Ban on File Trading Software Topics.

The BBQ Pit
61

I don’t think anybody posting in this thread has “supported the recording companies”. I don’t recall anyone stating that acquiring music over the 'net is intrinsically evil.

What has been stated, and what some of you refuse to admit, is that the use of copyrighted material without the copyright holder’s consent is illegal. It’s stealing, according to the law. Rationalize as you might, you have broken the law. You’ve stolen the music. End of story. Whether you stole it from “bad guys” or not doesn’t matter. Whether you’ve got it worked out in your head that it’s “really for the artist’s good” doesn’t matter.

The link and suggestions posted by Musicat seem like a wonderful solution.
I would gladly pay 25 cents for a reliable, quality download of a song I wanted. Then we’d have the best of both worlds.

In the meantime, those of you who are using copyrighted material without consent of the copyright holder have stolen it. Resign yourselves to that fact, and enjoy the fruits of your labors, if you can.

Peace.

62

Fine, but just out of curiosity when are these test cars designed to expire and prevent folks from keeping them? Because if they like the car there isn’t any incentive to buy it otherwise. This is, btw, the concept of demo software with an expiration date on it.

**

This is an interesting point from which I have a question. What do the boxes and bags your food comes in taste like? Or do you cut the cereal box open at the grocery store and just carry the cereal home in your pockets? Obviously since you only pay for what you want I assume that any packaging (the cost of which is covered by the MSRP cost of any item) you discard or you consume. Now as I have stated, if it is broacast I have no moral problem with copy/share concerns. Most hits are broadcast so that covers like 99% of instrances we are discussing. But you are an idiot to keep arguing that you can take and take from a source without depleting the sources revenue. Creation of anything, even excrement, involves an investment.

**

I agree with this entirely.

**

I like getting junk with my purchase as much as the next 31 y/o Peter Pan syndrome sufferer, but that shit aint’ free either and there are some folks who don’t like maps and coins or collectible figurines or UO pewter tie/lapel pins (I can’t understand them, but they exist). So by putting in all that crap you do noting to improve relative value to that consumer.

This should be easy to understand. Effort as well as money goes into making a sale. By exploiting the efforts of another, or piggybacking them, you are taking advantage of someone elses work. I could care less about legal issues. I break the laws I disagree with if I feel justified in doing so, what I’m talking about is simple humanity and ethical decency. If you really feel that your fellow human isn’t entitled to the returns from his efforts then please publish your full identity, SSN, etc and I’ll see to it that the right folks begin to deprive you of the fruits of yours. That’s fair, right?

63

I’m a strong defender of property rights. I have no tolerance for software pirates and the like. Theft of intellectual property is wrong.

HOWEVER. There is a difference in this case, in that the record companies do not have clean hands. The fact is, the record business has become a hostile oligarchy, protected by government. The RIAA has used the big hammer of government in the past to line its own pocketbooks. The most egregious example was their use of a copy editor in congress to change the wording of a bill AFTER it had been voted on, which turned artist’s performances into ‘works for hire’, thereby stealing THEIR copyright. A copy editor they subsequently ‘hired’ at a big fat salary.

Recently, they used the big arm of government to effectively shut down internet radio, which was perfectly willing to pay the same royalties that broadcast radio pays. The record companies claimed that radio royalties were artificially low because they were ‘advertisement’. But of course, the real difference is that the record industries exert de-facto control over the radio stations, and don’t control internet radio. This was not about piracy, but about shutting down lines of communication between artists and their fans so that the record companies could maintain their monopoly on distribution.

And what’s this about willing to accept low royalties because of ‘advertising’? Isn’t that what the MP3 advocates say they are doing? Sounds like the record companies want it both ways.

The record industry continually tries to have copyrights extended through legislation. This is contrary to the intent of copyright laws, which was to PROMOTE THE CULTURE by creating a system through which creators of original works could have LIMITED rights to their own works so that they could profit, and therefore have an incentive to create more. Limited rights means that copyright laws provide for things like fair use (which the record companies have also tried to limit).

