There was very real discussion about the United States losing its station as the world's most powerful nation. There were American hostages in Iran. There was an Olympics boycott. The Japanese stock market was booming, and many thought it wouldn't be long before our economy would be second to theirs. The U.S. auto industry was under attack by imports. Inflation was at record highs.
At Indiana University, our school newspaper carried headlines from around the state. I knew that Anderson, Ind., had an unemployment rate of more than 20 percent. Numbers that people were suggesting reflected Great Depression-era depths. Other cities were almost as bad.
Students weren't quite brimming with optimism. As I prepared to graduate, getting an interview was a battle. Fortunately, while our manufacturing economy was taking it on the chin, others were working late--including the labs at Xerox; the garages in Silicon Valley, Seattle and New Mexico; and the offices on Massachusetts' Route 128 and in Armonk, N.Y. The personal-computer business was getting ready to explode.
The history of computing and, in particular, the microprocessor revolution, is well-documented. What may not have been nearly as well-understood is the role it played in revitalizing our economy and how we felt about ourselves.
In a scant five years, college kids went from worrying about jobs to being positioned at the lead of the new PC generation. When I graduated from college, I had taken one computer class that required me to punch in a Fortran program on cards and feed them to a huge computer I never saw. A number of jobs available in the computer field were limited to "computer scientists." That changed in what seemed a heartbeat.
If you knew how to use a spreadsheet, you could get a job. If you could write batch files in DOS, you could get a job. If you were advanced and could integrate local-area networks, grasp multitasking, program using relational databases--you could pick the job of your choice.
The PC revolutionized the job market for college graduates and more importantly, the business of business. But it didn't stop at PCs. Software was developed for every application imaginable. PCs were connected into local and worldwide networks. Printers went from modified typewriters to laser. Communications went from modems to broadband. Online services expanded from the thousands to the millions--and that was before the Internet and America Online. We went from Moore's Law to Metcalfe's Law.
This technology revolution has been amazing for two reasons. First, the technology has continued to evolve this long. We may be at a point where we aren't surprised to read about new technologies, but entrepreneurs continue to generate ideas that lead to new products and services. Technology continues to have a significant impact on the U.S. economy and to create jobs.
Second, the government managed to stay out of the way for as long as it did. Who knows why, but our elected officials managed to let the free markets stay free.
Until now.
Taking a wrong turn
Things started to get a little shaky back in 1998. In October of that year, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was passed. The DMCA was basically a law that set a very unnerving precedent--that the government would do what it could to protect the interests of content owners at the expense of technological development.
By itself, the DMCA didn't kill technological innovation. At the time it passed, the DMCA was more a nuisance than anything else. Digital content wasn't all that prevalent, and there certainly wasn't much money in it. Not many people cared that our tax dollars were being spent to make sure that your Internet radio station never played more than three songs in a row from the same artist. Or that it became illegal to have a 24-hours-a-day station dedicated to the Beatles (or any other artist).
In 1998, few people were buying DVDs. It was easy to buy a VHS tape and make a second copy for your own use. The DMCA rarely touched home. In 2005, it's a whole different ball game.
You know those scratched DVDs you own? How nice it would have been to be able to make a copy first, knowing that the kids were going to ruin them at some point. But you can't. It's illegal to make software that allows you to make backup copies. You paid a lot of money for your DVDs. The movie industry has made billions upon billions
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Mark Cuban is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and is co-founder of HDNet. He also maintains a blog.
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First, movie and music industry is a big hardcore business masked as entertainment. You spent lot of somebody money to earn even more money. Same as any other such entertainment for example casinos in Vegas. All is bright, shiny, free drinks and friendly stuff while you pay.
So there is no wonder the movie/music industry would fight anything that somehow affect their business. Why everybody are still surprised about this?
Then, if copying copyrighted DVD is outlawed, ok, so be it. But we must make sure it would became a law that a company must replace any scratched DVD at no cost and they must openly advertise it. Since we are not paying for product (medium), but licensing a home use of its contens, we should be able to carry our end of license, even if the medium is damaged. It would cost very little to companies if every major DVD store will be allowed to simply replace any scratched DVD at no cost. The medium is sure less than 25 cents. But unless we demand it to become a law, the companies would not do it, because even 25 censts are still money. So far we let the media company dictate and change their end of license for their benefit without giving any benefits to us.
The P2P is another story. There is very little doubt that P2P is currently primary used to illegaly share copyrighted materials including music, movies, e-books and software. Just connect to any P2P network or torrent and look what people share - these are not their own pictures or music. These are ripped movies, mp3s and cracked software (that often carry also some virus or spyware as a bonus). Of course outlawing technology is just not going to work, people will find other means to do this. But there is less than 1% of legitimate use of P2P right now.
It is also amazing how some people think of P2P wide networks as a holly grail. It is most insecure way of distributing a data - you never know what you are really getting and from whom. That may be fine for mp3 or divx, but hardly for sofware.
I agree that we should not allow to outlaw a technology, it is clearly a step back. But we can't honestly hide behind scratched DVD's story neither. The people who exchange movies on P2P are not doing this because their dog chewed the DVD. They do it mainly because they don't want to spend 3 bucks in blockbuster.
If we make free replacing of damaged DVD a requirement, then the scratched DVD story will be gone. Studios wont take the first step by temselves because it cost them some money, but ultimatelly they will agree. However it seems a movie swappers not really want it neither, because the "kids scratched my DVD" cover story will be blown. I haven't really seen any movement in this regard.
majority of content distributed by P2P networks
(on a per-byte basis) are legally distributed
software and documents.
Sure, there are DVD rips and illegal software out
there, but they don't represent the majority of
content. Even then, most of the "copyrighted
content" (entertainment industry newspeak; in the
US, all content is copyright the moment it is
created -- including this post) like movies are
not complete products. They are typically
transcoded down, truncated, or excerpted.
Whether it's music, movies or other proprietary material. You know it ... and the people who are willfully downloading and/or distributing to friends and others the intellectual property belonging to others know it too.
Scratched DVDs? LOL ... Does Detroit fix my car because I got it dinged?
It still comes down to basics ... just because you can technologically copy something ... doesn't make it legal.
Before Sony BetaMax ... there was Xerox. And again the courts found that simply because you can slap a document on a copier and burn 1000 copies ... doesn't make it legal. Out of that, I think came the Personal Use rule ... which seems to still be valid today.
If we don't protect innovation ... and give innovators the ability to be rewarded ... then innovation will cease to exist in any meaningful way.
withstanding, we are not talking about theft.
Theft is a property crime. The "content" is not
subject to property law, but rather copyright
law. There is a vast legal difference between
copyright infringement and theft.
Making a copy is not stealing. One might argue
that it devalues an asset - that is the ability
to leverage a monopoly on a work to create a
profit by licensing copies - but the
entertainment industry doesn't typically make
that argument in court because there's no real
proof of that; particularly in the case of
personal use copies. Further, copyright, until
recently, only covered distribution of a work or
derivatives, and then only those "in a fixed
medium" (which a digital copy hadn't been
considered to be, but now is).
Keep in mind the intent of copyright was to
provide a short-term monopoly on a creative work
to the author to allow him to negotiate
publication of the work without fear that a
publisher will do so without their consent and
without attributing the actual author. It wasn't
until much later that a profit motive for having
a copyright existed. This was at a time when the
printing press was high-tech and belonged solely
to guilds a and nobles. It was a compromise, with
the notion that in return for this grace period
the author's works would pass into the public
domain.
In practice, modern copyrights do not expire.
Congress extends the term of copyrights every
time there's a threat of any commercially owned
content passing into the public domain. The
constitution sets the limit to 14 years with an
optional 14 year extension and required
registriation. Today, all works are automatically
copyrighted, terms now regularly exceed a
century, and there's no longer a systematic way
to identify and contact a copyright holder to
negotiate a license. The majority of the 20th
century's music and literature is now still under
copyright, but no longer published. Not
available, and illegal to duplicate -- many times
the author or performer being long since dead.
Yet media companies sue those that share copies
of these works too.
The DMCA did something very interesting to
copyright law, however. First, it made a
redundant law for copyright violation (i.e., if
the work is "digital", you get charged with
infringement and a DMCA violation); it made
infringement a criminal offense rather than a
civil one (FBI enforces rather than copyright
holder filing civil suit); it introduces, for the
first time, legal prior restraint at the
discretion of a copyright holder (they can force
a carrier to discontinue access to the work); it
made "access" to a work a violation -- with the
implication, for the first time, that the
copyright holder can not only prevent
distribution, but can ex post facto declare the
terms and manner in which a licensed work can be
used.
What's really interesting here is that the DMCA
also outlaws technology that circumvents an
access control, and it really doesn't state that
the technology be limited to controlling access
to a copyrighted work, nor does it require that
it be good at it. Since copyrights now enjoy
permanency, you can now patent a technology that
can be used to protect a work, and US law will
prevent use of that technology indefinitely
(without proper licensing, of course) - perpetual
patent protection for the creative programmer.
That's a big stretch, of course. The practical
end of it for you and me is that it effectively
eliminates the doctrine of fair-use by enabling
the copyright holder to restrict use, a priori,
to a single specific use-case and preventing the
licensee from obtaining the means to use it in
any other way.
This is why these technologies are sometimes
referred to as Fair-Use Circumvention Kits (and
for which there's an approriate, if not very
clever acronym).
Sweet if you're Sony, sucks if you are a
consumer.
Whether it's music, movies or other proprietary material. You know it ... and the people who are willfully downloading and/or distributing to friends and others the intellectual property belonging to others know it too.<
So go after the thieves, the downloaders and servers. Just because the software makers are easy targets does not make what the RIAA is doing right.
>Before Sony BetaMax ... there was Xerox. And again the courts found that simply because you can slap a document on a copier and burn 1000 copies ... doesn't make it legal. Out of that, I think came the Personal Use rule ... which seems to still be valid today.<
But the Personal (Fair) Use rule is being effectively repealed by the RIAA's efforts.
And the government didn't ban Xerox, did it? Where would we be today if Betamax, VHS, and copiers were outlawed? For that matter, where would the studios be today? A lot less wealthy, that's where.
>If we don't protect innovation ... and give innovators the ability to be rewarded ... then innovation will cease to exist in any meaningful way. <
Who's innovation are you talking about here? There is innovation in digital media and digital protection, innovation in copying and sharing software and equipment, and innovation in distribution. The only place I see a failure to innovate is on the part of the studios in dealing with the new world of digital media on the Internet.
We already pay a tax on every blank cassette, CD and DVD we buy, with the sole purpose to recoup losses from copying. Have the studios proposed to give up that tax when they get their way and ban copying and distribution software? If Grokkster loses in court, we should demand that that fee be repealed.
I don't download music or movies, and I believe that music and movie downloaders are stealing, but two wrongs do not make right. The RIAA is using the courts and Congress' misunderstanding of digital media to railroad laws and rulings through to deprive everyone of P2P software, whether the users are thieves or not. So who is stifling innovation in this scenario?
Just because your car is 'dinged' does not stop you from driving it. A scratched DVD which is then unable to be played because of that scratch(s) is a different matter. If you make a back up copy for your own use, what's the problem with that? Black market DVD's, now's there's a problem. If someone is selling and therefore making money from their illegal activity, of course they should be prosecuted if caught.
MGM make your own standard don't use standard made for consumers. So much so that you will be go on bankruptcy in no time.
It was one of the most unfair decisions of all time.
You can check out the statement on their site (www.321studios.com).
office. We are a tiny startup firm just closing our first serious
funding. We depend on P2P technology. If this blows the wrong
way...312 doesn't have to quit, it just has to move to Europe (or
maybe India? that's where are investors hail from).
More unintended consequences.
- grokster
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by zaide
April 28, 2005 9:16 AM PDT
- why can't you get right to the meat of the subject?. /who really cares about your scolastic history, etc.
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