Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
At The Back => The Dressing Room => Topic started by: nfe on March 15, 2010, 08:42:54 PM
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Anyone watching this on BBC1 just now?
Jo Whiley presenting a programme about filesharing and a new government plan to, in theory, restrict and/or ban households internet access.
Thus far, unsurprisingly with it being presented by a BBC radio and television presenter, has been enormously biased in favour of anti-downloading lobbyists with only Dave Stewart and Billy Bragg getting their voices of dissent in for about ten seconds between them.
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Now we're getting a little more sense with the real numbers, especially that on average, people who download a lot of music illegally also spend twice as much money on music per year than those who don't download illegally.
Also, I can't help but notice that all the young artists huffing about illegal downloads are the ones who seem to believe they're only a successful musician if they're inordinately wealthy.
EDIT: Furthermore, this singer from Scouting For Girls is laughably clueless.
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IMO, there are pro's and con's on both sides of the argument but the idea that 'taking legal action against your fan-base' is a good, long-term business model has little credibility. 20 years ago (when I was trying to 'make it big'), if someone told me "give your music away for free and make money from touring, merchandise, endorsements, etc.", I would have though that was just fine.
Doesn't the majority of money from music sales go to the label, not the artist? Is the Music Industry protecting Performers or themselves?
Even though I have reservations about downloading (I don't do it) I suspect it's impossible to stop. Time to start living with it, rather than commanding the sea to turn.
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i meant to watch that. with any luck it'll be on again, they normally repeat it.
i always love (:roll: ) the music industry's specious claim that all music illegally downloaded is lost revenue (I assume it's in the program somewhere). People steal because they don't want to pay for it; a lot of those illegally downloaded, were they prevented from doing so, would just not buy the music and do without.
and also how a lot of it seems to be a power grab by the record companies.
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What worries me more is what's not being talked about, monitoring of your network traffic and who decides what you can or can not pass along your wires.
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I'll see if the shows up on pirate bay later.
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Furthermore, this singer from Scouting For Girls is laughably clueless.
I concur.
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I'll see if the shows up on pirate bay later.
Nice
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going to watch it on iplayer later, freetards will always find a way, using DPI to monitor people's bandwidth isn't much use if everyone starts using encryption by default, the other way is for copyright holders to monitor trackers, but not much use if the tracker is private or if IP blocklists actually work
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I'll see if the shows up on pirate bay later.
:lol: :lol: :lol:
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Curiously devoid of any actual debate about filesharing itself - ir proceeds from the (erroneous) assumption that its wrong, and then gets people that (think they) depend on huge record sales (to keep their bank balance in or above the 7 figure level) to promise the death of music itself if P2P doesnt stop, and plonks some kids and students infront of a camera and asks them leading questions to film the guilty looks they're led to have.
No debate. No one makes the argument that it is in fact not stealing in more than a forgetable offhand comment. Dave, yes, the 'lost revenue' argument featured heavily, and it wasnt properly questioned either.
The only counter-points made, in my opinion, were those that gave credence to the overaching assumption, drive and motivation for the whole thing - that music is the money that music makes. NO! Creativity will be killed off if major record labels arent major and flush. BOLLOCKS. Creativity was around LONG before record labels, and will be around long after they're gone, which shouldnt be long now. But its OK, because illegal downloaders spend more on music. $%&# off. Yeah its true, but it falls very much in the 'placates the people that think music is all about money' camp.
Record Exec: This is wong!
Guy in street: No it isnt
RE: Ah, but its not making money!
GiS: But the people that do it make you more money, its actually good marketing.
= avoiding the debate about the ethics of it and supplanting it with support for 'whatever makes more money is best'. Its a late-game card to be played after real arguments have shown them the precipice, as a consolation prize that lets everyone go away happy.
Reality.
Its not a problem that conventional copyright law and media distribution businesses are designed to handle. They're made to handle stuff, first and foremost - the exchange of a physical object for some money. Copyright laws are vestigial systems designed to hold sway over the sale of copied material as though one were a mini-distributor. Niether can apply here.
Its not theft because nothing is taken. Its copied. Its an inferior copy at that. No one lost anything.
It does fall under copyright, but thats using the letter of copyright to defeat the spirit of copyright. When it was for sale of an object that you were unauthorised to sell, then fine. As is, its not so clear. Are you a 'distributor' if you seed a torrent? I say no.
Lost revenue. Pull the other one. "They're stealing money we never made, because we never made it!" I think not. The equivalent would ford going round trying to stop people from driving if they bought a second hand ford, because that means that ford didnt sell a new ford. Any potential customer is culpable for a businesses diminishing revenue because they should be buying things that they arent. So, record companies must be kept afloat, and we must be made to do so at the cost of our civil liberties. I dont recall such an argument so transparently detached from reality ever gaining so much credence since intelligent design won over some rednecks in the bible belt.
