Christ, what are the odds...when I was in school I clipped the tagline of a People magazine (!) article on the guy to decorate a mixed tape cover with. Got it right here in front of me:
Shoot the moon? Hell, says Prof. Alexander Abian, why not just blow it up?
Check here for slightly more detailed coverage on Wired News. From that article:
But while the win was significant for the RIAA, the real fight is still to come. "This was really a tune up for the main event," said [copyright attorney/talking head Whitney] Broussard. "The main event is going to be when Napster rolls out the Betamax defense, which will be very interesting."
So relax, people. <cliche'>It's only the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end.</cliche'>
Hey Metallica: I'm sure you've heard the arguments for why you'll never get rid of MP3 transfers. So why not treat MP3 transfers similar to radio broadcasts, and lobby to get ASCAP/BMI involved?
ASCAP/BMI already charge fees to radio stations (and other music users), and distribute those fees to publishers and songwriters -- which, these days, are often the artists themselves. They're already getting involved in internet music licensing. It wouldn't be difficult to keep a tally of how many Metallica songs get downloaded, and make payments accordingly. Napster or its competitors/replacements would have the option of passing the cost of licensing fees onto customers (charging for access) or advertisers.
It might take a bit of tweaking -- changing ASCAP/BMI's mandate so that it pays artists as well, instead of just the songwriters/publishers -- but wouldn't this be a fair and workable solution for everyone?
We cheer and hoot and holler when this is used to track down spammers--but oh how conveniently we forget that it's a double-edged sword. If you do something that's illegal, why yes, you can be tracked down and held accountable. Surprise!
Oh man, yes! It's that damned double standard that really infuriates me. You have got it exactly right.
1. The lawyers provided Napster with a printout of the user IDs, so that Napster would -- as they stated they would -- block them from connecting to Napster's servers. The users were not served with subpoenas, or cease-and-desist orders, or beaten with truncheons, or taken to concentration camps for "re-education".
2. "Many of them kids"? So what? Besides being presented throughout the entire article without any evidence, claims like this -- matter how self-evident they may seem -- are meant to tug at your heartstrings until the reader agrees to whatever is needed to protect "the children". The same techniques are used in accusations of ritual Satanic abuse, or arguments about gun control (on both sides), or just about any issue at all: "Won't somebody think of the children?" It contributes little, if anything, to a rational discussion.
3. "Napster contributes a lot more to the world than they do." So from this we can conclude: rights depend on worth to society; a program meant to circumvent what (clumsy, out-of-date, easy-for-record-companies-to-abuse) copyright protections exist is worth more than an artist providing the material that is being copied; Metallica should just shut up and take it like men, dammit, rather than take any of the legal remedies open to them.
Written baldly like this, rather than left as implicit assumptions, do these statements still seem rational? We might well argue that unequal access to money and lawyers has already created a second-class citizenship; should we attempt to write this into law too? Does being right depend on not being rich, not being a "crappy" band, or not being successful in your field?
4. "[Metallica's] targets include many [...] who have no idea their online movements are being tracked, and who certainly have the right to pursue individual cultural interests without worring that they're being watched." Does "the right to pursue individual cultural interests" extend to illegal acts? What about illegal duplication of copyrighted material? Why doesn't Metallica have the right to pursue their cultural interest of, say, prosecuting criminals? Is it any more or less silly to define one as a legitimate cultural interest than the other? Why should the expectation of privacy -- and, I think we would agree, an ill-founded one (the debate about whether there should be privacy on the net, or of what kind, is another matter) -- confer immunity from prosecution for illegal acts?
Now for what we do agree on.
"Metallica's action is dumb and nearly insanely self-destructive." Well, yes. I think there are a lot better ways they could've tackled this: through something like the Pay Lars site, or through lobbying their record label to change their behaviour toward Napster.
I agree that there is no putting the genie back in the bottle. I agree that the RIAA is being overly heavy-handed in their actions, and in the long run will only hurt themselves by passing up the opportunity to get involved in MP3 distribution earlier. But the problem with Napster and with sharing MP3s is that there is no way for artists to get paid for the duplication of their material. Record companies pay duplication fees; radio stations pay fees to ASCAP or BMI; anyone using music in a movie, or a commercial, or a tv show must pay as well. But there is no method in place to ensure artists are paid when someone gets a copy of their song from Napster.
I would propose that this is the perfect opportunity to involve ASCAP, BMI and other broadcasting-rights organizations. Monitor Napster and disburse money to artists for downloads of their music, in the same way they are paid for radio play. As for where this money would come from, I would say that Napster (or competitors) pay the licensing fees, as currently paid by radio stations. They would then have the option of either passing the charges on to users by charging to connect, or by passing the charges on to advertisers and allowing users free access.
The problem with this is that record labels would then be denied a potentially huge source of revenue -- because the fees in question would not be duplication fees payable to the copyright holder (almost always the record label), but broadcast fees payable to the writer (the artist or songwriter) and/or the publishing company (these days, most often the artist or songwriter as well). And how eager would these corporations (or any other) be to go along with a proposition like that?
In any case, Mr Katz's inflammatory article helps us not one bit. If we urge politeness and restraint upon everyone when dealing with NVidia accidentally using GPL code in a closed-source driver, then why don't we do the same in this issue?
ObCompliment: Love your books. And now the questions:
You've been using computers for a while now -- not only as things to write on, but things to write for. So how do they compare to what you imagined and wrote about? What don't they do that you'd really want -- and what do they do that maybe you never thought of, but is impressive anyway? And would you want to use any of the computers you wrote about?
Not to crush your dreams of having some valuable resource to academics in the future, but with all the information out there, about the only thing your little archive will be is a snap shot of (at least one aspect of) your personality, and what you considered important enough to take up HD space.
Oh, absolutely. I have no illusions about having the One True Archive that allows mankind to rebuild civilization after nuclear war. Rather, I'm taking inspiration from a book called Extremism in America: A Reader (Lynn Sargent, ed). It's based on one university's archive (can't rem. which), which was in turn started when one grad student turned over to the library a cardboard box full of stuff he'd collected on his own time: mostly fringe far-right stuff that hadn't been archived elsewhere. Now it's one of the premier collections of its kind. That's the sort of thing I'm interested in anyway, and I suspect there's few enough people archiving this stuff that it would be (more or less) valuable to either academics or amateurs like me.
And as for IP...yeah, that's the kicker. The only thing I've thought of so far is putting it in a box with instructions to open a century after my death, say -- long enough that any IP issues should be moot (I'm not archiving The New York Times, after all). But then, how do I make sure it can be read? Bit rot, obscelence -- hell, I'll have trouble making sure its readable in ten years unless I constantly back it up onto newer media.
Perhaps part of the solution is to find/start a company that will do exactly that: preserve stuff by constantly copying it onto new media. But how in hell could you make a profit -- and thus ensure that the company would be around in a century? And who besides me would need or want that service?
My two cents on The Solution: make your own backup copy.
I've got about a gig's worth of archived sites on my hard drive. My interest is the weird stuff: UFOs ate my dog, I am schizophrenic, Jesus moved to Asia, whatever. If someone puts out a weird pamphlet, the odds are relatively good that someone somewhere will archive it. But with a website -- well, one bad Visa day and it's gone, right? So what I figure is that someday, my hard drive will be worth something (for interest' sake, not $) to researchers -- whether university types or just freaks like me.
Now sure, this was all done when I had a cable modem and I could suck down a site in ten minutes. But since the subject here is text, you won't need a whole lotta bandwidth for image maps, MIDI files and the like -- just a half hour of your time. Take matters into your own hands! Make your own mirror! Just look at all the posts marked "informative": half or more are from people who kept their own copies.
No offense to the poster who said a centralized library was the solution, but nuts to that: multiple, redundant backups -- if for no other reason than to avoid copyright issues. (I still haven't figured out how to avoid that question in my plan to eventually donate my hard drive to a university for archival.)
So AOL/TW has traditional media (publishing, movies, music, tv), the pipes (cable networks), software (ICQ, Netscape) and the portal (AOL dial-up service). Wouldn't the logical thing be for Congress to break it all up, a la Ma Bell, into different competing divisions along those lines?
Sure, it's not as simple as waving the Slashdot wand at them (new def. of the Slashdot effect?), but maybe we should start pushing for that monopoly investigation now. Look at how long it took to get the MS process even this far along...
Slashdot Mirror
And youarenot.god while I'm at it, too.
Sock it to 'em, guys!
Unfortunately it's ROT26.
Shoot the moon? Hell, says Prof. Alexander Abian, why not just blow it up?
Sadly, Crank.net says he died of a heart attack. His homepage is still up at at Iowa U., and a fan has archived THE ABIAN LIST. See the gumption of a man who named the mass of the Cosmos at the big bang after himself (scroll down a bit). Finally, see the greatness of the man reflected in his exchanges with James "Kibo" Parry and Archimedes Plutonium.
But while the win was significant for the RIAA, the real fight is still to come. "This was really a tune up for the main event," said [copyright attorney/talking head Whitney] Broussard. "The main event is going to be when Napster rolls out the Betamax defense, which will be very interesting."
So relax, people. <cliche'>It's only the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end.</cliche'>
ASCAP/BMI already charge fees to radio stations (and other music users), and distribute those fees to publishers and songwriters -- which, these days, are often the artists themselves. They're already getting involved in internet music licensing. It wouldn't be difficult to keep a tally of how many Metallica songs get downloaded, and make payments accordingly. Napster or its competitors/replacements would have the option of passing the cost of licensing fees onto customers (charging for access) or advertisers.
It might take a bit of tweaking -- changing ASCAP/BMI's mandate so that it pays artists as well, instead of just the songwriters/publishers -- but wouldn't this be a fair and workable solution for everyone?
Oh man, yes! It's that damned double standard that really infuriates me. You have got it exactly right.
1. The lawyers provided Napster with a printout of the user IDs, so that Napster would -- as they stated they would -- block them from connecting to Napster's servers. The users were not served with subpoenas, or cease-and-desist orders, or beaten with truncheons, or taken to concentration camps for "re-education".
2. "Many of them kids"? So what? Besides being presented throughout the entire article without any evidence, claims like this -- matter how self-evident they may seem -- are meant to tug at your heartstrings until the reader agrees to whatever is needed to protect "the children". The same techniques are used in accusations of ritual Satanic abuse, or arguments about gun control (on both sides), or just about any issue at all: "Won't somebody think of the children?" It contributes little, if anything, to a rational discussion.
3. "Napster contributes a lot more to the world than they do." So from this we can conclude: rights depend on worth to society; a program meant to circumvent what (clumsy, out-of-date, easy-for-record-companies-to-abuse) copyright protections exist is worth more than an artist providing the material that is being copied; Metallica should just shut up and take it like men, dammit, rather than take any of the legal remedies open to them.
Written baldly like this, rather than left as implicit assumptions, do these statements still seem rational? We might well argue that unequal access to money and lawyers has already created a second-class citizenship; should we attempt to write this into law too? Does being right depend on not being rich, not being a "crappy" band, or not being successful in your field?
4. "[Metallica's] targets include many [...] who have no idea their online movements are being tracked, and who certainly have the right to pursue individual cultural interests without worring that they're being watched." Does "the right to pursue individual cultural interests" extend to illegal acts? What about illegal duplication of copyrighted material? Why doesn't Metallica have the right to pursue their cultural interest of, say, prosecuting criminals? Is it any more or less silly to define one as a legitimate cultural interest than the other? Why should the expectation of privacy -- and, I think we would agree, an ill-founded one (the debate about whether there should be privacy on the net, or of what kind, is another matter) -- confer immunity from prosecution for illegal acts?
Now for what we do agree on.
"Metallica's action is dumb and nearly insanely self-destructive." Well, yes. I think there are a lot better ways they could've tackled this: through something like the Pay Lars site, or through lobbying their record label to change their behaviour toward Napster.
I agree that there is no putting the genie back in the bottle. I agree that the RIAA is being overly heavy-handed in their actions, and in the long run will only hurt themselves by passing up the opportunity to get involved in MP3 distribution earlier. But the problem with Napster and with sharing MP3s is that there is no way for artists to get paid for the duplication of their material. Record companies pay duplication fees; radio stations pay fees to ASCAP or BMI; anyone using music in a movie, or a commercial, or a tv show must pay as well. But there is no method in place to ensure artists are paid when someone gets a copy of their song from Napster.
I would propose that this is the perfect opportunity to involve ASCAP, BMI and other broadcasting-rights organizations. Monitor Napster and disburse money to artists for downloads of their music, in the same way they are paid for radio play. As for where this money would come from, I would say that Napster (or competitors) pay the licensing fees, as currently paid by radio stations. They would then have the option of either passing the charges on to users by charging to connect, or by passing the charges on to advertisers and allowing users free access.
The problem with this is that record labels would then be denied a potentially huge source of revenue -- because the fees in question would not be duplication fees payable to the copyright holder (almost always the record label), but broadcast fees payable to the writer (the artist or songwriter) and/or the publishing company (these days, most often the artist or songwriter as well). And how eager would these corporations (or any other) be to go along with a proposition like that?
In any case, Mr Katz's inflammatory article helps us not one bit. If we urge politeness and restraint upon everyone when dealing with NVidia accidentally using GPL code in a closed-source driver, then why don't we do the same in this issue?
You've been using computers for a while now -- not only as things to write on, but things to write for. So how do they compare to what you imagined and wrote about? What don't they do that you'd really want -- and what do they do that maybe you never thought of, but is impressive anyway? And would you want to use any of the computers you wrote about?
Oh, absolutely. I have no illusions about having the One True Archive that allows mankind to rebuild civilization after nuclear war. Rather, I'm taking inspiration from a book called Extremism in America: A Reader (Lynn Sargent, ed). It's based on one university's archive (can't rem. which), which was in turn started when one grad student turned over to the library a cardboard box full of stuff he'd collected on his own time: mostly fringe far-right stuff that hadn't been archived elsewhere. Now it's one of the premier collections of its kind. That's the sort of thing I'm interested in anyway, and I suspect there's few enough people archiving this stuff that it would be (more or less) valuable to either academics or amateurs like me.
And as for IP...yeah, that's the kicker. The only thing I've thought of so far is putting it in a box with instructions to open a century after my death, say -- long enough that any IP issues should be moot (I'm not archiving The New York Times, after all). But then, how do I make sure it can be read? Bit rot, obscelence -- hell, I'll have trouble making sure its readable in ten years unless I constantly back it up onto newer media.
Perhaps part of the solution is to find/start a company that will do exactly that: preserve stuff by constantly copying it onto new media. But how in hell could you make a profit -- and thus ensure that the company would be around in a century? And who besides me would need or want that service?
Sigh. More than a little off-topic here anyway...
I've got about a gig's worth of archived sites on my hard drive. My interest is the weird stuff: UFOs ate my dog, I am schizophrenic, Jesus moved to Asia, whatever. If someone puts out a weird pamphlet, the odds are relatively good that someone somewhere will archive it. But with a website -- well, one bad Visa day and it's gone, right? So what I figure is that someday, my hard drive will be worth something (for interest' sake, not $) to researchers -- whether university types or just freaks like me.
Now sure, this was all done when I had a cable modem and I could suck down a site in ten minutes. But since the subject here is text, you won't need a whole lotta bandwidth for image maps, MIDI files and the like -- just a half hour of your time. Take matters into your own hands! Make your own mirror! Just look at all the posts marked "informative": half or more are from people who kept their own copies.
No offense to the poster who said a centralized library was the solution, but nuts to that: multiple, redundant backups -- if for no other reason than to avoid copyright issues. (I still haven't figured out how to avoid that question in my plan to eventually donate my hard drive to a university for archival.)
Sure, it's not as simple as waving the Slashdot wand at them (new def. of the Slashdot effect?), but maybe we should start pushing for that monopoly investigation now. Look at how long it took to get the MS process even this far along...