Artists create their music, and they get to determine what to do with it.

Something in me is saying that I’ve seen this in a performance art piece somewhere before.

The artist determines the ultimate disposal of a work of art by creating it, giving the public a hint of it, and then very publicly destroying it.

I don’t know if this is the tormented artist in me or if it’s been done before. It just seems germane to the discussion.

eric

Jason it’s quite possible that it is fair use. His complaint is with reporters, and he asks a fair question. They’re supposed to be impartial, yet they seem not to be. As a freedom-loving American, this is a bigger concern to me than anything you’ve raised on your site. Thanks for listening.

Is it possible that it’s fair use for people to take a copy of Frontier off of an FTP server that I set up? (This is derivative of a notion I’ve raised with you before, with no response; I only raise this because of your similar entreaties to have the issues you raise answered.)

Is it possible that it’s fair use for people to come photocopy my Harry Potter series in its entirety?

Can you possibly justify the notion that it’s fair use for people to take something they don’t own without paying for it, and with no agreement by the person who owns the ultimate rights to that thing that it’s OK to take it without paying for it? All I’m asking for is a logical explanation; just because there hasn’t been a final ruling by a court doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to apply logic, reasoning, precedent, and common sense to this.

And lastly, as for the reporters’ purported bias, do you really feel that the media coverage has been wholly biased? Take a look at your Napster weblog; it seems to me like there’s a pretty damn good representation of fair reporting there. Don’t paint an entire industry with a single brush; likewise, don’t tolerate others who do that.

/jason

That’s exactly the idea behind much of performance art — the artist’s control over their work, the message it sends, and its reach. I like that you’ve brought this to the table; it actually makes part of this much easier to understand and explain.

(Tortured artist…?)

/jason

Jason, to answer the question on your home page, there are fair uses for downloading a whole website, in toto, the search engines do it, and Google even caches the pages so if the site goes away you can still get the information.

All the negotiating you do, hypotheticals you ask about, miss the point, imho. I wrote a rather long bit about this today, rather than repeat myself, I ask that you just read it. Thanks.

http://scriptingnews.userland.com/backIssues/2000/08/05#ericRaymondOnNapster

I understand that you’re busy, I find your reports on your experiences at the hospital fascinating, but there’s a lot going on that you know nothing about if you haven’t used Napster.

One thing I forgot to respond to is your question about Frontier. We provide a 60-day free trial for it, so we’re already doing for Frontier what Napster does for music.

We provide a 60-day free trial for it, so we’re already doing for Frontier what Napster does for music.

Pardon my French, but bullshit. Napster doesn’t provide 60-day trials for music, it provides free music. If you choose to go to a record store or online site to buy the music sometime within 60 days after freeloading, then that’s a conscious decision on your part, not something that Napster does, enforces, or even encourages.

Now, to take a quote from your home page and replace a key word:

“So, after you finish telling me about right and wrong (I’ve heard it 80K times), you could then choose to use your imagination and consider all the inspiration, serendipity, even synchronicity that comes from massive numbers of people sharing their software discoveries.”

I think that you can agree with me that your next statement in that quite, that music is not like software, is a personal observation, not something that is necessarily universal. There are pieces of software out there, Manila being one of them, that are just as inspirational as any piece of music that I’ve heard; likewise, any creative work — be it a book, a song, a program, a painting, a thesis, a sofa — has the power to be inspirational to someone.

And even if you don’t want to agree that software can be equated to music in your quote today, then it’s pretty hard to argue that movies should fit into the same paradigm. Should I be able to buy a DVD, copy it onto my computer, and send it to all my friends? Hard to support, ethically or legally.

Thus, if I should be allowed to share my inspirational discoveries, then I’ve got copies of Manila for everyone. Hell, Gnutella/Gnotella shares non-MP3 files… but, then again, I don’t share things. I think I’ve made that pretty clear.

…there’s a lot going on that you know nothing about if you haven’t used Napster.

I’m glad that you asked me to read the Eric Raymond bit and the assumption that critics haven’t used Napster, because I wanted to respond to it anyway.

It’s interesting how you make the assumption that Eric and I haven’t used Napster. I can’t speak for him, but I have used it, mainly because I feel that I can’t write about it without knowing what it does and doesn’t do. So be wary of making assumptions; in my case, they aren’t true.

That being said, how does anything you say apply to someone who has used it and still disagrees with you?

And lastly, as far as I know only Google actually caches pages, so I’m not even going to waste time telling you that other search engines don’t reproduce my content without my consent. And as for Google, it’s easy to tell them not to cache my pages, again reinforcing that it’s my content, and I get to choose what to do with it.

It’s all personal observations, and Jason, bullshit is in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps you’ve been living in NY too long.

You can disagree with me.

And if you’ve used Napster, then you must have done something wrong?

I’m soooooooo confused!!

Perhaps you’ve been living in NY too long.

Whatever.

But perhaps you’ve never taken a basic logic and reasoning class, since you have yet to refute the notion that I should be allowed to give free copies of Frontier to everyone who asks.

Time to fire up Gnutella and share some inspirational applications, don’t you think?

Whatever turns you on.