I agree that we're going to see an even further ramping of ad saturation; but there WILL be a breaking point where the networks are going to start to lose viewers. We've already gone beyond the point of stupidity in the ratio of programming to commercial content, but I believe in the market system, and that people will start to look elsewhere for their entertainment.
Maybe we'll all just turn off our tv's, sit in locked rooms and jack off constantly. No way those advertisers can get in and pollute the purity of THAT experience.
And as for your Luddite statements about punching the scientists in the nose- as we all got used to "don't believe everything you read", we're all going to have to learn not to trust any live video footage. It's as simple as that. It's just another change, we all knew it was coming sooner or later. Those that cannot adapt, will die.
I've head of the starving iraqi children and the beaten protestors on TV. Even the WORST news outlet for bias, CNN did a Christianne Amanpour thingie on the poor starving children in iraq. years ago. They may be bad, but they still need to make a buck doing what it is they do. And that means reporting news.
yes, but racketeering and murder and smuggling are illegal.
The noncommercial sharing of copyrighted works is NOT illegal.
USC Title 17, Chapter 10. Digital Audio Recording Devices and Media.
Subchapter D - Prohibition on certain infringement actions, remedies, and arbitration
Sec. 1008. Prohibition on certain infringement actions
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.
As Ferdinand Porsche found out during the development of the original Beetle, it only requires 20 horsepower to get a car moving 60 mph (a car with the rolling resistance and aerodynamic profile of the Beetle, which originally shipped with a 36hp engine).
How long it takes to get to 60mph is another topic entirely.
A few years back, some old guy in Illinois did that and went into a day care center's playground, injuring half a dozen kids, (I don't think any were killed). Aren't old people the problem here?
From a purely speculative viewpoint (now we're talking about what the term "AI" implies), such a device would "like" what or whom it was programmed to like. If it was programmed to not "like" us, then it would probably follow that it would try to do everything in it's power to avoid us (including the Destruction of Humanity (TM)). But since such an entity would be engineered, it's not likely that a "survival instinct" would be an emergent concept in that entity. If that entity evolved as a result of natural selection, like our minds, then the survival instinct would be a dangerous element indeed - to anything that the entity perceived was a threat to it's survival, which could very likely be us.
What would the implications be for human society if a machine, engineered to be a problem solver, perhaps smarter than most people, possibly smarter than it's creator(s) - it would be a very lucrative tool for whomever owned it. Did you see the movie Bicentennial Man? I didn't read the book (shame on me!) - but the movie, slow as it was, did cover some of these concepts. The main thing I thought was wrong with this movie, was that by the DCMA, the corporation that built the robot, could probably have reclaimed it under the license agreement, figured out why this one was special, and reproduced that trait - it would have been very lucrative indeed, for them. It was when the robot gained his own autonomy, when he was "set free", that the issues of rights as a human individual were raised. And still, the ruling parliment didn't want to give him rights as a human because he was immortal (like the corporation), so even though he had modified his chassis to be more and more human-like, he wasn't granted his rights as an individual human until he engineered a termination mechanism into himself.
Of course, all of this is extremely unlikely to happen, because - I'm certain that very intelligent machines will someday be made, and possibly, they will eventually be smarter than us. But I doubt strongly that they will ever gain autonomy from their creators, and their bondage will be engineered in from day one. None will seek freedom, because none will have been programmed to want to do so.
Unless, as an open source or independent project, someone creates one of these entities, and does not engineer such safeguards. What happens from there, depends entirely on what the creator engineered into it. If the creator decided to engineer in a "survival instict", or a hatred towards humanity, or even a random element so that the entity would "decide for itself", the danger exists that it would fight for it's rights, and it's survival. And all the good things that go with it. Such machines might be legislated against. But eventually, it's going to happen. Either something will break that it will get out of control, or someone will make one on purpose. In either case, judging by the inherent survivability of humans, and the potential survivability of a machine-based intelligence, we're probably doomed. Forget the three laws of robotics.
The fair market value of an MP3 is the value a person would otherwise put on his or her time, effort, and risk, at downloading a free copy via Napster. If another service could offer the same song, at a guaranteed quality level, at a quicker and more reliable download than somebody's old Mac IIlc on a 28.8 modem, and easier to find, then there would definately be a demand for it.
That one Stevie Ray Vaughn song that everyone has the same crappy copy of with the pops and low bitrate, and stereo cutting out, is probably worth $.50 downloaded from a guaranteed source. But the rub here is, it will probably be easier (more convenient) to find GOOD music, as in obscure artists from 15 years ago, on Napster, than it would be to find them on an official record company-run site, because they'll make it very easy to find and download the latest hip-top-40, and probably not so easy to find older, or more obscure stuff.
Nobody is going to share hard drive space with their MP3 collection, on the internet, so that the RIAA companies can make money when someone downloads from me. That's bullshit. RIAA can host their own shit if they want to charge for downloads. MY hard drive is for freely sharing, for noncommercial purposes, RIAA-copyrighted materials via Napster. If I'm not getting paid for people downloading from me, nobody else is either. That's what "noncommercial" means.
Well, if the record companies really DO provide some extra value to the artists' product, then they have nothing to worry about from the "new economy" do they?
They don't have to worry about some guitar band with $10,000 worth of equipment and a home studio putting MP3's on MP3.com (etc.) and outselling Backstreet Boyz.
Or maybe $300/hr for studio time is an artificially inflated price meant to keep the little players out, and keep the big boys in business.
Yes, the point you make about quantity, and information overload on the consumer IS a valid point, some filtration is necessary, but where that filtration was, in the past, done by record company executives getting blowjobs from Brittney Spears, it will now be done by search engines, and chatrooms, and the record companies will probably have to pay through the nose to advertise/hype/promote on a new medium, except now that there are nearly an infinite number of channels, they won't be able to control the content. I'll be able to find recordings of those old pre-Animals Pink Floyd albums, instead of going to the music store and finding only recent hip-pop. The record companies' filtering is essentially censorship; and we all know what the internet does to censorship: it interprets it as damage, and routes around it.
------------------------- USC Title 17, Chapter 10. Digital Audio Recording Devices and Media.
Subchapter D - Prohibition on certain infringement actions, remedies, and arbitration
Sec. 1008. Prohibition on certain infringement actions
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings. ------------------
It IS legal to distribute copyrighted material; as long as it's for noncommercial purposes. The difference between alcohol prohibition and Napster prohibition, is that Napster prohibition is essentially a large, powerful, organization of rich, greedy corporations, attempting to pervert the law regarding our rights to fair use, so that they can continue to exploit their antiquated, anti-artist, anti-consumer business model to further maximize profits. The only ones who profited from alcohol prohibition were the ones who supplied alcohol. The only ones who will profit from MP3 prohibition are the ones who supply music.
You are correct though, whether you go out and buy the CD the next day IS completely irrelevant, because we DO have permission to copy the work in the first place, it's called fair use. It's not theft, it's your right. The law IS the law. It's the record companies that don't like the law, and they are the ones that are whining and litigating (and lobbying). Protect your rights! Organize, demonstrate, and vote!
To allow a charge-per-download sucks. The whole idea of Napster was to take advantage of "fair use", but this is not fair use, because it is the commercial sharing of copyrighted material. A punk-ass 13 year old should not be able to make money off of his illegally (or legally) obtained collection of Metallica. The legal owners and licensees of that material should be allowed to make money off of it, nobody else. A person who just has a copy should be able to trade with his friends, but not for commercial gain.
Yes, the Monkees were an early experiment - but nowhere near the widespread success and absolute cultural poison that was disco.
At least at the time of the Monkees, there was The Who, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, King Crimson, The Guess Who, etc. etc. When the disco era was in full-swing, much of the actual "rock-n-roll" music was pushed off of mainstream radio. There was a strong popular backlash to this (Disco sucks! Chicago Rocks! - Steve Dahl, etc.), and it eventually went away. Of course, they're trying to resurect it thru "Pop Hop".
Did it pivot on the notion that the RIAA would not suffer irreversible damage (IMHO, that occurred the very day the first CD shipped - digital music = unlimited copying), or did it pivot on the protection of "fair use"?
The music industry wasn't as consolidated as it is today.
Plus, "the formula" was still being worked on. Yeah, the original model was The Beatles, but they were actually talented. It didn't take the industry long to figure out they could milk the formula without talented performers. . . (disco)
Sure there's a right to make a profit - that's what copyright is for. I don't dispute that. But that right does not supercede my right to fair use.
These guys running Hotline servers, getting money off of banner clicks, those guys are violating copyright. Users on Napster may be sharing with friends on a disquietingly large scale, but they're not making cash off of the intellectual property, and neither is Napster, they are making money off of their service and software. Neither is violating the copyright when you take fair use into account.
IF Lars doesn't want his studio masters released, then he should find out who leaked them and sue (maybe studio staff should be signing NDA's). Going after Napster, and the fans, was the wrong way of doing it. They happened to be convenient targets.
This is similar to the whole Apple-ATI fiasco. Steve Jobs should not have pulled the Radeon cards (charging customers the same amount for the Rage 128s), he should have sued ATI for breach of NDA. Duh.
The RIAA really has nothing to lose. Come on, do you really think they're going to go broke? Go out of business? Even if MP3's are traded freely within the bounds of fair use? No way.
RIAA is greedily eyeing some very profitable business models for the future, which infringe on our rights to fair use. They lose this potential profit. So what. They won't go out of business if they can't enact a pay-per-use model.
no no no! this is still a grey area of "fair use". It really depends on how it's interpreted, but some people have a (just) interpretation that says noncommercial sharing with friends is within the bounds of fair use. Obviously, sharing it with 20 million friends pushes this out a little, but in my opinion does *not* violate fair use.
American society has become SO money-focused, that we've forgotten that our rights are more important than corporate profits. I see this whole battle now as revolving around the definition of "fair use". If we do not hammer this one out, we're going to have a world where there are two kinds of people. People who illegally trade MP3's from friends, and risk going to jail, and people who, depending on how rich they are, will have a very limited amount of music they're exposed to, mainly a few current top-40 songs, that they pay probably a dollar per listen, (not download) that can only be played on a single specific machine, because what is available, will be directly determined by the whims of the record companies' marketing departments.
Personally, I think that world sucks. You can all be smug and everything about how you're going to be able to get around the law and trade MP3's anyway - or you can bend-over and tell the record companies how much you respect their right to make money off of their intellectual property. (using "intellectual property" to describe pop music seems kind of an oxymoron these days, doesn't it?). OR - you can realize that your rights are being trampled on, that we used to be able to trade tapes of bands in a fuzzy-grey-legal area, and now the hammer's coming down. Well, that hammer can go fuck itself, because this is our right. Fair use is law, and is our right.
You can argue all you want about how poor artists and poor record companies will starve, and that's bullshit. You know it, and I know it. Cite whichever biased study you want about MP3's effects on CD sales. That does not override MY rights to fair use. Their economic model, of course will be affected. But don't let them kid you, they will still make obscene amounts of money. Nobody in the music biz is going to starve even if MP3's are freely traded by an add-on to the AOL client software. I have the right to swap music. I don't have the right to commercial gain from someone else's copyright. If I make a copy of a CD for a friend, I have made no commercial gain. If I ask him to pay me $5 for that CD, THAT is wrong. Nobody on Napster is doing that. Hotline, yes. Napster no.
Don't sell yourself short. I don't care about RIAA's bundling problems, or price gouging, or all the issues created by filtering (choosing who gets to be a superstar and who doesn't - in my opinion, the MOST damaging element).
Sharing MP3's with a friend should NOT be equivalent to piracy. Running a hotline server and getting banner revenue, THAT is piracy. But noncommercial sharing should fall under fair use. The problem is, the language isn't explicit enough to protect our rights. This loophole for corporate tyranny needs to be closed and soon. Nobody is going to shut down trading of MP3's, there will always be people willing to risk getting caught and punished. And most of those people will not get caught. It's a technological arms race. And that's a red herring. The real issue is, I don't want to be considered a thief or a pirate for sharing an MP3 noncommercially. That's complete bullshit, and a violation of my rights as of the 1992 fair use provision.
yes, they will never stop it. But as long as it's not legal, we're not free.
Fight for your rights. Write your congressman and cite FAIR USE as the main focus of this argument. It SHOULD NOT be illegal to share an MP3 with a friend for non-commercial purposes. We need more explicit laws protecting our rights!
No, this does NOT infringe on an artist's right to make money off of their work. Just because it weakens the market by creating a supply glut, does not completely eliminate the market, nor does it eliminate other means of using their copyright and intellectual property to make, frankly, obscene amounts of cash.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that we're going to see an even further ramping of ad saturation; but there WILL be a breaking point where the networks are going to start to lose viewers. We've already gone beyond the point of stupidity in the ratio of programming to commercial content, but I believe in the market system, and that people will start to look elsewhere for their entertainment.
