LOL! Yeah you just keep thinking that, it's been well over 2 decades and even the significantly more locked down Microsoft Windows still hasn't done anything that has caused its users to abandon it in favor of free OSes.
Microsoft did one such major screwup with Vista. The only reason why it didn't cost them a significant share of the desktop market is that they managed to salvage the situation with free WXP "downgrades" and incredibly fast release of W7. Meanwhile, I think they're headed in the Vista direction again with W8 so I'm stocking up on popcorn for after the big release.
Funny thing is, when you use proper genetic classification of species, it turns out there are still living dinosaurs even today: birds! Every time you eat chicken, you eat a dinosaur.
First, let us separate the concept of "copyright" from today's crazy hodgepodge of insane laws designed to line the pockets of people who have never done anything to earn honest money.
The concept that IF there is money to be made from an original idea, or work, then the author should be entitled to some of that money, is valid. And, I think it reasonable that such a law should apply for a decade, maybe a bit more. Possibly even 20 or 25 years.
Except that the concept you're describing has nothing to do with copyright. You don't need to prohibit copying in order to implement this concept. In fact, all the works can be freely available for use from day one BUT when you make money from using these works, you owe money to the author. If you don't have a contract specifying how much, the author can just come and take it all.
The concept of copyright is absurd. The difference between copyright and censorship is just one person.
They should raise tuition significantly- each seat filled by a foreign student is one less domestic student in that seat and robs the US of future domestic production, especially if that seat might have contributed positively to the domestic economy (ie: sciences/computer science/engineering)- I doubt these foreign students are here for liberal art degrees. Unless you actually build new facilities, enlarge existing lecture halls, and hire additional faculty, this is the simple math of the situation.
Don't worry, the graduates will just start building perfect copies of MIT and other top US universities when they return to China, just like they do with everything else. The problem you're talking about is only temporary.
Instead of just jumping in with your opinion you might actually RTFA. It contains the most succinct and convincing set of arguments on the subject I've seen so for. So the answers to your question are in the linked letter that David Lowery wrote.
I don't see any convincing arguments. Just whining that the business model he has chosen doesn't pay as well as he'd like. When you make cars or sell shoes and your business model doesn't work, it's your problem and the only acceptable solution is to change your business model, not blame others for your own failure. I don't see any good reason why music should be an exception.
One of the best points that he makes is that there is an industry that actually makes lots money by distributing works of art without compensating the artist. They make their money by selling ad space on their websites. Others make money by selling hardware that is used for illegally copying music. Some make money by selling things like mp3 players.
In that case, Mr Lowery should hire a lawyer and demand a fair share of turnover from this industry through court. However, shutting this industry down is not acceptable.
Certainly mp3 players would be much less popular if it weren't for the fact that you can fill them with music for free if you make that moral decision.
Oh, I'd certainly love to see you try and succeed in that. Because you see, the MP3 player is popular on its own due to its convenience. If you managed to split the music market into music made available for use in MP3 players by the artist and music that cannot be played from an MP3 player under any circumstances, the only thing you'd really achieve would be massive boost in popularity for those artists who made their music available for MP3 players (and also equivalent loss of popularity of those artists who did not).
Your statement that "Things should only be illegal when they cause serious harm to the entire society" is an astonishing statement. So if the RIAA sends some thugs to rough you up it makes very little difference to the entire society, (I wouldn't care) but it would make a hell of a difference to you. Should it be legal? Naturally not. Our threshold for what is wrong or illegal is much lower and includes causing harm to individuals.
Har, har, har, very funny. It doesn't matter whether one thug beats a thousand people or each of a thousand thugs beats one person. In both cases, a thousand people get beaten by thugs. That's why violence is illegal regardless of the number of victims.
The rest of your argument can be summed up like this, "Everyone does it so it must be okay."
You got only the first half right. Everyone does it. The other half is: Unchecked copying got humans from a cold damp cave to the Moon. If you stand in the way of copying, you're standing in the way of progress. And history tells us that progress never loses.
If there really is this overwhelming majority of people who think artists should work for free...
I never said anything like that and I'm really getting pissed that you pulled out something like that. If you didn't get the point from my other 4 comments in this thread, I'll repeat it one more time just for you: If you want to get paid for making art, that's perfectly fine. But finding a way to make it work is your problem just like in case of any other enterpreneur. The world doesn't owe you anything.
then I would suggest that you build a movement to modify law to eliminate copyright.
I'm already an active member of the Pirate Party movement.
What it really boils down to is this: do we want professional music in our society? If we do we have to make it possible for musicians to make a living.
No, it boils down to the fact that professional musicians are not necessarily needed.
Lowery's numbers on employment are backed up by the Burea of Labor Statistics -- an entity of the US federal government responsible for tracking industry trends. You can see for yourself that the 2000 data says there were 52,180 musicians employed in the United States earning a median annual wage of $36,740 and a mean annual wage of $44,520. From the 2010 data you can see that there were 43,350 musicians employed. They don't offer annual wages, saying that these occupations typically don't work year round, but the median hourly wage is $22.39 and the mean hourly wage is $30.22. While we can't compare the apples and oranges of the wage reports, we can certainly see that there was a substantial decrease in the number of employed musicians in the United States.
The obvious question is: who counts as a musician in this statistic? From the description on the web (especially the list of organizations in the 2010 statistic), these are normal day jobs where musicians are paid by the hour - theaters, opera houses, churches... I bet the list doesn't include artists signed up to labels which makes it completely useless for our discussion. Basically, close a few hundred theaters and opera houses around the country and you get 9,000 fewer musicians in this statistic. What does the RIAA statistic say?
I will go so far as to say that when there's less money in a business, there's less talent in it.
Exactly. The market will take care of balancing money and talent.
I understand you're not concerned. Maybe you're not concerned about deforestation or overpopulation or the euro crisis either.
Actually, I'm concerned about a lot of things. But artists in general getting paid is not one of them. No offence but paid artists are simply not that important for creation of art. Art will get created either way. Perhaps different art but that doesn't matter. The thing is, if you want to get paid for doing something, it's YOUR responsibility to find people who will pay you for doing that. Not mine and especially not the government's. The US constitution specifically says that copyright was created for the benefit of consumers, not to create jobs for creators.
In the meantime, I hope people will consider assisting their favorite musicians financially. I hope they will also consider not sharing music for artists they have not assisted financially. That seems pretty fair to me.
Of course it's fair. But I don't see any good reason why it should be a requirement.
That study is interesting -- although I would like to point out that it is hosted by Torrentfreak -- hardly a neutral entity.
The study is not hosted on TorrentFreak, they just report about it. The study itself is hosted on Scribd. Also, it's a master thesis from BI Norwegian School of Management. I can't comment on how good the school is but Lowery doesn't even bother to say where his numbers come from. And while TorrentFreak is certainly not neutral on the issue, neither is Lowery. So let's ignore who says what and just focus on whether or not those arguments stand on their own merits.
However, if the numbers are not corrected for inflation, 4% growth in Norwegian kronor revenue would likely represent a contraction of the market because inflation is typically 2-3% per year.
Those numbers ARE corrected for inflation. The 4% increase in industry revenues is mentioned twice in the article and the first time it specifically says the number is corrected for inflation in the very same sentence. The raw numbers are 1.4 billion kronor in 1999 and 1.9 billion kronor in 2009.
I'm cautiously optimistic about the future of music, but am still very concerned about the sense of entitlement among listeners like Emily White. She has 11,000 songs and hasn't paid for the vast majority of them.
I'm not concerned in the slightest. Even if people completely stop paying for recorded music (which is even more unlikely than successfully crushing all freeloaders with iron fist), musicians will simply start using Kickstarter to get paid for making completely new music. Not to mention millions of amateurs who make music just for fun without expecting a dime in return.
When you run a business, any change is either an opportunity, or a threat. When your business is small, most changes look like opportunities. When your business becomes big, all changes start to look like a threats. Capitalist who runs big business but doesn't fear any change he didn't cause himself must be insane.
Actually, the worst case is that good music doesn't get made.
Again, big deal. There's more than enough content made just for fun and distributed for free that's just waiting to get some spotlight.
If you RTFA by Lowery, you would have seen the stat that there are 25% fewer musicians in the U.S. than in 2000.
If that's true, it's a problem that seems to be specific to USA. I can throw a similar survey from Norway against that which lists completely opposite numbers between 1999 and 2009: 28% increase in the number of artists, 114% increase in the total revenue of all artists combined and 66% increase in annual per-artist income. I don't have numbers for Czech republic but I can quote top 3 Czech musicians (Karel Gott, Lucie Bila, Jarek Nohavica) saying that piracy is good advertisment. Jarek Nohavica even quit the recording industry, offers his own music for free on his official website and makes money from live concerts.
If you like music, you should pay for it or you can't expect it to get made.
... Dune, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Disney cartoons are all covered by copyright, and Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Frankenstein were. It sounds like you're making an argument for copyright, not against it.
All content created in Europe in the past 100 years and in USA in the past 20 years, even remotely creative, was covered by copyright at some point. Copyright based on Berne Convention attaches itself to any content at the moment of its creation and it takes a lot of effort to pry it off. In some places, you can't pry it off completely no matter how hard you try (my country is one example, you can't give unlimited license for uses which are not yet known here). The requirement for something becoming culture is people knowing about it, copyright just happens to be attached most of the time.
But if you need this pointed out, even copyright violations form a part of our culture. The most prominent cases that come to mind are anime fansubs and manga scanlations.
Oh, and BTW, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet were written a whole century BEFORE the very first copyright law (Statute of Anne) came into effect in 1710. It's true that these plays were copyrighted for some time but that was long after William Shakespeare died.
as I pointed out before, you cant' make something legal just because lots of people want to do it, because people do what's best for themselves in the short term, not what's best for themselves in the long term or society in general. It's the tragedy of the commons.
you can, and certainly should, reconsider if something should be legal in the face of overwhelming popular support of it being legal. you can reconsider if the benefit in keeping it illegal is disportionate to the harm in legalizing it.
You're turning the issue of legality upside down. Things should only be illegal when they cause serious harm to the entire society AND making them illegal won't cause even worse problems. So what's the harm from unauthorized file sharing? Well, in the worst case, some people may not get a return on their investment. Big deal, like that doesn't happen to millions of people in other professions every day. And what's worse, it happens to lots of artists anyway, regardless of copyright.
and to answer your question, I -don't- know whether file sharing of music should be illegal.
If you don't know a very good reason why something should be illegal, then you already know one very good reason why it shouldn't.
I think you're arguing this from the wrong point of view. There are many valid arguements on this side of the issue, but "it's easy to do so it shouldn't be wrong" is not one of them.
I think that the only argument that's really needed is this: "No matter how hard you try to legislate water to flow uphill, it just won't happen."
That said, TFA is utter BS. I support my country's Pirate Party. I did a lot of work a few years ago in open translation of Free Culture into Czech. And I say screw the corporations. My only concern is about culture. If you can make a living from your art, well, that's nice, good for you. But I won't give a damn if you can't. Content doesn't become culture by someone making money from it. The entertainment industry is not our culture no matter how much they try to make it look that way. They just happen to be the biggest contributor to our culture at the moment.
Content becomes culture when it's being shared. Think about it: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Frankenstein, Dune, Star Wars, Star Trek, Moby Dick, Disney cartoons etc., all of that is part of our culture. Why? Because people know what those stories are all about. But there's also a bajillion obscure books and movies that are not part of our culture because nobody has ever heard of them. That's why locking down content is wrong. I don't care why you're trying to lock down content, whether it's for money, political ends or whatever, it's wrong because it harms culture. If the lockdown is successful, then what's important part of our culture now may be lost forever just some 10, 20 years from now. I don't mind paying for content but at the same time I won't jump through burning hoops just for the privilege of paying somebody. The author has the right to get a fair share of profit from whoever makes money using his content and not to publish the content in the first place if he chooses so. But nobody has the right to lock down published content. Not the author, not anybody else.
It's not just disappearing down a black hole, it's part of the same economy as the rest of us.
Actually, that's not true anymore. Take a look at how much consumer goods people buy all the time. Now think for a while how many people actually make all those consumer goods and where. The thing is, it takes just a few thousand people to manufacture enough units of the same goods for the whole world.
So yes, from our point of view, money is disappearing down a black hole. The black hole just contains a significant part of the world economy (in terms of money, not people). Some money leaks back from the black hole through employee wages but those money leaks are not as evenly distributed across the world as money suction. Do you still think that some areas can't be sucked dry?
The books frequently parody, or at least take inspiration from J. R. R. Tolkien,
I have no idea why Wikipedia lists Tolkien as a source of inspiration. There may be some very small references to Tolkien here and there that I haven't noticed but there's no mention of Hobbits in the entire series. Discworld elves are evil goblins that use magic to appear much more beautiful than they really are, any physical contact with iron hurts them pretty badly (works almost as well as silver on werewolves) and they have been banished to another dimension long time ago. I think this description of elves comes from German folklore. Perhaps the only noticeable reference to Tolkien might be Orcs in Unseen Academicals but the book doesn't copy any storyline from Tolkien's books. Pratchett just describes Orcs as creatures artificially created for war just like Tolkien does but that's probably it.
Robert E. Howard,
There's Cohen the Barbarian in some books but he doesn't actually have that much in common with Howard's Conan. Cohen is ninety-something grey-haired toothless barbarian who still loves to kill evil priests, rescue girls about to be sacrificed, steal treasure and then get drunk in the nearest town. He mostly appears alongside Rincewind, a wizzard (that's how it's spelled on his pointy hat) that can't do any magic, and Cohen even takes the role of Genghis Khan (well, Ghenghiz Cohen) in Interesting Times. There's no obsession with steel as in Howard's books. There's a reference to the 1982 Conan the Barbarian movie though in the form of warriors talking about what's best in life in a yurt. But Cohen delivers a very different answer than Conan.
H. P. Lovecraft
There's Temple of Bel-Shamharoth in the first book and occasional appearance of monsters from dungeon dimensions but that also counts only as a reference. There's no storyline copied from Lovecraft.
I guess my main question was whether or not Pratchett depended on the "public domain" nature of these works to parody them.
Pratchett heavily parodies only stuff that's in public domain. Things that are still under copyright only get very small references.
I'm also doubtful that copying a single line from an earlier (copyrighted) work would be sufficient to be considered copyright infringement.
It's not a single line, it's the whole story of those two plays combined together. The opening scene of Wyrd Sisters shows three witches having a meeting on a stormy night (Macbeth starts with a similar scene, the witches are called Wyrd Sisters in Macbeth). Early in the book, Lord Felmet kills his cousin king Verence of Lancre because his ambitious wife wanted to become queen. Since Verence has a newborn son, Felmet orders him killed as well. However, the witches save Verence's son by sending him out of Lancre with a travelling troupe. When the baby is safely outside borders, the witches perform a ritual to move Lancre 20 years into the future. Meanwhile, Lord Felmet starts losing his mind, seeing blood on his hands all the time. He tries to clean his hands so hard that his delusions become reality. When the travelling troupe returns to Lancre, only a few months have passed since Verence's death but due to the ritual, his son is already an adult. The troupe performs murder of Verence on stage in Lancre Castle (just like in Hamlet) which makes Felmet completely snap and reveal himself as murderer of the king. Lord Felmet kills himself, his wife disappears in forests of Lancre (possibly killed by wild animals) and Lancre gets a new king. The end.
Could you give more details on this? I haven't read his books, but based on what I've heard of the books, they parody (or take inspiration from) certain aspects of other author's books - including J.R.R. Tolkien. Wikipedia says that the Discworld books were published from 1983 until the present. J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" books were written between 1937 and 1949 and published in 1937, 1954, 1955. Presumably, they were (and still are) under copyright - which means they were not public domain when Terry Pratchett parodied them.
I've read the entire main series of Discworld books except Snuff and Raising Taxes and Pratchett really does parody a lot of older works, Shakespeare in particular, though I haven't found anything that would remind me of Tolkien. There are two Shakespeare parody books: Wyrd Sisters (combination of Macbeth and Hamlet, the first spoken line in Pratchett's book is verbatim first spoken line from Macbeth) and Lords and Ladies (I believe it's a parody of A Midsummer Night's Dream but I'm not completely sure). Shakespeare also appears as a character in The Science of Discworld II: The Globe where Discworld elves try to become rulers of our world by influencing Shakespeare while he writes A Midsummer Night's Dream. Smaller references to Shakespeare also appear throughout other books. Other parodies of older works are Eric (parody of Faust, even the book cover points that out), Witches Abroad (multiple fairy tales including Cinderella), Maskerade (parody of The Phantom of the Opera) and Carpe Jugulum (I think it's a parody of Stoker's Dracula but it might be a parody of vampire stories in general). A lot of Pratchett's books also parody history and current culture themes, for example: Pyramids (parody of ancient Egypt), Moving Pictures (early years of Hollywood), Small Gods (Catholic church during the time of inquisition), Soul Music (life of Elvis Presley), Interesting Times (invasion of Genghis Khan into China), Hogfather (parody of Christmas and Santa Claus), The Last Continent (parody of Australia), The Truth (invention of movable type printing press) and Unseen Academicals (parody of football/soccer and its fans).
The idea that protecting copyright helps encourage the creation process is at least a valid idea.
Maybe technically valid, but still completely wrong. For example if Terry Pratchett was not allowed to use public domain works as a basis for his own Discworld series, the Discworld books would either suck or not exist at all.
Well, why are you linking to Xcode and not those FREE and SUPPORTED tools then? Note: If you think that Xcode counts, then you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. Xcode is a GUI monolith, you can't combine it with anything else to make it do something it wasn't designed to do from the start.
Actually, can you show me one of these "very simple tools" that exists on Linux but not on MacOS?
Personally I do use Linux for all my server needs, but my desktops and main work laptop are Macs. One of the things I love with MacOS is having the full GNU toolchain at my disposal.
Define "exists". Yes, MacOS X does have a UNIX base, comes with full GNU toolchain and pretty much any properly written UNIX program tool should build and run on it. But I really wonder how much effort it takes to find, build and use third party CLI tools. For example ImageMagick, SoX, MKVTools or Mencoder (part of Mplayer package). Most Linux distros provide tools to easily create a package for your program that will seamlessly integrate with the system and a HUGE database of packages ready to install and use. I can imagine that MacOS provides tons of GUI software but I don't believe that Apple would put that much effort into providing CLI tools beyond the bare minimum required for a UNIX system.
Linux works best when users don't know it's linux. Once you put it in front of consumers you're asking for trouble.
Linux works best when you don't expect your computer to be nothing more than a glorified TV/typewriter. The single most important feature of Linux is that it gives you power to solve complicated problems by combining very simple tools. You don't have to rely on somebody else to solve everything for you like on Windows or Mac.
As for the error code, 403 (Forbidden) is described as "The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it". Is this not technically accurate?
It's not accurate because the server didn't even recieve the request. The request was intercepted in transit and blocked by third party.
If its on Netflix, why would I even bother to download the torrent?
Because Netflix is a streaming service. Good luck watching a movie from Netflix when you have erratic connection or none at all. Also, Netflix is available only in US and UK at the moment.
Slashdot Mirror
Steam for Linux is coming this fall. Enjoy your migration.
LOL! Yeah you just keep thinking that, it's been well over 2 decades and even the significantly more locked down Microsoft Windows still hasn't done anything that has caused its users to abandon it in favor of free OSes.
Microsoft did one such major screwup with Vista. The only reason why it didn't cost them a significant share of the desktop market is that they managed to salvage the situation with free WXP "downgrades" and incredibly fast release of W7. Meanwhile, I think they're headed in the Vista direction again with W8 so I'm stocking up on popcorn for after the big release.
Where can I see the fossil of a the midway-between-dinosaur-and-bird animal?
Probably in the same place where you can see a fossil of the midway-between-ape-and-gorilla animal.
Funny thing is, when you use proper genetic classification of species, it turns out there are still living dinosaurs even today: birds! Every time you eat chicken, you eat a dinosaur.
First, let us separate the concept of "copyright" from today's crazy hodgepodge of insane laws designed to line the pockets of people who have never done anything to earn honest money.
The concept that IF there is money to be made from an original idea, or work, then the author should be entitled to some of that money, is valid. And, I think it reasonable that such a law should apply for a decade, maybe a bit more. Possibly even 20 or 25 years.
Except that the concept you're describing has nothing to do with copyright. You don't need to prohibit copying in order to implement this concept. In fact, all the works can be freely available for use from day one BUT when you make money from using these works, you owe money to the author. If you don't have a contract specifying how much, the author can just come and take it all.
The concept of copyright is absurd. The difference between copyright and censorship is just one person.
Yeah, and the result looks like the parody of misogynistic beer ads from episode 2 of Your Face is a Saxophone.
They should raise tuition significantly- each seat filled by a foreign student is one less domestic student in that seat and robs the US of future domestic production, especially if that seat might have contributed positively to the domestic economy (ie: sciences/computer science/engineering)- I doubt these foreign students are here for liberal art degrees. Unless you actually build new facilities, enlarge existing lecture halls, and hire additional faculty, this is the simple math of the situation.
Don't worry, the graduates will just start building perfect copies of MIT and other top US universities when they return to China, just like they do with everything else. The problem you're talking about is only temporary.
Instead of just jumping in with your opinion you might actually RTFA. It contains the most succinct and convincing set of arguments on the subject I've seen so for. So the answers to your question are in the linked letter that David Lowery wrote.
I don't see any convincing arguments. Just whining that the business model he has chosen doesn't pay as well as he'd like. When you make cars or sell shoes and your business model doesn't work, it's your problem and the only acceptable solution is to change your business model, not blame others for your own failure. I don't see any good reason why music should be an exception.
One of the best points that he makes is that there is an industry that actually makes lots money by distributing works of art without compensating the artist. They make their money by selling ad space on their websites. Others make money by selling hardware that is used for illegally copying music. Some make money by selling things like mp3 players.
In that case, Mr Lowery should hire a lawyer and demand a fair share of turnover from this industry through court. However, shutting this industry down is not acceptable.
Certainly mp3 players would be much less popular if it weren't for the fact that you can fill them with music for free if you make that moral decision.
Oh, I'd certainly love to see you try and succeed in that. Because you see, the MP3 player is popular on its own due to its convenience. If you managed to split the music market into music made available for use in MP3 players by the artist and music that cannot be played from an MP3 player under any circumstances, the only thing you'd really achieve would be massive boost in popularity for those artists who made their music available for MP3 players (and also equivalent loss of popularity of those artists who did not).
Your statement that "Things should only be illegal when they cause serious harm to the entire society" is an astonishing statement. So if the RIAA sends some thugs to rough you up it makes very little difference to the entire society, (I wouldn't care) but it would make a hell of a difference to you. Should it be legal? Naturally not. Our threshold for what is wrong or illegal is much lower and includes causing harm to individuals.
Har, har, har, very funny. It doesn't matter whether one thug beats a thousand people or each of a thousand thugs beats one person. In both cases, a thousand people get beaten by thugs. That's why violence is illegal regardless of the number of victims.
The rest of your argument can be summed up like this, "Everyone does it so it must be okay."
You got only the first half right. Everyone does it. The other half is: Unchecked copying got humans from a cold damp cave to the Moon. If you stand in the way of copying, you're standing in the way of progress. And history tells us that progress never loses.
If there really is this overwhelming majority of people who think artists should work for free...
I never said anything like that and I'm really getting pissed that you pulled out something like that. If you didn't get the point from my other 4 comments in this thread, I'll repeat it one more time just for you: If you want to get paid for making art, that's perfectly fine. But finding a way to make it work is your problem just like in case of any other enterpreneur. The world doesn't owe you anything.
then I would suggest that you build a movement to modify law to eliminate copyright.
I'm already an active member of the Pirate Party movement.
What it really boils down to is this: do we want professional music in our society? If we do we have to make it possible for musicians to make a living.
No, it boils down to the fact that professional musicians are not necessarily needed.
Lowery's numbers on employment are backed up by the Burea of Labor Statistics -- an entity of the US federal government responsible for tracking industry trends. You can see for yourself that the 2000 data says there were 52,180 musicians employed in the United States earning a median annual wage of $36,740 and a mean annual wage of $44,520. From the 2010 data you can see that there were 43,350 musicians employed. They don't offer annual wages, saying that these occupations typically don't work year round, but the median hourly wage is $22.39 and the mean hourly wage is $30.22. While we can't compare the apples and oranges of the wage reports, we can certainly see that there was a substantial decrease in the number of employed musicians in the United States.
The obvious question is: who counts as a musician in this statistic? From the description on the web (especially the list of organizations in the 2010 statistic), these are normal day jobs where musicians are paid by the hour - theaters, opera houses, churches... I bet the list doesn't include artists signed up to labels which makes it completely useless for our discussion. Basically, close a few hundred theaters and opera houses around the country and you get 9,000 fewer musicians in this statistic. What does the RIAA statistic say?
I will go so far as to say that when there's less money in a business, there's less talent in it.
Exactly. The market will take care of balancing money and talent.
I understand you're not concerned. Maybe you're not concerned about deforestation or overpopulation or the euro crisis either.
Actually, I'm concerned about a lot of things. But artists in general getting paid is not one of them. No offence but paid artists are simply not that important for creation of art. Art will get created either way. Perhaps different art but that doesn't matter. The thing is, if you want to get paid for doing something, it's YOUR responsibility to find people who will pay you for doing that. Not mine and especially not the government's. The US constitution specifically says that copyright was created for the benefit of consumers, not to create jobs for creators.
In the meantime, I hope people will consider assisting their favorite musicians financially. I hope they will also consider not sharing music for artists they have not assisted financially. That seems pretty fair to me.
Of course it's fair. But I don't see any good reason why it should be a requirement.
That study is interesting -- although I would like to point out that it is hosted by Torrentfreak -- hardly a neutral entity.
The study is not hosted on TorrentFreak, they just report about it. The study itself is hosted on Scribd. Also, it's a master thesis from BI Norwegian School of Management. I can't comment on how good the school is but Lowery doesn't even bother to say where his numbers come from. And while TorrentFreak is certainly not neutral on the issue, neither is Lowery. So let's ignore who says what and just focus on whether or not those arguments stand on their own merits.
However, if the numbers are not corrected for inflation, 4% growth in Norwegian kronor revenue would likely represent a contraction of the market because inflation is typically 2-3% per year.
Those numbers ARE corrected for inflation. The 4% increase in industry revenues is mentioned twice in the article and the first time it specifically says the number is corrected for inflation in the very same sentence. The raw numbers are 1.4 billion kronor in 1999 and 1.9 billion kronor in 2009.
I'm cautiously optimistic about the future of music, but am still very concerned about the sense of entitlement among listeners like Emily White. She has 11,000 songs and hasn't paid for the vast majority of them.
I'm not concerned in the slightest. Even if people completely stop paying for recorded music (which is even more unlikely than successfully crushing all freeloaders with iron fist), musicians will simply start using Kickstarter to get paid for making completely new music. Not to mention millions of amateurs who make music just for fun without expecting a dime in return.
When you run a business, any change is either an opportunity, or a threat. When your business is small, most changes look like opportunities. When your business becomes big, all changes start to look like a threats. Capitalist who runs big business but doesn't fear any change he didn't cause himself must be insane.
Actually, the worst case is that good music doesn't get made.
Again, big deal. There's more than enough content made just for fun and distributed for free that's just waiting to get some spotlight.
If you RTFA by Lowery, you would have seen the stat that there are 25% fewer musicians in the U.S. than in 2000.
If that's true, it's a problem that seems to be specific to USA. I can throw a similar survey from Norway against that which lists completely opposite numbers between 1999 and 2009: 28% increase in the number of artists, 114% increase in the total revenue of all artists combined and 66% increase in annual per-artist income. I don't have numbers for Czech republic but I can quote top 3 Czech musicians (Karel Gott, Lucie Bila, Jarek Nohavica) saying that piracy is good advertisment. Jarek Nohavica even quit the recording industry, offers his own music for free on his official website and makes money from live concerts.
If you like music, you should pay for it or you can't expect it to get made.
I completely agree.
... Dune, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Disney cartoons are all covered by copyright, and Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Frankenstein were. It sounds like you're making an argument for copyright, not against it.
All content created in Europe in the past 100 years and in USA in the past 20 years, even remotely creative, was covered by copyright at some point. Copyright based on Berne Convention attaches itself to any content at the moment of its creation and it takes a lot of effort to pry it off. In some places, you can't pry it off completely no matter how hard you try (my country is one example, you can't give unlimited license for uses which are not yet known here). The requirement for something becoming culture is people knowing about it, copyright just happens to be attached most of the time.
But if you need this pointed out, even copyright violations form a part of our culture. The most prominent cases that come to mind are anime fansubs and manga scanlations.
