The world is full of loons who love to shoot off their mouths, and if you paid attention to every one of them you'd never have time to do anything worthwhile.
The general public can either pay to listen to recorded music or get it free. Musicians can either make nothing from recordings, like they did all the centuries before the recording industry, or they can make nothing from recordings like they did DURING the century of the recording industry. Remember the basic truth that what musicians get from the distribution of recordings is EXPOSURE. They can get the same exposure and make the same amount of money by letting recordings be distributed FREE.
Live performances will always generate income for musicians. Recordings never will, because the middlemen don't want it to work that way any more than they want you to download tracks for free. The difference between free downloads and pay downloads is whether you and I pay a talentless middleman, who then becomes the focus of the whole process and gets to dictate terms to musicians.
By becoming a customer of ANY pay download service you are helping perpetuate the recording industry, or at least a recording industry-like model where people pay these middlemen to get access to music. Please don't do it!
"...thousands of young men (and a few hundred young women) are playing it on the Internet -- instead of watching TV."
Wow, thousands of viewers lost! No wonder television is tanking. Brilliant analysis.
I imagine the television industry would love to blame declining ratings on competion from games, even though it makes about as much sense as the MPAA blaming its decline on the 20% of movie piracy that is NOT due to insider pilferage. But it's better than admitting that most of television has become too stupid to waste time watching. Because of course that couldn't be the problem.
Their job isn't to help young artists find work. Their job is to find young artists whose music is similar to what's already proven successful, and who want fame badly enough to sign away all their rights so the record company can make a lot of money.
Non-polluting energy, cheap food for the world, disease cures? Nawww, these visionaries are too preoccupied with life's minor inconveniences to generate a significant thought. With the exception of Gibson's lie detector, none of these ideas would have any impact on the world.
There's nothing funny about this that I can see. Some poor guy who hasn't hurt anybody will have to spend x number of hours out of his life to deal with this crap and to make the money to pay the lawyers to get Luskin off his back. It's about as funny as the side of your car getting spraypainted with swastikas.
One thing I absolutely don't understand in this report is the stuff about companies not reading each others' patents. Examples:
"Some hearings participants explained that they do not read their competitors' patents because of concern that learning about others' innovations will expose them to treble damages infringement liability."...and... "The FTC's recommended legislative change would allow firms to read patents to learn about new innovations..."
Are they saying it's somehow illegal for Company A to read Company B's patents? That can't possibly be right. But what else could they mean?
I don't think it matters that an employer isn't the government. If people can be materially punished by employers for expressing personal views in public, or in this case, making a trivial statement of fact, then people don't have the freedom to speak their minds.
There are many other cases where editing or suppressing employee speech is perfectly acceptable. For example, newspapers aren't obligated to print whatever their reporters feel like writing. But employers shouldn't be able to take punitive action against people for making non-libelous statements on personal websites.
Here's a great idea for a startup: create software that mines postings in online forums like Slashdot, associating online personas with actual people and looking for evidence of insubordination or unacceptable opinions. No subpoenas necessary, no court orders, just screen scrapers, AI and a database. If you worked for a large company that could afford such a service would you feel free to speak your mind online?
The article stops short of the RIAA issue
on
Who Needs Radio?
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· Score: 1
"Big market, Top 40 stations are still a prime place for exposure for up-and-coming artists. They just might not need that exposure as much as they would have 10 years ago."
Exactly. They just might not need that exposure. Too bad the article stopped there. Record companies are in the same boat as radio. Exposure is the only thing musicians really get out of a recording contract. They don't make money from the actual record sales, because all the expenses are taken out of the musician's share of the profits. The general public still doesn't get this.
The only reason record companies have been able to get away with their outrageous contract terms is that for a century they've had a monopoly on large scale distribution. Free distribution on the Internet has the potential to give musicians the same exposure as a record deal, without having to sign away the rights to their songs. That's when the recording industry will dry up and blow away.
Come on folks, he's not saying the body is designed for lifelong starvation, he's saying it's designed to survive lean times by storing fat during fat times, which is absolutely right.
The problem with this article is that it doesn't go anywhere. It's just a mediocre writer getting paid to fill up a page.
