response 62 of 183:

May 16 03:27 UTC 2000

Did that make you feel better?

In any event, litigation is not going well for Napster. They were too late
in posting their rules relating to removal of copyright violators, which
may have moved them outside of the "safe harbor" protections in the law
governing on-line content providers. However, new products on the horizon
promise to do what Napster does and more -- creating a self-repairing
network of copyrighted goods, which can be downloaded through encrypted
connections. The stated goal of one of the developers is to put an end to
intellectual property as we know it.

response 64 of 183:

May 16 14:12 UTC 2000

BTW, Aaron, you ask for a response, and accuse me of picking a fight. I give
a response, and your sole response is "Does that make you feel better?"

I reiterate: I'm not the one trying to pick a fight. No, it doesn't make me
feel better that apparently intelligent human beings think that ART is
distinguishable from PRODUCT and that ART should be free and artists should
pay their way on the glory of praise.

If you'd care to spell out YOUR interpretation of other's suggestion in a way
that doesn't make it sound like ars gratia artis leading to impoverished
geniuses, feel free. Until then, stop with the condescending barbs.

response 66 of 183:

May 17 14:32 UTC 2000

#65> So what you're saying is, that because people are making illegal copies
of recorded music, then other's original suggestion is that musicians
shouldn't get paid for concerts (which was totally irrelevant to the original
thread)? In fact, what you're saying is that Other's plan suggests the ONLY
problem with the status quo is rock stars getting paid for concerts?

Paint me utterly confused.

Look, here's our current system: I do work, I get paid. If I don't like what
I'm getting paid for the work I'm doing, I ask for more, or I stop doing it.
Sometimes that work involves producing something tangible, sometimes it
doesn't. If I do something that's intangible, but creative, I control the
creativity behind the thought, as long as I can demonstrate that I did the
mental work involved.

Maybe the flaw, and where Other's plan runs askew, is in a misunderstanding
of what happens AFTER I do the creative work. I write a song. I sing a song.
I produce a song. I get paid for all of these tasks. Now, where copyright
and intellectual property comes in is, now that I've written the song, nobody
else can sing that song (legally) without giving me money.

Instead, I can see a system where I get paid for writing a song. If people
like how I sing it, then I get paid for that. If they make copies of me
singing it, then they give me money for each copy. (So far, that's what we
have now.) But if they want to sing the song themselves, they're welcome to
do so without paying me more (they have to pay me some initial fee for a copy
of the sheet music, perhaps). 

But this scenario doesn't address the Napster issue, either. Perhaps instead
of paying a musician a percentage of sales (ditto an author, or anyone else),
we should be paying them a lump sum up front... so, regardless of ticket
sales, or book sales, or what have you, the creative artist gets a set amount.
Actually, I think that's a better system, and it's one that's been used in
the past. Metallica gets paid $1,000,000 for recording "Load." Now, the record
company wants to sell copies of it. It's up to the record company to make sure
it makes enough profit to justify giving Metallica $1,000,000, and unless
Metallica wants to sing those songs in different ways, they're done getting
money for *that recording* of *those songs*. I really don't think that MP3
and "free music" will ever stop people from buying recorded music... after
all, home taping has existed for decades, and while that's had an effect on
sales, there's still a sizeable demographic (including me) who'd rather have
the convenience of buying the album without having to worry about errors in
copying, download times, finding all the tracks, etc. etc.

My point: Other's plan of stripping an artist's financial affiliation with
anything intangible is ludicrous. Instead, we might want to reconsider how
it is that we pay our artists. Right now, for any NON-creative work, we pay
a lump sum for the task, not ongoing dividends. I think we should do the same
for creative tasks.

response 68 of 183:

May 17 16:42 UTC 2000

The problem I see with "one lump sum and your done" is that the payer of
the lump sum can continue to profit into eternity from the work purchased
with that lump sum:  the profit from each album sold goes to the payer.
The current system is that the person recorded gets a portion of the
proceeds from each sale (and so does the songwriter, who may not be the
same as the singer).  So a really popular singer gets lots of money,
while a really unpopular singer gets little money.  Under a lump-sum
scheme, both will get the same amount, so why bother trying to be popular?

response 70 of 183:

May 17 17:23 UTC 2000

  (although there is a growing tendency to treat "the Internet" and
   "the World-Wide Web" as the same thing, I'm disappointed to see
   a long-time user like Aaron [who almost certainly knows better]
   make a statement like "for the first few years of the internet.."
   For the first *many* years of "the internet" there were no
   functional net-wide search tools..)


