Posted on 01/18/2017 5:16:53 AM PST by expat_panama
The Copyright Industry, especially the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), and MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) have suppressed every form of innovation, and technology to protect their questionable rights. In the 80s, they sued to stop video recorders, but were thankfully held back by the Supreme Court in the famous Betamax case. The Media Industry forced manufacturers of blank cassettes, tapes, and CDs to pay a royalty...
...1998, the RIAA sued to stop the first portable Mp3 player, Diamond Rio, from being sold.
In 1999, they took down Napster...
...In 2014, the RIAA considered suing Google for even listing sites that people could use to rip media.
The RIAA previously found that for 98% of the music related searches they performed, “pirate sites” were listed on the first page of the search results...
...the enforcement system we operate under requires us to send a staggering number of piracy notices – 100 million and counting to Google alone—and an equally staggering number of takedowns...
...media moguls are mafiosi in legal garb...
...Let the industry die off. It is a dinosaur in an age of mammals. It is a relic that has lots its usefulness like royalty, and aristocracy. We won't have to suffer industry stars telling us how enlightened they are, and how retro-stupid the public is.
For decades they have monopolized American and Western culture - often destroying our core values - and charged us for the privilege of their artistic rampage. We were stupid to put up with it. Now they are suing us. Let them die out. Let music and artistic creation return to the individual, as it was when the republic was born. Let the copyright attorneys find something useful to do.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Artists traditionally make most of their money from live concert performances. Unless an artist is huge, record sale proceeds usually go straight back to the record company. Digital music is best viewed as a free commercial for an artist's live performance, but the artist would derive little benefit even if the industry somehow found a way to monetize the transfer of every single wayward MP3. The record companies would benefit immensely, however - taking us straight back to the good old days of the 70's when they ruled the entertainment world - so they keep trying to do the impossible.
As for smaller artists who are trying to sell digital music on their own web sites, that's wishful thinking. There is just too much free product out there already. Without the aforementioned value-adds, sales of strictly digital music will be minimal at best.
All that ranting and not a single statement about the title of the thread.
Here in America it is a right to be paid for a creation. You anti-American expats might think our system of society is wrong, but we couldn’t care less what some anti-America living in a foreign country thinks.
Stealing is wrong and people have rights to their creations, maybe not in your Panama, but it is in America.
There are only two states in binary; 1 and 0, on or off, yet, try arranging the billions of bit in the proper order to create software.
There are 26 letters in the alphabet. Try arranging them in proper sequence for a novel, movie script, or document.
Your argument that a lack of of root data complexity invalidates a copyright is invalid.
What is your stance on the ownership...
We can change the subject from thugs to ownership if you want, as long as we first agree that the thugs must be stopped, and after that we can talk about something new.
“The internet is a wonderful thing, but one aspect that’s just stupid is that so many seem to think that content should be completely “free.””
Well, for all intents and purposes, it is free. We can argue whether it should be free or not, but the fact remains that nearly any content that people are trying to sell for money can probably be had for free with a few button clicks.
At some point we are going to have to acknowledge the reality that once the ability to replicate any kind of data for little to no cost is put in the hands of everyone, the data itself precipitously declines in value. This is basic economics; no scarcity = no value.
That's what we hear from folks who never create and don't work w/ products in the public domain. In real life a lot of us do quite well thank you. It's hard to understand in the old mindset --for example how can Red Hat be worth $13B and gross hundreds of millions w/ sales growing 20% annually while their main product is giving away software that's make by folks that write the code for free?
Things are what they are. Many artists don't sweat copyrights, and do quite well. Meanwhile the RIAA and the MPAA are thugs who're backed w/ my taxes.
Stop and think about what you’re saying, here. Music, entertainment, sports, they’re all “free?” Then there’s no motivation to provide them.
What do you do for a living? Can it be made “free?” If so, I suppose you wouldn’t find that objectionable.
We agree together on the article that started this thread.
I read the article and have some fundamental disagreement... ...I don’t have a problem with an recording artist having a lengthy period of protection...
imho we'd be better deciding first if we adhere to the rule of law. I say let's start with the U.S. Constitutuon
The Congress shall have Power 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...
So the question is whether we want to leave it at that or ignore "limited" and replace it w/ "lengthy" or with "indefinite" as in the case of major copyright lawyers today:
“Stop and think about what you’re saying, here. Music, entertainment, sports, they’re all “free?””
Yes, they are, and it really doesn’t matter what you or I feel about it. We can wail and moan and tear our hair out about it, but it won’t change the fact that they are all freely available to anyone with an internet connection.
“What do you do for a living? Can it be made “free?” If so, I suppose you wouldn’t find that objectionable.”
It wouldn’t change reality even if I did find it objectionable. The best I could do would be to try and adapt to the new reality before it ground me between its gears and spat me out.
No, they’re not “free” and the creators of these products (yes, they are products) will cease to produce them. A musician, professional sports figure, photographer, play writer, screen actor or any other person involved in creating products that are disseminated via electronic means are not slaves. They will not be forced to produce without compensation. You will not receive benefit of their efforts without paying for it. If you can’t be stopped from stealing, then the supply will be cut off.
You go on ahead and work for free. Such an altruist you are.
“No, they’re not “free”...”
They certainly are. You can choose to deny that they are free, but millions of people who obtain those products for free aren’t in any mood to join you in that fantasy.
“... and the creators of these products (yes, they are products) will cease to produce them.”
Perhaps.
“They will not be forced to produce without compensation.”
Nobody is forcing them.
“If you can’t be stopped from stealing, then the supply will be cut off.”
That is one possibility, but I don’t think it’s the most likely. I think it’s much more likely that people will adapt to the new reality and find other ways to make money while still producing what they are good at producing.
“You go on ahead and work for free. Such an altruist you are.”
And you can keep trying to make things personal instead of having a logical discussion about the issues, but it’s not going to get you very far.
Project Gutenberg spends a lot of time and effort attempting to track down if a particular work published, say, in 1930 has finally lapsed copyright. It is sometimes extremely difficult to determine because it is sometimes tricky simply determining who a particular author actually was, not to mention whether he/she has passed, and if so, when they did so. There is often no way to know, so they have to wait the longest length of time from the publication date before they can even bother to scan a work for publication.
Then you have the problems of large corporations buying off enough legislooters to extend the copyright yet again, so that you end up with a situation where:
In countries with (somewhat) more sane copyright law, like Australia, you can already download most of the works of George Orwell because they've already entered the Public Domain there. I doubt you'll ever be able to legally do so in the allegedly free United States.
Then you have corporations like Disney, that made a lot of their initial fortunes by digging deep into the public domain for their early works, yet seem to be absolutely terrified of the concept of Steamboat Willie ever reaching the same status. Should we really have to hunt down the descendants of William Shakespeare if we'd like to make use of material from The Merchant of Venice, or Romeo and Juliet so we can pay them royalties for the right to do so? If not, what are the logical limits of how long works should be held hostage to posterity by descendants of their creators? I recall seeing a quote from some movie exec who claimed that "eternity minus one day" would satisfy the "limited times" specified in Article 1, § 8 of the Constitution.
I read a lot, but refuse to buy any copy-protected ebook, not because I want to give it away to all comers, but because I want to be able ton control when and where I read it. On occasion, I'll run out of reading material I've purchased, and I have a directory on my reader that contains about 1000 e-books that I downloaded from Project Gutenberg. Are the distant relatives of Johann Arndt somehow being ripped off because I was able to download his work of apologetics "True Christianity" over 300 years after he wrote it? Surely someone at Disney or RIAA would argue that I am committing some wrong.
The bottom line for all of this is that the law has become a ridiculous over-reaching and abusive barrier to the free flow of information. So much so, that it weakens any remaining respect for that law. As far as I'm concerned I have no respect at all for any work over 30 years of age. If a friend wants a copy of Dark Side of the Moon, after first being amazed they didn't already have a copy, I'll gladly provide it. THis is an inevitable consequence of their twisting of the law to suit the needs of immortal corporations, who have far different concerns than we mere mortals of this earth.
Thank you so much for your reply!
My point is not that they actually own this but that they want to own ever conceivable use of it and the laws are written so vaguely that any court case could in effect give them that.
I only invite correction.
Thank you for your reply.
I understand your counter, and would accept the refutation except that the actual court cases do not hinge on minor variation. Of course it is true that there are an infinite number of combinations of the 12 tones, but they do not all sound good. Once you create a tonality, your melody will hover around five notes. After composition class we played a game converting various melodies to the pentatonic scale. It was fun and it was not the challenge that it sounds like. But the point is that your song is going to be played for a jury and it is going to sound like a host of other songs to them.
To apply my point to literature, there are a limited number of conflict ideas for your plot and Shakespeare covered them all in his career. If you can show that the idea you are using is in the public domain then you can get out of the infringement suit, but you cannot own your idea. There are an infinite number of dramatic ideas, but they are not all good. There are a limited number of ways to vary the plot ideas of Shakespeare, and soon if not already, all those ideas will be owned by somebody, and no one else can use them.
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