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Music Media

JWZ On Music Over The Internet 92

Posted by Hemos from the what-needs-to-happen dept.
kchayer writes "JWZ [?] 's current obsession includes an audio webcast. Recently he added to the site a description of what it takes to broadcast music over the Internet. Makes for an interesting read, and a good summary of the DPRA, DMCA, their relationship with the RIAA, and other issues involving music copyright and the recording industry in general. His summary at the end says it best: "What's going on here is that the music industry establishment are absolutely terrified of the internet...and are trying to [?] force things to continue to be done as if turn-of-the-century technology was all we had to work with.""
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Jamie Zawinski's On Music Over The Internet More

Jamie Zawinski's On Music Over The Internet

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  • Re:Question: How are jukeboxes handled? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Diner? Nickelodeon? Who are you, the fonz?

  • An individual bone is not "property" (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Property is the extension of direct individual or collective ownership through legal systems and police power to an extensively enforced indirect regulation of access to goods.

    Through collective and kinship based systems of ownership peasants might have said "this field is where we grow wheat" and hunter-gatherers might have said "this territory is where we hunt deer and gather berries". However, since the premise was collective ownership of the resource and the enforcement (against encroachment or competitors) was rarely necessary, the property system was not "pernicious" and did not needlessly restrict access (in other words the property system was "underdeveloped" as mainstream economic anthropologists might put it). This was a functional arrangement because restriction of access is costly process (it is costly to us as well but our price system does not convey the cost of property very well - prices are instead viewed as the cost of production of which enforced property relations are a less visible part of th total).

    Since we are all abstract individuals now (corporations included - they got to be legal "persons" even before women did in some parts of the world!) and there is a vast apparatus for protecting "private" property that extends far beyond direct ownership, the above points may be moot. But to return to your metaphor, if a dog were to conceive of its bone as "property" in an analogous sense to the concept of property as it operates in contemporary capitalist societies, then the bone the dog was chewing on would be relatively unimportant.

    More important would be the dog's claim that as the legally entitled executive officer of the current corporate form of the first prehistoric wolf pack in the region to devise a method for extracting marrow from moose rib bones, all dogs chewing on bones within the legal jurisdiction of must license said technique and submit payment to him/her or face legal action. Presumably payment would be accepted in a currency format acceptable to modern dogs: kibbles possibly.

    After all songs have been around since proto-humans first needed to signal one another on hunting excursions on the Serengeti (it is theorized that as a species we first sang before talking). Currently though songs and music can be conceived of as property and can be paid for in modern currencies like US dollars. The "industry" would like us to believe there is no other way to compensate artists. Surely one of their arguments will be the "naturalness" of property relations. Presumably if they could even understand a "critique of property" they would respond that it may have taken 100,000 years to devise an enforceable property system for music but that property over music is no less "natural" than property over other goods, ideas, services, etc.

  • I think you'll find the point is that copyright laws are supposed to serve a social good. If we find that compyright laws are, as in the case jwz outlines, serving certain narrow interests rather than the creators, consumers, and society as a whole, there's no reason for society not to change them until they are good.

  • The problem is that it isn't common sense knowledge. Especially not on /., which is infested with more than a fair share or ESR acolytes who believe property is an absolute right.

    As for what to do; well, the FSF have one route, to pervert the intent of copyright schemes against themselves, which is pretty effective. The problem is that large companies are bribing governments (sorry, providing candidate donations) and using NGOs (like WIPO) to tighten things up again.

    At the end of the day, the only way to solve the problem is to take political action. Much as there are plenty of political actions for land reform to elimate de facto and de jure fuedalism when land was the prize commodity, people who are being disenfrachised by the formation of multimational IP cartels need to start agitating for reform. That means letters to politicians, PACS, whatever works in your locale.

    Of course, it requires a bit of effort, so don't count on most people here to join in until you've nearly succeeded, and there's credit to go around.

  • This is a really good point. Current music IP is based on the concept that the means of distribution are costly brick and mortar facilities- when the cost of distribution drops so sharply some kind of change becomes necessary, but when this is combined with continued attempts to charge money on the now effortless distribution, change becomes irresistible.

    Completely eliminate the income for the 'media' that is now equal to the cost of flipping a bunch of bits from 1 to 0, and the current music industry has _no_ model for income, yet a market remains for some kind of product, and that's not going to change- people treat music like it was a _staple_, I've seen people rating it right up there with food and water as necessities for their existence.

    That said- as a previous resident of mp3.com's indie artist community I can tell you that ubitiquous music does NOT equal the current industry. It's not that places like mp3.com only have poor music- there's a mix, from the awful to the phenomenal. A lot of the stuff there is quirky but appealing- sort of unprofessional but honest. Some of it is fully 'label quality' in every sense, particularly for genres with poor record label support in the first place.

    The problem is sorting through all that, and it's a problem few music listeners want to deal with. As technology advances it'll become easier to do this- but we're still talking about traditional music business models, in a way.

    The thing is, musicians are not wholly reliant on IP. The biz is, but for all that IP, typically several to a lot of musicians, engineers, techs got together and produced the music that you listen to. The work they put in, to do that, is what can be charged for- and if the major label biz goes down the tubes and the world is rendered 'musicless', there will be immediate demand for something new. People won't sit around copying old music back and forth on Napster forever- they'll inevitably start to wonder what else is out there. That's the point where a performer- or studio player, or engineer- can start to earn possibly a quite respectable wage for practicing their specialised craft. If you need a guitar solo on a song you can't just hire a guy off the street- you seek out someone with that skill, and it makes a difference who you pick. You'll want someone who's got time to do the work, who you can afford, who can do just the right solo, who can work with your requirements.