Since the article makes only trivial observations and provides no insights, I guess it's up to us readers. So here's my long rambling attempt:
The article's advice that people should think about the consequences of new technology is sort of worthless, for the same reason mentioned that you can't replace abundance with scarcity because people wouldn't stand for it. If it were normal for people to think ahead about consequences, they wouldn't mind a healthy dose of scarcity that promised them better health, lower stress and greater security.
In the real world, people who stand to profit from something rarely let the impact on others get in their way. At most, they consider their legal liability. When the damage starts to become obvious, all responsibility is placed on the customers who "demanded" the product. Demand, whether real or advertising-generated, is blamed for all the long-term consequences. The fast food industry doesn't accept the blame for creating a nation of lard-asses with heart disease. They just fulfilled the demand and raked up the profits. Those lazy customers did the damage to themselves. And of course, people should eat sensibly.
On the other hand, if you leave a big pile of concrete rubble in your front yard, and some curious kids climb on it and get hurt, you're going to be held liable for their injuries. An unfenced hazard like that is what's called an "attractive nuisance." You don't have to spend billions on advertising to get those kids to wander over and check it out. Merely making it easy to get to is enough to make you responsible for it.
So why aren't people who operate on a much larger scale equally responsible for "attractive nuisances" -- especially when they're handing out billions of toys in Happy Meals? I'm not talking about frivolous lawsuits for spilled hot coffee, I'm talking about people who learn to love products as kids, use them as directed for years and then drop dead at age 50 from the health effects. Apparently the loophole is the fact that almost anything is okay in moderation, and companies don't actually suggest in their advertising that anybody should consume TOO MUCH of their products. But then, the person with the pile of rubble likewise isn't asking anybody to climb on it. The pile is perfectly safe if you merely look at it and imagine the fun you could have climbing on it. So where's the consistency in the law?
I think we're between a rock and a hard place. Liability for future consequences could cripple innovation, or limit it to large companies with litigation war chests. Which is the same thing. Making people responsible for whatever happens to them requires that they have an unrealistic level of expertise and caution. We want a safe world. We want a changing, progressive world. What a can of worms.
If somebody leaves a paper bag full of shit on your porch, rings the doorbell and runs away, does it really make any difference whether it's dog shit or cat shit?
I saw this coming. Why should only content producers enjoy the right to control what customers do with their products? It's inevitable that other industries will want to get in on this game. From an Intellectual Property owner's point of view, it would be a big advantage to be able to forbid customers from using any products in ways other than intended, especially loaning them to other people who haven't paid up. And of course we'll all be happy to pay for the needed law enforcement, and to live in a world where we are punished for doing anything without paying somebody for permission.
In the American colonial days, King George forbade the manufacture of metal shovels and other tools so the colonists would have to import them from England. The response of some New Englanders was to make their own shovels out of wood. Twenty years from now, will it be a crime to build your own computer? Or to loan power tools to your neighbor, or watch his tv, or play a radio out the window? Yeah, it probably will, at least in the United States of Intellectual Property.
That's the quote from the industry spokesperson at the bottom of the article. It's too bad media companies have never abided by that rule.
When you own the production and distribution system it's easy to dictate contract terms to the little people. It's easy to extort copyrights from musicians. It's easy to make them pay all the expenses out of their share of the profits. When you have them tied to 7-album contracts it's easy to shitcan them if they don't play ball. It's easy to buy legislators to write copyright laws for you. It's easy to believe you're a cut above the ordinary citizen, and that the world should revolve around you and what you want.
Anybody with any knowledge of a class action suit against AOL/Time Warner for this, please post conspicuosly somewhere. Let them whine all they want about "piracy". The shoe is on the other foot when they act like they own other people's computers. I would like to see a big payout to victims, and jail time for the execs who approved this.
Slashdot Mirror
The world is full of loons who love to shoot off their mouths, and if you paid attention to every one of them you'd never have time to do anything worthwhile.
The general public can either pay to listen to recorded music or get it free. Musicians can either make nothing from recordings, like they did all the centuries before the recording industry, or they can make nothing from recordings like they did DURING the century of the recording industry. Remember the basic truth that what musicians get from the distribution of recordings is EXPOSURE. They can get the same exposure and make the same amount of money by letting recordings be distributed FREE.
Live performances will always generate income for musicians. Recordings never will, because the middlemen don't want it to work that way any more than they want you to download tracks for free. The difference between free downloads and pay downloads is whether you and I pay a talentless middleman, who then becomes the focus of the whole process and gets to dictate terms to musicians.
By becoming a customer of ANY pay download service you are helping perpetuate the recording industry, or at least a recording industry-like model where people pay these middlemen to get access to music. Please don't do it!
Favorite quote - at the bottom:
"4K Smart cards which had never been previously programmed are being recognized by the Card Manager as manager cards."
Reminds me of the Win2K/XP feature that makes you an Admin if you insert an install disk.
If we have to have a Big Brother (which apparently we do), at least it's nice to have one that will beat up people who keep bothering you.
Opensource programmers in India will add those same features for less than half as much in pledges.
"...thousands of young men (and a few hundred young women) are playing it on the Internet -- instead of watching TV."
Wow, thousands of viewers lost! No wonder television is tanking. Brilliant analysis.
I imagine the television industry would love to blame declining ratings on competion from games, even though it makes about as much sense as the MPAA blaming its decline on the 20% of movie piracy that is NOT due to insider pilferage. But it's better than admitting that most of television has become too stupid to waste time watching. Because of course that couldn't be the problem.
For the record, it's "Lili Cheng" not Chang.
Their job isn't to help young artists find work. Their job is to find young artists whose music is similar to what's already proven successful, and who want fame badly enough to sign away all their rights so the record company can make a lot of money.
Non-polluting energy, cheap food for the world, disease cures? Nawww, these visionaries are too preoccupied with life's minor inconveniences to generate a significant thought. With the exception of Gibson's lie detector, none of these ideas would have any impact on the world.
What a bunch of wankers.
There's nothing funny about this that I can see. Some poor guy who hasn't hurt anybody will have to spend x number of hours out of his life to deal with this crap and to make the money to pay the lawyers to get Luskin off his back. It's about as funny as the side of your car getting spraypainted with swastikas.
One thing I absolutely don't understand in this report is the stuff about companies not reading each others' patents. Examples:
...and...
"Some hearings participants explained that they do not read their competitors' patents because of concern that learning about others' innovations will expose them to treble damages infringement liability."
"The FTC's recommended legislative change would allow firms to read patents to learn about new innovations..."
Are they saying it's somehow illegal for Company A to read Company B's patents? That can't possibly be right. But what else could they mean?
This is starting to sound like some of my more ambitious software projects.
Next scaleback: The Catapult Guy!
I don't think it matters that an employer isn't the government. If people can be materially punished by employers for expressing personal views in public, or in this case, making a trivial statement of fact, then people don't have the freedom to speak their minds.
There are many other cases where editing or suppressing employee speech is perfectly acceptable. For example, newspapers aren't obligated to print whatever their reporters feel like writing. But employers shouldn't be able to take punitive action against people for making non-libelous statements on personal websites.
Here's a great idea for a startup: create software that mines postings in online forums like Slashdot, associating online personas with actual people and looking for evidence of insubordination or unacceptable opinions. No subpoenas necessary, no court orders, just screen scrapers, AI and a database. If you worked for a large company that could afford such a service would you feel free to speak your mind online?
"Big market, Top 40 stations are still a prime place for exposure for up-and-coming artists. They just might not need that exposure as much as they would have 10 years ago."
Exactly. They just might not need that exposure. Too bad the article stopped there. Record companies are in the same boat as radio. Exposure is the only thing musicians really get out of a recording contract. They don't make money from the actual record sales, because all the expenses are taken out of the musician's share of the profits. The general public still doesn't get this.
The only reason record companies have been able to get away with their outrageous contract terms is that for a century they've had a monopoly on large scale distribution. Free distribution on the Internet has the potential to give musicians the same exposure as a record deal, without having to sign away the rights to their songs. That's when the recording industry will dry up and blow away.
Nasal Rangers would be a good name for a rock band.
Come on folks, he's not saying the body is designed for lifelong starvation, he's saying it's designed to survive lean times by storing fat during fat times, which is absolutely right.
The problem with this article is that it doesn't go anywhere. It's just a mediocre writer getting paid to fill up a page.
