"Sure you can "make sure you let everyone know your position and explain why you're taking that position", but that level of detail doesn't reach the sales figures of the RIAA. Show demand for the music (if there is any demand for it), just not the company's "Reign of Terror". So called piracy boycotts the business model thrusted upon us every time we want to listen to music, but still retains the demand for the music."
That's one of the more interesting rationales for piracy I've heard. If I understand you, pirating music is helpful to the cause because it indicates demand for the product, without compensating the people who made the product possible. I suppose this will motivate record companies in the same way that a high shrinkage rate will motivate a retail store to lower their prices -- after all, it shows that prospective customers want the product, but they're not willing to pay for the product and are instead using illegal means to get it. 5, Insightful to the first person who points out that shoplifting is not the same as piracy.
"I know everyone has said it, but give me a good-quality, DRM-free system (read: the system allofmp3.com uses), and I will be generous with my hard-earned cash."
The Russian sites don't need to worry about DRM because they don't have permission to sell the music in the first place. They are pirates who are exploiting a loophole in Russian law by paying for a broadcast license while allowing people to download the music. Web broadcast licenses are typically on the order of a couple of hundred bucks a month; if you and others download a collective million tracks a month from allofmp3, that's two thousanths of a cent per track for the artists, assuming ROMS manages to distribute the money.
As you know, there are sites like emusic and Magnatune which also distribute DRM-free music. The prices are higher than the Russian sites because they actually pay the artists. Out of curiosity, have you been generous with your hard-earned cash on these sites as well, or does it largely go to allofmp3?
"Ok, maybe she hasn't used a computer before.. Thats fine, but unless this person is uncontrollably stupid "dusted near the parts that she believes are a computer." How many people in a normal society would even be able to recongnize a computer! I think this person is playing extra stupid as part of her defense."
What TFA article doesn't mention is that Beckermen is her lawyer. And yeah, he's exagerating the hell out of the situation for sympathy. Which is what he's expected to do as a lawyer, so I have no problem with that.
Beckerman has a blog on the case. The equally valid explanation (but not nearly as glamorous as her lawyer paints it) is that somebody else in her house is the P2P fiend, and the ISP bill just happens to be in the defendant's name. That's an extremely common scenario; the RIAA often sues parents on behalf of their kids.
They do. In the UK there's the Association of Independent Music, and in Australia there's AIR. In Canada there's CIRPA, and in the US there's the A2IM. I found these by taking a few seconds to goodle on "independent record labels."
Many, if not most of them, do issue press releases, as you suggest.
I suspect that while the indie labels aren't suing people left and right, they may not be as pro-piracy as you expect. I knew a fellow once who ran an indie record label. He had ten employees and paid himself the princely sum of $20K per year. When x% of the population opted to pirate rather than buy a CD from a major label, all it meant was that somebody you never heard of got laid off or didn't get a raise that year. When his artists' works started showing up on the P2P services, it meant that he had to lay off his friends. Although it's the major labels (through their mouthpiece, the RIAA) make the most noise about piracy, the large RIAA-affiliated labels are actually more resilient to piracy, while the indie labels often run on razor-thin budgets. We can talk about how piracy actually helps the artist because it gets their music out there, we might buy a shirt or go to a concert, etc. but the reality for the tiny 10-person labels (who put up the cash to fund the CDS and who rely on sales to stay in business) is that they must pay the rent and pay their employees each month -- no exceptions, no excuses. If income isn't meeting expenses, it's simply not enough that some 17-year-old in Minnesota loves the copy of your CD that he got via BitTorrent.
"Honestly, the idea of DRMs pisses so many people off that they simply can't stay around for long. The consumer hates not being trusted, and won't buy things that have DRMs. DRMs will be a thing of the past in the next decade, I have faith."
Yet the iTMS is a phenomenal success, while emusic and Maganatune are virtually unknown by the public.
For what it's worth, the iTMS DRM has never bothered me. I can burn as many copies of a playlist as I want to, burn stuff for my car, and listen to it on as many computers as I want to. I couldn't start burning unlimited copies and selling them on the street corner, or drop the files into a P2P share directory, without jumping through a few hoops... but that's sort of the point of DRM. When you refer to "the consumer," you don't speak for me.
Agreed... the record companys will try to screw over the artists in any way they can. It's the supply and demand inequity; when there's a lot of supply, the suppliers tend to be treated like crap. And true stardom and financial independence in the music industry is about as hard or harder to come by as in other industries. Just as Kanye West doesn't represent all artists, Larry Ellison doesn't represent all of us in the computer biz.
My main point is that these facts do not justify pirating music vs. buying it. The old "two wrongs don't make a right" thing. Many people disagree with me, though.
"It's not unreasonable for people to have demands to show that the music industry is actually doing something productive."
You can answer that one yourself. I have a pretty good voice, I'm reasonably cute and I have this sheet of lyrics and a guitar. Are you up to the task of:
Getting me into a studio with a skilled engineer and producer that will make me sound good? I'll probably also need some session musicians and some singers. None of this "just do it yourself with Garage Band" nonsense -- stuff that's produced cheaply by amateurs often sounds exactly like it was produced cheaply, and by amateurs.
Getting me into a salon and a photo studio, so I'm somewhat presentable. Image counts.
Get my CD artwork done, my CDs pressed and into the major retailers (you've got to be in Wal-Mart and Best Buy if you're going to sell CDs these days), and my tracks onto the iTMS.
Getting me airplay on all the radio stations -- I don't want to be music's best-kept secret!
Buying ad space and otherwise generating buzz so that people have a chance to discover me -- "viral marketing" won't do... I want the same chance as the signed artists that are backed by record labels.
If you can do all that for me, and do it for free (that is, finding skilled people to do all the above, and who are willing to do it gratis), then you're 100% right -- the record companies simply do not do anything productive, and they're investing lots of money by hiring lots of experts for a set of tasks that you could do for free.
But, in case you're wondering, if I ever do write that excuse-o-matic, "the record companies are parasites" will be an option, as it's a common rationale.
"But 10c out of every $20 cd is a lot of wiggle and experimentation room, we'd just like to see artists pushing people to take a look at that 2000% discrepancy."
