Your logic is as bad as your spelling and grammar. The laws about driving to slow, in general, are based on traveling X mph under the posted speed limit. In Texas it is 15 mph under the speed limit so in a 65 mph zone you can drive between 50 and 65 mph legally and in a 35 mph zone you drive between 20 and 35 mph legally. Your hyperbole shows that you have no understanding of the laws you are arguing against.
The "weird law" to which you refer is not even from Virginia. It is from Tennessee and it is no longer on the books. You can't believe everything you read when you search Google for weird traffic laws to back up your hyperbole.
The FBI warnings don't mean anything at all in these trials. These trials are civil trials. Regardless of any criminal penalties, which I believe are only for commercial infringement (IANAL), the trial that is being referred to here and the other trials are civil trials brought by the RIAA on behalf of the copyright owners. There is no possibility of imprisonment and the damages are different as is the burden of proof.
Judgments against individuals are not usually discharged during bankruptcy. A common example is the short sale to avoid a foreclosure. The mortgage company will sometimes agree and their loss is as taxable income for the individual but if they do not agree to accept the loss then the individual still owes the difference between the remainder of the lien and the short sale. This then goes to court where it is over quickly and the individual has a judgment against that is, in general, not discharged by bankruptcy. Many judgments are not discharged with bankruptcy. Given the publicity of this case I doubt this one would be. I don't think her legal team does either or she would be filing as a back up plan. The longer she waits to file bankruptcy the less chance she has of having it discharged. That last sentence is in practice and not a part bankruptcy code and IANAL.
If you support copyright laws, then you have to accept that sometimes the courts will find in favor of the plantifs and award damages within the guidelines set by congress.
False dilemma. One can support copyright in its original form: as a means to further innovation and believe that the current system is all sorts of broken. One can even support the current idea that IP is something to be protected like real property and also see that the damages awarded in this trial are completely bogus without any regard to limits set by congress. This is not a case where there are mutually exclusive views. I support copyright in its original form but not this tripe we are seeing today. I also support content creator's abilities to profit from their work. I don't support the strong-arm tactics of the RIAA or anything close to the amount awarded by the jury in this case. Nice attempt but the logical fallacy here in your first paragraph pretty much loses the whole debate for you.
noring) is that the RIAA doesn't want 2 million dollars - they want a judgement. They would probably still settle with Jammie for the same amounts the offered to start with, or similar. Perhaps richard could dig deep into his pocket, find the few thousand dollars it would take, and get Jammie out of her, well, jam.
If they didn't want it then why have they not come out and said "We wanted a judgment but this is shite. We'll settle for x"? They have said nothing near the sort and in fact have defended the judgment in the press. They could easily decry the judgment and say that while legal it's too harsh and offer a very public settlement. I think I'll hold my breath...
Another AC who doesn't get the point. EBay doesn't accept any item. They never see the merchandise, they never handle it, they never pay anyone for it. They offer a service that connects two entities: a seller and a buyer and nothing more. They do not have the same legal, moral, or ethical obligations as someone who is purchasing used merchandise. It's not even the same market as pawn shops.
I must be having a really bad day...I am arguing with ACs again.
You see music as a commercial to sell a concert. Most of us still see music as thing onto itself, with not requirement past being music to have value (and a fair market price).
You may see music as something to sell in and of itself and big media may as well but the bands, for the most part, don't. The artists make more money off of touring and merch than they do off of album sales. I have booked many a band and am friends with many more and the vast majority see their time in the studio as an investment to get people interested in coming to see them play live and to buy their merch. They consider it a necessary evil at best. There are a minority who see physical media and digital media sales as their bread and butter but they tend to make less money and have less fans than those who treat recorded music as a side effect of being a performer. There is another minority who play music for the sake of playing music and will do so only on their terms and in my, not so humble opinion, that minority are the true artists. They are also the the ones who make the least money and generally turn out the best work in their genre. If you move into the pop/hip-hop/top 40 sphere the game is different but it is my firmly held opinion that society wouldn't suffer at all if there were never another album from J-Lo or any number of cookie cutter puppets you can here on the radio.
The idea that the quality of music will suffer if the cost of music approaches zero is based on the idea that radio music is good to begin with. Yes less music will be produced because there won't be a get rich quick one-hit-wonder template producing Hannah Montana's for the consumption of every tween girl but that is a good thing for society overall in my opinion. People will make music because they love music and the overall quality is likely to increase. History bears out this conclusion as the whole pop star idea is a fairly recent invention. People will pay for music because they love to listen to it and not as filler or background noise. Quality music is already a scarce good and people, like myself, will pay a premium for it. I buy songs for ~.89 USD but I also buy merch from the bands and go see them live. I support the bands I love in multiple ways from purchasing their work to giving them a place to crash when they are in town. The days of filling arenas to see a stage play may be coming to an end but the days of cramming too many people into small venues and actually knowing your favorite artists on a personal level are just beginning. Sure some will fall by the wayside and not be able to make a living playing music but there are nothing guaranteed in life. I love writing. I have written two novels and both of them suck. I can admit this because I am honest with myself. I will never make a living writing but I make a damn fine living as a Linux consultant. You don't always get to do what you want for a living and that applies to the music industry just as it does for every other part of life.
You may be able to keep an 8 gig ipod full and orgasnized, but how much music is on there? 800 songs? 1000 Songs?
let's work with 1000 songs, 3 minutes each - 3000 minutes = 50 continuous hours of music. So now, if you listen to music for 5 hours a day, it would take you 10 days to listen to your Ipod without refilling. If you refill it every 10 days, you might never listen to the same song again.
So lets work with 8 GB and see how your numbers work out. I have around 1200 songs on the player right now. That's about the max since I don't use anything lower that 192, but that's beside the point, it's usually lower due to the various TV shows and movies I have on there as well. But let's work with your supposed numbers.
1. I don't "refill" my iPod - I add to it or take away depending on my mood.
2. I don't care if I hear every single song on the iPod. I have them divided into playlists based on mood or activity and there's enough to have a good random selection.
Why I would want to "refill" my iPod at all? Remove what's on there and replace it? I only do that if I grow bored with an artist and have found something new to replace them with and then it' usually a rotation at worst. The proposed "refill" scenario is laughable to be honest. Also your usage numbers are arbitrary. I listen to the iPod to and from work so that's about two hours, at least 5 hours at my desk and somedays up to ten hours if I can get people to leave me alone, and I listen to while I am doing yardwork or work on the house as well as when running errands. I bet my usages averages eight to nine hours a day rather than the five you list. And it's not about the number times I listen to a song but rather about having a good enough variety for multiple random playlists. The whole "refill" thing still has me laughing BTW.
It's a pointless amount of music, the greed of free.
And here's where I get to tell you to GO FUCK YOURSELF. Not a single song on my iPod is pirated. There is music that I didn't pay for on there but I think bands giving you CDs doesn't count as "the greed of free" as you so aptly put it. I have paid for almost every song I own. Between e-music, amazon, and other services my collection is NOT free. And as for it being a pointless amount of music well that's your opinion and you are welcome to it. But the size of my music collection has nothing to do with "the greed of free". If that's the crux of your argument than you have lost the debate.
You can argue against the silliness of storage sizes all day and that's not going to make them stop increasing nor is it going to help the recording industry who will have to deal with the perceived value of music.
And in closing I would like say that you can take your "greed of free" and shove it because it's horse shit!
$1 still makes sense, that is if you are paying for a song you are going to actually listen to all the way through. 35TB is stupid to have on a device for audio, that's ridiculously large to manage, and makes the listening experience a chore. I only carry around less than 2GB on my music player, more than that is too much to weed through.
How would you propose to gauge "listen all the way through"? It can't be done. What if I listen to it all the way through hoping to find some hook I like and I don't? I carry an 8GB iPod and have no trouble keeping it full and organized. Storage in portable devices will keep getting larger regardless of how silly some people think the sizes are. If 35TB is cheap enough then that's what will be in the devices because manufactures stop making the smaller sizes at some point.
If you think large storage capacities should decrease song value, you are sadly misguided and know nothing about music creation costs. If you put the cost to a dime or less per song, it becomes a money losing operation to make music. Then what you are left with is a bunch of amateur crap to listen to, because professionals can no longer afford to make enough money from music to survive.
Whether or not the price of storage SHOULD affect the cost of music is not relevant. The fact is that it will and the industry will have to deal with it whether they like it or not and whether they want to or not. This argument has been debunked time and time (...can no longer afford to make enough) and there's no reason to address it. As for a price point of .10 USD a song you would end up with people buying massive amounts of music and recoup some of the loss that way. As the price of storage comes down so does the price of the rest of the recording process and we don't know where the prices will drop to making the discussion moot for the most part.
Lastly, with inflation skyrocketing, $1/song does not make sense. It needs to be $1.29 or higher, as is evident with new itunes pricing. Song prices are going to continue to go up, not down. Has nothing to do with storage capacity of devices.
The price which you claim shows what the cost of a song should be has nothing to do with economics. It is the result of Apple hiding from reality for too long. They had to charge more for DRM free music while the good folks at Amazon are selling the same music for less and still DRM free. I paid .89 USD for the last songs I bought and looking at my next expected purchase I am seeing .89 again at the good ol' Amazon MP3 store. The cost of music will be what the market can bear and as the size of storage goes up the cost of music will come down as storage is a scarcity and digital music is not. Quality may be a scarcity but the most popular music is drivel anyway. It doesn't have to be right but the music industry will have to deal with the perceived value of music getting smaller as the size of storage increases. They don't have a choice.
I didn't vote for the governor we have in Texas right now and didn't vote for some of the other idiots either. However no-one who has a serious chance of winning is running on a decent education platform. I voted for Kinky last time and will again. I don't vote any party line and study each candidate. Both parties have bent the Texas education system over a barrel and failed to use Vasoline. With the two major parties we get to choose just how we will screw the public education system in Texas even more. There are some candidates who have decent education platforms but those are usually third party and in areas where there chances are laughable at best. I vote for them when they come up but it's a sacrificial vote at best.
I don't think paperless is the way to go right now but it is time to start moving towards that goal. Couple something like Dell's education line with a good insurance policy and you could do it for a decent price and with good protection for lost or damaged laptops. It's not something that can be done overnight but we need to start taking the steps. The purchase mentioned in the article was not a wise choice towards the goal and we don't have all the facts such as the license agreement for the e-version and so on. But the decision doesn't shock me at all.
Don't get me wrong. There are good schools in Texas but they are not the norm. Katy just lost most of their highest rankings and the test scores are slipping and KISD used to be one of the best districts in Texas but it's headed down the same path. My oldest daughter's best friend goes to what used to be one of the top junior high schools in the state and from what I hear from her and my daughter talking the school is pretty dreadful compared to when I had friends that attended there.
The numbers don't lie. I cited the actual stats and gave the source (the state itself) from the last full study (2005) and recent stats (2008) showing that your children's exemplary school is the exception and not the norm. My grandparents-in-law taught at Lamar HS in Houston for better than 20 years (Sandy coached football and Florene taught science) and just listening to Florene (Sandy is no longer with us) talk about how good Lamar used to be and how it is now, as she keeps up with teachers there, is depressing.
You can make good arguments for a single school being awesome and making the cut but when less that 50% of 4th and 8th graders are performing at acceptable levels statewide then the system is broken. I am glad your children have an exemplary school to attend however the majority of children in Texas do not. AISD (Alief) is another fine example of a horribly run district. It so horrible that if you get your first job, right out of school teaching in AISD you cannot get hired anywhere else in Texas without a lot of wrangling and then only if you are lucky. My best friend is dealing with that right now.
You live where your children can attend, by your claim, an amazing set of schools. I do not so my children do not attend public school. I have three school age children right now all performing better than the national average in all commonly tested subjects. I intend to keep it that way and the only way to do that with any certainty is to homeschool them. I am glad you don't have to. Before you make statements like "quit voting for that idiot in office" you should check and see if the person did vote for him. I did not and will not. So thanks for the advise but I have already followed it. I am active politically and very much so at the local and state levels. I want to see to public school system in Texas re-vamped but it won't happen. It won't happen regardless of who is governor to be completely honest.
I am a native and proud Texan. Just wanted to make sure that was known. Here is info from the state.tx.us website on education:
Texas is #49 in verbal SAT scores in the nation (493) and #46 in average math SAT scores (502).
Texas is #36 in the nation in high school graduation rates (68%).
Between school years 1999 and 2005, the number of central administrators employed by Texas public schools grew by 32.5%, overall staffing in public schools grew by 15.6%, while the number of teachers grew only 13.3%.
Less than 35% of 8th graders performed at or above grade level in reading and math in 2005
Only 40% of fourth graders performed at or above grade level in math and less than 30% performed at or above grade level in 2005
That is abysmal to be sure! Administration increases at an alarming rate and teachers don't? Seriously, my beloved state has massive education issues. There is reason the unofficial motto for Texas is "Thank God for Mississippi".
The public school system is broken in Texas, it is broken due to the politics involved, the parents involved (or not involved as the case may be), and the teacher's unions. I have friends who teach at a variety of school districts and my grandparents-in-law taught high school here in Houston for better than 20 years. I what the system churns out in the way of students, I hear what the system does to teachers, and I see how it affects my children's friends.
Texas is anything but average in education. (Thank God for Mississippi.) There's a lot to be proud of here in the Lone Star State. Our education system certainly isn't on that list.
Texas is one of the worst states for public education! I wouldn't be shocked if there were rules in place preventing sharing textbooks between campuses of schools in same district much less between districts. It probably also has to do with budget issues where if they could only buy the bundle but then gave away the dead tree version it would work against their budget for the next year. The public school system here in my favorite state is entirely broken. Last I heard Texas was fighting Mississippi for 50th place in education in the US. (Reasons I homeschool my children). I haven't looked into it but I am willing to lay odds that some arcane policy kept the dead tree editions locked up and unable to be used.
Texas is one of the worst states for public education! I wouldn't be shocked if there were rules in place preventing sharing textbooks between campuses of schools in same district much less between districts. It probably also has to do with budget issues where if they could only buy the bundle but then gave away the dead tree version it would work against their budget for the next year. The public school system here in my favorite state is entirely broken. Last I heard Texas was fighting Mississippi for 50th place in education in the US. (Reasons I homeschool my children). I haven't looked into it but I am willing to lay odds that some arcane policy kept the dead tree editions locked up and unable to be used.
If you read the ORIGINAL article you would see that he happened to share the same- OS with the e-mail sender, and that the only one to visit the web site he set up with falsified data was someone using this same OS. An OS used by only ONE person on campus. Him. While the search MAY have not met the probable cause standard here, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to put two and two together....
You have got to be kidding me. Linux is not used by ONE person on the Boston College campus. I can personally attest to more than that without even starting to look at students. I have been on site at Boston College, I cannot mention in what capacity, and can assure you that members of the IT department use Linux in various forms on laptops and workstations and I would be shocked, from what I saw, if there weren't quite a few Linux junkies among the student body.
IF the original warrant stated these things and IIRC it didn't then it was false information to begin with and it only re-affirms the judge's ruling. Luddites who don't know OSX from OS/2 shouldn't be allowed to request warrants for anything that even displays text on a screen.
All that aside the information from the original warrant could easily be construed to say the kid was using a hackintosh and I am 100% certain that Boston College supports Macs. There is no way in hell the warrant could have met probable cause based on the OS and furthermore the amount of stuff confiscated was insane. The original issuer of the warrant got smacked down, and rightly so, by a judge who doesn't have his head up his ass.
In very few cases is copyright infringement a criminal offense and that's why we argue the use of the word "theft" in relation to the common teenager downloading songs for his/her iPod. The likelihood is that they are not criminals but rather breaking a civil law. None of the RIAA cases will end up on someone's criminal record but they might make it on their credit report. So while the copyright infringement done by the average person may be morally wrong it is not criminal. So nope, not a criminal if you do it, guilty of copyright violation? Possibly.
I think WH misses the point. The current system gives a select few artists a chance to get rich. These select few are by and large cookie cutter bands and nothing else. Every once in a while an original act gets a chance to make it big but it is a rarity.
The question is more how a band will get from the garage to being on every radio station in the nation, which is what is required for them to be able to play 200-250 nights a year and make a good living as artists, not as burger cooks. I haven't seen any of that here, just lots of "tear down the wall!" sort of things.
This is exactly the opposite of what happens. Take Lucero for instance (http://www.lucermusic.com) who toured for 200+ shows a year before getting signed to major label and then only to a branch of the label that would give them creative control. They made their living by touring and by encouraging their fans to share their music and get the word out. They didn't have radio play in most of the major markets and very little exposure outside of NPR and still they sold out show across the US and toured full time.
How is stealing from the artist "respect?" Can I go respect Donald Trump some and steal his money? Can I respect you and take your computer? You don't respect anyone by stealing. Your statement is moronic.
Once again WH: copyright violation is no theft in a legal sense. The constant attempts to emotionalize the argument by using terms that do not apply like "stealing" and "theft" detracts from the debate as people lose sight of the real issue and start insulting each other over improperly used terms. If copyright violation was stealing then the RIAA suits would not have been in civil courts for damages but rather in criminal courts for jail time. Even shoplifting a .75 candy bar can get you jail time but violating copyright, in the absence of commercial gain, can not.
What you seem to be suggesting is sort of music socialism, where everyone has to share, no artist should be rich, none should starve, and everyone can enjoy their music only for the effort of downloading it for free. Who is giving you economic lessons, Hugo Chavez?
No-one is suggesting this. This is strawman you build up over and over and is far from the truth. The overall view espoused is a standard economic principle and that an infinite good will always approach a zero cost. The push here is to find ways to monetize the non-infinite goods available in the music industry. No-one wants to see artists starve. I personally think the world could do without the Britneys and J-LOs. I think that music industry collapsing would honestly lead to better music overall. Maybe less of it but better in quality because the artists making the music would be doing it for the love of music and not to get rich.
I have no problem with a musician, songwriter et al getting right. I have problem with a system that insists they make record company executives, marketing agents, and so rich right along with them. The recording industry has a long history of corrupt from the top down and the modern industry is no different. At one time they used payola to make sure their artists were heard and now they claim that radio is akin to piracy and in some places try to fine people for playing the radio loud enough for others to hear. They are a dying industry and regardless of your apparent love for the sales of plastic discs if they don't change they will collapse leaving on those who have figured out how to monetize the non-infinite goods.
Your moral arguments lose all credibility when you show over and over again that you support a business model that wouldn't survive if it was created in these modern times. The record companies served their purpose and it is time for them to reinvent themselves or go the way of the dodo. Some are trying and some are fighting the future. I will give you odds on which ones survive.
I just want to make a quick off-topic point: IMO WH is welcome here just like the rest of us who agree with Mike and company on all or some of their ideals, conclusions, and so on. WH may be a complete jackass but telling him to leave and resorting to ad hominem attacks (I am guilty of the ad hominem attacks as well) is as asinine as anything WH has said. I cannot believe I am actually sticking for the guy because I don't agree with anything he says but if we all really believe in the freedoms we claim to believe in then we should welcome folks like WH strictly because not doing so makes us all hypocrites. Good natured poking is one thing but once you pass that and fall into throwing insults in response to his arguments, how ever untenable and ill conceived, then he and his ilk win the argument.
I think Choruss isn't a bad idea on the surface. I wouldn't mind paying more for my broadband connection to be able to legally download the music I listen to. It amuses me because most of the music I listen to is on independent labels and the bands encourage people to download their music. I worry because I don't want to end up on the wrong end of one of the *AAs because I grabbed the wrong file and seeded. I don't mind funding the artists or even the floundering record companies in order to have convenient access to my music.
However once you combine this with ongoing litigation and the *AAs not changing what they are doing then it becomes untenable. I don't think Choruss can work because it would require everyone to sign on, all the big names at the very least, otherwise the consumer isn't going to know what they can and cannot share without getting in trouble. If Choruss was a service that eliminated the *AAs, just for the music industry to start, I think it would be an amazing idea. ISPs could simply have in their "bare" offerings a clause that if you share or download music covered by the service you will be upgraded to whatever level is needed for that sharing to be covered. No-one pays for things they don't use in that model. Then over time expand it out to TV and movie distribution and you start having a working solution.
Like Mr. Griffin said it will take multiple failures (experiments) to figure out how to make it work. But the model, or a similar model, can work. It would be win/win for the consumer and the media companies. I also think this incarnation will likely fail due to the current IP climate. I know I would pay a good deal more for my internet connection if it included permission to share media. The utterly non-scientific poll I just took of my co-workers says that 8 of 10 would pay up to twice what they pay now just for that convenience. I have a feeling that every parent of a teenager would pay a little more to make sure they didn't run afoul of the *AAs of the world. It's a business model that could very well work but is doomed to fail as the giants won't let it run its course and be successful.
One of the HUGE problems with SoundExchange is the simple fact that, as an artist, you cannot opt out. If I record music and want it to be plated, for free, in the formats that SoundExchange collects for I cannot stop them from collecting. I cannot make my music free if I choose to do so and if I boycott the system in place then SE gets to keep the money. They are profiting off of ignorant unknowns and anyone who disagrees with the system and refuses to participate in their little reindeer games.
The overarching problem is that SE gets to keep the money. There should be an expiry period and after that period any unclaimed money is returned directly to the original payee. Or better yet they should only collect for those who have given them a right to collect for them. What is happening right now, collecting for any and all music, should be illegal. They collect for everything and get to keep the money that is unclaimed. In other words they are making a living off the backs of artists who have no say in the matter, much like WH claims p2p companies are doing.
Harold I can set Limewire to not share anything. I can set uTorrent to allow no downloads. Both of those are less than 30 seconds to set up.
As for damages being infinite because a digital good is infinite: It's total bollocks. Damages must be quantified and you cannot quantify infinite so there can be no actual damages. And aside from that the popular P2P methods of sharing download from multiple sources so no single person has shared the whole of whatever they are sharing with anyone. Let's say I have bittorren setup to seed to .5 and then stop seeding. I have never shared a complete file, I have likely never even shared anything that is usable in the form in which I have shared it. Lets say I sent 512k of a 200 meg file to 400 different people and the record company claims that file is worth 100 dollars and all this can be proved then what damages am I responsible for? I cannot be responsible for any damages for other people sharing only my own.
It's ridiculous to claim that the damage from sharing an infinite good is infinite as there is a still a finite number of people who accessed the infinite good. The point in saying that the goods are infinite is simply to show that file sharing, while possibly violating copyright, is not theft as the original rights holder still has the original.
On the post: DC Police Chief Says It's 'Cowardly' To Monitor Speed Traps With Your iPhone
Re: Re: Break the law a little
The "weird law" to which you refer is not even from Virginia. It is from Tennessee and it is no longer on the books. You can't believe everything you read when you search Google for weird traffic laws to back up your hyperbole.
On the post: As Jammie Thomas Seeks New Trial, RIAA Claims (Incorrectly) That She Distributed 1,700 Songs To Millions
Re: Right!
On the post: Jammie Thomas Decides To Appeal Constitutionality Of $1.92 Million Damages Award
Re: Yeah, but...
On the post: Richard Marx, One Of The Artists Jammie Thomas Supposedly Shared, Blasts Verdict, Apologizes
Re:
False dilemma. One can support copyright in its original form: as a means to further innovation and believe that the current system is all sorts of broken. One can even support the current idea that IP is something to be protected like real property and also see that the damages awarded in this trial are completely bogus without any regard to limits set by congress. This is not a case where there are mutually exclusive views. I support copyright in its original form but not this tripe we are seeing today. I also support content creator's abilities to profit from their work. I don't support the strong-arm tactics of the RIAA or anything close to the amount awarded by the jury in this case. Nice attempt but the logical fallacy here in your first paragraph pretty much loses the whole debate for you.
If they didn't want it then why have they not come out and said "We wanted a judgment but this is shite. We'll settle for x"? They have said nothing near the sort and in fact have defended the judgment in the press. They could easily decry the judgment and say that while legal it's too harsh and offer a very public settlement. I think I'll hold my breath...
On the post: Retail Stores Still Trying To Blame eBay For Shoplifting
Re:
I must be having a really bad day...I am arguing with ACs again.
On the post: When You Can Hold Every Song Ever Recorded In Your Pocket... Does $1/Song Still Make Sense?
Re: Re: Re:
You may see music as something to sell in and of itself and big media may as well but the bands, for the most part, don't. The artists make more money off of touring and merch than they do off of album sales. I have booked many a band and am friends with many more and the vast majority see their time in the studio as an investment to get people interested in coming to see them play live and to buy their merch. They consider it a necessary evil at best. There are a minority who see physical media and digital media sales as their bread and butter but they tend to make less money and have less fans than those who treat recorded music as a side effect of being a performer. There is another minority who play music for the sake of playing music and will do so only on their terms and in my, not so humble opinion, that minority are the true artists. They are also the the ones who make the least money and generally turn out the best work in their genre. If you move into the pop/hip-hop/top 40 sphere the game is different but it is my firmly held opinion that society wouldn't suffer at all if there were never another album from J-Lo or any number of cookie cutter puppets you can here on the radio.
The idea that the quality of music will suffer if the cost of music approaches zero is based on the idea that radio music is good to begin with. Yes less music will be produced because there won't be a get rich quick one-hit-wonder template producing Hannah Montana's for the consumption of every tween girl but that is a good thing for society overall in my opinion. People will make music because they love music and the overall quality is likely to increase. History bears out this conclusion as the whole pop star idea is a fairly recent invention. People will pay for music because they love to listen to it and not as filler or background noise. Quality music is already a scarce good and people, like myself, will pay a premium for it. I buy songs for ~.89 USD but I also buy merch from the bands and go see them live. I support the bands I love in multiple ways from purchasing their work to giving them a place to crash when they are in town. The days of filling arenas to see a stage play may be coming to an end but the days of cramming too many people into small venues and actually knowing your favorite artists on a personal level are just beginning. Sure some will fall by the wayside and not be able to make a living playing music but there are nothing guaranteed in life. I love writing. I have written two novels and both of them suck. I can admit this because I am honest with myself. I will never make a living writing but I make a damn fine living as a Linux consultant. You don't always get to do what you want for a living and that applies to the music industry just as it does for every other part of life.
On the post: When You Can Hold Every Song Ever Recorded In Your Pocket... Does $1/Song Still Make Sense?
Re: Re: Re:
You may be able to keep an 8 gig ipod full and orgasnized, but how much music is on there? 800 songs? 1000 Songs?
let's work with 1000 songs, 3 minutes each - 3000 minutes = 50 continuous hours of music. So now, if you listen to music for 5 hours a day, it would take you 10 days to listen to your Ipod without refilling. If you refill it every 10 days, you might never listen to the same song again.
So lets work with 8 GB and see how your numbers work out. I have around 1200 songs on the player right now. That's about the max since I don't use anything lower that 192, but that's beside the point, it's usually lower due to the various TV shows and movies I have on there as well. But let's work with your supposed numbers.1. I don't "refill" my iPod - I add to it or take away depending on my mood.
2. I don't care if I hear every single song on the iPod. I have them divided into playlists based on mood or activity and there's enough to have a good random selection.
Why I would want to "refill" my iPod at all? Remove what's on there and replace it? I only do that if I grow bored with an artist and have found something new to replace them with and then it' usually a rotation at worst. The proposed "refill" scenario is laughable to be honest. Also your usage numbers are arbitrary. I listen to the iPod to and from work so that's about two hours, at least 5 hours at my desk and somedays up to ten hours if I can get people to leave me alone, and I listen to while I am doing yardwork or work on the house as well as when running errands. I bet my usages averages eight to nine hours a day rather than the five you list. And it's not about the number times I listen to a song but rather about having a good enough variety for multiple random playlists. The whole "refill" thing still has me laughing BTW.
It's a pointless amount of music, the greed of free.
And here's where I get to tell you to GO FUCK YOURSELF. Not a single song on my iPod is pirated. There is music that I didn't pay for on there but I think bands giving you CDs doesn't count as "the greed of free" as you so aptly put it. I have paid for almost every song I own. Between e-music, amazon, and other services my collection is NOT free. And as for it being a pointless amount of music well that's your opinion and you are welcome to it. But the size of my music collection has nothing to do with "the greed of free". If that's the crux of your argument than you have lost the debate.
You can argue against the silliness of storage sizes all day and that's not going to make them stop increasing nor is it going to help the recording industry who will have to deal with the perceived value of music.
And in closing I would like say that you can take your "greed of free" and shove it because it's horse shit!
On the post: When You Can Hold Every Song Ever Recorded In Your Pocket... Does $1/Song Still Make Sense?
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$1 still makes sense, that is if you are paying for a song you are going to actually listen to all the way through. 35TB is stupid to have on a device for audio, that's ridiculously large to manage, and makes the listening experience a chore. I only carry around less than 2GB on my music player, more than that is too much to weed through.
How would you propose to gauge "listen all the way through"? It can't be done. What if I listen to it all the way through hoping to find some hook I like and I don't? I carry an 8GB iPod and have no trouble keeping it full and organized. Storage in portable devices will keep getting larger regardless of how silly some people think the sizes are. If 35TB is cheap enough then that's what will be in the devices because manufactures stop making the smaller sizes at some point.
If you think large storage capacities should decrease song value, you are sadly misguided and know nothing about music creation costs. If you put the cost to a dime or less per song, it becomes a money losing operation to make music. Then what you are left with is a bunch of amateur crap to listen to, because professionals can no longer afford to make enough money from music to survive.
Whether or not the price of storage SHOULD affect the cost of music is not relevant. The fact is that it will and the industry will have to deal with it whether they like it or not and whether they want to or not. This argument has been debunked time and time (...can no longer afford to make enough) and there's no reason to address it. As for a price point of .10 USD a song you would end up with people buying massive amounts of music and recoup some of the loss that way. As the price of storage comes down so does the price of the rest of the recording process and we don't know where the prices will drop to making the discussion moot for the most part.
Lastly, with inflation skyrocketing, $1/song does not make sense. It needs to be $1.29 or higher, as is evident with new itunes pricing. Song prices are going to continue to go up, not down. Has nothing to do with storage capacity of devices.
The price which you claim shows what the cost of a song should be has nothing to do with economics. It is the result of Apple hiding from reality for too long. They had to charge more for DRM free music while the good folks at Amazon are selling the same music for less and still DRM free. I paid .89 USD for the last songs I bought and looking at my next expected purchase I am seeing .89 again at the good ol' Amazon MP3 store. The cost of music will be what the market can bear and as the size of storage goes up the cost of music will come down as storage is a scarcity and digital music is not. Quality may be a scarcity but the most popular music is drivel anyway. It doesn't have to be right but the music industry will have to deal with the perceived value of music getting smaller as the size of storage increases. They don't have a choice.
On the post: Texas Schools May No Longer Be Forced To Buy Physical Textbooks Just To Use Digital Ones
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I didn't vote for the governor we have in Texas right now and didn't vote for some of the other idiots either. However no-one who has a serious chance of winning is running on a decent education platform. I voted for Kinky last time and will again. I don't vote any party line and study each candidate. Both parties have bent the Texas education system over a barrel and failed to use Vasoline. With the two major parties we get to choose just how we will screw the public education system in Texas even more. There are some candidates who have decent education platforms but those are usually third party and in areas where there chances are laughable at best. I vote for them when they come up but it's a sacrificial vote at best.
I don't think paperless is the way to go right now but it is time to start moving towards that goal. Couple something like Dell's education line with a good insurance policy and you could do it for a decent price and with good protection for lost or damaged laptops. It's not something that can be done overnight but we need to start taking the steps. The purchase mentioned in the article was not a wise choice towards the goal and we don't have all the facts such as the license agreement for the e-version and so on. But the decision doesn't shock me at all.
Don't get me wrong. There are good schools in Texas but they are not the norm. Katy just lost most of their highest rankings and the test scores are slipping and KISD used to be one of the best districts in Texas but it's headed down the same path. My oldest daughter's best friend goes to what used to be one of the top junior high schools in the state and from what I hear from her and my daughter talking the school is pretty dreadful compared to when I had friends that attended there.
The numbers don't lie. I cited the actual stats and gave the source (the state itself) from the last full study (2005) and recent stats (2008) showing that your children's exemplary school is the exception and not the norm. My grandparents-in-law taught at Lamar HS in Houston for better than 20 years (Sandy coached football and Florene taught science) and just listening to Florene (Sandy is no longer with us) talk about how good Lamar used to be and how it is now, as she keeps up with teachers there, is depressing.
You can make good arguments for a single school being awesome and making the cut but when less that 50% of 4th and 8th graders are performing at acceptable levels statewide then the system is broken. I am glad your children have an exemplary school to attend however the majority of children in Texas do not. AISD (Alief) is another fine example of a horribly run district. It so horrible that if you get your first job, right out of school teaching in AISD you cannot get hired anywhere else in Texas without a lot of wrangling and then only if you are lucky. My best friend is dealing with that right now.
You live where your children can attend, by your claim, an amazing set of schools. I do not so my children do not attend public school. I have three school age children right now all performing better than the national average in all commonly tested subjects. I intend to keep it that way and the only way to do that with any certainty is to homeschool them. I am glad you don't have to. Before you make statements like "quit voting for that idiot in office" you should check and see if the person did vote for him. I did not and will not. So thanks for the advise but I have already followed it. I am active politically and very much so at the local and state levels. I want to see to public school system in Texas re-vamped but it won't happen. It won't happen regardless of who is governor to be completely honest.
"Thank God for Mississippi"
On the post: Texas Schools May No Longer Be Forced To Buy Physical Textbooks Just To Use Digital Ones
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http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/082708dntextaksscores.14 5fbde2.html
Our scores are still falling, widening the gap between us and the rest of the nation...
On the post: Texas Schools May No Longer Be Forced To Buy Physical Textbooks Just To Use Digital Ones
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Texas is #49 in verbal SAT scores in the nation (493) and #46 in average math SAT scores (502).
Texas is #36 in the nation in high school graduation rates (68%).
Between school years 1999 and 2005, the number of central administrators employed by Texas public schools grew by 32.5%, overall staffing in public schools grew by 15.6%, while the number of teachers grew only 13.3%.
Less than 35% of 8th graders performed at or above grade level in reading and math in 2005
Only 40% of fourth graders performed at or above grade level in math and less than 30% performed at or above grade level in 2005
(http://www.window.state.tx.us/comptrol/wwstand/wws0512ed/)
That is abysmal to be sure! Administration increases at an alarming rate and teachers don't? Seriously, my beloved state has massive education issues. There is reason the unofficial motto for Texas is "Thank God for Mississippi".
The public school system is broken in Texas, it is broken due to the politics involved, the parents involved (or not involved as the case may be), and the teacher's unions. I have friends who teach at a variety of school districts and my grandparents-in-law taught high school here in Houston for better than 20 years. I what the system churns out in the way of students, I hear what the system does to teachers, and I see how it affects my children's friends.
Texas is anything but average in education. (Thank God for Mississippi.) There's a lot to be proud of here in the Lone Star State. Our education system certainly isn't on that list.
On the post: Texas Schools May No Longer Be Forced To Buy Physical Textbooks Just To Use Digital Ones
On the post: Texas Schools May No Longer Be Forced To Buy Physical Textbooks Just To Use Digital Ones
On the post: Judge Rejects Seizure Of Student's Computer Over Suspicious Activity... Such As Using A Command Line
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On the post: BSA Tries To Exploit Somali Piracy News In PR Campaign Against Software Sharing
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In very few cases is copyright infringement a criminal offense and that's why we argue the use of the word "theft" in relation to the common teenager downloading songs for his/her iPod. The likelihood is that they are not criminals but rather breaking a civil law. None of the RIAA cases will end up on someone's criminal record but they might make it on their credit report. So while the copyright infringement done by the average person may be morally wrong it is not criminal. So nope, not a criminal if you do it, guilty of copyright violation? Possibly.
On the post: Remixing Is Creating And Original -- It's Not Just Derivative Copying
Touring Bands
On the post: Musician Called A Copyright Violator On MySpace For Uploading Her Own Music
WeirdHarold
On the post: Jim Griffin Explains Choruss; We're Still Left Wondering Why It's Needed
I don't disagree
However once you combine this with ongoing litigation and the *AAs not changing what they are doing then it becomes untenable. I don't think Choruss can work because it would require everyone to sign on, all the big names at the very least, otherwise the consumer isn't going to know what they can and cannot share without getting in trouble. If Choruss was a service that eliminated the *AAs, just for the music industry to start, I think it would be an amazing idea. ISPs could simply have in their "bare" offerings a clause that if you share or download music covered by the service you will be upgraded to whatever level is needed for that sharing to be covered. No-one pays for things they don't use in that model. Then over time expand it out to TV and movie distribution and you start having a working solution.
Like Mr. Griffin said it will take multiple failures (experiments) to figure out how to make it work. But the model, or a similar model, can work. It would be win/win for the consumer and the media companies. I also think this incarnation will likely fail due to the current IP climate. I know I would pay a good deal more for my internet connection if it included permission to share media. The utterly non-scientific poll I just took of my co-workers says that 8 of 10 would pay up to twice what they pay now just for that convenience. I have a feeling that every parent of a teenager would pay a little more to make sure they didn't run afoul of the *AAs of the world. It's a business model that could very well work but is doomed to fail as the giants won't let it run its course and be successful.
On the post: How Come SoundExchange Is Holding Onto Over $100 Million?
The overarching problem is that SE gets to keep the money. There should be an expiry period and after that period any unclaimed money is returned directly to the original payee. Or better yet they should only collect for those who have given them a right to collect for them. What is happening right now, collecting for any and all music, should be illegal. They collect for everything and get to keep the money that is unclaimed. In other words they are making a living off the backs of artists who have no say in the matter, much like WH claims p2p companies are doing.
On the post: File Sharing, Damages And The Constitution...
As for damages being infinite because a digital good is infinite: It's total bollocks. Damages must be quantified and you cannot quantify infinite so there can be no actual damages. And aside from that the popular P2P methods of sharing download from multiple sources so no single person has shared the whole of whatever they are sharing with anyone. Let's say I have bittorren setup to seed to .5 and then stop seeding. I have never shared a complete file, I have likely never even shared anything that is usable in the form in which I have shared it. Lets say I sent 512k of a 200 meg file to 400 different people and the record company claims that file is worth 100 dollars and all this can be proved then what damages am I responsible for? I cannot be responsible for any damages for other people sharing only my own.
It's ridiculous to claim that the damage from sharing an infinite good is infinite as there is a still a finite number of people who accessed the infinite good. The point in saying that the goods are infinite is simply to show that file sharing, while possibly violating copyright, is not theft as the original rights holder still has the original.
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