Continuing the weblog, with occasional discussion, about news relating to the deconstruction of the music business: with side forays, to steal polygon's description, into "intellectual property, freedom of expression, electronic media, corporate control, and evolving technology." This item is linked between the Winter Agora conference and the Music conference. The previous version of this item (item:music3,37) includes a list of all earlier items in this series.219 responses total.
Soundscan issues a report on 2001 CD sales: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20020103/re/leisure_albums_dc_1.html "Album Sales Not Sweet Music in 2001" (Soundscan is the company which runs the point-of-sale counting system used by Billboard magazine for the "official" US sales charts.) Quotes: > A lack of blockbuster hits, the weak economy, and the > distraction of underground music Web sites like > Napster (news - web sites) and other media combined to > push U.S. album sales to 762.6 million in > 2001 from 784.8 million in 2000, according to Soundscan, . > It was the first decline since the company began monitoring > album sales in 1991 and was almost > entirely reflected in the drop in sales at the > multi-platinum top of the charts. > The top-10 selling albums sold 20 million less units in > 2001 than the top 10 albums in 2000, a > Soundscan spokeswoman said. > The year's best selling album was Warner Bros.' > ``Hybrid Theory'' by Los Angeles-based rock group > Linkin Park, which sold just 4.8 million units. > By contrast, seven albums sold more than 5 million copies each > in 2000, with Eminem (news - web > sites)'s smash release ``The Marshall Mathers LP'' > selling more than 9 million. To repeat that key point: the top-selling CD in 2001 sold roughly half as many copies as the top-selling CD in 2000.
Slashdot has coverage of the US imposing trade sanctions on the Ukraine over bootleg CDs. As best as I can sort it out, the US is demanding that Ukraine implement a serial number licensing system for all CD blanks and all CD-manufacturing machines so that the sale of every CD from that country can be traced. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/01/03/1621205&mode=thread
We're demanding that they do something there that we don't do here? Or *do* we do that here?
I don't think it's necessary to do it here if CD piracy isn't a problem here. And, to my knowledge, it's not. NOTE that I'm saying "CD Piracy" and not "music piracy". We're talking about making illegal copies of compact discs and selling them. That's not a real problem in the US.
Genuine Napster News! :) http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2002/napsterlives.html mp3newswire.net discusses Napster's preview of the new for-pay, copy-controlled service. Napster hopes to relaunch in "early 2002." There are two other mp3newswire.net stories worth a mention: their "winners/losers for 2001" stories discusses how the major labels wiped out most potential business competition in 2001, either through legal action or by buying them out, both in file-downloading and in internet radio. However, the labels' offerings seem to have no appeal to consumers; mp3newswire.net projects that anything successful in the digital music field will have to be based somewhere outside of the reach of the US legal system. mp3newswire.net also reports that the file trading company KaZaa is ignoring the Dutch court's order to shut down; that was as of late December and I have not seen any updates.
UBL should skip all this messy plane and anthrax business and just set up his own pirate music-trading site.
Re 3: I think we *do* do that here. Or rather they *do* do it in the places where they make the CD blanks and recorders that we use here.
Media and equipment do not make piracy.
What is the best site to download bootleg videos in VCD format?
re #8: Sony Corp. of Am. v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984) USSC. Everyone in the content industry, including Sony, is now trying to forget this decision. Hmm, I wonder why.
Re #7: That's very likely true of stand-alone audio CD burners and the corresponding "audio blanks". These are the only legal way to copy a copyrighted audio CD for home use under the amended Digital Home Recording Act. A copyrighted audio CD copied to a "data blank" is automatically an act of piracy regardless of what you do with it.
re #11: I've heard that claimed before but it's not at all clear to me that it's true. Is there a court decision which clearly establishes this position or is it just the wishful thinking of the music industry?
My understanding of the AHRA is somewhat different than gull's in resp:11. My recollection of the text is that consumers are "immunized from suit" for any copyright action involving the non-commercial use of digital recorders using SCMS (serial copy management system) and royalty-paid blank digital media. But that is far from saying that any copying involving non-royalty-media is an illegal infringement. Orrin Hatch, who was a principal author on most recent copyright legislation, and Hilary Rosen of the RIAA had a vigorous dispute on the subject of what consumers could do with copies they had made; this is far from a settled issue. Speaking of the AHRA: here's a news story where Rep. Rick Boucher questions whether the CD copy-prevention schemes being tested by the music labels are legal, under the AHRA compromise: http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173429.html
I don't know if it's ever been tested in court. krj seems to be right that it's just immunity from suit that's the issue. Here's what the RIAA claims: http://www.riaa.org/Copyright-Laws-4.cfm -- The Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 (AHRA) This 1992 legislation exempts consumers from lawsuits for copyright violations when they record music for private, noncommercial use; eases access to advanced digital audio recording technologies; provides for the payment of modest royalties to songwriters and recording artists and companies; and mandates the inclusion of serial copying management technology in all consumer digital audio recorders to limit multi- generation audio copying (i.e., making copies of copies). In general, the AHRA covers devices that are designed or marketed for the primary purpose of making digital musical recordings. Digital audio cassette players, minidisc players, and DAT players are devices covered by the AHRA. This law will also apply to all future digital audio recording technologies, so Congress will not be forced to revisit the issue as each new product becomes available. The AHRA provides that manufacturers (not consumers) of covered devices must: (1) register with the Copyright Office; (2) pay a statutory royalty on each device and piece of media sold; and (3) implement serial copyright management technology (such as SCMS) which prevents the production of copies of copies. In exchange for this, the manufacturers of the devices receive statutory immunity from infringement based on the use of those devices by consumers. To learn more about the administration of the royalties paid on recording devices and media, see the section on AARC. Multipurpose devices, such as a general computer or a CD-ROM drive, are not covered by the AHRA. This means that they are not required to pay royalties or incorporate SCMS protections. It also means, however, that neither manufacturers of the devices, nor the consumers who use them, receive immunity from suit for copyright infringement. -- Here's the relevent section of the U.S. code, since the link on that site seems to be broken: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/ch10.html Realistically, given the number of lawyers and U.S. lawmakers the RIAA owns, if their interpretation isn't the law, it might as well be.
There's an article in today's Free Press about Pressplay and MusicNet. http://www.freep.com/entertainment/music/mnet7_20020107.htm The basic conclusion is that the clumsiness and limitations of the services, and the fact that the record companies are withholding their best-selling material so as not to cut into CD sales, make them not really worth subscribing to.
I was looking for some clue as to how many people had signed up for the Pressplay and Musicnet services. All I can find so far is a ZDnet story from late december, about a week after the new services were launched. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2101670,00.html quote: > The figures from Download.com support his observation. > Music fans are downloading rogue > software that allows users to swap music files through > online services Kazaa, Morpheus Music > City and Audiogalaxy, to name a few, at a clip of more > than three million per week. > In contrast, Real Network's RealOne media player -- > the software associated with MusicNet -- > was downloaded 7,506 times during the past week, > according to Download.com.
Could someone give me a rundown of the various sucessors to Napster in the arena of free downloading?
Incidentally, a trojan was recently found in Kazaa, Grokster, and the Limewire Gnutella Client. See: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23532.html
Amazing! They can deliver condoms by computer now?
Slashdot points to a good summary article at EE Times about the Consumer Electronics Show. The hook is about plans to come up with some sort of system to stifle unauthorized video exchanges on the Internet, but the bulk of the article is more generally about: (Quote:) > Indeed, a battlefield rife with enmity between systems makers and > music, movie and video producers was perhaps one of the ugliest > parts of the industry on display at CES. Multiple panel sessions > expressed worries and lobbed barbs over frustrations stemming from a > variety of standoffs retarding the development of digital media > markets. > > Among the many outstanding issues: ... ((see the links)) http//www.eet.com/story/OEG20020109S0062 http://slashdot.org/yro/02/01/09/2226244.shtml Also, the dead-tree edition of USA Today has a preview of the new for-pay Napster service. Napster thinks its chat and bbs functions will give it an edge. Versions of the story probably available on other online media.
Excellent long summary article by Mike Godwin, a lawyer long active in Internet issues, on the war between the Content Industry and the Tech Industry, and how the Content Industry intends to force the dismantling of the general-purpose computer as we know it, and the Internet as we know it, through Hollings' SSSCA bill. The Tech Industry wants to empower "users", while the Content Industry plans to keep "consumers" as passive as possible. http://cryptome.org/mpaa-v-net-mg.htm
Philips has declared that CD copy protection techniques violate the CD- DA standard. They note that they could refuse to license CDs that use them: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991783
Coinciding with the Consumer Electronics Show is the second Future of Music conference, brought to you by Jenny Toomey's Future of Music Coalition, which is weighted heavily towards indie artists. Washington Post has a story about the conference, which is pretty quiet this year. As at the CES, the dominant theme seems to be gridlock: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22972-2002Jan9.html Quote: > ...but after umpteen panels and dozens of aria-length questions > from the audience, the clearest lesson was this: The music industry > today looks a whole lot like the end of a John Woo movie. > > You know, the climactic moment when the heroes and villains -- maybe > three or four of them -- take out guns, point them at one another and > freeze, each waiting for a false move and an excuse to shoot. In the > decades before modems and PCs went mainstream, the business gradually > and painstakingly split the music pie down to the last half-penny. > Now everyone is paralyzed, horrified by the idea that this online > world will rearrange the portions and leave some people with less > than they had before. > > Weapons are drawn. Lawyers have been retained. Nobody is budging. The Post also offers a fairly critical view of the new for-pay services. Nothing new here, though their writer does think that indie-rock fans may find some appeal in the "rhapsody" service from listen.com: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22922-2002Jan9.html
Letter to RIAA & IFPI heads from Congressman Rick Boucher - Jan. 4, 2002 http://www.dotcomscoop.com/article.php?sid=80 January 4, 2002 Ms. Hilary B. Rosen President and Chief Executive Officer Recording Industry Association of America 1330 Connecticut Avenue, N.W. Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20036 Mr. Jay Berman Chairman and Chief Executive IFPI 54 Regent Street London W1B 5RE United Kingdom Dear Hilary and Jay: According to many published reports, record labels have begun releasing compact discs into the market which apparently have been designed to limit the ability of consumers to play the discs or record on personal computers and perhaps on other popular consumer products, such as DVD players, video game consoles, and even some CD players, for traditional fair-use purposes such as space shifting. I am particularly concerned that some of these technologies may prevent or inhibit consumer home recording using recorders and media covered by the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 (AHRA). As you know from your personal involvement in its drafting, the AHRA clearly requires content owners to code their material appropriately to implement a basic compromise: in return for the receipt of royalties on compliant recorders and media, copyright owners may not preclude consumers from making a first-generation, digital-to-digital copy of an album on a compliant device using royalty-paid media. Under the AHRA, any deliberate change to a CD by a content owner that makes one generation of digital recording from the CD on covered devices no longer possible would appear to violate the content owner's obligations under the statute. To understand better the implications of this new technology for consumers, I would appreciate your providing answers to the following questions: 1. What methods have been used or are planned for use by your member companies to alter CD content or ancillary encoding so as to constrain functions of personal computers or other devices? Do these methods involve the injection of intentional errors? Do these methods involve compressed audio files separate from the CD-quality tracks? 2. Based upon your knowledge and upon any consumer contact received by your member companies, have any discs entered the U.S. market that may not be copied on a device or on media for which a royalty has been paid under the AHRA? 3. What steps, if any, have your member companies taken to inform consumers, retailers, or device manufacturers about the restrictions and which of their discs have been or will be altered? 4. What steps, if any, have been taken by your member companies to assure that the introduction of intentional errors as to encoded music, or other technical means to block copying, will not detract from sound quality or cause responses in equipment that could damage speakers? 5. Would you and your member companies support independent testing of the effect on sound quality, on listening behavior, and on the performance and operation of home networks, before these technologies appear more widely in the U.S. market? Assuming you and your member companies support such testing, are you prepared to provide assurances that no assertion would be made that these tests and any peer review of the tests would violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act? Given the recent announcements from some record companies that they intend the broad introduction in 2002 of copy protected discs, I would appreciate a prompt response to this inquiry. Thanking you for your time and attention to this matter, I remain Sincerely, Rick Boucher Member of Congress
A columnist for Billboard lectures the music biz on how it is ignoring consumers: http://www.billboard.com/billboard/musictomyears/index.jsp Quotes: > One hopes we all still wish to sell records. and, somewhat confusing: > Judging from the poor reaction to the clumsy new Web music > subscription services, the likelihood of fans opting to only "rent" > music they once owned/controlled in physical form is slim. > > As people inside and outside the industry are realizing, mere recorded > music is not that important or special to people unless those directly > involved can enhance both its real and perceived value. In the film > realm, DVD-Video has thus far managed but it needs to go farther. > The music world had better catch up quickly and dramatically between > now and next Christmas, because the public isn't interested in the > music industry's opinion of itself -- it's only interested in maximum > music choices with maximum ease and, yes, even greater post-digital > audio merit. And they won't be bullied into paying through the nose > for a bad bargain.
Confusing? It sounds like an incitement to include more content (live the special features on DVDs) in order to justify the different pricing model and as a way to ease the annoyance of music buyers.
mp3newswire.net has a review of the new for-pay Napster written by one of its beta testers. http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2002/paynapster.html
The New York Times has a story on "Napster culture" now moving on to downloading and trading TV shows and movies, as bandwidth and disk sizes increase. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/17/technology/circuits/17VIDE.html "Black Hawk Download: Pirated Videos Thrive Online" The store includes a visit with an Internet video collector in Ann Arbor. :)
Lots of stuff today... KaZaa has stopped offering their filesharing client for download at http://www.kazaa.com. This does not appear to affect the operation of clients already downloaded, though there are rumors that the KaZaa company may be able to shut off its clients operating on the FastTrack network. http://mp3newswire.net has more. Also Cnet at: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-8513895.html?tag=mn_hd ----- Another Cnet story reports on an attempt to get everyone to agree on a no-copy flag for the digitial TV bitstream. Theoretically this flag is to be turned into a standard, and then into hardware, in time for the Federal deadline for all TV to be broadcast digitally in May. Um, right. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-8516912.html?tag=mn_hd ----- Finally, Slashdot publicizes and rips to shreds a website put up by Universal Music Group to try to explain and justify their CD-copy- prevention scheme. UMG CDs now contain a software license which appears to forbid loaning the disc, and which certainly brings consumers under crypto export controls. Slashdot's story and rude comments are at http://slashdot.org/articles/02/01/17/1335204.shtml Universal's own site is at http://www.musichelponline.com
Somewhere back up there someone was looking for a roundup of current file sharing stuff. Slashdot today had a response pointing to http://www.afternapster.com which reviews 101 such systems. Also, I haven't got a link, but I've seen news stories about the Soundscan weekly sales charts, and they are still trending downwards. One analyst in one story somewhere is projecting a 3% decline for the CD business in 2002.
Thanks Ken.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23736.html Summary: Philips is continuing to insist that CDs using the current copy protection schemes can't bear the official Compact Disc logo. (Though since the logo is usually inside, on the disc, this still might not provide a good way to identify them before buying.) Philips' general manager has also said that the company will be building CD burners that can read and burn copies of the copy-protected CDs. He argues this won't be illegal under the DMCA because the "copy- protection" scheme isn't a protection system, it's a method of preventing the playback of music. It should be a very interesting legal battle if they actually go through with this.
More on the classical music crash from andante.com: http://www.andante.com/magazine/article.cfm?id=15643 From 1999 to 2001, the classical music CD business lost 20% of its sales in the USA. USA sales lag far below Europe; classical is down to about 1.8% of the market in the US, but 8% (and on an upward trend) in Britain, 7% in France (but trending downwards from 10% earlier in the decade), 11% and rising in the Netherlands. Harmonia Mundi, one of the classical independent label/distributors hit hard by financial troubles at Tower Records, has responded by slashing the number of CD titles they distribute in half. To take the optimistic view, they should now be a stronger company.
The CD logo often appears on the back of liner notes inserts or on the back of the CD package, but not consistently enough to be able to tell anything by it. What does the logo signify? Compliance with the red book encoding standard?
Specifically, it indicates the CD is licensed by Philips, which holds the CD-DA patents (at least for another year or two.) I think complying with the red book standard is part of the rules for making a licensed CD.
re 33: Must be all those classical fans downloading on the internet!
resp:29 :: Slashdot collects/points to a bunch of stuff about Kazaa. It appears the operation has been sold to a company in Australia which intends to charge for its use; however, there are also rumors that the company buying Kazaa can't be found in directories of Australian firms. The Kazaa file trading client is once again available for download, the articles say. Weird. http://slashdot.org/articles/02/01/21/1621223.shtml
mp3newswire.net assembles a coherent story about the Kazaa purchase, though I'm still not sure I grasp what is going on. Australia is developing a reputation as one of the least Internet-friendly nations so it seems a poor choice to host a file-trading operation. http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2002/kazaasold.html ----- mp3.com/news points to a Houston Chronicle essay from early this month: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/tech/weekly/1208692 On the disconnect between consumers and the music business, heavily redacted: > Here's the point that the music industry just can't seem to > comprehend: Consumers will not flock to any pay service that > constrains what they do with the music they download... > > The industry talks about "educating" consumers about intellectual > property rights and the fact that artists and license holders need to > be compensated for their work.... > > But consumers are also resistant to the notion that art is something > they've "licensed," like software, even though legally that's the > case. Instead, their mindset is this: "Hey, I paid for this music. It's > mine now. If I want to save some songs to my hard drive, burn a > compilation CD, listen to them in an MP3 player, I should be able > to."
If only there was some sort of Pulitzer Prize for stating the obvious..
I think a lot of people feel that way about software, too. I know to me it seems distinctly unfair that if I buy a machine with a pre- installed copy of Windows, I can't later sell it with that same copy of Windows installed.
an issue which is made only more confusing by the fact that if you buy a boxed copy of Windows, you *can* transfer the license with the machine.
Napster news, widely reported: Trial court judge Marilyn Patel agreed to a 30-day delay in issuing her ruling on the labels' request for a summary judgement against Napster. It is believed the labels and Napster are close to a settlement which would clear the way for the for-pay Napster model to open for business.
(But won't get them customers.)
The NYTimes reports further: the Register had some of this but frankly it sounded like wishful thinking in their article so I didn't include it in the earlier response. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/24/technology/ebusiness/24NAPS.html > Several people close to the case said, > however, that the record companies' real > motivation in asking for a suspension was > that Judge Patel had threatened to > issue an order that would have hurt their > own case. Specifically, these people > said, Judge Patel may have been planning > to look more closely at whether the > labels had negotiated in good faith in > their licensing discussions with Napster.
resp:42 and subsequently :: lots of stories are breaking about the release of the hearing transcripts from January 16 in the Napster case, and some of the press coverage is getting more and more breathless. I'll just cite this one, from the "Newsbytes" imprint of The Washington Post: http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/174154.html "Napster Case: Is Judge Turning Tables on Labels?" Quotes: > A judge's decision allowing Napster to pursue copyright misuse claims > against major record labels seems to signal a sea change in the music > industry's lawsuit against the peer-to-peer song-swapping service, > according to a trio of legal experts. ... > If she were to rule that labels have > misused their rights, one expert told > Newsbytes, at the extreme it could mean > the labels could not enforce their > copyrights. Such a decision, conceivably, > could kill the labels' case against Napster ... > The 10 pages of transcript following Patel's statement about copyright > misuse remain under seal by order of the judge, so any discussion that > followed Patel's statement remains secret. But what is present in the > document was described by one lawyer as "a bombshell." ---------- IANAL, but I went Googling in search of the terms "copyright misuse." This seems to be a fairly specific legal term specifying a defense against copyright infringement, in a situation where the copyright holder has used copyright licenses to enforce unfair or illegal trade practices. The case law I found, from early 1990s, involved a software firm which forced its customers to sign a 99-year non-compete agreement before it would license the software to them. It's unclear to me if a finding of "copyright misuse" merely ends the litigation in question in favor of the accused infringer, or if it terminates the copyright. The Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/23906.html) laments that Napster seems to have neither the resources nor the inclination to pursue this lead much farther, possibly leading to the smashing of the major record companies. I tend to agree; Napster is now controlled by Bertelsmann, one of the major music companies, and so it would not want to endanger the record company copyrights. My guess is that Napster is likely to just use its leverage to wipe the slate clean on anything it might have owed on past infringements, and to get the licenses it wants to launch the new for-pay Napster. However, an analyst in the Newsbytes piece points out that the copyright misuse issue will be lying around waiting for use by the other P2P file sharing operations which the music industry either is suing, or plans to sue.
