Would it be considered piracy...

[geoschmo]

Well, I would agree that limited copyrights are not a totally bad thing. I was saying that extreme example for effect. If the original artist sells his right to a coporation, that corporation shuld not have the complete strength of the copyright protection as the artist. And I think we both can agree that the "Suits" as you call them get too much of the gains from the work.

But Napster didn't distinguish between a recording that was 15 years old, and one that was 15 days old. For all their potificating about improving access to music unavailable by other means, that wasn't their bread and butter and they new it. They were being just as disingenuos as the industry, and you are naieve if you don't see that. If that's all it was about then the lawsuit would have never happend and Napster would be plugging along to this day sharing old songs.

Geo

[geoschmo]

Baron, you ever notice how we always seem to start out on opposite sides of any discussion, and then over time our stongly held beliefs and compelling debate techniques draw us closer to a middle ground that is emminently resonable and practical?

What say you and I appoint ourselves Co-Emporers of the Earth. I think between the two of us we could do a pretty damn good job of running things.

Geo

[Suicide Junkie]

I'm curious as to how much "bread & butter" Napster actually made.
They certainly didn't charge people to get the program or even use it, and I don't recall anything about ad sponsoring either.

[Baron Munchausen]

Yes, people can abuse freedoms to do Bad Things. Lots of universities still print 'resource booklets' for their courses by photocopying chapters out of copyrighted textbooks and binding them together. Publishers have been trying to stop this, or extract a fee, for decades. It's not working. Should we put all photocopy machines under lock & key and have lawyers watch what everyone is copying to prevent this? Don't they have other important uses that make our open and productive society what it is?

Yes, people trade brand new songs in MP3s as well as older songs. In some cases it leads to new CD sales. In many cases the new songs are deleted because they aren't interesting enough. In a few cases people keep them. The odds are good that those people would not have bought the CD anyway.

What the RIAA and MPAA are trying to do is equivalent to locking up all photocopy machines to stop a fraction of the population from accessing a fraction of their 'intellectual property' with an unknown and unknowable effect on their revenues. Remember, the justification for legal action is loss of revenue. Can they prove that MP3 trading is not increasing their revenue through wider exposure? No.

Can it be proven that absolute copyright has had bad effects on the economy in general? Yes. Copyright is costing ALL OF US now. Time to reform it.

An article about the Limits of Copyright by Lawrence Lessig, Harvard Law Professoer and an author of the petition:
http://www.thestandard.com/article/d...,16071,00.html

The 'home' site of the Eldred v. Ashcroft petition:
http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/e...legaldocs.html

LOOK at the list of co-signers! This is not a ground-swell of kids who want to copy music. This is rebellion from the established academic and scientific world.

[ June 27, 2002, 17:25: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
I'm curious as to how much "bread & butter" Napster actually made.
They certainly didn't charge people to get the program or even use it, and I don't recall anything about ad sponsoring either.

Well, no. I don't think they did ever pull it off to the extent he wanted to. But that was the "business plan" and the idea that he was pushing. I think the lawsuit pretty much brought it to a halt before his dream was realized. You don't think he was just doing it for the fun of it do you? Napster was a corporation at one point, and had some assets. I don't know what the source of the revenues were. Possibly investors looking towards possible future returns? If he had won the suit and had retained the right to do what he wanted, it would not have been long before you started seeing "subscription fees" and ads. In fact that is likely to be the end result of the idea anyway. But the issue over whether the content providor deserves any compenastion was the foundation of the whole disagreement.

Geo

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
I'm curious as to how much "bread & butter" Napster actually made.
They certainly didn't charge people to get the program or even use it, and I don't recall anything about ad sponsoring either.

I don't think Napster was ever making money. I think the reason they weren't making money is that their expected source of income sued them. They believed they were creating a new business model, and that the music industry would pay them to distribute their product. They hadn't counted on the fear of the new. Now the Peer-to-peer networks have taken up the slack while the Napster fight and general corporate klutziness kept large distributors out of the growing new 'culture' of music listening. They've cut their own throats now. There's no going back to central distribution.

Ideally, bands would now go Online and distribute their own samples. AND sell their own CDs direct, cutting out the exploiting suits. But 'artists' are not known for business sense, or even interest. That's how they got into their current situation with the recording industry. I guess a new 'middle-man' will appear or the old middle-man will adapt to the new situation and exploit them in new ways.

[ June 27, 2002, 17:23: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Jmenschenfresser]

IIRC, wasn't Napster sold for something like 50 million. I know it was quite a bit, but I don't know who the money went to.

There is an ultimate limit on printed copyright, even though there exist extensions beyond the 70 years after the author's death. I think beyond that you can extend it another 30 or 40...not sure. Read it once when trying to figure out if a GK Chesterton book was still copyrighted.

I am completely on Baron's side in this, and I think the fundamental philosophy of this issue can be found in many a college lit class--when they discuss interpretations of works. Does it matter what the author thought when he wrote work X, or is the only real interpretation the one we create, not knowing what he was thinking. The fundamental question, beyond that, consists of ownership of ideas and how they are presented. Some authors get profoundly offended when critics or professors interpret a book to mean something he/she never meant it to mean.

I think it is glaringly obvious that the readers, hearers, viewers, etc own the content. Not the artists. Society owns the content. Because such things define us...we use them to communicate and relate. The only wrench is the money, and god, if that isn't a massive wrench.

I say the copyright laws should resemble a car warenty. 10 years or 1 million copies. I mean come on, after 1 million copies, you don't need the money any more, and after 10 years, for music at least, tastes change...you are part of history, not business.

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.