Copyright law has had criminal penalties for many years now -- the first one was added to US copyright law in 1897 -- more than 100 years ago. Criminal offenses predate Slashdot and even the RIAA.
The scope of criminal infringement was broadened in 1997 with the NET act, which opened up criminal enforcement even if there's no profit motive involved. This was seen as necessary to deal with warez BBSes that were distributing lots of copyrighted material without charging for it.
You can read the actual copyright law regarding criminal offenses here.
Here's an interesting piece of trivia: you know the FBI warning that appears when you watch a DVD, that warns of fines and jail time even if there's no money involved? I don't mean the DVD rips you torrent, of course, but the legit ones. The NET act allows the FBI to claim this.
Just to be clear: I'm aware that many Slashdotters like to claim copyright law is a civil matter, not a criminal one. This is one of those ugly little memes that won't go away. Copyright violation holds both civil and criminal penalties, and the sooner everybody understands this, the better.
"So to be sued for having music files on my computer is an insult."
While the enemy (content producers) tend to lie and cheat, we should still strive to take the high road.
While I'm sure the record industry would rather that we not have music files on our computer unless they were purchased in digital form, that's not what she was sued over.
"Putting music files on your computer" and "Putting music files on your computer and then running file-sharing software" is a difference which may be indistinguishable to some, but it makes all the difference as far as the law is concerned.
The zeitgeist is that music is now free; if it's not given willingly, then we'll make it free by taking it. When we keep painting into a corner the people who make money from music (whether they're the record labels, or the musicians themselves), they'll keep trying to find new ways to make money.
Musicians can't depend on record sales to make money -- that's an established fact. Most record contracts are set up so that the record label is paid first with regard to recouping costs, and most records released do not cover the costs of production (the recording industry is a speculative one; the multi-platinum balls hit out of the park pay for the rest). Traditionally, radio airplay has been a good way for artists to make money; importantly, with terrestrial radio it's money that goes directly to artists and musicians; by law, record labels don't get a slice of the terrestrial royalty pie.
The record labels also know that digital delivery allows customers to be more choosy. They can buy only the tracks they want from a CD. The labels' issue isn't that customers aren't buying tracks online; the problem is that they are buying too many online, leaving the CD market to wither. And the record companies just weren't adequately prepared for this.
These two issues -- they don't get to play in the radio royalty park, and their revenues are dropping due to the shift to digital delivery -- were the motivation behind SoundExchange. If Internet radio gets big, they can't let the artists have all that money, now can they?
Here on Slashdot, we speak loftily of a new economy which is made up of musicians who don't want to be paid -- not only will they eschew record contracts; they'll voluntarily not join SoundExchange -- ie. they'll self-select out of the money that they'd get from Internet radio. This will require quite a shift -- even Pandora has been encouraging unsigned musicians to join SoundExchange if they want to be compensated for being heard on Pandora.
Perhaps there are indeed musicians out there who will refuse taking money for airplay -- those exalted souls who want not for money, who are driven only by recognition and the prospect of someone, somewhere, enjoying their music. I fully support these artists, but generally speaking, they don't produce music that's of high enough quality for me to listen to.
If I want to listen to Air of Zero 7, some guy in his basement doing Zero 7-knockoff music and who's not sure that it's good enough to sell is not an acceptable substitute. If Pandora were to start playing music by that guy and of musicians of similar talent and production values, I'd stop listening. I'd cancel my subscription, and everybody loses.
And that's why I subscribe to Pandora. I want to show Zero 7 that they can make money through webcasting. Then, perhaps, they'll release their next album on their own and be free of the shackle of record companies. I'll get to hear their next album on Pandora, and if choose to buy it, I'll know that they'll get the money directly. And everybody wins.
They're a trade group, and like all trade groups, they have one purpose in mind: looking after the interest of their members. Kinda like the AMA or innumerable other trade groups. If you don't count the part about looking out for doctors, the AMA is similarly useless.
Well, that's terrestrial radio, not Internet radio. So, we're talking ASCAP/BMI, not SoundExchange. The difference is that the record labels are largely shut out of terrestrial radio licensing and much more of the terrestrial fees actually make their ways to artists.
But to answer your question: sounds like they're a non-commercial station, so they pay a yearly fixed fee which is almost a token.
The caveat about Deezer is that it's a European operation. Deezer and other European sites offering similar services are allocating money for royalties while the European versions of SoundExchange figure out just how in the hell things are going to work.
If the royalty rates come in as expected, then great -- Deezer and their ilk will be going strong. But if European royalty negotiations go the way they have here in the US, Deezer might be the next to go.
...then please consider paying the $3 a month to subscribe. Seriously.
I know the sentiment is that we don't want to pay for music unless it's in the form of a DRM-free, lossless file which we can give to all of our friends. We want it for $0.10 per track, and when the industry makes it available for $0.10 a track, we'll just say that we want it for $0.05 a track and go about our swashbuckling ways.
I fully understand that Pandora does not meet this requirement. It's just not their model. I just ask that you think of it it this way: does Pandora give you $3 worth of musical enjoyment a month?
Mainstream radio sucks. Supporting Pandora gives each of us a chance to be part of the solution, not the problem.
"In the U.S., copyright infringement is a civil matter, not a criminal one, although I think that may be different in Europe...?"
Not sure what you mean there. It's pretty well known that copyright violation carries both civil and criminal penalties in the US. You're correct that most people reading this would be liable for civil penalties at most, but it's misleading to state that there's no criminal copyright infringement in the US.
That's why you see that FBI warning before movies on DVDs -- yeah, I know that many DVD rips have this removed, but you've probably watched at least one legit DVD in the past. The stuff about imprisonment on the FBI warning card alludes to the criminal penalties allowed in the copyright code.
You can read about the criminal penalties here. It crosses the line at $1K worth of infringement in 180 days. A bit difficult to hit if you're trading MP3s; a little easier if it's DVDs. But give away two or three copies of PhotoShop to your friends in six months, and you're in criminal territory.
That's probably something that can only be tested in court. Per the interview it's "personal, non-commercial use," so charging money per file (a la allofmp3) wouldn't fly, but somebody might try it by collecting donations only to cover costs.
They appear to be assigning the damage of trading one song at 1.5 Euro, no matter how many times that song is traded -- so you might be able to get away with it under the new guidelines, at least for a short time. Loopholes like this tend to be closed.
And auto security systems haven't stopped car theft as a whole. Cars have had locks, alarms, and various other systems for decades now, and auto theft still exists.
Of course, experts in the auto security field will tell you that auto security systems are a deterrent, and not intended to stop the sum total of auto theft. The smarter ones who tell you that anybody who claims otherwise is being disingenuous and employing the straw man fallacy.
Copyright law has both civil and criminal penalties. The Criminal Offenses portion of copyright law goes into more details.
You're correct that many cases of copyright infringement don't fall into criminal territory. But it's also important to understand that you are being misleading when you state that copyright is not a criminal matter. Sometimes, it is.
I guess I didn't make it clear enough in my original post that the permission isn't his to give.
You argue that he implied unlimited permission. Here are a couple of other examples where I might imply unlimited permission:
I break into Fred's house. I take some stuff. I post a note on Craigslist inviting everybody to come to Fred's house to take whatever they like. I even sign the post "I hereby give everybody reading this unlimited permission."
Do you have the right to take stuff from Fred's house, either legally or morally?
I punch you in the stomach. Why, who knows -- let's just say that I think I have permission to do so. I then announce that everybody should follow my example. Perhaps I even hold you down and post a sign that reads "eerybody punch this fellow in the stomach."
Do others have the permission to do so, either legally or morally?
The ugly reality of most record contrats is this: only the record company has the right to distribute the recording, or say who else gets to distribute it. What the band's manager might do -- whether you consider his permission to be implied, explicit, implicit, boiled, baked, fried or stewed -- makes not one bit of difference. He does not have permission to distribute, and he cannot give you permission to download or distribute.
What do the manager's wishes have to do with it? It's not his permission to give... no matter HOW sure you are that he wanted to make it available. He could have wanted to distribute it more than anything in the world. Distributing the music via BitTorrent could have been more important to him than curing cancer. But none of these things change the fact that if Buckcherry's contract is like most, the record company is the only party that can legally authorize the distribution of the recordings.
The nature of BitTorrent has nothing to do with this; it's all contract law. The distribution mechanism could be peer to peer, quantum spinning, carriier pigeon, you name it. I'll give you that their manager WANTED to distribute the recordings, more than anything in the world that anybody could possibly imagine. But did he have the right to? No. And do you have permission to download it because he broke the law? Well, you know the answer to that one.
It's just a $10 album, guys. If you'd rather save the money and pirate it, then go forth and Godspeed. You don't need to invent authorization when none exists.
BuckCherry likely own the rights to the words and music (assuming they wrote same), but if their recording contract is like 99% of them, the record label has the rights to the recordings.
Putting it in general terms... if you're a band with a typical contract, you can perform your songs live, print the lyrics, re-record them (once your exclusive recording deal is up), but you CANNOT distribute the recordings without the record label's permission.
"No black mark there. I'll be looking out for it on BitTorrent, as they've granted me the right to peruse the download link, I presume."
If you want to pirate it, just pirate it. Your rationalization, while unintentionally fallacious, is fallacious all the same.
Well, for what it's worth, the Rhapsody MP3 store at mp3.rhapsody.com doesn't make use of RealPlayer or the Rhapsody software. There's an optional download manager which serves the same function as AmazonMP3's download manager, but it's pretty lightweight. It's a download manager... not a player or a DRM manager. It's purely optional... and if anybody still has a problem with this concept, remember that you have to install a download manager (ie. a BitTorrent client) to get your music by the method favored by most Slashdotters.
If you have a Mac, it's actually simpler as there's no Mac version of the Rhapsody download manager available. You have to download your MP3 files in ZIP format. Requires a bit of extra work to get them into your iTunes folder, but there's absolutely none nada zero software to download.
That's funny and all, but in case anybody takes you seriously... Rhapsody sells MP3 files now. Real, honest-to-goodness MP3 files; no killer bees required.
Excellent points. Another reason for Warner's downfall is that customers are buying too much music in digital form vs. CDs; a likely result of this is that the average tracks per customer has gone down, and they probably have an inventory issue with all the physical CDs in the channel. They may have set up their cost amortization to rely too heavily on CD sales and they might not be clearing as much per downloaded track. Looks like they didn't expect this whole digital delivery fad to take off the way it did.
"So yes, it cost more than $1 to get a CD onto the shelf in target. How much more though is a serious question. What it comes down to is a band could easily put CDs in a store in a for $5 each and make more money than they do by feeding the MAFIAA beast and selling for $13."
Target might be a bad example here, as they probably won't even talk to you unless you're WMG or an outfit of similar size. But I agree. A small label that's figured out this whole Internet thing will do better than the behemoths that are still struggling with the numbers.
In the time since you've stopped buying CDs, prices have dropped dramatically. They're about $13 at retail now, and often much less online.
"It's fucking expensive, dumbshit! It costs me, a musician, exactly 1 dollar to get 1 CD pressed. In bulk, it costs less."
It's a little-known fact (at least among Slashdotters) that in the retail industry, the cost of goods is often the smallest of the costs of sale. The devil is in the details, and it's those details that have ground down Warner Music's margins to the point that they lost money last year.
If you're not sure what I mean, make a few mental notes of how much it might cost you to get that $1 CD onto the shelves at Target, along with a marketing budget that would be adequate to cause people to actually seek out and buy the CD once it's there. Those nickels and dimes add up fast.
"The RIAA mob had special exemptions made into law so they don't have to provide these proofs in copyright infringement cases."
Do you have a citation for that? I thought that the statutory damages portion of copyright law predates the RIAA, but I might be wrong.
"If it were you or me we would not only have to provide evidence showing each download we were trying to recover money for but also show evidence that each of those downloads resulted in a direct loss of revenue of the amount we were trying to collect."
Not true per se -- the law protects us all. It protects copyright holders in general, whether the medium is music, movies, poetry, painting, novels or sculpture, and whether the copyright holder is a person or a company, rich or poor.
Lots of boats are being floated here. The precedent set by the "making available" arguments has the opportunity to benefit you as well, even if you're, say, a self-published author trying to collect damages from someobyd distributing your ebooks.
That's the issue of what's being discussed here: actual damages vs. statutory damages. I may be oversimplifying, but statutory damages are values set by law and are often used when calculating the actual damages isn't feasible.
Statutory damages are tools of the law and aren't inherently good or evil. We may dislike them when bad people like record companies use them, but one day down the road, you might be involved in a civil case where statutory damages come to your aid and are instrumental in righting a wrong.
The law presently puts statutory damages at up to $750 per work. The young lady in question would like to see that number changed to $3.50.
$3.50 would be a huge boon to file sharing enthusiasts, as the law of averages would be on your side. Share as much as you want, and if you're caught, you'd pay only $3.50 per track, no matter how many times it's been downloaded from your computer. That's only 3.5X the going rate for the track, and you can look at it this way: the odds of your being caught are probably less than 1 in 3.5, so (again, looking at the averages), it's a pretty good incentive to step up your file sharing.
Not that you asked, but I think $3.50 is too low. Either torts are going to be enforced or not; if they are, then the statutory damages should provide some sort of incentive to respect others' rights. I also think $750 is too high.
"Piracy is defined in the dictionary as open water take overs of ships, it has nothing to do with software."
This confuses a lot of Slashdotters. "Piracy" is what's known as a homonym or a homophone -- a word that has multiple meanings. "Bark" is an example -- it refers to tree covering, and the sound your dog makes. Slashdotters probably understand this context, but for some reason they get into mental tangles over the multiple definitions of "pirate" and "piracy."
If you're not sure what I mean, a good resource is dictionary.com. This is what they have to say about the word.
1. practice of a pirate; robbery or illegal violence at sea.
2. the unauthorized reproduction or use of a copyrighted book, recording, television program, patented invention, trademarked product, etc.: The record industry is beset with piracy.
3. Also called stream capture. Geology. diversion of the upper part of one stream by the headward growth of another.
Software is covered in the "etc." portion of the 2nd definition.
That's a commonly expressed opinion, but it's incorrect. Just about any product out there has finite demand. If Ubisoft were to give away all their software starting tomorrow, I still wouldn't want any of it. If Apple were to lower prices on the iTunes store to $0.90 or $0.80 or even $0.50, I wouldn't buy any more of it. If Chevrolet or Ferarri cut their retail prices in half, I wouldn't buy one.
Piracy enthusiasts like to use this statement in an effort to point out that commercial software vendors don't understand pricing theory. "If PhotoShop costs five million bucks to produce, they should just sell it for $1 a copy and sell a five million copies, and they'll break even! If they sell another five million copies, that's five million dollars of profit, or 50% margin! It's so simple that I'm shocked that the pirates have figured it out and software vendors haven't! Durr on those stupid stupid software vendors!".
Although piracy enthusiasts are often heartfelt in their defense of this theory, it's got a lot of problems. First and formost is, as pointed out, demand is not infinite. There might not be ten million potential customers out there.
That's why supply/demand curves exist and why they're so useful for picking the right price for a product. What you've described (demand goes to infinity as price goes to zero) is called unit elasticity and is seldom found in real life. Demand curves are just that -- curvy -- and it might surprise you that a buck isn't automatically the best price to sell any given product.
Excellent point. My understanding is that BSA settlements consist of the retail value of the pirated software, plus some sort of punitive or administrative fine tacked on. So, to your point, Microsoft'll get their money even if the IT manager uses the BSA bust as the impetus to move the company to Linux.
Well, the thing is that if you're busted by the BSA, you have to pay up. How you come up with the money isn't their concern. It's not a safe assumption that you would have otherwise have put the money into the economy. I think they're using the same logic that drove the so-called economic stimulus package, that the money was better put into the economy by taxpayers rather than languishing in some government bank account.
I'm familiar with the broken window fallacy; it's applied to matters of piracy all the time.
If you make the assumption that companies who opt to pirate software would otherwise spend the money elsewhere, then your point is perfectly valid, and all those local governments will be able to hire their police officers anyway. But the BSA is taking the position that they'll be able to squeeze money out of companies that otherwise would not have spent that money -- in other words, a forceful economic stimulus!
Stuff like "if you don't understand sarcasm" is not helpful.
Slashdot Mirror
Copyright law has had criminal penalties for many years now -- the first one was added to US copyright law in 1897 -- more than 100 years ago. Criminal offenses predate Slashdot and even the RIAA.
The scope of criminal infringement was broadened in 1997 with the NET act, which opened up criminal enforcement even if there's no profit motive involved. This was seen as necessary to deal with warez BBSes that were distributing lots of copyrighted material without charging for it.
You can read the actual copyright law regarding criminal offenses here.
Here's an interesting piece of trivia: you know the FBI warning that appears when you watch a DVD, that warns of fines and jail time even if there's no money involved? I don't mean the DVD rips you torrent, of course, but the legit ones. The NET act allows the FBI to claim this.
Just to be clear: I'm aware that many Slashdotters like to claim copyright law is a civil matter, not a criminal one. This is one of those ugly little memes that won't go away. Copyright violation holds both civil and criminal penalties, and the sooner everybody understands this, the better.
"So to be sued for having music files on my computer is an insult."
While the enemy (content producers) tend to lie and cheat, we should still strive to take the high road.
While I'm sure the record industry would rather that we not have music files on our computer unless they were purchased in digital form, that's not what she was sued over.
"Putting music files on your computer" and "Putting music files on your computer and then running file-sharing software" is a difference which may be indistinguishable to some, but it makes all the difference as far as the law is concerned.
You're not a troll. You're 100% correct.
The zeitgeist is that music is now free; if it's not given willingly, then we'll make it free by taking it. When we keep painting into a corner the people who make money from music (whether they're the record labels, or the musicians themselves), they'll keep trying to find new ways to make money.
Musicians can't depend on record sales to make money -- that's an established fact. Most record contracts are set up so that the record label is paid first with regard to recouping costs, and most records released do not cover the costs of production (the recording industry is a speculative one; the multi-platinum balls hit out of the park pay for the rest). Traditionally, radio airplay has been a good way for artists to make money; importantly, with terrestrial radio it's money that goes directly to artists and musicians; by law, record labels don't get a slice of the terrestrial royalty pie.
The record labels also know that digital delivery allows customers to be more choosy. They can buy only the tracks they want from a CD. The labels' issue isn't that customers aren't buying tracks online; the problem is that they are buying too many online, leaving the CD market to wither. And the record companies just weren't adequately prepared for this.
These two issues -- they don't get to play in the radio royalty park, and their revenues are dropping due to the shift to digital delivery -- were the motivation behind SoundExchange. If Internet radio gets big, they can't let the artists have all that money, now can they?
Here on Slashdot, we speak loftily of a new economy which is made up of musicians who don't want to be paid -- not only will they eschew record contracts; they'll voluntarily not join SoundExchange -- ie. they'll self-select out of the money that they'd get from Internet radio. This will require quite a shift -- even Pandora has been encouraging unsigned musicians to join SoundExchange if they want to be compensated for being heard on Pandora.
Perhaps there are indeed musicians out there who will refuse taking money for airplay -- those exalted souls who want not for money, who are driven only by recognition and the prospect of someone, somewhere, enjoying their music. I fully support these artists, but generally speaking, they don't produce music that's of high enough quality for me to listen to.
If I want to listen to Air of Zero 7, some guy in his basement doing Zero 7-knockoff music and who's not sure that it's good enough to sell is not an acceptable substitute. If Pandora were to start playing music by that guy and of musicians of similar talent and production values, I'd stop listening. I'd cancel my subscription, and everybody loses.
And that's why I subscribe to Pandora. I want to show Zero 7 that they can make money through webcasting. Then, perhaps, they'll release their next album on their own and be free of the shackle of record companies. I'll get to hear their next album on Pandora, and if choose to buy it, I'll know that they'll get the money directly. And everybody wins.
They're a trade group, and like all trade groups, they have one purpose in mind: looking after the interest of their members. Kinda like the AMA or innumerable other trade groups. If you don't count the part about looking out for doctors, the AMA is similarly useless.
Well, that's terrestrial radio, not Internet radio. So, we're talking ASCAP/BMI, not SoundExchange. The difference is that the record labels are largely shut out of terrestrial radio licensing and much more of the terrestrial fees actually make their ways to artists.
But to answer your question: sounds like they're a non-commercial station, so they pay a yearly fixed fee which is almost a token.
The caveat about Deezer is that it's a European operation. Deezer and other European sites offering similar services are allocating money for royalties while the European versions of SoundExchange figure out just how in the hell things are going to work.
If the royalty rates come in as expected, then great -- Deezer and their ilk will be going strong. But if European royalty negotiations go the way they have here in the US, Deezer might be the next to go.
...then please consider paying the $3 a month to subscribe. Seriously.
I know the sentiment is that we don't want to pay for music unless it's in the form of a DRM-free, lossless file which we can give to all of our friends. We want it for $0.10 per track, and when the industry makes it available for $0.10 a track, we'll just say that we want it for $0.05 a track and go about our swashbuckling ways.
I fully understand that Pandora does not meet this requirement. It's just not their model. I just ask that you think of it it this way: does Pandora give you $3 worth of musical enjoyment a month?
Mainstream radio sucks. Supporting Pandora gives each of us a chance to be part of the solution, not the problem.
"In the U.S., copyright infringement is a civil matter, not a criminal one, although I think that may be different in Europe...?"
Not sure what you mean there. It's pretty well known that copyright violation carries both civil and criminal penalties in the US. You're correct that most people reading this would be liable for civil penalties at most, but it's misleading to state that there's no criminal copyright infringement in the US.
That's why you see that FBI warning before movies on DVDs -- yeah, I know that many DVD rips have this removed, but you've probably watched at least one legit DVD in the past. The stuff about imprisonment on the FBI warning card alludes to the criminal penalties allowed in the copyright code.
You can read about the criminal penalties here. It crosses the line at $1K worth of infringement in 180 days. A bit difficult to hit if you're trading MP3s; a little easier if it's DVDs. But give away two or three copies of PhotoShop to your friends in six months, and you're in criminal territory.
That's probably something that can only be tested in court. Per the interview it's "personal, non-commercial use," so charging money per file (a la allofmp3) wouldn't fly, but somebody might try it by collecting donations only to cover costs.
They appear to be assigning the damage of trading one song at 1.5 Euro, no matter how many times that song is traded -- so you might be able to get away with it under the new guidelines, at least for a short time. Loopholes like this tend to be closed.
And auto security systems haven't stopped car theft as a whole. Cars have had locks, alarms, and various other systems for decades now, and auto theft still exists.
Of course, experts in the auto security field will tell you that auto security systems are a deterrent, and not intended to stop the sum total of auto theft. The smarter ones who tell you that anybody who claims otherwise is being disingenuous and employing the straw man fallacy.
Copyright law has both civil and criminal penalties. The Criminal Offenses portion of copyright law goes into more details.
You're correct that many cases of copyright infringement don't fall into criminal territory. But it's also important to understand that you are being misleading when you state that copyright is not a criminal matter. Sometimes, it is.
I guess I didn't make it clear enough in my original post that the permission isn't his to give.
You argue that he implied unlimited permission. Here are a couple of other examples where I might imply unlimited permission:
I break into Fred's house. I take some stuff. I post a note on Craigslist inviting everybody to come to Fred's house to take whatever they like. I even sign the post "I hereby give everybody reading this unlimited permission."
Do you have the right to take stuff from Fred's house, either legally or morally?
I punch you in the stomach. Why, who knows -- let's just say that I think I have permission to do so. I then announce that everybody should follow my example. Perhaps I even hold you down and post a sign that reads "eerybody punch this fellow in the stomach."
Do others have the permission to do so, either legally or morally?
The ugly reality of most record contrats is this: only the record company has the right to distribute the recording, or say who else gets to distribute it. What the band's manager might do -- whether you consider his permission to be implied, explicit, implicit, boiled, baked, fried or stewed -- makes not one bit of difference. He does not have permission to distribute, and he cannot give you permission to download or distribute.
What do the manager's wishes have to do with it? It's not his permission to give... no matter HOW sure you are that he wanted to make it available. He could have wanted to distribute it more than anything in the world. Distributing the music via BitTorrent could have been more important to him than curing cancer. But none of these things change the fact that if Buckcherry's contract is like most, the record company is the only party that can legally authorize the distribution of the recordings.
The nature of BitTorrent has nothing to do with this; it's all contract law. The distribution mechanism could be peer to peer, quantum spinning, carriier pigeon, you name it. I'll give you that their manager WANTED to distribute the recordings, more than anything in the world that anybody could possibly imagine. But did he have the right to? No. And do you have permission to download it because he broke the law? Well, you know the answer to that one.
It's just a $10 album, guys. If you'd rather save the money and pirate it, then go forth and Godspeed. You don't need to invent authorization when none exists.
BuckCherry likely own the rights to the words and music (assuming they wrote same), but if their recording contract is like 99% of them, the record label has the rights to the recordings.
Putting it in general terms... if you're a band with a typical contract, you can perform your songs live, print the lyrics, re-record them (once your exclusive recording deal is up), but you CANNOT distribute the recordings without the record label's permission.
"No black mark there. I'll be looking out for it on BitTorrent, as they've granted me the right to peruse the download link, I presume."
If you want to pirate it, just pirate it. Your rationalization, while unintentionally fallacious, is fallacious all the same.
Well, for what it's worth, the Rhapsody MP3 store at mp3.rhapsody.com doesn't make use of RealPlayer or the Rhapsody software. There's an optional download manager which serves the same function as AmazonMP3's download manager, but it's pretty lightweight. It's a download manager... not a player or a DRM manager. It's purely optional... and if anybody still has a problem with this concept, remember that you have to install a download manager (ie. a BitTorrent client) to get your music by the method favored by most Slashdotters.
If you have a Mac, it's actually simpler as there's no Mac version of the Rhapsody download manager available. You have to download your MP3 files in ZIP format. Requires a bit of extra work to get them into your iTunes folder, but there's absolutely none nada zero software to download.
That's funny and all, but in case anybody takes you seriously... Rhapsody sells MP3 files now. Real, honest-to-goodness MP3 files; no killer bees required.
Excellent points. Another reason for Warner's downfall is that customers are buying too much music in digital form vs. CDs; a likely result of this is that the average tracks per customer has gone down, and they probably have an inventory issue with all the physical CDs in the channel. They may have set up their cost amortization to rely too heavily on CD sales and they might not be clearing as much per downloaded track. Looks like they didn't expect this whole digital delivery fad to take off the way it did.
"So yes, it cost more than $1 to get a CD onto the shelf in target. How much more though is a serious question. What it comes down to is a band could easily put CDs in a store in a for $5 each and make more money than they do by feeding the MAFIAA beast and selling for $13."
Target might be a bad example here, as they probably won't even talk to you unless you're WMG or an outfit of similar size. But I agree. A small label that's figured out this whole Internet thing will do better than the behemoths that are still struggling with the numbers.
"Paying $15-20 for a CD is ridiculous."
In the time since you've stopped buying CDs, prices have dropped dramatically. They're about $13 at retail now, and often much less online.
"It's fucking expensive, dumbshit! It costs me, a musician, exactly 1 dollar to get 1 CD pressed. In bulk, it costs less."
It's a little-known fact (at least among Slashdotters) that in the retail industry, the cost of goods is often the smallest of the costs of sale. The devil is in the details, and it's those details that have ground down Warner Music's margins to the point that they lost money last year.
If you're not sure what I mean, make a few mental notes of how much it might cost you to get that $1 CD onto the shelves at Target, along with a marketing budget that would be adequate to cause people to actually seek out and buy the CD once it's there. Those nickels and dimes add up fast.
"The RIAA mob had special exemptions made into law so they don't have to provide these proofs in copyright infringement cases."
Do you have a citation for that? I thought that the statutory damages portion of copyright law predates the RIAA, but I might be wrong.
"If it were you or me we would not only have to provide evidence showing each download we were trying to recover money for but also show evidence that each of those downloads resulted in a direct loss of revenue of the amount we were trying to collect."
Not true per se -- the law protects us all. It protects copyright holders in general, whether the medium is music, movies, poetry, painting, novels or sculpture, and whether the copyright holder is a person or a company, rich or poor.
Lots of boats are being floated here. The precedent set by the "making available" arguments has the opportunity to benefit you as well, even if you're, say, a self-published author trying to collect damages from someobyd distributing your ebooks.
That's the issue of what's being discussed here: actual damages vs. statutory damages. I may be oversimplifying, but statutory damages are values set by law and are often used when calculating the actual damages isn't feasible.
Statutory damages are tools of the law and aren't inherently good or evil. We may dislike them when bad people like record companies use them, but one day down the road, you might be involved in a civil case where statutory damages come to your aid and are instrumental in righting a wrong.
The law presently puts statutory damages at up to $750 per work. The young lady in question would like to see that number changed to $3.50.
$3.50 would be a huge boon to file sharing enthusiasts, as the law of averages would be on your side. Share as much as you want, and if you're caught, you'd pay only $3.50 per track, no matter how many times it's been downloaded from your computer. That's only 3.5X the going rate for the track, and you can look at it this way: the odds of your being caught are probably less than 1 in 3.5, so (again, looking at the averages), it's a pretty good incentive to step up your file sharing.
Not that you asked, but I think $3.50 is too low. Either torts are going to be enforced or not; if they are, then the statutory damages should provide some sort of incentive to respect others' rights. I also think $750 is too high.
"Piracy is defined in the dictionary as open water take overs of ships, it has nothing to do with software."
This confuses a lot of Slashdotters. "Piracy" is what's known as a homonym or a homophone -- a word that has multiple meanings. "Bark" is an example -- it refers to tree covering, and the sound your dog makes. Slashdotters probably understand this context, but for some reason they get into mental tangles over the multiple definitions of "pirate" and "piracy."
If you're not sure what I mean, a good resource is dictionary.com. This is what they have to say about the word.
1. practice of a pirate; robbery or illegal violence at sea. 2. the unauthorized reproduction or use of a copyrighted book, recording, television program, patented invention, trademarked product, etc.: The record industry is beset with piracy. 3. Also called stream capture. Geology. diversion of the upper part of one stream by the headward growth of another.
Software is covered in the "etc." portion of the 2nd definition.
HTH.
"When the price is zero the demand is infinite."
That's a commonly expressed opinion, but it's incorrect. Just about any product out there has finite demand. If Ubisoft were to give away all their software starting tomorrow, I still wouldn't want any of it. If Apple were to lower prices on the iTunes store to $0.90 or $0.80 or even $0.50, I wouldn't buy any more of it. If Chevrolet or Ferarri cut their retail prices in half, I wouldn't buy one.
Piracy enthusiasts like to use this statement in an effort to point out that commercial software vendors don't understand pricing theory. "If PhotoShop costs five million bucks to produce, they should just sell it for $1 a copy and sell a five million copies, and they'll break even! If they sell another five million copies, that's five million dollars of profit, or 50% margin! It's so simple that I'm shocked that the pirates have figured it out and software vendors haven't! Durr on those stupid stupid software vendors!".
Although piracy enthusiasts are often heartfelt in their defense of this theory, it's got a lot of problems. First and formost is, as pointed out, demand is not infinite. There might not be ten million potential customers out there.
That's why supply/demand curves exist and why they're so useful for picking the right price for a product. What you've described (demand goes to infinity as price goes to zero) is called unit elasticity and is seldom found in real life. Demand curves are just that -- curvy -- and it might surprise you that a buck isn't automatically the best price to sell any given product.
Excellent point. My understanding is that BSA settlements consist of the retail value of the pirated software, plus some sort of punitive or administrative fine tacked on. So, to your point, Microsoft'll get their money even if the IT manager uses the BSA bust as the impetus to move the company to Linux.
Well, the thing is that if you're busted by the BSA, you have to pay up. How you come up with the money isn't their concern. It's not a safe assumption that you would have otherwise have put the money into the economy. I think they're using the same logic that drove the so-called economic stimulus package, that the money was better put into the economy by taxpayers rather than languishing in some government bank account.
I'm familiar with the broken window fallacy; it's applied to matters of piracy all the time.
If you make the assumption that companies who opt to pirate software would otherwise spend the money elsewhere, then your point is perfectly valid, and all those local governments will be able to hire their police officers anyway. But the BSA is taking the position that they'll be able to squeeze money out of companies that otherwise would not have spent that money -- in other words, a forceful economic stimulus!
Stuff like "if you don't understand sarcasm" is not helpful.
"I always like it when they assume that every piece of pirated software is lost revenue."
They don't. You are assuming that they do, but you're incorrect.