Since the article makes only trivial observations and provides no insights, I guess it's up to us readers. So here's my long rambling attempt:
The article's advice that people should think about the consequences of new technology is sort of worthless, for the same reason mentioned that you can't replace abundance with scarcity because people wouldn't stand for it. If it were normal for people to think ahead about consequences, they wouldn't mind a healthy dose of scarcity that promised them better health, lower stress and greater security.
In the real world, people who stand to profit from something rarely let the impact on others get in their way. At most, they consider their legal liability. When the damage starts to become obvious, all responsibility is placed on the customers who "demanded" the product. Demand, whether real or advertising-generated, is blamed for all the long-term consequences. The fast food industry doesn't accept the blame for creating a nation of lard-asses with heart disease. They just fulfilled the demand and raked up the profits. Those lazy customers did the damage to themselves. And of course, people should eat sensibly.
On the other hand, if you leave a big pile of concrete rubble in your front yard, and some curious kids climb on it and get hurt, you're going to be held liable for their injuries. An unfenced hazard like that is what's called an "attractive nuisance." You don't have to spend billions on advertising to get those kids to wander over and check it out. Merely making it easy to get to is enough to make you responsible for it.
So why aren't people who operate on a much larger scale equally responsible for "attractive nuisances" -- especially when they're handing out billions of toys in Happy Meals? I'm not talking about frivolous lawsuits for spilled hot coffee, I'm talking about people who learn to love products as kids, use them as directed for years and then drop dead at age 50 from the health effects. Apparently the loophole is the fact that almost anything is okay in moderation, and companies don't actually suggest in their advertising that anybody should consume TOO MUCH of their products. But then, the person with the pile of rubble likewise isn't asking anybody to climb on it. The pile is perfectly safe if you merely look at it and imagine the fun you could have climbing on it. So where's the consistency in the law?
I think we're between a rock and a hard place. Liability for future consequences could cripple innovation, or limit it to large companies with litigation war chests. Which is the same thing. Making people responsible for whatever happens to them requires that they have an unrealistic level of expertise and caution. We want a safe world. We want a changing, progressive world. What a can of worms.
Everybody knows you have to read /. with stupidity filters at full power.
If somebody leaves a paper bag full of shit on your porch, rings the doorbell and runs away, does it really make any difference whether it's dog shit or cat shit?
Now he will *officially* be on the MPAA's payroll. Merely taking bribes doesn't qualify you for the retirement plan.
Asking an obvious question is insight? Okay. What idiot civil engineers buy these?
I saw this coming. Why should only content producers enjoy the right to control what customers do with their products? It's inevitable that other industries will want to get in on this game. From an Intellectual Property owner's point of view, it would be a big advantage to be able to forbid customers from using any products in ways other than intended, especially loaning them to other people who haven't paid up. And of course we'll all be happy to pay for the needed law enforcement, and to live in a world where we are punished for doing anything without paying somebody for permission.
In the American colonial days, King George forbade the manufacture of metal shovels and other tools so the colonists would have to import them from England. The response of some New Englanders was to make their own shovels out of wood. Twenty years from now, will it be a crime to build your own computer? Or to loan power tools to your neighbor, or watch his tv, or play a radio out the window? Yeah, it probably will, at least in the United States of Intellectual Property.
That's the quote from the industry spokesperson at the bottom of the article. It's too bad media companies have never abided by that rule.
When you own the production and distribution system it's easy to dictate contract terms to the little people. It's easy to extort copyrights from musicians. It's easy to make them pay all the expenses out of their share of the profits. When you have them tied to 7-album contracts it's easy to shitcan them if they don't play ball. It's easy to buy legislators to write copyright laws for you. It's easy to believe you're a cut above the ordinary citizen, and that the world should revolve around you and what you want.
But that doesn't make it right, does it?
Anybody with any knowledge of a class action suit against AOL/Time Warner for this, please post conspicuosly somewhere. Let them whine all they want about "piracy". The shoe is on the other foot when they act like they own other people's computers. I would like to see a big payout to victims, and jail time for the execs who approved this.
Sometimes the proper term for "libel" is "truthware." But truth doesn't matter much when you have bigger attack dogs than the other guy.