The Software Police vs. The CD Lawyers 160
guerby writes: "Dan Bricklin's (author of Visicalc) article
The Software Police vs. the CD Lawyers recently reprinted
on the ACM Ubiquity magazine provides
an interesting (and debatable) parallel between the
SIIA (Software and Information Industry Association)
and RIAA (well known to /. readers ;-) strategy against 'pirates.'" It does raise some good points -- and helps explain why groups like the BSA don't raise hackles the way the RIAA does: they tend to go after the large-scale counterfeiters, not kids with a cracked copy of Photoshop.
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:5)
I think we are looking at a future when all music is totally free, and artists will make there money through other channels (live performance, for example). Even better, the recording industry itself might die a death. Just imagine - no more intense promotion of artists, hype etc. Artists would have to start from the grass roots.
One thing I wonder about, though, is books. What if a novel equivalent of napster appeared (please excuse the pun:-)? How would authors make money then? Through publicly reading their works? I don't think so. I can't think of a mechanism whereby authors could continue to make cash, which is why I would be much more scared of the internet if I were a novelist rather than a musician.
It's Not the Money ... (Score:1)
... it's the control. If the RIAA was really interested in making money, they wouldn't be screwing over
while ignoring industrial- scale pirates in Central America and the Far East.
Looks to me like they think their purpose in life is to yank people's chains, not to make money. As they say in the dotcom biz, this is "not a viable business model".
Or maybe it is, as long as they have enough money and drugs to buy off the Government.Re:Napster == Database and Chat (Score:1)
If you're inciting people to commit illegal acts, or if you are an accomplice, then that's how far it goes. In the case of the search engines, one could argue that the primary use of the search engine is not to commit criminal acts. One would have a hard time arguing the same for napster.
Re:Piracy is KEWL (Score:1)
-c
Re:Never understood why DIVX was so bashed (Score:1)
Truth be told, DVD offered more and better for approximately the same price.
Re:Article is VERY flawed (Score:1)
One has to distinguish between the public performance/broadcast of music and the copying a recording of music. The former relates the situation in the coffee house.
For broadcast/performace, ASCAP is paid a royalty which goes to the songwriter. The record company and artist (if the artist is not the songwriter) have nothing to do with it. That is the major corporate use of copyrighted music, and where those royalties go.
For making a copy of a recorded piece of music, there are two groups that need to be paid royalties - the songwriter(s) and the record company that produced the 'sound recording' that is being copied. For the former, the Harry Fox agency handles the royalties paid to songwriters. For the latter, however, there is no centralized agent for collection of royalties to be paid to the record companies. One needs to contact each, individual company and negotiate use of the sound recording. I once asked the individual at the RIAA that deals in licensing why it is handled this way. She stated that due to anti-trust legistlation, the RIAA could not act as a collective agent like the Harry Fox Agency does.
The corporate users of music who employ the sound recording are companies that put together compilations like 'Greatest Pop Hits of the 70's Vol. 12' and the like. They purchase catalogs of recordings from the record companies. There is presently no mechanism to purchase individual songs. Even if you wanted to make a CD that had all the royalties paid to all the appropriate parties, unless you want to purchase a whole catalog of music from a prticular company, there is no legal way of doing it.
Re:Article is VERY flawed (Score:1)
Yeah, and 'cuz of pricks like you downloading illegitimate CD keys of Q3A, I, who've gone out and bought a game that I like (as opposed to pirating a game I just wanna try out) get BAD CD KEY messages when I try to play multiplayer sometimes.
Fuck.
---
Re:Never understood why DIVX was so bashed (Score:1)
I was kind of opposed to the greedy, pay-us-again-and-again attitude that seemed to motivate the DIVX backers and the system was kind of convulted because the "permissions" on the DVD didn't transport beyond your player.
I'd buy into DIVX-like systems if they could embed a smart chip or some other method of "marking" how many uses I had left to give the disc portability.
I was never swayed by the DVD fanatics who were into all the extra stuff that "fancy" DVDs have. Me, I could care less -- I want to watch the movie, usually once, and be done with it.
This is the truth of the matter. (Score:1)
ie, that software piracy helped grow the market, people learn on cracked warez, and when they grow up, buy the real versions, or are employed by people that already have.
Basically, this is so entrenched now that a lot of major companies let you have the stuff for free, either as a demo, or on a non-commercial licence.
There is plenty of evidence that napster et al, like radio, helps grow the market. The RIAA are trying to increase the production of eggs by cutting the heads off the chickens [or insert your own dodgy metaphor here].
The sustainable model for them is to charge a monthly fee (or maybe a fee per gig of download) for access to their databases, and let anyone have whatever they want, whenever they want it. This is the only way to compete with napster.
The probs with napster are uncertainty if your download will finish, dodgy quality or incomplete files, and non-availability of more obscure stuff.
The record companies are able to fix all of that, if they would only grab a clue. The fixes have value over and above what napster provides, so they can charge a reasonable fee for them.
Re:And perhaps the most telling quote (Score:1)
The cow comes on what??
rhino
Re:Piracy can HELP software companies (Score:1)
Re:Speaking of which... (Score:1)
Somehow I doubt it. 230 MB isn't too much of a download via 56K, if it's something you really want. I downloaded Oracle 8 (legally, from the Oracle site) on a 56K line. It was 240 MB. I started it up before I went to bed, and it was done the middle of the next morning.
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:2)
Actually, there's a pretty high volume of "fan fiction", both on USENET & on the web, which is essentially non-paid writing.
Granted, most of the stuff isn't very good
I don't think that many of these people are expecting remuneration for their work (and, in fact, usually pathetically beg not to be sued by the original character creators), but they still keep churning it out.
It's not a useful COMMERCIAL model, but for those people who have creativity oozing from their fingertips, it's certainly one way to get a bit of name recognition for their work.
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:2)
On the contrary.
The democratization of media ALWAYS lessens the quality. The path of music from the Renaissance to the digerati-controlled 21st century is court -> concert -> records -> free MP3's.
