The RIAA and French Button-Makers

Alien54 writes "Requiring permission to innovate? Feeling entitled to search others' property? Getting the power to act like law enforcement in order to fine or arrest those who are taking part in activities that challenge your business model? Don't these all sound quite familiar? Centuries from now (hopefully much, much sooner), the actions of the RIAA, MPAA and others that match these of the weavers and button-makers of 17th century France will seem just as ridiculous."

other examples of history repeating itself

[circletimessquare]

in the mid 1800s, it was customary for the usa to give the finger to european copyright laws and publish any book they wanted to, without any royalties sent to the old world

now we have the usa whining to china/ thailand/ indonesia/ etc to enforce american IP laws, with beijing playing lipservice for political and economic reasons while on the streets of hong kong you can still buy $10,000 worth of software bundled on a CD/ DVD for $3

and obviously, in 150 years, china will be issuing diplomatic myspace invectives to azerbaijan for stealing it's genetic code for it's zero G, no atmosphere moon crops... or whatever

Page Not Found

[gQuigs]

http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/085eb68e1d35f85a0 11622abd62ced01/index.html [mirrordot.org]

Re:/.ed

[Anonymous Coward]

No it's not, but if you can't get at it, or if it does get slashdotted, here's the text:

History Repeats Itself: How The RIAA Is Like 17th Century French Button-Makers

As regular readers know, I've been working through a series of posts on how economics works when scarcity is removed [techdirt.com] from some areas. I took a bit of a break over the holidays to catch up on some reading, and to do some further thinking on the subject (along with some interesting discussions with people about the topic). One of the books I picked up was one that I haven't read in well over a decade, but often recommend to others to read if they're interested in learning more about economics, but have no training at all in the subject. It's Robert L. Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers [amazon.com]. Beyond giving readers a general overview of a variety of different economic theories, the book actually makes them all sound really interesting. It's a good book not necessarily because of the nitty gritty of economics (which it doesn't cover), but because it makes economics interesting, and gives people a good basis to then dig into actual economic theory and not find it boring and meaningless, but see it as a way to better understand what these "philosophers" were discussing.

Reading through an early chapter, though, it struck me how eerily a specific story Heilbroner told about France in 1666 matches up with what's happening today with the way the recording industry has reacted to innovations that have challenged their business models. Just two paragraphs highlight a couple of situations with striking similarities to the world today:

"The question has come up whether a guild master of the weaving industry should be allowed to try an innovation in his product. The verdict: 'If a cloth weaver intends to process a piece according to his own invention, he must not set it on the loom, but should obtain permission from the judges of the town to employ the number and length of threads that he desires, after the question has been considered by four of the oldest merchants and four of the oldest weavers of the guild.' One can imagine how many suggestions for change were tolerated.

Shortly after the matter of cloth weaving has been disposed of, the button makers guild raises a cry of outrage; the tailors are beginning to make buttons out of cloth, an unheard-of thing. The government, indignant that an innovation should threaten a settled industry, imposes a fine on the cloth-button makers. But the wardens of the button guild are not yet satisfied. They demand the right to search people's homes and wardrobes and fine and even arrest them on the streets if they are seen wearing these subversive goods."

Requiring permission to innovate [techdirt.com]? Feeling entitled to search others' property [techdirt.com]? Getting the power to act like law enforcement in order to fine or arrest [techdirt.com] those who are taking part in activities that challenge your business model? Don't these all sound quite familiar? Centuries from now (hopefully much, much sooner), the actions of the RIAA, MPAA and others that match those of the weavers and button-makers of 17th century France will seem just as ridiculous.

Re:It's all related!

[Billosaur]

It may be modded funny, but the Jacquard Loom was the precursor of the modern punch-card computer. I remember from James Burke's original "Connections" series that the idea of registering patterns on a card led to the invention of a rudimentary computing system used to track the US Census (I think it was the 1890 Census, but my memory is flaky).

Re:other examples of history repeating itself

[HugePedlar]

Even more ironic: The film industry set itself up in California in the far West to avoid (by way of lots of geography) all those nasty patents on filming techniques that existed on the East Coast. Hollywood would never have existed had not the film studios decided to break IP law.

Re:Bad analogy

[initialE]

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/15/20 1259 [slashdot.org]
O'rly? They're already trying to tell you what you can do with the media you create and publish.

Re:There's a key difference here

[hummassa]

You might also say that the mandatory DRM in ipods hurts bands who want their music shared by keeping it from being shared by the uninitiated.

s/mandatory DRM in ipods/mandatory DRM in iTMS/

the DRM is not mandatory in iPods.

Re:There's a key difference here

[fireboy1919]

Here you go. [torrentfreak.com]

The big deal is that it only affect music CDRs. Not all CDRs.

The only reason I can think to use music CDRs is if you're using a standalone CD recorder which will only take music CDRs (this is a common, though artificial limitation).

Re:There are more examples of outdates businesses

[operagost]

Rome used to have a railroad [wikipedia.org]. I'd blame NY's economic policies and high property taxes more for the sad state of Rome.

Dont go THAT far away...

[xtracto]

In Mexico City central avenue (Eje 1) or Tepito market [wikipedia.org] you can buy Autodesk Maya Unlimited 8.5 for $3.0 the DVD. And games are usually $1 for each CD.

That is why I laugh REALLY hard when I read that RIAA is going to start prosecuting P2P file downloaders in Mexico...

Re:other examples of history repeating itself

[PDMongo]

Not trying to start a flame war, just sort of thinking out loud.

Because a manufactirer sets the MSRP at a certain level, does that really set an intrinsic value of that object? It has been a while since economics classes, but I am thinking that if the market is only willing to pay $3 for something doesn't that make it worth $3 rather than $10,000 or any other arbitrary value set by the manufacturer?

The whole question of piracy aside, software is only "worth" whatever someone is willing to pay for it, and that worth is specific to that someone. Something worth $100 to one may not be worth anything to another.