Why Make a Sequel of the Napster Wars? 280
6 writes "Cory Doctorow has an interesting article over at Information Week about Hollywood's strategy of suing sites such as YouTube. Says Doctorow: 'It's been eight years since Sean Fanning created Napster in his college dorm room. Eight years later, there isn't a single authorized music service that can compete with the original Napster. Record sales are down every year, and digital music sales aren't filling in the crater. The record industry has contracted to four companies, and it may soon be three if EMI can get regulatory permission to put itself on the block. The sue-'em-all-and-let-God-sort-'em-out plan was a flop in the box office, a flop in home video, and a flop overseas. So why is Hollywood shooting a remake?'"
it's generational (Score:5, Interesting)
these old mogul type guys are from an era when you DID solve the problems of piracy by suing someone. because in the good ol' days, piracy was done by some mafia dude with a cd press or vinyl press or a bunch of cassette decks in a warehouse or closet room somewhere, and there were about 6 pirates out there who were making any economic impact on their bottom line: a small group of slow easy targets, and it was easy to get the fbi to help you
now of course, anyone who can download a program and drag a file in to a folder is a "pirate". which is basically every single young, music hungry, technologically savvy, and, most importantly, POOR student... in the entire world
but the old guys just don't get that
the solution?
wait. the old geezers will just die off. the guys who succeed them in the boardroom will know what's up and what's down about the realities of the internet
give it a decade or so. these RIAA and MPAA lawsuits are obviously incredibly retarded. but your complaints about the obvious realities of today fall on deaf old ears
Re:Collapse (Score:1, Interesting)
Back in the days of Napster I would routinely buy albums based on songs I downloaded. I surely didn't purchase everything I downloaded, but I did buy a lot of CDs. Then the RIAA started doing its insane routine, and I became less interested in doing anything that would bring them revenue. I don't often purchase CDs anymore, and when I do, they're used. I just don't care about doing the "right thing" when the RIAA acts in this manner.
I'm feeling the same about DVDs anymore. That fucking "FBI WARNING" that I cannot skip every time I put a DVD that I purchased in my player is enough to make me feel fine about copying Netflix DVDs (since I no longer purchase DVDs, either).
In short, the companies piss me off enough that I like doing things that they feel costs them money. It's illegal, yes, but when they treat me like a criminal, I oblige.
Re:Curious (Score:5, Interesting)
Not MANY people would upload their copy to TPB, but it only takes ONE.
Something movie distributors have in their favor is their exhibition system. Showing movies on a big, bright screen in a large room with a great sound system is significant added value. If you want to defeat movies as they are, you must defeat the movie theater, and if you want to do that, you have to:
Just an opinion, but most people actively engaged in making commercial movies in Hollywood love the internet for promotion and secondary distro, but no business people, and crucially no artists, are talking about chucking the whole movie theater idea. Working in the status quo's favor as well, is the strong separation between commercial cinema, the clearly expensive star-studded vehicles that can be good or bad, but will generally be at least entertaining, and independent cinema, which can be more profound but often isn't, and is generally actively hostile to the idea of "entertaining" people (they regard mass entertainment in the way FOSS people regard configuration wizards).
Re:Curious (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, anyone who says they wouldn't share is probably lying, but that's not the point. The digital world has already turned certain aspects of our economy upside-down, and it has the potential to make even more changes. Its fundamental nature is to eliminate scarcity, and since so much of our current economy is based on scarcity, current business models don't function well in the digital world.
DRM is an attempt to introduce scarcity into an arena where none exists. It goes against the fundamental nature of the digital world. The deeper problem, however, is reconciling our current way of doing things with this new world. How will film and music be produced when they can no longer be sold like a carton of eggs? I doubt they can continue to be produced in the same manner as they currently are - but that's not necessarily bad.
nonsense (Score:3, Interesting)
I call bullshit. I played "stump the DJ" with a friend who has rhapsody, and it was no less impressive than Napster, at least for all the obscure titles I know that I was amazed to find on Napster.
Re:Curious (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you oppose copyright as a general principle? Without copyright, there could be no GPL.
Bill Gates: It's a total sellout for the government to give away my freedom to copy the Linux kernel to Linus Torvalds. If this means nobody writes free software anymore, than boo fuckin' hoo. I'd rather there'd be less free software and more freedom for me to sell it to people, preferably with a cute little animated assistant to help configuration.
Re:Yeah free trumps "not" (Score:4, Interesting)
Same thing happened with music. No one purchased records and tapes due to all that music broadcast over that free medium of radio.
What trumps everything is the basic building block of a business: customer value.
Companies that figure this out grow.
--- check it out thousands of video podcasts on your phone: www.mywaves.com ---
Re:Yeah free trumps "not" (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with music piracy (and to a lesser extent with web radio) is that you get the higher level of control associated with paid tiers of service for free. This takes away significantly from the added value that owning a CD provides. Whether I pirate a song or buy the CD I gain the same level of control over my music and piracy costs a whole lot less. The reason that the music and industry is scared is that the loss of the ability to charge for greater levels of controls takes away significantly from their ability to provide added value. In fact, it darn well invalidates their entire business model.
That's not to say that this is a bad thing. After all, the buggy-whip manufacturer's business model was invalidated by the advent of the autmobile, and no one is shedding tears for them. Business evolves, and the RIAA companies are filling a rapidly shrinking market with no clear progression to a new business model. Therefore they're trying their best to buy time with lawsuits and intimidation while they figure out what they will evolve into.
Tired of all this "illegal" crap (Score:2, Interesting)
It is perfectly legal to:
1. Record a show on VHS
2. Invite people to then watch this VHS (given no $$$ is involved)
3. There are storage/cables/wires (in this case RG6 coax, whatever speaker cables you have, home theater systems, etc) involved in getting the media on the VHS to the TV for people to watch
Now all of a sudden, it's illegal to:
1. Record a show on HD (hard drive)
2. Invite people to then watch (download) from this HD (given no $$$ is involved)
3. There are storage/cables/wires (in this case CAT5, fiber, routers, etc) involved in getting the media on the HD to the computer monitor for people to watch
EXACT same concept, and it was ruled in courts a LONG ass time ago (before Internet was popular) that scenario #1 is perfectly legal. So why the hell isn't scenario #2 legal? You can not have a double standard, and that's exactly what we have.
And do not say scenario #1 is "analog" and scenario #2 is "digital" as being the reason for them to be legal and illegal, cause that's a crock too. VCRs have S-Video output (I do believe that's "digital"?). If you record from satellite (digital) or digital cable, well, that's digital, and that's legal.
The big problem (Score:5, Interesting)
In the 20th century, when culture in the US, at least, was much more homogenic, stars like Elvis'es, Marilyn Monroe's, Beatles were more universally loved and demanded (paid for). Now, nobody is interested to that extent because there's so much more to see/hear/watch/read. Sure, a few hundred thousand kids may want to pay $5 for the new April Levigne CD, they're not interested enough to want to pay $20 for a CD.
Entertainers are simply not able to earn the money they used to make. Neither are the distribution company. We're seeing an overdue shift down in the amount of money that we are willing to pay for entertainment. Supply of entertainment shot through the stratosphere at the end of the 20th century, and demand merely shot through the roof increased with the population increase and populations joining the modern world (as far as entertainment is concerned).
All of this stuff that this article was about are simply the transitional pains. I predict that in 20 years, very few entertainers of any kind will be able to earn much more than say, a big city local television news personality. The days of Michael Jackson buying amusement parks and Elvis collection gold Cadillacs is over. The days of $20 music albums are over, too. The problem is that the large entertainment industry, as a whole, are going to go kicking and screaming, whether they're actors, musicians, or distribution companies (which are even less relevant now than the entertainers themselves).
The distribution companies do, of course, represent the entertainers demands for more money, of course. The problem for them is compounded by not only are peoples tastes diverging into more and more entertainment options, but people are especially not willing to pay for distribution. They're going the way of buggy whip makers.
What does this mean? It means that in 20 years, celebrities will be everywhere, but few will be massive, massive stars. It also means that they'll be more like actual, working people, and might have to work on their own distribution, if they want to make a good living from it.
Perez Hilton is a great early example of what most of tomorrow's celebrities will look like: organic, diverse, earning money by giving their "art" away for cheap or free, and making money from ads and sponsorships, while handling their own distribution straight to the people.
That's all people are willing to pay for. Why? Well, even if the distribution companies lock it down perfectly, it won't work. The demand isn't there. If you don't want to pay $20 to watch a shitty movie that you'll forget 10 minutes after you watch it, you can hop over to YouTube, and watch some rapidly improving, amateur stuff for free or cheap.
Re:Well (Score:2, Interesting)
If there was no copyright of course, they wouldn't get a penny. The media companies would just mass produce CDs with their music, sell them to the public and keep all the money for themselves.
Kind of like Youtube/Napster does/did in fact.
It's Not About Copyright Violation (Score:3, Interesting)
The Internet allows artists to get their work out without signing away their copyrights to the big media companies for a song and a prayer. That's what scares them. If they're not necessary for artists to make it big, then they're not going to be able to goad those artists into contracts that leave artists with a double-platinum album deep in debt to the record company.
It's about control, not justice.