In each of these the quality of overall music has decreased. The officials in the court were musically educated and did not admit fluff from their composers. The concert going public were also educated elite, and barely a step down from the court. The early days of the phongraph were also elite (because it was an expensive instrument), though it was not musically advanced until the middle of the first decade of the 1900's (mostly consisting of operas) and not further until the 1930's, where the symphony was first recorded in entirety. The compact disc democratized things further, to the point where you could buy symphonies in tin cans in drug stores, and culminates in free MP3's, where the repertoire consists of youth orchestras recording war horses.
You can also see this in literature. The pre-Gutenberg texts were exclusively for the educated elite (at the time, very elite). The early printing press brought the advent of the novel, but the mass market paperback brought the advent of the romance novel, and dummy books.
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:1)
What he did IIRC is to say that 1) Every time someone obtained a copy of the work, they had to pay him a dollar 2) People weren't allowed to make copies themselves (e.g. if you want to read it at work and at home you have to dl two copies for $2) and 3) If less than 75% of the dl's aren't paid for he stops.
The SPP operates differently AFAIK. With it he would have given the work over to a a third party, and set some price for it (let's say, $10,000). If the third party recieves $10,000, it gives the money to King (perhaps minus a fee off of the top) and releases the work into the public domain, where anyone at all can use it, copy it and redistribute it. If the price isn't met, it's never released; maybe King would lower the price instead. Of course, he would never get anything above the original asking price, and the work has to be completed really, before it can be offered.
King might be able to command high prices - people less well known would of course not be able to realistically ask so much.
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:2)
You are culturally illiterate. How many books have you read in the past week? And I mean real books, not novels, sci-fi, or technology books.
Time to play Devil's Advocate (Score:1)
A future where music is totally free? Frankly, I don't see that happening, because you know the RIAA will try to jump into the foray somehow (the degree of success is something else). And I don't like the fact that some artist(s) would have to deal with the fact that their music won't get them any compensation unless they toured extensively. Not all bands have the devout following of the Grateful Dead or Phish. What do you say to them? "Sorry, but information wants to be free, and we thought your music should be free too. So here's a map of the United States, have fun touring." I'm sorry, but that isn't fair to the artists at all. They still deserve to see some return from their recorded music.
"Even better, the recording industry itself might die a death. Just imagine - no more intense promotion of artists, hype etc. Artists would have to start from the grass roots."
As much as we'd all love to see the industry die a slow and painful death, that wouldn't be good to the artists. Face it, the industry is a necessary evil. Without the industry, artists would indeed have to go grassroots and make their way to the top. How many bands can truly do that? Sure, they could just toss MP3s around, but who are they reaching then? Those bands do better through radio airplay, promotional spots, and videos on MTV (despite MTV's plunge into Teenybopper Land). Who's going to do the promotional work? The artists could, but under your scenario, they'd have a little bit more to worry about.
Yes, MP3s are here to stay, and like cockroaches and Cher, they'll be around for a long time. But that doesn't mean we should dictate to the artists that, just because we can download their music for free, they should have to bend over backwards and conduct their business as per our whims. You'd just be hurting the people you're claiming to help here: the musicians.
--
When is a troll a troll? (Score:1)
Re:And perhaps the most telling quote (Score:2)
Re:BSA? (Score:1)
You mismatched your
--------
Life is a race condition: your success or failure depends on whether you get the work done on time.
Who is he representative? (Score:2)
Although this is a very enlightened attitude, I am not sure the use of the collective term we is appropriate. Even now, there still are software programs like Mathematica or Scientific Workplace that have dongles hanging off the parallel port to enforce their copyrights.
So some software houses are still unenlightened. But do they make less or more profits, I wonder.
Re:reason bsa doesn't go against small-time pirate (Score:1)
LOL!
You might have actually had to have learned a REAL language like C, using gcc or something. :)
--------
Life is a race condition: your success or failure depends on whether you get the work done on time.
Re:RIAA is doing the same thing... (Score:1)
Re:The "too little, too late" department (Score:1)
Software copy-protection hasn't died, it's merely switched to a less intrusive form. Most commercial software products (particularly computer games) have copy protection schemes designed to prevent you from making a workable copy of the CDs, such as SafeDisc, SecuROM, DiscGuard, etc. Most of these schemes revolve around putting weird stuff on a track that that standard CD burners can't duplicate. There are also other techniques like oversizing the CD, dummy files that "appear" to be hundreds and hundreds of MB, physical errors, etc.
Of course, like any other copy-protection scheme, there are always ways around it, the software industry however, banks (and rightly so) on the fact that these circumventions are quite out of reach for the average user. Of course what happens nowadays is one group or another cracks the protection and releases a "copyable" version online anyway. Also of note are new CD burners than support burning Disk-At-Once in "raw" mode with special software, such as CloneCD [www.elby.de] which allows one to make an exact copy of a CD despite copy-protection schemes.
Here's a good site [maxtarget.com] which explains most of the copy-protection schemes out there.
Re:Piracy is KEWL (Score:1)
Sure, what he did may not have worked per se, but his name is known widely hundreds of years later, even to the people that didn't see the animated Disney movie.
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:1)
I don't use napster anymore becuae I know it is wrong. I do not agree with the RIAA but respect the law. It is wrong to steal. Period.
Re:piracy is good (Score:1)
Baloney. Tell them you already have a previous copy of Windows you're going to install yourself, or that you're going to install Linux. Refuse to buy the system if they're going to make you pay for a copy of Windows you don't want. It's worked for me everytime. They cannot force you to pay for software if all you're interested in is the hardware. Remember, the customer is always right. Otherwise, take your business elsewhere.
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:1)
I assume by "real books" you mean works such as Moby Dick, Catcher In The Rye and other such books. These books have become classics because they have stood the test of time. Who is to say that some of Nine Inch Nails works will not be considered classics in 100 years -- of course the opposite could happen, and NIN may be only listened to by History Majors.
However, IMHO whichever outcome occurs, that doesn't make the current Nine Inch Nails fan any more or less culturally bankrupt. Everyone has their own opinions and favorites. BTW one of my favorite books is 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea . It is a classic and it is also Science Fiction.
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:1)
Lets suppose I am a large successful multinational corporation and have spent one thousand dollars creating a widget that allows people to block banner advertising on slashdot.
After successfully creating the slashdot banner ad blocker I finnaly start marketing it. I spend many hundreds of dollars marketing it and people finally start buying my product.
