What we need is a new form of copywright protection. We need to allow musicians to permit free and unlimited personal use of their songs while preventing other people from making money off them or claiming them as their own. While most musicians (we can assume) don’t mind their songs being distributed on the Internet, I think they would mind their songs being used in a Nissan commercial. If we can create a form of protection like that, I predict that labels will die off as more and more musicians take a Do-it-yourself approuch. I predict that the same thing will happen with the film industry as well. When that happens the people will have the power of creation in their hands instead of in the hands of corporations. Go Napster!
Lord, it’s very refreshing to be called naive!
There’s nothing ‘American’ about the glorification of the creative process. In fact, many would claim that Americans are the world’s experts on glorifying theft, or rather, stealing someone else’s ideas and calling them one’s own. We have quite a track record of failing to acknowledge foreign inventors and creators.
A musician needs a producer, not like a writer needs an editor, but rather like a playwright needs a theater director. Not to help assess the creation, but to ensure that the creation translates well to the audience. You misunderstand the role of producer. The producer has NO input into the creative process (there are, as in everything, some exceptions - usually occurring when a band works with the same producer over a decade or so and develops a real relationship), but is in charge of getting the best possible sound out of the recording artist.
I entirely disagree. Even if, at times, it is helpful to receive outside, objective opinion, that person giving the opinion doesn’t suddenly become partially responsible for the creation. Besides, musicians perform live. Live performance is like having hundreds of editors. After some of our shows we get all sorts of opinions and suggestions. This reduces the importance of a producer even further.
Again, not true. Kafka, Doestoyevsky, Lovecraft, Tolkien, Poe, James, Herbert, and many more I could list had no long-time editor to speak of.
Again, you fail to understand the job of record producer. Many producers work in partnership with recording studios. I have recorded in a small studio and had their head producer help out with the recording process and offer these typical suggestions, “Do you think the interlude might sound a bit better with less distortion?”, “Could you try that part again, with a little more high-hat?” & “Some more bass might be good about here.” I would have been stunned if the guy said, “That song really should have ended two minutes ago - let’s try re-writing everything after the bridge.” Like I said, by the time you get to the studio, you’ve played the song in front of crowds dozens or hundreds of times. That’s when you work on the tunes, not when you’re paying $120/hour.
Yes, you just missed my point. Both the King James and vast chuncks of Ayn Rand’s writings are butchered versions of earlier, more honest existing material which were intended to be read and understood by the gullible.
Yet to be reconciled with the reality of the dark for a moment, I go on wandering from dream to dream.
Johnny Angel wrote
Again, that may be your opinion, but it is not the opinion of the laws put in place by our society. Theft of Intellectual Property is Theft. Period.
Now, you bring up a good point of what the damages of such theft are. This is handled the same as any other thievery. If I steal something from you, you must take me to court and describe the damages. I may then argue that the damage is lower than you claim. Finally, justice is found somewhere in-between.
Stealing a song that has a market-value of 30 cents may make things academic, and it may make it impossible to prosecute, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s theft. Not partial-watered-down-who-really-owns-the-wind-in-the-trees-theft, but theft as real as stealing the bicycle out of my front yard.
RTFirefly wrote
Believe it or not, I was a musician once upon a time. I had a small recording studio in my house and use to record the local bands. I was a reasonable guitar player, and (I thought) an above average producer. This is about 10 years ago.
One thing that’s very cool about being a musician and producer (I’m sure Sake Samurai can relate to this) is that you hear things in music that most listeners don’t. You appreciate a particular kind of reverb on that snare, or some faint instrument off to the side, or some effect on the guitar that you know how to reproduce.
I understand the beauty of music. More than most, I daresay. Perhaps not more than you. But more than you give me credit for.
Sake Samurai wrote
Take a deep breath, my friend.
and
I think there are a few concepts here:
[ul][li]Creative Ownership. If someone writes a tune, that can never be taken away from him. Ala John Fogarty: It doesn’t matter that Saul Zaentz ripped him off; John is and always will be the author. As you say, he and he alone.[/li][li]Property Ownership. If an author decides to sell part or all of his song, he no longer owns it.[/li][li]Future Creation. Let’s see, how can I put this crisply: An artist works with a record company because the record company brings him more money than he could otherwise make. That money enables him to give up his day job and focus on music full-time. As a direct result, the artist creates more music than he would’ve had he not engaged the music company. So yes, the extra work was created by the musician, but it would not have existed if not for the record company. BTW, this is part of what I meant when I said they “create the business.”[/ul][/li]
Sake Samurai wrote
I will repeat the orginal posting:
Sake Samurai: I don’t think ANYONE should be getting rich off recorded music.
Was that said in heat, or did you really mean that? Is music really so precious? How about food? Or shelter?
billehunt, Johnny’s point was that stealing your bicycle out of your front yard deprives you of your bicycle while stealing your song does not deprive you of your song. You are right to say it is still thievery; after all, you did not give your permissioin for the song to by ripped off and you did put effort into it’s creation. You can not, however, equate the song to the bicycle.
Your discussion of Creative & Property Ownership seems to agree with my statement that the author has full responsibility & control over his material - we agree.
The concept of Future Creation is hollow. I win the lottery, quit my job and write full-time and produce the best album ever. You’re trying to tell me that the State (and everyone who bought a ticket) now deserves some credit for my songs? My current full time job allows me the money to buy a new Mesa dual rectifier,Aquarian heads, and other expensive musical equipment - I suppose my boss should get 25% of any royalties I earn, right? This is voodoo economics, my friend.
New, creative music is precious like poetry, painting, and the rest of art. True art is NOT created for money. It is unlike food & shelter. Food is a cheap necessity. Shelter is a cheap luxury. Neither are sublime without the element of art applied to them. A 4 Star chef turns sustanence into a feast for the senses. An avant-guard architect transforms a lean-to into a bold statement about man’s interaction with nature.
Everyone can place concrete value upon a steak dinner: say $12 - $50
Can you place a value upon Bach’s Cello Suites or the Sistine Chapel’s artwork? Some heathens would say they are worthless, while some fanatics would die for them.
Now music as a commercial product is a little different. Musak is sold to thousands of businesses to loosen up the atmosphere - it’s not great art, but it’s still music. We can certainly place value upon that. Much that is churned out of Nashville or L.A. is product. Sold to capture a chunk of the market. N’Synch is product, Metallica has become product. There’s a line there somewhere, but that’s a whole other debate.
Are we in agreement here, or do you still hold that music = soap.
Yet to be reconciled with the reality of the dark for a moment, I go on wandering from dream to dream.
I have a question to pose her. Lets say I’m listining to the radio. The DJ comes on and says that after the commercial, he will be playing Sake Samurai’s latest hit. I think the song rocks, and would like to listen to it whenever I want to, so I start my tape player recording. I can then enjoy the song anytime. Is this illeagle? If not, how is it different than what Napster does? otice i am only enjoying the song for myself, not trying to sell it. maybe some of you more knowledgeable types can answer. Also, I saw this quote:
I checked out this Napster program, and I did find some obscure stuff, but I can’t find the 1 song I’ve been looking for years, Sausilito Summer Nights by, I believe, Diesel. Does anyone out there know where I can find it? I havent even seen it on any compilation albums. This is where I would have no qualms about using Napster- I’ve tried everywhere else I can think of. If I were to find it there,I would download it in a heartbeat.
Cecil said it. I believe it. That settles it.
Wierdave, since different people (and their collections) are logged in at different times, a search that fails at one time may hit a few hours later. It took me a few trys to find some things (and yes, some things were never found).
Just for shits and grins, I did a search for artist :Diesel and Song Title:summer, and it came up. User by name of btfd43 has it.
Friggin smiley
It was, of course, “Diesel” for artist
bilehunt wrote:
You must be really hard to live with. I can just imagine what it would be like just to offer you an apple:
bilehunt: I don’t like oranges.
Johnny Angel: It’s an apple.
bilehunt: In your opinion. The grocer says it’s an orange.
Johnny Angel: No, the grocer says it’s an apple. And anyway, it doesn’t meet the criteria for an orange. For one thing, it isn’t orange.
bilehunt: In your opinion. But in the opinion of the grocer, oranges are orange.
Since you keep insisting on looking to the law to make your case, and you obviously set a lot of store by it, I strongly recommend that you learn something about how the law actually works. I have already pointed out that the law does not say what you think it says about copyrights. Let me further point out that the law does not handle theft in the way you describe. Even if we take it that the law is the standard to go by, the law has nothing to do with what you’re talking about.
Re: Theft/etc
-
Piracy is not theft, it is piracy. The terms are different. Theft deprives the original owner of the property, piracy just involves making a copy.
-
Piracy isn’t necessarily wrong, the world functioned well without laws against it for a long time. Perhaps we are better served by having the laws, but this is a matter open to honest debate. The issue is basically that IP laws prevent you from recreating something you have seen/heard, and this is a form of tyranny and control of speech. I myself fall somewhere in the middle. I think the laws are insanely powerful and shouldn’t be, but I recognize the value of the laws.
-
Laws and morality are not the same. Ask a christian is they believe murder is wrong because there’s a law against it, with a set punishment, or because there’s a commandment against it in the bible. I’m not a christian and I believe murder is wrong, but I also believed this long before I knew it was illegal.
To say that piracy is wrong morally is incorrect, unless your morals are identical to statues. Were I to move to a country with different laws, my morals would remain the same. Were my country to pass different laws, my morals would remain the same.
Personal views:
I have no problem with MP3s, from the view of me and the distributor. They do two things, record and distribute the music. The recording I owe them a bit for, but it’s essentially free compared to the cost of the distribution, which I am not using, because I’m paying for my internet traffic. Thus I see no reason why the studios deserve my money. They haven’t created anything, they’re just controlling it.
As for the artist. Well, I’d pay them if I could, and have long advocated that a system would be created whereby people could download music straight from the artist, for a certain fee. The only requirement to do this would be moral, but for the music I listen to, I could easily pay .10 to .25 per track, which would be an easy win for the artist compared to the current system.
And for music I download and listen to once, I have a hard time seeing that as a moral offence, no matter what.
And nobody has ever used an agent who wasn’t associated with the recording industry?
I think that if the whole industry went belly up, fans would still want concerts, and there would be plenty of agents, experienced in this line of work, who would make the arrangements. And given that these agents wouldn’t own the venues, and thus couldn’t control the means of distribution, they’d have to play fairly or be replaced. The problem with the recording industry is that they have many exclusive deals with the stores, so not only will they only market CDs they sell, but stores will only carry CDs from a major label, often because of fear of reprocussions.
Anyways, I have to run out the door, so more later.
SOB! I found the song! Thanks! Now that I listen to it tho, I wonder why I’ve been looking so hard. It’s ok, but I remember liking it better. Oh, well, at least I found it.
Cecil said it. I believe it. That settles it.
Heh, I know what you mean wierddave. I was looking for “Obsession” by Animotion and “One Night In Bangkok” by Murray Head for a while. One day, “Woohoo! Got 'em!”
And they suck. Well, more like my musical tastes have changed.
Just thought I’d throw something else out there, not really related to much of the debate but definitely an ‘issue’ with Napster. If you have Napster, do this: do a search for Gin & Juice by Artist Phish. You will find hundreds of hits. Now, download this song, listen to it. Its not Phish. Its a wonderfully humurous, well done cover of Snoop’s classic (done bluegrass style). It is not, however, Phish. I didn’t realize this at first, although several things struck me:
I’ve never heard much mandolin from Phish before, I don’t know if Trey even plays it.
The vocals do not belong to Trey, Paige or Mike. Fishman I can’t remember, but I don’t think he sings much.
The last thing I noticed, and what made me go searching, was that I realized it was not a live cover. It was recorded in a studio.
Now, I really could not imagine Phish recording this in a studio, so I did another search. I was very lucky, I found the same song (amid hundreds of Snoops and Phishs) with the name “String Cheese Incident” in front of it. I looked up String Cheese - sure enough they are an ‘eclectic’ band that incorporates bluegrass, funk, jazz, rock and roll and other musical styles. They have a full time mandolin player. I looked them up on napster, downloaded more tunes: Bingo. (Actually, some of their live stuff sounds a lot like Phish!)
However, there are hundreds, if not thousands of people listening to this studio recording and playing it for their friends and laughing their asses off (it really is a great song, but its just so funny if you’ve heard the Snoop version) - all the while giving credit to a great band who simply never recorded this song. It is Napster’s fault - or rather the fault of the Napster user community which is totally unregulated. Is it a serious problem? No, but The String Cheese Incident is having some seriously needed publicity stolen from them by people who cannot tell one band from another.
Johnny Angel wrote
Personal attacks don’t add to the validity of your argument, and certainly don’t add extra value to the discussion.
It takes two to tango: You have insisted (just as vehemenently) that taking IP is not theft. Does that make you difficult to live with? I suspect not.
And for what it’s worth, the people in my life consider me a reasonably nice person.
and
Whether I set the store by it is irrelevant. It is the definition of our point of contention. What other standard could you possibly apply?
Ah, that must make it so.
Ultimately, you’re insisting that your knowledge of this area of law is greater than mine. That may be so. Let me describe my background relevant to this discussion. I am not an IP lawyer, nor an expert in the field. However, I hold several patents (actually owned by companies I worked for), and in the process of acquiring those patents I worked extensively with IP lawyers and learned something of the subject. Also, as a company manager I set up an IP program at my two last companies, again working extensively with IP lawyers. Finally, I have been involved in squabbles on both sides of the IP theft issue, where I worked with lawyers who are experts in the field. Now, patents are different from copyrights, and the area was software, not songwriting. But I have a fair amount of experience in the area of IP.
As I say, is there any other standard to go by? I know you’re not crazy about the Bill Standard. How about the Sake Samurai Standard? Is the Johnny Angel standard the only one that’ll do? That’s what law is all about.
I did a quick search at the U.S. Copyright office. I didn’t see much relating to theft, but there was this:
Sake Samurai wrote
Differences:
[list=1][li]The Record Companies are specifically in the business of finding and funding successful artists. Neither the lottery nor your boss have that motive.[/li][li]The Record Companies expect delivery of music for their initial financial commitment.[/li][li]The Record Companies expect delivery of future music, i.e. they expect that you’ll create as much as possible.[/list=1][/li]I’m not saying that your Boss should own 25% of what you do in your off hours. But he should be entitled to some ownership of what’s produced in your on-hours. Record Company’s just a new boss (same as the …)
[quote]
Hmmmm, many choices here. Should I
[list=1][li]point out my original post said “music is a product like soap,” not “music is soap”[/li][li]Attempt humor, perhaps with a witty reference to a cleaning song, like “Working at the Carwash” or “Splish, Splash I was taking a bath” or… Shoot, neither of those are funny, and I can’t think of any cool songs involving soap. Maybe “Clean” by Depeche Mode.[/li][li]Make some really nasty comment, perhaps along the lines that clean and music can’t go together, or perhaps insult the hygiene of musicians in general.[/li][li]or …[/list=1][/li][/quote]
Well, with an attitude like that, what can I do but offer a hardy handshake.
[Moderator Note: edited to fix the fact that the “CODE” tag negates automatic line break, resulting in an ultra-wide page if you don’t put 'em in on your own. Careful with that tag, guys.]
[Note: This message has been edited by Gaudere]
[Note: This message has been edited by Gaudere]
Bill, granted, labels often push groups into producing more music so they can profit (but not too much to flood the market), but the rel big money makers (Michael Jackson, Greatful Dead, etc) do things on their own time.
Tool is an even better example. They spend an ungodly amount of time writing, recording and mixing their albums (been around almost 10 years and have only released two albums and one EP). It’s more than worth the wait, but it’s a matter of great friction with their label, BMG/Zoo (I think they’re still in court over it). Often labels can cripple an artist, holding them back and making them expend great effort with legal and business matters. There’s just something unholy and evil about slick, jaded executives raping aspiring, creative artists. I bet Satan works for a Record Company :).
I’m not going to keep refuting your points, we just disagree here. Part of this is certainly the fact that I am a struggling musician who puts a chunk of my soul into creation.
Oh, by the way, my ears are still ringing from last night’s practice - I appreciate the whispering!
Thanks for the debate!
Yet to be reconciled with the reality of the dark for a moment, I go on wandering from dream to dream.
Don’t know if you all have heard of Gnutella, it’s an open-source Napster clone, developed by Nullsoft(WinAmp creators).
http://gnutella.nerdherd.net http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/ptech/03/15/gnutella/index.html
Up the Irons!
billehunt wrote:
It was a little too light-hearted to be so easily dismissed as a personal attack. And I never claimed that it supported my argument. It was a joke, a harmless jape; and speaking as a person who knows from funny, let me assure you it was funny.
Except that I have defended my position with discussions of the nature of copyrights, where as you have merely reiterated yours without attempting to justify it or given any evidence to counter mine.
Nobody said you weren’t. Relax.
If you disagree, state your evidence and make an argument. Ah, but I know by now that you never intend to do so. You have made no attempt to support your position or to address my arguments. Until you do, I will not waste any more of my time trying to explain to you why you’re wrong.
Johnny Angel wrote
I had a huge ranting ready for posting, but after taking a quick walk outside, I deleted it. I’ll just leave the following:
In future postings, please either
a) cite even one reference
b) enumerate your qualifications as an expert, or
c) say something remotely resembling humor
On this thread at least, you’ve done none of that, instead spouting again and again, “I said it, therefore it’s so.”
billehunt wrote:
What claims have I made that require citation? The burden of proof is on the person making the unlikely claim (i.e., you). I quoted federal copyright law which clearly outlines the concept of copyright as a right and I made an argument about the extent to which it is also a form of property.
You have made an attempt to provide proof of the claim that copyright violation is considered theft in the eyes of the law, and have come up with a citation that establishes only what I had already conceded – that a copyright is a form of property – but doesn’t establish that it is a kind of property that can be stolen. It also doesn’t establish that a violation of a copyright is considered `theft’ by the law. A violator is charged with copyright violation, not theft.
This is only necessary if I’m making an argument from authority, which I am not.
What you keep dismissing as merely my opinions are actually arguments. An opinion is a statement which may or may not correspond to the truth. An argument is a set of two or more statements such that one, and only one, of which is claimed to follow from the rest, which are reguarded as providing evidence for the truth of that one. Since I have not merely stated my opinion but have explained my reasoning behind my opinions, the issue is not my expertise, but whether I am using valid arguments based on true premises. If you take issue with any particular premises or whether my conclusions follow from them, then you are dealing with my argument. Otherwise, you are simply comitting ad hominem.
Tell you what, I’ll move this part of the discussion to the Barbecue Pit, and we’ll be nice and civil in Great Debates.