  As usual, the Onion is right on top of things this week, with the
  following article lampooning Napster/MP3 hysteria:

       http://www.theonion.com/onion3618/kid_rock_starves.html

  Consider it mandatory reading before continuing this discussion..

response 72 of 183:

May 17 18:28 UTC 2000

(While I admit I haven't read the assigned homework yet,.....) What I'm
wondering at the moment is, why is the problem with pirated music so much
worse than the problem with pirated software?  After all, software generally
costs more than music, is a "useful" item rather than a luxury, and the
information you need to crack a piece of software is easier to transmit --
often just a short password.  Was there a similar software pirating kafuffle
that I'm just too young to remember, or is there some reason that music
pirating is having a bigger deal made of it?

(And what's the #2 net search?  I mean, really, between sex and music, what
else is left, right?)

response 74 of 183:

May 17 19:40 UTC 2000

First off, I think some of you are misreading my lump sum example.
To the person who asked about whether Metallica and, say, Kilgore Trout's Jug
Band would receive the same amount, clearly not. Metallica would
contractualize a lump sum. That's like asking if an entry level secretary and
a secretary with 25 years of experience would garner the same salary.

Take actors. Harrison Ford can pretty much name his salary; if David Schwimmer
wanted to make an action thriller, though, I doubt he could (while, in
contrast, David Schimmer et al *did* name their price recently to continue
making "Friends"). This is true under a royalties system, too -- Metallica
can insist on a higher percentage of profits, etc., than Kilgore Trout's Jug
Band, who should just be happy having a record contract, given that the sold
500 units last year.

Next, the artists can currently get in the mix, as it were, because people
who use Napster ARE stealing from them. I have no sympathy for record labels,
but there are starving musicians out there (not Lars and co., but hey). Under
a royalty system, every time somebody makes a copy of a copy, that's money
that they (potentially) lost. If they get a lump sum, go home, go make more
music, then they're not getting stolen from.

At any rate, Aaron, stop with the condescension and answer the fucking
question. Please illustrate how Metallica gets $1 for writing a song, under
other's system. Then explain how Napster isn't ripping Metallica off, again
under other's system. Or shut the fuck up.

response 76 of 183:

May 17 19:59 UTC 2000

I'd like to reiterate, btw, that my model is based on how every other sector
of capitalism works. At my job, I do work. I get paid. IF the product sells
well, I get a raise for my future work. Some companies do pay bonuses, but
I can't imagine the designer of the Ford Taurus, for instance, getting 1% for
every Taurus that sells. Instead, if the Taurus sells better than anticipated,
the designer might get a single bonus for his work on it.

In the same way, Metallica "works" for whatever record company they're with.
If they think they can sell product better independently, go for it (as Ani
DiFranco did, quite well, and many others do, very poorly). They turn out a
product, the record company pays them for their work (under my system), and
off we go. If it sells much better than anticipated, Metallica gets a bonus.

On the software piracy issue> You're too young. Been there, done that.
Software companies tried various things, such as making software that required
the disc to be in the drive, or writing a code on the distribution floppy to
indicate that the software had been installed, or including a non-producible
code sheet with the software, or some other difficult-to-reproduce password
system... they've all been abandoned, probably because of consumer complaint.
The problem was, if you lost the distribution disk or the password sheet, you
were screwed. 

Also, a sizable sector of the software market, business software, is
overwhelmingly consumed by companies which are large enough that they don't
want to risk lawsuits with unlicenced or improperly licensed software. Most
major corporations have policies about putting software on the network; this
is in part a irus security issue, but also out of fear that Microsoft or
whomever will find out they've got improperly licensed software. So Microsoft
doesn't spend a lot of time worrying about the little guys, since they're
getting the money they want from the big guys.

