Torrent Talk (1 Viewer)

[scoobygang]

Sorry, but I'm not following you then. If an artist can't cover Sympathy for the Devil without making compensation to Jagger and Richards, what do you mean by "Just because you make Sympathy for the Devil, why can't I make Sympathy for the Devil?"?J

Because I'm not asking you to tell me what the law says. I know that. I'm asking you to tell me why the law should be that. I buy a widget. Why can't I make a copy of that widget and sell my own? Leaving aside patent issues, I can. Now explain why my copy of Sympathy for the Devil should be treated differently. Of course, I know the answer. If we had a perfectly competitive market in Sympathy for the Devil, then the cost of Sympathy for the Devil would drop to a point just above the cost of making a copy of Sympathy for the Devil. And that cost couldn't account for providing the incentive to create Sympathy for the Devil. This is a utilitarian argument, not a moral one. So we grant an artificial monopoly in the market of Sympathy for the Devil. Only the Stones can sell it. The scope of that monopoly only makes sense to the extent that it is necessary to ensure that the Stones keep writing music. But the Stones have lots of reasons to want to keep writing music. Touring is one example that has been brought up. Or the Stones can sell Sympathy for the Devil more efficiently than I can. They can build a more trustworthy brand. So we need to take that into account. And we need to take into account that if the Stones have a monopoly on selling Sympathy for the Devil, then fewer people are going to hear Sympathy for the Devil. And fewer people will be influenced by Sympathy for the Devil. Maybe there was a better Rolling Stones out in England, but they never bought old Robert Johnson albums. And we should remember that human beings have made great art for a long time before thay could ever really sell it exclusively. Shakespeare couldn't stop anyone from performing Hamlet. He never made a dime off of Hamlet other than what he got out of performing it at the Globe. So we should take arguments that artists can only produce art if they can control all copies of that art with a grain of salt.

 

[Ignoratio Elenchi]

So you finally get to the real crux of the matter. It's a matter of ensuring that you have the proper incentive to create. But you don't address what several people have pointed out. The guy copying your content is exposing other people to your content. People who wouldn't know you from Adam. People who enjoy your content (and whose enjoyment is an independent social benefit worthy of protection in its own right), but who also increase the potential market for any content you might produce in the future. Morally, we should only protect your right to profit from your idea if the disincentive to your creation is greater than the value created by sharing your art with people who normally wouldn't buy it.

The disincentive to create is my biggest issue with free downloads, and this argument has been made several times but I don't buy it. People keep saying that the wide distibution of your product will introduce it to a larger pool of potential customers, etc. So what? They'll just download my next product for free, too.You're basically saying, it's ok that people download your first album for free, because the increased exposure means you'll have more fans and therefore you'll make money on your next album. I see no reason to believe that's true. Once we legitimize free downloads, no one will ever pay again, and once people stop paying for the product, people stop making the product.

In a similar vein, someone earlier said essentially that producers should produce because they want to - because it's their life's passion! - and not because they want to be involved in the lowly business of collecting a paycheck. Equally dumb, imo. People need a place to sleep, and food to eat, etc. I might be the world's greatest singer-songwriter but if I can't monetize my songs, the fact remains that I'm going to have to do something else for a living and the world is going to miss out on all that art that they are supposedly entitled to.

Anyway, re: a solution. This is probably not at all feasible, but I heard something the other day, I think on NPR, where they were talking about the Comcast case and the future of filesharing and ISPs. I only listened for a few minutes but someone made the point that eventually, the internet will be a utility like water or electricity. Right now you pay $50/month for cable internet, whether you never log in once or you download torrents 24/7. That model will likely change to one where you pay for what you use - it would likely be too complicated but I wonder if there's a way to incorporate compensation for the content creators into that structure. Just completely change the industry so that no one "sells" music anywhere anymore. It's just all over the internet, when a new album comes out it just gets released into the cloud, and you can download whatever you want whenever you want. Your ISP serves as the "meter reader" that charges you at the end of the month for all the songs, movies, etc. you downloaded and distributes that revenue back to the producers.

At this point, filesharing can't be stopped. The best recourse, it seems, would be to make it irrelevant.

 

[Joe Bryant]

So we should take arguments that artists can only produce art if they can control all copies of that art with a grain of salt.

I'm not making that argument that artists can only produce art that way. Lots of people will make art with no regard for what happens to it. And lots will choose to go the Radiohead path and give it away in hopes people will pay for it. Others will choose to charge what may seem exorbitant amounts for their creation. I'm fine with all of that. I just believe that decision is best when it's the artist's / writer's / photographer's etc decision.J

 

[Chaka]

I would like to hear ideas on how to monetize the music industry if enforcement of DL laws fails.

What is wrong with selling the music like itunes?There is a well established business model going on right now that does exactly what you're asking, isn't there?J

Nothing at all wrong with iTunes but apparently it is not working well enough in it's current incarnation for the recording industry. I have said multiple times that I think the best first option to fix it is by dramatic price reduction for content and hoping to significantly increase volume.

But can't you turn it around and say that iTunes would be doing much better if people weren't illegally downloading music so easily?J

Yes and it's true. That takes us back to square one. Enforcement isn't working yet and increasing it may not be feasible.

 

[Bottomfeeder Sports]

Can you help me understand why it's illegal?

J

You mean sharing copyrighted materials? Because Clinton had a bad habit of signing bad laws that started with the letter "D" (DMCA) and Napster. lost would be my best answer. If you are really asking why are there copyrights to begin with I'd read the Napster era article I linked that had the Jefferson quotes. A good summary though is-Copyright is a “deal” that the American people made with the writers and publishers of books. Authors and publishers get a limited monopoly for a short period of time, and the public gets access to those protected works and free use of the facts, data, and ideas within them. Without a legal guarantee that they would profit from their labors and creations, the framers feared too few would embark on creative endeavors.

If there were no copyright laws, unscrupulous publishers would simply copy popular works and sell them at a low price, paying no royalties to the author. But just as importantly, the framers and later jurists concluded that creativity depends on the use, criticism, supplementation, and consideration of previous works. Therefore, they argued, authors should enjoy this monopoly just long enough to provide an incentive to create more, but the work should live afterward in the “public domain,” as common property of the reading public.

So again the big question is whether the fear that "too few would embark on creative endeavors" is now, or even has ever been the case. Not individually, but globally. I'm up in the air torn between the two positions. I have strong opinions that on individual subtopics and I'm certain that our IP laws today are not the efficient means to achieve the goals of inspiration and incentive, but the degree that they need to change and how I'm less sure of.

 

[Chaka]

I would like to hear ideas on how to monetize the music industry if enforcement of DL laws fails.

What is wrong with selling the music like itunes?There is a well established business model going on right now that does exactly what you're asking, isn't there?J

Nothing at all wrong with iTunes but apparently it is not working well enough in it's current incarnation for the recording industry. I have said multiple times that I think the best first option to fix it is by dramatic price reduction for content and hoping to significantly increase volume.I think the people most opposed to it are all of the middlemen industries that built themselves up around the physical aspects of the media delivery market (they have been around forever from the days of vinyl, eight tracks, tapes, CDs etc). They are the ones who will suffer most. These industries have also been limiting the amount of money that artists make because they get a piece of the action. Removing them from the picture changes the profit margins entirely. I definitely agree with the arguments presented here that we need to protect the creators of media but are we to extend our protections to those who are living off those creators themselves? Are these aspects of the recording industry to big to fail? Actually they are failing already, it's just happening slowly.

I do agree with most of the above - I'd like to see artists get a bigger shake.As far as price, I don't know how much cheaper it can get. People cried at $20 cd's... "lower the price, and we'll buy" the downloaders said. Fine - done. The avg album is now about ten bucks on iTunes. Or how about this - you can buy 98% of the songs individually for .99-$1.29. Music has never been more reasonable in price, or easier to get/manage. I don't think any price reduction will matter to the current downloader.

$10 and legal apparently doesn't beat free and illegal (and plenty of albums are still well over $10).But $2-5 and legal might trump free and illegal. There are some successful (and of questionable legality) foreign websites out there that do this. If the record labels create their own sites they could provide the music directly for a fraction of the cost.Providing the DL and allowing consumers to set their own price is an option too. IIRC I paid $5 for In Rainbows.Who knows? Maybe that structure won't work at all but I think it's worth a shot.

 

[jwb]

No, I'm not - you are. Your entire argument is it's not stealing from me because hey, I still have my copy. Therefore, nothing was "stolen".

I am equating the value of ownership of digital property (to the creator) with real property. In other words, if I write something, the value to me isn't in my still possessing the word doc. The value is in that others want to possess a copy of it.

And again, you haven't articulated why you're entitled to whatever "value" you assign to what you make. I'm not entitled to have anyone pay $5 for widgets. Even if my efforts have popularized widgets worldwide.

Because I created it - it's unique to me. Such is the nature of copyrighted artistic content. And the law says I'm enbtiutled. For better or worse, that's what we (society) agree on to cover these grey areas. Again, this is the child saying "why" argument on your side. Your widget example doesn't fly for content. That would be like saying Steven King didn't write "The Stand"... he just wrote a book, equal to any other book, and you have a right to books, because nobody holds the general copyright on pages between covers. Therefore, that covers you if you download The Stand without paying. That seems to be what you are saying, anyway.

 

[Bottomfeeder Sports]

Anyway, re: a solution. This is probably not at all feasible, but I heard something the other day, I think on NPR, where they were talking about the Comcast case and the future of filesharing and ISPs. I only listened for a few minutes but someone made the point that eventually, the internet will be a utility like water or electricity. Right now you pay $50/month for cable internet, whether you never log in once or you download torrents 24/7. That model will likely change to one where you pay for what you use - it would likely be too complicated but I wonder if there's a way to incorporate compensation for the content creators into that structure. Just completely change the industry so that no one "sells" music anywhere anymore. It's just all over the internet, when a new album comes out it just gets released into the cloud, and you can download whatever you want whenever you want. Your ISP serves as the "meter reader" that charges you at the end of the month for all the songs, movies, etc. you downloaded and distributes that revenue back to the producers.

The innovation of iTunes and similar products was the ability to efficiently charge people for small dollar amounts. The traditional credit card model was never designed to handle a single .99 transaction, yet a lone a .10 transaction. The most frequently suggested ideas to deal with solving the incentive model in the future are mostly variations of this one offered. Some suggests that you get billed for everything you download in fractions of a cent and allow you to at the end of the month cross things out in kind of a reverse shareware model. Others are modeled after how music royalties are distributed now. Someone tracks what is being accessed and we all pay set fees that get split based on this tracking. I'd guess that both of these and other models are already being actively developed.

At this point, filesharing can't be stopped. The best recourse, it seems, would be to make it irrelevant.

Right. But even right now it is not that file sharing is really free and their are no competitive advantages to legitimate sources of products. I think right now what the file sharers are saying is that the safety and convenience of legitimate products aren't worth the current premium being charged. Some are arguing that it is wrong for file sharers to access the products outside of the legitimate markets while others are arguing that this is just how markets operate. (Among other arguments.) File sharing is product that meets a demand in the market place.

 

[Phurfur]

I would like to hear ideas on how to monetize the music industry if enforcement of DL laws fails.

What is wrong with selling the music like itunes?

There is a well established business model going on right now that does exactly what you're asking, isn't there?

J

Nothing at all wrong with iTunes but apparently it is not working well enough in it's current incarnation for the recording industry. I have said multiple times that I think the best first option to fix it is by dramatic price reduction for content and hoping to significantly increase volume.I think the people most opposed to it are all of the middlemen industries that built themselves up around the physical aspects of the media delivery market (they have been around forever from the days of vinyl, eight tracks, tapes, CDs etc). They are the ones who will suffer most. These industries have also been limiting the amount of money that artists make because they get a piece of the action. Removing them from the picture changes the profit margins entirely. I definitely agree with the arguments presented here that we need to protect the creators of media but are we to extend our protections to those who are living off those creators themselves? Are these aspects of the recording industry to big to fail? Actually they are failing already, it's just happening slowly.

I do agree with most of the above - I'd like to see artists get a bigger shake.As far as price, I don't know how much cheaper it can get. People cried at $20 cd's... "lower the price, and we'll buy" the downloaders said. Fine - done. The avg album is now about ten bucks on iTunes. Or how about this - you can buy 98% of the songs individually for .99-$1.29. Music has never been more reasonable in price, or easier to get/manage.

I don't think any price reduction will matter to the current downloader.

Nice abuse of numbers but it only shows your point is very weak.Most of the songs on iTunes are $1.29. This includes a 30% price increase during "the worst economic times since the great depression”. Production costs are next to nothing compared to the past and distribution is a non issue. I see nothing but greed by the music industry and they are feeling the consumer push back.

Does anyone know the profit margin on the sale of 1 million MP3s?

 

[videoguy505]

Anyway, re: a solution. This is probably not at all feasible, but I heard something the other day, I think on NPR, where they were talking about the Comcast case and the future of filesharing and ISPs. I only listened for a few minutes but someone made the point that eventually, the internet will be a utility like water or electricity. Right now you pay $50/month for cable internet, whether you never log in once or you download torrents 24/7. That model will likely change to one where you pay for what you use - it would likely be too complicated but I wonder if there's a way to incorporate compensation for the content creators into that structure. Just completely change the industry so that no one "sells" music anywhere anymore. It's just all over the internet, when a new album comes out it just gets released into the cloud, and you can download whatever you want whenever you want. Your ISP serves as the "meter reader" that charges you at the end of the month for all the songs, movies, etc. you downloaded and distributes that revenue back to the producers.

Hmmm... that sounds very familiar

I think the answer is better subscription music plans

I came up with an idea for an answer once, too, an iTunes-style market for everything--music, TV, movies, etc.--priced at a constant based on filesize ($X/gb). All the studios, anyone at all, in fact, can put stuff in the store. Sony, BMG, bigbottom, hulu, etc. Anything bought from the store, the cash goes to the provider. At the same time, ISPs go back to charging people for usage instead of "unlimited internet". Download 40gb, pay $40. Something like that. Downloads from the store would be credited back (you already paid for it once, so it's a "free to download"). All your other internet traffic, though, racks up the monthly gb total. At the end of the month, the ISP divides your $40 among the store contributors based on how much content they've put out there and how much was downloaded from the store. So someone who downloads 10 4gb movies from the iStore pays $40 to the content providers directly. Someone who downloads the same 40gb from a torrent or piracy pays $40 to the iStore, which then spreads it out among the content providers.

 

[Jason Bourne]

We have the law for that. That's the reason for laws - to answer these questions that have no concrete answers. Don't like it? Change the law instead of stealing. There, problem solved.

But I see what you are doing - you are purposely making the discussion impossible by circumventing the law and making about morals, etc. Your argument is akin to a child saying "why?" to every statement.

You're calling it "stealing." A number of posters come in to explain exactly why it's not stealing. But that doesn't matter to you. Because you want to believe it's stealing. Even if the creator has exactly the same property he had before. So now we move to the next step. You want to say that it's the moral equivalent of stealing. So we explain the steps you'd need to prove in order to make that make sense. But again, that's not good enough.

I've said several times in this thread that I don't use torrents. I've just asked for someone to explain why those who do are immoral. Or, alternatively, I've asked for someone to prove that torrents have objectively hurt creators or threatens to curtail the production of artistic works. If I'm like a child asking "why" it's because I haven't encounterd an answer that's more satisfying than "because I said so."

So we're back to the only point you can make. That it's illegal. Which no one has disputed. So congratulations. It is definitely illegal.

I mentioned this earlier - but all property rights are man-made: real, personal, and intangible.We, as a society, have chosen to give rights to people who create unique content - via a copyright. That gives that person the right to distribute the content in the manner of their choosing. When you interfere with that right - they are harmed - legally and morally.

These downloads all have value - otherwise rational people would not download them. By downloading illegally, you are depriving the copyright holder of their right to control distribution.

For some content it may be better to have free distribution - but that is the choice of the copyright holder - not you. Just as a store can say "we are going to sell this product at a loss, and in return we will generate sales of additional products". In that case you can't decide for the store that you will be taking the product for free, thank you very much.

Think of it this way - if it were impossible to download content illegally - the copyright would be worth X. With illegal downloads, the copyright is now worth X - Y. It really is a double whammy - since you now have to compete on price with a "free" product, and you lose the incremental sales.

 

[Bottomfeeder Sports]

Anyway, re: a solution. This is probably not at all feasible, but I heard something the other day, I think on NPR, where they were talking about the Comcast case and the future of filesharing and ISPs. I only listened for a few minutes but someone made the point that eventually, the internet will be a utility like water or electricity. Right now you pay $50/month for cable internet, whether you never log in once or you download torrents 24/7. That model will likely change to one where you pay for what you use - it would likely be too complicated but I wonder if there's a way to incorporate compensation for the content creators into that structure. Just completely change the industry so that no one "sells" music anywhere anymore. It's just all over the internet, when a new album comes out it just gets released into the cloud, and you can download whatever you want whenever you want. Your ISP serves as the "meter reader" that charges you at the end of the month for all the songs, movies, etc. you downloaded and distributes that revenue back to the producers.

Hmmm... that sounds very familiar

I think the answer is better subscription music plans

I came up with an idea for an answer once, too, an iTunes-style market for everything--music, TV, movies, etc.--priced at a constant based on filesize ($X/gb). All the studios, anyone at all, in fact, can put stuff in the store. Sony, BMG, bigbottom, hulu, etc. Anything bought from the store, the cash goes to the provider. At the same time, ISPs go back to charging people for usage instead of "unlimited internet". Download 40gb, pay $40. Something like that. Downloads from the store would be credited back (you already paid for it once, so it's a "free to download"). All your other internet traffic, though, racks up the monthly gb total. At the end of the month, the ISP divides your $40 among the store contributors based on how much content they've put out there and how much was downloaded from the store. So someone who downloads 10 4gb movies from the iStore pays $40 to the content providers directly. Someone who downloads the same 40gb from a torrent or piracy pays $40 to the iStore, which then spreads it out among the content providers.

You know I am old enough to remember paying $19.95 an hour at 300 baud to connect to CompuServe, and $5.95 an hour (I think it was) to connect to QuantumLink, and the GEnie, and the PlayNet, and all the rest using the wonders of 1200 baud. That was an expensive model, especially since at the time I was trying to support shareware charityware freeware.

 

[Chaka]

Anyway, re: a solution. This is probably not at all feasible, but I heard something the other day, I think on NPR, where they were talking about the Comcast case and the future of filesharing and ISPs. I only listened for a few minutes but someone made the point that eventually, the internet will be a utility like water or electricity. Right now you pay $50/month for cable internet, whether you never log in once or you download torrents 24/7. That model will likely change to one where you pay for what you use - it would likely be too complicated but I wonder if there's a way to incorporate compensation for the content creators into that structure. Just completely change the industry so that no one "sells" music anywhere anymore. It's just all over the internet, when a new album comes out it just gets released into the cloud, and you can download whatever you want whenever you want. Your ISP serves as the "meter reader" that charges you at the end of the month for all the songs, movies, etc. you downloaded and distributes that revenue back to the producers.

Hmmm... that sounds very familiar

I think the answer is better subscription music plans

I came up with an idea for an answer once, too, an iTunes-style market for everything--music, TV, movies, etc.--priced at a constant based on filesize ($X/gb). All the studios, anyone at all, in fact, can put stuff in the store. Sony, BMG, bigbottom, hulu, etc. Anything bought from the store, the cash goes to the provider. At the same time, ISPs go back to charging people for usage instead of "unlimited internet". Download 40gb, pay $40. Something like that. Downloads from the store would be credited back (you already paid for it once, so it's a "free to download"). All your other internet traffic, though, racks up the monthly gb total. At the end of the month, the ISP divides your $40 among the store contributors based on how much content they've put out there and how much was downloaded from the store. So someone who downloads 10 4gb movies from the iStore pays $40 to the content providers directly. Someone who downloads the same 40gb from a torrent or piracy pays $40 to the iStore, which then spreads it out among the content providers.

Very interesting solutions. They might fly.

 

[Jason Bourne]

Nice abuse of numbers but it only shows your point is very weak.Most of the songs on iTunes are $1.29. This includes a 30% price increase during "the worst economic times since the great depression”. Production costs are next to nothing compared to the past and distribution is a non issue. I see nothing but greed by the music industry and they are feeling the consumer push back.Does anyone know the profit margin on the sale of 1 million MP3s?

Consumer push back should be in the form of non-purchases - not illegal downloads.Prices generally have little bearing to costs - unless you have a commodity. By definition, almost any performer is the opposite of a commodity.By way of example I work in a division that has 8 other companies - my company operates at a 50% margin - very profitable. Same industry, and another company in our division operates at a 10% margin. My company provides very unique products with very little competition. I don't set prices based on my costs. I set prices based on the value we provide to our customer. The other company is closer to a commodity with lots of competition.

 

[Bottomfeeder Sports]

I mentioned this earlier - but all property rights are man-made: real, personal, and intangible.

Yes you did, and you are wrong. Maybe the philosophy that describes the existence of property rights is man made, but property, along with life and liberty are items that exists in man's natural state thus those rights are derived from nature and are protected when entering into the social contract of civilization which exists to manage the scarcity of resources. When the fertile valleys such as the Garden of Eden that allowed the hunter gatherer man to live entirely off of God's bounty flooded with the end of the last ice age, civilization was the result and that has evolved to deal with the issues of scarcity. Ideas that have been expressed to a larger community are no longer a scarce resource.

 

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[Jason Bourne]

Just as an aside - when I was looking at the billboard hot 100 yesterday to see how many artists were also songwriters - I ended up on Train's webpage.

They have a link to their album - Save me, San Francisco - which ended up taking me to myplay.com - where I could stream the entire album for free, with an option to buy the album/songs via itunes.

I think this is smart marketing on their part - and very different than an illegal download. For one, it was not a download. But, it did let me listen to the songs before buying. Second, it was a part of their website - so in addition to browsing their music, I could see their tour dates, and buy tickets if I was so inclined, read the blog, buy other merchandise, etc.. It was the epitome of a good website - a big part of marketing the band, and providing calls to action to spend my money.

 

[culdeus]

So you finally get to the real crux of the matter. It's a matter of ensuring that you have the proper incentive to create. But you don't address what several people have pointed out. The guy copying your content is exposing other people to your content. People who wouldn't know you from Adam. People who enjoy your content (and whose enjoyment is an independent social benefit worthy of protection in its own right), but who also increase the potential market for any content you might produce in the future. Morally, we should only protect your right to profit from your idea if the disincentive to your creation is greater than the value created by sharing your art with people who normally wouldn't buy it.

The disincentive to create is my biggest issue with free downloads, and this argument has been made several times but I don't buy it. People keep saying that the wide distibution of your product will introduce it to a larger pool of potential customers, etc. So what? They'll just download my next product for free, too.You're basically saying, it's ok that people download your first album for free, because the increased exposure means you'll have more fans and therefore you'll make money on your next album. I see no reason to believe that's true. Once we legitimize free downloads, no one will ever pay again, and once people stop paying for the product, people stop making the product.

In a similar vein, someone earlier said essentially that producers should produce because they want to - because it's their life's passion! - and not because they want to be involved in the lowly business of collecting a paycheck. Equally dumb, imo. People need a place to sleep, and food to eat, etc. I might be the world's greatest singer-songwriter but if I can't monetize my songs, the fact remains that I'm going to have to do something else for a living and the world is going to miss out on all that art that they are supposedly entitled to.

Anyway, re: a solution. This is probably not at all feasible, but I heard something the other day, I think on NPR, where they were talking about the Comcast case and the future of filesharing and ISPs. I only listened for a few minutes but someone made the point that eventually, the internet will be a utility like water or electricity. Right now you pay $50/month for cable internet, whether you never log in once or you download torrents 24/7. That model will likely change to one where you pay for what you use - it would likely be too complicated but I wonder if there's a way to incorporate compensation for the content creators into that structure. Just completely change the industry so that no one "sells" music anywhere anymore. It's just all over the internet, when a new album comes out it just gets released into the cloud, and you can download whatever you want whenever you want. Your ISP serves as the "meter reader" that charges you at the end of the month for all the songs, movies, etc. you downloaded and distributes that revenue back to the producers.

At this point, filesharing can't be stopped. The best recourse, it seems, would be to make it irrelevant.

This makes the best point. And I know there are some trolls on here that hate to see file sharing likened to libraries, but this is exactly what happened. Eventually fair use of libraries got passed to citizens in the form of property/sales taxes. It's built into everything you buy and you go get your books and use it as long as you need it. Booksellers have survived with libraries available to most city centers, and will continue to do so. Eventually the record/music/movies/tv companies will have to get plugged into the ISP content because it's a huge chunk of what the isp content is after a certain point.The main pitfall to this is that how cheap it is to download movies thru netflix. For all intents if you are a heavy user it is free compared to the PITA of using utorrent etc. It's certainly set a price point that will be tough to justify an ISP pushing on unless they are able to provide current release/non-netflix content.

Something has to give.

 

[Jason Bourne]

I mentioned this earlier - but all property rights are man-made: real, personal, and intangible.

Yes you did, and you are wrong. Maybe the philosophy that describes the existence of property rights is man made, but property, along with life and liberty are items that exists in man's natural state thus those rights are derived from nature and are protected when entering into the social contract of civilization which exists to manage the scarcity of resources. When the fertile valleys such as the Garden of Eden that allowed the hunter gatherer man to live entirely off of God's bounty flooded with the end of the last ice age, civilization was the result and that has evolved to deal with the issues of scarcity. Ideas that have been expressed to a larger community are no longer a scarce resource.

Just as the beavers don't "own" the dam they build - there are no inherent property rights. Those rights were created by man, along with real property rights.

It probably started when a dispute arose between two people over property - at some point, to preserve order, property rights were created, and real property rights were created to force people to respect boundaries. As we have evolved as a civilization, we have demanded additional protections for intangible property. In the future - we will probably have a new set of rights governing space, or clones, or something we have not thought of yet.

 

[jwb]

I would like to hear ideas on how to monetize the music industry if enforcement of DL laws fails.

What is wrong with selling the music like itunes?

There is a well established business model going on right now that does exactly what you're asking, isn't there?

J

Nothing at all wrong with iTunes but apparently it is not working well enough in it's current incarnation for the recording industry. I have said multiple times that I think the best first option to fix it is by dramatic price reduction for content and hoping to significantly increase volume.I think the people most opposed to it are all of the middlemen industries that built themselves up around the physical aspects of the media delivery market (they have been around forever from the days of vinyl, eight tracks, tapes, CDs etc). They are the ones who will suffer most. These industries have also been limiting the amount of money that artists make because they get a piece of the action. Removing them from the picture changes the profit margins entirely. I definitely agree with the arguments presented here that we need to protect the creators of media but are we to extend our protections to those who are living off those creators themselves? Are these aspects of the recording industry to big to fail? Actually they are failing already, it's just happening slowly.

I do agree with most of the above - I'd like to see artists get a bigger shake.As far as price, I don't know how much cheaper it can get. People cried at $20 cd's... "lower the price, and we'll buy" the downloaders said. Fine - done. The avg album is now about ten bucks on iTunes. Or how about this - you can buy 98% of the songs individually for .99-$1.29. Music has never been more reasonable in price, or easier to get/manage.

I don't think any price reduction will matter to the current downloader.

Nice abuse of numbers but it only shows your point is very weak.Most of the songs on iTunes are $1.29. This includes a 30% price increase during "the worst economic times since the great depression”. Production costs are next to nothing compared to the past and distribution is a non issue. I see nothing but greed by the music industry and they are feeling the consumer push back.

Does anyone know the profit margin on the sale of 1 million MP3s?

I'll bet it's a lot lower than you think. Pushing back? I could have bought that in a $20 a CD model. I really don't think $1.29 is too much for a song. You really think that's an outrage?

 

[Joe Bryant]

So you finally get to the real crux of the matter. It's a matter of ensuring that you have the proper incentive to create. But you don't address what several people have pointed out. The guy copying your content is exposing other people to your content. People who wouldn't know you from Adam. People who enjoy your content (and whose enjoyment is an independent social benefit worthy of protection in its own right), but who also increase the potential market for any content you might produce in the future. Morally, we should only protect your right to profit from your idea if the disincentive to your creation is greater than the value created by sharing your art with people who normally wouldn't buy it.

The disincentive to create is my biggest issue with free downloads, and this argument has been made several times but I don't buy it. People keep saying that the wide distibution of your product will introduce it to a larger pool of potential customers, etc. So what? They'll just download my next product for free, too.You're basically saying, it's ok that people download your first album for free, because the increased exposure means you'll have more fans and therefore you'll make money on your next album. I see no reason to believe that's true. Once we legitimize free downloads, no one will ever pay again, and once people stop paying for the product, people stop making the product.

In a similar vein, someone earlier said essentially that producers should produce because they want to - because it's their life's passion! - and not because they want to be involved in the lowly business of collecting a paycheck. Equally dumb, imo. People need a place to sleep, and food to eat, etc. I might be the world's greatest singer-songwriter but if I can't monetize my songs, the fact remains that I'm going to have to do something else for a living and the world is going to miss out on all that art that they are supposedly entitled to.

Anyway, re: a solution. This is probably not at all feasible, but I heard something the other day, I think on NPR, where they were talking about the Comcast case and the future of filesharing and ISPs. I only listened for a few minutes but someone made the point that eventually, the internet will be a utility like water or electricity. Right now you pay $50/month for cable internet, whether you never log in once or you download torrents 24/7. That model will likely change to one where you pay for what you use - it would likely be too complicated but I wonder if there's a way to incorporate compensation for the content creators into that structure. Just completely change the industry so that no one "sells" music anywhere anymore. It's just all over the internet, when a new album comes out it just gets released into the cloud, and you can download whatever you want whenever you want. Your ISP serves as the "meter reader" that charges you at the end of the month for all the songs, movies, etc. you downloaded and distributes that revenue back to the producers.

At this point, filesharing can't be stopped. The best recourse, it seems, would be to make it irrelevant.

This makes the best point. And I know there are some trolls on here that hate to see file sharing likened to libraries, but this is exactly what happened. Eventually fair use of libraries got passed to citizens in the form of property/sales taxes. It's built into everything you buy and you go get your books and use it as long as you need it. Booksellers have survived with libraries available to most city centers, and will continue to do so. Eventually the record/music/movies/tv companies will have to get plugged into the ISP content because it's a huge chunk of what the isp content is after a certain point.The main pitfall to this is that how cheap it is to download movies thru netflix. For all intents if you are a heavy user it is free compared to the PITA of using utorrent etc. It's certainly set a price point that will be tough to justify an ISP pushing on unless they are able to provide current release/non-netflix content.

Something has to give.

I see the library comparison but isn't that fundamentally different as you have to return the book without keeping a copy for yourself? There are lots of people that put a value on being able to keep the content. With music file sharing, you have the content to keep. It's the same as buying the CD. With a library, you get to sample the book and read it entirely if you like, but you have to return it. If you don't return it, then you have to pay a fine / buy it. It's not the same at all as buying the book.

Doesn't that make it fundamentally different?

J

 

[Joe Bryant]

I mentioned this earlier - but all property rights are man-made: real, personal, and intangible.

Yes you did, and you are wrong.

I think this is the kind of thing I was talking about. Just doesn't seem very conducive to real discussion. If I'm guilty of the same, I apologize.

J

 

[Monsieur Meursault]

So you finally get to the real crux of the matter. It's a matter of ensuring that you have the proper incentive to create. But you don't address what several people have pointed out. The guy copying your content is exposing other people to your content. People who wouldn't know you from Adam. People who enjoy your content (and whose enjoyment is an independent social benefit worthy of protection in its own right), but who also increase the potential market for any content you might produce in the future. Morally, we should only protect your right to profit from your idea if the disincentive to your creation is greater than the value created by sharing your art with people who normally wouldn't buy it.

The disincentive to create is my biggest issue with free downloads, and this argument has been made several times but I don't buy it. People keep saying that the wide distibution of your product will introduce it to a larger pool of potential customers, etc. So what? They'll just download my next product for free, too.You're basically saying, it's ok that people download your first album for free, because the increased exposure means you'll have more fans and therefore you'll make money on your next album. I see no reason to believe that's true. Once we legitimize free downloads, no one will ever pay again, and once people stop paying for the product, people stop making the product.

In a similar vein, someone earlier said essentially that producers should produce because they want to - because it's their life's passion! - and not because they want to be involved in the lowly business of collecting a paycheck. Equally dumb, imo. People need a place to sleep, and food to eat, etc. I might be the world's greatest singer-songwriter but if I can't monetize my songs, the fact remains that I'm going to have to do something else for a living and the world is going to miss out on all that art that they are supposedly entitled to.

Anyway, re: a solution. This is probably not at all feasible, but I heard something the other day, I think on NPR, where they were talking about the Comcast case and the future of filesharing and ISPs. I only listened for a few minutes but someone made the point that eventually, the internet will be a utility like water or electricity. Right now you pay $50/month for cable internet, whether you never log in once or you download torrents 24/7. That model will likely change to one where you pay for what you use - it would likely be too complicated but I wonder if there's a way to incorporate compensation for the content creators into that structure. Just completely change the industry so that no one "sells" music anywhere anymore. It's just all over the internet, when a new album comes out it just gets released into the cloud, and you can download whatever you want whenever you want. Your ISP serves as the "meter reader" that charges you at the end of the month for all the songs, movies, etc. you downloaded and distributes that revenue back to the producers.

At this point, filesharing can't be stopped. The best recourse, it seems, would be to make it irrelevant.

This makes the best point. And I know there are some trolls on here that hate to see file sharing likened to libraries, but this is exactly what happened. Eventually fair use of libraries got passed to citizens in the form of property/sales taxes. It's built into everything you buy and you go get your books and use it as long as you need it. Booksellers have survived with libraries available to most city centers, and will continue to do so. Eventually the record/music/movies/tv companies will have to get plugged into the ISP content because it's a huge chunk of what the isp content is after a certain point.The main pitfall to this is that how cheap it is to download movies thru netflix. For all intents if you are a heavy user it is free compared to the PITA of using utorrent etc. It's certainly set a price point that will be tough to justify an ISP pushing on unless they are able to provide current release/non-netflix content.

Something has to give.

I see the library comparison but isn't that fundamentally different as you have to return the book without keeping a copy for yourself? There are lots of people that put a value on being able to keep the content. With music file sharing, you have the content to keep. It's the same as buying the CD. With a library, you get to sample the book and read it entirely if you like, but you have to return it. If you don't return it, then you have to pay a fine / buy it. It's not the same at all as buying the book.

Doesn't that make it fundamentally different?

J

It doesn't prevent you from making a photocopy of the book however. And it doesn't prevent you from checking the book out again when you return it.

 

[Joe Bryant]

So you finally get to the real crux of the matter. It's a matter of ensuring that you have the proper incentive to create. But you don't address what several people have pointed out. The guy copying your content is exposing other people to your content. People who wouldn't know you from Adam. People who enjoy your content (and whose enjoyment is an independent social benefit worthy of protection in its own right), but who also increase the potential market for any content you might produce in the future. Morally, we should only protect your right to profit from your idea if the disincentive to your creation is greater than the value created by sharing your art with people who normally wouldn't buy it.

The disincentive to create is my biggest issue with free downloads, and this argument has been made several times but I don't buy it. People keep saying that the wide distibution of your product will introduce it to a larger pool of potential customers, etc. So what? They'll just download my next product for free, too.You're basically saying, it's ok that people download your first album for free, because the increased exposure means you'll have more fans and therefore you'll make money on your next album. I see no reason to believe that's true. Once we legitimize free downloads, no one will ever pay again, and once people stop paying for the product, people stop making the product.

In a similar vein, someone earlier said essentially that producers should produce because they want to - because it's their life's passion! - and not because they want to be involved in the lowly business of collecting a paycheck. Equally dumb, imo. People need a place to sleep, and food to eat, etc. I might be the world's greatest singer-songwriter but if I can't monetize my songs, the fact remains that I'm going to have to do something else for a living and the world is going to miss out on all that art that they are supposedly entitled to.

Anyway, re: a solution. This is probably not at all feasible, but I heard something the other day, I think on NPR, where they were talking about the Comcast case and the future of filesharing and ISPs. I only listened for a few minutes but someone made the point that eventually, the internet will be a utility like water or electricity. Right now you pay $50/month for cable internet, whether you never log in once or you download torrents 24/7. That model will likely change to one where you pay for what you use - it would likely be too complicated but I wonder if there's a way to incorporate compensation for the content creators into that structure. Just completely change the industry so that no one "sells" music anywhere anymore. It's just all over the internet, when a new album comes out it just gets released into the cloud, and you can download whatever you want whenever you want. Your ISP serves as the "meter reader" that charges you at the end of the month for all the songs, movies, etc. you downloaded and distributes that revenue back to the producers.

At this point, filesharing can't be stopped. The best recourse, it seems, would be to make it irrelevant.

This makes the best point. And I know there are some trolls on here that hate to see file sharing likened to libraries, but this is exactly what happened. Eventually fair use of libraries got passed to citizens in the form of property/sales taxes. It's built into everything you buy and you go get your books and use it as long as you need it. Booksellers have survived with libraries available to most city centers, and will continue to do so. Eventually the record/music/movies/tv companies will have to get plugged into the ISP content because it's a huge chunk of what the isp content is after a certain point.The main pitfall to this is that how cheap it is to download movies thru netflix. For all intents if you are a heavy user it is free compared to the PITA of using utorrent etc. It's certainly set a price point that will be tough to justify an ISP pushing on unless they are able to provide current release/non-netflix content.

Something has to give.

I see the library comparison but isn't that fundamentally different as you have to return the book without keeping a copy for yourself? There are lots of people that put a value on being able to keep the content. With music file sharing, you have the content to keep. It's the same as buying the CD. With a library, you get to sample the book and read it entirely if you like, but you have to return it. If you don't return it, then you have to pay a fine / buy it. It's not the same at all as buying the book.

Doesn't that make it fundamentally different?

J

It doesn't prevent you from making a photocopy of the book however. And it doesn't prevent you from checking the book out again when you return it.

No, but that's not really feasible on the photocopying. Kinkos won't do it for you because of the copyright. You could do it yourself on your office copier but it would take a long time to copy a 200 page book. Much higher bar than ripping a CD that takes a minute.

J

 

[eoMMan]

are PMs being policed in some way now? If a poster sends a PM to another poster with torrent info in it, does that earn them a timeout now?

bump

 

[eoMMan]

If there was ever a time for this smiley.....

 

[Joe Bryant]

If there was ever a time for this smiley.....

I would disagree some there EO.Lots of pretty thoughtful discussion. I better understand the side of some of the guys on the other side of this now.J

 

[Bottomfeeder Sports]

I mentioned this earlier - but all property rights are man-made: real, personal, and intangible.

Yes you did, and you are wrong.

I think this is the kind of thing I was talking about. Just doesn't seem very conducive to real discussion. If I'm guilty of the same, I apologize.

J

I think it might be true if that was my post. I did go on and explain why he was wrong. Jason Bourne is asserting a position in no uncertain terms, and so am I in this case. I still have to follow-up to his reply, but I have been stuck on the phone so that has been on hold.

 

[Christo]

I think the creator / copyright holder gets to make that call. Not the end user. If you want something that someone else created, and the creator/copyright holder would like to be paid for it, you should pay him or her. If your want isn't strong enough to make payment, then you do without. I don't see where this is so hard to get.

Because you need to do additional work to show why the creator should get that call. And you need to show why THESE creators (and not the creators of buffalo wings, or boot cut jeans, or #####ing haircuts) should get that call.

Sorry, no additional work is necessary. People in here keep saying that intangible property isn't like tangible property. But it is. And the reliance on natural rights to make the distinction is unavailing. John Locke's theory on the natural right to property is based upon labor--everyone is entitled to own all that they create. This is just as applicable to intangible property as it is to tangible property.As for your claim that we need to show why a performer of a song or a photographer is different from the creator of a haircut, it's easy. When you take a recording of my song (or a photograph that I took) being played by me, copy it and give it to your friend, you are giving him something that I created out of nothing. Something that is unique and can never be recreated by anyone else. You are not passing along an "idea." Nor have you added any value to my performance or picture. A haircut (or a buffalo wing for that matter) is transitory and needs your efforts to duplicate or recreate the actual performance. You are not giving your friend my haricut. You are giving your friend your interpretation of my haircut.

 

[Joe Bryant]

I mentioned this earlier - but all property rights are man-made: real, personal, and intangible.

Yes you did, and you are wrong.

I think this is the kind of thing I was talking about. Just doesn't seem very conducive to real discussion. If I'm guilty of the same, I apologize.

J

I think it might be true if that was my post. I did go on and explain why he was wrong. Jason Bourne is asserting a position in no uncertain terms, and so am I in this case. I still have to follow-up to his reply, but I have been stuck on the phone so that has been on hold.

Sure. It's more a tone thing. And that tone is pretty pervasive through the whole thing. And not at all conducive to open and continued discussion in my opinion. Just an observation.

J

 

[Bottomfeeder Sports]

I mentioned this earlier - but all property rights are man-made: real, personal, and intangible.

Yes you did, and you are wrong. Maybe the philosophy that describes the existence of property rights is man made, but property, along with life and liberty are items that exists in man's natural state thus those rights are derived from nature and are protected when entering into the social contract of civilization which exists to manage the scarcity of resources. When the fertile valleys such as the Garden of Eden that allowed the hunter gatherer man to live entirely off of God's bounty flooded with the end of the last ice age, civilization was the result and that has evolved to deal with the issues of scarcity. Ideas that have been expressed to a larger community are no longer a scarce resource.

Just as the beavers don't "own" the dam they build - there are no inherent property rights. Those rights were created by man, along with real property rights.

The beaver "owns" the dam to the degree that the beaver can keep anyone else (or other creatures) from appropriating the dam (or destroying it). That is how natural rights work at their crudest. In nature your right to life means you have the right to protect your life against my competing right to kill you. Who ever is strongest wins in this case...

It probably started when a dispute arose between two people over property - at some point, to preserve order, property rights were created, and real property rights were created to force people to respect boundaries. As we have evolved as a civilization, we have demanded additional protections for intangible property. In the future - we will probably have a new set of rights governing space, or clones, or something we have not thought of yet.

Civilization came to be because it is too inefficient for you to be spending too many of your resources protecting your property (and life) from those that would appropriate them for themselves. In order for you to benefit you trade many of your natural rights (for Hobbes you traded all of your natural rights) in exchange for protection. As part of that social contract you keep your natural property rights and also gain a commitment from society to commit its resources to protecting your property. The concept of "inalienable rights" are those things that you cannot (or will not) trade as part of this social contract. That is you cannot trade your life for protection. You cannot trade your liberty (though obviously many have been willing to). You cannot trade your rights to property, though Jefferson softened this to the more romantic "pursuit of happiness". When the above political philosophy was being developed, intellectual property was not considered the same as real property. You are correct that those concepts have been ideas that have happened as society has evolved, but I wouldn't say that "We the People" demanded this outside of small special interests that care. It happened while the masses were indifferent to the change.

 

[Dr. No]

I still am waiting to hear from Joe on how this all relates to FBG's and the sharing of accounts, and/or people reposting his content.

This entire FBG business is based on intellectual property that can easily be transferred amongst people.... is this not the real issue in your mind?

 

[Bottomfeeder Sports]

Sure. It's more a tone thing. And that tone is pretty pervasive through the whole thing. And not at all conducive to open and continued discussion in my opinion. Just an observation. J

Right, the tone that it is stealing period was pretty pervasive two, three pages ago. The discussion has greatly improved since that baggage was at least toned down.

 

[Christo]

Sure. It's more a tone thing. And that tone is pretty pervasive through the whole thing. And not at all conducive to open and continued discussion in my opinion. Just an observation. J

Right, the tone that it is stealing period was pretty pervasive two, three pages ago. The discussion has greatly improved since that baggage was at least toned down.

The "tone" that it is stealing?

 

[Bottomfeeder Sports]

I still am waiting to hear from Joe on how this all relates to FBG's and the sharing of accounts, and/or people reposting his content.This entire FBG business is based on intellectual property that can easily be transferred amongst people.... is this not the real issue in your mind?

And a great percentage of the FBG mode is based on building upon the works of others. It would be hard for Joe to suggest which rookies to look for in my fantasy draft, for instance if he couldn't report on the NFL draft. Or imagine his business model if he wasn't allowed to use actual player or team names.

 

[Joe Bryant]

Sure. It's more a tone thing. And that tone is pretty pervasive through the whole thing. And not at all conducive to open and continued discussion in my opinion. Just an observation. J

Right, the tone that it is stealing period was pretty pervasive two, three pages ago. The discussion has greatly improved since that baggage was at least toned down.

Excellent point. Subtle sometimes but huge difference between "I think this is right" vs "What you think is wrong". But you already know that.J

 

[Joe Bryant]

I still am waiting to hear from Joe on how this all relates to FBG's and the sharing of accounts, and/or people reposting his content.This entire FBG business is based on intellectual property that can easily be transferred amongst people.... is this not the real issue in your mind?

I was serious, Dr. No when I said this was really more about my conversation with my musician friend. What sparked it for me here was the folks downloading the workout DVDs and charging other people to send them copies of the DVDs they'd illegally downloaded.For FBG, I'd be naive to think there isn't some sharing going on. I don't really know how to stop that. We have some rudimentary stop gaps in place where multiple IPS are flagged. But lots of people want to access the content from home and work. Or on the road if they travel so it's kind of tough. We did find a guy last year that was selling his password online to people. Pretty easy to find. We asked him to stop and he at least took his posts down. I guess maybe I should be more concerned about it but I don't really know how to stop it. What's been sort of disheartening to me is so many folks seem to think it's ok to do. Maybe I'm not naive but ridiculously naive about how many people are doing this with FBG. I don't know.J

 

[Bottomfeeder Sports]

Sure. It's more a tone thing. And that tone is pretty pervasive through the whole thing. And not at all conducive to open and continued discussion in my opinion. Just an observation. J

Right, the tone that it is stealing period was pretty pervasive two, three pages ago. The discussion has greatly improved since that baggage was at least toned down.

The "tone" that it is stealing?

You just made a very good post about Locke's theory of labor, a more formal version than one that I used to suggest to Joe seemed to be the basis for his argument that file sharing is equivalent to stealing. Explaining why you think something is similar is certainly a different tone than just asserting over and over again that it is stealing. Oh, and I assume that Locke published under the copyright terms of the "Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers", which was basically from my understanding an agreement among members to not publish registered works of other members with the government preventing non members from legally publishing anything, creating a publishing monopoly. Did he write about these terms? Since a decade before his death it was shut down, and shortly after his death the first real copyright laws were created with the "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned" you would think this was a topic.

 

[Dr. No]

I still am waiting to hear from Joe on how this all relates to FBG's and the sharing of accounts, and/or people reposting his content.This entire FBG business is based on intellectual property that can easily be transferred amongst people.... is this not the real issue in your mind?

I was serious, Dr. No when I said this was really more about my conversation with my musician friend. What sparked it for me here was the folks downloading the workout DVDs and charging other people to send them copies of the DVDs they'd illegally downloaded.For FBG, I'd be naive to think there isn't some sharing going on. I don't really know how to stop that. We have some rudimentary stop gaps in place where multiple IPS are flagged. But lots of people want to access the content from home and work. Or on the road if they travel so it's kind of tough. We did find a guy last year that was selling his password online to people. Pretty easy to find. We asked him to stop and he at least took his posts down. I guess maybe I should be more concerned about it but I don't really know how to stop it. What's been sort of disheartening to me is so many folks seem to think it's ok to do. Maybe I'm not naive but ridiculously naive about how many people are doing this with FBG. I don't know.J

Fair enough.I guess in your case the bottom line is can you continue to make money doing things the way you do them even in the face of stealing.Music, video, and book industry is probably the same way. They know there is stealing, they can't stop it.. but if the venture is still profitable they continue doing it.I'm guessing that in the case of workout DVD's and stuff... that honestly the # of people that are technologically capable of knowing how to use a torrent and make it work for them is actually a fairly small number of people compared to those that would just as soon buy the product.I think it's easy to forget that on average, the people who post on a message board are most likely significantly more computer literate than the general population.And even amongst those who post on message boards... I doubt more than 1/3rd of FBG's have the skills and ability to make torrents work for them.Most people I associate with aren't smart enough/savvy enough to be hackers/torrenters..... I have a feeling these people aren't doing a whole lot more damage to the industry than petty thieves are to retail stores

 

[Jason Bourne]

The beaver "owns" the dam to the degree that the beaver can keep anyone else (or other creatures) from appropriating the dam (or destroying it). That is how natural rights work at their crudest. In nature your right to life means you have the right to protect your life against my competing right to kill you. Who ever is strongest wins in this case...

Civilization came to be because it is too inefficient for you to be spending too many of your resources protecting your property (and life) from those that would appropriate them for themselves. In order for you to benefit you trade many of your natural rights (for Hobbes you traded all of your natural rights) in exchange for protection. As part of that social contract you keep your natural property rights and also gain a commitment from society to commit its resources to protecting your property. The concept of "inalienable rights" are those things that you cannot (or will not) trade as part of this social contract. That is you cannot trade your life for protection. You cannot trade your liberty (though obviously many have been willing to). You cannot trade your rights to property, though Jefferson softened this to the more romantic "pursuit of happiness". When the above political philosophy was being developed, intellectual property was not considered the same as real property. You are correct that those concepts have been ideas that have happened as society has evolved, but I wouldn't say that "We the People" demanded this outside of small special interests that care. It happened while the masses were indifferent to the change.

This is sort of funny, only in that I have used almost the exact language with Timmy in discussing Israel's rights to the land it occupies - it can hold it for as long as it can defend it.We can agree to disagree on the unalienable rights - no matter your interpretation of the beginning of life, property rights were never handed out at birth - to real, personal or intangible property. At some point it became necessary to define those rights. At some point some one said: "You give me rock. I give you fire." Then proceeded to re-take the fire and a dispute over property arose. It is unlikely that an individual's right to own property arose in an effort to be part of a community - just the opposite - somebody did not want to share with the community.

I would also disagree that "we the people" allowed this to happen - we have demanded these protections - copyrights, trademarks, patents, etc. We demand that we be able to profit from our unique ideas. We can look back in retrospect and question whether this was the best policy - but extending property rights to intangible property was simply an evolution of property rights. We want what is ours, what we possess, what we create, what we cultivate. We want the right to profit from teh fruits of our labor - free from all other intrusions into that right.

Property rights will continue to evolve. I doubt we move to a communist state anytime soon where all property is communal - but that is what the folks who want to download content for free want. They see that as something that belongs to the public domain free to be shared among all.

 

[Bottomfeeder Sports]

... that honestly the # of people that are technologically capable of knowing how to use a torrent and make it work for them is actually a fairly small number of people compared to those that would just as soon buy the product.

More than that, I'd guess that the number of people capable and also willing to go through the trouble is an even smaller number. And for this statement I'm assuming that creating a DVD via a torrent is roughly the same process as creating a DVD of software download in ISO format. Easy enough technically, but there are better ways to spend one's time.

 

[Christo]

Sure. It's more a tone thing. And that tone is pretty pervasive through the whole thing. And not at all conducive to open and continued discussion in my opinion. Just an observation. J

Right, the tone that it is stealing period was pretty pervasive two, three pages ago. The discussion has greatly improved since that baggage was at least toned down.

The "tone" that it is stealing?

You just made a very good post about Locke's theory of labor, a more formal version than one that I used to suggest to Joe seemed to be the basis for his argument that file sharing is equivalent to stealing. Explaining why you think something is similar is certainly a different tone than just asserting over and over again that it is stealing.

Not really. I can say "it's stealing." Or I can say "it's stealing because . . ." No difference in tone. Now if I were to say "it's stealing you idiot." That's a difference in tone.

Oh, and I assume that Locke published under the copyright terms of the "Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers", which was basically from my understanding an agreement among members to not publish registered works of other members with the government preventing non members from legally publishing anything, creating a publishing monopoly. Did he write about these terms? Since a decade before his death it was shut down, and shortly after his death the first real copyright laws were created with the "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned" you would think this was a topic.

If he did I haven't read it.

 

[Cliff Clavin]

are PMs being policed in some way now? If a poster sends a PM to another poster with torrent info in it, does that earn them a timeout now?

bump

 

[scoobygang]

As for your claim that we need to show why a performer of a song or a photographer is different from the creator of a haircut, it's easy. When you take a recording of my song (or a photograph that I took) being played by me, copy it and give it to your friend, you are giving him something that I created out of nothing. Something that is unique and can never be recreated by anyone else. You are not passing along an "idea." Nor have you added any value to my performance or picture. A haircut (or a buffalo wing for that matter) is transitory and needs your efforts to duplicate or recreate the actual performance. You are not giving your friend my haricut. You are giving your friend your interpretation of my haircut.

This distinction is not present in copyright law today. It is every bit as illegal for me to give my "interpretation" of Harry Potter (titled Harry Potter and that Smoking Hot Hufflepuff Chick) as it is for me to copy Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. And of course, copying is absolutely adding economic value. Where once there was one, there is now two. Twice as many readers can benefit.I don't subscribe to the labor theory of property, so no need to get into Locke. I subscribe to a simple social utility theory of property. I'm on Jason Bourne's side in that one.

 

[Bottomfeeder Sports]

The beaver "owns" the dam to the degree that the beaver can keep anyone else (or other creatures) from appropriating the dam (or destroying it). That is how natural rights work at their crudest. In nature your right to life means you have the right to protect your life against my competing right to kill you. Who ever is strongest wins in this case...

Civilization came to be because it is too inefficient for you to be spending too many of your resources protecting your property (and life) from those that would appropriate them for themselves. In order for you to benefit you trade many of your natural rights (for Hobbes you traded all of your natural rights) in exchange for protection. As part of that social contract you keep your natural property rights and also gain a commitment from society to commit its resources to protecting your property. The concept of "inalienable rights" are those things that you cannot (or will not) trade as part of this social contract. That is you cannot trade your life for protection. You cannot trade your liberty (though obviously many have been willing to). You cannot trade your rights to property, though Jefferson softened this to the more romantic "pursuit of happiness". When the above political philosophy was being developed, intellectual property was not considered the same as real property. You are correct that those concepts have been ideas that have happened as society has evolved, but I wouldn't say that "We the People" demanded this outside of small special interests that care. It happened while the masses were indifferent to the change.

This is sort of funny, only in that I have used almost the exact language with Timmy in discussing Israel's rights to the land it occupies - it can hold it for as long as it can defend it.We can agree to disagree on the unalienable rights - no matter your interpretation of the beginning of life, property rights were never handed out at birth - to real, personal or intangible property. At some point it became necessary to define those rights. At some point some one said: "You give me rock. I give you fire." Then proceeded to re-take the fire and a dispute over property arose. It is unlikely that an individual's right to own property arose in an effort to be part of a community - just the opposite - somebody did not want to share with the community.

I would also disagree that "we the people" allowed this to happen - we have demanded these protections - copyrights, trademarks, patents, etc. We demand that we be able to profit from our unique ideas. We can look back in retrospect and question whether this was the best policy - but extending property rights to intangible property was simply an evolution of property rights. We want what is ours, what we possess, what we create, what we cultivate. We want the right to profit from teh fruits of our labor - free from all other intrusions into that right.

Property rights will continue to evolve. I doubt we move to a communist state anytime soon where all property is communal - but that is what the folks who want to download content for free want. They see that as something that belongs to the public domain free to be shared among all.

Well I don't want to get too involved in what Locke wrote because it has been a quarter century since I read it, and beside I have three more centuries of knowledge he was deprived of to form my opinions. That being said I think he argued that civilization began out of the need to protect property rights, with property being very broad such that included one's life itself. My argument is similar that civilization formed when man transitioned from relying only on God's bounty to survive and thrive to being forced to deal with new realities of scarcities in nature. That is civilization exists to deal with scarcities of real things and it evolved based on the communal aspects of the free sharing of ideas. Everything I have read over the years suggests that this the back drop for real property rights evolving on one track and what we today call intellectual property evolving on another track. In fact, from my understand copyrights as government function was created in the early 18th century to impose limits on the ownership rights that the publishers had created via collusion in the 16th or 17th century. And that by the founding of this nation these "rights" had evolved into what was believed a necessary evil. The debate wasn't about whether or not "intellectual property" existed as "property rights", but whether it was moral to deprive society the free usage of ideas at all. Are you calling our founding father's commies? Maybe the evolution of property rights internationally was an extension of property rights and the US just caught up to the rest of the world in the 80's and 90's, but this was not the evolutionary path that happened in the US. What happened in the US is items fell into the public domain because they were for all practical purposes abandoned. Then home sales of VHS came along and these abandoned properties were being sold on $5 VHS. So industry, while the public was its usual oblivious self used it lobby to correct this. Then as technology was allowing anyone to create better and better copies industry went and created a law to make it a crime to circumvent copy protection. You don't get in trouble for copying the content of the DVD under this law as there are legal reason that you may already under copyright, but you get in trouble for bypassing the copy protection. These laws requires every American consumer to pay royalties to a single company to degrade our entertainment experience. I seriously doubt "We the People" generally know this happened, yet alone "demanded it". So I don't think that IP is just a natural extension of property rights. I think that is what we are currently being conditioned to believe, though in more simplistic terms by industry. Oh, I'm sure there are those that honestly believe that this is the case and can make good arguments as to why. I just have never heard them.

Now in your example when I gave you a rock for the fire, was I free to do what I want with that fire? (Did you see the Jefferson quote about light?) Was I free in these ancient times to freely share a copy of this fire with someone else? Could I trade for more rocks? You see your analogy make your assertion that the rights are just catching up somewhat problematic. You would think that trading copies of fire would have been a very early activity. In fact I would guess that there were those that appropriated from other's fires without asking permission since the beginning of time. Wouldn't this be a pretty good analogy for taking someone else's expression of ideas?

 

[Jason Bourne]

I give you rock. You give me fire.

This is a Dairy Queen commercial - nothing more to it than that.

It was a humorous example of two cavemen exerting property rights - and trading rock for fire, until the "smarter" cavemen knocks the other with the rock and takes back the fire - ending up with both rock and fire while the other ended up with nothing.

 

[culdeus]

So you finally get to the real crux of the matter. It's a matter of ensuring that you have the proper incentive to create. But you don't address what several people have pointed out. The guy copying your content is exposing other people to your content. People who wouldn't know you from Adam. People who enjoy your content (and whose enjoyment is an independent social benefit worthy of protection in its own right), but who also increase the potential market for any content you might produce in the future. Morally, we should only protect your right to profit from your idea if the disincentive to your creation is greater than the value created by sharing your art with people who normally wouldn't buy it.

The disincentive to create is my biggest issue with free downloads, and this argument has been made several times but I don't buy it. People keep saying that the wide distibution of your product will introduce it to a larger pool of potential customers, etc. So what? They'll just download my next product for free, too.You're basically saying, it's ok that people download your first album for free, because the increased exposure means you'll have more fans and therefore you'll make money on your next album. I see no reason to believe that's true. Once we legitimize free downloads, no one will ever pay again, and once people stop paying for the product, people stop making the product.

In a similar vein, someone earlier said essentially that producers should produce because they want to - because it's their life's passion! - and not because they want to be involved in the lowly business of collecting a paycheck. Equally dumb, imo. People need a place to sleep, and food to eat, etc. I might be the world's greatest singer-songwriter but if I can't monetize my songs, the fact remains that I'm going to have to do something else for a living and the world is going to miss out on all that art that they are supposedly entitled to.

Anyway, re: a solution. This is probably not at all feasible, but I heard something the other day, I think on NPR, where they were talking about the Comcast case and the future of filesharing and ISPs. I only listened for a few minutes but someone made the point that eventually, the internet will be a utility like water or electricity. Right now you pay $50/month for cable internet, whether you never log in once or you download torrents 24/7. That model will likely change to one where you pay for what you use - it would likely be too complicated but I wonder if there's a way to incorporate compensation for the content creators into that structure. Just completely change the industry so that no one "sells" music anywhere anymore. It's just all over the internet, when a new album comes out it just gets released into the cloud, and you can download whatever you want whenever you want. Your ISP serves as the "meter reader" that charges you at the end of the month for all the songs, movies, etc. you downloaded and distributes that revenue back to the producers.

At this point, filesharing can't be stopped. The best recourse, it seems, would be to make it irrelevant.

This makes the best point. And I know there are some trolls on here that hate to see file sharing likened to libraries, but this is exactly what happened. Eventually fair use of libraries got passed to citizens in the form of property/sales taxes. It's built into everything you buy and you go get your books and use it as long as you need it. Booksellers have survived with libraries available to most city centers, and will continue to do so. Eventually the record/music/movies/tv companies will have to get plugged into the ISP content because it's a huge chunk of what the isp content is after a certain point.The main pitfall to this is that how cheap it is to download movies thru netflix. For all intents if you are a heavy user it is free compared to the PITA of using utorrent etc. It's certainly set a price point that will be tough to justify an ISP pushing on unless they are able to provide current release/non-netflix content.

Something has to give.

I see the library comparison but isn't that fundamentally different as you have to return the book without keeping a copy for yourself? There are lots of people that put a value on being able to keep the content. With music file sharing, you have the content to keep. It's the same as buying the CD. With a library, you get to sample the book and read it entirely if you like, but you have to return it. If you don't return it, then you have to pay a fine / buy it. It's not the same at all as buying the book.

Doesn't that make it fundamentally different?

J

Well I focus on movies/tv here. ISPs don't care about music.

 

[Christo]

As for your claim that we need to show why a performer of a song or a photographer is different from the creator of a haircut, it's easy. When you take a recording of my song (or a photograph that I took) being played by me, copy it and give it to your friend, you are giving him something that I created out of nothing. Something that is unique and can never be recreated by anyone else. You are not passing along an "idea." Nor have you added any value to my performance or picture. A haircut (or a buffalo wing for that matter) is transitory and needs your efforts to duplicate or recreate the actual performance. You are not giving your friend my haricut. You are giving your friend your interpretation of my haircut.

This distinction is not present in copyright law today. It is every bit as illegal for me to give my "interpretation" of Harry Potter (titled Harry Potter and that Smoking Hot Hufflepuff Chick) as it is for me to copy Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

You didn't say the distinction had to be made within copyright law.

And of course, copying is absolutely adding economic value. Where once there was one, there is now two. Twice as many readers can benefit.

It dilutes the economic value to the artist. I don't care about the benefits to the reader. If the reader wants to read he can fork over the dough to do so.

I don't subscribe to the labor theory of property, so no need to get into Locke. I subscribe to a simple social utility theory of property. I'm on Jason Bourne's side in that one.

Good for you.

 

[scoobygang]

It dilutes the economic value to the artist. I don't care about the benefits to the reader. If the reader wants to read he can fork over the dough to do so.

You're changing your argument. You were trying to distinguish books and music from haircuts and chicken wings. You said that copying the later two added independent value while the former two did not. Now, you're basing your argument on the economic value to the creator, which once again fails to distinguish books and music from haircuts and chicken wings. Because if I could force anyone who wanted to wear a pompadour or serve a buffalo wing to pay me a license fee, that would greatly enhance the economic value of those creations to me.

 

[bosoxs45]

It is stealing from the artist but music has become so expensive these days that people are resorting to cheaper alternatives.I do download torrents, as I can not afford several CD's a month.

so sue me for putting it on my ipod.

At some point I might buy the cd on Amazon..