And why should’t music be considered a product?
WTF? That’s the exact way a free-market, capitalist society would do things. The notion of intellectual property is a government intervention. It impairs the free market.
And yeah, artists should donate their time, talents, and facilities and make one copy available to everyone. That’s how it was done before the mid-1750’s (and even after that in many cases). Would you argue that art didn’t exist then? Nonsense. Great artists are compelled by their muses to create regardless of financial remuneration, as history proves.
UnuMondo
History also proves that unscupulous people can rip off your songs, plagiarise them, and make a shitload out of them.
Imagine another John Lennon comes along. He releases a truckload of potential hits via his website.
An unscrupulous producer comes along, steals those tunes and gets a band full of pretty young things to sell a gazillion albums, tickets, posters, and t-shirts.
According to your ridiculous assertion, the John Lennon deserves nothing because, hey, at least he gave us his art.
I challenge you to convince me that such a hypothetical is fair. And that further, that in the abscence of recognised “intellectual property”, that such a thing wouldn’t happen. Like hell it wouldn’t.
No, it is a social construct (and an intuitive one to most) to ensure that profit can be made from non-tangible works, thus ensuring that those works will be created. It’s there for a fucking good reason. It doesn’t impair the free market, it fucking well enables it.
Handy hint: a free market is not one in which you take whatever you can, bequeathing money if you see fit. It’s one where both parties negotiate a fair price for the good which is exchanged. If the artist believes that zero is a fair price, then that is their prerogative, and no “buyer” will complain. It is not up to the buyer to enforce zero as a “fair” price through theft. If you think a non-tangible good is worth nothing, then don’t bloody well use that good.
Finally, I would like to note that claiming that system x worked 300 years ago therefore it’s fine now is, not to put too fine a point on it, fucking dumb.
And are you willing to support all of us who have “muses”? Those of us who create things have to make a living too, you know.
It’s kind of hard to listen to your “muse” if you’re too exhausted working at the office all day. And even when you are not too exhausted, you still have a lot less time to listen to that muse since you are also holding down a full-time non-creative job to make a living. A lot less time means a lot less of the good stuff that you so want to consume without paying for it.
Or should all of us who have “muses” rely on benefactors? How many people will step up to the plate and be a benefactor for the many, many, many creative people out there? Will you? And if not, why not?
If you don’t want to be a “benefactor,” to help support those people who make the things you enjoy consuming, then in my opinion, you’re a leech. If you do want to be a benefactor, you’re still paying for the stuff you enjoy listening to.
And, how do you think that big-budget creative projects (like the film The Lord of the Rings) are going to be funded if the people who made the film can’t feel entitled to get paid for their work? Is it going to be funded by benefactors? Or, should all the actors, tradesmen, photographers, stuntment, everyone who worked on the films just work for free? Is that how you see it happening? Who can afford to be a “benefactor” for something that expensive, and just give it away? Who can afford to work on that huge (and lengthy) of a project without getting paid for it?
Your sample size is too small to be meaningful.
In that same time that P2P took off, my company, which has absolutely nothing to do with music or videos, laid off thousands of people. Coincidence?
An entire strip mall of stores (a Pet Food superstore, a battery retailer, a bar, and a realtor) near my house went out of business, one by one. Coincidence?
A Blockbuster Video nearby went out of business and was replaced by a restaurant. Coincidence?
None of these samples, nor yours, mean anything from a statistical or causal standpoint. And the fact that the RIAA and their ilk are trumpeting questionable figures about “abominable” drops in CD sales, over a more than 2-year slump in the economy, is so intellectually dishonest that it only shows moreso what sleaze they are.
Are you actually saying that would sue the Chicago Reader if it could be shown that “financial loss was incurred” by yourself due to being flamed on the SDMB? Rather than suing the person(s) who are actually responsible for the flaming?
Gee, you know, if it was sufficiently libellous, AND if it could be shown to have impacted in such a way that a financial tort had occurred in some manner, AND if the Chicago Reader refused to assist in identifying said flamer, AND if it could be shown that said flamer had instigated a policy of libellous conspiracy - yes, under those circumstances - possibly I’d consider it - but as I earlier noted, it would be an extremely tenuous series of links to prove beyond reasonable doubt.
Singularly, the caveat that I would like to stress none too highly is that I would need to be absolutely convinced that I had suffered inarguable financial loss AND that the Chicago Reader was actively preventing myself from obtaining said flamers identity.
Given that none of these things are likely to ever happen, it’s all kinda hypothetical I should like to point out.
What a twisted heap of tortured logic this thread is. I’m truly embarrassed for some you even if you don’t have the wherewithal to be embarrassed for yourselves.
“I know a guy who used to own a record store, and the day that Kazaa 1.2b was released, his sales dropped by 90%, and when he got home that night he found his wife in bed with his dog and all plants in the house were dead.”
“Yeah… well I know a band that swears they are making more money after they made their songs available online. Besides, I go out and buy any song that I like after hearing it; and if I don’t like a song, I delete it and reformat my hard drive. I never would have bought that album anyway, so I’m not doing anything wrong.”
Codswallop. Stow your inane anecdotes and excuses. The RIAA is a group of greedy wankers who don’t think twice about using intimidation and electronic snooping of questionable legality to ensure that you can’t figure out that 98% of all media available for sale is utter drek until you’ve already paid for it. Admittedly odious, but so what? That doesn’t change the law one iota, and doesn’t make you some electronic Robin Hood for appropriating works that don’t belong to you. The fact that you delete them, buy them later, or will all your worldly possessions to the artist has zero impact.
Conversely, these artists’ rights anec-tistics are steaming fabricated bullshit. Few, if any, artists are going to come into sudden wealth even if all the file sharers simultaneously went back to surfing for porn tomorrow. You don’t need to twist the truth to make your case. People are allowed ownership of their own works, even if those works are puddles of monkey-toss and no sane person would part with a pocketful of lint for them.
You want to ‘file share’? Be my guest, but quit the weaseling. I’ve file shared and I don’t delude myself for one moment that, despite my dislike of the RIAA and their ilk, it is legal – but fuck it, I’m evil and it meshes fine with my skewed moral code.
“Great artists” in that time period may have had muses, but also generally had wealthy and powerful patrons who would commission works from the artists. They created works because the Prince Archbishop of Salzburg, the Comte de Medici or whoever said “write me an opera” or “paint me a landscape.” It was transitory work at best. And what was really being purchased were personal services, not the work itself.
And the idea that property rights impair the free market is absolutely laughable. Property rights are a fundamental part of the free market. It is only the right to assert a claim of ownership that makes a commodity marketable. Intellectual property laws are the vehicle for making intangible assets marketable.
Whether or not an artist gets paid for their work depends entirely on whether or not the listening/viewing/reading/etc. public likes it enough to pay money to hear/see/read it. The idea that “I put time into this work and therefore I deserve to be paid for it” is one whose logic escapes me. Artists do not contribute a necessary service. No one asked my band to record our last EP; we did it of our own accord.
This thread is specifically about standalone music, so I’m not going to write out a list of disclaimers for web designers, graphic designers, newspaper reporters, etc. who are commissioned for their work.
Christ, what a totally arbitrary argument. This is like the anti-abortionists who worry that some aborted fetuses may have become great leaders, peacemakers, doctors, etc.
If “John Lennon” chose to put his music up on the web, he clearly was less interested in making money off of it than in gaining some kind of fanbase.
And when in this thread has anyone else suggested that filesharing somehow makes it easier for people to steal (read: claim as one’s own) another’s songs?
This is the dumbest thing I’ve read all month.
Very few things are neccessary when it all boils down.
The image of logic running headlong in an attempt to escape you is fairly close to the truth, I agree. I think you will find that this idea which is so alien to you is one upon which our entire economic culture is based. Is there some secret competition going on here to make mind-fuckingly stupid statements?
And are you selling this EP or just giving away copies away free to anyone who asks? Because if you are selling it, I would call it a product**, as much as that label bothers you when associated with music. And if you are giving it away for free, well, that is fine because it is your creation and the law states that you should have control of the distribution of your intellectual property. So give it away if you like and offer it to everyone to download for free. Being that “nobody asked you to record it”, there probably isn’t much demand for it anyway.
But I have the legal right to control the distribution of my artwork too. And if I don’t choose to give it away for free, that is my right. That is the way it has been for a long time and that is the way it should stay.
For all of those that think that all artists should just give away all of their work for free, I think you would be surprised at how much less music would be available to you if nobody was able to make a living from their livelihood. People need to work to make a living and if they can’t make a living at music, they have to do something else, which means less time, if any, for making music.
And it would truly be a shame if an artist couldn’t make a living anymore simply because a bunch of whining fucking crybabies think they have a right to have everything in this world given to them for free. Although, considering that the majority of offenders are high school and college age kids, who’s parents more than likely pay their tuitions, room and board, and probably the nifty little laptop that they are using to break the law, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why they think that they deserve music for free as well. But someday, they will have to get a job. They will have to pay rent. And my guess is that they are going to expect to be paid damn well for whatever thing it is that they have worked long and hard to become good at. Then maybe they will realize that if they were asked to give away their services for free, they would find it just a bit fucking offensive as well.
At this point it looks like others have saved me the need from going over ECON 101 for the likes of UnuMondo and Mr2001.
Very funny Dead Badger, very, very funny.
Actually, I can agree with this statement to a point. If you download a song and listen to it and decide that you don’t like it, you delete it off your computer. I have no problem with that as I would consider that download to be a time-shift (if the courts see it that way I don’t know). However, if you download a song and keep it on your computer it then you need to pay for it. You would have made the decision that the music is worth listening to, so then the artist deserves compensation for it.
If you still think that a song you like is not worth paying for, try this little experiment: Take a hand held scanner into a bookstore. Find a book that you think may be interesting and start scanning the pages. See how far your “I wasn’t going to buy it anyway/it isn’t worth buying” argument gets you.
And do you take the art from the museum home with you? In fact in any of the examples you cited, do you end up actually possessing a copy of the work to enjoy at your convenience?
As I expected, none of the anti file sharing people answered my simple objection.
There is currently no alternative to file sharing.
If music is important to you, if you want to find artists which will eventually become your favorites, if you want to listen to a wide variety of music:
There. Is. No. Alternative.
All your insane arguments about how the artists are being hurt by music listeners, rather than by a RIAA which refuses to give the music listeners what they want, and doesn’t even give the artists their share when they do make money, are ridiculous.
What if a band sells the rights to their music to a company, and the company decides to not even release it? If people download the songs, they are breaking the copyright laws, but can you really say with a straight face that the artist is hurt?
I dare you to try and say that without bursting out laughing at yourself.
The fact of the matter is that blaming the music listener is absurd. The listener wants the ability to find a diamond in the rough. The listener wants the ability to listen to a wide variety of music.
The RIAA simply refuses to offer this.
So yes, the RIAA is completely responsible for any harm done to artists. Which, of course, does not cause any discomfort to the RIAA - the fact that giving the listeners what they want would greatly help artists is likely one reason the RIAA hasn’t done it yet. Their entire business is based on cheating and controlling the artists. They don’t want people to have access to a wide variety of music, because they might not like the artists the RIAA wants them to like.
As for me, until there is an alternative I will contine to file share. It’s that simple. All these elaborate, and frankly ludicrous, arguments that you are coming up with fall to simple, objective reality - as long as there is no alternative, file sharing is the only option for people who want to listen to music.
What the everloving fuck are you on about? How then, did I happen to come by a cd collection numbering in the hundreds without file sharing? I assure you, I don’t fileshare. Gosh, it’s a mystery. Maybe it’s because I used one of the following apparently nonexistent, and utterly impenetrable alternatives:
- Magazines/online reviews
- Radio/webcasters
- Borrowing from friends/library
- Asking to hear it in the shop
- Personal recommendations
- Festivals
- Artists’ websites
- Amazon previews
And these are just off the top of my head. Your ludicrous assertion that it’s somehow impossible to find out about artists without filesharing is rather stunningly shat upon by the fact that filesharing is a NEW BLOODY PHENOMENON. What the hell do you think people did before it? They got off their bloody arses and didn’t break the bloody law, that’s what. Sample my arse; what exactly do you do in Kazaa - type in “something nice and obscure please” then cream yourself when Thee Michelle Gunne Elephant starts playing? No, you don’t, you have to bloody know what you’re after, and if you know what you’re after then filesharing has not opened your eyes, something else has. Web radio now exists in such diversity that the most obscure sub-sub-sub-subgenre is catered for, or you can find something as bland as Phil Collins paté if that’s your bag. “I have to steal this or I’d never hear it” is rationalisation, pure and simple.
Yeah, there could never possibly be a causative relation between listeners paying and artists getting money - perish the thought. You’ll be telling me the pope shits on bears next.
Then they’re a stupid bloody band, that’s what. Sheesh, exactly how often do you think this argument applies?
Other, of course, than actually paying for the product you’re using. Idiot. I mean, hell, to hear you talk, it’s as if up until file sharing was invented, no one ever listened to music.
Simple, objective reality, my ass.