"One of the consequences of requiring radio stations to pay for music is that old music with unknown copyright will simply disappear from the airwaves."
It would likely be a blanket license, just like the current system. Radio stations are free to play whatever the hell they want; divvying up the payments is determined by random sampling.
"Maybe I'm not understanding this correctly... but doesn't the RIAA want people to listen to these songs on the radio so they go out and buy the cd?"
Yes, but you know the chant around here: "Since music is freely copyable, the record industry needs to find a new business model that's not based on trying to sell individual copies of music. New business model! New business model new business model new business model new business model!".
Perhaps the record industry is doing just that; they've realized that many people, upon hearing the song on the radio, will simply pirate the CD; or, if they're law abiding, they might just buy that one track online, for which the record company gets much less money than the old sales model.
So there's the new model: get more money from performances so they don't need to rely on the shrinking "selling copies of music" market. It's just what countless Slashdotters have asked for. Hope you like it.
"Recorded music will always have a market value of zero, or close to it. Even $1 per song is too high, and this price will fall."
You mean that recorded music has zero monetary value to you. I'll even wager that all your friends feel the same way: you enjoy acquiring music but you do not think it is worth paying for. No argument there -- but the iTunes Store is seeing its business grow each year, along with the rest of the digital music market. That's the problem that some record companies are having right now: customers are turning away from CDs and buying too many digital tracks.
"All markets rely on supply and demand: as the supply of an item, prices fall. As the demand for an item goes down, prices fall."
The mistake here is not taking into account market behavior. You've taken the behavior of you and your friends (you opt for P2P rather than purchases) and you're attempting to map it to the market as a whole to make a general statement. If your thesis were correct, then fewer and fewer people would be using the iTunes Store as they decide that the correct price for tracks is zero. But the reality is that more and more people are using the iTunes Store. This is simply because the market as a whole does not behave in the same manner as you and your friends.
To use a hypothetical example: it may be the case that nobody you know has an interest in purchasing a Volvo, and thus you might be tempted to state that the price of Volvos will certainly fall. But this statement, like your statement about demand for legal music tracks, does not take the behavior of the entire market into account.
"Digital music has a near-infinite supply. Transfering 3MB of data (say, one song), as a cost of less than 1/2 cents from a server. P2P the cost is trivial and far lower."
You've forgotten that cost is a factor of both supply and demand. The demand for pirated music is not yet enough to stop the iTunes Store from having positive growth. And (I'm sure, unintentionaly), you've confused cost of goods with cost of sale, and not acknowledged that price is a factor of both supply and demand. There are vertical market software vendors which have absolutely no problem hitting their sales forecasts for software that costs upwards of $3,000 per seat -- despite the fact that downloading a copy via P2P would cost very little in terms of bandwidth. The reason is that demand for pirated copies among their target market simply is not big enough.
I acknowledge that the notion that somebody might want to pay for music when they get it for free is, on the face of it, counterintuitive -- but that's not the point. The essential thing to understand that the demand for legal music downloads continues to grow, no matter how irrational this may seem.
"Exactly. It's a free program. Why should anyone care? Is this an ego thing?"
We often justify music piracy by stating that if the musician is a real artist, just getting his work out there should be enough, and he shouldn't worry too much about making money per sale. We also state that we may, in the future, "go to a concert or buy a t-shirt," thus promoting the notion that by pirating the musican's work, we are helping them.
It now appears that further marginalization is happening: people who produce creative works should not be concerned if their work is re-released under somebody else's name.
"I know, i't s a tricky analogy, but give it a spin: how many cents does the original designer that worked in any given pair of nike shoes get for each shoe sold? i bet is much much much less than 12%, or whatever."
Well, here's a real-world example: until recently I was a director at a PC peripheral company that everybody reading this has heard of. I was responsible for about $30MM worth of business. Yet my salary was less than one percent of the gross sales! And, my pay was likely around the 98th percentile in my company.
Another real-world example: we pity the artists because they gross perhaps 5% of the selling price of a CD. Some of us even use this as moral impetus to pirate music. Yet the artist whose name is on the cover of the CD likely gets the biggest slice of the pie. Warner Music had something like $3.4 billion in revenues last year; if Edgar "I don't let my kids trade music" Bronfman's salary was, say, $10 million dollars last year, that's still about one third of one percent of revenues.
I agree with both you and the GP that musicians are underpaid. I'm underpaid. It would be a better world if the standard musician's contract included 50% royalties and their choice of color for their free pony. But the reality is that most record companies are exactly like every other big company, and that pie is sliced into a lot of pieces. It's disingenuous to call this out as an example of badly musicians have it.
"But i hadnt heard that fair use was finally struck down ( it will be, just give it time ), and i dont remember any contract that specifically stated i cant rip for personal use."
The crux of the matter is whether "personal use" includes placing rips in a P2P share directory. Remember, the RIAA isn't claiming that the simple act of ripping is unauthorized (as the title of the post implies), but that ripping and then sharing is unauthorized.
Many CDs have a line printed somewhere on the packaging that disallows "unauthorized distribution" and, at least in the US, there's a scary amount of legal precedent to show that making the music available via P2P is unauthorized distribution, even if the record company can't prove that anybody actually downloaded it -- most recently with the Jammie Thomas case.
"Why does the copyright owner have to be okay with it? Does he have some God-given Right to say how the work could be used, including the Right to prevent other people from creating new culture based off it? If not, then who decided this privilege should exist? Did society get a vote on it? Is it actually worth it for society to go along with it (i.e., at the expense of the Public Domain)? Have you ever considered any of these issues?"
To answer your questions:
Because the constitution says so. In Article I, in fact.
No, but we're not talking about being judged by God here; we're talking about being judged by the courts, who use the laws which have their basis in the constitution.
The guys who wrote the constitution. For what it's worth, it wasn't an original concept; copyright law had been enacted in Great Britain about 80 years previously. Much of the constitution was an effort to set things right compared to how the boneheaded British ran their country, but in a few cases, they knew a good thing.
Probably. This is just my opinion, of course. I know that capitalism abhors a vacuum, and the most significant effect of abolishing copyright law would not be our ability to legally "create new culture" by doing our own Episode I / BSG mashups; it would be that the person making the most money on BSG would be the guy who runs the factory in China that can copy and ship the DVDs the most cheaply. Great -- I could legally buy a copy of BSG:Razor for $2 instead of $15. This would not be a huge boon for culture. I already watched the damn thing on cable.
