Saturday, 15 October 2005

The Ripple Pool

If Record Labels can copyright sound waves, presumably I can go swimming and copyright the unique waves I make?

Why are people paying £0.99 for music over iTunes? 90% of that goes straight to the record label and you think legal downloads can't get any cheaper?
What is the defining characteristic of a legal download? There's no huge warehouse of MP3s as there is for physical products - just a server and a file - Yet it costs 99p.

When legally downloading, you get a copy of the file from the server, but you're restricted in what you can do with it.
When illegally downloading, you get a copy of the file from another computer, and you can do what you want with it.

I don't think 99p is required to cover the costs of production. Do I charge myself £0.99 when I backup my computer? Do I install Digital Rights Management to limit myself to only three backups? I just copy the files - I don't need a factory to do it. Look at Daniel Beddingfield. He recorded his entire debut album at home on his computer - yet the record label made a fortune from him.

Owning a CR-RW drive is equivalent to owning the means of production of entertainment.
The only thing standing in the way of communal ownership of the internet are the ISPs.

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