1. "Content" already has a meaning, and as it happens, a clear, well-established one, and
2. There's no reason to prefer a less clear, more vague, less specific, and on occasion factually incorrect meaning; it turns out this is one such occasion. IP law is clear: expression is protected, content is not.
NBC's Perrette refers to "filtering technology tha allows for playback of legitimately purchased content versus non-legitimately purchased content."
The problem of course is almost all content is free. It's expression he's charging for.
If you learn from watching NBC News Obama got 4 superdelegates last night, you're free to tell anyone, post it on your website, give that fact away from free; that's content and NBC can't control it.
If you post bits encoding the NBC TV news broadcast, you're violating NBC's copyright, and you're not free to do that, that's expression and NBC owns its expression.
Perhaps someone could explain this in terms so simple that an NBC executive could understand it.
A key difference: content doesn't get played back. That's expression. Or product, or video, or show, or entertainment, or media; any of those can be played back. There's no player for content. Either you get it or you don't. Either it's conveyed in the material played back or it isn't.
An illustration: some NBC programming is content-free.
Unfortunately, this is probably a fairly accurate statement of the law. What this means is EMI probably has the right to act against transmission and offsite storage by consumers of EMI's copyrighted digital audio files. Whether it would be wise for EMI to do so is another question. There are lots of rights that property owners have that they would be foolish or at least shortsighted to act to protect in all situations.
Now does this mean the law needs to catch up? So we can have offsite backup that includes digital audio files and other copyrighted files? It would be handy, and would enhance business opportunities for providers of these services, but consumers can do their own backups onsite. Sure would be convenient to be able to do it either way, but it turns out consumer convenience is not a constitutional right, nor necessarily a compellin case for anyone.
Bottom line: EMI's probably right, and the law may not change soon or ever, so guess what kids, that's the way it is. It's amazing how many laws I comply with that I don't completely agree with.
King George gave British soldiers broad powers to search homes. The founding fathers wrote the Fourth Amendment to make it clear that in the new nation, that wouldn't fly.
So the Fourth Amendment is in the Constitution precisely to limit domestic military operations.
The notion that Microsoft can take the EU's court judgement as a request demonstrates confusion on this point.
I would not suggest that Microsoft is in any way confused, just those who come up with the enchanting idea that Microsoft has an option not to pay the fine. That was never an option. The options were to prevaricate and jawbone and stall the process and play lawyer tricks and hope the court agreed. Microsoft has now exhausted those options. Microsoft is perfectly clear on this. Happy, no, but clear, yes. Not confused.
I suggest there's no reason for anyone else to be confused. Yes, governments have power, which they use to compel compliance. The only way to say no is to be another world government with comparable power. That Microsoft is not. Everyone clear now?
You're mixing metaphors. The 50 years figure applied to cars, not computers. You're welcome to ignore the metaphor, or suggest one you prefer; either would be a better move than getting it wrong.
As good as or better than XP?
Imagine if Toyota's latest Camry was as good or better than cars that were shipping 50 years ago. Wait, we have to lower the bar even further: someday Toyota will get its latest Camry to be as good as or better than cars you could buy 50 years ago. Impressed?
Those of us who have used dozens of operating systems over the course of decades are underwhelmed when a commercial shipping OS in 2008 is given the supposed praise of "it's maturing!"
That's appropriate praise for an experimental operating system that a few grad students have been hacking on for the last year or so.
What would it say about Toyota if its fans were reduced to saying things like "that new Camry runs pretty good now!"
Not quite the right point here, the relevant point, which is: nothing has stopped ANYONE EVER from writing, performing, digitally recording, and putting the bits up for download. It's COMPLETELY LEGAL and constitute merely someone making his work available to others without charge. Furthermore, it's also completely safe and legal to record and share works in the public domain in the same manner. What's more,
So it's not about the recording technology.
And it's not really about "who you sign with"; you don't have to sign with anybody, you don't have to sign, you don't have to do this as a business.
