Of course, my point all along is that the music is created for you, i.e. work is done with expectation of compensation.
If however someone else who made the exact same amount of money as you and had the exact same deductions as you went to H&R Block and had his taxes done and you copied his return replacing his info with your own, that would NOT be theft.
This is a very good point. I think I would have to agree. However, the difference between this, and with music, is that the first tax return was done with the expectation of payment from one person (which it got). The second one is without the expectation of profit, since the payment charged for the service was applied to only one person. With music if the sales expectation was X, and Y people pirated it as a substitute for buying it, then the business loss X-Y sales due to piracy.
I have another one for you. Is recording a file off of the radio theft? If so why isn't the RIAA suing Sony, Daewoo, Panasonic, Aiwa and others for making radios with cassette decks which can record songs from radio broadcasts?
Recording a file/tape of the radio is definitely not theft. It was originally fed to you over public airwaves, and you merely captured them. It is arguably theft to give it away.
Reguardless of what the big labels are trying to claim. BIG Labels (much like the one that Metallica is on) are seeing SMALLER bands on SMALL labels getting MORE sales because of Napster.
What you need to understand is that small label music does not compete with big label music. People who buy Britney Spears wouldn't suddenly go out and klezmer music on independent labels if it was known to them. They're not interested.
But furthermore, I would like to see your proof that small label sales have increased (relative to major labels, or relative to the rest of the economy) due to Napster.
I believe that online delivery will result in much lower margins, because I believe that most consumers will (wrongly) think that they are too smart to pay for the cost of the content, without the artifact. If people pay $15 for a CD, technically, they should be willing to pay $14 for the content without the CD, since the value of the artifact is $1. However, music will have a much less perceived value in this world, and people will be willing to pay considerably less, thus greatly reducing profits, and putting out of business any musician who does not sell fifty gazillion records.
This is merely my expectation, and I have not conducted market surveys to prove that consumers will actually be willing to pay less. However, the media is so heavily biased against the perceived high price of music _on an artifact_ that the companies will esentially be forced to dramatically lower their prices (at an extremely high cost to independent and small artists) when they start selling music without the artifact.
Your use of the word Napster in the above context illustrates to me that you have no idea what Napster is.
Or perhaps it illsutrates that "Napster" is easier to type than "decentralized file sharing systems which facilitate piracy". Oh yeah, I forgot - 0.0001% of the files which Napster indexes are actually legal.
You are incorrect. It would be more akin to borrowing the BOSS shirt of a friend and making a copy of it in your basement. You've refused to pay Hugo Boss for the time he took to design the original. You've refused to pay a big department store for one of the originals.
Of course, this is theft also. You are stealing the services of Hugo Boss for designing the shirt. You are not stealing the marginal cost of manufacturing the shirt, but you are stealing your portion of the fixed cost in designing the shirt. I don't have the first clue about the shirt business, but I am knolwedgable about the music business, and know that the fixed cost is over 90% of the value for most CD's.
This isn't the point however. Copyright infringement is an illegal practice, but it is NOT theft.
Why not? Why are you so insistent that a physical artifact must be transferred for theft to take place? Is it OK to break into a bank computer and transfer funds from a rich person's account to yours? And why not? This is _exactly_ what piracy amounts to. There is no physical artifact being exchanged but the producers of services and income do not receive compensations from the goods which the pirate enjoys.
If I go into H&R block, have them do my taxes, sneak over to a xerox machine, and then make a copy of the return they wrote, throw the original in their face, and walk out without paying, is that theft? According to your argument, it is not, because you have merely made a copy instead of taking the original. What you need to understand is that the services created in this transaction (the writing of the tax return) which you enjoy the results on were created on the expectation that you pay. Likewise, music is made at a huge expense to the artists, on the the expectation that you pay for the services if you enjoy them. Anything else is theft - you are stealing recording studio time, and creative time. You do not seem to understand the massive fixed cost of producing music, and seem to believe the marginal cost outweights it, but that isn't even really the point.
This isn't the point however. Copyright infringement is an illegal practice, but it is NOT theft. Is it morally wrong? I can't decide that for everyone. I can only choose for me. People have differing opinions about whether it's morally wrong to have an abortion or own a gun. Why is this any different?
Ah, a moral relativist. Just what we need more of. "There are no truths in society, and people are too helpless to be held to absolutes." Right. Theft is universally considered a crime almost on par with murder. Copyright infringment has nothing to do with morals, it is law. The moral corollary of copyright infringement is theft.
The low volume/high margin business model benefits independent artists because it allows companies to reinvest the profits from high volume artists into the low volume ones.
It's a fact: over 90% of recordings do not make money.
Hence, in a world where artists sell directly to consumers, over 90% will be out of business on the first day, because there will be no mechanism by which profits are redistributed within the organization (today's role of the record company). The only survivors will be low margin/high volume artists such as the Backstreet Boys.
Napster is theft by any definition of the word. The people who play moral games and claim that it is not theft are among the most dangerous people in the computer militia known as the online piracy community. They will be the leaders in the new force against copyright, the people who gut the government and industry of all serious order, and who declare any creative art not tied to an artifact to be the thing of the past.
The key is that there is value in a sound recording independent of the physical artifact. The artifact, indeed, is less than 10% of the cost of producing a sound recording. When you steal an online music file, you steal over 90% of the value of the recording. You have stolen services, such as recording studio time, production time, and the creative energy of the artists who made the music. Although you have not deprived anybody of a physical artifact, you stolen the share of the services which it cost to make the recording which you stole. It would be precisely akin to refusing to pay a barber for a haircut. Have you stolen something? Yes! You have stolen services.
