we've all been engaged in slightly-less-conscious attempts to manipulate the genes of our offspring forever. we choose better looking, we choose wealthier, smarter, whatever -- the point is that there's nothing inherently terrible about the process.
so we've got a new tool to do it -- and do it more quickly. surely, as you point out, there are going to be some real growing pains until we figure these things out. but there will never be a real danger to the species, because genetic inheritance is a self-correcting system, and has been for a long time. it's all monday-morning quarterbacking -- well, having extra fins turned out to be an advantage for this particular species, because they survived -- almost to the point of tautology. and it's this fact which indicates that no genetic departure from the status quo is neccessarily good or bad.
to the point that "Your faith in "democracy" frightens the hell out of me.", i think that this is a very valid assessment of the fallacy in katz's statements. in fact, voting isn't even an issue, as this is about taking control, genetically, of nobody but yourself and your offspring. and as we say above, that's been going on forever.
to the point that the wealthy will have first crack at creating super-kids: duh. they go to private school, they get tutors, they get better medical care. are these things just? tough question. fair? no. the right of every parent? like it or not, yes.
to "only healthy, cheerful, smart and attractive inhabitants" -- um, what? good-looking, smart people are always happy? do we need to start collecting data on this, or can we dismiss it out of hand?
to sum up: * this has been going on for a while, genetic engineering. we just got a new tool, and it doesn't even work very well yet. * making people prettier or smarter is not neccessarily going to make us happier or more alike in any but superficial ways * there's nothing we can do about it, anyway -- kill the tool, and the sentiment still pervades.
so, that's my thought. there won't be a monopoly on any new tool, cause it's science, not code -- the source is pretty well public in this case. so it's not like microsoft, which owns both the product and the sum total of the understanding about how it works.
to my way of thinking, gene manipulation by parents is just another tool to be used in an effort which is quite old, and not even that powerful a tool, compared to some others.
so, the basic aim here, the one we're worried about, is for parents to make life easier and happier for their children.
now, paper currency does this, and investing does this, and moving to the suburbs does this, and sending the kids to private schools does this, and getting the kid a lifetime subscription to Abercrombie and Fitch Party of Five magazine and online identity boutique does this. Constant innundation by ads causes conformity, but we don't condemn parents for tacit enforcement of the cultural norms for letting kids watch Dawson's Creek. Should we? Maybe, but the assertion that diversity is endangered by the sudden ability to choose genes in a fashion which is more powerful than the long-standing ability to provide a sheltered, culturally homogeneous environment -- it's unproven, at best.
Way i see it, if McDonalds, the Gap, and the Oprah Book Club haven't managed to stomp out cultural diversity, the ability to gene out, say, dwarfism -- i just don't see it.
Nonetheless -- a single authority, a private one, dictating the manner in which this process takes place, that's lousy, but for entirely different reasons.
a little more eloquent than my point, but basically, right on. all pragmatism aside (no, decss and mp3 will *not* make artists go broke, no, the movie theaters will *not* be closing), i do wonder at the validity of the assumption that people seem to be making: that the quality of music i'll have to enjoy will drop off if all of a sudden the only artists i get to hear are doing it because they like it. seems dubious, unprovable at best, and, at worst, sharply opposed to what common sense tells us about the importance of sincerity and passion in art.
i totally agree -- but the fact is, most of the bands on mp3.com have day jobs, and there's no particular proof that a) they'd like to be rich, or that b) they'd stop if they thought they weren't going to be famous. i mean, we could ask them, but you and i both know what they'd say -- no on both accusations.
so, i don't think that we can say for sure what would happen. but we can both agree that their desire to make music probably hinges on something in addition to the desire to make money. that's why they're a punk band. so that's the point that i want to make -- that in the absence of monetary incentive for recorded music (having no effect on monetary incentive for live music, and recognizing that the death of the CD doesn't neccessarily equate to the death of paying the artist for music), even in the absence of that incentive, it's a bit silly to say that we will certainly enter a cultural dark age.
artists should get paid for what they do, and they can even want to get paid.
all that i'm saying is that removing monetary incentives will not kill art. i mean, how many people do you know who play the guitar or write poems or something, and how many of them are famous? i don't think that the culture will suffer at all if, in addition to all of my non-rich non-famous friends, britney spears were all of a sudden non-rich and non-famous. some people would quit, but i assert that this number wouldn't be appreciable enough to induce a cultural dark age.
besides which, even bands that aren't selling cds can make money.
yeah, and this is something that chuck d has been talking about for a while -- if you remove the need to release 12-song albums every 12 months, and allow the artist to determine his release schedule (a song a month, or not, or a full album, just like today -- whatever), you eliminate the phenomenon of album filler. the artist releases what's good, and they do so when it's done, no sooner, no later.
but i think that there are hundreds of bands, unsigned, on mp3.com, for example, who show that what you're saying isn't relevant in terms of whether major-label suing is neccessary for an artist to a) make money or b) make music.
i mean, we have to explain these bands somehow -- take boy kicks girl, a punk rock band from i think maybe san jose who i stumbled across a couple months ago. really good, quality recordings, and they tour and don't have a contract with a major. so why do they do it? how do they do it? will they regret having done it if they don't get rich from it?
