152 new of 183 responses total.
BTW, I've been accused when I've made similar comments in the past of being morally- high-and-mighty. I'm not. I have tapes at home that friends made for me, I like to post lyrics of pop songs, I have unregistered copies of shareware that I use a lot (like WinZip), as well as illegal copies of commercial software. But I'll also freely admit taht I'm a thief, and if the government or private companies come after me and demand that I either pay up or cease and desist, or go to jail, then I'll pay the piper.
No Paul theft is making a CD for dollar and pocketing at least 10 dollars while the artist who makes the CD gets a buck. There is a pretty interesting article about this by Chuck D from Public Enemy somewhere on the web URL later. As I said before I think the ultimate solution is sites like mp3.com wherere you can buy sonds direct from the artist or they will burn a cd on demand for you and the artist gets all or nearly all the procedes. Yes Napster probably is wrong but wrong in a way like making home audio tapes or dubbing movies with a vcr, wrong in a way that became acceptable to society. I think the way home audio taping at least was dealt with was with a tax on audio tapes with the $ passed on to the record industry. It seems like some sort of online micro tax will have to happen as Napster I think in practical terms won't be stopped even in they lose in court they can use move to a country without copyright laws, then there's gnutella...
re #27: Napster is certainly an irritation to the record companies, but it's not exactly news that a lot of people aren't willing to pay $18 for something that they can get for free, so the idea that this is some sort of wake-up call for the music industry is somewhat flawed, I think. I believe a more significant result of the Napster situation is that many artists are being alienated by what's going on and dissuaded from music formats like MP3. Most artists have no great love for the record companies, so when you see them both lining up on the same side of an issue that should tell you something. Napster is, in fact, allowing the record companies to (almost justifiably) claim, "See? All of those paranoid scenarios we spun concerning on-line music distribution are true!"
Theft is taking something which doesn't belong to you. If you stand on the street corner and tell passersby, "Hey, gimme $10," and people give you $10, you're not committing theft. Saying that Columbia or Elektra is committing "theft" when they charge $18 for an album implies that the album belongs to YOU, that you have the RIGHT to own that album, and that Columbia or Elektra is denying you that right. That's ridiculous. You have absolutely no right whatsoever to own prerecorded music. None. The CD belongs to the record store until you purchase it. Then it belongs to you. If you don't want to pay the price, then don't pay the price. Somebody else will. Independent labels exist. Wax Trax!, for instance, and On Her Majesty's Behalf (or whatever it's called)...Whip-Smart. Oh yes, and Righteous Babe, Ani's label. Do these labels go out of their way to make sure *their* CDs are less than $18? Not generally. Ani's CDs are the same price as everyone else's. So she's pocketing the money instead of the record execs. Good for her. You're still giving it to her. I also remember Garth Brooks' tirade against used record stores some years ago... and that's different. I own a CD. I don't like the CD. I'm entitled to sell my CD to somebody else, just like any other possession. But accusing the record labels of THEFT? Because musicians (and oh yeah, some gold-plated phatcat with a Beemer and swimsuit models is going to get a lot of sympathy from ME about oh boohoohoo the recordcompany stole from him) were held at gunpoint and forced to play music? Because you were held at gunpoint and forced to buy a CD? I just don't buy it.
(I agree with brighn wrt CD pricing.)
What if I am download MP3s of songs I already have on a purchased format? It's just that someone else done the conversion for me.
what if you make a tape of a CD you own, and use it for yourself? Once you have purchased a piece of recorded music, you are generally permitted to copy that music, in whatever formats you deem appropriate, to your heart's content, for "archiving" purposes... that is, so long as you don't sell/give/exchange it with anyone else. Ditto software, for that matter.
Paul if you are so convinced this is a crime why don't you turn yourself in for your tapes and "stolen shareware." Your position is sort of like saying shoplifting is wrong except for those strawberries I lifted last week at the store. If you turn yourself in maybe Metllica or Dr, Dre will give you a good citizen award. :-)
I'm not going to turn myself in. That's the job of the police. But if I'm arrested or fined, I'll abide by the sentencing. If I shoplifted strawberries last week, then that would be a crime, too. Honestly, raven, we're all criminals. Claiming that we're not, because we don't happen to agree with the law, is bullshit (there, I just committed a felony in Michigan, because their are women and children present *rolls eyes*). I'm not saying that anyone who has an HD of napster-macked MP3s from artists they haven't given money to should be hauled away to the hoosegow in a mass arrest. I'm saying they're THIEVES. Please indicate any post where I've claimed that I'm legally justified in copying software that my company purchased onto my home computer. Please indicate any post where I've claimed that it's perfectly legal for me to have been given "mix tapes" by my friends. What I'm saying is: If you take what doesn't belong to you, you're a thief. If somebody says, HEY! Quit stealing from me!, it's childish and petty to respond with, "Well, you're charging too much, so it's ok for me to steal." We've become a nation of whiners. Boohoohoo, we can't get the MEtallica CDs. Boohoohoo. Honestly. So stow your implications of hypocricy. I'm a thief. Back when lyrics.ch was healthy and hadn't been hamstrung by the Law, I went there as much as anyone else. And when the Powers that Be tracked lyrics.ch down and initially dismantled it, then restructured it, I was disappointed. but I didn't sit around whining about my unalienable RIGHT to lyrics, and how if the record companies didn't charge so much, we wouldn't be forced to do it... blame blame pass the buck. Something neat was gone, and the people who took it had the Law on their side. That's the way it goes.
News item: Today the RIAA won a summary judgement against mp3.com. The RIAA suit alleged that the My.Mp3.Com service infringed its copyrights. Penalties against mp3.com will be assessed later. KRJ's analysis: I have to wonder, what were they thinking? The RIAA had been trying to paint mp3 files as an inherently criminal format; mp3.com, up until now, ran a legally unassailable operation. And then, someone at mp3.com had a great idea... The idea behind my.mp3.com was to create a central online database of mp3 files. You would prove that you were entitled to listen to a particular mp3 file by loading a CD containing that song into your computer's CD rom drive; this proved that you owned, or at least possessed temporarily, a copy of the album, and mp3.com argued that this showed that you were entitled to listen to a mp3 of the album, and that they were entitled to stream it to you. my.mp3.com could be thought of as a virtual box of cassettes which mp3 would "carry around" for you. Anywhere you were, you could stream down those Mp3 files which you had registered as "owning." In the original model, I think that the consumer was supposed to upload the MP3 files: I have read there are "storage locker" systems which work like this. But my.mp3.com decided to skip that slow and pesky upload process: they went out and bought thousands of CDs, and copied them into the my.mp3.com database. My take on this is that www.mp3.com decided that the consumer's right to make a copy of a CD which he or she owned could be transferred to mp3.com. The judge's reasoning is not yet available to us, but it looks like he decided that mp3.com's assembly of an online database of copyrighted songs was a slam-dunk copyright violation. Summary judgement means there was no dispute which the judge found worthy of trial. Best coverage on today's decision is on www.cnet.com: the actual URL is too long to type in, go there and grub around a bit. www.mp3.com contains their press release, which argues that mp3.com is actually much more responsible than those lawless Napster people. In a LA Times interview with the RIAA's Hilary Rosen -- reachable through www.mp3.com's news section -- Rosen was asked about what would happen if the RIAA lost the Napster case, and the mp3.com case. Reading between the lines, it sounded to me like Rosen thought the mp3.com case was a slam dunk, but she was deeply worried about the Napster case. The RIAA is asking for six billion-with-a-B dollars in damages: $750 to $150,000 for each CD copied into the my.mp3.com database. The Cnet article quotes copyright lawyers who think that the damages will be nowhere near that high. I'll write more about the Napster case later.
News from Yahoo: Metallica has been taking names. The heavy metal band, which is suing music-swapping company Napster for what the musicians say are massive copyright violations, says it has identified more than 335,000 individuals who were allegedly sharing the band's songs online in violation of copyright laws. The band's attorneys will deliver close to 60,000 pages of documents to the small software company Wednesday afternoon, asking that Napster block all of those individuals from the service. It's the first time Napster or other file-swapping software users have been identified in bulk as potential copyright pirates.
For a viewpoint somewhat opposed to that of Metallica, check out Chuck D's latest Terrordome column: http://publicenemy.com/terrordome/ (You might have to look in the archives for it. It's the May 1, 2000 column). Basically, Chuck D is very much in favor of online trading. Here's a little snippet: "I'm in support of the sharing of music files. I believe that truly another parallel music industry will be created alongside the one that presently exists, and that's the bottom line stake that traditionalists fear. Having been connected to the genre of hiphop and rap music for 22 years, I've witnessed the lack of proper service areas to fully support the majority of artists, songwriters, producers and labels in getting the music to it's fanbase. Although there's this talk about rap/hiphop growth and power, we are still only talking about a sliver of selected artists that participate on a major level." (sorry about the formatting)
Careful, though.... Chuck D sounds like he's in favor of having his own music traded online, and I'm sure he wishes other musicians felt the same way, but I have yet to see him support piracy.
