That's right, it is a business model. It is a business that is almost completely consolidated and so dominated by advertising that it is essentially shitting on our public airwaves.
That's irrelevant. The point was that P2P has a very different effect to radio.
Sounds like a Minus to me. Copyrights are supposed to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. Here you are arguing against efficient distribution.
That's only tangentially relevant. It's the same point: that P2P != radio. The argument that paying artists for their work encourages them to create more is a separate issue. But while we're on the issue, the act of creating a library doesn't itself "promote the progress of science and the useful arts", listening does. You can listen on the radio, support your own creativity, and support the artist financially without breaking the law. Or you could buy the music, or rent it out with a service like Napster. Illegal P2P is largely unnecessary for that purpose. If you want inspiration you may as well stick within the law. What the legal alternatives can't provide is a way for you to get your hands on as much art as possible without paying the artist for it.
Exactly, and if their business is failing why should we be making law after law to make sure they keep getting money?
It depends how it's failing. If it's failing from legitimate competition, i.e. someone has managed to produce a separate product that is of better value, and that person can sustain that business model as a replacement, then they have no right to protection from us. If it's failing due to people selfishly taking what they want, when they want, running them out of business, while contributing nothing back of their own, and producing no sustainable alternative, then we have a duty to protect them against such a hazardous aberration in modern economics. Currently, the latter is happening.
People like you have forgotten that it is in human nature to create. To create music, art, software, and all intellectual endeavors are what we do that makes us different from monkeys.
People like you forget that artists prefer to stay above the poverty line, so much so that most of them are prepared to give up being an artist for a little food money.
You don't realize that we don't need a massive distribution industry anymore, we can share our creations directly with each other.
That would appear to be true at first inspection, but not when you look at the market. If we didn't need a huge distribution system, then we wouldn't have a huge distribution system. We'd probably still have the RIAA (because they do more than just distribution), but they would distribute exclusively via the internet. It seems that broadband penetration and bandwidth allowances are just not there yet to compete with an uncompressed CD with cover art. We'll know when traditional distribution mechanisms become obsolete, because it'll be then that we won't be able to buy a physical CD any more.
It isn't a free market because people like you believed the sony bono crap.
Excuse me, but did you just tell me what I believed? I'll have you know that I'm a vocal supporter of shortening copyright terms.
I think the understanding you are missing is that it wasn't always like this. If you go back and look at world history (or the modern world in other countries) the sharing and collaboration of ideas was encouraged.
No, things indeed weren't always like this. Before broadband penetration levels reached such a soaring high, for example, there was much less need for strict copyright enforcement. Times have changed, for better or for worse, and pining for the good old days isn't going to help. It's best to rationalise the situation as it exists now, in its native context.
Also ideas are not copyrightable, unless you're referring
We all like to think that we're civilised enough to overcome greed. Perhaps not on an individual scale, but as a society, we like to think we can mediate greed, and get along with each other. The fact is, no matter how much we all would like it to be true, the system actively encourages and rewards greed. Human compassion is an aberration in our economy. Look at the term "rational consumer". It just means someone who puts their well-being over everyone else's, and compassion and kindness are just inefficiencies.
You raise nothing but good points, but I'm afraid that you're not going to see anything but greed from all sides. Not in this lifetime.
In the digital age, if you come over to my house and take a copy of my CD, you are in possession of a CD, and I am *STILL IN POSSESSION OF MY FUCKING PROPERTY*, you just have an exact duplicate.
It's not theft.
OK, let me explain why I personally consider it theft:
Copyrights have a certain commercial value, which is derived from the saleability of whatever the copyright applies to, and the fact that the copyrighted work should be unavailable from anywhere else. You can buy and sell them as much as you want, but the copyright will be commercially worthless unless its potential for money-making is used. that potential is in the form of sales, where money is handed over in exchange for a copy of the work. Value is exchanged for value.
Every time you pirate a CD, you are undermining the copyright. You have created another source from which copyrighted works can come, which eats into the value of the copyright itself. You are gaining the value of the copyrighted work, yet there is no equivalent exchange. The copyright holder ends up with a slightly depreciated version of what he owned before you pirated the work. You are stealing value from the copyright holder for your own gratification.
But that's just the way I rationalise it. I can see why people would not see piracy as stealing. I was pretty sympathetic to your viewpoint right up until here:
The music companies want you to believe you have harmed them out of their fair share.
You have. They have entitlements to their fair share, being the ones who have and who are paying for those copyrighted works, and their distribution. They are the ones lowering the barrier of entry for artists. They spend lots of money promoting artists, encouraging them, and risking their all important finances (they're a corporation after all) in doing so. They at least deserve some money if you like the music.
So how come it's possible to transfer copyright to a company (as some musicians effectively do), and where's the incentive in creating more works of art if you can live off of the royalties from one or two succesful albums or movies?
Most people can't afford to milk all the value out of their copyrights themselves, so they are able to sell it to a company. They won't get as much money as they would if they pursued it themselves, but they will get enough to encourage them to create again for a quick buck.
Why not cut back copyright to say, twenty years?
Well, apparently there are quite a few indie artists who actually do only see profit over a long period of time, and unlike the RIAA, they would be seriously hurt by shortening copyright terms. That said, I don't really buy it, and I certainly think that having the rest of our culture in public domain is more important.
That way if you record an album when you're twenty you'll still be in control of it and receive royalties until you're forty, seems like a pretty good deal considering most of us get paid only once for what we create...
Yeah, but it's not quite so fantastic when you consider that most of us get paid what our work is worth once off, whereas an artist relies on small-time payments from small-time customers (and not even all those customers decide to pay that money).
Yes, bringing more than a couple of issues to the table is quite difficult. On the other hand, maybe that's for the best, because society doesn't respond well to rapid change. It ends up being expensive and it gives people no time for acclimatisation.
Well, Mathinker, The One and Only is simplifying the math somewhat. You don't just get your vote, you get the vote of everyone you influence. Whenever you convince someone of your plight, that could be another vote to tip the scale. You don't have to do it one on one, you could advertise to the entire country via the web, and eventually, if you get some donations, via radio or TV. You could start a viral campaign, where you tell your friends to tell their friends to tell their friends... etc, to vote a certain way.
As for the lobbyist who has a lot of economic backing, your collective influence actually trumps any influence he has. He can only give the politician some extra advertisement money, but it's the public that must vote. You could put him out of a job if you wanted to, and he would no longer be of any interest to any lobbyists. They may be living the high life eating lunches, taking donations, but it's easy to fall and it's a long way down.
How about we, the people, demand equal access to culture regardless of what some greedy suit-claden business major who is only able to appreciate something's value in dollars thinks about it?
We could, but thankfully economics and politics are driven by more than just a small group's short-sighted and unreasoned desires.
Of course, since most people are apathetic sheep when it comes to anything that isn't being spoonfed to them by The Almighty Television(tm)...
That's some given. I'd say it's more like a bunch of relatively wealthy people realising that petty political squabbles don't change the fact that they are content, and that democracy has succeeded for them.
...the problem with this is that it will most likely be impossible to change the laws in many countries, especially as various lobbyists are filling the politicians' pockets with money to keep them from doing "crazy" things like recognizing fair-use rights in the first place, saying no to DMCA-like laws and denying the lobbyists the ability to get ISPs to turn over the names of their customers without a court order...
A congressman who is unelectable in the public's eyes will still lose no matter how much money goes into the campaign fund. If you really want anything to change you need to convince the happy^H^H^H^H^H apathetic masses that copyright reform is, for some reason, jeopardising their very existence. Think that's impossible? You may just be in the wrong democracy then.
I'm not even going to try to argue the practical points, I just wanted to point out that there is no God(tm)-given right profit, a lot of people (especially americans) seem to think so but opinions do not facts make.
OK, so now we have a decent point that doesn't just rely on positioning the blame on everyone else except you. Copyright isn't about a God-given right to profit. It's about allowing culture-creation to become profitable, consistent with the rest of the free market. If you do anything else in the free market, and what you create is appropriately priced and useful or entertaining, then you will be able to profit from it, if you work for it. With art, without copyright, the demand is there, the money is there, the work is there, it just can't turn a profit when it's available for free elsewhere. That would be fine in the free market, if it weren't for the fact that the free version can't survive without the original version. The art business essentially cannibalises itself. That's what copyright is meant to correct. The right to profit is not God-given, it's man-given to encourage the further contribution to society. Y'know, everyone working to help each other out, the essence of society, you know what I mean?
