Slashdot Mirror
New Zealand Shows Music Piracy Boosts Sales
vik writes "According to This NZ news article it appears local music is being boosted by piracy. Strangely, their Associate Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage, Judith Tizard, supports this when she warns that "... while sales of local music are high, so are illegal copies of New Zealand albums." Unfortunately as always, government bodies don't seem to be able to make the connection even when it stares them in the face."
Correlation is not causation.
A blog like any other.
How does this stuff get put on the main page? This is a 4 paragraphs or so article just saying that local music is popular, and mentions that piracy of the music is up too. How is this in any way proof or causal? Dear submitter, here is what is staring you in the face with this tiny, tiny article: Piracy happens more for bands that people like than bands they don't like. If a band becomes more popular, piracy will increase. To attribute some weird "the popularity must be because of the piracy, duh!" idea to this is ludicrous, and crazy illogical. God I hate myself for reading slashdot, especially on a saturday night.
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
I didn't know that Middle-Earth was at the top of the music scene, good for them.
I think it boost sales of less known album but reduce sales of more commercialy pushed album..... Free access to music give the power of choice.... thats why any big commercial distribors, RIAA etc are against it.
Overuse of the Pumping Lemma causes blindness
Do those bands promote bootlegging from their concerts? they generally drives up their raving fan base and promotoes sales of cd's and and concert attendance. Sure correlation, but there is some methoed of caustation here
Are you should this is the right link? All I see is a seven sentence "article" that doesn't say any such thing.
that piracy causes increased sales, that should not make it illegal. It should just be up to the music industry to not do anything about it, or perhaps even encourage it slightly.
it's so funny, etc. REALLY
...you know with RIAA and cousins constantly using my own government to screw me, i had pledged not to buy anymore cds...it's been months.
usually i just listen to the radio or existing collection.
but a friend loaned me a cd with a couple hundred mp3s on it, and two of them were by "no doubt", god i just love gwen's voice, and they just released some interesting stuff...
well i had to do it, buy some of their older cd's (and some of their newer stuff, too) as well as some dvd's i've been wanting.
so i was doing pretty well until this dude loaned me mp3s, then, bam! $250 spent on media just like that.
i hate the corporate bastards taking away my rights, but music has always been a calming, enjoyable thing for me--makes it pretty fucked when you have to choose between loving great music and hating corporate scum and knowing you can't support the former without supporting the latter.
You'd almost think that you care about us in the Southern Hemisphere ;)
Nothing in the article says or implies towards the fact that "Piracy boosts sales". What boosts sales is the fact that there are plenty of new zealand artists in top lists, and new zealanders love to support their fellowcountrymen.
What the DON'T tell you is that New Zealand has a vested interest in ENYA, yes the artist of such noteworthy titles as "Sail Away" and other new age hits. It turns out that the only way people will buy Enya is because they accidentally downloaded it--thinking it was Kenyan music--and want to do everyone a favor by taking it off the market through purchasing all remaining copies and tossing them into the incenerator ASAP. Where do you think Enya is from? New Zealand, where else? A coincidence? I think NOT!
Theres no proof that piracy contributes to higher sales. Infact the reason behind higher sales is because of all these stupid teeny music shows on like $Country Idol, and Popstars and all the other "young talent time"/"micky mouse club" wannabees.
I find the above comment about the governments not knowing something when it is in their face stupid. Just another typical geek lashing out at the government or some other ruling power (microsoft) for no good reason.
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
KHAAAAAN!
I think the boost in local NZ music by copying is not that surprising. There is a lot of very good New Zealand music, but a lot of it stays relatively unknown, even to the local market, as we tend to get swamped by the more affluent overseas marketing. A little exposure can take you a long way.
As to New Zealand copyright laws - that's an interesting one, as they are currently under review. I haven't checked recently (but made plenty of submissions while they were taking them) but I believe that while they aren't doing a DMCA (because enough people spoke up) they aren't doing the right thing either.
This article by the IT editor of one of the major NZ newspapers goes so far as to suggest that they ought to be trying to enshrine Copyleft and Creative Commons in the copyright laws, so there is a movement towards this at a reasonably public level - how much sway that actually has over politicians is hard to say.
All the New Zealanders reading this: Write in to your local MP and ask them for their stance on Copyright law, and explain the benefits of having Copyleft and Creative Commons as a firmly enshrined concept under law. The more they think people are paying attention, the better the chance thet something good will come in the copyright review.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
I think that there is a delicate balance in place that makes music piracy actually help the industry, and people should realize that a possibly integral part of this balance might in fact rely on music piracy continuing to be illegal.
-Zeecog
That doesn't matter to Slashdot when they can find some random thing (wow, some article in New Zealand) that supports piracy and latch onto it.
I'm sorry, but music piracy will always be wrong. There is no justification for it, because in the end, you are always damaging the artist in some way. It's become an anti-corporate culture movement by Slashdot, but that's really just a moral justification imposed to get rid of any pangs of guilt anyone might feel when they fire up Kazaa.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Correlation is not causation.
Repeat that.
Keep repeating it until it sinks in.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I dont know about you, but im starting to feel like some one cares about us down here. I wonder if this is proportional to the influx of Australian actors in Hollywood?
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
Yet we try to present music sharing as "helping the music industry!" It's like telling King George that Britain will benefit from granting the colonies self-rule. Sometime the reality will strike: music sharers don't care about the music industry and they don't care about the artists. Sales will eventually fall.
Better that we tell the industry what our resistance is really about: We reject the government's copyright system that makes Federal authorities into thugs that enforce the music companies' restrictions of our freedom to spread information to whomever we want.
Sigmentation fault - core dumped
First off, I do agree with that article being, well, not an article at all, but a news brief at the most. A more in-depth view is needed to really understand what's going on. But past that, I do agree with music piracy being a boost on sales and popularity, as it widens dramatically the potential market for any artist to not just people with 20 bucks but to people with MUCH much less who probably couldn't afford it at all otherwise.
Same thing happens with books, as pirated books, costing way cheaper than legits (at least in my country) find their way not only into a segment of the population's homes, but to a much broader market, and it is usually the widespread distribution through illegal channels that ends up dragging forward the non-pirate books or CDs or movies or whatever.
So, in a sense, piracy - despite its many cons - has the big pro of making culture (and yeah, a lot of garbage too) widely accesible to lots of people who, usually driven off by high prices, simply turn away in resignation. Knowledge for the masses, if you like, and in poor countries like my own, maybe the only working scenario to raise population's literacy levels.
http://castorexmachina.wordpress.com - Filosofía, tecnología y cultura.
I wonder if Radio listening has been ont he increase at the same time sales are picking up? I'd take a guess and say yes. But it all comes back down to think like American Idol etc!
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
After all, how do you quantify someone like myself, who either:
A) Downloads a track or three by an unknown (to myself) artist to 'test the waters' and based on the tracks in question either buys their CD's/Merchandise, or immediately deletes their tracks of my HD.
B) Downloads live/unreleased/discontinued tracks by the truckload.
Both of those show as 'piracy' by RIAA's standards, one of them 'MAY' contribute to higher music sales, HOWEVER, in the case of 'A', even tho' I downloaded tracks to which I will NEVER purchase said album, it can not be considered a 'lost sale'.
Bascially, just goes to show, you can skew the numbers to show whatever you want them to show...
Also of note, I'm up to about $400 in sales to the iTMS. Quantify that...
Don't park drunk, accidents cause people.
...and doing this doesn't harm anyone.
Of course it does.
Better that we tell the industry what our resistance is really about: We reject the government's copyright system that makes Federal authorities into thugs that enforce the music companies' restrictions of our freedom to spread information to whomever we want.
BS. Ask the average Kazaa downloader why they download music. Because it's there and it's easy! It has nothing to do with some sort of revolutionary movement. It's all about convenience, nothing more.
