I have indeed heard stories of independent bands selling their music through iTMS. And I know of at least one copyleft label that sells their catalog through iTMS. So I agree that iTMS can help independent artists, and that is an important point.

And, yes, I’m a Jobs fan as well. 🙂

However the DRM is not there to help independent artists, it is there to placate the large music companies. It is also not there to help consumers. We are living in the grace period of DRM. Give it a couple of years and people are going to start finding that they’ve run out of authorisations for machines or decide that that they don’t want to use iTunes any more. Or they’ll lose their downloads in a crash, or anything else that doesn’t happen if you pay the same price as an iTunes download for the higher quality tracks that you get on a CD. What then? How will that reflect on the bands that have participated in screwing you over? There will be a backlash. Whilst it could be argued that the market will adjust, the DRM market is desperate for monopolies. DRM really needs monopolies (or at least caucuses), and monopolies don’t have to adjust. They dictate. DRM is about dictating to consumers. That is not a good value proposition.

I am absolutely for mechanisms that support independent producers. DRM is not such a mechanism. DRM locks you and your fans in. It is easily broken by criminals but places an unneccessary burden on consumers. This will be its undoing, and independent producers might want to think twice before putting their music on what history will remember as the the 8 track of digital music.

There are examples of bands giving music away and getting money back for it (Lessig mentioned some in Wired, don’t have it to hand right now). Or of copyleft record labels (Loca, Magnatune, Opsound). These examples are less spectacular than iTMS because they are not exploiting the back catalog of big music. But they show that it is possible to make money without treating your fans as criminals.

I think the point on which we differ, and where I often differ with people, is on how to create the best environment for creatives. I am a creative. I believe that being free to create will give the greater benefit, I get the impression that you believe that ensuring that creativity is denied to those who will not pay distributors for it will give the bigger benefit (yes, I’m phrasing that to illustrate what I believe the flaw to be). I’m sure DRM will make money in the short term. Maybe a world in which I have to pay each time I put pencil to paper, or hear a tune on the radio, will make more money for people. But I doubt that I will be one of those people, and I doubt that it will lead to greater creativity. The fledgeling copyleft music industry shows that there’s another way.

It is ironic that the Romantic figure of the Artist-creator requires a noble view of human nature that protecting their money -uh- creation through DRM denies. DRM is romanticism in the service of mercantilism. To me that doesn’t make sense.

YMMV.

I see. It’s the IP-owner answer to the name of the GNU project. A sort of legal recursiveness. Clever…but hardly convincing. 🙂

Mr. Riolo,

Don’t lose hope and don’t give up. The truth always wins.

–K.

For example, George Bush should get a blog.

I think the only area of disagreement we have is you believe “the public” = government. If you study basic political science, a lot of thought went into fighting “mob rule” — the majority of the public controlling the nation’s wealth.

Tayssir John Gabbour,

I do not all all believe that the government and the public are synonymous. I believe that the government deriving authority from the public, has an obligation to act in the interest of the public and on its behalf.

For example, copyrights that extend forever would be something most government entities would find exceptionally easy to deal with. No red tape, no messy court battles, no complicated laws… just one simple rule that the first person to claim an idea owns it and all derivitives of it forever.

The public however would be unable to tolerate that kind of system and the government has an obligation to act on what the public’s needs are.

The public has a basic need for a knowledge base to be in the public domain, available to all for use as reference, inspiration, groundwork for innovation and so on. The government should be mindful of the rights of a creator, or a middleman, of the heirs of a creator… but those rights should not trump the rights of the public in all cases and forever.

It is the governments role to set reasonable limits on ownership. Just as the government may take land for public projects when neccesary, or the government may require corporations to pay taxes or abide by certain health and safety requirements… so should the government protect the rights of the public with regard to content.

Content is to the intellectual facet of society as health and safety is to the tangible facet of society. For the government to protect my hand from a punch press but not protect my mind from someone seeking to “own” a musical score or written work for the next 100 decades is silly.

I can understand (though I dont agree with) the view that government should stay out of everything; that health and safety should be a matter of contract between an employer and the employed…. length of workworks for children should be a matter for the marketplace to decide. But once we cross that line and decide corporations with unfair bagaining power should not be able to press 13 year old girls into sewing in sweatshops for 70 hours a week…. we must also cross the threshold and decide that Disney cant own Mickey Mouse and any derivation of it for the next 20,000 years.

The government’s role is the same, and content is no less vital than safety for the public.

What we have ended up with is a bunch of pigmies who don’t bother becoming giants, they just go around finding them to walk all over.

Eg: Microsoft.

Better protection and power for the giants themselves, would mean that those who wish to elevate themselves on the backs of others will need to give more credit where credit is due.

This is one of the reasons why in academia it is a crime that can get you expelled from university if you do not credit your sources. However, the crime is not having sources. A subtle distinction that is constantly loss on not only students, but sometimes the professors themselves.

It is a waste of your, my, and others’ time to
ask blaze the question about the true creation.
It is the myth that has been around here for
many decades. Authors and artists have
deceived themselves in believing that they
are on higher plane than the users and that
they are like gods that have special powers
in creating new works. In reality, they
are part of the ecosystem of knowledge where
they get the basic ingredients from the knowledge
to make a new work just like a cook that uses
some ingredients to make something for people
to eat.

As long as the authors and artists are stuck
in that myth, there is no way to reconcile with
them but to defend the freedoms of communication
and knowledge against their greed and lust for
control.

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<[email protected]>

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this
comment in the public domain.

Two things, one about this thread and another about Itunes:

After re-reading the entire comment list (something I often do), I still fully disagree with Blaze’s assertions. However, what strikes me as more abhorent are some of the comments by other posters claiming “victory” in the debate, or demanding Blaze end his part in the discussion.

Victory in a debate, contrary to popular myth, cant be “claimed” it can only be conceded. Let’s not turn these blog comment threads into a webversion of CrossFire… and lets not shun those we disagree with… or we will soon be posting and reading only the comments of those we are already in agreement with.

Thanks for the sanity check, Relentless. I agree and apologize to blaze for my presumptive and combative statements.

Perhaps it might be more constructive to focus upon that which we can agree instead of what we disagree upon:

I concede blaze’s point that the “middlemen” are the cause of the problem. Based upon what I’ve read from Prof. Lessig and the EFF, I tend to think they’d concede as well.

Where I differ from blaze is the reconcilation of the problem. He (please correct me if I’m wrong) advocates total creator rights whereas Lessig advocates the balance between creators’ rights and the rights of the public to “stand upon the shoulders of giants”.

In order to resolve that difference, I would pose a question/challenge to blaze: What have you ever truly, uniquely created for which I cannot find some prior precedent or derivative work?

Intellectual property is a misnomer; ideas simply don’t map to physical property law. We need to figure out a way to end this current duplicity of the law.

–K.