Cringely Proposes a Music Sharing Alternative 730
WEFUNK writes "The I, Cringely 'Pulpit' column at PBS presents an interesting idea for a new business model to take on the RIAA. He suggests that a publicly traded company could legally and profitably buy a single copy of each record which could then be freely copied and listened to by its shareholders under fair use. His 'Snapster' (Son of Napster) proposal is essentially a digital music co-op that would let shareholders/consumers bring copyrighted material into a quasi-public domain. While fair use and the public domain continue to be lost in our courts and congresses, maybe the capital markets will offer an alternative." While a neat idea, it's doubtful that it'll ever be implemented. Still, it's a good read.
Wow this usage seems very fair (Score:2, Insightful)
Uh no. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's been done (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Best Article Ever (Score:5, Insightful)
You know those little "by opening this CD you have agreed to.." things? Think a slight modification, here..
Wouldn't be that hard.
Assumptions (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Most people who share music are willing to pay for music.
2. Most people who share music are ethical, and won't give the music to non-shareholders.
I think both assumptions are questionable. (Note: if you share music, I'm not saying you are a freeloader and immoral. But is everyone like you?)
Re:Best Article Ever (Score:5, Insightful)
First, he handwaves about going public at $20/share. Maybe in 1999, pal, but not now. You can't just decide to do it, there are significant capitalization requirements, to say nothing of the money the bankers will want for doing the work for you.
But the real guffaw-worthiness of this article is the tremendous misunderstanding of fair use he displays. Number one, it's quite questionable what corporations' fair use rights are - but it's clear that they are less than an individual. Remember mp3.com? They bought 300,000 CDs and made one digital copy of each. That's perfectly legal, under fair use, for you and me. But when a corporation does it for profit (and by definition everything a corporation does is for profit), it's copyright infringement. MP3.com got pwn3ed by the major record labels for this.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, the traditional test of fair use is, "would it replace a sale?" This clearly would. It's legal for you to make a copy of a CD so you can listen to one and home and one at work, since you won't be listening to both simultaneously. If they wanted to build this system so that only one shareholder could listen to a given piece at one time, they MIGHT be able to squeak through. But try this, and they Major Labels will just laugh all the way to the bank.
this is nonsense (Score:3, Insightful)
Very Clever! (Score:1, Insightful)
This is a strange idea.... (Score:4, Insightful)
While on the surface it seems amusing enough there's some things I don't totally get, maybe someone else can explain where I'm wrong...
First off, owning company stock is not necesarially the same thing as wanting to own the company's product. I might want to own the product but not take on any of the risk of owningthe stock. Likewise, there are plenty of companies I'd own the stock for only for the point of making money, not because I want to personally want to use their products (stock in a pharmecutical company comes to mind)
related to this is the idea that there will be tons of people who want to own tons of stock for the point of being rich, namely the insiders or the investment bankers that want to make money off the IPO. Typically a large amount of shares of any company is held by institutions, not individuals. This idea sounds like he wants stock to be held by all the customers which totally goes against the way investments are usually held. I don't think the institutions would like this idea one bit.
Then, what happens to people who own shares of the stock via a mutual fund? People who own the stock that don't even know about the service? Or people who want to download the music but don't have any means of getting shares of stock because they can't open a brokerage for whatever reason (bad credit)?
Lastly, what happens at the shareholder meeting?
Maybe I just don't get this idea, but to sum up, the product / service a company provides is (and should be) totally separate from its stock.
Cringley lacks basic understanding of economics (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do we need to make a bogus corp (Score:4, Insightful)
They own the rights to begin with!
Re:It's been done (Score:3, Insightful)
This is absurd (Score:4, Insightful)
The other point is, why would you want to do this? Does no one here understand the basic concepts of economics? If people don't pay for music, there won't be any music -- or, at least, there will be very little. It costs money to produce. The artists need to eat. Sure the RIAA is evil, but two wrongs don't make a right. How could anyone seriously consider a plan like this without realizing that it is wrong?
Why do you people believe that you are entitled to free (or absurdly cheap) music? If you're unhappy with the RIAA, don't buy their music, but don't steal it either. You have no right to use something that someone else spent time and money to produce if you are not willing to use it under their terms.
What a bozo (Score:5, Insightful)
A simple perusal of copyright laws would show anyone with half a brain that what he proposes is illegal.
Fair use allows for the end user to make a copy for PERSONAL use. Not corporate use, not public use, not any other use. Personal, baby.
Survey says....
BZZZT!
Wheres the beef? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever. Considering the average mp3 @ 192kbps
is 4MB x 100,000 mp3's = approximately 390GB served to a large user base. For $100,000.
This guy may have ran his idea by some lawyers, but he didn't ask anyone here...
Re:This is absurd (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, 'cause nobody writes or records music for any reason other than profit.
Maybe if music weren't a multi-billion dollar business, true musicians would again gain prominence.
Re:Best Article Ever (Score:3, Insightful)
1. mp3.com was not owned by people who were downloding copies.
2. $20/share inital outlay per person can be though of as joining the club. It does not even need to be publicly traded, and the price can be kept fixed.
3. Maybe the intention of the law is "would it replace a sale", however that is not the actual wording, otherwise all those poor souls who got hit by RIAA would use that as an easy defense. "But your honor, I would not have bought that CD I downloaded, it is a buch of crap!"
another idea...that forgets the artist (Score:2, Insightful)
So under this plan, if an independent artist (pays their own recording, cd pressing, etc) has their disc bought for $14, is lucky enough that just one single is downloaded 100,000 times at $0.05/download, then $5,000.00 is made and then artist only receives (maybe) profit off of a $14 sale. If that is not motivation for artists to side with the RIAA I don't know what could do it.
Reductio Ad Absurdum (Score:3, Insightful)
We have two extremes here.
Do you really think #2 is the right answer? Don't give me the standard lines about "music sharing increases record sales." Sure, it might, right now, in the limited sense it's going on. Okay, what if copying anything you want is legal.
A studio spends $100 million dollars making a great movie. Last night I watched Gangs of New York. Fantastic...amazing...Scorsese is a fucking genius. I don't know how much it cost to make, but I'd imagine a shit-ton of money. So, they spend all this money, use all this talent, and equipment, and employ all of these people. The master copy is made. Immediately, somebody gets their hands on it, makes a copy, and puts it on the Internet. Everybody and their brother downloads it. Somebody copies it onto DVDs and sells it for $3 + shipping. How does the studio make money?
Don't tell me it's off ticket sales because people want to see it on the big screen...unless they own all the theaters, it won't do any good. I'll open up a theatre, buy the DVD for $3, and charge $4 for a ticket to see it on the big screen, then charge $8 for popcorn.
Is this the world we want? How will artists make money? Will it all be ads and product placements? Should Daniel Day Lewis have to say "Drink Pepsi" after every stabbing?
There should be a happy medium between options 1 and 2. So, what is it? Should there simply not be big-budget movies anymore, because the idea of "owning the bit pattern on the DVD is nonsensical?"
Re:one word: my.mp3.com (Score:3, Insightful)
However, there is still a distinction between the assets of the corporation and the assets of the shareholders. The assets of the corporation do not become the assets of the shareholders until the corporation liquidates, and then the shareholders are last in line (as various governments, followed by those who are owed money by the corporation have first crack at the assets). Even then, each shareholder would get it on a pro-rata basis. If the corporation bought 50,000 CDs and had 5,000 shares outstanding, you would ultimately be able to get 10 CDs for each share (assuming no one was ahead of the shareholders in this example) you held, and you would be the only shareholder to get each particular CD.
Re:This is absurd (Score:5, Insightful)
Damn straight! If not for copyright, Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms would never have published any music, so none of their music would be around today, in the public domain!
What? You say there was no such thing as copyright when they were composing? Er... never mind!
Re:Let me get this straght... (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing is, you become a part of the "they". If 51% of the shares are voted to do something, then it is so. So, if you ever get 51% of the company, it's your call and yours alone. (And, at that point you get to stack the board of directors with people who agree with you...) If a bunch of people who agree with you combine to make 51%, that works too.
Cringley's company of course would have that trap door. As a publicly traded company, they'd always be subject to a hostile takeover by the pro-RIAA interests...
Re:This is absurd (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Best Article Ever (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Buy 100,000 CDs
2) Suddenly every shareholder somehow now has a right to have a copy of that CD which they will make full use of (way beyond fair use)
3) Profit!
Wow, I'm impressed. Cringley has uncovered the long-sought step 2.
Really, I think he may run into a little trouble with the idea that a shareholder suddenly has rights to everything the corp has a single copy of. Heck, that wouldn't even fly if the corp held the original copyright. If it did, I'd be set! Buy a share of Microsoft, get a free copy of any MS software I want. Buy a share of SCO, I can run all the unix-like software in the world I want. Heck, I don't need Cringley, I'll just buy a share of each of the 6 or so music companies, and then I'm cool getting whatever I want from Kazaa.
But who knows, maybe in some strange way, he's right. Just in case, I present the open-source version of his plan:
I form a corporation for $100 dollars or so. I issue 10 billion non-public shares. I make each of you an officer in the corp, and issue you a share. You take a CD that you have a copy of, and transfer ownership of it to the corp. This is a distributed corporation, so you will be storing said CD in your home. You then rip the CD in MP3, OGG, etc.. and store on your harddrive. You then join the private corp p2p net. BTW, in order to actually sign up for the corporation and receive your share, you join the p2p network. To indicate that you wish to transfer ownership of your CD, you rip it and make the files available on the p2p network.
I think I'll call it Kazaa.
Where are the musicians? (Score:5, Insightful)
Coupled with the dismissive "Oh, it only takes $500 per hour to do a recording", and with profits being skimmed to support the pyramid scheme, Cringely sounds like one of these guys who think the cost of the average recording looks like this:
1. CD and box, 10 cents
2. ???
$19.90. Profit!!!
Re:Best Article Ever (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Not relevant, you're already out of business from 1.
3. "Would it replace a sale" is a shorthand way of saying, "would you normally need to buy it to do what you're doing?" The relevant law is 17 U.S.C. 107 [cornell.edu], "Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use":
I'd say his idea is a slam dunk not-fair-use under section four, as (he freely admits) it would "destroy the potential market for...the copyrighted work." Not fair use, not legal, not a good business idea.
None of this, of course, is trying to make any argument about what the law should be. But these questions aren't hard under the law now, and they're very obviously not legal under the law now. Anyone who tries this is going to get eaten for breakfast by the major labels (and the minor ones, too - they sued mp3.com pretty hard as well).
Missing the point (Score:3, Insightful)
If I own part of a corporation, and that corporation owns a recording, do I not have rights to that recording? Provided there is nothing in the corporate charter prohibiting this, I see no reason it wouldn't work. The difference between this and my.mp3.com is that the users own the service they are using.
The only hole I can really see is in the distribution method. If it's provided by a corporation as a service to its shareholders that's one thing, but if it's provided by a separate company? I'm not sure. Of course, I'm NAL.
DOJ interview says this isn't fair use (Score:3, Insightful)
Fair Use is law of spirit more than of letter -- there is no bright line distinguishing what exactly it is. I don't think you'd find a judge that would let this proposal weasel through.
Idiotic (Score:3, Insightful)
The same would go for music.
Re:I think the problem is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Using headphone jack splitters with a friend sitting next to you is not the same as making a copy of a song with a complete stranger on another continent, even though the two are connected by small steps.
Re:Missing the point (Score:4, Insightful)
Uhhh, no? Otherwise why wouldn't you just buy 1 share of Sony and AOL-Time-Warner, etc.? If that argument held any water at all you'd be legally able to download any song you wanted by a company you had a share in.
The sad truth is ... (Score:3, Insightful)
That is not to say i wouldn't buy a share or even a few shares when it starts. Even betting on the off chance that something good results from this is better than just sitting around watching the RIAA turn back the wheel until we're back at feudalism. And at least it will tie up some of their lawyers in the courts. Yes, by now i'm so pissed off with the record industry that i'm willing to give away money if it hurts them in any way.
Re:Missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
The best way to look at it is that music is similar to software. If you own a copy, you have a right to make a backup. I own a CD, I can back it up to my computer or mp3 player.
Fair use dictates that the copy is for personal use only. I can listen to my stereo, my computer, or my mp3 player, but I only listen to them one at a time. If I copy it to someone else's device so they can listen simultaneously, it goes beyond "fair use."
If I have a copy of Photoshop, I can only use it on one computer at a time. Same for a corporation. Even if all your emplyees were shareholders, you couldn't buy just one copy of Photoshop and copy it to ALL their computers -- even if they all technically "own" it. It's simply NOT legal.
Cringely's scheme is quite lamebrained...
Re:I think the problem is... (Score:3, Insightful)
If we're splitting hairs, though, even with streaming there's still a copy being made. The song will be buffered by the receiver. It may be deleted once the song is played, but it's still a copy. I'm not sure what the lawyers would make of that argument.
The original poster mentioned the console gaming system, where the sharedholders only get to play the game one at a time. I suppose a system could be worked out, much like Napster, whereby a central server keeps track of what songs a person is "sharing." The sharer will stream the song to one other person at a time, and only when the sharer is not listening to it himself. Assuming the user purchased the song, that might be covered under fair use. There may be 1 million copies of a song sold, but only 10,000 people want to listen to it at any given time. Still, if you actually tried that, you'd still get sued, and, if you won, Congress would just repeal your fair use rights, anyway, because that's really not what they're intended for.
We're splitting hairs here, and trying to find loopholes in laws. What we really need is to decide what rights an artist, distributor, and customer have when it comes to a piece of music, and craft our laws around that idea. Good freakin' luck, though.
mp3.com is not relevant (Score:5, Insightful)
The naysayers to this idea forget that the _critical_ component of this plan is that it must IMMEDIATELY go public. It also must limit downloads to owners (shareholders) ONLY. While the cost of going public may be significant, there is not necessarily a need to bring in investment bankers and join the NASDAQ or NYSE... The press would likely provide the marketing for free on the nightly news (due to the sheer audacity of the idea), and the employees of the business could probably sell the shares via telephone. "limit one share per customer"! (or something).
The real problem here is that by sharing the backup or shifted assets of the company among the owners in this way, IF a court later decides the idea is illegal, they (the RIAA) might then seek to recover directly from the owners... Usually by being a corporate entity, this kind of thing is avoided, but since the corporation is distributing it's assets directly to the owners, who can say.
Concerns that users may share their downloads with their non-owner friends are baseless. TODAY, even without this company, people MAY record things from TV and share it with their friends... and TV and radio are legal last I checked.
One final note. In the end, the legality of this plan would not matter. Unless stopped quickly by injunction, Current RIAA distribution methods would become obsolete technically (ok, ok, they are already technically obsolete), and practically. If this became widespread, digital distribution would be the only comercially viable alternative. The distributors would have to change or declare bankruptcy in short order. This company would need to be able to drag out any court proceedings... basically, they'd need to take a page out of Micro$oft'$ playbook. A delay of two to three years is all that is needed...
There will always be a small market for physical distribution, but the days of monopoly-via-artificial-scarsity-of-media would end. And wouldn't that be nice?
Re:one word: my.mp3.com (Score:4, Insightful)
Strictly speaking, this is only if the corporation is that modern beast of commerce, the Limited Liability Corporation. You can certainly have -- and indeed, prior to the railroads, often did have -- wholly owned companies which were not LLCs. Of course, no sane investor would ever buy into Snapster if it weren't an LLC, since then the RIAA would be able to sue for that investor's personal wealth as well as that of the company.
Hmmm. I wonder if that could be a way around the ridiculous lawsuits? Incorporate yourself, then file-share as the corporation. Then.... profit!
if Snapster is not bankrupted in court first... (Score:2, Insightful)
What I'm really saying is I'd like to see "the Snapster Studios Records Radio Entertainment Channel Online" and 500 other startups doing the same thing, because ultimately future companies built around this business model are owned by it's shareholders, who are the users.
I'd like the artists to enjoy a larger percentage of that revenue and better contract alternatives than they are currently, under the 75 year old curmudgeon with five heads that's suing potential lifelong customers [dailyillini.com], and can't imagine why CD sales continue to drop other than file sharing (answer: the economy sucks and so does your record company, two reasons I'm not buying your CDs).
And another thing that bothers me...some record companies have blatantly hired and trained armies of would-be usurpers [spacer.com] to take over the International Space Station! Think about it.
Re:Best Article Ever (Score:4, Insightful)
At best, it can behave like a library: offer the book up, and let one stockholder at a time read it. If the one-at-time method is implemented via electronic downloading of the data, the copyright holder probably has a good claim that the whole system is designed to facilitate infringment.
Re:Wow this usage seems very fair (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason everybody is so riled up about this is that it flips the burden of proof onto the accused. The RIAA can subpeona anyone they want, then file a lawsuit against that person. That person will probably be contacted by the RIAA prior to going to court and offered the following choice: settle for less than a lawyer would cost, or go to court and run the risk of having to pay enormous damages, plus a guaranteed huge lawyer bill. Whether this person has done anything wrong is irrelevant. The RIAA has become an Enforcement Agency.
If we had no prisons, but instead all of our criminal punishments were monetary in nature, then there would be no difference between the RIAA and the police.
Re:Best Article Ever (Score:2, Insightful)
Even penny stocks have some listing requirements. They're just less than for the major exchanges. Unfortunately for the purposes of Mr. Cringley's idea, generally the less reputable the exchange and listing requirements, the harder it is to actually buy. Still, if the rest of it were legal, you might be able to set up a company you'd list on the OTC:BB and sell shares in for some small amount. But since there are no market makers on the OTC, your stock would be illiquid and ripe for manipulation.
As for issuing shares in your still-private company to the massess: Selling unlicensed securities to unaccredited (read: not rich) investors will generally get you sent to jail for running a stock scam.
why stop at music CDs? (Score:2, Insightful)
Something here doesn't quite add up...
Re:This is absurd (Score:2, Insightful)
And Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms made their money because wealthy people paid them to write it.
Do you necessarily want a world where most of the music is chosen by those who are wealthy enough to either make it themselves or to hire someone to make it for them?
Re:Missing the point (Score:3, Insightful)
You ask, "If I own part of a corporation, and that corporation owns a recording, do I not have rights to that recording?" The answer is, quite simply, "no, you do not." At best you might have the right to go listen to it at the corporation (if management lets you) without making a copy of it. If management doesn't let you, I guess you can go start a proxy fight to get a listening station in the corporate lobby.
Look at it this way: If you own one share of a public company, you own like 1/30000000th of it. I figure that gives you the right to 1/30000000th of the CD, which is
If it were this easy, every corporation could issue one share of stock to every employee and buy one copy of every piece of software they wanted to use. Such a result so obviously flies in the face of the intent of copyright law that, even if it weren't clearly illegal now, if it somehow made it through the court system, it would quickly be made illegal.
Re:Thats the hard way of doing it! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow this usage seems very fair (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Best Article Ever (Score:2, Insightful)
One problem would be that the songs would need to be purchased separately, can't delete them from the original CD. Another problem would be how to prove the songs were legal to begin with. If the system were set up there would have to be some way to prevent abuse.
I assume the RIAA would claim that copies could be made of the songs even if they were offered and sold with the system. What's the difference with selling any other copyright item like a book?
Re:one word: my.mp3.com (Score:2, Insightful)
What is interesting here is how if you play it right, you might get the RIAA to shoot down corporate personhood along with you. It's your best argument at least. They'd be trying to keep a company from copying mp3s for itself. Since [my non-lawyerly interpretation of] modern equal protection means you can't discriminate between corporations and individuals in the law, the only way for them to get you would be overturning Santa Clara County vs Southern Pacific or just abolishing fair use rights for everybody. You just have to hope that fair use is a stronger precedent than some random contract dispute case from the 1800s. Even if they do find a nutty enough judge (or a big enough sack of Cash MoneyTM) to kill copying for personal use, I think you'll have a big enough freak-out to bring down some serious hurt down on the RIAA.
Ureka! The Library (Score:2, Insightful)
Why the Amazons and Barnes & Nobles of this country would be telling everyone how libraries would put their businesses under and that it was just a form of stealing to read a book for free when you really know you should be paying for it and supporting intellectual property.
vince
Re:Where are the musicians? (Score:2, Insightful)
Your right. It doesn't cost 10 cents to produce a CD. Here's a breakdown of the costs. (http://www.negativland.com/albini.html)
The agent says a band on a major label can get a merchandising company to pay them an advance on T-shirt sales! ridiculous! There's a gold mine here! The lawyer Should look over the merchandising contract, just to be safe. They get drunk at the signing party. Polaroids are taken and everybody looks thrilled. The label picked them up in a limo. They decided to go with the producer who used to be in Letterman's band. He had these technicians come in and tune the drums for them and tweak their amps and guitars. He had a guy bring in a slew of expensive old "vintage" microphones. Boy, were they "warm." He even had a guy come in and check the phase of all the equipment in the control room! Boy, was he professional. He used a bunch of equipment on them and by the end of it, they all agreed that it sounded very "punchy," yet "warm." All that hard work paid off. With the help of a video, the album went like hotcakes! They sold a quarter million copies! Here is the math that will explain just how f**ked they are: These figures are representative of amounts that appear in record contracts daily. There's no need to skew the figures to make the scenario look bad, since real-life examples more than abound. income is bold and underlined, expenses are not.
Advance: $ 250,000 Manager's cut: $ 37,500 Legal fees: $ 10,000 Recording Budget: $ 150,000 Producer's advance: $ 50,000 Studio fee: $ 52,500 Drum Amp, Mic and Phase "Doctors": $ 3,000 Recording tape: $ 8,000 Equipment rental: $ 5,000 Cartage and Transportation: $ 5,000 Lodgings while in studio: $ 10,000 Catering: $ 3,000 Mastering: $ 10,000 Tape copies, reference CDs, shipping tapes, misc. expenses: $ 2,000 Video budget: $ 30,000 Cameras: $ 8,000 Crew: $ 5,000 Processing and transfers: $ 3,000 Off-line: $ 2,000 On-line editing: $ 3,000 Catering: $ 1,000 Stage and construction: $ 3,000 Copies, couriers, transportation: $ 2,000 Director's fee: $ 3,000 Album Artwork: $ 5,000 Promotional photo shoot and duplication: $ 2,000 Band fund: $ 15,000 New fancy professional drum kit: $ 5,000 New fancy professional guitars [2]: $ 3,000 New fancy professional guitar amp rigs [2]: $ 4,000 New fancy potato-shaped bass guitar: $ 1,000 New fancy rack of lights bass amp: $ 1,000 Rehearsal space rental: $ 500 Big blowout party for their friends: $ 500 Tour expense [5 weeks]: $ 50,875 Bus: $ 25,000 Crew [3]: $ 7,500 Food and per diems: $ 7,875 Fuel: $ 3,000 Consumable supplies: $ 3,500 Wardrobe: $ 1,000 Promotion: $ 3,000 Tour gross income: $ 50,000 Agent's cut: $ 7,500 Manager's cut: $ 7,500 Merchandising advance: $ 20,000 Manager's cut: $ 3,000 Lawyer's fee: $ 1,000 Publishing advance: $ 20,000 Manager's cut: $ 3,000 Lawyer's fee: $ 1,000 Record sales: 250,000 @ $12 =
$3,000,000 Gross retail revenue Royalty: [13% of 90% of retail]:
$ 351,000 Less advance: $ 250,000 Producer's points: [3% less $50,000 advance]:
$ 40,000 Promotional budget: $ 25,000 Recoupable buyout from previous label: $ 50,000 Net royalty: $ -14,000 Record company income:
Record wholesale price: $6.50 x 250,000 =
$1,625,000 gross income Artist Royalties: $ 351,000 Deficit from royalties: $ 14,000 Manufacturing, packaging and dist
Here's the reason you were modded flaimbait (Score:1, Insightful)
If you had changed out your company and your employerto your record label you probably would haave been modded insightful. Record companies routinely screw over the artist, by raising the price of CDs unnecessarily, yet not passing on one red cent to the artist.
I truly believe that if the record labels offered a good product at a reasonable price, people would buy more music.
In even simpler terms: if I feel like you're ripping me off, I won't feel guilty ripping you off. Golden rule boiled down.
Re:Missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, that doesn't work, either. It's up to the rest of the stockholders to decide whether or not you have access to the corporations assets and secrets. However, what Cringely is talking about is one where the corporation DOES grant these rights. The problem is I don't think the corporation has the power to grant these rights in the first place, so the point is moot.
Re:CleanFilms avoids MPAA this way already.. (Score:4, Insightful)
For each movie they give to a customer/"co-owner", they've purchased one DVD from the publisher.
Cringley's plan is to somehow achieve a 1:200000 ratio. Buy one copy of each CD, and somehow let multiple shareholders play several of them at the same time.
That's just illegal. One entity (single person, or a corporation) is allowed to buy a CD and make backup copies. But if you play more than 1 of those at a time, you're breaking the law- because playing it isn't a "backup" use.
Cringley's idea is as dumb as suggesting Merril Lynch can buy one copy of Microsoft(tm) Windows XP(r) and install it on 9000 PCs, because they're all property of 1 corporation.
Business. He's right (Score:3, Insightful)
Several points. You can IPO at whatever the fuck price you want to. Don't give me that, oh, you can't do that because of
Robert's idea is simply brilliant. To put it simply. I work in the world where money matters, and law matters, and his idea is awesome. I see nothing wrong with it. But he is also correct with the fact that this is a small loophole which can be fixed by a quick lobby to Congress. Someone that works for the RIAA (read: intern) is reading this article, and tomorrow they will be reporting this to their supervisor and ni about 2 months this "law" will be lobbied.
I'm sorry to all the people that simply just say that this article is a bunch of horse-shit. This is one of the most comprehensive and simple (to-the-point) articles I've read recently. He's got everything covered (basics) and it is enough for "just about" anyone here to get it started. Just takes a little know how and in order to get it done before the "law" takes hold, just a few connections. I'm sure Robert (Cringley) could get you started...for a small fee of shared
Anyway, the point of this post was to say that all the people that got +5 for saying that this isn't possible. Wake up! Read something relevant. No, Wall Street Journal does NOT count. This is reality, and this is absolutely brilliant. This should go side-by-side with his "I use Linux to play DVD's" article.
Re:A better solution in a perfect world. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a pyramid scheme. The problem is, it only works as long people are buying into the bottom. While I agree that there are lots of alternative ways to sell music, this isn't one of them.
If I'm Joe Indie, why would I want to let someone else take half the profit for "distributing" my music (which amounts to keeping it on their hard drive and running Kazaa or whatever), when I could do the same thing myself and get all of the profit?
A creative, but silly idea (Score:3, Insightful)
One copy = one user at a time. And "fair use" doesn't mean you can make a copy of music and allow multiple people to access that copy at any one time.
Fair use? A library is fair use, but libraries don't photocopy their books for each person carrying a library card.
Beyond Stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Cringly's idea is really bad. Instead of trying to find loopholes, let's get to the three issues that matter with RIAA:
* Because of the degree of control over distribution, competition in the music industry, at least as far as price goes don't exist.
* Unfair contracts to artists.
* There's no incentive for innovation or new material for derivative work because old stuff doesn't ever move to the public domain.
Re:Best Article Ever (Score:4, Insightful)
But, once you get into morality I think the tradition in US copyright is that piracy isn't immoral (whatever the RIAA would tell you aside). The Constitution's enshrinement of intellectual property was controversial at the time and is entirely pragmatic: It is "for the advancement of the useful arts and sciences," not because copyright owners have some moral right to control their works. Tonight I've merely been discussing what the law is. I've made no assertions about what it should be.
Re:Wow this usage seems very fair (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, you asked, and after being slashdotted you probably are getting a lot of answers, but I do see a snag or two in your plan. Bear with me... I tried to be concise, but my response ended up being almost as long as your article.
Under the current system, artists depend on a big, evil record company to not only get their albums made, but to get them marketed. Okay, most artists get screwed by this deal, but the most popular acts eventually start making money when the big, evil record company sells enough CD's.
Under your proposal, any artist, with or without a label, would sell exactly one CD to, well, the entire world, because people would be crazy to not participate in "Snapster" if it exists.
So how in the heck does any artist make direct money off an album? A small percentage of 2 Million sales is certainly a better deal than 100% of one sale.
If such a company were to exist, recorded music would be released for the sole purpose of marketing the band, who hopes to make their cash via concerts. (Unless I'm mistaken, Phish pretty much already lives this way, cranking out lots of low-selling albums to drive ticket and t-shirt sales at their shows.)
So long as a CD costs $15, it's folly to think that lots of good albums will continue to be released in such an environment. What will probably happen is albums by established bands, such as U2 or Jewel will suddenly cost $10,000,000 per CD (or more), and albums by bands who are not established will be worth what Snapster is willing to pay (nothing).
Stay with me now, I don't think my conclusions are over-reaching just yet...
The only way to raise the price that Snapster will pay for your albums is by "getting established." The only way most bands will be able to do that is... big shock here... sign a contract with a big, evil record label (now a "marketing service") who is entitled by the contract terms to something like 95% of the sale (not sales, sale) of each CD the band releases under the contract.
Since these big, evil companies will be hungry (something like 40% of their business model is in back-catalog sales, which Snapster will have already erased.) They can then take the following steps to restore as much of their lost profits as they can:
1. Jack up the price of the individual album, including back-catalog disks.
2. Form their own Snapster.
3. Stop selling albums. Completely. If you are not a member of the big, evil labels' version of Snapster, you can't hear the new Avril CD. Instead of being a record sales company, or a music marketing company, they will be in the business of owning content which is not for sale, but is streamed exclusively to their shareholders for a fee.
4. Wait for your Snapster company to die on the vine.
5. Jack up the shareholder download price to the point that it's just as expensive to download as it was to buy CD's.
The only way to stop this would be to claim that Evil Snapster is in violation of anti-trust law. Apart from Standard Oil and Bell, how often does a company lose one of those!? Besides, what politician is going to want to bust up a company when it's partly owned by almost every single American who listens to music?
He forgot about the artists! (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know about the legality of his proposal, or even if his business estimations are reasonable, but he forgot the most important point: the artists
By his reasoning, CD sales would drop enormously, as anyone subscribed to the service would have access to the music, but the artists wouldn't see any kind of compensation for their work. In a "best case scenario", where everyone used this kind of service, any given record would sell only as many copies as there are service providers, plus a few CD's to those who insist in having the original packaging. How long do you think this would last?
Re:This is absurd (Score:2, Insightful)
And Mozart died a pauper and was buried in an unmarked mass grave. There's a big thank-you from society.
Re:Wow this usage seems very fair (Score:3, Insightful)
>it, you must pay for it.
No, there are many ways to get or listen to music without paying (and yes, I am talking about music that still has a copyright on them). I can for example go to a friends home and listen to his music. I can turn on the radio and listen to the music. I can record music of the radio. I can (at least in Sweden), get a copy of music from a friend (since such music is allowed according to our copyright law, at least for now) and so on.
There are many other ways as well where I don't have to pay for music I want that are all according to the law and does not infringe upon copyright. Of course, big content providers typically want you to believe otherwise and some press tend to jump onto that and write such things too, but that does not make it that way, fortunately.
Get Real (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wow this usage seems very fair (Score:1, Insightful)
3. Stop selling albums. Completely. If you are not a member of the big, evil labels' version of Snapster, you can't hear the new Avril CD. Instead of being a record sales company, or a music marketing company, they will be in the business of owning content which is not for sale, but is streamed exclusively to their shareholders for a fee.
BINGO! you got it dude. Cringely's motivation is not to destroy the record companies, but to destroy their current fucked-up business model. Everyone is free to start its own snapster, and every artist is also free to do so (note, if you are distributing your own stuff, you do not need $2M like he says, just a puny server and some kind of authenticated BitTorrent
cheers
Re:What a bozo (Score:3, Insightful)
He is not proposing to exploit any loophole in fair use. He is proposing to exploit a loophole in co-operative ownership. If you and I pool our money and buy a CD together, can we each listen to a copy of it at the same time?
Now expand that concept to everyone in the "company" buying the single CD together, and listening to it whenever we feel like downloading it. That is the proposal, except there is a download fee also.
I think there is a problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Now who has ownership of the CD? I'd say you now have shared ownership of the property. Could both of you make a copy for backup, probably. Could both of you transfer the music to MP3, yes, however my understanding of the law would say that the mp3 copies of the song could not be used at the same time. There is the problem.
Otherwise Blockbuster could make DVD copies of all there VHS tapes and form a a mini-partership which would allow all parterns to have unfettered access to the material.
I think Cringley is onto something though, morph his idea into a music rental system, similar to Blockbuster. Form a company, buy CDs (you'll need multiple copies of popular CDs) and offer streaming access to that music though a subscription service.
However the max amount of people who can listen to the same song at the same time is limited to the number of copies of the song that have been purchased. Example you buy 10 copies of CD "X" you can now offer out 10 streams of each song on CD "X", if an 11th person wanted to listen to that song they would need to be queued.
Would probably be legaly viable now would it be practical from a business view.
Fallacy (Score:3, Insightful)
Based on Napster, Kazza, etc . . . that does not seem to be the case. emmnemm had probably the most downloaded album ever, yet he still went platinum.
"The only way to raise the price that Snapster will pay for your albums is by "getting established." The only way most bands will be able to do that is... big shock here... sign a contract with a big, evil record label (now a "marketing service") who is entitled by the contract terms to something like 95% of the sale (not sales, sale) of each CD the band releases under the contract."
Not true. IT is the way it is currently done, but it is not the only way. Point in fact, if it was the only way, music radio would never have started.
Music Radio stations need music. If big corpration stop providing it, they will go to the local talent. The raio station would need to pay a fee every time a song is paid. There is your money.
I would also like to note, if all new musician refused to sign the current contracts, the contract will get changed. Contrary to what music companies will tell you, they need to to survive.
I know it would be hard to resist the money, but I would wager most muscians could hold out longer then the reccord company, espcially if it was done en-mass.
Sure, the musicians will have to eat hot dogs and top ramen for another year, but how much would a record company loose if the didn't sign new talent for 4 quarterin a row? there stock would plummet and they would loose millions.
Re:Wow this usage seems very fair (Score:4, Insightful)
Very, very good point, and something that Cringely misses in his article. On possible solution :
Cringely states : "Each share also carries the right to download backup or media-shifting copies for $0.05 per song or $0.50 per CD, that download coming from a separate company we'll call Snapster Download that is 100 percent owned by Snapster."
Why not double this to $0.10 per song, $1.00 per CD and split half with Snapster and half with the artist. Snapster would still have the revenue needed to run, and the artists would make more than they do now. Databases could be built to also make sure that song and lyric writers get a cut. Since each successful download would be logged, each artist would get what they actually earned instead of going by popularity ala ASCAP. Britney would only get what she earned while the independent band who cut a CD and got it on Snapster would actually get a check! This would keep the production of new music viable, and perhaps even more profitable for Musicians, while reducing the end price of music -- a win/win situation.