Would somebody please give me a cogent argument for pirating music?

FWIW, I use emusic, a pay service, as it's faster and P2P systems are a mess and a bore.

How in any way is that not "wrong"?

john is a member of the mountain goats.

Also, burning a CD isn't 'pirating' per se, especially if you paid for the stuff.

In my question, I clearly indicated that this is not any way the case.

I really want to understand how people consider this not wrong. Here is what I think: everybody knows it's wrong, all the people ridiculing me. However, they think in black-in-white George-Bush-"With us or against" us dichotomy worldview (evidence, this quote from Momus: ""If I have to choose between being an industry bod and being a pirate,
well, I choose piracy every time") and have come to conclusion that I'm not one of "us" anymore. I'm now one of "them." Therefore, fuck me. Fuck me! Nevermind the fact that they agree with the content of my very serious simple, non-controversial statement: it is not okay to download an album for yourself without paying, and continue to use that album in a way as if it was a product you purchased.

Prove me wrong.

xpost
ratty, that is clearly an exception and not the norm. I am not talking about artists that want you to not pay for their music. Is The Mountain Goats one of them? I don't know.

For electronic and audio-visual media, unauthorized reproduction and distribution is often referred to as piracy or theft (an early reference was made by Alfred Tennyson in the preface to his poem "The Lover's Tale" in 1879 where he mentions that sections of this work "have of late been mercilessly pirated".) The legal basis for this usage dates from the same era, and has been consistently applied until the present time.1 Critics of the use of "software piracy" to describe such practices contend that it unfairly compares a crime that makes no victim - except for those that would have profited from hypothetically lost sales - with the violent actions of organized thieves and murderers; it also confuses mere illegal copying of material with the intentional and malicious penetration of computer systems to which one does not legally have access. As a consequence, "software piracy" is a somewhat loaded term. "Theft" or "stealing" are considered even more inflammatory, as well as legally misleading.

I see 'downloading' as distinct from your legal term 'piracy'. From what I've read, piracy implies distribution. Hence I am curious about your inclusion (as a detail) of someone burning a CD and playing it in a car or something.

Downloading is downloading, and piracy is piracy. It is not yet clear whether P2P is "illegal".

1. logic suggests to most people that he would not be in serious criminal trouble if that were all it was; and
2. what public information has come out about his case also suggests that he was involved in something much more serious.

Therefore they are annoyed by Mickey and give him shit. And no matter how many times he asks his question, they'll feel he's being disingenuous. This isn't answering his specific question, which, as Min points out is pretty clear-cut and not too interesting.

And that fact that all he wants is for other people to come out and say "Yeah, it's wrong and we do it anyway," well, that's also annoying.

Mitya, your point is very well reasoned. To respond to that, people really don't understand how all this works behind the scenes, and I've tried again and again to explain it, only to met with increasingly more scorn. There's a difference between what it takes to be targetted by the powers-that-be and what it takes to be prosecuted.

What it takes to be prosecuted -- very little. I've been honest about my activity the entire time. It's to a degree not significantly different from what is common here. What difference does it make if an individual uploads a Mountain Goats CD to a private FTP server, to a ILM YSI thread, or to a random user on Kazaa? Is that not the same crime, the same degree, executed differently?

What it takes to be targetted -- something unusual. I was a part of a group. Yes. Does being a part of a group necessarily imply something different from what is the norm? No.

Could I have been targetted if I wasn't a part of APC? Who fucking knows. It isn't an exact science who the FBI decides to go after. If the FBI already knew more about APC and who they were busting when they went after me, they probably wouldn't have bothered. They were very disappointed when they started interviewing me and it was blatantly obvious. They thought I was involved in pre-releasing music, I had access to it somehow. They thought I was a group leader. They thought I ran a server. I did none of this.

I'm really ashamed at myself right now for how worked up I've gotten over my critics here. But really, I'm tired of trying to handle this situation with dignity. I'm tired of trying to defend myself. I am probably just going to be a lurker here for a while to learn about music, because I am fucking tired of posting.

Yeah, I myself got the new Neko Case and the new Stereolab off emusic. Hate to sound like a shill, but I found it easier and less time-consuming. But I suppose I could bootleg the things and distribute them if I knew anything about organized crime.

Socialists hold that capitalism is an illegitimate economic system that serves the interests of the wealthy and exploits the majority of the population. As such, they wish to replace it completely or at least make substantial modifications to it, in order to create a more just society that would reward hard work, guarantee a certain basic standard of living, and extend economic and cultural opportunities to all.

Is that not the same crime, the same degree, executed differently?

Again, I think a lot of people have the sense that you are only concerned with this question at this completely reductionist level. That is, if my only choice is "Downloading, right or wrong?" then I refuse to answer. Because that question obscures a huge range of variables that determine whether this is a white lie to your parents about where you were after school and testimony under oath in a capital murder case.

Ultimately, though, I think you're right. Lurk for a while, read one of the fifteen Roxy Music/Bryan Ferry threads going now and argue about prog Roxy vs. new romantic Roxy. Much less stressful.

Well this is an interesting question. How many of us are there? are we exceptional?

I want my music downloaded for free wherever possible because it leads to gigs, licensing opportunities etc, and brings in money by various indirect routes.

Now I have a question. What is the record industry going to do to preserve my right to have my music available for free download without the legal interference and harassment of my potential customers?

What you did was set up a straw man, Mickey. That's a bullshit rhetorical device. Similar to your emotional appeals and syllogisms.

Why I download music: There are two big, and distinct, reasons. The first is to try out music that I haven't heard before and am curious about. I don't have infinite space on my hard drive, so a lot of what I download gets deleted pretty quickly. And the stuff that I like, I buy (though I tend to buy used albums, which don't benefit the artist. But that's only a distinction if you're making legal claims based on the morality of compensating the artist). Since there's no sense of physical product for digital copies, there's no resale market, so things that I might pay, say, a nickel for are either free or a buck (or from a .ru).
The second reason why I download music— It's out of print and never coming back. I suppose the argument can be made that I should respect the artist's decision, and that by downloading it I make it less likely to be reissued. But frankly, that Wildman Fischer album is never going to come out again in my lifetime, and I don't respect the rights holders enough to particularly care why they're holding it back.

So, Mickey, what you might try to draw out of this is that yes, in YOUR situation YOUR copyright infringement was WRONG AND ILLEGAL. In other people's positions? Not so much. For example, in countries such as Sweden and Canada, the legal position on downloading is different and (at least in Canada) administered through compulsory license fees paid by certain electronics manufacturers.

For a man facing a pretty stiff legal penalty, you sure don't seem to know shit about the law. See: Criminal versus civil tort.

I don't consider that action, in any way, unethical or immoral. The record company tried to milk the public out of more money with shady business practices, and I ain't buying.

So you say, repetitively. You're so-o-o-o tired yet you keep coming back to see what others say of you. You're not only convicted but you're vain, too. You're just in no position to be a pedantic scold or a purveyor of lessons in life and piracy in a place where others can talk back to you. You need to get to a classroom where you can give a boring sermon while the teacher stands ready to give someone a bad grade for being rude and truculent.

You also quacked on being passionate about music in the newspaper. I'm not seeing it here or in any other thread. But I'm seeing lots of you being passionate about what people think of you.

I was going to ass semi-seriously that one side of that argument is rape and the other mass murder, but that's a little dark. Thepoint is, within that example is a gradation of offences.

js pretty much OTM on many fronts, esp. wrt hard to find/obscure/held for ransom stuff.

I would toss in that not all material is fit for consumtion. to pay $15.00 for a CD with 2 good tracks is a waste; then paying for those two tracks becomes a waste of time (to log on to itun3s, register, whatever) and risk (credit thieving, etc) relative to the value and lowering the worth of the track to essentially 0.

Paying for music is like the penny -- as soon as people leave it behind at the register it loses its use in society.

Nevermind the fact that U2 makes a shitload of money playing to 50,o00 fans at $60.00 a head.

http://www.popmatters.com/music/columns/campbell/060407.shtml

And as far as stealing it, what am I stealing? A transient, ephemeral piece of data, without the art, without the quality of the copy (CD-Rs always skip in my car, for example). The sound quality still sounds worse to me even at the highest encoding rate. Meanwhile, I have thousands of records and hundreds of CDs that I paid cold hard cash for, and I have hundreds of ticket stubs for shows I would never have known about without the educative possibilities of peer-to-peer filesharing.

this isn't necc. all true, but large bits of it are compelling.

also, sueing yr. customers = bad marketing

(which also = why they need duly chastened pr flacks to push the message)

the related argument is that the only "natural" component of the major labels' monopoly derives from the ever-presentness of their major artists (bought often with payola anyway -- so not like they're all decent legal sorts to begin with [and if it isn't bought with illegal paolya, it's bought with the legal sort via promotional mechanisms]) which is what lands them in a pretty impossible contradiction anyway -- they're trying to straddle making an artist *everywhere* AND making themselves the sole channel to access that art. the cudgel of big legal action is the only thing they have to try and keep that massive contradiction suspended.

other related issue -- the problem freelancers have where the only promos that are easy to get seem to be the ones you're not that interested in.

the major labels are trying to sell sand to the beach. it makes no sense, but they still wonder why no one's buying... music is so beyond oversaturated ...the age of highly priced music is clearly long gone, whether morality likes it or not. it's economics

what the RIAA calls piracy and what i call plagarism are, thankfully, two different things

And as far as stealing it, what am I stealing? A transient, ephemeral piece of data, without the art, without the quality of the copy (CD-Rs always skip in my car, for example). The sound quality still sounds worse to me even at the highest encoding rate. Meanwhile, I have thousands of records and hundreds of CDs that I paid cold hard cash for, and I have hundreds of ticket stubs for shows I would never have known about without the educative possibilities of peer-to-peer filesharing.

-- polyphonic (polyphoni...), April 11th, 2006.

otm

this isn't necc. all true, but large bits of it are compelling.

also, sueing yr. customers = bad marketing

(which also = why they need duly chastened pr flacks to push the message)

the related argument is that the only "natural" component of the major labels' monopoly derives from the ever-presentness of their major artists (bought often with payola anyway -- so not like they're all decent legal sorts to begin with [and if it isn't bought with illegal paolya, it's bought with the legal sort via promotional mechanisms]) which is what lands them in a pretty impossible contradiction anyway -- they're trying to straddle making an artist *everywhere* AND making themselves the sole channel to access that art. the cudgel of big legal action is the only thing they have to try and keep that massive contradiction suspended.

other related issue -- the problem freelancers have where the only promos that are easy to get seem to be the ones you're not that interested in.

