Slashdot Mirror
The File Sharing Report
An anonymous reader writes "In July, Slashdot posted an article about the file sharing experiment, which was a database where users could report items they've purchased as a result of file sharing. The author has completed the experiment and written a report outlining the results. He offers the philosophy that file sharing is a result of the industry's failure to meet the business models demanded by today's consumer, and provides many suggestions to the various industries on how to take advantage of the market emerging from file sharing to generate revenue."
Study incase of slashdotting
What about all of the files that these people continue to listen to, but don't delete or buy legit copies of? How much of their music do they actually own? My friends like to tell me that they wouldn't have bought the CD anyway, so downloading it doesn't hurt anybody. This may be true in some cases, but I think most of the time people just decide that they wouldn't have bought it post download.
...and the reason that I'd, uh, consider downloading a movie - ADS. I *HATE* going to the theatre, paying $10 to see a movie, and having to sit through three or four commercials before I can watch a movie. I just paid $10 to see the movie (which will be full of enough "product placement" as it is) - I don't want to see ADS too! It becomes so much more tempting to download since the movie industry is making it obvious that they're trying to squeeze out every last dime.
Find out about the Lexus Rx400h Hybrid!
is that you can only really get poor quality files and the more popular songs, in most cases, which is why i think of it like taping things off the radio etc: it's handy but only to preview songs or listen to songs you havent bought yet, or don't want the cd of. I usually buy a cd if I like the songs i download but I keep the opnes i download on my comp to have a collection of favorites to listen to on my computer.
Since when is not buying something "hurting someone"? That is simply the beginning of a fallacious chain of logic. I have news for you: "not buying things" is not a crime. Making copies of things is not a crime. Theft is a crime, but theft, by definition, must deprive someone of the stolen item. Information shall be free.
I almost never purchased music before file sharing--in a typical year I would buy one album (and that was because I would get a gift certificate to a music store on Christmas.) Because of filesharing, I was up to trying out allofmp3.com when I heard about it--and since then I've purchased 10 albums in the last few months.
But how are you supposed to make an educated decision without downloading it? ;-)
--- Egads, I glow in the dark!
I can't think of a whole lot of things you'd go and buy after already getting them from P2P. Maybe as a token gesture or something, but practically, what's the point after you already have it? Yes, I see the flaws in that argument and it's not entirely my position. Chew on it anyways =P
my problem with an experiement like this is that only people who actually bought stuff after veiwing/listening to it through file sharing are recorded here. What about all of those people who don't buy their movies after they download them, even though they enjoy them? Not that I'm supporting the RIAA or MPAA in any way, but people are still getting a free lunch at their expense. I suppose that their revenue does go up from file sharing, but will it be that way forever? If file sharing became more accepted, would people still go out and buy their CDs and DVDs after downloading them off of various file sharing programs?
Theory of flight?! I'll teach you the theory of fist!!
"file sharing is a result of the industry's failure to meet the business models demanded by today's consumer"
This is true, but the music/movie/computer software industries are unable to grasp that concept. They are so consumed with greed, so consumed with an unquenchable thrist for more money -- even when they are already taking in record profits -- that they believe there is only one way to do business:
An iron-fisted, totalitarian control of everything, in a world where there is no such thing as "fair use".
Their thinking is so clouded by a fog of greed that they can't even begin to grasp the idea that selling a good product at a fair price will bring in more money than all the lawsuits and copy protection schemes combined.
There is demand, and demand creates market.
And when there is complete disregard for the investments of the companies that worked to make the supply, there is bankruptcy and mass unemployment.
The television industry is obviously benefiting from the consumer's ability to download a few episodes online.
It is doubtful the industry would complain about "a few episodes."
Making the media available in a much more timely fashion may increase revenue.
Agreed. Entertainment companies in particular are the undisputed champions of foot-dragging when it comes to the requests of their markets.
There is a significant market of users who would download software should they find it useful to them, however these same users refuse to pay for software that won't run on their system, is poor quality, or misrepresented.
There is also a very large group of users who refuse to pay for software at all, no matter the price or the quality. Oh, they'll download it and make full use of it, but they will also categorically refuse to contribute a single dollar to the purchase price.
Quality must be paid for. This is no less a fact than any of the other statements in this argument. The economy depends on the ability for artists, producers, retailers and all of their vendors, suppliers, etc. to invest time and money and make a profit on these products.
If there is no demand (demand requires sales) there will be no supply. If there is no money, there will be no products.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
* For better quality recordings
* For a medium they can easily watch on their TV
* To avoid lengthy downloads
* To own the complete set
* The medium became available
This will not apply with the advent of savvier customers who own a DVD burner (for ripping and creation), the spread of digital tv, and increases in bandwidth. It is feasible to download a high quality episode or two now, but full seasons at high quality are still too large -- but not so out of reach once your connection speed is quadrupled in coming years.
failure to meet the business models demanded by today's consumer
What I like about file sharing is that's it's free and there is nearly no advertising (I use emule and bittorrent). So I'm thinking that there's no need for business in this area everything is perfect!
It's like going into a candy store, stealing a bunch of stuff, and making a list of ones you liked so much you want back and paid for the stuff you stole.
Including adware with the file sharing programs and a small group of people will get extremely rich and powerful.
File sharing works as a backdoor viral type of advertising...It is more more effective than traditional advertising because the people doing it pretend that they are adbusters. Opening disparaging ads increases the effectiveness of one's message...increasing sales.
File sharing should be thought of as an ad source...just one of those ad channels that you didn't join willingly...but can be lucrative if you play it right. Personally, I think we should be able to run the entire planet from ad revenues. Everything can be free if we just splatter ads all over the place.
Please don't point out the obvious that if everything was free then there would be no-one to pay for the ads, I personally reject everything that is obvious as bourgeoise and petty.
- * Allows them to preview high-quality, full length songs in the privacy of their homes
People make these demans about $15 cds, but there are software packages out that that cost $500 plus where the same demand applies.* Gives them time to let the music grow on them
Alias has understood these demands and released the PLE (personal learning edition) where people can use an impressive (slightly crippled) version of their $2,000 + software package.
If Adobe would get the message it would be great to have decent learning versions of their software for free.
After collecting so much data, there should be some data that shows how the people responded. This should appear in the form of: out of xxx respondents, yy (or yy%) said they did buy foo after downloading it. (something like that)
When the analyst doesn't report the statistics they got from analyzing the responses, there is nothing to show that they didn't just make up their conclusions. To the Author: Please get the statistical summary posted somewhere.
Until that info appears, no one in the business world will take this report seriously.
(FWIW, I'm a former IDC analyst)
(Yeah, yeah, I know. Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics, Campaign promises, VC funding presentations, and Internet based business plans..)
you know it, I know it, we all know it. If you tried to convince anyone that most people are thieves, you would just get laughed at. I download shit all the time. If it's good, I go buy it. If it sucks, I nuke it and never think of it again. This goes for music, movies, games, applications. Think I'm a thief for downloading before I've paid, good for you. I could care less what you think. If it's good, the people that were supposed to get my money first do get it after the fact anyways. No way in hell would you go to a clothing store, say here's my $100 for some clothes, and just accept whatever they go and get for you from the back.
Back when I had a dialup connection, if I spent 30 minutes downloading a song, and decided I really liked it, it was worth the price to go out and get the CD (it probably wasn't that much more expensive than the phone charges for sevral hours of downloading anyway). Broadband connections challange this now. I could (assuming that the other person who is serving the files has decent upload) download an entire CD in around 10 minutes. This is about 1/3 the time it would take to get in my car, drive to the nearest Best Buy or $music_store and buy the cd, and drive back (and I didn't have to pay for the disk or gas either). Now, i'm not saying that downloading music is entiely right, as dispite the poor royalities the MPAA gives to artists, it's still something; although, I would rather spend the money for a concert that goes slightly more to the artist. It's my opinion that the entire music-downloading craze is entirely the MPAAs fault for fixing CD prices. I went to Borders yesterday and I could either get a tape for $7.99 or the same thing on a CD for $15.00... Ok, I don't know about anyone else, but I always thought CDs were MUCH less expensive to make. This dosn't make sense to me.
