Edison to Hillary Rosen - Parts 3, 4 and 5 114
An anonymous reader writes "MP3newswire.net has the follow up to the first two chapters of its series "Thomas Edison, Intellectual Property and the Recording Industry". These articles show that the controllers of the media bullied folk back then as they do now - and it didn't work. The last installments of the 5 part series include; Chapter 3 -- The Industry Evolves, Chapter 4 -- Copyright and the Grand Illusion, and closes with Chapter 5 -- Bringing the Past Into the Present"
Can't RTFA (Score:2)
Re:Can't RTFA (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mirror (Score:1)
Re:Can't RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Can't RTFA (Score:1)
The link should show with the post.
www.azoz.com
hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
If you put a restriction on the sale of laws and/or politicians you are just hampering the market in action.
Re:hmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
not funny (Score:3, Interesting)
This is scary: (Score:2)
Re:hmmm (Score:1)
When was the media more diverse? (Score:5, Interesting)
Philosophy (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider this: do the Amish care about the RIAA?
Our possessions and desires imprison us as much as we will let them.
You can trap a monkey very easily with a jar and some peanuts...
So, RIAA can influence us as long as our desire to possess and experience recorded sounds outweighs our desire to strip them of their powers.
Re:Philosophy (Score:2)
Re:Philosophy (Score:4, Insightful)
Made to serve the public? Where the heck did you get that idea?
Re:Philosophy (Score:2)
Correction. (Score:3, Insightful)
In light of that, I'd like to correct your statement.
You think the RIAA was made to serve the public.
The RIAA thinks that the RIAA was made to serve the Recording Industry.
But maybe God thinks that the RIAA was made to bring you full circle and hopefully drive you back to something very like Amishism.
I, for one, respect the Amish, and wish that
Re:Correction. (Score:2)
Re:Correction. (Score:2)
Indeed you are right. My apologies--I mistook your comment for your sig and ignored it, and the quote for your comment.
Also, re: that other anonymous coward post, parallel this one, who said
> He had to sneek [sic] off the farm to use the
> computer so cut him some slack
Thanks for the slack. However, in reality the Amish let their kids go as they will, so there's no sneeking, particularly. That results in some heroin addict Amish kids, b
Don't Offend the Amish! (Score:1)
Re:Philosophy (Score:2)
In the same way the Kanamits came- to serve man [thetzsite.com].
Re:Philosophy (Score:2, Funny)
Try it sometime, you'll finder it tougher than you think. Even if you manage to finally trap the monkey, you have to remember to put in airholes.
Poor monkey.
Re:Philosophy (Score:2)
And he won't let go.
Trap the monkey's hand-- trap the monkey.
Moral of the story (since it sounds suspiciously like a parable): the monkey's own greed is as effective as any steel sprung trap. Or put another way, in 99.9% of human history, we've gotten along just fine w
Re:Philosophy (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Philosophy (Score:2)
and the more people notice them, the more independent labels and bands will spring up.
This is very true. The one thing the RIAA has going for it is that signing with one of them gets you a lot of exposure and sales (or at least that's the belief).
If instead, it were known that nobody ever buys anything they publish, bands will opt for some other means, possibly doing their own mixing on a PC with a good sound card, putting their own tracks on p2p and burning their own CDs.
Re:Philosophy (Score:2)
Re:Philosophy (Score:2)
You try explaining to a Girl Scout why they can't sing Puff the Magic Dragon
The Government (Score:2)
If at first you don't succeed... (Score:5, Insightful)
So they keep trying and keep leeching more and more off the fans of music. Less and less of the growing profits actually goes to the artists whose art is what is purchased while some fat excecutive skyrockets his cholesterol level in his exotic wood panelled office while having his knob polished by some babe banking brownie points.
I can make a longer sentence if I really put my mind to it. But... nah. That one paints the ugly picture of the current state of affairs well enough.
Enjoy while you can, parasitical record exec! The winds are changing. If the cholesterol level or some unspeakable STT doesn't get you first, maybe actually doing some REAL work once you can't make a living leeching off the creativity of others.
I suppose if you were a fan of record execs you could consider this a flame, but let's face it, are the descriptions above really THAT far from reality?
Re:If at first you don't succeed... (Score:1, Interesting)
She was waiting tables at some fancy restraunt in nyc when the sony records ceo was eating lunch. So he picked her up, boned her and since the putang was good he married her and gave her a record deal. Not a bad trophy wife eh?
