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Lessig And RIAA Answer NewsHour Questions
Zeta writes "The answers are finally in! Stanford's Lawrence Lessig and the RIAA's Matt Oppenheim have responded to all the tough questions on copyrighted music, many from Slashdot readers, for the online part of the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Take a look - some of the responses may surprise you." We ran the original call for questions a few weeks back.
That sort of brings up issues about if an auto manufacterer could stay in buisness if everyone did that doesn't it?
Record companies don't want to lock music up -- after all, why would people buy it if they could not listen to it in the way that they wanted?
DOES THIS GUY LISTEN TO HIMSELF? If the RIAA wants us to listen to music the way we want, why don't they let us GIVE THEM MONEY for things like music downloads or at least some sort of "approved" form of media other than $25 CDs that we can listen to however and wherever we wish?
"Ford," he said, "you're turning into a penguin. Stop it."
AMEN!!
Was he saying 'Amen' to the answer from the other person,
Or the question,
? ;)
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
Of course we all know they mean that we are stealing from a vapor of revenue they "could have" made if the person:
A. hadn't copied the file
B. still wanted it enough to pay $16
I don't have a problem paying for music, but the RIAA is making a big mistake if they think they can legislate out of existence economic law.
Supply vs. Demand. They should view P2P as COMPETITION, not as theft. Then, they would realize what it is: An inferior method of getting inferior versions of a product for a low low low price.
Back to the sharing!=copying!=stealing, I think that the original intent of copyright was to safeguard initial profits of a trademark or intellectual property, but then eventually safeguard the data so everyone can be enriched by it. I mean, that's what humanity is about--sharing and loving stuff, right? When did money become more important than happiness?! The RIAA wants to control everything, and they are seeing their empire collapse from under them as new, open sources of information take over where they couldn't go. Information wants to be free.
Anyway, maybe if the RIAA LOWERED THE PRICES ON THEIR MUSIC, more people would buy it. $16 isn't reasonable. That is 3 meals. Why do we as a society accept rockstars that make a lot of money anyway? They don't deserve it. They just waste it on clothes and drugs and cars. Personally, I am happy to support good and hardworking stars that come to my city on tours. But I will never buy a CD from the big5 again. Sigh, I digress.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Matt's "amen" was directed at the person asking the question. It seems that Oppenheim and Lessig's responses were made independently of one another, without responding to each other.
"Maybe, but if copying cars was as easy as copying music you'd probably have paid $15 billion for it. I don't know what the development cost for a car is but I'm pretty sure if Ford thought they had a market of one, then the price would be higher than it is."
And that is different from the present situation how?
Maybe, but if copying cars was as easy as copying music you'd probably have paid $15 billion for it.
I'm sorry, but it doesn't cost anywhere near $15 billion to build one single car. Sure, mass production is going to lower the per-car price somewhat, but you could easily create a car for under $100K. Now add the fact that most cars are just "derivative works" of their parts, and that parts can be recycled from year to year while still upgrading other parts, and the price of a new car is going to go down to just the price of the added feature. And that's just for one, the rest can be mass produced for no cost from there.
"Given the increased cost to produce and distribute copyrighted works..."
This is obviously b#lls##t! Technology (internet, P2P, computers, software, electronics) have made it easier and less costly to produce and distribute ideas/music/etc. There are other things that I have found wrong in the arguments, but I don't want to spend all night typing them all out. Read carefully and question everything they say.
Question everything.
He obviously drank the Kool-Aid(tm).
Yeah, I can't stand listening to him. All these RIAA-defenders sound like a broken record, repeating the same tired arguments over and over again. Like "intellectual property should be treated like any other property."
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
With people walking up and driving away with perfect copies, suddenly your car has no value.
If you are a car dealer, you're done for.
"Sufferin' succotash."
The RIAA is the Recording Industry Association of America. It is not the Recording Industry and Artists Association of America. It says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
sums it up nicely
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
What I am reading in these reponses is a whole rash of rationalizations:
Let's face it: We like the music and we want to use the technology that enables us to copy and share it over the Internet for free. We want the product, but we don't want to pay.
You can put forth all kinds of hypothetical situations where illegal and unethical intentions are not involved, but let's be grown-up enough to admit that getting something for nothing is 99% of what this is all about.