I don't think he's that worried about piracy, but you'd have to read the rest to really get that gist. He's saying that a whole new model of moneymaking would have to develop.
Way back in resp:26, carla asked about what legal defenses Napster
had in the three lawsuits against it.
I found a great article today, dating from April 18, which explains
a lot, very clearly:
http://www.upside.com/texis/mvm/news/news?id=38fb9b1f0
Napster pins its defense on the "Safe Harbor" provisions of the
Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). This provision was
designed to protect service providers who do not have control
over their users -- think your generic ISP, or AOL -- if
their users put copyrighted material on the net.
To qualify for this "safe harbor," the service provider has
an obligation: when a copyright owner complains that infringing
material is hosted by the provider, the provider is to remove
the material promptly.
Napster has a copyright policy which states that they conform to
this principle, and news stories report that Napster has actually
responded to copyright complaints before.
So, what's happened today is that Metallica has called Napster's
bluff. "Here's 355,000 copyright infringers, remove their stuff
from your system." If Napster doesn't comply, then I suspect
their safe harbor immunity goes away.
How will the court rule? I can't predict. The ISP safe harbor
provision was created to allow legitimate businesses to grow without
having to worry about what would happen every time one of their users
infringed on a copyright. Napster has taken that exemption and
used it to build a pirate bazaar for its own benefit. I suspect
the court will be looking for any way possible to nail Napster.
----------
Here's where things could get really unpleasant.
Quoting from the upside.com essay:
"Before 1997, criminal copyright infringement was limited to cases
motivated by financial gain. Then came the No Electronic Theft Act.
The NET Act was designed to criminalize online copying or distribution
of copyrighted works worth more than $1000, even if they were
distributed for free.
(Omit section about the U.Oregon student who was the first victim
of this act, for a website with 1000 MP3 files on it, among
other things.) "The student was facing up to three years in
prison and a $250,000 fine. He got off with probation.
"COnsidering that much stiffer criminal penalties for NET Act
violations take effect on May 1, that student should consider himself
lucky.
"The new NET Act sentencing guidelines will substantially increase
criminal penalties for online copyright infringement...
Under the NET Act, anybody using Napster, Gnutella or any number of
file swapping programs could be criminally liable for willfully
making copyrighted files available for download."
Unfortunately I don't have the new sentencing guidelines available.
The government passed the NET Act -- metaphorically they loaded a gun
and pointed it squarely at kids. The low threshholds established in
the NET Act mean that it is targeted squarely at Napster users --
even if Napster hadn't been invented when the act was passed.
So the only question is, are they going to pull the trigger?
From other articles I've read, it is reported that the RIAA has
so far bent over backwards to avoid targeting individual consumers,
because they're well aware of the backlash that will hit them.
But I'm getting the sense that the RIAA feels its back is getting
pushed against the wall. If the RIAA loses the suit against
Napster, then they won't have any cards left to play except
to target individual users.
I'm intrigued by the issues here, but i do not have a fully thought out approach to them. I'd like to see some modification to the copyright laws [for that matter all intellectual property laws] so that creative ideas such as songs, plays, stories, compositions and other things which are pure information without tangible structure and which are not formed exclusively as plans for a tangible object are treated very differently than such things as objets d'art, architectural plans, inventions and their design specs and plans, etc. The point would be that those things which are part of the *creative* lexicon would be always associated with the names of their creators, but would not be owned, sold or bought, while those things which can be manufactured en masse, or distributed tangibly, and which are considered products (especially products of technology) would benefit from the innovative drive of the marketplace. This would result in the focusing of economic efforts on the development of real products, the value of which is dependent on their success in the marketplace, while creative efforts could be fostered and developed for the pure benefit of the stimulation of the creative impulse. Naturally this would cause a decline in educational focus on the arts, but I freely admit to its being a utopian ideal, under which circumstances the educational system would not be so strongly driven by short-term economic concerns. Final point: I repeat, this is *not* a fully thought out approach, so treat it as such, and if you disagree (which you should feel free to do), I would appreciate it if you remember that.
Hmm and you lambast my ideas about the military being flaky... I actually agree with you on this one but this idea is probably as "out there" as anything I have posted in Agora.
You presented hyperbolic numbers to give your argument the facade of legitimacy, whereas my points above are presented purely wishful thinking. I think I mostly agree with your viewpoints, and that is why I nitpick your arguments. ;)
#47 is presented as if intellectual property and tangible realities could be separated, even in an ideal society. they can't.
you lost me at "even in an ideal society." care to give reasons for your assertion?
It's not that difficult, other. Architectural drawings which result in buildings are still *drawings*. When you look at a house and remark on the creative shaping of the roof, are you remarking on the use of materials, or on the creative process behind it? When you say you detest the shape of a Coke bottle, is it because the curvature doesn't quite fit your hand, or is it because the aesthetic of the curvature is askew? And if the former, isn't that, again, an aesthetic as well as a functional issue? Where is the line between creative and tangible drawn? On the blueprint table? In the final structure? There's no clear point in the creative process where one can say, "A moment ago, we had nothing but ideas. Now we have a concrete object." Rather, tangibles evolve.
i wonder if their fanbase will shrink. <smirk>
Add to this, "An eighteen-year-old boy has got to eat." Thinking is fun, but you can't do it on an empty stomach.
re #52: When your creative process is placed in a fixed medium, do you not have a concrete object?
Ok. I'm a designer. I have an architect working for me. We're hired by a land developer, and given carte blanche to build an office building. I design the building, and describe what I want to my architect, because I can't draw for shit. He draws exactly what I describe. We give it to the contractor. He builds exactly what we drew. SOOOOOOO... the developer owns the concrete object (the building), the architect developed the concrete evidence of the creative process (the architectural plans), and the person who generated the bulk of the creative process owns no actual proof of it. So the person who did the actual thinking gets no protections and no return, and the people who just did exactly what they were told possess the creative process itself? I don't think that's very fair.
Probably because you misunderstand the process, from the outset. Are you arguing that your ideas are not reduced to a fixed medium, at any stage of the process you describe?
No, I've already said what I'm saying. And I also resent you saying that *I* misunderstand the process, when you clearly misunderstand me.
Hmm. seems like i started a bonfire. pardon me while i walk away. ;) (Note: I *did* specify that my input was not well thought out....)
re #58: Your attempting to pick a fight is not helpful. If you failed
to explain yourself clearly, do try again. Until such time as
you do, I will continue to believe that the misunderstanding is
yours. Thanks.
Um, Aaron, you're the one attempting to pick a fight. But, all right, here's other's plan: IF you create something concrete, you get money. If you create something non-concrete, you get kudos. So I think of a cool building. In fact, that's what I do, I think of cool buildings. My architect draws up the plans, a developed builds the building. Everybody agrees that it's a really cool building. So the developper gets money, the architect gets money, and I get to feed my children with praise. Ok. So I learn to draw. I paint a picture of a really cool building. It sits on my wall for ten years. Somewhere along the line, some developper thinks it's a cool building, and hires an architect to design it in 3D. Now the architect gets paid, the developper gets paid, but what about me? Do I get paid, or not? On the one hand, I'd created something that was part of the creation of a tangible product. On the other hand, I didn't mean for it to be. If I'm not paid for painting the painting, why should the architect get paid for drawing a picture, though? So we don't pay me for painting a picture, and we don't pay the architect for drawing one. Why does the developper get paid, when in fact he didn't do anything either? What he did was hire a foreman and give him the picture... that's not concrete. Why pay the foreman? All he did was buy some materials and tell some other guys to put them together. So the foreman doesn't get money, the developper doesn't get money, and we're all living in the glow of Creation. That was my point... in the creation process for something as complex as a building, there are many many people who do nothing but provide or modify ideas, in one form or another. Yet without them there could be no tangible product. If anybody involved in the creation of a tangible product gets money for it, then that should include such absurdities as paying somebody YEARS later because you liked something that was in their painting... if only people involve didrectly in the creatiojn of the tangible object get paid, then who would that be, and where do we draw the line? ..
Did that make you feel better? In any event, litigation is not going well for Napster. They were too late in posting their rules relating to removal of copyright violators, which may have moved them outside of the "safe harbor" protections in the law governing on-line content providers. However, new products on the horizon promise to do what Napster does and more -- creating a self-repairing network of copyrighted goods, which can be downloaded through encrypted connections. The stated goal of one of the developers is to put an end to intellectual property as we know it.
If there is no reward for creative thought, what will be the point of art per se art? It will return to being the domain of the idle rich and bourgeois. (If there is no monetary reward, that is.) Praise is all well and good, but if making a pretty house gets you as much as make an ugly one, then we might as well make ugly ones and cut out the extra work. It's sad.
BTW, Aaron, you ask for a response, and accuse me of picking a fight. I give a response, and your sole response is "Does that make you feel better?" I reiterate: I'm not the one trying to pick a fight. No, it doesn't make me feel better that apparently intelligent human beings think that ART is distinguishable from PRODUCT and that ART should be free and artists should pay their way on the glory of praise. If you'd care to spell out YOUR interpretation of other's suggestion in a way that doesn't make it sound like ars gratia artis leading to impoverished geniuses, feel free. Until then, stop with the condescending barbs.
In your original scenario, Paul, you have to get paid, up front, by the architect interpeting your speech into a drawing (or, alternatively, make a contract describing how the proceeds from the collaboration will be shared). Consider a concert. The singer sings and the audience listens. No record (except memory) is made, so there is nothing to reproduce, nothing to sell later. Alternatively, the singer first writes the song onto paper. The song can then be sold innumberable times. If the performance is recorded on a reproducible medium, then the performance can be sold, too. The only way the performer can get paid for those copies of his performance is if he *controls* the copies. (That's why we can't take tape machines into concerts. It's also why cameras are banned from museums.) Yes, Eric's idea can be made to work, but it won't be easy. At some point, a creator is going to have to be recognised as capable of creation and then supported (fed, clothed, housed) to be free to create. We have that, now. What was that H Ford said about the worker with his feet up on the desk? "He once made me a million dollars like that."
#65> So what you're saying is, that because people are making illegal copies of recorded music, then other's original suggestion is that musicians shouldn't get paid for concerts (which was totally irrelevant to the original thread)? In fact, what you're saying is that Other's plan suggests the ONLY problem with the status quo is rock stars getting paid for concerts? Paint me utterly confused. Look, here's our current system: I do work, I get paid. If I don't like what I'm getting paid for the work I'm doing, I ask for more, or I stop doing it. Sometimes that work involves producing something tangible, sometimes it doesn't. If I do something that's intangible, but creative, I control the creativity behind the thought, as long as I can demonstrate that I did the mental work involved. Maybe the flaw, and where Other's plan runs askew, is in a misunderstanding of what happens AFTER I do the creative work. I write a song. I sing a song. I produce a song. I get paid for all of these tasks. Now, where copyright and intellectual property comes in is, now that I've written the song, nobody else can sing that song (legally) without giving me money. Instead, I can see a system where I get paid for writing a song. If people like how I sing it, then I get paid for that. If they make copies of me singing it, then they give me money for each copy. (So far, that's what we have now.) But if they want to sing the song themselves, they're welcome to do so without paying me more (they have to pay me some initial fee for a copy of the sheet music, perhaps). But this scenario doesn't address the Napster issue, either. Perhaps instead of paying a musician a percentage of sales (ditto an author, or anyone else), we should be paying them a lump sum up front... so, regardless of ticket sales, or book sales, or what have you, the creative artist gets a set amount. Actually, I think that's a better system, and it's one that's been used in the past. Metallica gets paid $1,000,000 for recording "Load." Now, the record company wants to sell copies of it. It's up to the record company to make sure it makes enough profit to justify giving Metallica $1,000,000, and unless Metallica wants to sing those songs in different ways, they're done getting money for *that recording* of *those songs*. I really don't think that MP3 and "free music" will ever stop people from buying recorded music... after all, home taping has existed for decades, and while that's had an effect on sales, there's still a sizeable demographic (including me) who'd rather have the convenience of buying the album without having to worry about errors in copying, download times, finding all the tracks, etc. etc. My point: Other's plan of stripping an artist's financial affiliation with anything intangible is ludicrous. Instead, we might want to reconsider how it is that we pay our artists. Right now, for any NON-creative work, we pay a lump sum for the task, not ongoing dividends. I think we should do the same for creative tasks.
I was out of town last week and am quite behind on the fast-moving news. There are three or four news stories on the Napster case I will try to summarize in the next day or so. Aaron in resp:62 :: On the developers who are working to develop a network to put an end to intellectual property as we know it: I wonder, would we / society want to see this entire effort as a crime? I have occasionally said over the last decade or so that we are moving into the post-copyright era. However, is it possible that society is willing to mount a War in defense of copyright, similar to the War waged against low-level drug users? There's a ZDnet story today, picked up by mp3.com, in which "a senior figure within the music industry... who requested anonymity" predicts that someone will go to jail "within the next four months" for downloading illegal MP3 files. The anonymous source "believes" says that the RIAA is pressuring the legal system to make an example of somebody. This really just restates what I wrote earlier about the No Electronic Theft Act: it's targeted specifically at low-level pirates such as Napster users, and the only question now is whether society is ready to start prosecuting middle-class kids in quantities sufficient to act as a deterrent.
The problem I see with "one lump sum and your done" is that the payer of the lump sum can continue to profit into eternity from the work purchased with that lump sum: the profit from each album sold goes to the payer. The current system is that the person recorded gets a portion of the proceeds from each sale (and so does the songwriter, who may not be the same as the singer). So a really popular singer gets lots of money, while a really unpopular singer gets little money. Under a lump-sum scheme, both will get the same amount, so why bother trying to be popular?
re #64: Does that make you feel better?
re #66: Even if you "pass the buck" from the musician to the recording
company (or to BMI and ASCAP), somebody continues to own the
recording, and needs to collect royalties to make its efforts
worthwhile.
re #67: The funny thing is, if I utilize the "safe harbor" provisions of
the law, I can develop programs that can be "misused" to avoid
copyright law and royalties. If I declare that my intent is to
destroy intellectual property as we know it, I might have a hard
time availing myself of the "safe harbor" provisions. But some of
these programs seem to be on a Usenet model -- where there is no
central storage, or Napster-like server you can point to, but
instead files are distributed across many systems. If the producer
of the software intends to just write and release the program, with
the sole reward being a loss of profits to record companies, there
isn't much that can be done (other than scrambling for the next
technological fix).
It is quite possible that the criminal prosecution of a person
who downloads MP3 files will be attempted. It probably will be
a blatant violation of the law, such that it doesn't look
too sympathetic, and end up backfiring on the industry. But it
won't stop MP3 trading, any more than Kevin Mitnick's conviction
ended cracking. What it will do is advance the alternative
software, which hides the source, file type, and recipient through
encryption.
For the first few years of the internet, searches for sex-related
sites were by far the most common. For the past year, sex is down
to #3, behind MP3-related searches. This isn't going to go away.
(although there is a growing tendency to treat "the Internet" and
"the World-Wide Web" as the same thing, I'm disappointed to see
a long-time user like Aaron [who almost certainly knows better]
make a statement like "for the first few years of the internet.."
For the first *many* years of "the internet" there were no
functional net-wide search tools..)
As usual, the Onion is right on top of things this week, with the
following article lampooning Napster/MP3 hysteria:
http://www.theonion.com/onion3618/kid_rock_starves.html
Consider it mandatory reading before continuing this discussion..
I read somewhere that 70% of college students are using Napster. I f this is true that's a hell of a lot of college kids to throw in jail unless we blatently want to violet the bill of rights equal protection clause and just prsecute a few people as "examples." I think a lump sum is exactly the wrong way to go. The beuty of mp3 is disintermediation. I think the best way to deal with this is for artists to sell their mp3 directly on the internet. One of my favorite singers Kristen Hersh is selling some of her songs only on her web site see: http://www.throwingmusic.com/TM2000/main.html Some bands such as phish encourage their fans to tape at concerts, this seems like a good compramise to me encouraging fans to exchange concert mp3s via say Napster and selling the studio mps directly. This way the artist actually makes more money by cutting out the parasitic middlemen. As for what to do about piracy that is a tough one. I don't think a war on Napster, Gnutella, freenet, is going to be any more effective than prohibtion or the war on drugs both failures IMO. It seems to me the best aproach is educating people that there is no free lunch and working towards furthur disintermediation. Ofcourse this would piss off the record companies and the few artists making millions, but frankly I have little sympathy for either group as there are so many talented muscians barely surviving, maybe this would even out the distributiohn of incomes in the music biz a bit.
(While I admit I haven't read the assigned homework yet,.....) What I'm wondering at the moment is, why is the problem with pirated music so much worse than the problem with pirated software? After all, software generally costs more than music, is a "useful" item rather than a luxury, and the information you need to crack a piece of software is easier to transmit -- often just a short password. Was there a similar software pirating kafuffle that I'm just too young to remember, or is there some reason that music pirating is having a bigger deal made of it? (And what's the #2 net search? I mean, really, between sex and music, what else is left, right?)
There was a bigger anit pirating of software stink in the 80s. Some software companies went so far as distributing a dongle which was a piece of hardware that you had to plug in to use the software. This was so unpopular that eventually the software companies back off and just barked without biting. The only reason I can think of that the music is different is their is more choice out there. i think some software companies figured out that if people pirated say Microsoft Word that it helped establish it as a standard so in the long run it may helped their sales. There is no analgous situation in music so I guess the record companies feel they have nothing to lose and a lot to gain by trying to put the clamp down as hard as possible on mp3. IMO it's not going to work with distributed networks like Gnutella. I think some other economic model will need to be developed (see my response 71) and that some pirating will be inevitable in the digtal age unless we want a staliesque police state decrypting and tracking every single packet on the internet.
First off, I think some of you are misreading my lump sum example. To the person who asked about whether Metallica and, say, Kilgore Trout's Jug Band would receive the same amount, clearly not. Metallica would contractualize a lump sum. That's like asking if an entry level secretary and a secretary with 25 years of experience would garner the same salary. Take actors. Harrison Ford can pretty much name his salary; if David Schwimmer wanted to make an action thriller, though, I doubt he could (while, in contrast, David Schimmer et al *did* name their price recently to continue making "Friends"). This is true under a royalties system, too -- Metallica can insist on a higher percentage of profits, etc., than Kilgore Trout's Jug Band, who should just be happy having a record contract, given that the sold 500 units last year. Next, the artists can currently get in the mix, as it were, because people who use Napster ARE stealing from them. I have no sympathy for record labels, but there are starving musicians out there (not Lars and co., but hey). Under a royalty system, every time somebody makes a copy of a copy, that's money that they (potentially) lost. If they get a lump sum, go home, go make more music, then they're not getting stolen from. At any rate, Aaron, stop with the condescension and answer the fucking question. Please illustrate how Metallica gets $1 for writing a song, under other's system. Then explain how Napster isn't ripping Metallica off, again under other's system. Or shut the fuck up.
From the Onion article mentioned above (titled: "Kid Rock Starves to Death,
MP3 Piracy Banned.")
"Napster killed Kid Rock, there's no doubt about it," Rosen said. "As
soon as that web site went up last October, people stopped buying his
music. It's not surprising, either: Why would anyone in their right
mind pay $12.99 for a CD with artwork when they could simply spend
seven hours downloading the compressed MP3 files of all the album's
songs onto their home computer's desktop, decompress it into an AIFF
sound file, and then burn the data onto a blank CD?"
I'd like to reiterate, btw, that my model is based on how every other sector of capitalism works. At my job, I do work. I get paid. IF the product sells well, I get a raise for my future work. Some companies do pay bonuses, but I can't imagine the designer of the Ford Taurus, for instance, getting 1% for every Taurus that sells. Instead, if the Taurus sells better than anticipated, the designer might get a single bonus for his work on it. In the same way, Metallica "works" for whatever record company they're with. If they think they can sell product better independently, go for it (as Ani DiFranco did, quite well, and many others do, very poorly). They turn out a product, the record company pays them for their work (under my system), and off we go. If it sells much better than anticipated, Metallica gets a bonus. On the software piracy issue> You're too young. Been there, done that. Software companies tried various things, such as making software that required the disc to be in the drive, or writing a code on the distribution floppy to indicate that the software had been installed, or including a non-producible code sheet with the software, or some other difficult-to-reproduce password system... they've all been abandoned, probably because of consumer complaint. The problem was, if you lost the distribution disk or the password sheet, you were screwed. Also, a sizable sector of the software market, business software, is overwhelmingly consumed by companies which are large enough that they don't want to risk lawsuits with unlicenced or improperly licensed software. Most major corporations have policies about putting software on the network; this is in part a irus security issue, but also out of fear that Microsoft or whomever will find out they've got improperly licensed software. So Microsoft doesn't spend a lot of time worrying about the little guys, since they're getting the money they want from the big guys. Maybe MP3s will settle into a shareware-style environment, with individual artists offering songs for a "whatever you want to pay" fee, as long as you do the download and you provide the media. shareware still exists, despite capitalist nay-sayers, so it must be making at least a few shekels for somebody. At any rate, I think the beef here is with the record companies, not with the artists, and that's why I'm confused that other's system penalizes the artists and rewards the record companies, by my read. (Aaron once again, is welcome to provide a reasonable read of other's post that contradicts this interpretation.) (And no, Aaron, before you ask again, I don't feel better, since I didn't feel bad to begin with.)
#75> Actually, the quote brings up a good point. Mybrother used to buy albums ONLY for the artwork. That's how I wound up with a few of my albums. Granted, he bought used, and this was in the days of the LP, but all the same....
To me, the fact of an artist (or a record company) getting a royalty every time someone plays a song they wrote/recorded/produced is the equivalent of an architect (or a building contractor) getting a royalty every time someone enters a building they designed/built. My point is that entertainment is the only industry in which the creative efforts at the core of the product are rewarded out of measure with the efforts themselves (i.e. in perpetuity as opposed to one-time). Suppose we treated musicians the same way we treat designers, architects, layout artists, window dressers, etc. Artists would be a paid a one-time fee for writing a song, and then would be paid additional fees for each time they perform the song *themselves*. Recordings would be distributed freely, and (and here's the real shocker) recorded music would be the inducement to come and see live performances, as opposed to the current system in which performances are done to induce people to buy recordings at inflated prices which result in record industry executives and a very few artists being made wealthy beyond reason. Writing and performing popular music is work, and for many it is enjoyable work. If we are going to treat the creation of art as an industry, then we should do it in a way which levels the field so that people get paid for the work they do when they do it, not over and over again for one piece of work they did way back when. This way, *good* musicians will have just as much chance to get their work out as those 'selected' by industry executives, and market forces will result in artists whose music is proven popular (by, sayyyy, the number of downloads...??!) being given the opportunity to perform for people willing to pay to see and hear them do so. Artist: Here's an MP3 I made. Independent promoter/producer: Wow. Lots of people here like your stuff. Want to come to XXXXX and play a concert? If it sells well, I might even pay for you to record additional stuff so more people will want to come to your concerts (assuming you agree to have me produce/promote the concerts.) (This works a little like life. You do work for free -- either as a volunteer or in school -- to build up a portfolio. Then, if someone decides they like it enough to pay you to do more, you do more. If you don't like the terms, you renegotiate. If you can't do that, then you take your portfolio and look for someone else who likes your work. If your work is bad enough that you can't find anone who will pay you to do it, then you either learn to do it better or you do something else.)
Your proposed system is pretty hard on musicians who either can't or won't spend a huge amount of their time touring.. I'm not sure I see what's in it for the musician to switch over from the current system.
I'm not assuming it is particularly attractive, but the reality is that a lot of people spend a lot of their lives pursuing the dream of stardom in music and never get much out of it. At least this way, the goals would be lowered to a more realistic level so that those people who really want to make music and be good at it will try to make a living at it (while anyone who wants to can still do it for their own pleasure). It simply levels the field. You do the work. You make a living. If you're really good at it, you make a better living. Of course it's less attractive. Would the lottery have any appeal if you only got $500 a week for winning it, but still had to work 40 hours each week to collect?
re #78 It also ignores the fact that some muscians work is difficult or impossible to perform live. John Oswald (does music involving tens of thopusands of samples per cd) and Brian Eno spring to mind here. Also a lot hip hop and certain kinds of elctronica aren't as enjoyable live. Does anyone have any response to my idea of muscians directly marketing their songs? It would not be an overnight solution but it seems like a viable economic model for muscians to migrate towards over time. It seems to work for Ani Difranco, couldn't this work for other muscians?
#80 slipped in..
100 years ago there were no recording artists. If you wanted to be a professional musician you almost certainly made all your money from performances. Is there any reason why we need to hang on to our current model so hard?
Well, for all its flaws, we know the current model works, good and interesting music gets made under it, and musicians find enough incentive to keep working. For all people complain about record companies stifling innovation, there seems to be a lot more variety in music, reaching a lot wider of an audience, than there was under other models we know of. I imagine it's tempting to cling to what you know works, rather than strike off into the great unknown. More to the point, since things will change whether we want them to or not, it makes good sense to cling to those aspects of the current model that work especially well. There's nothing irrational about trying to have the things that change be the things that weren't working so well in the first place.
re #70: And I'm always disappointed when people ignore obvious intent to
split semantic hairs. I guess we both have our burdens to bear. ;)
re #71: How does it "violet" somebody's rights to not be prosecuted for
a crime? (Or do you think that criminal indictments are like
bubblegum -- if you bring enough for one person, you have to bring
enough for everybody?)
re #72: I think that the licensing issue, and bundling, make it easier to
stay profitable as a software manufacturer, despite widespread
software piracy. Institutional customers really do put themselves
at risk if they don't license their software, even if the typical
consumer pirates four out of five applications on their home PC.
But I don't think that UM or General Motors will be negotiating
a deal with Warner to put a CD collection on every worker's desk,
any time soon.
re #74: Who is being condescending? I seriously want to know if your
little tantrums make you feel better? Do they?
If you feel fine, why do you insert an outburst into every remark?
re #78: Actually, there have been some interesting cases over the
intellectual property rights of architects, which relate to such
things as photographic reproduction of the architect's work, or
modifications to a signature building.
re #79: It's also probably hard on a composer, who simply writes for other
artists. Or somebody like Prince, who has contributed to the
repertoires of The Bangles, Kenny Rogers, Ray Charles, Sinead
O'Connor, and many other artists, in addition to having his own
recording career.
I'm curious why the "few big stars" model which we've been living with is good, though. I'd rather see many local/regional bands, even if they aren't as perfectly polished. Back several hundred years ago, composers would freely take melodies and such from each other. The idea was to see who could do the best arrangements with them.
#85> *shrug* This is how I post. Other people have said I seem to be tantrumming, or incindiery, or confrontational, or whatever. The only thing that's accurate there is the confrontational bit. I don't like it when idiots open their mouths around me. I find it ironic and vindicating thta, in the end, it turns out that other's restatement of his stance sounds almost exactly like what I explicitly said, even though you, Aaron, insisted I was the one who was confused. The only thing I was confused about was the level to which other's original plan agreed with mine.
Did that make you feel better?
oh shut up
Thank you both, *so much* for playing.. Can you perhaps take all of the "I know you are, but what am I" and "am not, are too" to e-mail?
"The last word..." Personally, I find these spats mildly entertaining. Of course, if people wanted to stop providing me such entertainments, they could simply *ignore* provocative comments which detract from the discussion at hand. Why anyone would deny me thusly, though, I'll never know... ;)
I find it annoying to have a decent discussion goobered up with people who get a little too steamed.
#91 expurgated. I apologize for allowing Aaron's behavior to affect my posts. I'm really not in the emotional state that's been attributed to me. *shrug* Anybody who wishes to go back to the original thread, please do so. Anybody who wishes to address the issue of whose behavior is juvenile, irritating, or whatnot, please don't. For my part, I'm done with the personal comments and commentary in this item.
Um, Paul -- I hate to break it to you, but you were the leader, and I chose not to follow in *your* footsteps. Mind you, you can delude yourself as to what really happened... if it makes you feel better. :*
Aaron: the "he started it" defense (valid or not) only protects those who are twelve years old or younger (physical age, not maturity.) I realize your specialty is criminal law, but I'm surprised that that wasn't covered as part of your education.
re #96: As delightful as it would be to answer you in kind, I will
instead remind you that we are supposed to be discussing MP3's.
We are supposed to be discussing MP3s and yet, for some strange reason, we are not.. Hmmmm.. Anyway, back on track -- Wired News had an amusing article this week about a diatribe Courtney Love apparently indulged in when asked to address a recording-industry group of some sort (the mind boggles..) Those who read the article will find that Love's position is apparently akin to some of those espoused here.. (in the interests of fairness, former proponents of such views will be allowed to revise and/or "clarify" their positions as necessary to avoid being in agreement with Love.. ;-)
I am perfectly happy to agree with Courtney. She's my heroin. Er, heroine. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,36410,00.html
"Maybe they'll give tips." Heh. To be fair, I kind of expect that the system would work much like the shareware system works. MP3's could be be encoded with a shareware reminder at the beginning or end, and for a small fee, access can be made available to a notice-free replacement file, along with additional tracks. Lot of people will share the tracks that one person has paid for, and lots of people will pay the small fee. But the artists will get the fees directly.
Chuck D's article says that other forms of money making will be "discovered or rediscovered". I'll agree that it's pretty hard to make money with the current download model, but there's an incredible market for whoever can figure it out first. And no, some form of copy protection is *not* an option that makes any sense.
I don't think that voluntary payment systems are likely to work. Microsoft's proposal is in some ways the most viable -- create a proprietary format, and sue anybody who utilizes that format without paying royalties.
The real question is who's getting payed here? Remeber the artist is making 5% of the purchuse price of a cd in Royalties. If the artist produced their own mp3 and sold them direct they would making damn near 100% of royaliaties (100%- transaction charge and promotion fees) thus even if their sales were lower and there was some piracy of the mp3s it seems likely that they could still make a living due to the higher profit margin. The record industry will argue that artisits need the hype machine to make money but I don't think it's true, Ani Difranco, Phish, and the Grateful Dead make money without hype, I think is true of some eltronica artists like the Orb as well, REM was not heavily hyped in their early days when they were on IRS records, neither were the Dead Kennedies, nor the Indigo Girls. If an artist is good they can make good money by word of mouth. I think direct sales on the internet only increses this potential.
Another interesting twist that occurred to me yesterday is that there are people who could turn a profit selling mp3s -- the smaller-name artists, who don't have a wide enough following for mp3 trading to build up momentum. I'm not gonna pay for a Dave Mathews Band mp3 when I can turn dozens of them up for free with a few minutes on the web, and not many other people are going to either, so Dave Mathews stands to lose a lot of money on the mp3 thing. But I heard recently that Rickie Lee Jones is going to be selling mp3s of an obscure side project of hers called Austin Chain, and hell yeah, I'd buy those, because I've checked, and _nobody_ has them on the web. Austin Chain, by virtue of their obscurity, actually stands to make a little money through mp3 sales. More support for the idea that we're gonna see a return to lots of small local bands?
re #105 Nods Kristen Hersh made some obscure tracks available as mp3s on her web site that I may purchuse if I can save the money. More badwidth wouls help too, it's a pain waiting almost an hour for each track to download at 33.6.
Personally, I really hope that we'll see the smaller bands get a lot more circulation.
The hype machine sells records. They hype machine turns crap like Silver Chair into a multi-million dollar return. Remember MC Hammer? He negogiated himself a wonderful first record contract, because he knew how much money he could make selling his own CD's from the trunk of his car. But he knew he would make a *lot* more money if he could take advantage of the hype machine. And boy, did he. Some band you have never heard of can try to sell its MP3's on its own website. Odds are, you'll never hear of the band or visit its website. Maybe, one day, somebody will send you an MP3 file from the band, and you'll be enticed to go and visit the 404 error that used to be its website. Or maybe it will go into your collection of "MP3 files I got for free" to be listened to at a later date, or to be forgotten. Ask that band if they would like to team up with the "hype machine" for a record or two.
Some would, some wouldn't. Ani DiFranco has basically told the major labels to go play with themselves. She self-releases 2 or more albums a year and is estimated to have earned about $4 million. The Grateful Dead were the most successful touring rock band through most of the 1980s, and for much of that period they didn't have a record contract. They encouraged their fans to trade live recordings. The Dead's major-label recordings never sold very much. The hype machine can sell records in the short term. Maybe. But there are too many stories of musicians who were ground up and spit out when the label accountants decided that sales had been inadequate; or when the label was acquired in a merger. (The Universal Music Group merger was supposed to result in about 200 pop/rock performers being dumped, though I never saw a comprehensive list.) And the contracts are routinely written so that the musician has a maximum amount of difficulty in restarting the career. There are signs that musicians who aren't likely to become pop megastars are catching on; the New York Times recently ran a story about a guy signed by a major label who was keeping his UPS job. This is a serious digression, alas.
Example: Prince, who has just reclaimed that name -- because the contract he had been under gave the record company the rights to his own damn name -- since said contract has now expired. Pardon the gobblywangered sentence structure.
re #109: Exceptions really don't prove the rule. Nobody is questioning
that it is possible to hit it big without the help of a major
(or perhaps even a minor) label. It is a rarity, but it happens.
I think the problem with short-lived bands is first that the
hype machine propels a lot of mediocrity into stardom -- that's
hard to sustain without talent -- and second that the type of
money a lot of these bands makes has a corrosive effect on their
unity. Yes, record labels will dump bands if their bean counters
tell them to, and it may be possible for those bands to eke out
an existence afterward, without the help of a record label. But
bands which have passed their prime, or were never any good in
the first place, will have a hard time making it on their own.
re #110: How big was that record deal, again?
Here's how the MP3 thing will work as I see it, people will trade MP3s for free, the record companies will make no money, the artist will make no money, any other plan devised will not work because the ability to do this already exists. Any proprietary format will just be converted to MP3 and traded for free. Any sale of MP3s will fail because once a few people pay, they will just distribute them for free. Eventually enough people will do this to make it not worth recording new music. As for artist making bigger profits selling MP3s, I can tell you I know one band doing this, and they say at $.99 a song they pretty much break even. People that don't want to pay $12.99 for a CD aren't likely to pay much more than $.99 for an MP3 either. I also know several reasonably popular bands that lose money touring, so thinking that will make up for lost CD revenues doesn't work either. Unknown artist getting known by distributing MP3s is another problem. Doesn't help to get a bigger following if none of them spend any money. I can see some big cchanges coming, and they don't look good to me..
It will eventually become difficult to make a lucrative career out of being a "recording artist". actually, it already is incredibily difficult. On the other hand, whenever I start paying attention to local bands I usually end up finding some music I really like. And those local bands will benefit from the technology of distribution.
If you're losing money touring, then either you're not doing it right, or you have an inflated idea of how popular you are, or you shouldn't be doing it. The point is you have to market the band and the music, and touring can be a part of that effort, but you have to contain the expenses appropriately. On the other hand, "losing money" could be just the wrong way of looking at an effort that is actually an "investment" in the marketing effort, but you still have to plan it properly. It is a business, and if you don't run it like one, you lose money.
From USA Today: "A study suggests that Internet file-sharing programs such as Napster can cut record sales. An analysis of sales within 5 miles of colleges (where Napster use is extensive) found a drop of 4% to 7% from 1998 to 2000, while national sales increased 20%." The study was done by VNU Entertainment and is being flogged by Reciprocal, "a digital-rights management firm." I haven't seen the detailed study, but one problem seems to be that they are comparing per-store sales at the college locations to overall industry sales. With the boom in megastores, it may be that college students are just ditching the local shops and driving to the nearest megastore. The sales shift to Internet retailers has also been large in the study period. Still this does square with the anecdotal evidence I've seen in my two college towns. Smaller stores are shuttering; the Tower stores -- especially Ann Arbor -- seem to be cutting the floor space for CDs and moving in more assorted geegaws for sale.
