Category: Magic Beaver

the paradox of pirate logic expresses itself in the form of wisdom dispensed by the magic beaver who live in a secret cave beneath the googleplex

Who Speaks For The Internet? Do Artists have No Voice Online?

Does the internet speak for Artists? This doesn’t appear to the case. Who is the internet anyway?

We’re always kinda amazed when a singular entity or point of view “speaks for the internet” as if there is no social, economic, geographic or political diversity. Is the “Internet’ a demographic onto it’s own, and if so, what defines that demographic? Which begs the question, does “the internet” speak for you (as an artist, as an individual)? Though this entry is somewhat cute, it is also disturbing to see “the internet” as a single block with a Borg like hive mind… TechDirt reports:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120718/18350719751/internet-wins-again-writer-gets-rapper-pitbull-exiled-to-alaskan-walmart.shtml

In another example we find it amusing when any ONE group alleges to speak for the internet. In the latest of what appears to be another round of Tech Funded astro turf and sock puppet groups enter the “Internet Association.” Why are we not surprised that Google, Facebook, Amazon and Ebay lead the list of members whose mandate is to represent “the interests of Internet companies.” Oh, ok, I get it now… the internet is a business and those who speak “for the internet” are really speaking for “corporate interests.” Phew, I’m glad we’re clear about that now… read on at Digital Media Wire:
http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2012/07/26/new-advocacy-group-speaks-on-behalf-of-the-internet

What do you think? Does the tech lobby own the voice of the internet? Does no one but the internet and tech lobby have a say in the future of our online and digital lives?

Let us know what you think.

by trichordist

A Kim Dotcom For All Seasons

Come on, guys, I am a computer nerd. I love Hollywood and movies. My whole life is like a movie.

That’s Kim Dotcom in an “open letter” to Hollywood that he penned last week. Dotcom is the owner and CEO of Megaupload and is currently facing federal criminal charges, along with six other individuals, for allegedly operating a “mega-conspiracy” that made him a very wealthy man using other people’s work without permission.

Since his indictment and arrest, Dotcom has been waging a PR campaign to cast himself, not as an opportunistic hack who exploited thousands of creators through his spammy, scammy website, but as some sort of internet freedom fighter — in his latest “music video”, he portrays himself as no less than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Strangely, in the topsy-turvey world of the internet, Dotcom’s efforts appear to be working.

You can fool some of the people all of the time

The weirdest part of this story is that it is part of Dotcom’s modus operandi. For over two decades, he has portrayed himself as some sort of master hacker, or savvy businessman, or whatever else would garner the most press, no matter how far from the truth.

Here, for example, is his take on his first brush with the law in the early nineties:

By chance in 1993, Schmitz discovered a computer account that included the word “Pentagon”. “I connected to the computer, made myself a super-user on it and after five or six hours had access to 100 computers within the Pentagon. I found the main router and so could ‘sniff’ all the traffic and jump from computer to computer. Some had real-time connections with satellites that were taking photographs of [Saddam] Hussein’s palace – I had no idea that technology even existed. It was like Ali Baba finding the treasure cave.”

If you think this sounds more like Hollywood Hacking than real life, you’d be correct. Dotcom also claimed he “got into Citibank’s system and transferred $20 million (21.4 million euros) by taking tiny amounts from the accounts of 4 million customers and giving it to Greenpeace” around the same time period. This isn’t just like a movie, it is a movie — the 1992 film Sneakers, to be exact.

The truth? Dotcom was convicted in 1998 on multiple counts of computer fraud and data espionage. Court records don’t substantiate any of Dotcom’s amazing claims.

What he did do was steal phone calling card codes and conduct a premium number fraud similar to the recent rash of Filipino phreaking frauds. He bought stolen phone card account information from American hackers. After setting up premium toll chat lines in Hong Kong and in the Caribbean, he used a “war dialer” program to call the lines using the stolen card numbers—ringing up €61,000 in ill-gained profits.

If anything good could be said about Dotcom’s latest media blitz, it’s that he at least is picking better historical figures to compare himself to. From a 2001 interview:

Wasn’t Hitler writing Mein Kampf while being arrested? Not that I like Hitler hehe, it’s just that strange people can have strange ideas while being arrested.

Dotcom would next reinvent himself as a shrewd businessman-slash-entrepreneur. In 2001, he was claiming to the press that his net worth was $100 million, and his investment company would soon be making $553 million a year. Here, again, the reality was far less glamorous than Dotcom suggested.

A German court would hear later that he had pulled a textbook “pump-and-dump” move, borrowing money to buy Letsbuyit shares, and then quickly selling them to those who swallowed his investment story, gaining himself a quick profit of 1.1 million euros ($1.4 million).

But before facing justice, Dotcom was busy writing Act 2.

In the movies, whenever a protagonist gets away with a big heist, we invariably see him passing safely through customs in the Caribbean or southeast Asia as the credits begin to roll.

