The ongoing discussion of intellectual property, freedom of expression, electronic media, corporate control, and evolving technology continues into the summer.151 responses total.
Well what can you do? I loved it, but normally if it's to good to be true then it normally is.
From the latest Roxio (EZ CD Creator) e-mailing: Apparently some of our customers have misinterpreted our new partnership with EMI. This is somewhat understandable in that there has been nothing less than a "holy war" being waged between content owners and some high profile internet entrepreneurs. The fact is, however, that Roxio in no way intends to restrict functionality, or obstruct the free and easy burning of content. The EMI/Roxio deal is about enabling -- not disabling. Roxio is hardly waving a white flag here. We have pro-actively fought and lobbied the labels to allow more burning functionality, not less. Our customers will continue to be able to burn all the content they burn now (regardless of the source--CD collection, mp3 files, downloads, etc.). Roxio's mantra is "Burn Everything". We have no intention of deviating from this fundamental promise to our customer. We think the major significance of the EMI/Roxio partnership is that one of the largest record companies in the world has publicly recognized that digital distribution doesn't work without burning. This is a huge win for the consumer in getting closer to delivering on the promise of the "celestial jukebox". Thank you, Chris Gorog, President and CEO, roxio *********** Also in the same e-mail, it was announced that there is now an update to EZ CD Creator 4.02 that "fixes" the Audio Recognition feature that "broke" when CDDB threw a spanner in the works.
I tend to use this item as a running weblog for news stories and essays which I find of interest; hope everyone else isn't too bored. http://www.newmediamusic.com/articles/NM01060306.html "Don't Let The New DRM Standards End Up In A Chorus of Disapproval" I can never be certain if author Larry Powers at New Media Music is utterly brilliant or just blowing really pretty smoke rings. In today's essay Powers talks about how the music industry in the past has created "the illusion of ownership" for LP/tape/CD consumers, and how the DRM systems threaten to destroy that illusion. But, according to Powers, the labels don't grasp that when they trash the consumers' illusion of ownership -- with song files which expire after 30 days, or which have a limited number of plays -- they will damage the value of their intellecutal property holdings. Powers cites the first DiVX DVD system, the one which involved players which had to phone home for authorization to play the disc, as an example of what might be in store for the music industry if they continue on their present course.
http://musicdish.com/mag/?id=4017 "Dear Artists, Take Control Now While You Can" The hook quotes economist David Friedman: "Mark Twain made a lot of his money lecturing, not selling books. His books were more or less promotional tools. In the future, creative people will have to accept a similar business model. Current copyright laws simply won't be enforceable..." (paraphrased) The article also mentions a Chinese artist-management agency which has thrown in the towel on CD piracy, which is rampant in Asia. The agency has now adopted a policy of manufacturing just enough CDs to get the interest of the pirates; the agency then lets the pirates assume the costs of manufacturing and distributing the discs, which the agency now regards as promotional tools for concerts. Musicdish.com is somewhat amateurish, but I have found their essays worth checking in for. ---------- I had another article which discusses the original Napster, and its file sharing successors, as the only consumer-driven online distribution system to date, but I've lost the reference...
((( Summer Agora #22 now linked as Music conference #315.
Previous items in this series can be found in the Music
conference: items 240, 279, 280, 294 & 304. )))
I stuck a response in the music conference (item:music,293) about the financial difficulties and possible bankruptcy of Tower Records. Requoting from the L.A. Times: "Music merchants say sales are down 5% to 10% for the first six months of the year..." The LA Times story mentions lots of causes for Tower's problems, and for the general fall in music sales. Curiously, Napster is never mentioned. One wag somewhere (mp3.com/news, maybe?) argues that the falloff in music sales has accelerated as Napster has been fettered with filters, and as all measurements report that less and less music is being traded through the Napster system. So, he argues, this shows that Napster actually was helping drive sales of music. (That argument is probably about as valid as the argument that Napster was damaging sales in 2000...)
Could it be, perhaps, that music is getting just too damn expensive? I'm not a big music buff like many of you, but how many CDs can the average person buy at $20 a pop?
I buy less than 10 cd's a year and so far this year have gotten over 50 free ones from work.
It has been years since I have purchased a new CD in a store -- mainly because the prices are so high. I have never used Napster. I do occasionally buy CDs from the artists directly, at concerts. I think the last CD I bought from Tower was a cutout, and it was at least seven years ago.
I have never used Napster (and the only time I ever downloaded mp3s at all was a couple of years ago when I downloaded perhaps 20 live Tool songs not available on any cd. They were deleted some time ago). I buy cds a lot less than I used to. I think part of the problem is that music isn't as good. Sales boomed during the early alternative period, when not only grunge but also rap produced large volumes of sales, but nothing new has moved in to take its place. Electronica was hyped as the next alternative explosion several years ago (with much discussion of how record execs were packing electronic dance clubs the way they used to pack Seattle shows in the late 80s and early 90s), but nothing came of it. I've puchased two new cds this year, both from bands formed and popularized in the early 90s. The difference? Tool and Radiohead have both gotten a lot better as they've gone along. Few bands mature musically the way they have.
resp: 3 - I went and read this article, and I'm still not sure what the authors mean by "the illusion of ownership" in regard to old/current practices of selling recordings. What illusion? resp: 4 - David Friedman's clever notion that authors will live by lecturing is not a new one: I think it came from Faith Popcorn earlier. But it's fallacious. Some authors lecture well; some don't, or dislike it so much that they'd give up authorship first. There's a limit to how many lectures a practicing author can give and still write, which means that to live on it, the fees have to be high. But I've heard a few high-paid lecturers meander on at conferences - John Perry Barlow was a notably ill-prepared example - and my willingness to pay big bucks to hear these people burble is strictly limited.
My CD budget is around $100/month, which gets me about 7 CDs. I stopped shopping at Tower when I moved out of Lansing, though that one went to shit after Mark left anyway.
I buy the vast majority of my CDs used.
I apologize if these links aren't new here; I've not been following the discussion. They're about comic strips rather than online music, but the argument applies to any content. part 1 http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/icst/icst-5/icst-5.html part 2 http://www.thecomicreader.com/html/icst/icst-6/icst-6.html
I've read part one, and I like -- but question -- the implication that, if web-based art is provided at a fair price, people will stop macking it. Napster (specifically referred to, visually) is, after all, a form of shoplifting, vitually speaking... its users justify the behavior on the dual grounds that (a) CDs cost too much and (b) too much of the money goes to fatcat RIAA guys, but would the virtual shoplifting really stop if prices were lower? Shareware has been around for years, and most shareware packages have a reasonably priced registration fee (WinZip is, what, $20 or so?), but most people I know (including myself) still don't pony up the dough (yes, I'm admitting I'm a virtual shoplifter, too). Of course, shareware continues because enough people pony up the registration fees to make it worth the while of the developers... with the negligible overhead involved in shareware distribution, especially on-line, the only thing that money goes to is development time.
