Posted on 06/15/2009 12:51:44 PM PDT by steve-b
The MPAA apparently said that the “enemies of copyright have really done a good job at creating the false premise that the interest of copyright holders and the interest of society as a whole are antagonistic” during the World Copyright Summit. The worry is that their pro-copyright advocacy perspective is fading away in the public conscious.
In an interesting report from IP-Watch where there were a few choice words levelled against those that disagreed with the view-points of the copyright industry. Apparently, Fritz Attaway suggested that it's false to assume that the rights of the industry and the interest of the public good are at odds. Maybe even giving the suggestion that 10 years of copyright debates is all just a big misunderstandings perpetuated by, using the black and white term, "enemies".
So, where do these misunderstandings possibly come from anyway? We figured a short list might be in order: destroying Napster and Audio Galaxy and not creating an alternative for the get-go, raiding people's homes because they uploaded Star Wars (not necessarily leaking it in the first place), hacking the URN hash and polluting FastTrack, hacking The Pirate Bay, having Viacom serve DMCA notices to people posting video's of people eating in a restaurant on YouTube, suing tens of thousands of average American's including fining one individual $222,000 for sharing a couple songs, saying that files in a shared directory is copyright infringement in court, saying that evidence is too hard to get and that the industry shouldn't be burdened to prove their cases in court, suggesting that iPods are little more than little pirate ships, saying in court that even making one back-up copy of a DVD is illegal....
(Excerpt) Read more at zeropaid.com ...
Well, the entertainment industry fanned the flames of marxism and anti-capitalism and made it “fashionable.”
Reap what ye sow boys.
The entertainment industry doesn’t help their own cause when they constantly pass extensions to copyrights that are about to lapse in the public domain. If these guys had their way, we’d still be paying royalties for Twain, Mozart, Scott Joplin and Nat Hawthorne.
They pretty much get their way as it is.
I don’t regret occasionally burning a rented DVD because of that reason.
If the MPAA included decent people in it, not thugs, I wouldn’t ever do it (extremely rare as it is).
Otherwise, my involvement is only to back up my own DVDs. Never share them or anything, but they need to find an alternative way to do things that doesn’t make enemies.
Along the same vein—I’m trying to do the right thing and buy MP3s, and I’ve found something interesting: some HUGE bands are almost impossible to find. Aerosmith (you can only buy full albums for some of their older stuff). The Beatles (very little available, the rest is “tribute” crap). AC/DC (same as The Beatles).
I just want to buy a few choice songs. If I’m lucky, all they’ll make me do is buy an entire album for one song. Unbelievable. And they wonder why people just download the stuff free...
Good point. Often I can’t find what I want on itunes or elsewhere, so I have to download it for free.
Copyfraud?
Ummmm.. Aerosmith has 273 tracks available on iTunes Music Store, DRM free. Only four require you to buy the album. They have new and old Aerosmith stuff, too.
The Beatles are just being dicks about digital downloads, and AC/DC has openly refused to do anything but full album sales (they think that the digital world of “buy only the tracks you want” is “destroying the artistic consistency and purity of” their work. Yeah, and you guys never released singles either, right? Oh wait....)
I'm giggling right along with you. What goes around...
Talk about a false dichotomy!
Copyright (and patent) holders are not all alike. Sometimes copyright functions as the Founders intended when they gave Congress the right to grant copyrights and patents, “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”
More often than not, now, it impedes progress in science and the arts by securing to commercial interests who often are not the author or inventor of anything, exclusive rights to the works of others for seemingly unlimited times.
The most egregious example of this is the use of the state granted monopoly by Henry Holt and Co. to suppress derivative artistic works based on the works of Robert Frost. In he goth band Unto Ashes recently had to ask (and was ultimately denied) permission to use Frost’s 1928 poem “Fire and Ice” as lyrics for a song. Frost died in 1968. This is promotion of the arts? (The song recorded in Europe is really quite lovely. The lyricist wrote a parody of Frost’s poem attacking Henry Holt and Co., which replaced the track on the American CD.)
The conflict is not between copyright holders per se and the interests of society, but between commercial interests that have perverted the Constitutional basis for intellectual property law into a means of securing state-granted monopolies, which impede progress in the sciences and the arts.
Then sue Apple/ITunes then. Why go after the consumer for using the technology he or she paid for.
Didn't know that about AC/DC. What a bunch of queers.
BAMMO! EXACTLY!!!!! The concept of copyright and royalties was to provide incentives to artists and writers. Hank Williams is DEAD! Elvis is DEAD! Walt Disney is DEAD! Copyright was NOT intended so creepy little guys in $3000 suits could go around suing people to collect money on creative works which they had no part in making.
I’d sooner buy directly from the Artist and pay him for the download.
63 pages.
If this was truly the case then listening to AC/DC would be like listening to hard rock / metal symphony .... each song in an album is a movement? I don't think so.
That’s because Columbia (who owns the rights to the first three Aerosmith albums) is also being a dick. They’re owned by Sony, and they made that an exclusive on the old Sony Connect music store (which was a complete failure). They’re still pissed about it, so they try to shaft everyone else.
They can’t do that because when Apple agreed to install DRM (the FairPlay setup), they agreed not to sue them.
Via Reuters - http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSTRE49C4BH20081013:
NEW YORK (Reuters) - For those about to rock, AC/DC salutes you. Unless, that is, you want to buy the Australian heavy metal group’s newest album, “Black Ice,” on iTunes, or anywhere but Wal-Mart when it drops in record stores on October 20.
“Maybe I’m just being old-fashioned, but this iTunes, God bless ‘em, it’s going to kill music if they’re not careful,” lead singer Brian Johnson, 61, told Reuters.
AC/DC, formed by brothers Angus and Malcolm Young in 1973, is among only a handful of musicians to refuse to put their music on the popular download website in a move that Johnson defended as a bid to protect the album format from the Internet’s emphasis on buying single songs.
Idiots.
Yeah, I don’t notice them complaining about singles or lone tracks getting played on the radio.... or getting sold in stores......
Why are they idiots? Seems to me that they are asserting the rights over their property.
I thought Freepers were in favor of property rights.
Many artists are doing that, or are doing it via iTunes (which charges a small fee per track for hosting it and the rest goes to the artist or whoever put it up.)
Oh, they have the right to do whatever they wish with their property.
I also have the right to ridicule them for what I think is a stupid decision that has no basis in objective reality and that is costing them tons of money in lost sales.
The politicians will be the judge of that. Law really doesn't matter anymore.
>>If these guys had their way, we’d still be paying royalties for Twain, Mozart, Scott Joplin and Nat Hawthorne.<<
...for singing their stuff in the shower.
Are you kidding? It's unAmerican to buy something you don't want to get something you do want. That'll kill music, definitely...
...and the monster grew, and grew, and grew, and they don't like it that they got aced. Tough!
The best part is that iTunes is exposing more artists to potential customers than the RIAA ever would - tons of people are releasing tracks on iTMS that the record companies turned up their noses at for no good reason, and those people are making pretty good money from those sales.
So when the RIAA drones crank up the latest “iTMS killer” site only to see it fail, it’s really amusing. They’ve had the years to figure out why iTMS is a runaway success the likes of which have never been seen before in the media industry, yet they still don’t get it.
1. Apple does not care if the iTMS turns a profit (though it does, and quite an enormous one). The iTunes Music Store exists for one reason and one reason only - to give people a compelling reason to buy Apple hardware. That’s it.
2. Since they don’t have to care about nickel and dime-ing their customers for each song, they do something totally revolutionary - they give the people what they want (both artists and customers) and little to none of what they don’t want. They have no egotistical need to crank up prices or put the screws to their customers to get one more penny out of some old and worthless catalog.
Most of the record labels in the RIAA still don’t get it. One notable exception, EMI does - in fact, it looks like back catalog sales of EMI properties on iTMS may very well save that label.
Thanks for the ping ShadowAce.
Dunno... I have a natural aversion to monopolies and roadblocks to progress.
I personally think our copyright system is a mess and needs a massive reformation.
Yea tough. That's the way it works in America.
Well, that is how the Constitution designed our system of copyright to be. Unfortunately, it is not that way anymore. We will no longer be at odds when the Copyright Cartel and Congress read the Constitution and truly understand the intent of copyright, and the public forgets this idea that everything should be free.
Copyright in this country was not designed to be the absolute, perpetual right that these people want it to be. Copyright is one of the most blatant examples in this country of our Constitution being destroyed by us signing treaties that more reflect the laws of other countries that are in opposition to the Constitution.
Copyright is also not property. It is a limited, granted right. The only way I can steal a singer's property is to rob his house, take his car or some other such action. Downloading a song is infringing on his copyright, a completely different legal concept.
They lost that legal battle against the old Rio music player. They should get over it.
I can think of some albums that tell a cohesive story and are best listened to as a whole, like The Wall, Tommy, Quadrophenia and Ziggy Stardust. But I can't think of a single AC/DC album that is more than a collection of singles.
Hey, dildo-breath! Who was it that bribed Congress to extend copy-wrong to something comparable to 10 times its original Constitutional duration, in the guise of protecting among other things, Disney works based on plots which had fallen into the public freakin’ domain? Remember that, public domain? Who was it that bribed Congress to TRY to neuter our fair use RIGHTS?
Yeah, how are we going to move all our crap songs if we can’t force you to buy them to get the few good ones?
Property rights (probably more properly called "interests" in the case of intangible property) for composition was supposed to be of limited duration, unlike say the deed to a piece of land. They broke the compact when they paid Congress to ignore our interest and over-emphasize theirs. They deserve no sympathy.
Most of the old Moody Blue Albums and pretty much all of Al Stewart's albums were exactly that: common-themed and pretty much progressing one to another.
----------------------------------------------------------
RESISTOR
Swear allegiance to the flag, whatever flag they offer;
Never hint at what you really feel.
Teach the children quietly for, someday, sons and daughters
Will rise up and fight while we stood still.
Der Elite Møøsënspåånkængrüppen ØberKømmändø (EMØØK)
Gross overreaching by the industry coupled with political corruption has certainly hurt their cause. Unlike many libertarians, I’m a firm believer in copyright protections, but no rational person can support the current set up.
The feds are working on taxing FM stations every time they play a song.
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