Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The problem with TD is just this
"In the end, it always boils down to the same things. Encourage people to pillage and plunder the existing music industry, pirate their material, and try to wipe out their business. The only reason? So that individual small acts can afford to trade their draft beer for a mixed drink when they are playing at the local club.
For the rare exceptional success cases in music (the sainted cory smith, as an example), there are millions of pirated copies made and sales lost. Oh yes, the sales are lost, people learn not to spend, learn not to buy. You will say "they had no intention of buying" and that is the point: They had no intention because they have learned not to buy."
So hordes of pirates are killing the music industry, I get it.
My question is, why is this death taking so damn long?
I'm sure this is an apocalyptic horror story from the standpoint of Edgar Bronfman Jr, but from my standpoint it's that Christmas wish that never quite comes true.
I mean, die already. The music industry, has been exploiting the art of music for well over a century, and it no longer serves any useful purpose to anyone with musical interests above a sixth grade level.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: this is what happens when you decimate the middle class
"It should be noted that theoretically, a band could refuse an advance, and simply start taking royalties from the moment they sold album one. I know a formerly independent label band that did that when they jumped to Sire."
That is rare as hell and you know it. The vast majority of labels will only take on a band that allows them to dictate who will engineer their albums, who will mix them, who will 'produce' them, and who will master them. The people the label will want the band to use will cost way too much for the band to employ without that big advance.
"This is like free speech cases where you find yourself defending hate speech. It's horrible, and no one should have to hear it, but it's still the right thing to do."
Why?
I realize that this is one of those obvious truths and all, but humor me: Why? Why is it so obviously the right thing for shitty but popular artists to be able to freely sample the music of good but less popular artists, thereby forever associating good-original-song A with crappy-derivative-song B?
Again, I know that this is super-obvious stuff: forward-thinking-pop-culture-philosophy 101 as it were, but for the sake of argument, could someone spell it out?
The thing is, though, that very few people will say openly: 'Yes I am an asshole, because is amuses me to be one'.
People always seem to feel a need to come up with an excuse, a narrative that makes them into something better than a mere asshole.
Kids are stupid, and don't have this problem. I severely doubt they ever think of what it's like to be on the receiving end of this shit. And I assure you that no kid who bullies other kids says 'c'est la vie' when they do end up on the receiving end. They say 'What a dick!'.
Finally, to the guy who wrote:
"Bullying preps you for real life"
I call bullshit.
There is only one social environment where kneeling on someone's arms and pounding their face in gets a pass, and that is in school. In real life, that would land you in jail.
If you want to prep kids for real life, hold them accountable to the behavioral norms of the adult world. There is nothing like doing some jail time to convince a kid that their actions have consequences.
None of which has anything to do with 'cyber-bullying', which is just people online acting like people online. I understand some kids might not be emotionally capable of dealing with the cruelty of hordes of anonymous cyber-jerks, but that is their parent's problem, not the government's.
"So if you believe that copyright is supposed to prevent other artists "leeching off of" your work, then you'll have to admit it does a terrible, terrible job."
Here I agree completely.
Copyright law doesn't really help artists. It certainly doesn't help the public, and it doesn't even help the RIAA, whose fortunes continue to decline even as they vainly attempt to sue the public into submission.
Copyright law as it exists in America today seems to be made to benefit lawyers more than anyone else.
"Artistic production is very much a matter of "leeching off others" in order to produce new works. If you're against people "stealing" your ideas, you're against art."
While I agree with you most of the time, Karl, I simply don't see this as being true.
I read time and again about 'the myth of originality', about how everyone takes ideas from everyone else, and about how culture is about building upon the works of others and so on. It's a big theme here on Techdirt, and it's rife in discussions of remix culture.
But there seems to be something just a trifle disingenuous about conflating the way, say, Tolkien 'built on' the poetry of Medieval England and Iceland, and the way Timbaland 'built on' the work of Janne Suni. I think there are quite a few people who would characterize the latter as 'leaching' and the former as just plain old 'being influenced by'. And so far as I can recall, I have never heard anyone, not even Jack Valenti, claim that artists shouldn't be influenced by each other.
Pretending that Tolkien and Timbaland were essentially doing the same thing because they both 'built on' their predecessors (and no, I am not saying that you personally are saying this) makes fair use advocates look kind of like they are trying to play a shell game. And as a strong believer in the importance of fair use, this troubles me.
"The biggest problem with copyright, as it stands, is that there's currently little incentive to create 'good' work that stands the test of time."
There has rarely been a social incentive to create art of lasting value. Ancient Greek Drama is the only case of this that I can think of offhand (at 8 AM, mind).
"It not's merely "Jay-Z"; it's the whole culture, Mike included, who find, or pretend to, something of great value in the *easy* and *trivial* re-mixing of *music*, and making heroes" out of those who merely produce pleasing noises."
The fact that some people make music that is trivial doesn't mean that all music is trivial.
The cultural importance (or unimportance) of Jay-Z doesn't impinge in any way on the cultural importance of, say, Milton Babbitt or Pierre Boulez.
"The whole area of entertainment has *nothing* to do with the economy, has never made *any* society rich, it's mere luxury made possible by industrial production, but because *easy* and *fun* for economists too, this clap-trap is what we get instead of sounding the alarm that the industrial base in the US is vanishing. PHOOEY."
Drama didn't make Athenians rich either. Do you really think that they were wasting their time watching plays written by Aeschylus and Sophocles? Are classicists wasting their time studying and translating them? Are students wasting their time trying to understand them?
Is making money really the only worthwhile human activity to you?
I think that you should know that posts like yours that have gradually led me to, more or less, take the position opposite to yours. In other words, you are scoring goals for the opposing team.
I am a 'content producer' (god how I loathe that term) whose IP has definitely been pirated on numerous occasions.
At the same time, my infringing activities have been quite limited, consisting of listening to a few CDs that people have burned for me, which have led me to actually buy CDs by the same artists (Fantomas and the Melvins to be specific).
In other words, my initial position was strongly pro-IP.
But when I read exchanges like this, I can't help but notice that you (and by 'you' I mean any number of anonymous people who share your posting habits) prevaricate consistently and almost never even try to present evidence. Instead you resort to ad hominem attacks almost to the exclusion of anything else.
In short, your practice of calling Mike dishonest, and then acting the way you do makes you looks bad.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Commercial vs. non-commercial
"You're asking the wrong question."
Sorry about that.
"It's like asking "do you have evidence that automation for telephone switching will lead to more money for telephone operators." You're defining it too narrowly."
Defining what too narrowly?
The issue is using an artists work without compensation or credit, which you say will open up opportunities. I asked how this would work for a specific kind of artist.
If you are making a comparison between telephone operators and composers, it sounds quite a bit like you are saying that composers of original music are, like telephone operators, obsolete.
Which promotes the progress of music how?
"By opening up the market, you create more opportunity for everyone, even if some of the roles may shift."
What does that mean? You are saying that by not paying for the work of living composers, opportunities are opened up for....who exactly?
No, don't tell me, that, too, is the wrong question, isn't it?
"I believe that, in the long run, more open access will always lead to greater economic opportunities."
Do you have evidence of this with regard to composers?
Are there any stories of composers who got known through the unlicensed use of their work who ended up making money on something other than licensed uses of their work?
Seriously, I am not being sarcastic. Are there any examples of this happening that you can point me toward?
I mean, I know how it could work in theory: say, your unlicensed song is used in an Audi commercial, you somehow convince the world that you wrote the song, and you get a contract to write, say, the music for a new Broadway musical on the strength of the resulting fame.
But I haven't heard of anything like this actually happening.
I mean, seriously, I have been accused of plagiarism for a song (well actually, a Sonatina, but whatever) that I put up on my site for free. Sure, I challenged the guy to find the work that I had plagiarized and he couldn't, but that isn't the point. My point is that I can't see how I could convince the world of my authorship of something after it was actually used in a commercial without pay or credit, when people have accused me of plagiarism for something on my own website.
Now of course, if one had filed a copyright on said song before it was used in said Audi commercial....
"Musicians can choose the terms under which they are willing to work. It wasn't always so, but slavery was outlawed in the US a long time ago."
So you are saying that because I am not a slave that I can get paid an hourly wage to write songs?
Here's the deal: go to the website of a company called Taxi. This is the kind of organization that composers go to find work. Taxi puts up listings from agencies looking for music to license for commercials and movies and so on. If you pay a yearly membership fee and an additional per song fee, Taxi submits your song to the relevant agency if they think that it's good enough.
Now the terms of these contracts are set by the agencies. None of them, NONE OF THEM will offer you an hourly wage to write music. If you wait for one of them to offer such a deal, you will pretty much never get work.
Seriously, if you find information to the contrary, post a link. Like I said, musicians will flock to any organization that offers such a deal, because they are almost non-existent.
"Why are copyright supporters so often such big liars? Is that the only way to justify copyright? If so, let's get rid of it."
You called me a liar. I just explained exactly what I meant above, and provided a link to prove what I said. Furthermore, I am on record here and on my website as a firm supporter of copyright reform and of a very generous interpretation of fair use.
I would demand an apology, but I am quite certain that I won't get one.
You did read the post that this comment of yours is on, no?
There are many things called royalties. It is possible to support some forms of royalties without supporting others. For the record, I am generally skeptical of the activities of organizations like ASCAP and BMI. But that has nothing to do with what are called 'sync rights', which deal with the use of music in commercials, movies, television and so on. Sync rights, too, are royalties.
And yes, it would piss me off if something I wrote ended up in, say, an Audi commercial and no one payed me a dime for it. If that makes me a fascist I am truly sorry.
"How difficult it is to go play on a bar?
How difficult is to record some songs and sell it?
How difficult it is to work?"
This is not idiomatic English, and so it is hard to know what you are asking exactly. Could you phrase this more clearly?
"Why royalties on public goods?"
A song that I wrote is a public good? How do you figure?
"Mortgages are about people entering an agreement, royalties are a compulsory tax how hard is to understand that?"
Again, there are many kinds of royalties. How hard is it to understand THAT?
"Do you see builders trying to get money from the buildings they build after they have build it?
Do you see the manufacturing industry trying to cash in on those things they manufacture after they sold it?
Nope, because work done is not to be charged again, and again and again and again and again."
This line gets really, really tired.
Builders and manufacturers are paid in ways that are simply not available to musicians. Either they bid and get a contract, or they get paid an hourly wage. Musicians, on the other hand, rarely have this option. The ones who have such an option offered to them take it sight unseen, because it's such a rare opportunity.
And there ARE people who get paid again and again and again long after you are in possession of their product: mortgage lenders. And yet no one complains about this. Why? Because they understand that the mortgage company didn't get all of their money up front. The same is true with musicians who earn money off of royalties. Why people have so much trouble understanding this is beyond me.
I knew that no one would give an adequate response to this.
The people that lose when commercial concerns use other people's music without compensation are not the cute singers like Lady Gaga or buzz bands like Sigur Ros. The people who lose out are composers, who really have no hope of making money, EXCEPT through licensing.
Even if you can 'get your name out there' with the promotional value inherent in a commercial, if no one is paying to license things, the only value that you will get out of said promotion is the knowledge that people like your music. Woohoo.
Now, how is that I know that someone is going to come along and say something like: 'If you chose to be a composer even when no one wants to pay to use your music, then that is your mistake. That doesn't give you an excuse to hinder the creation of cultural artifacts like commercials with obsolete concepts like licensing.'
"Really, the more you look, the more you realize that good ideas almost always are a process."
It depends on how you are looking at it. I agree that all knowledge comes out of some sort of conversation, whether real (live or online) or fictional (like e.g. 'talking' with Plato or Galileo or Montesquieu or Clay Shirky via reading and reflection).
But I think that there is always a danger in downplaying individual genius. Some people are just plain gifted: they have abilities that other humans don't have. In some cases (e.g. sports) this individual 'giftedness' is encouraged, because there is a lot of money involved, but in many other cases it is more of a curse.
Look at the life of the
physician Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (1818-1865). Semmelweis's crime was two-fold. He discovered the cause of puerperal fever which, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, killed poor women who delivered their babies in teaching hospitals rather than in their homes by the tens of thousands. That was bad enough. What made it worse was that he also discovered -- before it was discovered that bacteria caused diseases -- that, by washing their hands in a disinfecting solution, physicians could prevent the disease. Unable to reconcile himself to the rejection of his simple remedy and the continuing wholesale medical killing of parturient women, Semmelweis's behavior became increasingly "abnormal." He was incarcerated in an insane asylum and soon thereafter died. (Quoted from this article by Thomas Szasz.)
Here was a guy who really was just plain smarter than his contemporaries. A guy who just wanted to save lives; who had a cure for a horrible deadly disease that killed thousands of women; a cure that consisted of nothing more than doctors washing their fucking hands. A guy who gave his ideas to the world freely and with no protection whatsoever.
And look what it got him.
This is why, when I see statements like
That's why it's so harmful that today's intellectual property systems are built on the false assumption that innovation really does happen through that "spark of genius."
it makes me cringe.
Because the only reward that someone like Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis will ever get is the posthumous one of being acknowledged as being right ahead of his time. And it seems kind of mean-spirited to deprive him of that, too, on the theory that someone else would probably have come up with it soon anyway because, after all, 'almost every key innovation in history has been shown to have come about to multiple people at once'.
Just so you understand, I agree with Mike about copyright, and IP generally. I disagree with him about intellectual history, and in other contexts, I often disagree with him about aesthetics.
When I see oversimplified statements, they bother me, whether I am 'for' or 'against' the cause being espoused.
"Almost all good ideas come from people building on the works of others, with a minor tweak here or there, or a random decision based on a suggestion from someone new, after an idea percolates for months or years."
Sorry, but this is oversimplified.
Ideas come both ways, through widespread collaboration, AND through individual flashes of genius.
Both approaches can work, given the right conditions, and the right people.
On the post: New Year's Message: From Pessimism To Optimism... And The Power Of Innovation
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The problem with TD is just this
For the rare exceptional success cases in music (the sainted cory smith, as an example), there are millions of pirated copies made and sales lost. Oh yes, the sales are lost, people learn not to spend, learn not to buy. You will say "they had no intention of buying" and that is the point: They had no intention because they have learned not to buy."
So hordes of pirates are killing the music industry, I get it.
My question is, why is this death taking so damn long?
I'm sure this is an apocalyptic horror story from the standpoint of Edgar Bronfman Jr, but from my standpoint it's that Christmas wish that never quite comes true.
I mean, die already. The music industry, has been exploiting the art of music for well over a century, and it no longer serves any useful purpose to anyone with musical interests above a sixth grade level.
How can we miss you if you won't go away?
On the post: Debunking The 'But People Just Want Stuff For Free' Myth
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: this is what happens when you decimate the middle class
That is rare as hell and you know it. The vast majority of labels will only take on a band that allows them to dictate who will engineer their albums, who will mix them, who will 'produce' them, and who will master them. The people the label will want the band to use will cost way too much for the band to employ without that big advance.
On the post: George Clinton Sues Black Eyed Peas; Apparently He No Longer Thinks Sampling Is 'Cool'
Why?
I realize that this is one of those obvious truths and all, but humor me: Why? Why is it so obviously the right thing for shitty but popular artists to be able to freely sample the music of good but less popular artists, thereby forever associating good-original-song A with crappy-derivative-song B?
Again, I know that this is super-obvious stuff: forward-thinking-pop-culture-philosophy 101 as it were, but for the sake of argument, could someone spell it out?
On the post: Rethinking Bullying: Kids Don't See It As Bullying
Re: Re: Hmm...
People always seem to feel a need to come up with an excuse, a narrative that makes them into something better than a mere asshole.
Kids are stupid, and don't have this problem. I severely doubt they ever think of what it's like to be on the receiving end of this shit. And I assure you that no kid who bullies other kids says 'c'est la vie' when they do end up on the receiving end. They say 'What a dick!'.
Finally, to the guy who wrote:
"Bullying preps you for real life"
I call bullshit.
There is only one social environment where kneeling on someone's arms and pounding their face in gets a pass, and that is in school. In real life, that would land you in jail.
If you want to prep kids for real life, hold them accountable to the behavioral norms of the adult world. There is nothing like doing some jail time to convince a kid that their actions have consequences.
None of which has anything to do with 'cyber-bullying', which is just people online acting like people online. I understand some kids might not be emotionally capable of dealing with the cruelty of hordes of anonymous cyber-jerks, but that is their parent's problem, not the government's.
On the post: How Do You Measure The 'Benefits' Of Copyright?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Timbaland
Here I agree completely.
Copyright law doesn't really help artists. It certainly doesn't help the public, and it doesn't even help the RIAA, whose fortunes continue to decline even as they vainly attempt to sue the public into submission.
Copyright law as it exists in America today seems to be made to benefit lawyers more than anyone else.
On the post: How Do You Measure The 'Benefits' Of Copyright?
Re: Re:
While I agree with you most of the time, Karl, I simply don't see this as being true.
I read time and again about 'the myth of originality', about how everyone takes ideas from everyone else, and about how culture is about building upon the works of others and so on. It's a big theme here on Techdirt, and it's rife in discussions of remix culture.
But there seems to be something just a trifle disingenuous about conflating the way, say, Tolkien 'built on' the poetry of Medieval England and Iceland, and the way Timbaland 'built on' the work of Janne Suni. I think there are quite a few people who would characterize the latter as 'leaching' and the former as just plain old 'being influenced by'. And so far as I can recall, I have never heard anyone, not even Jack Valenti, claim that artists shouldn't be influenced by each other.
Pretending that Tolkien and Timbaland were essentially doing the same thing because they both 'built on' their predecessors (and no, I am not saying that you personally are saying this) makes fair use advocates look kind of like they are trying to play a shell game. And as a strong believer in the importance of fair use, this troubles me.
On the post: How Do You Measure The 'Benefits' Of Copyright?
Re: Re:
There has rarely been a social incentive to create art of lasting value. Ancient Greek Drama is the only case of this that I can think of offhand (at 8 AM, mind).
On the post: Jay-Z Explains He Is 'Honored' To Have His Work Remixed By Others
Re: Mike, you're busy devaluing honor.
The fact that some people make music that is trivial doesn't mean that all music is trivial.
The cultural importance (or unimportance) of Jay-Z doesn't impinge in any way on the cultural importance of, say, Milton Babbitt or Pierre Boulez.
"The whole area of entertainment has *nothing* to do with the economy, has never made *any* society rich, it's mere luxury made possible by industrial production, but because *easy* and *fun* for economists too, this clap-trap is what we get instead of sounding the alarm that the industrial base in the US is vanishing. PHOOEY."
Drama didn't make Athenians rich either. Do you really think that they were wasting their time watching plays written by Aeschylus and Sophocles? Are classicists wasting their time studying and translating them? Are students wasting their time trying to understand them?
Is making money really the only worthwhile human activity to you?
On the post: Archive Of Geocities Released As A 1TB Torrent
On the post: Could The Enterprise D Replica In Minecraft Be A Copyright Minefield?
Re: Re:
I am a 'content producer' (god how I loathe that term) whose IP has definitely been pirated on numerous occasions.
At the same time, my infringing activities have been quite limited, consisting of listening to a few CDs that people have burned for me, which have led me to actually buy CDs by the same artists (Fantomas and the Melvins to be specific).
In other words, my initial position was strongly pro-IP.
But when I read exchanges like this, I can't help but notice that you (and by 'you' I mean any number of anonymous people who share your posting habits) prevaricate consistently and almost never even try to present evidence. Instead you resort to ad hominem attacks almost to the exclusion of anything else.
In short, your practice of calling Mike dishonest, and then acting the way you do makes you looks bad.
You might want to rethink your strategy.
On the post: Why Imitation Gets A Bad Rap... And Why Companies Need To Be More Serious About Copying
Re: Re: Re: Someone has to be original.
Nor do they produce things that nearly destroy society like The machine gun, the hydrogen bomb, the neutron bomb, etc.
On the post: Is Uncompensated Commercial Use Of An Artist's Content Really That Bad?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Commercial vs. non-commercial
Sorry about that.
"It's like asking "do you have evidence that automation for telephone switching will lead to more money for telephone operators." You're defining it too narrowly."
Defining what too narrowly?
The issue is using an artists work without compensation or credit, which you say will open up opportunities. I asked how this would work for a specific kind of artist.
If you are making a comparison between telephone operators and composers, it sounds quite a bit like you are saying that composers of original music are, like telephone operators, obsolete.
Which promotes the progress of music how?
"By opening up the market, you create more opportunity for everyone, even if some of the roles may shift."
What does that mean? You are saying that by not paying for the work of living composers, opportunities are opened up for....who exactly?
No, don't tell me, that, too, is the wrong question, isn't it?
I'm sorry, but this sounds like waffling.
On the post: Is Uncompensated Commercial Use Of An Artist's Content Really That Bad?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Commercial vs. non-commercial
Do you have evidence of this with regard to composers?
Are there any stories of composers who got known through the unlicensed use of their work who ended up making money on something other than licensed uses of their work?
Seriously, I am not being sarcastic. Are there any examples of this happening that you can point me toward?
I mean, I know how it could work in theory: say, your unlicensed song is used in an Audi commercial, you somehow convince the world that you wrote the song, and you get a contract to write, say, the music for a new Broadway musical on the strength of the resulting fame.
But I haven't heard of anything like this actually happening.
I mean, seriously, I have been accused of plagiarism for a song (well actually, a Sonatina, but whatever) that I put up on my site for free. Sure, I challenged the guy to find the work that I had plagiarized and he couldn't, but that isn't the point. My point is that I can't see how I could convince the world of my authorship of something after it was actually used in a commercial without pay or credit, when people have accused me of plagiarism for something on my own website.
Now of course, if one had filed a copyright on said song before it was used in said Audi commercial....
;)
On the post: Is Uncompensated Commercial Use Of An Artist's Content Really That Bad?
Re: Re:
Really?
"Musicians can choose the terms under which they are willing to work. It wasn't always so, but slavery was outlawed in the US a long time ago."
So you are saying that because I am not a slave that I can get paid an hourly wage to write songs?
Here's the deal: go to the website of a company called Taxi. This is the kind of organization that composers go to find work. Taxi puts up listings from agencies looking for music to license for commercials and movies and so on. If you pay a yearly membership fee and an additional per song fee, Taxi submits your song to the relevant agency if they think that it's good enough.
Now the terms of these contracts are set by the agencies. None of them, NONE OF THEM will offer you an hourly wage to write music. If you wait for one of them to offer such a deal, you will pretty much never get work.
Seriously, if you find information to the contrary, post a link. Like I said, musicians will flock to any organization that offers such a deal, because they are almost non-existent.
"Why are copyright supporters so often such big liars? Is that the only way to justify copyright? If so, let's get rid of it."
You called me a liar. I just explained exactly what I meant above, and provided a link to prove what I said. Furthermore, I am on record here and on my website as a firm supporter of copyright reform and of a very generous interpretation of fair use.
I would demand an apology, but I am quite certain that I won't get one.
On the post: Is Uncompensated Commercial Use Of An Artist's Content Really That Bad?
Re: Re:
A group of sounds?"
No, the commercial use of a group of sounds.
You did read the post that this comment of yours is on, no?
There are many things called royalties. It is possible to support some forms of royalties without supporting others. For the record, I am generally skeptical of the activities of organizations like ASCAP and BMI. But that has nothing to do with what are called 'sync rights', which deal with the use of music in commercials, movies, television and so on. Sync rights, too, are royalties.
And yes, it would piss me off if something I wrote ended up in, say, an Audi commercial and no one payed me a dime for it. If that makes me a fascist I am truly sorry.
"How difficult it is to go play on a bar?
How difficult is to record some songs and sell it?
How difficult it is to work?"
This is not idiomatic English, and so it is hard to know what you are asking exactly. Could you phrase this more clearly?
"Why royalties on public goods?"
A song that I wrote is a public good? How do you figure?
"Mortgages are about people entering an agreement, royalties are a compulsory tax how hard is to understand that?"
Again, there are many kinds of royalties. How hard is it to understand THAT?
On the post: Is Uncompensated Commercial Use Of An Artist's Content Really That Bad?
Do you see the manufacturing industry trying to cash in on those things they manufacture after they sold it?
Nope, because work done is not to be charged again, and again and again and again and again."
This line gets really, really tired.
Builders and manufacturers are paid in ways that are simply not available to musicians. Either they bid and get a contract, or they get paid an hourly wage. Musicians, on the other hand, rarely have this option. The ones who have such an option offered to them take it sight unseen, because it's such a rare opportunity.
And there ARE people who get paid again and again and again long after you are in possession of their product: mortgage lenders. And yet no one complains about this. Why? Because they understand that the mortgage company didn't get all of their money up front. The same is true with musicians who earn money off of royalties. Why people have so much trouble understanding this is beyond me.
On the post: Is Uncompensated Commercial Use Of An Artist's Content Really That Bad?
Re: Commercial vs. non-commercial
The people that lose when commercial concerns use other people's music without compensation are not the cute singers like Lady Gaga or buzz bands like Sigur Ros. The people who lose out are composers, who really have no hope of making money, EXCEPT through licensing.
Even if you can 'get your name out there' with the promotional value inherent in a commercial, if no one is paying to license things, the only value that you will get out of said promotion is the knowledge that people like your music. Woohoo.
Now, how is that I know that someone is going to come along and say something like: 'If you chose to be a composer even when no one wants to pay to use your music, then that is your mistake. That doesn't give you an excuse to hinder the creation of cultural artifacts like commercials with obsolete concepts like licensing.'
On the post: Good Ideas Come From Sharing, Random Collisions And Openness, Not Hoarding And Bursts Of Inspiration
It depends on how you are looking at it. I agree that all knowledge comes out of some sort of conversation, whether real (live or online) or fictional (like e.g. 'talking' with Plato or Galileo or Montesquieu or Clay Shirky via reading and reflection).
But I think that there is always a danger in downplaying individual genius. Some people are just plain gifted: they have abilities that other humans don't have. In some cases (e.g. sports) this individual 'giftedness' is encouraged, because there is a lot of money involved, but in many other cases it is more of a curse.
Look at the life of the
Here was a guy who really was just plain smarter than his contemporaries. A guy who just wanted to save lives; who had a cure for a horrible deadly disease that killed thousands of women; a cure that consisted of nothing more than doctors washing their fucking hands. A guy who gave his ideas to the world freely and with no protection whatsoever.
And look what it got him.
This is why, when I see statements like
it makes me cringe.
Because the only reward that someone like Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis will ever get is the posthumous one of being acknowledged as being right ahead of his time. And it seems kind of mean-spirited to deprive him of that, too, on the theory that someone else would probably have come up with it soon anyway because, after all, 'almost every key innovation in history has been shown to have come about to multiple people at once'.
On the post: Good Ideas Come From Sharing, Random Collisions And Openness, Not Hoarding And Bursts Of Inspiration
Re:
Just so you understand, I agree with Mike about copyright, and IP generally. I disagree with him about intellectual history, and in other contexts, I often disagree with him about aesthetics.
When I see oversimplified statements, they bother me, whether I am 'for' or 'against' the cause being espoused.
In Mike's case, I am 'for' the cause.
On the post: Good Ideas Come From Sharing, Random Collisions And Openness, Not Hoarding And Bursts Of Inspiration
Sorry, but this is oversimplified.
Ideas come both ways, through widespread collaboration, AND through individual flashes of genius.
Both approaches can work, given the right conditions, and the right people.
Don't you agree?
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