Well, I wouldn't be bet on that.

Maybe, the author of this piece would do so, and maybe quite a few others. But some would switch to something completely different while the majority would simply pay for the content -- just like they did before it was possible to make illegal copies.

Free (whether in beer or speech) is not the only criterion for making buying decisions.

When really they are just after a free lunch :)

I'm sure most would just go onto pay content. And those currently on pay content anyway wouldn't see a difference.

He's asking: what if the guy making a youtube video of unboxing his new laptop couldn't use The Final Countdown as his soundtrack?

He still wants to upload his unboxing video. He still wants a soundtrack. What does he do? And what effect will that have?

There's no for-pay alternative unboxing video with a properly licensed The Final Countdown. And there's no for-pay system for him to acquire a license to The Final Countdown. The song isn't even the point at all. If there's any hassle involved in using it, he just won't. Not when he can just grab some JoCo and be done with it.

And if the creators do find and use permissive-license content, doesn't that necessarily erode the value of strictly-licensed content?

The reason why there's no system to license 'The Final Countdown' is probably that it wouldn't pay. I mean, come on! How many people would really watch a guys video unboxing his laptop? This is a nice for his handful of friends but the majority doesn't care, at all.

Even if you combine all the long-tail stuff, it's probably not worth the effort. IIRC Youtube is even unable to find advertisers for all this low-value long-tail stuff.

So, what will happen if this laptop guy uses some CC music? Nothing, I'd say. His friends will have forgotten it in a minute unless the track is really exceptional. And even if it's exceptional, that's one track in a few thousand.

Thus, the impact on stricly-licensed content will be very close to zero.

I'm all for banning copyright infringement!!

The day after this perfect enforcement came into effect users would still flock to Youtube/etc hoping to find the latest content. So if the a copyright holder decided to block all their content they would lose a lot of attention in the initial stages.

However would the users continue to flock to youtube/etc without all that copyright content? No doubt the copyright holders would soon revamp the 'official sources' of their content. These would most likely still be restrictive/costly/sucky but as the only source of that content they might stand a chance of drawing the audience back from the 'free' sources.

I'm not sure who I'd bet on in an 'all out war' but it most likely wouldn't come to that with copyright holders forced to allow a least some of their material on the sites with the existing audience. I do believe however that it would shift the balance of power back towards the copyright holders.

Alas, producers are stuck in their world of physical copies. They do have a problem there—in the digital world they are pretty much unneeded middlemen. Let's remember that if one got illegal copy of some piece this does not directly translates to lost sale — if there was no way to get it for free our hero could just as well decide "to the hell with it". However, illegal copies and copyrated material on youtube, etc. can sometimes work as an advertisement for an artist and mean more ticket sales for the next gig.

So, unbeatable DRM would probably mean slightly more sales, but less revenue for the artists.

But I believe, some sort of middleman will remain in the digital world.

Their value proposition is reducing transaction costs -- the costs associated with finding content that's worth to be produced, promoting it, distributing it to a place near you, and managing all monetary transactions.

Yes, distribution is a no-brainer in the digital world. All other points, however, remain valid.

And as far as I know, concerts and tours are expenses for lesser known bands, not money makers. In general, planning a tour is a very risky business. Today, a band may recoup some of the expense by selling physical stuff (CDs or merchandising). In the digital world, only merchandising remains.

On a side note, producers are currently struck in the world of physical copies because there's no reliable copyright enforcement method. Otherwise, they would have embraced it years ago. It's simply less expensive to make digital copies (and therefore generates higher profit if prices stay the same).

Under the premise of the OP, buying music would be as convenient as getting a illegal copy, I'd say.

It's not even that people are sheep who're getting screwed over by record companies. It's that, much as we may dislike them, record companies are providing quite a lot of value, and they're doing their best to preserve the value of the content they're providing, however flawed their approach may be. While I don't think they're doing a service to musicians, the strategy espoused here and by others — make music valueless and profit by other methods — doesn't sit well with me at all. Even if it is inevitable, and I'm still not entirely certain that it is, I think it would be a great loss if people started seeing music as intrinsically worthless.

Determine value is incredibly hard, thus many people use other attributes as a signal of value: Sometimes it's appearance, sometimes scarcity, sometimes hearsay, and rather often price. Therefore, if a product category had a price of zero, it will be considered less valuable when looking at the market as a whole.

However, that doesn't hold for every individual. For example, I still use quite a lot of Open Source software and it's free as in beer. That doesn't mean it has no value to me. If it had no value, I simply wouldn't use it.

By analogy, most music is already valueless to most people and has ever been. They wouldn't listen to it whatever the price. Nevertheless, some music will remain valuable to some people, whatever the price.

I think the term you're looking for is priceless, not worthless.

When you think it's okay to use a copyrighted song in its entirety in a video just because you're an amateur, what you're saying is that you're fine with releasing somebody else's work to the world without anybody making a dime. The people complaining about this lawsuit are saying they're mad because using somebody else's work without compensation should be completely fine. That devalues music.

It would be like if I stole the source code to Basecamp to release a free application, then defended myself to 37signals by saying I wasn't making money off it. I'm not more innocent because I was hypothetically releasing my work for free. In fact, in a way it's even worse because I've suddenly devalued Basecamp, which makes money off people who think it's worth something and have no choice but to pay if they want it.

(Actually, looking at Marco's post before this, I think I misinterpreted him: He agrees with my belief that the Vimeo thing is copyright infringement, and simply is saying that Creative Commons will let musicians flourish without breaking laws.)

What is the Mona Lisa worth? You'd say it's priceless, of course. Yet you can find free images of it--legally--online. Does that mean the Mona Lisa is worthless?

Something can be priceless despite reproductions of it being available for zero cost.

Something can be priceless despite reproductions of it being available for zero cost.

The question you don't ask is: What is being reproduced? If you're talking about just a band playing a song, then maybe I'd agree with you. I don't have an enormous problem with people listening to bootleg recordings of live bands. As you say there, those are recordings that stemmed from a concert that already made its money.

But when the music is recorded, when you hire audio engineers to get as good a sound as possible, when you slave over making an absolutely perfect recording, then you've created an object whose initial worth is determined by the exclusivity of the releases. When you spend lots of effort to release a CD, you're doing it because you expect the deal is going to be: "If you want these high quality recordings, you pay me a little bit of money."

When that gets released for free, all the efforts that went into making that particular sound are rendered valueless because the band's expected return suddenly isn't happening.

But then why are we still selling copies of John Lennon songs now that John Lennon is dead?

"If you want these high quality recordings, you pay me a little bit of money."

So then where do you draw the line? Is it illegal for me to play a CD for a friend, because he hasn't bought it? Is it illegal for me to lend a CD to a friend? Is it illegal for me to listen to my own MP3s ripped from a CD while lending the CD to a friend? Is it illegal to lend that CD to a whole lot of friends at once? Is it illegal for me to do that over Bittorrent?

Your argument says all these are illegal, because the person listening to the music didn't pay for it. Personally, I think the issue needs a slightly more subtle approach. But if you think that you can more easily deal with the problem by making it completely black and white, with everyone in the world a lawbreaker for listening to music they haven't paid for, feel free. Just don't impose such a flawed worldview on everyone else.

Copyright still holds. With him dead, whoever owns the copyright to his music — Yoko? — can do whatever she wants with it, until copyright expires.

Your argument says all these are illegal, because the person listening to the music didn't pay for it. Personally, I think the issue needs a slightly more subtle approach.

Agreed. And record companies have absolutely moved towards the irrational in their defense of copyright. But I can understand why they're being so irrational, and, misguided as I believe they are, I think their heart's trying to be in the right place.

I don't know what the solution is, but the one that blanket approves of piracy isn't the one I approve of. In this particular case with Vimeo, I think that when your lip dub's been viewed two million times, you've passed a point where you can claim you're sharing that song fairly.

The question is one of total cultural value. Compared to the value supposedly lost by the original artists by allowing their work to be remixed, how much does society gain from allowing their work to be remixed?

Did the Gray Album devalue the White Album more than it created value?

Did the video of the kid dancing to Dragostei Din Tei (aka Numa Numa) devalue the original song more than it created value? Let us say that it did; what about if we include the additional sales of records that resulted from the popularity of the video? Was value still lost? Could we get into a situation where you claim value was lost, yet the original artists would insist that value was gained?

The Dragostei Din Tei video didn't use the entire song. It make a lot of people who wanted to hear the rest of the song go out and buy it. The Gray Album is shadier, but it was remixing a much older album, and remixes aren't directly presenting what already existed. They're making some kind of creative alteration. Even then, I don't think it's wrong to assume that perhaps the original artists deserve some compensation. Not a ridiculous compensation that puts the remixer out of a job, but suggesting they have no rights to the final work is similarly silly.

The solution, as Marco writes here, is for more musicians to adapt to Creative Commons, so that people can use their works and contribute to that remix culture. The artists who're fine with that, and I think most of them are, can permit their works to be taken, and the ones that aren't can miss out. But it's their choice, not ours. Suggesting that all those artists only exist to contribute to culture is retarded.

I speak from my own experience of growing up in a home with a theatre actress / community theatre director mother and songwriter / playwright father, and their wider social network. An intellectually stimulating but extremely frugal existence.

I make art primarily because I love the creation, and I absolutely love when my work creates a response in somebody else. But that's my love for my work and for those people, not for a vaguer society.

I could see myself being really pleased over a lip dub of a song of mine. I could also see myself hating that something I'd made had leaked out without my receiving anything for the trouble. I mean, if I'm out to make a living with my work, then having it taken without compensation might not be what I'm looking for. But the point I was trying to make was that it would be my choice either way, that the work I make serves me first and society second.

So where is the loss? Do I miss out on bad poetry or meaningless instrumentals? Simple patterns of sound? What?

PS: No I am not deaf, I just find music to be boring.

I mean, I think it's pathetic that you don't like music, but that's an argument not worth having on Hacker News. We're not exactly bright musically.

I was asking a question. A loss of what?

From where I stand, every musician is a simple drain on society that would be far more productive flipping burgers. Now some people have become moderately wealthy playing music, but the music industry is a tiny slice of the economy because most people don’t place much value on music. It’s become adept at promoting its self but the self storage industry is a larger slice of the economy because people place more value on storing junk than music.

PS: IMO, replacing ALL music education with math/other real forms of education or even PE would be a far better use of students time and taxpayer money. Every court case over music copyright, contracts, or whatever is simply a waste of taxpayers’ money so IMO just abolish music copyright and get on with life. I understand that's and extreme view, but its still where I stand.

/s

Man, you can't take the stance that there's something worthless about what other people do just because you say so. That's stupid and hypocritical. Unless you want to go the nihilistic approach and deny everybody everything but the most savage of existences, at least have the courtesy not to be a twat about that which you don't understand.

I said already: We are not going to argue about music on Hacker News. I don't know you well enough as a user, Retric, to be able to make any judgment about you specifically, but I have a certain dim outlook on how we as a whole treat the arts, and I'm not enough of a martyr to waste a lovely winter Thursday trying to explain to you just how valuable a part music plays in greater society. Suffice it to say the average working musician produces far greater value than the average burger flipper, leads to more people being employed, has a wider audience, and gives more varied a product. It's not about business. It's about art. The business only exists because enough people think financing art is worth more than you do.

I switched from a computer-heavy major at one college to a more artistic major at a full-on art school, and I can say that I have absolutely learned more of value here in four months than I did spending a year learning to program.

Finally: You think math is productive? Math is the most whimsical of all the arts. No practical value whatsoever beyond the first few months, save the delight of having such freedom to think and play.

But it's fairly obvious how little you know about the things you've chosen to discuss. The way that you label art as "with a price tag" and "free" proves you know such a little amount that you'd assume it's simplistic enough to categorize on who's charging and who's not. That's a child's argument. That's how I talked about art when I was fourteen years old.

I'm not arguing with you because I want to debate you about music or about art. I have stated clearly that I think discussing art on this forum isn't worth the payoff, not when there are knowledgeable people willing to have actual conversations elsewhere. Rather, I am arguing that your position is uneducated and nonsensical, and that by attempting to state it like it's a valid point you're degrading yourself and this thread. Admit that perhaps there's more between heaven and earth than you've dreamt, and we will shake hands and part ways.

But you seem to think that my telling you you're uneducated is "raving like a lunatic", so perhaps this conversation's over already.

As to free vs. “price tag” I include any and all forms of advertizing. I directly spend far more money on Art than the average American due in large part to a ridicules disposable income. My sister has made most of her money selling Art and I have supported her in that for years. However, while I am far more willing than most Americans to support Art, I have little tolerance for music and I am part of the growing backlash against the music industry as it stands today. If you hope to support yourself as an artist you need to understand the culture of art, and the people willing to remove all support from your form of Art.

Thus, if you feel the need to protect the music industry you actually need to develop a reasonable argument in support of your viewpoint.

PS: There is a reasonable chance that there will be no copyright protection for music within the United States at some point in my lifetime, conceder how that might affect you.

Edit: If you don't understand why something is being said, becoming dismissive is childish. That’s honestly meant as constructive criticism, but feel free to be insulted.

This conversation is over.

PS: I was in no way referencing taxes on music, but ending with a straw man argument was well played.

Edit: And for our audience: http://qntm.org/?forgotten

I can appreciate music sometimes but I just can't imagine sitting down to listen to music as a pastime... or paying for it.

Music is a technical display wherein people each create something and, woven together, it becomes a song. You can't imagine being riveted by five instruments each weaving around one another, by the various techniques each one employs, by the editing process required to create each sound? It's just like watching fourteen people run a ball around on a field, but the movements are planned ahead of time and the execution is key.

Maybe it's not your thing, but I'd hope you can at least understand the appeal to other people.

What's interesting is that Disney does seem to be getting it on recent DVD releases—by including a iTunes digital copy for use by the purchaser on the release. At Costco the other week, I saw something even more interesting: a combination digital, Blu-Ray, and DVD release of a number of Disney's recent films.

Theorizing too much about the impossible is a risky activity, like deliberately practicing bad rhythm. You can train your mind to fall into patterns of misguided thought. You can wind up being deathly afraid of shadows that do not exist. Abstraction can be good for a while, like training wheels on a bicycle, but try to respect the limits of your abstractions and spend a healthy amount of your time in the real world.

I don't remember which lawyer -- might have been Lessig, might have been Moglen -- made the obvious point that copyright law can't be adjudicated by computer. Here are fifteen words taken from a copyrighted work:

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

A computer can detect that these words are from a copyrighted work and censor them. But it can't figure out that in this context -- a brief educational example as part of an essay -- my use of these words is obviously a case of fair use. That's for a judge to decide. Judges are not run by algorithms that we know how to duplicate.

If quotations that matched previously copyrighted work were literally "completely impossible" human thought would grind to a halt. Just read the Spider Robinson short story, which will tell you everything you need to know about this counterfactual, and then worry about something more subtle but actually real, like the problem of corrupt judges, or selective enforcement of unrealistic laws, or the fact that fair use could end up being so expensive to defend that only rich people can exercise it without fear.

The industry still hated vcrs, xerox machines, libraries, radio, mix tapes, etc. They still sued any time they could.

It was just impossible for them to identify the people copying cassettes, taping concerts, swapping mix tapes, xeroxing a passage from a book, etc. And when they did try to sue libraries to, say, try to block their lending VHS tapes, the average person didn't take much notice.

Since copyright is enforced by the state, for the purposes of advancement of art and science, we have to draw a balance. "Copyright" isn't state-policed money to be given to an "artist" and his/her/its heirs for ever. Copyright is supposed to entice people to create more stuff, by allowing a small monopoly.

If and when that monopoly becomes too costly to society, the state gets to revoke it. Like it or hate it, the GPL doesn't really have that kind of cost to society. GPL'ed code is open for people to build on, to create with.

Beyond that, "GPL" is a license, not a copyright. Actions against entities under the GPL are not really "copyright" suits, as I understand it, but rather contract suits.

To sum up: you're hoping that people forget what purpose copyright has, and you're hoping that people don't understand the difference between "copyright" and "license".

It's not a contract, and hasn't been enforced that way -- all GPL2 violations are copyright infringement -- you're distributing someone else's work without their permission.

This is also why the AGPL is unenforceable bullshit (it attempts to restrain your right to run the software, not just distribution), and why the GPL3 is extremely questionable (restraining the system on which you distribute the work).

However, GPL is a license, and it does waive some of the "rights" that usually get claimed, as long as you observe the terms of the license. In that respect, it's identical to EULA's.

But the GPL doesn't do the "it's mine, all mine, my precious" sort of hoarding that the usual licensing does, so I doubt that we'd ever see anyone busting copyright because the GPL is used to create artifical scarities, or jury-rig markets or the other stuff Big Media does with "all right reserved" copyright.

The AGPL, now that's a EULA. It hits the trifecta of basic wrongheadedness, poor implementation, and total unenforceability. The only thing it's missing is the admonition against using it in a Nuclear facility or exporting it to Libya.