Perhaps the key figure there in National sales are up 20%. I think people will continue to bu CDs because it's easier to get the music and better sound quality, + artwork, etc. Even with a high speed connection it would take an hour to download an entire CD. College students may have that time, but I think most people in the real world would not. For people ITRW I think use Napster to download single songs to see what an artisit sounds like and then purchuse a CD bases on this. I know from listening to a couple Aphex Twin mp3s I would be more likely to purchuse their music now. The overall trend is increased sales and I think Napster et al. could help this, esp. if supplemented by direct sales by artisits.
re #115: I think kids in college communities are also more likely to
use Internet discounters.
I think that Napster will have the biggest effect on recordings aimed
at the market with the least money -- that is to say, high school and
college kids. Adults are much less likely to obsess over spending $14
for a CD, as opposed to spending hours downloading music and building
their own. The net effect may well be that the record industry starts
aiming toward a slightly older market.
Cassette tapes were supposed to kill the recording industry, and then
DAT was supposed to be the end. While MP3's have caught on in a way
that DAT did not, and are becoming a viable mainstream recording
format, I don't think it's the end of the road for commercially
produced tapes and CD's.
High school and college kids may be the market with the least money, but they prop up a good-sized chunk of the music industry as it now stands.
Cnet has coverage of the study, which was done by SoundScan division VNU Marketing, at a URL which is too ugly to consider typing in. Cnet's story pretty much shreds the claims about Napster: "The drop in college music store sales was more pronounded in 1998 than in 1999 -- a year before Napster was written..." They interview a number of record store managers who say that the bigger competition is Internet stores and the big chain megastores.
re #118: Right. But you have to pitch your products at the market that
will *pay* for them.
Those of you who have cable can tune into MTV at 10:00 this evening, for a half-hour special presentation, "Napster: Grand Theft Audio?"
I meant to put this in a while ago. The Village Voice carried a story on a report by an investment research group: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0021/howe.shtml I suspect this represents real research for investors, as compared with the Soundscan study of college CD shop sales, which was pushing the music business point of view. This study can't be pushing a music industry point of view, because its conclusion is that all parts of the industry are screwed. Paraphrasing from the report: The study's worst case scenario estimates that 16% of US music sales will be lost to Internet piracy by 2002. Even if the record industry wins its current battles against Napster and MP3.com, more applications will come along to replace them. Some sort of encryption system might help, but the SDMI process to develop secure downloadable music has broken down. They were supposed to have a standard a year ago, so products could be on the shelves for Christmas 1999; now it looks like product deliveries in 2003. Too much squabbling between the involved parties in the SDMI group. The big record labels will have to push into selling Internet downloads directly to consumers; when they do that, they will piss off the brick-n-mortar CD stores, who currently generate 80% of sales. The study says the stores will "retaliate" against the labels, but I don't see how -- they're CD stores!! What else are they going to sell? So look for two or three years of bitter fighting between the labels and the record stores, with the record stores being "on the ropes" by 2003.
John Hockenberry, one of my fave guys, writes an essay for MSNBC.com today. "Give Me Napster, or Give Me Death" is the title. The URL is unmanageable, you can find it from mp3.com. Nothing earthshaking really, except Hockenberry's comparison of mp3-swapping technologies with the new communication technologies which were involved with the fall of the Soviet empire and the Palestinian uprising. Hockenberry's conclusion is that saving the music business would require "a Stalinist-style licensing system for the transfer of information."
I haven't read the article yet, but I basically agree with his premise as phrased above. The technological cat's out of the bag at this point and I can conceive of no way for the copyright interests to put it back. At this point the main option remaining to them is the one they seem to be committed to -- push for greater criminalization and prosecution of intellectual property offenses as a deterrant. Unfortunately, there's plenty of evidence to suggest that that approach will never work..
(I suppose they do have one other option available to them: produce music so uninteresting that nobody will be motivated to copy it. Sometimes it seems like they're pursuing that plan as well..)
The Lords of Music are coming out with big speeches on how Copyright Must Be Defended or The Economy Will Collapse. Edgar Bronfman of Seagram's was the first. (Did you know Seagram's owns the world's largest music company? They own Universal Music Group.) Michael Eisner weighed in with a similar speech; come to think of it, Eisner is only a bit player in music, as Disney's Hollywood Music label has mostly been a business boondoggle. It occurred to me that one of the premises of the copyright system was that "reproducing machines," in the most general sense, were expensive things owned by businesses. Businesses were few enough, and sensitive enough to economic deterrents such as legal judgements, that the legal system -- mostly tort lawsuits -- could police the use of these machines. But now ordinary consumers have reproducing machines. This breaks the copyright enforcement system through an overload of violations.
Disney knows that today's audio bootlegging will eventually become tomorrow's video bootlegging.
I've lost the reference to the speech by Michael Eisner of Disney, but he wants Congress to mandate that computers and ISPs be made incapable of making or transmitting illegal copies. Maybe we'll see people busted for Illegal Possession of an Unrestricted Computer. (only 1/2 :) ) The record industry, in its suit against Napster, is asking for a preliminary injunction to shut Napster down immediately. It's startling that they are submitting the discredited Soundscan study to support their claim that Napster damages sales at CD stores near colleges. This is the study, remember, that shows that Napster damaged college-area store sales a year before it was created. (You can find this story on most music and tech web news sites.)
Unless I am mistaken, their serious overreaching on this issue is likely to bite them, hard. They've got the money on their side, but I don't think they can really win this one.
I don't have any MP3s or even any sound files on my computer. I have never been to Napster's web site. I think of myself as being as much into music as anybody. But it has been years since I have bought a new music CD for myself. It's not that I'm impoverished, but the sticker shock is pretty intense. A CD costs maybe a buck to create, maybe another dollar to package and ship to retailers. I just plain can't swallow paying $12 or $14 or $20 for it. These prices are so breathtakingly high not because of the value of the CD, but because of the power of the incredibly concentrated music industry. The last time formats were changed -- from LPs to CDs -- they benefited in two ways: (1) CDs are much cheaper to make than LPs, and (2) their monopoly power gave them the ability to price the CDs considerably higher than LPs. And outside the U.S., for example in Europe, CD prices are double what they are here. The music cartel and its handful of chosen stars have grown incredibly fat on the system they have created. They have been able to induce Congress to write steadily more unreasonable and draconian copyright laws. And they're not satisfied yet, witness Eisner's desire for computers which are incapable of copying sound files. I have no sympathy for the RIAA and the corrupt system it is trying to defend.
I think that puts you in the solid majority. The RIAA has very few defenders outside of the music industry. If Eisner is really calling for the law to mandate the restriction of computers such that they cannot be used to copy audio and video content then he's truly, deeply ignorant about computer technology. There's simply no way you could produce a general purpose computing device that couldn't somehow be made to do the sorts of things Eisner wishes computers wouldn't do, and any steps taken to enforce such a scheme with technology would be so intrusive that consumers wouldn't stand for them. Of course the danger is that the mere fact that something isn't reasonable or can't be enforced has never proven an effective bar to legislative attempts to "fix" problems before, and a worrying number of our legislators are shockingly clueless when it comes to technology issues.
inside.com reports that the RIAA brief requesting an injunction against
Napster also includes damning email exchanges from among the Napster
founders indicating that the founders knew they were building a
company based on piracy; their business plan called for destroying
the record company profits and forcing them into a deal with Napster.
http://www.inside.com/story/Story_Cached/0,2770,5752,00.html
I have not seen this aspect of the story reported elsewhere.
---
Salon and other sites print a complete transcript of Courtney Love's
speech slamming the current music industry business model as
completely unfair to artists.
---
As for Michael Eisner: I thought that perhaps I had misrepresented
his views, but I found my source story:
"Walt Disney Co. chief executive Michael Eisner came to Washington
to lobby members of Congress for a new law that would require
Internet service providers and computer makers to create
technological barriers to block anyone from making an unauthorized
copy of copyrighted material."
Washington Post, June 13, "Record Firms Say Napster Hurt Sales"
Another report of a musician ditching record companies and going it alone: the Usenet folk music groups carry a mention that Andy Irvine has issued his second self-released album. The name won't mean much to anyone except Twila; Irvine was in the tremendously influential band Sweeney's Men in 1968 and is generally credited with introducing the Greek bouzouki into Irish folk music.
http://www.dannybarnes.com
(generally credited with introducing the Greek bouzouki into Irish folk? good grief!) The "content production" industries have been so successful in lobbying lawmakers for more sever penalties for copyright infringement that it seems possible that Eisner, et al., haven't considered that there's a difference between lobbying for laws that impose greater restrictions or more penalties on folks who don't have the money or organization to lobby back (e.g. students, random computer users) and passing legislation which imposes heavy burdens on ISPs and computer manufacturers, who definitely *will* be interested in making sure that responsibility for protecting Eisner's profits isn't a burden that gets placed on their shoulders.
(Are you opposed to the introduction of the Greek bouzouki into Irish folk music?)
Many news sites have been reporting that mp3.com is settling licensing deals with various labels in the wake of their court loss to the RIAA. inside.com attempts to analyze the financial situation, and they conclude that after mp3.com settles with the songwriters and all the labels, that there is no way for them to come up with a profitable business model for the my.mp3.com streaming service, even if they charge an annual subscription fee of $10 to their users. ..
Um... I don't get where the price of a CD is 'breathtakingly' high.. $12? You can't afford $12?? I see 16 year old kids driving around in Lexus' and BMW's with cellphones and pagers, $150 sneakers, designer clothes, and they don't want to pay $12 for a CD... gimmme a break people.. geez, an LP was like $8-$10 25 years ago.. figure in inflation and all and I don't see where CDs are overpriced.. you pay over a buck nowdays for a bottle of sugerwater 'cause it has the name Pepsi or Coke on it.. how much does that cost them to make?
(great music business item . . thanks)
re #138: $12? When was the last time you bought a CD?
re #140: a couple of weeks ago. I used the $12 figure because that was what someone else mentioned. Okay, let's change it to what I normally pay for a new release. $12.99? You can't pay $12.99 for a CD?
Finally, a force which can undermine the march of MP3s! It turns out the darn things are under patents, and the patent holder is now starting to collect royalties from download sites, web radio sites and software companies using the MP3 format. Holy GIF file, Batman! :) A group of open-source types are working on a replacement royalty-free version called Vorbis. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-2091466.html
Re 138. I don't have a Lexus or BMW or anything approaching it, indeed, I didn't have a car at all until I was married and benefited from pooling incomes. My shoes cost a small fraction of $150 and have to last a long time; I don't buy designer clothes and neither does my wife. A huge chunk of our income goes to paying off student loans, and will for years. I'm glad you're feeling wealthy, but I am not. Yes, twelve bucks, or I guess sixteen bucks or twenty-five bucks, is a breathtaking price to pay for a piece of plastic that costs probably $1.50 to manufacture and distribute. (Out of the remaining money, what does the artist get -- a few cents per CD? Funny thing!) That's why I haven't bought any new CDs for myself in years. I used to buy CDs occasionally at concerts (where typically the artist DOES get more than a trivial share of the money), but I don't get out to many concerts any more. I suppose you should be happy I'm not fooling around with Napster and MP3's either. But you probably think I'm guilty of piracy for listening to the radio but tuning out the commercials. Feh.
5.7 cents/song for mechanical reproduction. probably another 5 cents or so to the songwritter.
Re 143. Oops, sorry about the terrible formatting.
re #142: Nearly everything's under patent these days -- it's getting to be prohibitively difficult to write a useful free software application that's not encumbered. I wonder, though, what makes the patent holders think they have the rights to control the works produced using their invention. If their patents are valid they probably have the right to control who makes software or hardware that encodes or decodes MP3s, but how is a site infringing on their patent merely by storing a stream of bytes conforming to the MP3 format?
Why would I think someone guilty of piracy for listening to the radio? Radio stations generally comply with the copyright laws (unless you're listening to a pirate station). And you should realize I'm speaking in general terms. There are a lot of people out there that CAN afford CDs, but will still download the songs for free instead of buying them. I'm also sure there area lot of musicians that are glad to hear that people are doing them a big favor in there struggles with the record companies by not buying any of their CDs. I know if I was only getting a small return on each copy I'd want to sell as few as possible
That's an interesting aproach to economics.
Re 147. No, you don't get it, do you? I'm not doing anyone a big favor. I'm simply not interested in CDs at the current much-too-high prices. Think back to economics, if you ever studied it. This is a concept called "elasticity of demand". If you raise the price too high, many people will choose not to buy. If you lower the price, demand will increase. A product for which the demand is inelastic will sell the same number of units almost regardless of the price. The example often given is salt. The price of table salt could triple without affecting the quantity sold very much. When demand for a product is elastic, then the number of units sold will rise rapidly with declines in price. Quite likely, the total amount of money spent on the product will increase because the higher sales volume more than makes up for the lower number of units sold. The demand for CDs is, I would argue, highly elastic. Certainly my own personal demand for CDs is elastic. If CDs were in the range of $3 to $5, I would probably be buying them frequently. With CDs in the $12 to $25 range, the quantity I purchase is simply zero. The fact that these high prices are maintained by to monopolistic advantage is all the more reason to refrain from taking part in this market. At a concert, when I used to attend concerts, I would make an exception. The fact that the artist got more of the money helped reconcile me to what was still an extraordinarily high price. That consideration simply does not apply to CDs in stores. I'm sorry you have so much trouble with this simple concept.
And I'm sorry you are having so much trouble with the simple concept that I am not speaking specifically about you. Yes, there are other people in the world, ya know.
Thing is, he's not alone. There are a couple of CDs I'd really like to have, but I can't pay the price for them right now. Were the price to drop to $5, I'd get them.
I'd buy a lot more CDs if they were $5 each. I've seen some new releases go for $8-10 (Tracy Bonham, Tara MacLean). Why not price other new releases in that range?
yeah no doubt.
http://www.inside.com/story/Story_Cached/0,2770,6643_0,00.html "Hatch Warns Labels, Don't Make Me Come Over There And Spank You" This was the most entertaining report on this week's hearings at the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Detroit News ran an editorial cartoon depicting a elderly Senator asking: "So how will Napster affect the sale of 8-track tapes?" But in all the reports I've seen, committee chairman Orrin Hatch showed a good grasp of both the technical and social issues. Hatch brings an interesting perspective to this conflict, since he is a songwriter in the Christian music business. (I had not known that.) Hatch criticized the music industry for trying to use copyright as an absolute control over the use of their music. He pushed for an expansive view of fair use to cover casual sharing of recordings. When Hilary Rosen of the RIAA objected to Hatch's views on fair use, Hatch pointedly remarked that Congress determined what copyright was. Hatch threatened to push for a mechanical compulsory licensing system, for online music, similar to that for songwriting, if the music industry does no reach "fair and reasonable" licensing agreements with the online companies. Hatch also complained that the inclination of the 4 major companies to only deal with online entities which they control tended to freeze out independent music companies and could become an antitrust issue. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California took the music industry position in criticizing the Napster representative.
Feature story in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/07/biztech/articles/20tune.html "Unknown Musicians Finding Payoffs Through the Internet Jukebox" This was a front-page feature in the National print edition writing up some of the musicians who have made a little money, or even a lot of money, from MP3 downloads. "The Internet's emerging role as an equal opportunity jukebox is providing new ways to make a modest income from a relatively small base of fans." The earnings star appears to be "Ernesto Cortazar, a 60-year-old Mexican composer for films who has mainly performed in piano bars and who has earned more than $100,000 from his online efforts."
For the record: the story is published everywhere, you should have no trouble finding it. Judge Marilyn Patel granted the immediate injunction sought by the RIAA against Napster. Napster is to shut down the operations which enable file trading by midnight Friday, Pacific time.
Two opposing pundit views on the aftermath of the Napster injunction: The Washington Post says that the precedent of the Napster injunction is a powerful tool which leaves the RIAA and copyright holders in the driver's seat on the distribution of intellectual property on the web. In particular, the Post author thinks even small-time operators of Gnutella directories will be sued. http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56246-2000Jul27.html Salon says that the RIAA has won the battle but lost the war. Napster the company was an entity which the record labels could have made deals with; Napster the phenomenon, as represented by the 20 million users eager to exchange free music, isn't going anywhere, and now it will be much less controllable. http://www.salon.com/tech/col/rose/2000/07/27/napster_shutdown/index.html
It's hard to disagree with either of those two points, except to note that the value of the Napster injunction "precedent" isn't set in stone - it will change once the RIAA/Napster suit is decided..
Most people will have heard this by now (at least if the news coverage I encountered was typical) but the appeals court has issued an order staying the Wednesday injunction which ordered Napster to shut down by the end of the day. To put it more plainly, it appears Napster will be allowed to operate while the trial is conducted (unless the appeals court's ruling is itself reversed.)
I heard an NPR interview on this.. I don't remember the name of the interviewee, but the gist of the interview is that this technology basically cannot be stopped-- users will go elsewhere if Napster is shut down, or they won't care much. Either way, try as they might, the RIAA can't keep a lid on all of this issue, and it would be better if they worked it the way other media have been treated, i.e., how the film industry turned to video to actually *increase* their profits, and how cable companies have worked to make legitimate subscription a real value. Basically, the RIAA just needs to get their paws into this and turn it to their own ends.
Interesting article at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/state/updates/lat_needle000801.htm
Apparently the music and video industires aren't the only ones terrified
about what unauthorized digital distribution is going to do to their
industry. The latest front in the raging intellectual property war is
(wait for it..): needlepoint
Apparently, overly frugal needlepoint fans are exchanging patterns with
one another [don't they know how dangerous it is to share needle(points)?]
The article reads almost, but not quite, like an Onion parody story on
the Napster issue [Onion Quotient, or OQ, of 85%] complete with quotes like:
"I'm promoting the designers," said Shawna Dooley, a 25-year-old
housewife from Alberta, Canada. "We're just sampling the
patterns. If you like one pattern, you're going to be more
likely to go out and buy a pattern by that artist next time..."
and
..paying $6 for an entire pattern book is outrageous, said Carole
Nutter, particularly if a person wants just one or two of the
dozen designs listed... "It's like the CD. There's one song you
want, but you still have to buy the whole thing," said Nutter,
54, who lives in Bellgrave, Mont., a town of 3,000. "Why can't
[the industry] let us pay for what we want, not what they want
to sell us?"
and
..designer Leavitt-Imblum has ordered her attorney to start
collecting evidence so she can sue those who exchange copies of
her patterns, people whom she describes as the "scourge of all
that is decent and right."
I finally had time to go back and read Courtney Love's music-industry
diatribe (mentioned in #99, 100, 132..) and I actually found it pretty
lucid and thought-provoking. Sure, she's a bit full of herself, but
I think this is several times in a row now that I've enjoyed reading her
opinions on music-industry issues, even if I haven't necessarily agreed
with all of them -- if nothing else, she's not afraid to be blunt..
The speech in question can be found at:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/index.html
Could anyone with greater insight into music industry finances comment
on the numbers she spins for her financial hypothetical?
Napster is the cover story on the August 14 Business Week magazine. The material is on the web at http://www.businessweek.com
More articles, pointed to by the news section of mp3.com: Motley Fool has an essay on why the copyright system is doomed: http://biz.yahoo.com/mf/000814/hill_000814.html Quote: "More restrictive laws ((on copying)) can't substitute for the consent of the governed. King George tried that when the American colonies started grumbling. In the 1920s our own government tried it with prohibition..." ----- Another story reports on Hewlett Packard releasing a new line of CD-RW drives, bundled with software for creating audio CDs and professional-looking printed graphics for the box. HP acknowledges that Napster users are driving the CD-RW sales. "Market analysts figure that consumer demand could be as high as 30 to 35 million for CD-RW drives this year." HP reckons that 70-80% of the users are making audio CDs.
Many net news sources cover the brief Napster filed on Friday with the appeals court. This is where the RIAA seeks to reinstate the injunction shutting down Napster, while the company seeks a permanent stay. It's not clear to me that Napster is going to make any headway with calling the judge "naive." It's also not clear to me that they will many any headway with their argument that since it is impossible for them to distinguish between legal and illegal file trading, therefore they must be allowed to operate. ---------- http://www.upside.com/News/39a1a15c0.html mp3board.com is being sued for linking to illicit MP3 sites. mp3board has now sued AOL and Time Warner; mp3board argues that AOL, and Time Warner if the marriage comes off, should indemnify mp3board if any of mp3board's activities with Gnutella are found to be infringing copyrights. They argue that since Gnutella was developed by the staff of an AOL division, that the prospective company AOL-Time- Warner should not be able to collect damages for the use of a product they developed.
Heh.. It's been astonishing to see the about-face AOL has done on MP3 issues since their prospective merger with Time Warner was announced.
Speaking of AOL's about-face: http://www.inside.com has a piece today
on how the author of Gnutella has disappeared and seems not too happy
to have sold Winamp to AOL.
-----
News item:
http://www.inside.com/story/Story_Cached/0,2770,8823_9_12_1,00.html
MP3.com, in the copyright case over My.MP3.Com, was able to reach
settlements with all but one of the major labels. Universal held out
and so the trial now moves into a stage to determine damages.
Universal does not budge: they want billions. They want MP3.com
destroyed (KRJ interpretation) From the inside.com story:
"According to its filings, Universal is not only trying to get
even with MP3.com, but it is also seeking 'deterrence' --
that is, to send a shrill message to Napster, Scour and the like.
In one brief, Universal asks Judge Jed Rakoff to 'give notice
to other prospective Internet billionaires that violation of the
law is not an acceptable business strategy.'"
The article goes on to outline possible MP3.com legal defense
strategies.
News item: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,38525,00.html "17 out of 50 US colleges and universities polled have banned students from using Napster's song-swap service on their campuses, said a report released on Wednesday by research firm Gartner Group Inc. ... "'I would not want to be the university president who neglected to update the school policy regarding music downloads this year,' said Robert Labatt, principal analyst for Gartner's e-Business Services group. 'Long legal battles can be costly, and one school could easily be singled out to set legal precedent this year.'" Napster's next court date in the Court of Appeals is the week of October 2.
Continuing from resp:167 :: Wired, and most other media, report that the court has found that mp3.com's infringements of the Universal Music copyrights was "willful," and it set damages at $25,000 per CD copied into the MyMp3.Com service. Wired guesstimates the total bill at around $118 million, which is not enough to put mp3.com out of business. mp3.com plans to continue challenges to some of the Universal copyrights.
www.inside.com says that the number of CDs which were infringed is not determined. mp3.com says 4700 which yields the $118 million figure; Universal claims 10,000 which puts the damages closer to $250,000,000. In general the www.inside.com piece is much more pessimistic about mp3.com's survival.
mp3.com's stock will tank bigtime tomorrow they wont survive on their own, will need to get bought out
(( FW note: I've linked in the two lengthy Napster items from
the Agora conference, now that Summer's Agora is winding down.
I intend to keep most of the news updates on the legal war
in this item. ))
Lengthy interview with Napster's lead attorney David Boies, in which he lays out Napster's four main legal arguments: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.10/boies.html
http://www.upside.com runs an interesting rumor that two unnamed ISPs are interested in buying Napster. The idea is that the Napster server would only be available to customers of the purchasing ISP. With Napster incorporated as "bait" into a profitable company, there would be some money to try to cut a deal with the record industry. No such sale can happen unless a deal can be cut with the record industry, and the RIAA seems awfully determined not to make any deals.
Interesting. And it would be doubly interesting to see how much damage a "cover charge" like that would do to the size of Napster's user base.
Also in the same Wired mentioned in #173 a pretty good article by John Perry Barlow on I.P. and Napster. It makes the same points basicaly he made in a ground breaking article on IP in Wired in 1994 that have been addressed here, but still makes for a good read. The URL of the earlier article is http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.03/economy.ideas.html
Interesting "is not / is too" accusations are flying between Salon Magazine (www.salon.com) and Leonardo Chiariglione, head of the industry-sponsored Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) Salon, citing anonymous SDMI insiders, claims that *all* of the watermarking, encryption, and other security technologies proposed as possible standards by the SDMI have already been cracked in record time since the SDMI began their "Hack SDMI" challenge (which invites would-be hackers to try for $10,000 by breaking SDMI's security schemes.) Chiariglione, quoted in [Inside] magazine (www.inside.com) claims that nobody knows the results of the contest yet and that none of the 450 submissions have been properly examined to see whether they're successful cracks or not.
We haven't opened this can of worms for a while. I don't know what to think about the deal between BMG and Napster, but one element of it, which proposes that Napster charge its users $5 a month, seems like it would badly damage Napster by driving away lots of its users, and thus thinning the available song selection. mp3.com's streaming service "my.mp3.com" may be in even worse shape. mp3.com got reamed in the courts for thinking they could save users the trouble of uploading their mp3 files to the "storage locker" service. The revamped service will only allow free access to 25 CDs; if you want to "store" more than that, it'll be $50 per year, thank you. Oh, and major-label products only, please, because those are the only companies mp3.com has hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing deals with. I dunno, I think paying $50 per year to stream CDs that you are supposed to already own is a non-starter, but then I'm used to dragging a box of CDs and a portable player around with me.
It gets worse than that.. I order to prevent people from borrowing a copy of a CD to prove that they own it, the my.mp3.com service will apparently now require listeners to insert the CDs at random intervals to prove they still have them. If you have to keep the CD media handy so you can prove you're not a thief whenever you want to listen to something, what exactly is the benefit of the storage locker concept? Lower fidelity? High bandwidth usage? Limited selection? I probably never would have gone for the original service in a big way but I think MP3.com got reamed while trying to do the right thing -- all they were trying to do was provide a digital repository for content to which people already had access, even making good-faith efforts to ensure they weren't delivering music to people who didn't already have a copy..
Not purely an mp3 item, but an mp3.com news pointer leads to it. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/2/15620.html discusses a "stealth plan" to put a copyright protection system into all new hard disks starting summer 2001. Yes, this makes backups and large disk farms difficult to impossible to operate. "But for home users, the party's over. CRPM paves the way for CPRM-compliant audio CDs, and the free exchange of digital recordings will be limited to non-CPRM media...."
I'm extremely skeptical about the overblown claims being made in the CPRM stories (CPRM = Copy Protection for Removable Media..) It seems unlikely to me that the system can do all that its critics claim it will do and if indeed it does those things it seems pretty unlikely that it will be a widely adopted and successful technological format.
Pete Townshend on Napster: http://www.petetownshend.com/press_release_diary_display.cfm?id=3961 and if I typoed that, see www.mp3.com/news and dig down. He seems tired of the old business model -- note his carping about BMI -- and willing to see what's coming.
I'm not sure if I like this proposal, but there is an interesting article on a way to make free distribution of content profitable here: http://interocity.com/jukebox/jukebox2.html
You have several choices: