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Can Justice Scalia Solve the Riddles Of the Internet?
Wall Street Journal ^ | April 1, 2005 | Daniel Henninger

Posted on 04/02/2005 4:37:22 AM PST by billorites

As the berobed Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court sat pestering the suits who came before them days ago to contest Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer v. Grokster...

Conundrum #1: Has the Internet, the most powerful information pump the world has ever known, drowned the incentive to create in words or images?

Conundrum #2: Has the Internet effectively displaced the antique notion of the profit-motive with a newer, unstoppable reality that everything on the Internet is, if it wants to be, "free"?

Conundrum #3: How is it that millions of Americans who wouldn't cross the street against a red light will sleep like lambs after downloading onto their computers a Library of Alexandria's worth of music or movies--for free.

Even writers gotta eat. But this means one has to buy into the validity of eeeek, "profit." Absent that, there's no hope.

New business models like iTunes and techno-fixes such as micropayments matter a lot, but the unshakable reality is that digits and microchips are not like any previous reproducing technology. If you can digitize it, you can grab it, for free.

No matter what the Supreme Court decides about Grokster's 15 minutes of fame, this is a philosophical issue for the long run. The Web isn't just a technology; it's become an ideology. The Web's birth as a "free" medium and the downloading ethic have engendered the belief that culture--songs, movies, fiction, journalism, photography--should be clickable into the public domain, for "everyone."

What a weird ethic. Some who will spend hundreds of dollars for iPods and home theater systems won't pay one thin dime for a song or movie. So Steve Jobs and the Silicon Valley geeks get richer while the new-music artists sweating through three sets in dim clubs get to live on Red Bull. Where's the justice in that?

(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: grokster; intellectualproperty; internet; lawsuit; scotus
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To: Huck
Well, that depends on "evolving standards of useful art in a changing society." ;-)

The hell you say?

81 posted on 04/02/2005 7:21:33 AM PST by tacticalogic ("Oh, bother!" said Pooh, as he chambered his last round.)
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To: Huck
Hmmm... The version of KaZaa I used to use didn't have any advertising. I don't recall seeing any on Grokster, either, but I haven't used either in a while because I do very little trading in mp3 or other lossy formats. Mostly shn and flac.

But I see you still have no wish to retract your statements that I am a liar and a thief, even though you have absolutely no basis for making them. It is pretty obvious what that makes you.

82 posted on 04/02/2005 7:21:44 AM PST by lugsoul (Wild Turkey)
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To: lugsoul

I said outright I had no basis. I'm entitled to my prejudices.


83 posted on 04/02/2005 7:23:36 AM PST by Huck (mp3 file sharing is THEFT.)
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To: Huck
"Anyone who violates his copyright is stealing. It's no more complicated than that."

Do you pay any royalties to the RIAA when you sing 'Happy Birthday' to someone?

84 posted on 04/02/2005 7:24:49 AM PST by Tench_Coxe
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To: jpsb
Also why since it is the band that is playing the music, does the bar have to pay, how is that right if anyone should pay the license fees it should be the band?

The bar could pass the cost on to the band if they wanted. Bars pay to use music in their venues, period. They pay to use the jukebox. They pay for bands. If it's an original music band, they don't have to pay, but then, original bands don't draw as good a crowd.

If a bar can't afford entertainment, that's their problem. A cover band playing 3 sets will play roughly 30 songs. That's 30 bucks, according to your math. If a bar band can't draw enough happy drinkers to cover 30 bucks, they don't deserve the gig.

85 posted on 04/02/2005 7:27:01 AM PST by Huck (mp3 file sharing is THEFT.)
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To: Huck
You are not entitled to call me a liar and a thief based upon whatever stereotype you have in your mind of those who download music.

As for what you are, your false accusations, your cowardly inability to acknowledge your error, and your childish attempt to justify your statements provides evidence aplenty.

86 posted on 04/02/2005 7:27:22 AM PST by lugsoul (Wild Turkey)
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To: lugsoul

Fine. I admit it. You've never illegally downloaded a song. (rolling eyes.) Feel better?


87 posted on 04/02/2005 7:30:24 AM PST by Huck (mp3 file sharing is THEFT.)
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To: Huck
"They pay to use the jukebox.".

Nope the jutebox is liscensed, that is a dogde. The fact is, that you as a musician are just to damn cheap to bay the copyright fees and push that cost onto the bar. The bar isn't playing anything, you are. The bar is just contracting you to entertain and YOU are the one breaking the law.

88 posted on 04/02/2005 7:32:43 AM PST by jpsb
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To: Tench_Coxe
Do you pay any royalties to the RIAA when you sing 'Happy Birthday' to someone?

RIAA doesn't collect royalties. ASCAP and BMI do. The way it works is venues who hire musicians pay those agencies, not the performer. They usually pay a flat fee to both, which allows them to use from the entire catalog, and then those agencies use their own formulas and tracking mechanisms to distribute royalties. If asked, I can and do provide a playlist for any gig.

89 posted on 04/02/2005 7:32:59 AM PST by Huck (mp3 file sharing is THEFT.)
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To: jpsb

Incorrect.


90 posted on 04/02/2005 7:33:28 AM PST by Huck (mp3 file sharing is THEFT.)
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To: Uncledave; kingu
"Publishers that do not wish to have content posted tell JR who blocks that. Publishers who are OK presumably enjoy the publicity and links."

That’s a self serving presumption. That was the compromise ruling that FR grudgingly accepted to stay in operation. Nothing stronger would be enforceable on a wider scale without disrupting the net. Blogs today copy until they’re big enough to be noticed and formally notified. Morally, it’s not much different than downloading music, but more legally tolerated.

91 posted on 04/02/2005 7:33:38 AM PST by elfman2 (@ copyright 2005)
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To: Mathemagician
Good post.

We've been through this before: Think Lotus 1-2-3 and CopyWrite, for those over 40. 123 was a good product, vastly overpriced for the ordinary user. By "overpriced", I mean that it was overpriced for the market, which was thought of as corporate only but was in fact the growing home/small business world. So cheap, useful knockoffs came out and copying methods also appeared. (And viruses started to, so there's no free lunch.)

Soon, books came out on how to use the copies, which didn't have manuals. Back when Help systems were even worse than today.

Companies learned to price, and copy protect at what the market would pay. (Leave aside the overseas piracy--separate, tough issue--and those who will spend hours to save $10.)

Music is now overpriced. It can be gotten around by copying, in classical buying Nonesuch instead of the retail Renee Flemings, and so on. When the prices come down to reflect delivery costs which no longer include a bloated distribution channel and its protection, a good portion of the copying will disappear.

It's not nice, or moral, but the amount of copying is also the market speaking.

92 posted on 04/02/2005 7:34:37 AM PST by Blagden Alley
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To: jpsb

read and learn:

ASCAP Customers:

the three major television networks: ABC, CBS and NBC
public television - the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and its affiliated stations
the majority of the 11,000 cable systems and virtually all of the cable program services
over 1,000 local commercial television stations, including affiliates of the Fox, Paramount (UPN), Warner Bros. (WB) Networks and PAX
the Univision Television Network and its stations
about 11,500 local commercial radio stations
about 2,000 non-commercial radio broadcasters, including college radio stations and National Public Radio (NPR) stations
hundreds of background music services (such as MUZAK, airlines)
about 2,300 colleges and universities
about 5,700 concert presenters
over 1,000 symphony orchestras
over 2,000 web sites
tens of thousands of "general" licensees: bars, restaurants, hotels, ice and roller skating rinks, circuses, theme parks, veterans and fraternal organizations and more


93 posted on 04/02/2005 7:35:29 AM PST by Huck (mp3 file sharing is THEFT.)
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To: billorites

If you ask ardent downloaders to name the best site for siphoning music out of the ether, they won't say Grokster, but more likely Allofmp3, which resides in . . . Russia, and was described to me by one knowledgable user as "more or less legal."

And here's the problem(?) with the net. No borders on the net. And it's only going to get worse(?).


94 posted on 04/02/2005 7:36:34 AM PST by Valin (DARE to be average!)
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To: Blagden Alley
It's not nice, or moral, but the amount of copying is also the market speaking.

That's hilarious. That's like saying a crowd who crashes the gate to bust into a concert without a ticket is "the market speaking." What rubbish!

95 posted on 04/02/2005 7:36:34 AM PST by Huck (mp3 file sharing is THEFT.)
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To: Huck

Nothing personal but I was a musician for many years,
I know what it means when your first set is at 2am, and
there's NO billing.

Spare me.


96 posted on 04/02/2005 7:36:40 AM PST by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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To: jpsb; Huck

Copyright is not property. It is a limited public grant. Huck, you want to change it, that's fine, but it must be done in the Constitution.

Similar advance in technologies of reproduction that now threaten copyright holders and, more importantly, distributors, were responsible for the ongoing extensions of copyright to near indefinite status of today. When the profitible cycle of a copyright product ran a few printing runs, a show or concert tour, there was little profit in extending copyright. Artistic production naturally fell into the public domain with little complaint. Along come Edison and his audio and visual recording devices, suddenly, the franchise needed extending. Into the latter 20th century the serious pressure came not from music or movies but in licensing, which is why these copyright extensions are named for Disney. Come cable TV and the VCR, and Hollywood caught the bug as old catalogs found new outlets.

It's technology that drives modern copyright. There is no innate, natural period of time for copyright protection but the profitibility of a product.

In the print industry, copyright is disastrously long. Ideas are trapped in a protection racket that benefits only publishers and not authors (the copyright holders). There's nothing in F.Scott Fitzgerald's "This Side of Paradise" that more belongs to the public domain than "Great Gatsby," except that the one was published before 1924. As such, "This Side of Paradise" is far more valuable today than "Gatsby," for Scribner's no longer holds it in the vault. You may say this hurts Fitzgerald's descendents. They have no claim on it as an inheritance. Their claim is based upon the length of copyright, solely. As such, there is nothing "unfair" in their loss.

Is the Mickey Mouse franchise worth more to the people or to Disney? If copyright is property, the answer is clearly Disney. If copyright is a grant -- as it is in the Constitution -- than the public is the loser, as all the innovation copyright was intended to advance is smothered by Disney's clamp. My view is that current near-indefinite length of copyright stifles innovation and knowledge. To argue otherwise requires changing the meaning of copyright from license to property.

Actually, the current situation has little to do with copyright length. Illegal copying impacts new and old copyright equally, and new copyright more for the dollars at stake. At issue here is not extending or retracting copyright. One thing that does scare me in the case is this notion that a tool's potential can be criminal. Do guns or SUVs kill, or do people?


97 posted on 04/02/2005 7:39:55 AM PST by nicollo (All economics are politics.)
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To: Huck

I agree with you, it seems it is stealing. I thinks some justify it in their minds by transposing the music to zeros and ones.


98 posted on 04/02/2005 7:40:30 AM PST by Texas Songwriter
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To: Huck

You didn't answer the crux of my question. Do you pay royalties if you sing 'Happy Birthday' to someone?


99 posted on 04/02/2005 7:40:48 AM PST by Tench_Coxe
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To: Huck
Why are you working so hard to demonstrate that you are a petulant child who simply can't admit - without (rolling eyes)- that you jumped the gun and made a mistake?

Feel better? I didn't feel bad to start with. But I won't let you falsely accuse me without responding, and despite your silly assertion you are not "entitled" to do so.

The problem is obviously that you just don't have enough sense or brains to get past the simplistic view that internet file sharing is, by definition, theft. File sharing is no differenct than trading cassette tapes. Some of it is legal, and some of it is not. But the legality, or illegality, of that has nothing to do with the makers of blank tapes or cassette decks, and the illegality or legality of file sharing is not dependent on the creation of software.

So keep up with the juvenile name-calling. It is so helpful for your argument...

100 posted on 04/02/2005 7:41:34 AM PST by lugsoul (Wild Turkey)
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