Knowing MS, the site probably requires IE to function anyhow (what with all those advanced IE-specific DHTML extensions that are oh-so neccessary for e-commerce) so whats the problem?;)
Prove it. The recipie is a 'trade secret', meaning that if you can reproduce it without actually seeing the original recipie, you don't owe Coke a dime.
Oh please. Just the possibility that cultures and societies have placed far less cultural/political importance on the amassing and growth of personal and corperate wealth than the society we live in today seems to scare the bejeezus out of people.
No, the world has not always been about growing wealth (both organizational and personal).
Certainly in the past 400-500 years it has been, having started from the shift from feutal times to the following centuries of british and european capitalist economies, but there have been (are still are) pockets of society in which people are simply uninterested in increasing their wealth.
Very few people like to believe this tho, because it tends to suggest that people should feel guilty for wanting to increase their wealth and power. It's a natural thing to want a quality that might be perceived as bad to be a human constant instead of a personal choice, as it absolves the person from being driven to commit acts they might otherwise consider unethical.
Then there are countless examples of families, living today, who simply wish to retain their current standard of living, and are not neccessarily out to increase their wealth. However, such people are viewed as being 'losers who just couldnt gain wealth if they wanted to anyhow' as a means of not having to admit that the goal of growing ones personal wealth is actually a personal decision that may, in fact, have moral consequences.
Not that I'm against it, but it pisses me off when somebody says, "Well, thats the way its always been."
Murders have happened since the dawn of time, but that doesn't mean we let people 'kill or be killed' nor do we assume that the level of violence on the planet has been constant since the dawn of time.
We are in an age of the glorification of greed. Whether thats a good thing or not depends on your political and ethical leanings, I would imagine.
Why would you need patents in this case? Any method of invention could he beld secret by the inventor.
Patents are designed to encourage the publication of inventions and scientific discoveries, by providing *some* protection to the inventor. Edison would not have had to disclose how he made the lightbulb had he not patented it, and he could have been the only guy you could buy lightbulbs from. Because he patented the lightbulb (encouraged by the limited protection that patents offer), his methods were published and we will always know how to create a lightbulb as good as his thanks to the patent ensuring that his methods are published and publicly available.
Just never forget that patents exist to encourage inventors to disclose their methods and findings to the public; ie, to prevent monopolies via propriatary scienitific discoveries... including, for example, proprietary protocals. When companies and inventors die, patents ensure their knowledge extends beyond their lifetimes, by offering some limited encouragement to disclose your scienitific discoveries to the public at large.
Patents are to protect the public. Successful companies like you to think of it the other way, so they can extend the protections they are offered via the patent system, while stripping the public of any chance of building inter-operable solutions and licenced implementations.
Thanks for the correction. I've extended my thoughts in a reply to the above reply, which address your corrections. (Specifically that the restrictive terms of the USPTO's prior art guidelines cause the system to function in my ways like a 'first to file' system, since the first to file is frequently the first to document, but not neccessarily the first to invent.)
I *am* wrong. The US patent system is a 'first to invent' system.
But... I am going on what little I know about the US patent office's methods for determining prior art when considering an application for a patent. In so far as the patent approval process is concerned, the method the patent office uses to search for prior art is, for the most part, their own database.
If you challenge a patent in court, prior art is of course, documented prior implementation. However, this introduces an inherent weakness in the system; to challenge a patent takes money. How this helps the inventor (ie, the holder of the 'prior art') is beyond me, seeing as patents should be protecting the first to invent, not first to file as it would appear to protect in this case.
Furthur more, the USPTO requires prior art to exist in printed documentation (european patent office accepts oral descriptions of prior art, which strengthens traditional/cultural knowledge as a potential source of prior art) and have a very limited time frame in which to conduct their search for prior art.
These are common complaints of the US patent approval system. Yes, in name, its a first to invent system, but in practice it tends to favour the first to file.
one such reference: http://shr.aaas.org/report/xxii/2_patent.htm
.. its called 'submarine' patenting or 'umbrella' patenting. Get a patent (or multiple patents) approved that make broad claims supported by more specific claims, and then litigate against competitors based on the overly broad claims.
Because, in so far as the current process works, 'prior art' can only consist of previously approved patents.
IE, the US patent system is truely a 'first to file' patent system. Patents will generally be approved even if somebody can demonstrate that they had 'prior art' but failed to patent it.
It's a nice way of facilitating an extra advantage to the markets' status-quo leaders... who, generally speaking, have all the money and the lawyers they need to file for patents as often as they like.
Even if the claims held any wieght, the patent term (20 years) is rediculously inappropriate for software patents, as by the time the patent expires, any claims made within it are of little use to the public.
Computer technology changes far too quickly. 20 years protection on a software patent allows far too much protection for the 'inventor' (who decreasingly *is* the inventor, and usually just the first to file) and not enough benifit for the public.
No, given the choice between legal goods at reasonable prices (keeping in mind the very definition of reasonable is what people are willing to pay) and illegal 'free' goods, people choose to pay.
How do I know this? During the past 100 years, there has ALWAYS been a way of copying works, and yet, people have been paying for *copies* of music for years. All this noise about CDs being too expensive isn't just made-up bullshit. Expensive != 'has a price'. It just means the price is too high. When it comes down, people will buy.
It's happened to practically every single new format in the last 100 years. Hell, it happened to Player Piano rolls! First the publishers tried to sue the guy who made player pianos, because they wern't making their music available via the piano rolls and people were obtaining them illegally.. the player piano was quite useless without them, of course. As soon as the distributors started offering music in the new format at a price people were willing to pay, guess what... people were willing to pay!
Furthur reading: The Bread Wars, and copyright law over the last 100 years. People *always* get the media for new media formats for free, because distributors are always leniant to start offering in that format. But the market comes back in line eventually. Music has never been free; if anything, the concerts used to be, and the copies cost. I don't see copies being free, especially given that people have *always* been happy to pay for the priviledge of being able to reproduce music through speakers when ever and where ever they are.
So what can paid-for P2P music offer above-and-beyond non-paid-for P2P music? Authenticity, garunateed quality, correct credits, and the knowledge that your money is actually reaching the people creating the music. I think you've got the tunnel vision on this subject, where really, if you look at the big picture, there have been hundreds of times in history where people started to get a good/service for free when it wasn't available, but opted to pay for it once the price came down and the legal market was able to provide additional value that the black market could not provide.
I sure ain't against filesharing. I think its been the best thing to happen to music in the last 10 years (and I'm a musician,) but I am confident that people in developed nations that have the money dont mind paying for anything when they think they're paying a fair price. Thats the very defition of fair.
To associate innovation with the addition of features shows just how fucked up IT research and development is.
I'll tell you what I think is true innovation: making the product more efficient, more capable, but reducing the complexity of the interface and reducing the number of 'features' needed to achieve the same goals.
As long as innovation is associated with 'new features' (read: new menu items/buttons), I will continue to cry.
We should be focused on inter-app communication/co-operation.. not just racing competiting products side by side to see which company can re-invent the wheel the best. OpenDoc (or something along those lines) to me is the utopian goal, but we'd need an IT ecosystem FAR more cozy to the notion of open standards and protocals.. and corperate executives who can convince share holders that propriatery protocols and market manipulation through non-interoperability are bad things. Then we can reduce the complexity of products because they can focus on doing what they do best rather than adding in another half-assed implemented feature intended to cause the use of a competitor's complimentary application 'redundant'.
This is also known as: "Why does Word offer the ability to save to HTML, given that if they just freakin published the.doc format, some other company could focus on making.doc => HTML a feature that actually works well enough to use?"
Who cares. The patent itself should not pass the 'trivial' aspect of the patent approval process.
Showing a user that another user is typing is a minute, trivial, obvious feature built on top of existing technology.
The patent system is broken beyond comprehension. Your post demonstrates one way in which it is broken, but there are a wack of other reasons why patents like this damage the technological ecosystem, not encourage it.
> Is there some reason why musicians think they should be rolling in the big bucks?
Is there some reason people insist on putting words in the mouths of others? This thread is about whether artists should be paid *only* for performing. I can tell you that there are enough musicians out there who make modest livings, who are in fact big players in their respective genres. Outside of a TINY minority that most musicians don't even consider to be part of the industry (ie, the big label artists), most musicians don't make much, and are thankful simply to be able to make enough to feed themselves and pursue the career they so desire. When Brit Spears sells 250,000 CDs, thats 250,000 hours of listening time that could be shared among hundreds of musicians in the form of royalties. We'd all live modestly, not richly, but at least we'd all be doing what we wanted to do.
So I have to wonder why it is such a proposterous notion that I wish to live in the lower->middle class bracket without performing my music live if my work is in fact played in clubs, bedrooms, etc across the nation?
If people are enjoying it, I don't mind being compensated for it. I don't want to be rich, and neither do 99% of musicians. It is the loud minority that cause posters like you to suggest that musicians are just looking for a Get Rich Quick (tm) scheme supported by some (presumably) label-free copyright supported ecosystem. We arn't; we'd just enjoy the freedom to supply the demand and attempt to receive fair compensation in terms the market deems fair. Obviously, the way it is now, labels are making the market anything BUT free so whatever the various players in the industry (distributors, producers, consumers) are asking for or wanting these days is simply a reaction to the fact that the current scheme is hopelessly undermined by the disproportionate amount of power centralized with the disitributors.. ie, the labels.
As usual, it is the loud, asshole minority that discredits the goals, ambitions, intent, and willingness to compromise of the majority of musicians.
HAHA. The joke is, if you don't know 200+ artists who are unable to 'perform' their music due to the nature of how they compose it, its you who has to broaden your horizens.
Of course lots of electronic acts can perform, and do perform. Tons. Hundreds. However many you'd like to say. Its just that shitloads can't, and as a musician in the latter category, I have to worry a little more about putting food on the table than becoming as cultured as you apparently are. Smirk.
There's nothing wrong with copyright. There is everything wrong about how record companies have the clout to render copyright a moot point. They've pissed off people to the point that people are now claiming that they shouldnt have to pay *at all* for music, which sounds a hell of alot scarier to musicians than selling their lives away in a Big 5 label contract.
There is clearly a compromise to be found as there has been in the past haydays of music distribution. Not ssurprisingly, Copyright is innately a legally codified compromise between private/public interests. Alas, first the RIAA and the labels it represents must stop tampering with the market and cease the the 'staving artists/commie college kids' PR propaganda war.
But please refrain from the snide remarks. You might just discover you're talking to an electronic musician who creates unperformable music. I find watching most electronic acts (sequencer-types, cut-n-paste genres) boring, as do many other people, but I don't think I'm being unfair that I receive *some* limited compensation (certainly not as much as the labels want) such that I can make a living wage and continue to create more music. I just don't have to support the terms under which the labels wish to distribute music, as I find they overly favour the distributor rather than the consumer (you) and the producer (me.)
Too many musicians don't perform in order for that to be fair. Particularly composers of electronic music, in which the music cannot be 'performed' live and is most often used in DJ sets at 'concerts'. Maybe some of the money dance clubs make should go to the musicians who had songs in the set mixed by the DJ, but it seems unlikely that that will be enforcable without the physical presense of the musicians (or reprasentatives) at the club the music is played at; hardly a practical approach.
>There is no FUCKING way you will know IN ADVANCE whether you will like a film or not.
They're called critics (real critics, not your morning radio show critic.) And they can help, if you read 4 or 5, and know which critics share your tastes. Think of them as your friends who get to see the movie before you do and lets you know whether you might like it or not.
I know how much people hate being 'told' whats good and whats bad, but this is where people are confused. Critics are not there to tell you what is good and what is bad; they can just give you an idea of whether you might like the movie or not based on your knowledge of their tastes, and your own subjective tastes.
Asides, there are tons of easy ways of knowing what will be good and what won't. The irony is, people seem to hate other people who are paid to evaluate subjective material (anti-elitism and all), so between having fundamental personal issues with art critics and rewarding studios with 12$ out of your pocket for making an abysmal movie, most obstinately seem to choose the latter. I sure don't feel sorry for those types. If you want to whine about bad movies, you'd better have a reason that you thought it'd be good, aside from the 3 minute preview.
Claiming that there is no way to know if a movie is good or not would essentially mean that Consumer Reports has been ripping people off for years. Their reviews of products are also highly subjective, using unquantifiable concepts such as 'ease of use' and 'durability ratings' to evaluate choices that consumers have in the market place. People don't seem to get all haughty when Consumer Reports tells you what they thought of the 1998 Hyundai Elantra, but for some reason, doing the same thing with movies and music seems to annoy a great many people. You've all the right in the world to enjoy a movie that most other people didn't, but for the most part, like Consumer Reports, a real film critic is as indepensible a guide to improving your chances of being a happy consumer as is Consumer Reports themselves.