"In fact, in the MGM vs Grokster case, the RIAA suggested that iPods have a substantial and legitimate commercial use in contrast to Grokster."
Correct but I'm not sure this is germaine. In the case being discussed today, the fellow was ripping CDs and placing them in his Kazaa share directory. The 2nd part of the sentence is important:
Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recordings into the compressed.mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs.
In non-legalese: ripping into MP3 is authorized. Ripping into MP3 and placing into your Kazaa share folder is not authorized. The title of the article is hugely misleading; it's presently RIAA Argues That MP3s From CDs Are Unauthorized when an accurate title would be RIAA Argues that MP3s Ripped From CDs And Placed Into Kazaa Share Direcotyr Are Unauthorized but I'm guessing that NewYorkCountryLawyer didn't have enough characters available in the title field.
"This case appears to be an absolutely clear fair use case."
Unfortunately for P2P fans there are already several cases on the books that demonstrate that putting music in your P2P share folder is most certainly not fair use. I don't remember of MGM vs. Grokster touched on that, but you can ask Jammie Thomas about the whole "putting them in my share directory is fair use" notion.
Nonetheless, many people do try to slippery-slope this: they argue that making a copy of one CD can be seen as fair use; thus it stands to reason that ripping a CD and making it accessible to 100,000 of your closest "friends" is precisely the same. But it is not. How much of something you do often makes all the difference.
"When are they going to realize that rather than litigate against the pirates, they should simply realize that they should compete against them by offering great service for reasonable prices and get rid of all the DRM?"
This is troubling. The common argument against DRM is that it prevents media shifting for personal use and other non-infringing acts. When you state that you want the record companies to drop DRM in the same post that you argue that placing files in your P2P share directory is fair use, you are giving the record companies all the ammunition they need to continue with the belief that people dislike DRM because it makes it difficult to pirate music.
"Hey, I'd buy music if made available from a huge variety of artists that are currently out of print or have entered the public domain, but are no longer available."
Serious question: if you believe that placing music in your share directory passes the fair use test, what would be your motivation for buying it? If some other fellow putting it into his share directory is fair use, then downloading it from him can't be all that bad.
"It's a hard point to argue if you had only two options, food, or a laptop, the food seems a better choice. Of course there's no reason it can't be both."
Yup; he's using the logical fallacy of the false dilemma, or false dichotomy. Sending an OLPC to Africa or Latin America does not deprive a kid of a bowl of rice. I also think that Dvorak has the images from those Christian charity ads stuck in his head. In many places where the OLPCs are going, the kids already have access to decent diets and shoes and schoolhouses and all that -- they're just in relatively poor communities, and they cannot afford notebook PCs. Dvorak would do well to spend some time in the third world; he'd see that poverty doesn't necessarily equal starvation.
"Also, how many sites are in SiSwati or isiZulu these days?"
Well, an interesting bit of trivia is that Wikipedia has 100 pages in isiZulu, but 10,000 in Esperanto. Reminds me of that Onion piece about Klingon speakers outnumbering Navajo speakers. But, that's not as relevant as many people might think. My girlfriend's native language is Kikuyu (Wikipedia article count: jack shit), but she also learned Swahili and English in school -- most people in Africa speak one or the other, just as many Europeans speak English. Were she in school today, an OLPC would have done her just fine. Dvorak is supporting the perception that Africans are just too damned stupid to learn an 2nd or 3rd language, even though Europeans are quite capable of doing so. If Dvorak can understand the value of donating English-language software to Belgium, or get the concept of French citizens using English-language web sites, then he should be able to understand the potential benefit of allowing Africans to access an Internet which is mostly in English. If not, he's simply a bigot.
Dvorak claims that more PCs for students would be wasted in a place like Niger where the literacy rate is low. His choosing of Niger was no random example: he simply went to this page and chose the African country with the lowest literacy rate! In other word, he's -- surprise -- being intellectually dishonest. And, Niger's low literacy rate is sort of the point of why Niger needs more computers in the hands of students.
"Once you violate the GPL, your right to distribute the licensed software is terminated. You can only start distributing it again if the copyright holder relicenses you to do so."
Sorta-kinda. They can terminate your license for that instance of that software (and that is, I believe, the intent of the portion of the license you quoted). Revoking your license to use any instance the software ever again for the rest of your life is, as you've stated, unenforceable.
"Personally, I'd rather have actual damages and profits. But more importantly, why should non-commercial infringement by a natural person be infringing to begin with? Let copyright be something for commercial pirates and businesses to deal with for the most part."
Great question. Here's my cynical answer: my understanding is that the whole issue of damages for non-commercial infringement had its genesis in the NET act back in the Clinton era, when software vendors were freaking out because suddenly their entire product lines were available on pirate FTP sites. Correct? But today, the US is looking at its economic prospects for the next 50 or 100 years. Japan's the #1 maker of cars, South America grows a lot of produce, and the IP output of US citizens and corporations is suddenly looking like one of the few major revenue streams that the US can claim as its own.
Now, if our own citizens are allowed to pirate as much as they want for personal use and (assuming worse case) spend less money on movies and music and the like, it won't hurt our economy; the money they save stays in the country and they'll presumably spend it on other goods and services. But when citizens of other countries en masse decide that they don't care too much for respecting the copyright of US companies, then the government sees it a potential drain on our GNP. And, our legislators might be thinking, how can we get Sweden to crack down on The Pirate Bay, if we don't keep an eye on what our own citizens are doing?
I personally don't think the adoption of a culture of free media would be the utopia that many think it would. "The [artists / authors / filmmakers] will keep producing even if they're not being paid" can be easily adapted as a rationale to take anybody's rights away. "Programmers and IT workers would still do their thing even if we outlawed the consumption of junk food on the job!" is probably true, but it would still suck to be you if you could no longer enjoy your Doritos and Diet Coke simply because some third party decided that this particular right doesn't really matter. I know that the zeitgeist is that musicians who are in it for the money really aren't musicians, but nonetheless, when looking at my catalog of music, I suspect that a good many of the artists I enjoy would not have done what they did if there weren't the prospect of being paid per copy. Sure, there's lots of indie and unsigned musicians out there who release their stuff for free and then make money on concerts and t-shirts and the like, but I've found that among this body of work, the crap-to-quality ratio is scarily high.
"Note the extra parts bolded. According to your quote, they don't have to be charging a minimum $750 per song. The total of the damages just has to be $750 minimum. They could go for your $50 per work, they'd just need people sharing 15 songs."
