You'll often hear groups like EFF talk about how their solution will help the less popular artists, but that's hogwash. Your band isn't ever going to see a cut of that socan tax, is it? It's all just going to go to the majors, right?
It's a mistake to characterize this prying as record-industry-only. Note that the EFF's soultion to compensate atrists for p2p *also* wants to compromise privacy and anonymity.
In order to pay out a collected 'tax' they'll need to know how to divide it up, and to do that, they'll need to know who has what...
"I don't think noncommercial usage should require payment"
And so, since my guess is that you consider most P2P use to be noncommercial, am I correct in thinking that you also think that these authors should not get paid?
"Any other fix, via a tax or a 'smart' internet which charges and monitors for copyrighted-work transfer, would be a much more serious loss to all the public, including and especially future artists, than noncommercial personal copying."
Agreed, and that's exactly what I'm taling about.
BUT all the anti-RIAA rhetoric is taking us in exactly that direction.
Again, it's fun to hate the RIAA, but when you get familiar with the details of the alternatives, they can get pretty creepy.
"His point was that nobody but the record companies makes any significant money off selling CDs already, so is it really even a question of "ensuring the artist gets paid" in the first place. It's not a straw man. He's questioning the basic premise of the argument. The man asks "how will independents get paid", and he is asking "does anyone even make money selling CDs now?" "
Here's the response:
1) if the record companies are making money off CD sales, then money can be made of CD sales
2) if the artists start to throw off the record industry and take control over their work, that could be their money instead of the record companies'
3) in an effort to screw the record industry now, p2p disenfrachizes those CD sales
4) that, in turn, disenfranchizes the hope of those same artists from reclaiming those CD sales
"So you have no solution yourself, other than keeping a corrupt and broken system working?"
"One way or another something will have to give. It would be in your best interests as an artist, and mine as a consumer, that it is not the corporate solution that comes out on top."
Here's the deal -- once you understand the details of the alternative, only then can we compare them to what we have now and see how they both measure up.
But as long as the dialog reamins fixated on freedom vs. Great Satan, we're not really talking about anything meaningful.
I have read the alternatives, and I reamain unconvinced that they are better.
1) I don't like the idea of a new government agency to track Internet use.
2) I don't think it's practical to hinge it all on "voluntary" terms.
3) The alternatve would just be a new agency that pays out to the RIAA anyway.
And so on. The point is that rather than talk about how much wind the RIAA sucks, we should be talking about how much better the alternative system would be.
"Unfortunately, gropus like the EFF want you to keep thinking about this as no more than a struggle with an Evil Oligopoly"
"Not true at all. Depending on who you talk to, the problem with the RIAA/MPAA isn't that they are trying to protect copyrights. The problems include:"
Of course, you just did exactly what I'm talking about, flow the dialog into the same old anti-RIAA thing.
"No, the real question is just the inverse : in a world where copyright is unenforceable, why do you expect the courts to protect an industry whose time has been and gone? If you were looking for another job, ask yourself whether you'd consider training to be a buggy whip manufacturer."
Egads! Here comes the tired old "buggy whip" argument. The automobile took over from horse and carriage because it won over the market. The analogy to P2P is useless.
If the quesion is, why is there a copyright at all, the answer is to provide incentive to authors to invest considerable effort and time in creating complex works, and then have the hope of benefitting from copyright to recoup on that investment.
"The EFF has come up with a solution called Voluntary Collective Licensing that would allow artists to be paid for filesharing that is going to occur anyway.
As for the EFF's VCL:
1) Do you really think that the record companies are now going to voluntarily agree to this?
2) Do you really think that downloaders are going to voluntarily agree to pay?
Also, from the EFF's VCL, under the section "What about file sharers who won't pay?", I quote:
"Copyright holders (and perhaps the collecting society itself) would continue to be entitled to enforce their rights against 'free-loaders.'"
Exactly. As soon as you remove the standard-issue RIAA rhetoric, the p2p situation becomes a lot more complex (and interesting).
People say: "the artists should get paid!" but the same then say "but a tax isn't fair!" and so on.
Unfortunately, gropus like the EFF want you to keep thinking about this as no more than a struggle with an Evil Oligopoly, but the same stuff applies to every author protected by copyright.