I know that most people seem to hate critics (western anti-elitest attitudes and all that.) But, still, I'm amazed people manage to find themselves having paid money for movies they felt were so bad that they actually stole their time.
Thats like figuring out if you should by a Ford by asking a salesguy at a Ford dealership. Figuring out which movies you should see should be done by using independant sources (reviews, friends).. I really don't have much sympathy for folks who end up not liking movies that had wicked-awesome previews. What on earth do you expect? Previews are probably some of the best examples around of how advertising is essentially the art of manipulation.
Franchise whores (ie: "I know the movie will suck, but I'm an XYZ fan so I have to see it") and people who have stigmas against film critics (ie, the entire profession, not an individual film critic.. you have to find the critics that represent your tastes before they are worth much) must share part of the responsibility. If you believe, even in the slightest, in supply and demand, the quality of movies coming out is a good indication of the the quality of the demand. People don't know what to look for and refuse to vette their interests against film critics, so the studios can afford to keep pumping out crap so long as its backed by a preview with cutting edge effects and several rounds through focus group testing.
Like the manipulative, abusive boyfriend, people keep clinging to this (attractive, albiet) fantasy that the studios are trying to correct their recent track record of abusing or ignoring the minds of the people who pay for the tickets. But they arn't.. they know that currently, they're better off spending their time to secure franchise rights and developing wicked looking previews than actually making a good movie. Like any industry that has become more about the name than the quality of the product, the hollywood movie machine has become better at advertising and market manipulation than it is at producing decent movies.
My test? If the 'summary' of the movie contains pre-existing characters/franchises/brands, or hinges on one plot device, asume its bad until multiple discrete, independant sources suggest otherwise. Don't even bother with the preview; they're fun to watch, but a ludicrous way of determining which movie will contain an additional 157 minutes of quality cinema.
Basically, let people suffer before the market picks the best solution.
How does capitalism work when the current leader in the market is afforded exponetially subervise methods of advertising? Wouldn't you rather live your life than spend it trying to educate yourself about every product you consume? Every apple you eat?
Future Shop is owned by Best Buy. The Future Shop brand will be phased out (or was supposed to) until Best Buy realized that as long as nobody knew, they could make the two brands compete against each other and manipulate the market place to their advantage. Future Shop will gradually start 'sucking' more, and Best Buy will miraculously manage to undercut their prices every time, for some mysterious reason.
Anyone notice how both the telemarketers AND the AC are afforded free speech with 0 accountability of their speech via a relative amount of anonymity?
And the groovy co-incidence of how that kind of 'free speech with anonyminity and no accountability' invariably causes communication to degrade to shoe-size IQ level rhetoric/marketing?;)
No, the RIAA was clearly a reference to the DMCA, only to point out that there is a long standing history of policy/law being influenced by private interests.
Maybe I did imply with too much certainty that the Patriot Act was directly influenced by lobbying from the private sector; I was merely postulating. I didn't say with certainty that corperate interests actually requested provisions of the Patriot Act to come to fruition, but that leads me to..
*Who* put cyber-crime under the heading of 'terrorism' (thus allowing the use of the Patriot Act when dealing with criminal hackers) in the first place? Why, it was private groups with vested interests in deterring copyright and 'intellectual property' crimes by making the punishment out of proportion with the severity of the crime.
The RIAA would be one such group, but many other tech companies who'd rather prosecute than let their products' be vetted in the market place also lobbied to have cyber-crime and 'intellectual property' infringement placed under the heading of terrorism, opening the way for criminal hackers to be tried under the 'exceptions' in the justice system supposedly made exclusively for terrorist acting on behalf of foreign interests.
In the very least, its a good example of why discriminitory 'rights' in a judicial system are sure to be used against more people than the laws were originally drafted to apply to?
Slashdot Mirror
Knowing MS, the site probably requires IE to function anyhow (what with all those advanced IE-specific DHTML extensions that are oh-so neccessary for e-commerce) so whats the problem? ;)
> Their recipe is still a secret and is patented.
