Re: Re: Re: Guess Mr Eisler hasn't grasped the views of pirate extremists here.
The Web and the HTTP protool were developed in order to make it easier to find and read academic works on the Internet, such as it was in the early 1990s. So called "Big Content"/"Big Media" were nowhere to be found. Nor would they be until high speed to the home connections became more and more commonplace in the late 1990s.
If you're referring to the MPAA and RIAA, then, you're wrong. The Web, so often confused with the Internet as a whole, doesn't need content (at least from them) it got it other ways, often what we now call "user generated" before then. Those two entities need a healthy Internet (as a whole not just the Web) far more than the Internet and the technology behind it needs them.
Do keep in mind that most of the software the internet runs on is open source GPL licensed software with the odd bit of BSD licensed material out there. To even be deployed on the internet software has to be open source.
Content is generated to fill the available space. What IP maximalists always seem to miss is that humans, as a whole, create for the sheer fun of it not because most of us ever expect to earn a living from it or care a plug nickel about copyright as it doesn't affect them. he Internet filled with content long before high speed connections came along or "big media" took even so much as a cursory interest.
Music studios were burned in the 90s because the product was overwhelmingly crap. People put up with downloading the odd song over dial-up because what was available in stores was both junk and expensive junk at that.
The rampant file sharing didn't begin until the wide introduction of high speed services such as ADSL and cable near the end of that decade and member firms of the RIAA were already into steep decline NOT because of piracy but because no one was buying what they were selling.
Member firms of the MPAA were in decline for the same reason. Overly expensive films in cramped, airless multiplexes. The experience of seeing a motion picture had declined to something similar to being packed onto a bus downtown at rush hour. And just as smelly some days. The entertainment on the bus and street were and, often, still are superior to what you'll see in a movie theatre.
People weren't sharing files on Napster because they didn't want to pay the artist, there were sharing files on Napster because they knew that on the average CD that out of 10 songs there was one and only one, maybe 2 that they wanted to listen to. That as much as anything was the driver behind Napster. Crappy product not a desire to rip off an artist. And as member companies of the RIAA wouldn't sell the "singles" people were interested in they found their own way to get them.
Along comes high speed and the process speeds up and the AA's notice and scream foul though they're largely responsible for the file sharing to begin with.
As for going so far as to actually compete with sites like iTunes and Amazon need I remind you that they fought both of them every step of the way and finally capitualted not because they wanted to but because they didn't (and still don't) understand the Internet or the World Wide Web. As for setting up to drive at iTunes I suspect Steve Jobs was smart enough to make sure that the RIAA and MPAA members who signed up there had to sign onto the dotted line with some sort of non-compete agreement.
Yes, big media could destroy the gray market if they had the brain cells and talent to rub together to do it and the nerve to. But they have none of that. Running to big daddy government as cultural industries world wide have done screaming "protect me!!!" (and Candada just got a lecture from the MPAA again about free trade and our Canadian Content rules, ahhh, hypocracy..thy name is Hollywood).
All of this done after the horses have left the barn and found the fields more to their liking than another night of slop in the barn so they ain't coming back in again.
The biggest irony here isn't that Hollywood wants protection (again) it's that the industry with the most to lose from loosened copyright is the one leading the charge against SOPA and Protect IP. The tech industry.
Every bit of software out there is covered by a copyright and protected by licensing arrangements whether it's Microsoft or GPL, to use the stuff you have to adhere to a license or you violate both the license and infringe on the copyright.
The tech industry, though, clearly understands the ramifications of breaking the internet in a misguided attempt to protect what are rapidly becoming legacy industtires and the groups that represent them such as the RIAA and the MPAA and their attachment to copyright as a means of staying in business. (Won't work, even if SOPA is successful.)
The core of the issue around file sharing/piracy is that the recording and motion picture industries largely brought it on themselves by not giving their customers what they wanted and then by charging extortionate rents when and if they did come up with something. Rightly or wrongly the customer said no and "routed around" the problem. Granted that infringment is wrong but in many people's views they aren't left with much of a choice my the self-appointed monopolists in the recording and movie businesses.
The proposed laws aren't enhancement, they're a mulitiple warhead ICBM aimed at a flea. The warheads will explode and cause damage but the flea will surivive simply because the targeting is wrong. So called piracy won't stop, it may, in fact, increase as a result.
And the Internet and Web don't need content half as much as content needs them.
Empty movie theatres and closed record and video stores are ample proof of that. If Hollywood opts out by hiding behind the locked doors of a private garden someone else will produce that content. Nature, the Web and the Internet abhor a vacuum. The content will come. Hollywood's only choice is to stay and provide it, risky as it is or as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow morning someone else will. And copyright won't have a damned thing to do with it.
Re: Re: Google search drives over 21% of The Pirate Bay's traffic!
representing the global association of mental patients and mouth breathers I object strenuously to the notion that we should be contracted to post for o_o_t_b.
Please note that the vast majority of us can tie our own shoes, work a toothbrush and successfully turn on a computer without assistance or constant reminders of how to do it.
We can even dress ourselves and select matching socks.
Having studied o_o-t_b's posts we are of the informed opinion that he is not capable of any of the above nor is it likely he can feed himself properly which may account for his delusions and continued belief that De Nial is a river in Africa.
We refer you to the members of the Global Association for the Advancement of Amoeba & Related Creatures who have indicated they will be more than happy to post in his name following in his pattern and logic. This will save him wasted time on this site and is offered at the low price of $250US a post for a short time only, payable by credit card or paypal on a daily basis based on the number of posts.
Amoeba do have business models something which o_o_t_b seems to lack.
Re: "Google search drives slightly less than 22% of The Pirate Bay's traffic."
Let me get this straight in my poor little mind here. Showing a search result for a site that has movies that are in the public domain and, therefore, free to download somehow encourages people to download illegal copies of the latest spiderman does dallas movie?
And so what if Google has some hint from one of it's aps tha runs on a site that I've visited. So what? If you think they can tell from from the HTTP protocol how much I downloaded (if anything) using the Bittorrent protocol you seriously need to learn how the Internet works. Oh yeah, I did know you're a bit challenged in that regard I just forgot for a moment. (Or even the FTP protocol should that come into it.)
As you speak of empirical evidence that Google somehow profits from searches and the presence of Google Analytics, say, on a site somehow proves that then you are about as knowledgeable about statistics as you are about the structure of the Internet.
On the other side of the coin if the emphirical evidence you are looking for is a sudden spike in sales for RIAA members and a sudden increase in movie attendance for MPAA members I strongly suggest that you're not gonna see that. The real reason sales are down, in both cases, is that the vast majority of the product is crap. Same thing that happens in any other market.
Of course that cannot be, so it has to be pirates according to the two above named industry organizations/apologists/lobbyists and, as much as you claim ti dislike them, it seems to you as well.
Will it result in an increase in respect for copyright?
I'd suggest it will have the polar opposite effect. I'd suggest that it's already having that effect, in fact.
Of course all the likes of SOPA have done is to drive the illogic of IP maximalists out into the open where everyone gets to see the empty arguments for what they are -- a welfare program for RIAA and MPAA members.
As for the artists, well, the above two collectives move heaven and earth NOT to pay artists so I'm not at all sure if they'd be better or worse off.
Re: Re: Re: At least a decade after widespread broadband, YET NO SOLUTION!
It's one of life's deepest pleasures to be involved in a debate where I can read/listen to reasoned argument for another point of view. I get to encounter viewpoints and evidence that I may have missed or overlooked coming it my conclusions about things. This includes Ms Rosen, below.
Sadly it doesn't include you.
I didn't think I'd said anything about sampling then buying in my post but now that you mention it there's good evidence that such things do occur. At least according to the independent folks I know and mention above. 100% of the time? Of course not. But even then they're getting heard and making sales because of it. Not 1 for 1 but sales. Same way it worked in the days of AM top 40 sans the royalties paid by the radio stations most of which didn't make it back to the artist either.
But still it stands to reason that having not said it I can hardly be a LYING slimeball. Slimeball, perhaps, which only shows you need to be careful where and what you step in. As for committing sexual acts on a slimeball I understand that's very uncomfortable, cold and not at all satisfying. And you need SOS pads to get the slime off.
As for dying in a fire, no thanks, I use those to stay warm on winter nights not to cook myself or others in.
Take care and remember the idea when starting a fire is not to hurt yourself or others. Of course that means your age I find that unlikely. (Emotional and mental age, that is.)
Oh, God. Ubisoft has been complaining about "piracy" since long before the Internet. Last crap (game) I bought from them was way back in the days of Compu$erve. laden with DRM and even then they were bitching about people file sharing at dial up speeds.
I see Shuttleworth's argument is that the patent system itself is broken not that patents, as originally envisaged is a bad thing. It's become (becoming) a bad thing in that it's now applied in ways that aren't about what patents were originally supposed to do. Open up trade secrets.
Should you need a patent for your product to bring it to market and compete with the raytheon's of the world by all means get one.
It's not hypocritical to use a broken system when you must for its original purpose, as you propose to do, and still see the flaws and weaknesses in the current way the system is applied. It's not like the legal system provides an alternative, after all.
You can remain critical of the patent process as its broadening and abuse continues in the United States, Europe,Canada (my home) and elsewhere while using the system as it was originally designed to be used.
Apply for your patent, chedderslam. And good luck in the marketplace.
Thank you for participating in this discussion Ms Rosen.
The copying of a song and posting it somewhere is not a digital analog for the physical shoplifting of a shirt from the GAP cause you're pissed the one you wanted isn't there.
In the case of your illustration there is one less shirt, a physical entity, at the GAP. In the case of a digital copy of a song on the internet the original still exists and can still be sold, which it most often is and copies of that are sold repeatedly by members of the Industry group you formerly headed at a tiny fraction of the cost of pressing an extra copy in the world before the mp3. (Sonic cesspools that they are notwithstanding.)
My biggest problem with the playing of the artist card by the RIAA and MPAA is that they both have a track record of moving heaven and earth not to pay the artists they now claim to want to protect. Enough do to maintain the fiction that one can make even a lower middle class existence as an actor, writer or member of a band but that doesn't change the reality of what has frequently been called "creative accounting" by the RIAA, MPAA publishers and others who employ artists. I'm not asking you to defend such practices nor wanting to start an argument about it but let's be honest here and state that the RIAA and MPAA and publishers are interested only in their own existence and the artists themselves are not part of the equation. The only job a privately owned company has is to make a profit which is then shared with its shareholders. I doubt there's many artists as shareholders in member companies of the RIAA, for example.
So if I take the liberty of rephrasing "To the recording company who who makes their money on SALES, it is stealing." I would have more sympathy with the statement though I'd then want look into whether or not digital copies are actually depressing sales or increasing them in the long run. I strongly suspect the latter. That, though is a discussion for another time.
The matter at hand is SOPA and proposed laws like it are an over reaction to a still rapidly changing marketplace or not. Not too surprisingly for me, they are an over reaction. Not only that but they amount to protectionist legislation interested only in protecting the members of the group you used to head, for example, than the artists the group claims to represent. These laws are being put in place to protect the profits of the likes of Universal or EMI and not the income of artists. Some or maybe a lot of us see through the smokescreen.
The only thing that the member companies of the RIAA can be legally concerned with is making a profit for their shareholders being publicly traded. It's those profits the RIAA is attempting to protect not artists or musicians.
I would hope that the large ships of the entertainment industry weren't attempting to navigate in a stream though it would go a long way to explaining the staleness of product coming out the pipe to consumers long before piracy became an issue. It may, as well, explain the RIAA member companies inability to adapt to changing technologies and methods of communications.
As for Google, at least they understand that should SOPA pass that in the long run it's pointless. Just as it was pointless for opponents to free speech and other changes wrought by the printing press were pointless as governments attempted to control them by criminalizing a number of activities associated with them.
All messing with DNS does, for example, is mess with a "direction sign" on the internet which is something easily overcome and all, in the long run, telling payment agencies not to deal with something does is cost them money both in the short and long runs.
Bills whose collateral damage includes censorship by design or accident do nothing to bring "tech fans" or the public onside with ever tightening copyright laws. Taking these laws far beyond their original intent won't do anything other than broaden and stiffen resistance to them far beyond the "tech fan" group and well into the public realm as the laws as represented by SOPA bring things like the administration of justice into disrepute and respect for it reduced. It was tried with the printing press and it failed. It will fail here for much the same reason.
The people that will pay the price are employess and shareholders of member companies of the RIAA and MPAA and, should the rejection be strong enough THEN we'll be forced to start again with copyright so that the artists do, actually get paid. I don't want that to happen but I'm historian enough to see the wave coming on shore again because people forget history's lessons.
By the way I am a writer and I do like to get paid for my work from time to time. But this is the wrong way for me to get my cheque because that cheque probably won't ever come. It does now.
One cannot "steal" a lost sale, incidentally. There are plenty of songs that don't sell for reasons far beyond piracy and plenty of books, poetry and other written works that aren't ever sold for reasons far beyond piracy.
Re: At least a decade after widespread broadband, YET NO SOLUTION!
Let's see now, on one hand you talk about an INDUSTRY, then you flip to the argument that copyright is the only way creators have to protect themselves from Big Media who are the INDUSTRY.
You're quite right it does cut both ways and you just stabbed yourself in the navel with it.
You manage it again when you criticize Mike for his stance that some free distribution of, say, a song, is actually a promotion that often leads to more per unit sales for the artist. Note: The artist is rarely the "content" owner because Big Media, that INDUSTRY, you seem so keen on both protecting and dissing all at once, ensures that said artist has signed all copyright over to them in return for rarely paid "royalties" dependent on a number of factors including sunspots on the 4th of July for the artist to ever see a dime. (The latter is a variable though massive cost in how Big Media does its accounting.)
In the meanwhile there's a thriving group of independent artists with access to good production equipment (and if you think it's all about mixing you're more ignorant than I imagined and that's going some). Most of who sell high quality songs and CDs across this evil thing called the internet and do very nicely by it if they connect with people who like their music. Y'know, fans.
Keep twisting yourself into these knots and someone is going to mistake you for a pretzel and start dumping sea salt on you.
It's almost too painful to watch.
Almost though it says volumes about applying analogue rules to a digital environment which isn't going anywhere and has changed things like the rules of production and distribution. It's your notions that add up to a big fat zero because you refuse to see the changes.
More importantly refuse to adapt to them. Refusal to adapt leads to extinction not false notions of things like "piracy" and false panics.
Re: Nah, Mike, you're brushing aside the problem of infringement,
Other than the minor detail that we still have dinosaurs with us (we call them birds), instead of coming here to complain how about getting a business model (any business model) that will let you make that $100 million movie you carry on about?
To be perfectly honest, if I was an investor in such things I'd be avoiding your project as a potential disaster if you need infringement (the proper legal term -- not theft) made a capital crime for even thinking about.
And people regularly spend skywards of $100 million in Hollywood on movies these days so you're nothing all that special.
You're the guy wanting to make the movie it's up to you to come up with a business model, not Mike, me or anyone else.
I don't think I'd toss a loonie at a movie version of Hey Diddle Diddle anyway.
I suggest you start off on a smaller scale like competing with the 5 year old up the street in summer in her peanut and lemonade stand and see if you can compete with her before talking on Hollywood.
(PS: Loonie is the $1 CDN coin for those who don't know).
It did. That cassettee tape you have of mixes of music like Carry On My Wayward Son, Tie Me Kangaroo Down and other immortal compositions obviously killed music...dead
Quite dead.
And all this rampant piracy will kill it even deader. We have Ms Rosen's word on it now. /s
What I was getting to in the Heston remark was the connection between fans and the "celeb" not a connection between music and the individual. He was genuine in what he said not controlled by a PR flack.
As for the recent development of celebrity it's the name we give to them that's recent not the actual "status", if you want to call it that How else to explain the status of the romantic poets at the beginning of the 19th Century? Other than the stirrings of mass media which, I'll much more than concede.
Your reply turns back onto music theory, which I know quite well and, when I sing, largely ignore as not having a thing to do with what I'm doing. I'm a trained choral singer having been semi-tortured into it being inserted into church choirs growing up. Theory is all well and good but it's part in the "real world" is marginal, at best.
Being moved has everything to do with music as it has with poetry until the latter half of the 20th Century. There have been a number of studies done with look at the differences between what parts of the brain "light up" listening to music, pre-20thC poetry and prose. Prose lights up the fewest by far, poetry much more and music involves the entire brain regardless of whether the person being tested likes that style or not. Dismiss that all you want, it's fact. There's a very good reason that humans are the only creatures on this planet, that we know of, that make music for it's own sake. Individuals react visibly to a subset of music be it tiny or wide but their brains react to it the same way before the filter of like and dislike gets in the way.
To get back to the subject at hand which is how artists communicate with fans I am pleased to read that you do agree that it is what they ought to do, again, without the hangers on and the people the entertain, move, educate and in other ways please with their work as a way of increasing their income.
P.S. As for the Lee Eastwood song you mention I rather like it though I'm not a country fan and I'm not an American. To those who are moved to tears the song isn't pablum, speaking of narrow subsets. So soon after Remembrance Day I was thinking more of Dire Straits "Brothers In Arms" take that as you will.
They both worked for me too. The ideas are valid though, sadly, it'll take a lot of time before I buy a security product labelled MacAfee again given the mess it's made of my machines in the past.
An illustration of the trust thing. Even if Intel now owns them.
FF8 on Mandriva PWrPack 2011 as long as we're gonna start keeping score :)
"Without some sort of narrative to make them feel 'connected' to it, music is as uninteresting to most people as Boolean algebra."
Bull twaddle.
If you're talking about music theory, you're probably right but if you're talking of human reaction to music then, with respect, you're full of it.
Speech, that thing we do most of the time, engages mostly the Cerebral cortex as does traditional narrative in written works. In other words the logical centres of the brain.
On the other hand music, as does anything involving rhyme, rythymn and metre (a beat) engages not only the logical parts of the brain but also all of the emotional and visual (yes, visual) and other sensory parts of the human brain. If you want to argue that point then explain to me how easily people can be brought to tears listening to music, how easy it is to remember traditiional poetry which mostly exists in lyrics these days something fiction writers can mostly only dream of.
People were interested in John Lennon BECAUSE he was a celebrity and when he and Yoko started to tell people what they had for lunch, whether or not in a bed in Toronto or not it came across as genuine as did the lyrics in his songs when he wrote about how he felt about things and things he'd observed. More importantly, it came across as genuine and really him and not only a PR move (something The Beatles hardly needed).
He conncected, as did the rest of the band when they began to do much the same, however reluctantly. The fans cared because people were moved by their music not just their celebrity status. Keep in mind that most people have very active and accurate BS filters and can detect fakery.
There's no need to be profound, certainly Charlton Heston never was yet he was genuine in his connection through the NRA in the United States no matter how much I personally disagreed with him.
It's not about being profound. It's about piercing the veil of perfection that surrounds celebs and gives rise to gossip rags. If the musician or artist is in control and genuine then even the need for gossip rags and sites vanishes. People feel they already know the artist or musician (an artificial distinction by the way but it makes it clear that I'm talking about actors, poets, painters and others not just musicians and composers).
We humans will always develop celebs. It could be anyone though the ones we remember are the celebs of their era usually poets, playwrights, philosophers and religious leaders in their time. It didn't need the MPAA or RIAA and a vast army of agents and publicists to create them.
Nor do most of us need to understand the subjects in depth to appreciate them on what they create. As long as the work is a genuine reflection of them.
And artists made the connections as a matter of course before the invention of the MPAA, RIAA, agents or publicists hangons that attach themselves to them now.
"they should be talking about how buying legitimate software from Micrisoft will be a boon to the companies in question (Technical support, faster patch cycles, and what have you)"
Faster patch cycles? My Linux and BSD systems get patched at light speed compared to waiting for update Tuesday, or whatever day it is, which often don't address the problem to begin with. Often daily. And rarely requiring a reboot.
Tech support? I worked for a major company before I became disabled which paid tons for tech support. Guess what? I had to hold on line as much as anyone else does. (Over two hours at one point before I gave up and fixed it myself in a most unmicrosoft way.) So that advantage is marginal at best.
Not all amicus briefs have to be accepted by the court nor do they have to be considered at the end of the day. Most aren't.
What's ironic here is that the guys that head the *AAs are boomers, the same ones that made them in the first place. Recorded music and medium and high end sound systems were devoured by us Boomers to listen to that awful Jungle Music, modern Country music and a host of other things. We're also the same ones who mixed our LP's to listen to in the car or play at parties or dances which didn't seem to hurt album sales. I'm sure the *AA heads did the same thing. Cassettes were wonderful things even if they had a limited life expectancy.
We're also the ones who flocked to movies when they were affordable and didn't resemble or copy television shows.
Keep in mind the RIAA was pretty small spuds before we boomers came along and, while the MPAA (Studios by another name) were powerful in one area but not really anywhere else.
Now it's our kids who won't pay for shiny plastic disks filled with crap for one good song and, funnily enough, nor will their parents. Welcome to the world on the MP3, sonic junk but still better than what they studios have to offer.
I suspect that at the end of the day what's scaring them both is the rise of do-it-yourself recording (wide spread now) and the same for "movies" (ramping up) now that the equipment and software allows just about anyone to do it at a comparatively inexpensive price.
First it's piracy, then it's independent bands, then guys and gals making their own films...who knows where it will end?
These guys may be sleeping under tarps in parks soon, ya'know, bottle of cheap vodka in hand passing stories about the good old days when they could afford great booze and better drugs!
"It would also appear that DNSSEC was designed with the intent of hurting the ability for anyone to control or filter the net in any manner, and that itself may be enough of a reason not to go down that road."
If that's the design in intention of DNSSEC then I want to go down that road as fast as we can.
On the other hand if SOPA/PIPA wants to break that road then it's better avoided. The statement from Sandia Labs is anything to go by the proposal is not only easily circumvented but may also have commercial and military consequences for the United States.
Europe won't follow suit, Canada won't, Japan won't, China doesn't care and, in fact, the only country I can think of that might is that already dangerously censorious country known as Australia.
In the age of the Internet the United States isn't an island and can't be. Doing things like this hurts the US more than it does anyone else. Consequently it doesn't help the *AA's one bit as it's inconsequential to work around what they propose.
On the post: Best Selling Author Barry Eisler On Copyright, Piracy And Why SOPA/PIPA Are 'Extremely Disturbing'
Re: Re: Re: Guess Mr Eisler hasn't grasped the views of pirate extremists here.
If you're referring to the MPAA and RIAA, then, you're wrong. The Web, so often confused with the Internet as a whole, doesn't need content (at least from them) it got it other ways, often what we now call "user generated" before then. Those two entities need a healthy Internet (as a whole not just the Web) far more than the Internet and the technology behind it needs them.
Do keep in mind that most of the software the internet runs on is open source GPL licensed software with the odd bit of BSD licensed material out there. To even be deployed on the internet software has to be open source.
Content is generated to fill the available space. What IP maximalists always seem to miss is that humans, as a whole, create for the sheer fun of it not because most of us ever expect to earn a living from it or care a plug nickel about copyright as it doesn't affect them. he Internet filled with content long before high speed connections came along or "big media" took even so much as a cursory interest.
Music studios were burned in the 90s because the product was overwhelmingly crap. People put up with downloading the odd song over dial-up because what was available in stores was both junk and expensive junk at that.
The rampant file sharing didn't begin until the wide introduction of high speed services such as ADSL and cable near the end of that decade and member firms of the RIAA were already into steep decline NOT because of piracy but because no one was buying what they were selling.
Member firms of the MPAA were in decline for the same reason. Overly expensive films in cramped, airless multiplexes. The experience of seeing a motion picture had declined to something similar to being packed onto a bus downtown at rush hour. And just as smelly some days. The entertainment on the bus and street were and, often, still are superior to what you'll see in a movie theatre.
People weren't sharing files on Napster because they didn't want to pay the artist, there were sharing files on Napster because they knew that on the average CD that out of 10 songs there was one and only one, maybe 2 that they wanted to listen to. That as much as anything was the driver behind Napster. Crappy product not a desire to rip off an artist. And as member companies of the RIAA wouldn't sell the "singles" people were interested in they found their own way to get them.
Along comes high speed and the process speeds up and the AA's notice and scream foul though they're largely responsible for the file sharing to begin with.
As for going so far as to actually compete with sites like iTunes and Amazon need I remind you that they fought both of them every step of the way and finally capitualted not because they wanted to but because they didn't (and still don't) understand the Internet or the World Wide Web. As for setting up to drive at iTunes I suspect Steve Jobs was smart enough to make sure that the RIAA and MPAA members who signed up there had to sign onto the dotted line with some sort of non-compete agreement.
Yes, big media could destroy the gray market if they had the brain cells and talent to rub together to do it and the nerve to. But they have none of that. Running to big daddy government as cultural industries world wide have done screaming "protect me!!!" (and Candada just got a lecture from the MPAA again about free trade and our Canadian Content rules, ahhh, hypocracy..thy name is Hollywood).
All of this done after the horses have left the barn and found the fields more to their liking than another night of slop in the barn so they ain't coming back in again.
The biggest irony here isn't that Hollywood wants protection (again) it's that the industry with the most to lose from loosened copyright is the one leading the charge against SOPA and Protect IP. The tech industry.
Every bit of software out there is covered by a copyright and protected by licensing arrangements whether it's Microsoft or GPL, to use the stuff you have to adhere to a license or you violate both the license and infringe on the copyright.
The tech industry, though, clearly understands the ramifications of breaking the internet in a misguided attempt to protect what are rapidly becoming legacy industtires and the groups that represent them such as the RIAA and the MPAA and their attachment to copyright as a means of staying in business. (Won't work, even if SOPA is successful.)
The core of the issue around file sharing/piracy is that the recording and motion picture industries largely brought it on themselves by not giving their customers what they wanted and then by charging extortionate rents when and if they did come up with something. Rightly or wrongly the customer said no and "routed around" the problem. Granted that infringment is wrong but in many people's views they aren't left with much of a choice my the self-appointed monopolists in the recording and movie businesses.
The proposed laws aren't enhancement, they're a mulitiple warhead ICBM aimed at a flea. The warheads will explode and cause damage but the flea will surivive simply because the targeting is wrong. So called piracy won't stop, it may, in fact, increase as a result.
And the Internet and Web don't need content half as much as content needs them.
Empty movie theatres and closed record and video stores are ample proof of that. If Hollywood opts out by hiding behind the locked doors of a private garden someone else will produce that content. Nature, the Web and the Internet abhor a vacuum. The content will come. Hollywood's only choice is to stay and provide it, risky as it is or as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow morning someone else will. And copyright won't have a damned thing to do with it.
On the post: Data Shows: Removing 'Rogue Sites' From Search Won't Make Much Of A Difference
Re: Re: Google search drives over 21% of The Pirate Bay's traffic!
Please note that the vast majority of us can tie our own shoes, work a toothbrush and successfully turn on a computer without assistance or constant reminders of how to do it.
We can even dress ourselves and select matching socks.
Having studied o_o-t_b's posts we are of the informed opinion that he is not capable of any of the above nor is it likely he can feed himself properly which may account for his delusions and continued belief that De Nial is a river in Africa.
We refer you to the members of the Global Association for the Advancement of Amoeba & Related Creatures who have indicated they will be more than happy to post in his name following in his pattern and logic. This will save him wasted time on this site and is offered at the low price of $250US a post for a short time only, payable by credit card or paypal on a daily basis based on the number of posts.
Amoeba do have business models something which o_o_t_b seems to lack.
Thank you.
On the post: Data Shows: Removing 'Rogue Sites' From Search Won't Make Much Of A Difference
Re: "Google search drives slightly less than 22% of The Pirate Bay's traffic."
And so what if Google has some hint from one of it's aps tha runs on a site that I've visited. So what? If you think they can tell from from the HTTP protocol how much I downloaded (if anything) using the Bittorrent protocol you seriously need to learn how the Internet works. Oh yeah, I did know you're a bit challenged in that regard I just forgot for a moment. (Or even the FTP protocol should that come into it.)
As you speak of empirical evidence that Google somehow profits from searches and the presence of Google Analytics, say, on a site somehow proves that then you are about as knowledgeable about statistics as you are about the structure of the Internet.
On the other side of the coin if the emphirical evidence you are looking for is a sudden spike in sales for RIAA members and a sudden increase in movie attendance for MPAA members I strongly suggest that you're not gonna see that. The real reason sales are down, in both cases, is that the vast majority of the product is crap. Same thing that happens in any other market.
Of course that cannot be, so it has to be pirates according to the two above named industry organizations/apologists/lobbyists and, as much as you claim ti dislike them, it seems to you as well.
Will it result in an increase in respect for copyright?
I'd suggest it will have the polar opposite effect. I'd suggest that it's already having that effect, in fact.
Of course all the likes of SOPA have done is to drive the illogic of IP maximalists out into the open where everyone gets to see the empty arguments for what they are -- a welfare program for RIAA and MPAA members.
As for the artists, well, the above two collectives move heaven and earth NOT to pay artists so I'm not at all sure if they'd be better or worse off.
Oh...I almost forgot.
You need a better busines model, o_o_t_b.
On the post: A Step By Step Debunking Of US Chamber Of Commerce's Dishonest Stats About 'Rogue Sites'
Re: Re: Re: "Storage capacity of several Petabyte" -- All legal content, eh?
Belief in his protest is entirely optional.
On the post: A Step By Step Debunking Of US Chamber Of Commerce's Dishonest Stats About 'Rogue Sites'
Re: Re: Re:
You were still wrong, domestic, foreign or aliens from somewhere around Alpha Centari.
I'd want to talk to whoever provides you with the "outraged" posts and ask them to spell check it first.
Of course all that would require an intellect. Honest or not.
On the post: A Step By Step Debunking Of US Chamber Of Commerce's Dishonest Stats About 'Rogue Sites'
Re: Re: And this ladies and gents is why
At one time they were caught up in it but now they want to be paid for their work while they actually do the work so in came the unions.
Nice try on your part, though.
On the post: Ex-RIAA Boss Ignores All Criticisim Of SOPA/PIPA, Claims Any Complaints Are Trying To Justify Stealing
Re: Re: Re: At least a decade after widespread broadband, YET NO SOLUTION!
Sadly it doesn't include you.
I didn't think I'd said anything about sampling then buying in my post but now that you mention it there's good evidence that such things do occur. At least according to the independent folks I know and mention above. 100% of the time? Of course not. But even then they're getting heard and making sales because of it. Not 1 for 1 but sales. Same way it worked in the days of AM top 40 sans the royalties paid by the radio stations most of which didn't make it back to the artist either.
But still it stands to reason that having not said it I can hardly be a LYING slimeball. Slimeball, perhaps, which only shows you need to be careful where and what you step in. As for committing sexual acts on a slimeball I understand that's very uncomfortable, cold and not at all satisfying. And you need SOS pads to get the slime off.
As for dying in a fire, no thanks, I use those to stay warm on winter nights not to cook myself or others in.
Take care and remember the idea when starting a fire is not to hurt yourself or others. Of course that means your age I find that unlikely. (Emotional and mental age, that is.)
On the post: Ubisoft Director Backtracks On Piracy Complaints After Public Lashing
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Ubuntu's Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator For Life: 'Whole Patent System Is A Sham'
Re: honest question about patents
Should you need a patent for your product to bring it to market and compete with the raytheon's of the world by all means get one.
It's not hypocritical to use a broken system when you must for its original purpose, as you propose to do, and still see the flaws and weaknesses in the current way the system is applied. It's not like the legal system provides an alternative, after all.
You can remain critical of the patent process as its broadening and abuse continues in the United States, Europe,Canada (my home) and elsewhere while using the system as it was originally designed to be used.
Apply for your patent, chedderslam. And good luck in the marketplace.
On the post: Ex-RIAA Boss Ignores All Criticisim Of SOPA/PIPA, Claims Any Complaints Are Trying To Justify Stealing
Re: SOPA
The copying of a song and posting it somewhere is not a digital analog for the physical shoplifting of a shirt from the GAP cause you're pissed the one you wanted isn't there.
In the case of your illustration there is one less shirt, a physical entity, at the GAP. In the case of a digital copy of a song on the internet the original still exists and can still be sold, which it most often is and copies of that are sold repeatedly by members of the Industry group you formerly headed at a tiny fraction of the cost of pressing an extra copy in the world before the mp3. (Sonic cesspools that they are notwithstanding.)
My biggest problem with the playing of the artist card by the RIAA and MPAA is that they both have a track record of moving heaven and earth not to pay the artists they now claim to want to protect. Enough do to maintain the fiction that one can make even a lower middle class existence as an actor, writer or member of a band but that doesn't change the reality of what has frequently been called "creative accounting" by the RIAA, MPAA publishers and others who employ artists. I'm not asking you to defend such practices nor wanting to start an argument about it but let's be honest here and state that the RIAA and MPAA and publishers are interested only in their own existence and the artists themselves are not part of the equation. The only job a privately owned company has is to make a profit which is then shared with its shareholders. I doubt there's many artists as shareholders in member companies of the RIAA, for example.
So if I take the liberty of rephrasing "To the recording company who who makes their money on SALES, it is stealing." I would have more sympathy with the statement though I'd then want look into whether or not digital copies are actually depressing sales or increasing them in the long run. I strongly suspect the latter. That, though is a discussion for another time.
The matter at hand is SOPA and proposed laws like it are an over reaction to a still rapidly changing marketplace or not. Not too surprisingly for me, they are an over reaction. Not only that but they amount to protectionist legislation interested only in protecting the members of the group you used to head, for example, than the artists the group claims to represent. These laws are being put in place to protect the profits of the likes of Universal or EMI and not the income of artists. Some or maybe a lot of us see through the smokescreen.
The only thing that the member companies of the RIAA can be legally concerned with is making a profit for their shareholders being publicly traded. It's those profits the RIAA is attempting to protect not artists or musicians.
I would hope that the large ships of the entertainment industry weren't attempting to navigate in a stream though it would go a long way to explaining the staleness of product coming out the pipe to consumers long before piracy became an issue. It may, as well, explain the RIAA member companies inability to adapt to changing technologies and methods of communications.
As for Google, at least they understand that should SOPA pass that in the long run it's pointless. Just as it was pointless for opponents to free speech and other changes wrought by the printing press were pointless as governments attempted to control them by criminalizing a number of activities associated with them.
All messing with DNS does, for example, is mess with a "direction sign" on the internet which is something easily overcome and all, in the long run, telling payment agencies not to deal with something does is cost them money both in the short and long runs.
Bills whose collateral damage includes censorship by design or accident do nothing to bring "tech fans" or the public onside with ever tightening copyright laws. Taking these laws far beyond their original intent won't do anything other than broaden and stiffen resistance to them far beyond the "tech fan" group and well into the public realm as the laws as represented by SOPA bring things like the administration of justice into disrepute and respect for it reduced. It was tried with the printing press and it failed. It will fail here for much the same reason.
The people that will pay the price are employess and shareholders of member companies of the RIAA and MPAA and, should the rejection be strong enough THEN we'll be forced to start again with copyright so that the artists do, actually get paid. I don't want that to happen but I'm historian enough to see the wave coming on shore again because people forget history's lessons.
By the way I am a writer and I do like to get paid for my work from time to time. But this is the wrong way for me to get my cheque because that cheque probably won't ever come. It does now.
One cannot "steal" a lost sale, incidentally. There are plenty of songs that don't sell for reasons far beyond piracy and plenty of books, poetry and other written works that aren't ever sold for reasons far beyond piracy.
On the post: Ex-RIAA Boss Ignores All Criticisim Of SOPA/PIPA, Claims Any Complaints Are Trying To Justify Stealing
Re: At least a decade after widespread broadband, YET NO SOLUTION!
You're quite right it does cut both ways and you just stabbed yourself in the navel with it.
You manage it again when you criticize Mike for his stance that some free distribution of, say, a song, is actually a promotion that often leads to more per unit sales for the artist. Note: The artist is rarely the "content" owner because Big Media, that INDUSTRY, you seem so keen on both protecting and dissing all at once, ensures that said artist has signed all copyright over to them in return for rarely paid "royalties" dependent on a number of factors including sunspots on the 4th of July for the artist to ever see a dime. (The latter is a variable though massive cost in how Big Media does its accounting.)
In the meanwhile there's a thriving group of independent artists with access to good production equipment (and if you think it's all about mixing you're more ignorant than I imagined and that's going some). Most of who sell high quality songs and CDs across this evil thing called the internet and do very nicely by it if they connect with people who like their music. Y'know, fans.
Keep twisting yourself into these knots and someone is going to mistake you for a pretzel and start dumping sea salt on you.
It's almost too painful to watch.
Almost though it says volumes about applying analogue rules to a digital environment which isn't going anywhere and has changed things like the rules of production and distribution. It's your notions that add up to a big fat zero because you refuse to see the changes.
More importantly refuse to adapt to them. Refusal to adapt leads to extinction not false notions of things like "piracy" and false panics.
On the post: Ex-RIAA Boss Ignores All Criticisim Of SOPA/PIPA, Claims Any Complaints Are Trying To Justify Stealing
Re: Nah, Mike, you're brushing aside the problem of infringement,
To be perfectly honest, if I was an investor in such things I'd be avoiding your project as a potential disaster if you need infringement (the proper legal term -- not theft) made a capital crime for even thinking about.
And people regularly spend skywards of $100 million in Hollywood on movies these days so you're nothing all that special.
You're the guy wanting to make the movie it's up to you to come up with a business model, not Mike, me or anyone else.
I don't think I'd toss a loonie at a movie version of Hey Diddle Diddle anyway.
I suggest you start off on a smaller scale like competing with the 5 year old up the street in summer in her peanut and lemonade stand and see if you can compete with her before talking on Hollywood.
(PS: Loonie is the $1 CDN coin for those who don't know).
On the post: Ex-RIAA Boss Ignores All Criticisim Of SOPA/PIPA, Claims Any Complaints Are Trying To Justify Stealing
Re: Re: Re:
Quite dead.
And all this rampant piracy will kill it even deader. We have Ms Rosen's word on it now. /s
On the post: Connecting With Fans Means More Than Talking About Your Latest Work
Re: Re:
As for the recent development of celebrity it's the name we give to them that's recent not the actual "status", if you want to call it that How else to explain the status of the romantic poets at the beginning of the 19th Century? Other than the stirrings of mass media which, I'll much more than concede.
Your reply turns back onto music theory, which I know quite well and, when I sing, largely ignore as not having a thing to do with what I'm doing. I'm a trained choral singer having been semi-tortured into it being inserted into church choirs growing up. Theory is all well and good but it's part in the "real world" is marginal, at best.
Being moved has everything to do with music as it has with poetry until the latter half of the 20th Century. There have been a number of studies done with look at the differences between what parts of the brain "light up" listening to music, pre-20thC poetry and prose. Prose lights up the fewest by far, poetry much more and music involves the entire brain regardless of whether the person being tested likes that style or not. Dismiss that all you want, it's fact. There's a very good reason that humans are the only creatures on this planet, that we know of, that make music for it's own sake. Individuals react visibly to a subset of music be it tiny or wide but their brains react to it the same way before the filter of like and dislike gets in the way.
To get back to the subject at hand which is how artists communicate with fans I am pleased to read that you do agree that it is what they ought to do, again, without the hangers on and the people the entertain, move, educate and in other ways please with their work as a way of increasing their income.
P.S. As for the Lee Eastwood song you mention I rather like it though I'm not a country fan and I'm not an American. To those who are moved to tears the song isn't pablum, speaking of narrow subsets. So soon after Remembrance Day I was thinking more of Dire Straits "Brothers In Arms" take that as you will.
On the post: Why The Public Is Willing To Rally Against SOPA/PIPA, But Not For It
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Because you have a weird definition of "the public"
Talent/genius is a very very big cudgel.
On the post: Innovation In Security: It's All About Trust
An illustration of the trust thing. Even if Intel now owns them.
FF8 on Mandriva PWrPack 2011 as long as we're gonna start keeping score :)
On the post: Connecting With Fans Means More Than Talking About Your Latest Work
Bull twaddle.
If you're talking about music theory, you're probably right but if you're talking of human reaction to music then, with respect, you're full of it.
Speech, that thing we do most of the time, engages mostly the Cerebral cortex as does traditional narrative in written works. In other words the logical centres of the brain.
On the other hand music, as does anything involving rhyme, rythymn and metre (a beat) engages not only the logical parts of the brain but also all of the emotional and visual (yes, visual) and other sensory parts of the human brain. If you want to argue that point then explain to me how easily people can be brought to tears listening to music, how easy it is to remember traditiional poetry which mostly exists in lyrics these days something fiction writers can mostly only dream of.
People were interested in John Lennon BECAUSE he was a celebrity and when he and Yoko started to tell people what they had for lunch, whether or not in a bed in Toronto or not it came across as genuine as did the lyrics in his songs when he wrote about how he felt about things and things he'd observed. More importantly, it came across as genuine and really him and not only a PR move (something The Beatles hardly needed).
He conncected, as did the rest of the band when they began to do much the same, however reluctantly. The fans cared because people were moved by their music not just their celebrity status. Keep in mind that most people have very active and accurate BS filters and can detect fakery.
There's no need to be profound, certainly Charlton Heston never was yet he was genuine in his connection through the NRA in the United States no matter how much I personally disagreed with him.
It's not about being profound. It's about piercing the veil of perfection that surrounds celebs and gives rise to gossip rags. If the musician or artist is in control and genuine then even the need for gossip rags and sites vanishes. People feel they already know the artist or musician (an artificial distinction by the way but it makes it clear that I'm talking about actors, poets, painters and others not just musicians and composers).
We humans will always develop celebs. It could be anyone though the ones we remember are the celebs of their era usually poets, playwrights, philosophers and religious leaders in their time. It didn't need the MPAA or RIAA and a vast army of agents and publicists to create them.
Nor do most of us need to understand the subjects in depth to appreciate them on what they create. As long as the work is a genuine reflection of them.
And artists made the connections as a matter of course before the invention of the MPAA, RIAA, agents or publicists hangons that attach themselves to them now.
On the post: Microsoft 'Anti-Piracy' Campaign Explains Why It's Bad For Businesses To Pay For Microsoft Software
Re: Re:
Faster patch cycles? My Linux and BSD systems get patched at light speed compared to waiting for update Tuesday, or whatever day it is, which often don't address the problem to begin with. Often daily. And rarely requiring a reboot.
Tech support? I worked for a major company before I became disabled which paid tons for tech support. Guess what? I had to hold on line as much as anyone else does. (Over two hours at one point before I gave up and fixed it myself in a most unmicrosoft way.) So that advantage is marginal at best.
On the post: RIAA Thinking Of Backing Righthaven
Re: Re:
What's ironic here is that the guys that head the *AAs are boomers, the same ones that made them in the first place. Recorded music and medium and high end sound systems were devoured by us Boomers to listen to that awful Jungle Music, modern Country music and a host of other things. We're also the same ones who mixed our LP's to listen to in the car or play at parties or dances which didn't seem to hurt album sales. I'm sure the *AA heads did the same thing. Cassettes were wonderful things even if they had a limited life expectancy.
We're also the ones who flocked to movies when they were affordable and didn't resemble or copy television shows.
Keep in mind the RIAA was pretty small spuds before we boomers came along and, while the MPAA (Studios by another name) were powerful in one area but not really anywhere else.
Now it's our kids who won't pay for shiny plastic disks filled with crap for one good song and, funnily enough, nor will their parents. Welcome to the world on the MP3, sonic junk but still better than what they studios have to offer.
I suspect that at the end of the day what's scaring them both is the rise of do-it-yourself recording (wide spread now) and the same for "movies" (ramping up) now that the equipment and software allows just about anyone to do it at a comparatively inexpensive price.
First it's piracy, then it's independent bands, then guys and gals making their own films...who knows where it will end?
These guys may be sleeping under tarps in parks soon, ya'know, bottle of cheap vodka in hand passing stories about the good old days when they could afford great booze and better drugs!
On the post: Sandia National Labs: DNS Filtering In SOPA/PIPA Won't Stop Piracy, But Will Hurt Online Security
Re: Re: Re:
If that's the design in intention of DNSSEC then I want to go down that road as fast as we can.
On the other hand if SOPA/PIPA wants to break that road then it's better avoided. The statement from Sandia Labs is anything to go by the proposal is not only easily circumvented but may also have commercial and military consequences for the United States.
Europe won't follow suit, Canada won't, Japan won't, China doesn't care and, in fact, the only country I can think of that might is that already dangerously censorious country known as Australia.
In the age of the Internet the United States isn't an island and can't be. Doing things like this hurts the US more than it does anyone else. Consequently it doesn't help the *AA's one bit as it's inconsequential to work around what they propose.
Ironic, don't you think?
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