Starcade / Mike is correct: Too much stolen anime.
bil...@yahoo.com
I purchased Forte Agent and started downloading from the anime
binary newsgroups. As of this writing, I am in the middle of
downloading Sky Girls and Secret of Cerulean Sand. The amount of anime
on just four (4) diffrent NG's is startling. I don't think I need
Pokemon dubbed into German, or Ghost In the Shell at Blu-Ray
resolution, but it's out there - basically for free. The only thing I
really paid for is my license for Forte Agent. Didn't then-president
Clinton sign a bill saying that it's illegal to post copyrighted work
on the Usenet Newsgroups? What ever happened there? I only vaugly
remember one of the uber-smart anime/tech people within the Long
Island (New York) I-Con Convention saying that the DMCR got ripped to
shreds by a lot of diffrent groups. However, I don't remember any of
the details of what I was told. I can only guess that Starcade/Mike
would be willing to fill me in on the details.
After seeing all this anime, I realized: Why the hell should I waste
time watching the advertisements on Chrunchyroll or Hulu? It's such a
monumental waste of time. I have CableVision's Optimum Online. I can
set my PC to download overnight or while I'm in the shower and have
commericial-free anime waiting for me when I wake up. Why bother
spending money on discs, or non-free digital downloads??
Mike, please excuse and forgive me. I went with the crowd and called
you a wackaloon and an asshat (just like everybody else) without
really thinking or doing research. After seeing what's available for
free download (once you purchase the correct software), I must say
that you were (and still are) correct: The business model must change.
Signal encryption?? Only part of the issue. IMHO, for every one person
writing encryption code, there are at least three people writing code
to crack the same exact encryption that only one person is working on.
I think this has been as obvious as a slap across the face since the
dawn of Macrovision for VHS tape.
You asked me to ban you from I-Con ahead of time. Absolutely not. I
think you'd make a welcome addition to the I-Con family. Thank you
very much for your time, effort and consideration in this matter. I
hope to hear from you soon.
Best Regards,
Bill N.
Long Island - New York
Derek Janssen
>
> After seeing all this anime, I realized: Why the hell should I waste
> time watching the advertisements on Chrunchyroll or Hulu? It's such a
> monumental waste of time. I have CableVision's Optimum Online. I can
> set my PC to download overnight or while I'm in the shower and have
> commericial-free anime waiting for me when I wake up. Why bother
> spending money on discs, or non-free digital downloads??
>
> Mike, please excuse and forgive me. I went with the crowd and called
> you a wackaloon and an asshat (just like everybody else) without
> really thinking or doing research.
(I'm assuming this *has* to be sarcasm, but if not, order up the next
course of "Why not to be so naive as to take everything on the Internet
seriously" reality-training for our new Bill N.)
Derek Janssen
eja...@verizon.net
Giovanni Wassen
> After seeing what's available for
> free download (once you purchase the correct software),
Baka, there are free alternatives!
--
Gio
http://www.watkijkikoptv.info
http://myanimelist.net/profile/extatix
http://watkijkikoptv.info/animeblog
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> Hello,
>
> I purchased Forte Agent and started downloading from the anime
> binary newsgroups.
So you talk about it being a problem... while being the problem.
Do you see YOUR problem?
Starky isn't right because he equates the downloaders with sales, thus
seeing multi-billion dollar losses that did not ever exist as potential
sales.
That would be like my saying that my publisher and my fans stole money
from me by not buying my books and by not printing more books to be
bought. They COULD have printed more, and they COULD have bought more,
but they didn't and weren't going to. But in Starky-World, they SHOULD
have and should be MADE to.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://seawasp.livejournal.com
Doug Jacobs
> I purchased Forte Agent and started downloading from the anime
> binary newsgroups. As of this writing, I am in the middle of
> downloading Sky Girls and Secret of Cerulean Sand. The amount of anime
> on just four (4) diffrent NG's is startling. I don't think I need
> Pokemon dubbed into German, or Ghost In the Shell at Blu-Ray
> resolution, but it's out there - basically for free. The only thing I
> really paid for is my license for Forte Agent. Didn't then-president
> Clinton sign a bill saying that it's illegal to post copyrighted work
> on the Usenet Newsgroups? What ever happened there? I only vaugly
> remember one of the uber-smart anime/tech people within the Long
> Island (New York) I-Con Convention saying that the DMCR got ripped to
> shreds by a lot of diffrent groups. However, I don't remember any of
> the details of what I was told. I can only guess that Starcade/Mike
> would be willing to fill me in on the details.
Posting of copyright material IS illegal, and always HAS BEEN illegal.
However only the copyright holder can go after such things. We didn't
need the DMCA for that - not saying the DMCA is a horribly written piece
of legislation that partially impinges on your constitutional rights in
exchange for the corporations wielding more power.
Anyways, this would mean that the Japanese company and/or the US license
holder would have to go after "usenet" to get such posts removed, and
therein lies the problem. "usenet" isn't a centralized system. Trying to
get something removed from usenet is nearly impossible. At best, you
could use the source server's logs to track down the person who originally
put the material on usenet, but most folks who run a usenet server don't
do any logging at all - including the big commercials providers like
SuperNews.
Also, usenet usage is down quite a bit, especially since things like
LimeWire, or BitTorrent are so much more efficient and faster than usenet
and don't require a separate subscription. It's also a lot easier to
catch someone uploading material on these services than on usenet.
> After seeing all this anime, I realized: Why the hell should I waste
> time watching the advertisements on Chrunchyroll or Hulu? It's such a
> monumental waste of time. I have CableVision's Optimum Online. I can
> set my PC to download overnight or while I'm in the shower and have
> commericial-free anime waiting for me when I wake up. Why bother
> spending money on discs, or non-free digital downloads??
Most folks don't know about usenet, or don't know how to use it. And due
to spammers and the advent of web-forums, many ISPs don't even carry
usenet anymore. The subscription sites (like SuperNews, and others) have
pretty strict quotas in place, based on your subscription level. When you
consider that binaries on usenet have an overhead of about 30%(!) it's
easy to see why usenet is falling out of fashion so quickly.
Also, remeber that those ads help pay for the content. I don't like ads
either, but if the difference is paying $25 for 4 episodes on a DVD for a
series I'm not going to watch twice, or putting up with a brief ad now and
then so I can stream the series for free through my 360/PS3/PC and onto
my TV, guess which I'm going to choose?
And I already have a closet full of legitimate anime DVDs from the US and
elsewhere.
> Mike, please excuse and forgive me. I went with the crowd and called
> you a wackaloon and an asshat (just like everybody else) without
> really thinking or doing research. After seeing what's available for
> free download (once you purchase the correct software), I must say
> that you were (and still are) correct: The business model must change.
> Signal encryption?? Only part of the issue. IMHO, for every one person
> writing encryption code, there are at least three people writing code
> to crack the same exact encryption that only one person is working on.
> I think this has been as obvious as a slap across the face since the
> dawn of Macrovision for VHS tape.
Encryption is not the solution. I guarantee any encryption method will
fail even before it's launched due to it being cracked even before it's
made commercially available, or due to it being so horribly restrictive
it'll be nicknamed Divx 2.0.
> You asked me to ban you from I-Con ahead of time. Absolutely not. I
> think you'd make a welcome addition to the I-Con family. Thank you
> very much for your time, effort and consideration in this matter. I
> hope to hear from you soon.
Have you read this guys' other posts? About how he gets abusive with the
staff? And you want to basically make him a VIP? This ought to be
interesting...
This isn't to say there aren't problems in the anime industry today - and
piracy is definitely an issue. However it's not the only one, nor is it
even the biggest one. However, these have all been rehashed endlessly in
other posts so there's not much point in going into them here.
--
It's not broken. It's...advanced.
Derek Janssen
> bil...@yahoo.com wrote:
>>
>> Mike, please excuse and forgive me. I went with the crowd and called
>> you a wackaloon and an asshat (just like everybody else) without
>> really thinking or doing research.
>> think you'd make a welcome addition to the I-Con family. Thank you
>> very much for your time, effort and consideration in this matter. I
>> hope to hear from you soon.
>
> Have you read this guys' other posts? About how he gets abusive with the
> staff? And you want to basically make him a VIP? This ought to be
> interesting...
And are *you* going to be the one to buy a plane ticket to go down and
kill him, every time he asks the rest of us to?
Derek Janssen (not that we're being so group-think intolerant as to call
him an shtick-defunct asshat or attention-starved wackaloon, mind)
eja...@verizon.net
Galen
wrote:
>
>Also, usenet usage is down quite a bit,
Source?
I'm finding a full Usenet feed estimated at 600 megabits/sec.
Did it used to be higher?
-Galen
Galen
>
> I purchased Forte Agent and started downloading from the anime
>binary newsgroups. As of this writing, I am in the middle of
>downloading Sky Girls and Secret of Cerulean Sand.
You will also need quickpar:
http://www.quickpar.org.uk/
Split files must be rejoined before they are playable.
-Galen
Galen
>saying that the DMCR got ripped to
>shreds
DMCA.
It still holds in the US, but USENET gets much
of it's traffic from Europe (esp the Dutch) and
Asia.
BTW,
http://www.animeusenet.org/
is your onestop source for Anime NZB files,
so you don't have to download the entire header volume.
And even so, Usenet is chump change next to Bit-torrent.
-Galen
Galen
>As of this writing, I am in the middle of
>downloading Sky Girls and Secret of Cerulean Sand.
Neither of which is commercially available in the US.
-Galen
Rob Kelk
>Hello,
>
> I purchased Forte Agent and started downloading from the anime
>binary newsgroups. As of this writing, I am in the middle of
>downloading Sky Girls and Secret of Cerulean Sand. The amount of anime
>on just four (4) diffrent NG's is startling. I don't think I need
>Pokemon dubbed into German, or Ghost In the Shell at Blu-Ray
>resolution, but it's out there - basically for free. The only thing I
>really paid for is my license for Forte Agent. Didn't then-president
>Clinton sign a bill saying that it's illegal to post copyrighted work
>on the Usenet Newsgroups? What ever happened there?
You misspelled "Gerald Ford" there... The applicable law has been around
in one form or another longer than the Internet has, but the current law
was first enacted in 1976. (It was most recently amended in 2006.)
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/
> I only vaugly
>remember one of the uber-smart anime/tech people within the Long
>Island (New York) I-Con Convention saying that the DMCR got ripped to
>shreds by a lot of diffrent groups. However, I don't remember any of
>the details of what I was told. I can only guess that Starcade/Mike
>would be willing to fill me in on the details.
I assume this is something he claimed after I killfiled his posts.
>After seeing all this anime, I realized: Why the hell should I waste
>time watching the advertisements on Chrunchyroll or Hulu? It's such a
>monumental waste of time. I have CableVision's Optimum Online. I can
>set my PC to download overnight or while I'm in the shower and have
>commericial-free anime waiting for me when I wake up. Why bother
>spending money on discs, or non-free digital downloads??
Desire to pay for the intellectual property you experience. (Yes, this
is a major factor - look at the net from sales of the "Doctor Borrible's
Sing-Along Blog" DVDs, to give a directly-applicable example. Examples
that are of less direct applicability include sales of books available
on the Baen Free Library, and sales of Radiohead's latest CD.)
Desire to abide by the law.
Surety that you're getting what you want. (Who knows what data or virus
might be in that file available for download?)
Quality.
Ease of use.
>Mike, please excuse and forgive me. I went with the crowd and called
>you a wackaloon and an asshat (just like everybody else) without
>really thinking or doing research. After seeing what's available for
>free download (once you purchase the correct software), I must say
>that you were (and still are) correct: The business model must change.
As I recall, it was Sea Wasp who was saying the business model needed to
change. (I'm the first to admit my recall is not 100% accurate.)
>Signal encryption?? Only part of the issue. IMHO, for every one person
>writing encryption code, there are at least three people writing code
>to crack the same exact encryption that only one person is working on.
>I think this has been as obvious as a slap across the face since the
>dawn of Macrovision for VHS tape.
Add the perception, rightly or wrongly, that encryption degrades signal
quality (thanks to early implementations of Macrovision, among others),
and the public's desire for encrypted artworks is slim to none.
>You asked me to ban you from I-Con ahead of time. Absolutely not. I
>think you'd make a welcome addition to the I-Con family. Thank you
>very much for your time, effort and consideration in this matter. I
>hope to hear from you soon.
I'd be extremely wary of inviting to a convention _anyone_ who wants to
be banned from that convention.
--
Rob Kelk Personal address (ROT-13): eboxryx -ng- tznvy -qbg- pbz
"As for bootlegging: Every PDF, every book, every film, and every
piece of software ever released is available, somewhere, in a format
the copyright holders don't want it to be in. It is inescapable and
unstoppable. We trust our true fans to not pull crap like that ..."
- Paul Chapman (Marketing Director, Steve Jackson Games), 25 Nov 2008
Galen
wrote:
>
>Surety that you're getting what you want. (Who knows what data or virus
>might be in that file available for download?)
Have we forgotten that purchased
Sony Music CDs installed a rootkit
on any Windows computer used to play them?
-Galen
Rob Kelk
Ah, right. Okay, I only had four valid answers to the question "why pay
for what can be obtained for free?", instead of five.
--
Rob Kelk <http://robkelk.ottawa-anime.org/> e-mail: s/deadspam/gmail/
"You're not supposed to sell the files. 'Who'd be stupid enough to
buy something they could have for free?' you may well ask yourself.
If you do sell them, you are a Bad Person and may later exhibit
signs of wanting to run for political office"
- Dave Drake, discussing free, legal entertainment files
Starcade
> Hello,
>
> I purchased Forte Agent and started downloading from the anime
> binary newsgroups. As of this writing, I am in the middle of
> downloading Sky Girls and Secret of Cerulean Sand. The amount of anime
> on just four (4) diffrent NG's is startling. I don't think I need
> Pokemon dubbed into German, or Ghost In the Shell at Blu-Ray
> resolution, but it's out there - basically for free.
Take out the word "basically". It is, for all real intent and
purpose, free for the cost of having your Internet.
I condemn the practice, obviously, and believe that all such
downloading should come with an attached cost which must (by court
judgement) be paid to the studios, or no more new content can be made.
Which, of course, leads to the obvious question: Does the present
anime-pirate fanbase need NEW content, or is there so much out there
on the Net now that it isn't necessary anymore?
> The only thing I
> really paid for is my license for Forte Agent. Didn't then-president
> Clinton sign a bill saying that it's illegal to post copyrighted work
> on the Usenet Newsgroups? What ever happened there?
I would say that it's probably a matter that copyright is, more and
more, unenforceable every day.
The point being, the entire copyright-based revenue stream of
basically anything copyrighted which can be put on the Internet and
downloaded requires an enforcement mechanism (and an effective one, on
top of it) for it to work.
I could understand all the claims being made against the anime
industry IFF (if and only if) it were simply based on conduct on their
end. This is NOT true, no matter how much the "truth by consensus"
peer-pressure brigade says otherwise.
> I only vaugly
> remember one of the uber-smart anime/tech people within the Long
> Island (New York) I-Con Convention saying that the DMCR got ripped to
> shreds by a lot of diffrent groups. However, I don't remember any of
> the details of what I was told. I can only guess that Starcade/Mike
> would be willing to fill me in on the details.
The only way you would be able to expect to enforce a DMCA-level
situation would require a government agency looking at your Net usage
(independent of what you were doing on the Net) -- this, of course,
raises Constitutional and privacy issues for those who believe both
the US Constitution and the concept of individual privacy still exist
with respect to US law.
> After seeing all this anime, I realized: Why the hell should I waste
> time watching the advertisements on Chrunchyroll or Hulu? It's such a
> monumental waste of time.
Exactly. And why would you IF YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO?
You just hit upon why ad-based systems DO NOT WORK. You have to
assume, at minimum, that the eyeballs watching the show are watching
YOUR _LEGAL_ _AD-BASED_ broadcast of the show, and no one has
basically stripped off everything.
> I have CableVision's Optimum Online. I can
> set my PC to download overnight or while I'm in the shower and have
> commericial-free anime waiting for me when I wake up. Why bother
> spending money on discs, or non-free digital downloads??
And here's another problem:
Why spend the money on the discs when, either already or within a
short period of time, the stuff is available _from the company_
_LEGALLY_ on their own website?
I feel defrauded by Funimation for having bought Ouran High School
Host Club, to see it legally (sub and dub, for free) on their website
within six months of the release of the entire series.
The companies could be asked the same question I've been asking the
pirates and thieves: WHAT IS THE PRODUCT?
> Mike, please excuse and forgive me. I went with the crowd and called
> you a wackaloon and an asshat (just like everybody else) without
> really thinking or doing research. After seeing what's available for
> free download (once you purchase the correct software), I must say
> that you were (and still are) correct: The business model must change.
That's not really what I'm saying -- I'm saying that the products
value MUST BE ENFORCED, or, for the very reason you just stated, there
cannot be sufficient cost recovery (here or in Japan).
And you raise the other real good point: Peer Pressure. Not just on
groups like this, but consider how many people thieve so they can
"keep up with their friends".
> Signal encryption?? Only part of the issue. IMHO, for every one person
> writing encryption code, there are at least three people writing code
> to crack the same exact encryption that only one person is working on.
> I think this has been as obvious as a slap across the face since the
> dawn of Macrovision for VHS tape.
Exactly.
> You asked me to ban you from I-Con ahead of time. Absolutely not. I
> think you'd make a welcome addition to the I-Con family. Thank you
> very much for your time, effort and consideration in this matter. I
> hope to hear from you soon.
The big problem is something I encountered in Las Vegas. I had at
least two heated verbal confrontations about that people "didn't
appreciate" my view of the fandom. Someday (and I am surprised that
it didn't happen there), it will get violent. I still have a standing
offer for a fight (which I will take on my time).
We live in a punk-level ghetto. They know only one real response
which gets their attention, especially the youth of the target age of
much of the fandom.
Mike
PS: This is one of the reasons that the recent Vegas convention is
going away from a fan-run concept in a TBD series of changes to the
show.
Starcade
> bill...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > Mike, please excuse and forgive me. I went with the crowd and called
> > you a wackaloon and an asshat (just like everybody else) without
> > really thinking or doing research.
>
> (I'm assuming this *has* to be sarcasm, but if not, order up the next
> course of "Why not to be so naive as to take everything on the Internet
> seriously" reality-training for our new Bill N.)
He does run a convention, so I would bet he's probably got a few more
ins than most on the newsgroup.
Mike
Starcade
<seaw...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
> bill...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > Hello,
>
> > I purchased Forte Agent and started downloading from the anime
> > binary newsgroups.
>
> So you talk about it being a problem... while being the problem.
>
> Do you see YOUR problem?
>
> Starky isn't right because he equates the downloaders with sales, thus
> seeing multi-billion dollar losses that did not ever exist as potential
> sales.
There's a problem with your counterargument:
To counter that argument, you must negate the entire concept of
copyright and license, and state that the owners of the product have
no material legal right to control the flow of the product -- that,
simply by making the product, they have ceded all right to control its
dissemination, which is the entire point of both license and
copyright, vis-a-vis the anime industry.
(And most other similar constructs.)
