No, it's not. It's a simple fact that the "behind the scenes" workers (burger flippers, lawn mowers, machinery operators) tend to come from a much larger pool of available labor and don't have as much power to negotiate. If the bosses don't want to pay them royalties, they'll easily find someone else that doesn't demand them.
Yes. Audio engineers have reputations just as much as musicians do.
Seriously, how often do you hear of an album being abandoned because the audio engineer backed out?? They're important, but they're replaceable.
And how many musicians are sitting on such "vast personal fortunes"?
It's more common with the musicians than it is with the support staff, I can tell you that. Getting small royalty checks over the next 50 years for work you do today works a lot better if you already have your immediate financial needs taken care of.
Isn't that exactly what record labels expect the musicians they sign up to do?
And I never claimed it was a good deal for the newly-signed musicians. They'd probably rather be paid up front as well. But getting them to agree to royalties plays on their hopes of "striking it rich" with a big album, and it also allows the studios to screw the artists by hiding all the profits and/or eating away at them with "expenses" so they end up paying the artists very little. Royalties are much more favorable for the Madonnas and Stephen Kings of the world - they know that no matter what dreck they may put out, it'll still sell a ton of copies, so there's less risk involved in basing their pay on a percentage of sales.
Audio engineers play a crucial part in putting together a CD. As do the skilled folks who operate the CD-mastering plant. How come they don't get royalties for their work?
And what about the manufacture of hamburgers? That takes a lot of skills and high-tech equipment, not to mention the design of the stoves, electrical safety certification, health inspection etc. How come the folks who work on those things don't get royalties for every burger flipped?
I suspect the answer to your question lies in the fact that the individual stove designers, electrical inspectors, health inspectors, audio engineers etcetera generally don't possess a level of skill that is so unique or extraordinary in their field that they have the influence to demand compensation in the form of royalties. The production of a successful album requires an audio engineer, but is there any *specific* engineer whose skill is so great that obtaining his services will "make or break" the project? Most likely not. So the studio is free to find another engineer that isn't going to demand royalty payments.
As for the stove designer, if he has truly come up with a design so unique and so valuable that the burger company absolutely must have it, he may well be able to negotiate to license the design to the burger company in exchange for royalty payments, rather than selling his services outright for a flat fee.
Lastly, the people that do electrical inspections and run the disc-manufacturing facilities might prefer to be paid up front, rather than hoping for trickling payments over the next few decades. It's not as if they're sitting on vast personal fortunes and can afford to take a chance on the future success of a particular project. After all, if some stranger came up to you and asked for your services in exchange for a percentage of possible future earnings, would you jump at the chance? Or would you rather just take a check and go the hell home?
And here's a quote from Primera's FAQ/Knowledge Base:
Can I copy commercial DVD movies?
No. Our duplicators are intended only for duplication of original content audio, video and other digital information. All applicable copyright laws must be observed. Most DVD movies are copy-protected with encryption and this prevents a "global image," necessary for duplication, from being created.
So, the Primera duplicators can't copy protected discs, which means that the MPAA can't come after them using the same approach as they're taking with Real Networks in this lawsuit. I'm still looking for a definitive answer regarding the Tascam duplicator Alan linked to.
I can't prove a negative. Go to the Tascam site - none of their consumer (or "pro-sumer", or whatever you want to call it) models list the ability to copy CSS-protected media.
That's pretty good evidence that either they can't copy protected media, or that Tascam doesn't advertise the capability because they know doing so would be inviting lawsuits similar to the one Real Networks is currently facing. Either scenario would prove my point equally well.
Fine, so I called them "commercial" instead of "pro-sumer" - sue me. You're still missing the entire point of my reply to Alan. He asked why Real Networks was being sued, while the manufacturers of those two particular duplicators aren't. Here's my exact reply:
"The difference is that unlike the duplicators you linked to, the RealDVD software makes copies of encrypted/copy-protected discs. That's the whole thrust of this lawsuit - the plaintiff is claiming that Real's software is violating the DMCA because it bypasses the copy-protection scheme on the discs in order to copy them.
If RealDVD only made copies of unprotected discs (like the Tascam/Primera duplicators in your post), then this lawsuit wouldn't be happening, or at the very least, the plaintiff would have to find a different strategy to attack Real."
Unless you can show me some evidence that those two duplicators can in fact copy protected media, then I don't see anything wrong with my reply. Likewise, prove me wrong in my assertion that this case wouldn't be happening if RealDVD didn't bypass the DVD protection. That's the claim that the plaintiff's **entire case** hinges on - that Real Networks is violating the DMCA by bypassing the disc protection.
Yep - and that's my biggest problem with the studios - they want the best of both worlds. They want your purchase to be merely a license, so that you're subject to all of the restrictions when it comes to re-distribution and copyright infringement, but they also want to treat the sale as if you're purchasing the actual physical media, so that they don't have to replace damage media and so that you can't format-shift the performance onto other media.
If we were truly just purchasing a license, I wouldn't be looking at four copies of the Beatles' "White Album" on my shelf, all on different media and purchased at full retail price. Instead, I would have been able to just purchase the license once, and then pay a nominal materials fee to get it on whatever media I wished.
If the busker hasn't obtained a public performance license, than probably so.
But there's very little oversight when it comes to street performers, because the system in place for collecting royalties for public performances is set up for collecting payment from the venue where the performance is held, not from the individual artists giving the performance. In the case of buskers, the "venue" isn't well-defined, and there are just so many of them that enforcement would be problematic, to say the least.
"FYI in my experience as a studio pro, most burners of Tascam quality indeed do copy discs regardless of protection schemes."
Do you have any specific models you can name? Because if the Tascam consumer/prosumer duplicators *will* copy protected DVDs, they're being awful quiet about it on their website.
Interesting, but it doesn't refute my claim that there are no consumer-oriented duplicators that will duplicate CSS-protected discs, and *that's* why the manufacturers aren't being sued along with Real Networks for DMCA violations. That's all Alan was asking.
I really don't know what you're babbling about, but if you look up "unskilled laborer", I'm willing to bet you don't fit the accepted definition.
And since you asked, in the past week I secured 200k in funding for a relatively tiny project I'm working on as a result of an in-person meeting with DARPA representatives, including the former Chief Scientist of the US Secret Service. This will allow me to easily finish up the experimental portion of my thesis, so I'm all set to graduate with my master's degree in applied physics in June. Then I go back to Virginia to continue my career as a Naval officer.
Umm - "hourly" and "unskilled" are not synonymous. And even though works created by unskilled workers can sometimes still have value years later, you're ignoring my second criteria - that the work continues to directly produce a profit for the person that commissioned the work in the first place.
Do you really not see a difference between someone that nails a house frame together and an author that writes a book which is continually re-sold again and again at a profit for the publisher? How would you suggest that authors be paid? Hourly? An annual salary that entitles the publisher to everything that the author writes during the year? I think that an author's pay should be related to the amount of money his work is going to directly earn for the publisher. And the model that makes the most sense for that is a royalty arrangement.
Of course there are no lawsuits regarding the commercial duplication machines - they're the machines used **at the request of the publishers** to produce discs for sale.
Sony Pictures isn't going to ask a duplicating service to make them ten million copies of "Angels & Demons" and then turn around and sue the service for duplicating copy-protected discs - that's asinine.
As for my personal opinion on end-user copying of protected content, I think that consumers should be allowed to make backup copies of protected discs and/or transfer the content to other formats for viewing on laptops, personal video players, etcetera. In fact, I was disappointed to hear that the RealDVD software wouldn't let you burn a disc from the saved copy. To me, that's like having backup software without any "restore" functionality.
Re-read my original post. AC asked why he wasn't still getting paid for burgers he flipped 20 years ago. I just pointed out that he was paid hourly, so why would he expect lifetime payments? I never said that a royalty-based alternative for burger flippers exists.
Seriously, how would royalties even be applicable/appropriate in such a case? Are people still eating the burgers he prepared 20 years ago?
And don't get your panties in a twist about the whole "skilled/unskilled" thing. "Unskilled labor" is not a derogatory term - it's just a description of a certain type of work. And I still claim that unskilled labor doesn't lend itself to a royalty-based payment system, because the results of their labor are usually fleeting. A flipped burger is eaten and is then gone. A freshly-mown lawn grows ragged again over time. The work that's performed doesn't have any lasting value for anyone or provide profits for anyone over an extended period of time, so royalties don't make much sense, do they?
I never said anything about non-commercial copying being OK or not. I only mentioned commercials in my response to AC in post #45 where he said "Tascam and Primera have devices on the market that circumvent said copy protection."
I'm claiming that either he's wrong, or that such devices are meant for strictly commercial use. Obviously such commercial duplication devices exist, because that's how all of the DVDs that end up on store shelves are produced in the first place.
All this goes back to my response to Alan's post where he asked why Tascam and Primera haven't been sued like Real is being sued for RealDVD. I claim that any consumer-oriented duplication machines like the examples he gave are incapable of copying CSS-protected discs, and that's why Tascam and Primera aren't being sued.
No, I was just pointing out the obvious answer to his (rather inane) question - burger flippers don't get paid on a royalty basis, because royalties don't make sense in the case of unskilled labor.
Now, there *are* some people out there being paid hourly wages or annual salaries that could be paid on a royalty basis instead. Software designers spring to mind as an example. In fact, that's exactly what software designers are doing when they sell apps on the iTunes store, for example. But those projects are usually the work of a single creator or at most a relatively small team. For much larger projects, royalties would be problematic because it's hard to quantize how much a particular programmer's work contributes to the success of the project as a whole.
I'm not sure if you're the same AC that made posts 45 & 46, but I'm going to respond to both of them here.
First, there's nothing in my post that has anything to do with which countries are best for business, or whether DeCSS came from Norway, the Ukraine, or East Podunk, so that part of your reply has me a little confused.
And if Tascam and Primera have *consumer-oriented* duplication machines that bypass the disc copy protections, I'd love to hear about them. I'm sure that there are *commercial* duplicators out there - after all, the studios are obviously copying millions of DVDs from the original master discs, but all of the consumer-oriented products I've heard of that bypass the copy protection have ended up on the wrong side of a court judgement. That is, unless they make the end user jump through hoops by not including the DeCSS code in the actual product, like Mac the Ripper. In those cases, it's up to the end user to find and install the CSS libraries. That way, the actual authors of the copying software haven't technically broken the law.
Well, the simple answer is that while you were flipping burgers, you agreed to be paid on an hourly basis, so that's how you were paid.
But for people like recording artists and authors, where the value of their work is based on how much money that work is going to make for someone else well into the future, royalty payments make sense.
Other than a relatively small advance payment, publishing houses aren't going to want to pay a huge up-front fee for a work that may be a total flop, and authors aren't going to want to accept a few thousands dollars in payment if they know their work is going to be worth millions to the publishing house. In these cases, royalty payments make sense. The more valuable the author's work turns out to be to the publisher, the more he makes.
But that's not to say that royalty payments are the only way to go in this type of situation. Look at movies. In most cases, the stars are paid a flat fee, regardless of how well the move ends up doing. I don't honestly know why this model works for movie studios and not publishing houses, but it seems to.
"So what makes Tascam and Primera different than Real?"
The difference is that unlike the duplicators you linked to, the RealDVD software makes copies of encrypted/copy-protected discs. That's the whole thrust of this lawsuit - the plaintiff is claiming that Real's software is violating the DMCA because it bypasses the copy-protection scheme on the discs in order to copy them.
If RealDVD only made copies of unprotected discs (like the Tascam/Primera duplicators in your post), then this lawsuit wouldn't be happening, or at the very least, the plaintiff would have to find a different strategy to attack Real.
At least Ian was intellectually honest enough to just refer to his Kindle as a "partial brick". Read over Mike's commentary again, as well as the Channelweb blog he's commenting on, and you'll see just how many factual errors, omissions and misrepresentations there are in both. (I'm giving the authors the benefit of a doubt and not claiming that they're lying outright for the sake of a good story). Now that you know more of the story, even the two headlines - "Returning Product to Amazon Could Brick Your Kindle" and "Amazon Uses DRM To Turn Kindle Into A Very Expensive Paperweight" are misleading at best and ludicrous distortions of Ian's situation at worst.
And while DRM on the Kindle does introduce some potentially-serious problems such as the ones you described, none of them are the problems that Ian had. Even if the Kindle books were completely unprotected .TXT files, Ian still would have lost access to his purchased books that existed solely on Amazon's computers because he didn't keep a copy on his Kindle or his computer (both of which are trivially-easy to do). So again, the problem was really with Amazon's cancellation of his account, not the fact that the e-books had DRM.
He obviously fell afoul of some automated flagging routine on Amazon's computers. He had his account reinstated a day later, so Amazon couldn't have been too upset with him. Still, I agree that the cancellation was heavy-handed on Amazon's part - the automated flag should have generated a review by a real live person, rather than an automatic suspension.
And despite Mike's headline and the claims of the article he's commenting on, none of the customer's problems had *anything* to do with DRM at all. He would have had all of his same issues even if the Kindle and Amazon's e-books didn't use any DRM at all. If there's any bitching to be done as a result of this story, it should be directed at Amazon's return policy and auto-cancellation bots, not their DRM
On the post: EU Approves Copyright Extension, Despite Evidence Of The Harm It Does
Re: Re: Putting Together a CD
No, it's not. It's a simple fact that the "behind the scenes" workers (burger flippers, lawn mowers, machinery operators) tend to come from a much larger pool of available labor and don't have as much power to negotiate. If the bosses don't want to pay them royalties, they'll easily find someone else that doesn't demand them.
Seriously, how often do you hear of an album being abandoned because the audio engineer backed out?? They're important, but they're replaceable.
It's more common with the musicians than it is with the support staff, I can tell you that. Getting small royalty checks over the next 50 years for work you do today works a lot better if you already have your immediate financial needs taken care of.
And I never claimed it was a good deal for the newly-signed musicians. They'd probably rather be paid up front as well. But getting them to agree to royalties plays on their hopes of "striking it rich" with a big album, and it also allows the studios to screw the artists by hiding all the profits and/or eating away at them with "expenses" so they end up paying the artists very little. Royalties are much more favorable for the Madonnas and Stephen Kings of the world - they know that no matter what dreck they may put out, it'll still sell a ton of copies, so there's less risk involved in basing their pay on a percentage of sales.
On the post: EU Approves Copyright Extension, Despite Evidence Of The Harm It Does
Re: Re: Putting Together a CD
I suspect the answer to your question lies in the fact that the individual stove designers, electrical inspectors, health inspectors, audio engineers etcetera generally don't possess a level of skill that is so unique or extraordinary in their field that they have the influence to demand compensation in the form of royalties. The production of a successful album requires an audio engineer, but is there any *specific* engineer whose skill is so great that obtaining his services will "make or break" the project? Most likely not. So the studio is free to find another engineer that isn't going to demand royalty payments.
As for the stove designer, if he has truly come up with a design so unique and so valuable that the burger company absolutely must have it, he may well be able to negotiate to license the design to the burger company in exchange for royalty payments, rather than selling his services outright for a flat fee.
Lastly, the people that do electrical inspections and run the disc-manufacturing facilities might prefer to be paid up front, rather than hoping for trickling payments over the next few decades. It's not as if they're sitting on vast personal fortunes and can afford to take a chance on the future success of a particular project. After all, if some stranger came up to you and asked for your services in exchange for a percentage of possible future earnings, would you jump at the chance? Or would you rather just take a check and go the hell home?
On the post: Real DVD Copying Case Gets Off To An Inauspicious Start
Re: Re: Re: Re: @ Scott How discs are made
Can I copy commercial DVD movies?
No. Our duplicators are intended only for duplication of original content audio, video and other digital information. All applicable copyright laws must be observed. Most DVD movies are copy-protected with encryption and this prevents a "global image," necessary for duplication, from being created.
So, the Primera duplicators can't copy protected discs, which means that the MPAA can't come after them using the same approach as they're taking with Real Networks in this lawsuit. I'm still looking for a definitive answer regarding the Tascam duplicator Alan linked to.
On the post: Real DVD Copying Case Gets Off To An Inauspicious Start
Re: Re: Re: @ Scott How discs are made
That's pretty good evidence that either they can't copy protected media, or that Tascam doesn't advertise the capability because they know doing so would be inviting lawsuits similar to the one Real Networks is currently facing. Either scenario would prove my point equally well.
On the post: Real DVD Copying Case Gets Off To An Inauspicious Start
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: To Scott
"The difference is that unlike the duplicators you linked to, the RealDVD software makes copies of encrypted/copy-protected discs. That's the whole thrust of this lawsuit - the plaintiff is claiming that Real's software is violating the DMCA because it bypasses the copy-protection scheme on the discs in order to copy them.
If RealDVD only made copies of unprotected discs (like the Tascam/Primera duplicators in your post), then this lawsuit wouldn't be happening, or at the very least, the plaintiff would have to find a different strategy to attack Real."
Unless you can show me some evidence that those two duplicators can in fact copy protected media, then I don't see anything wrong with my reply. Likewise, prove me wrong in my assertion that this case wouldn't be happening if RealDVD didn't bypass the DVD protection. That's the claim that the plaintiff's **entire case** hinges on - that Real Networks is violating the DMCA by bypassing the disc protection.
On the post: Real DVD Copying Case Gets Off To An Inauspicious Start
Re: Re:
If we were truly just purchasing a license, I wouldn't be looking at four copies of the Beatles' "White Album" on my shelf, all on different media and purchased at full retail price. Instead, I would have been able to just purchase the license once, and then pay a nominal materials fee to get it on whatever media I wished.
On the post: EU Approves Copyright Extension, Despite Evidence Of The Harm It Does
Re:
But there's very little oversight when it comes to street performers, because the system in place for collecting royalties for public performances is set up for collecting payment from the venue where the performance is held, not from the individual artists giving the performance. In the case of buskers, the "venue" isn't well-defined, and there are just so many of them that enforcement would be problematic, to say the least.
On the post: Real DVD Copying Case Gets Off To An Inauspicious Start
Re: @ Scott How discs are made
Do you have any specific models you can name? Because if the Tascam consumer/prosumer duplicators *will* copy protected DVDs, they're being awful quiet about it on their website.
On the post: Real DVD Copying Case Gets Off To An Inauspicious Start
Re: Re: Re: To Scott
On the post: EU Approves Copyright Extension, Despite Evidence Of The Harm It Does
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
And since you asked, in the past week I secured 200k in funding for a relatively tiny project I'm working on as a result of an in-person meeting with DARPA representatives, including the former Chief Scientist of the US Secret Service. This will allow me to easily finish up the experimental portion of my thesis, so I'm all set to graduate with my master's degree in applied physics in June. Then I go back to Virginia to continue my career as a Naval officer.
No, I don't need a hug - thanks, though.
On the post: EU Approves Copyright Extension, Despite Evidence Of The Harm It Does
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: To Scott
Do you really not see a difference between someone that nails a house frame together and an author that writes a book which is continually re-sold again and again at a profit for the publisher? How would you suggest that authors be paid? Hourly? An annual salary that entitles the publisher to everything that the author writes during the year? I think that an author's pay should be related to the amount of money his work is going to directly earn for the publisher. And the model that makes the most sense for that is a royalty arrangement.
On the post: Real DVD Copying Case Gets Off To An Inauspicious Start
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: To Scott
Sony Pictures isn't going to ask a duplicating service to make them ten million copies of "Angels & Demons" and then turn around and sue the service for duplicating copy-protected discs - that's asinine.
As for my personal opinion on end-user copying of protected content, I think that consumers should be allowed to make backup copies of protected discs and/or transfer the content to other formats for viewing on laptops, personal video players, etcetera. In fact, I was disappointed to hear that the RealDVD software wouldn't let you burn a disc from the saved copy. To me, that's like having backup software without any "restore" functionality.
On the post: EU Approves Copyright Extension, Despite Evidence Of The Harm It Does
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Seriously, how would royalties even be applicable/appropriate in such a case? Are people still eating the burgers he prepared 20 years ago?
And don't get your panties in a twist about the whole "skilled/unskilled" thing. "Unskilled labor" is not a derogatory term - it's just a description of a certain type of work. And I still claim that unskilled labor doesn't lend itself to a royalty-based payment system, because the results of their labor are usually fleeting. A flipped burger is eaten and is then gone. A freshly-mown lawn grows ragged again over time. The work that's performed doesn't have any lasting value for anyone or provide profits for anyone over an extended period of time, so royalties don't make much sense, do they?
On the post: Real DVD Copying Case Gets Off To An Inauspicious Start
Re: Re: Re: To Scott
I'm claiming that either he's wrong, or that such devices are meant for strictly commercial use. Obviously such commercial duplication devices exist, because that's how all of the DVDs that end up on store shelves are produced in the first place.
All this goes back to my response to Alan's post where he asked why Tascam and Primera haven't been sued like Real is being sued for RealDVD. I claim that any consumer-oriented duplication machines like the examples he gave are incapable of copying CSS-protected discs, and that's why Tascam and Primera aren't being sued.
On the post: EU Approves Copyright Extension, Despite Evidence Of The Harm It Does
Re: Re: Re:
Now, there *are* some people out there being paid hourly wages or annual salaries that could be paid on a royalty basis instead. Software designers spring to mind as an example. In fact, that's exactly what software designers are doing when they sell apps on the iTunes store, for example. But those projects are usually the work of a single creator or at most a relatively small team. For much larger projects, royalties would be problematic because it's hard to quantize how much a particular programmer's work contributes to the success of the project as a whole.
On the post: Real DVD Copying Case Gets Off To An Inauspicious Start
Re: To Scott
First, there's nothing in my post that has anything to do with which countries are best for business, or whether DeCSS came from Norway, the Ukraine, or East Podunk, so that part of your reply has me a little confused.
And if Tascam and Primera have *consumer-oriented* duplication machines that bypass the disc copy protections, I'd love to hear about them. I'm sure that there are *commercial* duplicators out there - after all, the studios are obviously copying millions of DVDs from the original master discs, but all of the consumer-oriented products I've heard of that bypass the copy protection have ended up on the wrong side of a court judgement. That is, unless they make the end user jump through hoops by not including the DeCSS code in the actual product, like Mac the Ripper. In those cases, it's up to the end user to find and install the CSS libraries. That way, the actual authors of the copying software haven't technically broken the law.
On the post: EU Approves Copyright Extension, Despite Evidence Of The Harm It Does
Re:
But for people like recording artists and authors, where the value of their work is based on how much money that work is going to make for someone else well into the future, royalty payments make sense.
Other than a relatively small advance payment, publishing houses aren't going to want to pay a huge up-front fee for a work that may be a total flop, and authors aren't going to want to accept a few thousands dollars in payment if they know their work is going to be worth millions to the publishing house. In these cases, royalty payments make sense. The more valuable the author's work turns out to be to the publisher, the more he makes.
But that's not to say that royalty payments are the only way to go in this type of situation. Look at movies. In most cases, the stars are paid a flat fee, regardless of how well the move ends up doing. I don't honestly know why this model works for movie studios and not publishing houses, but it seems to.
On the post: Real DVD Copying Case Gets Off To An Inauspicious Start
Re:
The difference is that unlike the duplicators you linked to, the RealDVD software makes copies of encrypted/copy-protected discs. That's the whole thrust of this lawsuit - the plaintiff is claiming that Real's software is violating the DMCA because it bypasses the copy-protection scheme on the discs in order to copy them.
If RealDVD only made copies of unprotected discs (like the Tascam/Primera duplicators in your post), then this lawsuit wouldn't be happening, or at the very least, the plaintiff would have to find a different strategy to attack Real.
On the post: Amazon Uses DRM To Turn Kindle Into A Very Expensive Paperweight
Re: Re: Re: Re: Much ado about nothing.
And while DRM on the Kindle does introduce some potentially-serious problems such as the ones you described, none of them are the problems that Ian had. Even if the Kindle books were completely unprotected .TXT files, Ian still would have lost access to his purchased books that existed solely on Amazon's computers because he didn't keep a copy on his Kindle or his computer (both of which are trivially-easy to do). So again, the problem was really with Amazon's cancellation of his account, not the fact that the e-books had DRM.
On the post: Amazon Uses DRM To Turn Kindle Into A Very Expensive Paperweight
Re: Re: Re:
And despite Mike's headline and the claims of the article he's commenting on, none of the customer's problems had *anything* to do with DRM at all. He would have had all of his same issues even if the Kindle and Amazon's e-books didn't use any DRM at all. If there's any bitching to be done as a result of this story, it should be directed at Amazon's return policy and auto-cancellation bots, not their DRM
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