Unless specifically defined by law as such in some jurisdiction, it is not the penal law offense of larceny or theft. It is, however, the tort of “conversion” – the taking of the property of another for one’s own use or for sale to a third party without his consent and with no intent to reimburse him. The difference if any between this and “stealing” is a bit of legal metaphysics I don’t care to try to resolve.
There is no proof that file-sharing harms anyone. Indie labels are in fact seeing increasing sales, and this is probably related to file sharing.
Many, many people no longer look to the recording industry to tell us what to buy. Instead of being restricted to learning about the bands that are allowed on the radio, now we can read a review on a website, and immediately download a song to see if we like the music. Thus, good bands see increasing sales, and bands that were all hype see decreasing sales.
But guess what - they don’t have the right to those sales! If your sales are based on deception, hype, and keeping the competition out of the public eye, then you DON’T deserve those sales.
Sure, Major labels are seeing decreasing sales. They are also releasing less, and the decrease in sales is smaller than the decrease in releases. Hmm. Wonder why they don’t make that common knowledge.
Not to mention that they are releasing trash. If people are unwilling to buy your product once they know what it is, then you do not deserve to make the sale. End of story.
This is just wrong how so many people defend the music industry. It is blatantly immoral. It dishonestly “lobbies” for sickening anti-artist laws. It has a bad business model, and it does not DESERVE to continue operating under this model, no matter how many bribes it is willing to offer the government.
Now, even though there is no proof that file sharing harms anyone, and there is reason to believe that it in fact helps good artists, I can understand people being upset over it. I am in a band myself, and I imagine that if I made it big I would not want people downloading perfect copies of my albums without paying.
However, there is a simple solution. Let them download reduced quality copies, perhaps 128 kbps. Then if the music is worth it they will buy it, and if not they were not the victim of music industry hype and deception.
Let me try to make this clear:
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Listening to, borrowing, or passing around one piece of recorded media (i.e. a CD) is legal. The protection of copyright law is against copying. Listening to a piece of recorded media in a private setting, even with friends is legal, so long as you are not considered to be broadcasting or distributing the work.
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Copying the recorded media onto another form of media for your own use is of dubious legality. Making an archival copy of software and using a VCR for time-shifting of broadcast programming have been ruled as fair use. The legality of copying a CD you have bought onto your own iPod for personal use has not yet been definitavely ruled on. If you restrict it to your own use for the convenience of having mobile music, while you still own the CD and do not let anyone else use it, it would probably be considered fair use, but we’ll see what happens if the courts addresses the issue. The key point to all of these exceptions is that fair use is the proper owner or reciepient of the media’s personal use of the media.
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Copying the recorded media and distributing it is illegal (unless you have permission of the copyright holder). Whether you make one copy for a friend or multiple copies to sell or give away on the street corner, it’s illegal. Likewise, putting a copy on the internet for anyone to acces is illegal. If you’ve made a copy of your own CD to your iPod for your own use, even if that would be considered is legal when you made the copy, it becomes illegal when you distribute the copy to someone else.
Hope that this clears these things up.
I know plenty of people with hard drives that have gigs of space filled with hundreds of downloads. They then burn these to CD’s that they can listen to at home, in the car, etc. They have no intention whatsoever to purchase even a fraction of this music. Why? They already have it and can listen to it wherever they want.
I would like to know exactly how this helps the artists
While I strictly abide by written law (I purchase all my CDs, albeit for the cheapest legal price I can find- generally below $13), my personal sense of ethics is entirely in agreement with Nightime’s. Regardless of what is considered “legal” or “illegal,” the fact remains that the major labels are some of the dirtiest businesses around, producing products that are generally of extremely poor (if slickly produced) musical quality, and using their financial weight to force stores, advertisers, and the government to stock and sell what they want. Maybe I’m just idealistic, but I have problems with a “music industry” which doesn’t give a whit about producing good music.
Beg your fucking pardon??? Okay, now as one who works for and indie record label let me assure you – we lose far, far, FAR more than any paltry “promotion” we might get from file sharing thievery (which is why I avoid thse threads, lest I get too riled up).
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We have an artist who has personally lost THOUSANDS from the illegal download of one song (this is based on downloads we know about). A “hit” was downloaded instead of an album purchase although fans and critics who’ve listened to the album loved the entire work. Nothing but praise for the album, pity no one wants to pay for it.
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A small studio we’ve worked with created a dance recording that was a hit in Europe – played ad nauseum in clubs and was downloaded like crazy – all of the copies were illegal. He just closed the studio because he couldn’t afford to continue.
The price of his “free” music? The music isn’t made anymore!
Our artists are mostly self-financed. Most could recoup thier costs if those who illegally downloaded thier tunes paid just 75 cents for the song they copied from someone else.
Instead, I am presently dealing with a discouraged artist who is $50,000 in debt – she charted with the RedHot Chilli Peppers, Moby, Madonna, and Lenny Kravits, but has sold only a few hundred copies of the song while their have been thousands of “free” downloads. 75 cents per download would have paid her rent and helped defray her recording costs. She’s a on the verge of quitting for good.
And by the way – I’ve also personally lost a few thousand investing in some fucking great artists who produced albums loved by all those who “acquired” it for free. The next time some little fuck e-mails us to say “we LOVE that album, can you send us the lyrics” my head will explode (oh, there are so many times I wish I could answer with “the lyrics are included with the liner notes, Fuckface. If you’d actually bought the CD you’d have 'em.”)
Our “increase in sales” comes from legitimate fans who heard the music in movies and TV. We track our sales carefully and NOT ONE person who has ever ought a CD did so as a result of first downloading something for free.
This isn’t just about the music industry though. It is also about the artists. And not all artists are performers that can make money touring. Some are songwriters whose income is based solely on royalties. For the songwriter, illegal downloading is hurting them substantially.
And the fact is that it is illegal.
Whether or not it SHOULD be illegal is a totally different argument.
First of all, I applaude the fact that you purchase all of your music. I really do. But I am a bit confused. You say that the industry puts out nothing but crap. Surely that can’t be true or you wouldn’t be buying any CD’s.
What I find interesting, (and this isn’t directed at you, Tarrsk) is that in other industries, boycotts occur all the times. You don’t like the way a company conducts business, you don’t buy that product any more. It sends a strong message. But only with the arts can you still have access to the product.
My point is, if you truly think that all of the record industry is evil, then don’t buy the products. But don’t download them for free either. If you don’t want to buy McDonalds, that means you go without McDonalds. It doesn’t mean that you sneak food out of the place. Because your argument against the record industry is significantly weakened when you say “The record companies put out nothing but crap…but I have 10 gigs of that crap downloaded on my computer by my own choice”
How could you know that not a single person who bought the CD did so as a result of downloading something for free? Did every customer fill out a survey or something?
Actually I would say that illegal downloading is “ruining” or “destroying” them and “ending their careers”. I know one that used to put amazing stuff together that sounded like a cross between Portishead and Sinead O’Connor – now she shovels shit on a horse farm.
She couldn’t pay her rent anymore because
“no CD purchases” = “no royalties”
and “no royalties”= “no income”
and “no income” = “eviction for not paying rent”
Yes, in fact that is exactly the case.
To order on-line, you have to click on a “where did you hear about?” box. For off-line purchases, we just ask them.
We sell our CDs at a reaonable price $12-$14 shipping included and we always ask where they heard of the artist when we sent the confirmation of shipment.
90% of the time (roughly) it’s because they heard the song in a movie or TV show.
The rest of the time it’s word-of-mouth or a performance. Occasionally we’ll get one from an advertisement (but are ads have produced pathetic results).
For those of us who love kinds of music that are rarely heard on radio, and generally aren’t up on the Borders displays where you can listen to even the first 20 seconds of a few select tracks, the opportunity to listen online allows us to experience and grow to love music that we otherwise wouldn’t. I’m a big fan of all sorts of obscure ethnic music, but other than a couple of college radio shows or the occasional festival passing through town, it’s hard to find places to experience music and make up my mind about my tastes in the same way that a lover of Top 40 radio can. The universe of what we in the U.S. hear on the radio, even in diverse urban areas, is microscopic compared to the universe of wonderful music out there, and it frustrates me to no end. I’d love to support wonderful emerging artists, if I only knew where to find them!
As an individual, I have NEVER downloaded a song, though I will admit that I do have a couple of copies that people have made for me. But I also hate to drop $20 totally blind on a CD and then find out that I don’t like anything on it, or that the one song that I’d heard isn’t at all representative of the rest of the album and I hate the rest of the album. I have limited funds, and I hate to flush $20 down the toilet, but I would definitely buy more legitimately produced music if I had more ability to try it first! It’s very frustrating. What the heck am I supposed to do, as an ethical but prudent consumer?
Eats_Crayons:
Indie labels are seeing increasing sales, despite an economic downturn and despite overall decreasing music sales. To what do you attribute this, if not file sharing? Even if it is indirect, such as: File sharing lets people see how bad the major labels’ music is compared to indies, it is still helping.
I don’t know the size of the indie label you work for, so I can’t really comment about your case specfically. But how do you calculate how much you lose?
My method of buying music, and that of many people, is to look at reviews on websites like Amazon and Pitchfork, and then download songs from albums that sound interesting to see if I like them. I have purchased hundreds of cds using this technique, that I would never have bought otherwise.
Why do you think that the people downloading your songs would have bought the cd if they had never heard your songs?
How do you figure that these people would have bought the album if they had never even heard a song from it? That is some nice wishful thinking there, and I can understand it, but it isn’t accurate. The days of people being willing to buy music and just hope that it is good, knowing that they can’t return it if they don’t like it, are soon to be over.
However, as I said, they should only be able to download reduced quality copies of the song. It is indeed wrong for them to download a full quality song as a replacement for buying it, if that is what they are doing.
This is horrible. I’m not sure how dance clubs work. Do they have to pay to play a song? How could they get out of it, if they do?
How was the song being sold legally? What would someone have had to do to buy it?
And again, this would not be possible with a reduced quality copy, which is what I was advocating.
Very good point. Now, how easy would it be for someone to pay 75 cents for a full quality copy of the song? Do you have something set up for that purpose?
I never said that your label specifically had an increase in sales. Just indie labels as a whole.
If there is an explosion of your artists being heard in movies and TV, that can explain your particular label’s success, but it can hardly be used to explain an overall increase.
And I never said that people buy cds as a result of first downloading something for free. People hear about an album first, and then they download some songs from it to see if it is worth buying. If I was asked why I bought a cd, I would likely say that it got a good review at Pitchfork, or the reviewers at Amazon liked it, or I heard a song on a TV show I liked. But the fact remains, I only bought it because after I heard about it, I downloaded some songs, and liked them.
And one more time, I said that there should be reduced quality copies available. Not cd quality.
musicguy:
How do you figure this? Who is being hurt substantially?
As I have said, indie labels are seeing increasing sales.
Major labels are seeing decreasing sales, but they are also releasing less, and the decreasing sales are smaller than the decreasing releases.
I imagine that some of the “bands” that are all industry hype are not selling as much as they would have if everyone were forced to only learn about music from industry-owned sources, but they never had the right to those sales in the first place.
Surely you are aware that there are cds out there other than the ones currently being pushed by the industry. There are huge back catalogs, and there are bands who are going under the radar. I have many gigs of mp3’s, and I have hundreds of cds, but only an extremely small number of either have been promoted recently by the music industry. Indeed, the music industry would prefer that people buy cds from their current “products”, rather than buying old Big Star, Tim Buckley, Can, and Clash cds.
Just as I suspected.
This is the wrong question to ask, because people don’t generally download random mp3’s.
They hear about the album somewhere else, and THEN they download the songs to see if they should buy it.
Eats_Crayons-
While it’s always depressing to hear about someone who wants to do a “dream job” and it doesn’t work out financially, I don’t think your anecdotal evidence really shows that file sharing is the problem. It’s always been very difficult to make it in the music business. Furthermore, correlation does not equal causation. If copyright law is repealed and Britney Spears ends up flipping burgers in McDonalds with the Backstreet Boys manning the drive-thru, then I’ll believe you.
By the way, lest you think I’m insensitive towards young musicians trying to break out, my brother is one, and a pretty good one at that. He’s in high school, but I’d say his band is the best “garage band” I’ve ever heard, in that its members are all really competent musicians, they’re not just messing around. I’d post a link to their web site (which, by the way, offers free downloads), but I’m afraid the Doper traffic would blow out the data transfer limit for the next year 
I stand by the content of my previous posts in this thread, but I want to make it clear that I am not some yahoo who has no realistic view of the situation.
-Andrew L
The internet really IS a marvelous tool to introduce artists to the world.
We do offer sound samples of 30-60 seconds (and several tracks too), so people can get the feel of an entire album, not just a sample of one song. We also freely give away “acoustic versions” on occasion that people can copy and share with the whole world if they want to. A lot of indie artist have similar arrangements on their sites.
It isn’t hard to find an “indie artist database” that has descriptions and/or reviews and links to artist websites (Artist Direct does that even) or you can try GoGirlsMusic.com.
I actually encourage poeple to buy directly from an indie artist whenever possible. Some on-line distirbution services are okay, but often take a hefty percentage. Amazon.com has their “Advantage” program for indie artists, but they take 60% :eek: of the sale (and are thinking of adding a $50 yearly fee too).
Some artist have sites that are e-commerce enabled or use Paypal. If you can buy right from an artist’s website – go for it! It’s the only way to be sure they get the most out of the sale and aren’t being ripped off.
I was actually referring to cases where we know quite specifically that file sharing was the problem because of the way we were tracking data. We are the ONLY distribution outlet for some musicians. (So if you didn’t get it from us – I’d like to know where you got it). The one good thing about being small is it’s remarkably easy to track things down, down in that respect. So comparing download stats to sales was pretty darned interesting.
Acutally I’m referring to established career and professional musicians who are well beyond “breaking out.” I’m referring to people who actually have been working as songwriters for a very long time – some have been able to make a living off of it, some haven’t. Some were making a living off of it since before the internet existed.
There’s a growing trend of indies who want to be indies. If you want to know why, read Moses Avalon’s book Confessions of a Record Producer – you’ll be even more disgusted with the music industry then (and you’ll also understand why so many bands disappear right after they finally “make it big”).
I actually dread getting new material from young, really, really hopeful bands because they have no idea that only a teeny tiny fraction of bands actually get anywhere. I hate knowing that they’ll be disappointed. We got a message earlier this week that actually ended with “I don’t want pity, just a producer.”
Nightime we try to get our artists music into movies, TV shows and video releases (no small feat). It’s a very good way to spread the music around the world enough for people to hear it and become interested. People don’t randomly dowload MP3s – which is why the “oh, free downloads are good for promotion” has always annoyed me.
Well, considering that the RIAA is suing college students for millions of dollars due to file sharing, I’ve become a lot more accepting of such “paranoia.” Of course, it’s because of stupid policy, stupid law, and stupid business, but I know it’s happening…