Posts by Russell Brown
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@Mark, re Hype Machine:
but we are starting to stray into a different argument now, sites such as the one you have pointed out have taken it a step further than allowing people to grab music as they wish, they are actually selling advertising around it and making money from copyright they don't own, which is a whole step up from stealing something. They are actually providing a means to download music and profiting from those who choose to do so
Woah. That's to completely underestimate the vision and skill of the college student who created Hype Machine, and the real and potential benefits it offers your industry.
Hypem is an aggregator for hundreds of MP3 blogs (run by everyone from professional DJs to ordinary music fans). It presents posts to those blogs in real time, in such a way that the tracks posted are playable but not downloadable, but also allows users to click through to the original blog posts.
Technically, it's quite a feat, given that the original tracks are strewn across a variety of download services -- there's some clever cacheing going on there. Hypem also adds links to buy every track or (if the track's not available to buy digitally, which is quite often the case with those zeitgeisty remixes) the artist on eMusic, iTunes and Amazon MP3. (When I filled in their user survey earlier in the year, I said that my main wish was to be able to purchase music there on site. It'll come.)
The "Popular" list essentially represents what's on the go right now. No post can remain on it for more than three days. You can also drill down by most popular artists and blogs.
The text at the top of the page says:
"The Hype Machine follows music blog discussions.
Every day, thousands of people around the world write about music they love — and it all ends up here."
Some other dude described it thus:
"It's like listening to the iPod shuffle that the zeitgeist carries around in his pocket"
Yes, it carries some advertising -- up till recently, exclusively from independent labels and targeted releases on Amazon MP3. It's now part of the IndieClick ad network, which sells across a group of edgy, indie sites. Basically, it's the kind of audience you'd want to advertise your record to.
I's just crazy to think of Hype Machine as being some sort of dodgy rip-off. I know local artists who find the blogs they want to send tracks to via Hype Machine, and the fact that those blogs are Hypem-indexed is actually a good part of their value.
But in the end, the reason you'll eventually want to do business with it, or something like it, is that it engages and satisfies me, the guy who's been spending money with the music industry nearly every month for three decades. Actual fans who buy stuff deserve a listen.
Phew ... vented!
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I propose that lowering the $ cost of a legal download to something like $1 per album would make it more advantageous (i.e. less total cost) to legally download than illegally download.
At $1 an album, though, it's not worth colllecting the money. eMusic is the closed I've come to the ideal download service. It has a great community and the MP3s will play on anything.
It does, however, requite the commitment of a subscription. US$11.99 monthly for 30 tracks; US$19.99 for 75, etc.
I do think Mark underrates the importance of the internet dynamic in selling records. Cut Off Your Hands are all over Hype Machine, and most probably without permission. But when it comes down to it, do you want to be on Hype Machine or not? The answer is totally yes.
Personally, I infringe copyright all the time by sampling Hype Machine tracks. It doesn't cost the copyright owner anything for me to do that. And then I buy what I really like.
I once had to point out to a famous uber-geek that the fact that he could buy an album for a buck on AllofMP3 was not a good thing -- because no one but the Russian mafia got the money -- and I was kinda shocked that he didn't quite get it. He seemed to think that the only good worth paying for was the server capacity, and it didn't matter who got the cash.
Ditto for another uber-geek, who couldn't quite see that downloading an artist's whole career in one anonymous torrent was a kinda shitty thing to do.
OTOH, as I have explained in the past, I was genuinely shocked by some of the RIANZ/IMNZ submission to the copyright amendment bill.
I'm like, can't we all get along?
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I don't mind paying $17 for an album on iTunes, but I resent not being able to do the same thing I could do with my free copy or the CD - let my family listen to it, lend it to a friend, take it with me wherever I go, not have to worry whether it's going to play or not on different devices.
Actually, that's not the practical problem I have with iTunes: I can bless five different computers and they'll sync to an unlimited number of iPods and iPhones. As DRM goes, it's not terribly irksome.
My problem is the stupid industry war which sees the major labels try and beat down iTunes' dominance -- which was handed to it by virtue of DRM -- but not letting iTunes sell in a DRM-free format, and Apple will make only its DRM-free tunes available at a reasonable (256k) bitrate. It is a major pain in the ass for me.
All of these things I can do with downloaded files - what you as a music distributor has to do to get my dollar is provide a better than free service. This isn't hard; as already mentioned here, metadata is a key feature, high resolution album art, lyrics, notes and trivia - all these are easy add ons using existing technolog
Yup. Where are is the sleeve art? The liner notes?
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We had a chance to license Napster in 2001 and we choose to prosecute instead, we failed to embrace new trends in downloading and how people wanted to consume music and mainly we tried to dictate to music fans instead of listening to them.
And yet, Napster did eventually lead to iTunes. Sometimes consumer piracy drives innovation.
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I personally believe that if you are going to sell a service (broadband) then you have a responsibility to make sure it is used legally and fairly.
Woah. Lots of people sell goods and services that might not be used legally and fairly, including telephone companies -- I don't think they're expected to stalk their customers.
Russell’s original comment that ISP’s shouldn’t cut connections because a mother might be penalised due to the actions of her son makes no sense, it likes saying that if the same son went out and used his mothers car to speed around the neighbourhood then he shouldn’t be punished in some form (including losing the car) because the mother might need it to take the sister to the hospital
It's hardly the same thing. 400-odd people die every year on the roads, and many more are injured.
Junior would probably be in for a suspended license or a 28-day impounding. And Mum would have the chance to demonstrate she'd taken reasonable steps to prevent junior joyriding in her car -- which in some ways is the biggest difference.
At any rate, my point was more that internet access is becoming a component of citizenship, and having it summarily removed without due process, over a civil matter, is draconian.
And thanks for turning up to discuss it, Mark. I appreciate it.
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BTW, I frequently use Firefox add-ons to grab website video for review purposes in the context of Media7.
The use is explicitly permitted -- I just have to hope I'm not circumventing a TPM to get there ...
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Try sections 43Aand 175A - it would appear to me that your covered, unless you accessed the material knowing it was a breach of copyright to do so. But IANAL
From The minister's speech at the third reading:
The bill clarifies the liability of Internet service providers—ISPs—when it comes to copyright infringement. It introduces a limited exception from copyright infringement where the Internet service provider merely provides the physical facilities to enable a communication to take place. Transient or incidental copies that are made by a computer or a communications process as part of the integral and necessary processes by which, for example, users browse websites on the Internet is not infringing copyright.
I think you could argue that watching an embedded YouTube video is part of normal web browsing. And if watching an embedded clip isn't infringing, it would be odd if it was any different on YouTube itself.
Also, because YouTube always acts with dispatch to take down material under the DMCA -- or, as is increasingly the case, offers the claimant a slice of adjacent advertising revenue -- it could certainly be argued that there is no copyright claim on anything you can see on YouTube.
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Right. So there needs to be a balance, just like every other aspect of copyright. Going to court is too hard for them, letting them make up reasons to have us disconnected without any arbitration is unreasonable for us.
How about a "small claims" for copyright infringers?Far out. I was thinking of something quite like that -- a way to expedite reasonable claims without undue cost to any party.
Can we pursue discussion on the idea here? Is there any major obstacle to it in principle?
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I do wish I could get some of the music/copyright people into these discussions.
They're not ogres, and they do have a demonstrable interest in protecting the basis of their businesses.
I recall Arthur Baysting going off in his Silver Scrolls speech last year about what I now realise was S92A in one of its "out" phases. His view was that it was practically impossible, and certainly unreasonable, to mount a court action over every single breach. Well fine. But it's not reasonable to require extrajudicial punishment either.
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__Maurice Williamson (Nat IT spokesman) says he voted for the bill, but admits he doesnt know why.__
Is it overly cynical of me to say "Because his corporate overlords at RIANZ said it was vital to the preservation of the Kiwi way of life"?
What struck me was the way he held forth in the Internet Debate about how it's all changed with copyright and it's anarchy now and we just have to get used to it -- but doesn't appear to have done or said a single useful thing where it might actually have counted. At least the other side is serious.
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