Re: Would it be considered piracy...
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Copyright is _trying_ to destroy the internet, along with insanely draconian proposed legislation to allow government organisations to read all your amil and scan your ISP logs, but ultimately the internet is just too uncontrollable. It is inherently chaotic and it defies centralised authority by its very nature. In the end, the pirates, the pornographers and (most importantly) the fair Users - and by "fair Users" I mean the vast majority of netizens - will win out, and society/ business/ economy will have to adapt to accomodate new ways of doing things.

Guess who's been down the pub http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Would it be considered piracy...
 

"Only thing I can say about the future of copywrite is, god forbid the human race creates another religion in the western world. As god would have to pay some "suit" everytime he came to earth and quoted what he once said or wrote on a tablet."

Actually, this sort of exists already, as churches need to file with the government to get a 501c3 license to be recognized as a legit church. No money involved, but the control factor is still there.

Re: Would it be considered piracy...
 

Slashdot has a story today about the views of a major recording artist on this issue. Well, TWO major recording artists, actually, since the story includes a pointer to an earlier story about Courtney Love. Notice that neither Courtney Love nor Janice Ian have any detectable sympathies with the 'industry' itself, the record labels and other extortionists who exploit the artists and whine to the government about 'their' artists getting cheated, when they've signed these poor people at 80/20 royalty ratios... or worse. And are still trying to get recorded music declared 'work for hire' so they don't have to pay artist royalties at all anymore. It'd just be a one-time fee like the plumber or car mechanic.

Slashdot Story: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0...thread&tid=141

Janice Ian (on her own website): http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html

Courtney Love (on Salon.com): http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/

[ July 09, 2002, 19:01: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Would it be considered piracy...
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">So if you rent an apartment for 40+ years, you should own it by default?

If you get a room in the same hotel for vacation, every summer, for 40+ years, you shoudl own that room in the hotel?

Copyright isn't the problem. Big Business' abuse of copyright is.

The 70-years-after-death clause is so that an Author's work keeps supporting his or her children / other heirs. If I opened a hotel, and died, the hotel wouldn't suddenly stop giving my children, grandchildren, etc money. Would it?

Noone BUYS music. You -rent- it. If you buy a CD, that CD functions as a key for unlimited listening -- but you still don't OWN the music. If you buy sheet music, you pre-pay a lifetime's worth of rent to play the music ... but you still don't own the music itself.

Without laws protecting intellectual property, noone would ever see much reason to put the blood, sweat, and tears into creating much of anything ... and culturally, we'd be bankrupt.

Thanks, I don't want to live that way.

What needs to be done is, lower the price of CD's to a reasonable level; the recording companies need to stop gouging the public.

Blank CD media bought in ludicrous bulk must cost, what, maybe $0.10US a disc? Tops? Add in maybe $0.40US total for cover art / packaging issues. Up to $0.50US per disc.

If the producer and the store were each willing to take $2US, and another $2US for the artist, we're talking under $7 for the CD. Add in, oh, another $1US to cover costs of getting it from the distributor's warehouse, to the store itself. Look, about $8US for the CD ... but we're paying 2x and 3x that much right now, the difference almost entirely going into the pockets of the corporate types.

So. It's not copyright that's the problem; it's corporate greed.

Re: Would it be considered piracy...
 

This is really amazing. I mailed this link to our Forum Editor cause its so good. More importantly, the RIAA has to understand that they can't win. Morpheus is doing fine and more are coming out of the wings. If they would just give up and let the people run with the technology a buisness model woudl probably evolve over time, with a little help of course.

Though all these laws and regulations are frustrating as hell, that is not the worst part for me. It's the fact that i can't do anything about it. The RIAA has never written back (even a form letter!) to all my 100+ "opinions"/complaints they requested on their website. The politicians probably all listen to music that has long since lost its copyright, their grandchildren are probably the only ones listening to anything that still has copyright protection (ooops forgot Jenna Bush and the drunken raves she's always at). And i could never get into the recording industry with the attitudes i have now.

So basically the only people that think this is a problem are about half of our country and the only people that love copyrights are the people who have control. So short of blowing up the RIAA (got that Mr. inspector from the thought polic, i said something akin to treason) or moving to another country (any suggestions). All we can really do is ***** and moan and then steal the latest songs off of Morph.

btw, no hate for anyone who listens to stuff that has run out of its copyrights, i actually do too.

----

Long Live Emmanuel Goldstein

Re: Would it be considered piracy...
 

Yeah, many people don't understand that the lack of respect fo copyright comes from the extreme attempt to extend it to every corner of our lives. It's like the prohibitionists trying to stop everyone from drinking at all and only provoking people to find new ways to drink. Ever hear of the 'Grape Brick'? It was a very popular product in the 1920s. It was just a bunch or raisins compressed into a solid brick and it had a 'warning' on it that went something like: Warning: Do not place this grape brick in a large pot with 2 quarts of water and a cup of sugar and a packet of yeast and let stand for a week or a illegal alchoholic beverage may result! Deh! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

All Prohibiton did was erode respect for the law by making the law unreasonable. Same thing with this paranoid attempt to control everything we do with our computers. When they give up on trying to make us pay royalties every farking minute of our lives and find a rational position again they'll get most people to respect copyright again.

[ July 12, 2002, 02:46: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]