Entertainment Industry's Dystopia of the Future 394
renek writes "If you think the RIAA/MPAA's tactics have been outlandish, laughable, and disconcerting in the past, you haven't seen anything yet. From government-mandated spyware that deletes infringing content to border searches of media players, this reads like an Orwellian nightmare. Given the US government's willingness to bend over for Big Media it wouldn't be terribly surprising to see how far this goes and how under the radar it stays."
woohoo.. payday (Score:1, Insightful)
I will gladly run their spyware on my PC once they tell me where to send the invoice.
My current hourly rate to manage their software is $850 per hour.
My current rates for computer time is $245 per hour per processor.
I hope their spyware runs under Ubuntu.
I'll also start to carry about a few dozen old 128Mb-2Gb flash drives whenever I
travel. They are all filled with multiple TrueCrypt volumes full of random data which
is re-encrypted dozens of times. I'll gladly hand over all the decryption keys but
it'll still cost them time and money to check.
It's simple. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't possibly protect content without directly affecting the people who play by the rules. Things like the Patriot Act suffer from the same problem.
Bending over? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't forget... (Score:5, Insightful)
That we citizen elect the politicians.
Yes, but we don't select them.
To be unnecessarily extreme, we can essentially pick between Hitler and Pol Pot. While it's a tough choice, it's not a choice I want to make.
To paraphrase Star Wars... (Score:5, Insightful)
If they treat consumers as enemies they will become enemies.
haggling (Score:3, Insightful)
RMS described it well (Score:5, Insightful)
The Right to Read [gnu.org] was written 13 years ago, and is still remarkably prescient.
Re:Market balancing itself (Score:4, Insightful)
Trouble is, cartels tend to work outside of the free market...
And here I was just joking... (Score:5, Insightful)
*shakes head*
Re:Don't forget... (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought you could write whomever you wanted onto your ballot?
Or is your objection that voting for third-party candidates is useless because only Republican or Democratic candidates get enough votes to win and so your vote is only useful in helping one of those two to win?
I've seen this objection before. I'm pretty sure what makes it that Republican or Democratic candidates are the ones that get enough votes is because so many people choose to vote for them. So it seems your objection amounts to something like: "The majority chooses who wins, and I'm not part of the majority!"
Re:Market balancing itself (Score:3, Insightful)
And if they successfully legislate their survival?
bending (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the US government's willingness to bend over for Big Media...
Wrong metaphor; It is not the government who is getting screwed here. On the contrary, congressmen are collect big checks from media corporations for selling off our rights. I think you mean.
Given the US government's willingness to force citizens to bend over for Big Media
Re:haggling (Score:3, Insightful)
politics, where one get one batshit person in suit to make a outrageous claim so that a very similar claim from different suit seems mundane...
The U.S. Depends on it (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, the reality is that the U.S. economy currently depends almost exclusively on culturally created content/entertainment. Nothing gets made in the U.S. and exported anymore BUT movies, music, etc. So it's not a surprise that it's becoming more and more draconian in trying to defend those assets.
It's like if one country controlled all the oil. They'd jack up prices, but they'd also do everything they could to stifle the creation of oil alternatives. They'd start to insist changes in engine designs that used their oil, or else they wouldn't sell you the oil. They'd limit anyone trying to purchase the oil then refine it on their own, because they'd want to do all the refining themselves.
Every indicator I see says that this is going to get much worse in the future.
Re:Market balancing itself (Score:5, Insightful)
This probably isn't true. The point of the article is that the entertainment industry is trying to push obscene measures to stop "piracy." While in a normal market situation people would just stop supporting these companies and go to a competitor, such a scenario is unlikely to play out since there are no real competitors besides companies that will probably be squelched as illegal.
Think of it this way: would the automobile ever have taken off if the buggy industry owned and legally controlled all materials and technology related to the making of wheels? Sure the buggy makers could adopt the new automotive technology, and it would be better for the consumer if they did, but there is no immediate incentive for them to do so.
The music industry as a whole controls the vast majority of music, and are pushing laws to crush emerging technologies that might obsolete their main revenue source. There is no reason for them to switch and take advantage of these new technologies, because they don't have to. The average consumer of entertainment just doesn't have the self control to stop listening to songs or watching films for an unknown amount of time just to put pressure on the industry, and groups like the RIAA know this. Thus, they have every incentive to try and legislate the problem away, as the market has no way to correct. Only if their grip on copyright is loosened, or some form of piracy allowed to flourish, is there any pressure to adapt to changing realities in the world.
Re:Don't forget... (Score:4, Insightful)
That we citizen elect the politicians.
Yes, but we don't select them.
To be unnecessarily extreme, we can essentially pick between Hitler and Pol Pot.
Or Kang and Kodos! (Simpsons did it!)
Re:Don't forget... (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought you could write whomever you wanted onto your ballot?
Nope. They have to be pre-approved [google.com] (pdf in Google Docs) or they just plain won't be counted.
"The majority chooses who wins, and I'm not part of the majority!"
No, my objection is that the minority choses who the majority gets to pick. The US version of an "election" is a joke relative to modern systems [wikipedia.org].
Re:Don't forget... (Score:3, Insightful)
That we citizen elect the politicians.
Yes, but we don't select them.
To be unnecessarily extreme, we can essentially pick between Hitler and Pol Pot. While it's a tough choice, it's not a choice I want to make.
Yes, that is unnecessarily extreme. Why is everything in politics like this these days? Aren't there shades of wrongness? I mean really, we have a choice between politicians who have authorized the killing of millions of people? How about, 'we can essentially pick between Franco and Peron?' Both pretty bad, and fascist corporatists like many of today's politicians, but, you know, they didn't murder millions of people.
Rational politics requires rational citizens. Throwing around names like Hitler and Pol Pot does nothing to increase the rationality of voters. It does not motivate people to go out and vote or work for change. After all, what can one guy do against Hitler? Comparing our politicians to Hitler or Pol Pot is more than unnecessarily extreme. It is divisive and encourage irrationality, fear, and hopelessness. It also lumps all politicians in all races together into the 'utter monster' category, thus blurring the real distinctions that do exist. I mean, you can choose between the corporatist that wants to give you health care, or the corporatist that wants to regulate who you fuck. That's actually a pretty big distinction.
Not all politicians are evil monsters. And amongst the evil monsters, there are levels of evil. It is possible to pick the lesser of two evils if you don't lump all politicians together into the same evil madman stew.
Re:woohoo.. payday (Score:3, Insightful)
That's "sudo apt-get install dystopian-copyright-protection" dumbass.
Also, "Couldn't find package dystopian-copyright-protection"
Touché MPAA/RIAA/OMNIPATENTDROLLCARTEL (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't you just hate it when you're not even finished with your great American dystopian Sci-Fi novel and it suddenly morphs into a friggin' documentary?
Re:haggling (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course it is. And remember we're only seeing what EFF want us to see - they're hardly going to present the most unbiased view.
Thing is, money talks. It certainly talks to the US government, and also to my own (UK) government. Those who are going all out pro-piracy are easily labelled as insane (which is remarkably easy - much of the western world doesn't produce any sort of property but intellectual, it doesn't take a debating genius to put forward an argument that some sort of protection is absolutely necessary for the continued wellbeing of the economy - frankly, the previous system of patronage doesn't scale so well. It's easy to overlook the fact that a cleverly built website could probably fix that by allowing lots of small donations to be wrapped up into one big lump, because nobody's done that yet. Closest thing is probably Magnatunes).
This leaves the moderates. Those who produce and/or enjoy music, don't see a problem with artists getting paid per se but do see a problem with the current system. Problem is, AFAICT the moderates aren't proposing workable solutions, they're simply complaining that every suggestion that's brought up is worse than the current system. Which is true, but right now you've got people on all sides saying "We need to do something. Hey, Government, do something!" and the only "something" that's being presented to do is presented by the entertainment industry. So the Government reaction is likely to be "We need to do something. This is something. Let's do it."
Re:woohoo.. payday (Score:5, Insightful)
obscene-censorship
government-intrusion
corporate-greed
ubisoft-games
sony-rootkit-drm
You should explicitly select one to install.
E: Package dystopian-copyright-protection has no installation candidate
Re:Companies need protection too! (Score:4, Insightful)
Bottom line: copyright law was created to benefit SOCIETY, not big media, and we have every right to be upset with them removing any value we receive from it.
Re:The U.S. Depends on it (Score:4, Insightful)
Look, the reality is that the U.S. economy currently depends almost exclusively on culturally created content/entertainment.
So our society will collapse if people stop buying the latest Lady Gaga album?
Nothing gets made in the U.S. and exported anymore BUT movies, music, etc. So it's not a surprise that it's becoming more and more draconian in trying to defend those assets.
Except that all the defenses are aimed at stopping stuff from coming in, not going out. Nobody checks laptops, cameras, thumb drives, etc. that could be leaving the country with the latest music videos, jet fighter blueprints, photos of the White House and other target candidates.
Its all about maintaining a monopoly for distribution within this country. Companies see no need to cut prices or improve products so long as they have a block of suckers (us) that have to buy their products at huge markups.
The USA needs a "Pirate Party" (Score:5, Insightful)
The PP will probably never win an election, it's just there to show them how many votes they lose when they support the RIAA.
(OTOH I'd bet the PP could get quite a few votes in today's America...)
Artist will starve. The non-existent problem (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was a child our house was heated by oil, a tank car came by every now and then and fueled up a tank in the back.
That no longer happened. The guy who drove the tanker, has lost THAT job.
Coal was used earlier, and a lot of people made their money mining the coal in Holland and shipping it to homeowners. The mines have closed. The miners are gone.
In Amsterdam and many an old city you can still see evidence of horse stables in the center of the city. Evidence that once horses were the only method to power transport and the industry that made it happen.
Gas lighters once went around, turning on each street light individually, a job typically given as a charitable cause for people who could not earn their money in another way.
Countless jobs are gone as companies claimed that putting them in other countries was best for society, for the world, for the future.
And now, it is the time of the artist to loose their job, to see their means of earning a living turned upside down.
Does that matter? Is it worth halting progress to keep some people earning money the same way they are used to?
We could have stopped the car from ever going faster and thereby saved the horse industry. But at what cost to our society?
But art is different. Why? Great art has been created LONG before copyright was added (the current copyright is a recent invention and was fought tooth and nail by the record industry) and that art will remain.
Will people stop performing Opera because the composer is no longer being paid... oh wait, the composer died centuries ago.
Then perhaps people will stop making new art... except unpaid art is produced all the time. Go to flickr.com for just a tiny sample. Nobody there expects to be paid, yet they are producing art.
Yes, some artists will perhaps die of starvation. Just as lost of coal miners lost their job and countless stable boys before them.
THOUGH LUCK. The MPAA/RIAA/Brein/Bumastemra all love to claim that our society will collapse when no more "play for cash only" bands will exist. No more spice-girls, no more backstreet boys. The end of civilization as we know it. I could just cry.
But does it matter? I am not going to argue that pirates buy more CD's because I am trying to make a far bigger point. If indeed the end of copyright means NO more music is produced. Will that matter? Or is it just another development of our society? Imagine a world without movies. Ain't that hard, movie tech is not all that old. One thing often miss about Star Trek is that it is a fictional world without money (ToS and TNG at least) but ALSO without art. Think about it, there are no paid for artists and content in the series itself. We watch on TV a TV-less world. They make their own content, for their own consumption and art is "merely" something that each does for the fun of it, not for profit.
The RIAA and the likes hate such a future. They want us to believe that the artist who works for profit, a Michael Jackson or Madonna IS the ONLY part of our modern civilization that is worth anything. Everything else is secondary to them. The Spice girls are the 20th century, and everything else just plays second role to it. If content is not paid for, it does not exist, it is not worth it and if it is content it must be paid for.
This goes to such extremes that copyright mafia's collect royalties for music for that isn't even subject to royalties. If I produce a piece of music and put it in the public domain and it is played on the radio (in Holland at least) then Bumastemra collects a fee for it. A fee I, the person who created the music can't collect, nor can anyone. They have a legal right to collect money for something they don't own and which they never have to pay out to anyone. It would be like giving Shell the right to collect a fee from anyone on the road, no matter if they drive a car or not.
And the Internet, personal liberties, common sense, artisic license, law, they all got to bend or be broken s
Re:Companies need protection too! (Score:5, Insightful)
But what protects that same guy from the RIAA/MPAA/**AA bankrupting him and ruining his life for (maybe) sharing a few songs?
That's more important to you than your civil liberties?
Re:The EFF should do itself a favor (Score:4, Insightful)
The EFF isn't "pirate friendly". They just have different priorities: namely civil liberties.
Calling civil libertarians "pirate sympathisers" is a nice bit of Orwellian Newspeak.
Pirates are simply preferable to the alternative.
Although the real value of "eliminating piracy" is highly disputable. It's not a given that it would benefit artists.
Re:"Under the radar?" (Score:3, Insightful)
What's going on?
We're moving towards media technologies that allow Amazon to snatch back your copy of 1984.
It doesn't get much more "Orwellian" than that. There is no hyperbole here. That's the problem.
Sugar coating the situation is hardly going to help anything.
Re:Market balancing itself (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, they can try to force legislation that will pay them through taxes, effectively selling themselves to the government, a move that is certain to backfire on them. They can force legislation that would require Americans to purchase their products, which seems unlikely to succeed. They can also try to force legislation that would require artists to go through them to distribute their works, but I suspect such a law would get overturned by the courts rather quickly.
The recording industry blames their decline in sales on piracy, but I suspect it has much more to do with the increasing quality of material available from other venues. Artists can publish their material cheaply and easily over the internet. By using this method, they are free from the recording industry's abusive contracts, and they also retain ownership of their creations. In this way, the internet is revolutionizing how artists interact with their audiences, and even big name musicians are turning to it.
Meanwhile, the RIAA continues to alienate its consumer-base, with lawsuits, uncompetitive prices, rootkits and outlandish demands. For decades, they could control their content producers with harsh contracts, accepted only because there weren't any other practical options. Now the artists have another option, and the RIAA's policies are driving both them and their audience to it. Why should I sign a recording contract which requires me to sell so many hundred thousand albums or become the professional property of the corporation, when I can publish my material on YouTube? Why should I pay $15 for a CD which might have only one or two songs I enjoy, when I can find all of the satisfying material I want for free on YouTube?
They're losing ground because they've failed to alter their business model to compensate for the changes technology has made to their market. They can try to force all sorts of legislation, but their efforts will only be in vane.
That's Entertainment (Score:4, Insightful)
You know what's entertaining?
Watching people argue for rights they don't have against people enforcing rights they don't have.
Re:Market balancing itself (Score:2, Insightful)
So many flaws, so little time.
First off, your price comparisons are off. Cats and other pets are not free; they require regular feeding and care. Playing your own instrument is closer to free, but still requires an initial cost to get the instrument and possibly small costs to maintain it. Plus, you may have to pay some fee to obtain music to play, or lessons on how to play, if you aren't naturally gifted. Still, let's accept that there are things you can do to entertain yourself that are almost entirely free.
Second, why do you believe that advertising, and not people themselves, determines what is most enjoyable? I enjoy walking in the park, but I would get bored with it pretty fast if that was my only option. It's not advertising that makes me like the experience of listening to music, watching a movie, or playing a game. Advertising might make me aware of my options, and might even push me towards a particular one (if said ad is well-crafted by my standards and persuades me that the music/movie/game might be something I would like). But it doesn't define my enjoyment of a thing. I would still enjoy music if advertising didn't exist.
Finally, my world would be a much bleaker and more expensive place if it weren't for advertising. Advertising lets me use Google to search for things of interest on the internet (free), and to use all the other great Google tools (free), and to visit sites like this one (free). It lets me listen to music free (via the radio or a site like Pandora). It lets me play some of my favorite web games free. With advertisers footing the bill, I get to enjoy a lot of the things I enjoy, WITHOUT having to pay a dime for them myself (excluding any basic costs like the internet connection itself or the hardware used to access said entertainment).
You want to know how to block ads? Train your mind, not your computer. Recognize that just because some disembodied voice is trying to convince you to buy something, YOU have the choice not to. If an ad becomes too obnoxious or intrusive, then by all means block it or go elsewhere. Me, when I see an ad that bothers me, I make it a point to avoid products from that source if I can reasonably choose a competitor's alternative. But if everyone took your advice, and advertising magically failed to work any more, then we'd all have to pay full cost for all the things we enjoy. That would be a tragedy.
Re:Market balancing itself (Score:3, Insightful)
Trouble is, cartels tend to work outside of the free market...
I would argue that the black market is more free then the free market.
Looks like a new "War on Drugs" (Score:2, Insightful)
The War on Drugs has worked out remarkably well so far, I think we can all agree. I am sure that aggressive steps to locate and prosecute copyright infringement will have the same amount of success and public support.
Or, not.
Put together enough "War On X" programs and eventually, it's just "War on You."
Re:Don't forget... (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at what happened to Colbert when he tried to run in South Carolina. He was shot down because "he could never win,"
I'd argue that he was shot down because "there is a real possibility he could win, and/or garner enough votes that we would have to take him seriously"
Re:It's simple. (Score:5, Insightful)
I dunno about you but www.eff.org just got another donation.
Seriously if you don't like this kind of thing happening then:
1. SPEAK OUT
>Not only to those around you but to
a. Your Congressmen and Senators - Letter writing, and phone calls are simple, fairly cheap and CAN make a difference but only if you do it.
b. Signing Petitions - Online petitions are good ways of building support for causes you like and are quick and easy to do
c. Talk to those around you. Let your views be known you might help someone else realize how important this is.
2. Donate and Support good causes
Unfortunately our legal system is a pay for service setup where lawyers cost money. You can send a few bucks to places like the EFF or ACLU to help support your rights online and off. Their websites are easy to find and often have good information on what else you can do to support civil liberties. If you are not a US citizen then the organizations may be different but the idea is the same.
3. VOTE
It is your right and it may be a drop in the bucket, but that bucket will never fill if you don't put it in. If you don't like either of the two-party candidates vote for a third party. Even if they don't win, a third party getting a higher percentage of the vote DOES help them and other parties in the next cycle.
Voting is not just a right it is a duty. Yes YOU by living in a representative democracy have a duty to vote, and that doesn't mean just showing up at the polls on election day. You also have a duty to do what you can to RESEARCH and LEARN about the candidates and to THINK about who will be getting YOUR vote.
Democracy is hard and demands the most of its citizens compared to any form of previously tried government. ALL citizens have to work in government because all citizens ARE PART of the government.
Re:Don't forget... (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I think he sold out to Big Medicine, and what we ended up getting will require a lot of fixing. We need a single payer system that guarantees free health care to all, like every other civilized country on Earth. It's a moral issue: we're Americans and we shouldn't let Americans die like rabid dogs in the street. That's third world bananna republic bullshit.
What we got is not a system that guarantees health care to all, it's a system that basically hands money from taxpayers directly to insurance companies. In case you didn't know, insurance companies do NOT provide healthcare. They shuffle paperwork and money, and keep a lot of the money for themselves. They don't provide anything of value.
If you want to give the people healthcare, then you need a system where money is transferred from the taxpayer directly to those who provide healthcare: doctors, hospitals, clinics, etc. Sticking a middleman in there who takes a giant cut and only complicates the provision of care doesn't help any.
Obama didn't "sell out" to Big Medicine. He and the rest of the Democrats were already bought and paid for by Big Insurance.
Mark my words, what we ended up with is going to be even worse than the mess we had before, and cost an enormous amount of money that will bankrupt the country. The insurance companies and their CEOs are going to get filthy rich, but there will still be Americans dying like rabid dogs in the streets, because there won't be enough healthcare providers to provide care for them, as doctors will leave the country or go into other professions (as they're already doing, because of the insane cost of malpractice insurance).
Re:It's simple. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not about protecting content. It is protecting content "owners" desire to perpetually sell the content by creating laws that support that desire at the expense of the general public.
Human nature is one of sharing, remixing, co-creating. Standing on the shoulders of giants and all that.
In business, like in war, the party with the least compassion wins.
People who lobby for draconian IP laws are not creators, inventors, artists. They are the middlemen, trying to squeeze maximum profit and lock in their ownership of others' creations forever. Any politician that votes for such laws is by definition not serving the people, not doing their job, and deserves to be immediately removed from their position due to their being corrupted.
Simple.
Re:wish list (Score:3, Insightful)
Suggesting that corporate profits are more important than individual liberties is itself an extreme position.
Re:To paraphrase Star Wars... (Score:3, Insightful)
How many young people do you know these days that download stuff willy nilly without a second thought? How many young folk do you know that, when they can't convince Mom or Dad to buy them the next CD, find a way to get it off the internet or from a friend for free? How many college dorms exist were kids swap huge external hard drives full of content they will never listen to just because they can? How many of those folk stop and think, "What I am doing is so wrong. Maybe I should stop?"
As future generations mature in an age where computer technology is integrated into their cell phones which never leave their hand from the day they turn 6 years old they will learn that the information floating about on the intratubes is ripe for the picking. They will figure out that the $10 connection cable for their latest LG phone will provide them with limitless free downloads as opposed to being nickel and dimed by Rhapsody. Kids don't have a lot of money as a general rule of thumb. Thus, they find out easy ways to get what they want for cheap or for free. Those skills just get refined as they grow older and more intelligent and bold. As the older generations that remember the top 40 and billboard charts become obsolete and die off, so will their entertainment business methods. The iGeneration is going to take this industry by the balls and burn it to the ground, whether they mean to or not. Similarly some inventive and ambitious young folk will find better, cheaper, faster ways of producing the goods for the insatiable entertainment appetite of society and they will make a fortune.
Big media are going to find out, very quickly, how ineffective litigious tactics are when applied to scores of well-fed pop music fanboys and fangirls. If a 13 year old girl can't afford the latest copy of the Jonas Brothers newest CD, you can be damned sure she will still find a way to get it, be it legal or illegal. Litigation cannot stand the onslaught of pubescent hormones and irrational decisions that drive younger generations to obsess over music and movies.
So yeah, the RIAA and MPAA can litigate and throw a temper-tantrum. Technological innovations and an obsession the latest trendy content will prevail. Even the best equipped army will be overcome by a sufficiently large horde of brain hungry zombies. In this case, the zombies want music and movies rather than brains.
Re:Market balancing itself (Score:5, Insightful)
The market tried to sort out the banking industry, but the the goverment stepped in and handed a trillion dollars of taxpayer money to the banks for no good reason, ensuring they wouldn't learn a lasting lesson from their foolishness.
The government certainly has a role in regulating the logistics of markets: creating a standard language for contracts, defining standards for weights and measures, enforcing contracts, and protecting against fraud. They had a serious failure in doing so with the mortgage derivatives market that caused so much hassle. But the regulation needed there was simple "look, trade this shit on the CBOT or another major exchange, so that everyone is using the same standardized set of contracts". This is required for most other financial intruments, and creates enough transparancy to keep the market functioning (without the government even needing to create the standards, just insisting that there are standards.
Plus, of course, the mortgage fraud was starting to get out of hand before the collapse, but we didn't need any new laws for that, just to stop turning a blind eye to it.
Rather than doing the simple, non-instrusive job the government is suposed to, it created a problem which it then used to nationalize a big chuck on the American economy. Ditto healthcare, and to some small extent auto manufacturing.
Re:Don't forget... (Score:3, Insightful)
You right wingers love to point out that we are a constitutional republic, but that does not negate anything I said. Technically, I am right, hehehe, you even admit it. But look up the commerce clause.
Yes, the insurance companies do say that. If hold the only source of food, and I say, "suck my dick or starve to death," what will you do? Enter into a dick-sucking-for-food contract? If I hold medicine that will cure you, and I demand an outrageous price for it, what will you do? Economic coercion is real, especially when property rights are backed up with government guns.
You call my use of the word freedom 'misuse?' I'd say, protecting the rights of the wealthy to oppress the poor is even more of a misuse of the word.
The record shows that the free market is incapable of providing good reasonably priced health care solutions. Sorry that the facts have such a liberal bias, but the rest of the first world has awesome socialized health care that works, for less per capita than ours.
Your lies about the UK are, in fact, lies. My mom just died over there this Christmas. Because she couldn't get good health care here. Sarah Palin admitted to sneaking into Canada for health care.
Uh, none of the services you mentioned are actually bankrupt. And medicare, for instance, puts most of the money into actual health care instead of the pockets of paper pushing time wasting insurance leaches.
I'm sorry, but the imbalance of information and power inherent in any doctor patient relationship means the free market can not arrive at an equitable price for the service. You can't 'shop around' for health care. If you were seriously il;l, what would 'shopping around' mean? And how would you even know when you'd gotten a good deal.
Re:haggling (Score:4, Insightful)
This leaves the moderates. Those who produce and/or enjoy music, don't see a problem with artists getting paid per se but do see a problem with the current system.
The MAFIAA are at one extreme, those who wish to abolish copyright completely are the other extreme, and the Pirate Party members are the moderates; they simply want reasonable laws.
Re:Don't forget... (Score:2, Insightful)
But unlike Communism, we don't get killed for voting for someone else.
Perot was a viable third party candidate in '92 and '96. Nader was a spoiler in '00, Ventura became governor of Minnesota as a third party.
We have independent party Senators.
Yes, as a moderate Republican (they call me a RINO now) I have alot in common with the Blue Dog Democrats, but someone like Ron Paul is not virtually identical to President Obama. McCain and Obama were similar in 2008, but had McCain stuck to his stances he ran on in 2000 they would have been alot different.
Palin or Paul in 2012 will not be virtually identical to President Obama.
LDO (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, "Couldn't find package dystopian-copyright-protection"
Hidden file system entries. You need to be in group "mafiaa" to access those.
That's "sudo apt-get install dystopian-copyright-protection" dumbass.
Not if you're Sony. Sony always runs as root.
Re:To paraphrase Star Wars... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why the film industry is still doing well: people don't yet treat the experience of watching a film as disposable. Some do, happily watching one on their PSPs, but most people recognize the value of going out to a theatre, which extends beyond that of just watching the film. The act of going out, the communal aspect of the cinema, these are things that people still value, and as luck would have it they cannot be replicated by piracy.
It's only going to get harder, since when more and more content can come right to you, the less and less people are going to go out of their way to get the stuff that can't. I'm sure many young people nowadays don't even know the value of seeing a live stage show or play. I mean, why do that when I can watch it on my iPhone?
Re:This is a tired myth (Score:3, Insightful)
Thank you. I think the problem is that it's a meme that the RIAA, MPAA, etc. are pushing. Their lobbyists go to congress and claim that if they don't get bailed out and propped up, then no music or movies or art of any kind will be created anymore and the entire economy will implode.
Re:To paraphrase Star Wars... (Score:3, Insightful)
"I'm old, and I predict the imminent demise of western civilization because these newfangled gadgets the kids love so much are different than what I grew up with. And get off my lawn!"
It would have been faster. I bet if we went back and looked at the hypothetical iPod playlist of a 13-year-old You, it would be as embarrassingly banal as the playlists of today's crop of 13 year olds. Nostalgia is powerful, but tends to blind us to the fact that things really aren't "worse" than they were, things just take different forms.
The existence of my iPod does not cheapen my connection to music; I go to MORE live shows, and listen to MORE music now than I ever did when I was 13. Back then, my play list was determined almost solely by what was on the radio and what my parents listened to around the house. Then came MTV, and suddenly I was hearing music that I had never heard on the radio (this was in the days where there was actually music on MTV). Then came the internet, and suddenly I could discover even more music! And I can carry around all of that music (~17,000 tracks in my itunes library at last check) in a device the size of a deck of cards in my pocket, listen to it whenever I want, share the listening with others in my car, and discover new similar artists (or entire subgenres) with a few clicks of a mouse, and share recordings with dozens of friends and family with a few more clicks of the mouse via Youtube, Last.fm, Pandora, etc.
And you think that all of this somehow makes me less interested in, or supportive of, the arts? You are wrong.
Re:To paraphrase Star Wars... (Score:3, Insightful)
it's the fact that music itself is becoming less and less important, so less value is placed on it. Music is now something you listen to while studying, something you put on in the car or at a party, not something to be enjoyed for its own sake. The advent of portable music devices insure that it's everywhere all the time, utterly trivial to get, and not something you'd feel attachment to. We value what we have to work to get, and getting music nowadays is not work at all.
I hadn't ever thought about that before, the fact that many folk take music as a given since it permeates everywhere these days. I mean, it seems pretty obvious, but it is a decently insightful observation with regards to the values our culture has. The reason we don't value music enough to pay as much as we used to, these days, may very well be because we can see, hear, and access music everywhere. That doesn't just involve iPods and such, but also the fact that music now plays, regularly, in many lobbies of public areas, at restaurants, on elevators, and so on. Sure, that has been happening far longer than just the last couple of decades, but it was a lot more complicated and costly to get a clunky cassette recording playing in a mobile elevator than it is to use a nice little mp3 player. At least, that seems like it would be the case.
That said, the poster made an interesting point in that regard. However, I would agree to you that generalizing and saying the younger generations, or just people in general, valuing music as an art less these days in not necessarily true. These younger generations, just like those before them, have both artists and consumers in them. Saying whether current generations have fewer art lovers and more consumers would, in my opinion, require a decent study to be a valid point however.
FTFY (Score:1, Insightful)
We wouldn't even be having this discussion if a whole lot of people hadn't gone hog-wild and used Napster to literally STEAL music back in the day.
I'm sure what you meant to say was:
"We wouldn't even be having this discussion if, in the 90's the utter morons in the music industry had recognized the huge demand for music in a portable digital format at a reasonable price with minimal restrictions as a huge opportunity and moved swiftly to supplying product to meet that demand by and allowing us to literally BUY music back in the day."
Instead they acted like total fuckwads whose very belief system would be destroyed by such a move and they did everything in their power to try to push back the huge waves of the digital revolution that simply washed over them, leaving them mere flotsam and jetsam on the seas of progress.
For years, while others downloaded with abandon, I (a hard core music lover who had bought over 6,000 vinyl lp's and and 500 CD's) held back for many years waiting for them to provide me with this highly deisreable option. I even used to chastise downloaders in these very forums for 'piracy'. And I waited and waited for the industry to deliver.
After over half a decade of waiting, I gave up. Can you guess what my next move was?
Re:It's simple. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:To paraphrase Star Wars... (Score:3, Insightful)
It was more a joke than an attack. As an "oldish" guy myself, I know how tempting it can be to view every new gadget as the herald of the end of civilization as we know it. :)
"Valuing" music in the sense of art appreciation is not necessarily tied to the amount of money you pay for it. Recording companies are fairly new in the history of music. They have commoditized and packaged SOME music for mass distribution; this is not necessarily evil or bad. But they have exerted a significant control on the pricing of the product - or would you really argue that CDs were $17 worth of "value"?
:)
The Portable audio player (iPod, Sansa, Nomad, Zune, what have you), and easy access to music over the internet allows people more choice of the music they listen to. The result of this is that music becomes even more personal, because the music you choose is an expression of your individual taste - not just a reflection of what you're spoon fed every 3 hours by the local AAA radio station. So what if a kid gets most of their music for 99 cents? That doesn't diminish their appreciation, or their enjoyment, of the music any more so than my buying a $5 used CD would mean I enjoyed the album 1/3 as much as if I paid $15 for a shrinkwrapped "new" copy. Some of my absolute favorite songs I've downloaded for free from artists' websites, with their blessings. And knowing that it's free, I send those links around to my friends saying, "you gotta check this out."
Yes, much of what I hear in the doctor's office and at the mall is exactly what the OP mentioned: "background music." That doesn't mean that music will suddenly cease to be important to us, or suddenly cease to move us, delight us, or excite us. Long before there was a "music industry," people made music. Long after today's "music industry" is a pile of rubble, people will make music. The format you carry it around on will change, the way it's distributed will change... but the kids are all right, really. They're not going to stop loving music because it's easy to hear whatever song you want whenever you want to hear it. If anything, they will simply tune out the "background" music being piped in, and listen to their own personal playlists - witness the ubiquity of the white iPod earbuds on any city street or in any shopping center, and you'll see what I mean.
And let's be honest, I'd rather hear Lady GaGa at the mall than the sound of a bunch of out of shape middle aged folks huffing and puffing as they walk up and down the stairs.
Re:Don't forget... (Score:3, Insightful)
I just re-read your comment, and thought I should provide you with an answer, since you sound like you're probably not an American citizen.
why do you even need insurance companies in the loop ?
Simple: because the politicians who wrote this legislation were given large bribes, err, campaign contributions, by these insurance companies, so they were required by their employers (the lobbyists) to write the legislation to benefit them.
I think a lot of people don't realize that America's government is just as corrupt as, if not more than, Mexico's.