Oh, and BTW, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet were written a whole century BEFORE the very first copyright law (Statute of Anne) came into effect in 1710. It's true that these plays were copyrighted for some time but that was long after William Shakespeare died.
as I pointed out before, you cant' make something legal just because lots of people want to do it, because people do what's best for themselves in the short term, not what's best for themselves in the long term or society in general. It's the tragedy of the commons.
you can, and certainly should, reconsider if something should be legal in the face of overwhelming popular support of it being legal. you can reconsider if the benefit in keeping it illegal is disportionate to the harm in legalizing it.
You're turning the issue of legality upside down. Things should only be illegal when they cause serious harm to the entire society AND making them illegal won't cause even worse problems. So what's the harm from unauthorized file sharing? Well, in the worst case, some people may not get a return on their investment. Big deal, like that doesn't happen to millions of people in other professions every day. And what's worse, it happens to lots of artists anyway, regardless of copyright.
and to answer your question, I -don't- know whether file sharing of music should be illegal.
If you don't know a very good reason why something should be illegal, then you already know one very good reason why it shouldn't.
I think you're arguing this from the wrong point of view. There are many valid arguements on this side of the issue, but "it's easy to do so it shouldn't be wrong" is not one of them.
I think that the only argument that's really needed is this: "No matter how hard you try to legislate water to flow uphill, it just won't happen."
That said, TFA is utter BS. I support my country's Pirate Party. I did a lot of work a few years ago in open translation of Free Culture into Czech. And I say screw the corporations. My only concern is about culture. If you can make a living from your art, well, that's nice, good for you. But I won't give a damn if you can't. Content doesn't become culture by someone making money from it. The entertainment industry is not our culture no matter how much they try to make it look that way. They just happen to be the biggest contributor to our culture at the moment.
Content becomes culture when it's being shared. Think about it: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Frankenstein, Dune, Star Wars, Star Trek, Moby Dick, Disney cartoons etc., all of that is part of our culture. Why? Because people know what those stories are all about. But there's also a bajillion obscure books and movies that are not part of our culture because nobody has ever heard of them. That's why locking down content is wrong. I don't care why you're trying to lock down content, whether it's for money, political ends or whatever, it's wrong because it harms culture. If the lockdown is successful, then what's important part of our culture now may be lost forever just some 10, 20 years from now. I don't mind paying for content but at the same time I won't jump through burning hoops just for the privilege of paying somebody. The author has the right to get a fair share of profit from whoever makes money using his content and not to publish the content in the first place if he chooses so. But nobody has the right to lock down published content. Not the author, not anybody else.
It's not just disappearing down a black hole, it's part of the same economy as the rest of us.
Actually, that's not true anymore. Take a look at how much consumer goods people buy all the time. Now think for a while how many people actually make all those consumer goods and where. The thing is, it takes just a few thousand people to manufacture enough units of the same goods for the whole world.
So yes, from our point of view, money is disappearing down a black hole. The black hole just contains a significant part of the world economy (in terms of money, not people). Some money leaks back from the black hole through employee wages but those money leaks are not as evenly distributed across the world as money suction. Do you still think that some areas can't be sucked dry?
The books frequently parody, or at least take inspiration from J. R. R. Tolkien,
I have no idea why Wikipedia lists Tolkien as a source of inspiration. There may be some very small references to Tolkien here and there that I haven't noticed but there's no mention of Hobbits in the entire series. Discworld elves are evil goblins that use magic to appear much more beautiful than they really are, any physical contact with iron hurts them pretty badly (works almost as well as silver on werewolves) and they have been banished to another dimension long time ago. I think this description of elves comes from German folklore. Perhaps the only noticeable reference to Tolkien might be Orcs in Unseen Academicals but the book doesn't copy any storyline from Tolkien's books. Pratchett just describes Orcs as creatures artificially created for war just like Tolkien does but that's probably it.
Robert E. Howard,
There's Cohen the Barbarian in some books but he doesn't actually have that much in common with Howard's Conan. Cohen is ninety-something grey-haired toothless barbarian who still loves to kill evil priests, rescue girls about to be sacrificed, steal treasure and then get drunk in the nearest town. He mostly appears alongside Rincewind, a wizzard (that's how it's spelled on his pointy hat) that can't do any magic, and Cohen even takes the role of Genghis Khan (well, Ghenghiz Cohen) in Interesting Times. There's no obsession with steel as in Howard's books. There's a reference to the 1982 Conan the Barbarian movie though in the form of warriors talking about what's best in life in a yurt. But Cohen delivers a very different answer than Conan.
H. P. Lovecraft
There's Temple of Bel-Shamharoth in the first book and occasional appearance of monsters from dungeon dimensions but that also counts only as a reference. There's no storyline copied from Lovecraft.
I guess my main question was whether or not Pratchett depended on the "public domain" nature of these works to parody them.
Pratchett heavily parodies only stuff that's in public domain. Things that are still under copyright only get very small references.
I'm also doubtful that copying a single line from an earlier (copyrighted) work would be sufficient to be considered copyright infringement.
