I work for a video game company and have seen torrents of games that I have worked on. To be perfectly honest, I have no problem with people pirating games.
I can guarantee that games like Mass Effect, GTA 4 and Fallout have been pirated a huge amount, but they still make a ridiculous amount of sales. If a game is good, people will buy it.
Hell, I still continue to pirate games. They are always games that I wouldn’t have purchased anyways. Although, sometimes, I am pretty surprised by how good a game is and I buy it to support the company making the game. Doesn’t make it legal, but, morally, I don’t have a problem with it.
I believe this is part of the enjoyment of live God wants for His children.
The scriptures are spiritual (1 Cor 6-16, along with John 1:1, Ro 7:14), as such I just feel there is a misunderstanding and miscommunication between us. Differences between a worldly and heavenly profession can be seen in Matt 4:19 where Peter’s (and Andrew’s) profession in the world was identified as fishermen and was to change to the heavenly job of ‘fishers of men’. In John 21:3 we can still see Peter preforming his worldly profession though his work in his heavenly profession has already begone (Luke 9:1,2).
Also the parable of the talents, while talent translated as a unit of money (which the world understands) works better in the spiritual, as in spiritual value. God knew the word we would use talent would mean to us a special God given ability, and I believe He meant that to happen as a bridge between the world of money which we understand and the spiritual gifts which we don’t unless He shows us.
The talent of a artist would be to perform and basically spread the love of God through song. A lot of us never get to express our true talent, and as such have buried it (as in the parable), but for those who do discover their God given talent, what would God want? to make money, or to spread His love, perhaps preforming perhaps mentoring, or both. Maybe one can make a case for making money and donating lots of it.
This is a free will issue, that gets complicated, but those pursuing any path other then Love will eventually hit a dead end.
You mentioned that a laborer should get compensated for their labor, but that does not mean that a person should be compensated for their non-labor and there is no labor in p2p digital downloads.
If you reach more people with the love of God through music God will compensate you, though it may not appear as direct currency as below:
An totally made up example, a artist operating in the gifts of God can make perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, with that he has not achieved superstar status, but can go anywhere he wants, whenever he wants. A artist who sold his talent may become a superstar making 10’s of millions per year, but does not have the freedom that the other one has, there are many places that the second one will not be able to go (due to crowds, security), though he has many more dollars in his bank accounts, while the first on has the entire world, and God will open doors for him for things beyond his means.
Plus God does not what His children to worry about things, including copying of material, as He is willing to provide, and is above that.
The owner of the work is God, if a person claims ownership God will call him on that. Again the artist should get paid for his labor.
It doesn’t have to be one or the other. Making a living engages and employees others. You can find a balance between making a living and giving back to society. Sometimes both happen at the same time.
But that’s between them and god. It’s not up to free loaders to decide for them that they ought to be giving it away. That’s just justification for petty thievery.
yes there is. It’s the labor and investment it took for them to get to have that work available for sale. Hundreds of hours of practice and effort. You don’t get to be a master carpenter by just buying a hammer and nailing a couple of pieces of wood together.
great. but again, that’s for the artists to decide not the freeloaders. Of course if god tells you directly to download a song you get a pass.
irrelevent to this discussion. Yes people can become a slave to money and personal glory. People aren’t stealing songs to save them from that.
So, stores should have no security and let people walk out with anything they want and never porsecute anyone. They can just put a sign out that says “God is our security guard” and all will be well.
then substitute the word steward if you want to. The point remains exactly the same.
If god gives you stewardship over certain property is it okay to let people steal it? Is that good stewardship?
I’ve been coming on kinda strong here because I can be opinionated about this particular subject. I’d like to tone it down a bit.
I don’t think a couple of copies shared among family and or friends is a huge ethics issue. It’s just that the problem has become so pervasive that I’ve seen struggling independent artists be hurt. More than that I think it’s a problem when we as a society habitually justify what is clearly a dishonest practice and convince ourselves there’s nothing wrong with it. Not just this particular issue but others as well. I think in some real long term way it diminishes us as a society and even though we try to avoid seeing long term negative consequences they really exist.
I did a missions trip to Haiti (before the earthquake), and was walking down the streets of Port Au Prince, each home and store had walls around it, razor wire, broken glass in the walls designed to cut people climbing it, etc. Very much security. When walking through I prayed if this is really needed, and I got a very clear answer NO, He is willing to protect His children so they can live in a beautiful home and not have any security and He Himself would protect them. God does not want His children living behind secure walls as that is a prison. I know this is possible and have experienced some of this divine protection myself.
The gifts of God are not physical products, but gifts of Love, and yes they can be stolen, as currently done by the RIAA. The theft is theft by deception, such as the contract that one signs with the RIAA labels.
It is not accepted that p2p music sharing is ‘stealing’, in the sense that you are using the word, and I could make more of a case that it is ‘stealing’ to charge for non-labor (digital downloads) as if you labored.
There is something called theft of services, which is taking labor without paying for it, in scriptures we can see Jesus actually doing something that may have been considered this with commandeering a donkey and yet God finds His blameless, in the case of sharing music there is not even thief of services, but something apparently less, duplicating the gift of God.
How much claim does a steward have in the eyes of God to the rights to restrict the gift that God gave him to distribute?
“The situation we face a classic tragedy of the commons.”
Pretty much. It wont be solved by court cases breaking ordinary people, and theres no easy answer.
Its the naivety that this will have no effect on what gets produced that baffles me. If anything its the gi producers who will survive this.
Again go on about the nasty producers all you like, but I know that people will steal my pictures even if I just give them and ask them not to sell them or give them to other people. That they’ll be grumpy if I dont give them for free even though they might cost me thousands to get, etc etc. They feel like they own them even if they had nothing to do with their creation and paid zero to get them.
Theres a level of entitlement people seem to feel now about peoples art that we’ve not seen before. I dont know what the long term effects will be, and maybe we’ll work it all out eventually, but its nasty to watch during the transition.
So true. Americans are so spolied and to many do walk around with some feeling of entitlement. I saw it in retail all the time.
We have a thirty day return policy and you’ve had this item 35 days.
well I don’t get to this side of town that often. As if that detail entitles them to an extended return policy.
Can I get a discount on these , I’m buying 8 items?
I’m sorry, they’re all already on sale,
But I shop here all the time.
As if that detail changes anything. And as you said, then they act like your an ass for having the nerve to want to make a profit.
Thanks for this. It truly illustrates why I don’t have much of a problem with file-sharing music. There appears to be no (or precious little) money in producing an album for the artist. The artist gets obliterated by the juggernaut of the label. Their very survival often depends on getting as much exposure as supports a successful, lucrative tour.
Artists who recognize this are going the route of the independent label and self-publishing. They are also distributing their music for free (or low cost) under Creative Commons licenses via MySpace, YouTube, Pandora, eMusic, and their own websites. Why? Because it’s more lucrative for them than dealing with greedy labels. Because despite file-sharing, demand for music still generates tons of money that *can *benefit the artist when labels aren’t controlling it.
cosmosdan, the reason why your argument fails is because you keep saying you’re defending the artist when really all your defending is current copyright law and a system of music distribution that really doesn’t serve or protect the artist. You seem to believe that file-sharing kills art, when really it’s greed that kills art. The only art that survives distribution by Sony is art that Sony deems profitable for their bottom line. If it doesn’t benefit Sony, it will not likely see the light of day or even be produced.
The retail return policy discussion is a hijack and not even really that great of a comparison, but it does illustrate another way in which you’re missing the point. Restricting consumers doesn’t expand your business. I work for a retailer with a reasonable return policy. Everything sold is guaranteed for the life of the product and can be returned for whatever reason. The vast majority of returns are reasonable and valid. Yes, there will be people that take advantage of us and “rent” our products, but those people are dealt with on an individual basis. We don’t penalize our entire customer base because of a few people who game the system. How do we do it? Well, basic consumer economics.
People spend more money at retailers they trust. When consumers know they aren’t going to get stuck with something they don’t want for which they paid money, this builds trust. Those returns that we can’t resell as new, we resell to our loyal customers at steep discounts, so we recoup some of that loss and our loyal customers have just received an added benefit that further enhances their relationship with us. The actual loss from our return policy is negligible when you factor in the income generated from the goodwill our return policy promotes.
So you see, my employer has found a way to turn a negative into a positive and everyone benefits, including and especially the honest consumer, which is what should be the goal of every retailer.
Pardon me for being blunt but this is a load. That reality that major record labels can be bastards is a separate issue from piracy and one of several bullshit justifications. The fact that sometimes a good thing can come from piracy also a bullshit justification. When people pirate it’s not to help the band or stop the label from taking advantage. They don’t know or care what kind of contract the band has and I doubt many check to see if it’s a major label or a smaller independent or something the band paid for themselves. The message of that link isn’t “so go and and copy all you want” It’s a warning to eager young bands to be more cautious about their contract. {and it probably won’t help} If young artists decide they want to give thier music away just so it will be heard by more people and they encourage their fanbase to distribute it then awesome. Go for it, because now the creator of the art has given you thier blessing.
Tell you what though. If you have the integrity to only copy from the giant labels and won’t copy from smaller struggling labels and bands that are selling something they produced themselves, that’s progress as far as I’m concerned. I’m far more concerned about those artists. As Ive said several times, the problem is that as the mindset of free music becomes the norm and piracy is an accepted practice it hits the smaller struggling artists as well. When you’ve footed the entire bill for production it matters a little more when you’re losing sales because of piracy. I described a friend earlier who decided not to do another independent CD because as she put it" It’s hard to compete with free copies of yourself"
It’s great that this works for your employer but it’s a mistake to think this can work for every retailer in every market. Every major retailer that changed their policy did had the same philosophy when they first established a liberal return policy. The small % that abuse the system is worth it. What happened over time is that the % kept rising and the dollars involved kept getting more and more significant. The principle you speak of is correct but it simply doesn’t work for everyone in every market. That’s why other major retailers don’t have that policy. It’s not because they’re assholes or stupid. Even WalMart, the king of retail and known for easy returns , has had to alter some of their return policies because of increased abuse.
My point in my retail story was to give another example of how justification of a minor dishonest practice can have real world consequences when it becomes widely accepted. Your employer doesn’t change that point at all.
Cosmodan, as many have mentioned to you already, people were producing art long before it was financially profitable - in fact I know a guy whose only reason for being in a band was he got more shags, but that’s by the by - and will continue to do so long afterwards. Real artists have to do it, and any financial compensation is a bonus. That is how being an artist should be looked at. But, when the ability to record and mass produce “art” arose, obviously the money-men were bound to get involved. And what they are doing is akin to building an electrified fence around the only source of fresh water, and charging people to fill their cups.
Then again, if you see your “art” as your job…get another job if this one doesn’t pay well enough. I’m sure the manufacturers of horse-drawn carriages had an equally good moan, when the automobile came along.
I think the message you got was that we should work toward Eutopia and brotherly love , not that we’re already there. In all honesty, what do you suppose would happen if people decided to not have any security, never porsecute a thief, allow people to take whatever they want without paying, etc.
real people use their gifts to create a physical product that they offer for sale in order to benifit society and make an honest living. When others decide to take what they offer for sale without paying, there’s a word for it.
You couldn’t do it convinceingly. Non labour copies can benifit the consumer when the seller lowers the price because of lower cost. If they don’t do that you could argue they are price gouging or greedy. A musical composition represents hours of work and effort. That costs isn’t recouped in the sale of a few CDs. Taking it for free without the authors or owners permission is unethical. It’s a very basic principle that you cannot argue away.
Please stop. The point I’ve repeated is that the owner gets to decide what to give away, rather than the end user taking it without permission. Does that story include that donkey being used without the owners permission?
You appear to be contradicting yourself as you try to make up an argument. I thought the love of God was not a physical product?
The very term steward means to be responsible for and manage correctly right? So if you’re the steward of a certain work, what should you do if someone is taking it without permission and not paying. I think Jesus parables about stewardship in the NT make it clear. If god tells him directly to give it away that’s another story. If you tell me god told you all music should be free we can end this conversation immediately.
Please stop spelling my name wrong. All of this is irrelevant. I wish I had had the sense to be more business like when I was playing full time, but it was a hell of a party for a few years. None of those details speak to my point at all. If someone offers thier work for sale it’s unethical to just take it for free without their permissiion.
Another completely irrelevant point. If nobody wants what you have to sell that’s one thing. If somebody wants it and takes it without paying it’s quite another.
So if you have a store and you can’t make a living because people justify stealing your stuff because your prices are too high or some other bullshit reason, then just close up and stop whining?
That’s fine, but when the little thief gets caught I don’t want to hear any whining about how, “That’s not fair, he’s only a college kid” Don’t try to claim your stealing isn’t really stealing.
No, what’s irrelevant is your opinion. People are going to carry on “stealing” digital products as long as they are digitally available. You can’t turn back the clock, the horse has bolted, get used to it, or get in another line of business.
That’s exactly why file-sharing is so ubiquitous. Because the labels aren’t simply taking advantage of artist, they are taking advantage of consumers. Many music fans (and artists) are feeling ripped off by high CD prices. The only reason those prices are so high is not because artists want it that way, but because it supports the labels’ greed. How did it escape you that the record company has a 40% profit margin of which the artist earns less than one-half of one percent of the record company’s profits for its efforts. What happened to making sure people get paid for their work?
What effect is prosecuting random consumers with RIAA’s rabid furor supposed to have on consumers? To discourage them from freely sharing music? The only thing it really does is expose to the public the record companies’ avarice that artists have witnessed for years.
Really? Is that the message? Per the author of the piece? What was the message to non-bands? For the average music fan, the article reinforces the widespread belief that the record labels, especially the ones that are responsible for suing the holy hell out of random people, don’t give a rat’s ass about anyone but their bottom line. It doesn’t engender a great deal of sympathy on behalf of the labels, frankly. It does, however, reinforce the idea that pirating a song hurts the artists very little financially. Certainly, less than the cost of a concert ticket. Granted, if the label drops the artist because their vast popularity fails to translate into profit for the record company, it could push the artist into obscurity. Or, it could free them to produce music truer to their talent (i.e., without the input and control of the Profit Machine) that also contributes to cultural enrichment by becoming part of the public domain. Yes, it’s an ideal, but it’s not unrealistic, IMHO, and not really all that uncommon.
How many music contracts allow the artist to set the consumer value of their songs? Why do we keep discussing this as if the creator of the art is in control of their art, when, in fact, the reality is more often than not that the creator has very little control over distribution and pricing?
Why are those artists more entitled to protections than the artists being raped by giant record labels? If restrictive digital copyright fails, all artists are on an even playing field, whether they have a record deal or not. Artists are not automatically entitled to make a living off their art any more than retail employees are. If I have to supplement my income in other ways, that’s the way it is. That doesn’t mean we should allow them to become exploited by record companies. But if they can find a way to do it that their consumers accept as fair (i.e., you turn me on to your music, I pay you to perform it for me or movie director pays you to put it in a movie I’m going to pay him to watch), everyone wins.
What stopped her from touring or shopping it around to the entertainment industry. If she didn’t even find enough people that valued her work that she couldn’t even break even, maybe she needs to reconsider the value her work is to society. Just because she thinks it’s work X, doesn’t mean it is.
I’d be curious to know if any retailer has actually tried our policy and had it fail? Did yours? Why did the percentage of abusers rise? Or did it? Perhaps the people your company came to see as abusers were really dealing with substandard quality. I don’t deny that there is a certain percentage of people who will game any system, but I don’t agree that it’s a significant percentage. WRT file-sharing, I believe the problem lies with outdated distribution and copyright models, not with an increasingly abusive population. The models do not reflect society’s priorities and values.
Which my experience in retail actually does not support. It doesn’t really matter what the justification is, it only matters whether artists can survive the consumer rejection of the old revenue models. If they can adapt, as Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails seem to be doing, they may achieve success that also comes with freedom.
Before i address a couple of arguments, i want to make something clear about my own attitude to downloading music.
I agree that it probably doesn’t hurt the artists or the record labels anywhere near as much as the music industry would have us believe. As i suggested in the OP and my other posts, i also think that massive penalties are silly, and i quite like the ruling the judge made in this particular case.
On a more personal level, i don’t hold in any great disdain people who admit to downloading music illegally. It doesn’t bother me, it won’t stop me being your friend, etc., etc. And part of this is because i’ve done it myself in the past. When i first got a DSL connection, back in 2001, i downloaded music periodically, mainly because i could. I haven’t downloaded any music for quite a long time now, partly because i realized that i was just doing it because it was there, and partly because we already have hundreds of CDs of great music that we barely listen to anyway. I like music a lot, but i probably listen to it in the car more than anywhere else, and for that our CD collection and the radio are more than enough.
Also, i stopped partly because i didn’t want to get swept up in one of the RIAA’s IP-address-trolling dragnets and sued. In my case, at least, the lawsuits were a little bit of a deterrent.
With all that said, however, i find some of the arguments made in this thread bizarre. While i admit to downloading myself in the past, and also to not being especially judgmental of people who do it, i still find it completely weird that so many people are happy to argue, essentially, that people are going to do it anyway, so the artists and companies should just suck it up and find a new business model.
I agree that the companies themselves won’t support an act unless it supports their own bottom line. Absolutely true. I also agree that, in many cases, this results in a range of music that is fairly limited, and that ignores artists who might have lots of talent and much to offer the world.
The question i would ask, though, is why this fact exercises people so much when it comes to music, but not to other forms of endeavor. The United States, and most of the countries where people on this message board come from, is a place that runs, nominally at least, on the principles of a market economy (leaving aside government issues like taxation, welfare, etc.). We generally accept that people have the right to make contracts, to produce goods and services, and to charge what the market will bear for those services. We also generally believe that it’s unacceptable to take things without paying for them, whether that applies to something tangible like a car or a pack of cigarettes, or whether it applies to a service like a haircut or an oil change, or whether it applies to something that combines goods and service, like a restaurant meal.
Neither my hairdresser nor my mechanic ask for money from me before they perform the services i require of them. Neither do restaurants. Would it be acceptable for me to leave without paying for those things, just because i think i can get away with it?
Why is it that the artists and the companies that enter into voluntary arrangements in order to make money for both parties, and who sell a product that people clearly want (they wouldn’t download it if they didn’t want it), should be prepared to suck it up just because consumers are willing and able, without being caught, to take what they want without paying for it?
I understand if you want to protest against the particular business model that rules the music industry. That’s fine. If you don’t like the large record labels, i completely understand. I don’t like them much either. But surely, if you want to protest, the way to do that is to not buy or use their products. I don’t like Wal-Mart, so i don’t shop there; what i don’t do is protest against them, on the one hand, and then take their stuff for free, on the other.
It amazes me that you’re willing to cite “consumer economics” as if the idea actually means something to you, when you’ve been arguing all along that consumers should be able to simply take what they want if they don’t like the business model of the companies they’re dealing with.
And your whole story actually supports my argument, because your business sets the conditions under which it will sell its products, and under which it will accept returns. If the current system turned out to be economically unviable, i’m sure your business would change its policies. What you’re doing, however, is denying to another business (the music business) the very right that you assert for your own business—the right to sell its products in the manner that it chooses, without having those products taken.
If people don’t like the model the music industry offers, they are perfectly free to boycott the industry. But that’s not what’s happening. They actually do like what the industry offers, as evidenced by their willingness to download it for free; they just don’t want to pay for it.
As cosmosdan has already pointed out, this is a complete fail of an argument.
When the car came along, people bought cars. That’s why the demand for horse-drawn carriages died out. The demand for music has not died; if anything, it continues to grow. All that’s changed is the ability to download it for free, in violation of copyright law.
I believe they will but I’ll continue to remind them it is ineed a form of theft in hopes a few aren’t fooled by the “it okay, everybody does it” bullshit.
I also won’t hold much sympathy for people who are actually prosecuted and whine that “it’s not fair”
Well, that’s slightly different than my argument. I argue that people are going to do it anyway, so the artists and companies will HAVE to suck it up and find a new business model, because they have no choice. Because, as you say, people are going to do it anyway, and United States law doesn’t apply around the world.
And I don’t argue that widespread piracy won’t have an effect, of course it will have an effect, that’s why we need to implement some other workable scheme rather than just moan that piracy sucks. Because it doesn’t matter how hard piracy sucks, you can’t stop it just by whining about it. We can’t just whine about it, we have to do something about it.
Of course, in my thinking “doing something about it” means working with current technology to find some method of compensating creators that doesn’t rely on trying to prevent people from copying files, because it is my belief that any such scheme will fail. Copying is so trivial, technicially, and digital transmission is so trivial, technically, that any legal regime that pretends they aren’t is doomed to failure, because people just won’t bother to cooperate.
Look, all I want is to be able to listen to any music I want, on any device I want, in any format I want, at any time I want, and as often as I want. This is not a very difficult thing to achieve. This is the future. This is not unreasonable technically. And if there’s no legal way to do this, then it will be done illegally. The choice is, either provide this service for a reasonable fee, or don’t and get nothing.
Everyone keeps saying that if you don’t like the current business model, you don’t have to participate, just don’t buy anything new. Well, if creators don’t like my proposed new business model they don’t have to participate either. Nobody would force them to create something and give it away for free. They are perfectly free to create nothing if they don’t like the deal, just like today I’m perfectly free to purchase nothing if I don’t like the deal.
And of course I’m not arguing that creators deserve nothing. They deserve compensation–of some kind. Because otherwise, of course we’re going to get a lot less creative work produced. But creators will have to be compensated in a different way, because otherwise they’ll get nothing. Our laws will say they are entitled to compensation for every copy, but everyone will ignore the law. That may be a sad indictment of human nature that people won’t voluntarily pay money for something they can get for free. But as I said, if we’re going to rely on voluntary compliance with copyright law, we might as well just ask people to send in checks whenever they feel like it.
Voluntary compliance won’t work, no matter how much we wish it might. And so, what next? We must have a system that doesn’t rely on voluntary compliance, either that or embrace voluntary compliance and move to an explicit tip based system, where we make it really easy to tip the creator if you feel like it.