EFF's Letter to the Senate on INDUCE

z0ink writes "Picked up off of EFFector today a letter to all US Senators on the topic of IICA (Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004 -- formerly the INDUCE Act). 'In February, EFF proposed an industry-led collective licensing solution that would ensure compensation for copyright owners while minimizing the need for governmental intrusion into the digital music marketplace,' writes EFF Executive Director Shari Steele in the letter. 'It's time for a solution to the P2P conflict that pays artists, not lawyers.' IICA has been covered here on Slashdot with more information available here."

I've tired writing my Senators and Congressman

[Mr. Neutron]

But it's like talking to a brick wall. They see this as a "protecting against theft" issue, and no amount of oration will change their minds. The concepts of freedom to invent and create without worrying about being liable for any and every violation that might produce is lost on them. The concept of fair use, and reasonable limits to copyright are lost on them.

I give up.

Give 'em a chance

[seaniqua]

I hate lawyers as much as the next guy, but this is a good thing.

The current online music business model sucks a big fat one. If improvements were made (better availabiliy of new and non-pop artists, choise of file size including lossless, etc.) and the fee were changed to a per-month system, I think enough people would switch over and make it work. I would gladly pay $10 a month for unlimited downloads of lossless material (the EFF says $5, which is derived from the statistic that the average american spends $60 a year on CDs, I would recommend a higher amount, though, because I expect that people would download more music in this system than they would buy in a store).

Fair letter but ,,,

[SalsaDot]

Its a fair letter but in this world political "support" speaks lounder than words, you know the kind of support that lines pockets.

Whilst there are artists (ahem) who strive to be "superstars" and there are companies (the publishers who end up OWNING the stars and their material) who will push their resources to get them there -AND- there is an audience for these "pop" sensations, then the monetary incentive will be there to support the publishers and their whims. And that is that.

I do wonder sometimes if the politicians passing these draconian laws have EVER copied a tape, made a compilation disc for the car OR HAVE TEENAGE KIDS who would be so inclined?

Support the EFF!

[faqmaster]

Buy a T-Shirt [eff.org], or become a member [eff.org]. A sensible organization like this deserves your support.

Maybe I am cynical

[mpost4]

But I given up hope that anything good for fair use will come out of washington, The momentum from the clinton era is to strong now. And if Kerry gets in, he is bound to help his contributers back at hollywood, also (as much as I like Bush) Bush will not be any better, I don't think he has the time to look into and understand the issue at hand. Both canadates will not be good for fair use laws (better elect on other [more] important issues] So at this point I not going to worry about fair use anymore, it is dead, I will now give up (acturaly have a while back) and buy the DRM stuff (read iTMS, because atlest they are giving some ok rights to the user, read 5 computers can be autorized)

Re:I've tired writing my Senators and Congressman

[Short Circuit]

How about sending them all a letter containing a list of all the children's stories and scientific literature that is public domain?

Here's some examples of public domain fiction:

Brother's Grimm stories (itemize them)
Peter Pan
Gulliver's Travels
(And other collections of children's stories.)

Re:Yeah right, 5 bucks

[Curunir_wolf]

(yes, I said steal, let go of your state of denial, nerd)

And how, exactly, is the "Sony Bono copyright extension act" *not* stealing. See, copyright is a deal (see the constitution) where the people (the folks who purportedly authorize government intrusion, BTW) allow artists to maintain a monopoly on their works for a certain period of time. At the end of that time, that work becomes public domain. That is, it belongs to everyone. The artist is compensated.

So, for example, Walt Disney creates Mickey Mouse and produces some cartoons. He is provided a monopoly to make money from that work, and in return it will belong to everyone in 2001. Well, Walt was WELL compensated for producing it, and now he's dead, and Mickey should be ours.

Instead, Eisner buys a few congressmen, and they steal Mickey from us! Mickey Mouse is a cultural icon. He's part of the American consciousness.

Lots of other stuff was stolen from us, too. A lot of it are things that the corporations can't make money on, but they're like "hey, we can't just give away our assets", so it will sit in a vault and the tape or film or whatever it's on will deteriorate until it's gone forever.

This is actually closer to the real definition of stealing, because we are deprived forever of the item, not just an opportunity to make money from it, not just an exclusive right to make copies.

So we complain, we try to point out to them why they are wrong, but they just ignore us. So, we just ignore them, too. We just turn our backs on the bastards that have stolen our culture and our heritage and are trying to take everything else away from us, too. We turn our backs and just say "Fuck you. We're going to do our own thing". We're going to take our country back, one way or another. So you just keep taking money from the traitors that are exploiting us, and sending our jobs over seas, and leading us down the road to a litigation-based economy (how sustainable is that?). You take their money, and pass the laws they want, and we will ignore you more and more. Until your laws don't matter to anyone anymore, and you become irrelevant.

Re:Give 'em a chance

[sgtrock]

I used to buy at least a couple of CDs a payday. I passed outside the RIAA's primary demographic of 18-34 quite a few years ago, and my music buying habits did diminish quite a bit. I was down to maybe one a month.

About 5 years ago I quit buying any due to financial constraints. Once my situation improved, I didn't start buying CDs because; (a) I finally understood how the RIAA operates, (b) I really don't have time to sample tracks on sites like mp3.com anymore, and (c) my tastes run to mainstream music, mostly country.

Would I pay $10/mo just to be able to DL lossless music? Nope. Would I have 20 or 30 years ago? Doubtful. But back then you could still get some damn fine concept albums. Live albums, story albums like Jeff Lynne's "War of the Worlds", Rush 2112, almost anything by ELP (Emerson, Lake, and Palmer), Frank Zappa, the Grateful Dead, etc. Lots of good stuff. Now, albums just don't seem to hang together as well.

The point is that I bought albums because I wanted to hear all the tracks that never got airplay. So many of them were such great songs.

If there was a $5/mo service I'd be more interested, even if there were further surcharges for DLing songs. $10/mo for a service that I would only use infrequently sounds like too much.

Just my .02. No one else's. :)

Re:If this was the 80's

[goldspider]

Comparing tape-to-tape copying with CD-ripping/P2P is apples/oranges.

There is a definite cost to illegally mass-distributing music by making multiple copies of a cassette. You'd have to buy a TON of blank tapes (not cheap). You'd only be able to make one copy at a time. You'd need a means to physically transport the copied tape to the recipient. All of that costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time to do.

On the other hand, today all you need is a PC, CD-ripping software, and P2P software like Kazaa.

There is virtually no cost associated with CD-to-P2P distribution (about 15 minutes to convert an entire album to .mp3). Therefore there is little to discourage people from engaging in illegal copyright violation.

And by no means am I a RIAA apologist. It's just that the RIAA is far more concerned about P2P than they were about cassettes because the threat to their (outdated) business model posed by P2P is much greater.

This law SHOULD pass

[The Analog Kid]

This is not a trolling attempt but this law SHOULD pass. This is a law that affects Joe Sixpack. The DMCA, that was a law that mainly affect the IT sector, but this law affects anyone who owns a computer, an iPod or anything else that could possibly be used for copyright infringement. People will finally see what crooks those elected leaders are, sure there is no such things as an honest politician and Joe Sixpack knows this, but he just may not know how their representatives are huge sellouts to corporations. Once all these Joe Sixpacks see what the hell is going on, something will be done. So let this law pass, it's the only way change will happen.

The problem with P2P..

[PyrotekNX]

P2P gives people too much of a choice when choosing their music.

The RIAA and Clear Channel have a monopoly over the listening audience in the states.

Pay per download can still control what a user can or cannot listen to by only making certain records and songs available. It's not just losing money that record companies are afraid of, it's losing control over the distribution of music.

Sure the radio is free (for now) but the listeners do not control what is played over the air.

Music, Like Information, Wants to be Free

[KnarfO]

I think it's time to re-examine the whole concept of copyright and intellectual property. Unless it can be proven that a person or business is profiting from copyright infringement, and that those profits are having a direct negative impact on the IP owner's ability to gain from their work, then I don't see why we should not let people share information (including music), and encourage businesses and aritists to find other ways to make a living from art, ie: performances, merchandise, etc..

Re:nice proposal but ...

[turnstyle]

"Asking people to pay for a license that doesn't cover everything and doesn't make it clear what isn't covered puts an unfair burden on them. For the most part, people are downloading music because it is incredibly easy to do. Making that voluntarily harder won't solve anything."

And that's exactly why I say that the EFF proposal is just smoke and mirrors...

Effect changes in the networks

[patrik]

As far as I can tell people will always be file sharing, so why don't we come up with a responsible network that gives some incentive to the sharers to be responsible. Why is P2P so good? Simply put, high availability. Beyond that low cost to the owners of the material since they don't have to own a lot of servers and whatnot. So we need a network that can track sharers trades and charge them a nominal fee (read much less than current costs). I haven't seen much in the way of this but I did google across a relatively young and in the works network called bitmunk [bitmunk.com]. It's still in beta and whatnot, but they seem pretty serious about all this, I even talked to to a programmer there and bothered him for some technical questions and he seemed pretty receptive to my comments.

They seem to have the right idea, no DRM but they do have watermarks so they can track you down and cancel your account if you start sharing elsewhere. Maybe this doesnt' solve sharing among friends but, that's probably not a solvable problem, iTunes doesn't even solve this.

Of course all this means we have to return the copyrights to the artists or someone more responsible to the RIAA.

My 2 cents: check out the network give them ideas, they seem pretty bright and eager to please.

Patrik

Re:Copyright owners != artists

[Richard M. Nixon]

Any solution to the "P2P conflict" will have to center around getting entertainers to stop signing with the RIAA. Once that happens, the RIAA has absolutely no power over the entertainer and the means they choose to distribute their music.

There is also the problem that the majority of music is purchased by people with little musical knowledge: Teenagers

Their primary exposer to music is mainstream radio, thus without knowing that anything better exists, they are happy to eat up the tripe the RIAA serves them.

I suggest that we start kidnapping teenagers, tying them up, and forcing them to listen to music like John Coltrane and Miles Davis.

What???

Why are you looking at me like that?

You'd probably go for the idea if JFK had suggested it.

On a more serious note, while teenagers tend to buy more music, us grown ups do have more disposable income. If we want to loosen the RIAA's power we need to support non-RIAA artists, especially those who are openly critical of the RIAA, Clear Channel, and support p2p systems.

Or, on a smaller scale, if you are thinking of buying 2 cds, but only have the money to buy one, and one is on an RIAA label, and the other isn't.....