    It's really not that different from, say, hiring a web design professional. You could fake doing that in Frontpage or Word but it would be _awful_. How many people really need to produce- not read, _produce_- a really professional webpage? And yet the skills are in demand and it's commonly accepted that the most skilled performers get paid handsomely.

    Get rid of the existing music industry and you'll see similar conditions in music. Currently things are so distorted by weird expectations and ruthless control of the means of distribution and publicity that there's little correlation between skilled music performers and wealth, but in the computer industry (particularly Web stuff- much of which is effectively public domain and a matter of taste), there is that correlation. Kill the existing industry and leave nothing but rampant 'piracy' in its place and it will quickly become more feasible for skilled musicians to practice their trade and earn money, just like web designers, on the basis of their skill.

  • That condition is for a web broadcast license, not a radio broadcast license. ASCAP, etc. are worried about the ability to make high-quality copies. To their mind, the loss in quality that happens because of the conversion to radio frequencies makes the copies you get non high quality.


    ...phil

  • Eligible Non-subscription Transmission question (Score:3)

    by Stormie ( 708 ) on Wednesday November 08, 2000 @06:09AM (#638053) Homepage

    Hey, does anyone know how similar those rules on Eligible Non-subscription Transmissions are to what "real" (ie, non-internet) radio stations have to abide by?

    I'm talking about the "In a three hour period, you can't play more than three tracks from a given album, and no more than two consecutively" and "In a three hour period, you can't play more than four tracks by a given artist, and no more than three consecutively" restrictions.

    Because, on Australian radio I've heard some great specials on particular artists, where many many more than 4 tracks get played in 3 hours. I've heard new albums played in full. So obviously APRA (the Australian version of ASCAP) doesn't enforce such conditions. I'd hate to think that radio stations in the USA missed out on the chance of such quality programming because of these rules..

  • The century has yet to turn.

    Obviously, that depends on which century you're talking about :-) The century from 1891 to 1990 turned a decade or so ago. But yes, by the conventional usage of the word, it'll turn at the end of next month (even if common usage implies it turned 11 months ago).

    Tet (currently tearning his hair out trying to kick dg_xtrace(2) into giving an accurate return value for a traced process' system calls -- anyone with DG/UX knowledge, please help!).

  • I fail to understand why we should pay attention to anything this troublemaker has to say.

    Maybe because he wrote up a very handy little summary of the legalities of running your own webcast? I don't think his hacker-status is really relevant to the article.
  • Thanks - My mix is now number 1 again!
  • Justin Frankel was impressed enough to copy the idea and create shoutcast ;-)

  • Hmmm lets see - isn't is possible to post uuencoded mp3 data in DNS records???

    You could stream audio using a shitload of Digs...

  • Try Making DJ Mixes at Myplay.com (Score:3)

    by szyzyg ( 7313 ) on Wednesday November 08, 2000 @05:59AM (#638060)
    They let you 'legally' share music across accounts by making 'DJ Mixes' - Virtual compilation tapes of you favourite stuff which anyone can listen to. (One of the reasons why myplay.com was always better than my.mp3.com ;-)

    The thing is they've clearly gone for the basic compulsory license because they have a rules checker which enforce DMCA compliance and tell you when your sequencing is illegal, it'll even fix it for you.

    People should try it out because it's a nice working example of the DMCA sequencing rules in action.

    (and you can also go listen to my latest 'mix' at
    http://www.myplay.com/mp/playlist/now_playing.js p?plid=312651&start=1)

  • Re:What you need (Score:4)

    by szyzyg ( 7313 ) on Wednesday November 08, 2000 @06:14AM (#638061)
    Streaming over the internet is even easier...
    - my first server went something like this...

    soundcard -> mp3encoder -> file.mp3

    then in my cgi-bin directory I had

    #!/bin/sh
    echo "Content-Type: audio/mpeg"
    echo
    tail -f file.mp3

  • Standard libertarian property theory, derived from John Locke, primarily, though it has earlier antecedents. Its a deontological ethics in which humans have certain "natural" rights (its not clear where these come from: God and human nature are the usual options), one of which is the right not to be coerced into labouring for others benefit. From this you can derive in order that:

    1. Taking something after someone has laboured to create it is essentially the same as coercing them into labouring for you.
    2. Persons can claim unclaimed natural resources by "mixing their labour with them", providing "as much and as good" is left for others.
    3. People are entitled to give away or exchange their property.
    4. Taking another person's property, thus defined, is never justified.

    Of course, there are other ways to justify property, and this one has 2 major flaws. Firstly, its based on a unscientific claim about human nature, and subtly reasons from is to ought in the process. Secondly, no existing property was acquired purely by the mixing of labour and fair exchange. It was all stolen from someone at some point in time.
  • You go into a diner, put a nickle in the nickleodion - how's that paid for? Certainly the diner owner doesn't have to negotiate a licence for each and every recording in there.
  • and you'll see how natural property rights are. Pre-industrial people definitely had hunting/grazing/farming territorial disputes. The idea is to settle it in a somewhat civilized manner where nobody gets hurt. If that fails you have war. Just watch robins in the spring guarding their worm territory. If you want to imagine a world with no possessions join a friggin monestary.

    My information wants to be expensive :))
  • But that (paying BMI/ASCAP a flat fee) sounds like the compulsary license, and a jukebox would violate this qualification to get one:

    "The user must not be able to choose and receive a particular recording: that is, no playing songs on demand."

  • HF (Score:2)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 )
    the old folks home on 75mtrs :))
  • Of course our "rules" are just an orginized way of threatening that someone bigger and badder than you will come and pick a fight if you don't follow them. We prefer to call this civilized, because very few people actually call this threat.
  • The overwhelming fact often ignored when discussing North American tribal societies is that the incredible abundance of resources made most notions of ownership unnecessay.

    Bingo.

    Digital expressions of intellectual property are, for practical purposes, infinite. They can be copied and recopied endlessly, storage is almost free, and bandwidth is improving in leaps and bounds.

    Is there any reason to hoard these resources through legislation?

    - Richie

  • only independent artists...
    isn't that the point?! "independent art", woah, that's subversive!

    art is an expression of someone's soul; i would rather try to perceive the artist's soul than the corporation's lack thereof. (same goes for code, btw.) bring on the renaissance!

    thi

  • There are a lot of ways to promote your band without a record company, Even if you are a world-scale artist, it might be better to hire a PR-firm

    That's a really curious idea... I know a lot of indie artists who promote themselves... but this distinction is interesting. You can get help -- not just agents (who apparently actually work FOR them... some say Flemming and Tamulevich [flemtam.com] are good) -- but PR firms.

    Anyone know how much a good PR firm charges?

    And the interesting issue is: do you work for someone else and build THEIR assetts, or do you work for yourself and hire other people to build yours? With something as important as your own music, the former seems much better.
  • >>And the interesting issue is: do you work for
    >>someone else and build THEIR assetts, or do you
    >>work for yourself and hire other people to build
    >>yours? With something as important as your own
    >>music, the former seems much better.

    >You do mean the other way around, right?

    Oh. Yep. I do.

    That should have read the LATER seems better.

    Sorry.
  • I'm more interested in the new floorplan [dnalounge.com] for the club.. I especially like the "leveling of the bottom floor", something I think is due from my visit there before JWZ owned it. I like some of the ideas, like piping beer upstairs instead of lugging kegs, and a dj/band stage on a half-storey to accomodate trainspotting. If the opening night featured Carlos spinning, I'd make a special junket out there for just that..
  • Is it really property if you can't sell/trade it? Don't confuse territory with property.

    But aside from that, this doesn't really refute the original poster's assertion, that property is a social construct.

    Anyone who claims "natural rights" or "rights by God" is grasping at straws. When it comes down to bare essentials, you own whatever you can keep your hands on, just like in the natural world. The only difference is we humans are capable of organizing rules to determine who controls scarce resources, rather than fighting each other like animals. Society believes in property rights because the average individual believes he has more to gain by them, even if others stand to gain more. If someday this is no longer true, then the system better change, or violence will eventually make it change.

    Ever heard of the feudal system?

    Exactly. ;-)
    --
    Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
  • back in the old days we had MTV for that.
    --
  • Bandwith may be infinite, but creativity and time are still finite. Finite resources must be valued.

    Even with this argument it is only the time of musicians that has value, not what they produce. The multiplying nature of digital media makes the effort of one artist supplying an amount of creativity to one person the same as supplying it to all people. Any value that becomes inherent to digital media will be directly proportional to the amount spent protecting it. Only by enforcing an unnatural scarcity (outlined excellectly on one side by JWZ) can the "music industry" continue to gain profits and guide the musical culture of this country.
    --
  • That will restart the big mp3 file everytime you request it. The tail -f solution only plays new content as it gets encoded.
  • MPEG streams do not have a header.

    You might hear a click for the first frame (which will no doubt be incomplete) but subsequent frames will sound fine. Each frame can even have its own bitrate (that's how VBR works).

    Anyway, this is getting OT :)
  • Albert Einstein once said: "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." By your logic, then, we shouldn't value human stupidity, which is what capitalism essentially does.
  • This is exactly the kind of article I've been looking for - a complete summary on all of the legal stuff that webcasters have to deal with. Every webcaster should save it, bookmark it, or print it out onto dead trees.

    Isn't there a proposed bill in the works that promises to make this all easier for internet radio? Or is that just for fair "personal use" of music stored on the internet?

    One additional requirement of DMCA: if you do take song requests, you have to wait at least an hour before broadcasting it.

    http://radio.quickbuy.com/ [quickbuy.com] - Alternative Rock and Electronic Music

  • >At the risk of sounding like a Marxist, let me point this out: Property is not a concept that we find in nature, and it's not an idea handed to us by God. It is an arbitrary social construct, a scheme of points and benefits that we set up so that all of society can benefit.

    Actually, it IS an idea handed to us by God: Thou shalt not steal. Because is ain't yours. If you can't keep the fruit of your labor, you are a slave. If you can, you are a free man. The Marxists only want to steal, plunder, loot, and pillage what others have built up.
  • From his page about the project to revamp the DNA nightclub.

    Does this remind anyone of another reimplementation project jwc was involved in ?


    Is the DNA Lounge open now?

    No, we're closed for remodeling. And for other things like soundproofing and hiring staff.

    When are you re-opening?

    We don't know for sure yet. We have a guess, but it's too early to make any promises. Stay tuned.

    ``Technology?'' Is this going to be some nerd thing? You're scaring me.

    No, of course not. It is, however, going to be very high tech and cool like that club you saw in that movie that one time.

    So when did you say you were re-opening?

    Thursday. No, only kidding. We don't know when we're re-opening yet. Keep checking this web site, or subscribe to the announcement list, and we'll let you know a date as soon as we know.
  • The idea that "primitive people" don't have any concept of property is entirely the product of guiltdriven fantasies of western intellectuals.

    Just go there and try to take stuff if you don't believe me.

    These people had and have concepts of property, just like any other people. It's true that many nomadic people don't have the concept of ownership of land, when it's available in abundance. It's just too cheap to meter. That doesn't mean that they don't consider horses, tools, food etc to be personal and/or tribal property.

    Another display of how fundamental property is to human existence is that most every language have special gramattical forms of words to express property relations, i.e "his", "my", "our" etc.

    You could argue that this notion of primitive nobility and purity is fundamentally racist, but let's not get into that. We're far enough from the posted article already :-)
  • Of course turn-of-the-century technology isn't that bad considering it just turned 11 months ago. Guess that phrase will have to go out of use for a few years...
  • No, my userid is mine. There are many like it, but this one is mine!

    :)

  • JWZ is an interesting fellow.. (Score:3)

    by iamsure ( 66666 ) on Wednesday November 08, 2000 @06:02AM (#638085) Homepage
    From his leaving Netscape, and his neat little utilities he codes on the side, from a nightclub to this little tutorial about music law, JWZ is one keen cat.

    It's nice, and refreshing to see people with high visibility in the computer sphere showing backbone, and talking HONESTLY about music law. Sure, there are plenty screaming "napster, napster", but few break it down this well.

    What we really need to consider is just how fast technology is moving, and how easy it is becoming to circumvent laws, not on purpose, but on accident.

    I look forward to the day when artists get paid fairly, and I can click a link for any song in the world.
  • > The law is one their side

    Yes, but technology is on our side. What should we do? Use technology to break the law! Yes, I am preaching for breaking the law -- the law is old and outdated. Use FreeNet, use Gnutella, use all those technologies which allow us to bypass the law and get or will. The "music pirates" are the natural ally of the free software community: we both battle copyright law wherever we can. If we make that alliance, the free software community wll win because it will have a much larger installed base (how about an easy to use GNU/Linux distribution which comes installed with FreeNet?) and the music sharers will win because there will be more free music. And, eventually, RIAA will lose and so artists will win, because fans will be able to pay artists directly.
  • Wonder if they'll successfully go after telnet, ftp and then CGIs.. laugh.. KILL the enemy.. All of them!!! Even your little dog uucp too.
  • Unfortunately, unless congress passes leglislation that prohibits the restrictions quickly being imposed on the internet by entertainment industries (limit( 1/x: x -> infinity)), our civil society will let the Music industry do whatever they want with their copyrights and licenses.

    The law is on their side. The record company's had all the artists first borns signed over, and the atrotious "what if's" can scare enough business people (across most industries) to support legislation that enhances copyright restriction in the new digital age.

    On the one hand we have the Wild Wild Web, which is still lawless, and vandels can run around anonymously producing whatever mischivousness (or lawlessness) that they desire. For example: Kiddi pr0n, nuclear bomb blue prints, pirated software (including music), DOS attacks, generally accessible objectionable material by minors...

    The average person, when faced with these might get a little scared and say, "oh yeah, we should try and stop those". In the next decade or two, we're going to see the Internet infultrate our lives, which will require it's regulation. Sadly, we, the techni's, will be a minority influence on what we will and will not be allowed to do on the global network. Most likely, there will be licenses, jailable laws, monitors at every node, etc.

    The regulations involving copyrighted music distribution on the net are really too soon to see the outcome. On the one hand, hands off government (aside from contractual enforcement), will allow the music industry to keep their cash cow. I don't think the general public is all too concerned if one industry looses revenue, but as with the above, I think the general public is concerned with autonomy and security on the internet - They'll vote on what-ever they have to.. Or whatever they're made to believe that they have to.

    History would suggest that the net is going to become beurocratic to the point of unproductivity. The "Free lunch" we've been given will be abused and spoiled for the whole lot of us. Industry will win, resistance will be futile, you know, the whole bit. Might as well enjoy it while it lasts. :) Key point, keep a low profile. I can't believe that slashdot hasn't been flagged yet (with varoius posters submitting 'illegal' links, or saying 'naughty' things).

    Can we form an anti-corporate party yet? Or is it too soon?

    -Michael
  • WRT your sig: where'd you hear that, HF or 2 meters?
  • Thought so. Sounded like something the old farts would say, rather than us "appliance operators".

    One of the myriad reasons I've not pursued Section 1.
  • All five of the major record companies have started aggressive ramps of online distribution

    No. A few songs in some semi-proprietary limited format hooked up to some untried payment scheme does not count as an aggessive ramp-up. I should be able to go to a record company site and buy say 5 tracks for $10 on my credit card in any format I want (probably Windows .WAV uncompressed) from their *entire* back catalog -- every song, every out-take, every B-side, everything. I would gladly pay for this, I've been trying to do so long before Napster or MP3 existed, and AFAIK no record company has implemented it. Right now I have a much better chance of getting the same 5 songs easily, freely, and illegally off Napster. The record companies still need to get a clue.
    --

  • Let me add a little to your last statement:

    "There are a lot of ways to promote your band without a record company, Even if you are a world-scale artist, it might be better to hire a PR-firm rather than be hired by a record company."

  • Property is not a God-given idea (Score:3)

    by fhwang ( 90412 ) on Wednesday November 08, 2000 @05:57AM (#638093) Homepage
    At the risk of sounding like a Marxist, let me point this out: Property is not a concept that we find in nature, and it's not an idea handed to us by God. It is an arbitrary social construct, a scheme of points and benefits that we set up so that all of society can benefit.

    For example, most tribal societies didn't believe in the idea of owning land. Before the Industrial Revolution, the idea of somebody else owning the tools that they didn't use personally was also a bit counterintuitive. Eventually, people in society decided it might be beneficial to let those property rights exist, and they put them into place.

    What does that have to do with copyright? Simple: Copyright is a system that we as a society set up to balance conflicting interests -- for the good of society as a whole. And if the circumstances change, we can change them, too. We should: I'm a firm believer that art, like software engineering, is extremely hard work, and that people should be compensated for it. (I studied both in college, and thought art was ten times asdifficult.) But I also believe that hamstringing new technologies just for the sake of preserving an outmoded system of compensation would only serve the best interests of corporate attorneys.

  • Re:Question: How are jukeboxes handled? (Score:3)

    by fhwang ( 90412 ) on Wednesday November 08, 2000 @06:20AM (#638094) Homepage
    Actually, any place that has public performances of recorded music is supposed to pay songwriting royalties, usually through ASCAP or BMI. (And although this seems like more egregious corporate shakedown, let's note that the vast majority of these royalties go directly to bonafide flesh-and-blood songwriters, and not the record companies.) On the level of bars & restaurants, royalty payments seem to be irregular at best -- many bars have never been asked to pay. But some bars have had visits from reps from ASCAP or BMI, asking them to pay their royalty fee, yes.
  • Now ask yourself this question: would they still be doing this is Napster, mp3.com et al didn't exist? I seriously doubt it. Napster and mp3.com etc got there first, and forced them to pay attention to the online music market. I'm sure they'd much rather stick to their comfortable CD cartel, but in a capitalist society if there's an itch, it will be scratched no matter what.
  • What's going on here is that the music industry establishment are absolutely terrified of the internet...and are trying to[?] force things to continue to be done as if turn-of-the-century technology was all we had to work with

    That's unusual. All five of the major record companies have started aggressive ramps of online distribution, most particularly, BMG, who has allied with Napster. Do you think Napster is 19th century technology, or have you just been completely oblivious to all news in the past 18 months?
  • And the interesting issue is: do you work for someone else and build THEIR assetts, or do you work for yourself and hire other people to build yours? With something as important as your own music, the former seems much better.

    You do mean the other way around, right?

    A good PR firm is really expensive, of course, but if you are, like Madonna (or metallica) it's not much compared to the income from music sales.

    The Britney-wannabes needs an old style starmaker record company of course, but that's just because they are the ones who gets screwed in the end anyway.

  • Oh there is this new thing around. They call it "the internet" or something like that.
    Stopping artists from webcasting their own work might be beyond the powers of even the RIAA

    ;-)

  • The threat... (Score:4)

    by guran ( 98325 ) on Wednesday November 08, 2000 @06:02AM (#638099)
    I've said it before and I'll say it again:
    The real threat to the record megacorps lies not in users downloading songs instead of buying CD's.
    It lies in artists bypassing the record companies.

    A studio can be rented for a resonable amount of money, distribution can be done over the net.
    The only remaining service that the record companies provide is promotion.
    There are a lot of ways to promote your band without a record company, Even if you are a world-scale artist, it might be better to hire a PR-firm rather than a record company.

  • The century has yet to turn. So basically we're left with 1901 technology... in a couple months turn of the century tech will include the internet.

    hmmm, either way the statement doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
  • great idea. but what do you do when the record companies own the radio stations as well?
  • Have a look to the Commandement n. 7 ...
  • I'm not a JWZ fan, but you can't lay your first point on him.

    JWZ forked the Emacs code because Stallman was impossible to work with. I was there. I was involved with the telephone and email discussions between the XEmacs team (JWZ, Chuck Thompson, Ben Wing and others) and Stallman. I tried to find a compromise that was acceptable, but I was not successful.

    It's my opinion that the XEmacs team was less rigid and more willing to change than Stallman was.

  • Jukeboxes have a special negotiated license held by the owner of the jukebox. This license covers the place where the jukebox is installed but only applies to songs output by the jukebox. If a bar has a jukebox, the bar will be covered by the jukebox's license, unless the bar also has live bands, in which case the bar will require separate licensing for that.

    Maru

  • I can just see that happening. So then I guess you could literally say you 'dig' music...


    --

  • The overwhelming fact often ignored when discussing North American tribal societies is that the incredible abundance of resources made most notions of ownership unnecessay.

    So what you are saying that the natives had more access to material goods than we do now? Are you on crack? The very scarceness of resources necessitated their sharing, not the other way around.

    For example, the coastal natives, who did have things pretty easy, definately had the concept of property. The plains natives and the inuit where the ones who didn't own anything. If they selfishly hoarded to themselves, the whole tribe would die, so they were forced to pool their resources.

    Heath

  • Did he mean the turn of the 20th century, or the 21st? Because, technically, the internet/html/etc is "turn of the 21st century technology", and some day 65 years from now, people will be refering to it with nostalgia as "turn-of-the-century technology"

    Anyway, turn-of-the-20th-century technology was wax cylinders, rotograveures, and stereoscopes. I think the recording industry has advanced a little from that point.

  • This article is filled with misinformation.

    It's best to go right to the sources at the Copyright Office [loc.gov], ASCAP [ascap.com], BMI [bmi.com], RIAA [riaa.com], etc. The restaurant info, the who-owns-the-copyright info, etc., are wrong in implication if not in detail.

    And if the legalese is too much, then go here [templetons.com] or (when it's back up) here [tjc.com].

    Dennis

  • The real change in the music industry is the thousands of band web sites that have mp3s up on there own sites and can reach millions in distribution.

    Aren't napster and mp3.com just trying to control and manage distribution like the good old days of vinyl? All small companies have to be nice to people in order to get started. But once they get big and established, then they start protecting what (and who) they own.

    The internet was meant to be a communication network, not a broadcast network.
  • Digital expressions of intellectual property are, for practical purposes, infinite.

    Is there any reason to hoard these resources through legislation?

    Bandwith may be infinite, but creativity and time are still finite. Finite resources must be valued.

  • Anyone who claims "natural rights" or "rights by God" is grasping at straws.

    When was any notion of "natural rights" ever a precondition?

  • Re:Property is not a God-given idea (Score:4)

    by Ars-Fartsica ( 166957 ) on Wednesday November 08, 2000 @06:56AM (#638112)
    Property is not a concept that we find in nature

    I think you want to say "trade" in place of property, because notions of ownership certainly are bovious in nature, while bartering is not (although a symbiotic relationship might approach this in one sense).

    For example, most tribal societies didn't believe in the idea of owning land.

    The overwhelming fact often ignored when discussing North American tribal societies is that the incredible abundance of resources made most notions of ownership unnecessay.

    Were these same tribes to exist in a place like ancient Britain, where resources and land were more scarce, they would have certainly developed a notion of traded property.

    Before the Industrial Revolution, the idea of somebody else owning the tools that they didn't use personally was also a bit counterintuitive.

    Ever heard of the feudal system?

  • You know, it strikes me that what would be really nice would be if artists could just break their rotten contracts, and set up their web sites with all sorts of info, but importantly, links to other artists that they like. This will allow music consumers to discover artists that they hadn't heard of, and possibly like. This alone would take care of the promotion of artists, I think, along with word of mouth and other electronic forms of discussion. Artists works would be promoted in proportion to their merit. A meritocracy, if you will.

    Most important though, is making sure artists can be paid for their efforts. Obviously we want to do this with a digital medium. I think the best way is for artists to provide entire free songs for listeners to try out, and samples from songs that require a payment to download.

    Service beureaus could be set up which collect over-the-Net payment on behalf of the artists in return for allowing download of a song which requires payment. These beureaus would have to compete to serve artists, so it would be in the interest of artists to pick a beaureau that takes the tiniest slice of the cost of each song possible. Make a song $0.50 or something. Forward 95% to the artist, maybe 5% to the beaureau to cover the operating costs of their web site.

    Either that or use Paypal or that tipping site so that people can pay what they think a song is worth.

    This seems fair to me. It can't be that hard to implement.

    --

  • Hey, that's great.

    Does it really work?

    Doesn't the MPEG stream need a header or something?

    --

  • International issue... (Score:3)

    by lpontiac ( 173839 ) on Wednesday November 08, 2000 @06:13AM (#638115)
    Audio streaming over IP has the ability to cross borders, and the second that happens jurisdiction and exactly what laws apply, becomes a less-than-trivial issue. Restricting access to within a country can be difficult and is easy to work around (port bouncer anybody?)

    The Australian alternative radio station Triple J [abc.net.au] does a netcast 24/7, but IIRC they killed that for the two weeks the olympics were on, because people in other countries would have heard news on the Sydney Olympics before their local IOC licensee got to it, and that would have raised hell.

    • I vote with the masses: IOHO, the century changed along with the millenium when we went from 19 to 20.
    • "turn of the century" refers not to the moment, but to the period straddling. We are in a turn of the century period right now, no matter which way you measure it.
    • To back up that claim I looked "turn of the century" up and discovered this definition [dictionary.com] has a Y-mod-100 bug: "the period from about 1890 to 1910"

  • when is the turn-of-the-century? (Score:3)

    by G Neric ( 176742 ) on Wednesday November 08, 2000 @05:52AM (#638117)
    as if turn-of-the-century technology was all we had to work with.

    but, turn of the century technology is all we have to work with!

  • The large empires were fairly economically advanced in biblical times. Payment of taxes to the emperor, being the most simple example of (exploitative) mechanisms that were in place.

    However, the God at that time _was_ the emperor.
    And the God in this day and age is simply an anachronistic metaphor.

    So whatever biblical quotes you come up with can't change the fact that property is not a god given right.

    FatPhil

  • It's all about control (Score:3)

    by Jon Erikson ( 198204 ) on Wednesday November 08, 2000 @06:04AM (#638119)

    Well duh, obviously these organisations are afraid of the internet, they are totally reliant upon traditional distribution and marketing channels to enforce their control over their market. It's hardly a suprise that given the means to implement totally different models they're not going to embrace them with the same fervour we see here.

    The way I see it is that there are two issues here which contribute to the RIAA's crusade against online and digital music in all of its many forms. The first, and most obvious, is that they're not geared to operate in this way, and that it would take a lot of the profit out of their hands if they did. These organisations have built up multi-billion dollar business structures, and they've set them up to profit at every step. But online, many of these steps are irrelevent, and indeed all of the steps for which they are currently required (marketing and distribution being the main ones at the moment) may not be required. They're terrified that artists and customers may directly hook up.

    Secondly, there's the fact that current efforts to implement online music have been headed by such blatent thievery such as Napster and Gnutella, systems in which the only winners would have been Shawn Fanning and co. Rather than allowing the RIAA to adopt online music gracefully, Napster has forced it to act before it loses all control over everything it has ever produced. At the moment, very few people in the music business seem to want this.

    Unfortunately, between the ossification of the RIAA and the damage to online music that is Napster, it's likely that the advancement of digital music will slow to a crawl, and that only independent artists, with little to lose, will take full advantage of the internet.

  • The problem with legality (Score:3)

    by Njoyda Sauce ( 211180 ) <jnjpepper@NospaM.hotmail.com> on Wednesday November 08, 2000 @06:06AM (#638120)
    It seems that from a legal standpoint, we are *perpetually* behind the times. The law slowly drags its feet, and more often than not, it seems that big business takes advatage of this fact to maintain current holdings. For the moment it seems best to go do what you want! However, it's best to do this without getting to popular. If this plot fails due to legal reasons in the near future, the real future will be in independant bands who aren't seeking pay-to-play royalties.
  • Sorry to be pedantic, but the century doesn't turn for another month or so - 2000 is the last year of the 20th Century, and 2001 is the first year of the 21st...
  • "What's going on here is that the music industry establishment are absolutely terrified of the internet...and are trying to[?] force things to continue to be done as if turn-of-the-century technology was all we had to work with."

    shouldn't this article be moderated -1: Redundant?

    nearly every article (and at least ten comments to each article) have used this same argument...
    --------------
  • Consider for a moment the record companies' dilemma.

    On the one hand, they have their existing business model which, though not merely morally questionable but actually despicable, they are in full control of it, and they are using it to make money hand over fist.

    On the other hand, there is the Internet. They don't have control of it. They don't know how to make money off of it. They certainly don't know how to make the kind of money off the Internet that they're making now.

    And if they see what we see in the business dailies, I can't blame them. Companies putting off IPOs. Venture capital drying up. Replacing hundreds of dedicated technicians and staff with two web designers and a rhesus monkey. These are documented and documented [fuckedcompany.com] in a variety of sources.

    These days, people reread business models containing the word 'internet' twice, because there is not yet a set formula for success online.

    This is why they're not switching; they'd have to be fools to switch away from the model they have now, which is extremely profitable. Even if it is despicable.

    The only way they'll even consider changing given the above is to untrench them -- use legal means to make their current way of doing business so unprofitable that they'll grab for another way. The first (and least practical) way that comes to mind is rehabilitating a nation of music junkies. That, or popularize a new form of music that the Old Guard doesn't have any control of. (I hear there aren't many commercial techno mixes. Perhaps something could be done there?)
    ---
  • I think there is a valid point made in that industry all over is trying to hold the world at turn of last century technological advancement. (we're talking 18th to 19th century, or maybe, just maybe 19th to 20th century, but certainly not 20th to 21st century)

    It always makes me think of the president of my company. He doesn't understand why email is important. But someone finally convinced him that we needed email access. So here's what we got: One dial-up account with a generic email address. People emailing employees here send it to that one generic address and put who it is supposed to go to in the first few lines of the email. Our receptionist then downloads and prints out the email each day, placing it in the appropriate mail slots for people. If you want to 'send' an email you write it up, print it out, and hand it to the receptionist with the correct adress and she will re-write it into the machine and send it.

    Me, being the technical person for the company, I finally lost it and told the guy, "No matter what you try to do, you cannot turn the Internet and email into 18th century technology. At some point we are either going to have to catch up to the rest of the world, or we are going to get burried."

    He laughed at me and told me that if the Internet mattered, it would have been around a long time ago. This is the same idiot that told me to "Print out the Internet" for him so that he could understand why we should have a web site. This is real forward thinking on his part. In every one of his interviews he tells people that we are a "leading edge company, that utilizes technology to it's fullest". What a damn joke! Now, if we were a small business I would probably just shrug it off. But we are talking about a company that has done three million dollars in sales in its first year of business. I'm sorry, but that deserves better than the additude he has about new technology. Of course, I'm just the company geek, so what the fuck do I know!

    Back on-topic: If the president here is any indication, until people that grew up with the Internet are in charge, it will not be accepted as "common" or as a part of daily life/business. Sorry, move along....


    Slow moving marsupials and the women that love them
  • In the UK, at least, the Performing Right Society [prs.co.uk] handles this sort of thing. Their inspectors go around to pubs and restaurants asking to see the PRS license, and can levy fines if they find a violation.
  • With all due respect, you're making a lot of sense and your information seems pretty correct, but what exactly is the making you're trying to make. Is copyright good, bad, ugly or none/all of the above?
  • Evil dictators quite often become dictators cause they're scared of what they're trying to dictate. Ever hear someone scream:"Arrgghh, it's scary, kill it!"? My point exactly.
  • In the place where I live there's actually a place (diner) where they have an audio system (nickelodeon) that makes use of MP3's and MP3's only. It can either play randomly or well, do all the other things WinAmp does as well, including a few more. As far as I know they never got in trouble with the law, knock on wood. They did get quite a lot of music from the Net though...
  • Ok, but that's common sense knowledge. There's hardly any need explaining that to the Slashdot crowd, now is there? Question is, whatcha gonna do about it, or is that something I shouldn't ask around here?
  • Start your own band. Anybody need a bass-player?
  • How many signatures does it take to start a new party in the US? Something tells me just the Slashdot Crowd(tm)will be enough already to start one. Now for a name...
  • How big exactly is a century? It somehow seems like a bit of a hassle to start turning things like that around. Can't we just leave it the way it is?
  • There is an almost pompous distinction made often by Slashdot and its audience that the music industry (ie. the 5, eh-hem, 4 majors) have no idea what's going on with this crazy new internet thing and that these albeit dinosaur companies haven't learned anything in the past few years. Well sorry to inform you - they have.

    The idea that..."...what's going on here is that the music industry establishment are absolutely terrified of the internet...and are trying to force things to continue to be done as if turn-of-the-century technology was all we had to work with...." is absolute garbage. Any business enjoys when their task of promotion, distribution and production is simplified. The music industry is licking their lips when it comes to the "new" technologies; it is the ignorant or egotistical audience member that believes their dinky mynameiswhatever.com streaming audio has a chance to foil Universal or Sony.

    If you look at the breakdown of how a record company makes it's living, singles do not even make the radar. Napster is the greatest promotional tool and the labels are starting to realize it. Trouble is, they can't say they realize or else it opens the floodgates for everyone to accept pirated, viral transmissions of their audio content as the norm, even though it is not and will not make a dent in their own sales. Even the thought of encryption hackers making the world's produced music free for all of us no matter what legislation comes down...well since when is the music industry the one we all want to injure? It certainly isn't a great one, it's full of horrible top-heavy leadership and tons of manipulated, exploited, abused artists but at least it's people pushing art, expressing themselves and so on. I personally know the CEO of one of the largest hip-hop labels (Priority) that was bought by EMI, and he is not a cool guy. I don't really like knowing him in fact. But even in his arrogance, he still finds some time to enjoy the music, and I'm not sure he's the first crooked CEO I feel like attacking. What about guns? Where are all the discussions of new "smart-gun" technologies that are actually more dangerous? What about the real crippling topics other than our snide, sarcastic feel that WE Slasdotters and techies and filesharers (oh my!) are toppling the hated industry? I'd rather topple Brown & Williamson before BMG any day.


    1. O P E N___S O U R C E___H U M O R [mikegallay.com]
  • The law slowly drags its feet...

    Is this a neccessary evil?

    Think about the speed at which the internet moves and the mistakes companies make trying to keep up. In the business world mistakes are costly, but you can always try again.

    Mistakes in law are an entirely different kettle of fish. A law is harder to change than to create, think of it as a bad api, once you put it in you have to support it for ever (Linus?).

    I would rather have a slow moving law that gets it right than a fast moving one that failed to think of the consequences.

    And yes I know there are plenty of stupid tech laws, but I believe speeding up the process would make things worse. In a fast proccess a loud (corporate) voice will have even more influence becuase there won't be time to find the quiet ones.

  • I like some of the ideas, like piping beer upstairs instead of lugging kegs,

    Did you know that longer beer lines make for worse tasting beer.

    All the pubs I know with great beer have the kegs as close to the taps as possible.

  • Actually, to any Jew or Christian, property is a God-given right. In fact, in the Bible there was a year of Jubilee, I believe that is what it was called, that occurred every fifty years, and when it came around everyone got the land they lost back, no matter how they lost it.

    On the other hand, I agree with you on copyright. We made the system for our benefit, we should change it to fit our needs, not those of the large corporations. The current system definitely needs to be reformed and I doubt anyone on /. disagrees with that.
  • After reading this article, it cleared up a few things, but made others a little more difficult to understand. I was joking with a few friends a several months ago that we should start up a radio station, but now I am seriously reconsidering it.

    Who thought this one up? Pay for the cd, pay for the right to play it, pay for each time you play it. I mean you are paying for the same song(s) over and over again. Doesn't really make sense. But then that explains why the record companies really want their artists to get air time.

    As for the three hour limit on how often you can repeat songs and such, that explains why radio stations don't repeat songs as often as I'd like. Of course, a couple of years ago a local DJ played the same song three times in a row, just to get it out of the way (he really didn't like the song, but was told he had to play it three times during his shift).

    Eric Gearman
    --
  • When people want something and they're accustomed to getting it, the system should adapt to the new situation. Some corporation's stinking profits should not matter there. Take Mathworld, for example. A lot of people miss that site, and it was for the benefit of research and thus mankind.

    Or take mp3's. It is much easier to download them than perhaps travel a long distance to the record store (although I prefer CD's for the quality) and we already have a huge number of people who are accustomed to getting their music that way. Of course, I realize, the artists need compensation or soon we will not have any new music. Some people, like I, would certainly use a system like www.fairtunes.com it it was well established and usable worldwide. However, not everyone is as honest. (I even suppose that non-mainstream artists would get proportionally better compensated that way than mainstream). One solution, which would eliminate Giant Evil Record Companies(tm) is a government art/immaterial work fund (and people would pay by taxes). But it has problems, like whom to support and by how much.

    Price is, after all, an artificial concept. For material, some kind of "price" is however necessary, because there are limits on how much can be produced (natural resources, manufacturing process) and if there wasn't price, we'd soon be fighting over the last item of Product X or Food Y. For immaterial, however, such constrains do not exist, except in the form of media on which it is stored. (Don't take this like I wouldn't appraciate immaterial works. On the contrary, infact.) In the past, one had to buy the media with the immaterial work, so it was practical to pay for the work with the media. With stuff moving to networks and all, such is not the case anymore.

    The system must change, and a new system devised for compensation for authors of immaterial work, but big corporations are holding on to the past.

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