quoted 15 lines Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 16:56:14 -0700 (PDT)
>Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 16:56:14 -0700 (PDT)
>To: idm@hyperreal.org
>From: g m <noedig@yahoo.com>
>
>...
>[Metallica] have every right to sue Napster and anyone else
>who chooses to break copyright laws. Napster may seem
>cool, and yeah, wow, you now have a bunch of mp3 files
>and you didn't have to pay a dime... but what about
>the art? The artist?
>
>I congratulate Metallica on their decision to retain
>ownership of their music and attempting to put an end
>to this downward spiral of Web injected freeloader
>anarchy...
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
quoted 7 lines Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 19:20:41 -0700
>Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 19:20:41 -0700
>To: "idm" <idm@hyperreal.org>
>From: "Colin King-Bailey" <ckingbai@ucsd.edu>
>
>...also, a group of record companies is suing napster, seeking $100,000 per
>song traded on napster. napster does not reap any profit. they do not even
>have advertisers yet....
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Jordan Pollack's interview on Slashdot (
http://www.slashdot.org/) earlier
this week offers a fresh and very interesting take on larger copyright
issues, going beyond copying MP3s from machine to machine:
Q: Do you consider the economics of the market to be a greater concern
than individual freedom?
A: This is a beautiful question, thank you. My book is exactly about
freedom and rights: The freedom to sell a copy of a book you are done
reading. The freedom to share in the rewards when something you design or
write is in demand by millions of people. The right to own what you buy.
I see an inexorable movement towards dispossessionism, both coming from
the "right," with UCITA, secured digital rights, anti-crypto-tampering
in the DMCA, and ASP subscription models, and coming from the "left", with
ideas that we should give our writing up into free collectivist projects.
The Internet is the beginning of Goldstein's "celestial jukebox," the
encyclopedia of everything anyone has ever written, every episode of every
TV show, and every song by every band. It sounds wonderful until you realize
that you will have to pay per view! Bill Gates now has the money to deploy
satellites which will force you to rent his word processor for $1/hour,
the same rate for renting a movie. The laws on theft of satellite programs,
unfortunately, as legal doctrine goes, considers decoding satellite
broadcasts as theft of cable services, rather than as protected first
amendment rights to receive radio broadcasts. Once secure distribution
of programs on a rental basis is established, all content publishing will
move inexorably into that mode to maximize profits. No more books, no
more records. No more ownership. Dispossession.
The Free software movement, League for Programming Freedom, Open Source
Software, on the other hand, talk idealistic young individuals out of their
writing. "Contribute it towards a greater good." Be rewarded by occasiona
e-mails of thanks from your peers. The Free Music movement, or "let's RIP
our CD's and trade MP3s through Napster" isn't as politically as economically
motivated, but is also making musicians contribute their work for the greater
good, at least of dormitories! Dispossession.
Fascism and Communism, while they have philosophical appeal for their
mimetic simplicity, have proven themselves consistently the enemies of
freedom, enterprise and creativity. Ordinary people are "dispossessed"
of their property, which ends up, not surprisingly, in the pockets of
the promoters of the simple philosophy.
My purpose in writing License to Bill is to begin a discussion not only
on a societal remedy to the microsoft problem, but to secure, as a human
right, the right to own information properties I buy, rather than just
being able to rent them. I especially want the right to own and sell
copies of my own creations, and to own a library of other's creations,
reasonably priced based on supply and demand, without fear that a change
in technology will render my investments worthless...
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Imagine a world not so far into the future. Governments go bankrupt from
loan maintenance payments, or are so heavily laden with PACs and lobbyists
that they are bought out by the few multinationals that are left after
vertical after vertical merger, all of which control pieces of the global
information market: news media (Reuters Group, AP, etc.), music (Sony, Time
Warner), art (Getty, Corbis).
The new bosses enact laws that outlaw the use of any information
reproduction technology by the hoi polloi -- no more tape decks, no more
inkjet printers, no more CD-Rs. Corporatist culture concentrates on
technologies that deliver "perishable", rentable, non-reproducible
information that in -- a twist of irony -- is protected with free,
open-source, heavy crypto. Only a minority rebel, forming an underground
"copyright" culture that is determined to reclaim the "right to copy", the
right of "fair use". Most of these "criminals" are brutally crushed with
cruel law enforcement technologies; the rest -- with creative stuff that
can be repackaged and sold up the line -- "sell out", are assimilated into
one corporate bund or another.
It's clear that the MP3 system provides the means to easily steal from
musicians. It seems the number of MP3s distributed legally, *by the
artist*, is such a small percentage as to be negligible. Perhaps Napster
and related distribution methods aren't such a good way to fight the Man,
since free source code can be coopted to also allow corporations to easily
deliver media products with an expiration date.
Maybe "good" technology should be focused on protecting creative artists
from both ends of the criminal spectrum, from corporate lawyers gobbling up
those of innovation and creativity to 14 year olds with access to their
parent's DSL line. Why is MP3 currently the best means to this end?
-a.
Alex Reynolds
SAS Computing / Biology
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6228
V +1 215 573.2818 / F +1 215 898.8780
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~reynolda/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org
For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org