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krj
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The Tenth Napster Item
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Mar 28 18:38 UTC 2002 |
Continuing the weblog, with occasional discussion and outbreaks of
bitter argument, 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 quarter we have a major news story, the introduction of
Sen. Hollings' proposed Consumer Broadband and Digital Television
Promotion Act (CBDTPA), formerly known as the SSSCA. Dicussion
on that proposal is in Agora item 13 ( item:agora41,13 ).
This item is linked between the Spring Agora conference and the
Music conference. All previous versions of this item can be found
in the music2 and music3 conferences.
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| 165 responses total. |
brighn
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response 1 of 165:
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Mar 28 18:48 UTC 2002 |
You didn't steal polygon's description. Haven't you been paying attention to
anything Russ (or polygon, for that matter) has said? You can't steal
intellectual property. ;}
(Just finding that particular word choice ironic, is all...)
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krj
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response 2 of 165:
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Mar 28 18:58 UTC 2002 |
I've taken a week or so off from this, and items have piled up a bit...
To start this quarter, we have two pieces of Genuine Napster News.
They might be close to the last pieces of Genuine Napster News, too.
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,51301,00.html
"Dead Napster Gets Deader"
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the injunction of trial
court judge Marilyn Patel which demands perfection from Napster in
barring the exchange of copyrighted material through its (old) free
service. So Old Free Napster remains shutdown, probably forever.
At some level this ruling was not terribly relevant, because Napster
had never resumed operating.
Nowhere have I found a legal explanation for what appears to be a reversal
by the Ninth Circuit. Judge Patel originally ordered Napster to stop
all infringements through its service in summer 2000, and at that time
the Ninth Circuit overruled her with an order laying out what Napster
could reasonably be expected to do, and what the obligations of the
copyright holders were. A year later, Judge Patel came out with an
order which sounds to me just like the summer 2000 order, and this time
the appeals court upheld it. Beats me.
In the second Napster story, which I have temporarily lost the citation
for, Napster announced that its plans to launch its for-pay service are
now on a long-term hold: one story said nine months, one story said
indefinitely. Napster's executive said the problem is their inability
to negotiate license arrangements with all five major labels.
-----
Wired and Cnet also cover a stunning reversal against the copyright industry
in the Kazaa case. A Dutch appeals court ruled that the Kazaa company
could not be held responsible for the copyright infringements of its users
when they swap files.
The ruling comes a little late for the Kazaa operation, which sold all
of its assets to a mysterious Australian buyer earlier this year.
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,51380,00.html
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-870396.html
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krj
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response 3 of 165:
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Mar 28 22:01 UTC 2002 |
Two stories on the proposed new royalties for Internet radio broadcasts,
and the expectation that they will wipe out the independent webcasters
and hand complete control of this function to the major labels:
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/local/2922047.htm
"Proposed royalty rates could bankrupt Webcasters"
http://salon.com/tech/feature/2002/03/26/web_radio/index.html
"Web radio's last stand"
The Salon story interviews a web radio operator who says that under
the new Digital Millenium Copyright Act rules, his royalty payments
will go from $1000 per year to about $1000 per day.
"We just want to be treated as over-the-air broadcasters are treated,"
he says.
To recapitulate for those who came in late: The DMCA created a new
"digital performance right" for web streaming operations -- this
royalty is only to be paid by Internet radio operations, not by
"conventional" broadcasters. And the Copyright office proposal
would set this rate so high that only the largest corporations could
afford it -- probably just the major record companies, who would be
paying themselves. The result is that by law, we are strangling
what should be a tool for cultural diversity.
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remmers
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response 4 of 165:
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Mar 28 22:14 UTC 2002 |
Yup.
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vidar
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response 5 of 165:
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Mar 28 22:20 UTC 2002 |
<dies>
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other
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response 6 of 165:
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Mar 29 06:35 UTC 2002 |
From slashdot:
CBDTPA Finds A Champion In the House: Wired is reporting that House
member Adam Schiff of Burbank is seeking a co-sponsor for his House
version of Hollings' CBDTPA.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51400,00.html
http://slashdot.org/yro/02/03/28/2137253.shtml?tid=103
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other
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response 7 of 165:
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Mar 29 07:26 UTC 2002 |
oops, i'm replicating an earlier entry in the other "stupid government
behaviour" item.
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gull
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response 8 of 165:
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Mar 29 14:48 UTC 2002 |
Re #3: Will this apply to regular radio stations that simulcast online,
too? In other words, will they be double-billed?
I remember a while back an organization that represents TV stations
tried to get a bill considered that would have banned anyone from
streaming more than 30 minutes of continuous video over the Internet.
It was promptly heavily opposed by their own constituancy -- many small
TV stations were just starting to benefit from simulcasting on the
Internet, which gave them a bigger audience than they could get
otherwise.
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krj
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response 9 of 165:
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Mar 29 15:08 UTC 2002 |
IIRC, radio stations which broadcast over the air get a 50%
break on the new digital performance rights royalties for their
Internet simulcasts.
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keesan
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response 10 of 165:
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Mar 29 16:25 UTC 2002 |
I thought the record companies (CD companies?) liked to have radio stations
broadcasting their music because it resulted in more sales. And that they
would even pay them to do so.
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jazz
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response 11 of 165:
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Mar 29 16:41 UTC 2002 |
Okay. Record companies aren't really worried about theft of property
through services like Napster or internet radio; they're quite good at bean
counting and even the most elementary statistical analysis shows that, like
radio play, Napster had a noticeably positive effect on record sales. What's
happening here is that record companies want to OWN the Napster business.
By regulating it and making it difficult, if not impossible, to get into the
business, they create an industry where they can be the only players.
The intellectual property argument is for political spin control.
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krj
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response 12 of 165:
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Mar 29 22:29 UTC 2002 |
The old online journal NewMediaMusic had one of their best pieces
on this subject, maybe about a year ago. Unfortunately I did not save
a copy and their site is now gone.
In the record company business model which is now rapidly breaking,
the record company would work like the dickens to get free temporary
copies delivered to customers over the radio, with the expectation
that this would motivate purchases of tangible, permanent copies.
(The effort to get those temporary copies out onto the radio waves
has become so expensive that industry execs cite it as a major
reason that major-label releases have to sell 500,000 copies to
break even now.)
Now, map that old business model to the Internet world.
The delivery of the free radio samples:
ship digital bits to user's computer.
The delivery of the paid-for copy:
ship digital bits to user's computer.
The difference between the marketing function (free radio) and the
sales function has vanished. Uh-oh... thus we come to
the SSSCA-type proposals to cripple all computers to create
artificial distinctions between groups of bits, and restrict
the manipulation and processing of those bits accordingly:
essentially, to outlaw the general purpose, Turing-machine computer.
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krj
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response 13 of 165:
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Mar 29 23:41 UTC 2002 |
While writing resp:12 I had a wisp of another idea.
The major labels say they have to spend an obscene, and rising,
amount of money promoting their releases to radio.
Why should this be so? Well, in the last couple of years we have
had the rise of the Clear Channel radio "pigopoly."
But more generally: the major labels are having to spend more to
try and get Release X to stand out from the pack, because there
are so many releases. There is, in short, an oversupply of music.
Market theory tells us that some things are supposed to happen
in response to an oversupply: prices are to decline until the
less efficient producers are forced out of the market.
One wonders when the market forces start to kick in.
Articles published in the wake of the music industry sales reports
for 2001 said the decline in sales would probably lead to a
decline in prices, but we have not seen it yet.
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jazz
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response 14 of 165:
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Mar 29 23:41 UTC 2002 |
That's not going to happen. Follow the money. There's way too much
money at stake in computing.
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