secretwhistle

Largest social network in the Western world. It's been in all the papers.

"Turned?"

This is an awesome bit of writing. Thanks (sincerely) for posting this here.

Came back to add this, seeing as you're not interested in responding.

I don't really care if you don't like Techdirt, and by extension, the person who wrote this (that's me) and think that everything cranked out there is a pack of lies.

My issue with your claim here (beyond the fact that I'm about 95% certain you didn't even read the post) is that by saying "Techdirt fudges the facts," you're calling all the sources I quoted in the post liars, including the owner of the site that was taken down (Dale Porter/LendInk), who showed up in the comments to give his side of the story. His account syncs up remarkably with the narrative in the post.

So, you can hate on Techdirt if you must, but be careful about who else you're suffocating under your blanket statements.

Really? Care to point out the factual inaccuracies?

"Debasing real photography."

Whose definition of "real"?

According to her, she uses software to edit her images, which some photographers would claim to debase real photography. Digital cameras debased real photography because people could snap thousands of photos to end up with a few keepers.

Everything "debases" something for someone whose objective stance is basically "the way I do things is the only correct way."

For instance: DJs complained for years with each format change and advancement debased the "purity" of vinyl. "Real" DJs didn't use CDs/mp3s/Ableton/etc.

The nostalgia here isn't limited to grainy Instamatic filters.

"What they urgently need is some sort of cross-licensing agreement, but I'm unsure where it's going to come from ..."

Yeah, that's the issue. Here's my pipe dream. Someone at one big studio/label/publishing house stands up and says "This is ridiculous" and begins a Sherman's March to Sea on the existing system and streamlines it using common sense and ass-kicking.

That's my dream. I wish they would, while they still have the money and power to make it happen. Of course, that still doesn't address the problem that the industry heads and the artists have very different ideas about what's equitable. So, that's another issue. The industry doesn't have a great track record on treating its artists fairly so in all likelihood any slash-and-burn revamp would likely heavily skew in favor of those at the top of the heap, much as it does today.

A very slim possibility exists that this revamp, though heavily skewed, would still end up being a net gain for most, if not all of the artists working within that system.

What gets me is that they have still have massive amounts of power and money and they're using it all to play a largely defensive battle. Being the last to market, so to speak, isn't going to help them take control of the future. I understand that you can't suddenly yank an ocean liner into a tight 90-degree turn, but you also can't avoid icebergs (to continue this awful metaphor) by waiting until it's tearing chunks out of the hull before making your move.

I don't think this is a case of entitlement. There are plenty of people who do without rather than pirate. There are plenty who pirate after trying to make a legitimate purchase. As you say, no one is under any obligation to sell their music, books, etc. to anybody. But if you're going to make it available to purchase, actually make it available to purchase.

Setting it up so that only certain people can purchase your goods does nothing for the two parties most interested in each other: the customer and the artist.

You should plot a graph of your purchases and their subsequent decline. Every decline these days is written off to piracy while situations like yours and BRAT's (and thousands of others) are ignored or dismissed as outliers.

Charles, I'm the author of the idiotic article and I thought I'd wade in and explain my comment about not wanting to hear another rundown on why the system is the way it is.

Over at Techdirt, a site I've been reading for a half-decade and contributing to for nearly a year, IP issues compose probably 80-90% of the posts. The reason I inserted that particular paragraph was to head off discussion centered around rehashing multi-national licensing nightmares and instead get some sort of explanation as to why this isn't being fixed faster.

Obviously, there is a multitude of systems already in place and extricating ourselves from this won't be easy and won't happen quickly. But rather than working to streamline these processes, representatives of content industries are spending a great deal of their time (and lobbying power) trying to do the impossible: stamp out piracy.

Most people don't need an excuse to pirate content, but situations like this push people who otherwise would have purchased something into finding an alternate route or doing without, neither of which will make the labels (or studios or whatever) happy.

There's a lot of numbers thrown around equating each torrent to a lost sale. Actual lost sales due to speed bumps and hurdles in the distribution are rarely discussed by the industry and when they are, they result in horrendous "solutions" like Ultraviolet or the "drive your DVD to the retailer in order to rip a copy to the cloud."

So, if I'm ignoring the "why" behind the situation (which I don't believe I am), it's because the point of the article was "Don't cry about piracy if you can't give me an option to buy."

We know the system is a tangled mess. We know there are many more middlemen than there needs to be. We (and every time I use "we," I'm speaking broadly from my experience as a writer/reader of Techdirt) don't believe ALL middlemen are useless. Many of them DO add value, but when you've got several middlemen guarding turf in several different locales, all hoping to carve a slice of a digital good, it leads to this. And knowing every detail of "how" and "why" a particular band can't sell a particular album via the internet to you simply because of where you live doesn't change the fact that it's frustrating for fans who want to support artists and, I would imagine, greatly frustrating for the artists themselves, who need all the paying fans they can get.

So, we can engage the real nature of the problem, but unless someone towards the top starts slicing away at the undergrowth surrounding worldwide distribution, not much will change.

There are some great comments here. I found yours to be very informative as well as the contributions from commieneko and Gfischer. Both raise very good points about this situation. In short, the systems in place can't adjust as quickly as the market does. (Or in some cases, won't.) But back to the point of my post: you (this would be the royal version, not you personally, Charles) really shouldn't be hollering about piracy when you're unable (and in some cases, unwilling) to let would-be paying customers give you their money.

(P.S. I don't really consider myself a journalist. I'm sure many, many people would agree with me.)

"“More time on Facebook probably means less time on the road,” he said. That may mean safer roads, but it also means a bumpier, less vibrant economy."

So... the economy is being held back by the lack of teens cruising the main drag?

"And in case you're not convinced, allow me to submit some personal anecdotal evidence."

This, in particular, is disturbing:

"The ITU is one of those international organizations that does not have to answer to anybody in particular. None of its decision makers have to stand for reelection. None of the leaders have much to fear from any web-based protest."

I've always thought this is one of the more brilliant quotes concerning intellectual property rights/copyright, in response to those who feel that they "deserve" or are somehow entitled to the protection of IP rights:

"Wise assessment of copyright policy should have nothing to do with how you feel about the person or entity who holds the right at any particular time, because copyright policy is not about identifying wonderful and meritorious people and ensuring—certainly not as an end in itself, anyway—that their income is proportioned to their intrinsic moral desert—or lack thereof. We are all the massive beneficiaries of millennia of accumulated human scientific knowledge and cultural output, and not one of us did anything do deserve a jot of it. We’re all just extremely lucky not to have been born cavemen. The greatest creative genius alive would be hard pressed to create a smiley faced smeared in dung on a tree trunk without that huge and completely undeserved inheritance.

So banish the word “deserve” from your mind when you think about copyright. Nobody “deserves” a goddamn thing. (I say this, for what it’s worth, as someone who makes his living entirely through the production of “intellectual property.”) The only—the only—relevant question is whether a marginal restriction on the general ability to use information incentivizes enough additional information production over the long run to justify denying that marginal use to every other human being on the planet, whether for simple consumption or further creation."

http://www.juliansanchez.com/2011/03/30/4457/

Well, it was posted by Jane Wells (UX Lead for Wordpress) and filed under "Community" at Wordpress.org. I'm not sure where that falls exactly, but obviously she's chosen to speak for the community, or at least Wordpress' relationship to its community. It's on the Wordpress blog so I would guess she's speaking for Wordpress itself as well.

That's very true. It makes you wonder what internet entity (other than designated supervillain/punching bag Google) these politicians are aware of?

"It says here that Wordpress hosts 70 million blogs worldwide, which I find hard to believe. If Wordpress is this big, I'd have heard of it. And this Reddit? It's what... some sort of alien game thing?"

So quick to legislate something they profoundly (and proudly) misunderstand.

And then get nailed to the wall for the jump in unemployment.

The only issue I have with this whole situation (and believe me, this is the ONLY issue -- everything else I'm on board with) is Gabe's response to the rogue PR's request that he "make it stop:"

"The reality is that once I had posted the emails I didn’t have the power anymore. The Internet had it now and nothing I said or did was going to change that."

Everything he says is true, BUT... he posted the email addresses. Claiming that it's out of his hands (and implicitly NOT HIS FAULT what happens now) is like handing a bunch of firebugs some gasoline and strike-anywhere matches and claiming you're powerless to prevent the ensuing Devil's Night reenactment.

Those email addresses would have been dug up via the internet by enterprising individuals sooner or later. It seems a bit smug to revel in the very destruction you laid the groundwork for.

Other than that, I am all for exposure of hideous customer service/PR entities. This is precisely why anyone in these fields, in this day and age, should be doing everything they can to take care of their paying customers. You sure as hell don't want the loosely confederated wrath of the internet turned against you.

I would think that the statements regarding its support of the RIAA suing filesharers and Heritage fellow Edwin Meese comparing using Kazaa to "shoplifting DVDs" would indicate that Heritage members have traditionally taken views that side with the RIAA and MPAA.