The basic idea is lots of individuals contribute small amounts of money to get studio time for underground bands. Each band has a running total, and once they reach $50,000, Sellaband sends the money off to an agent who arranges for the band to record an album, which is then given away for free. Sellaband is quick to point out that all $50,000 goes to production, and they don't keep any of it for themselves.
It's a great concept, and I encourage everyone to support those bands. However, $50k is a lot of money when the minimum contribution is only $10, and only one band has reached that goal so far. Meanwhile, other bands have raised tens of thousands, but it's just sitting in the bank for months collecting interest until they reach their goal - and guess who's raking it in.
Anyone buying a PlaysForSure anything (song or device) is now suddenly screwed because Microsoft has a new strategy: Zobe. Thanks for clearing this up. I wasn't sure whether those intentional misspellings meant you were trolling or just being childish, but now that you're spouting inaccuracies, I think I can safely write you off as a troll.
That is, although the Zune doesn't play PlaysForSure media, MS is still supporting PFS. In fact, files from the Zune store apparently even work in PFS players, although that isn't officially supported.
But arguing that FairPlay is some tight lock-in is rather ridiculous. If you could push a button and dump all your Xbox games onto a CD that would then magically work on any other game console, would you be worried about vendor lock-in on Xbox games? Depends. How many days would I have to sit there, tediously burning and re-ripping that CD, until my whole library was converted? Do you realize how long it actually takes to convert a few gigs of purchased iTunes music (the legal way)?
The fantasy of iTunes lock in is rather weak. Anyone downloading iTS music is unlikely to be freaked out by some hypothetical loss in quality from buring to a CD and reimporting it. No, but they might figure that the inconvenience of having to jump through those hoops just to listen to the music they've paid for is a reason to stay away from the iPod+iTMS system.
That is, if you buy an iPod, buy a bunch of DRM'd music for it, and then decide next year that you like another player better, you can look forward to hours of burning and re-ripping. If you buy a PlaysForSure device, however, then there's at least some chance that the player you like better next year will also be a PFS device, and your music will be portable. And if you're a think-about-the-long-term kind of guy, those possibilities might influence your buying decisions this year.
Vendor lock in is not Apple's plan, its the fantasy of people trying to vilify Apple for selling a good product. [...] Apple is building a platform based on hardware profits, the same thing it has always done. You're arguing against your own point here. Apple wants to sell hardware, so it isn't exactly far-fetched that they'd bind their software (music files) to their hardware on purpose - that way anyone who buys the software has an incentive not to jump to another brand of hardware. You can see the same principle at work with OS X requiring Apple brand hardware.
BTW, the name of Microsoft's new player is "Zune".
I would just tell them that I dispute the charges and I'd see them in small claims court I doubt it'd be worth going to court for a bill this small. I took someone to small claims court once, and between the filing fee and the service fee it cost me about $70.
Wow, thanks for the link. I've been envisioning something like that, but I didn't realize anyone had actually done it.
The next step, I think, is to let artists sign up just to record MP3s using their own equipment. Instead of raising $50,000 to pay for studio time, they'd set their own price. The site might take a cut to pay for maintenance, but the artist would keep the rest. Anyone who wants a CD could download the tracks and burn their own, or order one from the band or the site to be burned on demand.
All of the musicians I know have fulltime day jobs, because the amount that local places pay for an evening's gig wouldn't cover a day's housing in this area, and if you plan to eat you need even more money. [...] So the answer is, No, I don't think people can make a go of it just being paid directly, until they get to some kind of critical mass.
Have you considered the possibility that the musicians you know haven't reached the point in their lives yet where they should be trying to sustain themselves as musicians?
People seem to have the idea that if you enjoy playing music, but you can't make a living at it, then something's wrong with the system and the law needs to be changed to make it easier for you. But clearly we don't have that expectation in any other field. Very few high school athletes will be able to play professionally as adults, but we don't consider that a problem, do we? Just as most of those players need to realize that football will always be a hobby for them, not a career, a lot of musicians need to realize the same thing about music.
Not necessarily.. in rural areas, there are plenty of roads that the government doesn't bother to maintain. My parents live on one. Any paving, grading, or snow plowing has to be done by private individuals and paid out of their own pockets.
It's easier than ever for a local niche band to reach the world. But they'll still only reach a little NICHE of the world. And if someone puts up mp3s of all of their stuff, and nobody needs to buy their CDs, then they don't have money to pay their rent. That's why copyright exists.
You're assuming that the only way they can make money is by selling CDs.
But why would that be? Are they such bad performers that no one wants to see them live? Is the quality of their work so unpredictable that no one is willing to pay them to record another song without hearing it first? If so, then maybe they shouldn't be in the music business; if not, then they don't need copyright, because they can charge directly for their work.
So you're saying that you could get ten million people to invest ten dollars, sight unseen, into a movie, for the eventual hope that they'll possibly like it? Do you think a business model like that would genuinely fly?
Yes and yes. If I liked Terminator 3 a lot, and I knew Terminator 4 was at risk of not being made, would it be worth $10 to fund its production -- particicularly if I knew I'd be able to get my money back if it didn't get made (i.e. if not enough money could be raised after all)? Of course it would. That's $10 I'd be spending on a ticket anyway, right?
We have enough trouble just getting people to donate money to people who really need it, let alone to people who just want to create entertainment/art/whatever. The entire idea is completely against human nature.
No, it isn't. See, this isn't a donation, it's payment for a service, which incidentally benefits more than just the people who pay for it.
It's like if ten people live on a dirt road, and eight of them get fed up with the dust, so they pool their money and hire someone to pave the road. They aren't donating money to the paver, or to each other; they're paying for the benefit of living on a paved road. Now, it happens to be the case that the two people who didn't pay, and any of their visitors, will also get to enjoy that benefit, but the reason it got paved in the first place is because those eight people felt strongly enough about it to open their wallets.
If enough people feel strongly enough certain types of movies, those movies will get made. It's just like what we have now, but with a more direct connection between funding and production - studios won't have to drop $100 million on a movie just to find out that it only sells $50 million worth of tickets.
If you want to release your work under the GPL and allow people to copy it, that's your right; OTOH if you want people to be able to get the money to make movies and shows that you like, you have to show your support for them by buying their results.
Not necessarily. You can also show your support by funding production. The advantage of doing it that way is it works whether or not copyright law exists or is enforced; you can always make money by selling your services, but making money by selling copies isn't easy in a world where anyone can make their own copies for free.
but that's how the industry counts "votes" for a given product.
Who cares how "the industry" wants to keep track? You don't have to conform to their standards just to get your "vote" counted; if they want to count inaccurately, that's their problem, not yours.
This would DESTROY the movie industry. We'd be left with little independant movies that were done for the love of it. Sure, some would be great, but I like to watch a good big budget action film every once in a while too.
Sure, who doesn't? I do too. In fact, I like them enough that I could put a dollar amount on my enjoyment, and I bet you could too. Both of us would be willing to spend some amount of money to keep action films alive, right?
The solution is simple. If we can find a lot of people who all like big budget action movies, then we can all pool our money together and fund the production of one. The demand is out there already - action movies make money. Ten million people each paying $10 adds up to $100 million, whether it comes from ticket sales or individual contributions to the movie's production.
How else would you suggest they stop the problem? No matter how you cut it, downloading copyrighted music without paying for it is a crime.
Not all crimes are equally worthy of our attention. There's probably more jaywalking in your city than there is copyright infringement - why do copyright laws deserve any more enforcement effort than jaywalking laws?
Now compare this with kids who setup their copyrighted music collections to be shared online. Instead of giving away dozens of copies, they could be giving away thousands or tens of thousands of songs per computer. Somehow this needs to stop.
No, it really doesn't. It's just people sharing information. No one is dying as a result, nothing is being taken away; the only conceivable loss is a loss of potential sales that may or may not have occurred anyway, and if you're worried about that kind of loss, you should be twice as worried about negative reviews (which also have the ability to prevent sales).
In my opinion, the tech community needs to help law enforcement stop illegal downloads.
In my opinion, law enforcement and legislators need to realize the technical impossibility of stopping copying, and work to reform the industries that currently depend on copyright. All the money and effort spent on making information uncopyable is simply being wasted; it's no less foolish than trying to make water unwet. Instead of pouring money down that hole forever, we should give up on it, and let industries deal with the fact that it's hard to make money by just selling copies. There are other ways to make money, and they'll find them if that's what they have to do.