Hi, I'm Twill!
Here's an odd story. CD sales went down globally in 2001, but in the UK and France they are up. UK sales up 5%, French sales up 12%. Go figure. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/music/newsid_1814000/1814160 .stm
Wired pointed to this think piece from MIT's Technology Review: http://www.techreview.com/articles/shulman0302.asp on "Intellectual Property Ecology." The argument is that the current shifts towards giving all rights to the IP owners and none to the public is likely to have bad effects on future creativity. Those clashing against the current trends are starting to apply an ecological metaphor in their organizing attempts.
And we all know how successful ecologists have been at influencing public policy..
From context, that's obviously intended as sarcasm, but ecologists actually *have* influenced public policy in the US and Europe a hell of a lot in the last 30-some years.
I know.. But I'm not particuarly hopeful for the effort Ken alludes to. I'd argue that ecologists have largely been successful because they've managed to convince a large enough segment of the populace, not because they've influenced legislators directly. However, it's a complicated issue and I have no desire to hijack the Napster item..
Agreed on both counts.
Returning to Napsterish news.. An article in today's New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/18/technology/18SONG.html blasts the
music labels' official subscription download plans for not fairly
compensating artists. According to the article, subscription plans such
as PressPlay and MusicNet, which have been pushed by the music industry
as a way to make sure that artists are fairly compensated for their work,
apparently improve upon Napster's $0.0000/download by offering artists
a whopping $0.0023/download.. So if you're paying PressPlay $19.99/month
for their "Gold Plan" service, which allows up to 75 downloaded songs,
as much as $0.1725 of that $20 *may* be going directly to the artists.
Care to guess where the rest goes?
Anyway, artists are predictably up in arms about the compensation and
several have demanded that their work be withdrawn from the subscription
services.
Favorite bits from the article:
(1) "Representatives of the five major record labels would not talk on
the record about the payment system or their rights to use the
music. But in comments not for attribution, several executives
at labels and their subscription services did not dispute the
accusations regarding the payment plan. They said their first
priority was to make the services attractive to consumers and
that the details of compensation could be worked out afterward."
Oh yeah.. I'm sure the record labels can be trusted to work out
equitable compensation arrangements "afterward."
(2) Quote regarding a statement from Rand Hoffman, head of business
operations for several labels on Universal:
"[Hoffman] added that it was 'beyond logic' that artists would
choose to leave their music off Pressplay and 'effectively
encourage the use of illegal services.'"
Gosh yeah. Everyone hates getting screwed over *illegally*.
Having it happen legally is no doubt much better..
Thanks, Mike, I'd missed this story. It's putting a big smile on my face, it is... Some of my favorite bits: There's a long-ish discussion of the differences between licensing arrangement and royalty arrangements; artists get less money in a royalty arrangement, and of course that's what the labels have chosen to use here, and it's defensible. But then: "But, out of that, 35 to 45 percent is deducted for standard CD expenses like packaging and promotional copies -- expenses that obviously don't exist in the online world." Yup, the labels are billing the artists for CD packaging costs for songs delivered online. And... "For many acts, suddenly there appears to be little difference between the illicit file-sharing system and record-label services. The arguments the labels are using, said Jill Berliner, a leading music lawyer, are exactly the ones Napster made. 'And, from our perspective, if the technology is going to be out there and the artist isn't really going to make money, we'd prefer that our fans just get it for free,' she said."
The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear a challenge to the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, which extended all copyrights for another 20 years, and which put quite a few public domain works back under copyright. The NY Times story is at: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/19/national/19CND-RIGHTS.html Slashdot points to a legal-oriented site backing the challenge to the law: http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/eldredvreno/ At the risk of oversimplifying, the argument is that Congress is going against the clear language of the Constitution's copyright clause, which calls for copyrights to have limited terms, when it continually lengthens the terms of copyright.
And it's a solid argument. Dunno whether it can beat the Mouse and his deep pockets, but it should in an ideal world.
CNN headline news said the surpreme court case involved extending copyright to 70 years past the death of the author. I suppose if the current copyright were 50 years, that would fit with #55.
It was 50 before the Bono Act, which became law several years ago. Oddly enough, the Act was passed a few years before the earliest Mickey Mouse cartoons were due to come out of copyright. It is widely believed that a similar act will be proposed in another 15 years, and that Mickey -- along with every other work that age or newer -- will never be allowed to fall out of copyright. Hopefully, this court challenge will short circuit that. In addition to the fact that the Constitution calls for limited terms, it also states pretty clearly that the purpose of copyright is for the public good, not for the good of copyright owners. The clear intent was to give a short- term monopoly in order to encourage people to create works, which would benefit the public. It was warped almost beyond recognition even before the Bono Act, and now it's ridiculous. (For one thing, extending the term on existing copyrights didn't encourage the production of any works, because those works already existed.)
The good of the copyright owners IS the public good, since they are members of the public. It is not in the good of the copyright holders that they should hold copyright for decades after they DIE.
It's not in the good of the largest number of people, either; it's
a method of consolodating and ensuring wealth, and that is against the public
interest when in excess.
The phrase "greatest good for the greatest number" also causes me to get Pig's "Blades" stuck in my head. (Side comment)
Re #59: It is to some extent, because that allows them to provide for their
children with the proceeds from their intellectual property.
#62> Their children didn't create the works, they did. If they want their children to benefit, they should set up trust funds for the money they earned while they were alive.
I'm just telling you what the justification is.
I think on this particular issue I'm one of those conspiracy theorists who believe it's all about the Mouse. Disney will use every trick in the book (and, if necessary, write a new book) to make sure that no Disney-owned character ever passes into the public domain. Movie and music studios have similar goals. Arrayed against these titans are a handful of archivists and librarians. As much as I hate to say it, the smart money is on the Mouse.
#64> I know. I even understand adding a certain amount of time after death, to cover surviving spouses. But I think that when it gets into kids, then grandkids, that's just getting silly.
While I understand that "the smart money is on the Mouse," I wonder how much the Disney deep pockets matter, now that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case?
No matter how long the copyrights get extended, Mark Twain is still not going to come back from the dead and write more books.
Re #66: These days, the real problem is that IP is owned by corporations.
Seems like much of the DMCA action has now moved away from music and
into game consoles and software. Slashdot carried this story from about
a week ago:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/02/14/1745238&mode=thread
in which the original author
http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~mcmillen/dmca/
reported having a serial cable (designed to connect a Sega Dreamcast
machine to a PC) seized by US Customs, citing the DMCA.
The cable is needed if one is to develop anything for the Dreamcast
on one's PC and upload it to the game console; theoretically this is
still a legal activity.
A followup Wired story indicated that Customs seems to be after all
shipments from this particular Asian vendor, Lik-Seng, in an effort to
stop the importation of modification chips for the Playstation.
It's not totally clear to me, but it looks like region coding is now
being elevated to the level of a copyright-protecting encryption.
The Dreamcast development cable thing seems to have been mostly due to a problem with insufficient granularity at customs -- customs was seizing all incoming merchandise from a vendor rather than just the items which were alleged to be in violation of the DMCA.
I don't think the copyright extensions have much to do with the interests of authors or their families. I think most of it has to do with the interests of various big corporations. Increasingly, most of the real money in the creative business is not in properties owned by a single person, but in properties owned and controlled by big corporations. This is certainly true of Mickey, it's also true of most other movies, most TV series and characters, most computer software... Even in the case of a creative property owned & controlled by a single person up until their death, I question whether it's really fair that their great grand children, who probably never even knew "the master", should still have a financial monopoly on the work 70 years later.
I don't think so; I think 70 years is way too long.
Slashdot again: The copyright office has come out with its proposals for
royalty payments for webcasting. As expected, the arrangements seem designed
to crush small webcasters. Royalty payments for pure webcasters are set
at twice the rate for a web stream of an over-the-air broadcast,
despite there being little to no advertising revenue in the webcasting
business right now.
Webcasters are also to log and report information about every single
listener to their service.
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/02/20/2351222.shtml?tid=141
also links to two journals at:
http://www.kurthanson.com/index.asp
(Radio and Internet Newsletter)
http://www.radiohorizon.com/index.php3?fcn=displayarticle&id=2424
Oh, now that's cute.
That may just drive the technology underground, like digitized music
sharing.
Time offers the best piece I've seen yet on movies88.com, which claims to be offering streaming movies for $1 from the sanctuary of a giant loophole in Taiwan's copyright laws. A sidebar includes an interview with the shadowy owner of the site, who seems to have poured thousands or millions of dollars into the project with little likelihood of profit. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,203474,00.html "Beyond Hollywood's Reach"
resp:42 :: The one-month time-out did not produce a settlement; Napster and the recording industry go back into court. Judge "Patel will likely move ahead" with orders opening up the issues of"copyright misuse" on the part of the labels, and also testing the validity of the labels' ownership rights. http://news.com.com/2100-1023-840756.html (from Cnet) From another article, the opinion was expressed that four of the five labels (excluding Bertelsmann, who control Napster) don't want a settlement; they need a clear legal victory as precedent for future battles against the next generation of file sharing services. The vaguely remembered quote was that the labels need a precedent so they can shut down future opponents in 30 hours rather than three years.
Man, I just "happy birthday" to pass into the public domain. ;)
Salon offers a decent interview with the plaintiffs in the upcoming
Supreme Court copyright expiration case:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/02/21/web_copyright/print.html
resp:78 no no no no.. I do not even want anyone doing a cover of the tune that once was "Good Morning To You." It's great when people pick alternate birthday songs when paying royalties is not desirable. Perhaps it is true that more people will come up with birthday songs once that all-too-familiar and often ill-sung (intentionally) ditty is public domain, but.. really. Anyone interested in an item listing all the songs about birthdays that do not include "Happy Birthday"? I somewhat think tpryan would have a handful of suggestions..
Some words from the copyright industry.
In the Washington Post, Jack Valenti of the movie trade group MPAA
lays out his case for prohibiting computers which can copy files,
though he doesn't mention the SSSCA by name.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/174745.html
The RIAA issues its own press release on 2001 cd sales. Their numbers
don't tally precisely with Soundscan, possibly because the RIAA
includes "club" sales. But the basic outlook is the same.
The RIAA says it has a survey indicating that 23% of their customers bought
less music because they were downloading or making homemade CDs.
Units of recorded music shipped -10.3%
dollar value of those discs -4.1%
full-length CDs units shipped -6.4%
In analog formats, cassette sales fell 40%. LP sales, however, increased. :)
http://www.riaa.org
An entertaining Slashdot rant on the RIAA press release: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/02/27/0213252 "RIAA Almost Down to Pre-Napster Revenues" "Napster came out in 1999, and the Recording Industry Association of America had two great revenue statements for that year and the next." However, when Napster was crippled, CD sales fell. Causality would be very difficult to establish. As was reported by the LA Times and logged earlier in one of these items, CD sales stopped rising and started to fall the very week Napster was forced to begin filtering. (Slashdot links to an SFgate story with the same theme: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/08 /05/PK220163.DTL ) A number of followup writers mention that in most industries, falling sales generally lead to lower prices. That hasn't happened yet in the CD business, despite promising news stories at the end of 2000 that the sales slump would certainly lead to lower prices. Instead, the recording industry is behaving as if it is a regulated public utility, guaranteed a return on investment no matter what its costs are.
... and no matter what shape the economy's in.
Good. If they go bankrupt, then they can (and will) be replaced by larger numbers of smaller labels who lack the might to force their profit enforcement down our throats.
(I speak as someone who does not buy CDs except directly from the artists -- with very rare exception -- and who actually might buy them if their pricing was reasonable.)
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A number of sources report that Senator Hollings opens hearing on the SSSCA proposal, which would criminalize the further production of every computer ever made to date, on Thursday. The Valenti piece in the Washington Post (resp:81) is apparently a warmup pitch.
I imagine the tech industry will put up a fight on this one. If it goes though, I wouldn't be opposed to calling for a general strike.
The proposal isn't viable. There's just no way to make it work with
something truly programmable, and even if it becomes a severe felony to
manufacture software to bypass copy protection, it won't affect Europe and
Asia's manufacture.
Oh, it's viable. It would leave the US a 3rd world country though.
News reports are flying everywhere about Sen. Hollings' hearings
on the SSSCA proposal. Essentially it was arranged to be a lynching of
the Intel executive, who was the only tech industry representative
there; contrary to what was reported to be the usual protocol, the
witnesses from the copyright industry were allowed plenty of scope to
attack the witness from Intel. Democratic senators are lined up
solidly with the copyright industry.
Slashdot's story has links which cover most of the ground.
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/03/01/1423248.shtml?tid=103
The CBS Marketwatch coverage stressed Sen. Hollings' insistance
that the proposal to disable copying in all PCs *will* be implemented.
http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7BCC92A3EB%2DB59F%2D41F6%2D
840C%2D4D224E765A2E%7D&siteid=mktw
A discouraging mailing list item written by Mike Godwin, who was
at the hearing:
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200202/msg00273.html
> I was in the hearing room, and I thought Vadasz's testimony made
> important points. But the senators were not terribly receptive to his
> arguments, and in fact came close to (effectively) ordering the IT
> industry simply to comply with Hollywood's demands (or else they'd be
> forced to by legislation). It was clear to me and to other
> technically knowledgeable people in the room that neither the
> senators nor most of the copyright-company witnesses grasped the
> scope of what Disney's Eisner and others were asking for.
> The IT community has a formidable task ahead of it when it comes to
> educating policymakers about the problems and costs of proposals like
> the one Senator Hollings floated prior to this hearing. Because a
> central goal of Hollywood's lobbying effort this time is to prevent
> unencrypted and unwatermarked content from being circulated on the
> Net, and the only kinds of measures that could do this require
> top-to-bottom rearchitecting of every aspect of the digital world.
> This rearchitecting would, among other things, require first the
> labelling of all coprighted content and secondly a redesign of all
> digital tools (from PCs to OSs to routers to everything else) to look
> for the labels and permit or deny copying accordingly. But few
> speakers at the hearing seemed to be aware of this.
s/democrat/moderate conservative
s/republican/conservative
"And the left wing's been broken long ago,
By a sling named cointelpro."
-Ani DiFranco
Well, folks, it sounds like it's time to put your money where your mouths are. Here's Hollings number: 202-224-6121. I just spent about 15 minutes talking to his staff and the staff of the committee. I made it clear how I felt, including not trying to hide the anger in my voice. And I promised to contribute to his Republican opponent's campaign if he doesn't step back and reevaluate the deep flaws in his approach. I also told them my prefered solution would be a tax on all digital storage media similar to the blank tape tax. If you have your own alternatives, it would be far better to mention them to his staff than here.
On the Hollings proposal, Republican Senators were the ones speaking up to suggest that a Federal law was not the way to proceed here. However, the corporate/government consensus has settled on the Stalinist position that the people should not have access to copying machines. Intel and other tech companies argue only that they will fix the problem for Hollywood, and they don't want the government mandating a klunky solution.
Odd things happening over in Morpheus/Kazaa land... the following is
pieced together from stories from Cnet, Slashdot, Infoanarchy, and
probably a few other places, plus the musiccity.com and kazaa.com
sites.
To start things off, I need to lay out a diagram:
Morpheus/MusicCity KaZaa
| |
----------Fast Track Network-----
Morpheus and Kazaa are the user clients, and they interoperate
using the FastTrack network to share files. Kazaa and FastTrack
had common ownership.
Kazaa (which was recently sold to new owners, possibly in Australia,
while under orders from a court in the Netherlands to shut down)
took its users through a software upgrade a few weeks ago.
Early this week, it appears that the KaZaa/FastTrack group
decided to wipe out Morpheus and grab its user base.
All of a sudden all Morpheus users received a message that they
could not connect to the network any more.
(This will be most interesting to the court currently hearing
the suit by the RIAA against MusicCity, the company supplying
the Morpheus software, because in their filings, and in the
argument the EFF just filed, it was asserted that the network
design was such that it could not be shut down.
Yet that has now plainly been done. It seems likely that
the Morpheus group had no idea this could be done to them;
they were just licensees of the Fast Track protocol.)
Reportedly MusicCity is going to abandon FastTrack (probably they
have no choice) and rush out a Gnutella-based client.
Meanwhile, Kazaa.com has a big welcome mat rolled out for former
Morpheus/MusicCity users. Infoanarchy.org reports that the new
version of KaZaa is loaded with spyware.
Hopefully I haven't mangled things too badly. It took several days
for a coherent picture to emerge. There is still no news on the
reaction of the Dutch court to KaZaa having fled its jurisdiction.
Morpheus' website says that the new client will be available in 2 hours. However, that same message was up 5 hours earlier. They also seem to be implying that Kazaa sabatoged Morpheus users, so as to force them to install Kazaa (and it's acompanying spyware)
http://www.theregus.com/content/54/24195.html Senator brutalizes Intel rep for resisting CPRM By Thomas C Greene in Washington Posted: 03/01/2002 at 09:45 EST Entertainment industry lapdog Senator Fritz Hollings (Democrat, South Carolina) lashed out at Intel executive VP Leslie Vadasz who warned that the copy-protected PCs Hollings is obediantly promoting on behalf of his MPAA and RIAA handlers would stifle growth in the marketplace. "We do not need to neuter the personal computer to be nothing more than a videocassette recorder," Vadasz said in testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Thursday. An obedient Hollings tore into the witness, calling his testimony "nonsense". "Now where do you get all this nonsense about how we're going to have irreparable damage?" Hollings demanded. "We don't want to legislate. We want to give you time to develop technology." The "we" he mentions, it's quite obvious, refers to the entertainment industry flacks and lobbyists who wrote Hollings' pet bill, the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA), which would require hard drives to fail to load 'insecure' applications, and perhaps even operating systems at some point in future. Tinkering with one's own personal property to defeat this Orwellian innovation would be criminally punishable. This is of course the entertainment industry's dream, as it seeks to hobble all equipment so that it can determine when, where and how its content can be enjoyed by consumers. Copying any content from one medium to another could be blocked on the pretext of piracy prevention, so it's entirely possible that one would have to purchase two CDs with the same content -- one for the computer and one for the stereo, say. It's this sort of extortion the industry has relentlessly lobbied Congress to enshrine in law. Defeating piracy is the pretext; but obliterating the consumer's right to fair use is the true goal. But because Congress can't quite bring itself to eliminate fair use directly and up-front, a series of laws like the DMCA and SSSCA have been devised to eliminate it practically, or 'incidentally'. Naturally, the hardware industry is going to resist any law which forces it to break its products. It understands that consumers will be disappointed by equipment which fails to let them enjoy content which they've purchased. They see a slump in sales in the SSSCA. And they're probably right. The hearing was a typical Congressional dog-and-pony show designed to stroke Hollywood fat cats like Michael Eisner and Jack Valenti pursuing the Holy Grail of pay-per-use technology. No critics were invited to speak, and no harsh criticism was expected. So when Intel's Vadasz showed the spine to blast the entertainment industry's pet scheme, he had to be beaten down, and Hollings was of course eager to please his masters. Eisner and Valenti also testified, exhibiting their profound ignorance of technology and their sneering contempt for the rights of consumers, under Hollings' admiring gaze. Hollings, apparently, is an 'honest politician' according to Brendan Behan's formula: when he's bought, he stays bought. Hollings has also adopted the industry's basic stance, that copying is primarily about piracy and only rarely about honest fair use, at one point calling the Internet "a haven for thievery." But the best expression of this comes from Recording Industry Ass. of America President Hillary Rosen, who wrote yesterday that, "surely, no one can expect copyright owners to ignore what is happening in the marketplace and fail to protect their creative works because some people engage in copying just for their personal use." The 'some people' says it all. Most people are criminals, and only a tiny minority are honest and decent, Rosen assumes. This is also the official perspective of Hollywood -- of Eisner, and Valenti, and Hollings. It is a perspective natural to a certain class of person. Consider that we all imagine others to be more or less like ourselves. Decent people expect others to be decent, just like themselves. Criminals expect others to be criminals, just like themselves. When Eisner and Rosen and Valenti and Hollings see a world populated by cheats and frauds and freeloading scum, what does that say about them?