Things not talked about enough
- You want to monitor the people of the UKs internet usage to WHAT degree to protect the profit of a vestigial industry now?
- 'The big machine' is in all ways a dinosaur, looking up at a funny light, getting bigger in the sky
- The reason for that us upstart little gits (many of whom can be found on these very boards) can now record good to great quality music for very, very little money, and even do it themselves if they have the getupandgo to learn how
- The 'big machine' that backs the spread and growth of modern music is now the internet itself. Anyone with a couple of grand in gear and a conneciton can throw that they have out here and whats gonna float will float, wont wont will sink. We no longer need distribution of a physical media to make and spread music, and thats what record labels were needed for
- Yeah, the highest quality is still made in very expensive studios, but studios =/= labels. Most studios make most of their money recording indie bands anyway.
- Business is business. You supply what theres demand for and you should be fine. If you get undercut or people dont want you any more, tough tits, you adapt or go out of business. This proposed law is nothing other than government protection of business.
The only point of significance stressed to a satisfactory degree was that the proposed measures and methods in the bill are indeed an exercise in futility.
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Oh, and fwiw I only very rarely download music now, will not pay for downloads on basic principle, and buy CDs because I like flac much better than MP3. I used to download a lot when my means couldnt keep up with my musical requirements, but I dont remember the last time I downloaded something I didnt buy as well, and I normally only download after placing the pre-order. The last time I got some CDs I spent well over that average 'illegal downloaders yearly amount' sum in the mid £70, and I do that a few times a year, with a one or two CDs at a time to snack on in between. So my objections are not rationalisations (to circumvent anyone that would say that)
Aside from anything else, I have a good CD player and like to use it. 2 good CD players, actually. Which reminds me, no one NOT ONE person even alluded to the lower quality of MP3s in download.
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nice post, mark. :) i reckon a good analogy for the record industry might be typewriter manufacturers... did they get to ban PCs? heck, the record industry has previous form in this, didn't they try to ban cassettes? :roll: plus now with youtube I can actually hear the stuff before I buy it- little chance of that before the internet came along (certainly with the stuff I listen to).
needless to say, the record industry isn't really the good guy here- most of the stuff the record companies push is shitee. not to mention the rampant misogyny regarding most female stars.
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I totally agree with you, MDV but I thought I might put my own spin on it.
There is a difference between the different things that are torrented, though.
For music there is a net gain for the musician as they ultimately sell several more records (if they have any sense this would be direct so that they could keep the best part of the money for themselves rather than have the middle-man forcibly take it from them with a crippling contract clause) and will have virtually free marketing for live performance; look at Gwem's tour diary thread, this would not have been possible for such a fringe genre to get their music out there before free downloads became freely available.
So the argument that artists wouldn't be able to 'afford' to be creative in the same way doesn't hold water and the only ones to lose out are the record companies and the millionnaires who live like kings off the back of their royalties cheques.
With television it's somewhat of a grey area given that not all television is commercial; if one has a paid TV license what is to stop them recording/filesharing their favourite programmes, barring the recent expansion of the BBC's own DVD video releases.
In theory they have already paid for the programme but it does tread on the toes of the distribution company.
With cinema I am more sympathetic to what damage torrents can do as they can't change the film that drastically. Once you have seen it you have seen it so why would you want to pay (barring the better experience of cinemas or High-Def Televisual broadcasting)?
Overall the last thing that's needed is an extra method of the government to keep tabs on what the British public is up to. The proposed system for looking into the surfing history of every broadband connection sounds like a Fascist's wet dream.
We aren't living in China are we?
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Aside from anything else, I have a good CD player and like to use it. 2 good CD players, actually. Which reminds me, no one NOT ONE person even alluded to the lower quality of MP3s in download.
on that fact, today in the shop our local yorkville sales rep came in. he demoed their new 21'' 2400 active subwoofer to us. the songs he had in his iPod were doing the sub justice.. (there was some RATM song that made my eardrums suck back and forth in phase with the speaker)... a local kid wanted to plug his iPod in. he did. some power metal band or so. might have been the mp3 quality or the EQ on his iPod.... but all of a sudden the 21'' sub was muddy, like we expected it to be at first. the sales rep puts his own Ipod back in, and all the punch and clarity is back.
mp3 is a good way to sample the quality of a cd...... but it's definitely not a quality format. a sound guy once told me that mp3 has a wall for anything over 12khz. i can beleive that!
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Watching it now, I'm only 10 minutes in and I've already had enough, weasel wording propaganda rubbish.
When they are talking to the uni students, like oh noes!!!! they download!!! nothing about how much debt they are in. How they talk about it affecting the UK creative industry, well if we only bought UK artist's music we'd be doing the UK economy a favour by reducing imports and having an indirect affect in exports, other countries loss is our gain. ;)
If everyone had financial security for life I don't think they would be downloading. But if I hadn't been able to "discover" proper music via the internet I wouldn't have spent loads of money on gigs, t-shirts and festivals, nor would I have started playing guitar and be making this forum post.
