I'm very interested in the intended scope of this. To my mind, it's simple corporate warfare if they are talking specifically about Napster. If they want to target and kill any business that focusses on exchanging Sony music for no money, well- I can see some logic in that, though it's a pity the idea of information sharing isn't more popular.
If they intend to target MP3 itself- ouch. Modified ouch... after all, mp3 is a painfully encumbered format and there is every reason to believe the patent holders will start putting the screws to ME the musician just as soon as they are ready to. This kind of lessens my willingness to madly defend the format- defend for whom? But all the same I _really_ don't like the idea of a world-controlling corporation shutting off entire forms of media, encumbered or non-encumbered.
If they intend to target ALL forms of media, current and future, being used to exchange Sony music for no money- *tweet* outta the pool! The towering, unavoidable problem with this is that it outlaws non-corporate media. I as a non-corporate musician wouldn't be allowed to function if every time I found a new digital format I could distribute on, Sony pulled strings to get it banned from all ISPs- particularly ugly is the fact that, unlike music-exchangers, I wouldn't find it so convenient to be anonymous or to conceal the filetypes or whatever.
Currently, I put out mp3s (see URL link, as ever) quite openly. If a Sony manages to make it impossible to traffic in mp3 files at all, I'm hosed. (If the patent holders start demanding $30,000 to use the format I'm also hosed- and this is beginning to happen already.) So I move to Ogg Vorbis *tadah* just as soon as I get my hands on the MacHack hack that ported the codec to MacOS (yes, turns out such a hack does actually exist- I want!). This time there is no patent holder, but there's Sony again, trying to get Vorbis outlawed- and that is the problem.
It's really not acceptable, in this day and age, for the individual to be forbidden to produce and distribute media. What Sony _wants_ is for anything that might ever get in their way to be made illegal and ferociously punished. They may not get what they want, but people must remain aware of the overwhelming importance of placing the tools for this media in people's hands. To legally support the position that the common man is fit only for mindless consumption is a despicable point of view- and it doesn't even matter that the common man's art or music may suck compared to a handpicked Sony artist with a million dollar (all out of royalties...) bankroll. That's irrelevant- the fact is, that ordinary person MUST NOT be legally forbidden to create. To forbid this is a shocking development that speaks volumes about the perspective and motivation of the corporate entity in society...
One would hope that the common man doesn't get forbidden IN PRACTICE from creating, either. "Oh, go ahead! That'll be thirty thousand dollars....so incorporate and do an IPO why don't you? Stop being a human being and become, legally, one of US..."
Good for you:) I went and gave all your songs full downloads (except netscape suicided in the middle of the last 9 meg one- note to non mp3.commers, if you download people's full songs it helps them out in the stats and PFP more than streaming listens) and I'm getting a huge kick out of them:) The rhythmic dislocations of 'Pipe' are just outrageous, and I really enjoy your take on the 'trance' genre *evil cackle* much fun, strange music! Plus your bassdrums really kick. Good work:) you've probably already seen my stuff (in my link- everybody but Jon Katz has seen it by _now_) but if not I'd probably direct you to 'Water Dragon' as the only thing that is truly weird enough to sate your appetites, that and 'Bone Dragon' and maybe some of the lead guitar on tracks like 'B17 Flying Fortress':) damn, it's nice to hear more music that- well, I'll quote Frank Zappa off the cover of Absolutely Free- "This tree is UGLY and it wants to die" no, wait, I meant "kills on contact" no- ah, here, the line I was looking for was, "You must BUY this album now- Top 40 Radio will NEVER EVER PLAY IT (buy this thing)"
That would depend on whether noncommercial copying and exchange constitutes infringement. You may behave like taping albums and stuff off the TV is illegal, if this pleases you, but that doesn't make it true. There is such a thing as fair use and one criterion is that the copying and exchange doesn't take place commercially. Claiming that this exchange intrinsically makes the situation commercial leads to a contradiction that renders pre-existing fair use meaningless- clearly if you tape your own CD, this is enabling you to not re-purchase the same music on audiotape, therefore home taping is commercial too... except that the law says home taping is fair use, and not by accident.
Follow the reasoning, respect the law and you can plainly see there's substantial question as to whether Napster exchange is even infringement. It's noncommercial, and is not even verbatim copying of the exact bits of the commercial product, merely an approximation much like audiotapes.
On the other hand, if you _don't_ respect the law you're welcome to imply whatever you like, but it seems strange to turn to the law for shelter when you aren't even interested in respecting what it has already had to say on the matter.
Hope you can read legalese;) generally, when they try to get away with stuff it's _very_ obvious- take it from somebody who reads music business clickthrough contracts for fun:D
Basically, if it seems to be saying really outrageous stuff and nailing it down without the slightest room to weasel out, you're in trouble. Contracts are contracts- it's not a simple matter to claim 'this was unreasonable so it's not valid or binding'. In fact, some of them have specific language stating that you've read the contract, understand it and agree that it is valid (another good litmus test- does the 'boilerplate' have you pointedly agreeing that it is valid, or does it just make its points?
Another tactic to look out for might be the traditional music business tactic of the 'deal memo', which could easily be adapted to the dotcom world. Basically, if there's a post-it saying something that seems 'reasonable' but could be used with legal literalness to harm you, and you're asked to sign it, watch out. I think the music biz version might go like this:
X Band will exclusively come to an agreement for a recording contract with XYZ Recording Company
Not many words, but sign it and contract law applies to it- you don't actually have an agreement yet, but you've just pledged to work only for XYZ before they've even set out any terms (the terms will _suck_). This is possible because there are far too many guitar players and always have been;) however, the potential dotcommer is not forever protected from this kind of treatment just because of current scarcity of tech professionals. That will pass.
In the final analysis, whatever the rationalisation, it's not sensible to be too flippant about signing legal documents that can be used against you. It's all too easy to abuse these things. Ask yourself if the company is willing to sign _your_ little contract in return- and whether you can afford to get a lawyer to enforce your little contract. Signing the NDA is potentially turning over too much power to the company- and this depends entirely on what's set forth in the document. There is no such thing, legally, as 'boilerplate'- it doesn't matter what they say about the relative significance of parts of the contract, every word applies, with the exception of bits marked 'summary, see below for actual conditions': if ever you are given a contract with a 'summary', totally ignore the 'Cliff's Notes' version and pay extra attention to the actual legalese as they _are_ trying to slip something by you:)
The Atlantic Monthly's articles are FREAKING AWESOME:D
The first time Slashdot linked to 'em, I ended up spending _hours_ there reading article after article. They are _great_ articles, terrific journalism done with style and intelligence. At this point I would be much more likely to click on a link and read an article if I knew it was Atlantic Monthly, that's how favorably they impressed me. I strongly recommend going there and reading all the articles you can find:)
Go hook up with mp3.com:) so far, their contract goes for only _nonexclusive_ rights, meaning they pretty much get to do what they want with what you give them, but you still own it and can do anything else that you want with it. It's perfect for times like this when you're not sure what's going to end up happening- you are free to move in case something important happens like Open Source Penguin DVD-Audio Co-operative Record Labels or something;)
Also, so far, the mp3.com contract does require both parties to consent to any changes that might be imposed in future. This is incredibly important as most major label contracts, and a lot of sleazy 'fake-indie' mp3-site contracts, give the label unrestricted freedom to unilaterally change the terms after you've agreed to them- check out farmclub.com's agreement for a particularly nasty example that forbids you to _imply_ they _endorse_ you in any way, on top of everything else:)
This is the new millenium, man- don't _ever_ sign a contract that's like you say. Don't _ever_ sign away all your rights and IP. You need to remain free to move as these issues develop:)
if it would be legal to burn a copy for his wife- and Hilary Rosen hemmed and hawed, at which point Orrin Hatch muttered, "The answer would be Yes" because he'd helped make the legislation by which consumers were allowed to do this with cassette tapes, and it's the same damn thing!