Perhaps this hackneyed Hollywood device was on Kim Schmitz’s mind when he chose Thailand as his hideout from German authorities curious about his KimVestor Ponzi scheme.

Add “bizarre” to the list of adjectives that could be used to describe Dotcom. As it turns out, prior to his arrest in Thailand, he had changed his website to announce that he would be livestreaming his own suicide. Said the site:

Enough is Enough. Kim Schmitz will die next Monday. See it on this website live and for free. When the countdown is over, Kim steps into a new world and wants you to see it.

But he would be arrested the Friday before. As the Guardian reported:

This proved to be a publicity stunt and visitors to the site are now informed that Schmitz wishes to be known as “King Kimble the First – Ruler of the Kimpire”.

A Kim For All Seasons

Schmitz’s claims follow a pattern. He takes bits of what he has been found guilty of, bits of other hackers’ publicised doings, even tales of hacker movies, and mixes them together to form his “personae”.

“A con man par excellence.”

“He was trying to make half a buck on every occasion.”

“On his way up, he fooled them all: judges, journalists, investors and companies.”

“Everything that entwines itself around Mr. Schmitz is, to say the least, somewhat dubious.”

Over the past 20 years, Dotcom has worked hard to portray his life like a movie, seeing himself as, perhaps, a super-hacker from Sneakers, or the innocent man on the run from The Fugitive (Dotcom’s nickname “Kimble” is said to be derived from Dr. Richard Kimble, the lead character in that show/movie).

But it seems to us that the closest one can come to the movie that Dotcom has created of his life is A Burns for All Seasons, the fictional movie created by Mr. Burns in the animated series The Simpsons. In the film, the unapolagetic plutocrat portrays himself, in three separate scenes, as an outsourcing champion, the alien E.T., and Jesus Christ.

That there are those who buy into Dotcom’s latest self-cast role as champion of internet freedom and innovation is sad commentary. Dotcom’s “mega-empire” made him millions of dollars off the work of thousands of creators. There’s nothing innovative about exploiting artists. If this were really a Hollywood movie, the happy ending would see Dotcom finally facing justice.

by Trichordist

Kim Dotcom Parody Video Appears on YouTube

We have been alerted to the video below as reported by AdLand.  The video is a parody spoof of Dotcom’s own propaganda clip released last week. This one is aptly titled the “Permissionless Innovation Remix – Lessig Edition”. Enjoy, and pass it on.

The war for my stolen fortune has begun
Artists are fighting for their rights
Any sane person would see I’m a piece of shit
But don’t let them take away my Ferraris

Can you believe
I think I’m like Dr King
When I steal from artists and they try to fight?
They work their whole lives
To express what’s inside
But I don’t understand the word copyright

Keep my thievery going
Keep my ego growing
Keep the truth from showing
My pursuit of money
Money
Money

I won’t give up, without a fight
My Rolls Royce is a pretty white
Oh never mind I have more than one
Because of all the stealing I have done

I’ve made half a billion I am Kim.com
By stealing money and costing jobs
I sail on a yacht I am Kim.com
And ask the poor to sing my song

We must oppose those who really know
and want to take all that is mine
We must not expose to kids who don’t know
I made a fortune from doing crime

I won’t give up, without a fight
My Rolls Royce is a pretty white
Oh never mind I have more than one
Because of all the stealing I have done

Entertainment industry
I stole from them endlessly
Can I get away with it
Can I get away with it

I won’t give up, without a fight
My Rolls Royce is a pretty white
Oh never mind I have more than one
Because of all the stealing I have done

It starts with you and me
And all of my money
It starts with you and me
And all of my money

I’ve made half a billion I am Kim.com
By stealing money and costing jobs
I sail on a yacht I am Kim.com
And ask the poor to sing my song

by trichordist

Declaration Of Free Milk and Cookies

We stand for a Free and Open Milk and Cookies for everyone without artificial limitations imposed by the creators of Milk and Cookies!

We support transparent and participatory processes for making Free Milk and Cookies policy and the establishment of five basic principles:

* Expression: Don’t censor Free Milk and Cookies for Everyone!

* Access: Promote universal access to fast and affordable networks of Free Milk and Cookies!

* Openness: Keep open networks where everyone is free to have Free Milk and Cookies!

* Innovation: Protect the freedom to have Free Milk and Cookies without permission. Don’t block Free Milk and Cookies, and don’t punish Milk and Cookies for their users’ actions!

* Privacy: Protect Free Milk and Cookies and defend everyone’s privacy to have Free Milk and Cookies!

If you don’t defend your right to Free Milk and Cookies, who will!

Satire and commentary adapted from the absurdity that is:
http://www.internetdeclaration.org/freedom

by trichordist

Launch and Iterate: Google’s Permissionless Innovation.

Every once in a while Google will accidentally reveal their true  nature through some cute slogan or catchphrase.

There is of course their famous corporate slogan  “Don’t be evil”.

As noted previously, we at The Trichordist believe that  “Don’t be evil” is not their corporate slogan but secretly their  corporate reminder.  Eric Schmidt has this written on the back of his hand in black marker.

Then there is their Net Neutrality campaign slogan they farmed out to one of their astro-turf organizations:  “We are the web.”   Yes Google we are quite aware that you think that “you are the web”. That you believe you own the web and all of our personal data.  Sergey Brin recently became apoplexic when discussing the fact that companies like Facebook and Apple have “closed” ecosystems that do not allow Google to scrape all of their data.    “How dare they? We Are the Web!”

Like Germans Google is mostly unintentionally funny.   Last week’s howler came in hearings on Capitol Hill. Google’s Internet Evangelist  Vint Cerf let this slip out:

“Such proposals raise the prospect of policies that enable government controls but greatly diminish the ‘permissionless innovation’ that underlies extraordinary Internet-based economic growth, to say nothing of trampling human rights,” said Vint Cerf.”

Now I understand that Vint Cerf was talking about some specific  proposals  from authoritarian governments that would  really truly be a threat to free access to the internet.  For once I agree with a Google spokesperson. But what caused me to guffaw was the phrase “permissionless innovation”.   It slipped out so smoothly and seemed so well-worn it was as if  Google’s collective Id  was speaking directly to us all.

It  seems particularly significant when you combine that with Van Lohman’s ( Google Senior Copyright Counsel)  cheerful admission of  Google’s “Launch and Iterate” copyright contempt strategy.  As reported in the Huffington Post:

Fred von Lohmann, senior copyright counsel at Google, reflected on how copyright has been an issue since the earliest search engines. Asked how to address the various obstacles of digital platforms, he cheerfully sloganeered “As we say at Google ‘launch and iterate,’ ” by which he meant the best approach for digital media companies, since the waters of copyright will remain murky for some time, is simply to launch content, learn from the inevitable public and legal response and then improve. The “launch and iterate” mentality allows for experiments in freedom of expression as well as public participation.

This same wonderful “experiment” also allows google to make plenty of money by exploiting artists without compensation.  But I digress.

From the Google Permissionless Innovation Department:

Google Books:  Don’t ask the authors if we can digitize their books, let’s just  monetize search within those books?

YouTube:  Let’s just put all this video content on the web and we’ll deal with the copyright owners later.

Shareholder rights:  Let’s screw virtually everyone but the founders by issuing new  non voting class c stock.  We’ll deal with the SEC and shareholder lawsuits later.

And of course you can apply “permissionless innovation” to many other rogue companies in the web space. After all according to the largely google funded copyleft  file-sharing sites are more innovative than sites like iTunes that seek permission.  That’s why consumers prefer The Pirate Bay to iTunes.  Not because they get stuff for free but because  The Pirate Bay is a pioneer in “permissionless innovation”.

I suppose the ultimate in “permissionless innovation” are the human trafficking sites.  No wonder Google apparently  refuses to restrict the flow of advertising dollars to these sites.  They are fellow “permissionless innovators”.

All sarcasm aside.  This is the problem with Google. It has never grown up.  There is something juvenile and narcissistic about it’s corporate culture. It’s slogan should be “you are not the boss of me”.  They have perverted the concept of internet freedom to mean don’t tell Google what to do ever.  Think I’m exaggerating?

” If we could wave a magic wand and not be subject to US law, that would be great.” —Sergey Brin quoted in The Guardian UK. 

Permissionless Innovation.  We love this phrase.  Do you mind if we Artists For An Ethical Internet keep it?

by Dr. David C Lowery

Nothing Says Freedom Like Getting Away With It: Google Tells Ari Emanuel to Change His Business

Americans are freedom loving people, and nothing says “freedom” like getting away with it….
Long Long Time, written by Guy Forsyth

Ari Emanuel spoke at the D10 conference recently which tells you something right there.  He has a far greater tolerance for bull than we do.

It’s probably easier to catch the engrained bias toward piracy amongst the Silicon Valley cognoscenti and the journalists who protect them when you are watching it on playback than when you are on the stage, take this for an example.

The most interesting reaction came from Mr. Emanuel’s statement about Google that boils down to what we all know:  Google’s business is in large part built on illegal stuff, including piracy.  (See Google drugs nonprosecution agreement antitrust claims in the US, Europe and South Korea; human trafficking complaints; Wi-Spy scandal in the UK, Germany, US, France, South Korea; major litigation losses in the Google Books and YouTube litigation; attempts to destroy unions; stockholder lawsuits for mismanagement by the 10 votes per share insider group that spent $500,000,000 of company money to stay out of a drug prosecution, etc.)

Mr. Emanuel said that Google filters child pornography with no problem because they can and because it’s the right thing to do–so there are limits to even what Google is willing to profit from.

Mr. Emanuel says that a comparable solution for content from illegal sites is also the right thing to do.  Google fails miserably to do so, to their great profit.  Mr. Emanuel would prefer that they did not.

Google’s answer was the usual “catch me if you can” that we have heard from Google for years as they profit from piracy.  What Google wants the creative community to do is take time–a lot of time–away from making movies, television shows, writing books and songs and making music and chase Google to stop them before they infringe again.

This is essentially the same losing argument that Google made to Judge Denny Chin in the Google Books case last week to try to force authors and photographers to sue Google individually and work by work rather than through their associations.  Judge Chin got it immediately—it’s not that Google wants hundreds of thousands if not millions of claims by authors.  It’s that Google’s bet is that they will only be sued by a handful who can afford it.

It seems clear that this is the same strategy Google has used for years–Google thinks this is the best way to get away with it.

I agree with Judge Chin that Google must hope that few of the authors and photographers  will have the ability to catch Google stealing and sue them for it.  This is the point.  And the argument didn’t work with Judge Chin and it didn’t work with Mr. Emanuel, either.  Nor should it work with any fair minded person.

Which is why Mr. Emanuel suggests that Google do the right thing, as Apple does, as Microsoft does, and as a host of other tech companies do.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Sergei Brin’s sister-in-law, Google’s Susan Wojcicki responded thusly to Mr. Emanuel’s charge that Google profits from piracy:

Google [Senior Vice President of Advertising] Susan Wojcicki said: “I think he was misinformed, very misinformed,” Wojcicki responded Thursday at the D10 conference. “We do not want to be building a business based on piracy.”

While child pornography is easily spotted, “When I see content, I don’t know if you own the copyright,” she said.

First of all, Mr. Emanuel was not misinformed at all.  As we have seen again and again in many different examples across its advertising business, Google intends to profit from anything that is not nailed down.

As the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year, senior Google executives aided and abetted the importation of controlled substances from Mexico, China and many other countries, drugs like human growth hormone, steroids and the abortion drug RU 486—and no one was misinformed about that, either:

[A whistleblower] fled to Mexico in 2006 and started an Internet pharmacy, selling steroids and human growth hormone to U.S. consumers through Google ads….”It was very obvious to Google that my website was not a licensed pharmacy,” [the whistleblower] wrote to the Journal. “Understanding this, Google provided me with a very generous credit line and allowed me to set my target advertising directly to American consumers.”

Posing as the fictitious Jason Corriente, an agent for advertisers with lots of money to spend, [the whistleblower worked with federal agents and] bypassed Google’s automated advertising system to reach flesh-and-blood ad executives. Federal agents created http://www.SportsDrugs.net, designed to look “as if a Mexican drug lord had built a website to sell [human growth hormone] and steroids,” [the whistleblower] said in his account of the sting.

Google first rejected it, along with an anti-aging website called http://www.NotGrowingOldEasy.com. But the company’s ad executives worked with [the whistleblower] to find a way around Google rules….Federal agents…[created a] site selling the abortion pill RU-486, which in the U.S. can only be taken in a doctor’s office.

By the end of the operation in mid-2009, agents were buying Google ads for sites purportedly selling such prescription-only narcotics as oxycodone and hydrocodone. Agents also got Google’s sales office in China to approve a site selling Prozac and Valium to U.S. customers without a prescription.

As a tape recorder ran, [the whistleblower] walked Google executives through the illegal parts of the websites. He said he told ad executives that U.S. Customs had seized shipments, for example, and that one client wanted to be “the biggest steroid dealer in the United States.”

“Suffice to say this was not two or three rogue employees at the customer service level doing this on their own,” said Mr. Neronha, the U.S. attorney. “This was corporate decision to engage in this conduct.”  [Mr. Neronha was quoted in a different Journal article saying that the decisions went up to Larry Page.]

Six private shareholder lawsuits have so far been filed against Google’s executives and board members, alleging they damaged the company by not taking earlier action against the illegal pharmacy ads.

Google has other potential legal exposure. Record companies and movie studios say Google willfully profits from illegal Internet piracy—an issue raised last week, when Congress dropped antipiracy legislation after opposition from Internet companies, including Google.

So you understand why Ms. Wojcicki and her brother in law would be very interested in diverting attention away from the many ways Google profits from piracy and other bad acts?   As Santa Clara Law School Professor Eric Goldman told the New York Times, “’How much of Google’s overall revenues are tied to product lines that are questionable?’ he said. ‘For investors, I think they just got a little bit of a jolt [after Google reserved $500,000,000 to pay its forfeiture in the drugs case] that maybe Google’s profits are due to things they can’t ultimately stand behind.’”  (Emphasis mine.)

If Google’s complicity in the drugs case went all the way to Larry Page as Mr. Neronha has stated, you have to wonder if Ms. Wojcicki herself—a senior Google advertising executive–was on those whistleblower tapes.  There’s currently a valiant shareholder lawsuit by a pension fund being heard in Delaware where these outsiders are trying to find out what Google’s insider team is up to–and remember that the insiders shares get 10 votes per share to the outsiders one vote per share–so the only way the outsiders can have a say in the corporation’s governance is to sue Google because the insiders can simply ignore the outsiders.

Exhibit A?  Google’s drug prosecution.  Google’s drug problem resulted in one of the largest forfeitures in US history–$500,000,000 of the stockholders’ money paid in a curious deal to keep executives from being indicted.  And for which Google is currently being sued by its stockholders in six separate cases.

So naturally, Ms. Wojcicki is motivated to divert attention away from Google’s addiction to piracy.

And…

Ms. Wojcicki says that when Google sees content online they don’t know who owns the copyright.  Just like they didn’t know the drugs were illegal?

And the decision—the decision that a human makes—when they see a red flag is to let the drugs be sold or the copyright be duplicated, or the mail order brides to be sold.  Or provide a link to someone who is allowing it to be happen because it profits Google to so do.

Just like the drugs case, it is hard to believe that piracy on a global scale all happens without any human interaction by Google employees.

But this just doesn’t ring true.  Google has acknowledged receiving five million DMCA notices last year alone, and over three million the year before that.   Don’t you think that if someone tells you five million times a year that you are doing something wrong there might be some truth to it?

Imagine if a CD or DVD duplicator decided—decided—not to inquire as to whether someone who wanted to use their services had the right to do so.  They would certainly make a lot more money for a while.  But they would be headed straight to jail in the long run.  This is why duplicators require considerable proof before they allow their facilities to be used to create copies of what are obviously works of copyright.

So all Mr. Emanuel is asking is that Google do the right thing.  Show that they are a reliable business partner, show that they can be trusted with content.

According to Ms. Wojcicki, we are a long, long way from anyone at Google doing the right thing.  Because nothing says freedom like getting away with it.

So let’s all remember that.

[ WHY ARENT MORE MUSICIANS WORKING ] [ ARTISTS FOR AN ETHICAL INTERNET ]
[ THE SKY IS RISING : MAGIC BEAVER EDITION ] [SF GATE BLUNDERS PIRACY FACTS ]
[ THE 101 ] [NEW BOSS / OLD BOSS ] [ SPOTIFY ] [GROOVESHARK ] [ LARRY LESSIG ]
[ JOHN PERRY BARLOW ] [ HUMAN RIGHTS OF ARTISTS ] [ INFRINGEMENT IS THEFT ]

by Chris Castle

Everyone Gets a Trophy Day

And the winner of the “most humble” award goes to… me.

Last week, Boing Boing writer Xeni Jardin posted this self-congratulatory story:

Constitutional law expert Marvin Ammori, one of the First Amendment scholars along with Larry Tribe who explained how SOPA would violate the First Amendment, shares a wonderful story with Boing Boing. Snip from his blog post:

When I was quite young, I saw the first Star Wars movie and believed that, if I took part in a great cause, it would end with a medal ceremony and a princess conferring the medal. It has finally happened.

Last night, I received a medal from Princess Tiffiniy Ying Cheng of Fight for the Future, representing the “committee for the Defenders of the Internet.” Bestowed upon me was the Nyan Cat Medal of Internet Awesomeness, the “highest honor known to Internet Defenders.” I could not be more honored.

The “great cause” here was a decade long effort by academics, tech companies, venture capitalists, and the nonprofits who love them to redefine the rights of creators in their own works as tools of oppression that would “break the internet.” To understand why this is self-congratulatory, it helps to understand the players involved. (And note, this is certainly not the first time this group of digital activists have engaged in such circular award ceremonies — see here and here.)

Tiffiniy Cheng is a serial activist who has held a grudge against record labels since 2003, when she helped form Downhill Battle. (To read more about the chilling tactics used by the group, read this series of posts). Next came the Participatory Culture Foundation (whose board includes Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow), a group whose biggest accomplishments seems to be getting money from the Mozilla Foundation.

Her latest venture is Fight for the Future, a group whose hyperbolic headlines involving Justin Bieber — and a whopping $300,000 grant from the Media Democracy Fund (the organization, which has previously awarded grants to the New America Foundation and Public Knowledge, awarded less than $4 million total in grants for the previous five years) — helped it lead the charge against SOPA last winter. (According to this article, the key meeting between Fight for the Future and the other advocacy groups involved occurred November 9, 2011, at Mozilla headquarters.)

Marvin Ammori is an Affiliate Scholar at the Google-funded Stanford Center for Internet and Society. He’s also a legal fellow at the New America Foundation — a nonprofit group chaired by Google’s Eric Schmidt.  He also, by the way, represents Google. *

You wouldn’t know it by reading Boing Boing or other tech blogs — to them, Ammori is simply “a leading First Amendment scholar.” Perhaps this is because the connections between this subset of the tech world extends to the people who report on them.

For example, the author of this piece, Xeni Jardin, also happens to sit on the board for Global Voices Online, along with New America Foundation fellow Rebecca Mackinnon. In another shocking twist, one of the sponsors of Global Voices Online: Google.

In other words, this story reflects the insular community of tech companies, nonprofits, and lobbyists who contribute to the ongoing erosion of creator’s rights — and award themselves medals for their efforts. In their eyes, they are playing the role of the Rebel Alliance. What’s chilling is that they have cast anyone who disagrees with themselves as the evil Empire in this fantasy.

This isn’t about SOPA, or any other particular law. Rational minds can disagree over proposed legislation, debate it, look for compromise or even shelve it. That’s not what happened here. What happened here was a “win” by a specific, interconnected group with a specific worldview that is hostile to the hard-fought rights of creators. And if you don’t agree with this group, you are part of the dark side, an enemy of free speech, a dinosaur who doesn’t “get it.”

And you certainly don’t get any medals.

* Also among the medal winners: Derek Slater, policy analyst for Google (and formerly a fellow at the Google-funded Berkman Center for Internet and Society and intern at the EFF and Creative Commons).

###

[ THE 101 ] [NEW BOSS / OLD BOSS ] [ SPOTIFY ] [GROOVESHARK ] [ LARRY LESSIG ]
[ JOHN PERRY BARLOW ] [ HUMAN RIGHTS OF ARTISTS ] [ INFRINGEMENT IS THEFT ]
[ THE SKY IS RISING : MAGIC BEAVER EDITION ] [SF GATE BLUNDERS PIRACY FACTS ]
[ WHY ARENT MORE MUSICIANS WORKING ] [ ARTISTS FOR AN ETHICAL INTERNET ]

by Trichordist

Online Piracy, It’s Different…

A comical exploration of common piracy arguments…

If you enjoyed that video, you may also enjoy this one:
https://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/mike-lombardo-smackdown/

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[ THE 101 ] [NEW BOSS / OLD BOSS ] [ SPOTIFY ] [GROOVESHARK ] [ LARRY LESSIG ]
[ JOHN PERRY BARLOW ] [ HUMAN RIGHTS OF ARTISTS ] [ INFRINGEMENT IS THEFT ]
[ THE SKY IS RISING : MAGIC BEAVER EDITION ] [SF GATE BLUNDERS PIRACY FACTS ]
[ WHY ARENT MORE MUSICIANS WORKING ] [ ARTISTS FOR AN ETHICAL INTERNET ]

by trichordist

The Sky Is Rising : Magic Beaver Edition

It’s unfortunate that some people are gullible enough to take a tech lobby funded Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) sponsored report “The Sky Is Rising” researched by a tech blogger as fact. As we detailed in our post about the SF Gate blundering the facts (obviously without fact checking!) here are some quick responses to the grossly selective and highly biased reasoning that enables such propaganda, and should have everyone questioning the credibility of such work.

Eventually there will a complete break down of the fallacy’s presented by a real economist but until then here are five quick standouts of absurdity:

#1 :  This is not an academic study or serious scientific study. It is a tech / internet industry commissioned (CCIA) lobby report.

#2   : The report falsely claims that the value of global music business grew from 130 billion to 160 billion. They do this by including iPod and music instrument sales. We are not joking about this!!

#3:  To claim that the entertainment business grew 50%  they include revenues from computer and video games.  Video gaming has exploded over the decade. And global gaming revenues are about 5x the size of global recorded music revenues. Console Gaming also has very robust DRM booting users off console networks if pirated or cracked copies are detected (Xbox, Playstation, Wii).

#4 :  Instead of showing the fact that gross recorded music revenues which have fallen over 50%,  the report uses the number of transactions.  Of course there are more transactions since a single album is now available by tracks which can contribute 10-15 times more “transactions.” Clearly the use of this metric is intended to deceive. This chart from The New York Times represents the actual facts.

#5  : Number of tracks cataloged?  Pointless.  This is mostly hobbyists using Tunecore and CD baby to “release” their tracks.   How do we know this?  Of 75,000 albums released in 2010, 60K sold less than 100 copies. Here’s more info spelled out by Ted Cohen and Tom Silverman from a Midem Presentation.

This all really begs the question, if the internet is really working for musicians than why are there less musicians working professionally?  Salon reports a decrease of over 45% less working “Musical groups and artists” from 2002 – 2011 according to the Bureau Of Labor Statistics. The tech / internet community it seems has confused  the democratization of distribution with the democratization of talent.

Of course coming from people who insist that “the internet is different,” (different from what?) and “old economic laws do not apply to the cyber economy,” (despite Google’s Chief Economist disagreeing with them) it’s not hard to take the leap to such absurd and nonsensical beliefs that a magic beaver lives in a space ship under the googleplex, which could also lead to the distorted magical thinking that produced The Sky Is Rising.

It’s also important to understand the near religious devotion some in the tech and internet community have taken to these issues. There is a fanaticism that is blind to all logic and reason that can only be described in the cult like obsession of “The Singularity,” as Jaron Lanier comments.

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[ THE 101 ] [NEW BOSS / OLD BOSS ] [ SPOTIFY ] [GROOVESHARK ] [ LARRY LESSIG ]
[ JOHN PERRY BARLOW ] [ HUMAN RIGHTS OF ARTISTS ] [ INFRINGEMENT IS THEFT ]
[ THE SKY IS RISING : MAGIC BEAVER EDITION ] [SF GATE BLUNDERS PIRACY FACTS ]
[ WHY ARENT MORE MUSICIANS WORKING ] [ ARTISTS FOR AN ETHICAL INTERNET ]

by trichordist

The Paradox of Pirate Logic : Music Versus Music Software – Full Post

by Chris Whitten
(Copyright in the Author, Posted with Permission)

The bottom line for many in the often heated piracy debate is this: “Give us a good product at a fair price, make it convenient and easy to obtain and we’ll buy it”.

There is a digital product that ticks most of those boxes. So by comparing two products I wonder if we can learn anything about the chances of reducing music and movie piracy by making it better quality, more affordable and easy to download?

I’m of course talking about music production software.

About 7 years ago I was involved in creating a virtual drum instrument in collaboration with a Swedish music software producer Toontrack. Our product has been critically acclaimed, is a best seller, but is also unfortunately a favourite with software pirates. The pirate’s ‘advice’ to “adapt or die” appears then to ring hollow. As a performance musician I added music software creation to my resume by adapting to new technology, but all that happened was the pirates followed me.

With a foot in each camp, music technology and music performance, I’d like to take a look at the claim that “if you build it they will come.” Let’s see if the available evidence supports that idea.

Straight away we need to acknowledge two things: firstly, no one has ever suggested music software has gone backwards in quality over the last few years. It’s also pretty easy to obtain, including plenty of free alternatives, often offered by new companies trying to build a customer base, or by hobbyist’s happy with the kudos of creating a popular plug-in. Secondly, music software is heavily pirated.

So the signs don’t look good, and the more you look at music software piracy, the more the excuses and arguments made by movie and music pirates seem questionable. Let’s look at a couple of them:

Entertainment pirates claim they are fighting corporate greed. Movies and music need to be liberated from the clutches of billionaires who remain powerful by buying political influence.

This rhetoric may sound compelling, but the reality is that most music software companies are small privately owned businesses, and/or collectives of young innovators and entrepreneurs. Most were founded no earlier than the late 1990’s and still retain the same management and design teams that started the business in the first place. In fact, many music software producers comprise one or two people working from home.

The biggest and longest established names like Spectrasonics and Native Instruments employ between 50 and 270 staff, but those are the exceptions. Even so, we are hardly talking ‘megacorps’ here. For example, one of the hottest names in computer sequencing and recording software, Cockos (producers of Reaper), has a staff of three. Cockos has an instant download demo of Reaper available. They also offer a discounted purchase price of $60 for Reaper, if you declare earnings of less than $20,000 from its commercial use each year. So you could be Donald Trump and buy Reaper for $60 as long as music is your hobby. And yet Reaper appears prominently for free download on piracy sites.

Entertainment pirates claim movies and music are overpriced.

Music software users though have many free options. Apart from the new producers and hobbyists mentioned above, many established software producers offer free products.

For example, Elysia’s Niveau Filter:
https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/plugins/detail/elysia_niveau_filter.html

And Sonimus’ SonEQ:
http://sonimus.com/site/page/downloads/

One of my own offerings, a sample pack for Toontrack’s EZdrummer, has a retail price of $89.00, but regularly sells for $39.99 from certain online retailers.

To use these software plug-ins you need a computer audio workstation, known as a ‘DAW’. Technology giant Apple give you one free with every computer; Garageband.  Audacity is a multi-track audio recorder and editor that is also free. And as mentioned above Reaper is $60.  Even the more expensive DAW’s like Logic Studio (Apple) and Live (Ableton) come bundled with a host of free software instruments, fx plug-ins and audio loops – something not dreamed of 10 years ago.

So can we still claim music software is over priced? No, not reasonably so.

Entertainment pirates cite what they see as false barriers to access as a major factor driving them to pirate sites.

So is music software easy and convenient to obtain? The answer surely has to be yes. Most music software is available for instant download. Some music software can even be used immediately as a demo without payment.

I was working on some music a few months ago and realized late one night I needed a certain FM synth sound resembling a Yamaha DX7. Not having the keyboard to hand, I went to Native Instrument’s webshop, bought and downloaded FM8, a virtual instrument based on similar architecture to the DX7. Granted it’s quite a large program and I have a basic broadband connection, but I was using FM8 in my project about one hour later.

By the way, FM8 cost me a fraction of the original price DX7’s sold for in the early 80’s. And smaller programs like plug-in EQ’s and compressors are much quicker to download and even with anti-piracy security, you can be using them within minutes. Modern musicians are drawn to music software exactly because it is cheap and convenient.

Music pirates claim digital music has no value.                                                                                  

 MP3’s for example are just ‘1’s and 0’s’ that can be infinitely reproduced at zero cost. Well then I guess digital music software is the same, just 1’s and 0’s, something that can be copied endlessly at no cost. Music pirates say they expect free digital music because it is free to produce, but they will support music by buying concert tickets, which directly fund true performance.

If you superimpose this claim on to music software, the logic falls apart immediately. Would the people who pirate EZdrummer be likely to pay $40 to see EZdrummer live on tour? What form would that tour take? I’m imagining a ‘technerd’ onstage for 12 hours coding the software, or maybe 12 hours of me sampling drums, one drum hit at a time, both of which are akin to paying good money to watch paint dry. What about merchandising? Well I must admit there are some cool Ableton Live t-shirts, but I still feel it’s the incredible music tool I should be valuing, not a Hanes in XL.

And what about the zero cost of reproducing the product indefinitely? Well I don’t agree with that either. Music software has to be maintained, developed and supported full time by a team of workers. Like many things these days, customers demand answers within hours of contact, even if they’ve emailed their query at midnight on Easter Sunday.

Then there is the initial investment in the creation of the software. If a hobbyist doesn’t count their man hours, a basic software plug-in like a softsynth, or compressor can be produced at low or no cost – but only IF they don’t count their man hours. However, sample based music software is much more costly to produce. For example, my most recent EZdrummer sample pack was recorded over four days at a commercial studio in New Jersey. I don’t live in New Jersey, the recording engineer doesn’t live in New Jersey, the Toontrack production team don’t live in New Jersey. My drums and cymbals aren’t located in New Jersey.

So why work there? Well because it was the right studio for the product we wanted to create. But let’s be clear: the costs involved are significant. To produce the included midi content alone, I recorded my own v-drum performances over two days. Then I spent two weeks, working ten hour days editing that midi. So again, are we working for free, for the ‘fun’ of it, or is it a job, or better still a career? The answer according to the pirates is it’s up to me to decide, but don’t expect to be paid. They say if I don’t like the work conditions and lack of pay, someone else will, or at least be more flexible and accepting than me.

But there are no free equivalents to EZdrummer. Why? Because it costs a lot of money to record several drum kits over several days in a decent recording studio, and hobbyists, or the free software evangelicals, aren’t prepared to spend that kind of money, or work that hard, then give away the end product without recompense.  So I guess you can argue that digital copying is zero cost, but when people pirate music software, they aren’t just taking 1’s and 0’s without payment, they aren’t ‘paying back’ by contributing anything towards the production cost of the original product.

Put another way, our first EZdrummer customer could pay $25,000, then all subsequent customers could take it without payment. More fairly however, I’d suggest the first customer and every customer subsequently should pay the same small share towards the production costs, say $39.99?

Entertainment pirates claim Hollywood and the music industry have failed to innovate and failed to listen to their customers.

They go on to state they’ll pay for movies and music if the content industries offer “a good product at a fair price, while making it convenient and easy to obtain”.

Meanwhile, the music software industry has responded to customer demands. While continuously improving their products, they’ve priced them competitively and fairly, many producers encouraging customers to audition products freely first. Almost all music software is available for instant download, wherever you are and at whatever time of the day or night.

Those customers who buy their music software are funding new ideas from young innovators and entrepreneurs directly, not giving money to middlemen who keep most of it for themselves while passing on a pittance to the creative employees, as is claimed happens in the music industry.

And yet music software products like Live (Ableton), EZdrummer (Toontrack), FM8 (Native Instruments) and Omnisphere (Spectrasonics) all appear on unauthorized file sharing sites for people to download without paying. Are the pirates therefore sincere in their promise to buy if the product is right and the price is fair, or is the only ‘fair’ price no price?

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you may also be interested in: You Can’t Have A Healthy Market Economy Without Property Rights
https://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/05/05/full-post-you-cant-have-a-have-a-healthy-market-economy-without-property-rights-why-do-so-many-in-tech-blogosphere-want-to-abolish-cyber-property-rights-and-cripple-the-cyber-economy/

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[ THE 101 ] [NEW BOSS / OLD BOSS ] [ SPOTIFY ] [GROOVESHARK ] [ LARRY LESSIG ]
[ JOHN PERRY BARLOW ] [ HUMAN RIGHTS OF ARTISTS ] [ INFRINGEMENT IS THEFT ]
[ THE SKY IS RISING : MAGIC BEAVER EDITION ] [SF GATE BLUNDERS PIRACY FACTS ]
[ WHY ARENT MORE MUSICIANS WORKING ] [ ARTISTS FOR AN ETHICAL INTERNET ]

by trichordist