The "with respect to any one work" after the part you bolded is key. "All infringements involved in the action, with respect to any one work" means that if you distribute a hundred copies of one unique song, the minimum statutory is still $750.
You're correct that if it read something like "all the infringements involved the action for all the works", or if they had just removed that "with respect to any one work" clause (so that the action applied to all the works copied by the defendant), then the law would match your interpretation. And, somebody has already suggested that this would be a fairer way to apply statutory damages. But, for the time being, "$750 minimum per work" is the law we have on the books.
HTH.
"Quoting a law, focusing on a very small section of it completely ignoring its context and meaning... are you a lawyer?"
Not sure I follow. If that was meant as a compliment, then thanks. No, IANAL.
"And what if the number of songs is 10000? You'd need to be fined for half a million to "get the point"?"
Slippery sloping can be fun, but let's call it what it is. Does anybody reading this really have 10,000 songs in their share directory? That's about 30GB of music, if my math is correct. It's also about 10X of the threshold for criminal infringement. It's probably best to stick with numbers that are applicable to the real world.
"The minimum should only apply to the complete fine, not each item. And then even $750 would make sense."
That's an interesting idea, but it's a bit like the flat tax: the large-scale pirates would get off easy, and the little guys would get the rough end. Can you imagine what the record labels might do if the law were changed so that the minimum statutory were $750 total? They might start suing college students with one song in their share directory. And, your hypothetical fellow distributing 10,000 songs might only be liable for a $750 fine.
"It does not say $750 per song downloaded giving a sum of no less than $billions."
The key phrase in the portion I quoted is "per work." It refers to distinct works, not multiple copies of the same work. For example, the Jammie Thomas judgment was based on the number of unique songs she was sharing, and was not a count of how many times each might have been downloaded from her PC.
"I've always been amazed by the gall they have quoting that number."
That's the minimum statutory amount. Per S504:
(1) Except as provided by clause (2) of this subsection, the copyright owner may elect, at any time before final judgment is rendered, to recover, instead of actual damages and profits, an award of statutory damages for all infringements involved in the action, with respect to any one work, for which any one infringer is liable individually, or for which any two or more infringers are liable jointly and severally, in a sum of not less than $750 or more than $30,000 as the court considers just.
Note that the record labels are asking for the minimum allowed. Could be much worse!
"What other type of copyright infringement can claim 757.6 times the value of the product as damages?"
Any other type of infringement where the retail value of the product is around a buck -- that is, not much. The $750 is arbitrary; ie. it'd be the statutory minimum amount if you were nailed for sharing copies of, say, PhotoShop... in which case the ratio would be much lower than 750:1.
The $750 minimum is out-of-date; a remnant of the days before it was so easy to share so much music. It was written in a time when it took a lot of work to distribute 1,000 unique pirated songs.
Ask 100 people and you'll get 100 answers, but I think that a more fitting statutory minimum should be in the neighborhood of $50 per work. Yes, I know, information wants to be fweeeeeeeeeeeeee, but for as long as copyright law is still around, the courts should be able to issue judgements that are an effective deterrent. If I were nailed for sharing 100 songs and the RIAA could only collect a statutory minimum of $5K from me rather than $75K (as under current law), I'd still get the point that perhaps I shouldn't have helped make other people's information so free after all.
"I don't really see how laptops will improve education anyway. Wasn't the goal to give these to kids in areas that don't even have electricity all the time? Instead of pouring money into laptops, wouldn't it be better to pour money into building schools and infrastructure and hiring teachers? Sounds like a better investment IMO."
False dichotomy. There are other foundations and NGOs that build schools and hire teachers. Negroponte, being the techhead that he is, wants to distribute laptops. If they help kids with their math and reading, then more power to him.
Keep in mind that lots of these laptops are going to places where they already do have schools and teachers, but they cannot afford to provide computers for the students. This is where the program steps in. As for your fundamental question of how having PCs will improve education, in these cases, it will improve education in the same manner that having access to PCs improved our education. Sure, we could have done with pads of paper and pens, but it would have righteously sucked.
"In any case, I think DRM is bad in an educational setting. Do you really want kids learning that DRM is just the way it's done?"
How does DRM even apply here? Because the kids won't be able to make copies of the stuff they're buying from iTunes? Because they can't make copies of games and DVDs for their friends? If they're running into DRM, odds are that they're not using the computers for their intended purpose.
"Do you think that many people want the 30gb brown zune or are they buying it because it's been so heavily discounted because it's the brown zune?"
I think that the pricing is a biggest part of it; there's a lot of elasticity between $199 and $249 (I'm talking list prices here), so I'm guessing that most people presently opting for the 80GB Zune would choose the 80GB iPod classic if both were offered at the same price.
That being said, the Zune has a lot going for it -- it's not the complete POS that many Slashdotters paint it to be. The interface has gotten good reviews and has that "gee whiz" factor that can make a difference if you're standing there in Best Buy preparing to buy your first MP3 player and wondering if the iPod is worth the additional $50 - $70.
I think I understand your viewpoint. You're applying a layperson, "common sense" approach to the definition of "success." As I'm in the industry and privy to background and data that most people don't have, I'm approaching it from another POV. We will have to agree to disagree.
One clarification: The Zune's occupation of the #1 slot at Amazon is probably a feather in Bill's cap this weekend, but it's not that much of an aberration. Pretty quickly after launch last year, they were able to surprass Sandisk/Creative, and they've been growing share ever since. Your conjecture about the quick death of the brand is, as stated before, at odds with the data so far. I'm not sure if they'll continue to grow their market share at the same rate, but they've dug in their heels and their products are only getting better. It's going to be a bumpy ride, and I think the only real losers will be Sandisk, Creative, and the other also-rans. The good news for Apple fans is that the arrival of a serious competitor will only influence Apple to make their products better.
"I think you need to RTFA! The author of the article has done a good job of dissecting microsoft's marketing claims and the number of NDP and pointing to the creative marketing that Microsoft uses to look like it's been more successful than it is."
I'd better back up here. I'm in the industry. I'm not just pulling things out of my nose. I'm an NPD subscriber (it's invaluable in my profession) and I happen to be friends with the folks who do the marketing for the Creative, Apple and Sandisk players. All of my PCs and audio players are made by Apple. Given that, you might expect me to be anti-Microsoft. It's very tempting to underplay Microsoft's success here, but the facts speak for themselves.
The "channel stuffing" argument was first brought up when Microsoft first reported NPD numbers. Two problems here: NPD is sell-through, not sell-in; and secondly, the Zunes have managed to stay in the top ten. NPD's reporting has its weaknesses (and folks in the industries covered by NPD know how to adjust for these weaknesses), but even making these adjustments, Microsoft has been putting in some solid sell-through numbers.
The Roughly Drafted fellow has taken the approach of picking a thesis ("The Zune is a failure!") and trying to make the facts work with the theory. It's lots of conjecture, and his bias is obvious. Bias is fine (he's not trying to make his pro-Apple stance a secret), but the bottom line is that there are lots of inaccuracies. He's managed to convince a lot of people, but people like me aren't his intended audience.
"If you sell products at a loss for several years it is by definition a failure. Companies are in business to make money."
Eek! Countless products in the CE and PC peripherals industry have been launched with plans that included profitability beyond the first year of sales. I'ts very much par for the course. You can bet that the iPod was sold at a loss for the first six months, and if it managed to make a profit after 12 months, it was pretty lean. It's a good thing that your statement isn't true, or there'd be a lot more "failures" out there than there are now.
"Long term plans are fine and all, but you need to make money at some point and if you look closely at the data instead of blindly believing Microsoft's marketing literature you'll see that they probably won't turn a profit any time in the next decade in these divisions."
Oh, it's no secret that Microsoft isn't expecting to turn a profit on Zune sales for a while. Your "next decade" statement is actually surprisingly close to what some people at Microsoft have told me.
"Actually, the Zune has been a failure.... The fact is, consumer electronics do not "Slowly gain market share" - they are hit or miss."
This is at odds with how things tend to work in the electronics and CE industry.
Microsoft started by looking at the market, looking at what they wanted to accomplish, set a budget, and then built a unit and market share forecast. And, they hit that forecast. This makes it a success. Sorry -- that's not the politically correct answer, but it's the truth.
"the iPod is king and will remain king - the Zune, in it's wildest dreams, may become a distant also ran in the top 20 selling."
Again, I'm not sure where you're coming from, as your statement is at odds with the actual situation that's occurring. As of this writing, Zune models occupy the #1 (yeah, #1), #9, #16 and #20 slots in the Amazon top 100. This matches up with the NPD industry data (available via subscription only), which consistently shows that Microsoft has no problem keeping Zune models in the top ten.
More importantly, they've passed Sansa in dollar sales. They've passed Creative. Their dollar share is greater than 10% (something that Sandisk and Creative haven't been able to do for a while), and it's growing. So, I'm having trouble understanding why you claim that the "wildest dreams" for Microsoft are to place it low in the top 20 when they're already doing quite well.
"Well I have to say that I don't think they are selling lots of them. I work at a software development firm. We develop Windows software. How many Zunes owners do we have? None. We have many iPod users though. When normal people speak about media players they don't call them media players. They call them iPods."
Anecdotal observations have their place, but the industry also has analytic tools. In this case, NPD.
The first generation was enough to take Microsoft to greater than 10% market share. They passed Creative, Sandisk and everybody else to become #2 in the market.
And -- trust me, this is important -- they hit their forecast numbers. They were aiming for about 10%, and they got it.
What your anecdote shows is that the Zune has zero penetration among people who work at your software development firm. That may very well be true. But the fact is that the unwashed masses have money, too. And they're buying Zunes in sufficient quantities to allow Microsoft to hit their mark.
"Piracy did wonders for Microsoft and likely photo, Maya, Lightwave, and many other programs. The cost of these programs puts them out of reach of kids, and kids are the ones who will pick up these essential skills fastest."
Which I believe is EXACTLY why the BSA (the software industry's equivalent of the MPAA) hasn't made college kids their primary target. They tend to go after the businesses, which have the money and should know better.
"The thing with piracy is once you get enough money (first job) it's less attractive to spend 2h filtering through torrents to download a season 30 min TV show then it is to spend $80 on the box set. So Piracy may set up the appetites the same way it does for software and convenience and economics convert them to customers."
It's less attractive now, but I believe the MPAA's fear is that the larger thir "culture of piracy" boogeyman gets, the easier it will become (with more people writing better tools and seeding the content).
"Their toolkit wrongly identifies students as illegal down loaders who actually aren't. In other words, how is the toolkit going to verify an illegal download or is it just passing all traffic to the Motion Picture spys? Somehow this sounds more Hitleronian tell on you family, then its supports education. Just because the entertainment industry has found interest in attacking its customers, should the universities follow suit?"
It's a tool, not a judge. Its intended user is the university IT guy; it shows him how much BitTorrent traffic is going on but doesn't identify which files are being traded or make an attempt to assess legality. The kit phones home when it's installed but, according to the writeup, does not send the actual monitoring data to the MPAA. The article's contention is that as this data is presented via an Apache server, if the IT guy's box just happens to be outside the firewall, then third parties could visit that web server and see how much BT traffic is going on at the school.
You are correct that the university IT guy could run the server outside the firewall, and could make the assumption that all BitTorrent traffic is of infringing content, and I suppose said IT guy could pass this info along to the MPAA. But is this likely? I think you're slippery-sloping here a bit too much.
"You're not thinking like a MPAA/RIAA executive. MPAA/RIAA executives don't think logically with a long-term outlook."
Oh, no, quite the contrary. While we may not agree with the MPAA's reasoning, they are going after the universities because of the long-term implications. It's the very same reason that car companies and cigarette companies go after the young-adult market: to create customers for life. In this example, the MPAA is distributing this network monitoring tool because their concern is that once children go to college and start getting heavily into piracy to acquire their movies, they'll keep doing it as they become adults. They are very much taking a page from the automobile, cigarette, and countless other industries.
"The only math they care about is the rate at which money is flowing into their pockets."
Which is what most companies care about... even not-for-profits. The MPAA represents the economic interests of the film studios, and the film studios -- like all companies -- must continue to make money to survive. It's tough to play the greed card here when most of us work for companies that also strive to make a profit each quarter.
"At best, they've lost whatever moral high ground they would have had. At worst, they've become so criminal that people committing massive copyright infringement actually have a degree of moral high ground over them."
Agreed; many people subscribe to the "two wrongs make a right" philosophy when coming up with rationalizations for piracy. But, this is a given: most people who pirate don't feel particularly bad about what they're doing. Throwing around words like "criminal" when describing copright holders is an effective way to make piracy feel okay.
"This makes no sense. What are they going to accomplish by going after college kids, who really don't have that much disposable income? It seems counter-productive to me."
they're trying to scare them into not pirating. The MPAA is scared to death that it will simply be ingrained in our culture (as it has in some other society's cultures) that piracy is perfectly OK.
We'll see how this plays out. Back in the 80's I pirated lots of software, and I heard stories of other teenagers being caught for it. Now that I'm an adult, I'm no longe a pirate. The prosecution of software pirates in the 1980s didn't push me into a life of hoisting the Jolly Roger; on the contrary, once I got a job and learned more about how the real world works, I prefer to respect the copyright of others.
I agree with you that many of the college kids who are pirates today will continue to be as they enter adulthood, but that percentage may not be as high as we might think.
Slashdot Mirror
"One of the consequences of requiring radio stations to pay for music is that old music with unknown copyright will simply disappear from the airwaves."
It would likely be a blanket license, just like the current system. Radio stations are free to play whatever the hell they want; divvying up the payments is determined by random sampling.
"Maybe I'm not understanding this correctly... but doesn't the RIAA want people to listen to these songs on the radio so they go out and buy the cd?"
Yes, but you know the chant around here: "Since music is freely copyable, the record industry needs to find a new business model that's not based on trying to sell individual copies of music. New business model! New business model new business model new business model new business model!".
Perhaps the record industry is doing just that; they've realized that many people, upon hearing the song on the radio, will simply pirate the CD; or, if they're law abiding, they might just buy that one track online, for which the record company gets much less money than the old sales model.
So there's the new model: get more money from performances so they don't need to rely on the shrinking "selling copies of music" market. It's just what countless Slashdotters have asked for. Hope you like it.
"Recorded music will always have a market value of zero, or close to it. Even $1 per song is too high, and this price will fall."
You mean that recorded music has zero monetary value to you. I'll even wager that all your friends feel the same way: you enjoy acquiring music but you do not think it is worth paying for. No argument there -- but the iTunes Store is seeing its business grow each year, along with the rest of the digital music market. That's the problem that some record companies are having right now: customers are turning away from CDs and buying too many digital tracks.
"All markets rely on supply and demand: as the supply of an item, prices fall. As the demand for an item goes down, prices fall."
The mistake here is not taking into account market behavior. You've taken the behavior of you and your friends (you opt for P2P rather than purchases) and you're attempting to map it to the market as a whole to make a general statement. If your thesis were correct, then fewer and fewer people would be using the iTunes Store as they decide that the correct price for tracks is zero. But the reality is that more and more people are using the iTunes Store. This is simply because the market as a whole does not behave in the same manner as you and your friends.
To use a hypothetical example: it may be the case that nobody you know has an interest in purchasing a Volvo, and thus you might be tempted to state that the price of Volvos will certainly fall. But this statement, like your statement about demand for legal music tracks, does not take the behavior of the entire market into account.
"Digital music has a near-infinite supply. Transfering 3MB of data (say, one song), as a cost of less than 1/2 cents from a server. P2P the cost is trivial and far lower."
You've forgotten that cost is a factor of both supply and demand. The demand for pirated music is not yet enough to stop the iTunes Store from having positive growth. And (I'm sure, unintentionaly), you've confused cost of goods with cost of sale, and not acknowledged that price is a factor of both supply and demand. There are vertical market software vendors which have absolutely no problem hitting their sales forecasts for software that costs upwards of $3,000 per seat -- despite the fact that downloading a copy via P2P would cost very little in terms of bandwidth. The reason is that demand for pirated copies among their target market simply is not big enough.
I acknowledge that the notion that somebody might want to pay for music when they get it for free is, on the face of it, counterintuitive -- but that's not the point. The essential thing to understand that the demand for legal music downloads continues to grow, no matter how irrational this may seem.
"Exactly. It's a free program. Why should anyone care? Is this an ego thing?"
We often justify music piracy by stating that if the musician is a real artist, just getting his work out there should be enough, and he shouldn't worry too much about making money per sale. We also state that we may, in the future, "go to a concert or buy a t-shirt," thus promoting the notion that by pirating the musican's work, we are helping them.
It now appears that further marginalization is happening: people who produce creative works should not be concerned if their work is re-released under somebody else's name.
"I know, i't s a tricky analogy, but give it a spin: how many cents does the original designer that worked in any given pair of nike shoes get for each shoe sold? i bet is much much much less than 12%, or whatever."
Well, here's a real-world example: until recently I was a director at a PC peripheral company that everybody reading this has heard of. I was responsible for about $30MM worth of business. Yet my salary was less than one percent of the gross sales! And, my pay was likely around the 98th percentile in my company.
Another real-world example: we pity the artists because they gross perhaps 5% of the selling price of a CD. Some of us even use this as moral impetus to pirate music. Yet the artist whose name is on the cover of the CD likely gets the biggest slice of the pie. Warner Music had something like $3.4 billion in revenues last year; if Edgar "I don't let my kids trade music" Bronfman's salary was, say, $10 million dollars last year, that's still about one third of one percent of revenues.
I agree with both you and the GP that musicians are underpaid. I'm underpaid. It would be a better world if the standard musician's contract included 50% royalties and their choice of color for their free pony. But the reality is that most record companies are exactly like every other big company, and that pie is sliced into a lot of pieces. It's disingenuous to call this out as an example of badly musicians have it.
"But i hadnt heard that fair use was finally struck down ( it will be, just give it time ), and i dont remember any contract that specifically stated i cant rip for personal use."
The crux of the matter is whether "personal use" includes placing rips in a P2P share directory. Remember, the RIAA isn't claiming that the simple act of ripping is unauthorized (as the title of the post implies), but that ripping and then sharing is unauthorized.
Many CDs have a line printed somewhere on the packaging that disallows "unauthorized distribution" and, at least in the US, there's a scary amount of legal precedent to show that making the music available via P2P is unauthorized distribution, even if the record company can't prove that anybody actually downloaded it -- most recently with the Jammie Thomas case.
"Why does the copyright owner have to be okay with it? Does he have some God-given Right to say how the work could be used, including the Right to prevent other people from creating new culture based off it? If not, then who decided this privilege should exist? Did society get a vote on it? Is it actually worth it for society to go along with it (i.e., at the expense of the Public Domain)? Have you ever considered any of these issues?"
To answer your questions:
"In fact, in the MGM vs Grokster case, the RIAA suggested that iPods have a substantial and legitimate commercial use in contrast to Grokster."
