"Because our law enforcement is acting on the behalf of private companies (who should be filing civil suits against these people) instead of going after the rapists/murders/terrorists of the World."
The Slashdot groupthink during the Napster trial was that the companies should go after the individuals doing the pirating, and not the companies providing the service. When that started happening, popular opinion on Slashdot was that rather than filing unchecked lawsuits, the media companies should let the government take care of it. And now they are. This is another "be careful what you wish for" situation. Either way, if you thought somebody wronged you to the point that crossed the civil/criminal line, you might very well opt to press criminal charges rather than go through the time, expense and the hassle of a civil proceeding. You can expect others to behave the same way.
"Well in fairness they are still going after them -- this just seems like wasted resources to me."
Whether we like it or not, the intellectual property generated by individuals and companies in the US brings in a good share of our money and is a major factor in the quality of life we enjoy today. The short list of countries that have not signed the Berne Convention or otherwise don't have copyright agreements with the US -- Afghanistan, Bhutan, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Nepal, Oman, San Marino, Tonga and Yemen -- does not read as a list of countries in which I'd like to live, or even as a list of countries which are seeing explosions in the International art scene. I appreciate the fact that I own a car, a house, and that I have access to health care and indoor plumbing. The trade-off is, of course, that Microsoft is liable to go all crazy monkey on my ass if they catch me with a thousand pirated copies of Windows XP.
"Or slavery that kept the south in business with cotton. What is your arguement that we can tolerate something bad (like stopping information flow or slavery) if it gives us jobs or coin?"
I think you've nailed it. My right to say how my program or my musical composition is distributed is just like the enslavement of black people in the 19th century.
"(But, on a side note, if some of the music/software/movie vendors got off their high-horse and sold their product at a resonable rate, TONS more people would buy it. $20 for a CD? Hell now... Put it on a shelf for $5 or $10, there's going to be a higher number of purchases... Simple economics."
I'm not sure where you're getting $20... is that Australian or Canadian dollars? For what it's worth, the average price of a new CD is $12.95 in the US. That's 4% less than last year.
It's a given that the folks who run the industries whose goods you desire also understand simple economics. To wit, the demand curve and the necessity of making a profit. The latter would rule out your suggestion of selling for $5.00. In the meantime, if they can make more money by selling a CD for $12.95 than they can for $10, that's precisely what they'll do. That might cause some people to opt out of buying it, or pirate it instead, but the most important thing to understand about the demand curve is that most of the time, you use it not to find the price that will sell the most units, but which will make you the most money.
Also, it's important to understand that if a company or individual clearly doesn't understand "simple economics" and prices something higher than you'd prefer, this is not a moral free ride to pirate the work.
"in fact, the only prediction hellwig got right was that digital music did continue to be popular and record labels did continue to be pissed off about it."
His prediction would be that there would be shakeout in the digital music industry:
"Everyone from Gibson Guitar to PepsiCo to Wal-Mart has announced that they are getting into music downloads in one form or another. The only companies seeing any bottom-line money in any of this are the record labels themselves and companies such as Apple, which can also upsell margin-heavy hardware. As a result, I think we'll see most of the new music sites either shut their doors or consolidate in 2004."
Record companies getting pissed about the success of iTMS and their ilk? They're laughing all the way to the bank. Nobody should think for a moment that they're annoying a record label when they download something from iTMS or the Wal-Mart music store (you really should be using Kazaa if that's your goal). The online download sites are just another sales channel to the record industry.
Thanks for the reply. You may many excellent points but I just had a few more comments.
There's two types of collusion in this sense: there's the type that Microsoft and Logitech do by keeping their mice and keyboards similarly priced with each others', as they know they own the market and there's no need to start a price war. Then there's the collusion where two companies directly cooperate to set pricing. I think the former is what happens in the music industry.
Remember that the price fixing suit only related to the retailers that set up the MAP program with Universal... Tower Records, TWE and one other (I believe Musicland). For one to have been ripped off 100 times, one would have had to buy 100 CDs at Tower Records vs. shopping around on price. Those three retailers still adjusted prices as necessary to be competitive, but when they ran ads (such as in the newspaper), they kept the prices at the MAP level.
As an aside, back in the day when the CD store was the only game in town, I preferred Tower Records to Wal-Mart. They had much better selection, a much better environment, and I didn't mind paying a buck or two extra. I didn't feel "ripped off" when I chose to shop at Tower or an indie record store rather than going to Wal-Mart.
Your estiamtes of the costs associated with materials and royalties are correct (or at least they match my understanding) but there's far more to the retail picture, all that nickel-and-diming that makes the retail biz such a nightmare. Accrual for returns (the record company only makes money if that CD actually sells through to the customer, and many don't), accrual for marketing, for channel programs, shipping costs, damaged goods, and so on (all things that AOL doesn't need to worry about when mailing out free CDs). If the cost of sale on a CD is four bucks and the record company sells it to the distributor for eight, that's not four bucks that the record company gets to keep. Unfortunately it's just not that simple. I acknowledge that it doesn't seem intuitive that the record industry makes do with margins lower than Logitech, but nonetheless it's true.
Lastly, I've met a few owners of indie record labels. They put their blood, sweat and tears into their jobs, underpay themselves, and when business is down, it means that they have to fire their friends. The reality doesn't match the cocaine / hooker perception. While I have no doubt that the presidents of Vivendi and BMG have lavish lifestyles, so do the presidents of Logitech and GM.
Excellent point! I don't fall into the trap of using the term "stealing" for piracy/copyright infringement, but your comments are otherwise astute. When I used to pirate software, I didn't pretend that I was taking part in a social protest, or practicing civil disobedience to fight an unfair law, or any of that nonsense. It was kind of a thrill to nail the copy protection, and it was nice to build a library of software for my Apple//e without having to pay for it.
My general feeling is that copyright law protects us all. Just as many laws can aid big companies as well as individuals, copyright is one of those things that anybody can take advantage of. Disney might hold a metric buttload of copyrights, but that does not preclude you and I having copyrights of our own, and from benefiting from those copyrights if we have the skill and talent to create something that others might want. The vast majority of copyrights are held by individuals -- some rich, but most not. Adopting the belief that copyright violation only hurts big companies, or seeing copyright as an exclusive tool of big companies makes piracy much more morally acceptable, of course, but it blinds us to the fact that if we pirate something rather than pay for it, we might ultimately be hurting somebody very much like us, with a family to feed and rent to pay.
Either way, there's no point in justifying why copyrights now last 70 years. It's simple: because Disney wants it that way, and Disney brings a huge amount of money into our economy. Intellectual property is one of the USA's biggest exports and it's a big part of the reason we enjoy the relatively high quality of life that we do. However, if copyrights lasted 16 or 32 or 50 years, the likely result would not be a glorious age of discovery brought about by Mickey Mouse being in the public domain. Instead, it would mean that every t-shirt factory in the far east would immediately set about cranking out their own Mickey Mouse t-shirts so that they can enjoy some of this revenue rather than Disney. The basic constant of human greed does not change.
"They were not the illegitimate spawn of lawyers and marketing executives to dupe people."
Neither is the definition of "piracy." It's had that definition for at least a hundred years; I believe the etymology relates to unauthorized copying of nautical maps but I might be wrong on that one. At any rate, back when I cracked and pirated Apple software in the 80's, the word had the same definition that it did today, and we flew the jolly roger proudly. Those lawyers and marketing executives are simply using a word that's in the accepted lexicon.
"The point is that the record companies, who WERE found guilty of collusion and price fixing, were the ones setting the wholesale prices, which then dictated the exorbitant retail prices."
You're correct that record companies were nailed for price fixing (but not collusion that I'm aware of; I welcome a cite) and you're correct that manufacturers set the wholesale price, but the price fixing suit had absolutely nothing to do with the wholesale prices being charged. I understand that many people think it did, but it didn't.
Going back to another point you made, you said that the settlement was discounts on future CD purchases. My recollection is that consumers got checks. Do you have a cite?
"Even if WalMart and Best Buy realized that the CDs were grossly overpriced and decided to sell them at a loss to attract customers, that does not in any way take away from the fact that RIAA companies were selling CDs for WAY more than any reasonable costs for the materials and reasonable compensation for the artists and distributors."
Interesting, do you have a cite for that? As you can guess I'm in the retail industry and thus I have an understanding of gross vs. net margin and the realities of what it costs to market and sell a product, and I'm aware of the margin structures of several industries (I'm in the computer peripheral industry myself). Of that $8 - $10 that the record company sells the CD into the channel, a few bucks go toward manufacturing, a few bucks go to royalties, a few bucks go to marketing and promotion, and a bit (if they're lucky) goes toward profit -- a model that's typical in the retail industry. I think many Slashdotters are confusing the gross margin (e.g. looking at the $1.50 cost of goods on a CD and thinking that's all there is to it) with the net margin, which is understandable.
More to the point, Logitech and Creative Labs made net margins of about 12% last year, while Vivendi Universal only managed a negative 3% net margin, and Time Warner, which owns Warner Music, managed 8%. A typical CD is sold on about a 30% net margin, which is less than the net margin you'll pay for that Logitech mouse, and, of course, far far less than you'll pay on housewares, designer clothes, soft drinks, and many other goods you buy every day. The bottom line is that following the supply/demand curve and selling a product for what the market can bear isn't a crime; if record labels and computer peripheral manufacturers can get away with a 30% net margin, DVD player makers must suffice with a 10% margin, and Louis Vitton can get away with a 90% margin, that's the free market economy at work.
It does matter to them. They'd really like to sell you the boxed DVD set of "Desparate Housewives: Season One" when and if they make it available. If the library of episodes is already readily available to anybody with a few clicks, then there's less of a demand for the DVD, which means less money for Disney.
Napster tried this approach with the record companies and failed. They said "the record companies aren't releasing these songs online, so we're not interfering with their market." The courts pointed out that Napster was hurting a potential future market for paid download sites, or rereleases of out-of-print stuff that was then available only on Napster.
"We should all insist on the correct term "copyright enfringement" as society deals with these intellectual property issues."
"Piracy" is also a correct term. If you're using Firefox or Mozilla, type "dict pirate" or "dict piracy" into the address bar.
The word "pirate" is a homonym, one of many, many words that have multiple meanings. Slashdotters manage to not get dogs and trees confused when they use the word "bark," so it's interesting to see folks selectively forget their elementary school education.
"There are laws against what the RIAA does, and the major companies in the recording industry have all been found guilty of collusion and price fixing. The settlement? After consumers fill out forms and other high-hassle jumping through hoops, they get a discount on their next CD purchase. So, who are the REAL criminals here?"
If I had to pick a "criminal" here, I'd say Wal-Mart and Best Buy. A quick primer for those who've forgotten the details of the price fixing suit:
Wal-Mart and Best Buy began selling CDs at the front of the store at or below cost, as a loss leader to bring people into the store to buy the higher margin, higher ticket stuff.
Independent music stores, and chain music stores that sold only CDs (one of whom was Tower Records) complained to the record companies that Wal-Mart and Best Buy were putting them out of business.
The record companies set up a MAP program (which is very common in other industries, such as the PC industry) in which the record labels gave Tower Records and a few other chains funds to run ads, in exchange for agreeing not to display prices below a certain price in those ads. MAP stands for "minimum advertised price" and if you've seen or heard an ad where the price is listed as "call" or "too low to advertise," then you're likely seeing a MAP program in action.
Best Buy and Wal-Mart, ineligible for the MAP program because they were selling CDs at a loss, complained to the government.
The government stepped in, hilarity ensued, you know the drill here. Tower Records declared bankrupcy because they couldn't compete with Wal-Mart and Best Buy, who continue to sell their crappy selection of music and enjoy the last laugh. Meanwhile, many othe industries (including, as I've mentioned, the PC industry) happily continue MAP programs.
As you can guess here, my opinion is that Tower Records was fucked on this one. Many Slashdotters, when they hear "price fixing," think that this had an effect on the price that the record companies sold their CDs into the channel, and thus the profits they made -- it did not. The record companies made the same money whether you bought your CDs at Tower or at Best Buy. In my opinion, the price fixing suit was a win for behemoths like Wal-Mart and a big loss for the indie and chain music stores. It should make no difference to Slashdotters, who are smart enough to know that if Tower Records has a CD for $16 an Wal-Mart has it for $12, they can make their own choice of where to buy it.
"All the BitTorrent sites need to move to developing nations, and parts of Asia where there are few or no copyright laws. In places where people are struggling just to find food, the idea that vapor has value is too absurd to even consider. Move your sites there."
The remaining countries that are not signatories to the Berne Convention include Afghanistan, Bhutan, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Nepal, Oman, San Marino, Tonga and Yemen. You would have to live there and maintain your servers there (and not simply register your company there) to escape prosecution. Most of these countries are not particularly nice places.
If you see offering torrents of copyrighted material as a social protest on the level of the Montgomery Freedom March, and you really think it's worth moving to Ethiopia to pursue this noble and glorious goal of allowing cheapskate teenagers the world over to download their music instead of buying it, then good luck and Godspeed.
By the way, you wrote "all the BitTorrent sites need to move...". Not to be pedantic, but plenty of BitTorrent sites, like legaltorrents.com, are still doing just fine. The MPAA is not declaring war against the BitTorrent protocol, but the people who are abusing the protocol to traffic in pirated material. Perhaps a better social cause, rather than moving to Ethiopia to run that pirate site, is to encourage more copyright creators to voluntarily make their stuff available on legaltorrents.com and its ilk.
The opposite of "literal" is "figurative" and "fly under the radar" seems to have been used in a figurative, not literal sense.
The blind spot that prevented us from seeing the asteroid appears to be a blind spot in the literal sense -- meaning that it prevented us from seeing the rock with optical telescopes, or with our own eyes. I do not believe that the article says that radar was trained on the area, or that the blind spot interfered with said radar.
Additionally, if I read the article correctly, the rock did not enter the atmosphere. For an item to literally fly under the radar, it typically has to be well into the atmosphere.
Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong and this truly flew under radar literally.
It's often much simpler than that. Since it's blindingly obvious to people like you and me that certain torrent sites are dedicated largely to unauthorized content, that goes a long way. That was the point I was trying to make. It's ye olde "laugh test" again... if I were to try to tell you that all those links on Suprnova given titles associated with well-known movies, music and games were actually all misnamed links to Linux distros, you'd laugh in my face -- and rightfully so. If a torrent site tried a similarly silly defense, all the courts would have to do is download a few, verify that the defendant was lying, and then it's game over.
To be sure, the "they would have to download each one to prove it" theory is a common one. Folks rallying around the original Napster (incorrectly) said the same thing, and Napster's gone. Folks also said that they couldn't touch the file sharing "whales" who are being sued for that same reason, yet suing (and settling) they are.
" How can someone prove that they "did not know" something. That is like proving pigs don't fly or WMD don't exist."
It happens in the courts all the time. Rather than pigs, in courts it's often the "if it looks, acts and walks like a duck" principle. Another very simple and common concept (but one of which people without much legal experience are often unaware) is the "laugh test." If you try to go to court making a claim that an average person wouldn't believe (for example, if you ran Suprnova and you went into court claiming that you had no clue that most of the torrents on your site were illegal), you would quite properly be laughed out of court.
To use a more proper legal term, there's also the notion of prima facie. Your "pigs don't fly" example would fall under this. People know that pigs don't fly, so there's no point in even discussing the matter in court. Sure, it's circular, but it saves a lot of time avoiding silliness like "pigs fly" or "I didn't know that my torrent site had torrents of copyrighted materials."
If you haven't yet, you should make your torrents available on legaltorrents.com. Agreed 100% with you that BitTorrent itself has plenty of legal uses. BitTorrent is still alive and kicking, but the torrent sites that provided largely illegal torrents are a bit of an an endangered species nowadays.
You raise an excellent point. P2P is simply a technology; it can be used for legal stuff, too. The problem is -- here shown by the amount of content on suprnova vs. legaltorrents -- that people generally prefer the illegal stuff.
In this case, it isn't "the MPAA vs. technology," as many people often like to frame it. It's "the MPAA vs. individuals who are misusing technology."
Can you please complete the dots? DVDs can be had for about $20.00. Obviously you think that this is an example of gouging. But what do you think is a fair price?
" Is a flawed business model not a legitimate concept? Would you prefer different wording?"
The phrase "flawed business model" is typically used on Slashdot to refer to a company that's taking action that's contrary to Slashdotters' interests. For example, bringing civil or criminal charges against a copyright violator, or releasing closed-source software, or not supporting Linux. The trouble is that declaring said company or industry to have a "flawed business model" appears to be a universal bromide, and it's seldom that the Slashdotter follows up with a viable alternative.
More than that, other evidence typically shows otherwise. Let's take the movie and music industries. Sure, it's relatively easy to pirate their stuff, and sure, they must allocate money toward stopping losses -- but so must just about any business. Adversity is part of running a business, and successful companies address problems directly. You don't simply give up, and you don't capitulate to others simply because they'd like to have your product for free.
The record and film industries with their "flawed business models" are largely doing just fine. Apple just sold its 20 millionth download, Universal has launched an online-only label, and the record companies and Apple are laughing all the way to the bank. Meanwhile, Magnatune, a worthwhile experiment in exploring the "capitulate to piracy and just give away stuff for free" business model, is struggling.
" No, because cars with a license plate regularly pay a road tax. Without it your car cannot be on the public roads."
Sorry, I haven't yet had my coffee, so I don't understand the distinction. Are you saying that hacking a car share program is morally different than hacking a municipally-run bike share program? If I understand you correctly, hacking the bikes is okay, but hacking a car is not, since a car has a license plate?
That was not my intention. Maybe a better way to put it is that such a system (wherein a producer can be held blameless as long as they claim that they intended that it be used for another purpose) would certainly be seen as a benefit to many people, and it can be argued that it's a better way approach cases of legal liability. Perhaps we can agree on that?
Yup. If you know that something you create is going to be misused, or at least believe it likely to be misused, when whatever your claimed intent might be isn't nearly as relevant in the eyes of the law.
I agree with you that such a legal system you describe would be a great loophole ("yes, your honor, we knew that our full-auto sniper rifle that we sold with the easy-to-remove serial number and the fingerprint-resistant casing and the armor-piercing shells would be used primarily for bad guys to hunt humans with, but we made it for shooting deer! Ha ha ha!") -- producers of goods and services could use that to pretty much avoid any responsibility. But, in our society we tend to hold manufacturers to a higher standard.
"It depends on your intent. With Grokster it was intended for the other 10% of uses, and people who came along afterward swelled the numbers with the other 90% of uses."
If that's really the case, then the Grokster developers were naive beyond belief. Had they not heard of Napster? Were they not aware that the vast majority of Napster traffic was unauthorized? Unbelievable.
"No I can't. If I create what I sincerely believe is an original work, some incumbent copyright owner is likely to come out of the woodwork and claim I copied it. This happened to George Harrison, and statistics show it could happen to any songwriter."
The fact that we remember this case at all (it was almost 30 years ago) shows how rare this is. Billions of pieces of artwork are copyrighted each year. The vast, vast majority are not contested. This does not match the definition of "likely" by any stretch of the imagination. There may be good arguments for abolishing copyright, but this ain't one of them.
Either way, I think it's pretty obvious that "My Sweet Lord" is the same song. I think the court ruled appropriately.
"What we don't like is the term "intellectual property" - property is something you can touch - to apply it to anything else is amoral and wrong."
"We" don't like the royal "we," either. The Queen of England can get away with using it; when enybody else does, it tends to look silly.
Your position is understandable, but far, far too many Slashdotters hold this opinion because it's a convenient, guilt-free way to engage in piracy. As in: "I don't P2P all my music because I'm trying to save a few bucks, but because I think that for Usher to claim a copyright on this music is amoral and wrong."
"Maybe this is a troll, but I'll bite anyway. You have a right to do anything that does not harm another. Since they are not even trying to get his money for the show, there's no basis whatever for any claims of monetary losses. The author gains nothing by keeping his work from others, so disseminating it cannot be said to harm him."
Nonetheless, the person who owns the copyright has the exclusive right to choose how it's copied. Whether you think they're making the right choice, or whether you think that they'd agree with your decision, or whether you think that they'll suffer no monetary loss makes no difference. It's their right, not yours.
The balance here, of course, is that anybody can create something and copyright. If you don't like what somebody does with their own intellectual property, you are completely free to release your own under the terms you choose.
That's a HUGE slippery slope. Come on, you can do better than that. If you're really not sure why Suprnova is on legally shaky ground and Google is not, don't take the intellectually dishonest route of declaring Google to be illegal -- instead, ask the questions and do the research. To fight unfair laws, you must first understand them.
Slashdot Mirror
"Because our law enforcement is acting on the behalf of private companies (who should be filing civil suits against these people) instead of going after the rapists/murders/terrorists of the World."
The Slashdot groupthink during the Napster trial was that the companies should go after the individuals doing the pirating, and not the companies providing the service. When that started happening, popular opinion on Slashdot was that rather than filing unchecked lawsuits, the media companies should let the government take care of it. And now they are. This is another "be careful what you wish for" situation. Either way, if you thought somebody wronged you to the point that crossed the civil/criminal line, you might very well opt to press criminal charges rather than go through the time, expense and the hassle of a civil proceeding. You can expect others to behave the same way.
"Well in fairness they are still going after them -- this just seems like wasted resources to me."
Whether we like it or not, the intellectual property generated by individuals and companies in the US brings in a good share of our money and is a major factor in the quality of life we enjoy today. The short list of countries that have not signed the Berne Convention or otherwise don't have copyright agreements with the US -- Afghanistan, Bhutan, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Nepal, Oman, San Marino, Tonga and Yemen -- does not read as a list of countries in which I'd like to live, or even as a list of countries which are seeing explosions in the International art scene. I appreciate the fact that I own a car, a house, and that I have access to health care and indoor plumbing. The trade-off is, of course, that Microsoft is liable to go all crazy monkey on my ass if they catch me with a thousand pirated copies of Windows XP.
"Or slavery that kept the south in business with cotton. What is your arguement that we can tolerate something bad (like stopping information flow or slavery) if it gives us jobs or coin?"
I think you've nailed it. My right to say how my program or my musical composition is distributed is just like the enslavement of black people in the 19th century.
"(But, on a side note, if some of the music/software/movie vendors got off their high-horse and sold their product at a resonable rate, TONS more people would buy it. $20 for a CD? Hell now... Put it on a shelf for $5 or $10, there's going to be a higher number of purchases... Simple economics."
I'm not sure where you're getting $20... is that Australian or Canadian dollars? For what it's worth, the average price of a new CD is $12.95 in the US. That's 4% less than last year.
It's a given that the folks who run the industries whose goods you desire also understand simple economics. To wit, the demand curve and the necessity of making a profit. The latter would rule out your suggestion of selling for $5.00. In the meantime, if they can make more money by selling a CD for $12.95 than they can for $10, that's precisely what they'll do. That might cause some people to opt out of buying it, or pirate it instead, but the most important thing to understand about the demand curve is that most of the time, you use it not to find the price that will sell the most units, but which will make you the most money.
Also, it's important to understand that if a company or individual clearly doesn't understand "simple economics" and prices something higher than you'd prefer, this is not a moral free ride to pirate the work.
Interesting link, thanks.
"in fact, the only prediction hellwig got right was that digital music did continue to be popular and record labels did continue to be pissed off about it."
His prediction would be that there would be shakeout in the digital music industry:
"Everyone from Gibson Guitar to PepsiCo to Wal-Mart has announced that they are getting into music downloads in one form or another. The only companies seeing any bottom-line money in any of this are the record labels themselves and companies such as Apple, which can also upsell margin-heavy hardware. As a result, I think we'll see most of the new music sites either shut their doors or consolidate in 2004."
Record companies getting pissed about the success of iTMS and their ilk? They're laughing all the way to the bank. Nobody should think for a moment that they're annoying a record label when they download something from iTMS or the Wal-Mart music store (you really should be using Kazaa if that's your goal). The online download sites are just another sales channel to the record industry.
Thanks for the reply. You may many excellent points but I just had a few more comments.
There's two types of collusion in this sense: there's the type that Microsoft and Logitech do by keeping their mice and keyboards similarly priced with each others', as they know they own the market and there's no need to start a price war. Then there's the collusion where two companies directly cooperate to set pricing. I think the former is what happens in the music industry.
Remember that the price fixing suit only related to the retailers that set up the MAP program with Universal... Tower Records, TWE and one other (I believe Musicland). For one to have been ripped off 100 times, one would have had to buy 100 CDs at Tower Records vs. shopping around on price. Those three retailers still adjusted prices as necessary to be competitive, but when they ran ads (such as in the newspaper), they kept the prices at the MAP level.
As an aside, back in the day when the CD store was the only game in town, I preferred Tower Records to Wal-Mart. They had much better selection, a much better environment, and I didn't mind paying a buck or two extra. I didn't feel "ripped off" when I chose to shop at Tower or an indie record store rather than going to Wal-Mart.
Your estiamtes of the costs associated with materials and royalties are correct (or at least they match my understanding) but there's far more to the retail picture, all that nickel-and-diming that makes the retail biz such a nightmare. Accrual for returns (the record company only makes money if that CD actually sells through to the customer, and many don't), accrual for marketing, for channel programs, shipping costs, damaged goods, and so on (all things that AOL doesn't need to worry about when mailing out free CDs). If the cost of sale on a CD is four bucks and the record company sells it to the distributor for eight, that's not four bucks that the record company gets to keep. Unfortunately it's just not that simple. I acknowledge that it doesn't seem intuitive that the record industry makes do with margins lower than Logitech, but nonetheless it's true.
Lastly, I've met a few owners of indie record labels. They put their blood, sweat and tears into their jobs, underpay themselves, and when business is down, it means that they have to fire their friends. The reality doesn't match the cocaine / hooker perception. While I have no doubt that the presidents of Vivendi and BMG have lavish lifestyles, so do the presidents of Logitech and GM.
Excellent point! I don't fall into the trap of using the term "stealing" for piracy/copyright infringement, but your comments are otherwise astute. When I used to pirate software, I didn't pretend that I was taking part in a social protest, or practicing civil disobedience to fight an unfair law, or any of that nonsense. It was kind of a thrill to nail the copy protection, and it was nice to build a library of software for my Apple //e without having to pay for it.
My general feeling is that copyright law protects us all. Just as many laws can aid big companies as well as individuals, copyright is one of those things that anybody can take advantage of. Disney might hold a metric buttload of copyrights, but that does not preclude you and I having copyrights of our own, and from benefiting from those copyrights if we have the skill and talent to create something that others might want. The vast majority of copyrights are held by individuals -- some rich, but most not. Adopting the belief that copyright violation only hurts big companies, or seeing copyright as an exclusive tool of big companies makes piracy much more morally acceptable, of course, but it blinds us to the fact that if we pirate something rather than pay for it, we might ultimately be hurting somebody very much like us, with a family to feed and rent to pay.
Either way, there's no point in justifying why copyrights now last 70 years. It's simple: because Disney wants it that way, and Disney brings a huge amount of money into our economy. Intellectual property is one of the USA's biggest exports and it's a big part of the reason we enjoy the relatively high quality of life that we do. However, if copyrights lasted 16 or 32 or 50 years, the likely result would not be a glorious age of discovery brought about by Mickey Mouse being in the public domain. Instead, it would mean that every t-shirt factory in the far east would immediately set about cranking out their own Mickey Mouse t-shirts so that they can enjoy some of this revenue rather than Disney. The basic constant of human greed does not change.
"They were not the illegitimate spawn of lawyers and marketing executives to dupe people."
Neither is the definition of "piracy." It's had that definition for at least a hundred years; I believe the etymology relates to unauthorized copying of nautical maps but I might be wrong on that one. At any rate, back when I cracked and pirated Apple software in the 80's, the word had the same definition that it did today, and we flew the jolly roger proudly. Those lawyers and marketing executives are simply using a word that's in the accepted lexicon.
"The point is that the record companies, who WERE found guilty of collusion and price fixing, were the ones setting the wholesale prices, which then dictated the exorbitant retail prices."
You're correct that record companies were nailed for price fixing (but not collusion that I'm aware of; I welcome a cite) and you're correct that manufacturers set the wholesale price, but the price fixing suit had absolutely nothing to do with the wholesale prices being charged. I understand that many people think it did, but it didn't.
Going back to another point you made, you said that the settlement was discounts on future CD purchases. My recollection is that consumers got checks. Do you have a cite?
"Even if WalMart and Best Buy realized that the CDs were grossly overpriced and decided to sell them at a loss to attract customers, that does not in any way take away from the fact that RIAA companies were selling CDs for WAY more than any reasonable costs for the materials and reasonable compensation for the artists and distributors."
Interesting, do you have a cite for that? As you can guess I'm in the retail industry and thus I have an understanding of gross vs. net margin and the realities of what it costs to market and sell a product, and I'm aware of the margin structures of several industries (I'm in the computer peripheral industry myself). Of that $8 - $10 that the record company sells the CD into the channel, a few bucks go toward manufacturing, a few bucks go to royalties, a few bucks go to marketing and promotion, and a bit (if they're lucky) goes toward profit -- a model that's typical in the retail industry. I think many Slashdotters are confusing the gross margin (e.g. looking at the $1.50 cost of goods on a CD and thinking that's all there is to it) with the net margin, which is understandable.
More to the point, Logitech and Creative Labs made net margins of about 12% last year, while Vivendi Universal only managed a negative 3% net margin, and Time Warner, which owns Warner Music, managed 8%. A typical CD is sold on about a 30% net margin, which is less than the net margin you'll pay for that Logitech mouse, and, of course, far far less than you'll pay on housewares, designer clothes, soft drinks, and many other goods you buy every day. The bottom line is that following the supply/demand curve and selling a product for what the market can bear isn't a crime; if record labels and computer peripheral manufacturers can get away with a 30% net margin, DVD player makers must suffice with a 10% margin, and Louis Vitton can get away with a 90% margin, that's the free market economy at work.
It does matter to them. They'd really like to sell you the boxed DVD set of "Desparate Housewives: Season One" when and if they make it available. If the library of episodes is already readily available to anybody with a few clicks, then there's less of a demand for the DVD, which means less money for Disney.
Napster tried this approach with the record companies and failed. They said "the record companies aren't releasing these songs online, so we're not interfering with their market." The courts pointed out that Napster was hurting a potential future market for paid download sites, or rereleases of out-of-print stuff that was then available only on Napster.
"We should all insist on the correct term "copyright enfringement" as society deals with these intellectual property issues."
"Piracy" is also a correct term. If you're using Firefox or Mozilla, type "dict pirate" or "dict piracy" into the address bar.
The word "pirate" is a homonym, one of many, many words that have multiple meanings. Slashdotters manage to not get dogs and trees confused when they use the word "bark," so it's interesting to see folks selectively forget their elementary school education.
"There are laws against what the RIAA does, and the major companies in the recording industry have all been found guilty of collusion and price fixing. The settlement? After consumers fill out forms and other high-hassle jumping through hoops, they get a discount on their next CD purchase. So, who are the REAL criminals here?"
If I had to pick a "criminal" here, I'd say Wal-Mart and Best Buy. A quick primer for those who've forgotten the details of the price fixing suit:
As you can guess here, my opinion is that Tower Records was fucked on this one. Many Slashdotters, when they hear "price fixing," think that this had an effect on the price that the record companies sold their CDs into the channel, and thus the profits they made -- it did not. The record companies made the same money whether you bought your CDs at Tower or at Best Buy. In my opinion, the price fixing suit was a win for behemoths like Wal-Mart and a big loss for the indie and chain music stores. It should make no difference to Slashdotters, who are smart enough to know that if Tower Records has a CD for $16 an Wal-Mart has it for $12, they can make their own choice of where to buy it.
"All the BitTorrent sites need to move to developing nations, and parts of Asia where there are few or no copyright laws. In places where people are struggling just to find food, the idea that vapor has value is too absurd to even consider. Move your sites there."
The remaining countries that are not signatories to the Berne Convention include Afghanistan, Bhutan, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Nepal, Oman, San Marino, Tonga and Yemen. You would have to live there and maintain your servers there (and not simply register your company there) to escape prosecution. Most of these countries are not particularly nice places.
If you see offering torrents of copyrighted material as a social protest on the level of the Montgomery Freedom March, and you really think it's worth moving to Ethiopia to pursue this noble and glorious goal of allowing cheapskate teenagers the world over to download their music instead of buying it, then good luck and Godspeed.
By the way, you wrote "all the BitTorrent sites need to move...". Not to be pedantic, but plenty of BitTorrent sites, like legaltorrents.com, are still doing just fine. The MPAA is not declaring war against the BitTorrent protocol, but the people who are abusing the protocol to traffic in pirated material. Perhaps a better social cause, rather than moving to Ethiopia to run that pirate site, is to encourage more copyright creators to voluntarily make their stuff available on legaltorrents.com and its ilk.
The opposite of "literal" is "figurative" and "fly under the radar" seems to have been used in a figurative, not literal sense.
The blind spot that prevented us from seeing the asteroid appears to be a blind spot in the literal sense -- meaning that it prevented us from seeing the rock with optical telescopes, or with our own eyes. I do not believe that the article says that radar was trained on the area, or that the blind spot interfered with said radar.
Additionally, if I read the article correctly, the rock did not enter the atmosphere. For an item to literally fly under the radar, it typically has to be well into the atmosphere.
Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong and this truly flew under radar literally.
It's often much simpler than that. Since it's blindingly obvious to people like you and me that certain torrent sites are dedicated largely to unauthorized content, that goes a long way. That was the point I was trying to make. It's ye olde "laugh test" again... if I were to try to tell you that all those links on Suprnova given titles associated with well-known movies, music and games were actually all misnamed links to Linux distros, you'd laugh in my face -- and rightfully so. If a torrent site tried a similarly silly defense, all the courts would have to do is download a few, verify that the defendant was lying, and then it's game over.
To be sure, the "they would have to download each one to prove it" theory is a common one. Folks rallying around the original Napster (incorrectly) said the same thing, and Napster's gone. Folks also said that they couldn't touch the file sharing "whales" who are being sued for that same reason, yet suing (and settling) they are.
" How can someone prove that they "did not know" something. That is like proving pigs don't fly or WMD don't exist."
It happens in the courts all the time. Rather than pigs, in courts it's often the "if it looks, acts and walks like a duck" principle. Another very simple and common concept (but one of which people without much legal experience are often unaware) is the "laugh test." If you try to go to court making a claim that an average person wouldn't believe (for example, if you ran Suprnova and you went into court claiming that you had no clue that most of the torrents on your site were illegal), you would quite properly be laughed out of court.
To use a more proper legal term, there's also the notion of prima facie. Your "pigs don't fly" example would fall under this. People know that pigs don't fly, so there's no point in even discussing the matter in court. Sure, it's circular, but it saves a lot of time avoiding silliness like "pigs fly" or "I didn't know that my torrent site had torrents of copyrighted materials."
If you haven't yet, you should make your torrents available on legaltorrents.com. Agreed 100% with you that BitTorrent itself has plenty of legal uses. BitTorrent is still alive and kicking, but the torrent sites that provided largely illegal torrents are a bit of an an endangered species nowadays.
You raise an excellent point. P2P is simply a technology; it can be used for legal stuff, too. The problem is -- here shown by the amount of content on suprnova vs. legaltorrents -- that people generally prefer the illegal stuff.
In this case, it isn't "the MPAA vs. technology," as many people often like to frame it. It's "the MPAA vs. individuals who are misusing technology."
Can you please complete the dots? DVDs can be had for about $20.00. Obviously you think that this is an example of gouging. But what do you think is a fair price?
" Is a flawed business model not a legitimate concept? Would you prefer different wording?"
The phrase "flawed business model" is typically used on Slashdot to refer to a company that's taking action that's contrary to Slashdotters' interests. For example, bringing civil or criminal charges against a copyright violator, or releasing closed-source software, or not supporting Linux. The trouble is that declaring said company or industry to have a "flawed business model" appears to be a universal bromide, and it's seldom that the Slashdotter follows up with a viable alternative.
More than that, other evidence typically shows otherwise. Let's take the movie and music industries. Sure, it's relatively easy to pirate their stuff, and sure, they must allocate money toward stopping losses -- but so must just about any business. Adversity is part of running a business, and successful companies address problems directly. You don't simply give up, and you don't capitulate to others simply because they'd like to have your product for free.
The record and film industries with their "flawed business models" are largely doing just fine. Apple just sold its 20 millionth download, Universal has launched an online-only label, and the record companies and Apple are laughing all the way to the bank. Meanwhile, Magnatune, a worthwhile experiment in exploring the "capitulate to piracy and just give away stuff for free" business model, is struggling.
" No, because cars with a license plate regularly pay a road tax. Without it your car cannot be on the public roads."
Sorry, I haven't yet had my coffee, so I don't understand the distinction. Are you saying that hacking a car share program is morally different than hacking a municipally-run bike share program? If I understand you correctly, hacking the bikes is okay, but hacking a car is not, since a car has a license plate?
That was not my intention. Maybe a better way to put it is that such a system (wherein a producer can be held blameless as long as they claim that they intended that it be used for another purpose) would certainly be seen as a benefit to many people, and it can be argued that it's a better way approach cases of legal liability. Perhaps we can agree on that?
Yup. If you know that something you create is going to be misused, or at least believe it likely to be misused, when whatever your claimed intent might be isn't nearly as relevant in the eyes of the law.
I agree with you that such a legal system you describe would be a great loophole ("yes, your honor, we knew that our full-auto sniper rifle that we sold with the easy-to-remove serial number and the fingerprint-resistant casing and the armor-piercing shells would be used primarily for bad guys to hunt humans with, but we made it for shooting deer! Ha ha ha!") -- producers of goods and services could use that to pretty much avoid any responsibility. But, in our society we tend to hold manufacturers to a higher standard.
"It depends on your intent. With Grokster it was intended for the other 10% of uses, and people who came along afterward swelled the numbers with the other 90% of uses."
If that's really the case, then the Grokster developers were naive beyond belief. Had they not heard of Napster? Were they not aware that the vast majority of Napster traffic was unauthorized? Unbelievable.
"No I can't. If I create what I sincerely believe is an original work, some incumbent copyright owner is likely to come out of the woodwork and claim I copied it. This happened to George Harrison, and statistics show it could happen to any songwriter."
The fact that we remember this case at all (it was almost 30 years ago) shows how rare this is. Billions of pieces of artwork are copyrighted each year. The vast, vast majority are not contested. This does not match the definition of "likely" by any stretch of the imagination. There may be good arguments for abolishing copyright, but this ain't one of them.
Either way, I think it's pretty obvious that "My Sweet Lord" is the same song. I think the court ruled appropriately.
"What we don't like is the term "intellectual property" - property is something you can touch - to apply it to anything else is amoral and wrong."
"We" don't like the royal "we," either. The Queen of England can get away with using it; when enybody else does, it tends to look silly.
Your position is understandable, but far, far too many Slashdotters hold this opinion because it's a convenient, guilt-free way to engage in piracy. As in: "I don't P2P all my music because I'm trying to save a few bucks, but because I think that for Usher to claim a copyright on this music is amoral and wrong."
"Maybe this is a troll, but I'll bite anyway. You have a right to do anything that does not harm another. Since they are not even trying to get his money for the show, there's no basis whatever for any claims of monetary losses. The author gains nothing by keeping his work from others, so disseminating it cannot be said to harm him."
Nonetheless, the person who owns the copyright has the exclusive right to choose how it's copied. Whether you think they're making the right choice, or whether you think that they'd agree with your decision, or whether you think that they'll suffer no monetary loss makes no difference. It's their right, not yours.
The balance here, of course, is that anybody can create something and copyright. If you don't like what somebody does with their own intellectual property, you are completely free to release your own under the terms you choose.
That's a HUGE slippery slope. Come on, you can do better than that. If you're really not sure why Suprnova is on legally shaky ground and Google is not, don't take the intellectually dishonest route of declaring Google to be illegal -- instead, ask the questions and do the research. To fight unfair laws, you must first understand them.