Please provide proof that indie bands are benefitting from online delivery.
Please demonstrate how the low volume/high margin business model of the independent music business will survive when piracy ultimately plans to a high volume/low margin business.
What the pirates need to understand is, although they may be somewhat computer savvy, the people playing on the other side aren't marching much before. The very concept of Napster was considered revolutionary when it debuted the pirates said, "See, we can do anything with the internet", and didn't think twice about the consequences. It is ironic that the copyright police are slowly but surely doing the same thing. The disgusting thing is that the pirates believe that somehow the police should be stopped even though their merits lie precisely where police's lie ("it's just bits over a wire").
The masses see the achille's heel of Napster enforcement is that a filename containing a certain text may not actually be by that artist. The MP3 format does indeed have a field for artist. It is unambiguous whether the text "metallica" refers to the name of the artist, or part of the name of the song.
But here's the gotcha: most artists will probably be _more_ furious if you misrepresent music and wrongly attribute it to them, or away from them. If you package up a Backstreet Boys song, and attribute it to Metallica, Metallica may even have _more_ ground to sue you (for libel, for example). If you attribute it away from them, if you claim that a Metallica song was by somebody _besides_ Metallica, that is even a larger crime (identity theft!). But this case is considerably more difficult to detect.
There are a huge number of problems with your proposition. First of all, the $6 figure for an album is not reasonable. The cost of producing a CD is only about $1 out of the total cost which the record company gets (approx $10-$12). The fair price, directly through the artist, would be that value minus $1. Next, under this scheme only profitable artists would survive. 90% of music is unprofitable; the record companies act to distribute the money away from the most profitable acts into the less profitable music. Under this scheme, basically, only artists like Britney Spears would survive. Next, there is the problem of commodification. Currently CD's are collectibles, but by turing them into snippets were are paid on a per song basis, buying music is too similar to trading a stock. Finally, there is the problem of a song-based economy. Most serious music is based on larger works, and the song-based music economy will ruin creativity and encourage three minute jewels of pop instead of serious music (with the expense of downloading large files this is an inherent problem with online distribution).
2. Definitely. But you can't give it to anybody else.
3. The law is unclear. According to the RIAA this is flat-out illegal, but at least some precedents have indicated that it is ok (e.g. RIAA vs. Diamond Rio).
4. I believe this is the same as 2 - the law doesn't distinguish between making analog and digital recordings of analog source material. A more interesting question would be, is it legal to digitally encode digital radio, such as internet radio broadcast, for personal use? AFAIK, no such precedent has been set, though I suspect that it would be considered illegal.
Sounds like they know what they are doing
on
TurboLinux Layoffs
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· Score: 1
From the interview it sounds like TurboLinux actually has a sound business model, and a plan to make money. Perhaps the first profitable open source company? Companies like Red Hat and VA Linux still do not have any profts in the foreseeable future, and they are in _serious_ risk when the market wipes out all the non-profitable companies. It's good to hear that this company is putting business first, unlike the vague things that Red Hat and others have said. I applaud their actions, and if they have an IPO, I will gladly participate.
An excellent, informed most. I agree wholly with the facts you present.
I agree that online distribution of an open format will win in the long term, but I also submit the very important condition that it will result in the death of quality recorded music. My general prediction is that the major labels will continue to lose more money from piracy, and will be so heavily pressured by the media and by consumers who do not understand the cost of producing a CD, that they will be essentially forced to distribute music online at low cost. At this point, low volume, high cost music (such as 90% of music - everything but the hits) will be completely shut out of the market, and only high volume, low margin music will survive in the industry. This means lots of Britney Spears and Ani DiFranco but not very much Lucy Kaplansky or Julie Miller.
Completely independent distribution a la MP3.com will continue, but it will be almost impossible to surf through the cruft to locate the best music.
The biggest losers in the online distribution model will be the middle tier artists -- the artists who right now are talented enough to secure long term independent label careers, have small but dedicated followings, and sell tens of thousands of albums, but do not have enough mass appeal to sell ten bazillion albums like DiFranco and Spears do. These artists will no longer be funded, and the quality of their work will suffer (both from lack of time because they will need to secure a day job, and from lack of expensive recording equipment). They will be relegated to the MP3.com along with everybody's uncle singing "Drunken Sailor" at the family reunion.
The online distribution model will further commoditize music, and will create two entirely different groups: high paid artists with lucrative record contracts, and volunteer artists with no income from music. Right now there is a massive middle tier, and there are artists at every income level, since the high margins on records fund the risk associated with the industry. 90% of the current music artists, including independent artists, who make a modest living from music -- and who currently hold the art form by their shoulders -- will no longer be able to produce music.
As most people know, Intel's StrongARM CPU uses about 1/5 of the power of Transmeta's offerring and is also faster. There is a Linux port to it as well, and it would be perfect for a machine like this. Unfortunately, it appears that AOL/Gateway are not interested in the best technology but in getting away from "Wintel" (this is what all the media are hyping). In this case, Intel does indeed offer the best technology for the job.
I bet the xbox is a much higher volume device anyways though. This AOL thing is locked into one ISP, one vendor, etc.; no way it can be high volume.
You can't post to Slashdot about the security hole you found in VMS because there _are_ no security holes in VMS. See, DEC employs competent, professional engineers, who know fluff when they see it. For example, VMS does not contain C style buffers, and therefore is immune to the crisis a certain other operating system has known as buffer overruns. It also doesn't have setuid. These two design flaws -- alone -- count for over 50% of Unix security bugs.
