What "actions" would that be? Downloading music I cannot buy in stores? Recording SNL from public TV broadcasts?
It astounds me how so many people in this country have become so brainwashed by the ideals of corporate ownership they leap at the chance to rebuke the very things that allowed this country to rise to the top of the heap in a single century.
Clue: Russian copyrights mean nothing in the US - just as US copyrights are meaningless in Russia. And that's only the least of the reasons your indingance is so utterly misguided.
Artists get paid for creating - not for publishing. Publishers get paid for publishing.
Some cross the boundaries and do quite well at it; Siouxsie and Budgie, one year, sent out a live CD recording as an incentive for people to subscibe to their mailing list/fan club (the Cd didn't come with the mailing list, but it was only sold to people who were list subscribers). Each CD came in a jacket that was hand made, numbered and signed (in pencil, of course) by one of them. They sold out the entire production of 1000 (as they have many other releases). At $25 a pop that's easily $15,000 profit - not bad for a month's work, and as a collectible it enhanced the value of all their other releases.
Of course, if no one knew who they were they wouldn't have sold any at all. So how does a new artist, who doesn't have the benefit of a "mainstream" 20 year back catalog, get known? Develop a fan base? Inspire a loyal creative exchange with those fans?
Well, let's see: they could whore themselves to a publisher who will take every penny they make for the next seven years. That might work - it sure has for all those other long forgotten flavor-of-the-month pop bands.
The problems you cite are exactly why I say DIY. There are plenty of DNS serrvers with lists of "problem" addresses and they're not at all hard to find. Keeping these lists decentralized is only a slight inconvenience and assures no central database gets to call all the shots. In short, it already works the way the net was supposed to work all along.. no?
Re:Highly attractive cover-girl? No. Pointless? Ye
on
Aimee Deep Interview
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· Score: 1
Since when do we need an "excuse" (veiled or otherwise) to "lust over teenage girls?" Or is it only OK when it's on TV or a fashion mag done by those "respectable" publishers?
Madeline Aimee Deep -- I was 15 when Aimster first came out. I may look different, but I still feel the same on the inside.
Yep. Because someone else who is NOT a member of that cartel will step in and sell parts for all those used cars that WEREN'T covered by the cartel's wonderful new laws. And you'd be finding a lot more people buying those "weird little cars" from euroupe, which means more money flowing out of the US into eastern euroupe, which means more money to put into product development and expansion, which in the end means a higher quality product from those "weird little carmakers."
But it wouldn't evne come to that, because as soon as the FEDS saw all those dollars pouring across the ocean they would do something about it. they may try to ban their import, but those sorts of things tend to go over poorly in this country. More likely they would tell Congress to tend to the matter by amending (ie revoking) all those stupid laws they gave the carmakers in the first place.
The content creators argued that unless there was some period of monopoly on the right to copy, they would all starve and cease to create music, books, etc.
Uhhh again. Actually "content creators" (by which one must assume you mean authors and other artists, since publishers create very little) would, provably, go right on creating with or without. The difference is, without some rightful protection - in the past - their works would simply be co-opted by the only people with the means to disseminate those works - the publishers who owned the presses - who would then profit to the exclusion of those who created the works in the first place. This is not only unjust, it also diminishes "the public" because, without the free time to devote to creating these works those "creators" would be forced to more mundane tasks - like seeking shelter and hunting food. This is the process that allows us to evolve beyond hunter-gatherer societies huddling in caves.
And even before "the founders" copyright was to protect the public from those same publishers who would attempt to dictate the very use of their publications; who gets a copy, who doesn't, and who controls their use - just as they are trying to do today.
Disney can claim "what's theirs is theirs" all they like, but there's scant little they can do about me making a parody of "Disney's Snow White" or even sharing my own X-rated version of The Little Mermaid. If I wish to take credit for my work I can publish it to the internet via usenet and p2p apps and my work will be seen by anyone who cares to download it. If I wish to publish my work anonymnously I can do it that way, too, by the very same mechanisms.
the only place the law enters into this is when I try to generate profit for myself by selling those works. Even then, in this specific example they may have a tough case (it likely wouldn't even be a copyright suit, but a trademark suit), but nevertheless "the law" would not even apply to any creative works I published until such time as I (or someone else) tried to profit from their distribution.
Now, how far we allow people to limit one another's ability to profit from sharing "knowledge" (if one is willing to go so far as to call modern media that) is another matter entirely - but if we are to talk about this brave new world where everyone is a publisher and individuals are empowered to share their "message" with the world then we have to draw a clearer distinction between the world of share and the world of sell. Until we do that this argument is just going to go in circles - and once we do that I think the other lines will draw themselves.
Comparing listening to music to knifing someone is fucking absurd. You make the people who insist on calling it "theft" and comparing copyright infringment to stealing cars look like trolling Stephen Hawkings.
