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Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
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Orion_Zorn
post Aug 11 2008, 11:46 AM
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The days of free music might be over.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterf...Trade_Agreement

The US, Mexico, Canada, EU and Japan are working on a 'Trade Agreement' that will fight against piracy. Searches without probable cause and "a provision to force Internet service providers to provide information about suspected copyright infringers without a warrant, making it easier for the record industry to sue music file sharers and for officials to shut down non-commercial BitTorrent websites such as The Pirate Bay"

Patents and copyrights basically give the person holding the copyright or patent a monopoly. Monopolies are always bad.

Look at Microsoft. Does anyone think Windows would be such a pile of crap, if any company could just make 'Windows'? Music is another great example. Lets say Sony owns Beyonce's music. They have a monopoly on her songs. If anyone wants to buy her music, they must go through Sony. Without copyright laws, Sony would just be a distributor, and if another distributor could sell music more cheaply, Sony would lose business. Competition is good, copyright laws just stifle competition. What would happen to the music industry if copyright laws were abolished?

Musicians would make a lot less money. Has anyone ever wondered where it was written that they should be filthy rich? It isn't music that makes them rich, it is that they, and the company that produces them, has a monopoly on their product. If copyright laws were abolished, musicians would not make money selling music. Or, they might make a tiny amount selling them initially (ex: people still pay for songs on Itunes). The most money they would make would be touring. They would not make money on merchandise - which is where most musicians make the really big money anyway. Again, this relies on copyright laws.

The key is that music, and ANY product would be cheaper without patents and copyright laws. Remove the fee paid to the copyright owner, and the product gets cheaper.

I have also read that the big corps want to change copyright to be like patents. Right now there is a common copyright law. If i post an article on my blog, I own it, and can take someone to court if they steal it. I dont pay to copyright it. The big companies want to make it so that you have to pay a fee if you want to copyright something. So any small writer, blogger, photographer, can ahve their work used by big companies, but the little guy cannot do teh same and use things produced by the larger companies.

In the end, this costs the average consumer more and more.

The common answer to this is that 'without copyright there would be no innovation', that companies would not invest in new products without copyright or patent laws.

Actually there is evidence that they stifle innovation, and do not foster it at all.

This article is also very good, and talks about the benefits of not having copyright laws.

This new 'treaty' is obviously big companies pushing governments to protect their interests. In the end, we all have less real wealth. We all hear about how poor factory worker should not complain that technological innovations made their jobs obsolete - but why doesn't technological innovation work both ways? When technological innovation happens that threatens big business, they work to make it illegal OR they buy up the rights to the improved product so no one can ever produce it.

here is an example "Fearful of losing business to a competing technology, they [oil companies] supported efforts to kill the ZEV mandate. They also bought patents to prevent modern NiMH batteries from being used in US electric cars."

Without patent laws, this would not happen. Real innovation is being lost because of patents.

The simplest example is music. Music would be free if it were not for copyright laws. The idea that musicians would not make music is ridiculous. There are all sorts of musicians playing in bars and night clubs for tiny amounts of money, because they love it.

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bridarshy
post Aug 11 2008, 01:31 PM
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MS is a good example of a corp that dominates without being inventive. They are good at marketting, and copying others.

How is it though that this agreement will be able to shut down a website in Sweden, which is not part of the EU?

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KS_Rockstar
post Aug 11 2008, 09:19 PM
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My ex Gf is married to the son of the guy that owns Sony Records. I got to chat with him for a while about this at a common friends wedding last year. Basically, he explained that pirated music is ruining their business. Saying that it discourages musicians from making music and it generally is putting record companies in a bad way.

While I'm sure it is hurting business, I didn't point out the obvious, "so what". As you said above, who said that record labels and artists had to be billionaires???

So I in theory agree with your original premise..........

However............................................................

As somebody that makes movies for a living, the idea of somebody being able to pull the latest would be block buster movie off the internet the day before it is released and watching it in full HD quality on their computer (for free) does worry me.

I know it's not exactly the same but I feel like the record companies made a mistake that the movie studios kind of avoided. When Napster first came out, you could literally rip any song the day it was relapsed, for free in basically the exact same quality as you would get buying the cd. You did not need a super powerful computer or any special hardware (except a cd burner if you wanted to listen in your car). Now if my choice is that or spend 25 bucks for a cd that may have 2 good songs on it, ill rip the music every day and twice on Sunday.

But, movies are a bit different. The file size of a DVD is not nearly as easy to dl (or ul for that matter). Watching it requires a decently powerful system and if you want it in anything close to what you have at the theater, you need a pretty serious home entertainment system. Not to mention, you can frequently buy new release DVD’s for like 9.99 or 12.99........

Now the day you can quickly dl a full rez, HD version of a movie and play it on your big screen TV for free the day it's released is the day I start get nervous about my next job. Studios will simply not fork over a hundred million dollars if there is a minimal box office and an almost non existent DVD sale.

So I agree that artists and particularly record labels are greedy bastards and that patents are not a good idea (and also probably won’t work that well), I do understand and support the concept of intellectual property and letting artists (all of us) get paid for our work...

Interested to see what happens….

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Orion_Zorn
post Aug 11 2008, 10:53 PM
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I sometimes think that the the compromise between both ideas is to have a very short copyright or patent system, and somehow make it cheap. Like..1 year.

i have read on techdirt.com (very good blog, mostly on patent and copyright theory, issues, etc) that the reason they keep extending copyright is because of frigging Mickey Mouse! They said, no joke, that they keep extending how long copyrights last because somoene points out that Mickey Mouse will soon be public domain (most likely disney, i assume).

I think Disney has made enough money off of mickey mouse, dont you think? At the least, copyright and patent laws need to expire fairly quickly, 1-3 years imo. I think it would be the best balance. Although on other days I think... screw it, we should just bag the entire thing, no copyright, no patents....

@Bridarshy - Microsoft is also a good example of how poopiety a company can be, because they have no real competition, and they only enjoy that position because of copyright and patent laws. I swear microsoft could screw up a wet dream.

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bridarshy
post Aug 11 2008, 11:08 PM
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What is funny about the mickey mouse example, is that I doubt Disney would see any damage to the bottom line if other companies were using their characters. People would still think of them as Disney inventions, and icons.

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Orion_Zorn
post Aug 12 2008, 07:26 AM
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They would lose money though, they would not make a cut of any item sold using the Mickey Mouse image. Just the other day I was at a party store buying things for my daughters first birthday party, and they had pinatas. Some were generic, others were name brand characters. There was a sign that basically said that any of the name brand items were $2 more than the generic ones. They cost more because the images are copyrighted/trademarked, whatever.

edit: @Rockstar, you should read this article.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070110/004225.shtml

It is the best example of how copyright and patents hurt society I have found. They talk about button makers in teh 17th century.

""The question has come up whether a guild master of the weaving industry should be allowed to try an innovation in his product. The verdict: 'If a cloth weaver intends to process a piece according to his own invention, he must not set it on the loom, but should obtain permission from the judges of the town to employ the number and length of threads that he desires, after the question has been considered by four of the oldest merchants and four of the oldest weavers of the guild.' One can imagine how many suggestions for change were tolerated.

Shortly after the matter of cloth weaving has been disposed of, the button makers guild raises a cry of outrage; the tailors are beginning to make buttons out of cloth, an unheard-of thing. The government, indignant that an innovation should threaten a settled industry, imposes a fine on the cloth-button makers. But the wardens of the button guild are not yet satisfied. They demand the right to search people's homes and wardrobes and fine and even arrest them on the streets if they are seen wearing these subversive goods.""

Your point of view is the same as any factory worker back in the 60s and 70s - new technology was making them obsolete. Should we stop new technology or in the base of the button makers, try to force 'the market'? People wanted cloth buttons, end of story.

