Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the jury-hampering dept
This week, one topic proved to be a magnet for insight and comedy: the Apple/Samsung verdict, and the ensuing comments from the jurors. Three of our four top-voted comments this week come from posts about that fiasco, starting with Most Insightful winner Yakko Warner (I assume not actually the inimitable Rob Paulsen, but that would be cool) on our post about the jurors' admission that they ignored key aspects of the case. Based on the votes, it seems like Yakko's not the only one here who dislikes jury duty:
A group of common people, forced to take time away from their jobs and families at less than federal minimum wage, told they can't leave until they come to a decision about laws no one fully understands... and they're surprised the jury just skipped over the complicated stuff and rushed to a decision so they could go home/back to work?
(I wonder if the verdict would have been different had it been delivered by The Justice Squadron at The Municipal Fortress of Vengeance.)
Lord Binky took second place, and also snagged the First Word spot, with a comment on the same post. He noted that the jury foreman's personal history with patents not only seems to have distorted his understanding of the law, but raises other red flags as well:
Sounds like the jury foreman admitted to personally benefitting from the outcome of this case.
Several other top-voted comments came from posts about Apple/Samsung, but for Editor's Choice we'll highlight a few other important topics. First up we've got Eric Goldman commenting on the latest colossal failure by the feds: the ignominious return of the Rojadirecta domains after 18 months of censorship. Eric neatly summed up what happened, and what's (sadly) probably going to happen:
The government will almost certainly abandon any case they are going to lose. That way, they will avoid accountability indefinitely. Meanwhile, the government will keep grabbing new domain names using the same BS theories. Eric.
The second Editor's Choice goes to Loki for a comment on Tim Cushing's post about the continued idiocy of the Author's Guild, in response to another comment about the "fundamental rights" of authors. What Loki says may sound harsh to some, but it's an extremely important concept that is often forgotten in debates about copyright, where a common anti-piracy mantra is "if you don't like the terms under which I release my work, don't listen/read/watch it". While a strict legal argument can be made for this under the current letter of the law, in the big picture the exact opposite is true—if artists don't like the rights that society is granting them on their work, don't release it:
Let me be clear here. Authors have NO fundamental rights.
We, as a society, granted a TEMPORARY advantage (a LIMITED monopoly) to allow them some "breathing room" for the opportunity (not a guarantee) to try to earn a reasonable wage so they can work on their next book (or song if you're a musician, or upgrade your next generation of computer/smartphone/car if you're an inventor, and so on) FOR THE BETTERMENT OF SOCIETY.
If the terms of this arrangement are not acceptable to you, we, as a society, don't really care. You can go get a job at a gas station, or Walmart, or work in a factory. Demanding that the opportunity/advantage we provided you is not enough, and that somehow we OWE you is meaningless to us. We owe you nothing, and the more you demand we do so, the more we will not only ignore your demands (regardless of whether or not you try to codify those demands into law or not) but we will also ignore the opportunity/advantage we have provided for you (regardless of whether or not we have codified it into law for you) as well.
There are a few elite people throughout history who will succeed regardless of opportunity because they are simply that talented, but as R.A. Salvatore said in a lecture years ago, his success didn't come so much from his talent (he actually knew several writers in his social circle better than him at that point in his careers) but from being at the right place at the right time to seize the opportunity that was presented him. If you do not wish the opportunity we have conferred upon you, don't take it, there are plenty of people likely just as talented (or potentially more so) who will gladly step up to fill the void you choose to vacate.
Okay, time to lighten the mood a bit! For the Funniest comment, we go back to the Apple/Samsung case, but this time on our post about how the verdict serves as a fantastic advertisement for Samsung. An anonymous commenter channeled his inner Mad Man and drafted some copy for the ad:
Ok. I have to admit. That is just awesome. THAT is how you spin a crippling legal defeat into a marketing win. "Samsung: 9 out of 9 jurors agree, our cheaper products are just as good as Apples overpriced products!"
Up next is another anonymous commenter, on our post about the latest legislative push from the US Chamber of Commerce. For this round, the CoC went with the popular slimy trick of lumping digital piracy in with counterfeiting, despite the two having little to do with each other. This AC identified the overlap:
I once got a counterfeit MP3. Turns out it was WAV file.
Of course, that would mean the counterfeit was of higher quality...
For Editor's Choice in funny, first up we've got an anonymous comment on our post about Craigslist implementing the same feature they just sued PadMapper for creating. This AC graced the post with a tremendous epigraph that might just have to become a t-shirt in our Insider Shop:
Innovation: It's only theft when someone else is doing it!
Finally, we'll close things out with a brief flurry of short Editor's Choice comments from our post about the demise of the Hall & Oates SuperPAC. We asked for possible alternative names, and here are some of the best submissions (in no particular order):
Loki: Well if the purpose is parody, the Righthaven superpac might be a good choice.
AC: The Oates and Hall Fans for America
Jeffrey Nonkin: Simon and Garfunkel? Loggins and Messina? Starsky & Hutch? Cagney & Lacey? Bob and Bing?
slander: BJ and the Bear No More Monkeyshines Political Fecal-Matter-Flinging Consortium for the Betterment of the Political Process.
manok: Our PAC will continue as the "Apple & Samsung superPAC". (a.k.a. "Samsung & Apple superPAC")
Mudkips: Haul'n Oats. but may pickup some static from grain transporters lobby.
We're getting there, but I don't think we have a winner yet. Any more ideas?
Normally, this being a long weekend, that would be it for us until Tuesday—but we're making an exception this time, with a special Labor Day post looking at the ongoing results from our crowdsourced Innovation Agenda project. Stay tuned for that tomorrow, and we'll be back with regular posts on Tuesday.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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The First Word
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Minor correction
The First Amendment prohibits American government from regulating what we listen to, read and watch. Lawmakers are prohibited by enacting any new law that does so. They cannot censor and they cannot require us to pay any fee for simply reading, listening or watching.
A strict MORAL or ETHICAL argument can be made for this given how creators and gatekeepers have been compensated in the past. I think that's what you meant.
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Also: If discriminating women because they are women is sexist, and discriminating blacks because they are black is racist, then what's the term for discriminating people based on their location?
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Seriously, -ist word formations refer to systemic discrimination & hatred on a very large scale in very large patterns, so regional restrictions don't qualify for that construction.
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Every single legal streaming site is geoblocked in my country.
I think it qualifies.
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No, that's not a very large scale. Consider what you're directly comparing it to: Racism and Sexism.
Those are omnipresent in every aspect of life, everywhere you go, in everything you do. Even when it doesn't target you, (because say, you're an anonymous person on the internet), racism & sexism are still present.
This is one thing, which can be completely sidestepped by some IP spoofing or proxys or anything, really. It isn't personal, it doesn't target your identity, it isn't present at all in other areas of your life, there aren't groups of people who congregate to discuss how much they hate you, people don't doubt your capabilities or intentions based on it, it doesn't prevent you from moving where you like (ie: PoC to rural areas), nor prevent you from moving when you like (ex: see rape culture and victim blaming "She shouldn't have been out that late at night"), etc. etc. etc.
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Why should I be required to circumvent these blocks should I wish to give companies my money?
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If a fan of the Grateful Dead is a Deadhead and a fan of Duran Duran is a Durannie, then is a fan of Rez a Rezbian?
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But thanks to government established broadcasting and cableco monopolies into the hands of private entities, they already do regulate what we listen to and watch, into the hands of private entities.
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If the terms of this arrangement are not acceptable to you, we, as a society, don't really care.
This quote makes no sense. Society "grants" an author a right, the author accepts the "grant", and then the author is vilified here for having the audacity to expect society to live up to the terms of the "grant".
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Someone who owned 10,000 hardcover books and the same number of vinyl records could bequeath them to descendants, but legal experts say passing on iTunes and Kindle libraries would be much more complicated. ... Most digital content exists in a legal black hole. �The law is light years away from catching up with the types of assets we have in the 21st Century,� says Wheatley-Liss. In recent years, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Indiana, Oklahoma and Idaho passed laws to allow executors and relatives access to email and social networking accounts of those who�ve died, but the regulations don�t cover digital files purchased.
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You missed the bit where the author unilaterally changes the terms of the grant.
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No generation has the authority to consign future generations to the despotism of royalty.
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You mean the one where more than 75% of the posts are either from Techdirt staff, paid posters, or flunkies? Wow, that is going to a be a real eye opener, should be some fresh new material coming out of that group.
Riiiight.
I am not shocked to see the author quote as a top one, considering it's the full statement of the basic errors made on here regarding copyright and it's intent, with a little "guaranteed profit" strawman thrown in. It's shameless how much this whole statement misrepresents copyright, and how sad it is that enough people here think it's worth a thumbs up.
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It's funny.
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Care to enlighten? Or should I type slower?
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So this comment:
"We, as a society, granted a TEMPORARY advantage (a LIMITED monopoly) to allow them some "breathing room" for the opportunity (not a guarantee) to try to earn a reasonable wage so they can work on their next book (or song if you're a musician, or upgrade your next generation of computer/smartphone/car if you're an inventor, and so on) FOR THE BETTERMENT OF SOCIETY. "
First, it uses a vague strawman (guarantee of profit, which does not exist). Second, copyright isn't specifically for the betterment of society, that's not at all what the constitution says. Third, it's not income to only permit the time to make the next item, it's also income to cover the time spent doing the previous work, and money to cover retirement, and all those other things that happen in life. Many writers may only produce a dozen or so works in their lives. Should we pay them only for the time they write, and not for any other time spent on their craft?
It's just a vague and misleading series of statements, none of which match with the law, the constitution, or for that matter court rulings.
Clear enough?
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I didn't know the constitution spoke for the entire global society.
First, it uses a vague strawman (guarantee of profit, which does not exist). and money to cover retirement, and all those other things that happen in life.
You're just making things more confusing.
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So...my ability to write what I wish is being curtailed so some other person can have a comfy retirement?
Copyright is for the progress of the useful arts and sciences. Not to establish a welfare system for authors. Copyright made sense in the analog era, when few people had the ability to copy works (the difficulty in that era lay in obtaining the works first, then secondly, in copying, whether by pen on paper or through printing).
We now live in the digital era, where everything can be copied extremely easily, by anyone. Copyright thus makes no sense. It restricts what I can and cannot do with my own equipment, with the vague promise of helping others make money somehow. Copyright's promises of income for authors ignores the income made possible through infringement: thus, it contradicts its own goal of trying to ensure an income for them by ignoring other possible forms of income.
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No. Your point isn't that someone stops your write what you wish, however, you rights have to exist in the real world with other people's rights. Quite simply, free speech doesn't mean unlimited speech or speech without concern for how it impacts the rights of others.
"We now live in the digital era, where everything can be copied extremely easily, by anyone. Copyright thus makes no sense."
I am sure some narrow minded people tried this same sort of process at other stages of our evolution. Remarkably, copyright tends to win out because people can understand cause and effect, not just effect.
"it contradicts its own goal of trying to ensure an income for them by ignoring other possible forms of income."
Nobody said that. However, I don't think it's the best way to further the arts to have book writers have to spend most of their time working in a library or perhaps selling t-shirts online. It seems to in face defeat the purpose and cause an opportunity drag on the whole process, limiting the amount of new art as the artists are forced to have to scavenge for dunner.
See? Cause and effect. Stop thinking about yourself, and thing about society as a whole, LONG TERM.
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Look at "to Kill a Mockingbird" and "Catcher in the Rye". Both hugely successful and acclaimed works by authors who never produced anything significant afterwards. These are the most obvious examples - but many authors produce their best work early in their careers whilst they still have the day job.
Look at the works of Gustav Holst, who has a day job all his life.
Look at JK Rowling - the quality of her work tailed of dramatically after she achieved success asn started to receive royalities.
The evidence is that having to scavenge a bit seems to be good for the quality of the art produced.
I am thinking about society as a whole long term - that is why I believe that copyright needs to be abolished.
The fact is that being a full time artist supported by copyright does not seem to be necessary in order to produce
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How wonderful is that!
"The fact is that being a full time artist supported by copyright does not seem to be necessary in order to produce"
You are attempting to draw a false conclusion, that is not at all what I said. Production may happen, but if they can only put a small amount of time on art, and the rest of the time is spent working for the man, then the art may take longer to produce, or might not happen at all.
It's not a question of "supported by copyright" either - if not copyright, you would have to come up with some other system by which society supports it's artists enough that they can be artists. In many communist countries, people are deemed to be artists ( or qualify ) and are paid by the state to do it - yet that even defeats the purpose many times. A system where those who love the art can pay for it, and the artist can profit from it to further their career seems to be best suited towards advancing the arts. Copyright, or something like it, would need to exist to protect the rights of the artist from scoundrels and thieves who would seek to profit from the works unfairly.
So if you abolish copyright, you have to first define it's replacement, otherwise we risk as a society to not be advancing the arts, but rather to sink into a dark ages. That would be sad.
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Not my "estimate" just the evidence I see around me
"The fact is that being a full time artist supported by copyright does not seem to be necessary in order to produce"
You are attempting to draw a false conclusion, that is not at all what I said. Production may happen, but if they can only put a small amount of time on art, and the rest of the time is spent working for the man, then the art may take longer to produce, or might not happen at all.
No - not drawing a conclusion - simply observing the facts. I can point to many many great works that clearly do not owe their existence to copyright and I have already mentioned a few - you, so far, have not bothered to come up with a single example that only exists because of copyright
It's not a question of "supported by copyright" either - if not copyright, you would have to come up with some other system by which society supports it's artists enough that they can be artists. In many communist countries, people are deemed to be artists ( or qualify ) and are paid by the state to do it - yet that even defeats the purpose many times. A system where those who love the art can pay for it, and the artist can profit from it to further their career seems to be best suited towards advancing the arts.
Sucha system exists in now in sites like Kickstarter and Unbound. What is more it has existed in one form or other since just about forever. It is called patronage and it has been responsible for much more great work than copyright. It does not have to mean patronage by a few rich individuals either. Today we have Kickstarter and the like - but even in the past there was crowdfunding. Beethoven's 9th symphony was commissioned by the London Philharmonic society.
Copyright, or something like it, would need to exist to protect the rights of the artist from scoundrels and thieves who would seek to profit from the works unfairly.
Au contrair - copyright and systems like it are precisely the kind of mechanism that is required to allow scroundrels and thieves to profit unfairly. It enables this because beign a tradeable right it allows people other than the creator to "own" a work - and to unfairly exclude the creator from profit. What do you think the RIAA members have been doing for the last 80 years or so?
So if you abolish copyright, you have to first define it's replacement, otherwise we risk as a society to not be advancing the arts, but rather to sink into a dark ages.
The system that supported Shakespeare, Mozart and Beethoven will do for me. A combination of live performance ticket sales and upfront crowdfunded patronage is perfectly capable of supporting art.
You have to remember that the value in art lies with your ability to guide it's future direction. Those who you might call pirates opt out of that - and hence they are not really profiting in the way you seem to believe.
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Mike would jump all over it is one of us AC said something like that. What you see around you doesn't qualify as a measurable thing, because it's clouded with your opinion. I can accept it as your opinion, but I cannot even start to consider it as fact.
"No - not drawing a conclusion - simply observing the facts. I can point to many many great works that clearly do not owe their existence to copyright and I have already mentioned a few - you, so far, have not bothered to come up with a single example that only exists because of copyright"
One can always draw incorrect conclusions by looking at a particular subset of data and then applying it blindly over the rest of the process. One can also take data out of context (say by pointing to works created hundreds of years before copyright existed), ignoring the realities of the economic and social conditions under which it was created.
As I have mentioned before, one could take a musical subset of Phish and The Greatful Dead, and incorrectly conclude that the music industry would be better off if everyone based their business on the ways these bands work. But it would be misleading to say that these acts represent a middle of the road or mainstream data point in the music industry, rather they are those stray data points that you tend to ignore in most statistical studies because they are too far outside of the curve to chart.
" It enables this because beign a tradeable right it allows people other than the creator to "own" a work - and to unfairly exclude the creator from profit."
You are making a similar mistake to Rikuo here, failing to look at both cause and effect. The creator is only excluded from CURRENT profit if they first negotiated and traded those rights away, often for a nice up front payment. They trade X for Y, which is their choice. That function isn't damning of the system, it's the system working perfectly, allowing artists to CHOOSE how their do business. Nobody forces them to do anything.
" A combination of live performance ticket sales and upfront crowdfunded patronage is perfectly capable of supporting art."
Okay, bad news now: Ticket sales are dropping fast, concerts that were massively over priced stopped selling out, and the bottom line is not being met. The rich continue to get richer (hello Madonna) and the rest of music industry now not only has to fight for the peanuts left in the bottom of the live performance world, but they now also have to face the fact that they likely will never make a penny from selling music either.
The general public cannot afford to attend dozens of shows each year in major centers, and the minor places (where there are fans of all sorts of music) never see the bigger bands, so they never add to the music economy.
Crowdfunding is an amusing short term sideline, which will be pretty much crippled in the next few years as the government seeks to regulate this type of investment scheme. Patronage? It's even worse for fans in the end, where your favorite artist no longer cares about you as much as they need to suck up to the few people who pay the bills.
It should be noted that, if you want to look at history, you will see that patronage was often responsible for great artists' work not being shown to the public for years, decades, and even longer, as the wealthy patrons kept the works to themselves, to profit handsomely from them later after the artist was dead and gone. If you think copyright sucks, imagine what it would be like if everything your favorite band did for the next 20 years wasn't available to you in ANY format or what until 2050. That would suck.
"ou have to remember that the value in art lies with your ability to guide it's future direction. Those who you might call pirates opt out of that - and hence they are not really profiting in the way you seem to believe."
You seem to be framing art as some sort of control game for large financial interests. That is said that you feel that way. Art is about the artists and what they can and will do, and the systems that exist to allow them to get paid enough to keep on doing it. Piracy is a short circuit, where the money is removed from the game and everything sinks down to it's lowest possible level, where real artists are often forced to take on other jobs to stay alive. We as a people lose out when this happens.
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No. Copyright is the reason things aren't in the formats I want; because nobody can legally convert them without going broke.
We're talking about COPYRIGHT not art. It seems you've got the two enmeshed to the point where they are one and the same. And yes copyright IS a control game for large financial interests (As well as ego-tripping artists)
The original Charlie and Chocolate Factory vs. the remake. Which of these is the "lowest possible level"?
The original Transformers movie vs. the trilogy by Micheal Bay. Which of these is the "lowest possible level"?
The original Charlotte's Web vs. the CGI/live action remake. Which of these is the "lowest possible level"?
3 examples that have nothing to do with piracy. Yet the remakes are about as low as it gets. Maybe what you are talking about is HOLLYWOOD, not piracy?
Newsflash: a lot of people have to take on more than one job to stay afloat, sometimes both husband and wife. And a lot of these people aren't even artists. Welcome to the recession.
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A huge comment consisting almost entirely of misrepresentation of what I said - read Boldrin and Levine for the detailed numerical evidence.
I may have given only a few anecdotal examples - but that is more than you gave! Your arguments are completely unsuppored by facts!
You seem to be framing art as some sort of control game for large financial interests. et
Huh - where did you get that from. I said nothing like that.
All I was saying was that those who pay for content - by whatever mechanism - have an influence on what is produced in future those who don't...don't. How you managed to get your reply from that frankly astounds me.
You obviously aren't trying to engage with any of my actual arguments - just shouting me down by repeating your own (unsupported) predjudices.
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This is key here: When you go to a patron system, you end up with a very few people having a large influence on the content. It's no longer what the fans like, but rather what the wealthy patron paying for it likes.
The existing pay for a copy system is in a way the most democratic way for music to get made - people vote with their wallets, not with their leaching downloads.
"You obviously aren't trying to engage with any of my actual arguments"
I am (see above). What I am saying is that it's hard to engage ghosts and goblins and narrowly constructed examples that really don't apply over the wide breadth of creation.
"read Boldrin and Levine for the detailed numerical evidence. "
I have read much of what they say on the subject, and I feel it has the same weakness that another MBA has (Hi Mike!): it's looking at short lived trends, trying to say they project to the endless future - but without real proof.
Let's look at an example: What the CD came out, sales of music went through the roof. It was an incredible heady time for those in the music industry, as people clammered to buy everything they could in this new format with it's high quality and all. If you had taken the first 2 years or so of CD sales and projected forward from that, you would think that today we would be swimming in the things, with everyone packing thousands of plastic discs of pre-recorded music in their houses and cars.
It's just not the case, because for all the good intentions, the economics are not supported long term.
Further, let's me make one other thing clear: Unless they are studying the past and commenting on it, economists are making forecasts and often just expressing opinion and their wishes. The esteemed professors are much more qualified to do so than you and I, but they are prone to the same failures in the future looking glass: Nobody knows what is around the next corner.
So at this point, the only real data that is out there is that recorded music sales are off 58%, concert ticket sales in dollars are up (but not really in attendance, which is actually not doing as well), and concert ticket prices have skyrocketed almost exactly in lockstep with the declines in recorded music sales. The end result are concerts that most fans cannot afford to attend, and bands and musical artists that are having to do longer and longer tours to support themselves and make the real money.
That's the reality of the music business and music world today. It's sad!
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What are you talking about? Other stages of our evolution? You do realize the digital era is at most only a few decades old, I hope?
Copyright doesn't make sense because of the ingrained human nature to copy everything we see. It's how we learn, it's how we build upon what we already know to better ourselves. Everyone is now a creator, whereas in the past, only a few people could. However, in order to become a creator, one must have access to our shared bodies of work, and be free to build upon them. Why is it okay for Disney to recycle old stories that were in the public domain, but somehow its not okay for anyone else to recycle Disney stories?
And yes, copyright law does contradict itself. It gives authors a government granted monopoly over the distribution of their works so as to earn an income. However, that monopoly completely ignores and outright forbids monetisation of the same works in other ways.
Tell me this...there are already prototypes for cybernetic eyes. It would be pretty easy to get them to connect, either wired or wirelessly, to a storage drive of one kind or another. How would copyright make sense once those eyes become commonplace? Would you have copyright law say they are now literally forbidden from even looking at certain things?
Copyright law only works in a world of scarcity and control, in a world of one-to-many speech. It doesn't work in a world of abundance, of relaxation of control, in many-to-many speech. Authors should not have a law stating they don't have to work in a library or selling t-shirts online. Other people have to do those jobs. What makes authors so special? I'm an author too, I create new works, but I don't go whinging to the government to create a special retirement fund just for me.
I don't care if authors have to get a second job. Most of them do anyway, and that's in our world where copyright is rigorously enforced (so how does that part of your argument make sense? You say copyright is to stop authors from having to get a job...but they do so anyway...). Copyright law sees a problem that no longer exists, promises a solution that doesn't work in today's world (and if enforced, only harms society, given that to enforce copyright, we must accept ever increasing forms of surveillance and punishments).
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Umm, yeah, but before that was the time of photocopies, and before that mimeographs, and printing presses, and many other ways by which art could be copied or distributed. Heck, even hundreds of years ago apprentice painters were trained by duplicating the works of their masters, which were often sold as originals to an unknowing public.
"You say copyright is to stop authors from having to get a job...but they do so anyway"
Actually, 20 years ago (you know, before the digital era) there were many authors who worked only as authors, often working for many different publications and magazines. Guys like Phillip K Dick turned out short stories at a phenomenal rate, and they were sold as part of what was called "pulp fiction" books (bet you didn't know the term meant anything, right?). An author, even at the lower levels, could scrape out a living working for various publications while working on their "master work".
Now? The digital era has made everyone a writer, everyone a publisher, and everyone an editor...and the results are fewer people working as authors, and more of the "media" being non-fiction, opinion, or "how to" books, and less about fiction and fantasy.
In today's market, a Philip K Dick would probably be writing a blog at night and flipping burgers during the day. How sad is that?
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In those days copying was difficult and imperfect. One of the primary motivations behind copyright for authors in those days was to ensure the integrity of their work by stopping pirate4 editions that were typically riddled with errors. Digital technology has removed that problem. If digital technology had come first then copyright would never have been invented.
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There isn't less fiction/fantasy it's same amount as before, the ratio's just really skewed. That's because it's easier to make a how-to book than it is to make a fiction/fantasy (Or at least a good one).
In today's market lots of people have to do exactly what you describe. The unlucky ones become homeless. It's sad, and it isn't limited to artists.
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But you seem to be saying that it is somehow a bad thing that everyone is now a writer/publisher/editor...
Why is it a bad thing? Before, you had a relatively low number of authors, the ones who got published in magazines and books. Now, anyone with an internet connection can do it. Now, we don't have to be beholden to a publishing corporation to spread our work to other people. You do know giants such as Tolkien himself, the Grandfather of Modern Fantasy, were rejected many times by publishers? How many great works of literature have been lost to society because the publishers were only looking to the profit margin?
Yes, there is a greater number of mediocre books than ever before. This simply means that for those who truly want to shine above the rest, they must put forth a greater amount of effort, make the quality of their work that much better. And no, they shouldn't have to rely on copyright to "guarantee" an income. Figure out a way to make an income that doesn't infringe on my own natural born right to copy.
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Not sad at all. If an artist gets his work out there in any capacity, then I couldn't care less what his career choices or personal finances are like. It's none of my business.
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Sweden�s Other Rape Suspects
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/sweden-s-other-rape-suspects-by-naomi-wolf
NEW YORK � It is difficult for me, as an advocate against rape and other forms of violence against women, to fathom the laziness and willful ignorance that characterize so much of the media coverage of the sexual-assault allegations against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. To report that we are simply witnessing Swedish justice at work, one must be committed to doing no research � not even the bare minimum of picking up a phone. In fact, we are witnessing a bizarre aberration in the context of Sweden�s treatment of sex crime � a case that exposes the grim reality of indifference, or worse, that victims there and elsewhere face.
If I were raped in Uppsala, where Assange is alleged to have committed his crime, I could not expect top prosecutors to lobby governments to arrest my assailant. On the contrary, �ordinary� Swedish rapists and abusers of women should assume that the police might not respond when called. When I tried the rape-crisis hotline at the government-run Crisis Center for Women in Stockholm, no one even picked up � and there was no answering machine.
CommentsAccording to rape-crisis advocates in Sweden, one-third of Swedish women have been sexually assaulted by the time they leave their teens. Indeed, according to a study published in 2003, and other later studies through 2009, Sweden has the highest sexual-assault rate in Europe, and among the lowest conviction rates.
CommentsWhen I reached the Stockholm branch of Terrafem, a support organization for rape survivors, a volunteer told me that in her many years of experience, Sweden�s police, prosecutors, and magistrates had never mobilized in pursuit of any alleged perpetrator in ways remotely similar to their pursuit of Assange. The far more common scenario � in fact, the only reliable scenario � was that even cases accompanied by a significant amount of evidence were seldom prosecuted.
CommentsThis, she explained, was because most rapes in Uppsala, Stockholm, and other cities occur when young women meet young men online and go to an apartment, where, as in the allegations in the Assange case, what began as consensual sex turns nonconsensual. But she said that this is exactly the scenario that Swedish police typically refuse to prosecute. Just as everywhere else, Sweden�s male-dominated police, she explained, do not tend to see these victims as �innocent,� and thus do not bother building a case for arrest.
CommentsShe is right: According to a report by Amnesty International, as of 2008, the number of reported rapes in Sweden had quadrupled in 20 years, but only 20% of cases were ever prosecuted. And, while the prosecution rate constituted a minimal improvement on previous years, when less than 15% of cases ended up in court, the conviction rate for reported rapes �is markedly lower today than it was in 1965.� As a result, �in practice, many perpetrators enjoy impunity.�
CommentsUntil 2006, women in Uppsala faced a remarkable hurdle in seeking justice: the city�s chief of police, G�ran Lindberg, was himself a serial rapist, convicted in July 2010 of more than a dozen charges, including �serious sexual offenses.� One victim testified that she was told her rapist was the police chief, and that she would be framed if she told anyone about his assaults. Lindberg also served as the Police Academy�s spokesman against sexual violence. The Uppsala police force that is now investigating Assange either failed to or refused to investigate effectively the sadistic rapist with whom they worked every day.
In other words, the purported magical Swedish kingdom of female sexual equality, empowerment, and robust institutional support for rape victims � a land, conjured by Swedish prosecutors, that holds much of the global media in thrall � simply does not exist.
In the Assange case, the Swedish police supported the accusers in legally unprecedented ways � for example, by allowing them to tell their stories together and by allowing testimony from a boyfriend. But other alleged victims of gender-based abuse, sometimes in life-threatening circumstances, typically receive very different treatment. In particular, according to WAVE, a pan-European consortium of service providers for rape and sexual-abuse survivors, when migrants, who comprise 13.8% of Sweden�s population, report rape and abuse, they face high systemic hurdles in even telling their stories to police � including longstanding linguistic barriers in communicating with them at all.
CommentsLikewise, Swedish intake centers for victims of male violence are woefully underfunded � like all support services for rape and abuse victims across Europe and North America � leaving many women who face threats to their safety and that of their children waiting for unavailable places in shelters. When I emailed the Rape Crisis support institute in Uppsala, listed by the global rape-crisis organization RAINN, I received an automatic reply saying that the facility was temporarily closed.
CommentsSo, for most raped Swedish women, the shelters are full, the hotlines inactive, and the police selectively look the other way � that is, unless they are busy chasing down a globally famous suspect.
CommentsWe have been here before. Last year, when my left-wing colleagues were virtually unanimous in believing the New York Police Department�s narrative of a certain victim and a guilty-before-due-process rapist, I made the same call � to the local rape-crisis center. There, Harriet Lesser, who works every day with victims whose alleged attacker is not the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, confirmed that the official support shown for the victim � in advance of any investigation � was indeed unprecedented.
CommentsLet me be clear: I am not saying that Assange, much less Dominique Strauss-Kahn, committed no crime against women. Rather, Assange�s case, as was true with Strauss-Kahn�s, is being handled so differently from how the authorities handle all other rape cases that a corrupted standard of justice clearly is being applied. These aberrations add insult to the injury of women, undefended and without justice, who have been raped in the �normal� course of events � by violent nobodies.
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Well, you don't need to pay for the Crystal Ball service to know the outcome of this in advance. Abject failure; one new post in the last week despite begging readers to please, please, please participate. Way to CwF.
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Like most people, I have certainly had my share of failures. However the difference between Mr. CwF and others is that despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he keeps pushing a service that few are interested in and even fewer are willing to participate in. Masnick frequently lectures on the folly of industries pushing something on consumers they don't want (DVD's, bundled content, etc) and yet he ignores his own CwF advice and continues to push Step2 despite clear evidence that his blog readers aren't interested. He pushed the entire discussion on what swag to offer from blog posts to Step2 only to see the discussion drop off entirely. The whole situation is laughable and kind of undermines his mantra about how companies should focus on what consumers want to consume rather than what they want to offer.
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Right, he should just run to the government and demand new laws.
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That's pretty much what is contemplated, isn't it? Laws and/or policies? +1 derp.
"Help Create An Innovation Agenda For The Next Administration"
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derp!
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Well, you don't need to pay for the Crystal Ball service to know the outcome of this in advance. Abject failure; one new post in the last week despite begging readers to please, please, please participate. Way to CwF."
QUOTED FOR TRUTH... too many people using the report button for censorship rather than reporting things that should be removed.
Wake up people - censorship is what you make it here.
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I like it when inane comments are flagged so I don't have to read them.
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I didn't know that saying "You suck! Your site sucks! Your everything sucks!" constituted a discussion.
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Everywhere else? Not so much.
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Your question wrongly presupposes that censorship = impossible to read.
Censorship is the suppression of speech. Suppression doesn't have to be complete and total. It can be partial. Reporting and hiding unpopular posts censors them since they are hidden away from view.
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I'll bet you were singing a different tune during SOPA when website delisting was contemplated. Under SOPA the website still existed, but was hidden.
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Here, at the very least, you are given a voice, and your comment registers as a sub-atomic scale particle on the Internet radar, which isn't a lot, but someone might one day see it and agree or disagree with it. In the "other site", your comment won't ever register, because you are in a no fly zone...and they are manning the anti-aircraft guns all day long. You are basically gagged. In short, you are censored.
That is censorship.
This here, not so much, since it fails at actually censoring anything. They even say: "Click to show the comment.". Again, not very effective censorship. Annoying, but not censorship-
And now, my 2 cents on the report button:
I'd say that the Techdirt community has an itchy report finger. I, personally, think it is abused sometimes to "report" things that are actually legitimate. But I think that it is actually a symptom of a lack of other ways of "voting down" comments. The same way people like to "vote up" comments as "insightful" and "funny", perhaps people would enjoy a "-1 troll" option as well? One that doesn't "censor"? Just an idea.
* You know, that website that had its 5 minutes of fame a while ago, but nobody remembers or cares about any more
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It's amazing to me that guys won't just admit that it's censorship. I care more about the fact that you all can't admit that it's censorship than I do about the fact that posts are being censored. I think those of you who are denying it are being intellectually dishonest.
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Hold it right there.
In case it this message didn't get through to you, on the Trichordist site your comment NEVER EVER showed up if someone - the admins - didn't feel like letting it through.
Here, your comment ALWAYS shows*. The community might "down vote" (report) you, of course, but your comment was, is, and always will be there (until Techdirt implodes, that is).
But this mechanism, even with its inherent flaws, is, in a way, is a form of Democracy: people can vote to "report" you, and - I presume - no single person can flag you. If you got reported it is only because a (large?) majority of the people decided that you should be. As I said, this is not optimal, and I believe the system is abused some times. I also suggested an alternative, which, I should stress, you did not comment on, preferring instead to continue your little "crusade" against censorship, which pretty much amounts to screaming "oh noez, censorship". No wonder SOPA went nowhere...
* unless it is caught by the spam filters, which, so far, have proven to be sensible enough
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Understand now? Good. We'll get back to "censoring" all your inanity.
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Understand now? Good. We'll get back to "censoring" all your inanity.
Censorship doesn't always involve the government. There's private censorship too. Mike claims that Google choosing to remove results from its autocomplete is censorship, even though the websites still exist and still show up in search results. That doesn't involve the government.
Censorship is the suppression of unpopular speech. Just because it's "the community" doing the censoring doesn't make it any less censorial. I think it's beyond sad that you guys feel the need to suppress dissenting views, and you're too intellectually dishonest to even admit that you're censoring them.
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The question that we ask is: So what?
Techdirt is allowed to (truly) censor any comments they wish, and not only is it legal, it's usually ethical. This is their backyard. What they don't like does NOT have to be tolerated.
Instead, they (as far as I can tell) allow themselves only the same powers as their audience. Unless I am mistaken, EVERYONE only gets one vote.
Even then, the content is easily available. You (or your ilk) keep comparing it to finding a censored book in it's difficulty. It's more like putting a blacked out cover on a porno mag. You're free to look, but if you don't want to see it, it's not staring you in the face.
Remember, free speech does not guarantee consequence-free speech. And in this case, the consequences are small indeed.
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I think it's actually very similar to the copying/theft issue. It doesn't bother me when people casually say things like "I want to steal that idea!" or a producer says "oh man I'm going to steal that bassline" -- or of course the great quote "Good artists copy, great artists steal". That's just colourful talk about the way culture works. However, once you're going to start accusing someone of wrongdoing, or once you're going to have a serious conversation about IP laws and policy or remix culture or whatnot, it becomes very important to make the distinction that copying is not in fact "theft" at all.
Similarly, "censorship" can be used as a sort of general term for anytime something is blocked in any way, even when the government isn't involved. I'm sure I've done so myself. But once you're going to have a serious discussion about freedom of speech and laws that impact speech, it becomes important to make the distinction, and so in those cases I try to reserve the word for things that originate with or are enforced by the government. After all, it is a vital component of free speech that people be able to define their own arenas for speech when they so choose, and that they not be forced to include/entertain speech that they would rather disregard or simply de-prioritize.
By the logic of the trolls here, it would be "Censorship" for a physics conference to refuse to let you them a keynote about chemistry, or for a hip-hop concert to refuse to put their folk duo on the bill, or for a restaurant to require them to wear jackets, or for people to never invite them to the good parties...
Of course, these are the same people who insist that government domain seizures are not censorship. Their #1 argument? People can still access the site, so it's not actually blocked. And yet hiding text behind a pink click-to-expand notice IS censorship. I think that contradiction alone reveals how idiotic their position is.
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Even with the autocomplete situation, there is a through-line to the government that doesn't exist here. Google is removing terms based on pressure from groups that are leaning on *laws created by the government* to make their case. Ultimately, if indirectly, Google's choice is based on a rule made by the government.
Personally, I reserve the term "censorship" for things directly involving the government. Mike doesn't always because (gasp) despite your insistence that we're the same person, we don't actually agree on every detail of everything. Nevertheless, it seems quite clear that Google's choice is much closer to "censorship" than our reporting of comments -- the choice made here is made by the community, based on their own freedom of speech and freedom to listen or not listen to whatever they choose. Google's choice is made based on pressure that's barely a couple of degrees of separation away from the law/government.
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If you don't think that involves the gov't, you haven't been paying attention. That's due to massive gov't pressure on Google to "do something" to keep the RIAA/MPAA happy.
Again, that's entirely different than what happens here. What happens here is that the *COMMUNITY* votes to tell you "you're a dumbass, knock it off."
And your response is to confirm their opinion of you.
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Are you really so intellectually dishonest that you can't admit that sometimes a post is reported and hidden simply because the point of view is not popular. The fact that you condone hiding away from sight unpopular views says tons about you, Mike. You don't like to have your beliefs challenged or questioned. You just want everyone to drink the Kool-Aid. You're a total joke, and a duplicitous douche.
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Yeah, I can't possibly imagine why comments like yours would get reported, you and those like you present such amazing and convincing arguments.
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Sometimes, though very rarely. We see people who disagree without being disagreeable, and those tend not to get hidden. Then we have people who use slurs, ad hominem and insults. Those tend to be hidden.
Take a look at your comment as an example of that. People who take a principled stance without being insulting are rarely hidden.
The fact that you condone hiding away from sight unpopular views says tons about you, Mike.
Not unpopular. Unpopular stuff stays visible all the time. It's the ones that include unnecessary insults -- like yours -- that tend to be hidden.
You don't like to have your beliefs challenged or questioned. You just want everyone to drink the Kool-Aid. You're a total joke, and a duplicitous douche.
If I didn't want to hear opposing viewpoints, I do what sites like your favorite one, the Trichordist, does and moderate all comments, and only allow the voices that agree with me through. We let all comments through and then let the community decide if you're being a jackass.
And guess what they've decided?
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Sadly, enough of them do. If you put up an opinion that goes against the grain, you get called out, called named, berated, insulted, and basically ridden out of town on a rail. The report button is just one of many ways that the local lynch mob takes care of people who call out the mayor on topics here.
"If I didn't want to hear opposing viewpoints, I do what sites like your favorite one, the Trichordist, does and moderate all comments, and only allow the voices that agree with me through. We let all comments through and then let the community decide if you're being a jackass."
No, you wisely figured out that allowing people to post opposing views works because it gives your supporters red meat to chew on. It doesn't improve the discussions most of the time, but it certainly gives people something to be passionate about. Look at Marcus, insulting people is his full time job here.
" We let all comments through and then let the community decide if you're being a jackass."
No, you let all comments through and let the local lynch mob do the work for you. Basically, they shut up anyone that won't toe the line. I have had many a comment censored here because people don't like the viewpoint, usually led by your boy Marcus.
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Funny, you've been here for years -- and you've more or less admitted the only reason you're here is to disagree with everything posted. If we were "riding people out on a rail" don't you think you'd be gone by now?
Except we don't. You're around, and despite many former promises that you'd be gone forever, you stick around.
And, in fact, when you actually don't act like a total dick, people do respect you. You may not remember it, because it coincided with one of your "absences" but the last time someone asked you to not act like a dick and make your point legitimately, it WON the most insightful of the week award, despite disagreeing with what we normally say.
That was perfect proof of the point: if you actually acted like an adult, and not a petulant, insulting child, people have no problem supporting you.
But you don't. So they express that viewpoint to you by voting you down. And you know that, but because you're you, you make a stink about it, because it's easier to do that than to make any legitimate point.
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First off, how would you know? I am an anonymous poster. Are you cheating and looking at IP addresses and user data again? If you are, you are wrong.
I have thick skin. I think it's actually funny to watch Marcus be a prick, because he does it in a way that makes me think of cartoons with steam coming out the ears and such.
I also really enjoy watching people suck up to you. Toadies are always amusing.
I act like an adult - but I don't mind mixing it up with the children if that is where they are going. Watch the discussions Mike (and often your own comments), they are baiting, flaming, and generally denigrating to anyone who dares not agree with you. Too often, your answers are the "I already answered that" but without the answer. That's not really respectful, is it?
This whole discussion though comes back to the same thing. Your points on here that any free speech stopped by legal action, any video taken down, any blog entry blocked, even if it's available via a different URL or a different method is censorship. Yet here, you have a tool by which a select few in your community can take it upon themselves to block people's comments from general view, wiping them out of a discussion, and you have no problem with it.
In my mind, how the report function is being used here is much more significant censorship than many of the things you rail against, especially considering how hard you rail against them. You hold others to a higher standard, why not hold your own site to the same?
Oh, and I noticed too that it appears that anyone in blue has a "one click" report that moves a post to the blocked pile immediately, without community intervention. I have seen your toady Marcus working it pretty good. You might want to remove that censorship tool from his hands, he's a danger to free speech.
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Yeah, you're a fountain of respectful behavior. You keep beating that censorship drum, maybe one day you'll have a tune that can actually be censored by a copyright infringement claim.
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Incorrect, I'm afraid. Not me nor Mike nor anyone else has the ability to bury comments with a single click. You're just not liked much.
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Seems you have an undue influence. Perhaps just all the Techdirt staff getting together to click to drive something down... or maybe a few different log on names?
I wouldn't put any of it past you. The results here speak for themselves.
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That's probably because when you see me around, it apparently causes you to fly into an unstoppable rage of childish insults and low IQ. Y'know, the stuff that gets you reported constantly.
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No, I haven't even bothered to look at your IP, because you change it frequently. But you're phrasing and manner of speaking is pretty obvious. It's not at all difficult to know who you are by your tone and word choice. You reveal it yourself.
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Not true. Same IP for ages.
Anything else you care to misrepresent?
"It's not at all difficult to know who you are by your tone and word choice. You reveal it yourself."
yeah, and it's why you often attribute to me things other people say, calling them out in the same manner you are doing now. It's amusing as hell to see you all sure of yourself and yet being so totally wrong.
So, would you care the answer the rest of my post? Or are you sticking with only dealing with things you think fall your way?
Oh, did you see all the censored posted above? Looks like Marcus has been hard at work.
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If you want to be mysterious, you're going to have to be more original
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Yes, when the nazi's come and tell you to take down signs or your business will be burned, are they censoring you, or is it just "the community" at work?
Come on Marcus. Your a twat and all, but even you know what is going on. The report button is being used to shut people up. That totally sucks. Would you mind if 25% of your posts got blocked out? I can fire up TOR and generate a few extra user names and report you into the weeds if you like. That would be the community at work too.
Admit it. Report doesn't work like it's suppose to.
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I'd take it as a sign that my viewpoint is incredibly unpopular and that either I should re-examine it, or I should find a community whose basic values and opinions are more in line with my own.
I certainly wouldn't take it as a sign that I should get angrier and angrier and start calling people Nazis but, y'know, to each his own.
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1) Since I am anonymous and you are as well, how would you know who is who? Perhaps it is you posting as me, and vis-versa?
2) "douche"... is that a dirty insult? Me thinks you need to cure yourself first.
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When did Cookie Monster start posting here?
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We can all see who you are, your cowardly anonymous tactics can't help you when you're a douche. Are you really such an idiot to believe that just because you are the biggest coward in the world we can't tell that its you? The sheer fact that you play the anonymous card, and complain and whine when people can tell its you, is the most OBVIOUS tell in the world. Nobody but you is that cowardly and tries to pretend its not you when called out. Maybe next year Mike will wise up, and start moderating comments like the RIAA does. Then you'll be left with one less techblog to spam with your agenda.
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One person spamming accounts using TOR IS NOT A COMMUNITY!
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Trust me, if Marcus's dribble started getting blocked the rules for reporting would change in a second. It would be funny to have 4chan do a number of on him.
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All I have to do is click on the pink text and the post is unhidden. Very ineffective censorship.
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Tell me this. Do you agree with Mike that Google choosing to remove certain things from its autocomplete is "censorship"? http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110127/01360912852/will-googles-new-hamfisted-censorship-autocomp lete-raise-questions-human-meddling.shtml
The websites are still there. Heck, they even still show up in the search results. All that has happened is that they don't show up in the autocomplete.
Is that "censorship"?
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Sad...
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But you can't revoke demotions on search results with a click.
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No, I'm not good with Google's search results demotions, particularly since it's a response to inappropriate pressure from certain out-of-touch lobby groups and their government flunkies.
"I'm just checking because I recall a lot of moaning from Techdirtbag Nation about this and it is no different than hiding comments here. I'd hate to miss the chance to point out another obvious hypocrisy (again)."
I hate to disappoint but you have definitely missed that opportunity, because the two situations are quite different. Do you really just not understand the "flagged by the community" concept? Are you so horrified by the action of one more click that you just stop thinking rationally?
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"It was great to see widespread participation in the discussion. Nearly 200 comments were generated, creating some thoughtful and enlightening discussions."
Laughable, and sad. How low has Masnick fallen!
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Techdirt Posts of the Week allows
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The analyst repeated the same idiocies we know are complete BS. That the decision is important to show that patents and copyright (yes, copyright) must be respected and are of invaluable importance if we want companies to keep innovating. The analyst also highlighted how epic of a victory it was for Apple and other minor bs.
No mention on the jury's errs. No mention that this will be reviewed. Typical Fox News quality we see on the mainstream media nowadays.
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TROLLING FAIL
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Samsung didn't break patents
Now I wait for COUNTERMEASURES from Apple.
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" If you do not wish the opportunity we have conferred upon you, don't take it, there are plenty of people likely just as talented (or potentially more so) who will gladly step up to fill the void you choose to vacate."
The part that I want to call attention to is the bit about there being 'plenty of people likely just as talented' as an author who doesn't like the way IP law works.
The ability of an author to write has no connection whatever to his or her views on IP. There are good authors who support stronger IP laws, there are good authors who support weaker IP laws, and there are even good authors who support the abolition of IP. The quality of an author's work is completely unrelated to his or her views on what is essentially a legal matter.
And the notion that all authors are replaceable is not just hostile, but historically inaccurate. There were no contemporary authors remotely like James Joyce. Nor did Lawrence Sterne or George Berkeley have 'just-as-good' substitutes waiting to take their places. If you could magically eliminate any of those people from the written record you would alter the course of history.
This 'you-creators-are-a-dime-a-dozen-so-quit-your-bitching' attitude is not going to win any friends among creative people. If you weren't so hostile to these people, you might see that this is kind of counter-productive.
There are some people who have unique insights. And the world will be poorer for it if they stop publishing their writing because the internet seems hostile to them. I am sure you won't care, because you will find some other 'content' to amuse yourself with. But if the goal is to get authors to share their works with the world (which is the whole point of copyright), then saying 'who needs you anyway?' is probably not very helpful.
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The internet is hostile to anyone who doesn't like or care about copyrights.
Spent a couple weeks on a video only to have it automatically content ID blocked because of one TINY TINY thing in the beginning of the video. Can't even file a counter-claim because you can't talk to an actual HUMAN. The ones they do have might as well be robots because all they do is regurgitate "you can't do that it's copyrighted!" Well FUCK you. The world can just stay poorer as far as I'm concerned. I'd rather make nothing than be told what I can make.
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However, I do agree with the post when it says there are plenty of artists with different talents and experiences out there. I certainly can pass James Joyce if he's a copyright jerk that overcharges his stuff. No matter how good he is. And the artists are competing for a very scarce good that is my attention, my time. Please understand, it's not arrogance, it's purely the truth. If your content is not easily available for some price I can afford then I'm sorry but I'm not spending my time with you.
And from this article itself:
What Loki says may sound harsh to some, but it's an extremely important concept that is often forgotten in debates about copyright
It does sound harsh but it's the truth. As much as the copyright maximalists talk about the pirate entitlement to have everything for free (not true) I believe we should not forget that no one is 'entitled' to anything and that includes the artists. Now how about we discuss it reasonably and more than anything, with sanity and evidence?
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So which is it? Your comment reeks of elitism...
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You wrote that I
...ended your comment by implying that the *truly* talented artists are the ones who support copyright, and everything else is just "some other content to amuse yourself with"...
I implied no such thing. You are trying to read between lines, but there is nothing there.
What I said was that 'some people have unique insights' and that 'the world will be poorer for it if they stop publishing their writing because the internet seems hostile to them'.
You don't have to support copyright to find large portions of the internet hostile. There is no necessary connection there. But even if we assume that certain gifted authors are both 'for' copyright and 'against' the internet, the point I made was not that they are right, because I don't think they are. My point was that if you want to get them to share their work with the world (which is the point of copyright, no?), then writing 'If you do not wish the opportunity we have conferred upon you, don't take it' is going to fail.
Because, believe it or not, there are gifted people who are reluctant to share their stuff with the world. It is only a lucky chance that, say, Tolkien's Silmarillion didn't end up as an unread manuscript on the bottom of a box in an attic. The same is true of many other works by Kafka, Proust, Lovecraft and many others. All I was saying is that I think this sort of thing is unfortunate when it happens, while the attitude of the poster I was responding to was 'So what?'.
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It is fairly meaningless to point to specific authors and say "what if they hadn't release their work" because, while yes it would be a shame, it seems certain that there are far more creators who didn't release brilliant work because the systems have always been bottlenecked -- the gatekeepers chose the elite few who would be allowed through. Now, for the first time ever, there are no bottlenecks, no gatekeepers -- except those created artificially, with copyright. If, as you say, the primary goal is getting work shared with the world, the only logical conclusion is that copyright is bad -- it is by its very nature a way of reducing the supply of something, struggling to survive in a world full of ways to increase supply to infinity.
The nature of art, and the incentives for people to release their art, have always been changing through all of history -- and yet society has never failed to produce brilliant art. Some of the world's greatest masterpieces were created by artists who didn't much care for the church producing solely church-themed work because that was the only existing financial incentive; the copyright regime of the past few decades, combined with the high cost of production and distribution, has incentivized a general push towards "mass appeal" since it relied on a one-to-many broadcast model and a limited amount of room for content.
We are entering uncharted territory now, with a distribution revolution that dwarfs the printing press, and the fact that an artist's control over their work exists solely by the consent of the public is now more true than ever. Today's landscape is defined by an any-to-any communication model that allows everything from megastars to tiny cult stars. The system also favours in artists an entrepreneurial spirit, an outgoing nature, and a desire to sincerely interact with fans.
Does this mean that some people who might have thrived under a different system will find things more difficult today? Yes. It also means a bunch of people who would have found things difficult/impossible under older systems will thrive today. In any large-scale change you will be able to identify things that are lost, but the important thing is to compare it with what's gained -- and in this case, it is clear that opening the floodgates of content and loosening the reins on distribution has created much more opportunity than it has eliminated.
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I agree with you.
My point is not and has not ever been that the internet is bad for authors, musicians, or anyone. My point is that many creative people don't understand this and find the internet alienating. And the reason that they find it alienating is because of the rather hostile attitude that they often encounter here.
I am basically just trying to point out that the tough guy style of rhetoric can be off-putting to some people, and that some of the people that it alienates might be worth listening to.
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http://www.emula.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/forever-alone-face1.png
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You're not the pot calling the kettle black, you're the pot calling the salt black.
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Aha! Well, that explains why you never seem to have more than half-grasped what the article says, and why all your responses seem to miss the point entirely.
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The truth is, you aren't here to discuss anything. You are just here to be a prick, and then act all righteous when someone drops the report-hammer on you.
If I was a cynic, I'd say that you are reporting yourself, just for the "fun" of it. Luckily, I am one of those, so there you have it.
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If you walked around stuffing clothes in their mouth of slapping them in the head every time they talked, then yes it would be.
I can't imagine how horribly smug and self important you feel.
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Once again projecting your own feeling I see. You have been nothing but an elitist, smug, and a self important coward this whole time. And talk about the bully calling others bullies. Here you are day after day literally bullying Mike and others in the comments and insulting him any chance you get. "Pirate mike this and dirt scumbag freetrads that, die in a fire burn in hell pirates!!!!ANGGRRRYYY"
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The community?
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Wonders will never cease...
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Then Mike comes out and declares it a big success, claims Step2 is massively profitable, and that "if this is a failure I need to keep failing" or something to that effect.
It's kind of obvious. Techdirt has a huge readership and plenty of people coming through every day, that Step2 didn't even take off at all makes you wonder.
Perhaps people only come here because of good SEO, and not because of the actual content.
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The Last Word
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