Is CD Copy Protection Illegal? 573
ribbiting writes "US Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va. is asking RIAA execs to explain how they can collect royalties on various blank media at the same time that the RIAA members are implementing copy protection mechanisms, with particular reference to the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA) of 1992."
Glad someone is asking the question.
Boucher Gets It (tm) (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Boucher Gets It (tm) (Score:3, Interesting)
(Oddly, for such a tech-savvy guy, he's not set up for secure credit-card contributions over the internet; most campaign web sites are. I usually send amounts totalling $1-2K a year to various campaigns -- usually because their opponent annoys me -- and I almost always contribute by CC.)
Philanthropy on Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
On a related point, your link has got me thinking about philanthropy on Slashdot. I'm still baffled why this site does not run drives to raise money for various causes - like a "Cause of the Month" type of thing. Kuro5hin has been doing this lately. There are always cause de jours that need money (Sklyarov) and the EFF could be the default. Hell, create a Slashdot poll to determine who gets the money for the next month. Taco could set up a Paypal account and donate the proceeds to each cause at the end of the month. Put the link on the homepage and BAM! donate with a single click, as you read.
Various posters talk about contributing to groups like the EFF - perhaps we can make this a community priority (as well as making it as easy as possible for people to do so).
Re:Boucher Gets It (tm) (Score:2)
Re:Boucher Gets It (tm) (Score:3, Informative)
Do move to VA, it is a very nice state :)
Understands 'Fair-use' (Score:5, Informative)
This unfortunate legal action highlights the overly broad terms of the criminal provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"). It clearly demonstrates the intrusion of these provisions on the ability of American citizens to exercise their legally protected fair use rights,
(http://www.house.gov/boucher/docs/sklyarov.htm
but he also gets that the entertainment industry wants money off the public everytime you listen to music or watch a movie.
As NTIA recognized in its letter, one of the foremost concerns reflected in the Congressional report upon passage of the DMCA was that changes in the law could chill the exercise of consumers' traditional "fair use" rights, and move us all toward a "pay-per-use" society.
Unfortunately, the announced exceptions to the rule are so narrow as to be practically meaningless. Fair use is not protected.
...Congress in its next session should act to prevent the creation of a "pay per use" society, in which what is available today on the library shelf for free is available in the future only upon payment of a fee for each use.
(http://www.house.gov/boucher/docs/payperuse.ht
Wow! That'll teach the entertainment industry to only give him $18,500 when the telephone industry gave him $49,000 (http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/detail.as
Re:Boucher Gets It (tm) (Score:5, Funny)
..I miss the days of good old fashioned Senate floor ass whoopings, we haven't had a good one since before the Civil War.
Oh well.
Right On. (Score:5, Informative)
I can't remember the number of times I've sat here and listened to all the armchair QBs on slashdot say "If I had the chance I'd make a diffrence.". Well, guess what! This is your chance. Get up, find a stamp and do your part. It's easy, even a post card will work. Even if doubt your letter will effect anything, don't worry it's cheap, easy and it will definitly benifit a postal system that could use some help anyway.
Re:Boucher Gets It (tm) (Score:4, Informative)
WASHINGTON, D.C. OFFICE
2187 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
202-225-3861
DISTRICT OFFICES
188 East Main Street
Abingdon, Virginia 24210
540-628-1145
112 North Washington Avenue
Pulaski, Virginia 24301
540-980-4310
1 Cloverleaf Square, Suite C-1
Big Stone Gap, Virginia 24219
540-523-5450
Re:Boucher Gets It (tm) (Score:4, Informative)
Congressman Boucher is a Member of the United States Congress -- the federal legislative body.
UCITA was adopted in the state of Virginia by the Virginia General Assembly, Virginia's legislative body.
As a U.S. Representative, Boucher never voted for or against UCITA.
The record companies worst nightmare (Score:4, Insightful)
But it doesn't have to.
And several million voters got used to Napster.
I doubt that there will be any dramatic steps in either direction, but disallowing and preventing everything probably won't happen.
Re:The record companies worst nightmare (Score:5, Insightful)
And several billion dollars says Napster shouldn't exist and "fair use" is theft.
Who wins?
#include "I_realize_Napster_is_not_equivalent_to_Fair_Use.
Compile Error (Score:3, Funny)
Line 3; undertermined character constant
Line 8; I_realize_Napster_is_not_equivalent_to_Fair_Use.h
can you help me?
Re:Compile Error (Score:3, Funny)
Did you use the Intensifier Disk? If so, turn it 18 degrees to the left.
Do you need a European adapter?
Are you in the Southern Hemisphere? If so, invert your monitor.
Re:The record companies worst nightmare (Score:5, Interesting)
And several million voters got used to Napster.
And several billion dollars says Napster shouldn't exist and "fair use" is theft.
And disillusioned customers stop buying music, so the record companies have the worst year in a long time... Also this attracts the attention of the Senate... Now who wins?
Re:The record companies worst nightmare (Score:5, Funny)
TARKIN: The National Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I've just received word that Hillary Rosen has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away.