-- Sterling Clover (s.clove...), April 11th, 2006.

also otm

http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~banks/images/logos/jolly-roger.gif

http://disney.go.com/disneyvideos/liveaction/pirates/downloads/desktops/POC_desktop2_small.jpg

That having been said, I pay for my music like chump.

http://us.movies1.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/walt_disney/pirates_of_the_caribbean__the_curse_of_the_black_pearl/keira_knightley/piratespre2.jpg

http://www.theseventhgame.com/playerimages/sanguillen_manny.jpg

http://www.jputt.com/Pages/Archives/Images/April04/Pirates/seinfeld.bmp

Why i think its booty...booty (wikka wikka wikka)

consider:
the music 'John' downloads p2p falls into 1 of 3 categories: non-commerically available music (live shows etc), music he has not yet decided if its worth purchasing, and music he have already decided not to purchase.
the first category is exempt from 'theft' because there's noone selling these releases anyway, and so there's no lost revenue on the part of the artist/label
the second category either makes the cut - in which case it goes, eventually, to his shopping cart - or doesn't. if not, see category 3
in the 3rd case, it's not 'theft' strictly defined because John is not even contributing to lost revenues for the artist/label; they were not going to get any of his money anyway. so what he's indulging in is music that doesn't meet his purchasing threshold. if its not worth 99 cents on itunes he wont purchase it. but given that music can be infinitely reproduced with no material loss (except for forgone intellectual-property revenue), John might choose to have this music and not pay for it. no loss to the artist/label and a net gain for John. of course this is illegal, since copyright law protects from theft in a much wider sense than this radical definition, but consider that the alternate scenario is exactly the same to everyone except John, who can get some marginal pleasure from, say, a song he values to the tune of, say, 47 cents.

this assumes John is a morally inclined downloader, but hey, some of us are (supporting artists and all that).

and if I've been enjoying those Mountain Goats bootlegs I'm way more likely to buy a shirt (for what it's worth)

ideally there should be a predictor of how much you will like a song that charges you based on that prediction. even if you are willing to pay 1 penny for a song it's a net gain for the artist/label because there is a 0 cost to distributing digital (infinitely reproducible) music. it won't always be right of course, but how else to account for the fact that I might be willing to pay only 49 cents for "Mushaboom" but would gladly pay 19 dollars for "How Ghosts Affect Relationships"???

Then we started pirating music. And now they release nearly every album with better artwork, nice casing, big inlays and booklets, DVDs of making ofs and videos. And for under a tenner. Sweet! I don't feel ripped off as much as I used to and, as a result, I am slowly starting to buy albums again.

I won't use a metaphor about the record industry and the consumer having a relationship where the industry cheated on us so we dumped the industry but we really were still in love with him/her and now, after much grovelling, we're ready to take the industry back into our hearts.

I won't do that.

Joe

No-one has a 'right' to be richer than everybody else, if a musician is richer than you, and makes a good living - why should you give them your money?

Recorded music by it's nature is now infinitely copyable, like fire, the recording industry's attempt to force people to treat it like an object in a supermarket is ultimately futile and might as well be ignored.

They really shot themselves in the foot with that pricing structure as I for one ceased to buy new and started scouring second-hand bins and cheaper deals through online stores. It also pushed me back towards vinyl as a sensible alternative to what is/was simply naked greed.

Things will find their own level over time and it is certainly easier these days to pick up cheaply without ever crossing the portals of the big chains. I guess what we are seeing at the mo' is the first stage of the 'legal download' market attempting to address this disparity between consumer/corporate expectations. As every store in the land has to allocate a contingency for the impact of shoplifting of goods throughout each financial year, so too will the legal download models have to learn to live with the background noise of p2p traffic impacting on profit margins. I'm not certain I have a problem with this, as Joe says if forces the market to make their product more attractive. Do remember that whilst such activity does undoubtedly impact sales profits, I've yet to hear of any record company returning a loss based on these concerns. A profit remains a profit however small.

The market loves competition from whereever it comes.

OTFM. I stopped even looking in the non-sale racks at high st record stores in the mid-90s. £15.99 for a CD when you can get them for about half that from the USA INCLUDING SHIPPING?

It is amazing, though, reading a few of the above posts, that people think music just appears, as if by magic. But whatever, perhaps I'm the worst kind, as I've certainly downloaded music, still do on occasion, and they'll have to tear my dead, cold hands away from my beloved indiep2pnetwork before I give it up. Dear ILX, please don't my label see this.

But it's all an ark lark, isn't it?

say gang whut doo yoo think of piracy?

weee love it! follow us 2 r secret rap mixtape waerhousz!!!

Robin? Is that you?

OTM! When I have to cover touring bands and don't have time to wait for goddamned highons at the labels to ship me a promo, I hit up whatever downloads are available on the internet so I can go into an interview or preview without being totally fucking ignorant.

Framing yr argument so that responders auto-incriminate themselves means you've been hanging out w/ lawyers too long, Mickey...

So if besides backing up your porn and other pictures you don't burn illegaly downloaded music to a CD from time to time... you're getting screwed.

So it's safe to say: we have to!... after all we payed for it.

And when the artillery of cads arrived he didn't like it. The pity party was interrupted.

If you are patient enough to read Derek 'Mickey' Borchardt's essay for the Los Angeles Times newspaper you'll spy a disconnect. His tone and voice in the essay is nothing like the tone and voice of his handpecked out replies on ILM. There he is allegedly owning up to his mistakes. (It sort of looks that way if you haven't seen his posts here.) He is embarrassed and in fear. Here he whines. If he's embarrassed, it's because he is concerned with what others think of him and having been dumped upon. He's tired, oh so tired of defending himself. Why, anyone who has any writing experience might think he didn't actually compose most of his op-ed piece on the personal peril of piracy without considerable propping up and prompting by editors. Or that if he had actually written something in his own voice, the one on display here and in the other thread, he would have been given the bum's rush.

And where is Derek 'Mickey' Borchardt's vaunted passion for music? He attests to it in the newspaper yet it cannot be found even with the finest of mental microscopes on ILM. Derek 'Mickey' Borchardt never acts or sounds like any of the many users on ILM with a passion for music. He spends no time in any of the rolling music threads expounding for a paragraph or two on why a certain CD floats his boat. He does not start any 'Where is the Love' threads. He doesn't post anything remotely like what the people who have a passion for music post on ILM. Instead he complains, carps about haters who have contradicted him, saying he is sooooo tired, exhausted really by the ordeal of not being taken for a nobleman in cyberspace. Life has been too hard and he's going to lurk for awhile.

And has he ever been honest? Did Derek 'Mickey' Borchardt tell newspaper readers the name of his warez crew? No. Did Derek 'Mickey' Borchardt tell readers his secret koow3l name in the warez crew? No. Did Derek 'Mickey' Borchardt inform opinion readers he was 'writing' an essay on piracy evil for the sake of leniency and downward sentencing, an essay with a tone starkly different than the one he uses here in the cybersticks? No. Did Derek 'Mickey' Borchardt even sign his name the same way he was compelled to sign it in criminal court? No.

(xpost clearly)

How in any way is that not "wrong"?

John hears the new album from the Mountain Goats on the radio. He does not in any way pay for it. He tapes the broadcast and "uses" (takes in his car, loans to friends, makes other copies of, etc) that.

How in any way is that not right?

*Upon a more recent listening, John decides that he's glad he didn't buy it.

*John loves it and decides to buy it because he wants the band to succeed.

now replace library with download...

.............................................................

or
*John copies it because it's OK but he doesn't give a shit if he really ever hears it again, but makes a copy just in case.

you, on the other hand, used FTP (or so the papers say) to upload music in what amounts to a conspiracy to commit wire fraud. it's almost like you were asking for it, using an unencrypted file transfer protocol. next time you decide to upload to a topsite, try SFTP or SSH/SCP.

This is not to say that artists (and their recording industry buddies) shouldn't get paid, just that the current method of paying them for something that has no physical value is ultimately ridiculous.

An argument I made on a similar thread:
------------
1. Filesharing is a great potential boon to humanity. It provides a self-generated and regulated library of almost all music ever created, whether or not the copyright owners want (or can afford) to pay for distribution.

2. IT'S NOT STEALING. It may not be morally ok, but it is not the same thing as stealing. It's in some fractal moral dimension between sharing and stealing.

3. It IS convenient. All other methods of online distribution suck, or have DRM schemes ranging from annoying to super-fucked-up. The best way to deal with this would be to come up with either some sort of ISP fee, or a compulsory license fee for content. The "Industry" would rather force crappy business models down our throat. One way to force the industry to look at other models is to thumb your nose at them.

4. Not everyone cares. In fact, although the big players account for most of the money made in the music business, they do only represent a TINY percentage of the people in the world who make music. Most of the indie bands seem to not give a shit if people download their music. Should we call the whole thing "stealing" just because the biggest players want to call it that?
------------

And finally, a Star Trek argument:

Wouldn't it seem ridiculous, if, every time Picard replicated a cup of Earl Grey tea, he had to pay the Twinnings family a buck?

Derek          Borchardt   Derek 
Derek          Borchardt   Derek        
Derek          Borchardt   Derek        
Derek          Borchardt   Derek           
Derek          Borchardt   Derek          
Derek 'Mickey' Borchardt   Derek            
Derek          Borchardt   Derek            
Derek          Borchardt   Derek            
Derek          Borchardt   Derek           
Derek          Borchardt   Derek           
Derek          Borchardt   Derek          

'Mickey' Borchardt      Derek'Mickey'  BorchardtDerek        Derek'Mickey'  
'Mickey'  Borchardt     Derek'Mickey'  Borchardt   Derek     Derek'Mickey' 
'Mickey'   Borchardt    Derek          Borchardt     Derek   Derek   
'Mickey'    Borchardt   Derek          Borchardt     Derek   Derek   
'Mickey'     Borchardt  Derek'Mickey'  Borchardt   Derek     Derek'Mickey'  
'Mickey'     Borchardt  Derek'Mickey'  BorchardtDerek        Derek'Mickey' 
'Mickey'    Borchardt   Derek          Borchardt  Derek      Derek   
'Mickey'   Borchardt    Derek          Borchardt    Derek    Derek   
'Mickey'  Borchardt     Derek'Mickey'  Borchardt      Derek  Derek'Mickey' 
'Mickey' Borchardt      Derek'Mickey'  Borchardt       Derek Derek'Mickey'  

How in any way is that not "wrong"?

Intellectual work as a form of property is a question that is amazingly open to contention in the late-20th and 21st century. Prior to the invention of the printing press, written work was uncommon since copies were treasured and hand-copied. Access to many works was restricted due to scarcity. From the printing press up to the wide distribution of vinyl, it was fairly clear what was being sold: a copy of the work. Technically much work that is done is still work for hire for a label or private individual or organization. Music-wise, many pieces were composed for a specific event and played few times so there's a case for even entire musical pieces being ephemeral and for-hire.

The creation of cheap, end-user copying technologies has brough the question of what you're actually buying into the public sphere. Intellectual copyright issues that deal with reproduction (not to be confused with those that involve trademark and right-to-likeness/use of character issues) have really only been addressed in a widespread manner since the 1980s. The ability to legally resell albums indicates that you are, in fact, buying the physical medium and that the license to the enclosed work is pretty much implied. We're now seeing a divorce between work and medium and what exactly you're buying is unclear. Digital rights management software is, in effect, an effort to create a less-copyable "medium" that differs from other files -- and actually includes a more restrictive license. What you're buying now is essentially a license to listen to a given work in certain conditions. A default copyright exists on work that defaults to the local law, but more restrictive terms are contractual.

So, in short, people will pay for what they believe is worth paying for. The playing field is a little more even -- if I hear a busker with a guitar I might toss a dollar in his hat, and if I hear an album that's freely available I might figure out a way to support the band. The opportunity cost for obtaining music is now almost as low as walking by a man with a guitar on the sidewalk. "Wrong" implies that you have a default moral judgement on what transactions are fair within the marketplace. Obviously other people have different opinions.

not exactly free

There's an interesting thing buried in here in that distributing music while retaining your copy of it violates the implicit terms of the contract the consumer enters into when he/she buys the music in the first place; much like you aren't supposed to photocopy books, magazines or sheet music, you aren't supposed to make duplicates of music you've purchased for anyone's use except your own. This has been true since forever; obviously it hasn't stopped anyone from taping a song off the radio but it still is stamped on pretty much 95% of the CDs, tapes and records being sold today. It's a fairly willful misrepresentation of existing laws to state otherwise.

I don't have a particular ethical problem with people doing this, BTW; I just think that people should stop justifying and make excuses and own up to what it is they're doing.

Food for thought:

On Tallahassee by The Mountain Goats:
The Copyright in this sound recording is owned by 4AD Ltd 17-19 Alma Road, London SW18 1AA

On Mississippi by David Banner:
(C) 2003 Universal Records. (address) All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws.

All the UK discs I have with me at work have the former wording ("copyright in this sound recording") and the US releases have the latter. Both rely on local law, the second for the definition of "unauthorized." Authorized by the label, artist, or local law? Presumably the latter.

100% otm.

i think people should stop thinking about all this in moral terms and think of it more as just part of the marketplace. the balance of legitimate vs. illegitimate goods is in constant flux; when it tips too far to one side (either legitimate goods become too expensive or too scarce, or illegitimate goods become too easily available), there tends to be a counteraction.

i work in the newspaper industry; we're dealing with this right now. people are suddenly becoming accustomed to getting for free what they used to have to pay for. it's a problem for us (seen newspaper stock prices lately?), and we haven't solved it. it's not exactly analogous to file-sharing (newspapers have been the ones putting our content up for free), but it's being driven by the same technological advances. and it makes sense that threatened industries will respond, either by suing file-sharers or making people pay to read maureen dowd. some industries will respond better than others. but the point is that this is all a function of supply and demand, much more than morality.

What I'm confused by, more generally, is why some people believe that that separation naturally leads to the need to reexamine the price of IP. That's a non-sequitor to me--why should the value of IP be devalued because it's easier to reproduce it? The free market discussion doesn't make any sense, as we're not offering an identical substitute that can be had at a much lower price. We're offering an identical product for free illegally. It's as if people started devaluing cars because they're easier to steal now. And the issue isn't the legality as much as it is the underlying notion that a person's efforts are not compensated.

Perhaps there's a discussion about the right price of IP in general to be had, but what annoys me is that it's bundled or "promoted" along with P2P and Creative Commons. Advocates of CC, including most of my friends and myself, most of the time, jump for joy when piracy happens and the RIAA does something stupid. But that's a non-sequitor. If you think the price of IP is wrong, then it should be a debate unto itself. It should not be predicated on piracy or the sudden ease of P2P, anymore than a debate on the right sort of government be predicated on the corruption of the politicians within.

SUPPLY AND DEMAND (as said upthread). The only thing economically that the internet has really accomplished is that its dramatically reduced the net worth of information.

Would it really be that bad if every major label went out of business- not at all.

Would it really be that bad if you choose whether to give an artist money or not based on merit, rather than on the offchance that their product might be good?

Mickey makes the point that unlike Momus, he thinks that rarely would someone actually go to a show or give sexual favours to an artist whose music they downloaded illegally and enjoyed. That doesn't add up. If ajn individual enjoy music procured illegally, then they will want to engage with that artist, and the methods of engagement will in all liklihood be ones that give a greater %age of cash to the artist than buying their album.

The real question from an artist-centric perspective is whether the total sum received in a situation where illegal downloads are rife is greater or lesser than in a situaton where there are no illegal downloads.

There are extraneous factors also- if music is free, then how does that change the nature of what is produced, how does that alter the make up of the market, the relationships between consumers and producers?

Its by no means been settled yet as to whether illegal downloading is from an artist's point of view a good thing or a bad thing. The value of more extensive dissemination cannot be undervalued... what benefit does an artist gain by creating music and making it available....? Income, yes, but also the ability to spread their ideas and their own take on the music they have listened to in the past into the wider world.

The "threats backed up by violence" point is prime here- I have seen nowhere in Mickey's argument a basis for why, beyond the fact that he is now being extremely sorely punished for his actions (for which he has my sincere sympathies) what he did was morally wrong. He is being beaten with a very large stick, true, but why is it it moraly wrong- prove why it is. I have found no compelling argument as to why it is wrong, other than it undermines an industry into which shareholders have poured investment. The question rests on whether the actions of these companies is correct, ad whether this law stands up to moral scrutiny- and not just the law, but also the the means and extent to which it is being enforced, and its practicability.

In my opnion and the opinion of many, the major label system is one which is set up to create an end result in the market place of which we do not approvem, creating a system whereby a tiny number of artists earn vast sums and the multitude earn next to nothing. They preside over a system, whereby they stack the odds grotesquely in their own favour... (see Steve Albini's imfamous rant about the structuring of major label contracts) and a system which refuses to invest in the development of the artist, where they must deliver mass sales on album one or be dropped, then replicate that album again and again. Is this "right" is this "moral"? Is it right and moral because they are investing large amounts of money in lawyers to prosecute their own customerbase, or is it right and moral because they are investing large amounts of money in lobbying governments to alter the laws so they can best protect their crooked system?

I'm unconvinced that beyond the letter of the law (backed up with threats) they have any case at all.

i don't even understand how that's a question. it's devalued precisely because it's easier to reproduce it. you act like "value" is some fixed thing, but even the value of necessities like food and water is dependent on supply and demand. discretionary commodities like music are even moreso. who says 10 songs in a plastic case are worth $14.99? who says one mp3 is worth 99 cents? i subscribe to emusic partly because i really like their selection, but also because their pricing (one file is worth 25 cents or less) seems reasonable to me in the current marketplace.

to go back to the newspaper example, for a long time what protected newspapers was the difficulty and expense of production and distribution. it was a big investment for someone to get into the market. that advantage is disappearing. as a consequence, the marketplace, for the moment, has decided that newspapers are worth less. we have been devalued.

(xpost with shaky mo)

all ownership is backed up by some kind of threat of force. it has to be for a society to function. and before we get too far along into "property = theft," the threat of force is not really a moral issue either. force is amoral, it can be put to good or bad use.

Thanks to Steve Jobs and a little feature he's built into iTunes called Shared Music, I'm listening to someone else's mp3 of Devendra Banhart's "Roots" right now, and Devendra doesn't get a cent. Police helicopters are not hovering overhead. I've also spent the morning watching illegal rips of a Japanese TV series called "Densha Otoko" on YouTube, recently declared "a good corporate citizen" by Hollywood. Apparently nobody has ever sued YouTube, despite the fact that almost everything I've ever seen on it infringes copyright in some way. However, most of the stuff I've seen on YouTube isn't available anywhere else, and the choice is not between me buying or "stealing" it, but between me being aware of it or indifferent to it. My awareness, as the industry knows, leads me in the general direction of being an educated, interested, motivated consumer of the kind of products I'm getting free on YouTube.

I do think, though, that unlimited availability (legal or not) impacts on the value we place on something. In other words, the effect of everything that's ever been recorded being suddenly available (in an outbreak of what Derrida called "archive fever" -- and let's not pretend this is just about P2P, the music industry has been doing this since the invention of CDs) is complex: it may educate us, lead us to specialize and fetishize and valorize, but it may also saturate the entire field. A horrible sort of "Parkinson's Law of Music" may occur, in which all this available music (aided by technologies like docking iPods, streaming AirTunes etc) expands to fill all available space, and becomes ubiquitous, unremarkable, useless, almost inaudible, and finally a horrible nuisance.

The main thing I'm not buying about this whole story (not buying, ha!) is this: one does not become and stay a member of one of the most notorious release crews in internet history by asking nicely and uploading a few albums a couple of times.

Nothing that is said can convince me that you don't have to first prove your "worth" by maintaining a steady supply/connection/cover story/whatever it is that makes you useful to the crew before your application is even considered. Similarly, you don't stay on board by being the nice guy who never does anything except show his belly button piercing now and then. It takes a certain level of sustained activity to remain a member.

So that "but I didn't do anything more than what most people do" is completely dud, as far as I see it. A criminal organisation like this isn't just a bunch of friends who copy an album for each other once in a while.

Whether or not Mickey was a big fish is completely irrelevant. He was a member of a criminal organisation, broke the law that he well knew was in place (apparent unfortunate applications of copyright law or not, that doesn't matter, that's how all laws work: they're general things that are applied in different ways in different cases. That's how we've learned to live with laws.) and he's going to have to take it like a man and pay the price eventually, whether he has our sympathy/understanding/compassion or not, whether we believe his public repentence or not, whether we believe he has actually been touched by the Uncopyable Light Of St.Copyrightius in the meantime or not, we are, have always been and will always be completely irrelevant to his case.

Sure, the mafia/al-qaeda guy who only got rid of the corpses/copied a couple of passports but never actually killed anyone/planted a bomb himself is theoretically less guilty than the people in his organisation who did, but he's not innocent. Membership of a criminal organisation is punishable by law. (stop comparing yourself to one of the unorganised individuals who aren't a member of a Crew, please, you aren't one of them, your actions aren't comparable.)

Everything else is irrelevant chatter.

(stop your annoying rambling style and put some structured thoughts on paper first next time, StanM.)

Momus: The overload question only comes into play if you really think there is any more "good" music (howevr you define that) than before. Merely blah/meh noise chatter is backgrounded pretty quickly. The "good" still sticks out like a sore thumb.

And oral sex is punishable in Florida with a 20 year prison term. In theory.

If you could snap your fingers and have an identical copy of a new car magically appear they would devalue!

Man, for us (and my pals in the newspapers), it's the damn classifieds market. The bottom has fallen out.

As far as one part of Mickey's argument, that people aren't likely to support artists if they download things for free, I can see some logic behind that. It doesn't work here so much because we're all (like the title says) loving music. But for someone to whom music is just another bit of entertainment, the increase in supply (especially as decoupled from 'value') means that the very experience of music is not as important. It becomes simply another mediated experience to wallpaper your life with, usually just to fill the gaps between other mediated experiences like video games, TV and movies.

Momus, you're perpetually pretending that Mickey was consciously performing an act of civil disobedience and that he backslid when he encountered the strong arm of the law. I would imagine that wasn't actually his goal or priority and he'd rather sweep this away and just finish school, get a decent job, etc. and let art and the market evolve without his attempts at intervention. You live a life of intervention and questioning, (so) the rest of us don't have to.

x-post

Feel better?

RIAA Suggests MIT Student Drop Out Of School To Pay Fine
from the educating-the-youth-of-America dept
The RIAA has made quite the business out of shaking down folks they accuse of uploading music. This has been covered at length before, but they basically send a "settlement offer" with each lawsuit. The offer says (more or less) "pay $3500 and this goes away." They also make it clear that just taking the case to court will likely cost more than $3500 in legal fees, suggesting it's not even worth fighting it -- which in some parts of the world sounds very much like extortion. Plenty of people have done the math and suggested that this little business of suing their biggest fans has turned into a nice little profit center for the industry. Digg is pointing to the case of one woman, a student at MIT, who is trying to talk to the RIAA after being offered just such a settlement. When she points out that she's a poor college student, the RIAA rep kindly suggests that perhaps dropping out of school will make it easier to pay off the fine. Now, from the story, it's unclear whether or not the student is guilty of uploading files. If she did it, then it's certainly her responsibility to face whatever punishment comes her way. However, on the spectrum of punishment fitting the crime, does it seem reasonable to ask a student to give up her college education for the sake of paying off the recording industry for the "crime" of helping others find music they might like?

yeah that's a big part of it. really, papers are getting hammered from all sides. (this is off topic, obviously, but james surowiecki wrote a good piece recently. or maybe i just like it cuz it says newspapers oughta be hiring rather than firing...)

1) obfuscating ("what is piracy, anyway?")
2) playing the artist's spokesperson ("most artists want their stuff distributed without payment")
3) justifying theft by claiming to make up for it ("I buy the CDs of the ones I really like", "I go to their concerts")
4) blaming the industry ("prices are too high so therefore it's fair for me to steal")

Look, I've stolen hundreds of albums myself, and while I don't like the idea of me being a thief, that's exactly what I've been. Just fess up and admit that if you had spent 3 years writing a book or programming software, or making music whose sales you intended to live off of, you wouldn't be happy about millions of people being able to ride free off of your hard work. You can argue that it helps you get to know new artists, it made you new friends, that you bought more CDs, and whatever else, but the reality is that this is theft. You download albums because you don't want to pay for them. Period.

I dare any of the "downloading-is-pefectly-moral" people to say this the next time they find themselves in the company of an artist they like. "I love your music so much! I downloaded all your albums!"

I feel guilt if I download an album, listen to it repeatedly, and never pay anyone because I'm used to paying and that's the system. I'd imagine for kids who became teens within the last five years, downloading music is as wrong as jaywalking since it's what they're accustomed to.

Oh, and I have told people that I've downloaded their albums. The response is mixed, but y'know, they tend to realize that you're there at the show and supporting them. "I only make a couple cents off those anyway" is a pretty common response. Of course, I also get paid to write about music, so when I tell artists that I downloaded their stuff, usually they tend to realize that it's because their label rep failed to send a CD in time for me to get it in for press, usually due to us being a monthly (so EVERYONE thinks our deadlines are later), but I realize that's a special case and not part of the overall moral argument.

This is off-topic, but a terrific point. I've been worried about this for a while now: instant availability of everything via "celestial jukebox" may result in fast entropy of desire. The Orgazmatron effect.

Get with the times, man.

piracy=theft=crime=morally wrong.

These are not necessarily so, morality and the law are clearly separate. They may (largely) overlap, but not necessarily so.

"The reality is this theft"- theft from who? You deny that looking at this from the artist's point of view is relevant, then return to the argument that this infringes their right to profit from their labours in some way.

Your arguments are incoherent, tell us WHY it is wrong, above and beyond the law, the threats that companies may use through legal apparatus and repeating like an R1AA zombie that "the reality is theft". The only reason why that is "reality" is because of the law, the law exists because of arguments made as to morality and economics, so in terms of questioning these legal conclusions, engage with the arguments....
IE: economically why? Who loses out. Does that effect the market place (ie- who would not make music and distribute it were it not for profit in recordings...?)
Morally- no one loses a physical object when somene steals a compressed file of musical data. No one is prevented from owning it by another's possession of it. Engage with the moral arguments as to why the artist (plus recording industry) ought to be able to turn a profit from their labours. And how they ought to be allowed to do so.
Why does the idea that blackmarket activity is less bad when arising from a market failure in terms of pricing offend you so much? These issues ARE NOT clear cut, no matter how the R1AA may wish to present them. Come on...

not to ahem name names, but some artists feel kind of embarassed that they have to hawk shirts and other stuff to make money, since while some degree of commodification is inevitable if you wanna make a living in music, one can feel proud of selling a piece of music one labored over & poured sweat into & feels is somehow worthy

I suppose one could also say "it's a nice shirt! good value" but I think the difference in relation to work is worth commenting on: it's nice to get paid for "what you do," right, for one's vocation/avocation

haha gekoppel I think the highwater days of mp3.com kinda put this idea to the lie

If I stole things from your house, and you didn't notice or care, I'm still a thief, am I not?

Look, I'm as anti RIAA as anyone, and I'm just as pro free stuff as anyone here, and I admit that I occassionally download stuff. But come on, let's not kid ourselves. This is theft. I really don't understand how anyone can seriously make a viable argument that it's not.

And to Gekoppel-- if I take a Stephen King book and photocopy 500 copies, and distribute it to the public, is that not a violation of both the publisher's rights and the author's rights?

As for your black market argument-- it's really silly. If you don't want to pay $15 for an album, you shouldn't buy it. You can't just arbitrarily set your own price and walk away with it for $3 or $1, or nothing just because that's how much you feel it's worth. The fact that we're talking about a digital, not physical, entity is immaterial here. You aren't seeking to possess the physical item; you want the intellectual content.

And don't accuse me of being an RIAA zombie. I'm not one, and in fact, I've been a pretty hearty defendant of P2P for many years now. I'm just saying that the time has come for us downloaders to be honest with ourselves. We are taking things that do not belong to us. True, the fact that we're theives is not a pretty thought. It does not sit well with me, and for many years it bothered me to the point where I tried, like a lot of people here, to justify my actions by any means I could (it's the RIAA's fault, it's me helping to create a new market, i go to their concerts, i buy the cds of new artists i'd never heard before, etc.) Yet still, beneath all the "ends justifies the means" bullshit, I find that I've taken that which I did not pay for, and used it in ways that only people who did pay for it should.

I honestly feel a lot of people here are willing to overlook the damage caused by their behavior because it's more convenient to turn the other way and not grapple with it in an serious manner, or attempt to create some sense of ethical ambiguity that will fool them into believing that the repercussions of what they're doing is somehow negligible or even beneficial!

Obviously, I'm probably not going to change your mind, but just consider what I'm saying for a minute, and be honest with yourself.

And I taped entire shows ("Breakfast with the Beatles" comes to mind) and whole albums. DJs used to tell you what they were gonna play.

But yes there are differences with ease of use - which goes back to the supply and demand determining value thing. The easier something is to do, the less valuable providing that service is.

If you really must know what's wrong with downloading music off of the internet:

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B000ATJZK2.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Well, sure, it's a perfectly fine one if the copyright holders are okay with people using p2p to check out their new music.

As far as the Steven King example given - copying the book yrself and keeping it is NOT illegal btw. But going through the onerous process of making 500 copies and then giving those away (apart from obviously being a stupid thing nobody would do) is a red herring - an inapprpriate analogy.

Haha so could your entire practically worthless argument!

Hi Betamax case!

how so?

Alex, please address my points logically if it's "practically worthless." It should be easy for you if you really feel so strongly.

However, downloading doesn't necessarily work that way - for one thing ease of use means no one really has to put in time or effort to share things. And no one makes any money. Also, one can download something without sharing it or further distributing it (YSI? haha)

This all points to the essential problem of mis-applying old models to a newly emerging one. The old market model of $$$ for hard copy of music no long applies in the digital age. This transition occurred without the RIAA or record companies figuring out how to capitalize on it. Now they are crying foul - applying the old rules to a new playing ground.

