The big-label recording industry, as we know it, will soon die. And the digital music delivery companies will kill them. But not because of piracy. It'll be because they will be better at the only job that is left for the recording industry to do: promotion and marketing.
Technology has made it possible for anyone to record music at home at low cost. Technology has made it possible for anyone to distribute that music world-wide on the internet for almost zero cost. But an unknown artist faces at least one critical problem: How do you get people to know you exist at all? You need marketing. You need promotion. The recording industry thinks that this will continue to be their job in a digital world. But once again they fail to see how technology will make them obsolete.
Right now the new Napster, Real Networks, iTunes, and a dozen other start-ups are trying to figure out how best to recommend new music to people based upon the music that they like. It's like Amazon.com's recommendations or Tivo's suggestions. Granted, some of those technologies are really lousy right now, but a lot of people are economically motivated to make them a lot better and soon. If Napster or iTunes makes these services better, it's money in the bank--they sell more tracks.
And while it's unclear whether the Dept. of Homeland Security will share their know-how, law enforcement agencies are ardently working on basically the same problem: How do you look at a set of relevant data points and predict something about a person? It might be looking at the music they've downloaded and predicting what other songs they will like or it could be looking at what library books they check out and predicting whether they will try to blow up federal buildings. But in both cases we are compiling databases of information and making predictions about human behavior.
And what happens when these technologies get really good? Well, for one thing we should worry some about our privacy and read the terms and agreements we click "I agree" on (and encourage our congress-critters to read the Patriot Act before voting "Aye!"), but the point here is that these advancing technologies have the potential to put the final nail in the recording industry's coffin. That unknown artist who records their own music and distributes it on the internet will also benefit from the advances in these recommendation/promotion technologies. The small group of people that do know about the artist's work inevitably have other likes that connect them to more potential fans. The best of these technologies can scale up exponentially in a friendster-like fashion. So, these potential fans get exposed to the unknown artist's music and if the music is good, they may like it. They may buy it. And the unknown artist's need for traditional promotion and marketing just decreased significantly.
Sure, any artist that goes on world-wide tours and tries to put CDs in every store on several continents is still going to have a manager and will use a lot of currently existing industry infrastructure. But their bargaining position when they come to the table with the recording industry is totally changed. In this quickly-approaching new world they will need a very limited set of promotion and marketing services that they may even contract out on a tour-by-tour or CD-release by CD-release basis. There will be few to no reasons for them to sign away all their rights to an industry that co-opts all their royalties. Technology will shift the power in these relationships to artists and when that happens, an oblivious industry will finally sputter out its last wheezing breath.
Today, Tuesday, February 24th, 2004, the web goes grey.
DJ Danger Mouse remixed Jay-Z's (new) The Black Album using exclusively samples from the Beatles' The White Album (apparently, every sound save Jay-Z's voice is from The White Album, "every kick, snare, and chord is taken from the Beatles White Album and is in their original recording somwhere [sic]."). Check out DJ Danger Mouse's Grey Album. Read the cease and desist letter from EMI.
He couldn't make this album legally in the U.S. So, this isn't some theoretical loss of creativity we face. The Copyright laws in the U.S. are broken. We should let the DJs create.
Think hard about this:
"This Court agrees with the Corley court that the purchase of a DVD does not give to the purchaser the authority of the copyright holder to decrypt CSS." - US Dist. Ct. for the Northern Dist. of California in 321 Studios v. MGM (2004).Umm. Boy is that dumb. If the purchaser of a DVD does not have the authority to decrypt CSS, which is absolutely necessary to view the contents of the DVD, then that means the purchaser of a DVD does not have the authority to view the contents of the purchased DVD. What are we buying, then? Expensive coasters?
The court actually claims that a DVD player itself, because it is licensed, has the authority to decrypt CSS, but a purchaser of a DVD does not. Somehow Judge Illston doesn't see the absurd consequence of this view that your DVD player can watch all the DVDs it wants. You just can't join in.
We're supposed to be happy that "321 itself stated, users can copy DVDs... by non-digital means." So, we are supposedly permitted to make non-digital copies. But this seems contradictory. If CSS is a copy-control mechanism, and if circumventing CSS is not allowed by any means other than one's licensed DVD player, then there's actually no allowable means of making that non-digital copy. Using one's eyes, one's memory, or a video camera on a tripod aimed at the TV (none of which are licensed by MGM) all seem to be circumventions of CSS. But, remember, circumventing CSS is supposedly illegal. So, is the court just contradicting itself? How is one supposed to make these legal copies?
