Okay, I assumed you were referring to the 90% figure quoted by ESR (since so many slashdotters do). 50% is still a big hit to take, even disregarding the multiplier effects that can throw an economy out of an unstable equilibrium. You are also shedding most of the interesting and high paying jobs that make it fun to work in the computer industry.
I think you also exaggerate how many businesses require custom software. Typically, large customers demand custom features because they have the financial clout to do so. I have written software that is used by the military in their networks. In many cases, they simply use off-the-shelf products. They may demand specific features, but generally they just want what works. In dealings with large customers, they are generally unwilling to pay for R&D. What they do is to dangle a carrot on a string and promise to buy 10,000 widgets if you implement the feature. Of course, they are actually promising the same deal to 3 other software providers.
You say that we don't know what effect free software will have on the economy. That is true, but we can still guess. To me, this is a lot like the people who say that global warming might be a good thing. Then they go on to explain how parts of the artic will be arable and you'll finally be able to get that great tan you've always wanted. The problem is that if global warming has bad effects, as most people think it will, then the effects will be irreversable. I'm not going to claim that open source will irreperably damage the economy, but it certainly has the potential to ruin my career, along with that of many others.
If RedHat is successful then they will change the industry from one that is worth tens of billions of dollars a quarter to one that is worth an order of magnitude less. That may seem like a poor deal, but if RedHat can grab a substantial portion of this new pie it is far more than they could make otherwise.
It does seem like a very poor deal. It is only natural, that as an R&D-based industry ages, its products become cheaper, but this rate is not natural. What you may be failing to account for is the fact that in order for an business to be considered successful, the reward has to outweigh the risk. All the software companies in the world are competing for the same pool of money. Software is already a high-risk business. If you shrink the pool of available money by 90%, then 95% of software companies are going to fail.
Investors expect low risk businesses to have low rewards and high risk businesses to have high rewards. Since no one can predict perfectly which company will emerge as the market leader, the one company that succeeds has to make up for the 19 that fail. If you shrink the size of the money pool, this can't possibly happen. RedHat may succeed for a time, but investors have already been bitten once by open source, and they will be wary of throwing good money after bad.
Ransom Love has got to be the thickest member of the Linux community. RedHat has beaten Caldera time and again by giving away software, and yet he still refuses to learn. The only way that these companies have a chance of unseating RedHat is to out-RedHat them. They need to give away even more cool software so that they can become the standard.
Yeah, I love it. RedHat 'won' the Linux market, despite the fact that they lost $139M last year (that's 71 cents a share on a $4.81 stock!!!). Meanwhile, Microsoft made $2.4B last quarter alone. RedHat have got to be the thickest members of the software community. Microsoft has beaten RedHat time and time again by charging for software, and yet they still refuse to learn.
Most of the people engaged in writing software for a living do not write software that ends up shrink-wrapped in a box on a retail shelf. Most developers write custom code for complex one-off applications that, even if the code were GPL, probably wouldn't be very useful except to the customer it was written for.
Yeah, we've all read CatB, but personally I think ESR just made that statistic up. It all depends on who you classify as programmers (sysadmins? web page designers? university students? researchers?) So to be realistic, I think that statistic is just a load of crap.
Hasn't this always been the case? E.g. - I can add digits to infinity to any radio station so that instead of tuning into 95.3 I could tune into 95.3000 - 95.3999. If the hardware/software can differentiate between such small differences in frequency then in the example above we just turned one setting on the radio dial into 1000. Why stop there? Am I missing something?
I still remember this stuff from my undergrad EE days. It's basic communications theory. For any radio broadcast (let's take FM as an example, but this also applies to AM), your signal to noise ratio is determined by the amount of power you put into the signal. FM stands for Frequency Modulation, so you are not actually using a fixed frequency; you are actually modulating the frequency within a small range.
If someone else sends a signal in a neighbouring band, their signal will appear as noise to you (in AM, you would hear a faint version of their broadcast; in FM it's just static). Therefore, you need a guard band to separate the signals. Fortunately, the amount of interference falls off pretty quickly (exponentially, I believe) with the size of the guard band, so the guard band doesn't have to be very big.
It is completely possible to reduce the bandwidth you require without losing signal quality, simply by increasing your signal to noise ratio. It is infeasible to reduce the noise, so you really need to increase the power of the signal (I seem to remember that S/N is directly proportional to power, but it might be a square law). But if you increase the power of your signal (and also reduce the size of the guard band), then you create more noise on each of the neighbour bands, so they have to increase their power output as well. The result is that we can have as many radio stations as we want, as long as each one comes complete with its own power plant.
As for the suggestion in the referrant article, I wish they had provided some facts about the science behind this guy's claims. Digital audio can certainly reduce bandwidth consumption, but it's not a panacea. Broadcasting on multiple bandwidths sounds like it will just increase ambient noise. Sure, bandwidth will go up, but so will power consumption. And that, as I've just illustrated, is nothing new.
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Re:Take Canada's Example
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Fair IP Laws?
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And yes, the government indeed collects a levy on blank media. However, this is because of lobbying by copyright holders who claim that pirating is happening in spite of the laws! Believe me, copying a friend's audio CD is just as illegal in Canada as it is in the States, there is no exception for not doing it on a commercial or large scale.
I was under the impression that copying a friend's audio CD was legal in Quebec, but not in the rest of Canada.
If I drive across the border, can I do it there?:-)
My wife is blind. Completely and totally. Tell me how a bright light helps her read the ebook I just bought for her. Go ahead bright boy, tell me.
The eBook format doesn't prevent the books being read out loud, per se. It merely allows the copyright owner to control whether this operation is allowed. I'm not sure why people assume that reverse engineering the copy protection was the only recourse. Some advocacy group for the blind could have sued the publishers, demanding that this particular bit be removed, or at least that blind people be provided with special eBooks/readers.
Changes have to be done twice? That's right, when they change the code, they must change the comment. I'll repeat that: they MUST change the comment. And it must make complete sense when they're done or they'll be out of a job!
Pay attention to what the guy is saying before you reply. If you write good comments, then it shouldn't be too burdensome for someone to change the comments when they change the code. If you write lots of useless comments then it does become a burden.
A few years back, I was a newcomer on a project where the incumbent programmer had already established some coding standards. These included "declare all variables at the top of the function" (which I refused to do), use Hungarian notation (which I don't mind, but use only sparsely), and put large comment blocks at the top of the function which basically reiterate everything you see in the function signature (e.g. name of function, class, inputs, outputs).
I found this very burdensome, so I eventually created a macro to generate the function header and I only added extra details where it seemed necessary. Over time I noticed that these comment blocks were very often wrong. He would change the signature of a virtual function, and this would require changes to a billion files. Do you think he is really going to update the useless header comment on each of these functions? Not a chance in hell.
I agree with an earlier thread. Buy Code Complete and follow its advice. Comments should either:
1. Explain what a block (>1 line) of code does as a whole. 2. Explain why a specific design decision was made. 3. Explain a potential pitfall that might catch the code maintainer off-guard.
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Re:My Gripes about Java &tm;
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Bitter Java
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· Score: 2
I for one, hadn't seen this post before, and it actually was on topic because *gasp* the book reviewed is about java! I personally got quite a chuckle out of it. It was obviously posted as AC so the person who posted it wouldn't fucking be flamed out of existence.
I saw it a couple of days ago on the thread about implementations of the C++ stl98 standard.
Yeah, that's great. Did you ever read about the history of the first (radio) soap operas? The entire plot line would centre around (you guessed it) *soap*. "Hey Molly, pass the soap. I need to do laundry now." "How is the soap? I hear this brand is very good." This succeeded for a while, mostly because there was nothing much else on, but broadcasters (e.g. Procter and Gamble -- yes, they were one of the earliest broadcasters) soon had to produce more compelling content. TV content today is already influenced by advertising. It's not just some occasional product placement. Did you ever wonder why there are so many dumb sitcoms and a dearth of good dramas (particularly during primetime)? It's because sitcoms put people in a "buying mood" and dramas don't.
You may think that the entire advertising revenue of the TV broadcasting interview can be replaced with a cleverly placed Pepsi bottle here and there, but it can't. Too much of their money comes from local advertisers. The plot of Friends can't exactly revolve around your local used car dealer. Well maybe it could, if they found a different car dealer in every city and digitally superimposed in their logo. But of course then they couldn't do the typical plot where the car dealer is a real weasel. Maybe that's a good thing.
What is far more likely to happen is that they will take commercial breaks during which they continue the program in a little box at the side of the screen, like they do for world cup soccer. That sucks; you can't even take a bathroom break without missing something. I kind of like the idea that was suggested by the author in his side essay. Paying people to read ads on the Internet was a terrible idea, but doing so on a TV where you control the hardware (and you're not actually paying them -- you're just discounting their bill)... that might actually work.
I went to the Yahoo site, read the privacy policy, clicked the opt-out button, noticed that I had filled in a fake name and address, and left well enough alone.
10 years ago, I could get Macs to hang and refuse to eject 3.25" floppies, even when you pressed the magic button. Smells like bad engineering. Looks like nothing has changed.
The only way any industry will ever get everyone to accept hardware "rights management" like this is if they make a better product. That's right: they have to make some DVD-player system (or whatever else they feel like) that has MORE features and more useful goodies than the modern computer.
BS. That technological lead will last for all of 3 seconds until someone puts out an identical product without DRM. Why people continue to mod arguments like this up is beyond me.
In all my examples, you don't seem to give a damn who gets screwed. I guess you'd support a regulation that allows toxic dumping at the local school and cuts your taxes by $300?
Not true. Obviously you've placed me for a hardcore right-winger. I'm a Canadian, but I'd be considered liberal by American standards. We had an election recently in which one of the candidates ran on a platform of cutting taxes. Many of my friends voted for him, but I didn't because he was a known homophobe who doesn't believe in the separation of church and state. I have the opposite viewpoint. I'm willing to stand up for the free speach rights of idiots like the Ku Klux Klan.
Hey, I believe in free speech. I believe that the KKK should have free speech. But I also consider the reasons for having speech, not just the fact that exists. People try to claim all sorts of protections on the basis of free speech. I don't necessarily think that code is "speech" for example. When I said that I don't believe in rights, what I mean is that there is nothing inherently "right" about rights. Rights are simply privileges that are granted by society. I guess that labels me an idealist?
Idealism is silly. Do you believe that it's better for a thousand guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to go to jail? I certainly don't. If the ratio was 2 or 3 to 1 then sure. But 1000? That's just idealistic. >>Try asking professor Felton It's no red herring. You missed my point.
Felton was doing research into breaking their copy protection, just like Sklyarov. Of course the big 5 aren't going to cooperate. If they have to sue for access, it doesn't bother me, and I don't really think that they should get it. If a researcher was merely looking into audio compression I think they would be more cooperative. Fair use is protected for good reason - it is in the public interest.
Fair use is that which was designated by the courts to be in the public interest with yesterday's technology. As the technology changes, so will the law. Bill Maher once made a great comment to some NRA weenie who was arguing that gun control was wrong because it violated his consitutional rights. Yes, it's in the second amendment. But it's an amendment! You know what that means? Constitutions can change. Anyone can put a DRM wrapper on anything. They can set any restrictions they like. They are not limited to normal copyright protections
I'm pretty sure that putting a DRM wrapper on something to which you do not own the copyright would be illegal. You can call the effects of DRM "chilling", but I am unmoved. That's just my opinion. I hear people call lots of things chilling. Ethicists call stem cell research "chilling" and I somehow am unmoved by that too. These are the people who tried to outlaw VCR's, remember?
Because before the home recording act classified time-shifting as fair use, VCRs had no legitimate use. A Video Cassette Player would allow people to rent movies and watch them at home. A Video Cassette Recorder simply lets people tape copyrighted works off tv. It is a totally one-sided "deal".
Allow me to let you in on a little secret: democratic != fair and one-sided != unfair.
Let's say there are 3 partners in a business. Two of them are lazy freeloaders; the other one does all the work and therefore demands all the rewards. It may be a one-sided deal, but it's not unfair. Let's say the other two stage a vote to split all the money between them. This passes by a vote of 2-1. It may be democratic, but it's not fair.
*You* demand fair use "rights" and yet *you* give nothing in return. The fact that something is good for society is not always good enough if the rights of the owner are violated. "Disney Chairman and CEO Michael Eisner accused technology firms like Intel of profiting from digital piracy, and said they were not interested in working out a way to stop the problem."
That's not the quote I disputed. I think you interpreted the other one wrong. I'm sure that Intel does profit from digital piracy. I'm sure that Intel knows that they are profiting from piracy. However, I think the extent to which they profit from piracy is unknown. I suspect that most people didn't buy a computer just to use Napster. Some probably bought a faster computer or bought some extra accessories though.
Sklyarov was arrested for making a bookreader for the BLIND. Oops, sorry, blind people are an edge case.
I think you're stretching. ElcomSoft makes software that allows you to break the eBook encryption. Allowing blind people to listen to the books is one of many possible uses, although it has been much upplayed by those sympathetic to the cause. Of course, I should point out the eBook format already allows the books to be read out loud. For whatever reason, this feature can be disabled by the copyright owners. Perhaps the National Institute for the Blind should be challenging the legality of that restriction in court (or they should demand that blind people can buy special eBook readers with that restriction removed) Please tell me you're joking. Try asking professor Felton
That's not copyright; that's research into DRM. In effect, he wanted to publish what the RIAA considered a trade secret. I don't know why you brought up this red herring. Fair use means you have the right - you don't need permission, completely vital when it comes to criticism and satire.
The courts already ruled that those doing criticism and satire do not need to be able to make a perfect digital reproduction of the work. They can simply make an analog recording. Even if a DRM scheme was magicaly designed to allow all known kinds of fair use, it would still block new kinds fair use. Courts regularly recognize new things as falling under fair use.
Doesn't bother me. The technology can evolve when the new laws get made. Technology doesn't need to be retroactively compliant with new laws. 10 years ago all my music/movies were on cassette/vcr, and I certainly did have the right to make a backup again if the original was destroyed. I don't know why you feel you can take away my rights now.
Right... you could make imperfect analog copies, which you can still do now. Cars are not protected by copyright. Try a book
That was my point. Fair use law was a reaction to a specific set of circumstances. It exists with some products (books, music), but not others (cars). You treat it as something so sacrosanct that I think you could found a religion. Any DRM file (music, movie, anything) can be printed as letters on paper. It will look like gobbly gook, but it's the same information.
I'll bet if you did that you wouldn't be charged. You could even mix the bits up randomly and play it on your stereo to torture cats as long as you don't reverse engineer the file. And as a programmer, the DMCA affects my rights.
I don't believe in rights. There are no rules, there are only regulations. I'm a programmer too. I can invent rights too. For example, I believe that I have the right to take GPL'ed code and include it in my closed-source software. So there. People do all sorts of unexpected things for perfectly good reasons. You couldn't imagine why a copyright holder would ever want to make a copy of an internet audio stream. I gave three perfectly good examples
The three examples you gave seemed rather uncommon to me (but that doesn't affect your definition of "perfectly good"). It seems to me that you had several options. You could have chosen to disable copy-protection on the files in the first place. Or, as the copyright owner, you could have used your magic administrator password to bypass the copy protection.
I doubt that anyone really believes that the copy protection is infallible.
Eisner: "If it's a fact you cannot protect intellectual property on the Internet, I do not accept that".
I read the article and you seem to be taking this out of context. The article is a bit vague, and you have made some unjustified assumptions. Eisner essentially said he believes that it is[pragmatically] possible to protect the information. Vadasz was basically saying that a perfect solution is impossible. Hollywood studios have been promoting a project that would embed a "flag," or watermark in every piece of digital video content. Computers, digital video recorders and other devices would then be designed to play the material only if they detected the presence of the markers.
If the entertainment industry's solution really does prevent you from playing a videotape of your friend's wedding that you shot yourself then I am opposed to that specific solution, although I approve of the general concept. Your source for this information: a brief two paragraph segment of a newspaper article, which has no doubt been dumbed down for the less than techno-savvy public.
"Not often" pretty much admits it exists. Example - If you do research on audio compression you need to test on common files (i.e. pop music).
"Not often" was actually more of an attempt at sacrasm. What I really meant was "effectively never". Perhaps you only think in absolutes, but I prefer to be realistic. I don't think our laws should cater to edge cases and idealists. If you're doing research into audio compression and you work for a major university, I'll bet you could persuade the major labels to help you out. If you're doing the research in your garage then you're probably SOL. Some DRM schemes attempt to dodge "fair use" objections by pointing to allowances for specific cases of fair use. Bogus defense.
I disagree. If you want to be pragmatic (which I do), the specific cases matter a great deal. The fair use laws were developed years ago in response to specific circumstances at the time. The law needs to adapt as the circumstances change. Therefore, the specific situation that exists today is very relevant. I buy music and make a backup. Maybe there's a reason my disks get damaged often. For whatever reason my original gets destroyed.
I dunno. Maybe you should take out insurance or something. I don't know why you make such a big deal out of a "right" that a) you happily lived without 10 years ago (before CD burners were common), and b) you don't get with most other consumer products (e.g. a car).
If you own the copyright then why are you recording it off the Internet?
"Why" is irrelevant. That someone could *ever* be guilty for doing so is absurd.
As far as I know, you wouldn't be guilty of copyright violation in this case. You would be guilty of reverse engineering the DRM, which makes me wonder why you enabled DRM for that file.
Well, I wouldn't agree with those DRM schemes. If the protection fails if the content *ever* gets out, then the intent of the protection is unrealistic.
Then you don't agree with any of the DRM schemes, chuckle. If a single copy "gets out" it can make a million copies on the net.
That's not the point. I doubt that anyone really believes that the copy protection is infallible. However, the fact that the medium is copy protected means that you can't claim plausible deniability when you do get caught with pirated music. When you go to the airport, you may wonder why they ask you if you packed the bags yourself. Obviously they don't really think if you're a terrorist that you're going to fess up right there. But if they do find something in your bags, you have already sworn that you packed them yourself.
(1) Back up copy. (2) Moving my music onto my new computer when I upgrade. (3) Moving my music onto my walkman style device. (4) Moving my music onto new media when old media becomes obsolete. (5) Student excerpting for school project. (6) Teacher excerpting for education. (7) Including an excerpt in scientific publication. (8) Anylizing the entirety for scientific purpose. (9) Excerpting for parody. (10) Music for which I own the copyright. (11) Music on which the copyright has expired. (12) Public domain (or other legally useable) content may also mixed into a DRM-locked package. I'm sure my list is far from complete.
Fine. I don't dispute that a backup copy is fair use, but I notice that you are mostly steering clear of the list you mentioned earlier.
Streaming to a file is perfectly legal... If the content isn't copyrighted. If I am the copyright holder. Time-shifting. Space-shifting. Educational purposes. Scientific pourposes. If I am criticizing the content. If I an satirizing the content. For signifigant political/social/legal discussion. Etc etc etc.
Pop music is not often used in education and scientific research. We had an English class in high school where the teacher wanted us to write poetry that was inspired by pop songs, but he didn't need to tape the songs off the radio; he just asked people to bring in CDs that they already owned. No one is going to include an excerpt of a song in a scientific publication.
If you own the copyright then why are you recording it off the Internet? Don't you already have the original? When you excerpt for parody, do you really need a 100% accurate copy, or could you just make a tape?
I already stated that I think a DRM scheme should allow backup (or space-shifted) copies, provided that they are made directly from the original.
There's no particular reason why DRM-enabled products shouldn't allow you to reproduce your own work.
There are a variety of proposed DRM schemes, but they all tend to have stupid results like this for one simple reason - if the content *ever* gets out of the DRM wrapper the protection fails completely.
Well, I wouldn't agree with those DRM schemes. If the protection fails if the content *ever* gets out, then the intent of the protection is unrealistic. The point of DRM is to be a sociological tool that raises the bar to piracy. How far out of your way will you go to circumvent copyright? You could build your own copyright circumvention hardware, but you won't find it at the local store.
Now, I'm not saying that's right (it's not), but artists have a choice. They can choose to self publish.
Well said. Sometimes people get too carried away with this "the artists are getting screwed" argument and they forget that the people who provide the seed capital need to make a fair return too.
But to follow this up, if the artists are getting completely screwed by this arrangement, do you have any idea why the cycle continues? If the big labels are making out like bandits then why aren't smaller labels cutting into their market share? I'm a fan of some musicians on smaller labels, and my experience has been that their CDs are, if anything, more expensive than the stuff put out by the big 5 (plus, they are hard to find in here in Canada).
Also, if the artists know they are getting screwed then why do they sign with the big labels? Surely anyone who aspires to be a pop musician has heard the Courtney Love rant by now... And clearly only struggling new artists are getting shafted by the record companies. I highly doubt that Mariah Carey's $100 million deal was based on the premise that she was going to sell 40 billion songs (i.e. 4 billion CDs).
Let's say that you record your own CD and try to sell it on the Internet. Clearly, the biggest thing you will be missing is marketing support. We may not want to admit it, but clearly advertising has something to do with our music preference. Unless a large group of people can get together and agree that a band is good, they will never acheive critical mass. Without critical mass, you can't take advantage of economies of scale and you won't be able to sell your CDs at a reasonable price.
On another note, I believe that artists typically get to retain ownership of the songs but not the recordings of those songs. Prince got into an argument with his record company so he ditched them and re-recorded all his old songs. Moby can say that he doesn't mind if people copy his songs, but that's not his perogative since he doesn't own the recordings. Maybe those people will turn into future Moby fans later and buy his albums, but he might be with a different record label by then.
I, for one, am not too happy with these "razor and blade" business models, or loss-leaders in general. Whenever someone gives something away at a loss, they do it because they expect something in return. Then when this happens, the freeloaders complain that the company is sleazy and unethical. Most of the time, I'd rather just pay directly for the product I want, on the basis that quality and low price are now directly rewarded with my patronage. There are countless examples:
1. TV advertising to sponsor programming
The result of which is poor quality TV in general: shows geared at young people, since they are more susceptible to advertising; mindless sitcoms, since they apparently put people in a buying mood; influence by advertisers over programming decisions, such as when advertisers almost forced the cancellation of Politically Incorrect.
2. Advertising to sponsor web content
This is just an unhealthy business model. Since the web is global, a site can't attract local advertising. There is only so much global (or even national) advertising to go around, and the result is that most mailing lists that I subscribed to were sponsored by people selling vitamin pills and penis enlargers (most of these lists eventually switched to a pay model). Plus it is just too easy to block the ads on a website.
3. Spyware and selling personal info
People who thought that Kazaa and Yahoo were giving them free services just to be benevolent were obviously just naive. Sure, Yahoo didn't need to sell your personal info back when their primary business model was selling stock, but now they they actually have to make a profit... what did you expect?
4. Let people copy your music for free, but make your money selling the packaging and cover art.
Wink, wink. As if you don't scan the cover art and post it online too, and as if most people really care. No one really believes this one any more. Nowadays, the party line is "let people copy your music for free because most people are basically honest and will buy the cd eventually."
5. Give away/sell your software at a loss in order to boost the sales of your hardware.
The fervour surrounding this business model died down when its poster child, VA Linux suffered a major stock crash. There are so many problems with this that it's not even funny. The cost of software development is high, probably higher than your hardware design, so you need to have huge margins on your hardware to compensate. Since you have put a whole bunch of software companies out of business, there will now be fierce competition in the hardware sector; someone is going to undercut you. Plus, if your code is halfway modular and you open source it, someone is going to port it to your competitor's platform anyway, so this gave you zero leverage.
6. Sell your game console at a loss and make money selling games, or likewise with printers and ink.
Which works great if you can retain the exclusive license to sell games/ink.
7. Give away your software and make money selling services and support
It may be the most-loved business model on Slashdot, but I think it stinks. Firstly, it punishes quality. If your software is bug free, who needs support? If your GUI is good, who needs help setting it up? If your product is flexible, who needs customization? Secondly, it doesn't work in the consumer market. When I buy software, I am paying for the software, not the support. This model has worked to some extent in selling support to businesses, mostly because businesses have been content to waste money in the past (e.g. the $1500 PC sitting on my desk which they bought for $4000). Watch for this to disappear in the new, leaner economy.
8. Give away your software at a loss and make your money selling t-shirts and plush Mozilla toys.
This business model was advocated by Netscape. Enough said.
The only reason I made that big post on fair use was because you said: "I think you are making most of that up." about my quicky list of fair use items earlier.
Yeah, but way back when this discussion started, we were talking about Internet music piracy. Read the comments in the context of music piracy.
I think you are making most of that up. Last I heard, copyright violations weren't legal for scientific/educational purpose -- otherwise textbooks would be free. You also can't steal music just because it has a political message. Most labels will give you a free CD if you are a music critic, but you don't have a right to a free CD.
There are cases where copyright can be subjugated by fair use, but you'd be hard pressed to find any realistic examples involving pop music. My other point is that fair use may allow you to reproduce a portion of a copyrighted work (typically 10% -- a detail that is often left out of these discussions), but it doesn't say they have to make it that easy. Radio stations don't announce what songs they are playing in advance. Going to the library to research an academic paper is one thing. Taping everything off the radio just in case they play something you want a copy of (something I did when I was a kid) hardly sounds like fair use. Businesses do not have a right to profits. It is the responsibility of the company to find a profitable business model. You do not pass laws protecting old businesses from advances in technology/society. That's what has me and other people pissed off - attempts to take away our rights.
And you don't have the right to tell copyright owners what business model to adopt either, yet that is what happening. This whole "I would buy it for $3 but since they are charging $18 I'm going to steal it" attitude is self-serving, and no one would take it seriously if you were buying a cabbage or a toaster. BTW, in actual fact, governments pass laws to protect businesses all the time. They also subsidize whole industries in order to protect them from unhealthy competition. I assume you intended to say "their work" where you said "your work", but it is a rather amusing error. Some of the DRM crap they want will make it hard for me to reproduce my work, which is plain obscene.
There's no particular reason why DRM-enabled products shouldn't allow you to reproduce your own work. If the data isn't tagged or is tagged with some kind of generic key then it shouldn't prevent you from copying it. I don't know why the camcorder would do that. Are you sure this is not some feature that he enabled by accident?
I have obviously heard of fair use. It only comes up on Slashdot 10 times a day. Fair use doesn't mean that the copyright owners have to make it easy for you to reproduce your work. I seem to remember that the courts already decided this way by ruling that reverse engineering eBooks security is not fair use because there are alternate techniques available (transcribing the text, photographing the display). You also don't have the right to a perfect reproduction (e.g. an analog copy of a DVD is acceptable under fair use.)
While the (lack of) quality of TV is always a popular topic chuckle, I doubt there is any link to home recording.
I agree that it's not the primary cause. The primary cause is increased variety. We now have so many available channels that none of them can afford to produce good programming. The fact that advertising is becoming less of a viable business model only aggravates the situation.
the anti-TiVo argument that allowing the consumer to record all 14 broadcasts of the Simpsons every day is an illegitimate use of broadcasting technology.
I'm not aware of this argument. It sounds really dumb to me, unless there's something you left out? What bussiness is it of theirs what I choose to watch or record? Maybe on my day off I want to sit and watch 14 hours of Simpsons straight through.
TV exists primarily as a method of broadcasting an evanescent signal which is paid for by advertising. The courts have ruled that time-shifting is okay, but at some point there is a distinction between time-shifting and archiving. If you can store programming in perpetuity AND skip past the advertising, then the business case which makes TV possible will cease to exist. The quality of the shows is already suffering. Streaming to a file is perfectly legal... If the content isn't copyrighted. If I am the copyright holder. Time-shifting. Space-shifting. Educational purposes. Scientific pourposes. If I am criticizing the content. If I an satirizing the content. For signifigant political/social/legal discussion. Etc etc etc.
I think you are making most of that up. Last I heard, copyright violations weren't legal for scientific/educational purpose -- otherwise textbooks would be free. You also can't steal music just because it has a political message. Most labels will give you a free CD if you are a music critic, but you don't have a right to a free CD.
I find it highly unlikely that you are streaming non-copyrighted internet radio broadcasts. However, if you are, I think it is perfectly reasonable for commercial services to have their own streaming media clients (with private encryption keys).
I really do think we need to ensure that it is at least inconvenient.
Oh man. This is my central complaint with the anti-sharing party line; the fact that they crow about "you can just GO ONLINE and download ANY song INSTANTLY!!1"
Okay, from what I've heard (I don't use these services), Gnutella was the slowest of the bunch. That guy from Napster posted an analysis here of why it wouldn't scale. Also, show a little imagination. Two years from now, computers will be faster, bandwidth will be higher, Gnutella may have its scalability problems sorted out, and music files will conceivably still be the same size.
I'm not sure why it took you so long to go get the track list of CDNow; that's the first thing I thought of. Then someone will write a GUI which lets you type a list of all the songs you want, and it will go and download them in the middle of the night. Now let's say (and I doubt this), that the four least popular tracks from an album are not available anywhere on the net. You'd have to be some kind of obsessive-compulsive freak to go out and spend $20 to get the four shitty songs from an album when you already got the rest for free.
BTW, you may clear $20 an hour after taxes, but most people don't.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, I assumed you were referring to the 90% figure quoted by ESR (since so many slashdotters do). 50% is still a big hit to take, even disregarding the multiplier effects that can throw an economy out of an unstable equilibrium. You are also shedding most of the interesting and high paying jobs that make it fun to work in the computer industry.
I think you also exaggerate how many businesses require custom software. Typically, large customers demand custom features because they have the financial clout to do so. I have written software that is used by the military in their networks. In many cases, they simply use off-the-shelf products. They may demand specific features, but generally they just want what works. In dealings with large customers, they are generally unwilling to pay for R&D. What they do is to dangle a carrot on a string and promise to buy 10,000 widgets if you implement the feature. Of course, they are actually promising the same deal to 3 other software providers.
You say that we don't know what effect free software will have on the economy. That is true, but we can still guess. To me, this is a lot like the people who say that global warming might be a good thing. Then they go on to explain how parts of the artic will be arable and you'll finally be able to get that great tan you've always wanted. The problem is that if global warming has bad effects, as most people think it will, then the effects will be irreversable. I'm not going to claim that open source will irreperably damage the economy, but it certainly has the potential to ruin my career, along with that of many others.
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If RedHat is successful then they will change the industry from one that is worth tens of billions of dollars a quarter to one that is worth an order of magnitude less. That may seem like a poor deal, but if RedHat can grab a substantial portion of this new pie it is far more than they could make otherwise.
It does seem like a very poor deal. It is only natural, that as an R&D-based industry ages, its products become cheaper, but this rate is not natural. What you may be failing to account for is the fact that in order for an business to be considered successful, the reward has to outweigh the risk. All the software companies in the world are competing for the same pool of money. Software is already a high-risk business. If you shrink the pool of available money by 90%, then 95% of software companies are going to fail.
Investors expect low risk businesses to have low rewards and high risk businesses to have high rewards. Since no one can predict perfectly which company will emerge as the market leader, the one company that succeeds has to make up for the 19 that fail. If you shrink the size of the money pool, this can't possibly happen. RedHat may succeed for a time, but investors have already been bitten once by open source, and they will be wary of throwing good money after bad.
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Ransom Love has got to be the thickest member of the Linux community. RedHat has beaten Caldera time and again by giving away software, and yet he still refuses to learn. The only way that these companies have a chance of unseating RedHat is to out-RedHat them. They need to give away even more cool software so that they can become the standard.
Yeah, I love it. RedHat 'won' the Linux market, despite the fact that they lost $139M last year (that's 71 cents a share on a $4.81 stock!!!). Meanwhile, Microsoft made $2.4B last quarter alone. RedHat have got to be the thickest members of the software community. Microsoft has beaten RedHat time and time again by charging for software, and yet they still refuse to learn.
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Most of the people engaged in writing software for a living do not write software that ends up shrink-wrapped in a box on a retail shelf. Most developers write custom code for complex one-off applications that, even if the code were GPL, probably wouldn't be very useful except to the customer it was written for.
Yeah, we've all read CatB, but personally I think ESR just made that statistic up. It all depends on who you classify as programmers (sysadmins? web page designers? university students? researchers?) So to be realistic, I think that statistic is just a load of crap.
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Hasn't this always been the case? E.g. - I can add digits to infinity to any radio station so that instead of tuning into 95.3 I could tune into 95.3000 - 95.3999. If the hardware/software can differentiate between such small differences in frequency then in the example above we just turned one setting on the radio dial into 1000. Why stop there? Am I missing something?
I still remember this stuff from my undergrad EE days. It's basic communications theory. For any radio broadcast (let's take FM as an example, but this also applies to AM), your signal to noise ratio is determined by the amount of power you put into the signal. FM stands for Frequency Modulation, so you are not actually using a fixed frequency; you are actually modulating the frequency within a small range.
If someone else sends a signal in a neighbouring band, their signal will appear as noise to you (in AM, you would hear a faint version of their broadcast; in FM it's just static). Therefore, you need a guard band to separate the signals. Fortunately, the amount of interference falls off pretty quickly (exponentially, I believe) with the size of the guard band, so the guard band doesn't have to be very big.
It is completely possible to reduce the bandwidth you require without losing signal quality, simply by increasing your signal to noise ratio. It is infeasible to reduce the noise, so you really need to increase the power of the signal (I seem to remember that S/N is directly proportional to power, but it might be a square law). But if you increase the power of your signal (and also reduce the size of the guard band), then you create more noise on each of the neighbour bands, so they have to increase their power output as well. The result is that we can have as many radio stations as we want, as long as each one comes complete with its own power plant.
As for the suggestion in the referrant article, I wish they had provided some facts about the science behind this guy's claims. Digital audio can certainly reduce bandwidth consumption, but it's not a panacea. Broadcasting on multiple bandwidths sounds like it will just increase ambient noise. Sure, bandwidth will go up, but so will power consumption. And that, as I've just illustrated, is nothing new.
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And yes, the government indeed collects a levy on blank media. However, this is because of lobbying by copyright holders who claim that pirating is happening in spite of the laws! Believe me, copying a friend's audio CD is just as illegal in Canada as it is in the States, there is no exception for not doing it on a commercial or large scale.
I was under the impression that copying a friend's audio CD was legal in Quebec, but not in the rest of Canada.
If I drive across the border, can I do it there?
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My wife is blind. Completely and totally. Tell me how a bright light helps her read the ebook I just bought for her. Go ahead bright boy, tell me.
The eBook format doesn't prevent the books being read out loud, per se. It merely allows the copyright owner to control whether this operation is allowed. I'm not sure why people assume that reverse engineering the copy protection was the only recourse. Some advocacy group for the blind could have sued the publishers, demanding that this particular bit be removed, or at least that blind people be provided with special eBooks/readers.
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Changes have to be done twice? That's right, when they change the code, they must change the comment.
I'll repeat that: they MUST change the comment. And it must make complete sense when they're done or they'll be out of a job!
Pay attention to what the guy is saying before you reply. If you write good comments, then it shouldn't be too burdensome for someone to change the comments when they change the code. If you write lots of useless comments then it does become a burden.
A few years back, I was a newcomer on a project where the incumbent programmer had already established some coding standards. These included "declare all variables at the top of the function" (which I refused to do), use Hungarian notation (which I don't mind, but use only sparsely), and put large comment blocks at the top of the function which basically reiterate everything you see in the function signature (e.g. name of function, class, inputs, outputs).
I found this very burdensome, so I eventually created a macro to generate the function header and I only added extra details where it seemed necessary. Over time I noticed that these comment blocks were very often wrong. He would change the signature of a virtual function, and this would require changes to a billion files. Do you think he is really going to update the useless header comment on each of these functions? Not a chance in hell.
I agree with an earlier thread. Buy Code Complete and follow its advice. Comments should either:
1. Explain what a block (>1 line) of code does as a whole.
2. Explain why a specific design decision was made.
3. Explain a potential pitfall that might catch the code maintainer off-guard.
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I for one, hadn't seen this post before, and it actually was on topic because *gasp* the book reviewed is about java! I personally got quite a chuckle out of it. It was obviously posted as AC so the person who posted it wouldn't fucking be flamed out of existence.
I saw it a couple of days ago on the thread about implementations of the C++ stl98 standard.
s/C++/Java/ doesn't make it on topic.
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Yeah, that's great. Did you ever read about the history of the first (radio) soap operas? The entire plot line would centre around (you guessed it) *soap*. "Hey Molly, pass the soap. I need to do laundry now." "How is the soap? I hear this brand is very good." This succeeded for a while, mostly because there was nothing much else on, but broadcasters (e.g. Procter and Gamble -- yes, they were one of the earliest broadcasters) soon had to produce more compelling content. TV content today is already influenced by advertising. It's not just some occasional product placement. Did you ever wonder why there are so many dumb sitcoms and a dearth of good dramas (particularly during primetime)? It's because sitcoms put people in a "buying mood" and dramas don't.
You may think that the entire advertising revenue of the TV broadcasting interview can be replaced with a cleverly placed Pepsi bottle here and there, but it can't. Too much of their money comes from local advertisers. The plot of Friends can't exactly revolve around your local used car dealer. Well maybe it could, if they found a different car dealer in every city and digitally superimposed in their logo. But of course then they couldn't do the typical plot where the car dealer is a real weasel. Maybe that's a good thing.
What is far more likely to happen is that they will take commercial breaks during which they continue the program in a little box at the side of the screen, like they do for world cup soccer. That sucks; you can't even take a bathroom break without missing something. I kind of like the idea that was suggested by the author in his side essay. Paying people to read ads on the Internet was a terrible idea, but doing so on a TV where you control the hardware (and you're not actually paying them -- you're just discounting their bill)... that might actually work.
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I went to the Yahoo site, read the privacy policy, clicked the opt-out button, noticed that I had filled in a fake name and address, and left well enough alone.
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10 years ago, I could get Macs to hang and refuse to eject 3.25" floppies, even when you pressed the magic button. Smells like bad engineering. Looks like nothing has changed.
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The only way any industry will ever get everyone to accept hardware "rights management" like this is if they make a better product. That's right: they have to make some DVD-player system (or whatever else they feel like) that has MORE features and more useful goodies than the modern computer.
BS. That technological lead will last for all of 3 seconds until someone puts out an identical product without DRM. Why people continue to mod arguments like this up is beyond me.
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In all my examples, you don't seem to give a damn who gets screwed. I guess you'd support a regulation that allows toxic dumping at the local school and cuts your taxes by $300?
Not true. Obviously you've placed me for a hardcore right-winger. I'm a Canadian, but I'd be considered liberal by American standards. We had an election recently in which one of the candidates ran on a platform of cutting taxes. Many of my friends voted for him, but I didn't because he was a known homophobe who doesn't believe in the separation of church and state.
I have the opposite viewpoint. I'm willing to stand up for the free speach rights of idiots like the Ku Klux Klan.
Hey, I believe in free speech. I believe that the KKK should have free speech. But I also consider the reasons for having speech, not just the fact that exists. People try to claim all sorts of protections on the basis of free speech. I don't necessarily think that code is "speech" for example. When I said that I don't believe in rights, what I mean is that there is nothing inherently "right" about rights. Rights are simply privileges that are granted by society.
I guess that labels me an idealist?
Idealism is silly. Do you believe that it's better for a thousand guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to go to jail? I certainly don't. If the ratio was 2 or 3 to 1 then sure. But 1000? That's just idealistic.
>>Try asking professor Felton
It's no red herring. You missed my point.
Felton was doing research into breaking their copy protection, just like Sklyarov. Of course the big 5 aren't going to cooperate. If they have to sue for access, it doesn't bother me, and I don't really think that they should get it. If a researcher was merely looking into audio compression I think they would be more cooperative.
Fair use is protected for good reason - it is in the public interest.
Fair use is that which was designated by the courts to be in the public interest with yesterday's technology. As the technology changes, so will the law. Bill Maher once made a great comment to some NRA weenie who was arguing that gun control was wrong because it violated his consitutional rights. Yes, it's in the second amendment. But it's an amendment! You know what that means? Constitutions can change.
Anyone can put a DRM wrapper on anything. They can set any restrictions they like. They are not limited to normal copyright protections
I'm pretty sure that putting a DRM wrapper on something to which you do not own the copyright would be illegal. You can call the effects of DRM "chilling", but I am unmoved. That's just my opinion. I hear people call lots of things chilling. Ethicists call stem cell research "chilling" and I somehow am unmoved by that too.
These are the people who tried to outlaw VCR's, remember?
Because before the home recording act classified time-shifting as fair use, VCRs had no legitimate use. A Video Cassette Player would allow people to rent movies and watch them at home. A Video Cassette Recorder simply lets people tape copyrighted works off tv.
It is a totally one-sided "deal".
Allow me to let you in on a little secret: democratic != fair and one-sided != unfair.
Let's say there are 3 partners in a business. Two of them are lazy freeloaders; the other one does all the work and therefore demands all the rewards. It may be a one-sided deal, but it's not unfair. Let's say the other two stage a vote to split all the money between them. This passes by a vote of 2-1. It may be democratic, but it's not fair.
*You* demand fair use "rights" and yet *you* give nothing in return. The fact that something is good for society is not always good enough if the rights of the owner are violated.
"Disney Chairman and CEO Michael Eisner accused technology firms like Intel of profiting from digital piracy, and said they were not interested in working out a way to stop the problem."
That's not the quote I disputed. I think you interpreted the other one wrong. I'm sure that Intel does profit from digital piracy. I'm sure that Intel knows that they are profiting from piracy. However, I think the extent to which they profit from piracy is unknown. I suspect that most people didn't buy a computer just to use Napster. Some probably bought a faster computer or bought some extra accessories though.
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Oh right, like Slashdot readers get dates.
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Sklyarov was arrested for making a bookreader for the BLIND. Oops, sorry, blind people are an edge case.
I think you're stretching. ElcomSoft makes software that allows you to break the eBook encryption. Allowing blind people to listen to the books is one of many possible uses, although it has been much upplayed by those sympathetic to the cause. Of course, I should point out the eBook format already allows the books to be read out loud. For whatever reason, this feature can be disabled by the copyright owners. Perhaps the National Institute for the Blind should be challenging the legality of that restriction in court (or they should demand that blind people can buy special eBook readers with that restriction removed)
Please tell me you're joking. Try asking professor Felton
That's not copyright; that's research into DRM. In effect, he wanted to publish what the RIAA considered a trade secret. I don't know why you brought up this red herring.
Fair use means you have the right - you don't need permission, completely vital when it comes to criticism and satire.
The courts already ruled that those doing criticism and satire do not need to be able to make a perfect digital reproduction of the work. They can simply make an analog recording.
Even if a DRM scheme was magicaly designed to allow all known kinds of fair use, it would still block new kinds fair use. Courts regularly recognize new things as falling under fair use.
Doesn't bother me. The technology can evolve when the new laws get made. Technology doesn't need to be retroactively compliant with new laws.
10 years ago all my music/movies were on cassette/vcr, and I certainly did have the right to make a backup again if the original was destroyed. I don't know why you feel you can take away my rights now.
Right... you could make imperfect analog copies, which you can still do now.
Cars are not protected by copyright. Try a book
That was my point. Fair use law was a reaction to a specific set of circumstances. It exists with some products (books, music), but not others (cars). You treat it as something so sacrosanct that I think you could found a religion.
Any DRM file (music, movie, anything) can be printed as letters on paper. It will look like gobbly gook, but it's the same information.
I'll bet if you did that you wouldn't be charged. You could even mix the bits up randomly and play it on your stereo to torture cats as long as you don't reverse engineer the file.
And as a programmer, the DMCA affects my rights.
I don't believe in rights. There are no rules, there are only regulations. I'm a programmer too. I can invent rights too. For example, I believe that I have the right to take GPL'ed code and include it in my closed-source software. So there.
People do all sorts of unexpected things for perfectly good reasons. You couldn't imagine why a copyright holder would ever want to make a copy of an internet audio stream. I gave three perfectly good examples
The three examples you gave seemed rather uncommon to me (but that doesn't affect your definition of "perfectly good"). It seems to me that you had several options. You could have chosen to disable copy-protection on the files in the first place. Or, as the copyright owner, you could have used your magic administrator password to bypass the copy protection.
Eisner: "If it's a fact you cannot protect intellectual property on the Internet, I do not accept that".
I read the article and you seem to be taking this out of context. The article is a bit vague, and you have made some unjustified assumptions. Eisner essentially said he believes that it is[pragmatically] possible to protect the information. Vadasz was basically saying that a perfect solution is impossible.
Hollywood studios have been promoting a project that would embed a "flag," or watermark in every piece of digital video content. Computers, digital video recorders and other devices would then be designed to play the material only if they detected the presence of the markers.
If the entertainment industry's solution really does prevent you from playing a videotape of your friend's wedding that you shot yourself then I am opposed to that specific solution, although I approve of the general concept. Your source for this information: a brief two paragraph segment of a newspaper article, which has no doubt been dumbed down for the less than techno-savvy public.
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For those unclear on the concept, posting the story here so people don't have to register is not fair use. How ironic.
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"Not often" pretty much admits it exists. Example - If you do research on audio compression you need to test on common files (i.e. pop music).
"Not often" was actually more of an attempt at sacrasm. What I really meant was "effectively never". Perhaps you only think in absolutes, but I prefer to be realistic. I don't think our laws should cater to edge cases and idealists. If you're doing research into audio compression and you work for a major university, I'll bet you could persuade the major labels to help you out. If you're doing the research in your garage then you're probably SOL.
Some DRM schemes attempt to dodge "fair use" objections by pointing to allowances for specific cases of fair use. Bogus defense.
I disagree. If you want to be pragmatic (which I do), the specific cases matter a great deal. The fair use laws were developed years ago in response to specific circumstances at the time. The law needs to adapt as the circumstances change. Therefore, the specific situation that exists today is very relevant.
I buy music and make a backup. Maybe there's a reason my disks get damaged often. For whatever reason my original gets destroyed.
I dunno. Maybe you should take out insurance or something. I don't know why you make such a big deal out of a "right" that a) you happily lived without 10 years ago (before CD burners were common), and b) you don't get with most other consumer products (e.g. a car).
"Why" is irrelevant. That someone could *ever* be guilty for doing so is absurd.
As far as I know, you wouldn't be guilty of copyright violation in this case. You would be guilty of reverse engineering the DRM, which makes me wonder why you enabled DRM for that file.
Then you don't agree with any of the DRM schemes, chuckle. If a single copy "gets out" it can make a million copies on the net.
That's not the point. I doubt that anyone really believes that the copy protection is infallible. However, the fact that the medium is copy protected means that you can't claim plausible deniability when you do get caught with pirated music. When you go to the airport, you may wonder why they ask you if you packed the bags yourself. Obviously they don't really think if you're a terrorist that you're going to fess up right there. But if they do find something in your bags, you have already sworn that you packed them yourself.
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(1) Back up copy. (2) Moving my music onto my new computer when I upgrade. (3) Moving my music onto my walkman style device. (4) Moving my music onto new media when old media becomes obsolete. (5) Student excerpting for school project. (6) Teacher excerpting for education. (7) Including an excerpt in scientific publication. (8) Anylizing the entirety for scientific purpose. (9) Excerpting for parody. (10) Music for which I own the copyright. (11) Music on which the copyright has expired. (12) Public domain (or other legally useable) content may also mixed into a DRM-locked package.
I'm sure my list is far from complete.
Fine. I don't dispute that a backup copy is fair use, but I notice that you are mostly steering clear of the list you mentioned earlier.
Pop music is not often used in education and scientific research. We had an English class in high school where the teacher wanted us to write poetry that was inspired by pop songs, but he didn't need to tape the songs off the radio; he just asked people to bring in CDs that they already owned. No one is going to include an excerpt of a song in a scientific publication.
If you own the copyright then why are you recording it off the Internet? Don't you already have the original? When you excerpt for parody, do you really need a 100% accurate copy, or could you just make a tape?
I already stated that I think a DRM scheme should allow backup (or space-shifted) copies, provided that they are made directly from the original.
There are a variety of proposed DRM schemes, but they all tend to have stupid results like this for one simple reason - if the content *ever* gets out of the DRM wrapper the protection fails completely.
Well, I wouldn't agree with those DRM schemes. If the protection fails if the content *ever* gets out, then the intent of the protection is unrealistic. The point of DRM is to be a sociological tool that raises the bar to piracy. How far out of your way will you go to circumvent copyright? You could build your own copyright circumvention hardware, but you won't find it at the local store.
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Now, I'm not saying that's right (it's not), but artists have a choice. They can choose to self publish.
Well said. Sometimes people get too carried away with this "the artists are getting screwed" argument and they forget that the people who provide the seed capital need to make a fair return too.
But to follow this up, if the artists are getting completely screwed by this arrangement, do you have any idea why the cycle continues? If the big labels are making out like bandits then why aren't smaller labels cutting into their market share? I'm a fan of some musicians on smaller labels, and my experience has been that their CDs are, if anything, more expensive than the stuff put out by the big 5 (plus, they are hard to find in here in Canada).
Also, if the artists know they are getting screwed then why do they sign with the big labels? Surely anyone who aspires to be a pop musician has heard the Courtney Love rant by now... And clearly only struggling new artists are getting shafted by the record companies. I highly doubt that Mariah Carey's $100 million deal was based on the premise that she was going to sell 40 billion songs (i.e. 4 billion CDs).
Let's say that you record your own CD and try to sell it on the Internet. Clearly, the biggest thing you will be missing is marketing support. We may not want to admit it, but clearly advertising has something to do with our music preference. Unless a large group of people can get together and agree that a band is good, they will never acheive critical mass. Without critical mass, you can't take advantage of economies of scale and you won't be able to sell your CDs at a reasonable price.
On another note, I believe that artists typically get to retain ownership of the songs but not the recordings of those songs. Prince got into an argument with his record company so he ditched them and re-recorded all his old songs. Moby can say that he doesn't mind if people copy his songs, but that's not his perogative since he doesn't own the recordings. Maybe those people will turn into future Moby fans later and buy his albums, but he might be with a different record label by then.
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I, for one, am not too happy with these "razor and blade" business models, or loss-leaders in general. Whenever someone gives something away at a loss, they do it because they expect something in return. Then when this happens, the freeloaders complain that the company is sleazy and unethical. Most of the time, I'd rather just pay directly for the product I want, on the basis that quality and low price are now directly rewarded with my patronage. There are countless examples:
1. TV advertising to sponsor programming
The result of which is poor quality TV in general: shows geared at young people, since they are more susceptible to advertising; mindless sitcoms, since they apparently put people in a buying mood; influence by advertisers over programming decisions, such as when advertisers almost forced the cancellation of Politically Incorrect.
2. Advertising to sponsor web content
This is just an unhealthy business model. Since the web is global, a site can't attract local advertising. There is only so much global (or even national) advertising to go around, and the result is that most mailing lists that I subscribed to were sponsored by people selling vitamin pills and penis enlargers (most of these lists eventually switched to a pay model). Plus it is just too easy to block the ads on a website.
3. Spyware and selling personal info
People who thought that Kazaa and Yahoo were giving them free services just to be benevolent were obviously just naive. Sure, Yahoo didn't need to sell your personal info back when their primary business model was selling stock, but now they they actually have to make a profit... what did you expect?
4. Let people copy your music for free, but make your money selling the packaging and cover art.
Wink, wink. As if you don't scan the cover art and post it online too, and as if most people really care. No one really believes this one any more. Nowadays, the party line is "let people copy your music for free because most people are basically honest and will buy the cd eventually."
5. Give away/sell your software at a loss in order to boost the sales of your hardware.
The fervour surrounding this business model died down when its poster child, VA Linux suffered a major stock crash. There are so many problems with this that it's not even funny. The cost of software development is high, probably higher than your hardware design, so you need to have huge margins on your hardware to compensate. Since you have put a whole bunch of software companies out of business, there will now be fierce competition in the hardware sector; someone is going to undercut you. Plus, if your code is halfway modular and you open source it, someone is going to port it to your competitor's platform anyway, so this gave you zero leverage.
6. Sell your game console at a loss and make money selling games, or likewise with printers and ink.
Which works great if you can retain the exclusive license to sell games/ink.
7. Give away your software and make money selling services and support
It may be the most-loved business model on Slashdot, but I think it stinks. Firstly, it punishes quality. If your software is bug free, who needs support? If your GUI is good, who needs help setting it up? If your product is flexible, who needs customization? Secondly, it doesn't work in the consumer market. When I buy software, I am paying for the software, not the support. This model has worked to some extent in selling support to businesses, mostly because businesses have been content to waste money in the past (e.g. the $1500 PC sitting on my desk which they bought for $4000). Watch for this to disappear in the new, leaner economy.
8. Give away your software at a loss and make your money selling t-shirts and plush Mozilla toys.
This business model was advocated by Netscape. Enough said.
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The only reason I made that big post on fair use was because you said:
"I think you are making most of that up."
about my quicky list of fair use items earlier.
Yeah, but way back when this discussion started, we were talking about Internet music piracy. Read the comments in the context of music piracy.
There are cases where copyright can be subjugated by fair use, but you'd be hard pressed to find any realistic examples involving pop music. My other point is that fair use may allow you to reproduce a portion of a copyrighted work (typically 10% -- a detail that is often left out of these discussions), but it doesn't say they have to make it that easy. Radio stations don't announce what songs they are playing in advance. Going to the library to research an academic paper is one thing. Taping everything off the radio just in case they play something you want a copy of (something I did when I was a kid) hardly sounds like fair use.
Businesses do not have a right to profits. It is the responsibility of the company to find a profitable business model. You do not pass laws protecting old businesses from advances in technology/society. That's what has me and other people pissed off - attempts to take away our rights.
And you don't have the right to tell copyright owners what business model to adopt either, yet that is what happening. This whole "I would buy it for $3 but since they are charging $18 I'm going to steal it" attitude is self-serving, and no one would take it seriously if you were buying a cabbage or a toaster. BTW, in actual fact, governments pass laws to protect businesses all the time. They also subsidize whole industries in order to protect them from unhealthy competition.
I assume you intended to say "their work" where you said "your work", but it is a rather amusing error. Some of the DRM crap they want will make it hard for me to reproduce my work, which is plain obscene.
There's no particular reason why DRM-enabled products shouldn't allow you to reproduce your own work. If the data isn't tagged or is tagged with some kind of generic key then it shouldn't prevent you from copying it. I don't know why the camcorder would do that. Are you sure this is not some feature that he enabled by accident?
-a
I have obviously heard of fair use. It only comes up on Slashdot 10 times a day. Fair use doesn't mean that the copyright owners have to make it easy for you to reproduce your work. I seem to remember that the courts already decided this way by ruling that reverse engineering eBooks security is not fair use because there are alternate techniques available (transcribing the text, photographing the display). You also don't have the right to a perfect reproduction (e.g. an analog copy of a DVD is acceptable under fair use.)
While the (lack of) quality of TV is always a popular topic chuckle, I doubt there is any link to home recording.
I agree that it's not the primary cause. The primary cause is increased variety. We now have so many available channels that none of them can afford to produce good programming. The fact that advertising is becoming less of a viable business model only aggravates the situation.
I'm not aware of this argument. It sounds really dumb to me, unless there's something you left out? What bussiness is it of theirs what I choose to watch or record? Maybe on my day off I want to sit and watch 14 hours of Simpsons straight through.
TV exists primarily as a method of broadcasting an evanescent signal which is paid for by advertising. The courts have ruled that time-shifting is okay, but at some point there is a distinction between time-shifting and archiving. If you can store programming in perpetuity AND skip past the advertising, then the business case which makes TV possible will cease to exist. The quality of the shows is already suffering.
Streaming to a file is perfectly legal... If the content isn't copyrighted. If I am the copyright holder. Time-shifting. Space-shifting. Educational purposes. Scientific pourposes. If I am criticizing the content. If I an satirizing the content. For signifigant political/social/legal discussion. Etc etc etc.
I think you are making most of that up. Last I heard, copyright violations weren't legal for scientific/educational purpose -- otherwise textbooks would be free. You also can't steal music just because it has a political message. Most labels will give you a free CD if you are a music critic, but you don't have a right to a free CD.
I find it highly unlikely that you are streaming non-copyrighted internet radio broadcasts. However, if you are, I think it is perfectly reasonable for commercial services to have their own streaming media clients (with private encryption keys).
-a
Oh man. This is my central complaint with the anti-sharing party line; the fact that they crow about "you can just GO ONLINE and download ANY song INSTANTLY!!1"
Okay, from what I've heard (I don't use these services), Gnutella was the slowest of the bunch. That guy from Napster posted an analysis here of why it wouldn't scale. Also, show a little imagination. Two years from now, computers will be faster, bandwidth will be higher, Gnutella may have its scalability problems sorted out, and music files will conceivably still be the same size.
I'm not sure why it took you so long to go get the track list of CDNow; that's the first thing I thought of. Then someone will write a GUI which lets you type a list of all the songs you want, and it will go and download them in the middle of the night. Now let's say (and I doubt this), that the four least popular tracks from an album are not available anywhere on the net. You'd have to be some kind of obsessive-compulsive freak to go out and spend $20 to get the four shitty songs from an album when you already got the rest for free.
BTW, you may clear $20 an hour after taxes, but most people don't.
-a