Our summary says, "in principle, content management is a justified objective." While this may or may not be true, the reality is that "content management systems" (aka DRM) never work. Someone will crack it immediately, flushing another $5-6 million down the drain.
I saw an article online several years ago where someone worked through the math to show that by dividing people up to vote for the members of the Electoral College it increased the weight of each vote over a simple majority takes all system.
The Electoral College doesn't make a specific individual vote carry more weight, it makes every individual vote carry more weight. That is, it makes every individual vote more influential.
This is, of course, impossible.
First of all, the guise of making each vote "more influential" would seem to indicate a distinct attempt to change the value of each vote in some manner. Whether beneficial or detrimental, the point is that they manipulate the worth of the votes.
The Electoral College skews the election results, especially in states with larger populations, by essentially giving the other candidate no credit for their votes, even if it was a close contest. Theoretically, you could take 49% of the popular vote in a large states (California, Texas, New York, Ohio) and still not get a single electoral vote. Even worse, your votes go to the other side.
So the newspapers are finally realizing what Slashdotters have known for 10 years -- nobody RTFAs.
Well, we used to, back in the days when we had no internet and only 3 TV channels. Then we got USA Today, which brought us the "you should be able to read each individual story in less than a minute" school of journalism, which threw in "write at 7th grade level because they're all stupid" just for fun.
Apparently, we all liked it that way and now we think we're informed if we read a whole paragraph. As newspapers are still trying a "pay-per-view" approach, I guess we ought to get used to it.
When the "content industries" have the total control they want, then suddenly the content is only valuable when they feel like it, which is only when they can squeeze some more bucks out of it. They're not interested in saving anything.
At least CBS still has copies, which is more than can be said for a lot of music masters. I've posted this link before, but it's a relevant example. http://www.billholland.net/words/vault2.html
I guess the "go fix your shit and don't come back until it's done" mentality is rather dead these days...
Internet Explorer has been vulnerable since the first version, but that's still what most people use. Microsoft says to "upgrade" anyway. And most people will -- whether Microsoft fixes their shit or not.
The productivity wasted as 80 percent of the country's computer users install patches every week or two has to be staggering. And you'll still be vulnerable. Not to worry, though. Another security patch will be on the way.
Gravity is just the scientific way of saying the planet sucks. Newton was trying to avoid the plague at the time, which is why he was in his country home, if I'm not mistaken./The first sentence was sarcasm//The second is just a random fact///No, I did not look it up.
This is the whole problem, of course - the more sites go paywalled, the more incentive there is for the others to stay free.
We used to call this "competition." It shouldn't be a problem.
Of course, there are those that say that my way of thinking will kill journalism / music / whatever...
If the paid content was far superior to what you could get for free, the pay walls might work. But it's not. I am shocked by the number of so-called journalists that write entire articles where each and every sentence is a new paragraph, as if none of those sentences really relates to any of the others. And it's not just small media. The BBC does it all the time.
Music is even worse in its departure from professionalism.
I'll pay as soon as there is significant incentive to.
Traditionally, advertisers have always borne the major costs of the newspaper businesses. Why that hasn't carried over to the Internet, I don't know, but I'm not interested in making micropayments to read stories.
I'll go back to getting my evening news from Jon Stewart. He's more reliable than the Times, anyway.
RIAA Wants Limits On Net Neutrality...... then it wouldn't be net neutrality, would it?
The RIAA is so technologically clueless that I am frequently entertained at the depth and breadth of the stupid things that they say. They never seem to really understand the concept of anything (as evidenced by Sony's rootkit gift to the world), but I've gotta say, this may be the first time I've seen them make a proposal that was an oxymoron right out of the box.
Yes, I just drew a comparison between a repressive copyright regime and slavery. Did I just pull a super-Godwin?
Nah. Musicians have been calling record execs "plantation owners" for a long time. For one thing, indentured servants generally earned their freedom after seven years, much like the terms of a recording contract.
Look at how much it cost to record an album in 1980 vs. now.
