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Music Media The Almighty Buck

Why Only Music? 255

Posted by michael from the don't-try-to-use-logic-against-me dept.
The Importance of writes "Last week, Slashdot readers provided a number of answers to the question "What is Music?" in the context of compulsory licensing. Now LawMeme asks another question about compulsory licenses: Why Only Music? Many compulsory licensing schemes have been proposed to cover music alone, but most of the arguments in favor of a compulsory license for music apply equally as well to other media types. Millions share movies, P2P can't be stopped, the MPAA hasn't provided legitimate alternatives for what consumers want, etc. If music should have a compulsory license, why shouldn't movies, software, ebooks and other media also be covered by compulsory licenses?"
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Why Only Music? More

Why Only Music?

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  • The moment.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kedisar ( 705040 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @04:37PM (#7156534) Journal
    I open up a brand new paperback and see a EULA, is the moment I destroy the human race. =/

    • Sadly, I have to inform you that as you've just made a wild and stupid-sounding threat that you'll never follow through on, you have violated the 'Intellectual Property' of SCO. The invoice is in the mail.

    • Please report to your local FBI field office immediately.
    • Strike me down with a EULA, and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!

  • Because (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sir Haxalot ( 693401 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @04:38PM (#7156547)
    If music should have a compulsory license, why shouldn't movies, software, ebooks and other media also be covered by compulsory licenses?
    It's bad enough music having it, how would you feel about the BAA (Book Association of America) sending you emails?
  • You will be.

    I didn't understand the post, and having tried to read the article I understand it even less.

  • OPEN SOURCE RECORD LABEL (Score:4, Interesting)

    by locarecords.com ( 601843 ) <david AT locarecords DOT com> on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @04:41PM (#7156572) Homepage Journal
    I don't know how many have heard of our label LOCA RECORDS [locarecords.com] but we have been releasing music Open-source for at least a couple of years now. Although our artists are small, for instance MEME, XAN, WARD and MAZ PLANT OUT, but they are all really excited about the ideas and the licenses.

    Granted most people look blank or think we must be insane to do this but we are experimenting with a new business model and it is very exciting!

    And as we believe in the artists and they trust us because of our licensing freedom we think in the long term the relationship can only get stronger and more artists will want to join us.

    • As a former performing/recording musician, I have to say I applaud your efforts. The only money I ever really made in recording was as a session musician (and really only thanks to the AFM), never as the featured artist. I have to ask, though, what do you do about the costs associated with recording? Do you expect to make the money back through live performances? That seems, to me, the model that would work best.

      p.s. I'll be placing an order for a t-shirt this week... kudos to you for bucking the tren

  • Bandwidth and cheap media. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gpinzone ( 531794 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @04:43PM (#7156594) Homepage Journal
    MP3 are ripe for the picking, but DVDs (or even Divx rips) are not so easy. Once bandwidth and cheap media catches up, the story will change. Besides, everyone knows you have to take small steps. First you fight hard to get it approved for music only, then you argue it should be applied for other stuff because it's unfair that only music should be protected. After a few years, people will forget to ask whay any of it should be treated specially. It will all be absorbed into the cost of doing business.

    • No, you sneak a bill through now that is generic enough to cover video, when the MPAA isn't paying attention because you can't make use of it. When broadband catches up, the laws are already in place, and it is just a matter of convincing your congressmen to not change them, instead of fighting against a change they are making. With luck and congress's slow pace, by the time they get a bill through, people are so used to the current law that congress is not willing to piss off the voters.

      Then again, giv

  • The title of this article made me think that is was about the fact that only music can be purchased online. Why not movies (too much bandwidth) textbooks, magazines, photos etc. What about physical objects that you could print out? Imagine buying a new computer online and having it ten minutes later after you print it star trek style. Then you get to the real question: how do you keep the user from printing the computer again?
  • Why discuss this at all? This isn't about licensing any more. It's about ignoring copyrights and trademarks completely in favor of "we want it for free."

    So why not just repeal the copyright laws? Why not repeal trademarks too? If you really want it all for free, then just repeal the law.

    Of course that won't happen, because the reality is that there won't be any "it" to have for free without copyrights.

    Without copyright and trademark law, 30% of the economy evaporates instantly.

    • Re:Hey (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bobKali ( 240342 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @05:03PM (#7156819) Homepage
      Yea yea yea, and without government farm subsidies 30% of agriculture would evaporate overnight also. Without steel tarrifs 80% of steel would evaporate overnight... Let's not forget that copyright originated as a means of censorship (proud tradition that) and the real "rights" to creative works belong to the whole of humanity - we're only trading those rights temporarily to encourage and reward people for creating those works for us. But we seem to be giving up more and more without getting anything back in return.

      Oh, and compulsary copyrights on everything creative sounds like a great idea. Lets just levy more taxes and use the revenue to support whatever art our federal government wants to support. Long live the NEA!!!

      I'm not against copyrights, but I am against the perpetual extension of copyright terms. I'm also against labeling copyright infringement as theft - call it what it is - infringement. It's wrong, it's immoral, but the owner is not deprived of the work when it is illegally coppied.

  • Yes, there are alternatives.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dan93 ( 222999 ) <danielonolan@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @04:44PM (#7156617)
    Several major Hollywood studios have offered alternatives that allow people to rent movies online. In fact slashdot [slashdot.org] has ran a story about them before.
  • If everyone did it (for all copyrightable material) then we would know it for what it is -- a tax! And we would be supporting the humanities with federally mandated taxes paid to our corporate masters.

    I, for one, welcome ou... just kidding. Up against the wall mother fudruckers!

  • There's no governing body (a la RIAA, MPAA) looking over software, so one company will have to step up for everyone.

    The only one with enough money to do this would rather watch everyone suffer, since they can take the hit. Besides that, if you pirate Windows, having to use it is punishment enough.

  • Theft is not what anybody wants (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sean80 ( 567340 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @04:47PM (#7156649)
    Maybe this will be considered a troll. But, I feel that sometimes the posting as written needs to be questioned - we can't just take it as the truth and proceed from there.

    "...the MPAA hasn't provided legitimate alternatives for what consumers want..."

    In my view, this statement is almost laughable. What's the purpose of it? To justify theft? That's a very, very slippery slope indeed.

    • I think the statement refers to cheap legal download-services for music - Apples iTunes [apple.com] for example. No major record label actually succeeded in introducing such a service (and in some cases - Napster - it backfired). All they offer are overpriced, old and heavy DRM restricted files. So they were unable to meet the expectations of the consumers, who already had a cheap, fast and easy download possibility: P2P.

      Of course you are right, creating such a service may not be the main focus of the MPAA. But it s
      • You are confusing the RIAA (music) with the MPAA (movies).
    • In my view, this statement is almost laughable. What's the purpose of it? To justify theft? That's a very, very slippery slope indeed.

      I see it as a very simple fact. Consumers don't want to be "music thieves", they want to have popular singles available on demand at a price they can afford. Since they can't get it legitimately -- having to buy the whole album for $15 or more instead -- they get it for free. But if they could get it easily, without overwhelming DRM, for (just say) $0.99, they usually would
      • What does being "music thieves" have to do with the MPAA? You said yourself that you don't have to steal movies online because you can buy or rent it for cheap, so, by your arguement, the MPAA is indeed giving consumers what they want.

        MPAA != RIAA
      • they want to have popular singles available on demand at a price they can afford

        Dunno which radio stations you listen to but most seem to rotate popular stuff about every 20 mins. Singles or the CD equiivalent are still available aren't they if not at 99c at least at less than $15. That's all they would have heard on the radio. plus they get a few remixes and maybe a video clip.

        Personally I download to set up playlists of stuff I wouldn't buy but would like to hear as background rather than the dreck that

    • In my view, this statement is almost laughable. What's the purpose of it? To justify theft? That's a very, very slippery slope indeed.

      Here is the misconception, copyright violations are not theft. Copyright ownership is not an absolute right like property ownership is. Copyright is a comprimise struck by society with artists and writers. The purpose of compulsory licensing was to modify the compromise to maintain it's fairness. The MPAA and RIAA have no absolute right to control their members' creations. Neither do their members for that matter. If the MPAA does not live up to it's side of the compromise, we the people reserve the right to renegotiate.

      No slippery slope, no theft. If we give in to the MPAA and RIAA or any of those extremists that say intellectual propery is the same as real property, then we are giving up our rights and heading down a slippery slope.

      He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody...

      -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Isaac McPherson, 1813
      • The fact is that everything that can be copied is being copied. I think it's in our genes - even quite literally. They copy themselves all the time without EULA's.
      • Jefferson wrote that 200 years ago about ideas, not movies/music. So by using that as your argument, you assume that:

        a) I would agree with Jefferson.
        b) anything that applies to ideas should also apply to music/movies, since they are both "information" (a categorization that I doubt Jefferson would have agreed with).
        c) 200 year old ideas are still likely to be relevant today.

        -a
    • You know I have to agree with you. Most of the people I know that pirate movies just don't want to pay for it. And there is no legitimate alternative for that - it cost money to make movies.

      Another big motivation I see are people wanting to see the movie as soon as possible. Again there is no good solution to this. Even if they had some sort of prerelease, people would still want it sooner than that. So lets go to the extreme - you put up everything for charge on the web, as soon as it is availble - the sc
    • Well, I say theft is justified when the public is taxed for media they might be using for theft. Don't you just love all this new age circular logic?

      First lets do away with all these stupid taxes, then lets break down the MPAA and RIAA into their respective companies and ask each and every one of them to prove that their media is being stolen. Then lets find a way to prevent piracy or catch all these pirates. Arrr.

      Or continue as we are, things seem to be working themselves out on their own. Before you
    • In my view, this statement is almost laughable. What's the purpose of it? To justify theft? That's a very, very slippery slope indeed.

      In fact, the MPAA has NOT provided a legitimate alternative, nor are they ever likely to. If movie prices were not so outrageously high, you would not see people swapping them on P2P networks. Simple fact: movies are a total rip off and consumers have begun to grow wise to this. Go do some research for yourself. If movies went public domain the moment they left the thea

    • "...the MPAA hasn't provided legitimate alternatives for what consumers want..."

      In my view, this statement is almost laughable. What's the purpose of it? To justify theft? That's a very, very slippery slope indeed.

      It's an attestation to the fact that MPAA is an oligopoly that is engaging in price-fixing, anti-competitive behavior. If government is to "sponsor" MPAA and similar cartels (RIAA, etc.) then it is fair for people to complain about their activities.

      Because MPAA is a cartel its members do not h

      • "I am not saying P2P sharing of copyrighted material is legal and justified - it's not."

        Sure it is. If you come across my copyrighted photographs, poems, or music, you are completely and expressly welcome to share it. Copyrighted material, shared on P2P networks, utterly and irrevocably legal and justified.

    • In my view, this statement is almost laughable. What's the purpose of it? To justify theft? That's a very, very slippery slope indeed.

      You know, this statement really makes me think.

      Lots of people here on slashdot like to say, "It's not theft, it's copyright infringement." As if this minor difference in terms means much, as if I were to write a book and someone scanned each page then put it up on the internet, I wouldn't feel like I had been ripped off.

      So why do we (as a community, culture, subculture,
    • One might argue that the MPAA *has* provided legitimate alternatives for what consumers want, because movie DVDs are pretty damned cheap -- about the cost of 2 or 3 theatre tickets, for not only the movie but also usually lots of extras, not to mention the ability to watch it hundreds of times if you want. Which I think is a reasonable response to the obvious consumer market, and makes "theft" (or more accurately, copyright infringement) of movies generally not worth the effort.

      It should be a good lesson t

  • Why no compulsory licenses? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stonecypher ( 118140 ) <stonecypher@noSpam.gmail.com> on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @04:51PM (#7156697) Homepage Journal
    Very simply put, because I don't want to pay for other people's right to steal, I don't want to underwrite the industry's estimates of what their failing business model, i mean, technology is costing them, and I don't want to be told that this is the alternative to allowing a puny entertainment industry to infringe upon my rights.

    It's their problem, and it doesn't come out of my pocket, amortized or not, period. This is not a socialism. Stop pretending.

  • How can this be lega.? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Hugh George Asm ( 708019 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @04:58PM (#7156759)
    It'd ludicrous to think of paying in advance a "tax" to the RIAA for blank media because we might use it to copy their music. Applying that logic to other areas, why not stipulate brief jailtime for anyone buying a knife, because they might use it to kill somebody?
    • I'd be fine with it if it shut them up.

      Really, I'd rather pay a few unnecessary cents on every data CD I burned if it meant I didn't have to deal with DRM, suponeas, bitching about sales figures etc etc etc...

      Would it be right? No. Worth the cost? ...

    • Haven't they already done this with other forms of blank media through recent years? If those laws passed, and survived, is there any hope for CDs?

      Example: 1992 DAT-tax
      http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/bad_laws/da t_tax.htm l

    • It'd ludicrous to think of paying in advance a "tax" to the RIAA for blank media because we might use it to copy their music. Applying that logic to other areas, why not stipulate brief jailtime for anyone buying a knife, because they might use it to kill somebody?

      No, it's not like that, because it's not a murder weapon.

      The current way we run copyright isn't a natural law. It isn't required. We already use compulsory licensing for copyright in many cases. Cover songs, for example.

      And the answer, to "how

      • "IF WE CHANGE THE LAW. That's how it can be legal. Jesus."

        My academic work has exposed me to people from various cultures, whose attitudes about authority simply shock and frighten me.

        There are a lot of people on this planet who are brought up in such a way as to actually believe that anything which is not mandatory, should be assumed to be forbidden.

        If you do not have explicit permission to do a thing, you should feel guilty for doing it.

        Incredible attitude. Utterly incompatible with free thought, and
    • If the same percentages of buyers vs offenders applied we probably would.

  • How (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Breaker_1 ( 688170 )
    Why would anyone would to apply this type of license to movies or ebooks? Think about it... the tracks on an audio cd don't really depend upon other tracks, meaning you can downloading (or license) one track and who cares right? You don't usually have to hear the other tracks to be able to enjoy a single track. Movies would be different, as would books... would you buy a part of a story? I don't think I would, and if I were going to have to purchase the entire movie or book to be able to buy a license for i
  • ...don't start giving them ideas!

    Chris Mattern

    Defeating the stupid idiot lameness filter

  • So that hearing-impaired people can hate them too...

    (Sorry, had to be done ;)
  • "...the MPAA hasn't provided legitimate alternatives for what consumers want..."

    What exactly does that mean?

    "Online" move distribution? Already sort of have that via PPV from the cable co. Granted, the service would be improved by providing more selections, but it's pretty good right now.

    Rent the movie before I (maybe) buy it? Blockbuster is less than a mile from my house.

    Own the movie and watch it as many times as I want? A quick trip to suncoast, or amazon.com takes care of that.

    Am I missing som
  • They have provided a decent process. It's called getting DVDs from amazon.com, and not only does it work with slow modems, but it comes with a COMPLIMENTARY BACKUP!

  • Compulsory License (Score:5, Informative)

    by M.C. Hampster ( 541262 ) <M...C...TheHampster@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @05:03PM (#7156816) Journal

    If you were as confused as I was reading the article, check this out:

    It gives a good overview of what "compulsory licensing" means:

    The scheme Verizon proposes is known as "compulsory licensing." A compulsory license forces a copyright (or patent) owner to permit someone else to use the work for a predetermined fee. Accordingly, it precludes the owner of the copyright (or patent) from refusing to license her work to other people in certain, specified circumstances.

  • I don't want the responsibility of music (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tuckerclerico ( 667874 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @05:03PM (#7156823)
    It's suddenly occurred to me that I no longer want the responsibility of music.

    I like listening to music, but I don't want to worry about whether or not I'm legally allowed to rip it for myself.

    I don't want to worry whether or not I'll have to disable autoplay in order to rip a CD. I don't want to worry whether or not I'm violating the DMCA if I say something, do something, or copy something.

    I don't want to have to worry about whether or not the RIAA will come busting into my house because I've downloaded -- apparently -- legal MP3s from emusic.com. I don't want to worry whether or not they'll think they're illegal.

    Art and enjoyment aren't supposed to be like this. I can go into a library, check out a book, read it, and return it. I can pick up a magazine, read it, put it back on the table.

    I can go into coffee shop, read a paper, leave it on the table, and not worry about whether or not (a) my privacy has been compromised and (b) I'm doing something illegal. I can just go and do it.

    Music is just not worth it. It's become larger than itself and owning it -- using it -- has become too much of a responsibility. I don't want to break the law, but I probably have. But I don't want to deal with worrying about whether or not I might have broken the law. I just want to listen to it. I could give a shit about DRM and licensing.

    It's too much responsibility. I give up. The RIAA wins. I won't buy any more or listen to anymore.

    There. You happy now, Craig? Hilary, you happy? Jack, maybe you wanna chime in about movies, too?

    Go ahead.

  • The author never stops to consider whether compulsory licenses are a good thing, instead attempting to find as many forms of content to apply them to as possible.

    I don't accept that compulsory licences on music are a good thing, and I *know* they would be bad for software. Compulsory license regimes create a single large collection agency that gets to rake in money for doing nothing, and dole out money to every content creator in the related industry.

    What if you write software and don't want to have all p

  • What people want... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Quixadhal ( 45024 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @05:06PM (#7156856) Homepage Journal
    I don't want to steal music, video, software, or anything else really. What I *do* want is a clear resolution to the "problem" that the failing industries of America seem to have created.

    When I purchase some bit of media, do I *own* it, like we've all assumed for the last couple of centuries... or have I purchased the *rights* to use the content?

    If I OWN the media in question, then it's mine. I can do whatever the hell I want with it, provided that I don't resell it, or try to claim it as my creation. If I buy a screwdriver, I have every right to use it as a hammer -- despite what the Hammer Consortium wants me to do! If I own a CD, then I have every right to turn it into mp3's and stick them on my hard drive using a non Microsoft-Endorsed OS if I like.

    If, on the other hand, I'm purchasing the rights to USE the content, then the media is simply a delivery mechanism. I want the RIAA to mail me CD's of all the vinyl records I own, and the MPAA to mail me DVD's of all my video tapes. I'm willing to pay shipping, and a small reasonable fee to cover materials. Oh, and those CD's that got scratched, I want replacements for those too since they were supposed to last for 20 years.

    The industry seems to think they can take the best of both worlds, so we don't really own anything at all. THAT is why I don't buy CD's anymore. It's bad enough to spend $15 on a disc which should cost about $7... but to then have it be unusable in half the players out there, and be told that if I rip it to mp3 format I'm considered a thief... one doesn't insult one's customers if one wishes them to remain customers.

    I don't see much point to downloading full DVD's over the net... but downloading digitized TV shows that your local cable monopoly refuses to carry is useful, and downloading older rips of things that aren't available is very handy. If Paramount were to make Enterprise available for download at $2 an episode (or thereabouts), I'd be happy to grab it from the source and avoid the variable quality rips, and slow connections... but they don't. I see it as a natural evolution of asking someone to tape a show and mail it to you for the same reasons.

    • The problem with IP. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ciphertext ( 633581 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:47PM (#7158756)

      You highlight an excellent problem with intangible assets. Specifically, how can a business survive (that is stay in business) when their livelyhood depends on the sale of intangible assets.

      When I purchase some bit of media, do I *own* it, like we've all assumed for the last couple of centuries... or have I purchased the *rights* to use the content?

      I think the correct answer to that question is "no, you don't own the rights to the music". What you do own, or more exactly what you have paid for is, a medium of delivery (CD, Vinyl, Super8, VHS, paper, etc.) and a limited personal use license. You should have the ability to make an archive copy of your product and enjoy unlimited, acceptable-use rights that are fully transferrable with ownership.

      This is the scheme that businesses have developed to allow a business based on intangible assets to exist and have received legislative and judicial support in accordance with the practice. Essentially, the business owners are looking for a way to protect their existence as a business.

      As it has been said before, the problem with Copyright law is that it is outdated. It was written when the concept of a computer or digital media, let alone the internet never existed. Now, we have technological means to easily supplant copyright restrictions. In the past the traditional distribution lines (suppy chains) for the copyrighted materials were easily regulated and were often cost prohibitive for an average individual to maintain. Now, everybody (nearly) has access to the internet and the freedom to upload/download whatever is available to them virtually unchecked. There is also an abundance of software equivalents to UPS, FedEx, DHL, and freight companies that are readily available for free (P2P software is an example) to "ship" your copyrighted/pirated material across the internet. Before the internet, you would need to go to a bookstore, a recordstore, or a movie theater to purchase/view copyrighted material. The pirates did not have a supply chain that was distributed enough to avoid detection, or large enough to provide to the masses. Essentially, the pirates had sales out of the trunk of their cars and only to a small subset of the population. There are/were of course examples of more sophisticated and organized pirate operations that functioned more as a business. The mafia in the U.S. and certain cadres of citizenry in Russia and China are good examples. The citizenry examples existed mainly due to the difference in copyright laws here in the U.S. and abroad. The problem of piracy didn't really begin to "show up on radar" until the following conditions were met.

      • the "cost of entry" for a pirate became significantly low enough that everyone could be a pirate (cheap supply chain and distribution network, and low cost of ownership for required tools to pirate the material)
      • the cost of doing business with a pirate (i.e. the accessability to pirated material, monetary costs if any for material, low potential of being caught, etc...) became significantly low enough to make it easier for an individual to retrieve a pirated version of material.
      • the growing popular perception that bussinesses aren't acting appropriately towards customers.
      • the perception that piracy is justified when pirating works from corporations that are perceived to be "stealing" from customers.

      I suspect that copyright law will be "revamped" that include restrictions that are adequate for our day and time and potentially, if the writers have any foresight, far into the future. Perhaps the better question to ask would be; "what should be copyrightable, and what should be public domain?". Perhaps societies view are changing on that question, and we should (at least here in the States) review what we consider to be acceptable to sell.

  • I've never created any music, so compulsory licensing for music would involve me telling other people what to do, which is good.

    I have written fiction and software, so compulsory licensing for those media might involve other people telling me what to do, which is bad.

    I hope that clears things up for everyone.
  • If music should have a compulsory license, why shouldn't movies, software, ebooks and other media also be covered by compulsory licenses?

    No need for thought provoking ruminations here, folks. The answer is:

    Because it's a fuckin' pain in the ass.

  • Why only music? Because at the moment that's all that's being widely copied over the Internet. So say we get a "tax" on CD/Rs and DVD/Rs to cover the costs of this as some countries have already done, issues of legitimate use aside. The tax is paid to the music studios for distribution to their clients, for a small administrative fee of course.

    In a few years, maybe less, when bandwidth increases the movie studios will be moaning that their copyright is being widely impinged too, and they want a slice o

  • Well, it is probably correct that the problems of making money from content are similiar regardless of the type of content (talking about creative content here, not information or knowledge).

    Nonetheless, there are unique aspects to each type of creative content. For example, music gains more value by repeated listening, while books or movies really only need to be read once (talking about fiction, not textbooks, etc).

    (That is why, for example, I have suggested that a voluntary compensation model would see
  • How many millions must engage in sharing of other media before we start hearing a call to legitimize that sharing? After all, millions can't be wrong, can they?

    No, certainly not. Millions of people believe in ghosts and UFOs, that Elvis is alive, and that Windows is a great operating system. Let's take everything that millions do and make it valid! I'm writing my congressman right now about legalizing drunk driving.

  • Why we currently discuss music so much, rather than books or movies, centers on how people use them, as well as what people can reasonably download compared with the time it takes to "use" that download.

    With a book, you can find OCR'd copies of just about anything in existance with a carefully worded Google search, and they only weigh a few meg at most. However, reading them then takes at least a few hours per book, and people likely will not read the same thing again for quite a while. Additionally, ma
  • Copy protection is circumvented by the shift key. So, maybe movie and software makers are waiting for something just a liiiiitle more secure.

    (From biz.yahoo.com [yahoo.com])

    Reuters
    CD-copy protection system said to have simple flaw
    Tuesday October 7, 2:21 pm ET
    By Ben Berkowitz

    LOS ANGELES, Oct 7 (Reuters) - A Princeton graduate student said on Monday that he has figured out a way to defeat new software intended to keep music CDs from being copied on a computer -- simply by pressing the Shift-key.
    In a paper posted on

  • Hilights problems with compulsory licensing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by laird ( 2705 ) <lairdp@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @05:22PM (#7157016) Journal
    Taking the compulsory licensing model and applying it to other media hilights the flaws in the model, for music as well as other media.

    One problem is in how money moves. Instead of dealing with the relatively straightforward counting of albums (or games, or DVD's) sold, you'd have to somehow measure files moving around the network. Since there's no way to accurately measure how files move around a p2p network(especially with encrypted networks like FreeNet), the division of money would be the subject of ongoing (legal) fighting. If people weren't fighting over the numbers, they'd be fighting over the formula used to split the money.

    Then there's pricing. In a network where everything is the same price (free), how do you differentiate between low-value products cranked out for almost nothing and the huge, high-value productions? There are plenty of niches where the number of customers is small but people are willing to pay more (e.g. massive RPG's, enterprise software).

    Another problem is that the total dollars for the music (etc.) business would be fixed, rather than fluctuating up and down based on people's desire for music (etc.). This means that there's less reward for making great music (i.e. the classics that grow the business). Instead, the winning strategy would be to crank out "OK" music as cheaply as possible to collect the guaranteed income.

    Imagine a new game company introducing a great new game, Deer Hunter. That game created a new genre of game, selling through an entirely new distribution channel (cheap, simple games selling through grocery stores, etc.), which grew the game industry dramatically. In the compulsory licensing model, before launching the game they'd have to make sure that their new distribution model was counted properly, and that the proper accounting would be done. And even if they were a hit that doubled the size of the game business (which is what actually happened), instead of getting 100% more income into the industry, the new game would suck 50% of the fixed revenue from other companies, so they make 1/2 what they would have, and other companies whose "sales" didn't actually go down would lose 50% of their revenue.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @05:45PM (#7157287)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • MP3's is an easy alternative to CD's. Burn it to a CD and you have a traditional CD just like that. The files are small enough that downloading them is not a big deal.

    Movies, games and printed material suffers in ways that music does not on P2P networks. These things suffer to the point that they do not make an adequate replacement for the actual media.

    Movies... where to begin. If you want them in a small download, small being defined at 700 megs or less, you have a quality hit that you must take. If
  • What's with the compulsory license sort of slant that's happening now? I'm sorry, but if slashdot supports this idea, no thanks to you.

    What I want to see is an Open Proposal Network. I.e., a band proposes a new album. Fans fund production. After that, it becomes public domain. Most likely, bands would have to release some free samples to generate initial support, but this would be much more ideal. This same model could be used for GPL'd software. People could propose features, and it could be funded

  • Becuase any other way would be mad. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TyrranzzX ( 617713 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @07:10PM (#7158068) Journal
    The REASON we have free media is becuase we have free ideas. This centers around a single arguement, how free do we want our ideas? Music, computers, programming, machinery, etc are ALL versions of the same principle; the idea. Who can exploite them is answered by pantents and copyright, and those are in place to ensure the benefit of society, not the indivudal making the music.

    We have come to a crux in our developement. Do we realize our best hope for survival is with eachother, stop fighting and start working and trusting eachother, or do we break up into nitpicky intrest groups and rip eachother apart? It's seeming a lot like the ladder of the 2, although most would prefer the primer of the 2 and go with the first one. The whole reason our goverment prosecutes [insert thing here] is becuase they don't trust them. I for one trust most people and most people trust me. We don't ened this bullshit. All they're trying to do with this is tear us up into little nitpicky groups and while we're all distracted by briteny spears' new album they'll fuck us over some more. When we finally awake, we'll find our headphones blank and useless, the computer moniter black, and the books in our houses turned to ashes. Read 1984, you'll get the idea of what I'm talking about.

    If we give up free media now, we give up our human right to communicate and to freely share ideas. If we give that up, we lose our humanity. What makes a person robust is their experiences, their ideas, aspirations and ideas. Without stimulation in the form of books, beauty, music, logic, and others we won't be anything but sacks of useless robotic meat. I for one refuse to become like that, and I'll start blowing shit up before I let it happen as would most hackers.

    I'm a fucking human dammit and I'm not going to just let you take away the ideas I thrive on. Fuck your system, fuck your way of thinking, and damn the lawers to hell who actually fight for this. I'd figure there'd be a point where any human would think "you know, mabye I'm going a little too far". These people are psychopaths, there seriously needs to be a mental condition for excessive greed so we can lock these assholes in a mental institution so they can't do anything to us.
  • ASCAP started all this. Victor Herbert was the main mover, a major mogul and composer/songwriter who was very popular and respected. He wanted protection for songwriters (around 1914) and he got it. After all, music, at least before the recent rounds of the downward spiral, was meant to be contagious, something that you wanted to copy, ie sing to your buddies after you heard the song a few times. This is both how the really good songs can maintain their positions on the hit parade for several centuries
  • While I have no doubts that storage and bandwith cost made sharing music easier than movies and software (as many others here have noted), I can think of several other reasons why the RIAA feels more threatened by file-sharing than the MPAA.

    Controlling public consumption:

    The MPAA can still control what theaters movies are shown in, which is where most of the public still sees movies. As P2P and Digital Radio replace analog radio stations, the RIAA can't control what music people listen to. If they can
  • Any arbitrary data file - whether its a movie, ebook, or software application can be converted to wav format just by adding the appropriate header. Once it's audio a person can start calling it music and take advantage of the compulsory license.
  • I think that music is the "art" form that can be most easily ripped off and then completely refabricated (in this case played) for the end user. You may not want to read a book on screen or on printer paper, there is something substatial and satisfying about the book itself. As DVD copiers become more common and people don't have to watch movies that are grainy on their computer the movie industry may catch up with music.

    The technology just supports the duplication of the art form better at this point ti
  • "The MPAA hasn't provided legitimate alternatives for what consumers want."

    Give me a break. The motion picture industry has plenty of valid excuses for any problems in distribution, not the least of which is the massive file sizes in any electronic copy.

    That said, you have distribution through purchase for little more and often less than music cds, rental for as little as a dollar, digital satellite and cable with 12 channels of HBO alone often in HDTV and 5.1 surround sound, on-demand pay per view fo
  • Why should the content industry alone enjoy the privilege of dictating what customers can or can't do with products? If the principle of licensing vs purchasing succeeds with media, why not apply it to everything else? Shouldn't ANY manufacturer be able to license its products to you and forbid you sharing them with your neighbors?

    Borrowing is a tremendous threat to our economy! Think of the jobs and profits that are lost because of lazy freeloaders who borrow things from other people instead of buying the
  • the whole concept of compulsory licensing is unconsititutional. That's not surprising since it's a direct attack on freedom.
    • So is the prohibition of rape and murder. Any discussion of "freedom" invariably concludes that the the term does not imply a necessary lack of restriction. In fact most would argue that certain restrictions are necessary to avoid limitless tragedies of the commons, for which the whole P2P issue is a textbook example. By equating restriction to "an attack on freedom" you are ignoring the consequences of unlimited freedom, which is not necessarily anarchy, where everyone eventually is worse off.

      Ok, so philo
  • Ok, since everyone seems to be a little off...

    A compulsary license has NOTHING to do with you downloading music, and compulsary licenses very rarely happen in fact for reasons that I will explain below.

    A compulsary license most often deals with a compulsary mechanical license. This basically says that anyone can record any song, and pay the statutory mechanical rate (set by congress) which is currently 8 cents for songs less than 5 minutes, or 1.55 cents per minute if the song is longer than 5 minutes.

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