Read part 2, and perhaps his followup to the flame war that this apparently started <pause for link-finding>: http://www.scottmccloud.com/home/xtra/backlash.html He addresses just that issue. Briefly, his response is that no, of course it won't stop pirating, but it will make it less common, because 1) for the average person, paying a small fee with a few clicks will be less trouble than going through the effort to get it for free, and 2) people will be less likely to go to the trouble of providing bandwidth, disk, and access to things just to save someone else the trouble of paying a few cents.
Ah, so, basically what I suggested in para 2 of #15, i.e., that pirating will continue, but that *enough* people will pony up to make it worth the time, and the artist will still wind up netting more than going through traditional publication channels. I'm inclined to agree.
Here's a report claiming that Napster is about to disable the older, "free" versions of its user software, to force everyone to download the new security-enhanced software. The report goes on with an account of what the new Napster pricing system will be, and argues that it is priced to be a certain failure in the market. Mp3newswire.net is a kind of amateurish site, and I haven't seen this stuff reconfirmed elsewhere, so you might take it with a grain of salt for now. However, this report does confirm my original speculation from back in February that Napster's fate was to become just a branding for some minor variant on the BMG centralized download system which has already been rejected by the market. http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2001/napstersleep.html
Here's a mainstream media story on the simultaneous crash in both Napster users and CD sales, which I discussed in vague terms in resp:6 :: http://www.latimes.com/business/cotown/20010620/t000051058.html "The numbers raise the issue of whether Napster truly represented the doomsday for record companies that some industry executives predicted. And they call into question the RIAA's contention that Napster would cause 'immeasurable' harm to the business." ..."Slumping sales may have more to do with a comparatively weak release schedule, a stumbling national economy and the popularity of video games and other competing forms of entertainment."
Ooops, forgot part of the article I wanted to quote: "SoundScan research shows total music sales are down about 5.7% from the same period last year, dragged down by giant drops in sales of the singles format and cassettes... "The story with CDs is even more intriguing. According to SoundScan, CD sales from January through March 4 were up 5.6% from the period a year earlier. But for the period from March 5 -- just after Napster began removing copyrighted material from its service -- through June 122, CD sales were behind last year's numbers by 0.9%" I did not realize (1) the overall crash in music sales is concentrated in singles and cassettes, and (2) that CD sales so closely correlated to the imposition of Napster filters.
So far, 2001 has turned out mediocre musical product. The crashes could easily be coincidental. They could also be anti-RIAA backlash by Napsterites... it doesn't demonstrate (on that analysis) that Napster wasn't adversely affecting Majors buisness, it would only demonstrate that the RIAA's handling of the issue adversely affected Majors business (which it would... regardless of the morality of Napster, the RIAA acted like Prime Bastards). And none of it really changes the morality, ethics, or legality of Napster. A clear proof that Napster was helping the Majors still wouldn't affect whether it was moral, ethical, or legal a priori.
Actually it does reflect on the legal situation. All of the legal fighting so far has been over a preliminary injunction; the argument for the preliminary injunction is that Napster was causing irreparable harm to the record companies. Napster has still not had its trial; I have no idea at this point if Napster is *ever* going to have its trial. I propose that one way in which irreparable harm to the record companies should have been apparent is in diminished sales. The sales figures we have now show a NEGATIVE correlation between Napster usage and CD sales; thus no irreparable harm, thus there should have been no preliminary injunction. Napster may still be liable for statutory or actual damages for copyright infringement, but these damages alone do not warrant a preliminary injunction before the full trial.
Mm... I'll grant that it does obviously impact on the irreparable harm issue. I was think of the intellectual property issue, and had forgotten that that wasn't the only (or even the major) part of the suit. My mistake.
I'm surprised that there's distress about singles and cassette sales, both of which are music formats that have been running downhill for years. In my early high school years, most retail centers still had healthy cassette sections, but barely anything exists now.
At this rate, an early prediction of mine -- that cassette will actually be discontinued before LPs -- may actually bear out.
Beta News reports on a preview they were given of the Real Networks /MusicNet online distribution system. http://www.betanews.com/article.php3?sid=993552636 "Each MusicNet file will contain code to verify that it may be played locally or streamed. Upon playback, a central clearinghouse is contacted to confirm a license has been issued for the song. If a user does not have the necessary tokens, a notice will appear prompting for the purchase of more." As I read the article, it sounds like the playback system requires a network connection so the software can phone home to see if it is authorized to play the song file. The user can download song files freely, but must buy tokens in order to play them. If I'm right, heaven help them; they have reinvented the Divx system for DVD licensing, a system which was a spectacular market failure, almost totally rejected by consumers.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2001-07-03-net-radio-usat.htm "Net Radio Tangos With The Law." The RIAA is suing a number of "webcasting" firms claiming that their offerings are more interactive than is allowed under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Allowing users to choose what will be streamed to them is a no-no, according to the RIAA's interpretation of the law. Lawsuit targets include MTV's SonicNet, Launch, MusicMatch and Xact. The article says that the RIAA did not take on MSN's streaming offering, even though it is essentially similar in functionality to the sued firms. The article says that most musicians are lining up against the RIAA this time, in contrast to the Napster suit.
Of course the RIAA didn't go after MS. It saw what happens when the govt sues MS, what chance do THEY have?
It just goes to show the sharks know each other.
Professional courtesy ("Why don't sharks eat lawyers?" and "Why doesnt the
RIAA sue MSN?")
ZDnet has a nice survey article on six foolhardy firms trying to follow in Napster's footsteps. OK, some of them really aren't "firms." Let's say, a review of six Napster replacements, plus the state of the original Napster, which one user now describes as "an elaborate chat program." http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2782840,00.html Reviewed are: Aimster, Audiogalaxy, Gnutella, iMesh, OpenNap, and Kazaa-Music City Morpheus.
Yeah, somebody today directed me to Morpheus. I would have expected that, after the nonsense with Napster, any similar site (especially one that claims to be "better" than Napster explicitly) would have HUGE notices about copyright infringement... READ THIS READ THIS READ THIS. Instead, it took me a few minutes to find it, buried several sections below the snake-in-Eden temptation of "Morpheus has no control over what people share."
Re #28: Plenty of chances. Look what Sun got after going after M$ for violating the Java license terms.
According to a news story on http://www.mp3.com/news, Napster shut down on July 3 and it has not returned. The main Napster web page confirms that "File transfers have been temporarily suspended while Napster upgrades the databases that support our new file identification technology. Keep checking this space for updates." Um, Napster's been turned OFF for a week and I haven't seen a news story about it until today? Sheesh. I don't think the idea of making money off the former Napster user base is going to fly, if the end of Napster's file trading service stirs only a whimper in the news.
Here's the Cnet story on the disconnection of Napster: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6537921.html?tag=tp_pr (cue theme music from "JAWS" :) ) "Sources close to the case say that court documents still under seal have deeply influenced the company's actions over the past few weeks -- including its decision to go dark rather than allow filtered trading on its service." The overall thrust of the story is that the record industry believes the precedents it has won in the Napster case will allow it quick victories in the future over other file-trading systems. The story talks a lot about the impact of "audio fingerprinting" technology as a means to halt the unauthorized trading of song files. What few is left unsaid in the article is this: a Napster which effectively filters unauthorized song files has no reason to exist.
Macrovision says they have a CD copy-prevention system ready to roll out. No details are available in the two stories I have seen. They claim you will be able to play the CDs on computer CD-rom drives but not rip them. ??? http://www.macrovision.com/safeaudio1.html and a press release at: http://www.newmediamusic.com/articles/NM01070093.html
From Friday's New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/12/technology/ebusiness/12NAPS.html Trial court judge Marilyn Patel (remember her? We haven't heard much from her lately) has ordered Napster to remain shut down until their filtering system is 100% effective at preventing the exchange of copyrighted material. Napster claims its filtering system is 99.4% effective and Patel says that is not good enough. Napster will appeal.
The filtering system they have at the moment is 100% effective -- nothing gets through. ;>
What I don't understand is how Patel's order can be congruent with the appeals court ruling on the preliminary injunction. This seems to be the order Patel wanted to issue originally, which was substantially modified under the direction of the appeals court, and now she's gone back to it.
Longer AP story on the Patel ruling at: http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,45184,00.html Napster CEO Hank Barry agrees with me that the Patel ruling goes directly against the appeals court order, and furthermore its logic makes the operating of any file sharing system impossible.
I would agree that a 90%+ effective system definitely represents a good faith effort on the part of the system operators, and should be "good enough."
More detailed stories on the Patel order are popping up everywhere; it was a closed-door hearing so I guess the leaks are taking a while. ------- Cnet ran an article Thursday on the growing tussle between libraries and librarians on the one hand, and the copyright industry on the other. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-201-6545588-0.html In a future world where every access to copyrighted material is controlled by the copyright owner, and charged for, and where material is routinely destroyed if the user doesn't continue to pay for it, it's not clear how libraries continue to exist. Quote: > What's more, as a rising number of copyright owners and software > developers turn to licensing models, librarians worry that they'll > be forced to pay perpetual rent on a product or lose the work--a > possibility that could endanger the important archival role > of their institutions. > "If I buy a book, take care of it, and nobody rips it off, I'll > still have it 500 years from now," said Jim Neal, dean of > libraries at Johns Hopkins University. "But if I buy an > electronic book and don't keep paying for it, it's gone." Cnet found an inflammatory quote from the Association of American Publishers comparing some librarians to "Ruby Ridge or Waco types" for wanting to preserve free access to material for their users.
Interesting how those publishers who propably consider Ben Franklin as part of their heritage, would also brand Ben Franklin as one of those "Waco types".
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,45279,00.html Paraphrasing the teaser: MP3 files are easy to use and interoperable with lots of software and hardware. But -- other than consumers -- no one wants to use the format. :) The copyright industry has decided that consumer choice and convenience takes a back seat to making files copy-proof. Software firms have now decided that they have to make products to appeal to the copyright industry rather than to consumers. The Napster tale is horrific...: > Napster, the file-trading service that was the bastion of free, > downloadable music, has recently become the poster child for > secure music. On Monday, Napster unveiled more of its plans for > security, announcing plans for a proprietary digital music player > that will be used with its new subscription service set to launch > before the end of summer. > > The new service won't allow consumers to move their music > away from the Napster file-trading network to other media > players like RealJukebox or Windows Media Player. Instead, the > service will only play proprietary ".Nap" files on the new player. > The Napster system will take MP3 files that run through its main > server and create the new, proprietary format, said Dube. > > "Napster is doing this because their chance for survival is to > leverage the huge volume of MP3s out there," said Dube. "They > saw this as a business strategy, to leverage all those MP3s out > there." I can just see the customers lining up to pay money for restricted-use files...
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns9999998 is a story on the previously-mentioned Macrovision system to prevent CDs from being copied by computer systems. The New Scientist article has some information on how the system works. It's still very sketchy.
Re #44: That's no good. How'm I supposed to use 'em in my portable MP3 player? ;> Re #45: Wonder if anyone's tried cdparanoia on one of these discs. I've seen it rip clean audio off discs so scratched up they wouldn't finish playing in a regular CD player. There's a similarly good Windows ripper, the name of which escapes me at the moment.
I'm not interested in proprietary or pay-per-use music files, but that's probably OK with the recording industry, because I didn't use Napster and I don't buy CDs in stores, either.
resp:37 and subsequent: The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Judge Patel's order closing Napster until it could show that it was perfect at preventing the trading of copyrighted files. (No surprise to this layman; Patel's order seemed to go right against the heart of the Court of Appeals' previous ruling.) Napster expects to reopen a form of its service shortly. (You know, we've been discussing this preliminary injunction for a year now...) The story is covered in most online news sources so I won't punch in a URL.
Historical essay on copyright as seen by the Founding Fathers: by Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of a book "Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity." Too long and detailed to summarize. http://www.msnbc.com/news/594462.asp?0si=-
(Subtitle: "Why Thomas Jefferson would love Napster.")
A typically insightful article about the ongoing collapse of the music industry: http://www.salon.com/ent/music/feature/2001/07/19/industry_downturn/index.h tml "Napster's out the picture, but for the first time in a decade, album sales are down -- and ticket sales are sagging too". I hope this means the DIY/punk revolution I've been predicting will finally happen.
Heh, beat me to it. The Salon article is a fairly bleak catalog of failure. It points out that Napster and file trading can't account for the crash in concert ticket sales; it appears that consumers, in general, are tuning out music as a way to spend entertainment money. Salon also has a summary article on the current situation with file trading systems, which doesn't have much we haven't already covered here: it describes what's happening now as "the Napster diaspora."
Could it be the recording industry has finally pissed off Too Many People?
Sounds to me like people are waking up to the fact that they're getting gouged. Should we really care that Britney Spears, Eminem and 'N Sync are selling fewer records this year?
Well, that suggests an interesting question. Does anyone know if there are figures on the "average artist's" sales trends? Is Joe Guitarist getting hurt by this, or just Dave Matthews and Lars Ulrich? (Or whoever that guy from Metallica is. Just pretend I got the name right, 'k?)
(serious drift) Did anybody see the new Pepsi commercial with Britney Spears? Did she get that outfit from Cher's garage sale or *what*??? No wonder her popularity is collapsing.
Britney Spears is a typical bubblegum pop artist. After a while, even her most ardent fans will find that she has lost her flavor, and spit her out.
Re #55: The "average artist" doesn't get a record contract, so his/her sales are essentially zero. ;>
Touche. Should have phrased that better. How about "are obscure bands with contracts hurting as much as the top names?"
There just isn't much to be excited about in music right now. NSync and Spears are probably two of the only major names around right now--nobody else with huge name appeal is doing anything. Metallica hasn't released original music since Reload, and with Hetfield entering rehab, they probably won't be for a while. It's a typical example of a band that is theoretically a big seller that isn't doing anything. Music has no major trend that's moving albums right now. Boy bands are on the way down, grunge is gone (there are survivors of these trends, but no trends themselves to pad sales), and nothing has moved in. The music industry is partly to blame for this, for pushing trends so heavily-with such limited portfolios, they would go broke in two weeks on wall street. To follow cliche, they should have diversified long ago. They still should work on that. Produce music that a lot of people will find interesting a buy consistently, if not outrageously. In a better market, people like ken whose interests are not at the top of the charts would have a niche that actually got attention. People without ken's verve for music don't get served at all, and they stop buying anything.
The New York Times runs its own version of Salon's "Napster Diaspora" story: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/20/technology/20MUSI.html Quote: "Six of the alternative ((file trading)) services had 320,000 to 1.1 million users each in May... Five of those services had little traffic or did not even exist in February." And, file trading programs are the most commonly downloaded items at download.com. So, now instead of fighting one file trading monster, Napster, the RIAA is now looking at fighting six of them. This story ran on page 1 of the dead tree edition.
Same old same old... from Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,45234,00.html Title: "What if Napster *was* the answer?" At a music and technology conference, anonymous major-label execs say privately that the labels should have managed to come up with a solution to work with Napster, because the post-Napster world is looking even tougher for them. Analysts say that the major label download plans still look like losers, and the majors have maybe 6-9 months to come up with something consumers will accept before the Napster successors are as big and entrenched as Napster was at its peak.
A crowing piece on www.mp3newswire.net:
http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2001/topclones.html
"Napster clones crush Napster, take 6 of the top 10 downloads on Cnet"
Napster won't talk about how many users have downloaded their new,
restricted, beta software directly from them. From Cnet, Napster
downloads are roughly 1% of the Morpheus downloads.
"RIAA president Hillary Rosen cheered triumphantly - almost tauntingly
- a week ago when Judge Patel ordered that Napster will remain
shutdown until it could reach 100% perfection in its filtering
endeavors. It seemed almost that Rosen was oblivious to what
Napster's shutdown was unleashing and that the reversal of Judge
Patel's order last Wednesday was the least of her problems."
Napster's CEO Hank Barry, who was installed by the venture capitalists who funded Napster in its early stages, is stepping down. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6651876.html?tag=mn_hd
Oh, the copyright/restricted usage situation is getting real bad. At a recent librarians' conference, I was treated to the story of the Rocket e-book. Originally, the physical readers were being sold as a loss leader: money would be made on selling content. But the companies discovered that many reader-buyers were never buying content: they were using the readers to read free content from the web (Project Gutenberg texts, etc). So the new models have been made with software that will only accept Rocket proprietary texts as readable. And if you munge the reader software so that it will accept free texts, then whenever you hook up the reader to the web to search for or buy new product, the website will detect this and re-set the reader software. Copyright owners have a legitimate interest in preventing illegitimate distribution. But they've gone way beyond this, and challenged the hitherto unquestioned right of the purchaser to do whatever s/he wants with the purchased copy itself. With much downloadable material, you can only use it on the computer you download it to. You can't even transfer it to another computer you own, even if you erase it from the first computer at that time, which would be a fair restriction. I think danr has the answer to falling sales: people are tired of getting gouged. Every major arena concert in my area is followed by a sheaf of letters to the newspaper's arts section, complaining about too high prices for too little concert.
resp:64 :: The new CEO of Napster is Konrad Hilbers, a veteran executive with Bertelsmann. So Bertelsmann is tightening control to try to salvage something from their investment in Napster, is my guess. It's obvious by now that Napster isn't going to make the promised July date for the relaunch of their for-pay service.
From the hometown of the American record industry: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-000060022jul23.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines %2Dbusiness (sorry the URL is excessively long there) The piece is fairly bleak about the early prospects for the major label download systems winning many customers. Quotes: >"All they're doing is having an electronic version of Tower Records," said >Roger Noll, a Stanford University professor of economics. "I suspect that >they're structured this way because they're so dominated by the record >companies . . . [which are] very much afraid of a world where the unit of >production is not the CD." ... >The companies have revealed few details about their services, >but this much is clear: They won't be free, they won't offer a >comprehensive catalog of music, >and they won't let subscribers transfer songs from their computers >to their cars or living-room CD players. ... >Dennis Mudd of Music Match said: "If you're going to have a >service that's just like Napster except that it's got less content, >it's more expensive [and more restrictive] . . . you're going to lose."
Last night, driving across northern California (somewhere in Mendocino or Sonoma County) I was listening to a local radio station's folk and bluegrass program when they cut in between songs with a recorded message describing how the station had ceased streaming its programming over the web because of legal fears related to the DMCA and recent court decisions.
That's a bad sign. Up until now, restrictions on streaming webcasts used to be that they would remain streaming only (no downloads), and for webcast-only material that they wouldn't tell you in advance what you were going to hear next. If radio broadcasting were invented today, the record firms would never allow it. Going out ... over the airwaves? And anybody with a cheap radio can, like, just listen to it without paying anything else? Unheard of? Licensing, you say? No licensing! Just ... stop it! Run for the hills! Buy off Congress!
Issues like these were actually fought over at the time radio and the recording industry were young, and eventually Congress imposed the structure we have today for royalties and compulsory licenses. I have come to the conclusion that nothing successful will happen in the "legitimate" section of the online music field until Congress imposes a similar set of rules regarding royalties and compulsory licenses. This is a good example of where the marketplace is NOT working things out. There are too many players, and they are all too greedy and determined to maintain control, for negotiations to reach a successful conclusion. Songwriter representatives have been indicating that they think the songwriters should get about half the money from the online music business, compared to roughly the dollar per CD they get today. Wired news, today: Universal has announced that it will launch the Universal/Sony "PressPlay" system in the first half of September -- whether or not agreements have been reached with the songwriters whose works will be sold. Universal is already being sued for having launched its farmclub.com download system without getting clearance on songwriting copyrights. (Actually I kind of hope they do this. With the Napster and "Tasini" precendents, I think they'll be crushed for multi-million or billion dollar damages, and unlike Napster, this time there will be a defendant with deep pockets. I call it poetic justice.) Anybody want to debate "Tasini v. NY Times?"
Given the recent decision that, unless they expressly signed over electronic rights to their work, freelance writers retain copyright on their work, the same would probably hold true for musical performances. Although my guess is that music companies, like print publishers, have been obtaining those rights as a matter of routine in recent years. That decision may slow Sony down a bit if it planned to offer music for which it does not have electronic rights.
Aren't musical performances in a different category now, the same one as movies? Something about "works for hire"?
Cnet: "File Trading Pressure Mounts on ISPs" http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-6674297.html?tag=mn_hd Sort of a repeat article, but maybe things are heating up again. The copyright industry is trying to get ISPs to terminate customers who run Gnutella or Napster-clones. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act never envisioned a scenario where copyright infringements emanated from a user's home PC: the "notice and take down" scenario was designed for material on the ISP's machines -- web pages, for example -- and it is sharply limited to the copyright-contested material. Nothing in the DMCA speaks to the issue of copyrighted material not under direct control of the ISP, and nothing in it talks about cutting off users from the net. Some ISPs are bending to the will of the copyright industry and some aren't. There's clear potential for abuse, and no semblance of due process, in what the copyright industry wants here. The Church of Scientology, just to pick a handy example, would love to be able to terminate the Internet access of its online critics. The ISPs also realize that file trading has driven all the money they have made selling high-speed connections, and they are wary of alienating their paying customers.
resp:36 -- An article in Stereophile magazine concerning Macrovision's method of making audio CD's un-rippable. http://www.stereophile.com/shownews.cgi?1094 "TTR's patents reveal that in the SafeAudio system, "grossly erroneous values," or bursts of digital noise, are added to the signal, forcing a regular CD player, whose error correction can't usually handle such extreme digital hash, to cover the gaps of bad data with data from before and after where the distortion occurs. But when copying the audio file to another device, like a PC's hard disc, the extreme digital values are said to overwhelm the computer's ability to transfer the data properly, leaving annoying noises in place of music." (this "technology" was developed jointly by Macrovision & TTR Technologies, and has been used *secretly* by several record labels on new releases, since March of this year)
Re 74. It doesn't seem to me that this will prevent ripping for long. Or would a program to screen out digital noise be illegal under the DMCA?
Programs already exist to remove the skips from a CD while ripping it. I would not be surprised if CDParanoia, say, would also do a pretty good job of overcoming the intentional noise on these disks.
My question about Mike's resp:74 :: if the Macrovision technology (a) (a) has been used secretly on several releases, and (b) actually blocks copying as a data file, then don't you think we would have heard reports from people saying, "Hey, I can't rip this CD, what's up?" Thanks for the pointer.
resp:51 and subsequently, on the sharp downturn in CD sales: "As Audiences Discover Frugality, Pop Culture Starts Feeling A Chill" Not actually about CD sales at all, but the article does discuss the flattening or downturn in pop/rock concert ticket sales, along with problems in Broadway, movies and book publishing. Free/inexpensive entertainment such as TV is either measured, or anecdotally reported, to be increasing its audience. The top tier of entertainment still sells well -- Madonna's tour, the movie "Shrek," the musical "The Producers," but below that level, business has fallen off in all sectors. Some pundits argue that prices are too high and people are watching their wallets carefully as they worry about their jobs. Others argue that a sort of cultural ennui has set in; people are tired of megahyped blockbuster after megahyped blockbuster, in all genres and styles. Regarding concerts: "In the first six months of this year, according to figures published in the trade journal Pollstar, the top 50 concert tours took in 12.6% less money than last year's top 50. The number of tickets sold was off by 15.5%... "'A two-million-ticket drop is not insubstantial,' Pollstar's editor Gary Bongiovanni said. 'The conventional wisdom is that the entertainment business is recession-proof, and with inexpensive forms of entertainment that's still true. But since the last recession in 1991, the cost of our product has more than doubled. What used to be an inconsiderable expense is becoming a luxury item.' "Music promoters in many parts of the country are seeing considerable drops in business." ---------- The relevance to the Napster arguments: it does start to look like file trading is irrelevant to the falloff in CD sales. Something bigger is happening in the culture at large.
BMG is going to test a anti-ripping scheme from SunnComm. In the initial test they will just process promotional CDs. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6719912.html A Cnet columnist compares the file sharing systems still operating: http://music.cnet.com/music/0-1652424-8-6699285-1.html?tag=sd Legal fantasy? mp3newswire.net points to a findlaw.com essay suggesting that the Supreme Court's ruling in Tasini v. NYTimes creates a precedent which may save the original filesharing Napster system... http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2001/tasini.html
The Register reports that a way has been found (already?) to bypass the Macrovision SafeAudio technology: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/20766.html The article's a bit short on details.
Wired reports that Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina), chairman of the Senate Commerce committee currently working on an Internet privacy bill, is talking about using that bill to begin the process of establishing a Federal security standard for entertainment files. Once the standard is developed, all new "electronics devices" would be required to conform to those standards and reject unauthorized files (like your MP3 file collection, most likely). This is the holy grail for the copyright industry; Disney is wildly in favor of it. The good news is the example of the SDMI consortium, which is now two years beyond its original deadline for a security standard for music files and which doesn't seem to be making any headway. There's no reason to believe a Federal process would be any more successful in mediating the conflict between the copyright industry and the electronics industry: the electronics companies believe that what the copyright industry demands, consumers will not buy. http://wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,45701,00.html
Another CD copy-prevention system, called Cactus. Sony is testing it in Eastern Europe. They claim to be able to make copied CDs generate square waves to damage electronics and speakers, though the test CDs sold in Europe were not manufactured to do that. (Sounds like a declaration of war to me.) Haven't had time to read this closely yet: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991105 Aren't all of these schemes defeated by a pass through the analog domain?
(In Douglas Hofsteader's book _Goedel, Escher, Bach,_ he comes up with an analogy for proof by counterexample using record players. The Tortoise keeps buying new record players. The Crab can always come up with a record that will blow the latest player to bits. In that sense, he's got the advantage. Sometimes, the Crab thinks he's noticed a pattern in the Tortoise's players. He takes advantage of that pattern to make a record that will destroy -- he hopes -- any player at all. But the Tortoise can always gain the upper hand by making a new player that doesn't follow the old pattern. In that sense, the Tortoise has the advantage. Douglas Hofsteader is a strange, strange man.)
re #82: When I try to pull up that article, I get: Sorry, This article is unavailable at the current time - every effort is being made to get it back up and running as quickly as possible. It's a conspiracy! Seriously, though, off the top of my head, I don't see how they could put anything on a CD that would damage speakers.
Speakers don't tolerate square waves at high volumes well. Back before CD players were savvy enough to refuse to play data CDs, it was pretty well known that the digital 'hash' generated by trying to play one could blow speakers.
From the Chicago Sun-Times: http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-mp02.html Northwestern University fires a secretary for having 2000 MP3 files on her computer. She wasn't running Napster; the University long ago blocked it.
Another review of Jessica Litman's discouraging book "Digital Copyright:" http://writ.news.findlaw.com/books/reviews/20010720_hodes.html The reviewer writes that Litman's optimistic conclusion that the DMCA would end up being ignored has been overturned by the destruction of Napster, which had not yet happened when the book was written. Other than that, the reviewer agress with Litman: copyright law no longer represents the will of the people expressed through their legislators, but instead it is dictated by the large corporations and becomes a club to beat the public with. ----- http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010802/re/music_internet_dc_1.html A Reuters story on proposed legislation being developed in the US House by Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va) and Rep. Christopher Cannon (R-Utah). They propose to loosen copyright laws to help online music businesses get up and running without being destroyed by lawsuits. The key seems to be a plan to extend radio-style compulsory mechanical licensing to online music services. "This would mean there would be one royalty pool, elminating the need for a Web-based service to negotiate with individual artists, labels, music publishers and songwriters." ((I *told* y'all this was coming.)) ----- http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/cn/20010727/tc/net_music_faces_patent_squeeze_ 1.html (careful with the wrapped URL) The Intouch Group has been given a patent which they claim covers most or all downloaded music. Lawsuits are flying. The courts have not yet had the sense to laugh this patent out of existence.
re #85: That may be true, but I'd guess that while square waves may have been written to the CD, by the time the signal actually got to the speaker, they'd be fairly well rounded off, especially in low-end equipment. Let's get one of these CDs, hook the audio output to a dummy load, and scope it out.
A square wave is easily maintained through even a cheap receiver and amp. It's the speakers which have trouble moving instantaneously from + to -.
There have been "conventional" recordings which were infamous for containing square waves and having equipment-damaging potential. Usually these would be recordings of the 1812 Overture with the cannons driven into clipping in the recording. However, the trick in the Cactus system is the claim that the CD data is manipulated so that the original disc plays musically and safely, while a copy produces noise, and could be manipulated to produce a square wave.
That really doesn't make sense - it's all digital stuff - just 576 byte blocks of data -- either you copy it, or you don't -- a CD-R is going to see just the same bits on the disk that a CD player will, baring weird chemistry or physics trying to play "tricks" with different kinds of lasers.
Marcus raises the obvious objection. Either there's something more to this scheme than explained in the press reports or Cactus is some kind of pseudo-technological scam intended to soak panic-stricken recording execs..
The theory is that an audio CD player will realize that the data makes no sense, and fix the obvious errors. Normally such errors would be the result of corrupted data; ie a scratch or other physical damage. A CD data read would read the data as-is, then lay it down on a new CD as good data. But yeah, why wouldn't the audio read of the copy fix the same problem? Maybe there's a checksum involved which aids the fixing of the bad data on the original?
Yes, but whatever's happening is *probably* something that CD-RW software can do just as well. I'm not sure there's any checksum (or that there isn't)--I do know though that when used to store data (CD-Rom) only 512 bytes of data are stored in the 576 bytes -- the remaining 64 bytes of data are used to store (I think) ECC data to repair any minor read errors -- this isn't done for audio because a 1-bit error in audio data is typically not audible. That suggests to me that there isn't any checksum on the audio data.
It probably has something to do with the underlying subcode tracks on the CD that audio players use but CD-ROM drives can't copy, but that's just a guess. I remember that this was why Playstation CDs couldn't be copied and the copies run in an unmodified Playstation -- the boot code for the Playstation was hidden in those subcodes. Supposedly you can fit about 2 megabytes in there, spread across the entire disc.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6788999.html "Department of Justice to probe online music ventures" Quotes: > The Justice Department opened an antitrust > investigation of the online > music business, focusing on two new joint ventures > backed by five major record > labels, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. ... > The government is also expected to examine the > major record companies' use of copyright > rules and licensing practices to control online > distribution of their music, according to these > people, the report said. ... > According to the report, a lawyer familiar with > the Justice Department investigation said that it > isn't unusual for joint ventures among competitors > to attract antitrust scrutiny and that many > such ventures have been permitted to continue operating.
At least some CD-RW players are (as best I can tell) capable of copying all the subcode data as well. Any CD-RW player has to be capable of copying the P and Q subcodes - I believe it's integral to how it knows the difference between data & audio, and other important stuff. Some common tricks used for copyprotection include a bad table of contents block (apparently audio players don't need to use it...?), and scattering bad sectors or data on the disk. The bad sectors can cause data under-runs if you're copying from CD to CD, but I don't see how those can break things if you use the HD as a buffer. I don't entirely understand how a bad table of contents can break things, but that's the claim. It sounds to me like something that could at least in theory be programmed around, if you were "clever".
Today's web news stories: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6820135.html "Napster blasts court's technical meddling" Napster complains that the court-appointed technical master, who was supposed to settle technical issues of fact, has been given unprecedented and unjustifiable authority to run the engineering side of the Napster company. ----- http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6817555.html The record companies ask the judge to skip the Napster trial and deliver a summary judgement against Napster. ----- http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6816989.html Napster's new CEO outlines the hypothetical Napster subscription arrangement. ((Your weblog writer thinks that this has become completely irrelevant. Napster Inc. has two possible outcomes: either it will be vaporized by the court judgement, or else it will die from lack of users.)) ----- http://musicdish.com/mag/?id=4333 "Putting the Pieces Together: An End To End Solution for Protecting Music" A music business fantasy about how our ability to copy CDs and music files will be restricted, and how we'll all put up with it just fine. Notice the handwaving where the writer assumes that no one will want to put up with second-generation music files which have been passed through the analog domain to strip out all copy restrictions...
The MusicDish article is amusing. Serious math/logic errors in the first paragraph. I really doubt that 30 million people are getting their music via online sharing, especially not for one specific album.
Speaking of fantasies, here's a link to an article that reports on the recording industry's hopes to phase out CDs: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5095272,00.html?chkpt=zdnnp1t p02 Basically, a company called Intertrust will provide the Digital Rights Management (DRM) format for DataPlay-enabled devices. The DataPlay discs have yet to hit the market, but are purported to be small and portable, about the size of a quarter.
I'm not sure I want my music to be recorded on media "the size of a quarter" if the record companies are going to pesist in charging nearly twenty dollars for new recordings.
Gee. You know, that DataPlay device sounds an awful lot like a minidisc player. Hmmmmm. (Twila goes back to contemplating her minidiscs.)
Considering that these players cost four times what a low-end CD player does now, and that the discs aren't likely to sound any better than CDs (maybe even worse, since they're compressed), this is going to be a hard sell.
I'd be afraid I would lose them too easily being the size of a quarter. It would be handier to carry around and seemingly light.. Feh I have enough trouble keeping track of my minidiscs. :)
The size of a quarter? How about the durability of a quarter? you stick CD recording technology in you're pocket, and you destroy it.
http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2001/6cd.html "6 CDs a Year, or, Consumers and record labels are at war." Nothing too original here, but it's a nice essay. It does point out that in the conventional economics models, the progress of technology is supposed to lower prices so that consumers can get more bang for their bucks, but the record industry is using its oligopoly power as best they can to prevent this from happening.
I was thinking about this yesterday after I talked to Drew at work -- he went to Borders to buy the "O Brother Where art Thou?" and "Songcatcher" soundtracks. And he said that the clerks were so unhelpful and so unclued that he gave up and went to Best Buy. (Which is a comment on the staffing at teh downtown Borders going downhill... in and of itself). But then I was thinking that a major reason for people not buying records is the problem of where to get them -- I know that a lot of people do buy on line, but most of the people I know don't as a rule. Music for a lot of people is something they still want to look at, ponder, all that -- and without some record stores that cater to that need, a lot of people will stop buying. And of course the cost factor doesn't help. Just some random musings.
That was certainly true when I was in Chicago. There were two decent record stores in Hyde Park, but neither of them were very well staffed, and I wasn't familiar enough with them to just blunder around the place on my own, the way I do in Encore or Wazoo. I ended up buying two CDs the whole time I was in Chicago, both of which I was ordered by friends to go out and buy This Instant.
http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,28532,00.html An anonymous source says that the Department of Justice antitrust probe of the major labels and their online music ventures, which was revealed this week, has been ongoing for months. 'The source said that the probe was initiated out of the DOJ's antitrust division in response to "disillusionment with the business practices of the record companies" from "multiple parties at every level of the music value chain," including recording artists, record stores, and online music services.' My my my.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/review/2001-08-15-korea-napster.htm Two South Korean brothers, both educated at American universities, are facing criminal prosecution for copyright violations. They wrote a Korean-language Gnutella-style file sharing program called "Soribada," which translates as "Sea of Sound;" they felt Korea deserved its own file-sharing system. Potential penalties include up to five years in prison and fines of $38,500. Soribada does not user a Napster-style central service; it is clear they are being prosecuted as the authors of the program, not for operating it.
I'm not into the tech, but with the lasers to read disks now
at a higher frequency, they can find the 1's and 0's closer together;
putting the same digital information is a smaller space.
Also, wasn't the standard for the CD set up to be 4 discreet
audio channells, room for text and/or graphics, etc? A new standard
could ignore those things the public rarely sees.
Then again, DAT (digital audio tape) was tried as a new
pre-recorded format. It failed. The Mini-Disc (MD) was tried as
a pre-recorded format. It, too failed to find a consumer market.
Only peripherally related to main topics here: http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,539104,00.html "How Radiohead took America by stealth," by the UK paper The Guardian. Radiohead's recent success, according to this article, relied on internet fan communication. The record company mostly stayed out of the way. > Most controversially, Radiohead and > Capitol encouraged fans to copy and > circulate free bootlegs of Kid A (((the next-to-last CD))) in its > entirety across their own sites three > weeks in advance of the album's official > release, upon which it went straight to > number one with no radio airplay, no video > and no hit single. The article does raise the question: so what does Radiohead need Capitol Records for? Why doesn't the band take over its own relationships with the fans?
The New York Times has a collection of pieces today. Besides the music stories referenced below there are a few more on the impact of digital technology on other arts. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/20/technology/20ROSE.html is a puff piece on Hilary Rosen, the head of the Recording Industry Association of America. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/20/arts/20ARTS.html "Why Just Listen to Pop When You Can Mix Your Own?" Discusses the rise of web sites where fans share their amateur remixes of work by their favorite artists, with a focus on Bjork. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/20/arts/music/20CEED.html Popular music critic Neil Strauss writes about two weeks spent listening only to music found on the net: one week before the crushing of Napster file sharing, and one week recently. This article will mostly be of interest to geezers and trailing-edge folks like me. Quote: > As a critic whose job is based on listening to > new music, I have never been exposed to more high-quality artists in a > shorter amount of time. Any musicians complaining about song-sharing > services like Napster, any record executives trying to work out an Internet > business model, and any fans who wants a glimpse of the way music > consumption and distribution will change in the future should put aside > their stereos and try this experiment ((( internet-only listening))) > first. and: > In general, it seemed to be a rule that the > more passwords you needed, the more > personal information you had to submit, the > more corporate logos you saw and the more > special software you needed to download, > the worse the site was. ... and www.live365.com was singled out for special scorn. In the post-Napster world of Summer 2001, Strauss seems to have found happiness with a mix of Aimster, IRC chat channels, and KaZaa.
Re #111: A CD has room for 74 minutes of uncompressed stereo audio. If you use any of the other features, the amount of audio you can put on is reduced accordingly. So you're not really savig anything by eliminating those features from the spec. 74 minutes actually turns out to be a bit short for some classical music. Minidiscs hold considerably less data than CDs, but they get around that by using a lossy psychoacoustic compression algorithm to compress the data on the disc. It works similarly to MP3 but it's a proprietary compression. In theory the loss of data in the compression is unnoticable to the human ear.
But you don't want to reduce the data quality level on classical music. Please!
Genuine Napster news! :)
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6946163.html?tag=lh
In a conference at Aspen, new Napster CEO Konrad Hilbers promised
that the new subscription based Napster service would open by the
end of the 2001.
Quote:
((Hilbers)) said Napster could still be a place where
people swap music free of charge, so long as it
isn't copyrighted.
"I'm very much a believer in what
Napster stands for, which is the
sharing of music among friends
and private consumers when it
comes to making available things
like my children's Christmas carol
singing or a garage band," Hilbers
said.
In which Hilbers demonstrates an awesome ignorance of intellectual
property law (everything is copyrighted now) and the market demand
for children singing carols. I'm sure BMG invested $50 million
in Napster because of the huge audience demand for other people's
children singing Chrismas carols.
-------
Songwriters represented by a copyright enforcement organization called
Copyright.net have launced a new lawsuit against Mp3.com. They argue
that Mp3.com was the original source for many Mp3 files traded on Napster,
and thus Mp3.com should be assessed damages for downloads from Napster
and related services.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/depth/mp3082101.htm
quote:
>The argument goes like this: MP3.com made compressed copies of about
>900,000 songs, which it placed on its computer servers -- without obtaining
>the rights to do so. That created a vast bootleg library, from which MP3.com
>subscribers could download songs. Once on the user's computer hard-drive,
>a single song could be copied and passed around infinitely in the music
>underground.
This seems totally bogus to me: I never heard of anyone using Mp3.com
as a ripping service to get tracks for further distribution, it seems
like it would have been much harder than ripping the tracks yourself.
I think we are now suing for theoretical copyright infringement.
I suspect this suit has only happened because Mp3.com was bought by
Universal Music Group, and the songwriters think they can now tap
Universal's very deep pockets.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/telco/story/0,2000020799,20256077,00.htm Australian Excite@Home users are upset over the cable ISP's new policy of randomly monitoring its users and immediately terminating the service of anyone they think is infringing copyrights.
Actually, I thought that technically, things that had been released into the public domain weren't copyrighted. Also, things on which the copyright has expired (and there are a few recorded pieces old enough to qualify, now) are not copyrighted. this post is (c)2001, but is hereby released into the public domain ;}
OK. For ten points: Describe a practical system for determining if an arbitrary sound file is under copyright protection, or has been released into the public domain. Remember that when the system fails to properly detect copyright protection, the consumer faces various unpleasantness ranging from loss of Internet access up through criminal prosecution. :)
Re 118. For a recording to be in the public domain through age alone, it would have had to be "published" before 1922. Anything which was never "published", regardless how old, is still under copyright.
There were recordings published before 1922, weren't there? When did Edison invent the phonograph?
You bet there were recordings before 1922. Edison patented the phonograph in 1878.
re #116: what a crock.. I'd say that the suit stood no chance whatsoever, but all kinds of previous decisions suggest that just maybe, if they find the right judge on the right day, this could succeed. I actually never thought that MP3.com should've been slapped for its MyMp3.com service (or whatever they called the service that would stream you MP3s of CDs that you proved you "owned" (or to which you had at least had temporary physical access ..)) which I guess shows how much my legal opinion is worth..
Re 121-122. I'm aware that recordings existed before 1922, but I am less certain about what technology existed to mass-produce and "publish" them. Wax cylinders? And how many of those still exist in playable condition today? I don't think the 78 rpm record was invented until later, was it? I guess there were player piano rolls, but they were not "recordings" so much as encoded sheet music. This is further evidence, if any were needed, how howlingly unreasonable it is that published items dating back to the early 1920s are still under copyright -- let alone non-published items dating back to the beginning of time.
I thought "published" meant there were at least three copies, or something like that. Didn't Edison also develop a method for copying his cylinders, one at a time? I'll agree that polygon's interpretation of copyright law creates a highly impractical situation, but it also doesn't match my recollection of copyright law. Maybe I just wasn't paying enough attention. =}
I have seen, and held in my hand, commercially published vinyl (or at least it looked and felt like vinyl) cylinders from circa 1905. Flat disks had been patented by Emil Berliner in 1896, and in the form of 78 rpms had taken over well before 1922. Commercial phonographs were plenty common by that time. What hadn't been developed yet (late 20s) was electrical recording, so the sound on those earlier records really sucks.
when did the first talkies appear? that would also qualify as "published sound."
"The Jazz Singer", usually credited as the first "talking movie" (although it was mostly a silent movie with a few sound scenes) was released in 1927. By 1929, Hollywood had totally converted to sound.
Well, ok, that's after 1922.
Cylinders where recorded in a "batch mode", with a sound horn picking up the sound and a distribution system (all acoustic) tapping into multiple recorders. A big batch would have been in the dozens. The next set of x many cylinders would get a new performance. This method ended once a master disk could be cut, and used to make mothers, that then in turn produced shellac and vinyl.
http://www.newmediamusic.com/articles/NM01080292.html Fairly neutral, mostly non-technical article summarizing the different approaches to copy-proofing CDs. IFPI (the International Federation of Phonographic Industries) got a patent last week on another such system. Quote: > The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry > (IFPI) patented a method to fool CD-Rom players when > consumers try to copy CDs or rip MP3s from CDs onto their computers. > It involves encrypting the time codes on CDs, which are > usually ignored by CD players but not by CD-Rom players, so as to > make the CD perform just fine on your stereo system--so > hopes the IFPI--but be incompatible when you try to copy it onto > your computer.
Michael Robertson, the entertaining and outspoken CEO of MP3.com, has left the job as the acquisition of MP3.com by Vivendi Universal is completed. http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2001/robertson.html The US Copyright Office has issued a report asking Congress to clarify some of the legal issues surrounding the Internet music business. MSNBC says the report generally tilts towards the Web music companies and away from the copyright industry. In particular, one area of focus is the copyright industry claim that it should get both performance royalties and recording royalties on the delivery of music over the net. In today's market, the copyright holders get either performance or recording royalties, but never both. http://www.msnbc.com/news/621682.asp?cp1=1
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,46596,00.html The Webnoize traffic measuring people say that four of the new file trading systems -- FastTrack, Audiogalaxy, iMesh and Gnutella -- are, in their aggregate, enabling users to trade about as many files -- 3 billion per month -- as Napster did as its peak. File trading activity is expected to rocket upwards as college students return to their campuses. FastTrack usage has been growing by 60% every month, for the entire year. ------- http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/06/technology/circuits/06IMAG.html A non-musical article, for a change. The Times reports on a conflict between the owners of copyrighted images and a new era of search engines which collect and index images from the web. Fairly interesting article, a bit too dense for me to summarize it well.
As to the NYT article -- it's odd that the sole focus is on images, with no mention of search engines caching copyrighted text.
Well, a picture *is* worth a thousand words...
The copyright industry is going for the whole enchilada: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46655,00.html Quoting: > WASHINGTON -- Music and record industry lobbyists are > quietly readying an all-out assault > on Congress this fall in hopes of dramatically rewriting copyright laws. > With the help of Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.), the powerful chairman > of the Senate Commerce > committee, they hope to embed copy-protection controls in > nearly all consumer electronic > devices and PCs. All types of digital content, including music, > video and e-books, are > covered. > The Security Systems Standards and > Certification Act (SSSCA), scheduled to > be introduced by Hollings, backs up this > requirement with teeth: It would be a > civil offense to create or sell any kind of > computer equipment that "does not > include and utilize certified security > technologies" approved by the federal government. > It also creates new federal felonies, punishable by five years > in prison and fines of up to > $500,000. Anyone who distributes copyrighted material with > "security measures" disabled or > has a network-attached computer that disables copy protection is covered.
This is a very big story, and rather than post all the details here, I'll start a new item.
The new item is #192.
NB: That is Item 192 in Agora, Summer 2001.
Good point.
Oh, and also, there is Item 194, same Agora, with objections to and discussion of Item 192.
Well, if we are going to argue about the argument there, maybe the actual discussion will stay here. :) Repeating myself from M-net: Congress already endorsed the proposal that consumers should not have access to unrestricted digital copying when they passed the Audio Home Recording Act, which mandated the Serial Copy Management System in consumer digitial music recorders. I bet the argument will be that Congress will just be closing the loophole the AHRA left for general- purpose computers; when the AHRA was passed, I don't think the lawmakers or the lobbyists forsaw the consumer Internet, or CD burners.
If people think $16 is too much to pay for a legal copy of their latest pop CD then why don't they not buy the thing? Simply making illegal copies doesn't seem like the best response.
Conditioned response.
But what else will it make illegal? And what future developments in the industry will it stifle? And what is the point of it except to guarantee certain persons (not necissarily the artist) the right to make money? What damage will it do to that industry by restricting artists rights?
This is pretty much the end of "fair use" rights, isn't it?
#146> Yep. Some spoiled kids ruined it for everyone. When is the Government going to stop acting like a father in midlife crisis who's too lazy to come up with serious solutions to his kids' misbehavior and just lays down "now EVERYONE's lost their priveleges" judgments?
Re 143. Not buying the CD is *my* response. I don't need an illegal copy. However, this law will have impacts on far more activities than downloading music.
The one that scared me was the "first sale" negation -- i.e., under this act, it would be illegal to borrow books/cds, etc. from the public library. Taht was scary!
#148> Doesn't current copyright "fair use" law also give (or at least imply) me the right to make archive copies for my *own* private usage?
hmmm. This is kind of funny because I was just thinking that I could take my old pc and put in a larger hard drive and then record all of my cd's onto that hard drive and hook it up to my stereo so I could have all my music in one place. I can still do that of course but that does seem to be what they are going to end up putting a stop to.
You have several choices: