Books, books, manuals, workshops (your local music store often holds workshops and seminars as a means of generating sales, but its a great way to get your foot in the door and see what these things are for and what they do.)
I learned most of my knowledge from experimenting and toying around, but I've always been more on the MIDI/Synth side than recording what instruments I play live and doing multitrack audio sessions, so it may have been somewhat easier for me than most traditional musicians.
www.sonicstate.com is a good place chalk full of reviews (the hardest part of home studio recording is getting past the hype and knowing what you need to buy to accomplish your goals), and www.harmony-central.com has a very active classifieds section. www.sweetwatersound.com staff, IMHO, have always been very good at taking time to help the customer in order to generate sales.. I've got a very good impression of their sales support.
I guess being a C/C++/CORBA programmer for a living who has in fact contributed to open source projects doesn't mean much. (Actually, I assume you'll just ignore this line, or say I'm lying, or whatever suits your fantasy world.)
If an avoidance of realistic evaluation is a common Slashbot trait, I can assume the ACs have mastered presumption of character.
I'm sure the/. code is crap. I dont doubt it. I'm just going to do everything I can to annoy those who criticize labour of loves because they desperately need a reason as to why they have no personal investment in what they 'produce' for a living. If you havn't got anything constructive to say, you're no better than those who construct crap.
Asides, when we are both taking time out of being productive to sling mud at the walls, its hard to accept that somehow you are productive, and I am not. The difference is, I place my name beside my words. Productivity doth not make the man - the balls to accept accountability for what one produces does.
The problem is that American culture raises people to worship the false idols.. the successful capitalists, which, according to some, made good products, but more often 'played the game right' (not even a reference to the quality of product their company created!) or 'exploited consumers'.
But just watch. American culture encourages worshipping the successful, and assuming all those in have-not situations (or 2nd best, for that matter) suck! There's not much that can be done about this - America itself must do many questionable things to remain #1, and so it would be contradictive for its people and voters to believe anything but #1 was the best way. Thats why MS could go around lighting people on fire, and they'd still be held up as 'the best way to do things' and 'the most likely saviour' when it comes time for us to eat our deserts. They have the most money, and for reasons of safety and security, people will side with them and assume that the downsides of their software are either unavoidable or, even more laughably, that their upsides outweigh their downsides.
I don't see this changing anytime soon, unfortunately. Apple is subject to a huge stigma for being 'elitist', Joe America's most hated trait, and Linux is still too complicated for the Average User.
The best part is there might be a fictional 4th, 5th, 6th option that may have existed had people not been so quick to defend MS's full and zealotous use of the advantages capitalism gives to those who've already achieved power and leverage. Success seems to breed laziness, and MS is a good example of that.. not that they were ever top notch to begin with, but they've been able to afford to pull wool over peoples' eyes for years, and since they are #1, people are all too happy to assume that its for a good cause.
No, obviously you have more important things to do with your time, like pester the slashdot crew, without which you wouldn't even have a place to assert your programming superiority and flaunt the value of your time.
1. What about this story has anything to do with *nix admins forgetting to install patches, and/or assuming their software is bugproof?
2. This bug affects Windows too (exploitably, apparently, while the bug is only DoS under 32 bit unix systems)
3. Who ever said *nix software never had problems/bugs? Maybe, arguably, less, but nobody contends that anything is perfect or ever will be, unless we can include marketing departments.
4. We know there is a difference between "admin" and "someone who installed some software". Everybody knows that.
It's not. I only meant to illustrate that history has already been through this. The first true copyright with the wellfare of the authors in mind was a response to the Licensing Act, which had the effect of creating a publishing monopoly where a disproportionate amount of the works being published were by a very small amount of parties (if you dont like my use of the word monopoly, the Big 5 are in court this very minute for anti-competative practices.. but they are successfully keeping that below the public radar.).. so, in effect, the first copyright law was a response to the very same system we have now. Its a good way of illustrating that the laws of today do not really have the artists in mind.. todays copyright law is much more of a law designed to protect the publisher rather than the creator.
>with those street vendors, there was still a limit on how many they sold, overall quality of the product
How? No limit, they can just burn more.
No quality issue, because they just keep their 'gold' copy. Doesn't even cost that much to ship your CDs all over the US to dozens of street corners.
The joke is, this has never been a threat to the big-label artists (the small label artists, sure, but do you think those are the ones getting copy protected CDs or high priced lawyers to deal with it?).. in fact, I can safely say I've never seen one single 'pirate seller' in my entire concert going life, although I know bootleggers exist to some degree (tho they seem to concetrate on live performances, most of which never get turned into commercial releases anyhow, so theres only a tiny bit of value dillution).
Incidentally, most of those street vendors could afford to pay the artist (directly) the royalties from the CDs and still sell the CD for less than the Big 5 do. So you're justifying RIAA protecting what it owns because it has a monopoly upon which can demand higher prices (mostly because there's the ever-accelerating race for higher production value and advertising budgets needed because.. lol, of how much other labels spend on this stuff). Which is why I have no sympathy for labels. Artists that need sympathy, sure, labels, no. The game is far to big and expensive than it needs to be, and thats the only reason the RIAA has to be so piracy-nazi about it. History is full of times where the true power shifted to the producers.. no one company/publishing house has a monopoly, but they've successfully made the game too expensive for anybody else to play.
