Sadly you are exactly right! I used to belong to a Netflix type company until one too many discs went 'missing' (i always returned them next day). I was charged for the disc. In response I cancelled my membership and joined an alternative company which doesn't require the physical shipping of the disc itself.
Customers are willing to play fair but if the media company's want to stop piracy they'll have to play fair too.
Official DVD rental has a larger selection especially when it comes to older titles. Usenet has the faster delivery but you have to take what's available at the time, this tends to be the higher demand new releases, which are harder to get on the legitimate rental platform. They both cost about the same @ $12-20 per month depending on the subscription plan.
Many (techi) people choose to subscribe to both instead of getting a premium rate cable / satellite service.
Now if only there was a totally legitimate way to download non DRM'd DVD's / TV for say $30-40 per month instead of having to send the digital bits and bytes physically through the post. I guess the media companies see my idea as too sensible to work.
Yes I've noticed decline in web radio station. A couple years ago there were lots of ShoutCast streams dedicated to electronic music and other specialist non mainstream genres. It's a shame many have thrown in the towel (www.tranceairwave.com) or gone subscription (www.di.fm) the remainder have consolidated (www.etn.fm). As always I like to blame the RIAA, in this case for the high licensing fees which small hobby stations cannot afford, as internet radio stations are charged per listener as opposed to a percentage of revenue.
From a listeners viewpoint there isn't much hardware available for hooking up an internet radio stream to your stereo. The different streaming formats and frequent breakups makes for a very limited experience.
As has been pointed out there is no way to receive internet radio on the move which is when people are most likely to want to listen. In recent months 'PodCasting' has become more common. This gets around the problems of bandwidth hungry and unreliable streaming and the ubiquitous mp3 format means they are universally playable. As with TV people want the ability to time shift and listen / view on the move. I don't see why radio shouldn't also move to an 'On Demand' model.
Just to give you guys the heads up, the BBC are actually plugging 'Horizon: A War on Science'
which airs on BBC2 tonight @ 2100GMT.
Hopefully someone will record it and make it available on bittorent / usenet so the rest of the world can watch it.
I'm not sure where they pulled these figures from but certainly most people I know bar one who is a devout Christian don't believe in creationism or intelligent design. Given that most people here in the UK are more likely to go shopping on a Sunday morning rather than go to church, I'm trying to decide if the average Joe six-pack / football mom in the UK really is just stupid or just doesn't care.
But I'm sure the MPAA didn't go out and give away copies to hundreds or perhaps thousands of strangers.
So that makes it ok?
BTW for those people who think it's also ok to download off bittorent remember that you're also "distributing".
It would be better to say:
"Those movies you can download from IRC / ftp / Usenet? They aren't copied for financial gain either."
This is all academic as we already know that multi billion dollar corporations are hypocrites and will simply crush you like the consumer bug that you are, whenever they wish. It's simply one of the perks of being able to buy governments / legislation.
Sure you could prioritize yahoo over google but would want to risk to loosing customers to rival ISP's who are more google friendly or even face regulation from the likes of offcom. Of course this mainly applies to the UK. The government in the US is a lot more pro corporate / anti-consumer.
Yes I noticed this rather statement myself. The way I interpret this is Commercial == Far eastern bootlegs / car boot sales, for profit. Open Source == P2P Little Johny in the bed room, personal use.
This shows a worrying mindset in the entertainment industry. They believe that Closed proprietary systems (Microsoft) is good and Open systems (Linux) is bad. Of course this isn't new, we've long suspected this. Now the entertainment industry have pretty much admitted it. So don't expect future legal media formats to be able to play under Linux.
This will result in Linux users having to resort to illegal bootlegs further reinforcing the Open Source == Piracy perception which may hamper the commercial adoption of free and open systems.
Legit download sales have fallen, CD sales have fallen and P2P users have increased. Hmmmm let me see If I actually want to pay for music I can choose to have either a file which may or may not work with my mp3 player or A DRM'd malware infested CD that may or may not play on my CD player./me bashes Carrey Sherman over the head with a clue! DRM and financial persecutions encourage music piracy.
I wonder if we are now seeing the beginning of the end of the music cartels as tech savy teens begin to question the moral ethics of buying music and supporting such corrupt entities.
