South Korean Music Retailers Dying 568
terrymaster69 writes "According to this Reuters feature, 95% of South Korean music retail businesses have failed in the last year. 'While South Korea is not alone in seeing a downturn, the drop has been greatly accentuated and particularly deep because of the country's high-speed Internet access and a youth culture that uses some of the most sophisticated gadgets available.' Is this really a problem or just a natural progression?"
Really? (Score:5, Funny)
*ducks*
This is enough for RIAA... (Score:3, Funny)
They will start a fresh more intensive drive to put the falling sales on "piracy" and "file sharing"...
RIAA will portray musicians as starving somalis who have to sell their souls to lawyers to fight for them...
INDUCE act will be reintroduced by Orrin Hatch and will be passed by 284-0
Re:This is enough for RIAA... (Score:2)
[yes, I know they'll complain anyway -- no need to tell me about it]
That's it... (Score:4, Funny)
let's see... (Score:5, Insightful)
i think we know how this one ends...
Re: (Score:2)
Re:let's see... (Score:3, Interesting)
the troubling aspect in
Re:let's see... (Score:3)
Do you know something I don't?
I put customers up there in quotes because, although I know it's an unpopular viewpoint to take on
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Add no value? Excuse me? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Add no value? Excuse me? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's great that you like shops, but when it comes to music, "shops" are an anachronism.
Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
They're doing better than the shops in the article, but they've definately taken a bad hit from piracy and the online box houses.
Re:So what? (Score:3)
Re:No, it's not (Score:3)
Re:perhaps but (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, sympathy is dangerous.
Wishful thinking? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, and they do nasty stuff like witholding support from Rob Halford's solo career so he'll team back up with Priest (and make them lots more money). Then there's King Diamond, who's got a successful album but can't get money to tour. He's blaming mp3s, meanwhile not notice who's really fscking him over.
So you'll forgive me if I don't cry a river for these guys. Maybe I'm mistaken, and the South Korean industry are all music loving saints (dountful, but stranger things have happended). Meanwhile, I'd say good riddence, but I'm a pessimist and I don't think they're going anywhere.
Re:The economic picture (Score:3, Insightful)
Your comparison would only hold some sway if all the music stores in South Korea had opened within the last five years.
To put it in slightly different terms, if the country of Fictionalistan had an 80% infant mortality rate, then it's still really big news if 95% of the people named Pete died in a five year period. Same thing as with the South Korean music stores.
Why this is happening... (Score:5, Informative)
Late 1980s they worked out a way to allow people to have professionally made audio tapes made up out of whatever single tracks they wanted from a large catalog. It involved a CD jukebox with compression that allowed cutting audio tapes at 8x or so - a 60 minute tape would run out in 10 minutes or less and all the gear to do this was at the record shop.
Detailed auditing tracked per-song revenue and royalties.
The music business deliberately killed this off in order to max out full album sales.
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9805/26/inter
http://www.betagroupllc.com/1st-personics.html
In this and a ton of other ways, they crippled innovation.
They're now paying the price.
Re:Why this is happening... (Score:3, Interesting)
He alleges that the trial failed as there was rampant abuse and piracy committed by the employees including himself.
They would have paid the price regardless. They just wanted to slow down the effects.
Re:Why this is happening... (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason they scream over the loss of physical retails or new technol
0 + 0 = 0 (Score:2, Interesting)
Are "professional" song writers that make their primary living as artists a thing of the past? If South Korea is any indication, the answer is YES...
Re:0 + 0 = 0 (Score:2, Insightful)
Concerts, performances, etc. etc.
Mozart never sold a single record in his lifetime, nor did Bach, Beethoven, Verdi, etc. etc.
Re:0 + 0 = 0 (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to go back to the patronage model, please, feel free to stump up the money to do so yourself.
You might want to learn how classical musicians were paid. Although it sounds like you might be surprised to find out that yes, indeed, they were paid.
Re:0 + 0 = 0 (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, there's also folk music and street performers -- it's not as if we'll somehow be deprived of culture, even if every professional musician on the planet never made another cent.
Re:0 + 0 = 0 (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, my girlfriend and I were heading out for dinner and a concert, but I'll let her know that after dinner we'll be sitting on the street listening to a panhandler play the spoons.