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It's not necessarily going to be an mp3 on the iPod. It can play any of the following files types MP3, AAC , WMA, AIFF, WAV, M4A and M4P.
Note that most of these are lossy formats and you have no way of knowing at what bitrate his files were copied at. One could have been at created at 44kbit/s whilst the other at 256kbit/s. You may also have been comparing a file encoded with one codec with another, e.g. MP3 v AAC. Also they may have been imported in a lossless format and then you're comparing something that's exactly like the source versus something that's got bits missing (pun intended).
You need to know you're comparing like for like before you can make an informed decision.
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Aside from anything else, I have a good CD player and like to use it. 2 good CD players, actually. Which reminds me, no one NOT ONE person even alluded to the lower quality of MP3s in download.
on that fact, today in the shop our local yorkville sales rep came in. he demoed their new 21'' 2400 active subwoofer to us. the songs he had in his iPod were doing the sub justice.. (there was some RATM song that made my eardrums suck back and forth in phase with the speaker)... a local kid wanted to plug his iPod in. he did. some power metal band or so. might have been the mp3 quality or the EQ on his iPod.... but all of a sudden the 21'' sub was muddy, like we expected it to be at first. the sales rep puts his own Ipod back in, and all the punch and clarity is back.
mp3 is a good way to sample the quality of a cd...... but it's definitely not a quality format. a sound guy once told me that mp3 has a wall for anything over 12khz. i can beleive that!
Theres little difference in the low end, actually. That would have been in the track, or as an outside possibility, the ipods, if, say, one were generation 5 (using the best dacs they've used) and the other was, well, any other.
The problems with MP3 are in the top end.
Only at an extremely low bitrate will it cut of at 12k, though (perhaps 56kbs). A 128Kbs lame encoded MP3 sounds about right up to ~16Khz.
Try getting some CDs, ripping them to FLAC and MP3 and testing them in an AB/X comparitor. I very much doubt you'll get them right with any statistical significance by listening to the low end. Cymbals, 'air', the sense of space in the sound, yeah, there can be big differences.
Also. read about Nyquist Theorem - should shed light on why this is!
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The Panorama was hard to watch because Joe Whiley is 'orrid and since when did the BBC become so one-sided and opinionated - it's something I've been really aware of recently, they've definitely lost their way.
Anyway... it can't and wont be stopped no matter how much propaganda they through at the easily scared.
Threatening and/or cutting off the internet will simply result in people using a different ISP thus resulting in loss of funds for the ISP's which in turn will result in ISP's making the law a non issue. If it is upheld, then an entrepreneur will find a loop hole and offer a more download friendly ISP. And in the very unlikely case of that not happening people will just become savvy with masking their I.P (it's not hard).
There's a buyer for everything, if it's not being sold the price is too high. You might not like to hear it but it's that simple. Media costs far too much. Make it worth buying - not by using antiquated models for pricing but by looking at actual value in the current world.
(http://w2.eff.org/Misc/Graphics/nsa_1984.gif)
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There's a buyer for everything, if it's not being sold the price is too high. You might not like to hear it but it's that simple. Media costs far too much. Make it worth buying - not by using antiquated models for pricing but by looking at actual value in the current world.
agreed. i remember before the internet came along, i used to have to pay £15 or £20 for the CDs I wanted. Needless to say, I only bought the ones I really, really wanted. If they're £20 each I'll only buy one, whereas if they were £7 each (as they often were on amazon, I'm not talking about illegal downloading when I mention the internet), I might buy 3.
Guess how much business I've given to places like HMV once the internet came around? I knew I was being fleeced at the time, but had no other option. That business model only works so long as there is no other option.
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ah but do they want to sell an item to one person for £20 or sell it to 2 people for £7
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I'm enjoying Spotify. It's superb value. Although, I'm sure they'll bring the price up when they get more traffic, they'd have to bring it up a hell of alot to make it bad value though. It's a really good idea. The UI is simple, clean and fast. The only draw back is there isn't a huge catalog of music on it (yet?).
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ah but do they want to sell an item to one person for £20 or sell it to 2 people for £7
with any luck they're selling it to nobody now for £20... :lol:
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Watched the programme last night. Lots and lots of short term views on display. Those that don't embrace the technology that is available now, and don't learn to live with it, will fail in the long run.
IMO the whole reason this argument exists is because of the people that run the record companies. They know that sales have been on the slide for a number of years and are trying to find ways to stop them. The methods they are using are the worst they could use - the arrogance is unbelievable.
If I was a recording artist (which I'm not) and in need of money (which I am) I would look at downloads as a great way of making new fans that would be willing to pay some money to come and watch a live show. You can't match that experience with a downloaded video of a gig.
As for Tinchy Stryder (great name) saying "it's alright for them to say that (i.e. downloading is good) when they have earned loads of money already", I thought that this was a good measure of some members of today's society. Bunch of tw@ts.
