"Ok... so now paying customers who buy a service as it is advertised are freeloaders?"
He means this in the sense that while you might pay Comcast a monthly fee for bandwidth, you're using that bandwidth to get free movies, games and music that are otherwise being offered for sale. Yes, I'm aware that some people use BitTorrent only for legitimate purposes, but he's addressing the other 99%.
"This is getting silly..... ISPs should NOT be advertising services they can not actually provide and then blaming groups of their own customers for their lack of infrastructure."
Agreed. Since Comcast is a virtual monopoly in many localities, they could simply drop the "unlimited" plan and start selling monthly bandwidth alotments in tiers. This wouldn't be a popular decision among BitTorrent fans, but it would be more equitable.
Sorry, another reply to the same post. This is from the Detroit Free Press writeup:
Horton said Activision should have secured a master license for the Romantics' original 1980 recording, then paid appropriate royalties. He said the band became aware of the issue when fans said they'd heard the song in the game but members saw no accounting for it on their record-label royalty checks.
What do you make of the band members' claim that they get record-label royalty checks, when (as you wrote it) "we all know" the band doesn't get royalties? Do you think the band members are lying about receiving royalty checks, in an efforts to build a case for the suit?
"I would go to trial on this, as there is no legal set precedent that I have ever heard of."
Good thing you're not their counsel, then. In Midler v. Ford Motor Company, the 9th circuit court held:
"When a distinctive voice of a professional
singer is widely known and deliberately imitated in order to sell a product,
the sellers have appropriated what is not theirs and have committed a tort
in California."
Ford had tried the same shenanigans that Activision is apparently doing: they didn't want to pay to use Bette Midler's original recording, so they hired one of her background singers to create an exact sound-alike, in an effort to confuse listeners.
Then there's Waits v. Frito-Lay -- That's Waits as in Tom Waits. That also went to the 9th circuit court, and Tom Waits got something in the area of $2MM. The decision is a fascinating 16 pages if you truly have an interest in learning more about this area of the law; it covers the Midler decision as well.
The bad news for Activision is that they're in California, so this will likely also go go the 9th circuit court.
The bottom line is that there's a huge difference between paying for the rights to do a cover, and making a recording that is designed to fool people into thinking it's somebody else. Companies have been nailed for doing this before, and it'll happen again. The Romantics are asserting that Activision is trying to do just that.
You lost me with your talk of "setting precedents", "worst legal precedents ever set," etc. I think you used the word "precedent" four or five times in the post. In reality, the opposite is the case: there's already plenty on the books to make it look not so good for Activision.
"Who cares. Presumably, "have permission" means "paid for permission", which, in turn, most likely means "pays royalties on every copy sold", which translates directly to "the label is being paid", which we all know really means "the artist isn't seeing a penny from the label", which means..."
Huh? We're talking about publishing rights here. Publishing rights typically don't go through the label. If you record a cover version, you're dealing with an entirely different set of people; often the composer and lyricist themselves Record companies, on the other hand, deal with distribution of recordings. This is exactly why TFS started out by mentioning that The Romantics are suing Activision, and not the record company.
Misinformation like yours is dangerous because we're supposed to be supporting the artists. Publishing rights for cover versions and the like are a great way for bands to make money without having to share any of it with the record label. This is a GOOD thing. You are trying to trivialize this very important right by spreading the falsehood that this is in the domain of the record label.
"can someone explain to them the purpose of a cover song? I hardly think that the makers of GH would want re-interpretations of original songs on their product."
Sorry -- there's precedent here. If you deliberately do a cover that sounds too much like the original as to cause confusion, you're likely to be sued. Maybe this is one of those cases where the rest of the world really needs a good explainin' from the Slashdot populace, but nonetheless, this is how the rest of the world works for the time being.
For those of you with Westlaw, look up Midler v. Ford Motor Company. Ford hired one of Bette Midler's background singers to do an exact copy of Midler's vocal style on a cover of one of her songs ("Do You Want To Dance") for an ad for the Mercury Sable. They did this because it was cheaper than hiring Midler, so they set out to attempt to confuse the audience. It worked -- I knew people who swore that it was the Bette Midler version. Midler sued; Ford lost.
What the makers of GH want has absolutely no bearing here. What matters is what they are legally entitled to get. If you don't want to pay up to use the original recording, you don't get to record a soundalike. To avoid being sued, you do a re-interpretation, no matter how much you want something that sounds just like the original article, without having to pay for it.
This is little band vs. big corporation here. I can't believe that some people think it should be simple as "explaining" to the band that they have no case because the big company wanted an exact copy of their song, but didn't want to pay for the privelege. Big companies should not have the ability to trample the little guy's rights simply because they "want" something. Sure, it happens enough... but why are Slashdotters suddenly supporting this notion?
"god knows they can subsist on their bloat for a very long time trying things until something works."
You're referring to Warner? Their share price has dropped from $27 to $7.50 since January, they're down to $280MM in liquid cash, and they lost $14MM last quarter. At this burn rate, they have less than five years left.
This is incongruous with the Slashdot "the record companies make insane profits" meme, but it's the ugly truth. Ed'll be out of a job soon if he can't turn WMG around.
"I like to give people the benefit of the doubt (enough rope to hang themselves with). But, given the paucity of Mr. Bronfman's concessions, it seems premature to alter my own behavior."
I presume that by this, you mean acquiring your music via P2P. That's perfectly fine, and expected -- it's essential to understand many people's rationalizations for piracy versus their actual reasons for piracy. For many people, the rationalization this year is DRM; in previous years, it was availability (until availability got a lot better) and price (until price fell below a buck a track). But the true motivator is much more primal: P2P music is FREE. And no matter what Messr. Bronfman and his ilk do -- they could sell uncompressed, DRM-free for $0.50 each -- many people will still not "alter their behavior" -- they'll help themselves to those uncompress, DRM-free tracks via P2P, and simply come up with a new rationalization.