TAGGE: That's impossible! How will the RIAA maintain control without the bureaucracy?
TARKIN: The Major Labels now have direct control over territories. Fear will keep the consumers in line. Fear of the DMCA and the New Police State.
Re:The record companies worst nightmare (Score:4, Funny)
TARKIN: The National Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I've just received word that Hillary Rosen has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away.
TAGGE: That's impossible! How will the RIAA maintain control without the bureaucracy?
TARKIN: The Major Labels now have direct control over territories. Fear will keep the consumers in line. Fear of the DMCA and the New Police State
VADER: Don't be so proud of this technological terror you've created. The power to prevent copying is insigificant next to the power of open source.
Re:The record companies worst nightmare (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, I shouldn't really do this, but wtf
Over the past two years or so, over here in the Netherlands at least, more and more "music afficionado's", meaning: "kids who bother to shell out bucks for music other than major label schtick", have been drifting towards more-independent-than-thou electronica, foregoing their usual diet of avantpop and guitar noise etc.
Why? Lemme take a guess
Like it or not, every form of guitar music excepting the most specialist garage thrash that gets recorded on two track cassette recorders as a matter of principle (as you can see, my own credentials are perfectly in order as well
On the other hand, for modern day electronica, all you need is a fairly average desktop PC (running Windows or MacOS, I'm sorry to say*), a cd burner and a few thousand EUR or so to press vinyl copies. No record label *ever* gets involved.
The result is that all truly original music nowadays gets made on a desktop computer, not by some geeky fellows in a mouldy practice space. Why bother with the latter if you can have near perfect sound quality and a near perfect materialisation of your musical vision at a tenth of the cost?
Support these independent electronica artists by buying their albums, eschew major label shit, and sooner or later you'll have turned the entire musical landscape around just because there's no more need for out of the ordinary equipment to make out of the ordinary music.
*Maybe some open source sound app developers should take a few pointers from Win/Mac freeware/shareware developers on how to develop music software? Please? I'd love to switch over completely to Linux, but unfortunately, most audio apps suck
Paying studios doesn't mean selling out to labels (Score:3, Informative)
What the label is providing is knowledge about how to sell music, and how to make music that sells, which is only partially related to how to make music that sounds good. But what they're really providing in return for your soul, first-born child, and ownership of your music is that they're running the business and hiring you to play music for them, like a bar owner hiring you to play for the evening, unlike the computer venture capitalist deal where the VC lends you money, owns much of the stock, but you run the business as well as making the product. Why can't you just buy studio time yourself? Theoretically you can, and if you can market your music successfully, cool. Studios are a lot less expensive than they used to be, but advertising is more expensive, but delivering product is less expensive. It's getting to be time to kick the chair out from under the traditional industry structure.
Re:The record companies worst nightmare (Score:5, Interesting)
I buy my music from used music stores. I get the same wuality music, its cheaper, the money stay locally and it dosn't go to the riaa.
Re:The record companies worst nightmare (Score:5, Interesting)
Several more billion dollars says Napster should exist. However, the PC and broadband industries--both of which collapsed in the wake of the Napster decision--do not spend their billions buying Congressmen. (Well, the surviving portion of the broadband industry does, but only because it has been consolidated into the hands of content owners, who of course contributed their billions against Napster.)
The sad thing is that there was another industry which collapsed, though not quite as precipitously, at exactly the time of the Napster decision. I'm speaking, of course, about the recording industry. All throughout 2000, when Napster grew from almost-zero to 80 million users, IIRC, record sales increased to record levels (yay, a pun!). Sure the economy was good, but 2000 had IIRC the largest rate of increase in something like a decade. (And the economy was good for most of that decade.) Now 2001 is a terrible year for the record industry--which they blame on "piracy", of course, completely disregarding the fact that the decline started almost precisely when Napster got shut down.
Of course there are other interpretations for why record sales sucked this year, e.g. "the music available sucked." But this is precisely the point--the music you heard about sucked. Maybe the fact that it was suddenly much more difficult (not just Napster, but even more the demise of independent online radio, also due to RIAA lawsuits) to hear about new bands and sample their music had something to do with this??
The Napster case was just like the Sony Betamax case...the only difference was which side won. We know what the long-term consequences of losing the Betamax case were for the MPAA--roughly half of their income. The comparison with the RIAA's "victory" over Napster should prove enlightening...
I think you're right. (Score:5, Insightful)
When I had Napster, I logged into its chatrooms, talked with people, and got pointers on what to listen to. Then I downloaded a few songs, listened--and if I liked I often went out and bought a CD. That's how I got intorduced to music like Cat Power and P.J. Harvey. But even when I could find > 160kbps MP3s of their songs, I still often wanted the better sound and the liner notes and images of the CDs.
A trip to Best Buy to pick up some blank CDs or a new PCI card or game often led to a new CD purchase, too. But not any more. I don't get introduced to new music I really like, since MTV is 99% kiddie-pop or shitty rapcrap, VH1 is 90% stuff I heard 10 years ago, and nowhere else is there in my area to get into music and explore.
