Panorama - Filesharing

[Roobubba]

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

[MDV]

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 ;)

[Afghan Dave]

MDV... (you're gonna love this)

How would you choose to ascribe a monetary value to intellectual capital?

[MDV]

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.

[Afghan Dave]

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.

[MDV]

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?

[Afghan Dave]

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.

[MDV]

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.

[maverickf1jockey]

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.).

[Roobubba]

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

[MDV]

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.

[dave_mc]

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).

[Afghan Dave]

When in this distribution cycle do you feel it appropriate for a rights holder (artist or publisher) to be paid?
 

[impossible]

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.

[dave_mc]

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?