Ironically, you both missed my point and proved it at the same time.
I was simply pointing out that Tape/CD singles were the same price to produce as Tape/CD albums, because the physical medium was the same (unlike vinyl where singles were physically cheaper to produce because they were smaller and generally came with far less packaging/inserts/etc). So the fact that you go on and on about how much CD singles sucked makes sense, because record companies were unable to make them cheap enough to make a profit and still give you your money's worth.
Another thing I'd like to point out is that you seem to think that record companies could sell CDs for the cost of the materials. Yes the actual CD might cost a few pennies to mass produce, but what about packaging? What about marketing? What about the cover art? What about the producer? And oh yeah, what about the musicians? The cost of *anything* you buy is not simply based on what the actual thing you're holding in your hands cost to make. The number of man-hours that go into the production of an album is often huge, so why would anyone bother producing a commercially available product if they had to operate with no profit?
Also, though cost of distribution in the music biz will eventually drop to nil, there are still costs involved in the actual production of the music. And even with that dropping dramatically, marketing remains the single most expensive aspect of a successful album - and that is not going to change any time soon.
actually, while I agree with the sentiment of your argument, it is actually flawed.
Their old business model of selling a $15 CD with 1 good song---aka ripping people off--doesn't fly anymore. If you just want that one song, you just buy that one song.
Back in the olden-days, there was such a thing as a "single", which was usually one or two songs sold for a fraction of the price of an album, and was intended to give people the chance to buy just that one song that they liked (which usually meant the song from the album that the record company thought would be a hit). Tapes and then CDs made this far less useful, because the cost of producing a tape/cd with one or two songs was no less than producing a tape/cd with an entire album, so the single died off.
your math regarding the recording process might be accurate, but where does a musician without a label get that kind of cash? And more importantly, the musician would need to sell at least 30,000 tracks (depending on the deal given by the various distribution outlets) just to get that money back (after tax). Add to that the fact that when an act gets to that level of popularity, their music is immediately added to the various torrent sites, which eats heavily into sales (I've seen my co-workers take my suggestions for new music and go straight to their fav torrent search engine without even considering itunes or amazon or whatever). Now I know the argument that people "check out" the music via torrents then for some reason reacquire the music via legit means, but how common is that really? And if there are no longer any CDs, which offer value beyond the audio files on them (the intrinsic value of holding an album in one's hands is the main reason vinyl has stuck around) why would anyone choose a pay site over a "free" site?
The bottleneck created by the labels had to go, but now the opposite problem is taking over - completely unfettered access to art (in theory a good thing) with no requirement for compensation (in practice a bad thing).
the ability to alter and subvert a piece of computer programming is a skill set that is highly prevalent in today's society
how many people anywhere on earth have the skills to hack into the defense department's military computers? Now we're not talking about the office PC where they keep track of expense accounts, we're talking about their encrypted closed-circuit military communications network. We'd have to start talking about governments, so turning one these things against their "masters" would be equivalent to capturing and using a tank in the same way.
While I agree in principle that law enforcement overreacted, the summary neglects to complete the quote that it goes on to misinterpret (albeit humorously). The quoted official goes on to say (and is backed up by the article itself), that Mr. Deeb was in possession of more of these chemicals than is allowed by law, and is not supposed to be doing experiments on that scale in a residential neighborhood. This is not little Johnny mixing vinegar and baking soda. He was clearly doing industrial-level experiments, as is evidenced by his declining to comment because patents are pending in relation to his work.
Yes, this is a very easy target for "the govt is a bunch of ignorant reactionaries" comments, but were they really so far out of bounds? Don't local officials have the right to regulate potentially (they did not know what he was doing until *after* they raided the place) commercial research being conducted in a residential neighborhood?
Witness the powerful association people have between controversial claims and Drudge. No one has yet corrected or even mentioned the ironic and Freudian misspelling of "report" in the headline.
Abuse? In what way did I abuse you? By questioning your ethics? By asking if you feel any obligation to those who have willingly put their lives in jeopardy to fight for freedoms we are now so dangerously taking for granted?
I am not talking about committing suicide in the name of the cause, something with which we have become far too familiar. I am talking about risking your life for something that will benefit not only you, should you live, but those around you who have made the same commitment. Here's an analogy you might understand.
Perhaps you work for a small startup. Perhaps it is a key point in the company's development, and everyone commits to putting in extra time and effort so the company can reach limitless heights. Would you work as hard if you knew that many of the people around you were putting in only the minimum amount of effort necessary, while standing to reap the same rewards in the end?
It was this scenario that elicited my rather crude description of the fate I would wish on someone who enjoys the benefits of other's sacrifices while refusing to make their own. And for that I apologize.
But it is poor reasoning like yours, i.e., that you would exchange freedoms gained by other people's sacrifice for some vague promise of security, that has led to the current state of affairs. My original point was that we must jealously guard our freedoms with our lives, or we will have neither, (to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin). Sacrifice is necessary to maintain our freedom in the the face of forces on both "sides" that would take them away as a means of control. I am not asking that anyone blow themselves up, I am simply asking people to take on more risk in order to protect something so precious that it has taken thousands of years to achieve.
Those who would kill morning commuters en-mass are attempting to prove something to god. They strive to demonstrate that they are so committed to the cause that we have no choice but to take them seriously and recognize their claims of moral authority. They have, in fact, been so successful they have us running scared. So scared that we are slowly beginning to accept the false notion that we are better off allowing the watchful eye of our "protectors" to peer into every aspect of our lives.
To paraphrase Tony Blair, we must demonstrate that we love freedom more than they love exercising control. That we will ignore their threats, and that we will sacrifice whatever is necessary to defend what we have gained.
Freedom has always been worth *other people* dying for.
Think it through. If you're dead, are you free? More to the point, do you care? Not much. So my guess is that you don't have any kids. I can also surmise that you don't really care much about other people in general. In fact, I would be willing to bet that you don't like other people very much at all.
But even beyond that, I would wager that you have not considered your own death as an inevitability, and that you have a certain amount of choice as to how you live your life. Look back and think of all the people you respect and admire. Did they do everything strictly for themselves? Or did they realize that contributing to the lives of others can offer immediate rewards?
You are correct to point out that dying for the freedom is to die for the freedom of others, but what do you have that others have died for? Do you thank them and return the favor by adopting the ethic that made their sacrifice pay off for you? Or do you scorn their stupidity and spit in their faces while enjoying what they have given you?
If you live it strictly for yourself, well then fuck you - I hope you die face down in a ditch with your pants around your ankles and your dignity stripped away like so much torn polyester. But if there is some part of your soul that needs to connect and contribute to the society from which you derive so much benefit, than perhaps should reconsider the rather grim and destructive attitude you are taking at the moment. The collective selflessness of strangers makes up something greater than the sum of its parts. It's like an insurance policy that provides both a short term dividend and long term protection against whatever oppression you may face. You need that selflessness. Without it, you will find the world around you quite hostile indeed.
Are you an embarrassed and anonymous leech, or are you a proud contributer to the benefit of your fellow human beings?
Freedom has always been worth dying for. Many citizen soldiers have died on the field of battle to establish and defend freedom, and now the struggle has been brought to our doorstep. But we are not soldiers; we have no weapons to wield.
Our instinct is to take away the weapons of our enemy. But we are horrified to find that they are using freedom against us. We recoil and draw back our trust. No longer can we take the good will of our neighbors for granted. So with the best intentions we seek to contain anyone who throws an ominous shadow.
But the young men who carried explosives onto trains and buses in London did nothing to draw our special attention. The morning of the bombings, they were seen conferring together by surveillance cameras. But human eyes cannot be everywhere. They could have written their intentions directly on the lens of that camera and no one would have noticed until it was all over. The men who boarded those planes more than seven years ago did not trigger any alarms or overwhelm any security systems, they simply bought some tickets.
So we are left with a sobering choice. Do we continue to retract our trust in one another; throwing up human and technological defenses against ourselves? Voluntarily retracting one another's personal freedoms in the hope of leveling the playing field? Or do we make something old, new again?
Though there is certainly a political element to the battle we fight, but the root of the conflict is ideological. Our enemy is not enamored with freedom the way we are. It calls our defense of liberty for all ways of life foolish and self-destructive. There is, after-all, a natural law revealed for all to see, and the failure to recognize and enforce it is the seed of our downfall. Those who threaten our souls should be singled out and punished. It is ultimately our single minded defense of freedom that allows the devil in us to find safe harbor. Perhaps they are right; but only partly so.