so, i mean, sure, i fully support the idea that artists should get paid for their work. i like the idea that people are making enough to make more music. but i think that there are a zillion counterexamples to any assertion that if bands can't get rich, there won't be any bands or any decent recordings. ( i don't think that you made this statement, btw, but i do think that it's part and parcel to the *AA's argument -- they don't care about teeny tiny little bands, thy care about their cash cows -- spears, sisqo, and limp bisquik).
i think that small artists have, can, and will continue to do ok, even if it becomes difficult for them to prevent piracy -- honestly, have small acts *ever* had this facility? if anything, tape trading helps these bands make money.
no one's asking you to give up a right. i'm asking someone to explain to me again when production of art became the same activity as production, say, of canned corn.
you can claim, if you'd like, that art is in the same class of production activities as stringing tennis rackets, and from an ownership standpoint, it is. but everyone knows it's not, from an inspiration and incentive standpoint. which is the crux of the statement by the time-warner guy.
don't confuse ownership rights, which i find perfectly reasonable and neccessary, with any statement about the nature of the activity. i'm not stating anything about who owns it once it's around, i'm simply making an observation about why people make it in the first place.
and if you want my guess, it's that the quality of creatively-inspired material available to me in the absence of ownership rights for recorded material wouldn't be greatly different than the quality currently available. might even go up, unless you're a big fan of the backstreet boys.
Man, what's your problem? What about amendment #3, the greatest amendment of them all? Do you want to have to provide food and shelter for soldiers? Have you seen how soldiers eat, according to popular television depictions? And, if the film Stripes is to be believed, they're always up at like 5 in the morning and John Candy's one of them. And oh, that mean Sgt. Hulka! What a wacky bunch!
Can you clarify? I work downtown, and see those guys all the time, and i even buy the movies when i don't feel like paying 9.50 to see ll cool j in deep blue sea. and you're right -- they're crap.
You're also right that DeCSS won't have anything to say about movies like that -- a digital copy of the digital camcorder footage on those things isn't worth any more than an analog copy.
So but, and i'm being dense here, are you asserting that this means that there's no effect on new movies? This is me genuinely misunderstanding. And do you like those street movie guys, and what they do?
See, I'm torn -- it's a real prisoner's dilemma, one made possible by exactly the underground-ness that you describe. Cause if everybody bought, say, the new Jay-Z on the street, he'd go broke. But everybody doesn't -- they can't, cause they don't all live where you and i live. So when i do it, i know i'm stealing a buck from Jay-Z, who's already wealthy, and 12 bucks from a bunch of jerks i don't want to pay, anyway. And i'm giving *five* bucks to a guy selling cds on the street, who surely has more basic monetary needs issues than any of those guys.
Yeah, it's stealing, i'm ok with that. But do you feel that this type of stealing, the kind that i can participate in cause it takes place on john street with a lookout on b'way and one on church, do you feel like this can ever become an efficient enough system of distribution to actually threaten profits by more than a percent or two?
And to repeat, i know that what i'm doing is illegal and wrong. Shut up unless you've never taped a cd or record off of somebody else, or unless you think i might have bought your cd off the street -- i owe you $2, and tommy matolla $6 -- send me your address and i'll send you a check. I'm asking whether the incremental effect of street sales on already-wealthy artists is having a) no effect, b) some effect, or c) a huge effect on anyone at all, and whether this is ever likely to change.
that's exactly what i'm talking about. it must have taken years of treating art as a commodity to become calloused enough to make statements such as these.
i'm down, yo. this is driving me effing nuts, the studios and labels talking all "artists won't have an incentive to create".
for that to be true, the following would have to all be true simultaneously: 1. an artist's only motivation to create would have to be monetary. 2. all possibility of making money from selling their work would have to be eliminated. 3. all possibility of making money from live performance of their work would have to be eliminated.
now, if someone can explain to me how the last two are true and how the first is at all related to the notion of artistic integrity, i'd sure appreciate it.
don't get me wrong -- you should get paid for what you do -- but the endlessly repeated assertion that artists will lose incentive for creating art in the absence of traditional ways to get paid, it shows a complete misunderstanding not only of electronic commerce and what it means, these days, to sell information, how it can be done, etc, but also why artists really make art. sure, they'd like to get paid, but don't most of us do it cause we have to? doesn't the sheer number of starving artists demonstrate that the 'incentive' isn't strictly monetary?
these execs are doing a great job of demonstrating that, amongst media company executive officers, the cultural dark ages have already set in.
but it's an age-old problem with leadership, and not just cause of privacy. plato said that anybody who was fit to lead wouldn't want to, and anybody who wanted to wasn't fit, for all sorts of reasons.
there was a book about 10 years ago, called "What it takes", about the 1988 presidential election, on this topic -- it showed, over 800 pages, that you have to be some kind of insane ambitious egomaniacal media whore to make it in national politics these days.
and while i'm not sure what the answer is, as you say, this is not going to necessarily attract the most talented people to the discipline.
