Mike, I think that there are plenty of negotiations you don't see going on, that aren't made public. I think the lawsuit part is when things hit a blockage and can't move forward anymore. I don't think the lawsuit is the first step.
Mike uses the "buggy whip" thing as if every buggy whip company owner just turned turtle and baked in the sun. He looks at a buggy whip company going out of business as a fail, when in fact it may just be closing company A to move on to being company B (going from Bob's Buggy Whips to Bob's Horseless Carriage Seats... who knows?).
There is little conclusive evidence, yet them buggy whip guys are held up like the dumbest SOBs in business history. It's funny as heck.
I can't help but think that Google discovered that it couldn't come up with a system that allowed them to turn purchased content into money. Buying content isn't Google's business model anyway.
It is actually telling. It's almost like we are back to the burn rate days again, where content wasn't really king.
Copyright won't end anytime soon, but I'm suggesting we look at the fundamentals here: it is an artificial construct within the digital environment.
I would have to say that this is the crux of the matter, but not in the way the author thinks.
Most constructs are artificial. From real estate to water rights, from citzenship to copyright, they are all artificial constructs. Copyright is an artificial construct without taking it digital.
For me, the digital world is going through it's adolescence. It is slowly growing up and trying to find it's place in the world. Right now, the internet is still pretty much like the wild west, where people are doing whatever they want until they are taken out by the sheriff. People like Tenenbaum, Thomas, and many torrent site owners are the dead bodies, the few taken out so far. In that environment, property rights and other legal rights are at best an illusion, easy taken out by a man with a gun at any time.
At some point, the internet will mature. The outlaws will become fewer, respect will return for the idea of "law and order", and everyone will move forward, in a very prosperous way. The current situation is just a transition. Attempting to apply the transitional rules as a long term solution just won't work out.
Not really clogging, as much as there becomes a point where there is too much competition for too little attention span, and then artists can't reach the point of critical mass.
The "new" music business (you know, the one you can't sell music in) requires that the artists are performing almost constantly, attempting to make a living. One of the requirements of this is to have enough fans in enough places that you can play enough gigs to make that living. That requires a certain amount of critical mass.
Now, if you are fighting with literally hundreds of thousands of other acts who all have access to the same internet distribution, the same home made music videos, the same t-shirt maker, the obligatory mysapce and facebook page, etc, then you end up with too much material and nobody has enough time to filter through it.
So what happens? instead of record labels telling you what is good, you rely on websites, promoters, programming directors on web radio stations, complicated playlist algos, and all sorts of other things. No matter what, since you don't have the time to figure it out yourself, you are still relying on someone else.
In the end, I just think there will be too much noise (too many bands on essentially an equal footing), and no real way for very many of them to differentiate and break out widely.
Plz. We all know that lower taxes just mean more expenditures to pick up the slack. The real point is that an employee should not get rich off of concepts they come up with while on the clock.
Yes, but in the end, if the government benefits from the invention (say it makes a billion dollars a year), you do benefit because your taxes would be lower.
If a school make an extra 10 or 20k a year on lesson plan sales, and that money is put back into the school (maybe an extra field trip or new text books for a class, example) then are we the public not benefiting from it?
The difference would be that the media is trying to "inform", where a billboard in Times Square at New Years (how nice!) is trying to sell something.
The numbskulls at PeTa are the same: they are trying to sell something, although it is an agenda rather than an actual piece of clothing (although I suspect they sell lottttttttts of t-shirts). It comes to the same thing: Associating someone with your product for gain, financial or political.
Both of them are tasteless, and unlicensed use of someone's image (not photo, image or likeness).
I read you post. You appear to be calling both sides idiots, but you seem to be more upset about what the big bad "entertainment industry" is doing. In this case, they appear to be in the right.
So would you like to get off the fence and pick a side?
So let's see. Someone is working for the government, say the Transport Department, and comes up with (at work) a great way to save lives that works like and airbag and costs like microwave popcorn. What you are saying is that the government should have no rights to it, and this guy should be allowed to sell his idea to someone else?
Did I miss something?
Just because something is a "not for profit" or government agency doesn't mean that the rules of work product and work for hire disappear.
The disc just adds extra expense, when they could decrease their cost by removing the DRM and the fees associated with licensing it and developing it into the hardware of DVD players.
Risk / reward. Removing DRM risks wider piracy, reward is a few whiners made happier. It's not hard to see the right choice from where they sit.
The entertainment industry has no interest in protecting the artists. It only wants to protect its bottom line -- and if that means screwing over the artists, it will do so at every turn.
It's the same old saw. The "entertainment industry" that you all rope together make huge investments in getting this product to market and marketing it. They take signficant financial risks, and the artist takes significant risks by putting their works under contract.
If the contract could easily be revoked by the artist at any time, the whole deal would change. It would make it very hard for companies to take risks, if they are unsure of their ability to have enough time to recoup their expenses, and to profit from their ongoing ventures.
I for one suspect that if the comics hadn't been turned into profitable movie franchises, we would not be hearing from the heirs.
Anyway Mike, are you the one usually disparaging the heirs for trying to have too much power over things? Is this just one of those cases where you can't help yourself, you so want to find a reason to take a swing at the "entertainment industry" that you dont' really worry about anything else?
Mike, how would you feel is someone got a picture of you at one of your events next to a Warner Brothers sign, or what have you, and someone used it in a billboard saying "Mike Masnick may put down the record labels on his blog, but in real life he is actually a talent scout on the payroll, and has been for years".
Would that be any more acceptable?
Should anyone be allowed to use your image in any way they like to suggest (right or wrong) that you support their products, their causes, or their ideals?
In the end, both of those advertisements are wrong, PETA needs to get itself slapped hard for this one, and the coat company should get at least a finger wagging. In the end, they got what they wanted, international publicity.
This is a hoot! As been said a million times, the biggest obstacle facing any up-and-coming artist is obscurity. The internet helps to solve that problem by allowing bands to have access to the world. (They still have to create music that's worth listening to or no one will bother listening.)
Welcome to the modern day chicken and egg problem.
As more and more unknown bands put stuff on the internet (videos, music, etc), the more the noise level grows and the less chance anyone has to stand out. It is actually a self defeating concept, similar to having a shopping mall with nothing but coffee shops and spatula stores. While both coffee and spatulas are useful and people want them, nobody has the time or desire to wade through many coffee shops or spatula stores to get the best price or find the best product.
Now they're arguing the opposite. That, for some bizarre reason, the internet hurts up-and-coming musicians while leaving successful musicians unharmed.
it's actually sort of obvious, no? Even as the noise level rises, the existing well known stars still stick up above the crowd. Trent Reznor could release an album of bowel movement noises, and get more downloads than your average garage band can. Trent is above the noise (and making his own) and the garage band is just lost in the noise.
What record labels, radio stations, and the like have done for us in the past is to narrow the field enough that we didn't have to go wading through the noise to find something we like. They dealt with the noise and extracted some interesting stuff for us.
I understand that some people like the noise, and like to go fishing. It's just not something you might do while you are listening to tunes at work, or when you are snowboarding and getting your freestyle freak on.
On the post: Grooveshark Sued Again... Negotiating Via Lawsuit Continues
On the post: Buggy Whips Not The Perfect Analogy Of Businesses Disrupted By Innovation?
Re: Re: Re: There's some good in the article
There is little conclusive evidence, yet them buggy whip guys are held up like the dumbest SOBs in business history. It's funny as heck.
On the post: Is It Legal For A Clothing Company To Show President Obama Wearing Its Jacket?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Your attempts to bait are horrible, your bait is stinky.
On the post: Responding To SoundExchange... By Their Numbers
Re: SoundExchange and forfeiture
On the post: BREIN Shut Down Hundreds Of Torrent Sites That Apparently No One Ever Used
On the post: Google Stops Hosting AP News
It is actually telling. It's almost like we are back to the burn rate days again, where content wasn't really king.
On the post: Explaining The Copyright Bubble... And Why Big Corporations Want To Keep ACTA Secret
I would have to say that this is the crux of the matter, but not in the way the author thinks.
Most constructs are artificial. From real estate to water rights, from citzenship to copyright, they are all artificial constructs. Copyright is an artificial construct without taking it digital.
For me, the digital world is going through it's adolescence. It is slowly growing up and trying to find it's place in the world. Right now, the internet is still pretty much like the wild west, where people are doing whatever they want until they are taken out by the sheriff. People like Tenenbaum, Thomas, and many torrent site owners are the dead bodies, the few taken out so far. In that environment, property rights and other legal rights are at best an illusion, easy taken out by a man with a gun at any time.
At some point, the internet will mature. The outlaws will become fewer, respect will return for the idea of "law and order", and everyone will move forward, in a very prosperous way. The current situation is just a transition. Attempting to apply the transitional rules as a long term solution just won't work out.
On the post: Dear Rock Stars: Please Stop Claiming You're Just Interested In Helping Up-And-Coming Artists
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
The "new" music business (you know, the one you can't sell music in) requires that the artists are performing almost constantly, attempting to make a living. One of the requirements of this is to have enough fans in enough places that you can play enough gigs to make that living. That requires a certain amount of critical mass.
Now, if you are fighting with literally hundreds of thousands of other acts who all have access to the same internet distribution, the same home made music videos, the same t-shirt maker, the obligatory mysapce and facebook page, etc, then you end up with too much material and nobody has enough time to filter through it.
So what happens? instead of record labels telling you what is good, you rely on websites, promoters, programming directors on web radio stations, complicated playlist algos, and all sorts of other things. No matter what, since you don't have the time to figure it out yourself, you are still relying on someone else.
In the end, I just think there will be too much noise (too many bands on essentially an equal footing), and no real way for very many of them to differentiate and break out widely.
On the post: Dear Rock Stars: Please Stop Claiming You're Just Interested In Helping Up-And-Coming Artists
Re: Re: Re:
Sorry, but you fail, I'm not taking your stinky bait.
On the post: School Wants To Claim Copyright Over Any Lesson Plans Created By Teachers
Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: School Wants To Claim Copyright Over Any Lesson Plans Created By Teachers
Re: Re:
If a school make an extra 10 or 20k a year on lesson plan sales, and that money is put back into the school (maybe an extra field trip or new text books for a class, example) then are we the public not benefiting from it?
On the post: Is It Legal For A Clothing Company To Show President Obama Wearing Its Jacket?
Re: Re:
The numbskulls at PeTa are the same: they are trying to sell something, although it is an agenda rather than an actual piece of clothing (although I suspect they sell lottttttttts of t-shirts). It comes to the same thing: Associating someone with your product for gain, financial or political.
Both of them are tasteless, and unlicensed use of someone's image (not photo, image or likeness).
On the post: Marvel Claims Jack Kirby Was Just A Workerbee; Has No Right To Reclaim Copyright On Marvel Characters
Re: Re:
On the post: Marvel Claims Jack Kirby Was Just A Workerbee; Has No Right To Reclaim Copyright On Marvel Characters
Re: Re:
So would you like to get off the fence and pick a side?
On the post: School Wants To Claim Copyright Over Any Lesson Plans Created By Teachers
Did I miss something?
Just because something is a "not for profit" or government agency doesn't mean that the rules of work product and work for hire disappear.
On the post: Judge Says No Antitrust Violation In Hollywood Killing RealDVD
Re: Why?
Risk / reward. Removing DRM risks wider piracy, reward is a few whiners made happier. It's not hard to see the right choice from where they sit.
On the post: Responding To SoundExchange... By Their Numbers
Re: Re:
On the post: Marvel Claims Jack Kirby Was Just A Workerbee; Has No Right To Reclaim Copyright On Marvel Characters
It's the same old saw. The "entertainment industry" that you all rope together make huge investments in getting this product to market and marketing it. They take signficant financial risks, and the artist takes significant risks by putting their works under contract.
If the contract could easily be revoked by the artist at any time, the whole deal would change. It would make it very hard for companies to take risks, if they are unsure of their ability to have enough time to recoup their expenses, and to profit from their ongoing ventures.
I for one suspect that if the comics hadn't been turned into profitable movie franchises, we would not be hearing from the heirs.
Anyway Mike, are you the one usually disparaging the heirs for trying to have too much power over things? Is this just one of those cases where you can't help yourself, you so want to find a reason to take a swing at the "entertainment industry" that you dont' really worry about anything else?
On the post: Is It Legal For A Clothing Company To Show President Obama Wearing Its Jacket?
Would that be any more acceptable?
Should anyone be allowed to use your image in any way they like to suggest (right or wrong) that you support their products, their causes, or their ideals?
In the end, both of those advertisements are wrong, PETA needs to get itself slapped hard for this one, and the coat company should get at least a finger wagging. In the end, they got what they wanted, international publicity.
On the post: Dear Rock Stars: Please Stop Claiming You're Just Interested In Helping Up-And-Coming Artists
Re:
Welcome to the modern day chicken and egg problem.
As more and more unknown bands put stuff on the internet (videos, music, etc), the more the noise level grows and the less chance anyone has to stand out. It is actually a self defeating concept, similar to having a shopping mall with nothing but coffee shops and spatula stores. While both coffee and spatulas are useful and people want them, nobody has the time or desire to wade through many coffee shops or spatula stores to get the best price or find the best product.
Now they're arguing the opposite. That, for some bizarre reason, the internet hurts up-and-coming musicians while leaving successful musicians unharmed.
it's actually sort of obvious, no? Even as the noise level rises, the existing well known stars still stick up above the crowd. Trent Reznor could release an album of bowel movement noises, and get more downloads than your average garage band can. Trent is above the noise (and making his own) and the garage band is just lost in the noise.
What record labels, radio stations, and the like have done for us in the past is to narrow the field enough that we didn't have to go wading through the noise to find something we like. They dealt with the noise and extracted some interesting stuff for us.
I understand that some people like the noise, and like to go fishing. It's just not something you might do while you are listening to tunes at work, or when you are snowboarding and getting your freestyle freak on.
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