Freedom allows the unfettered expression of the best in us as well as the worst. A natural law revealed in the hearts of people around the world is only served by the freedom to express it. What better way to talk truth to power than to do it freely and openly? What better way to aid your fellow man's soul than to do it without fear of reprisal?
But reminding those who would strike down this offering with violence or repression is not enough. We must live the ideal if we are to demonstrate its full potential. Thus we are brought back to our choice.
Continue to limit freedom in the hope of protecting ourselves, or risk our lives by maintaining and expanding it? We have a proud history of defending freedom on the battlefield. Now we must show reactionaries around the world that there is no profit in punishing those who might do harm by limiting the freedom of everyone. We must risk our lives once again by offering freedom to those who would use it to destroy us. We do not have to offer our lives, but we must protect the freedom that might be used by others to take it. What happened in London and New York will happen again, and we must be willing to let it. We cannot search everyone all the time. We cannot watch everyone everywhere. So we must become as selfless as the soldier. We must be willing to die riding on a subway, flying on an airplane or sitting in our homes. We must be willing to sacrifice ourselves to protect that which we hold most dear. We must live free or die.
Based on the fact that you refer to the current US administration as "yours", I can only assume that you are from somewhere outside the US. I don't know what kind of government you have, but as you write idiomatically and can use the word "revolution" online without fear of official reprisals, I can also assume that you are in a somewhat liberal democracy. Given that, I can only remind you that we have built our revolutions into the system. We hold a rather large meeting every two years to decide whether to throw out the day to day lawmakers, and every four years to decide about the overall regime.
This process has become the envy of the world (the transfer of power based on referendum, not the actual voting process, which is clearly flawed). The transfer of power is enforced in a way that channels all of our instinctive lust for bloody revenge into a simple principle - a nation of laws, not of men. To throw all of that away just to oust a particularly bad regime is to throw the baby out with the bath water.
Even if the regime we wish to oust has crossed all kinds of lines and seems to be worthy of immediate removal, there would still be nothing worse for "the people" than to breach the ethereal bubble that is public faith in their system of government. (Again, not the specifics of any interpretation of the law, but the fact that it is law that facilitates change, not the threat of violence.)
And as for all the talk about the "orange revolution", they were overturning a system, not just a regime. They wanted a new way of doing things, not just a new group of people in charge. They put into place many of the institutions and processes that we now take for granted. In fact, it was that very system that allowed the current administration to take power in the first place. Why? Well...because of culture rot. Too little emphasis on education when the issues at hand are complicated. Too much emphasis on self-indulgence when the situation requires us to tighten our belts. Too much apathy when the consequences of it are so grave. These problems exist among "the people", not the system.
Ok, I'm going to give this one more try. I cannot afford to spend any more time discussing this with someone who consistently uses strawman arguments to avoid addressing what I am saying.
I haven't used iTunes, and I've tried ripping those particular CDs on several difference systems - under both Linux and Windows. There are certain methodologies to creating audio CDs that cause a distortion in the track when ripped. (I'm not going to go into the details as I am not very familiar with them, though I have friends that are more so.) So, it is more likely the CD itself causing a problem with the rip.
If it is the format you don't like, then don't buy it. Download the song straight from iTunes or wherever and make your copies from there. My point was that even if you do only download torrents that you already own, (or are free in the first place), you are part of a very very small percentage of the whole pie. MOST people download media content from torrent sites because it is free. Address that and not your own cd storage issues.
A recording artist is simply someone who records their performance of a musical work. Often, they also sell that performance to others - either directly (e.g. indie artists) or indirectly (e.g. record labels). They will also often do concerts, etc. too. Ultimately, they are no different from the musician that goes around to bars and performs.
So what about the "Kind of Blue" session I mentioned? Would you deny that there is something about an improvised performance that makes it different from a note-by-note composition? And if I utilized some new technology to listen in on anything anywhere, what would that mean for that live performance you are so anxious to put on a plateau? Where would the NY Philharmonic be without the money to attract the great musicians it has? Would you say that they all have to have day jobs and practice after work?
You're right - I don't agree that it is property. At best it is intangible property, which is what Copyright is for. However, I also find it is more beneficial to receive credit for what one does and to get paid up front instead of leeching off society.
First of all, it is quite tangible. What I know is a direct result of time and energy I have put into my self to build something - namely my skills and my taste. When I am not around, neither is my intellectual property. But the notion of patents and copyright offers a place into which I can put my ideas and skills so that others can come along and offer me something in exchange for it. How long that special bubble lasts is certainly arbitrary, and I do believe that it has been extended too far. But that does not mean we should eliminate the protections offered by copyright. According to your definition of intellectual property, it is only real if it is expressed, and then it is worthless because anyone can take it away. So why exactly should I want to share it with anyone unless I can guarantee that I would get something in return? Would you offer help to people if they not only didn't say thank you, but spit in your face as well? Also, your business example would create a rather bleak art world if no one could share what they have done for fear of other's stealing it.
Leeching off society in any form is bad for society. Copyright and patents are the among biggest forms of that right now.
Leeching? So I guess no one actually gets anything out of copyrighted material? They just pay people for something they don't really want? Yes patents have been abused by people who use them for the opposite purpose of what they were intended - to foster development of new technologies, but copyright is very different. No one is held back by copyrighted material except rappers who want other people's beats and those who simply want their content for free.
That use to be expected of everyone in society - to pass on wisdom, typically from the older generation to the younger generati
I use torrents to get Linux ISOs because that is how they are distributed. [...] So please stop using that kind of analogy.
First of all, I was not making an analogy, I was pointing out a well documented fact that most people download music and movie torrents because they are free. For every one person that downloads the latest Ubuntu release, there are 100 more who download the latest episode of Lost or the latest Modest Mouse album. And what is the point of talking about your use of torrents for geek purposes anyway? It completely ignores the fact that while there are legitimate reasons for the technology, it has been utilized as a quick and easy way to avoid compensating artists.
Also, you say you couldn't get a good rip from the cd you bought? What kind of computer person are you? I don't even have to do anything but click "OK" and iTunes rips any cd I put in my drive at the highest possible quality. Even if you claim that there are pops or whatever because of a scratched cd, if I break a glass I've bought, does that mean I can go back to the store and demand a new one for free? And you expect me to believe that some random torrent you pick is going to offer a better quality rip anyway? Your claims are dubious to say the least.
I am also one of those guys that when I am looking for something in a store and see someone trying to find something to offer to help them out, and even give them guidance on what they want - especially if the sales rep is doing a really bad job or leaving out critical information. So yeah - friend or stranger a like, I do offer services for free.
While I share your instinct for generosity, neither of us would stay all day and work at that same store for free. Helping a stranger in need is something people do all the time, but offering a few moments of your time when you think it might help someone out is not the same thing as working there for free. I spend hours each day working on my art, and if other people are going to benefit from that work, I believe it perfectly reasonable that I be compensated for it.
I already do the piano very similarly. And yes - I do write music too, and no I don't expect to get paid for it; I write it so that others can reproduce what I have performed and be able to enjoy their own performance or playing of it, much as I do.
Again an admirable sentiment, and I hope your music makes people happy. But you are confusing a composer with a recording artist. A composer can make money because, as of right now, it is possible to make people pay to hear a live performance by simply doing it in a place where there are doors and people to collect money for tickets. But the recording artist is something different. Many recordings done in such a way that they often cannot be performed or even duplicated. Take the album "Kind of Blue" by the Miles Davis quintet. It was an improvised work of art produced by a group of musicians at the peak of their careers. How can you claim that this is the same thing as a composition? This is something totally different that must be treated as a form of art all its own. We all enjoy its beauty and recognize its importance, and you would say that the people involved should get nothing for their work because they can't stop people from listening to the performance with walls and tickets?
Honestly - this is just like starting any other kind of business. You will have to put in hours - often unpaid - while getting the business started, take out loans, and pay others to help out. In the long run you will make money, but not without serious work and likely debt in one form or another... Why should "artists" be expected to be treated any different? Just because it is hard to get going doesn't mean they should be entitled to special privileges.