Sorry, this is old news. It may be that the RIAA is having great success in taking away Orrin Hatch's right to legally burn a CD for his wife as fair use, but he had that right. Let's not be confused on that point- our government people went to a lot of trouble to arrange that we had a reasonable amount of fair use, and the laws are on the books. The fact that the RIAA is trying to overturn all this doesn't change the fact that fair use is the law, and it was put there on purpose, to allow people to do just these things.
Does it upset you that a lot of artists will choose, looking at the already miserable chances of even breaking even recording music, to just distribute their stuff for free- undercutting those musicians who are trying to earn a living, and perhaps even putting them out of business?
In other words, you may have Metallica on one hand and Limp Bizkit on the other. Imagine Limp Bizkit pulling a sort of 'IE destroying Netscape's business' by making all their stuff free, and hyping that a lot so it's everywhere. To what extent would this hurt Metallica, who will be trying to produce the expectation that you always pay for music? What if _lots_ of internet musicians and bankrupt major label refugees (including the big names of the last 30-40 years in pop music) began to pursue this strategy of keeping the same day job they had to have all along, and recording the music they especially liked, releasing it for free?
I think there comes a point where the amount of artist-driven free material will start to seriously impact the ability of a Metallica to create the expectation that music is something you meter and sell and restrict. That's not to say people won't go to a concert or buy a CD, but the business model of 'all the fans HAVE TO buy the CD' will die. And the consumer will feel no responsibility to pay the artist- when you read a book from the library, do you pay the author?
If there is any artist's power, it is in the rabid fans- the fanatics. In the early sixties they were cutting up _bedsheets_ that the Beatles had slept on, and selling them- how would free access to recordings diminish this sort of frenzy? You look to the heavy users, the fanatics, if you want to do business and earn money, because those are the people who think what you do is WORTH something. The uninterested consumer's natural degree of commitment only goes as far as sparing a bit of attention, and if you think you can squeeze money out of them you're conning yourself...
They already don't give the artists a cent man- it even says so right in the article. So why no uproar? Because slashdotters are interested in code, linux, natalie portman, whatever- not record industry contracts which most of them will never even see. There's plenty of uproar from actual musicians and music business professionals- try Steve Albini, Elton John, Courtney Love, and those are only the ones who are willing for whatever reason to really blow the whistle no matter what the consequences- Elton John probably because he's capable of still selling out concerts even if he was blackballed by the industry, Courtney Love because she has a self-described self-destructive streak and is happy to ruin her career for a chance to tell the real truth about things, etc.
Honestly, the record industry already does just this, and much more- they've managed to seize the intellectual property of most of the artists forever (see the copyright reversion stuff tacked onto the Home Satellite act) and have destroyed the artists' ability to get out of ungodly horrible contracts even when the artists are literally bankrupted. That's 'losing all their money' not simply 'not earning lots of money'- that's 'taking the songs, the performances, the mechanicals and all the intellectual property and also taking all the money away from the artist and leaving them bankrupt and, as Courtney Love astutely pointed out, with no credit'.
Seeing as they already behave even worse than you suggest and Slashdot people are mostly oblivious, why would there be an uproar in support of artists if the record companies formalised this and stated outright what they already do anyhow? Slashdotters don't necessarily care all that much about artists, why should they? Let artists care about artists. Artists may not care as much about DeCSS and that's where slashdotters might find themselves more directly involved.
Personally, as an artist, I'm just happy a bunch of people are fans of a digital file format that I can distribute music with. Some slashdotters have really dug my music, some were like 'what?' and some made fun of me because I'm not Metallica:) go figure! At least there's somebody coding the formats I get to use as a 'content producer';) I still can't wait to see Ogg Vorbis eventually get to the Mac where I can make use of it, I'm _ready_ for that stuff...
Dunno how involved you are on this level, but I've made upwards of $400 on mp3.com, where most of 'my competition' struggles to make $40 or $4, and I've told people how to do that and now some of the people I've told make more than me. I would love to think that people would do it your way but I am obliged to share the information of how to really do it with slashdotters, as I've seen other slashdotten musicians:)
First, go to mp3.com/chrisj and download all of my music a lot and buy all my CDs *g* just kidding! *ducks flung boots and stuff* Seriously, I mean, please do, but that was a joke. The real point is simply this:
Free stuff beats restricted stuff for mindshare.
It's that simple. I made all my stuff available free. I know a lot of people who used to, or still are, putting up only 'sample tracks' and making full CDs available with lots more stuff. A lot of those people got trapped by their own tightfistedness- they behaved as if they did such wonderful stuff that people would _have_ to buy their CD, would be _forced_ to do business. Unfortunately mp3.com is like a microcosm of internet commerce in that there are a LOT of bands there, and every time, the listeners would listen to those few tunes, get bored and go somewhere else, to some page that had LOTS of tunes! for free! The top money-spinners of mp3.com ended up being various more or less mainstream-type artists who didn't need to force money out of people (for instance, 'Bassic') and who made very large amounts of music available free.
That's the dynamic, and there's no escaping it. This is how Microsoft killed Netscape. This is how any number of internet musicians will kill the ones who insist on full prepayment. You just click a link or search and bam, you've got 40 different bands and musicians who are just as good and who aren't insisting on any sort of payment at all. Some (such as myself) are happily getting a cut of the ad banner revenue or something- some might just be distributing freely because they want to be heard, and want the freedom to pursue their art with NO compromises whatsoever. That's a good motivation- another motivation might come from recognising this dynamic and realising, damn, the way to get enough mindshare to be _able_ to be paid at all for good work is to begin giving the work away and just don't stop- keep doing it and doing it, and count on eventually selling things like 'convenience CDs' (as I've done repeatedly, even though I supply not only mp3s for burning CDs from but even literally the cover art to print out and use for your privately burned CD- not a joke, go see for yourself) or posters or special vinyl releases or special CD mixes- any or all of those things. Tchochkes. If you can be heard you can find a niche- people manage to find niches even by playing with tacky PC software to layer pre-made trance loops. Even this can sell CDs- given a bit of mindshare- but you can't tell people 'I ought to be able to do something great, give me money and I'll do something awesome!'. This can't compete with unrestricted free stuff...
Tell me about it;) I bought X-Plane when it was $200... now it's $80 but I'm not a bit sorry, I've really enjoyed it. In a funny sort of way this is an example of how good things can survive and persist even in a total wasteland of consumer-driven lowest common denominator garbage... X-Plane sold to fanatics. It still does, perhaps a bit easier now. It isn't for Fred Consumer who wants to fly a 747 to La Guardia by fast-forwarding it and then shooting a 'forgiving' landing- it's for the lunatics who'd be asking 'Why does the digital readout on the altimeter not have the correct font for Boeings?' Those are the people who've done things like entirely model aircraft cockpits in 3D rendering to accurately place the locations of gauges and the view obstructions at each perspective. They're the ones who were willing to cough up $200 or $300 when MSFS just would not do (it still won't- flightmodel is still a comparative toy, and at this point the eyecandy-driven framerate for MSFS is a sick joke- X-Plane's beginning to look as good but is a _lot_ smoother in use)
It's not even about documentation and debugging- X-Plane's always been developed so rapidly that documentation is a black art. It's about the target audience, pure and simple. Anytime you target the lowest common denominator instead of the high white scream of a perfect, unattainable concept, a part of your art dies. Those who refuse to grovel to the lowest common denominator are doomed to miss the consumer market- but there are the fanatics- then it just becomes a question of this: can your business model support a real business with selling and expenses and a breakeven point, or are you playing dotcom and expecting to sell to the whole world at a loss and make it up on volume? If it's the latter, forget it- if you have some sense, then it's still possible to make a product (even a game, even a game that doesn't target the mainstream) and do business with it. It's almost like a litmus test- these days, it's _impossible_ to play 'A-list' except by playing dot-com and king of the hill. Hence, CNet's article, and the perception that the game industry is dying. It is- if that's all you're looking at.
