So why not just file share those 1-3 good songs/get them for free, and save your money to spend on good music? This is where I see that file sharing has helped the music industry as a whole – it encourages exposure and experimentation. It’s most likely been a better deal for smaller labels/artists versus corporate pop acts.
Some other considerations as well, some of which have already been mentioned: out-of-print music; tiny labels and music from other countries that is difficult to find in stores where you live; cost prohibitive imports; bootlegs/live recordings; bonus tracks on singles/EPs; even music you lost/had stolen/only have on other formats except CD and would like to just get again and burn. I personally have dealt with all of the above-mentioned considerations when it comes to file sharing. I have also bought far more music than before I had access to file sharing programs, because of financially risk-free exposure to new (and old) artists.
File swapping hurts the RIAA and helps the music industry. It hurts the RIAA because they lose their control and with that goes the ability to fix prices and basically do whatever they want. It helps the music industry because getting rid of the RIAA is exactly what the music industry needs.
This is a great debate, of course, since there is no answer. And while it is true that a selected release of a group’s MP3s can help that group, it’s a denial of basic economics to believe that swapping all their files is going to help them in the long run.
However, the key question is one that’s always ignored in this debate:
If an artist says not to download their files, what gives anyone the right to overrule them?
Even if artists made no money from recordings they would stll get paid for live shows, personal appearances, and endorsements.
In any case if becoming a famous musician and/or singer is less profitable overall it means that artists are less likely to be in it just for the money.
But if artists can’t make money with recordings (which provide the majority of their income – there are very few who make a profit on tours, and even fewer than can make money on endorsements), then they can’t create as much music, since they need to hold down a job.
But again – if an artist doesn’t want their music traded, what gives you the right to overrule them?
Elwood, you just said a mouthfull. That’s the answer to the debate, right there. The music industry went through a huge slump in the early 80’s. What was happening in the early 80’s? Atari. The home video game market siphoned off the disposable income that kids had to buy music. When the home video game market waned, the music industry had a rebound. Now, twenty years later, the situation is repeated. The home video game market today is huge–bigger than Hollywood movies, even. Add in DVDs, and there’s just too much competition for the music industry to sustain the level of sales to which they are accustomed. But instead of lowering prices and offering more choice (improving the product like the tenants of capitalism say you should), they have instead decided to blame file sharing and try to force people to buy their product by litigation.
If file sharing is hurting sales–and I see no hard evidence of this–it’s the record industry’s own damned fault. What they should have done was get in bed with Napster in the first place. Make Napster a pay subscription service–$20 a month, the price of one CD–and let people download 'til their heart’s content. A little software could be written keeping tracks of all the downloads royalties, based on the radio play royalties, could be paid to the record companies (and then the record companies can use their usual methods to STEAL the royalties from the artists), and viola, the masses get to file trade, the slithering, theiving execs get to stay on the gravy train and keep the artists under their thumbs and eveybody goes home happy.
But that’s not what they did. They wanted to fight it because, damnit, they’re record executives and THEY get to decide what goes in people’s ears. The whole thing is about control, otherwise the RIAA would have found a happy medium by now. Nope, they fear all that marketing money they spend will go to waste when people are exposed to so much more music and finally have the information they need to figure out who is good and who sucks.
Law already limits the artist’s ability to control distribution of his work; moving the line back and forth a bit is trivial. I don’t think RealityChuck was referring to legality anyway.
Common sense concepts of ownership, intended to prevent people from quarreling over scarce resources, simply don’t apply to intangible things. Owning a chair or a house is completely different from owning a song, or owning the LZW compression algorithm.
As for your last point, I am both a moral creature and a human. I can empathize with artists and authors because I’m one myself (though my medium is not music). Yet it’s not apparent to me why I should have a moral right to tell people what information they can or can’t share with others, even if I’m the person who created or discovered it.
So you keep saying again and again and again, as if the words will magically come true. The problem is that the laws in place in every civilized nation, enacted by the vast majority of human beings on this planet, completely disagree. Mankind has recognized the existance of intellectual property for centuries.
You can call black white until you’re blue in the face, but it won’t change.
I was wondering, how good is the quality of a home-burned CD given the average computer equipment, speakers, etc, of an average person? Is it studio quality or just good enough to hear an approximation of the song? Secondly, how hard is it for a doofus to burn a CD? Can Aunt Martha burn a CD with tracks from Perry Como, John Denver, and Jerry Vale within 30 minutes of getting her new computer set up on the internet with her 56k modem? Cause regular people like Aunt Martha are who the RIAA have to worry about, cause there’s so darn many of them (IMHO).
Unfortunately for your “argument”, the laws against copyright infringement are, in fact, completely different from the laws against theft. The only connection is that both are illegal.
Because they created it. If you make something, it’s yours do to what you please with it.
Because music is not “information,” except in the most technical sense. Someone spent time and effort in order to create it. Why is it wrong to ask that the person who went to that trouble be able to benefit from his work?
And you still have avoided my question – If the musician says “I don’t want this shared,” what gives you the right to overrule that?
I can agree with this to a point. If I write a song, it’s my [moral] right to choose whether to let anyone else hear it; no one can force me to play it for them. However, IMO that right ends at the point when someone else hears it. When I play my song (or read my poem, or explain my algorithm…) to another person, I don’t have the right to force him not to pass it on to someone else.
That’s true of most any information (I could call it an “idea” or “expression” or “intangible thing” if you object to “information”). You could spend days or weeks coming up with, say, a route between your home and your office, but that doesn’t give you the [moral] right to prevent others from travelling on the same route. You could spend time and effort creating a new hairstyle, but that doesn’t give you the right to prevent others from styling their hair the same way.
The question only makes sense if you accept that the musician has the moral right to force me not to share it–which I do not accept. If someone tells me “I don’t want you dressing as a ghost for Halloween”, I don’t need to justify my decision to dress as a ghost against his wishes, even if he was the first guy on my block to make a ghost costume; he needs to justify his supposed control over my decisions.