Now that they are divorced she lost her sony contract and gets no marketing or promotion and has basically faded back into obscurity (albiet with a few more million than before).
Basically with mixing technology today anyone can be
Re:If at first you don't succeed... (Score:2)
"Enjoy it while you can"? Why would it change? (Score:1)
In short, the RIAA isn't going anywhere. But pirating, warezing script kiddies most certainly are... [prison.com]
Re:If at first you don't succeed... (Score:2)
While I would love to agree, I just don't think this is the case.
Looking at the UK Top 25 [dotmusic.com], I am totally willing to say that there is only one artist in there that I think makes 'music' - and that's Radiohead.
Although I have no idea of relative singles sales over time in the UK (and I can't be arsed to check them), I think this shows that singles at least are 0wned by people who like shit songs from leaching labels.
I haven't listened
Re:If at first you don't succeed... (Score:2, Interesting)
Keep up the good work.
Author doesn't understand economics (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Author doesn't understand economics (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Author doesn't understand economics (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Author doesn't understand economics (Score:2)
Re:Author doesn't understand economics (Score:2)
Re:Author doesn't understand economics (Score:1, Interesting)
How things work (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Author doesn't understand economics (Score:5, Insightful)
So, you're saying that "An artist is not necessarily a businessman" yet an artist needs to be an expert in contract law to ensure he's getting a good deal. Of course, he could just hire a lawyer to do it, except, oops, "nor does he necessarily have any capital".
The real problem isn't with the publishing system. It's necessary, as you pointed out. The problem, as I see it, is the fact that the majoriy of record labels seem to use contracts that can be broken down, in plain english, as 'You get x% of the profit, which is the total sales minus our costs, which we will calculate ourselves.' Then they calculate their 'costs' as 'total sales + $1'.
The problem is it's very hard to fix something like that in legislation. Unless you make some specific law dealing with accounting practices for "all contracts involving a percentage of an as-of-yet uncertain number" or something like that.
Or maybe a required basic course on 'everyday laws' in school. There are quite a few things that would be better if teens were exposed to a well-taught (yes that could be difficult in public schools) primer on contracts (read them carefully, require accountability), criminal law (what will happen if you're arrested), and generally what rights you are and are not granted by law, and probably more that I'm not thinking of.
And if it won't fit in the schedule, eliminate a PE course :D
it's not really as bad as it's made out to be (Score:2)
Re:Author doesn't understand economics (Score:2)
In films there exists - among others - a screen writers guild that make sure athat all screeenwriters gets a fair contract.
Thats the only thing that works when the cooporations become too powerful. It may not prevent all cases of unfair advantages by the corporation, but should most certainly make life easier for many artists in the music field.
Re:Author doesn't understand economics (Score:5, Interesting)
Furthermore, in a standard record label deal the artist agrees to pay all the costs of recording, promotion, production, transportation, food, etc out of their royalties. What is the record label going to pay for? Honestly, it seems to me that the only risk the record label assumes is the fact that the artist may bomb and owe the label millions. In that case, which seems to be very rare, the artist is bankrupt and the label has taken a profit hit.
Are you still entirely sure that it is the labels that assume the risk? Personally, I think that, unless my sources are very wrong, the artist takes the greatest risk -- by far.
usually artists don't pay the label (Score:2)
The main point is that it's very common for artists to make no money, and very uncommon for artists to sell millions of albums. So in most cases the label has basically thrown away th
Re:Author doesn't understand economics (Score:2, Interesting)
He enters into this contract freely, and shouldn't complain he got screwed
These two comments appear to be mutually exclusive.
I think a system based on a base fee plus percentage would work for production and distribution. I don't think that the flagfall fee for these functions should be the total annihilation of the creators' ownership of his/her works.
Re:this Author doesn't understand music (Score:2, Insightful)
The real artists don't care if they don't make millions off of what they really love. They care if they can make a living off of it that is all.
Re:Author doesn't understand economics (Score:1)
interesting. (Score:1)
umm, NAPC's rights go back to 1894? The phonograph is the one media that can't be controlled because the patents on it have been allowed to expire? The phonograph is the analog hole to end all analog holes?
this is unfair! (Score:2)
100+ years of (Score:2, Interesting)
And yet, the rebels prevail.
Reminds of all the FUD from Edison about this ridiculous Tesla guy and his "Alternating Current" (the work of the devil)
Some things just never change.
Buggy Whips... (Score:5, Insightful)
...and finally;
I realize I'm gonna be stating the obvious here on a number of points, but I'm building to something... Even as recently a ten years ago, stamping out a new CD of new music took large chunks of money. Large enough that only Big Names were worth the investment (though there was a thriving community of Not So Big Names and even Very Small Names survivng by producing cassette tapes). Now, a "professional" quality recording studio and CD burning setup costs less than a new car and anyone can record and sell CDs, and thanks to the web, these people can get attention without repetitive and redundant radio saturation or MTV airplay. Extrordinairily talented people who don't fit the recording industry's concept of Things They Can Sell now have a way to get their stuff out; maybe they won't sell a million CDs, but they might actually see some money for what they do sell (or, failing that, they may get a chance to do what they enjoy without someone in a suit telling them about "target demographics"). On some level, the recording industry realizes that they are selling buggy whips to an increasingly motorized society and they're starting to panic. The "devil" they point to is the "pirates" (who, according to the first chapter of this series, have been with us for over a century). The same pattern is showing up in movies; remember the shockwaves from Clerks and The Blair Witch Project? Low budgets, big returns, who knew?
So we know that "piracy" is not nearly the issue that the RIAA has made it out to be. We know that copyright laws are seriously gronked (though the intriguing points raised by Mr. Ziemann in chapter 4 about why had not occurred to me). We know that the lawmakers are either ignorant of the damage they're doing, or unconcerned (nothing like a few thousand bucks to soothe one's aching conscience). We know these things because we choose to investigate (even if it's only reading YRO posts on /.). But what about the millions of people who don't read slashdot and/or have never given the matter any thought? How can they be reached?
For myself, I try to spread the proverbial word. I've hooked my little sister on a number of indy bands and I'm working on my nephew. I expose my friends and classmates to college radio and small label bands. I buy my music, for the most part, directly from small labels or places like CDbaby. I'm always experimenting and encouraging others to do so. I try to inform people I know about the damage being done by the DMCA without sermonizing (well, I try anyway). Is it doing any good? I dunno. Probably not much. But maybe it's enough; a couple lines after the above quote, Thomas Paine also said, "Time makes more converts than reason."
Re:Buggy Whips... (Score:1)
I think the "getting attention" is the part that costs all the money, not the recording or the stamping of discs. The highest bar any band must leap is that of publicity.
I yearn for a solution to the "radio gateway" that keeps talented musicians from becoming well known because they haven't made it to MTV or your local Clearnet station, but I don't think there is one yet. MP3.com, internet radio, word-o
Re:Buggy Whips... (Score:2)
I really wonder about the internet radio thing. We have a situation where good bands can't get conventional radio play, and internet radio who complain that they can't afford the fees to play big label bands. One might expect that to be a good match and a solution to two problems at once.
You don't have to pay if the owner of the recordings gives you permission, and since internet radio can't afford to pay, they should play your recording if you let them do it for free.
While they might not capture the sa
Misinformed (Score:5, Insightful)
There are lots of little inaccuracies in this "article" that, together, make it classify only, at best, as "a fairly well constructed rant." The above is only one of these inaccuracies.
"The song" is not simply the words and notes. It's highly unlikely Don's old labels could prevent him from releasing live recordings of his greatest hits under any label he now chose - including just giving the damn things away over the internet, if that were what he wanted to do.
What the old labels own are the recordings they contracted him to perform. This is the deal most artists have, in fact. When Avril Lavigne signed away her rights to "Complicated" it's highly unlikely she signed away all rights to the song; what she signed to the label was the recordings the labels paid for in the contract. There may be a barrier to her recording those songs for any other label for a period of X months, but that does NOT mean the label "owns the songs." Songwriters own "the words" and or "the music." Artists own whatever performance rights their contract allows them to keep; labels own their recordings. That's it.
For a fantastic example of this follow the recordings of "Ol' Blue Eyes." [sinatraarchive.com] Sinatra was with Capitol for a large part of his career (The Capitol records tower in Hollywood was draped in black when he died.), but with every comeback he would renegotiate his deal; if that meant moving to a new label, he was always ready to do so (and did, several times). And each time he moved he'd re-record all those "classics" (most of which were written by someone else) for the new label, taking his (now greatly improved) cut of the sales.
For another example look at Prince (or whatever he calls himself now). He vowed long ago to re-record his entire catalog for his NPG label; last I looked he was too busy with new stuff, but he has, in fact, re-recorded many of them. And there's little anyone can do to stop him. They are, after all, his songs.
Re:Misinformed (Score:2, Informative)
One common misconception about the recording industry is that the band doesn't make any money off CD sales. Well, that is only partially true. The songwriters are the ones who make the big bucks. If your name is at the top of the song, you're raking in more than the musicians who played the instruments in on the CD.
Re:Misinformed (Score:3, Interesting)
And, in the example of Sinatra, I also doubt that is true. Look over his Capitol and Reprise discography and see how many times his bigger hits are repeated. Those aren't simple reissues of the same recordings; every time he cut a new deal (for more money) all those classics got re-recorded. The guy knew how to play the game, that's for sure.
Re:Misinformed (Score:1)
Because Warner Music owned his name.
Re:Misinformed (Score:2)
From what I understood, that seems technically correct but misleading in practice. My understanding was that artists typically (and naively) sign away their publishing rights and all of their copyrights to the label, because labels like to offer to "take care of" legal matters like copyright. But this might be a misunderstanding on my part due to lack of knowledge.
At any rate, I found a couple good links that are well worth reading. they might even clarify
Re:Misinformed (Score:5, Interesting)
If you get into older music youll find that the copyrights the record companies want indefinitely extended were acquired by means little better than theft.
Look at leadbelly or many of the other seminal roots of American music. Willie Nelson is a more current example. Youll see artists that were treated worse than I treat toilet paper. Youll also see record companies that are still selling their music and paying their heirs nothing. Whats worse Their are whole swaths of music that are locked up in vaults and may never be released.
Now lets look a hundred years into the future. DRM has been in place for nearly a century. For the sake of argument it actually works. The collected works of artist X are due to come into the public domain. Guess what it doesn't matter anymore. They can't. The DRM is protecting them the record companies don't want someone contributing to the culture that they aren't making a profit on, so the recordings are just left to die. Even if you could bypass the "Strong DRM" it doesn't matter because thats illegal.
Record companies aren't about creating or expanding a market for music, they are about controlling an existing market. If you don't believe that look at what they do to used record and CD dealers.
As long as the means of distribution are thoroughly under the thumbs of the large labels they will be able to pressure artists to sign whatever kind of garbage passes for a contract with them. The fact that their are counterexamples just means that occasionally a few lucy or gifted can win at a rigged game. The game is still rigged.
Re:Misinformed (Score:1)
When they talk about signing away rights to a song, they are not talking about signing away rights to an instance of a song, but rather to the song in all its incarnations. Only a few shrewd artists have managed to keep any real rig
Understand "exclusive." (Score:3, Insightful)
Duuuuuhhh... When you sign a contract giving a label exclusive rights to your work, no (duh), you can't just go out on your own while still under contract. This is the main obstacle PE faced and you cannot blame the corruption of the record industry for that. I
Obviously... (Score:5, Funny)
Getting Tired of All This (Score:5, Insightful)
Get over it. No one is going to change the world or human nature just so a few people can get free music.
Re:Getting Tired of All This (Score:3, Insightful)
our culture has somehow moved away from that, and now things that everything is to be taken from other members of our species for ourselves. essentially, greed makes us value our own interests over that of our community and by extentio
Human Nature (Score:3, Insightful)
I dunno where you get "since the industrial revolution." Didn't you read about Lords and serfs? About slaves? As I recall these practices predate the industrial revolution by several Millenia. Or is it your argument that slavery and ruthless exploitation aren't based on greed?
Re:Human Nature (Score:2)
You're right on the "since the industrial revolution" bit - I was trying to show that that is sort of the marker that accellerated the whole thing. Prior to that there was still greed, but it was almost always unable to individually scale the way it does today.
The point is not that greed exists. The point is that greed is
Re:Getting Tired of All This (Score:1)
YM "other people's work and creations". I don't think Hillary Rosen has written many songs.
Edison was an asshole. (Score:3, Interesting)
Edison invented the electric chair - not as a means in itself, but as a marketing stunt when his DC electricity distribution system had a huge problem: it was inferior to Tesla's AC system, a competing product designed to solve the same problem.
To graphically demonstrate the "dangers" of Tesla's AC electricity, Edison electrocuted animals (including elephants) - and eventually staged executions of criminals in public using an "electric chair" - powered by Tesla's alternating current system. Look how dangerous it is! Fear! Uncertainty! Doubt!
It's more gratuitous - but not much - than today's publicity stunts that companies pull with the DMCA and the ??AA practially saying you "support terrorism" and are "depriving artist" when you download MP3s and movies. I'm not going to magically have an extra
Such scare tactics don't work for anyone - and seem to be an indicator that they've already lost. And opening your secrets lets them live longer than you will. I can't imagine anyone will be running any sort of "Microsoft Windows" in 30 years, but I think Linux and the *BSDs will still be here. All patented and closed formats, techniques and software - will decay and cease to exist.
Microsoft, Edison, RIAA, MPAA, software patent extortionists: greedy children with "closed secrets" that will be forgotten in time.
Edison is like someone else we know well (Score:2)
click here.
pattern? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just MS and Oracle that have to be afraid of the `commoditization' that linux/mysql/open source cause. Everything moves towards it.
Back to the days of greek theater....
Re:pattern? (Score:3, Interesting)
Let me copy that CD and pay for a licensed case and label to asfix on it.
This would work for big corps and independence alike.
Copyright holders get thier cash, artists get royalities, everyone wins.
It's a small step but I think it's the first one nessecary to establish that we buy the content, not the media. I don't pay $12.99 for the CD to hang on my x-mas tree afterall.
Re:pattern? (Score:1)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=66423&cid=6
Tesla (Score:2)
Composer's Rights (Score:2, Interesting)
Argh! A cliffhanger! (Score:2)
Things have changed too much (Score:3, Insightful)
Today you have full blown capitalism in it's worst form. You need credit for anything so this is the limiting factor the independents would have to challenge to take on the RIAA and break their Trust (There's really no monopoly here so I'll go with Trust)
They dont control distribution, media (Cd's), players, or locations to play the music. At least not yet so that's one difference here.
An independent can come along and they did back in 98-2000 area via mp3.com which used to be a great site when it was just no name indie bands that were there. Then they sold out and now there's tons of RIAA backed bands there selling music.
When MP3.com tried to copy all the music in the world and stream it to users the RIAA jumped on them. Before that time there were a handful of name brand bands located there but shortly after you couldnt go to any genre and see one of the indie bands pop up in the top 20 they had all been replaced by the big bands.
The limiting capital factor here hurts the independent from breaking the Trust. At this point in time you need money to produce, money to advertise, and you need clout to get your product in the shelves of any store such as walmart. While it'd might be possible to distribute via independent music stores getting the word out is more important.
Factors that would help the independents -
Cheap internet access to distribute from. Lets get real here bandwidth is there, we've got miles of dark fiber and frankly as a network engineer costs have come down from the copper line days. The T1 needs to cease to be the cash cow it's been for the telco's the last 20 years. Let the T3+ become the cash cows and let the consumer have multimegabit access up and downstream.
If it was cheap for them to advertise on the internet and then distribute their music then they could easily get the word out and do the sales themselves. It's far cheaper to do a bulk mailing job with a bunch of machines burning cd's and also doing online paid music downloads than doing all the hard work it takes to get into one store.
It's no coincidence that the RIAA's outlash against Napster and the subsequent loss of full speed uploads via cable/dsl (Most are now limited at 128k) so people just cannot have a home webserver running where they can share their creations witht he world. Once again I have to point to the T1 cash cow. Server hosting is prohibitive in the sense it costs to pay for all the bandwidth you'd pump out before you get a return in sales. Of course your band has to be loved to make sales so then it comes down to a gamble there.
And it's that gamble that creditors will not be likely to loan musicans money especially if they're not known world wide.
Now as the internet continues to socialize the world things may change but it's not going to happen over night.
Re:Slashdot's fonts (Score:2)
Like this --> ï½ (even in the textbox I see that as a black diamond with a little question mark in it) In Internet Explorer, NoteTab Pro, Word, etc. it shows up as a little rectangle. One of the characters being replaced seems to be the apostrophe (but not always), but in the case of whatever the character I used here is, I have no idea
you realize, of course (Score:1, Informative)