"As I understand it Facts are not copyrightable. A huge list of email addresses is just a big list of facts. If they can't have a copyright on the list of email addresses they can't assert that they've been stolen."
I'm not sure how you made that last logical connection. This isn't a copyright infringement case; it's one of trade secrets and proprietary information. This is the modern equivalent of the old days where somebody might sneak out a big list of customer names and snail-mail addresses -- they're not copyrightable either, but it sure as hell is legally actionable.
" Its not theft, right? AOL wasn't deprived of any property!"
If you use the Slashdot groupthink definition of "stolen property," well then sure. You often see this come up in Slashdot discussions regarding copyright protection. Nonetheless, in the world of trade secrets, mailing lists, and the like, these are the terms that are used. If you leave a company and take with you a copy of a customer list, trade secret, or other confidential or proprietary information, you cannot use the "the company still has a copy so I didn't deprive them of anything" defense. In the real world, this claim can get you a +5, Astute from the Slashdot crowd, but that's about it.
"If he was charged with 'interstate transportation of stolen property', does that mean that he printed out all 92 million screen names and took them in his car across state borders?"
Doubtful. A sometimes common perception among Slashdotters is that the law is immutable and easily defeated by technology, but a look at how the law has changed over the past several hundred years shows that the law does eventually catch up. It's my understanding that interstate transport can now include e-mail as well as the historic methods of postal mail and, as you've mentioned, cars. And, of course, you probably already knew that that database is AOL's property whether it's printed or not.
Other examples: it took several years after the advent of motion pictures before copyright law caught up with them. There were a few years in which films weren't copyrightable, but the law did catch up. When the first cars started being built, there were no vehicle codes (or if there were, they covered things like carriages), but the vehicle codes eventually caught up. And, for most of our history of copyright law, it was basically legal to redistribute copyrighted material without compensation; the law didn't need to cover this because it was simply impractical to print a thousand books and give them away for free. When technology began allowing somebody to put a file on an FTP site and allow widespread duplication, copyright law finally caught up several years later, in the form of the NET act.
"I don't give a fuck if it's technically stealing or not. People can debate all night on the semantics - and boy, around here they sure seem to! Whatever it is, it's not very nice, and it's not very legal."
Good point. If I caught somebody copying my stuff without my permission and trying to tell me that it's okay because it's really just "copyright infringement," or even if they made up some word for it in that African language with the clicking sound, I'd still kick their ass right proper.
" Well, I know Apple does have DRM but you wouldn't know it."
Well put. My personal experience is that Apple's DRM has not once hindered my fair use of the music I've purchased -- and it's even let me do a few things that aren't fair use. I've burned more CDs than I can remember, moved the tracks between PCs and between iPods, and made backups. When I wanted some music on my Zen Touch I simply burned and re-ripped, but this extra step has nothing to do with the DRM layer, but limited AAC compatibility. Compare this with the nightmare that was some of the DRM systems before Apple stepped in. FairPlay is DRM done correctly.
"Since just about every song anybody would want that is available on most pay services is also on P2P networks, what's the harm of removing DRM? People pay these sites for convenience. All these songs are available elsewhere, but it's more difficult to find and download all the songs on an album on edonkey or kazaa. So all they are doing is annoying their customers, since even if these songs did make it on a P2P network, it wouldn't make much of a difference."
A common question, particularly among P2P fans who figure that if they and their friends use P2P, then everybody must use it.
A similar question is "why inconvenience car buyers with locks that they have to keep locking and unlocking, when breaking into a car is so trivially easy for the pros that if they want your car, they'll take it anyway?"
Another one is "why do retail stores use obnoxious anti-shoplifting measures, like stopping me at the door to check my receipt, or those annoying electronic tags I have to take off, when the good shoplifters will find a way to take what they want?"
The point that is vital to understand that the DRM on, say, the iTMS stops the casual pirate, just as the car lock stops the casual car thief and anti-theft measures in stores scare away the kids and the first-time shoplifters. And that's good enough.
And, although many people reading this will simply not believe this, there are lots of people who've purchased from the iTMS but who have no interest or need to install a P2P app. Just as there are red states and blue states, our society has room for people with different moral compasses as it relates to copying somebody else's work without their permission.
You're not the first person by far on Slashdot to see this as a binary, either-or solution: "DRM can be cracked and it can annoy paying users, so don't even try." Unfortunately, in the world of DRM, as in the world of auto security or retail, things aren't that simple. When it comes to security and protecting one's bottom line, a little goes a long way. If you're still not sure what I'm talking about, just ask anybody who's worked in retail.
"So services like this that sell songs without DRM shouldn't be a threat to the industry."
I agree with you here, but probably not for the same reasons. I think DRM-free sites are a great idea, but notice that they largely cater to the unsigned and fringe acts, the ones who vitally need the exposure (an exception is allofmp3.com, of course, where the DRM-less files are put up without the artists' permission). There's definitely a place in the market for them. But when artists and bands get past that point where they're starving for exposure and it's time to finally make some money to make up for all those years of toiling, they'll head to the big boys. Remember, much if not most of the content on iTMS is non-RIAA -- indie labels are flocking to it, too.
"I see the Slashdot population is equally ill informed about their rights. A school principal or administrator is indeed considered an agent of the government for these purposes. Public schools are government institutions, funded by the people. They must act accordingly and obey the constitution."
You're correct in a general sense that we must all obey the constitution, but you got lost on "for these purposes." This is a specific case where you don't have first amendment protection.
To repeat an example I used in another post, if you're an employee of a government agency and your job is to produce the employee newsletter, if one of your higher-ups edits or kills a story, you don't have first amendment protection simply because that person happens to be an employee of a government agency. The government has oversight over its own output -- it has to.
I'm aware that this is a fine line and a difference that may be difficult to grasp, and I certainly haven't made any friends with high school students by pointing this out, but this is how it works. Sorry.
Other people have probably explained it better than me. Keep reading.
"I think you fail to understand that the principal IS the government. He can't censor the news unless it falls into that category that would disrupt the school environment."
The GP's statement is correct. Sorry, but it's your understanding that's off.
Others have probably explained it better than I have, but perhaps an example will help here. Say, for example, once you graduate from high school, you get a job at the Department of Health and Human Services. Your first task is to launch an employee newsletter. Your job is to write the copy, then show it to several people for approval. If one of those people asks that you not publish a particular story -- for any reason -- you don't have first amendment protection here, regardless of the fact that the person who killed the story is a government employee.
I can't quote case law to explain why it works this way, but for me it's one of those "common sense" sort of things.
"How can we teach kids about 1st amendment freedoms when principals have 100% editorial control over school papers?"
Actually, that's a VERY good example to bring up when explaining how the first amendment works, by explaining how the first amendment does not protect you.
I'm sure that everybody reading this has encountered a situation wherein some goober on a web forum was banned or had their posts removed for violating the site's TOS or otherwise for simply being a jerk, and then screamed "[web site name] is violating my first amendment rights!"
The response to this is simple: the web site operator is not the government. And, neither is your principal. The web site owner can do anything he or she wants with their web site, and your principal can do anything he wants with the school newspaper that he oversees. Anybody who thinks that the first amendment will protect them from being banned by a web site or censored by one's high school principal lacks a fundamental understanding of the first amendment.
Several years ago I spent quite a bit of time tracking down and mocking chain letter spammers. A common claim by the spreader of chain letters was that if you put something like "please add me to your mailing list" when sending your $5 to the other suckers, you were actually paying for a "service" and thus evading the law. This, of course, is 100% horse shit.
Today I see a similar branch of Slashdot groupthink -- the belief that, as you put it, the people who work the legal system are stupid, easily confounded, and lacking in common sense. The reality is that the courts are armed with the same bullshit detectors that Slashdotters have.
"Therefore every publisher of a web page with external links is quilty of copyright infringement by linking to a copyrighted work."
Incorrect; the important thing to understand is that it's the rightsholder who gets to decide how their work is disseminated. If you post your own work (and not, say, somebody else's work for which you don't have permission to copy) to a web site, others may link to it, since you, the rightsholder, have made the choice to make it available on the 'net.
Many years ago, some web content publishers tried to take legal means to prevent others from linking to them; they were rightfully laughed out of court. If you post your own work to your web site, you must expect others to link to it and you have no way of stopping this other than taking the work offline.
In case it wasn't clear, in the instance we are discussing, the content available on the web was posted without the creator's permission. This may seem like a trivial point to some, but it's what makes the difference.
We'll have to agree to disagree that the most sought-after producers are people of average talent who simply use ProTools. I believe that in music production as well as many other industries, the cream rises to the top.
The 4% drop last year was just the latest in a multi-year trend. Remember five years ago when new releases at $18 were common? That's almost a 33% drop since then, not even accounting for inflation. I was paying $16 for CDs in 1984; that would be about $28 in today's dollars. If only cars and clothes and food and rent had fallen as much!
"$12.95 is too expensive for what you get on a CD. I'd be willing to pay maybe $1.99 for the average CD. $1.50 might be more reasonable, but I'd go as high as $1.99."
Not going to happen, of course. The record company typically pays the factory north of a buck for the finished CD. A model that allowed for a price of $1.99 per CD would rely on everybody from the artist to the folks at the record store operating on a volunteer basis.
FWIW the average price was reported by NPD; they're a market tracking firm that covers a lot of industries. I use them for tracking data in the PC peripheral industry and their data is usually rock-solid. They get the pricing data not by talking to manufacturers, but by doing store checks. Their music arm is here. An older but more complete announcement, which has a nifty graph showing the price drop over the past few years, is here.
"In other words the members of the RIAA have conspired to abuse their monopoly power and exclude any legal non-DRM market."
There are many legal non-DRM sites. Magnatune is one of them, and I think it fits the model of what many Slashdotters would consider to be the perfect online distribution site: no DRM, MP3 format, payment optional.
The trouble is, sites like Magnatune are flailing, and indie (non-RIAA) record companies are flocking to the iTMS in droves (in fact, I'd guess that the ratio of non-RIAA to RIAA music on the iTMS is higher than it is in most indie record stores). While there will always be outlets for unsingned musicians or indie labels to distribute their music for free or without DRM, the non-RIAA labels are largely choosing the download sites that provide DRM. For a non-DRM site to beat Apple, there has to be a critical mass of not only customers, but content providers that want a DRM-free download site, and so far that hasn't happened.
Anybody reading this can help fix this by writing to their favorite indie label (many are very small; less than a dozen employees, and they will read your letter) asking them to eschew MSN Music, iTMS and the like, and make the jump to DRM-free download sites. It won't happen until indie record labels understand that non-DRM is the way to go, and let's face it, those checks they're getting from iTMS et al will make it an uphill battle. But the power to change this starts with you.
"People deserve whatever other people are willing to pay for their time, talents, and efforts. In this case, that's close to nothing, mostly because of a lack of scarcity. End of story."
The trouble with this theory is that Apple's iTMS has been a wild success, logging millions of downloads. Apple and the record companies are laughing all the way to the bank.
Sure, some people have the moral mindset that limits them to getting their music only via the P2P services and the like, but there's always going to be some people who will break the law to get something for free. For instance, most people buy cars. Some people steal them, and pay zero. This does not make the value of the car zero, nor does it make the car manufacturer "deserve" zero.
" If you want to "support your artists," then you shouldn't give money to the RIAA companies. Fact is that the vast majority of the money you pay for CDs doesn't go to the artists, but to the corporate coffers."
Huh? About 30% of the price you pay for a CD goes to the store that sells it to you. Likewise, most of the money that the record company gets for the CD goes to paying the various people who helped create the CD. "Corporate coffers" sounds like you think it's going into some Gringots-style bank; the reality is that when you buy a CD, a mouse, or most any other consumer good, most of the money you pay ends up paying somebody's salary. In fact, the record industry makes do with margins that are lower than the PC mouse industry, so it's likely that if you buy a CD and a mouse, a higher percentage of the cash you paid for the CD will end up going to help somebody make their living.
"Why do we like breaking DRM? Because if I pay for something, I might want do things with it. You know, throw it on a few computers, play it in my stereo downstairs and also have a copy up at my summer home (I'm dreaming). The Constitution gives us that right, and calls it Fair Use. DRM attempts to defeat our constitutional rights, something that nerds don't like, you dig?"
The constitution says nothing about "fair use rights," and neither does US copyright law. If you'd like to learn more, you can read what US code has to say about fair use. There's also the Wikipedia entry and EFF primer. Fair use doctrine gives you a set of legal outs if you're brought into court for copyright infringement (ie. you can attempt to use the guidelines in that section to show that your actions were fair use), but fair use doctrine most definitely does not disallow a rightsholder from taking steps to prevent their work from being copied in an unauthorized manner.
Either way, you're allowed, under fair use doctrine, to make a copy of music you've purchased for personal use. I do this all the time with stuff I've purchased from iTunes, without breaking their DRM -- the folks at Apple who set up the DRM policies took a sensible approach, and their DRM allows me to move tracks between multiple iPods, make backups of the tracks, burn them to CD as often as I want, and even burn multiple copies for friends (which is definitely not fair use, but iTunes doesn't stop me from doing it anyway). In short, Apple's DRM has not stopped me from doing anything I've wanted to that would fall under the realm of fair use. Apple's DRM does not allow me to put a track in a P2P share directory so dozens of people I don't know can download it and listen to it, but that's not "fair use" by any stretch of the imagination.
If you ever come across a music download service that doesn't allow you to make copies for personal use, then that service is retarded and will hopefully die the death it deserves. Apple's DRM is remarkably easy-going, and I think this is one of the reasons that the iTMS is such a wild success.
"Where this all ends: a new business model will be developed in which artists can make money making music. This will, in all likelihood, spell the end of the RIAA and music companies as we know them. The RIAA knows this, and is just trying to hold off that day as long as it can; Hilary Rosen (former head of RIAA) has admitted this in interviews."
I see this stated on Slashdot a lot; it's been a common statement ever since the days of the original Napster. But I never see anybody estimate when this will happen. When do you think it will occur? A year? Five years, ten years? No right or wrong answers, of course; I'm just curious what you think.
"The MPAA shouldn't be giving out legal advice that they know is incorrect."
I think it's been pretty well established that the software warns you about its limitations. It should be obvious that it would be difficult to write an app that compared media files to a gigantic database of every known media file. The MPAA doesn't even try; it simply does its best and warns you in advance about the scope of what it does.
"They have enough legal resources to prove that anything you have written has been written before, is copyrighted, and was unconsciously copied into your so-called composition. It doesn't matter that you wrote it, they still already own it. If it's music, they own it. They own all music."
If you have allegedly copied a composition, then it's the publisher or the composer themself with whom you might be in trouble, not the RIAA. The record company typically has the rights to the recording of a song (they get this in exchange for putting up the cash to record it), but whoever wrote the song retains copyright on their lyrics or music. The composer and songwriter might enlist the aid of a publishing company to help deal with the copyright on the composition (much as one might hire a manager or an agent if one doesn't want to do everything themselves), but the publishing company is typically a separate entity from the record company, and not a member of the RIAA.
"Who demands artists pay $20,000/hour for some "big name" producer to hit a few buttons in Pro Tools?"
Really? If I buy Pro Tools I'll be as good as Quincy Jones or Nile Rogers? I was always under the impression that musical talent was unevenly distributed, and took lots of work and practice. Would it also be accurate to say that buying an expensive C++ compiler will make me write code as good as the highest-paid professionsals? Likewise, are highly paid programmers not worth the money? If, say, the record companies are suckers for spending crazy money on talented producers, are companies like Google also being stupid when they do what it takes to recruit talented programmers?
"We want more reasonably priced music, but they won't give that to us, either."
Are you sure? Music prices are freefalling. Looks like they're making an effort.
"I love reading posts from Apple fanboys who fail to see the problem with a DRM standard that locks playback to portable devices that our produced by the same company that distributes the music."
It's certainly not a problem for Apple. Their players have an ungodly market share, and I am certain that their strategy of locking the iTMS to iPods has helped. They make a much higher margin on iPod sales than they do music sales.
To put this in perspective, we're talking about music downloads and MP3 players, here. There are a squillion download sites, and a squillion makers of MP3 players. Apple's strategy is paying off for them; that's all that counts. If one doesn't like the way they do this, there are plenty of other options available.
"So why bother a paying user if your product is going to be pirated anyway? It's a battle you can't win; you might as well accept it as a price of doing buisness."
Accepting it is not the same as not taking measures to reduce it. Ask any retailer; they'll tell you that there's always going to be a certain amount of shoplifters, but rather than simply give up trying to fight it, retailers put anti-shoplifting measures into place. These, too, can bother paying users, but retailers have evidently done careful analysis to understand that it's worth the tradeoff. Case in point: Costco (or whatever your local club store is) has chosen the route of inspecting your reciept on the way out, rather than just simply giving up and "accepting" shoplifting. Perhaps Slashdot users know better, but I doubt it. It's a complex situation that cannot be resolved with simple bromides such as "piracy will happen, so give up on DRM."
"I also download a lot, even though i usually end up buying what i really like. I would buy a lot more, but the thing is, music/dvds and even books are still way too expensive. Why not lowering the price, knowing that you'll still make a profit? (no, i don't beleive $20 for a CD is reasonable)."
Huh? CDs haven't been $20 in years, and prices have been falling rapidly. The average price of a new CD dropped 4% last year, to $12.95. The record companies are way ahead of you on this one.
I've lost you on the "knowing you'll still make a profit" part, though. The record industry gets by with pretty shitty margins in general, and many CDs lose money.
This is a case of MGM suing Grokster because they are (in the eyes of MGM) operating in an irresponsible manner that's causing financial harm to MGM. They're not suing the people who run DNS servers. Nobody should seriously worry about the Internet going away as a result of this action.
"Can you take away rights of the innocent in order to prevent illegal actions? To me... outlawing p2p (which on its own is legal) to stop illegal file transfers is like outlawing driving cars in order to stop people from speeding."
Continuing your analogy, the goal of various pieces of litigation and legislation as of late is to force P2P software vendors to act in a more responsible manner. I suppose you could compare this to legislation to require cars to pass minimum crash standards and to include safety belts, or litigation against car makers who make unsafe products.
On one side, there are rightsholders who ask that P2P vendors make attempts to ensure that any content on the network is there with the creators' permission. On the other side, the P2P vendors largely refuse to even consider such a thing; the common argument is that (despite some compelling demonstrations to the contrary) any fingerprinting or filtering system would be absolutely unworkable. The 500 lb. elephant in the room that the P2P providers are ignoring is, of course, that a network without warez, porn and MP3s is a network that people will simply not use in a volume approaching the traffic on unrestricted P2P networks. The folks at Kazaa have gotten very, very rich by providing a medium for piracy, and just like the rightsholders, they don't want to see their revenue stream evaporate.
In short, it's two businesses that want to protect their revenue stream. It's no surprise which side Slashdotters at large are on; it's similar to the situation in which a three-year-old will have more affection for the nice parent that gives them free candy vs. the mean one who doesn't.
"Fortunately now the innards of a pro recording studio can reside on your home PC or Mac, and raison d'etre of the major studios no longer exists. Musicians can go back to doing what they have always done -- making music. Once the recording industry finally dies, those who make great music will earn lots of money from live performances and direct-pay-downloads spread by viral word-of-mouth."
Your post is very astute, but it raises another question. The observation that the Internet is going to kill the music industry Any Day Now has been bandied about since the late 90's. Usually, the same arguments are made: home-built recording studios will replace the professional studios with their professionally trained engineers, and direct Internet distribution will replace the traditional sales channel.
The trouble is, although this claim has been made for nearly a decade, I just don't see it happening. Universal has launched an online-only label, Apple has sold 100 million tracks online, and Apple and the record companies are laughing all the way to the bank. Meanwhile, brave experiments like Magnatune, which many Slashdotters probably see as a better choice for musicians, are foundering.
I think the assertation that the Internet will kill the recording industry lies in the conceit that the Slashdot crowd has an exclusive lock on the understanding of how to use the Internet to one's advantage. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, it appears that the record industry has hired smart people and tasking them with using the Internet as a sales channel.
I'm sure many will disagree with me -- and that's fine. To those of you who do, I'd like your opinion of when you expect the Internet to kill the record industry. Will it take another five years? Ten? And what will it take? From where I sit, the Slashdot crowd will need to convince musicians to stop signing contracts with major labels, and the record labels will need to be forced to stop using the Internet to their advantage. There is a tough task ahead of us.
Slashdot Mirror
"As I understand it Facts are not copyrightable. A huge list of email addresses is just a big list of facts. If they can't have a copyright on the list of email addresses they can't assert that they've been stolen."
I'm not sure how you made that last logical connection. This isn't a copyright infringement case; it's one of trade secrets and proprietary information. This is the modern equivalent of the old days where somebody might sneak out a big list of customer names and snail-mail addresses -- they're not copyrightable either, but it sure as hell is legally actionable.
" Its not theft, right? AOL wasn't deprived of any property!"
If you use the Slashdot groupthink definition of "stolen property," well then sure. You often see this come up in Slashdot discussions regarding copyright protection. Nonetheless, in the world of trade secrets, mailing lists, and the like, these are the terms that are used. If you leave a company and take with you a copy of a customer list, trade secret, or other confidential or proprietary information, you cannot use the "the company still has a copy so I didn't deprive them of anything" defense. In the real world, this claim can get you a +5, Astute from the Slashdot crowd, but that's about it.
"If he was charged with 'interstate transportation of stolen property', does that mean that he printed out all 92 million screen names and took them in his car across state borders?"
Doubtful. A sometimes common perception among Slashdotters is that the law is immutable and easily defeated by technology, but a look at how the law has changed over the past several hundred years shows that the law does eventually catch up. It's my understanding that interstate transport can now include e-mail as well as the historic methods of postal mail and, as you've mentioned, cars. And, of course, you probably already knew that that database is AOL's property whether it's printed or not.
Other examples: it took several years after the advent of motion pictures before copyright law caught up with them. There were a few years in which films weren't copyrightable, but the law did catch up. When the first cars started being built, there were no vehicle codes (or if there were, they covered things like carriages), but the vehicle codes eventually caught up. And, for most of our history of copyright law, it was basically legal to redistribute copyrighted material without compensation; the law didn't need to cover this because it was simply impractical to print a thousand books and give them away for free. When technology began allowing somebody to put a file on an FTP site and allow widespread duplication, copyright law finally caught up several years later, in the form of the NET act.
"I don't give a fuck if it's technically stealing or not. People can debate all night on the semantics - and boy, around here they sure seem to! Whatever it is, it's not very nice, and it's not very legal."
Good point. If I caught somebody copying my stuff without my permission and trying to tell me that it's okay because it's really just "copyright infringement," or even if they made up some word for it in that African language with the clicking sound, I'd still kick their ass right proper.
"Do I have that about right?"
You forgot the part about the "it's only piracy if you're on a boat" idiots.
" Well, I know Apple does have DRM but you wouldn't know it."
Well put. My personal experience is that Apple's DRM has not once hindered my fair use of the music I've purchased -- and it's even let me do a few things that aren't fair use. I've burned more CDs than I can remember, moved the tracks between PCs and between iPods, and made backups. When I wanted some music on my Zen Touch I simply burned and re-ripped, but this extra step has nothing to do with the DRM layer, but limited AAC compatibility. Compare this with the nightmare that was some of the DRM systems before Apple stepped in. FairPlay is DRM done correctly.
"Since just about every song anybody would want that is available on most pay services is also on P2P networks, what's the harm of removing DRM? People pay these sites for convenience. All these songs are available elsewhere, but it's more difficult to find and download all the songs on an album on edonkey or kazaa. So all they are doing is annoying their customers, since even if these songs did make it on a P2P network, it wouldn't make much of a difference."
A common question, particularly among P2P fans who figure that if they and their friends use P2P, then everybody must use it.
A similar question is "why inconvenience car buyers with locks that they have to keep locking and unlocking, when breaking into a car is so trivially easy for the pros that if they want your car, they'll take it anyway?"
Another one is "why do retail stores use obnoxious anti-shoplifting measures, like stopping me at the door to check my receipt, or those annoying electronic tags I have to take off, when the good shoplifters will find a way to take what they want?"
The point that is vital to understand that the DRM on, say, the iTMS stops the casual pirate, just as the car lock stops the casual car thief and anti-theft measures in stores scare away the kids and the first-time shoplifters. And that's good enough.
And, although many people reading this will simply not believe this, there are lots of people who've purchased from the iTMS but who have no interest or need to install a P2P app. Just as there are red states and blue states, our society has room for people with different moral compasses as it relates to copying somebody else's work without their permission.
You're not the first person by far on Slashdot to see this as a binary, either-or solution: "DRM can be cracked and it can annoy paying users, so don't even try." Unfortunately, in the world of DRM, as in the world of auto security or retail, things aren't that simple. When it comes to security and protecting one's bottom line, a little goes a long way. If you're still not sure what I'm talking about, just ask anybody who's worked in retail.
"So services like this that sell songs without DRM shouldn't be a threat to the industry."
I agree with you here, but probably not for the same reasons. I think DRM-free sites are a great idea, but notice that they largely cater to the unsigned and fringe acts, the ones who vitally need the exposure (an exception is allofmp3.com, of course, where the DRM-less files are put up without the artists' permission). There's definitely a place in the market for them. But when artists and bands get past that point where they're starving for exposure and it's time to finally make some money to make up for all those years of toiling, they'll head to the big boys. Remember, much if not most of the content on iTMS is non-RIAA -- indie labels are flocking to it, too.
"I see the Slashdot population is equally ill informed about their rights. A school principal or administrator is indeed considered an agent of the government for these purposes. Public schools are government institutions, funded by the people. They must act accordingly and obey the constitution."
You're correct in a general sense that we must all obey the constitution, but you got lost on "for these purposes." This is a specific case where you don't have first amendment protection.
To repeat an example I used in another post, if you're an employee of a government agency and your job is to produce the employee newsletter, if one of your higher-ups edits or kills a story, you don't have first amendment protection simply because that person happens to be an employee of a government agency. The government has oversight over its own output -- it has to.
I'm aware that this is a fine line and a difference that may be difficult to grasp, and I certainly haven't made any friends with high school students by pointing this out, but this is how it works. Sorry.
Other people have probably explained it better than me. Keep reading.
"I think you fail to understand that the principal IS the government. He can't censor the news unless it falls into that category that would disrupt the school environment."
The GP's statement is correct. Sorry, but it's your understanding that's off.
Others have probably explained it better than I have, but perhaps an example will help here. Say, for example, once you graduate from high school, you get a job at the Department of Health and Human Services. Your first task is to launch an employee newsletter. Your job is to write the copy, then show it to several people for approval. If one of those people asks that you not publish a particular story -- for any reason -- you don't have first amendment protection here, regardless of the fact that the person who killed the story is a government employee.
I can't quote case law to explain why it works this way, but for me it's one of those "common sense" sort of things.
"How can we teach kids about 1st amendment freedoms when principals have 100% editorial control over school papers?"
Actually, that's a VERY good example to bring up when explaining how the first amendment works, by explaining how the first amendment does not protect you.
I'm sure that everybody reading this has encountered a situation wherein some goober on a web forum was banned or had their posts removed for violating the site's TOS or otherwise for simply being a jerk, and then screamed "[web site name] is violating my first amendment rights!"
The response to this is simple: the web site operator is not the government. And, neither is your principal. The web site owner can do anything he or she wants with their web site, and your principal can do anything he wants with the school newspaper that he oversees. Anybody who thinks that the first amendment will protect them from being banned by a web site or censored by one's high school principal lacks a fundamental understanding of the first amendment.
Very well put.
Several years ago I spent quite a bit of time tracking down and mocking chain letter spammers. A common claim by the spreader of chain letters was that if you put something like "please add me to your mailing list" when sending your $5 to the other suckers, you were actually paying for a "service" and thus evading the law. This, of course, is 100% horse shit.
Today I see a similar branch of Slashdot groupthink -- the belief that, as you put it, the people who work the legal system are stupid, easily confounded, and lacking in common sense. The reality is that the courts are armed with the same bullshit detectors that Slashdotters have.
"Therefore every publisher of a web page with external links is quilty of copyright infringement by linking to a copyrighted work."
Incorrect; the important thing to understand is that it's the rightsholder who gets to decide how their work is disseminated. If you post your own work (and not, say, somebody else's work for which you don't have permission to copy) to a web site, others may link to it, since you, the rightsholder, have made the choice to make it available on the 'net.
Many years ago, some web content publishers tried to take legal means to prevent others from linking to them; they were rightfully laughed out of court. If you post your own work to your web site, you must expect others to link to it and you have no way of stopping this other than taking the work offline.
In case it wasn't clear, in the instance we are discussing, the content available on the web was posted without the creator's permission. This may seem like a trivial point to some, but it's what makes the difference.
We'll have to agree to disagree that the most sought-after producers are people of average talent who simply use ProTools. I believe that in music production as well as many other industries, the cream rises to the top.
The 4% drop last year was just the latest in a multi-year trend. Remember five years ago when new releases at $18 were common? That's almost a 33% drop since then, not even accounting for inflation. I was paying $16 for CDs in 1984; that would be about $28 in today's dollars. If only cars and clothes and food and rent had fallen as much!
"$12.95 is too expensive for what you get on a CD. I'd be willing to pay maybe $1.99 for the average CD. $1.50 might be more reasonable, but I'd go as high as $1.99."
Not going to happen, of course. The record company typically pays the factory north of a buck for the finished CD. A model that allowed for a price of $1.99 per CD would rely on everybody from the artist to the folks at the record store operating on a volunteer basis.
FWIW the average price was reported by NPD; they're a market tracking firm that covers a lot of industries. I use them for tracking data in the PC peripheral industry and their data is usually rock-solid. They get the pricing data not by talking to manufacturers, but by doing store checks. Their music arm is here. An older but more complete announcement, which has a nifty graph showing the price drop over the past few years, is here.
"In other words the members of the RIAA have conspired to abuse their monopoly power and exclude any legal non-DRM market."
There are many legal non-DRM sites. Magnatune is one of them, and I think it fits the model of what many Slashdotters would consider to be the perfect online distribution site: no DRM, MP3 format, payment optional.
The trouble is, sites like Magnatune are flailing, and indie (non-RIAA) record companies are flocking to the iTMS in droves (in fact, I'd guess that the ratio of non-RIAA to RIAA music on the iTMS is higher than it is in most indie record stores). While there will always be outlets for unsingned musicians or indie labels to distribute their music for free or without DRM, the non-RIAA labels are largely choosing the download sites that provide DRM. For a non-DRM site to beat Apple, there has to be a critical mass of not only customers, but content providers that want a DRM-free download site, and so far that hasn't happened.
Anybody reading this can help fix this by writing to their favorite indie label (many are very small; less than a dozen employees, and they will read your letter) asking them to eschew MSN Music, iTMS and the like, and make the jump to DRM-free download sites. It won't happen until indie record labels understand that non-DRM is the way to go, and let's face it, those checks they're getting from iTMS et al will make it an uphill battle. But the power to change this starts with you.
"People deserve whatever other people are willing to pay for their time, talents, and efforts. In this case, that's close to nothing, mostly because of a lack of scarcity. End of story."
The trouble with this theory is that Apple's iTMS has been a wild success, logging millions of downloads. Apple and the record companies are laughing all the way to the bank.
Sure, some people have the moral mindset that limits them to getting their music only via the P2P services and the like, but there's always going to be some people who will break the law to get something for free. For instance, most people buy cars. Some people steal them, and pay zero. This does not make the value of the car zero, nor does it make the car manufacturer "deserve" zero.
" If you want to "support your artists," then you shouldn't give money to the RIAA companies. Fact is that the vast majority of the money you pay for CDs doesn't go to the artists, but to the corporate coffers."
Huh? About 30% of the price you pay for a CD goes to the store that sells it to you. Likewise, most of the money that the record company gets for the CD goes to paying the various people who helped create the CD. "Corporate coffers" sounds like you think it's going into some Gringots-style bank; the reality is that when you buy a CD, a mouse, or most any other consumer good, most of the money you pay ends up paying somebody's salary. In fact, the record industry makes do with margins that are lower than the PC mouse industry, so it's likely that if you buy a CD and a mouse, a higher percentage of the cash you paid for the CD will end up going to help somebody make their living.
"Why do we like breaking DRM? Because if I pay for something, I might want do things with it. You know, throw it on a few computers, play it in my stereo downstairs and also have a copy up at my summer home (I'm dreaming). The Constitution gives us that right, and calls it Fair Use. DRM attempts to defeat our constitutional rights, something that nerds don't like, you dig?"
The constitution says nothing about "fair use rights," and neither does US copyright law. If you'd like to learn more, you can read what US code has to say about fair use. There's also the Wikipedia entry and EFF primer. Fair use doctrine gives you a set of legal outs if you're brought into court for copyright infringement (ie. you can attempt to use the guidelines in that section to show that your actions were fair use), but fair use doctrine most definitely does not disallow a rightsholder from taking steps to prevent their work from being copied in an unauthorized manner.
Either way, you're allowed, under fair use doctrine, to make a copy of music you've purchased for personal use. I do this all the time with stuff I've purchased from iTunes, without breaking their DRM -- the folks at Apple who set up the DRM policies took a sensible approach, and their DRM allows me to move tracks between multiple iPods, make backups of the tracks, burn them to CD as often as I want, and even burn multiple copies for friends (which is definitely not fair use, but iTunes doesn't stop me from doing it anyway). In short, Apple's DRM has not stopped me from doing anything I've wanted to that would fall under the realm of fair use. Apple's DRM does not allow me to put a track in a P2P share directory so dozens of people I don't know can download it and listen to it, but that's not "fair use" by any stretch of the imagination.
If you ever come across a music download service that doesn't allow you to make copies for personal use, then that service is retarded and will hopefully die the death it deserves. Apple's DRM is remarkably easy-going, and I think this is one of the reasons that the iTMS is such a wild success.
"Where this all ends: a new business model will be developed in which artists can make money making music. This will, in all likelihood, spell the end of the RIAA and music companies as we know them. The RIAA knows this, and is just trying to hold off that day as long as it can; Hilary Rosen (former head of RIAA) has admitted this in interviews."
I see this stated on Slashdot a lot; it's been a common statement ever since the days of the original Napster. But I never see anybody estimate when this will happen. When do you think it will occur? A year? Five years, ten years? No right or wrong answers, of course; I'm just curious what you think.
"The MPAA shouldn't be giving out legal advice that they know is incorrect."
I think it's been pretty well established that the software warns you about its limitations. It should be obvious that it would be difficult to write an app that compared media files to a gigantic database of every known media file. The MPAA doesn't even try; it simply does its best and warns you in advance about the scope of what it does.
"They have enough legal resources to prove that anything you have written has been written before, is copyrighted, and was unconsciously copied into your so-called composition. It doesn't matter that you wrote it, they still already own it. If it's music, they own it. They own all music."
If you have allegedly copied a composition, then it's the publisher or the composer themself with whom you might be in trouble, not the RIAA. The record company typically has the rights to the recording of a song (they get this in exchange for putting up the cash to record it), but whoever wrote the song retains copyright on their lyrics or music. The composer and songwriter might enlist the aid of a publishing company to help deal with the copyright on the composition (much as one might hire a manager or an agent if one doesn't want to do everything themselves), but the publishing company is typically a separate entity from the record company, and not a member of the RIAA.
"Who demands artists pay $20,000/hour for some "big name" producer to hit a few buttons in Pro Tools?"
Really? If I buy Pro Tools I'll be as good as Quincy Jones or Nile Rogers? I was always under the impression that musical talent was unevenly distributed, and took lots of work and practice. Would it also be accurate to say that buying an expensive C++ compiler will make me write code as good as the highest-paid professionsals? Likewise, are highly paid programmers not worth the money? If, say, the record companies are suckers for spending crazy money on talented producers, are companies like Google also being stupid when they do what it takes to recruit talented programmers?
"We want more reasonably priced music, but they won't give that to us, either."
Are you sure? Music prices are freefalling. Looks like they're making an effort.
"I love reading posts from Apple fanboys who fail to see the problem with a DRM standard that locks playback to portable devices that our produced by the same company that distributes the music."
It's certainly not a problem for Apple. Their players have an ungodly market share, and I am certain that their strategy of locking the iTMS to iPods has helped. They make a much higher margin on iPod sales than they do music sales.
To put this in perspective, we're talking about music downloads and MP3 players, here. There are a squillion download sites, and a squillion makers of MP3 players. Apple's strategy is paying off for them; that's all that counts. If one doesn't like the way they do this, there are plenty of other options available.
"So why bother a paying user if your product is going to be pirated anyway? It's a battle you can't win; you might as well accept it as a price of doing buisness."
Accepting it is not the same as not taking measures to reduce it. Ask any retailer; they'll tell you that there's always going to be a certain amount of shoplifters, but rather than simply give up trying to fight it, retailers put anti-shoplifting measures into place. These, too, can bother paying users, but retailers have evidently done careful analysis to understand that it's worth the tradeoff. Case in point: Costco (or whatever your local club store is) has chosen the route of inspecting your reciept on the way out, rather than just simply giving up and "accepting" shoplifting. Perhaps Slashdot users know better, but I doubt it. It's a complex situation that cannot be resolved with simple bromides such as "piracy will happen, so give up on DRM."
"I also download a lot, even though i usually end up buying what i really like. I would buy a lot more, but the thing is, music/dvds and even books are still way too expensive. Why not lowering the price, knowing that you'll still make a profit? (no, i don't beleive $20 for a CD is reasonable)."
Huh? CDs haven't been $20 in years, and prices have been falling rapidly. The average price of a new CD dropped 4% last year, to $12.95. The record companies are way ahead of you on this one.
I've lost you on the "knowing you'll still make a profit" part, though. The record industry gets by with pretty shitty margins in general, and many CDs lose money.
This is a case of MGM suing Grokster because they are (in the eyes of MGM) operating in an irresponsible manner that's causing financial harm to MGM. They're not suing the people who run DNS servers. Nobody should seriously worry about the Internet going away as a result of this action.
"Can you take away rights of the innocent in order to prevent illegal actions? To me... outlawing p2p (which on its own is legal) to stop illegal file transfers is like outlawing driving cars in order to stop people from speeding."
Continuing your analogy, the goal of various pieces of litigation and legislation as of late is to force P2P software vendors to act in a more responsible manner. I suppose you could compare this to legislation to require cars to pass minimum crash standards and to include safety belts, or litigation against car makers who make unsafe products.
On one side, there are rightsholders who ask that P2P vendors make attempts to ensure that any content on the network is there with the creators' permission. On the other side, the P2P vendors largely refuse to even consider such a thing; the common argument is that (despite some compelling demonstrations to the contrary) any fingerprinting or filtering system would be absolutely unworkable. The 500 lb. elephant in the room that the P2P providers are ignoring is, of course, that a network without warez, porn and MP3s is a network that people will simply not use in a volume approaching the traffic on unrestricted P2P networks. The folks at Kazaa have gotten very, very rich by providing a medium for piracy, and just like the rightsholders, they don't want to see their revenue stream evaporate.
In short, it's two businesses that want to protect their revenue stream. It's no surprise which side Slashdotters at large are on; it's similar to the situation in which a three-year-old will have more affection for the nice parent that gives them free candy vs. the mean one who doesn't.
"Fortunately now the innards of a pro recording studio can reside on your home PC or Mac, and raison d'etre of the major studios no longer exists. Musicians can go back to doing what they have always done -- making music. Once the recording industry finally dies, those who make great music will earn lots of money from live performances and direct-pay-downloads spread by viral word-of-mouth."
Your post is very astute, but it raises another question. The observation that the Internet is going to kill the music industry Any Day Now has been bandied about since the late 90's. Usually, the same arguments are made: home-built recording studios will replace the professional studios with their professionally trained engineers, and direct Internet distribution will replace the traditional sales channel.
The trouble is, although this claim has been made for nearly a decade, I just don't see it happening. Universal has launched an online-only label, Apple has sold 100 million tracks online, and Apple and the record companies are laughing all the way to the bank. Meanwhile, brave experiments like Magnatune, which many Slashdotters probably see as a better choice for musicians, are foundering.
I think the assertation that the Internet will kill the recording industry lies in the conceit that the Slashdot crowd has an exclusive lock on the understanding of how to use the Internet to one's advantage. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, it appears that the record industry has hired smart people and tasking them with using the Internet as a sales channel.
I'm sure many will disagree with me -- and that's fine. To those of you who do, I'd like your opinion of when you expect the Internet to kill the record industry. Will it take another five years? Ten? And what will it take? From where I sit, the Slashdot crowd will need to convince musicians to stop signing contracts with major labels, and the record labels will need to be forced to stop using the Internet to their advantage. There is a tough task ahead of us.