Open Source Leaders Speak About Napster

A huge number of people have been submitting the story on ZDNet (originally from the WSJ) regarding folks like Linus and others about Napster. Many of the submissions have been along the lines of "Linus Bashes Napster." He doesn't -- he's merely saying that copyrights aren't necessarily a bad thing, and that piracy is a bad thing. As well, there's some good points about the Napster/Open Source relationship -- the article is worth reading in depth.

Bruce Perens Weighs In

I'm disappointed they didn't include a reference to Bruce Perens' excellent comments on the matter [technocrat.net]. His essay not only weighs what's happening morally, but brings out an important insight: the less responsibly people behave with creations like Napster, the more ammo the greedy have to hit us with. Music Bootlegging with Napster Hurts Free Software. It's a bit frightening....

My Opinions...

I think that this entire process is fundamentally flawed.

"Piracy" Sure, Napster traffics in huge amounts of illegal mp3s, but wait a second to examine the process a little more. Most people (or at least myself and others I know) don't rely on Napster as their sole source of musical income. As proven in the previous poll on how many cd's the average /.'er owns, the majority owns a large number of cd's. Napster can be used in a "good" (by RIAA standards) way.

For example, I went down to the store and bought Play, Moby's new album. After buying this, I was really pleased with Moby's music and I wanted to see if I should buy any of his other cds. So, I went on to Napster to demo some songs. The next week, I ended up buying another Moby album, Everything is Wrong, based on the one or two tracks I previewed on Napster.

Napster doesn't have to serve as a means to illegal music. In my own opinion, I think that RIAA and the government shouldn't be trying to get rid of Napster. Instead, they should be trying to work in concert with Napster to fundamentally change it. Wouldn't you enjoy a free service where you could download the latest popular songs in mp3 format, in order to preview the cd? Or how about a fully downloadable album at reduced sound quality? Napster could even retain the free trading system by letting users trade only certain "accepted" mp3's, or by imposing a lower sound quality (say 56kb/s) on each downloaded song. If this were the case, you could download and then buy the cd, helping Napster and the RIAA thrive.

There are many alternative solutions, with shutting down Napster not being one of them. I only hope that the Government and RIAA would look into these, instead of blindly charging ahead in their "anti-piracy" jihad.


--------------------------------------------

Re:eCRIME, LAW & YOU

The ZDNet article and much of the discussions are likely to seem laughable in a few years when file transfer technologies are commonplace and the various legal issues have been sorted out.

Remember that copying songs, or TV shows, or poetry is not evil or, necessarily, illegal. Copyright violation is not murder, theft, bigamy, incest or jaywalking. It is violation of a category of law that society has put in place to foster the common good through creativity. Society has decided that efficiency is promoted by installing stop lights at intersections and creating a crime known as jaywalking. There is nothing evil about jaywalking and there is nothing evil about copyright violation -- it is simply the law.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided that copying broadcast TV shows for personal convenience was noncommercial "fair use" in the Betamax case. For Congress to outlaw, and the Supreme Court to uphold a prohibition on copying copyright music from a commercial CD to your hard drive or from your hard drive to your RIO for your own noncommercial listening pleasure would be a stretch.

Once a copyright piece of music is legally on your hard drive which is accessible to others on the internet, what should be the governing legal principles? It seems to me that while there are two possible outcomes in theory, there is only one practical outcome. The first is that Congress and the Courts decide that noncommercial exchange is fair use, akin to playing your boom box at the beach. There is no way that Congress will outlaw, and the Supreme Court will uphold a prohibition on file transfer software. There are enough files that aren't copyright and plenty of instances where the copyright holders want to do file transfers to establish the legitimacy of file transfer programs. Using legal software for noncommercial exchange of copyright material could, conceivably be found to fair use. I don't think that will happen.

I think that the Congress and the Courts will resolve this by taxing the users and giving the money to the copyright holders. Users of audiotape and audio CDR's are taxed (they call it a royalty) for the benefit of copyright holders. (For example, see 65 FR 19025, April 10, 2000 [loc.gov].) Once the RIAA has either driven Napster into the ground with legal costs, or gotten some part of the exchange process declared illegal, they can get Napster to gather information about what is being exchanged that will be valuable both for marketing purposes and for establishing the tax rate. Remember that even noncommercial colleges pay annual royalties for use of copyright non-dramatic music.

The RIAA has managed to get the U.S. government to tax almost everything that moves for their benefit under the name of copyright. They can't get the Congress to tax the digital exchange via Napster, Gnutella, etc. until the RIAA establishes that there is something illegal going on. Hence the law suits. Once they have established, either through a attrition or a legitimate reviewed legal victory, that there is some copyright violation, the problem is to figure out what to tax. Hard drives? DSL connections? RIOs? Any device that plays MP3? All of the above?

The ironic thing is that MP3's and Napster are almost certainly boosting CD sales. MP3's boost the demand for music by increasing the situations where you listen to your own music rather than the radio. Ripping MP3s from your own CDs is so much more efficient than downloading, checking, and organizing that if you have more money than time, it is more reliable to buy a CD and rip it. For those with more time than money, Napster lowers the average price per song which, depending on the elasticity, may actually increase total dollars spent. Increasing CD sales coincident with the increased use of Napster, if sustained, will mean that copyright holders will get increased royalties along with increased sales.

"the artists"?

I had a fledgling band that took a brief run with the major labels a few years back. One thing that was patently clear at the time was that the bulk of the profits generated by the artists went to support the corporate structure that is the music industry. It always amazed me that, despite our contract which, at the time, seemed like the break of a lifetime, every bozo in the cubicle at the company skyscraper made more than we did.

The only artists who benefit from the system are those that sell massive numbers of albums and, through that process, increase their leverage with the record companies and thereby negotiate higher percentages of the gross income. The majority of artists, however, make next to nothing -- from their meager 8 to 10 percent, the company deducts marketing costs, tour bus rental, etc. etc. In spite of the contract, these bands end up depending upon ticket sales at concerts and shows for income.

So, I guess it's no wonder that it's the fat cat artists like Metallica that have weighed in against Napster. I would guess, however, that most of the artists/bands out there would love to do away with the system as it stands. Several bands took a successful end-run around the record companies in the pre-Napster era -- fugazi and ani de franco come to mind -- but with Napster and Gnutella on the fly, the mechanism is finally in place for artists to connect with appreciative fans without the financially cumbersome middleman of the record company sucking up the profits and working the payola. In other words, I think Nap/Gnu will be a good thing for artists as well as the audience -- only the companies stand to lose...

WTF Linus?

The problem that I have with the lawsuite and the way people are taking it is that Napster is not to blame. Napster is just a service it's some of the people using it that are breaking the law. We do not want a situation were service providers must monitor what their users are doing so that they can be sure they won't be sued. That not only brings up privacy issues it will cost any type of service provider money policing its users. The next step is to sue ISP's for allowing people to post mp3s.

I would have thought that Linus would agree that Napster is not to blame it is the users that are misussing a service.

We all agree that it is wrong to go out and rent a movie tape it off then give copies away. But would we blame blockbuster for it if people were caught doing just that?

Metallica would not bring this lawsuite against it's listeners. The band said as much on its website. Metallica is suing the wrong people. Now that the users that were trading metallica mp3s have been baned I don't see how they still think they have a case. The only people left for metallica to sue are the users and they won't do that because 300,000 people == bad press.

Here's a smart article about this issue

Here's a smart article [msn.com] on Slate by Rob Walker that might give some posters around here something to think about. In particular, it points out who the Napsteroids might be getting into bed with. Worthy crusades against rip-off music conglomerates do not justify ripping off other people's intellectual or artistic work. Which is why OSS works within the framework of property rights and copyright law, and not outside it.

Re:This is disgusting.

Forty years ago the government stepped in and shut down then practice of "payola." Payola involved record labels paying radio stations to broadcast new songs to the public in the hopes of driving up record sales. The record companies were very angry that the government wouldn't let them pay to "serve" their copyrighted material to all radio "desktops."

The record companies want to hook you with free music. The Napster controversy is about who gets to decide on the bait: the major labels or the listeners.

We should ALL support copyright law.

The GPL draws all of its power from the fact that the person who created a work owns strong copyrights to that work. The owner gets to determine how that work is used, and the owner has the right to put the GPL on that work.

If we weaken copyright law, we hurt ourselves.

Look at this as a marketing dilemma

More likely what happens is that you download a song by Moby, decide you like it, and buy an album. Tomorrow you go and download something by Dr. Dre and discover you like it so you buy one of his CD's rather than buying that second Moby CD (thinking Moby is "safe" since you already like on of his works). Internet music sampling makes consumers less predictable because they can actually make informed musical decesions. As a result the record companies have to work harder (read produce more albums from a larger array of artists) to keep earning your money. This isn't about piracy or artist freedom to RIAA, it's about keeping the consumer where they can market to them more successfully. Douglas Rushkoff outlined this very well when he wrote "Coercion" (before Napster hit the net). RIAA knows you'll buy more albums, they just can't figure out which ones they'll be.

Re:My Opinions...

Napster's usage for me and others is to find recordings that are rare, out of print, or unreleased. I too am a fan of Moby, and I can find remixes of his songs on Napster, something which does not affect his album sales but does hold enjoyment and entertainment for true fans. There should be alternatives, as Tony Cross suggested, which should be negotiated by Napster and recording companies. BMI and My.MP3.com have reached an agreement--if they had negotiated earlier, perhaps there would have been no need for a lawsuit, saving bad PR, stock value, and considerable money.

Linus' quote

"Go Metallica, die RIAA"

I couldn't have put it better myself.

Ah, but they DID!!!

>But would we blame blockbuster for it if people
>were caught doing just that?

Not Blockbuster per se, but...

Our good friends the MPAA DID *try* to destory the entire VCR/Videocassete industry before Blockbuster ever got started and Wayne H. was just another Miami garbageman.

There was a rathar well known case between Sony and the MPAA that went all the way to the supreme court, which basiclly tole the MPAA to stuff it.

The MPAA was claiming that Sony's betamax tapes (and, by extension, everyone else's VHS tapes) were nothing but a tool for piracy and would destroy the movie industry (sound familiar?) and a bunch of other nonsence.

Hmmm, I guess since videotapes were SURE to *destroy* the movie industry, the MPAA that has been persecuting anyone who so much as mentions the word deCSS is just a figment of my imagination, eh?

How ironic that Sony, after taking the VCR to the supreme court, is now in bed with their old enemies and sideing with the RIAA against napster and the MPAA against deCSS.

Those who do not learm from history....

So who's going to take the MP3 format and deCSS to the supreme court so that the RIAA, MPAA, and their stooges like metallica can be told, finally, to stick it?

The ACLU appears to be sitting around doing dick about it. So I guess it's time to cancel my membership with them, and switch over to the EFF, who sure seem to be more on the top of things these days.

john

Re:You don't need Napster for demos...

But goddammit, snippets suck.

Yesterday evening, I'm sitting at my computer. I get an itch to download some Whiskeytown. So I go to CDNOW.com to see if they have a new album. (A great band, BTW -- sort of like a laid back Son Volt -- if that's possible -- but I digress...)