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Over the past couple of years (due to the economy) many board members, their friends and family will have seen their incomes reduced or lost their jobs (as I did). Most of us have been angry (for which there is no shortage of potential targets) but have acknowledged that this is the result of economic realities. Why is it that the Music Industry can not face up to it's new economic reality. Selling records was once very profitable, now it's less so.
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Ian and plxi - yes, its exactly the record companies that are at fault.
As I alluded to before - they're working on an obsolete business model thats built around exchange of material (CDs; an object that has to be made, and the object itself cant be replicated without some serious production capacity).
Now, its pretty clear that CDs (or comparable 'to have and hold' object that has music on it, or any media) arent going anywhere, but they need to take a different place in the business. Most music now, in terms of shear number of songs out there is probably digital. I dont know any stats, but thats a (fairly well) educated guess. Anyone thats a big music lover that associates with other music lovers, especially younger folks can make their own assesment of that and we can (in principle) add them all up and see if its true.
The younger people are, the more I guess this is true - MP3 is the dominant format.
But its also true that illegal downloaders spend more money on hard-copy music than non-illegal downloaders, because they're exposed to more music because theres no compunction to download because theres no outlay, so theres no risk. We've all not bought CDs because we didnt like the music quite enough, or handnt heard enough and werent sure, or didnt have the money at the time. I suspect we've all had CDs that we didnt like that much at first, but grew on us and we've come to love them.
Having a zero-outlay means to listen to the music whenever you want means that these risks are removed, and you can get the fence-sitters (the folks that will wander round HMV with a CD like a teddy bear only to put it down again) to buy and the slow-boil music that takes a while to grow on you to sell. The data supports this, too. So does my personal experience - the last time I bought a batch of CDs, the time I mentioned before where I spent more than the years average sum for illegal downloaders, it was to get music that I only had on MP3 (by copying mates CDs and illegal downloading) on hardcopy, because I like it and wanted A: the object B: the best quality sound C: a permanent and reliable source in case of loss of data.
I'd guess/argue a significant majority of people around and under 30 do much the same. I cant say real numbers but among my circles of friends its probably about half follow a similar patter, with the rest being CD-only or almost-download-only. I dont know anyone that doesnt buy CDs.
So what have labels done to address this change in listener consumption patterns?
Started payed downloads and gone on a legal battle to crucify people that download illegally.
Payed downloads are an insult. About £1 per song, the same or more than I can order a CD for from an american distributor on amazon.uk, and its MP3 or equivelent, medium/low bitrate. $%&# off. It doesnt cost near that much to set up and run some servers, even huge ones. Look at free sites like Wiki, that have massive traffic, a handful of employees and huge amounts of data to store - they do it for a few million. There are overheads, but there are no material losses - youre not exchanging anything; youre paying for people to replicate the data from your source. This exploits precisely what makes illegal downloading not stealing to make a huge profit margin - that no one actually loses anything; its all copies.
Going after people that do it to make examples of them is also absurd given the number of people doing it. The measures that have been taken against those that have been singled out smack of trying to lay the whole phenomenon of peer to peer on the first person they can find. Example. http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article721133.ece these punishments do not fit the crime. They are fitting with the record labels huge reserves of cash being able to pay for armies of lawyers to crucify everyday folk.
The sensible option would be to allow illegal downloading, to modify copyright law to state that its illegal to sell music on as a distributor, but not to share/copy for free, lower the prices of paid downloads and increase the quality to high end vorbis or flac and use it as a marketing device to promote CD sales, gigs and merch.
Of course, most of us know this. The mystery is why the labels arent making such shift - its in their financial interests (even if only to be able to throw less money into the legal system to lynch people) and its an easy shift to make.
They could even promote and derive revenue from free download - if sony started making peer to peer client software, for example, then A: they could bring it to the awareness of technological luddites and promote music to broader demographics, then letting the no-risk aspect sell more CDs to the indecisive and selling more 'grow on you' cds take effect in a larger population and B: they can take revenue from advertising in the software, or charge some reasonable monthly subscription for it (15 or 20 a month per copy, or something to that effect). Spotifys model is great for that - free with advertising, paid without, and its doing great.
We'll gloss over for a moment that its unlikely that sony in particular could resist making any software thats not laced with DRM, overcomplicated, unstable and designed to treat people like commodities that owe them their deserved riches, rather than customers that provide them their living. In principle it would work, regardless of the fact that big business will find a way to $%&# it up.
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with things like itunes, you're paying for ownership to your account right? not the actual download, i.e. if you lost all your data or something, you'd still own the track and just download it again right?
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another nice post, mark. :)
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Ta :)
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I'm just happy that someone else other than me is making monster posts that I can just agree with :lol:
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Lost revenue. Pull the other one. "They're stealing money we never made, because we never made it!" I think not. The equivalent would ford going round trying to stop people from driving if they bought a second hand ford, because that means that ford didnt sell a new ford.
I generally agree with the points you've made, Mark, but there's a big flaw in this particular argument. Ford made one car. That car doesn't get replicated and the replicates given to other people. That's what happens with music when it's shared.
Similarly:
With television it's somewhat of a grey area given that not all television is commercial; if one has a paid TV license what is to stop them recording/filesharing their favourite programmes, barring the recent expansion of the BBC's own DVD video releases.
This falls foul of the same argument. Your TV licence fee does not permit you to distribute the one copy you are allowed to make for personal consumption, so to speak, of a television show. So what's to stop people recording then filesharing such programmes is that it's against copyright law and currently illegal in the UK to do so.
Please bear in mind I'm only pointing out the one issue here: that copying music is still a breach of copyright (bar the one backup copy). Of course, MDV's analogy holds up if we're talking about someone giving their CD away and not keeping any copies for themselves. But of course, we're not talking about that, and that is the crux of the issue here.
The best analogy I can make here is a scientific one:
There is an enzyme which recognises a very specific sequence of amino acids in other proteins. This enzyme has been developed by a company and its use has been patented. Researchers in industry are permitted to use this enzyme, provided that they buy the enzyme from the supplier. An alternative way is to make the DNA required to produce the enzyme (a master CD, if you like) - this master can then be copied essentially for ever to produce enzyme free of charge without having to buy it from the manufacturer. This is an infringement of the patent, and does the company out of the money that would be spent on the enzyme.
Where this breaks down, however, is that academic institutions may use this enzyme in their experiments, and they are even allowed to re-make the enzyme from DNA (ie they are permitted to make copies from the master CD), thus circumventing the need to buy the enzyme in the first place. However, this is an agreement with the original manufacturer, and any attempt to pass on the protein to other institutions, academic or industrial, is in direct violation of the agreement, and infringes the patent.
Ultimately, it's the manufacturer - the band - not the damned record company that should have the say, but if the band makes an agreement with the record company, they are bound by the clauses of that agreement, and we end up in the current situation. Of course, with new bands out there getting wise (after HOW many years!?) to the antics of big labels, we now find the tide of opinion turn away from the big labels, and they don't like that.
If I'm lucky enough to be in a position where my band is 'signed' - or rather, that we're in a position to market and release our own material and go on tour etc - I will be acutely aware of the value of filesharing as a marketing tool, and as a means of making it easy for fans to get hold of material. The idea that anyone should be snooping on data is as abhorrent as the idea that all my mail should first go to someone to open before it is sent to me.
Roo
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Ah, contention! *rubs hands*
But seriously,(I'm glad theres a rebuttal to be had) you have a point, and the point I believe your illumination of the inadequacy of my analogy serves is the alien nature of modern trans-internet media replication to current (but decidedly not modern) business models. Ian M Banks fans may recognise the term 'out of context event' (excession, good book, read it); like a hunter-gatherer tribe meeting strange men from floating houses carrying boomsticks; this is something that modern industry (which record labels centre around - commanding the required resources to mass-produce distributable hardcopy media) is utterly unprepared for.
My analogy is incomplete. Yours is absurd. Neither are representative. Your (implied) analogy has occured to me befiore - what if there were a device, cheap and readily available, a star trek replicator type thing that could make a reasonable copy of anything. The device is legal, it makes inferior copies and it might die at any minute and all that it makes dies with it. You copy a car, or a house or a toaster or whatever - does the manufacturer have a right to press charges against you for loss of a sale? An easier, less scif-fi version may be that youre a mechanic, a damned good one, and you make a close replica of a ford with your own resources. Does ford have a right to take you to court? Basically the assumption is that you would have bought whatever you downloaded and the question is how the $%&# can they claim to know?
The fundamental point of the argument isnt in the analogy, and needs no analogy - its that record companies are losing profit (note, interestingly, not going into loss, just losing profit), and post hoc ergo propter hoc they blame it on peer to peer, despite the evidence that those that use it actually spend more on CDs. This is them claiming the loss of something they never had - supposed, inferred record sales that they simply think they're entitled to because of prior sales. It just qualitatively adds up, but the numnbers and facts dont support it.
Your scientific analogy of patented enzymes (and other biotech) is another debate entirely, and I know you know that ;)
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MDV... (you're gonna love this)
How would you choose to ascribe a monetary value to intellectual capital?
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MDV... (you're gonna love this)
How would you choose to ascribe a monetary value to intellectual capital?
The market value of precisely nothing is determined from any first principle or by any authoritative method, let alone anything as ambiguous as intellectual capital. The monetary value of everything is determined by the demand for it in the market its fielded to. Media are no different. That which people wish to consume, they will. I argue for a system that incorporates modern technologies into a free market consumption of media in an intelligent and adaptive fashion. There is still clearly demand for hardcopy media and free download is demonstrably a method to increase the exposure of music, and therefore increase sale of it, and therefore increase the value of whatever intellectual capital it holds. As with any commodity, business or service, the market, in the context of the social and technological climate is the judge and jury (and indeed, executioner). Your question/challenge (a good effort though it was) smells of the excluded middle, last nights curry and some dodgy knickers of disreputable origin :P
Maybe not the last two, but anywho, I'm sure you have something fitting that odours description.
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I see you blithely note the ambiguity of intellectual capital but fail to addess it's challenges.
As you posit that it derives its "monetary value" through trade, how would you envisge a market within which it could be traded?
BTW - I'm disappointed at your need for condescension, it does you no favours.
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Thats a redundant question - a huge amount of what is traded in modern markets amounts to intellectual captial, from singles to CPUs.
Condescending? As you wish. If youre going to switch forum masks from the boards jolly perv to sober debater, how am I supposed to know how youre going to take a friendly jab?
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Continue to duck the issue if you wish.
Consideration of a transactional market model which allows for distribution & (critically in this context) the protection of pure "intellectual capital" would be of greater relevance than further trading / deconstructing of imperfect analogies.
As for "switching masks", I was engaging with your apparently earnest position with interest and respect.
As this is a public forum I will allow others to keep their own counsel as to the level and appropriateness of the condescension contained in your post.
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I think your belief that I'm 'ducking' arises from misunderstanding of what youre asking.
'Intellectual capital isnt the same as intellectual property, as the terms are most commonly used.
Intellectual capital applies to everything that finds its source or operation in a persons mind - its the most generic and vague form of capital and value - tims pickup designs are intellectual capital, the computers we're using are full of intellectual capital, medicine is intellectual capital, and so on and so forth - everything falls under it in some way. Ergo, as I said before, the market decides its value, or the market decides if the value you arbitrarily set it is a good one, and it sells or it doesnt.
Intellectual capital is therefore distributed freely whenever anyone simply teaches someone something they didnt know that they could sell - tips on guitar teching for example (I do that in my spare time, or to pass my spare time, so if I get or offer advice on it then intellectual capital is being exchanged gratis). This happens on these very boards all the time. The value in that case is therefore some satisfaction one person gets from helping another. This is one example of many of intellectual capital not being fundamentally connected with monetary value at all.
For that which people choose to charge for -
You cant ascribe value a priori to anything. There is no authoritative arbiter, just the spectrum of demand of the market and the supply of the goods.
If youre talking about intellectual property, then its interesting to note that its applied in cases where
A: One artist can be shown to have likely copied another in material they claim is their own
B: The copier publishes that material as their own
C: The original artist takes offence and presses charges
Many do not, and the crucial aspect is claiming the material is yours when it isnt. Its not applicable to material that is duplicated without any claim of you being the source of the material.
To ask what value I would ascribe to intellectual capital, as it seems you mean the term, is to also to presume that all ideas have value. The obvious question is, to whom? There cant be an absolute answer.
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My point about television is that with BBC programmes everybody who has a TV license would have contributed to the funds of making the show in the first place so, in theory, no one has lost anything on the original broadcast if it is distributed digitally and downloaded by those people (not factoring in the potential for profits in the commercial redistribution of DVD and Blu-ray home-release formats.).
This makes for something of a grey area in the law as the BBC have never to my knowledge taken out litigation against an internet pirate (they are certainly happy enough for their programmes to be posted on youtube and similar) or torrent and very little, I assume, regarding copying of pre-optical hard-material as, back in the day, everyone who had a VHS player logically should have had a paid TV license.
With optical formats there is now the issue that the functionality to play these pirate copies is in virtually every PC made since the turn of the century and so hard-copy piracy is now very much a crime which directly affects everyone in the creative entertainment industry (with the exclusion of the music industry which also sees benefits of slightly increased overall record sales and a bigger fanbase for the musicians themselves.).
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My analogy is incomplete. Yours is absurd. Neither are representative.
It's not absurd at all, although I agree that it's not representative...
Your scientific analogy of patented enzymes (and other biotech) is another debate entirely, and I know you know that ;)
And this is the key point - it is another debate because one deals with patent law, the other with copyright law.
A much more applicable analogy, and one which also shows the equal absurdity and arbitrary nature of this issue, is in the copying of journal articles (hey I'm a scientist, leave me be!).
According to the copyright agreement in certain cases, articles in journals and books may be photocopied for research, but only 1 article, chapter or up to 10% of a book may be copied. Copying more than this is a breach of copyright, as is copying for other purposes, distribution of the copies, and so on and so on.
It's all very very woolly, arbitrary and almost entirely unenforceable, BUT those are the copyright rules which apply, and they are legally binding. As it stands, the copying of music is equally arbitrary (and the analogy even takes into account the (often) poorer quality of the replicated material!), and equally unenforceable - but my point is that it is still subject to copyright legislation!.
