The labels are definitely trying to maximize short-term profits at the cost of long-term success (a problem that seems endemic to all of business nowadays. e.g. the bank bailout) but i don't think they can bear the burden of blame for this. They aren't doing anything to help, but the staleness of the genre is the biggest factor imo.
Maybe not as eloquent as Mike's, but this is what i sent:
"Ironically, the biggest obstacles to innovation are exactly the structures that are intended to promote innovation. We need real patent and copyright reform.
There are too many stupid patents that add to the cost of innovation by forcing companies to pay extortionate licensing fees on patents that should never have been granted in the first place.
These patents are often owned by corporations whose only business function is to collect those fees and sue those who don't pay them. The productive companies that own some these patents only use them to stifle competition because they know it's cheaper to litigate and lobby than to innovate and compete. How could a small business hope to survive in that kind of setting?
Copyright has a similar problem. The big media companies spend money lobbying for stronger protections and spend more money suing potential customers than wooing them. They are fighting to maintain their failing business model through legislation and litigation instead of innovation. They're more focused on "protecting" existing content than they are on creating new content.
Look at Disney. This is a company that made its fortune by taking ideas from the public domain and commercializing them, yet every time any of their work gets close to entering the public domain, they lobby for (and get) another copyright extension.
I believe that everyone should benefit from the fruits of their labors, but i don't think that long after they are dead their great grandkids should still be entitled to the fruit of that same labor.
We should be granting fewer patents, not more. We should be decreasing copyright protections, not increasing them."
From www.copyright.gov:
"Even though copyright protection is secured automatically upon creation, there are certain definite advantages to copyright registration. Registration establishes a public record of the copyright claim. Before an infringement suit may be filed in court, registration is necessary for works of U.S. origin. If made before or within five years of publication, registration establishes prima facie evidence in court of the validity of the copyright and of the facts stated in the certificate. If registration is made within three months after publication of the work or prior to an infringement of the work, statutory damages and attorney's fees will be available to the copyright owner in court actions. Also, registration allows the owner of the copyright to record the registration with the U.S. Customs Service for protection against importation of infringing copies."
It looks like you didn't even read the post or perhaps that you are trying to respond to a completely different article. The writing is not muddled just because you personally disagree with what he's saying or just don't understand it. Your bit about not needing to register copyrights is explicitly stated in the original post.
On a tangent...
I'm not convinced that copyrights are an inherent right. At the most fundamental level it would be something like you whistling a tune and then telling the people that hear you not to try whistling it themselves because that's your tune. In a pre-industrial society, people would think you were a bossy buffoon and the very idea of it would be ridiculous. If a right doesn't hold up in that sort of situation, i don't think it can be an inherent right.
Hell, i'm not even sure that copyrights and patents are a good idea in any but the most limited forms. I see more time and money being wasted on arguments about who owns what imaginary property than i see benefits from uncontested control of it.
"...too lazy to compete in the marketplace or innovate when that market changes." gives the wrong impression. It's not fat cat sloth that leads them to their position. It's a much more active and malevolent culture of corruption that prompts it.
It's cheaper to buy favorable legislation and to litigate your competitors out of business than to actually compete.
Someone in his position saying something like that in public - seems like a good way to be out of a job. But hey - if he's right then their subscribers are probably too dumb to be offended by how dumb he thinks they are.
The explanation is not really about DRM - it's a preemptive cry for mercy from the antitrust investigators.
For the record, they aren't kowtowing - they're trying to put in a piece of DRM that will be so attractive to the MAFIAAs that their competitors get frozen out of the market for any device that plays audio or video, which these days, is pretty much everything. Bending the customers over and stuffing their rights where the sun don't shine is just part of doing business (and government) these days.
Who wins if they get what they are pushing for? Definitely not the consumer and certainly not the artists. I don't even think the groups themselves will ultimately gain in money, prestige, or power if they get their way. I also don't think this will have any effect at all on the 30-second song clip pirates.
More proof that either these groups do NOT have the artists' best interests at heart or they are amazingly out of date, stupid, and incompetent at their advocacy. Either way, if i were a member of one of these groups i'd be pissed.
I find that part interesting too. They wrote "Internet Protocol" when i think they meant "Intellectual Property." Probably just a typo where someone saw "IP" and replaced it with the full phrasing, but it shows a lack of fluency in both areas.
This might have more significance if we hadn't just lived through ten years of warrantless wiretapping and were not currently getting virtual strip searches and government-funded molestations at the airports. The fourth amendment has been all-but-dead for a while now.
I understand who this is and how they got this power. I just don't like Congress leaving itself loopholes like that. Assign the duty to a regulatory agency under control of the executive branch. That's how things are supposed to work.
We are literally willing to let people die in order to maintain the artificial scarcity that produces year after year of record profits for drug companies? What the fuck kind of monsters would do this?
The mainstream media denounces Wikileaks for two reasons:
1) They want to suck up to those in power so that they will continue to be granted easy access to the scraps of information they are given.
2) Wikileaks shows the people just how bad the mainstream media are at their job. For whatever reasons (laziness, corporate control, greed, corruption, partisanship - pick your favorite mix) today's media and what passes for "journalism" on it are exceptionally bad at telling the truth and holding people and governments accountable for their actions.
On the post: Did The Record Labels Kill The Golden Goose In Music Video Games?
I don't think so...
On the post: The White House Wants Advice On What's Blocking American Innovation
My input...
"Ironically, the biggest obstacles to innovation are exactly the structures that are intended to promote innovation. We need real patent and copyright reform.
There are too many stupid patents that add to the cost of innovation by forcing companies to pay extortionate licensing fees on patents that should never have been granted in the first place.
These patents are often owned by corporations whose only business function is to collect those fees and sue those who don't pay them. The productive companies that own some these patents only use them to stifle competition because they know it's cheaper to litigate and lobby than to innovate and compete. How could a small business hope to survive in that kind of setting?
Copyright has a similar problem. The big media companies spend money lobbying for stronger protections and spend more money suing potential customers than wooing them. They are fighting to maintain their failing business model through legislation and litigation instead of innovation. They're more focused on "protecting" existing content than they are on creating new content.
Look at Disney. This is a company that made its fortune by taking ideas from the public domain and commercializing them, yet every time any of their work gets close to entering the public domain, they lobby for (and get) another copyright extension.
I believe that everyone should benefit from the fruits of their labors, but i don't think that long after they are dead their great grandkids should still be entitled to the fruit of that same labor.
We should be granting fewer patents, not more. We should be decreasing copyright protections, not increasing them."
On the post: If Artists Don't Value Copyright On Their Works, Why Do We Force It On Them?
Re:
From www.copyright.gov:
"Even though copyright protection is secured automatically upon creation, there are certain definite advantages to copyright registration. Registration establishes a public record of the copyright claim. Before an infringement suit may be filed in court, registration is necessary for works of U.S. origin. If made before or within five years of publication, registration establishes prima facie evidence in court of the validity of the copyright and of the facts stated in the certificate. If registration is made within three months after publication of the work or prior to an infringement of the work, statutory damages and attorney's fees will be available to the copyright owner in court actions. Also, registration allows the owner of the copyright to record the registration with the U.S. Customs Service for protection against importation of infringing copies."
On the post: If Artists Don't Value Copyright On Their Works, Why Do We Force It On Them?
Re: Copyrights
On a tangent...
I'm not convinced that copyrights are an inherent right. At the most fundamental level it would be something like you whistling a tune and then telling the people that hear you not to try whistling it themselves because that's your tune. In a pre-industrial society, people would think you were a bossy buffoon and the very idea of it would be ridiculous. If a right doesn't hold up in that sort of situation, i don't think it can be an inherent right.
Hell, i'm not even sure that copyrights and patents are a good idea in any but the most limited forms. I see more time and money being wasted on arguments about who owns what imaginary property than i see benefits from uncontested control of it.
On the post: Mass P2P Porn Lawyer Tries Filing A Class Action Lawsuit... In Reverse
Porn lawyers with porn names...
On the post: J&J Sued For Trying To Avoid Recall By Sending People To Buy Up Defective Motrin
Re:
On the post: The Companies Who Support Censoring The Internet
wrong impression
It's cheaper to buy favorable legislation and to litigate your competitors out of business than to actually compete.
On the post: If Your Business Model Is Based On Hoping Your Customers Never Do Math, You're In Trouble
Wow...
On the post: Intel Claims DRM'd Chip Is Not DRM, It's Just Copy Protection
The explanation is not really about DRM...
For the record, they aren't kowtowing - they're trying to put in a piece of DRM that will be so attractive to the MAFIAAs that their competitors get frozen out of the market for any device that plays audio or video, which these days, is pretty much everything. Bending the customers over and stuffing their rights where the sun don't shine is just part of doing business (and government) these days.
On the post: Canadian Music Collection Society Demanding Payment For 30 Second Song Previews
Who wins?
More proof that either these groups do NOT have the artists' best interests at heart or they are amazingly out of date, stupid, and incompetent at their advocacy. Either way, if i were a member of one of these groups i'd be pissed.
On the post: Harvard Newspaper Staff Apparently In Need Of A Lesson On Copyright Basics
Re: Contradiction
On the post: Congressional Research Service Analysts Complaining About Blocked Access To Wikileaks
Govt response to wikileaks in 3 easy steps...
Step 2: point gun at foot
Step 3: pull trigger
On the post: Appeals Court Says Emails Are Protected By The 4th Amendment
This might have more significance if...
On the post: Movie Studios Purposely Crippling Rental DVDs In Misguided Effort To Get People To Buy
Fuck 'Em
On the post: FBI 'Thwarts' Another Of Its Own Bomb Plots
Re: Going a little to far
On the post: Jailbreaking Phones Lands A Guy In... Jail!
Re: Re: I'm torn...
On the post: So WikiLeaks Is Evil For Releasing Documents... But DynCorp Gets A Pass For Pimping Young Boys To Afghan Cops?
Aren't they always telling us...
On the post: NIH Won't Let Others Supply Life Saving Drug Even Though Genzyme Can't Make Enough
Re: Read the actual decision first...
They promised to try real hard. Fuck that.
On the post: NIH Won't Let Others Supply Life Saving Drug Even Though Genzyme Can't Make Enough
So...what the fuck?
On the post: Why The Wikileaks Document Release Is Key To A Functioning Democracy
Re: Re: You can't have it both ways
1) They want to suck up to those in power so that they will continue to be granted easy access to the scraps of information they are given.
2) Wikileaks shows the people just how bad the mainstream media are at their job. For whatever reasons (laziness, corporate control, greed, corruption, partisanship - pick your favorite mix) today's media and what passes for "journalism" on it are exceptionally bad at telling the truth and holding people and governments accountable for their actions.
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