Posts by Andrew Orlowski

Re: Blimey

"What I don't understand is if someone is so clueless about a subject, why comment ?"

Because it perpetuates the Dream World.

Re: Re: Collection Society

Once upon a time that was true. In practice there's Berne Convention, WIPO (x2), the European Copyright Directive etc.

And creators rights are human rights, so courts can agree to hear unfair assaults on creators rights by politicians and officials.

You're on safe ground calling it a "synthetic property right", and keeping the argument to the real world.

Re: @PyLETs Re: minefields are expensive places to do business

PyLETs argument only makes sense if we all agree to misunderstand copyright in the same, unique way that PyLETs misunderstands it.

The same applies to the PyLETS currency

To be fair to Richard, he's never angry or abusive on here (or by email), but at the end of the day, ideas that are based on a rejection of reality are as much use as a chocolate teapot. And some people prefer making chocolate teapots to systems that ordinary people can use and benefit from.

Re: Re: there is only one problem

"Under the present system, everything must be assumed to be under a copyright, and the only safe thing is to not only not use anything"

The safe thing is to pay the sodding person who created it. Or just ask. Daily Mail take note: marking a photo '(C) The Internet' doesn't cut it.

Reducing the overhead involved is obviously a good thing. More like this http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/14/stop43_national_cultural_archive_proposals/ for example.

Automatic copyright has these benefits: much lower overheads and bureaucracy than your opt-in registration scheme, lower costs for users, and the fear of doing a Daily Mail keeps most people honest.

Re: registered property == lower transaction costs

Translated into English (PyLETS is developing his own weird language, like A Man From Mars):

"Grabbing other people's property would allow the grabber to profit, which I call economic progress. Abolishing property rights is necessary for the Greater Good."

But Hooper's DCE would allow uses which would otherwise occur, too. As would Stop 43's Cultural Exchange. Or any similar exchange that lowers transaction costs - all of which can be achieved without breaking away from the international rights framework of laws and treaties.

So no landgrab necessary, and your argument is superfluous wibble.

Re: So basically...

Sadly KR I think "copyfighters" have been barking madly up the wrong tree. Now the man has come for their rights, too.

Re: (c) teh interwebz

It's a reminder that the state has more power than any industry lobby when it comes to nicking your rights.

They've got guns, too.

Re: Collection Society

#fail

Re: Ofcom refused to allow The Register

I've asked, so we should know.

It's a bit silly of Ofcom to pick a fight it can't win.

Re: giving it all away for nowt

But you have a horse in this race. You want other people's stuff for free.

Which is fair enough.

I want a free car and swimming pool. It doesn't follow from "I want, gimmee", that I should have it, or the taxpayer should pay for my freebies.

[no thought was supplied]

It's both. Useful for one-off cases, useless for persistent infringement.

Do you always have such difficulty holding two thoughts at once?

Re: Nice Conceit but wishful thinking

When companies envisage making more money on Plan B than they do today on Plan A, they rapidly switch.

This applies to any business situation, there is nothing unique about this one.

The motivation for Facebook, Google today is fear: they perceive their short-term interest today to be the ad-driven, data-mining approach which also involves a huge consumer surplus (McKinsey puts this at €100bn a year btw) of stuff given away for "free". They like being big fish in a small pond. It's their comfort zone.

Eventually somebody (the shareholders, the markets, a CEO with a bit of vision) gets a clue.

Re: Re: Geocities?

Except the bits you need.

Re: Re: He may have some valid points

It was a transcript of a talk illustrated by slides.

Not a piece of prose.

Surveys show people do respect copyright in practice and in principle. Surprisingly so. But one of the Great Immutable Laws of the Interwebs is that when the conversation turns to paying creators, somebody always changes the subject to copyright terms :-)

A 1,000 year copyright term means nothing if nobody gets paid.

Re: This is grim ...

SleepyJohn - All your posts are pretty obsessively about one subject. They are either about how less money for creators really means more money, or how they should just shuddup and settle for less.

Banging on about the idiocy of the entertainment industry is a given. It's like banging on about the the sun coming up. It's standard chip-on-shoulder stuff.

What Lowery's talk does - with facts and figures - is show your dream of artists being better off is a myth. This is self-delusion on an epic scale. You may hold these views for noble reasons, but reality bites you in the end.

From your post, I can tell Lowery bit pretty hard.

Re: Re: Fundamentally accept the argument one minor point to add

"Take the big money out of the picture for artists and you might just see the passion for the art return."

Take the money out of the picture for cleaners and you might just see the passion for the cleaning return.

Re: Re: Reality check

I would suggest there hasn't been as much new good music for a long time - at least 20 years.

What you're saying is that you can't find it - or if you find it you can't recognise it. Which says a lot about you. Yet you have a reluctance to blame your own lack of curiosity or imagination, or conservatism. I suppose it's easier to blame The Man.

The problem is: all this great new music is being made but the world doesn't reward the creators. It should make them betteroff, but in fact, the old music economy was in many ways much fairer.

What argument really boils down to is: "Curse these young people with their infernal instruments! They don't deserve being rewarded".

Re: Fundamentally accept the argument one minor point to add

"It would also be interesting if there was information about how much artists get from CDs now"

He gives you the full picture - it's much more sophisticated, mentions the importance of trickles from mechanical and performance royalties - this side of the artist's bank account is rarely heard.

But basically, it's like this:

Richer artists subsidise mid-range artists, and quite generously. In his case, for quite a few years. But in that time he bullt up a few other income streams - a talented bloke.

In the new, new exciting world of YouTube - some performing novelty teenager gets a few beans from The Man, and anyone on the sharecropping scale below them gets nothing.

(And you already know why that is)

This is grim, and unless money changes hands honestly - like it does in the real world - it's going to stay grim.

Re: Re: Steve Foster

Hard to know where to start listing the errors here, so I won't. Read this instead:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/21/format_shifting_conjoint_research/

Most EU countries have a small levy. Some are quite microscopic levies. People obviously value format-shifting, so chuck 'em a few quid and the problem is sorted.

Re: Why is your so anti-IP?

Only the rich, eg trustafarians, can afford to work for nothing. Lucky duckies.

As Mark Bide pointed out here recently - people tend not to give a tuppeny fudge about either privacy rights, or their creative rights, until they need them - and realise they've lost them.

As for ripping people off in the name of the Common Good - I presume you've seen Hot Fuzz?

Re: Why?

"What do the Bureaucrats get out of damaging Copyright?"

Quite a lot.

In a market system, which is how most rights are traded, there's very little place for bureaucrats. But in an Extended Collective Licensing system, there are lots of new opportunities for regulators and jobsworths. Setting the price, vetting the participants, censoring things they don't like, and general poking around, etc.

All this comes at the expense of future opportunities for people wanting to trade those rights - because the markets don't exist. But it does ensure jobs for children of regulators who want to be regulators when they grow up.

Perfect, really.

You're right, we can, but it will take a while.

Re: Post deleted

Now there's a headline.

Re: Fashion business

Fashion is an IP industry. Amazed that anyone could think it isn't.

Re: Re: Britain's IP laws...... We are all Criminals

Politicians can pass laws making copyright last a million years and it wouldn't make any difference. If you can't enforce a law, it's meaningless. That's the point, and you've missed it.

(Because you have the need to feel that The Man is "screwing you")

Copyright term online is now about 45 seconds - and infringing online is pretty much guaranteed to be totally safe and free of a knock on the door.

So carry on Torrenting by all means, but don't pretend that you're being persecuted - it just makes you look nutty.

Re: Re: Britain's IP laws...... We are all Criminals

One company, Google, outspent Hollywood and the RIAA on SOPA lobbying.

Tech industries had more lobbyists and more access. The "buying laws" line may have been true once but isn't anymore. Nothing gets through. Or hadn't you noticed?

Re: Britain's IP laws...... We are all Criminals

Yes, good point: our jails are heaving full of parody writers and format shifters.

Is impersonating a Chelsea Pensioner still illegal? I think it is. Until recently it carried the death penalty.

So copyright needs a bit of perspective. But there's no room for it in the paranoid freetard mindset, where the punter is always being victimised by The Man.

Re: Burn the witch

Neither were nicked, neither were nicked part-way through a series.

Sky paid more money in deals on the open market.

And the new Mad Men got only 47,000 viewers on BSkyB, costing it £5 per episode per viewer. A real flop for BSkyB.