This is about free speech, and is not the process through which a trademark is genericized. If I sell tissues as a "box of kleenex's" and Kimberly-Clark doesn't do anything about, then there is a real risk of genericide, and KC is compelled to act.
You seem to forget another reason to pay someone less: because you can.
For example, let's say you are working for a company and your research does something quite useful. Said company patents and copyrights that useful research as much as they can, and if a rival company wants to hire you, you have less utility to them because the first company has locked the second company out of your most direct expertise. Ignoring other factors for the time being, with copyright/patents, If the second company does hire you, they would have to pay you less because you are less useful to them. Because the second company will pay you less, the first company does not have to pay you as much to keep you from leaving.
You seem to misunderstand the US tradition of copyright/patent. It's basically supposed to be a subsidy on creativity for public benefit. Society waives the right to copy temporarily, and that theoretically lets the author or inventor make enough money from a temporary monopoly to justify their actions. The reality seems to be that with copyright, the public gets less, the actual authors/inventors get less, and we've got middlemen making large sums of money while not doing a whole lot of productive work. Said middlemen would be the actual leeches here.
The 'slaver' bit has far more more credibility than claims of copyright infringers being thieves, because copyright actually is a form of restriction. Also, it doesn't say there's anything wrong with buying software or movies, or that producing these inherently makes you a slaver. The 'sin' would be in restricting the flow and usage of published information, either through legal (copyright) or technical (DRM) means.
Profit from music has nothing to do with why Google would do this. Someone said EMI's asking price is $2 Billion. If Google buys EMI and lets them fall apart, then it costs cost them $2 billion, but if EMI not messing things up for Google results in Google making $10 billion more in advertising revenue over the next 5 years, then it's profitable for Google to do this even if they completely eat the cost of the acquisition.
In this case, profit and 'the right thing' would be in line. With an acquisition, what the record company does goes from 'What makes the most profit for EMI' to 'What makes the most profit for EMI and Google.' Google is the bigger division by far, so EMI quits trying to ruin the internet.
Also, monopoly isn't really the right word. Copyright law doesn't grant a monopoly on producing music to anyone. It limits the rights to reproduce specific pieces of music. Apple doesn't have a monopoly on O/Ss because copyright law grants only them the right to reproduce their own O/S. They can't call up Bill Gates or Linus and tell them they're not allowed to produce an O/S. A "monopoly" on reproducing a particular song is no more a "monopoly" than that given to Oracle being the only company allowed to distribute the Oracle database.
No, it's a monopoly, but it's a more limited monopoly than the kind typically prosecuted in anti-trust cases, and since it's largely a dirty word in the context of modern economics, terms like 'intellectual property' have been pushed by those with vested interests. Apple has a legally backed monopoly on producing OS X. Oracle does have a monopoly on their database software as well.
I think your faith in Google's benevolance is quite alarming if you're suggesting they might buy a major music label without the intent to make money off it. I also think you'd be very disappointed to learn that music still cost money as if Google wasn't making a decent profit of it, the artists would sign up with a different label that did make them some money.
The money they could make is small fries compared to their normal business operations. It's similar to Google's acquisition of On2. The primary purpose of buying On2 was to make sure there is a royalty free codec available. For the acquisition, the primary purpose is stop the record industry from fucking things up with the next DMCA, CTEA, etc.
Finally, a highly profitable music label and artist welfare don't really have that much in common. Like I said, the money that Google could make off of a record label isn't that large in the context of their entire operation, so the profits are secondary. Since the profits produced there are secondary, they have a chance to not be as awful as the other companies to the artists, which would be a good thing for the artists. Artists outside of established superstars generally don't make profits off of records anyway. The records essentially function as advertisements for merchandise and live shows, and Google might even do a far better job than the record labels at that.
While I don't disagree that the radio oligopoly has contributed to the divide, I would question the ability of large recording companies to form without copyright. A lot of why terrestrial radio never plays indie music is because of payola, which is because majors have the money to do that because of copyright.
Because buying that empty shell means that empty shell will quit holding back progress, allowing Google to make more money. It's not an investment, it's chemotherapy for the internet, where the recording industry is a malignant tumor.
You aren't thinking of Google as a whole. Buying the labels and sinking them will bring in more profits for Google's other divisions than running the labels as is. That's the whole point in buying them: it's cheaper to buy them and destroy them than to deal with the mess they make.
The value is not in the labels themselves, but in removing the negative influence of the labels. WIthout that negative influence, Google makes more money.
Because that industry is getting in the way of Google making more money. If buying the record labels costs Google $50B and the result of their absence nets Google an additional $100B, then they are making a profit.
True, but we already have an oligopoly (major labels) that only exists because of state-backed monopolies (copyright), and the purposes of the acquisition would be to reverse the harm that said oligopoly has caused. In this hypothetical, Google might not even be trying to make any money off of the acquisition, since basically, the music industry's pigheadedness costs them more than the value of the music industry.
One reason might be that while the movie and music industries insanity is a disadvantage for them, it's a disadvantage for everyone else as well, and essentially raises the barrier to entry for competition. They have to deal with the RIAA's garbage, but comparatively, they are harmed less than their competitors, and thus gain a competitive advantage.
Format shifting is legal, but about the only ways the mixtape would be legal is if 'Jay' made a compilation with her existing library (hardly worth thanking someone for unless it syncs up perfectly with a movie or something), or if Jay purchased the music for Lee's listening pleasure and kept no copies.
I would think that Lee not understanding the subtle nuances of copyright law that are never enforced is more likely.
Slashdot Mirror
The importance is that this is free as in freedom software. Ubuntu, gNewSense, and Debian can all legally ship this out of the box.
multi-rar archives in torrents? Just thinking about that makes my blood boil.
All that time spent playing "Asteroids" will finally pay off
This is about free speech, and is not the process through which a trademark is genericized. If I sell tissues as a "box of kleenex's" and Kimberly-Clark doesn't do anything about, then there is a real risk of genericide, and KC is compelled to act.
You seem to forget another reason to pay someone less: because you can. For example, let's say you are working for a company and your research does something quite useful. Said company patents and copyrights that useful research as much as they can, and if a rival company wants to hire you, you have less utility to them because the first company has locked the second company out of your most direct expertise. Ignoring other factors for the time being, with copyright/patents, If the second company does hire you, they would have to pay you less because you are less useful to them. Because the second company will pay you less, the first company does not have to pay you as much to keep you from leaving.
You seem to misunderstand the US tradition of copyright/patent. It's basically supposed to be a subsidy on creativity for public benefit. Society waives the right to copy temporarily, and that theoretically lets the author or inventor make enough money from a temporary monopoly to justify their actions. The reality seems to be that with copyright, the public gets less, the actual authors/inventors get less, and we've got middlemen making large sums of money while not doing a whole lot of productive work. Said middlemen would be the actual leeches here.
Wait, why are you railing on people that have library cards?
The 'slaver' bit has far more more credibility than claims of copyright infringers being thieves, because copyright actually is a form of restriction. Also, it doesn't say there's anything wrong with buying software or movies, or that producing these inherently makes you a slaver. The 'sin' would be in restricting the flow and usage of published information, either through legal (copyright) or technical (DRM) means.
Profit from music has nothing to do with why Google would do this. Someone said EMI's asking price is $2 Billion. If Google buys EMI and lets them fall apart, then it costs cost them $2 billion, but if EMI not messing things up for Google results in Google making $10 billion more in advertising revenue over the next 5 years, then it's profitable for Google to do this even if they completely eat the cost of the acquisition.
In this case, profit and 'the right thing' would be in line. With an acquisition, what the record company does goes from 'What makes the most profit for EMI' to 'What makes the most profit for EMI and Google.' Google is the bigger division by far, so EMI quits trying to ruin the internet.
Obviously, they need to be careful and understand that the reason to buy them is to shut them up.
No, it's a monopoly, but it's a more limited monopoly than the kind typically prosecuted in anti-trust cases, and since it's largely a dirty word in the context of modern economics, terms like 'intellectual property' have been pushed by those with vested interests. Apple has a legally backed monopoly on producing OS X. Oracle does have a monopoly on their database software as well.
The money they could make is small fries compared to their normal business operations. It's similar to Google's acquisition of On2. The primary purpose of buying On2 was to make sure there is a royalty free codec available. For the acquisition, the primary purpose is stop the record industry from fucking things up with the next DMCA, CTEA, etc.
Finally, a highly profitable music label and artist welfare don't really have that much in common. Like I said, the money that Google could make off of a record label isn't that large in the context of their entire operation, so the profits are secondary. Since the profits produced there are secondary, they have a chance to not be as awful as the other companies to the artists, which would be a good thing for the artists. Artists outside of established superstars generally don't make profits off of records anyway. The records essentially function as advertisements for merchandise and live shows, and Google might even do a far better job than the record labels at that.
While I don't disagree that the radio oligopoly has contributed to the divide, I would question the ability of large recording companies to form without copyright. A lot of why terrestrial radio never plays indie music is because of payola, which is because majors have the money to do that because of copyright.
Because buying that empty shell means that empty shell will quit holding back progress, allowing Google to make more money. It's not an investment, it's chemotherapy for the internet, where the recording industry is a malignant tumor.
You aren't thinking of Google as a whole. Buying the labels and sinking them will bring in more profits for Google's other divisions than running the labels as is. That's the whole point in buying them: it's cheaper to buy them and destroy them than to deal with the mess they make.
The concern for google is getting the major labels to quit ruining things.
Perhaps because, generally speaking, they are significantly less idiotic about things than their competitors.
Copyright is a legal monopoly, and the barrier to entry was lowered by technological advances, not by government interference.
The value is not in the labels themselves, but in removing the negative influence of the labels. WIthout that negative influence, Google makes more money.
Because that industry is getting in the way of Google making more money. If buying the record labels costs Google $50B and the result of their absence nets Google an additional $100B, then they are making a profit.
True, but we already have an oligopoly (major labels) that only exists because of state-backed monopolies (copyright), and the purposes of the acquisition would be to reverse the harm that said oligopoly has caused. In this hypothetical, Google might not even be trying to make any money off of the acquisition, since basically, the music industry's pigheadedness costs them more than the value of the music industry.
One reason might be that while the movie and music industries insanity is a disadvantage for them, it's a disadvantage for everyone else as well, and essentially raises the barrier to entry for competition. They have to deal with the RIAA's garbage, but comparatively, they are harmed less than their competitors, and thus gain a competitive advantage.
The lion's share of artists never see any money from their records past the initial advance, so they wouldn't really see any harm.
Fair use is a US thing. Most other countries have 'fair dealing'
Format shifting is legal, but about the only ways the mixtape would be legal is if 'Jay' made a compilation with her existing library (hardly worth thanking someone for unless it syncs up perfectly with a movie or something), or if Jay purchased the music for Lee's listening pleasure and kept no copies.
I would think that Lee not understanding the subtle nuances of copyright law that are never enforced is more likely.