As for the rest of your points -- VMS is free for personal use. It does not run any kind of pee-cee and requires a serious computer (boo-hoo for you if you are a pee-cee boy). Source is available for viewing. Why would you want to modify it? It is already bug-free and perfectly engineered. Since you use Linux, you are used to software which is riddled with bugs, which is unreliable, insecure, and prone to constant crashes. But guess what: not all software is like that.
Let's put it this way. This "weekend" I've already had to go in to work five times to reboot a crashed Linux machine. And there's still one more day to go... sigh...If only they upgraded them to VMS; management loves the buzzwords though, so Linux it is.
The Windows password dialog is not meant as a secure log-in, it is meant to provide different user options to different users who share a computer. Windows doesn't even have file permissions; this is not a bug, but a consequence of the fact that its file system is backwards compatible since the original release of DOS. The Windows NT is highly secure.
Slashdot is almost as insecure as Windows, and delivers only bare-minimum security.
I challenge you to find a security bug in any version of VMS past 4. This is one of the most closed, propritary operting systems in production, and also one of the most secure (even attained B2 - when is an open source OS going to get a security rating?)
Tom and his staff are actually relatively competent at reviewing things on a technical basis. But when they try to do these business assessments - oh, man - the results are just appalling. This article brings no new information to the Intel/Rambus relationship (is $158 million really important enough for Intel to risk its business on?). Anybody else remember the article a couple of months ago where Van Smith indicated that Intel would exit the microprocessor business imminently? Come on, Tom, stick to technical articles. We'll read about the business side from the experts.
Athlon is not "clearly superior" to the Pentium III. Let's see -
(a) Athlon uses double the power of the Pentium III, and runs twice as hot
(b) No support for MP (still!)
(c) PC Magazine recently ran an article which said a 1 GHz Athlon is approximately as fast as the 866 MHz Pentium III. The 1 GHz Pentium III absolutely slaughters the 1 GHz Athlon in most benchmarks (especially iSPEC).
Unfortunately, mass-public perception is that Athlon is superior. Intel has to work on marketing.
Anybody who has any clue at all about computers knows that RAM parts hold bits, not bytes, and you need 8 or 9 of them to make a full memory system. The poster who thought that RAM parts held bytes is a moron, and should have seen through the CNET typo.
The music industry didn't build popular music. It existed long before the recording industry
Incorrect. By definition, popular music is music which is disseminated by record, as opposed to classical music which is disseminated by printed score, and traditional music which is disseminated by memory.
Rock would exist.
Incorrect. The fact that the birth of rock music coincided with the birth of the vinyl LP is no accident. Jukeboxes, radio, and movies were the catalysts of the initial rock music scene, all of which depend on recorded music. Please read _The Rise and Fall of Popular Music_ by Donald Clarke.
Jazz and the blues existing LONG before the recording industry
If you want to talk about somebody like Buddy Bolden, OK, but that was localized, and not a national craze. It was more traditional/marine band music. Blues did not exist before recorded music (spirituals and field hollers were not blues, merely older cousins). Please read LeRoi Jone's _Blues People_. Jazz development has been more affected _by_ records than almost any other genre (besides rock). Please read Toni Morrison's _Jazz_. It is no coincidence that Louis Armstrong, early Duke Ellington, and early Count Basie sides were all three minute jewels of jazz (the running time of a 78 RPM record), and that the birth of modern jazz (with longer compositions, more drawn out improvsations) coincided with the long playing record.
Rap would have evolved, much as it did in its early days, on the street, and without the recording industry's help.
Rap music's main distinguishing characteristics is sampling, as well techniques such as record scratching. I sure would like to know how you think you can sample music which isn't recorded, and scratch records which do not exist!
Real bands haven't really been sold by the recording industry since the 60s and early 70s.
Odd. Last I checked, the Vienna Philharmonic was still in service. So was the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam. Seem to have zipped right through the 60's and 70's without a hitch. Of course, in the present decade, there are scores of hugely talented new artists (not necessarily bands), such as Hamiett Bluiett, Charles Gayle, Julie Miller, Steve Earle, Paul Bley, Cecil Taylor, John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Iris DeMent, John Prine, Carrie Newcomer, Lucy Kaplansky, to name just a few,... , and hundreds of others. You are not aware of them?
The 60's and 70's brought some tragedy - Coltrane and Ayler died - but if you're going to forget anything than happened after them, that's your own loss.
And yes, places like MP3.com have made some pretty successful bands.
Name one. I'll give you some criteria. Name one recording artists exclusive to MP3.com who has made an innovative and internationally acclaimed recording of Chopin's Ballades. (I can name a dozen recorded musicians who have done this over the years).
Huh? The current system rewards the bottom of the barrel 'artists' by use of shameless promotion, media tie-ins, branding, and easily digested but ultimately soulless drivel.
What planet are you on? The best selling artist of all time is von Karajan. How do you consider this soulless drivel? Please explain. Perhaps he was not quite as vivacious as, say, Kleiber, but he is certainly more compelling than some of the less-selling artists (say, Haitink, or even Norrington). Walter, Klemperer, Bernstein, Mackerras, Szell, Solti, Toscanini,... were all extremely good selling record makers, and are the most respected conductors ever. You think Walter's Beethoven #4 is shallow drivel? Please explain - boy, am I dying to hear this!
Unless, of course, you actually find value in the likes of N'Sync, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and any of the other teen pop 'sensations' that pollute the air waves.