Imagine, for instance, something potentially sold at Radio Shack that would connect between the DVD player and your TV screen and that would make a non-digital copy of the DVD onto VHS. On the one hand, something like this is supposedly legal. But, it's hard to see how such a device is significantly different from the very function of 321's software which is now illegal. Sure, 321's copies are digital, but the court doesn't claim to be making a digital/non-digital distinction dispositive. Oh, by the way, that device that connects between your DVD player and TV and makes non-digiital copies onto VHS is called a "VCR." That's right. On one reading of this opinion, your VCR is now illegal.
To avoid these absurd consequences the court would have to say that if you use a licensed DVD player to decrypt CSS and then some subsequent device merely makes a copy (probably even a digital one) then that would be legal. (Any electronics entrepreneurs follow that point? I'm dashing something off to the patent office right now!) The point is that to avoid the absurd consequences sketched above, the court has to be interpreted as saying that it's the unlicensed decryption of CSS that makes 321's software illegal, and nothing else. (The opinion actually says 321 could sell a version of their software that copies but doesn't decrypt.)
But this is a silly way to look at things. We don't give licenses to inanimate objects like DVD players. We give licenses to people. So it's just nutty to say that the purchaser of a DVD doesn't have an implied license to decrypt CSS. If Toshiba is licensed to make me a DVD player that decrypts CSS and is also licensed to sell me that player, then the part of the license that allows Toshiba to sell the player logically must allow the purchaser of that player the right to use the player for its intended purpose. Similarly, if MGM sells me a CSS-encrypted DVD, then they logically have to also be giving me a license to decrypt the contents of that DVD. Otherwise they're committing widespread fraud by selling useless merchandise. (Which may be true on independent grounds!)
This court's opinion is an unfortunate blow to fair use and even more unfortunately aggressively supports the DMCA. You've got seven days to buy this software (until February 26) unless 321 can get a stay of the injunction.
This is troubling. See the rap video that people are talking about. It reminds me of one of the things that makes me so angry about the Bush rhetoric. He repeatedly says he is fighting against people "who hate freedom" and who "hate our liberty" and so on. That's just idiotic on its face. No one prefers to be enslaved rather than free. What they hate is what everyone hates. They hate seeing people they know and love killed. They hate soldiers that glory in killing. That cheer. That think killing another human being is "awesome" and want to "do that again." But let's be clear. Just because I don't think Bush is their savior, doesn't mean I think Osama is. Bush is their enemy. Sure. But Osama is too. So is anyone that tells them to commit suicide. Their enemy is anyone that tells them to waste their lives in the taking of other innocent life. Their enemy is anyone that tells them that more killing is the answer to their problems. Their enemy is poverty. Their enemy is ignorance. Their enemy is the political structures of almost every country in the Middle East. Their enemy is the greed of politicians. Those things are our enemies too. We have to get new leadership in this country that sees this. That is willing to adopt a progressive foreign policy that tries to heal wounds rather than create new ones. And since such leadership could change their plight for the better as well as ours, regime change here is more important than regime change there.
Update: It seems the original link is no longer working. Here's the video in Real Audio format.
Update 6/23/04: MSNBC apparently played the video yesterday. Here is a larger and higher quality version where you can read more of the text. (.wmv format.)
Donald Rumsfeld claims not to recall Tony Blair's claim that Iraq could deploy WMDs within 45 minutes. Stunning. If, like Donald, you missed it, the claim that Iraq could deploy its deadly WMDs within 45 minutes appears FOUR times in the UK Dossier on Iraq, including Tony Blair's FOREWORD. I mean really. Give us a break.
Rumsfeld expects us to believe either that 1) he didn't even read the foreword to a intelligence dossier produced by our closest ally regarding the specific nature of the purported threat posed by a nation we were considering going to war with!? or 2) that despite the careful study of the dossier he made, as befits his job as Secretary of Defense, he now, only a year later, has no recollection of a key claim made in that dossier about the specific nature of the purported threat posed by Iraq!? That's absurd!
In either case, he deserves to lose his job. If the first option above is true and Rumsfeld likes to play ostrich, then he should be impeached, fired, and charged criminally for gross dereliction of duty. If instead, his memory is that bad, then he must also be fired for not having the requisite competence that the job requires during a time of war. I mean really. If this is true then Rumsfeld may have also forgotten that we have troops in Afghanistan! We sent them there well OVER a year ago, which we've learned is beyond his memory's capacity. No wonder troops are complaining about their longer than usual tours of duty! The Secretary of Defense has forgotten what he did with them!
Now, I wrote the last few sentences as a joke, but I'm sad to report that it's actually true! This article reports about a Florida unit that kept having its return delayed. When concerned family members called to inquire about their return, they were told that the troops were already back in Florida! Of course it turns out, as the family members already knew, the troops were still in Baghdad! The article actually says, "It seems the mix-up came from the upper levels of the Department of Defense." Upper levels, huh? They asked Rummy!!!
"Mister President, can you give us the names of three National Guard Service colleagues who served with you between May 1972 and October 1973?"Now a journalist needs to ask that question before Karl Rove starts thinking up the President's answer for him. Also, read from another Guardsman at the time what is currently the most e-mailed piece at the Washington Post.
Aaron Swartz is pointing out the solution to the biggest problem facing the United States today. Or at least, that's what I called it about eleven months ago on this blog. The impending war and our helplessness to do anything about it led me to say,
the most important issue facing this country today is, of all things, campaign finance reform. (emphasis in original!)I still believe this and am amazed at the brilliance of the solution Aaron advocates. Of course, that may be because I suggested something similar last October. I said,
I believe this may be the most pressing issue facing our country. Yes, worse than terrorism. The terrorists of 9/11 struck once over two years ago, but the corporate terrorists that control our government are terrorizing our country every day. I want radical reform. The government should give the candidates from each party that had at least x% of the vote in the last election the exact same amount of money (and let me tell you it ain't 100 million) and should mandate the major networks give each of these candidates the exact same amount of air time (free). Remember, they are the people's airwaves and we just lease them to NBC, CBS, ABC, etc. For an important civic cause like this, we can take the airwaves back.The key difference in the plan Aaron advocates and mine is that his plan provides greater access. My party-based prior-election percentage idea tends to lock out third parties, whereas the solution Aaron advocates opens the process up to anyone who can complete the $5 fund-raising scheme. I am pretty much sold on this version, although I do need to learn more about it. It has to be structured so as to avoid the problem California faced in its ridiculous recall election where there where over 100 candidates because getting on the ballot had such a low barrier to entry. That was absurdly costly as it was, so we certainly cannot have in place a system that also gives all these crackpots several million dollars for a big campaign. But the fact that such a scheme is working in two states already is great news on this front. I love it. Now, let's force our Congress (and our states) to adopt such reforms! You can write your reps now.
Who said it? President G. W. Bush or Emperor Palpatine? (Star Wars Trilogy) Read over these fourteen quotations and try to guess. I don't want to spoil it for you, but the really funny part is when you change your mind three or four times..."That one's Bush. No, wait. Palpatine. No. No. I'm gonna say Bush." link courtesy Eyeteeth.
A lot of fuss is being made lately as the Bush White House has realized that its best strategy on the non-existent WMDs in Iraq is to bite the (missing) bullet and admit that they aren't going to find them. The next step in their strategy is to distract everyone with investigations into how they could have been so misled by "intelligence failures." The point of these so-called investigations will be to guarantee that something like this never happens again.
Hooey.
The best explanation for these "intelligence failures" yet published was already available back in October 2003. Seymour Hersh's article, The Stovepipe, in the New Yorker. Hersh explains how the Bush administration sought out unfiltered and unvetted intelligence in an almost psychotic attempt to be misled. It's a stunning piece of journalism. Read it.
But even if the story Hersh tells becomes well known, I think it still paints the Bush White House in too positive a light. The truth that is even more accurate than Hersh's is already out as well. Paul O'Neill has already told us that this Bush Administration came into office dead set on war with Iraq. After September 11, they had what they wanted, an excuse. Or more accurately, a motivator for the public. They could dangle this threat of WMDs in front of a frightened public more effectively after 9/11. Wolfowitz has already told Vanity Fair that, "For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."
So, while investigations into so-called intelligence failures are cute, they don't get to the real problem: Bush lied. They all lied. They knew they were making it up all along. How could anyone have watched them in the days leading up to the war, going around stumping for the war like it was a political campaign, (ahh, but it was a political campaign, that's the point), and not realize they were lying?
What has really happened recently is that the Bush Administration is looking ahead to the election. They know that anyone who voted for the war (Kerry/Edwards) will be able to legitimately say that they were duped by the White House into voting for the war, and that it's not their fault that they were misled. (It's unclear that we should accept this, given how many people saw through the Bush lies, and the high standard we should hold our elected officials to, but most seem willing to accept this line of reasoning.) The Bush Administration is scared that they won't have a retort to that stance on the war, so they are jumping on the bandwagon: "We were duped too!" they'll say. "It was those darn intelligence failures! Which, we have investigated, and corrected, and now that will never happen again." Bull.
We shouldn't let them get away with once again revising history. The facts are: The Bush Administration was never duped about the WMDs in Iraq. Rather, they lied about the WMDs in Iraq and duped the country. The "intelligence failure" that really matters is that so many people keep on believing this White House.
[UPDATE 2/2/2004: It turns out I'm not the only conspiracy nut that believes this. Someone just sent me this Mother Jones article. Wow.]