Even if you are right, how does that justify pirating her tracks? Your argument sounds like her music sucks so copyright law doesn't apply. No one is forcing you to buy her albums, you can go buy - or not buy- whatever you want.
As a justification for P2P, this argument makes no sense. The argument is the music sucks, so it's ok to download the tracks for free. If the music sucks, why are you downloading it? You can't have it both ways (it sucks, but I want it).
Actually, if you read the press you'll see that the music group is not going with the rest of the entertainment assets. In other words, NBC won't end up with UMG, just the movie studio, theme parks, etc. This has nothing to do with the NBC deal.
Yes, mod this up. People seem to be confused that artists prefer to get nothing (from p2p downloads) rather than a small but steady stream from CD sales. Also, if this downhillbattle thing is so great, how come no artists are supporting it?
As far as I know, *no one* with any legal sense (including the EFF, Lessig, etc.) thinks that distributing copyrighted files is legal. If you have evidence to the contrary, please post it. The people the RIAA are going after are making hundreds of files available - they're not just downloaders. So I have no sympathy for these people, especially since they were warned. It's like hearing the cops say "we're going to set up a speed trap here" and then complaining when you get pulled over for going 90mph.
This idea is stupid. He clearly does not understand how music is consumed. Sales of a CD normally peak right after initial release when lots of people want to listen to the album. Over time, people start listening to other things and the amount of time they spend listening to the album slowly tapers off. In order for this system to work, you'd have to buy hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of copies of hit albums to satisfy the desire of everyone who wants to listen at the same time.
Independent of that, I don't think a single artist would support this. Some artists do make lots of money from CD sales, and even those who don't are not going to be willing to give up their royalties.
This is just another example of someone who knows nothing about the industry (or the law, as he has admitted) commenting on a problem he does not understand. Of course, this *is* slashdot:-)
So you are saying the people who create or make a living from music, movies, games, books, pictures, software, etc. should not have any rights with respect to their works? Don't take this personally, but it is people like you who give the rest of us who want looser restrictions a bad name. We need realism, not extremism.
If you think copyright law can be overturned, I want some of whatever you are smoking.
Excellent responses. Personally, I found the following points particularly interesting, given the common Slashdot rhetoric:
1) "we believe that using the term theft is not misleading. While there may be technical differences between certain types of infringing activity, conduct that triggers the criminal statutes is analogous to theft. In some instances, piracy can actually be more damaging than traditional theft. Unlike traditional theft, where a person steals a specific number of tangible objects, one product in digital format can alone be used to generate hundreds of thousands of near-perfect digital copies within hours."
2) "...while there certainly is a right to fair use, it is not a violation of that right to make products that cannot be copied. Although such features may prove unpopular to some, ultimately it is for the marketplace to decide the viability of those products. "
3) "Someone who is convicted of piracy for commercial advantage or private financial gain is subject to a felony penalty of up to 5 years in prison. By contrast, someone who infringes for reasons other than commercial advantage or private financial gain faces a maximum penalty of 3 years in prison (under the NET Act). Be aware, however, that the term private financial gain can encompass situations where pirated products are distributed or reproduced for anything of value, including other pirated products"
No one has mentioned the fact that Apple keeps a piece of the sale. I think they keep 35%. If correct, this means that the artist gets 58 cents for every 99 cent sale. This means you need to sell about 68 singles to recoup your $40. Still, not bad.
So let's take this argument to it's logical conclusion. Imagine every digital product was distributable without limitation, including games, software, movies, ebooks, and music. It now becomes impossible to make money through the production and sales of these works, because once one instance is created, it is copied and distributed for free to everyone else on the planet. So now we're kissing all of these industries goodbye. Think about what this would do to jobs and the economy.
My point is that claiming the benefits of unconstrained sharing outweigh the detriments is naive. No one can predict what the real impact will be.
As interesting of an idea as this is, I suspect it suffers from a few fatal flaws. First, people are not going to pay money in exchange for the possibility that they may get an album in a year. What happens if the band breaks up or the drummer spontaneously combusts? This means that the auction has to take place after the album has already been completed and the production money spent. Of course, one of the main reasons artists want a major record contract is so that they can get paid up-front to finance production.
Second, no one other than die-hard fans will pay for an album without hearing something from it first. Of course, since the whole DRM argument assumes that lack of protection = piracy, if you let people hear your album without some kind of protection, it's all over the net and now your auction won't raise much since everyone can get your songs for free.
Really? Will you think DRM is unbeneficial when it's used by your doctor to protect your medical records from unauthorized viewing and distribution? I think you are making the classic mistake of confusing technology and policy. This is the same mistake the music companies are making w.r.t. P2P.
You are correct, it is a copyright violation, but copyright violation is not legal. I doubt anyone, including the EFF or Lessig is going claim that people who get caught as part of this round-up are innocent.
Lessig himself said "I don't know anyone serious who doubts that under current law, individuals engage in copyright infringement when they make large quantities of copyrighted material available for others to copy without the permission of the copyright owner".
Let me start by saying no sane person agrees with damaging someoneâ(TM)s computer over copyright violations, including the music majors. Iâ(TM)m just trying to explain why Hatch said what he said:
It's well known in certain circles that Hatch is trying to pressure the IT companies into helping to solve the p2p piracy problem. I suspect he doesn't REALLY believe in damaging people's computers, he's just saying that to try and pressure the IT companies into getting something done. He is a song writer himself and is particularly interested in copyright issues but is frustrated with the lack of progress, thus his over zealous comments. He is a politician, after all, so statements like this are just part of his game. There is no way it will ever be legal to trash someoneâ(TM)s computer for a copyright violation since this would be like making it legal to trash someoneâ(TM)s house if they steal cable TV (not gonna happen).
Actually, not that surprising. Everyone here thinks music should be free, so why shouldn't communication infrastructure be free too?
Given the number of "when I download music I'm not stealing because I'm not taking anything physical" I understand why there are people who have trouble grasping the costs associated with non-physical goods (like bandwidth).
There is nothing preventing you from authorizing your work computer as one of your 3 machines. Then you can listen to your music in both places without having to worry about packet drops, etc. When you change jobs, you can just de-authorize your work computer.
What are you talking about? Just because someone produces a copyrighted work and makes it available to the public does not mean that they forfeit the rights to it. The copyright laws limit what you can do with a work - even one that you as a consumer bought. The fact that this is widely ignored has nothing to do with whether it is legal or not (just like speeding).
Your last statement claims that the good of the many (the public) outweighs the rights of the individual (the content creator). If you believe that, you're probably not from a country that believes in anything like the bill of rights. Artists and musicians have rights (at least in my country) and the public cannot legally trample them. What happens in practice is a different story...
I modded you up, but I don't think the point is as black and white as you make it. As an artist, don't I have some rights to preserve the integrity of my works? Say that you write a really good book. You probably don't want someone going in and changing parts, turning it into crap, and then releasing it to others. Word may get out that your book is crap, because people confuse the derivative work with the original.
Now it's an entirely different thing if you modify someone else's work for your own personal enjoyment, and I think everyone would agree that's a right you should have (i.e. "fair use").
I'm trying to make two points here, one is that there is a difference between expressing yourself and using someone else's work to express yourself. The second is that there is a difference between using someone else's work to express yourself privately or in a small setting and then taking that expression and selling it or widely distributing it. I think artists/creators should be able to choose what can be done to their works, just as it is up to developers to decide whether they release their programs under an open source license or a closed license.
I disagree. It seems like there is a stigma against the "hacking method" of development in the large software engineering companies. I totally related to the hacking mentality he described, and I have felt (since college) that this is not the "right way" to do things. I learned to hack in jr. high and high school, while college taught me rigorous design and implementation methods. These methods are anti-hacking because they focus on a lot of up-front paper design and process, whereas the hacking mentality involves working out the problem in code on-the-fly and refining over time. It's not unlike roughing out a sculpture in clay and progressively adding detail and changing things here and there as you go rather than working out the sculpture ahead of time.
So the point of this is that he is trying to say that hacking is a legitimate technique that has advantages over the traditional, slower and possibly less flexible, software engineering moethods and he's doing it by drawing parallels to how artists work. I think the truth is that you need a little of both.
ISPs are still legally required to respond to DMCA take down notices. ISPs are not P2P companies. The emails that the universities (and corporations) are getting are DMCA take down notices.
I don't understand why anyone would give advice to ignore the law. I don't think the university wants to get sued for violating the DMCA. Educate your users, throttle back P2P bandwidth, and respond to DMCA notices as directed by the law. Tell your students that legal uses of P2P will be allowed, but copyright infringers are own their own.
My employer issued a company wide statement about P2P use describing our policies (don't violate copyright) and people that are caught infringing now get a meeting with HR and their boss. I know that other large corporations have similar policies. I think we block all p2p ports, but if your students are responsible enough to stick to legitimate uses, this may not be necessary.
This is kind of a silly point. Movies are edited using Avids. Compare the cost of an Avid to the cost of the movie. There are a few orders of magnitude of difference. The biggest costs associated with movie and music production come from the people, not the equipment.
For example, hot music producers cost a few hundred thousand dollars per finished minute of song. For a three minute song, that's already over a million dollars not including anyone other than the producer!
Not true. All modern codecs are "perceptual codecs" which discard information that the human ear/brain ignores. This does not mean that everything over a certain sample frequency or bit depth gets discarded. Starting from a higher quality source IS an advatage.
That said, Apple did not actually go back to the masters to get the audio. They got 99% of their audio from CDs, just like everyone else. You've got to factor in the "Steve Jobs reality distortion field". Not everything he says is true.
Most people don't know this but all of this is available in the US today via Liquid Audio and its affiliates. They've got content from most of the majors (60,000-80,000 tracks from UMG alone, which is the biggest), it's reasonably priced, and yes, it can be burned to CD!
Right. Why not spend the money to cut prices so that they're in the same neighborhood as PCs? Why not accelerate the move to the Intel platform? Why not buy someone who can port over more popular software?
Slashdot Mirror
Even if you are right, how does that justify pirating her tracks? Your argument sounds like her music sucks so copyright law doesn't apply. No one is forcing you to buy her albums, you can go buy - or not buy- whatever you want.
As a justification for P2P, this argument makes no sense. The argument is the music sucks, so it's ok to download the tracks for free. If the music sucks, why are you downloading it? You can't have it both ways (it sucks, but I want it).
Copyright infringement = breaking the law.
Whether it's stealing or not, there still are legal implications.
Actually, if you read the press you'll see that the music group is not going with the rest of the entertainment assets. In other words, NBC won't end up with UMG, just the movie studio, theme parks, etc. This has nothing to do with the NBC deal.
Yes, mod this up. People seem to be confused that artists prefer to get nothing (from p2p downloads) rather than a small but steady stream from CD sales. Also, if this downhillbattle thing is so great, how come no artists are supporting it?
As far as I know, *no one* with any legal sense (including the EFF, Lessig, etc.) thinks that distributing copyrighted files is legal. If you have evidence to the contrary, please post it. The people the RIAA are going after are making hundreds of files available - they're not just downloaders. So I have no sympathy for these people, especially since they were warned. It's like hearing the cops say "we're going to set up a speed trap here" and then complaining when you get pulled over for going 90mph.
This idea is stupid. He clearly does not understand how music is consumed. Sales of a CD normally peak right after initial release when lots of people want to listen to the album. Over time, people start listening to other things and the amount of time they spend listening to the album slowly tapers off. In order for this system to work, you'd have to buy hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of copies of hit albums to satisfy the desire of everyone who wants to listen at the same time.
:-)
Independent of that, I don't think a single artist would support this. Some artists do make lots of money from CD sales, and even those who don't are not going to be willing to give up their royalties.
This is just another example of someone who knows nothing about the industry (or the law, as he has admitted) commenting on a problem he does not understand. Of course, this *is* slashdot
So you are saying the people who create or make a living from music, movies, games, books, pictures, software, etc. should not have any rights with respect to their works? Don't take this personally, but it is people like you who give the rest of us who want looser restrictions a bad name. We need realism, not extremism.
If you think copyright law can be overturned, I want some of whatever you are smoking.
Excellent responses. Personally, I found the following points particularly interesting, given the common Slashdot rhetoric:
1) "we believe that using the term theft is not misleading. While there may be technical differences between certain types of infringing activity, conduct that triggers the criminal statutes is analogous to theft. In some instances, piracy can actually be more damaging than traditional theft. Unlike traditional theft, where a person steals a specific number of tangible objects, one product in digital format can alone be used to generate hundreds of thousands of near-perfect digital copies within hours."
2) "...while there certainly is a right to fair use, it is not a violation of that right to make products that cannot be copied. Although such features may prove unpopular to some, ultimately it is for the marketplace to decide the viability of those products. "
3) "Someone who is convicted of piracy for commercial advantage or private financial gain is subject to a felony penalty of up to 5 years in prison. By contrast, someone who infringes for reasons other than commercial advantage or private financial gain faces a maximum penalty of 3 years in prison (under the NET Act). Be aware, however, that the term private financial gain can encompass situations where pirated products are distributed or reproduced for anything of value, including other pirated products"
No one has mentioned the fact that Apple keeps a piece of the sale. I think they keep 35%. If correct, this means that the artist gets 58 cents for every 99 cent sale. This means you need to sell about 68 singles to recoup your $40. Still, not bad.
So let's take this argument to it's logical conclusion. Imagine every digital product was distributable without limitation, including games, software, movies, ebooks, and music. It now becomes impossible to make money through the production and sales of these works, because once one instance is created, it is copied and distributed for free to everyone else on the planet. So now we're kissing all of these industries goodbye. Think about what this would do to jobs and the economy.
My point is that claiming the benefits of unconstrained sharing outweigh the detriments is naive. No one can predict what the real impact will be.
As interesting of an idea as this is, I suspect it suffers from a few fatal flaws. First, people are not going to pay money in exchange for the possibility that they may get an album in a year. What happens if the band breaks up or the drummer spontaneously combusts? This means that the auction has to take place after the album has already been completed and the production money spent. Of course, one of the main reasons artists want a major record contract is so that they can get paid up-front to finance production.
Second, no one other than die-hard fans will pay for an album without hearing something from it first. Of course, since the whole DRM argument assumes that lack of protection = piracy, if you let people hear your album without some kind of protection, it's all over the net and now your auction won't raise much since everyone can get your songs for free.
But interesting idea nonetheless.
Really? Will you think DRM is unbeneficial when it's used by your doctor to protect your medical records from unauthorized viewing and distribution? I think you are making the classic mistake of confusing technology and policy. This is the same mistake the music companies are making w.r.t. P2P.
You are correct, it is a copyright violation, but copyright violation is not legal. I doubt anyone, including the EFF or Lessig is going claim that people who get caught as part of this round-up are innocent.
Lessig himself said "I don't know anyone serious who doubts that under current law, individuals engage in copyright infringement when they make large quantities of copyrighted material available for others to copy without the permission of the copyright owner".
Let me start by saying no sane person agrees with damaging someoneâ(TM)s computer over copyright violations, including the music majors. Iâ(TM)m just trying to explain why Hatch said what he said:
It's well known in certain circles that Hatch is trying to pressure the IT companies into helping to solve the p2p piracy problem. I suspect he doesn't REALLY believe in damaging people's computers, he's just saying that to try and pressure the IT companies into getting something done. He is a song writer himself and is particularly interested in copyright issues but is frustrated with the lack of progress, thus his over zealous comments. He is a politician, after all, so statements like this are just part of his game. There is no way it will ever be legal to trash someoneâ(TM)s computer for a copyright violation since this would be like making it legal to trash someoneâ(TM)s house if they steal cable TV (not gonna happen).
Actually, not that surprising. Everyone here thinks music should be free, so why shouldn't communication infrastructure be free too?
Given the number of "when I download music I'm not stealing because I'm not taking anything physical" I understand why there are people who have trouble grasping the costs associated with non-physical goods (like bandwidth).
There is nothing preventing you from authorizing your work computer as one of your 3 machines. Then you can listen to your music in both places without having to worry about packet drops, etc. When you change jobs, you can just de-authorize your work computer.
