

The Recording Industry Likes to Make Me Look Like an Asshole - earbitscom
http://blog.earbits.com/online_radio/the-recording-industry-likes-to-make-me-look-like-an-asshole/

======
tomjen3
I hope one day you come to think about what you are really saying.

The music industry isn't a thousand part as important as a usefull internet.
Frankly copyright has become far too difficult to enforce without killing the
internet so we should drop the enforcement, accept the decline in output from
the movie/music industry (and I am ok with it going all the way to zero) and
move on.

Unlike a lot of others here I don't have anything against mainstream music,
but I do no that there is no such thing as a free lunch and that the price of
copyright, compared to the additional value created by it, is too high.

Remember there is no natural right to copyright, it was allowed by the
founders as a way to promote useful art and science - and there is no
requirement that we keep it.

~~~
earbitscom
I hope one day _you_ come to think about what you are really saying. It's too
hard to protect the interests of artists, fuck 'em.

~~~
quanticle
>It's too hard to protect the interests of artists, fuck 'em.

It's too hard to protect the interests of buggy-whip makers. Let's outlaw
automobiles. It's too hard to protect the interests of barges. Let's outlaw
trains. It's too hard to protect the interests of ocean liners. Lets outlaw
air travel.

No one is _entitled_ to a living. No one should have to rely on the government
to protect their business model. If your business model doesn't work in an
Internet-enabled world, too fucking bad. We didn't bail out the buggy whip
makers for having a business model that couldn't survive in an automobile
enabled world. We didn't bail out the barge and steamboat industry when trains
came along. Why should we bail out the recording industry because they can't
hack it in an Internet-enabled world?

Because that's what this is. A bailout. This a bailout that dwarfs the bank
bailout in terms of the harm it can do to our economy and our liberty. And
it's not even a bailout for artists. It's a bailout for a parasitic monster
that, as far as I can tell only serves to funnel money from consumers to
lobbyists.

EDIT: By your logic, even the recording industry _itself_ shouldn't exist. The
recording industry killed off the "home-performance" industry and drastically
cut sheet music sales by making and distributing recordings of performances.
So who's looking out for their interests?

~~~
earbitscom
That's the thing, no one is _entitled_ to free music, either.

Your argument is ridiculous because we're talking about a product that
everybody still wants. It's not a buggy whip. It's music. If you don't want it
enough to pay for it, then you just don't need to have a copy. Is that really
such a hard concept for you to grasp?

~~~
quanticle
>Your argument is ridiculous because we're talking about a product that
everybody still wants.

Is it a product that everybody wants? Or is it a product that everybody _says_
they want? If music were truly as appreciated as you say it is, then more
people would be paying for it, no?

And guess what? More people _are_ paying for music. iTunes is selling
_millions_ of tracks each year. Amazon is doing the same. Do you really think
that artists would go out of business if they got the _whole_ share of their
iTunes proceeds, rather than having to split it with the recording industry?

As another comment below me says so eloquently, "Louis CK gets it. Trent
Reznor gets it. Radiohead gets it. The recording industry doesn't get it and
neither do you."

~~~
KleinmanB
Your ignorance and oversimplified reasoning is woeful. If banks left their
vaults on locked and didnt enforce theft, you would bet your ass that people
would filling their fat pockets with wads of $100s. If someone makes something
and wants to charge a dollar amount you cannot say no and just take it.

Your argument of people doing it right is irrelevant. They choose to sell it
one way, and other artists choose another. You as a consumer can have an
opinion as to which way is most effective, but you cannot decide how they
distribute.

~~~
bobds
Think of a bank that CANNOT have an effective vault because there is
technology available that allows people to walk through solid matter.

You could outlaw (or make difficult to use, restrict its features) the walk-
through-walls technology. Or you could just stop clinging to your old idea of
what a bank or a vault is.

------
vectorpush
_Anyone who disagrees, frankly, can go fuck themselves._

Well consider me fucked.

What the author doesn't realize is that he's fighting against an organic
phenomenon. Even if SOPA passes, piracy will continue to thrive. There are
thousands of eager engineers begging for the chance to prove that they can
produce an elegant hack around this poorly considered attempt to control the
internet. There is also a culture that has now adjusted its formula for
content value, and those people will _demand_ piracy, just as they demand
jailbroken phones and modded xboxes, and someone will rise to meet their
demands. A new file sharing solution will emerge, and the media companies will
have to spend another decade trying to lobby for a way to whack the next mole.

In the meantime, those of us who understand that you can't prevent a bit from
being copied have learned how to create content that people _feel good_ paying
for. Of course, people don't have the right to download content without paying
for it, but you can't stop the spread of 1s and 0s without giving the media
companies an authority that goes beyond what is reasonable.

~~~
dlss
This. A million times this. Thank you.

The customer's desire to give you money _is_ the product. This is inherent in
the nature of near zero cost replication.

Loius CK gets it, Reznor gets it, Yorke gets it, kickstarter gets it. OP
doesn't, the RIAA doesn't.

~~~
donnyg107
So you're saying that we only REALLY want the products to which we would
chritably throw cash? so when I buy coke at the grocery store, it's because I
want to charitably contribute to the coca-cola company's artful soda recipe?
And when I don't feel like appreciating it, I should just take them?

OBVIOUSLY NOT. If you don't appreciate the music, or even the artists work,
then don't download it. If you don't want it, dont steal and insist that your
"just getting it for the right price." I can't even begin to explain how
entitled it sounds o hear people saying that they wil pay for the things that
they "really should be paying for because they want to be." This is a
justification for piracy and is in no way a solution to the curent issues. You
buy a product, you donate to charities which you like. Charities ask you to
contribute, firms tell you what you need to to pay for their product. Louis CK
is in no way an indication that people will pay for things they 'really
appreciate,' lots of people really wanted the experiment to work. But what of
Kanye's album? I see hundreds saying "Oh this guy is a jerk, I'm just gonna
take his album." Is that how natural markets work?

Don't like it? Good, that's your NATURAL INCLINATION to go for lowest price
possible which will in no way just 'go away' when you really appreciate your
products, nor should it.

And this is not zero cost replication. There are people that put a ton of time
and effort into piracy to make it work. We'll know when we've reached a
solution that works when the enormous online filesharing infrastructure
necessary for the current levels of piracy dissolves, and people simply start
to pay for the products like they would any other.

~~~
dlss
> This is inherent in the nature of near zero cost replication

If coca-cola sold their recipe rather than selling cans of soda, then I would
agree with your paragraph one.

Remember that coca-cola does not pay royalties to many of the inventors of the
ideas the bottler uses to bottle soda. Newton's heirs do not own the world.

As for paragraph two, all I can say is that yes: human markets do work that
way. My advice to you is to remember that a rational man adjusts to the world,
rather than becoming angry that it isn't the way he wants it to be.

As for paragraph three, you're wrong -- we all donate to charities we like, we
all give gifts, we all help each other; we read books by great thinkers and
are thankful for their gift. When you really like an artist, learning that
they need money to recoup their cost of production is much the same as
learning what a friend wants for their birthday: you give it as a token of
your affection.

edit: you just added paragraph four. Please reread what you wrote. You're not
even pretending to understand the subjects you're commenting on any more :(

~~~
donnyg107
That is not for you to choose. If the artist wants you to give as a token of
your affection, they can, but for now, you have no right to decide that you
need not pay for their work until they've earned your affection. This is in no
way a solution. And I have every right to be angry at justifications for theft
with claims that theft is the baseline, and benevolence is a product of
further appreciation. Theft cannot be the baseline.

People need to adjust to idea that services need to be paid for. Plain and
simple, if they aren't paid for, in full, they stop being provided. And if say
this magical benevolent system is implemented, are you to guarantee that good
will can ensure that the money is actually paid? I can't, and based on the
justifications for theft I've seen on this forum, I seriously doubt anyone
here will actually pay for the all music they take, especially under the
anonymity and "I'm special so it doesn't matter when I do this immoral thing"
of the internet.

~~~
dissident
The service of creative content production, or intellectual property in
general, is an artificial one, not a natural one. We've endowed ourselves with
this institution, presumably to promote cultural progress. So established, we
_can_ argue against the idea that it is "theft" because we have artificially
stimulated that definition in the first place; it is not "theft" naturally, it
is theft due to centuries of a model that used to work, but cannot work
anymore.

To refuse to reconsider whether it is theft or not is therefore asinine.

That said, I'd like to ask what more than a cynical and baseless speculation
you use to support the argument against a patronage model for creative
content? You're looking at charity in the wrong way -- a number of individuals
who enjoy the benefits of some action are free to provide as much of their own
incentive to support those institutions.

Your argument against a patronage (donation based, or public subsidy) model is
akin to complaining that a homeless shelter should expect all of the homeless
they take care of to pay their share in the service they provide. _That is not
the point_ and is clearly not the effective strategy. Enough people who have
the cultural motivation and desire can donate to those shelters, or a number
of other non-profit institutions who provide different solutions.

There simply is no evidence for you to base the allegation that it is "in no
way a solution" because we already see patronage as an effective model for a
number of systems that capitalism has failed to address. Once we stop
pretending creative content can be owned, we can actually begin progressing as
a culture.

The days for copyright are numbered, and the selfish and entitled are not the
pirates but the artists who demand that their content be worth something to
everybody.

~~~
donnyg107
Refer to response above.

------
Natsu
> I don’t see people in the technology community making real and productive
> proposals for how to solve the problems of copyright protection and piracy.

That's because there is no technical solution, this is a people problem, not a
tech problem. I've thought about it a lot myself. Software gets pirated too,
after all, so if there was some technical way to block it, it would've
happened already. Microsoft controls a significant fraction of the world's
OSes and they can't even manage it, and not for lack of trying or lack of
funding.

But that does _not_ mean that artists are screwed, only that they'll have to
adapt. Computers won't replace authors any time soon[1]. And adapting _is_
possible, though it relies less on copyright and more on business acumen. Look
at the webcomic authors: they give away their work for free, but the smart
ones can still make good money. If you want lessons on how, start watching how
Howard Taylor does business. He gets his fans to ship his books for him and
they like it.

You can give the pirates the middle finger all you want. But, laws or no laws,
I don't see how people are going to stay in business unless they adapt. I can
understand it being painful: I see factory workers getting replaced by
machines, after all. But the lesson is the same: evolve or die.

[1] Uncreative fill-in-the-blanks style writing, like that program that does
sports reporting, excepted.

~~~
ScottWhigham
* That's because there is no technical solution, this is a people problem, not a tech problem. *

That's just not correct. The technical "solution" of Napster and later
torrenting enabled this on a mass scale, did it not? Surely that's a
"technical" matter and not only a people matter? If you make it technology
easy enough that a 14yo with little tech skills can download the latest pop
album _for free_ and _with virtually no risk of any consequences_ , then
you've technically provided a way for someone to take the easy way out. People
are like water - they'll almost always take the easiest route to get what they
want. If it's easier to torrent/download and there are no repercussions (of
whatever type), then they'll choose that more often than not.

Take away the tech that made it easy (or technically add in repercussions like
a virus/trojan) and they'll stop.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I hate to get 2nd-amendment-peanut-butter into your piracy-chocolate, but as I
was reading your comment, the phrase "Guns don't kill people, people kill
people" flashed through my mind. Guns are a mix of a technology/people
problem, must as much as copyright infringement is, and we haven't even solved
that problem yet. (At least, we don't seem to have solved it in the USA.)

~~~
Natsu
There is one really good point in there. If you want to be a successful
artist, make it so that people _want to support you_. That's what Louis CK was
doing the other day. That's how Howard Taylor operates. It's just good
business. You have happy customers. That makes you happy. Good times all
around.

------
T-R
It isn't the job of government to ensure that a business model is profitable
where it otherwise wouldn't be. The concept that creating music or film (or
any other kind of intellectual property) would be predictably profitable
enough to merit investing so much in its production is a rather recent
phenomenon.

Consider, when musicians and performance artists play on the street, they
determine based on the donations they get whether or not their efforts are
worth their time, and adjust their future investments accordingly - they don't
use law enforcement to force every viewer/listener to pay, claiming
entitlement to compensation. On the internet, the sound reaches further, and
the street is larger - as are opportunities for donations, and the cost of
using law enforcement to extort payment.

Perhaps a better solution hasn't been offered because, for things that travel
and are reproduced more like sound waves than physical objects, this model of
business/enforcement just isn't scalable, at least without infringing on
people's rights.

------
JulianMorrison
It's not that the recording industry is, just coincidentally, a bunch of
jerks.

Copyright is not about money, not directly. Copyright is about power. In the
case of the content industries, honking great amounts of government backed
power to grant or withhold access to what is basically the shared culture of
the planet. Enough to, eg: strong arm a company that would prefer not to be
evil into accepting at-whim takedown - that's what power does. And that's what
by-design amoral money-grubbing organizations do when you hand them that much
power, they turn into thugs, because their only way to make money is to hold
things hostage. Even those around them who would be moral are pulled into the
amoral system, because of that power.

Regardless of whether you agree that artists and labels should be paid,
copyright is a bad way to implement it.

Thus, defending copyright but saying "you make me look bad" - no, this is
inevitable. If you shook the dice again and re-implemented copyright with
different starting people, personalities and companies, this would happen
again. it's what copyright _does_.

------
gerggerg
Culture: No one ones it. Not even creators.

Copyright: An incentive to produce culture.

The Internet: A bit distribution platform.

Technology: Gave you the ability to sell physical records, then took it away.
That was a quick century.

------
donnyg107
To put no blame on either side, as the only attempts I've seen on this ground
involve louis CK and some small-time dubsteppers, what of the music industry's
effective monopoly and set-without-alternative pricing? Not many artists have
the resources to bypass this system when they really have the opportunity to
opt out of the label system, so the argument of "pay for it or find another
way to get music" isn't exactly reasonable. And as a better indication,
there's been a clear decrease in consumer valuation of individual songs, as
evidence of the total effort exerted to bypass current prices, and yet the
prices for music have remained steady.

I believe that there is a market equilibrium, and that as songs are made
cheeper to reflect their new value to consumers, more will buy rather than
steal, but it seems like labels are insisting that they should dictate market
price without alternative rather than adjust price to demand. I don't mean
that they should just lower prices until we get what we want, but I think the
direction the music industry is headed is more enforcement of monopoly than
prevention of theft.

If there were a way for artists to effectively bypass the system, or for value
to consumers to have sway in the market price, this may not be an issue, but
it is. In reality, the system means more theft, so artists see less revenue,
and I'd imagine that artists would go for an alternative as readily as many
consumers. And further, if there were some way to do away with it, there'd
likely be far less of a culture of theft, or say, less communally supported
resources for it, so artists might conceivably be able make money if they
attempted to go sans-label.

Obviously these are just more reasons why the system is broken, but the
difference is the availability of a market solution. And if there isn't in
fact, a treatment for the disease rather than the symptom, I really only see
SOPA as reasonable if it were immediately followed by anti-trust legislation
against some big name labels.

------
spauka
While I agree that the protection of copyright is a noble pursuit (yes I
believe people should be paid for things they create if they request to be
paid), the recording industry is going about it in totally the wrong way.

Time and again, people have proven that if there is a SIMPLE EASY alternative,
then we will use it. Take a look at Steam, Spotify, Amazon etc. All of these
people provide a service that is easy to use, and despite there being a simple
way to pirate the content provided on most of those services (and btw, this
here is the big secret), MOST PEOPLE DON'T.

Most of the time, if there is a valuable product out there, then consumers
have no problem paying for it. Yes, there will still be piracy for a variety
of reasons just as there will always be physical theft, e.g. too high a cost,
people are too poor etc..., most people support artists and content creators
and are willing to pay for their use of those products.

Game manufacturers are starting to catch on, so are software producers with
the emergence of app stores (the restrictions on those platforms are another
matter entirely and I won't judge them here), but despite the fact that the
music industry is older than either of those industries, it is aiming to shut
down the only platform in modern society that can push their profits
incredibly high if they do it right.

Yes, to do this right (and I am not saying Spotify or ITunes have this down),
they would have to invest, A lot, but given how much they are investing in
lobbying for SOPA, it is a joke to think they couldn't devote a tiny bit of
their über profits to developing a platform that actually works.

P.S. earbitscom - Here is an alternative. One that your site goes some way
towards providing.

------
_dps
I like to view copyright as a short-circuit path to fast promise-exchanges of
the following form:

"I have a really interesting piece of information. In fact, I create this
information, and it takes a lot of work. For whatever reason, you want the
information. I'm happy to share it with you, for a price far lower than the
cost of creation, but only if you promise not to tell anyone else." Copyright
is a short-circuit process whereby anyone who has ever received the
information in whatever way (including hearing/seeing it in public) is legally
treated as though they agreed to the above terms.

I think that _some kind_ of "I'll give you info X if you promise not to
redistribute it" structure is not a priori a bad idea. Obviously, it is
unclear that those promises would be upheld in practice ... but at that point
I believe it becomes a market question of whether people are willing to live
up to their promises and not a question of bad policy.

Copyright, as an approximation to such a structure, is fundamentally
problematic because it attempts to make the above exchange work without:

a) having to trust people (the law is used to scare them into behaving)

b) the receivers of the information having felt like they made a valuable
promise in return for the valuable information (the receivers are told they
are getting something that is "owned" as opposed to merely "not public
knowledge")

------
joejohnson
>> But the other reason is that, for all the reasons that SOPA may be bad, I
don’t see people in the technology community making real and productive
proposals for how to solve the problems of copyright protection and piracy.

It's not that simple to "solve" piracy with technology. Technology inherently
makes it easy to copy and share things. The changes will have to come from the
businesses that accept that they have a failed business model. They must
accept that have no realistic way to continue.

------
palish
This is an interesting point.

I have no idea, but is it reasonable to make the claim that the DMCA is
flawed? By that I mean, is it excessively annoying / ineffective to actually
_use_ the DMCA for its intended purpose?

(I'm not referring to DMCA abuses... just whether it's fundamentally broken or
not.)

I haven't really given it much thought. I always assumed that the DMCA was a
reasonable middle ground. But is it?

~~~
jerf
If you believe that the purpose of the DMCA is to make it so you can sit back
and do nothing and all piracy magically stops by Sheer Force of Law, it
doesn't work.

If you believe the purpose of the DMCA is to give rights holders a certain
amount of power to self-enforce and are willing to concede that it won't all
be stopped, it works pretty well.

If your opinion is somewhere in between, adjust as needed.

I think if earbits wanted to clean up his essay a bit he should come out and
state clearly and explicitly what his goal for his desired legal regime is. I
suspect he's sneaking in an implicit requirement that it be perfect on us, and
if you accept that you'll _never_ be satisfied. There is no set of tools that
the government can hand the industry to eliminate piracy. Even SOPA isn't
draconian enough. On the other hand, once you accept that a certain amount of
lossage is inevitable and that we expect rightsholders to only really have to
chase down violations on the largest sites and have the tools to catch the
vast bulk, the argument that the DMCA is some sort of grossly flawed bill
becomes much, much harder to just float by without justification. There's a
huge gap in the logic there, which I think is what some people are choking on
without quite consciously realizing it.

I suspect that actually filling in that gap will inevitably erode the
perceived power of the argument, though. He complains technical people aren't
working out how to solve a problem that he can't actually give his true
requirements for without losing his audience.

------
shalmanese
Thank you. What's been conspicuously missing from the entire SOPA debate is
how there does exist rampant and willful violation of copyright currently
hidden under the safe blanket of the DMCA and that this is a legitimate
problem that needs to be addressed.

SOPA is not the right way to do it but denying the reality makes the anti-SOPA
side's message not being heard by those across the aisle.

~~~
waqf
Would you mind giving examples so we can understand what scale of problem
you're alleging?

------
cheald
> But the other reason is that, for all the reasons that SOPA may be bad, I
> don’t see people in the technology community making real and productive
> proposals for how to solve the problems of copyright protection and piracy.

If this is the crux of your argument (and I fully believe it is), then your
entire premise is flawed. There are big players making major inroads into this
problem already. You might have heard of some of them, like iTunes, Pandora,
Spotify, Amazon MP3, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Google Market, Steam, and
Origin.

You should read what Gabe Newell, the CEO of Valve Software, the owner of
Steam (which is often credited with singlehandedly saving PC gaming as an
industry) has to say about piracy: <http://www.gamefront.com/gabe-newell-
piracy-is-a-non-issue/>

The solution isn't DRM, or dispatching special ops to assassinate teenagers
who pirate Ke$ha music, or giving corporations an internet killswitch. The
solution isn't even to eliminate piracy. You can't, and you'll never be able
to. Beyond that, you don't even _need_ to eliminate piracy. What you want to
eliminate is lost sales. There's a lot of conflating piracy and lost sales,
especially by the content producers, and it's utter bull.

If Newell is correct (and I have every reason to believe that he is), then the
way you capture sales lost to piracy is you establish distribution that is
easier and more accessible than piracy, and people will use it. The "they
wouldn't buy it anyway" argument is old and tired, but there's a nugget of
truth in it - there are two general classes of content pirates; those who
would buy the item, but for whom piracy is more convenient, and those who
wouldn't buy the item, and take it because they feel entitled to it. There's a
third, smaller class, who would buy items, but lack the finances to do it, but
it's arguable that that's not a lost sale, and in all three cases, you're
still achieving greater distribution, which does make at least some
contribution to your product's success, however nebulous. That's not to make
an excuse for piracy, but I firmly believe it to be a reality of any form of
content distribution.

The consumers have proven over and over again that we'll legitimately buy
things if there are easy, convenient ways to get them legitimately. You
generally lose sales to piracy when it becomes _easier_ to pirate content, not
when it becomes cheaper. I would argue that the majority of piracy is about
convenience moreso than it is about money. The solution isn't to make it less
convenient to be legitimate (hi, DRM), but more convenient, and all of a
sudden, you find yourself recapturing those lost sales.

------
SudarshanP
The author claims "And I support record labels, because many of the albums I
love would not exist without label financing, and I might not know about them
if not for label marketing and promotion."

While this statement may be true about "the particular albums this particular
author likes" it is untrue in general. A good song will get popular through
various means. An artist does not need his life to be controlled by a middle
man so that the audience can be advertised to. There are many ways in which
the word spreads in the 21st century. The hard thing for an artist is to
acquire the minimum artistic ability which probably means years of toil to
reach a level when some one cares to listen to you. Making a song is a
relatively inexpensive task. And once u have a reputation, you have mechanisms
like kickstarter to fund your project. More alternatives will evolve as the
recording industry dies.

------
twainer
The SOPA outcry reminds me of global warming - specifically the generation
that doesn’t believe in it, that scoffs at the notion that man could even
affect mother nature.

That generation seems so backwards and hubrisitic: the crazy idea that one
could just take and take and take without giving something back, without
respect for the balance of the system. “My actions don’t count because mother
nature will always figure a way to make it all work out okay.” Could there be
a more juvenile train of thought?

That’s the fundamental problem when it comes to content; that’s the
fundamental problem when it comes to ‘business models’ - not the RIAA or MPAA
or even TPB - but the hordes of people who have too little respect for the
people who create the content that is voraciously consumed. Hordes that take
advantage of a system and predictably cry out when anything threatens their
spot at the teet.

The earth, of course, doesn’t ask for money - just for respect - respect shown
when each individual asks “Am I hurting you?” and when each individual wonders
“Is there a better way I could be doing this?”

A lot of folks fancy themselves the smartest person in the room, but there is
a lesson in respect for others that needs to be learned before true success
can be realized. Put away the false dichotomy of how things used to be and how
you want them to be; there is a real way they can be, and a balanced way they
should be.

I remain optimistic. But then, it's sometimes tempered; Upton Sinclair said it
well:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends
on his not understanding it.”

------
joejohnson
Here's is the thing: earbitscom _is_ an asshole. I think he might make a
decent point toward the end of his piece, but he is an asshole and it shows in
his comments and it shows in this article.

------
phil
"Don't fight the Internet." - Eric Schmidt

------
wturner
"But the other reason is that, for all the reasons that SOPA may be bad, I
don’t see people in the technology community making real and productive
proposals for how to solve the problems of copyright protection and piracy."

As far as artists being compensated for their work, I really have enjoyed some
of Jaron Lanier's talks where he argues that if the net had retained a design
intended to keep "provenance" then every person would get paid for the bit's
(no pun intended) they've input, and ideally this is the direction that would
have been more equitable. As to the feasibility or how "realistic" his views
can extend beyond "talks" , I have no idea. I do think within the current
framework piracy is simply the norm and all the politics around are just a
barrage of job opportunities to try and "solve" unsolvable problems. The point
of the piracy "war" isn't to end it, it's to extend it out as long as
possible. :)

------
OoTheNigerian
Joey,

I am in the same business as you and I will say this old quote. "Do not cut
your nose to spite your face".

So to fix lets say $50 billion worth of losses, you support destroying the
Internet?

Do you realize that the way the DCMA is abused this moment, SOPA can and will
be abused?

Based on your accusation of Grooveshark, let us take the reverse. do you
realize with SOPA anyone can take down earbits every single day for any song
and you have to prove you have the legal right to stream those songs?

Be careful what you wish for.

------
GigabyteCoin
> _far bigger dogs than me are on both sides of this fight and my opinion
> isn’t going to have an impact._

And that is where I stopped reading, unfortunately. Have a little faith in
yourself, why don't ya?

------
ScottWhigham
Well said. I think it would be interesting to see the reactions/votes/comments
to this broken down by age group. I suspect those > 30, by and large, agree
strongly with you, those between 25 and 30 would be a mixed group, and those
younger than 25 would think you are a crazy person. I have no "data" to back
this up but it's my guess.

Well written - thanks for sharing. (And I'm 40 if that matters)

~~~
orangecat
_I suspect those > 30, by and large, agree strongly with you_

I wish to register myself as a counterexample in the strongest possible terms.

------
tptacek
HE'S A WITCH! BURN HIM!

------
ldar15
Our founding fathers believed that you should be very careful what powers you
give to any authority because, even though they may be nice now, you have no
idea who will be in charge in the future.

This is why any student of history is against SOPA. We believe that it does
_not_ protect the rights espoused in the Constitution. We believe that it may
be abused in the future.

Some people, such as yourself, seem to believe that this would never happen.
You seem to think that because there is a need (in your view) for copyright
holders to remove "owned" content, that we need a law like this. And further
you seem to believe that its ok to have such a broad law, even though it may
be open to such abuse.

UMG is just _demonstrating why the founding fathers were right_ and why you
are naive and short-sighted.

Here's the thing: if UMG wasn't actively doing it, you'd still be naive and
short-sighted. You'd still be an "asshole", in your words, and the founding
fathers would still be right.

~~~
mattdeboard
Why would you put "owned" in quotes there?

There's one thing that the OP is indisputably correct about: Content creators
(should) own the content they create. When Isee someone do something like
putting "owned" in quotes, it just immediately strikes me as someone who
justifies piracy to themselves by saying that no one owns content.

~~~
calcnerd256
Or at the very least, if nobody owns it (as some people seem to believe), then
content creators shouldn't be deceived into thinking that they own it and that
society won't just pass it around. Whether or not IP exists, society at large
needs to mostly agree one way or another, or a lot of people will put a lot of
effort into something they wouldn't otherwise, and they won't be reimbursed in
the way that convinced them to put in the effort in the first place.

------
shareme
He forgets that in most countries Copyright, IP, etc are public commons
'licensed' to private companies by the laws passed. It is not an automatic
privilege and does change over time as the public adjusts its laws to match
reality.

In other words MPAA and RIAA do not have an automatic right to their business
models because as technology changes so than to how much we the public grant
in rights to companies in form of copyrights, etc.

Remember this dumb fuck MPAA and RIAA when DCMA was passed it got redefined by
negotiation and court cases. When SOPA gets redefined we do not have to be
nice about it..fair warning..

~~~
bmelton
I was very close to giving you an upvote, and then you resorted to calling the
author a "dumb fuck" after he posted one of the most thoughtful, poignant
essays I've recently read on the subject.

Because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't necessarily invalidate their
opinions. If anything, in perhaps a better time, it would open the invitation
for frank, but ideally _civil_ discussion.

~~~
burgerbrain
_"Anyone who disagrees, frankly, can go fuck themselves."_

 _"the most thoughtful, poignant essays I've recently read on the subject."_

You might want to read more...

~~~
bmelton
In context, he's saying that to anyone justifying theft from the artists who
are producing work.

I _did_ read more.

~~~
icebraining
Copyright infringement, not theft. Artist's property before infringement ==
Artist's property after infringement.

~~~
bmelton
If you say so. I'm not willing to get into that argument at the moment, but
let's just say that yes, I fall into the camp that believes it does deprive
the artists of revenue.

I play guitar, and I know and play with a lot of small / amateur musicians who
literally pay their rent with their artistry.

I find it amazing that in the dawn of all the technology we have at our hands,
people would honestly advocate that all of an artist's digitally distributed
goods should be 'free', whether they intend it that way or not, relegating the
artists to only being able to make money by performing in public shows, and I
guess hoping against hope that the pirating public doesn't decide that that is
too proprietary a way for them to distribute their music.

Hell, the way it's going, I can see people making an argument for holding
artists down while we surgically remove their talent from them so that we can
stick it up on the Pirate Bay. :-\

~~~
icebraining
_I fall into the camp that believes it does deprive the artists of revenue._

No more than simply not buying _and_ not listening does, and I doubt you
consider that "stealing".

 _I find it amazing that in the dawn of all the technology we have at our
hands, people would honestly advocate that all of an artist's digitally
distributed goods should be 'free', whether they intend it that way or not,
relegating the artists to only being able to make money by performing in
public shows, and I guess hoping against hope that the pirating public doesn't
decide that that is too proprietary a way for them to distribute their music._

I find it amazing that some people can't comprehend that one can find the
notion of copyright wrong, regardless of its benefits.

I also note that buyer have shown multiple times that they're willing to pay
way more than they need, even if they can get it legally for $0.01, so that
assumption that it would relegate the artists to just public shows remains to
be proven.

~~~
bmelton
Not buying and listening doesn't derive benefit from it.

If you don't believe in copyright as a natural right, and as a result, simply
do not purchase music that you find objectionable on whatever grounds, then I
support you 100%.

Regardless of whether or not copying the material deprives them of a tangible
good, it didn't cost them nothing to produce the work. Instruments are
expensive, recording time is expensive, distribution is expensive, etc.

More to the point, I believe that even if you don't consider the artist the
owner of the work, then I believe you should respect that they are the owners
of its distribution.

------
nknight
> _Anyone who disagrees, frankly, can go fuck themselves._

I really don't think it's the recording industry that's making you look like
an asshole.

------
ldar15
"There is a plan to murder 6 million jews. Some of you have written in to ask
me to condemn this plan. Unfortunately, I cannot condemn this plan, because
none of you have come up with a reasonable alternative."

I don't think you can use the excuse that we don't have a way to support your
business model, to turn around and support fascism.

~~~
Skroob
Godwin'd

------
Skroob
I'm not going to argue, but this one thing always bugs me, and it happens all
the time:

"You get people like Universal, who yanks down a Youtube video that they have
no copyright claim to, simply because they don’t like it and they can. This is
suppression of free speech and a violation of the most important right in our
country."

Only the government can suppress free speech. If you're talking to someone and
I come in and shout over you so nobody can hear you, I'm not limiting your
freedom of speech, I'm just being an obnoxious asshole.

~~~
skew
If there's a law that says you can call in the police to drag people away if
they don't shut up when you tell them to, it certainly is an issue of freedom
of speech.

~~~
Skroob
Maybe the law itself is unconstitutional (I won't argue that either), but
there is nothing that I, a private party, can do to you, another private
party, that will violate your right to free speech.