Yes, you fucking well can have something for nothing. It happens all the time; I can throw some seed in the garden - ignore them completely - and in a few months still have watermelons. I can walk outside, hold my mouth open to the sky in a rainstorm and drink all the fresh water I care to catch. I breath, and no one charges me for the air. I think, and no one questions my thoughts.
These rights of commerce are not inalienable, and are not moral. When it comes down to you trying to charge me for something as free as air or water just because you, at one time, drank from the same well then it's become time for you to leave the island.
They have the right to use DRM - corporation or artist. (And I've never seen anyone make this distinction.)
But, either way, they also have the right to starve.
It doesn't seem like you really understand "rights" in this regard at all. "Protect their investment?" A recording is a record of a single or multiple performances. If you are in a band that is a resource limited only by your time. Your "product" is music, and the performance of that music; selling even a single CD amounts to more income than you would have had without that record. That a market has existed for several decades for these recordings is just as much an accident of evolution as the recent devaluing of that same resource.
In short: if you're in a band, no one (in this country, anyway) can take away your "right" to sell your "product" at performances. Recordings of those performances simply have less market value than they did before - sorry, but dem's da breaks. Perhaps if you get more people to listen to your music (hint: using DRM on your recordings will hinder your progress in this pursuit) then you can generate more demand for your "product" and get more paying gigs.
Despite the fact you can buy a used car for a few hundred dollars, a new car for a few thousand, some people choose to lease their cars. Ford hasn't said "we're not going to sell cars any more, but only loan them" because if they did that they'd lose lots of customers to the other makers - and many more to people who would simply say "OK, keep your damn cars and I'll keep mine" and that would be it.
Don't like being "forced" to lease the latest Britney Spears collection? Fine! Spread your musical wings and discover the world outside the pop star of the month club.
Sheesh. Once upon a time (and not so long ago) people sat on the porch together, played and sang. They made their own music! Imagine!
If houses were so easily replicated and they could occupy only space the person already owned, then landlords would become as irrelevant as the music publishers are today becoming. Whether it "harms" them or not to replicate your own house means only that it's time for the landlord to find a new resource - one with enough scarcity to give it value.
Meanwhile, new markets would likely open up in these machines that do the house replicating. And there aren't many house that heat themselves, and even those that do still need power for the niceties the residents have likely become used to. So, while "landlords" might have a hard time the power industry would probably make more money than ever, given this explosion in new homes. Slums could be virtually wished away, since nice new homes could be replicated far easier than the effort that would be required to repair the old ones. Hell, the old rundown parts of town would probably take on new value since people with means would place even greater value on having "originals" - homes not produced by factory replicators, but built instead of good ol' human labor. the factory housing market would be so devalued that millions of "laborers" swinging hammers would be put out of work; cheap factory housing would become essentially worthless overnight. But this would alsa have the effect of making even higher quality "originals" more affordable to the middle class. So the people who had to sleep under bridges could now have homes; those who would have had to work a lifetime to get a small home in the city could now spend the money that would have gone to rent and mortgages on something else - like maybe original works of art, or high quality furniture instead of the crap from the factory that breaks down in a year.
It would put a serious hurt on real estate values - but only for a while, and in the meantime look at all the benefits that might come from it. Publishers may say they're in danger, but look at the facts: the Matrix sequel still made hundreds of Millions so far and the franchise will likely make Billions before it's all done. The sale of recorded music may be taking a nosedive, but there's still Billions more being made in that industry every year. When they complain about losing money they're lying - what they mean is we're not getting all the money we want. Well, fucking tough: give me all the money I want first, and then we'll talk.
This is the battle being fought by the publishers: they see the value of some of their product draining into the sewer, and they're pouring Billions into lobbying for legislation to protect them from the inevitable. Instead of trying to outrun the other campers, they're still trying to stare down the bear.
The joke is, as always, on them - because, so long as they do this, the end really is inevitable. Might as well let'em spend that money - because, as the saying goes: you can't take it with you.
Just today I was "shopping" for some new music via a handy-dandy point and click web interface. I found a few that looked interesting and set my download manager to the task of fetching them via my meager 56kbps connection. When I wake tomorrow I should have a new "CD" waiting for me in my daily download folder.
Nope, not iTunes. And definitely not some POS p2p spyware app laden with crappy rips. But free nontheless... (say it with me) usenet.
The other day I burned a CD for my cousin to listen to on his way to work. He bought a CD player for his car that plays MP3 discs despite the fact he rarely uses the net and probably doesn't even know how to spell usenet. He's into country but I make it my mission to widen people's horizons - the CD has music from the US, Sweden, Mexico, Russia, the UK, and even Egypt - all brought to him, via me, via USENET.
