Posts by Matthew Poole
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Yes, and in fact many creatives will retain their moral rights as a matter of course
Moral rights cannot be assigned, so this is something of a non-point. They vest in the creator, end of story.
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So, having established that, I take it we are now in agreement that film-makers may need some kind of protection? Like, let's say finding ways to limit 'downloaders'.
No, we're definitely not in agreement. I honestly do not believe that there is any way to limit non-paying consumption of digital materials without unduly impinging on the use of the internet by the general public. I say this as someone who has very strong feelings about civil liberties, and also has over a decade of experience doing various things with IP-based networks that provide content to and connections for the internet. Without trampling on liberties, or trashing the openness that has allowed the internet to flourish into its current form, trying to restrict downloading is a lost cause.
that doesn't mean we ought to try and keep the numbers down as much as possible.
What has worked for the music industry in trying to reverse the tide of downloading has been the rise of services that are convenient, offer value-for-money, and have a good selection. Why can this not work for the movie industry? Obviously the price point will be different (compare DVDs to CDs), but these fundamentals ought to hold true across types of product. A no-copy solution is probably never going to happen, because of the nature of playing back digital media. Until the movie industry accepts that, it will never position itself to offer a product that meets the convenience test. Locking things away in layer after layer of digital restrictions management just pisses consumers off. We've already seen plenty of cases of people with Windows-based computers being unable to play Blu-Ray disks. Way to win friends and influence customers.
You and I are approaching this from completely divergent positions. You believe that it's possible to limit downloading, and that this should be achieved before the movie industry plays ball with digitally-delivered content. I believe that it's fundamentally impossible to limit downloading without doing "bad things"[tm] to civil liberties and/or the internet generally, and don't consider those things to be a worthy trade-off.
Also, the movie industry does have the music equivalent of gigs: cinemas. Once upon a time, cinemas were king of income streams. Movies had to make it on the big screen, because there was no other way to make money. VCR and DVD changed that, and now we're being told that this situation must continue and cannot be reversed. Musicians are starting to return to live performing as the way they make money, with CDs as a side issue. Why can the movie industry not do the same thing? Merchandising ain't going away either, and it's going to be a long time before that changes.
Even if I accept your proposition that downloading can and should be curtailed, I do not accept that it is the duty of the law to preserve given levels of profitability for the major studios.
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Copyright is not a form of serfdom but the means by which artists can protect their productions and earn income from them.
You haven't been paying much attention to what actually happens with copyright, have you? Calling it serfdom isn't too far from the truth, especially in the work-for-hire category (which is where lyricists and composers tend to fall).
Please forgive my confusion. You keep on saying "downloading for free", and nothing more, leading me to believe that your entire position was that there is nobody willing to pay for goods online. Now that we've established that you do, actually, accept that people will pay for downloads, can we please move on to discussing how to make that model work instead of harping on about the downloaders*. Downloaders won't go away, no matter how much people try. That genie is out of the bottle, and cannot be returned. Better to figure out how to entice people to buy instead of download than to fight the losing battle of winding back the clock.
* What you would call pirates.
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Gio, it's as close to a real free market for artistic works as has been seen within our economic system. I know it's not much use as an indicator of what would happen if creativity were delivered up onto the slab of the free market, but it's all we have.
The biggest problem with digital is the payment modality. In the real world, payment is a well-known, thoroughly-considered system. The internet analogues of these are still being developed, complicated by currency conversion and all those other things that attend with a borderless economy in a world without a unified currency.
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But Paul, that is the entire extent of your position: That things can be downloaded for free, thus there is no paying market for those goods. That's crap, and I've proved it. So repeating, incessantly, "downloading for free", contributes nothing and ignores the evidence that people will pay for downloads provided that they are convenient, offer value-for-money, and are what the consumer wants. When it's $2/song to download, you can only play it on a Digital Nobodies 3000, and you have a selection that spans the range from Billy Ray Cyrus to NKOTB, it's not going to be a successful, high-demand service. That doesn't mean there's no market for paid music downloads, it just means that there's no market for over-priced, inconvenient downloads of crap music (no offence intended to Billy Ray or NKOTB fans).
iTunes makes lots of money. Billions of songs sold at 99c per is a veritable money tree. You cannot tell me that people won't pay for digital music when they can get it for free.
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Except you don't even understand your own ideology; there is no free market in fixed expressions of ideas without the continual intervention of the state. We can't leave it `up to the free-market' because the free-market can be proven, and by entirely orthodox neo-classicist tools alone, to be unable to provide these things, unless the state intervenes constantly and drastically.
huh? How can it be a free market if the state must intervene "constantly and drastically"? That speaks to a very un-free market, both by logic and by economic definition.
We have no idea if there would be a proper free market for expression of ideas, because no such market has existed within modern economic principles. Copyright predates Smith. Though, thinking about it, one could argue that fine art auctions demonstrate that there absolutely is a perfectly-functioning free market in expression of ideas. Moreover, it is one that does not rely on copyright to enforce value, because all of the works of the old masters were outside any copyright term limits before the idea of copyright even existed. -
Peter, once again, I don't know what to do about movies. How many times must I repeat the same message before it gets through to you? I have said that I know the costs of production are vastly different to music. You haven't made a single point that I have not accepted as fact when it comes to music not being equivalent to movies. Not one.
Also, again, the studios are having the same issue as the labels: unwillingness to accept anything less than a perfect solution to copying before they will enter the game. Which attempts at online distribution are you thinking of when you say they're "in real trouble... due to piracy"? Can you demonstrate that it's "piracy" (I hate that word, for the same reason Rich does), and not, say, consumers finding the offering underwhelming? Overpriced, afflicted with so much protection that it's inconvenient to use, and/or offering only a limited selection?
If you looked at the attempts of the music labels to enter the digital music market, you would've said that there was no way it could possibly fly. You probably would've blamed it on downloaders, too. Then iTunes came along, and eMusic, and totally blew that excuse away. eMusic had no copy protection whatsoever, and iTunes had stuff that was trivial to circumvent. Their pricing was good. Their selection was better than anything the labels could manage (at least in part because the labels weren't collaborating to offer anything from outside their own houses). They met the criteria for a successful digital offering: convenient, value-for-money, and with real depth to the selection, and they're both actually, objectively successful.Out of curiosity though, is there anywhere else you favor a purely unregulated market, or just in this one instance?
I'm against unregulated markets in general, yes. In this case, though, all the regulation is being passed in favour of one party and that is my objection. Consumers are being ignored, despite the fact that they are just as essential to a properly-functioning market as producers. If the regulation recognised that it's supposed to be an equal relationship, I would be less concerned. It's such an unbalanced situation, and the producers are still not happy, that I can only see leaving it to market forces as a solution.
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the customer has ceased to acquire in a way that provides quite the cash flow that recording giants were used to in years earlier
Indeed. No more CD singles, no more CD albums. Pick-and-mix off iTunes. No more paying $25 to get three good tracks from the 15 on a CD, the rest worthless except as filler. That is consumers speaking loudly, and clearly, as to how they wish to consume their music. The choice has mostly been made to give them what they wish, but it was not a choice made willingly and it is still a choice that does not sit easily with the major labels. Until they suck it up and deal with the fact that the world has changed, they will never really be open to exploring the possibilities that may come along in the future.
I bet the kids are excited this week..Bon Jovi are number one in the US
I bet the kids would be horrified to realise that Bon Jovi was last number one in the US before they were conceived :P
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including whether it is right - and not just inevitable - that music films and books should be downloaded for free
What the hell is with you, and Paul, and your incessant repetition of the "downloaded for free" mantra? If you want this debate, you need to accept that people can, will, and do pay to get media off the internet. If iTunes was an abject failure, and eMusic had folded, I might be prepared to accept arguments that people don't want to pay when they can get it for free. However, we have real, solid evidence that shoots that proposition all to hell.
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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.