Copyright Alert System

[Dale_M]

Another draconian measure on the part of the government.

The first post mentions policies being adopted by private industry in the US. This thread has more or less revolved around that topic. What government measure are you referring to?

 

[sedonaman]

… Even more infuriating, they want to double the fees if there’s dancing. …

What if you sang along with it? Would there be an extra charge for that, too? What about drinking? I have some really cool German beer drinking songs.

 

[LotusCarsLtd]

“While laws that protect intellectual property remain strong and enforcement efforts continue, technology has tipped the balance away from the interests of most creators and artists.”

This is the biggest load of garbage I’ve ever heard, as technology has done the opposite: tipped the balance towards artists and creators, giving them more power and control over their own careers and works than under the old system. It’s given them the ability to ditch the abusive legacy companies in the entertainment industry (think record labels, et. al.)

What technology HAS done is rendered groups like Hollywood studios and record labels obsolete, but this is actually the greatest thing that could ever have happened to artists (they have a history of abusing artists and restricting their freedom) or consumers (who are often assumed to be criminals who want to steal content…what other industry can do that and expect to maintain customers? That’s right, no one).

“The ease of distribution of copyrighted content has helped create a generation of people who believe that all content should be free. The notion that artists and creators, and even the big companies that finance, produce and deliver their creations, don’t have the right to own and control their distribution, simply cannot be.”

Not so much that they expect it to be free, but that endless, free, open distribution methods have reduced the real economic value of created content to near zero. Hence why more and more musicians (mainly in the underground realm) give their music away for free or use “pay what you want” schemes ala Radiohead and their album “In Rainbows”. SInce most musicians have always made money off of touring and merchandising, this doesn’t cause any real problems…music merely becomes a marketing tool.

So, if I create something, I should own it and decide how I will be compensated and how it will be distributed. People should not be able to take it for nothing.

But how can you monetize something that is now endlessly abundant? If I, as a musician, offer all my music for free online, how can an artist requiring payment garner as many downloads and fans? The game has permanently changed.

For me as a musician, I WANT people to pirate my music because it’s free marketing. And since the internet is designed in such a way that censorship is impossible (and since piracy cannot be stopped) it makes more sense to work with it and use it to my advantage. Many artists have found that more piracy = more fans = more people paying to go to concerts and buy merch = where the money is actually made.

Lastly, the fact that the RIAA and MPAA have their paws all over this is a bad, bad, bad sign and should cause everyone to immediately ditch this plan. They do not represent individual artists or their fans, only greedy legacy content providers in Hollywood. What they want will come at the expense of everyone else in the country.

 

[ComputerGeek25]

This is the biggest load of garbage I’ve ever heard, as technology has done the opposite: tipped the balance towards artists and creators, giving them more power and control over their own careers and works than under the old system. It’s given them the ability to ditch the abusive legacy companies in the entertainment industry (think record labels, et. al.)

What technology HAS done is rendered groups like Hollywood studios and record labels obsolete, but this is actually the greatest thing that could ever have happened to artists (they have a history of abusing artists and restricting their freedom) or consumers (who are often assumed to be criminals who want to steal content…what other industry can do that and expect to maintain customers? That’s right, no one).

Not so much that they expect it to be free, but that endless, free, open distribution methods have reduced the real economic value of created content to near zero. Hence why more and more musicians (mainly in the underground realm) give their music away for free or use “pay what you want” schemes ala Radiohead and their album “In Rainbows”. SInce most musicians have always made money off of touring and merchandising, this doesn’t cause any real problems…music merely becomes a marketing tool.

But how can you monetize something that is now endlessly abundant? If I, as a musician, offer all my music for free online, how can an artist requiring payment garner as many downloads and fans? The game has permanently changed.

For me as a musician, I WANT people to pirate my music because it’s free marketing. And since the internet is designed in such a way that censorship is impossible (and since piracy cannot be stopped) it makes more sense to work with it and use it to my advantage. Many artists have found that more piracy = more fans = more people paying to go to concerts and buy merch = where the money is actually made.

Lastly, the fact that the RIAA and MPAA have their paws all over this is a bad, bad, bad sign and should cause everyone to immediately ditch this plan. They do not represent individual artists or their fans, only greedy legacy content providers in Hollywood. What they want will come at the expense of everyone else in the country.