I'm working on "remastering" a few rock concerts that were sent to me (in a box of CDRs) by way of a friend of a friend in germany. See, the US hardly ever has live concert shows any more - but "rockpalast" is, so far as I know, still running. So, soon as I am happy with the results I'll commit these shows to MPEG2 streams and share'em with the world - most likely on DVD, since uploading even one would take me weeks online. What those broadband equipped friends do with this "data," however, is beyond my control.
I have several CDs worth of live SNL music performances (as well as a few favorite skits) that were ripped from my direcTV tivo. The quality is typical sucky direcTV, but let's face it: that's about as good as you're gonna get nowdays, and it's still (arguably) better than VHS. I also have pretty much every video PJ harvey has made - again, thanks to rips I made from my tivo when M2 was having its "women in rock" week.
All real world examples illustrate just exactly why most of this is irrelevant. I used to be pretty zealous about these legislations, but frankly I jsut don't care any more. Why? Because there's nothing at all stopping your fave garage band from producing their own release and getting exposure via the internet. (In fact, I've downloaded several this way and still have a few of these "underground" releases in my collection because they were actually GOOD.) There's also little (ie pretty much nothing except bandwidth or time) to stop me from ripping my fave music and sharing it with the world - or to prevent me from sharing my collection of SNL skits and music vids - in fact, I've shared Cdds with several friends.
None of these laws matter because they relate only to commerce. Sure, a few folks have put them to the test (and more power to them) by intentionally breaking the law and then taking the case to court. But for the "average user" (or even the "power user") who isn't an activist or a business owner, the laws mean pretty much nothing. They didn't stop the worldwide digital release of the new Matrix, they didn't stop me from recording countless hours of TV via my PC - nor could they.
I don't support these new "corporate legislations," nor do I support most publishers (no magazines, no pay tv, never listen to radio and watch TV only until I get so fed up with commercials I close the damn window on my desktop to bask in the silence.) Yet I'm still (again, arguably) better informed than most people I know because "most people" let Dan Rather spoon feed them their only news each day and probably have never even heard of WIRED or/. My music collection is more diverse than it's ever been in my entire 40 years of life (and I was pretty "out there" even in the 70's). I have hours and hours of various TV shows, movies, and music videos. And even if we woke up tomorrow and all media (including TV) was digital and had these "broadcast flags" and watermarks, you know it would be only a matter of days before workarounds were spread across the world. In the meantime the greater audience wouldhave been alienated and the proverbial other shoe would, no doubt, fall.
Obviously you weren't around then, so I'll inform you: once upon a time there was radio, and records, and the audio cassette. Not only that, but many people (most all of them with a hi-fi) actually had decent FM tuners. A good FM tuner, receiving a quality signal, can provide incredibly good sound - far superior than any factory purchased cassette, which is all they were competing with because, after all, they killed the LP off when CD players were still too expensive for most home users. The music industry itself, in the late 70's/early 80s, primed the market for piracy.
They screamed bloody murder about the cassette while they spent milions shoveling out crappy soundalike megabands like Foreignstar Jourkansas - and then bitched when they started losing all their sales to tiny little labels like Stiff and SST (who actually had artists and a cool new sound) while the dinosaur crowd simply recorded the "hair classics" from the radio.
And how did they know what was on? Because disc jockeys, in a giant thumbing of nose at "the industry," began a very widespread practice of pre announcing tracks and running "album nights" when they would play entire albums without any interruptions at all. This further incensed the music publishers and is likely one of the biggest reasons they spent the last decade buying up virtually every station they could get their coke-sweaty palms on.
I know it's hard for a young person to imagine radio actually being cool and supporting genuine artists while thumbing its nose at the RIAA, but it really did happen - a long, long time ago, in a glaxay far...
What fucking world do you live in where an MP3 represents a "perfect digital copy?" Yes, there are essentially perfect digital copies floating around out there but they're not on kazaa and never were on napster. Those people can't even rip a 128kbps MP3 worth a flip how can you expect them to master something like SHN or MA?
What's flooded the e-world is the equivalent of an infinitely reproducible audio cassette. Perhaps if the music industry hadn't spent an entire decade hawking such a shitty media whilst they "phased out" vinyl they wouldn't be feeling so threatened by a tin-eared public they themselves created.
Music publishers have a right to make a living - but when the only product they can imagine to market has dwindled to essentially zero value they also have the right to starve. That's the way the world of "free enterprise" works: if you don't have something of value - or if you can't figure out a way to add new value to something that has lost its value - then you sink to the bottom with all the other fish feces. So it was with sheet music, and with the player piano - and so it will be again. The publishing industry must remain free to adapt or to die; if a new technology kills a now antiquated industry, so be it.
If someone figured out a way to send hamburgers through the internet we'd be hearing the exact same wailings from a now-obsolete fast food industry. Everyone would be up in arms about these "thieves" who now give away free food to anyone who can afford the few hundred dollars for a food replicator while depriving countless farmers, food processors and fast food chains of their "right" to earn a living. The fact we are, in reality, talking about an imaginary property and not even something so tangible as a hamburger vividly illustrates how ludicrous the publisher's argument really is. Dying industries have to be free to die - that's how we evolve.
If you're an admin, you got the power. If you own your PC, you got the power. The last thing the 'net needs is some "central authority" to determine who gets to talk and who doesn't.
Every time I read one of these articles about web spammers and goatse.cx links.
I'll say one good thing for bonzi: it was their goddamn "punch the monkey" ad that finally pushed me into setting up my own ad filtering proxy.
I'm sure this sort of thing is good for the web in general, but I must admit the only such irritation I have suffered in the years since is that damn ad popup at NYTonline. I thought everyone these days uses an ad filter/proxy server/decent browser/crappy browser plugin? I mean, it's not like they actually cost money or anything. Do some people actually feel left out if they miss X10 popups and TGP porn dialers?
This is, of course, exactly what the RIAA has wanted all along. Penn State may be the first to discuss it openly, but it's quite obvious this is the tact planned, as it's the path always taken by the music industry when a new technology comes along. Soon it will move from the campus to washington and we'll be hearing (again) about "internet tax" to subsidize Hollywood as penance for all the "illegal file trading" - but this time they'll be much more serious about it.
Meanwhile the indie bands get nothing, indie filmmakers get nothing - you and I get nothing for our contributions to the public domain - while Hollywood goes back to doing what it's done the last half of this century: reaping profits and chipping away at our intellectual freedom while marketing to the masses all the worse our society has to offer.
That just ain't so. By the time even a 4GB drive is down to a couple hundred MB it's starting to slow noticeably. If you're doing anything at all that swaps data to the drive even less than a half gig will noticeably slow a windows system. My 30GB MP3 drive usually has about 500MB free and adding even a CD worth of MP3s may result in a files made up of hundreds (yeah, literally) of fragments.
Try doing full rez video captures to a fresh 20GB drive filled to 80% capacity; you'll be lucky to even grab a minute or two before dropping frames.
This article has no basis in logic - unless this person is still using windows98 or something, in which case publishing his article (let alone linking it from/.) has no logical merit.
Even Gateway teaches its phone techs "FFR" is the last resort. Thius guy seems to think it's nothing more than a walk down the street. Don't use compression because "it's not worth the trouble?" So apparently it's just dandy to risk losing all your data because you're too lazy to make proper backups and because you're an idiot who FFR's a machine because a newspaper reporter told you to, but it's "too much trouble" to click a damn button in a dialog window? Yeah, that makes sense. Stick it on a CD instead? Uh huh - I want to dig out a CD every time I need to access the docs on the windows or java sdk. And your data will be ever so much safer stored on a CDR that gets shuffled around by your greasy mitts every day than it would be tucked away on that once-state-of-the-art hard drive.
If you're running out of space because your drive is full of shit you don't need regular "spring cleanings" - you need to learn proper data management. Install pgpdisk and learn to use 699MB "partitions:" you can make all the backups you want whenever you need, nothing will unexpectedly outgrow its allocated space, and those "projects" will be safe from prying eyes when your imaginary girlfriend drops by to use your PC.
If your computer is slow and you can't fix it with the more logical approach of defragging the damn thing then you may need an FFR - or you may just need to learn to stop surfing thumbnail galleries for porn and opening every moronic little gadget and "postcard" your AOL/MSN loser friends deliver to your inbox when your security settings are still at "allow any scriptkid to fuck up my PC at will."
The article is way beneath Slashdot. I feel like I just opened an issue of Broadcasting and found this month's cover article is a reprint of a "Hirsch-Houck Labs Report" from Stereo Review.
The guy is an idiot, and the article is full of bad advice.
Is this what they mean by "Journalist File system?"
Unfortunately, the radar seems to think the distributor of the album is the company that released the album, so even small Norwegian independent labels like Rune Grammofon (I did a test with Supersilent) get tainted by being distributed in the USA by ECM/Universal. 4AD is a British company, and should be quite independent of the Recording Industry Assosiation of America.
Uhhh... Polydor is (or was) a british company. You think they're not an RIAA member? Most of these giant labels distribute worldwide and have ties from the US to China to Japan to Russia.
You don't seem to understand the very definition of "distributor." No matter whose studio the recording was made in, and no matter whose "indie" label it's on, if it goes through an RIAA member for distribution then it is indeed "tainted" because:
1) the "tainter" (the distributor) owns the exclusive right to that recording in the country in question (in this case the US). Which means...
2) Purchasing said "tainted" content does indeed mean you are funding the RIAA and its lobbying efforts. It also means "distributing" that content yourself via the internet may well get you slapped with a DMCA violation.
There are plenty of "indies" that manage to get distribution without being "tainted."
Sioux records, for example, manages to get their limited release product even into Virgin Megastore yet remain "unattached." Granted, Siouxsie fought for years to get such a deal, but they managed and (from what I can tell) are doing quite well.
I dig Cocteau Twins and DCD as well, but I really don't feel any remorse about downloading their stuff when I find it - especially seeing as how I already bought it - most of it years ago when those POS cassettes were the only media you could find in many stores.
Ah - but ask most Americans what socialism means and they'll tell you something like "it means we're not allowed to own anything and everyone works for the state." Ask them what capitalism means and they'll tell you it means private property is respected and protected by law.
But you won't find "most americans" know much at all about Marxism. And, given the direction this nation has taken the last two decades, it seems very apparent most either don't know or simply don't care they are feeding an all-powerful corporate state where their rights are not protected by such idealistic nonsense as a Constitution.
And I've heard that crap about "this is the only country in the world where we can also throw the bastards out if..." but I've also seen zero evidence of it in any practicality. My criticism isn't with the corrupt government, but with the people themselves who seem, at every opportunity, to be choosing this castrated existence. I mean - jeezus; long before we even had the last election shrub was bitching about "the internet" and even said "maybe we have too many freedoms" - and yet "you" silly fuckers elected the SOB anyway!
How I feel about Bush and his cronies has nothing to do with it; my malice is directed toward the sheep that populate this nation - those who seem intent on following the one most willing to lead them to the very nearest slaughterhouse.
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A father raping daughters is tragic; lesbian sisters snugglin' on the couch is just plain hot. Stop watching springer and do some steppin' out.
It astounds me how so many people in this country have become so brainwashed by the ideals of corporate ownership they leap at the chance to rebuke the very things that allowed this country to rise to the top of the heap in a single century.
Clue: Russian copyrights mean nothing in the US - just as US copyrights are meaningless in Russia. And that's only the least of the reasons your indingance is so utterly misguided.
Artists get paid for creating - not for publishing. Publishers get paid for publishing.
Some cross the boundaries and do quite well at it; Siouxsie and Budgie, one year, sent out a live CD recording as an incentive for people to subscibe to their mailing list/fan club (the Cd didn't come with the mailing list, but it was only sold to people who were list subscribers). Each CD came in a jacket that was hand made, numbered and signed (in pencil, of course) by one of them. They sold out the entire production of 1000 (as they have many other releases). At $25 a pop that's easily $15,000 profit - not bad for a month's work, and as a collectible it enhanced the value of all their other releases.
Of course, if no one knew who they were they wouldn't have sold any at all. So how does a new artist, who doesn't have the benefit of a "mainstream" 20 year back catalog, get known? Develop a fan base? Inspire a loyal creative exchange with those fans?
Well, let's see: they could whore themselves to a publisher who will take every penny they make for the next seven years. That might work - it sure has for all those other long forgotten flavor-of-the-month pop bands.
Can you think of any other (better) ways?
Sure you can...
The problems you cite are exactly why I say DIY. There are plenty of DNS serrvers with lists of "problem" addresses and they're not at all hard to find. Keeping these lists decentralized is only a slight inconvenience and assures no central database gets to call all the shots. In short, it already works the way the net was supposed to work all along.. no?
Madeline Aimee Deep -- I was 15 when Aimster first came out. I may look different, but I still feel the same on the inside.
Amazing, after all those fisting videos...
Yep. Because someone else who is NOT a member of that cartel will step in and sell parts for all those used cars that WEREN'T covered by the cartel's wonderful new laws. And you'd be finding a lot more people buying those "weird little cars" from euroupe, which means more money flowing out of the US into eastern euroupe, which means more money to put into product development and expansion, which in the end means a higher quality product from those "weird little carmakers."
But it wouldn't evne come to that, because as soon as the FEDS saw all those dollars pouring across the ocean they would do something about it. they may try to ban their import, but those sorts of things tend to go over poorly in this country. More likely they would tell Congress to tend to the matter by amending (ie revoking) all those stupid laws they gave the carmakers in the first place.
Uhhh again. Actually "content creators" (by which one must assume you mean authors and other artists, since publishers create very little) would, provably, go right on creating with or without. The difference is, without some rightful protection - in the past - their works would simply be co-opted by the only people with the means to disseminate those works - the publishers who owned the presses - who would then profit to the exclusion of those who created the works in the first place. This is not only unjust, it also diminishes "the public" because, without the free time to devote to creating these works those "creators" would be forced to more mundane tasks - like seeking shelter and hunting food. This is the process that allows us to evolve beyond hunter-gatherer societies huddling in caves.
And even before "the founders" copyright was to protect the public from those same publishers who would attempt to dictate the very use of their publications; who gets a copy, who doesn't, and who controls their use - just as they are trying to do today.
Disney can claim "what's theirs is theirs" all they like, but there's scant little they can do about me making a parody of "Disney's Snow White" or even sharing my own X-rated version of The Little Mermaid. If I wish to take credit for my work I can publish it to the internet via usenet and p2p apps and my work will be seen by anyone who cares to download it. If I wish to publish my work anonymnously I can do it that way, too, by the very same mechanisms.
the only place the law enters into this is when I try to generate profit for myself by selling those works. Even then, in this specific example they may have a tough case (it likely wouldn't even be a copyright suit, but a trademark suit), but nevertheless "the law" would not even apply to any creative works I published until such time as I (or someone else) tried to profit from their distribution.
Now, how far we allow people to limit one another's ability to profit from sharing "knowledge" (if one is willing to go so far as to call modern media that) is another matter entirely - but if we are to talk about this brave new world where everyone is a publisher and individuals are empowered to share their "message" with the world then we have to draw a clearer distinction between the world of share and the world of sell. Until we do that this argument is just going to go in circles - and once we do that I think the other lines will draw themselves.
Yes, you fucking well can have something for nothing. It happens all the time; I can throw some seed in the garden - ignore them completely - and in a few months still have watermelons. I can walk outside, hold my mouth open to the sky in a rainstorm and drink all the fresh water I care to catch. I breath, and no one charges me for the air. I think, and no one questions my thoughts.
These rights of commerce are not inalienable, and are not moral. When it comes down to you trying to charge me for something as free as air or water just because you, at one time, drank from the same well then it's become time for you to leave the island.
But, either way, they also have the right to starve.
It doesn't seem like you really understand "rights" in this regard at all. "Protect their investment?" A recording is a record of a single or multiple performances. If you are in a band that is a resource limited only by your time. Your "product" is music, and the performance of that music; selling even a single CD amounts to more income than you would have had without that record. That a market has existed for several decades for these recordings is just as much an accident of evolution as the recent devaluing of that same resource.In short: if you're in a band, no one (in this country, anyway) can take away your "right" to sell your "product" at performances. Recordings of those performances simply have less market value than they did before - sorry, but dem's da breaks. Perhaps if you get more people to listen to your music (hint: using DRM on your recordings will hinder your progress in this pursuit) then you can generate more demand for your "product" and get more paying gigs.
Don't like being "forced" to lease the latest Britney Spears collection? Fine! Spread your musical wings and discover the world outside the pop star of the month club.
Sheesh. Once upon a time (and not so long ago) people sat on the porch together, played and sang. They made their own music! Imagine!
Meanwhile, new markets would likely open up in these machines that do the house replicating. And there aren't many house that heat themselves, and even those that do still need power for the niceties the residents have likely become used to. So, while "landlords" might have a hard time the power industry would probably make more money than ever, given this explosion in new homes. Slums could be virtually wished away, since nice new homes could be replicated far easier than the effort that would be required to repair the old ones. Hell, the old rundown parts of town would probably take on new value since people with means would place even greater value on having "originals" - homes not produced by factory replicators, but built instead of good ol' human labor. the factory housing market would be so devalued that millions of "laborers" swinging hammers would be put out of work; cheap factory housing would become essentially worthless overnight. But this would alsa have the effect of making even higher quality "originals" more affordable to the middle class. So the people who had to sleep under bridges could now have homes; those who would have had to work a lifetime to get a small home in the city could now spend the money that would have gone to rent and mortgages on something else - like maybe original works of art, or high quality furniture instead of the crap from the factory that breaks down in a year.
It would put a serious hurt on real estate values - but only for a while, and in the meantime look at all the benefits that might come from it. Publishers may say they're in danger, but look at the facts: the Matrix sequel still made hundreds of Millions so far and the franchise will likely make Billions before it's all done. The sale of recorded music may be taking a nosedive, but there's still Billions more being made in that industry every year. When they complain about losing money they're lying - what they mean is we're not getting all the money we want. Well, fucking tough: give me all the money I want first, and then we'll talk.
This is the battle being fought by the publishers: they see the value of some of their product draining into the sewer, and they're pouring Billions into lobbying for legislation to protect them from the inevitable. Instead of trying to outrun the other campers, they're still trying to stare down the bear.
The joke is, as always, on them - because, so long as they do this, the end really is inevitable. Might as well let'em spend that money - because, as the saying goes: you can't take it with you.
Nope, not iTunes. And definitely not some POS p2p spyware app laden with crappy rips. But free nontheless... (say it with me) usenet.
The other day I burned a CD for my cousin to listen to on his way to work. He bought a CD player for his car that plays MP3 discs despite the fact he rarely uses the net and probably doesn't even know how to spell usenet. He's into country but I make it my mission to widen people's horizons - the CD has music from the US, Sweden, Mexico, Russia, the UK, and even Egypt - all brought to him, via me, via USENET.
I'm working on "remastering" a few rock concerts that were sent to me (in a box of CDRs) by way of a friend of a friend in germany. See, the US hardly ever has live concert shows any more - but "rockpalast" is, so far as I know, still running. So, soon as I am happy with the results I'll commit these shows to MPEG2 streams and share'em with the world - most likely on DVD, since uploading even one would take me weeks online. What those broadband equipped friends do with this "data," however, is beyond my control.
I have several CDs worth of live SNL music performances (as well as a few favorite skits) that were ripped from my direcTV tivo. The quality is typical sucky direcTV, but let's face it: that's about as good as you're gonna get nowdays, and it's still (arguably) better than VHS. I also have pretty much every video PJ harvey has made - again, thanks to rips I made from my tivo when M2 was having its "women in rock" week.
All real world examples illustrate just exactly why most of this is irrelevant. I used to be pretty zealous about these legislations, but frankly I jsut don't care any more. Why? Because there's nothing at all stopping your fave garage band from producing their own release and getting exposure via the internet. (In fact, I've downloaded several this way and still have a few of these "underground" releases in my collection because they were actually GOOD.) There's also little (ie pretty much nothing except bandwidth or time) to stop me from ripping my fave music and sharing it with the world - or to prevent me from sharing my collection of SNL skits and music vids - in fact, I've shared Cdds with several friends.
None of these laws matter because they relate only to commerce. Sure, a few folks have put them to the test (and more power to them) by intentionally breaking the law and then taking the case to court. But for the "average user" (or even the "power user") who isn't an activist or a business owner, the laws mean pretty much nothing. They didn't stop the worldwide digital release of the new Matrix, they didn't stop me from recording countless hours of TV via my PC - nor could they.
I don't support these new "corporate legislations," nor do I support most publishers (no magazines, no pay tv, never listen to radio and watch TV only until I get so fed up with commercials I close the damn window on my desktop to bask in the silence.) Yet I'm still (again, arguably) better informed than most people I know because "most people" let Dan Rather spoon feed them their only news each day and probably have never even heard of WIRED or /. My music collection is more diverse than it's ever been in my entire 40 years of life (and I was pretty "out there" even in the 70's). I have hours and hours of various TV shows, movies, and music videos. And even if we woke up tomorrow and all media (including TV) was digital and had these "broadcast flags" and watermarks, you know it would be only a matter of days before workarounds were spread across the world. In the meantime the greater audience wouldhave been alienated and the proverbial other shoe would, no doubt, fall.
They screamed bloody murder about the cassette while they spent milions shoveling out crappy soundalike megabands like Foreignstar Jourkansas - and then bitched when they started losing all their sales to tiny little labels like Stiff and SST (who actually had artists and a cool new sound) while the dinosaur crowd simply recorded the "hair classics" from the radio.
And how did they know what was on? Because disc jockeys, in a giant thumbing of nose at "the industry," began a very widespread practice of pre announcing tracks and running "album nights" when they would play entire albums without any interruptions at all. This further incensed the music publishers and is likely one of the biggest reasons they spent the last decade buying up virtually every station they could get their coke-sweaty palms on.
I know it's hard for a young person to imagine radio actually being cool and supporting genuine artists while thumbing its nose at the RIAA, but it really did happen - a long, long time ago, in a glaxay far...
What's flooded the e-world is the equivalent of an infinitely reproducible audio cassette. Perhaps if the music industry hadn't spent an entire decade hawking such a shitty media whilst they "phased out" vinyl they wouldn't be feeling so threatened by a tin-eared public they themselves created.
Music publishers have a right to make a living - but when the only product they can imagine to market has dwindled to essentially zero value they also have the right to starve. That's the way the world of "free enterprise" works: if you don't have something of value - or if you can't figure out a way to add new value to something that has lost its value - then you sink to the bottom with all the other fish feces. So it was with sheet music, and with the player piano - and so it will be again. The publishing industry must remain free to adapt or to die; if a new technology kills a now antiquated industry, so be it.
If someone figured out a way to send hamburgers through the internet we'd be hearing the exact same wailings from a now-obsolete fast food industry. Everyone would be up in arms about these "thieves" who now give away free food to anyone who can afford the few hundred dollars for a food replicator while depriving countless farmers, food processors and fast food chains of their "right" to earn a living. The fact we are, in reality, talking about an imaginary property and not even something so tangible as a hamburger vividly illustrates how ludicrous the publisher's argument really is. Dying industries have to be free to die - that's how we evolve.
Someone pull the plug on Hollywood, already!
REAL (whose CEO literally declared war on "consumers"... I mean "thieves.")
RIAA (who will spend it on lobbying away your intellectual freedom - just as they have been doing for years now)
ARTISTS (Who? WTF do "artists" have to do with this? Go away...)
If you're an admin, you got the power. If you own your PC, you got the power. The last thing the 'net needs is some "central authority" to determine who gets to talk and who doesn't.
I'll say one good thing for bonzi: it was their goddamn "punch the monkey" ad that finally pushed me into setting up my own ad filtering proxy.
I'm sure this sort of thing is good for the web in general, but I must admit the only such irritation I have suffered in the years since is that damn ad popup at NYTonline. I thought everyone these days uses an ad filter/proxy server/decent browser/crappy browser plugin? I mean, it's not like they actually cost money or anything. Do some people actually feel left out if they miss X10 popups and TGP porn dialers?
Those players are lucky. If they'd been on synthiotics they'd actually be under the sea right now.
Meanwhile the indie bands get nothing, indie filmmakers get nothing - you and I get nothing for our contributions to the public domain - while Hollywood goes back to doing what it's done the last half of this century: reaping profits and chipping away at our intellectual freedom while marketing to the masses all the worse our society has to offer.
Try doing full rez video captures to a fresh 20GB drive filled to 80% capacity; you'll be lucky to even grab a minute or two before dropping frames.
Even Gateway teaches its phone techs "FFR" is the last resort. Thius guy seems to think it's nothing more than a walk down the street. Don't use compression because "it's not worth the trouble?" So apparently it's just dandy to risk losing all your data because you're too lazy to make proper backups and because you're an idiot who FFR's a machine because a newspaper reporter told you to, but it's "too much trouble" to click a damn button in a dialog window? Yeah, that makes sense. Stick it on a CD instead? Uh huh - I want to dig out a CD every time I need to access the docs on the windows or java sdk. And your data will be ever so much safer stored on a CDR that gets shuffled around by your greasy mitts every day than it would be tucked away on that once-state-of-the-art hard drive.
If you're running out of space because your drive is full of shit you don't need regular "spring cleanings" - you need to learn proper data management. Install pgpdisk and learn to use 699MB "partitions:" you can make all the backups you want whenever you need, nothing will unexpectedly outgrow its allocated space, and those "projects" will be safe from prying eyes when your imaginary girlfriend drops by to use your PC.
If your computer is slow and you can't fix it with the more logical approach of defragging the damn thing then you may need an FFR - or you may just need to learn to stop surfing thumbnail galleries for porn and opening every moronic little gadget and "postcard" your AOL/MSN loser friends deliver to your inbox when your security settings are still at "allow any scriptkid to fuck up my PC at will."
The article is way beneath Slashdot. I feel like I just opened an issue of Broadcasting and found this month's cover article is a reprint of a "Hirsch-Houck Labs Report" from Stereo Review.
The guy is an idiot, and the article is full of bad advice.
Is this what they mean by "Journalist File system?"
It ain't flamebait at all... and I'm pretty sure you're right. Why else limit the functionality to Amazon.com?
Uhhh... Polydor is (or was) a british company. You think they're not an RIAA member? Most of these giant labels distribute worldwide and have ties from the US to China to Japan to Russia. You don't seem to understand the very definition of "distributor." No matter whose studio the recording was made in, and no matter whose "indie" label it's on, if it goes through an RIAA member for distribution then it is indeed "tainted" because:
1) the "tainter" (the distributor) owns the exclusive right to that recording in the country in question (in this case the US). Which means...
2) Purchasing said "tainted" content does indeed mean you are funding the RIAA and its lobbying efforts. It also means "distributing" that content yourself via the internet may well get you slapped with a DMCA violation.
There are plenty of "indies" that manage to get distribution without being "tainted." Sioux records, for example, manages to get their limited release product even into Virgin Megastore yet remain "unattached." Granted, Siouxsie fought for years to get such a deal, but they managed and (from what I can tell) are doing quite well.
I dig Cocteau Twins and DCD as well, but I really don't feel any remorse about downloading their stuff when I find it - especially seeing as how I already bought it - most of it years ago when those POS cassettes were the only media you could find in many stores.
But you won't find "most americans" know much at all about Marxism. And, given the direction this nation has taken the last two decades, it seems very apparent most either don't know or simply don't care they are feeding an all-powerful corporate state where their rights are not protected by such idealistic nonsense as a Constitution.
And I've heard that crap about "this is the only country in the world where we can also throw the bastards out if..." but I've also seen zero evidence of it in any practicality. My criticism isn't with the corrupt government, but with the people themselves who seem, at every opportunity, to be choosing this castrated existence. I mean - jeezus; long before we even had the last election shrub was bitching about "the internet" and even said "maybe we have too many freedoms" - and yet "you" silly fuckers elected the SOB anyway!
How I feel about Bush and his cronies has nothing to do with it; my malice is directed toward the sheep that populate this nation - those who seem intent on following the one most willing to lead them to the very nearest slaughterhouse.
And you obviously have never been to the deep south (that's the US, nic).