You all scream "SUPPLY AND DEMAND!", without realizing that the entire
point of copyright and license is to control the supply to allow the
demand to be realized in a way which can be _financially meaningful_
-- otherwise, there's no point.
> That would be like my saying that my publisher and my fans stole money
> from me by not buying my books and by not printing more books to be
> bought. They COULD have printed more, and they COULD have bought more,
> but they didn't and weren't going to. But in Starky-World, they SHOULD
> have and should be MADE to.
Exactly, _unless you, as the author, allow otherwise_ -- then you've
ceded that right.
Mike (This is why I still await Farix' lawsuit vis-a-vis copyright on
USENET.)
Aje.RavenStar
"Galen" <ga...@nekomimicon.net> wrote in message
news:cf2lb5l1a6m7dn6t1...@4ax.com...
He may be referring to the trend among IP's of eliminating their usenet
servers and forcing their subscribers to go elsewhere or do without.
Starcade
> Posting of copyright material IS illegal, and always HAS BEEN illegal.
> However only the copyright holder can go after such things. We didn't
> need the DMCA for that - not saying the DMCA is a horribly written piece
> of legislation that partially impinges on your constitutional rights in
> exchange for the corporations wielding more power.
If you believe the Constitution of the United States actually still
means anything.
> Anyways, this would mean that the Japanese company and/or the US license
> holder would have to go after "usenet" to get such posts removed, and
> therein lies the problem. "usenet" isn't a centralized system. Trying to
> get something removed from usenet is nearly impossible. At best, you
> could use the source server's logs to track down the person who originally
> put the material on usenet, but most folks who run a usenet server don't
> do any logging at all - including the big commercials providers like
> SuperNews.
Which is one of the reasons that people need to start going after the
Net as a whole with legislation.
Freedom unchecked is anarchy. Freedom unchecked nullifies the freedom
because entirely different forces come into play.
That's why I am not into the concept of freedom at all -- and the
anime fandom has shown why.
> Also, usenet usage is down quite a bit, especially since things like
> LimeWire, or BitTorrent are so much more efficient and faster than usenet
> and don't require a separate subscription. It's also a lot easier to
> catch someone uploading material on these services than on usenet.
The problem is: What separates them from a Napster situation, where,
as _conduit_, you could nail Napster and basically take it over?
I've always wondered why someone hasn't gone after BitTorrent for
this, especially with the billions of dollars of anime content stolen
off of it over the last several years...
> > After seeing all this anime, I realized: Why the hell should I waste
> > time watching the advertisements on Chrunchyroll or Hulu? It's such a
> > monumental waste of time. I have CableVision's Optimum Online. I can
> > set my PC to download overnight or while I'm in the shower and have
> > commericial-free anime waiting for me when I wake up. Why bother
> > spending money on discs, or non-free digital downloads??
>
> Most folks don't know about usenet, or don't know how to use it. And due
> to spammers and the advent of web-forums, many ISPs don't even carry
> usenet anymore. The subscription sites (like SuperNews, and others) have
> pretty strict quotas in place, based on your subscription level. When you
> consider that binaries on usenet have an overhead of about 30%(!) it's
> easy to see why usenet is falling out of fashion so quickly.
And the amount of content that the government would like to silence --
which see the political newsgroups.
> Also, remeber that those ads help pay for the content. I don't like ads
> either, but if the difference is paying $25 for 4 episodes on a DVD for a
> series I'm not going to watch twice, or putting up with a brief ad now and
> then so I can stream the series for free through my 360/PS3/PC and onto
> my TV, guess which I'm going to choose?
And then guess which people are going to choose if they can slice the
ad completely out of the equation so that the companies (on both ends)
don't continue that model... Consider how much anime costs before you
bitch about that DVD cost...
> > Mike, please excuse and forgive me. I went with the crowd and called
> > you a wackaloon and an asshat (just like everybody else) without
> > really thinking or doing research. After seeing what's available for
> > free download (once you purchase the correct software), I must say
> > that you were (and still are) correct: The business model must change.
> > Signal encryption?? Only part of the issue. IMHO, for every one person
> > writing encryption code, there are at least three people writing code
> > to crack the same exact encryption that only one person is working on.
> > I think this has been as obvious as a slap across the face since the
> > dawn of Macrovision for VHS tape.
>
> Encryption is not the solution. I guarantee any encryption method will
> fail even before it's launched due to it being cracked even before it's
> made commercially available, or due to it being so horribly restrictive
> it'll be nicknamed Divx 2.0.
Which is why the illegal content must be REMOVED and so must the
people who provide it. Otherwise, forget it. Enforcement is THE only
solution. Otherwise, kiss anime goodbye.
> > You asked me to ban you from I-Con ahead of time. Absolutely not. I
> > think you'd make a welcome addition to the I-Con family. Thank you
> > very much for your time, effort and consideration in this matter. I
> > hope to hear from you soon.
>
> Have you read this guys' other posts? About how he gets abusive with the
> staff? And you want to basically make him a VIP? This ought to be
> interesting...
See my response to him above. Not the greatest of ideas, sadly... I
would enjoy an open challenge to shout these fuckers into oblivion,
but don't think the fansubbing scum are going to get any respect from
me.
> This isn't to say there aren't problems in the anime industry today - and
> piracy is definitely an issue. However it's not the only one, nor is it
> even the biggest one. However, these have all been rehashed endlessly in
> other posts so there's not much point in going into them here.
Piracy IS the biggest issue. In fact, it's pretty much the only one.
Take out piracy, and you'd be surprised as to what follows.
Mike
B Sellers
> On Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:01:23 -0400, Galen <ga...@nekomimicon.net> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:53:07 GMT, rob...@deadspam.com (Rob Kelk)
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Surety that you're getting what you want. (Who knows what data or virus
>>> might be in that file available for download?)
>> Have we forgotten that purchased
>> Sony Music CDs installed a rootkit
>> on any Windows computer used to play them?
>
> Ah, right. Okay, I only had four valid answers to the question "why pay
> for what can be obtained for free?", instead of five.
>
Personally I don't care to be caught with contraband. I'd rather
forgo some things and spend the savings on anime dvds. Oh and the
Sony Rootkit was just one more reason to give up buying CDs anywhere.
later
bliss
Starcade
> On Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:51:35 -0400, bill...@yahoo.com wrote:
> >Hello,
>
> > I purchased Forte Agent and started downloading from the anime
> >binary newsgroups. As of this writing, I am in the middle of
> >downloading Sky Girls and Secret of Cerulean Sand. The amount of anime
> >on just four (4) diffrent NG's is startling. I don't think I need
> >Pokemon dubbed into German, or Ghost In the Shell at Blu-Ray
> >resolution, but it's out there - basically for free. The only thing I
> >really paid for is my license for Forte Agent. Didn't then-president
> >Clinton sign a bill saying that it's illegal to post copyrighted work
> >on the Usenet Newsgroups? What ever happened there?
>
> You misspelled "Gerald Ford" there... The applicable law has been around
> in one form or another longer than the Internet has, but the current law
> was first enacted in 1976. (It was most recently amended in 2006.)
>
> http://www.copyright.gov/title17/
He's talking the DMCA -- the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
(Not saying you are wrong, there... But I think you're talking about
two different reference points.)
> > I only vaugly
> >remember one of the uber-smart anime/tech people within the Long
> >Island (New York) I-Con Convention saying that the DMCR got ripped to
> >shreds by a lot of diffrent groups. However, I don't remember any of
> >the details of what I was told. I can only guess that Starcade/Mike
> >would be willing to fill me in on the details.
>
> I assume this is something he claimed after I killfiled his posts.
He's speaking more in a general sense than anything I specifically
said.
> >After seeing all this anime, I realized: Why the hell should I waste
> >time watching the advertisements on Chrunchyroll or Hulu? It's such a
> >monumental waste of time. I have CableVision's Optimum Online. I can
> >set my PC to download overnight or while I'm in the shower and have
> >commericial-free anime waiting for me when I wake up. Why bother
> >spending money on discs, or non-free digital downloads??
>
> Desire to pay for the intellectual property you experience.
But WHY would he have that desire? And would that desire not run
absolutely COUNTERPRODUCTIVE to the anime experience (and the thuggish
fandom thereof) of 2009?
You see, what Rob does not get is that the entire process is
counterproductive to what the fandom has become -- a bunch of scheming
little tyrant thieves who care nothing more than to see the present
model killed for their amusement, thinking the money will continue to
grow on trees and the like to allow Japan to continue to make stuff
for them to abjectly steal.
> (Yes, this is a major factor - look at the net from sales of the "Doctor Borrible's
> Sing-Along Blog" DVDs, to give a directly-applicable example. Examples
> that are of less direct applicability include sales of books available
> on the Baen Free Library, and sales of Radiohead's latest CD.)
For the people not following along: The Baen Free Library is the
model Sea Wasp is talking about in it's post in this thread.
> Desire to abide by the law.
That, I fear, would come at about the level of "Doing the right thing"
-- to which I already told my therapist "Not good enough."
> Surety that you're getting what you want. (Who knows what data or virus
> might be in that file available for download?)
That would be a very good thing, but, again, do the people involved
really care, end of the day, if they get virused or not?
> Quality.
Irrelevant to the May Wong crowd. (NOW! NOW NOW NOW!!)
> Ease of use.
How many times have I heard the exact OPPOSITE argument used _on this
newsgroup_?
> >Mike, please excuse and forgive me. I went with the crowd and called
> >you a wackaloon and an asshat (just like everybody else) without
> >really thinking or doing research. After seeing what's available for
> >free download (once you purchase the correct software), I must say
> >that you were (and still are) correct: The business model must change.
>
> As I recall, it was Sea Wasp who was saying the business model needed to
> change. (I'm the first to admit my recall is not 100% accurate.)
I tried to correct him in that regard -- I didn't say _that_.
However: I don't think he's saying that the model must change to the
likes of what Sea Wasp is saying. That would appear counter to his
"Too Much Free Anime" claim, because it appears that Sea Wasp wants us
all to concede the point that anime has no financial value.
> >Signal encryption?? Only part of the issue. IMHO, for every one person
> >writing encryption code, there are at least three people writing code
> >to crack the same exact encryption that only one person is working on.
> >I think this has been as obvious as a slap across the face since the
> >dawn of Macrovision for VHS tape.
>
> Add the perception, rightly or wrongly, that encryption degrades signal
> quality (thanks to early implementations of Macrovision, among others),
> and the public's desire for encrypted artworks is slim to none.
Of course, in the age of the Internet, their desire for paying for
them is similar.
> >You asked me to ban you from I-Con ahead of time. Absolutely not. I
> >think you'd make a welcome addition to the I-Con family. Thank you
> >very much for your time, effort and consideration in this matter. I
> >hope to hear from you soon.
>
> I'd be extremely wary of inviting to a convention _anyone_ who wants to
> be banned from that convention.
I explained to him my position on that regard (see above).
And, as to the Steve Jackson quote: People don't want to be "true
fans" anymore. They wish to own the fandom and possess it.
Mike
Derek Janssen
>
> And, as to the Steve Jackson quote: People don't want to be "true
> fans" anymore. They wish to own the fandom and possess it.
>
> Mike
Only one man would voluntarily cite Dungeons & Dragons gaming as deep
social wisdom, ladies and gentlemen...I give you to take that as you will.
Derek Janssen (which point will be further emphasized by Starky
immediately fuming "It *wasn't* D&D!--It was Gurps and Car Wars, don't
you know the difference??")
eja...@verizon.net
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> Starcade wrote:
>>
>> And, as to the Steve Jackson quote: People don't want to be "true
>> fans" anymore. They wish to own the fandom and possess it.
>>
>> Mike
>
> Only one man would voluntarily cite Dungeons & Dragons gaming as deep
> social wisdom, ladies and gentlemen...I give you to take that as you will.
>
No, he's not the only one.
Starcade
> Starcade wrote:
>
> > And, as to the Steve Jackson quote: People don't want to be "true
> > fans" anymore. They wish to own the fandom and possess it.
>
> > Mike
>
> Only one man would voluntarily cite Dungeons & Dragons gaming as deep
> social wisdom, ladies and gentlemen...I give you to take that as you will.
And that was in response to Rob Kelk's own sig line, dipshit.
Mike
Megane
Doug Jacobs <dja...@rawbw.com> wrote:
> Most folks don't know about usenet, or don't know how to use it. And due
> to spammers and the advent of web-forums, many ISPs don't even carry
> usenet anymore. The subscription sites (like SuperNews, and others) have
> pretty strict quotas in place, based on your subscription level. When you
> consider that binaries on usenet have an overhead of about 30%(!) it's
> easy to see why usenet is falling out of fashion so quickly.
yenc has been mainstream for at least five years now. That 30% figure is
long out of date.
bil...@yahoo.com
<megane#fanbo...@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>In article <yKOdnbQir-zV8CfX...@posted.rawbandwidth>,
> Doug Jacobs <dja...@rawbw.com> wrote:
>
>> Most folks don't know about usenet, or don't know how to use it. And due
>> to spammers and the advent of web-forums, many ISPs don't even carry
>> usenet anymore. The subscription sites (like SuperNews, and others) have
>> pretty strict quotas in place, based on your subscription level.
Usenet is still an integral part of Long Island's Optimum Online. I
don't see that changing any time soon. Not the issue here.
>> When you
>> consider that binaries on usenet have an overhead of about 30%(!) it's
>> easy to see why usenet is falling out of fashion so quickly.
I admit that I really don't know too much about servers. I used to get
a lot of Dell catalogs in the mail. I'd skim through them and then
forget amout them. The servers were always in the back of the catalog.
I never really paid attention. That's why I'm asking this: When a
traditional, slim, rack-mounted server is used by...... anybody as a
Usenet server there's 30% more strain on that server's CPU than a
server used to host a traditional web site?? If the services carried
by a server is going to shorten the lifespan of a peice of equipment,
I could understand a provider not wanting to carry that service.
However, I was all allways under the impression that servers,
regardless of traditional case or slim rack-mount were engieered to be
extra tuff to withstand hard, 24/7/365 usage.
If anybody is willing to bring me up to speed on this issue, I'd
appreciate it.
Regards,
Bill N. - Long Island, New York
Megane
bil...@yahoo.com wrote:
> I never really paid attention. That's why I'm asking this: When a
> traditional, slim, rack-mounted server is used by...... anybody as a
> Usenet server there's 30% more strain on that server's CPU than a
> server used to host a traditional web site?? If the services carried
I'll give you a hint about usenet: it's all about the disks. I think
that's actually the real reason that ISPs are quite happy to drop it.
The ones that don't are likely to farm it out to a NSP like Giganews
(which started as the usenet servers of ISP texas.net) such that you
won't even notice it unless you look at message headers.
Doug Jacobs
> yenc has been mainstream for at least five years now. That 30% figure is
> long out of date.
My readings on yenc when it first came on the scene is that it really wasn't
any better than old fashioned UUEencoding.
At any rate, about the only advantage usenet still has is anonmity due to
the providers deliberate lack of log files, and the fact that other
services are a juicier target for the copyright holders to monitor.
Doug Jacobs
> I'll give you a hint about usenet: it's all about the disks. I think
> that's actually the real reason that ISPs are quite happy to drop it.
> The ones that don't are likely to farm it out to a NSP like Giganews
> (which started as the usenet servers of ISP texas.net) such that you
> won't even notice it unless you look at message headers.
The traffic (bandwidth) isn't so pleasant either, and probably a bigger
issue than having enough local diskspace.
My ISP outsourced to Supernews. Then the admin learned that he had better
throttle that connection, as subscribers quickly realized that his shell
accounts were a cheaper faster way to access Supernews than by going
directly to Supernews itself. A friend of mine hacked together a system
that basically just dumped entire binary groups into a SSH-SCP pipeline
direct to his computer at home.
The admin was impressed with the ingenuity, and completely horrified at
how much bandwidth this was sucking down.
A throttle went into effect soon afterwards.
Doug Jacobs
Which traditionally makes it OK for fansubbing and digital distribution.
However, this causes a bit of a problem. By the time a show gets licensed
and comes out on the shelves, who's going to buy it? Most fansubbers
already have a copy - assuming they liked the show in the first place.
Even if they're moved enough to buy a domestic release, they aren't going
to bother with the 1-disc-at-a-time stuff. They'll wait for the bargain
box to come out roughly 12 months after the first disc arrived - assuming
they still remember they want to buy it... And that's already on top of
the 12-24 month gap between the time a show first hit the air in Japan,
and the time it ends up on US shelves.
This presumes that the show in question even gets licensed in the first
place.
Honestly, until the gap between Japanese TV, and the US release goes from a
couple of years to just a couple of weeks, I really don't see how the US
anime DVD market can survive. No DVD maker can compete with a dedicated
team of fansubbing otaku who are literally turning around an episode just
days after it hit the airwaves in Japan.
So it seems that part of the solution is...get rid of the DVDs, or at
least stop expecting them to generate the majority of your revenue! I
know that there's been some movement to try and put more licensed anime
online by the US companies, but I think it's really an issue of too little
too late. And why isn't there more anime on TV? Are broadcast rights
separate from DVD rights? Seems to me that Cartoon Network, SyFy
(sigh...) and even Nickelodeon are still prime targets for anime.
Doug Jacobs
>> Desire to pay for the intellectual property you experience.
>
> But WHY would he have that desire? And would that desire not run
> absolutely COUNTERPRODUCTIVE to the anime experience (and the thuggish
> fandom thereof) of 2009?
Not necessarily. If anything, the anime fandom from days gone, when tape
trading was the norm, set up this system of failure. Back then (~20-30
years ago...) there was no US anime market. The Japanese weren't even
interested in selling the rights to foreign distributors except in very
rare cases, such as Star Blazers, Voltron, Macross (Robotech) and the
like. There was still plenty of stuff that just wasn't being licesned
and, at least at that time, had no chance of ever being licensed. Back
then, the Japanese companies even ENCOURAGED foreign anime clubs to
trade tapes. It resulted in zero lost revenue for them, and, if on the
off chance anime caught on, the tape trading clubs would have already
established a footing for the Japanese companies to exploit IF they ever
thought anime could be a profitable export.
I think I can safely speak for most of the oldtimers here that we were
among the few who had the full implications of watching and distributing
anime tapes explained to us. We understood that this was never a final
solution, but basically a grassroots marketing project, to be replaced by
legitimate companies at some point. Eventually we would stop tape trading
altogether, and instead go wholly legitimate. However I also know for every
fan like me who understood this, there were literally 1000s who simply saw
tape trading as a way to get free stuff. They weren't interested in
spreading anime. They were simply leeches.
From the early days of tape trading, it's easy to see how, with the
progression of cheap technology, we've arrived at the situation today.
Even if tapes are a thing of the past, the whole culture hasn't really
changed.
It would be easy to simply say "that's it - get rid of the fansubbers
entirely!" but the sad truth is...it's too late. Even if you did get rid
of the fansubbers, and everyone obeyed the new ban on distributing
fansubbed anime, the fact still remains that it takes, on average, about 2
whole years for a show to go from its premiere on Japanese TV to showing
up on shelves in America.
