I think what the Copyright Alliance is getting confused between Google providing the user with results the user is looking for and Google providing the user with the results that a bunch of third parties would prefer. Google is in the business of serving up relevant results to users and that is exactly what it does. Providing results on keywords as determined by third parties is called advertising and if that is what the Copyright Alliance and it's members want then they can just buy Google adwords like everyone else.
I know that it is just an example to make your point but it is a bad example.
The now 110 year light bulb (http://www.centennialbulb.org/) has not lasted so long because it is of higher quality, if anything it has lasted so long because it is a bit crap. The filaments are extremely thick so have not burned out and it still works, the downside of this is it is extremely dull and probably uses a great deal electricity to supply it's meagre dull glow. I also suspect that the cost of the thing at the time it was made compares pretty poorly with the cost of 100 years worth of modern lightbulbs at today's prices.
Also technology moves on at an ever increasing pace, whilst perhaps todays televisions do not last as long as those made 40 years ago, but then today they do not need to. These days with TVs and most technological devices they are replaced with an new, better, more advanced equivalent after en increasingly shorter timer that products simply do not need to last as long. Very few people these days would pay what it cost to build a TV that lasted for 15-20 years because they they expect to have replaced it with a bigger/better/higher definition model long before that 15-20 years is up.
I have a massive amount of respect for the people working in developing countries trying to provide basic human needs like clean water, food and sanitary toilet/waste systems. However I think the "lets get them bread and clean water and we'll worry about computers and mobile phones later" misses the point somewhat. Everything created by human beings was created by communication and collaboration. Connectivity and technology are the best and most efficient ways to collaborate and communicate and if we work towards a world where collaboration and communication infrastructure is in place globally and collaboration communication and organisation become trivial then it provides the bedrock to solve the difficult problems like food, water, sanitation, education and inequality. Lets get the world connected and then it will be so much easier to work out how to solve the hard problems.
It implies that he failed to predict that the bubble burst in the same way he failed to predict that home taping did in fact kill music. Surely it should read ".... And Failed In Predicting Home Taping Wouldn't Kill Music", in that he predicted that it would?
Well the related article says "the government decided that it would not file a forfeiture complaint -- because there was no probable cause". So are you try to say that this is incorrect. The government did not file a forfeiture complaint this is undisputed fact. So was this for some other reason other than lack of probable cause, for example there was probable cause, but they just didn't feel filing a complaint or had better things to do with their time or simply couldn't be bothered. Please explain?
The 2300 number is beside the point fabricated or not. The government found that there was no probable cause. That means there was so little evidence (i.e. none at all) that the blog had committed criminal copyright infringement and that there was no justification for forfeiting the domain. That's like seizing a persons bank account because you are accusing them of being a drug dealer and then giving them back the money because there is no evidence that the person is in fact a drug dealer. The amount of money in the bank account is not really relevant to the argument of whether it should have been seized or not.
Secondly the RIAA don't even claim that any of the music uploaded was unauthorised, they claim that the site operators "uploaded music to unauthorised file sharing services". That is a massively disingenuous statement, the RIAA knows full well there is no such thing as an "unauthorised file sharing service". Setting up and running a file sharing service does not require any authorisation from anyone. It is the sharing and duplication of the files that requires authorisation and if is that is what happened they could have said "the operators of the site uploaded music to file sharing sites without authorisation of the copyright holder", however they make no such claim.
every ticked event i have ever been to, they tear of a perforated ticket stub with a serial number on it and keep it then give you the remaining portion back. So rather than counting people in video footage can't they just count the ticket stubs and match the serial numbers to the serial numbers stored in the ticketmaster database.
The below is only for digital mass consumer media, i.e. video, audio, books, magazines and such. It is also a very rough proposal to convey the general idea and be built upon. It is not some kind of comprehensive plan that can be implemented directly.
1. Reduce the copyright term to something more inline with its original intensions e.g. 30 years. Tell whining musicians that copyright does not exist to provide them with a retirement income, they need to invest like the rest of the population.
2. Give consumers the right to copy digital media (as defined above) that they have legally obtained for their own personal use. Essentially outlaw DRM.
3. Change copyright law to remove the ability of the copyright holder to control reproduction and distribution. Retain only the right to be compensated for distribution (i.e. where a copy changes hands). Anyone can copy and distribute anything but they are legally obliged to tell the copyright holder and compensate them for it. If the copyright holder does not want something to be distributed do not release it, once it is "in the wild" then they only retain the right to be compensated for it.
4. Create a central database of ALL copyrighted digital mass consumer media as defined above (i.e. every audio recording, movies, tv program, book magazine etc every produced that is currently under copyright). Each "media item" would have a unique identifier and if possible a high quality reference copy of the media.
5. Offer a series of subscription based licences for consumers at different prices for the media in the database. For this to compete with piracy it is imperative that at least some of these licenses be "all you can eat".
6. Create a standards based publicly documented API for the media database. This allows anyone who wants to distribute the media to comply with point three by recording that a copy has been distributed and to record that the person in receipt of the copy has the appropriate licence for that media.
7. An independent organisation should be set up manage and maintain the database, process payments for licenses and administer the distribution of funds to copyright holders. Their role should be very well defined so as to avoid the "scope creep" common to collection societies. Their role should be entirely technical and administrative and should not involve any kind of enforcement.
8. Licenses should be voluntary and not some kind of legal imposed "media tax" forced on ISPs or similar nonsense proposed in the past.
9. There should be a basic free of charge license, this would give all consumers access to any content that creators wish whilst giving those creators an idea of how popular their content is.
The way this would work is as follows. A user (john) signs up for a subscription (Music only, all you can eat) and decides to pay monthly ($10 a month). He signs up through a website distributing audio media, the payment goes directly to the central db administrator and not to the website distributor. He receives a username and password. This password can be used by any distributor website and is authenticated with the central database via a secure protocol such as oAuth. The distribute may provide the content in any format and by any means they wish (stream, download, CD, wax cylinder, stone tablet etching whatever) all they are obliged to do is log with the central database that the logged in user has accessed the media.
This separates out responsibilities nicely, e.g. record companies, film and tv studio can concentrate on what they are good at, producing and promoting content and they base their business model around that and not on the increasingly quixotic desikre to control distribution. Technology companies can concentrate on what they are good at, coming up with innovative ways to provide content to consumers in a format they find convenient and valuable. The distribution companies do not receive any money for the content, it is up to them to work out how to monetise their distribution mechanism, and we all know they will. It also creates true competition between distributors because users will use the service that they find the most compelling.
The pot of money should be distributed on a pro rata basis, weighted by the number of UNIQUE users that access that media e.g, a user using a music streaming service who listens to the same track 50 times counts once, just as a user who downloads the track once and listens to it 50 times.
There are many flaws in the above description that would need to be ironed out to turn it from an outline, back of envelope idea to a real implementable plan. But i strongly believe that it is a sensible foundation for a maintainable system. All it would take is for the media companies to realise that they can no longer base their business model on controlling distribution and as such they should stop trying to control it.
The fact that they are unauthorised/illegal is irrelevant to the argument. The point being made is that the entertainment industry has such contempt for its customers that it isn't even prepared to offer a product/service that is as good as or better than the "pirate" services. Their attitude of "we don't care what you want you will take what you are given" is exactly the reason pirate services are popular. The sooner they realise that and offer compelling legal alternatives the better if they are going to survive.
"(a) accept user generated content without considering what the content is, (b) accepting user content without knowing who the user is."
So you are saying that you think that people who run websites or online service that allow people to publish their own content SHOULD screen all content and verify the identity of the user before allowing them to publish. Having to do that is EXACTLY what is meant by an "onerous level of liability". Those 2 things are extremely difficult and complicated to do and are and should be the responsibility of the publisher not of the provider of the service. Do you expect every ISP that offers web hosting services to vet every single piece of content uploaded and verify the identity of every account holder and determine whether the content violates somebodies IP. If it worked like that then there would be no web.
All Chinese people are counterfeiters just like all Mexicans are lazy, all Indians smell of curry and all [insert nationality, ethnic grouping, or race] are [insert stupid prejudice].
Whilst it is technically true that the internet is the "the world's greatest copy machine" the main problem that the content industry still can't wrap their head round is the fact that the internet is a communication medium and not a broadcast or distribution medium. It was designed to exchange data and communicate between peers and not for "consumers" to be spoon fed content by "broadcasters" and "distributors".
Yes but you have to also remember the other out dated obsessions that record labels have, unit sales and unit based charts. Everything they do is measured in "units" and charts based on those "units", they don't want people outside of their promotional push in a particular territory because the number of unit sales and chart position during those periods of promotion is used to measure the success of the promotion. They don't want you buying 100,000 downloads over 12 months, they want you to buy them during the 4 weeks they are doing their promotion and marketing.
Seems like a fantastic opportunity to get these 6K folks to buy his other works for a discount. I know that if i had downloaded a book for free and liked it i would want to know where i could get more of the same. if the author put something up from his website saying "ooh the free book was a was a mistake by Amazon, hope you enjoyed it. If you did then please support me by buying more of my books and I'll even offer you a discount". You could even turn it into an overall win as i bet a significant number of those free readers downloaded it because it was free and may otherwise have never heard of it.
Go on give it a go search for ANYTHING, ebay and craigslist are always in the results. I typed in the word "arse", I got 2 results, ebay and craigslist. It's almost like they have a vendetta or something...
PPL's members are mainly record labels, it licenses things related to the copyright in the sound recording which is usually owned by the record label. PRS/MCPS is the equivalent for the copyright in the musical work (i.e. the composition) and it's members are mainly musicians, song writers and publishers. How much of these fees actually ends up with artists depends on their particular recording contract and/or whether they own the copyright in the sound recording.
No, i think Mike is right. A good example is used recently is the site anyvan.com i used to arrange moving to London.
They are a middleman type operation between couriers/moving companies and people with stuff to move. The process is kind if a reverse auction. You advertise your stuff and the from and to location. Then there is a bidding process where companies underbid each other to offer the lowest price. This benefits all parties. I got my stuff moved as cheaply as possible, the couriers/movers are able to work much more efficiently by putting together "runs" where they fill up their vans with loads from several people and get more money per run even if they get less per load. Anyvan are happy as they get a cut of what you pay. There is nothing stopping any of these parties "cutting out the middle man" and depriving anyvan of their cut. But why would you because they "enable" a much more efficient and profitable process that benefits all parties. It even benefits the environment because there are fewer half empty vans and trucks taking stuff from the same point a to the same point b.
Different interests
I think what the Copyright Alliance is getting confused between Google providing the user with results the user is looking for and Google providing the user with the results that a bunch of third parties would prefer. Google is in the business of serving up relevant results to users and that is exactly what it does. Providing results on keywords as determined by third parties is called advertising and if that is what the Copyright Alliance and it's members want then they can just buy Google adwords like everyone else.
Re:
I know that it is just an example to make your point but it is a bad example.
The now 110 year light bulb (http://www.centennialbulb.org/) has not lasted so long because it is of higher quality, if anything it has lasted so long because it is a bit crap. The filaments are extremely thick so have not burned out and it still works, the downside of this is it is extremely dull and probably uses a great deal electricity to supply it's meagre dull glow. I also suspect that the cost of the thing at the time it was made compares pretty poorly with the cost of 100 years worth of modern lightbulbs at today's prices.
Also technology moves on at an ever increasing pace, whilst perhaps todays televisions do not last as long as those made 40 years ago, but then today they do not need to. These days with TVs and most technological devices they are replaced with an new, better, more advanced equivalent after en increasingly shorter timer that products simply do not need to last as long. Very few people these days would pay what it cost to build a TV that lasted for 15-20 years because they they expect to have replaced it with a bigger/better/higher definition model long before that 15-20 years is up.
Is he super serial?
And has he defeated ManBearPig yet?
I am so into this idea
I have a massive amount of respect for the people working in developing countries trying to provide basic human needs like clean water, food and sanitary toilet/waste systems. However I think the "lets get them bread and clean water and we'll worry about computers and mobile phones later" misses the point somewhat. Everything created by human beings was created by communication and collaboration. Connectivity and technology are the best and most efficient ways to collaborate and communicate and if we work towards a world where collaboration and communication infrastructure is in place globally and collaboration communication and organisation become trivial then it provides the bedrock to solve the difficult problems like food, water, sanitation, education and inequality. Lets get the world connected and then it will be so much easier to work out how to solve the hard problems.
The headline is confusing
It implies that he failed to predict that the bubble burst in the same way he failed to predict that home taping did in fact kill music. Surely it should read ".... And Failed In Predicting Home Taping Wouldn't Kill Music", in that he predicted that it would?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Well the related article says "the government decided that it would not file a forfeiture complaint -- because there was no probable cause". So are you try to say that this is incorrect. The government did not file a forfeiture complaint this is undisputed fact. So was this for some other reason other than lack of probable cause, for example there was probable cause, but they just didn't feel filing a complaint or had better things to do with their time or simply couldn't be bothered. Please explain?
Re: Re:
The 2300 number is beside the point fabricated or not. The government found that there was no probable cause. That means there was so little evidence (i.e. none at all) that the blog had committed criminal copyright infringement and that there was no justification for forfeiting the domain. That's like seizing a persons bank account because you are accusing them of being a drug dealer and then giving them back the money because there is no evidence that the person is in fact a drug dealer. The amount of money in the bank account is not really relevant to the argument of whether it should have been seized or not.
Secondly the RIAA don't even claim that any of the music uploaded was unauthorised, they claim that the site operators "uploaded music to unauthorised file sharing services". That is a massively disingenuous statement, the RIAA knows full well there is no such thing as an "unauthorised file sharing service". Setting up and running a file sharing service does not require any authorisation from anyone. It is the sharing and duplication of the files that requires authorisation and if is that is what happened they could have said "the operators of the site uploaded music to file sharing sites without authorisation of the copyright holder", however they make no such claim.
Erm what about ticket stubs?
every ticked event i have ever been to, they tear of a perforated ticket stub with a serial number on it and keep it then give you the remaining portion back. So rather than counting people in video footage can't they just count the ticket stubs and match the serial numbers to the serial numbers stored in the ticketmaster database.
My Proposal (very rough outline)
The below is only for digital mass consumer media, i.e. video, audio, books, magazines and such. It is also a very rough proposal to convey the general idea and be built upon. It is not some kind of comprehensive plan that can be implemented directly.
1. Reduce the copyright term to something more inline with its original intensions e.g. 30 years. Tell whining musicians that copyright does not exist to provide them with a retirement income, they need to invest like the rest of the population.
2. Give consumers the right to copy digital media (as defined above) that they have legally obtained for their own personal use. Essentially outlaw DRM.
3. Change copyright law to remove the ability of the copyright holder to control reproduction and distribution. Retain only the right to be compensated for distribution (i.e. where a copy changes hands). Anyone can copy and distribute anything but they are legally obliged to tell the copyright holder and compensate them for it. If the copyright holder does not want something to be distributed do not release it, once it is "in the wild" then they only retain the right to be compensated for it.
4. Create a central database of ALL copyrighted digital mass consumer media as defined above (i.e. every audio recording, movies, tv program, book magazine etc every produced that is currently under copyright). Each "media item" would have a unique identifier and if possible a high quality reference copy of the media.
5. Offer a series of subscription based licences for consumers at different prices for the media in the database. For this to compete with piracy it is imperative that at least some of these licenses be "all you can eat".
6. Create a standards based publicly documented API for the media database. This allows anyone who wants to distribute the media to comply with point three by recording that a copy has been distributed and to record that the person in receipt of the copy has the appropriate licence for that media.
7. An independent organisation should be set up manage and maintain the database, process payments for licenses and administer the distribution of funds to copyright holders. Their role should be very well defined so as to avoid the "scope creep" common to collection societies. Their role should be entirely technical and administrative and should not involve any kind of enforcement.
8. Licenses should be voluntary and not some kind of legal imposed "media tax" forced on ISPs or similar nonsense proposed in the past.
9. There should be a basic free of charge license, this would give all consumers access to any content that creators wish whilst giving those creators an idea of how popular their content is.
The way this would work is as follows. A user (john) signs up for a subscription (Music only, all you can eat) and decides to pay monthly ($10 a month). He signs up through a website distributing audio media, the payment goes directly to the central db administrator and not to the website distributor. He receives a username and password. This password can be used by any distributor website and is authenticated with the central database via a secure protocol such as oAuth. The distribute may provide the content in any format and by any means they wish (stream, download, CD, wax cylinder, stone tablet etching whatever) all they are obliged to do is log with the central database that the logged in user has accessed the media.
This separates out responsibilities nicely, e.g. record companies, film and tv studio can concentrate on what they are good at, producing and promoting content and they base their business model around that and not on the increasingly quixotic desikre to control distribution. Technology companies can concentrate on what they are good at, coming up with innovative ways to provide content to consumers in a format they find convenient and valuable. The distribution companies do not receive any money for the content, it is up to them to work out how to monetise their distribution mechanism, and we all know they will. It also creates true competition between distributors because users will use the service that they find the most compelling.
The pot of money should be distributed on a pro rata basis, weighted by the number of UNIQUE users that access that media e.g, a user using a music streaming service who listens to the same track 50 times counts once, just as a user who downloads the track once and listens to it 50 times.
There are many flaws in the above description that would need to be ironed out to turn it from an outline, back of envelope idea to a real implementable plan. But i strongly believe that it is a sensible foundation for a maintainable system. All it would take is for the media companies to realise that they can no longer base their business model on controlling distribution and as such they should stop trying to control it.
Re: Making a lot over "rent" / "buy", when neither apply.
The fact that they are unauthorised/illegal is irrelevant to the argument. The point being made is that the entertainment industry has such contempt for its customers that it isn't even prepared to offer a product/service that is as good as or better than the "pirate" services. Their attitude of "we don't care what you want you will take what you are given" is exactly the reason pirate services are popular. The sooner they realise that and offer compelling legal alternatives the better if they are going to survive.
WTF?
"(a) accept user generated content without considering what the content is, (b) accepting user content without knowing who the user is."
So you are saying that you think that people who run websites or online service that allow people to publish their own content SHOULD screen all content and verify the identity of the user before allowing them to publish. Having to do that is EXACTLY what is meant by an "onerous level of liability". Those 2 things are extremely difficult and complicated to do and are and should be the responsibility of the publisher not of the provider of the service. Do you expect every ISP that offers web hosting services to vet every single piece of content uploaded and verify the identity of every account holder and determine whether the content violates somebodies IP. If it worked like that then there would be no web.
Isn't this just old fashioned racism
All Chinese people are counterfeiters just like all Mexicans are lazy, all Indians smell of curry and all [insert nationality, ethnic grouping, or race] are [insert stupid prejudice].
Comunication
Whilst it is technically true that the internet is the "the world's greatest copy machine" the main problem that the content industry still can't wrap their head round is the fact that the internet is a communication medium and not a broadcast or distribution medium. It was designed to exchange data and communicate between peers and not for "consumers" to be spoon fed content by "broadcasters" and "distributors".
Units and charts
Yes but you have to also remember the other out dated obsessions that record labels have, unit sales and unit based charts. Everything they do is measured in "units" and charts based on those "units", they don't want people outside of their promotional push in a particular territory because the number of unit sales and chart position during those periods of promotion is used to measure the success of the promotion. They don't want you buying 100,000 downloads over 12 months, they want you to buy them during the 4 weeks they are doing their promotion and marketing.
(untitled comment)
Seems like a fantastic opportunity to get these 6K folks to buy his other works for a discount. I know that if i had downloaded a book for free and liked it i would want to know where i could get more of the same. if the author put something up from his website saying "ooh the free book was a was a mistake by Amazon, hope you enjoyed it. If you did then please support me by buying more of my books and I'll even offer you a discount". You could even turn it into an overall win as i bet a significant number of those free readers downloaded it because it was free and may otherwise have never heard of it.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Avatar
Budget: $237 million
Box Office: $2,782 million
Yeah if it wasn't for all those damn freetards maybe it would have grossed $4 billion.
Try the search
Go on give it a go search for ANYTHING, ebay and craigslist are always in the results. I typed in the word "arse", I got 2 results, ebay and craigslist. It's almost like they have a vendetta or something...
PPL is for record labels
PPL's members are mainly record labels, it licenses things related to the copyright in the sound recording which is usually owned by the record label. PRS/MCPS is the equivalent for the copyright in the musical work (i.e. the composition) and it's members are mainly musicians, song writers and publishers. How much of these fees actually ends up with artists depends on their particular recording contract and/or whether they own the copyright in the sound recording.
Re: Re: If they aren't gatekeepers perhaps they aren't middlemen
I meant "A good example I used..."
Re: If they aren't gatekeepers perhaps they aren't middlemen
No, i think Mike is right. A good example is used recently is the site anyvan.com i used to arrange moving to London.
They are a middleman type operation between couriers/moving companies and people with stuff to move. The process is kind if a reverse auction. You advertise your stuff and the from and to location. Then there is a bidding process where companies underbid each other to offer the lowest price. This benefits all parties. I got my stuff moved as cheaply as possible, the couriers/movers are able to work much more efficiently by putting together "runs" where they fill up their vans with loads from several people and get more money per run even if they get less per load. Anyvan are happy as they get a cut of what you pay. There is nothing stopping any of these parties "cutting out the middle man" and depriving anyvan of their cut. But why would you because they "enable" a much more efficient and profitable process that benefits all parties. It even benefits the environment because there are fewer half empty vans and trucks taking stuff from the same point a to the same point b.