On Ethics And Music Piracy

Great Debates
41

A few comments after looking over the posts:

I expected this to be a controversial topic (both my particular situation and file sharing in general), and I’m not really sure what I think of it myself; that is, I don’t think I have a “magic bullet” argument that proves the ethics/unethics of these activities. I imagine I’m not alone in my uncertainty; a lot of file sharers will likely admit, when pressed, that there might be something unethical about their behavior.

But the thing that shocked me most was that several posters reacted as though my “cheap” philosophy was unacceptable, presumably even if copyright violation were not a part of it. I don’t quite understand this line of thinking. I mean, I’m not being so cheap that I make myself miserable, and I’m not going around shoplifting things. I find that I don’t really WANT all that much stuff, and many of the things I do want can be had for free or for low prices, if I look in the right places.

Music is one exception to that; it’s something I do kind of like, but it’s tough to get it free/cheap in a format that’s not obsolete, and it’s not “essential” enough to get me to break down and pay full price for it. That’s why I brought up this tough question. But in general, I am cheap because I enjoy it; there is a kind of satisfaction that comes from finding your stereo speakers in the trash, or building a computer from eBay parts rather than paying Dell price for a whole (and probably inferior) system, or obsessively maintaining a 1986 car in order to make it run forever. You learn a lot by living this way, rather than just throwing money at every problem.

-Andrew L

42

Argh! After 107 posts, the hamsters finally played a little trick on me. Excuse the double.

-Andrew L

43

I’ll respond to a few nits here, and then move this discussion over the Justifications for theft thread, since it is discussing the same issues, and most of the folks here are already over there.

Not necessarily. I see your point, but that could be a matter of interpretation, since the act was put into law before stereo component CD burners for non-professional use existed.

Well, no, you can’t. You may have a limited loophole here under the AHRA, but you would clearly be violating the intent of the law. However, once you exceeded a $1,000 retail value threshold within 180 days, you would be subject to the No Electronic Theft law (Public Law 105-147).

BS. Do you include in “current copyright laws” the Constitution? How about common law before that? Because that is where this basic concept comes from. As I demonstrated before, without these protections, individuals have no incentive to create. Society benefits from these restrictions.

An intellectual property owner has exclusive rights, except as limited in the copyright laws, which includes the fair use exception (See US Code, Title 17, Chapter 1 for a list of all limitations). Your particular description of the scope of fair use is much more broad than the actual law.

Nonetheless, your contention is downright silly. If taken to the limit, where everyone began swapping music via non-commercial trading, the entire industry would cease to exist. If the same standard applied to other intellectual property, it would potentially undermine our entire economy.

Welcome to the SDMB! And to your point:

Nothing. It’s not the future, it is now. Any artist can place their works in the public domain and distribute it free of charge.

What I find most interesting about this debate is that it is the first time that I have found myself on the conservative side of an SDMB debate!

44

Most of our copyright law was written before the Internet existed, but that didn’t stop it from applying. A stereo component CD burner certainly meets the AHRA qualifications for a digital audio device–that’s why you need to buy “music CD-R” media to use it.

Minor quibble: The $1000 threshold of the NET Act is an amendment to Title 17, and the phrase “no action may be brought under this title” from the AHRA refers to Title 17, so it doesn’t apply in this case. The NET Act also amends Title 18 with a $2500 threshold, though.

Yes, the Constitution clearly states the purpose of copyright is “to promote the progress of science and the useful arts”. If noncommercial copying doesn’t lead to decreased purchases, it has no negative impact on demand, and thus no negative impact on progress.

Nonsense. You need only to look as far as Linux, GCC, and Emacs to see that impressive, elegant, and useful works can be created without a monetary incentive.

Sure, if everyone stopped buying music, there would be no music industry. But there’s no convincing evidence that services like Napster and Kazaa lead to decreased music purchases–see my cites earlier in this thread, which demonstrate the very opposite.

45

I always hear this argument raised, and it’s a crock.

The artist, at the time of creation, owns 100% of the rights to his music. The artist then has a choice: (1) self-market, or (2) sign a record deal where he takes a much smaller cut of each sale. Most artists will naturally take option 2, because then know they’ll make more money with a commercially produced and marketed CD than they will selling CD’s from the trunk of their car.

The RIAA does not hold a gun to anyone’s head. No band is forced to sign a record deal. Bands sign record deals because the alternative – not signing – is a clearly inferior option, even given the slanted terms of a typical record deal.

The artist voluntarily agreed to share the bounty from his intellectual property rights in exchange for marketing and distribution. So please, spare me the wails of “the artist only makes a few cents on every CD” – the artist does so because the artist agreed to those terms.

Now, having said that, let me say this: I think that sharing copyrighted MP3s over Napster-style netorks without the consent of the copyright holder is unethical and illegal. I also do it occasionally – I’ve got a small chunk of MP3s of songs I did not pay for, mostly one-hit wonder type things. It’s a vice and I shouldn’t do it. But on a moral level, I think this is a bit like rolling through stop signs late at night – a bad thing, sure, but hardly a mortal sin.

So spare me the sanctimonious justifications for unethical behavior – it’s more honest to just admit it’s wrong.

(BTW, I’m no fan of the RIAA; their stance on copyright terms is ridiculous, their Luddite efforts to combat rather than embrace P2P networks are stupid, and the terms they offer new artists are shameful. But just because the RIAA is nasty doesn’t make file sharing OK. Besides, the RIAA is fast working towards irrelevancy – I think Sam Stone once posted a quote from an industry exec which stated things perfectly: even if the RIAA is prefectly right on the law, and even if they are perfectly right morally, P2P will nevertheless continue to expand, and if the RIAA fails to recognize and embrace that fact, all their legal and moral correctness will be meaningless.)

46

personally I think the whole ethics question comes down to your downloading/purchasing habits.

this week I purchased the new Audioslave album and put in an order for a rare as hell hard to find local band who just happened to have a cd left for me to purchase…and I never would have even looked for the local band (Dub Narcotic Sound System for those who need to know) had I not first listened to some of their stuff from somewhere. and that means downloading it.

there are Very few bands/artists that I would ever purchase without first giving a listen to. so personally I find my downloading habits to be completely ethical and to hell with the law.

where else are you going to hear from bands like Lamb, Phat Sidy Smokehouse, Ursula 1000, 9 lazy 9, Ben Wa, Massive Attack, Sven Van Hees, Naked Funk, or Tosca?
not the radio,
not mtv,
and thanks to the riaa not on any net stations either.
so I have a few people and a few message boards where I can look for new sounds and see what I can scavenge off of kazaa before I decide to buy it or not.

I dont know if it helps but theres my 2cents

47

I have a different twist on the issue…

I love Kate Price, and I gladly bought her two most recent albums. I’m looking forward to buying any more albums she may release in the future. I wish I could buy her first two albums, but they’re out of print, and can’t be had for love nor money. Kate Price is a little-known artist whose first two albums were on an obscure little label that won’t keep her early work in print. Short of an unexpectedly massive surge in her popularity, they won’t ever be re-released.

Do your laws and your ethics demand that I should never get to hear this music? I made a moral judgment on my own that there was nothing wrong with me downloading the entire two albums. And I’m glad I did. Belaich An Dorain and The Time Between are really beautiful and this music shouldn’t have to go unheard and forgotten.

The same goes for photocopying old out-of-print books from the library.

48

Absolutely.

The copyright holder is given a monopoly by the government–i.e., We The People–as an incentive for creating new works, with the goal of eventually benefitting the rest of us by increasing our access to creative works. If the copyright holder is not holding up his end of the bargain by making his works available, we have no moral obligation to hold up our end by not making copies.

49

Wow, we sure can get into some interesting dilemas when we start thinking about the hows and whys of paying for information.

Personally, I think that the modern music industry is just begging for the world to tear it down and expose it for the boodsucking parasite that it is. The film industry is headed in more or less the same direction as the technology to pirate and distribute is already in the hands of the people.

Destroy the monolith of the “industry” and maybe, just maybe we will see a freer flow of innovation and collaboration. An elite cadre of musicians and studio execs might be disposessed of the ability to amass gross fortunes for themselves. I’m not saying that musicians shouldn’t be payed for their work, it’s just that the distribution and marketing system that we have been paying out the nose for are becoming obsolete. File-sharing has torn the world of music wide open, suddenly we can get the music we want and exactly what we want. Internet radio stations allow us to go beyond the narrowly defined genres of music we hear on the car stereo (and where I live, all those stations are owned by the same company - a certain Clear Channel Communications). This is a good thing for us, a bad thing for the top 40. Most musicians out there would have never gotten the chance to be heard under the regime of the industry, they lose out very little and they get the chance to be heard.

Hopefully, I’m just hoping, music will become something not to be hoarded for profit, but shared to be heard.

50

My clock radio is set to a Clear Channel station. Every day I wake up to the same song! There are 3-5 songs that are played during that hour, every single day. When they take an occasional break from playing this month’s Top 40 songs, they play last month’s Top 40 songs.

Clear Channel is a great example of what’s wrong with the music industry.

51

Some of the opinions on this start from the premise that we can decide who we want to pay for music: “I’ll pay the musician but not the record company.”

The record companies, swine that they may be, promote and develop artists commercially. They pay for records to be recorded and produced, offer tour support, advertise the artists’ records in print and on the air, pay for videos to be made. It is unfortunate that they charge all this back to the artists, but who can get as huge as say, U2 by recording in their garage, burning their own CDs, and selling them at gigs.

If you can find a band that has never benefitted from any of this, feel free to pay the band only. Unfortunately, the record companies are big stakeholders with often huge investments, and they expect not to be robbed.

52

why not simply ask who can get as huge as U2?

Only a tiny fraction of the musicians out there will ever have anything remotely resembling the opportunity to make it like U2 (a band that is of course highly overrated) because the industry controls our access to music. I for one will not lose any sleep at night because it becomes that much harder to become a millionare for simply singing well, playing well or more importantly - being attractive.

I know I am off in idealist land here, but I also realize that the recording industry has grown up around a relatively new technology. I say we should have plenty of time to change the rules of the game and put the power of musical choice back in the hands of the listener. Music has always in some sense been about “ripping other people off” but that is no longer a problem when you no longer expect to be paid for the rest of your life for a sequence of notes and beats you once recorded.

The marginal cost of pressing another cd is almost nothing, how does that translate into $18 or $20 for a cd with maybe one single on it that you like? Sure the costs come in the distribution (nearly obsolete), marketing (so we can be told what is cool to buy), production (a lot of fancy equipment), paying the company employees and the musicians. But hell it’s not like these are R&D costs the company needs to re-coup. We basically pay the cost of them agressively marketing overproduced crap to us and we eat it up and then defend their right to do it.

Free music I say.