Huh? What are you talking about? Are you confused? Did you read my message? What does Britney Spears have to do with music? Is she the new conductor of the BSO? Last I checked Ozawa was, though I don't live in Boston any more so I haven't been to Tanglewood in a couple of years. Teenagers making music now? I knew about Chee Yun but who are the others?
You did realize that I was talking about classical music? Get a fucking clue you moron. I was talking about the BSO versus high school orchestras, and you inject crap about some teenybop music? Please, pray tell, explain to me what this has to do with my point???? Or do you like to respond to messages which you haven't read and/or have absolutely no clue what the author is talking about???
First off, I don't believe your figures. After all, if it costs $10/sale for recording costs for the typical classical CD as you say, then why is like half of the classical CD market those discs which sell at a list price of $3.99? I realize these are lower quality (thus cheaper) recordings, typically with less well known (cheaper) orchestras, but according to your figures, the cost of the recording and the orchestras would have to be negative.
This is explained in the article and the reasons you mention plus having non-copyrighted music, skimpy liners notes, etc., etc.
Also, while I don't know too much about the economics of the classical recording industry, I do know that for mainstream records, the artists are the ones who have to pay for the recording costs. (The label basically loans them the recording time, equipment, etc, but they have to pay them back. That's why Lars said record labels are like banks.) As I understand it, this comes directly out of the artists' cut of the profits, which is typically about 10% of the sale price of a CD. Thus your contention that recording costs contribute to 66% of a typical CD's cost structure seems a bit problematic.
Yes, bands pay for the recording and the labels loan them the money. But here's the rub: 90% (the figure which Lars quoted) of them do NOT pay back the money because they do not sell enough records. From a distance it looks like a utopia for record companies, but they're not making nearly as much as it looks like. If you look at an mega-selling album in a vacuum (such as the Britney Spears album): sure, the income reaped from this far exceeds the cost of making it. But when you realize that 9 other artists were also similarly invested in, but didn't make anything back, the picture is not so rosy. The music industry is extremely risky. When Intel goes to design a new chip, they know basically if it will be successful or not, and how many they can sell. With the music industry, it's totally different, the genre, or the artists hair-color, may be out of style by the time it reaches the market, and the investment was a total waste.
Oh, and also, I followed the link you provided (to a record company website; nice trustworthy source you got there) and it says that the cost of making a symphonic record can be as much as 50,000 pounds (about $70,000), NOT 500,000.
So first, your figures are completely and utterly wrong. But don't worry: it's only an order of magnitude.;)
My sales expectations were also an order of magnitude high (I said 50,000 where the link says 2,000-3,000 in some cases). So it all evens out. My figure of $500,000 is from _Who Killed Classical Music_ copyright 1997 by Norman Lebrecht. My main point is not quoting the exact figure of money invested to make the recording, but that there _is_ some non-trivial cost to making the recording.
The point is, your argument rests on the flawed premise that every person downloading an mp3 is one less person buying the CD.
This is indeed the crux of the argument. And it is not a simple issue. Of course, somebody who pirates an MP3 may not necessarily have bought the CD at full price. But there's a fine line: when I tell people I own 1000+ CD's, sometimes people ask, why don't you just download MP3's instead of buying them? Posters here have declared that they own NO CD's, or haven't bought ANY CD's since they started pirating MP3's. So MP3's are _definitely_ viewed as a subsitute for CD's. Of course: somebody who has pirated 10,000 MP3's and bought 0 CD's is not likely to have bought 10,000 CD's if it weren't be MP3's. But I do bet he would have bought more than 0. I'd say that there is some significant percentage (I'd guess somewhere between 1%-5%, but I'm just guessing and have no evidence) of pirated MP3's actually are lost CD sales.
Don't the two comments seem eerily similar? This is hogwash, of course. What Bronfman really means is that the internet would have no corporate noise on it. He INTENDED to say that. You don't even seem aware that you are just bowing down to corporate power. Music doesn't have to be paid for to be good. Lots of great bands have day jobs or tour ferociously to support themselves. And people would start making their own music again instead of being told that music is what comes on a shiny silver disc. Where do you think THAT music comes from? You are like the naive child who thinks that food comes from grocery stores. People have to play music in order for there to be music. People do not have to sell music in order for there to be music.
There are two obvious problems with the fantasy you propose where anybody who has access to a computer can become the next megastar.
First, and foremost: it costs money to record music. This is the point that 99.44% of Slashdot readers do not understand. Contrary to the popular view on Slashdot, recording an album is not a matter of hooking up a five dollar microphone to your computer and catting/dev/audio. It costs literally millions of dollars to make some symphonic and opera recordings (and some rock recordings are even more expensive). Recording quality has gone up enormously since the turn of the century (and ironically, recordings cost about two orders of magnitude less to boot!) thanks to this investment. If you seriously advocate a world where everybody has a chance to produce music, you are advocating a world where recording quality is very low. Since ALL music would be free under this system, even the world-class performers would suffer from low recording quality, because since nobody will pay for anything better, there would be no incentive to put real money into it.
Second: The current system based on media scarcity weeds out non-talented artists. It is not worth my time to go through MP3.com and listen to Georg Solti-wannabes, and high school bands recording Beethoven #5. If I go buy an album at a store from a respectable label, there is a guaranteed level of quality. If the Boston Symphony Orchestra gets mixed in Hick City Municipal Orchestra, how am I supposed to weed out the crap? It seriously affects my efficiency as a consumer.
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Yes, because that work was done for you.
Of course, my point all along is that the music is created for you, i.e. work is done with expectation of compensation.
If however someone else who made the exact same amount of money as you and had the exact same deductions as you went to H&R Block and had his taxes done and you copied his return replacing his info with your own, that would NOT be theft.
This is a very good point. I think I would have to agree. However, the difference between this, and with music, is that the first tax return was done with the expectation of payment from one person (which it got). The second one is without the expectation of profit, since the payment charged for the service was applied to only one person. With music if the sales expectation was X, and Y people pirated it as a substitute for buying it, then the business loss X-Y sales due to piracy.
I have another one for you. Is recording a file off of the radio theft? If so why isn't the RIAA suing Sony, Daewoo, Panasonic, Aiwa and others for making radios with cassette decks which can record songs from radio broadcasts?
Recording a file/tape of the radio is definitely not theft. It was originally fed to you over public airwaves, and you merely captured them. It is arguably theft to give it away.
The record industry make BILLIONS a year and the monetary loss that mp3's MAY cause them to loose is insignificant.
Proof please?
Reguardless of what the big labels are trying to claim. BIG Labels (much like the one that Metallica is on) are seeing SMALLER bands on SMALL labels getting MORE sales because of Napster.
What you need to understand is that small label music does not compete with big label music. People who buy Britney Spears wouldn't suddenly go out and klezmer music on independent labels if it was known to them. They're not interested.
But furthermore, I would like to see your proof that small label sales have increased (relative to major labels, or relative to the rest of the economy) due to Napster.
I believe that online delivery will result in much lower margins, because I believe that most consumers will (wrongly) think that they are too smart to pay for the cost of the content, without the artifact. If people pay $15 for a CD, technically, they should be willing to pay $14 for the content without the CD, since the value of the artifact is $1. However, music will have a much less perceived value in this world, and people will be willing to pay considerably less, thus greatly reducing profits, and putting out of business any musician who does not sell fifty gazillion records.
This is merely my expectation, and I have not conducted market surveys to prove that consumers will actually be willing to pay less. However, the media is so heavily biased against the perceived high price of music _on an artifact_ that the companies will esentially be forced to dramatically lower their prices (at an extremely high cost to independent and small artists) when they start selling music without the artifact.
Your use of the word Napster in the above context illustrates to me that you have no idea what Napster is.
Or perhaps it illsutrates that "Napster" is easier to type than "decentralized file sharing systems which facilitate piracy". Oh yeah, I forgot - 0.0001% of the files which Napster indexes are actually legal.
You are incorrect. It would be more akin to borrowing the BOSS shirt of a friend and making a copy of it in your basement. You've refused to pay Hugo Boss for the time he took to design the original. You've refused to pay a big department store for one of the originals.
Of course, this is theft also. You are stealing the services of Hugo Boss for designing the shirt. You are not stealing the marginal cost of manufacturing the shirt, but you are stealing your portion of the fixed cost in designing the shirt. I don't have the first clue about the shirt business, but I am knolwedgable about the music business, and know that the fixed cost is over 90% of the value for most CD's.
This isn't the point however. Copyright infringement is an illegal practice, but it is NOT theft.
Why not? Why are you so insistent that a physical artifact must be transferred for theft to take place? Is it OK to break into a bank computer and transfer funds from a rich person's account to yours? And why not? This is _exactly_ what piracy amounts to. There is no physical artifact being exchanged but the producers of services and income do not receive compensations from the goods which the pirate enjoys.
If I go into H&R block, have them do my taxes, sneak over to a xerox machine, and then make a copy of the return they wrote, throw the original in their face, and walk out without paying, is that theft? According to your argument, it is not, because you have merely made a copy instead of taking the original. What you need to understand is that the services created in this transaction (the writing of the tax return) which you enjoy the results on were created on the expectation that you pay. Likewise, music is made at a huge expense to the artists, on the the expectation that you pay for the services if you enjoy them. Anything else is theft - you are stealing recording studio time, and creative time. You do not seem to understand the massive fixed cost of producing music, and seem to believe the marginal cost outweights it, but that isn't even really the point.
This isn't the point however. Copyright infringement is an illegal practice, but it is NOT theft. Is it morally wrong? I can't decide that for everyone. I can only choose for me. People have differing opinions about whether it's morally wrong to have an abortion or own a gun. Why is this any different?
Ah, a moral relativist. Just what we need more of. "There are no truths in society, and people are too helpless to be held to absolutes." Right. Theft is universally considered a crime almost on par with murder. Copyright infringment has nothing to do with morals, it is law. The moral corollary of copyright infringement is theft.
The low volume/high margin business model benefits independent artists because it allows companies to reinvest the profits from high volume artists into the low volume ones.
It's a fact: over 90% of recordings do not make money.
Hence, in a world where artists sell directly to consumers, over 90% will be out of business on the first day, because there will be no mechanism by which profits are redistributed within the organization (today's role of the record company). The only survivors will be low margin/high volume artists such as the Backstreet Boys.
Napster is theft by any definition of the word. The people who play moral games and claim that it is not theft are among the most dangerous people in the computer militia known as the online piracy community. They will be the leaders in the new force against copyright, the people who gut the government and industry of all serious order, and who declare any creative art not tied to an artifact to be the thing of the past.
The key is that there is value in a sound recording independent of the physical artifact. The artifact, indeed, is less than 10% of the cost of producing a sound recording. When you steal an online music file, you steal over 90% of the value of the recording. You have stolen services, such as recording studio time, production time, and the creative energy of the artists who made the music. Although you have not deprived anybody of a physical artifact, you stolen the share of the services which it cost to make the recording which you stole. It would be precisely akin to refusing to pay a barber for a haircut. Have you stolen something? Yes! You have stolen services.
Please provide proof that indie bands are benefitting from online delivery.
Please demonstrate how the low volume/high margin business model of the independent music business will survive when piracy ultimately plans to a high volume/low margin business.
What the pirates need to understand is, although they may be somewhat computer savvy, the people playing on the other side aren't marching much before. The very concept of Napster was considered revolutionary when it debuted the pirates said, "See, we can do anything with the internet", and didn't think twice about the consequences. It is ironic that the copyright police are slowly but surely doing the same thing. The disgusting thing is that the pirates believe that somehow the police should be stopped even though their merits lie precisely where police's lie ("it's just bits over a wire").
The masses see the achille's heel of Napster enforcement is that a filename containing a certain text may not actually be by that artist. The MP3 format does indeed have a field for artist. It is unambiguous whether the text "metallica" refers to the name of the artist, or part of the name of the song.
But here's the gotcha: most artists will probably be _more_ furious if you misrepresent music and wrongly attribute it to them, or away from them. If you package up a Backstreet Boys song, and attribute it to Metallica, Metallica may even have _more_ ground to sue you (for libel, for example). If you attribute it away from them, if you claim that a Metallica song was by somebody _besides_ Metallica, that is even a larger crime (identity theft!). But this case is considerably more difficult to detect.
There are a huge number of problems with your proposition. First of all, the $6 figure for an album is not reasonable. The cost of producing a CD is only about $1 out of the total cost which the record company gets (approx $10-$12). The fair price, directly through the artist, would be that value minus $1. Next, under this scheme only profitable artists would survive. 90% of music is unprofitable; the record companies act to distribute the money away from the most profitable acts into the less profitable music. Under this scheme, basically, only artists like Britney Spears would survive. Next, there is the problem of commodification. Currently CD's are collectibles, but by turing them into snippets were are paid on a per song basis, buying music is too similar to trading a stock. Finally, there is the problem of a song-based economy. Most serious music is based on larger works, and the song-based music economy will ruin creativity and encourage three minute jewels of pop instead of serious music (with the expense of downloading large files this is an inherent problem with online distribution).
1. Definitely.
2. Definitely. But you can't give it to anybody else.
3. The law is unclear. According to the RIAA this is flat-out illegal, but at least some precedents have indicated that it is ok (e.g. RIAA vs. Diamond Rio).
4. I believe this is the same as 2 - the law doesn't distinguish between making analog and digital recordings of analog source material. A more interesting question would be, is it legal to digitally encode digital radio, such as internet radio broadcast, for personal use? AFAIK, no such precedent has been set, though I suspect that it would be considered illegal.
From the interview it sounds like TurboLinux actually has a sound business model, and a plan to make money. Perhaps the first profitable open source company? Companies like Red Hat and VA Linux still do not have any profts in the foreseeable future, and they are in _serious_ risk when the market wipes out all the non-profitable companies. It's good to hear that this company is putting business first, unlike the vague things that Red Hat and others have said. I applaud their actions, and if they have an IPO, I will gladly participate.
An excellent, informed most. I agree wholly with the facts you present.
I agree that online distribution of an open format will win in the long term, but I also submit the very important condition that it will result in the death of quality recorded music. My general prediction is that the major labels will continue to lose more money from piracy, and will be so heavily pressured by the media and by consumers who do not understand the cost of producing a CD, that they will be essentially forced to distribute music online at low cost. At this point, low volume, high cost music (such as 90% of music - everything but the hits) will be completely shut out of the market, and only high volume, low margin music will survive in the industry. This means lots of Britney Spears and Ani DiFranco but not very much Lucy Kaplansky or Julie Miller.
Completely independent distribution a la MP3.com will continue, but it will be almost impossible to surf through the cruft to locate the best music.
The biggest losers in the online distribution model will be the middle tier artists -- the artists who right now are talented enough to secure long term independent label careers, have small but dedicated followings, and sell tens of thousands of albums, but do not have enough mass appeal to sell ten bazillion albums like DiFranco and Spears do. These artists will no longer be funded, and the quality of their work will suffer (both from lack of time because they will need to secure a day job, and from lack of expensive recording equipment). They will be relegated to the MP3.com along with everybody's uncle singing "Drunken Sailor" at the family reunion.
The online distribution model will further commoditize music, and will create two entirely different groups: high paid artists with lucrative record contracts, and volunteer artists with no income from music. Right now there is a massive middle tier, and there are artists at every income level, since the high margins on records fund the risk associated with the industry. 90% of the current music artists, including independent artists, who make a modest living from music -- and who currently hold the art form by their shoulders -- will no longer be able to produce music.
As most people know, Intel's StrongARM CPU uses about 1/5 of the power of Transmeta's offerring and is also faster. There is a Linux port to it as well, and it would be perfect for a machine like this. Unfortunately, it appears that AOL/Gateway are not interested in the best technology but in getting away from "Wintel" (this is what all the media are hyping). In this case, Intel does indeed offer the best technology for the job.
I bet the xbox is a much higher volume device anyways though. This AOL thing is locked into one ISP, one vendor, etc.; no way it can be high volume.
You can't post to Slashdot about the security hole you found in VMS because there _are_ no security holes in VMS. See, DEC employs competent, professional engineers, who know fluff when they see it. For example, VMS does not contain C style buffers, and therefore is immune to the crisis a certain other operating system has known as buffer overruns. It also doesn't have setuid. These two design flaws -- alone -- count for over 50% of Unix security bugs.
