An imaginary place in a reactionary time

You needn't be worried citizen. In the future only the guilty need worry. Imagine it citizens, a world where no one need fear the deviance of the wicked. We will all be tracked via our very own System Identification Chip and cameras placed in all areas. First just public, but then for our own safety, all areas will have cameras. Every movement will have it's paticular point of prescence on the Citizen Protection Network. Any criminal activity will easily be indentified, and punished from a remote location by Citizen Protection Agents. Happy day citizens.

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

It's already here, comrades.

Last week, I went to a meeting where a guy handed out a map of Downtown Chicago, with all the surveillance cameras plotted on it (government, traffic, private.)

Except for one blindspot (oddly, on the corner where my office building is located,) the whole Loop is covered (except for the alleys.)

Oh well, I've always been a fan of alleys anyway.

Are you delibrately baiting me, Ffej?

I mean, here you have a lwayer who doesn't believe there should be such things as "intellectual property", and who eagerly anticipates the day when the recording industry's business model fails, sticking up for intellectual property and the failed business model.

Bricklin's article is bone-headed, and blithely ignores the expressed concerns of artists: "Ok, we figured out a way to steal your creations, so you're just gonna have to find a another way to make living." Tell that to any programmer who has copyrighted or patented his code, and watch him scream bloody murder.

"Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" was Jefferson's gloss on Locke's "Life, liberty and property." And, besides, our system was not founded on the Declaration of Independence -- the Constitution was a radical, Madisonian rejection of Jefferson's Enlightenment-founded Declaration.

Take this example:

"Again: These laws do not make works property, they are just schemes that enhance exclusivity and scarcity that help bring in some money from performance where the physical nature of the art does not provide it. They are not mimics of physical exclusivity, which in any case, themselves vary from art form to art form.)"

Total bullshit. He could say the same thing about ANY persoanl property (and he'd get no argument from me conceptually.)

Where are the cvoices of the artists' in this debate? Madonna's "What the fuck do you think you're doing" probably speaks for most artists on this subject.

Again, I'm not even sure I accept the notion of "property", let alone "intellectual property." And I'm no fan of the music industry, or the way artists generally do business.

But I do care about artists, enough to respect the choices they have made (and not choices forced on them by theft of their creations by unethical techies.)

sorry, i wasn't listening. i had a clearchannel(tm) radio station on and it was playing music.

for free. music that wasn't paid for, music for which the artist was charged money for. the labels give away prom copies of cd's to radio stations and charge the recording artists for doing this, sometimes multiple times under the catagory of promotions and marketing.

radio stations will play these songs several times a day. each time it a song is played over the radio, a lossy version is copied to the transmitter, which then broadcasts it to a lot of people. who get it copied through their recievers, with further loss to the original.

millions of lossy copies a day. from unpaid for master copies. master copies for which the artist is charged.

it sells cd's, so no one, not even the small time artists who's publishing royality is screwed everytime they get played and the statiscal sampling techniques used by ASCAP and BMI pays the bigger artists.

compare this to file swapping.

people (multiple sales) buy cds.
people rip their cds. people put lossy copies up for trading. files get copies.

not everyone rips. not everyone who copys a tune from a swapper hands it off to someone else. most people who grab copies have already bought the cd/lp, and are looking for a more convienent form (oddly true: a lot of companies don't have cdrom drives in their computers to keep unautherized software off the machines; some people don't rip their own [a lot of people think it's too hard, some think you need special hardware] some people only have computers at work, and don't want to bring/can't bring personal item to work, some have lost or lent out the media.) copying a tune doesn't preclude you from purchasing it on cd later--it's statiscally proven that more swappers buy the cd after getting a free lossy copy then most radio listeners.

almost immedetely after napster was closed down, cd sales supposedly tanked (actually, the industry cut artists rosters and releases, cut back on production, and jacked prices.) the riaa blamed napster. the artists got screwed, and guess what? the riaa collects on the new digital copies, not the artist.

all about lossy copies that worse fidelity then fm radio.

hey, while your at it, let's hear you piss on all those used cd and book stores that rip off the artists. no royalties there, not in america. shit, joe judd supposedly just bought a farm in arkansas off the backs of the artists.

meanwhile, i'm listening to the radio, for free, and the artists are paying for it.

poor stupid artists.