Mak'tal shree lok'tak mek'ta sa'tak Oz! - Daniel Jackson
For those of you who need a Coral link, try http://electrikxp.co.uk/Coral/ for a little converter thingy... (Well, I thought it was useful)
First of all, I said not buying the CD didn't hurt anybody if you weren't going to buy it in the first place, BUT I think many people claim that after the fact, and continue to listen to the music. If information should be free we should eliminate patents, too, right? I mean, they simply safegaurd one person's idea, which is just information. Also, you should be able to sell a cola, claiming it's Coke and use the same logo and bottle and everything. If you spend your life writing a book anyone should be able to reprint it. Are you a communist, because that's what it sounds like. Everything is everyone's and no one has incentive to work for anything but creativity.
Sure, maybe I should cut him some slack, since he's just one guy collating the data. But maybe he could cut me some slack by gathering resources commensurate to the size and nature of the sample.
I'm not sure I look at it as a failure on ANYONE's part. In general terms, the problem is simply this: in the past, Intellectual Property of any form (be it books, music, etc.) at least still had SOME natural element of "scarcity" about it, since its distribution was still limited by natural factors, such as printing expenses, logistics and transport expenses, etc. These factors made it nearly impossible for information consumers to re-distribute intellectual works.
Nowadays, however, the Internet has finally broken down even this barrier completely, to the point where we can now distribute intellectual property to the entire world with only a few clicks of a mouse, at virtually ZERO cost. At this point, the ONLY way we can now make intellectual property "scarce" or have any real economic value, is by trying to limit or deprive people of "natural rights" that they otherwise would have.
There are STILL two classes of people in intellectual pursuits: those who create information, and those who consume it. The sooner people realize this, the better. It is high time that we start accepting the idea that we MUST limit the "rights" of consumers if intellectual property is to retain any value at all. Information is may be easy to distribute, but anything that is truly valuable to people is NOT by any means easy to create or find. If we are to make it worth people's while to create music, art, databases, or any other kind of intellectual pursuit, we MUST come up with a way to limit the ability of information consumers to re-distribute such things on their own without payment to the person to created the information.
Anyone read it? This is a perfect case in point.
Giant corporation struggling against the tide to use old technologies to stay afloat, while a cheaper, easier, better solution is waving itself in front of them, but they don't know how to adapt into an emerging market.
I didn't buy anything.
I didn't steal anything.
I didn't share anything.
Where does that fit in?!?
http://jayceecorder.blogspot.com
Well, I do think the music industry needs to find the online equivalant to the listening station at the record store. Find a way that people can listen to a an album once, so they can see if they like it. This is dificult to impliment, obviously. I don't have a technical solution myself, but I know it needs to be done because the market demands it.
Without that side of the situation also investigated, this "research" is pretty much a bunch of useless self-selected self-reported anecdotes from people who - let's face it - have plenty of motivation to exaggerate how commerce-friendly their activities are.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Interesting report, and after reading it it seems to me that it was well done and the result may be valid, but the RIAA doesn't care. It's not just about the money, it's about control. Consider that the **AAs are organizations that produce nothing.
They do however control everything they get their greedy little hands on. File sharing isn't just a threat to them because of copyright violations, it's a threat because the media is distributed beyond their control. I'm sure the idea of any piece of content flowing from the artists to the eyes and ears of the public without first passing through their gates is a nightmare for them. After all, with today's technologies, who needs a **AA ?
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
Today's consumer ideal business model.
A valid observation. And the report was prefaced by emotive crap. A great exercise in science this one.
That's all it is... we used Napster because we were cheapskates, not because of some failure by the entertainment industry. If you want legitimate and convenient music downloading, go use ITunes. The solutions exist... you have no more excuses.
So please, be honest with yourselves... there's no moral high-ground in filesharing.
statistical voodoo, as meaningless as an Eyewitness News phone-in poll.
The idiots who came up with the region system can blame themselves for the money lost every time I download a ripped region-free dvd-image from the 'net.
Most music I listen to, I listen on my iRiver MP3 player. All of the music I have on it, I paid for at allofmp3.com at the rate of 2 cents a megabyte of download. I would have purchased CDs, and ripped them myself, but... A few days ago, I went to local music store to buy some of the CDs I downloaded, so I have a physical copy. Out of about 15 albums I was looking for, I didn't find 10, and the rest was priced at over 15$ a disk. That is way too much. If I couldn't download this for less, I wouldn't listen to any of this stuff. For me, recorded music is just a way of making my 1.5 hour commute a bit easier. It is not worth spending hundreds of dollars. Also, considering the ongoing debate around the definition of "fair use" I am not sure if ripping a CD I bought is completely legal. So much for the music industry and CD sales.
Some of us do. I can be bluntly honest. I had a small but growing CD collection until 1999. I don't think I've bought a CD since then. Put it down to laziness if you like (ok, I'm lazy) but ... that's just how it is.
For me and many MANY other people.
Yeah and once they find that perfect way of making it so you can only listen to it once that's how they'll start selling things...
/whines make all those albums that have been recording in very high quality analog or digital available as 192kbps/24bit surround sound dvd-a stuff? There's like no dvd-a's out there. If alkaline trio's record label put out re-releases of their best stuff on really high quality dvd-audio discs I'd be in my car right now to buy them... Give me something cool to buy!!! Something I can't just download for free!
now for a little redundant ranting...Tapes, cd's, minidiscs, vinyl albums... its all THE SAME thing.. a little different in quality or size or portability... But very similar to each other.
And on that note why dont they at the very, very least
Has there ever been a time when you were listening to something and you were like wow, I wish I could turn the other instruments off and just listen to the piano here, or just listen to the singing there, or just listen to the background vocals there... Why dont they make some dvd-a discs that let you do that? That'd be *COOL*!!!
Or make it so that when you buy a disc it includes a code that lets you go to the web and...guarantees that since your a buyer of this disc the band will let you ask them a couple questions which they promise to respond to.. Or they will grab their digital camera, take a pic *just for you* and send it. I'd pay a few extra dollars on top of a cd's usual cost for that, and I think any big fan of a band would too...
Even better would be that you dont *hafta* pay, but if you go to their web site and enter the code, you get the ability to pay the band a few dollars directly, for that one time specialty (that way the band gets the money instead of it being filtered through retailer, distributor, label, etc).. I'D BE ALL OVER THAT SHIT!!!
Instead we just get some cd-audio disc thats the same exact thing as I can just have in my hands without having to move in 5mins by using bit-torrent...It's not a moral issue here people.. Its a common-sense issue.
If mcdonalds sold a pasta dish that was as good as the olive garden, and was an exact copy... Yet offered it for half the price and delivered it to you for free... well shit... it might be a copy but damn.. thats some convenience... If corporations are allowed to make decisions based on economics not morals.. then I get to make decisions based on economics not morals when I'm dealing with corporations... fair.
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
What about it? Unless they stole the CDs to get those rips, it costs no one a penny except the guy who bought the hard drive and the bandwidth.
How much of their music do they actually own?
Unless they are a music publisher, none of it. You think those CDs you bought means you "own" that music?
You bought a CD. You can sell the CD. The CD only happens to contain the music - scratch it so it doesn't play, then see how much you can get for it.
Now, where there is no tangible good, there is no "loss" and no ability to deprive others - and, therefore, no ownership. As someone who just lost about 40GB of music to the brain-dead mandrake partition manager, I can personally attest to this - the "loss" was entirely my own.
My friends like to tell me that they wouldn't have bought the CD anyway, so downloading it doesn't hurt anybody. This may be true in some cases, but I think most of the time people just decide that they wouldn't have bought it post download.
I'm sorry you missed this, because that's the whole freaking point!.
Think about that part again...
This is not a census, and the sample is obviously self-selected and therefore completely biased. It's like asking people to make testimonials about how they *didn't* take any printer paper from their office, then concluding from the data collected that most people don't take office supplies home.
I suppose it bears repeating: information goods (music, movies, software, books) are pure public goods, and therefore a well-documented case of market failure (for example, demand in this situation will not necessarily create supply). P2P, binary usenet groups, warez sites, and before then bootleg tapes and photocopies, are all manifestations of this fact. Information good producers and distributors are attempting to solve the problem by making their products "excludable" again (see the Wikipedia article for the definition of excludable) with mixed success. There might be other ways, but for P2P advocates to declare "there is no problem except the refusal by media companies to adapt" is delusional.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
file sharing is a result of the industry's failure to meet the business models demanded by today's consumer
Yeah, that missing business model is "make things and give them to consumers for free".
I know that there are a lot of people that buy the stuff after downloading if they like it, but I really don't think that's most people. And from the people who buy stuff based on p2p "testing", not many actually delete those albums/movies/software which they decide not to buy.
It's like asking a group of consumers if they think radishes are:
a) Too cheap
b) Too expensive
And then claiming that the 97% who said they were too expensive is evidence of inflation of international radish prices, and launching an investigation into radish cartels is the wholly justfied.
The 3% who said they were too cheap? Well they're obviously working for the cartels, aren't they.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
offers the philosophy that file sharing is a result of the industry's failure to meet the business models demanded by today's consumer
In other words, it's the "It's not *my* fault that I want more than I can afford, it was [big business | abusive parents | school bully | neighbor's black cat | twinkie | chewbacca] who drove me into a life of crime." Same excuse, different day.
Man, did your momma have any offspring that can think for themselves?
It seems to me the RIAA/MPAA/ETCAA need to come to some sort of compromise now on how they're going to accept and compromise with P2P. For all of its plusses, P2P technology is not great yet. The downloads are usually very slow. It's hard to find everything you want and so many items use Windows Media Player and its ability to take you to websites that automagically download spyware. In other words, it's not perfect for users.
Yet.
When this technology becomes rock-solid -- that is, when P2P means fast, good, non-malware-downloads -- THAT'S when the *AA will realize their nightmares.
This _is_ coming. They should really stop putting their fingers in the dyke and work out a compromise.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
The problem with DVD-As and SACDs is that there aren't any players that aren't also DVD video players. You can't play them in the computer, or your car, or in a portable player. They have DVD music out, lots of good stuff, too. SACDs even cost the same as CDs from certain labels, but we need the hardware.
Errrmm... I mean, unless you're an international corporation. Then exploiting cost loopholes and licensing structures is just free market economics.
No tangable loss my ass. The recording and production cost a LOT of money. Studios, equiptment fees, producers and engineers salaries, insturments. Actually, the biggest part of what you pay for a CD goes to all the acts that fail miserably. Big hits have to pay for all the big flops. They decide they wouldn't have bought it, but continue to listen to it. I said that sevral times. If you listen to it, decide not to buy it, then never listen again it's different.
Something I feel a lot of people have forgotten is that, before copyright, authors wrote books and songs, poems and music and never got paid. Then, the printing press came along, as did publishers. Copyright came into being to help out authors, and publishers faught that, but then jested that they owned works (that were previously public, just not easily copyable).
Nowadays, I go onto Suprnova.org or shareaza, and I can find millions of different works, and I always wonder how many of them are still under copyright, of if this vast library of data will ever be opened up to everyone. Sure, it's illegal, but not necissarily immoral. Everyone seems to think corporations have a right to profit, but nobody ever wonders why corporations have an such an insatiable thirst for money that they'd work to digitally, or physically, enslave people.
Frankly, if mickey mouse wasn't still under copyright, as well as nearly every other single great american book, novel, movie, ect, I'd change my tune some. Companies have a stranglehold on information nowadays, one that the design of the internet is facilitating the destruction of. The MPAA and RIAA are about control, they are cults worshipping the false god of money. What is the best way to make money? Enslavement. If they were to innovate and change their business models and be constructive to society, would they then be worshipping money and making as much as they might be able to if something like the Induce act passed, or copyright was indeed extended forever?
I look on P2P apps, and I wonder what they'd be like without infinite copyright but a more logical system in place. Can any of you greedy idiots imagine that? Every single movie ever made, home video's, pictures, games. Bands from 50 years ago could become top hits today. Want to learn calculus? There are already over 20 titles on p2p apps, but there could be 100. Convert a schools book budget into the computer budget; every student gets a laptop (not even a new one, an older P2 with 386 megs of memory running win2k or linux).
Candy-Coated Knowledge
...more hard drives and CDRs!
(cheap) zing.
I have avoided making purchases in spite of the fact I used to spend - literally - thousands of dollars a year on records, tapes, CDs and DVDs. Through most of my life, in fact, because I'm one of those "artsy" types who likes to have lots of the good stuff around. You think I don't miss my Smashing Pumpkins collection? My Alice Cooper discography? Sgt. Peppers?
You think it doesn't suck boycotting these motherfuckers? You really think none of us are making sacrifices? You think I can't tell the difference in sound between the MP3 rips available most places and the CD? I wish these motherfuckers would pull their heads out of their asses and get it together to the point I didn't feel like a traitor to my ethics (not to mention my Constitution) when I entertain the notion of giving them my money to replace the tangible items I have lost.
Remember that most people are downloading MP3's, which are NOT the same quality as the orginal PCM version on the CD. ( or divx, etc )
So, really you arent even downloading the same thing as in the stores.
Thats why people go ahead and buy it, better quality AND you get the extras that come with the cd.. ( plus you support the artist, a little.. RIAA gets most of the purchase )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Most of the time you can find 30 second clips on Amazon or CDUniverse, even for small bands. I can see downloading copies of songs from bands that you cannot find any legit means to sample, but stop using this bullshit excuse of "oh they're just sampling" to justify most peoples' use. They don't delete the music and they keep listening to it in most cases. One of those little inconvenient logical twists is that you can also argue that many people wouldn't have bought the album anyway, because with Kazaa, et al. they don't have to.
The reaction of the people I lived with at my dorm when they saw that my music collection was not only legit, but that I had almost as many MP3s from my used CDs as they had taken off of AudioGalaxy was just... shock. I'm not rich, by any stretch of the imagination.
And you know what the irony of it is? Many of these "kids who couldn't buy them anyway" were driving much nicer cars than my 11 year old Honda Accord. It's nothing more than a bunch of rich brats who don't want to spend $10-$15 on a CD so that they can upgrade their beamer, at least around here. I just got Draconian Times by Paradise Lost in the mail today from Amazon's used products market. It cost me $5 before shipping and handling for a total of ~$7.50.
I have even more contempt for the RIAA than most of my geek peers because unlike them, I actually own all of my music that the RIAA wants to control. I didn't get it off of a file sharing network, I bought it either from a store or from the iTMS. That is also why when I bitch about those bastards that older people will actually listen to me. File sharers are free loaders, people like me have paid our dues to the RIAA and are getting shafted anyway.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
You know, I accidentally hear music all the time. The radio plays, and my neighbors play their stereos loud. In the office, people play their cds and mp3s.
I also feel really bad for the RIAA. They are just losing so much money to my unauthorized listening. So I send them money. First, I tried to count the songs and send them $0.10 per listening, but it got overwhelming.
So, I started just sending my pay check directly to them. But then I got kicked out of my apartment and lost my job because I never washed my clothes.
But now I get an unemployment check and a welfare check, and I just send these directly to the RIAA. The poor guys, they're really hurting these days.
It's getting colder outside now, but I'm warmed on the inside knowing that the executives at the RIAA are getting their due and are no longer being harmed by my illicit listening activities.
And here's the cool part, we can all do it!
Here's the address to send the checks. I always include a note apologizing for taking out the cost of postage. I know I'm hurting an artists, but I can only do so much.
RIAA
1330 Connecticut Ave N.W., Suite 300
Washington, D.C. 20036
Or make it so that when you buy a disc it includes a code that lets you go to the web and...the band will let you ask them a couple questions which they promise to respond to.. Or they will grab their digital camera, take a pic *just for you* and send it.
Even better would be that you dont *hafta* pay, but if you go to their web site and enter the code, you get the ability to pay the band a few dollars directly, for that one time specialty (that way the band gets the money instead of it being filtered through retailer, distributor, label, etc)
Bands that self-promote already do this kind of thing. At least one band with a pretty large following (Einstuerzende Neubauten) has a website with a reasonably active message board, and when you pay your 30 euros or whatever it was, you get access to the parts of the board where the bandmembers will answer questions. Despite being a band with a reputation for strange, noisy music, the members are all pretty nice and do answer questions pretty regularly. You also get access to live video feeds of their rehearsal sessions, archives of the rehearsals, and a CD or DVD (or both depending on how much $$ you want to fork over) sent only to people who paid for that phase of their music (effectively a year or two membership). At live shows the people who support the web site can get camera passes, and they've been nice enough to set aside someplace after the shows where you can hang with the band and other supporters (they play places that hold a few K people, and there are maybe 50 "backstage").
Most indie bands that play small places are fairly accessible, too. They usually have a merch table set up and you can buy their stuff (sometimes at negotiable prices). It's usually run by a friend of the band, or they just sell the stuff at the front of the stage themselves after a show, and you can talk to them a bit. I think most people I know would feel a little weird asking you to just donate a couple bucks online without giving you at least a download, but plenty of indie bands offer complete tracks for free download. They then hope that you'll shell out the $10-15 for the CD, and then come see them when they play your town.
How about this? we all support speech we like, don't support that we don't like, and let the fucking free market (that thing the entertainment industry likes to spin but doesn't believe in any more than most of us believe in Santa Claus) decide where the money goes.
You need a database created? Fine - if you can get it free, so what? That means I have to come up with some way to add value to it, or I make no money. It means I contribute or I perish... gee, what a novel fucking concept: people actually succeeding based on their own merit - without government intervention.
True enough. It's one bunch of pirates locked in a battle of wills with another. Both have vast resources behind them, and neither is willing to be reasonable.
That's why it's so fun to watch.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Fairplay to the author - that admission of bias was early on, and upfront. However:
Without the author giving stricter criteria here, one is left wondering if data that did not fit with the authors thesis was 'questionable' - it certianally would fly against his expectations, but that does not make it nesecerally invalid. Granted, given it was on here, there was probably a crapflood from the trolls that was justifiably deleted - but a reader cannot be certain it was just crap that was deleted.
There is also a serious flaw in premise with the study.
The latter quote is somewhat opposed to the former. If the value of a film is ephemeral, as the former implies, why do people purchase it? Both cannot be literly true.
The discussion of TV shows suggests there there needs to be a way for people to preview the shows, before purchasing, in order to drive sales. Doesn't the broadcasting of these shows on TV count?
From my reading of the report, the only thing I can draw from it reliably is: that some section of the people who download media later go on to purchase it.
That's not a strong conclusion, and skirts around some far more interesting (although much harder to answear) questions, such as: What proportion of illegal downloads lead to a sale? How many people would have puchased something if they could not have downloaded it, and how does that vary? [0]
In short, I don't feel anymore informed about anything after reading this report.
[0] For example, I think that highly marketed items (e.g. blockbuster films) and essentially not-marketed items (e.g. music from some unknown band) would show a difference here.
bw
[blue] - The Ministry of Information approved this message...
They decide they wouldn't have bought it, but continue to listen to it. I said that sevral times. If you listen to it, decide not to buy it, then never listen again it's different.
I don't think this means that they are lying when they say they wouldn't have bought it. Remember, people don't have an infinite amount of money.
So it's quite a conceivable situation that someone has a fixed amount of money that they spend on CDs, and downloading means that they listen to more music that they wouldn't have otherwise bought if they couldn't download it. It would be wrong to say "I would never pay for this music because it's crap" and continue to listen to it, but saying they wouldn't have otherwise bought it, whilst still listening to it, can be a perfectly truthful statement.
The record companies would have us believe that people have unlimited amounts of money and finite want for music (so every downloaded copy is a lost sale); personally I would have thought that the exact opposite is true (that people tend to have limited amounts of money to spend, but far less limited desire to listen to more music).
I agree with your first post in that we need to take into account lost sales if we are to determine if overall downloading is economically good or bad for the record companies, but I don't think that we can say most downloaded files are lost sales.
Trouble is, in the future people are going to have 100 times as much music as they used to just because it's technically feasible. However, as the prices are kept as what they are and there's no way to extract 100 times as much money out of the customers, the only way to enter that future is by doing so illegally.
So the question becomes that are people going to pay per song more or less than 1% of what they used to? If the system doesn't adapt, I'm afraid it's going to be less. Why pay at all when in the eyes of RIAA police you are equally guilty independent on whether you paid of 0% or 2%? They want 100 even if the latter choice would mean doubling their income.
?????? There are computer DVD-A players!!!!!!! My audigy2zs plays dvd-a quite nicely!!! (and it sounds good on even shittah speakers!) Theres a few other cards that do as well (some have better audio quality than the sound blaster as well so i hear)! SACD's you might be right I do not know anything about sacd's :)
:(...
And theres some DVD-A's out but most of it is just live concert stuff remixed up to make it feel liek your sitting in the front row... none of the punk music I listen to is out on dvd-a
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
People who simply don't have the money are an exception. Many people do have the money, though. Especially when they don't have to pay for rent or food (being high school students), but refuse to pay for anything.
Perhaphs the problem is that it is quite difficult to purchase exactly what you want.
Who do you even ask if you would like to purchase an MP3 that you just downloaded? The recording industry will tell you to go buy the whole (probably crappy) CD. Or sign up for their subscription service. Or get a DRM'ed version from iTunes.
If they want my business, they need to sell me what I want. Give me a web site where I can go and say, "hey, I just downloaded an MP3 I'd like to pay for." No subscriptions. no usernames/passwords, no contracts, no DRM. Just take my $0.99 from PayPal and we're done. Easy.
"Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." -- Lord Acton
Well, I do agree that copywrite law needs to be changed so that things enter the public domain more readily. Your issue here, though acts like the companies are one big guy just gobbling money. They are many many people and create jobs. They are thousands of people. Sure, the big executives make a lot. Is that really wrong? If you want to support communism, fine, but don't act like you're not. Before the printing press most couldn't read. Authors and artists were rich people with time or poor people who starved to death because they weren't farming. Industry supports artists so they can continue to work on what they love.
The parent poster is a paid astroturfer. A resident evil drinking is such a profoundly stupid idea that only a marketroid would think he pull that one off as a real grassroots game.
Give the consumer the ability to purchase music in the format they want to and, most likely, they will.
I can't believe it when I think about how much money they've wasted on lawsuits, failed DRM schemes, anti-piracy lobbying, etc. These will do NOTHING to stop the problem. It's like being on an airplane that's about to go down and having some idiot running up and down the aisle yelling "buckle up!" Worthless.
"Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." -- Lord Acton
Many, many DRM scemes let you burn to CD. Once you have that you can just rip it and do whatever you like. It's a bit of work, but it's not a huge deal.
High school students have money?
Certainly when I was a student, whilst I had enough to buy an occasional CD, the idea of buying every single CD that I wanted would be far from possible.
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
Sure, the RIAA harps on the evils of filesharing and litigate towards their next Carribean vacation, all the while while reaping it's benefits. They certainly don't want us to know the truth.
They want to have their cake and eat it too.
"I don't think this means that they are lying when they say they wouldn't have bought it."
The thing is, this becomes a tautology. When paying for something becomes optional, it becomes easier and easier to opt not to pay for it. The more comfortable one gets with "previewing" music via P2P in lieu of buying it, "I wouldn't have bought it anyway" becomes easier to say. It becomes shorthand for "I wouldn't have bought it because I can get it for free."
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
I'm not going to say "I'll buy i I like what I download". I'm tired of this music bussiness. Lots of people making lots of money for distributing it. Ok, there are new ways of distribution, so we don't need them anymore. It's just that simple.
Don't flame me. Peace.
Yeah, real punks listen to their music as 24kbps mp3s!
It's either a "free world economy" or it isn't. You can parrot the corporations all you like - your arguments will then remain just as irrational and moot.
Any side effect that comes from it, such as business models that come crashing down, are in the wrong. Just like the wheel and fire brought about a complete reevaluation of the priorities and methodologies of everyday life and society, so too must the internet. It's not an easy pill to swallow because money, jobs, and a whole lot of "institution" is behind the status quo, but in the end it must give way to the basic premise and results of the internet. Anything it's perpendicular to must disperse and reorganize (or not).
* by perfect, I mean exact (exact transfer, exact replication, etc).
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
I don't do much downloading. Frankly, if I do, it's to broaden my listening tastes. Thanks to finding music sharing I was turned onto music by Lee Morgan and Hank Mobley. I've since bought CDs of each artist.
But here's the service that I want.
I own a vinyl copy of Big Brother & The Holding Company's classic live album "Cheap Thrills". I do not have the hardware to facilitate ripping the songs to mp3. I think it is quite ethical for me to download songs from that album.
Actually, I want a service where I show someone my cassette tape or vinyl album collection and then download mp3s for that music. I would pay a reasonable service fee (say 50 cents per album) for this service.
This might be a nice moneymaker for the label. Imagine getting an extra 50 cents profit from each album people submit.
My father is a blogger.
That was my first thought, I scrolled down through the report looking for some actual figures, figuring I'd catch up with the analysis later, and I didn't see any. Without any supporting figures there's no way to tell if the author's conclusion is valid or not.
But, my friend, there is 1 or 2 major investors in every company (a million americans own 80% of america's stock exchange), and they are the ones who bind a corporation to, by law, make profit no matter what. They don't care how it's made, so long as it's made.
As for making a lot of money, I don't see it as a bad thing to make a lot of money. I see it as a bad thing to have too much money, or to make too much money. If you made a million in a year, that's ok. If you make 10 billion a month, that's bad. Billionairs are the worlds new dictators. Remember, money is the means by which man enslaves his brother, and thus, is synonymous with power. When organizations, or people, become too powerful with bad morals, society fall apart.
Yes, publishers do support artists. But, is it right for the RIAA to take a small band, invest 4 or 5 million in them and then take most of the profits, which mostly stem from from their work? I think not. There's a difference between "supporting artists" and "slave waging" artists.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
If this guy was serious about this, wouldnt he also need/want to do an experiment of the reverse. I'm not going to read the report, as it sounds borring and one sided. Why doesnt he do another experiment on how many people have ripped CD's of the net because they didnt want to buy them, but would have bought them if it wasnt avaliable else where. Once thats done, i suggest a comparison. Otherwise it looks like the report will be heavily one sided and bias. (bias because he wants to stick it to the man?)
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
The argument about "everything is free and no one pays" is utterly stupid and a lame duck. Besides the people who have made an overt decision to boycott this industry, I personally don't know a single person who never buys music they like. Everyone I know downloads music and, so far as I can tell, not one of them has actually boycotted the industry or never buys new work (and this includes myself, who HAS boycotted the US music industry - I still buy plenty of stuff from overseas). Perhaps a small sampling, but I doubt anyone reading this can point to a single person they know who never buys but downloads large amounts of media.
it all comes down to the free market. Either you believe in it, or you don't. Apparently many of you believe in freedom just so long as it doesn't mean you have to practice it.
Have some free music downloads, /.
f45147d71624
f45155x5k8bd
-The Burger King
If information should be free we should eliminate patents, too, right? I mean, they simply safegaurd one person's idea, which is just information.
Yes, they should be eliminated. Your statement, although sarcastic, is correct.
Are you a communist, because that's what it sounds like. Everything is everyone's and no one has incentive to work for anything but creativity.
I suppose I am, because that sounds like paradise to me.
is when I ripped a song from a online music video (made available by the publisher, by the way) and really, really liked it, so I went to Borders to buy the CD. But I didn't because I couldn't see paying $20 for it. I walked out of there and have never considered buying another CD again. And no, I don't download tunes from the Internet. The RIAA have no one but themselves to blame for their declining sales to me.
...should take a look at web comics.
Seriously, there are literally hundreds now, and quite a few are well drawn, intricately plotted, creative and imaginative. They publish weekly or more, for free or for "busking" style donations, on the open internet, with no DRM. Some artists make a living that way. Many more do it as a hobby. The number of comics out there just keeps on rising.
Surely this is a strong enough counter-example? Even with zero "business model", art would flourish.
If corporations are allowed to make decisions based on economics not morals.. then I get to make decisions based on economics not morals when I'm dealing with corporations... fair.
wow, I just wanted to re-iterate this. If i wasn't busy whoring my project I would make this my sig. Really, it is one of those things you read that kinda give you the shivers becaue they are so friggin right.
P.S. check out Crackpot They are really good, on an independent label and give away songs for free hehehe.
hmmm....it is a good idea, but I see ZERO sample tracks on this site (i could just be blind though). I have heard the name in relation to various "industrial" bands but have serious doubts about a band until I can at least hear a track or two. They really need to put up a couple of tracks for newbies. It is not like they get any radio airtime or anything.
Well, ones who tutor on the side or get allowence do. Trust me, a lot of students have enough cash for at least a good portion of the CDs they want, without completely depleting their money.
Just in case....
_____________________
Cashing In On File Sharing
A Report from the File Sharing Experiment
Last Update: Sunday, September 12 2004
Please notify me of any corrections or suggested additions
Jonathan A. Zdziarski
jonathan@nuclearelephant.com
Machiavelli would have been proud. The Recording Industry of America has raped and pillaged its heart out to put the fear of God into many unsavvy Internet users and the message, 'We know where you live' to would-be file sharers. File sharing has now become taboo to many; 87 year-old women who mortgaged their houses to pay settlements aren't likely to bother us again, and thanks to the RIAA, many 11 year old girls will now grow up knowing that if you share music, somebody's going to come and hurt mommy and daddy.
In spite of scheduled beatings for the elderly, the RIAA has failed to put a stop to the majority of Internet users who continue sharing files. As sharing continues to grow, music sales ironically appear to follow in an upward parallel. How can this be? Hasn't the RIAA been preaching a different sermon? The RIAA insists that music labels have been severely crippled by file-sharing networks. In light of industry earnings reports (which have shown a dramatic increase in sales), there is no other explanation: this must be reverse-psychology to trick us smarter fellows. The conflicting stories between killing and blessing the music industry with file sharing have sparked interest among many file-sharers who don't buy the three-legged puppy image of the music industry.
On July 31 2004, I decided to conduct an experiment to determine the motivation behind file sharers and establish proof for a long-believed philosophy many have about file-sharing: that it actually benefits the industry. Not just the music industry, but the movie industry and television industry as well as others. It has been a long held belief by some that the reason users are file sharing to begin with are because they are disenchanted with today's business model for entertainment, and are finding an alternative solution. In order to evaluate this philosophy, the file-sharing experiment was designed to allowed people to submit the names and cost of items they wouldn't have normally purchased if they hadn't first downloaded it over a file-sharing network. Each purchase required an explanation upon submission and, although establishing financial numbers was not the goal of the project, there was surprisingly over a quarter of a million dollars of merchandise reported within the first 24 hours of the project's appearance on Slashdot. Each submission has been analyzed by hand and bogus or questionable entries falling into the test window were discarded. The goal of this report is not to attempt to justify file sharing, but explain it. With a bit of creativity, the industry can overcome filesharing by giving consumer what they need. This report also is not intended to report on some level of statistics. Clearly, only individuals who purchased items reported into the experiment, therefore this report is only useful for explaining the reasons why individuals initially downloaded something that eventually led to a purchase. What this report does offer is a starting point for industry executives to build a new business model on top of, in an attempt to win the consumer back.
Further analysis of the data showed many things which will be shared in this report. The data as a whole screams one common observation: there is a captive audience and a viable market in reaching the file-sharing community to generate revenue (without litigation). Because of the vast selection of media available to file-sharers, many are finding themselves exploring new music, movies, and even software they would not have normally considered in their purchases. There is demand, and demand creates market.
The key to finding the market is adapting to a new business model - one that serves the enlightened consumer. Digital media provides a means of gratification that i
Once again, the one band that does well has to finance the ones that bomb, that's why they get such a small percentage. Most of it goes into what the company owes. As for one or two investors owning the whole company, this is simply not true. Besides, if a billionare is responsible they put a ton of their money into cherity. Bill Gates once said that he plans to give 90% of his money to cherity before he dies. Responsible billionares finance wonderful things.
"The world economy" has reduced all our laws to the lowest common denominator. It has resulted in our nation passing increasingly immoral laws in the name of protecting corporate profits. Information is now the one product where corporations will not be able to regulate the proletariat through threat of outsourcing, so they struggle for artificial regulation. Apparently you stand on the side of the corporations on all these issues... and likewise consider it moral to deprive someone of something which is freer than air and that costs us, as a society, nothing. I don't.
Let me geuss, you download the music of and pay lots of independant artists? No? You don't? You use iTunes? Well, how do you figure anybody is going to get onto the iTunes music store if it isn't for the record lables? Also, if you just take the music, how do you figure anyone will have the time to record much of quality when they have to work all day?
No tangable loss my ass.
No. See, loss means something that you once had, and now don't. For instance, if you had a pony, and it died at some point, you lost that pony.If you sung a little song that you thought might bring you the cash to buy a pony in the future, but everyone "stole" your song before you could buy the horsemeat, well, you didn't "lose" the pony - you never had it. As for the song, well, you were gambling a bit. It is hard to say that me and my buddy flickering flashlights at someone else is equivalent to stealing from you, and fucked if I know what you wanted with a pony in the first place.
Learn to make money from your "IP". The trick is, it isn't what you think it is - you make money by sharing it. I have. It rocks. If you can't, well, there's a long, well worn history of people who can't. Try starting with "Gutenburg" at the Wikipedia, and if it doesn't sink in, try "buggy whip".
I forget what 8 was for.
Where is the corporation's motive to do this? Why should they let you feel good about giving Neil Young fifty bucks for all his hard work so you can then feel justified in not buying the round silver things the corporation sells?
Bands already do this. You can order CDs online from many bands, but damn few of them are on major labels. Allowing bands to get income that doesn't come from the massas in the sharkskin suits would utterly destroy the hollywood power base - it just ain't gonna happen.
Siouxsie and Budgie travel he world, play, sell CDs from a chateau in France. And even though they had a name before they spun off on their own it took years for Sioux records to get the kind of distribution that would allow someone to order one of their CDs from Amazon or Border's - in fact, had it not been for that kind of competition it's easily argued they would still be looking for a distribution deal. It will get better in the future - but record labels setting up "tip jars" for the artists they control ain't quite likely...
First, I would like to thank you for insulting me. Second, they once had the money they put into the song, that everyone who gets to have their own copy pays them back, but it seems you get to have one free because you're special. They lose the money that you are supposed to pay them back if you want a copy. It's labor fee. You don't get a house built and then just pay the workers for the material. That would be stealing.
Very reasonable prices (compared to buying CDs in Australia we are talking 1/4 to 1/2 retail price).
I first was magnatune plugged on slashdot and now I'm nuts over it.
Up here in Canada file sharing such as is carried on with Limewire and other programs has been declared perfectly legal by the highest federal court. The recording industry lost in favour of freedom of information. People still buy lots of CDs. They lke the packaging and booklet. Packaging is getting better to make them more attractive. So we don't discuss these legal issues ... and spend our time enjoying the music and videos we downloaded.
Perhaps other countries with laws against it should lobby and rebel. After all Civil Disobedience has always been the cornerstone of social reform. The Boston teaparty being a good example. The Black rights and the Women's Movement owe their effectivness to Civil Disobedience.
We would suggest lobbying for a change in the law. That law would never pass up here because everyone would defy it. It should never have passed in the USA either.
Good luck with the problem! Hope you solve it.
Ian.
...and sent your favorite artists $5 while downloading their music. You both would have come out ahead.
I was in the USAF and let me be the first to tell you that almost every contract is bid out and goes to the lowest bidder. This is true whether it is for a batch of hammers, stealth fighters or even helmets and bullet proof vests. That makes you feel all warm and fuzzy doesn't it?
The author won't manage to convince any of those "big business" megacorp record companies that filesharing is to be left alone. His thesis is probably to demonstrate to big business that filesharers aren't "stealing" from them, they aren't losing out of filesharing, and fileshaing isn't a threat to megacorp record companies. He hopes that big business will leave filesharing alone and go on with their business as usual. But that's not the point for big business. It's simple, big business is driven by an insatiable desire to eat up all potential space available for its expansion; it's aggressive, it's predatory, and the concept of profit overrides the concept of fairness. It's not that filesharing threatens big business' economic space, it's that big business wants its economic space ***AND*** filesharing too! Big business isn't in the defense position eventhough they pretend to be, they are, in fact, on the offense, and unrelentingly so. If there's someone listening to music, they want to set a price on it and make him/her pay. They have no qualm about making you pay twice and thrice for the same thing. Even if you already own the record but will download it, they want you to pay too for that if they could.
Software patents should be eliminated or at least the laws severely re-written. Overall, patent laws should be re-examined; it's still a good thing to have the individual inventor's rights protected.
Perhaps we might start revising this law by re-examining the right of a corporation to hold a patent.
[ think ]
Because the punk ethos is summed up by flaming people annonymously on Slashdot. What do you do for an encore? Trash your mom's fridge?
[ think ]
What about it? Unless they stole the CDs to get those rips, it costs no one a penny except the guy who bought the hard drive and the bandwidth.
Then what we're really arguing about here is whether or not a loss of potential a sale (that is to say a sale that was never made due to the fact that you never bought the album that you downloaded) is equal to a real physical loss. Is it? I don't know. If it were, a lot of things could be considered "loss" by that definition. In any case, it's an interesting ethical question.
[ think ]
They ruled that ISPs and the program creators are not responsible, same as the US.
And what business model is that? That everything should be free?
reasons for downloading: * For better quality recordings //CHECK
* For a medium they can easily watch on their TV //CHECK
* To avoid lengthy downloads //CHECK
* To own the complete set //CHECK
* The medium became available //CHECK
All the checks can be surpassed by technology. We need 'justification' that doesn't consider these.
--- widget evolution: enhanced, plus, super, ultra, extreme, exxxtreme, ultra-extreme,
You don't get a house built and then just pay the workers for the material. That would be stealing.
This is a singularly bad comparison when dealing with IP. To build a house, you need to hire workers and buy materials FOR EACH HOUSE. When selling copies of a book or record, you pay the author or songwriter/artist to create the work, and then per unit for duplication costs.
In the case of the house, once you get paid, that's the end of the contract between the workers and you. In the case of IP, once the initial costs of paying off the author/artist are recouped, YOU CAN STILL PROFIT FROM THE MATERIAL, assuming that there is still a market for it.
So why are the publishers and recording studios (not to mention the movie studios) complaining, and what exactly are they complaining about? They're complaining because they can no longer recoup their costs in the same amount of time that they used to, and that running up their advertising and promotion tab does not deliver the corresponding boost in sales that it once did.
To illustrate, in the movie industry, the rule of thumb is that a movie must gross 3 times its production cost at the box office, IN ORDER TO BREAK EVEN. If your movie cost $100 to make (not uncommon, if it is a large production with stars and directors pulling in $10-$15 million a piece, with special effects), P&A (prints and advertising) at $40-60 million, it will need to take in AT LEAST $300 at the box office to be considered a success (because the studios only get half of the box office - the theatres get the other half, nominally anyways.) Break-even is good because there's always the ancillary markets (paytv/cable/satellite/DVD/syndication) to deliver future profits.
So what is the solution to this? The model needs to change - either the market for their product isn't as big as they think it is (meaning they need to scale back promotions, increase per-unit pricing), or they need to relax their timeframe on ROI (return on investment) - something that is hard to do in cases where the producers are using borrowed money to to push an act, or sell a movie, they need to lower per-unit pricing in order to expand the market (I have no idea what the demand and supply curves are like for music/movies/books), and compete against alternatives, OR they need to find new ways of repackaging and reselling content to different markets.
To illustrate one way of selling old material, look at Baen Books. There's a lot of old paperbacks that came out years ago that Baen is repackaging into "Mega Book" or omnibus editions. Not only is Baen filling a market need (because a lot of this material has long since gone out of print), but they are providing e-book editions in addition to the dead-tree hardcover editions. The authors of these works got paid a long time ago, and now, they're getting paid again.
Contrast this to record companies, who agressively push new acts (which are expensive, bland, and short-lived), when they're sitting on a gold mine of existing material that can be repackaged (compilations, licensing), for both CD, radio (I cannot, for the life of me, understand why record companies didn't jump on the idea of broadcasting theme stations using streaming media, and start cutting the radio stations out of the loop), and digital (ie, iTunes.) This is bizzare, because record companies made money hand over fist repackaging their libraries first for tape during the transition from 33rpms to LP records, LPs to cassette tape, and cassette tape to CDs. Why stop now?
Going back to the house labor vs. materials argument, hiring somebody to build a house for you is completely different from buying a mass-produced good. You're not dealing on a one-to-one basis with the laborer, but buying something someone produced in mass quantities, speculatively relying on the market to buy them. If more goods are produced than there is want, is it stealing when people decide not to buy those goods at the same prices that the prior buyers
When the RIAA started suing everyone, I just stopped listening to anything they had a hand in. I think everyone's making too big a deal of this. There is plenty of good music out there that isn't controlled by the RIAA.
Like you guys are really going to miss the new Britney Spears album.
Anyways, I'll use filesharing only sporadically for certain songs I really want to hear. Typically, I'll tire of the song within a few weeks and wipe it from my collection. I think most P2P apps are really more trouble than they're worth.
Maybe if the technology was rock-stable, and I got a high quality song in a very short amount of time, would it be more feasible to use on a larger basis.
Yep, no tangible good. Perfect. Why don't you come work for me. I'll never acutally pay you a salary because you are not giving me any tangible goods so no one has lost anything have they. This is great. I'll have a giant company and everyone in the world will work for me for free, none of them will lose anything tangible, it will be great!
It's amazing how the music and movie industry has managed to brainwash so many people. Reading the comments of so many of you is like walking into an aviary filled with one type of bird. I'll leave it to you to figure out which...
Think time is intangible? You must be young.
Not even close. The longer a theater runs a particular movie the more of the box office they get to keep but even after weeks the studios still get over 90%. Movies are loss leaders, for the theater, that they use to get people into what is really a popcorn store.
"...repackaging their libraries first for tape during the transition from 33rpms to LP records, LPs to cassette tape, and cassette tape to CDs..."
Actually 33s and LPs are the same thing, but you're right about them selling the same thing over and over on different media.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
They want to have their cake and eat US! ;-)
wow, I just wanted to re-iterate this. If i wasn't busy whoring my project I would make this my sig. Really, it is one of those things you read that kinda give you the shivers becaue they are so friggin right.
Yeah, it had the same effect on me too. It kind of summed up some vague thought that's been lurking at the back of my mind, and gave it form to rampage through my conciousness.
In fact, as I don't have a project to whore, I will make it my sig.
Damn quote's too long to be a sig. Anyone got any suggestions for a 120 char version of it?
You through? The tell me what makes it "their music" - and who "they" be? The record execs? Surely you aren't arguing that - those guys couldn't invent their way out of an inflatable pool.
So why can't the recording studios pick a better class of act? lok for good talent, instead of the 90% bad talent that they currently pick on.
The waste would be less and the costs would go down and profits up.
C'mon. Why?
Because they aren't good pickers? Well, maybe they should go down the pan, then.
So then you have to buy, download, burn, rip, (re)encode to get your music in a fully usable format again. That makes it lower quality (2 encodes) and less convenient than an mp3 off your file sharing network of choice or a CD from a shop.
That'll be a no then.
Unfortunately for Americans it's likely to become a criminal offence in a few days. Go democracy!
Then we will all plug the sound card's digital-out to the digital-in and wait a few minutes. Walla!
Anything that is output from a computer can also be input. If it's on your screen or in your speakers then you can capture it.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Here you go:
"If corporations are allowed to make decisions based on economics not morals, so am I."
Visceral Psyche Films
Here's a "He who fights monsters should take care, lest he himself become a monster." - Nietzche. *Ahem*
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Here's a sub-120 character version: *Ahem*
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Oh the shame of it. Missed an escape character for my '<'
Never mind my karma, there goes my self-respect...
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
HELLO! Anyone home, there? Haven't you heard about the 10,000 plus live concerts on www.archive.org? What about commoncontent.org, or our site, SONG STORM? What about using gnomoradio.org to get at a world of legal music? And, believe it or not, you get to do all of the above stuff you mentioned, right now, today. Those Independent Artists are all out there on the web. Go Get 'EM! . . . .
and stop whining.
Tom
So two wrongs make a right?
Both corporations and and individuals must be prepared to accept the legal consequences of their illegitimate actions.
Well you either know very rich students, or ones with few music tastes. Obviously I took into account things like part time jobs, but trust me, few students have hundreds or thousands of pounds of spare cash lying around.
Another point to consider is the perceived market price - even if someone does have the money to buy a CD, if they perceive its value at 5UKP, but it is selling at 15UKP (or whatever equivalents in your currency), then it is consistent that (a) they wouldn't have bought it anyway without filesharing, even if they have the money, and (b) if they can get it for cheaper or for free, they would still like to listen to it.
I agree it's very hard for someone to know for sure whether they would have otherwise bought it, but there are various ways round this. For example, there may be albums which the person only found out he liked after downloading it - so whether he really likes them, or hates them, and whether or not he would have bought them is irrelevant, because without filesharing he most likely would not have found out he likes them in the first place.
Another way, is to look at pure numbers. If someone has thousands of mp3s, it can be perfectly reasonable for him to say that without filesharing, he wouldn't be spending thousands or tens of thousands of pounds on CDs.
People may not be able to say whether they would have bought one particular CD, but they can better estimate how much money they would or are able to spend on CDs.
Patrons are what IMO have to come to "solve" current "digital issue or whatever we dare to call it(TM)" so artists and other creative people wont die of hunger and keep create but if my knowledge of history is correct, it is not new concept: Mozarts, Michelangelos, ... of the past were living in palaces of their patrons, eaten their food, drank their wine, etc. (so I agree with you)
Maybe now we do not know the names of those patrons (i.e. those patrons are not famous because of their patronage) or maybe they do not recouple money invested (i.e. from purely financial point of view they lost money). But on the other hand we are not that fortunate to know personaly those great people like Mozart, we can't see/hear/... their creations as a first person on Earth and so on.
Patrons paid (and maybe pay and maybe will pay) while essentialy (at the end) everybody gets to enjoy wonderfull creations of great people (sooner for some form of payment or later for free) but patrons got (get and wil get) something more (in exchange for support).
hany
Can you really not understand the difference between this and a recorded work they created of their own volition?
About a third of all CDs (everything from Universal Music and the companies they own) are 10USD (about 5UKP), and all albums are 10USD on legit online music stores, but that doesn't seem to change people's habits. I don't blame people who simply don't have the money.
Your arguement is that if it's not made to your specs then you don't have to pay for it? Hmmm, that ferrari is not to my specs, I guess I don't have to pay for that either.
There is no difference between material things and intagible things except that intangible things are easier to steal. Both require labor. Both have no value outside of the labor they represent. A house only costs $100K because it presents $100K of work. The house really only exists because of the labor to assemble it. The wood was free, provide by some trees, the concrete is also free, provided by diging up materials from the dirt. The only reason they cost anything is because you are paying the person that dug the concrete or cut the trees, you are paying the person that drove them to the place to build your house and you are paying the guys to assemble them into a house. The actual materials have ZERO value. The only value is the labor attached to them. So it is exactly with intagible IP. They represent labor. That fact that you can steal them by copying changes ZERO except your ability to be a thief.
He offers the philosophy that file sharing is a result of the industry's failure to meet the business models demanded by today's consumer
Which is a nice way of saying that people would like to have everything for free.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
No.
You really suck at this. No soup for you!
You can't even spell it - and it's obvious you don't have any idea what you're talking about. Ciao.
Er, prices in the UK and the US don't translate according to the exchange rate, it's a bit ridiculous to tell me I can actually buy new albums from a shop for 5UKP - I only wish that were true!
Having said that, the actual price is irrelevant (which is why I said "or whatever equivalents in your currency"), my point was that the price some people are willing to pay may be greater than zero, but less than the sale price. Clearly this is true whether the sale price is 5UKP, 15UKP or 500UKP.
Wrong. I cannot speak for "most slashdotters" but I can say with some certainty that, in this case, it ain't a matter of understanding on their (our?) part. It's simply a matter of ethical disagreement. You cannot make a logical argument someone is "stealing" when there is no opportunity to deprive others of the work.
Simple as that... you (and the other corporate parrots who have shown an inability to think for themselves) are just plain wrong in that assertion. You can try other arguments, but to say "sharing is stealing" is idiocy at its finest - and you will never win over any thinking individual with such a trite "argument."
They could buy used or older albums which are much cheaper. They don't, though, they buy almost no albums.
I don't use Kazaa anymore.. I don't use Napster like services.. However I might use napster.. I'm currently using Rhapsody, and love it.. What I miss most is the "Audiogalaxy" model of consumption.. I wouldn't mind paying for a streaming audio service..
But after purchasing 200+ cd's, I've lost interest in purchasing CD's, just takes up room.. I don't travel much, so it makes no sense to have the CD in my car, and even if I did I would just the music from my computer which can record sound from the sound card.. I don't like the fact that it costs about 77 cents to burn a song to CD.. We all know the distribution costs for CD's are bloated, and the musicians don't get paid much.. If I was sam walton I would demand from the music industry to narrow its margins, and to give more of its earnings to the musicians.. This is what's also pushing the industry.. I have no interest in current music, I get more enjoyment from listening to 70s and 80s tunes than listening to current hits.. Its for the same reason that David Crosby summed up on a PBS program "execs wouldn't know a good song if it flew up their nose and died". There was more actual good music in the 70s and 80s than now.. Its not because there was no file-sharing back then.. It was because the execs short-changed the musicians and rap hit the market mid-way in the 80s.. Since hip-hop is largely liquid, no staying power for a musician, over time I expect it will lose ground..
I'm not a supremist, but I like Michael Jackson previous to Thriller better than after.. I think most teens buy music to be different from their parents, I was listening to disco at age 8.. I listen to all the current stuff too, it just musically lacks.. And I think this is more due to the competition to non-music, sampling previous creative stuff, cover tunes, needs to fill space on a CD.. Nobody really cares about how much songs are stuffed on a CD, they really just want quality content.. That's why I stopped buying CD's.. I had no interest in paying for a CD to get only 3 good songs.. I've been on rhapsody for a month, and haven't been tempted enough to burn a CD, but I may tonight.. I'm pretty poor, more due to the dwindling US market, but I think thats happenign because of corporate greed.. The need to stay in business, forces companies over seas, trying to maintain product quality while compromising jobs and to retain profit margins, thus who doesn't feel the market problems? The rich, plain and simple.. But eventually it will..
We live in a day and age when its going to be increasingly harder for people to get rich or to stay rich.. The consumers have a lot of money collectively, but collectively are poor, so they are not going to let it go, unless they see real value.. And as a result, what goes around comes around, the value is expected of them in their everyday lives.. But I would rather be doing something I like for little money than doing something I hate for a lot.. Eventually I think the effect that modern consumerism will have on the industry is it will flush out the one-trick ponies of the business world, those who regugitated answers when taking exams, those who have little creativity, you haven't the sole ability to produce value..
Is this good or bad.. I really don't know.. I have a feeling that this over-consumerism will probably end, god only knows.. And a shortened lifespan may be the result..
Just say no to license servers!!
"Ensures better quality in the musi/tv/movie available" appears all over his agrument, but does the author realize that it's not diffcult to get dvdrip or even dvd iso for movie and tv series, lossless format music?
This Sig is removed due to factual inaccuracy
OMFG, he said "Reproduction prohibited without permission"...
This Sig is removed due to factual inaccuracy
Tryihg to make something that is not valuable, valuable is a no-win scenerio.
For example, whatever buisness you are in, you are *NOT* in the business of writing accounting software. (Unless, of course you are... 8-).
The fact of the matter is that there is no need to "create a scarcity of accounting software" because businesses need accounting software, but more importantly they need *ACCOUNTANTS* who will be paid for their effort, but who do not "deserve" to "become rich" because they wrote some software.
Doed "Britney Spears" *really* *DESERVE* her current lifestyle because of her good looks an moderately engaging little tunes? No. She deserves a reasonable paycheck and whatever fame floats her way.
Odly enough she is *GETTING* this *EXCESSIVE* lifestyle right now, in the presence of this "unworkable" and "evil" "file-sharing epidemic."
The biggest argument against all this MUST crap, (and, IMHO it *IS* crap) is as follows:
Those who will steal and will not buy, um... WILL NOT BUY. That is the definition of their group. All of the "lost revenue" clap-trap is hinged on the tautologically false presumption that each having-for-free represents a lost sale. That is rediculous.
The software industries GREW RICH in the presence of rampant software piracy. Because just as it is true that the people who won't pay, won't pay; the people who *WILL* pay *WILL* pay.
I can download a book to my hearts content, but I can't (currently) read it on the toilet. The physical media of a book is value in itself. e-Books will not kill tree-Books any time soon.
It is _TRUE_ that in the future the economies of scale will tilt, and the "rampant financial stardom" which began in the 1930's, and that is peaking now, will flag back to a sustainable level.
It is absurd to claim that some pop star *deserves* and must be *maintained* atht he level where they can fritter away HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS A YEAR because they have nice tits and a passable voice (once you process the hell out of it 8-).
Quite frankly, a "good performer" only deserves a "good wage" and so my urge to weep for Metalica is somewhat limited.
So all manufacturing all this scarcity is hardly a must, it isn't even a maybe-we-ought-to.
People like blockbusters, and will see big movies in big movie houses. And some will buy the DVDs the day they are released for a premimum price. And some will wait until the movies are on the bargan-shelf and Kreskgees. And some will borrow, and some will copy, and some wont touch the movie with a ten-foot pole while wearing a HazMat suit. It's just the nature of the beast.
And the numbers and the thresholds will jitter and flop about as the technologies change. That's nature of the beast too.
That will be hard for some people to take, and some industry fragmentation will follow. There may be a "Hip Hop Bubble Burst" just around the corner.
But you know what? The *ENTIRE* IP, Entertainment, and IT "industiries" are just bubbles anyway. They are new and hot and the will become passe, and pedestrian. And no amount of legislation or DRM or _thuggery_ can help them aboid their fate.
Markets will find their levels, and the gravy-train for "hit radio" is pulling into a station. And when it finally arrives, the prices and infamy levels will go back where they have always been. Motzarts will be famous, but they'll struggle to get that way, meanwhile Betty-the-madrigal will make about what anybody else makes and have a normally comfortable lifestyle while being a "total god" to her niche fan-base.
But there is no MUST about proping up the abherent prices and industires that exist. They were created to "find a way to distribute music" and guess what? (Go ahead and *read* the RIAA charter... 8-) For a time they were pretty necessary. But once the music distributes itself, their lifecycle is *OVER*, and *RIGHTLY* *SO*.
After all, what does the RIAA actually *DO* that they deserve to
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Quality must be paid for. This is no less a fact than any of the other statements in this argument.
Oh good. Because I didnt pay for firefox, and its the best browser ever made. As you have said that "this is no less a fact then any of the other statements," I guess that all your other statements are equally false, and I can ignore your argument completly.
Way to go.
"Sharing". You mean that it's ethical that only one person buys the new CD and "shares" it to everyone else on the globe? What about the people who made the album? I'm not talking about the corporations, I mean the actual musicians who made the album.
:) }
You're talking about ethics while you're defending the misuse of a loophole in old legislation which made giving copies ("sharing") to your friends legal.
If you really think you're supposed to get that album for free, why don't you go to the nearest store and grab a copy or a few (to share with your friends). Remember to run after the alarm goes off.
I'm not defending filthy capitalism. I hate it more than the next man but I hate the idea that some poeple think that they can just rip off musicians.
Do you think it's fun to do music for a living if you don't get paid? See the contradiction there? There are actual people (I'm not talking about plastic-Britney or gucci-Christina) whose livelyhood is dependant on record sales. I think it's perfectly ethical for people to ask for a payment for their work.
{ I wonder how long this will continue?
Probably too late to help you but...
A Call for Open Standards
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Unless they stole the CDs to get those rips, it costs no one a penny except the guy who bought the hard drive and the bandwidth.
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So, if I go to a store and take an item and leave behind the wholesale cost rather than the asking price, it's OK then? After all, the business owner isn't losing a penny.
> Copyright came into being to help out authors
Well, not quite. As I understand it, copyright
in the U.S. came into being in order to improve
the public domain. Rewarding the creators to
give them a reason to produce more and better
stuff was intended to ultimately put more stuff
in the public domain. The way the reward was
implemented was by guaranteeing them a limited-
time-window monopoly in which to profit on the
work before it became public.
I don't want a converting service. You know how much pop and hiss are on my albums, and how god-awful my cassette tapes have gotten?
I just want medium quality MP3s once I prove I bought the original music.
Oh well, too bad.
My father is a blogger.
I know that in Help! and in "The Monkees" you saw rock bands that live all together in one big house. But it's really not like that.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07