Re: big business has abused the system and the Internet generation is right!
"The CREATOR in this scenario will be at the top of the food chain."
This is a pipe dream. Creators will never be at the top of the food chain because, economically, what they produce is oversupplied and lacks demand. The number of artists vastly outstrips the demand for art because, almost unfailingly, the creation of art means more to the creator than society at large. Being artistic is an end in itself, and art gets created in response to a desire in the artist himself, not according to the needs of others. A lucky few artists are able to create art that does provoke demand in others, but even in these cases the competition is fierce because there is so much art out there created for reasons other than satisfying demand.
In contrast, the publishers and distributors that are at the top of the food chain supply services that are scarce and in demand (mostly from artists trying to sell themselves). The power that distributors have (or, have had...) is economic, not legal, and it comes from the fact that attention (eyeballs) is more scarce than places to put that attention (art).
With the internet making publishers and distributors irrelevant, the new people at the top of the food chain are editors: People who can direct other people to content / art that is worthwhile. Hopefully, these editors will be less exploitative than the big media industries of the past.
Thank you. You've said very well all the things I was trying to say and more, and you did it without inciting accusations of being a shill for the copyright maximalists. This is the single most intelligent post I've seen on this thread.
"The context of the post is about if the morality card is justifiable to justify an outdated economic system of the mentioned monopoly industry.
The answer is simply no."
Ok, perhaps I was missing the context here, but there's a difference between saying that there's no moral argument to support an obsolete economic system (something I strongly agree with), and stating outright that copyright has nothing to do with morality whatsoever (something I strongly disagree with).
It's a reality that the internet has made copyright and the business models based on it obsolete, and anyone who wants to succeed has to recognize this truth and work with it rather than against it. But, that doesn't change the fact that entire industries are collapsing because of this change and people are suffering because of it. And that suffering is absolutely, unequivocally, 100% a moral issue that we should be concerned with. It's all very well to say suck it up, learn to deal with the changes, but it doesn't really help these people fix their lives.
"The point is that what constitutes respectful and disrespectful conduct is often subject to opinion. Different cultures consider different things disrespectful and everyone is different. But we shouldn't ruin our economy just because some weird person might be offended at something arbitrary."
Agreed. Morality is often a very subjective thing. That's part of what makes it so difficult to deal with. I suspect that's why Mike wants to remove it from the debate — it defies rationality and you can't argue with it. Unfortunately, we live in a world full of subjective people, and stubbornly insisting that the world should be more rational is not a path to making it so. It is, however, an effective (if somewhat tired) rhetorical device.
I'm not in favour of ruining our economy to prevent people from being offended. I'm not in favour of laws or rights that attempt to prevent people from being offended in general. But my point was somewhat stronger. I *am* in favour of laws that prevent the actual harm that disrespect can cause. And I am certainly in favour of laws that prevent artists from being exploited by people who are better at selling other people's work than creating their own.
Sadly, our current laws have failed massively at preventing this kind of exploitation. I don't know what laws will work (I have some ideas...), but I do know that the problem that copyright was originally intended to solve — the sale of artistic works by people who haven't put any effort into creating them — hasn't gone away.
I'm not really sure where you are going with your Lego example, but I don't really see it as a representative example of how moral rights should be used (I *do* see it as a decent example of how moral rights can be abused). Most artists have nothing like the name recognition that Lego has. In situations where moral rights are supposed to be effective, the notoriety of the "remix" is often better known than the original. In this situation, people often do *not* know that the problem remix did not come from the originator, and this fact can certainly cause harm to the original artist's reputation. And, that in turn can have serious financial repercussions in trying to produce future art.
I'd also like to point out that moral rights are designed to prevent harm, not restrict reuse of materials. Remixes that incorporate prior works in a respectful way do not infringe moral rights. Your Lego example would not be considered a violation, since the Lego "remix" was on the whole a respectful reuse of their product. As I said, I see this as an example of abuse, not a case of how things are supposed to work. I also don't really think this is all that pertinent to copyright; there is clearly nothing copyrighted in lego blocks.
"It's disrespectful to our intelligence for you to come up with such nonsense arguments. You're assuming we're stupid enough to buy this garbage and I feel disrespected."
Actually, I'm assuming you are intelligent enough to understand it. The fact that you are too stupid to grasp why people get moral about this is not my problem (there, now you can feel disrespected).
"The fact is, as an intellectual property maximists, you are just trying to find any excuse, no matter how false and lame, to promote your pro exploit the public position."
Perhaps it might be wise to cut down on the assumptions. My actual position on copyright is the opposite of what you are assuming here; with the exception of certain moral rights, I am in favour of abolishing copyright outside the commercial realm. Inside the commercial realm, I would remove any mention of copying or property as criteria for infringement and move to something based on intent and how a work was used.
Now that you know this, read my post again and actually try to understand what I am saying rather than assuming I am an enemy. If we want to create a law that actually does benefit everybody, we have to understand where people are coming from — that includes copyright maximalists. My original post is my attempt at understanding where they come from.
"The people who don't get millions of dollars from taxpayers for doing nothing are not better off as a result. Who cares?"
Not me, but that wasn't my point. My point is that Mike's claim is that there's no moral issue at all since everyone is better off. If you want to understand why people are making a moral issue out of this, it helps to realize that not everyone *is* better off. Asking whether the *right* people are better of is a different question (one that has quite a moral bent to it).
" "There's a reason that many countries have "moral rights" as part of their copyright law."
Perhaps because intellectual property maximists just want to come up with any excuse, no matter how false or lame, to promote their position?"
Actually, moral rights were developed in France over a hundred years ago. Moral rights have nothing to do with property claims. You have no idea what you are talking about here.
"No one morally owes a creator a monopoly or any "rights" to monopolize or regulate his/her work."
I never said they did. I never mentioned monopoly at all. Moral rights aren't about property or monopoly. They are about recognizing that artist's reputations are made or broken on the basis on their work — and how their work is seen. Moral rights bear more in common with defamation and slander rights than property or monopoly rights.
"If you can structure things such that everyone is better off, then morality shouldn't even come into play at all."
People have already picked this apart, but this quote encapsulates Mike's mistake perfectly. This statement clearly implies that copyright *should* be a moral issue. The existing middlemen are clearly not better off, so it's no surprise they see this in moral terms. The fact that these middlemen are largely obsolete and redundant is certainly a good reason for why these middlemen should disappear, but it does nothing at all to make them better off. Given what they stand to lose, of course they see it in moral terms.
That said, seeing morality purely in terms of being "better off" (which you seem to think of in solely economic terms) is a very limited view of morality. You're essentially accepting the Utilitarian view of morality (see John Stewart Mill) as correct and ignoring all other ways of thinking about it. Utilitarianism is a popular and profound approach, but it's not the be all and end all of morality. There's more at stake here than just being "better off" — and more ways of being "better off" than you seem to think.
There's a reason that many countries have "moral rights" as part of their copyright law. Being a creator or an artist often entails being connected to your creations in a very deep and personal way. Moral rights recognize this by offering some assurance that one's creations are respected by society at large in ways that will not affect the creator adversely. For those not familiar with moral rights, they are generally concerned with protecting the *reputation* of the artist and preventing certain remixes in ways that would disrepect the original works.
The moral side of copyright is all about respect — of the artists and the works themselves — and it's not hard to see how Mike's cold economic lens could disrespect artists. Allowing people to do *anything* they want with artistic works can easily be disrespectful. The economic reality that this is how the world works does not change the fact of this disrespect. Morality comes into it because morality is about changing and regulating the realities of the world for the better. Unless economics can address the problem of respect, it is not a complete way of looking at copyright.
Assuming that just because things *are* a certain way means they *should* be that way is a classic mistake of economic thinking. (Moralistic thinking makes the opposite mistake — it assumes that because things *should* be a certain way that it is feasible to behave as if they *are* that way.) It's a reality that copyright is broken and it's impossible to stop copying. The smart money right now accepts that and works within those boundaries. But, just because it's smart doesn't make it good, and that is the moral crux of the debate.
If you really want to push it, you could argue that every transmission (i.e. every viewer) produces a new copy, since the data is essentially duplicated from YouTube's server array to the end user's cache drive. And, one can imagine the collection societies arguing, they deserve to be paid for every "copy". I suppose the might argue that every copy duplicated across YouTube's server farm might need to be licensed as well.
They'd be wrong, but not because there aren't new copies being created. They're wrong because copying is the wrong thing to be looking at. Whether or not additional copies are made is irrelevant. So is how they are made. Collection societies are designed to compensate for something along the lines of "public performances". So, what should be considered is not how many places the video can be seen (the societies' view) or how that video is delivered (Mike's). What is relevant is how many times that video is seen as part of a "public performance", and who is putting on that performance.
Unfortunately, we lack a good definition of public performance in the online realm, so we get this confusion.
I applied the moron in a hurry analogy not because I think this has anything to do with trademark, but because a moron in a hurry would be able to tell you who is "hosting" the "performance" online (don't confuse this usage with hosting the file — I'm perfectly aware it's on YouTube's server). I think what the moron would say (and the collection societies ... who fit the paradigm of morons in a hurry quite well I think) is that the site which embedded the video is where the performance is happening. Similarly, if you invited that same moron into your house and he saw a show on TV, they would say that *you* showed them that show; the network (YouTube) merely made it available to be shown.
I think this is why the collection societies think they can get away with charging every web site ... they're used to charging every *venue*, not the distributors where the venues get their shows.
Where the societies get into trouble is in assuming a web site is the same as a public venue. Yes, web sites are publicly available, but that doesn't make embedding a video a public performance. *Some* web sites might be this way (mostly, YouTube and sites that specifically exist to show videos), but most embed for purposes other than performance — typically criticism, cultural reference, or as part of a new work.
I would think that a video that is embedded in a web page counts as part of that web page regardless of how it is implemented technically. It's the experience of the end user that counts, not how it's hosted. On an experiential level, embedding content is *not* the same as a link even if it's accomplished in technically the same way.
To borrow a phrase that you like to use for trademarks, no moron in a hurry is going to think he is looking at YouTube if he types in www.techdirt.com into his browser and views a video embedded there (though perhaps there are borderline cases for less "branded" web sites where the only visible logo is the one Youtube embeds into all their videos).
I think you're barking up the wrong tree here. The bigger issue here is the collapse of the distinction between public and private realms and the fact that "publication" doesn't really have the same meaning online as it does offline.
The collection societies' claims are ridiculous. There's no way a collection society should be entitled to charge every single web site that embeds a video, especially sites that don't make any money. But the fact of how this is technically accomplished has nothing to do with why the collection societies are wrong here.
The real problem is that the collection societies are essentially claiming the right to a "tax" on participating in culture by sharing it. I suspect that this is a case where the collection societies may be within the letter of the law, and the law is the problem because its incentives are designed for an offline world.
I've written some pretty scathing reviews in my time, all of which were given to us for free by companies seeking good reviews. I object to having my relationship to these products characterized as an "endorsement".
That said, there *is* pressure to produce good reviews from all the companies involved ... either by not publishing bad ones ("kill fees" are not unheard of), or encouraging reviews to take a more positive tone. That said, "positive" reviews tend to make better reading anyway; being negative about things generally doesn't make for riveting reading (are you listening newspapers?) The key to a good review isn't to give a good/bad rating (that's just what companies want). It's to describe the product in enough detail that people who might be able to use the product know what it is useful for.
Ah ... now I know what you're responding to. I didn't look back at my original post; I assumed you were talking about this sentence: "I don't think there was the slightest bit of malice or intent to hurt behind Mike's words".
In any case, I'm a little sick of the subject and disgusted that I got as drawn in as I did. I was better off never having heard of Lily Allen, and I'd just as soon never hear about her again. Techdirt has been my only source of information about her, and hopefully she will soon disappear into the background haze of pop culture I don't really pay attention to..
Semantics sure are fun (note: for those who don't appreciate this kind of thing, that's your cue to stop reading).
I'd argue that the presence of the phrase "I (don't) think" before the rest of my clause about Mike's intentions indicates that I was, in fact, making a statement of opinion, not, in my opinion, a statement of fact (got that?) Moving beyond semantics to context ... would you really take the word of some anonymous guy commenting on a blog to be a statement of fact rather than a statement of opinion? Oh, wait, that might be Lily's problem...
In all seriousness (if that's still possible after so many semantic points), the fact that Lily didn't come away having learned anything *does* concern me. But, even more to the point, having Mike come across as a bully is an even greater concern. I *do* have hope that this "copyright war" will someday be more or less peacefully resolved. Mike is a smart guy and a strong voice. We need his voice to be heard by people in places other than this site, and his voice will be louder if he doesn't have a reputation for intellectual bullying.
You sir, are self-righteous. See how that worked? I used your logic (dialogue = attack) and can now say that you are a self-righteous blow hard. Of course, the difference this time around is that you actually represent no useful point of view and manage to be wrong in defining both Mike's position and simple things like meaning of word *attack*
Ok, I'm self-righteous. I didn't really think this was about me, but I'll gladly concede the point if you'll stop putting words in my mouth.
To my knowledge, I didn't define Mike's position far beyond agreeing with it, nor did I define attack. But I'm quite happy to turn this into a philosophical debate about semantics if it suits you.
My point is that Mike's position isn't what got Lily pissed off here — it's the way he presented it. All I'm saying is I can understand why Lily might interpret that presentation as hurtful. I'll avoid the word attack if it makes you feel better. I don't think there was the slightest bit of malice or intent to hurt behind Mike's words, but that doesn't change the fact that they were interpreted that way by Ms. Allen. It's like arguing with your girlfriend. It doesn't matter how right you are — if you've offended her it's up to you to eat your words if you want to get laid ... erm ... continue the dialogue.
In any case, I'm in favour of the comment earlier: Mike, can you provide a CwF-RtB incentive not to post about Lily Allen anymore?
Mike, I respect your work, and, in this case, I generally agree with what you've said. You *have* asked tough questions, and every point you've raised about her stance and her hypocrisy has been valid.
But...
That doesn't preclude it from also being an attack. It's a valid, and effective attack, perhaps even a reasonable one, but it's still and attack. Pointing out hypocrisy in a public forum (something you're very good at) is embarrassing and combative.
Personally, I think Ms. Allen is way out of her depth — public debate is clearly not her strong point. She's not the first person to walk into the copyright war unawares (Mark Helprin comes to mind), but she's not likely to stay around to debate if she's feeling insulted right off the bat. Your offended and petulant responses are not going to bring her to the table, no matter how correct or reasonable they are. This situation calls for empathy and diplomacy, not reason.
The questions you are asking are much better at inciting the masses than they are at provoking Ms. Allen to think through what she's saying. If the goal is to bring her views around to a reasonable point of view you should be asking her for solutions to the obvious problems that internet disconnection would create. Just don't connect *her* to the problems.
The problem I see — and the reason you're not likely to be making any friends in the pro-copyright camp — is one of attitude rather than rationality. You're coming across as self-righteous, and I can understand why it would be seen as an attack rather than debate.
Maybe you can untie this knot for me. These lawyers are basically complaining that giving people the ability to find whatever information they need is a bad idea. Search engines are bad = there are situations where some information should not be accessible.
It's not that much of a stretch to apply this to the ICBC case in your previous post where ICBC's ability to search their database for jury members' claim histories was potentially disrupting the justice process. Google essentially turns the internet into a massive searchable database, and many privacy advocates (including you) have recognized that individually harmless bits of data can be quite harmful when aggregated. I think there's a parallel between the harm these lawyers see in Google's news aggregation and the harm you (and I) see in ICBC's aggregation of claim data.
So, which is it? Is unfettered access to data (and potentially powerful analysis within that dat) a problem or not? I'm inclined to accept the proliferation of data as a fact and try to work around it. To me the biggest problem is that ICBC's data is proprietary (and perhaps the push towards transparency of government data would help here). Making ICBC's database publically available would be much fairer, since the defence would (theoretically) have the same information about the jurors available to it.
But, this doesn't solve the problem of tainting the jury pool. In fact, it probably makes the problem worse — the more information is available about the potential jurors, the farther from a "random" jury of peers the jury becomes.
So ... how do you deal with this? Are certain types of publicly available information a problem? Can we do anything about it? Maybe we need to reform the justice system to deal with this new world where everyone's sins (and accomplishements) are on public display.
On the post: Is Morality Even A Question In Copyright?
Re: big business has abused the system and the Internet generation is right!
This is a pipe dream. Creators will never be at the top of the food chain because, economically, what they produce is oversupplied and lacks demand. The number of artists vastly outstrips the demand for art because, almost unfailingly, the creation of art means more to the creator than society at large. Being artistic is an end in itself, and art gets created in response to a desire in the artist himself, not according to the needs of others. A lucky few artists are able to create art that does provoke demand in others, but even in these cases the competition is fierce because there is so much art out there created for reasons other than satisfying demand.
In contrast, the publishers and distributors that are at the top of the food chain supply services that are scarce and in demand (mostly from artists trying to sell themselves). The power that distributors have (or, have had...) is economic, not legal, and it comes from the fact that attention (eyeballs) is more scarce than places to put that attention (art).
With the internet making publishers and distributors irrelevant, the new people at the top of the food chain are editors: People who can direct other people to content / art that is worthwhile. Hopefully, these editors will be less exploitative than the big media industries of the past.
On the post: Is Morality Even A Question In Copyright?
Re: Interesting
On the post: Is Morality Even A Question In Copyright?
Re: Re: You have a narrow view of morality
The answer is simply no."
Ok, perhaps I was missing the context here, but there's a difference between saying that there's no moral argument to support an obsolete economic system (something I strongly agree with), and stating outright that copyright has nothing to do with morality whatsoever (something I strongly disagree with).
It's a reality that the internet has made copyright and the business models based on it obsolete, and anyone who wants to succeed has to recognize this truth and work with it rather than against it. But, that doesn't change the fact that entire industries are collapsing because of this change and people are suffering because of it. And that suffering is absolutely, unequivocally, 100% a moral issue that we should be concerned with. It's all very well to say suck it up, learn to deal with the changes, but it doesn't really help these people fix their lives.
On the post: Is Morality Even A Question In Copyright?
Re: Re: You have a narrow view of morality
Agreed. Morality is often a very subjective thing. That's part of what makes it so difficult to deal with. I suspect that's why Mike wants to remove it from the debate — it defies rationality and you can't argue with it. Unfortunately, we live in a world full of subjective people, and stubbornly insisting that the world should be more rational is not a path to making it so. It is, however, an effective (if somewhat tired) rhetorical device.
I'm not in favour of ruining our economy to prevent people from being offended. I'm not in favour of laws or rights that attempt to prevent people from being offended in general. But my point was somewhat stronger. I *am* in favour of laws that prevent the actual harm that disrespect can cause. And I am certainly in favour of laws that prevent artists from being exploited by people who are better at selling other people's work than creating their own.
Sadly, our current laws have failed massively at preventing this kind of exploitation. I don't know what laws will work (I have some ideas...), but I do know that the problem that copyright was originally intended to solve — the sale of artistic works by people who haven't put any effort into creating them — hasn't gone away.
I'm not really sure where you are going with your Lego example, but I don't really see it as a representative example of how moral rights should be used (I *do* see it as a decent example of how moral rights can be abused). Most artists have nothing like the name recognition that Lego has. In situations where moral rights are supposed to be effective, the notoriety of the "remix" is often better known than the original. In this situation, people often do *not* know that the problem remix did not come from the originator, and this fact can certainly cause harm to the original artist's reputation. And, that in turn can have serious financial repercussions in trying to produce future art.
I'd also like to point out that moral rights are designed to prevent harm, not restrict reuse of materials. Remixes that incorporate prior works in a respectful way do not infringe moral rights. Your Lego example would not be considered a violation, since the Lego "remix" was on the whole a respectful reuse of their product. As I said, I see this as an example of abuse, not a case of how things are supposed to work. I also don't really think this is all that pertinent to copyright; there is clearly nothing copyrighted in lego blocks.
On the post: Is Morality Even A Question In Copyright?
Re: Re: You have a narrow view of morality
Actually, I'm assuming you are intelligent enough to understand it. The fact that you are too stupid to grasp why people get moral about this is not my problem (there, now you can feel disrespected).
"The fact is, as an intellectual property maximists, you are just trying to find any excuse, no matter how false and lame, to promote your pro exploit the public position."
Perhaps it might be wise to cut down on the assumptions. My actual position on copyright is the opposite of what you are assuming here; with the exception of certain moral rights, I am in favour of abolishing copyright outside the commercial realm. Inside the commercial realm, I would remove any mention of copying or property as criteria for infringement and move to something based on intent and how a work was used.
Now that you know this, read my post again and actually try to understand what I am saying rather than assuming I am an enemy. If we want to create a law that actually does benefit everybody, we have to understand where people are coming from — that includes copyright maximalists. My original post is my attempt at understanding where they come from.
On the post: Is Morality Even A Question In Copyright?
Re: Re: You have a narrow view of morality
Not me, but that wasn't my point. My point is that Mike's claim is that there's no moral issue at all since everyone is better off. If you want to understand why people are making a moral issue out of this, it helps to realize that not everyone *is* better off. Asking whether the *right* people are better of is a different question (one that has quite a moral bent to it).
" "There's a reason that many countries have "moral rights" as part of their copyright law."
Perhaps because intellectual property maximists just want to come up with any excuse, no matter how false or lame, to promote their position?"
Actually, moral rights were developed in France over a hundred years ago. Moral rights have nothing to do with property claims. You have no idea what you are talking about here.
"No one morally owes a creator a monopoly or any "rights" to monopolize or regulate his/her work."
I never said they did. I never mentioned monopoly at all. Moral rights aren't about property or monopoly. They are about recognizing that artist's reputations are made or broken on the basis on their work — and how their work is seen. Moral rights bear more in common with defamation and slander rights than property or monopoly rights.
On the post: Is Morality Even A Question In Copyright?
You have a narrow view of morality
People have already picked this apart, but this quote encapsulates Mike's mistake perfectly. This statement clearly implies that copyright *should* be a moral issue. The existing middlemen are clearly not better off, so it's no surprise they see this in moral terms. The fact that these middlemen are largely obsolete and redundant is certainly a good reason for why these middlemen should disappear, but it does nothing at all to make them better off. Given what they stand to lose, of course they see it in moral terms.
That said, seeing morality purely in terms of being "better off" (which you seem to think of in solely economic terms) is a very limited view of morality. You're essentially accepting the Utilitarian view of morality (see John Stewart Mill) as correct and ignoring all other ways of thinking about it. Utilitarianism is a popular and profound approach, but it's not the be all and end all of morality. There's more at stake here than just being "better off" — and more ways of being "better off" than you seem to think.
There's a reason that many countries have "moral rights" as part of their copyright law. Being a creator or an artist often entails being connected to your creations in a very deep and personal way. Moral rights recognize this by offering some assurance that one's creations are respected by society at large in ways that will not affect the creator adversely. For those not familiar with moral rights, they are generally concerned with protecting the *reputation* of the artist and preventing certain remixes in ways that would disrepect the original works.
The moral side of copyright is all about respect — of the artists and the works themselves — and it's not hard to see how Mike's cold economic lens could disrespect artists. Allowing people to do *anything* they want with artistic works can easily be disrespectful. The economic reality that this is how the world works does not change the fact of this disrespect. Morality comes into it because morality is about changing and regulating the realities of the world for the better. Unless economics can address the problem of respect, it is not a complete way of looking at copyright.
Assuming that just because things *are* a certain way means they *should* be that way is a classic mistake of economic thinking. (Moralistic thinking makes the opposite mistake — it assumes that because things *should* be a certain way that it is feasible to behave as if they *are* that way.) It's a reality that copyright is broken and it's impossible to stop copying. The smart money right now accepts that and works within those boundaries. But, just because it's smart doesn't make it good, and that is the moral crux of the debate.
On the post: Dutch Collection Society Looks To Charge Bloggers For Embedding YouTube Videos
Re: Re: Re: Re:
They'd be wrong, but not because there aren't new copies being created. They're wrong because copying is the wrong thing to be looking at. Whether or not additional copies are made is irrelevant. So is how they are made. Collection societies are designed to compensate for something along the lines of "public performances". So, what should be considered is not how many places the video can be seen (the societies' view) or how that video is delivered (Mike's). What is relevant is how many times that video is seen as part of a "public performance", and who is putting on that performance.
Unfortunately, we lack a good definition of public performance in the online realm, so we get this confusion.
I applied the moron in a hurry analogy not because I think this has anything to do with trademark, but because a moron in a hurry would be able to tell you who is "hosting" the "performance" online (don't confuse this usage with hosting the file — I'm perfectly aware it's on YouTube's server). I think what the moron would say (and the collection societies ... who fit the paradigm of morons in a hurry quite well I think) is that the site which embedded the video is where the performance is happening. Similarly, if you invited that same moron into your house and he saw a show on TV, they would say that *you* showed them that show; the network (YouTube) merely made it available to be shown.
I think this is why the collection societies think they can get away with charging every web site ... they're used to charging every *venue*, not the distributors where the venues get their shows.
Where the societies get into trouble is in assuming a web site is the same as a public venue. Yes, web sites are publicly available, but that doesn't make embedding a video a public performance. *Some* web sites might be this way (mostly, YouTube and sites that specifically exist to show videos), but most embed for purposes other than performance — typically criticism, cultural reference, or as part of a new work.
On the post: Dutch Collection Society Looks To Charge Bloggers For Embedding YouTube Videos
Publication
To borrow a phrase that you like to use for trademarks, no moron in a hurry is going to think he is looking at YouTube if he types in www.techdirt.com into his browser and views a video embedded there (though perhaps there are borderline cases for less "branded" web sites where the only visible logo is the one Youtube embeds into all their videos).
I think you're barking up the wrong tree here. The bigger issue here is the collapse of the distinction between public and private realms and the fact that "publication" doesn't really have the same meaning online as it does offline.
The collection societies' claims are ridiculous. There's no way a collection society should be entitled to charge every single web site that embeds a video, especially sites that don't make any money. But the fact of how this is technically accomplished has nothing to do with why the collection societies are wrong here.
The real problem is that the collection societies are essentially claiming the right to a "tax" on participating in culture by sharing it. I suspect that this is a case where the collection societies may be within the letter of the law, and the law is the problem because its incentives are designed for an offline world.
On the post: Did The FTC's New 'Blogger' Guidelines Just Change The Way All Book/Music Reviews Must Be Conducted?
And bad reviews?
That said, there *is* pressure to produce good reviews from all the companies involved ... either by not publishing bad ones ("kill fees" are not unheard of), or encouraging reviews to take a more positive tone. That said, "positive" reviews tend to make better reading anyway; being negative about things generally doesn't make for riveting reading (are you listening newspapers?) The key to a good review isn't to give a good/bad rating (that's just what companies want). It's to describe the product in enough detail that people who might be able to use the product know what it is useful for.
On the post: A Song For Lily Allen... And A Little Conversation
Re: Lay off
In any case, I'm a little sick of the subject and disgusted that I got as drawn in as I did. I was better off never having heard of Lily Allen, and I'd just as soon never hear about her again. Techdirt has been my only source of information about her, and hopefully she will soon disappear into the background haze of pop culture I don't really pay attention to..
On the post: A Song For Lily Allen... And A Little Conversation
Re: Lay off
I'd argue that the presence of the phrase "I (don't) think" before the rest of my clause about Mike's intentions indicates that I was, in fact, making a statement of opinion, not, in my opinion, a statement of fact (got that?) Moving beyond semantics to context ... would you really take the word of some anonymous guy commenting on a blog to be a statement of fact rather than a statement of opinion? Oh, wait, that might be Lily's problem...
In all seriousness (if that's still possible after so many semantic points), the fact that Lily didn't come away having learned anything *does* concern me. But, even more to the point, having Mike come across as a bully is an even greater concern. I *do* have hope that this "copyright war" will someday be more or less peacefully resolved. Mike is a smart guy and a strong voice. We need his voice to be heard by people in places other than this site, and his voice will be louder if he doesn't have a reputation for intellectual bullying.
On the post: A Song For Lily Allen... And A Little Conversation
Re: Re: Lay off
On the post: A Song For Lily Allen... And A Little Conversation
Lay off
But...
That doesn't preclude it from also being an attack. It's a valid, and effective attack, perhaps even a reasonable one, but it's still and attack. Pointing out hypocrisy in a public forum (something you're very good at) is embarrassing and combative.
Personally, I think Ms. Allen is way out of her depth — public debate is clearly not her strong point. She's not the first person to walk into the copyright war unawares (Mark Helprin comes to mind), but she's not likely to stay around to debate if she's feeling insulted right off the bat. Your offended and petulant responses are not going to bring her to the table, no matter how correct or reasonable they are. This situation calls for empathy and diplomacy, not reason.
The questions you are asking are much better at inciting the masses than they are at provoking Ms. Allen to think through what she's saying. If the goal is to bring her views around to a reasonable point of view you should be asking her for solutions to the obvious problems that internet disconnection would create. Just don't connect *her* to the problems.
The problem I see — and the reason you're not likely to be making any friends in the pro-copyright camp — is one of attitude rather than rationality. You're coming across as self-righteous, and I can understand why it would be seen as an attack rather than debate.
On the post: Mark Helprin Stole From Techdirt Commenters (Using The Logic Of Mark Helprin)
Re: Winter's Tale
Just bear in mind that his specialty is fiction ... and treat his more recent writings in kind.
On the post: Lawyers: To Save Newspapers, Let's Destroy Pretty Much Everything Else Good
Databases
It's not that much of a stretch to apply this to the ICBC case in your previous post where ICBC's ability to search their database for jury members' claim histories was potentially disrupting the justice process. Google essentially turns the internet into a massive searchable database, and many privacy advocates (including you) have recognized that individually harmless bits of data can be quite harmful when aggregated. I think there's a parallel between the harm these lawyers see in Google's news aggregation and the harm you (and I) see in ICBC's aggregation of claim data.
So, which is it? Is unfettered access to data (and potentially powerful analysis within that dat) a problem or not? I'm inclined to accept the proliferation of data as a fact and try to work around it. To me the biggest problem is that ICBC's data is proprietary (and perhaps the push towards transparency of government data would help here). Making ICBC's database publically available would be much fairer, since the defence would (theoretically) have the same information about the jurors available to it.
But, this doesn't solve the problem of tainting the jury pool. In fact, it probably makes the problem worse — the more information is available about the potential jurors, the farther from a "random" jury of peers the jury becomes.
So ... how do you deal with this? Are certain types of publicly available information a problem? Can we do anything about it? Maybe we need to reform the justice system to deal with this new world where everyone's sins (and accomplishements) are on public display.
On the post: Attention, Out Of Work Journalists!
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