An industry which treats both the content creators and the fans with contempt should not survive. I'm surprised they've lasted this long.
Lame that the person who would never dream of walking out of a store with a CD under their coat sees nothing wrong with downloading hundreds of CD's worth of music.
Stop comparing people who FileShare with thieves. A thief is someone who walks into my house and takes my stuff. FileSharing is like sticking a sign outside my front door saying feel free to clone anything in my living room but please leave the bedrooms private.
If you want to talk specifically about an intellectual property thief then I consider this to be someone who profits from another's works without giving fair pay. Like say a record company who locks artists into unfair contracts.
In my controversial opinion it doesn't matter if you download a track from e-mule of buy a CD from a store, the artist, in my opinion has not been given fair pay for their work.
At least those who download choose not to expose themselves to malware DRM rootkits or support corrupt cartels. Only legal persecution.
And no I do not download music. I also don't care people do download music or buy music from a shop. I hope one day the creators of these works get fair pay for their contributions without middlemen getting fat from someone else's talent.
I don't know about other countries but in the UK petty mail theft is very common, especially around this time of year. I've had mail ripped open by postal chavs trying to see if there is any money in them there Christmas cards, which of course there isn't:P
I also used to be a member of a Netflix style film rental service. They used rather conspicuous packaging for returning films. After the 3rd film went 'missing' i was charged for the disc. Needless to say i canceled my membership. I now borrow films from elsewhere.
Needless to say if they think I'm going post them several hundred high cost CD's they really ought to know better.
Oh and insurance rarely pays out for the full value of the goods stolen.
I've posted this before, but I'll say it again anyway.
Imagine a screensaver like SETI@Home that's designed to generate false random data by connecting to various ports and IP addresses. Think how quickly storage space will get chewed up if only a small number of those 450 million ran this screen saver. Not to mention polluting the logs with false data.
This technique has had some affect in thwarting spammers who are harvesting e-mail addresses, but in this case it should be even more successful as it would be harder to determine what data is real and what data is fake and the program can be run from a household desktop instead of a web server.
Of course anyone who develops such a program will be locked up without charge or trial under anti terrorism laws.
What if someone created a screensaver that continually accessed thousands of websites, IP addresses. Basically create as much junk data as possible to pollute their logs.
A similar technique was used to poison the databases of spammers who used web bots to harvest e-mail addresses.
Linux could work just a well, and without junking their existing kit. As for the software, it's probably just warezed off p2p anyway. Where do you think the trojans and other assorted malware come from?
'ID Analytics' suggestions could be controversial. The company suggests, for instance, that companies shouldn't always notify consumers of data breaches
So that's who Sony's been asking for technical advice.
I believe that the ISP's could do more to protect their users.
At least here in the UK there is a trend for ISP's to bundle USB DSL Adapters with their packages. These devices require that the computer they connect to use the public IP address instead of allowing the host computer to run from a private NAT address. Exposing the computers real public IP address puts the responsibility on the user to install and maintain firewall software. Needless to say many don't know how to do this or simply allow their security software subscriptions to laps.
The argument for this practice this is that many home users do not have Ethernet ports making Ethernet based NAT, Firewalled routers harder to support as the user will have to install a NIC card. This may have had some truth 6 years ago when broadband first appeared in the UK and it was mandated by the incumbent Telco which USB modem must be supplied with the service. These days every PC and Laptop sold has at least an Ethernet port and in many cases WIFI as well, some routers also support USB. This means the only reason to continue this practice is cost saving. USB Adapters are less expensive to give away than routers, if an ISP doesn't bundle connection equipment they fear loosing customers to their competitors.
I feel this is a false economy. NAT routers are not much more expensive than USB Adapters and from a support point of view are easier to set up now that Ethernet ports are common place. You just have to pre-configure the router with the customers log-in details and enable DHCP. Pretty much the only thing the customer has to do is plug it in. No drivers need to be installed and updated. Running behind NAT now means that it's a lot less unlikely a malicious attacker can take over a customers PC. Which makes everybodys life easier.
This is not really a case of stealing someone else's intellectual property. It's more a case of corporations taking what's always been freely available to everyone then litigating so nobody can use it anymore.
