WMG's latest crime against humanity
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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.
That's just stupid. The fact is that the analogy is flawed because you CAN steal a book or a CD without taking the original, but the person stealing it, gets it full benefit without paying for it. That's why some people are retarded enough to not see that they are stealing.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
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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.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
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.
Agreed, but the "free" model isn't workable yet on a large scale... I don't know what the solution is, but there needs to be some kind of compromise.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
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PIEBALDconsult wrote:
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.
Except that you wouldn't have a car. Why? Well, because no one could afford to make one (and that's the maximum they'd ever sell, 1) because everyone else would be driving copies. Which means that it would be so expensive that they probably wouldn't even sell the 1. So you still wouldn't have a car for others to copy. No problem!
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
If we could replicate the car for free. Someone would make it for free. You really think no one would jump at the chance to make the only car everybody drives? "Where's the motivation if you can't make a profit?" Um, fame? Maybe the fact that everybody is driving the "RagnrocknRoll" Model A. Or maybe the fact that I made the car and I have the best possible knowledge of how it works and so when it breaks down, I can charge more than other folks to fix it? Or any of the dozens of related service industries I can build around my free car. But you folks are right, there aren't any working models of people just handing out their product for free and still making money. Not like Red Hat makes a ton off of training people to use and maintain their OS, or anything like that. Heck, it's not like Radio Head made any money off of their "pay whatever you want" album. And Reznor was a complete fool to do the same. I'm not saying steal everything. I am saying being in the outmoded way of thinking that it must come with an up front cost and there is no way to make a profit if you don't charge is not seeing how things are changing.
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Actually, in some ways musicians may have it better. At least popularity can lead to more live gigs, and since that's what musicians do, there's no doubt that the publicity helps. Of course, there are those who think that live performance should be the only way musicians are paid, and as you might imagine I take exception with that perspective. Even so, if you can deliver non digital product whose sales are increased by the promotional effects of piracy, then you're still getting screwed, but you at least have the chance to stay alive. With authors, unless you do speaking gigs or sell other (non digital) spinoff products, you don't reap the same promotional benefits. Your eBook gets passed around, everyone loves it, so even more people steal it. Not an encouraging model. That said, your observation about digital sales mirrors my own experience. Very few digital sales in contrast to paper ones, and that doesn't surprise me. I'm not going to sit in the bathroom balancing a laptop on my knees if I want to do some reading. Paper books are much easier to use (and if the book sucks, well, you can also reuse the paper). The Kindle/Nook/etc. trend isn't there yet. In fact, DRM is probably one of the reasons why. However, I find it incredibly disturbing that I could buy a book from Amazon one day and discover they've deleted it the next (there was a flap about 1984 a few months back where this happened). Of course, you're a much braver creature than I am. Writing non-fiction isn't nearly as tough a gig as trying to land book deals & build readership in the fiction world. If you've been able to make a go of it, you're on my list of heroes. :-D
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
Eh, I'm trying, but not catching on much so far. I think I've sold maybe 20-30 copies, but I don't actually know yet. Royalties from Amazon sales are on a four-month lag, believe it or not, and that's the only way I'll know how many were sold. I should start seeing numbers for July (When it was released) next month. But yeah, I guess musicians do have it a little easier with the promotion angle. We authors, however, have the advantage of being able to just do it in our spare time. When a band is on tour, they're not working a 9-to-5.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
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Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
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.
Agreed, but the "free" model isn't workable yet on a large scale... I don't know what the solution is, but there needs to be some kind of compromise.
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 isn't workable yet on a large scale
That's not true at all. It is working right now. It has worked for CodeProject people are giving away code for free and both CodeProject and authors have benefited from it, it has worked for Google, and it has worked for many internet companies. There is a good book on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Free-Future-Radical-Chris-Anderson/dp/1401322905[^] (BTW you can find the digital format of this book free).
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
There have been some successes built around free,
There have been a lot of successes built around free. This site is one very quick example.
Christopher Duncan wrote:
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.
It really depends on what you consider a profit as I stated in my reply to Ian. There might not be direct profits but sure there are lot of indirect profits (talk at conferences, contract jobs) etc.
Christopher Duncan wrote:
trying to rationalize a bad situation
What are your alternatives? Keep crying about the bad situation or understand that bad situation is bad and find ways to make it into a "good" situation.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
There have been a lot of successes built around free. This site is one very quick example.
Man, Chris is going to set the hamsters on me for this one. And I blame you, Rama! Chris, let me just say up front that every night I go into a small room full of candles and incense and chant many prayers to small, furry dieties for the joys that CP has brought into my life. I'm a devoted fan. Truly. Please don't throw me into the fire and shred my membership card, I implore you... That said, Rama, that's about the worst example you could possibly come up with for building a success around free. It's called "crowdsourcing" and I personally refer to it as "suckersourcing." You get a bunch of people to deliver your content on a silver platter in exchange for their 15 minutes of fame. You then leave them with the fame and take all of the money for yourself. Sure, there might be the occasional CPian who parlays that 15 minutes into actual hard currency, but divide that number by the total membership and you're going to have a long string of zeroes after the decimal point before you actually hit a positive number. From the point of view of the content creator trying to build a success around free, i.e. they're not getting paid for their content, that's odds that no businessman would touch with a ten foot water bottle. A better example of success built around free would be a web developer who offers a basic level of service for free, and enhanced service for a paid membership. In this case the content provider (i.e. the developer), profits by giving away a certain amount of his or her stuff for free. As for my definition of profit in the business world, it involves an amount of money that exceeds the cost of expenses to earn that money. Most businesspeople would agree with me on that one. :) And while I may not have an alternative just yet, I don't think pretending an unfair situation is acceptable offers any tangible benefits. Seems more like capitulation to me. I'd rather tilt at windmills in hopes that one day an equitable solution really will be found. I will say this, however. Although we disagree on most of this stuff, the fact that you're an author who lives or dies by the same sword certainly gives your voice more credibility to me than those who are just out to get something for nothing.
Christopher Duncan www.Practic
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I agree, but you haven't disputed my point. Are the record companies, by corporate standards, "evil?" Yes, I think so. But does that give you the right to steal, setting aside the distinctions between theft and copyright infringement? No. It's illegal and unethical. The ethical alternative, since you hate the industry so much, is to not buy/download/copy the music AT ALL. Listen to unsigned musicians instead, and buy CDs directly from them (At concerts, or via their websites).
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
We aren't at odds on this. All my music is from open source (yes it exists), free (thanks Trent), or public domain sources. I haven't bought a modern music CD in ages and if I have gotten any music outside those areas it was from iTunes. I paid for it. I have very rarely done that and usually try to get a way to get it from the artist in a manner that maximizes their profit. What I don't like is people supporting a system designed to screw over artists just because some business suit decided early on that the hippies were an easy mark and using them they could get rich. Heck, I won't even buy rock band Metallica because they are just shills for the industry at this point and their music has sucked roten eggs for almost 20 years.
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Ian Shlasko wrote:
the "free" model isn't workable yet on a large scale
That's not true at all. It is working right now. It has worked for CodeProject people are giving away code for free and both CodeProject and authors have benefited from it, it has worked for Google, and it has worked for many internet companies. There is a good book on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Free-Future-Radical-Chris-Anderson/dp/1401322905[^] (BTW you can find the digital format of this book free).
I have to defer to Chris's below reply to this argument... He said it perfectly. http://www.codeproject.com/Messages/3249306/Re-WMGs-latest-crime-against-humanity.aspx[^]
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
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Well and truly deserving of a 5. I continue to be amazed at how much people just steal stuff nowadays, and because it's easy and because nothing physical is stolen, they don't get that it's stealing at all.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
Yeah, I gotta tell you, when it was just me and my friend again and the guy who'd scarfed my book had gone home, we just rolled on the floor laughing and shaking our heads for that very reason. The guy clearly just didn't get it that what he'd done was stealing. Well, more likely that like so many others he's just in a deep sense of denial about it. Ed Koch, who was the mayor of NYC back in the 80s, defined chutzpah as, "A child who, after killing his father and mother, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he's an orphan." Koch woulda loved this guy. :)
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
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If we could replicate the car for free. Someone would make it for free. You really think no one would jump at the chance to make the only car everybody drives? "Where's the motivation if you can't make a profit?" Um, fame? Maybe the fact that everybody is driving the "RagnrocknRoll" Model A. Or maybe the fact that I made the car and I have the best possible knowledge of how it works and so when it breaks down, I can charge more than other folks to fix it? Or any of the dozens of related service industries I can build around my free car. But you folks are right, there aren't any working models of people just handing out their product for free and still making money. Not like Red Hat makes a ton off of training people to use and maintain their OS, or anything like that. Heck, it's not like Radio Head made any money off of their "pay whatever you want" album. And Reznor was a complete fool to do the same. I'm not saying steal everything. I am saying being in the outmoded way of thinking that it must come with an up front cost and there is no way to make a profit if you don't charge is not seeing how things are changing.
ragnaroknrol wrote:
Or maybe the fact that I made the car and I have the best possible knowledge of how it works and so when it breaks down, I can charge more than other folks to fix it?
You haven't thought this through! :-D Who is going to pay you to fix something if they can copy a new one for free. If everybody steals everything they want, there is nothing to steal because nobody can afford to make anything!!