You know what I think ought to be done about it? I think that the RIAA ought to start putting their product out there so cheaply that people won't object so vociferously to paying for it. If we could pay 5 or 10 or 25 cents for a copy of a song (I can already see pricing them on a sliding scale -- with the most popular stuff being priced highest, according to laws of supply and demand, kinda), I think that most of us would do that -- for a multitude of reasons:
So maybe I'm too naive about this stuff. But it seems pretty clear cut to me. Making copies of CDs for anything other than your own use is illegal. Does that mean that everyone who does it should go to jail? Probably not. I DO think it means that the RIAA had better wake up and realize that they have a MAJOR problem on their hands, and revolutionize the way they do business, if they want to stay in business.
"Personally, I agree with your comment about radio stations -- and I think that most record companies probably do too. We would love to have more variety on the radio."
f p_congress/ and other articles by that author.
This, at least, is correct -- sort of. According to Salon.com, the various companies pay $150 million per year to radio stations, through independent promoters, to decide what will get played on the radio. They're deciding to go for the same 40 hits, over and over again -- that's the kind of decision you can buy for $150 million -- but they hate it.
Why? Because payola shouldn't cost that much. It used to cost way less, but with Clear Channel holding a monopoly, the price per song has gone way up. They're trapped. No one record company can afford to stop unless they all do -- and if they all agree on that, it's collusion.
This leads to an interesting irony. The RIAA, as of the time this article was written, was lobbying Congress to mandate that pay-for-play be stopped -- "please order us not to pay $150 million each year to have our songs played on the radio." They were simultaneously lobbying Congress to mandate fees for streaming radio stations -- "please make sure we get payed whenever we let someone play our songs on the radio."
To my mind, the difference is choice. They'll pay a lot to make sure everyone listens to the same music; they see no particular benefit in having lots of different music available. This also indicates to me that, whatever this spokesman thinks, the individual companies have no desire for more diversity on the radio. They just wish they didn't have to pay so much to prevent it.
For more info: http://archive.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/06/25/p
their work became so popular (and a few pretty well known starlets got their start with these people) it spawned a newsgroup of it's own - a newsgroup that is pretty much dead now, because ALS sued the major carriers of that newsgroup, forcing them to police it or just remove it entirely. They've ALSo (har) been known to go after individuals who post their material. Occasionally you'll find some of their material in a newsgroup, usually either encrypted or renamed.
Ever heard of Suze Randall? Amateur & Teen Kingdom? Both these websites are (or at the very least were) enormously popular and they WILL go after individuals who infringe upon their material. One or two posts might not get one a DMCA complaint, but they produce prodigious volumes of porn and even a flood of three year old stuff (that's not even on their own website anymore) can land a poster in hot water.
This talk about the porn industry embracing p2p is only a half truth propogated, no doubt, by the industry itself as PR move to keep it in favor among its consumers. It's one thing in the public eye to steal from Mickey Mouse and the Olsen Twins - but another thing entirely when you're stealing from "lowlife pornographers." IOW they need to keep all the friends they can. Their "embracing" of the internet is largely in the form of limited collections with large banners and Microsoft (proprietary) format video and audio files that contain embedded links and scripts - basically just another form of popup ad (at least for the majority who don't disable such scripted security holes - er, I mean "features").
Hit a well maintained usenet server and globally search the binaries groups for PGP containers. If you look deeply enough (well, it doesn't take too much if you bother to read the peripheral discussions) you will find most of these PGP containers relate to the exchange of one of two forms: child porn, and commercial websites - like Suze Randall, ATK, and ALS. You do the math...
Thank you for looking at this topic logically and not emotionally. Personally I wished for a question related to the price of CD production and how it affects sales and the use of P2P networks.
Recently on /. link it was discussed how the cost of production software has dropped ($495 for the home version or $15,000 for the pro version) but it does not appear to have made its way to consumers. This particular point seems to slip through the cracks along with other obvious points of interest. The cost of burnable CDs has reached levels of 5 cents a CD for the consumer. Shouldn't this cost saving be available to large producers of music?
Personally I'm very selective of CDs now days because the prices have remained high. I still purchase CDs, but only rarely. Do I download songs off the net? Honestly, very rarely. And the songs I've downloaded are often songs I own on CD - I'm too lazy or uninterested in ripping the song. Of course I have found songs I always wanted to record off the radio or have a copy of because I could never justify $18 for one song as most music (in my opinion) is piss poor and often repetative.
Not that I've contributed anything new to the topic, but at least I've gotten my thoughts out. chichichi-a
It's not even a fun show anymore... they've become complete bores; the tribe has spoken by the millions: it's time for the men in the sharkskin suits to leave the island.
The only issue would be if you decided you wanted to download somebody else's copy of John Denver's Greatest Hits (which was likely from a CD, and a much higher audio quality).
Just as you would not go into a video store and steal a DVD copy of Star Wars and claim that you should be permitted to do that because you own the VHS version, you cannot download somebody else's copy of a recording.
So you're saying that the *exact* reason I cannot go from 8-track to CD is because the quality increases. Doesn't that logically mean that I would be allowed to go *down* in quality as much as I want? So why the hell can't I make VHS tapes of my DVDs, for those times I want to bring them with me to view with friends or relatives who may not have a DVD player yet? Aren't you implicitly saying that that's legal?
Heh. Not accessing others' property and not violating anybody's personal rights... is exactly what every other infringer is doing. Can I take that as the go-ahead that "infringers" aren't doing anything wrong?
In the context of his point, he's essentially saying that the RIAA is justified in doing whatever they want, even if it's illegal, because they're not doing it for an evil purpose. So if I lost a watch, I'd be justified in looking in your house for it without your permission. Hell, that's not even right. I'd be justified in looking to see if you had the same watch as me.
Mr. Oppenheim remarks: "If art of any form is going to survive and flourish in our culture, we need to support it and protect it."
This is a cynical and ingenuous statement. Perhaps Matt believes that is the goal of his organization, but its aims appear now to have more to do with lining its executives' pockets than with the promotion of the arts. The music industry wants us to believe that without them there would be no more music, no more arts. What crap. People would still write, play, and even record & distribute music. People did plenty of that before there was a music industry. The only difference would be... no music industry ! Which of course means no more fat cats, no more industry control of popular culture, no more middlemen whose main purpose in all of this is to keep their jobs.
And yes, Matt, some of us have considered that whole infrastructure from Sheryl Crow to the clerk at the local CD store and everyone in between. The Internet indeed threatens the existence of that infrastructure, and it is in the way of such things that your industry would rather fight than switch. I find it still ludicrous that iMusic and similar services are being touted so loudly, when the total amount spent on a CD's number of songs still comes to what you'd pay for a CD in the store. Yes, we get to choose the tunes, but we actually get less (no packaging, no Easter eggs, no value added) for the same money. Which means your industry can charge essentially the same amount of money for the product while eliminating the infrastructure you yourself want us to care so much about. Hmm...
Here's a real idea, Matt: Why doesn't your industry get it together to place kiosks in my local CD store, kiosks that are basically high-speed connections to a content delivery service. These stands would let me select or even design the CD cover material, then I could download and burn the content to disc right then & there, I get the jewel case and all. Hey, if I spend enough maybe you guys could throw in a little extra value, kinda like all the bonus material you get from a DVD. You think a store with maybe twenty of those kiosks would do a bumpin' business ?
So there's an idea, Matt. I haven't copyrighted or patented it yet, so I'll let you have it for free. Go ahead, share it with your friends. I'm releasing it on the Internet under the GPL anyway...
Trespass is probably the best meatspace analogy. Trespass law and copyright law are both about legally enforcing control.
Laws about trespass are a balancing act, just like laws about copyright. Fair use is just like the UK laws that require rural property owners to let hikers walk through their land.
A DVD factory in Hong Kong is like building an apartment house on someone else's property. Napster was like inviting a million of your friends to walk across someone's farm. The DMCA is like outlawing a book about how to open a gate.
Casey Muratori from Kirkland, Wash. asks:
Matt Oppenheim from the Recording Industry Association of America responds:
So, in simpler terms, the questioner asks:
To which the RIAA representative responds:
Very interesting Q&A session overall, I felt Mr. Lessig was quite sympathetic to the cause of limiting copyrights to the terms and purposes of their original creation, while the RIAA representative took the position of defending the industry's interests (though that "AMEN" comment was a bit odd for a senior vice president) as expected. It was a nice contrast and quite refreshing to hear respected members of their respective fields answer questions that haven't been excessively pre-screened.
-DAVEO
Sorry to all the artists, but you're just going to have to work harder and sell tour tickets and tshirts like everyone else. The scam is over.
Don't forget the publishing, writing, textbook, mapmaking, sound effects, music printing, software, film, home video, video game, audio book, ebook, print-on-demand, retail book, retail music, retail software and retail game industries, plus all the support companies, shipping and distribution companies too.
That'll push unemployment to about 30%, and destroy about $10 trillion in capital. Fantastic.
But hey, at least you can get your Green Day CD for free. That is, until all the musicians are working at Wal-Mart. Why the fuck not?
Who owns stolen property? The original owner, or the thief? If "fair use" privilege travels with ownership of the original media, then the RIAA loses either way.
You buy a CD, and rip it to mp3. This is legal, right? You own the CD.
I then steal your CD.
So: who owns it now? Who has the "fair use" privilege?
If I own it because I stole it (more precisely: you NO LONGER own it because you don't have it anymore), then I can rip it to mp3 legally even though I got the CD through illegal means. What you and I would do in this case is rob each other. You steal all my CDs and rip them, and I'll steal all your CDs and rip them, and aside from the crime of theft (and neither of us press charges, and "accidentally" leave our crates of stolen CDs at each other's houses next time we visit), no laws have been broken.
If you still own it even though I stole it, then you still have all your fair use rights, including making a new CD to replace the one I stole.
We can still rob each other.
How would the RIAA answer that?
My hunch is the only way out for them would be to claim that there is no "fair use" rights on stolen property, and that everybody loses their rights and has to buy new copies. (Which of course works out wonderfully for them.) I guess at that point your recourse is to consider my theft of your CD a "loan" so you can burn a new CD, claiming to still own it. So the theft victim's claiming ownership of the stolen property is the only way to retain their "fair use" rights.
Isn't this astonishingly stupid?
-- http://frobnosticate.com
Ever stuck to an arguement even when you knew you were wrong, because it looked like you might be able to at least prevent people from finding the truth (image).
Ever seen the 8-year-old that told an unbelievable lie, only to compound it with more wild claims in attempts at justification... it's like digging your way out of a hole but piling the dirt on your own head.
The RIAA hasn't grown up. They're still in big-lie syndrome... and as long as some people believe that filesharing is the cause of their woes, they get some form of retribution/compensation/etc despite the shittiness of their own business model.
no he has a license to the CONTENT of the 8 track edition. It's the copyrighted material he has a license to, not the media on which it is recorded.
And if you bought T2 on VHS, you should be entitled to reencode it and record it on DVD, you own a license which permits you to have one copy of that film, on any media. It does not have to be the same exact copy either, copyright law does NOT indicate this. If I lose my copy, I CAN legally aquire another copy. I CAN'T take a dvd from the video store because even though I own the rights to one copy (any physical copy, not just the physical copy purchased) I DON'T have the right to deprive them of one of the copies which they purchased for resale. There's a big difference there.
medium isn't an issue either, he strongly IMPLIED that the quality of the copy you purchased was an issue. But this is certainly not copyright law. Actually, you are getting a license to the copyrighted material... cd and cassette with the same content are covered under the same copyright, therefore the same license. I purchase a song, I have the rights to that song for my private personal use.
Perhaps the reason that the RIAA is so bent out of shape about the distribution of music on the internet is that it paves the way to making them (the record companies) obsolete. Fundamentally, why do record companies exist? To take the creative works of the artist and distribute them to the markets.
In the case of a physical medium (CDs, for example) this involves actually producing copies of the CDs, packaging them, and shipping them out to retailers. This is an expensive process, so there are economic benefits to doing it collectively under a few big record companies.
Distributing music over the internet is a different story, however. In a parallel universe in which I had the slightest shred of musical talent, given some rather inexpensive equipment, I could record a song on my PC, encode it to mp3 and post it for sale on the internet. I wouldn't even need to know much about the technology, just how to use the pretty GUI.
Do you not think that artists realize that they are being ripped off by record companies? Do you think they like that? The truth is that now there is really nothing stopping individual artists from producing their own music, and selling it through an online music retailer. If they want advertising, they could pay an ad agency to get their name out (that's what they exist to do).
Record companies are desperate. They are desperate to hang on to their contracts because they see the writing on the wall. They figure that if they give the impression that they are protecting the interests of the artist, then artists will continue to sign with them. Ultimately, of course, they are just trying to protect their bottom line. Their problem is not that CD sales are dropping. Their problem is that they themselves are obsolete.
As for the article: It really proved nothing except that RIAA folk are proficient at reciting canned responses to various types of questions. Nothing profound or unexpected turned up there. The justifications given held little or no water. What else is new.
Mr. Lessig, on the other hand, provided somewhat more insightful comments. He made it very clear when he was speaking on the letter of the law, and when he was infusing his own viewpoint and opinions. He also didn't try to suck up to either the recording industry or people who share files.
As much as I disagree with how the RIAA is conducting themselves, and how they are apparently manipulating the US government (more so because, being Canadian, I'm getting screwed by laws made by politicians I don't even have a chance to vote against), but I really feel that record companies are simply in the process of self-destructing. They are now redundant, and at the same time are making themselves unattractive. Bad combination.
Hmm... that turned into a pretty long post. Sorry about that guys.
Belushi (the later) and Ackroyd are on Carson Daily right now and Danny boy just said "we want folks to share this, burn it, download it - have fun. We're a small label now - if I was still on Universal I'd get in real trouble for sayin' that..."
It's a sad fact, but when an industry becomes obsolete, people stop making money.
People shouldn't feel hung up on the rights of the recording industry or any other one concerning their right to make money. What should matter, since it is the public that should decide, is the overwhelming public good. Why should we reward people who attempt to sell us something that can be produced and distributed for practically nothing. It makes no sense. It is an entirely useless allocation of capital that could be better spent on other things.
Don't let anyone scare you, there will still be good music around when the recording industry dies. It is inevitable, no matter what the laws are. Letting the industry die makes too much sense, and keeping it propped up would be far more costly than any impartial person would think reasonable.
Wow...you know very little about manufacturing. Go read books with titles like "Industrial Production Techniques", and you'll be surprised at the fact that the prototype is just the beginning of the manufacturing process.
In other words, once you've done your research, and made your first protoype, only then can one really start work on the manufacturing process; that is when you start designing and buying molds, presses, lathes, parts and electronics in mass quantaties.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
before I get so angry I've got to post.
RIAA guy re: cease-and-desist letters:
We are not accessing anybody's "property," and we are certainly not violating anybody's personal rights.
Really, you mean my copyrighted content on my website is not my property? Interesting, grasshopper, perhaps you should consider whether your own organization owns any "property" as you say.
In defending extended copyright terms, RIAA guy:
Given the increased cost to produce and distribute copyrighted works...
Right, I forgot how much more expensive it is to post a single mp3 file than to press a million CD's. That certainly explains why my paper industry stocks are doing so well: it's just so much cheaper to print copies than put them online.
I know I'm nitpicking, but for the love of god, doesn't this guy have the RIAA-mandated filter between his rational mind and his keyboard/voice? I'm usually a lot more even-keeled, but this stuff is straight from left field.
The website industry including this site was started by amateurs who did it for fun, it became popular and alot of people got rich.
What makes you think musicians cant make money in the same way websites do?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
You make a good case, as do the others talking about the same subject. However I think the point is, as on Star Trek, there wouldn't *be* any money anymore. There wouldn't *need* to be. Large corporations and rich and powerful men would cease to have their lever on the masses. You could make anything you needed, and no one would be 'rich' or 'poor' in their current definitions. We would probably see some form of barter system re-emerge, but my theory is that it would be design-swapping, example: I just built a really cool looking computer using my replicator, but only I know the design, so I could trade my cool computer design for your cool lawnmower design, or whatever.
I would think that even the advent of a replication machine wouldn't make this happen overnight. It would have to be the advent of a free, publicly available database of designs. It would be nice to know you *could* make a microwave with it, but if you don't have the design....I guess my point is that there would still be some form of economy, it just wouldn't be monetary anymore.
http://xkcd.com/386/
And speaking of RIAA, I still get those "join BMG" mailings, where I can get like 14 CDs for a dollar, and even then I can't find more than 4 I would take at those prices. And most of those are Classical Music compilations.
Corporate music is a wasteland, and therefore never gets any of my money. Thankfully there are still oases where one can find music worth buying. The RIAA should look at what those vendors are doing right, rather than at what their customers are doing wrong.
Yes, there would still be a *possibility* for making money, but there wouldn't be any *need* for it. Money is a way for most people to get goods and services, and is a way for rich people to keep score. If anything could be freely copied, the need to use money to get goods diminishes to nothing in a very short time, and the rich people lose their way to keep score. Wahh. I think one big problem would be standards. It would be like OSS, only truly applied to everything. There wouldn't be a relatively small group with the power to introduce new tech, either. If you think the rate of change is high *now*, imagine what it would be if people could freely innovate without regard to cost. I don't think the problem a few posts back about a 'monocar' culture would be the problem. Rather, the problem would be in determining what's *worth* copying and what isn't. Perhaps you could receive social status by introducing copy-worthy designs and innovations, rather than by possessing the most colored squares of clothy paper. Of course, the question would be: if there was no need to have a job to feed your family, who would maintain the roads? Who would pick up trash? Who would make sure the sanitation plants were still functioning? Would doctors and nurses still do their jobs? What would we do with the dictators that wouldn't allow access to replicators for their citizens, while copying massive amounts of weapons? Hmm. I'm not sure I'd want some budding world-ruler-wannabe copying cruise missles or bombers....also, if you could copy *anything*...what happens to the first guy that accidentally clones himself? Which one is the 'real' one?
I guess there are just a lot of things that we couldn't possibly predict; the law of unintended consequences will probably kill us all, sooner or later. That's why I smoke and eat food that tastes good and flirt with women and try to stress less. Worry will kill you before most of the things you're worrying about will.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Yeah, because nobody would *ever* make something good and useful unless they could get strong copyright and patent protection on it, would they? *Cough*Linux*Cough*.
There's no doubt the business models would have to change. But really, is the 2003 model of a car really so much better than the 2002 model, or the 2000 model, or the 1990 model? There might not be as much incentive to spend time to develop new models when the old one is "good enough". On the other hand, if enough people have enough need for a new "X" they'll either make it themselves or pay someone to make it for them. Sure, they'll have to live with other people having it as well, but so what?
I think the incredible success of Open Source / Free software has proved that people can and will design and build amazing things even if they can't sell the design or the end product for much if anything. If the physical world of car manufacturing were similar we'd probably end up with some pretty funky looking cars, and a lot of cars might have some really odd UI "features" and some odd bugs, but so what? I, for one, would not cry if Ford had to close down because there was no margin in designing the newest Mega-SUV.
As for music and other artistic processes, there was music before copyright, and there would be music afterwards. There might not be an N'Sync because the margins just wouldn't be there, but there would probably be just as many, if not more, local bands. To make money, musicians would have to play gigs. Guess what? Most of them do that anyhow, and many of them really enjoy it.
I say, why fear change? Sure there's a downside to getting rid of IP laws, but it's pretty obvious there's a huge downside to keeping them in place as well.
"So, according to this guy, "sharing" only takes place when the lender doesn't have the shared book/CD/whatever available for their use. If the lender retains a copy, or the original, then it's not, "sharing," but, "copying.""
I've wondered about this before. What would be their reaction if someone developed a system that actually did keep track of who was playing a song. i.e. Joe, Bob and all their friends put their mp3s on a server. When Joe wants to listen to one of Bob's songs, it's downloaded to his PC and as long as he's listening to it, no one else can until Joe is done with it. My college use to run a key server that would do that same idea with programs. For example, Photoshop would be installed on the network so that anyone in the lab could run it but it would check with the keyserver on start up to make sure that there were never more people using it than were licensed to.
My little scenario is lacking a lot of details but if something like that existed, would the RIAA still have any valid arguments against it?
I agree - in that I always think that the time a band should make real money is by making real live appearances.
Now - for a talented band to hire a recording studio, and release recordings of there work(and no perfect digital recording is ever good as a real live performance), thereby promoting themselves - so when they do go live they get many listeners. That and also through things like the stret-artist license. I already have paid artists on the street, or paid to see live performances.
I have already used the internet to bid voluntary sums for artists I really like.
To be honest- being an artist myself - I always MP3 my own work, and share it online. Its not my day job, and I do not intend to make money out of it. I just enjoy creating my music, and the reactions sometimes of other listening to it. Although I may consider placing it on a site where people can make the SAL donations...
OrionRobots.co.uk - Robots From sol
So, here's what you do: take the digital stream and translate the binary data to tones (hi, low) and convert those tones to analog, make your copy using only analog, band pass out the gibbs artefacts, convert the tones back to digital, run through a decoder with a touch o' error correction. Done.
You mean, like my modem does?
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle