WMG's latest crime against humanity
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Trevortni wrote:
Do they hire people who hate other people to sit on YouTube all day and keep an eye out for anything that might indicate people having fun with something that our insane copyright laws allow them to squash?
yes. i used about 45 seconds of a Pretenders' song as the background to a cat video[^] i posted. YouTube rejected it immediately for copyright reasons. i changed it to use a song from an obscure Swedish band, and it was posted, no problem. so, yes, there are people at YouTube who are paid to look out for copyright violations. but they don't know every song out there... :)
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nope. their message was : "Your video, Tricksey and the crinkle ball, may have content that is owned or licensed by WMG. " and they refused to post it.
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Trevortni wrote:
Do they hire people who hate other people to sit on YouTube all day and keep an eye out for anything that might indicate people having fun with something that our insane copyright laws allow them to squash?
yes. i used about 45 seconds of a Pretenders' song as the background to a cat video[^] i posted. YouTube rejected it immediately for copyright reasons. i changed it to use a song from an obscure Swedish band, and it was posted, no problem. so, yes, there are people at YouTube who are paid to look out for copyright violations. but they don't know every song out there... :)
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As an ex-professional musician, I can assure you that I find RIAA and their clumsy, heavy handed tactics to be an embarrassment to the brotherhood. That said, and unpopular though I know this perspective to be, I simply can't fathom how people think they have any rights at all to the property of others just because someone's connected a few computers together. If I decided to come over to your house, hotwire your car and drive it off for a joy ride because, well, you know, "transportation wants to be free," I suspect I'd be leaving amidst a hail of gunfire. It's your car. I have no rights to it whatsoever, unless you explicitly grant them to me. Here's a true story that just recently happened. I'm at someone's house, and he introduces me to a friend who's also a geek. The friend says to me, "Hey, great to meet you. You know, I downloaded a copy of The Career Programmer from [pirate site name deleted] a few weeks ago and I just wanted to tell you how much I'm enjoying it..." I could see our mutual friend bite his tongue in amazement, but I simply smiled and thanked this guy for the kind words. This was no bottom feeder, scum of the earth type. He's a nice person, very active in his church and from what I can tell a stand up kinda guy in general. And yet, he saw no moral dilemma whatsoever with looking the author of a book right in the eye and telling him he'd stolen a copy via a pirate site. He even added, "I guess I probably owe you some money, huh?" as a joke, meaning he knew very well that it wasn't his to take for free. Mind you, I can't get all worked up about the miniscule amount of money that didn't make it into my pocket from this transaction, and I've actually kept in touch with this guy & consider him a friend. I just mention this to point out how dramatically many people's ethics have degraded because they buy into the propaganda that "information wants to be free" and the implicit credo that if it's available on the Internet, it's free - whether the owner likes it or not. And of course it doesn't end there. Not only is the property belonging to those of us who create (a group which includes software developers, folks) assumed to belong by birthright to the entire world, for no compensation. We also get the treat of listening to the righteous indignation of those who steal from us. This is often accompanied by an impressive amount of twisted pretzel logic, of course, but is otherwise just a tirade about how unfair it is that anyone should so much as lift a finger to protect that which is
Christopher Duncan wrote:
What really makes my brain reboot is that, in my estimation, the overwhelming majority of these people are otherwise good, honest human beings who simply drank the wrong brand of Kool Aid but continue to cling to beliefs that they know are wrong because it's personally convenient for them to do so.
Pretty sure there's only one brand of Kool Aid. It's owned by the Kraft Food Company, who can't be happy that you're participating in the dilution of their valuable trademark. I'm sure you're otherwise a good, honest human being, but frankly this casual attitude towards the Intellectual Property of hard-working beverage manufacturers simply because it's personally convenient just reboots my brain. And I was right in the middle of a new UI design, and hadn't saved in a while, and now I can't remember it anymore. Also, my brain still uses FAT32, so chkdsk is running, and it's taking forever...
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
What really makes my brain reboot is that, in my estimation, the overwhelming majority of these people are otherwise good, honest human beings who simply drank the wrong brand of Kool Aid but continue to cling to beliefs that they know are wrong because it's personally convenient for them to do so.
Pretty sure there's only one brand of Kool Aid. It's owned by the Kraft Food Company, who can't be happy that you're participating in the dilution of their valuable trademark. I'm sure you're otherwise a good, honest human being, but frankly this casual attitude towards the Intellectual Property of hard-working beverage manufacturers simply because it's personally convenient just reboots my brain. And I was right in the middle of a new UI design, and hadn't saved in a while, and now I can't remember it anymore. Also, my brain still uses FAT32, so chkdsk is running, and it's taking forever...
:laugh:
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
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Trevortni wrote:
Do they hire people who hate other people to sit on YouTube all day and keep an eye out for anything that might indicate people having fun with something that our insane copyright laws allow them to squash?
yes. i used about 45 seconds of a Pretenders' song as the background to a cat video[^] i posted. YouTube rejected it immediately for copyright reasons. i changed it to use a song from an obscure Swedish band, and it was posted, no problem. so, yes, there are people at YouTube who are paid to look out for copyright violations. but they don't know every song out there... :)
Chris Losinger wrote:
i changed it to use a song from an obscure Swedish band
May I ask which one?
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Chris Losinger wrote:
i changed it to use a song from an obscure Swedish band
May I ask which one?
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OK, so I said nothing when the John Williams Tribute was pulled from YouTube (it came back). I writhed in pain when I discovered that the songs from The Muppet Movie were no longer accessible, but still I held my tongue. But now WMG has forced YouTube to mess with the Holy Grail[^]. What is wrong with these people? Do they hire people who hate other people to sit on YouTube all day and keep an eye out for anything that might indicate people having fun with something that our insane copyright laws allow them to squash? Seriously - I know these corporations are trying to protect their bottom line, but they are so completely out of touch with reality that they don't realize their actions, at best, have no bearing on their bottom line - and probably even hurt their bottom line. Maybe the consumers should show RIAA exactly how their bottom line can be affected. Let's boycott them! All the media outlets! Don't watch movies or TV shows, don't buy CDs or even visit iTunes! Just let them know that we're not going to dump money in their pockets until they let us enjoy the stuff they're not even trying to make money off of anyway without them pulling these outrageous stunts! But could someone else organize it, please? My show's about to come on, and I'm waiting for a CD to come out.
And here I thought you were writing about Windows Media Groundingfoundation, or some related amazing technology.
Personally, I love the idea that Raymond spends his nights posting bad regexs to mailing lists under the pseudonym of Jane Smith. He'd be like a super hero, only more nerdy and less useful. [Trevel]
| FoldWithUs! | sighist | µLaunch - program launcher for server core and hyper-v server -
As an ex-professional musician, I can assure you that I find RIAA and their clumsy, heavy handed tactics to be an embarrassment to the brotherhood. That said, and unpopular though I know this perspective to be, I simply can't fathom how people think they have any rights at all to the property of others just because someone's connected a few computers together. If I decided to come over to your house, hotwire your car and drive it off for a joy ride because, well, you know, "transportation wants to be free," I suspect I'd be leaving amidst a hail of gunfire. It's your car. I have no rights to it whatsoever, unless you explicitly grant them to me. Here's a true story that just recently happened. I'm at someone's house, and he introduces me to a friend who's also a geek. The friend says to me, "Hey, great to meet you. You know, I downloaded a copy of The Career Programmer from [pirate site name deleted] a few weeks ago and I just wanted to tell you how much I'm enjoying it..." I could see our mutual friend bite his tongue in amazement, but I simply smiled and thanked this guy for the kind words. This was no bottom feeder, scum of the earth type. He's a nice person, very active in his church and from what I can tell a stand up kinda guy in general. And yet, he saw no moral dilemma whatsoever with looking the author of a book right in the eye and telling him he'd stolen a copy via a pirate site. He even added, "I guess I probably owe you some money, huh?" as a joke, meaning he knew very well that it wasn't his to take for free. Mind you, I can't get all worked up about the miniscule amount of money that didn't make it into my pocket from this transaction, and I've actually kept in touch with this guy & consider him a friend. I just mention this to point out how dramatically many people's ethics have degraded because they buy into the propaganda that "information wants to be free" and the implicit credo that if it's available on the Internet, it's free - whether the owner likes it or not. And of course it doesn't end there. Not only is the property belonging to those of us who create (a group which includes software developers, folks) assumed to belong by birthright to the entire world, for no compensation. We also get the treat of listening to the righteous indignation of those who steal from us. This is often accompanied by an impressive amount of twisted pretzel logic, of course, but is otherwise just a tirade about how unfair it is that anyone should so much as lift a finger to protect that which is
This is always a fun issue... I kind of straddle both sides of the argument, but not in the way you might think... (Someone's going to take that out of context and make a joke about it) The pirate movement (Yarr!) wants to freely copy everything. This is just ridiculous. No, it's not theft, as defined by law, but just because they call it "copyright infringement" instead of "stealing" doesn't make it ethical by any stretch. That said, they do have some valid criticisms about the industry... Music is generally overpriced (Though that's been changing lately), copyrights last WAY too long (Indefinitely, if held by a corporation), DRM is just annoying, etc. My solution... If I don't think it's fairly priced, or if I'm not willing to put up with the DRM... I don't buy it. I don't pirate it either... I just do without it. In effect, I stopped buying music, and I buy VERY few DVDs (Only the ones that I absolutely love)... My music collection is basically static now, and I get my movies via Netflix, which I think is an excellent service. So in short... Yes, the companies comprising the RIAA and MPAA are, in corporate terms, unbelievably evil, but that doesn't give anyone the right to steal. If enough people just avoided them altogether, things would inevitably change.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
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Chris Losinger wrote:
i changed it to use a song from an obscure Swedish band
May I ask which one?
Paper they're obscure here, at least. no idea if they're well-known in Sweden
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If it was an immediate rejection it probably was an automatic pattern matching script that pulled the trigger.
The latest nation. Procrastination.
possibly. but i doubt they'd rely on an automated system to make a conclusive determination. i think it'd be pretty easy to fool such a system.
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As an ex-professional musician, I can assure you that I find RIAA and their clumsy, heavy handed tactics to be an embarrassment to the brotherhood. That said, and unpopular though I know this perspective to be, I simply can't fathom how people think they have any rights at all to the property of others just because someone's connected a few computers together. If I decided to come over to your house, hotwire your car and drive it off for a joy ride because, well, you know, "transportation wants to be free," I suspect I'd be leaving amidst a hail of gunfire. It's your car. I have no rights to it whatsoever, unless you explicitly grant them to me. Here's a true story that just recently happened. I'm at someone's house, and he introduces me to a friend who's also a geek. The friend says to me, "Hey, great to meet you. You know, I downloaded a copy of The Career Programmer from [pirate site name deleted] a few weeks ago and I just wanted to tell you how much I'm enjoying it..." I could see our mutual friend bite his tongue in amazement, but I simply smiled and thanked this guy for the kind words. This was no bottom feeder, scum of the earth type. He's a nice person, very active in his church and from what I can tell a stand up kinda guy in general. And yet, he saw no moral dilemma whatsoever with looking the author of a book right in the eye and telling him he'd stolen a copy via a pirate site. He even added, "I guess I probably owe you some money, huh?" as a joke, meaning he knew very well that it wasn't his to take for free. Mind you, I can't get all worked up about the miniscule amount of money that didn't make it into my pocket from this transaction, and I've actually kept in touch with this guy & consider him a friend. I just mention this to point out how dramatically many people's ethics have degraded because they buy into the propaganda that "information wants to be free" and the implicit credo that if it's available on the Internet, it's free - whether the owner likes it or not. And of course it doesn't end there. Not only is the property belonging to those of us who create (a group which includes software developers, folks) assumed to belong by birthright to the entire world, for no compensation. We also get the treat of listening to the righteous indignation of those who steal from us. This is often accompanied by an impressive amount of twisted pretzel logic, of course, but is otherwise just a tirade about how unfair it is that anyone should so much as lift a finger to protect that which is
"information wants to be free" - whether you like it or not that's the bitter truth. The truth is that anything which is in digital format is going to be pirated and will eventually become free because the cost to reproduce it is zero. That's the difference between things in digital format and tangible items like a car. How many times have you seen posts in the lounge that goes like this: "I want a software to do ..... preferably free". Eventually, anything digital is going to be free whether or not we like it or not. What needs to be done is not to find ways to prevent it but to find ways to build business models around "Free". There have been lot of successful business models around Free. Musicians who get pirated the most also earn a lot in concerts and shows. Authors who released digital format of their books have also seen the sales of print format go
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"information wants to be free" - whether you like it or not that's the bitter truth. The truth is that anything which is in digital format is going to be pirated and will eventually become free because the cost to reproduce it is zero. That's the difference between things in digital format and tangible items like a car. How many times have you seen posts in the lounge that goes like this: "I want a software to do ..... preferably free". Eventually, anything digital is going to be free whether or not we like it or not. What needs to be done is not to find ways to prevent it but to find ways to build business models around "Free". There have been lot of successful business models around Free. Musicians who get pirated the most also earn a lot in concerts and shows. Authors who released digital format of their books have also seen the sales of print format go
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
"information wants to be free" - whether you like it or not that's the bitter truth.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
The truth is that anything which is in digital format is going to be pirated and will eventually become free because the cost to reproduce it is zero
That much is true, if you approximate storage/bandwidth costs to zero... The problem is that there IS a cost to CREATING these things, both in time and money, and the "free" model doesn't work universally. People need income to survive, and though there are amateurs like me, who write in their spare time and have a day job, there are a lot of others who focus full-time on creation. If all of the profit was stripped out of these things, those people would not be able to survive, financially. In my case (I'm a self-published sci-fi/fantasy author), I've actually considered doing just as you mentioned, releasing the electronic version for free... But as I said, I have a day job, so I'm not depending on my writing for income. In actuality, I'll probably never recoup the money I laid out to print it. Maybe we'll just go back to ye olden days of patronage, where writers, musicians, and artists would just be hired by rich people with too much money to throw around...
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
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As an ex-professional musician, I can assure you that I find RIAA and their clumsy, heavy handed tactics to be an embarrassment to the brotherhood. That said, and unpopular though I know this perspective to be, I simply can't fathom how people think they have any rights at all to the property of others just because someone's connected a few computers together. If I decided to come over to your house, hotwire your car and drive it off for a joy ride because, well, you know, "transportation wants to be free," I suspect I'd be leaving amidst a hail of gunfire. It's your car. I have no rights to it whatsoever, unless you explicitly grant them to me. Here's a true story that just recently happened. I'm at someone's house, and he introduces me to a friend who's also a geek. The friend says to me, "Hey, great to meet you. You know, I downloaded a copy of The Career Programmer from [pirate site name deleted] a few weeks ago and I just wanted to tell you how much I'm enjoying it..." I could see our mutual friend bite his tongue in amazement, but I simply smiled and thanked this guy for the kind words. This was no bottom feeder, scum of the earth type. He's a nice person, very active in his church and from what I can tell a stand up kinda guy in general. And yet, he saw no moral dilemma whatsoever with looking the author of a book right in the eye and telling him he'd stolen a copy via a pirate site. He even added, "I guess I probably owe you some money, huh?" as a joke, meaning he knew very well that it wasn't his to take for free. Mind you, I can't get all worked up about the miniscule amount of money that didn't make it into my pocket from this transaction, and I've actually kept in touch with this guy & consider him a friend. I just mention this to point out how dramatically many people's ethics have degraded because they buy into the propaganda that "information wants to be free" and the implicit credo that if it's available on the Internet, it's free - whether the owner likes it or not. And of course it doesn't end there. Not only is the property belonging to those of us who create (a group which includes software developers, folks) assumed to belong by birthright to the entire world, for no compensation. We also get the treat of listening to the righteous indignation of those who steal from us. This is often accompanied by an impressive amount of twisted pretzel logic, of course, but is otherwise just a tirade about how unfair it is that anyone should so much as lift a finger to protect that which is
Christopher Duncan wrote:
hotwire your car and drive it off for a joy ride
But, see that's the difference... stealing a car or whatever leaves the owner with no car. Copying a car or whatever doesn't. So if someone were to put my car through a replicator and drive off with the copy, leaving me with my car unchanged, I'd have no problem.
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Paper they're obscure here, at least. no idea if they're well-known in Sweden
I have no idea who they are. :~ It could mean that I have no clue about the music produced here. I rarely listen to radio, so I am never really exposed to pop music. For all I know they could be the proverbial "shit". :)
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"information wants to be free" - whether you like it or not that's the bitter truth. The truth is that anything which is in digital format is going to be pirated and will eventually become free because the cost to reproduce it is zero. That's the difference between things in digital format and tangible items like a car. How many times have you seen posts in the lounge that goes like this: "I want a software to do ..... preferably free". Eventually, anything digital is going to be free whether or not we like it or not. What needs to be done is not to find ways to prevent it but to find ways to build business models around "Free". There have been lot of successful business models around Free. Musicians who get pirated the most also earn a lot in concerts and shows. Authors who released digital format of their books have also seen the sales of print format go
My mortgage payment wants to be free, too. I'm just having a little trouble getting the word out to the bank. :) Yeah, I don't disagree that if it's digital it's going to be pirated. And yet, I am not at all a fan of DRM, as it tends to hassle the very people who want to pay me, and that's just not right. I figure if someone buys a copy of a book, or a song, or a piece of software from me, I don't care how many devices they own. They should be able to buy it once, and put it on all of them so that it's convenient for them to use wherever they are (anyone remember Borland's No Nonsense Agreement?). Of course, that also means they can give it to a million of their close, personal friends, too but I just don't have a solution for that other than encouraging an ethical shift towards doing what's right. And the only way I know of to promote that is to treat those who do buy my stuff as well as I can, in hopes that they'll appreciate it and continue to do the right thing.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
There have been lot of successful business models around Free.
I'm not sure I'd agree with this. There have been some successes built around free, but the Internet is a classic example of the fundamental difficulty inherent in this approach. Gazillions of developers have been desperately trying to make a buck on the web only to find that it's extremely difficult to convert free to profit. I think most of that line of thinking is more of the pretzel logic, trying to rationalize a bad situation after the fact rather than just calling a pig a pig. With no offense intended toward swine in general, of course. :)
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
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Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
"information wants to be free" - whether you like it or not that's the bitter truth.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
The truth is that anything which is in digital format is going to be pirated and will eventually become free because the cost to reproduce it is zero
That much is true, if you approximate storage/bandwidth costs to zero... The problem is that there IS a cost to CREATING these things, both in time and money, and the "free" model doesn't work universally. People need income to survive, and though there are amateurs like me, who write in their spare time and have a day job, there are a lot of others who focus full-time on creation. If all of the profit was stripped out of these things, those people would not be able to survive, financially. In my case (I'm a self-published sci-fi/fantasy author), I've actually considered doing just as you mentioned, releasing the electronic version for free... But as I said, I have a day job, so I'm not depending on my writing for income. In actuality, I'll probably never recoup the money I laid out to print it. Maybe we'll just go back to ye olden days of patronage, where writers, musicians, and artists would just be hired by rich people with too much money to throw around...
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
Ian Shlasko wrote:
Maybe we'll just go back to ye olden days of patronage, where writers, musicians, and artists would just be hired by rich people with too much money to throw around...
Hey, when you get there, save me a seat, would you? :-D
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
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Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
"information wants to be free" - whether you like it or not that's the bitter truth.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
The truth is that anything which is in digital format is going to be pirated and will eventually become free because the cost to reproduce it is zero
That much is true, if you approximate storage/bandwidth costs to zero... The problem is that there IS a cost to CREATING these things, both in time and money, and the "free" model doesn't work universally. People need income to survive, and though there are amateurs like me, who write in their spare time and have a day job, there are a lot of others who focus full-time on creation. If all of the profit was stripped out of these things, those people would not be able to survive, financially. In my case (I'm a self-published sci-fi/fantasy author), I've actually considered doing just as you mentioned, releasing the electronic version for free... But as I said, I have a day job, so I'm not depending on my writing for income. In actuality, I'll probably never recoup the money I laid out to print it. Maybe we'll just go back to ye olden days of patronage, where writers, musicians, and artists would just be hired by rich people with too much money to throw around...
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
Ian Shlasko wrote:
the "free" model doesn't work universally
The problem is that the "Stop Piracy" model does not work either and I think there are less chances of getting the "Stop Piracy" model to work rather than the "Free" model.
Ian Shlasko wrote:
If all of the profit was stripped out of these things, those people would not be able to survive, financially.
I am not saying that you need to strip the profit out. You just need to realize where the profits are. The profits may not be with distribution but with other things. For example, People who contribute articles at Code Project even though freely apart from getting accolades and fame, do land up in contract jobs and may be better jobs. So there is the profit.
Ian Shlasko wrote:
Maybe we'll just go back to ye olden days of patronage, where writers, musicians, and artists would just be hired by rich people with too much money to throw around...
Believe it or not it is becoming true. Musicians in India whose music is practically free due to piracy are being hired for corporate events and conferences. The paradox is that giving things away for free does not mean no profit.
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My mortgage payment wants to be free, too. I'm just having a little trouble getting the word out to the bank. :) Yeah, I don't disagree that if it's digital it's going to be pirated. And yet, I am not at all a fan of DRM, as it tends to hassle the very people who want to pay me, and that's just not right. I figure if someone buys a copy of a book, or a song, or a piece of software from me, I don't care how many devices they own. They should be able to buy it once, and put it on all of them so that it's convenient for them to use wherever they are (anyone remember Borland's No Nonsense Agreement?). Of course, that also means they can give it to a million of their close, personal friends, too but I just don't have a solution for that other than encouraging an ethical shift towards doing what's right. And the only way I know of to promote that is to treat those who do buy my stuff as well as I can, in hopes that they'll appreciate it and continue to do the right thing.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
There have been lot of successful business models around Free.
I'm not sure I'd agree with this. There have been some successes built around free, but the Internet is a classic example of the fundamental difficulty inherent in this approach. Gazillions of developers have been desperately trying to make a buck on the web only to find that it's extremely difficult to convert free to profit. I think most of that line of thinking is more of the pretzel logic, trying to rationalize a bad situation after the fact rather than just calling a pig a pig. With no offense intended toward swine in general, of course. :)
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
Well said, Chris. I'm going much the same route with mine. I chose a publisher that doesn't wrap any DRM into the digital copies of my book... Just a plain old PDF. It might be a little easier for authors than it is for musicians, as readers tend to be of a different demographic than the consumers of popular music... At least for the most part. Oddly, though, I've had a number of people buy my printed book, but only two digital sales... No love for the Kindle/E-Reader/whatever, apparently.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
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I have no idea who they are. :~ It could mean that I have no clue about the music produced here. I rarely listen to radio, so I am never really exposed to pop music. For all I know they could be the proverbial "shit". :)
i like them. they sound like old-school punk. like Joy Division meets Big Black.