On Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 05:04:52PM -0600, Levi Bard wrote:
> > What I am supporting is their right to protect their property. I don't
> > condone illegal activities to further ANY objective, but I think that their
> > objective is just. As for your comment regarding Sony's "tenuous rights to
> > somebody else's product", if the artist wishes to have their music
> > distributed by Sony, and they sign a contract that gives Sony the rights to
> > their music, who's fault is that? Either negotiate a better contract, or
> > find someone else to distribute your music (or do it yourself). The fact
> > is, they go with Sony because Sony is huge and they can get a lot of
> > exposure (let me translate: $$$$$$$$). The artists are out to make
> a little
> > coin, too. Don't be so naive as to think they do not know what's going on.
>From what I understand, there isn't that much money coming from record
companies from the sale of CDs. Musicians make money from touring.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong on this.
A similar situation apparently obtains in book publishing. Publishing
companies make a lot of money on your book, and you make a very little.
Artists have a bad trade-off to deal with. They can go with Bob's
Records. They get to keep their content as their own. They'll sell 1000
records, and keep their day job at 7-11. Or they can go with Sony. Sony
will try to own their content outright. They'll sell 100000 records, but
make a pittance until they get a successful tour going. Like I said, a
bad trade-off.
Here's the problem: greed. Sony doesn't make better CDs with better
artists than anyone else. They're not even vaguely interested in that.
In fact, they put out a lot of pure crap. No, for Sony and many other
large companies, it starts and ends with money. Period.
The problem is that many companies completely lack anything even vaguely
resembling a conscience. I'm not talking about donating to save the rain
forests. Companies that do that are salving their consciences because
they got rich and deep down don't believe they deserve it. I'm talking
about a mission statement like this:
"We make records. We share as much _profit_ with our artists as we can,
since they create the content. We don't put out crap from people who
really can't sing or play. Our purpose is not to make profit, though we
intend to do that as well, in order to stay in business. Our purpose is
to put out recordings which have beautiful music on them by talented
artists."
I'm not decrying large companies. They make stuff we can't for cheaper
than we could. I'm just saying the real problem here is soulless
companies.
> >
> > My point is this: there is a problem with pirating music. Sony wants to
> > stop this illegal behavior. I agree with their *reasoning* behind wanting
> > to stop it. A *solution* needs to be found. One that allows Sony the
> > rights to their property (without violating any laws) and that does not
> > infringe upon any rights of the law abiding citizens of the world.
>
What you're seeing is a result of two things. First, the fact that
technology has made it easy to copy content. Xerox machines, I'm sure,
produced a backlash when they came out-- oh, no one will buy books any
more, because they can just copy them. Turns out it's pretty
time-consuming and ultimately costs more than just buying the book. But
now, you can rip a CD in a matter of minutes. You can pick and choose
the songs you want to listen to, instead of sitting through crappy album
cuts to get to the good ones. The technology permits (maybe even
encourages) some types of crime.
But the second factor is a backlash against record companies. The
companies are (rightfully) perceived as criminal. In addition, they have
become so addicted to the status quo, they resist all temptation to
change their distribution model to fit the changing tastes of consumers.
(This is changing slowly.)
> I understand what you're saying, but this is a fundamental flaw
> inherent in the entire concept of intellectual property. You cannot
> own an idea, nor control its distribution. For a while our current
> system worked by controlling the media on which ideas could be
> distributed, but now our technology has advanced to the point where
> there quite literally is no medium of distribution, unless you count
> electrons. (Or photons.) This is not a flaw in our technological
> system, but rather in the concept of ownable intellectual property in
> general.
There _is_ a medium, but it's shrunk in importance. Paper books (medium)
are expensive. Hard disk space (medium) is not.
But there is no flaw in the concept of ownable intellectual property.
Inventions like White-Out and Post-Its are examples of this. The
Beatles' White Album is an example of this.
No, ideas, particularly scientific ones, cannot be owned. Think DNA. But
source code isn't an idea. It's an expression of an idea. That's why
it's copyrightable (a novel is an expression of a story idea), but not
really patentable (not _really_).
Moreover, to come up with something like a workable light bulb took
years of research and millions of dollars. That's something worth
protecting. And not everyone could afford that kind of time and that
kind of money to do it. Software's different. Any halfwit with a copy of
Visual BASIC can write a program. It's like everyone has their own
little light bulb laboratory now. You can't pretend to use patents
adequately in a world like that. Too many people work on the same thing
every day and use the same methods. The patent paradigm simply doesn't
fit.
Two hundred years ago, no one had any question that IP existed and was
worth protecting. Now many people don't believe that. But back then,
record companies didn't sell CDs with one decent song on them for more
than the cost of a cassette, which costs far more to actually produce
but has the same content on it. The loss of the idea of intellectual
property has been fed by companies who seek to extort consumers with it.
If Thomas Edison had charged a hundred dollars per light bulb
(extortion), we might still be reading by candlelight. Because you just
couldn't make your own light bulbs. But now with computers, the consumer
has the power to bypass extortionate record companies. And out goes the
idea of owned intellectual property.
Jobs had a very bright idea when he convinced record companies to allow
downloadable single songs, sold for a pittance.
> There is no way to prevent the flow of information if you
> cannot control the medium, and as technology advances, our media will
> become more and more uncontrollable. Individuals and businesses who
> deal in intellectual property, if they want to continue doing so
> profitably, should be seriously evaluating their present and future
> business models at this point and looking at what they can do to offer
> services related to their current products.
>
> Believe it or not, the open source movement is doing this right. It
> recognizes that the salable value of a piece of software is not the
> executable nor the source code. People who don't understand this
> always say, "How are you going to make any money if you give your code
> away?" That's like saying, "How are you going to make any money
> running a restaurant if you let people in the door for free?"
I don't think the Open Source movement does this very well at all. The
Open Source movement is strewn with the carcasses of companies who
haven't done this right. And few are the ones who do.
The problem is that people in the Open Source movement aren't doing it
for profit. They're doing it to advance the art. Or improve mankind. Or
whatever their particular higher purpose is. (Or they just like to hack
;-) It's generally a labor of love, like all good science. But if the
code is the product, and you're making it freely available because you
weren't in it for the money in the first place, then you can't build a
business around that as a product. So you shift a bit and make the
product "services". But that means you've got a lot of marketing to do,
because you have to convince people that they need the service and that
it's worth paying for. That's hard to do, when you can buy computers for
$300, download the software for free, and mostly it "just runs". Big
companies will spring for this, because their thinking about such things
is pretty twisted anyway. But it's a tough market, as the carcasses of
Open Source companies will attest.
It's also worth noting that the general level of morality and ethics in
society has declined, exacerbating this whole problem. In a more moral
society, record companies wouldn't charge extortionate rates for CDs,
and no one would think of depriving an artist or company of profit by
pirating a CD.
Is it just me, or is all this getting too political? ;-}
Paul
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