Tim Griffiths 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (294) comment rss

  • On the post: Another Music Service Shuts Down, Blames Ridiculous Licensing Fees

    Tim Griffiths ( profile ), 09 Aug, 2012 @ 03:17am

    Re: Re: Re:

    Apple and Amazon have deep pockets and mark share clout. Itunes and Spotify were the first break out successes in offering their respective models, which means the legacy industry was slow to react and those services gained enough of a foot hold not to be easily stomped on.

    This makes Itunes relatively safe. Apple has enough money, enough market share and is embedded enough in it's market that the legacy industry is forced to deal with them more or less fairly.

    As for Spotify, well, it's complex. Firstly the big labels actually own small stakes in the company, 10-15% across all the big boys. At the same time those same labels are increasing the fees spoitfy pays the more successful it becomes. Which means the legacy players pretty much control the companies future, the company exists effectively on their sufferance while they try and figure out the best way to milk it dry. If they go to far the company fails they don't lose much and one of them would likely buy the company up cheaply.

    Other streaming music services do not have this "protection". The legacy industry has a given level of control over spotify and they DO NOT WANT spotify to have effective competition because they want the option to force more money out of spotify. If spotify has no effective competition then it's in a position to better pass on fee increasing to it's consumers as those consumers have no other place to go.

    It's stupid short sighted and greedy but it's exactly how the legacy industry is used to doing things. They are happy either way, if spoitfy goes out of business they will be happy, if they are able to keep on milking it while stagnating it's market as much as they can they'll be happy.

    Spotify on it's own is not a threat, they partly own it and control it's future based on what they feel like charging it. With out effective competition the market may grow but it won't evolve and they don't have to try and control a number of different companies and services and they do not have to compete with what a free market in that space would want to provide.

    In other words spoitfy got "lucky" enough to be allowed to be successful by the gatekeeps of the industry. They are that one band in a million the labels decide to sign up and then abuse as much as they can for that privilege. Any other streaming service effectively has no chance at competing.

    Itunes and amamzon have independent sources of markshare and wealth that allow them to effectively compete in the space and not just at the whim of legacy recording industry.

  • On the post: Another Music Service Shuts Down, Blames Ridiculous Licensing Fees

    Tim Griffiths ( profile ), 09 Aug, 2012 @ 01:27am

    Re: Legacy recording industry ???

    I know a number of labels, recording studios, producers and artists who operate entirely outside the legacy industry. A vast amount of the music I listen to comes from bands that funded the recording them self's through small studios some times with the help of small labels.

    A friends band has in fact just produced an album that I think is easily my album of the year, album of the last few years in fact and is as good or better than anything from any band doing anything like them. They toured their ass off, saved money, got help from a good small label to fund that album and not a single person in what is called the "legacy industry" had anything to do with it.

    So, and I never use this kind of language but you are a special case, fuck you.

  • On the post: Why Are New Zealand Prosecutors Seeking To Suppress All Images & Video Of Megaupload Raid?

    Tim Griffiths ( profile ), 08 Aug, 2012 @ 01:41am

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    I'm a subject not a citizen and I am NOT even conceptually equal to every one in my country purely due to the circumstance of my birth. All this because a god I don't believe exists apparently hand picked some people to rule over the rest of us because we can't be trusted to look after our self's.

    It's insulting deeming and even with the total lack of actual power I find it deeply disturbing that one unelected and uncountable person could technically shut down the elected branch of my government just because of who her parents were.

    I have a fundamental and deeply held problem with being subjected to authority and any one who is happy with a monarch even as a figure head is some one I simply can not understand.

    I might be a little bit of a republican.

  • On the post: More Anti-Youtube Whining: 'YouTube Complies With Our Takedown Requests Just To Make Us Look Bad'

    Tim Griffiths ( profile ), 07 Aug, 2012 @ 08:00am

    Re: YouTube

    I'd have thought you'd want the take down pages to remain up as an indicator to your fans not to re-upload the song. If a fan searches for song and does not find it they may upload it, if they search for a song and see a clear indication that you've asked for the song to be taken down before? They may think twice. Think of it as a education tool, since you are so hot on wanting to teach your fans the correct way to be your fans.

    To be honest the only reason I can only think of for you to want the notices to expire is that you don't want a list of songs your fans want to hear on youtube but which you are not providing on your account. I can see why from a image stand point that you don't want take down notices being only results for songs you provide. I am of course presuming that "adequate videos" does not include every song you've issued a take down for.

    As for educating your fans that this not the best form of promotion for you make it seem to me that you are misunderstanding their motives. "What can I do to best promote the artist I like" is not what drives some one to upload a track. "I want to share this song and artists because I like them" seems more likely. That sharing does act as promotion for you but how efficient that promotion is or isn't in your view is not really a factor in their uploading. So telling them "this does not promote me in the best way" is unlikely to change anything except make your fans think that you see them and them sharing your music purely in terms of how it benefits you. Which is not really the best way to connect with your fan base.

    Now to be fair I will explain that I'm some one who firmly believes that musicians are best off providing their music freely while selling it to those who want to support you. I'm following this advice with my own band and my own music and I've been actively trying to promote this idea to other bands and musicians I know who are far more successful than I am.

    So I am coming at this from a bias point of view, I just think you are making the mistake of over estimating the damage these videos are doing to you. If fans are going to keep upload these videos why not provide exactly what they want on your own page? If it's going to happen anyway you may as well be collecting the ad money for it.

  • On the post: More Anti-Youtube Whining: 'YouTube Complies With Our Takedown Requests Just To Make Us Look Bad'

    Tim Griffiths ( profile ), 07 Aug, 2012 @ 03:15am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120806/11053019945/curiositys-mars-landing-video-disappears-youtube-due-to-bogus-copyright-claim.shtml#c76

    Have a read of that wonderful comment. DMCA is being abused so much that it's possible to argue based on studies of the data (not just your made up number) that correct usage of DMCA take down requests is actually in the minority.

    At which do you stop asking a doctor to operate or demand a recall of cars due to faults?

  • On the post: Apple's Argument: Samsung Could Have Made Its Phone Large, Thick, Bumpy, Sharp-Edged & Hexagonal

    Tim Griffiths ( profile ), 06 Aug, 2012 @ 08:58am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Obviously...

    Why would she allow Kubrick in if she won't even allow Samsung to present the most compelling evidence they have for their case?

    http://www.dailytech.com/Judge+Blasts+Samsung+for+Leaking+Inadmissible+Evidence+to+Media/article25301.html

  • On the post: Apple's Argument: Samsung Could Have Made Its Phone Large, Thick, Bumpy, Sharp-Edged & Hexagonal

    Tim Griffiths ( profile ), 06 Aug, 2012 @ 08:53am

    Re: Even Samsung admits it

    Maybe you should help Apple out with being easily confused. They submitted a slide with an 2006 Samsung design on it as proof of how Samsung started to copy the Iphone after it came up in 2007.

    Samsung have been blocked form submitting evidence that shows they had these Iphone looking desigins before the Iphone because the Judge felt they submitted it to late in discovery.

    What's absurd about this is that if Samsung lose they are going to appeal with this evidence and will be able to make a hugely compelling case. Effectively making this trail a waste of time.

    This is why they leaked the stuff to the media, to make the Judge look silly. Which is likely more why she slammed them for it than them actually doing anything wrong (which they didn't) but leaking it.

  • On the post: Apple's Argument: Samsung Could Have Made Its Phone Large, Thick, Bumpy, Sharp-Edged & Hexagonal

    Tim Griffiths ( profile ), 06 Aug, 2012 @ 08:45am

    Re: Tons of prior art

    http://www.dailytech.com/Judge+Blasts+Samsung+for+Leaking+Inadmissible+Evidence+to+Media/article25301.htm

    Samsung have pretty compelling evidence all of their own in the form of design documents that they had an Iphone looking designs before the Iphone... It was just submitted too late in the discovery process and the Judge won't let them use it.

  • On the post: Apple's Argument: Samsung Could Have Made Its Phone Large, Thick, Bumpy, Sharp-Edged & Hexagonal

    Tim Griffiths ( profile ), 06 Aug, 2012 @ 08:18am

    Form always has a function even if it's only in the abstract of what the form is or isn't. In this case I can only hope Samsung turns around and says "how can we efficiently show widescreen content on anything other than a rectangle?".

    What really bugs me about all this is I thought pattens existed to protect work that was not just obvious next step that many people where arriving at around the same time. A special leap in what is actually more the cause of a technological evolution than anything else. As the environment made high quality wide screen content (games or film or otherwise) something that you could run and store or stream to a small wireless device then it's obvious that the best design for that device is a large touch screen with minimal other form factor.

    You want the biggest screen space for the smallest form because it needs to fit in peoples pocket. Given that it is intended to go in peoples pockets you don't want sharp edges or forms that don't sit flush in the pocket. Wallets are relatively flat with out pointed corners made out of soft material for a reason.

    That is not a genius next step that needs protection it's the obvious result of producing phones best suited for the environment they are used in and the environment they are used for.

    It reminds me of the story of "who designed the cowboy hat". The hat developed out of the mass of random hats that people took to the gold rush. Out of all the hats some are better suited t the environment than others and become more prevalent and then over time a number of different people made changes to that design to produce the hat as we understand it.

    That cowboy hat or a hat very much like it would have appeared at that time for use by those people regardless of the individual hat makers. There was no massive leap that needed to be made from the hats of the time to a the kind of hat required, no massive change in hatmaking technology. It was simply "cowboy hat" time in a "cowboy hat" environment.

    As much as it may hurt people egos most scientific and as such technological development is inevitable and happens in a predefined patten. Given what we know, we have a given level of technology that makes sense to be produced from that understanding and that technology and understanding will prime an obvious next step in development.

    There is room for individual brilliance and leaps in understanding or technology may come early but they will come. Rewarding with pattens ideas and technology that are a leap rather than a step is an understandable way to try and promote faster technological advance as this is of benefit to a state in any number of ways. Yet if we allow people to tie up every little step we risk stalling everything and allowing states not hindered by a regard for these laws to get ahead.

    My point I guess is that there was no brilliant leap in the form of the iphone. It's arguably (I guess) one of the best implementations of a this set of design ideas and was very much the most popular one. It was the first phone to really open up this step, it was the right phone in the right place at the right time, but it wouldn't have taken that step if the market was not ready for it and it's clear from phone designs at the time that we were converging on this design anyway.

    Widescreen content was a thing before the Iphone. Technology that made it possible and piratical to store and use high quality wide screen content on small device existed before the Iphone. Portable media players were a thing before the Iphone. Convergent devices were a thing before the iphone. Touchscreen on phones was a thing before the iphone.

    In that environment what are the obvious outcomes of future phone design? Firstly high quality media would require a big screen. Given the costs and the fact it had to fit in a persons pocket you are pretty limited on the best size and shape for a screen IE about the size of the iphones screen (the S3, which I use, is pushing it for the use size of a phone screen). Now given that you don't want to make the phone any bigger or any wider than you have to given people have to carry it around and hold it to their ear then reducing the space that isn't taken up by screen is a obvious must. The best way around this is touch screen interface which is much more efficient in it's use of space. Now for the shape again you are trying to limit the form as much as you can, so you make it the shape of your screen and you round of the edges because THAT'S WHAT YOU DO WITH PHONES AND HAVE ALWAYS DONE WITH PHONES BECAUSE YOU DON'T WANT TO POKE PEOPLE IN THE GOD DAMN LEG! (even a phone with the name "razor" was rounded!)

    So in a world where high quality media can be used on a small device, in which widescreen is a thing and phones are designed to be as small and slim as they can be (with rounded none poke based edges) and in which portal media players have a history... a phone that looks like the iphone is not only inevitable it's the only logical next step. Apple simply made that step better than the competitors at the game and their reward for that was getting to be the break out product for the next generation of phones... it should not bet getting to own the simple and obvious next step in phone design.

  • On the post: Study Links Violent Video Games And The 'Macbeth Effect'

    Tim Griffiths ( profile ), 06 Aug, 2012 @ 05:43am

    Sadly people will use this to argue for these games are desensitising the people who play rather than what you suggest . And it will be as a valid argument as your own. Again this is only showing a correlation between the people who play games and the showing of less guilt, there is no clear understanding of the causation.

    Anything else I have to say about violence in media in the wake of the awful things that have happened is better summed up by this video.

    http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/6101-On-The-Subject-Of-Violence

  • On the post: TPP Text On Fair Use Leaks; US Proposals Are Really About Limiting Fair Use, Not Expanding It

    Tim Griffiths ( profile ), 06 Aug, 2012 @ 04:18am

    Re:

    Copyright ended up, for a while, being designed for the public good, the short term benefits to individuals was a means not the ends. That way of thinking has been turned around and there is no reason for the public to support state granted monopolies that do nothing to benefit the state. Yet they just keep on pushing... telling us taking our rights away is good for us... it's just not going to last.

  • On the post: Judge Posner: Embedding Infringing Videos Is Not Copyright Infringement, And Neither Is Watching Them

    Tim Griffiths ( profile ), 06 Aug, 2012 @ 03:13am

    Re: Re:

    Full quote please so we can have context.

    "His bypassing Flava?s pay wall by viewing the uploaded copy is equivalent to stealing a copyrighted book from a bookstore and reading it."

    His point is that crime, in this case theft, is not reading the reading of the book but how it was taken. He goes on to say that watching the uploaded video is not the copyright infringement, taking it and uploading it was.

    While I think he could have phrased it better given the way the legacy industry insists on the false use of "theft" while framing this debate it's clear he wasn't saying "copyright infringement = theft". Unless you are attempting to read in to it something that isn't there of course.

  • On the post: Judge Posner: Embedding Infringing Videos Is Not Copyright Infringement, And Neither Is Watching Them

    Tim Griffiths ( profile ), 06 Aug, 2012 @ 03:02am

    Re: See! Making a copy is theft...

    His point about the book is that reading it after it's been stolen is not the crime, stealing it is. In the same way that watching the uploaded content is not the copyright infringement, reproduction without the right is.

    You may as well try and take his "sneak in to a film" analogy and claim that he means that copyright is the same as trespassing. After all it's actually a term that makes far more sense if we are going to take the stupid step of equating "intellectual property" (A term used to describe a set of disparate laws, not actually a legally defined term in it's self as far as I know) to physical property. Given that the "property" remains both with the owner and the person who copied it then using the term "theft" is illogical but implying the copier is "trespassing" on property we have something closer (if still stupidly wrong) to describe the action.

    But I doubt we'll see "trespassing" gain as much traction as "theft" because it's not as good a term of manufacturing moral outrage via legacy industry PR campaigns.

  • On the post: Did You Know That Professional Writing Is Dying And Only Taxing The Public To Pay Writers Can Save It

    Tim Griffiths ( profile ), 03 Aug, 2012 @ 05:09am

    Re: Amateurism Is Good.

    Every writer starts out as an amateur and under the old system if you wanted to move from being a amateur to being a professorial you pretty much had to write your first book with no help, no support, no money and then shop it around publishers in the hopes that one of them would decided that you might be worth picking up and that your book did well enough so that the publishers would offer you an advance to get on with writing your second.

    As example lets look at Harry Potter which was rejected by one agent and 8 publishing houses and when it was picked up it was with a ?2,500 advance for a book that was written over the course of 5 years or so.

    In the new model, just like with music, writers now have the ability to get their writing directly to the market and either use that as a way to fully self publish or to build up a follow and proven sales record to take to a publisher and offers armatures a way to have people read their stuff and maybe see some return from it.

    I find the legacy industry has this idea that people will only create art if they can profit from it. They can only see creative work through the eyes of business person and as such ignore history. People have always made art and they always will make art and great artist will always be found among those doing so. The last 100 years have been the exception to the way our culture has worked not the rule and we are simply getting ready to move past it.

  • On the post: Did You Know That Professional Writing Is Dying And Only Taxing The Public To Pay Writers Can Save It

    Tim Griffiths ( profile ), 03 Aug, 2012 @ 02:48am

    Re: Re: Re: Price

    Wait... what? Let break this down simply.

    The author is paid or not, the book is edited and put in to a format for either use in a ebook or for printing. These are "costs" that both the physical product and the ebook have in common. This is I guess you could call the "making" or production of the book.

    Lets move on to publication.

    The ebook is taken and I guess uploaded to the stores server farm where it is copied down from when a person buy it. The size of the ebook in terms of it's data means that the cost to store and transfer it to the consumer by the store is effectively tiny even including the running costs of that server farm or data centre.

    A physical book is sent for a given print run. The printers cost this based on how much they have to pay for paper ink and running costs of their printer. These physical books then have to be shipped and stored in a ware house until they are brought by stores that sell the physical item. The book is then shipped and stored in another warehouse before being shipped and stored in the store that is going to sell them. That store then has the running costs involved in actually selling that book.

    The physical book is priced to cover the costs of how it is made and how it is published. Ebooks do not have anywhere near the same PUBLISHING costs and as such can be priced cheaper while still covering it's publishing costs and the "making" cost of the book that it has in common with that physical version.

    In other words for a publisher to make back the same amount of money from a physical book as an ebook the physical book needs to be sold at a higher price.

    So if you spin that around and price the ebook book the same as the physical book the publisher have a much higher profit margin on that version of the book. Remember we are talking about profit which means AFTER COSTS.

    What Tim is saying in that quote is that if the industry likes it or not we live in a world where every time some one buys media they buy it in-spite of being able to get it for free in an illegal but almost risk free manner. In that market trying to price an ebook the same as a physical book when ever one with two brain cells to rub together (and yes that is a dig at you, I hoped I would be better than that but I'm not) understands that the ebooks publishing costs are vastly smaller, well, that's shooting your self in your foot.

    "Yes you can get this book for free, but here have this version on which we make a much MUCH bigger profit because we don't want to under cut our physical book sales"

    Consumers are not going to put up with that. You shouldn't put up with that.

  • On the post: If It Takes You 20 Years To Notice Madonna Sampled Your Songs, Perhaps It's A Transformative Use

    Tim Griffiths ( profile ), 02 Aug, 2012 @ 08:38am

    We need to understand what new "2011 audio technology" unearthed this "hidden sample". Then we need to create a number of different songs and then run random samples we know had not be used against them using this technology and see what happens.

    My bet is that you try enough samples you'll find one "hidden" in the songs we created with out ever using that sample. If you are having to dig so deeply in to the song that you need technology that has only just come about then the chances are that you are going to start running up the against the fact that there are only so many notes in some many pattens that make music senses in western music and digging about outside the range of noticeable hearing trying to find a link is just going to throw up incorrect matches.

    There maybe a chance that the writer of vogue was influenced by the song that he had worked remixing and that some of that influence made it way in to Vogue and that's what the "hidden sample detecting machine" is picking up on.

    Yet that's how music works... when does influence become sampled? I know I've written songs based of liking a chord patten I've heard or a given strumming patten. Does that mean if I record those songs I've sampled the things that inspired them even if the end song is fundamentally different?

    The answer is no... because copyright is protection of a execution not an idea. If we go down the road that I think this case would likely open up if it's ruled to be true then people won't be able to make none infringing music with in the next 5 years.

  • On the post: Richard Branson Claims People May Confuse 'I Am Not A Virgin Jeans' With His Virgin Properties

    Tim Griffiths ( profile ), 02 Aug, 2012 @ 08:21am

    Re: Branson seems deluded here...

    This is the main point, did your trademark have a meaning before you claimed it? If it did then you should have to accepted any use of the word that makes use of that meaning.

    I'm not a virgin makes sense in a world where Virgin did not exist. Now "I am not a virgin TV" makes a given amount of sense pre Virgin but makes significantly more sense post Virgin and as such I think could be argued to be a trade mark problem.

    That said I don't think trademarks should be given on single existing words full stop.

  • On the post: Sometimes The Business Model Is The Marketing

    Tim Griffiths ( profile ), 02 Aug, 2012 @ 04:55am

    PROOF PIRATE MIKE IS PIRATE! HE WANTS SOMETHING FOR NOTHING!

    /how I do?

  • On the post: UK Government Censors Copyright Consultation Submission About How Awful Collection Societies Are

    Tim Griffiths ( profile ), 02 Aug, 2012 @ 03:54am

    Re: Re: Re:

    I actually thought you were trying to make fun of me there... until I saw the post about that... ha.

  • On the post: UK Government Censors Copyright Consultation Submission About How Awful Collection Societies Are

    Tim Griffiths ( profile ), 01 Aug, 2012 @ 09:01am

    Re:

    I and a large number of my friends are active in the music scene. Some in bands, some as promoters other who run labels and venues. The issues with collection societies, copyright and everything else are vastly more important to this group in this day and age then it ever has been before.

    We actually now how grounds to operate outside of the walled garden tended by the gatekeepers in ways that can make us just as successful as those with in. So we have to understand our rights and we have to be able to argue correctly for changes that support and protect those rights and against the changes that legacy industry wants to see which is mostly aimed at retaining a monopoly and business model that no longer make sense.

    When, as "that sky is rising crap" points out, there are more people than ever making more music and more money than ever the number of people who these issues effect and who need to have a educated voice in the debates is bigger than ever.

    This is before we even start to consider that the laws the legacy industries are lobbying so hard to put in place spill over greatly from simply an issue that effects the creative industries. We are seeing laws being created to "protect content creators" that are treating the very basic structure of a free and open internet and that effects EVERYONE.

    I have and will keep arguing that the defining act of our age will be if we keep the internet free and open or let it be restricted and censored. I don't think there are many such debates who's outcome will have such wide reaching effects. To me it is going to be the single biggest indicator of if our future is going to be a good or a bad one. Having a free and open internet will, in my view and that of many others, have a positive effect on almost every other major issue we face as a society. I strongly believe that open debate, open information and education are the keys to gaining positive out comes in everything from the fight against racism to solving or at lest dealing with problems like global warming.

    In other words everybody and everything is in line to be effected by a small group of people who seem to be willing to burn the place down rather than face having to adapt to a world in which they are no longer as important as they were. It's in the best interests of everybody to be informed and aware of the battles going on over IP laws because how those laws effect the internet could have very dire outcomes.

    We are told that we have entered the information age and it's with in the creative industries that we are having the first fight over what that actually means to us as society and how we are going to change our laws to face it.

Next >>