Excerpts from Folderol's message of 2010-06-26 22:44:20 +0200: But a thanks from me, I didn't know of it. Very interesting, even the comments are in a way, as they display different points of view. It also spawned an idea. How about CC licensing music, but not right away. Wait a couple of years or however long you want. It's similar to a reduced copyright expiration time. After a duration you decide on you just say: "Hey it's free, listen to my music, share it!". This would be beneficial for a lot of reasons. As advertising for the artist, sharable cultural good for the public, as means of reducing illegal replication. I merely guess that a lot of the illegally copied music is actually pretty old and should IMHO be a shareable public good. As artist you could use CC-BY-SA-NC for example. If someone wants to make money off your music he still has to come to you, but for all other intents and purposes it could be shared. It could be used to advertise new music, and chances are that people are more willing to buy and less willing to just copy the new stuff. This is just an idea and a couple of guesses, I've nothing to back it up, but another guess is that it could cause quite a stir if a reasonably well known artist would pick up this approach. Ultimately, others would follow this example, which could lead to a 'natural' reduction of the copyright expiration time, or at least serve as practical example as to why it could be a good idea. -- Regards, Philipp -- "Wir stehen selbst enttäuscht und sehn betroffen / Den Vorhang zu und alle Fragen offen." Bertolt Brecht, Der gute Mensch von Sezuan

I don't think artists care so much for copyright. Who care for copyright are those publishing companies and then they try to speak for "artists" whom they don't give a sh.. about. To me all of this is turning things upside down. Saying that copyright is an incentive to create is revealing complete lack of understanding what creativity is all about. It is something that only a person who has no idea what music is or what art is can say - and indeed, that view is backed up mostly by businessmen most of who really know how to sell things and make a profit but are ignorant about the rest and they believe that all other people in the world too have set making money their life goal. Another common view that for some reason people owe me money if they are using my work somewhere, especially if they are getting money for it. I do not understand why this is bad and why should anyone owe money for what they are doing, even if it is based on my work. Seriously. I mean, it is always a case by case basis, of course and gratitude, normal human gratitude is one thing, the law is quite another. To me this law is jealousy that has been made lawful. You do something and than someone sets up a process by which he, say, sells your work. How come should I now take part in those profits? Did I set up that shop? Did I invest time into making my own shop? No, obviously. But this is not the only reasoning, in fact, it is not reasoning that makes me believe that, but rather my views in general, that one person should not have so many control over freedom of others. If someone wants to use my music in their film, they do not have to ask me - this is why I write music and put it out for everybody to listen to in the first place: so that it'd be used. If they do want to thank me and give me part of the profit - that's great, but that shouldn't be an obligation enforced by law. In fact, it should be common sense and based on human relationships. If those are my friends doing the movie, obviously it would be good of them to somehow thank me - these are normal relationships. But if those people do not know me, they should be free to use my work. Additionally, I do not see why a person should get money for work done once. I composed music for someone and got one time pay. Why should I then keep getting money for someone using my work? Because theoretically I could've gotten more if I would've sold it to several people? But I didn't sell it to several people. Why should I get the money? I would say that royalties for writers are somewhat justified since selling books in general and especially today is not as profitable, more difficult to get big one time pay. And in general, the solution to the copyright problem even without changing the law a lot is simple in my opinion - just say that copyright law is no longer by default. You want your work copyrighted? You think you need to put that kind of a restriction on the usage of your work? Okay, go register it. What this will do is make lots and lots of material effectively free since in reality not so many authors really need copyright. Thanks for hearing me out ;) -- Louigi Verona http://www.louigiverona.ru/

Mark, For what it's worth, if you download (for free) a Beatles/Stones/Pink Floyd album, they aren't exactly losing royalties, y''know? Also, if you are downloading one of their albums and NOT other starving artists' albums, then there is no lost sale toward that artist. On a similar note, shouldn't we just totally lobby against youtube for copyright violations and loss of sales etc for hosting videos containing songs by these young, screwed-by-the-record-label artists (Lady Gaga for example). But, last time I checked, nobody seems to, and neither are any of the visitors to the pages that contain the videos getting sued for illegally downloading copyrighted material etc. Also, I do agree with Louigi. Should there be a mandatory price on creativity? Andrew.

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 11:18 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht(a)gmail.com> wrote: Hey Mark! I like the points you make, but in my opinion, having discussed copyright a lot and working directly with major labels and publishers as my day job, I can tell you that the link that we make between making copies of artists' work and their wages have nothing in common. Copies almost never benefited musicians and when you are downloading music off of torrents, trust me - you are not making any musician poor - I see those contracts and in real life 90% of musicians don't get a penny anyway, even if you are buying it. This is just how it works. This is how it always worked. In fact, if you look around, you will see that since the come of Internet streets of cities did not become filled with starving musicians. That's because they are not really starving. It is important that artists be paid wages, if they choose to be professionals (nobody is forcing them to do music, btw, it should be a calling, ideally), but it is also important to not put the burden of responsibility on people who simply know how to use modern technology. Even if we force people to think that copying is bad, several generations more and a concept of NOT copying will be alien to people. Copying becomes better and better and in 10-20 years I bet you would be able to copy all book ever written to a small device within a couple of minutes. It is not science fiction anymore. And artists will continue to create and have wages. Just to try to bring in some real life, none of my musicians friends, who are professionals, make money byselling copies of their work - none. And my musician friends range from computer music composers who write for games and movies, to rock, folk and classical musicians. They all live fine and don't care about copies. Seriously. Looking around I do not see a problem at all. -- Louigi Verona http://www.louigiverona.ru/

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 5:47 AM, drew Roberts <zotz(a)100jamz.com> wrote: Hey drew! Yep, I think those do. My friend often writes music for Nintendo DS games, those are covered by copyright. But this is not the point because my friend never receives royalties, he gets a one time pay for his job. Also, I would argue that Nintendo DS games, for instance, rely more on being attached to the device rather than on copyright. Of course, one can say that if there was no copyright, then people would not want to release games and then no composer would be hired to write music for them. But this is a false argument as it implies that copyright is an incentive for making games, when its not. Games were created before copyright, they are created now and they will be created after copyright. -- Louigi Verona http://www.louigiverona.ru/

Hello Dave! Your argument seems very-very convincing. But is it really? "Yeh, yeh, yeh, artists made art before copyright. What they didn't make was as much money as they now stand to make because of it." So why not make up a law that, for instance, that allows bus drivers to make more money? Like, make using your car illegal. And if you are a bus driver, you would also say - "if you'd own a bus, you'd support that law, since before I did not get that much money, now I have great income". So what? Do bus drivers need more money? Do musicians need more money? Why? Why only musicians then? Why not teachers? Why not make up a law to increase income of washing ladies by making washing machines illegal? Looking at any law or regulation within that frame is going to deliver the same result. But I firmly believe that the link between artists income and copyright is made up. I am saying this because all my professional musician friends make substantial money and feed their kids WITHOUT selling copies of their works. I underline this. And I know this as a fact because I often work with them and know all the deals. And yes, we can and should count profits of people when they come out of limiting our freedom. This is a serious question. And if I see musicians buying houses and a teenager having to pay 15 million because he downloaded an album from the web, I can and should think that something is wrong here. But at the end of the day I will tell you this: if a musician makes music to then regulate it, I don't want his music. Seriously. I would rather give up all that professional "scene" if it makes not music that spreads around, but products which are "property". Maybe this is just me, so I am not saying everyone should be like me. But to me music is a spiritual experience and copyright ruins that experience and turns art into commerce - unfortunately. In fact, in my view fields like education, medicine, science and arts should not be platforms for wealth generation. These fields are too important to be spoiled by money seekers and when music was not a fortune-making business, but a calling, composers were those who had something to say. After all, life can force you to be a bus driver, but nobody forces you to be a composer if you don't want it. And, in conclusion, Russia today is basically a copyright-less country. The law does not really work. If you want, you can come to Moscow and look around. And see for yourself if you can find any starving musicians' bodies lying on the streets. And then you can go around, visit philharmonics, go to local band shows, see what is going on in experimental, rock, folk, classical scenes. All of those live without copyright. Bewildering. All those musicians don't seem to notice any problems. I wonder why. With respect, Louigi.

