I’m not sure about that “visionary answer” position gshevlin - and here’s why - by extension it’s a vision which will intrinsically make “studio only” artists unprofitable - which in turn will make them not worth marketing.
Lovely albums such as “Unforgettable” by Natalie King Cole would never get off the ground as a result because they were specifically studio projects designed to highlight Nat King Cole’s songs with modern recording tecniques and the very best of todays big band musicians.
Your visionary answer effectively enforces only “live performers or groups” would be able to make a go of it in the future - and quite frankly, the Steely Dan’s of this world would quickly fade into history.
I’ll stand by my earlier assertion - if everything went back to vinyl, then people would be forced to start copying from their turntables into their PC’s - and any filesharing which took place after that would be frought with varying levels of quality because of the varying levels of turntables on the market. It’s probably not very realistic - I’ll happily concede that - but it certainly would solve the problem.
It’s the fact that music is being offered FROM THE FACTORY in digital format which opens up the “perfect copying” problem.
Sure, but if a cop sees you driving over the speed limit, he’s going to give you a ticket anyway, regardless of your feelings on the matter. Similarly, you can talk about how it’s okay to snarf the entire Billy Joel discography from Kazaa, but don’t act surprised if you get hit with a subpoena or a lawsuit next week.
Of course. I think we all know copyright violation is illegal, and anyone who engages in illegal activity is at risk of being caught and punished for it.
But breaking the law isn’t always a moral issue. Is it immoral to drive 75 in a 65 zone, or to cross the street now instead of waiting for the light to change? Surely not, as long as no one is harmed. And I would say the same about violating copyright.
Of course, by extension - there’s a huge counterfieting copyright violation piracy industry in China and various other hot spots in South East Asia. At what point does copyright violation become unacceptable?
But by the time someone is harmed, it’s too late – the harm has been done.
In any case, while I agree that the “immorality level” of violating laws varies with the law in question, that still doesn’t change the fact that P2P “sharing” of copyright material is still against the law, and that attempts to handwave it away as “morally acceptable” is nothing but a lame-ass justification.
Sorry to hear you think so little of morals, and so much of law. And yet, without morality, why should I follow the law? Seems like any reason you would have to say why following the law is “morally acceptable” is just a lame-ass justification.
Nope, not physically harming them. Just stealing a little profit that they are legally entitled to for their hard work. Nothing immoral about that. No sir.
By the way, would you mind giving up your paycheck as well. Certainly that wouldn’t really harm anyone, would it?
Everyone’s morals are different – perhaps not by much, but there is a variation to some degree. The law is a codification of the subset of morals that the members of our society agree to comply with. If the collective moral view of society feels that copyright violation is not a problem/sin/bad thing, then the law should be changed to codify that new moral view.
Laws are not a codification of morals, though they can contain a set of enforced morals. They are a code of behavior, yes, but not a code of judgment (that is, it isn’t good to drive on the right side of the road, it is just the law), I think that’s the important difference. In no way does “illegal” mean “morally wrong”; if it does, it is more a matter of accident than design.
Also, no one agrees to comply with the law, my opinions have certainly never been consulted on anything other than petty popularity contests that have as much to do with law as penmanship, they simply do follow the law or are punished for transgressions that are caught by those that do agree with the law to the extent that they are willing to enforce it. In fact it isn’t even important that they are aware of the law; ignorance is largely not a defense. Because of that, we cannot be said to follow laws we agree with but rather act in a manner that reasonably prevents us from suffering artificial consequences that we are aware of.
And since there are little to no artificial consequences involved in filesharing, the odds of people stopping whether there is a law or not is pretty slim. I think musicians should find a way to come to terms with this, and in fact I think many have, they just don’t get the airplay. That’s fine, it’s politics at any rate.
It is a travesty that my car needs locks, and even moreso that I really should have an alarm system on it. It is no wonder that these things are available. But if I lived in a neighborhood where my car was stolen or damaged on a routine basis, I would adjust whether the theft and damage were illegal or not. I largely expect this is what most people would do under the dubious propostion that “the police can’t be everywhere”. It is a shame that this facet of existence has come to the possibly idyllic world of music, but reality is what it is and there you have it.
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Perhaps, rjung, it would help if you could explain to me what sort of copyright protection schemes exist in theory or practice that you support for digital media. Maybe we can focus a littler better.
Perhaps a good start would be to try and emulate the physical world. If I buy and download a song off the internet, for instance, I should be able to put copies of it on my computer, on my stereo, or in my car, whatever I want, so I can use it within “fair use” bounds.
However, if you were to make a copy of that file, it would not work for you, because you are not the owner, and would not be playable until I somehow transfer my “ownership” to you. I’m envisioning something like a “virtual container” for the media, which could only be unlocked by the designated owner. It could be copied indefinitely for whatever use/archival purposes the owner feels is necessary, but would be inaccessible to non-owners.
I go to the library and read a book. Somebody else goes to the library and reads the book. Both of us read it for free. The author hasn’t seen one cent of our money.
I go on-line and download a song. Somebody else goes on line and downloads a song. We both get the song for free. Again, the artist doesn’t see a cent of our money.
Sure, legally anyone who downloads a song should pay for it. Just like legally, everyone should wait for a green light before they walk across the street.
But if there are no cars around and nobody’s watching, why wait 3 minutes for the light to change, when you could just cross the street now? And why not download that hot new single, if you’re not going to get caught and you could hear it for free on the radio anyway (in other words, the artist isn’t gonna get your money whether you download it or not)? Neither is immoral, IMO.
Feel free to explain how this is relevant to file sharing.
I’m entitled to a paycheck as part of an agreement between myself and my employer. I have no such agreement with Eminem or Metallica, who BTW aren’t going to go hungry or get their cars repossessed if I deny them the few pennies they’d get from my CD purchase.
Downloading their songs doesn’t harm them any more than deciding right off the bat that I never want to hear or buy their songs at all.
You’re intentionally skipping a step. Then you both take the book back. You don’t get to keep a copy. If you want to read it again, you either have to pay me or you have to go to the library again.
With the digital music file, you do keep a copy, and there’s pretty much no chance taht you will pay me for what you have now stolen.
You don’t get a copy without paying me. That’s why its called a “copyright.” Learn to recognize the difference between borrowing a book and then taking it back, and the difference between copying a file and keeping it forever. Then perhaps we could have a useful discussion.
If you need me to draw you a diagram, I’d be happy to help.
Ive pretty much given up on the idea that you will ever give a damn about the artists you claim to be appreciate, but answer me this:
What if everyone just downloaded the music? What if a small band is struggling to make ends meet, they put out their first CD to have songs on the radio playlists… and instead of having discs purchased, their so-called fans and people who hear the song on the radio go and download it off of one of the thievery networks, so their sales are barely half of what they should be, or less. How have they not been harmed? How can you ensure that that won’t happen?
If you really loved an artists work, you would pay them for the songs you take. You are no fan of theirs if you take their work without compensating them for it.
You’re trying to justify theft because you’re a cheapskate who wants his music for free. But the decent people have, do and always will see through your charade.
Why would someone pay the author for a book he can read for free at the library any time? You fail to see that even though the library doesn’t make copies of books, they deprive authors of profit just as P2P services deprive artists. People use books differently than they use music; you don’t need your own copy of a book to get all the enjoyment out of it that you could possibly want.
I think I’m a better judge of who I give a damn about than you are, chum.
If not for file sharing, at least six bands would never have earned a dime from me. Instead, thanks to “thievery networks” :rolleyes:, I now own several of their CDs. How do you explain that?
Has it ever happened? Online music swapping has been around for at least six years; can you point to even a single band that has gone under because of it?
Remember this from the last page:
Both of those albums set sales records: two very high profile examples of file sharing helping, not harming artists. If people like a band’s music after hearing it, they tend to support that band - whether they heard it on the radio, on a movie soundtrack, at a friend’s house, or (gasp!) by downloading it from the internet - and whether supporting means buying albums, merchandise, or concert tickets.
Well, at least you got that right. I’m not a fan of most of the bands whose music I hear for free with no intention of buying, whether it’s via radio or via internet.
It must be hard to see straight with all that spinning. If I were trying to justify “theft”, I’d be making excuses for wearing a ski mask and breaking into Sam Goody at night. What’s next, branding me a rapist because I’m “fiscally raping” the poor starving artists?
What if a small band is struggling to make ends meet, and they release their songs on a P2P network which enables many more people to hear them than normally would and they’re shows sell out? How did this not help them? How can you ensure that without filesharing this will still happen?
The mythical lost sales is pretty much a joke, I think. At least to me it is. That’s like MS claiming it loses all this crap to piracy. Uh-huh. And when I can’t install an operating system for free… oh, wait, there’s Linux! Huh.
Microsoft has never lost a dime from me.
Well it is hard to spend $15 on a band I’ve never heard just to see if I like them. It is easy to spend $15 on a band I have heard through filesharing in order to support them.
And my liking a band isn’t a guarantee that music will be available, either. I never got a chance to purchase Shonen Knife stuff, only one album that I’m aware of is even distributed anymore. But thankfully I can still enjoy the music they cared to make. Do I have a right to? Nah. And that doesn’t ruin the sound quality one bit.
I want to be able to listen to music for free and THEN support who I like. I don’t want to support everyone and then only listen to what I like.
I largely expect the industry will have to adopt to this model. The old guard will fall.
Dangit. Just because someone illegally downloads an album from the internet doesn’t mean he would have bought it. This is my problem with this argument. In fact, practically everyone I know who used Napster and who uses Kazaa now to download music searches people’s library finds something that piques their interest, then downloads it. Sure there might have been some
albums that they would have wanted to purchase if downloading wasn’t an option, but that doesn’t mean they could have afforded to purchase the album, or would have bothered to do so. I’m not
trying to excuse the activity, but I am saying that every single download isn’t another dollar taken from the industry or the artists.
Those who are trying to compare the library to filesharing, let me ask you this question. How do you feel about downloading a PDF of a book you would like to read? I found a PDF containing just about the entire Wheel of Time series. Since I did purchase the books I didn’t have any qualms about downloading it for myself, but I didn’t like it being on the internet for any joe-blow. Is this any different from a library loan? YES! There are just so many
copies of the book at the library. Did you ever try to borrow a popular book when it just comes out? Try to borrow the new Harry Potter book right now. Even though it’s been out for months, there is probably still a waiting list. Well, I didn’t want to wait that long to read the new Wheel of Time book so I went to
the store and bought it. See the difference? The library doesn’t keep authors from making their money. Sure a little bit maybe, but not the same thing as free music downloads. 'Course I still don’t think that everyone who downloads music would have bought the album anyway. And I’ve downloaded music from the web when I already owned the album. I wanted a small version on my computer but I didn’t want to go through the trouble of converting it myself. See? Perfectly legal.
Also, what about buying used CDs and books? Isn’t that similar to the library argument? The artist/writer doesn’t make a cent there and someone gets the CD/Book cheap. In fact you could say it’s almost worse. Used bookstores actually make a profit by buying copyrighted material and marking up the price. That seems like it should be illegal too, but it soo isn’t.
Oh, I see, if I really like the book, and hate the fact that I want to return it, I may buy it so that I can keep it. Of course if I buy it used then you’re not getting paid then either, but, consider this. I download the song, and I like it so much, I decide to buy the album. Some CD’s have pretty cool artwork on the cover that you can’t get from downloading a song. A CD may have interesting liner notes that you can’t read from a downloaded song either. And if you go to a concert, and say, are lucky enough to go back stage and get an autograph, the singer or band most likely won’t sign a CD you burned from mp3’s you downloaded of their songs.
So, there are still plenty of reasons for me to buy your work despite the fact that I downloaded a song for free.
I can get a copy by buying it from someone else, and you don’t get paid. Unless you thought that whole Garth Brooks charging extra on people selling his used CD’s so that he could profit from their sales thing a good idea.
And yes, of course I know the difference of keeping a file forever and returning a book. But the result is the same. No money for you.
No thanks, but I’ll draw some for you.
Person A buys a CD -> For whatever reason they get tired of it and decide to sell it -> I buy the CD -> You don’t get paid.
The library buys a book -> They let people check it out -> I check out the book -> I read and return the book -> You don’t get paid.
Person A buys a CD -> They copy a song to their computer -> I go online and download it -> You don’t get paid.