The record industry tries to maintain control over the culture of music by filing ridiculous copyright infringement lawsuits against artists who don’t toe the line. When John Fogerty got out of his album contract and went his own way, his record label sued him for plagairism because his new music ‘sounded like’ the old stuff. Fogerty testified that the only way he could make music that sounded different would be to have his heritage removed from his soul. The record company eventually lost, but things like this can have a chilling effect. If the record companies of today had been around when the Blues were invented, they’d be suing everyone who tried to play the Blues.

So I’m not as convinced as some of you were file swapping fits into the moral picture.

On practical grounds, There is ZERO evidence that file swapping is hurting the record industry, and plenty of evidence that it HELPS the artists themselves. Artists make very little money from sales of the CDs themselves, unless the CD is a mega-hit. They make more money on tour. MP3’s help promote bands, which leads to more concert draws.

Yes, the record industry is in a slump. A small one. That is no surprise in a poor economy in which alternatives to CDs abound (DVDs are consuming more and more of the disposable income of young people - that money has to come out of their budget somewhere).

There is plenty of evidence of what’s wrong with the music industry - the real problem is that they are producing CRAP. For years, they have been abandoning real artists in favor of their own creations like Britney Spears or Avril Levigne. They have turned the music itself into a commodity instead of art. For a while, that benefitted them handsomely, because the kids bought the new music in droves, and the older people bought the back catalog. But as the years have gone on, they have discovered that once artists like Britney or Mariah Carey leave the spotlight, no one buys their older CDs any more. So they have a big hole in the back catalog dating from the time they started abandoning art. Albums from the 60’s and 70’s still sell extraordinarily well today. Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” was on the album charts for 25 years.

But there are almost no albums from the late 80’s and 90’s that still sell well. That’s one of the reasons why record company sales are falling.

Here are a couple of facts to think about for those who think that pirating is what caused the drop in CD sales:

  1. The Grammy awards had their lowest viewership in six years. If people were still listening to the new music, but from pirated MP3’s instead of albums, you would expect them to still watch their acts on the Grammy show. No one tuned in.

  2. Top-40 radio is dying. The top 10 singles on the radio today wouldn’t have made it into the top 100 20 years ago. People are tuning out. But radio itself is still huge - it’s just that more and more people are listening to ‘alternative’ and Classic Rock stations. Music that is among the most widely available on the net.

64

I don’t think anyone has claimed that copyright infringement of this sort is currently legal. And no, it’s not stealing according to the law, any more than it’s assault or loitering or providing a minor with cigarettes. Copyright infringement and theft are completely different crimes.

There is no expiration date, just like there’s no expiration date for MP3s. But there’s still an incentive to buy - in the case of cars, you get a warranty and discounts for service/maintenance.

In the case of MP3s, buying the CD is convenient (no need to download all night), higher quality than 128kbps MP3s, and you may be interested in the liner notes. Or maybe you just want to support the artist.

Cereal packaging serves a useful purpose, namely to keep the cereal from spilling across the floor. OTOH, music packaging (including the media itself) is less useful because I don’t need a plastic disc to listen to music. Most of my music is MP3 files, and I have no problem with using my computer as a stereo. I can also burn the files to a 50-cent CD-RW for use in my car, or transfer them directly to a portable MP3 player.

The costs of cereal packaging and shipping are necessary for keeping cereal on the shelves at the store, and the shipping/distribution costs of the packaging are insignificant since the cereal itself has to be shipped anyway. But why must I pay packaging and shipping costs for music when they could send me MP3 files over the internet for free?

The record companies aren’t going under. P2P users buy more CDs than before they started file sharing. Obviously it is possible to take without depleting the source’s revenue.

Well, it would have to be offered in addition to the bare-bones download. Those of us who just want to listen to “Oops I Did It Again” once in a while can pay 25 cents for the MP3; but the true Britney fans, the ones who would actually want a coupon for 50% off a concert ticket or an official Britney Spears nose ring, can pay $18 for a CD that includes these extras.

I’m taking advantage of an artist’s effort without compensation whenever I use the listening station at a record store. I could go back to the store every day and listen to the song for free. The listening station is there with the intent of creating interest in the CD and raising CD sales, but if I listen and don’t buy, I’m getting something for nothing.

That doesn’t bother me. I don’t think the store’s entitled to make money just because they did something with the intent of making money, and neither is the artist. Copyright law exists to benefit society by giving artists an incentive to contribute to our culture.

If file sharing benefits society by giving people more access to art, and it benefits the artists by increasing CD purchasing among the people who use file sharing (therefore providing an incentive to produce more art), where’s the harm?

By the way, you can feel free to use the fruits of my efforts without compensating me. You’ll have a hard time “depriving” me of them unless you plan to hack into my computer, though.

65

Wow, you wrote ViRC, Mr2001? Cool! I’ve used that program before (though I must admit that, like most users, I’ve always been partial to mIRC, probably out of sheer laziness to download a different program than anything else).

Another thing you mention that people often don’t touch upon in these discussions is the fact that MP3s really are subpar in terms of sound quality. The differences are especially noticable when you play them on decent speakers. I used to have a page bookmarked that provided good examples of the inherent flaws in MP3 technology, but it seems I must have lost it in one of my catastrophic hard drive failures. A cursory web search couldn’t find it. Shame, too, because it’s a really good page.

Upping the bitrate takes away from some of those flaws, but I can still hear them, even at 320kb/s. Most notable is the “wishy-washy” sound commonly heard in recordings of crowd noise at a live show. I’ve found that a CD recorded onto a high-quality cassette tape with a good tape deck produces much better results than encoding the CD to MP3.

A lot of audiophiles I’ve run into on the Internet are completely disgusted by the MP3 phenomenon, not because of piracy, but simply because they hate the sound quality.

I think SamStone hit the nail on the head about the music industry repeatedly shooting itself in the foot over the past 15-20 years by touting the flavors-of-the-month over real artists.

It usually follows a very predictable pattern. One band pioneers (or co-opts) a particular “sound.” They’re pretty good and build a nice fan base. Somebody eventually decides to grant them a bit of radio airplay. Their song is a hit and they become quite popular in the mainstream.

How does the record company respond? Not by looking for more original, talented artists, but by signing every musician they can find that sounds exactly the same as the hitmaking band. Apparently somebody in a suit decided that this would be the most effective business model. Unfortunately for them, as SamStone points out, it’s not a very good strategy in the long term.

Maybe record companies still haven’t figured this out. Maybe they don’t want to admit it to themselves yet, so they try to shift the blame for their falling sales off on someone else. I don’t know. What I do know is that people are fucking fed up with it, and, depending on the person, they use MP3 either as a way to snub their noses at the record companies and never buy any CDs, or for their own personal radio stations to preview music before buying.

I mostly fall into the latter category, though I must admit that I sometimes actually feel guilty when I buy a major-label CD, because I know that almost all of that money is going to blackhearted goons who want nothing more than to shove Britney Spears in my face, and wouldn’t know art if it jumped up and bit their ballsacks off.

66

Posted by Mr2001: " Copyright infringement and theft are completely different crimes. "

I guess you didn’t bother to read Jeff Olsen’s post, above, in which he posted the definition of stealing? Or are you a better source for definitions than:
The Original Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases (Americanized Version) Copyright © 1994 by Longman Group UK Limited. All rights reserved. ?

67

The fact that a thesaurus lists “copyright infringement” as a possible synonym of “stealing” only shows that the word has a popular meaning which is different from the legal definition. You specifically said “It’s stealing, according to the law”, as if copyright infringement and theft were the same crime.

For example, The Doubleday Roget’s Thesaurus in Dictionary Form lists the following as synonyms of rape: seduce, outrage, attack, maltreat. Does that mean that if I say something that outrages you, then I’ve raped you? If I maltreat my car by skipping an oil change, is Jiffy Lube going to blackmail me by saying “you know, that’s rape, according to the law”?

No, because rape is a specific crime with a specific legal definition, just like theft. Go ahead and rant about the evils of copyright infringement if you want. But don’t pretend it’s equivalent to theft.

68

Easyphil…

This is different. The law allows you to make an archival copy of music or movies that you have. Since downloading a song is “making a copy”, it is legal.

Ambushbug…

I don’t know, I haven’t seen a thread on radar detectors for quite some time. But radar detectors don’t enable someone to break a law… they only allow them to avoid getting caught. A bit of a difference, there.

Nightime…

Oh, yeah. I’m just coming up with SO-O-O-O many justifications. Can I roll my eyes at your ignorance now?

Keep your juvenile words out of my mouth. I never said anything about “evil”. I just said it’s against the law. If you want to get into a debate about whether the law is right or wrong, well, that’s a whole 'nother issue.

All right! Will you let me have my own cell phone, a cappucino, and more angst that I can imagine, too? Come off your high horse, you yuppie piece of shit. The law’s the law. Whether or not you follow it is none of my concern, but don’t go spreading all this bullshit about “entrapping artists” or philosophical morality into it.

Keep your immature Robin Hood fantasies out of this. You’re not striking a blow against corporate corruption… you’re fulfilling your own instant gratification, for your own selfish gain, with absolutely no regard for anyone else.

69

Essentially, what I’m saying is… call a spade a fuckin’ spade, okay? If you think the law is wrong, go nuts and try to change it. But keep your self-righteousness at the door when all you’re doing is looking to get something for nothing.

70

No cite, because it’s not true (not generally true at least, there may be rare circumstances where trading causes harm to specific bands).

When file trading was at it’s peak, so were CD sales, CD sales didn’t drop until after napster was shut down. Correlation is not causation, but it sure as hell proves that file trading doesn’t result in the opposite causation!

71

No but we do require a cite for statements known to be counter-factual. Better have your common sense recalibrated, it’s not tracking reality anymore.

72

To the contrary, it’s not property at all. It’s a government granted monopoly in return for sharing of the idea/expression and it’s eventual inclusion into the common.

False analogy, what I would leave behind is the original painting. I gain something, you loose nothing. No loss, no theft.

Thinking of copyright as property is just sloppy thinking. It leads to all sorts of absurd analogies like this.

73

It seems that a noninfringing use of p2p file sharing software exists, then.

Given: a population of people who have p2p software installed, versus a like population of people who have radar detectors in their cars. I submit that there is a greater proportion of drivers who speed because they have radar detectors, to people who use p2p software to infringe copyrights.

To put it the other way, I submit that a percentage of p2p software users only download in a fair-use, legal manner, while virtually no users of radar detectors never use their possession of a radar detector as a mental enabler to violate traffic laws.

AmbushBug

74

What, the original artist doesn’t continue to hold an interest in the painting? This is actually one of the best analogies on the subject, because the making of unauthorized prints might be costing that artist potential income :smiley:

AmbushBug

75

Very well said SPOOFE, particularly this:

While you are sitting on your butt in front of the computer and downloading the first Quiet Riot album, please try not to imagine yourself in a green cap, wrestling with Little John in the forest. You are not stealing food to feed the hungry. You are listening to product created by the industry that you despise in a vain attempt to entertain yourself.

For those that oppose the music business, I suggest that you get off your butts and participate in changing the system (see link above for an example). Better yet, get out and support some local bands - go to their shows, buy their CDs. And if all of this is too much effort, then I suggest that you simply exit the system. Even downloading free copies of the music created by the music business is still supporting them (admittedly much more indirectly).

Music is a luxury item used for entertainment. Fighting against the greedy music business is not like dumping tea in the ocean or demonstrating against segregation. It is a lot more like senators bouncing checks at the restaurant in the Capitol.

76

How is P2P any different from taping stuff from the radio or loaning someone a CD, tape or Vinyl, or having a party and playing music?

77

Might, but then again might not. There is only a loss of potential revenue if the who infringes would have purchased a legit copy, if an avenue for gaining an illigit copy didn’t exist. AND if that illigit copy does not motivate him or someone else to buy a copy.

The loss is theoretical, and (as it turns out), not seen in practice.

The real reason that this analogy is nonsense is that in an actual theft of phyiscal property, the artist would no longer have the painting AT ALL. While in the real world of copyright infringement, the artist still has the original, and the monopoly on commercial exploitation of it. He hasn’t even lost the (tiny) marginal cost of the creation of the new copy, because the infringer bore that cost directly.

The facts of the Napster situation demonstrate that the simplistic idea of a unathorized copy is a lost sale is simply not true in practice. There are lots of theories as to why this doesn’t work out in the simplistic way so many people seem to think it should. In the end, the lack of an understanding of the process doesn’t change the fact that P2P music sharing doesn’t hurt music sales.

So the analogy fails because it is contradicted both by the reality of napster and by the properties of physical v.s. virtual things.

78

Ah, I misread your post Tejota; our opinions largely coincide.

AmbushBug

79

SPOOFE:

Well, I won’t attempt to disabuse you of the absurd notion that justifying something is proof of a guilty conscience, since it is an irrelevant issue which you brought up, and you are free to maintain your preferred self delusions.

I was illustrating the juvenility of your own comment that anyone who defends file sharing has a guilty conscience, rather than just believing it is a good thing, by bringing up the equally false idea that anyone who attacks file sharing believes it is evil, rather than just against the law. Unsurprisingly, this was lost on you.

I was unaware that you accidentally posted in this thread while intending to start a new thread asking “Is copyright infringement illegal?” In case you would like to join this thread, I will bring you up to date. The debate started with the question of why threads about file sharing were not allowed, given that file sharing is not illegal. The answer was that file sharing is usually used in illegal ways, and that it “seriously hits the artist’s wallet.”

So, SPOOFE, do you agree that things should be banned because they can potentially be used in illegal ways? Keep in mind that the RIAA is trying to ban many useful technologies using this very logic, to such an extent that foreign scientists are afraid to come to American soil because their inventions could conceivably be used illegally and they could be arrested (there is precedent). Is it worth it to shoot down new ideas and stop technology in its tracks just to protect the record companies’ immoral monopoly?

Do you believe that file sharing necessarily causes harm to the artists? All of the evidence I have seen shows just the opposite. File sharing gives artists a way to build a fan base without signing over all future profits to the record company. I have bought hundreds of cds because of file sharing which I would never have bought otherwise. File sharing takes away some of the record companies’ monopoly and leverage, both of which they bought for good money from the government, but to use your own word, do record companies “deserve” to be able to treat artists like “works for hire”? Do they deserve a monopoly on the industry? Do they deserve the ability to lie about the effects of file sharing and get away with it? Do they deserve the right to shoot down whatever technology they dislike? Do they deserve the right to produce garbage and force it down our collective throats by eliminating the alternatives? Do they deserve the ability to buy legislation that is fundamentally harmful to our entire culture?

Of course, I will not demand that you actually address the real debate.

I have pointed out the despicable actions of the record companies, and I believe that they must be stopped. File sharing is one thing that helps bring them down. Notice it is file sharing itself, the advance in technology, that makes record companies as they currently exist obsolete. Just as if we came up with a source for free, clean energy, it would make oil companies obsolete. There is no “Robin Hood” in either case. It seems you are just overeager to live out your immature Sheriff fantasies.

I don’t think I have quite reached your level of self-righteousness, but if I have seemed to do so it is only because I am annoyed that people like you accept the record companies’ lies at face value and say things like “all you’re doing is looking to get something for nothing” when I use mp3’s to decide which cds to buy, and have actually bought hundreds of cds in the past few years. I don’t think record companies have the right to manipulate the laws into allowing them to control the culture. Yet, no self-righteousness is needed to defend file sharing. It is an advance in technology that justifies itself. It is now possible to hear songs that record companies do not either promote or release. Deal with it.

80

Or think about it this way: File Sharing networks are the ‘Web’ of music.

I use Kazaa to educate myself about music. I will read a review of a band, download a few of their songs to see what I think. If I like it, I’ll follow threads through web sites to other similar bands, and download their stuff. Read about the roots of their music, and listen to some of that. Follow a ‘thread’ of a musical style all the way back to Robert Johnson or Howlin’ Wolf. Then read an article about one of them, and discover their earlier gospel influences. Download some of that, and listen to it.

This way of appreciating and understanding music is flatly impossible without file sharing networks. You can’t learn this way by listening to radio, because the content is controlled and playlists are shortened more and more each year. Much of the music record companies own the rights to isn’t even available - it’s out of print. Their back catalogs are locking up more and more of the music culture.

You also can’t learn by buying the music, unless you are a gazillionaire. 90% of the stuff I download is crap. I can’t afford to buy it all. And anyway, much of it is locked up in back catalogs which the record companies refuse to distribute.

Now, this may be illegal. I grant that it is. But I will also suggest that it *shouldn’t be. This is too powerful a tool to throw away. There is great social good in this new model. And there is zero evidence that it harms the music industry, and plenty of evidence that it increases sales.

Think of this analogy: What if 90% of all the books that were written were owned by five huge book companies? Now further suppose that those book companies owned or controlled all of the bookstores, and used their monopolistic practices to prevent those stores from carrying anything other than their books?

Now further suppose that these book companies had grown tired of working with ‘challenging’ authors with talent, and were abandoning them in favor of house writers that could be controlled. Everything they put out is schlock designed by committee. Nothing available but lowest-common-denominator crap. How would you feel if “The Old Man and the Sea” went out of print, and the company refused to reprint it, and you couldn’t buy used copies because book companies had managed to run all the second-hand bookstores out of business?

Now let’s say that these book companies were militant about stopping all rival distribution methods, and were trying to squash any technologies that could hurt them. They won’t release E-books, but anyone who tries to set up their own E-book center gets hit with a raft of lawsuits. Libraries are under constant threat. Desktop publishing is squashed because it makes it too easy to copy books.

At what point would you have to stop and say, “Maybe this isn’t such a good thing”?

The fact is, we have outgrown the record companies. They were necessary at one time, because it was hellishly expensive to make an album, and the economies of scale required large compaanies to do things like print copies for radio distribution and the like.

But today, record companies are close to being irrelevant. They are a hindrance to the culture. If there was a true free market functioning in the music industry, they would be fading away rapidly. But for the last 20 years they have been buying themselves legal protection, and have locked up huge chunks of the musical culture with extended copyrights and long-term personal contracts of artists. And now they are fighting to destroy the technology that is helping the industry evolve into a more efficient, modern way of producing and distributing music.

Time for a change. I’m not talking about taking away their copyrights - I’m talking about extending ‘fair use’ to accept file sharing in some form as long as there is evidence that it doesn’t cause economic damage. I’m talking about fighting tooth and nail their attempts to force encryption on us, to hack into our computers, to shut down legitimate communication networks.

I’m also thinking that perhaps we need some other changes to copyright law, like having copyrights revert to the public domain if they are not actively being commercialized. There is precedent for that now - trademarks that aren’t actively enforced revert to the public domain.

It’s important to remember the purpose of copyright, as stated by the founding fathers. To PROMOTE the culture. What the record companies are doing is causing immense damage to the culture. Something’s wrong.