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The ongoing discussion of intellectual property, freedom of expression, electronic media, corporate control, and evolving technology continues into the summer.
151 responses total.
Well what can you do? I loved it, but normally if it's to good to be true then it normally is.
From the latest Roxio (EZ CD Creator) e-mailing: Apparently some of our customers have misinterpreted our new partnership with EMI. This is somewhat understandable in that there has been nothing less than a "holy war" being waged between content owners and some high profile internet entrepreneurs. The fact is, however, that Roxio in no way intends to restrict functionality, or obstruct the free and easy burning of content. The EMI/Roxio deal is about enabling -- not disabling. Roxio is hardly waving a white flag here. We have pro-actively fought and lobbied the labels to allow more burning functionality, not less. Our customers will continue to be able to burn all the content they burn now (regardless of the source--CD collection, mp3 files, downloads, etc.). Roxio's mantra is "Burn Everything". We have no intention of deviating from this fundamental promise to our customer. We think the major significance of the EMI/Roxio partnership is that one of the largest record companies in the world has publicly recognized that digital distribution doesn't work without burning. This is a huge win for the consumer in getting closer to delivering on the promise of the "celestial jukebox". Thank you, Chris Gorog, President and CEO, roxio *********** Also in the same e-mail, it was announced that there is now an update to EZ CD Creator 4.02 that "fixes" the Audio Recognition feature that "broke" when CDDB threw a spanner in the works.
I tend to use this item as a running weblog for news stories and essays which I find of interest; hope everyone else isn't too bored. http://www.newmediamusic.com/articles/NM01060306.html "Don't Let The New DRM Standards End Up In A Chorus of Disapproval" I can never be certain if author Larry Powers at New Media Music is utterly brilliant or just blowing really pretty smoke rings. In today's essay Powers talks about how the music industry in the past has created "the illusion of ownership" for LP/tape/CD consumers, and how the DRM systems threaten to destroy that illusion. But, according to Powers, the labels don't grasp that when they trash the consumers' illusion of ownership -- with song files which expire after 30 days, or which have a limited number of plays -- they will damage the value of their intellecutal property holdings. Powers cites the first DiVX DVD system, the one which involved players which had to phone home for authorization to play the disc, as an example of what might be in store for the music industry if they continue on their present course.
http://musicdish.com/mag/?id=4017 "Dear Artists, Take Control Now While You Can" The hook quotes economist David Friedman: "Mark Twain made a lot of his money lecturing, not selling books. His books were more or less promotional tools. In the future, creative people will have to accept a similar business model. Current copyright laws simply won't be enforceable..." (paraphrased) The article also mentions a Chinese artist-management agency which has thrown in the towel on CD piracy, which is rampant in Asia. The agency has now adopted a policy of manufacturing just enough CDs to get the interest of the pirates; the agency then lets the pirates assume the costs of manufacturing and distributing the discs, which the agency now regards as promotional tools for concerts. Musicdish.com is somewhat amateurish, but I have found their essays worth checking in for. ---------- I had another article which discusses the original Napster, and its file sharing successors, as the only consumer-driven online distribution system to date, but I've lost the reference...
((( Summer Agora #22 now linked as Music conference #315.
Previous items in this series can be found in the Music
conference: items 240, 279, 280, 294 & 304. )))
I stuck a response in the music conference (item:music,293) about the financial difficulties and possible bankruptcy of Tower Records. Requoting from the L.A. Times: "Music merchants say sales are down 5% to 10% for the first six months of the year..." The LA Times story mentions lots of causes for Tower's problems, and for the general fall in music sales. Curiously, Napster is never mentioned. One wag somewhere (mp3.com/news, maybe?) argues that the falloff in music sales has accelerated as Napster has been fettered with filters, and as all measurements report that less and less music is being traded through the Napster system. So, he argues, this shows that Napster actually was helping drive sales of music. (That argument is probably about as valid as the argument that Napster was damaging sales in 2000...)
Could it be, perhaps, that music is getting just too damn expensive? I'm not a big music buff like many of you, but how many CDs can the average person buy at $20 a pop?
I buy less than 10 cd's a year and so far this year have gotten over 50 free ones from work.
It has been years since I have purchased a new CD in a store -- mainly because the prices are so high. I have never used Napster. I do occasionally buy CDs from the artists directly, at concerts. I think the last CD I bought from Tower was a cutout, and it was at least seven years ago.
I have never used Napster (and the only time I ever downloaded mp3s at all was a couple of years ago when I downloaded perhaps 20 live Tool songs not available on any cd. They were deleted some time ago). I buy cds a lot less than I used to. I think part of the problem is that music isn't as good. Sales boomed during the early alternative period, when not only grunge but also rap produced large volumes of sales, but nothing new has moved in to take its place. Electronica was hyped as the next alternative explosion several years ago (with much discussion of how record execs were packing electronic dance clubs the way they used to pack Seattle shows in the late 80s and early 90s), but nothing came of it. I've puchased two new cds this year, both from bands formed and popularized in the early 90s. The difference? Tool and Radiohead have both gotten a lot better as they've gone along. Few bands mature musically the way they have.
resp: 3 - I went and read this article, and I'm still not sure what the authors mean by "the illusion of ownership" in regard to old/current practices of selling recordings. What illusion? resp: 4 - David Friedman's clever notion that authors will live by lecturing is not a new one: I think it came from Faith Popcorn earlier. But it's fallacious. Some authors lecture well; some don't, or dislike it so much that they'd give up authorship first. There's a limit to how many lectures a practicing author can give and still write, which means that to live on it, the fees have to be high. But I've heard a few high-paid lecturers meander on at conferences - John Perry Barlow was a notably ill-prepared example - and my willingness to pay big bucks to hear these people burble is strictly limited.
My CD budget is around $100/month, which gets me about 7 CDs. I stopped shopping at Tower when I moved out of Lansing, though that one went to shit after Mark left anyway.
I buy the vast majority of my CDs used.
I apologize if these links aren't new here; I've not been following the discussion. They're about comic strips rather than online music, but the argument applies to any content. part 1 http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/icst/icst-5/icst-5.html part 2 http://www.thecomicreader.com/html/icst/icst-6/icst-6.html
I've read part one, and I like -- but question -- the implication that, if web-based art is provided at a fair price, people will stop macking it. Napster (specifically referred to, visually) is, after all, a form of shoplifting, vitually speaking... its users justify the behavior on the dual grounds that (a) CDs cost too much and (b) too much of the money goes to fatcat RIAA guys, but would the virtual shoplifting really stop if prices were lower? Shareware has been around for years, and most shareware packages have a reasonably priced registration fee (WinZip is, what, $20 or so?), but most people I know (including myself) still don't pony up the dough (yes, I'm admitting I'm a virtual shoplifter, too). Of course, shareware continues because enough people pony up the registration fees to make it worth the while of the developers... with the negligible overhead involved in shareware distribution, especially on-line, the only thing that money goes to is development time.
Read part 2, and perhaps his followup to the flame war that this apparently started <pause for link-finding>: http://www.scottmccloud.com/home/xtra/backlash.html He addresses just that issue. Briefly, his response is that no, of course it won't stop pirating, but it will make it less common, because 1) for the average person, paying a small fee with a few clicks will be less trouble than going through the effort to get it for free, and 2) people will be less likely to go to the trouble of providing bandwidth, disk, and access to things just to save someone else the trouble of paying a few cents.
Ah, so, basically what I suggested in para 2 of #15, i.e., that pirating will continue, but that *enough* people will pony up to make it worth the time, and the artist will still wind up netting more than going through traditional publication channels. I'm inclined to agree.
Here's a report claiming that Napster is about to disable the older, "free" versions of its user software, to force everyone to download the new security-enhanced software. The report goes on with an account of what the new Napster pricing system will be, and argues that it is priced to be a certain failure in the market. Mp3newswire.net is a kind of amateurish site, and I haven't seen this stuff reconfirmed elsewhere, so you might take it with a grain of salt for now. However, this report does confirm my original speculation from back in February that Napster's fate was to become just a branding for some minor variant on the BMG centralized download system which has already been rejected by the market. http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2001/napstersleep.html
Here's a mainstream media story on the simultaneous crash in both Napster users and CD sales, which I discussed in vague terms in resp:6 :: http://www.latimes.com/business/cotown/20010620/t000051058.html "The numbers raise the issue of whether Napster truly represented the doomsday for record companies that some industry executives predicted. And they call into question the RIAA's contention that Napster would cause 'immeasurable' harm to the business." ..."Slumping sales may have more to do with a comparatively weak release schedule, a stumbling national economy and the popularity of video games and other competing forms of entertainment."
Ooops, forgot part of the article I wanted to quote: "SoundScan research shows total music sales are down about 5.7% from the same period last year, dragged down by giant drops in sales of the singles format and cassettes... "The story with CDs is even more intriguing. According to SoundScan, CD sales from January through March 4 were up 5.6% from the period a year earlier. But for the period from March 5 -- just after Napster began removing copyrighted material from its service -- through June 122, CD sales were behind last year's numbers by 0.9%" I did not realize (1) the overall crash in music sales is concentrated in singles and cassettes, and (2) that CD sales so closely correlated to the imposition of Napster filters.
So far, 2001 has turned out mediocre musical product. The crashes could easily be coincidental. They could also be anti-RIAA backlash by Napsterites... it doesn't demonstrate (on that analysis) that Napster wasn't adversely affecting Majors buisness, it would only demonstrate that the RIAA's handling of the issue adversely affected Majors business (which it would... regardless of the morality of Napster, the RIAA acted like Prime Bastards). And none of it really changes the morality, ethics, or legality of Napster. A clear proof that Napster was helping the Majors still wouldn't affect whether it was moral, ethical, or legal a priori.
Actually it does reflect on the legal situation. All of the legal fighting so far has been over a preliminary injunction; the argument for the preliminary injunction is that Napster was causing irreparable harm to the record companies. Napster has still not had its trial; I have no idea at this point if Napster is *ever* going to have its trial. I propose that one way in which irreparable harm to the record companies should have been apparent is in diminished sales. The sales figures we have now show a NEGATIVE correlation between Napster usage and CD sales; thus no irreparable harm, thus there should have been no preliminary injunction. Napster may still be liable for statutory or actual damages for copyright infringement, but these damages alone do not warrant a preliminary injunction before the full trial.
Mm... I'll grant that it does obviously impact on the irreparable harm issue. I was think of the intellectual property issue, and had forgotten that that wasn't the only (or even the major) part of the suit. My mistake.
I'm surprised that there's distress about singles and cassette sales, both of which are music formats that have been running downhill for years. In my early high school years, most retail centers still had healthy cassette sections, but barely anything exists now.
At this rate, an early prediction of mine -- that cassette will actually be discontinued before LPs -- may actually bear out.
Beta News reports on a preview they were given of the Real Networks /MusicNet online distribution system. http://www.betanews.com/article.php3?sid=993552636 "Each MusicNet file will contain code to verify that it may be played locally or streamed. Upon playback, a central clearinghouse is contacted to confirm a license has been issued for the song. If a user does not have the necessary tokens, a notice will appear prompting for the purchase of more." As I read the article, it sounds like the playback system requires a network connection so the software can phone home to see if it is authorized to play the song file. The user can download song files freely, but must buy tokens in order to play them. If I'm right, heaven help them; they have reinvented the Divx system for DVD licensing, a system which was a spectacular market failure, almost totally rejected by consumers.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2001-07-03-net-radio-usat.htm "Net Radio Tangos With The Law." The RIAA is suing a number of "webcasting" firms claiming that their offerings are more interactive than is allowed under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Allowing users to choose what will be streamed to them is a no-no, according to the RIAA's interpretation of the law. Lawsuit targets include MTV's SonicNet, Launch, MusicMatch and Xact. The article says that the RIAA did not take on MSN's streaming offering, even though it is essentially similar in functionality to the sued firms. The article says that most musicians are lining up against the RIAA this time, in contrast to the Napster suit.
Of course the RIAA didn't go after MS. It saw what happens when the govt sues MS, what chance do THEY have?
It just goes to show the sharks know each other.
Professional courtesy ("Why don't sharks eat lawyers?" and "Why doesnt the
RIAA sue MSN?")
ZDnet has a nice survey article on six foolhardy firms trying to follow in Napster's footsteps. OK, some of them really aren't "firms." Let's say, a review of six Napster replacements, plus the state of the original Napster, which one user now describes as "an elaborate chat program." http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2782840,00.html Reviewed are: Aimster, Audiogalaxy, Gnutella, iMesh, OpenNap, and Kazaa-Music City Morpheus.
Yeah, somebody today directed me to Morpheus. I would have expected that, after the nonsense with Napster, any similar site (especially one that claims to be "better" than Napster explicitly) would have HUGE notices about copyright infringement... READ THIS READ THIS READ THIS. Instead, it took me a few minutes to find it, buried several sections below the snake-in-Eden temptation of "Morpheus has no control over what people share."
Re #28: Plenty of chances. Look what Sun got after going after M$ for violating the Java license terms.
According to a news story on http://www.mp3.com/news, Napster shut down on July 3 and it has not returned. The main Napster web page confirms that "File transfers have been temporarily suspended while Napster upgrades the databases that support our new file identification technology. Keep checking this space for updates." Um, Napster's been turned OFF for a week and I haven't seen a news story about it until today? Sheesh. I don't think the idea of making money off the former Napster user base is going to fly, if the end of Napster's file trading service stirs only a whimper in the news.
Here's the Cnet story on the disconnection of Napster: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6537921.html?tag=tp_pr (cue theme music from "JAWS" :) ) "Sources close to the case say that court documents still under seal have deeply influenced the company's actions over the past few weeks -- including its decision to go dark rather than allow filtered trading on its service." The overall thrust of the story is that the record industry believes the precedents it has won in the Napster case will allow it quick victories in the future over other file-trading systems. The story talks a lot about the impact of "audio fingerprinting" technology as a means to halt the unauthorized trading of song files. What few is left unsaid in the article is this: a Napster which effectively filters unauthorized song files has no reason to exist.
Macrovision says they have a CD copy-prevention system ready to roll out. No details are available in the two stories I have seen. They claim you will be able to play the CDs on computer CD-rom drives but not rip them. ??? http://www.macrovision.com/safeaudio1.html and a press release at: http://www.newmediamusic.com/articles/NM01070093.html
From Friday's New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/12/technology/ebusiness/12NAPS.html Trial court judge Marilyn Patel (remember her? We haven't heard much from her lately) has ordered Napster to remain shut down until their filtering system is 100% effective at preventing the exchange of copyrighted material. Napster claims its filtering system is 99.4% effective and Patel says that is not good enough. Napster will appeal.
The filtering system they have at the moment is 100% effective -- nothing gets through. ;>
What I don't understand is how Patel's order can be congruent with the appeals court ruling on the preliminary injunction. This seems to be the order Patel wanted to issue originally, which was substantially modified under the direction of the appeals court, and now she's gone back to it.
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