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
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Eh, I'm trying, but not catching on much so far. I think I've sold maybe 20-30 copies, but I don't actually know yet. Royalties from Amazon sales are on a four-month lag, believe it or not, and that's the only way I'll know how many were sold. I should start seeing numbers for July (When it was released) next month. But yeah, I guess musicians do have it a little easier with the promotion angle. We authors, however, have the advantage of being able to just do it in our spare time. When a band is on tour, they're not working a 9-to-5.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
Ian Shlasko wrote:
When a band is on tour, they're not working a 9-to-5.
Wait a minute, you meant that as a bad thing, right? :-D
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
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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.
Not as the only way to reject stuff; but "We've implemented a system to prevent anything identical to something that you[big content]'ve flagged as a copy violation from being approved again." is cheap and shows making a good faith effort. The database it runs on is then fueled by an automated DMCA take down server that is primarily used by big content. Depending on how clever they're being they might try and look for steganographic bitrot (bitrot that doesn't change the seen/heard quality of the video/audio); but I suspect most of that would require storing something other than hashs of reported stuff which would make system requirements sky rocket. Storing hashes of short snippets and using a consistent triggering method for when to take them (beats in audio, video scene changes, something cleverer, etc) would allow stopping the "I'll just delete/pad the first/last fraction of a second of it" bypass attacks.
The latest nation. Procrastination.
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Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
There have been a lot of successes built around free. This site is one very quick example.
Man, Chris is going to set the hamsters on me for this one. And I blame you, Rama! Chris, let me just say up front that every night I go into a small room full of candles and incense and chant many prayers to small, furry dieties for the joys that CP has brought into my life. I'm a devoted fan. Truly. Please don't throw me into the fire and shred my membership card, I implore you... That said, Rama, that's about the worst example you could possibly come up with for building a success around free. It's called "crowdsourcing" and I personally refer to it as "suckersourcing." You get a bunch of people to deliver your content on a silver platter in exchange for their 15 minutes of fame. You then leave them with the fame and take all of the money for yourself. Sure, there might be the occasional CPian who parlays that 15 minutes into actual hard currency, but divide that number by the total membership and you're going to have a long string of zeroes after the decimal point before you actually hit a positive number. From the point of view of the content creator trying to build a success around free, i.e. they're not getting paid for their content, that's odds that no businessman would touch with a ten foot water bottle. A better example of success built around free would be a web developer who offers a basic level of service for free, and enhanced service for a paid membership. In this case the content provider (i.e. the developer), profits by giving away a certain amount of his or her stuff for free. As for my definition of profit in the business world, it involves an amount of money that exceeds the cost of expenses to earn that money. Most businesspeople would agree with me on that one. :) And while I may not have an alternative just yet, I don't think pretending an unfair situation is acceptable offers any tangible benefits. Seems more like capitulation to me. I'd rather tilt at windmills in hopes that one day an equitable solution really will be found. I will say this, however. Although we disagree on most of this stuff, the fact that you're an author who lives or dies by the same sword certainly gives your voice more credibility to me than those who are just out to get something for nothing.
Christopher Duncan www.Practic
Christopher Duncan wrote:
r who offers a basic level of service for free, and enhanced service for a paid membership
That's just one of the business model around free called "freemium". There are several such business models around free.
Christopher Duncan wrote:
nvolves an amount of money that exceeds the cost of expenses to earn that money.
Sure, that's might be a classic definition. But in this Internet world you have to think slightly out of the box.
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
r who offers a basic level of service for free, and enhanced service for a paid membership
That's just one of the business model around free called "freemium". There are several such business models around free.
Christopher Duncan wrote:
nvolves an amount of money that exceeds the cost of expenses to earn that money.
Sure, that's might be a classic definition. But in this Internet world you have to think slightly out of the box.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
That's just one of the business model around free called "freemium". There are several such business models around free.
Yeah, and I've spent the past year on some web dev projects trying to exploit them. I gotta say, I have a lot of respect for those who can make a living that way, because it's a much, much harder path than simply seling a product or service outright. Only a tiny, tiny percentage of commercial web sites out there are making money, and that's not the same percentage as the number of web devs who would like that to be their reality.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
Sure, that's might be a classic definition. But in this Internet world you have to think slightly out of the box.
Sorry, Rama, but you're waaaay too smart for me to let you get away with something this lame. :) Those who don't make more money than they spend can't pay the bills. Profit is profit, on the Internet or anywhere else. Nice try, though. :-D
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
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We aren't at odds on this. All my music is from open source (yes it exists), free (thanks Trent), or public domain sources. I haven't bought a modern music CD in ages and if I have gotten any music outside those areas it was from iTunes. I paid for it. I have very rarely done that and usually try to get a way to get it from the artist in a manner that maximizes their profit. What I don't like is people supporting a system designed to screw over artists just because some business suit decided early on that the hippies were an easy mark and using them they could get rich. Heck, I won't even buy rock band Metallica because they are just shills for the industry at this point and their music has sucked roten eggs for almost 20 years.
Agreed... But like all arguments, there are two sides. The record companies ARE providing a service... They provide the financial investment to get studio time. They do the marketing and promotion... It's a significant cost. That said, I do agree that the deal artists are getting nowadays isn't fair... They just don't have much of a choice. I'll use my own situation as an example, as there's a close parallel in the world of written works... When you write a book, you basically have three options: 1) Traditional publisher: Same thing as an RIAA company. You submit your work to them, and have a <1% chance of being accepted. You sign EVERYTHING to them, they gain complete control. You get a miniscule royalty, but since you're backed by one of the big guys, you'll be on all the shelves in all the retail chains (B&N, Borders, etc). If you fill the right demographic, and they really like you, they'll pay extra to get you premium placement. 2) Vanity Press: Kind of like being an independent musician. You lay out all of the money for the print run (Which can be substantial - Talking $10k+). You do your own marketing and sales. You get 100% of the profits after printing costs, but you're totally on your own. Bookstores won't carry it unless you're already famous, so you have to find your own sales channel. 3) Self-Publish/POD: Print-on-demand is the middle-of-the-road solution. You sign up with one of the smaller publishers. You pay to start the process (Much less than in #2), but they handle sales and fulfillment. They take a cut, but you still get a decent royalty, and can get listed on the major online booksellers. You usually won't get shelf space in the brick-and-mortar stores, so you're basically stuck with online sales unless you go out and sell it in person. So you see, there are some major advantages to signing your soul over to one of the big publishers/studios. Me, I went with option #3, which is sort of like signing with an independent label, but less restrictive. The irony, of course, is that the very existence of #1 is what makes #2 and #3 so much more difficult (They're hogging all of the shelf space)... As long as they exist, they're really the only way to make it to the big leagues. I think I made a point in there somewhere... I started thinking about six different things at once, all non-related, so wasn't paying attention for the second half of this post...
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark.
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Ian Shlasko wrote:
When a band is on tour, they're not working a 9-to-5.
Wait a minute, you meant that as a bad thing, right? :-D
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
Heheh... Ok... They're not GETTING PAID to work 9-to-5 :) Man, I need to retire.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
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Heheh... Ok... They're not GETTING PAID to work 9-to-5 :) Man, I need to retire.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
Yeah, I'm with you. And the thought of going back on the road has occured to me more than once the past few years... :-D
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
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Yeah, I'm with you. And the thought of going back on the road has occured to me more than once the past few years... :-D
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
I don't want to go on the road... I just want the Barnes & Nobles AROUND THE CORNER from my apartment to actually stock my book in-store. So I need to become famous. Which means I need to write more... I'm 180+ pages into the sequel to Guardians of Xen... But can't write more than a couple pages a day when I'm burned out from 9 hours at the office.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
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Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
That's just one of the business model around free called "freemium". There are several such business models around free.
Yeah, and I've spent the past year on some web dev projects trying to exploit them. I gotta say, I have a lot of respect for those who can make a living that way, because it's a much, much harder path than simply seling a product or service outright. Only a tiny, tiny percentage of commercial web sites out there are making money, and that's not the same percentage as the number of web devs who would like that to be their reality.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
Sure, that's might be a classic definition. But in this Internet world you have to think slightly out of the box.
Sorry, Rama, but you're waaaay too smart for me to let you get away with something this lame. :) Those who don't make more money than they spend can't pay the bills. Profit is profit, on the Internet or anywhere else. Nice try, though. :-D
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
Christopher Duncan wrote:
who don't make more money than they spend can't pay the bills
I am not saying that you don't make money. All I am saying is that properly know where you are making money and what exactly are you trying to sell. I gave away my music on MySpace for free (I encounter a loss because obviously I can not make up for the costs). But because people listened to my music and liked, they come to my concert in large numbers. So even though, I don't make any money with giving away the music for free, I more than recovered my money from concert. Now if the concert did not make any money than I agree I will be at a net loss.
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I don't want to go on the road... I just want the Barnes & Nobles AROUND THE CORNER from my apartment to actually stock my book in-store. So I need to become famous. Which means I need to write more... I'm 180+ pages into the sequel to Guardians of Xen... But can't write more than a couple pages a day when I'm burned out from 9 hours at the office.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
Yeah, brick and mortar presence is the holy grail, to be sure. I got some B&N love with Career Programmer, but not so much with Tribes. Of course, becoming famous is more an aspect of PR than of writing. More time writing is what you get to do after you're famous. :-D
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services