If you do decide to do this as a business, your choices include signing with a label, and if that's what you choose, then DUH you will definitely be signing a contract that precludes you from giving away the bits governed by the contract. That's one thing you exchange in return for what the label doses for you. I'm sorry if anyone was unclear on that.
But guess what: nothing makes you sign, nothing even makes you do this as a business. You're free and legal to put up recordings you own for others to listen to. You're not free and legal to put up recordings you don't own. You like sharing, go make some music, go share the corresponding bits, be free, be happy, be legal. Nothing stopping you.
A verdict of $222,000.00, for infringement of 24 song files worth a total of $23.76?
Yes, it might have been better for those involved to have paid the $23.76.
Or if they didn't think it was worth $23.76, exercised their choice not to buy the product.
All this wailing about the penalty does skip lightly over the plain fact that the penalty was 100% avoidable at no cost: don't violate the copyright.
Does this make everything RIAA does nice, and admirable, and so on? No.
But I'm tired of the prattle about outsized penalty. It was mid range for the violation, it could have been much more, and I see no reason to believe it was imposed out of line with the facts or the law. It was the price you pay for being found guilty here. If that seems high, you might want to not violate the law. If it seems much cheaper to buy the CD, you might want to buy the CD.
Again, this doesn't make RIAA right, or smart, or decent. But they had the law on their side and they choose to pursue their legal rights vigorously and they did and they won, most likely and plainly because the defendant was guilty.
Does this make the law right? I might differ with it, but you know what: it's the law. It was not a secret. It was not hidden in a locked box where the defendant could not see it when she violated the law.
Does this mean I have no sympathy for the defendant? In fact I do, but I can't say RIAA knocked her down and stole $220,000 from her. The penalty was exactly what she risked when she did what she did.
And as far as your suggestion that the business people who make a living selling on the Internet need to side with the defendant, you are in most cases completely 100% mistaken: their interests lie on the other side. Think about it. They may not be such jerks about it as RIAA is, but if you're making money selling IP on the net, guess where the protection of your property lies.
You're unclear on this? RIAA aims to deter copying/downloading. This requires them to bang on people. But that costs them money. So they want the biggest bang for their buck. They get that when people settle: that costs them only a warning letter, and in return they get a check. To make that happen, they need to create an incentive for people to settle. They get that by winning a couple high profile cases. That's what they just did.
That doesn't make them a protection racket, any more than ejecting trespassers from your property makes you a protection racket; it does make you a homeowner, and one who realizes that discouraging squatters is a good and legal move for you. The squatters are welcome to try RICO against you; they will get an education in the law.
Does that mean IP law is right and without flaw and a level playing field? Of course not. But it is the law we have. And confusing law you don't like, and uses of the law you don't like, with breaking the law is not helpful.
Does that mean RIAA are great guys? No.
Does that mean RIAA are not shortsighted, ugly bastards? No.
But you will find a variety of property holders are exactly that. They remain within their rights to protect their property in a variety of ways, and guess what, they do. That doesn't mean they're in some sort of a protection racket. It means they're protecting their property, and yes, they have the law on their side.
So the quote you cite is no accident, yes, and is ugly, yes, and is not a protection racket, no. Any more than "get off my land".
The good news is, you ultimately can choose different property owners. And if you do, the value of that contested land will go down. You will find the law is on your side there.
It seems high to me, but the reporting indicates it's middle of the range for the violation in question.
It might have been cheaper to buy the CDs.
You may not like the law, but that's the law.
And it follows a pattern: it costs more, sometimes a lot more, if you get caught stealing my car than if you buy my car. If all car thieves could get right with the law simply by paying the value of the car, or even anything in that range, the disincentive to steal cars would be severely undercut. That's the logic behind the IP law as well.
Is it fair that this individual will be banged this hard for this small a crime? I'd say no, but it turns out my opinion is not relevant here: the law is well established and has the last say, modulo the judge's discretion.
Did the industry get the law stacked in its favor here, and would that be unfair? Probably yes to both, but there is this: that fact was available when the violation was considered and performed.
Does that make RIAA right to do what it did, and what it's doing? Not in my book, but that's what I consider right; it is within the law. And its power to use this law this severely was not a secret when the downloads occurred.
Doesn't such a large bang mean our sympathies should lie with the individual? Mine do, but that again doesn't mean that RIAA went into the individual's bank account and stole $222,000. RIAA went to court and made its case and the law and facts were on its side. I still sympathize with the defendant, but I can't say RIAA stole the money.
Here's how it works: if you want to buy the product, and you're willing to pay the price, you buy it. If that's a catch-22, then so is the marketplace.
Here's the good news: this is the recording business; recordings are not music. You want to hear music, make music, you can do it. You have some music of yours you want to share in digital audio form: perform it, record it, put it up for download, and that's all perfectly free and legal.
If instead you want to listen to recordings of someone else's music, someone else's recordings, they may have chosen to copyright it, and there may be copyright holders, and your option may be to buy a CD in the marketplace and listen to it. More good news: it's perfectly legal for you to rip it and copy it to a different player and listen to it there. It's just not legal for you to put those bits up for download, or for others to copy those bits; you didn't buy that right.
the record industry believes that ripping a cd is "stealing"
They're welcome to believe whatever they like. They will find the law is not on their side here. Copying a recording you paid for from one medium to another remains perfectly legal. Providing copies to others is not. Industry beliefs are not relevant. They will win cases involving the latter (as in this case) and have already lost cases involving the former (back in the day of copying vinyl to cassette tape, by the individual who bought the vinyl, for his or her own listening).
proof that all they are trying to do is extort people
No, it's evidence they're trying to deter people. Since there's a lot more evidence that points exactly the same way, that would be the most likely inference. They're trying to stop people from getting their copyrighted work without paying them for it.
While we may not like how they're going about it (I don't), that doesn't mean what they're doing is extortion (it's not). They're doing exactly what copyright owners do to prevent their property from becoming worthless.
You may not like IP, you may not like them, you may not like property, you may not like law that gives property rights, you may not like law that protects their IP rights, you may not like their attitude, you may not want them around your beach community, but that doesn't mean they extorted a thing.
From day one, RIAA has been total jerks about this, but some property owners are total jerks about their property. In general the law is on their side. In general, that's what we mean by "property".
RIAA has aggressively, I'd say noxiously, exerted its property rights, with the clear goal of detering people from getting copies without paying, and the obvious ultimate goal of making them pay and keeping the rights valuable. I don't like how they have gone about it, but did you expect them to do nothing? Are you unclear on RIAA's reason for existence? Or what a business is? Or what RIAA's business is?
I'd also say that while RIAA may get the results it wants in the short term, it's making a big mistake in the long term, which may not be that far out, either. But guess what: property owners are allowed to be shortsighted in the use of their property. Happens every day. And it's not extortion; it's lack of vision.
It is neither necessary nor helpful to accuse RIAA of doing things it has not done, for reasons it does not have. The simple facts are fine: RIAA owns or represents owners for a lot of IP and it has the ability to severely punish those who are found in possession of that IP and it intends to do exactly that. Next time you make a purchase decision, you might want to take that into consideration and vote your dollars to a less punitive vendor.
In Twain's day copyright lasted 30 years. He thought it was perfectly fair as long as all property expired in 30 years.
Every day of your life you pay money to dead people who have ownership of tangible things you use and benefit from. You complain about that too? No? Didn't think so.
You may not like paying money to dead people, but as long as you accept property and inheritance, pay you shall. There's no reason literary property should be any exception.
The real story is the increasing volume of calls in violation of the law.
Any day I'm at home for a few hours I get an automated call from "a carpet cleaning service in your area" or "cardholder services". Of course my line is on the Do Not Call list. Of course they have no established business relationship with me. Of course they're not exempt as nonprofits. They just call anyway. From time to time they pay a FCC fine. The calling never stops.
That's the real story. These calls will not stop when you re-up, of course.
I agree. You want me to buy, mark the price down, honor the markdown at the counter, and we're done. Nice and simple. You want to play games with mail-in coupons, rebates, other complications: I won't buy even if the un-rebated price was still lower than the other product. I'm that tired of stupid games.
Slashdot Mirror
You should so inform the relevant IP law. They have it all confused. They somehow believe that it's expression that's protected, not content.
1. "Content" already has a meaning, and as it happens, a clear, well-established one, and
2. There's no reason to prefer a less clear, more vague, less specific, and on occasion factually incorrect meaning; it turns out this is one such occasion. IP law is clear: expression is protected, content is not.
The problem of course is almost all content is free. It's expression he's charging for.
If you learn from watching NBC News Obama got 4 superdelegates last night, you're free to tell anyone, post it on your website, give that fact away from free; that's content and NBC can't control it.
If you post bits encoding the NBC TV news broadcast, you're violating NBC's copyright, and you're not free to do that, that's expression and NBC owns its expression.
Perhaps someone could explain this in terms so simple that an NBC executive could understand it.
A key difference: content doesn't get played back. That's expression. Or product, or video, or show, or entertainment, or media; any of those can be played back. There's no player for content. Either you get it or you don't. Either it's conveyed in the material played back or it isn't.
An illustration: some NBC programming is content-free.
In a related story, the White House has ordered 6 thousand reams of the new paper, to be used to print out email.
Does this apply to the executive branch?
Now does this mean the law needs to catch up? So we can have offsite backup that includes digital audio files and other copyrighted files? It would be handy, and would enhance business opportunities for providers of these services, but consumers can do their own backups onsite. Sure would be convenient to be able to do it either way, but it turns out consumer convenience is not a constitutional right, nor necessarily a compellin case for anyone.
Bottom line: EMI's probably right, and the law may not change soon or ever, so guess what kids, that's the way it is. It's amazing how many laws I comply with that I don't completely agree with.
However that makes a handy quick guide. It exposes the error in virtually all news reporting on the recording industry. For instance, this story.
Here's how to tell which is which.
If the goal is to make it the same every time it's played, it's a recording.
If the goal is to make it different every time it's played, it's music.
So the Fourth Amendment is in the Constitution precisely to limit domestic military operations.
I'm happy to answer: Ballmer can pay me twice my usual rates to beta test his product. I couldn't accept less. It wouldn't be enough.
The notion that Microsoft can take the EU's court judgement as a request demonstrates confusion on this point.
I would not suggest that Microsoft is in any way confused, just those who come up with the enchanting idea that Microsoft has an option not to pay the fine. That was never an option. The options were to prevaricate and jawbone and stall the process and play lawyer tricks and hope the court agreed. Microsoft has now exhausted those options. Microsoft is perfectly clear on this. Happy, no, but clear, yes. Not confused.
I suggest there's no reason for anyone else to be confused. Yes, governments have power, which they use to compel compliance. The only way to say no is to be another world government with comparable power. That Microsoft is not. Everyone clear now?
Now there's truth in advertising :-)
You're mixing metaphors. The 50 years figure applied to cars, not computers. You're welcome to ignore the metaphor, or suggest one you prefer; either would be a better move than getting it wrong.
As good as or better than XP? Imagine if Toyota's latest Camry was as good or better than cars that were shipping 50 years ago. Wait, we have to lower the bar even further: someday Toyota will get its latest Camry to be as good as or better than cars you could buy 50 years ago. Impressed?
Those of us who have used dozens of operating systems over the course of decades are underwhelmed when a commercial shipping OS in 2008 is given the supposed praise of "it's maturing!"
That's appropriate praise for an experimental operating system that a few grad students have been hacking on for the last year or so.
What would it say about Toyota if its fans were reduced to saying things like "that new Camry runs pretty good now!"
So it's not about the recording technology.
And it's not really about "who you sign with"; you don't have to sign with anybody, you don't have to sign, you don't have to do this as a business.
If you do decide to do this as a business, your choices include signing with a label, and if that's what you choose, then DUH you will definitely be signing a contract that precludes you from giving away the bits governed by the contract. That's one thing you exchange in return for what the label doses for you. I'm sorry if anyone was unclear on that.
But guess what: nothing makes you sign, nothing even makes you do this as a business. You're free and legal to put up recordings you own for others to listen to. You're not free and legal to put up recordings you don't own. You like sharing, go make some music, go share the corresponding bits, be free, be happy, be legal. Nothing stopping you.
Yes, it might have been better for those involved to have paid the $23.76.
Or if they didn't think it was worth $23.76, exercised their choice not to buy the product.
All this wailing about the penalty does skip lightly over the plain fact that the penalty was 100% avoidable at no cost: don't violate the copyright.
Does this make everything RIAA does nice, and admirable, and so on? No.
But I'm tired of the prattle about outsized penalty. It was mid range for the violation, it could have been much more, and I see no reason to believe it was imposed out of line with the facts or the law. It was the price you pay for being found guilty here. If that seems high, you might want to not violate the law. If it seems much cheaper to buy the CD, you might want to buy the CD.
Again, this doesn't make RIAA right, or smart, or decent. But they had the law on their side and they choose to pursue their legal rights vigorously and they did and they won, most likely and plainly because the defendant was guilty.
Does this make the law right? I might differ with it, but you know what: it's the law. It was not a secret. It was not hidden in a locked box where the defendant could not see it when she violated the law.
Does this mean I have no sympathy for the defendant? In fact I do, but I can't say RIAA knocked her down and stole $220,000 from her. The penalty was exactly what she risked when she did what she did.
And as far as your suggestion that the business people who make a living selling on the Internet need to side with the defendant, you are in most cases completely 100% mistaken: their interests lie on the other side. Think about it. They may not be such jerks about it as RIAA is, but if you're making money selling IP on the net, guess where the protection of your property lies.
That doesn't make them a protection racket, any more than ejecting trespassers from your property makes you a protection racket; it does make you a homeowner, and one who realizes that discouraging squatters is a good and legal move for you. The squatters are welcome to try RICO against you; they will get an education in the law.
Does that mean IP law is right and without flaw and a level playing field? Of course not. But it is the law we have. And confusing law you don't like, and uses of the law you don't like, with breaking the law is not helpful.
Does that mean RIAA are great guys? No.
Does that mean RIAA are not shortsighted, ugly bastards? No.
But you will find a variety of property holders are exactly that. They remain within their rights to protect their property in a variety of ways, and guess what, they do. That doesn't mean they're in some sort of a protection racket. It means they're protecting their property, and yes, they have the law on their side.
So the quote you cite is no accident, yes, and is ugly, yes, and is not a protection racket, no. Any more than "get off my land".
The good news is, you ultimately can choose different property owners. And if you do, the value of that contested land will go down. You will find the law is on your side there.
It seems high to me, but the reporting indicates it's middle of the range for the violation in question.
It might have been cheaper to buy the CDs.
You may not like the law, but that's the law.
And it follows a pattern: it costs more, sometimes a lot more, if you get caught stealing my car than if you buy my car. If all car thieves could get right with the law simply by paying the value of the car, or even anything in that range, the disincentive to steal cars would be severely undercut. That's the logic behind the IP law as well.
Is it fair that this individual will be banged this hard for this small a crime? I'd say no, but it turns out my opinion is not relevant here: the law is well established and has the last say, modulo the judge's discretion.
Did the industry get the law stacked in its favor here, and would that be unfair? Probably yes to both, but there is this: that fact was available when the violation was considered and performed.