This would also shut down the home studio, wouldn't it?
Also making it harder for non-big company artists to take money
away from the big company market.
There is a lot that a home musician can now do on their
home PC, without expensive studio time.
Excerpt from http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50797,00.html SAN JOSE -- The Russian company that created software to circumvent Adobe's e-book format argued on Monday that its conduct -- which caused the arrest and detainment of programmer Dmitri Sklyarov in a high- profile case last summer -- was not illegal. Elcomsoft, the Moscow-based software firm, claimed that because it offered the encryption-breaking software on the Internet, the company was not subject to U.S. copyright law. Joseph Burton, Elcomsoft's attorney, told U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte that Elcomsoft's actions "occurred in Russia or on the Internet, and we take the position that the Internet is a place" outside of U.S. jurisdiction. Burton said the company was not specifically "targeting" the software to Americans, but that the software was instead available to anyone on the Internet, regardless of residence. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Frewing dismissed those claims, arguing that the Internet is a "physical presence" made up of many computers in America, and that "the U.S. has every right to stop contraband" on those machines. He added that Elcomsoft maintained a Web server in Chicago, that it hired a U.S. billing service, that it made no effort to prevent Americans from accessing its site, and that it sent e-mail messages to customers it knew were Americans. After the 40 minutes of arguments, Judge Whyte issued no immediate decision, and both sides said that they could not predict when a decision would come. --- Sounds like a pretty weak argument to me, but of course in legal defenses a lot of times you just throw things at the wall and see what sticks.
If they didn't have a server here, and weren't working with a US billing service, they'd have a point.
the ebook encryption was ROT13, right? thats some funny shit. you can run !rot13 on grex and break ebook encryption.
It wasn't really, was it?
I don't think it was actually ROT13, but it was apparently nearly as simple. I haven't seen it actually explained (presumably that'd be illegal) but from some of the comments I've seen I suspect it may have been just a substitution cipher. Hey, if the law says no one can try to break your code, why bother making it strong?
Slashdot keys off a Los Angeles Times story: both webcasters and the record
industry are appealing the proposed royalty rates for Internet webcasts
set by the copyright office, which are mentioned somewhere above.
Quoting from Slashdot:
It should surprise no one that the Webcasters feel
that the proposed royalties are absurdly high, while the record
companies wants them to be higher -- at levels set in independent
deals negotiated between the RIAA and a couple of dozen
companies. The fact that many of the companies that made these
independent deals with the RIAA couldn't make enough money to
both pay the royalties and stay in business doesn't seem to worry
the record companies much.
(Companines which didn't want to wait for the copyright office ruling
on royalties were free to negotiate their own deals with the record
companies.)
Most Slashdot commentators agree with me that the record companies are
demonstrating that they intend to control webcasting. It doesn't
matter how high the fees are set, if the record companies are just
paying themselves for their own webcast operations.
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/03/10/0150210.shtml?tid=141
Newsweek offers an entertaining rant on the overall state of the music industry: "Looking Grim at the Grammys" http://www.msnbc.com/news/718662.asp?cp1=1 The artistic state of popular music is described as "an esthetic national emergency." :) We haven't really touched on the Grammy speech by Michael Greene, chairman of the NARAS, the group which gives out the Grammy awards.
WHat's pertinent about the speech?
Michael Greene, the chairman of the National Association of Recording Arts & Sciences, used his Grammy Awards speech to launch an attack on the downloading of music, referring to "this World Wide Web of theft and indifference." He urged people to "support our artistic community by only downloading your music from legal web sites. That will ensure that our artists reach even higher and, deservedly, get paid for their inspired work." (Of course the legal music download systems have met with near-total consumer rejection and unanimously hostile reviews, and they don't pay the artists significantly more than KaZaa...) The text of his speech is at: http://grammy.aol.com/features/speech.html Most reaction to the speech was deeply negative. To paraphrase one analyst, the industry is in a pretty bad position when it believes it has to lecture its customers. One overview piece came from The Washington Post "Newsbytes" imprint: http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/174868.html "Music Fans Hear Grammys Night Anti-Piracy Screed" Or, as the title of Steven Levy's essay ran: "The Customer Is Always Wrong."
Well, and then there's the issue of spyware and adware on the 'illegal' sites..
#107> The industry wasn't lecturing its customers. It was lecturing its shoplifters.
Actually, it was lecturing its customers and assuming they're all "shoplifters" (a term you continue to use despite its inapplicability to digital copying.)
#110> Not at all. If I were not a shoplifter (a term I continue to use because of its applicability to illegally taking something which you do not have the right to take), I would not assume the comments applied to me. (Note on parenthetical: See, I too am capable of stating opinion as if it were fact. But here IS a fact: You have an opinion and I have an opinion, and they differ. No matter how strongly you state it, Mike, your stating your opinion won't make it fact.)
I refuse to use the legal downloading services because of the ridiculously tiny royalties they give to artists. (Of course, I don't use the illegal ones either.) I do find it interesting that, with sales declining for months now, the retail prices of CDs have not gone down. Smells like price fixing to me...
Definitely price fixing. I make no claims, and never have, that the RIAA and its associates are moral.
It'd be nice if there was a technology that allowed for independent
companies or inividuals to copy protect (and therefore sell) their music.
It'd be the death of the RIAA, though.
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I've been trying pretty hard not to buy new CDs for a while. It's hard, though; the used market just doesn't cut it for some of my tastes.
Re #110: But huge numbers of people are NOT shoplifting. They are using the Internet as a labor-saving device, a radio station, or a sampling service. When Napster was a going concern, people bought MORE music. Now that they cannot find new things or sample ones they've heard about to see if they like them (or at least not with the former ease), they are buying less. People downloading music they already own are just substituting connect time for their own time. Greene's speech at the Grammys specifically addressed Apple's "Rip, Mix, Burn" ads as "promoting piracy". That's WRONG. Burning your own mix CDs is FAIR USE. You have EVERY RIGHT to make mix CDs, backups of CDs, and other copies of music you own for your own use, just like cassette tapes. The language used by the RIAA is over the top, contemptible, and deserves nothing but scorn. And I'm astonished to see you buying their party line, Paul.
well, this is a gray area. I plan to use Grokster to get stuff I don't have ready access to, like older, used, music, and maybe to check out a little bit of the new. Do you know how frustrating it gets when stuff is out of print, or you have to wait to order it? My credit situation is bad, and so I'm not going to do online shopping. My behavior when I copied friend's music on cassette tape was I *eventually* bought the actual release. I figured I needed to be honest and fair, so I try to replace my copies with actual product, and I've done good.. so far. The P2P thing is new to me.. and I have hardly downloaded anything. I think it would be easier to spend my hard earned dough buying the CDs I like, rather than going to a cable modem connection so I can download all the time. resp:116 that's interesting. I haven't bought much new music in *years*. Most of it is old stuff. While I admire people like Ken, and other folk who just try to follow quality stuff that is outside the mainstream, I prefer to be electic in used stuff.. forgetting trends and fashions, but sticking with material I have heard somewhere. I buy music conservatively as I do not have much money to spend. I am *not* a person who has hundreds of CDs I hardly listen to. My collection is small.
#117> I see. Anyone who feels that illegally downloading music is, well, illegal is "buying the party line." Your arguments in paragraph one sound like someone, say, trying one candy out of every bin at the candy shop before buying any, and then acting surprised when the candy store owner accuses them of shoplifting. I won't repeat my entire stance, because I have in the past in such detail that if you're still not clear on what it is, it's because you're being obtuse and attributing to me a perspective which I do not hold.
*sigh*
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I agree. It should totally be legal to make mix cds of ones own music. Speaking of mix cd's. Does anyone know of an online service that can make those? I have an idea for one but I dont own all of the music so it would be really nice if there was a service that would allow one to download the songs or even one that would burn the cd. I would pay good money for this. :)
#121, 122> Twila's mashing a bunch of concepts together: 1. Making copies of music recorded from the radio 2. Making copies of music illegally available on the Internet 3. Making copies of music you have purchased, for your own use 4. Making copies of music obtained through 1-3 for distribution to friends (No, Jack didn't mention all of those cases, but they're all part of the dialog.) 4 is illegal. I have a copy of The Fixx's "Shuttered Room" which has a cassette-and-cross-bones in the corner of the back, and the words "Home taping is killing music" (or something to that effect). It's not the only album I have with that logo, but it's the first time I saw it. 1982. WAY before CDs. So much for Twila's claim that nobody made an issue of (4). As for nobody condoning (4), Twila, read through all the archives of the Napster items. You'll find there are PLENTY of people condoning illegally copying music. (1) is ok for your own use, IMHO. It's publicly transmitted. Indeed, HBO used to promote the concept of taping movies off of HBO for your own library. The Internet equivalent is copying any file that's legally available on the Internet, for your own usage. (2) is not ok. (3) is obviously ok.
But there *should* be a way to legally make mix cd's for one's friends. Right now, as far as I know there isnt. If there were a way to do that, I would choose that route as would many others. When the record industry refused to provide legal options for people, they shouldnt be surprised when people start engaging in those activities. If the illegal activity is the MOST convenient, that should tell the record companies *something*
And the RIAA, and it's constituents, have been taking action over the
last few years to prevent you from doing (3), which they don't like at all,
even though it's perfectly legal. In fact they seem to be quite happy with
the solution even if it means you can't play it on a computer at all, or
certain CD and DVD players.
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While it does work out that way (napster has not had a negative effect
on the RIAA's profits, nor have any of the napster clones), it's like asking
why you can't steal records from a record store to see if they're an artist
you might like to buy copies of.
If the RIAA had had its way we'd never have been able to buy cassette recorders,either. Basically they want to halt technological development.
#126, #124> *WHY* should it be legal for you to make copies for your friends? Do you also think it should be legal to photocopy your favorite short stories and gave them as chapbooks to your friends? Mick could hear the song in question the same way he could read a short story that you're fond of -- you could loan him the CD, just as you could loan him the book. There *IS* a legal option. Artists who agree with your reasoning can release their work into the public domain, or they can make it available online with conditions specified, or they can put notes on their CDs permitting you to make copies for not-for-profit purposes, or whatever. Almost all artists are aware of this option, very few artists take advantage of it. #128> No, they want to halt theft. I don't blame them, with all the people justifying their theft with commentary. Once again: I am not condemning anyone for violating copyright law and illegal copying music. I've done it myself, I'll probably do it again. I'm condemning people for acting as if they're completely in the clear, and that it's the RIAA that's all evil 'n' stuff. It's wrong. So is swiping a grape when you've got the munchies in the grocery store. So is doing 74 in a 70 zone. Life goes on.
I think brighn is wrong in his flat assertion that "making copies of music... for distribution to friends" is illegal.
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#130> By all means, post the relevant portion of intellectual property law that indicates that copying must be for profit, or for strangers, for it to be illegal. #132> Then make illegal copies, and say it doesn't matter to you that it's illegal. Don't pretend it's legal, though. That's all I'm saying. (Truth is, it doesn't matter that much to RIAA when people are doing it just for their friends and acquiantances... they know it goes on, it annoys them, but it would be worth more trouble and be more of a PR nightmare to try seriously to stop it than it's worth.)
From the RIAA's interpretation of the Audio Home Recording Act: ( http://www.riaa.org/Copyright-Laws-4.cfm ) "This 1992 legislation exempts consumers from lawsuits for copyright violations when they record music for private, non-commercial use." As the RIAA is about as anti-copying a group as you can find, I hope that will be sufficient. Hopefully I won't have to go buy a Washington Post reprint to come up with the rather heated exchange between Orrin Hatch and Hilary Rosen on what sorts of music copying are fair use. Hatch, as a principal author of the DMCA, can be considered an expert on congressional intent.
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/106.html Subject to sections 107 through 121, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending; Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html) The exclusive right of the owner of copyright in a sound recording under clause (1) of section 106 is limited to the right to duplicate the sound recording in the form of phonorecords or copies that directly or indirectly recapture the actual sounds fixed in the recording. (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/114.html) So, Ken, do point me to where in the law it says, "... except for friends and family." Maybe Twila would argue that it falls under "comment" as "fair use," but remember that fair use does not allow reproduction of an *entire* work, only a portion: In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html) [Code edited for ease of reading, but not altered. Original code available at the links provided.]
Ah, ok: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/1008.html No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings ... I stand corrected, then. Carry on, Twila.
Sorry, but if you have decided to ignore the existance of the Audio Home Recording Act there is no point in continuing a discussion.
(136 slipped in)
Your post slipped in, Ken. I just conceded. Give me a break.
so If I copy a song onto a tape and take to a party, and then one of the attendees says to me, "can I borrow the tape", to let them do so is illegal?
Yes, it slip in, Ken. I see your apology didn't.
If the music industry were just trying to protect themselves by identifying and bringing lawsuits against people who pirate music, I'd be a lot more sympathetic. Instead, they're trying to buy laws (which I find objectionable in the first place) to regulate in severe and short-sighted ways industries that are only tangentially related. I honestly think this is a case of outlawing short skirts because they lead to rape.
I am a legitimate user. I have never downloaded or listened to any music on the Internet that wasn't licensed to do so, and I own no CDs not commercially purchased. Yet I still feel I'm being lectured at by Michael Greene. Why? Because of his assumption that all users are "shoplifters". Because of the proposed draconian solutions to this problem, which would make it impossible for me to listen to my own legitimately purchased music the way I want for my own purposes - not passing it on to anyone else or doing anything even remotely unethical, let alone illegal. Some software anti-piracy fixes - I know this is planned for e-book downloads - would tie the software to the machine it's downloaded to. This means that if my hardware breaks or I buy a new one or anything of the sort, I can no longer use my legitimately purchased software. Nor can I buy it and then sell it or give it as a gift to someone else, activities that have always been both legal and moral with hard-copy books and records.
#140> I had thought so, but in 1992, Congress made it legal, as Ken has demosntrated. #142> I agree, actually. I find the RIAA acting very collusionarily and egregiously. Then again, I can understand some of their panic in the face of Napster, a situation nobody was really prepared to process. But they have nice, calm, nonpanicking lawyers who should know better. Supposedly.
#143> I don't feel like I'm being lectured by Michael Greene. Maybe you're feeling so because you're paranoid...? *shrug*
Flem in resp:142 brings up an interesting argument, one which Napster
attempted to raise in its defense. The court swatted it down without
much comment, which I think is unfortunate and wrong.
Napster is being sued for CONTRIBUTORY copyright infringement.
They are not accused of making infringing copies themselves; they are
accused of contributing to the infringing activities of others.
But who are the others? No Napster user has ever been successfully
sued or criminally convicted of copyright infringement. Without a
legal decision establishing the primary infringement, how can there
be a legal judgement of CONTRIBUTORY infringement? Napster argued
that the file sharing its users did fell into the category of
"private and non-commercial" copying.
("Contributory infringement" is what was alleged by the copyright
industry in the Sony Betamax case. More commonly it's seen in
cases like flea markets where the owners of the market know that
infringing goods are being sold.)
(Speaking of the Betamax case: it's worth reiterating how
close the USA came to banning the VCR. The Supreme Court decision
in the Betamax case was only 5-4 in favor of allowing the machines to be
sold, and to come up with that decision the Court engaged in some
pretty outrageous law-making, arbitrarily ruling that time-shifting
did not count as copyright infringement even though it involved
the physical production of an unauthorized copy. Those of you
who, like brighn, have a moral objection to the unauthorized duplication
of copyrighted material really need to disable the recording function
on your VCR.)
Does somebody else have to be found guilty of a crime for me to be found guilty of abetting the crime? I honestly don't know. Napster clearly had commercial gain in mind... why would it go through all this nightmare for pure altruism? I think the code that Ken pointed to, while applicable to the case, is poorly written, because it goes beyond "fair use" in letter, but I don't think it was intended to. Putting a copyrighted piece of music on my website is no more (or less) appropriate than putting a copyrighted piece of text, but the latter is illegal, but the former doesn't appear to be, so long as my website isn't a commercial venture. Reading the code, I think we'd be a lot better off if we just tore up sizable portions off the intellectual property code and started over, WITHOUT the interference from either the RIAA or the Napsterites. That's not going to happen, though.
A web site may be non-commercial but it is not considered private. People have gotten in legal trouble for putting copyrighted music on their web site.
I've said it before, but it's worth saying again: Fair use is *really* complicated, the outcome of a fair use case can be hard to predict, and you only get to find out whether your specific case was fair use at trial.
#148> The code quoted in #136 doesn't use the word "private," so if websites are no good, neither is distributing copies to friends. Reading it again, the code in #136 doesn't say anything about distribution. It says that I'm permitted to make copies for non-commercial purposes, it doesn't say I'm allowed to distribute them to anyone. #149> Fair use is really compicated, but there are clear cases.
True -- but making a mix CD and giving it to a friend isn't one of them.
I have one last word for Paul: "Publishing."
Well, that's an interesting word. Have you found a good definition of it in the copyright context?
Not explicitly, no, but it would seem to be bound up with the phrasing in Paul's resp:135, where the law talks about the exclusive right to "distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work TO THE PUBLIC" (emphasis mine).
Salon ran an overview of the SSSCA arguments yesterday, and today there is one in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/14/technology/14PROT.html "Piracy, or Innovation? It's Hollywood vs. High Tech" One quote from down deep in the article: > Several technology producers already offer copy-protection > systems that media companies can use when they > sell their content in a digital form. What the companies > are looking for, in essence, is a second line of defense for > material posted on the Internet by someone who breaks the > original security system, or records a movie in a > theater with a camcorder, or steals a copy from the studio. > > One proposal calls for a digital "watermark" -- a kind > of label undetectable to the human eye or ear -- to be > embedded in every piece of digital media, carrying > instructions about whether it can be played or copied. Every > computer and electronic media player would be designed > to obey those instructions, and TO REFUSE TO PLAY > ANYTHING THAT DID NOT CONTAIN A WATERMARK. That would > mean that even camcorders would have to be redesigned > to imprint watermarks on home videos. ((emphasis krj)) The 20 years' worth of "installed base" of CDs do not have watermarks, nor do the 3-4 years' worth of DVDs. Wonderful, there is a proposal in play to make most music sold in the last 20 years unplayable.
