Of course, you're right. Just because the middle-men "parasites" disappear, doesn't mean that the free distribution of copyright works will.
"People don't pirate music because they hate record companies. People pirate music because they want something for nothing."
Actually, I think that people freely copy and distribute music because they can.
The technology has enabled this. Copyright's strength was based in a large part on control of the means of copying and dissemination, and the genie, as they say, has fled it's bottle.
I think imagining that the entire media economy is going to be destroyed by what's going on is stretching things significantly. But some things are going to change, and why shouldn't they?
How were things before the ability to mass produce music?
Huge profits for music corporations or artists is not the baseline, and it may be that thinking things are so, is what is leading to a lot of wailing, and gnashing of teeth.
Maybe it will destroy them, maybe it won't.
Things appear and disappear, are created and are destroyed all the time, and always have been.
Why should the music biz, at it now is, be immune from the vagaries of time and change, when whole empires and civilizations aren't?
"In essence, copyright is a temporary monopoly on creative work granted to the authors, publishers and distributors of such products. It is intended to compensate them for their efforts and encourage them to continue to create. Yet, the disintermediation brought on by digital technologies threatens to link author and public directly, cutting out traditional content brokers such as record companies or publishers.
"This is the crux of the battle royal. Middlemen are attempting -- in vain -- to sustain their dying and increasingly parasitic industries and refusing to adapt and re-invent themselves. Everyone else watches in amazement and dismay the consequences of this grand folly: innovation is thwarted, consumers penalized, access to works of art, literature and research constrained."
That's a lovely summation, IMO.
Anyway, Germany gets computers without VAT??????
Lucky bastards! In the UK we pay 17.4% VAT on PCs, and always have.
The copyright levvy, sounds good to me, though:
"Here's your 35 quid, now fuck off and quit yer whining.":)
If I could still be bothered to moderate, I'd give that a +1 Insightful.
I never thought about it like that. A "sale right" makes so much more sense; after all, I think, virtually everyone, including supporters of p2p "copyright infingement," view the people who pirate stuff to sell, as criminal.
I wonder if it's too late to change things?
It isn't stealing because it's copying not stealing, so there's no tangible or easily precieved loss.
I've heard this argument so many times I'm about ready to throw up.
Get this through your thick, obtuse skull: intangible things can have a tangible value!!!! Intellectual property is just that -- property! Just because nothing physical is involved doesn't mean it's free and clear, where just anyone can do anything they want with it.
Well, you've already won me over with your charm, so let's examine your reason, just to make sure I'm not being smooth-talked into accepting a bogus argument.
Intellectual property is not property in the real sense. Infact I believe someone else said that. I may be stealing their property by repeating it, if they copyrighted or patented the expression. I just comitted an act of theft!
Oh... no, that's right, it wasn't real property after all, it was just a term with the word property in it. And as I'm sure you've been told, saying something doesn't make it so. People invented the concept of "intellectual property," (I wonder if they patented it?) it has no real existence, it is a law, an imposed cotract, backed by the physical force of the state to uphold it. It is simply an imposed rule, not a real thing in itself.
Further, you're not paying for the musical notes, or bits and bytes, or any vibrations in the air. You're paying the artist for their time and talent, which has a value. If you've got a talent that can't be matched by anyone else, that talent is worth something. Suppose you were the best programmer there was, and could come up with algorithms better and faster than anyone else. Would it be right for a company to employ you to write code for them, but then have them refuse to pay you for your time and talent? Of course it wouldn't be right, especially if you were expressly contracted to be paid for such work. Song artists expect to be paid for their work, otherwise they wouldn't work. I'm not sure what other careers some of those misfits might get into, but that's immaterial -- people have to work to make money, and they have a right to expect to be paid for their efforts in accordance to what the fair market value is for their skillsets.
But according to your world-view, anoyone who decides that they want to make money by engaging in any business model, whether it be realistically feasible or not, should be paid.
I want to be paid to be a portrait artist, but those bastards witht their personal "cameras" come along and take reaslistic copies of their own image for next-to-free, thus robbing me, robbing me I say, of my livelihood. Thieves.
Although it's not exactly synonymous with music creation, it's similar in the sense that a new technology has largely decimated a way of making a living. It's changed things fundementally. The means of production has been liberated from the few to the many.
That, of course, leads many to think that artists and music executives are vastly overpaid. To that, I say that: who in the hell annointed you with the power to say who is worth what?
Why is anyone needed to appoint power? I, and everyone else can use our own judgement... some would say God gave us that.
Nobody annointed you, that's who. It is not your place to decide how much money any person may make, any more than it is up to me to decide that you need to be making minimum wage instead of whatever it is you are making. Collectively, if consumers decide an artist sucks, they sell no albums and thus make no money. While I must admit that some musical tastes defy comprehension, the fact is that even Justin Timberlake has millions of screaming fans buying his execrable music. Who are you to tell them that their tastes are wrong? Nobody, that's who. You are not special.
Actually we're all very special. And, anyway, what are you going on about here?...I don't know.
Information, despite the current trendy tagline, is not free, nor does it want to be free. Information is valued in direct proportion to how unique it is. If you remove the carrot, that being a financial payoff to making a unique creation, from the system, you will destroy the largest motivating factor to innovation and creation.
I think the saying means, information wants to have liberty. That doesn't mean it can't have a value, even a very high value, but that does mean that if that value is dependent upon a restiction of it's ease of dissemination, then, when a technology comes along that makes it easliy disseminated, it's value drops, in some cases very significantly.
France tried this back in the 1800's. All inventions and creations were made public domain, and it failed miserably. People had no incentive to create! Why should they toil and sweat, the equivalent of modern R&D, when some fool down the street can quickly and easily copy my work with no effort at all? You see this today in how many countries shy away from investment in China due to lax copyright enforcement. People go where money is, and until something better than money comes along, you've no right to condemn them for it.
I wasn't condemning anyone for anything. Nor do I have an answer to what will happen because the current technological paradigm has changed regarding the dissemination of text, images, audio or video. But I do feel that the media corporations are doing their best at a modern day equivalent to King Canute (Kanute?)
You can hate the RIAA and MPAA all you want. I hate them, too.
Hate's for fools. They're just the enemy. Don't hate your enemy, understand them, so you can better defeat them.
But abolition of property rights is ridiculous, and copyrights are inherently linked to property rights. If you'd think a bit more about the implications of the socialist utopia you're proposing, you'd realize that it doesn't work, hasn't worked, and won't work.
I know what you mean, I mean, where was culture before copyright? Before copyright, people were ignorant savages without the finer things in life, like Coca-Cola branded lunchboxes, and The Cheeky Girls.
One more thing, don't take out your frustration at your inability to have to world think the way you want it to (perish the thought) on me, you uncouth little twerp. That is all.
"Napster was never about "free music." Napster was always about community, about "sharing my collection--my very own, personal, idiosyncratic collection.""
This is not a troll, and I'm not anti-P2P at all, but Napster was about free music, and indeed, stealing music, (in as much as copying can be stealing....although of course it cannot.)
The word Napster, was derived from the word "nap" which is listed as: napnap, vt to seize; to steal. [Cf Swed nappa Dan and Norw nappe to catch or snatch; relation to nab uncertain]
The intention of the site, I would argue by light of it's name, no accident I am certain, was to "steal" music.
At least that's what it was to the creator of the site.
I think the reason music copying is not seen as "wrong" is because it isn't.
It was only made "wrong" by an act of law.
It isn't stealing because it's copying not stealing, so there's no tangible or easily precieved loss, on the face of it.
If copying soup, or steak was possible because of a new replicator-gadget, would people not use them because the farmer or the soup company was losing out?
I think not.
The technology usurps the previous restrictions that were in place when the technology was not there. It makes past business models and ways of life obsolete, whether they be making and selling cd's, or soup, or slices of cow.
They can live in denial and fight the new tech, or they can change and go into new areas and accept that their time is over.
The new replicators would still need good original material, but it wouldn't be as profitable as before, when the copying and distribution method was not free (as in liberty.)
The only thing they can do now is either go with it, or ban the replication technology and free information communication. It's the latter, of course that is the real threat, not the copying (divide and rule vs. collective power, if you like)
"Seems grannies were swapping sewing patterns on-line and not paying for them, and it got quite a bit of press."
It would seem like the Internet will make criminals out of us all.
I loved this:""Where will it end?" wailed Marilyn Leavitt-Imblum, 54, who designs
needlepoint patterns. "I just don't understand how these [people] can stitch
a stolen angel and still live with themselves."
Copyright for non-commercial use is largely invalidated by the internet.
What's the difference, legally, between posting a URL as text and a posting Hypertext link to said URL, if the law says that linking to the URL is illegal?
That seems like a reasonable suggestion to me.
I imagine the quality of initial posts would improve considerably if people are allowed time to contemplate a story seen in advance before being allowed to post.
I would add my inconsiderable support to F452's plea.
Isn't that part of the RIP Act, where you can be imprisoned for 5 years for not divulging your passwords an obvious breach of your right to silence, under EU Human Rights Law? I mean... am I missing something?
For that matter that part of your "rights" that are read to you by the police, where you're told that, "...you have the right to remain silent, however, if you do not mention now, something that you later rely on in court,..." this may prove prejudicial to your case (or whatever.)
I've always thought this was nothing short of a blatant attempt to intimidate you out of exercising your right to silence.
Maybe I'm just crazy. I'm certainly no lawyer.
Government drafts law that breaches Human Rights, Shock! Story on pages 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 & 14
Wasn't there something fishy about his degree, indeed his entrance into Yale?
I heard he would have failed to get in if it hadn't been for his father pulling strings.
It's Corporate Media all over, though, isn't it.
The Music Industry puts out Karaoke Pop, new manufactured groups re-sing old songs.
The Movie Industry remakes anything it can get a hold of, sometimes it's a sequel, sometimes it's an old tv show/cartoon, sometimes it's a foreign film, or just an old movie.
TV does it too.
The people who make these decisions are, you should remember, frequently arseholes. Creativity, to them is formulating a way to write off the lunch they just had as a business expense.
Corporate power and artistic integrity..... oil and water, dude; oil and water.
I agree with your points about telling everyone you know. I don't think your ideas and my idea are mutually exclusive.
I do think it's important to let the company know, so that they understand the ramifications of their actions in an easy to understand way.
Also, just to be pedantic, I didn't really have a problem with Lexmark until they started this DMCA thing. I bought, well, actually got my printer free, over a year ago, and I'm looking for a replacement now. I'm not really prescient enough to know that a company's going to be a complete arse a year or more after I buy something from them... so I'm doing what I can, now.
Shit... I mean if I was that prescient, I wouldn't have bought a Dell.... their customer service has gone down the toilet something terrible.
"Please explain how buying another printer hurts the printer industry?"
Who wants to hurt the printer industry?
Lexmark are losing a customer for life, their competitors are gaining a customer.
I'm sorry, is a boycott of a manufacturer difficult to understand or something??
Well you could always write to Lexmark, and tell them that you're going to boycott their products unless they cease this sort of thing.
I did. I told them that I was going to dump my Lexmark printer (I got it "free" with my pc) and buy one of their competitors' models, if I didn't hear that they'd dropped the DMCA case.
Those Canon multi-tanked jobs look quite nice.
Slashdot Mirror
You're assuming the person doing this would be doing it to gain financially.
Suppose they were just up to "mischief" or they had a political agenda (anti-capitalist or a spot of "micro-terrorism"?)
"I think the article was just saying that the $13 levy would attract VAT, not that computers are currently sold VAT-free."
You're right. It would have been clearer if the author had written the vat reference in brackets.
Of course, you're right. Just because the middle-men "parasites" disappear, doesn't mean that the free distribution of copyright works will.
"People don't pirate music because they hate record companies. People pirate music because they want something for nothing."
Actually, I think that people freely copy and distribute music because they can.
The technology has enabled this. Copyright's strength was based in a large part on control of the means of copying and dissemination, and the genie, as they say, has fled it's bottle.
I think imagining that the entire media economy is going to be destroyed by what's going on is stretching things significantly. But some things are going to change, and why shouldn't they?
How were things before the ability to mass produce music?
Huge profits for music corporations or artists is not the baseline, and it may be that thinking things are so, is what is leading to a lot of wailing, and gnashing of teeth.
Maybe it will destroy them, maybe it won't.
Things appear and disappear, are created and are destroyed all the time, and always have been.
Why should the music biz, at it now is, be immune from the vagaries of time and change, when whole empires and civilizations aren't?
OOH! I just loved this:
:)
"In essence, copyright is a temporary monopoly on creative work granted to the authors, publishers and distributors of such products. It is intended to compensate them for their efforts and encourage them to continue to create. Yet, the disintermediation brought on by digital technologies threatens to link author and public directly, cutting out traditional content brokers such as record companies or publishers.
"This is the crux of the battle royal. Middlemen are attempting -- in vain -- to sustain their dying and increasingly parasitic industries and refusing to adapt and re-invent themselves. Everyone else watches in amazement and dismay the consequences of this grand folly: innovation is thwarted, consumers penalized, access to works of art, literature and research constrained."
That's a lovely summation, IMO.
Anyway, Germany gets computers without VAT??????
Lucky bastards! In the UK we pay 17.4% VAT on PCs, and always have.
The copyright levvy, sounds good to me, though:
"Here's your 35 quid, now fuck off and quit yer whining."
If I could still be bothered to moderate, I'd give that a +1 Insightful.
I never thought about it like that. A "sale right" makes so much more sense; after all, I think, virtually everyone, including supporters of p2p "copyright infingement," view the people who pirate stuff to sell, as criminal.
I wonder if it's too late to change things?
"what seemed like a fairly insufferable authoritative tone"
Yeah.
It would appear that you're entirely correct.
Just a coincidence, I guess (the word is English, the Swedish was just in the etymology.)
Making an error doesn't make me a fool, it makes me fallible.
It isn't stealing because it's copying not stealing, so there's no tangible or easily precieved loss.
...I don't know.
I've heard this argument so many times I'm about ready to throw up.
Get this through your thick, obtuse skull: intangible things can have a tangible value!!!! Intellectual property is just that -- property! Just because nothing physical is involved doesn't mean it's free and clear, where just anyone can do anything they want with it.
Well, you've already won me over with your charm, so let's examine your reason, just to make sure I'm not being smooth-talked into accepting a bogus argument.
Intellectual property is not property in the real sense. Infact I believe someone else said that. I may be stealing their property by repeating it, if they copyrighted or patented the expression. I just comitted an act of theft!
Oh... no, that's right, it wasn't real property after all, it was just a term with the word property in it. And as I'm sure you've been told, saying something doesn't make it so. People invented the concept of "intellectual property," (I wonder if they patented it?) it has no real existence, it is a law, an imposed cotract, backed by the physical force of the state to uphold it. It is simply an imposed rule, not a real thing in itself.
Further, you're not paying for the musical notes, or bits and bytes, or any vibrations in the air. You're paying the artist for their time and talent, which has a value. If you've got a talent that can't be matched by anyone else, that talent is worth something. Suppose you were the best programmer there was, and could come up with algorithms better and faster than anyone else. Would it be right for a company to employ you to write code for them, but then have them refuse to pay you for your time and talent? Of course it wouldn't be right, especially if you were expressly contracted to be paid for such work. Song artists expect to be paid for their work, otherwise they wouldn't work. I'm not sure what other careers some of those misfits might get into, but that's immaterial -- people have to work to make money, and they have a right to expect to be paid for their efforts in accordance to what the fair market value is for their skillsets.
But according to your world-view, anoyone who decides that they want to make money by engaging in any business model, whether it be realistically feasible or not, should be paid.
I want to be paid to be a portrait artist, but those bastards witht their personal "cameras" come along and take reaslistic copies of their own image for next-to-free, thus robbing me, robbing me I say, of my livelihood. Thieves.
Although it's not exactly synonymous with music creation, it's similar in the sense that a new technology has largely decimated a way of making a living. It's changed things fundementally. The means of production has been liberated from the few to the many.
