Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: Inimical to the public good

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  • Juha Saarinen,

    @Mark Harris (why are we using Twitterese here?)

    Yes, it'll hurt retailers and artists who wil then,l I hope, join in and make the message even louder and clearer to the media conglomerates and various elected representatives. Why limit the collateral damage to ISPs and their customers in the Copyright Wars?

    Another way of looking at is it to roll back the power of faceless media companies: if we can afford to spend billions and trillions on bailing out greedy banks, we can damn well spend a few millions on funding artists to make sensibly copyrighted material for us to enjoy.

    Since Nov 2006 • 529 posts Report Reply

  • Mark Harris,

    I dunno, seems to be the fashion. I didn't even know it was twitterese till a couple of weeks ago

    If the faceless media corporations (FMCs) don't give a crap about their downstream agents and clients now, I doubt they're going to listen to them in the future. They have cash reserves and can ride out blips, but the smaller independents would get caught up in this as well, and the retailers would probably get hit hard.

    From comments on PAS, I don't know that artistes would agree with you on what was "sensible" copyright.

    Waikanae • Since Jul 2008 • 1343 posts Report Reply

  • Mark Harris,

    That said, mark kneebone's comments upstream indicate that even the small independents are in favour of this legislation (the Kool Aid must be tasty this season) so who knows?

    Waikanae • Since Jul 2008 • 1343 posts Report Reply

  • robbery,

    record stores and cinema outlets have very thin margins and shallow pockets.

    spoken like a man with indepth knowledge of music retail,
    except ..... retails cut of a cd price is kinda big considering all they do in the process is stock the product and exchange it for money.
    75% mark up on cds. ie 19.94 = $34.95
    hat makup was pushed up to its present state in the late 80's
    australia has a lower mark up.

    new zealand • Since May 2007 • 1882 posts Report Reply

  • Kyle Matthews,

    i'm very far from anyone involved in briefing the minister or involved in the minister's office on this one, but i'm probably not wrong in assuming that she's working under advice.

    I'm sure she's getting advice.

    It's a bit of a coin toss as to whether a minister follows the advice given to them by their various ministries, follows the advice of someone in their office, or has their own barrow to push and are doing their own thing.

    The child porn thing would probably indicate someone who didn't have too much experience in the field. Extrapolating out the resources it takes to catch those people, to the hundreds of thousands of people that breach various copyrights every day...

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Mark Harris,

    That was the terrifying thing about Maurice Williamson as minister. You'd spend weeks crafting a speech guaranteed not to frighten the children and horses, laying out a specific policy in words easy to understand (for journalists, you know), prepare copies for the journos who would be covering the event and a press release or two, and every so often he'd get to the podium, screw up the speech and toss it over his shoulder, and then wing it.

    We'd stand at the back furiously taking notes in case he promised something that hadn't been discussed. Which he did frequently.

    oy.

    Waikanae • Since Jul 2008 • 1343 posts Report Reply

  • Kyle Matthews,

    Off-topic.

    My car tape deck has gone bung.

    Does anyone have any experience with car stereo mp3 systems?

    I don't want to plug an mp3 player into a stereo, I want to put songs on the system directly via usb or something, and go from there. And I don't want to spend $500.

    I don't mind if it comes with CD player, but it's not required, all my CDs I have as mp3s anyway. Anyone have any experience or suggestions?

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Steve Barnes,

    Sorry but that's just incorrect. Perhaps in New Zealand but most certainly not in much of the rest of the world. Sales of recorded works in the US, Asia and Europe throughout the 20th century have been massive since the 1920s,

    Sorry Simon but if it was "Massive" in the 20s then in the 60s it became exponentially "Super Massive" Surely you see that?
    I mean, how can you say I'm incorrect? Can you point me at some actual numbers?

    Peria • Since Dec 2006 • 5521 posts Report Reply

  • Simon Grigg,

    Sorry Simon but if it was "Massive" in the 20s then in the 60s it became exponentially "Super Massive" Surely you see that?
    I mean, how can you say I'm incorrect? Can you point me at some actual numbers?

    I did Steve....the sales of White Christmas for a start. This is hardly controversial stuff. The sales of Sinatra in the 40s are the stuff of legend. Sorry, but to claim that the recording and publishing industries didn't really exist before he 1960s is just complete nonsense. You are absolutely incorrect. Yes the industries grew in the 60s and more in the 70s and 80s but that does not make your original statement correct.

    I was wrong about Bing's White Christmas..it seems it's still number one..at 50 million singles during the 40s. His total sales were in excess of 500 million records..almost all in the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

    Ben Selvin sold 5 million copies of Dardenella in the 1920s. No-one knows how many records Rudy Vallee sold but it was in the many millions. And there were very many more like that. People like Vernon Dalhart. Or Caruso who's first million seller was in 1907!. Glenn Miller is reputed to have sold 200 million records.

    There are a bunch of books of this topic but I'd recommend this or this, or, especially, this which is quite comprehensive.

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report Reply

  • Don Christie,

    What guts you have, to mock and slime someone who's no opportunity to reply.

    Keir - I agree the rhetoric could do with toning down and I also agree with robbery's assessment of Judith Tizard - she works hard, has achieved a lot and deserves credit for lots of things, including her attention to indigenous rights and, I have to say, open source software.

    However, it cuts both ways. The first hand accounts of the meeting between the two Ministers and interested parties a couple of weeks ago showed it did not go well mainly because whilst most in the rooom came ready to compromise (including someone representing the NZOSS) Judith Tizard did not. Add to that the claims from her of "hysteria" and talk of "child porn" and you get a fairly toxic environment.

    I also note that according to yourself only people with a strong background in fine arts and its history were competent to talk about Copyright. That's ridiculous.

    There are lots of perspectives being aired on this thread, most of which have added to the value of the debate.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 1645 posts Report Reply

  • robbery,

    assessment of Judith Tizard - she works hard, has achieved a lot and deserves credit for lots of things, including her attention to indigenous rights and, I have to say, open source software.

    well said don.
    knowing that makes the present situation all the more confusing.
    I don't see the point in rushing through a half thought out idea but maybe they've been working on trying to get any sort of stop gap measure in place first. I don't for a minute think that Judith's motivation is to install a system that will encroach on the public's fair rights, but that doesn't mean that a party with less scruples couldn't use it to their advantage if they were to take power.

    new zealand • Since May 2007 • 1882 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha,

    The first hand accounts of the meeting between the two Ministers and interested parties a couple of weeks ago

    I understand there will be limits to what can be said, but I'd be interested in hearing Rick's perspective on the meeting.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • Don Christie,

    BTW - shutting down the internet is not something restricted to recording companies. Creationists will love our Copyright Act.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 1645 posts Report Reply

  • Don Christie,

    From TFA:

    Critics say Turkey's penal code makes it too easy to obtain blocking orders, although in practice prohibitions are often easily overcome through proxy servers.

    Sighs

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 1645 posts Report Reply

  • Keir Leslie,

    I also note that according to yourself only people with a strong background in fine arts and its history were competent to talk about Copyright.

    No, only people who had a strong background in art history (and, at that, I'd really quite like a strong competence in one of the more Marxist/sociological strands of art history rather than, say, aesthetic theory) were competent to talk about the motives of artists & how they were funded. At least, if they wanted us to take them on trust; I've no bother if people would provide realistic evidence for claims.

    And I'm not backing down from that; if you want to claim x, either provide evidence of authority, or back it up with evidence. People are very good at providing legal references, but rubbish at backing up claims about art history. (I'm not very good either, to be honest.)

    Likewise, factual claims about the economic impact of piracy should be backed up, not just assumed.

    Since Jul 2008 • 1452 posts Report Reply

  • robbery,

    Which leads me to the following conclusion. The recording industry has a technical solution for identifying people sharing files, similar to that used in the USA. However, it is not accurate enough to really know whether the sharing is legitimate or not.

    This is an interesting concept don.
    how do you think they identify potential copyright infringers?

    From what I know about Internet providers as of now they can identify peer to peer file sharing activity and filter it out. exhibit A : - xnet where ausreus/vuse does not work, although it does on xtra.
    - They can identify high user clients and investigate why they need in excess of 20 gig a month. Chances are the guy with the 90 gig of constant usage isn't sending emails. to get up to that level of usage you're going to be downloading film and tv files. This doesn't really help in identifying music files, no bodies pulling down 90 plus gig of music constantly.
    - They can identify known pirate sites and see who visits them and what they did when they were there.
    - potentially internet providers have access to everything you do on the net, as in everything you do goes through their pipes. whether they can decode and understand everything is just a matter of available technology to them. nothing is invisible. Its just a matter of how far they're prepared to go or how far they're required to go in order to 'police' their roads. Tech heads will have a better understanding of what is currently possible.

    new zealand • Since May 2007 • 1882 posts Report Reply

  • jon_knox,

    - potentially internet providers have access to everything you do on the net, as in everything you do goes through their pipes. whether they can decode and understand everything is just a matter of available technology to them. nothing is invisible. Its just a matter of how far they're prepared to go or how far they're required to go in order to 'police' their roads. Tech heads will have a better understanding of what is currently possible.

    It's been a while since I did any data comms stuff, but the way the protocol(s) for data comms work, is that the application by which your sending data is identifiable to the network provider/ISP, though the data itself probably remains a lot more difficult to determine...things may have changed in the last 5 years. Someone with Cisco certification should be able to clear that up quite quickly. Encryption is the perhaps the other/next spanner.

    An Internet Architect friend who was working for the big ISP, was telling me few years back about some of the tricks that they employed to throttle bandwidth at the application level.

    Belgium • Since Nov 2006 • 464 posts Report Reply

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