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 5:31 PM, Paul Davis <paul(a)linuxaudiosystems.com>wrote;wrote: Yes, this is actually the core of all copyright discussions, namely - can ideas be property? I think ideas cannot be property and I show why I think so here: http://www.louigiverona.ru/?page=projects&s=writings&t=authorship&a… I also do not believe an author has any right to control what he has created in the general case. And because I think so, I do not agree that placing limits on the ability to copy does not hurt anyone. It does hurt everyone - because the ability to copy is so easy to execute. And such limitations on ideas become draconian limitations, they always tend to increase. The allegories with cars and buses are bad, like any allegories, but they did show my point, I believe. -- Louigi Verona http://www.louigiverona.ru/

On Wednesday 30 June 2010 10:03:12 Lorenzo wrote: See, you have to go too far... http://dangernovel.blogspot.com/ you can take that and sell copies of it all you like and keep the money. Taking my name off of it and putting yours on it is a *separate* issue to the issue of making copies of it. The name thing is a fraud on the public. It is lying. We could easily have a plagiarism law separate from a copyright law if we chose to do so. Moral rights in a work under a different law than copyrights as it were. all the best, drew

On Wednesday 30 June 2010 10:14:27 Paul Davis wrote: Or to be paid up front, in full before releasing the first copy... Or to? This is currently the big rub. The terms today are not reasonable. Far from it. But supposedly these totally over the top terms are still not good enough to ensure that the artists can survive. What to do? Personally, I rather try and live with no copyright than what we have now. Do you have or know of a set of proposed reasonable terms that will allow artists to survive? all the best, drew

On Wednesday 30 June 2010 11:41:25 Paul Davis wrote: So perhaps they need to use this as a loss leader until they develop a sufficient reputation. The problem is not just are we suggesting this. It is being done. Under our noses. Are we fighting against it? And there is the rub on that side of things. But I have maintained for years in other areas that we should not have laws on the books that we do not intend to (or can't) enforce fairly and regularly. Otherwise, we breed contempt for law in general. Are we to get to the point were we pass a death sentence on those who illegally copy music? Will that put enough fear into the people to get them to stop? So, for a brief point in time, things came together to allow this. That time wasn't here long and seems to be passing. Rather than ruining society in general we need to look forward and try to find ways for those who want to earn a living with their art to be able to do so if they possess the necessary skills, temperament, etc. to do so. And that art gets produced in any case. I am convinced that people will pay for art to be produced and to "hang out" with artists in one form or another. all the best, drew

On Thursday 01 July 2010 09:06:20 Patrick Shirkey wrote: Except to the people whose lives are ruined when they are caught in the net or the crossfire. snip Perhaps musicians need to learn a few new tricks. Do a search and check the prices for autographed sports balls. And those can only give enjoyment by putting them on a shelf and looking at them and talking about them with your friends when they come over. Well you could play the games with them but somehow I doubt that is the use they are put to. all the best, drew

On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 9:37 AM, nepal <nepal.roade(a)mypostoffice.co.uk> wrote: i take it that you have some alternative account for how a creative individual can ensure that s/he doesn't die of starvation if they attempt to pursue their creative work as a full time effort? or do you believe that such an effort is misguided, and that one can only be creative "on the side", while doing something that provides for the basic needs of shelter, heat, food etc? i don't see my interaction with money as an attempt to accumulate anything at all. i subscribe to the timothy leary hydrodynamic theory of money, actually, in which there's enough flowing in the "stream" for us all to dip in our cups and get what we need as long as no psychotic idiot decides to build a dam. when i was younger, i saw money as the root of almost all evil. these days, my understanding has changed: those of us who live outside the equatorial zones on this planet don't live in a world in which our survival needs are simply met. ignoring any higher goals related to art, science, spirituality etc, work is required to ensure that we survive the winters, and that we have food for the whole year. somebody has to do this work, and someone will benefit. who these two parties are, and how they relate to each other, determines the structure of the societies in which we live. as much as my teenage kids would like to believe otherwise, there aren't any shortcuts around this: our world doesn't give us a free pass to life. so, the question remains: is it a desirable goal for a creative person to make a living by pursuing their creativity full time? If so, how will they be renumerated for their work, and what role does preventing others from using their work in ways that reduce that renumeration play in making it all possible? --p

On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 10:15 AM, nepal <nepal.roade(a)mypostoffice.co.uk> wrote: I'm listening to "Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ" by Steve Reich. As far as I know, he wasn't born with this piece, and I'm unsure which part of Nature provided it. Some complex interplay between what he was born with, his travels, his education, his family and friends, even the musicians he played with regularly, created this music. Who has the right to control its expression? Nobody? Just Steve? Steve for 10 years? Do we put it to a referendum?

On Thursday 01 July 2010 11:25:47 nepal wrote: I think this may actually be a language problem. "Actually my view is very simple on this. You have rights and ownership of everything you bring into the world when you are born." Do you mean to say that you have rights and ownership over what you come into the world with when you are born? Do you mean to say that you have rights and ownership over what you bring into the world from the day you are born? all the best, drew

On Friday 02 July 2010 12:17:37 nepal wrote: And nothing else, ever? drew

On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 2:19 PM, James Morris <james(a)jwm-art.net> wrote: the buddha spent quite some time as an ascetic too. i believe he didn't find that to his taste. we're not discussing joy. we're discussing means of surviving in a the temperate zones on our planet, which tends to involve some basics like heat, food and shelter. a loving and wise heart is a wonderful and joyous thing, but by itself, it won't get you through the winter.

On Fri, 2 Jul 2010 13:52:18 -0400 drew Roberts <zotz(a)100jamz.com> wrote: Precisely. nothing else ever. Then we develop a new system based on non-ownership. nepal. ______________________________________________ This email has been scanned by Netintelligence http://www.netintelligence.com/email

On Thursday 01 July 2010 10:15:36 nepal wrote: snip Before telling others, fine. After telling others, this is problematic. Are we to have the joke police at the water coolers of the world to pay royalties to joke writers when someone tells a joke they heard last night? At some point, the web it *much* too complicated for tracking this sort of thing to work. Plus, the structures needed to enforce the same will kill all freedom. all the best, drew

On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 8:51 PM, Patrick Shirkey <pshirkey(a)boosthardware.com> wrote: i have an account on CD Baby. there's a release there (you can check it out if you want, its by a group called Global Illage). how does what you've written above relate to my use of copyright in connection with this activity?

On Thursday 01 July 2010 22:05:17 Patrick Shirkey wrote: Largely ignorant here but I think ASCAP and BMI would be if you performed the work. I think it would likely be the Harry Fox Agency for mechanical royalties. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Fox_Agency http://www.harryfox.com all the best, drew

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 10:34 AM, drew Roberts <zotz(a)100jamz.com> wrote: absolutely agreed. my argument was meant to be in favor of the current status quo. my only art is code, its GPLed and so far, its worked out pretty well :)

On Wednesday 30 June 2010 10:47:00 you wrote: Yup, that was a generic *your* not a particular *your*. It was meant for everyone on the list who has issues with the current copyright situation. A sort of money where your mouth is proposition. all the best, drew

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 05:23:27PM +0400, Louigi Verona wrote: This fails completely. If you drive your own car then you don't have to pay the bus driver. And if you write your own music you don't have to pay a composer to do it for you. You could as well suggest that the bus driver should do his work for free. And let's generalise that: everybody just goes on doing what he/she did before without getting any money for it, you just take what you need from the store which gets its products for free from manufacturers and farmers, etc. etc. Just try to imagine how long it will last. BTW, Berloiz' memoirs are a good read anyway. Some parts of it are quite amusing like his troubles with the conservatory director, Cherubini. Or Berlioz' plans (abandoned) to murder his former fiancée, her family, and finally himself. Ciao, -- FA O tu, che porte, correndo si ? E guerra e morte !

