Sam Stone and Mr201 I agree with you that online anonymity and browsing music online are good things. But we have to find a balance. Getting music from Kazza is not like browsing in a book store, because you can’t take the book home unless you pay for it. Its not like a library either because while you take a copy home no one else can. If you read the quote you posted, Mr2001 you may notice that it implies that if the complaintant shows that he has a valid case this may overrule the defendants right to privacy. It may come to pass that this requirement is met when a certain packet traffic can be attributed to a certain online identity. I understand that there are technological impediments to doing so, but it is not impossible. I also agree that the record companies have a lot to answer for.
Imagine how poor we would be indeed. If file sharing rages undiminished like it does now, we will suffer a backlash. Unless we can come up with a technology ensuring that browsers are not keeping the copies and using them without permision, that argument won’t hold for long. Unless we can develop a technology that ensures that purchasers of online music will not turn around and distribute it without permision we will never replace the major labels distribution channels.
I agree that these things need to happen. But we will never achieve them without some unsavory changes to the current situation. Hopefully, we can reach an understanding where both sides give up a little so neither side has to give up too much.
It’s a basic micro-econ assumption thingamajig. Static cost has nothing to do with what it costs to produce one more unit of your product and also has nothing to do with what someone will pay for one unit of your product.
But the question is, what are the sides? If the sides are simply the Musicians and the Listeners, then it’s not so hard at all. Any Musician profits simply from having people listen to his/her music, and Listeners, after listening, may want to buy the album, buy merchandise, or even attend shows/concerts. The only problem is the RIAA wants to keep their stake in all the money too, but they’re not really needed anymore.
Quite. But it certainly has a lot to do with what the seller is willing to sell his goods for. Now, once those static costs have been amortized (in the seller’s estimation), then your model might hold. But since we are talking about music, I’m not sure you can say that once a band is formed the cost of producing albums is 0. Or are you saying that once an album is laid down the artist no longer counts what it cost him to write and perform?
I assume you are talking about live performances only here. Or do you mean that the artist profits in a PR sense?
Seriously. If this is really no problem at all, why don’t most groups already offer thier music online for free?
Now this is getting really off-topic, and into Econ 1A territory, but…
Basically, we’ve moved beyond the “How much am I selling this album for?” part of production and into “If I produce one more, will someone else buy it for at least as much as it cost me to produce it?” So, fixed costs have nothing to do with that, and so are of negligible importance. The only important thing is that the final marginal cost of your last unit of product produced must be greater than or equal to the marginal revenue of the last product produced. Keep in mind this is not an economic model, but pretty much the first thing you learn in Micro-econ.
Artist profits in a PR sense. More people knowing about them, makes it more likely that more will attend their concerts. Now, some artists do offer tidbits of their music for free online, but those are just mp3s of their songs.
If a group intends to release a CD, they must at least cover the cost of the production of their CDs, and offering them out for free can be good for a little while, but in the end it’s just not a good idea for several reasons. However, I don’t think it’s unlikely at all to assume that most people who download significant amounts of their music probably already own several of their albums or is intending to purchase some.
I have no clue how coherent that was, but it’s late, it’s New Year, and I think I shall be needing some sleep. Happy 2004 everyone.
We agree that people consume music differently than books, yes? While you may not be able to keep a copy of a library book, you can get all the enjoyment out of a book or magazine that you’d ever need, simply by borrowing it from the library, or even just flipping through it at the store. “All the enjoyment you ever need” may be one or two readings of a book, rather than daily or weekly listenings of a CD. That’s how the library is equivalent to Kazaa.
Some people in these threads seem to focus far too much on whether or not a copy is created, without thinking about whether making a copy is necessary or even desirable for the consumer. Having access to a work is more important than having a copy - if I make a hundred copies of an MP3 on my hard drive, I’ve gained nothing; if I delete all my copies, but I can stream the song over the net whenever I want, I’ve lost nothing.
Sure, but that doesn’t justify eliminating the right to privacy preemptively, which is what would happen if encryption were prohibited… and prohibiting encryption is what you’d have to do to defeat systems like the one I described.
Only if the major labels continue to control the flow of music. Their refusal to license music for online sale under reasonable terms is one of the few things keeping iTunes and Napster from replacing P2P networks.
Some have tried and been slapped down by their record labels.
Actually, there is a long list of artists who put their music online, a longer list of artists who tacitly approve of file sharing on the grounds thata it gets them exposure, and an even larger list who support the creation and trading of ‘bootleg’ discs.
Here’s an interesting perspective from Janis Ian, who is exactly the kind of “doesn’t-fit-a-radio-genre” artist I was talking about. She heartily supports file sharing.
It’s interesting that she takes the same position I do: Internet downloading of music actually helps all but a handful of mega-artists. For 99% of the musicians out there, the internet is a great boon to getting their music to their fans and making new fans.
She also agrees that the real threat is to the outdated distribution models of the record publishing industry. In other words, we aren’t protecting a public good here - just an archaic business model.
Here’s another good article by, of all people, Courtney Love. In it, she does the math on a successful band (probably talking about Hole here), which gets a million-dollar advance, 20% royalties, and sells a million albums. This type of money would apply to one of the most popular bands in the nation. Certainly no second-string acts would ever get a deal this good.
In the end, after the record company charges for all its work, the band members wind up making $45,000 for the year the album came out, and the record company earns a profit of 6.6 million dollars. Her point as well as Janis Ian’s is that its the record companies that stand to lose, for the simple reason that they’re really the only ones who make money under the current system.
And BTW, I’m a free-marking loving, Libertarian kinda guy who takes intellectual property rights very seriously. I do NOT believe that the fruits of my labor belong to everyone just because it’s ‘information’ and not a tangible physical product.
The problem, as I see it, is that the entertainment industry has gamed the system. How many people know that the entertainment industry is the single biggest donator to political campaigns? They have HUGE influence with the government, and they use it. As Love points out, copyrights are held by the record labels instead of the artists, where in book publishing, the copyright remains with the author. Copyright terms have been unreasonably extended, and many other shenanigans have been played by the entertainment industry to maintain a government-supported control over material they really have no right to.
In the end, though, it’s the artists that have to wake up. We could kill the stranglehold of the music industry tomorrow if they just stopped being able to sign artists. That will happen eventually, as the technologies for making, promoting, and distributing music online mature. But expect to see the record companies fight that too.
I think intellectual property in general needs to be reconsidered. Intellectual property is much different than the tangible asset of material or land property. Duplication, for one. I’ve 10 pieces of gold. I can’t create more unless I mine it or someone can synthesize it. There’s a natural constraint of availability and feasibility with material and land property that doesn’t exist with IP. The IP copyright holder has monopoly over the product and that subverts the laws of supply/demand, although it doesn’t eliminate their influence.
Furthermore, the whole concept of designating “intellectual property” is dubious. Humans are a product of their cultures and environment. There’s no such thing such as an “independent creation”, that can be used as a justification to confer monopoly to the “creator.” Language, education, past works, common cultural knowledge and forms, all such public domain elements are drawn upon to create “IP” and without them, there would be no creation. Indeed, one wonders what the scientific revolution would have been, had the discoveries and inventions of the 16-19th century been patented and that too for a period long enough to be considered practically indefinite. Accomodating an economic philosophy that allows an individual or group of individuals, an economic monopoly on a product derived without an equivalent charge from the sea of public human conception seems abhorrent. This is not to deny these individuals any compensation. But the model must not chain progress and innovation to public affordability or the pressures of cursory short-term public assessment
This is mostly not true. In our economy today, much of the value of the physical assets around us come from the intellectual capital that went into making it.
Consider the computer industry. The cost of the actual physical hardware (and the manufacturing cost of shaping raw materials into that hardware) is actually quite small. Most of the cost of building a computer is the amortized cost of the research that went into all the components. This is why an ATI 9800 graphics card is $400 while the 9600 is $200, despite the fact that they may have almost identical amounts of raw material, and cost the same per unit to manufacture. The newer card is amortizing the intellectual capital that went into designing it.
Would you feel okay about stealing an ATI 9800 graphics card and leaving a 9600 in its place? In this case, all you will have stolen is ‘information’.
If a Pentium 4 processor actually only costs $2 per unit to manufacture (but a billion to design), would you feel okay about stealing one and sending Intel $2 to cover the cost of making that part for you?
The fact that you CAN copy software and music freely masks the issue, but in fact you are stealing intellectual content, and most things in our society have a value determined in large part by intellectual content. It can not, and should not be ‘free’.
I’m not sure I’ve been clear about my position. I am not trying to defend the record labels. I agree that they are responsible for some of the problems in the industry.
Also, I agree that if an artist wishes to place his or her music online, if they agree to let anyone who wishes to copy and distrubute it, then I certainly have no problem with that. I would enjoy it myself if that were the case.
My only problem is with copying music that the artist does not wish distributed in this way.
It’s the tangible implementation that counts. Just the IP is worthless to the consumer. I’m not against paying producers for costs, services and time expended while innovating and manufacturing. I’m against the concept of a monopoly over an idea itself.
No. I’ve stolen the usable implementation as well. I can’t get a higher FPS by just studying the technical papers of the technology upgrade. I need a fab unit, raw materials and spare time of my own and those cost me money. The IP would be worthless if the tangible and feasible resources did not exist to implement it.
Right. We agree that books and music are different. But some of the same principles apply. Kazaa and a library are similar, but not equivilant, that was the point I was trying to make. I may not have been clear that I do think there are similarities. Again, however, this only goes to motivation. That people are motivated to copy music does not justify distributing it without the artists permision.
Well, this is the crux of the issue. You and I agree that destruction of this right would be a bad thing. We may even be able to convince ourselves that the economic interests of the record labels do not outway the current traffic in copyrighted material. But this is not a given for all time. It is entirely possible that the political and legal landscape will change in the near future. For instance, I don’t think it would be a preemptive violation for ISPs to keep enough records to more thouroughly trace packet traffic to and from the computers they connect to the internet. We could place legal restrictions on when and how those records are opened so that it would not interfere too much with “legitimate” traffic. I’m sure there are other technological issues. But as I said the main impediment is political and legal. And these can quickly change.
Pervert: How would you feel if the phone company recorded all of your conversations and stored them, “just in case” someone wanted access to it later? Would you feel comfortable with that?
I do NOT want my internet traffic recorded. I don’t want a record of where I go and what I do online. I do not trust the companies holding the data to keep it private under economic pressure, and I do not trust the government to not abuse it. The first line of defense against violation of privacy is to make sure the information is not available in the first place.
Sam Stone, I agree entirely. I would not like the phone company recording my conversations at all. But by definition, the things that I say into the phone are my personal speech. This is not true of internet traffic. True, it is communication, and speech should certainly be protected. But much of the traffic may not be speech at all. And this portion of the traffic may not have any protections whatsoever.
What I’m afraid of is that the other kind of traffic may entice the authorities to develop new methods of prosecuting crimes.
Look at the changes made to the phone tap requirements from the patriot acts. Am I wrong that the hoops the government had to go through before it could tape your conversations were loosened? I’m proposing that a similar sqeezing of online rights could easily occur unless we develop a way to ensure IP rights. Or, as I said, we get the artists to agree to give them up. If we convince enough artists to distribute their music online, and permit the free distribution of it, we might be able to take the record labels out at the knees. Unfortunately, we would still need to limit the amount of copyrighted material distributed across the net without the copyright holder’s permission.
Let me propose another choice. What if hard encryption is only permitted for slow communications. That is data that transfers at the rate of speech. All other data has to be transmitted in the clear, or with breakable encryption. I’m not proposing this, I’m not advocating it either. I’m only trying to suggest that there may be ways to strike a balance between freedom of speech and restrictions on the transmition of IP. I don’t think any such system has been proposed yet. I don’t even think that I have a good understanding how it would work. I simply think that historical precident demands that we consider the possibility.
Maybe, maybe not. But whether it’s “justified” is irrelevant here. People will do it with or without the copyright holder’s consent, and the copyright holder would be foolish to ignore that, clinging to a business model that depends on people not making “unjustified” copies.
And so do the SCOTUS and the federal courts.
Packet traffic isn’t the issue. The P2P networks are designed so that packet traffic doesn’t tell you anything about the ultimate source or destination of a file. In fact, even looking at the content of the data wouldn’t tell you.
Well, the bitrate of a decent quality Internet telephone is at least the bitrate of any modem, and modem users don’t have any problem downloading music today. So I assume that by “the rate of speech” you meant one or two bytes per second.
In that case, say goodbye to encrypted email attachments, secure web sites, SSH, and Internet telephones. No one could bank online or buy anything online without worrying about their financial details being stolen.
Exactly. But there may also be another choice. I’m sorry that I cannot point to exactly how the government could regulate internet traffic. I realize that my argument amounts to vagure hand waving. But I think that the historical record is on my side. I agree that it would not violate any laws of physics for the internet to be in some way unregulateable. But I really think this is most unlikely in the long run.
If you have seen some of the quotes from the “radio boys” as the early radio hobiests were called you might be shocked at how closely they mirror your own. They truly felt that a new international society was forming based on the ability to cross any border with any information totally uncontrollable by any government. They were totally wrong. When the governments of the world realized that regulating radio traffic was in their interests, they developed treaties to prevent unlicensed operators going to other countries, and cracked down on them within their own borders. Now you have to have a license to operate even a small transmiting device.
The point is that they may not change their business model, they may simply make it more draconian. Remember that the entire infrastructure requires lots of cooperation from government or government regulated entities. If they really wanted to they could change the nature of the packets travelling around the network.
[QUOTE] Originally posted by Gyan9 *
** The IP copyright holder has monopoly over the product and that subverts the laws of supply/demand, although it doesn’t eliminate their influence.* A lot of people really overestimate the power of IP laws. While patents are the strongest, given the amount of exceptions, at best a patent holder has a “virtual” monopoly. Remember, too, that a lot of the damages are monetary. One can only sue a person or corporation so far. There is no debtor’s prison. To actually go to prison (and from my survey for a law article), one would have to do something completely heinous, repeatedly, with reckless abandon.
No offense, but this is a too simplistic way of looking at this. This argument is analogous to saying that human culture is like bee culture. Humans don’t have a hive mind, there is a difference between what is ingrained through culture and what is individually expressed.
** The IP laws (and a combination of other laws (natural or otherwise), like economics) have this taken into account, arguably, at least that what I believe. If you could give a better example than say replicating gold.
** So, you believe that information should be free, I take it? As others have commented, not everyone believes this. Many people believe that not having such laws in place would have a chilling effect on creativity.
Sams Stone, I agree with a lot (if not all) of your arguments, (but I wouldn’t call myself a libertarian). How do you feel about downloaded movies?
There is no way I could afford to work on some of the creative projects I’m working on if they were going to be made “free” before the ink was dry. I just couldn’t (and wouldn’t) do it. I’d still do creative works, but a lot of the work would stay in my sketchbook and nowhere else.
But we’ve already argued that point (heavily) elsewhere. Some of the “information should be freeeee” crowd would even like to see the stuff found in my private home to be “shared” against my wishes. That indeed would have a chilling effect on creativity.
Let’s veer away from the “information should be free” nonsense for a bit. Let me ask you, yosemitebabe what level of assuance would you need that people were not copying your book? If you could release it in an electronic form which could be copied, but for which those copies could be traced to the copier, would that be enough? What if they could make copies for themselves, that is copies to have at home, at the office, etc. But they could not distribute those to others.
Also, what if they could make as many copies as they want, but you recieved a minimal amount of money based on the total numbers of copies made of all electronic books. Or a tax on the purchase of Adobe Acrobat reader, for instance.
As an artist, how much assurance that you control your work would you need?