Special privileges? To what are you referring? If a person starts a business, creates a product and puts it on
I never said they should not get paid. Only that they should not necessarily get paid for copies - especially copies that other people do.
When referring to wedding bands or someone actually making a backup of their iTunes purchases I am in agreement. But just about every other kind of copying is the direct result of not wanting to pay the artist. Why do people download torrents? To back up a dvd or cd they own?
The writer would usually write a piece for a band or artist. They should pay the writer for his effort to do so. The band gets paid for their production of the piece - by selling CDs, DVDs, giving concerts, etc.
Where does the money from the cds and dvds if there is no way to charge enough to even cover the cost of production?
...I do often give my services - writing code, technical support, etc. - to others for free. I have a lot of written code that I have licensed under the GPL. (Not all of it pubically available yet for various reasons, but it will be - and I have a lot more to come.)
I assume you mean you help your parents set up their wireless network and help your friend with a new website for the band. I imagine that if some stranger came calling and said, I would like to enjoy the fruits of your labor but refuse to offer any payment, you would say no. I give copies of my music to people I know, but why is it so difficult to imagine me asking strangers for something in return? I am not asking for much, just a token of their appreciation for making something that makes their life better in some small way. The people who would do what they could to take from me without asking don't deserve what I have to offer. And just because you intellectualize the nature of the transaction and claim that there is some difference between creating a recording with one's hands and making a basket with one's hands you must not ignore the nature of the impact on the maker of the item.
And though you may have found that people are only willing to offer something in exchange for your code, what about the people who feel the same way about other people's art?
Neither the band nor the writer should necessarily get paid for other artists doing their version (whether identical or modified) of the piece. (If they do, great. If not, oh well.)
Again, we are not talking about performances here. We are talking about the "copies" people make of a recording of that performance. These are widgets like any other. They are acquired with the knowledge of how to use them (play it on the speakers), why they are useful, (they are to be consumed like ice cream or the map of a city or a light bulb), what they are worth (I'm willing to give you X in exchange for it). The only thing in dispute here is the way in which the item is priced. In the case of music, the problem with the current situation is that there is no longer any reason for people to pay anything for it because they can almost always get it for free somewhere else. With no real change in demand, there is now an unlimited supply because other people are making money producing those copies. And I am not talking about the guy on the blanket with the hand-held camera version of Jurassic Park. I am talking about the broadband providers. Torrents at one point accounted for something approaching half of all the traffic on the web. All that bandwidth costs money, and it is the machinery with with individuals act in anonymous groups to make all the "copies" you are referring to. All the money people used to spend on music is not spent on the machinery to copy it: computers, mp3 players, routers, cable connections, etc.
...regardless of whether copyright exists or not - I'd still be willing to do what I do - both for a living and as hobby.
no, I don't mean that people wouldn't produce art if they couldn't get paid for it. What I mean is that people coul
The big premise here is the "work and get paid; don't work - don't get paid". Unfortunately, it is everyone's natural inclination to try to figure out how to "don't work and still get paid", which is why a lot of people really like copyright and patents, and why they'll fight tooth and nail to make terms longer and more in their favor, as opposed to letting it degenerate into what it was before we had copyright.
So are you saying that all artists should be amateurs? That they should be permanently relegated to the garage or the coffee shop? If I make a better mousetrap I can get paid for it, but if I write a song I should be forced to give it away for free? How do you suggest explaining to the next great master that her work will be enjoyed by all but she can expect nothing but praise and perhaps a little charity?
It is quite hypocritical for people who, without blinking an eye, peddle their commodified talents to the highest bidder, (that's right hired geeks, I'm talking to you), to demand that others give the fruit of their labor away for free. What you are saying is that if you produce something proprietary, i.e., something only useful to the person who pays you, e.g., a custom database, you should get whatever you can, but if you produce something that anyone can use, e.g., a work of art, you should be forced to give it away.
I agree that "people" like Disney have converted copyright into commodity, and you could very easily change that by eliminating copyright. But you would also irreparably harm the system of incentive that drives everyday artists to produce better and better work. No, money is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the prospect of being able to live a decent life while focusing completely on their work. Would Picasso have been able to do what he did if he also had to sling burgers or write code all day?
Since the beginning of recorded history up until the first half of the Modern Age, the copying was considered by EVERYONE, from writers to actors, from musicians to singers, from inventors to manufacturers, as an obvious right. Libraries, for instance, existed for thousands of years, and beyond allowing you to take a book and read it, they all had full teams of scribes who would copy any work a customer wanted, or, if he so wished, would allow him to do the copy himself. Everyone interested in any intellectual production did this, and everyone felt it was the natural way of things.
While I agree that certain expressions of human understanding should be available to everyone, e.g., the human genome, I disagree with the applicability of your example. During the time when content was freely available to any literate person, there were actually only a few literate people, and fewer still who could actually afford the luxury of producing content. Most if not all content was produced with the intent of gaining recognition, not wealth (though a reputation as a scholar would surely cement one's place in society).
Even in the modern era, when more people are literate than not, and the average college student produces more work than the average 16th century nobleman, it takes a tremendous amount of time and effort to produce a work of real value. Ask almost any artist/writer/musician if they would produce more and better work if they were able to make a decent living at it and you will get an emphatic yes.
It is not Metallica or Stephan King we're talking about here. Nobody likes rock stars. We are talking about the other 99% of the artistic world that needs time and money to continue their work. Why do you think the government gives grants to worthwhile artists? Who would pay for the studio time to make a decent recording of that band you like? How could a writer take enough time to really think about what they are writing if they had to spend all of their time making lattes?
Did you look at the graph? The error wasn't in anybody's favor. It was negligable. The problem is not the conclusion, which in this case seems to be correct. This is, imho, only the first of many more controversial science-based political debates to come. A few examples include cloning, gmo foods, genetically engineered viruses designed to treat disease, nanotechnology, man-machine interfaces, trait specific gene therapy (from hair color to mental and physical capacities), etc.
As these issues move to the forefront of our national political discussion, who do we look to when we want impartial information? The government? NASA, in spite of the special place it holds in the hearts of geeks everywhere, is still a government run operation subject (to some degree) to the whims of the current administration. Ditto the NIH and the WHO which, among others, will become just as important to future discussions about the aforementioned topics as NASA and the National Weather Service has been to the debate over global warming.
NGO's are an alternative source of information for these issues, but they more often than not have their own agenda as well. If these issues trend the same as other long debated topics such as economics and the sociology, there will be no real consensus on where to turn for "just the facts".
"costs us" ? Are you suggesting that you are "cleansing your mind" of thoughts of 4x4s and women chasing you instead of going to work? If so, you appear to be quite stupid First of all, calling someone stupid because you disagree with them is the first step on the road to limiting freedom of speech. And I'm not even sure what you mean when you say "cleansing your mind". What I said was that it takes a sustained effort to mitigate the influence of advertisement, and if you are not doing so yourself, you should probably have a long talk with someone, because you probably think that real men only smoke Marlboro and that you've just got to have that new thingamajig.
Second, I am in no way advocating a ban on anything. Yes, people know what commercials are for, but they do not want to be deluged by advertising, they simply tolerate it because they know it is a part of a liberal democracy. It distorts people's view of the world because it is "offered" in the guise of real information and is at the same time completely biased and unreliable. Do you like listening to someone who you know to be full of shit?
As for solutions, the best way to negate the effects of a lie is to offer the truth. Why not require advertisers to provide sources for their claims, or to explicitly state their intentions, e.g., "we are claiming that our body spray will make women want to have sex with you". How well would innuendo work when you can no longer get away with just a wink and a nudge?
There are very definite repercussions on our culture and our politics from the rapidly accelerating media blitz we now face. Consider the simple fact there was a time when you could go for days or even weeks without seeing any form of advertisement and now we are struggling to keep it away from us for a few minutes of peace. Think talking billboards (some of which actually show real commercials), spam, telemarketers, flyers, magazine ads, tv commercials, etc. It is everywhere and only getting worse.
And if you doubt its effects, consider that most people can tell you more about the iPhone than their senator.
Advertising is clearly no challenge to democracy at all. How was it that you came to this conclusion exactly? Where is your evidence? Have you even given it any thought?
Check this out if you're actually interested. If not, enjoy your Pepsi.
