Actually, it's a little more complicated. There are three separate things that are involved: songwriting, recording, and sometimes producing (listen to later Beatles music, Nine Inch Nails' first album, or most early-90s rap to get an idea of how important the producer can be).
The current system provides separate protections for songwriters and recording artists (producers usually get a flat fee or negotiate a special deal).
Anyway, I had two points. First, recording perfect covers is difficult, and this is why the band that does the recording deserves some money (this is also why a band can make money covering someone else's song--especially if they interpret it in a completely different way). Second, even if you could record perfect covers by pushing a button, the songwriter would still deserve their money (although you could make some arguments in the case of algorithmic compositions like Xenakis's works, or cut-and-paste compositions like Puff Daddy's).
In the case of Metallica (I'm assuming), they're both the songwriters and the performers. So if someone were to come up with a way to do an indistinguishable Metallica cover, you could stop paying them for their recording, but you'd still have to pay them as songwriters.
In other words, you don't have the right to do whatever you want with their recording, or with the song itself.
(There are limits to this, of course. For example, I can write a parody without paying them as songwriters; I can sample a fragment of their recording without paying them as recording artists; etc. Generally, the idea is that I'm creating a new work, not just stealing theirs.)
Sure. You can also get around Lojack by taking the car to a non-covered area, or a shielded garage, before the system is turned on. The system isn't 100% perfect. Lojack claims 90%. Maybe for laptops it would be signficantly lower. But it probably wouldn't be 0%.
It's probably impossible to make something impossible to steal. But making it harder for people to steal it and get away with it is still sometimes a worth-while effort.
I'm not that interesting in protecting Metallica, but I have seen bands that I like break up because they coldn't afford to keep going. I remember Birmingham 6's last concert, halfway through their first American tour, and I'd much rather live in a world where I'd get to see them again, or at least hear a new album.
Ideally, I'd like all good artists (read: artists that I like) to be completely supported (except the ones that actually create better art because of the struggle). But that's obviously not a realistic solution in our society. Paying the artists commercially for sales of their art isn't a great solution, but I don't want to throw that system away until we have a better one.
And not all bands get worse as they get more popular. Pet Shop Boys, Gary Numan, Information Society, Front 242, Wolfsheim, and plenty of others released some of their best music at and even after their commercial peak. (Yes, those are all electronic bands--I don't think there's any loss of generality there, but maybe there is [more money = better gear, at least]; I'm just talking about what I know.)
Sure, many bands never do anything interesting again after they start making money, but that's no reason to say that no bands should ever get any money.
As for your final point, it may be true that the current system is going to fall apart, but that's a separate issue from whether it _should_ fall apart.
"It's like a bar that lets people sell drugs in their establishment. By turning their head and acting like nothing's going on, they become liable for the actions of their patrons."
Actually, they don't. If people are selling drugs in my establishment, I have no more responsibility to stop them than any other witness.
On the other hand, I probably will try to stop them anyway, because otherwise, sooner or later, the cops are going to start coming in and arresting people at my bar, which will be bad for business. Especially if I'm doing anything illegal or questionable myself (like not checking ID's well enough). Having promoted clubs (ranging from deep underground to completely legit), and having friends that own venues, I know the line you have to walk--but it's not because there's a law saying I must patrol for illegal activities; it's just because it makes good business sense for me to do so.
Napster is in exactly the same position (as you yourself say). They don't have any legal obligation to monitor everyone using their network, or to make it easier for others to do so--just like I don't have to snoop around for drug deals in my bar, or make all my walls out of glass so the cops can see into the bathroom stalls from the street.
But if their main business actually is legal trading of MP3's (which I doubt it is), then it would be smart for them to do so, to avoid all the negative attention and lawsuits that will impede that business. (This is why mp3.com, whose business _is_ legal trading of MP3's, is so careful to make sure that anyone who uploads something has the rights to do so.)
RMS doesn't want someone to be able to take emacs, change the name, and release it as commercial software. People want to be able to take emacs, change the name, and release it as commercial software. Solution: Don't release emacs.
Stephen King doesn't want people to email around transcriptions of his books. Fans want to email around transcriptions of his books. Solution: He doesn't release any books.
What you're essentially saying is that nobody should ever release anything if they want to make any money off it, or retain any control over it. As I said before, after the People's Glorious Revolution, sure, all creative output should be free (like everything else--or at least everything that isn't scarce).
"Are you sure about that? I would say that honor goes to applications like Lotus 1 2 3."
Yes, killer apps make all the difference. But Microsoft created two of the killer apps that allowed GUIs to take hold: Word and Excel (the others were PageMaker and PhotoShop--both of which came later and sold to smaller niches, by the way). Yes, MacWrite had the WYSIWYG and easy learning curve first, but Word was the first WYSIWYG word processor that gave you all the power of a real word processor (like WordStar or WordPerfect), so it was actually feasible to switch over. Likewise, Excel brought the same benefits to spreadsheets.
In fact, on the Mac, the recent versions of Office, IE, and OE are very good apps. They're kicking their competitors' ass not because they're bundled with the OS, or because they can use secret tricks in the OS that nobody else knows about, or because they have a five-year lead, but because they're actually better. I know a lot of people who, after the horrible upgrade from Office 5 to Office 6, switched to Claris Office, and many of them have since switched to Office 98.
Maybe if the Office team weren't allowed to rewrite parts of the OS whenever they felt like it, they could write good products on Windows as well.
Obviously, the breakup won't fix everything that's wrong. But it will help things significantly.
What I'd really like to see is a breakup that moves their Internet software to a separate company. Let's see them try to make a profit off IE, OE, Media Player, PWS/IIS, and all the other software that people primarily use only because it's free and pre-installed....
Unfortunately, the laws were broken by a corporation, and the whole point of corporations is to provide (legal and tax) protection of this kind. In many ways, the corporation counts legally as a separate person from Bill Gates, and he can't be held accountable for its actions any more than you can.
Personally, I'd like to eliminate (or revise) corporate charters and the laws that govern them so we could go against the people who make the orders, but unless/until we do that, all we can do is pursue fines, injunctions, etc. against the corporation as a whole.
If you're actually interested in this idea, the Green Party has been tentatively advocating it for a while now.
"Acutaly its much more than just a 2 way split. Read the governments plan here."
From the link you provided (which is an article _about_ the government's plan, not the government's plan itself):
"Virtually all of the 19 states in the case are expected to sign on to the federal government's proposal that Microsoft be divided into two companies...."
In other words, it's a two-way split. There are some other provisions (10 years before they can work together, a 3 year ban on the Windows company doing things that are already illegal anyway), but it's still only splitting them into two (count 'em) companies.
That's true at the small end of the scale (when you're selling 2000 albums and making your living--or at least free drinks--off small club shows) and the large end (when you're selling out Dodger Stadium), but it's not true in between. For medium-sized bands (and their labels), a tour is a necessary expense to promote album sales.
Of course Metallica and Dre both fit in at the large end of the scale. But I see plenty of MP3s on Napster for bands in the middle range (hell, that's most of what I download), and those bands are definitely losing money.
"But the high prices are from the music/recording labels. They have high overhead in terms of promotions, distributions and so on. They have to spend all that money to promote the albumns so that they can sell more and pay everybody."
Bullshit. That's like saying that medicine is as expensive as it is because it costs a lot of money for HMOs to keep track of all of their doctors and patients. I've worked in the music industry, and I know how much these things cost. The real reason music costs so much is that between you and the artist, there are three layers--the label, the distributor, and the store--and the first two layers have obscenely high profits.
You can argue that they deserve to make these profits, and that we need this multi-layered system to "filter" the good music from the bad (otherwise every store would have to guess what would and wouldn't sell, deal with hundreds of labels, etc.), and so forth. But make these arguments, don't just assume that CDs cost this much because they have to.
mp3.com has been doing this for a long time now. There are some major bands that have decided to sell music this way (either instead of, or in addition to, traditional CD sales). Even better, a lot of bands that couldn't get a record contract (or, worse, could get a contract like some of the ones I've signed in the past--where you give up control over your music to a company that can't get you into most stores, can't support you, and half the time doesn't even send you the checks unless you harass them) are using mp3.com to sell their music. But even if you got with mp3.com, or a similar distribution method, the same problem exists. In fact, it's even easier for you to buy my MP3 and then upload it to people via Napster than to buy my CD, rip it, and upload it to people via Napster.... I've already mentioned elsewhere in this thread that I think shareware music would be an even cooler idea: You download the songs you want to hear, and if you want to keep them, you send me money. I've convinced a few bands to do this (the price model is usually $1/song, or $5 for a whole album), and I plan to do it in the future. But saying that all bands should be forced to release their music as shareware is like saying that all commercial software should be forced to be sold as shareware.
That's an interesting point. Instead of trying to find bands that have the widest possible appeal, labels would have to find bands that have the highest-income appeal. So instead of top-40 bands, we'd have bands that tend to appeal to, say, well-paid net.geeks and executives rather than bands that appeal to middle-class teenagers. (Instead of 98 Degrees and Metallica, the stores would be full of Aphex Twin and Kenny G?) It's almost interesting enough to make me want to leave my computer job and go back into music publicity....
"illegally use illegal protocols such as MP3 and Napster"
There is nothing illegal about the MP3 format. There is nothing illegal about Napster's protocols--or servers, or software. The fact that people do illegal things with them does not make them illegal. Are Win32 exectuables and FTP servers "illegal protocols" too just because of warez?
"If they like Metallica and Dre so much, why not produce an 'open source' version."
You could record a version that sounds exactly the same as the original, and this would get around the rights to the recording, but not the rights to the song (they're completely separate). If you recorded a cover (with proper ASCAP/BMI permission) and gave it away for free, there would be nothing illegal about people distributing MP3s of your cover. But it's much harder than you apparently think to pull off an exact cover. Can you sing just like someone else? Go to a karaoke bar and try it.
"Hell, the music is so cliched and similar, it sounds computer generated most of the time anyway."
Well, a lot of music is made with computers nowadays (and just wait until Steinberg's next-generation software comes out...). But it still takes a lot of time, and skill, to record music this way. Even if you had Dre's exact studio setup, the same loop sources, the sheet music, and the lyric sheet, it would still be difficult to duplicate one of his songs. And of course you still have to be able to sound just like him when you rap.
Why not just say, "Hell, all rock music is based on the same scales and played on the same instruments, so why not just write a new rock song instead?"
I think their longterm goal is to find some way to continue to be compensated for their music. They'd probably prefer to do that by stopping (or cutting down) piracy than by making money from lawsuits, but they'd also probably prefer either to not making money.
The reality is, though, that they're not really working with their fans, because it's quite clear that their fans want to get the music for free (assuming it's Metallica fans who download Metallica songs, which I think is a safe assumption), and they don't want to give it away for free.
Personally, I often download music and buy it later. Sometimes it's because I can't find the album, or I already ordered it and can't wait for it to arrive from Europe. More often, it's because I want to hear the album before I decide to buy it (and they don't have a copy at the Virgin listening stations).
For example, I recently downloaded Apoptygma Berzerk's new album in its entirety. I'd heard only one song from it, and didn't want to either spend $30 at a local store, or spend $20 and wait a week to get it. After hearing it, I decided to send off the $20, and soon I'll have the album legally.
I also often download things that are just impossible to find because they've never been legally released. For example, someone recorded S.P.O.C.K. covering "We're Not Gonna Take It" off a live radio broadcast in Sweden. I can't buy that, so how else am I going to get it?
Of course I realize that I'm not in the majority. (I also admit that I'm not perfect, and there are a lot of MP3s on my drive that I do listen to even though I haven't bought the CD, but let's ignore that for the moment.) Ideally, I'd like what I do to be legal, but piracy that makes it impossible for composers and musicians to make a living to be illegal. (While I'm wishing, I'd also like to be able to get import albums for a reasonable price.) But I have no idea how such a system would work.
P.S., while I'm advocating the whole shareware concept of music purchasing, if anyone finds an Ice IX song on Napster and likes it, instead of finding the comp it came from and giving $12 to the label, feel free to just send me $1 in the mail....
You're making the exact same points that people make when they justify pirating software. And my position is the same here. I agree that it would be ultra-spiffy if the laws allowed us to treat everything as "shareware" (download the songs, and then either buy them or destroy them), but what you're advocating is allowing us to treat everything as free for the taking, and I definitely don't agree.
Why? Well, personally, I like the idea that people can make a living as songwriters and performers (even if I probably never will...). I suppose that after the people's revolution against capitalism, this won't be an issue, but until then, do you really want your favorite musicians to have to keep a day job?
There is one more point in your post: The musicians (and labels) are making enough damn money, so your stealing from them is ok. Well, there are a lot of people who aren't making as much as Metallica--who are, in fact, making just enough that they have to make the tough choice between giving up their day job or putting less effort into their musical career. Many of the bands I listen to are in that position. As Napster gets bigger and bigger, and their earnings go down, fewer and fewer of them will make the choice I want them to.
Personally, I don't mind when I find one of my songs on Napster--but then they're mostly released on compilations that sell 2000 copies, so I'm only losing a few bucks. Metallica's making a living at this, so maybe I don't have a right to judge them the same way.
Of course they're missing an issue that's obvious to us--it's the pirates that are to blame, not Napster (just like people who copy tapes are to blame, not tape decks with a record button). But from their point of view, they just want to stop this from going on, and they can't see any other way to do it.
So just telling them they're wrong won't have much effect. We have to figure out how to explain to the artists that going after Napster isn't going to help them. And I'm not sure how to do that.
Re:What about my privacy?
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Laptop Lojack?
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Lojack had to deal with this exact problem already. After all, do you want to drive around in a car that constantly beams your location to anyone who wants it?
Here's what they came up with: Nothing is transmitted until the system is activated. When a car is reported stolen, the police send out a signal (repeatedly) telling that car's Lojack to activate. Only when it receives that signal does it begin broadcasting its location.
Re:Reliability issues galore!
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Laptop Lojack?
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No, it wouldn't have to be perfectly reliable. Lojack doesn't require that the stolen car be trackable all the time, just that it be trackable at some point.
So if the thief brings the laptop to his secret underground lead-shielded lab and keeps it there, a Lojack-style system would never work. But if he brings it out into the streets, it'll be found.
Some numbers: Lojack claims that their 65% coverage is enough to recover 90% of all Lojack-equipped cars as long as the theft is reported within 48 hours. (As opposed to somewhere under 25% of non-Lojack-equipped cars).
So this isn't 100% effective. It's still better than what we have now (i.e., nothing).
For laptops with really important data, you probably want to lojack the drive(s), encrypt the data (and use gigantic keys that would take even the NSA years to crack), booby-trap the device, and do everything else that's been suggested here. If the data is really worth millions of times the cost of protecting it, then as long as there's a one in a million chance of it being stolen, protect it. Simple cost/benefit.
OK, I know this is a troll, but maybe some people really don't know this--or maybe I'm just a sucker. Anyway: "umm, what the fuck is the lojack system, bud?"
The idea behind lojack is this: You have this device in your car. It just sits there listening on a certain frequency. If you report your car stolen, the police signal it on that frequency, and it starts broadcasting its location. They can then find your car pretty easily.
The reason that it works is that they got the cops in most major American cities (they claim 65% coverage) to go for it (and do all the work).
By the way, I was wrong about the pricing. They no longer charge a yearly fee; it's just a $500-$1000 flat one-time expense.
And yes, I think it's nice that I was able to get a real post in reasonably close to the top. Gosh, wouldn't it be terrible if you could actually read slashdot and find useful information?
Well, the idea of a harddisk that destroys itself if you remove it or power up without entering a key is pretty good. It should be much cheaper, and maybe more importantly, simpler (and therefore more likely to be foolproof).
But there are still two advantages to the lojack-type system.
First, sometimes it's important to catch the guy who stole it--or at least to know who it is (e.g., so you know which of your competitors to enjoin).
Second, sometimes you want to protect the valuable asset itself, not just prevent anyone else from using it. This could be the actual hardware, thousands of dollars worth of licensed software, or data that hasn't yet been backed up that's extremely important. Obviously, in those cases, you don't want to destroy it.
One more thing: I think you want a better way to destroy the hard drive. Scratching the media may make it stop working, but data recovery experts could probably still get a lot out of it. Plus, it would probably be obvious that something odd is going on, and the thief might be able to turn it off before much damage was done. You probably want to do something much more drastic and unstoppable, and harder to detect (release acid into the cylinders?).
It's more than that. If anyone can win a ridiculous case like this, it's Scientology--and that would cause a terrible precedent. Then anyone who wants to sue over something this stupid will get their day in court, and have a good shot at winning.
If I were ebay, I'd wait for someone else to bring up the issue, take it to court, and get a solid win that could bolster their defense in future cases. And I'm sure their lawyers were thinking the same thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Not unintentional at all--that was my point.
Actually, it's a little more complicated. There are three separate things that are involved: songwriting, recording, and sometimes producing (listen to later Beatles music, Nine Inch Nails' first album, or most early-90s rap to get an idea of how important the producer can be).
The current system provides separate protections for songwriters and recording artists (producers usually get a flat fee or negotiate a special deal).
Anyway, I had two points. First, recording perfect covers is difficult, and this is why the band that does the recording deserves some money (this is also why a band can make money covering someone else's song--especially if they interpret it in a completely different way). Second, even if you could record perfect covers by pushing a button, the songwriter would still deserve their money (although you could make some arguments in the case of algorithmic compositions like Xenakis's works, or cut-and-paste compositions like Puff Daddy's).
In the case of Metallica (I'm assuming), they're both the songwriters and the performers. So if someone were to come up with a way to do an indistinguishable Metallica cover, you could stop paying them for their recording, but you'd still have to pay them as songwriters.
In other words, you don't have the right to do whatever you want with their recording, or with the song itself.
(There are limits to this, of course. For example, I can write a parody without paying them as songwriters; I can sample a fragment of their recording without paying them as recording artists; etc. Generally, the idea is that I'm creating a new work, not just stealing theirs.)
Sure. You can also get around Lojack by taking the car to a non-covered area, or a shielded garage, before the system is turned on. The system isn't 100% perfect. Lojack claims 90%. Maybe for laptops it would be signficantly lower. But it probably wouldn't be 0%.
It's probably impossible to make something impossible to steal. But making it harder for people to steal it and get away with it is still sometimes a worth-while effort.
I'm not that interesting in protecting Metallica, but I have seen bands that I like break up because they coldn't afford to keep going. I remember Birmingham 6's last concert, halfway through their first American tour, and I'd much rather live in a world where I'd get to see them again, or at least hear a new album.
Ideally, I'd like all good artists (read: artists that I like) to be completely supported (except the ones that actually create better art because of the struggle). But that's obviously not a realistic solution in our society. Paying the artists commercially for sales of their art isn't a great solution, but I don't want to throw that system away until we have a better one.
And not all bands get worse as they get more popular. Pet Shop Boys, Gary Numan, Information Society, Front 242, Wolfsheim, and plenty of others released some of their best music at and even after their commercial peak. (Yes, those are all electronic bands--I don't think there's any loss of generality there, but maybe there is [more money = better gear, at least]; I'm just talking about what I know.)
Sure, many bands never do anything interesting again after they start making money, but that's no reason to say that no bands should ever get any money.
As for your final point, it may be true that the current system is going to fall apart, but that's a separate issue from whether it _should_ fall apart.
"It's like a bar that lets people sell drugs in their establishment. By turning their head and acting like nothing's going on, they become liable for the actions of their patrons."
Actually, they don't. If people are selling drugs in my establishment, I have no more responsibility to stop them than any other witness.
On the other hand, I probably will try to stop them anyway, because otherwise, sooner or later, the cops are going to start coming in and arresting people at my bar, which will be bad for business. Especially if I'm doing anything illegal or questionable myself (like not checking ID's well enough). Having promoted clubs (ranging from deep underground to completely legit), and having friends that own venues, I know the line you have to walk--but it's not because there's a law saying I must patrol for illegal activities; it's just because it makes good business sense for me to do so.
Napster is in exactly the same position (as you yourself say). They don't have any legal obligation to monitor everyone using their network, or to make it easier for others to do so--just like I don't have to snoop around for drug deals in my bar, or make all my walls out of glass so the cops can see into the bathroom stalls from the street.
But if their main business actually is legal trading of MP3's (which I doubt it is), then it would be smart for them to do so, to avoid all the negative attention and lawsuits that will impede that business. (This is why mp3.com, whose business _is_ legal trading of MP3's, is so careful to make sure that anyone who uploads something has the rights to do so.)
RMS doesn't want someone to be able to take emacs, change the name, and release it as commercial software. People want to be able to take emacs, change the name, and release it as commercial software. Solution: Don't release emacs.
Stephen King doesn't want people to email around transcriptions of his books. Fans want to email around transcriptions of his books. Solution: He doesn't release any books.
What you're essentially saying is that nobody should ever release anything if they want to make any money off it, or retain any control over it. As I said before, after the People's Glorious Revolution, sure, all creative output should be free (like everything else--or at least everything that isn't scarce).
But how do artists make a living until then?
"Are you sure about that? I would say that honor goes to applications like Lotus 1 2 3."
Yes, killer apps make all the difference. But Microsoft created two of the killer apps that allowed GUIs to take hold: Word and Excel (the others were PageMaker and PhotoShop--both of which came later and sold to smaller niches, by the way). Yes, MacWrite had the WYSIWYG and easy learning curve first, but Word was the first WYSIWYG word processor that gave you all the power of a real word processor (like WordStar or WordPerfect), so it was actually feasible to switch over. Likewise, Excel brought the same benefits to spreadsheets.
In fact, on the Mac, the recent versions of Office, IE, and OE are very good apps. They're kicking their competitors' ass not because they're bundled with the OS, or because they can use secret tricks in the OS that nobody else knows about, or because they have a five-year lead, but because they're actually better. I know a lot of people who, after the horrible upgrade from Office 5 to Office 6, switched to Claris Office, and many of them have since switched to Office 98.
Maybe if the Office team weren't allowed to rewrite parts of the OS whenever they felt like it, they could write good products on Windows as well.
Obviously, the breakup won't fix everything that's wrong. But it will help things significantly.
What I'd really like to see is a breakup that moves their Internet software to a separate company. Let's see them try to make a profit off IE, OE, Media Player, PWS/IIS, and all the other software that people primarily use only because it's free and pre-installed....
Right, because Apple never would have released the Macintosh in 1984 if Windows95 hadn't come out first in 1995.
Unfortunately, the laws were broken by a corporation, and the whole point of corporations is to provide (legal and tax) protection of this kind. In many ways, the corporation counts legally as a separate person from Bill Gates, and he can't be held accountable for its actions any more than you can.
Personally, I'd like to eliminate (or revise) corporate charters and the laws that govern them so we could go against the people who make the orders, but unless/until we do that, all we can do is pursue fines, injunctions, etc. against the corporation as a whole.
If you're actually interested in this idea, the Green Party has been tentatively advocating it for a while now.
"Acutaly its much more than just a 2 way split. Read the governments plan here."
From the link you provided (which is an article _about_ the government's plan, not the government's plan itself):
"Virtually all of the 19 states in the case are expected to sign on to the federal government's proposal that Microsoft be divided into two companies...."
In other words, it's a two-way split. There are some other provisions (10 years before they can work together, a 3 year ban on the Windows company doing things that are already illegal anyway), but it's still only splitting them into two (count 'em) companies.
Oh yeah, you intentionally download music you don't like, and wouldn't buy anyway, to hurt the bands that record it?
That's true at the small end of the scale (when you're selling 2000 albums and making your living--or at least free drinks--off small club shows) and the large end (when you're selling out Dodger Stadium), but it's not true in between. For medium-sized bands (and their labels), a tour is a necessary expense to promote album sales.
Of course Metallica and Dre both fit in at the large end of the scale. But I see plenty of MP3s on Napster for bands in the middle range (hell, that's most of what I download), and those bands are definitely losing money.
"But the high prices are from the music/recording labels. They have high overhead in terms of promotions, distributions and so on. They have to spend all that money to promote the albumns so that they can sell more and pay everybody."
Bullshit. That's like saying that medicine is as expensive as it is because it costs a lot of money for HMOs to keep track of all of their doctors and patients. I've worked in the music industry, and I know how much these things cost. The real reason music costs so much is that between you and the artist, there are three layers--the label, the distributor, and the store--and the first two layers have obscenely high profits.
You can argue that they deserve to make these profits, and that we need this multi-layered system to "filter" the good music from the bad (otherwise every store would have to guess what would and wouldn't sell, deal with hundreds of labels, etc.), and so forth. But make these arguments, don't just assume that CDs cost this much because they have to.
mp3.com has been doing this for a long time now. There are some major bands that have decided to sell music this way (either instead of, or in addition to, traditional CD sales). Even better, a lot of bands that couldn't get a record contract (or, worse, could get a contract like some of the ones I've signed in the past--where you give up control over your music to a company that can't get you into most stores, can't support you, and half the time doesn't even send you the checks unless you harass them) are using mp3.com to sell their music. But even if you got with mp3.com, or a similar distribution method, the same problem exists. In fact, it's even easier for you to buy my MP3 and then upload it to people via Napster than to buy my CD, rip it, and upload it to people via Napster.... I've already mentioned elsewhere in this thread that I think shareware music would be an even cooler idea: You download the songs you want to hear, and if you want to keep them, you send me money. I've convinced a few bands to do this (the price model is usually $1/song, or $5 for a whole album), and I plan to do it in the future. But saying that all bands should be forced to release their music as shareware is like saying that all commercial software should be forced to be sold as shareware.
You're making the same mistake that Metallica and Dre are making.
I _do_ have a right to use Napster. I do _not_ have a right to use Napster to download copyrighted music. It's as simple as that.
That's an interesting point. Instead of trying to find bands that have the widest possible appeal, labels would have to find bands that have the highest-income appeal. So instead of top-40 bands, we'd have bands that tend to appeal to, say, well-paid net.geeks and executives rather than bands that appeal to middle-class teenagers. (Instead of 98 Degrees and Metallica, the stores would be full of Aphex Twin and Kenny G?) It's almost interesting enough to make me want to leave my computer job and go back into music publicity....
"illegally use illegal protocols such as MP3 and Napster"
There is nothing illegal about the MP3 format. There is nothing illegal about Napster's protocols--or servers, or software. The fact that people do illegal things with them does not make them illegal. Are Win32 exectuables and FTP servers "illegal protocols" too just because of warez?
"If they like Metallica and Dre so much, why not produce an 'open source' version."
You could record a version that sounds exactly the same as the original, and this would get around the rights to the recording, but not the rights to the song (they're completely separate). If you recorded a cover (with proper ASCAP/BMI permission) and gave it away for free, there would be nothing illegal about people distributing MP3s of your cover. But it's much harder than you apparently think to pull off an exact cover. Can you sing just like someone else? Go to a karaoke bar and try it.
"Hell, the music is so cliched and similar, it sounds computer generated most of the time anyway."
Well, a lot of music is made with computers nowadays (and just wait until Steinberg's next-generation software comes out...). But it still takes a lot of time, and skill, to record music this way. Even if you had Dre's exact studio setup, the same loop sources, the sheet music, and the lyric sheet, it would still be difficult to duplicate one of his songs. And of course you still have to be able to sound just like him when you rap.
Why not just say, "Hell, all rock music is based on the same scales and played on the same instruments, so why not just write a new rock song instead?"
OK, that's a good point.
I think their longterm goal is to find some way to continue to be compensated for their music. They'd probably prefer to do that by stopping (or cutting down) piracy than by making money from lawsuits, but they'd also probably prefer either to not making money.
The reality is, though, that they're not really working with their fans, because it's quite clear that their fans want to get the music for free (assuming it's Metallica fans who download Metallica songs, which I think is a safe assumption), and they don't want to give it away for free.
How do you resolve such a fundamental dispute?
Personally, I often download music and buy it later. Sometimes it's because I can't find the album, or I already ordered it and can't wait for it to arrive from Europe. More often, it's because I want to hear the album before I decide to buy it (and they don't have a copy at the Virgin listening stations).
For example, I recently downloaded Apoptygma Berzerk's new album in its entirety. I'd heard only one song from it, and didn't want to either spend $30 at a local store, or spend $20 and wait a week to get it. After hearing it, I decided to send off the $20, and soon I'll have the album legally.
I also often download things that are just impossible to find because they've never been legally released. For example, someone recorded S.P.O.C.K. covering "We're Not Gonna Take It" off a live radio broadcast in Sweden. I can't buy that, so how else am I going to get it?
Of course I realize that I'm not in the majority. (I also admit that I'm not perfect, and there are a lot of MP3s on my drive that I do listen to even though I haven't bought the CD, but let's ignore that for the moment.) Ideally, I'd like what I do to be legal, but piracy that makes it impossible for composers and musicians to make a living to be illegal. (While I'm wishing, I'd also like to be able to get import albums for a reasonable price.) But I have no idea how such a system would work.
P.S., while I'm advocating the whole shareware concept of music purchasing, if anyone finds an Ice IX song on Napster and likes it, instead of finding the comp it came from and giving $12 to the label, feel free to just send me $1 in the mail....
You're making the exact same points that people make when they justify pirating software. And my position is the same here. I agree that it would be ultra-spiffy if the laws allowed us to treat everything as "shareware" (download the songs, and then either buy them or destroy them), but what you're advocating is allowing us to treat everything as free for the taking, and I definitely don't agree.
Why? Well, personally, I like the idea that people can make a living as songwriters and performers (even if I probably never will...). I suppose that after the people's revolution against capitalism, this won't be an issue, but until then, do you really want your favorite musicians to have to keep a day job?
There is one more point in your post: The musicians (and labels) are making enough damn money, so your stealing from them is ok. Well, there are a lot of people who aren't making as much as Metallica--who are, in fact, making just enough that they have to make the tough choice between giving up their day job or putting less effort into their musical career. Many of the bands I listen to are in that position. As Napster gets bigger and bigger, and their earnings go down, fewer and fewer of them will make the choice I want them to.
Hold on: what do you think?
Personally, I don't mind when I find one of my songs on Napster--but then they're mostly released on compilations that sell 2000 copies, so I'm only losing a few bucks. Metallica's making a living at this, so maybe I don't have a right to judge them the same way.
Of course they're missing an issue that's obvious to us--it's the pirates that are to blame, not Napster (just like people who copy tapes are to blame, not tape decks with a record button). But from their point of view, they just want to stop this from going on, and they can't see any other way to do it.
So just telling them they're wrong won't have much effect. We have to figure out how to explain to the artists that going after Napster isn't going to help them. And I'm not sure how to do that.
Lojack had to deal with this exact problem already. After all, do you want to drive around in a car that constantly beams your location to anyone who wants it?
Here's what they came up with: Nothing is transmitted until the system is activated. When a car is reported stolen, the police send out a signal (repeatedly) telling that car's Lojack to activate. Only when it receives that signal does it begin broadcasting its location.
No, it wouldn't have to be perfectly reliable. Lojack doesn't require that the stolen car be trackable all the time, just that it be trackable at some point.
So if the thief brings the laptop to his secret underground lead-shielded lab and keeps it there, a Lojack-style system would never work. But if he brings it out into the streets, it'll be found.
Some numbers: Lojack claims that their 65% coverage is enough to recover 90% of all Lojack-equipped cars as long as the theft is reported within 48 hours. (As opposed to somewhere under 25% of non-Lojack-equipped cars).
So this isn't 100% effective. It's still better than what we have now (i.e., nothing).
For laptops with really important data, you probably want to lojack the drive(s), encrypt the data (and use gigantic keys that would take even the NSA years to crack), booby-trap the device, and do everything else that's been suggested here. If the data is really worth millions of times the cost of protecting it, then as long as there's a one in a million chance of it being stolen, protect it. Simple cost/benefit.
http://www.lojack.com
The idea behind lojack is this: You have this device in your car. It just sits there listening on a certain frequency. If you report your car stolen, the police signal it on that frequency, and it starts broadcasting its location. They can then find your car pretty easily.
The reason that it works is that they got the cops in most major American cities (they claim 65% coverage) to go for it (and do all the work).
By the way, I was wrong about the pricing. They no longer charge a yearly fee; it's just a $500-$1000 flat one-time expense.
And yes, I think it's nice that I was able to get a real post in reasonably close to the top. Gosh, wouldn't it be terrible if you could actually read slashdot and find useful information?
Well, the idea of a harddisk that destroys itself if you remove it or power up without entering a key is pretty good. It should be much cheaper, and maybe more importantly, simpler (and therefore more likely to be foolproof).
But there are still two advantages to the lojack-type system.
First, sometimes it's important to catch the guy who stole it--or at least to know who it is (e.g., so you know which of your competitors to enjoin).
Second, sometimes you want to protect the valuable asset itself, not just prevent anyone else from using it. This could be the actual hardware, thousands of dollars worth of licensed software, or data that hasn't yet been backed up that's extremely important. Obviously, in those cases, you don't want to destroy it.
One more thing: I think you want a better way to destroy the hard drive. Scratching the media may make it stop working, but data recovery experts could probably still get a lot out of it. Plus, it would probably be obvious that something odd is going on, and the thief might be able to turn it off before much damage was done. You probably want to do something much more drastic and unstoppable, and harder to detect (release acid into the cylinders?).
It's more than that. If anyone can win a ridiculous case like this, it's Scientology--and that would cause a terrible precedent. Then anyone who wants to sue over something this stupid will get their day in court, and have a good shot at winning.
If I were ebay, I'd wait for someone else to bring up the issue, take it to court, and get a solid win that could bolster their defense in future cases. And I'm sure their lawyers were thinking the same thing.