Not an original argument so I'll post my own words (originally from January of this year.)
They may not have had legal copyrights, but they had methods to protect their music.
Before copyright there were other ways to protect work. Mozart had a patron, Baroness von Waldstätten, who underwrote his needs so that he could spend the day doing whatever he wanted.
Because Mozart's patron allowed his music to be freely performed does not mean that it was always that way. Kings and princes always had court composers and they jealously guarded their music.
Handel's patron (George I, the first of the Hanoverian kings) jealously guarded "water music."
Please remember at the time you couldn't "copy" music unless you could sit in the audience with a quill pen and follow along! Actually Mozart could do this, but not many others.
It was easy to protect music back then and hard to steal it. Don't think people wouldn't have if they could. The technology didn't exist.
Jump ahead to the 1890's where the rampant bootleging of sheet music was a huge business (please refer to http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/09/mann.htm )
From the above article a reference to Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan fame:
"The irate Sullivan filed lawsuit after lawsuit in U.S. courts, but only dented the trade. To prevent the pirating of The Pirates of Penzance, he long refused to publish the score; bouncers prowled every show to stop music thieves from writing down the melodies."
Let's face it, in U.S. society you are not going to do much with out being paid for it. So change the law, but until then buy what you use, or move to Canada where it is apparently legal now. (Yes, I know the original author lives there, I'm speaking to everyone else.)
Society values artistic works and society (Through the govenment) grants the creators a limited license to profit from their works in order to better society. That's the theory anyway. Maybe it's gotten out of hand, but the "music and information want to be free" approach doesn't really motivate humans to create great things.
Even throughout history people like Mozart have been motivated by "compensation" to produce new creative works.
Having people enjoy what you do is great, but even if they enjoy it how do you make a living if you can't sell it? If you sell one song to a company for a million dollars and that company sells two million copies of the song for one dollar each that is motivation for you to write more songs and for the company to buy more from you. If the company buys the same song and only sells one thousand copies at one dollar each, but later discovers two million copies have been made for free they are motivated to only pay you five hundred dollars for your next song, or to ask society to grant them a limited right to distribute your song, and the protection from counterfeits of your song.
So somebody loses. Either you no longer can make a living writing songs and you find other work, or the company lays off staff because they don't need a big distribution network anymore to deliver one thousand copies of a new song.
While you seem to have "higher ideals" about what is right and wrong it doesn't play in reality. Your carpenter analogy is flawed because I can't easily duplicate the house with little or no effort. If I could then you better believe the carpenter would want $5 for every night you spend in your new house because a new house would only be worth a few thousand dollars! There would also be much fewer carpenters who could make a living building houses (sort of like few musicians who can fully support themselves only selling songs.)
While IP has always been created through time it has always been protected by rule, religion, or force. People didn't share fire - they stole it from each other. The Egyptians didn't give their knowledge of mummification away to anyone that asked. The Library of Alexandria (aka "The Kings Library") wasn't a place you or I could lend a book from. Knowledge really was power. Ptolemy III paid the sum of fifteen talents of silver (a vast amount) to be allowed to copy the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.
So while the ancient scholars and composers may not have had our modern day protection of copyright, please don't confuse that with no protection at all.
You won't need a projectionist anymore - at least not one trained beyond pushing a few buttons.
There goes that job description.
Time to market is a good reason: Shoot, edit, project. Not Shoot, edit, print, distribute, project (simplified, I know.)
Exact knowledge of what is playing at what time in which market. No more sneaking in an extra showing and keeping the profits for yourself (this has mostly died out except for rural markets due to constant checking.)
No more throwing a print on a Telecine during the overnight, or off the workprint, to make a copy for Internet distribution before the film hits market.
Do you know what it costs to have the prints made for a major release? There's nothing more some studio execs would like to see than Technicolor vanish from the corner of the Uni lot.
Sony has contracted with a third party to spider the web looking for Sony music on P2P networks and then a form letter is generated with the IP address and any other info they can get, and sent to the domain contact name.
I had to do a search and destroy on one of these memos a few months back. But basically what we got just said to remove the offending material, go forth, and sin no more.
...but unfortunatly the value of AOL/Time Warner is down over $150 billion if you look at stock prices now and what they were when the "merger" took place.
Don't expect them to answer any questions about:
What assets EXACTLY did you write down? What about the rest of that lost value, when are you going to take that hit?
Inflated.com dollars from AOL didn't buy Time/Warner. It was a stock trade that did it and that's what will kill Time/Warner on their end of this "deal."
If you have a DVD drive in your computer you might have software or a hardware card that carries a licensed decoder. Actually you probably do unless you built your system yourself. Their software could rely on that.
On the other hand a direct copy could work - without ever decrypting the info on the DVD.
I wonder if the studios will use the defence that the software "changes" and degrades the original movie on the DVD and therefore is not a backup or copy of the original, but something that degrades the value of their trademark/copyright by creating a less than pristine copy of the movie and deceives the consumer into thinking they're making an exact backup?
I've seen some pretty crappy VCDs and some pretty good ones, but none of them look like DVDs to me.
I would expect the studios to explore all angles.
Can we really draw conclusions?
on
Sharing Doesn't Hurt
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I mean, the sample size is pretty small - one book. It's promising to see this happening, but I hesitate to jump to the end result of "it works". Then again, that's books and the hot topic of discussion isn't about books.
Even if the music companies are lying about everything else music sales are down and the actual reasons people are giving is that they download their music for "free" now instead of buying it. Yes, I've seen the survey results from the inside.
I guess my point is that this probably doesn't apply to music.
America is all about big business now. Yes it snuck up on but it honestly is too late. Business sees a threat with digital piracy or whatever you want to call it and the leaders of the media industry are lobbying Congress long and hard (pun intended) to pass a law NOW and sort out the facts later.
Doesn't this happen all the time? It's just that this one really affects everyone.
Get used to it. People who don't have the same sense of moral value that you do f'ed up the whole thing for us by taking something they had no right to take and they awoke the proverbial "sleeping giant" of the music industry.
When it became obvious early on that encryption and such wouldn't help they turned to heavy-handed legislation and mandates. That's what happens.
Face it, "We The People" brought this on themselves.
Where there are billions of dollars to be made or lost neither the government nor the businesses are particularly interested in what you think.
Be a good consumer and buy the product. Try to get it in a unauthorized way and that way will be legislated out of existence.
It's all about the Benjamins.
Did you all really think that "free music" was the wave of the future?
...Or was it just convenient to download the songs instead of buying them?
I'm serious. Were you all thinking about the utopia of music on the internet and small bands competing with big bands and musicians making more money from touring than from CD sales and everyone living in happy harmony?
Or was it fun to sit back with a beer and get a bunch of music for free?
I know how I would answer the question. It's tough for 80 million people to step up for a cause when the "cause" is just plain laziness.
But now I need one of those little 2.5 inch SCSI internal drives. The original blew up after the power went out and I tried to reboot - after 235 days straight running RH as a print server!
Unfortunatly the old Apple Powerbooks all use that same HD so the prices were still too high the last time I checked.
Seriously, all I need is a 500MB drive that will work for a decent price.
No, I don't want to kit it out with the mounting bracket for the 3.5 inch units - I don't want to lose my slot.
So anyone know of a good place to find parts? A floppy cover would be killer to have also.
I guess we'll just have to disagree on these points. I believe, and the laws of your society confirm, that copying music is indeed like stealing water from the store and not in any way shape or form like filtering your own. That much closed down Napster. The rest of the pack will go down also.
If you don't care about laws (which you have stated) and will do whatever you want anyway then there's not much point in appealing to your morality, sense of what is "right", etc.
My kid has a similar view of the world (i.e., leave me alone, I'm not hurting anyone.) As long as he can get away with something it's fair game to him. No moral dilemma there, he just lives for his pleasure and parents and school are a nuisance.
At some point we all grow up and want to buy a house, have some protection, be able to invest, and have a family. The society in which we choose to live, helps us to achieve those goals. If someone can't create something without the fear of it being stolen there's very little impetus to create and society suffers in the long run.
Don't think that when there wasn't copyright law you could just walk into a library and check out a book. No way. You had to be part of the caste that was allowed to read.
The United States society is based on making money and that's it. Period. The government is a tool of big business. Anything that keeps the record business from generating the income they believe they should have will be legislated against and crushed. No question. If we ignore laws the government will take away your ability to ignore laws.
When AOL is not longer under Common Carrier status just wait and see how long before they don't allow the traffic of anything ending in.mpg across their network.
Yes, reality is more complex than laws. But the laws of the U.S. shape your reality every day and because of mass disregard for the law many people will lose the ability to do what they want with their comptuers.
Music is just like water. It flows free from the ground, the various kinds of music are nearly indistinguishable from each other, and music is necessary to sustain life.
I totally see how your water analogy fits into the sharing music argument.
That was my sarcasm rant, but I can understand where you're coming from. We all want our music free and easy. Even I do, but I see the harm to the owners that comes from taking music.
The analogy to water would only work if you looked at the Morpheus listings and all they said were "Universal Music song", "BMI song", "Sony Music song" and didn't tell you the specific artist. Just like looking at water on the store shelves you only see "Arrowhead", "Sparkletts", etc. You don't get to know or decide what mineral content you want in your water, you take what you are given by a big, faceless, company and you either like it or you go somewhere else. But you don't steal Arrowhead water later once you decide that's the one you like. There is no free music that substitutes for the music you want, just like there is no free water that substitutes for the Arrowhead water you want. Therefore you decide to take what you want because there are few, if any, legal ramifications. Lack of enforcement does not make something legal.
While nobody is entitled to a business model (by nature) they are entitled to do business (by law.) In some cases they are entitled to a business model by law (your cable company, some oil companies, steel factories, water and power companies, etc.)
You said:
"It's no more mine than it is anyone elses'. Information 'products' I produce are mine as long as I keep them confidential; once they get out into public circulation, I'm not foolish enough to believe I can control two other people who wish to transfer it between them. Why would they?"
You are correct - if you live a society that is in total anarchy. If you live in a society that recognizes any type of copyright and trademark rights then you're wrong - legally wrong. You actually have a right to expect protection if you live in the U.S. and you copyright your work and you put it out on the Internet. This what patent, trademark, and copyright laws are all about - protecting the rights holders while still allowing them to promote and sell products, or give them away if they choose.
Unfortunately the machine of technology works faster than monolithic record companies, but that does not negate their product rights and allow the consumer to change the model at their whim. Your legal recourses are few and the best of them is stop consuming the product.
The fact that you are depriving someone of an income is the only point worth discussing, because that person (and a corporation is a legal person) is being wronged each time you take their product and do not compensate them for it.
Your main problem is that you wish to derive the benefits of living in a society you chose to live in, but do not wish to be bound by the rigid tenants (laws)of that society. This is a common problem among humans. I know people who live in Mexico because they can't stand the oppression of the government in the U.S. I know Mexicans who put up with the oppressive government in the U.S. solely for the purpose of earning more money than they can at home. You made the choice to live where you do. Please abide by the laws and constraints of your society.
Re:That crash you hear is society crumbling...
on
The Crime of Sharing
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· Score: 1
Actually, I'm really happy to hear what you say, because your post carries an authentic ring of truth to it.
You are saying what you really mean and feel and are not relying on some made up reason for what you do.
You actually make statements that can be addressed, such as "...the record industry has been overcharging people for years"
Thanks for your input.
That crash you hear is society crumbling...
on
The Crime of Sharing
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· Score: 1
O.K, it's not that bad, but...
(Please read my comments before modding me as a troll. Just because I have an opinion that is different than you doesn't mean I haven't thought about this.)
Disclaimer: I do work in the music industry.
I did not read every one of the last 175+ comments, but the ones I did read seem to echo the posts of every music sharing thread over the last year or so. Lots and lots of theoretical arguments about how this will help the artist or sell more CDs or has no effect at all.
Very few posters (and I applaud those that do) have the courage of their convictions. The ones who say that they DO NOT buy CDs any more (or the product formally know as a music CD, whatever) AND they DO NOT download the music using sharing products thereby deriving value for no recompense. People who say they now save their CD money and go to more concerts because they wish to provide direct benefit to the artists. Listening to the radio, even borrowing friends CDs (and not copying them) are both alternatives I've seen people mention.
The majority appear to be trying to justify a moral dilemma - receiving value for no associated cost. It's one thing to accept a gift or donation from someone. It's quite another to go out specifically searching for a product or products in a genre you desire and take those products simple because you can. In physical terms this is called looting (when a whole group of people perform the act.) With electronic copies of items we call it sharing. This makes us feel better.
If you have to make an argument, as one poster has, that this is a "0.1" on the scale of moral/ethical problems as opposed to murder which is a "100" then you already know it's wrong.
Either do what you say and go to the concerts, stop downloading music, stop buying cds and put the record companies out of business, or at least admit that what you're doing is wrong (in every sense of the term.)
I won't make cute analogies with stealing bread or breathing air or all the bullshit arguments that people make so they can sleep at night, just to try and prove my point.
A product is being sold (not given away) and people have found a way to get that same product without paying.
That is wrong.
If you don't like the way the product is packaged, the method it is distributed, who sells it, who produces it, where you have to go to get, the shipping charges, or the gaudy graphics of on the disc - the don't buy it.
But please don't steal it either.
If everyone who complains about this subject would stop downloading music (illegally) and stop buying ANY music discs the silence would be deafening (pun intended don't waste your time.)
Please don't lower yourself by trying to justify your moral, ethical and legal inconsistencies. Just admit it to yourself and your friends and everyone here on/. that you prefer to take things that are not yours and you feel better about it because the person wronged is a faceless corporation. You feel better about it because there is no physical object being taken. You feel better about it because _________.
The market does set the price for luxury items (music) and if you can't pay the price you can always go to school and then get a better job. If you don't want to pay the price the market will listen. If you steal the product the market will respond also, and I guarantee you that you will not like the response.
Have you ever thought what is going to happen when the record companies discover that they CANNOT secure CDs and DVDs? There will be a point where they'll just stop selling them and then you will be able to download all the music and video you want - but not for free.
Before copyright there were other ways to protect work. Mozart had a patron, Baroness von Waldstätten, who underwrote his needs so that he could spend he day doing whatever he wanted.
Because Mozart's patron allowed his music to be freely performed does not mean that it was always that way. Kings and princes always had court composers and they jealously guarded their music.
Handel's patron (George I, the first of the Hanoverian kings) jealously guarded "water music."
Please remember at the time you couldn't "copy" music unless you could sit in the audience with a quill pen and follow along! Actually Mozart could do this, but not many others.
It was easy to protect music back then and hard to steal it. Don't think people wouldn't have if they could. The technology didn't exist.
Jump ahead to the 1890's where the rampant bootleging of sheet music was a huge business (please refer to http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/09/mann.htm )
From the above article a reference to Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan fame:
"The irate Sullivan filed lawsuit after lawsuit in U.S. courts, but only dented the trade. To prevent the pirating of The Pirates of Penzance, he long refused to publish the score; bouncers prowled every show to stop music thieves from writing down the melodies."
Let's face it, in U.S. society you are not going to do much with out being paid for it. So change the law, but until then buy what you use, or move to Canada where it is apparently legal now. (Yes, I know the original author lives there, I'm speaking to everyone else.)
Society values artistic works and society (Through the govenment) grants the creators a limited license to profit from their works in order to better society. That's the theory anyway. Maybe it's gotten out of hand, but the "music and information want to be free" approach doesn't really motivate humans to create great things.
Even throughout history people like Mozart have been motivated by "compensation" to produce new creative works.
Having people enjoy what you do is great, but even if they enjoy it how do you make a living if you can't sell it? If you sell one song to a company for a million dollars and that company sells two million copies of the song for one dollar each that is motivation for you to write more songs and for the company to buy more from you. If the company buys the same song and only sells one thousand copies at one dollar each, but later discovers two million copies have been made for free they are motivated to only pay you five hundred dollars for your next song, or to ask society to grant them a limited right to distribute your song, and the protection from counterfeits of your song.
So somebody loses. Either you no longer can make a living writing songs and you find other work, or the company lays off staff because they don't need a big distribution network anymore to deliver one thousand copies of a new song.
While you seem to have "higher ideals" about what is right and wrong it doesn't play in reality. Your carpenter analogy is flawed because I can't easily duplicate the house with little or no effort. If I could then you better believe the carpenter would want $5 for every night you spend in your new house because a new house would only be worth a few thousand dollars! There would also be much fewer carpenters who could make a living building houses (sort of like few musicians who can fully support themselves only selling songs.)
While IP has always been created through time it has always been protected by rule, religion, or force. People didn't share fire - they stole it from each other. The Egyptians didn't give their knowledge of mummification away to anyone that asked. The Library of Alexandria (aka "The Kings Library") wasn't a place you or I could lend a book from. Knowledge really was power. Ptolemy III paid the sum of fifteen talents of silver (a vast amount) to be allowed to copy the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.
So while the ancient scholars and composers may not have had our modern day protection of copyright, please don't confuse that with no protection at all.
Actually now that you've brought up intent all we can go on it what Universal is saying. They say that the purpose of these new "music discs" is to eliminate the illegal movement of their product across the Internet.
You have attempted to guess their intent instead of reading their published, and probably legally justifiable, intent.
In a court of law in the U.S. the plaintiffs would bear the burden of proof to show that Universal's intent is other than what they've said all along.
When you guess someone's intent and make assumptions based upon your guess - especially when your assumptions are the opposite of what the originator said then the burden of proof is on you to show that Universal "made the special incompatible discs for the express purpose of restricting copying...including legal copying and use."
You might be right, but you have nothing to help you prove that.
Even if you did have the right (you may) there is nothing in what Universal has done to keep you from making a backup - if you have the right equipment.
You also have a right to make a backup of your Nintendo 64 games - if you have the right equipment.
In either case neither Universal nor Nintendo is under any legal obligation to provide their products in a nice, easily copyable format.
Complaining that you can't back up your music disc on a computer CDR drive (just because they fit the same form factor) is the same as complaining that you cannot backup your DVDs on that same computer CDR drive (just because they fit the same form factor.)
Please note that I use "music disc" and not "CD" as the description of what Universal is selling.
I didn't say "They're going to win this and crush all opposition. Barring, of course, armed insurrection by the populace and the overthrow of the U.S. government."
If you think the mass-market loving populace of the U.S. (me included) are going to go to war against the government for their string of abuses, you should think again.
Your two examples above do not have anything to do with updating business models. They have to do with technology that was vastly outmoded by new inventions. That is not what we are talking about here. Everyone did NOT throw away their CD players to run to online music the way they DID throw away their record players to run to CDs.
Slashdot Mirror
Not an original argument so I'll post my own words (originally from January of this year.)
m )
They may not have had legal copyrights, but they had methods to protect their music.
Before copyright there were other ways to protect work. Mozart had a patron, Baroness von Waldstätten, who underwrote his needs so that he could spend the day doing whatever he wanted.
Because Mozart's patron allowed his music to be freely performed does not mean that it was always that way. Kings and princes always had court composers and they jealously guarded their music.
Handel's patron (George I, the first of the Hanoverian kings) jealously guarded "water music."
Please remember at the time you couldn't "copy" music unless you could sit in the audience with a quill pen and follow along! Actually Mozart could do this, but not many others.
It was easy to protect music back then and hard to steal it. Don't think people wouldn't have if they could. The technology didn't exist.
Jump ahead to the 1890's where the rampant bootleging of sheet music was a huge business (please refer to http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/09/mann.ht
From the above article a reference to Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan fame:
"The irate Sullivan filed lawsuit after lawsuit in U.S. courts, but only dented the trade. To prevent the pirating of The Pirates of Penzance, he long refused to publish the score; bouncers prowled every show to stop music thieves from writing down the melodies."
Let's face it, in U.S. society you are not going to do much with out being paid for it. So change the law, but until then buy what you use, or move to Canada where it is apparently legal now. (Yes, I know the original author lives there, I'm speaking to everyone else.)
Society values artistic works and society (Through the govenment) grants the creators a limited license to profit from their works in order to better society. That's the theory anyway. Maybe it's gotten out of hand, but the "music and information want to be free" approach doesn't really motivate humans to create great things.
Even throughout history people like Mozart have been motivated by "compensation" to produce new creative works.
Having people enjoy what you do is great, but even if they enjoy it how do you make a living if you can't sell it? If you sell one song to a company for a million dollars and that company sells two million copies of the song for one dollar each that is motivation for you to write more songs and for the company to buy more from you. If the company buys the same song and only sells one thousand copies at one dollar each, but later discovers two million copies have been made for free they are motivated to only pay you five hundred dollars for your next song, or to ask society to grant them a limited right to distribute your song, and the protection from counterfeits of your song.
So somebody loses. Either you no longer can make a living writing songs and you find other work, or the company lays off staff because they don't need a big distribution network anymore to deliver one thousand copies of a new song.
While you seem to have "higher ideals" about what is right and wrong it doesn't play in reality. Your carpenter analogy is flawed because I can't easily duplicate the house with little or no effort. If I could then you better believe the carpenter would want $5 for every night you spend in your new house because a new house would only be worth a few thousand dollars! There would also be much fewer carpenters who could make a living building houses (sort of like few musicians who can fully support themselves only selling songs.)
While IP has always been created through time it has always been protected by rule, religion, or force. People didn't share fire - they stole it from each other. The Egyptians didn't give their knowledge of mummification away to anyone that asked. The Library of Alexandria (aka "The Kings Library") wasn't a place you or I could lend a book from. Knowledge really was power. Ptolemy III paid the sum of fifteen talents of silver (a vast amount) to be allowed to copy the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.
So while the ancient scholars and composers may not have had our modern day protection of copyright, please don't confuse that with no protection at all.
You won't need a projectionist anymore - at least not one trained beyond pushing a few buttons.
There goes that job description.
Time to market is a good reason: Shoot, edit, project. Not Shoot, edit, print, distribute, project (simplified, I know.)
Exact knowledge of what is playing at what time in which market. No more sneaking in an extra showing and keeping the profits for yourself (this has mostly died out except for rural markets due to constant checking.)
No more throwing a print on a Telecine during the overnight, or off the workprint, to make a copy for Internet distribution before the film hits market.
Do you know what it costs to have the prints made for a major release? There's nothing more some studio execs would like to see than Technicolor vanish from the corner of the Uni lot.
Sony has contracted with a third party to spider the web looking for Sony music on P2P networks and then a form letter is generated with the IP address and any other info they can get, and sent to the domain contact name.
I had to do a search and destroy on one of these memos a few months back. But basically what we got just said to remove the offending material, go forth, and sin no more.
Maybe this is something different, dunno.
...but unfortunatly the value of AOL/Time Warner is down over $150 billion if you look at stock prices now and what they were when the "merger" took place.
.com dollars from AOL didn't buy Time/Warner. It was a stock trade that did it and that's what will kill Time/Warner on their end of this "deal."
Don't expect them to answer any questions about:
What assets EXACTLY did you write down?
What about the rest of that lost value, when are you going to take that hit?
Inflated
Big problems brewing for the future.
...download it?
You get to see the movie framed by a camcorder, learn a foreign language, and make a political statement all at the same time.
What else could be so much fun?
If you have a DVD drive in your computer you might have software or a hardware card that carries a licensed decoder. Actually you probably do unless you built your system yourself. Their software could rely on that.
On the other hand a direct copy could work - without ever decrypting the info on the DVD.
I wonder if the studios will use the defence that the software "changes" and degrades the original movie on the DVD and therefore is not a backup or copy of the original, but something that degrades the value of their trademark/copyright by creating a less than pristine copy of the movie and deceives the consumer into thinking they're making an exact backup?
I've seen some pretty crappy VCDs and some pretty good ones, but none of them look like DVDs to me.
I would expect the studios to explore all angles.
