That Jawad on Web article about Edison is bullshit
I don't know much about patent attorneys, but you really shouldn't quote that article about Edison, because it is deeply flawed.
Allow me to demonstrate:
"Thomas Edison did not invent the record player. Rather, he invented the phonograph, which was intended for making recordings."
Yes the phonograph was intended for making recordings. But so were all of the other early recorders: the Tainter Graphophone and the Grammophone.
"The phonograph was first marketed as a dictation machine and only later modified for use in musical devices."
False. It was modified continually throughout it's lifespan, but there was no major difference between the early models used for dictation and the slightly different models used for music playback.
"The ability to record sounds had been invented much before Edison’s phonograph."
Egregiously false. There were no known methods of recording audible sound before Edison. The closest thing was the Phonoautograph, which made a visual recording of sound.
"The gramophone, invented by Emile Berliner, was actually the first record player as we know it."
The Gramophone did indeed look more like a later record player than the Phonograph. But it came a full ten years after the Phonograph.
All of which is irrelevant to the fact that Edison invented the first known method of recording audible sound. Which was not an innovation, but an honest to goodness real live invention the changed the world.
I realize that you have an idiological antipathy to the idea of an invention that really was earth shatteringly important, but you shouldn't let this antipathy lead you into believing junk history like this.
You know, I realize that this site is about business models and making money in the 21st century and so on, but it does get a little depressing the way everyone continues to discuss music solely in terms of 'the industry'.
The revolution isn't that now anyone can try to make money off of their music. The revolution is that money has more or less been taken out of the picture. You can make beautiful sounding recordings with equipment that costs less than 1000 dollars, and distribute them throughout the world for the cost of the bandwidth needed to upload them to LastFM or Soundclick.
If no one makes a penny off of any of it, the revolution has still taken place. Musical culture has, at long last, broken free of the 'cruel and shallow money trench, where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.'
Eventually, the people who want to be 'stars' will just become an extension of the fashion industry, leaving those of us who are interested in music free to practice our art without having to worry about them.
"i just think it is the start of the next wave, few cases went to court, and pretty much all of those were wins for the copyright holders. pretty much sums it up, no?"
Yes, and the Viet Nam war was a smashing success for the US.
I mean, we didn't achieve our stated war aims or anything, but look at all of the land we destroyed!!
Privacy is a word that means radically different things in different contexts.
Most people care a great deal if others listen in when they are having sex or having an argument over personal matters. There are a handful of exhibitionists who wouldn't mind, but most people would go ballistic.
But data is different. Aside from financial matters like credit card numbers and PINs and so on, I doubt most people feel very private about the forms they fill out online. I certainly don't.
"As difficult as it may be for some to comprehend or accept, the Copyright Office with which Mr. Stepp is affiliated is a rare breed among the many arms of the federal government. It knows the law, it examines proposed laws and responds in a dispassionate manner to Congress, and is not the slightest bit reluctant to stand in front of the train when it believes that proposed laws are ill conceived."
I'll use whatever is available when doing research. In many cases, Google Books and the Internet Archive are the only options.
But hard copies of books are always preferable. You'd think it would be easier with ebooks, as the text can be searched and whatnot. But my experience has been otherwise.
Books have been around for a long time. The codex book format predates printing by a thousand years. There are good reasons why they are still in use, and will be for many years to come.
OK, a question for all of the people who believe in these inalienable rights that belong to all humans regardless of where they live or what civilization they are a part of:
From what do these rights arise?
All I have seen so far is an attempt to shame the people who say that these rights have no real a priori existence.
"What if the MP3s you downloaded were not simply CD rips automatically encoded by software, but painstakingly re-engineered by the record company for maximum sound fidelity in the MP3 format?"
If you ever find an example of this, let us know, would you?
You say this as if you were informing me of something I don't already know.
You people are missing my point.
You, and indeed, we, are the ones arguing against the trend. The trend is ever-expanding copyright law with ever more draconian punishments for infringement. If you want to win artists over to the struggle against this trend, 'Them's the breaks' is worse than useless.
It's like saying 'please join our cause and act against what you perceive to be your interests because if you don't I'll make fun of your unrealistic expectations', when the problem is that those unrealistic expectations are continually being written into new laws.
And finally, @Richard, who wrote:
"I have recently had fairly major surgery. That surgeon's skill is infinitely more important to me than any work of art, writing or music could ever be. However he does not demand lifetime rights over my bodily functions as a result. So I these "oh genius needs to be rewarded" whinges don't cut much ice with me right now."
I don't know if you are aware of this but surgeons get paid A LOT more than the vast majority of artists. And many people do indeed spend the rest of their lives paying for the advantages conferred upon them by the skill of surgeons and anesthesiologists and pharmaceutical researchers.
And no one cares about lifetime rights over your bodily functions, as they couldn't possibly earn them any money, so why you are bringing them up is beyond me.
I really should acknowledge that all of what follows is sort of a side issue. I, personally, agree that US copyright law should revert to being how it was in the past, and I think we should go back at least as far back as 1975, if not earlier.
That being said.....
"Palpably false."
Well, sure. But you were talking about artists as if they were employees with unrealistic expectations. I was trying to point out that their situation is very different, so of course they have different expectations.
"Artists are frequently commissioned to produce work. Much great work has been created this way - for example the Sistine ceiling. Over historical time most artists who have made a living from their art have been paid this way."
Yes, here the popularity contest takes place before the commission. The commissioned artist is better off than, say, someone signing a standard publishing contract, because the money is less speculative. But whether or not you get the commission is still a fortuitous matter.
"What you are talking about is "speculative artists" who produce what THEY want to produce in the hope that someone else will want it too."
Well, as a matter of interest, it should be mentioned that according to some people, many of them actual artists, there is really just one artistic path that you can follow if you want to achieve your potential as an artist. If this is true, then ALL artists are essentially just 'producing what THEY want to produce in the hope that someone else will want it too', only it's not what they 'want' to produce, but what they have to produce.
I realize this sounds flaky, but let's face it, artists are a flaky lot. I mean look up Jaco Pastorius or Eric Satie, Dylan Thomas or Robert Graves, Antoni Gaudí or Marcel Proust, H.P. Lovecraft or Charley Parker: flakes, the lot of them. If you really are trying to 'promote the progress' of art, and not just trying to get your entertainment artifacts at the lowest possible price (which is not at all the same thing), then the sad fact is that you might have to make allowances for this flakiness. Especially if what you are trying to do is convince these flakes that the laws that provide them with a source of income are bad laws. I mean, this is a hard sell. Getting all tough-love about it has a really low chance of working.
'you shouldn't be penalized because you don't have a prolific career.'
"Try that one out in any other walk of life and see how far you get.
Try telling any ordinary employer that he should pay you a weeks wages for one days work on the basis that "you shouldn't be penalized because you don't have a prolific career" and I think you wouldn't last long..."
Artists are NEVER paid for the 'work' they do.
No one cares about how many hours were involved or how hard they worked. They don't get a bonus for giving that extra 10 percent. They don't get a commendation for staying late after punching out. In fact, it would be hard to find a single standard workplace virtue that artists are rewarded for demonstrating.
No, whether or how much an artist is rewarded depends entirely upon the completely fortuitous condition of whether or not people think that artist is 'cool'.
Now tell me, if a prospective employer were to say to applicants: "We might pay you handsomely, but the amount you get paid depends completely on how well you do in a daily office popularity contest", don't you imagine that any applicant who had a choice in the matter would tell them 'no thank you'?
But imagine that you were one of those unlucky applicants who didn't have a choice in the matter, a poor slob who was just good at this one thing and nothing else, and you had to accept this shitty bargain or live in your parent's basement for the rest of your life.
Now if you were such a person, don't you think it would occur to you to insist that if you were lucky enough to win that office popularity contest occasionally, that you get a decent sized amount of money on the occasion?
"The claim that ethics only matter when there are "winners and losers" is just dead wrong. A lie is wrong, whether there are losers or not: this is just a platform for rationalization."
What makes a lie wrong? What universally accepted moral principle or authority is being invoked here?
"It's a really good point -- but I have to admit I can see both sides to this argument. It's the very fact that, even when we do amazing things, we can still see the faults with it and that drives us to keep improving and to keep innovating. It's the very "culture of improvement" that drives growth and innovation. So, while I can agree that it's sometimes a shame how much we feel a sense of entitlement towards making things better when those amazing things didn't even exist just a few years ago, it's hard not to sympathize with the feeling of wanting things to be even better."
I'm afraid I have trouble sympathizing with always 'wanting things to be even better'. It might drive innovation, though I doubt it is essential to it, but whether it does or not, it's pretty depressing.
I don't see the issue just as a 'sense of entitlement'. There is also a deep, apparently inborn desire to complain about absolutely everything.
An acquaintance of mine was recently asked for money by a panhandler. She had no cash, but she was carrying a tray of cookies that she had made for an office party, and asked the guy if he wanted a couple of these instead. His haughty response: "Are the fresh?"
"But, the point stands. A lot of other people passed away on that day as well, and most of their families will not be receiving royalty cheques for work that person did while alive. That Chilton happened to stand in front of a camera for a living instead of working in an office or factory should not give him special status."
I realize you don't give a shit, but Alex Chilton didn't stand in front of a camera for a living, he wrote songs.
And the 'special status' you are talking about wasn't chosen by him, but rather forced upon him by the industry that he had to work in. I assure you he would rather have been payed an hourly wage, but that option isn't really open to songwriters.
And you never did answer my question: Should that 70's show have been allowed to use his song without paying for it? And if so, why?
"Erm, that's kind of the argument. Artists and labels are often "playing the lottery" by taking/paying advances in the hope that there's a greater sum of money on the horizon. Most major label artists never recoup their advance, let alone make a profit afterwards. It's their own pay structure that causes the risks, because they hope to hit the jackpot later on."
Historically, musicians had no other choice. It's not like the labels offered them various options. If you wanted to record in a decent studio and get a decent distribution deal, you accepted the ridiculous wheel of fortune payment system and hoped for the best.
"In no other field than entertainment does this kind of payment happen. Everybody else gets paid for the work they do, when they do it. Why not musicians?"
In the past, again, they had no choice. Today they do. Hooray.
"So? I know of sportsmen who had similar careers, but they don't get paid unless they play. I know programmers who didn't go where they should have done, but still have to code for a living. I know of middle managers for corporations who managed to torpedo their own careers, but they still have to turn up at the office. Why can Chilton just sit on his laurels and collect money for work he did a few years ago when others have to earn their pay days?"
I think that many people have no concept whatever of the extreme fortuitousness of being a musician. It's not like there is anything like a reasonable work to reward ratio. You can be the hardest working band in the world: touring incessantly, writing constantly, sleeping in the back of a van and doing everything in your power to promote yourself and economize, and still end up with nothing at the end of it.
It's not a simple matter of 'if you are good, they will come'. Look at e.g. the Melvins: a seminal band to the point of being almost legendary; they influenced, worked with, and recorded with everyone from Tool to Nirvana, and yet when they came to my city 6 years back about 10 people showed up to see them. The next time they came through town, you couldn't find a place to stand.
This sort of thing is true no matter who you are and no matter how hard you work. It's a total crap shoot.
Finally, let me get this straight, are you saying that Alex Chilton shouldn't have gotten paid when That 70s Show used his song as their theme song? Should he just have been happy about the free advertising? Even though hardly anyone knew that he wrote the song?
"Royalty owners (of which there are many, many, more than lottery winners) are like stock holders, property owners, company owners, or any other kind of asset holders who (sometimes) make money with minimal to no additional work after the initial expenditure."
I tend to agree in theory.
One thing that sometimes gets neglected in these discussions is the fact that musical art is not consumed in a rational or predictable fashion. Whether or not someone has a hit or becomes a celebrity of any sort is infinitely fortuitous. A short look at the career of Alex Chilton is all that is needed to confirm this. And I have to say that I really don't think that it was a bad thing that 'That 70's Show' had to pay him royalties every time they aired. It was a small recompense for a disastrously mismanaged career.
The problem is that the way musical royalties are administered is needlessly complex, involving a handful of agencies that have very little competition, and therefore very little inducement to improve the quality of their services. They're like the IRS: huge, clunky machines that no one quite understands or knows how to fix.
All of which has nothing to do with the ridiculous notion of Engineers and Producers getting royalties along with the musicians. Engineers and producers are paid for their work, paid out out of the advance given to the artist, which the latter has to pay back to the label out of 'their share' of the proceeds from unit sales. They make their money whether the artists 'recoup' or not. They take no financial risks.
I think that Albini's statements actually stem from his rather militant beliefs concerning the roll of a recording engineer. He believes their (his) job is a service position: to record a band sounding as much as possible like what they sound like on stage: no more, no less.
As an engineer, he is the absolute opposite of self-important jerks like Rick Rubin.
I also find it interesting that he is perfectly willing to embrace the internet, even though he doesn't like digital audio as a recording medium.
On the post: Patent Lawyer Insists Open Source Stifles Innovation
That Jawad on Web article about Edison is bullshit
Allow me to demonstrate:
"Thomas Edison did not invent the record player. Rather, he invented the phonograph, which was intended for making recordings."
Yes the phonograph was intended for making recordings. But so were all of the other early recorders: the Tainter Graphophone and the Grammophone.
"The phonograph was first marketed as a dictation machine and only later modified for use in musical devices."
False. It was modified continually throughout it's lifespan, but there was no major difference between the early models used for dictation and the slightly different models used for music playback.
"The ability to record sounds had been invented much before Edison’s phonograph."
Egregiously false. There were no known methods of recording audible sound before Edison. The closest thing was the Phonoautograph, which made a visual recording of sound.
"The gramophone, invented by Emile Berliner, was actually the first record player as we know it."
The Gramophone did indeed look more like a later record player than the Phonograph. But it came a full ten years after the Phonograph.
All of which is irrelevant to the fact that Edison invented the first known method of recording audible sound. Which was not an innovation, but an honest to goodness real live invention the changed the world.
I realize that you have an idiological antipathy to the idea of an invention that really was earth shatteringly important, but you shouldn't let this antipathy lead you into believing junk history like this.
On the post: Music In Real Time: Keep Up Or Get Left Behind
The revolution isn't that now anyone can try to make money off of their music. The revolution is that money has more or less been taken out of the picture. You can make beautiful sounding recordings with equipment that costs less than 1000 dollars, and distribute them throughout the world for the cost of the bandwidth needed to upload them to LastFM or Soundclick.
If no one makes a penny off of any of it, the revolution has still taken place. Musical culture has, at long last, broken free of the 'cruel and shallow money trench, where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.'
Eventually, the people who want to be 'stars' will just become an extension of the fashion industry, leaving those of us who are interested in music free to practice our art without having to worry about them.
On the post: Defining Success: Were The RIAA's Lawsuits A Success Or Not?
Yes, and the Viet Nam war was a smashing success for the US.
I mean, we didn't achieve our stated war aims or anything, but look at all of the land we destroyed!!
On the post: How Much Do Most People Really Care About Privacy?
Most people care a great deal if others listen in when they are having sex or having an argument over personal matters. There are a handful of exhibitionists who wouldn't mind, but most people would go ballistic.
But data is different. Aside from financial matters like credit card numbers and PINs and so on, I doubt most people feel very private about the forms they fill out online. I certainly don't.
On the post: Joe Konrath Explains Why Authors Shouldn't Fear File Sharing
That last post should have read:
"Last time I looked the professionals who save lives were surgeons - and they seem to be quite happy to work for a one off fee."
Perhaps because their one off fees are artificially high due to the AMA's own protectionist racket.
On the post: Joe Konrath Explains Why Authors Shouldn't Fear File Sharing
Perhaps because their one off fees are artificially high due to the AMA's own protectionist racket.
On the post: US Copyright Official Pretends That Concerns About ACTA Are Unfounded; Mocks Legitimate Concerns
Pinky promise?
On the post: Students Overwhelmingly Don't Like Kindle As A Textbook Replacement Option
But hard copies of books are always preferable. You'd think it would be easier with ebooks, as the text can be searched and whatnot. But my experience has been otherwise.
Books have been around for a long time. The codex book format predates printing by a thousand years. There are good reasons why they are still in use, and will be for many years to come.
On the post: Hurt Locker Producer Says That Criticizing His Plan To Sue Fans Means You're A Moron And A Thief
I've consumed an entire bowl of popcorn while reading it, without even realizing how long it was taking.
Classic stuff.
On the post: Victim Of Domestic Abuse Sues GPS Company For Helping Her Assailant
From what do these rights arise?
All I have seen so far is an attempt to shame the people who say that these rights have no real a priori existence.
On the post: Mitch Wagner Asks About Ethics Of Downloading Media You Already Paid For
If you ever find an example of this, let us know, would you?
On the post: The Economist On Why Copyright Needs To Return To Its Roots
You say this as if you were informing me of something I don't already know.
You people are missing my point.
You, and indeed, we, are the ones arguing against the trend. The trend is ever-expanding copyright law with ever more draconian punishments for infringement. If you want to win artists over to the struggle against this trend, 'Them's the breaks' is worse than useless.
It's like saying 'please join our cause and act against what you perceive to be your interests because if you don't I'll make fun of your unrealistic expectations', when the problem is that those unrealistic expectations are continually being written into new laws.
And finally, @Richard, who wrote:
"I have recently had fairly major surgery. That surgeon's skill is infinitely more important to me than any work of art, writing or music could ever be. However he does not demand lifetime rights over my bodily functions as a result. So I these "oh genius needs to be rewarded" whinges don't cut much ice with me right now."
I don't know if you are aware of this but surgeons get paid A LOT more than the vast majority of artists. And many people do indeed spend the rest of their lives paying for the advantages conferred upon them by the skill of surgeons and anesthesiologists and pharmaceutical researchers.
And no one cares about lifetime rights over your bodily functions, as they couldn't possibly earn them any money, so why you are bringing them up is beyond me.
On the post: The Economist On Why Copyright Needs To Return To Its Roots
That being said.....
"Palpably false."
Well, sure. But you were talking about artists as if they were employees with unrealistic expectations. I was trying to point out that their situation is very different, so of course they have different expectations.
"Artists are frequently commissioned to produce work. Much great work has been created this way - for example the Sistine ceiling. Over historical time most artists who have made a living from their art have been paid this way."
Yes, here the popularity contest takes place before the commission. The commissioned artist is better off than, say, someone signing a standard publishing contract, because the money is less speculative. But whether or not you get the commission is still a fortuitous matter.
"What you are talking about is "speculative artists" who produce what THEY want to produce in the hope that someone else will want it too."
Well, as a matter of interest, it should be mentioned that according to some people, many of them actual artists, there is really just one artistic path that you can follow if you want to achieve your potential as an artist. If this is true, then ALL artists are essentially just 'producing what THEY want to produce in the hope that someone else will want it too', only it's not what they 'want' to produce, but what they have to produce.
I realize this sounds flaky, but let's face it, artists are a flaky lot. I mean look up Jaco Pastorius or Eric Satie, Dylan Thomas or Robert Graves, Antoni Gaudí or Marcel Proust, H.P. Lovecraft or Charley Parker: flakes, the lot of them. If you really are trying to 'promote the progress' of art, and not just trying to get your entertainment artifacts at the lowest possible price (which is not at all the same thing), then the sad fact is that you might have to make allowances for this flakiness. Especially if what you are trying to do is convince these flakes that the laws that provide them with a source of income are bad laws. I mean, this is a hard sell. Getting all tough-love about it has a really low chance of working.
On the post: The Economist On Why Copyright Needs To Return To Its Roots
"Try that one out in any other walk of life and see how far you get.
Try telling any ordinary employer that he should pay you a weeks wages for one days work on the basis that "you shouldn't be penalized because you don't have a prolific career" and I think you wouldn't last long..."
Artists are NEVER paid for the 'work' they do.
No one cares about how many hours were involved or how hard they worked. They don't get a bonus for giving that extra 10 percent. They don't get a commendation for staying late after punching out. In fact, it would be hard to find a single standard workplace virtue that artists are rewarded for demonstrating.
No, whether or how much an artist is rewarded depends entirely upon the completely fortuitous condition of whether or not people think that artist is 'cool'.
Now tell me, if a prospective employer were to say to applicants: "We might pay you handsomely, but the amount you get paid depends completely on how well you do in a daily office popularity contest", don't you imagine that any applicant who had a choice in the matter would tell them 'no thank you'?
But imagine that you were one of those unlucky applicants who didn't have a choice in the matter, a poor slob who was just good at this one thing and nothing else, and you had to accept this shitty bargain or live in your parent's basement for the rest of your life.
Now if you were such a person, don't you think it would occur to you to insist that if you were lucky enough to win that office popularity contest occasionally, that you get a decent sized amount of money on the occasion?
On the post: Misguided Outrage At NY Times' Ethicist Over Ethics Of Downloading A Book
What makes a lie wrong? What universally accepted moral principle or authority is being invoked here?
Do tell.
On the post: Mobile Phones Suck... But Isn't It Amazing That They Exist?
I'm afraid I have trouble sympathizing with always 'wanting things to be even better'. It might drive innovation, though I doubt it is essential to it, but whether it does or not, it's pretty depressing.
I don't see the issue just as a 'sense of entitlement'. There is also a deep, apparently inborn desire to complain about absolutely everything.
An acquaintance of mine was recently asked for money by a panhandler. She had no cash, but she was carrying a tray of cookies that she had made for an office party, and asked the guy if he wanted a couple of these instead. His haughty response: "Are the fresh?"
On the post: Steve Albini Explains Why Royalties Don't Make Sense
I realize you don't give a shit, but Alex Chilton didn't stand in front of a camera for a living, he wrote songs.
And the 'special status' you are talking about wasn't chosen by him, but rather forced upon him by the industry that he had to work in. I assure you he would rather have been payed an hourly wage, but that option isn't really open to songwriters.
And you never did answer my question: Should that 70's show have been allowed to use his song without paying for it? And if so, why?
On the post: Steve Albini Explains Why Royalties Don't Make Sense
Historically, musicians had no other choice. It's not like the labels offered them various options. If you wanted to record in a decent studio and get a decent distribution deal, you accepted the ridiculous wheel of fortune payment system and hoped for the best.
"In no other field than entertainment does this kind of payment happen. Everybody else gets paid for the work they do, when they do it. Why not musicians?"
In the past, again, they had no choice. Today they do. Hooray.
"So? I know of sportsmen who had similar careers, but they don't get paid unless they play. I know programmers who didn't go where they should have done, but still have to code for a living. I know of middle managers for corporations who managed to torpedo their own careers, but they still have to turn up at the office. Why can Chilton just sit on his laurels and collect money for work he did a few years ago when others have to earn their pay days?"
I think that many people have no concept whatever of the extreme fortuitousness of being a musician. It's not like there is anything like a reasonable work to reward ratio. You can be the hardest working band in the world: touring incessantly, writing constantly, sleeping in the back of a van and doing everything in your power to promote yourself and economize, and still end up with nothing at the end of it.
It's not a simple matter of 'if you are good, they will come'. Look at e.g. the Melvins: a seminal band to the point of being almost legendary; they influenced, worked with, and recorded with everyone from Tool to Nirvana, and yet when they came to my city 6 years back about 10 people showed up to see them. The next time they came through town, you couldn't find a place to stand.
This sort of thing is true no matter who you are and no matter how hard you work. It's a total crap shoot.
Finally, let me get this straight, are you saying that Alex Chilton shouldn't have gotten paid when That 70s Show used his song as their theme song? Should he just have been happy about the free advertising? Even though hardly anyone knew that he wrote the song?
Really?
On the post: Steve Albini Explains Why Royalties Don't Make Sense
I tend to agree in theory.
One thing that sometimes gets neglected in these discussions is the fact that musical art is not consumed in a rational or predictable fashion. Whether or not someone has a hit or becomes a celebrity of any sort is infinitely fortuitous. A short look at the career of Alex Chilton is all that is needed to confirm this. And I have to say that I really don't think that it was a bad thing that 'That 70's Show' had to pay him royalties every time they aired. It was a small recompense for a disastrously mismanaged career.
The problem is that the way musical royalties are administered is needlessly complex, involving a handful of agencies that have very little competition, and therefore very little inducement to improve the quality of their services. They're like the IRS: huge, clunky machines that no one quite understands or knows how to fix.
All of which has nothing to do with the ridiculous notion of Engineers and Producers getting royalties along with the musicians. Engineers and producers are paid for their work, paid out out of the advance given to the artist, which the latter has to pay back to the label out of 'their share' of the proceeds from unit sales. They make their money whether the artists 'recoup' or not. They take no financial risks.
On the post: Steve Albini Explains Why Royalties Don't Make Sense
As an engineer, he is the absolute opposite of self-important jerks like Rick Rubin.
I also find it interesting that he is perfectly willing to embrace the internet, even though he doesn't like digital audio as a recording medium.
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