And even if everyone obeyed the informal rules about only dealing in
fansubbed shows that haven't been licensed yet, the problem remains that a
large chunk of your potential market is going to have already seen the
show even before DVD #1 hits the shelves. And no one wants to buy DVD
#1. If they're still interested, they're going to want to buy the whole
bargain boxset - you know, the ones that come out a year after the show
finishes its release schedule, and costs a whopping 60% LESS than the
individual discs combined? No wonder ADV went out of business! Everyone
eventually learned to just wait for the bargain box, meaning ADV wouldn't
see any money until 2 or more years after producing product!
> You see, what Rob does not get is that the entire process is
> counterproductive to what the fandom has become -- a bunch of scheming
> little tyrant thieves who care nothing more than to see the present
> model killed for their amusement, thinking the money will continue to
> grow on trees and the like to allow Japan to continue to make stuff
> for them to abjectly steal.
Oh please, it's nothing so planned and grandiose. It's simply a
progression of a bad habit that started, essentially, out of necessity
some 30 years ago. Think about it. If there weren't those early groups
of folks trading fuzzy tapes of Dr. Slump and Fist Of The North Star, we
wouldn't have an US anime market, muchless the fansub subculture that's
threatening to kill it.
Blade
"Doug Jacobs" <dja...@rawbw.com> wrote in message
news:x-SdnQ5pAZh30lzX...@posted.rawbandwidth...
> Starcade <darkst...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Desire to pay for the intellectual property you experience.
> It would be easy to simply say "that's it - get rid of the fansubbers
> entirely!" but the sad truth is...it's too late. Even if you did get rid
> of the fansubbers, and everyone obeyed the new ban on distributing
> fansubbed anime, the fact still remains that it takes, on average, about 2
> whole years for a show to go from its premiere on Japanese TV to showing
> up on shelves in America.
However, that wasn't an issue during the anime boom from the mid 90s to the
mid 00s. Primarily because most people couldn't easily get it in the
meantime, meaning it hardly mattered how long it took since it would be new
to the majority of the market.
> And even if everyone obeyed the informal rules about only dealing in
> fansubbed shows that haven't been licensed yet, the problem remains that a
> large chunk of your potential market is going to have already seen the
> show even before DVD #1 hits the shelves. And no one wants to buy DVD
> #1. If they're still interested, they're going to want to buy the whole
> bargain boxset - you know, the ones that come out a year after the show
> finishes its release schedule, and costs a whopping 60% LESS than the
> individual discs combined? No wonder ADV went out of business! Everyone
> eventually learned to just wait for the bargain box, meaning ADV wouldn't
> see any money until 2 or more years after producing product!
That's presumably why ADV started doing stripboxes, for which they were
roundly castigated here and elsewhere for actually making the singles have
something worth buying them for. ADV also probably wasn't helped by their
diversification into a wide variety of money-losing sidelines such as their
anime channel, manga lines, soundtracks, and merchandising.
> Oh please, it's nothing so planned and grandiose. It's simply a
> progression of a bad habit that started, essentially, out of necessity
> some 30 years ago. Think about it. If there weren't those early groups
> of folks trading fuzzy tapes of Dr. Slump and Fist Of The North Star, we
> wouldn't have an US anime market, muchless the fansub subculture that's
> threatening to kill it.
I would disagree it was that important. A lot of the founders of anime
companies grew out of raw tapes and Japanophilia in general, not fansubs per
se. And fandom itself grew by orders of magnitude by TV airings (Gundam
Wing, Sailor Moon, Pokemon, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Dragonball Z all brought
in legions of new anime fans), not due to any of the niche stuff more
beloved of existing fans.
Anime was and is popular in a huge number of markets without the necessity
of fansubs; I would suggest that penetration of the North American market
was just a matter of time, given the economics of licensing versus producing
and the long-standing ghettoisation of American animation into certain
restrictive types of shows (plus, the interest of Japanese companies in
finding new sources of revenue as the home market grew unsteady).
Admittedly, that's a product of hindsight, as I (and most others) didn't
expect it to dominate the market as it has come to do, but certain companies
(notably Tokyopop and Viz) had been aiming at that goal for years before it
happened.
-
Blade
Dave Watson
> That's presumably why ADV started doing stripboxes, for which they were
> roundly castigated here and elsewhere for actually making the singles have
> something worth buying them for.
The bullshit ADV tried to sling on me when I phone them to complain about
those damned things was "Oh, but this will give you a choice!", and I said,
"Yeah, until you delete the singles, that is!" Sure as shit, that's
exactly what they did. The search for Azumanga Daioh Vols. 2 5 & 6 (with
cloisonne pins) continues. ADV's advice? eBay. Insert loud repetitive
burst of profanity here.
Watson
Who will settle for Mike Bailiff's head on a platter.
Jack Bohn
>And why isn't there more anime on TV? Are broadcast rights
>separate from DVD rights? Seems to me that Cartoon Network, SyFy
>(sigh...) and even Nickelodeon are still prime targets for anime.
With SyFy (sigh...) still showing Ani-Monday two hours a week,
(now preceded by two hours of horror ani-monday on their sister
channel, Chiller,) and Manga Entertainment -especially in
partnership with Bandai- able to provide them with all the
new-school, old-school, and mesozoic-school anime they could need
to fill any number of hours a week they would want, I'm afraid I
must conclude the American general public is getting as much
anime as they desire. (More or less, you could factor in cost,
time delay of negotiating contracts, and the current fad of
channels to want to own their programs, see Kim Possible and more
especially Avatar.)
--
-Jack
Doug Jacobs
>> It would be easy to simply say "that's it - get rid of the fansubbers
>> entirely!" but the sad truth is...it's too late. Even if you did get rid
>> of the fansubbers, and everyone obeyed the new ban on distributing
>> fansubbed anime, the fact still remains that it takes, on average, about 2
>> whole years for a show to go from its premiere on Japanese TV to showing
>> up on shelves in America.
>
> However, that wasn't an issue during the anime boom from the mid 90s to the
> mid 00s. Primarily because most people couldn't easily get it in the
> meantime, meaning it hardly mattered how long it took since it would be new
> to the majority of the market.
Well, the 90s brought along DVD. And DVD meant pristine quality video,
with your choice of dub or sub. Many oldtimers eagerly emptied their
wallets replacing their aging videotape libraries.
But when they finished, what was left? In my opinion, not much. Those
who were still heavily involved in the fandom were still getting stuff -
either from friends, watching it at clubs, or begininning to download
directly off the internet. Many of my friends from the anime club have
since moved on. Once they finished going legit with DVD, they haven't
really looked into newish stuff.
Newer fans were coming in at the high school and college level, where
trading, and high speed internet, are both readily available. For them,
by the time a newer series had hit shelves, they'd already seen it. And
even if they wanted to buy it, they couldn't afford $25/disc. That really
hasn't changed in the past 10 years now.
>> And even if everyone obeyed the informal rules about only dealing in
>> fansubbed shows that haven't been licensed yet, the problem remains that a
>> large chunk of your potential market is going to have already seen the
>> show even before DVD #1 hits the shelves. And no one wants to buy DVD
>> #1. If they're still interested, they're going to want to buy the whole
>> bargain boxset - you know, the ones that come out a year after the show
>> finishes its release schedule, and costs a whopping 60% LESS than the
>> individual discs combined? No wonder ADV went out of business! Everyone
>> eventually learned to just wait for the bargain box, meaning ADV wouldn't
>> see any money until 2 or more years after producing product!
>
> That's presumably why ADV started doing stripboxes, for which they were
> roundly castigated here and elsewhere for actually making the singles have
> something worth buying them for. ADV also probably wasn't helped by their
> diversification into a wide variety of money-losing sidelines such as their
> anime channel, manga lines, soundtracks, and merchandising.
See, that makes no sense to me. I would have thought the Anime Channel
would be a money maker. I guess it didn't help that it was only available
as a "on demand" channel on Comcast though, as opposed to be a normal
cable channel with commercials... I would have also thought that
merchandising would be safe as well. Videos, soundtracks and manga can
all be digitized and downloaded. But a plushie, t-shirt or other thing
from your favorite series is pretty much internet-proof. Why weren't
folks buying these items? Anime fans obviously have no problems spending
money on goods...so... I just don't get it.
>> Oh please, it's nothing so planned and grandiose. It's simply a
>> progression of a bad habit that started, essentially, out of necessity
>> some 30 years ago. Think about it. If there weren't those early groups
>> of folks trading fuzzy tapes of Dr. Slump and Fist Of The North Star, we
>> wouldn't have an US anime market, muchless the fansub subculture that's
>> threatening to kill it.
>
> I would disagree it was that important. A lot of the founders of anime
> companies grew out of raw tapes and Japanophilia in general, not fansubs per
> se. And fandom itself grew by orders of magnitude by TV airings (Gundam
> Wing, Sailor Moon, Pokemon, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Dragonball Z all brought
> in legions of new anime fans), not due to any of the niche stuff more
> beloved of existing fans.
The later shows, like Sailor Moon, Gundam Wing, Pokemon, etc. did bring in
new fans - but only because there was a fandom there ready to embrace
them. My gateway show was Robotech, back in '85. There weren't any anime
clubs available to me until I got into college. At least my friends and I
knew a little about Robotech's anime roots, and did what little we could to
learn about this mysterious new medium.
In college, my friends and I lamented that the newer fans had it easy. Clubs
were more public, and were even appearing in high schools. Fansubs were
available, so you no longer had to spend hours squinting at a fuzzy screen,
and a piece of paper that may - or may not - describe the action that was
going on.
> Anime was and is popular in a huge number of markets without the necessity
> of fansubs; I would suggest that penetration of the North American market
> was just a matter of time, given the economics of licensing versus producing
> and the long-standing ghettoisation of American animation into certain
> restrictive types of shows (plus, the interest of Japanese companies in
> finding new sources of revenue as the home market grew unsteady).
> Admittedly, that's a product of hindsight, as I (and most others) didn't
> expect it to dominate the market as it has come to do, but certain companies
> (notably Tokyopop and Viz) had been aiming at that goal for years before it
> happened.
It may have happened even without the fansubs and fandom, but those
certainly accelerated the process much faster than anything the existing
syndication market was doing. You had, what, maybe 1 big (popular) show
every 2 or 3 years and even then most fans of the show had no idea it was
Japanese, or what anime was, or that there were literally dozens more shows
just as good available right at that moment...but not in your market, and
not in English. Fansubs solved both problems.
However, fansubs created a very real example of letting the genie out of
the bottle. The fans exposed to the fansubs now know there's more stuff
out there than the US companies can ever hope to bring over - at least at
the current pace anyways. These fans end up knowing more about the
Japanese market, and end up ignoring their domestic market entirely. I
honestly can't blame them. Viz took, what, 4 years to finish publishing
Video Girl Ai, which had been out for ages already. In that time, you
could literally become fluent in Japanese and then just buy the Japanese
version.
Doug Jacobs
> Take out the word "basically". It is, for all real intent and
> purpose, free for the cost of having your Internet.
And providing the equipment to download, and the time spent in finding the
stuff...
> I condemn the practice, obviously, and believe that all such
> downloading should come with an attached cost which must (by court
> judgement) be paid to the studios, or no more new content can be made.
The laws are in place. All the companies need to do is go after the
downloaders. I think a few high profile cases would go a long ways
towards scaring off a lot of the traffic.
The fact that the Japanese companies don't seem interested in going after
the folks who are subbing and releasing their work seems a bit odd to me
though... Perhaps they feel it's just too expensive? But at the same
time, you could argue the fansubbers are destroying the potential market
for the Japanese company's work.
This sets a rather nasty precedent, as many people aren't going to care
about the distinction between the US and Japanese version of something.
If both are available, and one won't get you sued into oblivion, and still
has English subtitles, guess what folks will choose?
> Which, of course, leads to the obvious question: Does the present
> anime-pirate fanbase need NEW content, or is there so much out there
> on the Net now that it isn't necessary anymore?
That depends on the particular type of downloader.
There's the hoarders - who just mindlessly downloads and collects stuff,
but rarely, if ever, watches anything.
There's the fans, who will download a specific show, and may sample other
stuff, but doesn't download everything.
I guess you could argue that the anime market in Japan is so fast paced,
that you barely get to know a show before the next season of stuff arrives
- all of which screams for your undivided attention, but rarely deserves
it.
>> The only thing I
>> really paid for is my license for Forte Agent. Didn't then-president
>> Clinton sign a bill saying that it's illegal to post copyrighted work
>> on the Usenet Newsgroups? What ever happened there?
>
> I would say that it's probably a matter that copyright is, more and
> more, unenforceable every day.
>
> The point being, the entire copyright-based revenue stream of
> basically anything copyrighted which can be put on the Internet and
> downloaded requires an enforcement mechanism (and an effective one, on
> top of it) for it to work.
Which is what the RIAA and MPAA are struggling with right now...
Basically unless you have a veritable army of lawyers, like Disney, it's
difficult to enforce your copyrights. Recent casses indicate you can only
take 1 person to court per case, so if 1000 people are downloading your
stuff illegally, that's 1000 cases. You can see that current laws just
aren't prepared to deal with the realities of the internet.
>> I only vaugly
>> remember one of the uber-smart anime/tech people within the Long
>> Island (New York) I-Con Convention saying that the DMCR got ripped to
>> shreds by a lot of diffrent groups. However, I don't remember any of
>> the details of what I was told. ?I can only guess that Starcade/Mike
>> would be willing to fill me in on the details.
>
> The only way you would be able to expect to enforce a DMCA-level
> situation would require a government agency looking at your Net usage
> (independent of what you were doing on the Net) -- this, of course,
> raises Constitutional and privacy issues for those who believe both
> the US Constitution and the concept of individual privacy still exist
> with respect to US law.
The only way the DMCA would apply here is if someone was stupid enough to
try and presecute you for that region-free DVD player you have in your
living room, or if you modded your Xbox360 so it can play Japanese games,
or something like that. Pre-existing copyright laws are plenty to go
after illegal downloads, and don't risk running afoul of the 1st amendment
or other parts of the constitution. (Which is why the EFF is trying to
goad someone into suing them under DMCA, so they can get it declared
unconstitutional and thrown off the books!)
>> After seeing all this anime, I realized: Why the hell should I waste
>> time watching the advertisements on Chrunchyroll or Hulu? It's such a
>> monumental waste of time.
>
> Exactly. And why would you IF YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO?
Maybe because you want to "do the right thing"?
I can understand not wanting to pay for anime, but that doesn't mean
you're off the hook with regards to finding an otherwise legal way to
watch the stuff. If you can't do Netflix, and your library doesn't carry
any anime, at least Hulu is free.
> You just hit upon why ad-based systems DO NOT WORK. You have to
> assume, at minimum, that the eyeballs watching the show are watching
> YOUR _LEGAL_ _AD-BASED_ broadcast of the show, and no one has
> basically stripped off everything.
And how is this any different from using a VCR or now a DVR to record TV
programs and skip through the commercials?
Or, even dump the recoded show onto your computer, edit out the
commercials, and burn your own DVD?
> And here's another problem:
>
> Why spend the money on the discs when, either already or within a
> short period of time, the stuff is available _from the company_
> _LEGALLY_ on their own website?
Then simply watch it there.
> I feel defrauded by Funimation for having bought Ouran High School
> Host Club, to see it legally (sub and dub, for free) on their website
> within six months of the release of the entire series.
Well...I wouldn't go that far. Sure, you get to watch a version for free,
but is it as high resolution as your DVDs? Is it possible to watch on a
TV without having to go through a bunch of OS-techno-hoops? If you
couldn't answer "yes" to those questions, then I think there's still
soomething to be said for DVD.
I still see you point, however. I'm beginning to wonder what's the point
of cable/satellite TV at all when you can watch many shows' episodes on
the network's websites for free. Most have no commercials, or just 1
short one in the beginning - which is less than what you'd get if you were
watching over-the-air broadcasts.
The video market is changing. At this rate, TV will be dead within a
decade, replaced by on-demand websites stuffed full of episodes. You'll
simply have your main viewing screen, with its embedded internet software,
configured with what your shows are, and when you turn it on, it fetches
the latest episode list. It'll remember what shows and episodes you've
seen, and will recommend other shows based on your previous viewing
habits. These viewing habits will also be used to tailor advertising for
you as well. This means no more maxipad commercials for guys!
> The companies could be asked the same question I've been asking the
> pirates and thieves: WHAT IS THE PRODUCT?
Indeed. Perhaps they're hoping you'll enjoy the shows enough to buy the
DVDs...although that seems rather odd. Honestly how, how many times have
you watched an entire show on TV and decided it was good enough to get on
DVD? (well, ok, I can think of some...)
> And you raise the other real good point: Peer Pressure. Not just on
> groups like this, but consider how many people thieve so they can
> "keep up with their friends".
Peer pressure!?! That's the lamest excuse for downloading anime I've ever
heard!
>> Signal encryption?? Only part of the issue. IMHO, for every one person
>> writing encryption code, there are at least three people writing code
>> to crack the same exact encryption that only one person is working on.
>> I think this has been as obvious as a slap across the face since the
>> dawn of Macrovision for VHS tape.
>
> Exactly.
Technology is rarely the solution to what's essentially a social problem.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> Starcade <darkst...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Take out the word "basically". It is, for all real intent and
>> purpose, free for the cost of having your Internet.
>
> And providing the equipment to download, and the time spent in finding the
> stuff...
>
>> I condemn the practice, obviously, and believe that all such
>> downloading should come with an attached cost which must (by court
>> judgement) be paid to the studios, or no more new content can be made.
>
> The laws are in place. All the companies need to do is go after the
> downloaders. I think a few high profile cases would go a long ways
> towards scaring off a lot of the traffic.
Nope. Won't have any significant effect, unless by "high profile" you
mean "tens of thousands indicted, convicted, and jailed".
There's BEEN a "few high profile cases". There were plenty with
Napster. Had *ZERO* effect on downloading. People NORMALLY think "well,
*I* won't get caught". And in this case, THEY ARE RIGHT. The companies,
and the justice system, can neither afford the time, the money, or the
resources to prosecute the *millions* of people involved, or even one
percent of them. There aren't enough jails to hold them, enough lawyers
to prosecute.
This is like trying to ticket and try all speeders -- with speeder
defined as anyone more than 1 mph over the speed limit. Can't be done,
and WON'T be done. When a law is not obeyed to that level, the law is
meaningless.
What will have an effect?
The companies getting a clue and providing their shows for download as
fast as the pirates, for reasonable fees.
Captain Nerd
Doug Jacobs <dja...@rawbw.com> wrote:
> Blade <kumo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > That's presumably why ADV started doing stripboxes, for which they were
> > roundly castigated here and elsewhere for actually making the singles have
> > something worth buying them for. ADV also probably wasn't helped by their
> > diversification into a wide variety of money-losing sidelines such as their
> > anime channel, manga lines, soundtracks, and merchandising.
>
> See, that makes no sense to me. I would have thought the Anime Channel
> would be a money maker. I guess it didn't help that it was only available
> as a "on demand" channel on Comcast though, as opposed to be a normal
> cable channel with commercials... I would have also thought that
> merchandising would be safe as well. Videos, soundtracks and manga can
> all be digitized and downloaded. But a plushie, t-shirt or other thing
> from your favorite series is pretty much internet-proof. Why weren't
> folks buying these items? Anime fans obviously have no problems spending
> money on goods...so... I just don't get it.
One word: variety. The amount of merchandising of anime, game, music
and manga properties that goes on in Japan is astounding, the plain
numbers don't come close to describing it. If US companies could
have tapped into 1/100th of the kinds of things that are licensed
and sold in Japan, they wouldn't have financial problems. If ADV
had gone into the import business a la jlist, they could have
cleaned up. Once I could compare a Japanese Newtype magazine to
the NewtypeUSA version, I knew NUSA wouldn't last. Since magazines
live and die by advertising, it was obvious that ADV couldn't sell
as many ads as NJapan was selling. I knew intellectually that there
was a lot of merchandising going on, I had heard about how big
Akihabara was in the otaku market, but I had to go there to really
appreciate the scope. Even then, I doubt I experience more than
half of the total picture.
What's been available here in the US is not just paltry, it's almost
statisticaly zero.
Cap.
(... pardon misspellings/grammar fails, fighting a cold now...)
--
Since 1989, recycling old jokes, cliches, and bad puns, one Usenet
post at a time!
Operation: Nerdwatch http://www.nerdwatch.com
Only email with "TO_CAP" somewhere in the subject has a chance of being read
Blade
"Doug Jacobs" <dja...@rawbw.com> wrote in message
news:27KdneIH5YoRsljX...@posted.rawbandwidth...
> Blade <kumo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> It would be easy to simply say "that's it - get rid of the fansubbers
>>> entirely!" but the sad truth is...it's too late. Even if you did get
>>> rid
>>> of the fansubbers, and everyone obeyed the new ban on distributing
>>> fansubbed anime, the fact still remains that it takes, on average, about
>>> 2
>>> whole years for a show to go from its premiere on Japanese TV to showing
>>> up on shelves in America.
>>
>> However, that wasn't an issue during the anime boom from the mid 90s to
>> the
>> mid 00s. Primarily because most people couldn't easily get it in the
>> meantime, meaning it hardly mattered how long it took since it would be
>> new
>> to the majority of the market.
>
> Well, the 90s brought along DVD. And DVD meant pristine quality video,
> with your choice of dub or sub. Many oldtimers eagerly emptied their
> wallets replacing their aging videotape libraries.
And many, many new fans came into the hobby that weren't there before, due
to wider exposure and a bunch of new shows on TV.
> But when they finished, what was left? In my opinion, not much. Those
> who were still heavily involved in the fandom were still getting stuff -
> either from friends, watching it at clubs, or begininning to download
> directly off the internet. Many of my friends from the anime club have
> since moved on. Once they finished going legit with DVD, they haven't
> really looked into newish stuff.
That's anecdotal evidence, I'm afraid.
> Newer fans were coming in at the high school and college level, where
> trading, and high speed internet, are both readily available. For them,
> by the time a newer series had hit shelves, they'd already seen it. And
> even if they wanted to buy it, they couldn't afford $25/disc. That really
> hasn't changed in the past 10 years now.
Yes, it has. High speed internet hasn't been widely available for all of the
last ten years. I agree that the college culture encouraged the "I only get
things that are free" mindset, but I don't really think the fact sales
continued to boom that time and then cratered only after most people (not
just college students with non-bandwidth-capped high-speed connections)
could easily download is entirely coincidental. There are other factors as
well, of course.
>> That's presumably why ADV started doing stripboxes, for which they were
>> roundly castigated here and elsewhere for actually making the singles
>> have
>> something worth buying them for. ADV also probably wasn't helped by their
>> diversification into a wide variety of money-losing sidelines such as
>> their
>> anime channel, manga lines, soundtracks, and merchandising.
>
> See, that makes no sense to me. I would have thought the Anime Channel
> would be a money maker. I guess it didn't help that it was only available
> as a "on demand" channel on Comcast though, as opposed to be a normal
> cable channel with commercials... I would have also thought that
> merchandising would be safe as well. Videos, soundtracks and manga can
> all be digitized and downloaded. But a plushie, t-shirt or other thing
> from your favorite series is pretty much internet-proof. Why weren't
> folks buying these items? Anime fans obviously have no problems spending
> money on goods...so... I just don't get it.
I think it makes sense, but that your premises are fundamentally unsound.
The most valuable part of the fandom (the actual anime and manga) is the
thing that can be taken for free. When a culture has grown around
entitlement to free things, I do not believe it by and large leads to a
willingness to pay for other things (without a considerable benefit
involved, and I don't believe merchandise is that to most people). I would
note that has been the experience in other industries besides anime (such as
newspapers and magazines with an online presence). The market performance of
anime-related products has generally been a dismal one, with the exception
of children-oriented shows. Many companies tried it; I can't think of a
single one that didn't later seriously cutback or eliminate such
merchandising.
Incidentally, I would note your argument that anime fans have no problem
spending money on goods seems to conflict with your assertion that high
school and college anime fans now cannot afford anime at $25 a disc. It
would also conflict with my own, admittedly anecdotal, memories of both my
own high school/college years and the experience of everyone else I can
think of I've ever talked with the subject about, as well as the experience
of people who remember smoking, drinking, partying, driving a car, buying
marijuana or other drugs, or other such things in high school and college
which require you to be able to come up with 25 bucks or more on a fairly
frequent basis. To put it another way, I think those audiences could (by and
large, statistically) pay for anime discs just fine. They just do not do so
in numbers anywhere near the amount who are willing to download anime.
It also bears mentioning that even if merchandising were more successful,
unless anime fans were routinely paying very inflated prices for an awful
lot of goods per series (which most of them clearly do not), they could not
hope to replace the revenue from purchased media - merely supplement it. As
it turns out, it couldn't even do that.
>> I would disagree it was that important. A lot of the founders of anime
>> companies grew out of raw tapes and Japanophilia in general, not fansubs
>> per
>> se. And fandom itself grew by orders of magnitude by TV airings (Gundam
>> Wing, Sailor Moon, Pokemon, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Dragonball Z all
>> brought
>> in legions of new anime fans), not due to any of the niche stuff more
>> beloved of existing fans.
>
> The later shows, like Sailor Moon, Gundam Wing, Pokemon, etc. did bring in
> new fans - but only because there was a fandom there ready to embrace
> them. My gateway show was Robotech, back in '85. There weren't any anime
> clubs available to me until I got into college. At least my friends and I
> knew a little about Robotech's anime roots, and did what little we could
> to
> learn about this mysterious new medium.
I would argue this is a fundamentally unsound premise as well. Robotech, and
many other cartoons that were either explicitly anime or influenced by
Japanese culture, became successful and attained cult followings with many
of the fans not having any notion what "anime" was. The existence of an
underground fandom of tape traders who had a general interest in Japanese
cartoons was basically irrelevent because most fans never knew they existed,
and each wave of new fandom would largely consist of people seeing the
series as something unto itself, only later realising that "anime" existed
and possibly gaining a larger interest.
To put it another way: DBZ on TV did more to grow anime fandom than any
fansub ever made, by several orders of magnitude, due to vastly wider
exposure and popularity.
>> Anime was and is popular in a huge number of markets without the
>> necessity
>> of fansubs; I would suggest that penetration of the North American market
>> was just a matter of time, given the economics of licensing versus
>> producing
>> and the long-standing ghettoisation of American animation into certain
>> restrictive types of shows (plus, the interest of Japanese companies in
>> finding new sources of revenue as the home market grew unsteady).
>> Admittedly, that's a product of hindsight, as I (and most others) didn't
>> expect it to dominate the market as it has come to do, but certain
>> companies
>> (notably Tokyopop and Viz) had been aiming at that goal for years before
>> it
>> happened.
>
> It may have happened even without the fansubs and fandom, but those
> certainly accelerated the process much faster than anything the existing
> syndication market was doing. You had, what, maybe 1 big (popular) show
> every 2 or 3 years and even then most fans of the show had no idea it was
> Japanese, or what anime was, or that there were literally dozens more
> shows
> just as good available right at that moment...but not in your market, and
> not in English. Fansubs solved both problems.
And yet very, very few people actually knew anything about fansubs, compared
to the vast number who followed Pokemon, DBZ, or other such shows on
television. So I would argue that fansubs solved a problem that never
actually existed, while simultaneously creating many problems of their own.
(I'd also argue that anime with broad mass appeal are in fact rare, and that
there was probably not dozens more shows that would be just as good to the
typical fan.)
> However, fansubs created a very real example of letting the genie out of
> the bottle. The fans exposed to the fansubs now know there's more stuff
> out there than the US companies can ever hope to bring over - at least at
> the current pace anyways. These fans end up knowing more about the
> Japanese market, and end up ignoring their domestic market entirely. I
> honestly can't blame them. Viz took, what, 4 years to finish publishing
> Video Girl Ai, which had been out for ages already. In that time, you
> could literally become fluent in Japanese and then just buy the Japanese
> version.
Or, you could live in Japan, where they have to watch one episode a week,
and read one 16 page manga chapter a week (or a longer one every month).
They somehow manage to hold considerably stronger sales (although the
Japanese market has its own problems, which at least the Japanese companies
also believe file-sharing has contributed to).
The problem is not that the anime takes awhile. The problem is that people
can - and therefore will - take it and never pay for it (even indirectly
through ad revenue), and that a significant percentage (though certainly not
100%) of those people would pay for it (again, including indirectly) if the
option to take it were not available. When the "get it for free" option was
limited to a niche market of mostly hardcore fans, this wasn't such a big
problem. When it became available to virtually everyone in North America,
half the industry went out of business in relatively short order. I don't
think that has a lot to do with how much time licenses take - though if you
really think it does, I suppose the market results of stuff like Takahashi's
new series and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood that have been released
near-simultaneously ought to be such a massive improvement over the norm
that it becomes the new norm. We'll see; it'll add ad eyeballs for series'
with a strong built-in fanbase like that, at least (and some people will
watch it who would not have bothered otherwise), which may or may not offset
lost sales due to offering the product for free.
-
Blade
Doug Jacobs
> One word: variety. The amount of merchandising of anime, game, music
> and manga properties that goes on in Japan is astounding, the plain
> numbers don't come close to describing it. If US companies could
> have tapped into 1/100th of the kinds of things that are licensed
> and sold in Japan, they wouldn't have financial problems. If ADV
> had gone into the import business a la jlist, they could have
> cleaned up. Once I could compare a Japanese Newtype magazine to
> the NewtypeUSA version, I knew NUSA wouldn't last. Since magazines
> live and die by advertising, it was obvious that ADV couldn't sell
> as many ads as NJapan was selling. I knew intellectually that there
> was a lot of merchandising going on, I had heard about how big
> Akihabara was in the otaku market, but I had to go there to really
> appreciate the scope. Even then, I doubt I experience more than
> half of the total picture.
>
> What's been available here in the US is not just paltry, it's almost
> statisticaly zero.
Sounds like a text book example of "Go big or go home."
And of course, the Japanese will simply point to this and say "See? There
is no American anime market!" Which will cause the digisubbers to simply
reply with "See? The Japanese companies don't care what we do, because
they think there's no market!" and the flood of digisubs will drown out
what's left of the legitimate anime market.
Captain Nerd
Doug Jacobs <dja...@rawbw.com> wrote:
> Captain Nerd <cpt...@nerdwatch.com> wrote:
>
> > One word: variety. The amount of merchandising of anime, game, music
> > and manga properties that goes on in Japan is astounding, the plain
> > numbers don't come close to describing it. If US companies could
> > have tapped into 1/100th of the kinds of things that are licensed
> > and sold in Japan, they wouldn't have financial problems. If ADV
> > had gone into the import business a la jlist, they could have
> > cleaned up. Once I could compare a Japanese Newtype magazine to
> > the NewtypeUSA version, I knew NUSA wouldn't last. Since magazines
> > live and die by advertising, it was obvious that ADV couldn't sell
> > as many ads as NJapan was selling. I knew intellectually that there
> > was a lot of merchandising going on, I had heard about how big
> > Akihabara was in the otaku market, but I had to go there to really
> > appreciate the scope. Even then, I doubt I experience more than
> > half of the total picture.
> >
> > What's been available here in the US is not just paltry, it's almost
> > statisticaly zero.
>
> Sounds like a text book example of "Go big or go home."
Or someone not doing due dilligence in analyzing what the market
really is. Oh for a J-culture analog of a Hilton or Gillette...
> And of course, the Japanese will simply point to this and say "See? There
> is no American anime market!" Which will cause the digisubbers to simply
> reply with "See? The Japanese companies don't care what we do, because
> they think there's no market!" and the flood of digisubs will drown out
> what's left of the legitimate anime market.
Someone really needs to find out where the real value is. Then,
find where the choke-points are in blocking those who want the
valueable, and those who have the valueable. Then opening up those
choke-points (for a small, really tiny, miniscule transaction fee,
of course).
Selling fixed copies of bits on plastic disks for large sums of
money doesn't seem to be it...
Cap.
bil...@yahoo.com
wrote:
>Megane <megane#fanbo...@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>> yenc has been mainstream for at least five years now. That 30% figure is
>> long out of date.
>
>My readings on yenc when it first came on the scene is that it really wasn't
>any better than old fashioned UUEencoding.
With programs like Forte Agent, that decode automatically, don't all
these issues just fade away??
<< SNIP >>
bil...@yahoo.com
wrote:
>On Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:51:35 -0400, bil...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
>>
>> I purchased Forte Agent and started downloading from the anime
>>binary newsgroups. As of this writing, I am in the middle of
>>downloading Sky Girls and Secret of Cerulean Sand.
>
>You will also need quickpar:
>http://www.quickpar.org.uk/
>
>Split files must be rejoined before they are playable.
>
>-Galen
Thanks. I have it covered. It was covered in the FAQ. I also have
another joinig program, just as an emergency backup HJSplit. Both do
the job.
Cheers,
Bill
Megane
Doug Jacobs <dja...@rawbw.com> wrote:
> Megane <megane#fanbo...@127.0.0.1> wrote:
> > yenc has been mainstream for at least five years now. That 30% figure is
> > long out of date.
>
> My readings on yenc when it first came on the scene is that it really wasn't
> any better than old fashioned UUEencoding.
Then you don't understand how either of them work. uuencode translates
256 codes (8 bits) into 64 codes (6 bits), which means that 3 bytes now
take 4. Guess what? That's where your 30% figure comes from. Plus
there's an extra "M" at the start and newline at the end of every line.
Yenc starts by assuming that usenet is transmitted by mostly 8-bit clean
methods, with only things like line ending characters and nulls needing
to be escaped, and a newline stuffed in every now and then to keep the
software happy. So now 256 codes become like 250.
There has been some whining that par files take up the bandwidth saved
by yenc, but the problem is that while people ARE sending way more par
files than needed (especially with the less capable and more troublesome
servers dropping off), they have removed the need for "fills", where 5%
or so of the entire file is reposted simply because a couple lines of
one message got corrupted for downloaders on one server. Once this
happens to different parts on different servers, you've got a lot of
extra data getting sent.
Doug Jacobs
>>My readings on yenc when it first came on the scene is that it really wasn't
>>any better than old fashioned UUEencoding.
>
> With programs like Forte Agent, that decode automatically, don't all
> these issues just fade away??
Automated download and decode has never been the problem.
The issue is that if you take a 100kb jpg, and UUEncode it, it's now about
140kb in size. If someone wanted to download your original jpg, they'd
download about 140kb of data to get a 100kb jpg. yEnc was supposed to offer
the same features as UUEncode but without making the resulting encoded file
being larger. From the articles I read when yEnc was still new, this wasn't
the case. yEnc'd files were about the same size as UUEncoded ones. I
believe yEnc had some nicer features for dealing with really huge files -
like .ISO's - but the main issue of wasting bandwidth was still there.
Doug Jacobs
No, all I did was read the flamewars from the time on the various
programming groups between folks with far more internet/usenet/programming
experience than I had, so I figured they at least knew what they were talking
about.
Anceodtal evidence from when I tried downloading small (<1MB) image files
showed that yEnc didn't really save much space. Also, the fact that my
news reader of choice (tin via command line) didn't have a yEnc decoder
built-in meant that I had to save the articles, then manually run a yEnc
decoder on them. Maybe if I tried downloading larger files I would see
the benefit.
Doug Jacobs
> Which is one of the reasons that people need to start going after the
> Net as a whole with legislation.
How do you create, much less enforce, a single set of laws to rule something
that is international in nature? Did you know that some countries don't
even HAVE copyright laws? So what gives us or any other country the right
to impose our local laws on them?
>> Also, usenet usage is down quite a bit, especially since things like
>> LimeWire, or BitTorrent are so much more efficient and faster than usenet
>> and don't require a separate subscription. ?It's also a lot easier to
>> catch someone uploading material on these services than on usenet.
>
> The problem is: What separates them from a Napster situation, where,
> as _conduit_, you could nail Napster and basically take it over?
Both service providers and Napster fall under common carrier status.
Under this part of the law, providers are not responsible for data
transmitted or stored, so long as they are not making any claims to be
monitoring or filtering that data or traffic. However, if the provider is
informed of a problem they now need to deal with it, or become libel for
it themselves.
Example: Someone calls you up and makes an obscene phone call. At this
point, you cannot sue the phone company. However if you complain to the
phone company, and they do nothing to stop the phone calls then they are
now responsible for them and can be sued.
With Napster, they were served with legal notices about enabling copyright
theft, but did nothing. So eventually the RIAA sued them off the internet.
Descendants of Napster, like Limewire, have multiple servers, located in
and outside of the US. I have heard of the RIAA and/or MPAA managing to
take down a server or two in the US, but going after the ones in China or
Russia....that's a bit more difficult.
> I've always wondered why someone hasn't gone after BitTorrent for
> this, especially with the billions of dollars of anime content stolen
> off of it over the last several years...
BitTorrent is a network protocol, like FTP.
They have gone after people who have seeded files for upload, but you
quickly run into the problem of having to deal with each incident as a
separate case, and given how many 1000s (millions?) of potential
defendents you're talking about...
>> Most folks don't know about usenet, or don't know how to use it. ?And due
>> to spammers and the advent of web-forums, many ISPs don't even carry
>> usenet anymore. ?The subscription sites (like SuperNews, and others) have
>> pretty strict quotas in place, based on your subscription level. ?When you
>> consider that binaries on usenet have an overhead of about 30%(!) it's
>> easy to see why usenet is falling out of fashion so quickly.
>
> And the amount of content that the government would like to silence --
> which see the political newsgroups.
Oh please. The (US) government is not interested in usenet unless someone
is stupid enough to post a threat against a public official. Even then,
with most of usenet's servers outside of the US, and basically being run
in "oh...I didn't know that was running" mode, any such attempt would just
be a monumental waste of time.
Besides which, there's more of a pressure from ISPs to drop the binary
groups simply due to the sheer amount of bandwidth and diskspace they
consume on a daily basis - to say nothing of trying to run a server with
decent article retention.
> And then guess which people are going to choose if they can slice the
> ad completely out of the equation so that the companies (on both ends)
> don't continue that model... Consider how much anime costs before you
> bitch about that DVD cost...
At some point it's just easier and more conveient to just put up with an
ad. Yes, I can always download a version from the internet that has the
ads cut out. But if I just want to watch something *NOW*, I'll put up
with a 15 second ad for a 22 minute episode streaming off the internet.
I guarantee I'll be finished watching the episode before you find a no-ad
version, queue it up, and download it.
>> Encryption is not the solution. ?I guarantee any encryption method will
>> fail even before it's launched due to it being cracked even before it's
>> made commercially available, or due to it being so horribly restrictive
>> it'll be nicknamed Divx 2.0.
>
> Which is why the illegal content must be REMOVED and so must the
> people who provide it. Otherwise, forget it. Enforcement is THE only
> solution. Otherwise, kiss anime goodbye.
Yes, there are existing laws to deal with this. Unfortunately you're
dealing with a network that extends across national borders. Even
restricting to just the US, the current legal system isn't designed for
this sort of situation.
And in the meantime, the (US) anime industry isn't entirely free of blame
either. Abusive pricing practicess and sub-par products isn't going to win
over customers.
Stephen Rudman
> > Net as a whole with legislation.
>
> How do you create, much less enforce, a single set of laws to rule something
> that is international in nature? Did you know that some countries don't
> even HAVE copyright laws? So what gives us or any other country the right
> to impose our local laws on them?
They signed TRIPS.
> >> Also, usenet usage is down quite a bit, especially since things like
> >> LimeWire, or BitTorrent are so much more efficient and faster than usenet
> >> and don't require a separate subscription. ?It's also a lot easier to
> >> catch someone uploading material on these services than on usenet.
>
> > The problem is: What separates them from a Napster situation, where,
> > as _conduit_, you could nail Napster and basically take it over?
>
> Both service providers and Napster fall under common carrier status.
> Under this part of the law, providers are not responsible for data
> transmitted or stored, so long as they are not making any claims to be
> monitoring or filtering that data or traffic. However, if the provider is
> informed of a problem they now need to deal with it, or become libel for
> it themselves.
You're talking about the Service Provider exceptions to the DMCA (the
512 provisions, called as such because it's section 512 of the
Copyright Act), not about Common Carriers. Napster, (well, the
Napster of 1998, which is the one I'm familiar with) wouldn't meet the
statutory requirements for it and could be found liable for
contributory infringement (isn't the current Napster not based around
piracy?).
Rob Kelk
<CCSB...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> > Which is one of the reasons that people need to start going after the
>> > Net as a whole with legislation.
>>
>> How do you create, much less enforce, a single set of laws to rule something
>> that is international in nature? Did you know that some countries don't
>> even HAVE copyright laws? So what gives us or any other country the right
>> to impose our local laws on them?
>
>They signed TRIPS.
What is TRIPS? I can't find any reference to it on the Department of
Justice website.
(If it's a copyright law, I refer you to Doug's earlier comment about
some countries having no copyright laws, to which your comment was a
direct reply.)
>> >> Also, usenet usage is down quite a bit, especially since things like
>> >> LimeWire, or BitTorrent are so much more efficient and faster than usenet
>> >> and don't require a separate subscription. ?It's also a lot easier to
>> >> catch someone uploading material on these services than on usenet.
>>
>> > The problem is: What separates them from a Napster situation, where,
>> > as _conduit_, you could nail Napster and basically take it over?
>>
>> Both service providers and Napster fall under common carrier status.
>> Under this part of the law, providers are not responsible for data
>> transmitted or stored, so long as they are not making any claims to be
>> monitoring or filtering that data or traffic. However, if the provider is
>> informed of a problem they now need to deal with it, or become libel for
>> it themselves.
>
>You're talking about the Service Provider exceptions to the DMCA (the
>512 provisions, called as such because it's section 512 of the
>Copyright Act), not about Common Carriers. Napster, (well, the
>Napster of 1998, which is the one I'm familiar with) wouldn't meet the
>statutory requirements for it and could be found liable for
>contributory infringement (isn't the current Napster not based around
>piracy?).
First, ISPs aren't common carriers, according to the Telecommunications
Act (which defines "common carrier"). [1]
Second, the Copyright Act only has 92 sections. [2]
Third, the DMCA is a foreign law which applies only to ISPs in that
particular foreign country.
[1] http://laws.justice.gc.ca/PDF/Statute/T/T-3.4.pdf
[2] http://laws.justice.gc.ca/PDF/Statute/C/C-42.pdf
--
Rob Kelk <http://robkelk.ottawa-anime.org/> e-mail: s/deadspam/gmail/
"They were engaged in a calm and dignified discussion of important
issues of the day. No, wait, that was somebody else. *These* two
were all but screaming at each other at the tops of their lungs."
- from "Drunkard's Walk V/Oh My Brother II"
Stephen Rudman
> On Wed, 7 Oct 2009 21:19:03 -0700 (PDT), Stephen Rudman
>
> >> > Which is one of the reasons that people need to start going after the
> >> > Net as a whole with legislation.
>
> >> How do you create, much less enforce, a single set of laws to rule something
> >> that is international in nature? Did you know that some countries don't
> >> even HAVE copyright laws? So what gives us or any other country the right
> >> to impose our local laws on them?
>
> >They signed TRIPS.
>
> What is TRIPS? I can't find any reference to it on the Department of
> Justice website.
TRIPS is the international agreement on Trade Related Aspects of
Intellectual Property Rights. It sets the minimum requirements for
copyright protection worldwide. Copyrighted works are further
protected by the WIPO Copyright Treaty.
> (If it's a copyright law, I refer you to Doug's earlier comment about
> some countries having no copyright laws, to which your comment was a
> direct reply.)
>
>
>
> >> >> Also, usenet usage is down quite a bit, especially since things like
> >> >> LimeWire, or BitTorrent are so much more efficient and faster than usenet
> >> >> and don't require a separate subscription. ?It's also a lot easier to
> >> >> catch someone uploading material on these services than on usenet.
>
> >> > The problem is: What separates them from a Napster situation, where,
> >> > as _conduit_, you could nail Napster and basically take it over?
>
> >> Both service providers and Napster fall under common carrier status.
> >> Under this part of the law, providers are not responsible for data
> >> transmitted or stored, so long as they are not making any claims to be
> >> monitoring or filtering that data or traffic. However, if the provider is
> >> informed of a problem they now need to deal with it, or become libel for
> >> it themselves.
>
> >You're talking about the Service Provider exceptions to the DMCA (the
> >512 provisions, called as such because it's section 512 of the
> >Copyright Act), not about Common Carriers. Napster, (well, the
> >Napster of 1998, which is the one I'm familiar with) wouldn't meet the
> >statutory requirements for it and could be found liable for
> >contributory infringement (isn't the current Napster not based around
> >piracy?).
>
> First, ISPs aren't common carriers, according to the Telecommunications
> Act (which defines "common carrier"). [1]
I'm going to assume that this statement was directed to Doug since he
referred to
> Second, the Copyright Act only has 92 sections. [2]
I was talking about section 512 of the US Copyright Act (http://
www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/usc_sec_17_00000512----000-.html) since
Doug referred to Napster, a US company.
> Third, the DMCA is a foreign law which applies only to ISPs in that
> particular foreign country.
See above.
Rob Kelk
<CCSB...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>On Oct 8, 8:15=A0am, robk...@deadspam.com (Rob Kelk) wrote:
>> On Wed, 7 Oct 2009 21:19:03 -0700 (PDT), Stephen Rudman
>>
>> <CCSBey...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> >> > Which is one of the reasons that people need to start going after th=
>e
>> >> > Net as a whole with legislation.
>>
>> >> How do you create, much less enforce, a single set of laws to rule som=
>ething
>> >> that is international in nature? =A0Did you know that some countries d=
>on't
>> >> even HAVE copyright laws? =A0So what gives us or any other country the=
> right
>> >> to impose our local laws on them?
>>
>> >They signed TRIPS.
>>
>> What is TRIPS? I can't find any reference to it on the Department of
>> Justice website.
>
>TRIPS is the international agreement on Trade Related Aspects of
>Intellectual Property Rights. It sets the minimum requirements for
>copyright protection worldwide. Copyrighted works are further
>protected by the WIPO Copyright Treaty.
>
>> (If it's a copyright law, I refer you to Doug's earlier comment about
>> some countries having no copyright laws, to which your comment was a
>> direct reply.)
>>
>>
>>
>> >> >> Also, usenet usage is down quite a bit, especially since things lik=
>e
>> >> >> LimeWire, or BitTorrent are so much more efficient and faster than =
>usenet
>> >> >> and don't require a separate subscription. ?It's also a lot easier =
>to
>> >> >> catch someone uploading material on these services than on usenet.
>>
>> >> > The problem is: =A0What separates them from a Napster situation, whe=
>re,
>> >> > as _conduit_, you could nail Napster and basically take it over?
>>
>> >> Both service providers and Napster fall under common carrier status. =
>=A0
>> >> Under this part of the law, providers are not responsible for data
>> >> transmitted or stored, so long as they are not making any claims to be
>> >> monitoring or filtering that data or traffic. =A0However, if the provi=
>der is
>> >> informed of a problem they now need to deal with it, or become libel f=
>or
>> >> it themselves.
>>
>> >You're talking about the Service Provider exceptions to the DMCA (the
>> >512 provisions, called as such because it's section 512 of the
>> >Copyright Act), not about Common Carriers. =A0Napster, (well, the
>> >Napster of 1998, which is the one I'm familiar with) wouldn't meet the
>> >statutory requirements for it and could be found liable for
>> >contributory infringement (isn't the current Napster not based around
>> >piracy?).
>>
>> First, ISPs aren't common carriers, according to the Telecommunications
>> Act (which defines "common carrier"). [1]
>
>I'm going to assume that this statement was directed to Doug since he
>referred to
>
>> Second, the Copyright Act only has 92 sections. [2]
>
>I was talking about section 512 of the US Copyright Act (http://
>www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/usc_sec_17_00000512----000-.html) since
>Doug referred to Napster, a US company.
>
>> Third, the DMCA is a foreign law which applies only to ISPs in that
>> particular foreign country.
>
>See above.
>
>> [1]http://laws.justice.gc.ca/PDF/Statute/T/T-3.4.pdf
>> [2]http://laws.justice.gc.ca/PDF/Statute/C/C-42.pdf
It appears you have completely missed my (and I believe Doug's) point.
Spelling it out:
The laws of the USA do not apply to the majority of Internet servers,
because the majority of Internet servers are outside of the USA.
There are countries that do not have copyright laws or treaties of any
sort and are connected to the Internet.
Because of those two facts, attempting to apply the laws of the USA to
the issue of copyright infringement on the Internet is pointless.
Gerardo Campos
>> > Which is one of the reasons that people need to start going after the
>> > Net as a whole with legislation.
>>
>> How do you create, much less enforce, a single set of laws to rule
>> something that is international in nature? Did you know that some
>> countries don't even HAVE copyright laws? So what gives us or any
>> other country the right to impose our local laws on them?
>
> They signed TRIPS.
Not all the countries are part of the WTO and not all countries have
implemented TRIPS.
>
> You're talking about the Service Provider exceptions to the DMCA (the
> 512 provisions, called as such because it's section 512 of the Copyright
> Act), not about Common Carriers. Napster, (well, the Napster of 1998,
> which is the one I'm familiar with) wouldn't meet the statutory
> requirements for it and could be found liable for contributory
> infringement (isn't the current Napster not based around piracy?).
As Rob mentioned, the DMCA is a foreign law, and can not be applied where
I live.
--
Saludos
Gerardo Campos
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> On Oct 8, 8:15 am, robk...@deadspam.com (Rob Kelk) wrote:
>> On Wed, 7 Oct 2009 21:19:03 -0700 (PDT), Stephen Rudman
>>
>> <CCSBey...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>> Which is one of the reasons that people need to start going after the
>>>>> Net as a whole with legislation.
>>>> How do you create, much less enforce, a single set of laws to rule something
>>>> that is international in nature? Did you know that some countries don't
>>>> even HAVE copyright laws? So what gives us or any other country the right
>>>> to impose our local laws on them?
>>> They signed TRIPS.
>> What is TRIPS? I can't find any reference to it on the Department of
>> Justice website.
>
> TRIPS is the international agreement on Trade Related Aspects of
> Intellectual Property Rights. It sets the minimum requirements for
> copyright protection worldwide. Copyrighted works are further
> protected by the WIPO Copyright Treaty.
>
And not all countries have signed those, and thus any Internet issues
on copyright/IP protection will run SMASH and fall apart if they make
assumptions that US, or even such treaty, law MUST apply. It DOESN'T apply.
The industries who don't grasp this WILL fail. The ones who grasp it
and adjust their tactics will survive, even prosper.
Stephen Rudman
>
> Spelling it out:
>
> The laws of the USA do not apply to the majority of Internet servers,
> because the majority of Internet servers are outside of the USA.
Right. However, copyright isn't just protected by domestic laws.
International Agreements exist to protect copyrights. So, while the
US Copyright Act can't be applied outside of US jurisdiction, there
are still statutory measures in place to allow for copyright holders
to go after infringers.
> There are countries that do not have copyright laws or treaties of any
> sort and are connected to the Internet.
Well, 153 nations are part of the WTO and signatories to TRIPS. 28
other countries are in the process of joining the WTO and are
implementing TRIPS as part of that process. There are 193 widely
recognized sovereign states so that leaves 12 widely recognized
countries that don't follow TRIPS. There are also 10 countries that
aren't widely recognized but many of them do implement TRIPS as a
matter of course.
So if a copyright holder is trying to go after infringers in Eritrea,
Somalia, Turkmenistan, North Korea, Monaco, San Marino, East Timor,
Nauru, Tuvalu, Palau, Kiribati, Micronesia, Marshall Islands and the
territories of Western Sahara and Palestine, they are out of luck
(unless there are sufficient contacts by the infringer with a TRIPS
signatory to bring a suit in one of those countries instead, which is
not a far off supposition in international disputes). However, there
is statutory copyright protection in every other country, making
copyright holders pretty well protected.
> Because of those two facts, attempting to apply the laws of the USA to
> the issue of copyright infringement on the Internet is pointless.
The only time I tried to apply US law in the issue that Doug presented
was when he was referring to a US company. Other than that, I've been
talking about international law, which has been incorporated into
domestic law for almost every nation across the globe.
Stephen Rudman
> On Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:19:03 -0700, Stephen Rudman wrote:
> >> > Which is one of the reasons that people need to start going after the
> >> > Net as a whole with legislation.
>
> >> How do you create, much less enforce, a single set of laws to rule
> >> something that is international in nature? Did you know that some
> >> countries don't even HAVE copyright laws? So what gives us or any
> >> other country the right to impose our local laws on them?
>
> > They signed TRIPS.
>
> Not all the countries are part of the WTO and not all countries have
> implemented TRIPS.
All but 14 nations and territories have implemented or begun to
implement TRIPS so while it's not an absolute rule, it covers most of
the globe.
> > You're talking about the Service Provider exceptions to the DMCA (the
> > 512 provisions, called as such because it's section 512 of the Copyright
> > Act), not about Common Carriers. Napster, (well, the Napster of 1998,
> > which is the one I'm familiar with) wouldn't meet the statutory
> > requirements for it and could be found liable for contributory
> > infringement (isn't the current Napster not based around piracy?).
>
> As Rob mentioned, the DMCA is a foreign law, and can not be applied where
> I live.
No, but since Doug was talking about a US company, it can be applied
where they live.
Doug Jacobs
> Spelling it out:
>
> The laws of the USA do not apply to the majority of Internet servers,
> because the majority of Internet servers are outside of the USA.
>
> There are countries that do not have copyright laws or treaties of any
> sort and are connected to the Internet.
>
> Because of those two facts, attempting to apply the laws of the USA to
> the issue of copyright infringement on the Internet is pointless.
Furthermore, even some countries that have signed an international
copyright agreement (like BERN) have a HORRIBLE track record actually
enforcing it. Look at mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong for example.
The pirate industry there is so entrenched, you have otherwise respectable
stores stocking pirated goods - either out of ignorance, or downright
necessity to remain competitive. I was actually surprised to see there
were legitimate DVDs for sale in Taiwan, when those stores were literally
surrounded by vendors selling the same titles for 1/5th the price.
If China/HK/Taiwan can't even control the flow of physically pirated goods
on the streets - which is a very obvious copyright violation - how do you
propose they control traffic on the internet?
Doug Jacobs
> Right. However, copyright isn't just protected by domestic laws.
> International Agreements exist to protect copyrights. So, while the
> US Copyright Act can't be applied outside of US jurisdiction, there
> are still statutory measures in place to allow for copyright holders
> to go after infringers.
But it gets more complicated than that, especially when dealing with
something where multiple companies may have parts of the copyright, which
is the case with anime.
Say there's an anime series named XYZ. XYZ's creator company in Japan
obviously has thecopyright to XYZ and its properties. But then XYZ's creator
sells the rights for distribution to a US company. Obviously the US company
can then enforce copyrights for XYZ in the US.
So here's the question: Which company should go after a rogue fansubber
who continues releasing English fansubs of XYZ when the fansubber is
located in:
A: The US
B: Japan
C: Some other country where XYZ is licensed
D: Some other country where XYZ is not licensed
A&B are obvious, but what about the more common case of C&D? What do you
do? Have the company ask the fansubber's local law enforcement to arrest
him and extradite him to the US or Japan to stand trial? What if the
fansubber wasn't even violating his nation's local copyright laws?
And of course, all of this is going to take time to process. Probably
years, due to the fact you're asking multiple nations' worth of legal
syatems and politicans to work together. In the meantime, whatever the
fansubber had released, will continue to circulate around the internet.
Each hop causing whole new violatiosn that need to be tracked and
prosecuted.
> The only time I tried to apply US law in the issue that Doug presented
> was when he was referring to a US company. Other than that, I've been
> talking about international law, which has been incorporated into
> domestic law for almost every nation across the globe.
Within the US it's pretty cut and dry but that's only because the US has
very strong copyright laws in place, and is willing to assist foreign
copyright holders enforce their copyright within the US using those laws
(and there are even anime-related predents for this.)
But outside the US, where local laws aren't as strong, I'm not really sure
what happens. Do the treaties really allow the US to enforce US copyright
law overseas? I doubt it. Then even if a situation is uncovered that
would violate US laws, but not the local laws where the person lives, what
happens? Yeah, in the past there's been examples of the US having someone
arrested in their home country and shipped to the US for presecution even
when the person hadn't broken local laws. The most egregious example of
this I can recall was the whole DeCSS mess from over a decade ago. I
don't recall how that all worked out, though, besides geeks wearing
t-shirts with DeCSS source code on them, daring the US Gov't to arrest
them under faulty US weapons charges.
ender
> A&B are obvious, but what about the more common case of C&D? What do you
> do? Have the company ask the fansubber's local law enforcement to arrest
> him and extradite him to the US or Japan to stand trial? What if the
> fansubber wasn't even violating his nation's local copyright laws?
You're forgetting option E: the people involved with fansub are from
multiple countries (which could fit in any of the above categories).
--
< ender ><><><><><><><>◊<><><><><><><>◊<><><><><><><>< e at ena dot si >
Because 10 billion years' time is so fragile, so ephemeral...
it arouses such a bittersweet, almost heartbreaking fondness.
Astrobiochemist
> something where multiple companies may have parts of the copyright, which
> is the case with anime.
Well, when you refer to multiple companies having "parts of the
copyright," in regard to anime series, you are referring to exclusive
licenses. This is dealt with in regards to standing to bring a
claim. In most legal systems, both the primary copyright holder (this
is the original company which created the anime, unless the company
sold all of their rights to the work) and the exclusive licensee can
file suit against an infringer. Non-exclusive licensees rarely have
standing in copyright cases.
> Say there's an anime series named XYZ. XYZ's creator company in Japan
> obviously has thecopyright to XYZ and its properties. But then XYZ's creator
> sells the rights for distribution to a US company. Obviously the US company
> can then enforce copyrights for XYZ in the US.
>
> So here's the question: Which company should go after a rogue fansubber
> who continues releasing English fansubs of XYZ when the fansubber is
> located in:
> A: The US
> B: Japan
> C: Some other country where XYZ is licensed
> D: Some other country where XYZ is not licensed
>
> A&B are obvious, but what about the more common case of C&D? What do you
> do? Have the company ask the fansubber's local law enforcement to arrest
> him and extradite him to the US or Japan to stand trial? What if the
> fansubber wasn't even violating his nation's local copyright laws?
The case will always be held by the country with personal jurisdiction
over the infringer. And in 181 countries, (which I mentioned in my
reply to Rob Kelk), by placing a copy of the anime series online
without permission of the copyright holder or their exclusive
licensee, the infringer has violated the countries copyright law. So
for C, either the XYZ's creator or the exclusive licensee can file
suit and in D, XUZ can file suit in that countries courts.
> And of course, all of this is going to take time to process. Probably
> years, due to the fact you're asking multiple nations' worth of legal
> syatems and politicans to work together. In the meantime, whatever the
> fansubber had released, will continue to circulate around the internet.
> Each hop causing whole new violatiosn that need to be tracked and
> prosecuted.
I actually wrote a fact pattern (basically, a legal word problem)
involving international copyright infringement of anime and sent it
around to some other IP specialists I've worked with and have asked
them for their opinion on it and I'm going to work on it as well.
After I finish working on it and I get all the response back, I'll
post about it.
> > The only time I tried to apply US law in the issue that Doug presented
> > was when he was referring to a US company. Other than that, I've been
> > talking about international law, which has been incorporated into
> > domestic law for almost every nation across the globe.
>
> But outside the US, where local laws aren't as strong, I'm not really sure
> what happens. Do the treaties really allow the US to enforce US copyright
> law overseas? I doubt it.
While it wasn't the enforcement of US Copyright laws abroad, US
copyright holders have had their works very well protected over the
past several decades by International agreements.
> Then even if a situation is uncovered that
> would violate US laws, but not the local laws where the person lives, what
> happens?
Well, in the 14 countries I listed in an earlier response, nothing can
happen. However, in 181 countries, there is domestic copyright law
which can be used to protect American copyright holders (or Japanese
copyright holders, as the case may be). But yes, you are right.
There has to be local copyright law. And like I keep saying, there
are only 14 places which don't have domestic law that can be used
against copyright infringers and only 12 of those are widely-
recognized countries.
> Yeah, in the past there's been examples of the US having someone
> arrested in their home country and shipped to the US for presecution even
> when the person hadn't broken local laws. The most egregious example of
> this I can recall was the whole DeCSS mess from over a decade ago. I
> don't recall how that all worked out, though, besides geeks wearing
> t-shirts with DeCSS source code on them, daring the US Gov't to arrest
> them under faulty US weapons charges.
Well, when Hollywood companies wanted to bring suit against Jon Lech
Johansen (AKA DVD Jon), they had him charged under Norwegian Criminal
Code section 145. At no point was he "shipped to the US for
prosecution." Now, while Jon actually didn't commit secondary
copyright infringement, the MPAA was able to bring suit against him
using the local laws. (Most legal experts agree that the only lawyers
who think that Jon broke the law are the lawyers who work for the
MPAA. See the most recent books by Lessig and Post.)
Astrobiochemist
> copyright agreement (like BERN) have a HORRIBLE track record actually
> enforcing it. Look at mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong for example.
> The pirate industry there is so entrenched, you have otherwise respectable
> stores stocking pirated goods - either out of ignorance, or downright
> necessity to remain competitive. I was actually surprised to see there
> were legitimate DVDs for sale in Taiwan, when those stores were literally
> surrounded by vendors selling the same titles for 1/5th the price.
This is not a problem of whether laws exist to stop copyright
infringers. There are Chinese laws against copyright infringement and
if a foreign copyright holder decided to file suit against all the
Chinese infringers, they could do so. The problem in this case is
that the there is so much infringement that it would require all the
resources of the Chinese judiciary in order to put a stop to it.
> If China/HK/Taiwan can't even control the flow of physically pirated goods
> on the streets - which is a very obvious copyright violation - how do you
> propose they control traffic on the internet?
Since it can be easier to track the flow of digital material than
physical material, one can more easily pinpoint the source of the
infringement online. However, the problem is that there is so much
infringement that it would take a ridiculous amount of time and
resources to go after all the infringers. This does not mean that
copyright holders couldn't take action if they decided that they
should make a stand here and now.
Laws of almost every country in the world has been constructed so that
infringement can be stamped out. However, infringement will continue
as long as people make the decision to not pay the copyright holders
for copyrighted works. This doesn't mean that there aren't methods to
stop specific instances of infringement or to punish specific
instances of infringement. Rather, even when the law is used to stop
one instance, another one pops up.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> Laws of almost every country in the world has been constructed so that
> infringement can be stamped out. However, infringement will continue
> as long as people make the decision to not pay the copyright holders
> for copyrighted works. This doesn't mean that there aren't methods to
> stop specific instances of infringement or to punish specific
> instances of infringement. Rather, even when the law is used to stop
> one instance, another one pops up.
More generally, if a law cannot command enough respect to make most
people obey it, the law is dead in the water. Even if the law is one
that most people agree with, if it sets limits too stringent for the
people, it's going to only be enforced at the extremes. Cops don't pull
you over here for doing 41 in a 40 zone. They pull you over for doing 55
in a 40 zone.
The MPAA, RIAA, etc., are fighting the battle to force people to keep
buying hand-carved chairs when everyone can get mass-produced plastic
ones. The entire industry and the dynamics thereof is not the same, and
if they can't adjust, they'll die.
Starcade
<seaw...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
> Astrobiochemist wrote:
> > Laws of almost every country in the world has been constructed so that
> > infringement can be stamped out. However, infringement will continue
> > as long as people make the decision to not pay the copyright holders
> > for copyrighted works. This doesn't mean that there aren't methods to
> > stop specific instances of infringement or to punish specific
> > instances of infringement. Rather, even when the law is used to stop
> > one instance, another one pops up.
>
> More generally, if a law cannot command enough respect to make most
> people obey it, the law is dead in the water. Even if the law is one
> that most people agree with, if it sets limits too stringent for the
> people, it's going to only be enforced at the extremes. Cops don't pull
> you over here for doing 41 in a 40 zone. They pull you over for doing 55
> in a 40 zone.
The only reason they don't is because their radars can only determine
within a margin of error -- which is why you usually won't see much
below 5 over.
(especially if that same "5 over" is the prevailing speed of the
entire group of traffic)
The fact is that if the law cannot command enough respect to make most
people obey it, then not only is the law dead in the water, but _all
which is dependent on said law_.
That means, in this case, the entire IP-based entertainment industry.
This means there is _no more anime_ -- and no more music industry
either. Those models are based that the companies and their assignees
are given the due recompense (which can only be done through
enforcement -- same as any physical product (the only reason the Slim
PS3 costs $299 is you can be shot for taking it and not paying for
it).)
One real question which should be asked is whether the present fandom
(specifically in anime) even WANTS any more new product, with the
kaleidoscope of product stolen onto the Internet...
> The MPAA, RIAA, etc., are fighting the battle to force people to keep
> buying hand-carved chairs when everyone can get mass-produced plastic
> ones. The entire industry and the dynamics thereof is not the same, and
> if they can't adjust, they'll die.
That would be a valid argument iff we were talking about conduct based
in good faith.
The fandom is in very bad faith, and the only way to bring these
actions back in line (and, in fact, the only way the industries
survive in any capacity) is to slap them down and go to court and
seize the proper recompense.
Otherwise, not only is all copyright law dead in the water, but all
which is dependent on it.
Mike
Astrobiochemist
> > infringement can be stamped out. However, infringement will continue
> > as long as people make the decision to not pay the copyright holders
> > for copyrighted works. This doesn't mean that there aren't methods to
> > stop specific instances of infringement or to punish specific
> > instances of infringement. Rather, even when the law is used to stop
> > one instance, another one pops up.
>
> More generally, if a law cannot command enough respect to make most
> people obey it, the law is dead in the water. Even if the law is one
> that most people agree with, if it sets limits too stringent for the
> people, it's going to only be enforced at the extremes. Cops don't pull
> you over here for doing 41 in a 40 zone. They pull you over for doing 55
> in a 40 zone.
The problem is, how do you make intellectual property laws less
stringent? "Don't steal TOO many songs or you will be sued for
infringement."
Rob Kelk
<CCSB...@yahoo.com> wrote:
<snip>
>> More generally, if a law cannot command enough respect to make most
>> people obey it, the law is dead in the water. Even if the law is one
>> that most people agree with, if it sets limits too stringent for the
>> people, it's going to only be enforced at the extremes. Cops don't pull
>> you over here for doing 41 in a 40 zone. They pull you over for doing 55
>> in a 40 zone.
>
>The problem is, how do you make intellectual property laws less
>stringent? "Don't steal TOO many songs or you will be sued for
>infringement."
Simple - go back to the limited duration that they were originally
intended to have.
If copyrights were still valid for only twenty-five years, "Voltron"
would just now be coming into the public domain and people would be
sharing copies to point out the differences between it and its parent
anime, which would already have been in public domain for a few years.
More importantly, "Nausicaa" would be entering public domain this year.
Instead, we've got a protection span of "life of the creator plus fifty
years" at the least, supposedly to encourage creativity (how creative is
somebody who's been dead for forty-nine years, again?) but actually
stifling creativity because they put the culture's common stories
off-limits to creators.
--
Rob Kelk <http://robkelk.ottawa-anime.org/> e-mail: s/deadspam/gmail/
"I'm *not* a kid! Nyyyeaaah!" - Skuld (in "Oh My Goddess!" OAV #3)
"When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear
of childishness and the desire to be very grown-up." - C.S. Lewis
Blade
"Rob Kelk" <rob...@deadspam.com> wrote in message
news:4ad7d8cb...@news.individual.net...
> Simple - go back to the limited duration that they were originally
> intended to have.
>
> If copyrights were still valid for only twenty-five years, "Voltron"
> would just now be coming into the public domain and people would be
> sharing copies to point out the differences between it and its parent
> anime, which would already have been in public domain for a few years.
> More importantly, "Nausicaa" would be entering public domain this year.
>
> Instead, we've got a protection span of "life of the creator plus fifty
> years" at the least, supposedly to encourage creativity (how creative is
> somebody who's been dead for forty-nine years, again?) but actually
> stifling creativity because they put the culture's common stories
> off-limits to creators.
Why precisely should people with corporations and investments be able to
bequeath the fruits of their efforts to their children, but not artists?
Why precisely should works that only become popular or even published after
the deaths of the authors not be used to benefit the people who legally
inherited them (usually their loved ones), as opposed to being given away to
people who did nothing for it?
Why precisely would artists be inspired to create more by the prospect of
being stripped of their legal rights to control their own work after 25
years? Because being an artist has such a great pension plan? You are aware
many artists are not exactly wealthy or famous, right? Why should some
printing company be making all the money from To Kill A Mockingbird, instead
of the author? So people can download it on the internet legally? Why do
they deserve it? Why would this inspire creativity in artists?
In other words, I think that's a terrible idea. Artists have quite a hard
enough time making a living without stripping them of their legal rights to
their work after an arbitrary time in order to give it to people who did
nothing to earn it.
-
Blade
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> In other words, I think that's a terrible idea.
But that was the original intent of copyright. And the reasoning behind
it is that the artists REQUIRE the prior work -- access to it WITHOUT
paying for it for, potentially, eternity -- in order to continue to
develop the new work. The public domain works are a common heritage of
the entire civilization and one on which the other artists build. I
write with the full knowledge of all the stuff that I'm building on, and
the fact that it IS public domain encourages us all to use it, build on
it, develop from it, comment on it, argue about it.
Disney has made an INDUSTRY of just that -- mining the public domain
for works that it then makes money from, and THEN -- in an ironic show
of hypocrisy -- has done its level best to make sure that no one will
ever be able to do the same with their works. It's fine for Disney to
take Victor Hugo's work and remake it as they will, to distort the Greek
Myths, to mangle fairy tales and all that, but God Forbid that someone
draws a Mickey Mouse comic without their permission. By the laws
obtaining at the time Disney began its work, many of their works would
already have passed into public domain, and SHOULD have.
Me, I'd be satisfied as a first step if we simply removed CORPORATIONS
from the equation: individual people can have copyright, but
organizations cannot. This eliminates the problem of the "immortal
copyright holder". At least until we actually invent immortality.
Blade
news:hb8qii$ivf$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
> Blade wrote:
>
>> In other words, I think that's a terrible idea.
>
> But that was the original intent of copyright.
Whether that was true or not, it hardly matters, since there is nothing
sacred about the "original intent" of any legal construction.
> Me, I'd be satisfied as a first step if we simply removed CORPORATIONS
> from the equation: individual people can have copyright, but organizations
> cannot. This eliminates the problem of the "immortal copyright holder". At
> least until we actually invent immortality.
I agree with this, with the caveat that creative works that
all-but-necessarily require organisations (e.g., movies and video games) to
create thereby become a thorny problem.
-
Blade
Rob Kelk
wrote:
>"Rob Kelk" <rob...@deadspam.com> wrote in message
>news:4ad7d8cb...@news.individual.net...
>
>> Simple - go back to the limited duration that they were originally
>> intended to have.
>>
>> If copyrights were still valid for only twenty-five years, "Voltron"
>> would just now be coming into the public domain and people would be
>> sharing copies to point out the differences between it and its parent
>> anime, which would already have been in public domain for a few years.
>> More importantly, "Nausicaa" would be entering public domain this year.
>>
>> Instead, we've got a protection span of "life of the creator plus fifty
>> years" at the least, supposedly to encourage creativity (how creative is
>> somebody who's been dead for forty-nine years, again?) but actually
>> stifling creativity because they put the culture's common stories
>> off-limits to creators.
>
>Why precisely should people with corporations and investments be able to
>bequeath the fruits of their efforts to their children, but not artists?
Because there is a fundamental difference between creative endeavours
and commercial endeavours.
>Why precisely should works that only become popular or even published after
>the deaths of the authors not be used to benefit the people who legally
>inherited them (usually their loved ones), as opposed to being given away to
>people who did nothing for it?
The heirs also did nothing for it; why should they get a free ride?
>Why precisely would artists be inspired to create more by the prospect of
>being stripped of their legal rights to control their own work after 25
>years?
For the same reasons that plumbers, lawyers, firefighters, and the rest
of society have to keep on doing their jobs even without a 25-year right
to control the fruits of their labours.
> Because being an artist has such a great pension plan?
Does *anybody* in the private sector has a great pension plan?
> You are aware
>many artists are not exactly wealthy or famous, right?
You are aware that many people in every other walk of life are not
exactly wealthy or famous, right? Airline pilots earn less than flight
attendants, yet people still become pilots despite the lack of financial
incentive. Family-store owners earn less than multinational-store
managers, yet people still open their own family-operated shops despite
the lack of financial incentive. As for fame, nothing in any copyright
law preserves a person's reputation.
> Why should some
>printing company be making all the money from To Kill A Mockingbird, instead
>of the author? So people can download it on the internet legally? Why do
>they deserve it?
The printers are putting their own money on the line to print the books.
Why should they not enjoy a return on their investment?
> Why would this inspire creativity in artists?
Ask the people who co-wrote "Hybrid Theory" how they needed to ignore
current copyright laws when previous works inspired their creativity.
Oh, right...
>In other words, I think that's a terrible idea. Artists have quite a hard
>enough time making a living without stripping them of their legal rights to
>their work after an arbitrary time in order to give it to people who did
>nothing to earn it.
Anyone who creates art to make a living is in it for the wrong reasons,
IMHO.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote in message
> news:hb8qii$ivf$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
>> Blade wrote:
>>
>>> In other words, I think that's a terrible idea.
>>
>> But that was the original intent of copyright.
>
> Whether that was true or not, it hardly matters, since there is nothing
> sacred about the "original intent" of any legal construction.
>
True, but the REASON for that intent is valid. We build freely on what
came before us, there's no reason for our generations to deny the same
freedom to those who will follow.
Note that while corporations and individuals can bequeath wealth
(money) and physical property, not only is copyright limited (in theory)
but so are patents. You do not, nor can you, maintain patent on
something forever, and in fact the duration is quite short even compared
to an average human lifetime. The reasoning is the same; if you've
invented something truly groundbreaking, giving the rest of the world
the chance to play with it unrestricted will probably end up giving MORE
benefit overall than keeping it in your hands for eternity.
>> Me, I'd be satisfied as a first step if we simply removed CORPORATIONS
>> from the equation: individual people can have copyright, but
>> organizations cannot. This eliminates the problem of the "immortal
>> copyright holder". At least until we actually invent immortality.
>
> I agree with this, with the caveat that creative works that
> all-but-necessarily require organisations (e.g., movies and video games)
> to create thereby become a thorny problem.
Possibly create another category of IP which has STRICT limits on
duration (and ideally would also force the companies to be more honest
about their accounting by requiring some equitable recompense, but
that's a separate issue). After all, such productions are in fact
expected to earn most of their return within a short period of time. Ten
years would be more than sufficient if you gauged it from "time of
release", but probably it would be reasonable to make it 20.
Oh, and while we're at it, SEVERELY restrict "trademark". Logos, fine.
But no, you can't trademark words and names so that you can then evade
the whole question of time limitations on copyright. If Spider-Man
Volume 1 goes out of copyright, you don't get to keep people from
re-printing it or pieces of it by saying "but you can't use our
trademark Spider-Man(TM)!".
rincewind
> bill...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > After seeing what's available for
> > free download (once you purchase the correct software),
>
> Baka, there are free alternatives!
He said in the post he doesn't like the ads in Crunchyroll or Hulu.
Is there something else out there?
Giovanni Wassen
I was talking about the software, there's a reason people snip text which
they don't reply to.
--
Gio
http://www.watkijkikoptv.info
http://myanimelist.net/profile/extatix
http://watkijkikoptv.info/animeblog
Giovanni Wassen
> rincewind wrote:
>
>> On Sep 23, 1:58�pm, Giovanni Wassen <exta...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> bill...@yahoo.com wrote:
>>> > After seeing what's available for
>>> > free download (once you purchase the correct software),
>>>
>>> Baka, there are free alternatives!
>>
>> He said in the post he doesn't like the ads in Crunchyroll or Hulu.
>> Is there something else out there?
>
> I was talking about the software, there's a reason people snip text
> which they don't reply to.
Which I didn't <g>
B Sellers
> On Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:30:44 +1100, "Blade" <kumo...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> "Rob Kelk" <rob...@deadspam.com> wrote in message
>> news:4ad7d8cb...@news.individual.net...
>>
>>> Simple - go back to the limited duration that they were originally
>>> intended to have.
>>>
>>> If copyrights were still valid for only twenty-five years, "Voltron"
>>> would just now be coming into the public domain and people would be
>>> sharing copies to point out the differences between it and its parent
>>> anime, which would already have been in public domain for a few years.
>>> More importantly, "Nausicaa" would be entering public domain this year.
>>>
>>> Instead, we've got a protection span of "life of the creator plus fifty
>>> years" at the least, supposedly to encourage creativity (how creative is
>>> somebody who's been dead for forty-nine years, again?) but actually
>>> stifling creativity because they put the culture's common stories
>>> off-limits to creators.
Well the creators have to be very creative and very well educated
to avoid infringement. I think that copyright should be no more
than 25
years from publication. J.R.R. Tolkien's children worked hard
editing his
original notes for all the stuff besides LOTR to be included in
the Middle
Earth cycle. I think that translation from one medium to another
should
involve another date of publication for the originator or estate
as well
as the people responsible for the new version of the work. But the
translator should not have as long a copyright as the author.
IMO
>> Why precisely should people with corporations and investments be able to
>> bequeath the fruits of their efforts to their children, but not artists?
>
> Because there is a fundamental difference between creative endeavours
> and commercial endeavours.
>
>
>> Why precisely should works that only become popular or even published after
>> the deaths of the authors not be used to benefit the people who legally
>> inherited them (usually their loved ones), as opposed to being given away to
>> people who did nothing for it?
>
> The heirs also did nothing for it; why should they get a free ride?
If heirs can inherit other assets why not IP?
>
>
>> Why precisely would artists be inspired to create more by the prospect of
>> being stripped of their legal rights to control their own work after 25
>> years?
>
> For the same reasons that plumbers, lawyers, firefighters, and the rest
> of society have to keep on doing their jobs even without a 25-year right
> to control the fruits of their labours.
Yes well historically various artists have had little control
over their
works after initial sale or other arrangements such as
publishing. Unlicensed
reproduction has been a problem since the invention of the
Printing Press
and maybe before that when scribes (frequently slaves) did copies
in longhand
or whatever script was employed. Inspiration and the creative
drive have
always been responsible for creative work over and above the idea
that
money might be earned.
>
>> Because being an artist has such a great pension plan?
>
> Does *anybody* in the private sector has a great pension plan?
Executives?
>
>> You are aware
>> many artists are not exactly wealthy or famous, right?
>
> You are aware that many people in every other walk of life are not
> exactly wealthy or famous, right? Airline pilots earn less than flight
> attendants, yet people still become pilots despite the lack of financial
> incentive. Family-store owners earn less than multinational-store
> managers, yet people still open their own family-operated shops despite
> the lack of financial incentive. As for fame, nothing in any copyright
> law preserves a person's reputation.
I don't know where you are getting pilots paid less than flight
attendants but maybe some junior pilots and senior flight attendants
have a disparity in wages?
>
>> Why should some
>> printing company be making all the money from To Kill A Mockingbird, instead
>> of the author? So people can download it on the internet legally? Why do
>> they deserve it?
>
> The printers are putting their own money on the line to print the books.
> Why should they not enjoy a return on their investment?
>
>> Why would this inspire creativity in artists?
>
> Ask the people who co-wrote "Hybrid Theory" how they needed to ignore
> current copyright laws when previous works inspired their creativity.
>
> Oh, right...
>
>
>> In other words, I think that's a terrible idea. Artists have quite a hard
>> enough time making a living without stripping them of their legal rights to
>> their work after an arbitrary time in order to give it to people who did
>> nothing to earn it.
>
> Anyone who creates art to make a living is in it for the wrong reasons,
> IMHO.
If anyone can create art and make a living from it or better enough
money for a decent life and retirement they are extremely fortunate.
Considering the lower standards of work accepted for publication
these
days as say the 1950s the people making a living are frequently the
editors working on the hacked-out-porn-for-matrons fantasy stories
and maybe the authors who have problems with homophones.
And authors are historically poorly paid until they write something
that attracts the general public. Some of the greatest Golden Age
science fiction and fantasy writers worked for pennies per word with
slow and poor payments.
later
bliss
Astrobiochemist
>>stringent? "Don't steal TOO many songs or you will be sued for
>>infringement."
>
> Simple - go back to the limited duration that they were originally
> intended to have.
>
> If copyrights were still valid for only twenty-five years, "Voltron"
> would just now be coming into the public domain and people would be
> sharing copies to point out the differences between it and its parent
> anime, which would already have been in public domain for a few years.
> More importantly, "Nausicaa" would be entering public domain this year.
>
> Instead, we've got a protection span of "life of the creator plus fifty
> years" at the least, supposedly to encourage creativity (how creative is
> somebody who's been dead for forty-nine years, again?) but actually
> stifling creativity because they put the culture's common stories
> off-limits to creators.
Well, many IP experts agree that the length of the term for copyright
protection has grown unwieldy. However, for the examples we are
talking about here (i.e. individuals downloading fansubs of anime
series instead of buying the DVDs as they are released), even if the
term of copyright protection was shortened to 25 years after
publication, the fansubs would still be infringing the copyright.
Length of copyright protection IS a problem but it's not the problem
we are talking about right now. How do you solve THAT problem?
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
Meet the market demand. Offer your product for $0.99 IMMEDIATELY for
download, in a simple, obvious, and non-DRMd format.
iTunes proves that you can in fact make money doing this. People WILL
pay what they feel is a reasonable price for something, IF you make it
easy to find and buy. Make them jump through hoops, make the price too
high, make them feel like you ASSUME they're criminals, and they WON'T buy.
The industry has to ADAPT. I warned three of the major record labels in
*1991* that this would happen to them (although I didn't envision
anything as efficient as Napster at the time), and I didn't even get a
form letter response.
Then Napster happened; you'd think THAT would have woken them up. But
no, they just went "sue them all, business as usual".
The ENTIRE industry has to adjust. Or it will die. This is not a legal
issue any more; it's a matter of recognizing that you're trying to sell
something in a fashion that no one will buy.
ender
> Why precisely would artists be inspired to create more by the prospect of
> being stripped of their legal rights to control their own work after 25
> years? Because being an artist has such a great pension plan? You are aware
> many artists are not exactly wealthy or famous, right? Why should some
> printing company be making all the money from To Kill A Mockingbird, instead
> of the author? So people can download it on the internet legally? Why do
> they deserve it? Why would this inspire creativity in artists?
You're forgetting that several studies have shown that most artists don't
actually make any significant amount of money on such old works (especially
the less wealthy authors you're referring to - one study I read found out
that works older than 25 years bring in less than 2€ per year).
Also, the intent of copyright wasn't to monetize on creative works, but to
encourage creativity. Unfortunately, the effect was exactly the opposite -
after copyright laws were put in place, the number of creative works
dropped, not increased.
Astrobiochemist
>> we are talking about right now. How do you solve THAT problem?
<SNIP)
> The ENTIRE industry has to adjust. Or it will die. This is not a legal
> issue any more; it's a matter of recognizing that you're trying to sell
> something in a fashion that no one will buy.
Sea Wasp, you've been hitting all the right notes here. (That's
pretty much why I haven't been responding to your posts, since the
only thing I can really say in response is "that's exactly right!")
While there are legal avenues for copyright holders to pursue to go
after infringers (which is basically my big argument with Doug Jones
and Rob Kelk is about), the best way to solve the problem is to make
the infringers useless, much in the way you describe.
bil...@yahoo.com
Yes - Install the Real Player. Using it, I was able to download Flash
streams and MPEG-4's directly off of YouTube. That's how I acquired
the subtitled anime "RideBack".
Take good care,
Bill N.
I-Con Science Fiction, Inc.
Blade
"Rob Kelk" <rob...@deadspam.com> wrote in message
news:4ad85ea7...@news.individual.net...
> On Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:30:44 +1100, "Blade" <kumo...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>"Rob Kelk" <rob...@deadspam.com> wrote in message
>>news:4ad7d8cb...@news.individual.net...
>>
>>> Simple - go back to the limited duration that they were originally
>>> intended to have.
>>>
>>> If copyrights were still valid for only twenty-five years, "Voltron"
>>> would just now be coming into the public domain and people would be
>>> sharing copies to point out the differences between it and its parent
>>> anime, which would already have been in public domain for a few years.
>>> More importantly, "Nausicaa" would be entering public domain this year.
>>>
>>> Instead, we've got a protection span of "life of the creator plus fifty
>>> years" at the least, supposedly to encourage creativity (how creative is
>>> somebody who's been dead for forty-nine years, again?) but actually
>>> stifling creativity because they put the culture's common stories
>>> off-limits to creators.
>>
>>Why precisely should people with corporations and investments be able to
>>bequeath the fruits of their efforts to their children, but not artists?
>
> Because there is a fundamental difference between creative endeavours
> and commercial endeavours.
And that is...? Please note that both of those things are every bit as much
legal constructions as copyright.
>>Why precisely should works that only become popular or even published
>>after
>>the deaths of the authors not be used to benefit the people who legally
>>inherited them (usually their loved ones), as opposed to being given away
>>to
>>people who did nothing for it?
>
> The heirs also did nothing for it; why should they get a free ride?
Because the artists want them to? Artists are perfectly capable of releasing
their own work to the public domain if that is their desire. Clearly, it is
not the desire of the vast majority of artists.
>>Why precisely would artists be inspired to create more by the prospect of
>>being stripped of their legal rights to control their own work after 25
>>years?
>
> For the same reasons that plumbers, lawyers, firefighters, and the rest
> of society have to keep on doing their jobs even without a 25-year right
> to control the fruits of their labours.
Uh-huh. So, basically, what you're saying is that the threat of starving to
death will inspire more creativity. How charming! By the way, the rest of
modern society stopped the "working until they dropped dead" plan over a
century ago.
>> Because being an artist has such a great pension plan?
>
> Does *anybody* in the private sector has a great pension plan?
Actually, yes. Lots do (and other long-term incentives such as stock
options). Not everyone, no, especially short-term contracts, but it is
considered a fairly common job perk. This is not the case for artists.
>> You are aware
>>many artists are not exactly wealthy or famous, right?
>
> You are aware that many people in every other walk of life are not
> exactly wealthy or famous, right? Airline pilots earn less than flight
> attendants, yet people still become pilots despite the lack of financial
> incentive. Family-store owners earn less than multinational-store
> managers, yet people still open their own family-operated shops despite
> the lack of financial incentive. As for fame, nothing in any copyright
> law preserves a person's reputation.
What a wonderful way of ducking the point.
>> Why should some
>>printing company be making all the money from To Kill A Mockingbird,
>>instead
>>of the author? So people can download it on the internet legally? Why do
>>they deserve it?
>
> The printers are putting their own money on the line to print the books.
> Why should they not enjoy a return on their investment?
Under the current law, they still do, amazingly enough! That's why they do
it, and not out of the sheer goodness of their hearts.
>> Why would this inspire creativity in artists?
>
> Ask the people who co-wrote "Hybrid Theory" how they needed to ignore
> current copyright laws when previous works inspired their creativity.
>
> Oh, right...
Ask the people who co-wrote Hybrid Theory how they wrote that work for
profit!
Oh, right...
Nor do I think we should have been able to do so. Nor is fanfiction
necessarily a violation of copyright law in Canadian law, as you yourself
have argued in the past, if I am not mistaken. Even if it is, it is
certainly apples and oranges compared to the subject under discussion.
So is there some reason you're being a twat about this? My initial post
wasn't insulting or even sarcastic.
>>In other words, I think that's a terrible idea. Artists have quite a hard
>>enough time making a living without stripping them of their legal rights
>>to
>>their work after an arbitrary time in order to give it to people who did
>>nothing to earn it.
>
> Anyone who creates art to make a living is in it for the wrong reasons,
> IMHO.
Spoken like a true guy with a cushy government job who has never done
anything artistic to provide for himself in his life. Funny how so many
artists disagree with you.
-
Blade
Blade
"Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote in message
news:hb9pj8$jl5$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
> Blade wrote:
>> "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote in message
>> news:hb8qii$ivf$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
>>> Blade wrote:
>>>
>>>> In other words, I think that's a terrible idea.
>>>
>>> But that was the original intent of copyright.
>>
>> Whether that was true or not, it hardly matters, since there is nothing
>> sacred about the "original intent" of any legal construction.
>>
>
> True, but the REASON for that intent is valid. We build freely on what
> came before us, there's no reason for our generations to deny the same
> freedom to those who will follow.
If you think the reason for the intent is valid, then argue based on it
instead of the nonexistent authority of a bunch of dead lawmakers. ;p
> Note that while corporations and individuals can bequeath wealth (money)
> and physical property, not only is copyright limited (in theory) but so
> are patents. You do not, nor can you, maintain patent on something
> forever, and in fact the duration is quite short even compared to an
> average human lifetime. The reasoning is the same; if you've invented
> something truly groundbreaking, giving the rest of the world the chance to
> play with it unrestricted will probably end up giving MORE benefit overall
> than keeping it in your hands for eternity.
Yes, but an invention is not the same thing as a creative work, and it is a
transparent fallacy to pretend it is. The measurable benefit to society from
people being able to manufacture something is far, far more tangible than
the measurable benefit of taking the rights to To Kill A Mockingbird away
from Harper Lee.
>>> Me, I'd be satisfied as a first step if we simply removed CORPORATIONS
>>> from the equation: individual people can have copyright, but
>>> organizations cannot. This eliminates the problem of the "immortal
>>> copyright holder". At least until we actually invent immortality.
>>
>> I agree with this, with the caveat that creative works that
>> all-but-necessarily require organisations (e.g., movies and video games)
>> to create thereby become a thorny problem.
>
> Possibly create another category of IP which has STRICT limits on duration
> (and ideally would also force the companies to be more honest about their
> accounting by requiring some equitable recompense, but that's a separate
> issue). After all, such productions are in fact expected to earn most of
> their return within a short period of time. Ten years would be more than
> sufficient if you gauged it from "time of release", but probably it would
> be reasonable to make it 20.
Perhaps it could have something to do with the original work still being in
print? As long as the company is still making copies every year, it's
certainly arguable they are recouping investment.
> Oh, and while we're at it, SEVERELY restrict "trademark". Logos, fine. But
> no, you can't trademark words and names so that you can then evade the
> whole question of time limitations on copyright. If Spider-Man Volume 1
> goes out of copyright, you don't get to keep people from re-printing it or
> pieces of it by saying "but you can't use our trademark Spider-Man(TM)!".
I do agree that is copyright is restricted on this sort of thing, that you
shouldn't be able to get around it with legalisms like that.
-
Blade
Blade
"Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote in message
news:hba3od$d67$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
> Astrobiochemist wrote:
>> Well, many IP experts agree that the length of the term for copyright
>> protection has grown unwieldy. However, for the examples we are
>> talking about here (i.e. individuals downloading fansubs of anime
>> series instead of buying the DVDs as they are released), even if the
>> term of copyright protection was shortened to 25 years after
>> publication, the fansubs would still be infringing the copyright.
>>
>> Length of copyright protection IS a problem but it's not the problem
>> we are talking about right now. How do you solve THAT problem?
Frankly, I prefer the new discussion, as it has the significant virtue of
not having been done to death countless times here.
> Meet the market demand. Offer your product for $0.99 IMMEDIATELY for
> download, in a simple, obvious, and non-DRMd format.
>
> iTunes proves that you can in fact make money doing this.
Itunes does not, however, prove that you can make even remotely as much
money doing this as the industry has to this point. Despite the fact that it
doesn't entail much reduction of initial capital costs.
It also doesn't prevent vast amounts of piracy.
Both of these are obvious concerns of companies.
-
Blade
Blade
"ender" <ec...@arnes.si> wrote in message
news:feae1ebk...@ender.ena.si...
> On Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:30:44 +1100, Blade wrote:
>
>> Why precisely would artists be inspired to create more by the prospect of
>> being stripped of their legal rights to control their own work after 25
>> years? Because being an artist has such a great pension plan? You are
>> aware
>> many artists are not exactly wealthy or famous, right? Why should some
>> printing company be making all the money from To Kill A Mockingbird,
>> instead
>> of the author? So people can download it on the internet legally? Why do
>> they deserve it? Why would this inspire creativity in artists?
>
> You're forgetting that several studies have shown that most artists don't
> actually make any significant amount of money on such old works
> (especially
> the less wealthy authors you're referring to - one study I read found out
> that works older than 25 years bring in less than 2€ per year).
Most don't, yes. But some do.
So why shouldn't the authors (or their loved ones) benefit from works that
still make money after 25 years (which most certainly do exist, such as To
Kill A Mockingbird)?
Artists that wish to release their work to the public domain have the right
to do so. The vast majority don't. Clearly they do not want to.
> Also, the intent of copyright wasn't to monetize on creative works, but to
> encourage creativity.
To encourage creativity via the ability to monetize creative works.
Unfortunately, the effect was exactly the opposite -
> after copyright laws were put in place, the number of creative works
> dropped, not increased.
Cite, please.
-
Blade
Blade
news:7jrg24F...@mid.individual.net...
> If anyone can create art and make a living from it or better enough
> money for a decent life and retirement they are extremely fortunate.
> Considering the lower standards of work accepted for publication these
> days as say the 1950s the people making a living are frequently the
> editors working on the hacked-out-porn-for-matrons fantasy stories
> and maybe the authors who have problems with homophones.
I've read work from the 50s, and I'm afraid I can do nothing but laugh
helplessly at your assertion that standards were higher then.
-
Blade
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
There is no measurable benefit to having freely available stories
around at all. It's intangible unless you can easily measure how many
things DERIVE from them being there.
Turn your argument around; what benefit would there be from taking all
of the public domain stuff and taking it OUT of public domain, putting
it under the control of some group of heirs of the original makers?
>>
>> Possibly create another category of IP which has STRICT limits on
>> duration (and ideally would also force the companies to be more honest
>> about their accounting by requiring some equitable recompense, but
>> that's a separate issue). After all, such productions are in fact
>> expected to earn most of their return within a short period of time.
>> Ten years would be more than sufficient if you gauged it from "time of
>> release", but probably it would be reasonable to make it 20.
>
> Perhaps it could have something to do with the original work still being
> in print? As long as the company is still making copies every year, it's
> certainly arguable they are recouping investment.
Then you will get into the question of defining "in print". And if you
define it one way, only corporations will have copyright. If you define
it another way, eternal copyright is mine for the price of posting links
on a webpage. I had this debate on another newsgroup earlier.
Astrobiochemist
> encourage creativity. Unfortunately, the effect was exactly the opposite -
> after copyright laws were put in place, the number of creative works
> dropped, not increased.
Copyright laws have been around for 300 years (The Statute of Anne was
passed in 1709), so I call shenanigans on your assertion that the
number of creative works being produced decreased after copyright laws
were put in place.
ender
>> after copyright laws were put in place, the number of creative works
>> dropped, not increased.
> Cite, please.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090308/1022324034.shtml
ender
> Copyright laws have been around for 300 years (The Statute of Anne was
> passed in 1709), so I call shenanigans on your assertion that the
> number of creative works being produced decreased after copyright laws
> were put in place.
I can't link to the original paper (doesn't seem to be available for free),
but here's an excerpt:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090308/1022324034.shtml
Rob Kelk
wrote:
Creative endeavours are those involving the use of the imagination or
original ideas. Commercial endeavours are those intended to make a
profit.
>>>Why precisely should works that only become popular or even published after
>>>the deaths of the authors not be used to benefit the people who legally
>>>inherited them (usually their loved ones), as opposed to being given away to
>>>people who did nothing for it?
>>
>> The heirs also did nothing for it; why should they get a free ride?
>
>Because the artists want them to?
Current copyright laws have extremely little to do with what the artists
want.
> Artists are perfectly capable of releasing
>their own work to the public domain if that is their desire. Clearly, it is
>not the desire of the vast majority of artists.
>
>>>Why precisely would artists be inspired to create more by the prospect of
>>>being stripped of their legal rights to control their own work after 25
>>>years?
>>
>> For the same reasons that plumbers, lawyers, firefighters, and the rest
>> of society have to keep on doing their jobs even without a 25-year right
>> to control the fruits of their labours.
>
>Uh-huh. So, basically, what you're saying is that the threat of starving to
>death will inspire more creativity. How charming!
That's an extremely narrow reading of my words, Chris.
> By the way, the rest of
>modern society stopped the "working until they dropped dead" plan over a
>century ago.
Based on the then-prevalent treatment of artists, if I recall correctly
(which I might not).
>>> Because being an artist has such a great pension plan?
>>
>> Does *anybody* in the private sector has a great pension plan?
>
>Actually, yes. Lots do (and other long-term incentives such as stock
>options). Not everyone, no, especially short-term contracts, but it is
>considered a fairly common job perk. This is not the case for artists.
>
>>> You are aware
>>>many artists are not exactly wealthy or famous, right?
>>
>> You are aware that many people in every other walk of life are not
>> exactly wealthy or famous, right? Airline pilots earn less than flight
>> attendants, yet people still become pilots despite the lack of financial
>> incentive. Family-store owners earn less than multinational-store
>> managers, yet people still open their own family-operated shops despite
>> the lack of financial incentive. As for fame, nothing in any copyright
>> law preserves a person's reputation.
>
>What a wonderful way of ducking the point.
Perhaps you should rephrase your point, then, because I addressed what
you wrote.
>>> Why should some
>>>printing company be making all the money from To Kill A Mockingbird,
>>>instead
>>>of the author? So people can download it on the internet legally? Why do
>>>they deserve it?
>>
>> The printers are putting their own money on the line to print the books.
>> Why should they not enjoy a return on their investment?
>
>Under the current law, they still do, amazingly enough! That's why they do
>it, and not out of the sheer goodness of their hearts.
Under the current law, *one* printer has a monopoly on the work. If a
works goes into public domain, then *many* printers can attempt to make
a profit, and competition results in a product that the market is
willing to purchase.
>>> Why would this inspire creativity in artists?
>>
>> Ask the people who co-wrote "Hybrid Theory" how they needed to ignore
>> current copyright laws when previous works inspired their creativity.
>>
>> Oh, right...
>
>Ask the people who co-wrote Hybrid Theory how they wrote that work for
>profit!
>
>Oh, right...
The copyright laws that you had to break in order to co-write "Hybrid
Theory" have nothing to do with profit. You're dodging my point.
>Nor do I think we should have been able to do so. Nor is fanfiction
>necessarily a violation of copyright law in Canadian law, as you yourself
>have argued in the past, if I am not mistaken.
I don't recall ever saying that. In fact, I've said the exact opposite;
that fanfic as a class is a type of "derivative work" and as such is a
violation of copyright law in Canada unless the inspiring work is in the
public domain.
(Yes, I do write fanfic. I've already said that I believe the copyright
law should be revised.)
> Even if it is, it is
>certainly apples and oranges compared to the subject under discussion.
>
>So is there some reason you're being a twat about this? My initial post
>wasn't insulting or even sarcastic.
It was, however, hypocritical. (You have created many derivitave works
based on in-copyright works, yet you said that changing the current laws
to make your own actions legal would be "a terrible idea".)
>>>In other words, I think that's a terrible idea. Artists have quite a hard
>>>enough time making a living without stripping them of their legal rights to
>>>their work after an arbitrary time in order to give it to people who did
>>>nothing to earn it.
>>
>> Anyone who creates art to make a living is in it for the wrong reasons,
>> IMHO.
<ad hominen snipped>
--
Rob Kelk <http://robkelk.ottawa-anime.org/> e-mail: s/deadspam/gmail/
"They were engaged in a calm and dignified discussion of important
issues of the day. No, wait, that was somebody else. *These* two
were all but screaming at each other at the tops of their lungs."
- from "Drunkard's Walk V/Oh My Brother II"
Rob Kelk
>Rob Kelk wrote:
>> On Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:30:44 +1100, "Blade" <kumo...@hotmail.com>
>> wrote:
<snip>
>>> Because being an artist has such a great pension plan?
>>
>> Does *anybody* in the private sector has a great pension plan?
>
> Executives?
True, but the number of executives compared to the total number of
corporate workers is on the same order as the number of writers earning
a living from writing compared to the total number of writers.
>>> You are aware
>>> many artists are not exactly wealthy or famous, right?
>>
>> You are aware that many people in every other walk of life are not
>> exactly wealthy or famous, right? Airline pilots earn less than flight
>> attendants, yet people still become pilots despite the lack of financial
>> incentive. Family-store owners earn less than multinational-store
>> managers, yet people still open their own family-operated shops despite
>> the lack of financial incentive. As for fame, nothing in any copyright
>> law preserves a person's reputation.
>
> I don't know where you are getting pilots paid less than flight
>attendants but maybe some junior pilots and senior flight attendants
>have a disparity in wages?
I was referencing senior pilots and junior flight attendants, actually.
It takes a pilot working for Air Canada ten to twelve years of flying
for the national carrier (plus a half-decade or more flying for a
regional airline before Air Canada will even look at his resume) to get
to the same pay rate as an entry-level Air Canada flight attendant. And
polits have to pay for their own training.
Pilots are like good writers - they're in their chosen fields for the
love of the activity, not for the money.
<snip>
>> Anyone who creates art to make a living is in it for the wrong reasons,
>> IMHO.
>
> If anyone can create art and make a living from it or better enough
>money for a decent life and retirement they are extremely fortunate.
>Considering the lower standards of work accepted for publication
>these
>days as say the 1950s the people making a living are frequently the
>editors working on the hacked-out-porn-for-matrons fantasy stories
>and maybe the authors who have problems with homophones.
>
> And authors are historically poorly paid until they write something
>that attracts the general public. Some of the greatest Golden Age
>science fiction and fantasy writers worked for pennies per word with
>slow and poor payments.
Exactly. The vast majority of writers don't write for money, even now.
Rob Kelk
<CCSB...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>The problem is, how do you make intellectual property laws less
>>>stringent? =A0"Don't steal TOO many songs or you will be sued for
Ano...
>>>The problem is, how do you make intellectual property laws less
>>>stringent?
That's the question I answered.
Starcade
> The problem is, how do you make intellectual property laws less
> stringent? "Don't steal TOO many songs or you will be sued for
> infringement."
You can't. At some point, you either have to prosecute the end user,
or nullify copyright entirely.
This is one of the reasons that the decision some time ago that a
judge made disequating downloading and lost sales is so disturbing.
The ONLY end result from that is that there would be no expectation of
sales _at all_, and, hence, no defendable copyright. The only
justifiable move from there is to nullify all rights protecting the
ownership of such intellectual property, across the board.
Mike
Starcade
> On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:18:25 -0700 (PDT), Astrobiochemist
> >The problem is, how do you make intellectual property laws less
> >stringent? "Don't steal TOO many songs or you will be sued for
> >infringement."
>
> Simple - go back to the limited duration that they were originally
> intended to have.
>
> If copyrights were still valid for only twenty-five years...
Irrelevant. Basically, under the current view of the fandom,
copyright isn't valid for twenty-five _seconds_, much less twenty-five
years.
The instant that a program is aired (or even stolen and "aired"
without authorization), then, to the fandom, it is public domain and
non-saleable.
Mike
Astrobiochemist
> On Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:35:12 -0700 (PDT), Astrobiochemist wrote:
> > Copyright laws have been around for 300 years (The Statute of Anne was
> > passed in 1709), so I call shenanigans on your assertion that the
> > number of creative works being produced decreased after copyright laws
> > were put in place.
>
> I can't link to the original paper (doesn't seem to be available for free),
> but here's an excerpt:http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090308/1022324034.shtml
OK, I was able to get a copy of the paper and I read it. Scherer says
that his research was inconclusive in whether copyright stimulated the
composition of classical music but most likely, that any stimulation
of composition was caused by a variety of factors, with copyright
protection only being one of them. However, Scherer was able to state
that copyright protection allowed composers to earn more income from
their compositions. Scherer implies this development allowed
composers to spend more time on individual compositions than simply
cranking them out.
I'm putting this in the "copyright good" pile.
Starcade
<seaw...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
> Blade wrote:
> > In other words, I think that's a terrible idea.
>
> it is that the artists REQUIRE the prior work -- access to it WITHOUT
> paying for it for, potentially, eternity -- in order to continue to
> develop the new work. The public domain works are a common heritage of
> the entire civilization and one on which the other artists build. I
> write with the full knowledge of all the stuff that I'm building on, and
> the fact that it IS public domain encourages us all to use it, build on
> it, develop from it, comment on it, argue about it.
Most entities which do this kind of work require a continuing stream
of income to be able to continue such work, or for it to be meaningful
enough to continue to do so. Which see comments from a couple years
back from Nabeshin, as previously discussed (and slammed by apologists
such as yourself) here.
Basically, what you are proposing would make all works, as a matter of
definition, public domain -- and the reality of the Internet (which
must be changed for industries such as this to survive) would make
those works public domain IMMEDIATELY, nullifying the very purpose of
copyright you admit to above.
> Disney has made an INDUSTRY of just that -- mining the public domain
> for works that it then makes money from, and THEN -- in an ironic show
> of hypocrisy -- has done its level best to make sure that no one will
> ever be able to do the same with their works. It's fine for Disney to
> take Victor Hugo's work and remake it as they will, to distort the Greek
> Myths, to mangle fairy tales and all that, but God Forbid that someone
> draws a Mickey Mouse comic without their permission. By the laws
> obtaining at the time Disney began its work, many of their works would
> already have passed into public domain, and SHOULD have.
But Disney is using those works to fund future works and it's entire
media empire.
> Me, I'd be satisfied as a first step if we simply removed CORPORATIONS
> from the equation: individual people can have copyright, but
> organizations cannot. This eliminates the problem of the "immortal
> copyright holder". At least until we actually invent immortality.
But you still haven't addressed the issue of the end user just
disregarding the copyright and all which comes with it.
Mike
Astrobiochemist
>>> protection has grown unwieldy. However, for the examples we are
>>> talking about here (i.e. individuals downloading fansubs of anime
>>> series instead of buying the DVDs as they are released), even if the
>>> term of copyright protection was shortened to 25 years after
>>> publication, the fansubs would still be infringing the copyright.
>
>>> Length of copyright protection IS a problem but it's not the problem
>>> we are talking about right now. How do you solve THAT problem?
>
> Frankly, I prefer the new discussion, as it has the significant virtue of
> not having been done to death countless times here.
I'm not saying the new discussion is bad but it is tangential to the
main point.
Starcade
> On Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:30:44 +1100, "Blade" <kumonr...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >Why precisely should people with corporations and investments be able to
> >bequeath the fruits of their efforts to their children, but not artists?
>
> Because there is a fundamental difference between creative endeavours
> and commercial endeavours.
Is there?
Without the means to make money from it, there is no "art". It's
something else, but it's not meaningful or perpetual unless there is a
very nice "day job", inheritance, or windfall of other sources
involved.
Especially in things such as anime, there is abjectly ZERO DIFFERENCE
at the base level (AMV's, fanfics, etc. could be another discussion)
between the creative endeavor of anime and it's commercial
counterpart.
Without the latter, there is no former.
That's what a lot of you deliberately fail to understand.
> >Why precisely should works that only become popular or even published after
> >the deaths of the authors not be used to benefit the people who legally
> >inherited them (usually their loved ones), as opposed to being given away to
> >people who did nothing for it?
>
> The heirs also did nothing for it; why should they get a free ride?
Under that, kiss all inheritance law goodbye. That's the same concept
as the "free ride" of a nice inheritance windfall when Daddy or Mommy
kick the bucket...
> >Why precisely would artists be inspired to create more by the prospect of
> >being stripped of their legal rights to control their own work after 25
> >years?
>
> For the same reasons that plumbers, lawyers, firefighters, and the rest
> of society have to keep on doing their jobs even without a 25-year right
> to control the fruits of their labours.
False, especially in the age of the Internet. Unless you can even
defend that right for 25 seconds...
> > Because being an artist has such a great pension plan?
>
> Does *anybody* in the private sector has a great pension plan?
Not anymore.
> > You are aware
> >many artists are not exactly wealthy or famous, right?
>
> You are aware that many people in every other walk of life are not
> exactly wealthy or famous, right? Airline pilots earn less than flight
> attendants, yet people still become pilots despite the lack of financial
> incentive. Family-store owners earn less than multinational-store
> managers, yet people still open their own family-operated shops despite
> the lack of financial incentive. As for fame, nothing in any copyright
> law preserves a person's reputation.
Oh, I disagree with that _to an extent_. The fact that copyright laws
exist preserves the person's reputation through the protection that
_he or she_ was the one who created the product.
Otherwise, for good example, what would stop someone else from making
a character completely identical to Sora Naegino and star her in a
completely identical anime to Kaleido Star, etc. ...
Today, _NOTHING_ stops that in the age of the Internet.
> > Why should some
> >printing company be making all the money from To Kill A Mockingbird, instead
> >of the author? So people can download it on the internet legally? Why do
> >they deserve it?
>
> The printers are putting their own money on the line to print the books.
> Why should they not enjoy a return on their investment?
Depends on whether you consider there to be a prima facie demand that
they get a return should people be interested in consuming the
product.
> >In other words, I think that's a terrible idea. Artists have quite a hard
> >enough time making a living without stripping them of their legal rights to
> >their work after an arbitrary time in order to give it to people who did
> >nothing to earn it.
>
> Anyone who creates art to make a living is in it for the wrong reasons,
> IMHO.
Then kiss the entire anime industry goodbye, from the Japanese side...
Mike
Astrobiochemist
To be fair, you did answer that question in general. However, the
context of the question was not "how to make intellectual property
laws less stringent in general?" bur rather "how to make intellectual
property laws less stringent in a way that will helps stop
infringement against modern works?" If the term of copyright
protection was only 25 years, then yes, Voltron would be in the public
domain and everyone could download it for free. However, if the term
of copyright protection was only 25 years, then Code Geass and The
Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya would still be under copyright
protection and it would still be an infringement of that copyright to
download those works.
So, when trying to make that problem go away, how do you make
Starcade
<seaw...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
> Astrobiochemist wrote:
> Meet the market demand. Offer your product for $0.99 IMMEDIATELY for
> download, in a simple, obvious, and non-DRMd format.
The market demand is FREE content. The explosive supermajority of
criminal conduct in the fandom (and the explosive supermajority of the
fandom completely dependent on same) makes ANY pay-for-download model
a non-starter.
Else it would've ALREADY completely replaced hard copy.
And do you realize how many sales (at 99 cents an episode) it would
take for you to make back the cost of the creation and licensing of
the product, especially when you take out the middleman?
The only way that would work is if you significantly slashed the costs
to produce, down to the point that it would literally be, as you've
said you see the future as, doujinshi-level, essentially individuals
taking over the content.
They're already starving the animators over in Japan as it is.
> iTunes proves that you can in fact make money doing this.
ONLY because of the threat of civil prosecution by the RIAA and
similar constructs. Without that threat, pay models will die, as they
have in anime.
> People WILL
> pay what they feel is a reasonable price for something, IF you make it
> easy to find and buy.
IF you make it the only option.
> Make them jump through hoops, make the price too
> high, make them feel like you ASSUME they're criminals, and they WON'T buy.
You have to assume they are criminals and demand they be otherwise,
otherwise the content has no financial value, nor any financial
expectation of recompense.
> The ENTIRE industry has to adjust. Or it will die. This is not a legal
> issue any more; it's a matter of recognizing that you're trying to sell
> something in a fashion that no one will buy.
I would take that last statement further:
Without the threat of legal action:
It's a matter of recognizing that you're trying to sell something no
one will buy -- nor, really, anyone SHOULD buy.
Mike
Starcade
> Sea Wasp, you've been hitting all the right notes here. (That's
> pretty much why I haven't been responding to your posts, since the
> only thing I can really say in response is "that's exactly right!")
> While there are legal avenues for copyright holders to pursue to go
> after infringers (which is basically my big argument with Doug Jones
> and Rob Kelk is about), the best way to solve the problem is to make
> the infringers useless, much in the way you describe.
How does this make the infringers useless?
As I just got done telling Sea Wasp: The demand is for FREE content.
Not 99 cents an episode, not 1 cent an episode.
If the anime fandom were forced to pay any real price to contribute to
the anime industry, at least two-thirds of the American fandom would
evaporate instantaneously.
Mike
B Sellers
I am so sorry you are helpless with laughter but remember there
is no accounting for tastes.
later
bliss
Blade
"B Sellers" <bl...@sfo.com> wrote in message
news:7jsjipF...@mid.individual.net...
> Blade wrote:
>> "B Sellers" <bl...@sfo.com> wrote in message
>> news:7jrg24F...@mid.individual.net...
>>
>>> If anyone can create art and make a living from it or better enough
>>> money for a decent life and retirement they are extremely fortunate.
>>> Considering the lower standards of work accepted for publication these
>>> days as say the 1950s the people making a living are frequently the
>>> editors working on the hacked-out-porn-for-matrons fantasy stories
>>> and maybe the authors who have problems with homophones.
>>
>> I've read work from the 50s, and I'm afraid I can do nothing but laugh
>> helplessly at your assertion that standards were higher then.
>>
>
> I am so sorry you are helpless with laughter but remember there
> is no accounting for tastes.
Nope. But I'm hardly alone in this opinion, given that the 50s were the last
big heyday of pulp fiction, which has become a byword for shoddily written
mass produced literature.
Much sci-fi from the 50s is also charmingly inept, which again is not really
a controversial statement.
Do you have any actual reason to believe that publishing standards are lower
today aside from perhaps selective memories and a healthy distaste for
fantasy novels (which are well past their heyday in market share, Harry
Potter aside)?
-
Blade