No, I disagree. You act as if you're the underdog in these proceedings, but I can assure you that you are not. The RIAA has an ungodly amount of influence over the government, but you have even more. You have the power to, anonymously if you choose, take a copy of anything they offer. Everyone has. You are in the position to completely disregard the law much to their detriment and get away scot-free. They at least have to work and pay for every lawsuit, every lobbyist, every (mis)information campaign, and they need to compete against all this piracy-justification crap, but you just need the computer and internet access you had lying around and you can get around all that. You have an extraordinary power, and you are abusing it. If you want the laws to be changed (like shorter term limits), you need to work for it, like the RIAA is doing constantly just to keep the laws in tact. If you want to just get a free kick out of your ill-gotten gains, keep doing what you're doing. That is, until the government/RIAA decide that you've abused the privilege of anonymity and encryption enough, and make it illegal.
So, you can either buy into the excuse that the system is broken, that your vote and your voice mean nothing, and just sit on your butt downloading media, both recent and old, or you can actually get up and do something about it. Support the EFF if you want, or just tell the *.AA that you really can do without their garbage, and refuse to have anything to do with it.
There is one assumption thats being made here, that if we didn't pirate the music, we would go out and buy it. Fact of the matter is, alot of people who pirate music do it because they weren't willing to pay for ANY music in the first place.
There's no such assumption being made here. The RIAA and copyright law can deal with you refusing to fork out the money for the music (although the RIAA would prefer if you did), but you actually don't get to keep the product that you decided not to pay for. The choice is simple: if it's overpriced, don't buy it, if it's worth it, then do, just like in any other instance of the free market.
I can definately guarantee that when my favorite band comes to town, i won't be pirating the video of the concert, i'll fork up the cash and go see them. THAT's the only place left to make money off music, live performance.
So, you're essentially letting die any music that can't be performed live? How do you think the fans of that music would feel? Copyright protects all works, biased only by popularity, i.e. the more people who derive enjoyment out of the artwork, the better it is protected. It's also optional too, so if your favourite bands don't mind its fans sharing their songs, and paying for the concerts, then they can. If they don't want that, that's their choice too. You have no more of a right to tell them how to do business than you have the right to shoplift a $30 CD and leave $5 because you think it's a "fair" price.
People won't buy something without hearing or seeing it for free, same reason a bookstore will let you read an entire book if you really want to without paying for it.
Music stores will let you do the same thing. In both cases, you don't get to keep the work.
Oh please not this fucking argument again. IT'S NOT A FREE MARKET, RIAA are a cartel which buys off radio stations and setups up crappy tv shows.
Firstly, the RIAA has nothing to do with the TV shows which you unilaterally declare crappy.
Secondly, and more importantly, any antitrust issues can be dealt with separately without having to have copyright and copyright holders deal with the flak. If you have a problem with the way the RIAA conducts its business, rather than just targeting the organisation, target the behaviour instead, and make it commercially infeasible. No-one's going to listen to you when you just chant for the RIAA's head on a pike. You need to be constructive if you want any change, let alone a permanent one.
Thirdly, if the OP is right, indie music shouldn't really need the radio when they've got P2P sharing to perform the same function. If it is truly a better advertising/distribution scheme, then indie artists will have no trouble at all if they just relax their copyrights.
You need to convert them for the resale value. It's going to be hard to sell your HD-DVD movies at a decent price, so you should go through the steps in TFA and convert them to BluRay discs and sell them. They'd even go for a high price, if they didn't have a BluRay release to begin with.
And then you could do it all again. And again. And again...
Yep. The real problem with copyright infringement is that it doesn't sound harmful, and even when its effects are explained in a clear manner, the long term nature of the problem and the economics base of the argument belie its urgency. It's a similar problem with global warming. There's serious danger that there will be some very negative effects to us, but the whole theory is just dry science and the scope is very long term. The only way it has made it into the public mind-space is through the sometimes outrageous speculation over what will happen to the societies of the world. It's the same tricks are being played here, just with the RIAA less hesitant than the scientific community to really stretch the truth for a good crisis.
The fact is, "pirating" is doing the same job today as radio did 10-20 years ago, promotes the artist.
Radio stations (and the artists they play) are supported financially, usually advertising. The mere impression of an ad is worth a certain amount of money, and a portion of that money goes towards the artist (if they so desire it). Plus, unlike pirated media, radio can't easily form a library the same way CDs or downloads can, so the radio would encourage to a much greater degree the purchasing of media that could form a library. With radio, you're distributing an advertisement for the music. With piracy, you're distributing the product itself for free.
I'd also like to say that's it's the RIAA's own damn business how they distribute their music. You can make all the recommendations you wish to them about what will help them get more money, but it's ultimately up to them as to what rights outside of fair use they wish to allow. If you don't like it, don't buy it, and don't pirate it. If it's commercially feasible, the free market should spit out a music label that allows more flexible licensing, one that recognises the potential of sharing, but until then, quit giving the government yet another reason to cave to the RIAA's demands.
Infoworld's Cringely has an interesting take on the Julius Baer bank trying to silence WikiLeaks.org -- and how stunningly stupid they've been. 'But the bank's solution is so mind-bogglingly stupid, you have to wonder if these guys need help getting their pants on each morning.
Normally I'd let slide the misuse of the word "stupid" where the word "ignorant" would be more appropriate, but the submitter and Mr Cringely seem to genuinely think that intelligence is conditional on knowledge of the workings and phenomena of the internet and the blogosphere.
Most interesting copying, like excerpting or converting to another format, requires access. You might think that the rightful owner of a copy of a work is implicitly authorized to access it in any way they wish, but this view has not prevailed in court.
I would think that. Do you know of any specific examples? What happened?
Also, after reading the actual law, I also noticed that the technology (in order to prevent distribution and importing) must be either "primarily designed" to circumvent copy protection, "have limited commercially significant purpose" other than to circumvent copy protection mechanisms, or be marketed as a program that circumvents copy protection mechanisms. Would that mean it would be possible, say, to create a program that integrates copy protection into its design, but design and market it to fulfil a legal purpose? For example, you could create a P2P program that, as part of its service, breaks popular DRM formats, and shares the broken files throughout its network? It has significant purpose other than breaking copy protections, and it's legal so long as it doesn't advertise as being a tool for either copyright infringement or copy protection circumvention. As another example, perhaps a fully-featured DVD-ripping tool that doesn't advertise its CSS-breaking capabilities? Or has there been other legal precedents that stop that kind of behaviour?
Section 1201 divides technological measures into two categories: measures that prevent unauthorized access to a copyrighted work and measures that prevent unauthorized copying of a copyrighted work. Making or selling devices or services that are used to circumvent either category of technological measure is prohibited in certain circumstances, described below. As to the act of circumvention in itself, the provision prohibits circumventing the first category of technological measures, but not the second.
This distinction was employed to assure that the public will have the continued ability to make fair use of copyrighted works. Since copying of a work may be a fair use under appropriate circumstances, section 1201 does not prohibit the act of circumventing a technological measure that prevents copying. By contrast, since the fair use doctrine is not a defense to the act of gaining unauthorized access to a work, the act of circumventing a technological measure in order to gain access is prohibited.
I am not a lawyer, or by no means competent in reading laws. However, from what I can gather, unless the DRM is designed to prevent you from accessing the content (e.g. napster after your subscription expires), then you may circumvent for fair use. It actually does prohibit "making or selling devices or services that are used to circumvent either category of technological measure", but not owning or being in possession of such goods or services. That means that as long as DVD Jon's actions are legal in whichever country he chooses to stay, he can continue to make and distribute his DRM-circumventing programs, and we can legally download and use them, so long as we don't distribute the programs ourselves (e.g. give it to a friend).
A basic human right is to be able to express your smart.
Aside from patents, I can't think of any form of IP that infringes on that right, and patents only prevent you from "expressing" yourself by creating and marketing a product using your "smarts" that someone has coincidentally created before you. It's not much, but it certainly makes patents the most questionable of IP forms. Still, I see little justification for calling all IP a "crude evil" without resorting to sloppy over-generalisation and irrational prejudice.
I was. I thought it was funny because the internet is built upon the concept of a different kind of "fair use", yet it's now come to denote something negative.
Slashdot Mirror
That's irrelevant. The point was that P2P has a very different effect to radio.
That's only tangentially relevant. It's the same point: that P2P != radio. The argument that paying artists for their work encourages them to create more is a separate issue. But while we're on the issue, the act of creating a library doesn't itself "promote the progress of science and the useful arts", listening does. You can listen on the radio, support your own creativity, and support the artist financially without breaking the law. Or you could buy the music, or rent it out with a service like Napster. Illegal P2P is largely unnecessary for that purpose. If you want inspiration you may as well stick within the law. What the legal alternatives can't provide is a way for you to get your hands on as much art as possible without paying the artist for it.
It depends how it's failing. If it's failing from legitimate competition, i.e. someone has managed to produce a separate product that is of better value, and that person can sustain that business model as a replacement, then they have no right to protection from us. If it's failing due to people selfishly taking what they want, when they want, running them out of business, while contributing nothing back of their own, and producing no sustainable alternative, then we have a duty to protect them against such a hazardous aberration in modern economics. Currently, the latter is happening.
People like you forget that artists prefer to stay above the poverty line, so much so that most of them are prepared to give up being an artist for a little food money.
That would appear to be true at first inspection, but not when you look at the market. If we didn't need a huge distribution system, then we wouldn't have a huge distribution system. We'd probably still have the RIAA (because they do more than just distribution), but they would distribute exclusively via the internet. It seems that broadband penetration and bandwidth allowances are just not there yet to compete with an uncompressed CD with cover art. We'll know when traditional distribution mechanisms become obsolete, because it'll be then that we won't be able to buy a physical CD any more.
Excuse me, but did you just tell me what I believed? I'll have you know that I'm a vocal supporter of shortening copyright terms.
No, things indeed weren't always like this. Before broadband penetration levels reached such a soaring high, for example, there was much less need for strict copyright enforcement. Times have changed, for better or for worse, and pining for the good old days isn't going to help. It's best to rationalise the situation as it exists now, in its native context.
Also ideas are not copyrightable, unless you're referring
We all like to think that we're civilised enough to overcome greed. Perhaps not on an individual scale, but as a society, we like to think we can mediate greed, and get along with each other. The fact is, no matter how much we all would like it to be true, the system actively encourages and rewards greed. Human compassion is an aberration in our economy. Look at the term "rational consumer". It just means someone who puts their well-being over everyone else's, and compassion and kindness are just inefficiencies.
You raise nothing but good points, but I'm afraid that you're not going to see anything but greed from all sides. Not in this lifetime.
Copyrights have a certain commercial value, which is derived from the saleability of whatever the copyright applies to, and the fact that the copyrighted work should be unavailable from anywhere else. You can buy and sell them as much as you want, but the copyright will be commercially worthless unless its potential for money-making is used. that potential is in the form of sales, where money is handed over in exchange for a copy of the work. Value is exchanged for value.
Every time you pirate a CD, you are undermining the copyright. You have created another source from which copyrighted works can come, which eats into the value of the copyright itself. You are gaining the value of the copyrighted work, yet there is no equivalent exchange. The copyright holder ends up with a slightly depreciated version of what he owned before you pirated the work. You are stealing value from the copyright holder for your own gratification.
But that's just the way I rationalise it. I can see why people would not see piracy as stealing. I was pretty sympathetic to your viewpoint right up until here:You have. They have entitlements to their fair share, being the ones who have and who are paying for those copyrighted works, and their distribution. They are the ones lowering the barrier of entry for artists. They spend lots of money promoting artists, encouraging them, and risking their all important finances (they're a corporation after all) in doing so. They at least deserve some money if you like the music.
Yes, bringing more than a couple of issues to the table is quite difficult. On the other hand, maybe that's for the best, because society doesn't respond well to rapid change. It ends up being expensive and it gives people no time for acclimatisation.
Well, Mathinker, The One and Only is simplifying the math somewhat. You don't just get your vote, you get the vote of everyone you influence. Whenever you convince someone of your plight, that could be another vote to tip the scale. You don't have to do it one on one, you could advertise to the entire country via the web, and eventually, if you get some donations, via radio or TV. You could start a viral campaign, where you tell your friends to tell their friends to tell their friends... etc, to vote a certain way.
As for the lobbyist who has a lot of economic backing, your collective influence actually trumps any influence he has. He can only give the politician some extra advertisement money, but it's the public that must vote. You could put him out of a job if you wanted to, and he would no longer be of any interest to any lobbyists. They may be living the high life eating lunches, taking donations, but it's easy to fall and it's a long way down.
No, I disagree. You act as if you're the underdog in these proceedings, but I can assure you that you are not. The RIAA has an ungodly amount of influence over the government, but you have even more. You have the power to, anonymously if you choose, take a copy of anything they offer. Everyone has. You are in the position to completely disregard the law much to their detriment and get away scot-free. They at least have to work and pay for every lawsuit, every lobbyist, every (mis)information campaign, and they need to compete against all this piracy-justification crap, but you just need the computer and internet access you had lying around and you can get around all that. You have an extraordinary power, and you are abusing it. If you want the laws to be changed (like shorter term limits), you need to work for it, like the RIAA is doing constantly just to keep the laws in tact. If you want to just get a free kick out of your ill-gotten gains, keep doing what you're doing. That is, until the government/RIAA decide that you've abused the privilege of anonymity and encryption enough, and make it illegal.
So, you can either buy into the excuse that the system is broken, that your vote and your voice mean nothing, and just sit on your butt downloading media, both recent and old, or you can actually get up and do something about it. Support the EFF if you want, or just tell the *.AA that you really can do without their garbage, and refuse to have anything to do with it.
Secondly, and more importantly, any antitrust issues can be dealt with separately without having to have copyright and copyright holders deal with the flak. If you have a problem with the way the RIAA conducts its business, rather than just targeting the organisation, target the behaviour instead, and make it commercially infeasible. No-one's going to listen to you when you just chant for the RIAA's head on a pike. You need to be constructive if you want any change, let alone a permanent one.
Thirdly, if the OP is right, indie music shouldn't really need the radio when they've got P2P sharing to perform the same function. If it is truly a better advertising/distribution scheme, then indie artists will have no trouble at all if they just relax their copyrights.
You need to convert them for the resale value. It's going to be hard to sell your HD-DVD movies at a decent price, so you should go through the steps in TFA and convert them to BluRay discs and sell them. They'd even go for a high price, if they didn't have a BluRay release to begin with.
And then you could do it all again. And again. And again...
Tech bling!
Yep. The real problem with copyright infringement is that it doesn't sound harmful, and even when its effects are explained in a clear manner, the long term nature of the problem and the economics base of the argument belie its urgency. It's a similar problem with global warming. There's serious danger that there will be some very negative effects to us, but the whole theory is just dry science and the scope is very long term. The only way it has made it into the public mind-space is through the sometimes outrageous speculation over what will happen to the societies of the world. It's the same tricks are being played here, just with the RIAA less hesitant than the scientific community to really stretch the truth for a good crisis.
I'd also like to say that's it's the RIAA's own damn business how they distribute their music. You can make all the recommendations you wish to them about what will help them get more money, but it's ultimately up to them as to what rights outside of fair use they wish to allow. If you don't like it, don't buy it, and don't pirate it. If it's commercially feasible, the free market should spit out a music label that allows more flexible licensing, one that recognises the potential of sharing, but until then, quit giving the government yet another reason to cave to the RIAA's demands.
Here's hoping for flying cars next year!
Also, after reading the actual law, I also noticed that the technology (in order to prevent distribution and importing) must be either "primarily designed" to circumvent copy protection, "have limited commercially significant purpose" other than to circumvent copy protection mechanisms, or be marketed as a program that circumvents copy protection mechanisms. Would that mean it would be possible, say, to create a program that integrates copy protection into its design, but design and market it to fulfil a legal purpose? For example, you could create a P2P program that, as part of its service, breaks popular DRM formats, and shares the broken files throughout its network? It has significant purpose other than breaking copy protections, and it's legal so long as it doesn't advertise as being a tool for either copyright infringement or copy protection circumvention. As another example, perhaps a fully-featured DVD-ripping tool that doesn't advertise its CSS-breaking capabilities? Or has there been other legal precedents that stop that kind of behaviour?
Oh, and you are a lawyer, right?
Um, if your sig is accurate, how the hell did you end up replying to an AC?
Can you please repost your comment in plain text? Most of us can't be bothered decrypting your message.