Ban on File Trading Software Topics.

minty green- How many artists have ever come forth and said that file sharing was stealing from them?

Metallica and Dr. Dre are the only two that come to my mind.

However, I believe they thought they were right in the beginning, and kept up the good fight against Napster… At face value, file sharing DOES look bad. I feel they were both looking out for the little guys, believe it or not…But where are they now? When was the last time either made a comment about “piracy”?

As someone pointed out earlier, the only people being hurt are the recording companies, (or bands that don’t tour anymore) as they make the most money from CD sales. Even the loss to a company is suspect, per the example in my previous post.

It’s interesting that you mentioned Dr. Dre as someone who hates filesharing. On a personal note, I downloaded some of his stuff, and that prompted me to go out and buy his last two CDs. Same goes for Blink 182. And I almost never buy CDs. My only CD purchases have come from MP3s I’ve downloaded for free. Conversely, it is the artist’s work, so s/he should be free to distribute it as s/he sees fit. I dunno.

I propose a happy compromise: how about MP3s that expire after 30 days? Don’t know if that’s even technically feasible, but it probably is. Probably would not be totally acceptable for either side of the argument, but compromises usually never are.

yep, picky in this since the music and movie industrie have cried wolf over pretty much everything that could allow to copy a tune without them getting royalities, to quote the excellent article that kferr linked

In the light of that, yes I dont trust common sense here (actually whenever someone shouts common sense I know he is trying to sell me a load of bullshit but thats not the point) but would like a third party, non influenced cite about the truth that statement. (yes I also want a pony, and a magical flying money)

Now this is where I get torn: (and where the “piracy” bit comes into effect)
If someone clutches at fame so hard, that they turn over the large amount of their rights (which most do) to the recording company…Then they have very little say in how their work is spread. Thus, downloading a song is wrong. You ARE stealing.

Not from the artist of course, but from the company that promotes them.

Fucking Snopes is fucking full of common fucking sense.

Seems the fucking artists have a fucking different fucking view of fucking file sharing than you fucking do.

cite:
Courtney Love does the math
The Internet Debacle: An Alternate View (by Janis Ian)
Public Enemy’s Chuck D on MP3
Public Enemy’s Chuck D Speaks Out For Napster
Prince Speaks Out About Napster and the Music Industry
Alanis Morissette Speaks Out About Napster

The RIAA does not represent artists. It is an organization made up of representatives from the various record labels. They don’t give a shit about whether the artists make money or not - in fact, its members are instrumental in robbing artists of their hard-earned money. All they care about is controlling OTHER PEOPLE’S MUSIC and making money off of it.

I find it odd that what is “common fucking sense” to a message board moderator appears not so to long-established recording artists. How is it that these people who have been an integral part of the industry don’t know these basic fucking facts? Maybe you should show them the error of their ways, Coldfire. Have you ever thought about managing Janice Ian or Prince? I bet they’d really benefit from your knowledge of how the industry works.

It’s also odd that this “serious hit in the wallet” has manifested itself as record-setting sales.

So, there are a few artists that think filesharing software may actually increase sales as a whole. It’s also interesting to note that a lot of the artists you mention have at one time or another had serious rows with their respective record companies over their contracts.

Could it be that this taints there view? Could it be that they do not respresent the majority of recording artists? Silent as this majority may be, having learned from the public flogging bands like Metallica took. Nobody wants to alienate their fans, and if you’re up in arms with your record company already, what’s easier than promoting that which takes the most dough out of their reach?

Perhaps you are right: maybe in the long run, filesharing does increase record sales, unsubstantiated as your “record-setting sales” claim remains. Also, you don’t mention the effect on the artists theselves: more sales with a smaller margin per unit to compensate for the competition of filesharing apps doesn’t sound like a remote scenario to me. Perhaps you’re wrong, and record sales WILL drop in the long run.

But until this has become readily apparent, expect a company like The Chicago Reader, publisher of intellectually copyrighted materials, to err on the side of caution when it comes to copyrighted materials.

I fail to see why this is so hard to grasp.

Cracker’s David Lowery explains why Napster sucks: Because nobody asked permission to steal his music. If Courtney Love, Chuck D., Prince, and Alannis Morissette want to give away their music, that’s fine. (Hell, it’s probably the only way they can get anybody to listen to their new stuff.) But they don’t get to give away everybody else’s music at the same time.

Stealing is wrong. What’s so hard to grasp?

Yes, file sharing costs record companies money. And it costs their major artists money. Why? Because record companies control every aspect of the music business except file sharing. Without file sharing, record companies can literally extort as much money as they want from any artist. Record contracts in which the artist ends up bankrupt and is forced to sign away most of their life’s work as nothing more than hired help are clearly ridiculous. It would be impossible for any artist to become known without signing away something it should not even be legal for the record company to take. Yet, the record companies have used their influence to get laws that allow them to have total control and treat artists like slaves. So, in the absence of file sharing, record companies can control everything you hear, and they can bury any artist who does not volunteer to be a slave. This will allow them to make more money because of the leverage it gives them in making contracts, and because they will be able to force feed selected albums to the public. So yeah, file sharing costs them money. It costs them money they never had a right to make in the first place. Just like we aren’t supposed to allow monopolies or price fixing, we should not let the record companies continue what they are doing.

Oh, and I have bought hundreds of cds in the past few years, all because of file sharing. Before that I had bought maybe ten cds in my whole life. The real problem the record companies have is that most of the cds I have bought because of file sharing are from bands that have not enslaved themselves, have not been promoted, and thus the record companies see their despicable use of unfair leverage being made obsolete.

<nitpick>

File sharing does not lend itself to the “you stole my painting” metaphor. Theft deprives a person of the thing that is stolen. Intellectual property doesn’t lend itself as easily to the metaphor of stealing material goods.
</nitpick>

At best, you are robbing the record company of hypothetical sales. But if somebody downloads an album/song that they wouldn’t have spent $15, or even $0.15 on, then where’s the theft?

The theft comes from the simple fact that you have used copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright holder. Be that holder a recording company or the artist him/herself, it is stealing.

Nightime,

Are you saying that to protest the recording industry’s ripping off the artists, you’re going to go ahead and rip off the artists too?

All of which ignores the simple Anthracite Principle of File Sharing which I have posted about so many times before:

  1. Downloading copyrighted music without permission to do so is theft under the law.

  2. The number of people doing this will steadily and continually increase.

  3. The record companies cannot win. They cannot even break even. And all of their copy protection methods will fail. They can pit their multi-billion dollar colossus against a disorganized bunch of adolescent script kiddies and crackers, and I’ll give 100:1 odds in favor of the crackers.

  4. Unless they change their business model radically and fast, they will go the way of the 5-cent Burma Shave and tailfins on Cadillacs.

  5. This is not fair, and not the way life should be, but I guess they can go all the way to bankruptcy screaming “It’s not fair!” too.

Quoth Larry Kenswil, the President of Universal’s eLabs division:

Indeed.

If the artists themselves really stood to gain so much from the shutdown of p2p filesharing (which is impossible anyway), then more of them would be more supportive of the RIAA.

Link to the full story

While we’re swapping anecdotal stories, my buddy Rob was one of those people threatened with a lawsuit by Metallica if he didn’t sign out of Napster. Because he had downloaded Metallica mp3s.

Rob was one of the biggest Metallica fans on the planet. Of the mp3s he had downloaded, he had purchased several copies of each and every Metallica album. He simply wore out numerous cassette copies, and later CDs.

Metallica lost a huge fan and a consumer that had probably provided them with thousands of dollars over the years, in album, concert ticket and merchandise sales.

Penny-wise and pound-foolish, if you ask me.

This one again? Let’s cut it open, I want to count the rings. Stealing is when you take something away from someone else.

If I break into your house, put your TV set in the back of my van, and haul it back to my place, you no longer have a TV. I have taken it away from you. I have stolen it.

If I look through your window at your TV, then construct an identical one at my own expense, you still have your TV. I have taken nothing away from you. I have not stolen anything.

If I take a picture of the Mona Lisa and hang it on my wall, the Mona Lisa is still safely kept at the museum. I have not stolen anything.

If I download a Britney Spears song, the original master tapes are still safely kept in the recording studio archives. The CDs are still on the shelf at Sam Goody. The song is still being played twice an hour on every radio station in America. I have not stolen anything.

The only thing you can say is that I may have deprived Britney (and an army of middlemen) of some potential profit. Yeah, maybe I would have bought the CD if I didn’t download the song. But maybe as long as I’m spending $18 on a CD, I would have bought something else, an album where I recognize more than one song. Or maybe the twice-hourly radio play is enough for me and I never would have bought the CD.

That’s not theft. There is a perfectly good legal term: copyright infringement. Aww, it doesn’t sound as bad as “theft”? Maybe that’s because it isn’t as bad as theft!

If I read a Consumer Reports article about auto safety, and as a result I decide not to buy a Chevy Metro, the magazine article has deprived Chevrolet of some potential profit. So what! Is Consumer Reports “stealing” from Chevrolet?

Nice misrepresentation of theft of intellectual property there, Mr.

Mr2001: While I am pro-file sharing in the case of anything that is available free by way of broadcast (recording music or films/TV shows) I must disagree with you on your definition of thefty as it is completely without consideration of reality.

Anyone who creates an image that is unique may expect to be allowed to at least attempt to profit from this unique image (or work process or sound for that matter). By sharing unrestricted copies of these images which are identical in quality to the original image you DO indeed deprive the author of revenue, at least in theory. This is the principle behind the concept of “intellectual property”. While you may not feel these things are tangible, that is most certainly due to your own lack of experience in creating itself. If your theoretical photograph of a museum painting were truly comperable to the real item then it would be not merely a forgery but it would be the original. The is obviously impossible as you can’t really make it identical to the original piece. However a perfect crafted copy is still likely to be worth something and as it was either made by the original artist or inspired by that artist’s original work it should contribute to said original creator’s financial well-being (or designated curator, although I do take some issue with the Rodan museum’s and the Lourve’s policy on reproductions. But legally they do posess the original and rights to repros in perpetuity).

Frankly I have a great belief that if you spent any amount of time crafting something you felt was original and something you cared enough about to take the time to make, you would not want someone to Xerox it and make a profit from it without at least asking you to share in the profits. If successful creation is not rewarded at least minimally then there is no longer any motivation for invention or creation. Certainly some folks would still make music or screenplays just for personal enjoyment, but as the moneys diminish so do production values.

That being said, CD sales have continued to grow since the advent of widespread file sharing so I still think much of what the RIAA says is crap.

I like to shop at record stores, what I object to is buying an album when i only know two songs on it. This is after i had looked up Crowded House online.

Back in February I was at a record store at a mall. I had looked at several album when i bought two Crowded House discs, I had thought to myself “you really liked this song, and on this other disc, there are two other songs you’ve heard a couple times.”

In April, I am at another record store in another mall, for my birthday, so i bought discs by Neil Finn, another Crowded House, Midnight Oil and Stabbing Westward

In August after downloading a couple of songs from a Neil Finn website, i then placed an order at CDNOW for $90 USD worth of Neill Finn and Crowded House.

I want to get two of Billy Joel’s albums, because the tapes that i had fell apart, but i cannot find them at a bricks and mortar store in analog life. I will be shopping online for music a bit more often now.

The way I’d interpret your example is that you are into music, your housemate is not.

A better way to see the effect of file sharing on CD purchase would be to look at your MP3 collection and see how many of your MP3s are represented by your own CD purchases. Eg you have lots of Midnight Oil MP3s and you have purchased the corresponding CDs.