Posts by jon_knox
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. I'm imagining it bypasses the ISP usage detectors cos it comes from a registered 'media' site which they'd know cos they know where you're visiting etc.
maybe there's a $1 episode which is riddled with mind numbing ads and a $2 episode which is pristine ad free.I get that Rob is postively contributing to this thread and suspect that his statements above are an attempt to describe a brave new world/model, as an incremental improvement on the current situation. I likes incremental change (starts rocking back & forward in a gimp-like manner) and will try to explain a little of the way that I see things.
This process change scenario is getting into the realm of things that I've worked in & around for now more than a decade being organisational change, typically org change driven using technology as the lever of change. Prior that it's what I studied under the guise of Operations Management....which is all really regarding optimisation of systems, typically manufacturing, but as most industry in first world economies is service based, so that's the angle that I've followed and been employed in. Prior to getting into the Operations Management domain, I have been looking to major in Economics, but found it a bit (cough) dry & abstract, whereas Operations Research was a whole lot closer to the real world, but is why I try to consider the big picture in terms of systemwide utility and occassionally flashback into economics babble.
I've got to put my hand up and say that (probably like most people...OK, perhaps not like most people but like Germans & Swedish people) I'm an advocate for simple, elegant solutions, ones that more often than not, borrow from nature (I guess this fairly strongly indicates that Darwin, De-Bono, Fayol & Taylor are guys that I have a big, but not godlike respect for...thse guys were human beings and like all of us had their flaws...some more than others). I tend to view a marketplace as a competitive environment, a type of ecosystem and personally favour evolutionary small incremental steps of change as most of the time, this is the best way to improve & finetune the state of a system. There are however occassions where incremental changes are simply not able to efficently or effectively get the job done, though I believe this leap-type scenario to be much less suitable generally than the small incremental improvement scenario (& saw a lot of problems & failures where giant-leaps were attempted and only rare successes).
So to use a (sigh) golf analogy, for this copyright stuff and to attempt to explain my preference for small incremental change, it's like pitching on the lake Taupo hole-in-one platform at night under spotlights. If we pitch too short, we can see the problem & subsequently adjust, though if we drive it too long, we pass not only the little island with hole we were aiming for, but the ball may go beyond the range of illumination from the spotlights. (and for some reason when I think about the giant-leap type approach I (more often than not) recall that bit from Macbeth regarding vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,and falls on the other.). With the giant leap approach, we don't really have suitable visibility until we get there and there may be further away than from where we started. Accordingly I've been an advocate for a series of incremental improvement rather than the giant leap in the organisations in which I've worked.
Some of the questions we don't have answers to in this case, are how many golfballs have we got, what is the cost of those golfballs and those costs (as represented by the golfballs) acceptable to the parties concerned?
However in the copyright discussion case, as Rob correctly points out, it's been 10 years or more and though occassionally we glimpse a bit of hope (such as Radiohead's In Rainbows album experiment), or flurry of activity that otherwise indicates progress (such as occurred under the the Web2.0 banner), there has been little in the way of a model emerging to bring a bit of balance back into this ecosystem since the pendulum of benefit swung away from artists/content providers (...etc) to society through the mechanism of the internet and the filesharing algal bloom took effect soon thereafter. (insert comments regarding a lack of oxygen/nutrients/respect for the artistic communities and ponder the idea that the old Music industry might have been the Dinsosaurs that were preventing this ecosystem from functioning in a healthy manner previously...as evident in the breakdown of the CD sale figures where the artist is lucky to $2 out of a full price CD sale...ponder the effect of internet filesharing as a form of "Minsky Moment" for the music world rather than the credit cycle).
Rob seems to me to be suggesting that the ISP responsibility provisions, requiring "ISP usage detectors" are the type of change required, tacked on the sort of current model Apple's iTunes is using. (This is why I see it as incremental). Perhaps the ISP usage detectors will add so much cost/bloat that the artists will only recieve a small fraction of the revenue. (...yeah just like they do in the current model, but with an additional layer of cost that also spills over elsewhere...) And is there an assumption that the artist actually wants to share, or profit. How is the model funded the artist doesn't want their work to be "for profit", who pays for the infrastructure required to allow the freely supplied work to opt out?
I think it likely that someone (or group or people, or even an organisation) who are thinking way outside the box, will come up with a model that is much more efficent, (maybe there are a bunch of ideas that are more efficent) and it may generate them wealth almost beyond belief (or maybe it will require vast wealth to get sufficent momentum to gain widespread acceptance), or perhaps they'll have just have recognition like Tim Berners-Lee has. There is a chance that we currently can't see the woods for the trees, but there is also a chance that the change is so radical we just can't perceive it, but when we do, we will wonder why the hell it took us so long to find it. This is the lesson that history tells me is likely.
To borrow from nature, the process of incremental improvement (regarding suitability to the ecosystem niche/void filling...rather than necessarily what we humans might consider "improvement") is important. The right incentives will induce a bit of balance and avoid the escalation in the use of increasingly desperate, complicated and expensive measures to build artificial structural features that may further encourage or otherwise lock us into proceeding down that path further. (brings back memories of "There was an old woman who swallowed a fly, I don't know why...")
Fundamentally what I am saying is that I don't see the signs that say the burden shifting leigislation is the smart approach despite it adhering to the incremental change philosophy I generally hold as a fundamental and I'd really appreciate seeing a few other ideas being discussed.
Rob may be right, but I there should be a lot of vigorous discussion before we head down that path, rather than grumbling afterwards.
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So take ISP's out of the equation for sharing data. About 10 minutes later every university is going to have some variation on an (informal) mesh (peer to peer WIFI) network pushing exactlythe same data around spontaneously popping up, with some snappy little file sharing WIFI application whipped up by the next Tech wunderkid. 2 days later it will spread to high schools and about 6 months later it will propogate into the rest of society. The amount of money and investment in WIFI and similar technology increases (particularly those that increase the range), file sharing decreases for a while in countries that implement the ISP responsibility clauses, but really the incentive to use alternative forms of network or to encrypt data are perhaps the only real outcomes (leading to an increase in the use/reliance of/on 'fair use' type clauses in contracts between ISP's and their customers & whitelist requirements for WIFI as end node for internet usage).
John's example for MTV's content being streamed with ad's is good example of trying to make the situation work for the content providers, though streamed content is generally of much lower quality than the content being shared by bittorrent. I don't know what the relative volume differences between streamed views and bittorrent views are currently.
for almost 10 years now, and yet we've seen one instance of radiohead and a whole bunch of advertising and not much else
I agree there has to be a better way than simply inserting advertising and or using product placement. I'm fairly sure that a radio type model, with compensation based on usage is not practical without a someone/thing fullfilling the role of broadcaster. I'm also fairly sure that the IRD will be keen to get a slice of any action and am a little surprised that the tax angle hasn't been pushed as one of the drivers for change.
How could introducing a usage based data levy via the ISP's work? How would allocation/remuneration be determined? What are the implications of the global nature of filesharing? At what level of funding would a levy type situation become attractive to content providers/artists...? Perhaps a prepaid levy model, with an requirement that bittorrent & internet applications (...etc) support the use of a content levy (akin to diesel road user charges....do these still exist/do these get used/abused?) is the way to go...</brainfart ends>
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I think the article Gareth Morgan wrote for the listener that David's original post references is this one, which wasn't available via the Listener site at the time.
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I don't get what Sacha is going for with the banking analogy either
I was trying to get Sacha to explain his ideas a bit more. I had my own ideas about his analogy, but was more interested in his than my own.....(But now I'm over that and I'm back to being interested in my own)
Sacha is putting an idea out there, trying to get us to consider it with a different perspective.
I don't necessarily agree with the use of the banking industry as an example of a non-depletable asset, but I do like the attempt to make the anology and like that it's a little creative. (Though I've not knowingly met Sacha, he's probably a pretty good problem solver)
I don't think that banks have viewed that dollar as entirely non-depletable, as probably the Risk and Treasury functions of the bank would have an idea of what amount of reserves need to be carried to prevent a loss of confidence & liquidity crisis....The banks may have just forgotten about rules of solvency for a patch (perhaps that is one advantage of NZ's relatively high interest rates meaning a constant supply of overseas investors looking to take advantage of NZ's high interest rates...in that the Local Banks really had no need to get creative to create credit, whereas overseas banks may have been more highly motivated....I better see if Gareth Morgan has covered this in the Listener)....now heading back towards this thread in a less subtle way.
Is it correct to think of as a music CD, as a non-depletable asset? I think that perhaps that view is to become a bit myopic regarding marginal utility (sorry I just had an economics flashback...ick) and conveniently puts aside the broader impacts such as the impact on the rights of the creator. ( I think this notion is the one that the Banking analogy importantly misses...but I suspect there are other parts where Sacha's analogy & views hold more relevence...such as that his view tends to perhaps represent society that is not so tied up in the creation process themselves.)
If there is a continuum with the rights of the creator at one end and the rights of society at the other end, if we wear both hats associated we begin to understand that it's important to strike some middle ground. Rob's mention (a few days ago) of downloading & watching Dexter, to me is an example of this.
What I've seen in business, is that you have to think about the incentives that are being created when any change is implemented. I would suggest that pushing responsiblility for enforcement onto any 3rd party creates an incentive for the "sharing via internet" phenomenon to use another means. So ISP's won't push the data around, people will share by other means, such as loading up their 250gb USB devices with data, or by more actively trading DVD's on the likes of Trade-me or other examples of networks that don't actually push data over the domain of the ISP.
This is one of the reasons that I see an attempt just to regulate, as likely to have limited impact, even though some of the proposed changes attempt to address the current lack of respect/control/consideration being affored to creators.
I also see the move as a barrier towards to encouraging investment in broadband. (getting them to build all that bandwidth to handle a smaller volume of data and with much greater responsibilites/costs).
There is temendous opportunity to improve the situation, to bring a new set of ideas forward, rather than just getting stuck in the traditional view.
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Islander...Congratulations on correctly detaling the Copyright enforcement process. I hope that the tapestry is a bit richer for that new anthem.
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Whilst I see the Bro'town side of "Glenn Close", but there is a bit of Once were Warriors in there too.
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I believe it was created in 1982 by a group of publishing magnates, led by Bob Guccione, and marketing gurus in an attempt to drum up sales for a bunch of worthless cross shaped pendants they had purchased by accident.
I'm more into the George Lucas interpretation.....Anyone want to help with the prequel?
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the ability to lend the same funds more than once, and enabled by a regulatory framework that enforces market barriers to competition.
All that leverage was working so well, until reality hit and the fundamental importance of having enough assets to cover liabilities was "discovered".
Am not quite however following the link to the music industry/IP/copyright here.
Is it a case of when there is more illegally copied music than legitimate copies were have a Music Crunch?
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In that overly graphic way she has of actually being a he.
Sacha is a bloke eh? That's bad parenting that is. Let that be an example to Mr Haywood.
Sacha is probably buzy elsewhere making insentive comments...There I was thinking that's an enlightened woman when he was cracking jokes about watersports on other threads.
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Cheers for the illumination.
Am just a little unclear on that digitial revenue figure.
Do you mean that the artist is getting approx 1/25 of the value of the sale (eg $0.60 on a $15 download), or 1/25 of the (few dollars) of revenue that they would have got for a CD sale? (eg $0.08 of $2 if there was $2 left once all the others had taken their cut on a $25 CD).