Oatmealing and the new practice of ethical bittorenting

I'd feel way too uncomfortable doing anything else.

As Thomas demonstrated, there is an obvious difference between copying and murder.

The question, here, is not whether copying is illegal. Clearly it is.

But we have an extremely large portion of the population that engages in copying.

We don't have roving bands of murderers, though.

Clearly there is a disconnect between what the public thinks is acceptable, and what the law says is acceptable.

Tsar is comparing that state with things like the Civil Rights movement and the Women's Sufferage movement, and I'm not certain that he's wrong. (emphasis added, obviously)

Consider for a moment how were the profits of the “old” music industry won: By subjecting listeners and musicians — and indeed, our very culture — to a laundry list of horrendous commercial exploitation. Price fixing, payola, unpaid royalties, market monopolies, ticket surcharges, obscenely exploitative record contracts, manufactured popularity, censorship, perpetual copyright and destruction of fair use and the public domain… the list goes on and on. In short, the old way of doing things sucked and we don’t care if a few of that era’s successful artists no longer get mailbox money for music they recorded decades ago. We certainly don’t care if the record industry, which enabled these injustices, dies a slow, public death.

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Today’s musicians are held in higher esteem by listeners than ever before, and it’s the industry that has lost their respect (and money), due to a history of unethical behavior.

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Fans formerly had no apparatus to directly compensate artists. Now that they have tools like Kickstarter and Bandcamp, we’re seeing millions of dollars pouring directly into musician’s pockets.

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That’s the thing about asking our generation to fix the record industry. We’re already doing it. We’re connecting artists directly to fans and bringing back patronage, a far less exploitative model that is emerging as the foundation of the new music career. We’re using crowdfunding to finance our work. We’re using digital tools to democratize distribution and licensing, with fairer publishing deals. Instead of basing our entire career on one album dropping or flopping huge, we’re ditching the LP in favor of a steady stream of singles, what fans really want. Apps are the new album. Production is going more lo-fi but is becoming more diverse and original in the process. These are the viable solutions I was talking about earlier. It’s all actually quite liberating because none of it involves being exploited by the music industry, and if it does, it’s certainly far less than in the past.

HBO Now Available on Hulu in Japan
by Alison Nastasi. Posted on 6:21 pm Thursday Jun 28, 2012


HBO has decided to license select series to Hulu… in Japan. While we won’t be seeing the newest [episodes] of Game of Thrones or True Blood stateside, it could plant the seeds for future markets.

Last week, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion in Flava Works v. myVidster, a case that raises questions about embedded videos and copyright infringement. Judge Richard Posner, who wrote the opinion, has a reputation for producing memorable and influential ruling, and this one is no exception. (You might remember that Judge Posner also recently issued an important ruling in a patent case between Apple and Motorola.) In reversing the injunction granted against myVidster, the Seventh Circuit wholly rejected the premise that embedding, linking to, or watching infringing videos constitutes infringement itself.

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In the ruling, Judge Posner also draws the meaningful distinction between copyright infringement, theft, and other actions that may reduce a company's income. Rhetoric from the copyright lobby often conflates these disparate concepts.

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For example, as Judge Posner wrote, a Flava Works employee embezzling corporate funds may be stealing and reducing the company’s income, but he is not infringing copyright. A person who sneaks into a movie theater to watch a copyrighted movie — like one who bypasses the Flava Works paywall by watching embedded videos on myVidster — isn’t infringing, either. Stealing a book from a bookstore and reading it “is a bad thing to do,” says Judge Posner, but again it is not copyright infringement. Considering how companies have abused copyright law for years to squelch competition and silence unflattering speech, this recognition is a major one.

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It's not a new song. Big content has been struggling for years to figure out how to stop shooting itself in the feet and legs and genitals and torso on digital content. It's Apple taking years to drop its draconian DRM from iTunes sales. Or it's Amazon—the biggest bookseller in the world—locking down its own ebooks, even though they often cost exponentially more than simply buying a paperback. Or even Adele, lovely Adele, not having 21 on Spotify because her people didn't want free customers to be able to listen to her. And it's certainly HBO tying its brilliant HBO Go streaming to an archaic cable subscription. Buying things, or getting them legally, is still a giant pain in the ass. Insanely, counterintuitively, infuriatingly, it's even worse for especially popular content, like Avatar or 21.

Well, of course they could "go without." Everyone has that option. Do without. That's the "honorable" way.

But let's look at this in a more realistic way. What exactly does "doing without" do for the content creator? How does "not purchasing" (or not having the option to purchase) the disputed content do anything for the creators? Because the bottom line in both scenarios is that $0 has made its way from the potential customers to the people desiring the income.

If everyone just "does without," how does this improve the situation for either the content creator or the customers? Once you've taken the piracy out of it, all you've got left is a set of lousy options that do nothing for everyone involved. If rights holders are happier merely saddling up their high horse and riding to the nearest moral peak, so be it. Riding that horse won't make you any richer, though. All it does is further separate you from your potential income.