Embrace file-sharing, or die

Salon.com ^ | Feb. 1, 2003 | John Snyder and Ben Snyder

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Let's look at the reason behind copywrite laws. Let's say you spend 5 years of your free time writing a book. Then let's say you go to publish it, and get it published. But, some big name author decides he likes it, takes your text, word for word, and puts his name on it. He just made alot of money off your work.

That's EXACTLY how GE accumulated the millions of stock photos it sells to advertisers - IT STOLE THEM FROM FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHERS WHO CANNOT WIN IN COURT BECAUSE GE CAN SPEND MILLIONS.

The simple fact is, it costs little guys more to defend their copyrights than they get in royalties. It's a game rigged by lawyers to make themselves the owners of everything.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Music is similar. These people (sometimes) put alot of time and effort into producing something. They want to get some money from all that effort.

I agree. Too bad the sleazy, corrupt music industry is rigged so the artists usually never make a dime for all their time and effort. Courtney Love Does the Math

[wizzler]

I'm not familiar with the case you're referencing. But it certainly sounds like you're acknowledging that copyright means something, that it has a value. And that when someone -- GE in this case -- infringes it, that's not a good thing.

So why are you OK with someone infringing the rights of musicians, songwriters and record labels?

Don't let your thinking get blurred by "big" and "small." Atlantic Records' legally obtained copyrights are just as important as those of the freelance photogs you're sympathizing with. Right is right, and wrong is wrong.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

So why are you OK with someone infringing the rights of musicians, songwriters and record labels?

Because the system is rigged so the musicians and songwriters rarely see a dime. Courtney Love Does the Math

[wizzler]

So Courtney Love doesn't like a contract she voluntarily signed. So she'd like to get the government to step in to protect her from herself.

So what? How is that relevant to YOU and ME honoring copyrights?

Your thinking is fraught with such skewed logic and shaky moral equivalence, it feels like too much effort to even try and rebut it.

[Jonathon Spectre]

Just curious -- why do you care so much about the business decisions and inner workings of some group of record labels? I just have trouble imagining people getting so up in arms about whether, say, JCPenney "keeps up with technology" or United Airlines makes wise financial choices. Yet apparently some record labels' failure to proceed as you think they should has the sweat flying off your keyboard.

The sweat is not flying off my keyboard and I am certainly not up in arms. Businesses committing suicide is interesting to me. It's why I keep up with the goings-on inside McDonalds. The recording industry's current death-throes are especially interesting because they have essentially plugged their ears and put their hands over their eyes and chanted, "Nah, nah, nah, nothing is or will change, we will destroy or control this new technology and all will be as it was before." They really are fighting the tide. In twenty years they will be looked at as the candlemakers who struggled to keep down the light bulb. A better way has emerged, and rather than embrace it they've wrapped themselves in dynamite and jumped off a cliff.

I could really care less, but it is amusing to watch companies die from stupid, self-inflicted wounds. Like I said, if they had bought Napster and wholeheartedly gotten behind downloadable music, they would today be enjoying record profits and consumer goodwill. Instead they are despised and, though they don't know it yet, thoroughly and humiliatingly beaten.

[eno_]

That's fine. When enough of them don't plunk down that $15, prices will drop.

But I hope they don't think it's OK to head to Kazaa and plunk down nothing to get it.

Be careful what you wish for. It's too much work to steal Windows for low-value hand-me-down PCs, so now they run Linux. I too, hope these kids get beyond stealing and try on some legal DLs from MP3.com, IUMA, or any of the thousands of indy band sites.

But reality is more messy. Just because some of these kids won't give up stealing doesn't mean that anyone has any duty to accept the RIAA's perversion of copyright law and the DRM invasion of privacy of our PCs.

And what about the grey areas? I DL what is in principle copyright material, but in forms I can't get commercially - like live bootlegs. Some bands wink at concert bootlegs as an effective promotion. Others are Hilary Rosen's meat puppets. Should I be careful to DL only stuff by Phish and like-minded bands? Even that is "illegal" by some peoples' lights. If nobody lost a deci-cent due to concert bootlegs, should I care? The RIAA makes it very easy not to care.

[wizzler]

What I find interesting is how often we hear that the record labels are greedy machines, driven only by hunger for money and obscene profits. Yet they refuse to embrace this online windfall you say is sitting there waiting to be had.

Which raises another good point: If downloadable music is the only viable path to a healthy music business, where are the successful new entrants who should inevitably be filling this wide-open niche?

[Poohbah]

Which raises another good point: If downloadable music is the only viable path to a healthy music business, where are the successful new entrants who should inevitably be filling this wide-open niche?

They're being repressed by the simultaneously all-poweful and all-stupid RIAA :o)

[Jonathon Spectre]

What I find interesting is how often we hear that the record labels are greedy machines, driven only by hunger for money and obscene profits. Yet they refuse to embrace this online windfall you say is sitting there waiting to be had.

They refuse to embrace it because they don't believe (rightly) that they will be able to control every aspect of the distribution. They'd rather have all of nothing than most of a lot. It's entirely, 100%, about control. So instead they will keep manufacturing CDs, charging far too much for them, and screaming about how "pirates" are destroying them.

Which raises another good point: If downloadable music is the only viable path to a healthy music business, where are the successful new entrants who should inevitably be filling this wide-open niche?

Ask Napster. Any new entrant into the business is cowering in fear of lawyers and their filth. And again, see control. The recording companies themselves are the ones who actually have the ability to fill the niche, but what if >gasp< someone does something with music they don't want them to? Arranges tracks they way they want, decides what particular songs they want to pay for, consumes music how they themselves see fit? Heaven forbid! Would that mean that a whole lot of record executive jobs would become... obsolete?

So instead, they let their entire industry become obsolete. Let's all go down with the ship! It's truly idiocy on a grand scale. Makes a good spectacle, though.

[wizzler]

So instead, they let their entire industry become obsolete. Let's all go down with the ship! It's truly idiocy on a grand scale. Makes a good spectacle, though.

If downloading is THE way to go, then new providers will step in to provide new music that way, and consumers will abandon the ones who don't. All that would happen is that X, Y and Z labels, whose names you know now, would be replaced by labels A, B and C. But where are these newcomers? And why would they be cowering in fear?

You seem to think that only the current slate of labels has the ability to make and market music. But the Internet looks wide open to me. I could start a record label right now, and stick everything online. Presumably customers will quickly come my way, because clearly the product's delivery system is more important than the product itself.

Jonathon Spectre (who remembers other experiments in control, 1917-1991)

Why do you remember that right now? Are you always reminded of communism when property owners strive to protect ownership and prevent theft?

[dark_lord]

A very bad argument. An equal number of Germans thought it was OK to kill Jews. Didn't your Mom teach you that "Just pecause others do it doesn't mean it's right."?

Hmmm....so you are arguing that downloading music and killing Jews are somehow equivalent? No? Just that they are both illegal? But so is driving over the speed limit. Is driving 75MPH in a 65MPH zone on a deserted highway in South Dakota like killing Jews? No?

Lets be clear - some things are wrong regardless of whether they are legal or not. Some things are right even if they are illegal. And sometimes actions are not, in and of themselves, right or wrong, but they may be illegal. One must be clear as to whether something is "wrong" because it is against the law, and whether something is wrong because it is wrong. Abortion is perfectly legal today, after all.

If the SCOTUS decided in some future court case that it was okay to download music for personal use, would that suddenly be okay with you? In other words, if it is no longer illegal it is not wrong to do? Have I beat this horse to death yet?

[muslims=borg]

The problem is record companies pay people like Mariah Carey and Michael Jackson huge sums of money before they even produce anything. These people have no incentive to make a really good record because they know they are getting paid regardless. To pay them they have to jack up the prices on everything else. Maybe if a CD cost like 8.99 people would buy them.

[July 4th]

I have my entire 250 CD collection on an MP3 player the size of my palm. This is with no help from the record industry. I have never seen a technology with so much commercial promise so violently bucked by a group that could have made -fortunes- off of it. The RIAA's "illegal any way you look at it" approach has sealed their fate, and the fate of the future music world. The new artists are becoming what the consumers want, rather than what the recording execs like on their stations.

Talk about the future of music, how's this: I was listening to a trance station on Shoutcast through my Winamp player. I really liked what I was hearing, so I looked up the artist on the internet. I e-mailed her on the address listed on her site, asking where I could get a copy of her stuff. She personally replied within about 12 hours, and gave me an FTP address with all of her mixes. How cool is that?

[freedumb2003]

>>If the music industry had wholeheartedly embraced file-sharing and Napster from the day it was developed, the recording companies would today be experiencing record profits and praise, not the falling sales and monstrous negative publicity they have. Like all tyrants, they instead attempted to quash what they could not totally control. Might as well fight the tide. Oh, wait, that is exactly what they are doing...<<

So, the music industry's business model hasn't adapted to current technology. That has nothing to do with the legality of stealing money from legitimate and Constitutionally-sanctioned channels. The market can and should eventually make the correction.

Capitalistic economics says something is worth what someone will pay for it. If an individual won't plunk $15 down on "8 Mile" then the price will lower to the point where someone will pay for it. Tell your students that they have two choices: 1) Plunk the $15 to get the album even if only 2 tracks are good and eventually they will be throw-away or 2) Don't plunk down the $15, wait for the price to drop, or forget the whole thing. Funny, those were our choices in the 60's and 70's (when music was good) and I don't remember complaining about "fairness." It was what it was. That fact hasn't changed because of a new technology that allows more flexibility. It sounds to me like people are complaining because music stinks today and they can't buy disposable music in small atomic units (i.e. single tracks). As long as the market keeps supporting the current crop of "artists" they can't blame the business model. It's like screaming because McDonald's doesn't offer better food while at the same time buying 5 Big Macs a week.


What they CAN do in addition is suggest they contact the record companies and tell them what they, the market, want.

>>The RIAA and record companies have dug their own graves by charging too much for too little. Rather than adapt, they have chosen to die. Good riddance.<<

Fine, let 'em die. Something will fill the vacuum.

See my point above.

[logic101.net]

So, that justfies stealing whaterver they might make? And if the artists only get crumbs, please explain Michael Jackson's fortune. Or how about the Rolling Stones and the Beatles? But, this was before mass theft of their work on the internet.

What you are defending is nothing less then theft. I will admit that MOST music is worth little, but I'm picky. But, if you find a CD to have value, you should have the decency to buy it rather than steal it.

MARK A SITY

[logic101.net]

I only got #3 and #5. I guess he forgot the other silly arguments.

Besides, if the record industry being sleazy is an excuse, then I suppose that the fact that many of the "artists" are sleazy is further justification....

What I have a huge problem with when it comes to music is the FM radio industry. Total crap is played over and over and hyped while really good stuff is ignored. Listen to any Angel song, then listen to any Hughy Louis (sp?) song and tell me which is higher quality. Yet, how many times has Angel been played on the radio?

Even so, there is no justification for theft.

In fact, the "logic" is circular. Since the "artist" gets little from the sale of a CD (which I doubt), that means it is ok to steal that little from him? It is just rationalization to justify theft.

MARK A SITY
http://www.logic101.net/

[dirtydanusa]

Remember when CD's came out and they said they would be cheaper than albums because they are cheaper to produce. I'm still waiting... Maybe the industry should go back to
ALBUMS!!!:) How good were those recordings when we copied the album to a cassette tape!!!

[eno_]

For someone callng themselves "Logic 101" you have a gift for the non-sequitor. Some people will not stop stealing music, ever. So that justifies hideous anti-Constitutional laws promulgated by coked-up Commies that enable them to legally hack our PCs?

The theft may go on forever, in whatever quantity. And that justifies a surveillance culture, and discarding the 4th Amendment? If Hilary Rosen were Mother Teresa and stealing music killed innocent children in orphanages, and the thieves were sending the money they saved on CDs to Saddam Freakin Hussein, it still would not justify perverting the Constitution and harming the rights of all Americans to stop it.

As it is, we are not talking about killing orphans, we are talking about some coked up jackass getting is Prosche repo'ed. Gee, save his gangrenous sinuses, or save my privacy rights and restore the Founders' intent? Hmmmm, tough choice! A true moral dilemma. Not.

[logic101.net]

You have the gaul to question my logic? Ok, let's follow yours through.

"Some people will not stop stealing music..."
Well, I do have to give you credit here, at least you admit you are stealing it! However, some people will not stop killing other people. Does this mean we should legalize murder? Some people will not stop abducting and raping children, should we legalize this now? Following your "logic" it would seem so.

"coked-up Commies that enable them to legally hack our PCs?"
Say what? Where did this come from? For one thing, I made no comment on enforcement in any way. I was just pointing out that what you are is a thief of "intelectual property". I was also pointing out that your crime is NOT victimless. It seems from the rest of your post that you care nothing for your victims. You seem to have a classic case of class envy, or even hatred. Do you also hate Bill Gates for making software that nearly everyone wants, just because he profits from the sale of such software?

"...restore the founder's intent."
I fail to see anything in the writings of our Founders that indicate that people should be allowed to steal from each other without consequense.

And you are questioning MY logic? Yours is as twisted and full of rationalized lies as Bill Clinton's is!

MARK A SITY
http://www.logic101.net/