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File-Sharing Ethics Taught In Classrooms?
shams42 writes "According to the New York Times, the movie/record industries are taking their concerns about P2P file sharing into the classroom (free reg. req.) Among other activities, they are planning to play a game called 'Starving Artist' with 5th-9th graders, where students come up with an idea for a record album, cover art, and lyrics only to be told by teachers that the album is already available for download for free."
Wow! You must listen to some REALLLLLLLLY stupid artists.
:-)...10 songs and thats a good chunk even if ya know some of the standard accounting practices...
The artists I work for that have major label deals all make between $1 and $2 and album.
The guys that I work for that do their own stuff -- pay for all their studio time out of their pocket, pay their managers completely out of their pocket, do all their own promotion, arrange distribution through the various means -- make considerably more than that.
Funny thing...the two guys that I consider to be equal amongst my clients make almost the same each year. One major, the other independent. One tours with a 12 piece band and puts on KILLER shows...the other puts on an acoustic show with him and MAYBE 2 others if he's feeling like it. Both are friends (I met the one through the other as he'd mentioned his friend needing help on his ProTools system)...and both privately tell me that if they were in the others shoes they would milk the system so bad that they would be mad rich.
So what would you prefer? $1.00 per album on 2 million sales? Or $7 on 30k of albums (and STILL have to split songwriting with Harry Fox doing the accounting and taking their chunk because they bill ya directly because you don't work with a label)?
There are advantages and disadvantages to all of this. I have never read a contract that wasn't clear. I've worked with a few artists that didn't read the contract and then complained about it. I've worked with artists that don't even want to know what's in their contract. Hell, I worked a video shoot a few weekends ago and a few of the artists just signed what was in front of them not realizing that this paid them solely for their work as a hired hand assigning their rights to the lead artist...I mean they would have signed it anyways if they wanted to keep their jobs, but afterwards I heard the same ones that said they were wondering how much they were going to make from DVD sales...ummm...nothing...they got one lump sum and nothing more.
Artists are not ripped off blindly...anyone that cares to know what they will get paid has it in front of them. They took a bet that it would pay off more than the alternative.
Artists are NOT starving because of any $0.00000083 payment. I know its an exaggeration, but hell, I think statutory payments for the song writer end up being something like $0.15 a song as it is (thus its always better for artists to write their own damn songs
I don't know why the parent was moded insightful...I hate responding to things like this, but even though the poster is a clueless idiot, enough others need to know this isn't the case and the truth about the industry.
There are criminal penalties for certain levels of copying. See U.S. Code Title 17, Chapter 5, Sec. 506 [cornell.edu] for the offenses and Title 18, Chapter 113, Sec 2319 [cornell.edu] for the penalties.
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That's not exactly true. Copyright infringement is actionable in a civil lawsuit (by the copyright owner) or in a criminal lawsuit (prosecuted by the US government). You should check out the the copyright act's section 506. It's a higher burden to prove criminal copyright infringement (you have to infringe "willfully"), but it still happens, and not just for cable, DMCA, etc. The bottom line is that the labels are suing because they have the money to do it and they can control the legal strategy. Also, the US government may not want to sue because it has other priorities (and a more limited budget).