Though I agree that the errors have more of an impact on the efforts to scare people (legitimately) into changing their ways than it does on the overall scientific analysis of the phenomena, you are, imho, missing Mr. Dyson's point.
The scientific method has resulted in some of our greatest achievements, but we must be willing to challenge accepted wisdom if we are to be sure not to fall into the same trap that "spiritual scientists" did. They believed that by following the practices of those who came before them, they could add something to the understanding of the human condition. Using themselves as guinea pigs, they used simple trial and error to further understand a way of life that achieves some goal set out for them by those who came before or occasionally goals set for themselves.
Siddhartha, for example, set out to discover how to eliminate suffering and tried all means of acheiveing that goal, resulting in rules he laid out for how to escape the pain of living. His experiment was actually a failure, in that he came to believe that life was suffering, and that all one could do was mitigate the pain until reaching nirvana.
This process should sound familiar to anyone practicing the scientific method. After his death, many generations of refinements and adaptations have resulted in a diverse set of variations on his original "findings", (that end of the analogy requires one to at least consider the possibility that he was on to something).
But such wisdom tends to become "accepted wisdom" embodied in an institution, mainly because not everyone is willing or able to do the work of experimentation necessary to achieve that wisdom on their own. So it becomes a pre-packaged whole that one has to either accept or deny. And even for those who do the work, the strength of the collective is quite formidable (e.g., the inquisition, the Sharia police, etc..)
How long before scientific wisdom is defended in such ways? Perhaps it will not take the form of violent oppression, but who has not felt the sting of a rebuke from someone who claims the backing of some institution?
And by the way, Einstein was as radical a thinker as one could have encountered at the time. He questioned everything he was taught, and remarked openly on how surprising it was that children learned anything at all from the wrote learning system.
I think this is the first time I've seen someone on slashdot advocating the elimination of the FREE option and requiring people to pay money for something. The deluge of advertising we are subjected to on a daily basis costs us much more than anyone can calculate. Think of how much time and energy we all spend cleansing our minds of all the subtle tweaks to our world view made by the advertising we encounter. Will I really have women following me if I use that body spray? Do I really need that 4x4 to commute to my job in the city? Is that politician really who she says she is? And these are just the most egregious examples of what we face in the struggle against advertising. Most people don't even know they are being manipulated.
The media culture is now the biggest challenge to democracy since it's inception. We are both better informed and more easily brainwashed.
Now this is not to say that pay tv is any better for such things. Cable stations advertise just as much as over-the-air stations (with the obvious exception of premium channels), but saying that over-the-air tv is "free" is like saying that gasoline used to cheap. We are now all paying a steep price for that delusion (and I don't mean at the pump). How long before we realize that advertising will do us in faster than global warming and jihad combined?
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't.
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They don't need to crack it themselves. When they realize that they cannot play DRM'd content, they'll run to their computer-savy friend and ask him why it doesn't work. Who can't play DRM'd content exactly? Linux users without iTunes or WMP? Idiots who download music from iTunes and own a non-iPod mp3 player? Though fair-use is a problem in principle, the primary reason torrent traffic takes up most of the web's bandwidth is people grabbing as much free content as they can. I mean why not? No one gets hurt but the big bad corporations right?
The people who pay are either unphased by 99 cents a song or don't have the means to get their stuff any other way (not everyone knows "a guy" who can set up p2p for them). Again I say, the problem is not DRM - its just a net the industry uses to catch as many fish as possible. Many of the fish are getting smarter, but as WC Fields once said, "There's a sucker born every minute". The real problem is no alternative business model for the artist. Some set ticket prices to what would once have been considered excessive. Others simply ask people to "donate" whatever they feel is appropriate. Others don't charge anything at all. But any way you look at it, the artist is suffering. Those who would make the content anyway are still making music, but not everyone can afford to. Its not like having a day job makes it easier to create your art.
By using DRM, the industry deprieves itself of potential sales Again I ask if you are claiming with a straight face that people turn to p2p primarily because they have 9 computers and they want to play the latest U2 album on all of them at once? Or that they want to run linux on their iPod and need to convert everything to OGG? Be honest now...
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't.
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That may be what the people being sued are saying, (more probably their lawyers), but that's not what is worrying the RIAA. They could care less if everyone who bought their stuff made a copy for a friend. At least in that scenario, half the people are actually paying for it. What you're talking about is that old and quite inhumanly tortured analogy of the guy who posts a rips a DVD and posts it to a torrent site doing the same thing as little Bobby letting his friend at school borrow his copy of the South Park movie.
The RIAA is holding on for dear life to whatever means they have to extract money from flow of content from creator to user. But any attempt to control of the means of distribution (sounds kind of familiar) will result in lower and lower returns for anyone in the digital content biz. Technology is making content distribution an almost trivial exercise, and short of quantum encryption for the latest Madonna album, there will be/. geeks stealing people's work.
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't.
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· Score: 5, Insightful
The question is not whether people can do it, its a matter of whether they actually will.
To get DRM-less content, they need to:
know that a crack exits
know how to get it
khow how to use it
AND...feel as though it was really worth it to go through all that trouble so they can avoid paying for someone else's work.
Each step filters people, and those people pay. Simple as that.
The real question is how long the RIAA will take to realize that there are alternatives to this model.
The entire reason some people believe this ability even exists is based on anecdotal evidence
You seem to imply that the reason people believe it is because other people believe it. An anecdote is a story people tell about their own experience. That means if I present anecdotal evidence, I am presenting my own experience. It may not be peer-reviewable, but it is not something to dismiss. It is exactly the kind of information that has led to countless discoveries in the past.
I do agree that there have been no notable successes in reproducing such claims in a laboratory environment, but we are talking about something very different than particle behavior or even neurological processes. There is an inherent problem with applying the scientific method to a feeling. What if we are measuring something that is highly susceptible to the influence of conscious thought? The quantum paradox tells us that it is impossible to remove the observer from the process of observation, so what if this is an example of the paradox at work?
...we should still be able to observe the presence of these abilities when they manifest.
The problem is that for such an observation to meet your standard of verifiability, (something more than the "anecdotal" evidence presented by millions of people around the world for centuries), one would need to measure it somehow. But what are we to measure? Those who claim a skill are engaging in conscious effort, which is perhaps the one thing powerful enough to overwhelm the "I'm being watched" feeling. From birth we are trained to override our instinctive reactions with reasoned action. So how can we expect to measure an unconscious instinctive reaction in an environment that requires people to follow instructions and behave in a self-conscious manner? Singing the national anthem has been difficult for even the most professional singers when they are put in front of millions of people. This tells us that tasks so mundane as to become unconscious "rote" behaviors can become nearly impossible when people become "self-conscious". So asking an "unskilled" person to do what the psychic claims to do will no doubt result in a hit or miss type result that will produce results similar to chance due to the variations in people's sensitivity to that "feeling". In other words, we might not construct the experiment in a way that will adequately capture the phenomenon, and even if we did, how can we know that there even enough "sensitive" people involved to make a statistically significant impact? No one claims that this is as ubiquitous as sight or hearing. It is more likely something that manifests in one in a million people. If I conducted an experiment to find Andre the Giant without specifically asking giants to come in to the lab, how many people would I need in the experiment to find him? And even if he did come in, he would simply have to stand there to make the experiment a success. For the ESP experiment to work, he might have to be in the right frame of mind or receive the right stimuli without interference of any kind. Since we don't even know what the parameters of the sense really are, how could we know what to do and what not to do? And even if we did, and the sensitive person did show up, and did actually get the "feeling" when met with the proper stimuli, if he/she is one in a million, would you consider that a statistical anomaly or a verifiable result? My guess is the later.
Such things can obviously be measured empirically.
Why is it "obvious" that such things can be measured empirically? Are you assuming that everything people experience should be reproducible under laboratory conditions or we should deny their experiences on principle? What about sociological phenomena? Some small scale social phenomena can be reproduced with control groups, but most can only be observed indirectly through documentation and - dare I say - anecdotal evidence.
I do not assert the the existence of mind reading or fortune telling, but the development of a sensory apparatus focused on properties of living things not available to the other senses (i.e., magnetic fields, quantum effects, etc.), is a reasonable possibility. The problem with discussing this subject productively is the incredible bias toward anything that reminds people of witches or psychics. Why is it so hard to conceive of a non-mystical understanding of something first described in a mystical context?
For example, certain animals use electroception to navigate, hunt, etc. And since it is not one of the standard "five senses", electroception could readily be described as a type of "extra sensory perception" (ESP). Should this connotation preclude scientists from taking it seriously? Perhaps humans share this system and have simply stopped relying on it for survival because of more successful tactics like conscious thought and reason. Evolutionary traits don't just disappear when they are no longer needed (most of our DNA is simply dormant), so perhaps it is still there in some form. We no longer rely upon our sense of smell for survival (except the trivial need to not eat rotten food), yet it intrudes on our everyday lives all the time in an unconscious way. Perhaps electroception is similarly out-of-date system that lingers in the background somewhere. The very article we are commenting on states that the brain's sensory systems work much faster than conscious thought, so at a time in our development when instinctive reaction was far more important to our survival than reasoned action, perhaps we relied on something like electroception to give us a heads up about what was going on around us (or, dare I say, what was going on the minds of the as yet inarticulate people around us).
Consider recent evidence that photosynthesis may rely on quantum effects. If this is true, then we have to assume that there is plenty going on in the biological world that is not necessarily observable in a traditional context. It was reported here recently that new research "suggests that giving up the concept of locality is not sufficient to be consistent with quantum experiments, unless certain intuitive features of realism are abandoned." This fact (if true) does not of course "prove" the existence of anything. It simply suggests that there is a lot more going on than what we can directly observe, and that what we observe is in some part a result of how we observe it. I recognize the fact that rigorous scientific analysis is required for anything one asserts as a "true" phenomenon, but in the case of the human sensory apparatus, what if that requirement forces us to come face to face with the great paradox of quantum mechanics, i.e., that our observation of the world has a direct effect on it? How would we go about examining our sensory relationship with the world if that very relationship is itself incompletely understood?
Furthermore, empirical evidence is not always about direct observation. If that were the case, Black Holes and Dark Matter/Energy would remain the stuff of science fiction. All claims about these things are based on indirect observation. We theorize that they do in fact exist, make guesses about what to look for as a consequence of their existence, then declare that they exist based on their effects. Why is it so hard to acknowledge that there are other phenomena requiring a similar means of understanding?
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I was simply pointing out that Tape/CD singles were the same price to produce as Tape/CD albums, because the physical medium was the same (unlike vinyl where singles were physically cheaper to produce because they were smaller and generally came with far less packaging/inserts/etc). So the fact that you go on and on about how much CD singles sucked makes sense, because record companies were unable to make them cheap enough to make a profit and still give you your money's worth.
Another thing I'd like to point out is that you seem to think that record companies could sell CDs for the cost of the materials. Yes the actual CD might cost a few pennies to mass produce, but what about packaging? What about marketing? What about the cover art? What about the producer? And oh yeah, what about the musicians? The cost of *anything* you buy is not simply based on what the actual thing you're holding in your hands cost to make. The number of man-hours that go into the production of an album is often huge, so why would anyone bother producing a commercially available product if they had to operate with no profit?
Also, though cost of distribution in the music biz will eventually drop to nil, there are still costs involved in the actual production of the music. And even with that dropping dramatically, marketing remains the single most expensive aspect of a successful album - and that is not going to change any time soon.
actually, while I agree with the sentiment of your argument, it is actually flawed.
Their old business model of selling a $15 CD with 1 good song---aka ripping people off--doesn't fly anymore. If you just want that one song, you just buy that one song.
Back in the olden-days, there was such a thing as a "single", which was usually one or two songs sold for a fraction of the price of an album, and was intended to give people the chance to buy just that one song that they liked (which usually meant the song from the album that the record company thought would be a hit). Tapes and then CDs made this far less useful, because the cost of producing a tape/cd with one or two songs was no less than producing a tape/cd with an entire album, so the single died off.
your math regarding the recording process might be accurate, but where does a musician without a label get that kind of cash? And more importantly, the musician would need to sell at least 30,000 tracks (depending on the deal given by the various distribution outlets) just to get that money back (after tax). Add to that the fact that when an act gets to that level of popularity, their music is immediately added to the various torrent sites, which eats heavily into sales (I've seen my co-workers take my suggestions for new music and go straight to their fav torrent search engine without even considering itunes or amazon or whatever). Now I know the argument that people "check out" the music via torrents then for some reason reacquire the music via legit means, but how common is that really? And if there are no longer any CDs, which offer value beyond the audio files on them (the intrinsic value of holding an album in one's hands is the main reason vinyl has stuck around) why would anyone choose a pay site over a "free" site? The bottleneck created by the labels had to go, but now the opposite problem is taking over - completely unfettered access to art (in theory a good thing) with no requirement for compensation (in practice a bad thing).
the ability to alter and subvert a piece of computer programming is a skill set that is highly prevalent in today's society
how many people anywhere on earth have the skills to hack into the defense department's military computers? Now we're not talking about the office PC where they keep track of expense accounts, we're talking about their encrypted closed-circuit military communications network. We'd have to start talking about governments, so turning one these things against their "masters" would be equivalent to capturing and using a tank in the same way.
While I agree in principle that law enforcement overreacted, the summary neglects to complete the quote that it goes on to misinterpret (albeit humorously). The quoted official goes on to say (and is backed up by the article itself), that Mr. Deeb was in possession of more of these chemicals than is allowed by law, and is not supposed to be doing experiments on that scale in a residential neighborhood. This is not little Johnny mixing vinegar and baking soda. He was clearly doing industrial-level experiments, as is evidenced by his declining to comment because patents are pending in relation to his work. Yes, this is a very easy target for "the govt is a bunch of ignorant reactionaries" comments, but were they really so far out of bounds? Don't local officials have the right to regulate potentially (they did not know what he was doing until *after* they raided the place) commercial research being conducted in a residential neighborhood?
oh wait...
Witness the powerful association people have between controversial claims and Drudge. No one has yet corrected or even mentioned the ironic and Freudian misspelling of "report" in the headline.
Abuse? In what way did I abuse you? By questioning your ethics? By asking if you feel any obligation to those who have willingly put their lives in jeopardy to fight for freedoms we are now so dangerously taking for granted?
I am not talking about committing suicide in the name of the cause, something with which we have become far too familiar. I am talking about risking your life for something that will benefit not only you, should you live, but those around you who have made the same commitment. Here's an analogy you might understand.
Perhaps you work for a small startup. Perhaps it is a key point in the company's development, and everyone commits to putting in extra time and effort so the company can reach limitless heights. Would you work as hard if you knew that many of the people around you were putting in only the minimum amount of effort necessary, while standing to reap the same rewards in the end?
It was this scenario that elicited my rather crude description of the fate I would wish on someone who enjoys the benefits of other's sacrifices while refusing to make their own. And for that I apologize.
But it is poor reasoning like yours, i.e., that you would exchange freedoms gained by other people's sacrifice for some vague promise of security, that has led to the current state of affairs. My original point was that we must jealously guard our freedoms with our lives, or we will have neither, (to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin). Sacrifice is necessary to maintain our freedom in the the face of forces on both "sides" that would take them away as a means of control. I am not asking that anyone blow themselves up, I am simply asking people to take on more risk in order to protect something so precious that it has taken thousands of years to achieve.
Those who would kill morning commuters en-mass are attempting to prove something to god. They strive to demonstrate that they are so committed to the cause that we have no choice but to take them seriously and recognize their claims of moral authority. They have, in fact, been so successful they have us running scared. So scared that we are slowly beginning to accept the false notion that we are better off allowing the watchful eye of our "protectors" to peer into every aspect of our lives.
To paraphrase Tony Blair, we must demonstrate that we love freedom more than they love exercising control. That we will ignore their threats, and that we will sacrifice whatever is necessary to defend what we have gained.
Reasonable enough?
Think it through. If you're dead, are you free? More to the point, do you care? Not much. So my guess is that you don't have any kids. I can also surmise that you don't really care much about other people in general. In fact, I would be willing to bet that you don't like other people very much at all.
But even beyond that, I would wager that you have not considered your own death as an inevitability, and that you have a certain amount of choice as to how you live your life. Look back and think of all the people you respect and admire. Did they do everything strictly for themselves? Or did they realize that contributing to the lives of others can offer immediate rewards?
You are correct to point out that dying for the freedom is to die for the freedom of others, but what do you have that others have died for? Do you thank them and return the favor by adopting the ethic that made their sacrifice pay off for you? Or do you scorn their stupidity and spit in their faces while enjoying what they have given you?
If you live it strictly for yourself, well then fuck you - I hope you die face down in a ditch with your pants around your ankles and your dignity stripped away like so much torn polyester. But if there is some part of your soul that needs to connect and contribute to the society from which you derive so much benefit, than perhaps should reconsider the rather grim and destructive attitude you are taking at the moment. The collective selflessness of strangers makes up something greater than the sum of its parts. It's like an insurance policy that provides both a short term dividend and long term protection against whatever oppression you may face. You need that selflessness. Without it, you will find the world around you quite hostile indeed.
Are you an embarrassed and anonymous leech, or are you a proud contributer to the benefit of your fellow human beings?
Freedom has always been worth dying for. Many citizen soldiers have died on the field of battle to establish and defend freedom, and now the struggle has been brought to our doorstep. But we are not soldiers; we have no weapons to wield.
Our instinct is to take away the weapons of our enemy. But we are horrified to find that they are using freedom against us. We recoil and draw back our trust. No longer can we take the good will of our neighbors for granted. So with the best intentions we seek to contain anyone who throws an ominous shadow.
But the young men who carried explosives onto trains and buses in London did nothing to draw our special attention. The morning of the bombings, they were seen conferring together by surveillance cameras. But human eyes cannot be everywhere. They could have written their intentions directly on the lens of that camera and no one would have noticed until it was all over. The men who boarded those planes more than seven years ago did not trigger any alarms or overwhelm any security systems, they simply bought some tickets.
So we are left with a sobering choice. Do we continue to retract our trust in one another; throwing up human and technological defenses against ourselves? Voluntarily retracting one another's personal freedoms in the hope of leveling the playing field? Or do we make something old, new again?
Though there is certainly a political element to the battle we fight, but the root of the conflict is ideological. Our enemy is not enamored with freedom the way we are. It calls our defense of liberty for all ways of life foolish and self-destructive. There is, after-all, a natural law revealed for all to see, and the failure to recognize and enforce it is the seed of our downfall. Those who threaten our souls should be singled out and punished. It is ultimately our single minded defense of freedom that allows the devil in us to find safe harbor. Perhaps they are right; but only partly so.
Freedom allows the unfettered expression of the best in us as well as the worst. A natural law revealed in the hearts of people around the world is only served by the freedom to express it. What better way to talk truth to power than to do it freely and openly? What better way to aid your fellow man's soul than to do it without fear of reprisal?
But reminding those who would strike down this offering with violence or repression is not enough. We must live the ideal if we are to demonstrate its full potential. Thus we are brought back to our choice.
Continue to limit freedom in the hope of protecting ourselves, or risk our lives by maintaining and expanding it? We have a proud history of defending freedom on the battlefield. Now we must show reactionaries around the world that there is no profit in punishing those who might do harm by limiting the freedom of everyone. We must risk our lives once again by offering freedom to those who would use it to destroy us. We do not have to offer our lives, but we must protect the freedom that might be used by others to take it. What happened in London and New York will happen again, and we must be willing to let it. We cannot search everyone all the time. We cannot watch everyone everywhere. So we must become as selfless as the soldier. We must be willing to die riding on a subway, flying on an airplane or sitting in our homes. We must be willing to sacrifice ourselves to protect that which we hold most dear. We must live free or die.
Based on the fact that you refer to the current US administration as "yours", I can only assume that you are from somewhere outside the US. I don't know what kind of government you have, but as you write idiomatically and can use the word "revolution" online without fear of official reprisals, I can also assume that you are in a somewhat liberal democracy. Given that, I can only remind you that we have built our revolutions into the system. We hold a rather large meeting every two years to decide whether to throw out the day to day lawmakers, and every four years to decide about the overall regime.
This process has become the envy of the world (the transfer of power based on referendum, not the actual voting process, which is clearly flawed). The transfer of power is enforced in a way that channels all of our instinctive lust for bloody revenge into a simple principle - a nation of laws, not of men. To throw all of that away just to oust a particularly bad regime is to throw the baby out with the bath water.
Even if the regime we wish to oust has crossed all kinds of lines and seems to be worthy of immediate removal, there would still be nothing worse for "the people" than to breach the ethereal bubble that is public faith in their system of government. (Again, not the specifics of any interpretation of the law, but the fact that it is law that facilitates change, not the threat of violence.)
And as for all the talk about the "orange revolution", they were overturning a system, not just a regime. They wanted a new way of doing things, not just a new group of people in charge. They put into place many of the institutions and processes that we now take for granted. In fact, it was that very system that allowed the current administration to take power in the first place. Why? Well...because of culture rot. Too little emphasis on education when the issues at hand are complicated. Too much emphasis on self-indulgence when the situation requires us to tighten our belts. Too much apathy when the consequences of it are so grave. These problems exist among "the people", not the system.
I haven't used iTunes, and I've tried ripping those particular CDs on several difference systems - under both Linux and Windows. There are certain methodologies to creating audio CDs that cause a distortion in the track when ripped. (I'm not going to go into the details as I am not very familiar with them, though I have friends that are more so.) So, it is more likely the CD itself causing a problem with the rip.
If it is the format you don't like, then don't buy it. Download the song straight from iTunes or wherever and make your copies from there. My point was that even if you do only download torrents that you already own, (or are free in the first place), you are part of a very very small percentage of the whole pie. MOST people download media content from torrent sites because it is free. Address that and not your own cd storage issues.
A recording artist is simply someone who records their performance of a musical work. Often, they also sell that performance to others - either directly (e.g. indie artists) or indirectly (e.g. record labels). They will also often do concerts, etc. too. Ultimately, they are no different from the musician that goes around to bars and performs.
So what about the "Kind of Blue" session I mentioned? Would you deny that there is something about an improvised performance that makes it different from a note-by-note composition? And if I utilized some new technology to listen in on anything anywhere, what would that mean for that live performance you are so anxious to put on a plateau? Where would the NY Philharmonic be without the money to attract the great musicians it has? Would you say that they all have to have day jobs and practice after work?
You're right - I don't agree that it is property. At best it is intangible property, which is what Copyright is for. However, I also find it is more beneficial to receive credit for what one does and to get paid up front instead of leeching off society.
First of all, it is quite tangible. What I know is a direct result of time and energy I have put into my self to build something - namely my skills and my taste. When I am not around, neither is my intellectual property. But the notion of patents and copyright offers a place into which I can put my ideas and skills so that others can come along and offer me something in exchange for it. How long that special bubble lasts is certainly arbitrary, and I do believe that it has been extended too far. But that does not mean we should eliminate the protections offered by copyright. According to your definition of intellectual property, it is only real if it is expressed, and then it is worthless because anyone can take it away. So why exactly should I want to share it with anyone unless I can guarantee that I would get something in return? Would you offer help to people if they not only didn't say thank you, but spit in your face as well? Also, your business example would create a rather bleak art world if no one could share what they have done for fear of other's stealing it.
Leeching off society in any form is bad for society. Copyright and patents are the among biggest forms of that right now.
Leeching? So I guess no one actually gets anything out of copyrighted material? They just pay people for something they don't really want? Yes patents have been abused by people who use them for the opposite purpose of what they were intended - to foster development of new technologies, but copyright is very different. No one is held back by copyrighted material except rappers who want other people's beats and those who simply want their content for free.
That use to be expected of everyone in society - to pass on wisdom, typically from the older generation to the younger generati
I use torrents to get Linux ISOs because that is how they are distributed. [...] So please stop using that kind of analogy.
First of all, I was not making an analogy, I was pointing out a well documented fact that most people download music and movie torrents because they are free. For every one person that downloads the latest Ubuntu release, there are 100 more who download the latest episode of Lost or the latest Modest Mouse album. And what is the point of talking about your use of torrents for geek purposes anyway? It completely ignores the fact that while there are legitimate reasons for the technology, it has been utilized as a quick and easy way to avoid compensating artists.
Also, you say you couldn't get a good rip from the cd you bought? What kind of computer person are you? I don't even have to do anything but click "OK" and iTunes rips any cd I put in my drive at the highest possible quality. Even if you claim that there are pops or whatever because of a scratched cd, if I break a glass I've bought, does that mean I can go back to the store and demand a new one for free? And you expect me to believe that some random torrent you pick is going to offer a better quality rip anyway? Your claims are dubious to say the least.
I am also one of those guys that when I am looking for something in a store and see someone trying to find something to offer to help them out, and even give them guidance on what they want - especially if the sales rep is doing a really bad job or leaving out critical information. So yeah - friend or stranger a like, I do offer services for free.
While I share your instinct for generosity, neither of us would stay all day and work at that same store for free. Helping a stranger in need is something people do all the time, but offering a few moments of your time when you think it might help someone out is not the same thing as working there for free. I spend hours each day working on my art, and if other people are going to benefit from that work, I believe it perfectly reasonable that I be compensated for it.
I already do the piano very similarly. And yes - I do write music too, and no I don't expect to get paid for it; I write it so that others can reproduce what I have performed and be able to enjoy their own performance or playing of it, much as I do.
Again an admirable sentiment, and I hope your music makes people happy. But you are confusing a composer with a recording artist. A composer can make money because, as of right now, it is possible to make people pay to hear a live performance by simply doing it in a place where there are doors and people to collect money for tickets. But the recording artist is something different. Many recordings done in such a way that they often cannot be performed or even duplicated. Take the album "Kind of Blue" by the Miles Davis quintet. It was an improvised work of art produced by a group of musicians at the peak of their careers. How can you claim that this is the same thing as a composition? This is something totally different that must be treated as a form of art all its own. We all enjoy its beauty and recognize its importance, and you would say that the people involved should get nothing for their work because they can't stop people from listening to the performance with walls and tickets?
Honestly - this is just like starting any other kind of business. You will have to put in hours - often unpaid - while getting the business started, take out loans, and pay others to help out. In the long run you will make money, but not without serious work and likely debt in one form or another ... Why should "artists" be expected to be treated any different? Just because it is hard to get going doesn't mean they should be entitled to special privileges.
Special privileges? To what are you referring? If a person starts a business, creates a product and puts it on
I never said they should not get paid. Only that they should not necessarily get paid for copies - especially copies that other people do.
When referring to wedding bands or someone actually making a backup of their iTunes purchases I am in agreement. But just about every other kind of copying is the direct result of not wanting to pay the artist. Why do people download torrents? To back up a dvd or cd they own?
The writer would usually write a piece for a band or artist. They should pay the writer for his effort to do so. The band gets paid for their production of the piece - by selling CDs, DVDs, giving concerts, etc.
Where does the money from the cds and dvds if there is no way to charge enough to even cover the cost of production?
...I do often give my services - writing code, technical support, etc. - to others for free. I have a lot of written code that I have licensed under the GPL. (Not all of it pubically available yet for various reasons, but it will be - and I have a lot more to come.)
I assume you mean you help your parents set up their wireless network and help your friend with a new website for the band. I imagine that if some stranger came calling and said, I would like to enjoy the fruits of your labor but refuse to offer any payment, you would say no. I give copies of my music to people I know, but why is it so difficult to imagine me asking strangers for something in return? I am not asking for much, just a token of their appreciation for making something that makes their life better in some small way. The people who would do what they could to take from me without asking don't deserve what I have to offer. And just because you intellectualize the nature of the transaction and claim that there is some difference between creating a recording with one's hands and making a basket with one's hands you must not ignore the nature of the impact on the maker of the item.
And though you may have found that people are only willing to offer something in exchange for your code, what about the people who feel the same way about other people's art?
Neither the band nor the writer should necessarily get paid for other artists doing their version (whether identical or modified) of the piece. (If they do, great. If not, oh well.)
Again, we are not talking about performances here. We are talking about the "copies" people make of a recording of that performance. These are widgets like any other. They are acquired with the knowledge of how to use them (play it on the speakers), why they are useful, (they are to be consumed like ice cream or the map of a city or a light bulb), what they are worth (I'm willing to give you X in exchange for it). The only thing in dispute here is the way in which the item is priced. In the case of music, the problem with the current situation is that there is no longer any reason for people to pay anything for it because they can almost always get it for free somewhere else. With no real change in demand, there is now an unlimited supply because other people are making money producing those copies. And I am not talking about the guy on the blanket with the hand-held camera version of Jurassic Park. I am talking about the broadband providers. Torrents at one point accounted for something approaching half of all the traffic on the web. All that bandwidth costs money, and it is the machinery with with individuals act in anonymous groups to make all the "copies" you are referring to. All the money people used to spend on music is not spent on the machinery to copy it: computers, mp3 players, routers, cable connections, etc.
...regardless of whether copyright exists or not - I'd still be willing to do what I do - both for a living and as hobby.
no, I don't mean that people wouldn't produce art if they couldn't get paid for it. What I mean is that people coul
So are you saying that all artists should be amateurs? That they should be permanently relegated to the garage or the coffee shop? If I make a better mousetrap I can get paid for it, but if I write a song I should be forced to give it away for free? How do you suggest explaining to the next great master that her work will be enjoyed by all but she can expect nothing but praise and perhaps a little charity?
It is quite hypocritical for people who, without blinking an eye, peddle their commodified talents to the highest bidder, (that's right hired geeks, I'm talking to you), to demand that others give the fruit of their labor away for free. What you are saying is that if you produce something proprietary, i.e., something only useful to the person who pays you, e.g., a custom database, you should get whatever you can, but if you produce something that anyone can use, e.g., a work of art, you should be forced to give it away.
I agree that "people" like Disney have converted copyright into commodity, and you could very easily change that by eliminating copyright. But you would also irreparably harm the system of incentive that drives everyday artists to produce better and better work. No, money is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the prospect of being able to live a decent life while focusing completely on their work. Would Picasso have been able to do what he did if he also had to sling burgers or write code all day?
While I agree that certain expressions of human understanding should be available to everyone, e.g., the human genome, I disagree with the applicability of your example. During the time when content was freely available to any literate person, there were actually only a few literate people, and fewer still who could actually afford the luxury of producing content. Most if not all content was produced with the intent of gaining recognition, not wealth (though a reputation as a scholar would surely cement one's place in society).
Even in the modern era, when more people are literate than not, and the average college student produces more work than the average 16th century nobleman, it takes a tremendous amount of time and effort to produce a work of real value. Ask almost any artist/writer/musician if they would produce more and better work if they were able to make a decent living at it and you will get an emphatic yes.
It is not Metallica or Stephan King we're talking about here. Nobody likes rock stars. We are talking about the other 99% of the artistic world that needs time and money to continue their work. Why do you think the government gives grants to worthwhile artists? Who would pay for the studio time to make a decent recording of that band you like? How could a writer take enough time to really think about what they are writing if they had to spend all of their time making lattes?
As these issues move to the forefront of our national political discussion, who do we look to when we want impartial information? The government? NASA, in spite of the special place it holds in the hearts of geeks everywhere, is still a government run operation subject (to some degree) to the whims of the current administration. Ditto the NIH and the WHO which, among others, will become just as important to future discussions about the aforementioned topics as NASA and the National Weather Service has been to the debate over global warming.
NGO's are an alternative source of information for these issues, but they more often than not have their own agenda as well. If these issues trend the same as other long debated topics such as economics and the sociology, there will be no real consensus on where to turn for "just the facts".
Second, I am in no way advocating a ban on anything. Yes, people know what commercials are for, but they do not want to be deluged by advertising, they simply tolerate it because they know it is a part of a liberal democracy. It distorts people's view of the world because it is "offered" in the guise of real information and is at the same time completely biased and unreliable. Do you like listening to someone who you know to be full of shit?
As for solutions, the best way to negate the effects of a lie is to offer the truth. Why not require advertisers to provide sources for their claims, or to explicitly state their intentions, e.g., "we are claiming that our body spray will make women want to have sex with you". How well would innuendo work when you can no longer get away with just a wink and a nudge?
There are very definite repercussions on our culture and our politics from the rapidly accelerating media blitz we now face. Consider the simple fact there was a time when you could go for days or even weeks without seeing any form of advertisement and now we are struggling to keep it away from us for a few minutes of peace. Think talking billboards (some of which actually show real commercials), spam, telemarketers, flyers, magazine ads, tv commercials, etc. It is everywhere and only getting worse.