Smaller labels are starting to make inroads with online sales and distribution, which is encouraging, but there is still a long way to go. Artists need the ability to protect their works for awhile with tolerable levels of piracy (some limited time span in their life, maybe 20 years), but thats all, folks. Sure, during that time frame the work should be treated somewhat like a physical commodity, but at some point, it should go... *poof*
I think the point, dear boy, is that I shouldn't have to battle for it, and that there were times when artists didn't (pre-big-label, for instance!). And he was Frank Zappa. I'm no Frank Zappa.. there are plenty of the fish in the sea like me, and we can all swim in it together. Except its more in the interest of publishers and distributors of today to cut me loose at the first sign of wishing to enter a 'battle' and pick up another me, instead of me coving my neighbourhood, and the other me covering another neighbourhood, etc, etc. Thats like me complaining that all musicians have to lift a 200 pound cinder-block to attain a certain level of distribution, and you saying former-wieghtlifter-turned-musician X didn't seem to have a problem with it.
This has been flogged to death, this 'choice' issue. When you have an example of somebody that made a choice, and hundreds of non-choicers, you have to start looking at the system instead of just working around it. I am not the brilliant musician who can risk spending his life fighting legal battles. It's hard becoming a musician in the first place. This isn't just for me, I'm altruistic in the sense that I wish it was simpler and more fair for all artists. Kinda leaves us more time to work on our art instead of having to play davids to goliaths.
> That'd be like me complaining about how it was necessary for me to sign up with AT&T's worst long distance plan, because it was the only way to use my telephone.
Ah right, I shouldn't complain, because I have a choice (to compare to AT&T and using your phone, I suppose the alternative would be walkietalkies or tin-cans?) in avoiding a monopoly.
You get +1 for insulting for suggesting that I only _want_ a career in doing what I love, and that its no more of a frivulous want than a diamond ring.. I dont really need it! I mean, whats 70 years of knowing it would have been considerably simpler (and on the merit of my music, not my ability to network, negotiate, and get lucky) to make a living off of what I truely love..
Are you an artist? What's next, I only _want_ clothes, I dont really need them?
> Music creators have the right to protect their property from theft, just like owners of any other property
> The RIAA may have a point about piracy
No, they dont! "just like owners of any other property"???! Thats why Copyright law exists! Because owners of cultural and artistic work is not like owners of other property.
The Great Big Lie has everybody forgetting this. Everybody get it through thy skulls! Copyright, and intellectual property is and never will be physical property! So you dont get to distribute it, or protect it like physical property. End of story.
Incidentally, copyright law 2002 is much more like the Licensing Act of 1722, which the first true copyright law of the 1760s was supposed to fix. The Statue of Anne, the firtst true copyright law meant to protect the creators of the work, not the publishers/distributors was meant to wrestle control of cultural distribution and publication from the companies to the arists. Nowadays, look in those 'big label' contracts. Guess who ends up owning the copyright when you sign (the only real way to get big time distribution these days?).. the company! Really, this is all a joke.. the labels are no better than the monopolistic printing houses of the 1622s, and everybody has bought it hook line and sinker that its all for the arists! ('Wont somebody think about the arists!'.. dont believe them!) As a musician, programmer, and dude who decided that something smelled fishy, I have not a shred of doubt in my mind that 'copyright law' is currently a misnomer - how about 'monopoly law'? It's time for another true copyright law, one where the people making the actual music have a say and where economic leverage doesn't allow companies to nullify the 'creator is the owner' statute by forcing signees to sign their copyright over to the label. Thats how this trouble all got started....
Far more telling is that while copyrights are initially the artists', you cannot get any respectable level of distribution without signing your copyright over to a corperation.
In that respect, the impedus of how to 'protect' those works is all in the hands of companies now, with far too much power, nearsightedness, and complete lack of understanding of technology. The 'artists', the exploited posterchildren of all of this, are really powerless to have a say, and they are being tugged around in a battle that concerns their very nature, living and wellfare, in which they really have no voice.
Labels already have what they need in the form of insane copyright terms (nevermind that none of them are signing multi-album deals anymore like they did 20 years ago.. they drop millions on one-hit-wonders, and have shrugged off any concept of a 'career' for musicians), and ownership most of the time of said copyright. This is just a prime example of how those in power are destined to spend the rest of their existance attempting to strengthen it rather than focusing on what got them into that position in the first place.
This is insulting to a musician like me. To hear what constitutes 'right to protect my property' (nevermind it should only be mine for 14 years, not 70 years after the death of me.. oh wait, forgot I had to sell that copyright to a company in order to get it heard, anyways!) from the mouth of suits is just plain insulting.
Interesting note: It was pre-copyright times in which publishers owned the works. Now, with the big 5, you have to sign your copyright to them for them to publish. And the copyright law is now 70 years after the death of me. Its kind of ironic.. the biggest battle in the history of copyrights, and really, they are arguing in favour of nothing other than technologically enforcing pre-copyright law, where publishers held the copyrights, ad infinitum (well, 70 years past my death, same thing.)
I really wish people understood how 'copyrights' that labels are arguing they must be able to protect are not copyrights at all, but more akin to the Licensing act of 1722 where publishers held a monopoly in the distribution of cultural works. (Also worth noting that the Licencing Act was also the first law that allowed government, and subsequently printing houses to censor works deemed against the Church or State.)
At any rate, I sure dont need to screw up your CDROM to make a living... although I wont argue that N'Sync and Nickleback or whatever already-well-off artist you love will make more money in the short term because of it!
Anyhow, as somebody else pointed out, maintaining those rails would be more expensive than air flight. It's not economical.. ironically, its that capitalism part that prevents its use on long routes. Unless you'd prefer to subsidize it by way of taxes, hrmmm, but I'm guessing thats the other thing you deplore?
Sure. Nice try, but sure, I agree. I'll spare you the 'Linux is an OS, not a window manager and desktop' lecture, but given what KDE and Gnome have done for a *fraction* of the cost that MS and Apple did to develop their Window Managers and Desktops, I think its fairly obvious that there is significant room for improvement in driving down the costs of both those commercial OSes (of which, to note, the cost of OSX is embedded in the hardware, as the OS is 'free as in beer'). Not to pick at their usability and functionality, but once everything is installed and configured, the KDE and Gnomes stack up fairly well against Windows and OSX, for a microfraction of the cost.
>Then maybe the patent holder would license his/her material to your friend for a reasonable fee, and they'd both be happy. I think this is how it's SUPPOSED to work...
It is how its supposed to work, but patents are often much more useful as leverage to supress the viability of copmetitors' work than as a means of getting paid for that discovery.
If you think about it, you only need one good marketable patent to support yourself. Any more patents, you can just use that as ammunition to fuck other people up.
Its the same with copyright. Can you imagine we are (happily, according to the IP camp) paying people's sons and daughters for a few years of creativity on behalf of a father/mother/uncle/aunt or whatever?
The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is simply too rich. People are altruistic (well, altruistic as in 'i wish to life with minimal social friction, and i dont need *everything* I can get, I'll share that so that I dont have to consistantly fight and keep my gaunrd up), until you put them in a pit and convince them that fighting to the death is the only way to live.
Hey, plus, you know filesharing to rip off albums from artists is pretty popular because the stars of the day make so much that people dont perceive that as an individual, you do affect the bottom line of somebody. ironically, if the visible top40 artists were less rich (which could only be attained through making Sony, EMI, etc less rich), people would likely think a little more about ripping off musicians, because suddenly they'd be more like your neighbour than a superstar with more money than they can spend. this would help the struggling musicians, because it would convert some of the 'your filesharing monster friends' to a 'you'. Remember, people change their behaviour primarily because of the optics of the situation (their context). This is backed up by mainstream social behvarioural science. Look into the book The Tipping Point for a good place to start on that.
> I just wanted one solid convincing reason why mass file-swapping and its inevitable harm to the industry wouldn't discourage music creation.
Well, I dont know about convincing.. the only person who can convince you is yourself. I can only provide examples of why I dont think this is true. And I cant be bothered to sound grammerically correct anymore:), this is going to be real stream of conciousness...
Example 1: Sony and EMI etc become less rich, thus reducing the barrier to entry of advertising (since they can basically 'buy out' any inventory less rich companies wish to advertise in.) More musicians who you dont know about (tons of people create music, what you're really talking about is making a living off of it.) Recuding the powers of the giants by way of filesharing would make it easier for more musicians to compete in the market, thus encouraging more musicians to make more music.
Example 2: file-sharing has proven to be the *only* community-driven method of distributing and exposing artists to other people, in other geographies. you might say that the big guys can do this, but you're missing that they dont *want* to do this. they want 10 brittany spears, not 40 mid tier musicians. file-sharing is the absolute perfection of word-of-mouth, the kind of advertising marketing execs (I work with them) know even money cant buy. although, they do try.. they hire 'urban salespeople' to go to bars and talk up artists they want to push. file-sharing returns the control of who gets sold to the people, and since the people are much more diverse than any big media company business plan wants it to be, this would encourage me to think more seriously about attempting to make a living off my music. as it stands, its utterly hopeless. I know enough people who could support me, but since I will never sell to millions of people, I'm of no interest to the companies that currently saturate the market and cater to those who havn't time to 'pull' their tastes.
example 3: since file-sharing has the tendancy to spread new music, influences, and ideas far more effectively than any previous method (ie, its much easier to get heard by many people with filesharing), more musicians would be subject to more creative ideas. any artist, of *any* kind will tell you that more ideas flying around will *always* encourage more and better music. money, or no money. artists dont have to have money to write music (as evidenced by the thousands of musicians on besonic.com, mp3.com, etc that are writing music *regardless* of whether they can make a living off of it).. but if the point is to provide them with livings, than its simply a matter of distributing the wealth in the music industry better than it currently is being distributed.
I guess you feel that if Sony and EMI dont put the millions in, we'll have less music. We'll certainly have less cds sold *per artist* (because the big companies can push one artist to the world), and the top level artists will (i hope) make less, but more artists could sell cds without Sony and EMI etc saturating the market. its as simple as that... yes, the big guys would hurt the guys under them, but the SHITLOADS of musicians who are disillusioned, sitting on the sidelines, waiting for a gap in the moise would be overjoyed. thats where the music would come from, and mid-tier labels would finally have a much easier time reaching wider audiences.
This is where I have much criticism of western culture (I'm western, but that doesn't mean I agree with its values)... the econeomics of it drive a 'less but bigger' type of mentality and approach, because the more you need to manage, the more simple your product offering had better be.. otherwise the logistics get impossible to manage. I'm arguing in favour of 'more but smaller'.. there is plenty of money going into the huge stars' pockets that could be distributed among the small guys. It is only the mammoth companies that dont want this - it is easier to hawk one thing to many people than many things to many people. You end up making more money on the savings in admisitering your product offering. If you really feel there is lots of music out there, you must mean that you get to hear that music a zillion times over. It's no secret that record labels are much more 'one album contract' than they were 20 years ago, making it even harder for musicians, even big label musicians, to know if they will have a whole life of making music. I'd rather provide more musicians with livings (isn't this what it should all be about, not turning one hit bands prepackedged for entire populations through the record-mill?) than have richer or more one hit wonders that are saturated in the market for a few months leaving people with little motivation to seek out more diverse music. It might *seem* like more music the way the record companies are doing it now, but it really simply damages the musicians' ability to make a modest but sustainable living off of music.
I know thats not a very well organized argument, but please trust me - I have spent the last 8 years doing music, and the value of the jobs being created in the mass markets for musicians, actors, etc are only so valuable because so few people get to be them.:) Let more people play, give distribution and promotion back to the streets, and you'd instantly have way more musicians happy they were making 3a modest living and touring and even finding a population that was more open to diverse tastes.
as for your friend, sure they exist, but like I said, as a musician and internet programmer and filesharer, I'd way more rather sleep with them than the Big Scary Top 40 machine. At least, at the end of the day, they happily pass my music on to the next crowd of potential 'people like you' (ie, the ones that pay for their music) than some capitalist old boy who doesn't understand the differences between physical product and intellectual property and thus why 'stealing' IP is TONs of a less big deal than some guy in a skimask stealing the 20 oak desks I need in order to sell so I can eat.
That doesn't even address the issue of IP of works created years ago, where distribution, sales, etc of said product ceased years ago, where the company refuses to re-issue it. I am not going to support Walt Disney's son because his pop had a good idea. He can create his own original stuff, which I will be more than happy to pay for.
one last question: when photocopiers were invented (available just about anywhere, any time, office, school, etc), why didn't magazines, authors, music sheet publishers, etc halt the motivation to write, make magazines, publish sheet music? please dont tell me because filesharing is 'perfect' and 'easy' in a way that the photocopier was not. thats what they said then, and the magainze/publishing industry is alive and well. same with the VCR. same with the casette recorder. etc, etc, etc
the end of all this is that as a musician who wants to make a living off of music, and knows the industry fairly well, I support filesharing to the max. and if you really are behind the musicians, dont you think you might consider they can appreciate the implications of technological influence to their business a little better than the consumer can?
When MS says they're going to do an about face on their history and enter 'trustworthy' computing with a straight face, they are going to get laughed at when that claim looks strained.
It's as simple as that. You'd probably be much more upset at us if we didn't all point out up front that we know we're flaming MS.:) That's the difference. When somebody makes a claim they dont keep, they wont get much support or benifit of the doubt (especially if they are the goliath.) I thank god the world works this way, or nothing would ever change.
Sometimes I wonder what MS would have to do to actually lose some market share if the anti-MS crowd wern't so passionate - probably kill a few people in the middle of a crowd, caught on videotape, I'd wager, although I imagine they'd just point out that the guy holding the gun wasn't an employee.. just another MS perma-temp.;)
Slashdot Mirror
Books, books, manuals, workshops (your local music store often holds workshops and seminars as a means of generating sales, but its a great way to get your foot in the door and see what these things are for and what they do.)
.. I've got a very good impression of their sales support.
I learned most of my knowledge from experimenting and toying around, but I've always been more on the MIDI/Synth side than recording what instruments I play live and doing multitrack audio sessions, so it may have been somewhat easier for me than most traditional musicians.
www.sonicstate.com is a good place chalk full of reviews (the hardest part of home studio recording is getting past the hype and knowing what you need to buy to accomplish your goals), and www.harmony-central.com has a very active classifieds section. www.sweetwatersound.com staff, IMHO, have always been very good at taking time to help the customer in order to generate sales
I guess being a C/C++/CORBA programmer for a living who has in fact contributed to open source projects doesn't mean much. (Actually, I assume you'll just ignore this line, or say I'm lying, or whatever suits your fantasy world.)
/. code is crap. I dont doubt it. I'm just going to do everything I can to annoy those who criticize labour of loves because they desperately need a reason as to why they have no personal investment in what they 'produce' for a living. If you havn't got anything constructive to say, you're no better than those who construct crap.
If an avoidance of realistic evaluation is a common Slashbot trait, I can assume the ACs have mastered presumption of character.
I'm sure the
Asides, when we are both taking time out of being productive to sling mud at the walls, its hard to accept that somehow you are productive, and I am not. The difference is, I place my name beside my words. Productivity doth not make the man - the balls to accept accountability for what one produces does.
The problem is that American culture raises people to worship the false idols .. the successful capitalists, which, according to some, made good products, but more often 'played the game right' (not even a reference to the quality of product their company created!) or 'exploited consumers'.
.. not that they were ever top notch to begin with, but they've been able to afford to pull wool over peoples' eyes for years, and since they are #1, people are all too happy to assume that its for a good cause.
But just watch. American culture encourages worshipping the successful, and assuming all those in have-not situations (or 2nd best, for that matter) suck! There's not much that can be done about this - America itself must do many questionable things to remain #1, and so it would be contradictive for its people and voters to believe anything but #1 was the best way. Thats why MS could go around lighting people on fire, and they'd still be held up as 'the best way to do things' and 'the most likely saviour' when it comes time for us to eat our deserts. They have the most money, and for reasons of safety and security, people will side with them and assume that the downsides of their software are either unavoidable or, even more laughably, that their upsides outweigh their downsides.
I don't see this changing anytime soon, unfortunately. Apple is subject to a huge stigma for being 'elitist', Joe America's most hated trait, and Linux is still too complicated for the Average User.
The best part is there might be a fictional 4th, 5th, 6th option that may have existed had people not been so quick to defend MS's full and zealotous use of the advantages capitalism gives to those who've already achieved power and leverage. Success seems to breed laziness, and MS is a good example of that
No, obviously you have more important things to do with your time, like pester the slashdot crew, without which you wouldn't even have a place to assert your programming superiority and flaunt the value of your time.
Please. Put up or shut up.
1. What about this story has anything to do with *nix admins forgetting to install patches, and/or assuming their software is bugproof?
2. This bug affects Windows too (exploitably, apparently, while the bug is only DoS under 32 bit unix systems)
3. Who ever said *nix software never had problems/bugs? Maybe, arguably, less, but nobody contends that anything is perfect or ever will be, unless we can include marketing departments.
4. We know there is a difference between "admin" and "someone who installed some software". Everybody knows that.
It's not. I only meant to illustrate that history has already been through this. The first true copyright with the wellfare of the authors in mind was a response to the Licensing Act, which had the effect of creating a publishing monopoly where a disproportionate amount of the works being published were by a very small amount of parties (if you dont like my use of the word monopoly, the Big 5 are in court this very minute for anti-competative practices .. but they are successfully keeping that below the public radar.) .. so, in effect, the first copyright law was a response to the very same system we have now. Its a good way of illustrating that the laws of today do not really have the artists in mind .. todays copyright law is much more of a law designed to protect the publisher rather than the creator.
Well, I"m canadian, but the real problem in the US is this:
:)
>as illegal as monopolies.
Monopolies arn't illegal in the states. Thats the big problem that hopefully some day they will fix.
>with those street vendors, there was still a limit on how many they sold, overall quality of the product
.. in fact, I can safely say I've never seen one single 'pirate seller' in my entire concert going life, although I know bootleggers exist to some degree (tho they seem to concetrate on live performances, most of which never get turned into commercial releases anyhow, so theres only a tiny bit of value dillution).
.. lol, of how much other labels spend on this stuff). Which is why I have no sympathy for labels. Artists that need sympathy, sure, labels, no. The game is far to big and expensive than it needs to be, and thats the only reason the RIAA has to be so piracy-nazi about it. History is full of times where the true power shifted to the producers .. no one company/publishing house has a monopoly, but they've successfully made the game too expensive for anybody else to play.
... *poof*
How? No limit, they can just burn more.
No quality issue, because they just keep their 'gold' copy. Doesn't even cost that much to ship your CDs all over the US to dozens of street corners.
The joke is, this has never been a threat to the big-label artists (the small label artists, sure, but do you think those are the ones getting copy protected CDs or high priced lawyers to deal with it?)
Incidentally, most of those street vendors could afford to pay the artist (directly) the royalties from the CDs and still sell the CD for less than the Big 5 do. So you're justifying RIAA protecting what it owns because it has a monopoly upon which can demand higher prices (mostly because there's the ever-accelerating race for higher production value and advertising budgets needed because
Smaller labels are starting to make inroads with online sales and distribution, which is encouraging, but there is still a long way to go. Artists need the ability to protect their works for awhile with tolerable levels of piracy (some limited time span in their life, maybe 20 years), but thats all, folks. Sure, during that time frame the work should be treated somewhat like a physical commodity, but at some point, it should go
Short term cost, this is arguably true.
But you dont have to pay the subscription cost yearly to MS to sleep with them, so you save money in the long run.
As for 'well supported', this is a function of its userbase. Guess what happens when more users use Linux? It becomes 'well supported'! Amazing!
> in particular his battles with Warner, EMI etc
.. there are plenty of the fish in the sea like me, and we can all swim in it together. Except its more in the interest of publishers and distributors of today to cut me loose at the first sign of wishing to enter a 'battle' and pick up another me, instead of me coving my neighbourhood, and the other me covering another neighbourhood, etc, etc. Thats like me complaining that all musicians have to lift a 200 pound cinder-block to attain a certain level of distribution, and you saying former-wieghtlifter-turned-musician X didn't seem to have a problem with it.
I think the point, dear boy, is that I shouldn't have to battle for it, and that there were times when artists didn't (pre-big-label, for instance!). And he was Frank Zappa. I'm no Frank Zappa
This has been flogged to death, this 'choice' issue. When you have an example of somebody that made a choice, and hundreds of non-choicers, you have to start looking at the system instead of just working around it. I am not the brilliant musician who can risk spending his life fighting legal battles. It's hard becoming a musician in the first place. This isn't just for me, I'm altruistic in the sense that I wish it was simpler and more fair for all artists. Kinda leaves us more time to work on our art instead of having to play davids to goliaths.
> That'd be like me complaining about how it was necessary for me to sign up with AT&T's worst long distance plan, because it was the only way to use my telephone.
.. I dont really need it! I mean, whats 70 years of knowing it would have been considerably simpler (and on the merit of my music, not my ability to network, negotiate, and get lucky) to make a living off of what I truely love ..
Ah right, I shouldn't complain, because I have a choice (to compare to AT&T and using your phone, I suppose the alternative would be walkietalkies or tin-cans?) in avoiding a monopoly.
You get +1 for insulting for suggesting that I only _want_ a career in doing what I love, and that its no more of a frivulous want than a diamond ring
Are you an artist? What's next, I only _want_ clothes, I dont really need them?
> Music creators have the right to protect their property from theft, just like owners of any other property
.. the company! Really, this is all a joke .. the labels are no better than the monopolistic printing houses of the 1622s, and everybody has bought it hook line and sinker that its all for the arists! ('Wont somebody think about the arists!' .. dont believe them!) As a musician, programmer, and dude who decided that something smelled fishy, I have not a shred of doubt in my mind that 'copyright law' is currently a misnomer - how about 'monopoly law'? It's time for another true copyright law, one where the people making the actual music have a say and where economic leverage doesn't allow companies to nullify the 'creator is the owner' statute by forcing signees to sign their copyright over to the label. Thats how this trouble all got started ....
> The RIAA may have a point about piracy
No, they dont! "just like owners of any other property"???! Thats why Copyright law exists! Because owners of cultural and artistic work is not like owners of other property.
The Great Big Lie has everybody forgetting this. Everybody get it through thy skulls! Copyright, and intellectual property is and never will be physical property! So you dont get to distribute it, or protect it like physical property. End of story.
Incidentally, copyright law 2002 is much more like the Licensing Act of 1722, which the first true copyright law of the 1760s was supposed to fix. The Statue of Anne, the firtst true copyright law meant to protect the creators of the work, not the publishers/distributors was meant to wrestle control of cultural distribution and publication from the companies to the arists. Nowadays, look in those 'big label' contracts. Guess who ends up owning the copyright when you sign (the only real way to get big time distribution these days?)
Far more telling is that while copyrights are initially the artists', you cannot get any respectable level of distribution without signing your copyright over to a corperation.
.. they drop millions on one-hit-wonders, and have shrugged off any concept of a 'career' for musicians), and ownership most of the time of said copyright. This is just a prime example of how those in power are destined to spend the rest of their existance attempting to strengthen it rather than focusing on what got them into that position in the first place.
In that respect, the impedus of how to 'protect' those works is all in the hands of companies now, with far too much power, nearsightedness, and complete lack of understanding of technology. The 'artists', the exploited posterchildren of all of this, are really powerless to have a say, and they are being tugged around in a battle that concerns their very nature, living and wellfare, in which they really have no voice.
Labels already have what they need in the form of insane copyright terms (nevermind that none of them are signing multi-album deals anymore like they did 20 years ago
This is insulting to a musician like me. To hear what constitutes 'right to protect my property' (nevermind it should only be mine for 14 years, not 70 years after the death of me .. oh wait, forgot I had to sell that copyright to a company in order to get it heard, anyways!) from the mouth of suits is just plain insulting.
.. the biggest battle in the history of copyrights, and really, they are arguing in favour of nothing other than technologically enforcing pre-copyright law, where publishers held the copyrights, ad infinitum (well, 70 years past my death, same thing.)
... although I wont argue that N'Sync and Nickleback or whatever already-well-off artist you love will make more money in the short term because of it!
Interesting note: It was pre-copyright times in which publishers owned the works. Now, with the big 5, you have to sign your copyright to them for them to publish. And the copyright law is now 70 years after the death of me. Its kind of ironic
I really wish people understood how 'copyrights' that labels are arguing they must be able to protect are not copyrights at all, but more akin to the Licensing act of 1722 where publishers held a monopoly in the distribution of cultural works. (Also worth noting that the Licencing Act was also the first law that allowed government, and subsequently printing houses to censor works deemed against the Church or State.)
At any rate, I sure dont need to screw up your CDROM to make a living
Lol, "I wish /. had something similar to a general forum for stuff like this" .. you mean like, as referenced in your sig, your Journal?
Just make your sig "A desperate plea for help", link to your journal, and make a few on-topic posts with all the requisite buzzwords. Problem solved!
embiggens .. something about such and such embiggens the man or soul or something.
> I don't think there is much of a fire hazard on a long train.
Not so fast, they may still do this and this, but their rail-bound parents might do this, so thats improvement! (Fun with search engines!)
Someone sounds bitter. :)
.. ironically, its that capitalism part that prevents its use on long routes. Unless you'd prefer to subsidize it by way of taxes, hrmmm, but I'm guessing thats the other thing you deplore?
Anyhow, as somebody else pointed out, maintaining those rails would be more expensive than air flight. It's not economical
I'd put the crane on a maglev train. Problem solved!
What's wrong with obligatory?! It's a perfectly cromulant word! ;)
(And great sig.)
Sure. Nice try, but sure, I agree. I'll spare you the 'Linux is an OS, not a window manager and desktop' lecture, but given what KDE and Gnome have done for a *fraction* of the cost that MS and Apple did to develop their Window Managers and Desktops, I think its fairly obvious that there is significant room for improvement in driving down the costs of both those commercial OSes (of which, to note, the cost of OSX is embedded in the hardware, as the OS is 'free as in beer'). Not to pick at their usability and functionality, but once everything is installed and configured, the KDE and Gnomes stack up fairly well against Windows and OSX, for a microfraction of the cost.
Anyhow, yes, if thats all you were looking for.
>Then maybe the patent holder would license his/her material to your friend for a reasonable fee, and they'd both be happy. I think this is how it's SUPPOSED to work...
It is how its supposed to work, but patents are often much more useful as leverage to supress the viability of copmetitors' work than as a means of getting paid for that discovery.
If you think about it, you only need one good marketable patent to support yourself. Any more patents, you can just use that as ammunition to fuck other people up.
Its the same with copyright. Can you imagine we are (happily, according to the IP camp) paying people's sons and daughters for a few years of creativity on behalf of a father/mother/uncle/aunt or whatever?
The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is simply too rich. People are altruistic (well, altruistic as in 'i wish to life with minimal social friction, and i dont need *everything* I can get, I'll share that so that I dont have to consistantly fight and keep my gaunrd up), until you put them in a pit and convince them that fighting to the death is the only way to live.
Hey, plus, you know filesharing to rip off albums from artists is pretty popular because the stars of the day make so much that people dont perceive that as an individual, you do affect the bottom line of somebody. ironically, if the visible top40 artists were less rich (which could only be attained through making Sony, EMI, etc less rich), people would likely think a little more about ripping off musicians, because suddenly they'd be more like your neighbour than a superstar with more money than they can spend. this would help the struggling musicians, because it would convert some of the 'your filesharing monster friends' to a 'you'. Remember, people change their behaviour primarily because of the optics of the situation (their context). This is backed up by mainstream social behvarioural science. Look into the book The Tipping Point for a good place to start on that.
> I just wanted one solid convincing reason why mass file-swapping and its inevitable harm to the industry wouldn't discourage music creation.
.. the only person who can convince you is yourself. I can only provide examples of why I dont think this is true. :), this is going to be real stream of conciousness ...
.. they hire 'urban salespeople' to go to bars and talk up artists they want to push. file-sharing returns the control of who gets sold to the people, and since the people are much more diverse than any big media company business plan wants it to be, this would encourage me to think more seriously about attempting to make a living off my music. as it stands, its utterly hopeless. I know enough people who could support me, but since I will never sell to millions of people, I'm of no interest to the companies that currently saturate the market and cater to those who havn't time to 'pull' their tastes.
.. but if the point is to provide them with livings, than its simply a matter of distributing the wealth in the music industry better than it currently is being distributed.
... yes, the big guys would hurt the guys under them, but the SHITLOADS of musicians who are disillusioned, sitting on the sidelines, waiting for a gap in the moise would be overjoyed. thats where the music would come from, and mid-tier labels would finally have a much easier time reaching wider audiences.
... the econeomics of it drive a 'less but bigger' type of mentality and approach, because the more you need to manage, the more simple your product offering had better be .. otherwise the logistics get impossible to manage. I'm arguing in favour of 'more but smaller' .. there is plenty of money going into the huge stars' pockets that could be distributed among the small guys. It is only the mammoth companies that dont want this - it is easier to hawk one thing to many people than many things to many people. You end up making more money on the savings in admisitering your product offering. If you really feel there is lots of music out there, you must mean that you get to hear that music a zillion times over. It's no secret that record labels are much more 'one album contract' than they were 20 years ago, making it even harder for musicians, even big label musicians, to know if they will have a whole life of making music. I'd rather provide more musicians with livings (isn't this what it should all be about, not turning one hit bands prepackedged for entire populations through the record-mill?) than have richer or more one hit wonders that are saturated in the market for a few months leaving people with little motivation to seek out more diverse music. It might *seem* like more music the way the record companies are doing it now, but it really simply damages the musicians' ability to make a modest but sustainable living off of music.
:) Let more people play, give distribution and promotion back to the streets, and you'd instantly have way more musicians happy they were making 3a modest living and touring and even finding a population that was more open to diverse tastes.
Well, I dont know about convincing
And I cant be bothered to sound grammerically correct anymore
Example 1: Sony and EMI etc become less rich, thus reducing the barrier to entry of advertising (since they can basically 'buy out' any inventory less rich companies wish to advertise in.) More musicians who you dont know about (tons of people create music, what you're really talking about is making a living off of it.) Recuding the powers of the giants by way of filesharing would make it easier for more musicians to compete in the market, thus encouraging more musicians to make more music.
Example 2: file-sharing has proven to be the *only* community-driven method of distributing and exposing artists to other people, in other geographies. you might say that the big guys can do this, but you're missing that they dont *want* to do this. they want 10 brittany spears, not 40 mid tier musicians. file-sharing is the absolute perfection of word-of-mouth, the kind of advertising marketing execs (I work with them) know even money cant buy. although, they do try
example 3: since file-sharing has the tendancy to spread new music, influences, and ideas far more effectively than any previous method (ie, its much easier to get heard by many people with filesharing), more musicians would be subject to more creative ideas. any artist, of *any* kind will tell you that more ideas flying around will *always* encourage more and better music. money, or no money. artists dont have to have money to write music (as evidenced by the thousands of musicians on besonic.com, mp3.com, etc that are writing music *regardless* of whether they can make a living off of it)
I guess you feel that if Sony and EMI dont put the millions in, we'll have less music. We'll certainly have less cds sold *per artist* (because the big companies can push one artist to the world), and the top level artists will (i hope) make less, but more artists could sell cds without Sony and EMI etc saturating the market. its as simple as that
This is where I have much criticism of western culture (I'm western, but that doesn't mean I agree with its values)
I know thats not a very well organized argument, but please trust me - I have spent the last 8 years doing music, and the value of the jobs being created in the mass markets for musicians, actors, etc are only so valuable because so few people get to be them.
as for your friend, sure they exist, but like I said, as a musician and internet programmer and filesharer, I'd way more rather sleep with them than the Big Scary Top 40 machine. At least, at the end of the day, they happily pass my music on to the next crowd of potential 'people like you' (ie, the ones that pay for their music) than some capitalist old boy who doesn't understand the differences between physical product and intellectual property and thus why 'stealing' IP is TONs of a less big deal than some guy in a skimask stealing the 20 oak desks I need in order to sell so I can eat.
That doesn't even address the issue of IP of works created years ago, where distribution, sales, etc of said product ceased years ago, where the company refuses to re-issue it. I am not going to support Walt Disney's son because his pop had a good idea. He can create his own original stuff, which I will be more than happy to pay for.
one last question: when photocopiers were invented (available just about anywhere, any time, office, school, etc), why didn't magazines, authors, music sheet publishers, etc halt the motivation to write, make magazines, publish sheet music? please dont tell me because filesharing is 'perfect' and 'easy' in a way that the photocopier was not. thats what they said then, and the magainze/publishing industry is alive and well. same with the VCR. same with the casette recorder. etc, etc, etc
the end of all this is that as a musician who wants to make a living off of music, and knows the industry fairly well, I support filesharing to the max. and if you really are behind the musicians, dont you think you might consider they can appreciate the implications of technological influence to their business a little better than the consumer can?
When MS says they're going to do an about face on their history and enter 'trustworthy' computing with a straight face, they are going to get laughed at when that claim looks strained.
:) That's the difference. When somebody makes a claim they dont keep, they wont get much support or benifit of the doubt (especially if they are the goliath.) I thank god the world works this way, or nothing would ever change.
.. just another MS perma-temp. ;)
It's as simple as that. You'd probably be much more upset at us if we didn't all point out up front that we know we're flaming MS.
Sometimes I wonder what MS would have to do to actually lose some market share if the anti-MS crowd wern't so passionate - probably kill a few people in the middle of a crowd, caught on videotape, I'd wager, although I imagine they'd just point out that the guy holding the gun wasn't an employee