One week left before US faces clamp down on piracy
 

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I dont agree with anti-piracy laws, because people should be able to listen, watch, or read something first to know wether they like it enough to buy it.

I think that people should be asked to support the artists they like a lot more. There should be large scale campaigns 'Support your favorite artists'.

Besides, I think certain area's of the creative industry are overpayed. People talk about soccer players being overpayed? Make one good record and your set for life.

How utterly little you know about the creative industries. If you really could "make one good record and you're set for life," then why do artists make more than one? Why do they tour?

And, okay... I give you a book, and you read it and you like it. Now, are you going to buy it? Uhh, no. Obviously you've already got it, and even presuming that you're going to read it twice, why would you pay money for something you've already got? Duh.

If you want to "support your favorite (whomever)," buy their stuff. Even if you have the opportunity and the capability not to. Do it because this is how they earn their bread. But remember also that there are a great many exciting artists who you'll never see in stores, and you'll never hear on radio, and whose songs you might be able to buy for a dollar ... the point being, in this plastic-free internet age, your "favorite (whomever)" might well be getting 80¢ out of that dollar, i.e. most of it. The traditional middlemen might have doled-out less than 5% of your purchase-price to that individual, and they never seemed to have any problem with that...

The fundamental idea of "copyright," and of having and showing respect for it, actually is very important. But this is "the Internet age," and you certainly should take full advantage of that, too. The two are not inconsistent with one another. You can deal very directly with the people whose work you appreciate, and generally (and legally) deal-out the middlemen. Music, books, movies, all of these things nowadays are just digital files. But ... buy those files.

They make more than one record because thats what music artists do. They tour because they enjoy the experience. Im sure if you asked the majority of music bands they would say money comes second to actually producing and performing their music.


If I really liked the book, and I intended to re-read it, as a lot of books are, then yes I would buy it.

But at the moment the idea has barely been floated.

I dont like the idea of buying something without knowing Im going to enjoy it first, its wasteful for the consumer.

If I do like it, encourage me to buy it, and I might.

Even in this situation, I still think their music should be free, and consumers who enjoy the music asked to pay for the music if they like it. The consumer should be king, not the artist. If the artist is good enough, then the consumer will pay for their work. Not all, but those who are real fans will if encouraged to do so.

And lets get this right, muscians make music, they dont find a cure for cancer.

But thats not the reality is it. People download music for free on the internet. A 15 year old boy doesnt respect copyright, but he does respect his favorite band.

I just think the traditional model is outdated and doesnt work efficiently for consumers.

Also, being the creative industry, you would think they would package their products better. Posters, postcards, chance to win concert tickets, backstage with the band.

Its lazy.

Its the same mindset they had with Napster. The music industry didnt react quick enough to new market conditions. Thats their own fault. The consumer is king. Give them what they want or they will go elsewhere.

That's because many bands "in the day" were given no choice by their record-labels (these being the only way to get music published until quite recently ...) to sign-away the royalties accruing from anything but "mechanicals" (the production of physical product) and a share of concert ticket sales. Song play on the radio, by far the most lucrative source of income, wasn't theirs to take.

"Let me eat the hamburger. Then, if I liked it, encourage me to pay for it and I might?" Dude, don't be an ass about this. :) By that time, you're full! And you ate for free.

You won't have any music to listen to, because the artists do this for a living, and so do the performers and the sound engineers and myriad other production specialists. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You must provide a business model somehow. This can never consist of, "you must produce for me whatever I want to eat, but I don't have to pay you for the meal."

And that is precisely what is being clamped-down on now. You're not describing "a consumer" anyway: you're describing a shoplifter.

Posters, postcards, concerts, backstage passes ... all to entice you to maybe decide to pay for something, if, having totally consumed the product free of charge, you decide to toss a morsel of dollars their way?

In this, you are correct. "The music industry" didn't react ... but musicians most-certainly did. It's much the same thing that is happening now with e-books. Prices to the consumer are dramatically less than they used to be, yet producers are earning more royalties than ever. Napster proved that market demand for music was so strong that the consumer would satisfy their demand for electronic delivery even if record labels weren't willing to sell it. But Amazon now sells more e-books than paper, and Apple made a fortune with its online music store. Yet ... none of that really was about, "I don't want to pay you for the stuff I love so much." People rightly demanded their stuff in a different form, and producers embraced the new technology because it was clearly in their favor. Traditional "labels," by and large, didn't want to.

The music industry is just pissed off because CD sales are way, way down. Second, in my opinion, the music from today's artists are really not that great with a few exceptions. This can also affect CD sales as well.

Music CDs is old technology and people are tired of paying $15 to $20 for a CD with only 1 to 3 good songs while the other songs sucks. The music industry is just jealous that Napster had a great new approach of delivering music and they didn't think of it first.

I'm not saying people should download songs illegally but they should be able to preview songs and not just 10 seconds like most music retail sites do. And if the consumer likes it, they'll buy it. It'll be a win-win-win for everybody. That is how rhapsody does it.

Prices are lower than ever, only IF you are prepared to buy digital media. Maybe in the US prices for physical media have dropped...here they havent at all.

The restrictions on digtial media vary from company to company and country to country, in the western world in general your rights are far more limited with digital media than with physical media.

Prices are lower, the value to the customer is as well.

The business model shouldnt consist of "once its made we own it for as long as we can get extensions to the copyright term". Which is currently 95/120 years or life plus 70 years in the US. Wait a few years, and it will be extended again IMO. Even if its not, why should someone still be making money after 95 years, or life puls 70 years? Thats ridiculous. The creator would be long dead.

The business model shouldnt be "lets get the lawmakers to make it, err, 'questionably legal' at the very least for people to rip the CDs they own to a HDD. Lets make them buy it again".

Easy: "Mickey Mouse."

Walt died in the early 1960's, but The Walt Disney Company continues to make money from The Mouse to this day. The lifespan of Mickey, commercially speaking, is much longer than the lifespan of Walt.

Just because something has the ability to make money doesnt make profiting from it right, fair or just.

Mickey Mouse is a great example of how the system is twisted. Under the 'Copyright Act of 1909', 'Steamboat Willie' (1928) should have entered public domain in either 1956/1984. For a corporation to lobby for changes to the corpyright law under which the work was written and published originally is obviously 'moving the goalposts' to retain money and power.

BTW part of the reason why the MPAA et. all are so worried about copyright issues- it works out best for them. Since the shutting of megauplaod, there have been are various studies around on its effects. Like this one-

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...act_id=2176246

Cutting down on filesharing has a negavitve effect on small and average sized films while increasing the takings for 'blockbusters'. I'd predict similar effects for music.

I guess that your point-of-view depends on whether you represent The Walt Disney Company. From your point-of-view in 2012.

"The Mouse" today has nothing at all to do with the late Walter Elias Disney (may he rest in smoky peace). From your point of view (perhaps being an individual who was not yet born when WED died, and "screw him, this is the source of your paycheck!"), "The Mouse" is now owned by a corporation for whom you happen to work and from which you might one day wish to retire. The lifetime of a corporation is "perpetual" ... which means to you, "long enough for you to retire from it, live a few years in retirement, and then (gaaaak!)." Just like WED did.

(Specifically including the gaaak!! part. Sux, but it happens to all of us. Even you, if you wait long enough ...)

And with regard to your ssrn.com paper, I zero in on the following: Dude... this is business, and business is all about "the revenues." The entire movie business is "all about tickets and popcorn." (Actually, not the popcorn: the theater owner gets to keep the popcorn money.) Absolutely nobody in the real world does anything-at-all for nothing. If the bottom-line is that it didn't hit the revenues, "who cares."

(Aww... stuff it! Neither do you ... and if your parents are still paying for you, it don't count.)

I recently read a book that talks about this from an economic theory point-of-view: Against Intellectual Monopoly.

The Walt Disney Company has a monopoly over the production of Mickey Mouse stuff thanks to copyright. Of course, from their perspective anything that maintains this monopoly is good, but basic economic theory claims that a monopoly is bad for society as a whole because the monopolist will produce less and raise prices compared to a competitive market.

So without copyright there would be more production of Mickey Mouse stuff, which means more work for people who produce Mickey Mouse stuff. That's the theory anyway; I'm not entirely sure economics actually has any predictive value with respect to reality, but at least it seems more serious than Stallman's arguments which always came across a bit crazy-hippy to me (although perhaps that's more a difference in style than substance).

I don't steal stuff.

I can go to online sites and listen to samples of music and decide.

Crooks hurt everyone.

Sorry, but wrong. The Walt Disney Company has a monopoly over the production of Mickey Mouse stuff because Mickey Mouse is a trademark.

Oops, I got mixed up. The Walt Disney Company has a monopoly over production of copies of films about Mickey Mouse because of copyright (of the film). Also, monopoly over making sequels (derived works) to those films.

Could they get the same control from trademark + control over Mickey Mouse themed stuff? I somehow had the idea trademark was less broad, but I'm not that familiar with the details of the law.