Re: So what if they have considerable non-infringing uses
You might want to check the incredibly wide scope the law that convicted these two can allow. And the fact that more than a few legal experts in the UK are of the opinion that once one of these "convictions" works it's way to the higher courts it's likely to be tossed into the toilet.
You can add to that the not-so minor detail that the Metropolitan Police have been not-so-gently ticked off for their far too cozy relationships with private organizations like FACT and stunts like handing evidence over to them before the courts get to see it AND the defendants solicitors get to see it.
Yeah, I know it's all "Big Search" that has brought about all the "piracy" and "Big Search" needs to be reigned in in your view but then so does anyone whose opinions differ to yours.
And there isn't a thing that's stopping "Big Content" from buying ad space from Google or Microsoft or Yahoo on their own sites.
Oh...just a second, they already do!
Have another glance under your bed, bob. There be monsters there I'm sure, even if they aren't visible to anyone else.
Add to the list Not An Electronic Rodent provided you can add private visits to what are sometimes called high end "massage" parlours when the media isn't around. The UK parliament is particularly interested in those if the number of sex scandals there is any indication.
For members of the Canadian parliament bribers get to substitute that for places that are hot in our winters with lots of beaches and young women in barely there bikinis. Even better are trips to Rio on some fact finding mission or other to investigate the poverty on display on Rio's beaches during Carnival!
With the "tax" on blank media in Canada we basically do turn over a portion of our paycheque each time we buy a blank CD or DVD or any reason. It doesn't matter what we're going to do with the media all that matters is that the "content industry" gets paid as, apparently, so to (some) artists.
For those like our AC here treating the UK like an American colony is just dandy. What bothers and amazes me here is that segments of the British power structure seem to find being an American colony just fine. Or, if you like, the undeclared 51st state.
The American Congress has been trying to apply laws extraterritorially for years. It's only recently that they've actually seem to have succeeded. That's more to the credit (??) of the content industry who have become well organized globally and encourage this sort of silliness but it amounts to the same thing.
That's what ACTA and TPP have been all about, too. Expanding US law and attitudes particularly where it applies to the content industry to the rest of the world.
As the American Empire declines in every other way it's expanding in this one. I wish it made sense but that's the way it works.
Sadly for some, the current state of copyright enforcement has created a generation of scofflaws of its own. It's becoming circular in the sense that increase the enforcement, ban the tools and what is likely to happen is that infringement is likely to increase not decrease. Things like today's 6 strikes story. Even though we know about all the false positives yeilded by relying on an IP address to identify a human being the 6 strikes are going that way again this time with some American ISPs lining up to help out. You'd think someone would want to try a different way that actually reduces infringement. But no, let's go with this. We're familiar with it even if the results tend to be something along the lines of the square root of negative one.
The thing is though that you can't fobid what's already in your device that allows you to play the DRM protected material to start with. The tools are already there and have to be.
Let's not even mention that the tools are needed for legitimate uses such as troubleshooting on a network, connections or the health of your DVD/CD player/writer.
In many cases it's already illegal to decrypt a wide range of communication and software. Not that it's stopping the Chinese, for example.
As for an attempt to forbid the tools or to make it too expensive to develop or maintain them that's another one of those cows that left the barn years ago. And they aren't coming home.
Forbidding the tools would make the legal cracking of DRM C-11 outlines pointless and would raise a Charter challenge of its own.
What we did have was the Diefenbaker era Bill of Rights, Magna Charta, the English Bill of Rights and the Bill of Right. Magna Charta we still have as it forms the legal basis of all of this. The courts pre 1982 were getting around the direct emphasis the Charter has by invoking the Diefenbaker era bill, practice and precedent or the requirement of reasonableness. Not the best way, I know but it worked when needed.
What's recognized outside of the Charter in the Constitution Act is what came before it which is basically how government evolves over time and the power of it. Contrary to fears in Quebec the recognition of Provincial rights has increased to such a degree that the Feds always need to take that into account now when coming up with dreams of "national" programs in just about any area you can think of.
Without the Charter we wouldn't be discussing the high probability that the DRM provisions of C-11 will be challenged. Without the Charter we'd not be discussing what may happen should the courts rule them unconstitutional on various grounds perhaps including those we had before 1982 that the provisions are in conflict with one another.
The DOJ seems to think that if you're breaking the DRM for the purpose of making your own archival copy and not for infringement the C-11 is open to constitutional challenge. This includes, if I read it correctly regional restrictions under most circumstances.
Perhaps more importantly the law as written prohibits the otherwise legal act of breaking DRM for the purpose of moving the software, book or whatever to another another device of allowing someone with, say, a permanent visual impairment access to what is being protected by the DRM. The problem there is that once the protected material is moved to another device, again, perfectly legal, there is no way of restoring the DRM as the bill appears to demand. Hence the prohibition of an exception to the forbidding of breaking DRM.
Reading through what Giest has posted, so far, it appears that attempting to enforce the no breaking DRM rule may very well contravene the freedom of expression clauses of the Charter unless because copyright infringement is the direct result. Marking an archival copy isn't infringement in Canada.
Perhaps there'll be more focus tomorrow when Industry Canada's concerns are posted. Right now there's a few blank spaces I'd like to see filled in a little bit.
One could argue that DRM violates freedom of expression and the right of citizens to access information kept on them by government and some private authorities and entities.
I can't see the argument that making DRM extends copyright terms to eternity though I'm open to it. At some time the work covered by copyright that the DRM is "protecting" will enter the public domain and at that point breaking the DRM will have nothing at all to do with infringing on copyright through redistribution once cracked.
Giest's post and comments indicate there are other issues around the DRM provisions which may land them in trouble too.
My sniffer always did detect the smell of something lawyers would love to challenge under the Charter. It's nice to see them listed other than just my feeling of "the smell".
As ACTA and TPP will also have DRM cracking provisions that make C-11 look tame in comparison I'd say those will land in front of the Supremes the moment they're tabled in the House.
I can understand where people come away with the idea that Newhoff and others haven't the faintest idea what Google does and how it does it. It certainly reads that way.
It's not so much that he doesn't, I hope, but he has another point to make about what he sees as competing utopias with his being the correct one.
This is where I think the schism between technologists and creators becomes ideological and sociological. The serious artist is offended to have his work ground into mouse fodder, valued identically with the garbage; and the consumer should be offended, too. The paradigm Google wants to foster is one that asserts that the booty-shakin’ college girl video has the same intrinsic value as the Emmy Award-winning TV show and that the value of either will only be determined by the number of hits each receives in cyberspace.
Now that certain Emmy award winners do have the cultural impact of MSM isn't important to his argument either though he could have tried to come up with a parallel. Emmys, even more than Oscars, award shows with the largest audience for the major awards and quality, such as it is, is reserved for the lesser awards. In short the number of hits in "the real world". There are worse ways of doing things nor does it mean that the general populace is arts ignorant it reflects that evening television and audiences for most movies is looking for entertainment after a long day. They want to escape, thank you, and if the Emmy winner does that then it ought to be rewarded. To that extent its done what it needs to do. PBS sneaking the odd "I, Claudius" into the mix doesn't hurt either.
The reality is that should I query a drug I was recently prescibed, Epival, I wouldn't expect to see a result for Newhoff's short "Gone Elvis" nor do I. The most relevant items are returned long before college girls shaking booty. I don't see that using the search term "Gone Elvis" either. In fact David Newhoff's short is the first item returned. No MSM that I can see there.
If there is one related to the search term its too, too many pages into the results for me to bother looking for it.
As a Canadian army veteran I'd be offended to see the two linked terms linked on the first page or two of the returns but it doesn't.
One point about Newhoff's utopia's is his dismissal of programmers and tech types as creative or creators. There has been a lot of creativity put into programs such as Photoshop, video editors, operating systems and the desktops they display.
In fact Newhoff's definition of artists worked with the creators of picture and video editors very closely to get what we have today.
Equally the tech industry relies on copyright as much or, or more, than artists do even for "simple" things such as enforcing licensing terms. Even open source software is covered by copyright for exactly that purpose. I'd suggest Newhoff wade through the GPL license, for example.
Techies are every bit as creative as sculptors, writers, painters, photographers and others and their work enters our culture indirectly but as profoundly as do the artist classifications I've just used. By and large, though, the tech industry understands that it is built on what came before and that copyright protects a single expression of an idea not the idea itself. I'm not sure Newhoff does, though I'll happily admit that I'm wrong if he says I am.
I'm also not as fearful of the ability of the general populace to identify quality in the artistic realm when it encounters it. There may be differences on the leading edge, avant guarde end but by and large we're able to tell the difference between, say, "My Favorite Martian" and "I, Claudius".
The dissonance between the tech world and Newhoff's is less than he wants us to believe or that he seems to believe. Not in the need for some form of copyright, even if it's not the corrupted version we have today. It's more in the understanding that the tech world has that sharing is vital to progress even if it's not line-by-line copying of code. Newhoff buys into the views of his patrons in the RIAA and MPAA that they must control who enters and what leaves the realms they "control". And that only they know who can enter or leave those realms. That only the gatekeepers have the faintest idea of what "art" is. It certainly isn't the general public.
So he focus's his argument on that rather than on any merit that sites like Techdirt may have to their/own views and diverts it to a concern for art and culture.
The thing is that the diversion is transparent and does nothing but point blame rather than seeking a way out of what his patrons see as a problem.
David, I'm sorry to tell you this but recording and movie studios don't give a damn about culture they want what sells the most. Bums in seats. The same thing Shakespeare wanted when he ran the Globe Theatre. The same applies to book and magazine publishers. If there's a positive cultural result then fine. But that's not what they're in business for. That's not what they pay you for.
Should you get bums in seats cranking out pink slime then you do that as far as they're concerned. It isn't why you went into the arts but that's what your patrons want and they, ultimately, are the ones signing your cheques. After we great unwashed in the general public pay them.
As for piracy/infringement or whatever the discussion here has centred around the economics and market demand for certain things like singles, movies released quickly, and other things they paying public wants if they were given a chance to pay. Where there's demand there will be supply. Legal or not. See: War on Drugs/Alcohol Prohibition should you need further explanation. No amount of enforcement is going to change that, I'm sorry to say.
More importantly the "content" industries need to start to understand that. And they need to stop our ability to do with our legal downloads what we would do with, say, a book. If it is, as you insist, property, then whether the property is in bits or bound and printed on paper we, as consumers, ought to be able to do the same things with them.
Phased releases of movies have pretty much had their day. Is it going to take people who really want the same thing bashing their heads on each other before that stops?
IF there's the dissonance you say there is, David Newhoff, that's where it is. What goes where and when. Not who should get paid. OF COURSE THE ARTIST OUGHT TO BE PAID if there are enough buyers. Economics, right?
(Different arguments apply to pharmaceuticals and software than to the arts for importantly different reasons.)
I'll end my "screed" by heartily recommending the short movie Gone Elvis to everyone who got this far. I don't like your opinions but, as a piece of work, this is great.
Not just because you're offering it for free. http://goneelvis.com/view/
Logical fallacies aside, I'm left to wonder just who is tilting at windmills here.
As Hadopi has failure stamped all over its forehead so let's just try it here and without the open government backup it has in France! To me that looks like an enormous windmill though I could be wrong about that.
Then there's the minor detail that an IP address does not identify an individual human being, it identifies a connection in a given location which anyone can use. It's also easily spoofed which lessens its value as and identifier of any kind. Those infringing/pirating on a "commercial" scale are using/going to use fake IP addresses.
Enforcement, on a criminal or civil level, is only as good as the methods used to ID the baddies. Too many false positives will inevitably lead to an increase in dismissals. So much for your enforcement.
The other thing I wonder about is are these ISPs going to use deep packet inspection to discover whether or not the torrent in question is being used to distribute "pirated" material? Not all torrents do, you know. The majority are used for perfectly legitimate reasons.
I can see a few lawsuits coming from this from the falsely accused, who can afford it, and a large political backfire.
Care to debate that without resorting to logical fallacies?
I'm going to disagree with you on this one. People like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen were covered before they broke out of the folkie circuit into the pop and rock mainstream where they now do very very well. In both cases it was likely their voices, originally, that kept them out of the mainstream as you can't call either great singers.
Musicians knew them and their songs which led to covers such as The Byrds version of "Turn, Turn, Turn" that made many kids aware of Dylan.
There is more than one kind of talent out there, remember and in many cases what record companies are promoting at any given time and radio stations are willing to add to their playlists. The original songwriter does get a cut of the sales and performances of cover versions so I wouldn't worry about them getting completely left out.
All of this repeating of phrases like "you guys do realize you are now supporting the RIAA as the Major Labels have an 18% equity stake in Spotify." which is well known.
Part of me wonders how soon it will be before some AC shows up to make that statement which nicely bypasses the reality that we all have some things we hide which have nothing at all to do with illegal acts.
It's this reality that tyrants and wannabe tyrants exploit to the maximum to control their populations or those who they are in contact with. Police agencies, sadly, fall into this as do some of their "supporters". Why bother with warrants when just doing it is easier? And it could be a bother to find a compliant JP in the middle of the night to grant that warrant, you know. They just get in the way. It's easier to hack into "the baddies" smart phone and grab the data that way.
J Edgar Hoover operated that way and struck the fear of God into low level crooks all the way up to the White House as one of the results. Joe McCarthy did much the same.
Requirements such as probably cause and the actual obtaining of a warrant is designed to lessen the chance that police can abuse their considerable power. It's all in the aid of preventing police from crashing down doors in the middle of the night for no reason or cause. All of which still happens even with all the safeguards in place.
Just as importantly it stops lazy police work. That they have to justify the need for a warrant in front of what is hoped to be a legally disinterested 3rd party may have the effect of them doing their homework.
Warrantless tracking of a person via their smart phone's GPS should be done, it at all, in only the most extraordinary circumstances. Government and, by extention, police, shouldn't have and don't need cart blanche to know where we are at every moment of the day and night no matter how much they may think they need it and should only get it in specific circumstances for specific purposes.
You're asking a complex question there which David over simplifies in his way and gets wrong in so many others.
Should the core of it be do artists, musicians, in this case, deserve to be paid for their work. The answer is and emphatic yes. Did they and do they under the RIAA gatekeeper system? After all the creative accounting does by the gatekeepers despite what Lowery says the answer is kinda. Obviously that's not the complete answer and there are others who have responded to David's post in far more detail and with far more direct knowledge than I have.
We can start here: http://blog.tunecore.com/2012/06/the-intern-the-artist-the-internet.html
Which answers David Lowery directly.
And for a Then vs Now comparison there's this: http://blog.tunecore.com/2012/06/then-v-now-the-path-to-success-for-artists.html
On software the answer is a "maybe" depending on the licensing of the software.
For closed source which is what Microsoft and Adobe largely deal in the answer is that infringement is a civil offense and probably best not done. Perhaps not for moral issues but more practical ones like support, bug fixes and nice stuff like that. There are times that it becomes a criminal offense for example when unauthorized software is downloaded for a profit.
For open source you it's morally, ethically and legally correct. In fact that's what open source is built on. The ability of the user to modify the software to allow it to work better for them. Under the GPL license which is the one Linux uses, now far more than a $100K project, you can download the source, have at it, make whatever changes you want but you must upload it back to the project leader under the same license.
Cultural endeavours like songs have a similar license known as the Creative Commons license which comes in slightly different flavours depending on what, if anything, the creator wants to restrict.
With respect to what David writes about he's both right and wrong and it's covered in one of the links I put in above. Perhaps what's missing in all of this is this historical context for "piracy" is that with Napster it started because the recording industry wasn't filling consumer demand at the time for a return to the "single" or "track" instead of the CD album which, in the late 1990s was something of a gamble as the grumble at the time was that you bought a CD of 14 songs and only 1 was worth the effort. Did it infringe? Yes. Was it ethical? In the purest sense of the word no. Then again it could be and has been argued that what the recording industry was doing at the time was anything but ethical as well. In the sense of "you'll damn well take what we give you and shut up". The musicians got caught in the middle and risked not getting paid for their work which no one here, then or now, agrees with. So that is a moral wrong. Technology allows for it and with the recording industry planting both feet into a market that was vanishing around them the battle lines were set up. Eventually Apple and Amazon came along and more or less forced a reluctant recording industry into resurrecting the single and letting Apple and Amazon retail them. The musicians started to get paid again.
One day something like this will happen for first run movies as well. Soon.
The moral clash will restore some balance even though nothing will ever return to pre Napster days. Morality notwithstanding.
As long as there is software that people in second and third world countries want or perceive they need software piracy will continue, I'm afraid. If there's a moral question there it's similar to the pharma one which is can me ethically expect people in those parts of the world to pay the same prices for software (or medication) that we do for first world countries?
The question is complex as are the answers. Economics as a science/art doesn't deal in morality just how markets behave in given circumstances. Markets themselves are amoral in that what a market demands it will get one way or another. I don't pretend to have the answers to the questions I asked above concerning pricing ethics what I know is that people will get what they feel they need.
I'm glad that Lowery got you thinking and involved. Don't lose either.
Actually, I'm not the one who said that "there's not much to talk about". I was always of the opinion that Lowery's screed had lots in it to talk about. Deceptions, misstatements and outright lies among them. Mike had another opinion at the time. Not me.
It's almost impossible to not take a shot at you when you are repeating yourself mindlessly and endlessly or to respond in a way you won't take as a shot or another repeat of your phrase of the day. I just thought it would be better to remove any doubt. For all that I disagree with Lowery he, at least, attempts to make some sense.
You just drop by to repeat yourself endlessly. What's amusing is that for all the blogs and sites that have responded to Lowery's post, almost all that I've seen negatively, that his defenders have acted like you are.
So, in a way, he is the candy man. A cure for boredom and a fascinating tour through the state of recorded music in the United States and elsewhere. And mindless, brain numbing defenses from the same band of loyalists who were saying that he'd really gotten us Techdirt freetard types where we live. Ya, know, something about the artist striking back at long last.
Thing is that he did nothing of the kind. In that sense Mike was right.
It's still a smelly pond you're swimming in. You can guess the colour if you want.
I wouldn't have missed the debates around this for the world.
You, I could have done without but it's also been hilarious how long you've hung onto that single line of yours as if it proves something. It doesn't prove a thing. Except that we Freetards don't march along in lock step with Mike or each other.
The problem with Moffett's "advice" is that it costs significantly more for a telco to place upgrades to outside plant on hold than it does to plan it out and just do it. Aging telco plant has an annoying habit of failing in large sections, say the better part of a 500 pair cable going bad, at least enough pairs in it that it has to be replaced immediately which means unplanned and in segments which isn't cheap. Better and cheaper to plan the whole thing out and just do it than sit on it till the worst happens. More profitable, too.
I don't know the competitive position of the duopoly where you are but where I live the telco and cableco are fierce competitors. I'm biased having worked for the telco for 35 years. In Canada "reasonable" traffic management is allowed to ensure the the quality of the network. Cable did want to try caps and overages and that went over like a lead balloon though it's still with us in another form based on usage. Telco's have the ability to do the same but it's not been to the competitive advantage of of the company I retired from to do that.
From what you say we Canadians, at least, have the advantage of a single regulator covering telecommunications so we aren't dealing with state by state, county by county differences, we're all running under the same rules no matter where we are. Telecom falls under federal jurisdiction and the provinces have never disputed that. Which isn't to say that the regulator hasn't fallen under the spell of regulatory capture from time to time but we still know what the rules will be no matter where we're installing plant and what we have to do, at minimum.
To repeat myself, however, for Verizon to respond to needed upgrades in the outside plant based on failures in the old plant is anything but profitable as it initially costs more and long term maintenance is considerably more.
A single regulator also makes collusion in delaying the introduction of new services more difficult though not completely impossible.
They are required by convention to maximize shareholder value though I'm not aware of any laws that say they have to or that the result of that is short term profits over long term performance. It is an obligation and a convention which may even be a term of listing on major exchanges.
Shareholders, particularly institutional ones, don't care a whit about short or long term plans by a publicly traded firm. What influences institutional and other investors is the stock price over the short term.
The likes of Moffett have delayed telco build out in North America to the point where the replacement of twisted pair with fibre is more expensive that it would have been 5 years ago. As the article notes only Verizon broke out of that trend in the United States. That work is being done now simply because it has to be.
Just how is that protecting shareholder value? Maintenance and updating of telco outside plant is done more inexpensively over the long term than the short term not to mention that fibre to the house beats the speeds and capacity of cable many times over increasing their competitive position vs. cable.
In short it doesn't protect or increase shareholder value in telcos no matter what nonsense Moffett may want to spew.
Let me see now, it's an entirely normal human reaction to lightly bite or chew the tongue when a human is deep in thought or under some form of stress. Stress, like, for example, some point in the last 5 or 10 minutes before his team won the NBA championship it was bought to get off the shelves of the private display rooms at Harrods.
I suppose he'd rather be portrayed as totally emotionless than a normal human being?
On the post: Exceptionally Troubling Ruling In The UK: Owners Of Links Site Guilty Of 'Conspiracy To Defraud'
Re: So what if they have considerable non-infringing uses
You can add to that the not-so minor detail that the Metropolitan Police have been not-so-gently ticked off for their far too cozy relationships with private organizations like FACT and stunts like handing evidence over to them before the courts get to see it AND the defendants solicitors get to see it.
Yeah, I know it's all "Big Search" that has brought about all the "piracy" and "Big Search" needs to be reigned in in your view but then so does anyone whose opinions differ to yours.
And there isn't a thing that's stopping "Big Content" from buying ad space from Google or Microsoft or Yahoo on their own sites.
Oh...just a second, they already do!
Have another glance under your bed, bob. There be monsters there I'm sure, even if they aren't visible to anyone else.
On the post: Exceptionally Troubling Ruling In The UK: Owners Of Links Site Guilty Of 'Conspiracy To Defraud'
Re: Re:
For members of the Canadian parliament bribers get to substitute that for places that are hot in our winters with lots of beaches and young women in barely there bikinis. Even better are trips to Rio on some fact finding mission or other to investigate the poverty on display on Rio's beaches during Carnival!
On the post: Over 130 Representatives Spell Out Their Concerns With TPP In Letter To Ron Kirk
Re: Some of us already do that
It's coming, don't worry, it's coming!
On the post: UK Politician Speaks Out Against The Travesty Of Trying To Deport Richard O'Dwyer To Feed Hollywood's Anger
Re: Outrageous. That's what this is.
The American Congress has been trying to apply laws extraterritorially for years. It's only recently that they've actually seem to have succeeded. That's more to the credit (??) of the content industry who have become well organized globally and encourage this sort of silliness but it amounts to the same thing.
That's what ACTA and TPP have been all about, too. Expanding US law and attitudes particularly where it applies to the content industry to the rest of the world.
As the American Empire declines in every other way it's expanding in this one. I wish it made sense but that's the way it works.
On the post: Canada's Own Justice Department Worried That Digital Locks Provision Is Not Constitutional
Re: DRM is really useless and this law doubly so.
On the post: Canada's Own Justice Department Worried That Digital Locks Provision Is Not Constitutional
Re: Re: drm
Let's not even mention that the tools are needed for legitimate uses such as troubleshooting on a network, connections or the health of your DVD/CD player/writer.
In many cases it's already illegal to decrypt a wide range of communication and software. Not that it's stopping the Chinese, for example.
As for an attempt to forbid the tools or to make it too expensive to develop or maintain them that's another one of those cows that left the barn years ago. And they aren't coming home.
Forbidding the tools would make the legal cracking of DRM C-11 outlines pointless and would raise a Charter challenge of its own.
On the post: Canada's Own Justice Department Worried That Digital Locks Provision Is Not Constitutional
Re: Re:
What's recognized outside of the Charter in the Constitution Act is what came before it which is basically how government evolves over time and the power of it. Contrary to fears in Quebec the recognition of Provincial rights has increased to such a degree that the Feds always need to take that into account now when coming up with dreams of "national" programs in just about any area you can think of.
Without the Charter we wouldn't be discussing the high probability that the DRM provisions of C-11 will be challenged. Without the Charter we'd not be discussing what may happen should the courts rule them unconstitutional on various grounds perhaps including those we had before 1982 that the provisions are in conflict with one another.
On the post: Canada's Own Justice Department Worried That Digital Locks Provision Is Not Constitutional
Re:
Perhaps more importantly the law as written prohibits the otherwise legal act of breaking DRM for the purpose of moving the software, book or whatever to another another device of allowing someone with, say, a permanent visual impairment access to what is being protected by the DRM. The problem there is that once the protected material is moved to another device, again, perfectly legal, there is no way of restoring the DRM as the bill appears to demand. Hence the prohibition of an exception to the forbidding of breaking DRM.
Reading through what Giest has posted, so far, it appears that attempting to enforce the no breaking DRM rule may very well contravene the freedom of expression clauses of the Charter unless because copyright infringement is the direct result. Marking an archival copy isn't infringement in Canada.
Perhaps there'll be more focus tomorrow when Industry Canada's concerns are posted. Right now there's a few blank spaces I'd like to see filled in a little bit.
One could argue that DRM violates freedom of expression and the right of citizens to access information kept on them by government and some private authorities and entities.
I can't see the argument that making DRM extends copyright terms to eternity though I'm open to it. At some time the work covered by copyright that the DRM is "protecting" will enter the public domain and at that point breaking the DRM will have nothing at all to do with infringing on copyright through redistribution once cracked.
Giest's post and comments indicate there are other issues around the DRM provisions which may land them in trouble too.
My sniffer always did detect the smell of something lawyers would love to challenge under the Charter. It's nice to see them listed other than just my feeling of "the smell".
As ACTA and TPP will also have DRM cracking provisions that make C-11 look tame in comparison I'd say those will land in front of the Supremes the moment they're tabled in the House.
This is going to be fun.
On the post: Google Is To Pink Slime As Apples Are To Airplanes
It's not so much that he doesn't, I hope, but he has another point to make about what he sees as competing utopias with his being the correct one.
Now that certain Emmy award winners do have the cultural impact of MSM isn't important to his argument either though he could have tried to come up with a parallel. Emmys, even more than Oscars, award shows with the largest audience for the major awards and quality, such as it is, is reserved for the lesser awards. In short the number of hits in "the real world". There are worse ways of doing things nor does it mean that the general populace is arts ignorant it reflects that evening television and audiences for most movies is looking for entertainment after a long day. They want to escape, thank you, and if the Emmy winner does that then it ought to be rewarded. To that extent its done what it needs to do. PBS sneaking the odd "I, Claudius" into the mix doesn't hurt either.
The reality is that should I query a drug I was recently prescibed, Epival, I wouldn't expect to see a result for Newhoff's short "Gone Elvis" nor do I. The most relevant items are returned long before college girls shaking booty. I don't see that using the search term "Gone Elvis" either. In fact David Newhoff's short is the first item returned. No MSM that I can see there.
If there is one related to the search term its too, too many pages into the results for me to bother looking for it.
As a Canadian army veteran I'd be offended to see the two linked terms linked on the first page or two of the returns but it doesn't.
One point about Newhoff's utopia's is his dismissal of programmers and tech types as creative or creators. There has been a lot of creativity put into programs such as Photoshop, video editors, operating systems and the desktops they display.
In fact Newhoff's definition of artists worked with the creators of picture and video editors very closely to get what we have today.
Equally the tech industry relies on copyright as much or, or more, than artists do even for "simple" things such as enforcing licensing terms. Even open source software is covered by copyright for exactly that purpose. I'd suggest Newhoff wade through the GPL license, for example.
Techies are every bit as creative as sculptors, writers, painters, photographers and others and their work enters our culture indirectly but as profoundly as do the artist classifications I've just used. By and large, though, the tech industry understands that it is built on what came before and that copyright protects a single expression of an idea not the idea itself. I'm not sure Newhoff does, though I'll happily admit that I'm wrong if he says I am.
I'm also not as fearful of the ability of the general populace to identify quality in the artistic realm when it encounters it. There may be differences on the leading edge, avant guarde end but by and large we're able to tell the difference between, say, "My Favorite Martian" and "I, Claudius".
The dissonance between the tech world and Newhoff's is less than he wants us to believe or that he seems to believe. Not in the need for some form of copyright, even if it's not the corrupted version we have today. It's more in the understanding that the tech world has that sharing is vital to progress even if it's not line-by-line copying of code. Newhoff buys into the views of his patrons in the RIAA and MPAA that they must control who enters and what leaves the realms they "control". And that only they know who can enter or leave those realms. That only the gatekeepers have the faintest idea of what "art" is. It certainly isn't the general public.
So he focus's his argument on that rather than on any merit that sites like Techdirt may have to their/own views and diverts it to a concern for art and culture.
The thing is that the diversion is transparent and does nothing but point blame rather than seeking a way out of what his patrons see as a problem.
David, I'm sorry to tell you this but recording and movie studios don't give a damn about culture they want what sells the most. Bums in seats. The same thing Shakespeare wanted when he ran the Globe Theatre. The same applies to book and magazine publishers. If there's a positive cultural result then fine. But that's not what they're in business for. That's not what they pay you for.
Should you get bums in seats cranking out pink slime then you do that as far as they're concerned. It isn't why you went into the arts but that's what your patrons want and they, ultimately, are the ones signing your cheques. After we great unwashed in the general public pay them.
As for piracy/infringement or whatever the discussion here has centred around the economics and market demand for certain things like singles, movies released quickly, and other things they paying public wants if they were given a chance to pay. Where there's demand there will be supply. Legal or not. See: War on Drugs/Alcohol Prohibition should you need further explanation. No amount of enforcement is going to change that, I'm sorry to say.
More importantly the "content" industries need to start to understand that. And they need to stop our ability to do with our legal downloads what we would do with, say, a book. If it is, as you insist, property, then whether the property is in bits or bound and printed on paper we, as consumers, ought to be able to do the same things with them.
Phased releases of movies have pretty much had their day. Is it going to take people who really want the same thing bashing their heads on each other before that stops?
IF there's the dissonance you say there is, David Newhoff, that's where it is. What goes where and when. Not who should get paid. OF COURSE THE ARTIST OUGHT TO BE PAID if there are enough buyers. Economics, right?
(Different arguments apply to pharmaceuticals and software than to the arts for importantly different reasons.)
I'll end my "screed" by heartily recommending the short movie Gone Elvis to everyone who got this far. I don't like your opinions but, as a piece of work, this is great.
Not just because you're offering it for free.
http://goneelvis.com/view/
On the post: Google Is To Pink Slime As Apples Are To Airplanes
Re: Re: Different interests
Seriously.
On the post: Big ISPs Expected To Start Six Strikes Program This Weekend [Updated]
Re:
As Hadopi has failure stamped all over its forehead so let's just try it here and without the open government backup it has in France! To me that looks like an enormous windmill though I could be wrong about that.
Then there's the minor detail that an IP address does not identify an individual human being, it identifies a connection in a given location which anyone can use. It's also easily spoofed which lessens its value as and identifier of any kind. Those infringing/pirating on a "commercial" scale are using/going to use fake IP addresses.
Enforcement, on a criminal or civil level, is only as good as the methods used to ID the baddies. Too many false positives will inevitably lead to an increase in dismissals. So much for your enforcement.
The other thing I wonder about is are these ISPs going to use deep packet inspection to discover whether or not the torrent in question is being used to distribute "pirated" material? Not all torrents do, you know. The majority are used for perfectly legitimate reasons.
I can see a few lawsuits coming from this from the falsely accused, who can afford it, and a large political backfire.
Care to debate that without resorting to logical fallacies?
On the post: WIPO Is Quietly Signing An Agreement To Give Hollywood Stars Their Own Special Version Of Copyright
Re: In all honesty
Musicians knew them and their songs which led to covers such as The Byrds version of "Turn, Turn, Turn" that made many kids aware of Dylan.
There is more than one kind of talent out there, remember and in many cases what record companies are promoting at any given time and radio stations are willing to add to their playlists. The original songwriter does get a cut of the sales and performances of cover versions so I wouldn't worry about them getting completely left out.
On the post: Myth Dispensing: The Whole 'Spotify Barely Pays Artists' Story Is Bunk
Re: Re: Headline June 10, 2035
All of this repeating of phrases like "you guys do realize you are now supporting the RIAA as the Major Labels have an 18% equity stake in Spotify." which is well known.
On the post: Myth Dispensing: The Whole 'Spotify Barely Pays Artists' Story Is Bunk
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On the post: Debate Club: Should Police Need A Warrant To Get Your Location From Your Mobile Phone Provider?
If you have nothing to hide...
It's this reality that tyrants and wannabe tyrants exploit to the maximum to control their populations or those who they are in contact with. Police agencies, sadly, fall into this as do some of their "supporters". Why bother with warrants when just doing it is easier? And it could be a bother to find a compliant JP in the middle of the night to grant that warrant, you know. They just get in the way. It's easier to hack into "the baddies" smart phone and grab the data that way.
J Edgar Hoover operated that way and struck the fear of God into low level crooks all the way up to the White House as one of the results. Joe McCarthy did much the same.
Requirements such as probably cause and the actual obtaining of a warrant is designed to lessen the chance that police can abuse their considerable power. It's all in the aid of preventing police from crashing down doors in the middle of the night for no reason or cause. All of which still happens even with all the safeguards in place.
Just as importantly it stops lazy police work. That they have to justify the need for a warrant in front of what is hoped to be a legally disinterested 3rd party may have the effect of them doing their homework.
Warrantless tracking of a person via their smart phone's GPS should be done, it at all, in only the most extraordinary circumstances. Government and, by extention, police, shouldn't have and don't need cart blanche to know where we are at every moment of the day and night no matter how much they may think they need it and should only get it in specific circumstances for specific purposes.
On the post: Some Facts & Insights Into The Whole Discussion Of 'Ethics' And Music Business Models
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Should the core of it be do artists, musicians, in this case, deserve to be paid for their work. The answer is and emphatic yes. Did they and do they under the RIAA gatekeeper system? After all the creative accounting does by the gatekeepers despite what Lowery says the answer is kinda. Obviously that's not the complete answer and there are others who have responded to David's post in far more detail and with far more direct knowledge than I have.
We can start here:
http://blog.tunecore.com/2012/06/the-intern-the-artist-the-internet.html
Which answers David Lowery directly.
And for a Then vs Now comparison there's this:
http://blog.tunecore.com/2012/06/then-v-now-the-path-to-success-for-artists.html
On software the answer is a "maybe" depending on the licensing of the software.
For closed source which is what Microsoft and Adobe largely deal in the answer is that infringement is a civil offense and probably best not done. Perhaps not for moral issues but more practical ones like support, bug fixes and nice stuff like that. There are times that it becomes a criminal offense for example when unauthorized software is downloaded for a profit.
For open source you it's morally, ethically and legally correct. In fact that's what open source is built on. The ability of the user to modify the software to allow it to work better for them. Under the GPL license which is the one Linux uses, now far more than a $100K project, you can download the source, have at it, make whatever changes you want but you must upload it back to the project leader under the same license.
Cultural endeavours like songs have a similar license known as the Creative Commons license which comes in slightly different flavours depending on what, if anything, the creator wants to restrict.
With respect to what David writes about he's both right and wrong and it's covered in one of the links I put in above. Perhaps what's missing in all of this is this historical context for "piracy" is that with Napster it started because the recording industry wasn't filling consumer demand at the time for a return to the "single" or "track" instead of the CD album which, in the late 1990s was something of a gamble as the grumble at the time was that you bought a CD of 14 songs and only 1 was worth the effort. Did it infringe? Yes. Was it ethical? In the purest sense of the word no. Then again it could be and has been argued that what the recording industry was doing at the time was anything but ethical as well. In the sense of "you'll damn well take what we give you and shut up". The musicians got caught in the middle and risked not getting paid for their work which no one here, then or now, agrees with. So that is a moral wrong. Technology allows for it and with the recording industry planting both feet into a market that was vanishing around them the battle lines were set up. Eventually Apple and Amazon came along and more or less forced a reluctant recording industry into resurrecting the single and letting Apple and Amazon retail them. The musicians started to get paid again.
One day something like this will happen for first run movies as well. Soon.
The moral clash will restore some balance even though nothing will ever return to pre Napster days. Morality notwithstanding.
As long as there is software that people in second and third world countries want or perceive they need software piracy will continue, I'm afraid. If there's a moral question there it's similar to the pharma one which is can me ethically expect people in those parts of the world to pay the same prices for software (or medication) that we do for first world countries?
The question is complex as are the answers. Economics as a science/art doesn't deal in morality just how markets behave in given circumstances. Markets themselves are amoral in that what a market demands it will get one way or another. I don't pretend to have the answers to the questions I asked above concerning pricing ethics what I know is that people will get what they feel they need.
I'm glad that Lowery got you thinking and involved. Don't lose either.
On the post: Some Facts & Insights Into The Whole Discussion Of 'Ethics' And Music Business Models
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It's almost impossible to not take a shot at you when you are repeating yourself mindlessly and endlessly or to respond in a way you won't take as a shot or another repeat of your phrase of the day. I just thought it would be better to remove any doubt. For all that I disagree with Lowery he, at least, attempts to make some sense.
You just drop by to repeat yourself endlessly. What's amusing is that for all the blogs and sites that have responded to Lowery's post, almost all that I've seen negatively, that his defenders have acted like you are.
So, in a way, he is the candy man. A cure for boredom and a fascinating tour through the state of recorded music in the United States and elsewhere. And mindless, brain numbing defenses from the same band of loyalists who were saying that he'd really gotten us Techdirt freetard types where we live. Ya, know, something about the artist striking back at long last.
Thing is that he did nothing of the kind. In that sense Mike was right.
It's still a smelly pond you're swimming in. You can guess the colour if you want.
I wouldn't have missed the debates around this for the world.
You, I could have done without but it's also been hilarious how long you've hung onto that single line of yours as if it proves something. It doesn't prove a thing. Except that we Freetards don't march along in lock step with Mike or each other.
On the post: The Short-Sightedness Of Wall Street When It Comes To Broadband Infrastructure Investment
Re: The benefits of the monopoly
I don't know the competitive position of the duopoly where you are but where I live the telco and cableco are fierce competitors. I'm biased having worked for the telco for 35 years. In Canada "reasonable" traffic management is allowed to ensure the the quality of the network. Cable did want to try caps and overages and that went over like a lead balloon though it's still with us in another form based on usage. Telco's have the ability to do the same but it's not been to the competitive advantage of of the company I retired from to do that.
From what you say we Canadians, at least, have the advantage of a single regulator covering telecommunications so we aren't dealing with state by state, county by county differences, we're all running under the same rules no matter where we are. Telecom falls under federal jurisdiction and the provinces have never disputed that. Which isn't to say that the regulator hasn't fallen under the spell of regulatory capture from time to time but we still know what the rules will be no matter where we're installing plant and what we have to do, at minimum.
To repeat myself, however, for Verizon to respond to needed upgrades in the outside plant based on failures in the old plant is anything but profitable as it initially costs more and long term maintenance is considerably more.
A single regulator also makes collusion in delaying the introduction of new services more difficult though not completely impossible.
On the post: The Short-Sightedness Of Wall Street When It Comes To Broadband Infrastructure Investment
Re: Re:
Shareholders, particularly institutional ones, don't care a whit about short or long term plans by a publicly traded firm. What influences institutional and other investors is the stock price over the short term.
The likes of Moffett have delayed telco build out in North America to the point where the replacement of twisted pair with fibre is more expensive that it would have been 5 years ago. As the article notes only Verizon broke out of that trend in the United States. That work is being done now simply because it has to be.
Just how is that protecting shareholder value? Maintenance and updating of telco outside plant is done more inexpensively over the long term than the short term not to mention that fibre to the house beats the speeds and capacity of cable many times over increasing their competitive position vs. cable.
In short it doesn't protect or increase shareholder value in telcos no matter what nonsense Moffett may want to spew.
On the post: Miami Heat Owner Sues Blogger & Google Over 'Unflattering' Photo
Unflattering?!
I suppose he'd rather be portrayed as totally emotionless than a normal human being?
Gotta SLAPP these things down, you know!
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