Maybe on Slashdot, it's something different, but that's because Slashdotters feel the need to build everything up into things they're not (for instance, this article, which is nothing more than a four-paragraph description of the local New Zealand music scene).
"Sufferin' succotash."
As many have pointed out - there's no good causality link here. It's equally likely that local music is more pirated _because_ it is more popular.
If I was to try and pin some causality to the rise in popularity of local music in NZ, I would say that the Governments request (with threats of legislation) that NZ radio stations fulfill a certain quota of airtime to local music has been a huge boost. And it links in timewise quite closely with some of the rise of popularity of local music. Mostly though, that is simply down to exposure. As noted in another post, local music gets lost amidst the larger marketing budgets of major overseas labels. I'm also not a fan of the government mandating local content quotas - I would prefer the radio stations choose to do that themselves.
My point is, simply, that greater exposure is what has boosted local music sales. Internet sharing of music is another way to increase exposure. That doesn't mean, of course, that I would advocate piracy - but perhaps local artists who would like to get known should release some tracks under a license that allows copying. Hopefully they already do.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
We've seen this already with games sales in China.
- A
water is wet
It all depends on what state it's in, wise guy... I bet you won't say it's wet when it's -200 degrees Celsius.
that should not make it illegal
;) (sorry, I loves you guys really)
this hsould be,
that should not make it legal
as the previous reply to my post pointed out, and I aggree with him.
2 errors in one thread one correcting a previous error, I should be an editor
I think we should make a big sign on the front page of slashdot submission utility that reads "Correlation does not Equal Causation.
I'm not sure how many times I have to read articles like this a day, but here's an example that everyone understands: "There are more deaths by drowning in swimming pools during the summer months. There is more ice-cream consumed during the summer. Therefore, it can be proven that Ice-cream causes deaths by drowning."
We need to look at factor 3 in the above case (it's hot!), just like people need to look at factor 3 for the music sales / piracy ratio (the bands are popular!).
There's no link between music piracy and sales that's been proven on a causal level. Why? Because it's impossible to prove causal relationships from studies with no variable manipulation. Case closed.
"we're definitely seeing an increase in traffic through the store which is good," said a wallmart spokesman, hal dumbdoilook, "people steal something off the shelves, and if they like it, they usually come back and pay for it later."
"this year, we are encouraging wallmart customers with our steal for the holidays campaign."
"this strategy is based on our belief in the moral integrity of each and every wallmart customer."
in store stickering of major label cds:
"WARNING: this record label pays radio stations to keep independent music off the air"
I use the library because I'm travelling around the globe and I can afford to store 40 electronic books - they all fit on one memory stick in my Clie, but I cannot afford to carry my complete paper based Sci/Fi library around the place.
|>>?
My guess is that sales are up for both legal and illegal copies, but only temporarily. Eventually pirated ones will replace legal ones.
I'm not saying this through the top of my hat, I went to China and there, even stores sell only illegal copies!
It's nice to try saying your pirating is ok, but it's not; the governments and record companies are right.
The slashdot editors are so damm dumb, they wouldn't know shit if it came right out of their asses.
The music industry apparently figures out the amount of money lost by piracy with the following formula:
Amount of money made = $X
Amount of money I think I should have earned = $Y
Amount lost to piracy = ($Y - $X) + $C, where $C is some large constant.
Unfortunately for the music industry, demand for music is sensitive to price. A lot more people will listen to a lot more music if the price is cheap than they will if it is expensive -- raise the price too high and you will see entertainment dollars flow to movies or computer games or kegs of beer. You can't just say "A billion songs were traded last year, so at a buck per song we would have made a billion more dollars without piracy." Even if the RIAA had absolutely perfect content protection and people were so law-abiding they hesitated to cut the tags off mattresses, the amount the recording industry would have gained would be a tiny fraction of the amount they are claiming -- and with some artists, especially the lesser-known ones, they would actually lose sales since no one is going to spend fifteen bucks on an artist they have never listened to.
"My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you the RIAA just purchased legislation which outlaws New Zealand forever. The bombing begins in five minutes."
corrolation proves nothing.
ie:
murders occur while the earth is spinning.
therefore murders are caused by the earth's rotation.
OR
music piracy is high, so is profits from sales, therefore piracy causes profit?
yeah that proves it? *shrugs*
-judging another only defines yourself
the trouble with online music piracy is it doesn't just threaten the industry's sales, it threatens their control over distribution. Put simply, why would the music biz tolerate music piracy for a modest increase in sales when they could use their strangle hold over distribution for a massive increase in sales? For profit's sake the music industry ought go on doing what it's been (crushing pirates and stuffing digital restrictions down people's throats while screwing artists). That's gonna pay off a lot more in the long run.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
KLINGON BASTARD you killed my son!
Anti-Nuclear free sheep.
I always purchase NZ sounds over the counter and never send copies aside from compilations.
Anything else, well..
I don't know who cares what New Zealand thinks. They don't even have vegemite-- they have "vegemite food"
Its a..*sniff*... visious cycle....*sniff* :,(
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
And in other news. Murder for Hire boosts sales for the funeral industry. Therefore Murder for Hire is OK.
And in other news. Invading foreign countries is good for Bush's cronies. Therefore invading foreign countries is OK.
And in other news. Smoking while pumping gas is good for the hospital industry. Therefore smoking near gasoline is OK.
And in other news. Wearing steaks strapped to your body while working in the lion exhibit is good for the meat industry. Therefore the meat industry will send flowers to your funeral, in appreciation of all your hard work.
Wearing tin-foil hats during a lightning sorm is good, for everyone else. Therefore please continue to wear tin-foil hats during lightning storms.
Thanks, The Managment.
Call it advertising, exposure, building a name for oneself and the band. Branding, etc. Authors, academics. painters all have to do this if they want to make a living off it anyway, perfectness of the distribution system nonwithstanding. With the internet, this system will be more perfect, more efficient so that's one less barrier to fame. Why should musicians be different?
Regardless of what it does or doesn't do, copying music isn't right. The concept of "it's good for them, so it should be okay" is total baloney.
Businesses are allowed to make mistakes that lead them into bankruptcy.
Here's the fact. Copying music is wrong. Anything else is a lie.
Looks like you've let the *AA slide YET ANOTHER ONE past you. People are taking the RIAA "stolen goods" crap at face value. Perhaps the astroturfers I've seen around here have managed to spread some disinformation.
128K MP3s are FM broadcast quality (by definition) promos. The business model has one big difference from FM. The users are storing music promos at their own expense and serving up copies using their own bandwidth.
The only differences between taping MP3 promo tracks being played back over a wireless analog channel, like an FM radio and downloading identical MP3 promo tracks off the Net is that one is illegal and the other isn't. Does listening to 128K MP3-quality tracks displace sales? Why would the labels be paying to have them broadcast if they did?
Either works for promoting records. The digital version is illegal because the *AA organizations paid off a bunch of politicians to make it illegal. As for morality, some people think getting law in exchange for campaign contributions is immoral.
Sales aren't displaced by MP3 downloading, they're driven. That's why indie musicians release their own stuff for download on MP3. Not because of generosity, but because they want people to buy their CDs and higher-than-broadcast quality digital tracks at iTunes.
The most downloaded album on Kazaa was the last Eminem CD, "pre-released". People were waiting to buy it so they could get a higher quality music experience than they could get off broadcast quality CDs.
Records are sold when people hear enough of what's on it to decide they want a high-quality copy for their own listening. Nobody hears it? Nobody buys it. People hear it, whether on FM, P2P, or via FM radio, people might buy it. What's so hard to understand about that?
Why is the digital version illegal? Record companies want exclusive access to media channels suitable for broadcasting promotional reduced-quality audio tracks to the general public. So they paid a bunch of politicians to make it that way. Just because it's legal doesn't necessarily make it right.
The only damage done to legit artists by MP3 is that fewer people buy CDs by mistake anymore. People who like a specific band are likely to check out the new album by buying it. If they've heard all the tracks, they aren't going to buy if they find the one good song is the one on the radio and the rest is filler. What's wrong with that? Record labels do not have the holy right to profit at our expense by selling us crap we wouldn't buy if we knew what was on those shiny discs in advance.
That's why the MP3 downloads from networks like Kazaa are being tracked by places like Big Champagne. To find out what bands are most popular in a kind of real-time readout simply impossible via traditional radio end user polling methods used to find out what music end users are. Arbitron's every few days or month. MP3 downloads are realtime.
If THE RECORD INDUSTRY didn't think P2P downloads caused CD sales, why are they using Big Champagne tracking info to run marketing campaigns? If low-quality promo downloads automatically killed the market for the CDs they're taken from, all they could find out from the tracking info is who will not be buying their records. If an album were getting millions of downloads, it would be time to pull the plug on marketing and write off the investment because everyone who wanted to hear it's got it on the hard drive and in their MP3 player. Funny that it isn't happening that way, isn't it?
Or maybe you guys are reacting instead of thinking to RIAA disinformation and conflating a law (AHRA) created via political campaign contribution with morality.
If you gave public policy issues the kind of concentrated thought you give your software when a program blows up in your face, you might be able to make sense of a lot more of what is going on around you.
While correlation isn't ca
Tech Public Policy stuff
Let me quote the text relevant to illegal copying: "But Tizard warns that while sales of local music are high, so are illegal copies of New Zealand albums. She says piracy and copying of CDs and cassettes is estimated to cost the music industry $40 million a year." That is it. No more information than that.
/. editors need to read the links before they post. There is nothing -- no surveys, no time line analysis, no reasoning -- to indicate that there is any causal relationship. The more rational explanation is that those songs that are liked most will be bought more and copied more.
The
Damn it people. Use your fucking brains for a minute.
same idea with software. consider MS in its infancy. because of piracy, more and more people had access to their programs. although i shudder to say this, their programs arent' that bad, and hence, adoption rate for MS products skyrocketed. now that they have critical mass, they are striking back at the very thing that made them the de facto standard for everything --- piracy!!!
"Beside the point, I think that most people (myself inculded) have a hard time correlating PHYSICAL goods, which cost money to produce each and every one, and DIGITAL goods, of which an infinte number of copies can be made with no direct cost."
That's proably because most of the audiance has never produced something that the masses would pay for. Or tried to eek out an existance from, drawing, writing, painting, or the thousands of other stuff that a creative spirit brings. It's kind of hard to notice the tightness of someone elses shoes, from the comfort of our own.
"This is the inherent difference, and why many people have zero guilt about copying songs, software etc. Sure, it cost money to produce the good, but the copies are free, and that fact cannot be changed, regardless of what the RIAA would like to believe."
However like physical goods an original is seldom enough to cover all the costs of producing it. Therefore "copies" do have a cost.[1] It just doesn't have the "costs" you want it to have.[2] The "understanding" it was released by the artist under[3]
"If it was no longer profitable to produce music, then music would stop being produced, but this is obviously not the case."
Actually it's not obvious, hence people's complaint with the article. Also most economic and social systems have a certain degree of slack to them that tolerates deviations. That's why a single murder doesn't bring the system down. A single pirate isn't going to change the world that much.
"I'm sure this argument has been made many times, but somehow people like to think making a copy directly costs somebody money, when it in fact is completely free, and is in no way related to shoplifting anymore than spam legislation is related to my spam count going down."
Then I suggest you give all your efforts away, then tell us if there are any costs to you? I'm certain reality will do it's damdest to accomodate you.
[1] OK everyone. New economic model. Charge the millions that LOTR cost to one DVD. Now who will be the the exceptional soul that will buy it, and let "free" copies be made. Oh come now, it will have no "direct" cost to you, so give it up already.
[2] Next on Jeopardy. Download, or leave it be, and let market forces set the tone? The fate of an entire society hangs in the balance.
[3] Copyright is a social agreement, not the terms of slavery. We as a society struck an agreement with certain members of our society, that balances both our interest, and theirs. We get "art" they get commpensated. An imbalance hurts everyone in the long run (and NO piracy does nothing toward correcting this imbalance).
i am just about finished conducting a study on why individuals share music. as part of this study, i also try to find out why people download these files.
/.? the /. title and blurb do not actually represent what the article says. not only do /. readers not read the article - apparently the posters don't read the articles they post about either.
of the following reasons regarding why people download music files in mp3 or similar format:
1) Cheaper than CDs
2) More convenient than buying CDs
3) Not worth buying CD for 1-2 songs
4) To sample songs
5) Instant access to songs
the results indicate that answer 4 is the least important of these reasons - by a long shot. the most important reason was found to be answer 2, followed very closely by answer 5.
the results also show that the availability of free music causes considerably more people to reduce the amount of cds they purchase - not the widely-viewed, non-sensical concept that seems to be floating around that people buy more cds because of fileswapping. of those surveyed (students attending a technical institute), the feeling that music file-swapping helps sales is widely held, but almost nobody responded to the survey to indicate that they personally did this. everyone assumes that everyone else uses this service for music sampling, but in reality, it seems that this is not the case.
if you're interested in any more of the research findings, let me know.
as a side note, how did this so-called 'story' make it to the front page of
Wave upon wave of demented avengers March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream
Let's see - the article says "A" is high, and it says "B" is high. So? Two observations don't make a correlation without some supporting evidence, wishful thinking aside! Otherwise the following two statements would be correlated:
1) The average highway speed limit in the United states is higher now than it was 20 years ago.
2) The average annual temperature in the United States is higher now than it was 20 years ago.
Almost anyone can see these are independent (I'm sure at least one reply will attempt to argue otherwise, since this is Slashdot after all).
Given the article as presented, the strongest valid statement one could really make is "Those Kiwis love their music!" If you want to draw stronger inferences, present data that actually links these two observations.
#DeleteChrome
how many more of these "correlation is not causation" posts are there going to be?
the first post says exactly this and is modded +5 insightful already.
Actually there were many more movie ticket purchases during the 1930s. Even during the "Great Depression" millions more tickets were sold, just at a lesser price. Granted, there may be more total tickets sold in today's global economy, but I doubt the number per capita has risen.
harmonious design
"[1] OK everyone. New economic model. Charge the millions that LOTR cost to one DVD. Now who will be the the exceptional soul that will buy it, and let "free" copies be made. Oh come now, it will have no "direct" cost to you, so give it up already."
Yes it's me again. I did want to point out a bit of Irony. One of the bastions of our economic model is the principle of "scale". In ball bearing manufacturing this is fairly easy. Now for "creative" endeavours (time to put on your "mythical man-month" hat) this isn't as true. If the beatles had more members, would there have been a proportional increase, in qauntity, or quality? Since economics of scale don't work as well on the creative side of the equation. The deficit has to be made up on the other side. The one that is presently under attack.
So what's one to do? Ignore reality and eat the costs. Or go out of businees. Who's really the winner there? Certainly not the business. Certainly not the consumer, who suddenly finds themself without something to consume.
Here, at the end of that article, is yet another example of the widespread, thoughtless assumption that every music file traded illegally constitutes lost revenue.
I know that if I couldn't download music without paying for it, I wouldn't listen to as much music, since I ain't that rich. Because I can "steal" mp3's, listening to music has become a much greater part of my life than it could have otherwise, which means that I'm more interested in buying the albums that I really enjoy. True, I'm not the kind of customer the music industry is really interested in; they cater mostly to the people who listen to those crappy NOW compilations, because those people form the meta-cliche of all cliches: the lowest common denominator. They're undiscriminating morons by the truckload who will, in a twisted bit of irony, undiscriminatingly download the same tripe from Kazaa, and will also likely never give the record industry another penny in their lives. Could the executives responsible for signing artists possibly develop a variegated, thoughtful customer base which really appreciates what it listens to enough to buy it, by refusing to offer up any more flashy, shallow nonsense? nah... Maybe they shouldn't have artificially jacked up the price of CD's (which they lost an antitrust suit over). Or allowed the heinous, evil Clear Channel to become so prevalent as to force musiclovers to find other means of listening to music for free.
What I'd like to do is simply steal every bit of major-label music I listen to and then mail a check of the full amount of the CD directly to the artist/band. The middle men don't get their cut. Everyone should go that way. Wouldn't be the "end of the music industry" as the press so often likes to say: it would just be the end of the bloated, manipulative corporations that have no place making a commodity of something as specific and inherently idiosyncratic as individual people should be.
1) Piracy
2) ???
3) Profit!
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
"In particular, she points to the one clear experiment being conducted in this area: the Baen Free Library. If increased availability of illegal and free entertainment guts the industry, then surely increased availability of LEGAL, FREE, and PRODUCER-SANCTIONED entertainment would be its death-knell, no? Yet what happens every single time an author puts their work up on the Library? Sales jump."
So does that speak to the principle that piracy is OK? Or does it speak to the majority rule of honest people? One has to be careful with one's "cause and effect".
yeah, i mean "indiscriminate" & not "undiscriminating"
Just don't send us another Paul Hogan, or we'll never look at you again.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Let's not use the word "identity theft". Let's call it "getting to know the neighbours", or "helping the needy". Something that sounds good, while not generating "bad vibes".
"This is for the people repeating the RIAA whines about piracy = theft."
As opposed to the pirates wine of "my actions hurt no one".
I got a better idea. How about we don't listen to either one of you, and do what honest people should be doing. Not downloading, and getting our voices heard in the political process, and the corporate board rooms.
In fact, the Canadian copyright board ruled on Friday that P2P downloading of copyrighted music is legal in Canada. Uploads, however, are illegal.
CNet is running an article on this right now. The decision (PDF) is here.
Ok, gettings back to the point, P2P downloads of music have exposed me to artists I wouldn't have known of otherwise, and I have bought more music becuase of it. I do claim this is good for artists and the music industry... who it's not good for is the big record labels.
Unfortunately for the big record labels, most of the music I've wanted to buy was from independent bands. Until P2P I had largely listened to signed bands -- mostly because that's what almost everyone was exposed to. With the advent of P2P, a lot of smaller bands got far more exposure... many (most even) of them are pretty rotten, but a few are great, and I do make an effort to support them.
To be fair, I think our IP laws are in need of serious reform, but I do support the right of musicians and other people who produce creative works to receive compensation.
For what it's worth, this very short article looks like a cut down version of a press release from Judith Tizard --- New Zealand's minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage.
The original press release is slightly longer with a couple of extra paragraphs on the end.
Sorry, but you are wrong. Simon Fuller, the manager of the former Spice Girls is behind UK Pop Idol. Something to do with him thinking it would have been very nice if he had used cameras to record all auditions for the Spice Girls.
After UK Pop Idol, the format was sold to stations around the globe.
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
You say the reason people download music is to listen to a song before they buy it.
And try and say that it is the same as a radio broadcast.
If its broadcast on the radio the you've HEARD it before, why do you need a copy for your use whenever you want, if you only download to hear before you buy?
Sure there is some music that isn't played on the radio but you have a few LEGAL options, 1. If they are indie that CAN allow people to download versions for free, if they dont want to then they dont have to. Just because they decide that they'd prefer not to give someone a digital copy of their music doesnt mean you should be allowed to commit copyright theft. 2. Alot of stores will allow you to listen to the CD before you buy it. 3. You could just not commit copyright theft and never hear it.
Lets see what other bullshit did you make up, oh the reason people buy CD's is because it better quality than SOME rips.
Yes that plays a part, but here is a huge difference between radio and CD's (and mp3's) on the radio you can not listen to the music you want anytime you want, anywhere you want. With a CD (or MP3) you can.
Oh and back to the issue of quality, many people rip there own CD's so they can listen to the music on their computer and/or MP3 player. They also release it on Kazaa and other file sharing networks.
Now why on earth would someone make BAD quality rips to listen to in MP3 format? Wouldnt they just rip it at a high enough quality that they cannot tell the difference? Wait maybe they DO!
Downloading illegal music drives sales, well lets see how many songs have I downloaded since napster was released, easy a couple thousand.
Now how many CD's have brought because of what I've heard from the MP3... hmm 0. I already (illegally) own the music, I'm not going to go and get another copy. The same goes for pretty much everyone I know who downloads music illegally.
We know its illegal, but really, we don't care. I still support artist in other ways, but it doesnt justify commiting copyright theft. I can admit to it, I think you need to aswell.
What else, "The most downloaded album on Kazaa was the last Eminem CD, 'pre-released'" erm.. source?
"tracked by places like Big Champagne. To find out what bands are most popular in" Didn't you just say that people don't download what they want to own (buy), but instead to find out what different bands and songs are like?
If this is true, tracking how many people download xyz does not help at all.
Sure people do download to test the waters, I do it often my friend says XYZ is good, I download it, and like it. But guess what I, and thousands others do? We dont rush out to the store, we type the name of the band in KaZaA search and download the rest of their music.
"Big Champagne's customers use of P2P network tracking info to drive CD marketing campaigns are proof that the RIAA record labels believe downloads drive sales." WTF? Where did that come from? I think its more proof that people download music they want. So the record labels see what music people want, and market it better. Plan a simple, it no way does it proves that it drives music sales.
There are other things incorrect in your post, but I just be stuffed pointing them out. **** Sorry about spelling etc, in a rush.
This slashdot article has got to be the poorest analysis of a newspaper article I have seen. I though slashdot was reasonably intelligent. The government of New Zealand is obviously aware of the effects of piracy otherwise they wouldn't have mentioned it!!
I live in New Zealand, and a lot of people I know have a bit of an edict - they buy New Zealand music to support the local artists, and they pirate the foreign stuff. I personally only buy my music as I haven't bought a foreign album in months - the quality of New Zealand music is awesome.
Governments oppose piracy because it is illegal, not because piracy has an impact on music sales.
Copyright protects the right of authors to profit from their work and to distribute it as they see fit, whether by giving it away free on street corners or doing a deal with a publisher.
Blatantly self-interested groups on either extreme -- misdirected music corporations and greedy individuals who don't want to pay for music -- dominate this discussion. Both groups willfully abuse the purpose of copyright to advance their own economic interests.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Look, if governments (and recording industries) doesn't realise theyre only hurting themselves by stopping piracy, then they deserve to have the lower sales which will eventuate.
Thats one thing the RIAA and the individual artists themselves have to do, allow users to download their bootlegs and those DAMN JAPANESE BONUS TRACKS!!! That, my friends, should not be made illegal.
As Tim O'Reilly puts it.
This article is well worth a read - the subsection headings say a lot:
Lesson 1: Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.
Lesson 2: Piracy is progressive taxation
Lesson 3: Customers want to do the right thing, if they can.
Lesson 4: Shoplifting is a bigger threat than piracy.
Lesson 5: File sharing networks don't threaten book, music, or film publishing. They threaten existing publishers
Lesson 6: "Free" is eventually replaced by a higher-quality paid service
Lesson 7: There's more than one way to do it.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
"you are always damaging the artist in some way."
Yeah, look what happened to Elvis.
An excellent example of how 'Net file sharing can actually be used deliberately to boost sales, while also making the fans happy, was how Iron Maiden promoted their latest album, Dance of Death.
The album wasn't recorded all in one go, as albums usually are, but was recorded during the breaks between tours and gigs. When Maiden had written and recorded a new song for the coming album, they'd perform it on some of the subsequent tours. Whenever they were about to play some new material, frontman Bruce Dickinson would tell the gathered hordes of Maiden fans that if they wanted to record it and share it with their friends on the Net, that was OK, "just buy the album when it gets out, right?".
So in the months before the release, tons of concert bootlegs of Wildest Dreams, Rainmaker and the title track Dance of Death were floating around the net. People's anticipation of the new album was boosted to the boiling point, and Maiden had come across as sympathetic people who wanted to share their music with the world rather than greedy Lars Ulrich clones. When the album was released, it had killer sales. Lots of people who had come across one of the aforementioned bootlegs (with poor sound quality -- you don't drag your studio quality recorder to a concert, do you? ;) ) just had to hear them in a studio version. It's likely that encouraging filesharing had actually boosted the sales of that record. At any rate, the move sure gained Maiden more respect from their fans, which I personally think is something that also translates to better sales.
I believe this is the way to do it if you're a major band -- adapting to the new reality of 'net file sharing (legal or not -- the illegal status of sharing copyrighted music obviously isn't stopping anyone) rather than whining about it.
Six sick
That's one of the most idiotic things ever said on Slashdot. Nowhere in the article does it say that, or even say anything that could remotely be interepreted as implying that.
The article does say that broadcast and performance are up, which would naturally lead to a boost in both sales and piracy, so the conclusion non-idiots would come to is that piracy is up because popularity is up, which is the same reason sales are up, rather than simply concluding that because piracy is mentioned in the same article as sales being up that piracy must somehow be causing the sales increase.
Where are the massive profit margins for record labels? Last time I checked they were laying off thousands of people and consolodating to try and survive. Time Warner just sold off Warner Bros. records because it was awash in red ink. Is your comment based on facts that you can substantiate?
I mean seriously... are the people that download 5000 mp3's to the HD really going to buy that much music? I think not.
For me, it reminds me of kids in High School in the 80's. Many of us would throw a tape in the radio at lunch, or late at night, to get certain tracks, then to mixed tapes, etc. These were tunes we were NOT going to buy. We didn't have the money, or didn't CARE to buy them.
The justification that people are somehow stealing music that is sent out via radio waves completely free anyway, and that CAN Be recorded off the radio via fair use, is just garbage.
Yes, MP3's are easier. Yes, you don't get commercials. But let's face the facts: most people who download music... if the tap was turned off today - would never buy music instead. They'd just stop listening to MP3's!!!!!
I doubt piracy is a huge catalyst for music sales. I'm certainly not buing as much music as I would if I wouldn't download music. But I guess many discovers new good music when downloading it and thus "trialing" it, and thinks "what the heck, I'll just buy the whole album and be sure I easily get it all in high quality".
So the truth probably lies somewhere in between. Music companies don't lose massive amounts of sales, piracy don't boost sales, but maybe... piracy makes a negligible difference?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
"You'd almost think that you care about us in the Southern Hemisphere"
It won't be the southern hemisphere for long...
The time has come for non-commerical copyright infringement to be made legal. Stiff penalties for commercial infringement, making money from copying, and counterfeiting should remain, or perhaps even be increased.
The terms of coopyright enforcement should be brought back in line so that something you pay for in your youth is in public domain before you die. Copyright should last a generation at most - call it 30 years.
Nobody creates in a vacuum. All creative minds thrive on the cultural and creative diversity that society affords them, and hence they should pay that back to society by allowing their creative work to enter the public domain for all to enjoy, and to allow others to base their new creatives upon the old.
All this commotion over music downloads, p2p and mp3 is just clouding the greater issues. If you want to campaign for anything, campaing for limited copyrights that don't get extended, that intellectual property cannot be sold, only licenced (to stop corporations owning IP - it must be owned by the individuals that create it, but a corporation could licenece it from them), and for non-commericial use to be free for all.
And don't get me started about patents....
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
"What the hell are you babbling about?" this article makes no sense when given the supposed title lets do some more readin, folks
nothing.can.stop.me.now
But the Slashdot spin doesn't stem from inherent idiocy, but rather its general stealing-stuff-is-kewl ethos. Another example of zealotry trumping thought.
Clearly, if stealing music was legitimized, at best the money flow to artists and their associates would slow to a trickle. Basic economics, no need for hand-waving fun with statistics. The only value-added that people would pay for would be transport and delivery services, & even that money would not go to the creators unless there was some kind of surcharge (which also is decried here as tyranny).
IMO, the Rhapsody model is the most interesting, since people can listen and be exposed to all kinds of music on demand for a nominal flat subscription (thus boosting sales by such exposure and musical education), and only pay extra for the privilege of burning songs. Yeah, yeah, you can get around that too. I have to laugh at some of my never-pay-for-anything geek friends who assure me that with audio capture programs they can rip anything going through their sounds cards. Yeah, if it floats your boat to mess around for 10 minutes adjusting levels and trimming ends so you can steal a song. I'd rather pay 75 cents. Funny thing, I never hear any geeks actually talking about music. The ethos seems to be some kind of pack-rat mentality of spending hour after hour amassing a large collection of stuff, never listened to, to beat The Man or something. A real human comedy there.
The piracy model simply doesn't work. Real world solutions are necessarily more complex and messy (laws, law enforcement, civil suits, gray areas) but that's life (as opposed to geek/libertarianoid fantasies).
HAHAHAHAA LOL u maed teh funnay!
One of the things that people need to keep in mind when speaking of "music piracy" is that there are two forms of piracy out there, both of which are as different as night and day, but he RIAA would prefer that people blur the line between them.
The type of piracy that people think about when the RIAA spews its propaganda is file-sharing "piracy". They whine about this and then point to their multi-million dollar losses.
But this is NOT the piracy that's causing them to lose money.
What has the potential to suck them dry is the second type of piracy. This is the kind sometimes run by organized crime. Big warehouses with CD duplicating machinery churning out fake copies of copyrighted music. This is very common overseas, usually in Asia. This type of piracy is very real and indistputably illegal AND immoral because it robs not just the RIAA of profit, but the artist as well.
But the RIAA purposely blurs the line between these for the purpose, I believe, of maintaining their strangehold on the distribution of music. The internet scares them because it opens up the possibility of increased competition. Thus they use the mass CD-duplication piracy problem (which IS a real problem) and use it as a convenient vehicle by which to forward their political agenda.
The moment that a major label Gets It and strikes out on its own to change its business model is the day that the RIAA will cease to be a cohesive political entity.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
It doesn't matter weather it boosts sales or not. It is still stealing. If the combind recording industries choose to hamper sales it is their choice not yours.
It is like saying in an area where allot of TV's are stolen, there is also demand for TV's, so it should be encouraged. It's absurd.
Besides, the article links exposure to piracy not record sales to piracy, so the RIAA's arguments still hold. And I also don't think it's unreasonable to assume that the music over there is just improving. Stop trying to twist stories to justify your own greed.
VENI, VIDI, VICI, DIXI
"... while sales of local music are high, so are illegal copies of New Zealand albums." Unfortunately as always, government bodies don't seem to be able to make the connection even when it stares them in the face."
:)
Nowadays Western Guvmints protect business first, people second. The leadership will do everything to protect the material interests of business, while neglecting the material interests of their constituents. On the other hand, guvmint is pretty good at protecting the 'soft' rights of their people...cause its basically free...unless it costs the people money
Call me stupid if you must, but I don't see how a news story saying that record sales are up and piracy is up somehow proves that record sales increase piracy. Indeed, it would seem far more likely that the market forces increasing normal sales are also increasing pirate music sales. Come to think of it, this is something which has been obvious for approximately as long as music has been pirated. Come on, Kazaa users, stop seeking justification and just admit that you're pirating music because you don't want to buy it.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Piracy is manufacture & sale of counterfeit albums (ie. real crooks). It is not ordinary citizens lending the music they listen to to others. It is not consumers creating personal "mix cds" or ripping mp3s to play on their computers.
Funny how the industry lumps everything together. Funny how the press still hasn't figured this out.
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
...and just having accidentally purchased my first Copy Protected Disc here in NZ (which incidentally crashed my PC, and left it quite unstable as their damn software tried to automagically install, and failed to so - it also bolloxed up the registry while it was at it). I was wondering if you could go after the RIAA in the States with your wonderful new Cyberterrorism laws?
we've heard the testimony from metallica and dr. dre about how they've lost their homes and cars and have to live on the streets, but have you heard from the indie scene?
during the days of napster and audiogalaxy the indie scene was booming. i know because i donwloaded an album or two every day. i got music from bands you've never, and i had never, heard of. soon i began going to concerts every weekend, where i'd buy on average 1 album and 1 t-shit each show. depending on the record label, the money from the album probably never made it back to the band, however the $10-$12 for the tshit, and the money for the concert ticket went directly into the bands pocket. as you can see, at least in my case, my piracy was leading to more money for the indie music scene.
since audogalaxy was murdered, i have literally purchashed less than 10 albums (remember, i purchased at least 1 per week before that). and these albums are not indie; in fact you've probably heard of every one of them. in my opinion, there is no indie music scene anymore, because there is no way of finding it.
the only musicians who benefit from enforcing anti-piracy laws are the musicians who dont need the money. the musicians struggling to get their music heard, the ones who someday could be the fat-cats rolling in dough, are the ones who lose money, because they lose fans.
Probably too late for the mods, but what the hell...
By trying to justify downloading music with "it probably boosts CD sales", many seem to be implying that we somehow owe the RIAA a working business model.
As I see it, we should show as little concern for their business model as they show for the fact that extreme copyright terms rip off the public domain.
The RIAA can adapt and continue to make money, and yet we at least acknowledge the fact that they claim to be losing money due to theft through piracy.
We as citizens don't seem to be making a difference, and the RIAA won't even admit that the public is losing due to the loss of the public domain.
Download 'em all and let bankruptcy court sort 'em out.
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
Music a person doesn't hear is music that person isn't going to buy.
You say that you've been downloading MP3s for year and as a result, never buy albums. You're whining about people committing "copyright theft", a crime that only exists in the imagination of the *AA publicity people. WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
You're trying way too hard to be a RIAA poster child. Either it's cool to rip and never buy, in which case you don't give a shit about copyright infringement, or you care and are trying to get us to stop. You can't have it both ways and have any chance of finding more than a few people stupid enough to believe you. So IMHO, you're an astroturfer and not very good at it.
Lets see what other bullshit did you make up, oh the reason people buy CD's is because it better quality than SOME rips.
Yes that plays a part, but here is a huge difference between radio and CD's (and mp3's) on the radio you can not listen to the music you want anytime you want, anywhere you want. With a CD (or MP3) you can.
So you rip the MP3 after buying. Unless your bosses manage to make the CD unplayable via DRM on a CD drive.
Now why on earth would someone make BAD quality rips to listen to in MP3 format? Wouldnt they just rip it at a high enough quality that they cannot tell the difference? Wait maybe they DO!
And all the rips on Kazaa are 256K and higher quality. Yeah, right. If you can make a 128K rip that's indistinguishable from the CD-audio, you should be working at a major label preparing CD-tracks for uploading to radio stations for on-the-air use and commercials. It probably would pay you better than astroturfing.
Downloading illegal music drives sales, well lets see how many songs have I downloaded since napster was released, easy a couple thousand. Now how many CD's have brought because of what I've heard from the MP3... hmm 0. I already (illegally) own the music, I'm not going to go and get another copy. The same goes for pretty much everyone I know who downloads music illegally.
We know its illegal, but really, we don't care. I still support artist in other ways, but it doesnt justify commiting copyright theft. I can admit to it, I think you need to as well.
Which PR firm are you working for and how's the pay in astroturfing these days? You say that you know it's illegal and you don't care. You claim to be committing copyright infringment and say that it doesn't justify committing "copyright theft". Never post before your first cup of coffee. Or in your case, your third. And never get loaded before you post.
What else, "The most downloaded album on Kazaa was the last Eminem CD, 'pre-released'" erm.. source?
For anybody else, I'd dig the info out of my files. For you, I suggest simply dropping an e-mail to your employer or client and ask them.
"tracked by places like Big Champagne. To find out what bands are most popular in" Didn't you just say that people don't download what they want to own (buy), but instead to find out what different bands and songs are like? If this is true, tracking how many people download xyz does not help at all.
Sure people do download to test the waters, I do it often my friend says XYZ is good, I download it, and like it. But guess what I, and thousands others do? We dont rush out to the store, we type the name of the band in KaZaA search and download the rest of their music.
Certainly, there are
Tech Public Policy stuff
Hey, maybe you can tell me - why is it that people on slashdot have taken to labelling anyone whose opinion they disagree with an "astroturfer"? Why is it so hard to accept that some people simply do not believe what you believe, and that they're not just saying what their employer is paying them to say?
Check the paragon_au (730772) post on this thread, we have an alleged downloader who allegedly never buys CDs who also repeatedly says that copyright "theft" is bad. You take this seriously as grass-roots opinion from a real member of the P2P user community? If you do, you're pretty gullible.
Astroturfing has become so popular on public forums and lots of other places that there's a word specifically coined to describe it. A PR firm or department at an organization that can access public opinion by posting on public forums that doesn't is run by tards. What could be easier for a PR firm than to have an employee register on /. or K5 or any other place where there are people with opinions and. . . inject the opinion of the client as phony "grass-roots" public opinion? Look up astroturf on Google for current examples of how this practice is being used by PR firms and corporate PR departments. Of course, the PR firm guy does have to know enough of the "in-group" jargon to look like he belongs there. So the next stage... perhaps some lucky slashdotters have already been offered money to post a company or organization's party line.
I've wondered where the posts endorsing Microsoft security have been coming from. I wouldn't even object to the practice if the people on payroll put their sponsor names at the bottom of each post.
If you're pissed because you aren't on the gravy train yourself despite your defense of astroturfing (suggesting that it's imaginary counts), Google is your friend. Find the PR firm for the RIAA and see if you can get them to hire you. You're doing a slightly better job than the other guy is doing, and your low slashdot ID should even give you some credibility.
I do not have the right to distribute copyrighted material without the copyright holder's consent.
Make an analog tape of a few tracks off an album off FM. Send me the tape. Guess what, you're legal and I'm legal and we're both completely within our rights. Look up the Audio Home Recording Act for further information. Make the same tracks available on Kazaa, you're A PIRATE!!!.
Preventing me from doing so id not an "assault on my rights", as it's not a right I've ever had.
You have that right now if you distribute via cassette. As I said, look up the law yourself. You do NOT have the right to do this digitally, because the law explicitly treats digital recording differently.
Now, trying to shut down P2P networks entirely would be an assualt on (one of) my rights, but that's not what's happening.
Only because the *AA hasn't managed it yet. But if you really don't think they're trying, you are either in denial or already on payroll. I suggest you look at the history of Internet Radio as well. Or check out Doctorow's article on closing the analog hole about what the *AA organizations are trying to do to consumer technology in general with the support of Congress.
Just to cut out independent competition for the purpose of preserving an obsolete business model a few years longer. In what way is that a legitimate public policy goal?
Of course it's legitimate, from their point of view - they're trying to preserve their profits, that's the entire reason they exist. This is what happens when you let companies get too powerful - they will enevitably act in their own best interests, regardless of what would be in the public's best interests. If the companies are small/weak, that's fine. If they're big/powerful, there's more chance they'll be successful, to the detriment of everyone else.
Spammers feel the same way about their "product". Does this mean their existence should be tolerated?
Tech Public Policy stuff
that's c not $C
Just because some people allow their audience to download their music, and encourage it, (DMB, for example), doesn't mean that it's okay to go and pirate music from people who don't want you pirating it. Common sense, no? I'd be interested to see what the powers-that-be at Slashdot make of this blatantly misleading "news" post.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I'm sure that they can see the correlation, only they're deliberately ignoring it at press-time because the government and the music industry are in each other's pockets.
The article mentions no causal relation between piracy and sales. It merely mentions that sales are up, and piracy is too. Whoever concluded that piracy caused a boost in sales (this 'vik' person that submitted the story, perhaps), is obviously doing so in an effort to justify their activities ("see? what I'm doing is actually GOOD for sales!").
.... the prominance of public libraries, freely distributing out copies of books , and providing copier services for FREE to the public has been blamed for sending multitutes of publishers bankrupt and unemploying millions of writers.
"What's worse," says one author, "is that the government is actually SANCTIONING this kind of flagrant abuse of our intellectual property. They OWN the public library for goodness sakes. What gets me upset is that I even pay my taxes so that they can keep it running!"
In an attempt to fight back against the public's apprent disregard for intellectual property, the writers union has been trying to apply a copy protection on their books. On newly DRMed books, a dye canister, similar to those found in clothing stores, has been attached to the book.
"The dye canister won't explode and damage the book with icky blue paint ONLY if it hasn't been opened more than 5 times.", said one publishing executive. "This is to prevent the owner from lending the book out multiple times, such as what is happening in the public lending libraries the world over."
"Once the book has been opened 5 times and read, the canister will explode, ruining the book. The owner will then have to buy another book if they wish to read it 5 more times."
The publishing industry calculates that the free distribution of theor works costs the industry billions of dollars every year... to the point where publishers have been going bankrupt, and writers can't even afford to pay their mortgage or send their children through school.
"With all these book shops closing down, and with the lack of new books coming out these days" said another writer. "If people want to read they're actually going to be stuck reading old books from now on! That will teach them! Once they've run out of new material, they'll have to go back and read some really old crusty books.... like Charles Dickens, and the Bible, and a few other classics without the DRM."
"Gee, I wonder how Shakespeare and RL Stevenson still managed to sell books long after their deaths without all the DRM protection we have these days?"
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
If Linux companies can make money from Open-Source and According to This NZ news article it appears local music is being boosted by piracy, Can we expect to see Open-source music apearing in a few years?
Webmaster of Infoweb
In Canada we have the right to make a copy of any recording for our own personal use? Lending to people does not constitute distribution either because only "sale or renting" is prohibited. Go Canada.
Nonsense. Metallica supported bootlegging. They didn't support the sort of wholesale piracy and screwing musicians that is lauded by slashdot pond-scum
That's kind of the point, isn't it - digital goods can be infinitely 'stolen', and do no damage to the producer, as long as the theft doesn't decrease sales. If a thousand 'thefts' have the net effect of producing one additional sale, then those thefts actually benefit the producer.
So, maybe a hundred people download the song. Of those, five would normally have sprung for the CD - two decide not to buy it now they have the mp3 (-2 sales), three go ahead and buy it (+/-0). What of the other 95? If twenty of them would normally not have heard of the artist or album, and three of them decide to buy it now (+3), then this 'theft' is really more like free radio play. No need to bribe radio stations to get exposure.
I fall into the last category - no mp3, no sale to me. I'm not about to special-order vinyl from HongKong without knowing if it will be worth it or not (seriously, that's like 90% of my music purchases). Besides, I hate the sound quality of mp3s. If I like music, it's more of an annoyance than a pleasure to hear it all thin and reedy and mp3-like. I'd as soon listen to a monaural AM radio at the bottom of the yard as an mp3. I do download a lot of mp3s though - it's the only way I can test-listen music I might consider buying, that's not mass-produced top-40 radio pabulum.
c.f. the article - all of a sudden, there's an un-explained upsurge in the sales of locally produced New Zealand music. Which is also being 'stolen' in unprecedented amounts...
The thing is, IMO, many record company execs can't differentiate between the two digital/physical 'thefts'. One theory of mine, is that record execs don't really like music (look at the crap they turn out), so they can't appreciate the difference in sound quality between mp3 and CD/vinyl. Therefore, they can't imagine that some people really do appreciate the difference, and consider mp3s to be more like listening to an AM station on a tinny mono radio set at the bottom of the garden, than like having a form of music you can really enjoy.
Another possibility is that the spread of mp3s promotes concert attendance, since people save the cash on CDs to go to bars/music halls/stadiums. So, the money is going directly to the artist, and cutting the execs out of the loop, and they fear that. Also, their radio station bribing system allows them to choose what we hear, aggressively promoting disposable bands. This way, they don't have to rely on talented musicians that can't be quickly replaced - they might get uppity, and demand a fair recording contract.
So, to apply Walmart to the thing, it's more like if WalMart realized people were spray-painting WalMart logos on stuff as the latest graffiti - nobody is actually stealing physical stuff, they're just reproducing stuff they don't technically have the right to. So, if the graffiti have a negative association and reduce sales, WalMart would be smart to go after the taggers. If they just work as free billboards, and increase sales, then WalMart should turn a blind eye, or even produce stencils (note: unlicensed public display prohibited) of their logo.
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
In the price of blank cd just as with blank tape, cassette and video, is a tax that goes to the recording and movie companies.
Should there be a Law?
Seriously, if I can't listen to at least some of an album, I don't buy it. And the stuff I buy, I have to special order, generally from out of the country (now that the one record store near me that sells psy-trance moved to the far end of town, it's easier to get it from Hong Kong than my home city. Crazy world, eh?)
So, it seems at least reasonable - NZ music doesn't have the mega-publicity budgets to buy radio airplay that US and EU mass-produced music does. So, mp3 distribution could be working more like free radio airplay than like 'theft'. The thing is, this is something that should be considered (it's true in my case, and in the case of a number of people I know who spend rather a lot of money on music), and the person the article quotes can't even conceive of it.
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
Yes, the last CD I bought, was $20 new, though I got it used. I'd like to get her new release as well as one by Neko Case, which are about the same prices. When I do I'll check at some used shops to see if I can get them cheaper. It's not just new releases I love to listen to either, I also love Billie Holiday, Igor Stravinski, and several other old performers and composers. Some of these are in the same price range. And yes, I love classical as well as jazz and other music genres
Though I'll admit not every does, and no I don't download music, some downloaders will go out and buy the cd for songs on it they love. The recording industry looks at downloading the wrong way, they need to look at the internet as a method of marketing. Look at iTunes, in the first week or two of the service Apple had more than a million legal and paid for downloads, strickly by Mac users as it has only been the past month that Apple has released a windows version of iTunes. Now several others are releasing such services, which only boosts the bottum line of the recording industry. Easy and relatively cheap methods of downloading music which the industry has been aganist will only reduce, though not entirely eliminate, illegal downloading.
Should there be a Law?
I wouldn't even guess or suggest the percentage of /. user who have P2P installed, I'll just say I don't have any installed, don't plan of installing any, and would bet there are others who are the same in this.
Should there be a Law?
We fundamentally disagree. I disagree that ideas written down are 'things', for a start (apart from the physical media it's stored on, obviously). They share some of the attributes of physical property, but not enough of them as to be classed as simple property, i.e. 'things' under the law. They are classed as something else, which after the law expires, ceases to be protected from it's natural state, that of being shared.
I'm stating that the person who creates something that hasn't existed before owns that "thing" and controls all rights to it until he. at his option, transfers some or all of tgose rights elsewhere.
EVEN when it comes to physical things, there are restrictions, rights, and responsibilities that come with that creation. Take the most fundamental of physical properties, a house and land. Be it building regulations, inheritance taxes, mortgage taxes, compulsorary purchase orders, mineral rights, or other laws affecting human action and human ownership of that property, we cannot be said to own and control everything about a thing. Such is the bargain we strike for living in a modern civil society.
also agree that current U.S. copyright duration is too long. That, however, doesn't indicate the fallacy of copyright or intellectual property anymore than overly long (or overly short) prison terms indicates the fallacy of prisons.
But prisons, like copyright, are a means to an end. If a new form of technology allowed us to 'cure' prisoners with a higher rate of effectiveness than prison, and allow us to punish them in a humane way that detered others more than going to prison, would that not that replace prisons?
As it so happens, I happen to think copyright is still probably the most effective way to ensure a fair balance between someone's right of remuneration for sharing their work, and migration to the commons.
I personally think a universal flat rate tax on net access is not that right way to resolve the issue of widespread infringement, but some form of opt-in pre-paid licence may work and be fair. Or, a non-DRM version of itunes would also work. We've managed to find a way with TV and radio to avoid pay-per-use. Hopefully we can do the same with music, and still give people a way to avoid paying for industry-sanctioned content that they don't want.
Actually, while I'm on that subject, I think DRM is extremely bad form; either you should get the protection of copyright, or you should be able to lock your material away from the commons for good with technological means (and laws to prevent circumvention of those means). I don't think you should have the benefit of both DRM laws and copyright, any more than you can benefit simultaneously from patents and trade secret laws for a particular business idea.
Anyway, I suspect there is little chance of either of us changing the other's mind, so I will probably make this my last entry to this thread. Still, it's been interesting discussing this with you.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
In a way, Internet-based sharing is bootlegging.
Albeit high-quality bootlegging. But it's making available stuff that people would mostly either [a] buy anyway, or [b] not pay for at all.
P2P is not "wholesale piracy".
TiggsThat description would be more appropriately applied to bulk-copying CDs and selling them at a profit.
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
Yes, we do disagree. You want to talk about "ideas". But, I think ideas are ephemeral. non-corporeal things that cannot be owned and cannot be manifested physically . A book, on the other hand, is a physical collection of symbolic language and images that, when read, will cause ideas to be created in the mind of the reader.
A book, once created, is a physical entity that is owned. The presence, or non-presence, if symbolic language and images on the pages of the book do not impact that fact of its existence. I.e., a book comprised of blank pages is still a book.
An author who creates a book owns the original version -- the collection of language and images, not the ideas. That author initially retains all rights pertaining to copying and disseminating the book. No one may make a copy, no one may read the book, and no one may distribute copies of the book unless the author gives permission. That is what copyright protects.
Ideas, by their nature, cannot be owned, cannot appear in physical form, cannot be copied, cannot be published and disseminated. As such, copyright has nothing to do with ideas.
Consider this analogy: if an artist creates a painting, that painting will likely contain several different colors. No one can own those colors, but the artist owns the object he has created.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
from an earlier slashdot posting, this is what the department of justice says about your theory:
Question to the DOJ:
"Given that from a legal standpoint (and, many would argue, an ethical one) there is a distinction between "copyright infringement"/IP violation and "theft", what views do you have on the regular and incorrect/misleading application of the latter term by such people as the RIAA and law enforcement? Such misuse of language seems disingenuous, and taints the arguments of those who might otherwise have valid points to make about the morality of misuse of intellectual property rights.
It seems that if there are ethical arguments against piracy and other forms of copyright misuse, those arguments can and should be made on their own merits without the introduction of psychological wordplay apparently designed to confuse the public and cloud the debate. Accordingly, what steps are being taken to clarify the correct terminology and to avoid jingoistic use of words like 'theft', 'thieves' and 'stealing' amongst law enforcement and elsewhere?"
Answer from the DOJ:
"You're correct that words are important, in particular as they apply to characterizations of specific conduct. As you suggest, people with differing views on intellectual property enforcement should be careful not to overstate their case, nor should they do the opposite in an effort to minimize the effects of their conduct.
Traditionally, theft involves taking something from another person without their permission. In short, you deprive that person of their property and they can no longer enjoy its use. Some have argued, particularly in the context of online or digital piracy, that infringement or misappropriation really doesn't deprive the victim of their product because it is merely being copied, so infringement or misappropriation is not truly theft.
As criminal prosecutors, we focus on the conduct, regardless of the label that might be applied. That said, in the cases we prosecute, we believe that using the term theft is not misleading. While there may be technical differences between certain types of infringing activity, conduct that triggers the criminal statutes is analogous to theft.
In some instances, piracy can actually be more damaging than traditional theft. Unlike traditional theft, where a person steals a specific number of tangible objects, one product in digital format can alone be used to generate hundreds of thousands of near-perfect digital copies within hours. In the case of software piracy, for example, the developer has not been deprived of his product in the traditional sense it has merely been copied. Yet, he faces the grim reality that his product is now available around the world, often for free, to anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. In very real terms, even though he retains his property, the digital victim is in a much worse position than the victim of a more traditional theft. To him, the theft is clear and the harm couldn t be more real."
In other words, downloading MP3s without the permission of the copyright owner is a crime.
Period.
Nothing weird or gray about it.
Now go and download a conscience.
You might think so, but however you try to slice it, the fact remains that Metallica were enthusiastic supporters of bootlegging. The Napster scene was never about bootlegging (something that dedicated fans did), it was always about justifying getting something for nothing.
But it's making available stuff that people would mostly either [a] buy anyway, or [b] not pay for at all.
I don't agree with [b]. I think if people were forced to choose between not having the music to listen to, and paying up, they'd pay up. The rhetoric one hears from the pirates is that they are forced to pirate, as though going without is not an option. If going without is indeed as painful as they make it out to be, then parting with some cash would no doubt be less painful (even for someone as cheap as the typical slashdotter)
P2P is not "wholesale piracy".
Certain implementaitons of it (like Napster) are. Napster was a high profile commercial operation, whose main claim to fame was illegitimate distribution of copyrighted works, much like a piracy operation.
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It has been very enlightening to read your various comments on my media statement. kiwioddBall and harlows_monkey are correct in concluding that my original statement was not drawing a correlation between increased sales of NZ music and increased piracy and copying of music (including NZ music). I used the opportunity of the amazing NZ album sales figures for that week to also draw attention to figures given to me by RIANZ in the same week about loss of sales from piracy and copying - not to make a comparison between the two. However it has brought up some interesting comments from your discussion streams, and as such I would be very interested in your thoughts and comments on the next issue we are looking at under the Copyright Act: the question of format-shifting of personally-owned recordings for personal use. Currently it is illegal in New Zealand to make a copy of a privately owned sound recording for personal use. For example, making a copy of a CD you have bought legitimately for your car stereo, or copying a CD that you own onto mini-disc or MP3 format for personal use in that medium. This is in recognition of the copyright owner's right to distribute their product and make earnings from that product in a way they see fit. We have examined the mechanisms used in other countries to address this issue, for example Canada's tax on blank CDs. I would be interested to hear your views on whether a format-shifting exception to allow one copy of a legitimately owned recording for personal use would be a sensible way forward for New Zealand, recognising that currently it is through sales of recordings that artists make an income (alongside live gigs, royalties etc). I look forward to hearing your views and experiences either here or via email (jtizard@ministers.govt.nz). Judith Tizard.
Associate Minister of Commerce Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage New Zealand Government