"I have to disagree that the increasing intrusion of the media into the lives of politicians and public figures is a bad thing, at least for the rest of us. These people accept that they are to have their lives scrutinised to a far greater extent than normal people - it's part and parcel of being in the public eye. "
This sounds a bit circular to me -- justification of the scrutiny by pointing out that politicians know they're going to have thier lives put under a microscope doesn't address whether this is a neccessary state or an admirable pursuit in all cases.
generally, i agree -- eternal vigilance and all of that. the question is whether there's only one big-P Privacy, that, once sacrificed on any subject, is no longer present for any other facet of one's life. That is, does a public figure's neccessary revelations of, say, fundraising activities logically extend to their sexual orientation? can they be private about one and not the other?
And that's two issues:
1. should they be able to maintain certain privacies? should the press be expected to be something other than a dumb rock-turning algorithm, or should it be expected to consider the usefulness and relevance of its stories, or the dignity and rights of its subjects?
2. as a couple of people have pointed out, large organized analytical systems (of which the media is one), once out of the bag for a particular purpose (investigations of important, legal, socially-relevant purposes) may naturally attack all notions of privacy at once. that is, an algorithm that breaks PGP isn't to blame if it's as useful in reading my email as that of a suspected drug-dealerr's -- can we say the same about the media, inasmuch as it's a privacy-breaking algorithm?
sorry it took me so lomg to respond -- took me a while to pry from my mouth all the words you tried to shove in there.
your assertion that all money derived from enjoyment of the work of an arist somehow rightfully belongs to that artist is both completely philosophically unjustifiable and completely at odds with the way that all forms of art eventually manifest themselves. consider the percentage (0) of the cost to get into the museum which goes to the artists whose work is displayed there. consider the amount that i'm forced to pay to hear metallica on the radio, or that the station is forced to pay them. again, the number to concentrate on is 0.
so clearly, your ignorance of the manner in which art is disseminated and its profit split up is hopelessly divorced from reality. the fact is, music is often played for free, and art is often displayed at no cost to the public and no profit to the artist. explain to me again how much you pay to see a public art exhibition? is this stealing? should we shut down free museums? should artists be fuming, suing for a pay-per-view standard to be imposed? and would this or would this not make them money-grubbing assholes?
your a priori assumption that all showings of works of art should profit the artist is neither common sense nor embedded in the law. many forms of reproduction and display are legal. you've drawn a line as to what is and what is not stealing, and that's just great. and i fully expect name-calling from egocentric solopsists who mistake their own subjective judgements for legal, ethical, or moral absolutes. but that doesn't make it right.
i haven't stolen from anyone. in fact, i think it's fair to say that the sum total of downloads i've performed have resulted in a greatly increased incidence of purchasing -- of bands i wouldn't have heard of, of albums i'd listened to in some small part, of entire genres to which i had little exposure and no willingness to explore because of the cost.
so get off my effing back. i spend like crazy, and moreso because of downloads. how you can be so self-righteous, claiming to understand not only my behavior (having had contact with me consisting entirely of two or three exchanged messages on/.) but also my deepest psychological motivations (see, i'm a thief, cause i don't like paying for things, cause i'm cheap, and a hoodlum)! the ignorance! the egotism! astounding.
actually, it costs me 63 dollars a month to ride all i want here. that's 756 dollars a year. i win, even over a fantastic deal like you've got. imagine the savings over someone in jersey driving, say, 50 miles total a day, paying 2k a year for insurance, plus repairs, plus tolls.
re: community, pshaw. brooklyn is the tightest-knit community in north america. i'm 50 yards from a thousand people who know me on sight and trust me and will look out for me, to some dgree or another.
while i take issue with the notion that nyc is expensive, given what you get (complete comprehensive access to the largest city this side of mexico for $63 all-you-can-ride for a month = less than most folks pay for insurance), cars are worlds beyond in terms of what it costs both the state and the individual to buy, power, and maintain. i'm not sure why people keep clinging to the assertion that they're no less efficient than mass transit.
generally, the tenor has been, "i need my car cause in my city mass transit sucks, you east-coast snob," when it ought to be, "gee, my transit sucks -- east coast snobs, how'd you make yours work so well?"
yeah, ok. i'm gonna inhale -- this got pretty vitriolic, sorry, and i'd like to provide a genuine answer -- btw, i'm leaving work to go to dinner in about an hour, if you'd like to respond to this, can i suggest that you mail me at hniceatcrazygrandpadotcom? slightly more civilized, conversation can continue over weekend, etc.
the way that i feel about automobiles is based on a lot of the criticisms that people have about cities, and NYC in particular. if you thought you sensed some bitterness towards car owners, give yourself a pat on the back, although i think that my reasoning is a bit more complex than you've posited.
basically, new york is dirty. i say nice things about it, and i love it here, but in a lot of easily quantifiable ways, it's a dirty place, and not an easy place to live. a lot of people, for exactly this reason, work here, but don't live here. these are the people who are often the most vocal about nyc's innumerable ills, and this bothers me.
so i've been forced to ask myself: if i don't have a yard, and i don't have, as you mention, the freedom to jump in an auto anytime i want, what have i bought myself by living here? what have i gotten that leads me to believe that this is a good idea?
now, there are obvious answers that involve museums and restaurants, but those are pretty clearly outside of the context of this discussion, and they're also considerably more subjective than you can force a transportation discussion to be, so we'll ignore them.
so what have i gotten myself in terms of transportation, and what have i lost, and how do these things affect the rest of the world (keeping in mind the fact that i may or may not have a desire or responsibility to consider my actions in light of their effects on others)?
i can honestly say that i do not at all feel as though my independence has been affected adversely. if you lived here for a while you'd probably find that the trains are unbelievably comprehensive and convenient. where they fail, the abundance of cabs fills in cheaply and with unfailing availability. so it's not really that.
(in fact, because it costs me so much less to ride than to drive, in a way, i've gained a certain freedom)
some of it is pollution -- everybody with a car pollutes more than i do, but my kids are going to wind up with skin cancer just like theirs. i feel like cars affect my life adversely, and there's nothing i can do about it. i really feel like i got the bad side of a prisoner's dilemma -- if nobody drove, we'd all be better off, but if just a few people are always going to drive, then i should act selfishly, cause what does one more car hurt? i dunno. that makes me kind of bitter, the idea that somebody else (many other people) are messing with my air. [re: heavy industry, i think that's lousy, too. but that doesn't make cars' contribution any better]
then there's the fact that nobody outside of a big city knows the value of neighborhood. it's funny, with/. wokring (occasionally) as well as it does, that people forget that a community was, once, a pretty tangible, non-digital thing. cars attack this -- they separate work from leisure, they fragment individuals. they allow you to completely abandon one area at the end of the day, an area you've used and placed demands on, to return to someplace entirely separate. they allow you to reject socializing with your neighbors, and the remove any responsibility of the individual to whereever he works. (obviously this bothers me, cause i live where so many other people work, but if you really want to see its bad effects, forget nyc -- go to a truly dead downtown, like hartford, or worcester, ma.)
does community have value? i think so, although i leave room for doubt. i live in a neighborhood, and i trust the people around me because i know them, because they're around me and i am in constant contact with them. it's good.
i understand the idea that cars are about individual control over place, and that this makes them particularly American. this, i think, is why people cling to them, not because of bad mass transit. i think that people have mixed up cause and effect here, at least to some degree -- we have bad mass transit cause people have decided to build their lives around cars, and mass transit can't always be made to serve.
i think that this is a smaller problem than it seems. nyc's a pretty good example -- we've minimized driving for the 3 million people, some living as far as 50 or 60 miles outside of manhattan, who come to work here every day from out of town. if you've ever been frustrated cause there aren't any parking lots in a major downtown, rest assured that i find this a symptom of the successful implementation of a mass transit solution. there's nowhere for cars, cause there aren't any cars anyway.
so i guess, to answer your question, i am a bit bitter, and i do have something against cars. they are not neccessary. they do affect me, negatively. further, urban sprawl, which is made possible by the automobile, also sucks life out of cities. i genuinely think that cars have made my life worse. so yeah, i don't like cars. i think we'd be better off without driving so much.
but, i respect people's right to disagree. as with all choices, however, i think that people should think about what they lose in addition to what they gain. cars are not all good, that's all i'm really saying, although rereading my original pot, i may have been an asshole about it;), and if, for example, you find yourself polluting or paying a ton for gas, you should accept this, do something about it, or stop driving.
i pay $63 a month for unlimited usage of my city's mass transit.
it's fast, comprehensive, and costs less *per year* than this mythical down payment for a car you're buying, which as yet has no gas, no insurance, and no reapair costs yet attached.
economy of scale. this thing runs 24-7, all year, it goes everywhere, the largest, most beautiful city in america -- nay, the world! -- would not be what it is without its efficiency and reach.
mass transit builds community, it saves lives, time, money, and the environment. you can choose to live outside of its embrace if you'd like, but any downside of such an existence is your problem, not mine. that includes the expense of owning a car. let's keep our fingers crossed about ozone depletion, too. boy are our kids gonna be pissed that we all decided to be so concerned with the Freedom of The Open Road!
yes there *is* reason for you to pay more! you have chosen, i repeat, *chosen*, to reject certain economies of scale. no one made you, and you think you got a pretty good deal, cause you got a lawn and a bigger place than you might in the city.
but in choosing to abandon these economies of scale with regards to transportation, you willingly put yourself in a situation where transportation costs more. if you don't like this inequality, you're free to move to a city, but that, too, has its downsides.
first off, $1.50 is super cheap. i pay 63 dollars a month for all-i-can-ride. that's $756 a year for all of my transportation needs. that's the price of car *insurance* in most places. we're cheaper than london, than dc, than paris. so yeah, cheap.
btw, the 1239 is the best train in the city. i love it.
re: people wouldn't drive if they thought it was harmful, i think that this is a false syllogism. people may not know, or they may not want to be inconvenienced. or they may be hooked, like smokers. they know it's bad, and do it anyway.
re: icky city people, exactly. that's why staten island, the whitest of all five boroughs, is the only on not connected to manhattan via rapid transit, and why they keep talking about seceededing to jersey.
living in an area removed from where you work destroys neighborhoods, accountability to the people around you, it segments work from life, it's bad for the environment. terrible stuff. you should care about where you are, and have a stake in it. cars kill this.
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this is another very good point --
we've all been engaged in slightly-less-conscious attempts to manipulate the genes of our offspring forever. we choose better looking, we choose wealthier, smarter, whatever -- the point is that there's nothing inherently terrible about the process.
so we've got a new tool to do it -- and do it more quickly. surely, as you point out, there are going to be some real growing pains until we figure these things out. but there will never be a real danger to the species, because genetic inheritance is a self-correcting system, and has been for a long time. it's all monday-morning quarterbacking -- well, having extra fins turned out to be an advantage for this particular species, because they survived -- almost to the point of tautology. and it's this fact which indicates that no genetic departure from the status quo is neccessarily good or bad.
to the point that "Your faith in "democracy" frightens the hell out of me.", i think that this is a very valid assessment of the fallacy in katz's statements. in fact, voting isn't even an issue, as this is about taking control, genetically, of nobody but yourself and your offspring. and as we say above, that's been going on forever.
to the point that the wealthy will have first crack at creating super-kids: duh. they go to private school, they get tutors, they get better medical care. are these things just? tough question. fair? no. the right of every parent? like it or not, yes.
to "only healthy, cheerful, smart and attractive inhabitants" -- um, what? good-looking, smart people are always happy? do we need to start collecting data on this, or can we dismiss it out of hand?
to sum up:
* this has been going on for a while, genetic engineering. we just got a new tool, and it doesn't even work very well yet.
* making people prettier or smarter is not neccessarily going to make us happier or more alike in any but superficial ways
* there's nothing we can do about it, anyway -- kill the tool, and the sentiment still pervades.
so, that's my thought. there won't be a monopoly on any new tool, cause it's science, not code -- the source is pretty well public in this case. so it's not like microsoft, which owns both the product and the sum total of the understanding about how it works.
i dunno, man --
to my way of thinking, gene manipulation by parents is just another tool to be used in an effort which is quite old, and not even that powerful a tool, compared to some others.
so, the basic aim here, the one we're worried about, is for parents to make life easier and happier for their children.
now, paper currency does this, and investing does this, and moving to the suburbs does this, and sending the kids to private schools does this, and getting the kid a lifetime subscription to Abercrombie and Fitch Party of Five magazine and online identity boutique does this. Constant innundation by ads causes conformity, but we don't condemn parents for tacit enforcement of the cultural norms for letting kids watch Dawson's Creek. Should we? Maybe, but the assertion that diversity is endangered by the sudden ability to choose genes in a fashion which is more powerful than the long-standing ability to provide a sheltered, culturally homogeneous environment -- it's unproven, at best.
Way i see it, if McDonalds, the Gap, and the Oprah Book Club haven't managed to stomp out cultural diversity, the ability to gene out, say, dwarfism -- i just don't see it.
Nonetheless -- a single authority, a private one, dictating the manner in which this process takes place, that's lousy, but for entirely different reasons.
a little more eloquent than my point, but basically, right on. all pragmatism aside (no, decss and mp3 will *not* make artists go broke, no, the movie theaters will *not* be closing), i do wonder at the validity of the assumption that people seem to be making: that the quality of music i'll have to enjoy will drop off if all of a sudden the only artists i get to hear are doing it because they like it. seems dubious, unprovable at best, and, at worst, sharply opposed to what common sense tells us about the importance of sincerity and passion in art.
no,
i totally agree -- but the fact is, most of the bands on mp3.com have day jobs, and there's no particular proof that a) they'd like to be rich, or that b) they'd stop if they thought they weren't going to be famous. i mean, we could ask them, but you and i both know what they'd say -- no on both accusations.
so, i don't think that we can say for sure what would happen. but we can both agree that their desire to make music probably hinges on something in addition to the desire to make money. that's why they're a punk band. so that's the point that i want to make -- that in the absence of monetary incentive for recorded music (having no effect on monetary incentive for live music, and recognizing that the death of the CD doesn't neccessarily equate to the death of paying the artist for music), even in the absence of that incentive, it's a bit silly to say that we will certainly enter a cultural dark age.
i don't think that that's what i'm saying:
artists should get paid for what they do, and they can even want to get paid.
all that i'm saying is that removing monetary incentives will not kill art. i mean, how many people do you know who play the guitar or write poems or something, and how many of them are famous? i don't think that the culture will suffer at all if, in addition to all of my non-rich non-famous friends, britney spears were all of a sudden non-rich and non-famous. some people would quit, but i assert that this number wouldn't be appreciable enough to induce a cultural dark age.
besides which, even bands that aren't selling cds can make money.
yeah, and this is something that chuck d has been talking about for a while -- if you remove the need to release 12-song albums every 12 months, and allow the artist to determine his release schedule (a song a month, or not, or a full album, just like today -- whatever), you eliminate the phenomenon of album filler. the artist releases what's good, and they do so when it's done, no sooner, no later.
but i think that there are hundreds of bands, unsigned, on mp3.com, for example, who show that what you're saying isn't relevant in terms of whether major-label suing is neccessary for an artist to a) make money or b) make music.
i mean, we have to explain these bands somehow -- take boy kicks girl, a punk rock band from i think maybe san jose who i stumbled across a couple months ago. really good, quality recordings, and they tour and don't have a contract with a major. so why do they do it? how do they do it? will they regret having done it if they don't get rich from it?
so, i mean, sure, i fully support the idea that artists should get paid for their work. i like the idea that people are making enough to make more music. but i think that there are a zillion counterexamples to any assertion that if bands can't get rich, there won't be any bands or any decent recordings. ( i don't think that you made this statement, btw, but i do think that it's part and parcel to the *AA's argument -- they don't care about teeny tiny little bands, thy care about their cash cows -- spears, sisqo, and limp bisquik).
i think that small artists have, can, and will continue to do ok, even if it becomes difficult for them to prevent piracy -- honestly, have small acts *ever* had this facility? if anything, tape trading helps these bands make money.
no one's asking you to give up a right. i'm asking someone to explain to me again when production of art became the same activity as production, say, of canned corn.
you can claim, if you'd like, that art is in the same class of production activities as stringing tennis rackets, and from an ownership standpoint, it is. but everyone knows it's not, from an inspiration and incentive standpoint. which is the crux of the statement by the time-warner guy.
don't confuse ownership rights, which i find perfectly reasonable and neccessary, with any statement about the nature of the activity. i'm not stating anything about who owns it once it's around, i'm simply making an observation about why people make it in the first place.
and if you want my guess, it's that the quality of creatively-inspired material available to me in the absence of ownership rights for recorded material wouldn't be greatly different than the quality currently available. might even go up, unless you're a big fan of the backstreet boys.
Man, what's your problem? What about amendment #3, the greatest amendment of them all? Do you want to have to provide food and shelter for soldiers? Have you seen how soldiers eat, according to popular television depictions? And, if the film Stripes is to be believed, they're always up at like 5 in the morning and John Candy's one of them. And oh, that mean Sgt. Hulka! What a wacky bunch!
Can you clarify? I work downtown, and see those guys all the time, and i even buy the movies when i don't feel like paying 9.50 to see ll cool j in deep blue sea. and you're right -- they're crap.
You're also right that DeCSS won't have anything to say about movies like that -- a digital copy of the digital camcorder footage on those things isn't worth any more than an analog copy.
So but, and i'm being dense here, are you asserting that this means that there's no effect on new movies? This is me genuinely misunderstanding. And do you like those street movie guys, and what they do?
See, I'm torn -- it's a real prisoner's dilemma, one made possible by exactly the underground-ness that you describe. Cause if everybody bought, say, the new Jay-Z on the street, he'd go broke. But everybody doesn't -- they can't, cause they don't all live where you and i live. So when i do it, i know i'm stealing a buck from Jay-Z, who's already wealthy, and 12 bucks from a bunch of jerks i don't want to pay, anyway. And i'm giving *five* bucks to a guy selling cds on the street, who surely has more basic monetary needs issues than any of those guys.
Yeah, it's stealing, i'm ok with that. But do you feel that this type of stealing, the kind that i can participate in cause it takes place on john street with a lookout on b'way and one on church, do you feel like this can ever become an efficient enough system of distribution to actually threaten profits by more than a percent or two?
And to repeat, i know that what i'm doing is illegal and wrong. Shut up unless you've never taped a cd or record off of somebody else, or unless you think i might have bought your cd off the street -- i owe you $2, and tommy matolla $6 -- send me your address and i'll send you a check. I'm asking whether the incremental effect of street sales on already-wealthy artists is having a) no effect, b) some effect, or c) a huge effect on anyone at all, and whether this is ever likely to change.
that's exactly what i'm talking about. it must have taken years of treating art as a commodity to become calloused enough to make statements such as these.
i'm down, yo. this is driving me effing nuts, the studios and labels talking all "artists won't have an incentive to create".
for that to be true, the following would have to all be true simultaneously:
1. an artist's only motivation to create would have to be monetary.
2. all possibility of making money from selling their work would have to be eliminated.
3. all possibility of making money from live performance of their work would have to be eliminated.
now, if someone can explain to me how the last two are true and how the first is at all related to the notion of artistic integrity, i'd sure appreciate it.
don't get me wrong -- you should get paid for what you do -- but the endlessly repeated assertion that artists will lose incentive for creating art in the absence of traditional ways to get paid, it shows a complete misunderstanding not only of electronic commerce and what it means, these days, to sell information, how it can be done, etc, but also why artists really make art. sure, they'd like to get paid, but don't most of us do it cause we have to? doesn't the sheer number of starving artists demonstrate that the 'incentive' isn't strictly monetary?
these execs are doing a great job of demonstrating that, amongst media company executive officers, the cultural dark ages have already set in.
moron.
yeah --
but it's an age-old problem with leadership, and not just cause of privacy. plato said that anybody who was fit to lead wouldn't want to, and anybody who wanted to wasn't fit, for all sorts of reasons.
there was a book about 10 years ago, called "What it takes", about the 1988 presidential election, on this topic -- it showed, over 800 pages, that you have to be some kind of insane ambitious egomaniacal media whore to make it in national politics these days.
and while i'm not sure what the answer is, as you say, this is not going to necessarily attract the most talented people to the discipline.
Hi,
"I have to disagree that the increasing intrusion of the media into the lives of politicians and public figures is a bad thing, at least for the rest of us. These people accept that they are to have their lives scrutinised to a far greater extent than normal people - it's part and parcel of being in the public eye. "
This sounds a bit circular to me -- justification of the scrutiny by pointing out that politicians know they're going to have thier lives put under a microscope doesn't address whether this is a neccessary state or an admirable pursuit in all cases.
generally, i agree -- eternal vigilance and all of that. the question is whether there's only one big-P Privacy, that, once sacrificed on any subject, is no longer present for any other facet of one's life. That is, does a public figure's neccessary revelations of, say, fundraising activities logically extend to their sexual orientation? can they be private about one and not the other?
And that's two issues:
1. should they be able to maintain certain privacies? should the press be expected to be something other than a dumb rock-turning algorithm, or should it be expected to consider the usefulness and relevance of its stories, or the dignity and rights of its subjects?
2. as a couple of people have pointed out, large organized analytical systems (of which the media is one), once out of the bag for a particular purpose (investigations of important, legal, socially-relevant purposes) may naturally attack all notions of privacy at once. that is, an algorithm that breaks PGP isn't to blame if it's as useful in reading my email as that of a suspected drug-dealerr's -- can we say the same about the media, inasmuch as it's a privacy-breaking algorithm?
sorry it took me so lomg to respond -- took me a while to pry from my mouth all the words you tried to shove in there.
/.) but also my deepest psychological motivations (see, i'm a thief, cause i don't like paying for things, cause i'm cheap, and a hoodlum)! the ignorance! the egotism! astounding.
your assertion that all money derived from enjoyment of the work of an arist somehow rightfully belongs to that artist is both completely philosophically unjustifiable and completely at odds with the way that all forms of art eventually manifest themselves. consider the percentage (0) of the cost to get into the museum which goes to the artists whose work is displayed there. consider the amount that i'm forced to pay to hear metallica on the radio, or that the station is forced to pay them. again, the number to concentrate on is 0.
so clearly, your ignorance of the manner in which art is disseminated and its profit split up is hopelessly divorced from reality. the fact is, music is often played for free, and art is often displayed at no cost to the public and no profit to the artist. explain to me again how much you pay to see a public art exhibition? is this stealing? should we shut down free museums? should artists be fuming, suing for a pay-per-view standard to be imposed? and would this or would this not make them money-grubbing assholes?
your a priori assumption that all showings of works of art should profit the artist is neither common sense nor embedded in the law. many forms of reproduction and display are legal. you've drawn a line as to what is and what is not stealing, and that's just great. and i fully expect name-calling from egocentric solopsists who mistake their own subjective judgements for legal, ethical, or moral absolutes. but that doesn't make it right.
i haven't stolen from anyone. in fact, i think it's fair to say that the sum total of downloads i've performed have resulted in a greatly increased incidence of purchasing -- of bands i wouldn't have heard of, of albums i'd listened to in some small part, of entire genres to which i had little exposure and no willingness to explore because of the cost.
so get off my effing back. i spend like crazy, and moreso because of downloads. how you can be so self-righteous, claiming to understand not only my behavior (having had contact with me consisting entirely of two or three exchanged messages on
actually, it costs me 63 dollars a month to ride all i want here. that's 756 dollars a year. i win, even over a fantastic deal like you've got. imagine the savings over someone in jersey driving, say, 50 miles total a day, paying 2k a year for insurance, plus repairs, plus tolls.
re: community, pshaw. brooklyn is the tightest-knit community in north america. i'm 50 yards from a thousand people who know me on sight and trust me and will look out for me, to some dgree or another.
that's what i'm talking about --
while i take issue with the notion that nyc is expensive, given what you get (complete comprehensive access to the largest city this side of mexico for $63 all-you-can-ride for a month = less than most folks pay for insurance), cars are worlds beyond in terms of what it costs both the state and the individual to buy, power, and maintain. i'm not sure why people keep clinging to the assertion that they're no less efficient than mass transit.
generally, the tenor has been, "i need my car cause in my city mass transit sucks, you east-coast snob," when it ought to be, "gee, my transit sucks -- east coast snobs, how'd you make yours work so well?"
awww, yeah. that's the stuff.
i can't stand those suvs.
i think, maybe, and this vitriol is showing it, that nyc is unique in the us in terms of the fact that cars can make your commute worse.
but this should only make other cities jealous to figure out how we do mass transit so well.
yeah, ok. i'm gonna inhale -- this got pretty vitriolic, sorry, and i'd like to provide a genuine answer -- btw, i'm leaving work to go to dinner in about an hour, if you'd like to respond to this, can i suggest that you mail me at hniceatcrazygrandpadotcom? slightly more civilized, conversation can continue over weekend, etc.
/. wokring (occasionally) as well as it does, that people forget that a community was, once, a pretty tangible, non-digital thing. cars attack this -- they separate work from leisure, they fragment individuals. they allow you to completely abandon one area at the end of the day, an area you've used and placed demands on, to return to someplace entirely separate. they allow you to reject socializing with your neighbors, and the remove any responsibility of the individual to whereever he works. (obviously this bothers me, cause i live where so many other people work, but if you really want to see its bad effects, forget nyc -- go to a truly dead downtown, like hartford, or worcester, ma.)
