Originally posted by: exdeath
Originally posted by: tangent1138
Originally posted by: exdeath
Why is it different? Why should one person be required to exchange a day of labor for a fair days pay, while another person can exchange 1 day of labor for 99 years of pay and have it guaranteed by the government? Before recordable media, musicians earned their money by working hard and traveling the country giving concerts and actually performing., and they still do it today. CDs are just icing on the cake. Sports players, regardless if you think what they make is ridiculous or not, at least they out out in the field performing for that money. They don't play one game, make a recording of it, and sit on their butt for 99 years making money off of it while suing anybody who downloads a copy or happens to watch their friends copy for free.
Don't get me wrong, I do support people being paid for their work, but when does 'fair compensation for hard work' become 'wanting a free ride for all eternity' and suing anybody who doesn't fork over their $20 every time they happen to hear a song playing on any radio they walk by without owning the CD?
First of all, it doesn't take one day to make an album or movie. It can take months and years. Even then you're not guaranteed any money whatsoever.
Would you pick up garbage for a year on the HOPE that you might get paid?
This is the chance you take as an artist.
Secondly, if you buy a CD... you can listen to it over and over and over, every day for the rest of your life. One day of garbage pickup = one day. You still have to pay for the next day.
Also, you glossed over the pension analogy. Garbage men get pensions-- money they can live on long after they're able to pick up garbage. Musicians do not. Are you against pensions too? They get to sit on their butt for the rest of their life as well.
Obviously, I wish DRM was seamless and completely transparent. But I also wish people wouldn't pirate content with reckless abandon. In the same way, I wish I didn't have to locks on my car. It's annoying to turn the key everyday. But it seems people want to steal my car. Can a good car thief get by the lock/ alarm easily? Of course. But it does slow down people.
I'm not a garbage man so I can't comment on their compensation, but that was only an example that someone else posted. I could just as easily pick another occupation such as a fry cook; fry cooks should be able to work hard for a year, and get paid for life after they quit, right? They don't get pension. I am a programmer and aspiring game developer, so I do understand the other end of it from a limited perspective.
And as I said, I do agree that artists, be the work a book, game, movie, or music recording, deserve compensation for their work. And I don't fault dumb ass athletes and actors for having millions regardless of how ridiculous I may thing it is, because nobody is forcing me to contribute. But I do snicker at the brainless masses who complain how rich those people are while they are standing in line with their $100 tickets.
But throwing around lawsuits and becoming paranoid Nazi control freaks over everything I own in my own home with reckless abandon is just as bad if not worse. If we let this DRM panic get out of hand, before long, expect your microwave to have a internet connection, such that if you are caught popping a bag of popcorn while there is a movie in your DVD player, you are billed theatre prices for the popcorn. Also, the sensor on your DVD player sees that two friends are watching with you, so you get billed the additional $9.50 a ticket before you are allowed to hit play. And if you tamper with your microwave or bypass it by poping it on your stove top, you are guilty of violating the DMCA and face 10 years jail time and $250,000 fine. Extreme, but so close to the idea behind DRM that it's a a legit comparison. Anybody remember the Circuit City Divx DVDs that were strictly pay per view? They failed because consumers flocked to the non-DRM alternative. What alternative is there when they are forced with only DRM formats? Thats right, the bit torrent networks slow to a crawl from the excessive demand.
I think 'id' has it right.. Quake was what, 1995? Not even 10 years later, they released the source code and made it free for public use. Their choice, sure, but I commend a company that understands that it has to constantly innovate and release new products to make a living. I do not support the the company that exists for 20 years contributing and innovating absolutely jack squat while they subsist on intellectual property lawsuits without having ever produced a product.
I'm not proposing that artists are not entitled to compensation, but I am growing sick and tired of the "find a way to charge money for nothing on a continuous basis" get rich quick schemes that some of these industries are aspiring to these days. Related, but off topic, I am of the opinion that companies that do not actually produce something within a few years of filing for a patent, they lose rights to that idea for being squatters. I'm sick of hearing about companies that sneakily patented some vague general idea that is common sense 50 years ago because they worded it a certain way, sitting in the dark, waiting until that idea becomes widely adopted as part of society, then all of the sudden they want a slice of the pie only when someone else is successful. If they were so concerned about their copyrights being violated why didn't they try to stop it before the other guy made millions? Because they just want a effortless slice of the pie, thats why. Copyrighting vague ideas and common sense and filing lawsuits is the new get rich quick scheme.
Locks on your car, good for you. What if those locks where controlled by the dealer whenever they wanted, and there was a credit card slot right next to the handle and it was illegal to take it off under the DMCA? Hell, why are performance chips and after market modifications allowed? Some manufacturers go so far as to make it more difficult to modify your car's computer because they have other cars with the same computer and the same engine, but with more horsepower that they can sell for a higher price (Intel and multiplier locking comes to mind immediately...) Wouldn't circumventing that violate the DMCA? Who cares if you already paid for the car? It's not really yours after all, you're just paying $30,000 for a license for the right to use it in only in the ways the dealer says you can. That includes nickle and diming you every time you turn on the radio, use the wipers, the trunk, the AC, etc.
But it's not like that for cars, why should we accept it on our cell phones and DVD players? We don't put our credit card number on file with Microsoft so they can charge us $0.25 every time we change our desktop background, why do we accept essentially the same behavior from mobile phone providers?
I just wish people bought what they thought was worth paying for and we didn't need DRM. Oh wait, thats already happening... all the fuss is just the death cries of a dying industry struggling to justify it's own existence. And dying for reasons other than P2P and copying. You think people weren't already noticing the dishonesty of things like CDs being purposely under filled and under utilized and spread thin long before they could download MP3s? Don't believe that? Then why is the PS2 so successful, even the best selling console more than 5 years later even amongst next generation systems, even though it was the easiest system to pirate for from day one? Success stories like Microsoft and the PS2, two things more widely pirated than anything else, show that piracy is indeed a marginal problem and not the big dilemma that Hollywood would have you believe it is.
(And contrary to popular belief it was not rampant piracy that killed the Dreamcast, but lack of developers and dying consumer confidence in Sega after abandoning the Sega CD, 32X, Saturn, etc. Piracy is always a convenient scapegoat for a intellectual property based company digging it's own grave)
I do fully embrace capitalism and believe that producers of intangible content are entitled to compensation for the use of their works. But I also know capitalism, like communism, has flaws and grey areas. Unlimited monopolies is one of those areas. Hence the 'limited time exclusivity' clause. Someone else could just as easily come up with the same idea or written the same poem or come up with the same name for their store as you, they don't have to lose out forever just because you got the copyright first. By that same logic, we aren't paying someone royalties every time we sing 'mary had a little lamb' or every time we utilize a spring or a round object attached to an axle in our products, because someone once came up with that as an original idea over a million years ago. After a while, when you have enough people together, an idea, a word, a song, whatever, becomes common knowledge and is no longer something that can hold a copyright for the same reason I cannot copyright the word 'the'.
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