I'm no Christian fundamentalist but in the book of Genesis didn't god give all living things on earth to mankind. That means everybody has equal rights, kind of like a bio GPL.
Now given G.W Bush's right wing religious views and support for the teaching of intelligent design. Allowing the creation of these bio monopolies really is like condoning piracy.
So does Bush really believe in the word of god? or just the word of big business?
In either case I'd be worried about the voices he hears in his head telling him to invade 3rd world countries.
I still
believe that a CD is vastly overpriced for what it is...
Then don't buy it.
Who said i did?
I criticize anyone
who downloads illegally.
I don't. I can
understand why people would want to download a clean FLAC or high
bitrate MP3 rip instead of paying for a CD loaded with crapware.
Either way as the artist does not receive fair payment, from my point
of view both are receiving stolen goods. Why give money to theives?
Most
artists are adults. They can decide for themselves wether a deal
offered by a label is right for them.
Things
I've noticed about the artists that speak out against P2P. They're
either stupid or they've already made it. A friend I used to work
with was a talented musician as well as a good business man with a
working knowledge of contract law. He refused to enter into any
contract he considered unfair. Needless to say he didn't make it in
the music biz. Would he have made it if he signed? Who knows. Who
knows also how many clever,talented musicians also don't make it
because they wanted a fair deal.
But illegally
downloading their label-sponsored music does not seem to help expand
their options much.
I'd rather work to
expand their options.
In
that case don't buy from the majors. Downloading music doesn't
generate revenue but it helps the smaller guy get noticed. Publicity
they would normally have to pay for out of their own pocket. Also
www.magnatunes.com seem to
give a fair deal.
you
are apparently not one of their customers (or at least not a very
profitable one, it would seem), so why should they listen to you?
More to the point: how can they listen to you?
Because
they should want my business? They can listen buy coming down from
their corporate ivory towers.
Oh
the music industry gets it, alright. Not for a second do they miss
the relationship between CD and $0, between DRM'd DVD and $80.....
Early
on it became apparent that the DRM and Region locking on DVDs are
worthless. Full length DVD images are available on the net as well as
album rips. The difference is that the bonus material has been
stripped from the DVD images. If you love the film and want the
extras then you have to buy the Disc.
Both the music
industry and the movie industry want to be sure they have some other
fallback to protect themselves besides a horrible bandwidth
infrastructure.
they want to make
sure broadband rollout does not go as most people would like
it to.
Yes that's what's
happening. Take a look at who's buying up the ISP. SKY, Time Warner.
That's right the media conglomerates. And you can bet it's because
they want to control distribution. Lets take a look at upload
bandwidth. A few years a go it was 2:1 thats twice as fast down as it
was up. Now its 4:1. Upload bandwidth has not increased at all.
Download bandwidth on the other hand has quadrupled. Next year the
ratio is going to be more like 9:1. You can see where this is going.
You can consume but there's no way you can distribute unless you want
to tie your net connection up for days. It isn't Joe six pack that's
putting his DVD's on the net. P2P is just the end of the supply
chain. Choked upload, DRM or even Legal threats is no deterrent for
the more determined pirates out there.
My
point with the GPL is that all the code is public but companies make
their money on the support and services. Sure I could get some d00d
out in Iscrapistan
Many modern DVD players support DivX and XviD Mpeg4. DVD+/-R recorders are under $50 so recording a film to disk is no harder than creating an audio cd.
If someone knows how to download they'll know how to burn to a DVD.
Yes i know about magnatune. Prbly the only place i'd be happy buying from. It's a shame their portfolio isn't that big yet. I'm tempted to buy something just to make a politacal point to encourage more artists to sign up.
Don't even mention allofmp3.com though. The artists get nothing. You may as well download it off Kazza or buy it from a shop.
Actually I do agree with many of your points. You are absolutely correct Copyright and indeed Patents are totally about control. I still believe that a CD is vastly overpriced for what it is, even more so if you only wanted one or two tracks in an album. Copyright is nothing but government protection of a monopoly. The original purpose of granting a temporary monopoly to encourage innovation may have been honorable but now after lobbying for almost indefinite extensions and the addition of draconian powers it has been twisted to become nothing but a protection racket which is hindering innovation, exactly the opposite to what it was supposed to achieve.
The result of this is poor quality products at inflated prices. Not only that the artists who actually produce the work are under such one sided contracts that they won't see any return on their work until their 3rd or 4th successful album, after which they at least have some negotiating power with their label. A new band starting out often have to pay for their own publicity. This can cost them more than they get from the label. The labels are effectively stealing work from the artists. With P2P and free sharing it costs the artists nothing to get noticed. The label looses control.
You say I don't hold much value in CD's. You're right I don't. I can't remember the last time I actually bought a CD. You criticize me for downloading! Now this is the sad thing. I can't remember the last time I even wanted to download an album. I much prefer to listen to local talk radio or Shoutcast streaming radio in a genre I like. To be honest it doesn't bother me that people do choose to download illegally. It does bother me that the money from people who do choose to download legally or buy CD's go straight to the labels and very little if any goes to the artist. Whichever way you choose to get music the artist looses out, but at least those downloading music are not giving their money to the labels who are exploiting the artists. That's just the way I feel though.
Even though I personally don't value music that much I understand that there are plenty that do. The labels don't understand this. They see music as a commodity with a short shelf life. They exploit artists and dump them as soon as their no longer 'hip' and they rip off 'consumers'. If the labels want to survive they should stop seeing people as consumers and start trying to get customers. This means stop treating everybody the same (at the moment that seams to be criminals). People do see music differently and they all have different tastes. Not everybody likes pop. There are people like me who just want music in the background. There are the fans who will want bonus material like videos and interviews with the artists. There are the audiophiles who want HD 5000.1 surround Super Audio DVD to play on their $10,000 kit. Instead of targeting these groups they treat everyone like 16 year old girls (consumers) and start crying to the government to protect their monopoly now artists have a means to distribute their music directly. My point is they should provide 'Service' to their customers not 'Crap' to consumers.
The movie industry seem to get this a lot better than the music industry. I'm not a great fan of the movie industry either, because of their copyright lobbying, but guises what I've spent $80 on DVD's this month. That's $80 more than I've spent on CD's over the last 5 years.
And your point with the GPL. It has been argued on Slashdot before. A world without copyright would indeed make the GPL redundant but then you wouldn't need the GPL. Some have argued the GPL is just a means to fight fire with fire. Now we would just need a means to make sure that people who use public code also kept their code public. Just like we would need a means to ensure that people who produce any work still have an incentive to keep creating. This is whole new debate which I'm far too tired to enter into right now.
Slashdot Mirror
Sadly you are exactly right! I used to belong to a Netflix type company until one too many discs went 'missing' (i always returned them next day). I was charged for the disc. In response I cancelled my membership and joined an alternative company which doesn't require the physical shipping of the disc itself.
Customers are willing to play fair but if the media company's want to stop piracy they'll have to play fair too.
Official DVD rental has a larger selection especially when it comes to older titles. Usenet has the faster delivery but you have to take what's available at the time, this tends to be the higher demand new releases, which are harder to get on the legitimate rental platform. They both cost about the same @ $12-20 per month depending on the subscription plan.
Many (techi) people choose to subscribe to both instead of getting a premium rate cable / satellite service.
Now if only there was a totally legitimate way to download non DRM'd DVD's / TV for say $30-40 per month instead of having to send the digital bits and bytes physically through the post. I guess the media companies see my idea as too sensible to work.
Yes I've noticed decline in web radio station. A couple years ago there were lots of ShoutCast streams dedicated to electronic music and other specialist non mainstream genres. It's a shame many have thrown in the towel (www.tranceairwave.com) or gone subscription (www.di.fm) the remainder have consolidated (www.etn.fm). As always I like to blame the RIAA, in this case for the high licensing fees which small hobby stations cannot afford, as internet radio stations are charged per listener as opposed to a percentage of revenue.
From a listeners viewpoint there isn't much hardware available for hooking up an internet radio stream to your stereo. The different streaming formats and frequent breakups makes for a very limited experience.
As has been pointed out there is no way to receive internet radio on the move which is when people are most likely to want to listen. In recent months 'PodCasting' has become more common. This gets around the problems of bandwidth hungry and unreliable streaming and the ubiquitous mp3 format means they are universally playable. As with TV people want the ability to time shift and listen / view on the move. I don't see why radio shouldn't also move to an 'On Demand' model.
Just to give you guys the heads up, the BBC are actually plugging 'Horizon: A War on Science'
which airs on BBC2 tonight @ 2100GMT.
Hopefully someone will record it and make it available on bittorent / usenet so the rest of the world can watch it.
I'm not sure where they pulled these figures from but certainly most people I know bar one who is a devout Christian don't believe in creationism or intelligent design. Given that most people here in the UK are more likely to go shopping on a Sunday morning rather than go to church, I'm trying to decide if the average Joe six-pack / football mom in the UK really is just stupid or just doesn't care.
So that makes it ok?
BTW for those people who think it's also ok to download off bittorent remember that you're also "distributing".
It would be better to say:
This is all academic as we already know that multi billion dollar corporations are hypocrites and will simply crush you like the consumer bug that you are, whenever they wish. It's simply one of the perks of being able to buy governments / legislation.
Sure you could prioritize yahoo over google but would want to risk to loosing customers to rival ISP's who are more google friendly or even face regulation from the likes of offcom. Of course this mainly applies to the UK. The government in the US is a lot more pro corporate / anti-consumer.
Yes I noticed this rather statement myself. The way I interpret this is Commercial == Far eastern bootlegs / car boot sales, for profit. Open Source == P2P Little Johny in the bed room, personal use.
This shows a worrying mindset in the entertainment industry. They believe that Closed proprietary systems (Microsoft) is good and Open systems (Linux) is bad. Of course this isn't new, we've long suspected this. Now the entertainment industry have pretty much admitted it. So don't expect future legal media formats to be able to play under Linux.
This will result in Linux users having to resort to illegal bootlegs further reinforcing the Open Source == Piracy perception which may hamper the commercial adoption of free and open systems.
Legit download sales have fallen, CD sales have fallen and P2P users have increased. Hmmmm let me see If I actually want to pay for music I can choose to have either a file which may or may not work with my mp3 player or A DRM'd malware infested CD that may or may not play on my CD player. /me bashes Carrey Sherman over the head with a clue!
DRM and financial persecutions encourage music piracy.
I wonder if we are now seeing the beginning of the end of the music cartels as tech savy teens begin to question the moral ethics of buying music and supporting such corrupt entities.
An industry which treats both the content creators and the fans with contempt should not survive. I'm surprised they've lasted this long.
Stop comparing people who FileShare with thieves. A thief is someone who walks into my house and takes my stuff. FileSharing is like sticking a sign outside my front door saying feel free to clone anything in my living room but please leave the bedrooms private.
If you want to talk specifically about an intellectual property thief then I consider this to be someone who profits from another's works without giving fair pay. Like say a record company who locks artists into unfair contracts.
In my controversial opinion it doesn't matter if you download a track from e-mule of buy a CD from a store, the artist, in my opinion has not been given fair pay for their work.
At least those who download choose not to expose themselves to malware DRM rootkits or support corrupt cartels. Only legal persecution.
And no I do not download music. I also don't care people do download music or buy music from a shop. I hope one day the creators of these works get fair pay for their contributions without middlemen getting fat from someone else's talent.
I don't know about other countries but in the UK petty mail theft is very common, especially around this time of year. I've had mail ripped open by postal chavs trying to see if there is any money in them there Christmas cards, which of course there isn't :P
I also used to be a member of a Netflix style film rental service. They used rather conspicuous packaging for returning films. After the 3rd film went 'missing' i was charged for the disc. Needless to say i canceled my membership. I now borrow films from elsewhere.
Needless to say if they think I'm going post them several hundred high cost CD's they really ought to know better.
Oh and insurance rarely pays out for the full value of the goods stolen.
If the media cartels get their way everyone's going to jail.
Why don't we have done with it and implement the final solution. Turn the whole planet into a jail.
The Record Company execs will of course have to be ejected into space.
I've posted this before, but I'll say it again anyway.
Imagine a screensaver like SETI@Home that's designed to generate false random data by connecting to various ports and IP addresses. Think how quickly storage space will get chewed up if only a small number of those 450 million ran this screen saver. Not to mention polluting the logs with false data.
