Lessig And RIAA Answer NewsHour Questions

Zeta writes "The answers are finally in! Stanford's Lawrence Lessig and the RIAA's Matt Oppenheim have responded to all the tough questions on copyrighted music, many from Slashdot readers, for the online part of the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Take a look - some of the responses may surprise you." We ran the original call for questions a few weeks back.

Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

It's probably a Microsoft conspiracy. This has been another Microsoft Conspiracy Update.

http://conspiracyupdate.microsoft.com

Get a copy of the transcript on kazaa

[SystematicPsycho]

Better yet, dl the the show off kazaa and watch it anytime!

The RIAA guy is an idiot...Copy the good stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'd let anyone make a perfect copy of my car and drive away with it if they'd like, I still have my car."

Who'd want a copy of a Yugo?

A favor to ask of /.

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you guys set me up with a girl? I've been looking around and haven't gotten a date yet, I thought slashdot could help!

I'm a 29 year old software engineer. My interests include Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and comic books, especially Spider-Man. Sometimes I like to pretend I'm a ninja and act out scenes from the 80's television show "The Master" with my two cats.

So if you guys could set me up, please respond to this message and I will provide the phone number to my Mom's basement.

Thanks!

P2P

[Zarxos]

The big thing I don't understand about the music piracy subject is why Napster was shut down and all these clones have sprung up, but none of them have been shut down. The Napster guy should have copyrighted P2P.

Re:Save PBS's bandwidth bill

[Anonymous Coward]

You *do* realize that you are COPYING the article and not SHARING it?

A debate would have been more interesting.

[DevNull Ogre]

It was kind of boring reading responses from Lessig and then from Oppenheim. I was hoping for more than just hearing them rehash the same old lines.

I would have much preferred hearing them debate. Now that would have been interesting. I'd like to see how each would respond to the other's various arguments. (Okay, so mostly I'd like to see Lessig rhetorically clobber the RIAA guy. But I don't think that invalidates my point about a debate being more interesting.)

My favourite quote

[iplayfast]

Matt Oppenhein (RIAA guy): Given the increased cost to produce and distribute copyrighted works, Congress has tried to keep pace with what it has believed is necessary to continue to incentivize creators and publishers.

And here I thought the problem was it was too easy to copy stuff.

Congress also was concerned that American creators should not have less copyright protection than is commonly provided abroad, and they therefore extended the term to match the copyright term in Europe and elsewhere.

Oh, right, the americans always do what the French and the Germans say...

Artists == Cattle

[The_Spide]

My favorite quote:

Lawrence Lessig from Stanford Law School: The RIAA is the Recording Industry Association of America. It is not the Recording Industry and Artists Association of America. It says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.

/me hums the tune to Dyan Lyons - Cows with guns [danalyons.com]...

Re:Why, oh why does this continue

[Entropy_ah]

Congradulations, I would like to present you with the award for most unorganized ordered list.

John Denver?

[Bootsy Collins]

OK, this will probably cost me karma, but I gotta say it: I can't help but wonder if the last question, asked by someone who wished to remain anonymous, was posed anonymously to avoid admitting publicly to owning (and choosing to listen to) John Denver's Greatest Hits.

P.S. Volume 2???

Re:NEWSFLASH Riaa wigs STill CLUELESS

[Anonymous Coward]

5) ITS THE ECONOMY STUPID!

What's this "economy" thing and what is so important about it?

Sincerely,

George W. Bush, President of the U.S.

More

[Safety Cap]

Someone asked if he already owned a copy of a song, could he download it from P2P. The brilliant RIAA lackey replied:

Just as you would not go into a video store and steal a DVD copy of Star Wars and claim that you should be permitted to do that because you own the VHS version, you cannot download somebody else's copy of a recording.

As if "download[ing] someone else's copy" removed their copy! I challenge Mr. Lackey to find ONE store that would mind if I walked in, picked up a copy of Star Wars, ran my hands over it and put it back on the shelf, unharmed. Oh wait, I used my Evil P2P Gloves (Pat. Pend.) to make a "perfect digital copy" and store it on the harddrive attached to my belt...

Okay, here's another one:

In legislation enacted [in 1992], [Congress] said that infringement actions cannot be filed against consumers who engage in copying using analog devices ~.

So, here's what you do: take the digital stream and translate the binary data to tones (hi, low) and convert those tones to analog, make your copy using only analog, band pass out the gibbs artefacts, convert the tones back to digital, run through a decoder with a touch o' error correction. Done.

Lets take some of this out of context

[SeanTobin]

*Blatently taken out of context*

Lawrence Lessig from Stanford Law School:

The DMCA is an embarrassment to copyright law. Copyright law has always been about balance -- about the balance between restrictions and access.

Matt Oppenheim from the Recording Industry Association of America responds:
AMEN!!

The future of RIAA and those like it

[phorm]

Homeless person A: "Anyone mind if I set myself up under this next bridge here"
Homeless person B: "Wouldn't recommend it. That's been the new headquarters for all the RIAA execs who hung on until the end"
Homeless person A: "Oh, well I don't want to associate with them. How about in this dumpster instead"
Homeless person B: Well, I think somebody from SCO was using it a short while back, but it might be free now.

Re:Reformatted comment

[Wordsmith]

I can't believe you ripped of the intellectual property in his comment like that.

I was going to pay him too

[Trepidity]

I would've paid $10 for a reformatted version, but now I've stolen it instead.