As for the rest of your points -- VMS is free for personal use. It does not run any kind of pee-cee and requires a serious computer (boo-hoo for you if you are a pee-cee boy). Source is available for viewing. Why would you want to modify it? It is already bug-free and perfectly engineered. Since you use Linux, you are used to software which is riddled with bugs, which is unreliable, insecure, and prone to constant crashes. But guess what: not all software is like that.
Let's put it this way. This "weekend" I've already had to go in to work five times to reboot a crashed Linux machine. And there's still one more day to go... sigh...If only they upgraded them to VMS; management loves the buzzwords though, so Linux it is.
The Windows password dialog is not meant as a secure log-in, it is meant to provide different user options to different users who share a computer. Windows doesn't even have file permissions; this is not a bug, but a consequence of the fact that its file system is backwards compatible since the original release of DOS. The Windows NT is highly secure.
Slashdot is almost as insecure as Windows, and delivers only bare-minimum security.
I challenge you to find a security bug in any version of VMS past 4. This is one of the most closed, propritary operting systems in production, and also one of the most secure (even attained B2 - when is an open source OS going to get a security rating?)
Tom and his staff are actually relatively competent at reviewing things on a technical basis. But when they try to do these business assessments - oh, man - the results are just appalling. This article brings no new information to the Intel/Rambus relationship (is $158 million really important enough for Intel to risk its business on?). Anybody else remember the article a couple of months ago where Van Smith indicated that Intel would exit the microprocessor business imminently? Come on, Tom, stick to technical articles. We'll read about the business side from the experts.
Athlon is not "clearly superior" to the Pentium III. Let's see -
(a) Athlon uses double the power of the Pentium III, and runs twice as hot
(b) No support for MP (still!)
(c) PC Magazine recently ran an article which said a 1 GHz Athlon is approximately as fast as the 866 MHz Pentium III. The 1 GHz Pentium III absolutely slaughters the 1 GHz Athlon in most benchmarks (especially iSPEC).
Unfortunately, mass-public perception is that Athlon is superior. Intel has to work on marketing.
Anybody who has any clue at all about computers knows that RAM parts hold bits, not bytes, and you need 8 or 9 of them to make a full memory system. The poster who thought that RAM parts held bytes is a moron, and should have seen through the CNET typo.
The music industry didn't build popular music. It existed long before the recording industry
Incorrect. By definition, popular music is music which is disseminated by record, as opposed to classical music which is disseminated by printed score, and traditional music which is disseminated by memory.
Rock would exist.
Incorrect. The fact that the birth of rock music coincided with the birth of the vinyl LP is no accident. Jukeboxes, radio, and movies were the catalysts of the initial rock music scene, all of which depend on recorded music. Please read _The Rise and Fall of Popular Music_ by Donald Clarke.
Jazz and the blues existing LONG before the recording industry
If you want to talk about somebody like Buddy Bolden, OK, but that was localized, and not a national craze. It was more traditional/marine band music. Blues did not exist before recorded music (spirituals and field hollers were not blues, merely older cousins). Please read LeRoi Jone's _Blues People_. Jazz development has been more affected _by_ records than almost any other genre (besides rock). Please read Toni Morrison's _Jazz_. It is no coincidence that Louis Armstrong, early Duke Ellington, and early Count Basie sides were all three minute jewels of jazz (the running time of a 78 RPM record), and that the birth of modern jazz (with longer compositions, more drawn out improvsations) coincided with the long playing record.
Rap would have evolved, much as it did in its early days, on the street, and without the recording industry's help.
Rap music's main distinguishing characteristics is sampling, as well techniques such as record scratching. I sure would like to know how you think you can sample music which isn't recorded, and scratch records which do not exist!
Real bands haven't really been sold by the recording industry since the 60s and early 70s.
Odd. Last I checked, the Vienna Philharmonic was still in service. So was the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam. Seem to have zipped right through the 60's and 70's without a hitch. Of course, in the present decade, there are scores of hugely talented new artists (not necessarily bands), such as Hamiett Bluiett, Charles Gayle, Julie Miller, Steve Earle, Paul Bley, Cecil Taylor, John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Iris DeMent, John Prine, Carrie Newcomer, Lucy Kaplansky, to name just a few, ... , and hundreds of others. You are not aware of them?
The 60's and 70's brought some tragedy - Coltrane and Ayler died - but if you're going to forget anything than happened after them, that's your own loss.
And yes, places like MP3.com have made some pretty successful bands.
Name one. I'll give you some criteria. Name one recording artists exclusive to MP3.com who has made an innovative and internationally acclaimed recording of Chopin's Ballades. (I can name a dozen recorded musicians who have done this over the years).
Huh? The current system rewards the bottom of the barrel 'artists' by use of shameless promotion, media tie-ins, branding, and easily digested but ultimately soulless drivel.
What planet are you on? The best selling artist of all time is von Karajan. How do you consider this soulless drivel? Please explain. Perhaps he was not quite as vivacious as, say, Kleiber, but he is certainly more compelling than some of the less-selling artists (say, Haitink, or even Norrington). Walter, Klemperer, Bernstein, Mackerras, Szell, Solti, Toscanini, ... were all extremely good selling record makers, and are the most respected conductors ever. You think Walter's Beethoven #4 is shallow drivel? Please explain - boy, am I dying to hear this!
Unless, of course, you actually find value in the likes of N'Sync, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and any of the other teen pop 'sensations' that pollute the air waves.
Huh? What are you talking about? Are you confused? Did you read my message? What does Britney Spears have to do with music? Is she the new conductor of the BSO? Last I checked Ozawa was, though I don't live in Boston any more so I haven't been to Tanglewood in a couple of years. Teenagers making music now? I knew about Chee Yun but who are the others?
You did realize that I was talking about classical music? Get a fucking clue you moron. I was talking about the BSO versus high school orchestras, and you inject crap about some teenybop music? Please, pray tell, explain to me what this has to do with my point???? Or do you like to respond to messages which you haven't read and/or have absolutely no clue what the author is talking about???
First off, I don't believe your figures. After all, if it costs $10/sale for recording costs for the typical classical CD as you say, then why is like half of the classical CD market those discs which sell at a list price of $3.99? I realize these are lower quality (thus cheaper) recordings, typically with less well known (cheaper) orchestras, but according to your figures, the cost of the recording and the orchestras would have to be negative.
This is explained in the article and the reasons you mention plus having non-copyrighted music, skimpy liners notes, etc., etc.
Also, while I don't know too much about the economics of the classical recording industry, I do know that for mainstream records, the artists are the ones who have to pay for the recording costs. (The label basically loans them the recording time, equipment, etc, but they have to pay them back. That's why Lars said record labels are like banks.) As I understand it, this comes directly out of the artists' cut of the profits, which is typically about 10% of the sale price of a CD. Thus your contention that recording costs contribute to 66% of a typical CD's cost structure seems a bit problematic.
Yes, bands pay for the recording and the labels loan them the money. But here's the rub: 90% (the figure which Lars quoted) of them do NOT pay back the money because they do not sell enough records. From a distance it looks like a utopia for record companies, but they're not making nearly as much as it looks like. If you look at an mega-selling album in a vacuum (such as the Britney Spears album): sure, the income reaped from this far exceeds the cost of making it. But when you realize that 9 other artists were also similarly invested in, but didn't make anything back, the picture is not so rosy. The music industry is extremely risky. When Intel goes to design a new chip, they know basically if it will be successful or not, and how many they can sell. With the music industry, it's totally different, the genre, or the artists hair-color, may be out of style by the time it reaches the market, and the investment was a total waste.
Oh, and also, I followed the link you provided (to a record company website; nice trustworthy source you got there) and it says that the cost of making a symphonic record can be as much as 50,000 pounds (about $70,000), NOT 500,000.
So first, your figures are completely and utterly wrong. But don't worry: it's only an order of magnitude. ;)
My sales expectations were also an order of magnitude high (I said 50,000 where the link says 2,000-3,000 in some cases). So it all evens out. My figure of $500,000 is from _Who Killed Classical Music_ copyright 1997 by Norman Lebrecht. My main point is not quoting the exact figure of money invested to make the recording, but that there _is_ some non-trivial cost to making the recording.
The point is, your argument rests on the flawed premise that every person downloading an mp3 is one less person buying the CD.
This is indeed the crux of the argument. And it is not a simple issue. Of course, somebody who pirates an MP3 may not necessarily have bought the CD at full price. But there's a fine line: when I tell people I own 1000+ CD's, sometimes people ask, why don't you just download MP3's instead of buying them? Posters here have declared that they own NO CD's, or haven't bought ANY CD's since they started pirating MP3's. So MP3's are _definitely_ viewed as a subsitute for CD's. Of course: somebody who has pirated 10,000 MP3's and bought 0 CD's is not likely to have bought 10,000 CD's if it weren't be MP3's. But I do bet he would have bought more than 0. I'd say that there is some significant percentage (I'd guess somewhere between 1%-5%, but I'm just guessing and have no evidence) of pirated MP3's actually are lost CD sales.
Don't the two comments seem eerily similar? This is hogwash, of course. What Bronfman really means is that the internet would have no corporate noise on it. He INTENDED to say that. You don't even seem aware that you are just bowing down to corporate power. Music doesn't have to be paid for to be good. Lots of great bands have day jobs or tour ferociously to support themselves. And people would start making their own music again instead of being told that music is what comes on a shiny silver disc. Where do you think THAT music comes from? You are like the naive child who thinks that food comes from grocery stores. People have to play music in order for there to be music. People do not have to sell music in order for there to be music.
There are two obvious problems with the fantasy you propose where anybody who has access to a computer can become the next megastar.
First, and foremost: it costs money to record music. This is the point that 99.44% of Slashdot readers do not understand. Contrary to the popular view on Slashdot, recording an album is not a matter of hooking up a five dollar microphone to your computer and catting /dev/audio. It costs literally millions of dollars to make some symphonic and opera recordings (and some rock recordings are even more expensive). Recording quality has gone up enormously since the turn of the century (and ironically, recordings cost about two orders of magnitude less to boot!) thanks to this investment. If you seriously advocate a world where everybody has a chance to produce music, you are advocating a world where recording quality is very low. Since ALL music would be free under this system, even the world-class performers would suffer from low recording quality, because since nobody will pay for anything better, there would be no incentive to put real money into it.
Second: The current system based on media scarcity weeds out non-talented artists. It is not worth my time to go through MP3.com and listen to Georg Solti-wannabes, and high school bands recording Beethoven #5. If I go buy an album at a store from a respectable label, there is a guaranteed level of quality. If the Boston Symphony Orchestra gets mixed in Hick City Municipal Orchestra, how am I supposed to weed out the crap? It seriously affects my efficiency as a consumer.