Speaker: ACTA: Don't sell us down the river
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I call them incompatible based on consumers all having a fixed level of disposable income
Yes but that's nothing new. You couldn't ever scrape together enough money to support everyone to do everything, you have to make choices. If the government (say) was to step in and provide increased support for artists to maintain or increase cultural output, it would no doubt result in a mixed bag of new/experienced artists receiving the benefit. If that means that Neil Finn keeps on going in the new 'digital age', and Freddy Fudd Pucker (who sings one of my favourite songs) gets more money to get an album together, all good?
Why would you design a system that says "once enough people like you and you're almost earning the level of the dole with your music, we won't support you anymore?" It's not like NZ is overloaded with multi-millionaire writers and artists.
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Gio, please, please tell me that I didn't need to put a <sarcasm></sarcasm> tag around that. Because I was not reiterating any point you've made about free downloads trumping paid downloads.
how do you propose to “limit the ability to make infringing copies of commercial works such as films and books”? And if you think that we can’t, then what system do you propose to put in place to support the people who currently work in those industries?
I know this wasn't directed explicitly at me, but as Russell and I appear to be occupying the same side of the debate (if not at quite the same point on the continuum), I'll have a punt anyway.
I don't think we can. Blu-Ray's state of imperviousness to protracted attempts at cracking is incredibly unlikely to last, unless the creators of the system have found some new variation of complex, unsolved math (the same basis as public-key encryption, for example) that can be applied to the problem in a totally novel way. That is the reality. Symmetric encryption, as is required for media distribution, is invariably breakable. If Blu-Ray turns out to really be unbreakable, counter to the absolute computing truth that nothing is secure if the attacker has access to the hardware, then this entire debate becomes null and void because there is a perfect solution to the issue of copying. However, given historical truths and also fundamental truths of encryption and IT I do not think that copying can be controlled by technical means. That leaves statutory protections, and we've seen how effective those have proven to be at ameliorating the downloading problem in the US: multi-million dollar lawsuit verdicts that leave the entire system as the subject of ridicule.As for the where to go, music seems to be taking care of itself, George's protestations notwithstanding. There's got to be a reorganisation that strips out the big four before we'll really see what's possible, though. Their very existence is a distraction from debates about where to go, because so much of their arguments are, of necessity, self-serving. In the absence of a real shift in consumer behaviour, one that stops paying even with the presence of a convenient, value-for-money system, it's hard to picture things going wrong.
There is no solid justification that's been presented for believing that the rules as applied to music cannot also be applied to books and movies, either. Nobody has tried the ITMS model with either of them, and prior to eMusic and iTunes we were constantly being told that nobody would ever pay for music on the internet. That turned out to be unmitigated bullshit, and makes me very, very leery about blindly accepting pronouncements about the impossibility of selling movies and books online.
Which leads me to ask, why do you think that we need a new system? The very question is making assumptions about what is and isn't viable before we've even seen if things can work. -
Didn't you say (and this is a genuine question) that album sales and dollar value were way down? Unit sales hardly tell the whole story, surely.
Yes I did, but that's because, I and many others would argue, that many people simply don't want, and have never wanted, the format, which was largely forced on them by an industry eager to maximise its profits. There is nothing wrong with that but you need to be willing to accept the market biteback when it comes as it has.
Most people want the song they've heard on the radio. End of story. Forcing them to buy 11 other tracks to get it is just bullshit and opens the act and the label up to all sorts of things including illicit copies of that one track. The genius of iTunes was that it recognised this demand when the labels refused to.
And still refuse to....the recent LCD Soundsystem 45:33 Remix album would only let you buy the key remixes if you bought the whole $18 album on iTunes. Cheers EMI, but I know how I'd rather acquire it and you've just lost a sale...
I'm on a music industry board too and it never fails to amaze me how many buffoons from labels still think that this is a temporary aberration and ACTA in particular, plus another round of multi-million dollar RIAA law suits, will eventually return the world to a pre-Napster state. Seriously...there is an element of hopeful delusion in the corridors of the corporates.
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So it's a consequence of the internet, but not of piracy.
Snap
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Which leads me to ask, why do you think that we need a new system?
How about you answer the second half of my question above first, since you bothered to quote it?
Simon's argument is that album sales are down because the labels can't now force people to buy albums just to get the one two or three tracks they really want. They can just buy the songs they want on iTunes or Amazon. The figures tend to back him up. So it's a consequence of the internet, but not of piracy.
Thanks.
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Yes but that's nothing new. You couldn't ever scrape together enough money to support everyone to do everything, you have to make choices. If the government (say) was to step in and provide increased support for artists to maintain or increase cultural output, it would no doubt result in a mixed bag of new/experienced artists receiving the benefit.
But why are we doing this with the advent of digital when we've not done it prior? Why introduce state support now?
Consumers make choices, that's always been the case. Why should the arrival of digital suddenly justify whole new levels of support to minor artists that has never existed before? If anything, those artists are more likely to be getting a living income than they were when you had to go through the gatekeepers to get any kind of decent exposure. -
Yes I did, but that's because, I and many others would argue, that many people simply don't want, and have never wanted, the format, which was largely forced on them by an industry eager to maximise its profits.
Singles were readily available in my music-buying days, I might have bought a grand total of three versus hundreds of albums. It was always my choice to do so, since my favourite bands still released them. But I wanted the albums, and in fact to me that it's still the unit of music. A good album is certainly better than the sum of its parts, I'll go to my grave with that belief, much as it might have been foisted on my by the evil industry.
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But why are we doing this with the advent of digital when we've not done it prior? Why introduce state support now?
Consumers make choices, that's always been the case.Consumers never had the choice to take everything for free, unless they chose to only patronise libraries, and in fact libraries compensate artists for the access given to the public.
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Blu-Ray's state of imperviousness to protracted attempts at cracking is incredibly unlikely to last, unless the creators of the system have found some new variation of complex, unsolved math (the same basis as public-key encryption, for example) that can be applied to the problem in a totally novel way. That is the reality.
Um, AnyDVD is as universal a crack for Blu-Ray as you'll find at the moment. It's for Windows PCs & is a commercial product.
Because Blu-Ray is based on AACS the keys are relatively easy to find and use. There's also BD+ (a virtual machine) which means the protections can change quite rapidly and easily. AnyDVD regularly releases patches to break these protections.
It did take a while for them to release a version that was compatible - Blu-ray was released Jun '06, AnyDVD HD was released March '07 and was the first (& most successful it seems) method of cracking Blu-ray & HD-DVD.
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How about you answer the second half of my question above first, since you bothered to quote it?
I did answer it.
There is no solid justification that's been presented for believing that the rules as applied to music cannot also be applied to books and movies, either.
If that's not clear enough, let me make it clearer: I don't think the current system is broken. I don't think we need a new system. I think the current system is perfectly capable of delivering support to creatives, with the caveat that the income that movie studios have become used to from sources other than the box office is probably not sustainable.
What I do not think is sustainable is big media trying to stamp out unauthorised copying, at the expense of collaboration within industries on common formats that can be delivered easily online through unified marketplaces. So much time, effort and money is being put into measures that, time and time again, are breached once they hit the market. What a waste. Copying ain't going away, it's that simple. It will never be zero, or anything close to it, for as long as the internet exists. Trying to get rid of it is distracting the industries from working out how to offer something better, something that people will pay for.So, now will you answer my question?
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Because Blu-Ray is based on a Virtual Machine to control it's encryption, the protections can change quite rapidly and easily. AnyDVD regularly releases patches to break these protections.
Without devolving this into a debate about encryption and security, I said above that home theatre systems have already lost the hardest battle in IT security: keeping the attacker out. By definition, home theatre systems are in your home. That is a huge advantage to anyone seeking to attack the protection.
Also, because they can be patched and altered in situ, that opens another point of vulnerability in the security model, along with key handling and the like. It may take another five years, but I don't think that Blu-Ray will remain un-cracked. It took about three years from the release of DVDs before deCSS made it into the wild.
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I did answer it.
Okay, now that you answered it, can we please officially dispel the myth that nobody has made an argument for unregulated downloading? Thank you.
So, now will you answer my question?
Your position is that nothing is broken and that to the extent that it might be, it's the industry's fault for not adapting. I think the former contention is debatable, the latter is morally derelict. We're back to adapt or die, and I've explained why I'm against that too many times to go through the whole thing again.
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I'll go to my grave with that belief, much as it might have been foisted on my by the evil industry.
And the continuing sales of the format show that we are not alone.
But, and this is an example, I love the track The Great Dominions by The Teardrop Explodes but am less than enthralled by some of the rest of the Wilder album. I do own a battered old vinyl copy, but wanted that track on my mobile player, in listenable quality. In analogue terms, I needed to buy the album and tape the track, which I'd be less than keen to do.
2009 allows me to buy that track, for $1.50, from ITMS, and I've done so. Julian Cope wins (assuming they ever recouped..doubtful) and I win, but Universal loses the $15 they would've got if I'd had to buy the album, assuming of course I gave in and bought it.
They're pissed off about that because that $15 multiplied by millions of units is quite handy, so they fight back, citing collapsing revues as evidence of piracy. But it's simply not that clear cut.
I don't buy into the argument that the corporations are evil for trying to maximise their profits to their shareholders (although lets not go into accounting practices and contractual stuff) but you have to expect a downside to the very lucrative upside if that's not exactly what the market wants.
[sorry a bit of a formless rant but there you go]
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Your position is that nothing is broken and that to the extent that it might be, it's the industry's fault for not adapting
Hell, many indies and label-free acts I know will be extremely pissed off if ACTA or any other restraint succeeds in wiping out the P2P networks, Hype Machine and blogs as these are crucial to their marketing and very existence. They don't feel any need to go back to the long past pre-adapt or die days that the likes of RIAA or RIANZ would like to see a return to.
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It took about three years from the release of DVDs before deCSS made it into the wild.
The main issue with CSS was that it prevented legal access to DVDs on systems like Linux, and it was used to enforce region encoding.
Luckily for Blu-ray, region encoding hasn't been enforced (yet) so people are less worried about the DRM preventing them playing the DVD they were sent by Aunty Jane in the US. And for those people who can't play it legally (OSX, Linux, etc), there's always bittorrent :P
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Why introduce state support now?
Mainly I just disagree with this idea that `state support' is something new here. (Also, I really really disagree with inconsistent use of free market rhetoric, because I think selective use of market rhetoric is deeply immoral.)
Personally, I favour doing nothing at the moment (aside from shortening terms and clarifying fair use) and if things get worse introducing some form of public financing, but that's way away in the future, and we'll see what happens.
But copyright is a state intervention to insure the provision of a public good; if copyright stops working, then we'll have to get the state to intervene in some other way. But that's only if things stop working, which I am not at all confident they will.
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Gio, we've established that we don't see eye-to-eye on whether or not it's broken. Simon has posted copious evidence, real evidence not just anecdata, to demonstrate that the music industry is only in trouble if you consider the fortunes of the big four to be the only thing that matters. By measures such as unit sales, or artist income, things that I consider to be far more useful measures of the health of the industry, things appear to be doing really well.
Neither you nor I has any evidence about how well movies would do if released under an ITMS model. I can point to ITMS and say "The theory worked for music. In theory, it should work for movies." You point to, umm, what, exactly? You have a feeling, I get that, but what evidence? Peter Cox at least backed up his position with examples from real life, but of ambiguous evidentiary value.
I get why you are against the "adapt or die" mantra, and I was really trying not to get into that vein. However, it's very hard to look at the history of the movie industry, in particular, and the massive costs that are accepted as entirely normal, and not have to qualify statements about things continuing to work with an observation that enormous expenses may not be sustainable in the future.As for my stance on trying to stamp out copying, the evidence is pretty strong that it's a losing battle through technological means. Not a single system has yet survived without being compromised, either structurally (DVDs) or piecemeal (Blu-Ray). Apple finally convinced the music industry that copy protection on iTunes tracks was a lost cause, after fighting for years to get that message through. Why should I believe that it is anything other than a waste of time, effort and money to keep trying to build better locks?
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I might have bought a grand total of three versus hundreds of albums
Most people don't buy hundreds of albums, though. Most people have a very... intermittent... relationship with music. They aren't completists and they don't care about the album as a 'work'. Most people just want something on in the background to hum along with, or occasionally bop about drunkenly to. And given that most people just want the single they heard on the radio, Simon's point about what the consumer is doing right now with iTunes is, I think, a very pertinent one.
(I - obviously - have a really intense relationship with music, and thousands of albums on CD and LP. I appreciate the concept of the entire album as a discrete unit, but I'd say that even for me, as a big old nerd, only a small fraction of those are worth listening to as a 'piece'. Random mp3 play is the best thing that ever happened to me. :) )
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Hell, many indies and label-free acts I know will be extremely pissed off if ACTA or any other restraint succeeds in wiping out the P2P networks, Hype Machine and blogs as these are crucial to their marketing and very existence. They don't feel any need to go back to the long past pre-adapt or die days that the likes of RIAA or RIANZ would like to see a return to.
I think that's a consequence that many don't think of. Not only will something like ACTA entrench the current system into law, with harsh penalties, it'll remove the ability of non-mainstream artists from competing directly.
I think it's one of the greatest (mis-)achievements mainstream media companies have achieved - to paraphrase: they are the way, the truth, the life. No one sells music/movies/etc except through them.
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Neither you nor I has any evidence about how well movies would do if released under an ITMS model. I can point to ITMS and say "The theory worked for music. In theory, it should work for movies." You point to, umm, what, exactly? You have a feeling, I get that, but what evidence?
I don't have any evidence, just concerns. Interesting to note though that Simon's experience is valuable to you whereas Peter's or Keri's isn't - could it be that it's because one supports your position, the others don't? So basically we're back to you being quite happy to letting chips fall where they may, which is less than admirable seeing as your livelyhood doesn't depend on the outcome.
What I'm saying, and it's really the extent of it, is - can we have a principled discussion, instead of just a discussion masquerading as pragmatic that is really just as ideological?
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Most people don't buy hundreds of albums, though. Most people have a very... intermittent... relationship with music. They aren't completists and they don't care about the album as a 'work'. Most people just want something on in the background to hum along with, or occasionally bop about drunkenly to.
That would describe me right now. I wasn't making value judgments either, just describing my experience - that particular industry-created format suited me quite well when I was a serious consumer of music.
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But why are we doing this with the advent of digital when we've not done it prior?
Because to jump back several pages to one of my earlier posts, which I'll paraphrase: "if the change in technology is affecting the creative output of the country and the culture that we get..." then the rest of the discussion follows.
Yes, you're happy to leave that to the market, I'd much rather we try and figure out the answer to that question and then figure out a response.
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Hell, many indies and label-free acts I know will be extremely pissed off if ACTA or any other restraint succeeds in wiping out the P2P networks, Hype Machine and blogs as these are crucial to their marketing and very existence.
I assume that acts that are happy for their works to be widely distributed, will continue to use the internet to put free versions of their work up. It will still be a very valuable tool for distributing music.
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I don't have any evidence, just concerns. Interesting to note though that Simon's experience is valuable to you whereas Peter or Keri isn't - could it be that it's because one supports your position, the others don't?
It's not Simon's experience that I'm interested in, though it is handy that someone who's intimately involved in the industry is saying it. No, I'm interested in the evidence that he's posting. Hard numbers. Sales figures. Stuff that isn't coloured by anything. Peter and Keri can't post that, because it doesn't exist. And it doesn't exist because, as I said, nobody has tried the ITMS (or any other) model for long enough to get real data.
Find me evidence. Find me real numbers. Not stuff from big media press releases, but audited sales figures and income distribution reports. Without intending any disrespect, I don't count Peter and Keri's experience for much for the same reason that I wouldn't expect you to count my experience for much. It's a few data points, at most, and hard to control against. If someone tries an ITM(ovie)S and it flops, that's evidence, especially if it's run for two or three years before being written off as a lost cause. One flopped indy movie (Peter's example of Tormented) and a distributor that's blaming piracy aren't exactly compelling counterpoints to the kind of stuff that Simon's posting.
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And given that most people just want the single they heard on the radio, Simon's point about what the consumer is doing right now with iTunes is, I think, a very pertinent one.
It is equally pertinent to the issue of illegal downloading and copying. People want songs; some pay, some don't.
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Because to jump back several pages to one of my earlier posts, which I'll paraphrase: "if the change in technology is affecting the creative output of the country and the culture that we get..." then the rest of the discussion follows.
Based on things said by Simon, the technology is totally having an effect. A positive one. "Best year EVAR!" to paraphrase.
A lot of the contributions to this thread seem to be premised on the assumption that the technology cannot possibly be good because downloading is running rampant. "Won't somebody think of the artists?" kind of thing, and from that we start running off into this world of designing a solution. Only, I don't see that we do need a solution, because I am very, very far from convinced that there is a problem. Fine, that's a point of serious disagreement. But it's no less extreme than the approach that I'm seeing that we have to plan for a problem because, in the absence of evidence that there's not a problem we have to assume that a problem exists.
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