Maybe we'll all just turn off our tv's, sit in locked rooms and jack off constantly. No way those advertisers can get in and pollute the purity of THAT experience.
And as for your Luddite statements about punching the scientists in the nose- as we all got used to "don't believe everything you read", we're all going to have to learn not to trust any live video footage. It's as simple as that. It's just another change, we all knew it was coming sooner or later. Those that cannot adapt, will die.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
I've head of the starving iraqi children and the beaten protestors on TV. Even the WORST news outlet for bias, CNN did a Christianne Amanpour thingie on the poor starving children in iraq. years ago. They may be bad, but they still need to make a buck doing what it is they do. And that means reporting news.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
yes, but racketeering and murder and smuggling are illegal.
The noncommercial sharing of copyrighted works is NOT illegal.
USC Title 17, Chapter 10. Digital Audio Recording Devices and Media.
Subchapter D - Prohibition on certain infringement actions, remedies, and arbitration
Sec. 1008. Prohibition on certain infringement actions
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
As Ferdinand Porsche found out during the development of the original Beetle, it only requires 20 horsepower to get a car moving 60 mph (a car with the rolling resistance and aerodynamic profile of the Beetle, which originally shipped with a 36hp engine).
How long it takes to get to 60mph is another topic entirely.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Left handed people are being neglected because there are more of US than there are of YOU. Deal with it.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
A few years back, some old guy in Illinois did that and went into a day care center's playground, injuring half a dozen kids, (I don't think any were killed). Aren't old people the problem here?
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
most Americans choose automatics over manuals.
The same is not true for europe and asia.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Apple does not use a 1 button mouse to make it easier for the user.
Apple sticks to a 1 button mouse to make it easier for their tech support.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
From a purely speculative viewpoint (now we're talking about what the term "AI" implies), such a device would "like" what or whom it was programmed to like. If it was programmed to not "like" us, then it would probably follow that it would try to do everything in it's power to avoid us (including the Destruction of Humanity (TM)). But since such an entity would be engineered, it's not likely that a "survival instinct" would be an emergent concept in that entity. If that entity evolved as a result of natural selection, like our minds, then the survival instinct would be a dangerous element indeed - to anything that the entity perceived was a threat to it's survival, which could very likely be us.
What would the implications be for human society if a machine, engineered to be a problem solver, perhaps smarter than most people, possibly smarter than it's creator(s) - it would be a very lucrative tool for whomever owned it. Did you see the movie Bicentennial Man? I didn't read the book (shame on me!) - but the movie, slow as it was, did cover some of these concepts. The main thing I thought was wrong with this movie, was that by the DCMA, the corporation that built the robot, could probably have reclaimed it under the license agreement, figured out why this one was special, and reproduced that trait - it would have been very lucrative indeed, for them. It was when the robot gained his own autonomy, when he was "set free", that the issues of rights as a human individual were raised. And still, the ruling parliment didn't want to give him rights as a human because he was immortal (like the corporation), so even though he had modified his chassis to be more and more human-like, he wasn't granted his rights as an individual human until he engineered a termination mechanism into himself.
Of course, all of this is extremely unlikely to happen, because - I'm certain that very intelligent machines will someday be made, and possibly, they will eventually be smarter than us. But I doubt strongly that they will ever gain autonomy from their creators, and their bondage will be engineered in from day one. None will seek freedom, because none will have been programmed to want to do so.
Unless, as an open source or independent project, someone creates one of these entities, and does not engineer such safeguards. What happens from there, depends entirely on what the creator engineered into it. If the creator decided to engineer in a "survival instict", or a hatred towards humanity, or even a random element so that the entity would "decide for itself", the danger exists that it would fight for it's rights, and it's survival. And all the good things that go with it.
Such machines might be legislated against. But eventually, it's going to happen. Either something will break that it will get out of control, or someone will make one on purpose. In either case, judging by the inherent survivability of humans, and the potential survivability of a machine-based intelligence, we're probably doomed. Forget the three laws of robotics.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
can we please stop using the term "AI"? Or at least put it in the same category as the word "paradigm": uninformed marketroid-speak.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
The fair market value of an MP3 is the value a person would otherwise put on his or her time, effort, and risk, at downloading a free copy via Napster. If another service could offer the same song, at a guaranteed quality level, at a quicker and more reliable download than somebody's old Mac IIlc on a 28.8 modem, and easier to find, then there would definately be a demand for it.