*g* well, I can't say it's available for more than Mac and Windows (and on Mac you'd better be running ATI for the 3D) but- http://www.x-plane.com
You want geeky? Try blade element modelling on all flight surfaces at least six times a second and _emergent_ flight model. Try modelling one of those wack planes from that upcoming MS game and seeing just how *CRASH!* unrealistic *WHAM!* it *CRASH!* really is *SPLAT!*;) Then, work like a crazed weasel at trying different airfoils, giving the canard a steeper upward cant, messing with the center of gravity, and eventually get something that flies, even something that flies well- and know that if you could build the actual plane, IT WOULD fly like that, for the most part. Now that's geeky! It's freaking delightful. There's no complex system half as much fun as designing aircraft and modelling them with blade element modelling. And half the fun is knowing that the majority of even X-Planers aren't up to the challenge and will only fly the Cessna 172 Skyhawk (aka 'spam can') and bitch about its modelling;) (which considering that no actual 172 flight model data was put in, just the dimensions of the plane and vital statistics, is not so bad at all)
I haven't updated the planes to the latest version of X-Plane yet, but I have some planes (with pictures) up at http://www.airwindows.com/gam es/flightsims/index.html. The planes there were a lot of fun to make, and there are infinite other possibilities..
Seriously- to hell with that! If a runner went around kneecapping everyone else in the race would you give him the prize? Even if you did, would you cheer when he showed up at another race?
I can tell you one condition under which I'd start using Internet Explorer. That condition is if IE was seized by the government, nationalised, perhaps turned over to the United Nations and henceforth developed and maintained by a multinational standards body- sort of 'if there really is going to be only one way for the world's citizens to communicate and do e-commerce, let's give them a voice in how it's made'.
Failing that, you go to hell and you die! I don't care how much worse other browsers are after they've been kneecapped or rendered forever unable to get financing. I've a right to make decisions that affect me, and I REFUSE to cooperate in giving power to what, in so many ways, is my most intractable competition. This is somewhat indirect- if I was a smalltown newspaper editor rather than a hacker and musician and writer MS would be more _directly_ my competition- but it's like Wal-Martization, I have _no_ valid role to MS other than as a passive consumer. I imagine I'm supposed to get the money to buy MS products from working AT Wal-Mart: lord knows it's certainly not by writing a web browser, word processor, spreadsheet and selling it to anybody.
On the other hand, if I wrote a game, MS might _buy_ me, and presumably this would come with a salary capable of paying for more Microsoft Products. Unless they only gave me stock options and I had to get a job at Wal-Mart to pay for the Microsoft Products;P
Seriously- to hell with you and your Internet Explorer! You're really stupid if you don't understand questions of consequences when they are _so_ obvious. Perhaps you don't remember a computer industry that wasn't composed of Microsoft and its servants? Funny, I remember an Internet that is composed of more than Microsoft and its servants. We're looking at it- for now.
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Justice and freedom and integrity only happen with _effort_. To believe as you do would make these things by definition impossible- thus making the argument meaningless. I'm not sure where you get this notion that making a meaningless argument means you win it...
In short: like hell there's not. You're free to argue that you have no sense of justice, no freedom, would not give others freedom, and that you have no integrity. I believe you, I do! Now please go play somewhere else- and for God's sake, don't vote! You would not legally be allowed to vote in Vermont as you'd be asked to agree to a statement that contradicts your philosophy completely and demands that you have integrity. Here's hoping you're not allowed to vote anywhere else either, unless you get a clue.
Soon they'll be able to tell individual Linux developers and development teams to 'knife the baby' just like they told Apple!
For those who don't recognise that reference- first of all, furrfu- second of all, this is the real leverage that comes with having Office on a platform. Given the expectation that 'oh, Office is on platform X, therefore legitimising it', Microsoft can and does use this as a weapon. For example, they literally told Apple to kill off Quicktime or they'd kill Office for MacOS- the quote comes from an exchange like 'We think it would be better if Quicktime, uh, wasn't.' 'Let's get this straight, are you asking us to knife Quicktime for you- to knife our baby?' 'Yes, we're talking about knifing the baby'.
Should MS apps be established on Linux it'd be like that only instead of dealing with a single point of development and control, MS would be dealing with little groups and individuals, threatening them that if they didn't stop work on their projects, MS would kill Office for Linux (and presumably blame said developer). This degree of blackmail might not work on RMS types but there is a level where it is frightening. Basically it's a sort of extortion, and the point is to engender a climate of fear and obedience. Some of us (mac people into development) have been able to watch this sort of thing going on in the real world for longer than you linux people have... and yes it seems to be illegal, the antitrust case nailed them for JUST this sort of behavior. Now we've got to see if that sticks, or if they get to ignore that as well.
At any rate- there is no benefit from having Office available for your platform. None. There's no significant compatibility between versions, ports are never in synch, it takes large amounts of motivation for them to produce software even half good (i.e. IE for mac) and even if they do they take pains to use it to cut off your other options and change the 'territory' right out from under you so your choices are dead.
The people screaming 'nooooo!' are, ironically, a lot closer to the mark than the people screaming 'yay' here. You've got to look at the business practices that inevitably go along with this sort of 'beachhead'. These guys kill markets- that is their whole schtick. Why would you want them coming over and killing your market too, even if your market is largely mindshare instead of commercial? All it will do is kill your choices without giving you the supposed benefits you think you'd be getting. And that's because, as was repeatedly found by the judge in the antitrust case, they really make a special EFFORT to kill your choices and kill your market- we're not talking about 'network effects', we're talking 'knife the baby'. An MS guy actually accepted those words, mid-negotiation, as descriptive of what they were trying to do. How can that be right? How can that be a market?
Absolutely. I can tell you I'm one letter away from pulling all my own music (that I recorded and played myself, that is 100% legitimate and doesn't even use samples) off the web. Technically, I have a buffer zone- I'm hosting through mp3.com, they are the ones who'd get hit, but it's probably just a matter of time. If they are they'll have a hard time continuing to pay me as they're currently committed to doing- I get a lot of traffic and downloads for an mp3.com artist, but they just do not have the margin to withstand this kind of squeeze. Nobody would go to mp3.com AT ALL if they had to pay to download- it just wouldn't happen.
Vorbis is not necessarily going to keep these guys in check. I think that's overly optimistic. I think they're going to end up putting the screws on anyhow, simply because they can- no matter whether they will truly get away with it in the long run. And 'Hammy's point is absolutely apt- sure, fine, rip other people's CDs all you want, but if you intend to run a small business centered around your music (or even music services, such as studio rental) you can't hide. You're out there, and you've gotta use _something_ to show people what you're doing, and more than anything else you need a distribution medium that's not going to soak you with royalties (never mind the 15K minimum payment!). That makes the cost of entry for being a 'record label' or 'studio that releases demonstrations via mp3' just prohibitive- it pushes your breakeven point painfully far into the future, and you have to jack up your prices to cover this and can't find customers at the higher prices.
Ogg Vorbis is the answer- even if it wasn't arguably better sounding than mp3 it would be the answer. It becomes a question of mindshare- we do need more extensive ports (I'm startled there's _still_ no MacOS port- do they want to reach musicians or not?) but that'll come. Then it becomes a symbiotic relationship- small content providers must turn to Ogg Vorbis to have an unencumbered form of media to distribute with, and Ogg will rely on this grassroots support among the _creators_ (i.e. small business!), who will be powerful allies in a way that napster people never could. There's nothing like being faced with the threat (immediate or expected) of massive extortionate licensing problems to make you support something else with all your heart and soul;)
I sure wish Vorbis _was_ available to me- if I could afford to buy Linux machines just to encode Ogg with, I could probably afford mp3 licensing at its deadly, soon-to-come worst. But even though I can't have it yet, I can see which side I'm on.
To me the objectionable part is not that they gathered up publically available theses and put 'em on the web, not even so much that they are charging for it (though that is distinctly annoying- call it deceptive, as people might not know the theses are publically available), but the notion that in future they will go to court and sue you for using any of it if you don't clear it with them. That to me crosses the line- it's the epitome of the 'evil corporate leech' concept, the idea of somebody going around scrounging up people's work and then taking legal action to basically pirate it and withhold it. That to me is piracy- not so much the taking, but the sword-waving after the fact. When these guys take theses they _stay_ took! You'll have to pay them to use your own words! Arrr!;P
I have to be alarmed whenever I see bits of legal boilerplate like 'X owns all content on its (aggregated, database, pirated) website and use is prohibited unless you get licensing from us'. Common sense would seem to indicate that if they just gathered up public stuff they can't really do that- but common sense doesn't always describe the world around us, and good faith is in even shorter supply. I honestly thought the people holding mp3 patents were going to only go after software authors- silly me! Turns out they are only overlooking me, the musician-type person- and will happily clobber me with lawyers and demand $15,000 and one cent minimum per download if I'm seen making mp3s of my own music available on my own website. But CD rippers can do that free, because they're not a business!;P
They appear to be talking in terms of charging royalties for internet downloads on the order of a minimum one cent per download, as applying to a content provider making their music available through mp3. I don't see that they're acting on this- yet.
If they start doing so, it's an absolute showstopper. I for one can't afford to share my music freely under those conditions- I'd be owing them hundreds of dollars by now thanks to mp3.com. Currently mp3.com expects to pay _me_ for this- I hope they do before they hear that knock at the door. One cent per download totally screws anybody's intent to promote themselves via free downloads, and also hoses attempts at micropayments for those who are into that. It might not seem like much if you're just downloading a few songs, but if you're hosting and you are doing a good amount of download volume, it will add up real quick- plus the required accounting procedures to keep track of all this.
I'm ready for Vorbis. mp3 is GIF waiting to happen. Anybody want to earn a few bucks as a conslutant helping me port the Ogg Vorbis stuff to MacOS? I'm not a good enough programmer to do it without help, but I do have a current copy of Codewarrior, and MPW.
One percent royalty on music downloads? I am making upwards of $400 from mp3.com, the bulk of which is from free downloads (there's an incentive program, a million bucks divvied up among the musicians by mp3.com). That would be four bucks either from me or from mp3.com just for using the format.
But wait, it gets better! A minimum of one cent per download??? Just how much do they freakin' think I _make_ from the downloads at mp3.com? I don't CHARGE people for those, it's part of the incentive program. As near as I can figure this would be in the thousands of dollars! O_O
Oh, man, you are right, this _is_ scary. Hopefully I can get paid what I'm currently owed while still remaining 'blissfully ignorant' of this situation. To me, the one cent minimum royalty on each download is the CRUSHER- that is an absolute showstopper. Makes me glad I never invested in an encoder beyond BladeEnc (say what you want, if you have the capacity of pre-emphasising the highs you can get a really smooth full sound out of it that's not over-dull).
Who knew? I could see a scenario in which mp3.com itself switches to Vorbis- that is, if it is actually possible to levy an mp3-distributing tax of a penny a download. Oy... this is nuts... looks like I have to teach myself C programming just to be able to compile and build Vorbis binaries for my Mac just to be able to operate as a musician... talk about 'not in the job description'! o_O
I agree with your main point here, but man! This is the one field in which you just _cannot_ overlook MacOS (pre-OSX MacOS). A shockingly high percentage of professional music studios and pro-quality content producers (not soundcard people, people with actual studios) are MacOS based. Why? Because it will do hard realtime applications like digital audio or MIDI sequencing with perfect results on any Mac even vaguely capable of handling the task- digital audio on Nubus powermacs and some 68Ks with Digi boards, MIDI on anything even including the old black and white Mac Pluses and earlier. What happens is you lose the interface- the MIDI or digital audio records/plays perfectly without a bobble and screen redraw or mouse movement gets shaky if there's not enough CPU. No professional would have it any other way- interface responsiveness is _not_ worth a.01 second dropout in a final take in a recording studio billing hundreds of dollars an hour. Macs rule for this- ask the Geeks In Space guys- think of them as a funny sort of embedded system that happens to do a personal computer impression;)
So to hell with the 'Dozers, their soundcards won't be producing clean enough recordings to flaunt Vorbis anyways (except for the few mad dozers running kilobuck soundcards, that's different)- if there's anybody capable of doing it, get this stuff deployed on MacOS _pronto_, then do something like make an extension that adds the Vorbis codec to Quicktime. Hell, just whip up a quick and dirty SIOW port for just the CLI tools and have people use that for now- but get it into the hands of the serious professional audio geeks. Heck with the soundcard people! The majority of CONTENT is not generated by CD rippers- I'd say that content was the digital audio, and the ripping is just translating content that already exists. Wouldn't you rather have the artists releasing Vorbis content themselves?
Furrfu. I make a lot of use of compressed digital audio. Why would I stop using one sort of compression that's totally tied up with patents to go and use another sort of compression that's totally tied up with patents? N F W (and that's not "fscking" way, this time). I've been following Ogg Vorbis with great interest despite not being able to find Mac binaries. I mix my own recordings on an analog board and _know_ I can get the most out of Vorbis, and my artist agreement with mp3.com totally permits me to go make vorbised versions of any or all of my tracks and host them on a vorbis-oriented hosting service. But if they go and get into 'defensive patents' they can go pound sand, I won't help in the slightest.
Quick clue session: there is no such thing as a defensive patent! A patent is a patent. The notion of a 'defensive' one is the intellectual property equivalent of passive-aggressive behavior. At the end of the day it's just a patent and has inevitably, unavoidably put the control in one person's hands, or one entity's, along with all the tools for abuse. There is NO such thing as a defensive patent. If people's desire to create and share their OWN INTELLECTUAL PRODUCTS is not enough to protect them legally- then we need a revolution of legal expectations, NOT 'defensive patents'. Are we not clear on the fact that the Vorbis people are doing their own work, in public, pointedly avoiding potential legal problems? Just how much credibility do we want to give potential attackers here? I'd rather be ready to scorn the potential attack and wave lots of evidence of prior art, instead. At some point that HAS to be enough. If it's not enough the system is so totally screwed that it's morally and ethically intolerable to cooperate with it in any way at all...
George Clinton released whole albums of remixes JUST TO allow rap artists to legally sample songs that were technically owned not by him but by the record companies. You couldn't necessarily legally sample "Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication" (G. Clinton, B. Collins, B. Worrell, G. Shider)- but George Clinton would do a remix of it so that you could sample the backing tracks! He literally remixed loads of songs explicitly to get around that record company-imposed limitation, and allow people to sample his tracks.
George Clinton deserves _much_ respect for the actions he's taken to back up his beliefs.
Granted, Prince has made his money (or has he? Some platinum sellers have had to declare bankruptcy- did Prince actually make money or did he make squat, not enough to live on, like Roger McGuinn of the Byrds?) but it's still terrific to see him entering this 'cultural discussion'.
One point that he touches on, which is not commonly expressed, is that motivation- love vs. consumption. If you put in some work (years of it) studying music, production, sound engineering, you gradually become more able to target the median of consumer desires, and you learn how to avoid including anything that would offend a consumer- and then you get to be mainstream, possibly a million seller, if you're properly hyped.
This is not art, but commerce.
Prince has in some ways used 'commercially popular' techniques (good production, intense vocals, high squealy notes and high squealy guitar solos etc etc etc) but he is also one of the few who's genuinely shown an experimental spirit- perhaps best illustrated by one of his monster hits, 'When Doves Cry'. The production of this remains unusual but at the time that it came out, was quite shocking- sparse, largely empty, producing more impact by virtue of the sheer bareness of the track. Prince was known to record many parts in the studio and then work by subtraction, taking out this and that track and seeing what combination of parts worked best- in "When Doves Cry" this subtractive technique was carried to an extreme. It breaks all the rules for 'popular' music production, and breaks them so well that it became a breakout monster hit.
The important thing to remember about art is that it is individual, and it's not possible to achieve artistic peaks and still avoid making enemies of your work. Love and hate are two sides of the same coin- the nearer you come to some person's love, the more another person will hate what you've done. A real artist (and I do consider Prince a real artist) will ignore this, accept the hate, refuse to water down their artistic vision.
Naturally I consider my music art;) more significantly, _only_ since I started to accept it as art have I liked it worth a damn. I produced music for years, in an agony of trying to tailor it to what I thought people would like. (This is all pre-Internet and little remains of this stuff.) It was OK- never managed to get beyond my own idiosyncracies and never succeeded in making truly commercial music. Then I started again, and for particular reasons (access to mp3.com) I decided to do some music that was just what _I_ felt like doing- to do a lot of different music based only on what I felt like playing and composing and hearing.
Since then, it's been freaking awesome!:) I've talked with a lot of other musicians, made a lot of really rabid fans, a lot of really rabid enemies, and a kinda-lot of money (to me, a couple hundred bucks is a lot). I've seen people fixate on the strangest things and be delighted, and I've had people take GREAT PAINS to convince me and anyone else reading that I'm a complete loser who's not good enough to be commercial. And I love every bit of it. My artist side was long suppressed and restrained, but now when I see someone come off all negative and totally scorn my music, I'll laugh at them and tell them to listen to stuff like the 'Hard Vacuum' noise album, or 'Bone Dragon' or 'Water Dragon' from the Dragons album which are downright weird, or I'll just sneer back at them and go off and produce some more music that they'd hate even worse. Because I do what _I_ like- I do what I think is good, and I like a lot of truly peculiar music:)
I've tried to arrange my mp3.com page so that it explains to people a little better what they're getting into- but what I'm about is not being 'the Microsoft of music' or pinning down the widest possible range of consumers. What illustrates me best is the picture of me running a roaring shortwave radio through homebrewed multiband compression and screwing with the controls to produce a definitive Noise track (White Dwarf), something which most of the world might think is just crap! But there are Noise fans out there, protesting at the tendency for industrial techno to genre-trespass into Noise charts, people who understand _immediately_ just what's being attempted in 'White Dwarf' and instantly recognise it as canonical Noise, from a hitherto unheard source. Or the image might be the composing of 'Water Dragon', spending _days_ painstakingly filling in the froth of flickering piano notes around the spacey lead piano theme, and composing a drum part that is so relentlessly experimental that it seems to stretch and contract in a peculiar disjointed rhythm- which evokes the unforgiving wasteland of the sea. You can't dance to the sea. You could drown in it. You can't understand it. It's not necessarily pretty- but there's a validity to trying to express it in sound and music- and when Prince talks about people listening to music for love of it and teaching themselves to understand it, he's not talking about making more crappy manufactured hits, he's talking about the forces that eventually got me onto my own artistic path- of people exchanging and learning from stuff that's beyond what the major labels feed 'the consumer'.
How many of you have used Napster or something like it to try and find something really _obscure_ or weird or unpopular? Never mind if you found it- that'll come. Have you searched for something that Warner Bros. would not sell you, because there's 'no market' for it? This is what Prince is really talking about. This is the reason I've so often asked for my music to be openly traded on Napster This is the only way towards cultural education now that there's no market for culturally educating people in school...
Slashdot Mirror
If they intend to target MP3 itself- ouch. Modified ouch... after all, mp3 is a painfully encumbered format and there is every reason to believe the patent holders will start putting the screws to ME the musician just as soon as they are ready to. This kind of lessens my willingness to madly defend the format- defend for whom? But all the same I _really_ don't like the idea of a world-controlling corporation shutting off entire forms of media, encumbered or non-encumbered.
If they intend to target ALL forms of media, current and future, being used to exchange Sony music for no money- *tweet* outta the pool! The towering, unavoidable problem with this is that it outlaws non-corporate media. I as a non-corporate musician wouldn't be allowed to function if every time I found a new digital format I could distribute on, Sony pulled strings to get it banned from all ISPs- particularly ugly is the fact that, unlike music-exchangers, I wouldn't find it so convenient to be anonymous or to conceal the filetypes or whatever.
Currently, I put out mp3s (see URL link, as ever) quite openly. If a Sony manages to make it impossible to traffic in mp3 files at all, I'm hosed. (If the patent holders start demanding $30,000 to use the format I'm also hosed- and this is beginning to happen already.) So I move to Ogg Vorbis *tadah* just as soon as I get my hands on the MacHack hack that ported the codec to MacOS (yes, turns out such a hack does actually exist- I want!). This time there is no patent holder, but there's Sony again, trying to get Vorbis outlawed- and that is the problem.
It's really not acceptable, in this day and age, for the individual to be forbidden to produce and distribute media. What Sony _wants_ is for anything that might ever get in their way to be made illegal and ferociously punished. They may not get what they want, but people must remain aware of the overwhelming importance of placing the tools for this media in people's hands. To legally support the position that the common man is fit only for mindless consumption is a despicable point of view- and it doesn't even matter that the common man's art or music may suck compared to a handpicked Sony artist with a million dollar (all out of royalties...) bankroll. That's irrelevant- the fact is, that ordinary person MUST NOT be legally forbidden to create. To forbid this is a shocking development that speaks volumes about the perspective and motivation of the corporate entity in society...
One would hope that the common man doesn't get forbidden IN PRACTICE from creating, either. "Oh, go ahead! That'll be thirty thousand dollars. ...so incorporate and do an IPO why don't you? Stop being a human being and become, legally, one of US..."
(_nobody_ else STR?)
Good advice for us all! ;)
Follow the reasoning, respect the law and you can plainly see there's substantial question as to whether Napster exchange is even infringement. It's noncommercial, and is not even verbatim copying of the exact bits of the commercial product, merely an approximation much like audiotapes.
On the other hand, if you _don't_ respect the law you're welcome to imply whatever you like, but it seems strange to turn to the law for shelter when you aren't even interested in respecting what it has already had to say on the matter.
Basically, if it seems to be saying really outrageous stuff and nailing it down without the slightest room to weasel out, you're in trouble. Contracts are contracts- it's not a simple matter to claim 'this was unreasonable so it's not valid or binding'. In fact, some of them have specific language stating that you've read the contract, understand it and agree that it is valid (another good litmus test- does the 'boilerplate' have you pointedly agreeing that it is valid, or does it just make its points?
Another tactic to look out for might be the traditional music business tactic of the 'deal memo', which could easily be adapted to the dotcom world. Basically, if there's a post-it saying something that seems 'reasonable' but could be used with legal literalness to harm you, and you're asked to sign it, watch out. I think the music biz version might go like this:
X Band will exclusively come to an agreement for a recording contract with XYZ Recording Company
Not many words, but sign it and contract law applies to it- you don't actually have an agreement yet, but you've just pledged to work only for XYZ before they've even set out any terms (the terms will _suck_). This is possible because there are far too many guitar players and always have been ;) however, the potential dotcommer is not forever protected from this kind of treatment just because of current scarcity of tech professionals. That will pass.
In the final analysis, whatever the rationalisation, it's not sensible to be too flippant about signing legal documents that can be used against you. It's all too easy to abuse these things. Ask yourself if the company is willing to sign _your_ little contract in return- and whether you can afford to get a lawyer to enforce your little contract. Signing the NDA is potentially turning over too much power to the company- and this depends entirely on what's set forth in the document. There is no such thing, legally, as 'boilerplate'- it doesn't matter what they say about the relative significance of parts of the contract, every word applies, with the exception of bits marked 'summary, see below for actual conditions': if ever you are given a contract with a 'summary', totally ignore the 'Cliff's Notes' version and pay extra attention to the actual legalese as they _are_ trying to slip something by you :)
The first time Slashdot linked to 'em, I ended up spending _hours_ there reading article after article. They are _great_ articles, terrific journalism done with style and intelligence. At this point I would be much more likely to click on a link and read an article if I knew it was Atlantic Monthly, that's how favorably they impressed me. I strongly recommend going there and reading all the articles you can find :)
Also, so far, the mp3.com contract does require both parties to consent to any changes that might be imposed in future. This is incredibly important as most major label contracts, and a lot of sleazy 'fake-indie' mp3-site contracts, give the label unrestricted freedom to unilaterally change the terms after you've agreed to them- check out farmclub.com's agreement for a particularly nasty example that forbids you to _imply_ they _endorse_ you in any way, on top of everything else :)
This is the new millenium, man- don't _ever_ sign a contract that's like you say. Don't _ever_ sign away all your rights and IP. You need to remain free to move as these issues develop :)
Sorry, this is old news. It may be that the RIAA is having great success in taking away Orrin Hatch's right to legally burn a CD for his wife as fair use, but he had that right. Let's not be confused on that point- our government people went to a lot of trouble to arrange that we had a reasonable amount of fair use, and the laws are on the books. The fact that the RIAA is trying to overturn all this doesn't change the fact that fair use is the law, and it was put there on purpose, to allow people to do just these things.
In other words, you may have Metallica on one hand and Limp Bizkit on the other. Imagine Limp Bizkit pulling a sort of 'IE destroying Netscape's business' by making all their stuff free, and hyping that a lot so it's everywhere. To what extent would this hurt Metallica, who will be trying to produce the expectation that you always pay for music? What if _lots_ of internet musicians and bankrupt major label refugees (including the big names of the last 30-40 years in pop music) began to pursue this strategy of keeping the same day job they had to have all along, and recording the music they especially liked, releasing it for free?
I think there comes a point where the amount of artist-driven free material will start to seriously impact the ability of a Metallica to create the expectation that music is something you meter and sell and restrict. That's not to say people won't go to a concert or buy a CD, but the business model of 'all the fans HAVE TO buy the CD' will die. And the consumer will feel no responsibility to pay the artist- when you read a book from the library, do you pay the author?
If there is any artist's power, it is in the rabid fans- the fanatics. In the early sixties they were cutting up _bedsheets_ that the Beatles had slept on, and selling them- how would free access to recordings diminish this sort of frenzy? You look to the heavy users, the fanatics, if you want to do business and earn money, because those are the people who think what you do is WORTH something. The uninterested consumer's natural degree of commitment only goes as far as sparing a bit of attention, and if you think you can squeeze money out of them you're conning yourself...
Honestly, the record industry already does just this, and much more- they've managed to seize the intellectual property of most of the artists forever (see the copyright reversion stuff tacked onto the Home Satellite act) and have destroyed the artists' ability to get out of ungodly horrible contracts even when the artists are literally bankrupted. That's 'losing all their money' not simply 'not earning lots of money'- that's 'taking the songs, the performances, the mechanicals and all the intellectual property and also taking all the money away from the artist and leaving them bankrupt and, as Courtney Love astutely pointed out, with no credit'.
Seeing as they already behave even worse than you suggest and Slashdot people are mostly oblivious, why would there be an uproar in support of artists if the record companies formalised this and stated outright what they already do anyhow? Slashdotters don't necessarily care all that much about artists, why should they? Let artists care about artists. Artists may not care as much about DeCSS and that's where slashdotters might find themselves more directly involved.
Personally, as an artist, I'm just happy a bunch of people are fans of a digital file format that I can distribute music with. Some slashdotters have really dug my music, some were like 'what?' and some made fun of me because I'm not Metallica :) go figure! At least there's somebody coding the formats I get to use as a 'content producer' ;) I still can't wait to see Ogg Vorbis eventually get to the Mac where I can make use of it, I'm _ready_ for that stuff...
Dunno how involved you are on this level, but I've made upwards of $400 on mp3.com, where most of 'my competition' struggles to make $40 or $4, and I've told people how to do that and now some of the people I've told make more than me. I would love to think that people would do it your way but I am obliged to share the information of how to really do it with slashdotters, as I've seen other slashdotten musicians :)
First, go to mp3.com/chrisj and download all of my music a lot and buy all my CDs *g* just kidding! *ducks flung boots and stuff* Seriously, I mean, please do, but that was a joke. The real point is simply this:
Free stuff beats restricted stuff for mindshare.
It's that simple. I made all my stuff available free. I know a lot of people who used to, or still are, putting up only 'sample tracks' and making full CDs available with lots more stuff. A lot of those people got trapped by their own tightfistedness- they behaved as if they did such wonderful stuff that people would _have_ to buy their CD, would be _forced_ to do business. Unfortunately mp3.com is like a microcosm of internet commerce in that there are a LOT of bands there, and every time, the listeners would listen to those few tunes, get bored and go somewhere else, to some page that had LOTS of tunes! for free! The top money-spinners of mp3.com ended up being various more or less mainstream-type artists who didn't need to force money out of people (for instance, 'Bassic') and who made very large amounts of music available free.
That's the dynamic, and there's no escaping it. This is how Microsoft killed Netscape. This is how any number of internet musicians will kill the ones who insist on full prepayment. You just click a link or search and bam, you've got 40 different bands and musicians who are just as good and who aren't insisting on any sort of payment at all. Some (such as myself) are happily getting a cut of the ad banner revenue or something- some might just be distributing freely because they want to be heard, and want the freedom to pursue their art with NO compromises whatsoever. That's a good motivation- another motivation might come from recognising this dynamic and realising, damn, the way to get enough mindshare to be _able_ to be paid at all for good work is to begin giving the work away and just don't stop- keep doing it and doing it, and count on eventually selling things like 'convenience CDs' (as I've done repeatedly, even though I supply not only mp3s for burning CDs from but even literally the cover art to print out and use for your privately burned CD- not a joke, go see for yourself) or posters or special vinyl releases or special CD mixes- any or all of those things. Tchochkes. If you can be heard you can find a niche- people manage to find niches even by playing with tacky PC software to layer pre-made trance loops. Even this can sell CDs- given a bit of mindshare- but you can't tell people 'I ought to be able to do something great, give me money and I'll do something awesome!'. This can't compete with unrestricted free stuff...
It's not even about documentation and debugging- X-Plane's always been developed so rapidly that documentation is a black art. It's about the target audience, pure and simple. Anytime you target the lowest common denominator instead of the high white scream of a perfect, unattainable concept, a part of your art dies. Those who refuse to grovel to the lowest common denominator are doomed to miss the consumer market- but there are the fanatics- then it just becomes a question of this: can your business model support a real business with selling and expenses and a breakeven point, or are you playing dotcom and expecting to sell to the whole world at a loss and make it up on volume? If it's the latter, forget it- if you have some sense, then it's still possible to make a product (even a game, even a game that doesn't target the mainstream) and do business with it. It's almost like a litmus test- these days, it's _impossible_ to play 'A-list' except by playing dot-com and king of the hill. Hence, CNet's article, and the perception that the game industry is dying. It is- if that's all you're looking at.
You want geeky? Try blade element modelling on all flight surfaces at least six times a second and _emergent_ flight model. Try modelling one of those wack planes from that upcoming MS game and seeing just how *CRASH!* unrealistic *WHAM!* it *CRASH!* really is *SPLAT!* ;) Then, work like a crazed weasel at trying different airfoils, giving the canard a steeper upward cant, messing with the center of gravity, and eventually get something that flies, even something that flies well- and know that if you could build the actual plane, IT WOULD fly like that, for the most part. Now that's geeky! It's freaking delightful. There's no complex system half as much fun as designing aircraft and modelling them with blade element modelling. And half the fun is knowing that the majority of even X-Planers aren't up to the challenge and will only fly the Cessna 172 Skyhawk (aka 'spam can') and bitch about its modelling ;) (which considering that no actual 172 flight model data was put in, just the dimensions of the plane and vital statistics, is not so bad at all)
I haven't updated the planes to the latest version of X-Plane yet, but I have some planes (with pictures) up at http://www.airwindows.com/gam es/flightsims/index.html. The planes there were a lot of fun to make, and there are infinite other possibilities..
Seriously- to hell with that! If a runner went around kneecapping everyone else in the race would you give him the prize? Even if you did, would you cheer when he showed up at another race?
I can tell you one condition under which I'd start using Internet Explorer. That condition is if IE was seized by the government, nationalised, perhaps turned over to the United Nations and henceforth developed and maintained by a multinational standards body- sort of 'if there really is going to be only one way for the world's citizens to communicate and do e-commerce, let's give them a voice in how it's made'.
Failing that, you go to hell and you die! I don't care how much worse other browsers are after they've been kneecapped or rendered forever unable to get financing. I've a right to make decisions that affect me, and I REFUSE to cooperate in giving power to what, in so many ways, is my most intractable competition. This is somewhat indirect- if I was a smalltown newspaper editor rather than a hacker and musician and writer MS would be more _directly_ my competition- but it's like Wal-Martization, I have _no_ valid role to MS other than as a passive consumer. I imagine I'm supposed to get the money to buy MS products from working AT Wal-Mart: lord knows it's certainly not by writing a web browser, word processor, spreadsheet and selling it to anybody.
On the other hand, if I wrote a game, MS might _buy_ me, and presumably this would come with a salary capable of paying for more Microsoft Products. Unless they only gave me stock options and I had to get a job at Wal-Mart to pay for the Microsoft Products ;P
Seriously- to hell with you and your Internet Explorer! You're really stupid if you don't understand questions of consequences when they are _so_ obvious. Perhaps you don't remember a computer industry that wasn't composed of Microsoft and its servants? Funny, I remember an Internet that is composed of more than Microsoft and its servants. We're looking at it- for now.
In short: like hell there's not. You're free to argue that you have no sense of justice, no freedom, would not give others freedom, and that you have no integrity. I believe you, I do! Now please go play somewhere else- and for God's sake, don't vote! You would not legally be allowed to vote in Vermont as you'd be asked to agree to a statement that contradicts your philosophy completely and demands that you have integrity. Here's hoping you're not allowed to vote anywhere else either, unless you get a clue.
For those who don't recognise that reference- first of all, furrfu- second of all, this is the real leverage that comes with having Office on a platform. Given the expectation that 'oh, Office is on platform X, therefore legitimising it', Microsoft can and does use this as a weapon. For example, they literally told Apple to kill off Quicktime or they'd kill Office for MacOS- the quote comes from an exchange like 'We think it would be better if Quicktime, uh, wasn't.' 'Let's get this straight, are you asking us to knife Quicktime for you- to knife our baby?' 'Yes, we're talking about knifing the baby'.
Should MS apps be established on Linux it'd be like that only instead of dealing with a single point of development and control, MS would be dealing with little groups and individuals, threatening them that if they didn't stop work on their projects, MS would kill Office for Linux (and presumably blame said developer). This degree of blackmail might not work on RMS types but there is a level where it is frightening. Basically it's a sort of extortion, and the point is to engender a climate of fear and obedience. Some of us (mac people into development) have been able to watch this sort of thing going on in the real world for longer than you linux people have... and yes it seems to be illegal, the antitrust case nailed them for JUST this sort of behavior. Now we've got to see if that sticks, or if they get to ignore that as well.
At any rate- there is no benefit from having Office available for your platform. None. There's no significant compatibility between versions, ports are never in synch, it takes large amounts of motivation for them to produce software even half good (i.e. IE for mac) and even if they do they take pains to use it to cut off your other options and change the 'territory' right out from under you so your choices are dead.
The people screaming 'nooooo!' are, ironically, a lot closer to the mark than the people screaming 'yay' here. You've got to look at the business practices that inevitably go along with this sort of 'beachhead'. These guys kill markets- that is their whole schtick. Why would you want them coming over and killing your market too, even if your market is largely mindshare instead of commercial? All it will do is kill your choices without giving you the supposed benefits you think you'd be getting. And that's because, as was repeatedly found by the judge in the antitrust case, they really make a special EFFORT to kill your choices and kill your market- we're not talking about 'network effects', we're talking 'knife the baby'. An MS guy actually accepted those words, mid-negotiation, as descriptive of what they were trying to do. How can that be right? How can that be a market?
Vorbis is not necessarily going to keep these guys in check. I think that's overly optimistic. I think they're going to end up putting the screws on anyhow, simply because they can- no matter whether they will truly get away with it in the long run. And 'Hammy's point is absolutely apt- sure, fine, rip other people's CDs all you want, but if you intend to run a small business centered around your music (or even music services, such as studio rental) you can't hide. You're out there, and you've gotta use _something_ to show people what you're doing, and more than anything else you need a distribution medium that's not going to soak you with royalties (never mind the 15K minimum payment!). That makes the cost of entry for being a 'record label' or 'studio that releases demonstrations via mp3' just prohibitive- it pushes your breakeven point painfully far into the future, and you have to jack up your prices to cover this and can't find customers at the higher prices.
Ogg Vorbis is the answer- even if it wasn't arguably better sounding than mp3 it would be the answer. It becomes a question of mindshare- we do need more extensive ports (I'm startled there's _still_ no MacOS port- do they want to reach musicians or not?) but that'll come. Then it becomes a symbiotic relationship- small content providers must turn to Ogg Vorbis to have an unencumbered form of media to distribute with, and Ogg will rely on this grassroots support among the _creators_ (i.e. small business!), who will be powerful allies in a way that napster people never could. There's nothing like being faced with the threat (immediate or expected) of massive extortionate licensing problems to make you support something else with all your heart and soul ;)
I sure wish Vorbis _was_ available to me- if I could afford to buy Linux machines just to encode Ogg with, I could probably afford mp3 licensing at its deadly, soon-to-come worst. But even though I can't have it yet, I can see which side I'm on.
I have to be alarmed whenever I see bits of legal boilerplate like 'X owns all content on its (aggregated, database, pirated) website and use is prohibited unless you get licensing from us'. Common sense would seem to indicate that if they just gathered up public stuff they can't really do that- but common sense doesn't always describe the world around us, and good faith is in even shorter supply. I honestly thought the people holding mp3 patents were going to only go after software authors- silly me! Turns out they are only overlooking me, the musician-type person- and will happily clobber me with lawyers and demand $15,000 and one cent minimum per download if I'm seen making mp3s of my own music available on my own website. But CD rippers can do that free, because they're not a business! ;P
furrfu... furrfu phoo phoo...
If they start doing so, it's an absolute showstopper. I for one can't afford to share my music freely under those conditions- I'd be owing them hundreds of dollars by now thanks to mp3.com. Currently mp3.com expects to pay _me_ for this- I hope they do before they hear that knock at the door. One cent per download totally screws anybody's intent to promote themselves via free downloads, and also hoses attempts at micropayments for those who are into that. It might not seem like much if you're just downloading a few songs, but if you're hosting and you are doing a good amount of download volume, it will add up real quick- plus the required accounting procedures to keep track of all this.
I'm ready for Vorbis. mp3 is GIF waiting to happen. Anybody want to earn a few bucks as a conslutant helping me port the Ogg Vorbis stuff to MacOS? I'm not a good enough programmer to do it without help, but I do have a current copy of Codewarrior, and MPW.
But wait, it gets better! A minimum of one cent per download??? Just how much do they freakin' think I _make_ from the downloads at mp3.com? I don't CHARGE people for those, it's part of the incentive program. As near as I can figure this would be in the thousands of dollars! O_O
Oh, man, you are right, this _is_ scary. Hopefully I can get paid what I'm currently owed while still remaining 'blissfully ignorant' of this situation. To me, the one cent minimum royalty on each download is the CRUSHER- that is an absolute showstopper. Makes me glad I never invested in an encoder beyond BladeEnc (say what you want, if you have the capacity of pre-emphasising the highs you can get a really smooth full sound out of it that's not over-dull).
Who knew? I could see a scenario in which mp3.com itself switches to Vorbis- that is, if it is actually possible to levy an mp3-distributing tax of a penny a download. Oy... this is nuts... looks like I have to teach myself C programming just to be able to compile and build Vorbis binaries for my Mac just to be able to operate as a musician... talk about 'not in the job description'! o_O
So to hell with the 'Dozers, their soundcards won't be producing clean enough recordings to flaunt Vorbis anyways (except for the few mad dozers running kilobuck soundcards, that's different)- if there's anybody capable of doing it, get this stuff deployed on MacOS _pronto_, then do something like make an extension that adds the Vorbis codec to Quicktime. Hell, just whip up a quick and dirty SIOW port for just the CLI tools and have people use that for now- but get it into the hands of the serious professional audio geeks. Heck with the soundcard people! The majority of CONTENT is not generated by CD rippers- I'd say that content was the digital audio, and the ripping is just translating content that already exists. Wouldn't you rather have the artists releasing Vorbis content themselves?
Quick clue session: there is no such thing as a defensive patent! A patent is a patent. The notion of a 'defensive' one is the intellectual property equivalent of passive-aggressive behavior. At the end of the day it's just a patent and has inevitably, unavoidably put the control in one person's hands, or one entity's, along with all the tools for abuse. There is NO such thing as a defensive patent. If people's desire to create and share their OWN INTELLECTUAL PRODUCTS is not enough to protect them legally- then we need a revolution of legal expectations, NOT 'defensive patents'. Are we not clear on the fact that the Vorbis people are doing their own work, in public, pointedly avoiding potential legal problems? Just how much credibility do we want to give potential attackers here? I'd rather be ready to scorn the potential attack and wave lots of evidence of prior art, instead. At some point that HAS to be enough. If it's not enough the system is so totally screwed that it's morally and ethically intolerable to cooperate with it in any way at all...
Might this further illustrate just how much the record companies control what music people get to hear?
George Clinton released whole albums of remixes JUST TO allow rap artists to legally sample songs that were technically owned not by him but by the record companies. You couldn't necessarily legally sample "Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication" (G. Clinton, B. Collins, B. Worrell, G. Shider)- but George Clinton would do a remix of it so that you could sample the backing tracks! He literally remixed loads of songs explicitly to get around that record company-imposed limitation, and allow people to sample his tracks.
George Clinton deserves _much_ respect for the actions he's taken to back up his beliefs.
One point that he touches on, which is not commonly expressed, is that motivation- love vs. consumption. If you put in some work (years of it) studying music, production, sound engineering, you gradually become more able to target the median of consumer desires, and you learn how to avoid including anything that would offend a consumer- and then you get to be mainstream, possibly a million seller, if you're properly hyped.
This is not art, but commerce.
Prince has in some ways used 'commercially popular' techniques (good production, intense vocals, high squealy notes and high squealy guitar solos etc etc etc) but he is also one of the few who's genuinely shown an experimental spirit- perhaps best illustrated by one of his monster hits, 'When Doves Cry'. The production of this remains unusual but at the time that it came out, was quite shocking- sparse, largely empty, producing more impact by virtue of the sheer bareness of the track. Prince was known to record many parts in the studio and then work by subtraction, taking out this and that track and seeing what combination of parts worked best- in "When Doves Cry" this subtractive technique was carried to an extreme. It breaks all the rules for 'popular' music production, and breaks them so well that it became a breakout monster hit.
The important thing to remember about art is that it is individual, and it's not possible to achieve artistic peaks and still avoid making enemies of your work. Love and hate are two sides of the same coin- the nearer you come to some person's love, the more another person will hate what you've done. A real artist (and I do consider Prince a real artist) will ignore this, accept the hate, refuse to water down their artistic vision.
Naturally I consider my music art ;) more significantly, _only_ since I started to accept it as art have I liked it worth a damn. I produced music for years, in an agony of trying to tailor it to what I thought people would like. (This is all pre-Internet and little remains of this stuff.) It was OK- never managed to get beyond my own idiosyncracies and never succeeded in making truly commercial music. Then I started again, and for particular reasons (access to mp3.com) I decided to do some music that was just what _I_ felt like doing- to do a lot of different music based only on what I felt like playing and composing and hearing.
Since then, it's been freaking awesome! :) I've talked with a lot of other musicians, made a lot of really rabid fans, a lot of really rabid enemies, and a kinda-lot of money (to me, a couple hundred bucks is a lot). I've seen people fixate on the strangest things and be delighted, and I've had people take GREAT PAINS to convince me and anyone else reading that I'm a complete loser who's not good enough to be commercial. And I love every bit of it. My artist side was long suppressed and restrained, but now when I see someone come off all negative and totally scorn my music, I'll laugh at them and tell them to listen to stuff like the 'Hard Vacuum' noise album, or 'Bone Dragon' or 'Water Dragon' from the Dragons album which are downright weird, or I'll just sneer back at them and go off and produce some more music that they'd hate even worse. Because I do what _I_ like- I do what I think is good, and I like a lot of truly peculiar music :)
I've tried to arrange my mp3.com page so that it explains to people a little better what they're getting into- but what I'm about is not being 'the Microsoft of music' or pinning down the widest possible range of consumers. What illustrates me best is the picture of me running a roaring shortwave radio through homebrewed multiband compression and screwing with the controls to produce a definitive Noise track (White Dwarf), something which most of the world might think is just crap! But there are Noise fans out there, protesting at the tendency for industrial techno to genre-trespass into Noise charts, people who understand _immediately_ just what's being attempted in 'White Dwarf' and instantly recognise it as canonical Noise, from a hitherto unheard source. Or the image might be the composing of 'Water Dragon', spending _days_ painstakingly filling in the froth of flickering piano notes around the spacey lead piano theme, and composing a drum part that is so relentlessly experimental that it seems to stretch and contract in a peculiar disjointed rhythm- which evokes the unforgiving wasteland of the sea. You can't dance to the sea. You could drown in it. You can't understand it. It's not necessarily pretty- but there's a validity to trying to express it in sound and music- and when Prince talks about people listening to music for love of it and teaching themselves to understand it, he's not talking about making more crappy manufactured hits, he's talking about the forces that eventually got me onto my own artistic path- of people exchanging and learning from stuff that's beyond what the major labels feed 'the consumer'.
How many of you have used Napster or something like it to try and find something really _obscure_ or weird or unpopular? Never mind if you found it- that'll come. Have you searched for something that Warner Bros. would not sell you, because there's 'no market' for it? This is what Prince is really talking about. This is the reason I've so often asked for my music to be openly traded on Napster This is the only way towards cultural education now that there's no market for culturally educating people in school...