I guess you missed the word "identical". Musicians can charge me for their CD, but just as I have no right to stop you from building a snowman that looks exactly like mine, flake for flake, musicians have no right to stop me from playing a song that sounds exactly like theirs, bit for bit.
The work has been laid down to a medium that is for sale.. intended to be sold. It's not like you can just hear it anywhere. You've actively got to go out and get it.
Not if you have a friend who bought a copy and is willing to share.
If I want to listen to a band's concert from outside the stadium then noone can stop me. But if I record it and start distributing it that's when I've got a problem.
If you get to listen to it, just because you're in the right place at the right time, then why can't anyone else? Maybe I'd like to go stand on the sidewalk outside the stadium, but I have to work that day and my schedule won't allow it. Shouldn't I be able to ask you to stand there, as my agent, and record it for me?
If your answer is no, then you're essentially arguing against the right to timeshift. That is, if listening to a concert from the sidewalk is a right reserved for those people who can manage to be there at the right time, then who's to say watching TV and listening to the radio shouldn't work the same way - i.e., if you can't be home at 3:00 tomorrow to watch some show, that's just too bad and you have no choice but to wait for the DVD?
You cannot perform a certain work in public (building a snowman) and demand everyone that passes by pay for it.
So where does that leave musicians whose work is sent out over the air several times a day?
However, if you make a shack and stick the snowman inside, you can certain charge people to see it.
Well, you can charge for entrance to your shack, but that's it. You can't stop them from building an identical snowman in their own front yard and letting everyone see it for free.
I couldn't disagree more. I simply can't see how this is a free speech issue. You're trying to get something for nothing.
It's a free speech issue from the perspective of the speaker, i.e. the person distributing copies. If you want to prevent him from sharing copies of that newspaper, then you also have to prevent him from reading it out loud. That's undeniably speech. Of course, there are reasons for which it's reasonable to limit speech, but "making it easier for some people to make money" isn't one of them.
To what end does your reasoning take us? Can I take (no.. not steal) someone's content and put *my* name on it? Can I take the content.. change it subtly and keep *their* name on it? After all the creator has no rights here.. it's just a free speech issue.
Both of those scenarios involve fraud. The author has no right to prevent you from sharing that content, but the public does have the right not to be deceived. If you put your name on something that you didn't write, or if you put someone else's name on something they didn't write, you're deceiving everyone who reads it.
Now you have the right to listen to that recording for free if someone chooses to sit in public and play their licensed copy on a boombox for all to hear, but you don't have a right to your own copy which you can play at your convenience.
Copies don't just appear out of nowhere, so it doesn't really make sense to talk about "a right to your own copy" without mentioning how it was obtained. I don't have the right to force the musician to give me a copy of his recording, obviously.
I do, however, have the right to accept a copy from anyone who's willing to give it to me. Whatever medium I use to record it is just an extension of my own memory, and I have every right to use tools to help me remember things I can't remember on my own, such as the sequence of several million bytes that makes up an MP3 file.
Similarly, I have the right to give a copy to anybody who wants one. I have the right to describe any of my experiences to people who are interested, in as much detail as I want, even if those experiences include listening to music and the details include a mathematical description of the sound waves that I heard.
[Musicians] specify a format in which you are supposed to receive them whereby you pay for CDs. On the other hand, people can't help but see your snowman
Now you're changing the subject. How about you just answer the question: if someone performs certain work because he expects that it'll bring in money, is he or is he not automatically entitled to get paid for it?
It shouldn't be hard to answer. Just a couple posts ago, you were shouting in all caps about this very subject. You seemed to think then that expectations create entitlement; have you changed your mind?
But what if the theatre's mostly empty? Then you're not depriving anyone of anything. Sorry.. it just doesn't wash.
Sure you are. You don't get to decide, on behalf of the theater owner, that the space you'd take up isn't enough for him to worry about; that's for him to decide. If he gets some weird thrill out of seeing empty seats, that's his right too. The unavoidable fact is that if you're in the theater, you're limiting to some extent what the owner can do with it - depriving him of the ability to use his property as he wishes.
OK then.. pull a copy out of the box (paid for), take a digital photograph of every page (high res, mind you). Burn a bunch of CDs and start selling/handing them out in front of said newspaper box. You *really* don't think this is a problem that the newspaper should be able to bust you for?
No, I don't; you might be making it harder for them to sell newspapers, but you aren't really taking anything away from them. I don't think they should be able to stifle your free speech (i.e. prevent you from sharing the data on those CDs) just because your ability to speak makes it harder for them to sell papers.
Sure... and after you kick the stuffing out of someone for copying bits without your permission, just try telling the cops "laws come and go". I'm sure that'll go over well.
Well, you are certainly good(not)at ignoring the whole download part of my reply.
Oh, you mean the words "or downloading"? I didn't realize you were trying to make a separate point.
Downloading movies is no different from downloading music: it doesn't deprive anyone of anything. And just in case you're about to ask, it's the same with downloading TV shows, programs, text files, PDFs, and really anything else that can be downloaded.
I just called a musician buddy and asked him if someone copied his music instead of buying it, if that constituted theft. He said yes. I agree.
Too bad you and your buddies don't get to decide what constitutes theft, huh? I just consulted the Supreme Court's case history, and they said copying isn't theft (Dowling v. United States). If you don't mind, I'll take their word over yours.
So, why don't you copy something of mine, then come on over and tell me how you didn't deprive me of income. Maybe I will only smash you in the face once or twice.
You know, it might be worth it, just so I could see you go to jail for assault. No wonder your posts are starting off at zero - do you have a long history of threatening violence over differences of opinion?
I put.25 into the newspaper box. I take 2 copies.. near the end of the day, mind you.. and the box is nearly full.. so those copies are just gonna be recycled.. I'm not depriving them of any income.
You're depriving them of newspapers. Those papers are theirs to dispose of as they wish. Maybe they'll change their minds at the last minute and sell them to the papier-mache piñata factory, or grind them up into filler for McDonald's patties... or maybe they'll recycle the papers just like every other day, but the point is, those papers can only be in one place at a time, and where they go is for the owner to decide.
Information, however, has no such limitations. No one needs to have an exclusive right to decide how it'll be used, because it can be everywhere at once.
Slashdot Mirror
You think that's clever, check this out...
Sellaband.
The basic idea is lots of individuals contribute small amounts of money to get studio time for underground bands. Each band has a running total, and once they reach $50,000, Sellaband sends the money off to an agent who arranges for the band to record an album, which is then given away for free. Sellaband is quick to point out that all $50,000 goes to production, and they don't keep any of it for themselves.
It's a great concept, and I encourage everyone to support those bands. However, $50k is a lot of money when the minimum contribution is only $10, and only one band has reached that goal so far. Meanwhile, other bands have raised tens of thousands, but it's just sitting in the bank for months collecting interest until they reach their goal - and guess who's raking it in.
That is, although the Zune doesn't play PlaysForSure media, MS is still supporting PFS. In fact, files from the Zune store apparently even work in PFS players, although that isn't officially supported. But arguing that FairPlay is some tight lock-in is rather ridiculous. If you could push a button and dump all your Xbox games onto a CD that would then magically work on any other game console, would you be worried about vendor lock-in on Xbox games? Depends. How many days would I have to sit there, tediously burning and re-ripping that CD, until my whole library was converted? Do you realize how long it actually takes to convert a few gigs of purchased iTunes music (the legal way)?
That is, if you buy an iPod, buy a bunch of DRM'd music for it, and then decide next year that you like another player better, you can look forward to hours of burning and re-ripping. If you buy a PlaysForSure device, however, then there's at least some chance that the player you like better next year will also be a PFS device, and your music will be portable. And if you're a think-about-the-long-term kind of guy, those possibilities might influence your buying decisions this year. Vendor lock in is not Apple's plan, its the fantasy of people trying to vilify Apple for selling a good product. [...] Apple is building a platform based on hardware profits, the same thing it has always done. You're arguing against your own point here. Apple wants to sell hardware, so it isn't exactly far-fetched that they'd bind their software (music files) to their hardware on purpose - that way anyone who buys the software has an incentive not to jump to another brand of hardware. You can see the same principle at work with OS X requiring Apple brand hardware.
BTW, the name of Microsoft's new player is "Zune".
Those of us who haven't upgraded should note that this is only for the 360, not the regular Xbox.
They didn't tell me what it'd cost until I'd already filled out an amount.
You must not have been looking very hard.
b ackup-copies-of-your-xbox-360-games/
http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/21/how-to-create-
Also see xbox-scene.com for various tutorials.