Re:0 + 0 = 0 (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? There is nothing inherently wrong with patronage model, its merely different and more appropriate for arts then the "assembly line/distributor/widget sales" model. Unlike the latter, the former does not require treating information as it were physical property with all of the logic/legal nonsense that approach produces (all the way down to ownership of DNA sequences). Instead, artists/scientists get paid and the resulting art/science/information is for all to share. The only thing to work out is the mechanisms for patronage. Remember, art is not business or "industry" (a most annoying lie). It is a way for an artists to express himself/herself. The commercial side-effects are just that, and might not occur at all in many cases, it is no accident that many artists before this kitsch-mass-production nonsense were indeed working at other jobs. Ever heard of a "starving artiste"? I cant believe people have become so brainwashed by the media moguls to believe otherwise.
Re:0 + 0 = 0 (Score:3, Interesting)
No, *art* isn't, but Britney and Justin are an industry just like hamburgers. So there could be a bright side to the imminent death of the industry :-)
Random lawsuits + music with the suck at 11 = 0 (Score:2)
It all depends... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, much depends on if you are a Korean music retailer or not.
mod parent up (Score:5, Insightful)
A fun exercise left to the reader:
1. Substitute X = filesharing
2. Substitute X = outsourcing
Natural Progression. (Score:2)
Consumers, rightly so, don't see a whole lot of value here anymore. If they want a stale, overproduced piece of music, they download it from the internet or listen to the radio.
The
Band names (Score:3, Funny)
"...Check out, for example, the Asylum Street Spankers...."
This sounds disconcertingly like a product of the band name generator [elsewhere.org]
T&K.
Stop talking rubbish (Score:2)
Err no. The bands I listen to hardly ever come to my country. Am I supposed to book a flight to go see them in the few hours I get free in an evening? Or am I suppose to spend 4 hours over my dial up link to download their album so depreving them of money and me tying up my phone line?
Sorry pal , I'd sooner pay the $20 for a CD (and unless you're some tight fisted student $20 is NOT a lot of money) and listen to it in the comfo
Re:Natural Progression. (Score:3, Interesting)
Listening to a studio album is very different thing from watching a live gig. I love live gigs, but they are not way interchangable with listening to an album, which is vastly more convenient.
Watching artists perfom and listening to their albums are complementary things (for the vast majority of people), not somehow in opposition. People don't get an album instead of seeing a gig, or vice versa.
What is more, if I'm listening to music at home/work/car/walking around I'll take the studio album almost ever
Of course I see it as a good thing. (Score:5, Interesting)
I just read in Business Week that the US slipped from number three --I'm pretty sure we're talking raw numbers rather than percentages-- to number ten in global broadband rankings. It's not altogether impossible that this decline is going to get worse rather than better in the near term.
And if it doesn't, if something like Wi-Max suddenly turns things around, then it could be even more interesting. Let's hope it's the latter rather than the former. But even then, there would be reprecussions for a rather large number of corporations beyond just music.
Re:Of course I see it as a good thing. (Score:2)
Of course it's going to get worse, and here's a few reasons why the US isn't #1 in broadband.
1.) We aren't "fortunate" enough to have something like 75% of our population in a 100sq km area (Seoul).
2.) While broadband p
same old story (Score:5, Insightful)
Or is it just because there is a better way of doing things?
Old industries die and new ones come along. Of course the dying industries aren't happy about it, but the only way is forward...
Re:same old story (Score:2)
Or is it just because there is a better way of doing things?
The difference being that driving a car instead of using a horse and buggy isn't illegal, whereas illegally copying music is.
Re:same old story (Score:2)
>of using a horse and buggy isn't illegal,
>whereas illegally copying music is.
So you are suggesting that we should make the cars illegal to protect the important and ancient trades of cart making and horse farming?
I don't know, perhaps people will find enough uses to keep horses around even when they are not needed as a primary form of transportation.
Perhaps it could even become a sport, you know, a bit of a recreational thing for people to do - hor
Re:same old story (Score:5, Insightful)
So, do you have a good reason why "piracy should be illegal" -- or, restated, why music sellers should be granted the privilage of monopoly (originally designed solely to encourage creation), even in the face of counterexamples such as unsigned bands that give away their music for free (and support themselves with concerts), Creative Commons licensed music, and folk music (you know, that stuff ordinary people make for themselves)?
