On Thu, Aug 17, 2006, Eran Tromer wrote about "Re: DMCA ן?½??ן?½??ן?½?¨ן?½?¥ - ן?½?¢ן?½??ן?½?¨ן?½?? ן?½??ן?½?¦???????¨": > You're ignoring my argument about the government is the only body in > position to create such a business without restricting people's freedom > and creativity by instating copyright laws and employing DRM.
I think you are wrong. Imagine we had a "all-you-can-hear" Ipod buffet. You pay Apple $10 (or whatever) a month, and you can download as many songs as you want. But now you say that Apple will, or indeed must, use DRM on the songs it gives you. But why??? Why should the copyright owners ask Apple to "protect" the songs they give you? After all the same songs are already available on the Internet from other sources! Once this obvious fact dawns on copyright owners - that no matter what DRM they use, the same music will always be available from other "pirate" sources without DRM - they will see the futility of DRM and stop using it. So Apple can already sell a music buffet now, without needing any new laws, without DRM, or without any government backing. All they need is for music companies to get off their high horse, and understand that "selling records", a business that lasted for a little less than a century, may be ending and that (relatively) cheap all-you-can-hear music buffet's may be tomorrow's business. By the way, think of public libraries - which unfortunately are seriously declining in Israel (according to a recent study, 5 years ago 40% of the families used them, today 20% of the families use them). It's more-or-less a buffet of books - read as many books as you want. You can't actually "keep" the book, but this is just an irrelevant detail (if you want to reread the book you can always go back to the library and get it). When libraries were invented, did the government need to make a special tax to give the book printers some of the revenue they could have had if libraries hadn't existed? Of course not. The book printers were far less greedy than today's music and movie sellers, and getting paid by the library was enough for them - even if they could theoretically make more money if all libraries went up in smoke. > > If the government wants to abolish copyright, fine. Let's try that. They > > tried it in the USSR, and as far as I hear it wasn't a disaster > > You mean the USSR had no copyrights but an alternative mechanism to > fairly compensate authors based on the the citizens' preference and > consumption habits? Fascinating, can you tell me more? Unfortunately, no. I only heard rumors to that effect. I understood that like most everything else, creations belonged to the government, not to the authors, and like every one, these authors were supplied with (less than) what they need. Perhaps someone who lived in the USSR can confirm/deny? > *That* would be a bad idea indeed. There has to be a mechanism for fair > distribution of the collected money -- again, based on the the citizens' > preference and consumption habits. This is obviously the hard (and > perhaps infeasible) part of this approach. But imagine the consequences > if we came up with a a nice, fair way to do it! My guess is that it will be just as fair as today's "channel 1" represents the interests of the population :-) -- Nadav Har'El | Thursday, Aug 17 2006, 24 Av 5766 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |----------------------------------------- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |The socks in my drawer are like http://nadav.harel.org.il |snowflakes: No two are alike. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
