RIAA/MPAA: the Greatest Threat To Tech Innovation 278
TAGmclaren writes "The Harvard Business Review is running an article stating that it's not India or China that are the greatest threat to technological innovation happening in America. Rather, it's the 'big content' players, particularly the movie and music industry. From the article: 'the Big Content players do not understand technology, and never have. Rather than see it as an opportunity to reach new audiences, technology has always been a threat to them. Example after example abounds of this attitude; whether it was the VCR which was "to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone" as famed movie industry lobbyist Jack Valenti put it at a congressional hearing, or MP3 technology, which they tried to sue out of existence.'"
The VCR? No (Score:3, Insightful)
The printing press was/is the greatest threat. That's where it all started. The first "Bertamax" case..
Simplistic view (Score:5, Insightful)
IP Laws as a whole are flawed (Score:5, Insightful)
Treating all IP in every industry the same way is flawed to begin with and the barrier to entry to stake a claim on an idea is way too easy.
The whole point of IP is to encourage innovation by providing incentive for the inventor. Today's IP laws are a flimsy shadow of that. Studios and IP troll companies collect the rewards and inventors are relegated to idea-generating grunts.
There is no inherent morality to ownership of an idea; it is something granted by the public to individual holders of IP for the benefit of the public. If at any time, said laws are detrimental to the public, it should be repealed.
Of course, that would require a government that isn't bought and paid for and a populace that's at least decently educated and informed.
time for copyleft for music (Score:4, Insightful)
consumers are obviously better off without mafiaa
it is my belief artists are better off without mafiaa. the evil communist business model in question is... the same business model as good ol' radio from the 1950s: give your content away for free. should we dig up senator mccarthy and tell him wolfman jack was endorsing a communist business model? make cash in related ways: gigs, ancillary revenues, advertising, endorsements, etc. on the internet, you are giving away your digital content for free, for free advertising, exposure. then you capitalize on that
of course, not all artists will take that route. that's fine. i think copyleft content will take off regardless as a valid zone of content that pays dividends for everyone who is not the beetles or the rolling stones. because really, with the mafiaa, unless you are the beatles or the rolling stones, some middleman is making cash, not the artist. they write the contracts in such a way you're screwed as an artist unless you have clout
so we just need to reach artists, and rather than confront IP laws directly, just route around them with a new generation with a new understanding: artists who want exposure more than anything else
More important is the government’s collusion (Score:5, Insightful)
1. It’s great to see this coming (finally) from a well-respected business source. The Lessigs, Doctorows and even Nissons of this world are potentially dismissed as impractical ideologues; not so Harvard Business.
2. The things that really makes me sad and angry is the continuing complicity of the US government in the RIAA & MPAA’s money-grabbing, price-fixing, collusive monopolistic ransom-holding of contemporary cultural output. From the anti-democratic secret ACTA treaty shenanigans to Joe Biden’s White House lunches with the Big Content and law enforcement, even Obama, by far the most technologically forward thinking president ever, has completely failed to comprehend the nature of the problem, despite excellent books on the subject, notably Lessig’s Free Culture.
I thought Obama would change this, because his election campaign was funded by crowd-sourcing and he railed against the “Special interests” in public debates.
It’s the public’s interests vs. those of a business elite with a powerful lobby. Guess where the Administration’s placing its support. Change we can believe in, indeed.
What about the children? (Score:4, Insightful)
to further this topic (Score:5, Insightful)
Meaning, it's RIAA and the MPAA failure to properly price their products at a reasonable level that makes the consumer believe that the purchase is reasonable. I mean, if a movie to buy was $1 or $2, would you purchase it or DL it? If a music CD was $3, not $20, would you own your own copy? Or if they offered monthly subscriptions, like the Netflix model, would you subscribe or pirate?
Not only are they missing the boat and stifling innovation, they're attacking and going after consumers who don't believe the purchase is worth the money and then lobby governments to put in CRAZY laws that illegally downloading a movie can cost you $250,000 + 5 years in jail if you're charged and found guilty. Yet get in your car drunk and kill a family of 5, spend 2-3 years in jail + $50,000 in legal fees.
Is it me, or does the who copyright debate sound complete like corporate sheit they've bought and paid for and then rammed down our throats?
If Intellectual property really is property (Score:5, Insightful)
Why cant there be a property tax on it?
Re:obvious? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please allow me to clarify:
Gramaphone == Threat to live performances!
Radio == Threat to the Gramaphone industry!
Blank Cassettes == Threat to the Record (gramaphone) industry!
Burnable CD's == Threat to the Record (and Cassette) industry!
Mp3's + web == We're all gonna die!
Re:Simplistic view (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Simplistic view (Score:5, Insightful)
These corporations are not a threat to tech innovation: Voter apathy is the threat. In every country where intellectual property concepts have been strengthened by legal precident, it has done so because the issues are too complex for the average person to understand. They are uninformed, and unable to feel any sentiments towards what is happening one way or another. They may vaguely understand that it is wrong, but being unable to form a cohesive argument against it, they shrug and move on.
In my experience, inability to form a cohesive argument doesn't stop people from having strong convictions. I won't politicize this with examples, but there are a lot of people out there who are very passionate about issues despite having incoherent, nonsensical rationale.
It's intellectually dishonest to place the blame on a handful of individuals and corporations for this situation. If you really want to drill down to the root cause of this, it's our poor public education system and a lack of training on using critical thinking skills that has caused this, and many other, social ills. And that's true globally, not just in the United States. Wherever you cut back education and voter participation falls, corruption grows and corporations become more powerful.
The problem is that they don't care, though. I'm not sure how you can educate the apathy out of them. I remember school, and I remember that people were apathetic then, too. If it wasn't something the directly impacted their priorities, they tuned out and couldn't give a shit. What's unfortunate is that there's not necessarily anything about this issue that *does* directly impact their priorities, so provided you can't change that thinking, there may be no way to get people to care. At least no way to get them to care enough to research and critically examine these issues themselves.
Also, I'm not even sure it's a skill you can teach everyone. I've run into some staggeringly irrational people, and I'm skeptical that it's all because their school didn't do its job.
Re:Simplistic view (Score:5, Insightful)
Voter apathy is merely a symptom of a larger problem -- a legislative system that decentralizes decision making so much that elected officials are accountable only to their local constituencies and large campaign contributors and a legal system that is focused on the minutiae of rules and processes and that is all too content to lose sight of the bigger picture. We should accept low voter turnouts in the US as a given for the time being and try to work out a system that will optimize responsible decision making on the part of elected officials.
Re the subject of this article -- until IP law is revised, the RIAA/MPAA will basically have free reign to do silly things. US IP law is badly broken, something we've been complaining about on Slashdot for years. It will not be revised until there is sensible campaign contribution reform and an organized grassroots political movement.
Not big content---big everything. (Score:5, Insightful)
Big Oil is why you fight wars.
Big Insurance is why you can't have the health care you want.
List goes on.
In the end, it is that Big has too much sway in the political system. They pay little tax yet have a disproportionate amount of influence.
Re:Simplistic view (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the problem is more along the lines of ignorant politicians. The USA is not a truely democratic society - ie we do not vote on every law that comes down, but instead we are a representative democracy. You really cannot vote for someone on a certain issue of none of your candidates understands the issue. In the few cases where a political party emerges that does understand (like the Pirate Party or something), they normally only have strong convictions about technologies and copyright. While that is all important, a politician with no major party backing, who has no clear cut agendas on things such as the economy, healthcare, education, enviornment, or any of the other hot topics, is probably going to recieve little votes.
Sadly, in the way the US government is setup, about the only way that progress is going to be made is if Party leaders come out, set forth guidelines of where the party stands in matters of copyright, get current politicians behind them, and then see where the votes lead. A half-dozen Congressmen who understand copyright and technology issues are probably going to have a hard time pushing reform through Congress if the other 400 members don't even know what an iPod or an MP3 or bittorrent even is.
Re:Copyright Lawsuits (Score:3, Insightful)
The net is already in a state where a misclick can send you to jail. Examples:
1) Accidentally hitting a web page that contains images that are considered child porn where you live.
2) Accidentally downloading copyrighted content that was illegally posted (like watching a youtube video, which has been prosecuted in some countries).
3) Buying something online. Perfectly legit. Except you may now owe use tax to your local government, and will not be informed of this until several years later when the interest is sufficent to wipe you out.
4) Buying something online which is (unknown to you) illegal where you live (but legal from whence it is being sold).
5) Posting an opinion in a forum, only to be sued by someone who dislikes that opinion.
6) Accidentally downloading a trojan that uses your computer as a proxy server for some kind of illegal content or activity.
7) Accidentally leaving your wireless router unsecured and being held responsible for the illegal activities that strangers use it for, without your knowledge.
8) Accidentally giving your child unmonitored access to the computer, and being held responsible for the illegal activities in which your child (possibly, innocently) engaged.
That's just what I can think of off the top of my head.