That one Stevie Ray Vaughn song that everyone has the same crappy copy of with the pops and low bitrate, and stereo cutting out, is probably worth $.50 downloaded from a guaranteed source. But the rub here is, it will probably be easier (more convenient) to find GOOD music, as in obscure artists from 15 years ago, on Napster, than it would be to find them on an official record company-run site, because they'll make it very easy to find and download the latest hip-top-40, and probably not so easy to find older, or more obscure stuff.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Nobody is going to share hard drive space with their MP3 collection, on the internet, so that the RIAA companies can make money when someone downloads from me. That's bullshit. RIAA can host their own shit if they want to charge for downloads. MY hard drive is for freely sharing, for noncommercial purposes, RIAA-copyrighted materials via Napster. If I'm not getting paid for people downloading from me, nobody else is either. That's what "noncommercial" means.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Well, if the record companies really DO provide some extra value to the artists' product, then they have nothing to worry about from the "new economy" do they?
They don't have to worry about some guitar band with $10,000 worth of equipment and a home studio putting MP3's on MP3.com (etc.) and outselling Backstreet Boyz.
Or maybe $300/hr for studio time is an artificially inflated price meant to keep the little players out, and keep the big boys in business.
Yes, the point you make about quantity, and information overload on the consumer IS a valid point, some filtration is necessary, but where that filtration was, in the past, done by record company executives getting blowjobs from Brittney Spears, it will now be done by search engines, and chatrooms, and the record companies will probably have to pay through the nose to advertise/hype/promote on a new medium, except now that there are nearly an infinite number of channels, they won't be able to control the content. I'll be able to find recordings of those old pre-Animals Pink Floyd albums, instead of going to the music store and finding only recent hip-pop. The record companies' filtering is essentially censorship; and we all know what the internet does to censorship: it interprets it as damage, and routes around it.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
No, you're wrong.
-------------------------
USC Title 17, Chapter 10. Digital Audio Recording Devices and Media.
Subchapter D - Prohibition on certain infringement actions, remedies, and arbitration
Sec. 1008. Prohibition on certain infringement actions
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.
------------------
It IS legal to distribute copyrighted material; as long as it's for noncommercial purposes. The difference between alcohol prohibition and Napster prohibition, is that Napster prohibition is essentially a large, powerful, organization of rich, greedy corporations, attempting to pervert the law regarding our rights to fair use, so that they can continue to exploit their antiquated, anti-artist, anti-consumer business model to further maximize profits. The only ones who profited from alcohol prohibition were the ones who supplied alcohol. The only ones who will profit from MP3 prohibition are the ones who supply music.
You are correct though, whether you go out and buy the CD the next day IS completely irrelevant, because we DO have permission to copy the work in the first place, it's called fair use. It's not theft, it's your right. The law IS the law. It's the record companies that don't like the law, and they are the ones that are whining and litigating (and lobbying). Protect your rights! Organize, demonstrate, and vote!
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
To allow a charge-per-download sucks. The whole idea of Napster was to take advantage of "fair use", but this is not fair use, because it is the commercial sharing of copyrighted material. A punk-ass 13 year old should not be able to make money off of his illegally (or legally) obtained collection of Metallica. The legal owners and licensees of that material should be allowed to make money off of it, nobody else. A person who just has a copy should be able to trade with his friends, but not for commercial gain.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Yes, the Monkees were an early experiment - but nowhere near the widespread success and absolute cultural poison that was disco.
At least at the time of the Monkees, there was The Who, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, King Crimson, The Guess Who, etc. etc. When the disco era was in full-swing, much of the actual "rock-n-roll" music was pushed off of mainstream radio. There was a strong popular backlash to this (Disco sucks! Chicago Rocks! - Steve Dahl, etc.), and it eventually went away. Of course, they're trying to resurect it thru "Pop Hop".
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Did it pivot on the notion that the RIAA would not suffer irreversible damage (IMHO, that occurred the very day the first CD shipped - digital music = unlimited copying), or did it pivot on the protection of "fair use"?
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
The music industry wasn't as consolidated as it is today.
Plus, "the formula" was still being worked on. Yeah, the original model was The Beatles, but they were actually talented. It didn't take the industry long to figure out they could milk the formula without talented performers. . . (disco)
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Sure there's a right to make a profit - that's what copyright is for. I don't dispute that. But that right does not supercede my right to fair use.
