No, you made the mistake of putting words in my mouth.
Easier said than done and the labels don’t care if the music is good or not, they just want to make money. One of the reasons why theres been the proliferation of boy bands and Britneys in recent years is that the labels can make more money off of them than they can a legitmate group. IMHO, the reason that record sales has declined in recent years has more to do with the labels promoting shitty bands than it does filesharing. At one point in time a band could expect a label to nuture them as they developed, since the label knew that the band was likely to have a hit at some point. Now, if you don’t start cranking them out almost immediately, you’re axed.
And therefore filesharing is justified? Don’t get me wrong, I think it is fine and dandy for wholly separate reasons, but I’m having trouble understanding why you keep coming back to the point that some people sign shitty contracts.
The contracting agency exists in part due to the artificial monopoly created for the purpose of promoting the arts. What then is the case where the standard business practice of the contracting agency does not promote the progress necessary to justify their claimed rights?
Do you have any evidence of the existence of this supposed monopoly? Which company holds it, and how is it maintained? Wikipedia lists 338 separate record labels starting with the letter ‘A’. Not all of these will be independent, but perhaps you could explain to me how such diversity of distribution manages to persist within what is apparently such a dreadfully monopolised industry?
What, you mean people like to buy boy bands more? So? Define “legitimate group”. People like boy bands. Deal with it. There’s no shortage of high-profile quality music.
Then there’s a killing to be made promoting “legitimate” bands. Go start your own record label. I don’t see what relevance this has to anything whatsoever.
People’s tastes run the gamut from dreck to sophisticated. Accordingly, the supply of music matches that range. The fact that some people want to buy P!nk records in no way constricts my desire for, or access to, Joanna Newsom records. Once more, I fail to see what relevance this has to the rights and wrongs of filesharing. But then, requiring points to be relevant is apparently an unpopular line to take in this thread.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to rob HMV to provide my dying niece with a Westlife CD.
I download illegally. What I download is almost exclusively “orphan” work: out-of-print, obscure, non-hit music (mostly of the era 1925-1945) that is now mostly the province of isolated obsessive-compulsive collectors.
Most of this era’s music is tied up by big media companies like Sony, who can’t take the time or trouble to keep it available because it has virtually zero commercial potential. People in other countries can freely enjoy this era of recording in the public domain, but in the US it’s all in copyright (albeit thru a loophole in federal law) for 60 more years.
I kind of doubt it will happen, but I dread the thought of someone being sued for spreading music this old. If it does happen, we’ll know that Big Media is either paranoid past the point of all rationality, hoping to establish every possible precedent against anybody using their stuff in any way they don’t expressly approve of – or else they’re dogs in the manger of the common cultural heritage, dedicated to shoving every piece of culture that can’t pay its own way down the memory hole just because they can.
Ah, well here’s a different case. I firmly believe that copyright terms (in the US particularly) have ballooned far beyond the point of ridiculousness, and certainly well outside the spirit in which they were originally enacted, namely to encourage fruitful innovation and creativity. There’s definitely a balance to be struck, and it is not being struck at present; compare and contrast with the protection given to patents (21 years). Are musical works really almost an order of magnitude more deserving of protection than today’s spinning jenny? Here in the UK there’s been some debate about it recently(ish) due to the Elvis horizon approaching, shortly to be followed by earlier Beatles works. Thankfully our government seems to be resisting the idea that terms should be extended.
Unfortunately, there’s precious little such debate going on over here. It’s just not an issue that concerns anyone other than a small clutch of underfunded academics and a loose band of unlettered historians. Neither community has the kind of money or power necessary to change things, and without money or power, even the best arguments don’t get listened to or discussed much.
Really? Where? I can see some rambly bullshit about incorporated persons and guns, but I can’t really see anything there about a monopoly on music publishing.
Okay, who is, then? Is it Joan Baez? Carrot-top? Bruce Willis? Who? Is it a vegetable? Does it cure bad breath? Who’s stopping all these awesome artists from getting the deals they deserve? Is it George Bush?
Edit: Oh, I see, you think the fact that I think it must be a company doing the monopolising proves that I subconsciously associate companies with evil. Well, that’s a contender for the stupidest point of the thread, and let me tell you it’s got some company (har har).
I actually beleive that figure, if only because I know quite a few songwriters/musicians who have signed development deals with record companies and things didn’t work out. There’s nothing remotely shady about that.
There is no doubt that they inject buzzard, badger and fugu DNA into record company execs when they come to work each day, but not all “evidence” will be helpful to build a case against them.
Never said that filesharing was justified. I’m having trouble understanding why people are trying to have me say something I didn’t.
Never said that people don’t like boy bands or that there wasn’t quality music out there, only that the boy bands tend to be more heavily promoted than legitimate bands (which I’d define as ones who write their own music and play their own instruments).
Charlie Tan, the A&R guy felt that there was something seriously wrong with it and didn’t like helping musician friends make connections within the label because of it. He indicated that it was because the rep who signed them left the company that the bulk of the deals didn’t go through.
That Sony, for reasons I’ve clearly laid out, is a bunch of mindless jerks and there’s plenty of reasons not to buy their stuff. If you choose to interpret that as an endorsement of filesharing, you’re sorely mistaken.
Lets look at this another way. The Sony EULA clearly states that I am legally obligated to delete any music from an MP3 player, or my computer, should I no longer own the original discs. That is fine if I sell them, but what if they are destroyed or stolen. Or even more to the point: I still have hundreds of vinyl LP’s. It is inpractical to listen to them on a needle weilding “record player.” I would maintain that the Sony EULA implicetly allows me to download that music in a format I can actually use. If the loss of the disc releases all rights that I have to the music, then I maintain that loss of the ability, due to technology changes, to listen to what I have legally paid for allows me to obtain in an appropriate form. I am sure I would be sued in a heartbeat, if I was caught doing so however. Am I the only one who sees evil in this one way street?
I honestly don’t know if my daughter illegally downloaded music or not. I told her not to when she went to college, and never inquired again. However, the RIAA is going after the easy pickings, small ISP’s run by colleges. Their techniques in identifiying infringers is borderline at best, but the legal system is set up in such a way that the mere threat of a lawsuit is cheaper to settle than to fight.
I also question whether the following should in any way be illegal or immoral. Let’s say that Jack Jackson has a new CD coming out in two weeks. I love Jack Jackson, and will buy the CD the second I can. In the meantime, what is the conceivable harm in downloading some of the songs before the album is available, given that I do indeed go on to purchase it?
Basically, the record companies cannot possibly stop downloading. Most people are not trying to cheat them when they do. The need to find someone with IQ’s over 20 to find a way to profit from today’s new reality.
I would like to make a couple of points because I know we like nitpicking here.
Filesharing is not illegal. Making copies of copyright material is, or more precisely making copies of copyright material without the copyright owner’s permission is, no matter which method is used. There are many legitimate use for filesharing e.g. distributing Linux or software updates. The assumption that filesharing is illegal per se I find quite annoying.
If I create a work of art then someone claims it as their own, that is copyright theft. If someone makes an unauthorised copy of the work they have not stolen my copyright. They have infringed my rights under the law, but they have not deprived me of the copyright as such. Whether that infringement is theft can certainly be argued, but it is not theft of copyright.
As I understand it, filesharing is the boogeyman the RIAA (and its co-organisations in other countries) is using to explain lower profits. The change from vinyl to CD was like oprinting $$$ during roughly 15 years. Many people went out to re-buy what they had on vinyl and wanted to play on a cd, and the record companies found new ways to re-package old stuff and sell at full price. We had TV commercials over here, selling “The Greatest Swedish Hits by Elvis Presley” topping the compilation chart, selling @ $19.95 while older compilations were gathering dust in the bargain bins and not moving at a $2.99 price tag.
A lot of this stuff only needed packaging and promotion and the shareholders and execs got used to making easy money.
It’s not as easy anymore, but filesharing is not to blame, rather, it’s a market that’s increasingly fragmetized (is that a word?) where we see the same trends as in movies: Record companies tend to back up a few really big names, pour a lot of money into marketing and hoping that album swill sell like hell (as they do for opening weekends for movies). Radio stations play along as it is easier to front sell “The new song from Madonna” whereas selling “The new song from Moist van Lipwig” is much harder, no matter how good the song is.
In the end, RIAA is squeling, but their own figures state that record sales in the U.S. has dropped from $ 12.2 B to $11.5 B annually in the last ten years. $700M is a considerable amount of money but considering the noise the RIAA is making, it’s nowhere near as bad as they make it out to be.
So yes, there is a long time downward trend, 0.6 % annually. Is filesharing to blame? Partially, I suppose.
But maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with how they distribute. It might’ve something to do with what they produce and put their markeing efforts into.
This is one area where the recording industry’s arguments have always seemed especially inconsistent and self-serving to me. When it’s convenient for the recording industry, you are buying a physical thing (an album, a disc); when it’s convenient for them in a different way, you’re merely paying for the right to play the music.
When people complain about the price of CDs, arguing that a disc only costs a few cents to make and package and distribute, the recording industry’s position has been, essentially, “Well, you’re not paying for a disc. You’re really paying for a sort of license to own that particular album. You are paying for all the time and effort of recording and engineering the album, and you are paying the artist and the studio for the creativity and work involved in producing the album. The cost of the disc itself is rather incidental.” Fair enough. All this creativity and time and effort deserves to be rewarded.
If this were really true, then surely you should only have to pay once for this license, for all the time and effort involved in writing, performing, and engineering the music.
For example, the presence of the White Stripes CD Elephant in my CD collection indicates that i have paid enough money to cover the effort of creating that album, and have earned to right to play the music as often as i want. If i happen to drop the disc into a fire, it doesn’t change the fact that i’ve paid for this right. Theoretically, if i could prove that i’ve paid full price once, i should be able to get a replacement disc for about a buck (the cost of the actual disc and packaging, with a bit left over for handling), or download the songs for free. But if my disc gets damaged, or simply deteriorates to the point where it’s no longer playable (as some CDs are starting to do), the recording industry expects me to pay full price to replace it.
Same when formats change. If you bought Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon on vinyl back in the 1970s, you’ve already paid the band and their recording label for the privilege of owning the music. Why should you have to pay the full amount again merely to change formats? Why shouldn’t you get the new format for little more than the cost of the physical material?
Of course, one argument here is that extra work has gone into the new formats. The music is often digitally remastered for CD, requiring input of time and money. Again, fair enough. But the price of buying this old music on CD is often as expensive as buying brand new material, sometimes even more expensive.
I think it’s clear that we’re only talking about the filesharing of copyrighted works here, without every poster having to explicitly state this. No one is suggesting that bittorrent is inherently illegal, any more than http is. Also, you are the first person to use the term “copyright theft” in this thread.
dauerbach, these requirements that you attribute to the Sony EULA are in fact requirements of copyright law. You are not permitted to make a copy then sell the original, not because Sony say so, but because it is copyright infringement. The Sony EULA does not, implicitly or explicitly, allow you to download a shiny MP3 version of your vinyl records, any more than owning a DVD allows you to download a high-definition rip of a Blu-Ray disc, or any more than going to see a movie in the cinema allows you to download it afterwards. Not only do Sony not allow this in their EULA, copyright law explicitly forbids it. You might want to familiarise yourself with the tests applied for determining whether something falls under Fair Use provisions, because you seem to be under the mistaken impression that when you buy a copy of some work, you are buying a licence for access to that work in perpetuity in the format of your choosing. This is not the case.
On the first point, I fully agree. On the second, I couldn’t agree less. Most people download because it is free, and when you present people with a choice between paying and not paying with a minimal chance of getting caught, they will tend to go for the free option. And in the time saved by not walking to the shops, they will go on the internet and loudly protest how they’re only “sampling” the work, and fully intend to buy it later at their leisure. No matter how many scenarios you care to concoct in which a wholesome and lovely person downloads music that they can’t live without for the 7 days until it’s released in the shops, if you pretend that this represents the majority of filesharers, you’re simply deluding yourself. For every Beware of Doug, there are umpteen people who just don’t feel like paying for Razorlight or whatever.
You are, of course, correct about all this as it stands in law.
The question for me, however, is whether the recording industry has been consistent and logical in the way they have argued for the law as it currently stands. If you’re going to argue, as they have often done, that buying something like a CD is made up, in large measure, of buying the right to play something, then the question of how much of the cost is for the physical product and how much of the cost is for the intellectual property and work behind it, becomes relevant.
As i said, a case can be made for having to pay again when you shift format (e.g., vinyl to CD; DVD to Blu-Ray) because of the expense involved in re-engineering the content for the new format, but i’m still not convinced that charging full price is consistent with the argument the industry is making.
To take my earlier example. Say you own a vinyl copy of Dark Side of the Moon, and i don’t. You’ve already paid Pink Floyd and their record label once for this music. Yet you are expected to pay the same amount as me if you want to listen to it on CD. Wouldn’t it be fair, for example, to give you a CD in exchange for your vinyl album plus a couple of bucks for material, shipping, handling, etc.? Or at least give you a discount on the full price of the CD?
Of course, this system would probably be prohibitively difficult to implement, but i’m speculating about the fairness of it.
And the issue of what, exactly, you’re paying for becomes increasingly important to nail down now that we’re talking about buying music without buying any physical product whatsoever. For example, would you support a change in copyright law that required companies like iTunes to allow you to download all your previously-purchased songs again for free (or a nominal fee) if you could prove to them that you hard-drive exploded?