Why not? Who's to say how much of a project needs to change in order to consider it forked? Obviously to keep it moving forward would take serious ongoing work, but it seems like releasing it as a simple fork would be trivial.
"So the thing to do would be to use a P2P service like Mute, where nobody can track any of the traffic, not even a node on the network."
I think you're missing the point -- most pro-P2P'ers still want the authors to be compensated for their work.
I don't know Mute, but I'm assuming that it's some sort of anonymous P2P? If so, then it's also at odds with the idea of compensating authors within a new system that embraces P2P.
Again, my point is that we generally like the idea of privacy, but in the effort to legitimize P2P, those who traditionally stump for privacy (ie EFF) are now pushing for a new pseudo government agency to track what we do on the Internet.
But because everybody loves to hate the RIAA, nobody seems to pay attention to details like this.
It's totally cool that Spirit made it to Bonneville crater (I've been waiting!), BUT I can't help but wonder if it wasn't a little disappointing that there doesn't seem to be any exposed bedrock as over at the Opportunity site...
"So, P2P networks, according to this, will cause another round of copyright law to be written and P2P networks will have to pay some set fee as dictated by congress for those "publishing" works. That seems to be the pattern over time for content broadcasting."
That's essentially what EFF et. al. are pushing for, but nobody ever pays enough attention to the details of how it would be implemented.
The main questions are where does the money come from, how do you decide to split it up, and who's in power.
For all the RIAA hatered, the details of these hypothetical laws can get downright scary if you think about them from a netural space.
It's weird that EFF wants to create some quasi-governmental organization to track what people listen to. Remember Carnivore?
Everybody spins everything to suit their own arguments.
In this case, the most obvious tidbit is the approved use of the term "piracy." An article talking about music piracy over p2p would have any number of posts saying "it's not piracy!"
The problem with the IP debate is that the arguments are always lacking logical consistency.
My turn to disagree -- look at the increased capabilites of Spirit/Opportunity vs. Pathfinder, and note that missions to Mars are generally separated by a multiple-of-three-year schedule (for the planets to be favorably aligned).
But for near Earth stuff, missions could be launched more regularly, and tech progress could be accelerated.
And there are many more obvious "real world" payoffs to better robot/AI tech than space-suit tech.
Slashdot Mirror
You'll often hear groups like EFF talk about how their solution will help the less popular artists, but that's hogwash. Your band isn't ever going to see a cut of that socan tax, is it? It's all just going to go to the majors, right?
In order to pay out a collected 'tax' they'll need to know how to divide it up, and to do that, they'll need to know who has what...
And so, since my guess is that you consider most P2P use to be noncommercial, am I correct in thinking that you also think that these authors should not get paid?
"Any other fix, via a tax or a 'smart' internet which charges and monitors for copyrighted-work transfer, would be a much more serious loss to all the public, including and especially future artists, than noncommercial personal copying."
Agreed, and that's exactly what I'm taling about.
BUT all the anti-RIAA rhetoric is taking us in exactly that direction.
Again, it's fun to hate the RIAA, but when you get familiar with the details of the alternatives, they can get pretty creepy.
Here's the response:
1) if the record companies are making money off CD sales, then money can be made of CD sales
2) if the artists start to throw off the record industry and take control over their work, that could be their money instead of the record companies'
3) in an effort to screw the record industry now, p2p disenfrachizes those CD sales
4) that, in turn, disenfranchizes the hope of those same artists from reclaiming those CD sales
"One way or another something will have to give. It would be in your best interests as an artist, and mine as a consumer, that it is not the corporate solution that comes out on top."
Here's the deal -- once you understand the details of the alternative, only then can we compare them to what we have now and see how they both measure up.
But as long as the dialog reamins fixated on freedom vs. Great Satan, we're not really talking about anything meaningful.
I have read the alternatives, and I reamain unconvinced that they are better.
1) I don't like the idea of a new government agency to track Internet use.
2) I don't think it's practical to hinge it all on "voluntary" terms.
3) The alternatve would just be a new agency that pays out to the RIAA anyway.
And so on. The point is that rather than talk about how much wind the RIAA sucks, we should be talking about how much better the alternative system would be.
Of course, you just did exactly what I'm talking about, flow the dialog into the same old anti-RIAA thing.
Look, I agree that P2P tech itself should not be held accountable. And I agreed with the EFF when that was their position. And note also that the EFF used to suggest that the RIAA should be suing infringers.
But the EFF has come to adapt a pro file-sharing-even-when-it's-copyrighted schtick, and that's when they got off track.
Egads! Here comes the tired old "buggy whip" argument. The automobile took over from horse and carriage because it won over the market. The analogy to P2P is useless.
If the quesion is, why is there a copyright at all, the answer is to provide incentive to authors to invest considerable effort and time in creating complex works, and then have the hope of benefitting from copyright to recoup on that investment.
As for the EFF's VCL:
1) Do you really think that the record companies are now going to voluntarily agree to this?
2) Do you really think that downloaders are going to voluntarily agree to pay?
Also, from the EFF's VCL, under the section "What about file sharers who won't pay?", I quote:
"Copyright holders (and perhaps the collecting society itself) would continue to be entitled to enforce their rights against 'free-loaders.'"
What does that sound like to you? ;)
People say: "the artists should get paid!" but the same then say "but a tax isn't fair!" and so on.
Unfortunately, gropus like the EFF want you to keep thinking about this as no more than a struggle with an Evil Oligopoly, but the same stuff applies to every author protected by copyright.
Again, it only makes sense to consider the full context as well as the solutions put forth by groups like EFF before you make up your mind.
Independents like me are also protected by copyright.
But note: if the goal is to "legitimize" p2p so that artists get paid, how would you do it?
Would you add a new Internet tax that everybody should pay?
Would you add new monitoring software so that an agency can track what people are doing on the net?
Would it actually be any more helpful to independents?
Do you think that everybody whose income depends on their ability to sell their own copyrighted work should just have to find another job?
These are the real questions...
No, Netscape went down the shitter because, 1) Microsoft bundled IE with Windows, and, 2) As of IE4, IE was better than Netscape.
Once upon a time AltaVista was the "unbeatable" search engine of choice.
Once upon a time, Yahoo was cool and had the endorsement of nerds.
Is whether Google will be able to hold onto their cool after they have their IPO and have to answer to shareholders...
Note, however, that isn't all that different from what the EFF wants to do in order to legitimize P2P...
Why not? Who's to say how much of a project needs to change in order to consider it forked? Obviously to keep it moving forward would take serious ongoing work, but it seems like releasing it as a simple fork would be trivial.
What heavy programming? After all, can't you just take it, change a few lines and call it OurSQL?
I think you're missing the point -- most pro-P2P'ers still want the authors to be compensated for their work.
I don't know Mute, but I'm assuming that it's some sort of anonymous P2P? If so, then it's also at odds with the idea of compensating authors within a new system that embraces P2P.
Again, my point is that we generally like the idea of privacy, but in the effort to legitimize P2P, those who traditionally stump for privacy (ie EFF) are now pushing for a new pseudo government agency to track what we do on the Internet.
But because everybody loves to hate the RIAA, nobody seems to pay attention to details like this.
How so?
In order to compensate copyright holders for sharing, the alternative system will need to know who's listening to what.
This is why the EFF's support of file-sharing is so out of whack. In this case, they *want* to build a government agency to listen in.
It's totally cool that Spirit made it to Bonneville crater (I've been waiting!), BUT I can't help but wonder if it wasn't a little disappointing that there doesn't seem to be any exposed bedrock as over at the Opportunity site...
That's essentially what EFF et. al. are pushing for, but nobody ever pays enough attention to the details of how it would be implemented.
The main questions are where does the money come from, how do you decide to split it up, and who's in power.
For all the RIAA hatered, the details of these hypothetical laws can get downright scary if you think about them from a netural space.
It's weird that EFF wants to create some quasi-governmental organization to track what people listen to. Remember Carnivore?
In this case, the most obvious tidbit is the approved use of the term "piracy." An article talking about music piracy over p2p would have any number of posts saying "it's not piracy!"
The problem with the IP debate is that the arguments are always lacking logical consistency.
But for near Earth stuff, missions could be launched more regularly, and tech progress could be accelerated.
And there are many more obvious "real world" payoffs to better robot/AI tech than space-suit tech.
We're better off sending bots unless there's a practical need to send peeps.
You don't think Guttenberg only printed bibles, do you?