After a few years of having the product on the market, trying to sell it for $4 per copy I realize that I am still in debt. In fact, I have only sold one copy to an AOL user.
After I tally up the numbers, it turns out I have lost over one thousand dollars!! In response to this loss I spend the next three years petitioning congress and donating hundreds of dollars to them until I finally convince them that they should protect my mistake by creating a government granted monopoly for me.
Now, because I have a monopoly on the slashdot banner ad blocker no one else can sell a product that does the same thing. No one else can take my product and improve it. People are even scared of creating similar products like the internet banner ad blocker
Over the next three years, I continue to try to sell my product for $4 per copy. After a total of ten years on sale I have only sold 20 copies.
When I create future products, I take this loss into account and consider that the products that I make in the future should bear the cost of this loss.
Next time I create a product, I decide to sell it for $5 dollars per copy and try to make up my past loss. After that product fails I sell another one and decide to sell it for $6 dollars. This trend continues until I am finally selling my products for $20 each.
It turns out that at the price of $20 per copy, I can create 10 failed products and make a fortune off my one successful product. However, I would not be able to do this if not for my government granted monopoly
My question is this: Should a company that continues to make crap that nobody wants be able to use the cost of creating the crap to justify the high prices of products that people really do what?
Pan lost to the RIAA for their USENET News reader (Score:2)
However, the RIAA hasn't gone after individuals.
Oh, yes they have. I just happen to be one of them. I'm lots of money in the hole due to litigation taken against me from these guys... my attorney's fees alone (not counting the reparations I now owe them due to an FTP site I used to run) were over $5,000.
I would be very interested in more info on this (without you having to give up your anonymoty, of course). It sounds like you were probably guilty, but I'll reserve judgement as I know for a fact that very innocent people have been found against, such as Superpimp.org, makiers of the PAN newsreader.
I noticed this when downloading Pan [superpimp.org] (a newsreader for gnome and the BEST USENET newsreader I've ever come across or had the pleasure of using) -- On Oct 11, 2000 an either corrupt or clueless court found in favor of the RIAA [superpimp.org] against the small startup, simply because some users MIGHT possibly misuse the software to save copies of MP3 files posted to USENET to their local hard drives.
Disgusting. This is like finding against ACE Hardware for selling hammers, one of which might, somewhere, by somebody, be misused to konk someone over the head with (hopefully an RIAA/MPAA lawyer). What is more appalling by this decision, is that this functionality has existed in newsreaders and stand alone programs since at least 1987 (when I first got on the internet). Superpimp wasn't doing anything revolutionary in making their newsreader that hadn't been done for the last 13 years or more, with perfectly legitimate application (such as allowing users to easilly download and save pictures of my vacation I post to one of the bin newsgroups).
We all comfort ourselves that this will be overturned in appeals, but sometimes I wonder if we aren't behaving very much like many Jews in Germany did prior to World War II, telling ourselves that this will pass and sanity will prevail while standing on the brink of a pending age of darkness. I'll believe the optomism when I see an actual case overturned in appeals -- in the meantime, I think we would all do well to look at this entire War Against the Internet which the Old Media are waging (and winning) with a little more realism and concern, and get involved politically and do something about it.
Consoles keep killing PCs .. (Score:1)
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:2)
B. The recrding industry has signficantly decreased prices since the dawn of the industry. In 1906 Red Seal records, which were one-sided, three-minute long records of extremely low fidelity, cost as much as $7 each, at a time when a suit of clothes cost $7, while today a CD twenty times as long, with infinitely higher sound reproduction quality, costs $12.99, even though inflation has decreased the value of the dollar by ten-fold. The effect is a decrease in real price per minute of music of over a factor of 100. CD's have decreased in nominal price since the introduction by about 50% while increasing quality trmendously, during a period when the CPI has increased by over 50% (a decrease in real price of 75% not even accounting for the quality increase)
C. The recording industry does not use high costs of production to justify high prices. It loses money off of 90% of titles, and makes it up only through mega-stars. If it used the high cost to justify the price, CD's of the 90% of non-profitable artists would be a lot higher than $12.99.
Let them suffer (Score:2)
Why is it that capitalism and the 'free market' are not simply meeting the needs of the patrons? I thought the capitalist economy was based on supply/demand? See below.
Of course, the free market says that if it is possible to supply the consumer with what he wants, the market it eventually will.
If the music industry really was a 'free market' we wouldnt see the present situation. Music would be supplied in singles -and albums- pick-your-own would be widely available at music kiosks (burn your own *.wav CD, $xx per track), available via download on the internet (wav & mp3 & ogg ect), artists would be able to license their copyrights to a 'distributor' for a fixed period (or maybe a production run) and they would be able to license to more than one distributor at a time. After all this is the product of the artist - not the industry. The point is simple: the music industry is not a free market.. Abusive copyright legislation. Blatant collusion (ever hear of the RIAA?). The music industry does not have to 'innovate' and adapt to the market - they are organizing the market, to only their advantage. They are specifying the terms to the market. How is this possible? Oligopoly and collusion, price fixing, predatory business relationships (deals with radio stations/record stores/'PR' Firms), purchased legislation (witha a corrupt government(another bigger problem)). The RIAA controls the whole deal. The barrier to entry is beyond approach - and the industry is talking about more consolidation.
This is a free and 'right' business climate? This is a free market? Puhleeze.
I hope the bastards suffocate under a collapsed pile of their own vile stinking greed. Bullocks to the whole lot.
Re:Piracy is KEWL (Score:1)
revolution through stealing? hey, it worked for robin hood ; )
In what sense did it work for Robin Hood? When Robin Hood began his story, John was king of England. When Robin Hood died, John was king of England. Robin Hood changed almost nothing -- he got Richard the Lionhearted back onto the throne for a few years, until Richard got himself killed in France.
And Robin Hood's exploits were essentially a tax revolt, even in the stories. So unless you mean "regained Robin Hood's royal favor for a short time", then no, his guerrilla war against the Normans did not "work."
-BBB
BSA? (Score:1)
</sarcasm>
------
http://207.168.234.207/
Vinnland - A country of True Freedom.
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:2)
Piracy is all about the LACK of RESPECT for an AUTHOR's work.
Did the AUTHOR say that you can FREELY DISTRIBUTE his or her works?? If No , then it is illegal.
On the other hand, am I "stealing potential profits" if I buy a CD (which is the "right" to listen to it), and then lend it out to a few of my best friends?? Morally maybe, legally no.
If piracy is a loss of potential income, then WHY do businesses NOT list it on their budgets??
P.S.How the hell is this parent post a troll?
Moderators, it is a fact that piracy is immoral & illegal. It is not a troll, dumb-@$$es.
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:1)
The difference... (Score:1)
I'm not sure I get the point..
And perhaps the most telling quote (Score:5)
"Special programs"? Does this sound familiar to anyone? Take out a loan and buy a clue, RIAA and MPAA and friends -- people just don't want to put up with complicated protection schemes. Most people probably don't want to pirate material in large volumes. But they also don't have any desire to put up with inconvient copyright schemes (cough, cough, SDMI), regardless of whatever "noble" intentions ("Let's stop those pirates!") they might be designed with.
Look what happened to Circuity City's DIVX. It failed not because it was immoral or evil, but because people just didn't want to have to put up with such an awkward system. And, ultimately, nothing that isn't accepted by the mainstream populace will ever be worthwhile. They can throw out new data formats and encryption schemes until the cow comes on, but if puts too much of a burden on the average consumer (who just wants his movies / music), it will simply never catch on.
After all, the customer is No. 1.
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:1)
Re:BSA? (Score:1)
--------
Life is a race condition: your success or failure depends on whether you get the work done on time.
Re:The difference... (Score:1)
Now, most people don't expect the music industry to go out and set up their own free distribution mechanism, but one of the reasons Napster is popular is because people are tired of paying high prices for one good song on a CD. The large music companies are not providing an alternative mechanism to buying a compilation of songs that they selected for what is perceived by many people as an unreasonable price. In the past, people had a choice: buy the compilation at a high price or copy it in noticeably lower quality (progressing through each generation) or do without it. Now they have a different choice: buy the compilation at a high price or copy it (keeping CD quality or near CD quality, depending on the method) or do without it. The RIAA isn't offering the option (as the software industry has to some degree) of purchasing the compilation for a more reasonable price or (something the recording industry could easily do if they wanted) selling individual songs at a reasonable price.
There's no difference between buying a CD today and an LP thirty years ago. Many people still pay for songs they don't want. However, depending on whether you're a home user buying a new system, an educational user, or a business, the cost (and sometimes the functionality) of software varies.
Let's use Corel WordPerfect Suite as an example. It can cost as low as approx. $40 for students or several hundred for business. Also, there are (or were) different WordPerfect Suites depending on how much one was willing to pay. For example, you could get the academic version without a database or voice regonition for less than Can$40, or the voice regonition or the one with a database for between Can$80 and Can$100. That's for students at college. For businesses, it costs more. Now, WordPerfect isn't exactly the most bug-free piece of software in the world, but the software is stable enough and functional enough to be worth 40 Canadian dollars for many students! :)
If I want to buy one song by a famous artist today, well, I still have to shell out the Can$15-$20 for the full CD. The RIAA and the major music companies are showing *incredible* resistance to changing how they do things, despite what their customers want.
I think that's part of his point. Now, the analogy isn't totally accurate. For example, office suites are becoming more common; you still often have to pay for that spreadsheet even if all you want is a word processor.
The software industry isn't as hated as the recording industry. Even the most hated software companies aren't as much hated as the recording industry.
Re:Because it's ILLEGAL (Score:1)
--------
Life is a race condition: your success or failure depends on whether you get the work done on time.
Article is VERY flawed (Score:5)
There are NO corporate buyers of music, so you'd HAVE to go after the individual. However, the RIAA hasn't gone after individuals.
They went after the "large-scale" copiers (MP3.com) and the "large-scale copier enabler" (napster).
I personally think that MP3.com is in the moral right (although not the legal right) and Napster is in the legal right (and moral right, but I maintain that copying for personal use is fair use).
HOWEVER, the parallel to the counterfeitting shop is the napsters of the world...
The article is flawed, the RIAA is doing what the SPA did... Go after the big boys, and leave your customers alone. SDMI was a bad idea, and the pricing model sucks, but they haven't been suing people for using napster.
Alex
Piracy can HELP software companies (Score:2)
Why were they trading it? The physics lab server is slow, and it's inconvenient to walk all the way to the damn physics building do to some work. SSH/X port forwarding is screwed up on that server, and you need special mathematica fonts, so you can't really use it remotely.
If those people couldn't get a pirated copy, they would just have to use the legit versions in the lab. They can't afford to buy Mathematica, and it wouldn't really be worth the cost, anyway. Wolfram Research isn't losing out a bit through them pirating it.
What happens when they graduate? Wolfram now has that much more market share over Maple and its other competitors, thanks to those "pirates". Once they have real jobs in physics or whatever, they'll probably buy Mathematica (or ge the department to buy it).
Napster == Database and Chat (Score:1)
-HobophobE
how much software does RIAA / MPAA pirate? (Score:1)
Re:The "too little, too late" department (Score:2)
But the intrusiveness is the issue. I don't mind that I'm not able to make copies of my software for friends, or that I can't steal theirs.
I *do* mind having to find a floppy on my desk every time I want to use my word processor, and another for my spreadsheet, and another . . .
*especially* with a laptop!
ANd then there's those stupid "on page 17" schemes. My wife threw out my manual for Master of Orion with the newspapers. At least its multiple choice questions about something that's in the game as well (and you can reboot before the third try and take up a couple of turns back). But the boo, is nearly as big as my laptop . . .
Am I likely to buy another game from MPS? not on purpose . . .
Re:piracy is good (Score:1)
<p>
That's one per month that we hear about. Obviously, not everyone is going to tell us they were looknig for a crack and couldn't find one.
<p>
There are plenty of cracks out there for our stuff. But we release often and don't allow people to download old versions from our site. So, the cracks are obsolete within a week. We know how to play the game.
<p>
-c
Re:And perhaps the most telling quote (Score:1)
- Put in the DVD.
- Select play.
- Movie starts (without credits!).
- Watch it.
- Put DVD in case and return.
Sure it is encrypted, but I can play my DVD anywhere, and it works just the same. No problem. No phoneline connection. No AutoDestruct mechacnism. No "certificate of your purchase" built into it.
Basically a DVD works like a CD. It is easy. If they made SDMI work like that (ie: It plays anywhere, anytime, in anything) it would be a hit. But as long as SDMI ties itself to certain authorized players and carries your name with it, it isn't palettable, and is hard work to play.
Imagine renting a poorly designed encryption/authentication system (tm) DVD:
- Put it in your DVD player.
- Get off the phone.
- Authorize the DVD.
- Phone store because the last guy forgot to de-authorize the disc.
- Re-Authorize the DVD.
- Play the disc.
- Take the disc to a freind's place.
- Go back home to de-authorize your disc.
- Go back to the freind's place.
- Authorize the disc.
- Watch it not work. See big "PHONE: 1-888-DIE-PIRATE-SCUM to get this disc to work" logo on the screen.
- Phone DVD company to tell them that yes, you really did want to watch it on two different players in the same day and did not pirate it at all. Argue with supervisor for a bit. Talk to yourself on hold. Get the identity work done. Wait... etc...
- Re-Authorize it on that player.
- Watch it.
- De-Authorize it.
- Return it.
What a nightmare. I'm not sure how SDMI works, I really don't care that much. But this is an example of what a poor encryption/authentication scenario looks like, and would explain why DIVX failed (it had a lot of similarities to my second scenario).
Re:And perhaps the most telling quote (Score:2)
If it had been more convenient, it might very well have succeeded, despite being immoral and evil.
-
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:1)
Secondspin.com seems to do good business buying and selling used CDs. The record companies are still making record profits (if not quite what they might hope for in a booming economy) so some of us must still be buying music.
Re:But you DO get nasty bad sectors again (Score:1)
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:1)
While not current works, about 3k titles of 'great works' can be found at Project Gurenberg (http://promo.net/pg/ [promo.net])
There is a lot of good stuff there if you are interested in older works that have entered the public domain.
Dongle software economics (Score:1)
-caveduck
illegitimis non carborundum
Re:Piracy is KEWL (Score:2)
Without responding to the rest of the post, you have to realize that this part here is complete BS. First of all, except for CEOs, workers are never paid in accordance to what their work does for the company. There would be no profits for any company if they were to pay in relation to the profit they made off of the product. Sure the battery can't be made if the factory worker isn't there, but it doesn't mean that he deserves a $2 million salary because Duracell makes $5 million in sales this year. Economics just doesn't work that way.
Secondly, do you think that a programmer would make anywhere near $200,000 a year based on shareware? This post talks big, and it's romantic to think about what would happen should our current economic system be turned on its head and completely decentralized, but I hear no concrete plans for what would happen then. Sounds like a big rationalization for plain old piracy to me.
Re:Pan lost to the RIAA for their USENET News read (Score:1)
1.5. Did the RIAA really sue Pan?
Re:The difference... (Score:1)
I'm going to put aside your usage of terms such as "musical moron" or "slashdolt" and assume you're not just a troll with a bit of content...
Let me point out two problems with your arguments. "Stairway to Heaven" is an older piece and no longer popular music. "Popular music." There is a reason it is called this. You may dislike Moby and the Backstreet Boys, but the people who are funding the Recording Industry do. You are not their target. Now, you can almost certainly purchase "Stairway to Heaven" on a single, or more likely on a CD with the "Greatest Hits" from when Stairway was popular... it will have other song that the industry is fairly certain you will like.
The same cannot be done for Popular Music. They release albums (note: AOR is not a standard radio industry "format." Stop BS'ing about an industry you are not in.) for a particular artists NOT KNOWING how well it will be received by their market. Surveys and marketing research only takes a company so far, then it must release to the public.
Many of the companies sued by the RIAA are providing a service that is *obviously* wanted by the market; wanted, whether it is legal or not. The RIAA is trying to use the law against market forces. There is no further argument than that.
Scott. ;-)
The best part is, I'm so far down, I can't karma whore.
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:1)
As it so happens, I posted an essay on Advogato [advogato.org] a few months ago that explores questions like this in great depth. If you want to make money, but forcing people to pay a price per-copy isn't an option, there are lots of other approaches at your disposal; public performance is one, but not the only one. Summarizing what I said about authors: things'll only change big-time if e-books become a preferred way to read. If this happens, authors'll likely have to rely on donations from their readership and grants to pursue authoring full time. This isn't really as outlandish as it sounds, provided the idea of offering such donations can be ingrained as a cultural norm. (I don't think this'll be all that difficult; public TV and radio stations seem to do okay for themselves.)
And now that you mention it, picking up speakers' fees for lecturing or reading works aloud could be a piece of the pie for authors, though probably not as big a hunk as live performance would be for musicians.
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:1)
What if a novel equivalent of napster appeared... how would authors make money then?
Check out the street performer protocol [firstmonday.dk]. Stephen King tried this recently, apparently with success. Also, bear in mind that an actual book is way more readable than any electronic equivelant, and will continue to be so for quite a long time.
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:1)
Having said all that in general context, the specific application to your comment is that you are confusing the issues of wrongness and illegality. Theft is obviously both wrong and illegal, on that point few would disagree. Piracy as defined by the RIAA is not the same as theft, and is not so clear in the minds of many, either from a moral or legal viewpoint. And if there is a question of the morality of the regulations, there exists justification for protests against any regulations that enforce this morally flawed legal position. Some people may choose to protest in economic terms, including as you suggested not buying a product. That shouldn't exclude the legitimacy of using other methods as well. The "ripping off" of companies you complain about should be balanced against the loss of fundamental rights that are imposed on both creators and consumers of artistic material by those same companies. That is one of the natural processes by which even bad laws can eventually be changed.
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:1)
Is it morally justifiable to deny one part of an infinately reproducable resource, not because they are not willing to pay for it, but are incapable of paying the going price for it? If you are poor, yet by no means a parasite, why shouldn't you enjoy the same access to intellectual property that the sleazy yuppy enjoys? I can't rationalize a critique to this, expect to say that if this were the case, the system would break, as everyone pays the price everyone can afford, which would approach zero.
--
Your comment is VERY flawed :) (Score:2)
Let's not forget that the SPA encourages people to turn anyone who pirates software in. They've only shifted the burden of finding pirates to honest users.
Re:Pan lost to the RIAA for their USENET News read (Score:2)
1.5. Did the RIAA really sue Pan?
No. It's just a joke.
Ouch! I fell for that one hook, line, and sinker. I haven't been taken like that since an April Fools joke on the 'net back in 1987
*wipes egg from face*
(I never had any reason to look at the FAQ, as PAN was trivial to compile and install -- mae culpa)
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:2)
errr... reading books on a CRT? yuk! I don't see this sort of problem happening until we get a *good* and *cheap* replacement for paper books (i.e. flat-flexible electronic paper) ...yes, books are expensive too (AUD $16.00+ for a standard paper-back? come-on!) but who would go to all the trouble to "rip" a book? It's easy to do with CD's now, because it's digital, but books are to analog to make this easy.
Anyway, that's just my $0.02 + 10% GST.
Re:reason bsa doesn't go against small-time pirate (Score:2)
---
Corporate buyers of music (Score:2)
Radio stations
Stores who pipe-in music to their customers
Karaoke companies
Music clubs (Columbia House)
Retailers
I don't know how often these buyers pirate the music they use. I do remember some news reports of pirate retailers, in the US and asia.
Piracy is KEWL (Score:5)
digital piracy has the potential to tear down an infrastructure that we see as RIGHT, even though it may not be.
elaboration:
music piracy is a really great thing. i hope it sinks the recording industry. the recording is EVIL. it steals artists rights and property and benefits very few, very successful artists. artists have very little to gain from the recording industry. for instance, even the biggest artists, metallica for intance, don't make more than 50 cents per 15 dollar compact disc. so if they were to sell 10 million albums this would amount to 5 million dollars. not chump change, but FAR below the amount of money Metallica makes every year. metallica makes all their money on tours and merchandising, something that they don't need record companies for.
imagine if all music were distributed over the internet for free, if the music were good enough, people would go pay to see the artists perform the music. much the same way people buy cds and go see the artist if they like the music. digital or physical, it makes very little difference. except that w/o the recording industry the artist would be able to keep their publishing rights, not worry about distribution and not get trapped into unfair contracts for money needed upfront to record albums. artist would get paid for performing (where most of their money comes from anyways) and record companies would go away. sounds perfect to me.
software piracy has the potential to do much the same thing. it would be a wonderful thing if every copy of Microsoft' windows were pirated. or if all commercial operating systems were pirated for that matter. in essence, this would lead to a free OS for all. it's been shown that a quality OS can be made by open source communities with free labor. imagine if your operating system was free and had mass user acceptance.stealing from MS and other is actually a good thing. if ms went bankrupt people would use a free os that would eventually (if it hasn't already) surpassed windows in quality.
stealing applications has nearly as much potential. obviously at some point programmers need to get paid. but do you think that adobe or microsoft pay progammers nearly enough? even if you make 200 thousand a year hacking away in redmond, it's nothing compared to the money MS makes off your labor. imagine if all applications development were shareware based. developers could reap the fruits of their labors much more directly. it's not too different than big corporate farming versus small organic farming. small organic farmers actually earn MORE than by being a part of some huge corporate farming collective that buys their crops too cheaply. a small nimble software company that operated on a shareware model, could compete effectively and make more money for the individuals. because they were relying on a shareware model, they wouldn't have to worry about distribution costs and their small size would allow them to be price comptetive.
think how kewl it would be if there were 20 different small companies that created word processors that all used a standardized (ISO standard maybe) .DOC file. or we have today's 100 mb word process full of bloat
that doesn't even handle it's own proprietary .DOC file correctly.
now i'm not advocating that digital piracy is always justified. nor am i saying we should all go steal cars and computer. what i am saying is that digital piracy has the potential to change software and music for the better.
revolution through stealing? hey, it worked for robin hood ; )
Music has no "learning curve" or upgrades (Score:2)
1. The idea of a software "learning curve" and complex document formats tends to lock people into specific software. So it is actually better for people to use your company's software for free than to buy from your competitors.
2. Mass software sales are largely upgrade based. Even if people get today's version for free, there will be a new version out every 18 months or so. Since in the past the percentage of people with computers was always growing, a little bit of piracy here and there did not hurt as much since there were always millions of new "virgin" computer users for each new rev.
Also, Bricklin did not say this, but I think the software suite approach was largely a Microsoft innnovation to dominate the applications market. In the golden age of the late 80's I would have taken the best of breed WordPerfect, Lotus and dBASE combo over the clunkier MS bundle any day, but that is now water under the bridge.
Now, I know there are people who will say that many people download MP3's and later buy the CD and/or will buy future CD's from the same artist. However, based just on my own contact with other people, I think this is a much smaller percentage than is sometimes claimed.
But having said the above, I think the RIAA and its big business approach to music is terrible. The false saying that "artists won't create if they won't get paid" is a total crock. True artists have little concern with financial gain. Did Mozart choose music over becoming a banker or something? Did he say he would only complete the final act of "Don Giovanni" if 75% of the audience agreed to pay for it?
I know I have said this here before, but the RIAA fighting with strong arm tactics to keep CD's at $15 each will only cause free or low-cost music to flourish. Let me quickly plug the Cynic Project just because I stumbled across it via mp3.com - I ordered his CD for $8 new and got 70 minutes of great music. Why would I now go out and spend $15 at the mall for a Ricky Martin CD that has only two good songs?
Again, I think the RIAA and the big four labels largely suck, but I seem to be one of the few here that think the much vaunted (by the right wing) "invisible hand" of the marketplace will actually come back to haunt them in the long run.
TWR
Re:Bypassing Dongles Illegal? (Score:2)
- Someone else writing the crack: illegal (DMCA)
- Someone serving you the crack: illegal (DMCA)
- Using the crack: legal - until UCITA is enacted, or until you're no longer sold a 'proof of purchase', but sold a license agreement that gets around all consumer protection laws.
Never, ever get into a license agreement without consumer protection backup if at all possible. If the company doing the licensing doesn't like the cut of your giblets, it can point to clause 666: "the company reserves the right to alter the terms of your license at any time without prior notification", revoke your license and leave you high and dry, with no recompense or legal recourse.Two different motives from two different... (Score:2)
Software:
Use: To create with and utilize our computers. To connect to other people, to help grow and make money.
Cost : Anywhere from 30$ to 15 grand for a product that is usually worth that.
Music (ala RIAA):
Use: To listen to and enjoy. That is basically it.
Cost: Under 30$ for a product that is never worth that.
The main difference here is that the RIAA controls more of how we function with the product than any of the software associations. They can control what over-zealous-low-self-esteem-pre-adolescent-girls hear, and sell products to them. They can censor thoughts, ideas, lyrics, good music. All of this controls the consumer market, in order to make more money.
The software industry, however, tries to prevent piracy in order to minimalize losses. Thats it. No mind control there.
Just my 2 cents.
-Fred
Slashdot Interview of Dan Bricklin? (Score:2)
Re:Corporate is just use to paying it... (Score:3)
Here's the interesting points:
The tapes were propritary.
The decks the tapes played on were propritary as well.
The music company owned the tapes, as well as the equipment that played it.
From what I had gathered from the whole thing, the coffee company paid the music service, not on a flat one-time fee, but on a continual basis, due to the fact that the music was considered a 'public performance' Sound familiar?
(as a final note of little interest, my beloved, yet much persecuted opera tape was found in the sanitizer one evening, quite melted and dead. No one confessed to the act, and instead of a decent burial in the trash can, it had to be sent back to the music company for supposed credit or replacement. I never did see that tape again... )
Should I have checked his site... (Score:2)
.. before posting this only one article, /. potential material on patents:
Laurent
Re:And perhaps the most telling quote (Score:2)
...and here's the reason: aside from the (obvious) financial reasons, if a piece of software has an annoying copy-protection scheme, a cracked copy is more interesting than a legal one, since it's more flexible to the user.
I think that's what's going to hurt the RIAA. As long as you can play your CD's anywhere, you'll keep buying them. However when they're going to place so many restrictions as to where your CD's will play, a pirated (unwatermarked) copy will be so much more interesting that you'd even be willing to pay as much for a pirated copy than for the original. Right now, for most people, there's at least a (moral) incentive to buy an original CD. This will soon be gone and I wouldn't be suprised if the RIAA looses money with SDMI.
remember Stephen King, the PLANT (Score:2)
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:3)
Except when you steal something, the original is not there anymore. When you pirate software or music, the original is still there, but the profits aren't. It's not quite the same.
Re:The difference... (Score:2)
I would say that the RIAA is much more arrogant than the software industry and that's because they are not used to competition. Even Microsoft is nice compared to them and that's because they are used to having competition. While the RIAA think that they can change the world to fit their business plan, the software people changed their business plans to fit the world...
SIIA (Score:3)
At least they are FAR more clueful than the RIAA, though.
-- all of those nasty copy-protection schemes of the '80s, like bad floppy sectors
-- now, you don't get none of that
-- serial numbers (think windblows) keep honest people honest, while not affecting the dishonest
-- the industry mostly realizes that the battle against the user is not worth fighting
-- instead, they go after the biggie counterfeiters
And, I think we all know that the RIAA is currently at the top of the list -- silly protection schemes to try and prevent all users from doing anything the RIAA doesn't want you to. Hopefully, they will progress down the list further in the next ten years.......
Oh well. I don't care too much whether the RIAA lives or dies, as long as they don't buy legislation (in the US of A mostly) that affects me. In other words, I don't care much for their music. Classical rules!
-----
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:2)
Your implication (that Nine Inch Nails isn't cultural dialectic) is naive at best. If anything NIN is a perfect example of modern culture. The fact that it's also good music is irrelevant, but they ARE talented and their music IS good.
I enjoy a good symphony as well, but it's just arrogance to imply that all pop bands have to be untalented or removed from culture. I can agree a lot of pop bands are shit, but there's talent in there if you look hard and long enough.
Re:Piracy is KEWL (Score:2)
Stealing software, though, isn't the way to go about it... regardless of how much bullshit has become attached to the concept of "intellectual property," I still feel a strong ethical obligation to honor the author's wishes as regards what I do with his or her stuff. Remember that the same copyright laws that stop Cheapbytes from burning Win2k CDs stop Microsoft (in theory) from stealing GPLed code for their own commercial gain, or re-packaging and selling shareware to people too uninformed to know better. I don't think it's my place to force MS's programmers to work in small shareware shops, if they want to work for an evil monolithic closed-source company that pays well... particularly because it doesn't get me anywhere. I've got a Free OS, web browser, and development environment, and three CDs and an internet full of any other software I might need, all with the source code included... why would I challenge the same copyright laws that protect my code against corporate misuse, just so I could get my hands on a handful of buggy, unmodifiable nonsense?
Shit, man, the revolution's over. We won. BSD and Linux work better for me, and I believe very strongly that the people behind them should have their IP respected by the community at large. That means I also have to respect the IP that went into Windows, which is not a problem for me -- not that I'll respect the license my buddy "agreed to" and refrain from installing an illegal copy of the OS he already bought so his computer'll work again, but that I equate installing one Word CD on ten computers with including "just a little bit" of a GPLed driver in a closed-source product. There's enough information out there that actually is free that there's very little cause to tread on the wishes of the guy who stayed after hours to make your computer run properly.
Howsis for irony: After writing a pretty blatant piece of karma-whoring about how much better Free software is than all that other crap, I click on "Preview," only to discover that Mozilla has suffered some sort of obscure brain damage and is unable to complete my request. Let's see if "Submit" works...
Never understood why DIVX was so bashed (Score:2)
Re:Article is VERY flawed (Score:2)
However, how do you go about stoping games? THey aren't bought by corporate buyers either. And it's places like gnutella that I can get Unreal Tourney or Q3 with about a billion CD keys.
THe best way, unfortunately, to stop piracy now is to make games so big that you won't be able to move them across the internet. And i think that soon we'll be seeing DVD games... that start normally taking 4 GIG installs...which has started to happen recently(full intall of Baldur's gate...hehe)
Re:Who is he representative? (Score:2)
The companies in this case don't come down hard on individual users of pirated and cracked copies because they know that they'd never pay the $2000-plus that a single-user license costs.
"If ignorance is bliss, may I never be happy.
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:3)
Re:The difference... (Score:2)
Obviously, you are very new to music. The main format for FM radio thirty years ago - AOR - was album oriented rock, where the stations played selections from albums. For example, "Stairway to Heaven" was never released as a single, and yet is almost always considered one of the top two or three "classic rock" singles of all time.
Today, in contrast, practically every song played on the radio is available for consumption via CD single. CD singles are also longer, and contain more different types of songs, than the 45 RPM thirty years ago. You are "forced to buy the album" much less frequently today than thirty years ago.
Of course, a fundamental tenent of business that almost no Slashdolts understand, is that you can only buy what business wants to sell you. You may think that you have the right to buy songs without buying the album (if you are so musically clueless that you buy music made up of "songs"), and 100 million people may also, but it doesn't mean that anyone will sell it to them. I bet 100 million people would love to buy a BMW for $1000 too, but I don't expect anyone to sell it to them. Of course, the free market says that if it is possible to supply the consumer with what he wants, the market it eventually will.
Rap Video? (Score:2)
The RIAA should make one of their puppets (boy bands , bubble gum pop girls , etc.) whip up a snappy tune about why you should give the poor RIAA more money. Wait, the RIAA would probably try to sell it for way more than it's worth, and then it would just get traded around illegally. The irony would be great though.
reason bsa doesn't go against small-time pirates (Score:2)
ie: i began programming in 8th grade, but there was no chance in hell i could have afforded to buy a copy of VB at the time....and if i hadn't gotten a pirated copy back then, i wouldn't be nearly as good of a programmer as i am now...
on the other hand, copying music cds doesn't bring any long term benefit to the industry
--------------
Re:As they said. (Score:2)
If you need some expensive CAD software to do your drawing, you should pay them.
If you could do the drawing with something cheaper.. then you should. I would bet that, unless you are an architect or engineer, you don't need the features of AutoCAD or Minicad or whatever you use..
But you DO get nasty bad sectors again (Score:2)
The reason? The PC game software industry is dying. Powerful easy-to-use consoles are murdering PC software sales in every category except first-person shooters and real-time strategy, and that's only a matter of time. Publishers believe due to timing that it's because of the rise of CD-R drives, when it's actually because of Windows and the PC architecture, neither of which was designed to play games and both of which act strangely when forced to do so.
Ironically, the only thing SafeDisc prevents in real life is playing the games on Wine (the bad sector check hacks it's way into kernel mode on Windows), and once cracked (either by automated or more traditional means) that's not a problem either.
The "too little, too late" department (Score:2)
Visicalc blew a fully owned market, monopoly beyond even microsofts, by refusign to sell on platforms it couldn't copy-protect (e.g., CP/M).
They figured this out far too late to save themselves.
While I'm at it, for those not old enough to remember, copy protection died a fast death somewhere around 1990. Copy protection was the norm, so even after you installed on your hard disk, you had to insert the install disk as a "key disk" on many progams (Microsoft business programs were a notable exception, iirc).
Then a magazine (MacWorld, I think) called for a flat-out boycott on any copy-protected software--and was heeded. About six months later, copy protection was the exception rather than the rule.
hawk, showing his age
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:2)
The reason you are wrong, is because the fixed cost of a CD is much more than the marginal cost of a CD (which is almost 0).
Most records costs hundreds of thousand or (for bigger name rock albums) millions of dollars to produce. When you buy the CD, you are paying to cover this cost. When you pirate the CD, you retain value for this extremely costly service, yet you don't pay for it.
If nobody paid for a CD, and everybody copied it, would be negative the cost of production (and not 0, as you claim). This is why you are wrong.
If you think when you buy a CD all you are paying for is the media and the packaging, then buying a blank CD and a jewel case would be the same thing as buying a pre-packaged CD.
BSA? Doesn't priating violate the Scouting Oath? (Score:2)
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:3)
Fin-de-siecle France, or early Nineteenth Century Vienna (the former emerging when recorded music was only in its extreme infancy) were almost infinitely more "cultural" than 20th Century teen culture where all recorded music is simultaneously and instantaneously available, but yet most youths would rather play a Moby or Nine Inch Nails song really loud, than experience anything resembling serious cultural dialectic.
Re:piracy is good (Score:2)
i will say it again (though i know nobody's listening :) ) :
not every program costs $4000. my company doesn't sell anything that costs over $50.
we need piracy... there is nothing negative about it since the people who download warez would never have bought those same warez in stores, hence the companies dont loose any money...
you are either 16 or a complete idiot, or both. i get at least one email a month from someone telling me that they tried to find a crack for our stuff but couldn't, so they are registering anyway because they really need our software.
let me rephrase that for you: people want our stuff. but, if they can't find a crack, they will sometimes pay for it.
it is quite obvious, to someone who is on the producing side of the deal, that "we" don't need piracy.
-c
Not all Wine and Roses (Score:3)
As they said. (Score:3)
Someone else brought up a good point that I think holds a lot of truth.
If we look to the software industry, for example... those little warez dudes who 'hoard' tons and tons of warez... so what? These software houses *don't give a shit*. It's not worth fighting, and they know it. WOuld any of those warez kiddies actually have a reason to buy the software? no. DO they need it ? No. Are they a 'lost sale'? No. Are the people who get it from them? No. Let's face it. 99% of the 'warez' scene are just people who like being part of the scene.. plain and simple. They are not threat to the outside world.
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:2)
Bleh (Score:4)
I don't disagree with Bricklin's ideas, I just think that his article should have balanced his details a bit more. It seems like he devoted so much time to explaining where he came from that he ran out space to explain his ideas.
~=Keelor
Re:There is no excuse for it... EVER. (Score:2)
Define piracy.
According to Lars Ulrich of Metallica, if I copy a live performance, then sell you copies from the trunk of my car, it's not piracy, it's a bootleg & a l33t mu5ik thing to do. But if I make a copy without charge for a friend to listen to, I'm a pirate & stealing his Intellectual Property. (Or is it his record labels? Seems to be something in the US Federal law that says Meticallica's album library is considered ``work for hire" -- unless that law *did* get changed.)
Same applies to software. Only the difference is that software corporations are letting the programmers remind people ``Hey, love us or hate us, if you don't pay for the software you're using, we won't be in business to maintain it."
Now if those software corporations could be convinced to fix bugs before they glue on more features . . .
Geoff