Prove it. The recipie is a 'trade secret', meaning that if you can reproduce it without actually seeing the original recipie, you don't owe Coke a dime.
I do not think it is patented. Prove me wrong.
Oh please. Just the possibility that cultures and societies have placed far less cultural/political importance on the amassing and growth of personal and corperate wealth than the society we live in today seems to scare the bejeezus out of people.
No, the world has not always been about growing wealth (both organizational and personal).
Certainly in the past 400-500 years it has been, having started from the shift from feutal times to the following centuries of british and european capitalist economies, but there have been (are still are) pockets of society in which people are simply uninterested in increasing their wealth.
Very few people like to believe this tho, because it tends to suggest that people should feel guilty for wanting to increase their wealth and power. It's a natural thing to want a quality that might be perceived as bad to be a human constant instead of a personal choice, as it absolves the person from being driven to commit acts they might otherwise consider unethical.
Then there are countless examples of families, living today, who simply wish to retain their current standard of living, and are not neccessarily out to increase their wealth. However, such people are viewed as being 'losers who just couldnt gain wealth if they wanted to anyhow' as a means of not having to admit that the goal of growing ones personal wealth is actually a personal decision that may, in fact, have moral consequences.
Not that I'm against it, but it pisses me off when somebody says, "Well, thats the way its always been."
Murders have happened since the dawn of time, but that doesn't mean we let people 'kill or be killed' nor do we assume that the level of violence on the planet has been constant since the dawn of time.
We are in an age of the glorification of greed. Whether thats a good thing or not depends on your political and ethical leanings, I would imagine.
Why would you need patents in this case? Any method of invention could he beld secret by the inventor.
... including, for example, proprietary protocals. When companies and inventors die, patents ensure their knowledge extends beyond their lifetimes, by offering some limited encouragement to disclose your scienitific discoveries to the public at large.
Patents are designed to encourage the publication of inventions and scientific discoveries, by providing *some* protection to the inventor. Edison would not have had to disclose how he made the lightbulb had he not patented it, and he could have been the only guy you could buy lightbulbs from. Because he patented the lightbulb (encouraged by the limited protection that patents offer), his methods were published and we will always know how to create a lightbulb as good as his thanks to the patent ensuring that his methods are published and publicly available.
Just never forget that patents exist to encourage inventors to disclose their methods and findings to the public; ie, to prevent monopolies via propriatary scienitific discoveries
Patents are to protect the public. Successful companies like you to think of it the other way, so they can extend the protections they are offered via the patent system, while stripping the public of any chance of building inter-operable solutions and licenced implementations.
Thanks for the correction. I've extended my thoughts in a reply to the above reply, which address your corrections. (Specifically that the restrictive terms of the USPTO's prior art guidelines cause the system to function in my ways like a 'first to file' system, since the first to file is frequently the first to document, but not neccessarily the first to invent.)
I *am* wrong. The US patent system is a 'first to invent' system.
... I am going on what little I know about the US patent office's methods for determining prior art when considering an application for a patent. In so far as the patent approval process is concerned, the method the patent office uses to search for prior art is, for the most part, their own database.
But
If you challenge a patent in court, prior art is of course, documented prior implementation. However, this introduces an inherent weakness in the system; to challenge a patent takes money. How this helps the inventor (ie, the holder of the 'prior art') is beyond me, seeing as patents should be protecting the first to invent, not first to file as it would appear to protect in this case.
Furthur more, the USPTO requires prior art to exist in printed documentation (european patent office accepts oral descriptions of prior art, which strengthens traditional/cultural knowledge as a potential source of prior art) and have a very limited time frame in which to conduct their search for prior art.
These are common complaints of the US patent approval system. Yes, in name, its a first to invent system, but in practice it tends to favour the first to file.
one such reference: http://shr.aaas.org/report/xxii/2_patent.htm
.. its called 'submarine' patenting or 'umbrella' patenting. Get a patent (or multiple patents) approved that make broad claims supported by more specific claims, and then litigate against competitors based on the overly broad claims.
Because, in so far as the current process works, 'prior art' can only consist of previously approved patents.
... who, generally speaking, have all the money and the lawyers they need to file for patents as often as they like.
IE, the US patent system is truely a 'first to file' patent system. Patents will generally be approved even if somebody can demonstrate that they had 'prior art' but failed to patent it.
