Analysis
...is what I'm going to need, (sorry Tom Cruise, but, don't worry, I don't take legal drugs... I feel the same way you do about the Brave New psycho-tropics and have said so) to deal with the opinions of these fuckin octogenarians... when was the last time one of them even listened to music? Ok, enough about my mental state (sadness for all the poor shmucks who still haven't figured out how to get their music). I never saw the original Napster website. By the time I got a clue, all they had was sad news and T-shirts... at least I got one of those.
Now, if the lower court reconfigures according to guidelines, we've got some 40 years till the software degrades, which will affect the network. I'm sure they'll do what they can to keep people from finding the software. They are very good at creating obstacles (which is about all they can do since positive actions are anathema to them) and the hackers and light-bearers will find more and better, hopefully aggressive guerilla, ways to sidestep them. This battle is gonna make the Vietnam War feel like the Six Day War... it's just gonna be endless back and forth.
There is no way to stop the exchange and copying of digital files by savvy people, though they may be able to make serious inroads on the sheeple (thanks for that term Jesse, it is handy...sheep + people = sheeple). Then again, many are probably saying, as I was in the fall of '01, "Holy shit, I better get on the ball with this free music before it's all gone". Anyway, as long as people can type "free" and "music".. we should do just fine.
I liked Ernest Miller's summary of the comments today. Here's yesterday's, which is also very good. There's certainly a variety of opinion on the decision. I also liked this story by the Washington Post as it touches on the relationship between the Grokster case and the larger issues of who owns our channels of communication. Today's story also gives a good perspective on the new landscape carved out here for corporate culture. You didn't buy that "We the People"... bullshit did you? The legislature, the MJ and OJ juries, and now even the fuckin Supreme Court cares about powerful people, and who are the most powerful people? The big corporations.
It's too bad I don't do the DVD reviews any more because I did see a very interesting documentary recently called The Corporation which went into the history of the corporation and how they came to be regarded, and treated legally, as people. They have all the same rights that people do... the right to own property and do whatever they want with it. Originally corporations were entrusted with very limited rights to do public projects, but, after the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment offered certain rights to all people.
Of course, that was meant to help the former slaves achieve a place in society (we all know how that worked out...) and, in the years following the war there were over 300 lawsuits that refined and expanded the law. Oh, and did you know that only a few of those cases were brought by people of color? The rest were brought by corporations which soon wielded unbelievable power that benefitted the robber barons and their progeny. The film compared the new "people" to real ones and showed how pathological they are.
Corporations, by fiat, are pathologically selfish and will externalize any cost they can. There is one, and only one, acceptable goal... to profit. This is not about immoral people, it's about the way the system is set up. Neither the legislature or the Supreme Court see the problem with giving corporate America such unfettered freedom. It really saddens me that they can't make out the larger issues.
So, personal analysis, social analysis... oh, you thought I meant legal analysis. I can do that in two words: software and stigma. I guess I was in fantasyland thinking those Justices were gonna look at Rosso and those companies and just condone. I can't get past the immorality of the label's ownership but, the court can't get past the fact that they do own that stuff. And it was unrealistic to think that they would rubber stamp websites that actively culled Napster users.
It's amazing how conservative we've become. I mean, Napster was not lead by Malcolm X here. Hank Barry is about as corporate & sanitized an image as you're gonna get. He had spent his career up till then as a lawyer, he came out of the courtroom in a white shirt and horn-rimmed glasses for god's sake. Yet, he might as well have been standing there with his fist in the air. All they saw was rebellion and upheaval. This is about structure and rules. There is only one thing they all agree on in Washington... rules are rules and you follow the rules.
You can try to change the rules, which is primarily what we're about now, but, whatever rules are there... that's what you play by. They ignore the fact that the rules favor the biggest players so strongly that you do create unstable situations that foster revolt and which drag on the economy.
The court tried to nod to hardware and I would like to think a more traditional defendant would see the other side of the pendulum. I think we'll continue to see the California courts act reasonably. Still, it's gonna be a big chill. If you think the VCs are not watching this Hummer lawsuit, think again. Just think what they're up against now, after this decision. No one likes exposure and hassles.
The renegade ventures are not gonna get funded, not with so many available that just have the usual amount of IP baggage. Worse, the VC's are gonna be far less interested in entertainment. This saddens me because the barriers to entry have made entertainment a great area for venture money. Roger McNamee/Bono are doing quite well with it. Worst of all, the marriage of high tech and content is more fractured than ever and all kinds of blended deals are gonna suffer.
So, score one up for business as usual, for more consolidation and corporate control. The High Court had a chance to act that way but, in their minds these are just some dinky little companies leaching off bigger ones and Sony was... well, Sony. While I may be interested in larger issues, the court takes its defendants as it finds them and this wink and nod business about we don't know what they're trading, came off as coy and they went hard after the inducement aspect. At the same time we just did not sell on the substantial non-infringing use aspect, which shows a real knowledge gap on the part of the court.
The court saw Sony as a legitimate innovator that was gonna have some marginal negative impact on the content providers and saw these guys as being about theft. They were not persuaded by all the necessary, good and legal sharing because they probably believed Shawn fucking Fanning who told them he could sort it all out.
Now, if the lower court reconfigures according to guidelines, we've got some 40 years till the software degrades, which will affect the network. I'm sure they'll do what they can to keep people from finding the software. They are very good at creating obstacles (which is about all they can do since positive actions are anathema to them) and the hackers and light-bearers will find more and better, hopefully aggressive guerilla, ways to sidestep them. This battle is gonna make the Vietnam War feel like the Six Day War... it's just gonna be endless back and forth.
There is no way to stop the exchange and copying of digital files by savvy people, though they may be able to make serious inroads on the sheeple (thanks for that term Jesse, it is handy...sheep + people = sheeple). Then again, many are probably saying, as I was in the fall of '01, "Holy shit, I better get on the ball with this free music before it's all gone". Anyway, as long as people can type "free" and "music".. we should do just fine.
I liked Ernest Miller's summary of the comments today. Here's yesterday's, which is also very good. There's certainly a variety of opinion on the decision. I also liked this story by the Washington Post as it touches on the relationship between the Grokster case and the larger issues of who owns our channels of communication. Today's story also gives a good perspective on the new landscape carved out here for corporate culture. You didn't buy that "We the People"... bullshit did you? The legislature, the MJ and OJ juries, and now even the fuckin Supreme Court cares about powerful people, and who are the most powerful people? The big corporations.
It's too bad I don't do the DVD reviews any more because I did see a very interesting documentary recently called The Corporation which went into the history of the corporation and how they came to be regarded, and treated legally, as people. They have all the same rights that people do... the right to own property and do whatever they want with it. Originally corporations were entrusted with very limited rights to do public projects, but, after the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment offered certain rights to all people.
Of course, that was meant to help the former slaves achieve a place in society (we all know how that worked out...) and, in the years following the war there were over 300 lawsuits that refined and expanded the law. Oh, and did you know that only a few of those cases were brought by people of color? The rest were brought by corporations which soon wielded unbelievable power that benefitted the robber barons and their progeny. The film compared the new "people" to real ones and showed how pathological they are.
Corporations, by fiat, are pathologically selfish and will externalize any cost they can. There is one, and only one, acceptable goal... to profit. This is not about immoral people, it's about the way the system is set up. Neither the legislature or the Supreme Court see the problem with giving corporate America such unfettered freedom. It really saddens me that they can't make out the larger issues.
So, personal analysis, social analysis... oh, you thought I meant legal analysis. I can do that in two words: software and stigma. I guess I was in fantasyland thinking those Justices were gonna look at Rosso and those companies and just condone. I can't get past the immorality of the label's ownership but, the court can't get past the fact that they do own that stuff. And it was unrealistic to think that they would rubber stamp websites that actively culled Napster users.
It's amazing how conservative we've become. I mean, Napster was not lead by Malcolm X here. Hank Barry is about as corporate & sanitized an image as you're gonna get. He had spent his career up till then as a lawyer, he came out of the courtroom in a white shirt and horn-rimmed glasses for god's sake. Yet, he might as well have been standing there with his fist in the air. All they saw was rebellion and upheaval. This is about structure and rules. There is only one thing they all agree on in Washington... rules are rules and you follow the rules.
You can try to change the rules, which is primarily what we're about now, but, whatever rules are there... that's what you play by. They ignore the fact that the rules favor the biggest players so strongly that you do create unstable situations that foster revolt and which drag on the economy.
The court tried to nod to hardware and I would like to think a more traditional defendant would see the other side of the pendulum. I think we'll continue to see the California courts act reasonably. Still, it's gonna be a big chill. If you think the VCs are not watching this Hummer lawsuit, think again. Just think what they're up against now, after this decision. No one likes exposure and hassles.
The renegade ventures are not gonna get funded, not with so many available that just have the usual amount of IP baggage. Worse, the VC's are gonna be far less interested in entertainment. This saddens me because the barriers to entry have made entertainment a great area for venture money. Roger McNamee/Bono are doing quite well with it. Worst of all, the marriage of high tech and content is more fractured than ever and all kinds of blended deals are gonna suffer.
So, score one up for business as usual, for more consolidation and corporate control. The High Court had a chance to act that way but, in their minds these are just some dinky little companies leaching off bigger ones and Sony was... well, Sony. While I may be interested in larger issues, the court takes its defendants as it finds them and this wink and nod business about we don't know what they're trading, came off as coy and they went hard after the inducement aspect. At the same time we just did not sell on the substantial non-infringing use aspect, which shows a real knowledge gap on the part of the court.
The court saw Sony as a legitimate innovator that was gonna have some marginal negative impact on the content providers and saw these guys as being about theft. They were not persuaded by all the necessary, good and legal sharing because they probably believed Shawn fucking Fanning who told them he could sort it all out.
posted by Intervision at 5:12 AM
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