Steve Jobs and the State of Legal Music Downloads 964
An anonymous reader writes "Rolling Stone has published an interview with Steve Jobs about the current state of the music industry. He is a smart man, that guy. 'When we first went to talk to these record companies -- about eighteen months ago -- we said, "None of this technology that you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.s here who know the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content."'"
The way to protect digital content (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Copy (Score:5, Insightful)
The protection doesn't work (Score:5, Insightful)
Bonus content (Score:5, Insightful)
I've gt a buddy with a HUGE classic vinyl collection (lots of rare stuff) and the artwork is worth WAY more than the record itself. Maybe there's a parallel these guys can draw to offer something a little more tangible than the bits. Having a scan of artwork isn't the same as having a rip of the music.
Of course for that to work, they'd have to stop pumping out 500 godzillion copies of every single album made, which is a problem for them as well.
Not to be insightful (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh come on Pudge... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's be realistic Pudge, Apple would not have been able to get anything off the ground for the Music Store if it had no sharing limits. As with almost everything these days, a compromise is reached that makes the best sense for both parties (or for one, depending on your viewpoint).
I know, I know...this is slashdot, where every editor shows their bias on each story. Perhaps I'm asking too much.
-Cyc
Bad analogy (Score:3, Insightful)
That really isn't that insightful. What he should have said was "people are still going to copy digital content, no matter what you do." Saying that it's not possible to protect digital content is just like saying "it's not possible to protect your home." You can put a lock on the door, but a burglar can break the window. You can put up an alarm, he can cut the power or something. You can create an armored bunker, but if the burglar's got a tank, it's not really going to matter.
Make it cheap and easy (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally like the idea of being able to hear a song before I buy it and then just buy the songs I like. That why iTunes is good.
Brilliant (Score:2, Insightful)
I love the idea and the way it's implemented... unlimited burning to CD is what I want and that's what you get. It seems America-centric which puts me off a little (I'm not going to be phoning America when my credit card gets charged by accident) but I was very interested in it and my girlfriend agreed with me.
I looked into it with the possibility of getting her a gift certificate for it for Christmas. Well... I would if it would work on ME or 98. Oh well, another good idea down the drain. I ain't paying to upgrade to XP (as well as the associated hassle) just for that one program, when everything else I download runs just fine. Come on Apple, get off your backside and make a 98 version.
Advances (Score:5, Insightful)
Ph.D. - piled higher, deeper (Score:3, Insightful)
While I don't necessarily believe that they can protect it, I think it's far more interesting that here's yet another group that thinks just because a Ph.D. said something it's gotta be true. Holy crap, when are they going to learn that a Ph.D. doesn't give people complete insight into all things. Hell, most of the time they don't have insight beyond the scope of their own disseration.
Not possible to protect... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seeing as AAC has already been broken using their own player, I think that point is pretty well proven. It's not possible to protect digital content, if by "protect" you mean preventing copying.
Re:Legal music downloading... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it shows that there isn't a large enough market for subscription base. Those people are the hardcore music listeners, they are the minority. Most people listen to a song on the radio and say "wooooo that is catchy" and pay and download it and be done.
Re:Bad analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ph.D. - piled higher, deeper (Score:1, Insightful)
heh (Score:3, Insightful)
I haven't seen one "copy protection" scheme that has actually worked yet and I don't expect to see any in the future either. It's trivial to take the songs off an iPod and people are starting to unravel the DRM on the iTunes music store files - give it time ...
I've given up on iTunes, Nap2, etc (Score:5, Insightful)
If the RIAA wants the legal downloads to flourish, they should get serious about selling the music.
Supply and Demand still work (Score:5, Insightful)
When music is hard to get (low supply) and people want it (demand goes up) the price goes up. Look at live music back in the time of Bach or Beethoven. The average person could not afford it -- so only the rich had the best music. The poor had their "opera houses" that were not very safe and did not sound very good.
When music started to get more accessible (records and then tapes) and cheaper, supply went up, and demand went down, so the price went down.
As music became popularized through more radio productions and later television productions (MTV, etc), the supply went way up, the demand went way up, so the prices stayed consistent. The record labels charged what people were willing to pay. If the people were not willing to pay $18 for a CD, the prices would have come DOWN (supply up, demand down, prices drop).
Now we have the Internet. Supply goes up immensely, and demand to pay $18 a CD goes away. Therefore demand has dropped at that price, so the price has basically dropped. Some people pay $18, some people want it for free. Of course the record labels earn "less" per person per song. But the distribution cycle is so different, therefore you have to really look at the supply and demand issues differently.
If the incentive to produce "good" music goes down (less profit), then "good" music will diminish. As there is less and less "good" music, the supply will go down. Demand for "good" music will go up. People who are taking music for free will have less and less music to take for free. The free market over rides copyright and other bad laws by removing the supply of good music, as the incentive to profit is lost.
This is what will happen over time. Music production houses will find that they can make more money selling their popular tunes to TV commercials, movies soundtracks, nightclubs, and other places. Those songs will eventually be thrown into the virtual "public domain" of the Internet, but the cost to produce the music will be a function of the price of a movie, the cost to enter a nightclub, or the cost of a shampoo or fragrance or whatever it is that uses the song for its background music in a commercial.
You can regulate, you can mandate, you can tax. But you can't run from the rules of supply and demand.
Re:DRM (Score:2, Insightful)
*runs*
Re:thank god for that (Score:0, Insightful)
need I say more?
Re:Make it cheap and easy (Score:1, Insightful)
People still look for them on Kazaa or Newsgroups or Bit Torrent.
I used to like that "If only CDs were cheaper" argument myself. But it's just not substantiated by the facts at hand. Cheap solutions exist. They are largely ignored for the free solutions.
Re:Make it cheap and easy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Make it cheap and easy (Score:5, Insightful)
If CDs were like 1/2 price, like $8 or less, a lot more people would think about buying them
I doubt that very much ... I suspect that what would be happening at that price point is that people would be saying "If CDs were like 1/2 price, like $4 or less, a lot more people ...."
People expect something for nothing and have found a way to get just that, and they use the "expense" argument to justify their actions to themselves. The only reason you don't see the same thing happening with DVDs is that most people don't have the bandwidth and diskspace to download movies. Yet. Wait a few years, and then you are going to start hearing "If DVDs were like 1/2 price, like $15 or less, a lot more people ...."
Re:jobs lies about subscriptions (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a little apples to oranges (hah hah) and you are strictly comparing song revenue, but repeat after me "Apple is a hardware company. Apple is a hardware company."
iTunes exists to sell iPods. What's the profit margin like when you factor those in?
Re:Digital copying is ALWAYS possible. (Score:5, Insightful)
This, of course, makes Linux illegal. Unless all access to hard drives and similar hardware is enclosed in a closed-source, black-box interface layer. The effective end of open source.
I'm hoping the electronics industry will never go for it, but considering the recent news about Phoenix ditching BIOS [slashdot.org] in favor of "Trusted Computing," that hope is rapidly fading.
We need to do something before the right to hack stuff is completely taken away.
Re:Bonus content (Score:5, Insightful)
They should. It would be well worth it for them to come out with a huge book sized packaging with one CD and lots of pages (pictures/text/lyrics), posters and what ever merchandising you can get in there.
You effectively can charge more, get free advertisement and make it worthwhile for people to go out and buy the product.
Re:jobs lies about subscriptions (Score:5, Insightful)
Right in line with me (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that this model is perfect for the vast majority of people.
There's one hitch that's not often talked about, though. It is that the "share music locally" doesn't work with purchased music. So, the CDs I've bought can be shared on my LAN, but my legally "purchased" music can't (unless I authorize those computers to play my stuff).
I don't think that this makes any sense from any angle, except a bit of buckling to RIAA et. al. If I can share what I bought on physical media, why can't I share what I bought digitally. Of course, one of the things I most want to share is new tunes I've grabbed, and I don't want to go around authorizing/deauthorizing my colleauges' machines. Hopefully, they'll find a way to enable sharing of ITMS purchases in the future.
Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
"And Apple is in a pretty interesting position. Because, as you may know, almost every song and CD is made on a Mac -- it's recorded on a Mac, it's mixed on a Mac, the artwork's done on a Mac. Almost every artist I've met has an iPod, and most of the music execs now have iPods."
And this affects what system the music gets played on in what way? Most american homes are made from Canadian lumber, but that doesn't make me more likely to want to become a Canadian. I suppose it's nice self-back-scratching.
And, of course, most of those top music execs probably got their iPods for free during the negotiations. Heck, if I knew somebody who didn't have a PC or email in 2001, I sure as heck wouldn't try to get them to use a 2 year old Archos jukebox!
Re:Brilliant (Score:4, Insightful)
Relying on services seems kind of retarded, when so many other Windows programs are able to perform similar tasks without needing to do so. I can only imagine they did so to allow the Windows version to mimick the BSD based Macintosh version, and thus cut down a bit on redundant development.
Since Win98's kernel does not support services, Apple would have to completely rewrite the program for an OS which is 6 years old and generally only used by computers that are too underpowered to run iTunes in the first place. Sounds like an egregious waste of resources to me, but hey, what do I know. I only do this for a living.
I agree, except about the movies (Score:5, Insightful)
How about movies? Do you see an iTunes movie store?
"We don't think that's what people want. A movie takes forever to download -- there's no instant gratification."
Right now, on a good cable connection, it takes about 30-45 minutes to download a good quality mpeg4 version movie (at 700Kbs). Cable can easily increase its bandwidth over time (not so easy with DSL), so that time interval will be decreasing. As more and more people have access to faster and faster connectivity, Jobs statement will become meaningless (as it already has for the fastest cable users). The quality of the movies will increase as well, to fill the available bandwidth.
The movie studios should NOT make the same mistakes that the music industry did. They should start offering legitimate good quality legal downloads NOW, before too many people start thinking about movies the way they do mp3s.
Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:5, Insightful)
This man Understands.
Rip Mix Burn (Score:5, Insightful)
The person who assailed us over it was Michael Eisner. But he didn't have any teenage kids living at home, and he didn't have any teenage kids working at Disney whom he talked to, so he thought "rip" meant "rip off." And when somebody actually clued him in to what it meant, he did apologize.
You know, that says so much about Disney and their current state of affairs.
Right of First Sale still hasn't been addressed (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a very important issue here because it blurs the line between Right of First Sale and Fair Use. While it's unlikely that right of First Sale can be sidestepped, how is it going to be possible to convince people who eventually will want to swap their legally purchased products from getting a bit of their money back in a legitimate re-sale. This is a great re-sale market from the buyers perspective because you can be sure the quality is top notch even after many sales. You just have to trust that people won't keep a copy in an open format when they make the sale. I'd say the whole premise is weak.
And yes, I do know that there are people of the opinion that Right of First Sale cannot apply in digital distribution, but if you look at the arguments that have been presented, the weak link is usually the part where they try to define copy and mangle the technical facts of how digital media is played in various digitial devices. There is no blanket defintion of copy that can cover all cases unless you use a naive definition of terms like RAM. That may convince non-technical people, but under closer scrutiny I've never seen a solid definition that worked across serval commonly available digital music players.
Re:jobs lies about subscriptions (Score:5, Insightful)
For a bunch of technologists, the Slashdot crowd is suprisingly reactionary when it comes to music. Ever consider that the currently model of buying music permanently isn't the be all and end all? For me, paying $10 per month for access to basically all the music I care about is a fantastic, unbelievable deal. I can still buy CDs or even buy tracks on iTunes if I want - but that doesn't negate the value of the subscription service.
Re:jobs lies about subscriptions (Score:5, Insightful)
Earnings report link [realnetworks.com]?
How many of those "subscribers" just signed up for a free trial period? (Elsewhere they make a point of mentioning "paying subscribers", so i think that's a valid question.)
How many subscribers cancelled or went inactive during the quarter?
There's lots of stuff that gets glossed-over or left out of official press releases. I don't use either service, nor do i own an Apple product, so i have nothing to gain from either one, but i distrust anything a company says about itself.
Re:Ph.D. - piled higher, deeper (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's less likely to be flawed than that of some marketer making guesses somewhere. It's far less likely to be incomplete than some random slashdot post. I trust a Ph D to at least THINK before making a judgment...I am not such an anti-intellectual anarchist snob that I can automatically assume that school is a tool of the system and all doctoral students are mindless sheep. But hey, maybe I just don't read enough Cat and Girl comics.
Re:I agree, except about the movies (Score:5, Insightful)
30-45 minutes isn't even in the same ballpark. That's longer than it would take me to walk to Blockbuster and get it on DVD. (Not to mention that you'll only get 700K/sec off a swarm system like BitTorrent, so you can't even start playing the unfinished movie like you can with true streaming or VOD.)
I'm sure legal movie downloads will eventually arrive, but with current technology Steve is correct that there is no instant gratification.
From the interview: (Score:3, Insightful)
No. If copyright dies, if patents die, if the protection of intellectual property is eroded, then people will stop investing. That hurts everyone. People need to have the incentive so that if they invest and succeed, they can make a fair profit. Bullshit. Look at the Open Source movement.
Re:Legal music downloading... (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, the way the music industry has always solved the lack of content problem is to release a few tracks from each album slowly, over a few weeks, then release some more album tracks from groups in the same genre.
That seems to be the antithesis of the instant gratification model that iTunes offers, which is essentially what the info age is all about. The entertainment industry in general seems to have a ton of people who are very good at doing what has been done, but very few (none at all?) visionaries.
Re:The protection doesn't work (Score:1, Insightful)
We're talking about DRM. The customers have to be able to play the music. That means they decrypt it.
So we're really talking about giving the hacker the encrypted message -and- the key.
Why isn't music like magazines? (Score:4, Insightful)
Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing I've noticed about iTMS is that I have purchased a lot of music that I actually like. Because I have to pay per song I'm pickier about what I download and I don't feel any preasure to download X number of songs in a month just to feel like I got my monies worth.
Subscription is great if the source has a lot of stuff you like and you don't have much of an established collection.
Promotion; skill (Score:2, Insightful)
buy from those who DO
The problem here is that those who do NOT have a lock on the media of promotion to those people inside moving vehicles and those people inside retail establishments. When was the last time you heard a commercial FM radio station play more than 5 percent of non-major-label music? Not every city has enough free space in its FM band to let the local community college start an FM radio station. (I live in one of the unlucky cities.)
or DO IT YOURSELF
Are you sure this is feasible? Though it's rather easy now for any songwriter to produce a rough recording of his song using Modplug Tracker, most people cannot afford formal training in songwriting.
Re:My experiance with d/l'ing music... (Score:5, Insightful)
The simple fact is that the P2P networks are so full of garbage as to make hem not worth the effort. And it's always been like that. Anyone who's tried them out can tell you that.
With a legal source you dion't really have to worry about the sabotage files, the misnamed files and the crappy encodings. And you can preview anything before you decide to buy it. Every track on iTunes can be previewed.
Re:Advances (Score:1, Insightful)
The only other reasons you'd need to depend on the record company is to acutally record, mix, market, and distribute your work. I bet technology is good and cheap enough now that good recording/mixing can be done by any small company or even a home-based business that invested in some good quality mics. And the marketing/distribution could be Apple's iTunes.
A new artist doesn't even have to burn CD's now, just hire a small company to record & mix, then sign up with Apple, and watch some money pour in! If the artist becomes very successful, they can invest more money into proper marketing and CD burning.
I think Apple's new distribution model somewhat competes with that of the RIAA and offers more efficient alternatives for new artists.
Re:The protection doesn't work (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:jobs lies about subscriptions (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Maybe... maybe not... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bad analogy (Score:2, Insightful)
Clear thinking Silicon Valley Capitalist.. Indeed (Score:2, Insightful)
Fair enough. But then, so is making oodles of profit, Mr. Billionaire.
Why not just charge cost? I'd probably buy music again (no, I don't steal it now) if it was just covering costs and not going to make rich people richer. Take it a step further, and work with music companies that only charge cost themselves.
Think Different: Convert Apple to a nonprofit corporation. Start a more substantial moral revolution.
Re:Ph.D. - piled higher, deeper (Score:4, Insightful)
How so? As dasmegabyte [slashdot.org] stated, a Ph.D. is a certification of sorts that demonstrates an ability to solve problems and communicate those problems to the community. Granted, lots of folks solve problems every day without that certification, and they might be very good at it, but if I were hiring a person to accomplish a particularly difficult job that required a certain degree of background knowledge, in many cases, someone with a Ph.D. would get the nod over someone who did not have that certification. All other things being equal of course.
It applies equally to anyone in any field. Hopefully we all understand that PhDs are not the only ones who are taught to work a problem until they have the answer.
I agree, but one has to admit that having a Ph.D. gives one a certain degree of credibility because they have a certification of sorts that says "I have identified a problem or question and either solved or investigated that problem to a degree that helps the rest of the world understand a little more than we did before." Furthermore, that degree demonstrates to me that this person can work hard, can solve problems and communicate. Ph.D.s are difficult to obtain because they require hard work and dedication. I value people that work hard, are independent and have a passion for what they do, and that includes folks with and without "degrees", but don't disparage someone because you might think you are an intellectual elitist. After all, the first thing groups like the nazis and the communists do is get rid of those who are independent thinkers because they represent a threat to the established way of thought and are harder to manipulate intellectually than those who are uneducated. We need folks who can think, so give props where due, eh?
Re:Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think that he does. If he did he wouldn't be using terms like 'thieves' to describe copyright violation.
Re:Legal music downloading... (Score:4, Insightful)
An "all you can eat buffet" works as a business concept, because everybody eats dinner once per evening, and they almost everybody eats 1 - 3 plate loads of food.
Most music consumers are broken into two groups: Those who only buy about one album a month or less, for whom the subscription model is not worth the money, and those who would be downloading music several hours each week, off whom you would not be making a profit.
So, the customers who you do get, you get at a loss, and nobody else will sign up for your service. Not really a situation that lends itself to profit, is it?
Re:Maybe... maybe not... (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course dots for a second in a 1 and a half hour film aren't too much of an annoyance, but a blip in a 3min music track would be very annoying.
Re:Bonus content (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:jobs lies about subscriptions (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The way to protect digital content (Score:5, Insightful)
People already want to. People want to see concerts so bad that they have no problem giving ticketmaster about 15 dollars for the priveledge of selling them a ticket with a face value of 40. For really popular concerts its not uncommon for people to pay hundreds of dollars for a single ticket. But you might say, concerts != albums. No, they don't, but it does say that there is money that people are willing to pay for music. I hate repeating myself, but I will.
Give us our money's worth you fuckers! For the price of a CD I _expect_ good album art, lyrics, the content in multiple digital formats. At least. And btw, those oldies that people are downloading and collecting in droves should be about 5 dollars. A music recording is just that, its not a press for money. There is no excuse for a Beatles album to cost 12 to 20 bucks. 1/2 of them are dead, and I don't feel like contributing to Michael Jackson's child molestation defense fund. I gave at the office. (For those that don't know MJ owns I think 1/2 of the beatles rights, he used to have 100%).
Music is a part of the human experience. It is something that defines us as a culture and has been ever since sticks were 1st beat on something and it made a sound. People want it, and will pay for it. People don't care or necessarily want musicians and execs in the music industry to make 7 and 8 figures a year.
Buying Music is Good Karma (Score:5, Insightful)
We all have a mental list of talented and creative people we wish success to -- singers or bands we think should be recognized, actors we'd like to see in a series or a leading role, authors whose books we eagerly recommend to others and sometimes buy extra copies just to give away. I've given people money to support hopeless film projects because I think they're talented, and bought books no one else will ever read because I want the writer to keep writing.
We used to have formal systems for patronage, which provided financial support and promotion to individuals with talent or potential. What modern systems have taken the place of patronage? Are they better or worse at promoting the people "we wish success to"?
How can technology be used to promote people 'worthy' of patronage? We have various forms of word of mouth (e.g. blogrolling, recommended reading lists, etc.) but that doesn't seem like much help when you see cream that isn't rising to the top.
There should be a word for this.
McMe
Re:Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:1, Insightful)
thief
n : a criminal who takes property belong to someone else with the intention of keeping it
Let's see...copyright violation...suggesting I have rights to the copies of a particular work...including digital format of same work...so I as copyright owner get to dictate the terms of how copies are made and distributed...
Darn it, hard as I try, I still can't figure out where the logic breaks down. Nope, I'm pretty much still convinced. Copyright violators are thieves.
Re:Bonus content (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Digital copying is ALWAYS possible. (Score:3, Insightful)
This, of course, makes Linux illegal. Unless all access to hard drives and similar hardware is enclosed in a closed-source, black-box interface layer. The effective end of open source."
I wouldn't worry about that juuust yet. I'm sure the RIAA would love to sacrifice general purpose computing at the alter of the almighty dollar, but any such measures wouldn't work, and wouldn't last for long.
First, it would take trillions of dollars to convert everyone to the new hardware, and it would take a long bloody time and everyone with a CD collection would be screaming bloody murder.
Second, it would put the US and American companies at a huge disadvantage. Innovation in the computer industry, proprietary or not, depends on kids fucking with computers in the basement. I'm sure big companies would support such restrictions, because it would be easier for them to get general purpose computer licenses, and they'd be able to dominate in the domestic market without worrying about upstarts, but they wouldn't be able to compete with the rest of the world because the general level of competence would be so low.
Third, it's just too fucking easy to smuggle stuff in, break protection, or build it oneself. 50 cent microcontrollers with like 5k gates are never going to get DRM, period. Hell, you'd have to put DRM in transistors because that's the only way you're going to make conversion between analog and digital too hard for anyone to bother. That would put the US and American companies at basically an impossible disadvantage, because the components would cost a fortune and they'd cost more to work with because there'd be more stuff to break.
Apply some context (Score:3, Insightful)
Now I know how upstanding people will get all fired up how doing something out of mere convenience is immoral. To which I will answer that this is precisely why you are not Steve Jobs. The man see the market for something, and is interested legitimizing the activity. Like it or not, downloading music was, in 1999, morally ambiguous. Steve Jobs acknowledges this, and seeks to make it legally possible in 2003 for this convenience, becuase quite clearly, this is the way forward for a music distribution system.
Does reasoning morally impede the ability to reason with foresight. This is holding you back from improving, or supporting the improvement of the state of the world to one where both the consumer and the producer of the content can be satisfied?
Re:Digital copying is ALWAYS possible. (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh please! Gimmie a break! You're so off the mark, it's not even funny. Record companies don't give a sh*t about such juvenile phallus-metrics like "who invented it first" - they're all about the bottom line. That's all Vivendi, Universal, et. al. care about. They couldn't care less who invented it. They only care whether or not it will increase their profits.
These mega-corporations didn't get as huge as they are by succumbing to such pitiful "Not-Invented-Here" ego-wars. They chase the money. That's all.
A better experience than unfettered capitalism? (Score:3, Insightful)
So: Tom Waits "Rain Dogs" = $19; Bob Dylan "Infidels" = $9; Philip Glass "Music in 12 Parts" (3 CDs) = $12? Where are they going with that bologna? Are the Boredoms or other experimental artists going to sell any of their extra-long tracks or one-track albums for just $1? Are artists going to be forced to ditch the 'album' experience and focus on hovering a saleable image over a bunch of disconnected songs?
Does commercialism or commercial break cause ADHD?
Another funny thing: a lot of the insistance that we pay to share data that appears to be somebody's music is based on the idea of 'intellectual property' and this unproven (untested) theory that 'intellectual property' and 'copyright' are required for the global economy to function.
Meanwhile, they still want to charge top dollar for recordings of compositions that are in the public domain. And, corporations pressure lawmakers to change the meaning of 'copyright' anyways for instance extending the lifetime of copyrights an additional few decades just because an expensive icon is about to become free.
Why the double standards? Could they be reasoning all of this over profits, not their purported ideals? It's possible. I wonder why we allow ourselves to continue to be duped by laws controlling information after seeing time and again that it does information no good.
I just think it's strange that such antisocial tendencies as 'competition' and 'private property' are being pushed on the back of such raging idealism when the idealists aren't even serious about ideology except as packaging and when said ideals are contradictory. The package is being bought despite these logical inconsistencies.
The carrot is their false ideologies and the stick is the truth that the world is ruled by violence and issues of MP3 piracy only matter to a civilization of very comfortable hogs.
Anyways its a fitting analogy; only in agricultural civilization could food become so scarce that a stuck carrot would be so tantalizing to so many.
Re:Steve Jobs, Capitalist Dog (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Advances (Score:3, Insightful)
jobs is telling these people in not as many words that their time is up. the notion of a record company is an outdated BS business model. the world is evolving without them.
RIAA, Denial, Money for nothin' (Score:5, Insightful)
RIAA doesn't want to provide "value". They want to get paid for doing something which is essentially worthless--the act of copying the song to the media and distributing it to us. Hello, RIAA--we've got that one under control. You're fired; your job has been replaced by a computer.
As long as RIAA insists on getting something for nothing, there will be no foldouts, posters, 12" full-color art prints, etc.
I agree that RIAA needs to go back to their old business model. (maybe without the abusive artist contracts). Find something they can produce in quantity for a $3-5 a pop. Something that costs an individual user $20 to produce as a one-off. And charge $10.00 for it.
But in order to do that, they're going to have to let go of the idea that they can just sit back and let the money roll in.
Those days are over. Denial is the issue here. RIAA is going to start having to work for their bread. It's going to take a few bloody noses in the financial department for them to realize that.
Funny thing is--this is exactly the issue that RIAA raises when pointing fingers. "You're stealing. You want something for nothing." Point your finger, RIAA. Now, look at your hand. There's 3 fingers pointing right back at you.
Re:Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, let me make this veeeerrrrrry simple for you:
It breaks down on word 4.
Now, count carefully, and you'll see that word is "takes".
"Duplicates" is not a synonym for "takes".
This is difficult, I know, but try hard to get your head around it since once you do the rest follows quite logically.
Re:The Copy (Score:1, Insightful)
But because it's easy and cheap for them to copy, it's also cheap and easy for everyone else to copy.
Re:Digital copying is ALWAYS possible. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Apple Vs. RIAA (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, the music industry makes no bones about the fact they are in it for the money, and nobody can blame them for that. But what gets me is how the industry is focused more on 'successes' (read: mega stars) then consistently signing good artists that would make them a consistent profit. Sign a dozen boy bands, or a dozen blonde bombshells, or a dozen hard core gangsta' rappers, or a dozen neo-metal bands . . . that all sound the same, spend millions on each of them, and then hope one of them sticks and puts up numbers like New Kids on the Block, J-lo, Ice-T or Korn.
It just seems that the recording industry is incapable of objectively evaluating quality in music, and instead is only able to evaluate potential 'success' insofar as an artist meets certain criteria in terms of marketability which has little to do with the actual music: Does the artist have the right look? Will the artist be able to give the impression of a certain 'lifestyle' key demographics are looking for? It's reached the point where the only difference between a country music star and a 'alternative' radio star is how long the artists hair is, and how much twang is added to the guitar track.
Music is--or at least should be--art. It's not wrong to make money from that art, but when your business model only works when art stops being a consideration and marketability becomes the only consideration, things start to fail. I almost get the impression that Jobs has a faint understanding of that; Stop throwing million dollar advances at countless sound-a-like bands and take the time to invest in unique individual artists, and perhaps the industry isn't doomed.
Re:Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, I've got it now...all of those folks who are copying music without paying for it actually have permission from the artists/music companies to have those unpaid for copies, thus excepting them from the need to pay for it like the rest of us.
Because you see, if I hold copyright on something, I get to say who can and cannot have a copy of my work, including whether you must have put money into my or someone else's pocket. And if you have a copy, and have not abided by my decision as copyright holder, you now have something that doesn't belong to you. At this point its semantics, but it still comes down to theft.
No such thing as a fickle customer (Score:3, Insightful)
Still, Jobs' bet on digital music is a hugely risky move in many ways, not only because powerhouses such as Dell and Wal-Mart are gunning for Apple (and Microsoft will be soon, as well), but because success may depend on how well Jobs, a forty-eight-year-old billionaire, is able to understand and respond to the fickle music-listening habits of eighteen-year-olds in their college dorms.
I don't think Apple has to worry about fickle music listeners, because there is no such thing. Tastss change to be sure but it's not like Apple is an sll-Ska store, for example.
What Apple has to do is very simple - not piss off the customers. That's it. If a store is appealing and simply does nothing bad to a customer, many many people will keep using that store as long as they do nothing to drive them away. People are more disposed to change through dissatisfaction than being drawn elsewhere.
Re:Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:2, Insightful)
We all know that it's theft. You simply don't like the word because you can't hide from what it says about what you are doing, so you sanitize it away until you are comfortable.
Re:Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:2, Insightful)
Call it whatever you want. It doesn't change the fact that if you're downloading music without permission of the copyright holder, you're a thief.
Re:Steve Jobs Gets It. - NOT! (Score:2, Insightful)
I have 300 cd's. Not an uncommon number for a music afficianado. A co-worker of mine owns twice as much and his Music library will amount to 40-50 gigs.
iPods are not for the casual pop consumer who owns 50 cd's. Compare this to the collector who has 50 Rolling Stones cd's, and the entire pink floyd discography.
Hell I probably have more NIN material than most people have of any music.
Re:Dodging some questions (Score:3, Insightful)
Intelligent hardware-based digital protection (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Maybe... maybe not... (Score:3, Insightful)
You see, people are accustomed to having their visual feed interrupted for short times. We blink, we turn our heads, a man crosses in front- whatever the cause, small visual breaks don't bother us. Hollywood (mostly in years past) would happily release a movie with a dropped frame or a hair on the corner of the screen, knowing that it won't bother the audience enough to hurt sales.
But perceptual reaction to modified sounds are different. Humans never stop hearing. They don't go deaf for 2 seconds to refresh the ears; a hand in front of your head doesn't block sound. Sound is something that normally will never be disturbed- and if it is, we're bothered. So the consumer's threshold for audio modification is much lower than for visual.
Re:Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:3, Insightful)
Words matter.
Give him credit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bargain bin; Record Rental Amendment (Score:4, Insightful)
CDS ARE CHEAP.
Hold on a second. When CDs came out they were twice as expensive as LPs. Labels said this was due to their limited manufacturing ability at the time (it was limited). Flash forward to when CD manufacturing costs plummetted. Where was the corresponding plummet in price? There was none, the labels enjoyed the fat profit of their inflated price. The labels made their bed with their own greed and now they get to lay in it.
What other form of entertainment even comes close to offering this much bang-for-the-buck?
Right now I can walk down the street and purchase "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", a three-hour movie, remastered and fully restored, for ten bucks. I can then walk over to the music aisle and get an old, not remastered CD of the soundtrack (about 30 minutes of music) for eleven bucks.
In conclusion:
Re:Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:3, Insightful)
From a legal standpoint, I think I am going to have to agree here (countering my previous point) that what is happening is not technically theft (unless I and the folks who have convinced me are missing important facts).
And it is, as has been pointed out, copyright violation. Still and all, it is a wrong thing. I won't argue that the folks who corrected me are saying it's right (though perhaps they hold that view).
But I will say that you don't have the right to grab those copies. Only the copyright holder or their designee can make that choice of who is allowed to make copies and under what guidelines (barring, of course, fair use dictums, but fair use does not include sharing with a few thousand of your closest friends).
What does it mean to be social? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you don't like the movie-going experience, blame the moviegoers.
-Graham
Re:Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:4, Insightful)
For example: My mother knows many traditional folk songs of her particular ethnicity that were handed down at least from her grandmother's generation. Recently (late 1970s) somebody collected these songs and published them in a book. The rights to the book "arrangements" are now being vigorously defended by the copyright "owner" to the point that the larger church and social groups now refuse to sing them at campfires.
Who's stealing from whom?
The reality of the situation is that you cannot simultaneously expect total ownership and widespread distribution. Artists have always struggled with this: At what point do you let go and allow your art to become part of the world? But a painter who sells a picture can't expect to come into your house and verify that you haven't sketched a copy of it.
The long and the short of it is, if we allow copyright interests to become absolute, we destroy the engine that runs our culture. All art is fundamentally a form of copying in one way or another, because no man is an island.
These are important eighteenth-century issues. By the nineteenth century they were for all purposes solved to everyone's satisfaction. It's really amazing how far we've regressed.
-Graham
Re:Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe I am... but there's something much different about that and taking your car so you can't use it any more.
We can now duplicate and transport information trivially. The times they are a changing and we're all going to have to update our thinking one way or the other.
Cheers.
Re:Bonus content (Score:2, Insightful)
You must not be downloading the same mp3s I've tried. I think Jobs pretty well covered it when he said, "you finally download a song, and four seconds are cut off, because it was encoded by a ten-year-old". That's what most of what I've seen on the net sounds like -it was encoded by a ten-year-old.
Re:Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:4, Insightful)
Is someone that trespasses on your property a "thief"? If no why not and in what way does your vague definition not apply? They are after all "stealing" your right to not have people come onto your property.
Is someone that slanders you a "thief"? If no why not and in what way does your vague definition not apply? They are after all "stealing" your good reputation.
Is someone that rapes you a "thief"? If no why not and in what way does your vague definition not apply? They are after all "stealing" your viture or perhaps even virginity.
Is someone who speeds on the highways a "thief"? If so why not and in what way does your vague definition not apply? The are after all "stealing" your right to safe passage on the nations highways.
Is someone that doesn't agree to have unprotect farm sex with you a "thief"? If so why not and in what way does your vague definition not apply? They are after all "stealing" your right to "the pursuit of happiness".
The problem with you "copyright violation" == "thievery" people is that you either willingly or unwillingly help the english language to become less precise in order to bolster a particular socioeconomic interest group. You're a tool and a fool. Call a spade a spade. Argue with the accepted legal terms rather than using smear tactics. I might agree that copyright violations should be illegal and punished, but I'll call a dishonest tactic when I see one.
Insightful? Give me a break. (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't download music, so I don't need any excuses. Copyright infringment is not theft, that's why it's called "copyright infringement" and not "theft". I'm not sure how much clearer it can be made. The other posters arguments were very plain. It seems you are the one who is in denial here, because you can't, for whatever reason, accept that these crimes are not the same thing. Your empty arguments just add to the FUD.
Re:The way to protect digital content (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's just it, they are so only because we have tried to shoehorn them into a legal system built for physical property. Copyright is not a natural right, it is one that is created by the government. No one can deny that physical property is very different from "intellectual property," (which is a horrible term). Laws that work for a physical object do not directly translate into something as etheral as an idea. Because of that, we've tried to come up with a system that treats ideas as different than physical property, that system being copyright, patent, and to some degree trademark.
There is a difference between theft of a physical property, and copyright infringement. I am being pedantic about that because it matters. It is an easy heuristic to simplify copyright infringement = theft, but doing so ignores the issues specific to the former. I think everyone would benefit from a better understanding of the system, and, with any luck, find a more equitable way of dealing with it.
It seems odd that stealing a CD is a minor crime, while one instance of copyright infringement can be a $150,000 fine. If you want to say copyright infringement = theft, then each CD you steal form the local wherehouse music should net you ~ $1.5 million (assuming 10 songs per cd) fine.
-Ted
Re:bonus (Score:2, Insightful)
Arthur C Clarke wrote.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Wrong again, RIAA!! HA!
language abused once again.... (Score:4, Insightful)
2) the fact that you don't like something or feel that it should be more disliked that it currently is does not justify intentional obfuscation. Copyright infringement is not theft, both in the eyes of the law (previous SC decisions and the Constitution) and morally. It is wrong and prosecutable, but nonequivalent. (considering the ransom the RIAA is attempting to extract for copyright infringement versus the potential civil and criminal penalties for the theft of physical CDs, the RIAA doesn't view theft and copyright infringement them as identical, either.)
I could call copyright infringement "mass murder" but that commits two sins at once. One, a word with a precise legal meaning is intentionally confused with another - thus if repeated, neither word means what it did before. Speakers can't be sure what either term means, and so both terms lose the ability to express ideas that is their purpose. Two, the moral implications of mass murder are diluted by conflating it with copyright infringement; legitimate uses of the term lose their moral force in speech where they should possess such force.
Eggs are not chickens, no matter what I call them. Theft and copyright infringement are legal terms with independent legal realities, like a chicken and an egg. Choosing to call one the other doesn't prove that they are the same, only that the speaker either doesn't know or doesn't care about the law. The fact that copyright infringement is wrong and that the potential consequences are bad and likely harmful does not change its legal status.
3) copyright entitles both the users (via rights codified in law or requiring specific denial in law) and the providers. If I purchase a DRM CD, the rights given to me by copyright law are infringed - the terms of the copyrights are violated. In both cases, the users and the artist are deprived of the license to use a work as they see fit, rights in both cases given by law. Respect for copyrights requires that the people whose use them for profit should start by respecting them themselves. Linguisitic legerdemain or name-calling will not change reality - when the industries dispect their customers and the law that protects them while emphasizing and demonizing violations of the law by others and aggrandizing its defense of their actions, people will return the dispect in kind.
Copyright infringement is neither good in and of itself nor a good way of achieving the respect of copyright owners for the rights of their users, but according a moral status (theft) to it which the people who use copyrights are unwilling to accord it themselves (by altering copyright limitations with DRM and other schemes to limit legally given rights to use) is intellectually dishonest and ultimately counterproductive to the rights you hope to preserve.
Re:Steve Jobs Gets It. (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, that's one way of looking at it. Another is that theft is taking something you don't have permission or legal rights to. You made a copy, and now you have something you have no right to possess without paying the copyright owner. That you copied it, as opposed to taken the original, is immaterial. The act, and the end result, have no legal sanction.
Re: Music Industry (Score:4, Insightful)
The argument holds up, if we ignore one gigantic, gargantuan, glaring fact: the music industry has a monopoly.
So, is it that they find, like so many diamonds in the rough, the better acts, or would the more accurate portrayal be that they, being the only means of distribution, exploit the best talent? The monopoly makes the answer impossible to determine, since there is no free market going on in music.
The same is true of the moral argument around file sharing. People who protect the current system seem to forget that they're protecting an arguably illegal cartel that inarguably price-gouges them. That the music industry has a monopoly and abuses it, again, clouds the whole issue.
Underneath the clouds, I think the real problem the music industry faces is life without a monopoly. Their abuse of the consumer has caused an alternative means of distribution to crop up that seems impervious to the laws that the industry has, in the past, been able to bend to its will. They had a unique thing - a guarantee of revenue. What a business! But now it's evaporating, and they'll have to actually compete for their food, like the rest of us.
Jobs probably doesn't have it wrong; he's just politicing. He has to, now that he's in bed with the music guys.