DMCA Creator Admits Failure, Blames RIAA 239
An anonymous reader writes "DMCA architect Bruce Lehman has admitted
that "our Clinton administration
policies didn't work out very well" and "our attempts at copyright
control have not been successful". Speaking at conference in
Montreal (video
at 11:00), Lehman lay much
of the blame at the feet of the recording industry for their failure to
adapt to the online marketplace in the mid-1990s."
On behalf of all fair use fans (Score:5, Insightful)
To err is human, to apologize and publicly shoot one's own demonic brainchild in the foot is divine.
When? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:To bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah the DMCA is bad, but one of the worst laws ever? I don't think so. How bout the Patriot Act? or drug prohibition laws? Or the race segregation laws of bygone eras? Cmon, keep things in perspective.
Re:Wooo! (Score:5, Insightful)
What does this mean? Despite DRM, copying carries on regardless, and despite the copying, the recording industry is making more money than ever.
Only difference now is that when a CD doesn't sell, they can blame copying/file sharing, and not simply bad marketing practices.
Passing the buck (Score:5, Insightful)
That's rich. The RIAA can't make law. The RIAA aren't charged with doing what's best for the USA public. That's your job, and you failed miserably at it. You can't fuck over the public because a corporation told you to, and then blame the corporation. It's your fault for listening to them instead of the public in the first place. The RIAA could "fail to adapt" a million times over and it still wouldn't make it any less your fault for pandering to them.
DRM doesn't work, DMCA means it never will (Score:5, Insightful)
So we have the worst of all possible worlds, the makers of DRM turf around pretending that their broken DRM still works and spread fear that if a publisher releases anything without their DRM it will be instantly stolen. But their DRM is already broken!
It's turned a simple clean purchase into a complicated 'license' where the user is getting totally screwed over.
It's caused a massive loss of sales. All the sales they could have had if they hadn't gone the DRM route are lost. It's going to take them a long time to recover.
It's given the luddites in the copyright industries a means to hold back time. It only takes one shortsighted Valenti to separate an entire industry from it's VHS profits.
It's led to fake claims, a person making a DMCA takedown claim does not need to show any evidence that they are the copyright owner and because the DMCA claim is made to a third party, there is no interest in that third party ensuring the claim has even the basics of legitimacy.
Dumb shit has been slotted in as copyright clauses, like the UK's no parallel imports, so I can't import Vista from the US, even though its half the price, because it's been made an offence under a copyright statute! Now everyone if claiming copyright to block imports of their products from cheaper markets and UK consumer is getting screwed over paying inflated prices.
at least they got radio deregulation right (Score:3, Insightful)
And the War on Drugs (read marijuana) that they kicked into gear in the 90's and has netted 750,000 pothead arrests a year since ahs worked out well. The prison lobby, police and drug testing and rehab fields are booming.
Yup, dem dems did real well for their friends.
Now tell me the story about how both parties are somehow different and are not in the pockets of lobbyists and multinationals:
I love a good fairy tale.
Re:An open Letter to the RIAA (Score:3, Insightful)
1) You were poor in the 1990s, buying CDs at retail price, but discovering cheaper used CD prices.
2) You soon refuse to pay higher retail prices, but are still willing to buy used CDs.
3) You, for unspecified reasons, develop a taste for software piracy.
4) Morally comfortable with piracy in general, you move on to music piracy.
5) You would be willing to pay up to $4 per CD at 256kbs VBR.
6) ???
7) The RIAA is to blame!
At no point in there did you make an argument that the RIAA has done anything wrong, except place CDs at a price point you were not comfortable with. You demand that the RIAA allow digital copies of CDs at $4, but will remain a music pirate until that day comes. You admit to being able to easily afford your monthly quota for music on CDs (from which you yourself could generate MP3s fitting your personal requirements), but yet "the labels alienated you", an assertion you never justified or backed up in your post. Am I missing something here?
"DMCA architect?" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:at least they got radio deregulation right (Score:5, Insightful)
The US government/constitution had two things going for it that are now in the toilet. The first was an independent press to expose wrongdoing. Since giant corporations control the media what we get as "news" is now heavily filtered. The second is the ability to vote out bad leaders. Since the political process is controlled by political parties that are two sides of the same coin, funded by the aforementioned giant corporations, we don't really get a choice as to who we elect or what the so-called "issues" are. Pretty much the same thing is happening in europe.
Bottom line: as the western governments squabble over which corporation gets to screw the most people, the chinese are slowly and carefully assuming real power in the world.
Welcome to the dawn of the totalitarian era.
The phrase that pay (or doesn't) (Score:5, Insightful)
This from the guy who is head of the International Intellectual Property Institute.
I have maintained since the late 80's that the road to the future on this issue is paying a few cents or a few dimes to verify that your copy is a good copy... and doing that direct with the labels or the bands... but some doing it with anyone they "trust."
When street "kids" can sell a terabyte of music on a corner like they used to sell crack, then my friend, copyright for this sort of thing will be dead.
There is one other "blame" besides the two headed griffen of DRM and bad Major Label Music, and that is the Sonny Bono Act and those acts that came before which have strenched out copyright protection so far into the future that let's be honest none of this stuff will ever see the light of the public domain; they killed public domain's cousin too, sweet little Fair Use (but then you knew that!!).
Re:Wooo! (Score:4, Insightful)
And they'd still be wrong! If they could pull their heads out of their overstuffed asses, they'd realize that they're not selling records because they're not making records worth spending money on. Plain and simple. I wish I could go buy a record a week, like I used to do on a teenager's allowance! Today, I could buy new records to my heart's content! But my heart's not content with the content (or lack of) they continue to spew at us.
Re:On behalf of all fair use fans (Score:2, Insightful)
His recalcitrance doesn't repeal the law. The purpose of the system is what it does, and the purpose of his "demonic brainchild"--whatever it was originally--has become to allow the RIAA to bludgeon whomever they'd like. So whatever the RIAA has done with his baby, it's still his fault for spawning it.
--jeremy
Why so many laws now don't work (Score:3, Insightful)
Fair use is (was) already well established doctrine. Any new law regarding any perceivable restrictions to fair use should be framed from the perspective of the end user (of the people, by the people, for the people) rather than from the perspective of the copyright holder. I BUY a DVD and it's ILLEGAL for me to rip it and put it on a server in my own home or to compress it and put it on a laptop. That's completely absurd. It's what happens when lobbyists write laws and lawmakers pass them without reading them and understanding the consequences.
We've heard what Senator Stevens has said about technology. Can you just imagine the things that get said in those committees discussing laws like the DMCA? I can't even fathom the level of stupidity that goes on when they're discussing complex technological issues.
-S
Re:To bad (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Welcome to the dawn of the totalitarian era (Score:4, Insightful)
Capitalism only works well when the competition is strong. you start creating monopolies even short term ones, and competition dries up. Patents, copyrights are federal backed monopolies for a set term.
Re:On behalf of all fair use fans (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:An open Letter to the RIAA (Score:5, Insightful)
1) CDs are of no greater value new at the $12-$15 price to him than they are used at the $6 price. This is the fulcrum of his entire argument. If he accepted the price of new CDs because they were set at that point to help overcome starting costs for a new medium, why should he accept it after the medium is fully adopted?
2) He found other means of getting songs and shows that he knows it isn't right but that he is also willing to spend money on them if they were delivered in a way that reflected the value he has set in his own purchasing already.
3) He proposed a reasonable system to meet his value with their product and that's a very helpful data point for any company. They try to set their prices at a place that will capture their core audience. (ignore the iPhone, Apple knows they pwnzor joo)
If you're confused as to how the RIAA could be blamed for any of the reasons he stated, implied, or possibly could have had for his decisions, you really should hand over your Slashdot account to someone who actually reads this site. It is practically the primary theme of any music-related post. Look up what a "meme" is and you're questions will all be answered. And don't worry, he does NOT need to spell out why the RIAA is at fault to the RIAA itself. Using logic is always your first mistake when dealing with hegemonic a-holes.
Re:To bad (Score:2, Insightful)
Friend of mine once told me that Bush and Clinton were pretty much equally likely to screw you in the ass, but at least Clinton would have the courtesy to give you a reach-around and thank you later. Bush would slap you in the face, spit on you and call you a bitch, cleaning out your wallet as he left you on the floor degraded, bloody and shamed after the deed was done, leaving you wondering why you were stupid enough to have invited him into your home in the first place, and why you didn't kick him out or call the cops once he TOLD you exactly what he was going to do to you.
Exactly. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wooo! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not really true, though. There are a lot of really great records coming out every year. Problem is, the ones that the record companies market are often the same-old same-old unimaginative pop crap, or the "alternative" stuff that has basically just become pop 2.0. There's still a ton of great music out there, you just have to search to find the records worth spending money on.
So, Brucee.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Old habits are hard to die.. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the entire RIAA problem in a nutshell and I completely agree that *this* is the root of their problem *and* our problem.
They made a choice. They made this choice when Napster (the old Napster, not the castrated one) showed the world how to share, point, click, and download.
The choice was to hold on to their legacy distrobution cash cow and go screaming, kicking and clawing their way into the internet age instead of seeing the digital tsunami heading their direction.
Their problem now is that theyre loosing their brick and mortar base *and* the digital distrobution war and the only way the can maintain any semblance of their arcane business model is to sue the masses into submission, which of course will never work.
The entire DRM/DMCA/RIAA battle was lost before it began. Those who cant evolve become irrelavent and extinct sooner or later...
Not what he is saying. (Score:5, Insightful)
another perspective (Score:1, Insightful)
Thought control is a crime against humanity.
The PATRIOT act is horrible, but perhaps slightly less so because the contradictions that it presents with the Constitution and with American values are more obvious, thus making the act easier to challenge.
The DMCA takes information control and packages it up as if it were an exemplar of American values. It, too, presents slavery as if it were freedom, but it does it in a more subtle way.
The PATRIOT act takes an obvious frontal assault to our freedoms, whereas the DMCA sneaks in through the back door. The PATRIOT act attacks our ability to speak and act freely, whereas the DMCA attacks our ability to gain knowledge. An aware mind may find ways to operate within the chains that bind him (and even to escape them), whereas a mind starved of knowledge cannot act at all.
This would apply not only to knowledge of one's culture (necessary for one to have a sense of self which empowers him to interact effectively with his peers), but also to knowledge of how to make his computer do useful things (that is to say, software copyrights), knowledge of how to create useful items (design copyrights of all forms), and so on.
Until information is free, the human soul cannot be free.
Re:Wooo! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wooo! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now I'm only slightly older, and there is rarely anything on the mainstream music charts that is anywhere as good as any of those. I haven't changed that much in the last few years. I know what's good and what's crap. I can tell what bands are real and what bands have been prefabricated by the record companies based on focus groups.
If there were some new musical style on the pop charts that I just "didn't get", maybe you'd have a point. However, that's not the case. Most everything I see is a poor derivative of various genres that were already done better the first time around.
In fact, one of the main problems is probably that the big record companies are too conservative and stick with the same tired formulas rather than finding new music directions that alienate old people for the right reasons. As it stands, what they're doing is alienating everyone because it's just crap. It's no wonder CD sales are plummeting.
Re:On behalf of all fair use fans (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wooo! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now you occasionally get a good dance tune out of produced groups: one of the first of these, C&C Music Factory, people are still dancing to, particularly one track of theirs. Did anyone listen to any of their other crap though? And crap it was.
Occasionally a produced popstar breaks out and does their own thing and it actually works. Christina Aguilera is actually producing interesting music now (still pop but so's Madonna)
Re:On behalf of all fair use fans (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Here's where you lost them (and me) (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:On behalf of all fair use fans (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes it isn't the content producer that chooses what format to settle on and whether they can phase out the old. Its the market. Even the music industry can't just drop a new format in place, they have to phase it in. If nobody buys your new encrypted format but they are still buying cd's then there is no money for the massive investment to change all the content over to the new medium. Further there is every reason to believe that all those consumers who are avoiding your encrypted format will turn to piracy to keep avoiding it if you don't provide cds anymore.
Re:Wooo! (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree there's lots of good stuff that's "hard to find". That's the whole problem that the big record companies are facing. Little if any of the good stuff is mass marketed any more. They've relegated all of that to niche players. It's as if the banana growers had said: "We're only going to ship bruised bananas to supermarkets from now on. If you want good bananas, you'll have to go search for them on 2-bit websites and obscure stores near college campuses." If that happened, it would be no surprise if banana revenue went through the floor.
Re:Wooo! (Score:3, Insightful)
As opposed to pop that was produced from start to finish in the 60s...
There was plenty of crap 50 years ago, and there's plenty of crap today.
Re:On behalf of all fair use fans (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait a sec... are you calculating the amount of improvement by just comparing the resolutions differences in the formats? You can't possibly be that simple -- can you? Or do you not remember what it was like to watch VHS? Picture quality was a distant 4th place or lower in my list of things that made DVDs better than videocassette.
1. Do you remember rewinding/fast-forwarding? I mean I hate having to wait for that FBI shit (when watching on my consumer device, as opposed to e.g. Linux where it's not a factor) but that's still quicker than when I would have to rewind the tape because I forgot to the last time.
2. Do you remember how quickly even the best tape would degrade and streeeeetch in certain spots, especially for those favorite parts of a movie which you wanted to see again (this is especially nice for musical stuff: "Blues Brothers" anyone?).
3. Do you remember having to fast-forward to that certain funny scene to watch it or show it to a friend ("wait just another minute; it's almost there").
4. Do you remember lugging around a whole video recorder and TV with you, so you could watch a flick on the train.... wait a sec: we couldn't do THAT at all!
5. Do you remember how much room all those cassettes took up in even a moderately-sized collection.
6. Do you remember being not being able to choose whether to have subtitles on for a foreign language film, and being able to switch the subtitles... even to the language of the film, e.g. for just a little help understanding the language, while still forcing your brain to practice/learn that language. My wife does this with English language films since her English isn't *quite* good enough to follow a fast, spoken dialog, but she can get by if the words are also being shown; for the really difficult parts she can rewind and switch to German or Hungarian subtitles for just that scene.
Oh, and:
7. The picture and sound are significantly better than cassettes. Presumable 3X better according to your calculations.
That's just off the top of my head. I'm not sure how to quantify 1-6 since they were essentially 0 before and 1 after, meaning infinitely better numerically-speaking.
Then we have DVD -> High Def:
1. Significantly better picture and sound (6x presumably, according to your calculations)
and.....
ummmmmm.....
What was number 2?
I'm sorry I just don't see what the big deal is. I mean, sure all other things being equal, I'm sure I'll like the whole high-def thing better than the 'legacy' DVD, but frankly It's not going to revolutionize my movie-watching experience; it's an upgrade nothing more. To use the tried-and-true car analogy:
VHS -> DVD = Horse and Buggy -> Modern car = revolution
DVD -> High def = Toyota -> Porsche = upgrade (an expensive one at that), but just a matter of degree.
But I'm thinking you weren't around for the horse-and-buggy days of home video, to have made the statement you did
-chris
Re:Wooo! (Score:3, Insightful)
Their policies may have failed because of the recording industry acted with a total lack of imagination, but it doesn't change the fact that he is admitting the policy was wrong. They should have known better than to expect the industry to do creative risk taking when it is so much easier and safer to dig in their heels.
The problem with the music industry is that they're playing the same game IBM did with the PC. They're trying to contain a paradigm shift by turning it into an independent revenue stream, and that doesn't touch their existing business at that. You can see it in the ideas of electronic distribution they are most receptive to, which are uniformly inconvenient, restrictive, and priced high enough so that you're really better off buying a CD. The worst idea of all is pay per use, which holds the promise of converting one time sales into ongoing revenue streams. It's bad enough having to think about whether you want to purchase a song once. The only way people would "embrace" that idea is if they had no other choice.
In fact, the recording industry position is much tougher than IBMs in the early 80s. PCs don't really substitute for mainframes, and arguably they didn't destroy the minicomupter business so much as refocus it. They create as many or more new opportunity for IBM services as they eliminate.
In contrast, the current methods of distributing music are simply put, obsolete. There would be no reason to buy a CD if the exact same information could be purchased over the Internet without the expense of producing, shipping and storing physical media. The marginal cost of getting music from the artist to the listener should be tiny. Prices "should" drop dramatically, and consumer "should" be buying lots more music.
But asking the record companies to do something creative with the power that DMCA gives them is unrealistic, because you are asking them to participate in the annihilation of their industry. Sure the process of annihilation will create winners, both the public, artists and companies facilitating the connection between them, but nobody knows in advance who those companies will be.
DMCA is a tool that industry has been given. Like most tools, DMCA could be used different ways. It could aid the creation of a new industry, be the stick in a carrot and stick offer that consumers see as a good deal. Or the industry can take the carrot off the table, and us the stick to squeeze a few more years out of the old way of business rather than risking being a loser in the new game. Which alternative would you expect a recording industry executive to take? To be honest, which would you take in their shoes? It would take uncommon courage to torch your business so you can be part of a new industry.
The lesson of Napster is this: people will go wild for music, if they have a wide selection, convenience, and low prices. Zero is obviously not sustainable for a business, but it is possible for an industry to make a huge amount of money from quantities of value which are indistinguishable from zero by the consumer. Consider TV advertising. The unit value of a single impression is tiny, almost infintessimal. In aggregate it is huge.
The future for music is, or should be, one of nearly constant and ubiquitous consumption. I'm sitting here now typing this, not listening to music. I believe that that is much less likely to happen in the distant future. Those armies of people wearing white earbuds are a mere shadow of what might be. The total value created by music being almost everywhere, all the time will be enormous, and vast fortunes are going to be made off of this fact by somebody.
Or we'll end up with a system where the law has successfully stifled innovation, and consumers inclined to work around the moribund industry, by illegal means if necessary.
Re:Here's where you lost them (and me) (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed, the people who are crying "mine, mine, mine" are the copyright holders themselves. They think they can own a number and prevent other people from using it without permission. It's like a child crying because he taught a game to some other kids and now they're playing it by themselves without him - he thinks he owns that game, but like any other piece of information, it doesn't really belong to anyone.