..on Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 01:55:08PM +1200, johannes contag wrote:
Unfortunately this is already in place in several countries, notably here in
Spain but in a different form. It's called the Digital Canon and is a tax on
all
storage media on the assumption that people will be inevitably infringing
copyright with that media. It was introduced by a state undersigned rights
management society deeply hated in Spain by the name of SGAE.
yes, I read about this. if enforced fairly/intelligently - and with proceeds
actually going to copyright holders - I thought this might even have worked,
but terrible if it's so heavy-handed and there's no exceptions for
non-private users... also seems a bit pointless now with storage media being
used less and less.
Well the problem here in Spain is that only 1-2% of all the tens of thousands of
artists signed with the SGAE ever see more than a euro cent from this canon. All
the profits are weighted on returns and so it works only for the strutting
superstars of Spanish pop.
The opponents of 'net-neutrality' have
also talked about what you propose
often,
I'm certainly for net neutrality and against ISPs fudging their bandwidths
for commercial reasons while claiming to offer advantages. I actually think
ISPs aren't being held accountable enough for their role in
fostering/hindering different aspects of net traffic; our much-publicised
data privacy is also a bit of a joke from an ISP perspective, seeing they
can (and do?) monitor almost everything.
interesting wikipedia read, thanks.
The problem isn't the fact people are
downloading the content the problem is
corporations to which artists have willing signed non-pro-copy right licenses
are making a lot of money claiming they're losing billions to downloads, a
logical fallacy when you give it a second's thought. Meanwhile those same
corporations are absolutely embracing moves from CD content to digital media..
They're just trying to make a buck in while CD content transitions out of the
industry, with their help...
Secondly artists are choosing to sign with these labels/record deals giving
away
their rights in the first instance. It's their fault: don't sign with Island
records and then complain you don't have rights over your stuff.
well yes, these are all valid points and are well familiar from the music
copyright discourse, but the point I was trying to make was that file
sharing today mostly infringes film/tv copyright, and that this makes it a
different ballgame due to the dramatically higher production costs involved.
Indeed, so they need to change their approach entirely. It's a problem they have
created, as much as anyone else. Producers expecting they can fight the fact
it's so easy to record, upload and distribute video content with DRM or at the
ISP level are simply foolish. I sincerely doubt any of them really think that.
They're just trying to make a few bucks at the bar while their ship sinks.
There were no complaints about people copying TV shows/movies onto VHS in the
past and sharing them with friends and family, in fact it was an industry in
itself that moguls like Sony benefitted from greatly, for instance.
It's the mechanism and volume has changed, not the act itself. This is something
that 'ethical' arguments about 'piracy' don't ever seem to address.
supposing that film/tv was in fact "losing
billions to downloads" (which it
can't be far off from), I think this might spell a fairly rapid end to
either film/tv or to downloads... or maybe I'm too pessimistic, maybe the
millions of downloaders watch all their illegal content on top of their
regular idiot box diet (but I doubt it).
The box office made its record sales in 2007. Just previously to releasing these
figures MPAA execs cited downloading as "killing" the industry:
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/36366/113/
I don't think it's an eye-for-an-eye industry where downloads are concerned.
It's part promotion, part distribution and indeed part theft, from the
perspective of the law.
if I'm right though, and film/tv is
the biggest loser right now (and for the foreseeable future), then that's
what the copyright debate should jump on - some workable fair ideas as
alternatives to the inevitable cash-cow ideas from the industry.
Indeed. It's my guess that a service based model is the only way to go, DRM is
clearly flawed (/me nods to DVD Jon) and expensive on the industry.
Trying to wrap up digital bits as artefacts is ridiculous. Anyone with a
rudimentary understanding of computer science knows that the file is not the
data and that data is not a thing (despite what the archaic Desktop metaphor
will have you think).
If the entertainment industry doesn't innovate then it will just have to suffer,
collapse and then emerge as something else. Artist's don't have a 'right'
to
make money from what they make so much as an opportunity in this relatively sick
system. That includes producers who have been playing with cards behind their
backs for a little too long.
Cheers,
--
Julian Oliver
home: New Zealand
based: Madrid, Spain
currently: Madrid, Spain
about:
http://julianoliver.com