;), and if, for example, you find yourself polluting or paying a ton for gas, you should accept this, do something about it, or stop driving.
the way that i feel about automobiles is based on a lot of the criticisms that people have about cities, and NYC in particular. if you thought you sensed some bitterness towards car owners, give yourself a pat on the back, although i think that my reasoning is a bit more complex than you've posited.
basically, new york is dirty. i say nice things about it, and i love it here, but in a lot of easily quantifiable ways, it's a dirty place, and not an easy place to live. a lot of people, for exactly this reason, work here, but don't live here. these are the people who are often the most vocal about nyc's innumerable ills, and this bothers me.
so i've been forced to ask myself: if i don't have a yard, and i don't have, as you mention, the freedom to jump in an auto anytime i want, what have i bought myself by living here? what have i gotten that leads me to believe that this is a good idea?
now, there are obvious answers that involve museums and restaurants, but those are pretty clearly outside of the context of this discussion, and they're also considerably more subjective than you can force a transportation discussion to be, so we'll ignore them.
so what have i gotten myself in terms of transportation, and what have i lost, and how do these things affect the rest of the world (keeping in mind the fact that i may or may not have a desire or responsibility to consider my actions in light of their effects on others)?
i can honestly say that i do not at all feel as though my independence has been affected adversely. if you lived here for a while you'd probably find that the trains are unbelievably comprehensive and convenient. where they fail, the abundance of cabs fills in cheaply and with unfailing availability. so it's not really that.
(in fact, because it costs me so much less to ride than to drive, in a way, i've gained a certain freedom)
some of it is pollution -- everybody with a car pollutes more than i do, but my kids are going to wind up with skin cancer just like theirs. i feel like cars affect my life adversely, and there's nothing i can do about it. i really feel like i got the bad side of a prisoner's dilemma -- if nobody drove, we'd all be better off, but if just a few people are always going to drive, then i should act selfishly, cause what does one more car hurt? i dunno. that makes me kind of bitter, the idea that somebody else (many other people) are messing with my air. [re: heavy industry, i think that's lousy, too. but that doesn't make cars' contribution any better]
then there's the fact that nobody outside of a big city knows the value of neighborhood. it's funny, with
does community have value? i think so, although i leave room for doubt. i live in a neighborhood, and i trust the people around me because i know them, because they're around me and i am in constant contact with them. it's good.
i understand the idea that cars are about individual control over place, and that this makes them particularly American. this, i think, is why people cling to them, not because of bad mass transit. i think that people have mixed up cause and effect here, at least to some degree -- we have bad mass transit cause people have decided to build their lives around cars, and mass transit can't always be made to serve.
i think that this is a smaller problem than it seems. nyc's a pretty good example -- we've minimized driving for the 3 million people, some living as far as 50 or 60 miles outside of manhattan, who come to work here every day from out of town. if you've ever been frustrated cause there aren't any parking lots in a major downtown, rest assured that i find this a symptom of the successful implementation of a mass transit solution. there's nowhere for cars, cause there aren't any cars anyway.
so i guess, to answer your question, i am a bit bitter, and i do have something against cars. they are not neccessary. they do affect me, negatively. further, urban sprawl, which is made possible by the automobile, also sucks life out of cities. i genuinely think that cars have made my life worse. so yeah, i don't like cars. i think we'd be better off without driving so much.
but, i respect people's right to disagree. as with all choices, however, i think that people should think about what they lose in addition to what they gain. cars are not all good, that's all i'm really saying, although rereading my original pot, i may have been an asshole about it
let me know what you think.
ok, this is nuts:
i pay $63 a month for unlimited usage of my city's mass transit.
it's fast, comprehensive, and costs less *per year* than this mythical down payment for a car you're buying, which as yet has no gas, no insurance, and no reapair costs yet attached.
economy of scale. this thing runs 24-7, all year, it goes everywhere, the largest, most beautiful city in america -- nay, the world! -- would not be what it is without its efficiency and reach.
mass transit builds community, it saves lives, time, money, and the environment. you can choose to live outside of its embrace if you'd like, but any downside of such an existence is your problem, not mine. that includes the expense of owning a car. let's keep our fingers crossed about ozone depletion, too. boy are our kids gonna be pissed that we all decided to be so concerned with the Freedom of The Open Road!
yes there *is* reason for you to pay more! you have chosen, i repeat, *chosen*, to reject certain economies of scale. no one made you, and you think you got a pretty good deal, cause you got a lawn and a bigger place than you might in the city.
but in choosing to abandon these economies of scale with regards to transportation, you willingly put yourself in a situation where transportation costs more. if you don't like this inequality, you're free to move to a city, but that, too, has its downsides.
suburb dwellers choose to pay more for transport.
first off, $1.50 is super cheap. i pay 63 dollars a month for all-i-can-ride. that's $756 a year for all of my transportation needs. that's the price of car *insurance* in most places. we're cheaper than london, than dc, than paris. so yeah, cheap.
btw, the 1239 is the best train in the city. i love it.
re: people wouldn't drive if they thought it was harmful, i think that this is a false syllogism. people may not know, or they may not want to be inconvenienced. or they may be hooked, like smokers. they know it's bad, and do it anyway.
ok, let me be clear:
commuting by car for 30 minutes is significantly more destructive, socially and environmentally, than commuting by train or bus for 30 minutes.
besides which: cars do pollute.
re: icky city people, exactly. that's why staten island, the whitest of all five boroughs, is the only on not connected to manhattan via rapid transit, and why they keep talking about seceededing to jersey.
as the french say, whoomp, there it is --
living in an area removed from where you work destroys neighborhoods, accountability to the people around you, it segments work from life, it's bad for the environment. terrible stuff. you should care about where you are, and have a stake in it. cars kill this.