An artist declares that they're going to produce a new work of art, and asks for donations. People donate the amount of their choice, and in return, they usually get perks like being first to view/listen to the art, access to extra materials, their name prominently displayed, meeting the artist, etc.
I assume the GP meant public broadcasting service (PBS).
I don't think you need to go that far to show that copyright is not necessary to generate revenue, though. Ordinary, commercial broadcasting of TV programmes for free has worked quite well for more than half a century, thanks to advertising revenue. Even without copyright, the company that produces a TV programme will get most of the viewers, because they're first to broadcast it. The freeloading networks will have to make do with reruns.
The only fair solution is a balance for everyone concerned--a limited copyright that lets businesses recoup their investment without keeping works hostage to private interests for eternity. I am just as frustrated with the "all information should be free" crowd as I am with the "all free information is stealing" crowd, since neither has a lasting solution to the problem.
That's a reasonable position, but there are arguments against even a short and limited copyright. For example, once you have copyright, content producers become dependent on the slow and steady income from certain works, and start putting pressure on the legislators to extend it. That's how we ended up with the mess we have today.
Most people assume that copyright is necessary to recoup investments from, for example, $100 million films, but I'm not entirely convinced.
First, films tend to collect most of their revenue during the first two or three weeks of showing, which leaves little time for (legalised) pirates to make their own high-quality copies and distribute to pirate theatres.
Second, when DVD-quality copies have leaked to the filesharers at or before the premiere date, it hasn't affected filmgoing noticeably.
Third, despite rampant piracy, the film industry keeps increasing its revenue.
*facepalm* Yes, the same reason it always existed then. To improve the public's access to creative works by creating a favourable environment for businesses which create those works so that such businesses don't get laughed out of the room when asking for investment.
The problem is that the "favourable environment" copyright creates for businesses, is a free lunch at the expense of the consumers. Copyright beyond the first few years don't give any incentive to create new works; it only allows companies to take out a higher price for the works that still happen to be popular after a few years. It rewards companies for sitting on their @$$ets instead of creating something new.
Shakespeare also produced original content for his own, very popular, theatre business. According to today's copyright lobby, that'd never work, because all the other theatres in the country could just copy the plays without paying Shakespeare a cent.
On the other hand, the original contract isn't valid either if he doesn't click "Accept" on the installer. He can just dissect the installer file and not be in breach of the click-wrap agreement.
The GP is going about it in a very roundabout way, though.
You need to read up on contract law a bit. When you pay a shop for goods, legally you are making a tender and they are accepting your offer. At that point, the contract is complete, and you can't just go back and demand another contract, any more than you can re-negotiate the price.
That sounds fine to me. The problem is that the manufacturers try to change the terms of the contract *after* you've purchased the product, when you've opened the packaging and got a chance to read the fine print.
And the courts allow them to do this, unless the consumer complains within a reasonable amount of time.
But if it worked the way you describe, I'd be perfectly happy.
There's also the fact that the media companies uploaded their own material *for marketing purposes* (according to the TFA). That's basically admitting that piracy is good for them, at least some of the piracy.
Why haven't the record companies sued the artists for breach of contract then?
MegaUpload recorded a song with several well-known artists, the MegaUpload Song, and put it up on YouTube, and Universal quickly used their administrative priveleges with YouTube (intended for DMCA takedowns) to take the song down. When MegaUpload complained that the song didn't infringe anyone's copyright, it was put up again, and then immediately taken down again for "breach of TOS".
When MegaUpload complained in court that Universal had abused the DMCA, Universal admitted to taking the song down without reason, but defended themselves by saying that using YouTube's system for DMCA takedowns didn't formally constitute a DMCA takedown notice.
They didn't fail, they did both in parallel. In fact, MegaUpload was planning to increase the amount of licensed content and become a direct competitor to the traditional music distributors.
Also note that they didn't specifically pay people to upload pirated material. They just paid people when other people downloaded their files, without caring what it was. They were, of course, aware that a large portion of it was pirated.
Even if, say, Disney, struck a deal with MegaUpload, MegaUpload would still be distributing pirated versions of other companies' files. So Disney would buy a service from a company they think is illegitimate.
I agree... I want e-mail software that removes e-mail from spammers, but if a friend sends me an e-mail with a link to a spam site, I can decide for myself if I want to click the link.