It's not a single line, it's the whole story of those two plays combined together. The opening scene of Wyrd Sisters shows three witches having a meeting on a stormy night (Macbeth starts with a similar scene, the witches are called Wyrd Sisters in Macbeth). Early in the book, Lord Felmet kills his cousin king Verence of Lancre because his ambitious wife wanted to become queen. Since Verence has a newborn son, Felmet orders him killed as well. However, the witches save Verence's son by sending him out of Lancre with a travelling troupe. When the baby is safely outside borders, the witches perform a ritual to move Lancre 20 years into the future. Meanwhile, Lord Felmet starts losing his mind, seeing blood on his hands all the time. He tries to clean his hands so hard that his delusions become reality. When the travelling troupe returns to Lancre, only a few months have passed since Verence's death but due to the ritual, his son is already an adult. The troupe performs murder of Verence on stage in Lancre Castle (just like in Hamlet) which makes Felmet completely snap and reveal himself as murderer of the king. Lord Felmet kills himself, his wife disappears in forests of Lancre (possibly killed by wild animals) and Lancre gets a new king. The end.
Could you give more details on this? I haven't read his books, but based on what I've heard of the books, they parody (or take inspiration from) certain aspects of other author's books - including J.R.R. Tolkien. Wikipedia says that the Discworld books were published from 1983 until the present. J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" books were written between 1937 and 1949 and published in 1937, 1954, 1955. Presumably, they were (and still are) under copyright - which means they were not public domain when Terry Pratchett parodied them.
I've read the entire main series of Discworld books except Snuff and Raising Taxes and Pratchett really does parody a lot of older works, Shakespeare in particular, though I haven't found anything that would remind me of Tolkien. There are two Shakespeare parody books: Wyrd Sisters (combination of Macbeth and Hamlet, the first spoken line in Pratchett's book is verbatim first spoken line from Macbeth) and Lords and Ladies (I believe it's a parody of A Midsummer Night's Dream but I'm not completely sure). Shakespeare also appears as a character in The Science of Discworld II: The Globe where Discworld elves try to become rulers of our world by influencing Shakespeare while he writes A Midsummer Night's Dream. Smaller references to Shakespeare also appear throughout other books. Other parodies of older works are Eric (parody of Faust, even the book cover points that out), Witches Abroad (multiple fairy tales including Cinderella), Maskerade (parody of The Phantom of the Opera) and Carpe Jugulum (I think it's a parody of Stoker's Dracula but it might be a parody of vampire stories in general). A lot of Pratchett's books also parody history and current culture themes, for example: Pyramids (parody of ancient Egypt), Moving Pictures (early years of Hollywood), Small Gods (Catholic church during the time of inquisition), Soul Music (life of Elvis Presley), Interesting Times (invasion of Genghis Khan into China), Hogfather (parody of Christmas and Santa Claus), The Last Continent (parody of Australia), The Truth (invention of movable type printing press) and Unseen Academicals (parody of football/soccer and its fans).
The idea that protecting copyright helps encourage the creation process is at least a valid idea.
Maybe technically valid, but still completely wrong. For example if Terry Pratchett was not allowed to use public domain works as a basis for his own Discworld series, the Discworld books would either suck or not exist at all.
Well, why are you linking to Xcode and not those FREE and SUPPORTED tools then? Note: If you think that Xcode counts, then you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. Xcode is a GUI monolith, you can't combine it with anything else to make it do something it wasn't designed to do from the start.
Ok, that's nice. So how much effort does it take to install those ports and how many average Mac users know about this stuff?
Actually, can you show me one of these "very simple tools" that exists on Linux but not on MacOS?
Personally I do use Linux for all my server needs, but my desktops and main work laptop are Macs. One of the things I love with MacOS is having the full GNU toolchain at my disposal.
Define "exists". Yes, MacOS X does have a UNIX base, comes with full GNU toolchain and pretty much any properly written UNIX program tool should build and run on it. But I really wonder how much effort it takes to find, build and use third party CLI tools. For example ImageMagick, SoX, MKVTools or Mencoder (part of Mplayer package). Most Linux distros provide tools to easily create a package for your program that will seamlessly integrate with the system and a HUGE database of packages ready to install and use. I can imagine that MacOS provides tons of GUI software but I don't believe that Apple would put that much effort into providing CLI tools beyond the bare minimum required for a UNIX system.
Linux works best when users don't know it's linux. Once you put it in front of consumers you're asking for trouble.
Linux works best when you don't expect your computer to be nothing more than a glorified TV/typewriter. The single most important feature of Linux is that it gives you power to solve complicated problems by combining very simple tools. You don't have to rely on somebody else to solve everything for you like on Windows or Mac.
As for the error code, 403 (Forbidden) is described as "The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it". Is this not technically accurate?
It's not accurate because the server didn't even recieve the request. The request was intercepted in transit and blocked by third party.
If its on Netflix, why would I even bother to download the torrent?
Because Netflix is a streaming service. Good luck watching a movie from Netflix when you have erratic connection or none at all. Also, Netflix is available only in US and UK at the moment.