Yeah, it's f*cking ridiculous, and hopefully it won't actually get very far. It's possible that even the people who proposed it don't expect it to pass, and are just using it to soften us up for a less ridiculous proposal that will sound reasonable by comparison... or it's possible that they really are that evil, and really do think we're that stupid. After all, they'd get to sell us new stuff, right? And since they can't get us to buy their new products in the quantities they want, they need to resell us the old stuff, right?
"Publishing" is a nice word, Ken. Irrelevant, but very pretty. Throwing single words out at me and then making obtuse arguments about them isn't a good way to state a thesis.
Re #156: Record companies have been looking for a way to do this for a while now. They made out like bandits when people switched to CDs and bought all new copies of albums they already owned. Now they're looking for a way to tap into that market again. A mandatory digital watermaking system would be a pretty effective way to do it. (The other way they've been trying to get people to buy the same music again is buy coming out with the "Super CD" standard. It has yet to take off, but it'd use 24-bit sampling instead of 16-bit. Some audiophiles claim to be able to hear the difference, but it's doubtful most people could; the evidence mostly points to even 16-bit sampling having about 3 dB more dynamic range than the human ear.)
Re mix tapes: Look, nobody's arguing that it's immoral to make copies for a friend, or that it _should_ be illegal. Nobody's even saying "oh, you've been naughty, you're gonna get in trouble now" -- everybody knows that even the New, Improved, Twice As Much Evil For The Same Low Price copyright industry isn't gonna bother prosecuting you for making a single mix and giving it away quietly. Paul's just saying that technically, the way the laws have been interpreted, it _is_ illegal to make a mix tape for anyone but yourself. And, well, that's just true. It's also pretty trivial. We break laws all the time -- traffic laws, for instance. (Now, granted, the cops aren't lobbying for a law that would prevent any new car from going over 65, so the bad guys in the copyright industry are acting a little badder... but if you ignore what _they're_ doing, _we're_ still breaking the law in both cases.) If you wanted to argue against a law banning cars that can go over 65, you wouldn't do it by saying "well, but speeding is legal, isn't it?" -- that would never fly. You'd come up with other arguments -- cars like that would be unsafe, they'd be less efficient running at the high end of their range all the time, they'd require unreliable new technology to limit their speed. There are plenty of arguments like that against what the RIAA and their ilk are up to; nobody needs to deny the existence of the laws to show that the RIAA are being excessive.
If it's illegal to make a mix tape for someone other than yourself -- meaning, that it's clearly outside the bounds of Fair Use -- please cite the case or statute where that's explicitly stated. Nothing that's been quoted or referred to in this item so far eliminates the possibility that making a mix tape and giving it to a friend is Fair Use. I'm not convinced, and I have a fair amount of background in this area. I realize there may be something I've missed, though, so educate me.
It's not clearly illegal. Ken pointed to the AHRA, which is vague in letter about whether it's legal to distribute home copies for non-commercial purposes. I said there are clear examples which are not fair use. In that post, I didn't specify any examples.
Fair enough. Um, no pun intended.
So, who wants to start a critics circle?
The AHRA doesn't actually say it's not *illegal*, just that they aren't allowed to sue you over it.
I find it very enlightening that brighn:
1.) Is talking about things I never mentioned,
2.) Didn't mention anything I actually said, and
3.) Can't seem to grasp the distinction between physical
property and "intellectual property".
Neither does he seem to grasp that taking a physical copy
without paying for it is stealing, but sending off a virtual
copy for free is often damned effective *marketing*.
But he won't admit that this has any merit either.
In wacky corporate copyright news: Megacorporation Vivendi Universal has filed a billion dollar copyright suit against megacorporation News Corp. Vivendi Universal, in this case, owns a European satellite TV operation called Canal+ (Canal Plus); the News Corporation is Rupert Murdoch's outfit, including the USA network Fox and also a European satellite TV operation called Sky TV. Vivendi alleges that, in order to hurt Canal+ revenues, News Corporation employees were involved in the engineering and distribution of stuff for cracking Canal+ satellite TV encryption. Interestingly, the satellite TV operations are European, but the lawsuit is filed in an American court to take advantage of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. I don't get the jurisdictional aspect, unless Vivendi is alleging that the cracking work was done in the USA. The story is widely reported and should be easy to find, so I won't bother pasting in a link.
I think sometimes people go on fishing expeditions in U.S. courts, too. I remember hearing about some other foreign cases that were filed here, but dismissed when the judge ruled he didn't have jurisdiction.
It does happen.
Really interesting article from the NYT on the future of music: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=76&u=/nyt/20020316/tc_nyt/w her e_music_will_be_coming_from (sorry about the excessive URL; this is a no-registration version from Yahoo)
#165> A few months ago, we put up a ruralmailbox so our postal worker wouldn't have to climb our porch steps in the snow. A week after that, she stuffed our mailbox full of sample packets of Friskies, you know, the sort of thing that companies send out from time to time. FREE. Through the mail. See, they have to do it through the mail, and not via email, because, well, they're giving away PHYSICAL things. I fail to see how, "People give stuff away via the Net for free" is justification for "People take things via the Net that don't belong to them," anymore than "People give stuff away via the USPS for free" is justification for "People take things in the 'real' world that don't belong to them." Unless Russ is advising me that it's ok for me to steal Friskies from the supermarket, because the company has set a precedent?
Leaving aside the question of "wrong" and "right", or "legal" and
"illegal", the peer-to-peer file sharing issue does illustrate that the
traditional record-selling method really isn't viable anymore. You can sell
fruit out of a stand in downtown Detroit, but if you leave the fruit there
overnight, someone's going to steal it. It's still wrong, and illegal, but
it's the business model that's failed.
Point. I'm not even sure how much I'd question the morality of whoever stole the fruit, because it was stupid of the vendor to leave it there. I'd only challenge them when they said, "Hey, I'm not a thief because it was just sitting there!" ;}
Re #170: Still a faulty analogy, as you have a transfer of PHYSICAL
PROPERTY (just so you can't claim to have missed it again) from
someone else's possession to yours.
Here's a better analogy. Suppose that Friskies were available only
in huge, lifetime-supply quantities (like an album on CD, once you
own it you may never need another). Further suppose that you got
the recipe for Friskies and made some of your own, to see if your
cat liked them. It would not deprive anyone else of a thing, and
it would let you sample the wares before you buy instead of being
stuck with an expensive, non-returnable item that you can't use.
The only way you would be harming the maker of Friskies is if you
continued to make your own instead of going out and buying the
package once you knew your cat liked them.
And in case you missed it, "intellectual property" is a LEGAL
CONSTRUCT. No such thing exists in nature. Once you let someone
else learn your idea, your poem or your song, nothing prevents
them from repeating it to others for nothing; it becomes part of
the commons, available to everyone. It requires a legal system
to give the inventor, poet or composer anything resembling "property
rights" in any work once revealed to the public.
As Jefferson (who helped author the copyright clase of the
Constitution, so he should be an authority) wrote in 1813:
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others
of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called
an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he
keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself
into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess
himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses
the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who
receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without
lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light
without darkening me . . . .
Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society
may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an
encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but
this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience
of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody.
Both Jefferson and Madison classed copyrights and patents as grants of
monopoly, only to be allowed for limited periods and only for the
purpose of creating an incentive to invent and make inventions public.
Patents and copyrights are supposed to exist only for the purpose of
increasing the public good. To the extent that rigid enforcement of
copyright increases monopoly rents on music, movies or anything else,
they are contrary to the public interest. Ditto any mode of enforcement
which keeps people from space-shifting or time-shifting; such should
be ruled contrary to the Copyright Clause and thus un-Constitutional
to enforce legally. Bye-bye, DMCA.
Russ, why do you keep acting like I don't understand intellectual property just because I happen to disagree with you? As long as you keep insulting me, I'm done talking to you about this.
*sigh* well, congratulations. The conversation between the two of you has convinced me to admit I'm a petty thief. Not a thief to be of any real notice, but a thief. Now-- let enough alone so I don't have a reason to forget this item.
re #174: Perhaps Russ keeps acting like you don't understand intellectual
property because you keep using, OVER and OVER, deeply flawed analogies
likening the "theft" of intellectual property to the theft of physical
property while ignoring the absolutely critical difference between the
two acts..
The two possibilities I can see for why you might choose to put forward
a deliberately flawed argument over and over again are:
(1) you don't believe people will agree with your position unless
you resort to a deliberately inaccurate and intentionally misleading
comparison, or
(2) despite repeated efforts to bring the problem to your attention,
you remain bafflingly unaware of the flaw in your metaphor.
Of the two alternatives, (2) is slightly more charitable. Perhaps Russ
is merely being polite and giving you the benefit of the doubt.
Ok, Mike, what is the "absolutely critical difference between the two acts" that makes my analogies "deeply flawed"? Isn't it at all possible that my perspective and yours differ, without one of them being the objective, unmalleable truth? Again, just because I disagree with something doesn't mean I'm ignoring it, or being obtuse, or whatever. Russ, polite? Hah. You must be joking.
I guess you really ARE trying to shore up a claim on alternative (2). I don't see any point in discussing it if you're going to be deliberately obtuse.
I think brighn likes bickering more than he likes firm conclusions. Get to the root of the issue and resolve it, and he sulks and won't talk to you anymore. I'll have to remember this if I'm ever stuck in a car with him. ;-)
#178> Mike, I asked you a simple question. #179> I'm not sulking. If Mike doesn't want to answer the question, why don't you do it?
re #180: You asked me a "simple" question to which you already know, or should already know, the answer. Your question isn't an honest one -- it's asked not out of a desire to hear my answer but because you want to prolong a pointless argument. As I've already said, I don't see any point in obliging you.
http://www.theregus.com/content/54/24356.html Summary: Canada is considering adding a CAN$1.23 charge to each blank CDR, and a CAN$100 charge to every MP3 player sold in the country. The money would go to the Canadian Private Copying Collective, which already gets money from similar levies on other recording media. The idea is to compensate musicians for illicit copying. Now, my opinion is this could backfire. If you knew you were already being charged a tax on your blank media on the assumption you'd use it for infringing copyrights, would you feel guilty about living up to that assumption?
Hell, no.
#181> Mike, there have been so many twists in this conversation over the course of multiple Agoras, I honestly do not know the "single thing" to which you are referring. If you don't want to tell me, at least point me to a post number. I'd thank you to stop assuming malice on my part. I'm not Leeron.
Oh, no, brighn. I won your withdrawal from the discussion fair and square, I'm not about to give you license to come back with more postmodern pointlessness. (I'm also not going to let you pretend that the question you asked in #177 wasn't already answered in #173, or that you're the only one who doesn't publicly acknowledge this.) I know you like to feel like everyone's against you, but you shouldn't be so insecure that you need us to re-affirm it several times a day. We're not about to stop disagreeing with you that fast; you might want to check back once a week. And as long as I'm on a roll with analogies here, let me try to work up one that Courtney Love might agree with: Downloading music and listening to it without ever buying the media is like bypassing a criminal cartel which has enslaved most of the artists and paid them almost nothing for their work; you've taken the cartel's ill-gotten gains and put them back in your own pocket. If you spend any of that money on tickets to a live concert, you've given the artist more than most would ever get from buying music in a store. Waitasec, that's not an analogy; it's pretty much what Love says herself.
Re #182: You mis-stated the taxes. It's CDN$1.23 per *audio* CD-R, CDN$.59 per data CD-R. Fees on CD-RWs are much higher (as if you can have more than one thing on a CD-RW at once... what *are* they thinking?). More to the point, with such outrageous taxes on media I would feel no qualms about smuggling either. The fee on CD-Rs amounts to about 60% of the US retail price, no? At a difference of US$36 per hundred, there will be people making a very tidy profit on the arbitrage. Maybe this will start a long-overdue backlash against Canadian taxes. At the very least, Canadian garage bands having to pay a royalty to the establishment for the priviledge of making CDs of their own music should be raising a huge stink in Ottawa.
#185> Russ, I didn't withdraw from the conversation, I withdrew from talking to you about it so long as you were going to insult me. If you're going to answer the question, politely and civilly, I'll gladly discuss it with you. Since that's not likely to happen, I really don't have to worry about it, but I'm ready in case you do.
I think it is funny how russ pretends that he gets to give people permission to engage in conversations here.
I think Russ is just funny, period. ;}
McNally, you want to administer the clue-by-four? I'm curious to see what lame excuse brighn will come up with to ignore you.
Mike has already declined. Surely you wouldn't be goading him into doing what you've chastised me for allegedly doing? The only "single thing" I could identify as a candidate is that copying does not diminish the quantity available. If I steal an apple, the vendor has one fewer apples; if I photograph an apple, the vendor still has the apple. Is that the great mystical one thing that makes intellectual property "theft" morally acceptable? If so, it doesn't. If I make a living as a photographer, one element that goes into the value of my work is its availability. People copying my photographs and selling them at a lesser price diminishes the economic viability of my photographs. That's economics. Frankly, Russ, your rant re: Courtney Love speaks volumes about your actual (vs. pretended) bias. You hate the RIAA. You loathe them. You are justified in your actions because you feel they are lower than low. It has nothing to do with your attitudes about intellectual property, it has to do with your attitudes about the RIAA. No, if this were a simple difference of opinion, you wouldn't be this cranky. You have a good deal of emotional stock in this, too. Otherwise you wouldn't be hurling insults around. If you were to go back and read my posts (I mean the whole things, not just the parts that piss you off), you'd see that I hate the RIAA too. You want to call them scum? Groovy. They're greedy fucking bastards. They're immoral pricks who care more about money than anything else in the world. You think that justifies pillaging from them. You've said as much. I don't. That's what this argument is really about, sunshine. You thin kit's all right to commit immoral acts in response to immorality. I don't. Everything else is just justification on your part.
It'd be quite amusing if there was a populist movement to give money
to artists whom a listener has pirated MP3s from. Perhaps music can survive
on a shareware basis.
#192> Hm. Now, my attitude probably WOULD be different if someone downloaded entire albums via Napster-clones and then sent a $4 check to the band. Then they could legitimately say they're giving more to the band than the RIAA would be (a pittance, to be sure, per item), so they're not hurting the artist. (Counterargument: The artist doesn't get new contracts without units sold, but if the artists were getting most of their revenue from online sales, they'd drop out of the RIAA gristmill anyway.)
Except then, the big record companies wouldnt be compensated for all the money they put into the marketing that made someone want the music in the first place. There is a reason bands dont just set up web sites that charge $4 for downloads (they could do this I am sure but they dont, why not?)
Sure. The RIAA is accused of all sorts of evil doing when N*Sync is selling 5 million copies and only getting a buck a unit, and while I'm inclined to agree, the record companies are rarely praised for taking on that dark horse that winds up selling the 5,000 copies and is a huge financial hit for them. When someone asked my previous boss about profit sharing, his response was, "Well, are you willing to pay out of your pocket when the company has bad years?" All the same, I think the movies, as an industry, runs better. It still has its share of greedy scumbags, but award-winning actors who want to split their time between blockbusters and indies (Kevin Spacey, William H. Macy, etc.) have room to do so, and the indies do actually get made.
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I have never heard of Dougie MacLean. I'll bet that most people have not heard of him. He is serve a niche market so his method of distribution works but if he were trying to serve a mass market, his method would all but insure failure.
(The Plant Life record label expired years ago; they didn't even make it into the CD era. The new label Osmosys seems to have acquired most of the Plant Life masters and Osmosys issues do turn up in specialist shops. Pickey details that only Twila will care about.)
Non musical DMCA news: The Church of Scientology has used DMCA threats to get the major anti-Scientology sites deleted from Google's search engine listings. Source: Wired, and usenet.
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Slynne, people also said that bands that refused to sign major label deals were always doomed to staying below the radar. Ani Difranco proved them wrong, but the fact that ONLY Ani Difranco proved them wrong, proved them right. All the same, I think the Net could be an incredible marketing tool for the right artists, and I do think that some bands might be able to become huge commercial successes without the majors.
re#201 - It's about marketing, twila. If an artist wants to reach a *mass* audience, one has to advertise. Most artists dont have the funds necessary to really promote their work. While the Net can be an incredible marketing tool, it isnt currently nearly as good as other marketing tools -- marketing tools that are very expensive. I get that you, twila, would be happy to buy downloads legally. I would be happy to legally buy downloads too. But, I'll bet that a lot of music you like is not mass market type of music. Think about how you find out about artists. Most people probably discover new artists in a different way. For me, I usually either hear of something from a friend or I hear it on the radio. It takes a LOT of expensive marketing to get a song on the radio.
Especially with many of the radio stations these days being owned by a few conglomerates, some of which are wings of the same companies that own the record labels...
Whee! Wind him up, watch him go! (Two word refutation: "fair use". Also, legality has nothing to do with morality. But I'll stop here.) Re #192: If I recall correctly, there already is. Fairtunes.com. Unfortunately I don't know if they use anything other than Paypal. (Since I have never downloaded any music which was not explicitly being given away [one whole MP3 file], I owe nothing to any artist.)
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#205> "Fair use" is not a refutation in and of itself. And legality IS related to morality: It's socialized morality. A culture's laws are a reflection of what that culture, together, has decided its morality is. But I see you have no real interest in a substantive conversation, you'd rather just through out vacuous barbs. Maybe I hit too close to home, so you're trying to sneak out of the conversation.
Sen. Hollings has formally introduced the SSSCA in the Senate.
It has a new name, the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television
Promotion Act, or CBDTPA. Sponsoring Senators are
Hollings, D-South Carolina
Stevens, R-Alaska
Inouye, D-Hawaii
Breaux, D-Louisiana
Nelson, D-Florida
Feinstein, D-California.
News coverage is abundant.
Wow, isn't that like calling a machinegun a "mobile people renewing
tool"?
Actually, with the economic imperative at work, this may well promote consumer broadband and digital television. I mean, what better incentive for the corporate interests than legally enforceable control over the consumer experience?
They're really not getting this whole concept that, when it comes to
a battle of wits, corporate America pretty consistently loses to rebel youth,
are they?
I think you answered your own question, there, fella. :)
Re #200: From what little I've had the time to follow, the Co$ did it by making specious allegations of DMCA violations and invoking the "notice and take-down" provision against Google's mirrors. I gather they pretty much deleted xenu.net from Google. xenu.net is hosted in Europe, outside the reach of the US courts. However, in order to contest the specious take-down, xenu.net would have to submit itself to the judgement of US courts in Scientology's choice of venue. This means that the asshole with the most money wins the battle, not the side that's right. Yet another reason why the entire DMCA is evil and must be abolished. Re #204: Now you know why I don't listen to commercial radio any more.
Google bas backed off a little -- they've relisted Xenu's homepage. The request was apparently only to remove the pages that actually had the claimed copyright violations on them. http://www.theregus.com/content/6/24405.html
((Metadiscussion: now that Agora has rolled, I'll start the next item in this series later today or this weekend. I wanted to give Agora a chance to grow a few less argumentative items in its front parlor.))
Russ, if you don't listen to radio, don't buy commercial CDs, and don't download music, what sources *do* you use? (I'm also wondering if you watch TV and attend movies, or if you've taken your attitudes to Keesanian lengths.) I suppose one's music consumption could be limited to concerts, but all but the smallest of those are tied up in the same gristmill.
Re #216: I listen to non-commercial radio (WDET), and I do buy CDs (mostly used). At this time I do not have a television hooked up and functional.
h, makes sense. I don't enjoy the bulk of what's on public radio. I'll admit, I'm a slave to the corporate entertainment industry.
I like some of the public radio talk shows, dislike others. I often enjoy the jazz programs on WEMU.
You have several choices: