http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/ebookrights

If you think we’re all a bunch of thieves who are ‘being played’ because someone else gets to profit on our thievery… Kind of sounds like someone’s playing you.

This has HAPPENED ALREADY with Microsoft, not to mention a fair number of smaller enterprises. What’s worse is that it allows Amazon to retroactively brick parts of the files you bought, or even “un-sell” them without notification or your consent.

Anyone who tries to color this as “Elitist jerks and thieves vs poor starving sensible business people” is either a colossal moron, or an Astroturfer.

Record companies aren’t just executives. They are also engineers, producers, managers, etc, etc.

I’ll check out “local compensation plans,” thanks.

@53 (Nosehat)

Thanks for taking the time to listen to my music! I totally appreciate your comments — yeah, my wife likes Cutout Building too. Anyway, yes, I’m a real person – 37 year old programmer, if you want to know more — maybe not quite as green as you think. And I’m also sorry (to you and Cory also) that my first post was so inflammatory. My frustration with the anti-DRM movement has been growing for years. I really just want to make my point and argue against the typical reasons given for the anti-DRM stance, which I don’t agree with.

As I mentioned above, record companies do offer more than just recording facilities and means of distribution. In fact, they offer something very important which I’m sure you’ll remember from economics class: it’s called “division of labor.” When working within a record-company-like organization, the folks in the band can focus on what they are supposed to focus on — playing bass, or drums, or writing lyrics. Somebody else handles the engineering. Someone else manages deadlines and makes sure things get done. Someone else handles booking tours. In a way you can think of this as a big collaboration of people similar to the huge amount of collaboration that it takes to create a feature film. Sure, technology allows somebody to do it all in their living room — and for some projects maybe that’s fine. But you listen to an album like U2′s Achtung Baby for example — even if you don’t like that band — and try to deny that the recording team (producer, engineer, etc) has an integral role in making an album sound amazing. You think Bono and the Edge could have done all that themselves in Cubase in a bedroom? I doubt it. I know artists complained about record companies — Pink Floyd practically made a whole album about it (Wish You Were Here). But those same artists made millions of dollars, and there were plenty of other artists who knew better than to complain. Dark Side of the Moon has sold 43 million copies since it was recorded. That’s a lot of “selling CDs at shows.”

And that’s just it. By saying that we should get rid of the record companies, we are essentially telling up-and-coming bands that they have to do it all themselves. Engineer it yourself. Promote it yourself. Distribute it yourself. Forever — your whole artistic career will consist of driving around the country in a used van that you bought with money from your day job, and try to somehow turn a profit selling a few CD’s at shows. That doesn’t leave a lot of time to practice your instrument.

As far as getting famous first — there were quite a few blues guitar legends who died famous and poor. Fame isn’t going to guarantee you riches unless there is some legal mechanism that gets the money from the fans to you. DRM is part of a system that allows this.

Anyway, thanks again for the compliments. I hope, by sticking my neck out here, I’ve made at least a few people think twice about this anti-DRM crusade. I think it’s wrong, and I’ve been talking to people, and I’m finding I’m not the only one.

Thanks for listening.

Corporate greed and narrow mindedness will always win out.

Sure!

You can find me on soundcloud.com with the same username you see here — eeeeaaii

http://soundcloud.com/eeeeaaii

As you may know, soundcloud is a new service that was written up recently in Wired. What I personally like about it is that it gives up and coming musicians a chance to showcase their work, in a controlled/streaming environment (similar to MySpace, but more focussed exclusively on music). You can think of it as sort of a twitter-like social network for musicians. I only have a few songs up there right now, but I may put more. It’s not DRM exactly, but it does give me some control over my work, in the sense that I know who is listening to it, what they think about it (if they decide to comment on it) etc., etc. It’s good for listeners, because they can access and listen to new music, but it’s also good for the musicians (remember us? :)

Look folks: I know these are unpopular opinions. I don’t mean to antagonize anyone here. I really just want to raise some points that I’ve long felt but kept silent about, because (at least on the internet) it seems like I’m very much in the minority. I’m really being honest when I say that I’ve never really been swayed by any of the arguments against DRM — I’ve really tried, but it just doesn’t seem to make sense to me. I’m still open to hearing one (and I’ll make it a point to read Mr. Doctorow’s full talk)

Thanks for listening (to my opinions — and to my music, if you choose to check it out)

Cheers,
Jason

I have no stolen books, no stolen music, no stolen videos. Everything is either legally purchased from an online download store or copied from another medium. I’ve paid for all of it.

I’ve also paid four times for the same text book. Why? DRM. Do I use all four of those copies at the same time? Do I read with eight eyes? No. So why the hell did I have to pay for the book FOUR TIMES?

That’s why I’m against DRM. I’m against having to pay for a new format for every device I might use.

See here:
How to Digitize a Million Books
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/16434/

One company thinks that there’s enough of a market for automatic scanner: 1250 pages per hour, won’t even crack the spine – so you can bring the book back for a refund!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlOQuuLYavY

==========

anonymous @ 8: Any suggestions as to what’s the best alternative device to a kindle?

Well, I’ve had an iRex iLiad for more than a year now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILiad

It’s a bit pricey, but: the screen is large (a bit smaller that the new Kindle DX but bigger that the Kindle 2) and they’ve pretty much open-sourced the software. This was one of the deciding factors for me: I knew my device couldn’t be obsoleted by fiat.
http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Iliad_Overview_for_developers
http://developer.irexnet.com/pub/

And then there’s the (drool..!) iRex DR1000S:
http://www.irextechnologies.com/irexdr1000/features
If you read a lot of newspapers or technical PDF documents, it’s ideal. Battery life is not so good, but the USB port/charger is big improvement from the iLiads’. (Mind you, that huge hunk of glass is scary!).

Kindle/iRex comparisons here:
http://freshtech.wordpress.com/2009/06/14/kindle-2-vs-irex-iliad-2nd-edition/
http://freshtech.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/kindle-dx-vs-irex-digital-reader-1000-1000s/

With a “If you really want to get their attention, buy a competitor’s product.”

More info here:
http://bruji.com/articles/

What, exactly, is so wrong with renting (licensing) media? What is it so important that you be able to “own” those digital files? You only paid 99 cents for that song, and within a year you’re probably going to be tired of it and you’re not going to want to listen to it anymore.

When I was in high school I bought hundreds of cassette tapes. I don’t even know where they are now — I might have thrown them all away. Most of them got broken, melted, or lost. Even if I could find some of them, I don’t have a cassette player anymore to play them on. I’m not heartbroken about it — my musical tastes have moved on anyway. And if I really wanted to hear that Led Zeppelin song again it’s not going to break the bank to shell out 99 cents to buy it again.

I’ve heard that argument, but my answer is — so what? I’ve heard people say “it’s not the cost of the downloads, it’s the principle of the thing”. What principle? When you go to a concert, you don’t own the concert hall or the performers. You’re not allowed to go in anytime you want or make them play for you whatever you want. Does that violate your principles somehow? No, you just accept it, because to you it seems normal.

What I see as a frightening and disturbing trend with digital media is that there seems to be an overall perception of consumers that they are somehow owed unfettered access to the creative products of the folks who actually produce this stuff. And anything that inconveniences them or gets in the way is violating their rights somehow. I don’t buy it. Nothing lasts forever — not tapes, not 8-track cassettes, not LP’s, not CD’s, and not DRMed files. Buy it, listen to it a while, and move on.

And if you really don’t want to pay for a recording of me playing guitar, then go buy yourself a guitar and learn to play it yourself — then you can entertain yourself all you want. Meanwhile as long as you’re having me entertain you, I need to get paid, and I want some assurance that you’re not going to go give that file to 100,000 of your closest friends — because, dammit, you’re a total stranger and I don’t trust you. Get over it — why should I?

Any suggestions as to what’s the best alternative device to a kindle?

You’re actually a shill for the anti-DRM movement, right? Because nobody here has made any better arguments against DRM than you have.

Even if you stipulate to this, what on earth does DRM have to do with anyone (apart from DRM vendors) getting paid?

Or do you know something that the world’s preeminent cryptographers, computer scientists, and security experts don’t that leads you to believe that DRM stops copying?

I’ll bet you’re like those people who say “[Friedman-style capitalism|Marxism] really work, and all their failures in the world can be explained away through special pleading — there’s some way in which all those earlier experiments don’t count, but someday they’ll do it right and utopia will arrive.”

I’ll bet you’re about to type something like “Oh, but all those DRMs were imperfect, but here’s how a perfect one is possible, despite everyone else,” and then say something incredibly vague and technically ridiculous about how DRM can be expected to work.

Do I win my bet?

As to nothing lasting forever: people who bought unpersoned Plays For Sure and Open AG music probably expected it to last more than a year or two. The piano roll in my office is 110 years old and plays fine. And of course, within a mile of my office in Clerkenwell are dozens of booksellers who have books that are centuries old. “Forever” is a long time, but I’ll settle for the century that well-cared-for media can be expected to last (and I’ll thank you and your thieving friends in the entertainment industry to get out of the way of my preservation efforts aimed at keeping my property in good working order).

All these ad-hominem attacks on the character of the people who dislike DRM is both hilarious and dishonest. People stay away from DRM by the millions — only you and Mark Halprin believe that they’re all “bespectacled academics.”

Petitioning the government to change a law makes a lot of sense: You are stuck with the existing legal system whether you want it or not, so if you’re dissatisfied the reasonable thing to do is to work to change it.

Petitioning a company to change a product you don’t like makes much less sense to me. Nobody’s making you buy it, and there are a lot of other choices. When I’m at a store, I don’t get mad at the products I don’t want to buy–I just don’t buy them. Instead, I buy the things I want. Problem solved?

Nope, just a musician, writing songs because I love it, but wondering to myself — what’s the point of trying to get a record deal? What’s the point of touring, trying to get fans and a following? My day job will end up paying me more money.

That’s ok, all you DRM-haters can just keep listening to those same old songs that were recorded back in the days when artists got paid to write music. With the way things are going, there won’t even be a music industry in a few more years. And all you folks will realize, out of your greed, that you’ve killed the goose who laid the golden eggs.

Smart and talented people go where the money is. If there’s no money to be made in creating music, there won’t be any good music to listen to.

Is the deal that working artists who disagree with you (and who know a lot about technology) (these two factors may be related) are dismissed as “technorati?”

Cos you’re a moron who didn’t think to go to the bookstore instead.