Come on mods, that's not insightful it's -1 Flamebait. Saying a musician "rips off" previous musicians is like saying we all rip off our parents by speaking their language. It's absurd. Music isn't born completely anew with each musician. Yeah, duh, Zep sounds like the blues, thanks for that astoundingly astute observation, Einstein -- that's because rock and roll grew out of the blues. In this case, "grew" is the operative word.
Your comment is a non-sequitir. GP commented about original copyright terms; you replied about current copyright terms. Furthermore, whether or not Zep is 'still played regularly' has no bearing.
GP's point is that Zep's music should be in the public domain by now, and he's absolutely correct. Stop saying copyrighted MUSIC and start saying copyrighted CULTURE. In this case it's an apt rephrasing: Zep is (IMHO) history's greatest rock and roll band (Beatles were a pop band, so they don't count). Keeping rock and roll history locked up by copyrights is a crime against culture. Zep has had a long, long time to get rich off their old music, and they continue to have the opportunity to get richer with new music, which is how the copyright incentive should work.
The essential difference is that in our society, anyone who works hard enough can become a lawyer or even a CEO. That's a far better system than allowing those jobs to be inhereted. We didn't eliminate power, but we limited it, and we opened it up to everyone (on a sliding scale of availability).
We're not saying the moral balance tips toward justification. All we're saying is that there is a positive externality from the tragedy in the form of less spam.
What country do you live in? The USA is currently enjoying its lowest crime rate ever, since the beginning of the union. Many people believe this is a direct result of the get-tough-on-crime laws passed in the 80s and 90s. (Other people believe it is due to other factors, such as legalized abortion.)
They purposefully picked an amount that had absolutely no relationship, whatsoever, to the financial damages that may have been incurred.
A song costs about a dollar. She was fined about ten thousand dollars per song.
You don't think that a single starting 'seed' copy of a particular MP3 might propogate out to ten thousand or more copies all over the internet? I don't think that's unreasonable.
Furthermore, the fines aren't even supposed to be equal to the financial damages incurred, they are supposed to function as a deterrent. To do that, the fine must be multiplied by the unlikelyhood of being caught. Certainly fewer than one in ten thousand filesharers get sued for it, so in that case even a single copy made from her 'seed' MP3 would suffice to make this a reasonable fine. I mean, reasonable in the eyes of the law, not necessarily in my eyes or yours.
Yes. Your true point goes to show that the RIAA has a bad policy by suing customers. It will lose them money.
But business concerns aside, they were, for lack of a better word, Right. The law was clear and on their side, so they won. So, your point doesn't make that any less true.
Ever heard of the British East India Company? It had to do with some added tax/levy or something being added to tea. I think it caused a bit of a riot in boston, local affair, easy to miss but some people were upset about it.
Yes, I am from the US of A, and I can tell you all about your little event there. That was Custer's Last Stand, which was a legendary battle between Texans and Mexicans during the Civil War. The whole dirty affair was caused by yellow journalism. It was a sad battle, napalm was used all over the place. Eventually we had to end the war by dropping a nuclear bomb. We commemorate that day every year on September 11. Most Americans don't know much about it, thought, since it happened almost seventy years ago now.
songwriters are artists, and songwriters receive 'mechanical royalties' on public performances such as radio play. afaik, singers to not receive mechanical royalties.
1. Jury nullification is okay in some circumstances, but it's also the reason no white man could be convicted of killing a black man or raping a black woman in the deep south until somewhat recently. It cuts both ways. But you are correct that it remains an important popular check on the courts' power.
And this one is way more important to me, as an American:
2. dude, our constitution does not guarantee a trial by a jury of your peers. Jesus it's like you've never read the Constitution. The Constitution does give the right to jury trials for both criminal and civil cases, but the "jury of your peers" phrase does not appear in any American document. I think that phrase comes from the French revolutionary documents, but I'm not familiar with French history so much as I am with American history.
Seriously. I introduced a song to a girl who was not terribly tech-savvy. I own the CD; the song was on my iPod. She liked the song, and went online to buy it. She bought it from the iTunes Music Store, and she was happily listening to it in iTunes. Then she copied the song to her MP3 player (non-iPod brand) and called me to ask why the song didn't play. I told her why; she was more than a little disappointed. For a few minutes we were discussing how to excise the music from the DRM, trying to find the program online and whatnot. Then I realized, fuck it, I should just email her the MP3, so I did and she was happy. She learned the DRM lesson for $1.
But was my action illegal? She'd just bought the song. She wanted to listen to it. Now with the MP3 she can listen to it. I'm unclear what the law says about it, but I obviously had no moral qualms with it.
I explained to her that while I don't have a big ethical problem downloading songs for free (which is copyright infringement, not theft), I also don't have a big financial (or ethical) problem paying for music. But when I am making that decision, it's perfectly clear that free+easy+workseverywhere+illegal > pay+painintheass+worksalmostnowhere+legal for all but extremely large values of legal.
Oh, but I want to warn you that if you are shunning all modern music because Britney Spears doesn't make you want to dance, then you are doing yourself a big disservice. There is lots and lots of good music being made today, both within and without the traditional recording industry.
Dude let me start by saying I agree that people should buy used CDs. I haven't bought a new CD since I was in college back in 2000. Since then, I have bought all my CDs used, mostly from Half.com, which I like a lot. I imagine there are plenty of other places to by used CDs too (want to recommend your favorite?). I have never had a problem with a scratched CD (Half.com separates CDs by quality; I buy New or Like-New CDs) and there are two price benefits: first, the price is generally about half of a new CD; and most important, the prices vary, so I can buy a CD when it drops to a price I think it's worth. For me, I like to get a CD for five or six bucks, including shipping, so four or five bucks list price. At that price, I can (literally) afford to do a little more experimentation than with $20 CDs.
But dude, you shouldn't do it because it kills the music industry. For one thing, supporting the secondary market for a good has a positive net effect on the primary market for the good, because the primary good will have greater value. (That is to say, a $20 new CD is 'worth more' if you know you can not only enjoy the music on it, but also sell it for $5 when you're done with it.) But more importantly, if you buy an authentic CD used, the music industry already got paid for it. You're not really sticking it to the man. If you want to kill a music company then don't buy their CDs at all, just copy them for free. (You can't "steal" music, but you can copy it for free. "Theft" implies denial of use, but copyright infringement does not imply denial of use.)
The reason to buy used CDs is that it's an appropriate, legal, convenient way to get reasonably priced music in an accessible, high-quality format. So everybody, buy CDs used if they are available when you want to buy a CD!
Fines and civil penalties aren't supposed to be the magnitude of the individual transgression, they are supposed to be the magnitude of deterrence, which is typically considered to be the magnitude of the individual transgression multiplied by the probability of getting caught.
So, say a song costs one dollar. Say the chance of getting caught downloading a song is one in a million. Then the civil penalty should be somewhere on the order of a million dollars. If it were only one dollar, then why bother every buying the song? You'd just wait to get caught then pay the dollar.
slashdot needs a general understanding that we won't use the term "copy protection" or "digital rights management." if you are snarky you can call it "playback crippled", and if you want to be respectful toward the content producers you can call it what it is: "playback prevention." It stops you from playing the content under certain conditions, or at least attempts to. It doesn't protect copies (which is what copy protection would do, it would protect copies, not prevent them). It doesn't manage digital rights. It prevents media use. Call it what it is, playback prevention. Playback prevention is a morally neutral term to which no one should object. If you think preventing playback is okay, then you think playback prevention is okay. If not, not.
Yeah, it's too bad, but it's in line with the court's history. In America in times of war courts often drag their feet on issues for a while, letting the other two branches of government duke it out or try to reach a solution, before really coming in and giving an opinion. It's remarkable constraint, really. American legal history makes the courts the most powerful branch in theory, because for the most part everyone else follows court orders all the time. So the fact that courts don't jump in all over the place and run things is a small surprise. There are those, of course, who think the courts do too much of that, but I'm comparing it to how much they could do if they wanted to.
Well to be fair, if you bought a blank cassette tape and recorded copyrighted music onto it and gave that music to your friend, then RIAA *did* get paid, in the form of the tax levied on blank media. That doesn't make copyright infringement morally right, but it's not like the RIAA didn't get some money anyway. I would be about thirty percent more against copyright infringement if the **AA didn't get paid when it happens. But they do.
Well actually, not anymore, because now the physical medium is the hard drive, which afaik doesn't have the blank-media tax. But if you dupe a DVD onto a blank DVD, then the MPAA gets paid. Same with CDs. So, filesharing MP3s with your friends does hurt copyright holders. So now the question is, that considered, do we have any pity for them? I have some, but very little.
Yeah, but if this is a song you are going to listen to for the rest of your life, then you don't really have to reboot in OS X to download it, you just have to (remember to) download it sometime when you are booted into OS X.
Slashdot Mirror
!begsthequestion
i wish we could tag comments.
Come on mods, that's not insightful it's -1 Flamebait. Saying a musician "rips off" previous musicians is like saying we all rip off our parents by speaking their language. It's absurd. Music isn't born completely anew with each musician. Yeah, duh, Zep sounds like the blues, thanks for that astoundingly astute observation, Einstein -- that's because rock and roll grew out of the blues. In this case, "grew" is the operative word.
Your comment is a non-sequitir. GP commented about original copyright terms; you replied about current copyright terms. Furthermore, whether or not Zep is 'still played regularly' has no bearing.
GP's point is that Zep's music should be in the public domain by now, and he's absolutely correct. Stop saying copyrighted MUSIC and start saying copyrighted CULTURE. In this case it's an apt rephrasing: Zep is (IMHO) history's greatest rock and roll band (Beatles were a pop band, so they don't count). Keeping rock and roll history locked up by copyrights is a crime against culture. Zep has had a long, long time to get rich off their old music, and they continue to have the opportunity to get richer with new music, which is how the copyright incentive should work.
The essential difference is that in our society, anyone who works hard enough can become a lawyer or even a CEO. That's a far better system than allowing those jobs to be inhereted. We didn't eliminate power, but we limited it, and we opened it up to everyone (on a sliding scale of availability).
That's funny, but how is it a pun?
We're not saying the moral balance tips toward justification. All we're saying is that there is a positive externality from the tragedy in the form of less spam.
What country do you live in? The USA is currently enjoying its lowest crime rate ever, since the beginning of the union. Many people believe this is a direct result of the get-tough-on-crime laws passed in the 80s and 90s. (Other people believe it is due to other factors, such as legalized abortion.)
They purposefully picked an amount that had absolutely no relationship, whatsoever, to the financial damages that may have been incurred.
A song costs about a dollar. She was fined about ten thousand dollars per song.
You don't think that a single starting 'seed' copy of a particular MP3 might propogate out to ten thousand or more copies all over the internet? I don't think that's unreasonable.
Furthermore, the fines aren't even supposed to be equal to the financial damages incurred, they are supposed to function as a deterrent. To do that, the fine must be multiplied by the unlikelyhood of being caught. Certainly fewer than one in ten thousand filesharers get sued for it, so in that case even a single copy made from her 'seed' MP3 would suffice to make this a reasonable fine. I mean, reasonable in the eyes of the law, not necessarily in my eyes or yours.
Yes. Your true point goes to show that the RIAA has a bad policy by suing customers. It will lose them money.
But business concerns aside, they were, for lack of a better word, Right. The law was clear and on their side, so they won. So, your point doesn't make that any less true.
Another effect of overpunishment is low crime.
Ever heard of the British East India Company? It had to do with some added tax/levy or something being added to tea. I think it caused a bit of a riot in boston, local affair, easy to miss but some people were upset about it.
Yes, I am from the US of A, and I can tell you all about your little event there. That was Custer's Last Stand, which was a legendary battle between Texans and Mexicans during the Civil War. The whole dirty affair was caused by yellow journalism. It was a sad battle, napalm was used all over the place. Eventually we had to end the war by dropping a nuclear bomb. We commemorate that day every year on September 11. Most Americans don't know much about it, thought, since it happened almost seventy years ago now.
songwriters are artists, and songwriters receive 'mechanical royalties' on public performances such as radio play. afaik, singers to not receive mechanical royalties.
please someone explain the reference
yeah she could have done that. we went the easy route instead.
If it's universal doesn't that imply that it's intergalactic?
Okay, brother, you talk a good game, but:
1. Jury nullification is okay in some circumstances, but it's also the reason no white man could be convicted of killing a black man or raping a black woman in the deep south until somewhat recently. It cuts both ways. But you are correct that it remains an important popular check on the courts' power.
And this one is way more important to me, as an American:
2. dude, our constitution does not guarantee a trial by a jury of your peers. Jesus it's like you've never read the Constitution. The Constitution does give the right to jury trials for both criminal and civil cases, but the "jury of your peers" phrase does not appear in any American document. I think that phrase comes from the French revolutionary documents, but I'm not familiar with French history so much as I am with American history.
Okay maybe those are minor quibbles, I admit it.
Seriously. I introduced a song to a girl who was not terribly tech-savvy. I own the CD; the song was on my iPod. She liked the song, and went online to buy it. She bought it from the iTunes Music Store, and she was happily listening to it in iTunes. Then she copied the song to her MP3 player (non-iPod brand) and called me to ask why the song didn't play. I told her why; she was more than a little disappointed. For a few minutes we were discussing how to excise the music from the DRM, trying to find the program online and whatnot. Then I realized, fuck it, I should just email her the MP3, so I did and she was happy. She learned the DRM lesson for $1.
But was my action illegal? She'd just bought the song. She wanted to listen to it. Now with the MP3 she can listen to it. I'm unclear what the law says about it, but I obviously had no moral qualms with it.
I explained to her that while I don't have a big ethical problem downloading songs for free (which is copyright infringement, not theft), I also don't have a big financial (or ethical) problem paying for music. But when I am making that decision, it's perfectly clear that free+easy+workseverywhere+illegal > pay+painintheass+worksalmostnowhere+legal for all but extremely large values of legal.
Oh, but I want to warn you that if you are shunning all modern music because Britney Spears doesn't make you want to dance, then you are doing yourself a big disservice. There is lots and lots of good music being made today, both within and without the traditional recording industry.
Dude let me start by saying I agree that people should buy used CDs. I haven't bought a new CD since I was in college back in 2000. Since then, I have bought all my CDs used, mostly from Half.com, which I like a lot. I imagine there are plenty of other places to by used CDs too (want to recommend your favorite?). I have never had a problem with a scratched CD (Half.com separates CDs by quality; I buy New or Like-New CDs) and there are two price benefits: first, the price is generally about half of a new CD; and most important, the prices vary, so I can buy a CD when it drops to a price I think it's worth. For me, I like to get a CD for five or six bucks, including shipping, so four or five bucks list price. At that price, I can (literally) afford to do a little more experimentation than with $20 CDs.
But dude, you shouldn't do it because it kills the music industry. For one thing, supporting the secondary market for a good has a positive net effect on the primary market for the good, because the primary good will have greater value. (That is to say, a $20 new CD is 'worth more' if you know you can not only enjoy the music on it, but also sell it for $5 when you're done with it.) But more importantly, if you buy an authentic CD used, the music industry already got paid for it. You're not really sticking it to the man. If you want to kill a music company then don't buy their CDs at all, just copy them for free. (You can't "steal" music, but you can copy it for free. "Theft" implies denial of use, but copyright infringement does not imply denial of use.)
The reason to buy used CDs is that it's an appropriate, legal, convenient way to get reasonably priced music in an accessible, high-quality format. So everybody, buy CDs used if they are available when you want to buy a CD!
Fines and civil penalties aren't supposed to be the magnitude of the individual transgression, they are supposed to be the magnitude of deterrence, which is typically considered to be the magnitude of the individual transgression multiplied by the probability of getting caught.
So, say a song costs one dollar. Say the chance of getting caught downloading a song is one in a million. Then the civil penalty should be somewhere on the order of a million dollars. If it were only one dollar, then why bother every buying the song? You'd just wait to get caught then pay the dollar.
slashdot needs a general understanding that we won't use the term "copy protection" or "digital rights management." if you are snarky you can call it "playback crippled", and if you want to be respectful toward the content producers you can call it what it is: "playback prevention." It stops you from playing the content under certain conditions, or at least attempts to. It doesn't protect copies (which is what copy protection would do, it would protect copies, not prevent them). It doesn't manage digital rights. It prevents media use. Call it what it is, playback prevention. Playback prevention is a morally neutral term to which no one should object. If you think preventing playback is okay, then you think playback prevention is okay. If not, not.
Yeah, it's too bad, but it's in line with the court's history. In America in times of war courts often drag their feet on issues for a while, letting the other two branches of government duke it out or try to reach a solution, before really coming in and giving an opinion. It's remarkable constraint, really. American legal history makes the courts the most powerful branch in theory, because for the most part everyone else follows court orders all the time. So the fact that courts don't jump in all over the place and run things is a small surprise. There are those, of course, who think the courts do too much of that, but I'm comparing it to how much they could do if they wanted to.
Actually, you'd go to jail for battery. Assault is the crime of threatening violence; batter is the crime of perpetrating violence.
That's in the USA, at least. YMMV.
Well to be fair, if you bought a blank cassette tape and recorded copyrighted music onto it and gave that music to your friend, then RIAA *did* get paid, in the form of the tax levied on blank media. That doesn't make copyright infringement morally right, but it's not like the RIAA didn't get some money anyway. I would be about thirty percent more against copyright infringement if the **AA didn't get paid when it happens. But they do.
Well actually, not anymore, because now the physical medium is the hard drive, which afaik doesn't have the blank-media tax. But if you dupe a DVD onto a blank DVD, then the MPAA gets paid. Same with CDs. So, filesharing MP3s with your friends does hurt copyright holders. So now the question is, that considered, do we have any pity for them? I have some, but very little.
because there products are completly ineffective
where are products completely ineffective? i sure don't want to go there.
Yeah, but if this is a song you are going to listen to for the rest of your life, then you don't really have to reboot in OS X to download it, you just have to (remember to) download it sometime when you are booted into OS X.
Me, I think I'll stick to buying CDs on Half.com.