"Seriously, I can understand the movie issue but I think it's a bit idiotic of them to go after filesharing in general."
The article states:
A trade group representing seven major movie studios filed a first wave of lawsuits against individuals they say are
offering pirated copies of films using Internet-based peer-to-peer file-sharing programs.
Their interest is people who are sharing pirated copies of films. They are not suing people who are sharing Debian distributions.
Either you didn't RTA (that's okay, many people don't), or you are engaging in a debate tactic called the "straw man," where you mischaracterize your opponent's position to make it easier to tear down.
"I'm glad more musicians are seeing the benefit of online distribution. I just hope more of them release songs in lossless form, without DRM. Magnatune.com works this way (and artists get %50 of sale price) and I hope more artists choose to follow this model."
You bring up a good point. Magnatune is the epitomy of what many Slashdotters want from a record label, yet their catalog and sales are virtually non-existent compared to enterprises like the iTunes Music Store that eschew the "payment optional" model.
"Once big-name musicians disover the mighty power of Internet distribution, the record labels will be finished" is a bromide that's been uttered for five years now. Yet the record labels are making tons of money via iTMS, companies like Magnatune barely register, and even in 2004, when a somewhat-well known band like Wilco leverages the Internet for distribution, it's still news.
"If you want to talk about the RIAA's business interests, then talk about what their mission statement is: "Its mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members' creative and financial vitality." Something tells me that when such a tiny percentage of the money you pay for a CD goes to the actual artist, the RIAA is not promoting their members "financial vitality."
The RIAA counts as its members record labels, not artists. The RIAA is indeed fiercely loyal to its members, the record companies -- loyal to a fault, it seems sometimes.
There are, however, organizations that are run by and for artists, such as ASCAP and BMI (performing rights societies that collect performance royalties and distribute them to their members) as well as the various musicians' unions, who were instrumental in enacting the AHRA, which dictates the tariff collected on audio CD-Rs.
"The legislation is worded such that they could sue anyone (whether or not they have a financial interest in their success) like Bram Cohen."
Remember, the INDUCE Act is in draft form. It needs to be fixed so that it can be used to go after its intended targets, and not, say, Bram Cohen. You have not yet made the logical connection from "the draft is poorly worded" to "the RIAA likes it because it's poorly worded."
"If you can't logically conclude from the RIAA's position on various legislation that it would like to see filesharing stopped all together, then I really am sorry that your reasoning ability was lost somewhere along the line."
"If I recall, INDUCE would make any program capable of allowing copyright infringement illegal, including IM, FTP, web servers, etc., because everything is fundamentally peer-to-peer."
INDUCE is in draft form. Its purpose is to go after the folks who've built a business model on piracy; it's apparent that it was written specifically to make Kazaa illegal. Many people have pointed out that the wording in the act is vague enough that it could be interpreted to apply to IM and the like, but this is the important thing: Orin Hatch wrote it to go after Kazaa. Orin Hatch does not want to outlaw IM or HTTP.
The solution here is to keep refining the wording to allow the law to do its intended job and prevent it from being abused otherwise. If the goal of launching a GAIM file-sharing plug-in is to provide a litmus test against the INDUCE act , then that's great -- but, Nietchsesquely enough, this would make the INDUCE act stronger, not kill it.
Thank you for your reply. I think two things are well-established:
The INDUCE Act, as currently drafted, could potentially be used to sue Apple for selling the iPod.
The RIAA likes the INDUCE act.
However, this does not mean that the RIAA wants to sue Apple or CNet. In this particular case, for example, I'm sure the RIAA loves Apple, because their iTunes store is helping them make tons of cash. Apple "plays nice": at the same time that they offer an iPod (a device that can hold authorized as well as unauthorized content), they have invested millions into a platform for selling authorized content.
My guess is that the RIAA has in mind for its first target the same people that the drafters have in mind: the P2P companies like Sharman Networks that have essentially built a business model on copyright infringement. Sharman Networks does not "play nice" in the sense that Apple does.
The RIAA -- just like you and me -- has their own business interests in mind. If Phish allow concert tapes to be exchanged and you and I exchange them on a web site dedicated to such, or if you and I composed and performed our own music and posted it to our own web site, the RIAA would not likely have a business interest in arbitrarily suing us because we are engaging in "file sharing."
Years ago, my company bought a lot of ad space on Kazaa. My company is well-known and we were advertising a popular CE device that's done very well in the market. Our ad contract was worth well into the six figures.
The ads did very poorly. The click-through was much lower than it was for the same ads elsewhere on the 'net. We got out of the contract.
While some of that might be attributed to Kazaa Lite or some other apps that counted ad views but didn't show them to the customers (I'm guessing here; not sure if that's how Kazaa Lite works), the analyis was that it was primarily due to it being the wrong audience -- largely teens with no interest in spending money.
Our dealings with the folks at Kazaa were interesting. They're bigger than many people think. They're very smart, drive tough deals and do a huge amount of business. Although they never did admit it in writing, they know darn well that their product, in the marketing sense (please, no "but it's the users who provide the product" retorts) is a vast collection of pirated material.
"P2P should be banned because there is no potential legal use for it, therefore anyone using it is intending to break the law."
Straw man. Not even the record companies are claiming "no potential legal use." They are (correctly) claiming that the vast majority of traffic on the big P2P networks is of pirated material.
There are plenty of download sites and even P2P networks where strict adherence to creators' rights is observed and nothing is made available without the creators' permission -- in fact, the creators themselves use these systems to distribute these works. But there's two fundamental differences between these sites and Kazaa, eDonkey, etc.: their popularity is far, far lower, and the record industry is not trying to drive them out of existence. You'll not likely see "Sony Music vs. Magnatune" any time soon.
"Enough with the 'its all copyright piracy' arguments already."
Fair enough. The vast majority of it is copyright piracy.
If, magically, all the unauthorized copyrighted content were to disappear off of Kazaa tomorrow, traffic would virtually disappear, they would no longer be able to collect ad revenue, and they'd no longer have a business model. It's the ad revenue that keeps Sharman Networks (a for-profit company whose founders are very, very rich) afloat, and it's not those Linux distros that's driving 99% of the Kazaa traffic -- it's the movies and music being distributed without the owner's permission.
"How dare they come up with an innovative business model that directly competes with established companies. This isn't a free market here."
I know you were being ironic, but you're right. From the Wiki on "free market economy":
A free market economy is an idealized form of market economy in which buyers and sellers are permitted to carry out transactions based solely on mutual agreement without interventionism in the form of taxes, subsidies, regulation, or government provision of goods or services
beyond simply the protection of property rights and enforcement of contracts.
It's often said on Slashdot that P2P sites whose traffic is primarily unauthorized copyright content is just the free market economy at work, but that's not technically correct. If you're breeching a contract or ignoring somebody's rights by trading music or movies, it can't be rationalized as simply participating in a free market economy.
"Which goes against any common sense, really. Giving a product away for free doesn't help sales in any way."
Agreed. To expand on the rationale, I think the argument is that if they download the CD via P2P they might eventually buy the CD and they might see the artist's concert. This is predicated on the assumption that the artist is one who does public performances.
"Suffice to say the artist in question isn't going to release a CD anytime soon. He's pretty pissed off too, having worked years on the music. From our point of view, endorsing massive music sharing on the Internet seems like advocating slavery. As if musicians were monkeys who do tricks for peanuts and should be happy that people graciously listen to them."
The common attitude in that regard is that the Internet has put musicians in their place. Their more fitting role in society will forever more be the "tip" model and people will no longer become musicians knowing that it's the easy road to a lifestyle which commonly includes snorting lines off of the taut stomachs of hot naked women. Because, you know, that's exactly the lifestyle by the average performer, singer or songwriter whose had their income hurt through piracy.
"So, basically, we haven't even made back our investment, and we're being given shit for being corporate assholes. None of us is rich by any means. I made a whopping $6000 from the label last year, and that's mostly because we also run a recording studio and I recorded & mixed some independent artists. Needless to say I need to have another job to make the ends meet. Still, people seem to think we should give the music away for free."
I'm not in the music industry but I've met other indie record label owners who tell the same story you do. It's not a story which is complimentary to the notion of guilt-free piracy. You should post it more often. I'm not bothered by piracy, but I'm annoyed by people who pirate and then claim that they're helping somebody by doing so. People should just fly the Jolly Roger proudly and grow some balls.
"But it's all the same because no one listens. Anti-music business posts in Slashdot get modded up and others like me get modded as Troll whatnot. People need to get their music for free, and god forbid if someone disagrees. Oh well, I think after almost 20 years of working as a professional recording engineer, it's time to start looking for other career options."
I'm sure you've heard the phrase "horse and buggy industry" thrown back at you. This is because the same technology that brought us the Internet now allows anybody to set up their own recording studio in their bedroom for peanuts. Skilled engineers and producers aren't part of the equation at all -- to many Slashdotters, it's all about the technology.
The lawsuits aren't enough. The major record labels are literally trying to send people to prison for sharing music, and a new bill in Congress right now would let them.
Makes sense - but on the response page you linked to, they write:
Above all, and this is something we mention on our description page, it is crucial to support and protect filesharing against the current onslaught of the RIAA and MPAA-- not because we want people to get Hollywood's stuff for free, but because the real promise of the technology is to let people create and share their own music and movies.
Which is it? Is this GAIM project about providing a way for people to trade copyrighted files without going to jail, or for people to create and share their own music and movies?
For what it's worth, the bill they referenced would not make it a jailable offense for sharing your own music and movies.
What is downhillbattle's intent with this project? If it's to create a platform for people to share the stuff they've created, that's great, but why lead the project description with the horrors of the latest potential threat to people who share other's copyrighted work? It should be completely irrelevant.
And -- and this has been raised before -- if I have my own movies and music, why would I need yet another platform to distribute it? The web and the existing P2P platforms work remarkably well for people to distribute their stuff. The benefit of the GAIM project seems to be a platform for protection from prying eyes... but why on earth would I worry about that if I'm distributing my own stuff?
"I thought everybody has been hooting and hollaring about how P2P etc has nothing to do with the demise of the record industries, and their downfall was simply a result of crappy music, less demand, blah blah blah."
Agreed, that appears to be the popular opinion around here. In fact, many people advocate the position that music piracy actually helps the industry by providing more exposure for artists.
" They want to push the government to the point that they realize that anything connected to the Internet could be used for copyright infringment, so that they would either have to completely give up on stuff like the INDUCE act and the DMCA, or shut down the entire Internet."
I don't follow. Can you connect the dots here? It's a given that any electronic transport mechanism, such as the HTTP protocol or any other method of sending packets back and forth, can be used to transmit copyrighted material. You know this, I know this, the government knows this. Why would this cause problem for the DMCA or other legislation? These sorts of laws are an effort to deal with the people that misuse technology.
It's happened time and time again that when a new technology has sprung forth, new laws eventually appear that govern the use of that technology. Think of cars and weapons as an example. There were no state vehicle codes in the 1850's (or if there were, perhaps they covered carriages). When cars appeared, shortly thereafter, the rules governing them followed, and now my state's vehicle code is an inch thick.
Is it easy to keep laws up-to-date to cover the latest advances in automotive firearm, or communication technology? Hell no. But it generally does manage to happen, and society hasn't broken down.
"People like etree make such a mockery of the RIAA's claims that filesharing is only used for evil that it's not even funny."
Interesting... do you have a citation for RIAA claiming that file sharing is only used for evil? I can imagine (and vaguely remember) them saying something to the effect of 90% of Kazaa traffic being unauthorized copyrighted stuff (and I think they'd be right) but have they made a statement that encompasses a totally different type of service, like etree?
It would be great to see a link. Unfortunately I think you may be putting words in the RIAA's mouth or using a tactic called a straw man, defined as mischaracterizing your opponent's position so that it can be torn down easily.
"Okay, so, who's your favorite lighting effects programmer? I mean, since they get so much "exposure" from your bootlegged software, I'm sure they'll take comfort in your fanlike devotion."
Exactly. And while music pirates find solace in the notion that their favorite band probably wouldn't mind them P2Ping their latest CD rather than buying it, it's little solace to the songwriters and lyricists who don't see value in that "free exposure" but who would really rather have that royalty check to pay the rent. It's the same situation for engineer, producer, session musician and dozens of other behind-the-scenes people who are vital to the music production process yet who are not helped by piracy despite these rationalizations.
"As one of the looked down upon members of rural America, can I ask: if my local chinese restaurant is owned and entirely staffed by chinese people that barely speak english, how is our chinese restaurant less than yours. And the locally owned pizzerias are owned by real italian people."
Easy: lack of competition. When you're the only Chinese restaurant in town, you don't have to be as good as the Chinese place that's in proximity to ten other Chinese places fighting for the same business. If you're located in a town where it's tough to get a reservation at the Applebee's on a Friday night, "good enough" is just fine for the locals who don't know any better.
Make no mistake; on the road I've discovered some real gems in the international food arena run by immigrants such as those you describe. However, my extensive and frequent travels to the small-town midwest have shown me that mediocrity is the culinary standard.
"Most places will have pizza delivery, Chinese food, and Walmart."
I've made the mistake of sampling what passes for pizza and Chinese food in some of the banjo-swinging states. And don't even get me started about Wal-Mart.
" Any time you pirate a game, you are making life that much harder for the programmers who work on it. These people have difficult jobs, work long hours, and they don't do it so you can just download it from Usenet."
My apologies if you were being ironic, but my guess is that most folks would see this as a reason to pirate the software. As this fellow put it:
"My advice: if you don't agree with EA practices, dont buy any of their products. Hit them where it hurts, and if they lay people off, you're doing those workers a favor anyhow."
While he didn't specifically advocate piracy, it seems like a logical conclusion. The game industry and the music industry have this in common: the big companies tend to mal-treat their workers. And, I think we can apply some of the same rationalizations: just as musicians would probably appreciate us getting their music via P2P because it's the exposure that counts more than paying rent, perhaps many game programmers also feel the same way. So hoist that Jolly Roger!
"I'd be positively THRILLED to pay, say, $25/month for access to the old Napster knowing that a portion of my money went into a fund directly supporting the various artists."
Agreed, it's an idea with merit. A few years back when the "Napster hearings" were going on in congress, a few of the P2P companies were pushing for the consideration of a compulsory licensing system, where the copyright holders would give up the right to prevent their work from being distributed by online services (either the P2P platforms or the legitimate online resellers), in exchange for getting some money in relation to how often thier stuff was downloaded. In a bizarre turn of events, the record companies and the P2P companies were on one side of the table on the issue, while the composers, lyricists, etc. were on the other side.
That's because back then, a lot of composers and lyricists were reticent about allowing their stuff to be distributed online. The concern was that, say, if Madonna had a CD in which the songs were the creative work of ten different people, individual agreements would need to be worked out before the CD could be released as a whole. The P2P companies wanted this because it would allow them to operate as legitimate companies, and the record companies wanted this because it would allow them to quickly build their online catalogs (for resale through iTunes and the rest) without sinking all the person-hours into negotiating with each individual songwriter, lest they have the "swiss cheese" effect of only certain tracks of albums being available, which would have been a hinderance to the adoption and success of the online sales channel.
Flash forward to three years later, and while on iTunes you won't have to look very hard to find examples of particular songs not being available for download (due the band, songwriter, or lyricist declining to allow it to be sold online), the artists have largely seen the light and it isn't as big of a problem as the record companies probably feared. The P2P companies are still SOL with regard to legitimacy, of course, but I'm not too worried about the financial futures of the guys who run Kazaa.;-)
"The point you're missing here is that, apparently, file-sharing isn't the major cause of the downtrend in sales."
I think he gets that point, as do the rest of us. The issue is that the point is still at odds with Slashdot groupthink, which is often that music piracy helps the industry (the tale usually told is that people who pirate a CD will more likely end up buying it than if they hadn't at all).
That file sharing isn't the major cause of the industry downturn is, as another Slashdotter succinctly put it, one of those "no shit" statements. The shocker here should be that it's a cause at all. And, if it's just part of the cause, the industry should be worried. If you're not sure what I mean here, if you owned a shop and you thought that 50% of your lost sales were due to shoplifting but it turned out to only be 10%, you'd still want to take some action.
"The RIAA already imposes a "CD Tax", why couldn't it have imposed a "Napster Tax"?"
You mean the tariff on blank CDs in the US? That's imposed largely by the artists. Only a small slice of the pie goes to record companies. None goes to the RIAA. Likewise, when the notion of a compulsory licensing system came up in congress, it was the unions representing the lyricists, composers and other artists that threw the biggest fit. This is an important thing to understand if one kneels at the shrine of "record companies bad, artists good."
"With CDs, you're (mostly) paying for the nice cars and houses of a bunch of executives."
Interesting... do you have a cite for that? I've met a few people in the music industry, including the owner of a small indie label. They most certainly did not fit into the "nice house and car" category. They were ordinary working people. If the people you've met in the music industry were all rich executives, then your experience has certainly been different from mine.
As I mentioned above, net margins for CDs are around 30%, which is the starting point for many products in the computer peripheral industry, in which I make my money. It's equally accurate to say that when you're buying a mouse, or a monitor, or a keyboard, or a webcam, that your money is going "for the nice cars and houses of a bunch of executives." While it's true that the president or CEO of any sufficiently large company makes much more money than most people, the music industry doesn't strike me as any more top-heavy than any other industry. Do you disagree?
"he record companies originally existed as pretty much the only method of advertising and distributing music. We have better ways now."
There's an old joke that used to go around on Usenet: "Immenent death of Usenet predicted, film at 11." For years people have been saying that about the record industry, as well. The record industry has been in some tough spots as a result of increased piracy, but I don't see them going away. Some record labels have consolidated and there have been some layoffs (but I'm sure they were all those executives with nice houses;-) ). The Internet is a new medium that record companies are starting to use (too slowly for many people's tastes), but the Internet is not a record company and won't replace record companies. The Internet may eventually replace those old-fashioned brick-and-mortar retailers as people flock more and more to Amazon or the iTunes Music Store -- but that's a sales channel, not the record industry.
There are new record labels popping up that embrace the business model that many Slashdotters think is the right way to do it: online distribution, payment optional, and no DRM. I speak specifically of Magnatune. As successful as they might eventually be, they are still a record label. Here, the difference is the business model, not the industry.
"I love how DVDs' prices are decreasing and will one day be lower than audio CDs' prices. How is it possible for such an old technology to be so expensive? (I know the answer but I'd really like their point of view...)"
The average price of a CD is down to $13.29. That's a historic low, and the price drop is accelerating. DVDs are typically priced at $19 or $20, so DVD prices have a long way to go before they meet CD prices.
The "old technology" involved in a CD -- the pressing -- is one of the less significant costs of production. A finished CD with jewel case and artwork runs around a buck in the quantities typically produced. Even if that cost were to magically go down to zero tomorrow, the cost to the consumer of a CD would only drop by a couple of bucks. The rest of the costs of a CD are things that have risen with inflation -- ie. rent, salaries, shipping costs, and so on.
You mentioned $17 for a CD... the average price of a new CD is now down to $13.29. That's a historic low, particularly when you take inflation into account. Some CDs will cost more (those pressed in smaller amounts, those that cost more to produce) but if you're still paying $17 for a typical new release, you're shopping at the wrong store.
You're correct that a CD doesn't cost anywhere near $50MM. The typical cost of sale for a CD is about six or seven bucks. This includes accruing for marketing, but I don't believe that it includes accrual for returns (which is a big cost at retail... the profit margin of a product is zero if it doesn't sell). They sell it into the channel for nine or ten bucks, so their net profit , if they're lucky, is two or three bucks, or around 25% - 30%.
If that makes your blood boil, believe me, you don't even want to think about the money-grubbing bastardship (I love that phrase!) behind the retail sales of food at your supermarket or clothes at the department store. Record companies would love to get those kinds of margins. I work in the computer peripheral industry and our margins when we sell into the channel start at 30% and go up from there.
As somebody else has pointed out, DVD sales of a film are just frosting on the cake. The film company makes most of their money on the theatrical release. A record company has one shot and one shot only to recoup their investment on a CD -- by selling the CD. The money collected from radio airplay, public performance, etc. goes to the artists who wrote the lyrics and music, not the record company.
"The musical artists already don't leave a legacy behind under the current system, because they don't own their copyrights. If you want the RIAA to make you famous, you have to give all your work to them, so THEY can leave it behind for THEIR children. You, the artist, are currently left empty-handed."
For what it's worth, the way it typically works in a recording contract is this: if you write your own words or music (as opposed to simply being a singer or performer) you keep those rights (that's how composers and lyricists make a lot of their money -- e.g. for radio or juke box airplay, it's the composer and lyricist who make money, not the record company). The record company usually has the copyright on the recording (although it's often shared with the engineer and/or producer). If you don't want a record company to have a copyright on a recording of a song you've written, the best way is to go it alone and come up with the money to hire the engineer and the recording studio. Once you're established, you get more leverage here. This is the reason that many artists end up starting their own record label.
"Incidentally, They Might Be Giants, the greatest band in the world, has been giving their music away for free since the day they started performing. They retain all their copyrights, because they did not do business with the RIAA. In other words, they played the game the way the slashdot crowd would like to see it played...and they have been making a living at this for 20 years, which is much longer than most RIAA bands can even hope for."
I'm a huge TMBG fan as well. Elektra/Asylum has the rights to lots of their earlier recordings (from the Flood era). I was glad to see that they went the indie route when they weren't cranking out the hits necessary to get big label distribution. The Spine was released on a much smaller label (Zoe) with which they presumably have more leverage. You probably know more details about the arrangement than I do.
"So, everything you said is wrong from every possible perspective."
"I'd take a wild guess that the mean time for children to outlive their parents is 30 years. So why do American and European copyrights last life plus 70 and not life plus 30?"
My guess is to cover the worst-case scenario of the songwriter finally hitting it big with a hit song, at around the time that he and his struggling wife have had their first child, and immediately preceeding being run over by a bus.
Slashdot Mirror
"Seriously, I can understand the movie issue but I think it's a bit idiotic of them to go after filesharing in general."
The article states:
Their interest is people who are sharing pirated copies of films. They are not suing people who are sharing Debian distributions.
Either you didn't RTA (that's okay, many people don't), or you are engaging in a debate tactic called the "straw man," where you mischaracterize your opponent's position to make it easier to tear down.
"I'm glad more musicians are seeing the benefit of online distribution. I just hope more of them release songs in lossless form, without DRM. Magnatune.com works this way (and artists get %50 of sale price) and I hope more artists choose to follow this model."
You bring up a good point. Magnatune is the epitomy of what many Slashdotters want from a record label, yet their catalog and sales are virtually non-existent compared to enterprises like the iTunes Music Store that eschew the "payment optional" model.
"Once big-name musicians disover the mighty power of Internet distribution, the record labels will be finished" is a bromide that's been uttered for five years now. Yet the record labels are making tons of money via iTMS, companies like Magnatune barely register, and even in 2004, when a somewhat-well known band like Wilco leverages the Internet for distribution, it's still news.
"If you want to talk about the RIAA's business interests, then talk about what their mission statement is: "Its mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members' creative and financial vitality." Something tells me that when such a tiny percentage of the money you pay for a CD goes to the actual artist, the RIAA is not promoting their members "financial vitality."
The RIAA counts as its members record labels, not artists. The RIAA is indeed fiercely loyal to its members, the record companies -- loyal to a fault, it seems sometimes.
There are, however, organizations that are run by and for artists, such as ASCAP and BMI (performing rights societies that collect performance royalties and distribute them to their members) as well as the various musicians' unions, who were instrumental in enacting the AHRA, which dictates the tariff collected on audio CD-Rs.
"The legislation is worded such that they could sue anyone (whether or not they have a financial interest in their success) like Bram Cohen."
Remember, the INDUCE Act is in draft form. It needs to be fixed so that it can be used to go after its intended targets, and not, say, Bram Cohen. You have not yet made the logical connection from "the draft is poorly worded" to "the RIAA likes it because it's poorly worded."
"If you can't logically conclude from the RIAA's position on various legislation that it would like to see filesharing stopped all together, then I really am sorry that your reasoning ability was lost somewhere along the line."
Uncalled for.
"If I recall, INDUCE would make any program capable of allowing copyright infringement illegal, including IM, FTP, web servers, etc., because everything is fundamentally peer-to-peer."
INDUCE is in draft form. Its purpose is to go after the folks who've built a business model on piracy; it's apparent that it was written specifically to make Kazaa illegal. Many people have pointed out that the wording in the act is vague enough that it could be interpreted to apply to IM and the like, but this is the important thing: Orin Hatch wrote it to go after Kazaa. Orin Hatch does not want to outlaw IM or HTTP.
The solution here is to keep refining the wording to allow the law to do its intended job and prevent it from being abused otherwise. If the goal of launching a GAIM file-sharing plug-in is to provide a litmus test against the INDUCE act , then that's great -- but, Nietchsesquely enough, this would make the INDUCE act stronger, not kill it.
Thank you for your reply. I think two things are well-established:
However, this does not mean that the RIAA wants to sue Apple or CNet. In this particular case, for example, I'm sure the RIAA loves Apple, because their iTunes store is helping them make tons of cash. Apple "plays nice": at the same time that they offer an iPod (a device that can hold authorized as well as unauthorized content), they have invested millions into a platform for selling authorized content.
My guess is that the RIAA has in mind for its first target the same people that the drafters have in mind: the P2P companies like Sharman Networks that have essentially built a business model on copyright infringement. Sharman Networks does not "play nice" in the sense that Apple does.
The RIAA -- just like you and me -- has their own business interests in mind. If Phish allow concert tapes to be exchanged and you and I exchange them on a web site dedicated to such, or if you and I composed and performed our own music and posted it to our own web site, the RIAA would not likely have a business interest in arbitrarily suing us because we are engaging in "file sharing."
Years ago, my company bought a lot of ad space on Kazaa. My company is well-known and we were advertising a popular CE device that's done very well in the market. Our ad contract was worth well into the six figures.
The ads did very poorly. The click-through was much lower than it was for the same ads elsewhere on the 'net. We got out of the contract.
While some of that might be attributed to Kazaa Lite or some other apps that counted ad views but didn't show them to the customers (I'm guessing here; not sure if that's how Kazaa Lite works), the analyis was that it was primarily due to it being the wrong audience -- largely teens with no interest in spending money.
Our dealings with the folks at Kazaa were interesting. They're bigger than many people think. They're very smart, drive tough deals and do a huge amount of business. Although they never did admit it in writing, they know darn well that their product, in the marketing sense (please, no "but it's the users who provide the product" retorts) is a vast collection of pirated material.
"P2P should be banned because there is no potential legal use for it, therefore anyone using it is intending to break the law."
Straw man. Not even the record companies are claiming "no potential legal use." They are (correctly) claiming that the vast majority of traffic on the big P2P networks is of pirated material.
There are plenty of download sites and even P2P networks where strict adherence to creators' rights is observed and nothing is made available without the creators' permission -- in fact, the creators themselves use these systems to distribute these works. But there's two fundamental differences between these sites and Kazaa, eDonkey, etc.: their popularity is far, far lower, and the record industry is not trying to drive them out of existence. You'll not likely see "Sony Music vs. Magnatune" any time soon.
"Enough with the 'its all copyright piracy' arguments already."
Fair enough. The vast majority of it is copyright piracy.
If, magically, all the unauthorized copyrighted content were to disappear off of Kazaa tomorrow, traffic would virtually disappear, they would no longer be able to collect ad revenue, and they'd no longer have a business model. It's the ad revenue that keeps Sharman Networks (a for-profit company whose founders are very, very rich) afloat, and it's not those Linux distros that's driving 99% of the Kazaa traffic -- it's the movies and music being distributed without the owner's permission.
"How dare they come up with an innovative business model that directly competes with established companies. This isn't a free market here."
I know you were being ironic, but you're right. From the Wiki on "free market economy":
It's often said on Slashdot that P2P sites whose traffic is primarily unauthorized copyright content is just the free market economy at work, but that's not technically correct. If you're breeching a contract or ignoring somebody's rights by trading music or movies, it can't be rationalized as simply participating in a free market economy.
"Which goes against any common sense, really. Giving a product away for free doesn't help sales in any way."
Agreed. To expand on the rationale, I think the argument is that if they download the CD via P2P they might eventually buy the CD and they might see the artist's concert. This is predicated on the assumption that the artist is one who does public performances.
"Suffice to say the artist in question isn't going to release a CD anytime soon. He's pretty pissed off too, having worked years on the music. From our point of view, endorsing massive music sharing on the Internet seems like advocating slavery. As if musicians were monkeys who do tricks for peanuts and should be happy that people graciously listen to them."
The common attitude in that regard is that the Internet has put musicians in their place. Their more fitting role in society will forever more be the "tip" model and people will no longer become musicians knowing that it's the easy road to a lifestyle which commonly includes snorting lines off of the taut stomachs of hot naked women. Because, you know, that's exactly the lifestyle by the average performer, singer or songwriter whose had their income hurt through piracy.
"So, basically, we haven't even made back our investment, and we're being given shit for being corporate assholes. None of us is rich by any means. I made a whopping $6000 from the label last year, and that's mostly because we also run a recording studio and I recorded & mixed some independent artists. Needless to say I need to have another job to make the ends meet. Still, people seem to think we should give the music away for free."
I'm not in the music industry but I've met other indie record label owners who tell the same story you do. It's not a story which is complimentary to the notion of guilt-free piracy. You should post it more often. I'm not bothered by piracy, but I'm annoyed by people who pirate and then claim that they're helping somebody by doing so. People should just fly the Jolly Roger proudly and grow some balls.
"But it's all the same because no one listens. Anti-music business posts in Slashdot get modded up and others like me get modded as Troll whatnot. People need to get their music for free, and god forbid if someone disagrees. Oh well, I think after almost 20 years of working as a professional recording engineer, it's time to start looking for other career options."
I'm sure you've heard the phrase "horse and buggy industry" thrown back at you. This is because the same technology that brought us the Internet now allows anybody to set up their own recording studio in their bedroom for peanuts. Skilled engineers and producers aren't part of the equation at all -- to many Slashdotters, it's all about the technology.
They appear to be contradicting themselves. On the page announcing the project they wrote:
The lawsuits aren't enough. The major record labels are literally trying to send people to prison for sharing music, and a new bill in Congress right now would let them.
Makes sense - but on the response page you linked to, they write:
Above all, and this is something we mention on our description page, it is crucial to support and protect filesharing against the current onslaught of the RIAA and MPAA-- not because we want people to get Hollywood's stuff for free, but because the real promise of the technology is to let people create and share their own music and movies.
Which is it? Is this GAIM project about providing a way for people to trade copyrighted files without going to jail, or for people to create and share their own music and movies?
For what it's worth, the bill they referenced would not make it a jailable offense for sharing your own music and movies.
What is downhillbattle's intent with this project? If it's to create a platform for people to share the stuff they've created, that's great, but why lead the project description with the horrors of the latest potential threat to people who share other's copyrighted work? It should be completely irrelevant.
And -- and this has been raised before -- if I have my own movies and music, why would I need yet another platform to distribute it? The web and the existing P2P platforms work remarkably well for people to distribute their stuff. The benefit of the GAIM project seems to be a platform for protection from prying eyes... but why on earth would I worry about that if I'm distributing my own stuff?
"I thought everybody has been hooting and hollaring about how P2P etc has nothing to do with the demise of the record industries, and their downfall was simply a result of crappy music, less demand, blah blah blah."
Agreed, that appears to be the popular opinion around here. In fact, many people advocate the position that music piracy actually helps the industry by providing more exposure for artists.
" They want to push the government to the point that they realize that anything connected to the Internet could be used for copyright infringment, so that they would either have to completely give up on stuff like the INDUCE act and the DMCA, or shut down the entire Internet."
I don't follow. Can you connect the dots here? It's a given that any electronic transport mechanism, such as the HTTP protocol or any other method of sending packets back and forth, can be used to transmit copyrighted material. You know this, I know this, the government knows this. Why would this cause problem for the DMCA or other legislation? These sorts of laws are an effort to deal with the people that misuse technology.
It's happened time and time again that when a new technology has sprung forth, new laws eventually appear that govern the use of that technology. Think of cars and weapons as an example. There were no state vehicle codes in the 1850's (or if there were, perhaps they covered carriages). When cars appeared, shortly thereafter, the rules governing them followed, and now my state's vehicle code is an inch thick.
Is it easy to keep laws up-to-date to cover the latest advances in automotive firearm, or communication technology? Hell no. But it generally does manage to happen, and society hasn't broken down.
"People like etree make such a mockery of the RIAA's claims that filesharing is only used for evil that it's not even funny."
Interesting... do you have a citation for RIAA claiming that file sharing is only used for evil? I can imagine (and vaguely remember) them saying something to the effect of 90% of Kazaa traffic being unauthorized copyrighted stuff (and I think they'd be right) but have they made a statement that encompasses a totally different type of service, like etree?
It would be great to see a link. Unfortunately I think you may be putting words in the RIAA's mouth or using a tactic called a straw man, defined as mischaracterizing your opponent's position so that it can be torn down easily.
"Okay, so, who's your favorite lighting effects programmer? I mean, since they get so much "exposure" from your bootlegged software, I'm sure they'll take comfort in your fanlike devotion."
Exactly. And while music pirates find solace in the notion that their favorite band probably wouldn't mind them P2Ping their latest CD rather than buying it, it's little solace to the songwriters and lyricists who don't see value in that "free exposure" but who would really rather have that royalty check to pay the rent. It's the same situation for engineer, producer, session musician and dozens of other behind-the-scenes people who are vital to the music production process yet who are not helped by piracy despite these rationalizations.
"As one of the looked down upon members of rural America, can I ask: if my local chinese restaurant is owned and entirely staffed by chinese people that barely speak english, how is our chinese restaurant less than yours. And the locally owned pizzerias are owned by real italian people."
Easy: lack of competition. When you're the only Chinese restaurant in town, you don't have to be as good as the Chinese place that's in proximity to ten other Chinese places fighting for the same business. If you're located in a town where it's tough to get a reservation at the Applebee's on a Friday night, "good enough" is just fine for the locals who don't know any better.
Make no mistake; on the road I've discovered some real gems in the international food arena run by immigrants such as those you describe. However, my extensive and frequent travels to the small-town midwest have shown me that mediocrity is the culinary standard.
"Most places will have pizza delivery, Chinese food, and Walmart."
I've made the mistake of sampling what passes for pizza and Chinese food in some of the banjo-swinging states. And don't even get me started about Wal-Mart.
" Any time you pirate a game, you are making life that much harder for the programmers who work on it. These people have difficult jobs, work long hours, and they don't do it so you can just download it from Usenet."
My apologies if you were being ironic, but my guess is that most folks would see this as a reason to pirate the software. As this fellow put it:
"My advice: if you don't agree with EA practices, dont buy any of their products. Hit them where it hurts, and if they lay people off, you're doing those workers a favor anyhow."
While he didn't specifically advocate piracy, it seems like a logical conclusion. The game industry and the music industry have this in common: the big companies tend to mal-treat their workers. And, I think we can apply some of the same rationalizations: just as musicians would probably appreciate us getting their music via P2P because it's the exposure that counts more than paying rent, perhaps many game programmers also feel the same way. So hoist that Jolly Roger!
"I'd be positively THRILLED to pay, say, $25/month for access to the old Napster knowing that a portion of my money went into a fund directly supporting the various artists."
Agreed, it's an idea with merit. A few years back when the "Napster hearings" were going on in congress, a few of the P2P companies were pushing for the consideration of a compulsory licensing system, where the copyright holders would give up the right to prevent their work from being distributed by online services (either the P2P platforms or the legitimate online resellers), in exchange for getting some money in relation to how often thier stuff was downloaded. In a bizarre turn of events, the record companies and the P2P companies were on one side of the table on the issue, while the composers, lyricists, etc. were on the other side.
That's because back then, a lot of composers and lyricists were reticent about allowing their stuff to be distributed online. The concern was that, say, if Madonna had a CD in which the songs were the creative work of ten different people, individual agreements would need to be worked out before the CD could be released as a whole. The P2P companies wanted this because it would allow them to operate as legitimate companies, and the record companies wanted this because it would allow them to quickly build their online catalogs (for resale through iTunes and the rest) without sinking all the person-hours into negotiating with each individual songwriter, lest they have the "swiss cheese" effect of only certain tracks of albums being available, which would have been a hinderance to the adoption and success of the online sales channel.
Flash forward to three years later, and while on iTunes you won't have to look very hard to find examples of particular songs not being available for download (due the band, songwriter, or lyricist declining to allow it to be sold online), the artists have largely seen the light and it isn't as big of a problem as the record companies probably feared. The P2P companies are still SOL with regard to legitimacy, of course, but I'm not too worried about the financial futures of the guys who run Kazaa. ;-)
"The point you're missing here is that, apparently, file-sharing isn't the major cause of the downtrend in sales."
I think he gets that point, as do the rest of us. The issue is that the point is still at odds with Slashdot groupthink, which is often that music piracy helps the industry (the tale usually told is that people who pirate a CD will more likely end up buying it than if they hadn't at all).
That file sharing isn't the major cause of the industry downturn is, as another Slashdotter succinctly put it, one of those "no shit" statements. The shocker here should be that it's a cause at all. And, if it's just part of the cause, the industry should be worried. If you're not sure what I mean here, if you owned a shop and you thought that 50% of your lost sales were due to shoplifting but it turned out to only be 10%, you'd still want to take some action.
"The RIAA already imposes a "CD Tax", why couldn't it have imposed a "Napster Tax"?"
You mean the tariff on blank CDs in the US? That's imposed largely by the artists. Only a small slice of the pie goes to record companies. None goes to the RIAA. Likewise, when the notion of a compulsory licensing system came up in congress, it was the unions representing the lyricists, composers and other artists that threw the biggest fit. This is an important thing to understand if one kneels at the shrine of "record companies bad, artists good."
"With CDs, you're (mostly) paying for the nice cars and houses of a bunch of executives."
Interesting... do you have a cite for that? I've met a few people in the music industry, including the owner of a small indie label. They most certainly did not fit into the "nice house and car" category. They were ordinary working people. If the people you've met in the music industry were all rich executives, then your experience has certainly been different from mine.
As I mentioned above, net margins for CDs are around 30%, which is the starting point for many products in the computer peripheral industry, in which I make my money. It's equally accurate to say that when you're buying a mouse, or a monitor, or a keyboard, or a webcam, that your money is going "for the nice cars and houses of a bunch of executives." While it's true that the president or CEO of any sufficiently large company makes much more money than most people, the music industry doesn't strike me as any more top-heavy than any other industry. Do you disagree?
"he record companies originally existed as pretty much the only method of advertising and distributing music. We have better ways now."
There's an old joke that used to go around on Usenet: "Immenent death of Usenet predicted, film at 11." For years people have been saying that about the record industry, as well. The record industry has been in some tough spots as a result of increased piracy, but I don't see them going away. Some record labels have consolidated and there have been some layoffs (but I'm sure they were all those executives with nice houses ;-) ). The Internet is a new medium that record companies are starting to use (too slowly for many people's tastes), but the Internet is not a record company and won't replace record companies. The Internet may eventually replace those old-fashioned brick-and-mortar retailers as people flock more and more to Amazon or the iTunes Music Store -- but that's a sales channel, not the record industry.
There are new record labels popping up that embrace the business model that many Slashdotters think is the right way to do it: online distribution, payment optional, and no DRM. I speak specifically of Magnatune. As successful as they might eventually be, they are still a record label. Here, the difference is the business model, not the industry.
"I love how DVDs' prices are decreasing and will one day be lower than audio CDs' prices. How is it possible for such an old technology to be so expensive? (I know the answer but I'd really like their point of view...)"
The average price of a CD is down to $13.29. That's a historic low, and the price drop is accelerating. DVDs are typically priced at $19 or $20, so DVD prices have a long way to go before they meet CD prices.
The "old technology" involved in a CD -- the pressing -- is one of the less significant costs of production. A finished CD with jewel case and artwork runs around a buck in the quantities typically produced. Even if that cost were to magically go down to zero tomorrow, the cost to the consumer of a CD would only drop by a couple of bucks. The rest of the costs of a CD are things that have risen with inflation -- ie. rent, salaries, shipping costs, and so on.
You mentioned $17 for a CD... the average price of a new CD is now down to $13.29. That's a historic low, particularly when you take inflation into account. Some CDs will cost more (those pressed in smaller amounts, those that cost more to produce) but if you're still paying $17 for a typical new release, you're shopping at the wrong store.
You're correct that a CD doesn't cost anywhere near $50MM. The typical cost of sale for a CD is about six or seven bucks. This includes accruing for marketing, but I don't believe that it includes accrual for returns (which is a big cost at retail... the profit margin of a product is zero if it doesn't sell). They sell it into the channel for nine or ten bucks, so their net profit , if they're lucky, is two or three bucks, or around 25% - 30%.
If that makes your blood boil, believe me, you don't even want to think about the money-grubbing bastardship (I love that phrase!) behind the retail sales of food at your supermarket or clothes at the department store. Record companies would love to get those kinds of margins. I work in the computer peripheral industry and our margins when we sell into the channel start at 30% and go up from there.
As somebody else has pointed out, DVD sales of a film are just frosting on the cake. The film company makes most of their money on the theatrical release. A record company has one shot and one shot only to recoup their investment on a CD -- by selling the CD. The money collected from radio airplay, public performance, etc. goes to the artists who wrote the lyrics and music, not the record company.
"The musical artists already don't leave a legacy behind under the current system, because they don't own their copyrights. If you want the RIAA to make you famous, you have to give all your work to them, so THEY can leave it behind for THEIR children. You, the artist, are currently left empty-handed."
For what it's worth, the way it typically works in a recording contract is this: if you write your own words or music (as opposed to simply being a singer or performer) you keep those rights (that's how composers and lyricists make a lot of their money -- e.g. for radio or juke box airplay, it's the composer and lyricist who make money, not the record company). The record company usually has the copyright on the recording (although it's often shared with the engineer and/or producer). If you don't want a record company to have a copyright on a recording of a song you've written, the best way is to go it alone and come up with the money to hire the engineer and the recording studio. Once you're established, you get more leverage here. This is the reason that many artists end up starting their own record label.
"Incidentally, They Might Be Giants, the greatest band in the world, has been giving their music away for free since the day they started performing. They retain all their copyrights, because they did not do business with the RIAA. In other words, they played the game the way the slashdot crowd would like to see it played...and they have been making a living at this for 20 years, which is much longer than most RIAA bands can even hope for."
I'm a huge TMBG fan as well. Elektra/Asylum has the rights to lots of their earlier recordings (from the Flood era). I was glad to see that they went the indie route when they weren't cranking out the hits necessary to get big label distribution. The Spine was released on a much smaller label (Zoe) with which they presumably have more leverage. You probably know more details about the arrangement than I do.
"So, everything you said is wrong from every possible perspective."
Please take it down a notch.
"I'd take a wild guess that the mean time for children to outlive their parents is 30 years. So why do American and European copyrights last life plus 70 and not life plus 30?"
My guess is to cover the worst-case scenario of the songwriter finally hitting it big with a hit song, at around the time that he and his struggling wife have had their first child, and immediately preceeding being run over by a bus.