However morally right or wrong the position of record companies, they have (in this case at least) played by the rules which society has made up to govern the protection of artists. The fact that artists have signed over their own rights to big companies is their decision, but those contracts are still legally binding, and the copyright laws still apply. The quagmire in this argument, I think, is not anything to do with money making or protection of profit margins, it is the suitability of existing legislation to deal with the challenges posed by modern technologies which were not present when the legislation was drafted, and the tide of public opinion about how the interests of artists should be protected (or not).
Roo
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We agree then
It is under copyright law. That much is, currently a fact, and no matter my opinion on the matter its a fact I dont see changing in the immediate future.
Those laws should be questioned. For a start, are they there to protect the artists or the labels? Is one the other? I'm not convinced that it is to protect the artists - its to protect the rights of distribution, which is protection of the label, but it can in if the artist holds the copyright.
Nevertheless, the laws were made for simpler times and it seems errant to me that a law would be maintained when hundreds of millions of people globally, tens of millions in this country violate it routinely and in a fashion that cannot be demonstrated to harm anyone - quite the opposite; teh benefits of it have been well covered in this thread and mentioned in the show.
Our laws and the industries surrounding the distribution of music havent developed fast enough to keep pace with the technology. They will have to, though, because its not going anywhere (and its not new either - people have been copying music and film/tv for years, since tape: you just needed a cassette deck and/or 2 VCRs and a local blockbuster, but I dont recall anyone talking about denying these people record and film sales)
Which reminds me - if this cut off from the internet thing does happen, think about the knock on effect - obviously its supposed to be a deterrent rather than a routine punishment, or I hope so, since the net economic effect of any significant number of obviously regular internet users being cut off would be very detrimental to the other internet transactions they take part in - millions of sales takes place over the net now, almost all firms are set up for it and many of the people that use it are the same people that download illegally. It would hit record sales (since its established that illegal downloaders buy more music, a lot of it will be over the net) and, well, everything else - its not unreasonable to assume that the relatively technologically literate people that do this are also the ones that buy most of their stuff online as well.
Which means that they cant apply it universally: they have to implement this and rely on it not actually being used very often, and when it is used, it being heavily publicised as a scare tactic.
I dont think they've thought it through very well.
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politicians don't think stuff through? whatever next?
on a more serious note, i wonder what will happen when the internet gets more and more prevalent in the mainstream (much like tv is today)? at the moment they're still trying to paint the internet as the preserve of geeks, but it's getting to be more and more mainstream. I wonder what laws the politicians who grew up with the internet will seek to enforce? and when they no longer have to pander to people who don't use the internet and don't care about it (or more accurately, don't have to worry about losing votes when enacting new draconian legislation).
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When in this distribution cycle do you feel it appropriate for a rights holder (artist or publisher) to be paid?
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Condescending? As you wish. If youre going to switch forum masks from the boards jolly perv to sober debater, how am I supposed to know how youre going to take a friendly jab?
Frankly I'm disappointed in you both for not realising we're having a. . .
MASS DEBATE
Geddit? :D
Also, I think Dave's always up for a friendly jab.
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When in this distribution cycle do you feel it appropriate for a rights holder (artist or publisher) to be paid?
is that to me or mark?
when i say, "I like that, I'm willing to pay for it". Perhaps make free downloads have some kind of degradation built-in, like some computer software demos?
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That's not a bad idea actually, the use it for free 10 times then you have to pay for it approach could be quite workable and a good midway point.
As for the used car analogy, this made me laugh because this is exactly what the games industry are complaing about, and they keep talking about finding a way to get a cut of resales :o
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i don't agree with that at all. second-hand sales eat into new sales for any industry. Yes, I'm sure for some it's worse than others, but I'm sure it's fairly bad for cars too, and I don't see them talking about banning s/h sales. it's also fairly shortsighted- most people who sell their cars will then go to buy a new one- or another second-hand one... but a lot of those selling will move on to a new one, presumably. And if you were suddenly prevented from selling your car, would people buy a new car as quickly? I'm guessing the car industry has the sense to realise this.
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See, my point in general is that it doesnt need that centralised arbitration or imposed restriction, and shouldnt have it for one huge reason
- doesnt need it: people still by CDs and there doesnt need to be a mechanism to force people to. People that download illegally buy more cds and a calm and level view says to allow it, even encourage it, in order to let the natural tendency of people wanting to have an object take its course. They just need to, as my boss is fond of saying to or of our advisees when we're advising things that are counterintuitive or seem risky but are in fact well supported by the available evidence 'be brave' (ignore the gut response, use your head)
- shouldnt have arbitration, as thats legislated protection of business against consumer interest and consumption patterns. I've said it before; business has no right to be protected and no right to force people to buy its produce - its either successful off its own back, resourcefulness and adaptability or it isnt.
The games thing is a good example, actually, and another bugbear of mine. I sporadically play PC games, I've never downloaded a game and owned every single one I've played save, I think, 2 (out of dozens; those 2 were copied from a mates downloads). The situation there is the use of DRM to restrict the number of installations, force online activation, install secondary software that the user is unaware of that monitors the PC and installs its own drivers and ties games to a particular user account, meaning that if you want to sell it you have to give your access details to whomever you sell it to. Not all these happen in the same DRM, but thats the sort of stuff they do between them. Its basically treating paying customers like thieves and all purchased games as long term rentals. Ironically people that use pirated games get a copy that doesnt do that. Many people didnt buy the games because of the DRM and many got a pirated copy. Some even bought the game, so that they've paid as a matter of principle and then actually used and played a pirated version!
Go on amazon and look at reviews for spore, bioshock, crysis warhead, mass effect, far cry 2 - the reviews of the games themselves are pretty good, but the actual scores are low because many people that reviewed attacked the DRM, and rightly so.
Now, the good part: some of those games have been patched to remove the DRM, sequels to those games dont have it or have a stripped down version that only performs a disk check. The publishers learned; they responded to the outcry and the lack of sales (I for one didnt buy any of those save crysis, and then only because I didnt know it had this cr@p, which is half the problem).
Another interesting view thats quite pertinent can be provided by Stardock Games. They have a manifesto. It reads
1. Gamers shall have the right to return games that don't work with their computers for a full refund.
2. Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.
3. Gamers shall have the right to expect meaningful updates after a game's release.
4. Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game.
5. Gamers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will adequately play on that computer.
6. Gamers shall have the right to expect that games won't install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their express consent.
7. Gamers shall have the right to re-download the latest versions of the games they own at any time.
8. Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers.
9. Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the internet every time they wish to play.
10. Gamers shall have the right that games which are installed to the hard drive shall not require a CD/DVD to remain in the drive to play.
Its tongue in cheek, but they stick by it (though I have heard of some subtle ammendments being made, I dont know what they are). The best parts - their games are popular, they are well respected, they retain their value in the new market as well as any other PC game, their equivelent of Steam (they call it impulse) - software that controls access to the game, is opt-in, not forced, and allows you to download the game as many times as you want removing the need for the hardcopy. I have a couple of their games and they come with serial numbers which arent used in the installation; they arent CD keys - they're website/impulse access keys that allow you to get updates and use the infinite-download facility.
All this practice seems idiotic, the enemy of profit, surely people will take advantage. As it turns out, their Honours-System rights control isnt exploited any more than any draconian, prohibitive system that the likes of EA games tried. And, from the fact that they're still kicking out games, they seem to be doing well.
I think that people that are going to copy material illegally will do so regardless. The technology makes a red-queen-effect battle between pirates and devs/labels/distributors inevitable. Theres no way to stop it, theres no way to restrict it and theres no way to force recompense. The reason I find stardocks model interesting because it assumes that people will pay for what they like and want, and be more inclined to do so if they, the distributor, treat the customers with respect, it doesnt try to treat customers as potential thieves and impose strong access control or go to war against free copying of the material they release, and its doing very well.
They're the only example that comes to mind of a company that is affected by peer to peer copying of their media who have found a way to coexist successfully with it in a fashion that allows people that would be paying customers to be happy and hand over their money, and leaves those that would copy it for free to do so, because they're almost certainly going to anyway. They're 'being brave' :lol: But it works.
I think addition of a time-out or limited number or plays will produce the same effect - people wont go for it, some people will not buy it at all, some people will go get a pirated version that doesnt have the restrictions and the industry wont benefit; they're end up doing the same thing that the publishers that used DRM in games did: have the remove it because their sales and their reputation are suffering.
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That's A Great Idea!
Take that to the bank & get a loan or stand up at an AGM and sell it to the shareholders..
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What do you think the fact that people that pirate more music buy more music than people that dont means for record label shareholders?
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Are you two going to bum soon?
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Shob, you're the only man for me... It's the girth that I can't resist.
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anyone remember that company that was threatening to take members of the British public to court for sharing some pinball game/gay porn unless they paid up, well now they are targeting some file sharing forum because it thinks people expressing opinions is damaging to their business
freedom of speech anyone?
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word, mark.
speaking of the honour system, the underground in vienna works on the honour system (at least it did last time I was there). Far as I could tell, most people were paying.
As mark says, if you treat people like criminals, it'll piss them off, and some may even become criminals out of spite.
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Girth indeed. I've done my time in academenture, but I never made them call me Dr. Dr. aherm.
Delight!
You should be able to perceive that I'm receding at an accelerated velocity, that I don't believe can be sustained for a protracted time.
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Shob.... don't run too fast...
You might think you know what you'er talking about whithout ever trying....
God help you if that ever happens...
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Dave Mc, cheers dude. Quite so. Its a depressing sign of the times that people forget the reciprocity that is innate to humans, for the greatest part.
A. Dave, youre making me regret bothering to you the responses I did, doubly so that its you that spoke of approaching this discussion with respect. You have no response to my question?
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:)