I mean, the sample size is pretty small - one book. It's promising to see this happening, but I hesitate to jump to the end result of "it works". Then again, that's books and the hot topic of discussion isn't about books.
Even if the music companies are lying about everything else music sales are down and the actual reasons people are giving is that they download their music for "free" now instead of buying it. Yes, I've seen the survey results from the inside.
I guess my point is that this probably doesn't apply to music.
America is all about big business now. Yes it snuck up on but it honestly is too late. Business sees a threat with digital piracy or whatever you want to call it and the leaders of the media industry are lobbying Congress long and hard (pun intended) to pass a law NOW and sort out the facts later.
Doesn't this happen all the time? It's just that this one really affects everyone.
Get used to it. People who don't have the same sense of moral value that you do f'ed up the whole thing for us by taking something they had no right to take and they awoke the proverbial "sleeping giant" of the music industry.
When it became obvious early on that encryption and such wouldn't help they turned to heavy-handed legislation and mandates. That's what happens.
Face it, "We The People" brought this on themselves.
Where there are billions of dollars to be made or lost neither the government nor the businesses are particularly interested in what you think.
Be a good consumer and buy the product. Try to get it in a unauthorized way and that way will be legislated out of existence.
It's all about the Benjamins.
Did you all really think that "free music" was the wave of the future?
...Or was it just convenient to download the songs instead of buying them?
I'm serious. Were you all thinking about the utopia of music on the internet and small bands competing with big bands and musicians making more money from touring than from CD sales and everyone living in happy harmony?
Or was it fun to sit back with a beer and get a bunch of music for free?
I know how I would answer the question. It's tough for 80 million people to step up for a cause when the "cause" is just plain laziness.
It was cheap to buy, that is true.
But now I need one of those little 2.5 inch SCSI internal drives. The original blew up after the power went out and I tried to reboot - after 235 days straight running RH as a print server!
Unfortunatly the old Apple Powerbooks all use that same HD so the prices were still too high the last time I checked.
Seriously, all I need is a 500MB drive that will work for a decent price.
No, I don't want to kit it out with the mounting bracket for the 3.5 inch units - I don't want to lose my slot.
So anyone know of a good place to find parts? A floppy cover would be killer to have also.
Yes, having an Alpha is really cool.
Sam K said:
"Lick the alphabet"
A
B
C
... it works
What do the Enterprise and toilet paper have in common?
They both circle Uranus searching for clingons.
How messed up is it that the THIRD post, and the first actual post from an intelligent life form is moderated as "redundant"?
I try to moderate while not completly wasted and I expect the same curtosy. This person deserves the same.
Moderation is dead! Long live the moderator!
Also Known As - Jack
I guess we'll just have to disagree on these points. I believe, and the laws of your society confirm, that copying music is indeed like stealing water from the store and not in any way shape or form like filtering your own. That much closed down Napster. The rest of the pack will go down also.
.mpg across their network.
If you don't care about laws (which you have stated) and will do whatever you want anyway then there's not much point in appealing to your morality, sense of what is "right", etc.
My kid has a similar view of the world (i.e., leave me alone, I'm not hurting anyone.) As long as he can get away with something it's fair game to him. No moral dilemma there, he just lives for his pleasure and parents and school are a nuisance.
At some point we all grow up and want to buy a house, have some protection, be able to invest, and have a family. The society in which we choose to live, helps us to achieve those goals. If someone can't create something without the fear of it being stolen there's very little impetus to create and society suffers in the long run.
Don't think that when there wasn't copyright law you could just walk into a library and check out a book. No way. You had to be part of the caste that was allowed to read.
The United States society is based on making money and that's it. Period. The government is a tool of big business. Anything that keeps the record business from generating the income they believe they should have will be legislated against and crushed. No question. If we ignore laws the government will take away your ability to ignore laws.
When AOL is not longer under Common Carrier status just wait and see how long before they don't allow the traffic of anything ending in
Yes, reality is more complex than laws. But the laws of the U.S. shape your reality every day and because of mass disregard for the law many people will lose the ability to do what they want with their comptuers.
Benjamin,
Wow, you may be right!
Music is just like water. It flows free from the ground, the various kinds of music are nearly indistinguishable from each other, and music is necessary to sustain life.
I totally see how your water analogy fits into the sharing music argument.
That was my sarcasm rant, but I can understand where you're coming from. We all want our music free and easy. Even I do, but I see the harm to the owners that comes from taking music.
The analogy to water would only work if you looked at the Morpheus listings and all they said were "Universal Music song", "BMI song", "Sony Music song" and didn't tell you the specific artist. Just like looking at water on the store shelves you only see "Arrowhead", "Sparkletts", etc. You don't get to know or decide what mineral content you want in your water, you take what you are given by a big, faceless, company and you either like it or you go somewhere else. But you don't steal Arrowhead water later once you decide that's the one you like. There is no free music that substitutes for the music you want, just like there is no free water that substitutes for the Arrowhead water you want. Therefore you decide to take what you want because there are few, if any, legal ramifications. Lack of enforcement does not make something legal.
While nobody is entitled to a business model (by nature) they are entitled to do business (by law.) In some cases they are entitled to a business model by law (your cable company, some oil companies, steel factories, water and power companies, etc.)
You said:
"It's no more mine than it is anyone elses'. Information 'products' I produce are mine as long as I keep them confidential; once they get out into public circulation, I'm not foolish enough to believe I can control two other people who wish to transfer it between them. Why would they?"
You are correct - if you live a society that is in total anarchy. If you live in a society that recognizes any type of copyright and trademark rights then you're wrong - legally wrong. You actually have a right to expect protection if you live in the U.S. and you copyright your work and you put it out on the Internet. This what patent, trademark, and copyright laws are all about - protecting the rights holders while still allowing them to promote and sell products, or give them away if they choose.
Unfortunately the machine of technology works faster than monolithic record companies, but that does not negate their product rights and allow the consumer to change the model at their whim. Your legal recourses are few and the best of them is stop consuming the product.
The fact that you are depriving someone of an income is the only point worth discussing, because that person (and a corporation is a legal person) is being wronged each time you take their product and do not compensate them for it.
Your main problem is that you wish to derive the benefits of living in a society you chose to live in, but do not wish to be bound by the rigid tenants (laws)of that society. This is a common problem among humans. I know people who live in Mexico because they can't stand the oppression of the government in the U.S. I know Mexicans who put up with the oppressive government in the U.S. solely for the purpose of earning more money than they can at home. You made the choice to live where you do. Please abide by the laws and constraints of your society.
Actually, I'm really happy to hear what you say, because your post carries an authentic ring of truth to it.
You are saying what you really mean and feel and are not relying on some made up reason for what you do.
You actually make statements that can be addressed, such as "...the record industry has been overcharging people for years"
Thanks for your input.
O.K, it's not that bad, but...
/. that you prefer to take things that are not yours and you feel better about it because the person wronged is a faceless corporation. You feel better about it because there is no physical object being taken. You feel better about it because _________.
(Please read my comments before modding me as a troll. Just because I have an opinion that is different than you doesn't mean I haven't thought about this.)
Disclaimer: I do work in the music industry.
I did not read every one of the last 175+ comments, but the ones I did read seem to echo the posts of every music sharing thread over the last year or so. Lots and lots of theoretical arguments about how this will help the artist or sell more CDs or has no effect at all.
Very few posters (and I applaud those that do) have the courage of their convictions. The ones who say that they DO NOT buy CDs any more (or the product formally know as a music CD, whatever) AND they DO NOT download the music using sharing products thereby deriving value for no recompense. People who say they now save their CD money and go to more concerts because they wish to provide direct benefit to the artists. Listening to the radio, even borrowing friends CDs (and not copying them) are both alternatives I've seen people mention.
The majority appear to be trying to justify a moral dilemma - receiving value for no associated cost. It's one thing to accept a gift or donation from someone. It's quite another to go out specifically searching for a product or products in a genre you desire and take those products simple because you can. In physical terms this is called looting (when a whole group of people perform the act.) With electronic copies of items we call it sharing. This makes us feel better.
If you have to make an argument, as one poster has, that this is a "0.1" on the scale of moral/ethical problems as opposed to murder which is a "100" then you already know it's wrong.
Either do what you say and go to the concerts, stop downloading music, stop buying cds and put the record companies out of business, or at least admit that what you're doing is wrong (in every sense of the term.)
I won't make cute analogies with stealing bread or breathing air or all the bullshit arguments that people make so they can sleep at night, just to try and prove my point.
A product is being sold (not given away) and people have found a way to get that same product without paying.
That is wrong.
If you don't like the way the product is packaged, the method it is distributed, who sells it, who produces it, where you have to go to get, the shipping charges, or the gaudy graphics of on the disc - the don't buy it.
But please don't steal it either.
If everyone who complains about this subject would stop downloading music (illegally) and stop buying ANY music discs the silence would be deafening (pun intended don't waste your time.)
Please don't lower yourself by trying to justify your moral, ethical and legal inconsistencies. Just admit it to yourself and your friends and everyone here on
The market does set the price for luxury items (music) and if you can't pay the price you can always go to school and then get a better job. If you don't want to pay the price the market will listen. If you steal the product the market will respond also, and I guarantee you that you will not like the response.
Have you ever thought what is going to happen when the record companies discover that they CANNOT secure CDs and DVDs? There will be a point where they'll just stop selling them and then you will be able to download all the music and video you want - but not for free.
I really wish there was a button for that...
I'll take that as a complement.
But to answer your question, no, I'm just really involved in this subject.
Before copyright there were other ways to protect work. Mozart had a patron, Baroness von Waldstätten, who underwrote his needs so that he could spend he day doing whatever he wanted.
m )
Because Mozart's patron allowed his music to be freely performed does not mean that it was always that way. Kings and princes always had court composers and they jealously guarded their music.
Handel's patron (George I, the first of the Hanoverian kings) jealously guarded "water music."
Please remember at the time you couldn't "copy" music unless you could sit in the audience with a quill pen and follow along! Actually Mozart could do this, but not many others.
It was easy to protect music back then and hard to steal it. Don't think people wouldn't have if they could. The technology didn't exist.
Jump ahead to the 1890's where the rampant bootleging of sheet music was a huge business (please refer to http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/09/mann.ht
From the above article a reference to Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan fame:
"The irate Sullivan filed lawsuit after lawsuit in U.S. courts, but only dented the trade. To prevent the pirating of The Pirates of Penzance, he long refused to publish the score; bouncers prowled every show to stop music thieves from writing down the melodies."
Let's face it, in U.S. society you are not going to do much with out being paid for it. So change the law, but until then buy what you use, or move to Canada where it is apparently legal now. (Yes, I know the original author lives there, I'm speaking to everyone else.)
Society values artistic works and society (Through the govenment) grants the creators a limited license to profit from their works in order to better society. That's the theory anyway. Maybe it's gotten out of hand, but the "music and information want to be free" approach doesn't really motivate humans to create great things.
Even throughout history people like Mozart have been motivated by "compensation" to produce new creative works.
Having people enjoy what you do is great, but even if they enjoy it how do you make a living if you can't sell it? If you sell one song to a company for a million dollars and that company sells two million copies of the song for one dollar each that is motivation for you to write more songs and for the company to buy more from you. If the company buys the same song and only sells one thousand copies at one dollar each, but later discovers two million copies have been made for free they are motivated to only pay you five hundred dollars for your next song, or to ask society to grant them a limited right to distribute your song, and the protection from counterfeits of your song.
So somebody loses. Either you no longer can make a living writing songs and you find other work, or the company lays off staff because they don't need a big distribution network anymore to deliver one thousand copies of a new song.
While you seem to have "higher ideals" about what is right and wrong it doesn't play in reality. Your carpenter analogy is flawed because I can't easily duplicate the house with little or no effort. If I could then you better believe the carpenter would want $5 for every night you spend in your new house because a new house would only be worth a few thousand dollars! There would also be much fewer carpenters who could make a living building houses (sort of like few musicians who can fully support themselves only selling songs.)
While IP has always been created through time it has always been protected by rule, religion, or force. People didn't share fire - they stole it from each other. The Egyptians didn't give their knowledge of mummification away to anyone that asked. The Library of Alexandria (aka "The Kings Library") wasn't a place you or I could lend a book from. Knowledge really was power. Ptolemy III paid the sum of fifteen talents of silver (a vast amount) to be allowed to copy the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.
So while the ancient scholars and composers may not have had our modern day protection of copyright, please don't confuse that with no protection at all.
Actually now that you've brought up intent all we can go on it what Universal is saying. They say that the purpose of these new "music discs" is to eliminate the illegal movement of their product across the Internet.
You have attempted to guess their intent instead of reading their published, and probably legally justifiable, intent.
In a court of law in the U.S. the plaintiffs would bear the burden of proof to show that Universal's intent is other than what they've said all along.
When you guess someone's intent and make assumptions based upon your guess - especially when your assumptions are the opposite of what the originator said then the burden of proof is on you to show that Universal "made the special incompatible discs for the express purpose of restricting copying...including legal copying and use."
You might be right, but you have nothing to help you prove that.
Even if you did have the right (you may) there is nothing in what Universal has done to keep you from making a backup - if you have the right equipment.
You also have a right to make a backup of your Nintendo 64 games - if you have the right equipment.
In either case neither Universal nor Nintendo is under any legal obligation to provide their products in a nice, easily copyable format.
Complaining that you can't back up your music disc on a computer CDR drive (just because they fit the same form factor) is the same as complaining that you cannot backup your DVDs on that same computer CDR drive (just because they fit the same form factor.)
Please note that I use "music disc" and not "CD" as the description of what Universal is selling.
Believe me Joe consumer ONLY uses Windows. Let's not elevate ourselves into thinking we're part of the target market for this.
I would postulate that if you read slashdot you're not something any record company truely cares about.
Let's be realistic. They've captured 90 percent plus of the home market if they don't even look outside of the Microsoft operating systems.
If that doesn't define "Joe Consumer" then I don't know what does.
I didn't say "They're going to win this and crush all opposition. Barring, of course, armed insurrection by the populace and the overthrow of the U.S. government."
If you think the mass-market loving populace of the U.S. (me included) are going to go to war against the government for their string of abuses, you should think again.
Your two examples above do not have anything to do with updating business models. They have to do with technology that was vastly outmoded by new inventions. That is not what we are talking about here. Everyone did NOT throw away their CD players to run to online music the way they DID throw away their record players to run to CDs.