Earlier this week, the google-owned youtube pulled down Rick Astley's annoying masterpiece, "Never Gonna Give You Up". It turns out the video was mistakenly flagged as spam, but its disappearance did cause a bit of internet ruckus (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10458847-36.html).
Linked in the above article, one of Never Gonna Give You Up's lyricists complains about being "exploited by google"
Waterman, co-author of the song, compared his plight to the "exploitation of foreign workers in Dubai."
"I feel like one of those workers, because I earned less for a year's work off Google or YouTube than they did off the Bahrain government," Waterman told the paper."
do these people just not fucking get it?
google-youtube does not owe you any royalties. They are not a label, they are a distribution platform. PEOPLE are linking each other to your video, that's what they do. They don't owe you money for that, the free exchange of information is how you got famous again to begin with. When your song was on the radio, Waterman, people talked about it. They hummed it to each other. They put it on mix tapes and gave it to their friends. And they did not owe you a single penny for that. What I'm describing is not you being "exploited by google", but fame itself.
Fame doesn't make you rich. Capitalizing on that fame does. I am certain that, based on the Rickroll phenomenon, Rick Astley could have relaunched his career had he wanted to. Waterman, you hack song writer, you could have cashed in on that too. But instead you're crying about how you're internet famous and nobody's cutting you a check.
The South Park Kids got it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e-VDXhXPSE (please note that this link contains copyrighted feckin video)
This looks like a good place to quote our good friend Synaptaclypse Generator:
QuotePublic domain allows works to become integral parts of other works – Alice
in Wonderland is a good example. It has been borrowed from by thousands of
artists for thousands of reasons, and because of this, the story has lived
on and grown with us to the point of becoming archetypical. This is not
possible with works that are still under copyright for obvious reasons.
In the information age, our cultural heritage has gone global.
Scheherazade’s work is almost as much a part of our cultural heritage as
Shakespeare and Carroll. Innovations and enhancements on all of their works
enrich the scope and power of the original to inform our global culture and
provide a familiar framework for the innovator to work within.
For Eris’ sake, even weather data is under strict copyright – the National
Weather Service is limited on what weather data it is allowed to provide free
on its website, since the private sector owns pieces of the information.
I find it especially disappointing that the company that has benefited most
from information in the public domain is leading the fight to keep their
versions of those public domain works under strict copyright.
As annoying as it was, Rick Rolling was a legitimate cultural event. If you were alive a few years ago, and you are hip enough to know that the internet isn't, like, some kind of home appliance or something, you probably got rickrolled. And I want to point out that Rick Astley took this joke
very well. He certainly didn't go on a crusade to remove the video from the internet because he thinks somebody should be paying him whenever anybody makes a joke involving him. So Thanks Rick, something unique happened in our culture because you're not being a territorial dick about your precious IP.
I'm also baffled that OK GO's record label pulled down the music videos (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13526_3-10438599-27.html?tag=mncol;txt) which relaunched
their career. Don't they understand how much money they
actually made from the free trade of information? That's not theoretical internet money, that was
actual album sales. If Waterman released an album a few years ago, and had the liner notes said "BY THE CO-AUTHOR OF NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP", I bet he would have made some good scratch off the notoriety. I know a few people that bought
actual Rick Astley CDs
because of the internet craze. So it's possible to capitalize off it if you're in the right place at the right time. But don't try to pretend that somebody owes you cash just because kids are talking to each other about your work.
Thanks to Enki for the original link
(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/party.png)
You knew that was going to happen, right?
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a289/goblinhill/pirate2.jpg)
posted without a single flying fuck as to the legality of my action . . .
I think we're still in that gray-area period where a few people understand the legitimacy of the argument made in the OP, but lack empirical evidence to back it up. Intangible assets don't look good on paper, and no-one understands viral marketing on the internet well enough to profit from it consistently. Although there is a decent market in pretending you do and selling that "wisdom".
For the first time, in terms of ability to collect and communicate information, the consumers are more intelligent than the producer. I don't think the balance will ever really shift back, assuming the current ability for us to communicate does not diminish.
But waiting for industries and business models to adapt to these new realities is such a bore.
Quote from: FP on February 26, 2010, 06:32:47 PM
But waiting for industries and business models to adapt to these new realities is such a bore.
word
luckily we don't have to wait for anybody
That old adage "Information wants to be free" -- I know information itself doesn't
want anything, but...
unregulated forms of communication are competing with regulated channels. The unregulated forms are going to win.
That's why more people pirate albums than download them on iTunes.
Thats' why more people pirate movies than subscribe to Netflix.
When
Never Gonna Give You Up disappeared from youtube, it was never really
gone - it was already on a hundred
other video-hosting websites.
Right now I've got to watch a 15 second commercial before I can view a 30 second youtube clip... When you watch a clip, a banner ad pops up
twice during the video and you have to close it manually. I don't think this is going to last. Eventually youtube will have a competitor, and people will go to the one with the least intrusive ads.
And then there's the Streisand Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect) - that you can't really take information out of the internet, it's like taking pee out of a pool. Furthermore, trying to cover up knowledge which is already widespread, it just draws more attention to the info you're trying to hide.
"The Net treats censorship as damage and routes around it." -John Gilmore
BTW, here is Barbara Streisand's house: http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/barbra-streisands-house/
some of you may enjoy clicking that link just because Streisand doesn't want anybody to know where it is.
and hahahah - Dick Cheney got HIS house pulled off of google maps - http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/07/what-is-google/ ------ but you can still find it via
yahoo maps. :lulz:
Quote from: MMIX on February 26, 2010, 05:35:34 PM
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a289/goblinhill/pirateindustry.jpg)
posted without a single flying fuck as to the legality of my action . . .
thanks for your consideration. Don't worry, there is absolutely nobody associated with this website who could in any way be held legally and financially responsible for copyright infringement.
I don't get it - it's just an image right?
Quote from: Cramulus on February 26, 2010, 06:42:52 PM
unregulated forms of communication are competing with regulated channels. The unregulated forms are going to win.
That's why more people pirate albums than download them on iTunes.
Thats' why more people pirate movies than subscribe to Netflix.
Legitimate forms of media consumption are actually far more popular than piracy. The pirates are still in the minority (and the pirates never stopped buying things legitimately, in fact they buy more than the non pirates).
Piracy wins on overall volume, because a pirate can use up far far more media than they could ever afford to pay for, but not on people using it.
Also, from http://www.azoz.com/music/features/0008.html
QuoteSpecifically, total U.S. shipments dropped from 1.08 billion units shipped in 2000 to 968.58 million in 2001-a 10.3 percent decrease. The dollar value of all music product shipments decreased from $14.3 billion in 2000 to $13.7 billion in 2001-a 4.1 percent decrease, according to figures released today by the RIAA.
"This past year was a difficult year in the recording industry, and there is no simple explanation for the decrease in sales. The economy was slow and 9/11 interrupted the fourth quarter plans, but, a large factor contributing to the decrease in overall shipments last year is online piracy and CD-burning," said Hilary Rosen, President and CEO of the RIAA. "When 23 percent of surveyed music consumers say they are not buying more music because they are downloading or copying their music for free, we cannot ignore the impact on the marketplace."
They sort of left out how they only put out 81% as many new releases for the years they're saying piracy has detrimented business.
QuoteSo the record industry cut their inventory (and artist investment) by (about) 25 percent and sales only dropped 4.1 percent, even though the economy is at rock bottom. There were almost 12,000 fewer new releases for the consumer to choose from in 2001 than 1999. The record companies are making more money per release than ever.
Piracy is (probably) negligible, though its hard to quantify. The things that are really hurting the old media industries are new forms of entertainment (video games, the internet), lowered wages (especially compared to inflation), and rising costs to consume the media (an ipod is more expensive than a discman). Having to compete with video games takes its toll.
The music industry in particular is acting like morons though, the optimal price point for music is about half what it is now (estimated to triple the sales*, which is a not insignificant increase in profit when you have nearly fixed costs of production).
*Those estimates are for the British market, I don't know what the estimates are for the US.
Quote from: Sigmatic on February 26, 2010, 09:44:36 PM
I don't get it - it's just an image right?
I think it may have a lot to do with the sentiment as opposed to the action.
Quote from: Sigmatic on February 26, 2010, 09:44:36 PM
I don't get it - it's just an image right?
Yeah, I don't care about the image at all, I was just pointing out that this is not the right venue for escalating an interesting discussion on the validity of the current IP law framework into a personal assault on copyright law in a place where other people may be on the hook for your illegal behavior in that regard. I don't think MMIX is actually trying to get anyone in trouble so it's really no big deal and hopefully won't derail the thread.
btw - OP edited to include context of the Waterman quote:
QuoteWaterman, co-author of the song, compared his plight to the "exploitation of foreign workers in Dubai."
"I feel like one of those workers, because I earned less for a year's work off Google or YouTube than they did off the Bahrain government," Waterman told the paper."
:objection:
those guys make $149 per month for heavy construction work and living in a bunker with 3000 people, so they pretty much are still better off than that douchebag.
Cramulus, if they are actually getting $149 / month then they are earning close to $1800 p.a. Waterman was paid $16 by google/youtube which is way less than 1% of that. This was for the use of copyrighted material the creation of which is the basis of Waterman's employment and livelihood. I have huge problems with the current state of IP "rights" and copyright law in general but I honestly think you are being unfair to Pete Waterman in this instance - hence my, apparently unsuccessful, attempt at irony with the punk collective image with the anti-copyright message and my "blind justice" hands over the eyes comment on my personal responsibility towards the copyright law.
ps I've censored the image and I'll just slink off and STFU now . . .
pps ECH I would never try to get you in trouble, I'm sure you don't need my help anyway . . . :wink:
ppps Americans . . . Irony . . . who knew . . .
In response to LMNO.
(http://accidentalsexiness.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/rick.jpg)
The song being on youtube does not in any way prevent him from selling it in other venues (like iTunes). If this were a TV show on Google he might have a point, but its not, its a music video, the purpose of which is to *promote* the song. Its a commercial, not a revenue source.
Quote from: Requia ☣ on February 27, 2010, 12:51:50 AM
The song being on youtube does not in any way prevent him from selling it in other venues (like iTunes). If this were a TV show on Google he might have a point, but its not, its a music video, the purpose of which is to *promote* the song. Its a commercial, not a revenue source.
The song being on youtube - which, despite its monumental losses, $1.6 Billion iirc, is supposed to be a commercial (i.e. revenue generating) operation, severely restricts the market for product which can now be freely accessed at no cost and thus provides no benefit for the artists/writers.
Personal observation: I no longer buy music but, back when I did, I almost always opted for the video version. I have to admit that partly this was because of a research interest in the creation/re-creation of contemporary icons but also because so much commercial musical product of the last thirty years always seemed to be lacking something when divorced from its visual elements. Very much a case of "Nice video - shame about the song . . ." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM1c7YSizjU
You cannot acquire the song from Youtube* you can watch the music video. The song (the bit that can be played in a music player and so forth) still has to be bought elsewhere.
As for buying the music video, that's never been a big market. Hell I couldn't even find music videos in the 90s. They were created to be a form of advertisement. MTV ad so forth do lose out, but nothing says they don't have to face competition.
*There's probably software that can get you the song, but you can also pirate it off any torrent site easier.
Quote from: Requia ☣ on February 27, 2010, 03:04:29 AM
You cannot acquire the song from Youtube* you can watch the music video. The song (the bit that can be played in a music player and so forth) still has to be bought elsewhere.
Technically correct but this begs so many questions about what actually constitutes "the song". Is it "the dots" the actual music score - something else which can be bought and sold but the sound of paper is quite limited unless its a pianola roll . . .
Quote from: Requia ☣ on February 27, 2010, 03:04:29 AM
As for buying the music video, that's never been a big market. Hell I couldn't even find music videos in the 90s.
Yeah , I suspect I'm pretty much in the minority there. Except that I still can't imagine Thriller without the full mini-movie with dance routines thing. Again, these things may have started as loss leaders/adverts but stuff like Thriller and Bohemian Rhapsody surely pushed them into a different gear and the commercial key is still how to equitably remunerate the 'producers', from the Talent to the technicians and even godhelpus the corporate entity which is funding the whole thing.
Quote from: Requia ☣ on February 27, 2010, 03:04:29 AM
They were created to be a form of advertisement. MTV ad so forth do lose out, but nothing says they don't have to face competition.
They developed beyond their origin in advertising because the technology developed to enable them to do so. And my argument is not about youtube being in competition with MTV it is about how in an increasingly complex technological environment you can still 'pay the piper' - and, for the purposes of this discussion, the guy who wrote the song
Quote from: Requia ☣ on February 27, 2010, 03:04:29 AM
*There's probably software that can get you the song, but you can also pirate it off any torrent site easier.
Interesting idea but on a practical level no use to me. I don't torrent, I don't know what an MP3 is I don't have an iPlayer, I never even had a walkman. Am I odd? - probably. Am I unique? - probably not. I lived through the whole of this technological development from being a kid in the 60's with a reel to reel taperecorder who used to tape Top of the Pops every week - you know, back in the day - when it was still live, back in The Stones Age. My parents hated that. I used to get extremely testy if they made a noise during the show because I was recording with a good old fashioned microphone. I wish I still had those tapes, sigh. So, now I come to think about it, I have a long and undistinguished history of music piracy. Back then I used to think that if I could afford it I would pay direct to the writers/performers, I think I pretty much still feel that way, its just that the technology has changed and the number of creatives involved in the process has increased.
QuoteCramulus, if they are actually getting $149 / month then they are earning close to $1800 p.a. Waterman was paid $16 by google/youtube which is way less than 1% of that. This was for the use of copyrighted material the creation of which is the basis of Waterman's employment and livelihood. I have huge problems with the current state of IP "rights" and copyright law in general but I honestly think you are being unfair to Pete Waterman in this instance - hence my, apparently unsuccessful, attempt at irony with the punk collective image with the anti-copyright message and my "blind justice" hands over the eyes comment on my personal responsibility towards the copyright law.
We're not actually saying that lyric writing from many years ago is to be paid on par with present day heavy physical labor for foreign governments are we? Because that seems a little silly.
Quote from: Placid Dingo on February 27, 2010, 11:45:18 AM
QuoteCramulus, if they are actually getting $149 / month then they are earning close to $1800 p.a. Waterman was paid $16 by google/youtube which is way less than 1% of that. This was for the use of copyrighted material the creation of which is the basis of Waterman's employment and livelihood. I have huge problems with the current state of IP "rights" and copyright law in general but I honestly think you are being unfair to Pete Waterman in this instance - hence my, apparently unsuccessful, attempt at irony with the punk collective image with the anti-copyright message and my "blind justice" hands over the eyes comment on my personal responsibility towards the copyright law.
We're not actually saying that lyric writing from many years ago is to be paid on par with present day heavy physical labor for foreign governments are we? Because that seems a little silly.
Silly??? Like paying sportsmen huge wages because they have time-limited careers . . . I mean working stiffs not mega stars - that's a different argument. Like recording companies and sheet music companies generating profits over centuries from the work of musicians and composers who are long dead . . ? The comparison was not of the nature of the work but of the pittance paid for a comparative years work. Waterman's point seemed to be 'Those foreign workers are being shafted and so am I'. NB many of those workers are Nepalese where the average wage is estimated at between $180 / $200 a YEAR . . . The thing which is SILLY is the whole idea of money and comparative wages in a world economy - but that, again, is a different argument
Quote from: Requia ☣ on February 27, 2010, 03:04:29 AM
*There's probably software that can get you the song, but you can also pirate it off any torrent site easier.
actually once you get the software in place it's easier than having to find a good torrent first, then putting it in the client, and you know what you're getting from youtube (immediate preview), but the soundquality of a youtube video is pretty bad (usually a 64kbps mp3).
in fact you don't even need software, just a website, such as kickyoutube.com, which allows you to do this:
have a youtube URL like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h6pcqC6wrI
and then you type "kick" like http://www.kickyoutube.com/watch?v=9h6pcqC6wrI
and then you can click a link and download wheeee
for those people who know how to run Python scripts, I personally find the youtube-dl (http://bitbucket.org/rg3/youtube-dl/wiki/Home) script incredibly useful. it would, for instance, allow me to open that webpage with "30 punk songs" for LMNO, use Ctrl-L in Opera to copy/paste a list of all the youtube URLs to a textfile, and use that textfile to automatically one by one download all the songs, without much effort on my part.
Quote from: Triple Zero on February 27, 2010, 02:25:39 PM
Quote from: Requia ☣ on February 27, 2010, 03:04:29 AM
*There's probably software that can get you the song, but you can also pirate it off any torrent site easier.
actually once you get the software in place it's easier than having to find a good torrent first, then putting it in the client, and you know what you're getting from youtube (immediate preview), but the soundquality of a youtube video is pretty bad (usually a 64kbps mp3).
in fact you don't even need software, just a website, such as kickyoutube.com, which allows you to do this:
have a youtube URL like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h6pcqC6wrI
and then you type "kick" like http://www.kickyoutube.com/watch?v=9h6pcqC6wrI
and then you can click a link and download wheeee
for those people who know how to run Python scripts, I personally find the youtube-dl (http://bitbucket.org/rg3/youtube-dl/wiki/Home) script incredibly useful. it would, for instance, allow me to open that webpage with "30 punk songs" for LMNO, use Ctrl-L in Opera to copy/paste a list of all the youtube URLs to a textfile, and use that textfile to automatically one by one download all the songs, without much effort on my part.
On *nix, the flash plugin caches flash videos as /tmp/Flash*. These are .flv files, which will play with any audio player for which I have tried them. With mplayer, you can tell it to spit out a .wav or simply not to show the video stream.
Quote from: MMIX on February 27, 2010, 12:21:42 AM
Cramulus, if they are actually getting $149 / month then they are earning close to $1800 p.a. Waterman was paid $16 by google/youtube which is way less than 1% of that. This was for the use of copyrighted material the creation of which is the basis of Waterman's employment and livelihood. I have huge problems with the current state of IP "rights" and copyright law in general but I honestly think you are being unfair to Pete Waterman in this instance - hence my, apparently unsuccessful, attempt at irony with the punk collective image with the anti-copyright message and my "blind justice" hands over the eyes comment on my personal responsibility towards the copyright law.
Yeah, but people telling each other about cool stuff isn't a commercial transaction and shouldn't have a price tag attached to it. It's sad that a lot of people in the music industry are getting the shaft, financially, but this is because they're trying to apply old business models to a new form of market.
Media has changed since the 80s, you just straight up can't guard information that you're broadcasting everywhere. Especially 20 years after it peaked.
Imagine if, back in the 60s,
everybody built their own radio station transmitters. It would be too big of a job for the FCC to monitor every single station. People are going to play their favorite music, and they're not going to pay any royalties. Does that mean somebody's getting screwed out of money? Why does the entire system have to accommodate the financial interests at the cost of the creative ones? Going back to Utilitarian Ethics, what's the greatest good for the greatest number? Is it restricting everybody's right to have a radio station? To me, it seems fairer to change the nature of IP. There's no real reason to expect cash just because your song is popular on youtube. Should the artist worry that people are not buying the album because they can hear the song on the radio whenever they want? Hell no - the song on the radio / internet is a commercial for the CD. If you're not profiting off of your internet fame, it's because you're using a ten year old model.
When the printing press was invented, an awful lot of scribes lost their jobs.
I'm not sure if this represents a change, really. It's just the continuation of a trend -- information tends to travel faster between any two points as time goes on. That anyone had a radio station in the 60s was just as much an advance over the 1860s as youtube is over standard radio in the 60s -- since radio is not only wireless (meaning that receivers don't need to be telegraph operators), but contains more than just telegraph signals, just as a youtube video contains more than just audio and has many more potential producers and consumers than radio.
Quote from: Enki v. 2.0 on February 27, 2010, 09:19:30 PMOn *nix, the flash plugin caches flash videos as /tmp/Flash*. These are .flv files, which will play with any audio player for which I have tried them. With mplayer, you can tell it to spit out a .wav or simply not to show the video stream.
True but you can feed youtube-dl the URL to any youtube movie, without even loading it in the browser, which is often more useful.
I usually use ffmpeg to rip the mp3 from the flv. Because an flv is just a multi stream format like AVI, all it has to do is separate the original mp3 stream embedded in the flv file, no need to re-encode anything even.
The point I really want to tease out is the kind of grey area around exactly what, in an increasingly fluid market, constitutes a commercial transaction. You say that two people swapping ideas about music [or even books or magazines maybe???] does not qualify as a commercial transaction. I'm just interested in where the line between commercial/non-commercial lies when the material they are swapping can have a monetary value defined in legal rights held by someone else and which represents their livelihood. And for all the "freedom" of information and music and such in the contemporary social market even when the lines are blurring almost before the ink is dry the bottom line is . . . if people are still making money out of "stuff" no matter what the market/legal model it seems to necessarily rely on some form of legal "ownership" and copyright. I'm actually pretty much in favour of kopyleft and the most non restrictive practice practicable in the dissemination of all IP materials but thats 'cos I'm still pretty idealistic for an ground down old hag
Oh lawd. Another good thread turned into a shitfest on some argumentative subject.
Quote from: Kai on February 28, 2010, 12:02:16 AM
Oh lawd. Another good thread turned into a shitfest on some argumentative subject.
WTF??
Mittens to OP.
Quote from: Kai on February 28, 2010, 12:02:16 AM
Oh lawd. Another good thread turned into a shitfest on some argumentative subject.
Disagree. Mittens to discussion as well.
It's back up, by the way.
http://mashable.com/2010/02/24/youtube-rickroll-removal-was-a-mistake/ (http://mashable.com/2010/02/24/youtube-rickroll-removal-was-a-mistake/)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0&feature=player_embedded (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0&feature=player_embedded)
Keep on rollin.
I'm sure that Never Gonna Give you up did not represent a years work.
If so he only deserves the $16.
Granted the comparison may only stretch so far as 'we're both exploited'. Even so, the question of exploitation. When should this man have made money?
In 1987. When it was a hit. When it was a massive song. When it was selling CDs. Let's be realistic; the criticism of Youtube for exploitation is ridiculous because without YT, the Rickroll phenonomon would not have come about - the only reason this song is so well know at present is because for some reason it is part of this obscure cultural event.
Yes, he's a working stiff (EDIT: Just checked him out on Wiki; even if he only got 10% of the money his three person team made, that's still 6 million pounds - about 12 mil Aus and i think the same US), but he's being a whiny prat. Let's see if those foreign workers are making $16 a year from their hard work in 22 years, for the buildings they built 22 years ago.
Quote from: Cramulus on February 26, 2010, 02:03:34 PMThis looks like a good place to quote our good friend Synaptaclypse Generator:
QuotePublic domain allows works to become integral parts of other works – Alice
in Wonderland is a good example. It has been borrowed from by thousands of
artists for thousands of reasons, and because of this, the story has lived
on and grown with us to the point of becoming archetypical. This is not
possible with works that are still under copyright for obvious reasons.
In the information age, our cultural heritage has gone global.
Scheherazade’s work is almost as much a part of our cultural heritage as
Shakespeare and Carroll. Innovations and enhancements on all of their works
enrich the scope and power of the original to inform our global culture and
provide a familiar framework for the innovator to work within.
For Eris’ sake, even weather data is under strict copyright – the National
Weather Service is limited on what weather data it is allowed to provide free
on its website, since the private sector owns pieces of the information.
I find it especially disappointing that the company that has benefited most
from information in the public domain is leading the fight to keep their
versions of those public domain works under strict copyright.
There is a common and oft repeated misconception that I wrote that. I stole it, actually and have always admitted this. I can't remember where from. It might have been the old 23ae. Sweet (K)! :lulz:
Quote from: Placid Dingo on February 28, 2010, 09:44:20 AM
I'm sure that Never Gonna Give you up did not represent a years work.
If so he only deserves the $16.
That is actually a scarily close estimate. I did the math - calculating from StockAitkenWaterman's $105M profit over their 25yr history allowing for a 52 week year [but no weekends - they are creative ya'know] during which they worked 24/7 [still being creative all the time] they earned $2.67 a minute. So using those figures, yep must have taken him about 6 minutes to write it then. Yeah, I know its crap - but I'm still flabbergasted that you used the word "deserves" in a discussion of financial remuneration . . . wtf does "deserving" have to do with pay???
Quote from: Placid Dingo on February 28, 2010, 09:44:20 AM
Granted the comparison may only stretch so far as 'we're both exploited'. Even so, the question of exploitation. When should this man have made money?
In 1987. When it was a hit. When it was a massive song. When it was selling CDs. Let's be realistic; the criticism of Youtube for exploitation is ridiculous because without YT, the Rickroll phenonomon would not have come about - the only reason this song is so well know at present is because for some reason it is part of this obscure cultural event.
Yes, he's a working stiff (EDIT: Just checked him out on Wiki; even if he only got 10% of the money his three person team made, that's still 6 million pounds - about 12 mil Aus and i think the same US), but he's being a whiny prat. Let's see if those foreign workers are making $16 a year from their hard work in 22 years, for the buildings they built 22 years ago.
Nope, Waterman is not the working stiff I was talking about, in fact for the purposes of my argument he's a cypher for any other/unknown writer/artist. Imagine that Rickrolling is based on the creative output of jobbing composer Snirk Dragney and sung by Earnest Youngman. They are 40 year showbiz veterans but never made it big. They just about paid their bills; they loved their careers but never got famous. In fact even when Earnest died after a long and financially debilitating illness his wife and two young daughters were pretty lonely in the local chapel at his funeral. Snirk and a few of the old crowd came, of course, but it only made it to the bottom of the local news shorts column in the local paper. Mrs Youngman is deeply in debt and the $16 she gets from her husbands estate is not going to pay for sandwiches at the funeral tea; and Snirk? Well he spent the money on the bus ride to the funeral.
Pete Waterman may or may not be an overpaid jerk but that has no bearing whatsoever on the underlying principle at stake here. The nature of builders is to build, get paid, move on. The nature of creatives is to create and wait a lifetime hoping your creations will pay the bills. The nature of youtube is to be a COMMERCIAL enterprise trying to make MONEY from its content. I get what you and Cram are saying but you are glossing over the whole 'profiting from your work' issue. Waterman's work is writing songs for profit. And to quote Cram:
QuoteIf you're not profiting off of your internet fame, it's because you're using a ten year old model.
I would suggest that, certainly in the short term, copyright law will not be able to maintain step with the phenomenal pace of change in the technology underpinning the culture business.
I'd also add that youtube as a BUSINESS was bought out for $1.6 BILLION, presumably by people using an extremely contemporary profit generating model who thought that they could make a monumental profit on the deal; though interestingly youtube = still not in profit - which begs several questions about how you can actually generate profit from this kind of enterprise, especially when people of the younger generation seem to have such a different take on "profit" and the nature of what constitutes a commercial transaction. You and Cram seem to be hung up on 'info wants to be free / music wants to be free' like it was still the 60's and you were damn hippies or something . . . its really rather sweet :wink:
MMIX
uses patchouli scented soap - not a dirty hippy dammit
pre-emptively edited to applaud the Synaptaclypse Generator piece
youtube's goal is not to make its content providers rich
youtube may be a business, but just because you're youtube famous doesn't mean that somebody owes you a check. Your fame has actually made a lot of money for youtube, but it's not like they're licensing your creativity, they're just capitalizing off the free trade of information.
What I'm saying about info wanting to be free is that the more youtube becomes commercialized,
(and I think we've all seen how it is changing after being bought by google)
the more power it gives to sites which aren't as controlling about what they present.
Youtube can do great as a commercial entity if it retains its stranglehold on kids linking each other to videos.
But the more commercials they add, the more copyright restrictions they adhere to, the less clicks they will get.
Look at napster - everybody used napster to pirate music. It reached a certain size, and then Napster decided to become a legitimate business venture and started charging and paying royalties. And overnight, it disappeared and was replaced by free trade venues like BitTorrent, Limewire, Gnutella, OpenNap, KaZaA, Morpheus, WinMX and FastTrack.
Youtube cannot make many content producers rich, spreading the wealth, while the prices it charges for advertising are kept artificially low. Simply, the money isn't there - it's still being spent on billboards, radio, tv, newspaper, old established forms of media. This (http://seanharper.net/2008/04/08/online-advertising-statistics/) is just one example I just found, showing that for every dollar spent, online advertising was at least 18x more effective than offline advertising. But good luck charging higher advertising rates for your news site than The New York Times. Not that there's a conspiracy, just sayin'.
But it's still early days. Your friendly local cable company will dig its heels in for as long as possible at the prospect of delivering television channels through the high speed internet connection you already pay them for, even though they both currently use the exact same coaxial cable. Because half its business model is dead when it loses its monopoly on over-priced advertising, which it will just as soon as it becomes the norm for people to have an internet device attached to their living room screen. An internet device which can show premium content, funded (at least partially) by higher advertising rates.
The networks (Fox, ABC, etc) won't like this, because with a direct line to the actual talent, it will become possible to fund the production of high quality content without all the parasitic middlemen. Advertising won't be a scatter-shot broadcast one-many approach, but demographically targeted. Those companies which take advantage of this will reap the rewards, and the market will likely move dramatically when it does start to shift.
At that point the infrastructure behind Youtube and Googles advertising machine will be best positioned to a) fund content and b) deliver it. I think this is why Youtube sold for 1.6 billion dollars, and if it plays out as above, it'll be a bargain in the long run. At that point maybe even an asshole like Waterman would be able to buy more hookers and blow as a result of the rickroll meme.
We can but hope
Quote from: Cramulus on February 28, 2010, 02:57:29 PM
youtube's goal is not to make its content providers rich
No, its aim is to make its shareholders rich
Quote from: Cramulus on February 28, 2010, 02:57:29 PM
youtube may be a business, but just because you're youtube famous doesn't mean that somebody owes you a check. Your fame has actually made a lot of money for youtube, but it's not like they're licensing your creativity, they're just capitalizing off the free trade of information.
There can be no free trade of copyrighted material - its kind of a contradiction in terms . . .
Quote from: Cramulus on February 28, 2010, 02:57:29 PM
What I'm saying about info wanting to be free is that the more youtube becomes commercialized,
(and I think we've all seen how it is changing after being bought by google)
the more power it gives to sites which aren't as controlling about what they present.
Yes youtube is changing but No it is still hand over fist unprofitable. And, it is a reasonable bet that the sites which currently aren't as controlling will be knocked back into line like the ones you cited, Napster, KaZaa etc
Quote from: Cramulus on February 28, 2010, 02:57:29 PM
Youtube can do great as a commercial entity if it retains its stranglehold on kids linking each other to videos.
But the more commercials they add, the more copyright restrictions they adhere to, the less clicks they will get.
They only need to retain enough clicks to turn a healthy profit and then the rest of us can go hang for all they care. And once the sector is sustainably in profit anything which can be ditched as not necessary to profitablity will be at risk. That's how business works. It ain't no damn charity to educate and entertain you . . . [British in-joke -that is the mission statement of the BBC]
Quote from: Cramulus on February 28, 2010, 02:57:29 PM
Look at napster - everybody used napster to pirate music. It reached a certain size, and then Napster decided to become a legitimate business venture and started charging and paying royalties. And overnight, it disappeared and was replaced by free trade venues like BitTorrent, Limewire, Gnutella, OpenNap, KaZaA, Morpheus, WinMX and FastTrack.
Yes, lets look at Napster.
It reached a certain size, and then the PTB behind major copyright holders took them to court and drove them out of business and into bankruptcy and the NAME Napster was bought by another commercial enterprise at a bankruptcy sale . . . Thats why it pretty much disappeared. And a quick surf shows that Mininova went pretty much the same way; BitTorrent "is scaling back on some of its activities - specifically the Torrent Entertainment Network - to spend more time focusing on areas of strength ..." hmmmm, retrenching; Kazaa "is now run under license as music subscription service by Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Inc." - I don't know about you but I'm seeing a pattern here . . .
I am not disputing that things are changing fast and indeed probably actually need to change faster in the entertainment/culture business but as you can see from the $1.6Bill Google spent on youtube the roots of this change lie as much in board rooms as message boards and free-downloads are all part of the free-lunch mythology. Somebody, somewhere, is footing the bill for your "free" entertainment and they want a profit from it - if they don't get it they may well pull the plug . . .
Quote from: FP on February 28, 2010, 04:13:50 PM
Youtube cannot make many content producers rich, spreading the wealth, while the prices it charges for advertising are kept artificially low. Simply, the money isn't there - it's still being spent on billboards, radio, tv, newspaper, old established forms of media. This (http://seanharper.net/2008/04/08/online-advertising-statistics/) is just one example I just found, showing that for every dollar spent, online advertising was at least 18x more effective than offline advertising. But good luck charging higher advertising rates for your news site than The New York Times. Not that there's a conspiracy, just sayin'.
But it's still early days. Your friendly local cable company will dig its heels in for as long as possible at the prospect of delivering television channels through the high speed internet connection you already pay them for, even though they both currently use the exact same coaxial cable. Because half its business model is dead when it loses its monopoly on over-priced advertising, which it will just as soon as it becomes the norm for people to have an internet device attached to their living room screen. An internet device which can show premium content, funded (at least partially) by higher advertising rates.
The networks (Fox, ABC, etc) won't like this, because with a direct line to the actual talent, it will become possible to fund the production of high quality content without all the parasitic middlemen. Advertising won't be a scatter-shot broadcast one-many approach, but demographically targeted. Those companies which take advantage of this will reap the rewards, and the market will likely move dramatically when it does start to shift.
At that point the infrastructure behind Youtube and Googles advertising machine will be best positioned to a) fund content and b) deliver it. I think this is why Youtube sold for 1.6 billion dollars, and if it plays out as above, it'll be a bargain in the long run. At that point maybe even an asshole like Waterman would be able to buy more hookers and blow as a result of the rickroll meme.
We can but hope
The ability to use things like PayPal and on-line subscription services to fund "product"- damn but that is an ugly word for cultural artefacts - is possibly the most hopeful direction that this thing can go. Paying 20p to d/l a single track could well be the way to actually generate the enormous profits that the edutainment industry demands in order to make us goodies.
Quote from: MMIX on February 28, 2010, 04:41:59 PM
Quote from: Cramulus on February 28, 2010, 02:57:29 PM
youtube may be a business, but just because you're youtube famous doesn't mean that somebody owes you a check. Your fame has actually made a lot of money for youtube, but it's not like they're licensing your creativity, they're just capitalizing off the free trade of information.
There can be no free trade of copyrighted material - its kind of a contradiction in terms . . .
If I may be a pedantic ass for a moment: by the terms of the Berne convention, all things that can be copyrighted are implicitly copyrighted. Futhermore, intellectual property is (at least in US law) is not part of criminal but civil law -- in other words, IP rights are functionally nonexistent until someone sues, at which point whether or not the rights have been violated is decided by the court (which is why fair use can be so cloudy an idea). When we are posting in this forum, this is a free trade of copyrighted material, since everything we have written is copyrightable and therefore implicitly copyrighted (except in the fringe case that someone here lives in a nation that has not signed the Berne convention and that therefore has no international copyright support) -- however, the various copyrights that exist and their respective various infringements do not in fact matter until someone decides to sue someone else. If you sued me for quoting you for quoting cram, then the copyrights would begin to matter (nevermind that it's a nonsensical suit and should get thrown out of court -- IP law is dictated by a lot of people, many of whom have only the vaguest idea about the context in which they are dictating legislation, which is why someone managed to successfully patent a linked list).
Quote from: Enki v. 2.0 on February 28, 2010, 04:55:43 PM
Quote from: MMIX on February 28, 2010, 04:41:59 PM
Quote from: Cramulus on February 28, 2010, 02:57:29 PM
youtube may be a business, but just because you're youtube famous doesn't mean that somebody owes you a check. Your fame has actually made a lot of money for youtube, but it's not like they're licensing your creativity, they're just capitalizing off the free trade of information.
There can be no free trade of copyrighted material - its kind of a contradiction in terms . . .
If I may be a pedantic ass for a moment: by the terms of the Berne convention, all things that can be copyrighted are implicitly copyrighted. Futhermore, intellectual property is (at least in US law) is not part of criminal but civil law -- in other words, IP rights are functionally nonexistent until someone sues, at which point whether or not the rights have been violated is decided by the court (which is why fair use can be so cloudy an idea). When we are posting in this forum, this is a free trade of copyrighted material, since everything we have written is copyrightable and therefore implicitly copyrighted (except in the fringe case that someone here lives in a nation that has not signed the Berne convention and that therefore has no international copyright support) -- however, the various copyrights that exist and their respective various infringements do not in fact matter until someone decides to sue someone else. If you sued me for quoting you for quoting cram, then the copyrights would begin to matter (nevermind that it's a nonsensical suit and should get thrown out of court -- IP law is dictated by a lot of people, many of whom have only the vaguest idea about the context in which they are dictating legislation, which is why someone managed to successfully patent a linked list).
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a289/goblinhill/pedantic.jpg)
@you . . . :lulz:
While you are technically correct I still stand by my point insofar as copyright material can always be controlled by the copyright holder.
That's cute, but the law and reality seem to disagree.
Quote from: Triple Zero on February 28, 2010, 06:14:42 PM
That's cute, but the law and reality seem to disagree.
Hence the legal distinction between de facto and de jure . . . but its like so much else - like for example if you stole my bike I would probably never notice and if I did I would probably not do anything about it - but if I stole yours then a crime would have been committed [and I'm assuming here that you
would notice]
and also
What is this "
reality" of which you speak .? .? .?
My point is that everything's peachy until someone sues -- except in the cases wherein someone tries to cover their ass in case they might get sued. It's a bit of a pet peeve of mine when people throw around the term "copyrighted work" as though it's meaningful, because everything that can be copyrighted is automatically copyrighted anywhere where copyright exists, but that's just a slippery language thing (it's typically assumed that someone who doesn't make nonsensical statements about IP law otherwise means "registered copyright" by "copyright", but it's still potentially dangerous, since that usage encourages the people who equate licensce breach with theft, &c.).
Quote from: MMIX on February 28, 2010, 04:41:59 PM
Quote from: Cramulus on February 28, 2010, 02:57:29 PM
youtube may be a business, but just because you're youtube famous doesn't mean that somebody owes you a check. Your fame has actually made a lot of money for youtube, but it's not like they're licensing your creativity, they're just capitalizing off the free trade of information.
There can be no free trade of copyrighted material - its kind of a contradiction in terms . . .
Really? I'm pretty sure I'm downloading Sean of the Dead right now. When it's done downloading, I will seed it. Sorry, copyright holders - your DVD price point is irrelevant to me.
there is really no way to stop two computer users from trading information with each other.
A lot of business models are going to have to adjust, because free communication is no longer something you can legislate away or prevent via lawsuit.
QuoteQuote from: Cramulus on February 28, 2010, 02:57:29 PM
What I'm saying about info wanting to be free is that the more youtube becomes commercialized,
(and I think we've all seen how it is changing after being bought by google)
the more power it gives to sites which aren't as controlling about what they present.
Yes youtube is changing but No it is still hand over fist unprofitable. And, it is a reasonable bet that the sites which currently aren't as controlling will be knocked back into line like the ones you cited, Napster, KaZaa etc
...and in turn be replaced by more permissive organizations.
QuoteQuote from: Cramulus on February 28, 2010, 02:57:29 PM
Look at napster - everybody used napster to pirate music. It reached a certain size, and then Napster decided to become a legitimate business venture and started charging and paying royalties. And overnight, it disappeared and was replaced by free trade venues like BitTorrent, Limewire, Gnutella, OpenNap, KaZaA, Morpheus, WinMX and FastTrack.
Yes, lets look at Napster.
It reached a certain size, and then the PTB behind major copyright holders took them to court and drove them out of business and into bankruptcy and the NAME Napster was bought by another commercial enterprise at a bankruptcy sale . . . Thats why it pretty much disappeared. And a quick surf shows that Mininova went pretty much the same way; BitTorrent "is scaling back on some of its activities - specifically the Torrent Entertainment Network - to spend more time focusing on areas of strength ..." hmmmm, retrenching; Kazaa "is now run under license as music subscription service by Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Inc." - I don't know about you but I'm seeing a pattern here . . .
Really? I'm seeing an inability to regulate the trade of information. As sites get larger, they become targets for legal attention, and then they must morph or die. Smaller, more private sites will continue to succeed. As mininova sinks, demonoid rises. When somebody decides to slap demonoid with a lawsuit and the thing goes belly up, all those users will flood to whatever site is next. You can't sue a mode of communication out of existence, even if it challenges your monopoly on a type of information. They tried to sue the Pirate Bay for damages to the film industry, how retarded is that? As if the Pirate Bay is the only website which hosts torrents.
And luckily for pirates, technological advancements will always be a step ahead of the law. And the law isn't globally uniform, so even if some American investors get all bitchtits, and American copyright law gets psycho groupie cocaine crazy, there are still tons of places where the net is unregulated. Online casinos are illegal in the USA, so they just keep the servers in Costa Rica. That's why the Pirate Bay is running out of a cyberbunker in Russia right now. And they developed their software so that they no longer need a central tracker site to manage torrents, the load is distributed throughout the network.
QuoteI am not disputing that things are changing fast and indeed probably actually need to change faster in the entertainment/culture business but as you can see from the $1.6Bill Google spent on youtube the roots of this change lie as much in board rooms as message boards and free-downloads are all part of the free-lunch mythology. Somebody, somewhere, is footing the bill for your "free" entertainment and they want a profit from it - if they don't get it they may well pull the plug . . .
your mistake is in thinking that the Internet is owned by anybody. Yes, individual companies may sink of swim, but they are not the whole of the internet. It's not like the sharing of videos is going to cease being profitable and then disappear. If google dumps the company, all that traffic will just be absorbed by the hundreds of video hosting sites which want to be the next youtube. These companies can go ahead and pull the plug on "free entertainment" for all I care. This just hastens their realization of the inevitable truth - that they cannot possibly control how people trade shit. They should be working within the free trade model (and figuring out how to make a buck off of microtransactions and ad revenue) instead of fighting futilely against it.
Quote from: Enki v. 2.0 on February 28, 2010, 06:37:12 PM
My point is that everything's peachy until someone sues -- except in the cases wherein someone tries to cover their ass in case they might get sued. It's a bit of a pet peeve of mine when people throw around the term "copyrighted work" as though it's meaningful, because everything that can be copyrighted is automatically copyrighted anywhere where copyright exists, but that's just a slippery language thing (it's typically assumed that someone who doesn't make nonsensical statements about IP law otherwise means "registered copyright" by "copyright", but it's still potentially dangerous, since that usage encourages the people who equate licensce breach with theft, &c.).
. . . and its a good point. Breach of copyright is of course a civil offence and it is only of relevance if an aggrieved party attempts to gain legal satisfaction. So my bike example was right in principle but wrong in law :wink: To go back to the inimitable Mr Waterman . . . he is in an equivalent legal position to Rick Astley who is apparently NOT bothered by the whole business. Interestingly youtube have actually acknowledged that they owe Waterman for the use of the material by paying him the $16. Maybe they would just have done better to ignore the debt? It is possible that it is the derisory amount of $16 which is the irritant rather then the unauthorised use of the work - just a thought
Not to derail the thread or anything, but any free lunch "mythology" is closer to the literal truth than anything that assumes you need to pay for lunch. Money is a social construction -- which is not to say it's unimportant, but merely to say that in a purely literal and physical sense, it is nonexistent or nonsensical. The idea of a free lunch or the absence of it makes no sense unless you assume the existence of money, and furthermore assume a particular use of money, and furthermore assume that money is valuable. What we are getting in the case of rickrolling is that someone is pointing someone else to something -- which is a transaction, but it need not be an economic transaction. A rough equivalent off the internet is that someone points at the Statue of Liberty. Should france get money because someone pointed at the statue of liberty and someone else saw them pointing? It's a terribly broken metaphor, mind you -- but, so is the metaphor that indicating the location of some publically accessible thing without the explicit intent of gaining money from it is a financial transaction.
Someone making a monument may wish that they had gotten money off of it. Whoever manufactured the urinal now signed and in a museum might wish they were getting royalties. That doesn't make it no longer public, and the fact that people want all sorts of things doesn't mean that they are allowed (or should be allowed) to get them.
Quote from: Cramulus on February 28, 2010, 07:07:51 PM
your mistake is in thinking that the Internet is owned by anybody. Yes, individual companies may sink of swim, but they are not the whole of the internet. It's not like the sharing of videos is going to cease being profitable and then disappear. If google dumps the company, all that traffic will just be absorbed by the hundreds of video hosting sites which want to be the next youtube. These companies can go ahead and pull the plug on "free entertainment" for all I care. This just hastens their realization of the inevitable truth - that they cannot possibly control how people trade shit. They should be working within the free trade model (and figuring out how to make a buck off of microtransactions and ad revenue) instead of fighting futilely against it.
Yeah, and I go back to my earlier point - maybe PayPal will save the civilised world . . . but between now and then there are going to be a lot more unhappy Pete Watermans. Interesting that his reaction is to complain to the press rather than institute legal action. Maybe that kind of direct appeal to the public will become the way people look for redress in what is, inevitably, going to be a very different future.
related:
(http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a95/discordman/bin/piracy-is-not-theft-its-piracy.jpg)
Quote from: Enki v. 2.0 on February 28, 2010, 07:19:54 PM
Not to derail the thread or anything, but any free lunch "mythology" is closer to the literal truth than anything that assumes you need to pay for lunch. Money is a social construction -- which is not to say it's unimportant, but merely to say that in a purely literal and physical sense, it is nonexistent or nonsensical. The idea of a free lunch or the absence of it makes no sense unless you assume the existence of money, and furthermore assume a particular use of money, and furthermore assume that money is valuable. What we are getting in the case of rickrolling is that someone is pointing someone else to something -- which is a transaction, but it need not be an economic transaction. A rough equivalent off the internet is that someone points at the Statue of Liberty. Should france get money because someone pointed at the statue of liberty and someone else saw them pointing? It's a terribly broken metaphor, mind you -- but, so is the metaphor that indicating the location of some publicly accessible thing without the explicit intent of gaining money from it is a financial transaction.
Someone making a monument may wish that they had gotten money off of it. Whoever manufactured the urinal now signed and in a museum might wish they were getting royalties. That doesn't make it no longer public, and the fact that people want all sorts of things doesn't mean that they are allowed (or should be allowed) to get them.
Money is the most powerful meme we have. The interesting thing about the free-lunch mythology is that it kind of prefigures the kind of post-currency transactions which are being developed like LETS systems and other non-cash economies. The 'price' you pay for a free-lunch may not be money at all it might be agreeing to exposure to ads or the withdrawal of certain currently available products -like for example on-line services like youtube. * I really can't see how that can ever be financially viable - anyone got any idea as to how you might be able to generate the kind of revenues which would justify Google's huge investment??
Quote from: Cramulus on February 28, 2010, 07:27:48 PM
related:
(http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a95/discordman/bin/piracy-is-not-theft-its-piracy.jpg)
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a289/goblinhill/icon_rofl.gif)
Quote from: MMIX on February 28, 2010, 07:37:41 PM
I really can't see how that can ever be financially viable - anyone got any idea as to how you might be able to generate the kind of revenues which would justify Google's huge investment??
The per user cost of running Youtube will fall as bandwidth and servers get cheaper, ads will not.
Though, Youtube doesn't *have* to be profitable. Google is supposedly trying to be the next Microsoft, and part of how Microsoft maintains its monopoly is putting out products even when those products are unprofitable. Google may be doing the same thing with Youtube (As long as they control the main video site, nobody can get a foothold for a new advertising network with the primary video site).
Quote from: Requia ☣ on February 28, 2010, 08:52:16 PM
Quote from: MMIX on February 28, 2010, 07:37:41 PM
I really can't see how that can ever be financially viable - anyone got any idea as to how you might be able to generate the kind of revenues which would justify Google's huge investment??
The per user cost of running Youtube will fall as bandwidth and servers get cheaper, ads will not.
Though, Youtube doesn't *have* to be profitable. Google is supposedly trying to be the next Microsoft, and part of how Microsoft maintains its monopoly is putting out products even when those products are unprofitable. Google may be doing the same thing with Youtube (As long as they control the main video site, nobody can get a foothold for a new advertising network with the primary video site).
A $1.6Billion loss leader/cockblocker . . . wow, those guys must have some stones
Google's trying to take over the world. Youtube is a useful pawn to that end. Makes perfect sense to me.
I wonder if they'd use Google Ad sense on themselves.
I might read the ToC if I get time, this conversation is very interesting.
Quote from: Cramulus on February 28, 2010, 07:07:51 PMThat's why the Pirate Bay is running out of a cyberbunker in Russia The Netherlands right now.
Fixed. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_pirate_bay#Recent_incidents)
Quote from: Triple Zero on February 28, 2010, 09:38:48 PM
Quote from: Cramulus on February 28, 2010, 07:07:51 PMThat's why the Pirate Bay is running out of a cyberbunker in Russia The Netherlands right now.
Fixed. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_pirate_bay#Recent_incidents)
Yo ho ho and a bottle of Advocaat :cheers:
(fixed for incompetent quoting)
:lol:
Quote from: Sigmatic on February 28, 2010, 09:19:02 PM
Google's trying to take over the world. Youtube is a useful pawn to that end. Makes perfect sense to me.
From what I understand, the official word on their world domination plan is that it hinges upon the singularity. This is, presumably, why they hire top AI researchers to do pure research for a company that's primarily making web apps.
Quote from: Enki v. 2.0 on March 01, 2010, 02:53:44 AM
Quote from: Sigmatic on February 28, 2010, 09:19:02 PM
Google's trying to take over the world. Youtube is a useful pawn to that end. Makes perfect sense to me.
From what I understand, the official word on their world domination plan is that it hinges upon the singularity. This is, presumably, why they hire top AI researchers to do pure research for a company that's primarily making web apps.
Interesting, I'd heard that before but I have no link. Do you?
'deserves' was a play on the idea that it took him 16 years to write that song. It was a 'funny.' ignore.
My point was he was being a whiny prat. I don't think anytihng of the 'wants to be free' or whatever, but that's a good looking future that i think few people will object to, provided their bills get paid somehow. So maybe the Youtube model is worth changing, but that's not the point I care for.
I was just a bit cheesed that this guy would compare his writing a song years ago to being a builder in challenging conditions.
Quote from: Sigmatic on March 01, 2010, 05:55:59 AM
Quote from: Enki v. 2.0 on March 01, 2010, 02:53:44 AM
Quote from: Sigmatic on February 28, 2010, 09:19:02 PM
Google's trying to take over the world. Youtube is a useful pawn to that end. Makes perfect sense to me.
From what I understand, the official word on their world domination plan is that it hinges upon the singularity. This is, presumably, why they hire top AI researchers to do pure research for a company that's primarily making web apps.
Interesting, I'd heard that before but I have no link. Do you?
I'm pretty sure it was Word of God at some point, but I can't seem to find it at the moment. It might have been part of that email they sent around 2007 trying to recruit all the google code account holders.
We also might want to look at the initial circumstances in this situation.
Some internet jokers played a prank that linked supposed content to [UNRELATED THING X].
The "value" of [X] was in the non-sequitor nature of the link.
Additional "value" was the once-popular status of the link, now largely derided (before the rickroll phenomenon, an early 80s club night would not play the song, or if they did, it would clear the dancefloor*).
So, there is nothing about "Never Gonna Give You Up" that the jokesters found valuable in the song itself; rather, it was the cultural placeholder and irrelevancy that added the humor and entertainment.
The point being: If the original Rickroll jokesters had to pay to use the song upfront, they wouldn't have done it. They would have chosen some public domain footage of an equally obscure and culturally irrelevant thing, perhaps a clip of Pettycoat Junction (which has an episode or two in the public domain, actually).
The point being, that this guy isn't gonna get paid either way - it was used because it was free, and if it cost money, it wouldn't be used.
*Citation: I have attended many, many early 80 club nights.
Excellent synopsis, LMNO. Makes me sad it had to be explained, it's like a joke that's ruined in the explanation after no one gets the punchline, but it's the sort of meta-meta-analysis that keeps this board hopping.
Also, speaking as a sister to two brothers who are self-publishing/recording, it's a tough world out there. The "starving" artist will do just about ANYthing sometimes to get out there and be "known." Let alone "noted."
But once they ARE "notable," they tend to want to reap those rewards and open source tends to be a 4-letter word. Sad, but true. I understand both sides and empathize with both. I think education about what the alternatives and how you can use both to your benefit as an artist/producer/etc. are the key to making it work for you. And then you won't feel burned by the consequences of either.