You can't freely sample something and use it in your own songs unless the result substantially differs from the original sample.
Someone should remind Dr. Dre of that...
Of course, Dre may not be the patron saint of music ethics, either. He's just been sued for copyright infringement by George Lucas' Lucasfilm Ltd., which claims the rapper stole its "THX Deep Note" sound for the opening of his quadruple-platinum album, 2001. http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,6363,00.html
"Mr. Kumpula hired a psychologist to review the original test results and found the boy's IQ was significantly higher than calculated. On a revised version of the same IQ test, the boy scored 99, which is within the average range of intelligence. Normal intelligence is between 85 and 110, plus or minus five, the statement of claim said.
"Edmonton lawyer Scott Schlosser, who is acting for the Kumpula family, said the boy has subsequently scored 113, which is considered high average. "
...
"The board has denied the allegations, none of which have so far been proved."
well, no one will likely read this since i was slashdotted friday and it's now monday... ('twould be kewl if slashdot sent us authors a courtesy email when our articles go up in case we want to participate in the discussion... would add something to the chat, IMHO... like when greenspun chimes in on postgre and such)...
anyway, i should have mentioned this in my article: Love does indeed own *a* copyright associated with her music: the copyright on the composition and lyrics. this copyright is administered for performances (on the Net this means webcasts and possibly downloads, depending on what lawyer you talk to) by one of the three performance-rights agencies: ASCAP, BMI, SESAC.
interestingly -- and again this should have been in my story -- ASCAP and BMI have already cut deals with MP3.com (see http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1839488.html? tag=st.ne.1002.srchres.ni , so Courntey has earned *some* MP3.com money, if not from the settlements/judgement concerning My.MP3.com.
there is another copyright, of course, on the sound recording itself, and this is indeed owned wholly by Universal. this is the copyright in question in the case over My.MP3.com. but artist contracts are built above and beyond copyright law, and ms. Love would likely sue for breach of contract rather than copyright violation.
your replay unit would only be able to update its settings after dialing in to the server, and it does this once per day, late at night. so you would miss the simpsons.
if only the replay unit could update itself via cable modem or dsl, then the my.replay service could push the updates out to the box pro-actively.
As E.S. Raymond has said, programmers can feed themselves on the use value of what they create, and thus it is usually in their best interests to create and surround themselves with free code that belongs to everyone and to no-one. That is, since programmers create functional copy, they can wisely forgoe the sale value of their creations in exchange for maximized consulting, customization and other service-oriented profit opportunities (*cough*Andover.net*cough*). In other words, use value.
How do poets, guitarists or actors wring use value out of their creations? How do they eat without some copyright protection? Bob Dylan should have been a college professor, or harmonica coach? John Lennon ("imagine no possessions...") a piano instructor? Toni Morrison forced to write excellent Toyota ads ("... and so through the filth, through the bigotry, and because of--not despite--our rich cultural heritage, we were, in the end, Everyday People.")?
Of course they shouldn't. Trying to wring use value out of an artistic creation, as in the above examples, is far more hoary and commercial than simple copyright, which lets at least popular artists focus on art, rather than on making money from art.
It is not that copyright protection needs to be as intrusive as it may be in the DMCA. But, reading through Mr. Katz's post and some of the top responses, I repeatedly encountered the notion that copyright itself is less valuable in the digital world, since the cost of reproducing data is close to zero.
But the cost of producing content is never xero, no matter what it costs to *re*-produce. Content producers have to eat, and it is the independent, struggling artists and writers and creators who are hungriest. Shouldn't they have some say in whether Live365.com can rake in $2,500/day in banner and audio ads off of some newly-popular song they've written? Shouldn't they get a cut of that? And shouldn't hugely popular musical geniuses on major labels be able to live well off of their creations? Should the Ani DiFrancos and Arto Lindays and DJ Shadows and Dr. Dres, whose tunes make some people feel really, really good, have to get day jobs? Do we want them to have to get day jobs?
Do we want budding musicians and writers, child prodigies, to know that they will never be able to dedicate themselves to any creation without use value? There is a gulf between Perl and the Philharmonic.
Does DCMA help AOL/Time Warner a great deal? Excellent! Hundreds of the country's best government watchdog journalists, best folk singers, best actors, best directors, best agitators, best iconoclasts, best Think Different billboard candidates, best Penguin-drawers, best hack-on-Apache in their spare time webmasters and best gotcha-made-you-think nonfiction book authors eat every day because of AOL/Time Warners copyrights.
And while most slashdotters can eat without owning, most of these bright folks cannot.
Because there is, in the end, a difference between emacs source and "Oye Come Va." Not everyone can afford to give it away.
actually, the sum couldn't be fixed in the Napster example, because both groups would have the same average score -- the total sum! you'd just have to ask each group something like, rate each of these spending decisions for thriftiness.
It's disappointing to see these statistics accepted so blindly by Jon Katz. They do confirm his thesis, but raise at least as many questions as they answer.
There are many problems with asking Napster users if they eventually plan to purchase music after using the system, not the least of which is that framing a question in such a manner encourages an affirmative response. It would make sense to also ask, "Will Napster help you save money on music purchases?" This question also encourages an affirmative response, but in the other direction.
But the real problem with these surveys is that everyone knows the "correct" answer to the question, "Do you plan to buy music after downloading it for free." There is a cultural stigma associated with being a freeloader, and no one who is a freeloader (whether there are two or 200 million of them) wants to own up to it.
An alternative approach would be to use a survey method designed to protect survey respondents against giving a stigmatized answer. I heard about one interesting technique in a survey methods class i took at UC Berkeley (Poli Sci 3). This is a loose outline of the technique, I am almost certainly omiting some important controls.
The system was developed for surveying public sentiment on racial integration in housing. Obviously, people started getting wise around the late 1950s that racism was no longer OK, and in survey-land everyone was suddenly a racial Jesus. Even the racists. Hmmm.
So here's the survey. Six questions for the experimental group, five for the control group. Both groups are all-white.
On each question, the respondent is to come up with a score of 0 to 5 for how angry situation X makes her. For instance, her house is robbed. Her car is keyed.
Each respondent in the experimental group gets an extra question -- a black family moves in next door.
The respondent rates each item, keeping the individual scores to herself. She gives the survey-taker only the TOTAL score for all five or six items.
The surveyor determines the average score for each group. If racism is alive and well (gee i wonder), the experimental group will have an average score that is higher by a statistically significant amount.
The differential between average total score of this group and the control is considered a rough guage of how racist people are when it comes to housing.
This framework, IMO, would work well for guaging whether Napster users REALLY are willing to buy as much music as non-napster users. I'm no survey expert, but I'm thinking you'd need four groups -- one control and one experimental for frequent Napster users and for non Napster users. Each group rates 0 to 5 on how much of a fixed available sum they would spend on various items. The experimental groups would be asked about music, the controls wouldn't. Compare the music differentials for Napster users and non Napster users.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you think the son of God could really have created his own operating system without decades of work by Richard Stallman? Pshhha.
Reuters broke the story, Yahoo is not a newsgathering organization.
Ya, you wouldn't be the first property-rights revolutionary asassinated in that town ...
Someone should remind Dr. Dre of that ...
Of course, Dre may not be the patron saint of music ethics, either. He's just been sued for copyright infringement by George Lucas' Lucasfilm Ltd., which claims the rapper stole its "THX Deep Note" sound for the opening of his quadruple-platinum album, 2001. http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,6363,00.html
er, make that Obscure Store
Boy takes two years of special ed after getting bum I.Q. results
"Mr. Kumpula hired a psychologist to review the original test results and found the boy's IQ was significantly higher than calculated. On a revised version of the same IQ test, the boy scored 99, which is within the average range of intelligence. Normal intelligence is between 85 and 110, plus or minus five, the statement of claim said.
"Edmonton lawyer Scott Schlosser, who is acting for the Kumpula family, said the boy has subsequently scored 113, which is considered high average. "
...
"The board has denied the allegations, none of which have so far been proved."
(found this via the excellent Obsucre Store)
anyway, i should have mentioned this in my article: Love does indeed own *a* copyright associated with her music: the copyright on the composition and lyrics. this copyright is administered for performances (on the Net this means webcasts and possibly downloads, depending on what lawyer you talk to) by one of the three performance-rights agencies: ASCAP, BMI, SESAC.
interestingly -- and again this should have been in my story -- ASCAP and BMI have already cut deals with MP3.com (see http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1839488.html? tag=st.ne.1002.srchres.ni , so Courntey has earned *some* MP3.com money, if not from the settlements/judgement concerning My.MP3.com.
there is another copyright, of course, on the sound recording itself, and this is indeed owned wholly by Universal. this is the copyright in question in the case over My.MP3.com. but artist contracts are built above and beyond copyright law, and ms. Love would likely sue for breach of contract rather than copyright violation.
cheers -r
your replay unit would only be able to update its settings after dialing in to the server, and it does this once per day, late at night. so you would miss the simpsons. if only the replay unit could update itself via cable modem or dsl, then the my.replay service could push the updates out to the box pro-actively.