Of course, if the software warns me and asks me to confirm when I click the link, that's ok too.
MegaUpload was monetising their copyrighted works all along... if the big media companies think that's an illegitimate business, it's hypocritical to try to be a part of it.
Ok, let's assume the record stores' slice of the cake has disappeared, because distributors such as Apple handle both sales and distribution and take out just a slightly larger margin. Where's the problem? It just means consumers get the same music for a lower price.
Consumers still have better access to music than ever (both legal and pirated), there are more music albums produced than ever[1], and the individual artists make more money than ever[2]
[1] According to studies made in the USA [2] According to studies made in Sweden and Norway.
Hm... my unsupported assertion in the OP gets modded +5 Insightful, but when I support the assertion with references to academic studies, I don't get a single mod?
I'm sure both you and your colleagues are good. There are just too many people who want to be musicians. Between 2000 and 2007, the number of music albums created more than doubled. (Michael Geist)
In general, there are too many people who want to live by doing creative work. I spend a lot of time writing fiction, and send it out to friends and acquaintances. I hope to earn money from it one day, but I'm not counting on it.
So all those local record stores and places like Walmart and Best Buy did not make any money off of sales of music?
Not sure what you mean by this comment. Yes, they made money, but Apple is taking a much larger margin than those stores typically did. Today, many artists completely bypass the record companies, producing their albums themselves, which means the record companies lose the revenue from those albums, and the artists and the distributors gain it.
Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates. Moreover, these estimates are of moderate economic significance and are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the recent decline in music sales.
Among Canadians who engage in P2P file-sharing, our results suggest that for every 12 P2P downloaded songs, music purchases increase by 0.44 CDs. That is, downloading the equivalent of approximately one CD increases purchasing by about half of a CD. We are unable to find evidence of any relationship between P2P file-sharing and purchases of electronically-delivered music tracks (e.g., songs from iTunes). With respect to the other effects, roughly half of all P2P tracks were downloaded because individuals wanted to hear songs before buying them or because they wanted to avoid purchasing the whole bundle of songs on the associated CDs and roughly one quarter were downloaded because they were not available for purchase. Our results indicate that only the effect capturing songs downloaded because they were not available for purchase influenced music purchasing, a 1 percent increase in such downloads being associated with nearly a 4 percent increase in CD purchases.
I don't understand what you mean with your comment about the physical media supply chain.
No, it's not the same. Until Windows Vista, the vast majority of users were logged in on accounts with full Administrator priveleges on their local computers. That made it much easier for small security loopholes to escalate into big security loopholes when a user ran a program or visited a web site they shouldn't have. Even on Windows Vista, users tended to turn off the security features because they were badly designed and too cumbersome. And remember that the decade-old Windows XP is still the most widely used Microsoft OS (unless it's been overtaken in the last year).
Also, until around the turn of the millenium, Microsoft didn't believe in the Internet. It may sound ludicrous today, but Microsoft claimed the Internet's popularity wouldn't last, and instead pushed their own proprietary online service, Microsoft Network, which, back then, was similar to America Online. Microsoft products were adapted to a LAN environment, not an Internet environment, so their security was seriously lagging behind, and it took many years for them to catch up.
Internet Explorer has also historically had much more security problems than the most popular browsers on competing operating systems (Safari, Firefox, Chrome, etc).
Saying that Windows OSes get more viruses because they're more widely used is only part of the answer.
Don't forget to include ASCAP revenues (or the equivalent in your country) in the total music sales figure. They've increased a lot during the last decade.
According to a news report by local station WRDW, the police incident report in the case claims that the teacher read “pornographic material from the Internet to the students in class. One of the stories was about prostitutes having their faces covered with ejaculation.” But according to the WRDW report, the school is still maintaining that the offending material was just three books that the teacher read to class, which were primarily offensive due to swear words. (Thanks to AJRimmer for pointing us to this.)
Slashdot Mirror
The modern patronage model works like this:
An artist declares that they're going to produce a new work of art, and asks for donations. People donate the amount of their choice, and in return, they usually get perks like being first to view/listen to the art, access to extra materials, their name prominently displayed, meeting the artist, etc.
I assume the GP meant public broadcasting service (PBS).
I don't think you need to go that far to show that copyright is not necessary to generate revenue, though. Ordinary, commercial broadcasting of TV programmes for free has worked quite well for more than half a century, thanks to advertising revenue. Even without copyright, the company that produces a TV programme will get most of the viewers, because they're first to broadcast it. The freeloading networks will have to make do with reruns.
The only fair solution is a balance for everyone concerned--a limited copyright that lets businesses recoup their investment without keeping works hostage to private interests for eternity. I am just as frustrated with the "all information should be free" crowd as I am with the "all free information is stealing" crowd, since neither has a lasting solution to the problem.
That's a reasonable position, but there are arguments against even a short and limited copyright. For example, once you have copyright, content producers become dependent on the slow and steady income from certain works, and start putting pressure on the legislators to extend it. That's how we ended up with the mess we have today.
Most people assume that copyright is necessary to recoup investments from, for example, $100 million films, but I'm not entirely convinced.
First, films tend to collect most of their revenue during the first two or three weeks of showing, which leaves little time for (legalised) pirates to make their own high-quality copies and distribute to pirate theatres.
Second, when DVD-quality copies have leaked to the filesharers at or before the premiere date, it hasn't affected filmgoing noticeably.
Third, despite rampant piracy, the film industry keeps increasing its revenue.
*facepalm* Yes, the same reason it always existed then. To improve the public's access to creative works by creating a favourable environment for businesses which create those works so that such businesses don't get laughed out of the room when asking for investment.
The problem is that the "favourable environment" copyright creates for businesses, is a free lunch at the expense of the consumers. Copyright beyond the first few years don't give any incentive to create new works; it only allows companies to take out a higher price for the works that still happen to be popular after a few years. It rewards companies for sitting on their @$$ets instead of creating something new.
Shakespeare also produced original content for his own, very popular, theatre business. According to today's copyright lobby, that'd never work, because all the other theatres in the country could just copy the plays without paying Shakespeare a cent.
On the other hand, the original contract isn't valid either if he doesn't click "Accept" on the installer. He can just dissect the installer file and not be in breach of the click-wrap agreement.
The GP is going about it in a very roundabout way, though.
You need to read up on contract law a bit. When you pay a shop for goods, legally you are making a tender and they are accepting your offer. At that point, the contract is complete, and you can't just go back and demand another contract, any more than you can re-negotiate the price.
That sounds fine to me. The problem is that the manufacturers try to change the terms of the contract *after* you've purchased the product, when you've opened the packaging and got a chance to read the fine print.
And the courts allow them to do this, unless the consumer complains within a reasonable amount of time.
But if it worked the way you describe, I'd be perfectly happy.
There's also the fact that the media companies uploaded their own material *for marketing purposes* (according to the TFA). That's basically admitting that piracy is good for them, at least some of the piracy.
Why haven't the record companies sued the artists for breach of contract then?
MegaUpload recorded a song with several well-known artists, the MegaUpload Song, and put it up on YouTube, and Universal quickly used their administrative priveleges with YouTube (intended for DMCA takedowns) to take the song down. When MegaUpload complained that the song didn't infringe anyone's copyright, it was put up again, and then immediately taken down again for "breach of TOS".
When MegaUpload complained in court that Universal had abused the DMCA, Universal admitted to taking the song down without reason, but defended themselves by saying that using YouTube's system for DMCA takedowns didn't formally constitute a DMCA takedown notice.
They didn't fail, they did both in parallel. In fact, MegaUpload was planning to increase the amount of licensed content and become a direct competitor to the traditional music distributors.
Also note that they didn't specifically pay people to upload pirated material. They just paid people when other people downloaded their files, without caring what it was. They were, of course, aware that a large portion of it was pirated.
You can check the cracks/keygens against the checksums from the release group's site, but yeah, most users have no idea how to do this.
Even if, say, Disney, struck a deal with MegaUpload, MegaUpload would still be distributing pirated versions of other companies' files. So Disney would buy a service from a company they think is illegitimate.
But I agree that the point is not very strong.
Doesn't "reasonable expectation of privacy" just apply to wiretapping orders?
I agree... I want e-mail software that removes e-mail from spammers, but if a friend sends me an e-mail with a link to a spam site, I can decide for myself if I want to click the link.
Of course, if the software warns me and asks me to confirm when I click the link, that's ok too.
MegaUpload was monetising their copyrighted works all along... if the big media companies think that's an illegitimate business, it's hypocritical to try to be a part of it.
MegaUpload paid well-known artists to upload their own content.
Ok, let's assume the record stores' slice of the cake has disappeared, because distributors such as Apple handle both sales and distribution and take out just a slightly larger margin. Where's the problem? It just means consumers get the same music for a lower price.
Consumers still have better access to music than ever (both legal and pirated), there are more music albums produced than ever[1], and the individual artists make more money than ever[2]
[1] According to studies made in the USA
[2] According to studies made in Sweden and Norway.
Hm... my unsupported assertion in the OP gets modded +5 Insightful, but when I support the assertion with references to academic studies, I don't get a single mod?
I'm sure both you and your colleagues are good. There are just too many people who want to be musicians. Between 2000 and 2007, the number of music albums created more than doubled. (Michael Geist)
In general, there are too many people who want to live by doing creative work. I spend a lot of time writing fiction, and send it out to friends and acquaintances. I hope to earn money from it one day, but I'm not counting on it.
So all those local record stores and places like Walmart and Best Buy did not make any money off of sales of music?
Not sure what you mean by this comment. Yes, they made money, but Apple is taking a much larger margin than those stores typically did. Today, many artists completely bypass the record companies, producing their albums themselves, which means the record companies lose the revenue from those albums, and the artists and the distributors gain it.
I'm sorry, it may be counter-intuitive that piracy has a zero or positive effect on music sales, but we can't ignore the facts.
The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales - An Empirical Analysis:
Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates. Moreover, these estimates are of moderate economic significance and are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the recent decline in music sales.
The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study for Industry Canada:
Among Canadians who engage in P2P file-sharing, our results suggest that for every 12 P2P downloaded songs, music purchases increase by 0.44 CDs. That is, downloading the equivalent of approximately one CD increases purchasing by about half of a CD. We are unable to find evidence of any relationship between P2P file-sharing and purchases of electronically-delivered music tracks (e.g., songs from iTunes). With respect to the other effects, roughly half of all P2P tracks were downloaded because individuals wanted to hear songs before buying them or because they wanted to avoid purchasing the whole bundle of songs on the associated CDs and roughly one quarter were downloaded because they were not available for purchase. Our results indicate that only the effect capturing songs downloaded because they were not available for purchase influenced music purchasing, a 1 percent increase in such downloads being associated with nearly a 4 percent increase in CD purchases.
I don't understand what you mean with your comment about the physical media supply chain.
No, it's not the same. Until Windows Vista, the vast majority of users were logged in on accounts with full Administrator priveleges on their local computers. That made it much easier for small security loopholes to escalate into big security loopholes when a user ran a program or visited a web site they shouldn't have. Even on Windows Vista, users tended to turn off the security features because they were badly designed and too cumbersome. And remember that the decade-old Windows XP is still the most widely used Microsoft OS (unless it's been overtaken in the last year).
Also, until around the turn of the millenium, Microsoft didn't believe in the Internet. It may sound ludicrous today, but Microsoft claimed the Internet's popularity wouldn't last, and instead pushed their own proprietary online service, Microsoft Network, which, back then, was similar to America Online. Microsoft products were adapted to a LAN environment, not an Internet environment, so their security was seriously lagging behind, and it took many years for them to catch up.
Internet Explorer has also historically had much more security problems than the most popular browsers on competing operating systems (Safari, Firefox, Chrome, etc).
Saying that Windows OSes get more viruses because they're more widely used is only part of the answer.
Don't forget to include ASCAP revenues (or the equivalent in your country) in the total music sales figure. They've increased a lot during the last decade.
From TFA:
Update 2: According to an update at io9:
According to a news report by local station WRDW, the police incident report in the case claims that the teacher read “pornographic material from the Internet to the students in class. One of the stories was about prostitutes having their faces covered with ejaculation.” But according to the WRDW report, the school is still maintaining that the offending material was just three books that the teacher read to class, which were primarily offensive due to swear words. (Thanks to AJRimmer for pointing us to this.)
So, you're saying that countries new to capitalism try to block other people's innovations instead of improving their own?
Good thing we don't have that problem here in the West!