Even if that factor remained constant, the savings in distribution are more significant -- No factory, wages or raw materials for duplication, no packaging, no shipping costs, no returns. And they still get to deduct from the artists' royalties for returns and packaging, as far as I know.
And it's not so much what any label did, it's that they got together to create all of the "joint ventures" which not only allow them to collude, but make it completely unavoidable in order to run the company. As soon as Warner joins in, Vevo will be another one of those.
I think the biggest problem is the total absence of competition. They think they're competing with iTunes and e-music, two of the largest digital retailers -- because neither will let the labels dictate the retail price.
But before we cheer too loudly over this, keep in mind that the DOJ is still top-heavy with RIAA attorneys. On the other hand, a) this is the umpteenth time the RIAA has gotten busted for price fixing and b) New York's Attorney General has the evidence this time instead of the FTC.
All in all, this looks promising. However, the RIAA has always behaved as if antitrust laws do not apply to it -- that's usually when they point out that they're foreign-owned. Usually they get away with it. If not, it's settled out of court with no admission of guilt. This pre-empts future cases from pointing back at their repeated violations -- technically, there are none.
He'd be fighting so hard to get ANYTHING passed through congress that little issues like this one would be given up in some kind of compromise.
This assumes that it goes through Congress, which ain't necessarily so.
"The Office of the USTR has chosen to negotiate ACTA as a sole executive agreement. Because of a loophole in democratic accountability on sole executive agreements, the Office of the USTR can sign off on an IP Enforcement agenda without any formal congressional involvement at all."
Yeah, I take your point, but can't you see the difference between payment and theft? Hint: payment is involved in transactions you have voluntarily entered.
I take your point, but can't you see the difference between copyright infringement and theft? Hint: If the record label and retailers don't have a single copy to sell, you can't possibly steal it. You also can't buy it and, due to the record labels' foresight and immense concern for the art of music, they can never be re-released.
So a great number of works have simply ceased to exist, long before their copyrights expired. Argue with your label too much and you could find your entire catalog suddenly missing from retail shelves. Now all the retail record stores are out of business and everyone's catalog is missing in physical form.
There is nothing to steal, although you could infringe a few copyrights without too much trouble, especially if you were trying to save something from being forgotten -- after its commercial potential for exploitation has been realized but before they set off the dynamite charges. (See http://www.billholland.net/words/vault2)
You can use the copy, but it does not belong to you.
Yes, it does. If I walk into a store and buy a CD, DVD, or a book, I own them. I just don't own the right to reproduce and distribute it. The same copyright laws apply to a Louis Vitton bag or a Louisville Slugger baseball bat, but no one ever brings up this silly argument after you buy one.
I can resell that physical copy, give it away, or share it. No one is ever going to come to my house to collect them and return them to their "rightful" owner, because that would be me.
In a book, for example, you can burn the paper in it for kindling if you'd like, but you'll never, ever own the words printed on it.
But if the words started disappearing off the pages, I'd stop buying books.
As we've already seen happen with Microsoft, sooner or later (mostly sooner) the DRM gets abandoned, keys are removed, and your legitimate purchase has less value than the pirated version. You've paid for it, but your copy no longer works and you can no longer continue to enjoy it.
Until you buy it again in the new and improved DRM format. Rinse. Repeat.
Interestingly enough, Wikipedia's entry for Mr. Poe points out that when he left West Point and began writing, the U.S. publishing industry was plagued by piracy -- from British publishers.
Apparently, publishers failed to react or adapt to new technology at the time, and started screaming "piracy!" Just like they do each and every time.
I was with you all the way to the last sentence -- Get a proper job!
What exactly is a "proper" job? One where you go to work every day for minimum wage, doing the same thing over and over and over, hating the job and the paltry contents of the pay envelope at the end of the week? Do you have a "proper" job that doesn't involve a money-grubbing corporation of some sort and isn't solely in the pursuit of money?
And to play devil's advocate for a moment, what if everyone listened to your advice? Everyone gets a "proper" job, leaving no one to make new movies, music, video games, television shows or books. What do you do after work when our culture disappears? How do you entertain yourself? What do you do for fun?