Does that make RIAA right to do what it did, and what it's doing? Not in my book, but that's what I consider right; it is within the law. And its power to use this law this severely was not a secret when the downloads occurred.
Doesn't such a large bang mean our sympathies should lie with the individual? Mine do, but that again doesn't mean that RIAA went into the individual's bank account and stole $222,000. RIAA went to court and made its case and the law and facts were on its side. I still sympathize with the defendant, but I can't say RIAA stole the money.
Here's how it works: if you want to buy the product, and you're willing to pay the price, you buy it. If that's a catch-22, then so is the marketplace.
Here's the good news: this is the recording business; recordings are not music. You want to hear music, make music, you can do it. You have some music of yours you want to share in digital audio form: perform it, record it, put it up for download, and that's all perfectly free and legal.
If instead you want to listen to recordings of someone else's music, someone else's recordings, they may have chosen to copyright it, and there may be copyright holders, and your option may be to buy a CD in the marketplace and listen to it. More good news: it's perfectly legal for you to rip it and copy it to a different player and listen to it there. It's just not legal for you to put those bits up for download, or for others to copy those bits; you didn't buy that right.
They're welcome to believe whatever they like. They will find the law is not on their side here. Copying a recording you paid for from one medium to another remains perfectly legal. Providing copies to others is not. Industry beliefs are not relevant. They will win cases involving the latter (as in this case) and have already lost cases involving the former (back in the day of copying vinyl to cassette tape, by the individual who bought the vinyl, for his or her own listening).
No, it's evidence they're trying to deter people. Since there's a lot more evidence that points exactly the same way, that would be the most likely inference. They're trying to stop people from getting their copyrighted work without paying them for it.
While we may not like how they're going about it (I don't), that doesn't mean what they're doing is extortion (it's not). They're doing exactly what copyright owners do to prevent their property from becoming worthless.
You may not like IP, you may not like them, you may not like property, you may not like law that gives property rights, you may not like law that protects their IP rights, you may not like their attitude, you may not want them around your beach community, but that doesn't mean they extorted a thing.
From day one, RIAA has been total jerks about this, but some property owners are total jerks about their property. In general the law is on their side. In general, that's what we mean by "property".
RIAA has aggressively, I'd say noxiously, exerted its property rights, with the clear goal of detering people from getting copies without paying, and the obvious ultimate goal of making them pay and keeping the rights valuable. I don't like how they have gone about it, but did you expect them to do nothing? Are you unclear on RIAA's reason for existence? Or what a business is? Or what RIAA's business is?
I'd also say that while RIAA may get the results it wants in the short term, it's making a big mistake in the long term, which may not be that far out, either. But guess what: property owners are allowed to be shortsighted in the use of their property. Happens every day. And it's not extortion; it's lack of vision.
It is neither necessary nor helpful to accuse RIAA of doing things it has not done, for reasons it does not have. The simple facts are fine: RIAA owns or represents owners for a lot of IP and it has the ability to severely punish those who are found in possession of that IP and it intends to do exactly that. Next time you make a purchase decision, you might want to take that into consideration and vote your dollars to a less punitive vendor.
Every day of your life you pay money to dead people who have ownership of tangible things you use and benefit from. You complain about that too? No? Didn't think so.
You may not like paying money to dead people, but as long as you accept property and inheritance, pay you shall. There's no reason literary property should be any exception.
Any day I'm at home for a few hours I get an automated call from "a carpet cleaning service in your area" or "cardholder services". Of course my line is on the Do Not Call list. Of course they have no established business relationship with me. Of course they're not exempt as nonprofits. They just call anyway. From time to time they pay a FCC fine. The calling never stops.
That's the real story. These calls will not stop when you re-up, of course.
I agree. You want me to buy, mark the price down, honor the markdown at the counter, and we're done. Nice and simple. You want to play games with mail-in coupons, rebates, other complications: I won't buy even if the un-rebated price was still lower than the other product. I'm that tired of stupid games.