Louigi Verona wrote: Yes. Ah yes, Luddism. Bruce Sterling's novels investigate this impact of evolving technologies upon our societies. Given that any society includes a balance of agreements and contracts, assumed and explicit, there is always an imbalance of wealth. Now it favors this class, now it favors that one. Musicians currently enjoy more legal protection than at any other time in Western history. In the not-so-recent past they haven't fared so well. And there's no guarantee that their current good fortune will continue indefinitely. Anyway, such laws are made here all the time. Everyone vies for their share of legal protection for what they perceive as their legitimate means of livelihood. That's what lobbyists do here, they push for favor in the formation of law. There are good and bad lobbyists. All contracts are "made up", there's nothing especially natural about them. But contract law is specific to nationality. It's very nice that your friends can do so well there. You refer to them as professionals, and I would expect by definition then that they can make a living as musicians. So do I. But I also create work covered by copyright, and I happen to not agree with your assumption that what I create becomes yours by mere possession. You exaggerate, but it helps emphasize your real point. Ultimately you want a cap on allowable income, i.e. after a person has made $500,000 on his recording - whether by direct payment or royalties - he should get nothing more. Even more, his work ought to be usable without further fees by anyone anywhere. To follow your own reasoning: Why ? If anything, it acts as a disincentive to create works requiring substantial investment of time and material resources. You do understand that the FSF takes a strong stand on copyright violation ? Whatever you or I might believe about copyright law, the FSF clearly understands that it protects projects like Linux. Money is not the only issue in the misappropriation of what is called intellectual property. The FSF perceives stuff like Linux as intellectual property, entitled to copyright protection by law, and they enforce action against violators of the GPL, and with the same justification taken by the greedy record companies. It's law, and it applies to the good and bad alike. My music reaches maybe a few thousand people at best. I'm happy to give it away. My band sells CDs at our gigs, we make a little money from those. Your statement that "if a musician makes music to then regulate it, I don't want his music" implies that you have an agenda that I don't share. I don't care in the least where the music comes from, if the artist is a Muslim or a Jew, or whether it's covered by license A or contract Z. I listen to the music, that's what I attend to. The rest is personal drama, more or less interesting as I have the time to attend to it. We may not agree on many things, but I guarantee that I will be utterly honest with regards to your art. The work lives its own life, not the life of its creator. The life-form of the work interests me, not its provenance. Earlier you economically equalized artists with wash women (nothing against wash women), now artists are "too important to be spoiled". Anyway, the statement that "fields like education, medicine, science and arts should not be platforms for wealth generation" puts you at odds with probably about 95% of my fellow citizens. Your reasoning simply assumes that money spoils or stains these activities. I think the situation is not so black & white. Btw, composers today still have a lot to say. The ones I like are surely saying something to me. Because you're talking about performance, a form of work which is not subject to copyright. However, in an amusing twist, the bootleg market here was booming when I worked in retail years ago. The store owner caught hell from Sony because he was selling bootleg discs of recorded shows. The corporation was pissed off because no-one except the bootlegger and the retailer made any money. Sony wanted to assert copyright violation, but they didn't go to court. They didn't have to, they simply threatened to stop delivery of Sony product to the retailer. Ah, power. There's performance work here too. Probably not so much as in Moscow, but like there, no-one's making any money from copyright as performers here either. And I'm out of this discussion. Not because I'm loath to write more. In fact, I have to write more, just not on this list, and if I don't get myself back to work (for hire, btw, and subject to copyright) then I don't get paid. I need more memory in the secondary machine, the vet needs paid, I gotta buy groceries this week, I just got the water bill, et cetera ad nauseam. "Money, it's a gas" Best, dp

drew Roberts wrote: Yeh, I should have thought twice about that remark. I know RMS's stand, I've read that paper. In all things GNU he is The Man, but I don't agree with him on everything The point isn't that the freedoms wouldn't exist without it. As you say, those freedoms can be protected by copyright law. Obviously too, and often sadly, laws outlast their utility. My major beef with current copyright is its terms of extension and renewability. I won't say that it guts the whole notion of the public domain, but it no longer functions to guarantee its replenishment. Thankfully CC and other such licenses do ensure a rich public sources of copyright-unencumbered works. Best, dp

Louigi Verona wrote: Hi Louigi, I'm glad you can take a good attitude towards the issue. People can get pretty hot about topics to which they have a deep attachment. Btw, I think it was Drew who made the comment re: your article. Again I think scale matters. If I took your article and sold a hundred copies at 10 cents each you probably wouldn't get too excited. You might think differently if I sold 100,000 at $1 each. Best, dp

On 30 June 2010 at 13:16, drew Roberts <zotz(a)100jamz.com> wrote: I'm a paying subscriber to Ardour, to CodeWeavers (for CrossOver Pro Linux) and to Mandriva. Two of these things are "free", and the third is free-ish in that CodeWeavers contributes heavily to Wine. These things have a lot of value to me, and I want them to continue to exist, indeed flourish. So, I do what I can to give tangible support. This has some similarities to my recommending my favorite plumber to my friends with pipe problems. If I keep him in business, then he'll be there next time I need plumbing fixed at my house. Cheerio... -- Kevin

On Wed, 30 Jun 2010, Dave Phillips wrote: Well said! -gabriel

On Wed, 30 Jun 2010, drew Roberts wrote: The point is: people seem to be really cavalier about who has rights to the art that they did not create. Harm? Are you really /harmed/ because the artist asked you to /pay/ for a copy of his recording?? gimme a break. -gabriel

On Wednesday 30 June 2010 10:56:08 Dave Phillips wrote: I am interested in experiment with prepayments for production soon. all the best, drew

Am 30.06.2010 14:37, schrieb Dave Phillips: In this I am absolutely with you, Dave. It is absolutely NOT cool and rebbellious to ignore the rights of authors if they choose to claim such rights. It is simply cheap and uncivilized behaviour. As I see the situation here in Germany today, many things should change about Copyright-laws and the way they are enforced. But still I think simply breaking these laws on a dayly basis wont make a change for the better. Fact is: creative work has its value and many creative work demands investments. Try to make a simple movie, say: a comedy, without any budget, then think about how such work could be financed. Find out about the average rent for a rehearsal-room in your city, the price of equipment and then think about how to raise the fundalation for a rock-band. And I mean it: think! Ignoring the traditional system to get artists/programmers/performers paid for their work is not enough. I think the traditional system is in desperate need for changes: it is bad, it takes 80% for itself and its burocracy and only 20% for the artists, that have to pay all the costs from this 20% also and thus can be happy to keep 2-3% for themself. So what about a different system? If you want to make a difference, start paying for Downloads of CC-Music you could get for no-cost as well. Start paying for software that is GPLd if it is important for you that this software is developed. Donate 5 bucks on the artists website and the artist gets about 90% - fair system. fair deal. You only have to embrace the idea that you are willing to contribute you share without being forced to. Until such a system is widely accepted, enforcement the way ASCAP or GEMA does it will prevail. best regs. HZN btw:get some CCed tunes from my website, if you want to get something freely without being a stupid :-) http://lapoc.de/demos

When it comes to making money from our art, just because we as artists can create something doesn't mean people have any obligation to listen to it (regardless of if anyone pays us for it). If you don't produce what people want to listen to, they won't steal your music or pay for it. They won't listen to it. I think a lot of musicians make little or no money in music because they've chosen to pursue music that pleases only them or their chosen "in" / "cool" crowd. (I blame it all on the Romantic movement and its idea that creative people are somehow specially touched by the gods, therefore worthy of greater honor than other people.) When I was playing professionally many decades ago, there was a local band in my home town that was making about $200K a year without selling a single record. What they sold was their live performance, which was entertaining and people wanted to listen to. A bigger example of that in action was the Grateful Dead. They officially allowed bootlegging - IOW, copying of their concerts. They still sold out concerts, sold recordings, didn't do it with big commercial "hit" songs. They seemed to be more commercially successful at it than that well-known English singer/songwriter who blogged about how every time she performed live, she lost money and was seriously talking about no longer touring. An old example of musicians making a living at it were the bards. They wrote and shared music and news. The more successful they were at pleasing their audience, the better they were paid. They also shared songs among themselves, I think because they knew that improving each bard's ability to survive and prosper made it easier for the whole group of bards. If your village had a great time when one bard had been there, you're more likely to think better of the next bard that comes through town. (And lest you think people back then didn't have the means to readily copy a bard's song - they did. People back then were much much better at memorizing and singing than people in our present "passive consumer" culture.) Anyway, I support copyright with reasonable limitations. What I think the recording industries are trying to do under the guise of copyright protection is force it to become a "pay per play" thing: If you want to listen to a particular song 20 times, you pay for it 20 times. -- David gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community

micromoog wrote: Sigh. I didn't suggest that it's all about high profits. It isn't just about pop/rock music either. Elliott Carter arguably "hit it big" quite some time ago. That's when his finest work began to appear. According to Wikipedia he's produced "more than 40 works between the ages of 90 and 100^ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_Carter#cite_note-nytimes-100-0> , and three more since he turned 100". Did Charlie Parker "hit it big" ? Miles Davis ? John Coltrane ? Duke Ellington ? Leonard Bernstein ? Aaron Copland ? Buell Neidlinger told me that Cecil Taylor makes great money playing in Japan. I doubt that Cecil's music has suffered since he started making better money. Best, dp

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 12:57 PM, Rob &lt;lau(a)kudla.org&gt; wrote: this is a strawman. "copyright proponents" (and i'm not referring to sony, disney and sony bono, but dave phillips and myself) aren't claiming that copying the expression of an idea creates value and that people should not be allowed to "steal that value". the people who claim that are idiots :) the claim here is that the development of an idea before it is expressed is a form of work. if the work is to be rewarded, its either going to be done before, at or after the point at which an expression of the idea is released into the world. because copying the expression is so easy, its not easy to see how one can ensure sufficient revenue from the release to make it feasible for the artist to *work* as an artist. i'm fine (to some extent) with the conclusion that we, as a society, no longer wish to pay artists & creatives to do what they do. but if that's really going to be the conclusion, we'd better think very carefully about all the side effects. i'm not sure its pretty, and it may be even less pretty than the world in which disney and sonny bono get everything they ask for.

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 1:28 PM, drew Roberts &lt;zotz(a)100jamz.com&gt; wrote: i don't believe that the before or at options are viable for the overwhelming majority of artists & creatives. i think that "before/at" can probably work for programmers working on contract work. its certainly awful, as are your other examples. on the other hand, i'm not sure quite how the mixture of easy distribution via the net but almost no paid compensation for most artistic work would compare the situation we've had for on the order of 100 years, in which it was feasible for quite a lot of artists to make a living by being artists. and i don't mean this as a snide rhetorical remark - i mean that i really don't know.

On 07/01/2010 10:51 PM, drew Roberts wrote: You/We would need a credible following first. Maybe we can get a subscription to LAM going but it would probably only be a trickle of < $100 per month at the moment. Highly unlikely the performers would se the money. Venues tend to make most of their profits on drinks not tickets. Tickets usually go someway towards paying for the cost of the venue, staff, marketing, artists, travel, accomodation, etc... The rest is covered by sponsors if you are lucky but usually only in kind and not with cash payments. -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd

On 07/01/2010 11:09 PM, Louigi Verona wrote: I'll go even further than that. In many cases these days music is designed to act as a form of prozac and distraction from the real issues that we are constantly being subjected to in our daily lives. In the past music was a way for people to express ideas and get across often subversive messages from different lands and peoples to a mass audience. These days popular music and any music that aims to be popular struggles to educate people about the bigger picture if not actively avoids the most important topics. At best a cursory glance is assigned that is swiftly dealt with by flashy graphics and naked bodies flaunting their warez. The industrial media and entertainment complex is abused to deliver trite, sexually provocative and erotically stimulating drivel. The constant merciless barrage of crap that we are subjected to by the modern music industry is just another way of keeping us in check by the few heriditary elite who own the empires and print the cash that funds the industry. They should be paying us to listen to the majority of the crap we are served not the other way around. I personally can't wait for it the industry to collapse under the weight of it's own greed. -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd

On Thursday 01 July 2010 10:01:04 Joep L. Blom wrote: Someone else having some thoughts on jazz and copyright: Are Bad Copyright Laws Killing Jazz And Harming Jazz Musicians? http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100615/0255059823.shtml all the best, drew

On 2/07/2010 1:07 AM, ailo wrote: It's a nice idea, but the money flowing back to the artists from these streaming services is depressingly small: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-o… It doesn't give you any freedom with the web design, but Youtube does this to a degree -- if your video gets enough plays you can begin to get a share of the revenues it brings in. I don't know a lot about this though, so it's entirely possible that the revenues are just as depressing as the streaming music services! I'd assume it would also depend on just how annoying you decide to allow the advertising on your videos to be. I've always wondered how these schemes work -- similar things already exist for blank media (CDs, etc.) in some places. Where does the money go to, and how does it get distributed to the artists? Who decides each artist's share? Thanks Leigh

Ever increasing, though still probably not adequate for most artists. I don't know if the numbers you have on that web page is up to date. Remember reading about Spotify, that its' revenues had surpassed radio royalties. I may be wrong. I think web design is an important part, though only indirectly related to financing. The web is what MTV used to be. A web site is like a combination of different things. One of those things is the artistic representation of yourself, as musics video sometimes aims to be. Thankfully a web site is cheap to create, which makes it easier for smaller artists to represent themselves. Too bad so few artists make the most of it. This is what they say about services like Spotify, that they need large customer pools in order to make good money. One way to get the money in, is of course aiming at media hardware products, which are made for playing the media that the artists want to be paid for. I could accept such a system. It makes it cheaper for poor people to get access to free media (if media in such a case is free). Even connecting to media may be free if your city decides to have wireless internet for everyone. This way, you would only need to buy a used laptop in order to get legal access to every work known to man (in theory). I agree, though, who would want to pay 10 $ for one CD of music, when ones' appetite for music may require you to buy 5 CD's a week, or more. This I think is the Achilles heel when it comes to 'pay per product'. Paying a membership fee is better, but in my view the prices need to be really low in order for it to seem reasonable. When it comes to copyright and patent control, where do the lines go? I remember reading about North American Native music, how the songs changed a little from mouth to mouth and someone would make up their own song, using virtually an identical melody of a another known song. No body cared about who made up the song. I guess since no one was making money off of it. They were only interested in the song itself. So... The problem with Copyright and Patent Control? It's easy to say it's about money, and of course it is. If you take away the money, there is no need for Copyright and Patents, unless you have a moral reason to keep your work intact, which is a different philosophical question entirely. Then it's like religion, where you can't allow someone else to make their own flavor of a religious text, because it's holy.

On Friday 02 July 2010 02:05:03 david wrote: Did you look at the graphic? It shows that you need above four and a half million play on spotify in a month to earn what you would get from selling 143 self pressed CDs for $9.99 in that same month. Now I may be wrong, but I think I would have an easier time selling 143 CDs than getting even one million listens. I could be wrong. Their figures could be wrong too. all the best, drew

On 30 June 2010 at 13:12, Paul Davis &lt;paul(a)linuxaudiosystems.com&gt; wrote: I also think that creators need to be compensated in some way, for what they've created. They may or not choose to avail themselves of that compensation. But, allowing for a revenue stream in turn allows for more created works, which *can* be good for society. I don't think the monetized system works in a way which is good for this end. My view is that the monetizing of these creations is changing. It used to be that record companies would use tours of music artists to drive demand for recorded works. Now artists give away recordings (like when Prince gave away CDs in 100,000 London Sunday newspapers) in order to drive ticket sales for musical tours. Some artists are choosing to offer "boxed sets" including promotional materials, autographs, programs, and other stuff and sell that with the recording for a greater price. Sting has done some 1000 seat shows at $1000US/ticket. Certainly, different artist have different options for their livelihood. It used to be that if a song went viral, that someone in the creative loop (frequently the record company) would get rich from it. Now, it might just mean 15 hours of fame with no money, or lost money, to show for it. But, there will always be some market for live music, and "things" to buy from that artist. All that said, I saw Dream Theater play in a 1000 seat venue 10 days ago, then got to chat with Jordan Rudess and Mike Portnoy as they signed autographs. Of course, I own 14 of their CDs, which are at this point only used in my car or for backup of the FLAC tracks I ripped off of them. Cheers.... -- Kevin

Just my 2 cents: I don't think it has much to do with free market (and I fail to see where true free markets are operating by the way) but a more fundamental reason: that's how nature works to evolve. Copying is just one way, and it used to be the main way of reproducing in the past. With the advent of sexual reprod. things got a bit more fancy and evolution took a new turn. I venture that copying computer bits that provide meaningful information is just another instantiation of the same old process. Later on, that copying process may well evolve to a form equivalent to the sexual reprod. and more diversity will emerge from the process. I don't really know what to think of theories like Susan Blackmore's (memes and temes) but I feel there is something to it in the way we exchange data and spread "new" information. The Disney vs Stravinsky bit made me laugh: so it is American and capitalist to explicitly exploit regulation loopholes in order to steal the work of other people ? My! I would have never guessed ... :lol: Cheers! J.

yes, could be participating in this next stage of information diversification, spreading, and even creation (1 + 1 > 2). Not that I subscribe to the Gaia concept, but it feels like we are active "neurons" and "neurotransmitters" of an evolving "superbrain". We are still very far from full development as we feel or are disconnected from the rest of our environment. But even that stage of separation was probably necessary so we could develop our specific human features to interesting levels. When we bring this back to the rest (provided that we don't destroy ourselves in the process), this "superbrain" (or consciousness ?) will move on to some further stage. All we are doing now (artistic activities, economic exchanges, etc) are just natural processes within a larger dynamic design. Whatever it takes to interact, even if we argue or screw each other, the idea is that this brings new complexity levels via expanding networks (of any kind) that add up in this ever evolving design. Just like a brain: first new neurons are created then interactions and bridges between them are intensifying and getting more and more complex. I was just laughing a bit about it. I don't think it is specifically American to operate in this way ;) J.

guys! an interesting point was raised here that if you use someone else's work without creating original music, then you do not use your skill and thus owe something to someone. this, in my opinion, is a vague generalization. 1. sometimes it does require quite a lot of skill. one thing to just take samples, another - make something decent out of it all. 2. taking samples and working with them is a lot of fun and i would argue does require skill, simply skill of a different sort than composing original music. a lot of people who love to do mash ups can do original music as well, me included. i have a whole collection of tunes where the principle was to use only someone else's samples. it's a very creative process and there are masters of that kind of thing around, which are admired and which do wonders with those samples. 3. i think a lot of the problems with who owes who raises from the fact that music is so reward heavy. if you are an artist, you expect money, fame and respect. but we forget that talent in itself is a great-great gift. and not all people have inspiration and ability to create something wondeful. and strictly speaking, although we do attribute from an economic perspective everything to a person who composed something, we should not be blind to spiritual side of things. many composers and talented artists in other fields often say that they feel they are driven by some power when they write their works. and this delicate spiritual experience which endlessly enriches the soul of an artist is such an important gift, that at times i think the artist benefits by simply being an artist. it is a benefit which obviously not a lot of people can or want to recognize, but it's there and those who do not see it obviously never experienced the power of inspiration and the boundless happiness that creativity gives. so i think in general people do not owe anything to artist. if we go that rode, then we all owe to each other and artists are in a huge debt to people who build houses, cook food and, of course, we are all in debted to plumbers. louigi.

Hey Joep! In the end it comes down to values. I consider a discussion to be resolved if we 1) agree or else 2) find points on which we differ I think you and me are 2). I do not share your view on spirituality in music. To me music is more than just fun or displaying skill to then get a reward. And there is nothing to be explained here, this is simply true for me and not true for you. When you say that sampled music is not music, it is your opinion with which I respectfully do not agree. When you say that no skill is required to work with samples, than here I can confidently tell you that you are simply wrong. Working with samples is extremely difficult if you want a good result. You should consider the possibility that you did not hear good sampled music, it is a unique art. You may call that not music but, say, mash ups, but it is certainly art when you look at best examples. And performing sampled music, just like playing piano, requires hours and hours of everyday practice - no kidding. When you say that people spend hours and hours playing music and that they deserve a reward, I must add that I typically agree, provided their work is actually good (who would care about a bad song which took 100 hours to produce). The emphasis on hard work is irrelevant, though. Some composers work really quickly, some work slowly, it depends. But there are many examples of people not caring much about rewards. A scientist in Russia got a Noble prize and refused to take it, because he does not want money. His main reward is the result of his work. Of course, as always, I am not saying composers should not eat. But I do not believe there is any problem making a living. But you did raise a very interesting point. it is a point that asking permission to use your work is courtesy. I can say that I completely agree IF we are speaking about colleagues or friends or generally people that know you. I agree that if I know my friend hates Baroque music it would not be a good thing to take his images and make a mash up with Baroque music on top. And anyway, would be nice to inform him and ask him. But generally, it would be courtesy on his side if he says "Yes, sure, use it". In fact, not allowing to use your work is almost always bad. The reasons are almost always nasty. It's not about starving, really. And if my friend tells me "Can I use your melody", I cannot imagine how I can tell him "no" and not feel that I've betrayed the very essence of what being a composer is. But what should be done between friends and close colleagues should not be put into law. While I expect my friend to tell me that he plans to use my melody in his composition, simply because it is courtesy, I do not expect you, a person on the other side of the globe, to be obliged to do the same. You can do it if you want and I'd be glad to know, but I do not oblige you and I don't think I should. Some copyright in close relationships is good. It is copyright as a law that's causing problems. Hope you find my opinion interesting ;) Cheers! Louigi. On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 12:33 PM, Joep L. Blom &lt;jlblom(a)neuroweave.nl&gt; wrote: -- Louigi Verona http://www.louigiverona.ru/

I have posted Paul Davis criticism of my article on my site and commented it a bit, though not very thoroughly yet. http://www.louigiverona.ru/?page=projects&s=writings&t=authorship&a… In my opinion, this is a very useful turn of reasoning which allowed me to understand more in the relation of ideas, physical object and scarcity. Hope you guys also find it useful. Feel free to tackle the subject around. Louigi Verona.

On Wednesday 07 July 2010 09:09:51 Hartmut Noack wrote: First we have a word issue here. What is the meaning you are using for the word "work" in the phrase: "And such work is scarce"? Works of art may be naturally scarce, but copies of works of art are not. Especially digital copies of them. For physical copies, the materials of which the copy is made may be scarce and this may cause the physical copy to be scarce. So, can we find a way to "pay" for the naturally scarce bit without trying to legally make the naturally abundant digital copies legally scarce? all the best, drew

On Wednesday 07 July 2010 10:57:13 Hartmut Noack wrote: I am pretty sure Sean T Wright: http://www.seantwright.com has put out an album a month for an astounding number of months now. (I think that is the deal.) I do know that not all of us can produce at that pace though. Still, how many hours of music is put out each year these days? Right, so not work is scarce as in I am working as in labour is scarce. You are saying works are scarce? I am not so sure works are scarce. Especially works in digital form. New works, perhaps. New pleasing works, perhaps. Once a scarce works is cast in digital form, the scarcity for "that" work is then gone in the natural order of things. Or going back, once a work is made public, the natural scarcity for that work is gone. The scarcity for the works "containers" may remain.

I think it's more like taking two photos of the salad bar... Martin

Mark Knecht wrote: Some more: 3a) Musicians are playing a live show for a standing audience. You are not even in the room but the music is so loud you can hear the whole thing from across the street. Still you enjoy the music and even dance to it. Right or wrong? 3b) Musicians are playing a live show for a standing audience. You are not even in the room but the music is so loud you can hear the whole thing from across the street. You hate that kind of music and it keeps you awake. Right or wrong? Maybe we could get paid if we are forced to consume a copyrighted work against our will? Martin

On Thursday 08 July 2010 10:58:22 you wrote: Not always, sometimes you are stuck in traffic... Because if the over the top laws we have re copyright these days, I consider non-Free licensed coyrighted works in a public place to be pollution. They infect my sound recordings and my photographs and videos. Pollution. Not to mention possibly infecting my mind and polluting future artistic efforts on my part. (And this can happen without the artist's awareness according to legal theory it seems.) all the best, drew

Hey everybody! Some very good points raised which I'd like to comment. "Maybe we could get paid if we are forced to consume a copyrighted work against our will?" I loved this one. Very funny and I think t-shirts with that phrase can be successful! I have commented several things brought up by different people in the discussion: 1. Manifestations of ideas. 2. Hard work. 3. Artists should eat. 4. Right/wrong examples. "In your comments you discuss the question of scarcity of ideas and you compare ideas and physical objects. But I do not think, that we talk about ideas here. We talk about manifestations of ideas in the form of compositions and recordings." What you say is confusing. Every idea results in a manifestation. If we are talking about physical objects that result from realization of an idea, then my original article's argument stands very well - in that case we will have to be speaking about distribution and copies. Intellectual property in that regard is then absolutely irrelevant, since any manifestation of an idea would be a physical object that falls under physical property concept - and in the digital world that makes those manifestations redundant. Of course, I understand what you mean - you can think a copyrighted melody, but you cannot really perform. But I think it is an erroneous distinction. If a manifestation of an idea is prohibited, basically it means you cannot use this idea, it means you do NOT have it. An idea can be useful only when you can use it. If you know something but cannot use this knowledge -* it is the same if you simply did not know it.* When copyright laws regulated only a particular type of manifestation of an idea - namely, publishing books - maybe then this distinction would have had some sense, I don't know. Today copyright regulates ANY manifestation, including derivative works. It effectively destroys any differentiation between pure idea and its manifestation. Tell me if my thought is clear, since I believe it to be an important point of the discussion. "But "Moses and Aaron" took Schönberg months if not years to write and of course he claimed a right to be compensated for this work." What if it took him 10 days to write? McCartney wrote "Yesterday" in less than one minute one morning. So? And did you read anywhere that Schönberg claimed the right to be compensated because it took him so long to write? Where did he claim it? I cannot imagine, for instance, Tchaikovsky or Bach walking to the main square of the city (or to the government) and saying - I have worked on this particular score for ten years, so now I claim the right to be compensated for it. I am not mocking your statement, I am just questioning its validity. The argument is, in my opinion, weak, although it is frequently brought up. If someone did "hard" work, he is not entitled to any compensation by default. Why? 1. Because nobody asked him to. 2. Because the result of his hard work might not be good. To rephrase it positively, you are entitled to be paid for your work if: 1. You were asked to do it beforehand (and promised to be paid). 2. The result of your work is satisfactory, regardless of how much time you put into it. The first point is more important and is often missed. The second one is very often brought up. I usually say that I've spent 5 months working on a song that turned out to be awful. What can I claim? Nothing? But I worked hard!!! "One may philosophize all day and all of the night about how works of art are derived from traditions that belong to everyone or if maybe Shiva, Hekate or God himself or mother earth or whatever instance beyond our realm of economics and physical needs are to be attributed for inspiration. But nobody can ignore physical needs, at least not for long ;-) It is a social issue: creators need food and shelter, they need a social status that is adequate to their work" This is a more important argument. Here is my view on it. I think there are two issues here: 1. A link between a concept of intellectual property and artists' profits. 2. An imbalance between sufficiency and fortune. The first is highly questionable. It is a fact that law of IP as we know it today is a very recent thing. Even the first half of XX century did not have copyright as we know it today, it was a very limited law. It is also a fact that many musicians have stated in their interviews that they rarely made money by selling records, that includes famous groups. Try reading up a great Rolling Stones interview where he says that selling records was profitable to the artist only between second half of the 70s and beginning of 90s. 20 years of all music history the model worked for artists. It is also a fact of life that in most countries around the world IP laws do not really work. People download for free, people crack software, people rip cds and movies and there is no problem whatsoever in obtaining any media you like if you want to. Yet I do not see musicians starving or painters lying on the streets, not being able to make another step out of hunger. Seriously. I do see some people who called themselves "musicians" and wanted to make a "career" and become a "star" give up their teenage dreams and get a decent job, possibly doing something useful for a change. Those people who are really in music for the music have generally no problem of making a living. The link between IP and supporting artists has always been theoretical. For most of real life cases there is simply no such link at all. So yes, I do agree with you that artists should be able to eat and have a shelter. I just do not see what it has to do with a confusing concept of intellectual property and restricting law of copyright. The second is also an important problem. If copyright worked as RIAA and MPAA wanted it, then artists would not simply be making a living, they would be crazy rich. RIAA and the like are basically calling for a society in which being an author means being a millionaire. If the aim was to provide a living, at the very least (at the very least) copyright law should be shrunk by about 700% in its length and scope. 2 years of duration, covers only commercial copies of original work. Then we would be talking about making a living. Being a composer and being a painter should not mean that you would be successful and have money. Some painters become poor, some musicians might starve, but same happens to engineers, programmers, designers, teachers, drivers, to anybody in our world. You cannot create a society where everyone would be happy and always have a job. It is not a matter of law or copying a digital file - it is a matter of human nature. In the end, if I am told that my freedom should be very seriously restricted because there is a hard link between my everyday interaction with the technology and starvation of whole classes of society, that claim, which does not seem obvious from my life experience, should then be proven. It should be researched thoroughly and presented to the public. We need facts and numbers. Was such research carried out? It was. Several times. Why don't people generally know about it? Because it showed that IP does not help make a living. In some fields, such as patents, it in fact made it less possible to make a living. So, the super famous argument that links IP law to profits is, in my very well formed opinion, completely false. It does not stand up to critical thinking. We can philosophize as much we want about artists starving because of torrents, but in real life it is not an issue and if an artist does starve, it has nothing to do with intellectual property. *note: compensation is a bad term, by the way. if we say that we are morally obliged to pay to musicians because music is not our need but our "want", this obligation is cancelled by the fact that nobody forced a musician to be a musician. You can be forced to work as a waiter, but not as a musician. This is not that kind of a job. Of course, a more deep argument would notice that perhaps, music is our need after all.* Right/wrong examples. Most examples, in my opinion, have little to do with IP. Most of them make those usual parallels with how physical property works and all the morality that comes with it, like sneaking in to the concert. I don't see how this is even remotely close to IP. Any analogies that copying a file is the same as sneaking to the concert don't stand a chance. There were, however, two examples that are interesting and deal directly with the question at hand. "4) A friend purchases a DVD of a movie that cost $1M to make but brought in $1B at the box office. You rip a copy. Right or wrong. 5) A friend purchases a DVD of a movie that cost $1B to make but brought in $1M at the box office. You rip a copy. Right or wrong?" I would answer "Right" on both and will explain why. First of all, the situations assume that it is you and me who should now be carrying the burden of how the artist makes his living. For some reason, now that Internet is around, I should be looking up how much was spent on the movie and how much did it make in the box office to figure out if all those guys made their living. For some reason, I should now be making sure that Hollywood would be "willing to compete in the new market", as MPAA said. (They said that they would want to compete with new technology only when all pirating is stopped 100%). For some reason, I should now sacrifice possibilities that new technology gives me and count stuff to see whether an artist gets his paycheck and if the sum on it is enough. However, this assumption is wrong. This is not my job. I am not a distributor. Those distributors take 80% of the profit for their "hard work". It is their job to come up with the new models, it is their job to calculate investments and income. It is their direct responsibility to know exactly what technology offers today and not rely on selling DVDs when they know they are instantly ripped and spread around. It is their wrong, not mine. In fact, telling people they will be paid based on sales of DVDs with digital files is irresponsible to say the least. A person who has made such a decision should be fired from his job. But if the burden is now on me and you, then we should fire and disassemble MPAA and RIAA since they, obviously, are not needed anymore. And if the burden is now on me and you, then we would want some facts and numbers before we agree to part with a substantial amount of our freedom and our money. And we would ask for a law that does a job of helping artists to make a living, something I mentioned before and something that has nothing in common with the law we have today - at the very least. We would also ask why would a movie cost so much money to make in the first place. Where does all that money go exactly? Why should Cage or Brad Pitt get a salary of millions of dollars for appearing in the shot? Why am I not getting so much money for appearing at my work? Should anyone receive so much money for ANY kind of work, really? Why does making digital effects cost so much? Is it really so much work? Or are the costs high up for artificial reasons? Can we get movies with less blood and explosions, please? Won't it bring down the costs anyway? Why doesn't the movie industry use pirate bay or isohunt business model which was shown to work and bring millions of dollars? Can we see research that shows this model works for isohunt but won't work for Hollywood? Can we get a written statement from MPAA and people, making movies, explaining why they did not use their "hard work" and "marketing talents" to see where technology is going and adapt their business models to the new situation beforehand? Can they please explain to us why they believe selling DVDs and then spending millions of dollars suing people is a better profit then just setting up an official torrent site? Numbers, please? So yes, this is right to copy a movie from DVD in the situation described above. How much money the movie made is irrelevant. It might be relevant in a non-general case only, for instance, if you are a friend of one of the actors and you want to buy the movie to support him personally. But this is not a question of general morality, it is a question of morality of your personal relationship. It is not something the law should regulate. Hope my comments were useful. Cheers! Louigi Verona.

Hartmut Noack said: "To completely abolish the concept of intellectual property (gee... I hate that corporatism the same as you do... ;-) ) will not work and will not help. All the problems, you have rightfully stated above ( musicians seldomly make any money in the given system etc) come from the implementation of the concept and from the economic system, that uses this concept and not from the concept itself." Perhaps. However, I observe that the whole concept of intellectual property and such utilitarian approach to art has its roots in today's western economic system. It could be that the change of the economic system and the resulting change of how people think would simply eliminate the concept of IP as we know it today. L.V.

On Thursday 15 July 2010 16:43:48 Hartmut Noack wrote: Hartmut, when you speak of IP, are you speaking of copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, or some specific combination of them, or all of them? all the best, drew

On Thursday 15 July 2010 19:11:22 you wrote: Well, I think it is clear that people are using the word "right" to mean different things. Are you meaning what people call Natural rights, or are you meaning Legal Rights which some call privileges? Are these rights you speak of something someone is justified in using force against another person to secure? Do all natural rights justify the use of force to secure? Legal rights? (Speaking person to person, not state enforced.) See, can we assign our right to Freedom to someone if we wish? Our right to life? If only. But in keeping with that thought, I propose that anyone who wants to look at things that way is held responsible for net letting their works be heard / seen in public places of any kind but only in places where the public has to pay to enter. I don't agree. The law in some places states this though it seems and I will do my best to obey the laws where I am. In fact, personally, I think my giving copies of someones work to a friend is more valuable to the artist in many cases than the value of the copy. So, if they don't want me to work for them for free in promoting their music to my friends, I am happy to oblige. There are other people making fine music that are happy for me to promote them at no cost to themselves and I am happy to do so. But this is precisely why the term "Intellectual Property" was coined. To answer this vexing question. Just like my heirs should get to enjoy my real and personal property after I die as long as it lasts and they do not sell it, the theory is that the same should hold for my intellectual property. Any thinking to the contrary is a disrespect of private property rights. Well for that reason and to make people fuzzy on the completely different laws, terms, etc, surrounding the different legal concepts lumped together under the term. And the real problem is that the deal that was made keeps getting broken by the side holding the copyrights. To the point that just recently I read of works already in the public domain being taken back and put under copyright. Here is to that hope coming to pass. New problems certainly will. I am sure they will. I am more concerned about artists being able to earn what normal folks on the block earn rather than that they be able to run with the big boys. (If they can in a sane system, fine.) http://www.sportsmemorabilia.com/sports-memorabilia/autographed-footballs/ http://www.sportsmemorabilia.com/sports-memorabilia/autographed-football-je… http://www.sportsmemorabilia.com/sports-memorabilia/autographed-football-ph… http://www.sportsmemorabilia.com/sports-memorabilia/autographed-basketballs/ http://www.sportsmemorabilia.com/sports-memorabilia/autographed-baseballs/ http://www.sportsmemorabilia.com/sports-memorabilia/autographed-golf-balls/ http://www.sportsmemorabilia.com/sports-memorabilia/autographed-golf-photos/ Do you see the prices on some of those items? Surely some famous musician can put together packages to get in on that game. How many people would like to be listed as co-executive producers on the next album by an artist they like?

On Friday 16 July 2010 07:36:24 Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas wrote: Inherent dignity. Inalienable rights. A couple of points, Since 2 comes after 1 is it reasonable to hold that you cannot interpret 2 in a way that denies 1? Does 2 allow for the assignment of these material interests to another? Does it allow for the taking away of these material interests in a lawsuit situation for debt or? all the best, drew

Am 16.07.2010 00:32, schrieb drew Roberts: I speak of copyrights. But speaking of the others also I would not want to abolish any of these, I would want to change the application of these rights. During the Shogun-era in Japan samourai owned swords and they where allowed to carry them wherever they go and they where officially allowed to use them. If a samourai had the feeling, that somebody from a "lower" caste of the society did not show the due respect, he was allowed to kill this person with his sword. Today everybody in Japan is allowed to own a sword and nobody is allowed to decapitate someone else with it - I guess, the japanese people like that change of application of ownership rights regarding swords. I find it perfectly OK, that people are allowed to own a sword or a rapier. It may even go unpunished to use such a weapon in seldom cases of self-defense. But of course duelling is not tolerated anymore. Authors should own copyrights and shall be allowed to use them for their benefit. In a balanced, sensible way. Attribution forever, a right to control commercial distribution for 10 years, a right to control every distribution for 5 years. A right to forbid usage for advertisement. And such rights should belong to the natural person, who is the author. And no commercial organisations should be allowed to take over these rights and use them 80% for their own benefit. Trade secrets are OK but it would be absolutely NOT OK, if law allows the holders of trade secrets to forbid research, that could lead to an unveiling of such secrets. If someone finds out the recipe for Fanta by legal means, this person must be allowed to tell everybody that Fanat contains fish-jelly. Patents for 5-6 years would be OK, if prior-arts regulations are faithfully met, if they are not trivial, not for lifeforms, not for genes etc. I have seen the outcome of experiments in destroying a system completely and trying to build up a new one from scratch by theoretical philosophic assumptions made by ideologic visionaries. East-germany was a ridiculously obvious proof, that philosophers should not rule something as complex as a human society. And the Milton-Friedman-school of philosophical economics is still around and the Chicago-boys are still allowed to try to implement their visions, that work the same as good as communism worked in the east. Gradual changes can be very revolutionary and they tend not to kill the patient with the cure. best regs HZN

On Thursday 15 July 2010 13:35:57 Hartmut Noack wrote: I don't think so, to me, the concept itself is flawed in that it cannot be implemented with Free People. The monitoring and Force necessary to ensure the outcome needed is over the top. Either you share freely and people contribute to you willingly as a result. This will let people be Free. Or you use force on them to *make* them contribute to you against their will. Personally or via the state. People no longer have their Freedom in this case. If you see some middle way, I am sure many would like to hear it. all the best, drew

"* use extreme force against anyone who redistributes (i.e. the creator is the only legal distributor)" Extreme force as a middle ground, Paul? Such a "solution" is not a middle ground for me, certainly. What I think drew is trying to say is that any middle solution would tend to become extreme. The whole "copyright" idea began very calmly, just like any middle ground solution we come up with now. Look what it turned into. L.V.

On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 6:25 PM, drew Roberts &lt;zotz(a)100jamz.com&gt; wrote: i was being partly tongue in cheek, naturally. IF copyright was restricted to the creator AND limited in duration to a single-digit number of years AND utterly non-transferable (even to next-of-kin) AND intent had to proven THEN i'd say that maybe 6 months or a year in jail, with options for first offenses and/or parole and/or scope of damages affecting the sentence? unintentional distribution and/or performance is a hard case that, like so many other gray areas, would have to be decided by a court. then of course is the question of what constitutes distribution or performance, but these questions exist in the current state of affairs and will always represent some kind of tradeoff. 5 seconds? 2 bars? chord changes but not melody, or vice versa? 2 lines of lyrics? etc. etc.

On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 9:53 PM, drew Roberts &lt;zotz(a)100jamz.com&gt; wrote: it doesn't need to be criminal. i was just getting caught up in your lead on a jail time suggestion. the biggest problem with the kind of scheme i'm describing above is that it relies above all on identifying the distributor/performer. its already clear that this is fundamentally impossible to do with any degree of reliability in the internet age.

On 16 July 2010 06:50, Louigi Verona &lt;louigi.verona(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: How would you feel then, if you were a farmer, about being prosecuted for growing plants from the seed of the plants that grew from the seeds purchased from international seed company X?

On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 11:04 AM, James Morris &lt;james(a)jwm-art.net&gt; wrote: This, also, is illegal. Your chance of being prosecuted depends on the value of the product whose intellectual property rights are being infringed. i.e. did you know that when Pioneer creates a new seed, they have to sequence the genome in order to patent it? Yup, that's yet another analogy shot full of holes :)

On Fri, 16 Jul 2010 20:29:02 +0100 Gordon JC Pearce &lt;gordonjcp(a)gjcp.net&gt; wrote: Odd that. I could have sworn just today a read a couple of messages about audio interfaces on here. Careful, don't let the door hit your backside on the way out. -- Will J Godfrey http://www.musically.me.uk Say you have a poem and I have a tune. Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song.

On 16/07/2010, hermann &lt;brummer-(a)web.de&gt; wrote: Yes, but it's a very British thing to do, throwing a very public tantrum about something other people are doing that you don't like rather than simply taking a couple of small steps to avoid it.

On 07/17/2010 08:13 PM, James Stone wrote: That may be the case while Brits are in Britain but when they travel they tend to get a bit more mouthy and self absorbed. Perhaps that was what Gwenhwyfaer was alluding to... Maybe it's more noticible when you can understand the language being spoken. Perhaps non english speakers have seen similar behaviour from other non english speakers? -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd

On 17/07/2010, James Stone &lt;jamesmstone(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Well, in the three and a half decades I've been living here, I've seen an awful lot of flouncing.

On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 12:29 PM, Gordon JC Pearce &lt;gordonjcp(a)gjcp.net&gt; wrote: It'll stop soon enough. It's not a good reason to leave. Just ignore us! :-) Cheers, Mark

On Friday 16 July 2010 12:04, James Morris wrote: Or for growing plants from the seed of the plants that grew from seeds purchased from international seed company X... and then blew onto your farm from a neighboring farm. Which was an actual case such a company was allowed to bring, not against the wind, but against a farmer who wasn't a customer of theirs. The farmer lost. All because said company was allowed a patent on the genes of a living thing. They made billions before such a thing was possible, but billions weren't enough; they needed control over people who weren't even their customers. "Intellectual property" has spun way, way out of control. The only workable tactic I can see when faced with multi-billion-dollar corporations with an interest in things getting worse rather than better is to advocate for it all to be thrown out so that the people advocating for a less extreme approach to copyright/patent/trademark reform will seem like reasonable people willing to compromise. The other guys are doing the same, but to them, cutting off families' Internet access based on an unproven accusation and making copyright infringement a criminal act (or the facilitation of possible copyright infringement, even if no actual copyright infringement takes place) are examples of things they think *are* reasonable compromises. Rob

On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 12:20 PM, david &lt;gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com&gt; wrote: <SNIP> All the ISPs are doing is watching bandwidth. They're not watching content. They just 'logically assume' that there aren't too many sources of data that provide 4GB of data unless it's a movie, and if it's a movie it's copyrighted, and if it's copyrighted then it shouldn't be 'copied'. This isn't Big Brother. It's just logic. They don't need to _prove_ copyright infringement because if they don't cut someone off after determining that there is a high likelihood that the customer is transmitting copyrighted data then they potentially become liable along with the customer. And since the original agreement signed by the customer states they won't use the connection to transmit copyrighted data in any manner contrary to the local laws more power to them for doing it. As far as I've heard, at least in the U.S. they don't cut anyone off for copying one 4GB item even if it is a movie but they can watch for aggregate bandwidth. When it starts to be 200GB/month - the point where Comcast has told me they will cancel my account and cut me off completely & forever - then they are probably right if the bandwidth is coming from an 'unlikely' IP. They know where NetFlix and Hulu are streaming from, and those are legal because they are licensed. They can guess when it's coming from a file sharing website or using BitTorrent that it _probably_ isn't. A few GB from those sites probably won't result in a court appearance. 10 Terrabyte likely will. Cheers, Mark

As a side note, this does indeed happen. By the way it's even worse, they will prosecute a farmer even if he harvests seeds from his own plants (not grown from the companie's seeds) with the claim that, since 98% of the croplands are grown from it's (Monsanto's) seeds, most certainly even his plants have been breeded with the nearby Monsanto plants. Guess who wins the trials. For more on this, watch the excellent documentary "Food" renato

On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 4:25 PM, Hartmut Noack &lt;zettberlin(a)linuxuse.de&gt; wrote: <SNIP> So, it wrong but you'd do it anyway as long as what, no one gets hurt? I suspect you wouldn't spray the guard at the door with anything that knocked him out for 30 seconds, or you wouldn't hire a very pretty girl to distract him so he wasn't watching the entry. Does the penalty matter? If they throw you out then you'd sneak in, but if they break your hand then you wouldn't? Penalties aren't really fair to talk about if we're just discussing right/wrong. OK - There are local norms which may change the answers to some extent around the world. That's cool, although I'd ask what Germany means by a 'private copy'. Even our U.S. DRM laws allow one copy of digital material for 'archival purposes' so TTBOMK I'm allowed to copy my DVD for safe keeping. However I'm not (to the best of my knowledge) allowed to loan out the copy. Only the original. So, it's OK for _any_ individual to break _any_ law which _that_ individual deems it 'should be changed'? How did we 'help the neighbor' in this case? Couldn't your friend have simply loaned you the DVD, you watch it and give it back when you're done? I very much like your picture of 'virtual properties'. That's worth some extra thought. I hadn't thought of the parallels with credit cards. Interesting. Thanks very much for the answers! Cheers, Mark

This particular horse is dead. Dig a hole and bury it, chop it up and put it in pies, do what the hell you want but for the love of all that is holy *stop beating it*. Gordon MM0YEQ

On Fri, Jul 09, 2010 at 12:49:07AM +0100, James Morris wrote: True, but use it wisely. Someone quite famous (but I don't remember ATM who) wrote: "Don't try and make pigs sing. You'd make a fool of yourself and the pigs don't like it." That remains true, even for the most passionate singers. Ciao, -- Je veux que la mort me trouve plantant mes choux, mais nonchalant d’elle, et encore plus de mon jardin imparfait. (Michel de Montaigne)

Am 08.07.2010 16:48, schrieb Mark Knecht: It is not forbidden to make up to 6 copies for friends and neighbors as long as you do not use technology that is made to break copy-protection. Such technology must be officially labeled illegal to make the copy itself an illegal one.So if copy-protection works by manipulating the TOC of a CD to make it unreadable in CD-ROM Drives, it is perfectly legal to copy this CD using a software that is made to repair a broken TOC. Such copies are allowed only if you own the original. Second generation is not legal.

Rob wrote: In the context of the discussion, it's about royalty payments. Copyright "counts" to me in other dimensions as well, but the subject under discussion has to do with profiting from copyrighted work. Bad recasts all. In each case there's no misappropriation of the work itself. There is a displacement thanks to a technological development - what we're probably talking about anyway when we talk about failed business models or business models on the way out - but elevators, buggies, automobiles, windmills, and refineries remain. Geez, I even saw an elevator operator when I was in New York. No one except the PR bozos at ASCAP seem to think so. We are not in disagreement here. But you'll understand that I'm in no hurry to eliminate my revenue streams just to satisfy my idealism. I teach music for a part of my living. I'm fascinated by the march of media tech, and in the past ten years alone I've watched students go from discs to dedicated file players to ipods to god-knows-what-it's-called-today-but-damn-it's-cool. And yes, we discuss the realities of how they get their music. I'm not living in an ivory tower. "Value" gets a bit slippery in that context. It kinda depends on who copied the song and why, doesn't it ? Or do we determine "value" only in monetary terms or pertaining only to durable goods ? Best, dp

On 30 June 2010 at 18:23, PMA &lt;PeterArmstrong(a)aya.yale.edu&gt; wrote: I don't think we've gone down the road of patents yet. So does the former. But, the notion that discovering a gene (sequence) in an organism could be patented is about as insane to me as to say that Columbus should own the new world because he discovered it, even though some would dispute that as well. [I'd better start round-filing this OT thread now that I threw fuel on the fire. ;-)] -- Kevin

On 07/01/2010 08:40 AM, fons(a)kokkinizita.net wrote: Actually more or less what happened is that a group of people who saw something they wanted took it and didn't pay anything for that right to the people who claimed ownership of what was taken. This systemic theft has been applied everywhere in the world so why should it be held back by a small group of Musicians wantign to protect their annual earnings? In fact to think that they can adjust this is pretty much the typical Muso dream of trying to change the world. Dreams of Musos are usually lofty goals but generally completely outside of reason. Like healing the sick with their song or teaching the world how to be peaceful through beautiful music. A misplaced faith in the societal myth that is being constantly pushed in our faces about the world we live in and our ability to affect change for the better by working with the system not against it. -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd

On 06/30/2010 10:37 PM, Dave Phillips wrote: In this case Disney made a clear determination of his thieving abilities being worth more to him than upholding the spirit of artisitic appropriation. He was just being a true capitalist and therefore American too. If you don't like that then maybe you should consider renouncing your American passport and moving to a country where that is not acceptable behaviour by law ;-) I would feel more comfortable about doing so if it was applied evenly across the board. But when every Tom, dick and Harry is screwing the system for every cent then I don't have any qualms about taking a copy of a piece of artisitc work and doing whatever the hell I want with it. Of course If I have the opportunity to send some cash in the direction of the artists that I appreicate then I try to take that opportunity too. -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd

On Tuesday 29 June 2010 03:18 pm, Mark Knecht wrote: I think it's important to distinguish the importance of the continued viability of artistic careers from the assertion that their viability must continue in the same form it's taken for the century or so that the recording industry has existed. There were plenty of artists around before it became possible to perform a song once and sell it thousands of times over on pieces of plastic. There'll be plenty of artists still around once they've realized that pieces of plastic are no longer necessary and an intangible copy of a performance does not inherit the value of that performance. It's just the industries exploiting them that'll go away, and the artists who can't adapt will be replaced by artists who can. Proponents of "intellectual property" call free culture proponents anti- free-market, but it's they, not us, who are pushing for more and more regulation. All these lopsided, DMCA-type laws, all the perpetual copyright term extensions and treaties, they're just more and more sandbags piled up in the face of a tsunami of market forces. Rob

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 4:55 PM, Paul Davis &lt;paul(a)linuxaudiosystems.com&gt; wrote: Thanks for the clarifications. Saves me the hassle of reading it myself. (But not the responsibility for understanding it!) Cheers, Mark

On Tuesday 29 June 2010 13:20:41 Mark Knecht wrote: snip Where is the den of thieves again? all the best, drew

On Tuesday 29 June 2010 14:12:31 James Morris wrote: Oh, so not the people taking advantage of the young artists? drew

On Tue, 2010-06-29 at 15:07 -0400, drew Roberts wrote: To be fair though I do not believe you can construct a moral argument along the lines of: "If I buy a record various people, including the record company, benefit a great deal more than the recording artist therefore the artist concerned won't mind if I just steal it instead and deprive the artist of even that little he would have had." On the other hand people should be free to choose an alternative license without hassle from those who choose to charge,

On 07/06/2010 02:01 PM, Louigi Verona wrote: That seems like a good summary of one side of the argument. I think Steve and Dave make a good point re musicians who are expecting to get some money back from the system and Paul on everyone being able to get their cut however it would appear that this side argument is so strong because it is simply not possible to stop people from copying without taking away a very big infrastructure that the people using to do the copying on are going to defend to the death. Do we really want to loose that infrastructure just so some people can get paid more money than others? It's a hard angle but simply if everyone is doing it then making it illegal just forces it to be a black market activity with the consequences that some organisations can and will use to their advantage. -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd

On 06/30/2010 05:50 AM, Gabriel M. Beddingfield wrote: It's also highly likley that Microsoft pays Netflix to use it's technology and has an agreement with them to actively promote against any other options. -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd