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Bootlegged Music in Russia
Guppy06 writes "MosNews.com has an interesting article on the thoughts and opinions of everyday Muscovites on the rampant music (et al) piracy in their country. It seems that some of them don't have much trouble justifying it to themselves, with quotes like 'Yes, I know that some of the sellers are here with burned CDs. But they have to earn a living too, I can understand them.' The article also mentions 'In a country where the average monthly salary is about $240, buying the latest album for $15 is a grotesque luxury, let alone spending $600 on Adobe Photoshop or a similar computer program.' Apparently, catchy slogans like 'Listen up, you pirate, I choose copyright!' just aren't working."
It seems that some of them don't have much trouble justifying it to themselves, with quotes like 'Yes, I know that some of the sellers are here with burned CDs. But they have to earn a living too, I can understand them.'
While it's kind of a stretch, it's basically the same as "it's okay to steal a loaf of bread if you're hungry." (With the vendors being the thieves).
What?
Apparently, catchy slogans like 'Listen up, you pirate, I choose copyright!' just aren't working." - what is so difficult to understand? In the former Soviet Republics there are hundreds of millions of poor people who their entire lives lived under opression of a corrupt 'communist' government. Nothing in that society belonged to anyone. Property rights are virtually non-existant. When the president of the Country puts the most famous, richest person in the country into a prison cell for basically just that - being rich and thus dangerous (well Hodorkovskiy sort of was aiming at the president's position) and the company is now going to be sold at 1/10th of the value to the buddies of the president and to those who will share some of the wealth, what the hell do you expect from the people? Respect copyrights? HA!
It also works the other way around - when the people of a country, whose assets were supposedely owned by noone and everyone at once were 'freed' from the regime, and the valuable assets were divided among the top elite who had access to some money and were in power, and the average person was left in the cold with nothing at all, after slaving their entire lives for this regime, these are the people who allow Putin to be the president, obviously he is representative of the population and who is to say that anyone at all in that country would behave differently from Putin given the power, then what do you expect from those people?
Generations of Soviets grew up with assumption that they had to steal from the state because the state stole from them. The sense of someone elses property is nonexistant. Mix this with the fact that making digital copies nowadays is cheaper than buying a loaf of bread and you have yourself a runaway copyright infringement process on 1/6th of the landmass of this planet.
You can't handle the truth.
Because there will be smart opportunists out there practicing arbitrage, i.e., buying cheap music in poor economies and importing it into rich ones and taking advantage of the price differential to earn a profit.
This is one of the reasons why pharmaceutical companies are so reluctant to sell AIDS drugs for cheap in developing African nations. They know almost no one in African countries can pay full price for their drugs, but they're afraid that if they lower the costs of their drugs in these developing nations, people will buy drugs there and import it back into the first world, cutting into the margins they need to cover the costs of development and to underwrite further research.
I truly can't understand why a blockbuster Hollywood movie with the world's most famous actors, thousands of special effects created by the world's most powerful supercomputers, and a credits list that takes 5-10 minutes just to scroll by on the screen normally costs about $15, while a CD, often with already-released songs, and requiring only a singer, guitarist, drummer, etc., and a sound technician, costs the same amount. *What is up with that?!*
Dr Superlove 300ml. I use my powers for awesome
Of course, if they lowered the prices for Russia, then we could just buy music and software there for peanuts, and the publishers would be fucked.
They're fucked anyway. And I say good riddance to them. What they did worked before the internet, but it doesn't now. They use mass media to control 13yo girls and buy popularity, they suffer when we use the same systems to get their content free. I'd sleep if there were never another new song recorded, there's so much out there I'll never come close to running out of new stuff to listen to. And the people who're in it for the music will still produce, and the people who want to see live acts, and want to support the acts they like, will still pay.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I'm not sure what portion of a DVD's cost goes to cover promotion, but 50% of the cost of a CD does. So $10 of that $20 CD you might have just bought will go to cover things like apperances on MTV's TRL, appearances, radio play and other forms of advertising, which are usually handled by the record labels. In addition to that, the labels take cuts in other direct and indirect ways so that something like 70% of the points (a point is about 80 cents) on an album go to the label. The artist themselves usually get one or two points - so from that expensive album, they're getting 80 cents to $1.60. The cost to manufacture the CD and put the music on it and print the sleeve and wrap it is about 1 point.
:)
The reason they can afford to make DVDs for so cheap is probably because they've already factored the cost of promotion and other expenses into the movie itself and that is usually recovered in the box office long before it hits store shelves.
That and the fact that I'm sure they've conducted expensive research that has surely shown consumers are willing to spend six hours worth of pay on a CD or DVD, but not anything more than that. $20 for a CD and $30 for a DVD might be the price break after which people begin to stop and think "wait, do I really want to dish out this much of my income for a movie I'll only watch one time?".
I would find the cost of both DVD an CD to be acceptable if you were paying for the right to posess and view the content whenever you wanted for the rest of your life. But if your media is lost, stolen, damaged or wears out (or there hardware to play it is no longer made), then it's a rip off to have to pay for it all over again.
Just imagine you're some Star Wars dork and you payd $30 for three star wars movies on VHS. Then you spend $30 on each for laser disc. Then you spend $30 each for DVD. Then someone stole those DVDs or they were damaged while you were moving out of your dorm and you had to spend another $30. That's $480 on just three star wars movies over time - and your life isn't even half over year. Just wait until the next "big amazing format" comes out and you have to upgrade again if you ever want to watch those movies.
The best thing I've ever done is just give up buying DVDs and CDs and going to the theater. I have far more money in my pocket and can get more entertainment for the buck by purchasing used books at half the price.
You're blurring the lines between stealing and pirating. When something is stolen, the original owner is harmed because they are now missing something. When something is pirated, the original owner is harmed because there is one less person to possibly buy a copy of something. They are both wrong, but are not apples to apples.
If nobody wanted to pay for software, I imagine it would fall to academia, hobbyists, and in-house jobs for corporations.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
0.80 to 1.60 goes to the artist? Please. My friend's dad has put out 16 cd's since the late 60's/early 70's. He's still putting them out today, and he gets about 10 cents per album. This is common from others I've talked to in the industry. Luckily for him, he's just one guy. A band of 4 people have to split those profits. Selling a million records does not make you a whole lot of money.
Interestingly enough, it's the shows and appearances that make them the most cash, not the records. Unfortunately, you can't sell many records without the backing of a big label because of the stronghold they have on the industry. Most artists would give their records away for free if they could gain more fans that way, then they would make even more off shows and appearances. But the record label charges for the albums, and it's impossible to get radio play on any popular station if you're independent. The record industry is a scam, and all signed artists know it. That's why you see some artists starting their own labels, both to make more for themselves, and to sign other bands and do the same to them. Dre, Eminem, Metallica... they all have their own labels, and they are all rolling in cash. But you've gotta be a superstar before you start a credible label or you will be ignored.
It would be nice if some big names that have made their money got together and started a campaign to take down the labels, or at least start some kind of change for the better. Maybe come together and start their own label that didn't screw their talent and is not part of the 4 letter organization that we all love to hate.
My Karma is "bad" ...
The thing is i couldnt care less. If they "flamebait" comments like this, im actually proud to have "bad" karma. I have no idea where are the moderators are living, but when a heavily centralised goverment with a not rocket scientist leader to say the least thinks he knows better whats good for the world rather than following international "standards", then when someone points it out, shouldn't be considered flamebait.
To stay Ontopic a bit, if you look at the russian music market, from a production perspective, then "illegal music pirates who endanger the world order" are actually competition. Competition with low prices. And how does the industry react? Not wanting to fix the issue, they shout "pirates" and "crime", instead of being competitive (which they could be). Why everyone's "pirating" music in russia? Yes, because its cheaper than buying it in a music store. But if you look at the figures, this is totally irrational. Around 1-5% of the price of the cds goes to the actual artist. Well, if the music industry would be smart enough to realise things, they would go competitive. It would mean lowering prices to their 1/5. Giving around 10%-20% of the price to artists, and having the benefits of mass-production, the recording industry would still stay competitive. The only reason they are not doing this is just out of pure greed and short sightness. They can keep this state up for a while, but not on a long term. Eventually someone will figure out a way to pay artists while getting round the music industry.
Now you can hit the -6, Flamebait, Troll, reason of Apocalypse, etc button to rate my post.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
First, the United States has not signed all the Geneva Conventions.
Second, the Geneva Conventions are in some ways absolutely absurd. For instance, prisoners are supposed to be guaranteed athletic uniforms. In a lot of ways the Geneva Conventions are a reflection of a 1920s notion of how gentlemen ought to act to each other in a state of peace; they do not speak very much to the modern state of the world or to the modern state of war. Let's not forget that Geneva was drafted in the post-WW2 period by diplomats whose military experience and notions of 'the laws of war' were shaped by WW1.
Third, Geneva sees the world in strict black and white. For Geneva to apply, you must be either a civilian or a uniformed soldier in the service of a recognized government. If you're neither a civilian nor a uniformed soldier in the service of a recognized government, Geneva considers you to be a spy and entirely outside the protections of the Geneva accords.
So think about this: the detainees captured during combat operations in Afghanistan are not civilians. (Some may be, and we desperately need a legal process to determine who is a civilian and who is not; but I do not believe the majority of them are civilians.)
The Taliban were not the recognized government of Afghanistan. Only one country in the world recognized their government as being legitimate, and anyone who suggests that the opinion of a generalissimo dictator (i.e., Pakistan's Musharraf) lends credibility to the Taliban-as-government idea has no credibility at all.
Thus, no Taliban fighter could be considered a soldier under the Geneva Conventions. Even if the Taliban were a recognized government, they'd still fail because they didn't have uniforms. (A pedantic point? Sure. But that's law for you; law is nothing more than the rigorous application of pedantism.)
Not only that, but the Taliban committed gross breaches of the laws of armed combat. They mixed in with civilians; they militarized noncombatant areas; they targeted medical personnel; they engaged in military operations against civilian targets. Under the Geneva Accords, they can be summarily executed for this without judicial process. After all, they're not in uniform, not in the service of a government, and not civilians--they're spies. Kill 'em without trials. It's legal.
So when you start talking about Geneva, start thinking long and hard. Do you really want us to treat them in strict accordance with Geneva? Or do you want us to treat them in accordance with some nebulous 'standard' which far, far exceeds Geneva protections?
If you want Geneva, fine. But don't go about talking how awful it is that Bush isn't strictly adhering to Geneva without understanding just how horrible Geneva allows us to be. I'm no fan of Bush, but I have to give him this: he's not summarily executing people in Gitmo. And under the law, he's allowed to.
(Addendum: None of this is an argument to abandon Geneva. I'm only suggesting that we acknowledge Geneva's many shortcomings and understand what it actually says, not what we wish it to mean. If I had my way, NATO would agree on uniform standards for prisoners, both regular and irregulars, with severe penalties for violators. I don't trust the UN to form a new Geneva Convention, given that Geneva is fundamentally a human rights issue and Libya's the current chair of the UN Human Rights committee.)