My reading is a bit different than yours in that I read it as he is telling the RIAA that his client won't pay for their application for intervener status, outlining his opposition to it, in law, and then saying "go for it, just buck up".
His legal reasoning seems good as it does reflect legal thinking, and annoyance with, wasting thier time being asked to do things they're not about to do or are not compelled in law to do. One of them is a grant of intervener status. The annoyance is spread through the English speaking world and we all share the same basis of English civil (written) and common (unwritten precedent) law as more and more people clog up the courts with silly things, like contesting something that's well and truly lost. So he's simply saying, go for it but here's the price for that. You pay the costs of that request and subsequent costs on your own.
Other than that he's also telling them that if needs must he is willing to carry this through pro bono and is more than willing to take it as far as it will go that way, so the RIAA is going to be on the hook for those costs, too, if it comes to that and good luck to them cause they're going to need it and more.
It's a confident letter from a confident lawyer and, I suspect, a confident client.
At this stage he doesn't have to demonstrate anything. He's simply making his case opposing their request for intervener status at the appeal stage and nothing more.
Under the circumstances I'd want my lawyer to demand costs, too. Particularly as he spends the previous paragraphs making the argument he'll present that they ought not to have it and then proposing a settlement by which is client won't oppose that. That doesn't mean someone else won't oppose it or that the judge(s) hearing the case won't grant it for all the reasons he outlines previously. It just means "fill you boots but you bear the cost of a lost cause not us" letter. Under the circumstances not all that uncommon, really.
Given that the case is highly visible once it gets to the appellate court, should it be allowed, he's also better off releasing it now than letting the RIAA control the timing and messaging around the letter. This way he controls the messaging.
Even if it does make Average Joe want to tear his hair out, something he seems to do a lot instead of studying law or whatever it is he's studying.
Silliness and petulance it may be but he's also warning, in my reading, the RIAA's lawyers that, if necessary, he's going to continue on pro bono right to the end because he believes he has a valid ruling and that the appeal will fail on MERIT not on any letter he writes. A letter which, even should the interveners gain standing isn't evidence of fact in the case to be heard.
Warning shots across the bow are common enough in legal practices and this letter wouldn't have been written or made public unless it fell well within the bounds of both the case,laws and precedent in this situation.
It's also far better that he make it public rather than the RIAA because he gets to control the message this way in the public realm.
Some laws are dangerous to law abiding citizens as well and those are what are called bad laws, tyranny, dictatorship, censorship or whatever....take your pick or add one of your own.
Does that sound rather like what the 13 colonies rebelled against and wrote the US Constitution to, in part, protect and defend their new republic from just that kind of junk?
Ad hominems like "All laws are dangerous to criminals" are tossed about when the person in favour of bad law has no leg left to stand on. Welcome to that club.
One debbil in the details here. If you sue in the most IP loving court in the US, West Texas Federal District court and win then good on you.
If I live in said lax country or have had someone there take care of the registration for me, register it in their name and so on then the court ruling means all of nothing to me. There's no paper trail to me. (Or bit trail, if you like.)
The United States can't enforce a court order outside the USA than it can make another country "obey" its laws regarding copyright and all that good stuff. So unless that lax country suddenly "gets religion" about the USA's notions about copyrights the operation in the lax country is perfectly safe. Which is exactly where SOPA/IP Protect fall apart.
But for now the discussion is theoretical except that what's happening now will continue to happen regardless.
It goes round and round in circles, just like the discussion here, and the only loser is the United States which has just passed a censorship law, something I suspect most Americans would find abhorrent. And a law which has every capacity to cripple it's world leading tech industry.
An industry which creates more wealth and jobs on several orders of magnitude taken to the power of 100 than the entertainment industry does and is more reliant on copyright than the entertainment industry is or can ever be. The latter being the one funding this economic and social bit of lunacy.
Re: "you should be able to buy the DVD of the movie you just watched"
Would you please, please go read some history, instead of ad hominem repeats of lies?
Copyright was not put in place to lock up content. Hell, the digital world wasn't even a distant nightmare when the Statue of Anne was passed in Westminster.
It was passed to
(a) make sure writers were paid. Well kinda, anyway.
(b) much more importantly, prevent publishers from outdoing each other to release the same work by the same superstar poet of the day all on the same day. (Well, that era's version of the same day.) There was a lot of that happening then. I suppose you'd call it piracy.
(c) to encourage education which is hardly the same thing as locking something up forever plus 16 days lest there be a single descendant of the author left alive at that time.
I get it, you're as intellectually dishonest as well as a liar. Now please follow through on your promise and take your drivel elsewhere. I'd suggest Grocklaw but they have real life lawyers there who'd cut you to ribbons in seconds.
To kinda back up PaulT here that it's hard to keep a pending release secret or even the release day ended years ago.
Ancient history in recording terms and in tech term but not all that long ago. If you have to put a date to it I'd pick 1 June, 1967.
The releases of Rubber Soul, 1965 and Revolver 1966 had pulled The Beatles away from the pop/rock they were so indisputably masters of and into more experimental and mature sounds and lyrics. People had waited on Beatles releases before but somehow it came to a fever pitch that began in the winter of 1966 and followed all the way up to the release of Sgt Pepper's in 1967. In Canada, kids talked about less and less as the summer approached, me among them, it eclipsed our country's centennial celebrations. Something was coming, something huge. The Beatles didn't need a publicity machine by that point -- they were one. All that was needed were the snide, off-putting and half grinned hints from Lennon & McCartney that this was going to be different and from producer George Martin how much of a challenge this album was becoming.
When you listen to Sgt Pepper today and realize that they did things back then with open reel tape tricks that are hard, even impossible to do with all the tech gadgetry we have now you can see what Martin was talking about.
The Beatles didn't need a publicity machine, they WERE a publicity machine. I remember talking with other kids as we waited for the papers we were to deliver to be delivered to us and outside of girls, a constant for 14 year old boys, the RECORD was all we talked about. Musically inclined or not. After Revolver and Rubber Soul what could these guys come up with next??
June 1st answered that question. AM Top 40 stations turned off the singles and played the album through the day and night. So did Vancouver's only FM station that played rock.
My parents told me I could never buy that record after hearing the drug related bunk about Lucy in The Sky (funny how no one caught on to the bridge in A Day In The Life) which I promptly defied them on by getting it the next day. Don't tell a musically inclined 14 year old with something of an income that he can't be part of the musical event of the second half of the 20th Century if not the musical event of the entire century!
I spent my hour with my guitar teacher dissecting Fixing A Hole and almost got the chart done for it the next morning and the next afternoon I spent, with some other singers, a couple or three hours figuring out how to play A Day In The Life on a pipe organ with the organist and choir master. Very impressive song on a 210 pipe organ.
My parents, seeing they weren't getting away where gave me the album back that afternoon. I still have it, scratched, pitted, beat up but I still have it. A ruined cover with beer and cat pee stains and coffee stains. It's had a decent life and it's and mine aren't over yet though we've both seen better days.
It's impossible for most artists these days to hide that they're in the studio. Even if the musicians wanted to their publicists won't hear of it. And some bands go in one and live there for a year or more. Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull and the like. Metallica too not that I like them much.
That may very well be the reason for labels now waiting nervously for release windows. That month other songs and records were released only to be buried by the avalanche called Sgt Pepper. The Stones Between the Buttons, released earlier that year was part of the road kill and they hurried out Their Satanic Majesties Request in response in the late fall of 1967, both only attaining gold record status. Sgt Pepper was 11x Platinum in the US and 8x Platinum in Canada. The Stones weren't sideswiped, they got buried.
Why Tuesday? I haven't a clue. Though I wondered why the Moody Blues wrote a stoner song called Tuesday afternoon which made no sense even my their stoner song standards. Could that be it?
By the way, if you want an object lesson in connecting with fans you could do far worse than looking at how Epstien, Lennon and McCartney handled it. It's why I say the Beatles were a publicity machine. They knew their fans (true fanatics with that band), related with them and stayed with them.
That together Lennon & McCartney's musical genius shone like the sun and apart they were more like a full moon on a dark night, doesn't take away from the fact that the band was something special. Incredibly special. (Though I didn't like them at the time so were and are The Rolling Stones.)Their Satanic Majesties Request
NAFTA doesn't preclude laws in the importing country that forbid counterfeits. No trade agreement does. It's easier when countries like Canada have similar laws on an issue (counterfeits) than where they may differ (as you infer with Mexico though NAFTA does insist on alignment on these issues).
Your fake NFL jersey is a physical object crossing a physical border the moment it does it's subject to the importing county's laws. If you try to resell the jersey once it's landed it's still a fake and subject to U.S. laws.
While I agree with you that IP is very important to the US economy.
That said, isn't it interesting that the industry with the most to gain, one would think, of attempts to lock down on and protect IP is the one that's most against it. The tech industry. The one industry that almost totally and completely exists on so called intellectual property. You'd think they'd be all for it on the surface, wouldn't you?
(The tech industry was none too thrilled by the notion of software patents when they were proposed, even Bill Gates was against it. And is still of two or more minds on the issue.)
The SOPA/ProtectIP issue is full of ironies, isn't it? But if the very industry with the most, allegedly, to lose and contributes the most to the US Economy, certainly more than the 0.1% of GDP the entertainment industry does is the most set against it then there is something very,very wrong with the bill(s).
Good Lord, do you have the slightest idea how Google's search algorithm and rankings work? Apparently not. You just don't like the results.
If you don't get a penny from lyrics sites then sic BMI or ASCAP on them, assuming you're a member. That's what you pay them for.
Nor do I care one bit about what ads are being displayed until someone actually clicks through on the ad they're just an annoyance whether the site is "legal" or "illegal" in your mind.
I already knew what results come up when I search for a song for whatever reason. I wouldn't download from any of the first couple of pages of returns that come back as mp3 download sites if my life depended on it because most of them are a serious security risk, particularly if you're on a Windows box.
And no, you're not a dick because you want to get paid something for your work. You're a dick because you appear to rather come here than create anything, go out and gig and actually work for your money like everyone else does, including uber successful artists. You've listened to "Money For Nothing" one too many times and totally missed that it's satire. That's what makes you a dick.
No, there is a difference between a collective and a communist, at least as defined by Lenin and Stalin. (And Marx but that's another story, Marx never got to run a country.)
Collectives existed long before the words communist, socialist, capitalist and all the rest of our secular economic religions appeared and will exist long after they're gone.
I get your drift, I don't necessarily agree with it but I see it. But do, please, have a doctor find out where your sense of humour went.
The major problem with your position isn't that you should be able to make some money off performances of your song through licensing, I don't see anyone disagreeing with that position. Or that you, as an artist, should be able to hold copyright on your music, charts, sheet music etc created from them. Or, even heaven forbid, that you should get a cut, however small, from sales on iTunes or Amazon of your songs. It's that when you drop into the world as the RIAA and music licensing outfits in order to get recorded or published you sign over that copyright to the label or music publisher that will get it out there. Unless you're an indie, of course, then you may pretty much do as you want. May, not will, notice but may.
I'm not sure I buy into what seems to be your claim that your music is being downloaded hundreds of thousands of times on P2P networks but if it's a general statement, once again, there's no definitive proof that you have lost so much as a single sale. I agree that the position makes some sense but the other side is that your music gets heard by more people and may increase sales in other areas and formats.
Search engines don't charge for searches, so if I search for "where do I find writeem's latest hit" I don't get charged for it, Google ads have to be clicked on for the advertiser to make a penny off my quick drive through; payment processors don't make a penny if I don't buy something, if the site owner doesn't charge for downloads somewhere, somehow, no money changes hands; I block display ads something a large number of people do so I don't even see those and they don't register on ad servers like doubleclick; so no money changes hands there either. So far no money has changed hands.
Include in that that a lot of P2P activity is perfectly legal, legit and moral and doesn't involve your song it involves distributing Linux releases, documents shared by users or businesses and organizations having nothing whatever to do with your song.
OK, now I've found your song, no money has changed hands and I download it, listen to it and find I like it but not enough to hold onto it taking up disk space but I do tell a couple of friends about it that I think will like it. Say my niece and her husband. I do a bit more research and find out where it can be paid for and tell them that too. IF I can find that information, not always the easiest thing to do which is often what sets people looking for other ways of finding it.
My niece likes it enough to buy your latest shiny disk from Amazon and there you go, a sale. Or she hates it and doesn't and no sale. But until the moment she clicks on buy at Amazon not a penny has changed hands, no one has made a penny off you as they search for the song.
Actually, if I click on an ad as I look the odds are it probably isn't for music at all but something I've been looking for elsewhere so no one has made a penny off you either. Say that dandy tiller attachment I've been looking for to go with my ECHO gear in the garden.
OK, so where's the theft? If I didn't go looking for your song in the first place my neice wouldn't know about it and she wouldn't have bought your CD, even if your song doesn't appeal to me it does to her and you made a sale.
There's no empirical evidence that you've lost anything when file sharing takes place. You can't lose or have a potential sale "stolen" if it doesn't take place to start with. It's still just potential, nothing, nada, zippidy do dah that you can legally place on a balance sheet. You can't steal a ZERO.
There is plenty of empirical evidence for the scenario I outlined above where I tell someone that may be interested in the song actually buys it (or the whole CD) after through word-of-mouth they find out about it.
Perhaps think of it as a form of comparison shopping, if you will. Most people don't buy music without sampling it in some form be it radio, a music channel, or whatever particularly after the bad old days of the 1990s where most CDs were jammed with junk hiding one good piece. As most people I know, of any age, don't listen to radio that programs simply music anymore that avenue is slowly closing down so what's left? (Song, annoying DJ telling the world in full throated volume about what they had for breakfast as if anyone cares, endless ads, back to the DJ holding a "contest", back to the ads and then music comes up under the ads and the whole cycle starts again until the talk radio show comes on in half an hour and music vanishes till the afternoon drive and even if I do like it I haven't a clue who you are cause current programming practices on radio seem to have ditched that part.)
The point is that people went to Napster and other P2P stuff to find what they couldn't find elsewhere through "normal" distribution channels. And they still do it for exactly that reason.
The bigger point is that most of these people want you to get paid, too. As I pointed out above during the search for you no one made so much as one red cent, the download didn't cost anything if the searcher has two brain cells to rub together, and now because person A heard it, liked it enough to tell persons B and C about it and one of those actually bought your CD. (Anyone serious about listening to music doesn't create libraries of the sonic sewerage known as .mp3 unless a device demands it.)
The flaw is in distribution by the gatekeepers, you know, the RIAA, MPAA of the world not in the musician (seller) and those who like the song (buyer). If I can't find you and be exposed to your music through those channels then I'm not gonna buy what you have to sell, am I? Nor am I about to pay outrageous prices for a CD by an artist I know next to nothing about.
Nor am I gonna demonize you. I will say you're uninformed, frightened to the point where you'll believe what your told by RIAA and MPAA propaganda that has no factual basis and you do want to make some kind of living from your music. I'd also say practice up and get out and perform live because that's the best advertising a musician can have. Learn to perform live, if you must but get out there and gig. Work hard for your money like the rest of us have to. Artists who hit the big time have had to do that, major label backing or not, they went out and gigged, gigged and gigged some more until they were sick of it, then gigged some more. Beatles, Stones, Zep, Metallica, Lady Gaga, Elvis, Sinatra, Crosby, Neil Young or just about anyone else whose name falls off the tongue or tip of the brain had to do that. So do you.
One of the reasons that the Statue of Anne was passed wasn't that writers weren't being paid, by and large they were. Not much, but they were being paid. It was that more than one publisher could release the same title and author at the same time leading to marketplace confusion. While the act did stipulate that it was also intended to make sure that only one publisher would have the right to copy the work at one time. Hence the name.
It also granted perpetual copyright to the Kings/Queens Printer to reproduce acts of parliament, regulations and laws.
I'm not sure when the concept of copyright was applied to the visual arts though I suspect it was probably around the time of the invention of photography when it became easier to duplicate and reproduce the image of a painting or sculpture.
Anyway, while movable type was new in Europe and did cause the arrival of copyright it had existed in China for a couple of centuries at least prior to Gutenberg and I'm unaware of any similar concept being introduced there.
The best selling author I mentioned above will get an advance from the publisher to do her research before she produces the manuscript which carries her over until the publication date of the novel.
Prior to copyright's existence authors did "make it big" in England. Notable examples were John Milton's epic poems Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Poets, remember, were the rock stars of the day.
And we can be sure that Shakespeare got paid, if only for the simple reason that he owned the Globe Theatre. He was a production company unto himself. Even at that he had the time and inclination to write the plays which changed the English language even more that the King James Version of the Bible did and all his sonnets.
I know these men were the exception, not the rule, but it does appear that writers could "stike it big" before copyright in the English speaking world.
The point I'm making here is that writers, and other creators created before copyright came into existence. Should it vanish they'll continue to create because of the powerful human urge to do just that. We have this unquenchable urge to tell stories to one another. Stories to instruct our children, to make sense of the world around us, to entertain ourselves and to draw us closer. We'll make music for its own sake simply because it's the art form that most deeply resonates with the human brain, mind and spirit, we;ll draw to represent our view of the world in ways photography cannot. To our core and soul we're creative beings. If you accept the Judeao-Christian creation story even as a narrative explanation then being made in God's image we could hardly be much else. God is creative, so we must be creative. God creates so, being in His image we create.
It'd be harder without copyright perhaps. Though I wonder sometimes when I read stories of authors in legal battles with publishers trying to make sure they were paid properly by their contract. Publishers are as good at mythic accounting as movie companies and record companies. Maybe better they've had more experience and time at it.
Nina is right. Most artists are poor. Few get to the lower middle class scale even fewer fully middle class. That wouldn't change in the absence of copyright. The Stephen Kings of the world would still be superstars. Margaret Lawrence would still be a literary star, barely able to pay for her middle class family life in Toronto. Margaret Atwood would still be a literary star and sales star living very comfortably, thank you very much. Brian Adams, of all people, would still afford seafront property in the most expensive neighborhood (West Vancouver) in the most expensive city in Canada and one of the most expensive in the world (Metro Vancouver).
The good copyright does has more to do with the reasons it was passed in the first place. To reduce confusion in the marketplace with two, three and four publishers and more simultaneously bringing out the same book. Maybe they all paid the author, maybe they didn't. It appears that they didn't because the Statute of Anne was passed. Copyright was also passed to preserve works for educational purposes not lock it away in walled gardens only the publishers could touch. On that score it's failing completely.
I guess you can tell I utterly reject that fewer people would want to produce art. Artists I know are driven to it. So I do reject that. Utterly and completely. They created for thousands of years without it and will go on creating no matter what happens going forward.
They do ok. Kinda like the rest of us. They do ok.
Re: "wholesale sales ... dropped from $594 million to $384 million"
Now this is cute. In a childish sort of way.
You constantly repeat that you don't like the current copyright regime. You insist that you don't like BigMedia and then come to the rescue of it's Aussie branch when it's income is down after endlessly repeating the mantra that "it's about the artists". Suddenly you like BigMedia.
I mentioned how you repeatedly tie yourself into emotional and logical Gordian knots a while back but you've just outdone yourself.
Tell me, do you stand for anything other than find new and inventive ways to troll? (Something else you're not particularly good at.)
Actually, you said "music has almost no value" and then go on to talk about royalties through air play and other ways that have little or nothing to do with music or songwriting while proving that you know less than nothing about how the system works.
Songwriters do get paid up front and then get royalties or residuals should sales (not air play) reach a certain level similar to how session musicians are hired and paid. And some songwriters and session players get paid far more than peanuts for their work. Places like Tin Pan Alley didn't exist waiting for air play royalties, you know. They got paid up front.
As for Lady Gaga she sells recordings, sells out concerts, endlessly promotes herself, attaches herself sincerely to issues such as bullying that affect her fans and more so let's be a bit less critical there. She works hard for the money and she gets what she earns.
Your assertion that the the system that existed prior to the Internet worked for artists doesn't hold a teaspoon full of water when you look at it closely. Particularly the
"front end" of the food chain, namely the bands that went in unpaid up front to record their music. George Harrison didn't write "Only A Northern Song" because he and the band were happy with how Northern Songs dealt with them, you know.
To that extent I'm not sure what you're saying piracy upset. Songwriters get paid, session players and background singers get paid while the recordings are done. Same as before. The artist whose name goes on the end product is in there on spec, same as before and if this evidence that musicians, the people whose name is on the end product are doing very well then the ones who may not be are the member companies of the RIAA and their ilk. Y'know the gatekeepers you don't like. At least claim to.
And performance royalties don't just come in from radio airplay, they come in from songs played in your local coffee shop and supermarket, your barber shop, streamers like last.fm, your dentist's office and a host of other places. Unless, of course, all those places are pirates too. But I suppose anything is possible even if not probable.
Though I'd rather not be getting my hair cut by a barber while he listens to a mix of death metal and punk. I have no idea what the hair cut would look like!!
If it's bizarre sex you're after, and that seems to be part of your motivation for coming here then let me suggest you break into your local aquarium at 3am and slip into a nice warm tank and have sex with an electric eel while listening to Rocking The Casaba. I'm sure you'll have a wonderful time.
And music does have intrinsic human value. Keep in your binary with me or against me mind that humans are the only animal that creates music for reasons other than communication. We create it for the intrinsic reasons. We love the stuff. No other reason needed. Just because we love it. We create music for its own sake.
Then why is indie music thriving like never before? Why is self publishing taking off?
As for indie film they don't get into theatres because the theatre chains are directly or indirectly controlled by the big studios so indie films are locked out of movie theatres not by pirates but by your competition which strikes me as an anti-trust issue not a piracy one. And most indie film makers I know of don't have union operations so those obligations aren't there except for actors guilds. And if you're silly enough to max your credit card out on your first indie film venture so you can make it look Hollywood I have no sympathy for you as a businessman.
I do know creators, authors, musicians etc who are quite happy how things are working out using the Internet to distribute their works and to get paid for them. Most of them seem to have discovered places like Facebook and MySpace where they can actually be found, listened to and make sales. Not best seller variety but you don't get that when you're starting out even if you were Elvis or The Beatles.
So people like me DO respect authors, musicians and yes, even indie filmakers work and, if we like it, will support them with cash if and when we can find them.
If I was running piracy site for profit I have to tell you the last files I'd want are indie films, self published books and indie music because no one will come to the site looking for stuff they haven't heard of. So your argument disintegrates right then and there.
Yeah, indie film making is hard. It's tough and sometimes expensive but it also means you have to do your own promotion. If you're not going to promote yourself, take the risk that a file or two may be shared and sell on line where you can be found then you have only yourself to blame for not making any money at it.
And no, I'm not going to buy your stuff if it's bad, amateurish or I just don't like the story you're trying to tell but then I'm under no obligation to. If I don't like it enough I'm not about to share it with anyone either. But if the dislike is mild I may make a quick clip, add that to an email and fire it off to a friend who may very well like it and that could very well generate a sale for you.
But dear AC, you have to take that risk first. It strikes me you think that simply being in the arts is something you should be automatically paid for. Doesn't work that way, never has and never will unless you're addicted to something like Canada Council Grants and you'll be lucky to put a tent over your head if that's what you rely on.
Yes you have rights under copyright and I do respect them. But do something with it and make your damned movie already. Hiding in the corner in fear and trepidation won't get the movie made and it won't change the fact that things just aren't as simple as they maybe used to be. There never was and never will be a guarantee that you will make a penny off it. The risk is what it always was. Stop making excuses.
So get this right, pirates really aren't interested in your movie. No one knows you, no one cares and until they do no one will pirate as much as a second of it.
So much for any potential theft. Someone may drop by and take off with that nice expensive video camera you just bought which IS theft but they're not pirates or film makers they just want to hock the camera to get a fix or something.
And get this right...people will create because humans are creative people. People created long before the Internet and the movable type press came along in Europe and long before copyright and patent laws existed and will continue to do so should they cease to exist tomorrow morning. (Thankfully they won't.)
On the post: RIAA Really Planning To Join Righthaven Fight
Re: The important paragraph
His legal reasoning seems good as it does reflect legal thinking, and annoyance with, wasting thier time being asked to do things they're not about to do or are not compelled in law to do. One of them is a grant of intervener status. The annoyance is spread through the English speaking world and we all share the same basis of English civil (written) and common (unwritten precedent) law as more and more people clog up the courts with silly things, like contesting something that's well and truly lost. So he's simply saying, go for it but here's the price for that. You pay the costs of that request and subsequent costs on your own.
Other than that he's also telling them that if needs must he is willing to carry this through pro bono and is more than willing to take it as far as it will go that way, so the RIAA is going to be on the hook for those costs, too, if it comes to that and good luck to them cause they're going to need it and more.
It's a confident letter from a confident lawyer and, I suspect, a confident client.
On the post: RIAA Really Planning To Join Righthaven Fight
Re: Not that I disagree with Randazza
Under the circumstances I'd want my lawyer to demand costs, too. Particularly as he spends the previous paragraphs making the argument he'll present that they ought not to have it and then proposing a settlement by which is client won't oppose that. That doesn't mean someone else won't oppose it or that the judge(s) hearing the case won't grant it for all the reasons he outlines previously. It just means "fill you boots but you bear the cost of a lost cause not us" letter. Under the circumstances not all that uncommon, really.
Given that the case is highly visible once it gets to the appellate court, should it be allowed, he's also better off releasing it now than letting the RIAA control the timing and messaging around the letter. This way he controls the messaging.
Even if it does make Average Joe want to tear his hair out, something he seems to do a lot instead of studying law or whatever it is he's studying.
On the post: RIAA Really Planning To Join Righthaven Fight
Re: Re: Re: Re: Not that I disagree with Randazza
Warning shots across the bow are common enough in legal practices and this letter wouldn't have been written or made public unless it fell well within the bounds of both the case,laws and precedent in this situation.
It's also far better that he make it public rather than the RIAA because he gets to control the message this way in the public realm.
On the post: Alternative To PIPA/SOPA Proposed; Points Out That This Is An International Trade Issue
Re: tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock
Does that sound rather like what the 13 colonies rebelled against and wrote the US Constitution to, in part, protect and defend their new republic from just that kind of junk?
Ad hominems like "All laws are dangerous to criminals" are tossed about when the person in favour of bad law has no leg left to stand on. Welcome to that club.
On the post: Alternative To PIPA/SOPA Proposed; Points Out That This Is An International Trade Issue
Re: Re:
If I live in said lax country or have had someone there take care of the registration for me, register it in their name and so on then the court ruling means all of nothing to me. There's no paper trail to me. (Or bit trail, if you like.)
The United States can't enforce a court order outside the USA than it can make another country "obey" its laws regarding copyright and all that good stuff. So unless that lax country suddenly "gets religion" about the USA's notions about copyrights the operation in the lax country is perfectly safe. Which is exactly where SOPA/IP Protect fall apart.
But for now the discussion is theoretical except that what's happening now will continue to happen regardless.
It goes round and round in circles, just like the discussion here, and the only loser is the United States which has just passed a censorship law, something I suspect most Americans would find abhorrent. And a law which has every capacity to cripple it's world leading tech industry.
An industry which creates more wealth and jobs on several orders of magnitude taken to the power of 100 than the entertainment industry does and is more reliant on copyright than the entertainment industry is or can ever be. The latter being the one funding this economic and social bit of lunacy.
On the post: Yet Another Study Shows That Hollywood's Own Bad Decisions Are Increasing The Amount Of Infringement
Re: "you should be able to buy the DVD of the movie you just watched"
Copyright was not put in place to lock up content. Hell, the digital world wasn't even a distant nightmare when the Statue of Anne was passed in Westminster.
It was passed to
(a) make sure writers were paid. Well kinda, anyway.
(b) much more importantly, prevent publishers from outdoing each other to release the same work by the same superstar poet of the day all on the same day. (Well, that era's version of the same day.) There was a lot of that happening then. I suppose you'd call it piracy.
(c) to encourage education which is hardly the same thing as locking something up forever plus 16 days lest there be a single descendant of the author left alive at that time.
I get it, you're as intellectually dishonest as well as a liar. Now please follow through on your promise and take your drivel elsewhere. I'd suggest Grocklaw but they have real life lawyers there who'd cut you to ribbons in seconds.
On the post: 'Pro-Artist' Gatekeepers Continue To Separate Artists From Their Fans
Re: Re:
Ancient history in recording terms and in tech term but not all that long ago. If you have to put a date to it I'd pick 1 June, 1967.
The releases of Rubber Soul, 1965 and Revolver 1966 had pulled The Beatles away from the pop/rock they were so indisputably masters of and into more experimental and mature sounds and lyrics. People had waited on Beatles releases before but somehow it came to a fever pitch that began in the winter of 1966 and followed all the way up to the release of Sgt Pepper's in 1967. In Canada, kids talked about less and less as the summer approached, me among them, it eclipsed our country's centennial celebrations. Something was coming, something huge. The Beatles didn't need a publicity machine by that point -- they were one. All that was needed were the snide, off-putting and half grinned hints from Lennon & McCartney that this was going to be different and from producer George Martin how much of a challenge this album was becoming.
When you listen to Sgt Pepper today and realize that they did things back then with open reel tape tricks that are hard, even impossible to do with all the tech gadgetry we have now you can see what Martin was talking about.
The Beatles didn't need a publicity machine, they WERE a publicity machine. I remember talking with other kids as we waited for the papers we were to deliver to be delivered to us and outside of girls, a constant for 14 year old boys, the RECORD was all we talked about. Musically inclined or not. After Revolver and Rubber Soul what could these guys come up with next??
June 1st answered that question. AM Top 40 stations turned off the singles and played the album through the day and night. So did Vancouver's only FM station that played rock.
My parents told me I could never buy that record after hearing the drug related bunk about Lucy in The Sky (funny how no one caught on to the bridge in A Day In The Life) which I promptly defied them on by getting it the next day. Don't tell a musically inclined 14 year old with something of an income that he can't be part of the musical event of the second half of the 20th Century if not the musical event of the entire century!
I spent my hour with my guitar teacher dissecting Fixing A Hole and almost got the chart done for it the next morning and the next afternoon I spent, with some other singers, a couple or three hours figuring out how to play A Day In The Life on a pipe organ with the organist and choir master. Very impressive song on a 210 pipe organ.
My parents, seeing they weren't getting away where gave me the album back that afternoon. I still have it, scratched, pitted, beat up but I still have it. A ruined cover with beer and cat pee stains and coffee stains. It's had a decent life and it's and mine aren't over yet though we've both seen better days.
It's impossible for most artists these days to hide that they're in the studio. Even if the musicians wanted to their publicists won't hear of it. And some bands go in one and live there for a year or more. Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull and the like. Metallica too not that I like them much.
That may very well be the reason for labels now waiting nervously for release windows. That month other songs and records were released only to be buried by the avalanche called Sgt Pepper. The Stones Between the Buttons, released earlier that year was part of the road kill and they hurried out Their Satanic Majesties Request in response in the late fall of 1967, both only attaining gold record status. Sgt Pepper was 11x Platinum in the US and 8x Platinum in Canada. The Stones weren't sideswiped, they got buried.
Why Tuesday? I haven't a clue. Though I wondered why the Moody Blues wrote a stoner song called Tuesday afternoon which made no sense even my their stoner song standards. Could that be it?
By the way, if you want an object lesson in connecting with fans you could do far worse than looking at how Epstien, Lennon and McCartney handled it. It's why I say the Beatles were a publicity machine. They knew their fans (true fanatics with that band), related with them and stayed with them.
That together Lennon & McCartney's musical genius shone like the sun and apart they were more like a full moon on a dark night, doesn't take away from the fact that the band was something special. Incredibly special. (Though I didn't like them at the time so were and are The Rolling Stones.)Their Satanic Majesties Request
On the post: Alternative To PIPA/SOPA Proposed; Points Out That This Is An International Trade Issue
Re: Re: Re:
Your fake NFL jersey is a physical object crossing a physical border the moment it does it's subject to the importing county's laws. If you try to resell the jersey once it's landed it's still a fake and subject to U.S. laws.
On the post: Alternative To PIPA/SOPA Proposed; Points Out That This Is An International Trade Issue
Re: Re: Pirates and counterfeiters don't respect trade laws.
On the post: Alternative To PIPA/SOPA Proposed; Points Out That This Is An International Trade Issue
Re: Re: Re: The International Trade Commission!!!
That said, isn't it interesting that the industry with the most to gain, one would think, of attempts to lock down on and protect IP is the one that's most against it. The tech industry. The one industry that almost totally and completely exists on so called intellectual property. You'd think they'd be all for it on the surface, wouldn't you?
(The tech industry was none too thrilled by the notion of software patents when they were proposed, even Bill Gates was against it. And is still of two or more minds on the issue.)
The SOPA/ProtectIP issue is full of ironies, isn't it? But if the very industry with the most, allegedly, to lose and contributes the most to the US Economy, certainly more than the 0.1% of GDP the entertainment industry does is the most set against it then there is something very,very wrong with the bill(s).
On the post: Why We Don't Need To 'Think Of The Artists': They're Doing Fine
Re: artists
If you don't get a penny from lyrics sites then sic BMI or ASCAP on them, assuming you're a member. That's what you pay them for.
Nor do I care one bit about what ads are being displayed until someone actually clicks through on the ad they're just an annoyance whether the site is "legal" or "illegal" in your mind.
I already knew what results come up when I search for a song for whatever reason. I wouldn't download from any of the first couple of pages of returns that come back as mp3 download sites if my life depended on it because most of them are a serious security risk, particularly if you're on a Windows box.
And no, you're not a dick because you want to get paid something for your work. You're a dick because you appear to rather come here than create anything, go out and gig and actually work for your money like everyone else does, including uber successful artists. You've listened to "Money For Nothing" one too many times and totally missed that it's satire. That's what makes you a dick.
On the post: Why We Don't Need To 'Think Of The Artists': They're Doing Fine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hmm...
Collectives existed long before the words communist, socialist, capitalist and all the rest of our secular economic religions appeared and will exist long after they're gone.
I get your drift, I don't necessarily agree with it but I see it. But do, please, have a doctor find out where your sense of humour went.
On the post: Why We Don't Need To 'Think Of The Artists': They're Doing Fine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Artists
I'm not sure I buy into what seems to be your claim that your music is being downloaded hundreds of thousands of times on P2P networks but if it's a general statement, once again, there's no definitive proof that you have lost so much as a single sale. I agree that the position makes some sense but the other side is that your music gets heard by more people and may increase sales in other areas and formats.
Search engines don't charge for searches, so if I search for "where do I find writeem's latest hit" I don't get charged for it, Google ads have to be clicked on for the advertiser to make a penny off my quick drive through; payment processors don't make a penny if I don't buy something, if the site owner doesn't charge for downloads somewhere, somehow, no money changes hands; I block display ads something a large number of people do so I don't even see those and they don't register on ad servers like doubleclick; so no money changes hands there either. So far no money has changed hands.
Include in that that a lot of P2P activity is perfectly legal, legit and moral and doesn't involve your song it involves distributing Linux releases, documents shared by users or businesses and organizations having nothing whatever to do with your song.
OK, now I've found your song, no money has changed hands and I download it, listen to it and find I like it but not enough to hold onto it taking up disk space but I do tell a couple of friends about it that I think will like it. Say my niece and her husband. I do a bit more research and find out where it can be paid for and tell them that too. IF I can find that information, not always the easiest thing to do which is often what sets people looking for other ways of finding it.
My niece likes it enough to buy your latest shiny disk from Amazon and there you go, a sale. Or she hates it and doesn't and no sale. But until the moment she clicks on buy at Amazon not a penny has changed hands, no one has made a penny off you as they search for the song.
Actually, if I click on an ad as I look the odds are it probably isn't for music at all but something I've been looking for elsewhere so no one has made a penny off you either. Say that dandy tiller attachment I've been looking for to go with my ECHO gear in the garden.
OK, so where's the theft? If I didn't go looking for your song in the first place my neice wouldn't know about it and she wouldn't have bought your CD, even if your song doesn't appeal to me it does to her and you made a sale.
There's no empirical evidence that you've lost anything when file sharing takes place. You can't lose or have a potential sale "stolen" if it doesn't take place to start with. It's still just potential, nothing, nada, zippidy do dah that you can legally place on a balance sheet. You can't steal a ZERO.
There is plenty of empirical evidence for the scenario I outlined above where I tell someone that may be interested in the song actually buys it (or the whole CD) after through word-of-mouth they find out about it.
Perhaps think of it as a form of comparison shopping, if you will. Most people don't buy music without sampling it in some form be it radio, a music channel, or whatever particularly after the bad old days of the 1990s where most CDs were jammed with junk hiding one good piece. As most people I know, of any age, don't listen to radio that programs simply music anymore that avenue is slowly closing down so what's left? (Song, annoying DJ telling the world in full throated volume about what they had for breakfast as if anyone cares, endless ads, back to the DJ holding a "contest", back to the ads and then music comes up under the ads and the whole cycle starts again until the talk radio show comes on in half an hour and music vanishes till the afternoon drive and even if I do like it I haven't a clue who you are cause current programming practices on radio seem to have ditched that part.)
The point is that people went to Napster and other P2P stuff to find what they couldn't find elsewhere through "normal" distribution channels. And they still do it for exactly that reason.
The bigger point is that most of these people want you to get paid, too. As I pointed out above during the search for you no one made so much as one red cent, the download didn't cost anything if the searcher has two brain cells to rub together, and now because person A heard it, liked it enough to tell persons B and C about it and one of those actually bought your CD. (Anyone serious about listening to music doesn't create libraries of the sonic sewerage known as .mp3 unless a device demands it.)
The flaw is in distribution by the gatekeepers, you know, the RIAA, MPAA of the world not in the musician (seller) and those who like the song (buyer). If I can't find you and be exposed to your music through those channels then I'm not gonna buy what you have to sell, am I? Nor am I about to pay outrageous prices for a CD by an artist I know next to nothing about.
Nor am I gonna demonize you. I will say you're uninformed, frightened to the point where you'll believe what your told by RIAA and MPAA propaganda that has no factual basis and you do want to make some kind of living from your music. I'd also say practice up and get out and perform live because that's the best advertising a musician can have. Learn to perform live, if you must but get out there and gig. Work hard for your money like the rest of us have to. Artists who hit the big time have had to do that, major label backing or not, they went out and gigged, gigged and gigged some more until they were sick of it, then gigged some more. Beatles, Stones, Zep, Metallica, Lady Gaga, Elvis, Sinatra, Crosby, Neil Young or just about anyone else whose name falls off the tongue or tip of the brain had to do that. So do you.
Stop complaining and get to work.
On the post: Why We Don't Need To 'Think Of The Artists': They're Doing Fine
Re: Re: Hmm...
One of the reasons that the Statue of Anne was passed wasn't that writers weren't being paid, by and large they were. Not much, but they were being paid. It was that more than one publisher could release the same title and author at the same time leading to marketplace confusion. While the act did stipulate that it was also intended to make sure that only one publisher would have the right to copy the work at one time. Hence the name.
It also granted perpetual copyright to the Kings/Queens Printer to reproduce acts of parliament, regulations and laws.
I'm not sure when the concept of copyright was applied to the visual arts though I suspect it was probably around the time of the invention of photography when it became easier to duplicate and reproduce the image of a painting or sculpture.
Anyway, while movable type was new in Europe and did cause the arrival of copyright it had existed in China for a couple of centuries at least prior to Gutenberg and I'm unaware of any similar concept being introduced there.
The best selling author I mentioned above will get an advance from the publisher to do her research before she produces the manuscript which carries her over until the publication date of the novel.
Prior to copyright's existence authors did "make it big" in England. Notable examples were John Milton's epic poems Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Poets, remember, were the rock stars of the day.
And we can be sure that Shakespeare got paid, if only for the simple reason that he owned the Globe Theatre. He was a production company unto himself. Even at that he had the time and inclination to write the plays which changed the English language even more that the King James Version of the Bible did and all his sonnets.
I know these men were the exception, not the rule, but it does appear that writers could "stike it big" before copyright in the English speaking world.
The point I'm making here is that writers, and other creators created before copyright came into existence. Should it vanish they'll continue to create because of the powerful human urge to do just that. We have this unquenchable urge to tell stories to one another. Stories to instruct our children, to make sense of the world around us, to entertain ourselves and to draw us closer. We'll make music for its own sake simply because it's the art form that most deeply resonates with the human brain, mind and spirit, we;ll draw to represent our view of the world in ways photography cannot. To our core and soul we're creative beings. If you accept the Judeao-Christian creation story even as a narrative explanation then being made in God's image we could hardly be much else. God is creative, so we must be creative. God creates so, being in His image we create.
It'd be harder without copyright perhaps. Though I wonder sometimes when I read stories of authors in legal battles with publishers trying to make sure they were paid properly by their contract. Publishers are as good at mythic accounting as movie companies and record companies. Maybe better they've had more experience and time at it.
Nina is right. Most artists are poor. Few get to the lower middle class scale even fewer fully middle class. That wouldn't change in the absence of copyright. The Stephen Kings of the world would still be superstars. Margaret Lawrence would still be a literary star, barely able to pay for her middle class family life in Toronto. Margaret Atwood would still be a literary star and sales star living very comfortably, thank you very much. Brian Adams, of all people, would still afford seafront property in the most expensive neighborhood (West Vancouver) in the most expensive city in Canada and one of the most expensive in the world (Metro Vancouver).
The good copyright does has more to do with the reasons it was passed in the first place. To reduce confusion in the marketplace with two, three and four publishers and more simultaneously bringing out the same book. Maybe they all paid the author, maybe they didn't. It appears that they didn't because the Statute of Anne was passed. Copyright was also passed to preserve works for educational purposes not lock it away in walled gardens only the publishers could touch. On that score it's failing completely.
I guess you can tell I utterly reject that fewer people would want to produce art. Artists I know are driven to it. So I do reject that. Utterly and completely. They created for thousands of years without it and will go on creating no matter what happens going forward.
They do ok. Kinda like the rest of us. They do ok.
On the post: Why We Don't Need To 'Think Of The Artists': They're Doing Fine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hmm...
On the post: Why We Don't Need To 'Think Of The Artists': They're Doing Fine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hmm...
/s
On the post: Why We Don't Need To 'Think Of The Artists': They're Doing Fine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
He'll fit right in,
On the post: Why We Don't Need To 'Think Of The Artists': They're Doing Fine
Re: "wholesale sales ... dropped from $594 million to $384 million"
You constantly repeat that you don't like the current copyright regime. You insist that you don't like BigMedia and then come to the rescue of it's Aussie branch when it's income is down after endlessly repeating the mantra that "it's about the artists". Suddenly you like BigMedia.
I mentioned how you repeatedly tie yourself into emotional and logical Gordian knots a while back but you've just outdone yourself.
Tell me, do you stand for anything other than find new and inventive ways to troll? (Something else you're not particularly good at.)
On the post: Why We Don't Need To 'Think Of The Artists': They're Doing Fine
Re: Re: Re: Artists
Songwriters do get paid up front and then get royalties or residuals should sales (not air play) reach a certain level similar to how session musicians are hired and paid. And some songwriters and session players get paid far more than peanuts for their work. Places like Tin Pan Alley didn't exist waiting for air play royalties, you know. They got paid up front.
As for Lady Gaga she sells recordings, sells out concerts, endlessly promotes herself, attaches herself sincerely to issues such as bullying that affect her fans and more so let's be a bit less critical there. She works hard for the money and she gets what she earns.
Your assertion that the the system that existed prior to the Internet worked for artists doesn't hold a teaspoon full of water when you look at it closely. Particularly the
"front end" of the food chain, namely the bands that went in unpaid up front to record their music. George Harrison didn't write "Only A Northern Song" because he and the band were happy with how Northern Songs dealt with them, you know.
To that extent I'm not sure what you're saying piracy upset. Songwriters get paid, session players and background singers get paid while the recordings are done. Same as before. The artist whose name goes on the end product is in there on spec, same as before and if this evidence that musicians, the people whose name is on the end product are doing very well then the ones who may not be are the member companies of the RIAA and their ilk. Y'know the gatekeepers you don't like. At least claim to.
And performance royalties don't just come in from radio airplay, they come in from songs played in your local coffee shop and supermarket, your barber shop, streamers like last.fm, your dentist's office and a host of other places. Unless, of course, all those places are pirates too. But I suppose anything is possible even if not probable.
Though I'd rather not be getting my hair cut by a barber while he listens to a mix of death metal and punk. I have no idea what the hair cut would look like!!
If it's bizarre sex you're after, and that seems to be part of your motivation for coming here then let me suggest you break into your local aquarium at 3am and slip into a nice warm tank and have sex with an electric eel while listening to Rocking The Casaba. I'm sure you'll have a wonderful time.
And music does have intrinsic human value. Keep in your binary with me or against me mind that humans are the only animal that creates music for reasons other than communication. We create it for the intrinsic reasons. We love the stuff. No other reason needed. Just because we love it. We create music for its own sake.
On the post: As We Complain About SOPA & PIPA, Don't Forget The DMCA Already Has Significant Problems
Re: Re: Re:
As for indie film they don't get into theatres because the theatre chains are directly or indirectly controlled by the big studios so indie films are locked out of movie theatres not by pirates but by your competition which strikes me as an anti-trust issue not a piracy one. And most indie film makers I know of don't have union operations so those obligations aren't there except for actors guilds. And if you're silly enough to max your credit card out on your first indie film venture so you can make it look Hollywood I have no sympathy for you as a businessman.
I do know creators, authors, musicians etc who are quite happy how things are working out using the Internet to distribute their works and to get paid for them. Most of them seem to have discovered places like Facebook and MySpace where they can actually be found, listened to and make sales. Not best seller variety but you don't get that when you're starting out even if you were Elvis or The Beatles.
So people like me DO respect authors, musicians and yes, even indie filmakers work and, if we like it, will support them with cash if and when we can find them.
If I was running piracy site for profit I have to tell you the last files I'd want are indie films, self published books and indie music because no one will come to the site looking for stuff they haven't heard of. So your argument disintegrates right then and there.
Yeah, indie film making is hard. It's tough and sometimes expensive but it also means you have to do your own promotion. If you're not going to promote yourself, take the risk that a file or two may be shared and sell on line where you can be found then you have only yourself to blame for not making any money at it.
And no, I'm not going to buy your stuff if it's bad, amateurish or I just don't like the story you're trying to tell but then I'm under no obligation to. If I don't like it enough I'm not about to share it with anyone either. But if the dislike is mild I may make a quick clip, add that to an email and fire it off to a friend who may very well like it and that could very well generate a sale for you.
But dear AC, you have to take that risk first. It strikes me you think that simply being in the arts is something you should be automatically paid for. Doesn't work that way, never has and never will unless you're addicted to something like Canada Council Grants and you'll be lucky to put a tent over your head if that's what you rely on.
Yes you have rights under copyright and I do respect them. But do something with it and make your damned movie already. Hiding in the corner in fear and trepidation won't get the movie made and it won't change the fact that things just aren't as simple as they maybe used to be. There never was and never will be a guarantee that you will make a penny off it. The risk is what it always was. Stop making excuses.
So get this right, pirates really aren't interested in your movie. No one knows you, no one cares and until they do no one will pirate as much as a second of it.
So much for any potential theft. Someone may drop by and take off with that nice expensive video camera you just bought which IS theft but they're not pirates or film makers they just want to hock the camera to get a fix or something.
And get this right...people will create because humans are creative people. People created long before the Internet and the movable type press came along in Europe and long before copyright and patent laws existed and will continue to do so should they cease to exist tomorrow morning. (Thankfully they won't.)
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