That, of course, leads many to think that artists and music executives are vastly overpaid. To that, I say that: who in the hell annointed you with the power to say who is worth what?
Why is anyone needed to appoint power? I, and everyone else can use our own judgement... some would say God gave us that.
Nobody annointed you, that's who. It is not your place to decide how much money any person may make, any more than it is up to me to decide that you need to be making minimum wage instead of whatever it is you are making. Collectively, if consumers decide an artist sucks, they sell no albums and thus make no money. While I must admit that some musical tastes defy comprehension, the fact is that even Justin Timberlake has millions of screaming fans buying his execrable music. Who are you to tell them that their tastes are wrong? Nobody, that's who. You are not special.
Actually we're all very special. And, anyway, what are you going on about here?
Information, despite the current trendy tagline, is not free, nor does it want to be free. Information is valued in direct proportion to how unique it is. If you remove the carrot, that being a financial payoff to making a unique creation, from the system, you will destroy the largest motivating factor to innovation and creation.
I think the saying means, information wants to have liberty. That doesn't mean it can't have a value, even a very high value, but that does mean that if that value is dependent upon a restiction of it's ease of dissemination, then, when a technology comes along that makes it easliy disseminated, it's value drops, in some cases very significantly.
France tried this back in the 1800's. All inventions and creations were made public domain, and it failed miserably. People had no incentive to create! Why should they toil and sweat, the equivalent of modern R&D, when some fool down the street can quickly and easily copy my work with no effort at all? You see this today in how many countries shy away from investment in China due to lax copyright enforcement. People go where money is, and until something better than money comes along, you've no right to condemn them for it.
I wasn't condemning anyone for anything. Nor do I have an answer to what will happen because the current technological paradigm has changed regarding the dissemination of text, images, audio or video. But I do feel that the media corporations are doing their best at a modern day equivalent to King Canute (Kanute?)
You can hate the RIAA and MPAA all you want. I hate them, too.
Hate's for fools. They're just the enemy. Don't hate your enemy, understand them, so you can better defeat them.
But abolition of property rights is ridiculous, and copyrights are inherently linked to property rights. If you'd think a bit more about the implications of the socialist utopia you're proposing, you'd realize that it doesn't work, hasn't worked, and won't work.
I know what you mean, I mean, where was culture before copyright? Before copyright, people were ignorant savages without the finer things in life, like Coca-Cola branded lunchboxes, and The Cheeky Girls.
One more thing, don't take out your frustration at your inability to have to world think the way you want it to (perish the thought) on me, you uncouth little twerp. That is all.
"Napster was never about "free music." Napster was always about community, about "sharing my collection--my very own, personal, idiosyncratic collection.""
This is not a troll, and I'm not anti-P2P at all, but Napster was about free music, and indeed, stealing music, (in as much as copying can be stealing....although of course it cannot.)
The word Napster, was derived from the word "nap" which is listed as:
nap nap, vt to seize; to steal. [Cf Swed nappa Dan and Norw nappe to catch or snatch; relation to nab uncertain]
The intention of the site, I would argue by light of it's name, no accident I am certain, was to "steal" music.
At least that's what it was to the creator of the site.
I think the reason music copying is not seen as "wrong" is because it isn't.
It was only made "wrong" by an act of law.
It isn't stealing because it's copying not stealing, so there's no tangible or easily precieved loss, on the face of it.
If copying soup, or steak was possible because of a new replicator-gadget, would people not use them because the farmer or the soup company was losing out?
I think not.
The technology usurps the previous restrictions that were in place when the technology was not there. It makes past business models and ways of life obsolete, whether they be making and selling cd's, or soup, or slices of cow.
They can live in denial and fight the new tech, or they can change and go into new areas and accept that their time is over.
The new replicators would still need good original material, but it wouldn't be as profitable as before, when the copying and distribution method was not free (as in liberty.)
The only thing they can do now is either go with it, or ban the replication technology and free information communication. It's the latter, of course that is the real threat, not the copying (divide and rule vs. collective power, if you like)
"Seems grannies were swapping sewing patterns on-line and not paying for them, and it got quite a bit of press."
It would seem like the Internet will make criminals out of us all.
I loved this:""Where will it end?" wailed Marilyn Leavitt-Imblum, 54, who designs needlepoint patterns. "I just don't understand how these [people] can stitch a stolen angel and still live with themselves."
Copyright for non-commercial use is largely invalidated by the internet.
What's the difference, legally, between posting a URL as text and a posting Hypertext link to said URL, if the law says that linking to the URL is illegal?
Or maybe diplomats of the United Nations, to protect themselves from being spied upon by the NSA! :oO
Sounds like the $cientologists should be suing for infringement of a patented business method. ;)
That seems like a reasonable suggestion to me.
I imagine the quality of initial posts would improve considerably if people are allowed time to contemplate a story seen in advance before being allowed to post.
I would add my inconsiderable support to F452's plea.
Isn't that part of the RIP Act, where you can be imprisoned for 5 years for not divulging your passwords an obvious breach of your right to silence, under EU Human Rights Law? I mean... am I missing something?
For that matter that part of your "rights" that are read to you by the police, where you're told that, "...you have the right to remain silent, however, if you do not mention now, something that you later rely on in court,..." this may prove prejudicial to your case (or whatever.)
I've always thought this was nothing short of a blatant attempt to intimidate you out of exercising your right to silence.
Maybe I'm just crazy. I'm certainly no lawyer.
Government drafts law that breaches Human Rights, Shock!
Story on pages 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 & 14
Ok, so media whore, should really be corporate whore.
My bad.
I think it's a great idea.
Hey kids! C'mon, it's the neat new thing!
Sell your soul and become a media whore!
Rock & Roll(TM)!
Rock & Roll(TM) is a Trademark of Satan Inc.
Selling your Soul is a patented business method, patented by Amazon.com and licensed to Satan Inc.
"At least now that 12 song, $12 CD is filled with 12 songs you actually like and not 2-6 good or decent ones and 6-10 pieces of crap."
Or alternatively...
At least now that 12 song, $12 CD is filled with 12 songs you instantly like and not 2-6 good or decent ones and 6-10 pieces that grow on you.
This seems like a good model for catchy pop; impulse buy tunes with an immediate hook. It may be a very cost-effective way of selling singles.
Troll my arse.
Obviously a moderator who's a Vehement Republican.
Wasn't there something fishy about his degree, indeed his entrance into Yale?
I heard he would have failed to get in if it hadn't been for his father pulling strings.
It's Corporate Media all over, though, isn't it.
The Music Industry puts out Karaoke Pop, new manufactured groups re-sing old songs.
The Movie Industry remakes anything it can get a hold of, sometimes it's a sequel, sometimes it's an old tv show/cartoon, sometimes it's a foreign film, or just an old movie.
TV does it too.
The people who make these decisions are, you should remember, frequently arseholes. Creativity, to them is formulating a way to write off the lunch they just had as a business expense.
Corporate power and artistic integrity..... oil and water, dude; oil and water.
I agree with your points about telling everyone you know. I don't think your ideas and my idea are mutually exclusive.
I do think it's important to let the company know, so that they understand the ramifications of their actions in an easy to understand way.
Also, just to be pedantic, I didn't really have a problem with Lexmark until they started this DMCA thing. I bought, well, actually got my printer free, over a year ago, and I'm looking for a replacement now. I'm not really prescient enough to know that a company's going to be a complete arse a year or more after I buy something from them... so I'm doing what I can, now.
Shit... I mean if I was that prescient, I wouldn't have bought a Dell.... their customer service has gone down the toilet something terrible.
"Please explain how buying another printer hurts the printer industry?"
Who wants to hurt the printer industry?
Lexmark are losing a customer for life, their competitors are gaining a customer.
I'm sorry, is a boycott of a manufacturer difficult to understand or something??
Well you could always write to Lexmark, and tell them that you're going to boycott their products unless they cease this sort of thing.
I did. I told them that I was going to dump my Lexmark printer (I got it "free" with my pc) and buy one of their competitors' models, if I didn't hear that they'd dropped the DMCA case.
Those Canon multi-tanked jobs look quite nice.