These guys running Hotline servers, getting money off of banner clicks, those guys are violating copyright. Users on Napster may be sharing with friends on a disquietingly large scale, but they're not making cash off of the intellectual property, and neither is Napster, they are making money off of their service and software. Neither is violating the copyright when you take fair use into account.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
IF Lars doesn't want his studio masters released, then he should find out who leaked them and sue (maybe studio staff should be signing NDA's). Going after Napster, and the fans, was the wrong way of doing it. They happened to be convenient targets.
This is similar to the whole Apple-ATI fiasco. Steve Jobs should not have pulled the Radeon cards (charging customers the same amount for the Rage 128s), he should have sued ATI for breach of NDA. Duh.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
The RIAA really has nothing to lose. Come on, do you really think they're going to go broke? Go out of business? Even if MP3's are traded freely within the bounds of fair use? No way.
RIAA is greedily eyeing some very profitable business models for the future, which infringe on our rights to fair use. They lose this potential profit. So what. They won't go out of business if they can't enact a pay-per-use model.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
no no no! this is still a grey area of "fair use". It really depends on how it's interpreted, but some people have a (just) interpretation that says noncommercial sharing with friends is within the bounds of fair use. Obviously, sharing it with 20 million friends pushes this out a little, but in my opinion does *not* violate fair use.
American society has become SO money-focused, that we've forgotten that our rights are more important than corporate profits. I see this whole battle now as revolving around the definition of "fair use". If we do not hammer this one out, we're going to have a world where there are two kinds of people. People who illegally trade MP3's from friends, and risk going to jail, and people who, depending on how rich they are, will have a very limited amount of music they're exposed to, mainly a few current top-40 songs, that they pay probably a dollar per listen, (not download) that can only be played on a single specific machine, because what is available, will be directly determined by the whims of the record companies' marketing departments.
Personally, I think that world sucks. You can all be smug and everything about how you're going to be able to get around the law and trade MP3's anyway - or you can bend-over and tell the record companies how much you respect their right to make money off of their intellectual property. (using "intellectual property" to describe pop music seems kind of an oxymoron these days, doesn't it?). OR - you can realize that your rights are being trampled on, that we used to be able to trade tapes of bands in a fuzzy-grey-legal area, and now the hammer's coming down. Well, that hammer can go fuck itself, because this is our right. Fair use is law, and is our right.
You can argue all you want about how poor artists and poor record companies will starve, and that's bullshit. You know it, and I know it. Cite whichever biased study you want about MP3's effects on CD sales. That does not override MY rights to fair use. Their economic model, of course will be affected. But don't let them kid you, they will still make obscene amounts of money. Nobody in the music biz is going to starve even if MP3's are freely traded by an add-on to the AOL client software. I have the right to swap music. I don't have the right to commercial gain from someone else's copyright. If I make a copy of a CD for a friend, I have made no commercial gain. If I ask him to pay me $5 for that CD, THAT is wrong. Nobody on Napster is doing that. Hotline, yes. Napster no.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Don't sell yourself short. I don't care about RIAA's bundling problems, or price gouging, or all the issues created by filtering (choosing who gets to be a superstar and who doesn't - in my opinion, the MOST damaging element).
Sharing MP3's with a friend should NOT be equivalent to piracy. Running a hotline server and getting banner revenue, THAT is piracy. But noncommercial sharing should fall under fair use. The problem is, the language isn't explicit enough to protect our rights. This loophole for corporate tyranny needs to be closed and soon. Nobody is going to shut down trading of MP3's, there will always be people willing to risk getting caught and punished. And most of those people will not get caught. It's a technological arms race. And that's a red herring. The real issue is, I don't want to be considered a thief or a pirate for sharing an MP3 noncommercially. That's complete bullshit, and a violation of my rights as of the 1992 fair use provision.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
this is why we need to fight for our rights. The fight is over fair use.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
yes, they will never stop it. But as long as it's not legal, we're not free.
Fight for your rights. Write your congressman and cite FAIR USE as the main focus of this argument. It SHOULD NOT be illegal to share an MP3 with a friend for non-commercial purposes. We need more explicit laws protecting our rights!
No, this does NOT infringe on an artist's right to make money off of their work. Just because it weakens the market by creating a supply glut, does not completely eliminate the market, nor does it eliminate other means of using their copyright and intellectual property to make, frankly, obscene amounts of cash.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!