Posts by Mark Harris
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Just seeing the letter DRM up there - there's no reason for copyright law to have anything to do with DRM.
When talking about copyright in a digital world, you can't ignore the role (largely negative) that DRM has played (and is playing) in shaping the debate.
DRM is more restrictive than copyright (cf. WalMart's withdrawal from the game, leaving their customers with no way to use the product legitimately purchased) and, as you note, won't vanish when (if) the copyright expires. But because it's being used as a technological enforcement for copyright, it has to be discussed in any debate about copyright.
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And, finally for this evening, those who might think I argue against copyright altogether would be wrong. Copyright is a good thing as it enables content creators to get some recompense for their work.
Abuse of copyright is what I argue against, and we may differ as to the definition of abuse.
I'm a content creator, as a writer, producer, director, performer, photographer, composer (if Garageband tunes can be said to be compositions ;-) and occasional web developer. I've even been paid in all those capacities. I regard the copyrights I hold as important not because of revenue but because of control.
Some of my work is marked as Creative Commons, and some (especially photographs of people, are copyright. CC requires copyright, for those who aren't familiar with the concept. See Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand's website for details.
I don't download music, not even legally - I prefer to buy the CD or the vinyl (and yes, I am that old that I had vinyl before it was retro). I rip it to my hard drive, but I don't share it - among other things, I couldn't afford the bandwidth! (I have a lot of CDs)
When we talk about DRM and its failure you only have to look at WalMart's withdrawal of its service to see how screwed up that system is, or EA Games' Spore mis-adventure (did you know about the root-kit?)
I don't talk about this stuff in the abstract. It's very concrete to me. But the world has changed and I'm changing with it, rather than be left behind like much of the content industry.
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@Islander
For information on ACTA, have a look at http://acta.tracs.co.nz/ (I can haz new URL!)
For the text of the Copyright Act and amendments (and all current legislation), please go to http://legislation.govt.nz/
You'll have to use Search to find the New Technologies Amendment, as it hasn't been added to the index yet, but it is on the site.
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They were mesmerized by Beatlemania, Abba-mania and Elvis-devotion, but they saw the as
Sorry wife arrived home as I was revising that sentence and i forgot to finish it ;-)
They were mesmerized by Beatlemania, Abba-mania and Elvis-devotion, but they saw the hype as a reason for sales, not a result. The difference between causality and correlation has escaped brighter minds than theirs.
>quote>The industry hyped what they had as the new _ but it never was;</quote>
The industry hyped what they had as the new [insert_famous_band_name] but it never was;
We now return you to your regular bunfight.
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Jesus, you really have this mantra that you aren't going to let go of, don't you? Treasury bonds aren't property in that sense either, being purely societal promises to pay, and solely potential money, just like copyright is a societal promise to pay on use of an idea.
Just like you have the mantra that copyright infringement is theft. And don't call me Jesus - you don't know me that well.
So? There's no evidence that most shoplifters would have paid the money had they not been able to shoplift.
Not the same thing. The goods shoplifted have an intrinsic value and a physical presence. Dollars have gone into making the item. And the dollar value is what they get charged with in court.
You appear to be arguing against dodgy claims by the RIAA that the music industry is losing Very Large amounts of money in sales, which are pretty dodgy.
That sentence is dodgy and it's entirely too easy to misunderstand. Let's try to parse it correctly.
The RIAA claims that the music industry is losing Very Large amounts of money in sales
Yes, they do claim this.These claims are dodgy
Indeed, I would agree that they are dodgy.Apparently, I'm arguing against these claims
I don't know where you got that from - I've not once mentioned the RIAA or their claims.However, while I do argue about the sums the RIAA claim they are losing, I don't argue that the music industry is not making the sort of money it used to. That has more to do with the crap they've been putting out for the last 15 years or so than filesharing. In fact, the last big spike in music sales was during the time Napster was operational.
A little history. During the 50's, New Zealand made a fortune from wool, due to a number of factors such as the Korean and Vietnam Wars. There were up to 70 million woolly bastards wandering the hills waiting to be shorn. Then the war stopped, the bottom dropped out of the wool market, farmers had to sell their Lamborghinis and we got Muldoon for a Finance and later Prime Minister. NZ kept on spending as if the money was still coming in. This led to wage freezes, price freezes, strikes, all manner of economic nasties and ultimately Muldoon got voted out in 1984 and Labour had to make the largest adjustments ever seen in the NZ economy. You might think they went to far (I do) but that's another thread. Now there are only around 40 million sheep on our farms.
The entertainment industry is in that denial period that NZ wallowed in for a decade or more. Their market has changed and they are too short-sighted to see what the best way forward is. What did we get from the major labels through the 90's? Formulaic girl- and boy-bands like the Spice Girls, Westlife New Kids on the Block, the Knack - manufactured bands with manufactured sounds with manufactured hype propping the edifice up. There were no new Beatles, Rolling Stones, Elton John - authentic bands with authentic sounds that had made significant money for the labels. But the industry couldn't see this. They were mesmerized by Beatlemania, Abba-mania and Elvis-devotion, but they saw the as
The industry hyped what they had as the new _ but it never was; just cotton candy as compared to toffee apples. What the industry forgot was that confectionery has a short shelf-life, and you get sick of sugar as your only diet. They were creating fads and fads come and go like the seasons. Once the fads wore off, they had nothing in behind them. That's why their revenues are down, not because of file sharing.
What's not dodgy about those claims is the fact that there's a Very Large number of people exploiting the labour of musicians without paying them for it. Seems a lot like theft to me, even if it isn't exactly the same.
You're right, the musicians are being exploited, not by the filesharers, but by the labels. Iniquitous contracts where bands go into irredeemable debt in order to put out their first album, then have to give up their copyrights to get out of the debt. The industry has been squeezing their resources for every last drop, but now the artists are getting smarter, getting better lawyers and managers (not the ones the labels "suggest") or avoiding the labels altogether and going direct to the fans.
The Internet enables artists to go direct without the need for any of the production facilities the labels can offer, and thus without the crippling debts. The net-artist can produce huge volumes of perfect copies without large investment. The labels can't understand this - they literally haven't been able to get their heads around it. (Signs that this is changing - EMI DRM-free on iTunes et al)
That's why the industry is losing money - the market changed and didn't see it happening. It no longer wants what they had to offer.
This is less about copyright and more about crap business models.
And, in fact, if you steal a CD from a store what you are denying them is the potential income represented by that CD;
No, you are stealing a physical thing they have paid for. It's not losing the potential profit that kills retailers (or they would never reduce prices in sales), it's the fact that they have to buy in their stock. But filesharing (your previous arguing position) is not the same thing as shoplifting ([sings] mantra, mantra, hare mantra...)
the CD itself is largely worthless to the store except as something to be sold
Keir, do you make sense to yourself? That's what stores do - they sell stuff. They don't have esoteric discussions about copyright and artists going hungry. They just move stock. It's called retail.
(and i suspect the real value of the CD lays in the licensing, not the physical media anyway, but others could be more precise on that.)
The value of a CD (or anything, in fact) is what someone will pay for it. People aren't buying CDs like they used to because they don't want them. They're buying through iTunes and the many other music sites. They're paying the artists directly through PayPal and tip jars. They're downloading music from their cell providers.
There's still a music industry - it's just not your father's music industry.
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Infringement !=theft. Theft is a crime, copyright infringement is (still) a civil dispute. You make the same basic error as the RIAA. Potential money is not real money. There is no evidence that an infringer would have paid, had they not been able to infringe. It's right up there with "if only I could win Lotto" - imaginary money.
You only have a right to $7.50 of my money if I purchase your copyrighted item. What you might have a right to, if the Court agrees, is an amount in damages which may be more or less than the amount you might have got had I purchased it. Using the RIAA's maths, it would be substantially more, but I think their accounting is as corrupt as their understanding of property law.
Treasury bonds are not the same thing. You pay money for them and they accrue interest. They are a form of property. Copyright is not.
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in reverse order
@RBI do think that it's easier to sermonise about the evils of copyright when it's not the way you actually earn your living.
Ah, but then you have a conflict of interest ;-)
@keirThey are of benefit to society even while still under copyright. You can tell this because people choose to pay money for works. In general people are rational enough not to throw money away; ergo, selling copyright works is of benefit to society, the same way that selling milk or rice is
Actually, no. It's of benefit to individuals who are prepared to pay for it. That doesn't necessarily benefit society. Culture may be enriched by the presence of a work (though history says rarely in a creator's lifetime cf Jackson Pollock for one), but IMHO society is enriched when you can do something new with it (for any given value of "it").
@StephenNina Paley is screwed because she can't get copyrights sorted for songs written and performed in the 20's. The composers and the performer are long, long dead.
Nina Paley is screwed because she assumed the fairies would bring her money to pay for the rights she knew she had to have in order to get the film distributed. Although the spreadsheet is fascinating reading, if you want to see the nature of the numbers being talked about. And not a bit of it will go back the creators of the works.
@keir
Yup. That's about the measure of it. Hugely successful businessmen make their descendants hugely rich; hugely successful whatevers tend to be able to make their children rich.
Because of what they do in their lifetime. J.K. Rowling can leave an obscene amount of money to her heirs, as JP Morgan could to his. But his bank, when he died, had to be managed to continue producing profits. (Fortunately, his son appeared quite able to do that. Many other scions of the rich have not proved so and the enterprises have withered). Under current copyright law, Rowling's heirs don't have to lift a finger and their benefactor's work keeps generating income.
@Keir
Doesn't matter; you haven't paid me for it, and you're depriving me of the money you should give me under the law. I don't care if I can listen to, listening to my own CD doesn't feed or clothe me. I don't really like calling it theft, because it isn't, but it is similar.
Actually, it's not. The legal definition of theft is around the removal of property from the rightful owner. If Matthew took your CD and didn't give it back, that would be theft. Copyright infringement is not theft, despite all the adverts from the industry to try and convince us it is. Their understanding of "intellectual property" is flawed (some might say intentionally) in order to transfer formal property rights to copyright. If infringement was theft, it would be covered under the Crimes Act and enforcement administered by the Police. Funnily enough, the US Department of Justice has just persuaded Congress that they don't want that power or responsibility.
Besides, Matthew would only be infringing your copyright if you were the one who recorded the CD. Mere possession of a storage medium gives you a property right in that medium only, not any of the material that is stored on it.
@LyndonAnd seeing as this has been said in public, illegal downloading is not like stealing. The best analogy I've seen is it's like jumping the fence to a swimming pool.
Nice. I concur, as does the law (at the moment).
Can't think what to search for, or of the name of the legal guy's book Cory Dottrow was recommending more recently. Sorry.
Copyright's Paradox by Neil Weinstock Netanel, perchance?
@DonSorry, but there comes a point where the community good does trump individual "fairness". The Copyright holders are taking us well beyond that point.
Ah yes, but don't equate "copyright holder" with "artiste (or creator, Stallman notwithstanding)", 'cos they ain't necessarily the same thing. Otherwise, I agree.
@Matthew Yes, pretty much, to all you posts so far. I think you articulate the problems well. I too would not like to see creators bumped off in order to release their work and a fixed term (regardless of life or death of the creator) would see the work repaid.
@Sacha
yeh, yeh, whatever. [insert FX of 747 overhead] ;-) -
First! (c)
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Just to confirm, CCL are these folks ?
Quite right, mea culpa, should have checked before postings.
Indeed those are the very bastards I was talking about. :-)