Precise and credible stats (Score:4, Insightful)
"About 95 percent of music retail businesses in the country have failed in the last five years."
"Since the launch of these sites, domestic CD sales have nose-dived by nearly 50 percent."
And they come from a credible unbiased source.
"It was two years ago when Seoul music store owner Jang Kyung-hee"
Personally, I'd like to see percentages of CD sales broken down by speciality music stores, big box stores (whatever is their equivalent of Walmart), local online shopping malls, and foreign shopping malls (such as iTunes). There are many factors that could be affecting these stats.
Well, Why buy a shrinkwrapped cd? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Get in my car, drive through traffic to get to the mall, find parking, and then go to my retail music store.
2. Once there, I can manually browse the racks for a while in hopes that the cd I want is there.
3. If there, I can now buy it for $14
4. If not there, I can ask the salesman to order it for me, or just come back next week.
5. Drive back home, through traffic, and put said CD in my player. Hopefully it will work also on my computer without any DRM scheme in the way.
OR....
I can
1. Not leave the house, and sit at my computer in my bathrobe.
2. Search for a song online, from as many bands as I want and know that they're there. And only get the songs I want, not being forced to buy the whole album.
3. Download said music, in a fraction of the time it would take to drive anywhere.
4. Listen to it on every one of my music devices
5. Pay or not pay for it as I see fit.
Hmmm... I'm thinking this new-fangled music download thing goes in the "trend" category.
fondling bjork (Score:4, Interesting)
Bjork has a new CD out. Now, I dearly love bjork. You could quite honestly say I am a "fan" - you could even say I am somewhat obsessed with her work. And I have multiple usenet accounts which I frequently employ so as to keep up with my favorite tv shows (bad reception and rural living means tivo is useless to me). It would be trivial to add a pretty high quality rip of bjork's latest CD to my download folder. However:
I don't have a jacket to fondle - with that cool picture of her nearly topless and wearing what looks almost like S&M gear. Is there more inside? I don't know.
Her latest release is actually a DVD with 5.1 sound, two channel PCM sound, and video interviews. While I might be able to download all this stuff as a high quality ISO of the DVD (which would cost me a large percentage of the bandwidth I pay ten bucks a month for), if I do so I still...
I don't have the liner notes to read as I listen, nor do I have the satisfaction of knowing I gave Bjork my further support in the only way I can (at least until she realizes I'm alive and comes to live with me forever in my modest country home) - by giving her some money.
And so my download experience becomes significantly less fulfilling than were I to order the meatspace stuff and wait for its delivery. While there's a small chance I might not like the release at all, the fact is I "just want it because it's Bjork." And, as they say, it's never like the first time again.
So, I go to bjork.com, fill out a form, and wait...
Uncopyable Bits (Score:3, Insightful)
sooner people accept this, and build business models that take this into
account, the sooner people will start making money again."
-- Bruce Schneier
From TFA: "These days, cellphone handset sales are the biggest source of profit for us," Jang said.
So they have realized.
But then: ``the future of music retailers looks particularly bleak since they also face cut-throat competition from online shopping malls.''
Well, looks like their business model is too last century. That's how the cookie crumbles. Innovate or degrade.
Re:Uncopyable Bits (Score:5, Insightful)
When evolving marketplace dynamics make the RIAA business model unprofitable, that's just fine with slashdotters.
When evolcing marketplace dynamics make it unprofitable to hire programmers in the U.S., slashdotters are up in arms, demanding government intervention.
Hmm, I wonder why the discrepancy?
Re:Uncopyable Bits (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a problem (Score:2)
There are two explanations for such a severe drop in music purchases: either their consumption of music is being replaced with their consumption of the other sophisticated gadgets, or (as I think was implied) the piracy* rates are extrordinarily high.
The
Adaptation (Score:2, Interesting)
anyway, the FUD part of this announcement should also be considered.
I know which conclusions people want us to draw.