Maybe MP3s will settle into a shareware-style environment, with individual
artists offering songs for a "whatever you want to pay" fee, as long as you
do the download and you provide the media. shareware still exists, despite
capitalist nay-sayers, so it must be making at least a few shekels for
somebody.

At any rate, I think the beef here is with the record companies, not with the
artists, and that's why I'm confused that other's system penalizes the artists
and rewards the record companies, by my read. (Aaron once again, is welcome
to provide a reasonable read of other's post that contradicts this
interpretation.)

(And no, Aaron, before you ask again, I don't feel better, since I didn't feel
bad to begin with.)

response 78 of 183:

May 17 22:18 UTC 2000

To me, the fact of an artist (or a record company) getting a royalty every
time someone plays a song they wrote/recorded/produced is the equivalent of
an architect (or a building contractor) getting a royalty every time someone
enters a building they designed/built.

My point is that entertainment is the only industry in which the creative
efforts at the core of the product are rewarded out of measure with the
efforts themselves (i.e. in perpetuity as opposed to one-time).

Suppose we treated musicians the same way we treat designers, architects,
layout artists, window dressers, etc.

Artists would be a paid a one-time fee for writing a song, and then would be
paid additional fees for each time they perform the song *themselves*. 
Recordings would be distributed freely, and (and here's the real shocker)
recorded music would be the inducement to come and see live performances, as
opposed to the current system in which performances are done to induce people
to buy recordings at inflated prices which result in record industry
executives and a very few artists being made wealthy beyond reason.  

Writing and performing popular music is work, and for many it is enjoyable
work.  
If we are going to treat the creation of art as an industry, then we should
do it in a way which levels the field so that people get paid for the work
they do when they do it, not over and over again for one piece of work they
did way back when.


This way, *good* musicians will have just as much chance to get their work
out as those 'selected' by industry executives, and market forces will result
in artists whose music is proven popular (by, sayyyy, the number of
downloads...??!) being given the opportunity to perform for people willing
to pay to see and hear them do so.

Artist:  Here's an MP3 I made.  
Independent promoter/producer:  Wow.  Lots of people here like your stuff.
Want to come to XXXXX and play a concert?  If it sells well, I might even pay
for you to record additional stuff so more people will want to come to your
concerts (assuming you agree to have me produce/promote the concerts.)

(This works a little like life.  You do work for free -- either as a volunteer
or in school -- to build up a portfolio.  Then, if someone decides they like
it enough to pay you to do more, you do more.  If you don't like the terms,
you renegotiate.  If you can't do that, then you take your portfolio and look
for someone else who likes your work. If your work is bad enough that you
can't find anone who will pay you to do it, then you either learn to do it
better or you do something else.)

response 80 of 183:

May 17 23:28 UTC 2000

I'm not assuming it is particularly attractive, but the reality is that a lot
of people spend a lot of their lives pursuing the dream of stardom in music
and never get much out of it.  At least this way, the goals would be lowered
to a more realistic level so that those people who really want to make music
and be good at it will try to make a living at it (while anyone who wants to
can still do it for their own pleasure).

It simply levels the field.  You do the work.  You make a living.  If you're
really good at it, you make a better living.  Of course it's less attractive.

Would the lottery have any appeal if you only got $500 a week for winning it,
but still had to work 40 hours each week to collect?

response 82 of 183:

May 17 23:29 UTC 2000

#80 slipped in..

response 84 of 183:

May 18 02:23 UTC 2000

Well, for all its flaws, we know the current model works, good and interesting
music gets made under it, and musicians find enough incentive to keep working.
For all people complain about record companies stifling innovation, there
seems to be a lot more variety in music, reaching a lot wider of an audience,
than there was under other models we know of.  I imagine it's tempting to
cling to what you know works, rather than strike off into the great unknown.

More to the point, since things will change whether we want them to or not,
it makes good sense to cling to those aspects of the current model that work
especially well.  There's nothing irrational about trying to have the things
that change be the things that weren't working so well in the first place.

response 86 of 183:

May 18 11:36 UTC 2000

I'm curious why the "few big stars" model which we've been living with is
good, though.  I'd rather see many local/regional bands, even if they aren't
as perfectly polished.  

Back several hundred years ago, composers would freely take melodies and such
from each other.  The idea was to see who could do the best arrangements with
them.