You often get people in the UK complaining about how many languages healthcare, tax etc forms and leaflets are in. "A waste of taxpayers' money" they cry, "it's discouraging them from learning the language." Well I've been on the other side, filling out tax forms in a foreign language, and believe me, it's hard. This isn't language you use very often -- it's specialised and often unclear even to native speakers. Dealing with health problems is even more difficult, and as a language teacher, I can't prepare my students for discussing every possible medical complication they might encounter. I had a degree in the language in question -- I struggle to imagine how difficult it would be to approach it after only evening classes at a community library....
How fucked up has the world become where everyone gets to decide what a store owner "needs to" do but the store owner.
Yeah. Man, the gubmint came into my shop just last week and told me I had to put English ingredients on my food labels. I said "hey, Mr Gubmint Man, get off my back. This is Thai curry that I imported from Thailand, so the ingredients are in Thai. Stop trying to tell me what to do!
Passing laws like this will not "defend their culture". It merely hurts them economically, makes them look stupid to the rest of the world, and at best delays the inevitable changes that will occur.
I bow to your superior knowledge of language dynamics. Shall I tell my university lecturers that they were all wrong then?
Because, you see, it has been seen time and again that if there is one language you can use everywhere, and one that is optional, people use the one you can use everywhere. Before the language laws, people were shifting to English, because there was the expectation and/or fear of not being understood. This has been reversed. By comparison, you have the minority regional languages of France, where only French is official. Without legal protection, the loss of expectation of language means even people that are perfectly competent in speaking the local language tend to use the majority language with each other. Quebec's language policy is working very well, thankyouverymuch, and if you think they look stupid for doing it, well, they think you're pretty damned arrogant for deriding them for refusing to be like you.
You know, I once tried importing my fine German sausages into the US, but the b*st*rds said I had to translate the ingredients into English. Das ist nicht gut! Tyranny of the majority! Interfering with the free market!
For the 25% who subscribe, they can, in fact, elect a specific song. However, does the ability to do this equal a compelling enough reason to bear economic costs above and beyond the subscription costs? For most people, it does not; indeed, we know for a fact that even the subscription costs are not a compelling enough argument for 75% of the user base.
Then the business plan is not viable. If a shopkeeper can't charge enough to buy the stock, the shop closes.
A little correction to my figures -- Spotify say that they pay out 70% of gross revenue as royalties, which means each play is worth 0.857 of a cent in income. That's a 115th of a 99c track.
If you follow the case more closely, you'll find that people have been finding their material blocked and contacting GEMA, saying "this isn't under your license, what the hell are you playing at?" and they've responded that "we never asked for this material to be blocked -- speak to Google."
"Put the barrel of the gun against his temple, now flick the safety catch off, now softly squeeze the trigger" is not communicating an "idea" or an "opinion", therefore it is not the abstract "speech" of "freedom of speech".
Yes it is. The person with the gun to a man's temple is the sole actor. Only he is responsible. The words do nothing. A person has to act.
So Hitler isn't in any way responsible for the untold thousands that died in the gas chambers, because he didn't turn the tap? Osama Bin Laden was free of all guilt over the Twin Towers because he wasn't piloting either of the planes?
The GEMA model splits the royalties on an apportionment basis related to ratings, which in no way has anything to do with views of a particular artist.
That is a problem, and it should be dealt with. It is now trivially easy to apportion the royalties, because Spotify have the data. Hopefully the artists will push for this.
Even were that the case, the economic value of a play on Spotify, which is point-to-point, and only reaches the person playing it, rather than every idiot stuck in their car on the Autobahn, and too lazy to change the station instead of just waiting for the next song to come up instead in no way reaches the economic value of a play to a much larger (semi-captive) audience.
Demanding the same amount per play to a single user as to an entire radio audience for a regional station, of which there are a limited number, is both extortionate and unrealistic.
It seems extortionate and unrealistic, right up until you consider that the big difference between radio and Spotify isn't the "one-to-one" vs "one-to-many" part, but the on-demand part. The individual value of a radio play is low because the listener has next-to-no say in the matter.
With Spotify, I choose what I listen to, which makes it immediately more valuable to me. Spotify pays 0.6 cents per play, so let's assume a 100% markup, and that they're receiving 1.2 cents per play on average. Compare with a 99c track from iTunes -- you get 82.5 plays for the price of that, and I have to say there are a lot of CDs in my collection that I haven't played that many times.
Comparing the cost of Spotify to the cost of radio plays is like comparing Blockbuster Video to TV plays. A better comparison would be comparing hiring a VHS tape from Blockbuster against buying the same film. The difference there was not 82.5 times...
Except most of the material isn't even GEMA's to license, and they have not asked for it to be blocked. It looks for all the world like Google are playing a nasty, nasty game. Lots and lots of collateral damage and pointing to someone else to blame. "Sorry I blew up your house, but it was GEMA -- they asked us to exterminate a rat that was in it."
Ah, "exposure". For those of us with more than two neurones to rub together, it is patently obvious that using your principle product as publicity collateral leaves you with nothing to sell.
That is the system working as it should. When I was in primary school, most of the music I had for singing lessons or for instrument lessons was either in professionally prepared and published books, or it was handwritten and photocopied. It was the school's decision whether the convenience of the professional books outweighed the cost, or whether they were better off writing it themselves.
Computers have allowed amateurs to get nearer and nearer to professional quality, and this does lead to a natural decline in the publishing industry that they cannot complain about -- free amateur stuff is fair competition to the paid-for professional stuff. But the choice should always be between the free stuff for free, or the paid-for stuff for money. Suggesting the paid-for stuff should be free makes no sense. It should either be paid for, or it should cease to be.
presumably Google has offered a similar deal to GEMA as it has done to the US, UK and other countries' music bodies, and this has in turn set the baseline. If GEMA are being greedy and asking for more, then they deserve to be made to look bad by YouTube's message.
Just because the baseline exists doesn't mean that it's reasonable. If GEMA believes that YouTube would be ripping off the people it represents at that rate, GEMA has a duty to refuse. Your argument is like calling for the abolition of minimum wage laws because some poor sods somewhere in the developing world are worked to death for tuppence a day, and that asking for more than that is "unreasonable".
Youtube has no obligation to paint GEMA in a favorable light, as long as their statements are true. They can say GEMA are evil, unreasonable greedy misers, and it would be perfectly legal free speech (as it should be).
Which is why MacDonald's adverts tell you that KFC makes you spotty, and why Apple ads tell you Windows causes cognitive impairment, yes?
Nice try. The answer is that the producers took a gamble that they could sell enough copies of the work to recoup the production costs and earn some profit. If they can't do that, well, that's their problem.
Have you had an eyetest lately? I'm worried you may be more than a little short-sighted.
Yes, every piece of intellectual property, whether it's a pharmaceutical compound, a movie or a short story, is a gamble by the producer hoping they can sell enough copies.
Now, let's abolish copyright. Now what are the chances of producing enough copies of the work to recoup the production costs? Zero. Zilch. Nil. Nada. The gamble is gone, and production stops.
I mean, seriously, would anyone go into a bookie's shop and lay down any money if all the odds were 0:1, 0:5, 0:32? Not a chance in hell.
Let people who like to make art (paintings, stories, music, whatever) do so because they like to do so without expecting it to let their great-grandchildren live like royalty - that's not what 'royalties' mean.
Culture isn't about mass-producing music that is, essentially, all the same, or producing movies and books that all follow pretty much the same script.
Copyright terms are too long. Agreed. But that does not mean that artists should produce art only "because they like to do so". No-one truly masters an art in their spare time, and being an artist is a full-time job. The abolition of copyright is not the only alternative to over-long copyright terms!
Alternatively, they could strip out the YouTube search engine, the recommendation engine and the ad engine, and leave it to the channel owners to publicise their own videos, generate their own recommendations and organise their own ads. At that point YouTube would be a "dumb channel" and deserving of safe harbor status. Right now, YouTube may not be generating the content, but they're directly responsible for publicising it as well as profiting from it.
Have you ever heard of the Safe Harbor provision of the DMCA?
That's a law designed to prop up a flawed business model: "we can't afford to do it right, so please exempt us from copyright" and many countries have no similar laws... eg Germany.
My argument since the founding of YouTube has always been the same: printers vs publishers vs editors.
Is a printer liable for any damages if they print infringing/defamatory/otherwise-illegal material in a newspaper? No, they're a printer. They get a file and push it through the rollers. They are not expected to read it.
Is a publisher liable? Yes.
Is an editor liable? Yes, he OKed the material.
Is the journalist liable? Of course.
Now, YouTube claims to be a printer, but is it? Well, what's the biggest brand on the site? "YouTube". Have you ever seen a book or a newspaper where the biggest brand on the material is the name of the printer? Of course not -- the publisher could switch printer any time he likes and still come out of it with a product that differs only by one little "printed by/at:" line that no-one ever reads.
So you go to YouTube. It says YouTube in bigger letters than the name of the channel you're viewing. Unless the channel has paid megabucks to get a totally exclusive channel, the suggested videos are not chosen by the channel provider, but by YouTube. The adverts are selected by YouTube. The comments are stored and moderated by YouTube.
They want to have their cake and eat it. They have built a huge brand as the world's biggest and most varied magazine, but when someone challenges their publishing policies they wave their hands in the air crying "we're not a publisher, we're a printer".
GEMA's stance is #@!&. Once you're a member you aren't even allowed to make your own material freely available. Your IP isn't your own any more, it will belong to GEMA and you will be charged with copyright infringement although you're the creator.
GEMA is all about money for GEMA, nothing else.
One misleading truth, and one untruth. First up, GEMA's exclusivity is not unique -- most collection societies have the same deal; suggesting GEMA is particular in this way is misleading. The collection societies couldn't operate without this exclusivity, because if one of their inspectors walks into a shop and hears one of their artist's songs, he can mark it down. But what if the shopkeeper says "I got a license from Such-and-such Company". Now the collection society has to go back and audit this license, which means extra work (hence expense) over something that they're not getting paid for. If they were to allow parallel licensing, then, their fees would increase dramatically, to the point where it wouldn't be worth it. And then suddenly the artists would be able to license 1001 different ways should they desire, but no-one would be checking that they were getting paid for it, so most people would chance it and use the material without a license, and even if you caught wind of it, building a case would be nigh on impossible.
So while there are undoubtedly problems with the current collection societies, your complaint isn't actually the problem.
Close, but no cigar. Google is a business, not an individual. Companies outside the US do not typically get granted "human rights", what with not being actual humans. Arguments about neo-naziism and holocaust denial are valid, but completely irrelevant to this case.
Besides, would you consider it free speech if Pepsi ran an advert "Coke causes cancer: Drink Pepsi"? Do you not think it fair and right that such an advert would be banned?
Perhaps it's just that you don't speak legalese. The WP definition of "Freedom of speech" is "the political right to communicate one's opinions and ideas using one's body and property to anyone who is willing to receive them." There is a difference between expressing an idea and coordinating an action. "Put the barrel of the gun against his temple, now flick the safety catch off, now softly squeeze the trigger" is not communicating an "idea" or an "opinion", therefore it is not the abstract "speech" of "freedom of speech". It's conspiracy or incitement, or if the person is completely legally incompetent, it might even be full-blown murder. "Someone should shoot the b*st*rd" is (or at least should be) protected speech in most circumstances.
Notably, Britain doesn't extend free speech protection to visitors. You can no longer be done for seditious speech as a citizen (unless you're actually planning something) but a visitor can.
If that law says all visitors, it's wrong. A principle of the EU is that citizens of other member states must be treated at least as well as your own citizens -- if it's not a crime for British citizens, it's not a crime for EU citizens.
That's right. However, the 1st amendment does explicitly enumerate the right to free speech without any conditions. All "legalized" restrictions are in violation.
You can argue that restrictions in criminal law are legally incompetent, but you cannot deny someone the right to sue for defamation/slander in a civil court.
Slashdot Mirror
You often get people in the UK complaining about how many languages healthcare, tax etc forms and leaflets are in. "A waste of taxpayers' money" they cry, "it's discouraging them from learning the language." Well I've been on the other side, filling out tax forms in a foreign language, and believe me, it's hard. This isn't language you use very often -- it's specialised and often unclear even to native speakers. Dealing with health problems is even more difficult, and as a language teacher, I can't prepare my students for discussing every possible medical complication they might encounter. I had a degree in the language in question -- I struggle to imagine how difficult it would be to approach it after only evening classes at a community library....
"it needs to"
How fucked up has the world become where everyone gets to decide what a store owner "needs to" do but the store owner.
Yeah. Man, the gubmint came into my shop just last week and told me I had to put English ingredients on my food labels. I said "hey, Mr Gubmint Man, get off my back. This is Thai curry that I imported from Thailand, so the ingredients are in Thai. Stop trying to tell me what to do!
Passing laws like this will not "defend their culture". It merely hurts them economically, makes them look stupid to the rest of the world, and at best delays the inevitable changes that will occur.
I bow to your superior knowledge of language dynamics. Shall I tell my university lecturers that they were all wrong then?
Because, you see, it has been seen time and again that if there is one language you can use everywhere, and one that is optional, people use the one you can use everywhere. Before the language laws, people were shifting to English, because there was the expectation and/or fear of not being understood. This has been reversed. By comparison, you have the minority regional languages of France, where only French is official. Without legal protection, the loss of expectation of language means even people that are perfectly competent in speaking the local language tend to use the majority language with each other. Quebec's language policy is working very well, thankyouverymuch, and if you think they look stupid for doing it, well, they think you're pretty damned arrogant for deriding them for refusing to be like you.
How about this. Most North Americans that people from Quebec come into contact with speak English.
That's circular logic: most North Americans that people from Quebec come into contact with are also from Quebec.
You know, I once tried importing my fine German sausages into the US, but the b*st*rds said I had to translate the ingredients into English. Das ist nicht gut! Tyranny of the majority! Interfering with the free market!
For the 25% who subscribe, they can, in fact, elect a specific song. However, does the ability to do this equal a compelling enough reason to bear economic costs above and beyond the subscription costs? For most people, it does not; indeed, we know for a fact that even the subscription costs are not a compelling enough argument for 75% of the user base.
Then the business plan is not viable. If a shopkeeper can't charge enough to buy the stock, the shop closes.
A little correction to my figures -- Spotify say that they pay out 70% of gross revenue as royalties, which means each play is worth 0.857 of a cent in income. That's a 115th of a 99c track.
If you follow the case more closely, you'll find that people have been finding their material blocked and contacting GEMA, saying "this isn't under your license, what the hell are you playing at?" and they've responded that "we never asked for this material to be blocked -- speak to Google."
"Put the barrel of the gun against his temple, now flick the safety catch off, now softly squeeze the trigger" is not communicating an "idea" or an "opinion", therefore it is not the abstract "speech" of "freedom of speech".
Yes it is. The person with the gun to a man's temple is the sole actor. Only he is responsible. The words do nothing. A person has to act.
So Hitler isn't in any way responsible for the untold thousands that died in the gas chambers, because he didn't turn the tap? Osama Bin Laden was free of all guilt over the Twin Towers because he wasn't piloting either of the planes?
Libel/slander are nothing but bullshit attempts to silence criticism.
You wouldn't object to me putting up billboards in your neighbourhood calling you a paedophile then...?
The GEMA model splits the royalties on an apportionment basis related to ratings, which in no way has anything to do with views of a particular artist.
That is a problem, and it should be dealt with. It is now trivially easy to apportion the royalties, because Spotify have the data. Hopefully the artists will push for this.
Even were that the case, the economic value of a play on Spotify, which is point-to-point, and only reaches the person playing it, rather than every idiot stuck in their car on the Autobahn, and too lazy to change the station instead of just waiting for the next song to come up instead in no way reaches the economic value of a play to a much larger (semi-captive) audience.
Demanding the same amount per play to a single user as to an entire radio audience for a regional station, of which there are a limited number, is both extortionate and unrealistic.
It seems extortionate and unrealistic, right up until you consider that the big difference between radio and Spotify isn't the "one-to-one" vs "one-to-many" part, but the on-demand part. The individual value of a radio play is low because the listener has next-to-no say in the matter.
With Spotify, I choose what I listen to, which makes it immediately more valuable to me. Spotify pays 0.6 cents per play, so let's assume a 100% markup, and that they're receiving 1.2 cents per play on average. Compare with a 99c track from iTunes -- you get 82.5 plays for the price of that, and I have to say there are a lot of CDs in my collection that I haven't played that many times.
Comparing the cost of Spotify to the cost of radio plays is like comparing Blockbuster Video to TV plays. A better comparison would be comparing hiring a VHS tape from Blockbuster against buying the same film. The difference there was not 82.5 times...
Except most of the material isn't even GEMA's to license, and they have not asked for it to be blocked. It looks for all the world like Google are playing a nasty, nasty game. Lots and lots of collateral damage and pointing to someone else to blame. "Sorry I blew up your house, but it was GEMA -- they asked us to exterminate a rat that was in it."
Ah, "exposure". For those of us with more than two neurones to rub together, it is patently obvious that using your principle product as publicity collateral leaves you with nothing to sell.
That is the system working as it should. When I was in primary school, most of the music I had for singing lessons or for instrument lessons was either in professionally prepared and published books, or it was handwritten and photocopied. It was the school's decision whether the convenience of the professional books outweighed the cost, or whether they were better off writing it themselves.
Computers have allowed amateurs to get nearer and nearer to professional quality, and this does lead to a natural decline in the publishing industry that they cannot complain about -- free amateur stuff is fair competition to the paid-for professional stuff. But the choice should always be between the free stuff for free, or the paid-for stuff for money. Suggesting the paid-for stuff should be free makes no sense. It should either be paid for, or it should cease to be.
presumably Google has offered a similar deal to GEMA as it has done to the US, UK and other countries' music bodies, and this has in turn set the baseline. If GEMA are being greedy and asking for more, then they deserve to be made to look bad by YouTube's message.
Just because the baseline exists doesn't mean that it's reasonable. If GEMA believes that YouTube would be ripping off the people it represents at that rate, GEMA has a duty to refuse. Your argument is like calling for the abolition of minimum wage laws because some poor sods somewhere in the developing world are worked to death for tuppence a day, and that asking for more than that is "unreasonable".
Youtube has no obligation to paint GEMA in a favorable light, as long as their statements are true. They can say GEMA are evil, unreasonable greedy misers, and it would be perfectly legal free speech (as it should be).
Which is why MacDonald's adverts tell you that KFC makes you spotty, and why Apple ads tell you Windows causes cognitive impairment, yes?
Nice try. The answer is that the producers took a gamble that they could sell enough copies of the work to recoup the production costs and earn some profit. If they can't do that, well, that's their problem.
Have you had an eyetest lately? I'm worried you may be more than a little short-sighted.
Yes, every piece of intellectual property, whether it's a pharmaceutical compound, a movie or a short story, is a gamble by the producer hoping they can sell enough copies.
Now, let's abolish copyright. Now what are the chances of producing enough copies of the work to recoup the production costs? Zero. Zilch. Nil. Nada. The gamble is gone, and production stops.
I mean, seriously, would anyone go into a bookie's shop and lay down any money if all the odds were 0:1, 0:5, 0:32? Not a chance in hell.
Let people who like to make art (paintings, stories, music, whatever) do so because they like to do so without expecting it to let their great-grandchildren live like royalty - that's not what 'royalties' mean.
Culture isn't about mass-producing music that is, essentially, all the same, or producing movies and books that all follow pretty much the same script.
Copyright terms are too long. Agreed. But that does not mean that artists should produce art only "because they like to do so". No-one truly masters an art in their spare time, and being an artist is a full-time job. The abolition of copyright is not the only alternative to over-long copyright terms!
Alternatively, they could strip out the YouTube search engine, the recommendation engine and the ad engine, and leave it to the channel owners to publicise their own videos, generate their own recommendations and organise their own ads. At that point YouTube would be a "dumb channel" and deserving of safe harbor status. Right now, YouTube may not be generating the content, but they're directly responsible for publicising it as well as profiting from it.
Have you ever heard of the Safe Harbor provision of the DMCA?
That's a law designed to prop up a flawed business model: "we can't afford to do it right, so please exempt us from copyright" and many countries have no similar laws... eg Germany.
My argument since the founding of YouTube has always been the same: printers vs publishers vs editors.
Is a printer liable for any damages if they print infringing/defamatory/otherwise-illegal material in a newspaper? No, they're a printer. They get a file and push it through the rollers. They are not expected to read it.
Is a publisher liable? Yes.
Is an editor liable? Yes, he OKed the material.
Is the journalist liable? Of course.
Now, YouTube claims to be a printer, but is it? Well, what's the biggest brand on the site? "YouTube". Have you ever seen a book or a newspaper where the biggest brand on the material is the name of the printer? Of course not -- the publisher could switch printer any time he likes and still come out of it with a product that differs only by one little "printed by/at:" line that no-one ever reads.
So you go to YouTube. It says YouTube in bigger letters than the name of the channel you're viewing. Unless the channel has paid megabucks to get a totally exclusive channel, the suggested videos are not chosen by the channel provider, but by YouTube. The adverts are selected by YouTube. The comments are stored and moderated by YouTube.
They want to have their cake and eat it. They have built a huge brand as the world's biggest and most varied magazine, but when someone challenges their publishing policies they wave their hands in the air crying "we're not a publisher, we're a printer".
GEMA's stance is #@!&. Once you're a member you aren't even allowed to make your own material freely available. Your IP isn't your own any more, it will belong to GEMA and you will be charged with copyright infringement although you're the creator.
GEMA is all about money for GEMA, nothing else.
One misleading truth, and one untruth. First up, GEMA's exclusivity is not unique -- most collection societies have the same deal; suggesting GEMA is particular in this way is misleading. The collection societies couldn't operate without this exclusivity, because if one of their inspectors walks into a shop and hears one of their artist's songs, he can mark it down. But what if the shopkeeper says "I got a license from Such-and-such Company". Now the collection society has to go back and audit this license, which means extra work (hence expense) over something that they're not getting paid for. If they were to allow parallel licensing, then, their fees would increase dramatically, to the point where it wouldn't be worth it. And then suddenly the artists would be able to license 1001 different ways should they desire, but no-one would be checking that they were getting paid for it, so most people would chance it and use the material without a license, and even if you caught wind of it, building a case would be nigh on impossible.
So while there are undoubtedly problems with the current collection societies, your complaint isn't actually the problem.
Close, but no cigar. Google is a business, not an individual. Companies outside the US do not typically get granted "human rights", what with not being actual humans. Arguments about neo-naziism and holocaust denial are valid, but completely irrelevant to this case.
Besides, would you consider it free speech if Pepsi ran an advert "Coke causes cancer: Drink Pepsi"? Do you not think it fair and right that such an advert would be banned?
Perhaps it's just that you don't speak legalese. The WP definition of "Freedom of speech" is "the political right to communicate one's opinions and ideas using one's body and property to anyone who is willing to receive them." There is a difference between expressing an idea and coordinating an action. "Put the barrel of the gun against his temple, now flick the safety catch off, now softly squeeze the trigger" is not communicating an "idea" or an "opinion", therefore it is not the abstract "speech" of "freedom of speech". It's conspiracy or incitement, or if the person is completely legally incompetent, it might even be full-blown murder. "Someone should shoot the b*st*rd" is (or at least should be) protected speech in most circumstances.
Notably, Britain doesn't extend free speech protection to visitors. You can no longer be done for seditious speech as a citizen (unless you're actually planning something) but a visitor can.
If that law says all visitors, it's wrong. A principle of the EU is that citizens of other member states must be treated at least as well as your own citizens -- if it's not a crime for British citizens, it's not a crime for EU citizens.
Then no free speech exists anywhere.
That's right. However, the 1st amendment does explicitly enumerate the right to free speech without any conditions. All "legalized" restrictions are in violation.
You can argue that restrictions in criminal law are legally incompetent, but you cannot deny someone the right to sue for defamation/slander in a civil court.