It's a nice way of facilitating an extra advantage to the markets' status-quo leaders
Even if the claims held any wieght, the patent term (20 years) is rediculously inappropriate for software patents, as by the time the patent expires, any claims made within it are of little use to the public.
Computer technology changes far too quickly. 20 years protection on a software patent allows far too much protection for the 'inventor' (who decreasingly *is* the inventor, and usually just the first to file) and not enough benifit for the public.
No, given the choice between legal goods at reasonable prices (keeping in mind the very definition of reasonable is what people are willing to pay) and illegal 'free' goods, people choose to pay.
.. the player piano was quite useless without them, of course. As soon as the distributors started offering music in the new format at a price people were willing to pay, guess what ... people were willing to pay!
How do I know this? During the past 100 years, there has ALWAYS been a way of copying works, and yet, people have been paying for *copies* of music for years. All this noise about CDs being too expensive isn't just made-up bullshit. Expensive != 'has a price'. It just means the price is too high. When it comes down, people will buy.
It's happened to practically every single new format in the last 100 years. Hell, it happened to Player Piano rolls! First the publishers tried to sue the guy who made player pianos, because they wern't making their music available via the piano rolls and people were obtaining them illegally
Furthur reading: The Bread Wars, and copyright law over the last 100 years. People *always* get the media for new media formats for free, because distributors are always leniant to start offering in that format. But the market comes back in line eventually. Music has never been free; if anything, the concerts used to be, and the copies cost. I don't see copies being free, especially given that people have *always* been happy to pay for the priviledge of being able to reproduce music through speakers when ever and where ever they are.
So what can paid-for P2P music offer above-and-beyond non-paid-for P2P music? Authenticity, garunateed quality, correct credits, and the knowledge that your money is actually reaching the people creating the music. I think you've got the tunnel vision on this subject, where really, if you look at the big picture, there have been hundreds of times in history where people started to get a good/service for free when it wasn't available, but opted to pay for it once the price came down and the legal market was able to provide additional value that the black market could not provide.
I sure ain't against filesharing. I think its been the best thing to happen to music in the last 10 years (and I'm a musician,) but I am confident that people in developed nations that have the money dont mind paying for anything when they think they're paying a fair price. Thats the very defition of fair.
Amazing!
The lawyer profession is still alive and well, isn't it? ;)
To associate innovation with the addition of features shows just how fucked up IT research and development is.
.. not just racing competiting products side by side to see which company can re-invent the wheel the best. OpenDoc (or something along those lines) to me is the utopian goal, but we'd need an IT ecosystem FAR more cozy to the notion of open standards and protocals .. and corperate executives who can convince share holders that propriatery protocols and market manipulation through non-interoperability are bad things. Then we can reduce the complexity of products because they can focus on doing what they do best rather than adding in another half-assed implemented feature intended to cause the use of a competitor's complimentary application 'redundant'.
.doc format, some other company could focus on making .doc => HTML a feature that actually works well enough to use?"
I'll tell you what I think is true innovation: making the product more efficient, more capable, but reducing the complexity of the interface and reducing the number of 'features' needed to achieve the same goals.
As long as innovation is associated with 'new features' (read: new menu items/buttons), I will continue to cry.
We should be focused on inter-app communication/co-operation
This is also known as: "Why does Word offer the ability to save to HTML, given that if they just freakin published the
Who cares. The patent itself should not pass the 'trivial' aspect of the patent approval process.
Showing a user that another user is typing is a minute, trivial, obvious feature built on top of existing technology.
The patent system is broken beyond comprehension. Your post demonstrates one way in which it is broken, but there are a wack of other reasons why patents like this damage the technological ecosystem, not encourage it.
> Is there some reason why musicians think they should be rolling in the big bucks?
.. ie, the labels.
Is there some reason people insist on putting words in the mouths of others? This thread is about whether artists should be paid *only* for performing. I can tell you that there are enough musicians out there who make modest livings, who are in fact big players in their respective genres. Outside of a TINY minority that most musicians don't even consider to be part of the industry (ie, the big label artists), most musicians don't make much, and are thankful simply to be able to make enough to feed themselves and pursue the career they so desire. When Brit Spears sells 250,000 CDs, thats 250,000 hours of listening time that could be shared among hundreds of musicians in the form of royalties. We'd all live modestly, not richly, but at least we'd all be doing what we wanted to do.
So I have to wonder why it is such a proposterous notion that I wish to live in the lower->middle class bracket without performing my music live if my work is in fact played in clubs, bedrooms, etc across the nation?
If people are enjoying it, I don't mind being compensated for it. I don't want to be rich, and neither do 99% of musicians. It is the loud minority that cause posters like you to suggest that musicians are just looking for a Get Rich Quick (tm) scheme supported by some (presumably) label-free copyright supported ecosystem. We arn't; we'd just enjoy the freedom to supply the demand and attempt to receive fair compensation in terms the market deems fair. Obviously, the way it is now, labels are making the market anything BUT free so whatever the various players in the industry (distributors, producers, consumers) are asking for or wanting these days is simply a reaction to the fact that the current scheme is hopelessly undermined by the disproportionate amount of power centralized with the disitributors
As usual, it is the loud, asshole minority that discredits the goals, ambitions, intent, and willingness to compromise of the majority of musicians.
> Broaden your horizons.
HAHA. The joke is, if you don't know 200+ artists who are unable to 'perform' their music due to the nature of how they compose it, its you who has to broaden your horizens.
Of course lots of electronic acts can perform, and do perform. Tons. Hundreds. However many you'd like to say. Its just that shitloads can't, and as a musician in the latter category, I have to worry a little more about putting food on the table than becoming as cultured as you apparently are. Smirk.
There's nothing wrong with copyright. There is everything wrong about how record companies have the clout to render copyright a moot point. They've pissed off people to the point that people are now claiming that they shouldnt have to pay *at all* for music, which sounds a hell of alot scarier to musicians than selling their lives away in a Big 5 label contract.
There is clearly a compromise to be found as there has been in the past haydays of music distribution. Not ssurprisingly, Copyright is innately a legally codified compromise between private/public interests. Alas, first the RIAA and the labels it represents must stop tampering with the market and cease the the 'staving artists/commie college kids' PR propaganda war.
But please refrain from the snide remarks. You might just discover you're talking to an electronic musician who creates unperformable music. I find watching most electronic acts (sequencer-types, cut-n-paste genres) boring, as do many other people, but I don't think I'm being unfair that I receive *some* limited compensation (certainly not as much as the labels want) such that I can make a living wage and continue to create more music. I just don't have to support the terms under which the labels wish to distribute music, as I find they overly favour the distributor rather than the consumer (you) and the producer (me.)
> Musicians that don't perform don't deserve a cent.
Snort. Composing is 99% of the work a musician does, and this is why only composers (not performers) are paid royalties.
> hardware/concerts/theaters
Too many musicians don't perform in order for that to be fair. Particularly composers of electronic music, in which the music cannot be 'performed' live and is most often used in DJ sets at 'concerts'. Maybe some of the money dance clubs make should go to the musicians who had songs in the set mixed by the DJ, but it seems unlikely that that will be enforcable without the physical presense of the musicians (or reprasentatives) at the club the music is played at; hardly a practical approach.
>There is no FUCKING way you will know IN ADVANCE whether you will like a film or not.
They're called critics (real critics, not your morning radio show critic.) And they can help, if you read 4 or 5, and know which critics share your tastes. Think of them as your friends who get to see the movie before you do and lets you know whether you might like it or not.
I know how much people hate being 'told' whats good and whats bad, but this is where people are confused. Critics are not there to tell you what is good and what is bad; they can just give you an idea of whether you might like the movie or not based on your knowledge of their tastes, and your own subjective tastes.
Asides, there are tons of easy ways of knowing what will be good and what won't. The irony is, people seem to hate other people who are paid to evaluate subjective material (anti-elitism and all), so between having fundamental personal issues with art critics and rewarding studios with 12$ out of your pocket for making an abysmal movie, most obstinately seem to choose the latter. I sure don't feel sorry for those types. If you want to whine about bad movies, you'd better have a reason that you thought it'd be good, aside from the 3 minute preview.