This technique has had some affect in thwarting spammers who are harvesting e-mail addresses, but in this case it should be even more successful as it would be harder to determine what data is real and what data is fake and the program can be run from a household desktop instead of a web server.
Of course anyone who develops such a program will be locked up without charge or trial under anti terrorism laws.
I'm surprised no ones mentioned this already.
What if someone created a screensaver that continually accessed thousands of websites, IP addresses. Basically create as much junk data as possible to pollute their logs.
A similar technique was used to poison the databases of spammers who used web bots to harvest e-mail addresses.
Linux could work just a well, and without junking their existing kit. As for the software, it's probably just warezed off p2p anyway. Where do you think the trojans and other assorted malware come from?
So that's who Sony's been asking for technical advice.
I believe that the ISP's could do more to protect their users.
At least here in the UK there is a trend for ISP's to bundle USB DSL Adapters with their packages. These devices require that the computer they connect to use the public IP address instead of allowing the host computer to run from a private NAT address. Exposing the computers real public IP address puts the responsibility on the user to install and maintain firewall software. Needless to say many don't know how to do this or simply allow their security software subscriptions to laps.
The argument for this practice this is that many home users do not have Ethernet ports making Ethernet based NAT, Firewalled routers harder to support as the user will have to install a NIC card. This may have had some truth 6 years ago when broadband first appeared in the UK and it was mandated by the incumbent Telco which USB modem must be supplied with the service.
These days every PC and Laptop sold has at least an Ethernet port and in many cases WIFI as well, some routers also support USB. This means the only reason to continue this practice is cost saving.
USB Adapters are less expensive to give away than routers, if an ISP doesn't bundle connection equipment they fear loosing customers to their competitors.
I feel this is a false economy. NAT routers are not much more expensive than USB Adapters and from a support point of view are easier to set up now that Ethernet ports are common place. You just have to pre-configure the router with the customers log-in details and enable DHCP. Pretty much the only thing the customer has to do is plug it in. No drivers need to be installed and updated. Running behind NAT now means that it's a lot less unlikely a malicious attacker can take over a customers PC. Which makes everybodys life easier.
This is not really a case of stealing someone else's intellectual property. It's more a case of corporations taking what's always been freely available to everyone then litigating so nobody can use it anymore.
I'm no Christian fundamentalist but in the book of Genesis didn't god give all living things on earth to mankind. That means everybody has equal rights, kind of like a bio GPL.
Now given G.W Bush's right wing religious views and support for the teaching of intelligent design. Allowing the creation of these bio monopolies really is like condoning piracy.
So does Bush really believe in the word of god? or just the word of big business?
In either case I'd be worried about the voices he hears in his head telling him to invade 3rd world countries.
Now will someone please pass the tinfoil hat.
From experience of remote call centers.
You'll get more sense out of the dog.
Or
Sit here and rip the whole thing off the net for free and burn it to CD and copy it to my IPod.Yeah DRM is a great way to stop piracy.Maybe they should try offering value for money instead.
Who said i did?
I don't. I can understand why people would want to download a clean FLAC or high bitrate MP3 rip instead of paying for a CD loaded with crapware. Either way as the artist does not receive fair payment, from my point of view both are receiving stolen goods. Why give money to theives?
Things I've noticed about the artists that speak out against P2P. They're either stupid or they've already made it. A friend I used to work with was a talented musician as well as a good business man with a working knowledge of contract law. He refused to enter into any contract he considered unfair. Needless to say he didn't make it in the music biz. Would he have made it if he signed? Who knows. Who knows also how many clever ,talented musicians also don't make it
because they wanted a fair deal.
In that case don't buy from the majors. Downloading music doesn't generate revenue but it helps the smaller guy get noticed. Publicity they would normally have to pay for out of their own pocket. Also www.magnatunes.com seem to give a fair deal.
Because they should want my business? They can listen buy coming down from their corporate ivory towers.
Early on it became apparent that the DRM and Region locking on DVDs are worthless. Full length DVD images are available on the net as well as album rips. The difference is that the bonus material has been stripped from the DVD images. If you love the film and want the extras then you have to buy the Disc.
Yes that's what's happening. Take a look at who's buying up the ISP. SKY, Time Warner. That's right the media conglomerates. And you can bet it's because they want to control distribution. Lets take a look at upload bandwidth. A few years a go it was 2:1 thats twice as fast down as it was up. Now its 4:1. Upload bandwidth has not increased at all. Download bandwidth on the other hand has quadrupled. Next year the ratio is going to be more like 9:1. You can see where this is going. You can consume but there's no way you can distribute unless you want to tie your net connection up for days. It isn't Joe six pack that's putting his DVD's on the net. P2P is just the end of the supply chain. Choked upload, DRM or even Legal threats is no deterrent for the more determined pirates out there.
My point with the GPL is that all the code is public but companies make their money on the support and services. Sure I could get some d00d out in Iscrapistan
Many modern DVD players support DivX and XviD Mpeg4. DVD+/-R recorders are under $50 so recording a film to disk is no harder than creating an audio cd.
If someone knows how to download they'll know how to burn to a DVD.
Yes i know about magnatune. Prbly the only place i'd be happy buying from. It's a shame their portfolio isn't that big yet. I'm tempted to buy something just to make a politacal point to encourage more artists to sign up.
Don't even mention allofmp3.com though. The artists get nothing. You may as well download it off Kazza or buy it from a shop.
Actually I do agree with many of your points. You are absolutely correct Copyright and indeed Patents are totally about control. I still believe that a CD is vastly overpriced for what it is, even more so if you only wanted one or two tracks in an album. Copyright is nothing but government protection of a monopoly. The original purpose of granting a temporary monopoly to encourage innovation may have been honorable but now after lobbying for almost indefinite extensions and the addition of draconian powers it has been twisted to become nothing but a protection racket which is hindering innovation, exactly the opposite to what it was supposed to achieve.
The result of this is poor quality products at inflated prices. Not only that the artists who actually produce the work are under such one sided contracts that they won't see any return on their work until their 3rd or 4th successful album, after which they at least have some negotiating power with their label. A new band starting out often have to pay for their own publicity. This can cost them more than they get from the label. The labels are effectively stealing work from the artists. With P2P and free sharing it costs the artists nothing to get noticed. The label looses control.
You say I don't hold much value in CD's. You're right I don't. I can't remember the last time I actually bought a CD. You criticize me for downloading! Now this is the sad thing. I can't remember the last time I even wanted to download an album. I much prefer to listen to local talk radio or Shoutcast streaming radio in a genre I like. To be honest it doesn't bother me that people do choose to download illegally. It does bother me that the money from people who do choose to download legally or buy CD's go straight to the labels and very little if any goes to the artist. Whichever way you choose to get music the artist looses out, but at least those downloading music are not giving their money to the labels who are exploiting the artists. That's just the way I feel though.
Even though I personally don't value music that much I understand that there are plenty that do. The labels don't understand this. They see music as a commodity with a short shelf life. They exploit artists and dump them as soon as their no longer 'hip' and they rip off 'consumers'. If the labels want to survive they should stop seeing people as consumers and start trying to get customers. This means stop treating everybody the same (at the moment that seams to be criminals). People do see music differently and they all have different tastes. Not everybody likes pop. There are people like me who just want music in the background. There are the fans who will want bonus material like videos and interviews with the artists. There are the audiophiles who want HD 5000.1 surround Super Audio DVD to play on their $10,000 kit. Instead of targeting these groups they treat everyone like 16 year old girls (consumers) and start crying to the government to protect their monopoly now artists have a means to distribute their music directly. My point is they should provide 'Service' to their customers not 'Crap' to consumers.
The movie industry seem to get this a lot better than the music industry. I'm not a great fan of the movie industry either, because of their copyright lobbying, but guises what I've spent $80 on DVD's this month. That's $80 more than I've spent on CD's over the last 5 years.
And your point with the GPL. It has been argued on Slashdot before. A world without copyright would indeed make the GPL redundant but then you wouldn't need the GPL. Some have argued the GPL is just a means to fight fire with fire. Now we would just need a means to make sure that people who use public code also kept their code public. Just like we would need a means to ensure that people who produce any work still have an incentive to keep creating. This is whole new debate which I'm far too tired to enter into right now.