You point out something that the Dinosaurs in the industry are failing to realize.

For example, musicians are making most of their money from live performances. The Studios/RIAA pay peanuts to artists based on CD/Digial Downloads. With technology getting more ubiquitious and cheaper, what’s to say artists can’t directly offer their own CD’s and downloads and directly profit from this? Or can’t they completely undercut the labels - i.e. offer CD’s for less than they would if they signed as a label?

Secondly, I really dislike the whole grey area of ripping CD’s / DVD’s / Blu-Ray for my own personal use. I understand that I should not distribute copies, but I should have some sort of fair use if I buy a physical copy. I should also be able to buy and sell second hand copies as well, to save money.

 

[epan]

They must have gotten sued for copying a photo taken by a professional. As a result, the word came down: “No copying any photos without a release. Period.”

You should be able to sign a statement that you own the material. Unless Walmart (in this case) knows the difference, then they are off the hook with that. But, presumably, they are the deep pocket, if a copyright violation occurs.

I have experienced people taking pics of me, and also taking my own photographs and putting them on web pages for profit. When I called them on it, and asked them to remove the material which I owned, they responded by saying it was their own copyrighted material. I had to get a lawyer involved to get them to stop.

 

[adrift]

You should be able to sign a statement that you own the material. Unless Walmart (in this case) knows the difference, then they are off the hook with that. But, presumably, they are the deep pocket, if a copyright violation occurs.

I have experienced people taking pics of me, and also taking my own photographs and putting them on web pages for profit. When I called them on it, and asked them to remove the material which I owned, they responded by saying it was their own copyrighted material. I had to get a lawyer involved to get them to stop.

No Wal-Mart has no such procedure.

There was a customer that had a picture from the 20’s of her mother. She wanted to copy it but they would not do it. Actually she had scanned it but they wouldn’t allow her to have it. The photopher was dead and she had no idea who might own the copyright.

 

[kelvinf]

But where is the incentive to create anymore? Nobody in their right mind would call Call of Duty 9 (or whatever they’re on) a creative work because it’s just taking the same thing as the last 8 and altering it slightly. All they’re doing is pulling a Disney really.

There’s also no incentive to do anything if you get 1 big thing. You are allowed to sit on that for potentially 100 plus years. Not only that, the new age of copyright (the grail, if you will, for the RIAA and MPAA) is the complete destruction of the First Sale Doctrine. If I buy a CD, then I have bought the songs and should be able to do whatever I please with then, including putting them on my computer, iPhone, ect because it is my property (Sony tried to get around this. It did not turn out well). If my friend is going on a road trip, I can lend him my CD so that he can listen to it.

The video game industry is especially working hard at eliminating first sale because they hate (and I mean hate) the used games market.

Obviously game makers deserve to get paid for their work (and pirating is wrong), but it’s completely unfair to customers to go all the way to the other side and make it so that they’re buying something without having any rights to it. We have a right to personal private property.

Or you get the really, really stupid examples. SOCAN (basically the RIAA in Canada) wants to charge huge fees for people to have music at a wedding say. I can’t really say I understand why you would need to pay to play music that you have already purchased and are playing at a private event (a wedding reception is private). Even more infuriating, they want to double the fees if there’s dancing. Seriously, that makes no sense at all. Why should you have to pay more for dancing?! I think that is actually the new definition for “a policy that is completely retarded”.

It’s hard to understand when they don’t make any sense sometimes.

I agree with you. But you say “pirating” is wrong. It seems though to depend on your definition of piracy. You say that if one buys something, he becomes the owner of the item and that is also my belief. I also agree with you that when you become the owner, you should be able to do whatever you like with the item. In the case of the CD example, you become the owner and could rip it or lend it to a friend as you said. However, you could also send an electronic copy to a friend. Or you could simply host the file on your computer and share the directory with the friend via a network. Or you could host the file online and share with the friend via a link to the file. Or you could share the file with friends. Or with all your classmates or with the whole world.

So my question to you is: which of the above would then be piracy and which wouldn’t if we agree that the owner can do whatever he likes with the item he paid for? Would bringing money-making into the equation change anything?

 

[curlycool89]

What if you sang along with it? Would there be an extra charge for that, too? What about drinking? I have some really cool German beer drinking songs.

Shhhh. Stop giving them ideas.

Actually, I believe if you look at the same article, you’ll see that they want higher fees for karaoke if people sing, and even higher fees if there’s more people in the crowd! I really don’t understand them anymore.

I agree with you. But you say “pirating” is wrong. It seems though to depend on your definition of piracy. You say that if one buys something, he becomes the owner of the item and that is also my belief. I also agree with you that when you become the owner, you should be able to do whatever you like with the item. In the case of the CD example, you become the owner and could rip it or lend it to a friend as you said. However, you could also send an electronic copy to a friend. Or you could simply host the file on your computer and share the directory with the friend via a network. Or you could host the file online and share with the friend via a link to the file. Or you could share the file with friends. Or with all your classmates or with the whole world.

So my question to you is: which of the above would then be piracy and which wouldn’t if we agree that the owner can do whatever he likes with the item he paid for? Would bringing money-making into the equation change anything?

Honestly, I don’t have an answer to this question and I choose to side-step that whole debate (on theft, because theft implies that I am depriving you of the use/enjoyment of your property and that’s why it’s wrong. So it’s not that I’m breaking into your house to steal your tv, I’m breaking in and replicating your tv, so now I have a tv and … you still have your tv. The breaking and entering is, obviously, still wrong). Instead, I say that it is a moral wrong because it deprives someone of their fair wages. If they made a song, then they do deserve to be paid for it as a work of their labour. So I buy my music largely from iTunes (because let’s face it, for every 1 good song an artist releases they have 10 that are a total flop and make me want to cut my ears off).

I don’t know where the appropriate place to put the line is. That’s why I used borrow, because that implies the intention to give the CD back.

This is why I have issues with so-called “showing fees”. I own my music, so if I want to have a dance party (we’re keeping this firmly in hypothetical territory here ) using the music I bought then I should be able to and the creator, frankly, does not deserve another cent from me. If I buy a trampoline, I can invite friends over to jump on it or put it in the middle of a park and let whoever jump on it.

The problem I would say is that we’re trying to apply economic and legal arguments based on scarcity to something that does not follow the rules of scarcity (the RIAA and MPAA seem to like to pretend that it’s all scarcity still). Digital music is largely post-scarcity. It takes effort to make the initial song (or movie), but production (of each individual copy of a song) and distribution costs are almost nill. I can make a perfect replica of a song as fast as my computer can make a copy of it. I can’t do that with the Mona Lisa.

Like I said, I don’t have answers. But I don’t like it when people’s (the RIAA/MPAA) answer is to basically strip private property rights.

 

[Dale_M]

This is why I have issues with so-called “showing fees”. I own my music, so if I want to have a dance party (we’re keeping this firmly in hypothetical territory here ) using the music I bought then I should be able to and the creator, frankly, does not deserve another cent from me. If I buy a trampoline, I can invite friends over to jump on it or put it in the middle of a park and let whoever jump on it.

My understanding is that “showing fees” would only be required if you were charging admission to your dance party or otherwise making money which wouldn’t be earned in the absence of the music. Perhaps a similar situation would be the local community theater group having to pay royalties if they want to perform a play which is still under copyright.

I think the difference between buying a trampoline and buying a DVD is fairly clear. In both cases you are buying a physical object. In the case of the trampoline, there are no artistic creation bundled with the trampoline. However, with the case of music or a movie, your purchase of the CD or DVD is only paying for the license to enjoy the artistic creation for yourself or your family. The trampoline can only be enjoyed where it is located,. whether with the purchaser or a friend to whom the trampoline was loaned. And if two persons in two different locations want to simultaneously use the trampoline, they will need to buy two trampolines. Similarly, a CD or DVD can only be enjoyed where it is physically located, so loaning it to a friend is okay. If you both want to listen to it and you aren’t near one another, you would need to buy two copies of the CD or DVD.

Where the issue gets tricky is with digital copies of the creative work, e.g. a ripped CD or MP3 download. Such versions are less physically tangible, which incline many persons to view the artistic content as without ownership. Perhaps the analogy would be to a radio or television broadcast. I am not up on the legal differences, but I think the issue of distribution rights comes into play somewhere.

 

[irishpatrick]

Yes, because copyright is meant to be a cash cow for people to be able to make money off some old thing for at least 100 years.

Oh wait, silly me. Copyright (and patents for that matter) was a system invented to encourage creativity by giving people a monopoly on their product for a short time. How far we’ve drifted from that.

I see that the M.A.F.I.A. is involved in this too. I wonder when they’ll finally move into the 21st century? Or maybe they can just reinvent themselves as “artistic traditionalists” to try and gain some sympathy?

The real problem is with recent works…not 100 year-old work.

 

[curlycool89]

My understanding is that “showing fees” would only be required if you were charging admission to your dance party or otherwise making money which wouldn’t be earned in the absence of the music.

Then why are they going after wedding receptions? Nobody is going to charge money for people to attend a wedding reception.

I think the difference between buying a trampoline and buying a DVD is fairly clear. In both cases you are buying a physical object. In the case of the trampoline, there are no artistic creation bundled with the trampoline.

What if there’s a patent on the design of said trampoline (humour me)? Now it’s again an “intellectual property” (the term itself is really a misnomer, but that’s another argument altogether) case.

But in the case of the trampoline too, we aren’t paying the designer a fee with every trampoline made. Aha, maybe that’s the solution then. Let’s start treating artists as salaried positions (maybe with bonus’ for number of records sold). After all, what really is the difference between creating a song and creating a trampoline when it comes down to it? Both require designs (drawings and specifications for one, and lyrics and melodies for the other) and implementations (building a trampoline, recording a song).

However, with the case of music or a movie, your purchase of the CD or DVD is only paying for the license to enjoy the artistic creation for yourself or your family.

This is where I heartfelty start to disagree. You can’t reduce something you own down to a “license”. I bought the CD, it is mine. Calling it a license is absolutely ridicules, and at most an ad hoc rule created to exert control over your private property.

The idea of a “license” is in complete opposition to private property and the rights of private property (including, notably, the First Sale Doctrine).

The trampoline can only be enjoyed where it is located,. whether with the purchaser or a friend to whom the trampoline was loaned. And if two persons in two different locations want to simultaneously use the trampoline, they will need to buy two trampolines. Similarly, a CD or DVD can only be enjoyed where it is physically located, so loaning it to a friend is okay. If you both want to listen to it and you aren’t near one another, you would need to buy two copies of the CD or DVD.

But as I said, you’re applying the logic, economics, and laws of scarcity to things which are non-scarce. It’s like saying we can only have 1 Mass at a time because we wouldn’t want to divide God’s attention.

 

[kelvinf]

Similarly, a CD or DVD can only be enjoyed where it is physically located, so loaning it to a friend is okay. If you both want to listen to it and you aren’t near one another, you would need to buy two copies of the CD or DVD.

:nope: You are forgetting that “CDs” and “DVDs” equally exist as softcopies. If you buy a software DVD online for instance, I wonder whether anybody would post the hardcopy to you. You would likely receive a link to download the softcopy of the DVD which you can mount on a virtual drive. So I don’t think physicality has any role to play.

If you can give something to a friend temporally, what difference does it make if it’s a softcopy or a hardcopy? What difference does it make if he returns it back to you? The fact is, he has consumed something he hasn’t paid for. Think about movies that most people watch just once. Again, what difference does it make if the friend watches just once and returns it to you? What if you lend it to many friends?

The thing is, technology makes the whole process way easier and that’s why I believe people’s issues are with technology. Cuz if you can lend something to one to two friends, technology simply facilitates the entire process.

 

[Dale_M]

Then why are they going after wedding receptions? Nobody is going to charge money for people to attend a wedding reception.

That does seem unusual. I am not familiar with any instances, but wonder if perhaps they involved a professional DJ who was being paid to play music at the reception.

What if there’s a patent on the design of said trampoline (humour me)? Now it’s again an “intellectual property” (the term itself is really a misnomer, but that’s another argument altogether) case.

I know little about trampolines, but imagine that if a particular design were patented and another manufacturer copied the design, without authorization, they could be sued.

This is where I heartfelty start to disagree. You can’t reduce something you own down to a “license”. I bought the CD, it is mine. Calling it a license is absolutely ridicules, and at most an ad hoc rule created to exert control over your private property.

Private property is one thing, i.e. the physical object which a person owns. However, consumers do not own the ideas contained on the the physical object (whether a CD or digital code.) Buying a copy of Microsoft Office does not entitle a person to give away multiple copies of it to friends. Buying a bottle of medicine doesn’t given someone the right to break its patent. Buying a copy of the Game of Thrones novels doesn’t mean the buyer can digitize them and make them available for download.

But as I said, you’re applying the logic, economics, and laws of scarcity to things which are non-scarce. It’s like saying we can only have 1 Mass at a time because we wouldn’t want to divide God’s attention.

I doubt the Mass is copyrighted.

And I disagree that copyrights involve applying the law of scarcity to non-scarce things. The intellectual property protected by copyright are unique, and are scarce by definition. They were created by the investment of time, money and hard work. Simply because a physical copy of their work can be easily produced doesn’t mean their work has not unique. It just means it can be easily shared.

 

[Dale_M]

:nope: You are forgetting that “CDs” and “DVDs” equally exist as softcopies. If you buy a software DVD online for instance, I wonder whether anybody would post the hardcopy to you. You would likely receive a link to download the softcopy of the DVD which you can mount on a virtual drive. So I don’t think physicality has any role to play.

I agree that the ability to buy soft copies blurs people’s understanding of the issues involved. But even soft copies are in fact physical. They are comprised of digital code. The code itself is of little value. I could write some which no one would possibly care to have. What is of value is the unique creation which is revealed by the code. And it is that unique work which needs to be protected.

 

[Holly3278]

I am definitely against copyright infringement and piracy. However, I have a problem with this. The main problem I have is that in order for this to work, ISPs will essentially have to monitor everyone’s internet activity. If not, how else will they detect the piracy and illegal downloads? The reason I have a problem with this is because it seems to be a major invasion of privacy.

 

[kelvinf]

I agree that the ability to buy soft copies blurs people’s understanding of the issues involved. But even soft copies are in fact physical. They are comprised of digital code. The code itself is of little value. I could write some which no one would possibly care to have. What is of value is the unique creation which is revealed by the code. And it is that unique work which needs to be protected.

Well, I am partially anti-copyrights and anti-patents. Why partially? Because I agree and believe that people who invest time and come up with something, deserve the right to market their product. But it ends there. There is bad marketing and there is good marketing. We all know that. In the past, it wasn’t possible for a buyer of a product to replicate the product. (People couldn’t rip CDs they owned.) Today, with digital technology, it’s possible for people to make multicopies of what they have purchased. (Just think of the days before and after cassette recorders.) I believe he who has paid for something equally has a legitimate right to do whatever he likes with the product just as the creator still has the right to market his products in ways that could generate income.

The creator has been given rights. The rights of the consumer needs to be ensured!

 

[edwest2]

But where is the incentive to create anymore? Nobody in their right mind would call Call of Duty 9 (or whatever they’re on) a creative work because it’s just taking the same thing as the last 8 and altering it slightly. All they’re doing is pulling a Disney really.

There’s also no incentive to do anything if you get 1 big thing. You are allowed to sit on that for potentially 100 plus years. Not only that, the new age of copyright (the grail, if you will, for the RIAA and MPAA) is the complete destruction of the First Sale Doctrine. If I buy a CD, then I have bought the songs and should be able to do whatever I please with then, including putting them on my computer, iPhone, ect because it is my property (Sony tried to get around this. It did not turn out well). If my friend is going on a road trip, I can lend him my CD so that he can listen to it.

The video game industry is especially working hard at eliminating first sale because they hate (and I mean hate) the used games market.

Obviously game makers deserve to get paid for their work (and pirating is wrong), but it’s completely unfair to customers to go all the way to the other side and make it so that they’re buying something without having any rights to it. We have a right to personal private property.

Or you get the really, really stupid examples. SOCAN (basically the RIAA in Canada) wants to charge huge fees for people to have music at a wedding say. I can’t really say I understand why you would need to pay to play music that you have already purchased and are playing at a private event (a wedding reception is private). Even more infuriating, they want to double the fees if there’s dancing. Seriously, that makes no sense at all. Why should you have to pay more for dancing?! I think that is actually the new definition for “a policy that is completely retarded”.

It’s hard to understand when they don’t make any sense sometimes.

From one extreme to the other. You don’t get it. How about this at the end of a baseball game (which I borrowed from another site): “Any Rebroadcast, Retransmission, or Account of this Game, without the Express Written Consent of Major League Baseball, is Prohibited.”

Seen the FBI Warning on a DVD? A lot of people are under the completely wrong, 'it’s OK as long as you don’t make any money off it." No.

fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/cyber/ipr/anti-piracy

Read the last three paragraphs in particular.

And if George Lucas decides to make 8 more Star Wars movies, how is creativity harmed?

Dungeons and Dragons is coming up on Edition 5. Don’t like it? Don’t buy it.

The owners of D&D have published a ton of novels that were “derivative works.” You’re saying there was zero creativity in those books? That’s called “licensing.” They sold quite a few.

OK. All that goes up as Public Domain tomorrow. Then what? A bunch of people with mostly zero talent publish a bunch of fanfic hoping to make a buck.

When the company I work for started some years back, my boss attended a convention of those already established in our field, and soon to be peers of his. They told him: “You want to do what? Save you’re money.” They laughed. And he was not of the attitude of “I’m going to make this work to get back at you guys.” He had talent and he worked hard and he honed his craft, and ended up making a lot of money.

Just because you can’t copy a 45 rpm vinyl record inexpensively, does not mean that since you paid 50 cents for it (in the 1960s) it is yours to duplicate, duplicate and duplicate. You played it. If you played it too much, it started to wear out.

Let everybody buy their own copy of a song today, and I agree, don’t let them use it and copy it any way they want. It’s not yours to distribute and redistribute.

So, what’s stopping you from being creative? What’s stopping you from creating the next Magic the Gathering? It used cards, but never before had the world seen anything like it.

How many decades have they been making James Bond movies?

You are going to be seeing more, not less control, over anything that’s created. It’s my property and if you disagree with DRM or any other restrictions, just because you paid 99 cents on iTunes, then I’m within my rights to do so. Here’s your choice: the latest big budget movie from Netflix for $5.00 or for nothing off a file sharing site.

To everyone: learn how to sing, play a guitar, start your own band and after months and years of practice, put out a song for 99 cents. Does anyone here believe an artist straight out of art school should get his original art stolen off the internet to be used for anything, even if he’s only asking a buck for reproduction rights?

Peace,
Ed

 

[curlycool89]

And I disagree that copyrights involve applying the law of scarcity to non-scarce things. The intellectual property protected by copyright are unique, and are scarce by definition. They were created by the investment of time, money and hard work. Simply because a physical copy of their work can be easily produced doesn’t mean their work has not unique. It just means it can be easily shared.

Scarce means, by definition, that not everyone can have it. iPods are scarce, they require particular components to create them. A song cannot be scarce because all I need to do is sing it.

Maybe you’ve hit something though, copyright is artificially applying scarcity to non-scarce things.

From one extreme to the other. You don’t get it. How about this at the end of a baseball game (which I borrowed from another site): “Any Rebroadcast, Retransmission, or Account of this Game, without the Express Written Consent of Major League Baseball, is Prohibited.”

That is pretty equally ridicules and equally unenforceable. I’ve recorded sports games on a VCR and on a DVR before in order to watch them later. I don’t think anyone would actually say with a straight face that that’s wrong.

And if George Lucas decides to make 8 more Star Wars movies, how is creativity harmed?

Dear God do not give him any more ideas.

But that really proves the point, doesn’t it? Creating sequels is not really creativity, it’s taking an existing idea and spinning it a little bit because they know they can make money off of it. I’m not anti-making money or anti-profit, but that doesn’t mean I can’t see that what’s being created now is more often the not not creative at all.

Dungeons and Dragons is coming up on Edition 5. Don’t like it? Don’t buy it.

Well, v.3 was better anyways.

D&D is actually a fairly good example of being creative actually. Each edition (from what I’ve understood) brings some pretty substantial changes not just to the particulars, but often to the entire system.

OK. All that goes up as Public Domain tomorrow. Then what? A bunch of people with mostly zero talent publish a bunch of fanfic hoping to make a buck.

They do that already. Same with commentaries or online reviews. Most of it falls under Fair Use (something else the RIAA and MPAA would like to destroy if they had their way) so long as you’re not borrowing an unreasonable amount.

How many decades have they been making James Bond movies?

They’ve been fairly creative with that though. There’s some background that seems to follow each movie (and incarnation of Bond), but the stories tend to be fairly unique (some tropes are the same, but it’s not so bad that they’re just shuffling the chairs around each movie).

You are going to be seeing more, not less control, over anything that’s created. It’s my property and if you disagree with DRM or any other restrictions, just because you paid 99 cents on iTunes, then I’m within my rights to do so. Here’s your choice: the latest big budget movie from Netflix for $5.00 or for nothing off a file sharing site.

But if I buy it, it becomes my property. You can’t sell me something and tell me that it’s not mine, that’s simply not fair or just.

And actually, we’re starting to see less DRM. Steve Jobs hounded the record companies into selling music from iTunes, which by the way is the #1 music store in the US (and probably the world), DRM-free and relatively high quality (256 kbps AAC). In ebooks, the push is on for DRM-free books (the Kobo, which is pushed by Canada’s biggest bookstore Indigo-Chapters, allows for DRM-free books).

The DRM on DVDs has been broken forever (when I play DVDs on my computer, by and large I use VLC, which is a program that everyone should have on their computer because it’s awesome. And why shouldn’t I be able to use a program of my choice to play a DVD that I have legally purchased?), and the only thing that upgrading really did was make older legally-purchased DVD players obsolete (my parents had to get rid of one a little while ago). That’s not fair either, why should people have to buy a brand new DVD player to play newer DVDs? Isn’t the point of having a standard format that you don’t have to put up with stupid stuff like that?

By the way, Blue-ray was DOA. They cost more and the difference doesn’t make enough of a difference for most people. Not only that, but last time I checked there was only 1 Blue-ray play that actually followed the full standard: the PS3. Blue-ray was too late, digital already won that war (and it’s prolonged battle with HDDVD didn’t help).

 

[edwest2]

Here’s the way I would do it. I put a book in the iBookstore. You select the title, select the device and it gets to go only to that one device. Any attempt to crack the code on it and it erases itself. Any attempt to port it over to another device and the same thing happens.

My book. My rules. It’s as simple as that. You know why it’s fair, because I worked really hard, for years, to learn my craft to produce a book worth reading.

And you still haven’t explained how creativity is harmed in any way by someone owning the rights for a hundred years. Thousands of new books are published every year.

Here’s another scenario for you. I own a book company that drops DRM and allows you to port the book to any device you want. Obvious outcome. I sell a thousand copies at $3.99 and nine thousand copies are out there for nothing. I contact my cover artist and tell him I can’t afford to pay him. I contact the author and tell him I can’t afford to pay him either. I go out of business within 30 days. And by the way, whether I use amazon or the iBookstore, they get a cut. So it’s not, pure profit.

Peace,
Ed

 

[tvdxer]

edwest2, I agree with your principles, but in practice, you’re way off.

DRM is useless in today’s era. It hinders consumer freedom and discourages legal (i.e. paid) downloads. Why? Because almost all content is also available from pirated sources. The chances of getting caught are minimal. Those who lack a concept of intellectual property or who don’t care will always be able to find almost anything they want through illegal sources.

On the other hand, those who decide to pay for their content usually do so freely. There’s a free alternative out there, but they shell out the money anyway for a legal copy. DRM causes frustration for these legal purchasers, as it inhibits their legitimate enjoyment of the work. For example, I can only watch a video I purchased on iTunes in…iTunes. The only mobile devices I can watch it on are…iDevices (iPod, iPhone, iPad). As I am fond of saying, ten years ago, when there were no legal ways to acquire mainstream media online, you could have downloaded a movie illegally (or a public domain video legally) and played it on any device that supported the codec it was encoded in, or transcode the original file to a file your device supports. Ten years later, you can buy it…but you are severely hindered in your availability to make use of it.

Just look at online music stores. In the beginning, they all used DRM. The record companies insisted on it. Now it is rare to buy music that is DRM-crippled. They realized that if users wanted to, they could download it for free from a pirated source, and that DRM can almost always be cracked as well, as experience has shown.