Well, they don't have a *new* album, but I see an album of theirs that I don't own. I scroll down the CDNOW page and see the ubiquitous Real Audio 'snippets.'

And, WTF? only some of the songs on the albums have snippets -- and GODDAMMIT! -- the snippets are 30 seconds long.

I don't mind the reduced sound quality, but for chrissake gimmee samples of all the songs! What, you're playing some tease -- some game?

"Hey, bud, here's a couple snippets. We can't give you all of 'em, but, um, take a snippet from track 1, track 2, and, er, let's skip down to track 6 and 7 -- here take these. See, if we gave you snippets from all the tracks, you'd probably not buy the album, right? So we gotta control the snippets you listen to. Plus, ya know, we got disk space issues to consider. Imagine the fucking chaos that would exist if we snipped snippets from all the songs!"

This alone gets me a little peeved. But -- there's more! The brilliant propellar head that snipped the snippets decided to start the snippets at apparently random intervals of each song. So instead of just -- for the love of GOD! -- starting the 30 seconds at the BEGINNING of the track (What? At the beginning? You're kidding, right?) Zippy the MSCE/Multimedia specialist decided to, oh what the heck, start the snippets 30,40 seconds into the song during a particularly long silent space so it's virutually imposible to get any coherent sense of the song.

Yes, yes, this, my friend, is what snippets are for! Hell, yes, that's what they're for!

Lets reduce to the sound quality so that you hear more hiss than music and -- lets really remind the consumer who's in charge -- let's rotate the points where each snippets begin and give them, say, 27 seconds of crappy, disjointed audio) and -- wait, there's more! -- let's just give the buyer a few tracks -- not even the good tracks! Let's tease! Yes, that'll rope 'em in! The snippet tease!

A suit in the backroom: "Snippets? I dunno. Give these internet scavengers more than a few seconds and they'll find a way to SCREW us!"

Zippy the MSCE Propellar Head: "Hey, wait boss: we thought about that. We'll just do a tease. Tease sells, you know."

"A tease! Ah! I love it! The snippet tease! Yes! Zippy, that's the way to sell albums! Let's tease the listener. It's like local news, right?"

"Right."

"Is the milk your drinking loaded with lead? Find out at 11."

"Ha!"

"Ha! I love it! Tease, tease, tease!"

Is it any freaking wonder people are sick of the RIAA? Everything is a marketing tease. (Heck, see my other posts about Roland Barthes, Death of the Author, and Lars, but I digress...)

Everyone is trying to control everything I do. Why? In the name of art? Hell no.

In the name of profit.

Profit for the art?

Hell no.

Profit IN SPITE OF the art.

Fuck art. Fuck Lars. "But, um, Lars? James?" -- high pitched whisper of a pimply-faced record company exec worrying about buying his next Porsche -- "Could you boys go and make us another one of your albums?"

"Why sure, Mr. Record Company Suit."

"See, because, um, while I don't really understand your metal, um, your art, we here at the record company sure do like the profit that your stuff -- er, your *ART* I mean -- the money that your art makes."

"Why sure, we do to! Right James?"

"Right Lars."

Re:Let's face it...

> Even better, where are the genius record companies when you're looking for
> a place to _buy_ your MP3's? Nope, I can't find ane MP3's for sale on Metallica's website.
> Well gosh darn, instead of crying, DO SOMETHING!

This is an excellent point, and I think perhaps the crux of the MP3/Napster debate. I don't think that many of us would champion ripping the artists off -- at least, not on such a large scale. But the question is: /How do we legitimately pay for our MP3s/? I'll chime in myself as one of many who have downloaded MP3s (on my pathetic 56K connection) and then bought the album, at least before I started my boycott of commercially distributed music. However, what if there is only one song on the CD that you want? Many people say "just buy the single", but many, many times, the song that I want is /not/ the RIAA-blessed single.

I'd love the chance to download MP3s for price-of-single-less-cost-of-physical-media-and-di stribution. I'd adore the ability to pay for certain songs and have them burned to CD and shipped to me. But it's not there.

My comment to the RIAA would have to be this: I want to give you money. I don't want to be taking directly from the artist. /Why/ will you not come up with a way to let me give you my money? Why will you instead sit in the corner with your fingers in your ears screaming piracy?

They'd never answer, of course. It would destroy the case they've built up for themselves, where the eeeevil internet community is stealing from them because we're all greedy bastard 'hackers'.

Nice article

"And then they have the gall to use the holy word 'copyright' to try and maintain their slipping control," Torvalds says. "That, I consider to be immoral. Go, Metallica. Die, RIAA."

:-)

And you gotta love Larry Wall..

"Persons of leisurely moral growth often confuse giving with taking."

And (to add in a nice way) people who confuse stealing and sharing have ceased any moral growth whatsoever.

To base the whole thing (connection of Napster and Open Source/Free Software) on a Katz(?) or any other /. poster's comments, is, IMHO, shaky at best.

The ideas cross but they are not exactly parallel.

--

Re:We should ALL support copyright law.

The GPL would not be necessary without copyright law! ... and if pay-per-copy were eliminated, there'd be no motive for authors not to share their source code ...

I disagree. The GPL, which can permanently liberate software, is based on copyright. Without copyright, authors would have an even stronger motive not to share sources. Commercial programmers would be reduced to a continual arms race to develop newer copy "protection" methods, because the temporary advantage of obfuscation would be the only way to eke out any money from sales. Shrink-wrap licenses would change to strong, fully-enforceable nondisclosure agreements that must be signed before purchase. All software would be less open than the BSD license.

On the other hand, with copyright, authors can earn a living creating works. And the GPL is possible, which can liberate source code permanently. I personally think copyright is a good balance between liberty and tyranny. (Of course, I make a living creating intellectual "property", so I'm not unbiased.)

Duh.

Since when has Open-Source ever been about stealing IP from others?

The thing I've always thought was the best part of the Open-Source mindset, is the fact that it's set up to help you learn, not to give anything to you. As put by some wiseman, "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime". Just because you have the source, does not necessarily mean you can do anything with it unless you're willing to take the time to figure it out.

Pirating MP3s has nothing to do with Open-Source. It's just stealing fish.

That said, I still disagree with Metallica's lawsuit against Napster. It's like trying to sue a hammer manufacturer because some psycho used a sledge to kill one of your family members. You have every reason to be upset, but it's hardly the tool's fault.

Ban Napster and you've laid down the groundwork for the government to shutdown/regulate the entire Internet. It maybe a tool that is primarily being used for evil, doesn't change the fact that it's just a tool.

-Tommy

------
"I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday."

I'm in the RMS camp

He's right, the system is fundamentally flawed. The existence of the Internet, and digital copying technology in general, destroys the utility of copyright law as it stands.

Some new system needs to evolve. Some guy up above ran an interesting thought experiment to try to determine the price of a song. I'd prefer to go about it from the other direction.

How much should a top artist be paid?

As a means of sort of arriving at a number in a vaguely plausible fashion, try this: A top programmer (who's not the owner of a business with employees besides themselves and their immediate family) can make as much as, say, $200k per year. Lets say an album of 12 songs takes about 3 years to produce. Lets say that music is twice as valuable to society as the program the programmer would produce. And, lets say being a 'top artist' means they're popular. Say, selling above 1 million albums qualifies you as a top artist. And, finally, lets say a band is on average about 5 members.

Working through the numbers on this looks like this:
($400k/yr * 5 members * 0.25yr/song) / (1e6 copies) = 50 cents / song

Hmm, and songs cost about $1.25 apiece on a standard CD. That can't all be production and distribution costs. There's a whole HUGE amount of money going somewhere it shouldn't. Over the net, I would guess that product and distribution costs would add at most 25% to the cost.

The $0.50 result was not a target. Perhaps, subconciously that's what I was doing, but I think the number just fell out. Of course, I don't know how much an artist who sells a million copies makes from the album. I'd be interested to know though. I bet, despite the incredible price, that the artist actually makes a lot less.

As I said, I think the system is broken. I don't know exactly how to fix it, I just know that RIAA needs to die, and for me Napster is a means to that end.

Although, strangely enough, Napster has also induced me (against my better judgement) to buy CDs of interesting artists. :-)

Re:Linus' quote

"Go Metallica, die RIAA"

And that really is the heart of the matter.&nbsp The piracy argument from the RIAA is really about maintaining control of their distribution channels.&nbsp These days I buy all of my CDs used so neither the artist nor the RIAA gets directly compensated.&nbsp I would gladly buy direct from the artist (CD or MP3) and pay $10 for a disc.&nbsp Until that day comes, I'll just be patient and get my music 6 months after it comes out...

Well, they're right...

Just because you can shoplift doesn't mean everyone should. We're going thru a massive public education program right now and every ip worker needs to try every chance they get to enlighten folks to the rules, risks and punishments.

In fact, the more OSS advocates stand up for copyright protection the better oss projects look - I mean, if someone can rip off a copy of W2K it's way better than any Linux distro - but when you force people to factor in the $799 or whatever price tag per install then Linux et al are clearly the better choice. You either have to pay someone else (Msft) to do all your work, or you can do some work yourself and save a bundle.

Re:My Opinions...

I think that in the long haul Napster is going to lose it's battle with the RIAA.

While I agree with you on the 'mp3's are good for previewing' idea, I disagree that it is a valid argument for an entity like the RIAA to condone distribution of copyrited mp3's. The bottom line is that the music is copyrited, the authors/owners of it do NOT want it available on the Internet, and it's WRONG. We need a better way to preview our music. Even if some of the authors are for the Napster/mp3 deal, if there are some who don't like it, your decision to take their music is being forced on them.
Who are we to force them (the artists) what to do with their music? (That reminds me of a certain company indirectly dictating what OS I people should use for software..)

I'm not debating whether the $15/cd or $15 for 1 song is right or wrong. I don't like the RIAA and how they rape then music bus. All I'm saying is that right here, right now, it's stealing unless all people involved in the music industry (artists, bands, etc) agree that their copyrited stuff should be available for download.

Maybe you use Napster to preview songs, but I'm sure for every one person who uses Napster as a means to preview, there is one who doesn't.

Wouldn't you enjoy a free service where you could download the latest popular songs in mp3 format, in order to preview the cd?

Yes, this would be very nice, and it reminds me a bit of CD Now. CD Now has lots of commercial material samples available to listen to on-line. Perhaps another site dedicated to song previews could do the same legally (as in no full length copyrited stuff and full downloads of the legal ones).
And please don't tell me you need the WHOLE song, at CD quality, to decide if you should buy it. That's like saying a free sample you get at the grocery store isn't enough for you to "properly" sample the food, and you need to have the whole dish to see if you like it. :) That would just be silly.

ZDNet Baits Slashdot

You know, it's awefully weird to have ZDNet posting something about "moral compunctions" that is obviously slashdot-bait.

I don't like the oily feeling I get when I read their articles, knowing that their idea of news is tied directly to their revenue from ad-driven articles aimed for specific audiences. They obviously by now have identified slashdot as one of those target markets, and makes news stories that specifically "bait" everyone here into clicking onto their page.

I think I'd prefer if when news from them came out, if it was _really_ necessary to see the article that someone would post the text here, so I wouldn't have to go to their site. Oh wait, they'd probably sue /. just like MS. Just like the RIAA.

Don't be fooled by this non-freind of Open source, and don't be baited into silly anger at their statements...

("slashdot, a site for novice linux enthusiasts")
(WTF? No bearded smug people from VAX days read slashdot anymore? Silly ZDNet!)

Re:This is disgusting.

RMS is the only one here who seems to have it straight. The existing system is flawed, and the only way to work it out is to, as Chuck D of Public Enemy put it, "Fight the power! Fight the powers that be!"

If you want to "Fight the power" you should stop listening to RIAA-pimped music altogether. Stop watching MTV. Stop listening to commericial radio stations. Don't buy their crappy CD's. Don't buy magazines with photos of Britney Spears.

Otherwise, you're just as clueless as all the people that complain that Microsoft is a monopoly, while using a pirated copy of MS Office. Using Napster is the moral equivilant to giving the RIAA the finger. They might not like it, but it sure as hell doesn't hurt them. If you're gonna be a tough monkey boy and "Fight the Power", then fight it in a way that hurts them. Hurt their influence and pocketbook -- stop giving them any money at all, either directly through album sales, or indirectly through advertising revenue.

Dishonesty or a new economics?

I was speaking to a friend of mine about this topic and we covered some interesting ground. I don't much listen to music of any kind, let alone pirated MP3's, so I was trying to understand from him exactly to what extent he was really being honest with himself and me about the ethics of copying.

We all have grasped by now that electronic information (from software to music to books, and so on) differs from physical commodities in that the replication price is virtually nil. Yesterday /. referred to an article by Bertrand Meyer in which he argued (fairly cluelessly I thought) that this was only a difference in degree, not in quality. But he failed to reflect that the reverse of the same argument can be used to examine the ethics of charging for physical commodities. Maybe it is only "just" to charge for an apple or a hard drive because they are so expensive to reproduce. If apples materialized out of thin air at the whim of a hungry man, would it still be true that the original breeder of that particular apple variety could ethically charge a price for the long-past labor of creation?

In the MP3 discussion, my friend commented that he would gladly charge for music if it were valued at something closer to it's "true" value. Leaving aside the confusion of a line of argument that tries to assign some kind of intrinsic value outside of a free marketplace, I asked him what that fair price might be. He said 50 cents per song would be just if that meant he could download the song quickly and hassle-free.

Well, I respect my friend but frankly I thought he was lying. It's easy to say that you would pay 50 cents for something you can currently get for free. I might agree that 50 cents is a reasonable price to get a Camaro delivered to my doorstep if all I had to do otherwise was walk down the street and take the keys out of the glovebox.

So I tried to reverse the situation, to find out what he really thought a song was worth. He thought of a song he liked, and I asked him how much he would require me to pay him in return for a promise that he would never choose to listen to that song again. Of course, he could listen to it if someone else were playing it, or if it happened to be on the radio, but he could never again decide of his own volition to play that tune.

He thought about it for a bit, and then *still* said 50 cents. It may be that the didn't really like the song that much, or it may be that he was still fudging the truth, but I'll take his word for it. You may come to a different answer, and if you do then perhaps you haven't been completely honest with yourself about your motives. It *is* possible to believe you're serving the side of virtue when in fact you're only looking out for your baser desires. I hear it even happens on slashdot :)

So the next time you assign a value to a commodity that you can get for free, ask how much it would be worth to you to go without it. Think of it as an exercise in self-inspection.

-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!

Feh

Why should it surprise people that Open Source people should be keen on Copyrights? The Copyright laws are the foundation of the movement. We don't tend to tolerate pirates and warez kiddies because there are so few commercial apps in Linux and we want to see more.

I think the success of Napster may be in part due to the demand for the MP3 format, for which there are no legal sources outside MP3.com. Encoding their own might beyond your less technically literate Windows user, as used as they are to the point and drool convienence to which Microsoft has accustomed them.

Of course the RIAA and the MPAA would like us to move over to a pay-per-view world where you have to give them money every time you want to listen to a song or watch a movie. To that end they'll need to outlaw every format that might allow for free viewing and free distribution. Napster is not a threat because their copyrights are being violated. Napster is a threat because the distribution model might give people ideas.

Not Napster

I don't pretend to believe that trading MP3s is legal, or should be. But when there are lawsuits against companies like Napster or mp3.com it outrages me. These companies are not breaking the law, they are providing a service that can be used for good or not-good.

It is legal for me (or you) to have mp3s. I have almost every one of the Beatles' songs on mp3, I also own every albulm. I made most of the mp3s myself, but occasionally I didn't have the time to make my own and I set up a program to download a copy. Is that illegal? I still own and paid for the CD. I literally have gigs of mp3s and an entire box of CDs, it's much easier for me to set up a list of songs off of xmms then on my stereo. But if they keep suing compaines that provide a mp3-related service I'm not going to be able to play those files (then what would I do with that 20gig drive?) because there will be no WinAmp or XMMS.

Fine let everybody pretect their copyrights, but I must protect my rights to use this file format!

Devil Ducky

Dodging the REAL Issue

I think that very few people would argue for piracy. It is generally accepted that copyright holders deserve to receive some financial benefit from the work that they produce. However, that is not the issue that is relevant to the Napster fiasco.

Napster never encourages or acts as an accomplice to music piracy in any form. It is simply an open forum that allows for the distribution of music files, plain and simple. Since none of the files that are exchanged ever reside on Napster's servers, they are in never in possession of pirated music. While some users utilize Napster's network for legitimate MP3 distribution, some abuse it and pirate music. The fact is that Napster, who is merely providing a service that can be used for legal, ethical, activity is being blamed for the abuse of some of its users.

The RIAA should pick a fight with pirates directly, not use Napster as a convenient scapegoat.

Re:Whose rights, again?

Firstly, walk into any non-bargain-bin CD shop, take a CD case up to the counter, say "Can I listen to this?", and they'll let you, free of charge, perfectly legally.

Secondly, noone is twisting your arm behind your back, forcing you to listen to certain music. If you think the deal is bad, or the risk is too great, the answer is to BOYCOTT the product, not to steal it.

Thirdly, the world does not owe you the fruits of other peoples creativity. If you want free music, download some amateur works from mp3.com, or buy a guitar and make your own. If you think that mp3 is a viable distribution medium, then go around convincing _artists_ of that -- if you achieve this, then the record companies will become irrelevant.

If you want the record companies' music music, however, don't whine about the terms they ask - it's their product. If you didn't consume it, they wouldn't exist. If you consume it without agreeing to their terms, you're a criminal. Pay up or shut up.

Charles Miller
(Having fun being moderated down for the totally unacceptable crime of disagreeing with the slashdot mob mentality...)
--

Re:Let's face it...

I agree with you, many people like to have the actual CDs and a recent research (I guess that this were reported here) with the popular MP3 encoders showed that they are actualy less quality then the CD itself.

I think that if put a few bells and whistle into the CD every one will buy it, even thought they already have it on MP3.

Napster is a good thing(tm) for several reasons, like for instance geting musics before buying a cd or distribute your backyard band to the world.

Well off course pirate music is bad for every one. So is pirated software or books, but how can you stop those? Ban xerox machines? Start using some kind of unique ID in each computer?

The music is entering the hall of the "easy to copy" media, just like books and software already are. Well cheap xerox existed since I can remember needing it, and there are still very rich authors and editors. Software is easy to copy by definition, and there are M$ and other companies that sell software.

The music industry and artists will also survive, there is cash in other places. There are clips that people want to watch. There are beautyful/colorfull booklets that comes with the CDs that dosen't come with the MP3s. And off course there are live shows and concerts.

Soon the movie industry will be in the same place, an they are alredy fearing those days....


--
"take the red pill and you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabitt hole goes"

An Open Letter to All Current Media Providers

With the advent of the internet, many of the current media providers have found themselves on the defensive. Newspapers and magazines feel threatened by the web; movies, television, radio, and music distributors are lashing out against filesharing of their content; software companies are complaining about rampant piracy of their products.

This situation is deteriorating with the addition of new legislation and new lawsuits to the scene. The Motion Picture Association of America is suing the makers of DeCSS (a tool that allows DVDs to be read to a file for viewing or copying), the Recording Industry in general seems to be suing Napster, MP3.com, and anyone else that they see using the MP3 music codec, and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act has basically criminalized "fair use" for anything that uses encryption to prevent copying.

The Problem

Most traditional content providers make their money by charging consumers for their products based on the media that they buy. Book publishers sell printed book, newspaper companies sell newspapers, record companies sell CD, tapes, or records. For most of our lives, this has been the only way to do it. If I want the latest Terry Pratchett novel, I have to go to the bookstore and buy it. They even make additional money by releasing hardbacks first, so that the devoted fans will have to pay 2-3 times more than the paperbacks will cost if they want the books in the first few months after release. The internet challenges this entire revenue model by offering an alternative distribution system. Traditional media is based on the sale of the physical medium. Since most types of content can now be digitally encoded as files, the physical medium is not a limiting factor. 100,000 recordings of a song can be copied with no degradation, no media cost, infinitesimal distribution costs, and no additional sales commissions attached. This sounds great, doesn't it? Economics 101 says that demand will always exceed supply, and drive the price up. Well, the supply curve just went through the roof, so shouldn't this mean that the price should go down? The problem is that the sale of items cannot be mandated for copying to take place. Simply put, there is no way to physically make someone pay for items that they have copied from another person. Legal requirements against copying protected materials will be about as enforcable as the 55 mph speed limit has been on metropolitan interstates in the long run. :)

What's At Stake Here

Many computer users may feel that this is fine. "The music will always be free" proclaimed one in a recent article. That very well may be true, but musicians will continue to have to pay rent and buy groceries. Therefore, some method needs to be found to allow them to make money from their efforts.

On the other hand, groups like Metallica and Dr. Dre can only lose by their lawsuits and intimidation tactics. The word "Boycott" may not hold the threat that it once did, but their fans will remember their actions for quite some time. Many people are simply tired of the inflated prices for movies, CDs, software, and other items that are now media-independent, and are taking things into their own hands. They know that they're not stealing, since the "injured" party has not lost anything; they simply haven't gained anything either. The net outcome to the artist is the same as if they had simply not bought the album at all.

While each of these viewpoints are correct, a solution must still be found for each. If prices aren't drastically lowered for media-independent content, many computer users will simply stop buying movies, CDs, and other items they can "pirate" for free. But if revenues diminish for the artists, the content will suffer (as many would argue it already has for television).

Fortunately, there is a solution. I'm not the first person to have thought of it. I doubt that I'm even in the first thousand to have thought of it. I just haven't seen it in print anywhere yet in it's entirety.

The Solution

Lower the price for file-based media content. Drastically.

Yes, I know that this is a blinding flash of the obvious, but it's well overdue. How much does an album really need to cost, once you remove the cost of the media, the shipping, the warehousing, and the retail markup? How much would you earn in additional sales?

The key to defeating piracy is simple. Reduce the price and piracy goes away. Downloading a CD from the internet on a slow connection might take up to two hours, depending on your speed and if you get disconnected from your (often unreliable) source. Software often takes 4-6 hours and movies could take days. This assumes that you can even find what you're looking for, which can be a hit-or-miss process for many items. Even a straight CD-to-CD copy will often take an hour if you have a CD Burner and may not always work.

If companies were to reduce their prices and make their content available for paid download online from high-speed, reliable servers, they would not only stop the vast majority of piracy, but they would increase their own revenues fairly substantially. Copying would still be possible, but the effort required to do so would not be worth it.

The model I think would work best is along the line of "Everything for a buck". Why that amount? Because one dollar represents a psychological cut-off point in most people's minds. It is throw-away cash that can be spent with no guilt. How many people do you think would have paid $1 to download WinAmp? How many would have downloaded the Matrix Soundtrack for $1? I'll bet that it would have amounted to more money than was earned.

I sincerely doubt this would affect the current market for conventional media either. People will continue to buy CDs, DVDs, and books if they have no computer, have no internet connection, or simply don't wish to be chained to their computer to enjoy these items. In fact, people who download these items onto their computers will often buy the media afterwards for the convenience, if they enjoy it that much. In the case of television, this may inject some life back in the media, if broadcast companies would allow download of old shows and episodes (and we mean complete series, not just snippets).

Specifics

CDs - Allow download of complete CDs for $1 ideally ($2 if necessary), or $0.25 per song. Royalty is paid to artist, company pockets the rest. Could also profit from banner ads on download page.

Movies - Allow partial download of movie (first half) for free to get people hooked. Require payment of $1 for download of entire movie. Link to sale of physical DVD or VCR tape. Make money on banner ads.

Television - Allow download of TV shows at $0.25 per 30 mins. This includes shows that are off the air, as well as previous episodes of currently showing series. Include commercials, which can be fast forwarded (but often aren't; people have gotten used to seeing them and often forget when they can fastforward). Make money on banner ads.

Books - Allow download of first half to 3/4 of book for free (many publishers already do this.) Allow text, HTML, or word doc download of entire book for $1. Link to sale of physical book. Make money on banner ads.

Software - Allow download of popular software (games, common apps, OS's, other "must-have" software) for $1. Sell printed manuals separately (this is commonplace). Have easy on-line registration. Make money on banner ads.

Critical to this is the ease of payment. All payment should be through credit card or some equivalent secured online payment. Note that this will make the credit card companies very happy and would make for excellent partnerships with them.

Don't worry about encryption or copy protection. Encryption cannot succeed, since the final product must be decrypted to be used. DVDs could have unbreakable encryption, but all that a viewer needs to do is set up a video camera, point it at the TV screen, and digitize their recording. Same with audio. If you sell your products at a reasonable price, most people will have no problem with paying that price. Some unauthorized copying will still take place; simply point out the ultra-low cost of legitimately purchasing the product to flagrant abusers.

...Or Else

What I have suggested above is one of the better ways to go. I would urge media executives to consider this and implement it. A few final points should be made, however.

If companies continue to try to enforce their inflated prices by lawsuits against companies like Napster, MP3.com, and individual users, they will rapidly find themselves running out of targets without solving the problem. New technologies are being developed specifically to mask the identities of users and decentralize the location of the files. Who will you sue when the program has no controlling company? Who will you finger when the users and file sharing are anonymous and encrypted? How will you block their access if the software can jump ports or sit on port 80 (requiring Web Access to be blocked in order to block the program)?

The business of media content is changing. The dike is leaking and the industry is running out of fingers to plug the holes. The rewards for adapting to this new reality could be enormous; if you lower your prices by 90%, but have sales increase by ten fold, you can come out ahead. But if you don't change, you may find that you don't have a industry anymore.

Mike Dickinson
[e-mail]

Notice: This article may be retransmitted freely, but only in it's entirety and with credit for authorship given.

Oh, joy...

And thus another debate begins.

Look: copyrights are, in principle, good. The fact is, everyone has the right to share his stuff on his own terms, so long as said terms are fair. Copyright is a balancer in that. It defines some things which must be included for the terms to be considered fair (fair use, and expiration after a set time). But it also makes sure those terms are kept. It's used by the GPL to enforce its terms (I'll share this with you, but in return you have to share it too.)

This is why UCITA and DMCA are bad; they allow corporations to set unfair terms (no negative reviews, no reverse-engineering for compatibility, no right to see the terms before agreeing with them, etc.)

However, that's a double-edged sword. Look at the standard terms for a CD. OK, you've bought the CD. You can play it as much as you want. You have the full terms of fair use. You can even play it for your friends, so long as you don't try to make money off of it. You can even lend it to a friend. The only thing you can't do is make a copy of the music and give it to a friend (or give said friend the original and keep the copy for yourself). This seems fair enough; you paid your dues, they should have to pay theirs. Now, the price-fixing the RIAA does is highly unethical, and they need a DoJ slapdown in the worst way because of it, but that's another issue that this post isn't meant to address.

This said, I don't like what Metallica is doing. They certainly have the right to be suing over piracy, but the arguments they are using are extremely hypocritical (saying they're disgusted at the fans "treating their music as a commodity" when that's just what they do themselves). Let's face it, it's all about the money, and they ought to be honest about it. Of course, that'd be terrible PR, but it's still the truth.

As for RIAA, MPAA, etc, they're just plain scared. The Internet and computing technology, particularly as the infrastructure thereof matures, is going to render them obsolete. Right now, software exists that allows a person at home to theoretically make movies with special effects surpassing what many Hollywood films had not even ten years ago. Sound processing software exists for recording music, and CD burners and duplication firms exist to distribute it. With a decent Website and e-commerce software (some of which is Open-Source), I could publish and sell a book without ever going to a major publishing house.

That's why MPAA is so worked up. They aren't afraid of people using DeCSS to decrypt DVD's; they're afraid of people doing the opposite: making their own DVD's. Without going through them. It's why RIAA is so worked up; artists could use MP3 or related formats to distribute their music. Without going through them. In short, they're very quickly becoming obsolete, relics of the past which will die out as technology evolves and "natural" selection drives them out. They had a chance, once: had they embraced the technology early on they could well have enjoyed their dominant position even as smaller companies and individuals came into their own. But this can't happen; they sat on their hands for too long and now it may well be too late.

People have said in defense of piracy that "you can't stop the technology." They're not right to defend piracy with that argument, but the statement is still correct. You can't stop it. All you can do is embrace it. Problem is that RIAA pushed MP3 away for too long, and MPAA is doing the same with similar technologies. It may well no longer embrace back. And that's their fault, not that of the technology. The corporations had their chance. They blew it. And now they're going to reap what they've sown, and it won't taste good. I only pity the innocents who had nothing to do with it, but are going to feel the fallout because a few fatcat execs were too scared to take the plunge.

Consequences

I don't use Napster. I've never used it, in fact. I think the people who say that Napster won't cost the music industry money are kidding themselves. The music industry will lose money if Napster or one of its cousins works. A lot of money.

However, the idea of the music industry losing a lot of money is, in my mind, not necessarily a bad thing.

I just can't help but wonder if the people who use Napster understand that the music industry could be radically changed by their actions. I mean, I've heard that most of the stuff on Napster is crap - Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, etc. If Napster/GNUTella/FreeNet really take off, to the point where Big Music just bites it, it will mean no more Britney, Backcrap, etc, forcing Napster-ers to listen to music that isn't overproduced to the point of being bad.

I can't condone the actions of people who illicitly copy information across Napster. It is illegal. It will hurt those companies. And that's (as Stuart Smalley would say,) okay. I do believe in the free exchange of information, and I can acknowledge that Big Media is against the free exchange of information.

Alright, I seem to have forgotten my point. I guess it's this: I wish people would choose a side other than "Napster doesn't hurt anyone". Either pick "Napster hurts people and I'm okay with that", like I have, or "Napster hurts people and I'm not okay with that".

Choose! CHOOSE!

Re:We should ALL support copyright law.

The GPL draws all of its power from the fact that the person who created a work owns strong copyrights to that work.

The GPL would not be necessary without copyright law!

The GPL exists to protect your rights to use, share, and modify software. Without copyright, no one could stop you from using or sharing; and if pay-per-copy were eliminated, there'd be no motive for authors not to share their source code, and as more people understand the necessity of open source for quality, every reason for them to do so. (Note that today's "free beer" software always has a pay version, which shares a codebase.)

The GPL is a judo-type defense against copyright - it uses the attacker's power against them[*]. Take away the power to attack, and the defense goes away too - but since, by defintion, it's no longer needed, that's okay.

([*]Which isn't strictly true about judo; there are plenty of nasty attacks there. Whipping a choke on someone doesn't really use their power against them. But we'll ignore that for purposes of metaphor.)

Re:We should ALL support copyright law.

You fundamentally misunderstand one of the most important parts of the GPL. If GPL were merely a defense against copyrights, it would look more like the BSD license.

The GPL is sure as hell NOT a defense against copyrights! Quite the opposite! Without the GPL, I'd be able to take a copy of GPLed software, slap a couple minor changes on, and sell the result WITHOUT releasing source code and WITHOUT compensating the original authors. Without copyright, everything becomes public domain and anyone can do anything without anything, without regard to the original author's wish. The GPL exists to prevent this, using copyrights in a very straightforward fashion. It asserts the original authors' copyright in order to prevent types of use that the original authors don't want. The only difference between more traditional copyrighted work is that the original authors don't want money and don't reject changes to the work. Other than that, it is a normal copyright.

The statement "The GPL would not be necessary without copyright law!" is completely wrong. The correct statement would be "The GPL would not be possible without copyright law!". Without copyright law, Microsoft would be able to take the latest Linux source, make a whole bunch of UI changes, and release it as "Microsoft Linux", without letting anyone have the source to their changes.

Copyright law prevents that.

Re:Why are these people opinions worthwhile?

What on Earth makes people think that the opinions of a bunch of open source "gurus" has any more validity than the IANAL post of the average /.er?

The opinion of Linus counts because he has actually had to think about copyright issues, starting from the point when he released the first version of the kernel to the net. That is something you can't say about the average Napster pirate, whose only idea is to get "MP3's FREE!!!" - that is, it's "free beer" instead of "free speech" for them.

true to form we are bound see /.ers rush in to fill this story with plenty of "I agree with Linus!" posts

Well, I am sure that you will classify me as a zealot now, but I do agree with Linus. It's not actually that hard - what he says is just common sense. You don't have to agree with him, but at least you could show some respect and listen to what he has to say.

I've been against Napster and for Metallica ever since the they filed the suit. A lot of people have criticized Metallica for not having guts. I claim exactly the opposite - they are doing this because they are Metallica; they have the balls to do this. Other artists fear the negative publicity that they might get by going after Napster; Metallica knowingly puts themselves to the front, knowing they risk alienating their fans. There are issues that need to be brought forward, and now they are actively being discussed.