f13.net

Nothing can be done. They need to stop spending money to prevent piracy. Doucetards.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I heard about a great movie you can download on the net.

Edit: I say this in completely and utter awe - looks like the whole dvd made it to the net. Someone needs to work on their weak hollywood investigation skills.

So the movie is completely finished and they're not going to let me buy it until September?  How am I supposed to NOT download it when the alternative is waiting more than a month?  It'll probably show up in my email unbidden before that time is up.

So let me get this straight.  Someone leaks (read as: pirates) an upcoming DVD release, and for some reason the fact that it's available way before it's supposed to be available is good?

Or did you  two forget to use the green sarcasm text?

Shit like this is what the RIAA and the MPAA feed upon.  If people wouldn't be stupid with shit like this, P2P networks wouldn't be getting the shit they're getting (i.e. the Grokster case).

People need to realize that if they want more freedom, they can't be INT4RW3B R00tz R4Wk R3b3lz and hope that their virtual robin hood personae won't be taken as utter bullshit by those with the money and political clout. 

Odds are very good that I'll end up seeing this movie one way or another before I can pay to see it, which I'm glad for because I like instant gratification.  Odds are even better that I will pay for it regardless come September, which the MPAA should be glad for because it means they get their goddamned money.  Crossing fingers and hoping that nobody will leak highly coveted media, or hoping that when highly coveted media gets leaked nobody will download it, isn't likely to get either of us anywhere, because if crossing fingers and hoping for things worked, I'd be Emperor of the Universe and none of this would matter.

What I'm hoping is that stuff like this keeps happening and that the industry is forced to cope in an effective manner (and by effective I don't mean sending the Gestapo after students).  If file sharing stops in reponse to the MPAA and RIAA's use of intimidation tactics (which is a gussied-up name for terrorism when you get right down to it), it'll just encourage more of the same in the future.  I want these knuckleheads to see that what they're doing isn't working, and try something else, something that will be beneficial to everyone involved.  Like maybe coming up with something that gets me my instant gratification AND gets them their goddamned money.

The Stewie Griffin DVD will probably be one of the best selling DVDs in the history of the world despite this. So, frankly, I don't give a damn. I'll buy it and when they double dip it with episodes I'll buy it again.

Frankly, if you have something worth buying, pirates will download it and then buy it. It's just How Things Work.

Its terrorism to enforce the law?  How the hell is suing over piracy or prosecuting criminally any different than enforcing the law in every other area?  Do you regard every attempt to enforce every law as terrorism?

Well, yeah, but I never did manage that God and Country Merit Badge in Boy Scouts.

Enforcement of laws does involve a sort of bullying, no matter how genteel.  And it is ultimately doomed to fail, because you really can't Make People Behave.  Better if you can find a way to get people to want to do it your way.  But that, to quote the old saw, is HARD.

What the RIAA is doing with file sharers (bringing lawsuits against them that are designed to ruin their lives) is the modern equivalent of impaling people on pikes over the gates of the city.  It has nothing to do with enforcing the law for that particular violator, or getting restitution for their perceived wrongs against the RIAA (because I'm honestly not convinced that copyright violation has any sort of detrimental effect on their business, other than the money spent on their clumsy attempts to stop it), or even deterring that particular individual from doing it again.  It has everything to do with terrorizing everyone else into compliance. 

That's a far cry from giving someone an inconvenient parking ticket to make her think twice about parking in a blue zone again, or locking up a dangerous murderer to keep him from murdering again.

So why shouldn't people comply with copyright laws?  You can argue that they never did once the cassette tape was put into mainstream use, but I doubt the "piracy" going on there was as easy to track or as pervasive.

Give me a good reason, founded in something other than, "I hate the RIAA/MPAA" for why people SHOULDN'T be expected to comply with the laws.  "They're stupid," is not a good reason.

And just to provide perspective, I'm not a fan of the RIAA or the MPAA, I just don't see how pirates are going to force them to change anything they're doing.  I'd love to see those industries truly explore electronic distribution methods that are cheap and provide quality product at the same time.  I just honestly don't see the impetus for this change coming from some sort of E-Robin Hood. 

Following similar logic, it just seems like I could steal all of my food from large, corporate grocery chains and if I ever got caught, basically say how it's unfair that they charge such high prices for food and if they didn't want their food stolen, they should have found a better way to distribute it.

The way I see it, the basic intent of copyright law is to make sure the owner of the copyright gets their fair share of money.  It is my belief that downloading a couple of songs or a movie leak over the Intarweb, in and of itself, does not interfere with that.

Most of the music I've bought, I've bought as a direct result of having sampled it beforehand in some way.  I generally won't buy an album if I've only heard one song from it (which is all they usually play on the radio), and in the absence of some easy way to preview an album, I'll just about never feel compelled to shell out money for it.  Therefore, when the RIAA says "don't download music," I hear "we hate money, don't give us any."  I consider this stupid.

I challenge you to explain how stealing food from Safeway helps them.  The difference between copying content and stealing physical goods is that when you steal physical goods, the previous owner no longer has them and is therefore impoverished by some amount, however slight.  Copying content in and of itself does not impoverish anyone in the slightest, which is why copyright laws have "fair use" clauses permitting copying under some circumstances.

The Safeway analogy is bound to be flawed because it's brick & mortar vs. the virtual.  Stealing from Safeway doesn't help them.  It also, most likely, doesn't hurt them.  Grocery stores toss out all kinds of stuff every day.  I guess that's the attitude that example was geared towards. 

Arguably, you downloading a few songs here and there doesn't cost the RIAA any money.  You also assert that you buy albums.  Great.  Maybe your practices help the RIAA somewhat.  The problem is that this is a war of public perception.  As long as the laws stay as they are, P2P music file sharing (and movie file sharing) will be prohibited.  The problem is that if people want to change the laws (and I personally think that the whole life + 70 years duration on copyright is just the first thing that needs to be changed), they need to also toe the line a bit.  If people persist in downloading songs and sharing out hard drives with tens of thousands of songs on them, the industry can still point to them as "bad people." 

Unfortunately for those who want to freely share music, most people aren't savvy and/or informed enough to truly appreciate the complexity of the issues involved.  They will only hear the RIAA talking points parroted on the news and by the current administration.  If the file sharing "movement" is truly about bringing about a change to the industry (and not just, "whee! free shit!"), it has to, for lack of a better phrase, win the hearts and minds of voters.  The RIAA/MPAA is a strong lobby.  Continuing to prod it with pointy sticks only makes it lash out more, and continue to resist change. 

Should we treat certain kinds of media differently than others?  Probably.  Are the copyright laws just a bit too strict these days?  Most definitely.  Should they be reformed?  Absolutely.  Is the file sharing community at large doing much to help change them?  Signs point to no, IMO.


EDIT -- to address "copying does not impoverish anyone" -- Even if that's true, it takes a lot to combat the stats and spin that the RIAA & MPAA like to puke out.  Even if YOU personally buy albums after downloading tracks, the perception is that most people don't buy albums, they have already downloaded them (sometimes with cover art and liner notes) for free.   

Yea, but here's the problem. If these TEENAGERS and lazy dorks couldn't download the album, would they even bother paying to get it? Probably not. Given the revenue in all media industries right now, I don't think they can disprove that.

I guess it depends on which bands you're talking about at that point.  Certainly there are plenty of inputs from popular media, especially aimed at teens, that tell them which bands to like and albums to buy.  I spent a ton of cash on albums in my teenage years, well before music downloads were even out there. 

