what happens if SOPA passes?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

hmmmmmmm

less web-based filesharing, people will figure out a new and clever way around that within like a week tho

passenger pigeon

putting CD into manila folder (the "file"), then "sharing" it via US mail

mix cds are the new moonshine

sopes vs tacos

I tell you what's not going to happen: a pronounced uptick in the sales of recorded media in response to increasing difficulty getting shit for free. This is dumb legislation. I would really, really, really love it if all the people who enjoy Aerosmith music bought the albums. That would be fuckin awesome. It's never going to happen. Trying to legislate a return to the pre-filesharing age just the dumbest.

my understanding is that the internet will shut down for like a year while telephone operators reconnect all the cables

actually the one thing that will definitely happen is that the MPAA/RIAA will line the campaign chests of any and all politicians who voted for it

I despair, i really do

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/25316-record-giants-sue-irish/

actually the one thing that will definitely happen is that the MPAA/RIAA will line the campaign chests of any and all politicians who voted for it

but like, for no reason! this is not going to get them extra money! there's just nothing in this for them, and if they manage to shut down any of the mediafires of the world, they'll further alienate producers/engineers/musicians/filmmakers who make DAILY use of these services and are pretty accustomed to having a wide range of options for getting files to people who need to see/hear them

just wondering if i wasted my 20s learning a valuable skill like 'youtube surfing,' and if i should be furiously downloading any & all 90s g-funk records from hamburg-based gangster rap blogs now before the fire rains down from the heavens

or if someone will just invent a newer better napster

Ubuweb have been tweeting about how they'll surely go down if it passes. Which might not sound like much, but it's a large proportion of my cultural life down the drain, *and* a bunch of important documents I've used for research.

that's not what they're going for though. it's my understanding that they want to rewrite the basic technological infrastructure of the internet. it's like pointing at a house and saying "there's bad cabling that's permitting piracy under the floorboards and in the walls. we need to replace that cabling." to which anybody who is sane would reply "that would require destroying the whole house" to which SOPA supporters would reply "I don't care. there's bad cabling. we need to fix it."

it would basically make the internet in the US be similar to internet in China, i.e. censored at the discretion of the US government.

^^ what i'm really worried about

on the plus side it would limit access to gucci mane mixtapes, which is a good thing

nah, those are free anyway bro

are they doing this becuz i downloaded honkin' on bobo

i never had the guts to tell u i did it aero, i guess i was ashamed of myself

this country is turning into soviet russia, which incidentally is where bobo honks you

on the plus side it would limit access to gucci mane mixtapes, which is a good thing

― bob loblaw people (dayo), Thursday, January 12, 2012 8:42 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you're worse than hitler

but actually many gucci mixtapes were already removed from datpiff by his label

isnt the diff between us & china that corporations have to ask the government to censor us before we can be censored

rip Gucci mane mixtapes

focus dayo focus

dayo it's almost like whenever we get a glimpse at a thread that might not go straight into this particular ditch you have grab the steering wheel and swerve us into it

all roads lead to gucci mane

its very important to me that i be able to grab chicken talk from the cloud at any time for the forseeable future

im jus sayin

the only thing available for free download will be the dozen or so new albums by the weeknd coming out every year.

Free azealia banks tracks for some; miniature american flags for others

Ubuweb have been tweeting about how they'll surely go down if it passes. Which might not sound like much, but it's a large proportion of my cultural life down the drain, *and* a bunch of important documents I've used for research.

― emil.y, Friday, 13 January 2012 02:38 (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

kind of curious about this -- seems like it would mean that the more flagrantly copyright-violating stuff would have to go, sure, but i don't know if that stuff is the same stuff as the stuff that constitutes its value as an archive. in an ideal world it would result in goldsmith spending more time on actual archival and less time tweeting that he's found a file with the complete lacan seminars in e-reader form

(but i'm not entirely sure in what form the thread SOPA entails would manifest -- i was under the impression that copyright owners could order stuff to be taken down already, and i'm not sure what extra weight SOPA adds to this threat)

http://ubu.com/images/beckett_header_sopa2.jpg

less web-based filesharing, people will figure out a new and clever way around that within like a week tho

exactly, the government is powerless against a country full of 14 year old nerds with ridiculous amounts of spare time

File-sharing will keep happening whatever they do. If they want to stop most of the file-sharing, they need to work together to exploit the medium that consumers have exploited in their absence.

This is a hell of a lot more about control imo – control of so many of the artists who would manage perfectly well without them.

Oh so what happens if SOPA passes? People will continue to nick stuff off the internet. If that fails, they'll carve new grooves into the internet and share through those. If that fails, they'll set up local gatherings and swap hard drives. I have soooo much more to say on this btw.

i mean, when Windows XP had that whole "YOUR COPY IS NOT GENUINE" thing that dicked over a bunch of people (regardless of whether or not their copy was legit) it took all of 6 hours before articles went online detailing how to get around it. and Microsoft probably had this technology in development for YEARS.

But I think the one thing that will happen, whether SOPA passes or not, is that a company with a clue about what drives people to consume (e.g. Apple) will devise a way for people to do so that's so easy, clean and affordable that 99% of people will use it rather than scrape the darknet for a decent copy xp

Socialist Party of Azania (South Africa)
Student Oral Proficiency Assessment
Society of Professional Archeologists
Synchronous-Orbit Particle Analyzer
Standard Operating Procedure Amplified (aviation)
Safety Office of Policy Analysis (City of Denver)
Supporters of the Performing Arts, Inc. (Estes Park, CO, USA)
senior officer present afloat (USN) (US DoD)
Space-Only Power Allocation
Supporters of Performing Arts
Selanik Ozel Pedagoji Akademisi
Salinas Owners and Pilots Association (Salinas, CA)
Southern Oregon Photographic Association (Medford, OR)
State of the Province Address (various locations)
Stop Online Piracy Act
School of Physics and Astronomy (various locations)
School of Public Affairs (various locations)
South of Pandosy Street (area in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada)

Anything with any user-generated content is going to be potentially screwed, surely.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/13/how-sopa-will-hurt-the-free-web-and-wikipedia/

It would give them power that they might not use, but of course that's not the point. They shouldn't have that power in the first place, especially when it's 100% about propping up a industry bloated by a century of physical media and regional distribution.

But I think the one thing that will happen, whether SOPA passes or not, is that a company with a clue about what drives people to consume (e.g. Apple) will devise a way for people to do so that's so easy, clean and affordable that 99% of people will use it rather than scrape the darknet for a decent copy xp

― Autumn Almanac (Schlafsack), Thursday, January 12, 2012 9:27 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you say this, but in the CD era there was nothing to keep them from pushing the price point up to 20 bucks for a shitty CD

if this happens, I'm going to send every member of the MPAA/RIAA unique snapshots of my dick every day for one year.

they should come around in about a week, tops

A Sheffield student can be extradited to the US to face copyright infringement allegations, a judge has ruled.

Richard O'Dwyer, 23, set up the TVShack website which US authorities say hosts links to pirated copyrighted films and television programmes.

The Sheffield Hallam University student lost his case in a hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court.

If found guilty in a US court he could face up to five years in jail.

Mr O'Dwyer's lawyer, Ben Cooper, indicated during the hearing that he would appeal against the ruling.

Mr Cooper said the website did not store copyright material itself and merely directed users to other sites, making it similar to Google.

He also argued that his client, who would be the first British citizen to be extradited for such an offence, was being used as a "guinea pig" for copyright law in the US.

But District Judge Quentin Purdy ruled the extradition could go ahead.

Mr O'Dwyer's mother, Julia O'Dwyer, from Chesterfield, has described the moves by US authorities as "beyond belief" and described Britain's extradition treaty with the United States as "rotten".

Speaking before the hearing, Mr O'Dwyer said he was "surprised" when police officers from the UK and America seized equipment at his home in South Yorkshire in November 2010.

However, no criminal charges followed from the UK authorities.

The case was brought by the US Customs and Border Protection agency, which claims that the TVShack.net website earned "over $230,000 in advertising revenue" before US authorities obtained a warrant and seized the domain name.

Ubuweb have been tweeting about how they'll surely go down if it passes. Which might not sound like much, but it's a large proportion of my cultural life down the drain, *and* a bunch of important documents I've used for research.

― emil.y, Friday, 13 January 2012 02:38 (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

kind of curious about this -- seems like it would mean that the more flagrantly copyright-violating stuff would have to go, sure, but i don't know if that stuff is the same stuff as the stuff that constitutes its value as an archive. in an ideal world it would result in goldsmith spending more time on actual archival and less time tweeting that he's found a file with the complete lacan seminars in e-reader form

― thomp, Thursday, January 12, 2012 10:10 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

(but i'm not entirely sure in what form the thread SOPA entails would manifest -- i was under the impression that copyright owners could order stuff to be taken down already, and i'm not sure what extra weight SOPA adds to this threat)

― thomp, Thursday, January 12, 2012 10:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

right now under DMCA, copyright holders can ask for individual infringing things to be removed

under SOPA the way I understand it if there is one infringing file on a large site the entire website could get taken down w/o notice and replaced by

http://itlounge.eu/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/0f470__sopa-notice-470-75.jpg

LOL

A Sheffield student can be extradited to the US to face copyright infringement allegations, a judge has ruled.

This elicited a resounding "well DUH" from me.

Ha this is sure to be the PR boost that Big Business needs to keep the plebes from hurling large cans of tomato paste at CEOsk heads...

Can't they hurl large cans of lima beans? I'm not as partial to lima beans.

you say this, but in the CD era there was nothing to keep them from pushing the price point up to 20 bucks for a shitty CD

yeah but the market has collapsed now. totally different era & you can't compare imo

wouldn't make as big a difference, but i suppose all the digital retailers could start jacking up their prices big time if the illegal alternatives were more strongly enforced

eh, if this has any type of noticeable transformative effect (a massive "if"), it is going to do is make people switch from open free-for-all p2p filesharing to closed, private friends-only shared file repositories

true. i think it's kind of a shame that there seems to be this pushback of "ahhhh it PROBABLY won't make a difrerence, let's not even bother getting angry about this or figuring out if there's any way to stop it," though.

there is a missing "all" in my post but I think my point is still clear enough

I'm not getting angry about this because I don't think it is manifestly wrong? I mean, I am not holding delusions about artists magically making more money out of a more tightly-controlled Internet or anything, but on balance I've never read or seen anything to make me question the idea that unsanctioned free filesharing isn't stealing, and as a result I'm not super bothered when governments try to stick enforceable penalties on it.

Having said that, attempting to push the entire industry back to what it was in the 80s is regressive and not going to happen, but not because of any major uproar; it's because we now have a generation of first world Earth who think music is economically worthless and any market based solely upon it is pretty much doomed for the next 30 years regardless of what shape it takes.

I don't think its manifestly wrong either wrt to the filesharing issue, but SOPA will be way more far-reaching than just p2p file sharing of music and movies. Thats why I think some dude is otm.

WAKE UP SHEEPLE WE WILL NOT BE SILENCED

FIRST AMENDMENT BILL HICKS WAS RIIGHT

The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for 10 such infringements within six months.

this is the part that is going to be entirely unenforceable IMO

It other words reacting to this with a shrug of the shoulders because "kids will find another way to share music and movies", is a really reductive read of what SOPA is all about and conveniently ignores a lot of the more frightening aspects of the proposed bill.

like basically this is saying "clicking on a link someone sent you from Youtube can send you to jail" and I don't see how it can be enforceable on any large scale

yeah, i'm not worried that people won't be able to as easily steal or illegally share music/intellectual property anymore, or that some of the people who've been knowingly breaking the law all along might actually face consequences in greater numbers, i'm worried about all the much more undesirable scenarios outlined upthread that could be made possible by this piece of legislation noone in their right mind thinks the world NEEDS.

OTM

like basically this is saying "clicking on a link someone sent you from Youtube can send you to jail" and I don't see how it can be enforceable on any large scale

Oh of course this insn't enforceable on any massive level, but imho the frightening part is that it might lead to user-generated sites just shutting down rather than having to deal with all sorts of liability issues.

Yeah most people who are getting angry are doing so because it leaves a *lot* of sites that have nothing to do with filesharing potentially open to being closed down because of the bill being complete overkill. ILX, for example, could easily have one person post one filesharing link one time and get shut down, as I understand it.

Booz & Company on November 16 released a study, funded by Google, finding that almost all of the 200 venture capitalists and angel investors interviewed would stop funding digital media intermediaries if the House bill becomes law.

