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Legal Issues Don't Bother American Downloaders
An anonymous reader writes "Ipsos-Reid has released its latest research on file trading. Bottom line, the great majority of users do not believe they are breaking the law. Only 9% feel there is anything wrong with their actions. With 40 million Americans identified as active file traders this is indeed stirring information, though not surprising. Another stat, 73% of US downloaders report that their motivation for trading was to sample music for later purchase. You can see the charts and original press release here."
Note thechoice of words. I'd be willing to bet that the majority of people who download mp3's are well aware that what they are doing is illegal, but may not believe in their heart of hearts that it is actually wrong - there's a semantic difference implied at the very least.
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I have been downloading songs from Sister Hazel for a few months. I was told they were pretty good, so I downloaded and agreed. Yesterday I bought their new album, virtually (heard 2 songs)sound unheard (or whatever the audio equivalent of sight unseen is).
The only reason why I bought their album is because of Kazaa.
This year have purchased about 3 cds. My pre file-trading average was about 5-6 a year. I know I will get at least one more when Big Bad Voodoo Daddy releases their next one in April.
So my quantitative purchasing habits have not really changed, but my satisfaction with purchases have increased tremendously. My choices of what I buy also have changed a little.
In summary, what the hell is the RIAA worried about? I feel most people are like me, they pay for what they like, and try to do the honest thing.
--Joey
I would recommend the RIAA to work hard at making music, not the physical cd, but the actual song, what is being purchased. Once people realize that the song is what they own then they will respect it even when they see it is for "free".
The other problem is that there is no crackdown on downloaders. If you started arresting people, it would actually sink in to 90% of the users that they are breaking the law. If you could walk in to a store, grab that cool shirt you've been wanting, and walked out without being stopped, you'd probably get into the habit of it. But not only because of our conscience, the detectors at the door and the security cameras help deter us from stealing.
Obviously there would still be people d/ling mp3s, but it would be much less than the 20 million or so that do it now.
Mind you, I don't necessarily agree with the law, but I'm explaining that people don't realize they're breaking the law, why they do, and how they could be stopped.
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The story writeup has a howler of a conceptual mistake: It conflates the idea of breaking the law and doing something wrong. If you had asked American downloaders whether they're breaking the law, I'm sure the great majority would say they are. But get with it. Sometimes breaking the law is the right thing to do. Now I'm not saying that filetrading is a sort of civil disobedience, but I think, understandably, many Americans think that filetrading is as immoral as jaywalking--so, not very.
There is one other, but it's unusual: merger. That is, if turns out that there are very few ways of expressing a particular idea, copyrights on the expressions will be voided. But you'd have to challenge the copyright and prove the merger of expression and idea.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I think that as these services become even better (and I'm sure they will) I personally will feel a moral obligation to sign up for them. The music industry needs to learn their lesson--they can't get away with price bloating in the 21st century. Once they learn that and come up with viable alternatives like PressPlay and Rhapsody, I will have no problem paying them $10 to listen to whatever the heck I want, whenever I want.
I do want to make it clear, however, that I still have no problem downloading songs from Kazaa that I cannot find on the pay services. That right there should be enough for the record companies to see what they need to do to get our business back: High quality and variety, and a REASONABLE price.
They're just a fraction away from getting my business.
However, I'm actually convinced that a lot of people who would like to pay the artists (out of enlightened self-interest if not deep morals) *don't* ever buy the album not because they like being evil and naughty, but because *the physical medium* is actually more annoying than valuable, and downloads-for-money are still a novelty on both sides of the Music Industry (ack, what a term! I imagine hard hats on the music assembly line, turning out each manufactured instant hit
Illustration: I've been slowly burning my CDs to Ogg files for a while now -- I even have a pretty tall stack of CDs on my monitor right now just from the last 24 hours of ripping-with-grip -- because it's much more convenient to have the files on many fewer physical units, and because (for the tracks on my hard drive) then I can search by song title, etc. These are CDs that I've collected over the last 12-15 years, and as the collection gets heavier it gets less convenient.
Also, I think there is a slightly larger grey area than you seem to allow
My point is that there *is* some actual "sharing" that goes on in the online world just as there was before the Internet was a major social force. Wide-open directories of arbitrarily gathered music just to fill as many GB as possible, yuck, a different beast.
Aside, but related: Yes, it seems silly and transparent, just a built-in-excuse to say "well, if I own this album already (check), and could therefore potentially compress it for convenience play (check), then why not download from someone who has already done the compression work?" There's a very easy leap to say "Well, I obviously *could* buy the album at the record store down the street, and I intend to
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I find a big reason I listen to MP3s is because I hear new things all the time with them. On an average week I probably download 20 songs that I've never heard of, and put them into my random rotation. Often times when I'm listening to my collection I hear something I've never heard before... which is cool.
I find myself doing a similar thing in my car. I always listen to radio in my car, not because I love the music the radio plays, but because it's random. I don't know what's going to happen next (even though it'll prolly suck).
I dislike CDs cause they're a fixed format. Every time I listen to one, it's the same thing. I don't think I'm alone in liking the randomness of formats like radio and MP3s. It would be nice if record companies could offer me something legal to listen to my genres without having to worry about downloading stuff or hearing a song more than a few times. (Maybe I should try XM Radio.)
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According to the Home Recording Act, I can record any signal I can pick up in my home from the radio or TV AND let any of my friends or family borrow or record from my recording.
So, it's not illegal for me to get a radio tuner for my PC and encode songs to MP3 -- yet, it is illegal to download those exact same songs in mp3 format or to post them to the web, but it is legal for me to give my radio-encoded mp3's to any of my friends. Also, the same is true for any TV shows. I can record The Sopranos, burn it to a DVD, and give it to a friend, yet I can't download the episode of the Sopranos I missed last week even though I pay for HBO!!
Anyone else think this is stupid? I can listen to any music on MP3 whenever I want -- so long as the original source was from either a CD I baught, the radio, or a friend or family member who gave it to me as long as they got it from the radio or TV -- but NOT from a stranger online... mmmkayyy. But, if I met a stranger online in person, and we were friends... they could give me a copy & that'd be legal.. so long as their source was from a the radio or TV.
I fear that laws will change to where noone can copy anything (goodbye fair use), but I'd prefer that they'd change so that noone can enforce a copyright longer than 7 years. (after 2 years, most music and movies have made their serious dough anyway -- 'cept TV shows b/c they get their major money in sindication (sp). I think a fair compromise would be -- you can't copy anything for other than personal use, parody, news media, or some other variant of free speech/fair use ... unless it's 7 years old :-) (in other words, no sharing of an exact copy of a full work with anyone unless it's 7 years old)
Laws are made by the people. If 93% of the people think this is right, maybe the laws should be changed.
If you read up on some of the ancient philosophers and how they defined law you will actually find that most, if not all considered unjust laws to be invalid. While in practice the lawmakers would probably disagree and charge you with breaking the law if you chose to do so, theoretically I have no problem with there claim. Slavery would in this case fall into the unjust area of law. I doubt the 'average man' would disagree with me there. But do copyright laws fall into the unjust area? I challenge anyone to explain to me how copyright laws are fundamentally unjust. You can't get everything for free.
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
What, exactly, do modern day musicians (artists and 'performers') do to deserve hundreds of millions of dollars, again? They follow their calling well? So do I, and I am not entitled to millions for it.
Why is the IT job market in the dumps right now? Too many unqualified gold-diggers clogging the field.
Why is music in the dumps right now? Too many unqualified gold-diggers clogging the field.
Music was a hell of a lot better, imho, before the advent of the superstar. Not very rewarding, either -- I guess that meant you only sung if you had something worth saying.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Yeah, you tell yourself that, if it makes you feel better.
Fine then, I'll tell myself that. Meanwhile, I'll be ordering another round of CDs from CD Japan pretty soon, for instance the SaiKano OST and the GitS:SAC OST which I "borrowed" from a friend since I wasn't a big fan of the show, only the music (amongst other CDs that I have mp3s from.
Why bother, when downloading it is so much easier
I only have one reply to this: snort. I'm really sure its "so much easier" to deal with the drek, people who never let you fetch stuff, and other crap on kazaa and the like. And thats if anyone else out there actually had my interests in music.
Now, I'm completely against the people who do as you describe and resell the burnt CDs for 500% profit (at this point, I would call it "bootlegging"). But you have to face it: Today's US music industry relies on people not hearing the crap on the disc ahead of time, so that they might be fooled into buying it. Since they have managed to get their industry into such a run-down state that the only way they can manage to sell anything is by accident or deceit (wouldn't you call filling a CD with two good songs which get radio advertising time, and the remainder with remixes or other crap deceit?) they have to force people to not preview the music. So they push for laws against it.
You know what really makes me feel better? It's not telling myself that I'm going to buy the stuff I like, because I know that to be true. It's that I look out and see civil disobedience performed against the gross misuse of a once-honorable law (copyright law, to be specific). Once upon a time it let people be creative and get money for their creations. Now, the music industry (amongst others) has shifted the power of the law from protecting authors to protecting the publishers. Once upon a time, an author granted permission to a publisher to publish the work. Nowadays, the publishers use work-for-hire loopholes and other tricks to take the work by force and leave the author with nothing but debt. For instance, if you read the text of the DMCA, you'll notice that there are no rights assigned to authors of a work. If I record a song in a DRM-enabled format, I have no right to remove the DRM from it, because the DMCA protects the DRM, not my work. (And before you claim "bullshit", take a look at this where legal threats were made against a person who wrote his own tool for fixing the "don't embed" bit for fonts he created himself. It hasn't gone to court, apparently, but given that the DMCA repeals rights of due process, that doesn't matter much, does it?)
So do the American thing. Protest the commercialization of your government and download an mp3 today.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.