Love-Hounds-request@GAFFA.MIT.EDU (06/21/89)
Really-From: Richard Caley <rjc%aipna.edinburgh.ac.uk@NSFNET-RELAY.AC.UK> >Really-From: John M. Relph <relph@presto.ig.com> >Do people still believe this myth? It is not a few fans making copies >of albums, CDs, or live concerts that rip the artist off. Artists >get ripped off by "creative accounting practices" . . . The issue is not depriving KT of money, it is theft of intelectual property. It must say something about Americans that the first thing they start worrying about is the money :-) >All these copyright laws are well intentioned: they are >(theoretically) designed to make sure the artist continues to derive >revenue from her or his hard work. Nope they are designed to ensure that people who make something retain control of it. Revenue has nothing to do with it. >So how am I, with my lowly tape trading non-profit exercise, going to >steal money from those artists? As I say, money is not the point. It is the work you are stealing. >IED continues to say that the moral issues are not simple . . . He is right. I sent off the money to him ( is it there yet? Have the Royal Mail and the USPO decided to shred it? ) after some moral agonising. _I_ decided that sooner or later I was going to be faced with these tapes face to, erm. . . face to liner ( lets hear it for mixed metaphor ) and knowing I would not be likely to resist in that case I decided that IED's argument, that it is best to bite the bullet now and not feed the bootleggers, holds. The work has already been stolen, it is receving stolen goods we are talking about here. Intelectual property is bad in that you can't return it to its rightful owner. The choice now is either to distribute or to let others. >P.S. Read Frank Zappa's book, it'll give you something to think >about, too. I assume you stole your copy:-) -- rjc@uk.ac.ed.aipna Stay alert, Trust nobody, Keep your laser handy.
dbk@mimsy.UUCP (Dan Kozak) (06/24/89)
>Really-From: Richard Caley <rjc%aipna.edinburgh.ac.uk@NSFNET-RELAY.AC.UK> >The issue is not depriving KT of money, it is theft of intelectual >property. It must say something about Americans that the first thing >they start worrying about is the money :-) >>All these copyright laws are well intentioned: they are >>(theoretically) designed to make sure the artist continues to derive >>revenue from her or his hard work. >Nope they are designed to ensure that people who make something retain >control of it. Revenue has nothing to do with it. Strike two. Allow me to quote from a recent message on gnu.gcc. The issue there was look and feel copyright law, but if you substitue "recording artist" for inventor below, it makes just as much sense in this disscussion. The Constitution deals with intellectual property not in the Bill of Rights, but in Section 8 of Article I, which enumerates the powers of Congress. The eighth of these is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and inventions." It is quite clear this is a power of Congress, not a right of the inventor. Congress is given a clear quideline as to why this power is given. It is *not* to profit the inventor but to "promote the progress of science and useful arts". This of course means money for the author or inventor, but that is only a side effect. Any privilege granted creates a lobby for its extension and perpetuation, regardless of the original purpose of the privilege. And in justifying extensions of intellectual property before Congress, its claimants always pretend that they are being deprived of a right, and treat the public benefit, which is the sole proper purpose, as a secondary issue, or even an irrelevant one. Any questions? :-) -- #dan Clever: dbk@mimsy.umd.edu | "For I was rolled in water, Not-so-clever: uunet!mimsy!dbk | I was rolled out past the pier" - MoB
Love-Hounds-request@GAFFA.MIT.EDU (06/26/89)
Really-From: Richard Caley <rjc%edai.edinburgh.ac.uk@NSFNET-RELAY.AC.UK> In article <18255@mimsy.UUCP> you write: >>Really-From: Richard Caley <rjc%aipna.edinburgh.ac.uk@NSFNET-RELAY.AC.UK> >>Nope they are designed to ensure that people who make something retain >>control of it. Revenue has nothing to do with it. >Strike two. Says you! >The Constitution . .. >Congress . . . >Any questions? :-) I'll take your word for stupid American legalities, however, the argument was morality. And if the US constitution can't distinguish copyright from patent law then it has even more problems than I previously thorght. The US is a society built on the assumption of the right of private property. Now one could scrap that assumption, but as long as it remains ignoring intelectual property is as bad as ignoring physical property. Out LBW for a golden duck?
Love-Hounds-request@GAFFA.MIT.EDU (06/28/89)
Really-From: Doug Alan <nessus@athena.mit.edu> > From: Richard Caley <rjc%edai.edinburgh.ac.uk@NSFNET-RELAY.AC.UK> > The US is a society built on the assumption of the right of private > property. Now one could scrap that assumption, but as long as it > remains[,] ignoring intelectual property is as bad as ignoring > physical property. This is a lame argument. Physical property and "intellectual property" are two different things. Why is ignoring "intellectual property" as bad as ignoring physical property? Certainly you could have a society that recognized physical property, but did not recognize "intellectual property". The GNU people would propably have things this way if they could. There is a fundamental difference between "intellectual property" and physical property. If you steal someone's physical property, they no longer have it. However, if you steal someone's "intellectual property", they *do* still have it. This makes the two types of "property" very different. This does not mean, however, that the victim might not have been hurt in some way. The victim may lose some or all ability to profit off of the "intellectual property", which would indeed be a loss of physical property. However, in many cases, this may not be an issue. In some cases, the damage to the victim may be less tangible. The victim may be embarrased by this "intellectual property", and may not want it to be spread. In other cases, there may be absolutely no loss to the victim at all. Because of the peculiar nature of "intellectual property" the ethical issues involved with it are particularly interesting. Conceptual goods (or at least instances of any specific conceptual good), unlike physical goods, are not constrained (except by law) to be a limited resource, since "intellectual property" can be duplicated almost for free. The argument can be made that all "intellectual property" should be in the public domain. This way everone gets to have it -- everyone's life is improved, rather than just the lives of a few. With conceptual goods, you can have your cake and eat it too! However, the counter-argument can be made that if there is no incentive structure to encourage people to create conceptual goods, then there will be few conceptual goods to enrich the lives of all these people. Copyright and patent laws were invented to address both of these issues. The aim was to both provide an incentive structure for creating conceptual goods and provisions to encourage conceptual goods to be widely available for a reasonable price. If you wanted to copyright a book, for example, you also have to allow copies of the book to be put in libraries, where anyone can read it for free. You only get the royalties for one book sold, but a thousand people might read it. If you copyright a book, you can't say that only one person is allowed to read it. The owner of the book can lend it to whoever he wants to. If you copyright a piece of music, you must allow it to be played on non-profit radio, where you get no royalties and where any listener can legally copy the work off of the airwaves and listen to as much as they want to, without you receiving a cent. If you want more restrictive control over your ideas, you might be able to patent them, but in this case you lose complete control over them (they become public domain) after only seventeen years. Notice that these laws oppose the idea of absolute "intellectual property" that one has total control over until the end of time. Today, some people argue that these laws are not the best possible laws to promote the common good. Some people argue that they are too restrictive, and that people should have more right to copy conceptual goods -- that everyone should be allowed a piece of any intellectual pie, no matter how poor they may be, because an intellectual pie can be cut into an infinite number of full-size pieces. Other people claim that the laws are not restrictive enough and that people should have more control and derive more personal profit from the product of their minds. I don't hope to settle this issue here. What I am trying to point out is that the issue is not so black and white as some people involved in this discussion would have us believe. To apply the above bits of philosophising to the issue at hand -- the matter of distributing the Cathy Demo tapes -- there are two questions that are relevant: "Is this legal?" and "Is this moral?" Well, if the original demo tape was copyrighted, and it seems likely that it would have been (some of the songs on the tape definitely are copyrighted, because they appear on albums) then it is clearly illegal. What about the question is it moral? There are many approaches one might use to answer this question. I will outline two of them here. One approach might be to say that one should always follow the law. Following the law is always moral and breaking the law is always immoral. A less rigid version of the previous argument might say that one should always follow a "good" law and that the copyright law is a "good" law. An even less rigid version of this argument might say that one should always follow a set of good laws, not necessarily the laws of the government, but a set of laws that would be a good thing if everyone followed. Someone pursuing this line of reasoning might then argue, in some fashion, that any good set of laws would reject such theft of "intellectual property". This last version is not so absurd. Kant, I believe, supported this sort of ethics. Another approach might be to analyze the situation using Utilitarian ethics. Which choice of actions in this situation would result in the greatest common good (i.e. happiness and fulfillment)? In order to anaylize this, we must try to evaluate what Kate will lose from this venture and what the people who receive the tape will gain. Some people have argued that the tape project is stealing money from Kate. This is patently ludicrous. This is not an issue. Kate is not planning on selling this material and if by some complete fluke she did, anyone who would buy one of these tapes would undoubtedly also buy the official release. I will pummel anyone who brings up this argument again. What will Kate really lose out of this? The truth of the matter is that it might cause her some discomfort. She may very well not like to think that people are listening to her immature work by which she is embarrased. She has stated repeatedly in the past that she doesn't want people to hear her work until it is perfect. This would be something to consider even if there were no copyright on the material and it were totally in the public domain and completely legal to copy. However, I truly doubt Kate will lose a whole lot of sleep over the matter, even if it does make her a bit mad. Another issue is that the cat is already out of the bag. Will it cause Kate any more discomfort if 3,000 people hear this material, rather than only 1,000? Maybe, maybe not. What will those who get a copy of this tape gain? A large percentage are likely to gain hours, days, weeks, or even years of intense enjoyment and enligthenment from this tape. So, which weighs heavier on the scale when considering the common good? A modicum of displeasure for Kate or intense pleasure and enlightenment for hundreds of people? One might reasonably argue that the intense pleasure and enlightenment times several hundred weighs more and that distributing the tape causes the greatest common good. Since, as I have shown, the issue is not cut and dry, it is not black and white -- reasonable arguments can be made for both the morality and immorality of distributing the tapes -- it is time to shut up about the morality of issue. This is not "talk.philosophy.misc". Let IED and the other subscribers to Love-Hounds and rec.music.gaffa decide for themseleves without being preached to and verbally bludgeoned. Your humble pseudo-philosopher, |>oug "I've been told, when I get older That I'll understand it all, But I'm not sure if I want to."
Love-Hounds-request@GAFFA.MIT.EDU (06/28/89)
Really-From: tynor%pyr@gatech.edu (Steve Tynor) In article <8906272103.AA05983@GAFFA.MIT.EDU> Love-Hounds@GAFFA.MIT.EDU writes: ... >What will Kate really lose out of this? The truth of the matter is >that it might cause her some discomfort. She may very well not like >to think that people are listening to her immature work by which she >is embarrased. She has stated repeatedly in the past that she doesn't >want people to hear her work until it is perfect. This would be I remember reading an interview (sorry, can't remember where) where she stated that she dislikes TKI album and would love to rerecord the material (at least the vocals - since it was her 1st album, she had little control over its production); I can just imagine how she feels about the demos. >What will those who get a copy of this tape gain? A large percentage >are likely to gain hours, days, weeks, or even years of intense enjoyment >and enligthenment from this tape. So, which weighs heavier on the scale >when considering the common good? A modicum of displeasure for Kate >or intense pleasure and enlightenment for hundreds of people? One >might reasonably argue that the intense pleasure and enlightenment >times several hundred weighs more and that distributing the tape >causes the greatest common good. I like this argument! I no longer feel sqeamish about sending my $$ to IED. > |>oug =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Virtue is its own punishment. Steve Tynor Georgia Tech Research Institute tynor@gitpyr.gatech.edu
Love-Hounds-request@GAFFA.MIT.EDU (06/29/89)
Really-From: halley!halley.mp3!watson@cs.utexas.edu (William Watson) Doug Alan <nessus@athena.mit.edu> said: >If you copyright a piece of music, you must allow it to >be played on non-profit radio, where you get no royalties and where >any listener can legally copy the work off of the airwaves and listen >to as much as they want to, without you receiving a cent. This is not the case, at least in the US. Non-commercial radio stations pay fees to ASCAP and BMI, just like commercial stations, restaraunts, and clubs. You will not get anything from the listeners, though. William
Love-Hounds-request@GAFFA.MIT.EDU (06/29/89)
Really-From: Doug Alan <nessus@athena.mit.edu> >> [|>oug:] If you copyright a piece of music, you must allow it >> to be played on non-profit radio, where you get no royalties and >> where any listener can legally copy the work off of the airwaves >> and listen to as much as they want to, without you receiving a >> cent. > [William Watson:] This is not the case, at least in the US. > Non-commercial radio stations pay fees to ASCAP and BMI, just like > commercial stations, restaraunts, and clubs. You will not get > anything from the listeners, though. Wrongo! I can't speak for all non-profit stations, since there may be different classifications of non-profit stations, but I used to be a DJ on a major college radio station and we payed nothing to no one. No royalties were received by anyone for anything we played on the air. This was certainly legal and intended by the copyright law and the FCC. |>oug
Love-Hounds-request@GAFFA.MIT.EDU (06/29/89)
Really-From: arc!ken@apple.com
Hello,
I haven't had time to read gaffa for a couple of weeks, so I
spent the last hour or two with the issues and people's opinions
thereof. Here are my thoughts:
You are Kate Bush fans.
Kate Bush's private recordings were stolen from her.
She has said that she doesn't want anyone to listen to them.
You're not much of a fan if you wouldn't obey her wishes.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I can't see why this isn't the whole story (sorry - no
wordplay intended!). I really disagree with Robert Kelner; if she
hasn't released these tapes, then it is exactly the same as publishing
her private diaries.
As far as the "I've got to hear more Kate stuff" argument
goes, What happens after you've heard this material as many times as
her albums? Are you going to break into her house and steal any tape
you can? Why not just consider that the body of work she has released
is her statement - as she intends it - and leave it at that? Is it
not PerfeKT? Even the idea of unreleased bootlegs seems to me to be
particularly at odds with the sort of careful studio work that she
does; I can't possibly imagine wanting to hear any of the outtakes
from her albums, either.
It's amazing to me that people seem more interested in hearing
this unpolished stuff than hearing her new album as soon as possible.
Maybe for her birthday, Kate Bush would like to receive a big
stack of bootlegs that everyone had mailed back to her.
Just to back up my words with actions, I'm going to listen to
"Hounds of Love" on the way home tonight (the EMI tape).
--
- Ken
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to : apple!arc!ken \ Disclaimer: All the above is solely
sun!apple!arc!ken \ the opinion of the author
ken@arc.UUCP arc!ken@apple.COM \ and not those of his employer.
======================================================================
"I only believe in you." - Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe
----------------------------------------------------------------------stevesc@microsoft.UUCP (Steve Schonberger) (06/30/89)
In article <15312.8906261354@edai.ed.ac.uk> Richard Caley <rjc%edai.edinburgh.ac.uk@NSFNET-RELAY.AC.UK> writes: >And if the US constitution can't distinguish copyright from patent law >then it has even more problems than I previously thorght. I suspect that one of our citizens, who often don't understand our laws as well as they might proclaim, are the ones with problems, rather than our constitution. It has its problems, but failing to distinguish such things as copyrights and patents are not among them. The writers of it have been much more careful and knowledgable than most people who write things on the net. Steve
Love-Hounds-request@GAFFA.MIT.EDU (07/01/89)
Really-From: Jeff Dalton <jeff%aiai.edinburgh.ac.uk@NSFNET-RELAY.AC.UK> In article <15312.8906261354@edai.ed.ac.uk> Love-Hounds@GAFFA.MIT.EDU writes: >Really-From: Richard Caley <rjc%edai.edinburgh.ac.uk@NSFNET-RELAY.AC.UK> >I'll take your word for stupid American legalities, however, the >argument was morality. And the arguments for the US laws were moral ones. Those arguments just happened to put more emphasis on the public good than you're willing to tolerate.
Love-Hounds-request@GAFFA.MIT.EDU (07/06/89)
Really-From: ll-xn!rochester!moscom!telesci!ashepps@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (Anton C Shepps (Tony))
In article <8906290314.AA07484@gaffa.mit.edu> you write:
...I used to be a
DJ on a major college radio station and we payed nothing to no one.
Well, there are two possibilities:
1. The ASCAP, BMI, and SECAM licensing fees were paid by the COLLEGE
instead of the radio station as a part of a SITE license. This is legal.
2. Your station was breaking the law. Non-profit, non-commercial,
educational radio statios still have to pay licensing fees.
Note: I would have posted this publicly, but our site's PNEWS has somehow
become fouled! I don't mind if you re-direct this mailing to r.m.gaffa.
--
_______________________________________________________________________________
Tony Shepps ashepps@telesci.uucp | "A statesman is a dead politician.
(...!princeton!telesci!ashepps) | Lord knows, we need more statesmen."
Long on talent, short on fame. | - Opus