On 9/26/2012 12:28 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> On 21/09/2012 10:29 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
 >
> ...
>
> Similarly, a later chapter comes tentatively close to saying "You don't
> need a multi-million dollar recording studio to make music any more. All
> you need is a laptop and a few hundred dollars worth of other stuff."
> This is not true, of course. High quality microphones still cost a
> crapload of money. Sound-proofed rooms are still extremely expensive.

Not really.  Any cinder-block room, with carpet on the walls as well as 
on the floor, will be as quiet as you need for most applications, and 
can be gotten at a modest expense if you're not worried about the pattern.

> Professional recording engineers aren't cheap.

And as Youtube has proven, incompetent recording engineers are common.

> But really, if music did not have copyright, I'm pretty sure we would
> see an army of backroom musicians putting out some great stuff. I'm a
> little worried that, like YouTube, most of the cool stuff would be
> drowned in an ocean of stupid musical burping and other nonsense.

That was already the case even before Youtube.  90% of everything is crap.

> But
> there would be a lot more music out there. (I could show you some of the
> music *I* made, for example...)

The problem with the music business is not copyrights, but the fact that 
in order to create a great deal of music, you have to be able to make a 
living at it.  And to do that in the past required the support of two 
parallel industries, the music industry and the radio industry, which by 
their natures only supported a limited number of acts at any given time. 
  If you didn't get the support a key player in both industries, you 
essentially had no chance at all.  This led to a high level of 
centralization, where a small number of executives determined the fate 
of a large number of creators.

The Internet has changed all of that.  Your success is no longer tied to 
your willingness to hand half of your earnings to the gatekeeper.  You 
no longer need the record company to distribute your product, or the 
radio stations to promote it.  Youtube does it all.

You still need a decent studio and the know-how to use it (unless you're 
focused on working live performances), and because you're not the only 
one freed from the record company, you have more competition.  But at 
least your chances do not depend on persuading one of a small handful of 
executives that you deserve a shot.

> And you're seriously telling me that somebody is going to spend
> $225,000,000 of their own money, knowing that as soon as the first DVD
> is minted, the entire movie will be available globally for $0, and the
> studio will never make a single penny back? Like, seriously??

One thing keeping the movie industry alive is that people enjoy the 
theater experience, and that creates an essentially captive market.  But 
the Internet helps us there, by allowing the early attendees to warn us 
about over-hyped suckfests.

What strikes me most about IP law in the US is the contrast between the 
laws we live under and the plain wording of the US Constitution[1].  In 
the COTUS, Congress' authority was limited to providing IP protection 
for the *creator*, and much of the mess with US IP law could be swiftly 
ended by applying that understanding to the law today.

Regards,
John

[1]  This contrast is by no means unique to IP law; our government has 
enthusiastically voided waste on the Constitution for the better part of 
a century.

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