I think that's what the RIAA bitches don't understand. The piracy angle is insignificant if the side-channels it creates get millions of people to be more enthusiastic about music and let them find the kind of music they really want. You see, it turns a largely indifferent market--and let's face it, unless you're a child or young adult into the MTV sort of demographic, the odds are you're pretty indifferent about music and only buy it on occasion--into the same sort of excited MTV-kiddiez who rush out to buy the latest NSYNC crapola, only about a far broader range of music. For every Britney Spears lover who downloads her whole new album at 128kbps instead of buying the CD, there are several people who sample a few dozen tracks and then get inspired to buy a CD or two when they never would have bought one before.
That's exactly the sort of person I met in the Napster chatrooms quite often. I mean, if they were still in print I'd buy every Cat Power album ever recorded, all thanks to someone at the Napster forums, and I know there are lots of others who'd say the same about an artist they never would have known but for online "piracy."
Incidentally, if anyone can point me to a copy of Cat Power's "Darling Said Sir" from one of her old out of print singles, I NEED THAT SONG. I can't find it, not even in online record stores, and only have a very bad and scratchy MP3 of it at 128kbps. I had to mention it beause I've been searching for sooooo long.
Anyway, I think the nail has been hit right on the head. All those increased record sales pre-Napster shutdown were due to ordinary people becoming excited music lovers and buying music they never would have known about before. The decline in music sales ever since has been due to the fact that no real replacement for Napster's community exists yet--no place with an easy interface that anyone and everyone can log into, with integrated chat functions and real ease of finding almost anything at almost any bitrate. I've tried stuff like Limewire, WinMX, Kazaa/Morpheus--each has fatal flaws. Some lack Napster's nice integrated chat communities. Some only find crappy 128k music and won't let you limit your seaches to better quality stuff. Some is too hard for an average guy to use. Some are just too obscure with too few users. Some never provide stable connections when you try to make a transfer.
In short, nothing is what Napster was. If the recording industry were to be beaten within an inch of its life with a clue-stick, it would realize that what it needs to do is just remake Napster exactly like it was, with open MP3 and OGG file formats freely allowed, with a reasonable subscription fee to be doled out to artists and labels according to number of downloads for each song. If it were a reasonable flat monthly fee and the file formats were open and unencumbered, most old Napster users and a bunch more would jump on it--as I said, the other file trading networks just aren't as good, with all the features and ease and connectivity Napster had. And most people would continue to buy CDs, and just as before a lot of non-CD-buyers would become CD buyers thanks to the music they're introduced to. Let's face it: a real album still usually offers something an MP3 doesn't. Tangibility. Pictures. Notes and information about the band and the album production. Show-off-ability--easier to point a friend to an album on the shelf and tell him how great it is, than to point him to your hard drives.
Not that I like the RIAA, but they could have easily consolidated their power over the industry into the next millennium by embracing Napster and working with it toward a fee-based licensing regime. Instead, by fighting the new media, and trying to impose control under their own unnatural terms, they're pissing away their power and influence. Stupid, stupid RIAA.
Re:I think you're right. (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, I tend to think that the RIAA does understand this and it scares the crap out of them. After all, if the audience splits off into a million niche groups, you know how much that adds to the companies marketing expenses?
It also gives smaller labels (that aren't part of the RIAA and paying their dues to it) access to a wider market. If there's anything the RIAA doesn't want, it's to be relegated to a non-essential, because retailers start stocking from the small labels because consumers are demanding the music from the small labels.
On the otherhand, if the market is only half as big, but can be neatly advertised to in 4 large chunks of demographics, and belongs entirely to RIAA members.. it's more profit.
Re:The record companies worst nightmare (Score:3, Informative)
For music, there are 2 kinds of copyrights:
PA - Performing Arts
SR - Sound Recording
Since most classical music was written before ~1922, there is no PA copyright for it in general; hoever, a specific arrangement or orchestration can be copyrighted. Most sheet music of classical music is coprighted for this reason, unless it's aiming to be as close to the original score as possible (then it would be public domain).
Every recording of classical music (or any music) is SR copyrighted. Since not many recordings exist from before ~1922, you can safely assume the recording is copyrighted.
In Canada... (Score:2, Redundant)
Now, if the RIAA were to "prevent" (haha) such pirating through copy protection, why should they get to double-dip by continuing to collect the revenues from that "tax"?
You can't have your Cake and Rip it too.
MadCow.
Re:In Canada... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:In Canada... (Score:2)
It was to compensate them for the lost revenue when someone makes a copy of a CD for their car, or to take to the office, or makes their own mix instead of buying it from the record company.
Re:In Canada... (Score:3, Interesting)
You mean like the U.S. Government taxing your income, then taxing it again when you invest it and make money? And taxing it again if you use that money to pay an employee?
And its a good question (Score:3, Troll)
What about the Telco (Score:4, Offtopic)
Re:What about the Telco (Score:4, Insightful)
This seems similar to the Bells and AT&T selling the consumer Caller ID, then CID blocker to the telemarketers, then selling caller id blocker blocker to the consumer, then ....
Is this like the star-bellied sneetches? No, really. You could learn alot from Dr. Seuss.
They're on drugs (Score:2)
Or does it? It's still possible to make *analog* copies of cd's, just not *digital* ones. Does the law state anything about allowing analog (imperfect) but not digital (perfect) copies?
Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
The labels are worried that the rise of home CD-burners has eaten into album sales, particularly after the worst year in a decade for the music industry.
These sales figures couldn't possibly shaped by the fact that the RIAA is releasing the shittiest music in a decade, could it?
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nor by the fact that this has been about the worst year in a decade for a lot of other industries, too.
Or does RIAA think themselves exempt from a recession?
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Nor by the fact that this has been about the worst year in a decade for a lot of other industries, too.
Or does RIAA think themselves exempt from a recession?
Well, I don't know about you, but when I am facing the doors of my company closing in two weeks, with no savings, a $2000 a month rent, and a tough struggle to find a new job looming bigger and bigger every day, there is only one thing on my mind...
Buying N'Sync's Greatest Hits at full retail price that may or may not play on my CD player!
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Cases in point: the 1930s were one of the high points of the movie industry. Ditto stage musicals. People would gladly pay a quarter to go to the movies and forget their troubles for a couple hours. The recession of the early 1990s was also when things like Starbuck's got a boost. People who can't afford a new car will spend $4 on a cup of coffee.
Of course, considering movie ticket and CD prices these days, one can hardly consider movies and recorded music cheap entertainment anymore.
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
Re:Hmm... (Score:2, Funny)
Which I guess means you are now owed a $.01 micro-payment.
Hmm...
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile, since the major labels are ALL part of the major entertainment companies, they've figured out how to cross-promote like hell, which may be part of how they are succeeding better than usual at keeping their lame crap on top - people like what they already know and they make damn sure you know about it. And if you don't believe me, ask yourself how many events you've seen on ABC where Brittany, that boy band, and Aerosmith are all present, sometimes on the stage at the same time, and said "Fuck me mickey".
We were warned about this (Score:3, Insightful)
Something just hit me. This is so obvious to me now based on what you just said and based on my previous comment [slashdot.org].
You know how in 1984 by George Orwell, he talks about the "Versificator" (it's in Part II, chapter IV)?
I'll quote it for you:
"The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention on an instrument known as a versificator." - George Orwell, 1984, Part II, Chapter IV
And so here we are today with clone-bands singing cloned songs that all sounds the same. Have you noticed that "oops i did it again" and "baby one more time" have the same music and different words? Doesn't it seem like those BSB and NSync songs all sound the same and are cranked out from the same machine-liked process? There are other songs within (and between!) the boyband groups with the same music and different lyrics. Try finding them. You'll be surprised.
I'm not sure which idea scares me most:
1. In this picture, WE (or at least most of the wealthy countries' youth of today) are the proles.
2. Most people don't even have a clue how accurately our situation portrays a portion of Orwell's book that was written decades ago.
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree that the music stinks, but it DOES sell...
Since BSB, Nsync, Britney, etc are "made" bands instead of real musicians, there aren't issues like 'artistic differences' and the band members getting a cut of the music that they wrote (because they didn't write it.) They're just paid for being celeberties and singing/dancing/appearing in person at events. And in terms of enconomics, it brings in billions for the music labels and sellers of associated merchandise because the 12-year-olds eat it up.
Heck, these so-called 'musicians' are not even artists. They don't make their music. They don't design their costumes or choreography. They just perform routines made by nameless individuals in the Ministry of Art.*
Until the boyband/breastimplantgirl music sales model doesn't bring in the dough anymore, we can expect the industry to shove these groups down our throats even harder. We'll just have to hope that they shove too hard resulting in the groups being "old," "stale" or "uncool" in the eyes of the kids. This and nothing else will bring them down.
*the "Ministry of Art" is akin to the Ministry of Truth and the Ministry of Love.
They will have to choose (Score:2, Interesting)
What they will have to do is figure out if they make more from the pennies they get on those blank Audio CDs (Humm
In this case, the RIAA cant have their cake if you can't eat it
You can't have your cake... (Score:2, Redundant)
In the U.S., the media companies get a large piece of that fee.
That they want the right to collect both this fee *and* impliment copy controls is what is being questioned here.
Personally, I think it should boil down to one or the other. Pay the tax or pay for copy protected CD's. Not that either is really effective, but...
Hopefully, Boucher will raise a large enough stink over this that it will actually cause some changes. Not likely, but there's always hope...
Re:You can't have your cake... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you follow the music industry line of reasoning then copy protection should boost sales by curbing piracy. If it's really as big a deal as they want you to believe then this should more than offset the loss of the tax. Hence by economics of scale, we should see cheaper music and cheaper digital media. Of course all of that is predicated on the assumption that the recording industry isn't entirely made up of monopolistic money-grubbing pigs.
Alternatively we can throw copy protection in the trash and keep the high music costs and artificially inflated digital media costs.
Is there a winning situation for the consumer? Not really, unless you can believe that RIAA represents a fair, economically sound industry and you don't care about fair use rights.
Record companies mass producing CD's is illegal (Score:4, Insightful)
Intellectual property laws have done their job -- they've created a massive amount of stuff -- some good, some bad. But now the system is choking itself.
Copy protection schemes are the wrong target.
Mod parent up! (Score:4, Interesting)
This is exactly the problem... The RIAA/MPAA are the forces driving western culture into the ground, creating generations of bumbling, sex-mad idiots with carbon-copy personalities and giving capitalism a bad name.
Aside from any legal problems, I think it's damned unethical the way today's media giants operate.
Re:Record companies mass producing CD's is illegal (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the main functions of mass media is the perpetuation and dissemination of culture. Although RIAA may be greedy about it, why is the dissemination of culture bad necessarily?
In most cultures, people are willing to pay for reflexive representation of values they hold. Whether it's a poster for the movie Pi or an N'Sync album, both are cultural representations and perpatuations...and people are willing to pay for both. Why is this bad?
Re:Record companies mass producing CD's is illegal (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not bad at all. It's just that the uniformity and ubiquitousness of the content is the result of corporate design, not social interaction.
I am really happy about local and regional culture getting recognition alongside the mass produced stuff. Just because it isn't a worldwide phenomena doesn't mean it's not culture.
In most cultures, people are willing to pay for reflexive representation of values they hold. Whether it's a poster for the movie Pi or an N'Sync album, both are cultural representations and perpatuations...and people are willing to pay for both. Why is this bad?
It's not, really. What's bad is the manner in which cultural representations are distributed and then *controlled* by virtue of IP laws and copy protection and such. Also, in order to mass produce culture, you have to mass market it which means it has to be low-risk, watered-down, drab, inoffensive, and facile. Lowest common denominator. I love culture, but not stuff that's been bleached and de-boned.
So what do you propose? (Score:3, Insightful)
Capitalism may be a poor method of resource distribution -- but there is none better.
Re:So what do you propose? (Score:3, Insightful)
Here are just a few suggestions:
The common thread is that it's better to be a participant in culture than just a consumer of it.
Capitalism may be a poor method of resource distribution -- but there is none better.
Man, you are so, like, missing the point. Even if a perfectly efficient information market *were* possible, I would still be happier with art and culture of a local or regional nature.
Did we do this? (Score:4, Informative)
But don't stop now. Not only should you continue to keep those letters and emails flowing, but you should also send new letters and email praising the efforts of those congress-folk who make a good descision, after all, they like to get a pat on the head as much as the next person...
Depends (Score:2)
This has been my point for a long time (Score:2, Insightful)
well hmmm... (Score:2, Funny)
I wonder (Score:2, Insightful)
who this representative's backers are? I mean, most of the time you hear a politician say something like this to the media, it usually just means that he's fishing for some campaign money.
But maybe this isn't the case, maybe this guy is already backed by the CDR Companies / MP3 Device companies / Any company who doesn't profit from CD copy protection. Because almost certainly, that is why a question like this would be asked.
I think I might cry... (Score:2)
This is very good news. They certainly need to look into this practice, since rights we have been given by law are being taken away by corporations. Though I'd be grossly dissapointed if, as the comments at least make possible, this ends only the blank media royalty.
Though this isn't the only time fair use issues have been brought up. In the DeCSS case the judge was quite unapproving of the MPAA's thoughts on fair use... not that it ended up helping much.
The part that bugs me (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The part that bugs me (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The part that bugs me (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, in Canada all CD media is surtaxed, but the same is not true in the US.
Re:The part that bugs me (Score:2)
Re:The part that bugs me (Score:5, Interesting)
How would you feel about sending some money towards N'Sync each and every day because you use CD-R for daily incremental backups?
Sure, you could use CD-RWs, but that requires you to track them, blank them, etc. With a CD-R you can just label them and toss them into the archive vault.
Of course that pimple-faced kid buying a 100-pack at Costco is probably not using them for backups. But so what? Do I have to spend a week in jail every week because some rapists went unpunished? Do I have to spend two weekends picking up trash, under court supervision, because some drunk drivers went uncaught? Then why do I have to pay this "pirating" tax on media destined to archive my source code and mail box?
Clarification (Score:3, Interesting)
the bargain (Score:2, Informative)
The cost of copying has dropped (Score:4, Interesting)
I was in school at the time, and our University had maybe a couple CD burners for student use, and that was actually later than 1992. Broadband was available only at work and in the computer labs. Our dorms didn't start getting ethernet until a year later.
So in 1992, when the RIAA managed to get the law passed compensating them for piracy, there was a whole lot less digital piracy occurring simply because most people didn't have access to equipment to make digital copies. It seems we now have the choice between allowing copy protection or increasing the compensation to the RIAA if we assume that the 1992 law was just. :-(
Nevertheless, piracy will continue. If I buy CDs that force me to use a special player, you can bet that I'll decide to rip them to mp3s just so I can use XMMS. The RIAA could argue that piracy will continue, and they should be compensated accordingly, though now they can claim that hard drives, memory sticks, compact flash, and smart media storage also contribute to their allegedly lost sales and that these should also be taxed.
Re:The cost of copying has dropped (Score:3, Informative)
Which is sad, really, because there's an unwritten agreement that DAT and MiniDisc recorders will treat analog inputs as if they contained copyrighted materials which the user has no rights in.
In his What's Wrong With Copy Protection [toad.com], John Gilmore says
So much for fair use.
: Again? (Score:2)
Does that really change whether we will be saddled with it or not?
We all know the story:
ConHugeCo does something evil and of dubious legality. Someone calls them on it (like the high tech community's good friend Rick Boucher or the Justice Department, or Ralph Nader), the matter gets talking head time on the enws channels... gets debated for a while... maybe goes to court... drags on a few years... Congress passes a law that would have helped before the fact, but not after... even the media get bored with the story... and finally gets resolved with a slap on the wrist long to ConHugeCo after the issue has ceased to be relevant.
paying for copies (Score:5, Insightful)
The Law: AHRA details (Score:5, Informative)
The main thrusts of the law are:
-No copyright infringment suit can be brought against someone making home digital recordings.
-Retailers have the right to sell copying equipment and media, so long as they contain serial copy protection.
-The RIAA collects a royalty of 2% on copying equipment and 3% on media.
That the RIAA might be violating this law by making copy-proof cds is not immediately apparent from a quick reading. In fact, the definitions of what is and is not a "digital musical recording" do not seem to hinge in any way on the "copyability" of the recording, and the only qualification for entitlement to payments is that an entity is making and distributing recordings so defined.
The point that copy-proof cds violate the spirit of this law is a good one. I think that any argument that the letter of the law is violated is weak, however. Anyone who can determine otherwise would make me happy, though, since IANAL.
As a final point, the fact that a congressman is looking into this might make violation of the letter of the law irrelevant since congress, of course, has the power to create new law.
what about RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, etc. (Score:2, Interesting)
mmmm.... (Score:3, Interesting)
what is going to happen when the people who use operating systems produced by people outside this [microsoft.com] company... aren't able to access the music [zdnet.com] on a copy-protected cd?
"no, i'm sorry mom. you can't use your imac to listen to that cd because the record companies don't want you to."
Why is this so hard? (Score:3, Interesting)
Assuming that you can somehow justify paying a tax on recordable media, IIRC the way it works right now is that the copyright owners get a proportion of the money based on the sales of the particular records.
Records which are copy-protected should simply be removed from the equation and everything should continue the way it is. Why is this so hard?
Software copy protection (Score:2, Insightful)
Thank you, Representative Boucher! (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the text of the Audio Home Recording Act.
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/ch10.html
(Arranged in easy to navigate sections from Cornell Law School)
http://www.hrrc.org/html/ahra.html
(Full text on one page from Audio Home Recording Rights Coalition)
Subchapter C is the part that is particularly interesting in that it sets out the details on royalty payments. You will have to cross reference to the definitions section is Subchapter A, however, in order to fully understand who is entitled to collect payments. Love the method of splitting up the royalty payments!
FINALLY someone is paying attention to this (Score:5, Informative)
The upshot of it is that every time you purchase a digital audio recorder, or blank digital audio recording media, such as audio CDRs, you pay a small statutory royalty into a fund. This fund is collected by the Federal Government, and turned over directly to the music industry. The name of the fund is the DART fund. DART stands for "Digital Audio Recording Technology". The best source of information on the DART fund is right here [loc.gov]
These documents are very interesting. They show how the money was paid out. The law was written to allow all of the major copyright interests to gather together and collect all the money in one lump sum. According to the first report on the page, we find that 99.997% (LITERALLY!) of all of the statutory royalties collected on blank digital audio media (mostly CDRs), and digital audio recording devices went to the following organizations:
Broadcast Music, Inc. (``BMI'');
the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (``ASCAP'');
SESAC, Inc. (``SESAC'');
the Harry Fox Agency (``HFA'');
the Songwriters Guild of America (``SGA'');
and Copyright Management, Inc. (``CMI'')
Copyright Management, Inc. is a blanket organization that represents all of the major record labels.
In other words, all of the people who are raising hell that they aren't being paid when people burn music onto CDRs are being
you got it
paid every time a blank CDR is purchased!
However, nowhere in any of these web pages will you find the actual dollar figures. The reports go to laughable extremes to avoid disclosing exactly how much money we are talking about. For instance, according to the report, for the 1995 funds collected, 99.998034% was paid to the music industry, 0.001966% was paid to one individual claimant, and 0.000614% was paid to Ms. Alicia Evelyn.
I obtained the actual royalty yearly figures by contacting Ms. Evelyn, one of the individual claimants. Ms. Evelyn is a songwriter who, unable to obtain any royalty payments from ASCAP for her work, petitioned the copyright office directly for payment. She read me these numbers over the phone which she received in the course of her research. If you do the math, you'll find that she received a few pennies for her efforts. Literally.
Here are the total amounts collected year by year since 1992. These statutory royalties were all paid out to the recording industry:
1992 $118,227.42
1993 $520,162.84
1994 $521,999.64
1995 $473,592.20
1996 $397,152.52
1997 $969,178.06
1998 $1,978,457.93
1999 $3,551,030.86
2000 $5,285,246.32
So, while on the one hand, the music industry is claiming that they are not being paid when individuals make audio CDRs of their music, yet on the other hand, they are quietly collecting millions of dollars in statutory royalties from consumers when they purchase blank digital audio media.
The key here is that these are statutory royalties. They are NOT a tax. They are described as royalties in the law, and they function exactly as royalties.
A royalty is what you pay in exchange for the right to make a copy. This is the ordinary meaning of the term "royalty", as it is used throughout copyright law, and there is absolutely no evidence that it means anything else in the context of the AHRA.
I submit that by accepting these statutory royalty payments from the general public, the recording industry, and every major record label claimed this money, has incurred an obligation to permit the public to exercise the rights that they have paid for, to the tune of millions of dollars per year.
This is NOT an issue of fair use. This is an issue of consumers receiving the rights that they have paid for.
Kudos for Rep. Boucher. We need more representatives of his caliber with his level of committment to the rights of the people.
Re:FINALLY someone is paying attention to this (Score:3, Interesting)
A royalty is what you pay in exchange for the right to make a copy. This is the ordinary meaning of the term "royalty", as it is used throughout copyright law, and there is absolutely no evidence that it means anything else in the context of the AHRA.
I have two questions: First, does this mean by buying a CDR, I am legally allowed to copy any music whose copyrights are owned by the RIAA? and Second, if I do not record any music on any of those CDs, can I send the RIAA a bill for a refund of that money?
Re:FINALLY someone is paying attention to this (Score:4, Informative)
This is not at all accurate. The fee is only charged on CDR media specifically intended for audio recording. It is not charged on CDR media intended for computer based recording even though it is often used for music.
Also, similar fees are collected on analog cassette tapes, and have been for years. I'm not certain if VHS tapes have such a tax, but I would not doubt it.
On a similar note... (Score:4, Interesting)
BUT...Microsoft's own EULA -- which in their own words is a legal agreement -- states that if the original media is required to play the game (as is the case here), then it is permissible to make a backup copy of the game CDs. To quote:
So as you can see there is a major contradiction here. Microsoft explicitly and legally states that it is okay to make backup copies, but they implicitly state that it is not. Are they contradicting their own agreement here? Is this legal?
Yes, it's contradictive.. but legal (Score:4, Insightful)
Kjella
Uses of blank CD's? (Score:4, Insightful)
How can someone determine exactly what blank data cd's are being used for?
Ask 20 people the same question and you will get 20 completely different breakdowns.
Based on my burning habits, how much should be a per disk gift to the RIAA to cover their simulated paper loses?
If I had a decent vid capture card I would be saving tv shows to cdrom but not yet..
My last hundred burned cd's breakdown to this..
5 Playstation backups
yes I own the originals
5 Dreamcast stuff
not games but emu's, and extra stuff that others have made.
10 Audio cd's of music that I made.
I made - meaning original music. I sequence midi files and record and edit the final product in wav format.
5 computer game discs
yes I own the originals
15 Software discs
Software I have downloaded, like patches, IE updates, MS service packs, plugins, Netscape, driver updates, Star Office etc..
15 Linux distros and software
10 MP3 disks
mp3's that were converted from CD's I own or I created (see above). I use these in my home DVD player and my laptop when on the road.
15 data disks with pictures from my digital camera
5 data disks filled with prOn and car pictures from various usenet groups
5 data backups - various data files that need backed up
3 stuff I do not own..
d/l mp3's, game roms, cracked software etc..
7 coaster - ran into problems copying some of the above.. I could probably make this better but I try disc-disc on the fly first, if that doesnt work I see why (orignal scratched, copy protection that slows reading etc..) and try another method.
Is that 100?
Boston CD Party? (Score:5, Funny)
List of "corrupt" (copy-protected) CDs.. (Score:4, Informative)
Seems similar to Arizonas Cannabis tax experiment (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny thing is, because they had the tax, they had to then create a cannabis license. So, people started applying for licenses to sell cannabis.
When all was said and done, and everything went through court, it was decided that these people who had applied for and received cannabis sale licenses and had paid the tax, could not then be prosecuted for selling cannabis.
So...If I pay a tax on the blank media I buy - a tax that was put in place to compensate the various content holders for "piracy" - does that not then give me the implicit right to use that media for "piracy"? I mean, hell, I *did* pay the tax after all...
Rick Boucher on Fair Use (Score:3, Informative)
Notice he mentions AHRA (Score:5, Interesting)
However, he mentions the AHRA. The interesting part about the AHRA is that it places a tax on certain blank media, and mandated certain copy protection schemes in digital recording hardware. The record companies get the money from the tax. In exchange for this, consumers got some pretty broad music copying rights.
I think the theory he is thinking about is that consumers have bought copying rights via that tax, and so that the record companies can't take steps to stop that copying, since they have accepted the money from that tax.
Re:Notice he mentions AHRA (Score:4, Insightful)
Now you have the right to copy music from anyone who collected those royalties. Those royalties are collected by, among others, all of the major record labels.
Then they turn around and make it impossible for you to exercise the right that you have paid for.
Imagine that you purchased a new car, then went out to the parking lot to drive your new car away, but found that the auto dealer had placed a Club on the steering wheel. Wouldn't you be screaming bloody murder?
The recording industry's right to attempt to prevent copying ended when they accepted statutory royalty payments on blank digital audio media.
Re:No, I guess (Score:3, Insightful)
/Janne
Read, then post (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No, I guess (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No, I guess (Score:5, Insightful)
You aren't free to not pay the taxes on blank media that they want (except by not buying blank media, but a lot of us have legitimate need for CDRs, etc).
That's the real problem, in my opinion. You are assumed guilty without even a chance of proving your innocence.
Re:No, I guess (Score:4, Informative)
Actually as far as CDR's are concerned you are free to avoid paying the tax, just buy Data CDRs instead of Music CDRs. There is virtually no difference between the media, except that Audio CD to CDR burners such as you might have in a audio component system, won't work with the Data CD. CDR burners for PCs don't care.
Of course making a copy of an audio CD onto a Data CDR would be a violation of the same act, but until the RIAA and the recording industry in general start complying, I can't see that they should have any expectation that consumers will.
Why is it that this hasn't come up before, and does anyone know how this act affects MP3's? Should they be considered legal as long as you burn them to media on which you have paid the royalty tax?
Re:No, I guess (Score:2)
Uhm, no, I think you're mixing up two different things.
There's audio-only cd-r's which only work in standalone audio cd burners. These are hideously expensive because the market for them is limited.
The ones you can use in computer cd burners (either the 74 minute/650 MB audio type or the 80 minute/700 MB type older stand alone cd players choke on) are cheaper because everyone wants them.
IIRC, for both you'll have to pay some sort of copyright tax.
Re:No, I guess (Score:3, Informative)
They're getting PAID by us consumers NOT to make copy-protected CDs under an existing law.
The question is whether it's fair to REQUIRE consumers to pay a "tax" to the record companies for the privilege of being able to copy CDs for personal use and then for the record companies to copy-protect CDs anyway. It's a great deal for the record companies at the consumers' expense: free money and they don't have to do anything in return.
If they're going to sell copy-protected CDs, they should no longer get their "protection money" for blank CD sales.
Re:No, I guess (Score:3, Insightful)
In simpler terms, if I buy a CD, and want to burn a copy to keep in my car, that's my right, and the label gets compensated by collecting a small percentage from the sale of the blank CD. What they want to do, however, is collect that money, and by making it impossible for to make a copy, get me to buy another full-price copy for my car. That's doesn't seem fair. They either need to give up the money they collect from blank-media sales, or stop trying to prevent me from making copies.
But I suppose a few million in lobbying money will make it all come out in the labels' favor in the end. My few $$ as a consumer mean nothing in the face of the industry lobby. Won't it be great when we all have our Passports(tm) and can be charged every time we listen to a song?
It's worse than that (Score:4, Insightful)
the musicians listed on MP3.com - where is their cut of the pie?
the indie recorder who got listed on Napster - where is their cut of the pie?
Face it - the money only goes to those musicians stupid enough to have signed a contract with a RIAA music provider. In which they lost their copyright ability to earn the most money from the sale of their music, and in return get less than a penny per song played from many dollars collected on the sale of the CD.
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It's not just boy bands anymore (Score:5, Interesting)
Today I got a review copy of an Oval (raise your hands if you've heard about them
Re:It's not just boy bands anymore (Score:3, Informative)
This happened in Windows ME (work, sorry) *and* Linux.
Re:Worst year in a decade for album sales (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How do they do it? Duh.... they're greedy b*st* (Score:2)
Yeah, you would think. But the record companies seem to have convinced everyone that there is such a thing as a "star". Of course, everybody knows that stars were just an invention of the manufacturing divisions of the record industry giants. They complained to their bosses about always having to change the damn plates on the record press. They said "Hey, instead of promoting 50 artists who each sell 100,000 albums, could you please just have one artist who sells 50*100,000 albums? It would be *so* much more convenient and *profitable*.
So the record companies realized that they could make much more money by having 1 big star and mass producing copies than by having regional music with no economies of scale.
So every garage band and coffee house wannabe still labours under the illusion that one day they will be great. Maybe they will, but they won't be in control.
Re:Send your support (Score:3, Insightful)