Hard News: The Casino
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Rob, that's the problem. Everyone will agree that theft is wrong.
Not everyone. But certainly most people will agree that it is illegal.
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The two comparable tipping points are fire, and writing.
Actually, the scale seems to me more on the order of what happened when we moved to modern ideas of intellectual property. Prior to that, it was open season. It was a big step but I'm not sure it's on the order of writing or the even bigger step before, talking.
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as soon as we had an AM radio/cassette recorder, maybe around 1974, “everything was free”. but “everything” was still quite limited—to what they played on the radio. and you had to have your blank tape ready and your finger on the button ready to start recording if they played the song you wanted to record, and you had to put up with DJs talking all over the intro and outro…blah, blah. and the mono sound quality was crap. but at least you could play it at the beach or in your bedroom. a little while later (1976?) we got a radio/record player/tape deck stereo system. so you could borrow records from people over the back fence and record them. y’know, killing music. as young kids, we didn’t have much money to buy records. a single was $1.49. an album was about $7.99 or something. i bought singles occasionally, and my older sister bought albums and singles. especially “20 Solid Gold Hits Volume 7,435” (the quality of those pressings was fcuking appalling, btw). anyway, we wanted to buy stuff. And as we got older and had more money, we bought stuff, a lot of stuff. It was much nicer to own a piece of vinyl with a nice big artily designed sleeve to show off to your friends and play in real stereo than some crappy recording off the radio or your friend’s LP. If you were a real fan, you bought the records. Simple as that. Even though “everything was free”.
These days, the problem seems to be that a large minority (?) of people do not see great value in buying a legit CD or legal download track. The free stuff seems to be enough for them. Why has this changed? Do they spend their money on other stuff? Do they have less money? Are they not “real” fans? Is the legit product unattractive? Is it unavailable in shops (physical and online)?
Personally, if I really like a CD or track, and I can buy it legitimately, there is no way I would just get an unpaid copy and be satisfied with that. It would not seem right. I would not be a “real fan”. Am i in the minority? Do younger people not think this way in general? Just because you can get something without paying for it, doesn’t make that right, imo. But a big distinction for me is if you can afford to buy it. Yeah, we taped friends’ records, if we couldn’t buy them ourselves. Personally, I think people who spend a lot of money buying music legitimately should be cut some slack to have non-legit copies of a bit of stuff lying about. They are doing there bit, but they can’t afford to buy everything, right now. Maybe later. Maybe they will buy the same song several times over in many formats. Give them some time, I reckon.
A friend of mine runs a small independent label. File sharing definitely cuts into his sales, so it is tough to sell CDs. But some people might never have found his stuff if they hadn’t bit-torrented some tracks. And some of them might buy legitimately later on. So it’s not all bad. But what really shocks me is that major media organizations rip him off all the time. They use his tracks as background music on TV, etc., without any licensing fee. No matter how many times he politely asks them to pay. They just tell him, politely, to fcuk off.
(pls excuse the extended ramblings. I will cease and desist, forthwith.) -
Ben, I think Mark was talking about the impact of digital connectedness rather than copyright - and I tend to agree with him that represents a quantum leap rather than just more of the same.
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Stephen, on this thread that is nowhere near being extended rambling.
It's an interesting point - has the relationship between consumer and performer changed so there are less "fans" or is it being expressed differently?
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Ben, I think Mark was talking about the impact of digital connectedness rather than copyright - and I tend to agree with him that represents a quantum leap rather than just more of the same.
What he said
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YOU, on the other hand are trying to conflate some ethical standpoint, regarding artist remuneration, with the legal construct that is copyright, and infringement thereof. When your law is based on a particular set of ethics that are not necessarily shared by all, it is bad law. That is why the law generally eschews ethical and moral aspects in its language and execution (though not necessarily in its creation).
Mark, our ability to talk past each other is reaching epic proportions. So let's freeze frame this bit, and then possibly agree to disagree forevermore. I'm suggesting that so long as we are saying that copyright ought to change (it must! see other thread) then we are in fact in the law creation phase and it is precisely the time to NOT eschew ethical and moral considerations. The whole reason why I suggested at least not completely forgetting about the charged term "theft" in the first place, is that I felt that the discussion wasn't really taking proper account of livelihoods lost. You say you're a rights holder. Hell, so am I. But I am not a rights holder in the same way that Islander is, nor do I feel entitled to speak for her. The income streams she's fiercely attached to? I think they need to be protected. The response that nobody's owed a livelyhood is really no response at all, unless your premise is that Islander's income streams are an accident of history, wrapped in the technology of print, and don't deserve to be brought forward into the brave new world of the quantum leap of interconnectedness.
I even pay for shareware. I regard myself as both ethical, and moral (and I'm careful about the distinction), and as law-abiding, which is different again. Hell, I even let people into the stream of traffic when I don't have to, because I'm that kind of guy.
A state of affairs based on the goodness of your heart is the "giant honesty box" I was talking about the other day. I'm not saying it won't work, but is it the best we can do?
Well, you do already have your guest-poster permit ...
Mind if I keep it for a topic in which my opinions are at least three-quarted baked? :-)
Let's say I hand you a flash drive containing all three episodes of The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World, from BBC4's Storyvillestrand -- which may turn up in five years at midnight on the Documentary Channel but because of the quirks of the TV market isn't even offered to NZ broadcasters. It's the most intriguing and useful take on the modernisation of China that I've seen on a screen.
Do you take it?
Probably. As I might have written before, I download and share a hell of a lot of copyrighted material. It's either stuff not otherwise available, or that would cost me a fortune on account of where I live and where my home country is (although I also buy a lot of stuff from there obviously - but not everyone ships over here at human prices), plus the Italian television for the kids available legit on the Net but that I'm probably not supposed to format shift. I try to look at it in terms of am I hurting somebody in the pocket? And even so, I'm actually not against people with little money (especially the young'uns obviously) helping themselves to quite a bit more stuff than I'd be personally comfortable with. There's a lot of value to making the world's a library at least for some.
The BBC is a great model in many ways- I'd be very happy to see a big dollop of that return to NZ broadcasting. But do we want ALL our (professionally produced) culture paid for via taxes? No so appealing.
I absolutely think all culture ought to be paid for by the British taxpayer.
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It's the least they can do really. Cough colonisation cough.
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I find the "CwF" + "RtB" formula (connect with fans/reason to buy) very unconvincing. It disconnects the value of the product (lets say music) with what is actually being sold (some variant of tee-shirts!?) It's pushing the (old way of thinking, Mark?) notion that you CAN compete with free.
I don't think it's about competing with free, but it is, I think a legitimate reaction to the fact that an immediate revenue stream appears to disappear and you can't stop it technologically, and you'll only spend money trying. It probably is a bit old school, in that you're not actually reforming the structure, you're only evolving your reaction to it.
Perhaps we can see it as a transition phase? Where you acknowledge the abundance paradigm, but are still supplying something scarce, and unobtainable without paying for it. And it has to be something non-digital, as anything digital can and will be copied by someone who just wants to be a spoiler. Sad but true.
I see it as a coping mechanism until we big PAS brains are finished developing the new model ;-)
It disconnects the value of the product
Now who's confusing price and value? :-)
See my rant on intrinsic value, in response to Kyle (I forget which thread).
Value is what people perceive they're getting. Price is what they're prepared to pay.
Reason to Buy is about trying to find a price that they're willing to pay in order to receive value. If they're not willing to pay for the track, how can you make them? I don't think you can.
But is there an alternative that's not some variety of compulsary levy or tax?
That's why I think Reason to Buy is a good way forward, if it's married to Connect with Fans. The fans want to reward you, because they like what you do and want you to keep doing it. The RtB doesn't have to be physical - it can be a heartfelt plea that makes your fans want to help. But the stepped value tiers of Ghosts is one way to do it, granting access to the band or the artist that non-payers don't get. And you have to let go of the idea that you're going to see revenue for every single copy. That's where the concept of "intrinsic value" can be so toxic, and lead to the charges of "stealing" and stuff.
A compulsory levy or tax is like the dole, in my mind. It bears no relationship to any value, or merit in the work. Eventually, it will lead to an overall diminution of quality in the product, as some will only provide what is necessary to gain their stipend. Others will still produce fine works, because that's how they're wired, and works that are popular but are not recompensed appropriately because it's very difficult to design a stipendiary sytems that takes account of "quality" when quality is so subjective.
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Probably been said, but the threads too long to check...
Copyright infringement is not theft or stealing.
Theft or stealing means unlawfully taking something away from someone else.
If I steal a CD, I deprive the shop owner of something they own.
If I download a track (which I don't), the copyright owner can still sell tracks to other people, and maybe even to me.
Copyright infringement is more like sneaking into a concert or sports game (trespass).
