Posts by Andrew Orlowski 1435 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Sep 2006
Remember that MOST of the music we hear offline is "free" - yet ALL of it is paid-for.
Just because we don't put a coin in a slot every time, doesn't make us freetards and it doesn't mean the supply side isn't being rewarded.
Beware of anyone who wants you to focus solely on paying/not paying for chunks of digital music. They obviously don't want you to think about other methods of payment.
hi Pierre -
"The crowd of freetards use 'free' downloads as a preview for most of them, and they DO pay twice for the same stuff"
I think you mean "pay once". Well, some do, but many don't. And why "should" they?
Never having to pay for music and only using the torrents saves you money which you can spend elsewhere. I've always argued that this is an entirely rational economic decision for people to make.
I also think its mean spirited - and if we all do it all the time, and our creators don't get paid, our world is a lot worse off.
So my definition of "freetard" is not someone who downloads now and again, I think most people do. It's someone who pretends there are no consequences, or that the consequences don't matter. This creates a sense of entitlement that becomes self-reinforcing, and culminates in the view that art doesn't matter, it's just another compiler switch. You can read that viewpoint pretty much everywhere.
"Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Or just a poor line. Wasn't there an article on the reg quite recently about how an otherwise respectable researcher cried 'connection throttling!' when ut just turned out to be a few hours of router problems?"
Yes, I think this is what you mean -
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/23/bellovin_neutrality_mob_rule/
The US is in the middle of a McCarthyite hysteria. Best arrest anyone who talks funny.
A couple of years ago "Net Neutrality" was about discriminatory pricing. Now it's about traffic shaping. It'll be vapor trails, next. They look pretty sinister to me.
"The only thing stopping me buying one is the small 4gb memory."
You lucky sod. The rest of us were stuck with the 4MB and 8MB models ;-)
After (mostly) gathering dust for five years, my 5MX still does me good service. There's room for it in the coat pocket (next to the iPhone and 6300i) these days. I wrote the Nokia CWM article on it last week, spellchecked it on the Tube, and beamed it over as soon as I got back to the office (thank you John Montgomery). Voila.
(And again I cursed Psion for not producing a 5MX with an embedded GPRS SIM before they bailed...)
"but there's no other manufacturer out there that comes close in the long run."
You should have stuck a Joke Alert icon on that, Rolfie.
Nokia were once the King of the UIs - they made phones usable.
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/12/20/nokia_breakthrough_phone/
But that reputation has not survived the albatross called S60 - a UI disaster. Too many clicks to do anything.
The iPhone really deserves its success, IMHO.
@Jared, Anthony -
Actually, I don't think W's requests are unreasonable at all.
If we permit a real market to be built from our desire to share music - a market with real money coming into it - then it should provide incentives for people to build real services. Then, if W's desires are unreasonable, they'll flop in the marketplace.
But if the networks and the music business simply strike up a backroom deal not to bother each other (ie, "Covenant Not To Sue") there's no incentive for people to invest in service innovation. And we'll still be cracking open torrents that are missing or incomplete.
"From what I understand Major Labels usually hijack the royalty payments in the recording contracts as a means to recoup the advance payments made to the artists."
You're forgetting there is a separate royalty stream that goes back to the composers. The majors can't and don't hijack royalties that don't belong to them.
Which we can expect to see here.
"There's no outrage because those of us who care about the issue to any degree won't be using this kind of service anyway."
Uh, huh.
"There's plenty of (better) alternatives elsewhere for the independent-minded."
That may be so. I think I understand your point. Which is that because you don't like or use MySpace, you don't care what happens there - even though as the market leader, its choices will influence every other independent site.
I'm glad this logic ("Doesn't bother me why should I care?") wasn't more widely used in the debate about Phorm... :)
... that when Comcast misled Greg, they were lying.
And thanks for agreeing that ISPs need to make clean, honest contracts. Best of luck finding a "clean, honest contract" anywhere, particularly in the USA. (When 1m+ lawyers have a vested interest in obfuscation). Comcast, as you say, should have been open and transparent in explaining the techniques it was using.
But there are two immediate issues here, so don't confuse them. One is the matter of PR people lying. The other is the elephant in the room that you have chosen to ignore: was Comcast's network management "immoral"? Or was it ugly but rationally justifiable?
My argument only contains a "flaw" if you try to look at the picture in such a cross-eyed way, that the two issues become one big blurry blob. You can strain your eyes if you keep doing that - I really don't recommend it.
Neutrality is a proxy war for liberal activists: it's a hyper-real simulation of "activism" - with its own "heroes" and "villains". So instead of taking on a big issue like healthcare, which has powerful opponents and which might mean a messy (to nerds) compromise, it's far easier for armchair warriors to "Save The Internet", sign a petition, wear a badge, etc.
And like all politics (particularly US politics) it's about making a symbolic gesture - it's a power play, demonstrated by adding regulatory obligations to the FTC, or passing a Law.
Neutrality was dying as an issue last autumn - but these activists really want to Get Their War On - and like the Duke of York, they had already marched 10,000 men up a hill. So any issue that smells of neutrality will do as fuel.
It didn't help when Comcast's PR drones repeatedly lied to Cade about what they were doing. But what *were* they doing?
Since Comcast's actions made the BIttorrent application run *better* for *more* people, I find it hard to see how anyone can argue that Comcast "busted" Bittorrent.
It's like arguing you've "busted" traffic by removing a traffic jam. Or taking a faster journey has somehow "busted" your travel plans. It makes no sense at all - but the term is pejorative, and we have already decided the morality in advance for you.
But before we are in a position to make a moral judgement on Comcast, we have to permit them the possibility that they may have been acting rationally. And when we do, we see they have to cope with real issues that come with managing a network - like physics (Bittorrents design meets a bug in the DOCSIS protocol) and economics (no customers means no revenue).
When the network grinds to a halt, customers don't blame the DOCSIS designers, modem manufacturer or Bram Cohen - they blame Comcast, quite naturally. So Comcast had a customer retention crisis. The peak-time throttling wasn't pretty, but it made Bittorrent downloads run better, barely affected uploads, and therefore made most of its customers happier. Crisis averted.
Yes, I would rather we reported the reality of physics and economics than the fictional hyper-reality created for us by the armchair Neutrality activists.
For a sufficiently large advance (no less than six figures) I will gladly write a short tome on what I had for breakfast, my views on how to remove mildrew from the shower curtain, etc.
No one wants to read this, but I'll be out in the Bahamas before any notices, hopefully.
So: show us the money, then.
You need also need to get up to speed:
"Greenpeace does not accept donations from governments.." - as if any governments would offer in the first place!"
Er, the government has just offered. That's the point.
We'll see if the Greenpeace Trust, if offered a donation from the proposed tax, refuses to accept the donation. As you say, if it is consistent with its stated policy, it will decline the offer.
The EU likes to splash the cash. See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7127182.stm
"In 2006 the EU gave more than 7.7m euros (£5.5m; $11.2m) to at least 40 environmental organisations to help them lobby in Brussels... only Greenpeace refused the cash."
"Fixed fee" or "flat fee"
"I'm just scared that the majors will by hook and crook set up a system which nets them a large monthly cheque without them needing to do anything other than taking certain people on nice junkets..."
No one gets paid if no one exchanges the music. There's far more economic risk for the majors in trying to drive dross down channels they can't control, than channels they can control. But you have a very legitimate concern, there. The "counting", whatever form it may take (probably several) needs to take account of all kind of demographics and regions, and should not be set by the majors today.
Dave, there are many unique complications to legalising P2P, but the wrinkle you suggest isn't one of them.
There's nothing to stop you putting out a CD today, and selling it. If you want the benefits of collective licensing, you simply register it (cheaply) with the collection societies. Most people find it's worth it, and there's no compulsion. With P2P networks, you'll just register it and release it.
We've written about this many times over the years. You'll see why there's no economic incentive to use DRM. When you're paid more the faster the music flows, it's not in your interest to impede those flows.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/02/01/free_legal_downloads/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/02/11/why_wireless_will_end_piracy/
Exactly, Shabble - thank you. This has been my working assumption for several years now.
95+ per cent of people have nothing in common with either fringe. It's just that each group of extremists makes more noise than the rest of us, so they are over-represented by a clueless media.
It's up to us to demand what the future looks like, rather than bleating about how unfair piracy is to our business models, or how unfair paying artists is. That debate is well and truly over.
But if we're not involved in articulating what we want, we shouldn't complain when people impose a settlement on us that we don't like "for our own good".
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/about/greenpeace-environmental-trust
"The Greenpeace Environmental Trust was founded in 1982 with the objective of furthering public understanding in world ecology and the natural environment."
Has a tax ever gone directly into a lobby group's marketing budget before?
Once upon a time there was a company called Nokia, which grew rich and successful and popular because it took technology that was complicated and unreliable and made it very simple and easy to use, and very reliable.
Every Nokia product was better than the one it succeeded.
The financial markets didn't like this success, and said it was a fluke, and predicted that Nokia would soon lose its way, because competitors could do something just as good, only cheaper. Especially if these competitors were in Asia, and had lower labour costs.
But Nokia ignored this advice, and grew and grew. Soon, Nokia was the envy of the world, and one of only two consumer electronics companies on the planet - Sony was the other one - that could both set standards and deliver them successfully to many millions of users, all over the world.
And people liked Nokia, because their products were better every year. Business partners liked Nokia, because they created markets like ringtones, which gave royalties back to the music business, that made them richer. And network operators liked Nokia, because it was a sign that here was technology that was simple and reliable, and that worked, and that made them richer too.
Then, one day, some Californians came to Nokia. Their own internet technology hadn't made anyone much money - it had made the music business much poorer, and network operators poorer still; these internet network operators were going bust just trying to deliver it. And as for the customers - they hated every damn tacky bit of the network they used - Windows and Intel. It just wasn't reliable - and seemed to get worse every year.
But the Californians had a brilliant idea. They invented a Religion, and they persuaded Nokia that unless Nokia followed their Religion, they too would go bust.
And Nokia suddenly saw a blinding Flash of Light, and in that instant, forgot everything that had made it succesful - and made its business partners successful - and made customers like Nokia phones so much.
So Nokia had to follow the Religion, and pray every day to the Californians, that it was doing the right thing.
Soon Nokia Labs were full of people who didn't really know what they were doing at all.
These people didn't understand what customers wanted, or what made business partners share in the wealth, so they ran around in a panic saying things like "Social Media!" and "Web 2.0 Services!"
They even forgot how to make their phones simple to use and reliable.
And the rest of the story, you can fill in your good selves...
{where's the icon for "crumbling cookie"?}
"Also, PLEASE don't call people "retards", Andrew, even with your oh so amusing pun on 'free'. Some of your arguments are perfectly valid, but whenever you resort to that level of abuse it doesn't matter; you might as well have saved yourself the bother and written: "la la la, you're a big Mongo" instead. I understand it's not a terribly offensive word in the US, but this is still a UK site and it's the equivalent of "spastic"."
This reminds me of one of my favourite quotes (paraphrasing) -
"Someone who is without humour is like a cart without suspension - he feels every bump and jolt in the road".
It's the logic that's "retarded", not your arms and legs. So this is voluntary. To un-retard yourself, you only need to begin to think clearly.
As usual Mark, you have to invent a fiction to support your obsessive anti-creator rhetoric. And as usual, it's a persecution fiction.
(Bullies do this a lot: they imagine they're being bullied themselves, which gives them the moral justification for their bullying).
No one at El Reg has ever advocated removing the right of artists to do what they want with their material. The beauty of the system today is that a copyright holder can do so whatever they wish, by doing absolutely nothing.
I've received hundreds of emails from you Mark over the years (as many as eight in a single day) complaining about the compensation right. You've never once defended the right of artists to _choose_ to be compensated for their creativity. Nor have you ever made a proposal that would help artists get paid that didn't involve the removal of that right.
In addition, you support anything going that weakens those rights. You praise the gift economy, then invent a fiction like this, that somebody wants to remove the right of an artists to give their stuff away. That's a claim that exists only in your head.
So to recap - one of us is fighting for the removal of a creator's "right" here, and it's not me ;-)
This obsessive hatred you have of creatives is very mean spirited - you begrudge people these pennies simply because it gets in the way of your digital utopia.
Can't you find a more noble cause to fight - or is this as good as you get?
"Hey, shouldn't Orlowski cover this? But he's missed the last few RIAA stories."
Rebranding the RIAA: Lobby group gets the Strategy Boutique treatment
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/15/riaa_competition_results/
Pay attention Mark - points will be deducted for inattentiveness. You can find stories very easily using our fabulous search facility, for example:
http://search.theregister.co.uk/?q=riaa
It's even easier than posting a comment. If you're having trouble with that, ask a grown-up for help.
"more honest than most but crutially lacks any real ideas"
I heard no shortage of ideas at Midem this week. But these have to be worked out in partnership with the service providers. If people on the music business side floated them at this stage, people like you would accuse them of bullying.
"Go back to the pre-beatles days and musicians worked their whole life doing something they loved which didn't pay all that well."
Why stop there, Anonymous Coward?
We could even go back to the Victorian era, the child chimney sweeps back then looked as happy as Larry! You seem quite keen on exploitation, I'm not sure why.
@Julian Bond:
That's the wisest comment on music we've ever had, thank you :-)
"There's significant pain in finding, downloading, tidying, renaming, re-tagging P2P music. Relief from that pain can be charged for."
It's a real pain.
Music is a service now, we need to be having a discussion like this next one on what service levels we'd like to see, viz-
@AC:
"Why don't they do this : wanna listen to music ? Pay 5 $ a month for a music service service. The limitation would be a max of 450 songs a month."
That sounds like a very expensive radio service. Can't we keep the songs? Can't we exchange them (within reasonable and mutually understood parameters)?
Then again...
@3x2
"I have some bad news for the music industry, you are not important, I don't consume your product in any form so leave me [and my ISP] out of your plans."
They'll really miss you too, when they see your contribution to their bottom line. Er, so why are you here, then?
The music biz needs genius logic like this.
Scariest comment by an AC:
"Or even better the ISP's buy the record companies, much like the hardware manufacturers did with the music/video industry"
And how shall we all welcome our new AT&T/BSkyB insect overloads?
@Demon
"How you say, well it's call supporting the indie artists year"
It's interesting how so many readers can't distinguish between the two.
"But I would happily spend plenty if I thought I wasn't getting totally ripped off."
Don't look now, but your utility bills have just gone up 15 per cent, and over a decade have risen several times over the price of inflation (or the cost of raw materials).
You'd better put a woolly jumper on.
@Martin
"This is such an obvious invasion of privacy and illegal search"
So is filtering email. Get over it.
@ Chris Beach
"bit of a rant but..."
How did I guess?
"ISP's cannot and will not filter if they want any hope of still being in business"
ISPs filter in order to stay in business. See above.
@ doublejay1973:
"Many people would be prepared to throw a couple quid at Pandora : it ADDED VALUE to the process of me finding and hearing music from the artist I like (and indeed might like)"
I find it odd that people _say_ they'll pay a couple of quid a month for a service that is no longer available, or doesn't exist.
But when Omnifone launches exactly this kind of discovery service, with access to the global jukebox, people say they won't pay for it at any price!
Apparently agrees. There's a very nice tribute to the "Radio City" phone here:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article3075580.ece?print=yes
"Only tarts and tea-boys want phones that double up as mini-music centres, games consoles, cameras and broadcasting studios. Serious people want a phone for making phone calls. So insistent has been the demand that there is now a company http://www.nokia6310i.co.uk/index.htm offering reconditioned 6310i handsets for about £100."
... published the same day. By the Dept. of Spooky Coincidences!
"Ironic that it is left to Andrew "Scourge of Sadville" Orlowski to defend this technocratic tripe...."
Glad you've enjoyed the chats with Adam - but I'll rise to that bait, Niall.
Try this on for size:
It's ironic that given the chance to destroy Rupert Murdoch within five years, you flunk it. (Compare business models, revenues, audiences... and the value of TV rights to the winning bidder)
It's almost as if you want to keep him alive.
Why?
@Nev:
"A privatised BBC would be open to attack by Murdoch and his untaxed billions."
The BBC is already under attack by Murdoch and his untaxed billions - I'm not sure why you think it isn't. Only this time it would have enough capital to defend itself. And then some.
Try again, this time with logic - and my comments above re. football rights.
"You're assuming that any sell off wouldn't end up with Murdoch having a controlling share in the new private BBC. "
Correct. Luke discusses this in the piece.
"There'd be no controlling them."
No. Every broadcaster whether public or private is subject to regulation today. I can't see that changing - but then you may know something I don't.
" the reg ... bought by Newscorp"
Stop your knee from jerking for a moment.
You imply that a private BBC with billions to spend would be what Murdoch really wants. It's almost certainly not: no rational businessman wants competition with a) more resources and b) more viewers.
A BBC with billions to spend would be able to buy the football right - which would destroy Sky's TV business.
No footie, no dishes, no subscriptions.
"but there isn't any *good* reason why the general public who paid for the production should not have an unfettered right to view the material within the UK without further payment."
You're not a lawyer, I'll bet.
"A simple change in the law could remove BBC productions from the scope of UK copyright law .... solve the distribution problem and provide the basis for a vast new creative industry"
Did you come here in a space ship?
"iPhone launch failure"
Steady on there, lad. You're making the same mistake as the lazy hacks who traipsed down to Regent Street on Thursday made: they saw crowd control barrier, and assumed mass hysteria was imminent. Be careful about what now much you infer from _one_ evening's sales.
The Friday night launch was disapppointing for retailers, especially Carphone Warehouse. The iPhone may have sold buckets on Saturday and Sunday - but that's beyond the scope of the article.
Hopefully retailers _and_ press will take note that manufactured "6:02" style events risk backfiring badly, as this one has.
I'd love to believe that you were sincerely interested in engagement, or discussion. But you're not. You're much more interested in bullying people into agreeing with your very narrow view of the world.
I enable Comments when I'm able to reply. But you're not really persuading me (or anyone else at El Reg) for the case why this should happen more often.
Quite the opposite, in fact. Your whining is counter-productive... and very boring.
"[I].. would have liked to present my counter-argument not simply to you alone, but also to the Reg readership to see what their views are."
In the participatory democracy of Web 2.0, nothing can stop the people formerly known audience presenting their arguments, and counter-arguments. Isn't this wonderful? That's why I recommended some blog services.
"So the question I must ask you is, if as you say you don't have to read the comments, why then do you disable them? "
You've blown a logic chip there, Steve. Hopefully the whole motherboard doesn't have to be replaced, as is the case with my T42. :-)
Your statement assumes that I don't want to read them. (If you use your noggin for a second, you'll see I can't really avoid reading reader comments - something to think about)
Yes, reviving our Forum is The Way to go. We haven't had one since 2001, I've missed it, and we're looking at options.
In the meantime, why not come and "join the conversation"? The email address is above.
Apologies to regular readers, but there are some newcomers here.
Everyone who writes to me gets a reply - so long as you're not a nutter, or a Martian.
It takes a fair bit of time out of each day, which is why journalists everywhere prefer comments: they don't have to read them. But I've always found it well worth the investment. Offline debate is one of the best things about the job here.
It's doubly worth it these days as I get a lot more good tip-offs.
If you simply want to make a statement (or meta-statement about making statements), I can recommend some blog services.
(I hear WordPress is very good.)
For everyone else, the address is andrew.orlowski@theregister.co.uk - you can just click on the byline. See you there ;-)
"but I can't see them actually building workable hardware"
Google makes very workable hardware - you're using it everytime you do a Google search. One can argue that they've built the world's biggest computer. The performance and uptime of this hardware is very impressive.
"start from scratch"
Cheers for spotting that Io, I've restored the missing "not" :-)
"...ok it's 3.41am, am done with page 1"
Would you like to try again at a more sensible hour, 'Tash, this time using stuff like evidence, logic, deduction?
You nicely prove my point that people prefer utopian fantasies to real economics:
> it's been a defensive move adopted by most Telcos. They want to
> block Skype traffic coz they know what Skype did to the landline
> Telcos.
Now check AT&T's revenue against [> INSERT BASKET CASE VOIP COMPANY < ] here.
> --- I think it's safer to say that eBay is still figuring out a good
> business plan to make money out of Skype (post acquisition).
Uh, huh.
Can I sell you a bridge?
Robert -
from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/25/labour_anti_roaming_cap/ -
Documents exposed by The Times show that the UK's Labour government worked tirelessly to try and prevent the EU capping mobile phone roaming rates, a move which cost the industry millions.
The chatty nature of the emails seems to indicate a close working relationship between operators and the government's negotiating committee, with one message to Vodafone reporting that the "UK [are] still not happy bunnies" when the EU said it was going to take a tough line with the operators.
--> The Times
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article2733670.ece
“MH thought that the industry could have moved faster and earlier but said that she was two thirds on their side!”
Most enlightening, no?
Reports so far base their estimate on two sources: an opinion poll of 300 punters, and a self-selecting and voluntary web-based survey. Who would have thought that people lie to opinion pollsters to make themselves look more virtuous?
I'm quite shocked!
"unsubstantiated figures and emotive bollocks"
In other words, you don't like the facts, so you reject the evidence. Cool!
Since you can't make up your mind whether it's £2.50 or a "magical" £3, I suggest taking a chill pill and having a think.
(You can of course, choose to believe what you want to believe. There _is_ a Santa Claus and the earth is flat, for example.)
You're right Paul - Radiohead have made a pot of money by "cutting out the middle man".
However by choosing to allow people to pay 0p, it's less than the "break even" gross on a physical CD. Feel free to construe this how you wish ;-)
I understand that Radiohead also got a waiver on paying mechanical copyright royalties on 0p downloads. Without that, they'd be subsidizing the 0p downloaders, and end up well out of pocket.
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