The movie thing is interesting though, because the costs are higher to make a movie than they are for an album. But people will still want movies no matter what, I think something would change.

The real problem is that people get unlimited bandwidth with their cable modem (some companies are trying to charge by usage though), so sharing movies and songs is 'free'. (Techdirt.com has some really good stuff on 'the economics of abundance', very cool stuff)

I would think if we had a truly free market, someone would offer a cable modem with limited bandwidth that was cheaper and the unlimited version. Right now though the cable companies are almost oligopolies(?), not much competition.

I would bet that if they removed copyright laws, bandwidth usage would go way up. Cable companies have to raise prices, and eventually someone would say 'lets offer a modem that lets you transmit 20 GB of data a month for half the price'.

People start to use this - and now it costs the average citizen to download or share movies. Will people still freely share movies when it is using up their finite bandwidth? I doubt it. And this is where people might gladly pay $2 to download a movie from a website. Again, who decides that Julia Roberts deserves $10 Million per movie...? There will always be actors.

I think this is just like factory workers that complained about machinery and robots replacing their jobs. Technology should be allowed to enhance our lives, it seems obvious that the internet makes distribution of movies and music easy, and absurdly cheap. I thought the USA was all about 'progress'? :)

This post has been edited by Orion_Zorn: Aug 12 2008, 08:02 AM

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KS_Rockstar
post Aug 12 2008, 10:52 AM
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^^yes, i agree......... but, if julia does a movie and specifically because she's in it, it makes say another 50 million than she should get her fair share.

if by lowering the total cost of making the movie you lower the total profit (thus lowering julia's theoretical deserved profit) do you not hinder the overall quality of the movie?

and, take some recent blockbuster's. yes, the actors made a few million (batman is a good example) but the lion's share of the money went into production. even if the actors worked for free, that movie could not have been made without an expectation of a multi hundred million dollar box office. you would simply not have batman, spiderman, superman, ironman, lord of the rings, harry potter, the list goes on and on.

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Orion_Zorn
post Aug 12 2008, 11:28 AM
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Well from what I have read, much of the reason that free market economists yell so loudly about how bad government intervention is for society is because by artificially propping up a business, you make that business not interested in efficiency. For example, the airline industry. I have read often that the airline industry could not exist without government aid... but the libertarians would say that because the government always gives them aid and a free ride, they do not have any incentive to figure out ways to do things more efficiently.

Does it really cost $75 million to make a movie? The reason that kind of money is tossed around is because there is big money to be made. As you said, Julia deserves her fair share. But if movies sold for $1 online, no one would invest that kind of money into a movie, so then her 'fair share' might be say... $50,000, out of $500K invested. Is she not doing the same job? She only gets so much money today becasue people want a product that the movie company has a monopoly on. There isnt much competition, if the studio owning spiderman prices its movie less than the batman movie, will people buy it rather than the batman movie? Somewhat, but not many, until the price difference gets huge. So movie companies, just like music companies, can just continue to price their product at whatever level they feel the public will pay for it.

Maybe the biggest budget movies would disappear, but what would we gain? I would lose Spiderman to be able to pay less for about... everything else we buy.

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KS_Rockstar
post Aug 12 2008, 05:23 PM
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fair point. what we dont know is exactly how much cost is involved in making a record. i actually have budgets for movies ive worked on. even low budget b movie carp is expensive.

the least expensive movie ive ever worked on is called hip hop kids "it's a beautiful thing". the budget was around 250k. now we had no expensive locations (a school durring summer break), no expnesive equipment (two min dv hd video cameras) and only a very small crew (say a total of 25 people). the actors were all no name kids that could dance and or sing. the movie is really good for 250k but it's obvious that we only had a 1/4 of a mil.

id say that for any movie worth watching (or one worth paying anything for) your going to spend about 25-40 million and that's a movie that doesnt have big name actors in it (think something like juno). you really do need to have some form of guarinteed income to make spending 40mil worth it.



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