If you're paying $20 on average CDs, that's something you should correct on your own. The average price of a new CD in the US is down to $13 or $14, which means that they are sold into disti for about $10 or $11. What happens with that $10 or $11 can be further disected by looking at the costs of all the things I mentioned in my list above, but as the math texts state, that's an exercise left for the reader. The reason the royalty slice of that $10 pie is a buck or two, vs. say five bucks, is supply and demand: there are a lot more people who want recording contracts than can get them, so the record companies have the luxury of paying as little as legally possible. This isn't a concept the recording industry invented; if, say, you were hiring a designer to redo your web site, you'd find that the quotes would vary greatly depending on whether there were two web designers in your town, or two hundred.
But, yeah, the "CDs cost $20 and the artist only gets $0.10" (I love how both numbers are exagerated in opposite directions) will be on the excuse-o-matic; for many people, paying the artist nothing is rationalized as being better for the artist than paying them an amount which we arbitrarily deem to be too low.
This has been fun -- what say we make a Starbucks run? A grande frap with an extra shot costs around $3.80 around here -- if the barista makes a hundred of them an hour, s/he probably made about $0.07 for the priveledge. While we're enjoying our drinks we can talk about how the record company profit margins are way out of line, and -- everybody say it with me -- "so, I have no choice but to pirate." By the way, nice Kenneth Cole shoes you're wearing. Did you pay retail for them?
"You don't like this sort of compromise WHY, exectly?"
I can't speak for the GP, but I've noticed that many Slashdotters appear to have a flow chart in their head that has a single terminator labelled "And so, I have no choice but to continue pirating!". It's a given, of course, that the content industries creep along at a speed slower than we'd like (you younger folks can ask your parents what it was like living in the time period between the launch of the first affordable CD players and when a decent amount of content was available), but whenever the content industry does advance toward that point that we'd like, or even do exactly what we've been asking them to, we simply add more boxes to that flow chart in our head so that "And so, I have no choice but to continue pirating!" is still the sole terminator.
One of these days I'm going to write a web-based excuse-o-meter that will give each user their own custom-tailored rationale for piracy. God forbid some people just admit that they're cheap.
Mechanicals alone are around $0.07 per track by law. Even if you're only making the statutory mechanical rate, if 1,000 kids opt to buy rather than pirate, that's $70 more you'll have each month.
"And the first $2 million of that goes to the label for recording, promotion, etc. before the artist sees anything."
If the CD cost $2MM to produce, why then yes. That's because it was the record label, and not the artist, who invested the $2MM. The "Spend $2MM on producing a record and let the artist have all the revenue" idea doesn't work if you're trying to stay in business.
"Just go to their shows or send them money direct. Seriously."
This is a good philosophy if you don't believe that all the people who helped make the music happen (the engineers, the session musicians, etc.) deserve to be compensated. It could very well be that you only care about the person whose name is on the CD, and you'd prefer not to think about all the others who made the music a reality, or how they get paid. It's an even better philosophy if you only spend your money on CDs where it's the artist who's invested 100% of the money to get their work out there -- and there's plenty of music out there that fits this model. In this instance, it's only right and fair that the artist gets to keep 100% of the money from the sale.
"So in other words, it's exactly the same as buying the record from Circuit City or Tower Records... from which the artists get the same amount of money: none."
"a little" != "none." To many people, particularly when making the choice to pirate or buy, it's the same thing. But since you've written a book, you can probably emphathize with the artists here. You likely don't make much per sale -- maybe enough for a couple of gallons of gas, I'm guessing -- but it all adds up, and my guess is that you would not want a teenager opting to pirate an electronic version of your book using the rationalization that since you only make a little money per sale, it's effectively the same as none. I can guess that your attitude is that if they want to pirate it, then fine -- just don't make up some bullshit excuse about it being okay because you're only making a little money on the sale, which is the same as none.
By the way, when you buy a CD at Circuit or Tower, at the least, mechanicals are paid at around $0.07 per track. That's $0.70 per CD, which is less than you get for each sale of your book, but a CD costs much less than your book. By the way, I know musicians who've made money by selling CDs in record stores... they're more common than you might think. "Musicians don't make money from CD sales" is a common meme among Slashdotters, but it's not as common among professional musicians who actually make money from CD sales.
"I find it sad that no one gave a damn what these people made until P2P came along and they had a reason to question the distribution chain. All of the sudden every P2P file trader is an activist who just standing up to the man. Utter bullshit."
...and CDs weren't "overpriced" and record companies weren't "greedy." It's rare that I see somebody who acknowledges that they pirate simply to save money. It's too often elevated to some sort of social protest on the order of the Montgomery Freedom March.
This type of behavior really isn't about slashdotters or piracy or music or anything like that. It's simply how we human beings are wired to work. American settlers got along fine with the Indians until we got the notion that we wanted to expand into their land; that's when they became whiskey-fueled savages who spread disease and raped our women. Countless times throughout history, if a large group has had the technology and the desire to take something from another group, the first step is to invent a reason for doing so.
"as if the artists received any compensation when you buy music from iTunes or any other music sales service based in US."
They do. Remember a while back when Weird Al was complaining about how he makes less per album on the iTMS than he does on physical CD sales? Compare this to the zero he makes on copies delivered via P2P or the Russian sites.
It may be useful to rationalize that the $0.20 or so somebody would have made from the sale isn't helpful, because $0.20 doesn't get you much. But if a couple of thousand people a month make the choice to buy a track vs. pirating it, then the income may make the difference between paying the rent, and not paying the rent.
Lots of people are of the belief that because artists don't make a particular arbitrary amount via record sales, then it's no harm to simply pirate the stuff instead. But sometimes, the difference between "a little" and "nothing" can be all the difference in the world. I think I'm underpaid, but I wouldn't tolerate somebody cheating me out of money with the rationalization that it's okay because I'm underpaid anyway. Likewise, when I was a kid and making an obscenely low amount for an allowance, I would not have wanted my parents to opt out of paying me because it was such a low amount anyway. How would you feel in these instances, and do you believe that musicians have the same rights as us to be upset if the same thing happens to them?
"yup download your 320x240 resolution movie and hook it up to your 20" normal TV and cringe at the low quality - or worse yet your big 1920x1080i HDTV."
It's not an either-or. I buy low-res content for my low-res devices (such as my iPod) and for convenience (one cannot take a 1920x1020i HDTV on a plane). And I use Netflix to get content to throw on my wall at 110".
"If what I hear about record contracts is true, then that's the case for signed artists as well: they have to pay back all the money the record company loaned them before they get a single cent out of the deal. Therefore, my idea is valid wrt signed artists as well."
That is my understanding as well. That is what I was referring to when I mentioned that the artist is the last one to be paid.