Wow, thanks for the link. I've been envisioning something like that, but I didn't realize anyone had actually done it.
The next step, I think, is to let artists sign up just to record MP3s using their own equipment. Instead of raising $50,000 to pay for studio time, they'd set their own price. The site might take a cut to pay for maintenance, but the artist would keep the rest. Anyone who wants a CD could download the tracks and burn their own, or order one from the band or the site to be burned on demand.
Have you considered the possibility that the musicians you know haven't reached the point in their lives yet where they should be trying to sustain themselves as musicians?
People seem to have the idea that if you enjoy playing music, but you can't make a living at it, then something's wrong with the system and the law needs to be changed to make it easier for you. But clearly we don't have that expectation in any other field. Very few high school athletes will be able to play professionally as adults, but we don't consider that a problem, do we? Just as most of those players need to realize that football will always be a hobby for them, not a career, a lot of musicians need to realize the same thing about music.
Not necessarily.. in rural areas, there are plenty of roads that the government doesn't bother to maintain. My parents live on one. Any paving, grading, or snow plowing has to be done by private individuals and paid out of their own pockets.
You're assuming that the only way they can make money is by selling CDs.
But why would that be? Are they such bad performers that no one wants to see them live? Is the quality of their work so unpredictable that no one is willing to pay them to record another song without hearing it first? If so, then maybe they shouldn't be in the music business; if not, then they don't need copyright, because they can charge directly for their work.
Yes and yes. If I liked Terminator 3 a lot, and I knew Terminator 4 was at risk of not being made, would it be worth $10 to fund its production -- particicularly if I knew I'd be able to get my money back if it didn't get made (i.e. if not enough money could be raised after all)? Of course it would. That's $10 I'd be spending on a ticket anyway, right?
No, it isn't. See, this isn't a donation, it's payment for a service, which incidentally benefits more than just the people who pay for it.
It's like if ten people live on a dirt road, and eight of them get fed up with the dust, so they pool their money and hire someone to pave the road. They aren't donating money to the paver, or to each other; they're paying for the benefit of living on a paved road. Now, it happens to be the case that the two people who didn't pay, and any of their visitors, will also get to enjoy that benefit, but the reason it got paved in the first place is because those eight people felt strongly enough about it to open their wallets.
If enough people feel strongly enough certain types of movies, those movies will get made. It's just like what we have now, but with a more direct connection between funding and production - studios won't have to drop $100 million on a movie just to find out that it only sells $50 million worth of tickets.
Not necessarily. You can also show your support by funding production. The advantage of doing it that way is it works whether or not copyright law exists or is enforced; you can always make money by selling your services, but making money by selling copies isn't easy in a world where anyone can make their own copies for free.
Who cares how "the industry" wants to keep track? You don't have to conform to their standards just to get your "vote" counted; if they want to count inaccurately, that's their problem, not yours.
Sure, who doesn't? I do too. In fact, I like them enough that I could put a dollar amount on my enjoyment, and I bet you could too. Both of us would be willing to spend some amount of money to keep action films alive, right?
The solution is simple. If we can find a lot of people who all like big budget action movies, then we can all pool our money together and fund the production of one. The demand is out there already - action movies make money. Ten million people each paying $10 adds up to $100 million, whether it comes from ticket sales or individual contributions to the movie's production.
Not all crimes are equally worthy of our attention. There's probably more jaywalking in your city than there is copyright infringement - why do copyright laws deserve any more enforcement effort than jaywalking laws?
No, it really doesn't. It's just people sharing information. No one is dying as a result, nothing is being taken away; the only conceivable loss is a loss of potential sales that may or may not have occurred anyway, and if you're worried about that kind of loss, you should be twice as worried about negative reviews (which also have the ability to prevent sales).
In my opinion, law enforcement and legislators need to realize the technical impossibility of stopping copying, and work to reform the industries that currently depend on copyright. All the money and effort spent on making information uncopyable is simply being wasted; it's no less foolish than trying to make water unwet. Instead of pouring money down that hole forever, we should give up on it, and let industries deal with the fact that it's hard to make money by just selling copies. There are other ways to make money, and they'll find them if that's what they have to do.
