But until we are in a place where - without lots of technical skills - you can describe a scene, an environment, a character to a computer and it is generated and you can use it to tell a story, until we are able to completely freely adjust such scenes and plots as a gamemaster in a matter of seconds if our players surprise us (as a your group *always* will sooner rahter than later, no matter how good your preparation), we will remain unable to match the tabletop storytelling with modern media.
I think you are perhaps looking through too narrow a lens of what creativity and storymaking looks like -- because this is very much happening in games. One of the best examples is the ascendancy of Minecraft -- a game where the core engagement is one of creation and construction, not one of reflexes or action. Now I'm not saying people are creating deeply moving literary stories on the fly in Minecraft -- they are mostly just building castles and cities and crazy structures. But the fact that this is the CORE of that game, and that game has been massively adopted by kids and that will change the future of the industry, is just one of many signs pointing towards the expansion of video games into whole new realms.
There are also things like the huge visual novel trend in Japan that is starting to take hold in the west -- mechanically simple games that are easy to create, often using a large amount of stock imagery and settings put together in original ways with all original dialogue (much like a D&D campaign), being churned out (at varying levels of quality, to be sure) by amateurs and professionals alike, with nearly as many people making them as playing them.
There's stuff like the new, excellent adventure games from Telltale (most notably the Walking Dead game), which are exploring the role of the player in storytelling. I think any D&D fan would agree that in a good campaign, everything doesn't just play out linearly the way a DM envisioned -- it branches and changes according to the player choices, so the player has a huge impact on the story. The degree to which that happens in a game like Walking Dead is still limited, but Telltale is aggressively and creatively working on ways to grow that type of meaningful player-as-storyteller interaction (their new The Wolf Among Us series, which just concluded its first season, has introduced substantial new choice mechanics, and there are two more major properties -- Borderlands and Game of Thrones -- being adapted into Telltale games with big resources behind them as we speak).
Lots of interesting storymaking happens in the metagame too. Head over to the Taleworlds Mount & Blade forums, or the Paradox Crusader Kings forums, or the reddits for either of those games. You'll find players who have written extensive tails of their exploits, taking the basic mechanics of play and weaving them into a detailed narrative with all sorts of colour and creativity. Crusader Kings may not let me instantly describe and create any scene I can imagine -- but as I play a dynasty game, guiding a line of rulers through four centuries of European history, forging marriage alliances and staging assassinations and declaring holy wars, I'm writing a story in my head (not to mention being spurred to learn a whole lot about some of the greatest true stories from history).
Obviously I can't debate that storytelling within a computer game is "more limited" than simply "anything you can imagine" the way it ostensibly is with a tabletop game. Though, I played D&D for a while at one point, always as DM, and it is by no means simple or easy -- there's a huge amount of mechanical knowledge and technical skill that goes into creating and running a D&D campaign. If you want to invent your own world or even your own town, you need to spend a lot of time doing calculations and writing down numbers and preparing contingencies and making notes for yourself, all based on information spread throughout multiple long (and expensive) books. And to today's younger pure-digital generation, the barrier of learning some basic LUA scripting, or similar, to expand and mod one of the many games that make modding easy is probably much lower than the barrier of starting to pore through book indices and plot out monster stats on scraps of graph paper.
So while videogame storytelling is still certainly more limited on the surface, I think you might find that what's happening there is more exciting and much further along than you expect.
I still think the Discworld MUD -- itself a fan-built extension of a fictional world from Terry Pratchett's novels -- is probably my favourite game of all time.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Right out of the liberal playbook
Still just digging yourself deeper in the hole, I'm afraid.
Shall I quote Limbaugh and other pundits saying how "you can't discuss things with democrats because they are not rational"? Or shall I quote you right now saying you can't talk to the left because of their "false cries" meant to "distract from the issues"?
Those are personal attacks too. Excellent analogues to people who try to derail discussions with accusations of racism or sexism. Meanwhile, at the same time, irrationality and distraction tactics are potentially real issues -- just as racism and sexism are potentially real issues. It's all a matter of perspective, and you are engaging in exactly the behaviour you are trying to condemn, in the same breath as condemning it. I'm glad you showed up really, because nothing could have demonstrated my point better.
No criticism can be made of Obama w/o someone saying you are a racist.
Um, really? I've criticized Obama plenty of times and never been called racist. We've also written articles critical of Obama here on Techdirt and I can't recall a single comment accusing us of racism. So either you're imagining that, or you're only talking to really stupid people.
Read that final linked lawsuit from his college days. I wish he were merely stupid and that all it did was burn, but it seems more like he's hateful with the heat of a thousand suns.
The right, for the most part, talks issues but the left resorts to personal attacks.
Hahahaha. No. You're doing exactly what we're talking about here -- choosing a "team" and seeing everything through that lens.
Both sides talk about issues, and both sides make personal attacks. But when you have a particular stance on an issue, especially one based on core values, then it's easy to see any discussion of that issue as a personal attack.
When you say Obama is guilty of discrimination, you believe you are talking about issues, whereas democrats are likely to see it as a personal attack. Conversely, when people criticized Romney for being a wealthy elitist, they considered that a discussion of a real issue, whereas republicans saw it as a personal attack.
Neither side wants to actually address what the other side is saying, so they seek out ways to simply invalidate it with one fell swoop, so they can walk away feeling good about themselves. "Oh that's a personal attack, I don't have to respond." It's not a "tactic" of either side -- it's a psychological weakness and a flaw of everyone involved. It's precisely the kind of partisan pitfall the original comment was talking about, and you marched yourself right into it.
So I just realized that for some reason I took historical dates in June, not July... I think some part of me doesn't want to admit that summer is moving so fast.
My bad! I'm sure some interesting things happened this week in July too, anyway...
You can say you "don't have a side", but looking at just one page of your comment history reveals you are: pro-NSA-data-collection, anti-Aereo, pro-strong-copyright, anti-Mayday-PAC and pro-UK-web-filter.
Seems to me that we are on the opposite side of a great number of issues.
To clarify, the "other Beacon" was never actually a tech company -- it was Facebook Beacon, which was just their internal name for the tracking program.
One minute, you say that this is simple and obvious: Aereo was infringement, plain as day, anyone could see it, and it was thus automatically illegal, the court "saw right through it", and shut it down swiftly and easily.
The next minute, you're saying the ruling is over-broad, that in fact this was a very specific and nuanced kind of infringement that has to be carefully and narrowly identified, and that sloppily targeting it as the court has done could cause significant collateral damage by impacting services that are not in fact infringing.
Or how about this? On the original Aereo post, you commented: "Aereo is violating copyright laws the same way that torrent sites violate the copyright laws. There is NO difference."
On this post, you commented "What Aereo did is worse than what bit torrent websites are doing ... they may revise the ruling so that it only impacts the type of service like Aereo"
So... which is it? Is there "NO difference" between Aereo and torrents, or does Aereo require a newly revised ruling that "only impacts the type of service" it provides, a service which is "worse" than torrents?
All your comments have this theme that it's all so simple, it's all so obvious, and there's no difference between Aereo and torrents.
You do realize that this is a nuanced issue that, even though it was decided to be infringement, had to be elevated to the highest court in the land before it was settled, right?
You do realize that one in three supreme court judges disagreed with the decision, and all nine supreme court judges would laugh you out of the room if you presented your simplistic analysis that it's, like, super-obvious, and it "doesn't matter what argument anyone comes up with".
So... go ahead and be happy that the final result is one you approve of -- but don't act like your facile understanding of the issues had anything at all to do with it.
Thanks for this comment. You raise a lot of good points -- however, we really aren't trying to say this is "idiot music rightsholders", just that there are a lot of holes in their position. Also, I'll grant that I'd love to see YouTube do more and even sacrifice more to give indies a leg-up -- it would be a great community move and win them a lot of goodwill from me and others -- but I just don't see them as having any obligation too, and it seems like something nobody would expect from most businesses, yet people are acting as though it's somehow a duty.
To expand on some of your points (not saying this directly refutes every one of them, but just pointing out other aspects)...
1 - If approx. 90% of independent labels have signed the contract, as is being reported, then would a group negotiation be likely to make much of a difference? And is there any reason to hold up those 90% for the other 10%?
2 - Well, that kinda sucks, but "non-negotiable" only holds as much weight as people let it. Again, 90% of labels agreed -- if they hadn't, negotiation would be back in the picture.
3 - I'm all for YouTube putting its foot down over global rights, and I suspect a lot of internet users feel the same. The artificial distribution borders ensconced in old, arcane licenses and contracts are obsolete, and between the difficulty of getting out of them and ongoing attempts to maintain them, they are severely holding up the progress of digital media distribution. I'm sorry for the labels that find themselves in a difficult spot because of this, but if they want to use a global website on the global internet with a global audience, they are going to have to sort their own mess out. Neither fans nor YouTube are particularly interested in hearing about their "patchwork of partners and distributors" -- sounds like that was a foolish situation to get themselves into in the first place.
4 - I have mixed feelings about the use of exclusivity online, and whether it's ultimately a true scarcity for an artist to sell, or an essentially artificial scarcity that shouldn't exist (I think it can sometimes be both depending on the circumstance). So I'll leave this point alone for now. It'll be interesting to see (if we ever do) exactly what the differences in terms are for the majors and indies.
5 - Similarly to the global rights issue, this is something that I understand YouTube putting its foot down on -- though it's perhaps not as solidly defensible in all situations. But the fact is that comprehensive availability should have been the norm on the internet for a long time now -- in fact it has been, in the world of piracy -- and labels' weak attempts to parcel out their content in limited ways is only holding them back and frustrating users. The internet is capable of making all music constantly available to every corner of the globe, and YouTube is demanding that people get on board with that vision. While I imagine there are some legitimate reasons for withholding certain content that may give me pause, overall I find it hard to condemn YouTube for trying to force this issue. As I said once before: the culture machine has been built, and pirates shouldn't be the only ones using it properly.
6 - So much has now been tossed back and forth about the blocking issue that I'm not sure there's much more to be said until we actually find out the true details. However, I'd make a decent wager that the labels will in no way be "fully blocked" from YouTube, and that the very worst case scenario would be them needing to re-upload everything and start from scratch as normal youtube users -- though I admit that if YouTube does make them do that, it would be a bit of a dick move.
7 - Again, I think we'll have to wait until we find out exactly what's happening regarding ContentID, because I've heard several different versions. However I will point out that "individual takedowns" is all the law requires of YouTube -- ContentID and the ability to monetize user videos are things that YouTube created for rightsholders.
8 - Well, finally, one more that I'll withhold strong judgement on until there are more details... But it will likely always be very hard to say with any certainty whether the advances were "in exchange for" a low per-stream rate -- and when you look at it without that speculation, it seems pretty fair: of course labels can get bigger advances, because it's a safer bet that they will bring in the necessary number of views to offset them. And it's not as if getting matching advances would really change anything for the indies: they would just be stuck paying them off from per-stream royalties for longer. That's assuming these are sensible advances -- if they are of the "you'll never recoup so we own you forever" variety, then that's a cruelly ironic twist from YouTube, and while I can't really support it, I also can't say I don't grin just a little bit at the majors getting a taste of their own medicine.
it would shift even more power to the administrative infrastructure since those would end up being the people who are in it for the long haul
This. Same reason that the elegant old Greek system of sortition -- where any and all citizen can be called upon to govern for a short period of time, as a civil service much like jury duty -- almost certainly wouldn't function today. The actual work of government is too huge and complex now, and requires dedicated lifelong staffers who learn its ins and outs -- and that's already a bit scary, because anybody who has worked in an even-slightly complex/large organization knows how much power lies in the gaps between "official" decisions.
[This is a bit of a tangent, but I wanted to talk about the whole profit/love thing a bit more]
Personally, I don't subscribe to the idea that musicians should only make music for the love, or that making money is a bad ambition.
However, doing something for the love and doing something to get paid are different in many ways, and while you can certainly do both, there will have to be compromises — because your love and the market's love won't always be identical, and your love might not extend to all the tasks surrounding music-making that enable success, so sometime's you'll be forced to choose between curbing your love in favour of money or sacrificing some money in favour of love. You'll also probably get some times where the two line up perfectly.
The problem is when creators act as though pursuing their love should result in material success automatically. I mean, sure, that's basically what everyone wishes for in this world, and it's a good slogan for a perfectly society — but it's hardly the norm, and it's unfair for creators to act as though the internet has somehow taken this away from them and only them, when in fact neither they nor anyone else ever really had it as a baseline.
For example:
- Many artists object to the suggestion that success now means being an entrepreneur, promoter and businessman in addition to a good musician. They want to focus on their art. That's a fine demand if you are doing it solely for the love, but an unfair one if you want to compete in the market for money.
- Many artists mourn the death of cultural things like record stores, album art, underground imports and back-room bootlegs — a perfectly fine thing to do if you're only in it for the love. But if you want money, then you have to accept that the market forces which killed these things made a lot of sense, and the market benefits outweigh the market downsides, especially for music consumers, and you have to reconcile that with your nostalgia.
- Indie labels such as those in this dispute highlight their importance as places where new, different artists get exposure and support, and insist that they are an important artistic and cultural counterbalance to the major labels, and should be valued just as highly. I agree, from the perspective of a music lover. But if these labels and their artists are also seeking to make money, then they can hardly complain that by the stark reality of dollars and cents, their bargaining position in the market is weaker than that of the majors, and they often won't be able to get the same deals.
Re: YouTube is just implementing user 'protection'
Can you explain a version of contract renegotiations that you would consider acceptable?
I mean, I just don't get it. YouTube PAYS these people -- and when contract renewal time came up, it sought to renegotiate, just as anyone paying for a license in any contract might seek to do. In the course of negotiations, it reached a new deal with a bunch of labels -- but small minority didn't agree to it. So what exactly is YouTube's choice but to end its partnership with them? And how exactly was YouTube supposed to go about this so it's not "extortion"? Or should YouTube, as a business, never be permitted to renegotiate contracts or grow its business model, simply because it's popular and some people will always dislike the change?
It was a major strategic blunder by Google/Youtube to, suddenly and without recourse, take away something that so many people had grown accustomed to.
I don't think it was sudden and without recourse. These negotiations have been going on for some time, presumably since long before the current partner agreements are set to expire. For those with whom a new agreement has not been reached, the current contract expiry marks the end of the partnership.
I understand what you're getting at with those examples, but the test with the *customer base* really hasn't happened yet. That will happen when videos actually come down, and even then it's likely to be so few that it won't make a big difference. Either way, despite the (fairly mild, in internet terms) firestorm over this, I highly doubt that users have been turning away from YouTube en masse over the past couple days a la New Coke.
The labels, meanwhile, are not so much YouTube's customers as they are its business partners. But if you want to put it in seller-customer terms then... well, it's pretty clear isn't it? YouTube is the customer. YouTube is the one paying the labels for the rights to host their content. The money flows one-way. YouTube, as the customer, has made an offer: "here's what we're willing to buy, and here's the price we're willing to pay". About 90% of the labels agreed to sell them what they want at that price; about 10% didn't. The labels are the ones refusing YouTube, not the other way around.
On the post: An Actual D&D Effect: Inspiring Kids To Become Writers
Re:
I think you are perhaps looking through too narrow a lens of what creativity and storymaking looks like -- because this is very much happening in games. One of the best examples is the ascendancy of Minecraft -- a game where the core engagement is one of creation and construction, not one of reflexes or action. Now I'm not saying people are creating deeply moving literary stories on the fly in Minecraft -- they are mostly just building castles and cities and crazy structures. But the fact that this is the CORE of that game, and that game has been massively adopted by kids and that will change the future of the industry, is just one of many signs pointing towards the expansion of video games into whole new realms.
This is an excellent video on that specific example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K8G6BFg1Wk
There are also things like the huge visual novel trend in Japan that is starting to take hold in the west -- mechanically simple games that are easy to create, often using a large amount of stock imagery and settings put together in original ways with all original dialogue (much like a D&D campaign), being churned out (at varying levels of quality, to be sure) by amateurs and professionals alike, with nearly as many people making them as playing them.
There's stuff like the new, excellent adventure games from Telltale (most notably the Walking Dead game), which are exploring the role of the player in storytelling. I think any D&D fan would agree that in a good campaign, everything doesn't just play out linearly the way a DM envisioned -- it branches and changes according to the player choices, so the player has a huge impact on the story. The degree to which that happens in a game like Walking Dead is still limited, but Telltale is aggressively and creatively working on ways to grow that type of meaningful player-as-storyteller interaction (their new The Wolf Among Us series, which just concluded its first season, has introduced substantial new choice mechanics, and there are two more major properties -- Borderlands and Game of Thrones -- being adapted into Telltale games with big resources behind them as we speak).
Lots of interesting storymaking happens in the metagame too. Head over to the Taleworlds Mount & Blade forums, or the Paradox Crusader Kings forums, or the reddits for either of those games. You'll find players who have written extensive tails of their exploits, taking the basic mechanics of play and weaving them into a detailed narrative with all sorts of colour and creativity. Crusader Kings may not let me instantly describe and create any scene I can imagine -- but as I play a dynasty game, guiding a line of rulers through four centuries of European history, forging marriage alliances and staging assassinations and declaring holy wars, I'm writing a story in my head (not to mention being spurred to learn a whole lot about some of the greatest true stories from history).
Obviously I can't debate that storytelling within a computer game is "more limited" than simply "anything you can imagine" the way it ostensibly is with a tabletop game. Though, I played D&D for a while at one point, always as DM, and it is by no means simple or easy -- there's a huge amount of mechanical knowledge and technical skill that goes into creating and running a D&D campaign. If you want to invent your own world or even your own town, you need to spend a lot of time doing calculations and writing down numbers and preparing contingencies and making notes for yourself, all based on information spread throughout multiple long (and expensive) books. And to today's younger pure-digital generation, the barrier of learning some basic LUA scripting, or similar, to expand and mod one of the many games that make modding easy is probably much lower than the barrier of starting to pore through book indices and plot out monster stats on scraps of graph paper.
So while videogame storytelling is still certainly more limited on the surface, I think you might find that what's happening there is more exciting and much further along than you expect.
On the post: An Actual D&D Effect: Inspiring Kids To Become Writers
Re:
On the post: Years Later, Google Finally Dumps Its Ill-Advised Real Names Policy: Drops All Restrictions On Names
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Years Later, Google Finally Dumps Its Ill-Advised Real Names Policy: Drops All Restrictions On Names
Re:
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Right out of the liberal playbook
Shall I quote Limbaugh and other pundits saying how "you can't discuss things with democrats because they are not rational"? Or shall I quote you right now saying you can't talk to the left because of their "false cries" meant to "distract from the issues"?
Those are personal attacks too. Excellent analogues to people who try to derail discussions with accusations of racism or sexism. Meanwhile, at the same time, irrationality and distraction tactics are potentially real issues -- just as racism and sexism are potentially real issues. It's all a matter of perspective, and you are engaging in exactly the behaviour you are trying to condemn, in the same breath as condemning it. I'm glad you showed up really, because nothing could have demonstrated my point better.
No criticism can be made of Obama w/o someone saying you are a racist.
Um, really? I've criticized Obama plenty of times and never been called racist. We've also written articles critical of Obama here on Techdirt and I can't recall a single comment accusing us of racism. So either you're imagining that, or you're only talking to really stupid people.
On the post: Techdirt Sued For $10 Million In A Frivolous Lawsuit For Posting An Earlier Frivolous Lawsuit
Re:
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Re: Re: Right out of the liberal playbook
Hahahaha. No. You're doing exactly what we're talking about here -- choosing a "team" and seeing everything through that lens.
Both sides talk about issues, and both sides make personal attacks. But when you have a particular stance on an issue, especially one based on core values, then it's easy to see any discussion of that issue as a personal attack.
When you say Obama is guilty of discrimination, you believe you are talking about issues, whereas democrats are likely to see it as a personal attack. Conversely, when people criticized Romney for being a wealthy elitist, they considered that a discussion of a real issue, whereas republicans saw it as a personal attack.
Neither side wants to actually address what the other side is saying, so they seek out ways to simply invalidate it with one fell swoop, so they can walk away feeling good about themselves. "Oh that's a personal attack, I don't have to respond." It's not a "tactic" of either side -- it's a psychological weakness and a flaw of everyone involved. It's precisely the kind of partisan pitfall the original comment was talking about, and you marched yourself right into it.
On the post: This Week In Techdirt History
My bad! I'm sure some interesting things happened this week in July too, anyway...
On the post: Want In-Depth Coverage Of Net Neutrality? Crowdfund Our Reporting - And Double Your Impact
Re:
On the post: Want In-Depth Coverage Of Net Neutrality? Crowdfund Our Reporting - And Double Your Impact
Re: Re: Re: classic
Seems to me that we are on the opposite side of a great number of issues.
On the post: Want In-Depth Coverage Of Net Neutrality? Crowdfund Our Reporting - And Double Your Impact
Re: Trademark
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re:
One minute, you say that this is simple and obvious: Aereo was infringement, plain as day, anyone could see it, and it was thus automatically illegal, the court "saw right through it", and shut it down swiftly and easily.
The next minute, you're saying the ruling is over-broad, that in fact this was a very specific and nuanced kind of infringement that has to be carefully and narrowly identified, and that sloppily targeting it as the court has done could cause significant collateral damage by impacting services that are not in fact infringing.
Or how about this? On the original Aereo post, you commented: "Aereo is violating copyright laws the same way that torrent sites violate the copyright laws. There is NO difference."
On this post, you commented "What Aereo did is worse than what bit torrent websites are doing ... they may revise the ruling so that it only impacts the type of service like Aereo"
So... which is it? Is there "NO difference" between Aereo and torrents, or does Aereo require a newly revised ruling that "only impacts the type of service" it provides, a service which is "worse" than torrents?
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re:
NO, THEY DID NOT.
Did they acquire a license or compensate copyright owners or broadcasters for the content they re-broadcasted?
NO THEY DID NOT.
Did the law clearly require them to do either of those things?
NO IT DID NOT.
In fact, it took the country's highest judges to decide if they were breaking the law or not, and even they couldn't agree on it.
Every time you act like this is simple, you make yourself look more of a fool.
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re:
You do realize that this is a nuanced issue that, even though it was decided to be infringement, had to be elevated to the highest court in the land before it was settled, right?
You do realize that one in three supreme court judges disagreed with the decision, and all nine supreme court judges would laugh you out of the room if you presented your simplistic analysis that it's, like, super-obvious, and it "doesn't matter what argument anyone comes up with".
So... go ahead and be happy that the final result is one you approve of -- but don't act like your facile understanding of the issues had anything at all to do with it.
On the post: That Story You've Read About YouTube 'Blocking' Indie Artists... Yeah, That's Not Accurate
Re: There's more to it than this
To expand on some of your points (not saying this directly refutes every one of them, but just pointing out other aspects)...
1 - If approx. 90% of independent labels have signed the contract, as is being reported, then would a group negotiation be likely to make much of a difference? And is there any reason to hold up those 90% for the other 10%?
2 - Well, that kinda sucks, but "non-negotiable" only holds as much weight as people let it. Again, 90% of labels agreed -- if they hadn't, negotiation would be back in the picture.
3 - I'm all for YouTube putting its foot down over global rights, and I suspect a lot of internet users feel the same. The artificial distribution borders ensconced in old, arcane licenses and contracts are obsolete, and between the difficulty of getting out of them and ongoing attempts to maintain them, they are severely holding up the progress of digital media distribution. I'm sorry for the labels that find themselves in a difficult spot because of this, but if they want to use a global website on the global internet with a global audience, they are going to have to sort their own mess out. Neither fans nor YouTube are particularly interested in hearing about their "patchwork of partners and distributors" -- sounds like that was a foolish situation to get themselves into in the first place.
4 - I have mixed feelings about the use of exclusivity online, and whether it's ultimately a true scarcity for an artist to sell, or an essentially artificial scarcity that shouldn't exist (I think it can sometimes be both depending on the circumstance). So I'll leave this point alone for now. It'll be interesting to see (if we ever do) exactly what the differences in terms are for the majors and indies.
5 - Similarly to the global rights issue, this is something that I understand YouTube putting its foot down on -- though it's perhaps not as solidly defensible in all situations. But the fact is that comprehensive availability should have been the norm on the internet for a long time now -- in fact it has been, in the world of piracy -- and labels' weak attempts to parcel out their content in limited ways is only holding them back and frustrating users. The internet is capable of making all music constantly available to every corner of the globe, and YouTube is demanding that people get on board with that vision. While I imagine there are some legitimate reasons for withholding certain content that may give me pause, overall I find it hard to condemn YouTube for trying to force this issue. As I said once before: the culture machine has been built, and pirates shouldn't be the only ones using it properly.
6 - So much has now been tossed back and forth about the blocking issue that I'm not sure there's much more to be said until we actually find out the true details. However, I'd make a decent wager that the labels will in no way be "fully blocked" from YouTube, and that the very worst case scenario would be them needing to re-upload everything and start from scratch as normal youtube users -- though I admit that if YouTube does make them do that, it would be a bit of a dick move.
7 - Again, I think we'll have to wait until we find out exactly what's happening regarding ContentID, because I've heard several different versions. However I will point out that "individual takedowns" is all the law requires of YouTube -- ContentID and the ability to monetize user videos are things that YouTube created for rightsholders.
8 - Well, finally, one more that I'll withhold strong judgement on until there are more details... But it will likely always be very hard to say with any certainty whether the advances were "in exchange for" a low per-stream rate -- and when you look at it without that speculation, it seems pretty fair: of course labels can get bigger advances, because it's a safer bet that they will bring in the necessary number of views to offset them. And it's not as if getting matching advances would really change anything for the indies: they would just be stuck paying them off from per-stream royalties for longer. That's assuming these are sensible advances -- if they are of the "you'll never recoup so we own you forever" variety, then that's a cruelly ironic twist from YouTube, and while I can't really support it, I also can't say I don't grin just a little bit at the majors getting a taste of their own medicine.
On the post: Awesome Stuff: Crowdfunding To Get Money Out Of Politics... Now With Steve Wozniak!
Re: Re: Re: I'm not really liking this
This. Same reason that the elegant old Greek system of sortition -- where any and all citizen can be called upon to govern for a short period of time, as a civil service much like jury duty -- almost certainly wouldn't function today. The actual work of government is too huge and complex now, and requires dedicated lifelong staffers who learn its ins and outs -- and that's already a bit scary, because anybody who has worked in an even-slightly complex/large organization knows how much power lies in the gaps between "official" decisions.
On the post: That Story You've Read About YouTube 'Blocking' Indie Artists... Yeah, That's Not Accurate
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: That Story
Personally, I don't subscribe to the idea that musicians should only make music for the love, or that making money is a bad ambition.
However, doing something for the love and doing something to get paid are different in many ways, and while you can certainly do both, there will have to be compromises — because your love and the market's love won't always be identical, and your love might not extend to all the tasks surrounding music-making that enable success, so sometime's you'll be forced to choose between curbing your love in favour of money or sacrificing some money in favour of love. You'll also probably get some times where the two line up perfectly.
The problem is when creators act as though pursuing their love should result in material success automatically. I mean, sure, that's basically what everyone wishes for in this world, and it's a good slogan for a perfectly society — but it's hardly the norm, and it's unfair for creators to act as though the internet has somehow taken this away from them and only them, when in fact neither they nor anyone else ever really had it as a baseline.
For example:
- Many artists object to the suggestion that success now means being an entrepreneur, promoter and businessman in addition to a good musician. They want to focus on their art. That's a fine demand if you are doing it solely for the love, but an unfair one if you want to compete in the market for money.
- Many artists mourn the death of cultural things like record stores, album art, underground imports and back-room bootlegs — a perfectly fine thing to do if you're only in it for the love. But if you want money, then you have to accept that the market forces which killed these things made a lot of sense, and the market benefits outweigh the market downsides, especially for music consumers, and you have to reconcile that with your nostalgia.
- Indie labels such as those in this dispute highlight their importance as places where new, different artists get exposure and support, and insist that they are an important artistic and cultural counterbalance to the major labels, and should be valued just as highly. I agree, from the perspective of a music lover. But if these labels and their artists are also seeking to make money, then they can hardly complain that by the stark reality of dollars and cents, their bargaining position in the market is weaker than that of the majors, and they often won't be able to get the same deals.
On the post: That Story You've Read About YouTube 'Blocking' Indie Artists... Yeah, That's Not Accurate
Re: YouTube is just implementing user 'protection'
I mean, I just don't get it. YouTube PAYS these people -- and when contract renewal time came up, it sought to renegotiate, just as anyone paying for a license in any contract might seek to do. In the course of negotiations, it reached a new deal with a bunch of labels -- but small minority didn't agree to it. So what exactly is YouTube's choice but to end its partnership with them? And how exactly was YouTube supposed to go about this so it's not "extortion"? Or should YouTube, as a business, never be permitted to renegotiate contracts or grow its business model, simply because it's popular and some people will always dislike the change?
On the post: That Story You've Read About YouTube 'Blocking' Indie Artists... Yeah, That's Not Accurate
Re: The "New Coke"
I don't think it was sudden and without recourse. These negotiations have been going on for some time, presumably since long before the current partner agreements are set to expire. For those with whom a new agreement has not been reached, the current contract expiry marks the end of the partnership.
I understand what you're getting at with those examples, but the test with the *customer base* really hasn't happened yet. That will happen when videos actually come down, and even then it's likely to be so few that it won't make a big difference. Either way, despite the (fairly mild, in internet terms) firestorm over this, I highly doubt that users have been turning away from YouTube en masse over the past couple days a la New Coke.
The labels, meanwhile, are not so much YouTube's customers as they are its business partners. But if you want to put it in seller-customer terms then... well, it's pretty clear isn't it? YouTube is the customer. YouTube is the one paying the labels for the rights to host their content. The money flows one-way. YouTube, as the customer, has made an offer: "here's what we're willing to buy, and here's the price we're willing to pay". About 90% of the labels agreed to sell them what they want at that price; about 10% didn't. The labels are the ones refusing YouTube, not the other way around.
On the post: That Story You've Read About YouTube 'Blocking' Indie Artists... Yeah, That's Not Accurate
Re: Re: Welcome to the "fair market rate" for music.
Since YouTube -- an entirely separate company that is the one running and operating this service -- decided to expand in that direction.
You seem to think that YouTube has some duty to never, ever change so long as 10% (or less?) of its partners don't want it to. Why?
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