Second: to re-frame the question a bit in such a way as to draw out the parallels: downloading isn't really "stealing" in any conventional moral sense. Stealing implies that someone had X finite units of a particular thing, and I through taking possession of one unit of that thing left that person with X-1 units of it; i.e., I caused them measurable loss/harm. File-sharing is not like that. There aren't a finite number of downloads available. You could argue that every download is one less album copy sold, but everyone knows that's rubbish. The more salient comparison would be to compare downloading an artist's album in lieu of paying $15 for it to sneaking into their concert without paying a $15 admission. In both cases I'm getting something for free that I should by all rights have paid for, but I'm not sure I would call either "stealing" per se.

Even then, however, I still think the argument pre-supposes a conception of morality and then demands respondents answer only under the auspices of that conception. Hilariously enough, Mickey (way up near the top of this madness) accuses his detractors of subscribing to a "black-in-white George-Bush-"With us or against" us dichotomy worldview". This is almost enough to make my brain hurt, considering that Mickey's entire argument is a Black-and-Black presentation: "Admit that file-sharing is wrong or FILE SHARING IS WRONG DAMN IT".

-- joseph cotten (josephcotte...), Today.

i thought this was already going on.

it may be immaterial to your argument, but it's not immaterial to the real world. again, casting all this in moral terms is silly -- unless you just get off on moralizing, which i suppose some people do.

There is still stuff I can't find immediately. :( But when I do I am going to make 500 copies and hand them out of the back of my van!

xxxxxpost: I remember when radio stations (the Loop and WMET in Chicago, specifically) used to play full albums and take a break between sides, and leave several seconds of silence at the beginning and end of each side, with the stated purpose of allowing people to make good tapes.

which brings up intellectual property - a concept I don't personally acknowledge as valid, and a very sticky one that cannot be tossed aside as you would like.

"and its distribution"

which has to do explicitly with the method of distribution and who has invested capital to distribute it and whether or not anyone is willing to pay for that distribution service (to which, in the age of bits and bytes, the answer is NO). But you don't want to address these issues and dismiss them as hiding behind rhetoric, etc.

And honestly Steven King does NOT have the right to limit who checks out his books, photocopies them, or hears them read on the radio and makes a recording, etc. Ergo, he does NOT have exclusive distribution rights (only the rights that apply to his material insofar as they are in the form of books which are sold for money.)

The Jack Valenti "like walking into my house and stealing my TV" line of argument has always been beyond ridiculous.

Masturbate? Or make pirate noises?

- Also, Mickey, your crime was nowhere close to sharing via a p2p network. It was much worse. To compare yourself with someone like me, who just wants to hear that new [....] single, is ridiculous.

- If a radio station has a podcast or webcast, it cannot play whole albums, as there are laws against such things. Since a good deal of radio stations are now gaining listenership this way, there are not many full albums are being played on the air. Thus, radio play of anything but singles is irrelevant in this discussion.

- A question to everyone: would you have to sell everything you own (except music-listening devices) and more to afford all of the music that you want? Because I'm pretty certain that I would.

Is the previous antimickey stance of "no it cannot just have been music, you (or your lot) MUST haf pirated films and/or games as well!" dead and gone? The way I remember it, that used to be the prime argument back then sometime.

(Also, the newspaper slump subdiscussion is interesting, while reading it I got visions of 15th century newspaper headlines* like "HAND WRINGING AT MONTE CASSINO: Monks complain German invention takes bottom out of Scripture copying market")

xposts blimey this thread is busy, but:

First off I'm not sure I can get behind the Categorical Imperative-type conception of morality presupposed by the entire discussion.

Right, I'm learning this here bit by heart for using in any discussion ever. This is not a dig, Chris, it's excellent.

And honestly Steven King does NOT have the right to limit who checks out his books, photocopies them, or hears them read on the radio and makes a recording, etc.

Um I'm no expert but is this not plain wrong? Or, at least, is he not then entitled to an amount of centZ0rs per reading or something? (At least if what is read is a non-insignificant** part of one work?)

*) Yes yes, I know.
**) See what I did there?

ahaha, i've thought the exact same thing.

As I said, inscrutably complex remuneration schemes. ;)

(PS- I searched around government websites and large PDFs for almost 40 minutes trying to find the exact wording, but came up empty-handed. I

i love organizing music piracy on this thread.

Many of you speak as though we are living in a societal vacuum. Copyright laws are in place so people can afford to and will be encouraged to create art and other things that are useful for our society. If you spent a lot of time inventing something, surely you wouldn't be happy about someone else taking that idea that you worked hard on and channelled a lot of money into. Even if someone distributes the idea without making money on it, it would be discouraging you from making further contributions if there wasn't a reasonable expectation that you'd recap the money you spent on making it. Just look throughout history and you'll see that almost every useful invention was developed with the intent of making money on it. Take that away, and the inventor loses incentive to work on anything. I don't think music is so much different.

xpost

-- Michael Fuck (kjnds...), April 11th, 2006.

You are wrong. And super-cynical. Music IS different, and it is different for probably 99% of the people who make music today.

Look, I don't think you get it. I don't think anyone on this board thinks that musicians (and their support staff) shouldn't be able to try and make a living off of their music. However, many people do not think that the way for them to make that money is by limiting the dissemination of their work and forcing people to pay an artifically high rate for their work that is mandated and enforced through the government.

Get outside your selling-copies-is-the-only-way-for-this-to-work mentality for a second, and you can come up with all sorts of ways for an artist to make money:
1. Play a freakin' SHOW! I have to go to work every day, why shouldn't an artist?
2. If money's so important to them, they can sell their music for use in commericals, TV shows, etc.
3. Sell a subscription to their upcoming work.
4. Tell their RIAA to stop suing their fans and lobby for a tax on broadband, or media, or just a frickin' straight-up TAX (call it the Free Culture Tax) to divvy up between all the RIAA members.
5. Go back to the days where labels pay an artist a salary, and THE LABEL has the rights to the artist's work. That's how MY job works.
6. Get a day job, and make music for the fun of it.

All the whining and handwringing - ugh. At least today's artists don't have to beg some rich person or the Catholic church for money.

The question really is, what will everyone do when all IP is copy-able? Including pharma, engineering designs, everything. Will only carbon compounding companies make money? Free Samsung/Gucci/Prozac for everyone!

this is in some ways the model the music industry could/should work towards -- accept the masses getting music as a loss leader and make $ leveraging the brand and music with other corporate entities, venues, etc.

on another note too, intellectual property remember is a fairly recent and also somewhat contested abstraction. it used to be that you had the "right" to copy for backup purposes, but record companies have been trying to change that -- what does that mean for cds you already own, tho, if they do change it? the nature of the property you "purchased" changes in yr. hands. etc.

at a certain point the notion of a songwriter credit was unknown, then at another point the notion of a patent was unknown, then at another the notion of a copyright.

these are *created* forms of property (tho of course all forms of property are juridically created in one sense or another) and so recourse to IT IS PROPERTY just begs the question "why? and should it be?"

another area of contested ip law, for example: genetic work -- can you patent a sequence for a gene where nature is the prior art and you just sequenced it? can you patent "one click shopping"? what about a mathmatical proof? but what if that proof is equiv. to an efficent algorithm? can you patent the algorithm but not the associated proof, even though they're actually the same thing?

etc.

people are making up the rules as we go and then making up new ones to supercede the old ones and the record companies are doing it as much as anyone.

but again, my argument isn't really whether it's ok or not ok to make copies of copywritten material, because i think that argument is really just an intellectual exercise. the marketplace has changed. people who want to succeed in the marketplace are going to have to change too. and they already are, even as they fight rearguard actions by raiding dorm rooms and suing jr. high school students.

Yes, but they also have a right to do it the way they're doing it now. What is your point? Just because you don't like the paradigm in place doesn't mean you have been given the go-ahead to abuse the system for your own convenience.

OTM!

some guy walking in front of a movie camera one afternoon and getting paid millions. it's a nonsensical model.

some guy playing a few concerts and getting paid millions. it's a nonsensical model.

some guy playing a few concerts and getting paid millions. it's a nonsensical model.

Well, I guess I agree with those statements as well..

What is my POINT? You asked if there is a cogent argument for what you call "piracy." I gave you a whole shitload of them, most of them having to do with how screwed up the current system of paying for copies is.

And your current argument is completely ridiculous. Of course I haven't been given the go-ahead to do any of this. I'm not abusing any system. I'm ignoring the system.

There are cogent arguments AGAINST copyright infringement (although yours get more and more incoherent). Also, many arguments FOR copyright infringement are selfish and convenient for the infringers.

However, there ARE good arguments to be made for changing the current system, and one way to change that system is to ignore it and wait for it to fail.

I started reading ILM, using p2p and having enough disposable income to spend on records all around the same time, and I'd say that I'm a more knowledgeable music fan as a result. I've definitely spent more on music than I would have if those three factors hadn't converged and my primary reference points were still boring british music magazines. I'm sure a lot of other ILMers are the same. I find it hard to equate my, and their, behaviour to leaking pre-release albums as part of a warez group, to be honest.

there is no line -- or rather, the line is always moving. you're still hung up on this being a moral issue. you're like people in the immigration debate who can't get past the fact that "they're here illegally!" the line moves. its location depends on a whole host of factors, which are constantly being renegotiated. what's going on now, the crackdowns on the one hand, the digital music services on the other, the explosion of things like ysi, the feints and starts toward copy-protected cds, all of these things are part of that negotiation, which has no actual end point.

analogies about someone coming into your house and stealing your tv are false and, more to the point, irrelevant. that's not what we're talking about. you can pretend it is and construct a pleasing little moral fable, but not one that's going to mean anything in the actual world.

There's this band I really like, and they have a new album out. I went to the store to buy it, but they only had it on vinyl. I have a turntable, and didn't want to have to wait any longer to hear it, so I bought it. I took it home and listened to it, and really liked it. I then realized that I might like to hear this album in my car, but my car does not have a turntable. I could tape it, but the cassette player in my car is broken. The CD player works. I could:

A) Purchase the album again on CD

B) Run the output of my stereo into my computer, recording the album onto my hard drive, and burning a CD of the album, or

C) Log onto a P2P service, download an already digitized version of my album, put that onto a CD, and be happy for the rest of my life.

Options A, B, and C all result in a CD version of an album I have paid for. Option A, however, requires me to pay for my album a second time. Option B is time-consuming, and depending on my equipment, may yield a copy of sub-par quality which may diminish my enjoyment of the album and/or desire to listen to it. Option C is a free service where nice people make backup copies of my albums for me and let me redeem them for occasions like this.

I went with Option C. Between my original vinyl copy and my CD copy, the content (the music) is exactly the same. It would be unethical of a person or entity to demand that I pay twice for the same content, regardless of format. That's why A was eliminated. I'm not so technically adept that I can faithfully copy my records to CDs, so there went B. The choice I made, while not perfect, was the most perfect considering my other options.

Does using a P2P service for this purpose make me a pirate? I've done it numerous times. I'll likely do it again, too. Should I feel guilty? Am I ripping off anybody? No.

Well, what if your family didn't like bread? But instead liked records?

Also, no one has brought up the argument that recording contracts have improved tremendously since the advent of p2p filesharing. A music business insider told me that whereas before the record company had 100% leverage and bands would sign contracts completely unfavorable to them monetarily, now such extortion happens less because bands figure "Uh screw this we can get more than one cent a CD just from myspace hits," even if the distribution less. This in turn forces record companies to make compromises and deals that are more favorable to the artist.

Is there any truth to this? It sounds quite logical.

DUDES.

explain!

http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/TV/9902/15/wrestling/sting.jpg

"Obviously, they might be more forgiving because you're a reviewer, but I doubt they'd be happy to hear about it from anyone else, or worse, a room full of people, none of whom actually spent any money getting the materials that the artist labored over."

You mean folks who have just spent $15-$65 to see 'em live? Sorry, Fucko, if they're shedding a tear because they haven't milked every dime out of me instead of being happy that I'm paying for an ephemeral experience, they can throw me out. Insert obligatory Stones quote about getting what you want.

"If I stole things from your house, and you didn't notice or care, I'm still a thief, am I not?"

If you made exact duplicates of things from my house and I didn't notice or care, you're not a thief, dumbass. God, is there someone that you can pay to teach you the difference between REAL property and INTELLECTUAL property?

"if I take a Stephen King book and photocopy 500 copies, and distribute it to the public, is that not a violation of both the publisher's rights and the author's rights?"

Yes, a rights violation under US law. Not theft. And law is a thin thing to stake morality upon.

http://cache.gridskipper.com/travel/sting.jpg

well, yeah. loads of people have spilled about how/why they illegally DL music, etc. unlikely that anything will come of it, but it's safe to say that, thanks to Mickey becoming an industry shill (SORRY DUDE), ILM is now on the radar.

That's because it's not true.

This is a totally laughable claim. Examples please.

To re-iterate Mickey, whilst downloaders may not have a "right" (legally enforceable) to download, they may still be in the right to do so. Just because something is against the law does not obviously mean that it is wrong, merely that society will enforce it as if it were wrong.
Why ought massive conglomerates have the right to enforce bad business practices, to reshape the world to fit their business model, rather than to alter themselves to fit the changing demands of consumers???

And the fact that easy clear lines cannot be drawn here is what angers you, angers the R1AA. If John downloads album A, listens to it thru three times, then never listens to it again, having deleted it in disgust as it's no very good, how is that different from hearing the album played on late night college radio and then not buying it? Or renting it from a library and then not buying it? It doesn't appear to be any different. Is the mere potential to permanently own the distinction? What if John downloads the album, but never listens to it... is that "theft"? Where do we want to draw the line here...?

The industry wants to deal in absolutes because that is the way they crush debate about the nature of rights and the nature of theft, but it really is not that simple.
Mickey: you also draw attention to the key economic argument for copyright, that it encourages more and better producers to bring ideas and products to the market place with the lure of making a buck. But what if in the case of music there was no need to offer such a lure in the area of recordings of music... what if the same number brought product to market, for (a)the pleasure of doing so in and of itself, (b)as a trailer for the other related services they could provide?

In other words, is a wolrd of gentleman musicians (who do not rely on commercial recordings as their primary revenue stream) really such a bad one to envisage?

A few people have mentioned the idea that if you pay to go to someones show, you are somehow compensating them for not paying for their album. If you believe this, you have no idea how little 95% of musicians profit off of shows. Most tours are of the break-even/lose money variety.

Sadly, T-shirts are profitable. So buy those, I guess.

Or put it another way: Is it right for someone to intercept a journalist's work, claim it as their own, and get paid for it?

However, your argument ("I really want to have an album--but I don't want to pay for it") was cogent, just not a very good moral or ethical defense of filesharing.

The last two are totally missing the point.

1. If you do believe that the GAP is fucked-up, then go ahead and steal their shirts - that's a form of civil disobedience.

2. Nobody sharing music is claiming that they made it.

In a wolrd where downloading for free is possible, then whatever they think might be even slightly woth their attention is heard, so many more artists wil get support in some way, some of whom before would have got nothing at all. For those artists, AND their recod companies, even if the profits they have gleaned are not as great as those they would have got if that initial album was purchased legit rather than D/Ld for free, in actuality were it not for that initial piracy, they would have had no income at all--- given that it cost them nothing (in real terms) for that initial download (ie- they would notice no loss when it occured) then surely there are consdierable gains available here???

My new cogent argument: the Mount Everest approach. Why download albums? Because they're there.

i hate that oldenburg plug thing.

I'll just use my own experience as an example...I have a record coming out soon. Basically, we've paid for recording, already spent $1200 and owe another $1400....will have to shell for half the mastering ($250)...off of every record sold once it comes out on a (very) small label...we get $4 per album sold for $10 at shows....$8 per CD sold on tour....that's not bad....

As far as the "oh I'll go to your show thing"...lots of small touring bands will basically get a cut of $5 or $6 buck a head from a bar show, after splitting with whatever the venue and the other bands take....on average, I'd say we make about 60-70 per show...sometimes more, but sometimes as little as $25...

So basically, I love the idea of "gentlemen musician", but honestly most of us are just going into debt, and the dwindling of CD sales is only hurting....itunes sales I expect to be minimal and we'll barely get any of that....So basically, there's just a ton of reasons not to do it, obv. I do it "for the loooove man", but the older you get the harder it gets to justify all the time and expense....So, I'm not sure if this brave new world of downloading is really helping improve the overall quality of music, I'd imagine there are a bunch of talented folks that have just said fuck it.

what if the same number brought product to market, for (a)the pleasure of doing so in and of itself, (b)as a trailer for the other related services they could provide?

I don't know what that means...I guess I could provide another service like coming over to yr house and plunking around on the bass??

I'm not against downloading, but I guess I always try to be a good member of the "community" (whatever that means)....I generally don't burn and keep stuff from small labels or people that I'm pretty sure make way less than I do a year. I love the idea of it bascially being the new libraries/radio/whatever, but I think some people abuse it. Major label record companies and the RIAA are definitely immoral (IMO) in how they deal with artists and the audience, but I don't think that absolves the audience to act however it feels...it's an (expensive) hobby at this point.

..that said, if anyone burns my music and enjoys it, that's fine, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it...I'd be glad they liked it.....I guess what I'm suggesting though is that I'm much more in favor of the model of giving out a couple free MP3s as a sample so people can decide if they like it, then (hopefully) they will buy to at least help some bands be less in debt.

I need to rephrase the journalist point--claim it as their own was bad phrasing--I merely mean, take it and publish it, regardless of byline, and get paid for the idea generation.

(the oldenburg plug is great to pee on.)

(xpost)

You mean like ripping huge chunks from other papers' wire services? Happens all the time, and since there's no attribution on most wire copy, a local writer can get sole byline for fairly small additions.

The rise of copyright is directly related to advances in the printing press and the industrial age. The protection of intellectual property offers massive economic incentive to innovate and create.

and nobody ever innovates and creates without massive economic incentive. nope.

JS, that's exactly it. I think the question for me (unanswered) is still, what is the worth of the idea generation, and how does one preserve, if one deems worthwhile, the ability to recoup value from idea generation.

X-post?

this is like this classic backwards neocon argt. that essentially attributes massive technological change etc. to the "right" set of legal economic conditions rather than v/v.

there's another bogus element to this argument in that sure there wasn't mass distribution of big long books while they had to be copied by monks, but there was distribution of songs, tunes, poems, oral epics, etc. along with "copying" of artistic themes & works, development of all SORTS of technology and its spread (technology, which granted from our modern standpoint all just sort of looks like "old inefficent stuff that hardly qualifies as technology" granted, but technology that played a pivotal role in its time, and advances that were qualitative in their impact).

i get rilly pissed by the maddening presentism of neocon argts. that amount to "AS IT IS SO EVER WAS IT BECAUSE IT IS SO WRITTEN (and if it wasn't, then people were too stupid to make it so)"

i mean, you had plenty of trade secrets back then sure on the other hand. and historically one of the main arguments for patent law was to OPEN access to technology by forcing things that would otherwise have been trade secrets to instead be documented publically if they were to enjoy the protection of law. (copyright, of course, being a difft. matter). the continuing expansion of the scope and relative duration of patent law (especially in fast moving fields) works opposite to the intended effect if anything.

1) I want to hear a lot more music than I can afford. I'm a student, I only work summers, and most of the time there's a lot more money going out than coming in.

2) So, I download. With the intent of, when I am able, paying for every single record I enjoy.

3) The money I do have basically goes to two things, social activities (restaurants, bars, shows, movies, PBR) and buying music.

4) Priority for buying goes to CURRENTLY ACTIVE bands, to whom record sales make a good deal of difference and hopefully encourage them to continue being a band.

5) Used CDs don't count for the most part. If you think buying used is any different from filesharing you're wrong.

6) Used vinyl is a bit of a different issue. If an album originally came out on vinyl only (so it's from pre-'90, more or less) then I like to have it that way when it's affordable/makes sense.

7) Obviously buying used vinyl doesn't help artists, but generally speaking if a band is no longer active I don't feel too bad about not buying their stuff new. They had their run, and I'm going to give the money I have to musicians who I feel are important now.

8) So I guess I look at downloading as a long-term loan. If I've downloaded your record and I like it, I'm going to buy it someday. Really. Promise. If it's not for me, I'll delete it. And I won't hate you for making me waste money.

9) If anything, I've bought a lot MORE CDs by good independent artists because I've been able to hear their stuff first. Just looking at the few CDs in front of me, I'd own no Arsis or Boris records had I not been able to sample.

In news, the idea is that the value to the public is more important that the value to the individual. I think you can make a decent argument that the same is true for art.

check out the texts section.

I think the "rightness" argument is stretched even further if you think about other media, like movies, computer games, or what have you. These things take a LOT of money--and if we're making a distinction that it's ok to get music for free, and not ok to get movies and games for free, then I've not understood that. And I disagree that the distinction should be made. And it ISN'T free to make music--it may be "free' to write a song, but the effort and cost it takes to record it, produce it, master it, is not free. Unless we all go back to monophonic vinyl recordings. Then maybe it's free-er.

But I think perhaps trolling means belaboring an unanswerable point, so I'll stop.

it's not that writing a song doesn't require significant economic resources; historically, it's that manufacturing and distributing a song does require significant resources. And you're missing the point--it's not that ideas or innovation or creation will die without the incentive of intellectual protection, the concept is that there is far less incentive to bring those ideas to market. Replication is a key component to competitive advantage, and if you remove it entirely then the resulting commodification puts all the market incentive on manufacturing and distribution. So unless you are a musician with absolute controls on your manufacturing and distribution channels (playing live), where's the incentive to create profitable art? Well, there's always the NEA I suppose. So if my argument is some sort of "backwards neocon" scheme, then killing copyright I guess must be some sort of socialist utopia.

But before we even get that far, maybe it'd be helpful to review the cases where intellectual property is not protected yet flourishes in the marketplace, and how those marketplaces themselves are flourishing and expanding.

It's OK to get movies and games for free, but it's harder. I have absolutely no problem at all with someone downloading Chinatown, The Shining or Being There. I just hope they have a big hard drive. As for games, I have no problem saying that Frogger should be free and that Gametap (or whatever it's called) should shove it. Same with Kid Icarus, Metroid and Super Mario Brothers. I have a little more trouble justifying current movies and games, but that's because I think of the commodities as different from music. If I buy an album, I'm going to listen to it hundreds of times. If I buy a movie, I may watch it twice. Hence, I feel it's a lot more important to have a preview of the entire album. Games are the same way— after I beat a game, aside from a few casual games that ARE FREE, I rarely play it again. So I tend to rent 'em or take 'em out from the library, which just isn't an option with music (well, the library is, and I do take a fair amount of stuff out, but they just don't have the selection I want. I mean, I like Don Henley as much as the next guy who's not Don Henley, but I can't live on him alone). And I have absolutely no problem with unauthorized computer clones of Monopoly or Scrabble.

you can beg the question, but will it bend?

meanwhile, we continue to wait for Sterling to elaborate on a market that relies on a unique offering without affording that offering limited protection.

meanwhile, in the hard sciences it is pretty much universally agreed by actual scientists that ip rights foster monopoly more than productivity & its even been demonstrated that despite whining about "generics" from the big pharmacos, they can turn a profit on name-brand quality issues regardless (not to mention that everyone outside of bushco [& even some in] agree that they're gouging regardless).

and as for journal articles and research ppl. hardly get paid for them rilly, but rather they're 1) for career/cred purposes and 2) to actually advance the field and the big journal publishers (waving the banner of "peer review" -- like, uh uh, they're actually the "peers" and not just intermediaries in a monopoly position) essentially take their cut from endowed libraries with overpriced subscriptions the libraries have no choice but to take.

if someone could actually show me where ip DID do a uniquely good job in driving innovation in the past 50-70 years i'd flip my lid.

ffs, the big profit from edison and the lightbulb even came from the creation of electric utilities, not the patenting of a particular coil design.

and the argument i'm leveling here isn't even against markets per se -- rather, i'm just pointing out the bleeding obvious that even without ip the market (among other things) is perfectly capable of driving innovation.

there's all sorts of non-ip-protected ideas that are invented and distributed all the time. it doesn't make innovation harder at all, it just means that a purely ip-based business model is off the agenda.

As for your new set of questions - How do you incentivize people to make art without copyright - I think I came up with some ways (taxes, fees on broadband, media, etc.). The question about other forms of IP protection are also interesting, and complicated. The one that really perplexes me is videogames, as they currently cost a huge amount to produce, and really serve no purpose other than to entertain (and therefore are not bought by corporations or any other legally-obligated entity).

In the case of music, and now, to some extent, movies, the production costs are falling as the barriers to distribution (legal or otherwise) are falling, somewhat near in-unison. In the case of muic, the cost of creating an album is (or at least CAN be) MUCH lower than it was in the past. Movie production costs (ridiculous effects-laden blockbusters nonwithstanding) are also falling.

I think we are in a period of disconnection right now, where the costs of production are still much higher than the costs of distribution. I think my point is that rather than artifically increasing the costs of distribution (through copyright, DRMN, etc.), we need to find a different way to balance this offset until the production costs come down.

And finally, once again, the way to incentivize (ugh) the players to find a new model is not to, as a group, just accept whatever model the rights-holders are currently pushing.

One great example of this is recipes. Some of the more aggresive IP-absolutists I've talked to express shock that you cannot patent a recipe. Usually, once I point out how ridiculous the idea of recipe patents is, not only do they agree, but it changes their view on IP in general, at least a little bit.

I also might point out that the appeal of "high art" is in its scarcity and controlling its distribution. Endowment would evaporate if there were unlimited amounts and uncontrolled distribution.

there's all sorts of non-ip-protected ideas that are invented and distributed all the time.

Which ones of those are sold? Or are you only coming up with ideas that simply cannot be protected (breathing through the nose? Ambitdextrous watches? Serving green eggs with ham?

if someone could actually show me where ip DID do a uniquely good job in driving innovation in the past 50-70 years i'd flip my lid.

what's your version of unique?

I never said that a lack of protected IP makes innovation harder or that it won't occur. I said it removes a significant amount of the incentive. Are we going to start comparing the market size for recipes and songwriting next?

That's a specious argument that requires quite a bit of jiggerypokery to make cogent.

ok don first you have a market-based idiocy here. you've confused the *appeal* of "high art" with the *market value* of "high art" -- which is pretty much equiv to saying that anyone who likes, say, jasper johns more than, say, kinkade, does so because of its scarcity. which is also not true anyway b/c you can get a nice print of some modernist art much cheaper than a kinkade with hand-detailed highlights by the man himself.

also since "high art" is generally made available in museums, many of which offer the opportunity to visit either on a "pay what you can" or with a free day, the scarcity issue is again sort wtfish. not to mention that, say, a gorecki symphony and the latest jessica simpson album cost about the same at Tower records or whatever.

and ok yeah endowment would evaporate if there were unlimited amounts because DUH, but unlimited distribution wouldn't matter two hoots becase endowment BY DEFINITION is already not profit driven.

i don't even know why i bother. xpost with js.

YSI?

I don't know why I bother either, Sterling. Your argument to me is founded on the idea that basic economics doesn't apply to this thread, and you haven't yet come up with one good example of an incentive with regards to intellectual property that is as significant or strong as protection of a tangible, unique idea. I'm pretty surprised that you so casually dismiss the concept that a creator might want to have control over his or her creation, and that retaining that control is no more of an incentive than not.

I think the first case should be legal (and we should find some other way to pay artists for this type of distribution), and the the second case can be solved with more traditional means (compulsory licensing, for example).

And to the Ford/Toyota idea, the whole point is that there is friction in the system, and for a little bit of time, you can derive value from that innovation for yourself or whomever. As you can imagine, the closer the gap becomes between the release of innovation and the copying of it, the less value you generate and the less you are able to fuel new innovation. The second problem is, typically, that this style of innovation lends itself to smaller, incremental innovations, not great leaps and bounds types of stuff. An example of this is open-source innovation, which typically works off of a creative "mainstream" base, not wild leaps and bounds which would require significant investment of resources and infrastructure. There are exceptions to this, like Linux and Apache, but these examples often grow through commercialization of some sort-just as Ani DiFranco and Dave Matthews doesn't a grassroots industry make.

And so now that I know what trolling is, I was trolling???--"posts inflammatory, rude or offensive messages designed to annoy and antagonize the existing members or disrupt the flow of discussion." I thought this was a discussion forum! And Sterling's brilliant reproduction x-post aside, j'accuse! And Michael, thanks for the x-post definition.

    Which ones of those are sold?

Lots. Ever heard of any computer software development models or standard sort algorithms? Or business methodologies? We're talking about things that people pay to be taught in school, buy numerous books about, and will go to lectures or hire people to come in and implement.

Music, or art in general, isa lot harder to address because it's not merely a technique or process. There's something to be experienced that isn't really quantifiable or tangible. To me, part of that experience is often talking about music with friends or reading about it before actually listening. It can involve the experience of going in a record store and looking at a nice cover before buying an album.

There needs to be a recognition that there is now a way to distribute and copy this material with a low cost and that selling albums may become a niche market. They'll still sell, I mean people who have no practical reason to buy vinyl still do. As I've said before, people will likely pay for an efficient, reliable means to get music at an affordable cost. You just have to meet all that criteria.

I have a cogent argument for pirating music summarized from a few of the above posts. It goes as follows: "I really want to have an album--but I don't want to pay for it."

But whatever - not like we don't all make obnoxious comments all the time.

And the only way to fight piracy, in the world of copyable bits, is to provide "an efficient, reliable means to get [access to IP] at an affordable cost," as mike h. says.

Honestly, it seems like we can go in one of two directions, as the world becomes more about intellectual rather than physical property:

1. We can completely change how people are compensated for their work.
2. We can try to create an artificial economy for intellectual property, based on DRM, laws, and heavy enforcement.

Number 1 pretty much involves dismantling the whole structure of capitalism, so I'm guessing we'll end up with 2, at least for a while. But ask yourself this: Would you send your kid off to war with China because they were "stealing our ideas?"

I get the point--but can we please contain this to things that are patentable (or more specifically, copyrightable) so that it's germaine to the thread? Maybe I wasn't being entirely specific in my assertion but it's fairly obvious. And in the end, if something IS patentable or copyrightable, there is more incentive to innovate. It would be great to argue for the utopian version of innovation stemming from purely problem solving, but putting that exception as the guidepost is barely relevant. It's not particularly realistic given that copyright isn't only a legal concept, it's clearly part of entrenched culture.

But at the crux of my argument is my assumption that popular music or even underground music is not likely to flourish on an endowment basis. Nor will it support itself without a revenue stream for its creators; or maybe it will given that most creators are probably barely making minimum wage to begin with.

Personally, I have long advocated #1 but changing the aforementioned culture to embrace this is a long slog in the shitstorm.

Yes, but I hate both Chinese and children.

Also- distinction between copyright in music and creative forms and patents in research and devlopment based products ought to be underlined...

Has this thread been completely derailed?

i don't see why solving this problem has to entail dismantling the whole structure of capitalism or total-DRM and heavy enforcement. soulseek and the like are great, but having a place to get music inside of itunes is so much more convenient. music isn't scarce anymore, and it's going to be very hard to recreate that scarcity, really or articially. why not structure an intellectual property compensation mechanism around a digital (because that seems to be the preferred format) allocation interface? like the one in itunes, but better. the definition of 'better' is obviously a personal preference, which can be catered to by different services, creating competition.

copyright holders could enter into contracts with services individually, negotiating their cuts in the sales of their property, or the government could regulate it (former=USA, latter=EU).

of course, this could fail if copyright holders limited themselves to one service, alienating consumers, as they are so wont to do.

i heard that we were moving to a service economy from a little birdie.

I can get a tip jar,
Gas up the car,
And try to make a little change
Down at the bar.

Or I can get a straight job,
I've done it before.
I never minded working hard,
It's who I'm working for.

(Chorus)

Every day I wake up,
Hummin' a song.
But I don't need to run around,
I just stay home.

And sing a little love song,
To my love and myself.
If there's something that you want to hear,
You can sing it yourself.

'Cause everything is free now,
That what I said.
No one's got to listen to
The words in my head.
Someone hit the big score,
And I figured it out,
And I'm gonna do it anyway,
Even if doesn't pay.

No, because Corey's a douchebag.

http://www.campusdownloading.com/dvd_quicktime.htm

Paul Zollo interviewed Frank Zappa way back in 1987, and I think the following excerpt about his opinion regarding the quality of songwriting applies to this post:

Zollo: "..isn't it possible for something new and great to be heard - even if it doesn't fit the pat hit-making formula?"

Zappa: "Not unless there's a massive change of attitude at the distribution level, which includes the places where music is dispersed: radio, TV, jukeboxes, whatever, until current values disappear. Until then, there is little hope that a person who is doing anything other than formula swill will have an opportunity to have his music recorded,let alone transmitted." (I think this was originally published in SongTalk magazine, but I'll cite Zollo's book Songwriters On Songwriting p 324).

Seems Zappa was on the mark almost 20 years ago. I don't know if he would have wholesale supported free downloading, but I would argue that, at the very least, he definitely would have seen it as a necessary short-term tool to bring down the monopoly of the recording industry.

Until then, there is little hope that a person who is doing anything other than formula swill will have an opportunity to have his music recorded,let alone transmitted.

Little hope, not no hope. Zappa wasn't making an absolute statement; you shouldn't either. Think about how much larger the indie scene is today than it was in the 80s and tell me that doesn't reflect Zappa's words.

Besides, you appear to "completely and utterly" miss the point of how it applies to this thread. Because you disagree with his opinion in part, you dismiss the main point of how a massive change in the distribution of music would challenge the monopoly of the recording industry.

The rest is related but not why I thought Zappa's words applied to this particular thread.

- Don't bother with the "okay, so I didn't buy the CD, but then I did go to their show and buy a t-shirt and totally give Darn31lle a blowjob." Maybe you did -- but face it, most of don't. I mostly didn't.

problem solved!

On the other hand, it should be noted that music companies have been ripping off artists for years, blocking access to "the system" by new and innovative artists for years, serving up pablum and rehashed formulaic junk that passes for music for years, using payola scams to promote their lame so-called music, and preventing listeners from hearing or getting access to all sorts of exciting and diverse music, by restricting us to tightly-controlled music outlets on commercial radio and in corporate record stores. The biggest crime is that the US music industry has destroyed the musical landscape in this country so completely, that many readers of this blog probably don't even realize how bereft our musical taste has become in this country, due to it's corporatization.

In a sense, P2P is an act of listener-survival, or civil disobedience, necessitated by the cultural starvation we've endured for decades under the total domination of the RIAA-affiliated music companies.

More on media domination:
www.inyourear.org

-johny radio

You may want to take a look around "this blog" before making statements like that!

In a sense, P2P is an act of listener-survival, or civil disobedience, necessitated by the cultural starvation we've endured for decades under the total domination of the RIAA-affiliated music companies

Which explains why soulseek and blogs are filled with material from small independent labels how? Also, isn't most P2P just people downloading exactly the kind of major label "lame so-called music" that you resent so much anyway?

re indie music, we at our indie internet radio station, killradio.org, use soulseek to get lot's of indie music, so yes it's there.

you may be correct, that most people are downloading major-label music, but that may be because that's the music that gets the most publicity-- it's all most people are aware of. but p2p has still made non-major label music available.

Pop music, like corporate news, has "dumbed down" our culture, so that listeners want and expect to most awful, prepackaged, simple-minded plastic mass-produced pop songs. The industry ripped off the styles and ideas of neglected artists. For decades, most Americans have been cut off from a universe of ethic music, art music, world music, punk (during its heyday), real jazz (not Kenny G), socially-conscious hip-hop (before IT'S corporatization) and so much more.

It remains difficult to impossible to find any music on FM radio which deviates from the corporate diet.

check out portable internet radios, which let you listen to internet radio without a computer:
www.inyourear.org

In fact in a world with low transactions costs, the 'winners' could completely compensate the 'losers' and still have excess benefit themselves - pareto improvement!

Say you value a CD at $10, it's selling at $11. a) No piracy, you don't get the CD - you are $10 poorer, the company is neutral. a) Now say you can pirate it for $0. You are $10 richer, the company is the same. How is situation b not better than situation a, yo? And yes, some people that pirated would have bought the CD. So, there's some redistribution. Yawn.

I say not only is downloading music illegally OK, but if you don't do it you are making the world worse off. Seriously, how do you people sleep at night?

Told you.

Johny, the only thing that's dumbed down anything is idiots who can't be bothered to read the boards they post to.

sorry, I'm at a desk job this week!

Johny, I'd love to think if the major labels and tv stations and radio stations started promoting really good shit then america would get educated and all of a sudden the music I'd like would show up on Total Request Live but it ain't gonna happen. The best thing to do is to try to support the artists you like and share it with others, and you know what, you can do that without ripping them off.

Nothing but GG Allin on the radio then?

dan, i'm not saying p2p is a solution to the problem, simply that there's a problem. i imagine p2p hurts indie artists the least-- according to articles i've read (this deserves documentation), some indie artists use p2p as a form of promotions.

"if the major labels and tv stations and radio stations started promoting really good shit then america would get educated... but it ain't gonna happen"

i agree with you that major labels and tv (& radio) stations are not about to start promoting quality material.

but i strongly feel that if they did, then yes, americans would become more sophisticated listeners.

Anyway, first of all, many people would disagree with you that major labels always equals crap. Why, that's why we have Sasha Frere Jones explaining Cristina and Justin to readers of the New Yorker. Anyway, a large portion of the population will always want watered down crap, and alwasy have. You want to give them access to this other stuff but in the end they'll make their own choice, and you probably won't be happy with it.

Love,
The Grammar Police

P.S. The Ethics Committee would like to point out johny radio's use of a false provocation argument, e.g. my local supermarket will not stock organic foods, therefore I am justified in stealing food.

P.P.S. ILM is not a blog.

i support the rule of law-- to a point. some laws are very wrong, and breaking them may be an effective PART of changing the system-- along with working within the system for change.

not sure i'm defending p2p-- just saying it's a symptom of a problem.

johny fever, i dig your sn.

Mickey, thanks for starting the thread. personally, i don't think it's a simple question with simple answers. downloading a song without paying is illegal (i think)-- but again, "illegal" does not necessarily equal "wrong".

i wish rosa parks was still alive to see how brave you are.

"don't worry about it grandma, you can play all the harlem hamlets you want because of this"

"you so sweet"

(can't help it, sorry)

And maybe there's no peace in this world, for us or for anyone else, I don't know. But I do know that I can YSI you the new Clipse record!!!

And I'm not anti-p2p, per se. I just can't stand it when people post logical fallacies on my blog.

might be of interest:
"the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) ...had become a dominant force in the music business through its licensing agreements regarding the sales of sheet music, piano rolls, and the recordings of Tin Pan Alley songs. A battle between ASCAP and the radio stations--whose programming had become increasingly committed to airing recorded music during the latter 1930s and early 1940s--spurred the latter to boycott ASCAP material and establish their own publishing firm, Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI). ASCAP's history of ignoring black and country music compositions, combined with the tendency of many radio stations to target regional tastes overlooked by the major networks (ABC, NBC, and CBS) enabled BMI to secure a near monopoly on the material in these categories. The advent of rock 'n' roll, itself largely a product of the marriage of rhythm and blues and country, assured the continued dominance of BMI within the youth music market."
http://tinyurl.com/oj5p6

other authors have observed that rock and roll was created because the indie radio stations broke away from the big establishment firms.

dan, there's an example of music (black and country), previously suppressed (or imitated) by the dominant music provider (ascap), becoming hugely popular with americans once they got access to it.

today, local radio stations are being threatened with being swallowed up by Clear Channel and other national megoliths. if you live in LA read about it here:
www.inyourear.org

http://www.viva-radio.com

Then that artist will get paid. Maybe not a lot but it can add up. But ASCAP isn't controlling what gets played, nor really promoting it. It's up to the DJs, the publishers etc.

http://www.free-culture.cc/

If you talk to indie record labels that have been around pre- and post-p2p, the sales post-p2p are on average significantly less. People are at a bit of a loss on how to make money from p2p.

i dont agree that a viable alternative has to create a U2 success to prove itself. niche marketing is the real power of the web-- marketing to special tastes instead of the lowest common denominator.

direct link on the FCC hearings:
http://tinyurl.com/mvddx

pardon if i've repeated what others have said. i really want to read all 63 pages, but i'm running off to the Podcast & Portable Media Expo.
http://www.portablemediaexpo.com/

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ahrpa/opa/kids/images/yousaypirate2.jpg

LOL

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w228/Tatseart/pirategp.jpg

Please take a toke off the bong for me.

it's a joint, but you're welcome.

trae in the house

this thread was a joke, right?