And if you doubt its effects, consider that most people can tell you more about the iPhone than their senator.
Advertising is clearly no challenge to democracy at all. How was it that you came to this conclusion exactly? Where is your evidence? Have you even given it any thought?
Check this out if you're actually interested. If not, enjoy your Pepsi.
Though I agree that the errors have more of an impact on the efforts to scare people (legitimately) into changing their ways than it does on the overall scientific analysis of the phenomena, you are, imho, missing Mr. Dyson's point.
The scientific method has resulted in some of our greatest achievements, but we must be willing to challenge accepted wisdom if we are to be sure not to fall into the same trap that "spiritual scientists" did.
They believed that by following the practices of those who came before them, they could add something to the understanding of the human condition. Using themselves as guinea pigs, they used simple trial and error to further understand a way of life that achieves some goal set out for them by those who came before or occasionally goals set for themselves.
Siddhartha, for example, set out to discover how to eliminate suffering and tried all means of acheiveing that goal, resulting in rules he laid out for how to escape the pain of living. His experiment was actually a failure, in that he came to believe that life was suffering, and that all one could do was mitigate the pain until reaching nirvana.
This process should sound familiar to anyone practicing the scientific method. After his death, many generations of refinements and adaptations have resulted in a diverse set of variations on his original "findings", (that end of the analogy requires one to at least consider the possibility that he was on to something).
But such wisdom tends to become "accepted wisdom" embodied in an institution, mainly because not everyone is willing or able to do the work of experimentation necessary to achieve that wisdom on their own. So it becomes a pre-packaged whole that one has to either accept or deny. And even for those who do the work, the strength of the collective is quite formidable (e.g., the inquisition, the Sharia police, etc..)
How long before scientific wisdom is defended in such ways? Perhaps it will not take the form of violent oppression, but who has not felt the sting of a rebuke from someone who claims the backing of some institution?
And by the way, Einstein was as radical a thinker as one could have encountered at the time. He questioned everything he was taught, and remarked openly on how surprising it was that children learned anything at all from the wrote learning system.
The media culture is now the biggest challenge to democracy since it's inception. We are both better informed and more easily brainwashed.
Now this is not to say that pay tv is any better for such things. Cable stations advertise just as much as over-the-air stations (with the obvious exception of premium channels), but saying that over-the-air tv is "free" is like saying that gasoline used to cheap. We are now all paying a steep price for that delusion (and I don't mean at the pump). How long before we realize that advertising will do us in faster than global warming and jihad combined?
The RIAA is holding on for dear life to whatever means they have to extract money from flow of content from creator to user. But any attempt to control of the means of distribution (sounds kind of familiar) will result in lower and lower returns for anyone in the digital content biz. Technology is making content distribution an almost trivial exercise, and short of quantum encryption for the latest Madonna album, there will be /. geeks stealing people's work.
The question is not whether people can do it, its a matter of whether they actually will.
To get DRM-less content, they need to:
Each step filters people, and those people pay. Simple as that.
The real question is how long the RIAA will take to realize that there are alternatives to this model.
The entire reason some people believe this ability even exists is based on anecdotal evidence
You seem to imply that the reason people believe it is because other people believe it. An anecdote is a story people tell about their own experience. That means if I present anecdotal evidence, I am presenting my own experience. It may not be peer-reviewable, but it is not something to dismiss. It is exactly the kind of information that has led to countless discoveries in the past.
I do agree that there have been no notable successes in reproducing such claims in a laboratory environment, but we are talking about something very different than particle behavior or even neurological processes. There is an inherent problem with applying the scientific method to a feeling. What if we are measuring something that is highly susceptible to the influence of conscious thought? The quantum paradox tells us that it is impossible to remove the observer from the process of observation, so what if this is an example of the paradox at work?
...we should still be able to observe the presence of these abilities when they manifest.
The problem is that for such an observation to meet your standard of verifiability, (something more than the "anecdotal" evidence presented by millions of people around the world for centuries), one would need to measure it somehow. But what are we to measure? Those who claim a skill are engaging in conscious effort, which is perhaps the one thing powerful enough to overwhelm the "I'm being watched" feeling. From birth we are trained to override our instinctive reactions with reasoned action. So how can we expect to measure an unconscious instinctive reaction in an environment that requires people to follow instructions and behave in a self-conscious manner? Singing the national anthem has been difficult for even the most professional singers when they are put in front of millions of people. This tells us that tasks so mundane as to become unconscious "rote" behaviors can become nearly impossible when people become "self-conscious". So asking an "unskilled" person to do what the psychic claims to do will no doubt result in a hit or miss type result that will produce results similar to chance due to the variations in people's sensitivity to that "feeling". In other words, we might not construct the experiment in a way that will adequately capture the phenomenon, and even if we did, how can we know that there even enough "sensitive" people involved to make a statistically significant impact? No one claims that this is as ubiquitous as sight or hearing. It is more likely something that manifests in one in a million people. If I conducted an experiment to find Andre the Giant without specifically asking giants to come in to the lab, how many people would I need in the experiment to find him? And even if he did come in, he would simply have to stand there to make the experiment a success. For the ESP experiment to work, he might have to be in the right frame of mind or receive the right stimuli without interference of any kind. Since we don't even know what the parameters of the sense really are, how could we know what to do and what not to do? And even if we did, and the sensitive person did show up, and did actually get the "feeling" when met with the proper stimuli, if he/she is one in a million, would you consider that a statistical anomaly or a verifiable result? My guess is the later.
Such things can obviously be measured empirically.
Why is it "obvious" that such things can be measured empirically? Are you assuming that everything people experience should be reproducible under laboratory conditions or we should deny their experiences on principle? What about sociological phenomena? Some small scale social phenomena can be reproduced with control groups, but most can only be observed indirectly through documentation and - dare I say - anecdotal evidence.
I do not assert the the existence of mind reading or fortune telling, but the development of a sensory apparatus focused on properties of living things not available to the other senses (i.e., magnetic fields, quantum effects, etc.), is a reasonable possibility. The problem with discussing this subject productively is the incredible bias toward anything that reminds people of witches or psychics. Why is it so hard to conceive of a non-mystical understanding of something first described in a mystical context?
For example, certain animals use electroception to navigate, hunt, etc. And since it is not one of the standard "five senses", electroception could readily be described as a type of "extra sensory perception" (ESP). Should this connotation preclude scientists from taking it seriously? Perhaps humans share this system and have simply stopped relying on it for survival because of more successful tactics like conscious thought and reason. Evolutionary traits don't just disappear when they are no longer needed (most of our DNA is simply dormant), so perhaps it is still there in some form. We no longer rely upon our sense of smell for survival (except the trivial need to not eat rotten food), yet it intrudes on our everyday lives all the time in an unconscious way. Perhaps electroception is similarly out-of-date system that lingers in the background somewhere. The very article we are commenting on states that the brain's sensory systems work much faster than conscious thought, so at a time in our development when instinctive reaction was far more important to our survival than reasoned action, perhaps we relied on something like electroception to give us a heads up about what was going on around us (or, dare I say, what was going on the minds of the as yet inarticulate people around us).
Consider recent evidence that photosynthesis may rely on quantum effects. If this is true, then we have to assume that there is plenty going on in the biological world that is not necessarily observable in a traditional context. It was reported here recently that new research "suggests that giving up the concept of locality is not sufficient to be consistent with quantum experiments, unless certain intuitive features of realism are abandoned." This fact (if true) does not of course "prove" the existence of anything. It simply suggests that there is a lot more going on than what we can directly observe, and that what we observe is in some part a result of how we observe it. I recognize the fact that rigorous scientific analysis is required for anything one asserts as a "true" phenomenon, but in the case of the human sensory apparatus, what if that requirement forces us to come face to face with the great paradox of quantum mechanics, i.e., that our observation of the world has a direct effect on it? How would we go about examining our sensory relationship with the world if that very relationship is itself incompletely understood?
Furthermore, empirical evidence is not always about direct observation. If that were the case, Black Holes and Dark Matter/Energy would remain the stuff of science fiction. All claims about these things are based on indirect observation. We theorize that they do in fact exist, make guesses about what to look for as a consequence of their existence, then declare that they exist based on their effects. Why is it so hard to acknowledge that there are other phenomena requiring a similar means of understanding?