Claiming that there is no way to know if a movie is good or not would essentially mean that Consumer Reports has been ripping people off for years. Their reviews of products are also highly subjective, using unquantifiable concepts such as 'ease of use' and 'durability ratings' to evaluate choices that consumers have in the market place. People don't seem to get all haughty when Consumer Reports tells you what they thought of the 1998 Hyundai Elantra, but for some reason, doing the same thing with movies and music seems to annoy a great many people. You've all the right in the world to enjoy a movie that most other people didn't, but for the most part, like Consumer Reports, a real film critic is as indepensible a guide to improving your chances of being a happy consumer as is Consumer Reports themselves.
I know that most people seem to hate critics (western anti-elitest attitudes and all that.) But, still, I'm amazed people manage to find themselves having paid money for movies they felt were so bad that they actually stole their time.
.. I really don't have much sympathy for folks who end up not liking movies that had wicked-awesome previews. What on earth do you expect? Previews are probably some of the best examples around of how advertising is essentially the art of manipulation.
.. you have to find the critics that represent your tastes before they are worth much) must share part of the responsibility. If you believe, even in the slightest, in supply and demand, the quality of movies coming out is a good indication of the the quality of the demand. People don't know what to look for and refuse to vette their interests against film critics, so the studios can afford to keep pumping out crap so long as its backed by a preview with cutting edge effects and several rounds through focus group testing.
.. they know that currently, they're better off spending their time to secure franchise rights and developing wicked looking previews than actually making a good movie. Like any industry that has become more about the name than the quality of the product, the hollywood movie machine has become better at advertising and market manipulation than it is at producing decent movies.
Thats like figuring out if you should by a Ford by asking a salesguy at a Ford dealership. Figuring out which movies you should see should be done by using independant sources (reviews, friends)
Franchise whores (ie: "I know the movie will suck, but I'm an XYZ fan so I have to see it") and people who have stigmas against film critics (ie, the entire profession, not an individual film critic
Like the manipulative, abusive boyfriend, people keep clinging to this (attractive, albiet) fantasy that the studios are trying to correct their recent track record of abusing or ignoring the minds of the people who pay for the tickets. But they arn't
My test? If the 'summary' of the movie contains pre-existing characters/franchises/brands, or hinges on one plot device, asume its bad until multiple discrete, independant sources suggest otherwise. Don't even bother with the preview; they're fun to watch, but a ludicrous way of determining which movie will contain an additional 157 minutes of quality cinema.
.. because of my superior brain processing power.
Basically, let people suffer before the market picks the best solution.
How does capitalism work when the current leader in the market is afforded exponetially subervise methods of advertising? Wouldn't you rather live your life than spend it trying to educate yourself about every product you consume? Every apple you eat?
>Future Shop (Canada's version of Best Buy)
;)
Future Shop is owned by Best Buy. The Future Shop brand will be phased out (or was supposed to) until Best Buy realized that as long as nobody knew, they could make the two brands compete against each other and manipulate the market place to their advantage. Future Shop will gradually start 'sucking' more, and Best Buy will miraculously manage to undercut their prices every time, for some mysterious reason.
Now *thats* a free market, eh?
Anyone notice how both the telemarketers AND the AC are afforded free speech with 0 accountability of their speech via a relative amount of anonymity?
;)
And the groovy co-incidence of how that kind of 'free speech with anonyminity and no accountability' invariably causes communication to degrade to shoe-size IQ level rhetoric/marketing?
Mmmm, bait.
Well, that was the sales pitch, right?
No, the RIAA was clearly a reference to the DMCA, only to point out that there is a long standing history of policy/law being influenced by private interests.
..
Maybe I did imply with too much certainty that the Patriot Act was directly influenced by lobbying from the private sector; I was merely postulating. I didn't say with certainty that corperate interests actually requested provisions of the Patriot Act to come to fruition, but that leads me to
*Who* put cyber-crime under the heading of 'terrorism' (thus allowing the use of the Patriot Act when dealing with criminal hackers) in the first place? Why, it was private groups with vested interests in deterring copyright and 'intellectual property' crimes by making the punishment out of proportion with the severity of the crime.
The RIAA would be one such group, but many other tech companies who'd rather prosecute than let their products' be vetted in the market place also lobbied to have cyber-crime and 'intellectual property' infringement placed under the heading of terrorism, opening the way for criminal hackers to be tried under the 'exceptions' in the justice system supposedly made exclusively for terrorist acting on behalf of foreign interests.
In the very least, its a good example of why discriminitory 'rights' in a judicial system are sure to be used against more people than the laws were originally drafted to apply to?