At any rate, any logic along the lines you're arguing will just be counter argued by a much stronger lobby as, "Well, if they can't download it, they'll have to buy it, just like before."  That argument is just as flawed since cassette tapes made it easy to share music before the advent of the mp3 and the CD burner. 

So far, there's really been nothing new from the "free music" camp.  The party line seems to be RIAA is bad.  Sadly, any creative solutions seem lost amongst the flood of angst.  The RIAA is no better.  Their party line is "downloads are bad."  Once again, any creative solutions are lost.

I guess it's all a matter of time to see if the RIAA "wakes up" to the "obvious" solution being touted by the free downloads crowd.

Raving techno-hippy lunatic time:

I think the real problem is that the RIAA is basically obsolete.  Their job isn't to make music, it's to distribute music, and both the artist and the consumer pay through the nose for that service.  Once everyone starts figuring out that 95% of the profits get signed away to do something that any jackass with an Internet connection can do for free, the entire industry is going to change.  I'm not sure exactly how yet, but I think the iTunes store is a small step in that direction.  Since the iTunes store opened, all the music I've downloaded has come from there instead of P2P networks.

See, I think iTunes is also a step in the right direction.  I'm by no means pro-RIAA, I just don't see how the "illegal" file sharing will really change things.  At the same time, I am really put off by the RIAA and how it handles licensing to various media types.  For instance, the iTunes model is nice.  The RIAA is largely transparent to the end user, because they just see themselves paying iTunes 99 cents a song.  For internet radio, on the other hand, the licensing stuff is a bunch of garbage, imo. There are restrictions on how the stations play the music they are licensing.  For instance, they cannot take requests.  They cannot play two songs by the same artist in a row.  This is stuff that broadcast radio can do.  The difference, as I see it, is that the RIAA/ASCAP/MPAA are afraid of the digital model. 

I also agree that the RIAA is an outmoded means of distributing music. 

I think they know that, and that's why digital distribution solutions/methods scare the bejezus out of them.

And the place that illegal file sharing comes into it is this: if you can provide a service that people want (cheap and easy digital distribution), and you won't sell it to them, they're likely to find a way to get it without your help (P2P) rather than paying you for a substandard alternative (overpriced and overmarketed physical media).

Right.  But that still doesn't stop the RIAA from flipping out about it.  I just don't see them ever making The Switch To Digital Distribution until the illegal downloads stop.  Think about it.  iTunes, the new Napster, etc. are all making good cash for the RIAA using their model.  It sure seems that now, the industry is selling that digital distribution cheap and easy.  I bet that's how the RIAA sees it.  Therefore, all non-paid downloads are bad.

Now if you meant FREE and easy distribution method, that's a different matter.  Suffice it to say, it seems that iTunes et. al. is working just fine for the RIAA.  I don't know how much cheaper or easier you want it to get, so now I'm left a bit dumbfounded as to what more you want.  If not you, then what more does the P2P crowd want?  Is the selection uber shitty on iTunes et. al.?

Or is 99 cents/song too much to pay?

Or is it that the copyright laws need a major overhaul?

Here we have a consequence of the industry's manic release/hype machine that has created a mass of consumer zombies who crave instant gratification. (Cue George Romero Was Right placards among the audience.)

Well, surprise, the Internet has become far better than the industry at satisfying that craving.

The industry created the monster and now they cannot kill it. Only they really don't want to kill either the zombie hunger for the next thing, nor the channel where they can sell music at CD prices without having to deal with manufacturing or distribution of physical product.

I guess Orrin Hatch will have some more "campaign contributions" coming his way soon.

The selection is mildly shitty on iTunes, and their DRM is occasionally obnoxious.  That said, I personally am by and large satisfied with iTunes, which is why I haven't spent much time looking for music on P2P networks since it came out.

Of course, since it came out several years after the P2P networks, people in general have had plenty of time to get used to P2P as a way to obtain music, and aren't as likely to go seek out iTunes since there's a working solution already in place.  Once services like iTunes shape up a bit more and are actually more convenient to use than P2P (broader song selection and no DRM bullshit are two current advantages of P2P), they're likely to get broader acceptance.

That said, illegal downloading will never stop completely, especially if the alternatives are all unappealing (and again, iTunes is a big step in the right direction there).  If the RIAA's plan is to come up with more appealing alternatives AFTER the illegal downloading is gone, they've completely backed themselves into a corner.

It seems to me like both sides are backed into corners.  Until they're willing to come together to find a solution that is best for everyone (read as: flying pigs in an icy hell) I think we'll have more of the same until something happens to make the clue bat smack a few people.

Wow, and this hasn't been moved to politics yet.  It's like sometimes we CAN have nice things.

I haven't contributed enough.

I said Politics, not the Den.

To rerail: The movie was good, had some truly hilarious moments that simply couldn't have been on TV - and a slew of incest jokes as well that aren't really appropriate for anything.

Question:

Can I download in sweet OggVorbis format?

If not, it still sucks balls. iTunes is missing tons of the type of music I listen to.

I started out on the side of the people enforcing the copyrights even though I thought they were a bit draconian. I've seen so much whining and fud from the **AA though that my new attitude is fuck them. If the music business isn't profitable enough get out of it. No one is entitled to make a profit when times change and they can't keep up. Things have changed and will continue to change. The ability to make infinitely many copies at zero cost has given us a whole new playing field and they need to find a way to turn a profit under the new rules. I feel a bit sorry for the smaller musicians but I'm of the belief that the people who want to make music will find a way to do what they love and be rewarded for it. They may not be multi billionaires as a result but I don't see why they should be in the first place. I'm more than happy to support music I like by buying it, either from something like iTunes or cdbaby.com. I hope the RIAA and all of the major record companies wither and die a slow painful death and the people who love to make music embrace this new world and are rewarded for it.

I feel almost like a /.er now but I'm honestly just absolutely fed up with the current situation. I think the industry needs to die and be reborn in order for things to get better.

I thought so to until I switched my itunes music store to the german portal.

Ah ha....may have to give it another look then.

But they ARE trying to keep up by prosecuting people who commit crimes.  If it got a lot easier to commit bank robberies because criminals all had teleporters and lasers, would you advise the banks to just lay down and accept that all their money would be stolen?  Your entitlement to a "profit" doesn't get taken away because thieves innovate.

 
I was wondering when this justification would come up.  Most RIAA haters have moved to ERobin Hood style justifications, but its nice to see an old-time Age of Aquarius "music shouldn't be about profits, it should be about expanding your SOUL, maan" argument.  Sorry, but just because you romanticize music and believe its so precious that it shouldn't be soiled by commerce doesn't make it so. 

$.99 Scheiße videos?

Triforcer, your arguments all seem to be based on the premise that copyright violation = profit loss.  Would you say that copyright violation is bad insofar as it results in lost profits for copyright holders?

While his analogy is certainly aimed at profit loss (a bank robbery is obviously $$ lost), the problem lies in the fact that we're trying to define "theft" as being related to an intangible.  Technically, the way copyright laws treat things, there is some kind of economic harm implied from someone else making "use" of your IP.

It does a lot to muddle discussion and highlights why the copyright laws need a significant overhaul.  The DMCA was NOT a step forward.

Bullshit on both of your arguments Triforcer. The first one is stupid and the second one mischaracterized what I said.

Let me go through this again for you.

The ability to make infinitely many digital copies for zero cost means that the old idea of a record company producing the media and distributing it is obsolete. What they need to do is find a way to make a profit that doesn't involve bundling up media and sticking it on shelves. It's no different than when mass cheap automated printing came out and all of the people copying books were now unemployed or like in 30 years when we've moved off of petroleum and all of the gas/oil companies will be obsolete. You can try and outlaw using new technologies but it won't work. They need to change or die.

The "Music should be free!" argument is completely different than what I said. I said without the big bucks of the major labels and the RIAA I still think that musicians will make music because it's what they like to do and they'll make a profit because people enjoy it and are willing to pay a fair amount for it. They may not be able to snort coke off of Mary Kate and Ashley's asscracks in the back of their limo anymore but I won't lose much sleep over it if they have to become somewhat mundane like the rest of us.

 There's no Robin Hood fantasy here, I have zero pirated copies of songs in the 5 gigs of music I have on my iPod. I'll pay for things that I believe are at a price that reflects their value, if I disagree with the price I won't pay and I won't pirate it. Others are not as scrupulous as I'm sure you know and will continue this trend of copyright violation as long as it's cheaper in both time and money to download a copy of it off a P2P network or whatnot. The RIAA can keep suing grandmas and 11 year old girls for a hojillion dollars but it will just drive us quicker to technologies like Freenet or Tor.

Yes.  And given the slump of the music industry in the last few years (double digit % sales losses) I think its hard to argue that hasn't happened.

Correlation does not equal causation.

Speaking from only my own experience (since I haven't personally conducted any more studies on this than you have), since the advent of P2P file sharing networks, I have spent probably 100x more on music than I did before they were around.  By that logic (which is about as skewed as yours), recording companies should be PAYING people to download their songs off the Internet, the way they pay radio stations to broadcast their songs over the airwaves.

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item.jhtml?id=4206&t=innovation

Just showing that the argument that File Sharing != Lost Record Sales exists and is backed up by real evidence.

 :roflcopter:

Bullshit. Those numbers are bullshit. The music industry has actually made MORE profit, but they have done so by shipping LESS PRODUCT. So there is less product at the retail end, meaning there are less sales, but the sales that are there are more profitable because they aren't shipping merchandise that never gets sold.

Now, as for your (and the RIAA's) idea that copyright violation = theft, you have to examine that argument in other lights.

Are these things theft?

Playing a CD for a friend, so the friend, who doesn't buy the CD, hears all the songs on it at original quality.
Buying a CD, not liking it, and selling or giving the CD to a friend.
Buying a CD at a used CD store, or selling a used CD to a used CD store.
Recording an entire CD off of the radio (some stations still play the entirety of a CD on special occasions) either in whole or song by song.

Are any of those things theft? They are copyright violations, because the end user, the one who ends up with the CD did not compensate the artist for the music. But these things are ALL legal. The only difference is that P2P networks allow people to trade music with complete strangers, in larger volumes than 1-to-1. Is the trick to the law that you can only allow 1 other person at a time to hear the music?

I'm not saying that file-sharing is totally legal, or even totally fair to the original artist. I am saying that I don't believe it's a theft worthy of the amount of vilification the RIAA is doing. What they don't seem to want to get is that the people who are downloading their artists' music ARE INTERESTED IN LISTENING TO THE ARTISTS' MUSIC. Why is this a bad thing? Because they might not buy the CD? How do they know they won't buy the CD? They are essentially abdicating an incredibly awesome marketing tool, just to protect a distribution model that is inefficient and outdated, simply because utilizing the new technology will cost them some short-term profits.

You want to kill piracy? Stop targeting the users who make no goddamn money off of it. Those people who share thousands of songs without charging anyone for them? THEY ARE MARKETING YOUR PRODUCT FOR GODDAMN FREE. You want to stop piracy, you hit the people who are making money off of your product without paying you. The bootleg CD sellers. The asshats requiring donation or paid registration for "illegal" music. So long as the downloading is free, it's a tool that doesn't hurt you. Unless of course, you demonize all those potential customers into hating your fucking guts.

Again, copyright laws are FUCKED. The DMCA is worse. This isn't about the ERobinHood bullshit some people will spout, it's about money that's there to be made, if only the idiots in charge of making it would unass their heads and get on with life.

There's a common misperception, amazingly even among artists, that RIAA is protecting the content creators' interests.  Just ain't so.  In fact the entire reason RAC was founded was because RIAA attempted to covertly strip them of most of their rights.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riaa#Work_.28Made.29_For_Hire_controversy
http://www.recordingartistscoalition.com/industrypractices.php#conclusion

You're also assuming that the music industry is being honest about their losses, which is a little like assuming Enron had the best interests of energy consumers at heart.

Jumping in a little later here.

For me, yes, $.99 is far too much per song, and its why I don't use itunes. Is it that I can't afford $.99 per song? No. It's because where I live I can buy an entire cd (legit) for $13 - $16, or older cds for $8 - $12. That's all Canadian dollars. Essentially, they want me to pay the same for downloaded content as I do for the entire album.

Give me high quality downloads at say $.50 per song, with a good selection of current and older stuff, then I might be interested. Oh, and once I pay for a song, I expect to be able download it again for free if I need to.

This is my biggest issue. Period. It's not the price, nor the quality. Simply the fact it doesn't bank my download. Fucking NCSoft let's you download all their clients if you paid for a key online. Apple sucks++.

Playing a CD for a friend is not a copyright violation.
Selling the CD to a friend is not a copyright violation.  (Right of First Sale)
Used CD stores, not a copyright violation.  (Right of First Sale)
Recording an entire CD off the radio, maybe so, maybe no.  Odds are that while maybe not ok it is next to impossible to stop or track, aside from stations risking losing their license to play the music by breaking some rule the RIAA/ASCAP has for radio airplay that says, "No entire albums."

The law actually allows bars and clubs with a small enough space (figure less than 200 people max. limit) to have a jukebox and not have to pay royalties or licensing fees to the RIAA/ASCAP.

You did, however, hit the nail on the head....the RIAA's issue with P2P is the billyuns and billyuns /carlsagan of people that could be DLing the file.

Oh, that and the industry needs to be fixed.

Personally I don't like Apple's downloads partly because of DRM bollocks you get stuck with, partly because you can't re download a song you've already bought and mostly because in the UK they charge £0.79 per song. That's about $1.50 and I don't see how the fuck they justify that mark-up for the UK compared to the US. Yes we have higher VAT but nowhere near high enough to justify a 50% mark-up. I somehow doubt that bandwith and running costs are going to be that much higher for the UK store so it looks to me like Apple's just charging the UK more because, y'know, they can. That pisses me off, I don't want to pay the same for digital tracks downloaded from Apple as I would for a physical CD, especially seeing as I could copy the CD as many times as I wanted and do pretty much what I liked with it.

Hence, I still buy actual physical albums.

Plus they come with neat little booklets that sometimes have secrets messages in them!

hahahha.

Edit: was funny.

I think nearly everyone is missing the whole point on this issue.  I'll try to sum it up the best I can, but I'm certain that I'll leave out some detail... here goes:  Obtaining media without the permission of the creative force behind it is stealing.  The questions we should be asking ourselves is: a) why do people feel that obtaining music and video are an entitlement? and b) Why do people feel that they can justify the theft of copyrighted works? 

I think I've heard every form of justification on these forums in one thread or another.  Saying RIAA is wrong doesn't justify theft.  Saying "because I can" doesn't justify theft.  My favorite is the one above stating that by pirating music they actually increased their music purchases. I'm sorry, but the ends don't justify the means.  To me it's a very simple ethical situation.  If you want to have a proper copy of the media, buy it.  If you don't like the apparatus behind the distribution, boycott it.   If the artists want to give their work away, they will.  Some already do. 

I beg you all, please stop rationalizing that stealing is ok.

And please stop equating copyright infringment with STEALING. Because it isn't in all cases.

Copyright infringment which allows me (who didn't create the work) to make money off of the produce of the creator IS stealing. Copyright infringement where I hear a song or see a movie for free from a download? That's not stealing, that's fucking marketing. Is it "right?" I suppose to some people that depends on if I buy the album or see the movie or not.

As for the legal download places like ITunes or (MONKEYFUCKERS) Buymusic.com, I have one problem with all of them. I'm not actually buying anything from them, according to their EULA. I'm renting it. Fuck that. If I bought the CD, I'd have fair use copying privileges, but because I download it, I don't? FUCK YOU. If I'm only renting music, I should be able to re-download the shit for free if my harddrive crashes. But I can't, because it's all one time purchases.

Copyright law is fucked.

The issue you have with iTunes et. al. is moreso licensing law being fucked, not copyright.  It's just as fucked for internet radio, where the licensing doesn't let internet radio stations do shit like play requests, play the same band twice in a row, etc.  The industry is the one that's fucked, really.  For some reason it sees (or pretends to see) the copyability of music as the great white satan or somesuch.

I agree (that's why the disclaimer that I'm sure I was omitting some detail).  Since media isn't as tangible as something like an apple, there is a lot more gray area in what is stealing and what isn't.  I do feel that people obtain music without the consent of the artist and spend an inordinate amount of energy trying to justify their actions.  To me this is partly a societal and/or ethical problem as the root cause.  Taking something without paying for it is stealing... isn't that the crux of this whole issue?  Managers/Distributors/Artists want their cash and the masses find ways to obtain what they want without paying.  I'm not condoning what the RIAA is doing, but they are somewhat justified in wanting to get more for their product than they currently are.  Hell, if you've ever worked in retail you realize that markup is partially to cover the costs of both shoplifting and security.  It seems to me that people pirating copyrighted materials could save everyone a lot of money by not doing it anymore (assuming the money grubbing industry moguls would adjust their prices for decreased theft).  I do agree that the RIAA and the industry are going about their solution all wrong, but that wsn't the point of this post.  


I agree again.  When you have to get into the game of covering loopholes, the written vernacular can become so convoluted that it is almost more readily manipulated.  My contention is that if the mainstream had some ethics and/or conscience about this we'd have fewer invasive issues.

Please to explain how not downloading copyrighted material in and of itself saves anyone any money.  If every single pirate stopped downloading music this very second, and in no other way changed their behavior, how would anything be any different from the industry's point of view?

Actually, a lot of the creative process that involves finding an audience just wants your voice (as the creator) to be heard. Money is just supposed to be there to allow your voice to be heard without having to work a goddamn day job you hate. Beyond that, it's all greed and luxury.


Not going to happen, and you know it. I remember the days when CD's were first introduced, and many of the industry proponents were justifying the cost of CD's, which at the time was double the price of the same album on cassette tapes. I remember the justification being that CD manufacture was expensive, and that the prices would go down once the manufacturing process was cheaper. Prices never went down, they went up, while the cost of manufacture is TRIVIAL these days. Which either means the industry has been gouging us, or the distribution model is fucked, or both.

Businesses do not lower consumer prices unless they have no other choice. Businesses that are able to sell their product without many of the same costs associated (like say not having to ship a physical product to the store) and yet still charge the same amount for the product? Fuck them.

I'm going to talk out my ass from a purely academic business model for a moment, so bear with me.  Most of these ideas came out of lunches with my colleagues in the business school.  Being an audio geek, I was quite interested in their take on the business side of the matter.

Marketing and pricing decisions are often based on perceived variables.  One of those variables would be lost sales due to a perceived product leak through theft.  This is a variable every distributor has to account for... product loss.  If the music industry were to follow business practices of nearly every other product out there, they would have a decreased cost per unit if they had to account for less loss due to product theft.  i.e. One possible scenario that the music industry could assume is that out of x fewer thefts they would see a correlative increase of y in sales or that some of the people no longer pirating the music is now buying it.   Of course this would take some time to flesh out. Now, it is of course possible and even expected that less pirating would result in no pricing change in the short term.  A long term trend would have to be established before I think anyone would see a tangible benefit.  

One of the things I learned while working retail is that deadbeats make the rest of us suffer when it comes to price.  Shoplifters drive up the retail prices of goods.  To a lesser degree, media pirates could be perceived to have a similar effect on the cost of finished media.  At least that's how I understand it.

EDIT: What Haemish says above is also true though.  Unless busines has some real pressure to change pricing, they won't. 

Not to split hairs, but prices have gone down.  When I started buying cd's in 1984 there were fewer than 50 choices and the disks cost somewhere between $20 and $40.  Mass availability coupled to a drastic reduction in the cost of cd players has dropped cd prices since that time.  Now that more people can afford a cd player, music distributors can sell cd's cheaper knowing they will reach a larger audience. 

Now... are prices on cd's still higher than they should be?  Yes.  I'll agree with that.  I blame the managers and the distributors far more than the artists.  Just like most systems in this country, the costs associated come with the fat in the middle rather than the source.

Edit: My apologies for the double post.

For most cases that is true.  Most of the arguments here and elsewhere is that the creative forces SHOULD give permission for free downloads or at least samples that lead to low cost downloads of the actual songs.  Cut out all the other costs that aren't needed in that business model and the songs would be really cheap and the performers would win.  Who loses?  The middlemen.

I agree.  As the current system works, downloading the content without paying is stealing because the people that made the content say so.  My issue is that they are just being ignorant and stupid.

Put me in the same camp that buys music I have heard through ripped CD's and I like to buy by the song, not by the album.  P2P (before the latest crack down) had me eventually buying way more music than I ever did.  After the crack down?  None.  I walked away from the whole business and get fed the same 5 songs over and over on the radio now.  And I hate it.

This whole thing screams "Don't buy music from us ever!!"  They make something that could be so easy and inexpensive a nightmare in my opinion.

All right, so how does this:mesh with this:?

Are sales the thing that matters, or aren't they?  Is your argument based on hard economics or some abstract moral principle involving which nodes on a network electronic packets may and may not be routed to?

The only CD's I ever see for more than $20 are those stupid gold master types or box set/double albums. Normal, everyday CD's? In the late 80's, I would see them for about $16 for a new CD. Now? $18, unless you go to some of the mass discount places like Best Buy.

In the first quote the two are inversely related, in the other poster's quote they were directly related.

Hope that helps.

Haemish:  CD players were in their infancy in the late 70's and early 80's.  I had one of the very first phase linear top loaders and recall it being almost prohibitively expensive for the time.  There was a huge change in cd prices and marketing between 1984 and 1988.  If you're recalling prices in the late 1980's as being similar to today's you would be correct.  Adjusted for inflation, the cd's in 1988 while at the same price are still pretty significantly more expensive, but that's another discussion. 

So you take issue with the premise that piracy boosts sales in some cases, not the logic that if it does boost sales, it's not bad.  Right?

When you do it, it doesn't.  When you and a few ten million of your friends do, it's a serious issue.

To be completely honest, what I think doesn't matter.  It's what the market analysists in the industry think that does.  I'm saying that the people I've chatted with feel that piracy has a more destructive effect on the market than it works to promotes sales.  My common sense logic: if piracy increased sales, they'd be less apt to try to stop it.  Wouldn't they?

My personal bias is that I take offense to people that steal copyrighted materials without permission and then try to justify themselves for doing it.  If you're stealing media, just admit that your stealing it and quit trying to make excuses.  Saying it's ok to steal copyrighted materials because the price is too high or the system is screwed just doesn't cut it.

Your equation fails to account for two things:

1) Stupidity.
2) Ulterior motives.

I haven't made up my mind which of these it is.  Either the RIAA is incredibly stupid and doesn't realize that they're fucking their own customers, or they're incredibly evil and this is part of some master plan to fuck copyright laws even further, with the DMCA as the first step towards some even more hideous apparatus.



No matter how many times you multiply ten million by zero, it's still zero.  And my position is that if I download something and then pay for a copy of it, zero money has been lost as a consequence of the download.  If I download something and then pay for a copy of it as a result, money has been GAINED as a consequence of that download.  The only instance in which anyone has a logical or ethical basis for bitching about piracy is if I download something and then don't pay for a copy of it as a result.  And that has never been the case.

Hence my bias that the entire concept of file sharing equalling theft is basically fucked.

I am partial to the hideous apparatus idea.

You're right, and isn't really piracy in that respect.  It is legal anyhow, to copy files that you 'own' through other means, such as a paid d/l or a CD.  The concern is the amount of people who download music and DON'T pay for it.  I'm glad you do.  A lot of people do not.


It isn't uncommon to have access to listen to songs on the radio, on the group/label/amazon website, etc for the purposes of demo'ing a song.  The difference is that those methods of previewing the product are legal - yours is not.  I'm glad that you paint yourself as the hero for the music industry, but there are a lot of people who don't give a whit about them, and don't want to give them money.  RIAA isn't concerned so much about you.

The thing is, I am not by any means unique.  There is a huge market out there of people like myself who are willing to part with vast sums of money in exchange for music, as long as they get a chance to preview it first and make sure it isn't ass.  And rather than courting that market in an attempt to get some of that phat cash, the RIAA is demonizing it and slapping it with lawsuits.  REAL FUCKING SMART, ASSHOLES.  That's all I'm saying.

Agreed...I'm always tenative to pick up a new album if I don't have previous experience with the creator(s).

If I had an easier way to demo music, I would therefore BUY more music.

But as it stands, there are only 4 or 5 people/bands whose albums I will buy on blind faith. As such, I have a pretty small CD collection.

First, it's not my equation.  It's some simple business priniples applied to a specific business.  Second, the answer is neither of the points you provide.  Business is about the exchange of one thing for another.  The music industry wants to maximize profits for their wares and they feel that online piracy threatens this.  They are using the legal system to try to make their point. We'll have to see what decisions get handed down before we can start spewing accusations.


I don't know how to say this nicely, but you're wrong.  File sharing is the making and distribution of copies of an initial copyrighted piece of material that violate the terms of said copyright.  Every instance where a person accepts an illegal copy instead of purchasing the original copyrighted version, the artists and the apparatus lose money.  I'm not sure why this doesn't make sense.  Now there are instances where having access to the music may encourage people to purchase a copyrighted version, but the ends do not justify the means.  The artist and or record company own the rights to the media and to its distribution.  Here's the thrust of the argument: If the artist wishes to distribute their media for free, that should be their choice to do so.  At this moment, media is being distributed without the consent of the artist and that is where your argument breaks down.  People are distributing materials that violate the copyright of the holder... in my mind this is stealing, but opinions vary.

Me too.

Just to support your point.

Though I very rarely download entire CDs that I don't already own, I do frequently download released singles and burn them onto a CD, so I can hear them whenever I want and decide if I really want the album.  Mars Volta got money from me because of this.  So have a lot of other bands.  CDs that I would buy anyways are the only ones who stand to lose from this investigation (like the latest Nine Inch Nails CD... I wouldn't have bought that if I listened to it ahead of time), but I'm usually too psyched up to buy the album to do that research.  I already have my money ready to throw at them.

I know the music industry thinks that they're losing sales if I hear a song on the radio, download it, listen to it a few more times, decide I don't like it and trash it, but they're not.  I wouldn't have bought the album anyway.  I don't experiment buying CDs anymore.  I used to, when I could regularly find CDs for $12.  But now that everything is about $20 with tax, I'm not so eager to throw away my money anymore.  The downloading just speeds up the process, which the industry seems to prefer anyways, fond as it is of giant release weeks and such.


It does make sense, but you're making the erroneous assumption that all (or, by my guess, even most) people "accepting illegal copies" are doing so as an alternative to purchasing the material.  For me, the alternative is to just not have the material.  And because it costs them nothing for me to own the material (not like in a convenience store- a candy bar I take for free costs them money because it cannot be infinitely duplicated for free) they're not losing anything if I have no interest in the product other than in a way that doesn't involve me spending money.

Basically, if I wasn't going to buy it anyway and the download confirmed that, you've lost no money.  If I WAS going to buy it, I probably already did.  If I wasn't going to buy it and the download changed my mind, you've gained money.

If I were one in a million, the record industry would have a real case here.  As it is, the research shows that I'm not.  The research shows that the majority of people downloading do so in the same way.  Based on the research, it seems that the balance is about even in money lost/money gained because of downloading (the above posted link in which a Harvard study concluded that there was no link between lost record sales and music downloads).

Though I should point out that I do feel that the attitude of "Why buy it when I can just download it?" is stealing, and does harm the creative media fields, even if the result is the same.  Kant would be proud.

But that has no bearing whatsoever on what we're discussing, because we're discussing instances in which the purchase is made.  Do you agree?

I agree with you completely.  The issue I have is that noone has the right to obtain their own preview.  It's up to the artist to release their information and/or make portions of it public domain.  With the right kinds of pressures, perhaps this will start becoming more commonplace.  I believe many artists are already releasing song previews on the net and there's always the whole radio/satellite radio mechanism.

I think we're on the same page.  I just can't condone the downloading of music against the terms of the copyright.  You're saying that pirating music is ok if it causes you to buy the music.  I'm saying that piracy is piracy no matter what the end result is.  The solution is a change in the way that music is distributed for preview and it appears we agree there as well.   

So should it be illegal for me to borrow a friend's CD in order to preview it for myself?  The artist certainly doesn't explicitly consent to that.

I think saying that previewing music by download is tantamount to stealing is going a bit too far. It's not something the artist consents to, that's true, but it doesn't negatively effect the artist in any way (assuming said song doesn't suck, and people who release bad music don't deserve money). It seems to make more sense to equate that with listening for an artist's new song on the radio and deciding whether it's worth getting or not.

I think now your trying to be ridiculous to grasp for a concession.  First, I have no idea what the artist has or hasn't consented to in any particular case.  I do know that listening to music is quite different from making a new permanent copy that violates copyright law.  Do you see the difference?  Borrowing a CD is using a copyrighted version of the material much like checking a book out from the library.  Copying a song from the net creates a new permanent copy of the song that violates the copyright much as it is illegal to photocopy most books.

Maybe I'm missing the subtlety of your point???

My point is this: You're either making an illegal copy or you're not.  It's pretty simple really.  Whether or not you like this isn't the point I'm after.

Downloading creates a permanent copy of the song but that's only because of the way that the technology functions rather than eveyone desperately wanting to steal an artist's song. If someone downloads a song with the intention of previewing it and doesn't like it, they probably aren't going to want to listent to it much.

Yes it allows for the possibility that people will just download music and not bother to buy it but so does radio or lending a CD to someone. The only difference is that downloading requires the creation of the copy and so it's a lot easier for people who don't want to buy it. I'm not sure if that's justification enough for saying all downloading = theft though. If you go out and buy the song afterwards I doubt many artists could give a rats ass how you heard it first.

Okay, what if I download a song from Napster, listen to it once, and then delete it?  It's no longer "permanent".  Am I still in violation of the law?

My point is that copyright is not an end unto itself.

Ok. Enough with this gray area bullshit.

Downloading something that wasn't meant for preview is pirating.

I do it, we do it, everyone does it. All the way up. Lead designers at gaming companies do it.

It's because we don't give a shit, not because it might be legal and fall into one of the gray areas.

Most of the bullshit laws that are cropping up lately are because we've invented as a cyber-society this gray area mess. It's our fault.

That said, many of the laws are dumb as shit.

I feel stupid for not stating it like this sooner. 

That's pretty much all I was getting at.

The Family Guy movie was awesome.

Huzzah!  The thread has come full circle.  I think we're all winners today.

Neg. Just me. Awardz plz.

(http://www.forumspile.com/Misc-Winner.jpg)

Best I could do on short notice.

That's fair. I'm the guy he didn't just eat.

(http://www.stunicholls.myby.co.uk/menu/win.gif)

Do I get a consolation prize?


nvm, the movie was a prize in itself.

(http://blaklion.best.vwh.net/images/E80-LSH.jpg)

Spoiler, but so funny. (http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/4269/stewiefunny3zk.jpg)

Why link when it's your avatar?

Weird.

I could link the other one.  But you shot me down.

WHY DO YOU ALWAYS SHOOT ME DOWN.

You need a roofiecolada.

You need strychnine in your guacamole.

My hatred for *IAA is based on their abuse of a law designed to protect individuals' works of art to protect their employee's industrial works for hire. Since the creator "forcibly" relinquishes their copyright to a third party, the intent (as I understand it) of the law no longer applies.

Note that this is different from when an author/artist licenses their work to someone for reproduction, e.g. a printer for publishing their book. The copyright stays with the maker.

These work-for-hire clauses come in addition to copyright term extensions which only serve those that profit from the works at a later date, and not the creator of the work. These might be family trusts (like Tolkien) or corporations.

IANAL and all that shit.

Oh, and literary piracy is old (http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/pva/pva74.html).

Here's why that is such a foreign concept to just about everyone. Lots of the reasons are because of the things that I mentioned in an earlier post that ARE legal.

1) I can make a copy of the CD for myself - legal, yet it's an exact copy of a copyrighted material
2) I can let my friend listen to the CD for free - legal, and as a matter of fact, it's only illegal if I CHARGE him for listening
3) I can give my friend the CD for free - legal, but he hasn't paid for the copyright material
4) Radio stations can play the CD and I can listen to it for free and I can copy the song for free - legal, yet many people are listening to this for free and can copy it for free. The radio station makes money off selling ads to other people, and to my knowledge, doesn't have to pay licensing fees for every song (unless they put it on the Internet)
5) I can buy or sell the CD to or from a used CD store - legal, and the original artist never ever sees a dime of the second sale

So it should be needless to say, these are all instances where similar actions can happen as file-sharing that ARE NOT ILLEGAL. The radio stations is the big one to me, as is the used CD store. The laws itself are not only not clear, they are contradictory. It gets even more muddied when you start tossing out the idea that the RIAA wants to charge licensing fees to radio stations who broadcast DIGITALLY, but not the traditional way. It's a whole bunch of mixed messages, and there can be a lot of money changing hands that never go into the artist's pocket at all. The RIAA is even sending mixed messages about what the actual product we are buying is. Are we buying the song? The CD of songs? Are we buying the right to listen to the song in only limited, but not clearly defined, circumstances? Is it only digital copies of the songs that are problematic because they are so "true" to the original recording?

The problems are that file sharing really isn't that different from other things already being done that are legal, except in the means of transmission. If I only use P2P software to trade songs with people I know, and they do not keep copies of the songs, is P2P then being used illegally? The RIAA has targeted P2P, but that's just the technology. And very few people with power are trying to unfuck the copyright laws to be fair to the original artists; they are more concerned with the people whose current business model is threatened by a technology they don't understand.


It doesn't make sense because of the legal means of doing the exact same thing as I listed above.


You mean like paying radio stations and dj's illegal gifts to make sure they play a record company's songs more times than a competitor's songs? Do you mean instances like that?



The only problem in that is that the copyright holder, i.e. the original artist, very often have very little say in how their media is distributed. The copyright holder is being held over a barrel by large, monied conglomerates who has no qualms about inflicting endentured servitude on creators. Creators want to be heard, and so are faced with either toiling in poverty for their entire lives, or signing a shitty shit shitty shit contract just to make ends meet and still have their creations be their job. The copyright holders are not the people that the RIAA is representing, nor is it the copyright holders whose interests are being protected.

Please don't get me wrong, I am in no way trying to support the actions of the RIAA or any record company conglomerates.  I guess that I just have an antiquated sense of right and wrong.  In my eyes it's a simple matter explained with an oversimplified example.

Let's say a piece of copyrighted media is an apple.  If I'm holding the apple (or copyright) and you want the apple, there are two ways you can obtain it from me; you can take the apple or I can give you the apple.  Both cases end up with you holding the apple but the means by which you obtained it are fundamentally different. To me, media piracy is like taking the apple.  When you pay for something it's like being given the apple as it's an open exchange of a good/service. I guess most people perceive media piracy as ok because of a) the anonymity of the internet as a source for obtaining materials and b) noone appears to be hurt in the process.  Media piracy just "feels" too much like I'm just taking the apple.  All of this could also be compounded by the fact that I have been both a published author as well as a signed recording artist.  That being the case, I apologize for trying to impose my morality.  It's a sensitive issue to me.

RIAA claims these are all accidents of history but now the technology exists to prevent same abuses.

Bullshit?  Of course.  But they're getting traction with judges and lawmakers with it.


Nothing you need to apologize for.  I think it's wrong when people stop in a restaurant just to use the bathroom.  And yet I do it all the time.  Little wrongs I can live with.

Don't worry.  Once we all have our government-mandated DRM chips installed at birth, none of those will be possible anyway.  Because if you listen to music that you haven't paid for a license to, your head will implode.

Public libraries baffle me in light of all this.

Then again - I ask myself - what if someone bundled up all the posts at F13 and sold the insightful commentary for $100 a pop to thousands of people, would I feel like I was owed a piece of the pie?

If I download Battlestar Galactica from England and 4 months later it plays in the US, who am I hurting? US advertisers I skip through anyways with my Tivo?

I try to be ethical with my downloads, If I sample a couple Anime episodes, If I like it I try to buy them. Granted half the time I suspect I am buying a Hong Kong knockoff on ebay anyways.

You ARE oversimplifying. It is a much more complicated process than that. You cannot and should not equate or compare the creations of the mind with the physical, tangible products you can hold in your hand.

As someone who hopes to be a published author someday, I still would rather fall on the side of looser copyright restrictions than tighter ones. Let's face it, I write here for free because I like doing it. I WANT my stuff to be read. I also want to get paid for it, but I am not so bold as to say that someone who is genuinely interested in reading my writing should be punished for the method in which he got my writing.

EDIT: Also, I haven't bought a new CD in years. I stopped buying them when the RIAA started suing the fuck out of everybody. I buy my CD's at used CD's shops and places like Half.com. There are very very few artists whose albums I will actively go out and buy new again. Who gets hurt by my stance the most? The artist. What caused it? Being treated like I'm a fucking dirty criminal by the industry whose products I wanted to purchase.

Of course I was oversimplifying.  I still think you missed the point of my analogy.  To me it's all a permission issue. Having a copyright on a piece of media or intellectual property should (in theory) give you the right to say who can or cannot use it.  Unless something is public domain, it's all about permission.  The problem, as I see it, is that people consider music public domain when they find that they can freely access it.  This is clearly not the case.  If I hold a copyright, that should give me the right to decide who gets to have access to my materials.  Of course with music, the business end of it convolutes the whole situation.

So, again... what's your position on radio play or used CD stores?  Because if the issue is permission and/or control, neither radio listener nor Amoeba patron obtains your permission in any way before they listen to your music, and you don't have the slightest amount of control over either of them.  Logically, you should be arguing for a ban on those methods of distribution as well.

But the problem with your permission reasoning is you NEVER had that absolute right. You still don't. Copyright doesn't give you that absolute right, for the reasons I mentioned above. Someone can always just lend your book out, or lend your CD out, and that's a potential lost sale.

Or, it's a potential GAINED sale, if you look at it as a form of viral marketing.

Now, for the people selling copied CD's on the sidewalks and in the markets, or bootlegged copied books? Yep, put them in pound me in the ass prison. The people making money off of file-sharing web sites (not the makers of the software, I mean the people offering paid access to torrent files or whatever or requiring donations)? Pound me in the ass prison. Samwise downloading a Yeah Yeah Yeahs CD to see if he likes it? He may actually buy it in the future, but if you keep hounding him telling him what a dirty pirate he is, I'm pretty sure he'll just tell you to go fuck yourself.

I fail to understand your logic.  I think the artist should have a choice in whether or not they wish to allow airplay.  Of course signed recording artists sign these permission rights away since they are fronted huge sums of cash to record and produce the project from the start.  For much the same reasons I think artists wishing to get exposure should offer free downloads of their music.  I'm just saying that they should have the option whether or not their music is given away in this manner.

If an artist doesn't want people downloading their copyrighted material from the internet, that's their choice.  If it hurts their image and sales in the long run, that's a byproduct of that choice.  I personally see a huge advantage to allowing people to download your material.  I'm just saying that if I hold the copyright, I'd like to have some say in how my material is distributed. I also realize that due to the huge costs associated with creating and producing media these days that many artists give up a large portion of these rights. I know that's what happened in my case.

As for Samwise wanting a copy of my new hypothetical copyrighted cd, he can listen to a friend's purchased copy, hear a sample on the radio or a sanctioned website or he can buy it.  He doesn't have to download it in a manner that violates the copyright.  He may choose to, but he doesn't have to. This is where it becomes an ethical matter.

Okay, now to repeat my question: what makes one method different from the other, apart from the current copyright law that we agree is basically fucked anyway?  Is your ethical stance based solely on what the laws happen to say right now (and again, we all agree that what the laws say is fucked), or is there more to it than that?  Because if there's more I still haven't seen it.

I always hear people say downloading music makes them buy more CDs, and im sure for them its true but i seriously doubt its anywhere near the norm.  I haven't bought one-single-CD since the day i found napster and im sure there are alot of mes than there are of the "i found this cool band on limewire so i bought their CD" types.  Also, i don't give a fuck.

On the other hand i WILL buy video games after downloading them if they are good.  I'd love to say its to support the creators but 90% of the time its because i can't be bothered to get multiplayer to work with warez.  Most of the time after downloading a game i feel like the game company owes ME money for the CD i wasted burning their POS though, so i also don't give a fuck about warezering games.

The research linked earlier in the thread suggests you aren't the norm. But thanks for admitting you also don't give a shit.

But the industry saying they lose money on illegal downloads isn't just unethical, it's a direct lie. They try and present loss of potential income as the same as loss. But they lose just as much if I enter a record store, browse a little and then say "naah" and leave without buying anything. The difference is that the downloader gets free access to a SERVICE (the music) without paying the FEE for the LICENSE. There is no product - the media is, as the industry repeatedly points out when they try and fight the second-hand market, irrelevant.

(If it was a loss, and the industry had, say $100, then after someone downloaded a song they would have $98 left or something like that. But that's not the case.)

Calling it theft, like they also are wont to do, is like comparing apples to the idea of oranges.

Currently there are people obtaining copies of music by download against the wishes of the copyright holder.  They are, in essence, taking the music without the permission of the creator.  Allowing your music to play on the radio is not the same as allowing someone to create a free cd by downloading the media directly.  Though I suppose that you could argue that you could make a copy of the same music played on the radio but then you'd have an issue of quality.  

If the copyright holder says "please download my music to preview it" that's one thing.  If the copyright holder says "please don't download my music from the internet" and you do, can you see that is another?

And yes... I agree that copyright laws and current standards are messed up.  I just feel that part of bothering to even get a copyright on something is to help ensure that you have at least a modicum of control over how it is distributed.  

At this point I think this is becoming like politics or religion.  Perhaps we should just agree to disagree.

I called it theft because (to me) it is taking something without permission.  Their reasons for calling it theft are/may be different.

for money. The intent of copyright is to make sure you got paid for something you created, instead of someone else taking something you created and making money off of it by claiming it was theirs to make money off of.

Yes, that is the largest "part".

I'm fairly certain that nobody has ever said that to me - in fact, all of the conversations I've had with musicians regarding their work and the Internet have been them asking the exact opposite of me.  So I guess I'm safe.

Now that we've got that all cleared up I'll just go back to talking to this wall over here.

What's interesting is that RIAA's stance seems to revolve around digital reproduction.

http://www.upenn.edu/researchatpenn/preview/article.php?25&bus



So now that radio is going digital it appears the terrestrial radio stations are about to be up for royalties.  In effect the disitrbutors are playing a game of Mutually Assured Destruction - if they can't keep an oar in the water no more consumer consumption.

Only Matthew Broderick can help us now!
(http://www.sorgonet.com/supercomputing/films/wargameswopr.jpg)(http://www.msu.edu/~wolvenca/wargames.jpg)

You could sort of see it coming when they put the kibosh on Internet radio.


So for years, the ebil terrestrial radio stations have been draining the lifeblood of the recording industry... tragic!  Except the recording industry pays them to do it. (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=4111.0)

(http://www.simpsoncrazy.com/gallery/town/Linguo.gif)
ERR-ROR!

Edit: Since the ideal model apparently involves the recording industry bribing the radio stations to play certain songs, and the radio stations simultaneously paying the recording industry for use of those songs, I can only imagine that the entire thing is some sort of giant tax loophole.

See, that was where Wiliam Gibson was wrong: When you copy a file, the original remains in place. I can take a camera and snap a photo of a painting hanging on a wall. The painting remains. Unless it's an episode of X-Files or Charmed.

What "pirates" do is called leeching: They are enjoying something for free which others pay for. Sort of stepping on the subway without a valid ticket; the train runs anyway. But the people operating the train wants people to pay for enjoying the benefits of the service.

And if illegal downloads can be called "piracy", then the music industry's contracts can be called "slavery" (or "indentured servitude" which is the modern term, ref. Courtney Love in one of her few sober moments). Discuss.

For the record, they don't want you taking pictures of paintings in museums for 2 main reasons:

1) They want to make money from selling books and reproductions.

2) Flash photography can damage paintings over time.

OK - how about someone who buys a game from Gamestop, with 5 day shipping, then downloads it from the net and plays a no-cd cracked version?

(http://users.rcn.com/alcibiades/judge-c.jpg)

Ironically, that was an example of a picture where the copyright has expired, so it was perfectly legal for you to post it.

Disney copyrights will start expiring in Europe, so if I post a Steamboat Willy picture, will you Americans go to jail for "downloading" it when you open the article?

The US legal concept of Fair Use is more lenient than the Commonwealth concept of Fair Dealing.  I suspect we'll be fine.  And hopefully Disney will stop suing mom & pop daycares because they have a poster of Mickey Mouse on the wall.

This is true across the board by the way.  For all the bitching about US law enforcement our laws are still much more lax than most others.  Though our current trend is worrisome.  But then a lot of our current trends are worrisome.

I liked the public transport analogy, for me that really presents a more accurate picture of what goes on when someone copies song or CD. What people are doing is wrong but it certainly isn't stealing and if only a few people do it, it really doesn't hurt anyone. The difference between public transport and the recording industry though is that public transport needs considerable money in order to keep money and to be able to upgrade it's infrastructure. The recording industry however needs money to make money hats and refuses to change distribution methods that could save the consumer money and possibly make them more money. What you're doing is still wrong but you're doing a bad thing to a bad person, morally there's no difference but you don't get the guilt of doing something bad.

I think the piracy term dates back to pirate radio stations which didn't pay for copyright use in Britain, so that othe term fits but the RIAA obviously likes it because it makes the act seem that much more unethical

Another difference is that there's a finite amount of space on public transport, so every freeloader on public transportation makes the ride that much less comfortable for everyone else; in an extreme scenario, freeloaders could deny space to paying customers.  A music pirate doesn't use up anything but his own bandwidth and drive space; new purchases aren't made any more difficult regardless of the number of extra copies that are made.

Ok.  All this stuff has me thinking.  So, what's the difference between music/media piracy and software piracy? By the arguments above is it ok to make a copy of some high priced piece of proprietary software? Is it ok to download copyrighted software for free?  We are allowed to make backup copies of the software that we own, so why not burn a copy for a friend?  If the answer is that they are different, what is the ethical difference (meaning let's keep the cost out of it and focus on the ethics of the matter) that you feel separates the two. 

I'm asking this out of purely academic interest.  I'd like to see how you guys see the matter since most of you are better versed on the software industry than I am.

Since I feel that property ownership is a societal convention anyway, one designed to help keep us from murdering each other in our repsective sleeps, imagining an extension of these rules to nontangible property is natural.  To that end, I do consider acquiring something without giving something in return to be stealing.  No matter if it is software or a dog, if one can imagine that I have exclusive rights to the item then it should not matter what the item is.

I'd say the same logic applies - making a copy of proprietary software is not in and of itself wrong.  It's only wrong insofar as it takes bread from the mouths of software developers (e.g. me).   :-D  If you're a paying customer and you're making a copy for your own use (e.g. using a no-CD crack for a purchased game, which is illegal under the DMCA IIRC), or if you're not a paying customer but you weren't going to pay regardless, what do I care?  My paycheck is none the smaller for your actions, as long as my company doesn't do something asinine like spend a lot of time and money chasing you down.

Software as opposed to music? It's just about the same concept, in my opinion, except in the case of software, one can generally produce something totally new out of the pirated software. Software is a tool, used to produce something (while that something could be entertainment, it could also be a song, a picture, etc.)

Legally, it shoud be about the same. But again, when you start talking about some software, you are back to the price-gouging justification. Photoshop being worth $700? Maybe, but they won't sell many copies that way. I'd wager there are as many if not more illegal copies of Photoshop out there than there are legal copies. But the cost of the software completely prices out casual users, much more so than in the music biz.

And either way you look at it, from music or from software, you cannot directly correlate every pirated copy of a song or a piece of software into a lost sale, because you cannot say for sure that every download would be a sale if the download wasn't available. As I said, the only justification I can see that makes a software download different from a book download is the potential for the downloader to produce something new from the software package.

In the case of money, the "pirate" could use the pirated copy of Photoshop to make money for himself by producing something that is not just another copy of Photoshop. The music downloader could only make money off of it he burned it to CD and sold it to someone.

Of course, the more money you make using pirated tools, the more likely you are to be noticed.  Which is why big companies are absolutely religious about making sure they have valid licenses for everything - one audit and they're completely fucked, especially if they're using pirated tools to do their everyday work.

Proof of causation is hard in any area.  It's hard in my field of cancer research and it's a hell of a lot easier to obtain viable data. 

As for the software-tool concept, I think sampling produces some very similar issues in music (or even plagiarism in writing).  Sure there are subtle differences, but there are some profound similarities. 

The rest of it seems a bit like vigilanteism (sp?) i.e. "I think the company is asking too much for their wares so I'm just going to take it and pay them if I feel moved to do so."  I guess some people feel better about this approach than others. I don't sit with it very comfortably, but I can see how others would as noone really gets hurt.  The fact that we can't really prove that it hurts just helps to justify the behavior further.

Anyway, I appreciate your input.  I've been having some great discussions on this topic with colleagues in Law, Ethics/Philosophy, and business. You're actually providing me with some good viewpoints.

There are a lot of software companies who make inordinately strong software that is ridiculously expensive. I'd talk about it here, but much of it is just esoteric software used by the digital art folk (and I don't mean the people who photoshop). Anyway, they know it's too expensive and offer incredibly cheap educational copies or stuff for free because the more people that use the software and learn it, the more people who will buy it when they have the money to - basically they're smart. You rarely, if ever, hear about single productivity software companies (excluding Microsoft) going after single downloader/campus types because they need people to educate themselves on the software.

One day, I'll buy photoshop. That is, when I use it professionally (something being resizing images and making avatars). And no one taught me how to use it, I probably downloaded it back in 96 or 97...and still can't afford it.

I actually have a legal copy of Photoshop.

And my girlfriend has a legal copy of Illustrator.

We... *cough* share.

But yes, a lot of companies like that turn a blind eye to people pirating the program to teach themselves because, like schild said, the more people who CAN use the program, the more people who will use it and pay for it.

I love the way they totally ignore ASCAP/BMI--the two biggest companies that already enforce and collect licensing fees for use of music by radio stations, TV stations, etc. in the United States.

They can't possibly be ignorant of this; therefore they are either a) blatantly lying or b) twisting it to mean "no performance right exists that is created by the gubmint and that WE control with an iron fist"

I was chatting with a couple ex-Adobe developers last year who told me Adobe actually looks at what features casual folks who pirate their software might need, and attempts to keep that "market" happy. They figure that a good chunk of the folks who pirate eventually turn into legal liceneses, and that if nothing else it cockblocks their competition. I suspect that the high fee for Photoshop has a built-in "you've been pirating this for years" tax.

/Chuckle

Case in point:

Excerpt from a Reuters article:

Also, a quick search shows that the Foo Fighters album tops the file sharing music files currently. In other words it's their best outing, it's selling incredibly well, and it's also one of the top warez pieces of software/whatever.

Well done. Once again the music industry makes themselves look like nothing but asstards.

Just to back up my comments a bit:


From here - a report on filesharing (http://p2pnet.net/story/5801).

OH NOES, 2.3 MILLION LOST SALES. Or poor teenagers who wouldn't buy the album anyway.

An industry is at steak!!!11!

Are you fixing your post to be legible ?

That's probably what he meant to put in there, the list of the top 3 downloaded songs in the Modern Rock category.

On Billboard's Top 200 charts, Foo Fighters is #14 overall, My Chemical Romance is #46 overall, and Weezer is #48. Mariah Carey is #3 on the overall charts and #1 on the most downloaded P2P chart. The Ying Yang Twins are #2 most downloaded and #15 on the Top 200. Pretty Ricky is #3 most downloaded and #39 on the charts.

I'm only 23.  Shouldn't I at least have some clue who the fuck these people are, or am I already that far out of the loop?

God I'm old.  (In spirit, don't bitch at me.)

I sorta know who Ying Yang Twins are, but have no fucking clue on the others. I'm ok with that.

They certainly shake it like a salt shaker.