I think the best way to sum up Edison is to say that he used existing scientific principals to make consumer products which he then protected viciously using patent law. (For example, he would hire Pinkerton guards to go around and head-bust filmmakers caught using French-made Lumiere cameras.) With sound recording, lots of people knew that sound waves could be made to make a pen or a needle move, Edison had to come up with the engineering expertise to turn it into a usable consumer product. If you read the Wiki article on his cylinder recorder, it took him 10 years before he "perfected" it, basically giving up on tin foil and using wax as the recording medium. With motion picture cameras and projectors, however, it's pretty sure that Edison representatives saw the Lumiere devices in operation in Paris and Edison rushed to patent it in the US to monopolize that business. So Edison used a variety of methods to make money. He invented when he needed to, refined products when someone else invented them, and stole when he could.
That would be way too easy and helpful! As you know now, Webmasters and YouTubers usually find out by accident that their stuff has been taken down and then they have to fight to get it back up.
I think Google's correct, a lot of writers would like to just have their books read rather than withheld from the public. I heard a writer say he really didn't care that his copyright extended 70 years beyond his death, but he would like to be paid for his current work! One expert estimated that 75% of copyrighted works never renewed their copyright when the term was 28 years. The present copyright law only protects media corporations wanting to hang onto their stuff for as long as possible (I'm looking at you Mickey Mouse!)
This is an outstanding article. The only thing you left out was how does Warner Bros. make money from all of this? Instead of Warners getting 90% of the artist's money, you've got the artist keeping 100% of his money!
It's all about money. If you just post yourself singing a song on YouTube, nobody cares. But the minute you create a YouTube channel and try to get some of YouTube's ad revenue, then someone will care!
It's all about money. If you just post yourself singing a song on YouTube, nobody cares. But the minute you create a YouTube channel and try to get some of YouTube's ad revenue, then someone will care!
All this whining about fixed costs comes in because of the corporatization of media companies. Back when the Scribner family ran Scribner's, for example, they could publish works by Hemenway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, and so on because they only had to make enough money to keep the family-run publishing business going. They didn't even have to make a profit as long as the family members could pay themselves a salary. After being purchased by Macmillan and then Simon & Shuster, which was then bought by CBS, the company is expected to bring in huge profits which then get swallowed up by its parent company to support their corporate overhead. (It has several layers of overhead to support.) That's why traditional publishers CAN'T price e-books below a certain amount.
The entire publishing business needs to be torn down and rebuilt, and companies like Amazon and Google can do it. Look at Amanda Hocking. She became a millionaire selling her own books through Amazon, B&N, etc. She keeps 70% of the selling price instead of getting the traditional 5%-10% royalty traditional publishers pay. The 65% the traditional writer gets screwed out of is paying for the fixed corporate overhead costs!
Wow! If the LOC does this scanning project, and the estimate that 75% of works were never renewed for copyright is correct, we could be looking at an avalanche of works entering the public domain from 1923-1963! That could help to make up for the fact that the public domain clock doesn't start running again until 2018!
Well, you don't want things to get too Democratic! After all, if you have a pure democracy, people could just vote themselves free healthcare, free education, free housing, free food, free transportation, and a weekly pension, and bankrupt the country much faster than Obama is doing! Government is already doling out huge amounts of wealth transfer "because people want more services."
The MPAA should not be so concerned about piracy. When you have 1 gbs Internet access you don't need cable anymore! Google becomes the new cable company. YouTube evolves into a video on demand service. Google goes out and make deals with to stream the cable networks either through an advertising or subscription model, and Google has the potential to put the cable companies out of business very quickly.
Unfortunately, they do care. A lot of people were pushing for Microsoft to make Windows 3.1 open source because what the heck is MS going to with a 15-year old operating system? Let people play around with it. Nope. Sorry. You might be able to do something really cool with it and we can't have that!
Universities just forward any fees onto the students, so they don't care. These days, colleges are more interested in real estate than education and screw the students.
Even though I agree that copyright laws are unfair, fair use never allows you to grab a copyrighted image to use for a published work. I don't understand the part about the image being part of a much larger work. Was this a few brushstrokes blown up from a larger piece of art? Or do you mean taking one picture out of 50? The brushstrokes might be fair use, but you can't just cop a picture from a book and use it without permission -- ever.
However, your friend might still be able to license the picture. Instead of contacting the publisher (whose policy is to say no), he should have contacted the Copyright Clearance Center (copyright.com) (whose policy is to say yes). The CCC would charge a small fee for its use and the burden of tracking down the current copyright owner (it may have reverted back to the artist), would be its job. Your friend should try that!
Well, when you take an indefensible stand you do tend to make things up to prove your point.
As for the members of The Band, who told them to retire? There's lots of things they could have been doing to make money, such as owning their own recording studios, mentoring young musicians and bands, producing other artists, writing new songs, and selling their stuff online.
Also, I hope they saved some of their money when they were making $200,000 a year. I make less than half of that and I manage to put away some money for retirement. Are rock 'n' rollers immune from having to save money for their retirement?
Just another attempt to make you believe you didn't "buy" a movie, you "leased" it instead. The government codified this for software with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and now the movie studios will probably add this into the next copyright revision to go after the used DVD business!
And where are the artists in all of this? Reminds me of the $1.62 royalty check Lady Gaga got from a million downloads from some European online store. Someone made a million euros from her music and it wasn't her!
Interesting discussion
I think the best way to sum up Edison is to say that he used existing scientific principals to make consumer products which he then protected viciously using patent law. (For example, he would hire Pinkerton guards to go around and head-bust filmmakers caught using French-made Lumiere cameras.) With sound recording, lots of people knew that sound waves could be made to make a pen or a needle move, Edison had to come up with the engineering expertise to turn it into a usable consumer product. If you read the Wiki article on his cylinder recorder, it took him 10 years before he "perfected" it, basically giving up on tin foil and using wax as the recording medium. With motion picture cameras and projectors, however, it's pretty sure that Edison representatives saw the Lumiere devices in operation in Paris and Edison rushed to patent it in the US to monopolize that business. So Edison used a variety of methods to make money. He invented when he needed to, refined products when someone else invented them, and stole when he could.
Not Greece
Well, it's probably not the Greek government pushing for this but rather the RIAA, MPAA and their European cousins.
Re: Idea for Google
That would be way too easy and helpful! As you know now, Webmasters and YouTubers usually find out by accident that their stuff has been taken down and then they have to fight to get it back up.
Agree with Google
I think Google's correct, a lot of writers would like to just have their books read rather than withheld from the public. I heard a writer say he really didn't care that his copyright extended 70 years beyond his death, but he would like to be paid for his current work! One expert estimated that 75% of copyrighted works never renewed their copyright when the term was 28 years. The present copyright law only protects media corporations wanting to hang onto their stuff for as long as possible (I'm looking at you Mickey Mouse!)
Outstanding Article!
This is an outstanding article. The only thing you left out was how does Warner Bros. make money from all of this? Instead of Warners getting 90% of the artist's money, you've got the artist keeping 100% of his money!
Money
It's all about money. If you just post yourself singing a song on YouTube, nobody cares. But the minute you create a YouTube channel and try to get some of YouTube's ad revenue, then someone will care!
Money
It's all about money. If you just post yourself singing a song on YouTube, nobody cares. But the minute you create a YouTube channel and try to get some of YouTube's ad revenue, then someone will care!
Scribner's
All this whining about fixed costs comes in because of the corporatization of media companies. Back when the Scribner family ran Scribner's, for example, they could publish works by Hemenway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, and so on because they only had to make enough money to keep the family-run publishing business going. They didn't even have to make a profit as long as the family members could pay themselves a salary. After being purchased by Macmillan and then Simon & Shuster, which was then bought by CBS, the company is expected to bring in huge profits which then get swallowed up by its parent company to support their corporate overhead. (It has several layers of overhead to support.) That's why traditional publishers CAN'T price e-books below a certain amount.
The entire publishing business needs to be torn down and rebuilt, and companies like Amazon and Google can do it. Look at Amanda Hocking. She became a millionaire selling her own books through Amazon, B&N, etc. She keeps 70% of the selling price instead of getting the traditional 5%-10% royalty traditional publishers pay. The 65% the traditional writer gets screwed out of is paying for the fixed corporate overhead costs!
Wow!
Wow! If the LOC does this scanning project, and the estimate that 75% of works were never renewed for copyright is correct, we could be looking at an avalanche of works entering the public domain from 1923-1963! That could help to make up for the fact that the public domain clock doesn't start running again until 2018!
Not too Democratic
Well, you don't want things to get too Democratic! After all, if you have a pure democracy, people could just vote themselves free healthcare, free education, free housing, free food, free transportation, and a weekly pension, and bankrupt the country much faster than Obama is doing! Government is already doling out huge amounts of wealth transfer "because people want more services."
Cable is the target
The MPAA should not be so concerned about piracy. When you have 1 gbs Internet access you don't need cable anymore! Google becomes the new cable company. YouTube evolves into a video on demand service. Google goes out and make deals with to stream the cable networks either through an advertising or subscription model, and Google has the potential to put the cable companies out of business very quickly.
Re: Re:
Unfortunately, they do care. A lot of people were pushing for Microsoft to make Windows 3.1 open source because what the heck is MS going to with a 15-year old operating system? Let people play around with it. Nope. Sorry. You might be able to do something really cool with it and we can't have that!
Forward it on
Universities just forward any fees onto the students, so they don't care. These days, colleges are more interested in real estate than education and screw the students.
Not Fair Use
Even though I agree that copyright laws are unfair, fair use never allows you to grab a copyrighted image to use for a published work. I don't understand the part about the image being part of a much larger work. Was this a few brushstrokes blown up from a larger piece of art? Or do you mean taking one picture out of 50? The brushstrokes might be fair use, but you can't just cop a picture from a book and use it without permission -- ever.
However, your friend might still be able to license the picture. Instead of contacting the publisher (whose policy is to say no), he should have contacted the Copyright Clearance Center (copyright.com) (whose policy is to say yes). The CCC would charge a small fee for its use and the burden of tracking down the current copyright owner (it may have reverted back to the artist), would be its job. Your friend should try that!
Lost Money
I'm sure Rumblefish will issue him a financial statement that he will be due for royalties when the song breaks even in 45 years!
Make Things Up
Well, when you take an indefensible stand you do tend to make things up to prove your point.
As for the members of The Band, who told them to retire? There's lots of things they could have been doing to make money, such as owning their own recording studios, mentoring young musicians and bands, producing other artists, writing new songs, and selling their stuff online.
Also, I hope they saved some of their money when they were making $200,000 a year. I make less than half of that and I manage to put away some money for retirement. Are rock 'n' rollers immune from having to save money for their retirement?
Dictate Copyright
Obviously companies want the right to have copyright be anything they dictate it to be. We're just fighting the inevitable.
Buy? No, Lease a movie!
Just another attempt to make you believe you didn't "buy" a movie, you "leased" it instead. The government codified this for software with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and now the movie studios will probably add this into the next copyright revision to go after the used DVD business!
Artists?
And where are the artists in all of this? Reminds me of the $1.62 royalty check Lady Gaga got from a million downloads from some European online store. Someone made a million euros from her music and it wasn't her!
Re: Re:
Hmm. So if a company goes out of business, all of your music will disappear in a month? You better hope iTunes never goes out of business!