Warner's got to find that thin line and do what it takes to grow their business while making a profit (something they failed to do last year), and understand that there's a certain segment out there that will continuously play the "close, but not quite" card.
Your question about taking photos to art galleries has already been addressed, but I'll just add that it's often not allowed because the exclusive reproduction rights have already been assigned to somebody else. You buy the book of prints in the gift shop, and the artist gets a cut. By the way, something similar happens with TV shows -- if you see a piece of framed art blurred in a reality show, it's often because they don't want to bother getting the rights to reproduce it. In the cases where artwork is prominently featured on a set (such as the paintings in Frasier), the rights were acquired.
Anyway, the big difference between taking a snapshot of a piece of art and P2P is that a P2P download is an effective substitute for a purchase. Yes, yes, I know this is Slashdot, were we all download music purely as a "try before you by" and we are always very careful to purchase legitimate copies of the music we download, but outside of this realm, most people who tell you this are lying. On the other hand, I might have a (licensed or otherwise) photo of Thibaud's Cakes, but I would still very much like to have the original.
As I believe the latest sale price for that particular piece of art was somewhere around $25MM, this is a bit of an extreme example, but put it in the realm of a framed original photograph selling for $200, and it makes more sense.
"I do believe in this case, the intellectual property is a little more than imaginary."
Correct; the substitution of "imaginary property" for "intellectual property" in the writeup was plain and simple flamebait. I'm surprised it hasn't yet been tagged as such.
"How can anyone not be on her side? This site is not just publishing derivative works based on Harry Potter, they are making a PROFIT from her ideas."
For many people, it's because J. K. Rowling (a) has a profit motive herself, and (b) is already quite well off. For many folks, rights are not a black-and-white issue: some artists are clearly more equal than others.
This outlook serves many people well (for instance, it's a great way to build one's music and movie collection for free and without guilt) but I think it can ultimately be self-destructive. If your sympathy for other's rights ends when they have a net worth of, say, $100K, what happens when you reach that point? If you've been sowing the seeds of indifference for the well-off on your way up, karma just might bite you in the ass.
Each case is different, and has subtle nuances. Fair use doctrine is a set of guidelines that aren't often applied until a case goes to court. The Slashdot audience is made up a lot of computer scientists, so we're used to tests of the form "does $a equal 5?" and we tend to get bound up in false equivalences when trying to grok the legal realm.
Wikipedia generally gets a pass because they are a not-for-profit organization, and (depending on your definition of "lots") they're not swimming in lots of money. The folks who want to publish the lexicon are, on the other hand, taking the traditional route of "sell copies of something" and are clearly in the for-profit realm. If the defendants' lawyers bring up the Wikipedia / selective litigation argument, I don't think it will be too tough for the plaintiff to demonstrate to the court that an apple is not an orange.
There's lots of precedent for this. What immediately comes to mind is Paramount's policy on the Star Trek world: if it's non-commercial, go ahead. This allows amateur fan fiction and the amateur-produced TV shows (which rely on donations) to thrive, but allows them to stop me if I wanted to sell an unaothorized Star Trek novel. I believe this has been ultimately helpful to Paramount; it's allowed the Star Trek franchise to thrive in its own way.
Likewise, of course, J. K. Rowling et al. appear to be taking a similar approach. They're not hassling the legions of Harry Potter fan sites, yet they're bringing down the mighty fist of God on these folks who are trying to make some serious dough off of her work.
Remember -- in copyright law there are compensatory, and then there are statutory. We know by now that record companies need not prove lost sales or economic harm; they ask for (and get) statutory damages. Writers of prose also have this option.
"And no, you're absolutely wrong in the belief that IP is anything but a minor industry. Weapons and agriculture are big sectors. Books, movies, music and software, are nothing."
I think there's a disconnect here between what you think should be the government's economic priorities, and what the government does. That's fine, but you asked why copyright law exists, and the answer is because the government thinks it's vital to our economy. The department of commerce has stated that IP industries represent 40 percent of U.S. economic growth -- 40 percent! -- and more than one-third of the value of all publicly traded U.S. companies.
Simply put, the government isn't messing around. At 40% growth, they know where their bread is buttered. And, reading between the lines, "publicly traded U.S. companies" means "...which pay taxes." You and I will have to agree to disagree on the definition of "minor" in this context, but at least you can understand that with a growth of 40%, the government has plenty of motivation to protect their interests.
And so it goes. Perhaps there will be a future day in which the weapons and agriculture export businesses are experiencing 40% growth, and -- The Pirate Bay willing -- our IP export business is foundering. When that happens, perhaps it will bring about changes in our laws. But despite what you or I say, that's the reality today.
"Ask you mother if she's ok with you copying one of her CDs. If she says no, that would be against the law and she thought she raised you better than that then the law is just. Otherwise, if, say, she says "sure, whatever you like son", then the law is neither wanted nor needed by society."
I don't think it was intentional, but you're slippery-sloping here. "it's okay to copy a CD owned by a family member" does not equal "it's okay to offer a copy to 1,000,000 of your closest friends on P2P."
"The music industry makes less money than the self storage industry.. I don't see why we need special laws to protect their broken business practices."
