John Dvorak comments on Napster

[javasaurus]

Napster is all but gone from the news, though lawsuits related to music piracy still continue. Still, John C. Dvorak's column in PC Magazine this month laments the loss of the music swapping service.

While Dvorak attacks the music industry for driving Napster away, and while his comments are valid, he ignores one thing. The copying of music against the wishes of the copyright holder is illegal. Once we get rid of the sanctity of copyright, what's next, patents? Dvorak's claims that the music industry would, as a whole, enjoy greater prosperity by encouraging free music-swapping services like Napster, and he may be right. But a copyright holder should be able to choose whether or not to participate.

Comments

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

"The copying of music against the wishes of the copyright holder is illegal."

Fine. Only the copyright holder is generally the music label, even though the Artist paid for the work they created. The standard industry practice of the music business is contracted theft and slavery.

There are artists who WANT to let people share their files because they know it increases album sales and concert tix and attention, and can't because their labels hold that slavery clause and say "we speak for your work because we own it".

The finest example of how sharing the work made everybody richer is the Grateful Dead. They basically had a complete hands-off policy, eventually (like Phish) turning into an encouragement policy, of concert taping and tape-trading, and all it did was turn them from an arena band into a stadium band...and didn't hurt their CD sales in the slightest.

"Once we get rid of the sanctity of copyright, what's next, patents?"

I wouldn't mind. Software patents and their application, where the concept is what's patented and not the specifics of the implementation, are poorly applied and interpreted and have actually reached the point of slowing down innovation and research rather than encouraging it, which means that it IMHO violates the Constitutional clause that permits them.

Business Process patents, meaning how you actually interact with a consumer and vice-versa, irregardless of any "invention", are even worse.

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

Then it sounds like the problem is the music industry itself, not copyright law, and that's a completely different issue, one in which you'd not find me arguing with you. The industry sucks.

Same is true (i.e., that the industry sucks) of how patents are applied to software. But that doesn't mean that patents (as an idea) are bad, just that new industries find ways to twist the laws and set precedent before congressmen understand the new industry. In many industries patents really do promote advancement. For example, if you got rid of patents, you wouldn't see another new drug hit the market.