We've been trying to prevent starvation for about five thousand years. It turns out that people who don't have a good education tend to fuck a lot. They tend to have too many kids. Until you get them out of the cycle of having more kids than they (or you) can support, you make no progress.
Think of it as a particularly relevant form of education. Communication, planning, resources... These are all things people will need if we want them to someday feed *themselves*.
The more I think about it, the more cool this sounds; it's a good use of resources. Free skilled labor is always good.
Pros: Technology clearly helps people become more self-sufficient. It's not necessarily a good thing to wait until everything else is in place to give people tools.
Cons: Perhaps the money and resources would be better spent helping people stabilize their economies, get fed, and things like that?
I guess I come down on the "pro" side. We've been trying to "feed the poor" for as long as we've had written history, and it's never really *solved* anything. Now, if we *EDUCATE* the poor, maybe that'll actually change something.
The reason used CD sales got laughed at is the first sale doctrine. When you buy a physical embodiment of a copyrighted work, you can do *ANYTHING* with it except copy it. You can even copy it, for personal use, as long as all the copies stay "associated" with that original. You can sell a book that you've bought, even if it's in perfect condition. You can sell a CD, even if the sound doesn't degrade.
What you can't do is make copies and sell them, or make copies, and sell the original, or anything like that.
This is not the same shit at all. Fussing about used CD's is dumb; every used CD is a CD the record company *already* got paid for. At any given point, only one person owns that CD.
Fussing about Napster and MP3's is different; every new person getting a given MP3 is another *copy*, without any revenue for the copyright holder.
Not the same at all, and trying to make it look the same is either disingenuous or stupid.
The CD's are an interesting question. I see no benefit to duping CD's; I already have the ones I want. Even then, it's still not a *distributed* medium; even if I were letting friends dup my CD's, the copies wouldn't be going to thousands of people.
MP3's are *not* widespread. Not by comparison with, say, CD players. MP3's aren't even close yet. In a couple years, when MP3 market penetration is in the tens of millions, and at least a few million of those people have portables, *THEN* we'll see what effect it has.
Also, "CD sales are up" and "MP3 is widely used" are not necessarily related. We're also, if you hadn't noticed, in a period of fairly strong economic growth, with record low unemployment, meaning, a lot of people who couldn't afford CD's in '98 may be able to now... We have no evidence for causality. (We also have no real evidence against it. My instinct is to guess that, right now, MP3's are having only marginal effects either way on CD sales.)
So, here's my question: Let's say that the music industry *can't* find a way to adapt to the MP3 thing, because there's nothing anyone cares about once they can copy MP3's. So, they go under.
What are we going to listen to? It may turn out that, once perfect copies are that easy, it's not worth it for anyone to go "pro". Touring may not be an option, if you can't make enough money on album sales to fund the marketing...
This is why I think we need to find a solution that keeps the musicians paid. The alternative might be a serious drop in the quantity and quality of new music produced.
Technology can't make copyright infringement ubiquitous, any more than it makes burglary ubiquitous.
Anyway, I'd *much* rather have copyright than some system based on taxation, because a system based on taxes will *never* support the kind of variety we enjoy today. The religious right will veto Trent Reznor's albums because they encourage gratuitous sex. Rap albums will get no funding, because some rap star says something misogynistic.
It's doomed.
Right now, it's possible for a lot of people to get paid for music. It is in our best interests, as consumers, to preserve this state until we have a *better* alternative - and not just more convenient for us, personally.
Well, by the same token, it's totally unclear that people have any intrinsic right not to be killed; we created that one with law, too.:) You have to decide whether or not you like the law. If you don't, may I recommend Singapore? I think they have pretty lax copyright laws.
How about this: Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that we want musicians to be able to be professionals; that we want it to be possible to earn a living producing music. If we accept this premise, then we must resolve the question of how they are to get paid.
Before you dismiss copyright law, please suggest an alternative.
The burden of proof is on your side. The law, for all its flaws, is the best we've been able to come up with. It represents a serious effort by people who gave the matter serious thought, to attempt to come up with an equitable solution. The best argument you've had so far is "information wants to be free" - and it's not clear that this even applies, because creative works are a different category from the purely factual and informative information that phrase originally referred to.
If you think the law is wrong, provide a better alternative. In the mean time, yes, musicians have that right, for the same reason that you have a right to expect certain minimal standards from resturaunts, and the same reason that people aren't supposed to hit you with their cars. Because we all agreed to play by a set of rules.
"Information wants to be free". So, we were wrong to ever create copyright law? The GPL is a joke and shouldn't be enforcable? How about a little basic consistency here.
Why do we need a music industry? Because, as a species, we're a bunch of cheap-ass fucks who would not, in fact, pay for art if we didn't have to.
Anyway, if we, as a society, have given artists control, then yes, it's wrong for us, as a bunch of computer geeks, to ignore that decision. Laws can be changed, and if the law is so obviously wrong as all that, we can probably get it changed. As soon as we offer a better alternative... It may be that you, personally, just disagree with Lars. That's cool; your opinions are probably just as well researched as his, or mine, or anyone else's. What bugs me is the people who are using his non-techie nature as justification for trashing his beliefs. You see, he's thought about these issues too. He may have come to different conclusions than I have, or than you have, but that doesn't mean he's wrong, it just means the debate's still going.
Well, if we hadn't created copyright law, you'd have a very good point.
However, we *DID* give the artists the right to withhold music.
You talk about "peacefully sharing information that will result in greater profits". First off, you're making a big assumption. Secondly, *IT IS NOT YOUR INFORMATION TO SHARE*.
Don't like it? Move to a company with no copyright - and not many artists.
Nice try. I particularly like how you copied my slashdot sig into an anonymous coward post. We all know the software appends your normal user.sig to AC posts, right?
SHEESH. I haven't signed as "-seebs" since I was a teenager.
If the best refutation you can come up with is to forge a post from me, well, that pretty much sums up your argument. "What I can do with technology must be ethical". Great logic, kid.
Long ago, I played hack a lot. Then my dad got me the source. Printed out. So, I read the source, and I had the game, and I learned C because it was pretty easy to compare sets of instructions in the source to what the game actually did.
Call Lars and ask if you can get permission to release the conversation in MP3 format.
Seriously! It's a good application for the format, it'll solve the "is this really him" debate, and if he authorizes it, it's totally legit.
The cool thing is, this would be a way in which Lars could shove a rusty railroad spike up the RIAA's colective asses, by visibly and publically endorsing the use of MP3's for some purposes.
I never said you never said anything useful, just that that particular comment was stunningly unuseful.
Go ahead, call names. The fact is, taking people's stuff without their permission is "theft".
Metallica is not trying to "establish control over the industry". He's saying "hold on, you can't just take my stuff". Hasn't got a damn thing to do with the RIAA.
My God, it's pathetic how easily you polarize. You're all into this idea that anyone who doesn't think you have a God-given right to whatever the fuck you can take is somehow an "RIAA whore". Real mature of you. Shows a great deal of analysis of the issues.
You'll notice that Lars was speaking moderately positively of distribution channels like this if they can get the permission thing worked out. Is he saying "death to all record labels"? No, and in your eyes, that makes him an RIAA whore. I think he's just responding to the fact that he *does* know something about the industry, and you don't know jack shit about it. He's decided that he thinks record labels may be doing something useful, and that we shouldn't just write them off.
He's come to this with an open mind. You're so obsessed with the idea that anyone who doesn't want you stealing their stuff is some kind of evil scumbag, that you'll never realize that their experience might have something to show you.
I don't like the RIAA particularly. I don't think Metallica is a big fan of the RIAA. However, that doesn't mean that anything that might be of some benefit to the RIAA is necessarily wrong. Get over your attitude. You're a lot more ignorant than Lars is; he at least knows when he's guessing.
I suspect that if you counted the bootlegs of concerts, Lars would be not especially surprised, and if he were surprised, it'd probably be positive. I suspect he wouldn't even be surprised by the number of bootleg tapes of studio albums.
Why? Because I suspect that number is self-limiting, in a way that MP3's aren't. Bootleg tapes of studio albums aren't that good. They wear out. Hell, I haven't personally put any music but mine on a tape in at least five years. People tend to buy CD's if they like an album... IF the copy they have now isn't a perfect, non-degrading, digital one.
You've got lots of ideas for how a band can get sold among the tiny little group of people who are out looking for new bands. Record companies have found ways to get a new band sold to people who are in music stores. Until you can do that in your business model, you're not improving on anything.
Compare your argument with the same argument the other way:
"The guy admits he knows fucking nothing about the music industry, yet he's starting a hugeass distribution mechanism and attempting to bankrupt a record company. What the fuck gives some goober who has no clue what he is talking about the right to regulate the administration of the music industry?"
Getting the point yet? Well, I didn't think so, but there's a reason your post stayed at 0.;)
Lars is attempting to find a way to keep the technology from wrecking the industry he works in, not because "technology is bad", but because "people ought to be able to exercise the control we have given them by law in this country". If you're willing to be the one to figure out how new bands get promoted and paid without record companies, go make your billions revolutionizing. But don't just sit on your hands and say "it's not my fault that I steal stuff from people, it's new technology".
Lars is a hell of a lot better informed about the computer industry than you appear to be about the music industry.
Is it net abuse to send a single email to a single person asking about a possible economic relationship? No.
Is it net abuse to send a few million? Yes.
Many, many, things are problems only if done on a large scale.
Most people have come to the conclusion that morality and ethics have to allow for grey areas, as something gradually shifts from harmless to harmful.
Concrete example: If I touch someone, I probably kill a skin cell. This is not a problem. If I killed enough of their cells, it would be a problem. How do you decide whether causing cells in someone's body to die is immoral? Well, you look to see if it's doing measurable damage. At some point, it's clearly doing damage. At some point a little before that, it's ambiguous, and you have to look at the context.
Bob's Nearly-Successful Band probably doesn't care if I make a copy of their band for my wife. However, if I give away thirty thousand copies that are good enough that people don't buy their album, they may be screwed.
So, what is it with this? Whence the instinctive assumption that people who aren't "into" computers can't possibly understand their implications? Can non-drummers appreciate good music?
I work in tech support, and I laugh at all the stupid-user jokes, because I've *talked* to those users. But I also believe that the jokes are symptomatic of a tendency to assume that one's own field is the important one, and that it's not that hard and people could do it if they really tried.
In fact, most people who don't know how to use computers are about as smart as the people who do know how to use computers. Just like I'm probably as smart as many people who can perform brain surgery safely. Same deal; I haven't put the time in to know jack shit about the medical field. Now, as some people recently established, newbies tend to overestimate their understanding of a field, and indeed, many geeks cheerfully make proclamations about how much they understand about nutrition after reading a single web page.
But never forget that we, too, are hopelessly, laughably, ignorant. Maybe in different fields, but we're just as ignorant.
Lars admitted, quite frankly, and right up front, that he's not a techie. That computers aren't his thing. How many slashdotters have the balls to admit that we don't know a damn thing about the music industry?
Minidisc to minidisc can be done, as I understand it, but it costs extra.
The media are getting cheap, though - not much more expensive than tapes, and they reuse better.
Your point about taping is good. If five of my friends and I share all our vinyl, we're still buying one album per five people. If a million people and I share all our MP3's, we're talking about one album per million, or maybe a little more. Big difference.
I think he actually articulated very well. Maybe you don't ramble at all on the phone. I do. I talk a lot like that sometimes, when I'm not in a medium where I can backspace over things.
I think he has a damn good feel for what this involves. Napster is, indeed, totally different from home taping. It is, indeed, potentially going to screw people.
Okay, quick show of hands, who believes that was orchestrated by the record company execs?
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
I think he's got damn good points. The statistic about *ONE* unsigned artist is particularly sobering. Let me share something with you all. I write music. It's not very good music. I don't have the bandwidth to post a URL here. I just put a couple MP3's up, and forgot about 'em.
Last week, I got a fan letter. Someone liked my music. That was fucking awesome. I am also nowhere near making any sort of a living at this.
Would I like to see something like Napster make it easier for me to make a living? Yes. But I'd like them to do it by *ASKING MY PERMISSION* before letting people distribute my work.
Hell, the fact is, I'm not sure that Metallica would have said "no" if they'd been asked; if you read the interview, they're pissed because they weren't asked, not necessarily because people are copying their music.
Anyway, I'm really glad it's Metallica doing this, and not a pop band that gets its entire mindset from the record label, specially shrink-wrapped.
Not a bad interview at all; really, it frankly totally exceeded my expectations; how often do you see a public figure in a debate like this give any ground at all, or admit that the issue is more complicated than he thought at first?
You have this totally wrong. Trademarks do not protect you from identical products, they protect you from "similar" *BRANDING*. Thus, I am allowed to make a product which cannot be distinguished from Coke Classic, but I'm probably not allowed to sell it (or anything else) in red cans with white ribbony-looking letters reading "Goka-Gola".
The idea, apparently, is that they're getting a trademark on the use of a specific smell to identify their product. Thus, if you sell tennis balls which smell of fresh-cut grass, you may be creating "confusion" in customer minds. I'm not sure whether or not I buy this, but it's not like a patent in any way.
Osborne once offered me $200 to do a technical edit on the entire _C: The Complete Reference_. I told them it was way too much work for the entire book.
I have an 8-page fax from Schildt "defending" void main, based entirely on not reading the definition of "undefined behavior".
Slashdot Mirror
We've been trying to prevent starvation for about five thousand years. It turns out that people who don't have a good education tend to fuck a lot. They tend to have too many kids. Until you get them out of the cycle of having more kids than they (or you) can support, you make no progress.
Think of it as a particularly relevant form of education. Communication, planning, resources... These are all things people will need if we want them to someday feed *themselves*.
The more I think about it, the more cool this sounds; it's a good use of resources. Free skilled labor is always good.
I'm not sure whether this is brilliant or stupid.
Pros: Technology clearly helps people become more self-sufficient. It's not necessarily a good thing to wait until everything else is in place to give people tools.
Cons: Perhaps the money and resources would be better spent helping people stabilize their economies, get fed, and things like that?
I guess I come down on the "pro" side. We've been trying to "feed the poor" for as long as we've had written history, and it's never really *solved* anything. Now, if we *EDUCATE* the poor, maybe that'll actually change something.
"freedom of information" is not a "fundemental law of cyberspace" any more than "freedom of bicycles" is a "fundemental law of guys with hacksaws".
Strongly seconded. Studying existing code lets you experience maintenance, which is a crucial thing to know. :)
I learned mostly from other people's code.
The reason used CD sales got laughed at is the first sale doctrine. When you buy a physical embodiment of a copyrighted work, you can do *ANYTHING* with it except copy it. You can even copy it, for personal use, as long as all the copies stay "associated" with that original. You can sell a book that you've bought, even if it's in perfect condition. You can sell a CD, even if the sound doesn't degrade.
What you can't do is make copies and sell them, or make copies, and sell the original, or anything like that.
This is not the same shit at all. Fussing about used CD's is dumb; every used CD is a CD the record company *already* got paid for. At any given point, only one person owns that CD.
Fussing about Napster and MP3's is different; every new person getting a given MP3 is another *copy*, without any revenue for the copyright holder.
Not the same at all, and trying to make it look the same is either disingenuous or stupid.
The CD's are an interesting question. I see no benefit to duping CD's; I already have the ones I want. Even then, it's still not a *distributed* medium; even if I were letting friends dup my CD's, the copies wouldn't be going to thousands of people.
MP3's are *not* widespread. Not by comparison with, say, CD players. MP3's aren't even close yet. In a couple years, when MP3 market penetration is in the tens of millions, and at least a few million of those people have portables, *THEN* we'll see what effect it has.
Also, "CD sales are up" and "MP3 is widely used" are not necessarily related. We're also, if you hadn't noticed, in a period of fairly strong economic growth, with record low unemployment, meaning, a lot of people who couldn't afford CD's in '98 may be able to now... We have no evidence for causality. (We also have no real evidence against it. My instinct is to guess that, right now, MP3's are having only marginal effects either way on CD sales.)
So, here's my question: Let's say that the music industry *can't* find a way to adapt to the MP3 thing, because there's nothing anyone cares about once they can copy MP3's. So, they go under.
What are we going to listen to? It may turn out that, once perfect copies are that easy, it's not worth it for anyone to go "pro". Touring may not be an option, if you can't make enough money on album sales to fund the marketing...
This is why I think we need to find a solution that keeps the musicians paid. The alternative might be a serious drop in the quantity and quality of new music produced.
Technology can't make copyright infringement ubiquitous, any more than it makes burglary ubiquitous.
Anyway, I'd *much* rather have copyright than some system based on taxation, because a system based on taxes will *never* support the kind of variety we enjoy today. The religious right will veto Trent Reznor's albums because they encourage gratuitous sex. Rap albums will get no funding, because some rap star says something misogynistic.
It's doomed.
Right now, it's possible for a lot of people to get paid for music. It is in our best interests, as consumers, to preserve this state until we have a *better* alternative - and not just more convenient for us, personally.
Well, by the same token, it's totally unclear that people have any intrinsic right not to be killed; we created that one with law, too. :) You have to decide whether or not you like the law. If you don't, may I recommend Singapore? I think they have pretty lax copyright laws.
How about this: Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that we want musicians to be able to be professionals; that we want it to be possible to earn a living producing music. If we accept this premise, then we must resolve the question of how they are to get paid.
Before you dismiss copyright law, please suggest an alternative.
The burden of proof is on your side. The law, for all its flaws, is the best we've been able to come up with. It represents a serious effort by people who gave the matter serious thought, to attempt to come up with an equitable solution. The best argument you've had so far is "information wants to be free" - and it's not clear that this even applies, because creative works are a different category from the purely factual and informative information that phrase originally referred to.
If you think the law is wrong, provide a better alternative. In the mean time, yes, musicians have that right, for the same reason that you have a right to expect certain minimal standards from resturaunts, and the same reason that people aren't supposed to hit you with their cars. Because we all agreed to play by a set of rules.
"Information wants to be free". So, we were wrong to ever create copyright law? The GPL is a joke and shouldn't be enforcable? How about a little basic consistency here.
Why do we need a music industry? Because, as a species, we're a bunch of cheap-ass fucks who would not, in fact, pay for art if we didn't have to.
Anyway, if we, as a society, have given artists control, then yes, it's wrong for us, as a bunch of computer geeks, to ignore that decision. Laws can be changed, and if the law is so obviously wrong as all that, we can probably get it changed. As soon as we offer a better alternative...
It may be that you, personally, just disagree with Lars. That's cool; your opinions are probably just as well researched as his, or mine, or anyone else's. What bugs me is the people who are using his non-techie nature as justification for trashing his beliefs. You see, he's thought about these issues too. He may have come to different conclusions than I have, or than you have, but that doesn't mean he's wrong, it just means the debate's still going.
Well, if we hadn't created copyright law, you'd have a very good point.
However, we *DID* give the artists the right to withhold music.
You talk about "peacefully sharing information that will result in greater profits". First off, you're making a big assumption. Secondly, *IT IS NOT YOUR INFORMATION TO SHARE*.
Don't like it? Move to a company with no copyright - and not many artists.
Nice try. I particularly like how you copied my slashdot sig into an anonymous coward post. We all know the software appends your normal user .sig to AC posts, right?
SHEESH. I haven't signed as "-seebs" since I was a teenager.
If the best refutation you can come up with is to forge a post from me, well, that pretty much sums up your argument. "What I can do with technology must be ethical". Great logic, kid.
Long ago, I played hack a lot. Then my dad got me the source. Printed out. So, I read the source, and I had the game, and I learned C because it was pretty easy to compare sets of instructions in the source to what the game actually did.
Your milage may vary.
Call Lars and ask if you can get permission to release the conversation in MP3 format.
Seriously! It's a good application for the format, it'll solve the "is this really him" debate, and if he authorizes it, it's totally legit.
The cool thing is, this would be a way in which Lars could shove a rusty railroad spike up the RIAA's colective asses, by visibly and publically endorsing the use of MP3's for some purposes.
I never said you never said anything useful, just that that particular comment was stunningly unuseful.
Go ahead, call names. The fact is, taking people's stuff without their permission is "theft".
Metallica is not trying to "establish control over the industry". He's saying "hold on, you can't just take my stuff". Hasn't got a damn thing to do with the RIAA.
My God, it's pathetic how easily you polarize. You're all into this idea that anyone who doesn't think you have a God-given right to whatever the fuck you can take is somehow an "RIAA whore". Real mature of you. Shows a great deal of analysis of the issues.
You'll notice that Lars was speaking moderately positively of distribution channels like this if they can get the permission thing worked out. Is he saying "death to all record labels"? No, and in your eyes, that makes him an RIAA whore. I think he's just responding to the fact that he *does* know something about the industry, and you don't know jack shit about it. He's decided that he thinks record labels may be doing something useful, and that we shouldn't just write them off.
He's come to this with an open mind. You're so obsessed with the idea that anyone who doesn't want you stealing their stuff is some kind of evil scumbag, that you'll never realize that their experience might have something to show you.
I don't like the RIAA particularly. I don't think Metallica is a big fan of the RIAA. However, that doesn't mean that anything that might be of some benefit to the RIAA is necessarily wrong. Get over your attitude. You're a lot more ignorant than Lars is; he at least knows when he's guessing.
I suspect that if you counted the bootlegs of concerts, Lars would be not especially surprised, and if he were surprised, it'd probably be positive. I suspect he wouldn't even be surprised by the number of bootleg tapes of studio albums.
Why? Because I suspect that number is self-limiting, in a way that MP3's aren't. Bootleg tapes of studio albums aren't that good. They wear out. Hell, I haven't personally put any music but mine on a tape in at least five years. People tend to buy CD's if they like an album... IF the copy they have now isn't a perfect, non-degrading, digital one.
You've got lots of ideas for how a band can get sold among the tiny little group of people who are out looking for new bands. Record companies have found ways to get a new band sold to people who are in music stores. Until you can do that in your business model, you're not improving on anything.
Compare your argument with the same argument the other way:
;)
"The guy admits he knows fucking nothing about the music industry, yet he's starting a hugeass distribution mechanism and attempting to bankrupt a record company. What the fuck gives some goober who has no clue what he is talking about the right to regulate the administration of the music industry?"
Getting the point yet? Well, I didn't think so, but there's a reason your post stayed at 0.
Lars is attempting to find a way to keep the technology from wrecking the industry he works in, not because "technology is bad", but because "people ought to be able to exercise the control we have given them by law in this country". If you're willing to be the one to figure out how new bands get promoted and paid without record companies, go make your billions revolutionizing. But don't just sit on your hands and say "it's not my fault that I steal stuff from people, it's new technology".
Lars is a hell of a lot better informed about the computer industry than you appear to be about the music industry.
Yes, scale makes it wrong.
Is it net abuse to send a single email to a single person asking about a possible economic relationship? No.
Is it net abuse to send a few million? Yes.
Many, many, things are problems only if done on a large scale.
Most people have come to the conclusion that morality and ethics have to allow for grey areas, as something gradually shifts from harmless to harmful.
Concrete example: If I touch someone, I probably kill a skin cell. This is not a problem. If I killed enough of their cells, it would be a problem. How do you decide whether causing cells in someone's body to die is immoral? Well, you look to see if it's doing measurable damage. At some point, it's clearly doing damage. At some point a little before that, it's ambiguous, and you have to look at the context.
Bob's Nearly-Successful Band probably doesn't care if I make a copy of their band for my wife. However, if I give away thirty thousand copies that are good enough that people don't buy their album, they may be screwed.
Count the generations, though.
A copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of an MP3 is indistinguishable from the original MP3.
Not especially suspicious. I've certainly never met anyone who used napster to get music that they couldn't have bought on CD.
It's easy to say he's "not the brightest man I've ever run across". Would you come out any better in a verbatim phone interview?
And I certainly don't think he's lying. Too far out of character.
So, what is it with this? Whence the instinctive assumption that people who aren't "into" computers can't possibly understand their implications? Can non-drummers appreciate good music?
I work in tech support, and I laugh at all the stupid-user jokes, because I've *talked* to those users. But I also believe that the jokes are symptomatic of a tendency to assume that one's own field is the important one, and that it's not that hard and people could do it if they really tried.
In fact, most people who don't know how to use computers are about as smart as the people who do know how to use computers. Just like I'm probably as smart as many people who can perform brain surgery safely. Same deal; I haven't put the time in to know jack shit about the medical field. Now, as some people recently established, newbies tend to overestimate their understanding of a field, and indeed, many geeks cheerfully make proclamations about how much they understand about nutrition after reading a single web page.
But never forget that we, too, are hopelessly, laughably, ignorant. Maybe in different fields, but we're just as ignorant.
Lars admitted, quite frankly, and right up front, that he's not a techie. That computers aren't his thing. How many slashdotters have the balls to admit that we don't know a damn thing about the music industry?
Me, for one. Anyone else?
Minidisc to minidisc can be done, as I understand it, but it costs extra.
The media are getting cheap, though - not much more expensive than tapes, and they reuse better.
Your point about taping is good. If five of my friends and I share all our vinyl, we're still buying one album per five people. If a million people and I share all our MP3's, we're talking about one album per million, or maybe a little more. Big difference.
I think he actually articulated very well. Maybe you don't ramble at all on the phone. I do. I talk a lot like that sometimes, when I'm not in a medium where I can backspace over things.
I think he has a damn good feel for what this involves. Napster is, indeed, totally different from home taping. It is, indeed, potentially going to screw people.
Okay, quick show of hands, who believes that was orchestrated by the record company execs?
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
I think he's got damn good points. The statistic about *ONE* unsigned artist is particularly sobering. Let me share something with you all. I write music. It's not very good music. I don't have the bandwidth to post a URL here. I just put a couple MP3's up, and forgot about 'em.
Last week, I got a fan letter. Someone liked my music. That was fucking awesome. I am also nowhere near making any sort of a living at this.
Would I like to see something like Napster make it easier for me to make a living? Yes. But I'd like them to do it by *ASKING MY PERMISSION* before letting people distribute my work.
Hell, the fact is, I'm not sure that Metallica would have said "no" if they'd been asked; if you read the interview, they're pissed because they weren't asked, not necessarily because people are copying their music.
Anyway, I'm really glad it's Metallica doing this, and not a pop band that gets its entire mindset from the record label, specially shrink-wrapped.
Not a bad interview at all; really, it frankly totally exceeded my expectations; how often do you see a public figure in a debate like this give any ground at all, or admit that the issue is more complicated than he thought at first?
You have this totally wrong. Trademarks do not protect you from identical products, they protect you from "similar" *BRANDING*. Thus, I am allowed to make a product which cannot be distinguished from Coke Classic, but I'm probably not allowed to sell it (or anything else) in red cans with white ribbony-looking letters reading "Goka-Gola".
The idea, apparently, is that they're getting a trademark on the use of a specific smell to identify their product. Thus, if you sell tennis balls which smell of fresh-cut grass, you may be creating "confusion" in customer minds. I'm not sure whether or not I buy this, but it's not like a patent in any way.
Osborne once offered me $200 to do a technical edit on the entire _C: The Complete Reference_. I told them it was way too much work for the entire book.
I have an 8-page fax from Schildt "defending" void main, based entirely on not reading the definition of "undefined behavior".
:)