^^^ this is why this will not happen or be enforced if it does happen

and if it does all happen and ILX gets yanked, you can all stare at the blocked message and say "fuck you DJP, you were so wrong *shakes fist*"

dude we all know your real name, we'll find you

not if facebook gets shut down

everything must go

i'm pretty curious about what will happen if SOPA passes. part of my job involves clearing use of academic articles for professors & the guy who oversees copyright stuff is pretty concerned about it

Hmmm:

In a move the technology sector will surely see as a victory, a controversial antipiracy bill being debated in Congress will no longer include a provision that would require ISPs to block access to overseas Web sites accused of piracy.
Rep. Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), one of the biggest backers of the Stop Online Piracy Act, today said he plans to remove the Domain Name System or DNS-blocking provision.
"After consultation with industry groups across the country," Smith said in a statement released by his office, "I feel we should remove DNS-blocking from the Stop Online Piracy Act so that the [U.S. House Judiciary] Committee can further examine the issues surrounding this provision.
"We will continue to look for ways," Smith continued, "to ensure that foreign Web sites cannot sell and distribute illegal content to U.S. consumers."
A watered down SOPA means Smith improves his chances of getting the bill through Congress. Smith's move comes a day after a backers of a similar bill in the Senate, known as the Protect IP Act, began to backtrack on the issue of DNS.
Without the DNS provision, SOPA now looks a great deal more like the OPEN Act, a bill introduced by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), which was created to be an alternative bill to SOPA.

Lol it was so obvious that was going to happen

I'm not getting angry about this because I don't think it is manifestly wrong? I mean, I am not holding delusions about artists magically making more money out of a more tightly-controlled Internet or anything, but on balance I've never read or seen anything to make me question the idea that unsanctioned free filesharing isn't stealing, and as a result I'm not super bothered when governments try to stick enforceable penalties on it.

Having said that, attempting to push the entire industry back to what it was in the 80s is regressive and not going to happen, but not because of any major uproar; it's because we now have a generation of first world Earth who think music is economically worthless and any market based solely upon it is pretty much doomed for the next 30 years regardless of what shape it takes.

so fucking well put & otm

I dunno, as a musician in a pitifully unknown band, I really welcome file-sharing. Anything that gets people to hear what we've done is cool by me. Yeah, I definitely hope that this will result in them either coming to a gig or actually buying the record, but I'm under no illusion that those will be the actual results. I still don't feel like I'm being stolen from, though.

I haven't even read this yet, but here's what the White House has to say.

Obama sez I'm president and I ain't payin $12 to hear Lil Wayne rhyme "Machiavelli" with "jelly"

Mostly it's the tying in with HOMELAND SECURITY that is upsetting to me.

Why is that upsetting?

I like that the white house's statement tries to get beyond the simplistic x vs. y argument. Its like theyre telling us to grow the fuck up lol

lol yeah it's like they're on a whole different level from us dumbasses. hard to stand in the glare of their wisdom

lol

sad lol

it's because we now have a generation of first world Earth who think music is economically worthless

I agree 100%; also, the industry had the power to take control of this in the fallout of Napster and didn't. Here we are more than 10 years later and the industry is still trying to shut everything down rather than just make content available. If it weren't so hellbent on retrofitting its antique structure into the 21st century we would already be well on the way to a non-SOPA solution imo.

by 'take control' I mean sell its content via the new medium instead of being Victorian-era dicks

lol yeah it's like they're on a whole different level from us dumbasses. hard to stand in the glare of their wisdom

― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Saturday, January 14, 2012 4:43 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol you cant even praise the tone of a letter ?

frankly i think they have a point. it would be nice if ppl didn't just rally to protect their free mp3s, but rallied around coming up w/ solutions for overseas piracy. i'd think you'd agree with that

I wouldn't, and I'm presumably one of the "victims."

solution for overseas piracy = destroy all boats

the industry had the power to take control of this in the fallout of Napster and didn't. Here we are more than 10 years later and the industry is still trying to shut everything down rather than just make content available. If it weren't so hellbent on retrofitting its antique structure into the 21st century we would already be well on the way to a non-SOPA solution imo.

this is what "the adult in the room" would actually say btw

otm

I don't know whether that's a compliment or a zing

and now, a lol break

http://torrentfreak.com/images/rupert.jpg

complete with 'you are hurting the artists'

One day all of the artists will just decide not show up to work and stop making art and then we'll be sorry!

solution for overseas piracy = destroy all boats

― Neanderthal, zondag 15 januari 2012 0:05 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

well the lulzboat, surely

the industry had the power to take control of this in the fallout of Napster and didn't. Here we are more than 10 years later and the industry is still trying to shut everything down rather than just make content available. If it weren't so hellbent on retrofitting its antique structure into the 21st century we would already be well on the way to a non-SOPA solution imo.

this is what "the adult in the room" would actually say btw

― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Saturday, January 14, 2012 5:51 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

completely disagree. didnt you just otm rudolphus tarantino, who said exactly what i did?

you're confusing 'music' with 'piracy.' if we can all get free films from overseas it essentially guts an industry that relies on a lot more investment. The tipping point for films hasn't been reached the way it has w/ music but I think it's just as reasonable (and obviously w/ services like Netflix studios are hoping to head off the worst of it better than the music industry did)

sorry for using djp's real name, i wasnt thinking. a mod can edit that

shit wasn't even heated

just make content available.

what the fuck does this even mean?

lol @ rudolphus tarantino

SOPA dead, PIPA still in progress. Wikipedia's blackout day still going ahead iirc.

https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petition-tool/response/combating-online-piracy-while-protecting-open-and-innovative-internet

can I just point out that when I said "this isn't going to happen", I was OTM

and i'm perfectly happy to say you were right!

maybe next I'll play the lottery, clearly the world is temporarily bending to my will

I always liked Canada's solution of accepting that piracy will occur but just charging an extra tax on CD-Rs and CD burners that goes to the industry.

that's what they do in the US too

i mean i totally agree with the "industry should have done something in 2000 instead of just pretending the internet would go away" comments.

the thing that struck me about sites like oink is that cost aside they were so much easier and better than any legal alternative. I mean I was one of those guys who would pay $30-40 to import discs or buy OOP stuff on eBay (of which the industry sees not one dime) and the whole time I was just thinking "I would definitely pay for this service if I could!" Look at what Nintendo has done with the "virtual console", now they're making tons of money with no effort by just screwing over the resellers, which is the way it ought to be.

i was talking to a guy recently who produced a Japanese band and was learning about the whole music/entertainment industry over there and how generally just the whole idea of music piracy never caught on over there that much and people are happy to pay for music just like they always have, makes me feel like things like Napster kind of sensationalizing the whole phenomenon and getting people excited about the act of 'stealing' music is really how we got where we are and really could've gone down much differently

The whole "if only the music industry had figured out a way to charge me money for digital files earlier I wouldn't want them for free" argument strikes me as JUST A BIT po faced.

there should just be one private tracker w/ all the music in the world

i'm not saying THAT per se, hurting, just that cultural attitudes and the sequence of certain events contributed to the current situation much more than just "once music could be free people only wanted it for free, end of story"

I dont think the attitude shifted so much toward "I want everything to be free" as it did "I want everything to be available".

I mean, mp3s don't really have any value on their own so the whole issue gets complex. For example, I think it's fair to say that a person who gets three new albums in a month should pay $10 a piece for them, but if someone downloads a thousand albums every month it's not really fair to say that they owe $10,000 monthly or that he's getting $10k worth of "value" from those mp3s.

it has never mattered how much 'value' someone actually gets out of ownership of an object. that's not how our society works.

So if I decide I want to eat a thousand loaves of bread per month instead of two or three, I should only have to pay for three because I'm more efficient at getting "value" out of my bread?

I mean horrible analogy aside, I don't think consuming anything in bulk means you shouldn't have to pay per unit. Sure, economies of scale to buy things in bulk but music doesn't work that way unless you are going to download four thousand copies of the same Max B mixtape.

I mean, mp3s don't really have any value on their own so the whole issue gets complex. For example, I think it's fair to say that a person who gets three new albums in a month should pay $10 a piece for them, but if someone downloads a thousand albums every month it's not really fair to say that they owe $10,000 monthly or that he's getting $10k worth of "value" from those mp3s.

― frogbs, Tuesday, January 17, 2012 11:44 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

why on earth would you think this was fair to say

i've seen some right-on/cynical commentary putting the backlash against SOPA in the context of the non-backlash against the PATRIOT re-up, detention bills, etc.

lolcats have a bigger constituency that 'terrorists' i guess...

So if I decide I want to eat a thousand loaves of bread per month instead of two or three, I should only have to pay for three because I'm more efficient at getting "value" out of my bread?

its a totally different situation because someone still has to make the bread. you don't have to make copies of an album. the analogies to physical materials don't work on the same level. would an artist prefer to have someone buy one song for $5 but not buy anything else, or an entire album for $10?

why on earth would you think this was fair to say

what do you mean?

of course the price-per-unit of almost anything drops when a consumer gets that item in larger quantities. that has little to do with how or how much they use it, though, or how much effort it takes to produce the item.

do you think mp3s are like unicorns, with no actual physical existence or something

they are!

when you publish Frogbsonomics, I'm going to buy every copy (for the price of five copies) and light them all on fire

you don't have to make copies of an album.

but you did a few years ago! until perfect cd copying and then perfect digital replication and storage hit dirt-cheap consumer levels. but the costs to produce/market/promote the product are still budgeted for a hard-copy world. that's the whole problem.

also, electronic files ARE a copy of the album

the fact that it's effortless to copy and doesn't take up room on a bookshelf doesn't mean that you haven't made a copy and it isn't taking up actual space on your hard drive

well finding 3 megabyes of storage space is not that expensive in 2012

bytes

of course the price-per-unit of almost anything drops when a consumer gets that item in larger quantities. that has little to do with how or how much they use it, though, or how much effort it takes to produce the item.

it does when the item is essentially free for the seller! when you sell a loaf of bread, you no longer have the loaf of bread. you cannot sell it any longer. that's why I don't think the economics should work the same, or why the public views it the same way. I think most people rationalize piracy with "I wouldn't have bought that anyway, so nobody gets hurt" which is a much more "valid" rationalization than any other kind of stealing

do you think mp3s are like unicorns, with no actual physical existence or something

pretty much

the correct analogy here is photocopying a textbook btw

when you publish Frogbsonomics, I'm going to buy every copy (for the price of five copies) and light them all on fire

you can't buy "every" copy because I'm talking about infinitely replicable nonphysical objects!

haha the textbook market is even more fucked up than the music one

yes, I know!

the news business is a good analogy. it's almost exactly the same problem i think.

yeah I agree w/ that

sadly, you don't have millions of kids staring longingly at CSPAN going "someday I'm gonna write a paper about this $$$$$$$"

The physical cost of CDs and their packaging was always a relatively small part of the overall cost of bringing a record to market.

when you publish Frogbsonomics, I'm going to buy every copy (for the price of five copies) and light them all on fire

you can't buy "every" copy because I'm talking about infinitely replicable nonphysical objects!

― frogbs, Tuesday, January 17, 2012 1:07 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ok then i'll pee on your kindle, does that work

And it's also not where most of the value was, obviously. People didn't pay for the shiny plastic discs with pretty pictures, they payed for the music.

it's basically the problem of finding a way to price + get people to pay for information when distribution costs for information are trending towards zero and the total quantity of information is higher than ever.

The physical cost of CDs and their packaging was always a relatively small part of the overall cost of bringing a record to market.

distribution is a pretty big cost too. going from plant to large distributor to small distrubutor to record store to consumer involves markups at each level, which isnt really necessary anymore

Also there's the whole argument that the production costs of music are going down too, which is sort of true. But most people still want expensively-produced, expensively mass-marketed music, contrary to what some guy recording into a firepod in his underwear might want to believe.

dude should really take the firepod out of his underwear

it doesn't matter what people want if the market can't support it in the long-term. there's no inherent human need for expensively-produced music.

Oh so what happens if SOPA passes? People will continue to nick stuff off the internet. If that fails, they'll carve new grooves into the internet and share through those. If that fails, they'll set up local gatherings and swap hard drives. I have soooo much more to say on this btw.

― Autumn Almanac (Schlafsack), Thursday, January 12, 2012 10:23 PM (5 days ago)

I asked this on another thread, but any guesses as to how many bytes the entire Impulse and Blue Note catalogues would take up?

You can buy 1 Terabyte USB drives now. Storage is getting cheaper every day....

man i really hope this legislation and its attendant debate die off or take a very different shape very soon just because i don't want to see "Sh1pley Gohard" at the top of new answers for the next 6 months

And it's also not where most of the value was, obviously. People didn't pay for the shiny plastic discs with pretty pictures, they payed for the music.

― extremely lewd and incredibly crass (Hurting 2), Tuesday, January 17, 2012 12:10 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i know what you mean but in a literal sense this is backwards

it's basically the problem of finding a way to price + get people to pay for information when distribution costs for information are trending towards zero and the total quantity of information is higher than ever.

exactly, which is why I think taxing the internet itself is probably a more sensible way to go.

you're pretty good at taxing ilx, maybe they can put you in charge of the rest of the internet too

You can buy 1 Terabyte USB drives now. Storage is getting cheaper every day....

right, plus we're headed toward a future where things are based on "cloud" technology and storage is essentially infinite.

haha daaamn

xp

everyone who uses the internet pays a tax? levied by whom? and given to the government? who disburses it to... content producers/copyright holders? ASCAP? man, what could go wrong?

assuming all those entities weren't corrupt as hell, it could work

Well yeah, lets just ignore those pesky realities.

that strategy's worked pretty well for the music business

i think the idea itself is corrupt as hell. just to have an email account and surf the web, my mom has to pay a tax that gets directed to the bronfman family, just because napster exists?

re: the "Canadian solution", the tax gets distributed according to who has the most sales. This sucks. Every blank disc you buy, you are subsidising Nickelback.
Most sales does not necessarily equal most pirated. Also, fuck you Canadian government for charging artists who buy blank media in order to duplicate and distribute their OWN music.

she has to pay taxes for lots of other things that don't benefit her goole. including some art programs.

lol Nickelback's continued existence now makes sense

my mom has gone to see every federally funded art object within 750 miles of her doorstep

I don't nec. think it should be levied on internet users but I do think that ultimately national funding for art is prob gonna be the long-long-term answer to 'how do we pay artists' / 'are there benefits to having a large art economy that don't get reflected w/ free market pricing'

i think the idea itself is corrupt as hell. just to have an email account and surf the web, my mom has to pay a tax that gets directed to the bronfman family, just because napster exists?

yes, and I have to fund my local school's music program even though I don't have kids. I mean I get this is what everybody is going to say, but the amount of people who actually just use the internet to surf the web and get email is getting pretty low isn't it? Even my grandma is obsessed with YouTube these days.

right, plus we're headed toward a future where things are based on "cloud" technology and storage is essentially infinite.

"Sorry we went out of business and lost all your stuff forever when our servers shut down, sucks to be you!"

yeah I'm more concerned about my apt burning down than amazon servers suddenly disappearing

everytime someone downloads an album the government should charge nickelback a dollar.

Even my grandma is obsessed with YouTube these days.

Yes but watching a couple YouTube videos a week is not at all similar to your 10,000 album downloader.

re: the "Canadian solution", the tax gets distributed according to who has the most sales. This sucks. Every blank disc you buy, you are subsidising Nickelback.
Most sales does not necessarily equal most pirated. Also, fuck you Canadian government for charging artists who buy blank media in order to duplicate and distribute their OWN music.

but the alternative to this is...the artists with the most sales make the most money??

seems like there's an obvious difference between paying the local district for someone else's schooling and paying license holders (or supposedly fairly-distributing agencies thereof) for someone else's presumed piracy

That's what you get for living in those urban tenements you love so much xxxxp

xxp pardon me if I'm misunderstading this but isn't SOPA kind of suggesting otherwise?

yes, the first model is worse and has led to generations of shitty school systems xp

well ok, but so what? one is a funding mechanism for a public good, the other is organized restitution for a crime being committed, by someone, somewhere...

our business is way off, must be all those downloaders!!! i've never seen numbers that are convincing about this, or even definitive.

music should be a public good and should be funded as one!

jesus even i don't agree with that.

i liked it better when it was a corrupt market run by the mob tbf.

yeah so did lots of people but technology has made that p. impossible in the long-term

and tbh I think there are industries that have been or will be even more fucked than the music biz by the same 'information distribution costs approach zero' problem. newspaper writers can't go on tour.

and tbh I think there are industries that have been or will be even more fucked than the music biz by the same 'information distribution costs approach zero' problem. newspaper writers can't go on tour.

I can't wait until the technology that allows me to steal free LED TVs from the store, then the manufacturers will just have to "adapt".

that technology exists

no u c there is technology that will make LED TV's not particularly useful. you will be able to get one for free eventually, because nobody will want them.

no u c there is technology that will make LED TV's not particularly useful. you will be able to get one for free eventually, because nobody will want them.

Is there technology to prevent iatee double posts? Such a waste of resources.

all my posts deserve multiple readings tbh

hollywood and big music are probably all for this bill, no? they can go after asian and russian pirates via the government. if i'm reading wikipedia correctly...

I can't wait until the technology that allows me to steal free LED TVs from the store, then the manufacturers will just have to "adapt".

c'mon, this isn't that hard

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5295/5465725257_a74a1a206e.jpg

now asia THERE is where you see some bigtime theft. actual real theft and not virtual theft. for ever. for decades. probably billions of dollars worth. bootleg dvd mania. they didn't need the internet to do that.

I guess my question for people who are on the other side of this debate is 'what's the alternative to a macro-level tax / some sorta national spotifyish system?' $1 a song is as arbitrary as $15 a CD and has no relation to the costs of production or the demand for the music.

again I think it's better to think of what's happening to the music industry as on the first wave of what will happen to lots of people who work in the information economy.

Well I guess thats the tough part for me because I simply DON'T have a better solution, but I'd love for one that falls somewhere between a national tax and a system that takes money away from the content creators.

is that good? no. but I don't think the best way to ensure people get paid is through creating artificial scarcity.

xp to myself

labels could be trying to set up competitors to itunes. you can find ways to technologically brake piracy instead of getting the law on your side and hating apple (all the industry seems to be able to imagine doing)

the other route is to try to sell those things that people want to have that are unreproducible, and have download codes attached. all the merch and swag sort of becomes the 'album' in this model

I don't think those are long-term solutions

the question is, what do the artists want?

here's another one: music follows classical and jazz and becomes a niche thing supported by enthusiasts and a few gov't/ngo grant institutions and most other people quit giving a shit unless its on tv

the only solution for labels and artists are well-organized subscription services like itunes. a one-stop shop for people. itunes makes money, right? you have to corral people. left to their own devices, they'll just surf around and nab things where they can for free.

seems more realistic!

xp

yes, people will suddenly stop liking music. huh?

yeah, the whole "less and less people care about music because look at the numbers" argument is weird to me. billions of people will always listen to music and lots of it, whether or not it remains a billion dollar industry.

people suddenly stopped going to the movies 5x a week, things do change

how much did people love music before the radio era of the 30s? or the single era of the 50s or album era of the 60s? none of this has ever been about what is natural or about what people like

I mean, it's sorta like saying people don't care about news because newspapers are going out of business. (there might even be some truth in that, but) the real problem is a lack of serious BBC-equivalents here. there's no reason why the value of music or news should be directly reflected in their free market profits and in the internet age that truth is making itself more and more clear.

i think in general "time spent listening to stuff" and "time spent watching stuff" has been going up every year. it's not like the technology is just going to go away. if they had iPods in the 30's I'm sure they would have been huge!

labels could be trying to set up competitors to itunes.

Prior to iTunes, the labels tried this, and failed miserably (and somewhat hilariously), mainly due to the many restrictions on the files you downloaded -- couldn't burn them to a CD, proprietary file types, could only listen x number of days.

well, trying to approach your customer with an attitude beyond paranoia and hatred is a good start

people suddenly stopped going to the movies 5x a week, things do change

And movie theaters suddenly started showing commercials for 15 minutes before the movie starts.

mighta mattered 15 years ago

xp

music is a huge and inseperable part of daily life for most people on earth and always has been and always will be, more than football, more than video games, more than whatever form of entertainment is more lucrative than music at this particular point in history. the advent of recording music and different changes in culture and technology have big effects on HOW it's a part of their life but i don't feel like 10% or 30% of all people have in the past couple decades gone "eh, music, i've had my fill of that, not my thing."

now asia THERE is where you see some bigtime theft. actual real theft and not virtual theft. for ever. for decades. probably billions of dollars worth. bootleg dvd mania. they didn't need the internet to do that.

― scott seward, Tuesday, January 17, 2012 2:02 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

What makes this "real theft" vs "virtual theft"? They're not selling stolen DVDs, they're making unauthorized copies of DVDs. It might not be analogous to illegally downloading, but it's probably analogous to those russian mp3 sites that charge like $3/album for pirated music.

I was going to say, about the only thing I can think of more prevalent on Earth than music is speech

which is exactly why it's so hard to price + make money off and will continue to be

yeah, just like phone companies has never found a way to profit off of peoples' desire to talk to each other

al I will let you ponder this for a while and come up w/ some reasons why they are different

how about you take that time to think about why it makes no sense to say that things that are hugely prevalent in daily life are difficult to profit off of

it is difficult to measure and capture the true economic value of things that are 1. available freely on some level and 2. are hugely prevalent. w/ music not only are those two things true, they are both increasingly true. what's wrong with that statement?

i think bottled water is the classic example people tend to use in this situation but there are about a dozen others if that doesn't fit the bill

"What makes this "real theft" vs "virtual theft"?"

oh yeah i just meant concrete objects like dvds and cds and non-concrete objects like mp3s. i don't consider mp3s real things.

i don't consider mp3s real things.

this is 99% of the problem facing the music industry right now

bottled water = paying $30 for a tshirt or picture book just to get the music attached

come on that totally works

the bottled water industry created a new need for 'water in bottles'. people consider 'water in bottles' to be something different from 'tap water not in bottles'. if the music industry wants to create a physical product w/ limited availablity and sell it as something 'different' from other music then yes, they can make bottled water money. you can argue this is already what the market looks like.

the bottled water industry created a new need for 'water in bottles'. people consider 'water in bottles' to be something different from 'tap water not in bottles'. if the music industry wants to create a physical product w/ limited availablity and sell it as something 'different' from other music then yes, they can make bottled water money. you can argue this is already what the market looks like.

― iatee, Tuesday, January 17, 2012 2:43 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This argument seems self-justifying though. All this boils down to is, "people don't want to pay for mp3s because they can get the exact same thing for free" -- which is not really something anyone here is arguing with.

oh yeah i just meant concrete objects like dvds and cds and non-concrete objects like mp3s. i don't consider mp3s real things.

― scott seward, Tuesday, January 17, 2012 2:41 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yeah but the concrete objects themselves aren't being "stolen." The bootleggers are the ones making the objects.

seward is the one guy who DOES believe in unicorns but not mp3s

yeah, just like phone companies has never found a way to profit off of peoples' desire to talk to each other

at least until "the era of the MagicJack"

This argument seems self-justifying though. All this boils down to is, "people don't want to pay for mp3s because they can get the exact same thing for free" -- which is not really something anyone here is arguing with.

people shouldn't want to pay $1 for an mp3 because that's not the value of a song for yr average consumer in 2012. and that wouldn't be for most music, even in a world where straight piracy had been 100% cracked down on. the total quantity of music continues to increase and it costs less and less to distribute it. it's p much impossible to figure out 'the value of one song' in this situation, but we prob can have a debate on how much we value music as a society and how much we think should be made and how a gov't could best subsidize the industry.

i see a difference between making thousands of physical copies of stolen material, like a fake handbag or a dvd, and an MP3. i can't help it. maybe its just too soon. an MP3 is basically a new product. like a record was a hundred years ago. people have to get used to the idea that something is worth paying for.

when iTunes introduced the 99 cent song pricing point (like, what, 7 years ago?) it was looked at as a pretty good deal, especially since it was so impossible to buy most songs as a single serving apart from parent albums before that. a lot has changed about the perception of that price since then (and of course the price for some songs went up a bit), but i really think it's more about perception than anything inherent about the 'value' of that song/file or the strength of the dollar or whatever.

perception and value aren't different things!

the economics of pricing music have always been weird. I remember reading that all the goofy "subsections" in the tracklisting of In the Court of the Crimson King were done just to get more royalties as apparently you don't get much for writing "only 5 songs". iTunes and Amazon will still price an hour-long, 7-track album at $6.93 and a half-half, 10-track one at $9.90

i liked the allofmp3 system of just paying per megabyte

then again if you start charging for albums based on length then everything will be like the 90's R. Kelly era where every release is 78-79 minutes long.

especially since it was so impossible to buy most songs as a single serving apart from parent albums before that.

That's pretty much where the music industry started digging its own grave. Majors stopped manufacturing/selling singles in the 90s, so you had to buy an $18 CD for the one song you wanted. File sharing started as "I just want this one song" rather than "I want artists' entire discographies."

it still makes me mad! i loved buying singles. i bought them all the time. i've never bought an MP3 single.

i still understand why they had to do it. you can't charge $3.99 for a half hour cd single and $18.99 for a half hour album. it looked bad.

Yeah, I used to buy singles too. I think I have a few CD singles that are longer than some albums (Yo La Tengo's "Upside-Down" springs to mind -- one of its "b-sides" is 24 minutes long).

how come the price of gas suddenly goes up and then never comes down they should do that with mp3s

what would have happened if the major labels had cut their advertising budgets by half and started putting out five dollar CDs? i would own a LOT of CDs if they had done that.

Speaking of gas, lets remember that iatee is in favor of jailing all automobile owners rather than actually working towards an effective topdown solution that reverses decades of planning America around those very same automobiles, so grain of salt in all.

In other words, like the car argument we all come from the same place but iatee takes a really different route than everyone else.

ya and a train takes me there

what would have happened if the major labels had cut their advertising budgets by half and started putting out five dollar CDs? i would own a LOT of CDs if they had done that.

Starting in the late 80s, it cost less to manufacture a CD than an LP, but CDs were sold at nearly double the price of LPs. Since sales kept rising (more people buying more affordable CD players, yuppies replacing their LPs with CDs), they didn't see any reason to lower prices. At one point, majors tried to mount a campaign against used CD stores, but nothing really came of it, and sales were still healthy, so why bother?

i wonder if the cd was to the music industry what the suv was to the car industry

http://ailicontinifield.com/projects/akbar_and_jeff/images/compact_disk_hut.jpg

I've never bought a mp3 and I've had an itunes card that was a gift for awhile now. I don't know what to do it with. I see mp3s as a transitional copy of music. If someone gives me mp3s of a record, I'm either going to seek the actual record out or I will eventually discard the mp3s. Even the mps I have on my computer are transitional and never stay for more than a year. But I'm guilty of what this bill is aimed at. I copy my records and share them with people. I've never thought that I am stealing, maybe I am. But I've never thought that owning a mp3 is really "owning" anything. But I feel like my records are mine.

was there a time when they were called compact disks instead of compact discs, or is that life in hell comic just wrong?

if it gets too risky for you guys to download files cuz of a new law or something i can hook you up. come by any time. ilxor discount.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/405487_10150547137427137_686202136_8958683_295480582_n.jpg

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/407584_10150547139562137_686202136_8958691_1342874711_n.jpg

s'opa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hve9QES_ICM

Hey scott can I send you a wish list?

was there a time when they were called compact disks instead of compact discs, or is that life in hell comic just wrong?

I seem to remember the "disk" spelling being part of NYTimes style throughout the 80s and into the early 90s. And for a brief period, the Times was referring to them as "compact disk albums."

i'm envisioning a Variety headline: SONY SOUR AS SCOTUS SCUTTLES SOPA!

yes, jacob, sure, why not, you never know......................

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_of_disc

Disk and disc are the two alternative spellings of the descriptive word for things of a generally thin and circular geometry. These variations are due to the way in which the words originated. The discussion here somewhat focuses on Disk storage as an Electronic media. Generally in Computer terminology, disk refers to Magnetic storage while disc refers to Optical storage.

omg i had completely internalized this distinction w/ realizing it

we takin' over

w/out realizing i mean obv

"hard disk" and "compact disc" look and feel completely natural. "hard disc" and "compact disk", not.

wake up sheeple

Taxing the internet is pretty much the opposite of commerce. It's a solution proposed by people who imo don't understand what encourages content production and distribution – at its distant logical conclusion (i.e. a dystopian world in which all content is free and everyone 'subscribes' to everything via an internet tax) what you're doing is basically just handing a load of people some money to vaguely make some stuff, with no financial incentive for that stuff to be good. At least with subscription television (the closest analogue I can come up with) there is some incentive to provide quality/value so that people keep subscribing. All this is in my opinion, in my opinion, in my opinion.

Also in my opinion, piracy absolutely needs to be reigned in, but there's no getting rid of piracy altogether. That has never been possible and it never will be. I think the content industries know that, but it's a convenient scapegoat for them to take to govts worldwide in order to get the SOPA-like protectionism that they will actually need if they want to continue operating for another n decades in their current bloated forms, maintaining artificial scarcity, geoblocking the world &c.

btw DJP's photocopying (and therefore scanning) analogy is u+k, principally imo because it indicates that people will always pay handsomely for the same content if it's of higher quality and easier to obtain. The whole 'you can't compete with free' argument is bullshit.

"financial incentive" does not equal "good music"

people will always pay handsomely for the same content if it's of higher quality and easier to obtain

pretty sure the last decade does not bear this out wtf

ie MP3s sound like shit

not anymore!

pretty sure the last decade does not bear this out wtf

― “How you like that, Mr. Hitler!” (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 18 January 2012 09:42 (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ie MP3s sound like shit

― “How you like that, Mr. Hitler!” (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 18 January 2012 09:42 (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

256 kbps one-click iTunes download is superior to a set of 96 kbps files you found on the third torrent site you tried that day

Taxing the internet is pretty much the opposite of commerce. It's a solution proposed by people who imo don't understand what encourages content production and distribution – at its distant logical conclusion (i.e. a dystopian world in which all content is free and everyone 'subscribes' to everything via an internet tax) what you're doing is basically just handing a load of people some money to vaguely make some stuff, with no financial incentive for that stuff to be good. At least with subscription television (the closest analogue I can come up with) there is some incentive to provide quality/value so that people keep subscribing. All this is in my opinion, in my opinion, in my opinion.

ideally the music downloaded or "subscribed to" would be tracked and money paid out accordingly

obviously this is not going to happen for a very long time given how much legislation is in place already, but it's not like I'm suggesting we give the big three several million in tax money and tell them to find another Justin Bieber

Digital file music actually added a lot of value compared to what came before! I mean you have shuffle, you have cloud storage, streaming through services like spotify, you can play them on really tiny players that don't skip if you jump up and down a lot, etc.

256 kbps one-click iTunes download is superior to a set of 96 kbps files you found on the third torrent site you tried that day

― Autumn Almanac (Schlafsack), Tuesday, January 17, 2012 2:52 PM (46 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

sure and wines taste different lol

That's pretty much where the music industry started digging its own grave

Nah, the industry started digging its own grave when CDs replaced LPs. Digital copies of anything = easy to copy and distribute for free.

At least with subscription television (the closest analogue I can come up with) there is some incentive to provide quality/value so that people keep subscribing. All this is in my opinion, in my opinion, in my opinion.

i think the incentive for cable tv channels is "pls god let us be put into a basic package with espn" :/

i honestly can't fathom why ppl still buy digital music from itunes instead of amazon

Nah, the industry started digging its own grave when CDs replaced LPs. Digital copies of anything = easy to copy and distribute for free.yeah, but no one that i know of anticipated the present situation at the time, so it's hard to blame it on poor decisions made by the industry (rather than the simple progress of technology). and i strongly doubt that keeping the single alive would have changed much about where we're at right now.

i guess that's becoming my signature

yeah, but no one that i know of anticipated the present situation at the time

usenet groups amirite

sometimes there will be obscure stuff that's not on amazon, but besides that I totally agree. things you buy for 99 cents should not become a hassle because you might "mis-use" them

they were first in the crosshairs because of data footprint, albums/mp3s are so small...then it happened to movies...video games might stay ahead of the curve because data keeps increasing with each generation, it used to be crazy to fill up a double-density DVD now naughty dog struggles to fit uncharted on a blu-ray

but there was nothing they could have done, piracy was too easy

there was nothing they could have done

One thing they could have done was to not go out of their way to make it harder for people to buy and use content

I definitely don't think keeping the single alive would have prevented the rise of file sharing, but it might have slowed down certain tendencies. Also, in addition to keeping singles around, labels still would have had to seriously lower prices on CDs, and since they were making insane profits on this no-singles/$18 CDs business model, majors saw no reason to mess with it.

xp This shit was the tipping point imo

http://seeklogo.com/images/C/Copy_Control-logo-9793502DF6-seeklogo.com.gif

i mean i guess there were things that could have slowed the decline, but everyone's a fuckin' genius now but you must admit it would have been hard to understand what was going on when the ground was moving so quickly under your feet

you must admit it would have been hard to understand what was going on when the ground was moving so quickly under your feet

Definitely, although there was a time (Napster stands out imo) when it was pretty gd obvious that people wanted to download stuff, and to have some control of what they were downloading. The Copy Control image I posted above is indicative of just how desperate the big music labels were to control people's use of music, and Copy Control happened years after the Napster thing.

(For those who don't know, Copy Control stopped you ripping the CD you paid for. The notion that you were purchasing one licence for use in only a CD player didn't wash.)

yeah, but no one that i know of anticipated the present situation at the time, so it's hard to blame it on poor decisions made by the industry (rather than the simple progress of technology). and i strongly doubt that keeping the single alive would have changed much about where we're at right now.

I might be overstating this but i think in general this is the result of an industry that's been fucking over its customers for the last 40 years, trying to get people to buy the same albums over and over, promising price drops that never came, limiting the consumer's options whenever possible, introducing ridiculous stuff like "copy protection" to dick over people who tried to do things legally, attempting to bankrupt and ruin the lives of college students and single mothers for downloading songs that everyone's heard on classic rock radio for the last 30 years - I mean they are truly one of the most unlikeable industries around (even the artists say so!), and I find I'm way, way, way more likely to buy stuff when it's directly from the artist or a small label

Music consumers are the biggest whiners on the planet imo

yes

I remember how great Napster was because the interface was so much easier to navigate than any other option at that point. I remember telling my roommate that even if I had to pay a quarter for a song I would have happily done so just to have to much music at my fingertips, instantly. My argument was based on people happily paying that much a jukebox for just on play!

i think in general this is the result of an industry that's been fucking over its customers for the last 40 years <...> limiting the consumer's options whenever possible

Additionally (it's sometimes tricky for Americans in particular to understand this), piracy is huge in many parts of the first world (particularly Australia) because of region lockout. One example: something comes out in the US, it's hyped to death on social media, Australians want to pay for it, they're told they're arbitrarily not allowed to (sometimes for months, sometimes never), they find a way to get it instantly, and money that could have changed hands never does. I'm not promoting any behaviour here, just pointing out that it happens, and it happens to service the redundant bloat of very old industries.

even if I had to pay a quarter for a song I would have happily done so just to have to much music at my fingertips, instantly. My argument was based on people happily paying that much a jukebox for just on play!

also $5 ring tones

and napster had the built in player which was great for comps light on ram despite being 3 months old and cost a fortune.

i guess i question the fact that people "wanted" to pay for something once they could get it free and w/o consequence very quickly and easily

yeah that is not a "fact". people want shit for free.

Taxing the internet is pretty much the opposite of commerce. It's a solution proposed by people who imo don't understand what encourages content production and distribution – at its distant logical conclusion (i.e. a dystopian world in which all content is free and everyone 'subscribes' to everything via an internet tax) what you're doing is basically just handing a load of people some money to vaguely make some stuff, with no financial incentive for that stuff to be good. At least with subscription television (the closest analogue I can come up with) there is some incentive to provide quality/value so that people keep subscribing. All this is in my opinion, in my opinion, in my opinion.

again I don't think 'taxing the internet' is the best way to go about this, but I'd like to hear an explanation for why the profit motive is the only way to for a society to create great art.

I guess I have to admit that I've at times made similar rationalizations for streaming sports ("Cable is too expensive and they're operating on an antiquated model! Plus they're choking the internet!") although there I'm REALLY getting inferior quality. Still, I could just maybe see NBA as being a tipping point for me getting cable if I really had no other way to watch. Maybe. I'd also probably just pay for that NBA leaguepass thing if it didn't have so many blackouts of the games I'd most want to watch, but that's not one single company's fault so much as the result of a tangled web of rights.

because steve jobs! rip xp

do we need a way to ensure that people can be artists full-time? absolutely. did paul mccartney write 'yesterday' because he wanted to be a billionaire? I don't think so.

No, he wrote "Maybe I'm Amazed" to be a billionaire. He wzs just another lowly millionaire before that.

again I don't think 'taxing the internet' is the best way to go about this, but I'd like to hear an explanation for why the profit motive is the only way to for a society to create great art.

― iatee, Tuesday, January 17, 2012 6:39 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I don't think it is at all, I just think you need an economically viable model, be it patronage, government support, private industry or whatever. I do see a downside to govt support vs private industry though, which is that, ironically, I think you're going to get more support for radical or challenging projects from a private model. The government would be under too much pressure to only support tame, centrist tastes.

haha for reasons i don't understand myself my most arch-libertarian beliefs exist in the zone of arts. do you want bureaucrats in washington deciding which records you get to hear?!?!?!

But he did invest in music publishing and, as a result, was the only Beatle to never come close to bankruptcy.

xp

hmm what do you guys think about pbs?

npr?

haha I mean I guess those are bad examples w/r/t boring or not but they're competently run despite 'bureaucrats in washington'

I think it would be really sad if most art was like PBS and NPR

antiques roadshow is the fuckin' bomb imo

well come up w/ a better feasible model for what the music economy should look like 20 years from now. "I'm against piracy" doesn't solve any problems.

xp

i see your point, but those are single actors in a still-commercial space, and who have been forced to accept their highly politicized nature from the attacks leveled at them.

you seem to be arguing for a 'single payer' model for music, which is a whole other order of difference. right?

(there is a non-classical npr music station here and i basically hate it fyi)

xps 2 iatee

and really it's not like I'm for creating one-government-radio-station, I'm for the gov't giving living wages to artists who want to create art. this stuff happens in more enlightened countries already!

again I don't think 'taxing the internet' is the best way to go about this, but I'd like to hear an explanation for why the profit motive is the only way to for a society to create great art.

― iatee, Wednesday, 18 January 2012 10:39 (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I didn't say it is. The big companies that provide content will not have any incentive to find and fund good content if all the revenue is just coming in via a tax. Good art will always happen obviously.

you seem to be arguing for a 'single payer' model for music, which is a whole other order of difference. right?

on the macro level, yeah basically

well come up w/ a better feasible model for what the music economy should look like 20 years from now

gonna look like this
http://dairyboycomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/hillbilly.jpg

i saw a dutch band open for low once. they were on a grant. they sucked super bad.

data point of one and all.

actually lol they didn't open for low now that i think, they opened for a friend's band. iirc.

I didn't say it is. The big companies that provide content will not have any incentive to find and fund good content if all the revenue is just coming in via a tax. Good art will always happen obviously.

big companies don't need to provide content! and making music w/ expensive production costs might not be financially feasible in the long-term. that sucks but there are also things about this that don't suck, like having all music in world history available to you. certain costs of production will go down.

The most underrated thing about the record label model of doing business - whether big label or moderate-sized indie -- is the advance. The advance is basically music startup capital -- it's one of the only things that enables a non rich person to finally quit that day job and go for it full time. I think this kind of full-time commitment makes for much better music, and I think it's a shame that fewer artists are getting a shot at making music this way. I've seen a lot of people who I thought were quite talented eventually just peter out because it wasn't really possible to make the transition to the kind of heavy practicing, touring, writing and recording you usually need to break through to an audience. There's no way to say for sure whether they would have done any better in the old model, but I don't think the current DIY model is all it's cracked up to be.

well that's the single easiest aspect to emulate

Sure, but however you slice it, less money spent on recorded music = smaller pie from which to give advances.

big companies don't need to provide content!

But they want to, because that gives them complete control over something. Even when they sign deals with external production houses etc., they have to compete with other big companies in order to secure those deals.

If a tax on all content were introduced and all content were free (remember this is a hypothetical extension of a theoretical possibility), they would stop producing decent content because there would be no need. It wouldn't matter how crap it was, as long as it was cheap and they weren't arousing sufficient suspicion to have the tax taken away. In Australia, our free-to-air television networks are required by law to produce a set percentage of local content every year, so they produce the shittiest, least risky rubbish you could possibly imagine.

and making music w/ expensive production costs might not be financially feasible in the long-term

Some of the best music (and television, and cinema, and writing) happens on a shoe-string budget. But, as Hurting said, those involved on shoe-string productions are only making do unless their art is commercially successful.

I mean I know you already know that but

Some of the best music (and television, and cinema, and writing) happens on a shoe-string budget. But, as Hurting said, those involved on shoe-string productions are only making do unless their art is commercially successful.

again...I'm for ensuring living wages for artists so they don't have to worry about commercial viability. and again...I'm not sure why big music companies even need to exist?

SOPA is what happens when they try to remain in existence.

like, avatar was commercially successful and I guess it's cool that movies like that can still earn back their insane investments. would we have more great movies if we gave 20 great directors 1/4 a billion dollars to play with? probably! and on some level it is a shame we cannot give everyone 1/4 billion dollars to make a movie w/. and eventually we prob can't even do that w/ the james camerons.

like, perhaps today's brian wilson wants to make today's good vibrations and cannot afford to do so because of today's music economy, and we're all being deprived of an imaginary piece of genius. that sucks! but there are lots of things that don't suck, like the fact that some 12 year old kid w/ spotify and youtube has more access to the history of music than most of us coulda dreamt of at that age.

please no more attempts to make good vibrations. can we pay people to not make music like brian wilson?

ps I'm not saying avatar was great I didn't see avatar.

perhaps today's brian wilson wants to make today's good vibrations and cannot afford to do so because of today's music economy, and we're all being deprived of an imaginary piece of genius. that sucks!

otoh today's brian wilson probably has garage band and a bandcamp page so

I mean where people in the '60s had to hire a studio and battle expensive and ever-failing equipment, today p much every middle-class kid can do what they like at home and at a fraction of the price.

and that's why today's records sound so wonderful

immaculate production values aren't a basic human right

lol m@tt

instead of one brian wilson we can get 20 mike loves

can we be shown weirdo + mike loves

idk, mike love vs. brian wilson which one of them was pushing the profit motive

the idea that the mid-20th century american capitalist market was and always will be the best way for great art to develop seems weird to me

idea that "great art" depends on any particular system is ridiculous. it doesn't even depend on monetary reward, and as autumn almanac said, it'll always happen. that's a non-issue.

thing is, this doesn't apply only to music. it applies to any form of art or information that can be digitized. if big business and government can't figure out a good way to protect the profits made from the sale music, movies, TV shows and books, then the internet will eventually be taxed in order to compensate for lost revenue and monitored/restricted in order to limit the possibility of piracy. seems inevitable to me.

like, wearing a tinfoil hat, you could view the emergence of digital media as a preemptive strike against internet freedom

I agree w/ the 'this applies to any form of art or information' - like I don't think this overall phenomenon is so far from the fact that encyclopedia britannica is having trouble paying the bills.

but I don't agree that the internet 'needs to be monitored/restricted' - SOPA was taken down by the populist + tech company response. and a more drastic bill woulda attracted even more attention.

Piracy needs to be combated by carrot and stick. Right now it's almost 100% stick, unless you're in America in which case it's maybe 85% stick.

antiques roadshow is the fuckin' bomb imo
― the 500 gats of bartholomew thuggins (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

TRUTHBOMB

"and that's why today's records sound so wonderful"

ha! although some people get it right. mostly people outside the mainstream.

bye-bye wikipedia!

now how am i gonna know anything?

A: Rolling Regional Thug Thread will take place in Petco parking lot after hours (boom-boxes provided).

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxzdagdiir1qdmmiqo1_500.gif

metal-archives.com is gone for the day! this'll be the first time I go 24 w/o using it in years!

I shld really buy a non US domain for ILX, just in case. Us foreign websites can't take no chances.

No Rateyourmusic today either, which isn't a terrible loss, but I've been using it to track what I listen to.

is the .ilx TLD still available?

French Wikipedia is so quaint

do we need a way to ensure that people can be artists full-time?

Until piratebay starts torrenting booze, inebriated members of the opposite sex, and the atmosphere of a dimly lit bar, perhaps artists can play live shows.

right, but the $ in live music is never gonna make up for the losses from recorded music

It was my understanding that a lot of ppl make the majority of their money touring or at least as much as they make from sales of their work.

that's probably true today but people were playing live music before record sales so the only 'new revenue' is from people who go to live music events today and wouldn't have before.

it's kind of silly to turn back the clock to before people sold any records at all, a MUCH smaller percentage of people were playing music at any kind of professional level back then

also they were largely poor/itinerant and dead before the age of 50

touring is often p horrible and money losing for small bands fyi, esp w/gas prices now

also let's not pretend like live music hasn't changed drastically - the narrowing of venues to bars, large clubs and arenas is totally different from the economic environment of, say, the 20s and 30s where bands could be booked for multi-date engagements at a variety of clubs. If you wanted to dance, you're only option was live music, often provided by a band playing multiple sets a night for several weeks in a row. Nowadays clubs just hire DJs for that shit.

also also also touring is RIDICULOUSLY expensive now with the price of gas, increase in food prices, etc. the odds that a band can survive and make it to the next gig on $200 or whatever are really low.

haha yeah I didn't want to be the one to bring that up, but the costs of transportation are only gonna rise over the years xp

yeah i think you have to hit a certain tipping point where "this many people will show up for you in any major city" before it's anything other than an expensive hobby, and that bar is probably getting higher every year now

it would be pretty interesting to figure out what that exact point is, although maybe it would vary hugely depending on the type of venues, type of band, how good they are with money, etc.

Meantime we might as well update a bit here -- the protests actually seem to be doing some good, both Rubio and Cornyn have pulled their sponsorships in the Senate.

also how big the band is - duos are easier to feed/move than an 8-piece ensemble for ex.

xp

fwiw I totally do not give a shit about SOPA or PIPA and don't care if they pass or not, getting really irritated by all the righteous indignation of the tech people in my social circle

like one dude was complaining about FBI warnings on DVDs. really dude.

maybe we'll get (big) bands doing simulcasts of their shows to theaters like they do with opera now

xps

Listening to Mike Doughty (the ex-Soul Coughing frontman) talk about this stuff is pretty interesting. At one point this guy was a rock star with a record deal and a few hits on MTV, and wound up having to take a day job to get by anyway. Now, much less famous, playing smaller shows, and in the era of filesharing (which he famously said "saved his life"), he's finally able to support himself. I mean the new "no money in record sales" enviroment sucks but it sounds much better than what the majors would do to you

basically this is just economic/political warfare between mega-rich corporations trafficking in free content (Google, etc.) and formerly mega-rich corporations trafficking in paid content. both sides are reprehensible.

xp

I mean the new "no money in record sales" enviroment sucks but it sounds much better than what the majors would do to you

lol the scale is vast these generalizations are meaningless

...and smaller bands will just skype from one shithole basement to another. the future!

xp2myself

like for all the bands that got fucked by a major label, there were guys like Neil Young who were nurtured by major labels and turned into bazillionaires

he probably would have made good music even if he weren't a bazillionaire

or he might have made one record and died in obscurity

well one story then is management one day looked at the books and wondered why there was a "nurture neil young" budget line and got rid of it

I'd say the chances of a musical genius dying in obscurity today are lower than they were 40 years ago

xp: Old man, take a look at my accounts

and what are you basing that on exactly iatee

he would have, but it would have been different. we shouldn't pretend that they height of the major label system didn't afford artists (some artists) a scale and freedom to do things they couldn't have done otherwise.

for example, "tonight's the night" by neil is one of my favorite albums, but i think it could never have been made without funding, or made by someone that wasn't a rich rock star

basically what i'm saying is all the crazy bloat and waste and excess and stupidity created an atmosphere where certain things could happen, and more importantly, they meant something different specifically because of who these people were and the pedestal they were put on.

and what are you basing that on exactly iatee

the fact that mass distribution in the internet age isn't inherently limited to a small % of people who make music

Cool what does Mike have to say about all this?

Major labels have been ripping off artists for decades, and seldom do artists make money from record sales. The people making music that earn a living wage off record sales is probably close to the number of people earning a living wage off playing professional sports.

Licensing is where all the real money is, so maybe the best hope for artists is to combat piracy of the movies/tv shows/commercials that may one day feature their music.

getting really irritated by all the righteous indignation of the tech people in my social circle

Well, sure, the example you chose to cite about FBI warnings is rmde, but I think there is actually a lot of justified indignation about this bill and it irritates me to people be so casual about it. As it stands right now, these bills go well beyond just pirating music and can impact quite a bit of how the internet gets used. Like I understand if you don't want to care, but I don't think you should be dismissive of people who are following this very closely and do give a shit.

like for all the bands that got fucked by a major label, there were guys like Neil Young who were nurtured by major labels and turned into bazillionaires

seems like there are so much more in the former category. from the labels' perspective selling 20 million of one album is so much better than selling a half million of 40 different albums by 40 different artists so obviously the way they treat those two groups are going to be drastically different

Like I get that people itt are just "well it'll be harder to pirate music now", but that is a dangerously reductive view of these bills.

basically what i'm saying is all the crazy bloat and waste and excess and stupidity created an atmosphere where certain things could happen, and more importantly, they meant something different specifically because of who these people were and the pedestal they were put on.

yeah I'm pretty sure the era of the mega-blockbuster album is over, but the system that creates that seems to do way more harm than good

besides, the cost of getting certain types of sounds/instruments on your album is probably way down from Neil's heyday, but I guess I'm not really sure what you're referring to here

same w/ the cost of drugs

1) these bills aren't going to pass, they were never going to pass
2) programmers/hackers would have just found ways around this shit, like they always do
3) righteous indignation about the right to pirate DVDs, MP3s, etc is nagl

xp

the cost of getting certain types of sounds/instruments on your album is probably way down from Neil's heyday,

this is absolutely 100% not true

Shakey you are impossible to argue with on this. Like I've said multiple times now, the bills aren't just about illegally downloading music and movies.

like I said, it really depends on what exactly he's talking about here

it's terrible bill and i don't think it's going to pass, and if it does it won't have the draconian DNS stuff in it IMO

basically what i'm saying is all the crazy bloat and waste and excess and stupidity created an atmosphere where certain things could happen, and more importantly, they meant something different specifically because of who these people were and the pedestal they were put on.

yeah I'm pretty sure the era of the mega-blockbuster album is over, but the system that creates that seems to do way more harm than good

besides, the cost of getting certain types of sounds/instruments on your album is probably way down from Neil's heyday, but I guess I'm not really sure what you're referring to here

― frogbs, Wednesday, January 18, 2012 11:54 AM (36 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

tonight's the night isn't a mega-blockbuster, it's a super ragged album that was done over a few months where neil and the band rented out a building in LA and proceeded to do drugs and drink themselves to death and then did takes at like 2AM

it's an amazing album and captures that vibe of being fucked up beyond belief and sad etc

i'm not saying the money went to like hiring orchestras and brian wilson type shit, i'm saying that it is a great album SPECIFICALLY because neil got to live like he got to live, as a fucked up rockstar coming off a huge hit album and thus the label was willing to fund his ridiculous antics and even release an amazingly non-commercial album because harvest

the album could not have been made on weeknights on a macbook before neil went to bed to go work in an HR job or something

there are plenty of musicians out there. some talented ones will always languish in obscurity. some hacks will, inexplicably and inevitably, rise to the top. a few will find their place, high or low on the musical totem, under native impulse. money has little to do with it.

~ from sensei bean's collected tritisms vol. 2 ~

Like I've said multiple times now, the bills aren't just about illegally downloading music and movies.

I know it isn't and I never said they were. Nonetheless, this is what the most panic-stricken comments about these bills have been concerned about.

I think righteous indignation about the right to not have your website shut down because an anonymous commenter posted a Youtube video is agl

basically i think you need big money and big scale stuff, funded by crooked motherfuckers, it all makes things more interesting

the album could not have been made on weeknights on a macbook before neil went to bed to go work in an HR job or something

so OTM. just the luxury of having months to work on nothing else but a record, hang out in a different locale and do whatever - nobody can do that now.

xp

the album could not have been made on weeknights on a macbook before neil went to bed to go work in an HR job or something
bruce berry was a workin man, he used to fill out w-9s

I'm pretty sure Mick and Keef still can.

so OTM. just the luxury of having months to work on nothing else but a record, hang out in a different locale and do whatever - nobody can do that now.

otoh we have many other new luxuries w/r/t the creation and distribution of music

I'm not saying music is worse now or anything like that, but in general it is made in a VERY different way now, and the stakes and degree of potential exposure to a mass audience are much lower

xp

okay, I see what you're saying now Shakey, I haven't heard the album in question

obviously there are both sides to this. I can see some artists thriving under filesharing that before would have never been able to build an audience otherwise

bruce berry was a workin man, he used to fill out w-9s

bands used to have roadies! can you believe it?

so OTM. just the luxury of having months to work on nothing else but a record, hang out in a different locale and do whatever - nobody can do that now.

isn't this how James Murphy made the 3rd LCD Soundsystem record? I don't think its as bad as you're making it out to be

Rupert Murdoch is disappointed:

https://twitter.com/#!/rupertmurdoch/status/159425611000057856

Murphy is in a fairly unusual situation - head of his own label, income from product placement, etc. - he basically bankrolled that himself. which is not what Neil did.

don't worry everyone, these bills will not affect your ability to pirate music

lol

rupertmurdochRupert Murdoch

Don't care about people not buying movies, programs or newspapers, just stealing them.

15 hours ago

think this says it all

well, sometimes that goes the other way too. didn't Factory Records spend like $2 million on the Happy Mondays for Yes, Please! and subsequently bankrupt themselves?

tbf that's some guesswork on my part. I do recall there being some argument on some other thread a long time ago about how rich James Murphy was and someone pulled up an interview where he revealed he was barely surviving in NY on like $30k a year or something... that was awhile ago though.

hey hey
Wii Wii
rock and roll will never die

if they don't pass tho Hollywood's ability to keep churning out quality product cd be damaged

always important to remember that media companies are continually in panicked darkness about what the public is going to want next. they rely on their contracted performers and writers to come up with the goods but it's not like they really know why it worked or for how long

that sounds kind of obvious to say but shakedown's line about "a fucked up rockstar coming off a huge hit album and thus the label was willing to fund his ridiculous antics" made me think of it

if they don't pass tho Hollywood's ability to keep churning out quality product cd be damaged

lol

tbf that's some guesswork on my part. I do recall there being some argument on some other thread a long time ago about how rich James Murphy was and someone pulled up an interview where he revealed he was barely surviving in NY on like $30k a year or something... that was awhile ago though

that might have been before Pitchfork hyped the shit out of him. I really have no idea how he got so famous as I've never heard him mentioned on radio or TV or really anything besides blogs and sites like this one

I think he got famous because people on the internet liked the music he was making and then other people also liked the music he was making

that is just my theory

it was his songs being in beer commercials and gossip girl i bet

suspect LCD gets used on a lot of soundtracks etc

I thought his Superbowl appearance did it...?

from what I know, ppl are making more money off of licensing than anything else

suspect LCD gets used on a lot of soundtracks etc

^^^strongly suspect this and the commercials is where he really made his dough

i'm not saying that when the labels die all good music will die, of course it won't, i have like 100s of records my artists that never made any money, were totally obscure etc

but i think it's silly to say that the system didn't work sometimes, and also it's silly to say that specific albums and artists could not have done what they did without it

to use more recent examples of stuff that a lot of ppl on ILM have felt were significant...take say my beautiful dark twisted fantasy...or lady gaga

neither one of those examples could work outside of the big label system, gaga's video budget for one song could bankrupt an indie and there's no way you could self-fund that...

dark twisted fantasy, which i'm not a huge fan of but obv some ppl think is a classic, is more akin to my neil young example...i just flat don't think kanye would have had those songs or those ideas or lyrics or anything without having been a huge coked up millionaire star

yeah, well obviously something has to go, the industry isn't going to sustain itself like this. I would think it's much harder to sustain the mega-millionaire stars w/ license to do whatever

i assume they're easier to maintain because they sell a lot of records?

I think he got famous because people on the internet liked the music he was making and then other people also liked the music he was making

my question was more, "when did this all happen". he was getting plenty of hype in 2005 but from what I had seen few people had heard of him or came to the shows.

from what I know, ppl are making more money off of licensing than anything else

this is probably true, I think the goal for most young artists is just to get a song in Madden or Tony Hawk 16

a lot of bands don't get anything for being in EA Sports titles, lots of times A&Rs work really hard to get placement in games as promo

it's different in the case of GTA where rockstar takes a lot of pride in curating a soundtrack to capture and era and vibe

well, i've heard the opposite (that they do get paid), but yeah I think getting in a game like GTA is so huge regardless b/c you now have millions of people listening to your song over and over again where the more "traditional" exposure methods like radio/MTV are kinda dead to most bands

but i think it's silly to say that the system didn't work sometimes, and also it's silly to say that specific albums and artists could not have done what they did without it

this goes back to what I was talking about w/ avatar upthread. could that movie have been made without a 1/4 billion dollar investment? no. is it cool that you can still make 1/4 billion dollar investments in a work of art and make money? sure. will this model last forever? no. you can say the model we're trending towards in the music business is a good thing or a bad thing, but either way it's still a thing.

well, i've heard the opposite (that they do get paid), but yeah I think getting in a game like GTA is so huge regardless b/c you now have millions of people listening to your song over and over again where the more "traditional" exposure methods like radio/MTV are kinda dead to most bands

m@tt works in the videogame industry iirc pretty sure he knows what he's talking about. plus you realize that in the former scenario you describe you imply the band should be grateful for simply getting exposure, whereas in the latter scenario they would have actually gotten paid.

maybe they should be grateful for simple getting exposure when there are 100,000 other bands out there

simply

well, i've heard the opposite (that they do get paid)

sometimes but matts right abt the EA games

it's pretty obvious from the acts that get on FIFA games that it's a plugging exercise

i wish i had that problem

"thanks for all of the exposure, I plan to use it to pay my rent this month"

I'm a video game character and matt's wrong

it's an honor to meet you waluigi

omfg lol

maybe they should be grateful for simple getting exposure when there are 100,000 other bands out there

sure but you can't deny that the goalposts have moved significantly - ie, from "I can make a living at this" to "I need to make a living at something else, but at least some people know about me". that's a huge shift.

the goalposts are shifting for most americans tbh

"you should just be grateful for getting the exposure, we could've given this opportunity to 100,000 other bands" is the eternal mantra of the music industry scumbag who doesn't want to pay a musician for their work fyi

music industry scumbags are gonna have more trouble finding work than musicians in the long-term

sorry i didn't say more broadly "entertainment industry scumbags" since we're talking about why bands might not profit off of video game soundtrack placement as much as they could

they don't profit because there's a lot of music out there and the difference between hearing band x's okay song and band y's okay song is really not that big for most people playing madden

People equate fame with fortune. They think if you're on TV, you're making alot of money, rather than a standard industry rate.

Also, you do not need a ton of funding to have your band live in a house doing drugs together and recording music. People do this with zero label support all the time.

well i don't know if we're talking about the difference between a band getting a FAIR royalty rate or any kind of usage fee and nothing else or getting screwed out of even that, maybe m@tt could clarify. but honestly you're just parroting the mindset of every label and club owner for the past 50+ years that says "why should i pay you? any other band in town would die to be in your shoes, you should be thanking me."

xpost

I'm not parroting their mindset, I'm explaining why there's financial logic to it. that doesn't mean it's 'fair'. I see what's happening here as analogous to other things that are happening in our economy that might look 'not fair' - overall it's harder and harder for people to get paid for 'work they do'. I don't think that's a good thing! but I do think that there are amazing social gains from having total freedom of information and because of that it's worth it for the gov't to just pay people to be artists. not that much money in the big picture. fin.

does the NEA even still dole out grants?

lol pisschrist

The people making music that earn a living wage off record sales is probably close to the number of people earning a living wage off playing professional sports.

btw this is one of those awesomely compelling sounding arguments that is actually 100% wrong. theres lots of people making a living wage off of music, its just not in the cool i am in an indie band way.

"cool"

O RLY

am happy for orchestral musicians to get paid in full

well tbf people who sell yankees caps are 'making a living wage off professional sports' if you want to expand that in the other direction

Roy Blunt has pulled sponsorship.

i guess it depends what 'pro sports' means. i mean there are a LOT of people playing in a LOT of leagues of a LOT of different sports, it adds up. but yeah still probably more gigging musicians.

yeah those orchestra dudes are doing alright (altho not forever in some markets obv) but also yknow sometimes u have to shit your way through some godawful tribute band to have the time and $$ to record stuff you actually care about, and thats ok frankly.

"thanks for all of the exposure, I plan to use it to pay my rent this month"

i think the issue is not so much artists working for free to record music for a video game as it is video game companies using music that was already recorded and for sale in their games

i seriously doubt there was any confusion with anyone about that.

ze german pov

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaXR9dsQGn8

xp i know, but that's how a lot of this is reading

i assume they're easier to maintain because they sell a lot of records?

well, one kinda begets the other. i'm not sure what you're suggesting is going to happen here

I've always been under the impression that the musicians that are most likely to earn a living are wedding bands, smooth-jazz-standards-for-'classy'-bars bands, some session dudes, advertising jingle writers etc. Figure it's similar to the way in which most actors who earn a living by it are not film stars, y'know.

but I do think that there are amazing social gains from having total freedom of information and because of that it's worth it for the gov't to just pay people to be artists.

Sorry, no, a government that "just pays people to be artists" also gets to decide who is and isn't one. Do you trust the fucking Republican House of Representatives not to just give all your money to Ray Stevens and that chick from Northern Exposure? I sure don't.

I mean, shit, I play the bass and guitar and have been in bands and have an entry at AllMusic and a bunch of songs with BMI. Where's my check?

i would think it would be based on something like "who's getting the plays on Spotify" rather than anything the government controls

Well, that's kinda cart before the horse territory, isn't it?

lol that sounds like a total racket

xp

Sorry, no, a government that "just pays people to be artists" also gets to decide who is and isn't one. Do you trust the fucking Republican House of Representatives not to just give all your money to Ray Stevens and that chick from Northern Exposure? I sure don't.

yeah I guess the difference is I don't see this as 'govt pays people to be artists vs market pays people to be artists' I see this as 'govt pays people to be artists or nobody pays people to be artists'

I like this conversation, just chiming in with thoughts

lots of parallels with the long history of arguments and dialogues about the sad demise of classical music. which is still around, but as a museum. few people mind; by the early 1920's it was pretty clear most of the good music for that medium had already been written, and the newer works were either populist neo-classical collages of earlier works, or too experimental and esoteric to captivate a large audience

what's dying now is popular music as we know it, funded by major labels, and we're at the neo-classical phase. the largest artists are collagists hopping across the last 50 years of styles, and the experimenters are increasingly fringe. it's winding down and its passing is nothing to mourn.

people worshipping at the altar of classical were not in a position to accept jazz & pop as substitutes in the 1920's, the new music was a base competitor corrupting the children & leading young instrumentalists away from the higher discipline, it took another 4-5 decades before recorded pop proved itself as a 'high' art form, it really might be a while before we get some clarity on this issue, but the music being posted for free on youtube like tap water is already incredibly fascinating and the technology behind video game soundtrack composition, which is mixed in real time by the games and different every time you hear it, is already several paradigm shifts ahead of the way most of us like to think about music

but anyway SOPA can't pass and I'd be seriously surprised if PIPA does

Well, that's kinda cart before the horse territory, isn't it?

all i'm saying is that the system would be in some way based on what people actually listen to. obviously you wouldn't want to pay for bands that nobody likes

and besides that, i'm not sure what would work better.

video game soundtrack composition, which is mixed in real time by the games and different every time you hear it

like 1/2 of it is "procedural" sam's choice hans zimmer but there is some interesting stuff going on

Milton otm

like 1/2 of it is "procedural" sam's choice hans zimmer but there is some interesting stuff going on

nintendo has done some pretty amazing things along these lines, especially in games like "Mario Galaxy"

money-making opportunities created by the sale of recorded media were a small blip relative to the history of human music-making. musicians of all sorts were making a decent living long before the advent of the commercial music industry. suspect that this will continue to be true even when the sale of recordings to consumers ceases to be a big dollar engine for anyone.

when do we see the emergence of a generation of hip young artists who don't record/release anything, and instead make their music available only through their live shows?

plus Milton OTM

that's a pretty interesting take milton tho find this line curious:
by the early 1920's it was pretty clear most of the good music for that medium had already been written,

there is some truth to this though, compare everything we got from 1969-1984 to everything from 1998-present

though the real equivalent to milton's point = "everything we got from 1929-2000" in comparison with what's going on right now

^^^

it really might be a while before we get some clarity on this issue

what's your take on the french revolution nyuk nyuk

obviously you wouldn't want to pay for bands that nobody likes

i do!

I find the 'classical music has been exhausted' argument interesting. can you exhaust a genre? is there low-hanging artistic fruit that someone takes and then that's that? this is veering into new-thread territory.

xp - uh, why?

out of spite

well i was being flip abt my own musical tastes but in a more serious way this goes to the whole problem of a govt pd artist program - the nea doesnt pay for popular artists they pay for "artists of merit" however that is defined. but plenty of (republican) people would like to establish some sort of metric where popularity is the dispersal unit which would lead to guess what blando art and all the crap peeps from that shitshow on bravo would be living in cocaine castles.

idk it'd be more like guaranteed income for people who prove that they're working musicians and produce a certain quantity of work, not 'gov't bureaucrat is the new talent agent'

i think in general people are becoming more educated about what the "good stuff" is, thanks to the internet of course

obviously the Justin Bieber world is always going to exist and be hugely profitable in some capacity

So under that system, Robert Pollard would be set for life.

(xpost)

considering that we live in a country where 'subsidized medical care for poor people' is ~controversial~, yeah, we're far from something like this but the future will be a strange place

its a neat idea except for the part where it is insane and impossible

i have read quasi-scifi stuff about the future of socialism being some combo of public ownership/elimination of private ownership of intellectual property, where "producers" however defined are subsidized via tax transfers. i don't get the particulars either but it's not like iatee is making this idea up!

idk I'm sorta getting into my crazy futurist ramblings but eventually I don't think this type of thing will be limited to musicians.

xp yeah basically

well yeah it used to be called patronage but guess what it led to a separation of "high art" (classical) from low art (folk or whatever you want to call it) and the same thing would happen under this system. its a non-starter.

like betty blue hair is going to write her congressperson when she finds out i am getting government cheese for my power drill and bucket kicked down the stairs series of eps

well she won't have a job either

i think in general people are becoming more educated about what the "good stuff" is, thanks to the internet of course

― frogbs, Wednesday, January 18, 2012 3:42 PM (6 minutes ago)

smdh

yeah if u dudes arent careful im going to go ten kinds of philosophy of aesthetics on yall

So in iatee's future we will all live in an expertly designed urban megalopolis with renewable resources, but no one will have any jobs? Bleak dude, bleak.

has patronage even gone away?

not in the slightest IMO

I mean, what do you think record labels etc are but a for-profit patronage system

smdh

you really disagree with that?

well that's not really what i meant. the donor/foundation-manager/big ticket art buyer crowd aren't nobility (well not all of them) but they're pretty close

So in iatee's future we will all live in an expertly designed urban megalopolis with renewable resources, but no one will have any jobs? Bleak dude, bleak.

very few people will have jobs because computers will do most things we consider to be jobs! it's only bleak if we don't redistribute the social gains from this.

hey, while where all here: if you turn javascript off wikipedia is still perfectly visible.

(like i didn't get all the "wiki person with funney page title" screencap humor cos i wasn't seeing any of that shit to begin with)

well that's not really what i meant. the donor/foundation-manager/big ticket art buyer crowd aren't nobility (well not all of them) but they're pretty close

not denying this at all; in fact, a truculent patron was 100% of the reason why Opera Boston imploded: http://articles.boston.com/2012-01-15/arts/30627936_1_development-director-metropolitan-opera-board-president

http://www.occasionals.co.uk/pics/will/morris2.jpg

i think in general people are becoming more educated about what the "good stuff" is, thanks to the internet of course

Nielsen SoundScan top selling albums 2011

1 Adele - 21, 5,824,000
2 Michael Buble - Christmas, 2,452,000
3 Lady Gaga - Born This Way, 2,101,000
4 Lil’ Wayne - Tha Carter IV, 1,917,000
5 Jason Aldean - My Kinda Party, 1,576,000
6 Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More, 1,420,000
7 Drake - Take Care, 1,247,000
8 Justin Bieber - Under The Mistletoe, 1,245,000
9 Jay Z & Kanye West - Watch The Throne, 1,232,000
10 Lady Antebellum - Own The Night, 1,204,000

i'm not talking about top 40 junk, that's pretty much always going to be the same

i'm talking about people who actually try to discover music on their own and all the resources available to them these days as opposed to 15 years ago

so... you're not actually talking about people "in general" despite what you said

i dont really think its that hard to figure out
like, do you really think we'd be going through a 2nd wave of Can re-issues if not for all the internet hype/youtube/downloading?

i dont really think its that hard to figure out

lol neither does anyone else

idk who cares if people like 'good music' the question is whether people are enjoying music more / finding more types of music they enjoy

exactly which I'm saying would allow the market to 'figure itself out' (in a supposed future world)

1) these bills aren't going to pass, they were never going to pass
2) programmers/hackers would have just found ways around this shit, like they always do
3) righteous indignation about the right to pirate DVDs, MP3s, etc is nagl

― “How you like that, Mr. Hitler!” (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 19 January 2012 04:55 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Dude, despite 'piracy' being in the name these bills are not about piracy at all. They're about a load of content companies, bloated by a century of physical distribution and region lockout, trying to control the entire internet in order to save themselves and themselves alone.

Remember that this is the first time in history these companies have not had complete control of the distribution medium. That's their goal here. The word 'piracy' is chucked in to distort their motives.

Save yourself some time Schlafsack and just beat your own head against the wall, it'll be less frustrating.

depressing

yes, we get that; the thing is, the companies who are opposed to this are worth way way way WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more than the companies who are supporting it, plus they are stating that putting this legislation into place will hurt their ability to do business, ergo NOT GONNA HAPPEN

programmers/hackers would have just found ways around this shit, like they always do
DCMA has been a pretty good guide to how even though there were ways around it, it's still a fucking monumental pain in the ass. And DCMA was like asking politely compared to this mugging.

id be curious to see how a bill like this would do if it weren't so fucking extreme

I ate sopes because of this thread

thank you D@n

xp

the companies who are opposed to this are worth way way way WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more than the companies who are supporting it

You reckon the pro-SOPA/PIPA companies are not prepared to kill themselves fighting this thing? I'm not saying you're wrong but they've still got deep pockets, and I suspect many of them see this as their last chance before the 21st century hatchets them to death.

who cares? Google et al are more powerful at this point and everyone knows it

this is just a battle between different sets of corporate overlords hooray for patting yourself on the back for choosing one over the other. they all fucking suck afaic.

btw re this from shakey

programmers/hackers would have just found ways around this shit, like they always do

Yes, and at least 99% of all DRM in history has only punished people who are doing the right thing.

clearly this thread has kind of ranged beyond even the broad implications of this one bill.

i don't think anyone is surprised to see it become a fight among superrich firms with a stake in the outcome

xp well to elaborate more, it is an actual fight ie the outcome is not really foreordained. maybe "the RIAA" will win or maybe "google" will, yet. we will see conflict over this kind of shit for the rest of our lives probably!

who cares? Google et al are more powerful at this point and everyone knows it

― “How you like that, Mr. Hitler!” (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 19 January 2012 09:32 (54 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is just a battle between different sets of corporate overlords hooray for patting yourself on the back for choosing one over the other. they all fucking suck afaic.

― “How you like that, Mr. Hitler!” (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 19 January 2012 09:33 (5 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

You don't have to blindly take a side. It's possible to say SOPA and PIPA are fucking ridiculous while also opposing open slather to torrent sites. The solution is somewhere in the middle.

seems to me like 99% of all DRM policy has been an abject failure so again, who cares

xp

while also opposing open slather to torrent sites.

how does one do this? these sites exist and nothing can stop them, certainly not some half-baked paranoid legislation with no prayer of passing

seems to me like 99% of all DRM policy has been an abject failure so again, who cares

That's why the best way to deal with piracy (assuming that's the motive (which it isn't)) is offering superior access to the same content. Despite the loony ranting of the "can't complete with free" brigade it's absolutely possible.

You reckon the pro-SOPA/PIPA companies are not prepared to kill themselves fighting this thing? I'm not saying you're wrong but they've still got deep pockets, and I suspect many of them see this as their last chance before the 21st century hatchets them to death.

I reckon that it doesn't matter if they are prepared to kill themselves or not; in fact, I invite them to kill themselves as it will put them out of their misery faster rather than the 30 year agonizing decline they are currently staring at; perhaps with them gone someone can figure out a business model that actually fits the landscape.

seems to me like 99% of all DRM policy has been an abject failure so again, who cares

it failed at preventing piracy; it totally succeeded in making electronics more complicated, expensive and hard to use than they need to be. Like HDMI cables and DVD ads you can't skip and lots of other bullshit that's too low-level to go and download some crack for, but annoying enough that it's still bullshit.

That DRM is easy to subvert and doesn't prevent piracy doesn't mean it has no effect at all.

while also opposing open slather to torrent sites.

how does one do this? these sites exist and nothing can stop them, certainly not some half-baked paranoid legislation with no prayer of passing

― “How you like that, Mr. Hitler!” (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 19 January 2012 09:37 (43 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I was referring to e.g. Google displaying torrent links in search results. The easy way to stop that would be to legislate against it. It wouldn't stop determined pirates (nothing would) but it would disguise from your average pleb the notion that a free illegal copy is one click away.

it would disguise from your average pleb the notion that a free illegal copy is one click away.

lol wuht everyone who is not a goddamn idiot knows that ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING is one click away at this point

Like HDMI cables and DVD ads you can't skip and lots of other bullshit that's too low-level to go and download some crack for, but annoying enough that it's still bullshit.

lol rmde take it to the first world problems thread

to repeat myself a little differently, i don't know why people (shakey) are saying this bill never had a shot. clearly it did! otherwise it wouldn't be controversial!

like that's what you wanna get up in arms about, the important shit like how annoying it is to watch DVD ads. oh the humanity.

i don't know why people (shakey) are saying this bill never had a shot.

for the simple fact that Google et al have more money and political clout than WEA et al.

That DRM is easy to subvert and doesn't prevent piracy doesn't mean it has no effect at all.

― stet, Thursday, 19 January 2012 09:39 (35 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I can't prove this (obviously) but without DRM I seriously doubt piracy would be as widespread as it is now. A prime example is that bullshit notion of authorising music you've bought with a service that completely closes down after two years, taking with it your access to the music that you paid for. There are loads of people who will never trust content companies again.

DRM was basically what got me to stop buying any major-label discs altogether, as I was one of the unlucky few that couldn't get the thing to work on their car stereo too, it really did have the feeling of being "punished for doing the right thing"

That's why the best way to deal with piracy (assuming that's the motive (which it isn't)) is offering superior access to the same content.

this is exactly it - I'm okay with paying for things I can get for free, but when the free stuff is superior (as it is when the CDs have DRM, or the iTunes m4a's can't be transferred cleanly between computers or hassle you otherwise), that's when I just won't pay

SOPA is looking more dead by the minute. co-sponsors are pulling out, white house seemed to indicate it would not pass it about a week ago.

to be honest, i don't think it's entirely down to lobbying by Google, maybe i'm naive but i think the public outcry really had an effect here...for example the white house's first statement against was a response to an internet petition.

so you know, maybe a bit of hope in that all the hue and cry does seem to have helped (IMO)

major label CDs have DRM? not the ones i buy

i don't think that's readily apparent. or, obvious the interested parties didn't see a game so one-sided they didn't bother to show up to play, did they?

this isn't like the single-payer health plan bill john dingell filed every year for 40 years, it was a real divide.

i think the web panic of your jimmy wales types had a real effect btw. plenty of other telecom/IP issues come and go w/o more than the core of committed activists knowing or caring, usually just to bemoan another loss.

xp 2 shakey

lol wuht everyone who is not a goddamn idiot knows that ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING is one click away at this point

― “How you like that, Mr. Hitler!” (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 19 January 2012 09:41 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like you're assuming that everyone knows how to pirate stuff. They don't.

On a different but related point, recently I found out my dad has been pirating music and he didn't even know it. He found an app on his Android phone that gave him free access to a load of music, then one day called me asking why the app had vanished.

i personally do no know how to torrent anything and never have

perhaps with them gone someone can figure out a business model that actually fits the landscape.

― Bam! Orgasm explosion in your facehole. (DJP), Thursday, 19 January 2012 09:38 (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I get the strong impression that Steve Jobs spent the last decade of his life trying to implement exactly that, and was fought every single step of the way (I'm not saying his way was 100% correct btw)

lol poor steve jobs, he just wanted to make more than both the label and the artist for putting up a website where ppl could download mp3s :(

yeah I've read articles about some of the ideas Jobs had for this and I don't think iTunes as it exists now is even close

basically how itunes works is the label used to fuck you then give you the scraps, and how itunes works is the label fucks you then itunes fucks you and you get the smaller scraps

like that's what you wanna get up in arms about, the important shit like how annoying it is to watch DVD ads. oh the humanity.

Yeah, but this is backward. That's the effect DRM has had -- unskippable adverts, expensive cables, games you can't play without the internet, etc. Amazing, great job, industry.

And the price of achieving that has been to create effectively useless technology that doesn't interoperate and you can't use to build anything interesting or new with. DRM literally holds back the tech industry, either by making things legally or technically impossible, or just much too expensive.

To achieve nothing more than some adverts you can't skip!

xxp Yeah, I mean Jobs was clearly lining Apple's pockets first and foremost but his plans far outweighed anything any content company has ever put into practice. If he had got his way many years ago, the balance would be tipped in his favour but everyone would be making a fortune and piracy would have simmered back down to outlier levels imo.

my friends are awesome

http://i43.tinypic.com/35lw3r8.jpg

just because I dunno how to do it doesn't mean I'm unaware that it can be done and would not be able to figure it out

i think the web panic of your jimmy wales types had a real effect btw.

Google donating $2.5 million to wikipedia (an enterprise they had previously tried to kill) might have had something to do with that lol

xxp

how itunes works is the label fucks you then itunes fucks you and you get the smaller scraps

you should be grateful for the exposure etc

That's the effect DRM has had -- unskippable adverts, expensive cables, games you can't play without the internet, etc. Amazing, great job, industry.

The irony of sitting through a 15 second "do not copy or lend or broadcast this DVD" warning is totally obscene.

To achieve nothing more than some adverts you can't skip!

advertising is increasingly the basis for the entire economy and culture, you might wanna rethink its importance.

lol I hope you're not trying to draw a parallel there Shakey

wait, more expensive cables? how does DRM have anything to do with idiots like Monster Cable screwing over rubes with "high quality" HDMI cables at Best Buy?

because gold plated cables

I can't prove this (obviously) but without DRM I seriously doubt piracy would be as widespread as it is now.

It totally wouldn't be. DRM punishes the people who don't pirate, especially in games. Some games have unbelievably draconian DRM licence checking -- like you must have a live internet connection for every second you play and a disc in the drive or they quit and you lose your saves, while the pirate versions have none of that at all. If your hard drive dies and you reinstall Photoshop, it'll refuse to run until you phone Adobe and go through a multiple-day dance to de-auth your dead machine, but the cracked version will run instantly.

DRM cripples software for legitimate people and means pirates get better stuff. How would that not encourage piracy?

advertising is increasingly the basis for the entire economy and culture, you might wanna rethink its importance.

Advertising is only as powerful as the number of people who respond to it.

my friends are awesome

my facebook is littered with this crap too, which would be somewhat pointed if this bill had any chance of passing in the first place

apple is basically the least "open" company ever, i think it's hilarious that they are being brought up as some paragon of freedom in the tech field.

If he had got his way many years ago, the balance would be tipped in his favour but everyone would be making a fortune and piracy would have simmered back down to outlier levels imo.

I can't even... this is such pie-in-the-sky idolization nonsense. People like free things because they're free. If they can get something for free rather than pay for it, they will take it. The last 10 years have borne this out with startling clarity.

xp

also steve jobs never gave a fuck about content, he made you want sexy objects and knew if he was successful he could bully his way into getting whatever content he needed

stet totally OTM in regards to this stuff, the whole "genuine Windows" thing fucked everyone who ever had computer repairs done, the results of which was a hell of a lot more pirating

Advertising is only as powerful as the number of people who respond to it.

Economically speaking, this is demonstrably untrue.

If your hard drive dies and you reinstall Photoshop, it'll refuse to run until you phone Adobe and go through a multiple-day dance to de-auth your dead machine, but the cracked version will run instantly.

Additionally to this, I've mentioned somewhere here before that Adobe products are more than twice as expensive for Australians as they are for Americans, despite being exactly the same products. You download them from the web site, so Adobe can't even claim it's for distribution. I know for a fact that that drives people to piracy.

Companies spend BAJILLIONS advertising products that fail, and all that money paid salaries for people, including funding things like uh GOOGLE, whether the product fails or not.

xp

product fails succeeds or not

eh you get the idea. I hope.

apple is basically the least "open" company ever, i think it's hilarious that they are being brought up as some paragon of freedom in the tech field.

I'm not sure you're following

People like free things because they're free. If they can get something for free rather than pay for it, they will take it. The last 10 years have borne this out with startling clarity.

We've explained why that's a nonsense argument but clearly you don't want to listen.

also steve jobs never gave a fuck about content, he made you want sexy objects and knew if he was successful he could bully his way into getting whatever content he needed

this is so totally wrong

Economically speaking, this is demonstrably untrue.

― “How you like that, Mr. Hitler!” (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 19 January 2012 10:04 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Go on.

at least we can all agree that Adobe is a horrible company to deal with lol

how does DRM have anything to do with idiots like Monster Cable screwing over rubes with "high quality" HDMI cables at Best Buy?

thats the gold bullshit, but every hdmi cable manufacturer has to pay for a licence to make a hdmi cable, which raises the costs for everyone. This was so they can try and prevent people making cables that would fuck with hdcp content "protection"

and apple
xp

advertising is increasingly the basis for the entire economy and culture, you might wanna rethink its importance.

carts are increasingly coming before horses

things bankrolled by advertising: Google, Facebook, every news site, television, rock bands, rap acts, films, Pitchfork etc etc

xxp

how does DRM have anything to do with idiots like Monster Cable screwing over rubes with "high quality" HDMI cables at Best Buy?

thats the gold bullshit, but every hdmi cable manufacturer has to pay for a licence to make a hdmi cable, which raises the costs for everyone. This was so they can try and prevent people making cables that would fuck with hdcp content "protection"

― stet, Wednesday, January 18, 2012 5:06 PM (58 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

didn't know that, but honestly if you go on amazon or newegg or something it's down to pretty low, like a $1/foot for HDMI now, unless you actively want to get suckered

stet's point is that the cost of DRM is passed on to the customer (who has already done the right thing by paying for the thing that's enforcing the DRM).

http://www.thefader.com/2012/01/18/swizz-beatz-is-the-ceo-of-megaupload/

!!!!

We've explained why that's a nonsense argument but clearly you don't want to listen.

I think it's hilarious that the "people WANT to pay for things, if only we could figure out HOW" angle is essentially unchanged (and just as wrong) as when it was first proffered at the turn of the century. Are you going to be making this same argument 50 years from now when companies still can't figure out how to get people to pay for content? People clearly don't want to pay for things. If something's free and convenient, they take it.

xp

omg @ that swizz thing

things bankrolled by advertising: Google, Facebook, every news site, television, rock bands, rap acts, films, Pitchfork etc etc

So it's good for who that they all punish their paying/legitimate customers by forcing them to watch advertising that the pirates don't have to watch?

I think it's hilarious that the "people WANT to pay for things, if only we could figure out HOW" angle is essentially unchanged (and just as wrong) as when it was first proffered at the turn of the century.

that's not the argument here. the argument is that the free version is better than the paid version. i'd sure as hell pay for a service like Oink if one existed!

I think it's hilarious that the "people WANT to pay for things, if only we could figure out HOW" angle is essentially unchanged (and just as wrong) as when it was first proffered at the turn of the century.

The turn of the 20th century? That's the century that made the content industry rich by selling squillions of records, newspapers, books, magazines, audio tapes, video tapes, CDs, DVDs and video games, yeah?

People clearly don't want to pay for things. If something's free and convenient, they take it.

If you stopped generalising you would begin to understand out point.

Shakey, read this (even just the headline will do): http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/05/netflix-traffic/

If something's free and convenient, they take it.

If something's free and a bit of a hassle vs cheap and convenient it's totally not so clear what people will do.

Like there are entire luxury industries predicated on the fact that people will pay a bit more for convenience. Like you could give away blocks of cheese and some people would still buy grated cheese in bags.

Downloading from iTunes is in a lot of cases a lot less hassle than finding a good-quality torrent w/loads of seeders. If you don't know how to torrent or how to evaluate them, the margin is even wider.

So it's good for who that they all punish their paying/legitimate customers by forcing them to watch advertising that the pirates don't have to watch?

you're missing my point entirely. is Google punishing you? the NY Times? Pitchfork? My point is that all of these services can't make money providing content or even a service, they make all their money from advertising. advertising has become a foundational sector of the global economy, so much so that basic infrastructural and cultural institutions cannot even exist without it. I'm not saying this is a good thing (on the contrary I think it's an absolutely idiotic and horrible thing) but it is a reality.

I think it is a good thing that google is free

lol

Netflix streaming movies now fill more of the United States’ internet tubes than any other service, including peer-to-peer file sharing, which long held the top spot

also was this article before or after Netflix totally shot themselves in the foot with the increased fees thing.

Netflix not exactly a thriving company/economic model at this point, iirc

Downloading from iTunes is in a lot of cases a lot less hassle than finding a good-quality torrent w/loads of seeders.

you know what's even easier is just downloading a zip file of megaupload or mediafire

OFF megaupload or mediafire

bemoaning advertising while complaining about the weird but quite capitalist music biz at the same time is strange to me. do you think the pre-internet music business could have existed without its various forms of advertisement?

about the death of* the weird

Netflix not exactly a thriving company/economic model at this point, iirc

Absolutely, but it indicates that there are still a hell of a lot of people willing to pay for content.

you know what's even easier is just downloading a zip file of megaupload or mediafire

finding them can be tough especially when there are a bunch of links full of trojans

My point is that all of these services can't make money providing content or even a service, they make all their money from advertising.

Of those three, only the NY Times have tried to charge, and they made a mess of that. I don't think the Times paywall is a great idea, but it's apparently washing its face. I would pay some hefty money for ad-free GMail too, if only they'd ask me.

That's ignoring the ones who are trying to sell a lower-quality product and then say "you can't sell it, people want free stuff, we need to rely on ads, that we will force them to watch [and make our quality worse, so that people will pirate even more, and remove the ads, which we rely on because we sell low-quality alternatives]"

so yeah, they make all their money from advertising, but that's in no way an inescapable law of digital economics or something.

man i have been craving sopapillas constantly the last few days because of this stupid fuckin legislation

is Google punishing you? the NY Times? Pitchfork? My point is that all of these services can't make money providing content or even a service, they make all their money from advertising. advertising has become a foundational sector of the global economy, so much so that basic infrastructural and cultural institutions cannot even exist without it.

Yes, and it's only as powerful as the number of people who respond to it. In your example, if everyone installs ad blocking software and the advertisers don't get a return on their investment, the advertising stops.

Worth bringing up, I guess, that the various industries are even in a position to complain because they famously pushed through massively favorable copyright extension legislation some years ago. I'm curious to know how they'll deal in, say, the UK when suddenly all these monster catalogs go public domain.

Oh, wait, they pulled a fast one there, too: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/arts/music/european-union-extends-copyright-on-recordings.html

And also because the VCR saved them, after them trying to kill it too.

Which is another way of saying they screwed up (which we all know) by not grabbing onto MP3s as the logical revenue-stream successor to CDs. They broke the cycle by myopically focusing on CD dough.

Yeah, because they could control CDs end-to-end but had no control over MP3s.

In your example, if everyone installs ad blocking software and the advertisers don't get a return on their investment, the advertising stops.

uh that is not how Google and Facebook make their advertising/marketing money

advertisers/marketers pay those firms to mine their data, in turn using that information to target consumers etc. it's not a straight eyeballs = $$$ scenario

again you are attacking advertising while complaining about the demise of a certain capitalist sector

er sector's the wrong word, but you know what I mean

I'm just describing how advertising works. I don't like it but it is what it is. I dunno what complaining I've done re: the demise of the music industry - I mean think it's sad that artists essentially make less money these days, across the board, but I don't hold any particular love for the music industry, which was fairly monstrous in its heyday and had plenty of horrible practices.

I see what you mean Shakey but I don't know whether data miners are advertising something per se.

http://static.someecards.com/someecards/usercards/MjAxMS0xZWMwMDAyNDU0Y2MzMWU0.png

i just thought that was funny, not directed really anywhere

I mean yes data mining leads to targeted advertising, but advertising is advertising, and all of it requires people's attention in order to survive xxp