I've read the whole thing, brilliant stuff. I'd suggest we all in one way or another need to take what he's saying on board.

"That compulsory license created a world where a thousand times
more money was made by a thousand times more creators who made a
thousand times more music that reached a thousand times more
people."

This caught my eye - could someone comment?

If I read it correctly, no copyright owner can deny me the right to use/perform his/her copyrighted work if I abide by the provisions of this "compuylsory license". Is that true?

Caruso - Oh, the balance of the piece I found very interesting reading

As i understand it no one can deny you the right to perform his work. The crucial word being 'perform'. That does NOT mean you can copy say the recording of his work, all it gives you is the right to perform the composition, at least that's how I understand it. I don't think that even gives you the right to record the 3rd party performance of the work.
So say Happy Birthday, being a copyrighted composition, you can quite legally sing it BUT press record on a camera of someone singing it and you could be in deep trouble.
Then again I don't live in the US and I'm not a lawyer who specialises in this, in fact I'm not even a lawyer so my advice is worth what you've paid for it.
The only real worthwhile advice I could give is this, unless the person giving the advice is willing to backup the opinion with their house, their wife and their first born, I wouldn't trust it!

Of course you can record it. Should you choose to do a remake of any song out there, you can. You simply have to pay compulsories. But....the second you sync that song to video regardless of whose performance it is, it's a different issue, and a different violation without the copyright holder granting a sync licence.

Interesting note on same topic:
321 Studios close to shutting down

Moore's company was sued by a trio of large video game companies on Tuesday. The companies contend that 321 Studios' recently released Games X Copy software violated copyright law. Previously, a San Francisco judge had ruled that 321's popular DVD X Copy was illegal, because it was able to circumvent copyright protection programs. The judge ordered it removed from the market.

The company, which used to number nearly 400 employees, has laid off all but about 20 people now. Although he hasn't made the decision, the latest lawsuit may well trigger a final shutdown, Moore said.

"That is one of the options that we're considering," Moore said. "This has been a long and enjoyable ride up until the time we lost in California. Things have gone from good to bad to worse since then."

The St. Louis company has been a standard-bearer for the idea of fair use of entertainment--essentially the idea that consumers should be able to make personal backup copies of products they have purchased, such as CDs, DVDs or video games.

Copyright law allows people to make their own backup copies of CDs, since in most cases, music discs do not have copy protection coding to block such duplication. However, DVDs and many software packages and video games have digital rights management tools that prevent copying. Copyright law forbids distribution of tools that can break through these technological guards, though consumers might otherwise have the right to make personal copies of their legally purchased content.

Content companies contend that the DVD and game-copying software contributed to wider piracy instead of being limited to simple home backups.

"Video game copyright owners stand to lose an enormous amount from the piracy enabled by products like Games X Copy," Entertainment Software Association President Douglas Lowenstein said in a statement, announcing the game maker's lawsuit Tuesday.

Although 321 Studios has stripped the ability to copy Hollywood DVDs from its popular software, free tools that do the same thing are still widely available online. Hollywood studios have sued a handful of other companies that offer similar products.

Moore said that even if his company closes its doors, it has had an impact. He cited a recent visit to Congress, in which several lawmakers were sympathetic to the company's plight.

"They understand that it's common sense," he said. "People who buy things in the store should have a right to back things up for personal use."
=========

Copyright law allows people to make their own backup copies. . . However, DVDs and many software packages and video games have digital rights management tools that prevent copying.

I realize that's true, it appears to be a contradiction of itself, doesn't it?

J--

It certainly is. Unfortunately, there is not (currently) a cost effective means of limiting the number of copies via serial, and therefore, everyone loses because of a few jerks. If we could technologically wipe the cultures that allow rampant piracy off the map, then it might be different. Making a friend a copy of a CD is illegal, but common. And I don't know that it's something that a Federal case should be made of. Milliions of $ are lost as a result, but it's the billions of $$ lost because of pirate business houses. Walk down the streets of some foreign countries, or even here in the US at flea markets, and look at how many people are selling pirated products.
I wish there were a more sensible answer.

> Walk down the streets of some foreign countries, or even here in the US at flea markets, and look at how many people are selling pirated products

Heck, just go to eBay and try to find a legitimate copy of Sony/Sonic Foundry software. I dare you! You’ll be amazed at the number of pirated copies that are being sold. It is very challenging to find legal copies of software on eBay.

It is very sad that people could be so bold as to sell illegal copies of software in a public forum like eBay and brag about it. It is even sadder that eBay turns a blind eye to it claiming they are just a conduits. In my book, if you are aware of a crime being committed and you do nothing to stop or report it, you are an accessory. Apparently, this is not the law in cyberspace.

> everyone loses because of a few jerks

Amen, and so we all suffer because of it.

~jr

Is it okay for me to make backup copies of my money in case I lose it?

Sure!!! Just try to execute the backup copy. :-) You might not get the BSOD, but you'll probably find yourself without a computer for a while.

As has been hashed many times on this forum, I agree with the author. DRM provides no valuable service to the end user, which is who business should care about first.

Sadly, todays state of affairs, big time corporations want to control everything its customers can do with their product. Music companies want to decide when and where and jsut how much people can listen to music they purchased. Software companies want to tell a user when and where they can use their software (even our beloved Sony does it.)

Does it stop piracy? Hell no. Does it help faciltate workflow for the ned user? Nope. Photoshop is a good example. I added a new 512MB stick of memory and then had to go through the activation process all over again. Same with Premiere Pro 1.5. So the activation stopped me from my productions but yet the warez pirate/casual copier who used a blanket serial number and a keygen to bypass activation never misses a beat.

Just tonight, I had to reformat my system again for like 8th time in 2 months (spyware and SP2 issues.) I enter my serial for DVDA2 and click to register online and I am met with this software has been activated too many times. WTF? Nothing about how to resolve this. No call customer support. No nothing. Just closes the program out.

If not for owning a copy of DVD Encore, the rough draft due Monday would be very late because support isnt open on the weekend.

Why does anyone bother encrypting DVDs anymore? Who does it benefit? The encrypting companies is all. Anyone who still pays to encrypted their content is foolish as it the product is popular, the encryption will be defeated. And if your product isnt popular enough to warrant it being pirated, then you have more serious problems.

If companies would focus more on marketshare, then they would be more successful. Take this theory for instance. Say your product costs $20 and you have a 20% marketshare and your product is heavily pirated because fo cost. But you dropped your prices to lets say $10 and you end up with 45% marketshare that continues to grow. You have doubled your marketshare and made 5% more in total profits and most probably cut your piracy rate by makign your product more affordable.

ITunes has proved its possible. Affordable songs. They sell a crapload. If not for the DRM, they would prolly sell more, at least they would sell more to me. While true that we all need to eat and that we all want to get rich as quickly as possible, the music and movie industry continually raise their prices and give the customer less.

Can anyone justify the massive budgets that Hollywood blows on crap films? Let me ask you this. Was Waterworld worth the money they lost on it? Would you have paid $8 to see tht movie? Not to mention the prices of concessions.

The days of Robin Hood will continue. Pirates will continue to steal from the rich to give to the poor and the rich will continue to steal from the poor and give to the rich. Either way someone gets screwed. Better a company, than a consumer.

Wait til artists finally wake up and realize that they dont need the mouth pieces and moeny grubbers known as the RIAA and MPAA. Everything has gotten much easier that you can produce/record your own cd in your basement and sound just as good as a professional studio. Same goes with film/video. Once artists have figured it out, no longer will they have to share the profits with those that had nothing to do with the creation of it.

Don't kid yourself. I don't think the majority of people in the world are so honest that they would pay for a relatively inexpensive item that they could get for free, especially when it's very easy to do, with little chance of getting caught and little consequence. I am willing to bet that most of the folks reading this don't leave the keys in their ignition when they go to the mall, either.

I remember Napster saying (when they were a free/"illegal" file sharing site) that they were actually increasing CD sales because people would "sample" music on Napster, and go out to buy the CDs at a record store... RIGHT!!

I hate this copy protection business as much as anyone, but it's going to get harder and harder for a business to make any money on virtual intellectual property that can easily be copied anonymously and replicated like a virus. I don't think the big Studios are going to spend $150 million on a huge film with break-through special effects if most of the people who used to buy or rent it will just download a copy from Kazaa.

I think it's especially funny that this guy gave this speech to Microsoft, because I don't think Bill Gates will be removing any of his product activation requirements any time soon!

Copy protection schemes will be around forever... whoever comes up with the best compromise solution will be okay. It's like Spy vs. Spy.

I will admit to downloading songs from Napster. Honestly, I did buy more music that I did hear on Napster. Some do, some dont. The same with radio. There are some that will listen and go buy the CD. Some wont. But over the last 3 years (which the RIAA claims decreasing sales yet for the same time frame they have increased profits...explain that one), on the radio it has been the same tired artists played over and over and shoved down the throat of the listener. Surely Britney and Justin arent played because they are more talented than New Found Glory.

What the speech is basically about is how technology changes society. The invention of the printing press threw 1000s of monks out of a job but at the same time bought about demand for the skill of reading, no point being able to read if a book is going to cost $10,000. So on one side a few 1000 monks had to find employment as teachers but so did 1000s of others become teachers. The increase in literacy improved our society.
The invention of recorded music did much the same, it didn't drive musicians out of work, it created more demand for their skills because now almost anyone could hear their work and it could be made immortal.
So now we face another nexus, a means exists to deliver the creations of authors, musicians and film makers at almost zero cost. I know of no other industry that has such a golden opportunity, can you imagine how say the food industry would respond if someone showed them how to get product direct from the factory or fields straight to the dinner table at zero cost, can anyone see them hiring teams of highly paid lawyers to stop this happening? I can can see them investing billions to make it happen.
Piracy is nothing new, I can loan / borrow a book, a vinyl LP, a VHS tape or a DVD. Result is I get to to read/hear/watch it for free, nothing is going to stop this.
So what's the fuss about, the way to beat the pirates is to look at their business model and beat them at it. If they can sell a crappy ripped DVD for a $1 and still make a buck then why aren't the studios selling them for 90 cents. At that price their sales would go up by orders of magnitude. Better still make them available for legit download at 80cents, their production costs are now zero, they get ALL of the 80 cents but their sales figures would increase at least 100 fold and there'd be no point in piracy. And if they're really smart they'd be buying into ISPs, imagine how profitable they'll become with those 1000s of terabytes of downloads.
I just read the latest local computer mag, Internet2 speeds are now around 625 GB/sec, 3 seconds to download a DVD, not the DivX rip, the whole original. The smart money should be planning a business model that makes money from the doors that this throws open, not trying to work out how to keep the door shut.

I wouldn't say that their production costs would be zero. Having a download site capable of that amount of traffic is horrendously expensive. In my own case, it would cost me about $2.25 to $3 in real hard cash for each DVD's worth of material someone downloaded from me. True, i'm just a puny home cable user and the costs go way down as the capacity goes up. But even still, i can see a substantial portion of that 80 cents going towards servers, maintenance, tech support, electricity, bandwidth costs, etc.

I'm basing that on the amount the cost of bandwidth can afford to decrease. If anyone thinks what we pay for CDs and DVDs is highway robbery rest assured there's plenty of true highway robbery on the data highways.

Sorry couldn't resist that!

Joking aside though it's an even more rediculous situation. Out of this country we have several massive pipes back to the US and Asia. At the moment almost all of the channels don't even have light going through them, the telcos say there isn't the demand and in the same breath claim it's expensive because of the low utilisation of their expensive infostructure. With current technolgy and using existing cables there's something like enough capacity to run a seperate video stream from the US to every household in this country. I don't have the precise figures but I'm sure you get the idea. Drop the price and more gets used, economies of scale kick in and still more gets used. It doesn't matter how much you get per unit, what matters is the margin per unit times total sales of anything.
Even at $2 per movie and a 15 minute download, no one can drive to the shop or the markets and back in that time or for that price, I'd bet you wouldn't even bother waiting for your mate to loan you his copy at that price.

farss,

Those are good points. This is defintely a gray area. Try to go into a nice restaurant with your own bottle of expensive wine and see what happens! There will still be lots of talented artists who would still compose, record, act, direct, etc.if the most they could make is a million dollars instead of 50 million, and during the transition, they'll be getting ripped off a bit.

In that speech, Doctorow urges Microsoft to make a record player that plays everyone's records. But with the current situation, as soon as they do that, they'll probably end up back in those antitrust hearings!

Albert Einstein observed: "The signnificant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."

I think this is at the heart of the problem. The industry is looking at a new problem with old thinking.

Jay

"Try to go into a nice restaurant with your own bottle of expensive wine and see what happens! "

This is actually common practice in Thailand. Bring whatever you want and they'll charge a small fee for serving the wine at your table. You can also bring a bottle of the hard stuff to night clubs and they'll charge you mixer and ice. Or if you buy one in the club and have not finished the bottle by the time you leave, theyll mark it up, give you a card and then the card will give you free entrance the next time and they'll bring you the same untampered bottle for you to enjoy. OR, take the bottle with you to the next club and let them serve it to you. Is this lovely or what! Impossible in Sweden I'm sad to say.
Best/Tommy

---Sorry, no hijacking intended---

Don't kid yourself. I don't think the majority of people in the world are so honest that they would pay for a relatively inexpensive item that they could get for free, especially when it's very easy to do, with little chance of getting caught and little consequence.

"The trade association Business Software Alliance reports as many as four out of every ten software titles sold on the Web are counterfeit or illegal copies." (from Tom Spring, PC World, Monday, June 21, 2004)

Well, it would appear that at least 40 percent of us fall into this category. What a sad statement!

Jay

Maybe I'm a gullible idiot, but I don't think $18 is too much to pay for a CD full of music. Think about it -- the thing lasts pretty much forever and you can play it whenever you want. We spend more taking our families to Pizza Hut that on a CD and that give you please for what, 30 minutes? If you conisder how much time goes into making the CD, mastering, recording, etc, and all, can you honestly complain that that's too much to pay? We seem to think we're entitled to something for about nothing any more.

You know what I think a rip-off is? $15-20 bucks for a stupid USB or printer cable.....

todd