Speaker: ACTA: Don't sell us down the river
526 Responses
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Books currently don't seem to be on the path much at all
Largely because they've not been digitised until very recently, and there's still the BS format war going on with Kindle and every-other-man-and-his-dog's proprietary formats. Once there's a standardised format things will start to change. Google Books also alters the picture significantly, but is still too new for people to have worked out the hows and whys.
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People like reading and owning books, made from dead tree and obtainable from all good book shops. Authors like it that people like that.
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People like reading and owning books, made from dead tree and obtainable from all good book shops. Authors like it that people like that.
Absolutely true, but also not in any way certain to remain absolutely true. It would be an enormous shame if the same mistakes of the movie and music industries were made by the book industry, but we are, sadly, seeing exactly those same mistakes being made with the Kindle. That bodes poorly for the future, especially since with the Kindle we're seeing attempts to restrict e-books to being a lesser object than a real book. Real books cost a lot of money to produce, e-books cost a fraction of a cent. Electronic paper is well on the way to being a reality, allowing the traditional appearance of the printed word with the convenience of digital transmission. Publishers would do well to consider a future where that is how books are consumed, instead of trying to fight against the shifting reality.
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What mistakes did the movie and music industries make? The shifting reality they are fighting against is one where people with broadband expect to be able to download movies and music without paying for them, yet still expect the industries to continue producing the product. If the hospitality industry were run on the same lines - if people could wander into pubs and take whatever drinks they wanted without paying - it would all be over by Christmas.
And what mistakes is the book industry making? E-books may well cost a fraction of a cent if they are out of copyright and the text is readily available, but will cost more if royalties and editing costs are involved, as well as those of finding and marketing new authors. Why would the industry bother if some kid in Norway is going to find a way of hacking the technology to get the books for nothing?
Besides, books are more than just texts. They are objects, with high production values that e-books cannot emulate. Reading a book is also a particular kind of experience, that is different from reading on a screen.
I am reading the Norton Critical Edition of Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier. It comes in paperback, with the text, illustrations of the locations in the novel, contemporary reviews and critical essays. I am also using a Project Gutenberg transcription to search for key words, for my academic work. The book is much superior to the electronic text, but the electronic text is much easier to use for searching. So I search online and read at leisure. The experience of reading online is not only less pleasant, but the bare text is less informative than the published book.
I think many advocates of e-books are not book lovers, and they make the mistake of thinking of books as mere data.
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we are talking about PIRACY
No, "piracy" is the violent robbery of ships at sea, as practiced by various Somalis. You are discussing copyright infringement.
The problem the content creation industry has is that they have a business model based on financing the creation of very expensive works through mass reproduction of those works. This worked while such reproduction was difficult and unauthorised copies were hard to find or of poor quality.
Technology has changed, and that business model doesn't work.
So now, what (some) content owners are demanding is that governments defend their business model, by, inter alia: spying on people, reversing burdens of proof, banning computer software, etc.
Why are those content makers entitled to have govenment attack their citizens liberty in this way?
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What mistakes did the movie and music industries make?
Fighting their customers. Suing their customers, in the case of the music industry. Refusing to release product that consumers want in the absence of supposedly-perfect protection against duplication in the case of the movie industry. They force people into downloading because they fail to deliver what is being sought.
Again and again you have demonstrated an unwillingness to believe that people will pay for products delivered digitally. I even presented you with an unequivocal example - iTunes - and still you persist with language and positions that predicate on the untenable premise of the digital consumer being only after products that are free. That is not the case. They take what is free because it's the only thing going, not because they don't want to pay. The controlling industries won't give people what they desire, so the consumer is forced to pursue other avenues. Any diminution of illicit downloading of music has zero to do with the lawsuits and everything to do with easy availability, at a reasonable price, of digitally-delivered music in convenient formats. That is what I mean by "the mistakes of the movie and music industries" - the attempt to achieve absolute control, rather than accepting that such control cannot be achieved and, instead, that it is better to take some revenue from an imperfect product than no revenue from a non-existent one. If people are already trading your works in digital form, is it not better to offer them something for which you can get money, even if it's not much money, than to throw your toys and not participate at all?
E-books may well cost a fraction of a cent if they are out of copyright and the text is readily available
No, in every case the production of an e-book costs a fraction of a cent. The content is expensive, the "book" is cheap.
And look up "electronic paper" before you start waffling on about the joys of a tangible object. It's not an e-book in the style of Kindle, but rather a paper substitute that displays whatever is required. If its apparent potential is realised, one minute the book (paperback or hardback, you decide) you're holding is the collected, annotated works of Shakespeare, the next it's Bronte, then Freud, and now it's from the top of the New York Times' latest best-seller list. Looks like a book, reads like a book, even feels pretty much like a book, but with all the benefits of digital distribution.
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I think many advocates of e-books are not book lovers, and they make the mistake of thinking of books as mere data.
Yes, a book is an object but really what you or I or anybody else care for are the words in it. Change the font or the cover of my copy of Moby Dick, it ain't going to affect my appreciation of the novel all that much. Note too how my Penguin Classics copy of Moby Dick is already quite a different object from the paperback that was published in Melville's day.
Now if electronically we were somehow able to replicate certain key aspects of the book-as-object - portability, ease on the eye, resolution of the page, opacity of the surface - I think you'll find that people are going to adopt this new encoding medium very quickly, all the more so since it allows to navigate the text in ways that a print book cannot achieve. It's going to be a shift comparable to the iPod for music, you mark my words. And I think we aren't remotely prepared to absorb its repercussions.
(I saw my first Kindle - a clone, actually - when I was in Italy a couple of months ago and it's a very slick thing indeed. Nothing whatsoever to do with reading a project gutenberg file on your computer.)
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If its apparent potential is realised, one minute the book (paperback or hardback, you decide) you're holding is the collected, annotated works of Shakespeare, the next it's Bronte, then Freud, and now it's from the top of the New York Times' latest best-seller list. Looks like a book, reads like a book, even feels pretty much like a book, but with all the benefits of digital distribution.
In The Diamond Age Neal Stephenson does a very good job of imagining what the electronic book of the future might look like. And it's still most decidedly an object.
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@Paul: You're making 2 mistakes in regards to digital distribution.
First off, you assume that a consumer isn't willing to pay. Many consumers would be quite happy to pay a low fee for easy access to media (music, movies, etc), and many often do with systems like the iTunes Store and NetFlix.
Secondly, you assume that media organisations can't make money from digital distribution. Media organisations have been crying foul for years when a new competing technology comes along. There's sheet music, the gramophone (record player), VHS, cassette tape, CD, DVD, etc. Each one has been labeled as an immoral technology who's only purpose in life is to destroy the fundamental right of media companies to make money. Look where the media companies are now? DVDs make more money than ticket sales!
The problem media companies have is thinking that they can control consumer demand for access to media thru whatever means they think is fair. They embrace cutting costs, but hate to pass those on to the consumer. They provide a crap product then wonder why consumers look elsewhere!
Let me ask: do you think it's fair to cut the wireless internet access for a whole town because one person downloaded a movie via it? The MPAA thought so!
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/12/mpaa-shuts-down-enti.htmlIf the media companies spent the money they've "invested" in to DRM, PR, court cases & lobbying to provide products for consumers, then we'd have an amazing system that would be very lucrative. You are right that people like physical copies. But I won't spent $8 for a CD single when the whole album costs $15 on special. While some media is perfectly consumable in a purely digital form, many other forms can be quite profitable. Look at NIN - gave away their album as MP3s, then sold a bunch of CDs and box sets. Value add, my friend, value add.
Sell the consumer what they want & they will buy it. Sell them what you THINK they want, and they'll go find what they really want elsewhere.
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In The Diamond Age Neal Stephenson does a very good job of imagining what the electronic book of the future might look like. And it's still most decidedly an object.
Yes, but even a Kindle is still an object. What a Kindle most decidedly is not is vaguely book-like. That is the objection of Paul and Islander, and even myself to quite some degree. I like books. It will take the creation of something that is very much like what I just described before I would switch away from dead tree and ink, but such a creation is well inside the boundaries of science fact based on current technology.
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Yes, but even a Kindle is still an object. What a Kindle most decidedly is not is vaguely book-like. That is the objection of Paul and Islander, and even myself to quite some degree. I like books.
I think that's the fundamental thing that most media companies miss. It's the experience that consumers are buying, not the physical item specifically.
What I mean by that is that I can go and buy a DVD for $30 which a few extras that I want to see, or I can spend $50 and get it in a steel case with a bonus disc. I'm getting the same product, but paying more for the experience!
I can buy a hardcover book, or a paperback. Paperback might be 1/2 the price, yet still the same experience as the hardcover.
I can buy a CD with a few lame pics, or download the MP3s I like off iTunes. iTunes allows me to choose the songs I like without the crappy "fluff" or the lame sleeve. Or I might pay $25 for a CD with a cool sleeve (10,000 Days is an example).
Aside: why can I pay $30 for a new release DVD of a 2hr move that cost 10's of millions (at least) to make, yet pay $20-25 for a new release 60min CD that may have cost a few hundred thousand?
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Yes, but even a Kindle is still an object. What a Kindle most decidedly is not is vaguely book-like.
I found it quite book-lilke actually. Certainly more than I expected. The page surface was very impressive.
My mother has a house full of books, but her eyesight has deteriorated to the point that she can't read most of them anymore. If she could just increase the size of the font it would be quite literally a new lease on life.
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I think Stephenson missed the obvious in Diamond Age once you can assemble anything from atoms up the cost of things is the cost of the energy required - physical objects in the real world become as easy to copy as things like music or movies - the argument we're having here is just the beginning our kids will be having this argument about physical objects - "But I designed that chair/DVD/house/painting/$20note - how dare you make a copy ...."
2000 years ago there was no copyright, if you wanted to copy a book you went down to the forum and there was guy with educated slaves who would get it done for you. 1000 years ago there was no copyright, traveling minstrels were the publishing companies of the day - copyright for books showed up to help the publishers when the printing press was created - music wasn't really copyrighted until it was written down and published - in victorian times when the middle class started to buy pianos - most of our modern copyright system is less than 150 years old
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the argument we're having here is just the beginning our kids will be having this argument about physical objects
And then we get into a whole new can of worms. One of the reasons that I get royally peeved with the downloading==theft argument is that theft, as defined in law, requires that someone be deprived of possession of their property. If I download a copy of a song, who have I deprived of property? We can get into the whole debate about notional lost revenue, but that's incredibly arguable and really detracts from the point that you still have your bits that assemble to make the song, and I also have some other bits that assemble to make the same song. We both have the song; nobody has been deprived of a song. This is as opposed to, say, my neighbour's car, which the law says can be stolen, because if I have my neighbour's car, my neighbour obviously doesn't.
Once you can copy physical property, everything changes. The law cannot cope with that notion as it is - that you can steal electricity required special provision in the law, because it is not governed by the physical laws of tangibles - never mind in a future when everything can be duplicated. Criminal law doesn't cover it, and shouldn't. Copyright law doesn't cover it, and can't without introducing some really nasty hooks. Trademark law kinda covers it, sorta, but only if you're selling duplicates of a design that's trademarked, like a Lamborghini. Patent law will doubtless cover the technology for creating duplicates, but that's not the same thing and, in any case, a patent only lasts for 17 years.We can't even deal reasonably and civilly with duplicating songs that retail for a buck. How will society cope with duplication of cars and houses and yachts that sell for millions?
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And then we get into a whole new can of worms. One of the reasons that I get royally peeved with the downloading==theft argument is that theft, as defined in law, requires that someone be deprived of possession of their property. If I download a copy of a song, who have I deprived of property?
The capitalist credo notwithstanding, your wealth is your work. Take away somebody's work, you've done a damage far more irreparable than if you had deprived them of property (which, after all, can always be replaced).
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Gio, what has been taken? The work is still theirs, still intact, still available for sale. Copyright as it exists now is designed for a system revolving around scarcity. What we have now turns that entirely on its head, because it is entirely possible for effectively limitless numbers of people to have perfect copies of the same song at a near-zero marginal cost. Rules of scarcity do not apply, and trying to shoehorn the old model of copyright into the new reality of digital isn't working out terribly well.
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Also, thinking about it, copyright as it is now, with authors and musicians as mere serfs of the gatekeepers, is a far worse evil than downloading. Forced to turn their work over to corporations, denied the right to utilise it on their own terms.
So, you were saying? -
Gio, what has been taken? The work is still theirs, still intact, still available for sale.
If there is a channel that enables you to take somebody's work for free, then no, it's no longer accurate to say that it's available for sale. And what's happened is theft, of a worse kind in fact than the mere theft of money or objects.
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If there is a channel that enables you to take somebody's work for free, then no, it's no longer accurate to say that it's available for sale.
Except that the reality of the current world says that this is far, far too simplistic a viewpoint. After all, iTunes makes money, and lots of it, CDs are still sold, but downloading for free is still very viable. That's reality, and that makes for a rather murkier picture than the one you're painting.
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That's reality, and that makes for a rather murkier picture than the one you're painting.
Hey, you're the "adapt or die" guy. You don't get to tell people they're being too simplistic.
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Gio, what has been taken? The work is still theirs, still intact, still available for sale. Copyright as it exists now is designed for a system revolving around scarcity. What we have now turns that entirely on its head, because it is entirely possible for effectively limitless numbers of people to have perfect copies of the same song at a near-zero marginal cost. Rules of scarcity do not apply, and trying to shoehorn the old model of copyright into the new reality of digital isn't working out terribly well.
This by the way was why I was so utterly anal about `market' before; it really helps when you start doing economics to know what you're talking about. Almost every single statement of fact in that quote is false.
Copyright is not a system revolving around scarcity, or at least not the way you mean it. Think: when did copyright in books turn up? About the same time the marginal cost of book production plummeted.
In fact copyright is premised on the observation that the marginal costs of distribution may be next to zero*. It is a fundamental part of the economic justification for copyright. What has changed is the difficulty of preventing piracy. That's the difference, not anything about marginal costs and scarcity.
* And it isn't really the marginal costs that matter, it's the fixed costs. See lighthouses.
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Hey, you're the "adapt or die" guy. You don't get to tell people they're being too simplistic.
Why not? I don't say the issues are simple, I say there's a simple solution. Your picture is of simple issues, when I can point to unquestionable evidence that counters your argument. Can you point to any evidence to counter my "adapt or die" position? Of course you can't, because there's no evidence to support or deny any solution. There's only guesswork, modelling, and speculation. My solution is simple to implement, and simple to monitor: leave the media industries with the tools they have, allow technology to develop and spread unhindered, and foster new solutions by not caving in to media interests every time they feel they're not getting their way.
History says that if you leave them alone, technological changes will lead to things unimagined at the time of invention. 30 years ago, you'd have been locked up if you'd tried to suggest that little plastic disks with a silver coating would be the major source of income for movie studios. If the studios had had their way, that reality would likely not have come to pass. Thankfully Vallenti's hysteria was ignored, the VCR flourished, and now we have Blu-Ray. What might we miss out on if we ignore history and instead grant the media moguls that which they now seek?
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Why not? I don't say the issues are simple, I say there's a simple solution. Your picture is of simple issues, when I can point to unquestionable evidence that counters your argument. Can you point to any evidence to counter my "adapt or die" position?
You make it sound like yours is not an ideological position, but it is. Your rather shrill contention that downloading somebody's music for free isn't a form of theft proves it very conclusively. This ideology worries me just about as much as its opposite, which you cartoonishly identify with evil "media moguls". We need to have a very serious debate about how society and consumers should reward artists, so that we can have a say in the new world order that is around the corner, and not just wait and see what happens, letting technology and the free markets lay an industry to waste in the process.
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Gio, I've never claimed that my position isn't ideological. Of course it is. I invoke the free market, for goodness sake, how can it be anything but ideological?
I try not to get into the downloading/theft debate, because nobody's position ever changes. It's a waste of time going there. I only raised it because it segued into what the future holds.letting technology and the free markets lay an industry to waste
And as I asked Kyle, what's good and what's bad? If more people are making a living income, but those who're currently making heaps start making less, is that a net good or a net bad? Because that's what is being seen in music at present. More artists are getting more exposure and making money from what they love doing. The big names are making less, certainly, but those at the bottom are making more. Do we define good as merely what's good for those who've made it to the top? Or do we define it as bringing depth and width to the pool of artists who can live on the income they get from being artists?
Technology is laying waste to some parts of the music industry, but other parts are flourishing. Live music is as vibrant as ever (making exceptions for the economic climate diminishing disposable income, but even that hasn't had much impact from what I've read), and there are lots of stories out there of artists who are making money from performing off the back of the exposure they get from the internet. Who gets to define the terms of the debate? Right now, in the places that matter it's very one-sided. That's why we've got this thread, and all the other threads on PAS that have are or have become discussions of the rights and wrongs of copyright. -
And as I asked Kyle, what's good and what's bad? If more people are making a living income, but those who're currently making heaps start making less, is that a net good or a net bad? Because that's what is being seen in music at present. More artists are getting more exposure and making money from what they love doing. The big names are making less, certainly, but those at the bottom are making more. Do we define good as merely what's good for those who've made it to the top? Or do we define it as bringing depth and width to the pool of artists who can live on the income they get from being artists?
See, now you're talking, but in fact it makes no difference if all you're prepared to do is wait for the game to play itself out and see if in fact the good outweighs the bad. We need to be involved and insist that value judgments like the ones you just proposed be made every step of the way, including whether it is right - and not just inevitable - that music films and books should be downloaded for free, or that the key functions of distribution of the content should be transfered wholesale from the publishers that used to move the plastic discs to the telcos that move the digital bits.
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