You say that if 80% of authors stopped writing, no one will notice. This seems to assume that the good ones aren't motivated by money and only the mediocre talent wants to get paid. Look around. That's not real life.
Besides, would we really rather have Stephen King working down at the local hardware store? Would the world be a better place if Charles Dickens had joined the military or been a banker instead of writing stories? Edgar Allen Poe tried the military, but failed to get through West Point. Should we put Bob Dylan in a telemarketer job? Willie Nelson could be a WalMart greeter. Springsteen could probably get elected governor of New Jersey. Pete Dougherty and Amy Winefeld maybe could run a day-care center. Samuel L. Jackson could be a great car salesman, but don't even think about trying to get him to come down on the price. Yeah, proper jobs for all.
There's enough literary playground in that concept for a good book. At least a comedy film. I'd go direct to DVD, though, because it might only be funny for one or two viewings.
But what about the harm to books and to the confidence of new authors happening RIGHT NOW.... what do we do BEFORE we have a system of direct compensation in place?
The question was not about the "money-grubbing, Disneyfied publishing industry," it's about how to keep the authors writing without the need for publishers. "Get a haircut and get a real job" was an insult when George Thoroughgood wrote a song about it and it still is. Do you decide the 20% that shouldn't get a proper job? Or is Simon Cowell to remain the global arbiter of that? If so, I'd rather wade through the other 80 percent in search of something that rocks a bit more than the sticky-sweet pop parade he puts on.
As for the original article, railing against dear old Ben Franklin's public library system because people can read your books for free is even more ludicrous than the RIAA's campaign of stupid. There's more to a library than just the fiction section. You can't copy things at a library. You can borrow one physical copy of a book to read it, but only one person at a time can access its contents. Still, hundreds of people may read one particular copy.
While I'm willing to take chances at the library, I'm not going to buy a book from an author whose work I have never read. Similarly, I'm not going to buy music I've never heard.
And a last thought on all of this is that the only people complaining about the internet (or the library) are those whose success and popularity may be directly attributed to it.
...the truth is the vast majority of adults are 'smart' enough to operate an intersection correctly.
But not quite smart enough to put down their cell phones while they're doing it, which is why we had to have a law. I also see people getting busted by the red light cameras all the time for failing to operate an intersection correctly.
In Arizona, we have a "stupid motorist" law. If a road is closed due to running water, marked by a barrier or "Road Closed" sign, and you still try to cross, you have to pay for your own rescue, plus a fine for being stupid.
While I agree the vast majority of us aren't stupid, there are certainly enough of them sprinkled around. Even though 500 people may pass through an intersection correctly, it only takes one moron that doesn't to cause an accident, which is how we ended up with red light cameras in the first place.
Both, one crime doesn't erase another, especially when their hardly related.
I never said it did. The question was "Who are the real pirates?"
The average file-sharer is a music fan and, at worst, guilty of copyright infringement, a civil offense. Copyright infringement is NOT theft, it's copyright infringement.
The labels are guilty of massive copyright infringement for profit, as well as actually stealing directly from the artists by non-payment or questionable accounting practices that skim off the top. When they get caught, they keep 90 percent anyway.
The file sharer is a music fan; the record labels are true pirates and have been since the 50s.
Even if some dude kills your brother you can't go kill him, let alone his brother, without the full force of the law coming down on you and it's the same with theft.
I've got almost 100 songs on my website, which have been downloaded a half-million times in the past five years. Every last one of them is still there. No one has ever stolen even one song.
One is the opportunistic thief that intends to merely take a copy of a product for their own use, the other is the opportunistic thief that wishes not only to copy your product but also wishes to make money from it.
The latter group sounds like it includes Sony, which has taken Idol outtakes and made albums that they don't feel obligated to pay the performer for their efforts. Sony also still owes the Bay City Rollers about $60 million from the 70s, which they haven't paid because Sony "lost" the original contract and isn't sure how to pay it out -- so they've kept it for 30 years. Then there is the list of 300,000 songs that all the majors put on compilation albums over the last couple of decades and never bothered to pay royalties on.
Now decide for yourself which is the actual pirate?
Wait, you mean that two songs sounding the same isn't only annoying, it actually constitutes a crime?
Not always. Fantasy Records tried to sue John Fogerty for still sounding like John Fogerty after he left the label. Fogarty took a guitar with him when he testified, and showed the judge that everything he sang kinda sounded the same and there was nothing he could do about it. Fogarty won.
I don't think I would want to sign a piece of paper saying I used one or more P2P services between two dates.
Well, "attempted to use" works, too and doesn't imply guilt because Comcast made it unlikely that any dreaded copyright infringement would take place.
Some independent artists actually take advantage of P2P sites, posting their songs for free consumption in order to expand their audience, if we could only figure out how to get people to search for our stuff. For us, this is a seriously anti-competitive action. If you don't want to sell at the swap meet, fine. But don't shut it down. Some of us are okay with it and actually enjoy just looking at what everyone has to offer.
To jump about five steps further, the entire purpose of the internet is to enable the basic sharing of information. File sharing, whether on peer-to-peer sites or a simple web site, is a natural evolution of the resource and serves the underlying purpose.
Despite everything the RIAA, MPAA and ISPs like Comcast do to try to stop the flow, it'll never happen. It is contrary to the purpose of the internet. Their target will just keep moving, re-routing and disappearing into the cloud.
Lots of people like mainstream media output, and that's what makes it mainstream.
The thing is that those "lots of people" don't decide what the mainstream media output will be, it is simply thrust upon them. More likely an envelope full of cash makes the decision, and the most honest scenario still involves people like Simon Cowell.
What makes people like mainstream is repetition. After 25 listens or so, a song is in your head whether you want it there or not. My child went through the Disney Channel phase a few years ago, which included a couple seasons of Hannah Montana, and at least two of the High School Musicals, which seemed to run on an endless loop for about a month, when you consider the regular version, dance version, "pop-up" version, each of which got a week or so.
After all that overkill, those Disney albums still topped the charts, with a target demographic that's too young to have any money because they're too young to have a job.
Speaking for all parents of pre-teens at the time, we had already listened to these albums, in their entirety, several times. Compared to Ms. Spears, who was just beginning to melt down at the time, or Pink, or Christina Aguilera, Hannah Montana and High School Musical were pretty safe choices when a birthday or Christmas came along.
The other line of thought I have on this is that, once upon a time, mainstream music was on AM; everything else was on FM. Then, one day, talk radio took over AM, the mainstream music went to FM, and everything else got kicked to the wayside. Even the "classic rock" stations only play the songs that were hits, but nothing new.
Rock is still the biggest selling genre, despite the only current mainstream bands seeming to be Nickleback and Coldplay before you start naming people that have been doing it for decades. The Billboard Top 200 doesn't include anything more than 18 months old. This means it is certainly skewed, just like everything else involving the record labels and basic math. The answer to how much is behind a pay wall.
You're absolutely correct. It's just that when you're talking about ASCAP, you have to remember that you're not talking about the artist, just the songwriter. They can be the same person/entity (like Iron Maiden). Springsteen writes the bulk of his own material, but sometimes he'll throw a cover song in -- or an entire album, like he recently did with Pete Seeger songs.
While it may be normal today for an act to write most of their material (especially rock acts -- there are still a few thousand songwriters taking country music to Nashville), people like Elvis and Sinatra never wrote any of their own songs. American Idol winners don't seem to be writing a vast amount; Susan Boyle certainly didn't write any music for her #1 selling album.
And then you have the occasional odd case... Having lost the original copyright to Michael Jackson when the Beatles broke up, Paul McCartney has to pay every time he plays "Hey Jude" live.
So you've got to look at each song individually. But ASCAP doesn't care who the artist is, and it's obvious that a lot of people miss the distinction.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't worry too much.
Our summary says, "in principle, content management is a justified objective." While this may or may not be true, the reality is that "content management systems" (aka DRM) never work. Someone will crack it immediately, flushing another $5-6 million down the drain.