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Well if
A compulsory levy or tax is like the dole
this
The fans want to reward you, because they like what you do and want you to keep doing it. The RtB doesn't have to be physical - it can be a heartfelt plea that makes your fans want to help.
is somewhere between busking with a hat and simple begging. (And are they so far apart? Beckett somewhere had a snide line about getting "arrested for begging while not in possession of a musical instrument") Charity isn't the best foot to start off on if we're to build a brave new world ;-0
Interesting ethical question, Mark: you insist that copyright infringement is in a different ethical catagory to theft, yeah? Yet personally you won't have a bar of it.
Can you put your finger on what it is about this "not-theft" that is so clearly unethical you won't do it? Is it simply that it's not fair? I can kind've see that, yet since you've so vehemently taken the line: "the world ain't fair- get over it" I'm struggling a bit.
I hope this isn't idle or too personal. If we were to change copyright-put it on a new, solid real-world foundation ;-) it needs to rest on a broadly consensual ethical base.
Fairness is a good place to start; maybe after another 50 pages we'll have some idea how far apart our ideas of fairness are... -
Ben, I think Mark was talking about the impact of digital connectedness rather than copyright - and I tend to agree with him that represents a quantum leap rather than just more of the same.
Well since Mark says so, I'll let that slide. But I'm still not sure that it's quite the quantum leap he suggests. I guess more specific pointing at what actual technology he's talking about would be needed. If it's just "The last 30 years in the computer industry" then we're talking about millions of technologies.
It's easy to get excited about the biggest thing since writing was invented, but the way technology has been exponentially improving for at least a few hundred years, it's hard to know if just about everything that's invented isn't a quantum leap, and that we're not in an age of quantum leaps, but a continuous quantum explosion. Guessing the future is a highly risky business. It is quite possible that in 100 years people will look back and say "well, yes, humans did really start using the internet a lot around that period, and computers rose very rapidly in power to their now stable physical limits, but fundamentally society did not change much at all. Capitalism continued unabated, rapaciously eating every bountiful piece of resource that the newfound power produced, a lot of drivel was produced, which kept a lot of people happy, thus hiding the fact from them that the resources were still incredibly unfairly distributed, and most people in the world were still direly in need of basic services". Who knows really?
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Interesting ethical question, Mark: you insist that copyright infringement is in a different ethical catagory to theft, yeah? Yet personally you won't have a bar of it.
Not quite. My point is that copyright infringement is in a different legal category to theft and, because copyright is a legal construct (as is theft BTW), you cannot discuss it rationally without acknowledging that. My personal ethics compel me to pay my own way, and to give credit (and money) where it's due.
I view the distinction between ethics, morals and the law as this:
ethics are internal subjective, morals are external subjective and the law is external objective. That is, ethics are about what I think is right and wrong, morals are about what the people around me think is right and wrong, and the law is about what we collectively agree is right and wrong. None of these are universal or inherent in the human condition. They are all learned behaviours that enable us to live together as a society. And sometimes, the agreed behaviour of the law may not accord with the ethics of the individual or the moral code of a group but, because we have collectively made the rules, they take precedence over personal preferences.I can see many sides of the debate and, while I can understand the thinking of people who just want stuff to be free, it doesn't mean I agree with them. I think their position is as unsustainable as the copyright maximalists in the long term. But both have to be considered if we are to move forward. Both are stakeholders, along with all those in-between. The arguments I hear from the likes of RIANZ are all skewed towards one end of the spectrum, and are technologically unfeasible. The arguments from "free-riders" are skewed the other way, and (for me) ethically unacceptable.
I believe that copyright is a useful method of encouraging innovation and creation of new art by remunerating artists for prior work in order to afford them the resources to move forward to the next project. And I don't just say that because I are one. ;-)
I don't believe it's a property right, indivisible and eternal. I believe its a contract between the creator of work and the society s/he lives in to afford the creator control over the use of and revenue from the act of creation for a limited time. After that time, the work becomes the property of the society.
Can you put your finger on what it is about this "not-theft" that is so clearly unethical you won't do it? Is it simply that it's not fair?
Pretty much. I want to get paid as much as anyone else does (one day, Roger Fitch!) so it would be hypocritical of me to say "well, pay me, but I won't pay you" and I've never been a big fan of hypocrisy.
I can kind've see that, yet since you've so vehemently taken the line: "the world ain't fair- get over it" I'm struggling a bit.
Yes, it's not. Just because I believe in a certain perspective doesn't mean the world does the same or operates in concert with my beliefs. I think it should be fair, but I know it's not and no amount of bleating "But it's not fair!" will make it so. That's the pragmatist in me - you've got to live in the world that is, and deal with what it throws at you. I might wish it was different, and indeed I do, but it's not going to remake itself to my wishes just because I wish it.
It's not incompatible to hold an ethical position in a world that doesn't operate that way. In fact, I think it's essential in order to keep your balance. Those who operate without ethics to guide them will never be able to make the changes needed. I acknowledge that my ethical stance may not be shared by others - that's their problem, nt mine. I don''t argue from an ethical position because that's my business. I don't argue from a moral position, because that a sure way to never get anything done. I argue about the legal position because it's behaviours we need to change, and the legal method is the only way to objectively do that.
I want the maximalists to realise that their day is done, because the world has moved on and their perspective doesn't rule any more. I want the free-riders to accept that people should be paid for the work that they do. I want creators and publishers to understand that the scarcity model is dead in the digital world and they have to adjust their thinking to the abundance model, and the fact that they need to stop seeing every copy as revenue lost or yet to be earned, but to start looking at the opportunities offered to increase the potential size of the pie.
It think Reznor gets this, and Doctorow and many others. It's early days but they're making money, so they're making it work. The old ways are on life support, going kicking and screaming into the dark.
How much money has the movie and music industry spent on trying to criminalise their customers? How much difference might that money have made to some musician or writer or performer, if they'd focused on finding new ways to funnel that money to them.
I think we're all pretty much agreed that the media industries have fucked up in their approach. But their rhetoric is pervading all debate - "stealing", "pirates", and such. "Won't someone think of the struggling artist?". We need to get away from that and away from the "content just wants to be free" as well. To move forward we need an approach that is fair and balanced, that recognises the new reality instead of railing against it and that looks to create a new model that's not just about protecting vested interests on both sides.
Phew. Thanks for asking, Rob. It's good to articulate it. I think I may copy this screed over to my blog as well.
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I declare thursday the 12th of march mark harris day.
phew man, that was a mammoth effort.
If you don't mind though I might wait till the make it into a movie and then download it on bit torrent. -
but you don't purchase the process,
if only that were the case all items would be so much cheaper.
development of any product is built into the price. hence paintings don't sell for the cost of paint and man hours, and computers don't sell for the price of the raw materials, and you pay a lawyer a rate that reflects the years they took to get their qualification, all built in. -
phew man, that was a mammoth effort.
I thought it was pretty solid, myself. Thank you Mark.
But their rhetoric is pervading all debate - "stealing", "pirates", and such.
Piracy is a funny one, though, insofar as the people who engage in it don't mind using it. I'm looking at you, Pirate Bay.
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Can't speak for Giovanni, but I'd probably take it. I feel pretty squirmy at times, but ethically I'm no Mark Harris on this issue: have done, will do, probably until the law or me ISP stops me.
Me too, but not without ethical boundary. I hate the idea of downloading an artist's lifetime catalogue via BitTorrent (oddly enough, the people I know who do do that are or have been musicians) but feel no pang about using MP3 blogs to find new music. I'll grab interesting TV, especially if I'm unlikely to see it onscreen here, but I don't do box-office movies, because they get here in a timely fashion these days. Because the Daily Show is on C4 hours after its US broadcast I don't need to get that off the internet, which is great.
One issue with BBC programming that should be discussed more is the role of the Beeb's commercial arm, BBC Worldwide. It's often regarded as a brilliant success because of the money it brings in -- mostly through sales of formats rather than actual programmes. In my view, it's a great part of the problem. There are huge swathes of BBC factual programming that local broadcasters either have shoved at them in unattractive packages or can't buy at all.
Even pure public service programmes such as the <i>Briefings</i> series can't be viewed online either, if you're outside the UK. Even if you're resident in Britain, you'll find that the BBC retires <i>Briefings</i> from iPlayer a month after broadcast. The official iPlayer message cites copyright as the reason for yanking the content. My arse. <i>Briefings</i> is a couple of cameras pointed at someone speaking in a room at Westminster. No one but the BBC is in a position to assert copyright over it, and it won't. The Beeb is kneecapping itself.
You can of course still see <i>Briefings</i>. Perhaps on Google Video, more likely via BitTorrent. UKNova is serving the BBC vision better than BBC Worldwide is. That's ironic.
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it was an interesting comment re gauging how 'piraters' 'feel' about things.
do we as a society gauge how burglars feel about police infringing on their rights to take stuff? Maybe we do, I wasn't at the meeting.
(I can't find the original comment which is understandable in that flash flood of a days writing but correct me if I've paraphrased you wrongly) -
There are huge swathes of BBC factual programming that local broadcasters either have shoved at them in unattractive packages or can't buy at all.
I wonder how much of an impact it would make if the BBC allowed it's factual content to be freely available to all. I sSuspect allowing those ideas to float freely to would make a bigger impact to global democracy than flushing money in unwanted foreign conflicts. Making the content available for only the former colonies sends a message about two standards existing, which in my view is not positive.
It rankles me slightly that TVNZ blocks international traffic to it's factual content. That knife, it cuts both ways.
Allowing information of that kind to flow freely is like making the big torch of democracy available to those who feel they're trapped in a room darkened by barriers of one kind or another.
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I wonder how much of an impact it would make if the BBC allowed it's factual content to be freely available to all. I sSuspect allowing those ideas to float freely to would make a bigger impact to global democracy than flushing money in unwanted foreign conflicts.
Ironically, that was the atmosphere of the Beeb's big rethink earlier in the decade -- we want people to see our public-good programmes, so why should we care if they're file-shared? -- but they somehow contrived to go the other way entirely.
It rankles me slightly that TVNZ blocks international traffic to it's factual content. That knife, it cuts both ways.
I used that TVNZ ondemand "this content is not available outside New Zealand" grab you did for me in my Webstock speech, alongside the equivalents from Hulu and iPlayer, to illustrate why TV is not the Web. Yet.
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if only that were the case all items would be so much cheaper.
development of any product is built into the price. hence paintings don't sell for the cost of paint and man hours, and computers don't sell for the price of the raw materials, and you pay a lawyer a rate that reflects the years they took to get their qualification, all built in.What you pay is what the market will bear. If the PC was put together by a robot, the retailer would still charge whatever they could get away with. It's called profit, and it's how they make their living.
Re paintings - you pay what the market will bear. Whether the artist knocks off a work in 20 minutes or 20 days, the charge would be if only that were the case all items would be so much cheaper.
development of any product is built into the price. hence paintings don't sell for the cost of paint and man hours, and computers don't sell for the price of the raw materials, and you pay a lawyer a rate that reflects the years they took to get their qualification, all built in. they wanted it to be. You don't buy the process, you buy the results of the process.And NEVER suggest that what you pay a lawyer has ANYTHING to do with the amount of work or training involved.
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Hmm, must have hit a "past" without noticing.
Re paintings - you pay what the market will bear. Whether the artist knocks off a work in 20 minutes or 20 days, the charge would be they wanted it to be. You don't buy the process, you buy the results of the process.
And NEVER suggest that what you pay a lawyer has ANYTHING to do with the amount of work or training involved.
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Piracy is a funny one, though, insofar as the people who engage in it don't mind using it.
I think it's a reflection of the charged wording the maximalists use. Kind of like blacks reclaiming "nigga" of geeks standing proud with the term.
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it was an interesting comment re gauging how 'piraters' 'feel' about things.
IF "piracy" is such a major issue that it's killing the industry, then you need to understand why your potential customers do what they do, and how you can change the situation so everyone wins. Just smacking them with lawsuits hasn't worked.
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The items are not, however, identical if they were not made by the same person.
Yes they are. If I take a collection of objects (take for example, lego art which I saw reported on 3 News the other night), and join them together, they're exactly the same as the same collection of objects joined together in the same way by someone else. No physical difference at all, nobody in the world could tell them apart, without some sort of dna testing or fingerprints on the objects.
If that someone else is some famous artist, their identical art work will sell for more than mine.
Hence the object is clearly not the only thing on sale, the history, context, metadata, name attached to it is part of the value or price.
If the object was the only thing on sale (as you said), the fact that they were identical would mean that they should fetch the same price.
What if I switched the labels, selling the authentic one as yours and your one as "made by xxx". As far as objectively observable, if the objects are physically identical and cannot be told apart, the buyer would pay as much for the copy because of the metadata that's now been attached to it, and would be satisfied by the purchase.
They would be satisfied by the purchase until they found out that you'd switched the labels, at which point they'd have you charged with fraud or some similar crime.
Dishonesty about the provenance of an object doesn't mean that the provenance doesn't have value. Indeed, it indicates that changing the intangibles, but leaving the object exactly the same, changes the value, which was precisely my argument. If you can swap labels beside an artwork and change the value to a purchaser, you're not just selling the object, because the object hasn't changed.
The two comparable tipping points are fire, and writing.
Agriculture. Massively important. Followed up by domestication of animals.
The internet has a long way before it's as significant as those four.
phew man, that was a mammoth effort.
Interesting post Mark. Sometimes you make sense, and sometimes the social darwinist comes out.
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