Well, to answer your question literally, the constitution puts it thusly: "to promote the progress and science of useful arts." But beyond the touchy-feely stuff, IP is a huge money-maker for the US; we probably put out more of it than any other country. If you're perplexed by the relative size of the music industry (viz. vs. the storage industry, as you mentioned), keep in mind that IP laws also protect books, films, software, and so on. And as other countries continue to get better at doing the things that have traditionally been money-makers for the US, our collective creative output is going to become an even more vital part of our economy. Remember what Neal Stephenson wrote in Snow Crash: the US excels only in music, movies, software, and high-speed pizza delivery.
And, that's why the US has strong copyright laws: to protect our economic interests. It's an ugly, unfortunate situation, but our government sees the US as being in an economic cold war with pretty much the rest of the world.
Copyright law isn't "special" -- it's been around in some form or another for hundreds of years -- and I'm concerned that you chose that word deliberately, like Red State politicians stating that gays don't "special" laws giving them the same rights as others. Pick any industry and it's susceptible to loss; the retail industry deals with shrinkage and nobody here would claim that laws against shoplifting are "special" and in place to prop up the retail industry.
"I think, however, most people can justify copyright infringement by thinking that a) the laws about all this stuff are MORE wrong and b) the business practices of the RIAA/MPAA/etc are also MORE wrong. That is, of course, when they bother to think about it at all."
Simply put, you believe that most people believe that two wrongs make a right?
God help us all if your assertion of "most people" is correct. I've done some bad things in my life (ask any number of ex-girlfriends); I certainly wouldn't want a random person attempting to injure my person or property based on this principal.
I counter that most people do not justify their actions using "two wrongs make a right." I think that a healthy number of pirates also know that two wrongs don't make a right; they simply don't care.
"According to a study by Industry Canada [michaelgeist.ca], file sharers actually buy more music than non-file sharers. All file sharing allows people to do is to find music that they like much easier. The more stuff they find that they like, the more money they will spend on music. If you've only ever heard of Britney Spears, because that's all the radio ever plays, then you can't buy that many CDs."
This study was torn to bits when it was first covered on Slashdot a few weeks ago. The non-file-sharing group includes people who have no significant interest in music; they don't buy music anyway. But 100% of the music file sharers are music fans and thus there's a possibility that they'll buy music. It's a bit tricky to explain here; this is one of those instances where Venn diagrams come in handy. It's all too easy to confuse correlation with causation here, but it's not the case.
A more useful study would compare two groups of music fans; one made up of people who acquire their music via P2P; the other made up of people who do not. I doubt that the end result would be the same.
Either way, there's a false dichotomy here: if you're a P2P fan you have lots of ways to find new music; if you don't pirate music as a "try before you buy" mechanism, then you do not. Yet I (and plenty of people like me) have absolutely no trouble finding new music and exploring new artists and genres, without resorting to piracy. iTunes is set up quite well to encourage this sort of exploration; there's also Pandora, last.fm, and countless alternative streaming radio stations. While I've no doubt that there are P2P fans who've used P2P to find new music, anybody who attempts to imply that piracy is the only way to find new music is simply trying to justify their behavior, at the expense of honesty.
"Umm... US police forces haven't been focused on personal downloading, either."
THANK YOU. I had to read through hundreds of comments before somebody pointed this out. Google on "criminal copyright infringement" and you'll see that the guys who are being busted for same here in the US are waaaaay out of the realm of "personal use." And rightfully so. Our own government has better things to focus on. Personal copying is largely in the realm of civil law, and should stay that way.
Slashdot zeitgeist is a funny old thing. The common sentiment is (or at least used to be) "why are the copyright holders filing civil suits? Shouldn't they be leaving this to law enforcement?". But when it's pointed out that the Canadian government, just like the US government, lets personal copying fly below the radar, people are happy. Go figure.
"In all seriousness, any law which makes the majority of citizens into criminals by its design is a law which is perverse and illegitimate on its face."
Are we talking about file sharing? The majority of US citizens (or Canadian citizens, for that matter) do not use P2P apps. US Internet usage is 73%; your assertation would be that that five in seven Internet users pirate music using P2P. I doubt that even five in seven college students pirate music via P2P, and P2P usage is heavily weighted among the under-24 set.
My guess is that the majority of your friends like using P2P to get their tunes -- I certainly have no argument there. But one should look at the big picture.
As the rest of your argument appears to be based on the assertion that the majority of citizens use P2P software, I'm not sure where that's going. "Most college students not fans of copyright law" is a statement that might very well be true. But that does not make copyright law unjust.
I haven't yet read the entire bill, but the first paragraph of TFA calls out another requirement:
New federal legislation says universities must agree to provide not just deterrents but also "alternatives" to peer-to-peer piracy, such as paying monthly subscription fees to the music industry for their students, on penalty of losing all financial aid for their students.
Therein lies a problem. Responding to all DMCA requests? Sure, the universities should be doing that anyway. Yes, yes, I know -- the greedy movie studios and film companies might not deserve the same protection as other copyright holders, but since we're all so busy quoting 1984, let's remember what Orwell's pigs wrote on the barn wall. Some copyright holders aren't more equal than others.
But providing an "alternative" program might be a needless waste of time and money for a small private liberal arts college where the IT staff is two guys. And, alternative programs may largely be a panacea. There's one constant about pirates: they'll always rationalize what they're doing. The "alternative" program could be a service with two billion songs in uncompressed, DRM-less format for $10 a month, and many people I know would still find a reason to use BitTorrent instead.
"No one else expects residuals. Why should writers be any different?"
That one's answered in the U.S. Constitution: to promote the progress of science and useful arts.
I know it's easy to imagine that people who write poetry, novels, screenplays, songs, and so on must have it so good -- just write a little something and you're set for life. But the reality is quite different: these creative arts often have a 99% unemployment rate. It may be hard to believe, but you and I actually have it easier in a lot of ways: if you have a job, you can keep going to work each day and there's a reasonable chance you'll get paid. Your employer pays for your health insurance and probably kicks in to your retirement plans. Writers typically have no such cushion.
Was this the right thing for the framers of the constitution to do? Who knows. But consider this: take a look at your music collection, or your collection of books. What percentage of them would still be there if the writer were perfectly content without earning money on the sale? While there are those brave souls who write or perform or code sheer for the unbridled joy of it, the sad fact is that many of them wouldn't do it without the money, as they need the money to survive. Or, think of it this way: would you keep doing what you're doing if the collective Slashdotters waved a magic wand and you no longer had the right to be paid for it? There's a good chance that you really enjoy your job (otherwise you probably wouldn't be doing it), but is it a true labor of love that transcends the chance of making money? If not... then it's not fair to expect many artists to adopt such an outlook.
"In that last (successful) RIAA case, they decided to drive their point home by playing a 25 year old audio recording. No one should be getting bent out of shape regarding the "piracy" of 25 year old recordings. They should be PD by now (or nearly so)."
Straw man. The bulk of the stuff that's pirated is recent software, music, and movies. Just take a look at the top lists of your favorite BT tracker. While stuff from the 80's is still pirated, it's not at nearly the volume of the stuff that's popular now.
"CD sales are down because what is released on CD is crap."
Most music released has always been crap. 90% of what's released today is crap, but most of the stuff released in the 90's was crap, too. As was the stuff in the 80's, and the 70's, and so on.
It's easy to remember decades past as having better music than what's being released today; this is due to our propensity to remember the good and discard the bad. There's even a common word for this phenomenon: "nostalgia."
Ask many people and they'll swear up and down that there was a magical time in history when the crap level dropped below 90%. For instance, a 50-year-old living in 1926 might have told you that the era of good music ended in the 1890s. Everybody's right, but everybody's also wrong.
At any rate, while I agree with you that most music is crap, pirates love it just the same. The top music traded this week has remarkable parity with the top-selling music. This is why "music is crap" is a great rationalization for piracy, but not the cause of piracy. Piracy is caused by people's natural desire for music, and the natural desire to save money.
"This measure has nothing to do with piracy and everything to do with outdated business models being destroyed by new technologies, and companies unwilling to adapt. They loved the monopoly."
There's widespread confusion over what the word "monopoly" means. There are literally thousands of indie music labels whose products are readily available at plenty of retailers, both online and off, and there's absolutely nothing preventing anybody from starting their own label, or even selling their music without working with a label. Sure, going the indie route is hard. So's starting your own independent ice cream shop in this market dominated by the Ben and Jerry's and Baskin-Robbins of the world. You won't have their brand recognition or their marketing budget. But no Slashdotter in their right mind would call the ice cream business a monopoly. So why the disconnect when it comes to the music biz? I suspect that many Slashdotters incorrectly throw around the term "monopoly" not because of a genuine misunderstanding, but because, like the "we pirate music because it's crappy" argument, because it shifts the moral burden off of us, and onto somebody else.
"You are implying that encrypted traffic is by its very nature illegal. When it comes to torrent traffic this is definitely not true. Especially from places like Canada where simple downloading of RIAA etc music is (still) legal, and as is seen from sites like LegalTorrents.com."
That's not my intent. My reply was within the context of the discussion; he stated that sending encrypted data can be used as a defense against charges of copyright infringement. Naturally, nobody here is of the belief that encryption is illegal.
You're the only other person I've seen (besides myself) who knows about legaltorrents.com. I checked it a few weeks back and saw that it still had a pitifully small and stale selection. And now it's down for retooling. I hope the new site is more popular, or that there's another tracker of which I'm not aware that's specifically for legal stuff -- I would love to see some real muscle behind the "lots of people use BitTorrent for legitimate use" argument. As it stands today, many trackers (OiNK comes to mind) actually go beyond the willful blindness of content agnosticism, and actually disallow torrents of stuff that's readily available for free.
"I don't think courts use something like "the laugh test". "
that's exactly my point. People who come up with ideas like "let's put some artwork in the file which the receiver would have to encrypt and thus violate the DMCA!" simply aren't aware of the informal test that every lawyer knows: if you can't explain it to a buddy without them laughing, it won't fly in court.
"I'm not sure if the DMCA says anything about it, but it seems to me that any person looking at any traffic you aren't sending to them is (or should be) illegal. How would this be relevantly different from an illegal wire (phone) tap?"
Because BitTorrent isn't a one-to-one, private transaction. It's anonymous, one-to-many. You make that Kanye West rip available, and anybody with a BitTorrent client can get it. It makes no difference if they're another Kanye West fan, or the record label that would very much like to stop you from distributing their stuff for free.
This is how the record companies bust people: they use P2P clients to see what you're offering. And, no, it's not entrapment. This is a no-free-lunch situation: if you share copyrighted stuff without permission, you're liable to be nailed, and the DMCA can't help you here.
"Somebody should create a file sharing program that has the user create a small copyrightable piece of art, and encrypt it along with the data to be transfered. Any attempt to decrypt the data is also (illegally) decrypting your copyrighted art."
Stuff like that's been tried. I recall somebody writing a script to ROT13 song names in P2P indexes. This was in the days of Kazaa or even the original Napster, if I recall. The reason was the equally bogus claim that undoing the ROT13 violated the DMCA.
Some time ago I ran a pretty popular site exposing Make Money Fast letters and their writers. A popular claim at the time was that if you called your chain letter a "recipe exchange" or added the words "please add me to your mailing list" when you sent your money, you were actually paying for a service. Like your decryption idea, these served solely as panaceas to make the participant think they were getting one over on the powers that be. That is all.
Putting it another way: courts have something called "the laugh test" and this would not pass it. A false hope that somehow you can sue a record label for decrypting your artwork might get you some sympathy from the uninformed masses (the same legal geniuses who've marked your post "Insightful"), but will do you not one bit of good when the record company takes your house.
Slashdot Mirror
"Ok... so now paying customers who buy a service as it is advertised are freeloaders?"
He means this in the sense that while you might pay Comcast a monthly fee for bandwidth, you're using that bandwidth to get free movies, games and music that are otherwise being offered for sale. Yes, I'm aware that some people use BitTorrent only for legitimate purposes, but he's addressing the other 99%.
"This is getting silly..... ISPs should NOT be advertising services they can not actually provide and then blaming groups of their own customers for their lack of infrastructure."
Agreed. Since Comcast is a virtual monopoly in many localities, they could simply drop the "unlimited" plan and start selling monthly bandwidth alotments in tiers. This wouldn't be a popular decision among BitTorrent fans, but it would be more equitable.
Sorry, another reply to the same post. This is from the Detroit Free Press writeup:
What do you make of the band members' claim that they get record-label royalty checks, when (as you wrote it) "we all know" the band doesn't get royalties? Do you think the band members are lying about receiving royalty checks, in an efforts to build a case for the suit?
"I would go to trial on this, as there is no legal set precedent that I have ever heard of."
Good thing you're not their counsel, then. In Midler v. Ford Motor Company, the 9th circuit court held:
Ford had tried the same shenanigans that Activision is apparently doing: they didn't want to pay to use Bette Midler's original recording, so they hired one of her background singers to create an exact sound-alike, in an effort to confuse listeners.
Then there's Waits v. Frito-Lay -- That's Waits as in Tom Waits. That also went to the 9th circuit court, and Tom Waits got something in the area of $2MM. The decision is a fascinating 16 pages if you truly have an interest in learning more about this area of the law; it covers the Midler decision as well.
The bad news for Activision is that they're in California, so this will likely also go go the 9th circuit court.
The bottom line is that there's a huge difference between paying for the rights to do a cover, and making a recording that is designed to fool people into thinking it's somebody else. Companies have been nailed for doing this before, and it'll happen again. The Romantics are asserting that Activision is trying to do just that.
You lost me with your talk of "setting precedents", "worst legal precedents ever set," etc. I think you used the word "precedent" four or five times in the post. In reality, the opposite is the case: there's already plenty on the books to make it look not so good for Activision.
"Who cares. Presumably, "have permission" means "paid for permission", which, in turn, most likely means "pays royalties on every copy sold", which translates directly to "the label is being paid", which we all know really means "the artist isn't seeing a penny from the label", which means..."
Huh? We're talking about publishing rights here. Publishing rights typically don't go through the label. If you record a cover version, you're dealing with an entirely different set of people; often the composer and lyricist themselves Record companies, on the other hand, deal with distribution of recordings. This is exactly why TFS started out by mentioning that The Romantics are suing Activision, and not the record company.
Misinformation like yours is dangerous because we're supposed to be supporting the artists. Publishing rights for cover versions and the like are a great way for bands to make money without having to share any of it with the record label. This is a GOOD thing. You are trying to trivialize this very important right by spreading the falsehood that this is in the domain of the record label.
"can someone explain to them the purpose of a cover song? I hardly think that the makers of GH would want re-interpretations of original songs on their product."
Sorry -- there's precedent here. If you deliberately do a cover that sounds too much like the original as to cause confusion, you're likely to be sued. Maybe this is one of those cases where the rest of the world really needs a good explainin' from the Slashdot populace, but nonetheless, this is how the rest of the world works for the time being.
For those of you with Westlaw, look up Midler v. Ford Motor Company. Ford hired one of Bette Midler's background singers to do an exact copy of Midler's vocal style on a cover of one of her songs ("Do You Want To Dance") for an ad for the Mercury Sable. They did this because it was cheaper than hiring Midler, so they set out to attempt to confuse the audience. It worked -- I knew people who swore that it was the Bette Midler version. Midler sued; Ford lost.
What the makers of GH want has absolutely no bearing here. What matters is what they are legally entitled to get. If you don't want to pay up to use the original recording, you don't get to record a soundalike. To avoid being sued, you do a re-interpretation, no matter how much you want something that sounds just like the original article, without having to pay for it.
This is little band vs. big corporation here. I can't believe that some people think it should be simple as "explaining" to the band that they have no case because the big company wanted an exact copy of their song, but didn't want to pay for the privelege. Big companies should not have the ability to trample the little guy's rights simply because they "want" something. Sure, it happens enough... but why are Slashdotters suddenly supporting this notion?
"god knows they can subsist on their bloat for a very long time trying things until something works."
You're referring to Warner? Their share price has dropped from $27 to $7.50 since January, they're down to $280MM in liquid cash, and they lost $14MM last quarter. At this burn rate, they have less than five years left.
This is incongruous with the Slashdot "the record companies make insane profits" meme, but it's the ugly truth. Ed'll be out of a job soon if he can't turn WMG around.
"I like to give people the benefit of the doubt (enough rope to hang themselves with). But, given the paucity of Mr. Bronfman's concessions, it seems premature to alter my own behavior."
I presume that by this, you mean acquiring your music via P2P. That's perfectly fine, and expected -- it's essential to understand many people's rationalizations for piracy versus their actual reasons for piracy. For many people, the rationalization this year is DRM; in previous years, it was availability (until availability got a lot better) and price (until price fell below a buck a track). But the true motivator is much more primal: P2P music is FREE. And no matter what Messr. Bronfman and his ilk do -- they could sell uncompressed, DRM-free for $0.50 each -- many people will still not "alter their behavior" -- they'll help themselves to those uncompress, DRM-free tracks via P2P, and simply come up with a new rationalization.
Warner's got to find that thin line and do what it takes to grow their business while making a profit (something they failed to do last year), and understand that there's a certain segment out there that will continuously play the "close, but not quite" card.
Your question about taking photos to art galleries has already been addressed, but I'll just add that it's often not allowed because the exclusive reproduction rights have already been assigned to somebody else. You buy the book of prints in the gift shop, and the artist gets a cut. By the way, something similar happens with TV shows -- if you see a piece of framed art blurred in a reality show, it's often because they don't want to bother getting the rights to reproduce it. In the cases where artwork is prominently featured on a set (such as the paintings in Frasier), the rights were acquired.
Anyway, the big difference between taking a snapshot of a piece of art and P2P is that a P2P download is an effective substitute for a purchase. Yes, yes, I know this is Slashdot, were we all download music purely as a "try before you by" and we are always very careful to purchase legitimate copies of the music we download, but outside of this realm, most people who tell you this are lying. On the other hand, I might have a (licensed or otherwise) photo of Thibaud's Cakes, but I would still very much like to have the original.
As I believe the latest sale price for that particular piece of art was somewhere around $25MM, this is a bit of an extreme example, but put it in the realm of a framed original photograph selling for $200, and it makes more sense.
"I do believe in this case, the intellectual property is a little more than imaginary."
Correct; the substitution of "imaginary property" for "intellectual property" in the writeup was plain and simple flamebait. I'm surprised it hasn't yet been tagged as such.
"How can anyone not be on her side? This site is not just publishing derivative works based on Harry Potter, they are making a PROFIT from her ideas."
For many people, it's because J. K. Rowling (a) has a profit motive herself, and (b) is already quite well off. For many folks, rights are not a black-and-white issue: some artists are clearly more equal than others.
This outlook serves many people well (for instance, it's a great way to build one's music and movie collection for free and without guilt) but I think it can ultimately be self-destructive. If your sympathy for other's rights ends when they have a net worth of, say, $100K, what happens when you reach that point? If you've been sowing the seeds of indifference for the well-off on your way up, karma just might bite you in the ass.
Each case is different, and has subtle nuances. Fair use doctrine is a set of guidelines that aren't often applied until a case goes to court. The Slashdot audience is made up a lot of computer scientists, so we're used to tests of the form "does $a equal 5?" and we tend to get bound up in false equivalences when trying to grok the legal realm.
Wikipedia generally gets a pass because they are a not-for-profit organization, and (depending on your definition of "lots") they're not swimming in lots of money. The folks who want to publish the lexicon are, on the other hand, taking the traditional route of "sell copies of something" and are clearly in the for-profit realm. If the defendants' lawyers bring up the Wikipedia / selective litigation argument, I don't think it will be too tough for the plaintiff to demonstrate to the court that an apple is not an orange.
There's lots of precedent for this. What immediately comes to mind is Paramount's policy on the Star Trek world: if it's non-commercial, go ahead. This allows amateur fan fiction and the amateur-produced TV shows (which rely on donations) to thrive, but allows them to stop me if I wanted to sell an unaothorized Star Trek novel. I believe this has been ultimately helpful to Paramount; it's allowed the Star Trek franchise to thrive in its own way.
Likewise, of course, J. K. Rowling et al. appear to be taking a similar approach. They're not hassling the legions of Harry Potter fan sites, yet they're bringing down the mighty fist of God on these folks who are trying to make some serious dough off of her work.
"How do they claim damages?"
Remember -- in copyright law there are compensatory, and then there are statutory. We know by now that record companies need not prove lost sales or economic harm; they ask for (and get) statutory damages. Writers of prose also have this option.
"And no, you're absolutely wrong in the belief that IP is anything but a minor industry. Weapons and agriculture are big sectors. Books, movies, music and software, are nothing."
I think there's a disconnect here between what you think should be the government's economic priorities, and what the government does. That's fine, but you asked why copyright law exists, and the answer is because the government thinks it's vital to our economy. The department of commerce has stated that IP industries represent 40 percent of U.S. economic growth -- 40 percent! -- and more than one-third of the value of all publicly traded U.S. companies.
Simply put, the government isn't messing around. At 40% growth, they know where their bread is buttered. And, reading between the lines, "publicly traded U.S. companies" means "...which pay taxes." You and I will have to agree to disagree on the definition of "minor" in this context, but at least you can understand that with a growth of 40%, the government has plenty of motivation to protect their interests.
And so it goes. Perhaps there will be a future day in which the weapons and agriculture export businesses are experiencing 40% growth, and -- The Pirate Bay willing -- our IP export business is foundering. When that happens, perhaps it will bring about changes in our laws. But despite what you or I say, that's the reality today.
"Ask you mother if she's ok with you copying one of her CDs. If she says no, that would be against the law and she thought she raised you better than that then the law is just. Otherwise, if, say, she says "sure, whatever you like son", then the law is neither wanted nor needed by society."
I don't think it was intentional, but you're slippery-sloping here. "it's okay to copy a CD owned by a family member" does not equal "it's okay to offer a copy to 1,000,000 of your closest friends on P2P."
"The music industry makes less money than the self storage industry.. I don't see why we need special laws to protect their broken business practices."
Well, to answer your question literally, the constitution puts it thusly: "to promote the progress and science of useful arts." But beyond the touchy-feely stuff, IP is a huge money-maker for the US; we probably put out more of it than any other country. If you're perplexed by the relative size of the music industry (viz. vs. the storage industry, as you mentioned), keep in mind that IP laws also protect books, films, software, and so on. And as other countries continue to get better at doing the things that have traditionally been money-makers for the US, our collective creative output is going to become an even more vital part of our economy. Remember what Neal Stephenson wrote in Snow Crash: the US excels only in music, movies, software, and high-speed pizza delivery.
And, that's why the US has strong copyright laws: to protect our economic interests. It's an ugly, unfortunate situation, but our government sees the US as being in an economic cold war with pretty much the rest of the world.
Copyright law isn't "special" -- it's been around in some form or another for hundreds of years -- and I'm concerned that you chose that word deliberately, like Red State politicians stating that gays don't "special" laws giving them the same rights as others. Pick any industry and it's susceptible to loss; the retail industry deals with shrinkage and nobody here would claim that laws against shoplifting are "special" and in place to prop up the retail industry.
Thanks for the clarification. I agree with you on that point.
"I think, however, most people can justify copyright infringement by thinking that a) the laws about all this stuff are MORE wrong and b) the business practices of the RIAA/MPAA/etc are also MORE wrong. That is, of course, when they bother to think about it at all."
Simply put, you believe that most people believe that two wrongs make a right?
God help us all if your assertion of "most people" is correct. I've done some bad things in my life (ask any number of ex-girlfriends); I certainly wouldn't want a random person attempting to injure my person or property based on this principal.
I counter that most people do not justify their actions using "two wrongs make a right." I think that a healthy number of pirates also know that two wrongs don't make a right; they simply don't care.
"According to a study by Industry Canada [michaelgeist.ca], file sharers actually buy more music than non-file sharers. All file sharing allows people to do is to find music that they like much easier. The more stuff they find that they like, the more money they will spend on music. If you've only ever heard of Britney Spears, because that's all the radio ever plays, then you can't buy that many CDs."
This study was torn to bits when it was first covered on Slashdot a few weeks ago. The non-file-sharing group includes people who have no significant interest in music; they don't buy music anyway. But 100% of the music file sharers are music fans and thus there's a possibility that they'll buy music. It's a bit tricky to explain here; this is one of those instances where Venn diagrams come in handy. It's all too easy to confuse correlation with causation here, but it's not the case.
A more useful study would compare two groups of music fans; one made up of people who acquire their music via P2P; the other made up of people who do not. I doubt that the end result would be the same.
Either way, there's a false dichotomy here: if you're a P2P fan you have lots of ways to find new music; if you don't pirate music as a "try before you buy" mechanism, then you do not. Yet I (and plenty of people like me) have absolutely no trouble finding new music and exploring new artists and genres, without resorting to piracy. iTunes is set up quite well to encourage this sort of exploration; there's also Pandora, last.fm, and countless alternative streaming radio stations. While I've no doubt that there are P2P fans who've used P2P to find new music, anybody who attempts to imply that piracy is the only way to find new music is simply trying to justify their behavior, at the expense of honesty.
"Umm... US police forces haven't been focused on personal downloading, either."
THANK YOU. I had to read through hundreds of comments before somebody pointed this out. Google on "criminal copyright infringement" and you'll see that the guys who are being busted for same here in the US are waaaaay out of the realm of "personal use." And rightfully so. Our own government has better things to focus on. Personal copying is largely in the realm of civil law, and should stay that way.
Slashdot zeitgeist is a funny old thing. The common sentiment is (or at least used to be) "why are the copyright holders filing civil suits? Shouldn't they be leaving this to law enforcement?". But when it's pointed out that the Canadian government, just like the US government, lets personal copying fly below the radar, people are happy. Go figure.
"In all seriousness, any law which makes the majority of citizens into criminals by its design is a law which is perverse and illegitimate on its face."
Are we talking about file sharing? The majority of US citizens (or Canadian citizens, for that matter) do not use P2P apps. US Internet usage is 73%; your assertation would be that that five in seven Internet users pirate music using P2P. I doubt that even five in seven college students pirate music via P2P, and P2P usage is heavily weighted among the under-24 set.
My guess is that the majority of your friends like using P2P to get their tunes -- I certainly have no argument there. But one should look at the big picture.
As the rest of your argument appears to be based on the assertion that the majority of citizens use P2P software, I'm not sure where that's going. "Most college students not fans of copyright law" is a statement that might very well be true. But that does not make copyright law unjust.
I haven't yet read the entire bill, but the first paragraph of TFA calls out another requirement:
Therein lies a problem. Responding to all DMCA requests? Sure, the universities should be doing that anyway. Yes, yes, I know -- the greedy movie studios and film companies might not deserve the same protection as other copyright holders, but since we're all so busy quoting 1984, let's remember what Orwell's pigs wrote on the barn wall. Some copyright holders aren't more equal than others.
But providing an "alternative" program might be a needless waste of time and money for a small private liberal arts college where the IT staff is two guys. And, alternative programs may largely be a panacea. There's one constant about pirates: they'll always rationalize what they're doing. The "alternative" program could be a service with two billion songs in uncompressed, DRM-less format for $10 a month, and many people I know would still find a reason to use BitTorrent instead.
"No one else expects residuals. Why should writers be any different?"
That one's answered in the U.S. Constitution: to promote the progress of science and useful arts.
I know it's easy to imagine that people who write poetry, novels, screenplays, songs, and so on must have it so good -- just write a little something and you're set for life. But the reality is quite different: these creative arts often have a 99% unemployment rate. It may be hard to believe, but you and I actually have it easier in a lot of ways: if you have a job, you can keep going to work each day and there's a reasonable chance you'll get paid. Your employer pays for your health insurance and probably kicks in to your retirement plans. Writers typically have no such cushion.
Was this the right thing for the framers of the constitution to do? Who knows. But consider this: take a look at your music collection, or your collection of books. What percentage of them would still be there if the writer were perfectly content without earning money on the sale? While there are those brave souls who write or perform or code sheer for the unbridled joy of it, the sad fact is that many of them wouldn't do it without the money, as they need the money to survive. Or, think of it this way: would you keep doing what you're doing if the collective Slashdotters waved a magic wand and you no longer had the right to be paid for it? There's a good chance that you really enjoy your job (otherwise you probably wouldn't be doing it), but is it a true labor of love that transcends the chance of making money? If not... then it's not fair to expect many artists to adopt such an outlook.
"In that last (successful) RIAA case, they decided to drive their point home by playing a 25 year old audio recording. No one should be getting bent out of shape regarding the "piracy" of 25 year old recordings. They should be PD by now (or nearly so)."
Straw man. The bulk of the stuff that's pirated is recent software, music, and movies. Just take a look at the top lists of your favorite BT tracker. While stuff from the 80's is still pirated, it's not at nearly the volume of the stuff that's popular now.
"CD sales are down because what is released on CD is crap."
Most music released has always been crap. 90% of what's released today is crap, but most of the stuff released in the 90's was crap, too. As was the stuff in the 80's, and the 70's, and so on.
It's easy to remember decades past as having better music than what's being released today; this is due to our propensity to remember the good and discard the bad. There's even a common word for this phenomenon: "nostalgia."
Ask many people and they'll swear up and down that there was a magical time in history when the crap level dropped below 90%. For instance, a 50-year-old living in 1926 might have told you that the era of good music ended in the 1890s. Everybody's right, but everybody's also wrong.
At any rate, while I agree with you that most music is crap, pirates love it just the same. The top music traded this week has remarkable parity with the top-selling music. This is why "music is crap" is a great rationalization for piracy, but not the cause of piracy. Piracy is caused by people's natural desire for music, and the natural desire to save money.
"This measure has nothing to do with piracy and everything to do with outdated business models being destroyed by new technologies, and companies unwilling to adapt. They loved the monopoly."
There's widespread confusion over what the word "monopoly" means. There are literally thousands of indie music labels whose products are readily available at plenty of retailers, both online and off, and there's absolutely nothing preventing anybody from starting their own label, or even selling their music without working with a label. Sure, going the indie route is hard. So's starting your own independent ice cream shop in this market dominated by the Ben and Jerry's and Baskin-Robbins of the world. You won't have their brand recognition or their marketing budget. But no Slashdotter in their right mind would call the ice cream business a monopoly. So why the disconnect when it comes to the music biz? I suspect that many Slashdotters incorrectly throw around the term "monopoly" not because of a genuine misunderstanding, but because, like the "we pirate music because it's crappy" argument, because it shifts the moral burden off of us, and onto somebody else.
"You are implying that encrypted traffic is by its very nature illegal. When it comes to torrent traffic this is definitely not true. Especially from places like Canada where simple downloading of RIAA etc music is (still) legal, and as is seen from sites like LegalTorrents.com."
That's not my intent. My reply was within the context of the discussion; he stated that sending encrypted data can be used as a defense against charges of copyright infringement. Naturally, nobody here is of the belief that encryption is illegal.
You're the only other person I've seen (besides myself) who knows about legaltorrents.com. I checked it a few weeks back and saw that it still had a pitifully small and stale selection. And now it's down for retooling. I hope the new site is more popular, or that there's another tracker of which I'm not aware that's specifically for legal stuff -- I would love to see some real muscle behind the "lots of people use BitTorrent for legitimate use" argument. As it stands today, many trackers (OiNK comes to mind) actually go beyond the willful blindness of content agnosticism, and actually disallow torrents of stuff that's readily available for free.
"I don't think courts use something like "the laugh test". "
that's exactly my point. People who come up with ideas like "let's put some artwork in the file which the receiver would have to encrypt and thus violate the DMCA!" simply aren't aware of the informal test that every lawyer knows: if you can't explain it to a buddy without them laughing, it won't fly in court.
"I'm not sure if the DMCA says anything about it, but it seems to me that any person looking at any traffic you aren't sending to them is (or should be) illegal. How would this be relevantly different from an illegal wire (phone) tap?"
Because BitTorrent isn't a one-to-one, private transaction. It's anonymous, one-to-many. You make that Kanye West rip available, and anybody with a BitTorrent client can get it. It makes no difference if they're another Kanye West fan, or the record label that would very much like to stop you from distributing their stuff for free.
This is how the record companies bust people: they use P2P clients to see what you're offering. And, no, it's not entrapment. This is a no-free-lunch situation: if you share copyrighted stuff without permission, you're liable to be nailed, and the DMCA can't help you here.
"Somebody should create a file sharing program that has the user create a small copyrightable piece of art, and encrypt it along with the data to be transfered. Any attempt to decrypt the data is also (illegally) decrypting your copyrighted art."
Stuff like that's been tried. I recall somebody writing a script to ROT13 song names in P2P indexes. This was in the days of Kazaa or even the original Napster, if I recall. The reason was the equally bogus claim that undoing the ROT13 violated the DMCA.
Some time ago I ran a pretty popular site exposing Make Money Fast letters and their writers. A popular claim at the time was that if you called your chain letter a "recipe exchange" or added the words "please add me to your mailing list" when you sent your money, you were actually paying for a service. Like your decryption idea, these served solely as panaceas to make the participant think they were getting one over on the powers that be. That is all.
Putting it another way: courts have something called "the laugh test" and this would not pass it. A false hope that somehow you can sue a record label for decrypting your artwork might get you some sympathy from the uninformed masses (the same legal geniuses who've marked your post "Insightful"), but will do you not one bit of good when the record company takes your house.