I guess you missed the word "identical". Musicians can charge me for their CD, but just as I have no right to stop you from building a snowman that looks exactly like mine, flake for flake, musicians have no right to stop me from playing a song that sounds exactly like theirs, bit for bit.
Not if you have a friend who bought a copy and is willing to share.
If you get to listen to it, just because you're in the right place at the right time, then why can't anyone else? Maybe I'd like to go stand on the sidewalk outside the stadium, but I have to work that day and my schedule won't allow it. Shouldn't I be able to ask you to stand there, as my agent, and record it for me?
If your answer is no, then you're essentially arguing against the right to timeshift. That is, if listening to a concert from the sidewalk is a right reserved for those people who can manage to be there at the right time, then who's to say watching TV and listening to the radio shouldn't work the same way - i.e., if you can't be home at 3:00 tomorrow to watch some show, that's just too bad and you have no choice but to wait for the DVD?
So where does that leave musicians whose work is sent out over the air several times a day?
Well, you can charge for entrance to your shack, but that's it. You can't stop them from building an identical snowman in their own front yard and letting everyone see it for free.
It's a free speech issue from the perspective of the speaker, i.e. the person distributing copies. If you want to prevent him from sharing copies of that newspaper, then you also have to prevent him from reading it out loud. That's undeniably speech. Of course, there are reasons for which it's reasonable to limit speech, but "making it easier for some people to make money" isn't one of them.
Both of those scenarios involve fraud. The author has no right to prevent you from sharing that content, but the public does have the right not to be deceived. If you put your name on something that you didn't write, or if you put someone else's name on something they didn't write, you're deceiving everyone who reads it.
Copies don't just appear out of nowhere, so it doesn't really make sense to talk about "a right to your own copy" without mentioning how it was obtained. I don't have the right to force the musician to give me a copy of his recording, obviously.
I do, however, have the right to accept a copy from anyone who's willing to give it to me. Whatever medium I use to record it is just an extension of my own memory, and I have every right to use tools to help me remember things I can't remember on my own, such as the sequence of several million bytes that makes up an MP3 file.
Similarly, I have the right to give a copy to anybody who wants one. I have the right to describe any of my experiences to people who are interested, in as much detail as I want, even if those experiences include listening to music and the details include a mathematical description of the sound waves that I heard.
Now you're changing the subject. How about you just answer the question: if someone performs certain work because he expects that it'll bring in money, is he or is he not automatically entitled to get paid for it?
It shouldn't be hard to answer. Just a couple posts ago, you were shouting in all caps about this very subject. You seemed to think then that expectations create entitlement; have you changed your mind?
Sure you are. You don't get to decide, on behalf of the theater owner, that the space you'd take up isn't enough for him to worry about; that's for him to decide. If he gets some weird thrill out of seeing empty seats, that's his right too. The unavoidable fact is that if you're in the theater, you're limiting to some extent what the owner can do with it - depriving him of the ability to use his property as he wishes.
No, I don't; you might be making it harder for them to sell newspapers, but you aren't really taking anything away from them. I don't think they should be able to stifle your free speech (i.e. prevent you from sharing the data on those CDs) just because your ability to speak makes it harder for them to sell papers.
Sure... and after you kick the stuffing out of someone for copying bits without your permission, just try telling the cops "laws come and go". I'm sure that'll go over well.
Oh, you mean the words "or downloading"? I didn't realize you were trying to make a separate point.
Downloading movies is no different from downloading music: it doesn't deprive anyone of anything. And just in case you're about to ask, it's the same with downloading TV shows, programs, text files, PDFs, and really anything else that can be downloaded.
Too bad you and your buddies don't get to decide what constitutes theft, huh? I just consulted the Supreme Court's case history, and they said copying isn't theft (Dowling v. United States). If you don't mind, I'll take their word over yours.
You know, it might be worth it, just so I could see you go to jail for assault. No wonder your posts are starting off at zero - do you have a long history of threatening violence over differences of opinion?
You're depriving them of newspapers. Those papers are theirs to dispose of as they wish. Maybe they'll change their minds at the last minute and sell them to the papier-mache piñata factory, or grind them up into filler for McDonald's patties... or maybe they'll recycle the papers just like every other day, but the point is, those papers can only be in one place at a time, and where they go is for the owner to decide.
Information, however, has no such limitations. No one needs to have an exclusive right to decide how it'll be used, because it can be everywhere at once.