Avast (that shows that I’m no land-lubber, cuz I said avast), yescurvysnarky dogs, the wanton wireless wastrels have continued their campaign of theft. And, as shown to me by the minor shitstorm (a manure monsoon, if you will. Or a fecal flurry) that occurred in the comments of my
The patent system is out of control. Aside from the trolls, legit firms can now file for patent protection of unrealized ideas (expressly <i>not</i> patentable). The old joke about Gates patenting 0 and 1 is barely funny anymore. And even yesterday&#039;s SCOTUS decision about the patentability of human genes is only a partial win: <a href="http://www.psmag.com/health..." target="_blank">" rel="nofollow noopener" title="http://www.psmag.com/health/supreme-court-rules-u...">http://www.psmag.com/health....
I just don&#039;t think Kid Zoom and his fellow Teenz should feel too bad about their Very Terrible Piracy. Consumer and retail piracy are the subject of a great deal of outrage and scrutiny in the press and the courts, while The Mouse and any number of other piratical interests are walking away whistling.
That said, Kid, it&#039;s always good to be legal and honest. I, for one, never made any cassette mix tapes for friends back in the day without rebuying the all LPs each time. Nope, not me. None of us did.
It all depends upon what level you&#039;re at as to whether or not it&#039;s profitable. Bigger artist who minimize down time and expenses make money. As Vodka noted, it is often merch that puts you in the black, along with selling cds of the show. That&#039;s why a good tour mgr prowls the venue to catch the sleazeball promoter selling unauthorized merch.
Okay, I managed not to comment on this matter last week, but I&rsquo;m weak.
Since I am an oldz, I have very rarely downloaded music or video content without paying for it. I do have a half dozen downloaded YouTube files that exist because I wanted to ensure they never went away, and to get rid of the goddam latency (e.g., Springsteen and Morello doing &ldquo;Ghost of Old Tom Joad&rdquo; at the R&amp;R HOF). In most cases, I&rsquo;m not aware that the files are even commercially available, but I admit I haven&rsquo;t tried hard to find out.
I have two kids, who were around Kid Zoom&rsquo;s age back in 2004-2007, aka the heyday of Limewire and Kazaa. I&rsquo;m sure that they downloaded some stuff, despite my lectures about malware. As a point of information, I doubt that this substantially affected the gross revenue of any content provider. They did save up their allowance and part-time-job income, and with it purchased gamez. And movie tickets. And CDs.
So much for the tl;dr disclaimer. Now for the tl;dr rant.
The &ldquo;piracy problem&rdquo; is fundamentally based on the fact that US copyright law is terrible. Perhaps the most obvious way it is terrible is the Disney effect that makes copyright last way too motherfucking long. I am fine with the idea that human beings should get compensation for the commercial distribution of their intellectual property. The current copyright limits are similar to <i>Citizens United</i> in that they give corporate copyright holders the same, or higher, rights as those available to actual humans.
But, while a piece of shit, this feature of copyright law doesn&rsquo;t really have a lot to do with &ldquo;piracy&rdquo;. Where piracy comes from is the free market. (No, I&rsquo;m not a libertarian). There are a very large number of commercially available audio and video tracks/files/objects. Some of them are of such outstanding character that an enormous audience regards them as wonderful. Some of them suck badly. A lot of them are considered wonderful by some folks, and not so wonderful by others.
In the prevailing distribution model, all similar media are priced the same. And pretty aggressively, IMO. On what basis was the price of an audio track set at $0.99? (or $0.69, or whatever it is now?). My guess would be that it was sort of the average price of one track off a CD, which was priced to be about the same as the corresponding vinyl LP, despite the facts that the manufacturing costs for CDs were different from LPs, and that the physical distribution of LPs or Cds entailed inventory costs that do not exist for downloads. And with, I am absolutely sure, lots of rounding up.
With genuine respect to audio content creators (of whom I am not one), you, or your distributors, are in many cases overcharging for your product. I cannot prove that this is why piracy happens, but I think it&rsquo;s a factor.
For video (i.e., movies and TV episodes), the situation is a bit different, because the owners/distributors are all corporations. But they still want to charge approximately the same price for objects of very different quality. This is price-fixing. It should be illegal. Eventually, when you want to experience a bit of copyrighted media, your software agent will negotiate with the various software agents who represent the subject media, and strike a deal that will be reasonable for you, and also reasonably satisfactory regarding royalties to the creators. This will not happen under current copyright law.
It&#039;s the convenience. The DRM is invisible, if you&#039;re doing it right. (&quot;Right&quot; means using an iPod, but that&#039;s not exactly a problem.)
one other thing I don&#039;t remember being mentioned last week is also the issue of those mega superstars serving the role of rainmaker for the smaller or unknown artists. The money that those record companies invest (and often lose) taking risks on unknown commodities comes from all the cash they generate with the big artists. Download too much Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift and the money available from TNBT dries up and they may never get their chance
To set a good example for Kid Zoom, I will not longer steal <strike>precious</strike> valueless work time from my employer to comment on wonket. (Except on Mon-Fri, 8am-5pm, holidays not included.)
You go, Kid! And if we&#039;re going to be all righteous and honorable about piracy of downloaded content, let&#039;s also be righteously outraged about the flip side: Assholes who assert copyright and collect fees (and restrict or deny uses) <b>when they don&#039;t own the copyright</b>. And often <b>when there is no copyright to own</b>. This is demurely called &quot;copyright misuse&quot; by experts. I call it theft. <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporte..." target="_blank">" rel="nofollow noopener" title="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/happy-bi...">http://www.hollywoodreporte...
Or, here&#039;s another good one: the Museum of Modern Art in NYC slaps the following notice on all the digital scans it rents to publishers for use in books or on websites (and for which it collects a pretty penny): &quot;Digital scan (c) the Museum of Modern Art.&quot; It does this even when the copyright in the artwork belongs not to the museum but to an artist. (E.g.: &quot;Artwork (c) Estate of Andy Warhol. Digital scan <i>[of the artwork by Andy Warhol separate and made-up]</i> (c) the Museum of Modern Art.&quot; It does this even though the federal courts have ruled that an exact replica or scan of an artwork cannot have a separate copyright because it&#039;s just a copy of the copyrighted work. Did I mention that there is money to be made from asserting copyrights one does not own?
So yeah, the RIAA can get all dudgeony about how downloads are injuring the making of music, but there is resounding silence about the flip side: the art and music and other new creativity that is <i>not</i> being made because someone has slapped a copyright control they don&#039;t own on the stuff the artist needs in order to make the new work.
And now, let&#039;s talk about Patent Trolls.
America: privatizing core democratic principles since 1980.
<i>&ldquo;iTunes songs can go on five computers&rdquo;</i>
In a decade of iTunes, I&#039;ve cycled through a bunch of computers and am at the limit for some songs (that I&#039;m not sick of yet, for others I can&#039;t wait for the license to run out -- I&#039;m looking at you &quot;Fergalicious&quot;). I think I need to call Apple if I buy another one of their computer machines. Or maybe not buy one. It&#039;s not clear what their bidness model is for people like me. Fuck it. I&#039;ll just send them my max&#039;ed out (on porn and booze of course) credit card and let them figure it out.
There is that. Flame on!!1!
Presented with facts concerning the effects of his actions on others, KidZoom changes his mind, thus ruling out a career in Republican politics.
Which is why the US Constitution refers to the concept of &quot;for limited times.&quot;
Then there&#039;s the guy who claims to hold a patent on all podcasts. <a href="http://www.thisamericanlife..." target="_blank">" rel="nofollow noopener" title="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/ep...">http://www.thisamericanlife...
The patent system is out of control. Aside from the trolls, legit firms can now file for patent protection of unrealized ideas (expressly <i>not</i> patentable). The old joke about Gates patenting 0 and 1 is barely funny anymore. And even yesterday&#039;s SCOTUS decision about the patentability of human genes is only a partial win: <a href="http://www.psmag.com/health..." target="_blank">" rel="nofollow noopener" title="http://www.psmag.com/health/supreme-court-rules-u...">http://www.psmag.com/health....
I just don&#039;t think Kid Zoom and his fellow Teenz should feel too bad about their Very Terrible Piracy. Consumer and retail piracy are the subject of a great deal of outrage and scrutiny in the press and the courts, while The Mouse and any number of other piratical interests are walking away whistling.
That said, Kid, it&#039;s always good to be legal and honest. I, for one, never made any cassette mix tapes for friends back in the day without rebuying the all LPs each time. Nope, not me. None of us did.
It all depends upon what level you&#039;re at as to whether or not it&#039;s profitable. Bigger artist who minimize down time and expenses make money. As Vodka noted, it is often merch that puts you in the black, along with selling cds of the show. That&#039;s why a good tour mgr prowls the venue to catch the sleazeball promoter selling unauthorized merch.
And now my comment (look down) seems derivative.
Or puce.
Okay, I managed not to comment on this matter last week, but I&rsquo;m weak.
Since I am an oldz, I have very rarely downloaded music or video content without paying for it. I do have a half dozen downloaded YouTube files that exist because I wanted to ensure they never went away, and to get rid of the goddam latency (e.g., Springsteen and Morello doing &ldquo;Ghost of Old Tom Joad&rdquo; at the R&amp;R HOF). In most cases, I&rsquo;m not aware that the files are even commercially available, but I admit I haven&rsquo;t tried hard to find out.
I have two kids, who were around Kid Zoom&rsquo;s age back in 2004-2007, aka the heyday of Limewire and Kazaa. I&rsquo;m sure that they downloaded some stuff, despite my lectures about malware. As a point of information, I doubt that this substantially affected the gross revenue of any content provider. They did save up their allowance and part-time-job income, and with it purchased gamez. And movie tickets. And CDs.
So much for the tl;dr disclaimer. Now for the tl;dr rant.
The &ldquo;piracy problem&rdquo; is fundamentally based on the fact that US copyright law is terrible. Perhaps the most obvious way it is terrible is the Disney effect that makes copyright last way too motherfucking long. I am fine with the idea that human beings should get compensation for the commercial distribution of their intellectual property. The current copyright limits are similar to <i>Citizens United</i> in that they give corporate copyright holders the same, or higher, rights as those available to actual humans.
But, while a piece of shit, this feature of copyright law doesn&rsquo;t really have a lot to do with &ldquo;piracy&rdquo;. Where piracy comes from is the free market. (No, I&rsquo;m not a libertarian). There are a very large number of commercially available audio and video tracks/files/objects. Some of them are of such outstanding character that an enormous audience regards them as wonderful. Some of them suck badly. A lot of them are considered wonderful by some folks, and not so wonderful by others.
In the prevailing distribution model, all similar media are priced the same. And pretty aggressively, IMO. On what basis was the price of an audio track set at $0.99? (or $0.69, or whatever it is now?). My guess would be that it was sort of the average price of one track off a CD, which was priced to be about the same as the corresponding vinyl LP, despite the facts that the manufacturing costs for CDs were different from LPs, and that the physical distribution of LPs or Cds entailed inventory costs that do not exist for downloads. And with, I am absolutely sure, lots of rounding up.
With genuine respect to audio content creators (of whom I am not one), you, or your distributors, are in many cases overcharging for your product. I cannot prove that this is why piracy happens, but I think it&rsquo;s a factor.
For video (i.e., movies and TV episodes), the situation is a bit different, because the owners/distributors are all corporations. But they still want to charge approximately the same price for objects of very different quality. This is price-fixing. It should be illegal. Eventually, when you want to experience a bit of copyrighted media, your software agent will negotiate with the various software agents who represent the subject media, and strike a deal that will be reasonable for you, and also reasonably satisfactory regarding royalties to the creators. This will not happen under current copyright law.
It&#039;s the convenience. The DRM is invisible, if you&#039;re doing it right. (&quot;Right&quot; means using an iPod, but that&#039;s not exactly a problem.)
&quot;Nights in a Whiter Shade of Pale Satin&quot;
Nobody owns the rights to that.
he downloaded them from Bittorrent...
Coastie the Safety Boat sez: Wear your life vest at all times. And stay in the parking lot.
one other thing I don&#039;t remember being mentioned last week is also the issue of those mega superstars serving the role of rainmaker for the smaller or unknown artists. The money that those record companies invest (and often lose) taking risks on unknown commodities comes from all the cash they generate with the big artists. Download too much Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift and the money available from TNBT dries up and they may never get their chance
To set a good example for Kid Zoom, I will not longer steal <strike>precious</strike> valueless work time from my employer to comment on wonket. (Except on Mon-Fri, 8am-5pm, holidays not included.)
True, one of the easiest rationalizations after too much bling excuse is that the RIAA really are a bunch of soulless assholes
You go, Kid! And if we&#039;re going to be all righteous and honorable about piracy of downloaded content, let&#039;s also be righteously outraged about the flip side: Assholes who assert copyright and collect fees (and restrict or deny uses) <b>when they don&#039;t own the copyright</b>. And often <b>when there is no copyright to own</b>. This is demurely called &quot;copyright misuse&quot; by experts. I call it theft. <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporte..." target="_blank">" rel="nofollow noopener" title="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/happy-bi...">http://www.hollywoodreporte...
Or, here&#039;s another good one: the Museum of Modern Art in NYC slaps the following notice on all the digital scans it rents to publishers for use in books or on websites (and for which it collects a pretty penny): &quot;Digital scan (c) the Museum of Modern Art.&quot; It does this even when the copyright in the artwork belongs not to the museum but to an artist. (E.g.: &quot;Artwork (c) Estate of Andy Warhol. Digital scan <i>[of the artwork by Andy Warhol separate and made-up]</i> (c) the Museum of Modern Art.&quot; It does this even though the federal courts have ruled that an exact replica or scan of an artwork cannot have a separate copyright because it&#039;s just a copy of the copyrighted work. Did I mention that there is money to be made from asserting copyrights one does not own?
So yeah, the RIAA can get all dudgeony about how downloads are injuring the making of music, but there is resounding silence about the flip side: the art and music and other new creativity that is <i>not</i> being made because someone has slapped a copyright control they don&#039;t own on the stuff the artist needs in order to make the new work.
And now, let&#039;s talk about Patent Trolls.
America: privatizing core democratic principles since 1980.
<i>&ldquo;iTunes songs can go on five computers&rdquo;</i>
In a decade of iTunes, I&#039;ve cycled through a bunch of computers and am at the limit for some songs (that I&#039;m not sick of yet, for others I can&#039;t wait for the license to run out -- I&#039;m looking at you &quot;Fergalicious&quot;). I think I need to call Apple if I buy another one of their computer machines. Or maybe not buy one. It&#039;s not clear what their bidness model is for people like me. Fuck it. I&#039;ll just send them my max&#039;ed out (on porn and booze of course) credit card and let them figure it out.