I guess it comes down to whether you feel that people who helped create the music you enjoy, but did not happen to be the person whose name is on the cover art (and I'm talking dozens or more people, from the backup singers to the engineer to the graphic artist who designed the CD), deserve compensation (either directly or indirectly) as a result of your enjoying the music.
"It's still not legal in the p2p case, but it least it's more ethical than paying the RIAA."
The RIAA is a trade group; they don't see a cut of every sale. That's a bit like saying that you pay the AMA when you visit your doctor. A more accurate way to put it is "but at least it's more ethical than paying the record company that produced and distributed the music."
I agree wholeheartedly with your idea (paying the artist directly) if the artist was also the one who did the cover art, engineered and produced the music, planned the marketing campaign, and did all the other things that the record company pays for, cash out of pocket (the costs for which, of course, they recoup from sales, leaving the artist the last one to be paid).
The good news is that people who like the "pay the artist directly" model can find plenty of unsigned artists who do fund all of that themselves; so it's right and proper that you give them cash directly -- after all, they've already paid all the people who helped them make their music, so you're helping to ensure that they end up in the black. But for most of the music out there, whether we like it or not, it's the record company that came up with the funds to make it happen.
To be clear, I think the guys who run Magnatune are great. They're trying what many Slashdotters would believe is the ideal business model for a record company: charge a sliding sale, allow the music to be copied, and don't apply DRM. And as that billboard on the 101 in Palo Alto will attest, it looks like it's starting to work for them.
But consider this: a traditional record company sells a CD to distributors for $10. The money they make from that sale must cover the rather significant cash investment they've made. Magnatune, however, invests no money into artist development and thus has ultra-low operating costs compared to record companies. Yet they charge $8 to $18 per CD.
The GGP stated that record companies don't "deserve" to make above a certain profit margin, and I was asking if Magnatune is on his good side or his bad side, since their net margin per sale is likely much, much higher than that of a typical record company. As you can probably guess, I think the entire issue of whether somebody "deserves" to make a certain profit margin is complete and utter bullshit; Magnatune or iTMS or BMG or whatever have the right to charge whatever the market will bear. And in the case of Magnatune, if they can make a million bucks by adopting the high-margin model of not investing into artists, then more power to them!
"That means they'll only clear a few billion this year instead of the extra hundred million or so that never makes it to the hands of the people who matter most in all this: the artists themselves. The most important people in the music business are the composers and musicians who write and perform the music and the producers and engineers who put it all together."
Allofmp3.com does not help this situation. I find it highly doubtful that allofmp3.com is paying them anything close to what's fair. And they are most certainly not paying the producers or engineers; those people are salaried or contractors and the record company pays them whether the record makes money or not. Buying from allofmp3.com ensures that a couple of Russian guys get money (which I suppose is a good thing), but it leaves the record company to foot the bill for making the music a reality. Or, in other words, "payback."
"For those of you out there who like say... Nelly Furtado, if she put her songs online at her own site for legal download at $.25 a track, she'd be a very rich woman."
This is a very common claim. Slashdotters are often quite full of advice for people in the recording industry. While there are certainly plenty of examples of musicians who've managed to eke out a living selling their music without a recording contract, and instances of bands releasing stuff on their own after their contract is up or they're dropped from their label (TMBG is one example), the fact is that there are still many, many more people who want recording contracts than actually get them. Why haven't Nelly and countless others done the right and proper thing? Broadly speaking, one of three possibilities is correct:
Slashdotters are smarter than musicians about the best way to make money in the industry. If only they'd listen to us!
Perhaps they know something we don't,
...or perhaps they are simply not interested in coming up with the money to produce, record, engineer, market and sell their own music.
"Legality aside, allofmp3.com shows one thing very clearly; the operating costs of a music store. It is possible for them to sell tracks at 10 each and still make enough to cover their operating costs and make a profit on top. This shows the average consumer exactly how much profit the labels are making on a 99 iTunes track (or a $1.45 iTunes track if you buy it from the UK music store)."
Are you of the understanding that once the payment to the record company is subtracted, Apple's operating costs are similar to that of allofmp3.com? Do you believe that Apple pays its staff similar to those earned by Russian workers, and do you believe that it's as cheap to build and maintain data servers in the US as it is in Russia?
No doubt about it -- it's probably a lot more efficient to locate your online business in Russia if you want to save on salaries and operating costs. But don't try to imply that the delta between iTMS and AllOfMP3 costs goes entirely to the record companies, let alone imply that this is "profit."
I love hearty debates about the issues surrounding piracy, but at least do the math.
"And the more they push it, the more people will hear about allofmp3.com. Some of them may visit the site, and see how cheap it is to distribute music online. They may start to realise that it's possible to distribute that 99 iTunes track for 10, cover all distribution costs, and still make a profit."
I was at Best Buy the other day, looking at large flat panel monitors. They were nice, but I just couldn't justify buying one for $1,000. Then when I was in the parking lot, a scruffy looking kid called me over to his car. His trunk was open, and he had some monitors that had "fallen off the truck". And they were only $100! This guy has really shown Best Buy that it's possible to sell a $1,000 monitor for $100, cover all distribution costs, and still make a profit.
"They may start wondering if the recording industry really deserves to be getting 90/track for music that was recorded decades ago by people who are now dead, of if they deserve a 900% profit margin."
It is not mathematically possible to have a profit margin of more than 100%. ITYM "900% markup." But is your issue that record companies charge the same price for music by dead people as they do by people who have not yet shed this mortal coil? If so, do you only pirate music by dead people? A related question: Magnatune allows you to download a CD's worth of music for as low as $5. That's still several X the price of music on the Russian sites. Do you think that this makes Magnatune greedy? At least the traditional record companies will front the artists the production money; Magnatune does no such thing. Do you think they deserve to charge so much?
Smart people -- on both sides of the piracy debate -- know that the record industry is hugely competitive and highly speculative, and that the reality is that net profit margins are actually quite low. With the exception of the big media conglomerates that happen to have recording company arms (and you shouldn't be buying music from them anyway), it's exceedlingly rare to find a record company in the Fortune 500, and the reality is that most record companies are like Magnatune -- they have very small staffs and everybody is generally over-worked and under-paid. This is why there's an inherent issue with flying the "the record companies are greedy" flag when making the choice to pirate or use the Russian sites. At the least, there's the karma issue: it's easy for us to declare that somebody is greedy or makes too much money by some arbitrarily standard when considering whether we're going to violate their rights. But no matter how much money we make, somebody with less money than us just might make that same arbitrary decision about us.
"As soon as another site allows me to set what encoding I want and what bitrate with no DRM, they will get my business. Unfortunately the music industry doesn't understand any of this."
The worst mistake you can make is to underestimate your enemy.
They likely understand just fine that there's a certain set of people who'll go to the Russian sites or P2P if they want DRM-free versions of major label releases; the fact is that they simply do not want you as a customer. The cost of releasing material in non-DRM form is not worth the incremental business from you and like-minded people.
Bully for you if it's really DRM, and not the fantastically low price that makes you an AllOfMP3 customer, but I doubt that's the primary driver for most consumers. If the public at large really considered DRM to be an issue, then emusic, magnatunes and other DRM-free stores would be the kings of the hill, and the iTMS would be struggling. The reality is that the iTMS DRM is lax enough that most customers won't even notice that it's there. For the small subset of customers who indeed find the iTMS prohibitive, and who have the requisite moral compass, then P2P and the Russian sites will serve their needs. But, I think that Apple and the record companies know that there are just some people who will never buy music from legitimate channels.
By the way, if you'd like DRM-free music at any bitrate you like, old-fashioned audio CDs are still a good choice. There are some with easily-defeatble DRM, but most are DRM-free.
"...who reads that as "British Pornographic Institute" every time I see an article about them? Say what you will about the RIAA, at least their name is clearer."
Not hardly; each time the BPI is mentioned, somebody does the "phonographic / pornographic" joke.
"Damn anachronistic Brits. Who the hell says "phonograph" any more?:-)"
If you want to be modded up again, the next time somebody mentions AT&T, you can point out that nobody says "telegraph" any more. And if the NAACP should happen to come up, you can point out that "colored" is also an archaic phrase; in fact, in the wrong context it's offensive. If the ACM has a chapter on your campus, you can point it out to them that "computing machinery" is rather old-fashioned. No mod points for real-life corrections, though.
"How do they expect to compete with the illigit stuff? I can either download and play the illigit items on anything I own or pay for the content and only play it on the windows machine with the approved player?"
The iTMS seems to be doing well, despite the fact that DRM-free versions of the same content are usually available via P2P. Or via Russian sites like allofmp3, which are sorta legit, because you're paying, and the Russians assure us that the artists are being paid.
The quick answer is that there are indeed lots of people who'd never pay for something online -- but those people aren't the primary target market for the iTMS and other paid content delivery services. Or, as you put it very succinctly:
"no thanks. Offer it without DRM so I can play it on my archos, mythbox, and other items that are not approved or I am not buying."
However, "I am not in the target market" != "this product is doomed to fail."
I imagine many people reading this believe that voluntarily paying for some DRMed content, when the easily copyable version is available for free via P2P, is a waste of money, if not downright idiotic. But nonetheless, there's enough people like that out there to make a market.
"Wrong, copying was quite efficient since there was a large class of slaves and copying of books was just as big an industry as today. And literacy in the ancient world was higher than people today often think."
Thank you for the clarification. I am always glad to learn something new. What was the literacy rate in ancient Greece? Were slaves also part of the target market for books? When you say that the book publishing industry was just as big back then, how big was it? I assume you don't mean in units or currency, but in books consumed per capita?
"No, firms which sell copyrighted content often make creators sign away their rights. Copyright doesn't work for the little guy, he either sells away his rights or he doesn't get published at all."
I'm a "little guy," at least in the sense that you're using, and I've had no problem whatsoever publishing my web site and filling it with content which I've copyrighted. I've done pretty well, too. In the music and print publishing industries there are plenty of outlets for people who want to start small and/or retain all rights to their works. There's plenty of opportunity for little guys to get their work out there, and use copyright as they see fit.
The ice cream retailing industry can also be tough for the little guy. It's dominated by big companies like Ben and Jerry's and Baskin Robbins. It can be quite hard for somebody who wants to start an independent ice cream shop -- they simply don't have the marketing or ad budget of the big guys, they'll likely pay more for materials, and they need to build brand awareness and sales from zero. The same goes for lots of other industries. This is a feature of the competitive retail market, and not limited to the IP industries.
"IMHO, an artist should be concerned with one thing: the spreading of his art."
Not food, clothing, shelter, feeding their family?
I see on your xanga that you are married. Would your wife be happy if you told her that you would no longer try to earn money for what you do? I also see that you just bought a new Mac -- great! Did you buy that with money you earned by working?
"Art used to be thought of as a means of promoting thought and creativity but gradually began to be thought of as a means of profit and popularity."
Art has been made for profit since the history of currency. Shakespeare, Mozart, and countless other grand masters were in it for the money. Sure, they liked what they did, but they were in it for the money -- just as you might have chosen a career in programming or IT because you enjoy it, but you're doing it for the money.
"Are artists going to make as much money? Probably not. Should that be their focus? I don't think so."
Well, I think that people in [INSERT ANDREW NAGY'S PROFESSION HERE] are too money-focused, and paying people like Andrew should be voluntary. Will Andrew make as much money? Probably not. But we'll get [THE OUTPUT OF ANDREW NAGY'S PROFESSION] for free, or at least cheaper.
I also see from your xanga that you are a religous man. Please re-read Luke 6:31, Luke 10:27 and Matthew 7:12 and consider how you can reconcile your attitude toward artists with the teachings of Jesus.
"Actually, it is copyright that is an entirely recent development, for it appeared only a few hundred years ago in the West."
I believe you're referring to the Statute of Anne and the Licensing Act of 1662. It is no coincidence that these came about at around the same time as the printing press.
"The ancient world had no concept of "intellectual property", and creators of content in Greece and Rome understood that their work would be freely copied without compensation."
Because, of course, copying was a slow, tedious process, and most people were illiterate anyway. It was a non-issue.
Other examples of laws changing to keep up with the times:
Rules for storing and handling perishible foods weren't necessary in the past, because most people grew or raised their own food, and refrigeration and preservation technology simply didn't exist on the scale they do now. Today, we need those laws.
In the 19th century, the equivalents of our modern vehicle codes dealt only with how to behave with your horse and your carriage. As cars appeared on the scene and their technology improved, the vehicle code got bigger and bigger.
Pirating software and music and giving it away without accepting cash payment was, generally speaking, legal in the past because it simply wasn't feasible to make massive quantities of software or music and give them away for free. As with the subject of copying printed works in the days before the printing press, it was a non-issue. With the advent of the Internet and mechanisms like FTP, this suddenly changed, so the Clinton Administration closed this loophole.
"Our ancestors didn't need copyright laws, so we don't either" is a good rallying cry for P2P enthusiasts, but it breaks down on inspection. Those same P2P enthusiasts are likely very grateful for the new laws that protect them in the countless other parts of life where technology has continuously improved. While we may still wish that copyright law had remained in its pre-printing press (or even pre-broadband) form, we understand why it has not.
"However, the recent and geographically-limited genesis of copyright should nonetheless make one question if it is indeed a desirable institution, or merely a means of protecting the rich while limiting the rights of the many."
Copyright law protects us all. You have the right to say how your work is copied whether you make $10 a year, a million bucks a year, or even give it away for free. Lots of other laws help rich and poor alike.
Slashdot Mirror
"Sure you can "make sure you let everyone know your position and explain why you're taking that position", but that level of detail doesn't reach the sales figures of the RIAA. Show demand for the music (if there is any demand for it), just not the company's "Reign of Terror". So called piracy boycotts the business model thrusted upon us every time we want to listen to music, but still retains the demand for the music."
That's one of the more interesting rationales for piracy I've heard. If I understand you, pirating music is helpful to the cause because it indicates demand for the product, without compensating the people who made the product possible. I suppose this will motivate record companies in the same way that a high shrinkage rate will motivate a retail store to lower their prices -- after all, it shows that prospective customers want the product, but they're not willing to pay for the product and are instead using illegal means to get it. 5, Insightful to the first person who points out that shoplifting is not the same as piracy.
"I know everyone has said it, but give me a good-quality, DRM-free system (read: the system allofmp3.com uses), and I will be generous with my hard-earned cash."
The Russian sites don't need to worry about DRM because they don't have permission to sell the music in the first place. They are pirates who are exploiting a loophole in Russian law by paying for a broadcast license while allowing people to download the music. Web broadcast licenses are typically on the order of a couple of hundred bucks a month; if you and others download a collective million tracks a month from allofmp3, that's two thousanths of a cent per track for the artists, assuming ROMS manages to distribute the money.
As you know, there are sites like emusic and Magnatune which also distribute DRM-free music. The prices are higher than the Russian sites because they actually pay the artists. Out of curiosity, have you been generous with your hard-earned cash on these sites as well, or does it largely go to allofmp3?
"Ok, maybe she hasn't used a computer before.. Thats fine, but unless this person is uncontrollably stupid "dusted near the parts that she believes are a computer." How many people in a normal society would even be able to recongnize a computer! I think this person is playing extra stupid as part of her defense."
What TFA article doesn't mention is that Beckermen is her lawyer. And yeah, he's exagerating the hell out of the situation for sympathy. Which is what he's expected to do as a lawyer, so I have no problem with that.
Beckerman has a blog on the case. The equally valid explanation (but not nearly as glamorous as her lawyer paints it) is that somebody else in her house is the P2P fiend, and the ISP bill just happens to be in the defendant's name. That's an extremely common scenario; the RIAA often sues parents on behalf of their kids.
They do. In the UK there's the Association of Independent Music, and in Australia there's AIR. In Canada there's CIRPA, and in the US there's the A2IM. I found these by taking a few seconds to goodle on "independent record labels."
Many, if not most of them, do issue press releases, as you suggest.
I suspect that while the indie labels aren't suing people left and right, they may not be as pro-piracy as you expect. I knew a fellow once who ran an indie record label. He had ten employees and paid himself the princely sum of $20K per year. When x% of the population opted to pirate rather than buy a CD from a major label, all it meant was that somebody you never heard of got laid off or didn't get a raise that year. When his artists' works started showing up on the P2P services, it meant that he had to lay off his friends. Although it's the major labels (through their mouthpiece, the RIAA) make the most noise about piracy, the large RIAA-affiliated labels are actually more resilient to piracy, while the indie labels often run on razor-thin budgets. We can talk about how piracy actually helps the artist because it gets their music out there, we might buy a shirt or go to a concert, etc. but the reality for the tiny 10-person labels (who put up the cash to fund the CDS and who rely on sales to stay in business) is that they must pay the rent and pay their employees each month -- no exceptions, no excuses. If income isn't meeting expenses, it's simply not enough that some 17-year-old in Minnesota loves the copy of your CD that he got via BitTorrent.
"Honestly, the idea of DRMs pisses so many people off that they simply can't stay around for long. The consumer hates not being trusted, and won't buy things that have DRMs. DRMs will be a thing of the past in the next decade, I have faith."
Yet the iTMS is a phenomenal success, while emusic and Maganatune are virtually unknown by the public.
For what it's worth, the iTMS DRM has never bothered me. I can burn as many copies of a playlist as I want to, burn stuff for my car, and listen to it on as many computers as I want to. I couldn't start burning unlimited copies and selling them on the street corner, or drop the files into a P2P share directory, without jumping through a few hoops... but that's sort of the point of DRM. When you refer to "the consumer," you don't speak for me.
Agreed... the record companys will try to screw over the artists in any way they can. It's the supply and demand inequity; when there's a lot of supply, the suppliers tend to be treated like crap. And true stardom and financial independence in the music industry is about as hard or harder to come by as in other industries. Just as Kanye West doesn't represent all artists, Larry Ellison doesn't represent all of us in the computer biz.
My main point is that these facts do not justify pirating music vs. buying it. The old "two wrongs don't make a right" thing. Many people disagree with me, though.
"It's not unreasonable for people to have demands to show that the music industry is actually doing something productive."
You can answer that one yourself. I have a pretty good voice, I'm reasonably cute and I have this sheet of lyrics and a guitar. Are you up to the task of:
If you can do all that for me, and do it for free (that is, finding skilled people to do all the above, and who are willing to do it gratis), then you're 100% right -- the record companies simply do not do anything productive, and they're investing lots of money by hiring lots of experts for a set of tasks that you could do for free.
But, in case you're wondering, if I ever do write that excuse-o-matic, "the record companies are parasites" will be an option, as it's a common rationale.
"But 10c out of every $20 cd is a lot of wiggle and experimentation room, we'd just like to see artists pushing people to take a look at that 2000% discrepancy."
If you're paying $20 on average CDs, that's something you should correct on your own. The average price of a new CD in the US is down to $13 or $14, which means that they are sold into disti for about $10 or $11. What happens with that $10 or $11 can be further disected by looking at the costs of all the things I mentioned in my list above, but as the math texts state, that's an exercise left for the reader. The reason the royalty slice of that $10 pie is a buck or two, vs. say five bucks, is supply and demand: there are a lot more people who want recording contracts than can get them, so the record companies have the luxury of paying as little as legally possible. This isn't a concept the recording industry invented; if, say, you were hiring a designer to redo your web site, you'd find that the quotes would vary greatly depending on whether there were two web designers in your town, or two hundred.
But, yeah, the "CDs cost $20 and the artist only gets $0.10" (I love how both numbers are exagerated in opposite directions) will be on the excuse-o-matic; for many people, paying the artist nothing is rationalized as being better for the artist than paying them an amount which we arbitrarily deem to be too low.
This has been fun -- what say we make a Starbucks run? A grande frap with an extra shot costs around $3.80 around here -- if the barista makes a hundred of them an hour, s/he probably made about $0.07 for the priveledge. While we're enjoying our drinks we can talk about how the record company profit margins are way out of line, and -- everybody say it with me -- "so, I have no choice but to pirate." By the way, nice Kenneth Cole shoes you're wearing. Did you pay retail for them?
"You don't like this sort of compromise WHY, exectly?"
I can't speak for the GP, but I've noticed that many Slashdotters appear to have a flow chart in their head that has a single terminator labelled "And so, I have no choice but to continue pirating!". It's a given, of course, that the content industries creep along at a speed slower than we'd like (you younger folks can ask your parents what it was like living in the time period between the launch of the first affordable CD players and when a decent amount of content was available), but whenever the content industry does advance toward that point that we'd like, or even do exactly what we've been asking them to, we simply add more boxes to that flow chart in our head so that "And so, I have no choice but to continue pirating!" is still the sole terminator.
One of these days I'm going to write a web-based excuse-o-meter that will give each user their own custom-tailored rationale for piracy. God forbid some people just admit that they're cheap.
"It's $0.03 for a $0.99 song. Don't lie."
Mechanicals alone are around $0.07 per track by law. Even if you're only making the statutory mechanical rate, if 1,000 kids opt to buy rather than pirate, that's $70 more you'll have each month.
"And the first $2 million of that goes to the label for recording, promotion, etc. before the artist sees anything."
If the CD cost $2MM to produce, why then yes. That's because it was the record label, and not the artist, who invested the $2MM. The "Spend $2MM on producing a record and let the artist have all the revenue" idea doesn't work if you're trying to stay in business.
"Just go to their shows or send them money direct. Seriously."
This is a good philosophy if you don't believe that all the people who helped make the music happen (the engineers, the session musicians, etc.) deserve to be compensated. It could very well be that you only care about the person whose name is on the CD, and you'd prefer not to think about all the others who made the music a reality, or how they get paid. It's an even better philosophy if you only spend your money on CDs where it's the artist who's invested 100% of the money to get their work out there -- and there's plenty of music out there that fits this model. In this instance, it's only right and fair that the artist gets to keep 100% of the money from the sale.
"So in other words, it's exactly the same as buying the record from Circuit City or Tower Records... from which the artists get the same amount of money: none."
"a little" != "none." To many people, particularly when making the choice to pirate or buy, it's the same thing. But since you've written a book, you can probably emphathize with the artists here. You likely don't make much per sale -- maybe enough for a couple of gallons of gas, I'm guessing -- but it all adds up, and my guess is that you would not want a teenager opting to pirate an electronic version of your book using the rationalization that since you only make a little money per sale, it's effectively the same as none. I can guess that your attitude is that if they want to pirate it, then fine -- just don't make up some bullshit excuse about it being okay because you're only making a little money on the sale, which is the same as none.
By the way, when you buy a CD at Circuit or Tower, at the least, mechanicals are paid at around $0.07 per track. That's $0.70 per CD, which is less than you get for each sale of your book, but a CD costs much less than your book. By the way, I know musicians who've made money by selling CDs in record stores... they're more common than you might think. "Musicians don't make money from CD sales" is a common meme among Slashdotters, but it's not as common among professional musicians who actually make money from CD sales.
"I find it sad that no one gave a damn what these people made until P2P came along and they had a reason to question the distribution chain. All of the sudden every P2P file trader is an activist who just standing up to the man. Utter bullshit."
...and CDs weren't "overpriced" and record companies weren't "greedy." It's rare that I see somebody who acknowledges that they pirate simply to save money. It's too often elevated to some sort of social protest on the order of the Montgomery Freedom March.
This type of behavior really isn't about slashdotters or piracy or music or anything like that. It's simply how we human beings are wired to work. American settlers got along fine with the Indians until we got the notion that we wanted to expand into their land; that's when they became whiskey-fueled savages who spread disease and raped our women. Countless times throughout history, if a large group has had the technology and the desire to take something from another group, the first step is to invent a reason for doing so.
"i buy the content once then use my fair use rights and format shift."
Sounds like you have more time than money. For me, it's the opposite. There's room for both of us in this market.
"but no, i don't have a video iCrack, nor do i want one (i have a portable DVD player I hardly use)."
Once you're logging 100K air miles a year, that might change!
"as if the artists received any compensation when you buy music from iTunes or any other music sales service based in US."
They do. Remember a while back when Weird Al was complaining about how he makes less per album on the iTMS than he does on physical CD sales? Compare this to the zero he makes on copies delivered via P2P or the Russian sites.
It may be useful to rationalize that the $0.20 or so somebody would have made from the sale isn't helpful, because $0.20 doesn't get you much. But if a couple of thousand people a month make the choice to buy a track vs. pirating it, then the income may make the difference between paying the rent, and not paying the rent.
Lots of people are of the belief that because artists don't make a particular arbitrary amount via record sales, then it's no harm to simply pirate the stuff instead. But sometimes, the difference between "a little" and "nothing" can be all the difference in the world. I think I'm underpaid, but I wouldn't tolerate somebody cheating me out of money with the rationalization that it's okay because I'm underpaid anyway. Likewise, when I was a kid and making an obscenely low amount for an allowance, I would not have wanted my parents to opt out of paying me because it was such a low amount anyway. How would you feel in these instances, and do you believe that musicians have the same rights as us to be upset if the same thing happens to them?
"yup download your 320x240 resolution movie and hook it up to your 20" normal TV and cringe at the low quality - or worse yet your big 1920x1080i HDTV."
It's not an either-or. I buy low-res content for my low-res devices (such as my iPod) and for convenience (one cannot take a 1920x1020i HDTV on a plane). And I use Netflix to get content to throw on my wall at 110".
More choices are good.
"If what I hear about record contracts is true, then that's the case for signed artists as well: they have to pay back all the money the record company loaned them before they get a single cent out of the deal. Therefore, my idea is valid wrt signed artists as well."
That is my understanding as well. That is what I was referring to when I mentioned that the artist is the last one to be paid.
I guess it comes down to whether you feel that people who helped create the music you enjoy, but did not happen to be the person whose name is on the cover art (and I'm talking dozens or more people, from the backup singers to the engineer to the graphic artist who designed the CD), deserve compensation (either directly or indirectly) as a result of your enjoying the music.
"It's still not legal in the p2p case, but it least it's more ethical than paying the RIAA."
The RIAA is a trade group; they don't see a cut of every sale. That's a bit like saying that you pay the AMA when you visit your doctor. A more accurate way to put it is "but at least it's more ethical than paying the record company that produced and distributed the music."
I agree wholeheartedly with your idea (paying the artist directly) if the artist was also the one who did the cover art, engineered and produced the music, planned the marketing campaign, and did all the other things that the record company pays for, cash out of pocket (the costs for which, of course, they recoup from sales, leaving the artist the last one to be paid).
The good news is that people who like the "pay the artist directly" model can find plenty of unsigned artists who do fund all of that themselves; so it's right and proper that you give them cash directly -- after all, they've already paid all the people who helped them make their music, so you're helping to ensure that they end up in the black. But for most of the music out there, whether we like it or not, it's the record company that came up with the funds to make it happen.
To be clear, I think the guys who run Magnatune are great. They're trying what many Slashdotters would believe is the ideal business model for a record company: charge a sliding sale, allow the music to be copied, and don't apply DRM. And as that billboard on the 101 in Palo Alto will attest, it looks like it's starting to work for them.
But consider this: a traditional record company sells a CD to distributors for $10. The money they make from that sale must cover the rather significant cash investment they've made. Magnatune, however, invests no money into artist development and thus has ultra-low operating costs compared to record companies. Yet they charge $8 to $18 per CD.
The GGP stated that record companies don't "deserve" to make above a certain profit margin, and I was asking if Magnatune is on his good side or his bad side, since their net margin per sale is likely much, much higher than that of a typical record company. As you can probably guess, I think the entire issue of whether somebody "deserves" to make a certain profit margin is complete and utter bullshit; Magnatune or iTMS or BMG or whatever have the right to charge whatever the market will bear. And in the case of Magnatune, if they can make a million bucks by adopting the high-margin model of not investing into artists, then more power to them!
"That means they'll only clear a few billion this year instead of the extra hundred million or so that never makes it to the hands of the people who matter most in all this: the artists themselves. The most important people in the music business are the composers and musicians who write and perform the music and the producers and engineers who put it all together."
Allofmp3.com does not help this situation. I find it highly doubtful that allofmp3.com is paying them anything close to what's fair. And they are most certainly not paying the producers or engineers; those people are salaried or contractors and the record company pays them whether the record makes money or not. Buying from allofmp3.com ensures that a couple of Russian guys get money (which I suppose is a good thing), but it leaves the record company to foot the bill for making the music a reality. Or, in other words, "payback."
"For those of you out there who like say... Nelly Furtado, if she put her songs online at her own site for legal download at $.25 a track, she'd be a very rich woman."
This is a very common claim. Slashdotters are often quite full of advice for people in the recording industry. While there are certainly plenty of examples of musicians who've managed to eke out a living selling their music without a recording contract, and instances of bands releasing stuff on their own after their contract is up or they're dropped from their label (TMBG is one example), the fact is that there are still many, many more people who want recording contracts than actually get them. Why haven't Nelly and countless others done the right and proper thing? Broadly speaking, one of three possibilities is correct:
"Legality aside, allofmp3.com shows one thing very clearly; the operating costs of a music store. It is possible for them to sell tracks at 10 each and still make enough to cover their operating costs and make a profit on top. This shows the average consumer exactly how much profit the labels are making on a 99 iTunes track (or a $1.45 iTunes track if you buy it from the UK music store)."
Are you of the understanding that once the payment to the record company is subtracted, Apple's operating costs are similar to that of allofmp3.com? Do you believe that Apple pays its staff similar to those earned by Russian workers, and do you believe that it's as cheap to build and maintain data servers in the US as it is in Russia?
No doubt about it -- it's probably a lot more efficient to locate your online business in Russia if you want to save on salaries and operating costs. But don't try to imply that the delta between iTMS and AllOfMP3 costs goes entirely to the record companies, let alone imply that this is "profit."
I love hearty debates about the issues surrounding piracy, but at least do the math.
"And the more they push it, the more people will hear about allofmp3.com. Some of them may visit the site, and see how cheap it is to distribute music online. They may start to realise that it's possible to distribute that 99 iTunes track for 10, cover all distribution costs, and still make a profit."
I was at Best Buy the other day, looking at large flat panel monitors. They were nice, but I just couldn't justify buying one for $1,000. Then when I was in the parking lot, a scruffy looking kid called me over to his car. His trunk was open, and he had some monitors that had "fallen off the truck". And they were only $100! This guy has really shown Best Buy that it's possible to sell a $1,000 monitor for $100, cover all distribution costs, and still make a profit.
"They may start wondering if the recording industry really deserves to be getting 90/track for music that was recorded decades ago by people who are now dead, of if they deserve a 900% profit margin."
It is not mathematically possible to have a profit margin of more than 100%. ITYM "900% markup." But is your issue that record companies charge the same price for music by dead people as they do by people who have not yet shed this mortal coil? If so, do you only pirate music by dead people? A related question: Magnatune allows you to download a CD's worth of music for as low as $5. That's still several X the price of music on the Russian sites. Do you think that this makes Magnatune greedy? At least the traditional record companies will front the artists the production money; Magnatune does no such thing. Do you think they deserve to charge so much?
Smart people -- on both sides of the piracy debate -- know that the record industry is hugely competitive and highly speculative, and that the reality is that net profit margins are actually quite low. With the exception of the big media conglomerates that happen to have recording company arms (and you shouldn't be buying music from them anyway), it's exceedlingly rare to find a record company in the Fortune 500, and the reality is that most record companies are like Magnatune -- they have very small staffs and everybody is generally over-worked and under-paid. This is why there's an inherent issue with flying the "the record companies are greedy" flag when making the choice to pirate or use the Russian sites. At the least, there's the karma issue: it's easy for us to declare that somebody is greedy or makes too much money by some arbitrarily standard when considering whether we're going to violate their rights. But no matter how much money we make, somebody with less money than us just might make that same arbitrary decision about us.
"As soon as another site allows me to set what encoding I want and what bitrate with no DRM, they will get my business. Unfortunately the music industry doesn't understand any of this."
The worst mistake you can make is to underestimate your enemy.
They likely understand just fine that there's a certain set of people who'll go to the Russian sites or P2P if they want DRM-free versions of major label releases; the fact is that they simply do not want you as a customer. The cost of releasing material in non-DRM form is not worth the incremental business from you and like-minded people.
Bully for you if it's really DRM, and not the fantastically low price that makes you an AllOfMP3 customer, but I doubt that's the primary driver for most consumers. If the public at large really considered DRM to be an issue, then emusic, magnatunes and other DRM-free stores would be the kings of the hill, and the iTMS would be struggling. The reality is that the iTMS DRM is lax enough that most customers won't even notice that it's there. For the small subset of customers who indeed find the iTMS prohibitive, and who have the requisite moral compass, then P2P and the Russian sites will serve their needs. But, I think that Apple and the record companies know that there are just some people who will never buy music from legitimate channels.
By the way, if you'd like DRM-free music at any bitrate you like, old-fashioned audio CDs are still a good choice. There are some with easily-defeatble DRM, but most are DRM-free.
"...who reads that as "British Pornographic Institute" every time I see an article about them? Say what you will about the RIAA, at least their name is clearer."
Not hardly; each time the BPI is mentioned, somebody does the "phonographic / pornographic" joke.
"Damn anachronistic Brits. Who the hell says "phonograph" any more? :-)"
If you want to be modded up again, the next time somebody mentions AT&T, you can point out that nobody says "telegraph" any more. And if the NAACP should happen to come up, you can point out that "colored" is also an archaic phrase; in fact, in the wrong context it's offensive. If the ACM has a chapter on your campus, you can point it out to them that "computing machinery" is rather old-fashioned. No mod points for real-life corrections, though.
"How do they expect to compete with the illigit stuff? I can either download and play the illigit items on anything I own or pay for the content and only play it on the windows machine with the approved player?"
The iTMS seems to be doing well, despite the fact that DRM-free versions of the same content are usually available via P2P. Or via Russian sites like allofmp3, which are sorta legit, because you're paying, and the Russians assure us that the artists are being paid.
The quick answer is that there are indeed lots of people who'd never pay for something online -- but those people aren't the primary target market for the iTMS and other paid content delivery services. Or, as you put it very succinctly:
"no thanks. Offer it without DRM so I can play it on my archos, mythbox, and other items that are not approved or I am not buying."
However, "I am not in the target market" != "this product is doomed to fail."
I imagine many people reading this believe that voluntarily paying for some DRMed content, when the easily copyable version is available for free via P2P, is a waste of money, if not downright idiotic. But nonetheless, there's enough people like that out there to make a market.
"Wrong, copying was quite efficient since there was a large class of slaves and copying of books was just as big an industry as today. And literacy in the ancient world was higher than people today often think."
Thank you for the clarification. I am always glad to learn something new. What was the literacy rate in ancient Greece? Were slaves also part of the target market for books? When you say that the book publishing industry was just as big back then, how big was it? I assume you don't mean in units or currency, but in books consumed per capita?
"No, firms which sell copyrighted content often make creators sign away their rights. Copyright doesn't work for the little guy, he either sells away his rights or he doesn't get published at all."
I'm a "little guy," at least in the sense that you're using, and I've had no problem whatsoever publishing my web site and filling it with content which I've copyrighted. I've done pretty well, too. In the music and print publishing industries there are plenty of outlets for people who want to start small and/or retain all rights to their works. There's plenty of opportunity for little guys to get their work out there, and use copyright as they see fit.
The ice cream retailing industry can also be tough for the little guy. It's dominated by big companies like Ben and Jerry's and Baskin Robbins. It can be quite hard for somebody who wants to start an independent ice cream shop -- they simply don't have the marketing or ad budget of the big guys, they'll likely pay more for materials, and they need to build brand awareness and sales from zero. The same goes for lots of other industries. This is a feature of the competitive retail market, and not limited to the IP industries.
"IMHO, an artist should be concerned with one thing: the spreading of his art."
Not food, clothing, shelter, feeding their family?
I see on your xanga that you are married. Would your wife be happy if you told her that you would no longer try to earn money for what you do? I also see that you just bought a new Mac -- great! Did you buy that with money you earned by working?
"Art used to be thought of as a means of promoting thought and creativity but gradually began to be thought of as a means of profit and popularity."
Art has been made for profit since the history of currency. Shakespeare, Mozart, and countless other grand masters were in it for the money. Sure, they liked what they did, but they were in it for the money -- just as you might have chosen a career in programming or IT because you enjoy it, but you're doing it for the money.
"Are artists going to make as much money? Probably not. Should that be their focus? I don't think so."
Well, I think that people in [INSERT ANDREW NAGY'S PROFESSION HERE] are too money-focused, and paying people like Andrew should be voluntary. Will Andrew make as much money? Probably not. But we'll get [THE OUTPUT OF ANDREW NAGY'S PROFESSION] for free, or at least cheaper.
I also see from your xanga that you are a religous man. Please re-read Luke 6:31, Luke 10:27 and Matthew 7:12 and consider how you can reconcile your attitude toward artists with the teachings of Jesus.
"Actually, it is copyright that is an entirely recent development, for it appeared only a few hundred years ago in the West."
I believe you're referring to the Statute of Anne and the Licensing Act of 1662. It is no coincidence that these came about at around the same time as the printing press.
"The ancient world had no concept of "intellectual property", and creators of content in Greece and Rome understood that their work would be freely copied without compensation."
Because, of course, copying was a slow, tedious process, and most people were illiterate anyway. It was a non-issue.
Other examples of laws changing to keep up with the times:
"Our ancestors didn't need copyright laws, so we don't either" is a good rallying cry for P2P enthusiasts, but it breaks down on inspection. Those same P2P enthusiasts are likely very grateful for the new laws that protect them in the countless other parts of life where technology has continuously improved. While we may still wish that copyright law had remained in its pre-printing press (or even pre-broadband) form, we understand why it has not.
"However, the recent and geographically-limited genesis of copyright should nonetheless make one question if it is indeed a desirable institution, or merely a means of protecting the rich while limiting the rights of the many."
Copyright law protects us all. You have the right to say how your work is copied whether you make $10 a year, a million bucks a year, or even give it away for free. Lots of other laws help rich and poor alike.