Posts by Matthew Poole
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It starts to get hard to draw an ethical distinction between that and downloading
Very, very hard. Particularly since the downloaders are doing it because they want to consume the content. The labels are doing it so they don't have to pay the artists. Some of the former are guilty of the same sin as the latter, to be sure, but when the labels are constantly crying about the poor artists...
Simon, that assuages my soul somewhat. These albums were already moderately old (18 months, maybe two years after release, if not longer in one case) when I bought them, so definitely candidates to be put into a lower price bracket.
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That's where most of the stuff in the cheap bins comes from, or those specials
I feel quite dirty now. I haven't bought (or downloaded, before anyone starts!) new music in quite some time, but the last time I did it was from one of those bins. Justified to myself on the grounds that at $10/CD I wasn't giving some part of the big four excessive sums (yes, that is why I don't buy music). Now you're telling me that, quite likely, the artists got none of the money :/
And I knew that wasn't what you meant about the album. I was just amused by the phrasing, given some of your past comments.
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If it had been a track or two, more power to them, but the whole album sucked, so I arranged for a take-down notice.
That's a really unfortunate way of phrasing it, especially in light of your comments about the album being the poison-of-choice of the labels, carrying only a small handful of worthwhile tracks.
Thanks for the giggle though ;) And I agree, that really isn't very cool. Would you consider a couple of tracks, in their entirety, to be an actual fair use? -
Personally, I favour doing nothing at the moment (aside from shortening terms and clarifying fair use) and if things get worse introducing some form of public financing, but that's way away in the future, and we'll see what happens.
Finally, something on which we unquestionably agree. It had to happen eventually, I guess. I also agree with your belief that things will continue to work.
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It is equally pertinent to the issue of illegal downloading and copying. People want songs; some pay, some don't.
Totally correct. Some people used to tape songs off the radio, too. Or borrow tapes and CDs off friends and take copies. And don't get me started on mix tapes!
Some leakage is inevitable. No system can avoid it, and I remember seeing a (very quickly pulled) report that was on the RIAA website that suggested that leakage within the music industry's distribution systems was responsible for greater recordable losses than "piracy". About three times greater, from memory, and this was when "piracy" was being blamed for over a billion dollars a year in industry losses.
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Because to jump back several pages to one of my earlier posts, which I'll paraphrase: "if the change in technology is affecting the creative output of the country and the culture that we get..." then the rest of the discussion follows.
Based on things said by Simon, the technology is totally having an effect. A positive one. "Best year EVAR!" to paraphrase.
A lot of the contributions to this thread seem to be premised on the assumption that the technology cannot possibly be good because downloading is running rampant. "Won't somebody think of the artists?" kind of thing, and from that we start running off into this world of designing a solution. Only, I don't see that we do need a solution, because I am very, very far from convinced that there is a problem. Fine, that's a point of serious disagreement. But it's no less extreme than the approach that I'm seeing that we have to plan for a problem because, in the absence of evidence that there's not a problem we have to assume that a problem exists.
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I don't have any evidence, just concerns. Interesting to note though that Simon's experience is valuable to you whereas Peter or Keri isn't - could it be that it's because one supports your position, the others don't?
It's not Simon's experience that I'm interested in, though it is handy that someone who's intimately involved in the industry is saying it. No, I'm interested in the evidence that he's posting. Hard numbers. Sales figures. Stuff that isn't coloured by anything. Peter and Keri can't post that, because it doesn't exist. And it doesn't exist because, as I said, nobody has tried the ITMS (or any other) model for long enough to get real data.
Find me evidence. Find me real numbers. Not stuff from big media press releases, but audited sales figures and income distribution reports. Without intending any disrespect, I don't count Peter and Keri's experience for much for the same reason that I wouldn't expect you to count my experience for much. It's a few data points, at most, and hard to control against. If someone tries an ITM(ovie)S and it flops, that's evidence, especially if it's run for two or three years before being written off as a lost cause. One flopped indy movie (Peter's example of Tormented) and a distributor that's blaming piracy aren't exactly compelling counterpoints to the kind of stuff that Simon's posting.
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Gio, we've established that we don't see eye-to-eye on whether or not it's broken. Simon has posted copious evidence, real evidence not just anecdata, to demonstrate that the music industry is only in trouble if you consider the fortunes of the big four to be the only thing that matters. By measures such as unit sales, or artist income, things that I consider to be far more useful measures of the health of the industry, things appear to be doing really well.
Neither you nor I has any evidence about how well movies would do if released under an ITMS model. I can point to ITMS and say "The theory worked for music. In theory, it should work for movies." You point to, umm, what, exactly? You have a feeling, I get that, but what evidence? Peter Cox at least backed up his position with examples from real life, but of ambiguous evidentiary value.
I get why you are against the "adapt or die" mantra, and I was really trying not to get into that vein. However, it's very hard to look at the history of the movie industry, in particular, and the massive costs that are accepted as entirely normal, and not have to qualify statements about things continuing to work with an observation that enormous expenses may not be sustainable in the future.As for my stance on trying to stamp out copying, the evidence is pretty strong that it's a losing battle through technological means. Not a single system has yet survived without being compromised, either structurally (DVDs) or piecemeal (Blu-Ray). Apple finally convinced the music industry that copy protection on iTunes tracks was a lost cause, after fighting for years to get that message through. Why should I believe that it is anything other than a waste of time, effort and money to keep trying to build better locks?
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Because Blu-Ray is based on a Virtual Machine to control it's encryption, the protections can change quite rapidly and easily. AnyDVD regularly releases patches to break these protections.
Without devolving this into a debate about encryption and security, I said above that home theatre systems have already lost the hardest battle in IT security: keeping the attacker out. By definition, home theatre systems are in your home. That is a huge advantage to anyone seeking to attack the protection.
Also, because they can be patched and altered in situ, that opens another point of vulnerability in the security model, along with key handling and the like. It may take another five years, but I don't think that Blu-Ray will remain un-cracked. It took about three years from the release of DVDs before deCSS made it into the wild.
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How about you answer the second half of my question above first, since you bothered to quote it?
I did answer it.
There is no solid justification that's been presented for believing that the rules as applied to music cannot also be applied to books and movies, either.
If that's not clear enough, let me make it clearer: I don't think the current system is broken. I don't think we need a new system. I think the current system is perfectly capable of delivering support to creatives, with the caveat that the income that movie studios have become used to from sources other than the box office is probably not sustainable.
What I do not think is sustainable is big media trying to stamp out unauthorised copying, at the expense of collaboration within industries on common formats that can be delivered easily online through unified marketplaces. So much time, effort and money is being put into measures that, time and time again, are breached once they hit the market. What a waste. Copying ain't going away, it's that simple. It will never be zero, or anything close to it, for as long as the internet exists. Trying to get rid of it is distracting the industries from working out how to offer something better, something that people will pay for.So, now will you answer my question?