117 new of 126 responses total.
Now, see, there you guys go with the rationalizations again. You're only stealing a little bit from Lars, you're just screwing the distribution company, you're doing this, you're doing that. Look, if you have to convince yourself that you're not "really" stealing before you steal, then you have serious conscience issues. If you don't work through those, you're going to be wasting way too much energy devising these bullshit rationalizations. Just admit you're stealing, AND DO IT! Stop being wusses, fer chrissake.
It is totally stealing. Kind of like how folks steal software which is something I have done. There is an arguement that if no one ever stole software, it would be much cheaper *shrug* I suppose one could also make the argument that if folks keep stealing on napster, things will get more expensive for the honest folks.
So making a "tape" for someone when you create a mix is stealing? I'm trying to get where this is truly a theft issue? I am getting a song from someone else. Same as making a mix tape or a mix cd with your burner, correct?
that's still stealing, just is minor theft. <grins> I like md's point. Hey, I've downloaded mp3s, though not from Napster, and have made use of the mp3s Sarah downloaded from Napster. Of course it's stealing, but I can accept that.
Sharing isn't cool when it's your stuff, but there's a bit of
difference between somone stealing your computer and someone stealing a
banana.
Sharing information isn't quite the same as sharing objects, though. What if somebody could make an exact copy of computer? You've still got your computer (let's pretend that it isn't full of private stuff). Were you stolen from? Maybe. If almost nobody was in the business of selling cheaply copied computers, but the software to do so was free, what do you suppose most people would do?
If you're looking for an analogy, it would be someone buying a CD, making five million copies of it, and placing them all in a big box in Times Square with a sign saying "Take one."
I hear another "tragedy of the commons". Just because each copy made is just a *little bit* of theft, it is not thought significant by some people compared to the benefit they reap from the theft. That is used to justify everyone doing it. Of course, if everyone did it, there would not be an industry from which to steal.
We hear that claim often -- if everyone steals, there would be no incentive to create new work. In music, at least, history tells us that is not so. There was no effective copyright system in the era which gave us Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and all the great musicians of the past. Pirate editions were common; in opera, rival prouduction companies might send scribes into theatres to try to note down the music for a particularly hot show. Music predates copyright; if copyright were to end tomorrow, there would still be music next week.
It isn't theaft if the group who made the song put it on there for people to download and listen to. It is theft if I buy the CD and put it on napster so all the people can download it for free. It isn't stealing if I make a mix and play it for myself adn my freinds. It is stealing if I make a mix and then sell it for a profit to people on the street. I think the question of Napster is that they are making a profit by letting people share music over the net. If they weren't making money (somehow) they would not be in trouble. I think it a much better idea if each artist were to set up his website so that they could cahrge you for the download.
Is it stealing to listen to music on the radio? How about if you record what you hear on the radio? Is that stealing if you record the commercials, too? Is it stealing if you erase the commercials? Are you stealing when you rent a videotape? With software -- if you go over to a friend's computer and use his software, is that stealing (from the software company)? If my whole family uses a copy of a program I bought and installed on the computer, are the rest of them stealing it? If I buy one copy of a program, and install it on two computers, but I'm the only one who uses it (because the kids like to play games on the main computer), have I stolen a copy? If I install a program on my laptop, and it is never installed on another computer, but the laptop gets passed around to 24 people who all use it at separate times for an hour per day, did 23 of us steal it? What if I installed 24 separate copies on the laptop, so each of us can use a separate environment, did I need to buy 24 copies in order not to be stealing? Copyright law in the electronic age is not straightforward. I am not convinced that software, video and music "piracy" are unethical. The word "piracy" is a marketing term, not one that is concerned with ethics.
This response has been erased.
In each case, it depends upon the terms of the license you implicitly agree to when you purchase the product. For example, you cannot *own* most software - you can only buy a license to use it. At the other extreme, the radio station has purchased a license to play the music, but that does not give the listener a license to make a copy. That infringement can only be detected, of course, if the listener distributes (or sells) copies and gets caught. There are many ways in which these licenses can be infringed without much chance of getting caught. They are infrinements nevertheless, and honest people would not do it. Re #18: you are quite right. Copyright law, and patent law too, were developed when the industrial revolution made it possible to mass produce items. Since an idea or a work only occurs once, it was easy for others to just take the idea or work and make copies. This could give the inventor or author very little return for their invention or work, *which stifled innovation and creation*. Therefore laws were created to give the inventor or author exclusive rights for a limited period of time, but enough for the inventor or author to obtain a return on their effort if they continued to be diligent. Many inventors and authors are persons whose motivations lie primarily, or initially, in the creative act itself. But others also need to support themselves. "Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and all the great musicians of the past" were in this category, and many *suffered financially* while pursuing their drive to create. Mozart was a classic example, who died pennyless, and whose body was dumped in a pauper's grave. Is that a civilized way to "recognize" creative people? Patents and copyrights are better. (Many of those great musicians, by the way, survived by having *patrons*, wealthy and powerful individuals that wanted what the musicians could create. This is not a good system if society wants more of such creativity
A number of people have suggested that the future of the music
business lies in exactly the patron model. In the past, the patrons
were the few rich and powerful people who held all the spare money.
In the democratic era, the patrons will have to be the ordinary people.
I know that there are musicians who I love who I would be happy to send
a $5, $10, $20 tip to every year. Say some folk musician I like,
a solo performer, can have 1000 dedicated fans who will send her
$20 bucks a year. That's the start of a livable income.
Such a performer probably gets less than that from current CD sales.
Models like this are being seriously discussed in various online
publications.
----------
Rane, let's concede for a moment that Napster-style file trading is
theft. What can be done about it? The options seem to be:
1) Legally require that all computer and network systems
recognize and block illicit copying. Michael Eisner of Disney
is demanding this solution. It does not seem to be
very technically feasible.
2) Start feeding hundreds or thousands of middle-class kids
into either the civil or criminal legal system.
We would have to have a War on Copyright Criminals on a
scale roughly equal to the War on Drug Users.
And this becomes a nightmare for the music copyright industry,
because a substantial number of the people being prosecuted will
be their best customers.
Exactly my argument against keeping the notion of "intellectual property" in our laws. It makes trouble with powers-that-be way too easy to get into, if persued seriously. It was at least tolerable when you had to have an expensive printing press, or else go through some other effort and expense, in order to "steal" the protected material. But now the concept steps on more toes than its benefits are worth.
There will be a lot less "intellectual property" created if the creators cannot make a living from their work. This is why the patent process was invented - to promote invention. If you want to have lots of new music created, you have to protect the investment and living of the musicians.
... but by that standard, Rane, the current system is not suceeding very well, except for a small number of megastars. Currently the system protects the investment and living of the five (soon to be four) music companies who control the distribution system. This is why musicians are quite split on Napster.
Re #25:
Yes, there will be a lot less "intellectual property" created. I would
rather have this than a system of laws which a large part of the population
runs afoul of.
actually, according to the article in the Atlantic Monthly's sept. issue, musicians are so screwed by their record companies vis a vis *their* intellectual property that any new system couldn't help but be an improvement. For example, the musicians have to pay for the production, distribution, and advertising for their records (unlike a book's author, who may or may not make money on any given book but usually doesn't end up in DEBT to the record company!) and if they aren't the songwriters for that particular song, they don't get royalties for any performances. It's amazing that anyone actually goes into music.
Heh. The political situation for the music industry is quite grim: they are going into this battle with many of their suppliers (the artists) and many of their customers cheering for their destruction.
The technology exists today for Lars to get his 5.7 cents for the one song the kid downloaded. Instead of persueing that revenue avenue, Lars wants us not to think of how he and other artists can get payment for their works when the media and distribution costs are borne by the end user.
I just went and skimmed the Atlantic Monthly article online. http://www.theatlantic.com Wow. It's even more brutal than the celebrated Courtney Love piece.
I'd be very happy to contribute $x directly to artists I like. Some long-term
favorites would be better off that way than with the pennies they get from
rereleases ("record club" stuff might not result in *any* money to the
artist!). When possible I buy stuff from independent artist's web sites; I've
done this for Pete Townshend, Aimee Mann, and Jello Biafra. In some cases,
such as the Sluggy Freelance web comic, I don't really want any of the
T-shirts. I'd rather just send $20 in return for the ongoing comic.
Do you have any of the Sluggy Freelance books? I don't, because I'm not all that into the strip. A friend of mine does have one, and says it's interesting because the book makes something noticable that the online strips don't -- that Pete Abrams often cuts and pastes frames, then changes a few details, instead of hand-drawing each one. To me that seems a bit cheap, but obviously the appeal of the strip isn't the artwork. It's the fact that it pushes geek-culture buttons.
The artwork is pretty good. I don't really want a book either, though. I'm into one of those "don't make me store any more *stuff*" periods.
I'm hoping Rane will get back to the second part of my resp:23 :: if downloading music from the Internet is theft, what do you propose to do about it?
If it's Lars you're stealing from, I'll be cheering you on. Opps, you were asking Rane. Sorry.
Re #35: I don't propose to do anything about it. I'm not the one violating the law, or responsible for its enforcement. However I don't buy the *selfish* arguments in #23 that the buyers are the ones that should have the sole say on what they will "donate" after they take what they want. Most people will take what they want and give nothing, when it is so convenient to do so. I much prefer the bargaining mode, where the owner of the property can set a price and the buy can say what they will pay, and then they negotiate in the market - the usual process by which prices are established. Just stealing the goods isn't a very ethical end-run around this process.
The failure of most shareware to make much money is proof that the "patronage" system doesn't really work in the real world.
My arguments in #23 and elsewhere aren't "selfish," they are observations of what is happening. The number of Napster users is guesstimated at 20 million and growing explosively. Aimster, a similar program designed to piggyback on AOL Instant Message, has been out for one month and the news reports estimate that it has already got one million users. Here's my predictions for the near term: remember, Rane, these are observations, not endorsements. I expect Napster, Inc., to get whacked. I expect that it won't make any difference. About a year from now, the business model for music on the Internet is going to be something like the marijuana business in the 1970s, and 30-50 million Internet users will be downloading music for free from a variety of guerrilla sources. The next battle for the copyright holders will be to overturn the DMCA immunity which the ISPs have for the copyright violations of their users, which will be a direct attack on the economic viability of the Internet.
Will the streets be flooded with starving artists, too?
Actually, I think ISPs only have immunity until they know a violation is taking place. Once they know it's happening, either through their own logging or through being notified by someone, they're required to stop it. The obvious next step would be to make logging mandatory, so that ignorance is no longer an excuse. Let's face it; the only way to fully enforce copyright law on the internet is to spy on each and every connection. The question is whether the entertainment industry has the clout to make it happen. I forsee a lot of campaign contributions in their future.
Rane in resp:40 :: The streets will not be flooded with starving
musicians. You really need to read the article at http://www.theatlantic.c
om
and also the well-known Courtney Love essay on how most musicians are
raped for years by the current system.
An exceptionally memorable quote from the Atlantic article, from
Chuck Cleaver, of the obscure critic-favorite rock band The Ass Ponys:
"It's relatively mild, the screwing by Napster
compared with the regular screwing."
The streets may be flooded with starving record company employees and
executives, but one of the key functions of the Internet is to
destroy businesses whose only service is as an intermediary.
Or, to put it better, I think, "to destroy businesses which add no value as an intermediary." The Courtney Love essay is a good one to read. It's on salon.com.
Thanks for the pointer danr. I will go read the Courtney Love essay now.
This has been a thoughtful, intelligent discussion of this subject, and I appreciate that. I read several music-related mailing lists and forums, and I have seen the direction these sorts of discussions usually follow. Not having read the article in The Atlantic, I cannot comment on it, yet. I'd ask some kind soul to copy it into an e-mail for me, but somehow I feel that might not be wise. ;) Speaking of ISPs, and immunity, I received this e-mail from TimeWarner Austin/RoadRunner today: <pasted> NETWORK UPDATE: NAPSTER AND BANDWIDTH ABUSE In the interest of providing the best reliable service to all of our customers, we would like to share some information that will help all of our Road Runner customers enjoy their service. One of the conveniences of Road Runner High Speed Online is that it is an "always on" service and there are no hourly charges for bandwidth usage. However, the service is asymmetrical in nature thereby providing far more bandwidth downstream, for downloads than upstream. Because of this, our terms and conditions of use prohibit the use of bandwidth intensive "servers" in the customers' home. Excessive use of upstream bandwidth, which is common with these types of server applications, can cause slow downs for other users on our network. In addition to servers, file sharing software programs like Napster, which is being sued for copyright infringement by the recording industry, can also utilize excessive amounts of upstream bandwidth. We have found this is often the case when customers leave these types of applications running while away from their computer. When we identify customers who, through excessive use of upstream bandwidth, are causing slowdowns for other users, it is our practice to contact the person responsible for that account, make them aware of the situation and ask that such usage be curtailed. In the event such abuse continues, an account may be suspended or terminated in the interest of other users on the network... <end paste> Now, I'm not sure that they are extending the TOS to include a ban on file-sharing systems, as well as servers, or merely pointing out that high upstream bandwidth usage is subject to closer inspection, no matter what the culprit. In any case, I no longer have Napster installed on my computer, due mostly to this very fact. Napster has no way to limit upstream connections (like Gnutella, frex) and therefore does not live on my machine anymore. I also find it very interesting that mp3 trading and/or illegal copying is occuring on Usenet with little or no media attention. That's where I found Sinead O'Connor's newest CD posted at CD quality 2 weeks before the official release, as an example.
That's because Usenet generally isn't a double-clickable icon with a pretty GUI and a cute mascot. You don't hear many people denouncing FTP servers, either. I was most delighted when Ameritech came right out on their web page, and touted their "open port policy". Ameritech.Net explicitly allows you to run any kind of server you want, on a DSL connection. (Well..."any kind" being "any protocol". I doubt they'd let you run a web server full of their internal documents.)
One must distinguish between the copyright rights of the originator of an intellectual property - the author, composer, or artist - and the subsequent ownership of those rights resulting from their sale or contractual obligation. I have been discussing the rights of the authors and inventors to their property, with their right to be reimbursed for any copying that they allow. Now others have brought in the actions of the *industry*. So, how did the industries obtain those rights? They obtained them by sale or contract. Now, if you are going to agree that the artist or inventor did indeed own those rights, and had the authority to sell them, you would have to agree that the new owners also have those rights. They way in which they use (or abuse) them, however, is not up to the consumer, who legally has an obligation to buy or not buy in accord with the terms set by the industry. I can understand people caring more for the artist than for the faceless industry *to whom the artist sold their work*. But the rights are not different. If both artists and consumers have problems with how the industry runs their business, I would suggest that they take legal steps to correct those problems, rather than themselves violate the laws for their own pleasures.
It's easy to stop Napster, because of how it uses the network protocol. Probably not much harder to look for Gnutella and the like. Given the DSL provider's love of changing service terms on the fly, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody wrote something like Gnutella but which basically did verything with email (which would a tough service to justify blocking).
I believe Napster can use a nonstandard port; I'm sure GNUtella can.
In either case it makes it difficult to stop without examining the payload
of the packet, and network equipment (short of a stateful inspection
firewall) isn't really meant to do that.
It's not surprising, though. Napster uses up a *lot* of bandwidth,
for very few people. The entire industry is built on oversubscription to one
degree or another, much like the telephone industry. So anything that
benefits few people and consumes a limited resource may be discriminated
against.
Re #45 - There is an option in Napster to disable your file server, so you can still grab other people's stuff, but not let other people get yours.
Okay, rane. I read the Courney Love piece. Her point is, in essence, that an artist has two choices -- sign a contract with a record company and have your creative rights ripped away (and there was a bill passed which changed the law on how long the company owns the copyright, making it an in perpetuity deal, when it had reverted to the artist after thirty-five years, just recently, according to her article) and your records at least promoted and distributed, with luck, OR try to do the production, promotion, and distribution all yourself, without any contacts. Now, from the folk musicians I've talked to, most of them have made the conscious choice to stay small, and to do it more for love than for financial gain. Many (most?) of them have day jobs which pay the bills and keep them off the streets. It's sometimes hard to hear some one with a lot of talent scraping by with only a fringe group of fans who know who they are, when you know that they could have been big if only... but at least they get the money from their art, what little they can get from such a limited exposure.
Did that bill pass? Yet another example of the industry pushing through legislation that benefits them at the expense of artists and consumers alike. For a while there was talk of making it *retroactive*, which really scared some artists who were currently funding their retirements off of the proceeds from stuff that had passed the 35-year limit. The sad thing is, not only did they manage to buy this bit of legislation, they managed to keep it pretty quiet, too. Hardly anyone heard about it.
The legal change which gave the record companies the right to control the copyrights in perpetuity was one of the most classic examples of the corruption in the record industry. The relevant language was inserted into a bill in a markup period by a congressional staffer. Anyone who inquired about ias told it was "just a technical clarification." And the bill was passed with essentially no one realizing what had happened, except for the record companies. The record industry later hired that particular staffer as a lobbyist. Want to tell us again about the laws of mankind, Rane? Here's a clear example of the laws being used to deprive artists of their rights -- without the artists, or even the legislators, understanding that this was happening.
One thing I'd love is to stop seeing people bicker over the "it's theft"/ "it's not theft" issue. "theft", as generally understood, involves the taking of physical property, and subsequent deprivation of the original owner. Nearly everyone agrees that that sort of theft is generally wrong, which is why intellectual property advocates like to call copyright infringement "theft" or "piracy" instead of calling it "infringement", where infringement is an act which may be equally unlawful but which does not generally carry the same public sanction. By insisting on calling infringement theft, pro-intellectual-property forces are trying to put their own spin on the issue because they know that the public cares about punishing theft but not about punishing copyright infringement. On another note, I'd like to hear Rane comment on whether the current oligopolistic control of media distribution affects his position vis-a-vis the "consensual" contracts entered into by artists who would otherwise find it virtually impossible to offer their material to enough of the public to support a career.
I'm not arguing in favor of misuses (in my opinion) of copyright, such as the examples from the recording industry given above. But none of those cases bear upon the right of the holder of the patent/copyright to not have their invention/creation stolen. The arguments that are being made are that the inventor/artist should get the benefits. I agree completely, and consider it a corruption of the process when a monopolist grabs the rights. But none of that changes the fact that there are rights, they are owned, it is illegal to violate those rights. If you think that the laws awardiong and sustaining those rights are flawed, CHANGE THE LAWS. Don't promote theft as the correction.
Hear, hear. Bootlegging - stealing what little take the artists get under the current system is still stealing - and you are stealing from them as well, not just the multimegabuck 'evil corporation who will not even be able to tell the difference they take so much'.
Just take the Metallica mp3's.
Exactly. Send $5 for every CD you bootleg directly to the artists;
it's probably far more than they'll ever see out of the album.
Re #55: Correction won't happen, because the people with all the clout and influence (i.e., the people who can bribe politicians) have a vested interest in seeing the situation get worse, not better. So yes, I agree stealing isn't the answer. Unfortunately, I don't think there is an answer.
They'll be the first ones up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Re 55. Like Ken, I have never downloaded any unauthorized piece of music, ever, period. However, I strongly agree with the point that copyright laws are essentially arbitrary, and represent rights which are created for the public interest. Use of words like "stolen" and "piracy" is pure spin, not law. The abusive change in copyright law (taking copyrights away from musicians) was slipped through during the impeachment hearings. Due to various copyright treaties, which were also written by the industry, this change in law CANNOT LEGALLY BE UNDONE unless the U.S. is willing to abrogate its signature to the treaties.
Larry, for what, then, would "stolen" and "piracy" apply? Isn't taking someone's property without permission stealing? Patents and copyrights, IN LAW, are property.
Ice T wrote a good article about this in Business 2.0 which essentially says that things like Napster are only the beginning.
(Oddly enough, I read that article/interview this very morning. Now imagine yourself in 1991, listeing to his then hit "Cop Killer", and being told that he'd be in a magazine called "Business 2.0".)
Is the Business 2.0 item online, or should I go stand in the magazine section in Borders to read it? :) ((Heh, amusing side digression. In America it is expected that some degree of free reading will take place at a newsstand. When I was in London in 1995, strolling down a street, the headline on a folded newspaper caught my eye: "HURRICANE THREATENS BRITS" or some similar thing. I'm a hurricane junkie, so I flipped the paper up to glance at the lead story, which was on the side I couldn't see -- and the news vendor's hand slammed the paper down. "35 pence," he growled. I paid.))
I did something like that in '92 where I read the interview with Jello Biafra and Ice T in SPIN magazine and was quite sure that Ice T was an up and coming/already established entrepeneur.
re #65 I have a subscription. I rarely read off the rack.
RE#33 - "Celebrated Courtney Love piece"?!? She stole that from Steve Albini. Do a seach on "The Problem With Music" and read his original essay. Ms. Love is one to talk about piracy.
Heh. True. I recognized the numbers she used as Albini's. But Love got the issue much more circulation. And remember that copyright only covers the precise expression of an idea, not the idea itself.
Today's web news reports that two major music releases have hit Napster. First, someone seems to have ripped and uploaded a pre-release copy of the new Wallflowers album, and Universal Music is pissed, because they were really working on cranking the hype machine up for it. It is rumored/reported that Smashing Pumpkins have released a final album in a limited edition pressing of 25 vinyl copies, with the wish that it be distributed through the net. This is a parting "fuck you" gesture to their record company and if the news & release are genuine the legal issues may be interesting. A web page about the Pumpkins release is at http://machina2.cjb.net; this is not a link to the music. I can't be positive the Pumpkins story is not a hoax. The Wallflowers story is derived from www.inside.com who are usually reliable.
((Oops, the actual mp3s are in that web site. Maybe that will be ruled an illegal link.))
Those bands suck.
It doesn't sound from what I'm reading here as if the record companies are treating teh artists very well. That would seem to open the door to some new record companies that could lure artists by treating them much better. What's stopping that? Are the costs of running a record company so high that, even with some competition, they could pay the artists any more than they already are? For whatever reason, many artists are chosing to release their stuff through record companies. They seem to be deciding that the record companies, in buying their work from them, producing and marketing their CDs, and so forth, are providing them with some sort of valuable service, at least more valuable than what they could get from anybody else. I'm guessing, therefore, that if people were to start exclusively making free copies of their music, thus causing them to provide no economic benefit to the record companies, that these artists might suddenly start wishing the record companies would come back. I do think the record companies' business model is wrong. When they're selling $20 CDs that I have to go to a store and look for, I generally don't buy anything unless I'm quite sure that there's something on the CD that I really want, and it's stopped getting enough radio play for me to hear it on the radio on a regular basis (however, if it had never made it to the radio, I probably wouldn't have noticed it in the first place). If, however, there were some online service I could get an account on, and get charged, say, 50 cents per copy for each piece of music I downloaded, I would probably spend considerably more on music than I do now. Until something like that happens, while I don't think it's legal or right, I expect things like Napster to keep getting bigger. I doubt many of Napster's users have any strong objection to giving some amount of money to the artists or record companies, but all financial issues aside Napster makes a much easier way to obtain copies of music than buying CDs in record stores. I think we've seen this happening with the software industry over the last several years. It used to be that there were large stores full of various shrink wrapped software packages that people had to go buy. Maybe such stores still exist, but I haven't seen any lately. The software industry certainly still exists, split between a few large players in the computer market whose stuff can be bought at computer and office supply stores, expensive specialized software that gets sold by actual sales people directly to the companies that use it, and everything else that can get downloaded off the publishers' websites by providing a credit card number.
I'm not sure why there aren't more record companies. I think part of it is that the major, RIAA-member companies pretty much have a lock on retail space, and in the past they've punished store chains that didn't help them maintain that. There may be issues with licensing the Phillip CD audio patents to produce CDs, too, but I'm not sure.
It's because the major labels have a pretty good lock on retail space, MTV/radio promotion, etc. And even honest promotion these days is pretty expensive at the top end; not many companies can get a deal with Burger King or McDonalds.
RE#74 -- IT has nothing to do with Phillips patents.
It's largely the access to promotional and distribution channels that keeps the smaller labels out on the margins..
((( Summer Agora #550 now linked as Music #280, as this
Agora rolls over in a week. )))
When did it become legal to make copies of your music and give it to your friends and family? (going back to the early bits of the item...) I've always been told that's illegal.
It is.
Re 79-80. See the Home Audio Recording Act for details on this. I doubt that making a recording and giving it to a family member is illegal any more, even technically. As to friends, I'm not sure.
Re 62. "Stolen" and "theft" apply to taking away tangible property without authority. They DO NOT apply to unrelated kinds of deprivation of property rights, except as rhetoric or spin. For example, if someone who has your property with your permission takes it for his own use -- that is "conversion", not theft. One of the founders of Ann Arbor raised money for his venture by taking his Maryland neighbors' farm animals to market, promising to bring back the money from sales; he never did. A related concept is "fraud". Another example, if the adjoining property owner builds his house in such a way that it extends five feet over the property line, depriving you of many square feet of your land -- that is "encroachment", not theft. And if someone takes your copyrighted work and republishes it, making vast profits for himself -- that is "infringement", not theft. There are specific legal remedies for each of these things, and many more. But none of the remedies involve using words like "theft" or "steal" except as rhetoric.
CD-RAudio would also fit, then, since it two is media that a blanket royalty has been applied to. That's why it is more expensive, but not all the 75 cent to $2.50 difference one can find in CD-R prices and CD-RAudio prices.
How about "vernacular", Larry? In the vernacular, if you take something that isn't yours, you have "stolen" it. The legal terms apply, of course, once you enter the courthouse. (I guess it would also be correct to use the general expression, in place of 'to steal', 'to cause an insecurity without permission in one's person, houses, papers and effects'.)
#81> I would assume that what's legal is making copies for household members, not family members per se. #82> "theft" has a definition in the dictionary. It may have a separate (more restricted) definition in legal lingo, but according to my dictionary, copyright infringement is theft. We're not lawyers here.
copyright infringement is your best entertainment value. http://www.negativland.com As an aside, it wasn't clear to me if Paul was talking about making copies of *his* music or of music from his record collection. You can make all the copies of *your* music you want and give them to everyone, but the music on the CD's in your collection is not *your* music.
Re 85. Please cite and quote this dictionary definition. The fact that lots of people say sidewalks are "cement" may make it the common, ignorant use of the word, but it is a fact that they are concrete, not cement. Using "theft" to mean copyright infringement is specifically a political use of the word, like the use of "murder" to mean legal abortion.
theft. The act of stealing. steal. to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, esp. secretly or by force. Copyrighted materials fall under the heading "intellectual property." property. 4. ownership, right of possession, enjoyment, or disposal, esp. of something tangible... 8. a written work, play, movie, etc. bought or optioned for commercial production or distibution. Source (except for the line starting "Copyrighted"): Random House Webster's College Dictionary, Random House, New York, 1991. Same source, incidentally: murder. the unlawful killing of a person. So long as abortion is legal, it isn't murder. That's not political rhetoric, that's a circular claim (since "murder" presupposes legality).
Re 88. Ah, it appears that you transposed the broadest possible definition of "property" into the "theft" definition, which is apparently too brief. Better luck next time.
Er, I should say, into the "steal" definition. "Intellectual" modifies "property" so that the term "intellectual property" no more fits under "steal" than "road apple" fits under "apple".
Provide your own quotes and sources or climb down from the tower. This is all subterfuge, anyway. The point was one with which you already agreed, and rather than stick to the heart of the matter, you're choosing to get into legal semantics.
I disagree. I think there *is* a substantial difference between theft and copyright infringement. Obviously you do too, or at least you accept that most people recognize one, otherwise why would you care which term is applied. I really hate playing the analogy game with this stuff, because I think it's ultimately bankrupt as a tool for serious analysis. Why talk about whether it's "like theft", or "like sharing", when we can agree that it's important enough to be talked about directly, and not by way of potentially deceptive and ultimately inadequate comparisons? If you insist on playing the analogy game, though, I'm curious whether you consider parking at an expired meter "theft". If I pull into a parking space, put a quarter in the meter for fifteen minutes' worth of parking, and stay twenty minutes, have I "stolen" a nickel? Does it matter if anyone else would have parked in the space during those five minutes? Does whether or not I intentionally exceeded the time allotted have any bearing on the severity of my offense? Would my offense be the same if the parking garage was privately owned by a family whose sole means of support came from the fees collected or is it just as wrong to stick it to the man as it is to cheat the independent operrator out of his nickel? This sort of indirect analysis is probably pretty fascinating for certain types (e.g. Jesuits or rabbinical students) but most of the rest of us seem to realize that you can take it too far..
Main Entry: theft
Pronunciation: 'theft
Function: noun
1 a : the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and
removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful
owner of it b : an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or
burglary) of property
2 obsolete : something stolen
3 : a stolen base in baseball
Main Entry: piracy
Pronunciation: 'pI-r&-sE
Function: noun
1 : an act of robbery on the high seas; also : an act resembling
such robbery
2 : robbery on the high seas
3 : the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or
conception especially in infringement of a copyright
So, strictly speaking, according to www.m-w.com "theft" isn't really
correct, but "piracy" is by definition (3).
It goes back to the definition of property. 1b applies depending on how wide you're willing to define property. I only care because "theft is theft" is easier to say than "infringement is infringement," and because I feel like this is analretentive obfuscation and people being difficult rather than discussing the issue. If I drop a quarter on the ground and somebody picks it up, that isn't theft. So if i use only part of my parking meter time, and somebody else uses the rest, they haven't stolen anything. They found something of value that had been abandoned.