Correct but I'm not sure this is germaine. In the case being discussed today, the fellow was ripping CDs and placing them in his Kazaa share directory. The 2nd part of the sentence is important:
In non-legalese: ripping into MP3 is authorized. Ripping into MP3 and placing into your Kazaa share folder is not authorized. The title of the article is hugely misleading; it's presently RIAA Argues That MP3s From CDs Are Unauthorized when an accurate title would be RIAA Argues that MP3s Ripped From CDs And Placed Into Kazaa Share Direcotyr Are Unauthorized but I'm guessing that NewYorkCountryLawyer didn't have enough characters available in the title field.
"This case appears to be an absolutely clear fair use case."
Unfortunately for P2P fans there are already several cases on the books that demonstrate that putting music in your P2P share folder is most certainly not fair use. I don't remember of MGM vs. Grokster touched on that, but you can ask Jammie Thomas about the whole "putting them in my share directory is fair use" notion.
Nonetheless, many people do try to slippery-slope this: they argue that making a copy of one CD can be seen as fair use; thus it stands to reason that ripping a CD and making it accessible to 100,000 of your closest "friends" is precisely the same. But it is not. How much of something you do often makes all the difference.
"When are they going to realize that rather than litigate against the pirates, they should simply realize that they should compete against them by offering great service for reasonable prices and get rid of all the DRM?"
This is troubling. The common argument against DRM is that it prevents media shifting for personal use and other non-infringing acts. When you state that you want the record companies to drop DRM in the same post that you argue that placing files in your P2P share directory is fair use, you are giving the record companies all the ammunition they need to continue with the belief that people dislike DRM because it makes it difficult to pirate music.
"Hey, I'd buy music if made available from a huge variety of artists that are currently out of print or have entered the public domain, but are no longer available."
Serious question: if you believe that placing music in your share directory passes the fair use test, what would be your motivation for buying it? If some other fellow putting it into his share directory is fair use, then downloading it from him can't be all that bad.
"It's a hard point to argue if you had only two options, food, or a laptop, the food seems a better choice. Of course there's no reason it can't be both."
Yup; he's using the logical fallacy of the false dilemma, or false dichotomy. Sending an OLPC to Africa or Latin America does not deprive a kid of a bowl of rice. I also think that Dvorak has the images from those Christian charity ads stuck in his head. In many places where the OLPCs are going, the kids already have access to decent diets and shoes and schoolhouses and all that -- they're just in relatively poor communities, and they cannot afford notebook PCs. Dvorak would do well to spend some time in the third world; he'd see that poverty doesn't necessarily equal starvation.
"Also, how many sites are in SiSwati or isiZulu these days?"
Well, an interesting bit of trivia is that Wikipedia has 100 pages in isiZulu, but 10,000 in Esperanto. Reminds me of that Onion piece about Klingon speakers outnumbering Navajo speakers. But, that's not as relevant as many people might think. My girlfriend's native language is Kikuyu (Wikipedia article count: jack shit), but she also learned Swahili and English in school -- most people in Africa speak one or the other, just as many Europeans speak English. Were she in school today, an OLPC would have done her just fine. Dvorak is supporting the perception that Africans are just too damned stupid to learn an 2nd or 3rd language, even though Europeans are quite capable of doing so. If Dvorak can understand the value of donating English-language software to Belgium, or get the concept of French citizens using English-language web sites, then he should be able to understand the potential benefit of allowing Africans to access an Internet which is mostly in English. If not, he's simply a bigot.
Dvorak claims that more PCs for students would be wasted in a place like Niger where the literacy rate is low. His choosing of Niger was no random example: he simply went to this page and chose the African country with the lowest literacy rate! In other word, he's -- surprise -- being intellectually dishonest. And, Niger's low literacy rate is sort of the point of why Niger needs more computers in the hands of students.
"Once you violate the GPL, your right to distribute the licensed software is terminated. You can only start distributing it again if the copyright holder relicenses you to do so."
Sorta-kinda. They can terminate your license for that instance of that software (and that is, I believe, the intent of the portion of the license you quoted). Revoking your license to use any instance the software ever again for the rest of your life is, as you've stated, unenforceable.
"Personally, I'd rather have actual damages and profits. But more importantly, why should non-commercial infringement by a natural person be infringing to begin with? Let copyright be something for commercial pirates and businesses to deal with for the most part."
Great question. Here's my cynical answer: my understanding is that the whole issue of damages for non-commercial infringement had its genesis in the NET act back in the Clinton era, when software vendors were freaking out because suddenly their entire product lines were available on pirate FTP sites. Correct? But today, the US is looking at its economic prospects for the next 50 or 100 years. Japan's the #1 maker of cars, South America grows a lot of produce, and the IP output of US citizens and corporations is suddenly looking like one of the few major revenue streams that the US can claim as its own.
Now, if our own citizens are allowed to pirate as much as they want for personal use and (assuming worse case) spend less money on movies and music and the like, it won't hurt our economy; the money they save stays in the country and they'll presumably spend it on other goods and services. But when citizens of other countries en masse decide that they don't care too much for respecting the copyright of US companies, then the government sees it a potential drain on our GNP. And, our legislators might be thinking, how can we get Sweden to crack down on The Pirate Bay, if we don't keep an eye on what our own citizens are doing?
I personally don't think the adoption of a culture of free media would be the utopia that many think it would. "The [artists / authors / filmmakers] will keep producing even if they're not being paid" can be easily adapted as a rationale to take anybody's rights away. "Programmers and IT workers would still do their thing even if we outlawed the consumption of junk food on the job!" is probably true, but it would still suck to be you if you could no longer enjoy your Doritos and Diet Coke simply because some third party decided that this particular right doesn't really matter. I know that the zeitgeist is that musicians who are in it for the money really aren't musicians, but nonetheless, when looking at my catalog of music, I suspect that a good many of the artists I enjoy would not have done what they did if there weren't the prospect of being paid per copy. Sure, there's lots of indie and unsigned musicians out there who release their stuff for free and then make money on concerts and t-shirts and the like, but I've found that among this body of work, the crap-to-quality ratio is scarily high.
"Note the extra parts bolded. According to your quote, they don't have to be charging a minimum $750 per song. The total of the damages just has to be $750 minimum. They could go for your $50 per work, they'd just need people sharing 15 songs."
The "with respect to any one work" after the part you bolded is key. "All infringements involved in the action, with respect to any one work" means that if you distribute a hundred copies of one unique song, the minimum statutory is still $750.
You're correct that if it read something like "all the infringements involved the action for all the works", or if they had just removed that "with respect to any one work" clause (so that the action applied to all the works copied by the defendant), then the law would match your interpretation. And, somebody has already suggested that this would be a fairer way to apply statutory damages. But, for the time being, "$750 minimum per work" is the law we have on the books.
HTH.
"Quoting a law, focusing on a very small section of it completely ignoring its context and meaning... are you a lawyer?"
Not sure I follow. If that was meant as a compliment, then thanks. No, IANAL.
"And what if the number of songs is 10000? You'd need to be fined for half a million to "get the point"?"
Slippery sloping can be fun, but let's call it what it is. Does anybody reading this really have 10,000 songs in their share directory? That's about 30GB of music, if my math is correct. It's also about 10X of the threshold for criminal infringement. It's probably best to stick with numbers that are applicable to the real world.
"The minimum should only apply to the complete fine, not each item. And then even $750 would make sense."
That's an interesting idea, but it's a bit like the flat tax: the large-scale pirates would get off easy, and the little guys would get the rough end. Can you imagine what the record labels might do if the law were changed so that the minimum statutory were $750 total? They might start suing college students with one song in their share directory. And, your hypothetical fellow distributing 10,000 songs might only be liable for a $750 fine.
"It does not say $750 per song downloaded giving a sum of no less than $billions."
The key phrase in the portion I quoted is "per work." It refers to distinct works, not multiple copies of the same work. For example, the Jammie Thomas judgment was based on the number of unique songs she was sharing, and was not a count of how many times each might have been downloaded from her PC.
"I've always been amazed by the gall they have quoting that number."
That's the minimum statutory amount. Per S504:
Note that the record labels are asking for the minimum allowed. Could be much worse!
"What other type of copyright infringement can claim 757.6 times the value of the product as damages?"
Any other type of infringement where the retail value of the product is around a buck -- that is, not much. The $750 is arbitrary; ie. it'd be the statutory minimum amount if you were nailed for sharing copies of, say, PhotoShop... in which case the ratio would be much lower than 750:1.
The $750 minimum is out-of-date; a remnant of the days before it was so easy to share so much music. It was written in a time when it took a lot of work to distribute 1,000 unique pirated songs.
Ask 100 people and you'll get 100 answers, but I think that a more fitting statutory minimum should be in the neighborhood of $50 per work. Yes, I know, information wants to be fweeeeeeeeeeeeee, but for as long as copyright law is still around, the courts should be able to issue judgements that are an effective deterrent. If I were nailed for sharing 100 songs and the RIAA could only collect a statutory minimum of $5K from me rather than $75K (as under current law), I'd still get the point that perhaps I shouldn't have helped make other people's information so free after all.
"I don't really see how laptops will improve education anyway. Wasn't the goal to give these to kids in areas that don't even have electricity all the time? Instead of pouring money into laptops, wouldn't it be better to pour money into building schools and infrastructure and hiring teachers? Sounds like a better investment IMO."
False dichotomy. There are other foundations and NGOs that build schools and hire teachers. Negroponte, being the techhead that he is, wants to distribute laptops. If they help kids with their math and reading, then more power to him.
Keep in mind that lots of these laptops are going to places where they already do have schools and teachers, but they cannot afford to provide computers for the students. This is where the program steps in. As for your fundamental question of how having PCs will improve education, in these cases, it will improve education in the same manner that having access to PCs improved our education. Sure, we could have done with pads of paper and pens, but it would have righteously sucked.
"In any case, I think DRM is bad in an educational setting. Do you really want kids learning that DRM is just the way it's done?"
How does DRM even apply here? Because the kids won't be able to make copies of the stuff they're buying from iTunes? Because they can't make copies of games and DVDs for their friends? If they're running into DRM, odds are that they're not using the computers for their intended purpose.
"Do you think that many people want the 30gb brown zune or are they buying it because it's been so heavily discounted because it's the brown zune?"
I think that the pricing is a biggest part of it; there's a lot of elasticity between $199 and $249 (I'm talking list prices here), so I'm guessing that most people presently opting for the 80GB Zune would choose the 80GB iPod classic if both were offered at the same price.
That being said, the Zune has a lot going for it -- it's not the complete POS that many Slashdotters paint it to be. The interface has gotten good reviews and has that "gee whiz" factor that can make a difference if you're standing there in Best Buy preparing to buy your first MP3 player and wondering if the iPod is worth the additional $50 - $70.
I think I understand your viewpoint. You're applying a layperson, "common sense" approach to the definition of "success." As I'm in the industry and privy to background and data that most people don't have, I'm approaching it from another POV. We will have to agree to disagree.
One clarification: The Zune's occupation of the #1 slot at Amazon is probably a feather in Bill's cap this weekend, but it's not that much of an aberration. Pretty quickly after launch last year, they were able to surprass Sandisk/Creative, and they've been growing share ever since. Your conjecture about the quick death of the brand is, as stated before, at odds with the data so far. I'm not sure if they'll continue to grow their market share at the same rate, but they've dug in their heels and their products are only getting better. It's going to be a bumpy ride, and I think the only real losers will be Sandisk, Creative, and the other also-rans. The good news for Apple fans is that the arrival of a serious competitor will only influence Apple to make their products better.
"I think you need to RTFA! The author of the article has done a good job of dissecting microsoft's marketing claims and the number of NDP and pointing to the creative marketing that Microsoft uses to look like it's been more successful than it is."
I'd better back up here. I'm in the industry. I'm not just pulling things out of my nose. I'm an NPD subscriber (it's invaluable in my profession) and I happen to be friends with the folks who do the marketing for the Creative, Apple and Sandisk players. All of my PCs and audio players are made by Apple. Given that, you might expect me to be anti-Microsoft. It's very tempting to underplay Microsoft's success here, but the facts speak for themselves.
The "channel stuffing" argument was first brought up when Microsoft first reported NPD numbers. Two problems here: NPD is sell-through, not sell-in; and secondly, the Zunes have managed to stay in the top ten. NPD's reporting has its weaknesses (and folks in the industries covered by NPD know how to adjust for these weaknesses), but even making these adjustments, Microsoft has been putting in some solid sell-through numbers.
The Roughly Drafted fellow has taken the approach of picking a thesis ("The Zune is a failure!") and trying to make the facts work with the theory. It's lots of conjecture, and his bias is obvious. Bias is fine (he's not trying to make his pro-Apple stance a secret), but the bottom line is that there are lots of inaccuracies. He's managed to convince a lot of people, but people like me aren't his intended audience.
"If you sell products at a loss for several years it is by definition a failure. Companies are in business to make money."
Eek! Countless products in the CE and PC peripherals industry have been launched with plans that included profitability beyond the first year of sales. I'ts very much par for the course. You can bet that the iPod was sold at a loss for the first six months, and if it managed to make a profit after 12 months, it was pretty lean. It's a good thing that your statement isn't true, or there'd be a lot more "failures" out there than there are now.
"Long term plans are fine and all, but you need to make money at some point and if you look closely at the data instead of blindly believing Microsoft's marketing literature you'll see that they probably won't turn a profit any time in the next decade in these divisions."
Oh, it's no secret that Microsoft isn't expecting to turn a profit on Zune sales for a while. Your "next decade" statement is actually surprisingly close to what some people at Microsoft have told me.
"Actually, the Zune has been a failure.... The fact is, consumer electronics do not "Slowly gain market share" - they are hit or miss."
This is at odds with how things tend to work in the electronics and CE industry.
Microsoft started by looking at the market, looking at what they wanted to accomplish, set a budget, and then built a unit and market share forecast. And, they hit that forecast. This makes it a success. Sorry -- that's not the politically correct answer, but it's the truth.
"the iPod is king and will remain king - the Zune, in it's wildest dreams, may become a distant also ran in the top 20 selling."
Again, I'm not sure where you're coming from, as your statement is at odds with the actual situation that's occurring. As of this writing, Zune models occupy the #1 (yeah, #1), #9, #16 and #20 slots in the Amazon top 100. This matches up with the NPD industry data (available via subscription only), which consistently shows that Microsoft has no problem keeping Zune models in the top ten.
More importantly, they've passed Sansa in dollar sales. They've passed Creative. Their dollar share is greater than 10% (something that Sandisk and Creative haven't been able to do for a while), and it's growing. So, I'm having trouble understanding why you claim that the "wildest dreams" for Microsoft are to place it low in the top 20 when they're already doing quite well.
"Well I have to say that I don't think they are selling lots of them. I work at a software development firm. We develop Windows software. How many Zunes owners do we have? None. We have many iPod users though. When normal people speak about media players they don't call them media players. They call them iPods."
Anecdotal observations have their place, but the industry also has analytic tools. In this case, NPD.
The first generation was enough to take Microsoft to greater than 10% market share. They passed Creative, Sandisk and everybody else to become #2 in the market.
And -- trust me, this is important -- they hit their forecast numbers. They were aiming for about 10%, and they got it.
What your anecdote shows is that the Zune has zero penetration among people who work at your software development firm. That may very well be true. But the fact is that the unwashed masses have money, too. And they're buying Zunes in sufficient quantities to allow Microsoft to hit their mark.
"Piracy did wonders for Microsoft and likely photo, Maya, Lightwave, and many other programs. The cost of these programs puts them out of reach of kids, and kids are the ones who will pick up these essential skills fastest."
Which I believe is EXACTLY why the BSA (the software industry's equivalent of the MPAA) hasn't made college kids their primary target. They tend to go after the businesses, which have the money and should know better.
"The thing with piracy is once you get enough money (first job) it's less attractive to spend 2h filtering through torrents to download a season 30 min TV show then it is to spend $80 on the box set. So Piracy may set up the appetites the same way it does for software and convenience and economics convert them to customers."
It's less attractive now, but I believe the MPAA's fear is that the larger thir "culture of piracy" boogeyman gets, the easier it will become (with more people writing better tools and seeding the content).
"Their toolkit wrongly identifies students as illegal down loaders who actually aren't. In other words, how is the toolkit going to verify an illegal download or is it just passing all traffic to the Motion Picture spys? Somehow this sounds more Hitleronian tell on you family, then its supports education. Just because the entertainment industry has found interest in attacking its customers, should the universities follow suit?"
It's a tool, not a judge. Its intended user is the university IT guy; it shows him how much BitTorrent traffic is going on but doesn't identify which files are being traded or make an attempt to assess legality. The kit phones home when it's installed but, according to the writeup, does not send the actual monitoring data to the MPAA. The article's contention is that as this data is presented via an Apache server, if the IT guy's box just happens to be outside the firewall, then third parties could visit that web server and see how much BT traffic is going on at the school.
You are correct that the university IT guy could run the server outside the firewall, and could make the assumption that all BitTorrent traffic is of infringing content, and I suppose said IT guy could pass this info along to the MPAA. But is this likely? I think you're slippery-sloping here a bit too much.
"You're not thinking like a MPAA/RIAA executive. MPAA/RIAA executives don't think logically with a long-term outlook."
Oh, no, quite the contrary. While we may not agree with the MPAA's reasoning, they are going after the universities because of the long-term implications. It's the very same reason that car companies and cigarette companies go after the young-adult market: to create customers for life. In this example, the MPAA is distributing this network monitoring tool because their concern is that once children go to college and start getting heavily into piracy to acquire their movies, they'll keep doing it as they become adults. They are very much taking a page from the automobile, cigarette, and countless other industries.
"The only math they care about is the rate at which money is flowing into their pockets."
Which is what most companies care about... even not-for-profits. The MPAA represents the economic interests of the film studios, and the film studios -- like all companies -- must continue to make money to survive. It's tough to play the greed card here when most of us work for companies that also strive to make a profit each quarter.
"At best, they've lost whatever moral high ground they would have had. At worst, they've become so criminal that people committing massive copyright infringement actually have a degree of moral high ground over them."
Agreed; many people subscribe to the "two wrongs make a right" philosophy when coming up with rationalizations for piracy. But, this is a given: most people who pirate don't feel particularly bad about what they're doing. Throwing around words like "criminal" when describing copright holders is an effective way to make piracy feel okay.
"This makes no sense. What are they going to accomplish by going after college kids, who really don't have that much disposable income? It seems counter-productive to me."
they're trying to scare them into not pirating. The MPAA is scared to death that it will simply be ingrained in our culture (as it has in some other society's cultures) that piracy is perfectly OK.
We'll see how this plays out. Back in the 80's I pirated lots of software, and I heard stories of other teenagers being caught for it. Now that I'm an adult, I'm no longe a pirate. The prosecution of software pirates in the 1980s didn't push me into a life of hoisting the Jolly Roger; on the contrary, once I got a job and learned more about how the real world works, I prefer to respect the copyright of others.
I agree with you that many of the college kids who are pirates today will continue to be as they enter adulthood, but that percentage may not be as high as we might think.