I've tried this myself and it works great.
What are you talking about? Just because someone produces a copyrighted work and makes it available to the public does not mean that they forfeit the rights to it. The copyright laws limit what you can do with a work - even one that you as a consumer bought. The fact that this is widely ignored has nothing to do with whether it is legal or not (just like speeding).
Your last statement claims that the good of the many (the public) outweighs the rights of the individual (the content creator). If you believe that, you're probably not from a country that believes in anything like the bill of rights. Artists and musicians have rights (at least in my country) and the public cannot legally trample them. What happens in practice is a different story...
I modded you up, but I don't think the point is as black and white as you make it. As an artist, don't I have some rights to preserve the integrity of my works? Say that you write a really good book. You probably don't want someone going in and changing parts, turning it into crap, and then releasing it to others. Word may get out that your book is crap, because people confuse the derivative work with the original.
Now it's an entirely different thing if you modify someone else's work for your own personal enjoyment, and I think everyone would agree that's a right you should have (i.e. "fair use").
I'm trying to make two points here, one is that there is a difference between expressing yourself and using someone else's work to express yourself. The second is that there is a difference between using someone else's work to express yourself privately or in a small setting and then taking that expression and selling it or widely distributing it. I think artists/creators should be able to choose what can be done to their works, just as it is up to developers to decide whether they release their programs under an open source license or a closed license.
I disagree. It seems like there is a stigma against the "hacking method" of development in the large software engineering companies. I totally related to the hacking mentality he described, and I have felt (since college) that this is not the "right way" to do things. I learned to hack in jr. high and high school, while college taught me rigorous design and implementation methods. These methods are anti-hacking because they focus on a lot of up-front paper design and process, whereas the hacking mentality involves working out the problem in code on-the-fly and refining over time. It's not unlike roughing out a sculpture in clay and progressively adding detail and changing things here and there as you go rather than working out the sculpture ahead of time.
So the point of this is that he is trying to say that hacking is a legitimate technique that has advantages over the traditional, slower and possibly less flexible, software engineering moethods and he's doing it by drawing parallels to how artists work. I think the truth is that you need a little of both.
ISPs are still legally required to respond to DMCA take down notices. ISPs are not P2P companies. The emails that the universities (and corporations) are getting are DMCA take down notices.
I don't understand why anyone would give advice to ignore the law. I don't think the university wants to get sued for violating the DMCA. Educate your users, throttle back P2P bandwidth, and respond to DMCA notices as directed by the law. Tell your students that legal uses of P2P will be allowed, but copyright infringers are own their own.
My employer issued a company wide statement about P2P use describing our policies (don't violate copyright) and people that are caught infringing now get a meeting with HR and their boss. I know that other large corporations have similar policies. I think we block all p2p ports, but if your students are responsible enough to stick to legitimate uses, this may not be necessary.
This is kind of a silly point. Movies are edited using Avids. Compare the cost of an Avid to the cost of the movie. There are a few orders of magnitude of difference. The biggest costs associated with movie and music production come from the people, not the equipment.
For example, hot music producers cost a few hundred thousand dollars per finished minute of song. For a three minute song, that's already over a million dollars not including anyone other than the producer!
Not true. All modern codecs are "perceptual codecs" which discard information that the human ear/brain ignores. This does not mean that everything over a certain sample frequency or bit depth gets discarded. Starting from a higher quality source IS an advatage.
That said, Apple did not actually go back to the masters to get the audio. They got 99% of their audio from CDs, just like everyone else. You've got to factor in the "Steve Jobs reality distortion field". Not everything he says is true.
Most people don't know this but all of this is available in the US today via Liquid Audio and its affiliates. They've got content from most of the majors (60,000-80,000 tracks from UMG alone, which is the biggest), it's reasonably priced, and yes, it can be burned to CD!
Said one former Apple exec: 'Apple always needs to pull a rabbit out of its hat. Universal is a pretty big rabbit.'
You don't save a drowning man by throwing him another drowning man.
Right. Why not spend the money to cut prices so that they're in the same neighborhood as PCs? Why not accelerate the move to the Intel platform? Why not buy someone who can port over more popular software?