It would help to know how future royalties show up, if at all, in Metallica's financial statements. It wouldn't be in the income statement, obviously. It isn't receivables on the asset side of the balance sheet, exactly. What, good will? I'm guessing it has to be in there *somewhere*, because a newly released CD that's doing well on the charts and a classic CD that enjoys good steady sales are both very considerable assets. That is, if you wanted to buy Metallica -- I mean, literally buy the music group -- the value of future royalties would account for much or even most of the sale price. That's what's being stolen.
Apparently Courtney Love is suing/planning to sue her record company to make sure she actually gets some of the settlement with mp3.com.
Did you know Jason Newsted is an admitted bisexual?
HE;s from Gull LAke, MI....I always wanted to see a sign as I drove through Gull Lake that said "The home of Jason Newsted"///but instead I get to see that they were the Class D Girls Softball champs in 1986.
girls softball is more hard than metallica anyhoo.
Spoken like somebody who's unaware that "harder" is a word.
mayhap he was pointing out that a girl's softball is harder than a metallica anyhoo (whatever that might be)
Anyhoo is a cute spelling for anyhow. *noddles*
anyhoo yer a patoot.
I take that as a compliment coming from happyboy
i meant is as one, patoot.
well, good thing I took it as one, then, eh?
How to really confuse a copyright argument? Let's see... The following happens on a continuing basis, and is entirely real, what are the copyright implications? Copyrighted materials (books, CDs, assorted format videos) are released outside North America. They may or may not ever be released in North America. People purchase these materials from legitimate vendors and have them brought into the continent. In some cases this ends up side-stepping a deliberate intent of the copyright holder for distribution by location. Some people argue that this is a violation of copyright because the rights holder may have wanted to squeeze more money out of each North American purchaser. Others say that a purchased item can end up anywhere and there is no basis for complaint. One country has declared attempts to create differential pricing by location-based distribution control to be restraint of trade, and certain classes of device cannot be sold in that country until copyright-inspired technical restrictions are deleted or patched around so that materials for such devices may be purchased from anywhere on the planet. Specifics can be provided later, I am looking for opinions relating to this situation.
Don't worry, eventually your CDs and your eBooks will have "country codes" built into the player just like DVDs so you won't have to fret about this..
Oo, good topic. And one that's become ever more relevant in the days of the Internet. I've personally ordered CDs directly from a British website, receiving the same price as for a domestic CD rather than for an import. In my opinion, there's no real difference between purchasing a copyrighted piece and importing it and purchasing any product at all and importing it... to my knowledge, importation laws are generally limited to higher volumes than most private consumers would reach (although I've seen the tag on some software, especially Microsoft products, restricting sale and use to North America). In my opinion, if I buy something from a legitimate vendor and import (or have them import as my agent), then the only restrictions on that purchase should be whether the imported items fall below the allowable import limits, and whether the class of item is legal in all countries involved (for instance, I could probably find some website which sells photos of naked 17-year-olds which are legal in their country but illegal here in the U.S.). Now, if I import and then pirate, that goes back to infringement law... ALTHOUGH, now that I think about it, I have some books from Ukraine that may be inviolation of American copyright laws, or were when I purchased them, principally a rewrite of "the Wizard of Oz" (which may be trademarked, I dunno) and a game called "Management" which is obviously a ripoff of Monopoly (which I know is trademarked). I'm not sure about legalities, but as far as ethics go, I don't think it's fair or appropriate to tell a purchaser that they can't take a legally purchased item wherever they want to (so long as the item is legal wherever they take it).
Well, I have a similar thang. As many of you know, I have a daughter who's into anime music and j-pop. Most of the available music in this country are from Son-May, which is a company somewhere in Asia which re-records the music and then sells it. It's legal in whatever country Son-May is located in, but morally, that's a bootleg, and a ripoff of the artists. Only problem is -- that's often the only available music, unless one has a friend or other contacts in Japan... Frustrating, yes. Morally problematical, yes. And of course, until she learned about the problem, neither of us knew that Son-May wasn't a legit company.
re #109: That seems to have the potential to conflict pretty dramatically with your previously stated insistence that creators be able to control the way their works are used, and that denying them that control is theft.
#111> Yes, it does superficially seem that way, doesn't it? But, again, the issue with copyright is that it's copy + right. As a creator, I have the right to decide how many copies of something will be made available (not including legal archives), and in what contexts subportions of my works are to be used, but once I've sold a copy to somebody, they have the right to play/read/use/view that copy wherever it's legal to play/read/use/view it, so long as they don't violate any commercial restrictions I've explicitly or implicitly placed on it. Consider the alternative -- that, among the rights of the creator is included the right to dictate to what areas a legally purchased copy can be taken. We tend to forget that the musician isn't the only artist on the CD. There's a photographer and/or an illustrator, a typesetter, various engineers, ... maybe there's some cover songs on the CD ... it would be an INCREDIBLE obstacle to the purchaser (and legal owner of) the COPY to have to be aware of all of these artists' concerns. The only way to function in such a climate would be to stay wherever you purchased the album, and even then, maybe you purchased an import album in good faith, then discover later that the sculptor of the item photographed on page 7 of the booklet doesn't want any depiction of his art to appear in Michigan. In contrast, the "fair use" rules of copyright law are easy enough -- you cant reproduce something unless it's explicitly said that you can (there are legal nuances to that, but that's the safe rule of thumb). No real obstacles to the owner of the copy: You can play your CD wherever you go, but you can't make copies of it. Your proper USE of the item isn't hindered... the item was designed to be played, not copied. The copy + right belongs to the creator, the use right (non-commercially) belongs to the legal possessor of the copy. [This isa simplification of intellectual property law. This mingles non-profesional legal opinion with personal ethical opinion. Where not obvious, "right" refers to moral rights, not legal rights. I am not a lawyer.]
(BTW, I think you can afford to leave off the "I am not a lawyer" disclaimerrs -- nobody is going to confuse you with one based on your posts..)
[Yes, but unlike certain others, I'm not going to put myself in harm's way by even suggestinf I'm providing free legal advice.]
re: 110 -- Check with One World Market in Novi. It's a Japanese supermarket that also imports videos, music, and magazines legitimately. If you can write it in Kanji, they can probably get it for you.
Re: 108 Actually, the DVD issue was what I was addressing with a country having declared that the devices must be modified. Based on some information found at opendvd.org, it would appear that some european countries have declared the region coding illegal for one reason or another. I had read once that New Zealand specifically did restraint of trade stuff, but as I hunt for data I can't seem to find anything specific. On the other hand, players that have some to all of the Hollywood-imposed "security" features forced on them are available readily via web merchants. Add a decent standards converter from Tenlab, and it can then be of relevance to you that the whole first season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is being released in the UK in the next month or two as a box set of DVDs. Locally, I think that there a whopping 8 or 9 tapes available in North America, with no DVDs due. In the UK, 3 seasons on VHS and DVDs coming. The copyright holders would say that you have to live with that and are in the wrong if you do not wait until they say your location can buy this stuff. They may have actually said this outright someplace, but the region coding system only makes what little sense that it does if that is the case, so I deem its existence to be that statement. The above nonsense is why I have an account with a UK video dealer. Alternate US editions of books are why I have an account with a UK book dealer. (One year-plus edition delays are another big point.) The copyright industry would likely put me in chains for just that, if they could. Re:109 On your last point, as the region scheme of DVD illustrates, the opinion of copyright holders is that their items are only legal in places where they've released them, and since few seem willing to abide by that, they are turning to technological means to enforce thier opinion.
I would concur with the European countries that have the sentiment that region codes are illegal. The only thing that should affect the legality of a copyrighted piece in a given area is that area's laws on content. IMNSHO.
re #116:
> and since few seem willing to abide by that, they are
> turning to technological means to enforce their opinion.
It's more twisted than that.. Having failed to maintain their
oligopoly on copying and distribution, as new technologies arose
that allowed copying to become decentralized (as nearly everyone
got access to a copying device..) they abandoned their primarily
legal approach to containing copying in favor of technological
means. But then they also lobbied for (and got) legal weapons
to use against the producers of technology, so we have things like
the DMCA, a legal weapon to use against people who are producing
technological countermeasures to circumvent the technological weapons
they adopted because their original legal weapons weren't working..
Any honest participant in the discussion pretty much has to concede
that there aren't enough courtrooms in America to try every person
who would illegally duplicate copyrighted material if it were made
exceedingly easy to do so -- you need only look at Napster's subscriber
lists to determine that. The publishing companies know their only
option, unless they want to relax their control on music/book/movie
distribution and pricing, is to attack the infringement chain at its
weakest link (or perhaps its narrowest bottleneck..) That weak point
used to be the few infringers who owned the heavy equipment needed for
mass duplication. These days the weak point is where there are
(relatively) few people with the technological knowledge and skill to
circumvent the publishers' technological protections.
ther'es two issues, though. One is blocking illegal copying (which I think is the producer's right), and one is blocking playing something in a non-sanctioned locality(which I DON'T think is the producer's right).
Ahh, but the two issues are naturally linked because in order to exert control in either case you need to have some way to deny the data stream to the end consumer and an intermediary of some sort, controlled only by you, to handle the translation. Having gone to the trouble of designing (albeit poorly) such a system to fight the easiest sort of illegal copying, DVD publishers have recognized that they can use the same technology to control regional viewing and have chosen to do so.. Expect to see more and more intrusive developments in this front. Recent posts in Slashdot have pointed to news stories about a dental school which is switching to time-limited digital texts -- students pay (a lot) for a dentistry text that comes on CD-ROM. The contents are licensed to them, and them only, for a limited time and unavailable after their time-limited decryption key expires. Textbook publishers must be drooling over this technology, which promises to cripple that pesky competition from the used textbook market..
The two issues may be technically linked, but they're ethically unrelated
University bookstores will hate that. Most of their profit comes from used textbooks, not new ones.
Re 122. I was thinking that, too.
That doesn't just affect those who want to buy and sell used books. I generally like to keep stuff I've read, so that I can go back and look at it again if I have a question. It's a big part of why I always buy books rather than checking them out of libraries.
Speaking of libraries, I hope nobody's expecting to be able to check such books out of libraries..
Now linked to cyberpunk.
You have several choices: