What is Digg?134 Comments
- mlwarrior, on 10/12/2007, -3/+44The broken record of the RIAA etc just keeps saying that artists need to make money to keep creating. If Internet pirates charged 1 cent for an album and gave that to the creators, then made their money off ads on their sites, I bet the artists would make more. The problem is the fat, old middle men of the RIAA who inflate the price of each song. They are a vestigial trait in this age and should be chopped off - this is where piracy comes in. They can hide behind their arguments saying "would you give away clothing for free", but I bet I could sell it for almost free if I could transmit it for free along optical cables from India and china to consumers with no middle men.
- pharekyz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+36I'd call you a moron but I don't want to insult the stupid people
- RavenNights, on 10/12/2007, -4/+36"But the good news is that you guys are mean sons of bitches and you've been figuring out ways of ripping off audiences and artists for centuries....."
Nice. - AdamLiv, on 10/12/2007, -1/+30Truth is when I write technology articles we get stacks of e-mails because at the moment my programme doesn't have a web forum. That's for me a very far from ideal way of discussiing technology issues, as I find it very hard to answer all the correspondence, and I do much of this work in my own time. I think it's much better to have people debate it in places like here and Slashdot, and it's purely at my request that my stuff gets a Digg link. It's not like the BBC is desperate for a Digg endorsement, but I do find it a very intelligent forum based on a very innovative concept.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+24"when you're dead"
they've been dead for a long time. - shoover, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18I found the article to be interesting and enlightening, and the fact that it made to the first page means I'm not the only one. If you don't agree with it, you're well within your power to *not* digg it, and accept that the rest of the community will exercise their own ability to think freely.
It amazes me how the 'industry' just doesn't get it, but then for them status quo means bathing in money, and there is little incentive at this point for them to get a clue. That, however, is changing...
I thought the best part of the article was the last part:
"But you know the problem is - the bad news is that you're up against a dedicated foe that is younger and smarter that you are and will be alive when you're dead. You're 55 years old and these kids are 17 and they're just smarter than you. So you're gonna lose that one.
But the good news is that you guys are mean sons of bitches and you've been figuring out ways of ripping off audiences and artists for centuries....." - pgm_01, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17I just read a free BBC article, linked from the free website Digg, using the free web browser Firefox running in the free OS Kubuntu while listening to the free KEXP stream using the free Linux version of RealPlayer (VLC also works but the caching feature is better in Real). Free works well, all of the cds that I have recently purchased had free mp3s. One of the worst abuses of copyright is that Metropolis is still under copyright, a movie made 79 years ago!
In order to make a movie with John Travolta, you need to meet his multi-million dollar salary demands, pay for his transportation to the filming location (even though he often flies himself using one of his fleet of planes) and pay for his star quality room and board. In order to recoup the cost you need to make sure the cost is spread out over the generations of potential viewers which means you need to prevent others from distributing your content. Copyright should allow an artist to make money off of their work for a limited amount of time and then it would enter public domain for others to build off of. The RIAA/MPAA have broken copyright law in order to protect their profits. The dinosaurs will die, but they are going to make a huge mess before they do. - ekso, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17There are tons of ways to make PROFIT without SELLING stuff. Even more now in the information age than it used to, where digital content can be so easily copied and distributed.
How radio and open TV had survived and grown for so long without a paying audience? - trex, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18I agree. Digg is a great avenue for reader discussion. So often I read an article and want to post feedback, but with an email you sometimes wonder if anyone's listening. On Digg you get a roundtable discussion as opposed to 1-on-1 correspondance.
I also think it's an excuse to escape liabilty/moderation on the BBC's part ;). I mean, why not leverage Digg's self-moderating community?
In regards to the article, some statements by Dan Glickman stood out:
"It is ridiculous to believe that you can give product away for free and be more successful. I mean it defies the laws of nature."
Obviously he hasn't heard of Google.
"...because you see if you don't adequately compensate the artist, the director, the creator, the actor, they won't do it in the first place so people won't get movies."
Wow, just wow. What ever happen to making art for the love of making art? The sooner these greedy SOBs exit the scene maybe we'll start getting creative music and movies again. - BTrey, on 10/12/2007, -8/+22Here's another pro to the practice of authors submitting their own stories: I get the chance to respond in a public place that they're quite likely to read. In this case, your article is highly misleading in a couple of respects. First, you refer to the Pirate Bay as "...the biggest pirate movie site on the internet ...." It is not at all a pirate movie site. It is a bittorrent search site. This is the fact that the RIAA can't seem to wrap it's collective mind around. You're spreading the lies. Second, you talked about the RIAA versus hackers/pirates, then said you "...decided to track down the two most powerful voices on either side of the divide..." The clear implication is that JP Barlow is a hacker and a pirate. This is also false. Unless you're a paid shill for the RIAA, you need to do a much better job of writing your stories.
- eonblue, on 10/12/2007, -7/+20It doesnt matter who does what, even if something is blogspam and it hits the front page then it was still "worthy" of hitting the front page.(voted on democraticly) Thats the way digg works, if something is stupid or self servicing it probably wont make it to the front page unless its worth it. It's an interesting article and it was linked directly to a source. Digg++ from me.
- SimonC, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14I think your linkage of Digg was a great idea even if the story wasn't really dugg (at least, yet). And the BBC site is hardly spam. Anyway Digg is more or less a democracy (for the better or the worse) so there's no problem as long as Diggers decide whether to digg or not this story.
(btw, I got to your article from Slashdot and got back here after, so as a curtesy, I'll complete the loop here: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/09/1520254 [the Slashdot story, comments actually about the story and not about the BBC linking on Digg). - pharekyz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14JPB: I've got good news and bad news and good news. And the good news is that you guys have managed to buy every major legislative body on the planet, and the courts are even with you. So you've done a great job there and you should congratulate yourself.
But you know the problem is - the bad news is that you're up against a dedicated foe that is younger and smarter that you are and will be alive when you're dead. You're 55 years old and these kids are 17 and they're just smarter than you. So you're gonna lose that one.
But the good news is that you guys are mean sons of bitches and you've been figuring out ways of ripping off audiences and artists for centuries.....
------------------------
Sweet Jesus.... lol.... thats so harsh but so gold at the same time - dclowd9901, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16I'd say that a hired reporter has much more news integrity and worthiness than your random blogger. That's what differentiates this story from other blogspam stories. He's not linking it to his own personal site, he's giving the digg audience something that he knows they'd be interested in (I read the whole damn article), and he works for a credible news source, to boot.
I'm sure I'll be dugg down for this, but I welcome the self-promotion of a professional over an amateur any day of the week, especially in news. - qkslvrwolf, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15Which is a move that I think is good. Its a great thing to be able to communicate directly with the writer of an article like that, and I think that even if you did have forums at BBC, that digg is a better place to discuss articles like this than the BBC is. Here, we only have to educate half the people on the real issues.
That said, and while I appreciated the article, I have to agree with BTrey that you're in many ways reinforcing the frames set up by the Thought Police crowd. (I'm still looking for a better framing of "intellectual property", which is a terrible misnomer, and if anyone has a better one I'd love to hear it.
These issues reach far beyond simple consumer rights and issues of entertainment. The ceaseless extension of copyright and patents, worldwide, over the last century or so are starting to have a real dampening effect on innovation. The visibility of this effect is cut down by the simple fact that technology and knowledge have overcome this dampening effect, but it is still visible. Pharmaceuticals (sp?), the dearth of decent movies coming out of hollywood, etc, etc, ad nauseum.
In America, copyright and patents were established for the good of the American People: to protect innovation and creativity. Nothing about continuing to restrict the use of something 90 years after it was initially produced gains its original creators anything - that is gone. So why doesn't it fall in to the public domain? Because of folks like Dan Glickman and his ilk, who simply want to protect their own profits. They wouldn't understand creativity and innovation if it found a new and exciting way to bite them in the ass.
Dan Glickman also needs to read the long tail of economics, to read the statements by george lucas regarding the impending death of the super-blockbuster, the articles evaluating netflicks and proving that the age of the blockbuster is dying...and with it, the power and money that these people wield. Which is all a very good thing.
My only lament in all this is that people who are fighting for creativity, for the public domain, for the good of society are obscured by people who just want free *****. Not that there's anything wrong with free *****, but its better to know what should be free, who needs your support, and most importantly, whats good for society. - !3en, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Wow the BBC plugs the power of DIGG! Hey check out the bottom of the article. I found that more interesting than the actual article. It's nice to know that Adam Livingstone (BBC Newsnight Producer) hang around digg.
"Click here to read and join the debate about this article on the Digg website. [The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites.] " - AdamLiv, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13BTW You can also hear the extended interview on the Newsnight podcast dated 9th June about 20 minutes in
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=136697142 - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13Being a writer, I know that I would keep writing if I never made any money from it (which I currently don't). I don't have any problem distributing art and not making money. I can get a job to keep money, but no matter how little I get paid I will never have enough motivation to stop writing and doing what I love. If anyone will quit their job as a director/actor/writer because of losing money, they obviously don't love what they do enough.
Dan Glickman -- suck my balls you old bald *****. - Enchirito, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Glickman: "if consumers do not pay the product will not exist"
This is simply not true. Creativity is not $ driven.
http://www.channel101.com
http://www.youtube.com/categories - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Are you new to the Interweb? Any site that links to another site is an extension of that site. That's the way things work around here. If you don't like it, try your local newspaper.
- FunHeadlines, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13Content creators will always create content even if there is no market for their content. Think of the writers over the centuries who had little chance to have anyone read what they wrote (at least in their lifetime as far as they knew), yet they wrote anyway. Why? Because they were writers, that is what they enjoyed doing -- it's what they needed to do. Such creative impulses will always be with enough people that there is no fear that no one will create new stories in the future.
It is true that certain types of creative expressions require more capital up front, more than an author scribbling on a page. Movies, for instance, require up-front capital in order to get the movie made. However, as we have seen in recent years in independent cinema, those costs don't have to be all that high in order to tell a good story. Right now you absolutely need high costs if you want to a) have huge special-effect laden moviews; and b) have superstars in your film. B) can be solved by having superstars waive their usual fees for a good story, as sometimes happens. Longer term, the star system needs to change such that they are not getting $20 million up front as can happen today. As for A) that too will change as computer power puts ever more powerful tools into the hands of the average computer user. Then the unknown movie maker can create a movie, even a "big" movie, on the cheap. Problem of up-front capital mostly solved.
History is on the side of the 17-year-olds. The MPAA will learn that too late. - randomc0de, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12From the article:
"It is ridiculous to believe that you can give product away for free and be more successful. I mean it defies the laws of nature."
This is the crux of the matter. Notice the "be more successful"? That's what matters to the MPAA and RIAA. 15%. That's the minimum needed to be a valuable investment from an economic standpoint. The *AA's can easily get their minimum 15%, which is good enough for the rest of the world. Instead, they're greedy ***** who want every last penny they can possibly get. Know what guys? I can raise my profit margin by stealing money from people's purses. This doesn't make stealing a natural law, it just makes you look dirty. - kalphegor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Agree, it's more like "if consumers do not pay the MPAA/RIAA will not exist".
- TheAngryMob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9"You're up against a dedicated foe that is younger and smarter that you are and will be alive when you're dead."
Please don't let my kids see that quote. Ever. - Misled, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9"DK: It is ridiculous to believe that you can give product away for free and be more successful. I mean it defies the laws of nature."
He assumes that it takes material possession to be successful. - JustMatt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10I think I'm about to go out and buy (yes, BUY) a Grateful Dead album right now. Barlow is the coolest.
- saifrc, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12I dugg the article, which I thought was very good. I'm a huge fan of both Digg and the BBC. All I did was make a few points to provoke some thought. I didn't criticize anything. Thanks for democratically modding me down, though -- it gives me a lot of faith in the average Digg-user's ability to infer intent from a comment.
- superkendall, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Pirate Bay is not a pirating site. It is a site that enables piracy, and other things. That is the distinction. The Pirate Bay does not list or store anything illegal itself, it's basically like a large message board with lots of links.
Digg itself also enables piracy in the same way by mentioning that the Pirate Bay exists. - JShope, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8WOW. Great article. Of course, I couldn't get past the first words from Glickman without noting a serious flaw in his logic.
"if you don't adequately compensate the artist, the director, the creator, the actor, they won't do it in the first place so people won't get movies"
Then how do we get Independent Movies, *actors* working as waiters, documentaries, and so on?
"It is ridiculous to believe that you can give product away for free and be more successful. I mean it defies the laws of nature. "
No. It defies the generally accepted practices of business. Many businesses give away things for free that other businesses choose to charge for. Some retailers charge the consumer for the catalog of merchandise, as an example. TV has been free since its inception, yet it is still going strong. The typical response would be, 'Well, TV is paid for with commercials, which movies don't have.' My response to that is, that the last movie I went to had commercials, product placement, and merchandising. Once they put it on a DVD, they add even more commercials and marketing. - boredzo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8And it seems one of the co-hosts (Adam Livingstone, i.e. AdamLiv) was the submitter.
No, I'm not calling "spam". I think this is cool. - qkslvrwolf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Not all of us lose our idealism. Stop projecting.
- pr0t0, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9
Mod parent up. pgm_01 is spot on.
Travolta, Cruise and others can make $100,000 per film and be making far more than most in the world. They can be happy with that. For me, the actor isn't even that important...the story is. The only time I care about who the actor is is when it's someone I don't like, and then I don't see the movie.
We should live in a culture where we know more about who wrote the story, than who acted in the movie. - qkslvrwolf, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8It isn't theft. Theft implies depriving the owner of the owner of something. Its digital. You're not depriving the owner of a damn thing.
And frankly, IMHO, it ought to be illegal for these guys to write the laws, which they're doing throught their lobbyists, so if I decide to copy a movie, you can consider it my version of civil disobediance. - superkendall, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7It's not the RIAA making the product we like though, it is artists.
- Chewie67, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8He was doing so well with his argument, then he dropped into a tirade of insults. That doesn't help make his argument to "average" Americans.
I tend to agree with the core of his point -- stop wasting your time chasing after a few pirates because you'll never win. Loss is a fact in every business. Plates get dropped at restaurants. Copy paper gets stolen from offices. You never get 100% profit. Instead of fighting that losing cause, spend your energy making more enjoyable movies so your sales go up. Look into easier ways for people to see your movies so they don't feel the need to steal them.
In short, spend your time, energy and money in areas that are more productive. - MikeyTwit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7How disrespectful to me as a songwriter. If you won't create (music, movies, art whatever you claim your art to be) because you won't get paid, then you are not an artist!!!! I write music because I love it as my form of expression. If I can get paid too, then great, but not getting paid will not stop me from being creative. That's why Hollywood makes so much crap, because it's about the profit and not the art. Screw'em!!!
- mtbjunkie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7What a bunch of rich, selfish, arrogance...
This is all you need to read, the rest is already obvious, "But the good news is that you guys are mean sons of bitches and you've been figuring out ways of ripping off audiences and artists for centuries....." A-freaking men JPB, thank you for speaking on the behalf of us all who believe. And here is a line from Sublime, that all these aholes in their high places can keep humming in their head for the remainder of their miserable life's: "Can't fight against the youth, cause we are stron-nngggggg". I hope you choke on your big piles of money spent by all of us the last 30 years, cause the gravy train has made a final stop. - dclowd9901, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I agree. I bow to the men in power who fight for us, and speak what we think.
- artbell, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Kudos to you on this article. What struck me most was the power of Barlows arguement. He was telling the truth, and he knew it. He was spot on when he stated the **AA has bought and paid for the courts and legislature. When he stated "you are going to lose this battle", It came across with a finality hard to miss. If you know anything about technologys of today, its obvious he is correct, and really Senator or whatever Glickman knows it. However, Glickman is part of the Machine, and must go through the motions of acting like he knows what he's talking about, else he'd lose his job as chief shill.
- SeanMoney, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Wow this is a Great read. A former Dead song writer in a verbal spat with Dan Glickman= priceless.
"It is ridiculous to believe that you can give product away for free and be more successful. I mean it defies the laws of nature." -ever hear of Google? Sick of Losing Money MR. Glcikman don't pay a single actor/actress 10-20 million $ a single movie. I find it funny that a Hollywood bigshot like this tool is not familiar with getting things for free I mean who gets more free ***** than Actors and celebrities, who are the last people on earth who need it. Maybe that is the part of human nature He needs to understand better. - tizz66, on 10/12/2007, -6/+12But it IS the biggest movie pirating site on the internet. It doesn't say there's no other pupose to it, but that doesn't mean that the fact is wrong. How can it be a lie when it is right? In the context of this article, regarding the MPAA, then I think that choice of words is justified.
Come on now, don't bury your head in the sand and pretend TPB is anything but what it is: a massive pirating site that also has some legal material for download. Arguing that it only indexes torrents is just semantics. We all know what the purpose of the site is. Trying to claim otherwise is just portraying ignorance. - GeoNine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6"John Perry Barlow is the one who's doing a disservice to the consumers, because you see if you don't adequately compensate the artist, the director, the creator, the actor, they won't do it in the first place so people won't get movies."
The idea that artistic creations will cease to exist if there is no monetary compensation is simply not true. Maybe it would be more effective to reexamine what constitutes adequate compensation. - scslmd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Dan Glickman: "Would a clothing store give all their clothes for free? Would a car dealership give all its cars for free? Of course not. If they don't make a profit in this world they're out of business. That's just the laws of human nature."
Man, these guys still don't get it. You can't use the old model of "give [your material example here] away and not having anything to show for it. They're still thinking of the old business of luggnuts. You can't think physical anymore, you have to think ethereal with the internet distribution method. It's no longer how many physical copies you can sell, its how well you can expose your product to as many people as possible and make a percentage of that! People no longer go to the movies anymore and rent a seat for those 90 minutes. People now have to power thru technology to enjoy that experiencey anywhere they want and we demand that! Sell 10,000 seats per day @ 10 dollars a pop versus distrubute over 1 million copies/day at 2 dollars a pop. Let's say that you recup 33% of that. Which would be the logical choice? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6"...because you see if you don't adequately compensate the artist, the director, the creator, the actor, they won't do it in the first place so people won't get movies."
So how much is adequately? 20 million for Tom Cruise. 20 million for Steven Speilbergo? 50 million silver dollars for "taking a chance" on producing the film minority report? Your greed makes me sick, entertainment industry. I am not above spitting in the face of anyone who has the balls to tell me their work is worth 20 million dollars a pop.
Where's my 20 million? I might after all the IT nerd, that recovered that pixar server farm that allowed you to even release Cars this year, if at all.
Just f'n sick. Go 'Dead! - aliengoods, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5> Bartlow says he thinks the opportunities are "vast and very encouraging" but he doesn't elaborate. I don't think he believes this and I don't think he could come up with a model that demonstrates it.
They are vast and encouraging, and new models are being tried all the time, some with success, some without. Some examples: iTunes, video on iTunes, add supported video on the web, subscription based music and video, product tie-ins (U2 and iPod, iPod and Nike), and these are just the few that pop into my mind. While some of these models are basically the equivalent of old media on the internet, others represent new opportunities. Since iTunes has been turning heads, many people have changed their tune (I love a Friday pun) regarding online distribution. While I'm not sure what new business models or technologies will change the way I spend my free time, I'm sure there are some out there. In 20 years, I don't expect to watch tv in the same manner I do today.
In short, just because someone lacks the vision to see the road doesn't mean it dead ends. - daonlyfreez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Excellent read!
Typical that the MPAA/RIAA is trying to make this into a 'but we are doing it for the artists' thing...
If this were true, why do the artists (musicians) usually only get 2-5% of the generated revenue from CD sales etcet.? Oh, they'll tell you why: 'because we need the rest of the money for the cover, the marketing and the huge amount of time we put into your product to make it successfull, without us, you wouldn't even earn the small percentage we give you now'...
Fact is: most musicians need to gig, need to gig a lot to make the money they need, not only are they usually forced to by the contracts they signed, but they really need it to cover expenses...
Of course I'm not talking about your average mega-star, whether musician or actor, but the mainstream creatives...
So, if the MPAA/RIAA (and record companies) are really only doing their thing 'for the artists'... SPEND SOME MORE MONEY ON THEM (and stop whining about 'piracy' and how you have to 'protect' your artist, for you are only into protecting yourselves)...
Them petty, greedy lies...
Why are more and more artists objecting against this witch hunting anyway? Because they like what you (MPAA/RIAA) are doing? Don't think so... - WinterSolstice, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I think that some of the most enjoyable movies I have ever seen were self-financed. There may be one or two exceptions. I don't appreciate the current "action-laden" "superstar" movie culture any more than I do the "rock star" culture of music.
Whatever happened to musicians and actors doing what they love?
Oh - wait. They still do... the good ones just aren't shoved down our throats :D
-WS - HavocStyles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5John Perry Barlow said it best...
"These are aging industries run by aging men,...."
Dan just does not get it, he can't comprehend that information/content can be free and still make money. Or his greedy ass does understand but wants to get the profit margin up for the shareholders.
From the TFA
Dan G. "So, yeah, we should be protecting our copyright but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't be looking for new ways to get that content to people in modern ways -"
then further down he says
"It is ridiculous to believe that you can give product away for free and be more successful. I mean it defies the laws of nature."
and here is the kicker...
"But he is right to the extent that we need to be finding new and different ways to get our content to people,"
God this guy sounds like SCOG lawyers for Pete's sake!!!! Which is Dan, make up your damn melon and quit suing your consumers moron!!!! - pr0t0, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5
Amen!
Many actors and content creators in general need a reality check. Not only do I not care if Tom Cruise no longer wishes to make movies, I'm actually praying for it. I've been wondering if we really need 'professional' artists in the way they currently exist. Is an actor SO good because he spends 40 hours a week practicing his/her acting skills until the next movie or is it just natural talent? It seems most movies take about 39 days to shoot before going to post. That means Tom gets paid $20 mil for 6 weeks of work plus a promo tour. Why?
The movie "Open Water" was shot entirely on the weekends because most people involved had other jobs. I know that's not the best example because the movie was far from great, but it was also far from unwatchable. I've seen worse movies with larger budgets and bigger names. The point is, it can be done.
What keeps springing to my mind is symphony musicians. Most symphonic orchestras are populated by very talented musicians that do something else for a living. They commit to a symphony for the prestige, the pride, and the chance to showcase their abilities.
Not every actor or musician could split their time. I believe most television shows require 40-80 hours per week from their actors and associated personnel. But there is lots of room. Just because you are good at playing guitar or portraying dramatic characters, doesn't mean the world owes you a short-lived career in it...where you make more in six weeks than most do in a lifetime of something likely more important.
I could be way off. I don't know. That's just what's been going on in my head lately. I could change my mind tomorrow. -
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