First off, I've been a Music Industry Weasel for 14 years...
Napster is all about piracy, anyone arguing otherwise is kidding themselves. They will be killed in court. BUT, they are a huge wake-up call to the Biz.
It seems that the majors are all developing secure systems and such, but until they address PRICE, they will be eaten alive by pirates. Why would I want to download something and pay full price just so I could then pay for my own blank CD and take the time to burn it?? That is nuts!! The middlemen create most of the markup of that 15.98 cost. Labels end up with 6 bucks or so - and they have manufacturing and print costs to deal with!!
If I could download a CD for 5$, then it is much more attractive to me. The artist gets paid, the label gets paid, the consumer gets good value.
Until the ARTISTS are part of a music equivalent of OSS they will still expect to get paid. The labels and publishers that invest in the artists will expect to get paid. And of course the lawyers that will sue your ass seven ways from Sunday will get paid...
MP3.com (at least in it's earlier days) was a much more interesting idea - "here's my music, listen to it, if you like it then maybe you will buy it". The model was about artists choosing to do this. Much closer to OSS in spirit. Also a good place for Industry Weasels like myself to cruise for talent.
I see the napster phenomenon as a dangerous precedent - "its OK to steal cuz they are all rich bastards" or "if its Digital then it should be free (so I will just take it)". I fear it is creating a generation that just doesn't give a shit about law or ethics.
Judging from the article, it seemed that the bug reports were about conscious choices in interface design. If a UI doesn't adhere to the look and feel of Win 95/98 does that make it deficient? jeez, I hope not...
After reading the article, it seemed to me that the real issue was in the definition (real or perceived) of "bug".... I always thought that a "bug" was an actual problem in the code that crashed the program or created actual problems. I thought that a "wish" was something you would like to see in a program. By that definition, the Corel-supplied "bug reports" would seem to be wishes rather than bugs. If Corel doesn't like the UI in KDE, then write code and see if it flies, don't claim that UI aspects you don't like are bugs....
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Napster is all about piracy, anyone arguing otherwise is kidding themselves. They will be killed in court. BUT, they are a huge wake-up call to the Biz.
It seems that the majors are all developing secure systems and such, but until they address PRICE, they will be eaten alive by pirates. Why would I want to download something and pay full price just so I could then pay for my own blank CD and take the time to burn it?? That is nuts!! The middlemen create most of the markup of that 15.98 cost. Labels end up with 6 bucks or so - and they have manufacturing and print costs to deal with!!
If I could download a CD for 5$, then it is much more attractive to me. The artist gets paid, the label gets paid, the consumer gets good value.
Until the ARTISTS are part of a music equivalent of OSS they will still expect to get paid. The labels and publishers that invest in the artists will expect to get paid. And of course the lawyers that will sue your ass seven ways from Sunday will get paid...
MP3.com (at least in it's earlier days) was a much more interesting idea - "here's my music, listen to it, if you like it then maybe you will buy it". The model was about artists choosing to do this. Much closer to OSS in spirit. Also a good place for Industry Weasels like myself to cruise for talent.
I see the napster phenomenon as a dangerous precedent - "its OK to steal cuz they are all rich bastards" or "if its Digital then it should be free (so I will just take it)". I fear it is creating a generation that just doesn't give a shit about law or ethics.
Judging from the article, it seemed that the bug reports were about conscious choices in interface design. If a UI doesn't adhere to the look and feel of Win 95/98 does that make it deficient? jeez, I hope not...
After reading the article, it seemed to me that the real issue was in the definition (real or perceived) of "bug".... I always thought that a "bug" was an actual problem in the code that crashed the program or created actual problems. I thought that a "wish" was something you would like to see in a program. By that definition, the Corel-supplied "bug reports" would seem to be wishes rather than bugs. If Corel doesn't like the UI in KDE, then write code and see if it flies, don't claim that UI aspects you don't like are bugs....