http://tinyurl.com/9vvsvob

Interesting idea I suppose.

About 50% of the comments seem to be "No, we should just ban ALL 
PATENTS! Because patents are EVIL! All you guys are doing is 
legitimising patents."

Now maybe we don't need software patents. I don't know. But what I *do* 
know is this: The pharmaceutical industry wouldn't exist without patents.

You see, a drug is a bit like a big-budget movie: It costs *billions* of 
dollars to develop and test a drug to the point where it gets licensed 
for use on humans. But once the drug has been invented, it costs about 
0.0003 USD per pill to manufacture the stuff. The *only* reason anyone 
is willing to pay billions of dollars to develop new drugs is that they 
know that if it gets licensed, then for the next X years they can sell 
this stuff for $$$ per pill - i.e., vastly more than what it costs to 
manufacture.

Without patents, a company would spend billions on making a new drug, 
get it licensed, and then every other company on the globe would start 
manufacturing it and selling it for peanuts - because, let's face it, 
they have no design costs to recoup.

Of course, this would not happen - what would *actually* happen is that 
nobody would develop new drugs in the first place. And that would be 
pretty catastrophic.

So what's the alternative? Honestly, I don't know... Perhaps if drug 
licenses were only granted to the company that did all the safety 
testing? That might work?

Post a reply to this message

I think you're case for the pharmaceuticals is a bit biased towards the 
official propaganda of those companies.
Reality is much more complex.
There is the problem that very few new medicines come on the market. The 
rules are probably just too strict. And the main improvements are mostly 
done, most things nowadays are statistical improvements. What the 
companies are doing is finding ways to extend an existing patent, not 
creating new ones. (A bit like Walt Disney finding ways to extend the IP 
on mickey mouse indefinitely.) The money they earn with that only for a 
small fraction goes into research, most of it goes to marketing. Which 
often means that a new patient group is identified (or conjured from 
thin air) and doctors are pushed to prescribe it. Backed by scientific 
studies that are less objective than one would hope.
In the mean time proven effective medicine is withdrawn from the market, 
because they make more money on another medicine.
And we need Bill Gates to fund the medicines that are needed but not 
profitable.
It is clear that the current way of funding medicines has a lot of 
problems, but we don't have a better alternative yet.




On 21-9-2012 17:57, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> http://tinyurl.com/9vvsvob
>
> Interesting idea I suppose.
>
> About 50% of the comments seem to be "No, we should just ban ALL
> PATENTS! Because patents are EVIL! All you guys are doing is
> legitimising patents."
>
> Now maybe we don't need software patents. I don't know. But what I *do*
> know is this: The pharmaceutical industry wouldn't exist without patents.
>
> You see, a drug is a bit like a big-budget movie: It costs *billions* of
> dollars to develop and test a drug to the point where it gets licensed
> for use on humans. But once the drug has been invented, it costs about
> 0.0003 USD per pill to manufacture the stuff. The *only* reason anyone
> is willing to pay billions of dollars to develop new drugs is that they
> know that if it gets licensed, then for the next X years they can sell
> this stuff for $$$ per pill - i.e., vastly more than what it costs to
> manufacture.
>
> Without patents, a company would spend billions on making a new drug,
> get it licensed, and then every other company on the globe would start
> manufacturing it and selling it for peanuts - because, let's face it,
> they have no design costs to recoup.
>
> Of course, this would not happen - what would *actually* happen is that
> nobody would develop new drugs in the first place. And that would be
> pretty catastrophic.
>
> So what's the alternative? Honestly, I don't know... Perhaps if drug
> licenses were only granted to the company that did all the safety
> testing? That might work?
>


-- 
Women are the canaries of science. When they are underrepresented
it is a strong indication that non-scientific factors play a role
and the concentration of incorruptible scientists is also too low

Post a reply to this message

On 21/09/2012 07:27 PM, andrel wrote:
> I think you're case for the pharmaceuticals is a bit biased towards the
> official propaganda of those companies.
> Reality is much more complex.

I see...

> There is the problem that very few new medicines come on the market.

Cool. So all those "first time in man" drugs I've helped my ex-employers 
work on... apparently those didn't actually exist, right?

> The rules are probably just too strict.

This is somewhat outside my area of expertise, but IMHO the rules are 
reasonably OK ATM.

> And the main improvements are mostly
> done, most things nowadays are statistical improvements.

While it's true that there are plenty of cases of designing a new drug 
which is like an existing one but slightly different in some way, it's 
also true that there are plenty of people scouring the tropical 
rainforests, the great coral reefs, and the bottom of the oceans to find 
unusual molecules that do something interesting. Most drugs are "found" 
rather than "designed". Oh, sure, the molecule you find might not be 
perfect; you might need to do some design work to improve it. But the 
basic design is from mother nature's kitchen, mostly.

> What the
> companies are doing is finding ways to extend an existing patent, not
> creating new ones. (A bit like Walt Disney finding ways to extend the IP
> on mickey mouse indefinitely.)

Again, while I'm sure they /do/ try to find inventive ways to keep 
milking their stuff for every last penny, that doesn't mean that there's 
nothing new coming out.

> The money they earn with that only for a
> small fraction goes into research, most of it goes to marketing.

Now /that/ I can believe...

> In the mean time proven effective medicine is withdrawn from the market,
> because they make more money on another medicine.

I doubt that. Usually once a drug comes off patent, a whole raft of 
other companies step in to start copying it. (My ex-employers got quite 
a lot of contracts from companies wanting to investigate the properties 
of drugs that have just recently come off patent.)

> And we need Bill Gates to fund the medicines that are needed but not
> profitable.

Sadly, that is probably true. It costs a fortune to develop a drug; 
you're probably not going to bother for something extremely rare. (Who 
would you test it on anyway?) Meaning that if you contract a very rare 
disease... you're kind of screwed.

> It is clear that the current way of funding medicines has a lot of
> problems, but we don't have a better alternative yet.

I agree with this sentence.

Post a reply to this message

On 21/09/2012 04:57 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> About 50% of the comments seem to be "No, we should just ban ALL
> PATENTS! Because patents are EVIL! All you guys are doing is
> legitimising patents."

One irritated commenter posted this link:

http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/anew.all.pdf

It's going to take me... a while to read all that. But it seems quite 
interesting.

Post a reply to this message

On 21-9-2012 22:39, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> On 21/09/2012 07:27 PM, andrel wrote:
>> I think you're case for the pharmaceuticals is a bit biased towards the
>> official propaganda of those companies.
>> Reality is much more complex.
>
> I see...
>
>> There is the problem that very few new medicines come on the market.
>
> Cool. So all those "first time in man" drugs I've helped my ex-employers
> work on... apparently those didn't actually exist, right?

Did you follow them up afterwards? And did you check that claims?
Many of those would have been (hopefully) irrelevant variants of 
something existing.

>> The rules are probably just too strict.
>
> This is somewhat outside my area of expertise, but IMHO the rules are
> reasonably OK ATM.

Reasonable, but not the best in the interest of patients.

>
>> And the main improvements are mostly
>> done, most things nowadays are statistical improvements.
>
> While it's true that there are plenty of cases of designing a new drug
> which is like an existing one but slightly different in some way, it's
> also true that there are plenty of people scouring the tropical
> rainforests, the great coral reefs, and the bottom of the oceans to find
> unusual molecules that do something interesting. Most drugs are "found"
> rather than "designed". Oh, sure, the molecule you find might not be
> perfect; you might need to do some design work to improve it. But the
> basic design is from mother nature's kitchen, mostly.

Did you do research on that or just watch Discovery Channel now and then?

>> What the
>> companies are doing is finding ways to extend an existing patent, not
>> creating new ones. (A bit like Walt Disney finding ways to extend the IP
>> on mickey mouse indefinitely.)
>
> Again, while I'm sure they /do/ try to find inventive ways to keep
> milking their stuff for every last penny, that doesn't mean that there's
> nothing new coming out.

The rate of truly new drugs has been declining over the last decades, 
despite all the research. One of the problems is that most diseases are 
too complex. If you have a broadly defined disease, 'heart failure' for 
instance you have the number of patients for a new drug. Only, some 
subgroups will benefit and some others will get worse. On average there 
is only a small effect, possibly even negative. Which means that the 
drug never goes to market. (Unless it is a small effect but the target 
patient group is (after marketing) extremely numerous, as in the case of 
statins) You might figure out which subgroups do benefit and which are 
harmed, but then the group becomes too small to make a reasonable 
profit. Or the identification is too complicated to make sense for the 
general hospitals and GPs.

>> The money they earn with that only for a
>> small fraction goes into research, most of it goes to marketing.
>
> Now /that/ I can believe...
>
>> In the mean time proven effective medicine is withdrawn from the market,
>> because they make more money on another medicine.
>
> I doubt that. Usually once a drug comes off patent, a whole raft of
> other companies step in to start copying it. (My ex-employers got quite
> a lot of contracts from companies wanting to investigate the properties
> of drugs that have just recently come off patent.)

So no new drugs actually...
But I meant that they are taken off market before the patent expires to 
be replaced by an almost identical one that has a more recent patent or 
they can charge more for. Or simply taken off market because it is too 
cheap.
 From my limited experience with drugs in the clinic I know at least one 
example of the latter. Probably quite a lot of drugs never enter the 
market because they are too cheap to produce. You would hope and expect 
that governments would step in to fill that gap, but 'somehow' that does 
not happen.


>> And we need Bill Gates to fund the medicines that are needed but not
>> profitable.
>
> Sadly, that is probably true. It costs a fortune to develop a drug;
> you're probably not going to bother for something extremely rare. (Who
> would you test it on anyway?) Meaning that if you contract a very rare
> disease... you're kind of screwed.

Indeed. We are talking about rare diseases like malaria and other 
tropical diseases.

>> It is clear that the current way of funding medicines has a lot of
>> problems, but we don't have a better alternative yet.
>
> I agree with this sentence.


-- 
Women are the canaries of science. When they are underrepresented
it is a strong indication that non-scientific factors play a role
and the concentration of incorruptible scientists is also too low

Post a reply to this message

>> Cool. So all those "first time in man" drugs I've helped my ex-employers
>> work on... apparently those didn't actually exist, right?
>
> Did you follow them up afterwards? And did you check that claims?
> Many of those would have been (hopefully) irrelevant variants of
> something existing.

I don't doubt some of them were just variants on something existing. 
(That's surely a much cheaper way to design a new drug.) From what 
little I saw, some of them were also brand new. (And yes, I don't doubt 
some of them never saw the light of day in the end. That's why we /test/ 
these things, after all...)

>>> The rules are probably just too strict.
>>
>> This is somewhat outside my area of expertise, but IMHO the rules are
>> reasonably OK ATM.
>
> Reasonable, but not the best in the interest of patients.

How so?

> Did you do research on that or just watch Discovery Channel now and then?

I don't actually have access to the Discovery Channel, annoyingly 
enough. (Still, I bet it's not as good as everybody says it is...)

> The rate of truly new drugs has been declining over the last decades,
> despite all the research.

Do you have an actual citation for that?

> One of the problems is that most diseases are
> too complex. If you have a broadly defined disease, 'heart failure' for
> instance you have the number of patients for a new drug. Only, some
> subgroups will benefit and some others will get worse. On average there
> is only a small effect, possibly even negative. Which means that the
> drug never goes to market. (Unless it is a small effect but the target
> patient group is (after marketing) extremely numerous, as in the case of
> statins) You might figure out which subgroups do benefit and which are
> harmed, but then the group becomes too small to make a reasonable
> profit. Or the identification is too complicated to make sense for the
> general hospitals and GPs.

Or, to put it another way, sometimes you can't just inject somebody with 
a chemical and make everything better again.

> But I meant that they are taken off market before the patent expires to
> be replaced by an almost identical one that has a more recent patent or
> they can charge more for. Or simply taken off market because it is too
> cheap.
> From my limited experience with drugs in the clinic I know at least one
> example of the latter.

Oh, the original designer of the drug might stop selling it. But once 
the patent expires, anybody who wants to can make the stuff. I'm telling 
you, we regularly got contracts relating to this very activity.

> Probably quite a lot of drugs never enter the
> market because they are too cheap to produce.

That doesn't even make /sense/. The price a drug sells for is usually 
unrelated to the cost of producing it. (Until the patent expires, anyway...)

>>> And we need Bill Gates to fund the medicines that are needed but not
>>> profitable.
>>
>> Sadly, that is probably true. It costs a fortune to develop a drug;
>> you're probably not going to bother for something extremely rare. (Who
>> would you test it on anyway?) Meaning that if you contract a very rare
>> disease... you're kind of screwed.
>
> Indeed. We are talking about rare diseases like malaria and other
> tropical diseases.

I didn't think that malaria was rare, or that nobody has developed drugs 
to treat it...

Post a reply to this message

On 21/09/2012 10:29 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> One irritated commenter posted this link:
>
> http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/anew.all.pdf
>
> It's going to take me... a while to read all that. But it seems quite
> interesting.

I said it would take me a while to read it all! I only just finished. 
Man, that was *a lot* of text...

While many of their arguments make a great deal of sense, I'm still not 
completely sold on a few things.

The argument against patents seems clear. They should go.

The exception is the pharmaceutical industry. That's because 
pharmaceuticals require absurdly expensive testing before you're allowed 
to sell them. But, as the authors point out, the purpose of testing is 
to find out *if* a new drug works. If that work is funded by the company 
that just spent $$$ inventing that drug... well, can you spell "conflict 
of interest"? So perhaps we need a system where somebody else funds 
clinical testing. If we can sort that out, then making new drugs becomes 
about as expensive as making new anything-else, and the argument for 
patents vanishes in pharmaceuticals as it does everywhere else.

The one that gets me, though, is copyright.

They claim that authors writing in England (which had copyright laws) 
made more money from American customers than from their native England. 
(And, at the time, America had no copyright laws.) I cannot wrap my mind 
around this. I am not saying it is untrue - but rather, that I cannot 
comprehend /how/ it can be true. If in America it costs nothing to copy 
an author's work, HOW ARE THEY MAKING MONEY??

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. 
Professional recording engineers aren't cheap. And so forth.

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 
droned in an ocean of stupid musical burping and other nonsense. But 
there would be a lot more music out there. (I could show you some of the 
music *I* made, for example...)

What I really cannot figure out is this: It apparently cost $225,000,000 
to film Pirates of the Caribbean. It's not just that it has famous 
actors in it and there are some big explosions. If you watch the 
documentary DVD, you'll see that they took an entire container ship 
loaded to the max, sailed to a tiny tropical island, and terraformed 
half of it. Seriously. They built an entire town. They cut down jungle. 
They built new roads. They created whole buildings. They build brand new 
infrastructure that didn't exist there before. Just so they could film 
the few scenes in the movie that call for a jungle setting.

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??

Post a reply to this message

Le 2012-09-26 13:28, Orchid Win7 v1 a écrit :
> 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.
> Professional recording engineers aren't cheap. And so forth.

Who said anything about high quality microphones or sound-proof rooms? 
Most music is done with synthetizers nowadays.  And in the event that 
they actually want a good mic, they can get them used for less than $100 
off e-Bay.

Professional recording engineers don't come beofre you get an actual 
record deal with a company.

Most people are do-it-yourselfers nowadays.  I know a few that actually 
made enough money by recording in their bedrooms that they are actually 
making a living out of it.

Back in the good old days, bands would sell "demo tapes" recorded in 
their garage or basement (hence the name "garage sound") at concerts, to 
help pay the bills and hoping that these would end up in some record 
industry's guy lap.  Now the quality of many of these demos is actually 
good enough that some simply skip the record company part and sell their 
own CDs.

-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/*    flabreque    */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/*        @        */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

Post a reply to this message

> 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.
> Professional recording engineers aren't cheap. And so forth.

But really, with a laptop and few hundred dollars 99% of people (who are 
listening in the car, on crappy radios, £1 earphones or cheap "hi-fi" 
systems) are not going to be able to tell the difference whether you 
used a microphone for £10 or a microphone for £1000.

Post a reply to this message

On 27/09/2012 08:34 AM, scott 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.
>> Professional recording engineers aren't cheap. And so forth.
>
> But really, with a laptop and few hundred dollars 99% of people (who are
> listening in the car, on crappy radios, £1 earphones or cheap "hi-fi"
> systems) are not going to be able to tell the difference whether you
> used a microphone for £10 or a microphone for £1000.

You honestly believe that?

I have a £40 microphone, and it still sounds /terrible/. Every time I 
record something, it sounds like I'm sitting /inside/ a waterfall. 
There's just so much hiss!

(What is more perplexing, you would /think/ filtering out a constant set 
of frequencies would be pretty easy... but I've yet to find any software 
which can actually do it.)

Post a reply to this message

On 27/09/2012 01:28 AM, Francois Labreque wrote:
> Who said anything about high quality microphones or sound-proof rooms?
> Most music is done with synthetizers nowadays.

I would dispute that assertion. But sure, if all you want is electronic 
music, you really *do* just need a laptop, some software, and possibly a 
few MIDI controllers.

If, on the other hand, you want to record your totally kick-ass flute 
playing, or you want to produce any kind of music that includes vocals, 
you're going to need a microphone and a quiet recording environment.

> And in the event that
> they actually want a good mic, they can get them used for less than $100
> off e-Bay.

And a room with low noise and suitable acoustics?

> Professional recording engineers don't come beofre you get an actual
> record deal with a company.

See, the thing is, I've made plenty of music in my bedroom. But it never 
sounds anywhere as good as even the crappiest shop-bought CD. And that's 
because I am not a professional sound engineer. I don't know how to do 
things like EQ adjustments to give an optimal sound. Thus, everything I 
made screams "this was done in somebody's bedroom".

> Most people are do-it-yourselfers nowadays. I know a few that actually
> made enough money by recording in their bedrooms that they are actually
> making a living out of it.

Seriously? I mean, for real? That's actually physically possible?

I mean, I can imagine that every once in a while, someone gets lucky 
this way. But /several/ people this lucky??

Post a reply to this message

>> But really, with a laptop and few hundred dollars 99% of people (who are
>> listening in the car, on crappy radios, £1 earphones or cheap "hi-fi"
>> systems) are not going to be able to tell the difference whether you
>> used a microphone for £10 or a microphone for £1000.
>
> You honestly believe that?

Yes.

> I have a £40 microphone, and it still sounds /terrible/. Every time I
> record something, it sounds like I'm sitting /inside/ a waterfall.
> There's just so much hiss!

That's not the microphone's fault (unless it was faulty), you're doing 
something wrong and spending £4000 on a mic won't fix it. There are many 
other factors; what do you have it plugged in to (including cabling and 
where it is routed), how loud is your source and how close is it to the 
mic, what is the background noise like in the room etc. It's perfectly 
possible to get a decent recording with a £40 mic, £20 pre-amp and 
standard PC sound card in a normal quiet room. I've done it before and 
didn't have any issues with hiss.

> (What is more perplexing, you would /think/ filtering out a constant set
> of frequencies would be pretty easy... but I've yet to find any software
> which can actually do it.)

Isn't hiss by definition all frequencies? If you want to filter out set 
frequencies that's easy, even Audacity can do that, but you won't get 
rid of hiss like that.

Post a reply to this message

>> I have a £40 microphone, and it still sounds /terrible/. Every time I
>> record something, it sounds like I'm sitting /inside/ a waterfall.
>> There's just so much hiss!
>
> That's not the microphone's fault (unless it was faulty), you're doing
> something wrong and spending £4000 on a mic won't fix it.

Perhaps, but paying money for a sound-proofed room probably would.

> There are many
> other factors; what do you have it plugged in to (including cabling and
> where it is routed), how loud is your source and how close is it to the
> mic, what is the background noise like in the room etc. It's perfectly
> possible to get a decent recording with a £40 mic, £20 pre-amp and
> standard PC sound card in a normal quiet room. I've done it before and
> didn't have any issues with hiss.

It's a £40 mic plugged into a £100 external sound card, using the XLR 
cable the mic came with. I get about -24 dB of hiss, and the mic easily 
picks up my voice (or, indeed, the TV downstairs).

>> (What is more perplexing, you would /think/ filtering out a constant set
>> of frequencies would be pretty easy... but I've yet to find any software
>> which can actually do it.)
>
> Isn't hiss by definition all frequencies? If you want to filter out set
> frequencies that's easy, even Audacity can do that, but you won't get
> rid of hiss like that.

It seems to me that the sound is concentrated at high frequencies, but 
hey. I did try using Audacity's "noise cancel" function. You're supposed 
to feed it some hiss, and then it removes that from your actual 
recording. But I found that with the effect level low, it hardly removes 
any hiss, and with the effect level high, the actual signal becomes 
highly garbled (without actually removing all of the hiss).

Post a reply to this message

> It's a £40 mic plugged into a £100 external sound card, using the XLR
> cable the mic came with. I get about -24 dB of hiss, and the mic easily
> picks up my voice (or, indeed, the TV downstairs).

Did you try turning down the gain? If the TV downstairs is coming out 
above -24 dB then I find it hard to believe you could get an unclipped 
signal when singing a few cm from the microphone.

Post a reply to this message

Le 2012-09-27 04:57, Orchid Win7 v1 a écrit :
> On 27/09/2012 01:28 AM, Francois Labreque wrote:
>> Who said anything about high quality microphones or sound-proof rooms?
>> Most music is done with synthetizers nowadays.
>
> I would dispute that assertion. But sure, if all you want is electronic
> music, you really *do* just need a laptop, some software, and possibly a
> few MIDI controllers.

It may come as a shock, but the majority of the music being produced 
today is indeed at least partly electronic.  Yes, there may be some 
acoustic guitars and vocals, but by shear number, there are more people 
playing with synths, electric guitars, drum machines and samplers than 
anything else.

>
> If, on the other hand, you want to record your totally kick-ass flute
> playing, or you want to produce any kind of music that includes vocals,
> you're going to need a microphone and a quiet recording environment.
>

Never denied that.

>> And in the event that
>> they actually want a good mic, they can get them used for less than $100
>> off e-Bay.
>
> And a room with low noise and suitable acoustics?
>

Never said that this was available through e-Bay.  But some people can 
actually have decent sounding bedrooms.

>> Professional recording engineers don't come beofre you get an actual
>> record deal with a company.
>
> See, the thing is, I've made plenty of music in my bedroom. But it never
> sounds anywhere as good as even the crappiest shop-bought CD. And that's
> because I am not a professional sound engineer. I don't know how to do
> things like EQ adjustments to give an optimal sound. Thus, everything I
> made screams "this was done in somebody's bedroom".
>

First, you don't need to be a professional sound engineer to know how to 
properly equalize tracks.  Just like you don't need to be a classically 
trained musician to be good at an instrument.

Second, I never said that it needed to sound like it was produced by 
Brian Lanoix.  Garage bands sound like garage bands for a reason.

>> Most people are do-it-yourselfers nowadays. I know a few that actually
>> made enough money by recording in their bedrooms that they are actually
>> making a living out of it.
>
> Seriously? I mean, for real? That's actually physically possible?
>
> I mean, I can imagine that every once in a while, someone gets lucky
> this way. But /several/ people this lucky??

Yes.  Lots of indie bands do it, or are signed to indie record labels 
that are run out of some guy's bedroom.

-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/*    flabreque    */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/*        @        */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

Post a reply to this message

> It may come as a shock, but the majority of the music being produced
> today is indeed at least partly electronic.

It's the partly /not/ electronic which is problematic. ;-)

> First, you don't need to be a professional sound engineer to know how to
> properly equalize tracks. Just like you don't need to be a classically
> trained musician to be good at an instrument.

I'm sure it helps though.

> Second, I never said that it needed to sound like it was produced by
> Brian Lanoix. Garage bands sound like garage bands for a reason.

Maybe I don't want to sound like a garage band?

>>> Most people are do-it-yourselfers nowadays. I know a few that actually
>>> made enough money by recording in their bedrooms that they are actually
>>> making a living out of it.
>>
>> Seriously? I mean, for real? That's actually physically possible?
>>
>> I mean, I can imagine that every once in a while, someone gets lucky
>> this way. But /several/ people this lucky??
>
> Yes. Lots of indie bands do it, or are signed to indie record labels
> that are run out of some guy's bedroom.

Sure. But for every successful band, there must be, like, a million 
hopeful wannabies who never get anywhere.

Post a reply to this message

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.

Post a reply to this message