Blame the ringtone sellers! (Score:2)
Unexpected but logic result of copy protection (Score:3, Insightful)
In high tech countries like Korea and Japan, this is felt first. In more countries this effect will be noticed soon, I expect.
Oh come on now (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you can show that a higher percentage of South Korean CDs are copy protected compared with North America or Europe, you've got no argument.
Alternative music licensing/Music + Technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Give the people what they want. (Score:5, Informative)
I bet Jang isn't forcing his customers to buy the vinyl that they used to need to replace after scratching them, either. If only the record labels would stop fighting voluntary blanket licenses for song sharing, that they allow for lucrative radio royalties, they might survive to distribute content to Jang's new wares. But it looks like instead they're just roadkill on the Infobahn.
Impossible To Tell (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean that seriously too. Pretty much all the studies that have shown that downloaders don't buy more music were sponsored by the RIAA or the companies doing them had it in their best interest to get results that would make the RIAA member companies happy. Whether the results are accurate or not is irrelevant, when there's potential for bias you have to look at them as possibly incorrect. On the other side many of the folks who have found the opposite are sometimes motivated to want that result, or at least the RIAA will claim so. In some cases they're right, in others they're not but it's hard to always know which are which so you have to treat most of those as possibly incorrect.
What's that leave us? I bunch of wasted time to produce studies that we have to be skeptical of. Frankly we'll never really know the answer, we'd need alternate universes/timelines to experiment in to really come anywhere near proving it either way. Even then I wouldn't be surprised if we could prove both camps right, but it'd only apply in those alternate universes/timelines.
What IS definite is that music sales are down, downloading is at least steady if not growing and lawsuits flying right and left have had no real effect on those download numbers. Frankly it should be obvious to everyone that something is going to have to change to fix this. Perhaps compulsury licensing is the answer, perhaps something new we've not heard of is (DRM isn't going to stop it though), but whatever the answer is pointing fingers and trying to place blame (on both sides) will not help find it. Granted the RIAA seems to be the worst offender here, but /. alone has its share of "information wants to be free, no one should pay for music" supporters.
It'd be nice to see everyone to just sit down and find a solution, unfortunately the RIAA is probably the least likely to take part so a solution is likely still far away.
Re:Impossible To Tell (Score:3, Insightful)
Speaking of DRM, DRM does stop CD sales. There are some market droids research that show otherwise with a DRM'ed CD outselling the rest on the shelf, but theat droid failed to measure the chilling effect of DRM overall.
I don't want to buy a broken CD. Nobody does. Knowing that the supply chain is polluted has mostly ended my shopping in stores. Now before purchase, I have to know if the title is free from problems. This has almost completely killed the hear it in
Re:Impossible To Tell (Score:3, Insightful)
As mentioned in my parent post, three things are needed for the industry to compete. Take away any one of the three and sales fail.
Your comment covers the third point. How many people got a free tune from a Pepsi Cap or a hamburger purchase but didn't redeem it because of the first point and or the second point.. Even though it was free. Free alone does not sell the product. I have un-redeemed Pepsi caps and hamburger wrappers. The free stuf
Re:Impossible To Tell (Score:3, Insightful)
The downloaders most definately are the cause, but they're not evil.
Ultimately, there are only 3 possible solutions:
Cheaper online (Score:3, Insightful)
Good god, how awful of our loyal customers to abandon our stores for the same product sold cheaper and with less hassle elsewhere. Let's hope the government bails out our failing model of selling.
So the answer is simple, make it easier and cheaper for people to buy in your store than online...or face bankruptcy.
Natural progression, and not just for music (Score:3, Insightful)
- in a store, where they might not carry what I am looking for, or the CD I want is out of stock, where I have to ask the store clerk for every single CD I'd like to listen to, and where those same clerks often are distinctly un-knowledgable about music.
- or, on the Internet, where I can buy music legally by the song (and at a better price as well), where they pretty much carry everything on-line, and where I can browse to my heart's content without leaving my house?
It was bound to happen, and it's only natural that the first business to be affected is the one dealing in stuff that is essentially non-physical. I think other retailers must be beginning to feel the on-line competition as well... on line purchasing is way up for physical goods suchs as toys, clothes and electronics, and these are all purchases taken away from physical shops.
natural progression (Score:2, Insightful)
only bad music will die... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:only bad music will die... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The big sell-out (Score:3, Insightful)
If they thought there was value in it, they'd be extracting that value right now. Yes, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk will survive, but lots of lesser artists won't. Last I checked, I couldn't even find Don Pullen's "Ode to life" or his last, posthumous album, "Sacred common ground", both released by Blue Note in the 1990s to excellent reviews.
Music stores are important - not everyone has PC (Score:3, Insightful)
So how about some people move out of this bleedin edge mindset and realise that not everyone on this planet is part of the wired generation.
Well, I was in Seoul in 1991... (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact I still have two of these tapes going strong now (and before anyone whines about me being a pirate, I also own legitimate copies thereof).
Now, I don't know whether it was just the shops I was going to, but it seemed there was a cultural predilection for fake stuff - which is just being amplified heavily by the ease of broadband access.
Well I'm not korean but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I love music, I listen to lots of it, but I just can't bring myself to believe that $15 - $18 is a fair price for a CD of music, by ANYONE, I can count on one hand, maybe both, the number of CDs or cassettes (or records) that I own that I would listen to and think "hell yeah this is WORTH $18" and the rest are simply worth less and most if I had to buy them AGAIN for the retail price (that I paid for OH so many of them) I wouldn't repurchase them, no way.
I can go buy "most" new movies for $14.99 a few go $19.99 but as a rule of thumb I can pick up a movie for about $15 or I can rent it for $2 (actually I use Netflix religiously). This, to me, is a good enough deal that I buy quite a few movies, and rent quite a few more (via Netflix). Pirating movies to me is an absurd thought, why spend hours and hours downloading a crappy copy when I can just Netflix it? The same for music, if I could pick up a CD for $7-$9 I wouldn't bother pirating it it'd be WORTH it to me to get the pretty insert and a "real copy" of it. Alternatively I feel like 99 cents per track of music is a bit high too, your average CD is around 10-15 tracks and that makes some CDs more expensive to buy online than in the store, I've yet to buy a single song of online music, and probably won't unless it gets cheaper. When it hits about a quarter per song, maybe 50 cents, then I'll probably buy into it. Hey it probably never will, and I won't buy any music online, life goes on I suppose.
I put a "personal price point" on music at about $8 per cd. I hop on Amazon.com and pick up used CDs for $2-$7 all the time, I've bought dozens and dozens. I'll PAY that for a CD rather than pirate it, gladly. I support the artists by going to their concerts, and by listening to their music and by telling others "hey check out..." but I'm growing increasingly pissed off at the price of CDs and I haven't bought a CD off the shelf in... hmm 2 years now? Maybe more.
I for one will shed nary a tear to hear that the RIAA and the "big music" companies are hurting, evolution happens to us all. Better things come along, new ways of doing things, faster, cheaper, ways of doing things, and you adapt or die. Hello RIAA, meet the Dodo.
Re:Well I'm not korean but... (Score:4, Interesting)
OK, that may be a bit over the top, but my point is they do things different. I used to be a director at a small language school in Toronto [cacenglish.com]. Once or twice a month I would need up-to-date information on student enrollment etc - information kept in the database. but the school only had a licence for 3 copies, already used by the General Manager, admissions officer and receptionist. So once a month I would ask the (Korean) GM to email me a spreadsheet of the relevant info. Each time I would have to explain that I can no see the database since I don't have Access on my computer. And each time she would tell me "just install it". And each time I would explain to her about having 3 licences and how this is not done in legit businesses. Every frickin' month! same stuff. When they needed graphic software ... they asked someone to give them a copy. I explained about how software purchases would be legitimate business expenses and could be written off. But the GM seemed incredulous - for her EVERYONE copied. There was no point in paying money for software, even if it could be written off.
The Korean student were mostly in their early to mid twenties and they had a similar mindset. I remember mentioning a new CD I bought of some band I really like. A half dozen Korean student agreed I was stupid since I could probably download it. Just to be clear I am not saint. i have 50 GB of music on my hard drive and not all of it is ripped from CDs I own. Likewise, not all of my software has been purchased. But a lot has, and I will gladly shell out the money for a CD of a band I really like. (Say the upcoming U2 one.) But I strongly feel businesses should not be blatantly pirating.
I played devil's advocate with a group of Korean students. They said I could just download any music. I said it was a kind of stealing since the artists don't get paid. A few of the girls just DIDN'T GET THIS! (All the guys did.) Their response was always "well everyone does it, so it is OK."
My impression is that copying / pirating music and software is FAR more rampant in Korea than in my country (Canada). And this is more a matter of culture than access to high speed internet. From young people to business people, it is just standard operating procedure to use a copy, and not make a purchase.
On a totally different note ... I am now living in japan where it is LEGAL to rent CDs and make your own copy. The video shops do a brisk business in CD rentals. I think this is banned in Canada and the US. Seems like forward thinking on the part of the Japanese music companies. People want to borrow music and make copies - why not make it easy and get them to pay for the privilage. I copied over 100 CDs this way.
Horse Troughs (Score:4, Funny)
"Automobiles are infernal machines that stink, make noise and are cutting into our bottom line," Christopher Fisk, barrister for HTIA, said earlier this afternoon.
HTIA is pressing legislation to impose tough penalties on non-horsetrough users.
South Korean music retailers dying? (Score:3, Funny)
When will the horror end?
Fare dodging (Score:3, Insightful)
Trouble is, if everyone does it, the train doesnt make any money and then it wont run. Everyone loses.
Of course, some trains will still run out peaoples love of driving trains, but theres no guarentee it wil go when and where you need it.
Censorship and otherwise (Score:4, Interesting)
Better Post Titles Please? (Score:3, Funny)
I've got to admit - I thought this was going to be a story about hitmen wacking small business owners in some new untraceable way that made it look like natural causes.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Natural (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlike material assets, which have value by themselves, copyright is a government imposed monopoly, created to ensure that creators of works get an incentive to create above those who merely distribute. However, now there are also too many greedy middlemen(RIAA et. al. members), and the total cost paid by the users of the information is far in excess of the costs of production, plus reasonable profit. Governments should therefore be stepping in to ensure most of the money goes to the creators, and that copyright monopoly only lasts until the creator receives the cost of production plus reasonable profit.
Re:Natural (Score:5, Insightful)
Just wondering... what do you earn?
Whatever figure you reply with, I'm willing to bet that it's not "reasonable" profit. I'm, in fact, sure that you're overpaid. The government should step in and make sure that you're paid less - after all, I certainly don't consider what you get paid to be reasonable.
The "they're making more money than I want them to" argument is really really stupidly lame.
Re:Natural (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not saying that people shouldn't get paid, I am saying that the ability to repress someone else's freedom to distribute should not last after you have been paid reasonably for your creation. After that, you should still be allowed to distribute the work, but on the same terms as everybody else. The creator has been rewarded, and the price to end users of the information is controlled by market economics and will tend to the marginal cost of distribution(or less, if people are willing to distribute at a loss).
Re:Natural (Score:5, Insightful)
If, due to government regulation, I was the only person in the country allowed to write software, you might have a point. But my employment is controlled by market economics.
---
And so is the music industry. Prices go all over the place. The government protection that you're complaining about isn't the same as saying that no one else can compete with you. It's the equivilant of saying that your boss can't take your work and then say, "I only feel that you're worth half of what you're supposed to get paid." You're free to buy music from people who sell it cheaply (if you live anywhere near an urban area, there's plenty of talented local musicians who'll sell you their CD for $5) or even give it away for free via mp3 or what-have-you. But if you want someone specific's music, pay what they ask for it. It's that simple.
Re:Natural (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell no.
None of the guys who I know who are downloading music from internet is doing it as an expression of the desire for the free speech.
They do it because they don't want to pay for it.
Re:Natural (Score:3, Informative)
I think there's a proportion of downloaders who would pay, but just not to the RIAA. I'd certainly want to pay the artist directly.
--Rob
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
way too simple (Score:3, Interesting)
That damn Victoria's Secret commercial with the first few notes of "Monkey Man" got that song stuck in my head and last night I had to clear it out. Now, I lost virtually my entire MP3 collection about a month ago and have been able to restore only a tiny part of it, so it's not like I could just "click on the mp3." And while I have an LP of that album somewhere in my collection, I haven't had a turntable in years.
So I headed for easynews (n
Re:Natural (Score:4, Insightful)
Copying information doesn't interfere with anybody, it doesn't destroy anything, it doesn't take anything away from anything.
That's why [ /me puts asbestos suit on ] capitalism is the best system for most "normal" goods and communism is the best system for most types of information.
Yeah, I said it, the "c"-word.
BTW, there are many things that are public or "communistic" in almost any country. Take the road net for instance - those goddamn communists allow just anybody to use them and they use taxes to build and maintain them. Wouldn't it be much better to have private road owners collect fees for using roads?
Or take police or military. Also public or "communistic".
There is no one-size-fits-all economic system. For most entities, the capitalistic system fits best, but there are a couple of entities where puplic just works better than private.
The Soviet Union failed because they tried to force the communistic system on everything. The USA better watch out that they don't make the same mistake in reverse.
Ideologists are morons. No matter if they are blind communists or blind capitalists.
Re:Natural (Score:3, Insightful)
People get that music as a 128kbps quality mp3 for free over the radio waves from their favorite radio station. Another reason why sattelite radio is failing miserably. (Yes, it is, both providers are hurting bad right now.) And why P2P music is thriving.
I love mp3's but I PAY to get them as high quality by buying the CD used and ripping it with lame with a -q0 setting at 192 fixed bitrate and normalized or even higher VBR if I will not be using it in my portable.(I
Re:Natural (Score:5, Insightful)
This statement is not only irrelevant (information is not a "thing" and thus cannot be private property and thus being "owned" and thus gotten for "free") but also quite revealing of your attitude towards the universe: everything in yours has its price. Libertarian, are you?
Re:Natural (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know. Are you serously suggesting that anything which can be represented digitally is NOT a thing?
I'm not sure what's more frightening: DRM and copy controls, or the public attitudes that make them necessary.
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Re:Natural (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a great succinct response to "information wants to be free". I'm gonna remember that one.
Its a stupid answer to a stupid statement. Information cannot want anything because it is an abstract, inanimate concept. By responding that people want "things" for free to this nonsensical statement you add additional layer of stupidity by assuming that information is a "thing" (implying an object that can be bought/sold).
Re:Natural (Score:3, Insightful)
Pedantry is the only modus operendi in dealing with legal scams like that of "Intellectual Property" or music "industry". Their entire base is a maze of skillfully crafted mis-directions, false definitions and lies.
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Re:Natural (Score:5, Interesting)
And herein lies the rub: they are not. Information does not have the required physical properties to be "private property" nor "labour" (or action) and thus is entirely outside traditional economic considerations. The only type of contract that could be drawn is one obligating one party to maintain information in one of its fundamental states: known or unknown. One could swear secrecy for example. Unfortunately this is entirely impossible to apply to enterntainment because the objective of a broadcaster/distributor is to disseminate information and thus break the secrecy. The consumer cannot be required to work for the music company in guarding the secrecy, even if one ignores the fact that the very medium on which the information is disseminated (air vibrations) is not conducive to secrecy.
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Re:Natural (Score:3, Interesting)
Which h is at its core false. The question is framed by those who wish you to make assumptions such as: information can be "free", thus conversly it can also have a "price" and then before you can blink the entire mountain of "Intellectual Property" rubbish is balanced on this assumption.
Re:Natural (Score:2)
Then again, when RIAA backed "musicians" like Britney Spears can buy a diamon rings worth $10 000 000 while other great bands and musicians can hardly afford releasing their albums, the RIAA won't get any sympathy from m
Re:Natural (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Natural (Score:4, Interesting)
You know, waaay back in 1787 Thomas Jefferson was against copyright (and "intellectual property" in general) entirely. [kuro5hin.org] He only reluctantly agreed to put copyright privilages in after Madison convinced him that there was little possibility for abuse, beacuse there was no "powerful few" back then:With today's corporatism and powerful cartels (e.g. RIAA, MPAA, BSA), it seems that Madison's premise is no longer valid. Therefore, copyright itself is no longer morally justified, and should be abolished!
I agree completely (Score:2)