As E.S. Raymond has said, programmers can feed themselves on the use value of what they create, and thus it is usually in their best interests to create and surround themselves with free code that belongs to everyone and to no-one. That is, since programmers create functional copy, they can wisely forgoe the sale value of their creations in exchange for maximized consulting, customization and other service-oriented profit opportunities (*cough*Andover.net*cough*). In other words, use value.
...") a piano instructor? Toni Morrison forced to write excellent Toyota ads ("... and so through the filth, through the bigotry, and because of--not despite--our rich cultural heritage, we were, in the end, Everyday People.")?
How do poets, guitarists or actors wring use value out of their creations? How do they eat without some copyright protection? Bob Dylan should have been a college professor, or harmonica coach? John Lennon ("imagine no possessions
Of course they shouldn't. Trying to wring use value out of an artistic creation, as in the above examples, is far more hoary and commercial than simple copyright, which lets at least popular artists focus on art, rather than on making money
from art.
It is not that copyright protection needs to be as intrusive as it may be in the DMCA. But, reading through Mr. Katz's post and some of the top responses, I repeatedly encountered the notion that copyright itself is less valuable in the digital world, since the cost of reproducing data is close to zero.
But the cost of producing content is never xero, no matter what it costs to *re*-produce. Content producers have to eat, and it is the independent, struggling artists and writers and creators who are hungriest. Shouldn't they have some say in whether Live365.com can rake in $2,500/day in banner and audio ads off of some newly-popular song they've written? Shouldn't they get a cut of that? And shouldn't hugely popular musical geniuses on major labels be able to live well off of their creations? Should the Ani DiFrancos and Arto Lindays and DJ Shadows and Dr. Dres, whose tunes make some people feel really, really good, have to get day jobs? Do we want them to have to get day jobs?
Do we want budding musicians and writers, child prodigies, to know that they will never be able to dedicate themselves to any creation without use value? There is a gulf between Perl and the Philharmonic.
Does DCMA help AOL/Time Warner a great deal? Excellent! Hundreds of the country's best government watchdog journalists, best folk singers, best actors, best directors, best agitators, best iconoclasts, best Think Different billboard candidates, best Penguin-drawers, best hack-on-Apache in their spare time webmasters and best gotcha-made-you-think nonfiction book authors eat every day because of AOL/Time Warners copyrights.
And while most slashdotters can eat without owning, most of these bright folks cannot.
Because there is, in the end, a difference between emacs source and "Oye Come Va." Not everyone can afford to give it away.
actually, the sum couldn't be fixed in the Napster example, because both groups would have the same average score -- the total sum! you'd just have to ask each group something like, rate each of these spending decisions for thriftiness.
It's disappointing to see these statistics accepted so blindly by Jon Katz. They do confirm his thesis, but raise at least as many questions as they answer.
There are many problems with asking Napster users if they eventually plan to purchase music after using the system, not the least of which is that framing a question in such a manner encourages an affirmative response. It would make sense to also ask, "Will Napster help you save money on music purchases?" This question also encourages an affirmative response, but in the other direction.
But the real problem with these surveys is that everyone knows the "correct" answer to the question, "Do you plan to buy music after downloading it for free." There is a cultural stigma associated with being a freeloader, and no one who is a freeloader (whether there are two or 200 million of them) wants to own up to it.
An alternative approach would be to use a survey method designed to protect survey respondents against giving a stigmatized answer. I heard about one interesting technique in a survey methods class i took at UC Berkeley (Poli Sci 3). This is a loose outline of the technique, I am almost certainly omiting some important controls.
The system was developed for surveying public sentiment on racial integration in housing. Obviously, people started getting wise around the late 1950s that racism was no longer OK, and in survey-land everyone was suddenly a racial Jesus. Even the racists. Hmmm.
So here's the survey. Six questions for the experimental group, five for the control group. Both groups are all-white.
On each question, the respondent is to come up with a score of 0 to 5 for how angry situation X makes her. For instance, her house is robbed. Her car is keyed.
Each respondent in the experimental group gets an extra question -- a black family moves in next door.
The respondent rates each item, keeping the individual scores to herself. She gives the survey-taker only the TOTAL score for all five or six items.
The surveyor determines the average score for each group. If racism is alive and well (gee i wonder), the experimental group will have an average score that is higher by a statistically significant amount.
The differential between average total score of this group and the control is considered a rough guage of how racist people are when it comes to housing.
This framework, IMO, would work well for guaging whether Napster users REALLY are willing to buy as much music as non-napster users. I'm no survey expert, but I'm thinking you'd need four groups -- one control and one experimental for frequent Napster users and for non Napster users. Each group rates 0 to 5 on how much of a fixed available sum they would spend on various items. The experimental groups would be asked about music, the controls wouldn't. Compare the music differentials for Napster users and non Napster users.