This ought to work: http://www.bbc.co.uk/feedback/
I saw an article online several years ago where someone worked through the math to show that by dividing people up to vote for the members of the Electoral College it increased the weight of each vote over a simple majority takes all system.
The Electoral College doesn't make a specific individual vote carry more weight, it makes every individual vote carry more weight. That is, it makes every individual vote more influential.
This is, of course, impossible.
First of all, the guise of making each vote "more influential" would seem to indicate a distinct attempt to change the value of each vote in some manner. Whether beneficial or detrimental, the point is that they manipulate the worth of the votes.
The Electoral College skews the election results, especially in states with larger populations, by essentially giving the other candidate no credit for their votes, even if it was a close contest. Theoretically, you could take 49% of the popular vote in a large states (California, Texas, New York, Ohio) and still not get a single electoral vote. Even worse, your votes go to the other side.
So the newspapers are finally realizing what Slashdotters have known for 10 years -- nobody RTFAs.
Well, we used to, back in the days when we had no internet and only 3 TV channels. Then we got USA Today, which brought us the "you should be able to read each individual story in less than a minute" school of journalism, which threw in "write at 7th grade level because they're all stupid" just for fun.
Apparently, we all liked it that way and now we think we're informed if we read a whole paragraph. As newspapers are still trying a "pay-per-view" approach, I guess we ought to get used to it.
Why do these people run things?
When the "content industries" have the total control they want, then suddenly the content is only valuable when they feel like it, which is only when they can squeeze some more bucks out of it. They're not interested in saving anything.
At least CBS still has copies, which is more than can be said for a lot of music masters. I've posted this link before, but it's a relevant example. http://www.billholland.net/words/vault2.html
I guess the "go fix your shit and don't come back until it's done" mentality is rather dead these days...
Internet Explorer has been vulnerable since the first version, but that's still what most people use. Microsoft says to "upgrade" anyway. And most people will -- whether Microsoft fixes their shit or not.
The productivity wasted as 80 percent of the country's computer users install patches every week or two has to be staggering. And you'll still be vulnerable. Not to worry, though. Another security patch will be on the way.
Gravity is just the scientific way of saying the planet sucks. Newton was trying to avoid the plague at the time, which is why he was in his country home, if I'm not mistaken. /The first sentence was sarcasm //The second is just a random fact ///No, I did not look it up.
This is the whole problem, of course - the more sites go paywalled, the more incentive there is for the others to stay free.
We used to call this "competition." It shouldn't be a problem.
Of course, there are those that say that my way of thinking will kill journalism / music / whatever...
If the paid content was far superior to what you could get for free, the pay walls might work. But it's not. I am shocked by the number of so-called journalists that write entire articles where each and every sentence is a new paragraph, as if none of those sentences really relates to any of the others. And it's not just small media. The BBC does it all the time.
Music is even worse in its departure from professionalism.
I'll pay as soon as there is significant incentive to.
Traditionally, advertisers have always borne the major costs of the newspaper businesses. Why that hasn't carried over to the Internet, I don't know, but I'm not interested in making micropayments to read stories.
I'll go back to getting my evening news from Jon Stewart. He's more reliable than the Times, anyway.
RIAA Wants Limits On Net Neutrality... ... then it wouldn't be net neutrality, would it?
The RIAA is so technologically clueless that I am frequently entertained at the depth and breadth of the stupid things that they say. They never seem to really understand the concept of anything (as evidenced by Sony's rootkit gift to the world), but I've gotta say, this may be the first time I've seen them make a proposal that was an oxymoron right out of the box.
Yes, I just drew a comparison between a repressive copyright regime and slavery. Did I just pull a super-Godwin?
Nah. Musicians have been calling record execs "plantation owners" for a long time. For one thing, indentured servants generally earned their freedom after seven years, much like the terms of a recording contract.
The DOJ has nothing to do with this case; it's a private class action.
Well, they weighed in on the Tenenbaum case. That was a civil suit that had nothing to do with the DOJ but they interjected their opinion anyway.
Not arguing with you, it just seems that they are capable of effecting the outcome, whether they have anything to do with the case or not.
Look at how much it cost to record an album in 1980 vs. now.
Even if that factor remained constant, the savings in distribution are more significant -- No factory, wages or raw materials for duplication, no packaging, no shipping costs, no returns. And they still get to deduct from the artists' royalties for returns and packaging, as far as I know.
And it's not so much what any label did, it's that they got together to create all of the "joint ventures" which not only allow them to collude, but make it completely unavoidable in order to run the company. As soon as Warner joins in, Vevo will be another one of those.
I think the biggest problem is the total absence of competition. They think they're competing with iTunes and e-music, two of the largest digital retailers -- because neither will let the labels dictate the retail price.
But before we cheer too loudly over this, keep in mind that the DOJ is still top-heavy with RIAA attorneys. On the other hand, a) this is the umpteenth time the RIAA has gotten busted for price fixing and b) New York's Attorney General has the evidence this time instead of the FTC.
All in all, this looks promising. However, the RIAA has always behaved as if antitrust laws do not apply to it -- that's usually when they point out that they're foreign-owned. Usually they get away with it. If not, it's settled out of court with no admission of guilt. This pre-empts future cases from pointing back at their repeated violations -- technically, there are none.
He'd be fighting so hard to get ANYTHING passed through congress that little issues like this one would be given up in some kind of compromise.
This assumes that it goes through Congress, which ain't necessarily so.
"The Office of the USTR has chosen to negotiate ACTA as a sole executive agreement. Because of a loophole in democratic accountability on sole executive agreements, the Office of the USTR can sign off on an IP Enforcement agenda without any formal congressional involvement at all."
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/11/stopping-acta-juggernaut
Yeah, I take your point, but can't you see the difference between payment and theft? Hint: payment is involved in transactions you have voluntarily entered.
I take your point, but can't you see the difference between copyright infringement and theft? Hint: If the record label and retailers don't have a single copy to sell, you can't possibly steal it. You also can't buy it and, due to the record labels' foresight and immense concern for the art of music, they can never be re-released.
So a great number of works have simply ceased to exist, long before their copyrights expired. Argue with your label too much and you could find your entire catalog suddenly missing from retail shelves. Now all the retail record stores are out of business and everyone's catalog is missing in physical form.
There is nothing to steal, although you could infringe a few copyrights without too much trouble, especially if you were trying to save something from being forgotten -- after its commercial potential for exploitation has been realized but before they set off the dynamite charges. (See http://www.billholland.net/words/vault2)
You can use the copy, but it does not belong to you.
Yes, it does. If I walk into a store and buy a CD, DVD, or a book, I own them. I just don't own the right to reproduce and distribute it. The same copyright laws apply to a Louis Vitton bag or a Louisville Slugger baseball bat, but no one ever brings up this silly argument after you buy one.
I can resell that physical copy, give it away, or share it. No one is ever going to come to my house to collect them and return them to their "rightful" owner, because that would be me.
In a book, for example, you can burn the paper in it for kindling if you'd like, but you'll never, ever own the words printed on it.
But if the words started disappearing off the pages, I'd stop buying books.
As we've already seen happen with Microsoft, sooner or later (mostly sooner) the DRM gets abandoned, keys are removed, and your legitimate purchase has less value than the pirated version. You've paid for it, but your copy no longer works and you can no longer continue to enjoy it.
Until you buy it again in the new and improved DRM format. Rinse. Repeat.
Apology accepted.
Interestingly enough, Wikipedia's entry for Mr. Poe points out that when he left West Point and began writing, the U.S. publishing industry was plagued by piracy -- from British publishers.
Apparently, publishers failed to react or adapt to new technology at the time, and started screaming "piracy!" Just like they do each and every time.
I was with you all the way to the last sentence -- Get a proper job!
What exactly is a "proper" job? One where you go to work every day for minimum wage, doing the same thing over and over and over, hating the job and the paltry contents of the pay envelope at the end of the week? Do you have a "proper" job that doesn't involve a money-grubbing corporation of some sort and isn't solely in the pursuit of money?
And to play devil's advocate for a moment, what if everyone listened to your advice? Everyone gets a "proper" job, leaving no one to make new movies, music, video games, television shows or books. What do you do after work when our culture disappears? How do you entertain yourself? What do you do for fun?
You say that if 80% of authors stopped writing, no one will notice. This seems to assume that the good ones aren't motivated by money and only the mediocre talent wants to get paid. Look around. That's not real life.
Besides, would we really rather have Stephen King working down at the local hardware store? Would the world be a better place if Charles Dickens had joined the military or been a banker instead of writing stories? Edgar Allen Poe tried the military, but failed to get through West Point. Should we put Bob Dylan in a telemarketer job? Willie Nelson could be a WalMart greeter. Springsteen could probably get elected governor of New Jersey. Pete Dougherty and Amy Winefeld maybe could run a day-care center. Samuel L. Jackson could be a great car salesman, but don't even think about trying to get him to come down on the price. Yeah, proper jobs for all.
There's enough literary playground in that concept for a good book. At least a comedy film. I'd go direct to DVD, though, because it might only be funny for one or two viewings.
But what about the harm to books and to the confidence of new authors happening RIGHT NOW.... what do we do BEFORE we have a system of direct compensation in place?
The question was not about the "money-grubbing, Disneyfied publishing industry," it's about how to keep the authors writing without the need for publishers. "Get a haircut and get a real job" was an insult when George Thoroughgood wrote a song about it and it still is. Do you decide the 20% that shouldn't get a proper job? Or is Simon Cowell to remain the global arbiter of that? If so, I'd rather wade through the other 80 percent in search of something that rocks a bit more than the sticky-sweet pop parade he puts on.
As for the original article, railing against dear old Ben Franklin's public library system because people can read your books for free is even more ludicrous than the RIAA's campaign of stupid. There's more to a library than just the fiction section. You can't copy things at a library. You can borrow one physical copy of a book to read it, but only one person at a time can access its contents. Still, hundreds of people may read one particular copy.
While I'm willing to take chances at the library, I'm not going to buy a book from an author whose work I have never read. Similarly, I'm not going to buy music I've never heard.
And a last thought on all of this is that the only people complaining about the internet (or the library) are those whose success and popularity may be directly attributed to it.
But don't you see? Apple isn't officially compatible with Windows 7 yet, so Macs suck.
Just wait till you see the new Microsoft computers... /sarsasm
...the truth is the vast majority of adults are 'smart' enough to operate an intersection correctly.
But not quite smart enough to put down their cell phones while they're doing it, which is why we had to have a law. I also see people getting busted by the red light cameras all the time for failing to operate an intersection correctly.
In Arizona, we have a "stupid motorist" law. If a road is closed due to running water, marked by a barrier or "Road Closed" sign, and you still try to cross, you have to pay for your own rescue, plus a fine for being stupid.
While I agree the vast majority of us aren't stupid, there are certainly enough of them sprinkled around. Even though 500 people may pass through an intersection correctly, it only takes one moron that doesn't to cause an accident, which is how we ended up with red light cameras in the first place.
Both, one crime doesn't erase another, especially when their hardly related.
I never said it did. The question was "Who are the real pirates?"
The average file-sharer is a music fan and, at worst, guilty of copyright infringement, a civil offense. Copyright infringement is NOT theft, it's copyright infringement.
The labels are guilty of massive copyright infringement for profit, as well as actually stealing directly from the artists by non-payment or questionable accounting practices that skim off the top. When they get caught, they keep 90 percent anyway.
The file sharer is a music fan; the record labels are true pirates and have been since the 50s.
Even if some dude kills your brother you can't go kill him, let alone his brother, without the full force of the law coming down on you and it's the same with theft.
I've got almost 100 songs on my website, which have been downloaded a half-million times in the past five years. Every last one of them is still there. No one has ever stolen even one song.
One is the opportunistic thief that intends to merely take a copy of a product for their own use, the other is the opportunistic thief that wishes not only to copy your product but also wishes to make money from it.
The latter group sounds like it includes Sony, which has taken Idol outtakes and made albums that they don't feel obligated to pay the performer for their efforts. Sony also still owes the Bay City Rollers about $60 million from the 70s, which they haven't paid because Sony "lost" the original contract and isn't sure how to pay it out -- so they've kept it for 30 years. Then there is the list of 300,000 songs that all the majors put on compilation albums over the last couple of decades and never bothered to pay royalties on.
Now decide for yourself which is the actual pirate?
Wait, you mean that two songs sounding the same isn't only annoying, it actually constitutes a crime?
Not always. Fantasy Records tried to sue John Fogerty for still sounding like John Fogerty after he left the label. Fogarty took a guitar with him when he testified, and showed the judge that everything he sang kinda sounded the same and there was nothing he could do about it. Fogarty won.
I don't think I would want to sign a piece of paper saying I used one or more P2P services between two dates.
Well, "attempted to use" works, too and doesn't imply guilt because Comcast made it unlikely that any dreaded copyright infringement would take place.
Some independent artists actually take advantage of P2P sites, posting their songs for free consumption in order to expand their audience, if we could only figure out how to get people to search for our stuff. For us, this is a seriously anti-competitive action. If you don't want to sell at the swap meet, fine. But don't shut it down. Some of us are okay with it and actually enjoy just looking at what everyone has to offer.
To jump about five steps further, the entire purpose of the internet is to enable the basic sharing of information. File sharing, whether on peer-to-peer sites or a simple web site, is a natural evolution of the resource and serves the underlying purpose.
Despite everything the RIAA, MPAA and ISPs like Comcast do to try to stop the flow, it'll never happen. It is contrary to the purpose of the internet. Their target will just keep moving, re-routing and disappearing into the cloud.
Lots of people like mainstream media output, and that's what makes it mainstream.
The thing is that those "lots of people" don't decide what the mainstream media output will be, it is simply thrust upon them. More likely an envelope full of cash makes the decision, and the most honest scenario still involves people like Simon Cowell.
What makes people like mainstream is repetition. After 25 listens or so, a song is in your head whether you want it there or not. My child went through the Disney Channel phase a few years ago, which included a couple seasons of Hannah Montana, and at least two of the High School Musicals, which seemed to run on an endless loop for about a month, when you consider the regular version, dance version, "pop-up" version, each of which got a week or so.
After all that overkill, those Disney albums still topped the charts, with a target demographic that's too young to have any money because they're too young to have a job.
Speaking for all parents of pre-teens at the time, we had already listened to these albums, in their entirety, several times. Compared to Ms. Spears, who was just beginning to melt down at the time, or Pink, or Christina Aguilera, Hannah Montana and High School Musical were pretty safe choices when a birthday or Christmas came along.
The other line of thought I have on this is that, once upon a time, mainstream music was on AM; everything else was on FM. Then, one day, talk radio took over AM, the mainstream music went to FM, and everything else got kicked to the wayside. Even the "classic rock" stations only play the songs that were hits, but nothing new.
Rock is still the biggest selling genre, despite the only current mainstream bands seeming to be Nickleback and Coldplay before you start naming people that have been doing it for decades. The Billboard Top 200 doesn't include anything more than 18 months old. This means it is certainly skewed, just like everything else involving the record labels and basic math. The answer to how much is behind a pay wall.
You're absolutely correct. It's just that when you're talking about ASCAP, you have to remember that you're not talking about the artist, just the songwriter. They can be the same person/entity (like Iron Maiden). Springsteen writes the bulk of his own material, but sometimes he'll throw a cover song in -- or an entire album, like he recently did with Pete Seeger songs.
While it may be normal today for an act to write most of their material (especially rock acts -- there are still a few thousand songwriters taking country music to Nashville), people like Elvis and Sinatra never wrote any of their own songs. American Idol winners don't seem to be writing a vast amount; Susan Boyle certainly didn't write any music for her #1 selling album.
And then you have the occasional odd case... Having lost the original copyright to Michael Jackson when the Beatles broke up, Paul McCartney has to pay every time he plays "Hey Jude" live.
So you've got to look at each song individually. But ASCAP doesn't care who the artist is, and it's obvious that a lot of people miss the distinction.