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How to Turn A Music Lover to Piracy
dugn writes to tell us The Consumerist is running a story about how a run of the mill (read non-tech-savvy) music lover was pushed to become a pirate. "I've devoted a not-inconsequential chunk of my life to collecting music; to tracking down obscure records, cassettes, 8-Tracks and CD's of all genres and styles. And now apparently that is all but over. Music has somehow evolved from tangible things into amorphous collections of 1's and 0's guarded over by interested parties as if they were gold bullion. How so very sad."
Music has somehow evolved from tangible things into amorphous collections of 1's and 0's
What? Music has always been data. This guy isn't a music lover, he's a memorabilia lover.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Some people want us to belive that being a pirate is contradictory to being a music lover. Such a contradiction does not exist. Some of the people that I know that have the greatest appreciation for musica pirate like mad, and still spend hundreds on concerts and vinyl and have their very own bands.
If (as the "content industry" would like us to believe) we do not ever actually "own" our music, but "license" it, then there can't be any such thing as a Music Pirte. It's more like Unlicensed Music Listener. Like an unlicensed driver. Your thoughts?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
tee hee ... It has allowed me to listen to bubblegum pop without the scornful looks of music store clerks and no embarrassing CDs to hide when friends stop over.
Life needs more saving throws.
I love audio books, mostly because I work out, and learn stuff at the same time. I love my audible subscription, but after buying books from Audible that are DRM'ed, and running into extreme troubles playing them on one of my "non-approved" MP3 players, or running into trouble trying to convert the files into MP3 so I can actually use them in my car, I started downloading them off of bittorrent sites.
And that is the funny thing. I have been downloading the *EXACT* same books that I have paid Audible for from bittorrent. I have no problem buying Audio Books - but when I buy them, the DRM gets in my way, and I cannot always listen to the book I paid for in the manner I want. I *WANT* to pay for the books, I have no problem with that. I just want to be able to listen to them as I choose, not as the company controlling them chooses.
In the same way, I have found myself downloading MP3's of music that I already own on CD because it is faster for me to download the music that I already have, than to go through my CD collection and rip all the music.
I cannot see any of these industries surviving for long when they stand in the way of what consumers who are willing to pay for what actually want. The Barenaked ladies have it right. The author of this article is correct, we are being driven to piracy. At least I have never used Rhino.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
...so what's the prospect for making **AA officials and the congresspeople they've purchased stop calling unauthorized copying "theft", "piracy", etc.?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I have a collection starting on vinyl I inherited. I have many many old vinyls, and I have cassettes and cd's of many of these as well. To think, I have media pre-dating all this non-sense about RIAA, and who owns what. If I take a digital rip of a Elvis song now, I supposedly owe the RIAA money for it. Even though I realistically own multiple copies on media of various types. It seems to me especially on older classics that I should have a right to do with the music as I wish now. Is there a grandfather clause for such old media? Can I legally just acquire a new digital format for free now if I wished as to archive and preserve my collection?
for pushing this poor poor user to piracy.. (or will they catch him, and the story evolves more?) news at 11
I've also been frustrated by trying to mix and match different music listening formats in the digital age. iTunes music doesn't show up on my Windows Media Center via my Xbox 360 and some WMA downloaded songs can't be listened to on my iPod. I own about 800 LP's and nearly 1000 CD's so I too have fattened the pockets of Sony/BMG/Warner/etc. over the past thirty years. The music industry is due for a collapse of epic proportions...just read today that music sales are down 20% so far in 2007. Here's hoping the entire industry falls apart and artists can start dealing with fans directly.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
The problem with the mafiaa is that they have turned their back on the traditional physical ownership aspects of music in favour of a rental, pay to play model.
Trying to sell digital information on the internet is literally like trying to sell sand on a beach. It's infinitely available. They're using DRM to create the illusion of scarcity, kind of like shovelling sand back into the sea, what they're really doing is just digging a big hole for themselves instead of trying to find somewhere which doesn't have any sand (improving their business model). When the tide comes in they'll just bury their heads and hope for the best.
I'm no fan of the draconian restrictions that exist on most digital music, but this guy was not "pushed to become a pirate" or "forced to become a pirate". He downloaded material without bothering to make sure that what he was downloading was what he needed in order to play the music.
This entire blog post should be retitled "Why I chose to become a pirate, and how my own ignorance of media formats helped it along." The guy made a mistake (downloading WMA format music to play on an iPod) and rather than deal with it and eat his $10 losses, decided that he would rather get his music for free.
Please... if you pirate music, good for you. But don't claim it was forced on you, and don't claim that you didn't choose to do it of your own free will. Man up and take responsibility for you actions.
Note: I am not a record-industry shill, I'm just sick of people justifying their actions in order to clear their consciences.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Has anyone ever traced the origins of the term "pirate" with regard to un-licensed informational products?
It just seems like a bizarre word to pick out of the entire English language to describe that activity. I can't imagine that it was chosen by anyone who didn't have a definite axe to grind against "unauthorized copying," since it's such a loaded term.
I wonder if its origins have ever been really well researched, because it's probably too late now to ever change it. I suspect that the generation of young people growing up now are going to, on hearing the word 'pirate,' think first of a hot copy of Photoshop, and only second of a smelly guy with a knife clutched in his teeth. So there's no getting rid of it now.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Is interesting anyways, how people is not complaining about Apple iTunes not supporting wma. Since there are lots of Apple lovers, I guess that would only cause that people will start complaining about Microsoft also.
The conclusion is, once again, that both Microsoft and Apple want to win a war of digital music formats, and RIAA supports both of them without measuring this kind of consequences.
Too bad for them.
I imagine you do it with a hat, a bird, and a peg leg.
When they stopped paying the temple musicians, they went back home to provide for themselves. So they brought them all back and insisted they got paid so there would be music for the temple.
Now the funny part is that most commercial music sucks badly, and I wouldn't miss it if it died off completely. I'm sure there would be people creating music for other reasons that just money. There's lots of reasons to make music other than just money. I'm just saying that people were being paid for music before Edison's invention, and the musicians gave up and quit when they weren't being paid.
God spoke to me.
tracking down obscure records
Like DRM'd records?
In a few years DRM'd records will become collector items just like rare vinyl records.
Anyone noticed, on the front page it says "Your Rights Online: How to Turn A Music Lover to Piracy 8 of 6 comments". 8 out of 6? So that means 8 of the 6 posts are above my threshold? I'm confused now.
This is exactly why I don't even bother paying for music any more. RIAA can't make up their mind about licenses. If I own a CD and lose it, I have to pay for another one, which means I owned the CD that I lost. But RIAA will tell you that you don't own anything, you get a license to listen to it. Ok, then if I lose my CD give me another one for free, right?! And by the way, anybody who owns any vinyls, tapes, or any other kind of media should digitise it as many times as he wants to. At the time you bought those things there was no law about digitising music, therefore you still don't break any laws according to the old license. And why would you even think about what you can or cannon do with the music you bought, forget RIAA and do whatever you want.
is the sound of the death of an industry. The closer that death comes to us, the louder it will be, but no matter the volume of the sound, you cannot change it into anything other than the sound of death.
IMO, that is the ONLY possible outcome of the head-on crash of the entertainment industry, technology, and their desire to control the use of content. It may take awhile, but the current entertainment industry will die. It will probably be slow, painful, and not fun to watch but it is inevitable.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
"Records never came with any such restrictions," I said. She replied, "Well they were supposed to, but we weren't able to enforce those licenses back then, and now we can"
And here you all thought that you owned all those 8 track tapes, when in fact you're just storing them for the company that made them.
I've seen some of my grandparents' early 45s and they did indeed have a label with a license printed on them. It said things like RCA owned the record and the music on it and all you had was a license to listen to it under certain terms yadda yadda.
(I think one of the terms was that it had to be a genuine RCA branded player, too. Shades of the CSS licensing scheme! Also mattress tags and video tape "FBI warnings".)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I'd say before bringing up religion, that most music around the world in the past has either been about getting laid or not getting laid, just like nowadays.
Sig cannot be found.
"I've devoted a not-inconsequential chunk of my life to collecting music; to tracking down obscure records, cassettes, 8-Tracks and CD's of all genres and styles."
Perhaps part of the realization is that was wasted time, as now you can collect music from anyone who ever existed in a matter of seconds. The fun was probably not the music, but the journey, experiences, and people met in doing so.
...The tale is such. Once upon a time I heard a song on the radio. It was a good song, I liked it, it was a summer song, it disappeared after that summer, it was by a one hit wonder, and being "poor" trying to find a job, and then "poor" and "busy" because the job sucked required huge hours and didn't pay well, I never got around to finding out more about the song, or where it came from, or for that matter since it never seemed to get announced by the DJ's on the radio who it was even by.
Well as I said it was a good song catchy, and it got stuck in my head "FOR YEARS" literally. And for a long time I just couldn't figure out how to find or get this song. Then came the magic of the internet and search engines. I could remember a couple lines of the song and from time to time I'd plug the lines I could remember into Google and Yahoo, etc...well a little at a time I started finding the song's information at forst I got a title, but no singer or band, then eventually I got the singer, however it wasn't attributed to any album, and as I said...ONE HIT wonder.
Then the Magic Day, I found out this song only ever appeared on the sound track to a particular movie, from that summer I remembered it from...great go find the sound track. Umm...only ever produced on cassette tape, likelyhood of finding a tape copy of a silly summer movie soundtrack...LOW...VERY LOW...but OK, I'll give it a shot...the search begins.
I checked every obscure/rare music reseller I could think of, and more that people turned me on to...NO LUCK...but you guessed that.
So then along comes various P2P networks, and sites, etc...and yes I looked in iTunes, not there....Then, by pure luck one day on a bittoreent site I remember to try plugging in the song, and there it is...Downloaded!
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
I'm sure someone not so damn tired either auto translated (like loose/lose which this gent did (huzzah!)) or
figured it out quickly.
I did not.
Thought 1: three house? Three houses? Why go to three houses? Different internet connections?
Thought 2: Tree house? He has a tree house? WTF...makes no sense. Tree house are fun, tho.
Thought 3: Time? Three hours? Ah, makes sense now. Odd. Funny, but odd.
Thought 4: HEY, I'll be damned, the typed lose instead of loose! Wow, house/hours typo forgiven!
Thought 5: I need a nap.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
and do it youself.
http://www.ion-audio.com/
http://www.plusdeck.com/
Cheers,
Jonathan
It will cost Rhino far more to deal with the credit card company's fees for his refusing payment than he paid originally for the music.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
1) Find the bands people like
2) Sign them on with Sony
3) Never sell an album again!
I just have to tell you - that is the single biggest, most protracted and yet accurate metaphor I've ever seen.
Bravo sir. Bravo.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
"How to Turn a Cheapskate Freeloader to Piracy"
Guess which article more people would relate to (or at least more accurately represent).
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Summary says "turn to piracy", not "change into a pirate".
FA says "Does DRM drive even honest well-meaning people to piracy?"
You are complaining about an attack that never came.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Here: http://crudcrud.blogspot.com/
because there's no such thing as a liscense.
I mean, come on, how many other posts were there on the screen with the word "license" correctly spelled when you decided to throw in that extra "c"?
My first Experience with DRM was many years ago. I bought 4 books from a web site that sold them as protected acrobat files. Which is great for me to read them. However since then I have changed my computer and the files can no longer be opened, becasue they where licenced to my old computer. I can not redownload the licence for my new computer, because the company is now out of business. So the books I bought, are no longer usable, even though I have purchased the rights to be able to view them on my computer. If they had been significantly cheaper than the paper versions, I would just ignore it, and move on. However, they where not, and becasue of the experience I pretty much avoid all DRM protected content. Think about the response you would have, if apple closed tomorrow, and took everything with it, so that all that music on your ipod is good until your ipod dies and then it is all gone.
this anaolgy is so invalid that it borders on trolling.
CD and a record are fundamentally incompataible due to the way they work.
an iTunes-downloaded AAC file and a non-iPod AAC-compatile music player are not fundamentally incompatable. they're supposed to work together, but this CRAP prevents that.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
They rail against XM and say the satellite companies don't pay their fair share of royalties. I hate to break it to them, but the variety my friends and I have heard on XM has resulted in our purchasing more CDs in the year we've had XM than the previous five years of FM radio listening.
The great thing about lots of the past music has been the tie to visual arts, both graphic design and visual experiences. The problem with a lot of the digital music now is the loss of these cues and links. As a "collector" of music, parts of this I miss. Having the whole lot that took a dozen boxes to move (ultimately to the resale shop) on my laptop, even at 128 AAC is really appealing. It was very hard to finally make the irreversible decision to get rid of it all.
Now I have music in something where alphabetically it is really easy to find. Well, except for all of that Japanese noise! But, I don't have my visual cues, my stacks... My musical "thought" process is gone. Seeing the edge of a CD with a certain color made me think of playing it. Seeing something, made me dig for a cover. It is harder in lots of ways to find the music in intuitive ways.
He isn't simply after the memorabilia, he's after the memory. It's that subtle difference between work and working. A task is easy to break down, and code around perhaps. But, making meaningful software and work methods is a whole lot more difficult.
The story's always the same. Some article relating to piracy comes up on Slashdot and everyone's trotting out a thousand reasons why their behavior is acceptable. You know what? It doesn't mean anything to the rest of us. For people who are so keenly set on what they do, it is funny they need to explain themselves so much.
Also, I'm curious if anyone has actually walked up to an artist whose works they pirated and told them that to their face. If you haven't, I'd like to hear why not. Obviously, you're quite proud of sticking it to the man, and patting yourself on the back. Now, some of the better artists I don't think would care.
I used to feel bad about pirating music. But then i heard a fairly large sample of what is popular today. Now I want to hurt the labels and the artists as much as I can.
So yes, the guy has a point but as a consumer he needs to be more vocal about his preferred music distribution format. There are still many of us buying new and old vinyl.
I have 6000+ albums on vinyl and CD. I don't buy DRM music online. I shop around online (Amazon etc) until I find CDs at less than 11.99, usually less than 10. I don't buy CDs with DRM. I frequently buy them used for about 5. I'm a happy customer with no issues and have not been or expect to be driven to privacy. I have no pirated CDs. I suspect the whole industry issue is not with DRM; I don't think piracy hurts them that much. What they want is to eliminate the right of resale, where people get their music.
and read intestinal parasites?
I completely disagree with you.
It will be massively enjoyable to watch.
"We may face a scorched and lifeless earth, but they're accountable to their shareholders first."
...that artists make JACK SHIT on record sales?
We're talking less than 1% profit! What kind of crap is that? The label makes the most money, even though all they did was broker an arrangement between the artist, a studio, a media press, and a marketing outfit. They're a THIRD PARTY and they make the lion share of the profit, and then they have the balls to sue everyone under the sun because they downloaded an MP3.
Back in the day, Steve Albini (Big Black/Shellac fame) composed a fairly accurate breakdown of who makes the most money on record sales, and the figures are really sad.
Here's a link for your reading pleasure..
If you're lazy, to summarize: You can make more money flipping burgers than selling CDs of your music via a record label.
Looking at the numbers, I would rather send a $10 check to the artist and download the MP3 than pay some suit for his new ferrari.
Recently Garth Brooks made a deal with Walmart where all his new releases would be sold via the Walmart chain, with something close to 50%-50% profit sharing. I think as we get more and more artists to follow suit and tell recording labels to fuck off, RIAA and its army of racketeering criminals will pretty much fizzle out of existence.
Artists: I will GLADLY pay you for downloadable music (DRM-free, of course) as long as YOU are getting more than chump change off every sale. I will GLADLY pay you for cover art and promo media if YOU make money on it. Of course, the offer doesn't stand if your music SUCKS.
Which brings me to another point -- majority of the music that RIAA is trying so hard to protect SUCKS. The top 40 is a mockery of what music should be and nothing but a SHITTY rehash of somebody else's past work.
ok, I'm done.
-v
--- sig moved for great justice.
Yes, I have -- well I told the roadie/webmaster/CD and T-shirts seller. I accidentally pirated music from a certain band. The pirating was intentional, the music I got was accidental. I'd never heard of them before. Now I've been to a couple live shows and bought some CDs directly from them. I wasn't the first one to tell them that.
Wow. It's like he sees into my soul or something . . .
At least for me, subscription services have eliminated even the temptation of piracy. For the equivalent cost of one cd purchase a month, I get access to practically unlimited supplies of music, perfectly suited to my tastes since I get to pick everything. Over the course of the last year, I've listened to 400+ cds I had never heard before, and only spent around $100 to do it. Try doing that another way without either pirating the music or borrowing from someone who spends thousands of dollars a year on cd's (even then that person isn't likely to own every single album you might be interested in listening to).
"Me? Lady, I'm your worst nightmare -- a pumpkin with a gun."
Lots of good music, more major artists every day, and approx. 25 cents/song, variable rate mp3, no DRM.
I'm a little ga-ga over them at the moment.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
The Illuminati freakshow has already done this.
Their `dream consumer' knows that buying second hand goods is theft just as clearly as downloading it off the intraweb is -- they just haven't bought laws making that illegal yet. (But don't worry -- they're working on it. The Doctrine of First Sale is just another way of stealing the fruits of the labors of the poor musicians and therefore must be destroyed. DRM is one way of achieving this goal, but it's not a complete solution.)
must be made of the bullies that went somewhere in high school, as apposed to the bullies that went no where (cops), and still wanted to bully everybody that they could. they think everybody is supposed to listen to them just because they are the RIAA, but that's just a title. any person, company, or government can have serious issues. the title doesn't make them the "know-alls" nor the "be-alls". we have allowed them this power. we must find their weakness and exploit it. they are a virus among the music industry, our economy, and our way of life, and they should be treated as said virus and promptly deleted.
We've all been spoon feed what the recording industry wants us to listen to, and they've had a strangle hold on the air waves, TV, recordings, and the artists themselves. Now with the advent of internet, it levels the playing field, so to speak, because bands that would be otherwise relegated to obscurity because they could not get a record deal, can supplant this entire process by releasing the music via the internet...of course, we all know this, and if it wasn't for this new process I would never have heard of Machine Men, or DreamLand...etc. What about those hard to find albums? I've tried in vain for years to get some music, and even though they are being advertised on websites as being available, when I go to purchase them I'm told later on that they aren't available because there isn't enough of a demand for the particular album to warrant them making another copy! So here I am, a willing, legal paying customer...now what do I do? Yup, pirate it...they've brought this onto themselves by not embracing the new technology, and instead vilify it as being nothing more than something that dishonest people use. They've got their hands into everything, and I suspect...no I know that they are behind the new fees that are being imposed on online radio stations. If it wasn't for an online radio station, I would never have known about the artist "Biosphere!" I have purchased most of his stuff, and I'm looking forward to purchasing more, but I'm sure that if these new fees are imposed, then "Bluemars.org" will cease to exist. So, all-in-all, I have no pity on them whatsoever, and it is quite strange that since I've started downloading music, I've actually purchased more music than I ever would have before! I literally went 5 years without purchasing one album, or tape (Before mp3's, or Internet) because I didn't like what was being played on the radio, or the bands I liked hadn't put out a new album. Nope, I have no pity for the recording industry, and it is too sad that the only way I can pay an artist that is signed with them for their works is to go through the recording industry, and that is why they are so tenacious about fighting for the "artist's" rights because it will mean that they can be circumnavigated, and the artists will actually make the money for their hard work, and not them! I liken them to being a union that fights, and fights for more money for their members, and then prices them all out of reach for the company to make a profit, and they all lose their jobs because of it! ----This message has been brought to you by "DUH" Magazine!:-)
If the iTMS went away tomorrow, you would still be able to load songs purchased from it onto a new iPod. What you wouldn't be able to do is transfer the protected songs to a new computer running iTunes. That's got a lot of the same effects, but isn't quite as dire.
(I'm a big fan of viewing music as a product rather than a license, and while my band has stuff on iTunes, we're even happier when someone buys the physical CDs...)
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
Since I've resigned myself not to waste any more time with the music business, I suppose I'll have to resort to purchasing used CD's & records, or having my friends occasionally make me a copy of one of their newer CD's.
WTF? What's wrong with buying CD's just like he used to?
Sure there are discs that are copy-protected and can give you trouble but the vast majority isn't, especially on non-mainstream music.
Improve at backgammon rapidly through addictive quickfire position quizzes: www.bgtrain.com
This might have been news 3 years ago.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The music industry is an evil entity led by evil people. They don't profit from their creativity - they profit from the exploitation of others' creativity in some cases, and actively suppress creativity in others (don't try to be in the music industry if you're a small time band who pissed off a label - they don't just avoid signing you, they essentially blacklist you). The corporations that own the major labels have no interest in following the law (guess how many major labels don't evade taxes with offshore holdings). They're trying to program consumers into passive customers, and they're happy to urge kids (rather successfully) to take narcotics or acquire guns if it means an extra buck.
Fight this large subset of the corporate world. If you're unwilling to pirate music, please avoid buying anything from the major labels through other means. Listen to independent artists, listen to the radio or webcasts, but by all means don't support evil by giving the record companies any money. Urge your friends to do the same.
I can afford the karma, but you only get so many mod points.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The amount that Apple iTunes gives artists (or at least, those who go through the CDBaby Digital Distribution as independents) on any given song is $0.637, and the amount they pay an artist for a "whole-album" download is $6.37.
Give either our first album or our second albumus a listen, and if you want me to send you drm-free MP3s of them, I'll happily do it. Shoot me an email and we'll talk...
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
it worked for Michael Jackson........
angels have been singing from the top of pins for much longer.
The FSM enjoys to be worshiped and enjoys choirs for some reason. I'm not exactly sure why the angels didn't work out. We don't have the "Angel Bible", so we don't really know when FSM decided to create angels/devils.
I've always stayed well clear of DRM, copy protection and such other crud designed to make fat cats richer and my life harder. I listen to my music on good old fashioned CD, with this I rip to completely unprotected MP3. I am them 100% free to do what I want with it: put it on my MP3 Player (it's not an Ipod but Ipod does support MP3 just the same), listen to it in the car, my mobile phone, pc, burn it with Nero to CD no hassles.
I always have and always will stay well clear of this DRM nonsense. I'd only consider online music stores IF they used MP3, even non-DRM WMA doesn't interest me. I want 100% universal file formats and that for music is MP3!
In this case the user should've just gone to Itunes, if he really want to download music (now!) OR better yet gone to Amazon/music store and bought that rare CD of his favourite band. It's a simple rule Ipod means Itunes, most other MP3 players means the rest. That said my brother has an MP3 Player that plays MP3 and WMA but NOT DRM-WMA, he has to mess around removing the DRM from the music he does purchase online.
I've seen this a few times now, and having thought about it I've become a bit suspicious.
I mean, how did he get to speak to a clued up representative? Do they really have human beings dealing with customers? And of so, do they authorise them to make statements on behalf of the entire music industry? If so, why can't they employ some people who are a little better at customer relations? If the customer has a problem, you don't say anything like "You didn't actually purchase the files, you really purchased a license to listen to the music, and the license is very specific about how they can be played or listened to". You want the customer to think they own the music, and to think its someone else's fault that they can't do what they want.
And I don't believe anyone ever would want to track down a rare 8-track, especially a music lover. It was a crappy format even at the time, and a 40 year old would be too young to have acquired enough tapes to make it worthwhile.
I used to think that people stealing music was wrong, but after getting bitten by their copy protection bullshit on their discs that prevented me from ripping my own MP3s, my attitude is now - fuck 'em. I hope people rob them blind.
The DRM helps protect the file from illegal copying. However, as with any 'lock', hackers may break it. Those who knowingly tamper with DRM are acting illegally. They may even wear masks and possess secret identities. We discourage any attempt to defeat the copyright protection.
"Music for pleasure didn't become decently commonplace until the Baroque era in the West,"
Right, because nobody sang as they worked, or there were no folk tunes, unless it was done in a church until the Baroque era. And no one created art until the church paid for it. Thank heavens for the Baroque era, people didn't know about music or art until that time. They must have all sighed a collective "phew!" to know they could do stuff like hum, or sit around the campfire making music now that it was the Baroque period.
Elie,
Someone needs to use a cluestick and chase you with it. The human brain is inherently wired for music. We've been making music as long as our ancestors fit the definition of "human", and I promise you it was longer than 15,000 years.
Mozart (et al) got paid not just to make music, but to make elaborate music. To write original music, the orchestration for hundreds of musicians simultaneously and performance for the king. It's the equivalent today of being paid a lot of money to design a custom aircraft for the pleasure of a very wealthy oil sheik. We remember that music not because it was "paid for" but that it was so good.
Seriously, did you think people didn't know about music until that era? The folk songs we sing today have been passed down dozens if not hundreds of generations.
I suppose you're one of those people who aren't very musical so the whole thing seems complex. To a musician they produce music easily and without thought.
Remember iTunes at the beginning? Slashdot had an article about how a customer moved to Canada only to find out all the songs he purchases suddenly quit working the first time he went to buy a new tune from Canada. For me, that is the only real fear of following DRM. The license explicitly states that it can change at any time. A couple years from now they could suddenly say, "Hey, we decided all your songs expired. Pay us again, this time, in monthly installments"
I've heard many complaints about DVD's too. Many people rip them to AVI so that they can skip the crap in the beginning. Even I'm starting to get frustrated by the 20 second menu screens. I just want to play!
Then there's Disney's 10 minutes of commercials, and one company's brief trip in disabling the remote functions during those commercials!
The most painful thing I read in that article was the steps needed to download the DRM license. Firewalls and ad-blockers are treating it like a virus? Indeed.
Are you geeky enough to attend your local BarCamp??
Easy: tell him how the music industry works.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
I'm gleefully looking forward to it as well.
More like selling water from the lake. It's free for the taking, practically infinite - yet companies make a killing selling it in bottles. That's because they add value to the product (filtering and packaging), and make it convenient for the end user. Yet we're all still free to drink our water for nothing.
The music industry could learn a lot from the bottled water industry.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Step 1: Download music, with or without DRM
Step 2: Burn disc for 'backup' purposes with that music on it. Only standard Audio CDs - no MP3 CDs.
Step 3: If there are tracks you cannot transfer to a device you want them on, 'restore' these files from the backup CDs using the CD import feature on the software that transfers files to your device. iTunes works especially well this way.
Tips:
Save discs by using CD-RW discs
Make sure to tell your friends
Laugh while you're doing it, you're legally screwing DRM
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
The problem is they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. They want to limit your rights to use your purchase as if it were a license. But they want you to buy it over and over again as if it were a product. If they would just pick one or the other (like the software industry has picked the license and gives free replacements and discounted upgrades), a lot of these contradictions would disappear.
Well matey, traditionally, you get kidnapped on the streets of London as a laddie whilst innocently playing a fiddle to get some money for your poor, sick mother. You then learn to handle a sword and a gun, tie knots and skull gin, get an eye patch and wooden leg, and zap, you're a buccaneer. Arrrrhhhh!
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
And for those who don't believe that it's true that the music industry wants to stop you from buying used, check out this little gem.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I download CDs all the time - almost always indie stuff not from the big labels. But if I like something, then I buy it since I know these indie artists will be seeing the profits.
If not for downloading music, I wouldn't have discovered - and purchased - many CDs. Yet if the music industry had its way, that path wouldn't exist and we'd all be listening to fitty.
Bender: "I was having a horrible dream... 1s and 0s everywhere! And I thought I saw a 2!"
Fry: "It was just a dream bender, there's no such thing as 2."
for those dictionarry's two.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
just as he had to collect the devices required to play records (and there are a number of variations) tapes and CDs, he will have to collect the digital equivalent, WMP, iTunes etc. Big Deal! Formats have been changing since musicians first stated to record their music on velum. Licensing has been around on just about all forms of commercial music, sheet music, records, tapes, he just ignored it and didn't research his subject.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
I'm getting tired of hearing people bitch about record labels and their drm, and about how musicians don't get paid when you buy a cd. It's all true, and I totally agree with you-- I'm just tired of hearing it from you, slashdot . So here's how you stick it to the record companies without pirating, AND pay the musicians: buy this cd. http://cdbaby.com/cd/pulseprophets
It's all just convenience really... Get me an iPod that can read LP's, 8-track cartrides, cassettes, CD's, DVD's etc. and fits in my shirt pocket and I'm with you ! Humunculus "For Every Pleasure There's a Tax."
The Man
Well, it certainly looks like Rhino wants him to pay through the nose :-)
Greedy record execs who are okay with stiffing the bands.
Greedy pirates, who are also okay with stiffing the bands, as long as they can claim to be horribly persecuted people who simply cannot afford all the stuff they want in life.
If you are really concerned about the bands being stiffed, can I assume that you send the band a check every time you illegally download a song? No? Hypocrites.
For the vast majority of that fifteen thousand years you speak of, music wasn't a service that people (regular folk, that is) provided each other at all. For the lion's share of the first 14/15ths, nearly all music was for religious purposes, so at best it was a service by people for their gods, not for each other.
We have no clue of that whatsoever.
What we DO have for most of that time is the some buried artifacts and the speculations of anthropologists as to how they were used. Anthropologists tend to assign a religious meaning to anything they can't explain otherwise.
For much of the fraction where we DO have a historic record that record was written primarily by members of the ruling classes and/or the clergy.
And for the recent few centuries, where we have a more complete historical record, what do we see?
- Work songs.
- Sea Chanteys.
- Love songs.
- Drinking songs.
- Marching songs.
- Battle songs.
- Pro-establishment propaganda songs.
- Political protest and satire songs.
- Oral history (such as epic poetry and nursery rhymes) set to music.
- Teaching songs (lessons and mnemonics set to music).
- Herder and hunter self-entertainment songs.
- Lullabies.
I could go on for a while.
Even from the leading edge of recorded history we have minstrel figures like Orpheus and the "panpipes" of the fauns (indicating that herders were playing them even back then). And what religious-celebratory significance can you assign to Pythagoras' mathematical studies of stringed-instrument resonance and musical structure?
Meanwhile we have a sampling of religions and find that they run a gamut from using music in their celebrations to attempting to ban it altogether.
My take:
I'd bet that music is as old as language and may predate it. And that it's the "love song" that made it a pervasive characteristic of humans: Those who could make music had an easier time mating and raising children.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Come on, I am so broke. I'm an amature geek, but a professional musican, and I am broke. And 99 cents is nothing to me. Sure, I can get better quality stuff for free. but I don't gave a damn about that 99 cents.
if transaction volume of some 'market' is any pointer to anything ...
Read radical news here
"Music has somehow evolved from tangible things into amorphous collections of 1's and 0's guarded over by interested parties as if they were gold bullion."
so your bitching that instead of: a.
1. people (such as yourself) hunting down music at some all-holy music store and buying it
2. being scrutinized by some music snob is looking down his stylishly thick glasses that almost covering his brown-colored nose
3. so you can bring it home and horde in your own interests, as if it were a gold bullion.
that people are: b.
1. downloading the same copy of the same music for free
2. sharing it (mostly, this is what the fuss is about)
3. sometimes hording it in their own collection and not sharing
gosh i can see the difference completely. by any chance do you work at hot topic?
and i looked up the word too:
bullion Pronunciation (blyn) n.
1. a. Gold or silver considered with respect to quantity rather than value.
oh and i also looked up suicide Pronunciation (s-sd) n.
1. The act or an instance of intentionally killing oneself.
consider the latter plz, ktnx
US music sales included 588.2 million albums and 581.9 million digital tracks indicates that there is perhaps a bit of money in the field of selling albums and music, and not just performing. When it is so patently obvious that owning music is worth quite a bit to hundreds of millions of people, the old argument that recorded music "should" just be used to draw people to concerts seems more than a little self-serving.
Are you implying that artists somehow benefit from music sales? I was under the impression that platinum performing artists made next to nothing from those sales but were forced to tour perpetually to promote them.
Yes, hundreds of millions of people are willing to pay for music. The greedy pigs who own the entire history of recorded music, unfortunately are so busy both artists and fans that no one is getting what they deserve.
The vast majority of music is still acquired on CDs, but history is all they will provide in the future. Everyone but the majors are sick of the majors. New music is being produced, promoted and enjoyed without them. Online, they are just one of many providers. The future belongs to those who meet people's need for entertainment. Lawsuits, restrictions and bad deals are not fun for anyone.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
SH*T... reading that article was like looking in to a mirror.... having "worked" as a DJ (both club and student radio) and playing many various rock and electronica bands, further more almost all of my holiday travelling is spent going to music festivals in other countries, so you could say I'm a bit obsessive about music. My vinyl collection is, I guess, about 3 or 4 thousand LP/EPs and around the same in 7" and 12" singles, plus probably 2 thousand CD's....
... it's like every CD that has copy protection, every download with DRM is accompanied with an accusing stare of suspicion...
yet why do I feel that the "industry" side of the music business regards me as their worst enemy... as if they don't trust me one bit
Fuckem I say... every time I see copy protection I make it a priority point to break it.....
An open Letter to the RIAA What follows is a short history of my economic experience of music and a simple business model for the labels to recapture my wallet:
.40 a song. Bill me based on band
Back in the old days, when I had my first CD player, I went out and replicated my sizable record collection at $12-$13 a pop (note that I lived in Berkeley, which is blessed with two awesome non-chain retailers - Rasputins and Ameoba) - this took all of my struggling-student-with-no-loans spare cash. Over the course of a year, I bought 80+ CDs. It sucked hard, but I hated records and tapes (no nastalgia for me). Back then, the rumor was that the price of CDs was inflated to cover the cost of retooling manufacturing and would come down below record prices because they were cheaper to make.
Five years later, the prices didn't go down and my 200+ CD collection was stolen from my ghetto appartment. I was literally in tears. That was more than $2500 and I was still pretty poor due to the early 90s resession. The upside was that stolen CDs were valuable because there was a budding used CD market in the Bay Area. Once Rasputins & Ameoba started selling used CDs in quantity, I stopped buying new CDs altogether. This is early 90's and I already dropped out of the label's direct market. Here I was, a 20-something kid that was so in love with music that I would spend the better part of my expendable cash on CDs and I dropped right off their books because I could buy "Nevermind" for $9 if I waited a month after it came out.
Funny thing is that I started making serious money. I still wouldn't buy new CDs. I was used to paying $6-9 and there was no way I could go back. I probably missed out on a lot of music, because I was limited to what college kids would buy and return.
Then came burners - I spent many hours burning all of my friends CD collections. Shortly thereafter came MP3s. I was already pirating software on the FTP scene (another economic lesson to be learned for the SW companies, but I'm not gonna stray there), so suddenly, I'm not even buying used CDs anymore.
So where does this leave us? Well, I'm in my mid 30s, make 6figs, and I like a huge variety of musical genres. I could spend $250 a month on music and not bat an eye, but I don't. The labels have alienated me. I virulently despise them, but I am a music addicted consumer. If they offered me something that had value to me, I would embrace the bastards with loving arms.
So, what can they do for me that would convince me to give them my money again? Simple:
1. Save me time - downloading stuff on Kazaa is work: sifting through the crappy files, figuring out which songs I am missing from a given CD, and organizing the 40+gigs of it all - this stuff takes time and my time is worth money to me. Figure out ways to save me time and I will pay a price for it.
2. Selection - I am limited to what the masses are trading. I like obscure shit and am willing to experiment, but not at $15-17 (notice how this trended higher?) a pop - no fricking way!
3. Ease my concious - I admit it, I feel bad for screwing the artists by downloading mp3s. The problem is, they are already getting so screwed by the labels. It's kinda like buying Nikes - hard to say whether it helping the poor little Indonesian kid or not. Besides, the less that people give the labels, they less they have to offer the artists who should really all jump ship anyway. I buy Timberland clothes 'cause they make a big deal about how their sweatshops are less satanic than others. Treat the artists well so I don't feel bad about promoting your exploitation of them. Tax the superstars a bit to feed the starving artists - music should be a middle class profession.
So, how can the labels meet these needs? Again, simple:
Give me FTP access to a full catalog (all labels in one place)of high quality, verified, DRM-free and properly tagged MP3s. How much would I be willing to pay for this? Figure 2-4 bucks for 10 songs. That's $.20 -
parent was being sarcastic ffs -_- mod should have been "funny"
I am not a record-industry shill, I'm just sick of people justifying their actions in order to clear their consciences. ... The guy made a mistake (downloading WMA format music to play on an iPod) and rather than deal with it and eat his $10 losses, decided that he would rather get his music for free.
You may have been paid to say that but you lack both understanding and sympathy either way. It's crazy and pathetic that your bosses paid someone to talk to this guy for hours rather than giving him his money back or giving it to him in a format he could use. That's not the way you treat a customer you expect to make another purchase.
The man is still afraid of your paymasters and is not going to "get his music for free" which is a shame. There's a whole world of legitimate free music at archive.org, magnatune.com and other places that are much better than his proposed remedy:
He's only going to share in meat space, so your bosses don't try to take him for another $5,000. Don't worry, though, it will only take him a few hours of searching before he realizes that he does not need your product at all. No more dirty bad pirate for you, just another lost customer.
From where I stand, the music industry can't run out of customers fast enough. All this shit will blow over in a decade or so when your bosses run out of money and there are some worthwhile recordings in the owned archives. When the RIAA finishes self destructing, it will come back out as it already should have. Copyright laws will finally be fixed.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
They would if they would sell their own music, or found distributors that gave them favorable terms. (And don't try the crap about there being no such thing -- there is; you just don't get the marketing muscle that the big names have.) I feel no sympathy for the poor, downtrodden artists who sign away the rights to their music in hopes of becoming multimillionaires. They played the lottery, they lost.
In any case, I was responding to the statement "That's where the money is, anyway. not the Albums," which is obviously false. Many more people buy music than go to concerts, and are willing to pay for it. There's money in both.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
http://lavidavegas.blogspot.com/2007/02/ipirate.ht ml
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
...as an amateur artist struggling to learn the ropes of production and so on - there is actually quite a lot of skill going in to those shiny top-40s tracks from almost every level EXCEPT the "face" person usually. I would kill to have some of my stuff remastered by the guys doing the work on those tracks, or to be able to work with studio musicians half as good as the ones that back up the latest boy- or girl-band sensations.
That's not to say that I like top 40s shit, and in fact I haven't listened to the radio in almost five years unless it was a retro station and someone else forcing me to listen, but to be fair a lot of people buy this stuff because it DOES sound better than anything an amateur or semi-professional can even afford to produce. It doesn't matter how good your singing is, it still sounds like crap sung through laptop mics or using unamped stuff because you can't afford proper equipment.
Note that I am deliberately excluding live amateurs/semi-pros from that comparison - a lot of small-town or lesser-known bands are really fucking amazing if you hear them live and we can only hope that a few more of them manage to crack the vinyl ceiling or whatever you want to call it. I have high hopes that the internet really will slowly replace the recording industry as the primary means of both marketing AND distribution, and of course am personally making use of it to slowly build a little fan-base of my own.
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
It's just the way it works, folks. The RIAA (and others) try to make the music scarce so people will pay for it. But in many cases they take it too far.
How cool would it be to have jukeboxes in your local tavern or party house show the *videos* along with the music? Why hasn't this been made widely available? Before videos, jukebox manufacturers would go to all kinds of lengths to make the thing noticed- videos would really do the trick!
And I've seen a LOT of old music out there ya just can't find. But because it won't sell enough to justify a batch of plastic getting squeezed out, they don't bother.
Make anything people want/need scarce, and the price will go up AND the pirating does, too. That's why you lower the price and make'em easily available. The RIAA working in the other direction is putting them out of business.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
They would if they would sell their own music, or found distributors that gave them favorable terms. (And don't try the crap about there being no such thing -- there is; you just don't get the marketing muscle that the big names have.) I feel no sympathy for the poor, downtrodden artists who sign away the rights to their music in hopes of becoming multimillionaires. They played the lottery, they lost.
This is some incredibly forced logic. In the first para you are quoting (I assume) industry stats on sales (which do not benefit artists in any substantial way) with the industry's predilection for DRM which serves only to alienate fans?
Yes, finally, with the advent of the internet and cheap technology, artists can market themselves. The issue at hand, however is how the industry that supposedly has the artist's interests in hand has turned a "legal" consumer away from products handled by same said industry.
I guess I just don't understand. Are you defending the industry's use of DRM, or are you condemning artists for singing with major labels?
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
The artikel mention monopoly pigs riaa want hold 'moosik' for 130 years. This same riaa that want to not pay authors who wrote product they dont want to sell..just rent authorization to listen to it. Suppose riaa pigs in future want fit all humans with ear muff so no listening to stray 'unauthorized for him' mooosik will be possible to listen to. Maybe they want all present trash masquerading as moosikk will rot away in forgotten warehouses like MPaassholes movies originally recorded on nitrate film. The movie industry originally intended to re-release all that dross....someday. The market moved away from most of it and never came back. Who today wants to watch old mary pickford and lionel barrymore silent flikers. So let the recording industry's old crep rot, and the faster the better. Boycott it
until these hated monsters are driven to the poorhouse and back under the slimey rocks they sprung from.
Now let us raise a generation of folks that hate all commercial music as too cumbersome to even try to listen to, so they learn to PLAY and SING it themselves and tell the industry and its paid stooges to go fuck themselves. Today's moosik
is way to uniform, and uniformly BAD. No wonder it won't sell even to an audience
that does not boycott them.
Charge $15-$25 for a CD that has (maybe) one decent song on it.
-ADR
Couldn't he have just found something to burn the files to a CD with, in an audio track format? Then rerip? Or was that the problem he had with the encryption on the files?
Sounds to me like he needs software that's a bit more devious and lets you actually do what you want with the media. Then again, you're right. It wasn't exactly bright for him not to read the disclaimer or know that a proprietary WMA format -- the direct competitor to Apple. I don't think ignorance is much of a defence to that sort of thing. Thoughts, anyone?
Sometimes I wonder if I think too much.
[artist would benefit from music sales] if they would sell their own music, or found distributors that gave them favorable terms. ... [but] don't get the marketing muscle that the big names have.
Sure, the old radio lock up means less everyday and cable music means less than nothing. No one is listening anymore because they have found alternatives. Gone are the days of the old radio empire where creativity was saved for a few "target" cities like New York and the rest of us got to sample the safe crumbs of the weekly top 40 on heavy rotation. The internet brings much of that music scene to everyone, like the pigopolist never would. So, I agree, there are better deals elsewhere now. So what? It's not like the pigopolist are not fighting the emerging competition with every breath.
In any case, I was responding to the statement "That's where the money is, anyway. not the Albums," which is obviously false.
If you read what Love has to say, touring is the only way they make money now.
I feel no sympathy for the poor, downtrodden artists who sign away the rights to their music in hopes of becoming multimillionaires. They played the lottery, they lost.
Your lack of sympathy is apparent, but that does not mean the rest of us should support an unjust system that screws everyone. In a year Love made $6,000,000 profits for her record company her band members got paid about $30,000 each. That kind of bad deal can only exist outside of a free market, where government has granted people monopolies and is taking a cut. It's not just Love that's a loser, it's all of us. The record companies did not make that $6,000,000 by promoting Love, they made it by shutting out hundreds of equally talented artists out of radio play and venue space. Obviously, from the sales figures you quoted, there's plenty of room for $30,000/year artists. What goes around comes around, and the sharp decline of major music sales is good payback. All you have to do to fight the greed heads is to enjoy better music from other sources. A free market is asserting itself and everyone is going to win.
So what exactly are you trying to say? People are willing to pay for recorded music and shows. What's the problem with that? How does that make it wrong for people to promote their concerts by giving their music away? Do you have a better way for them to promote themselves without "losing the lottery"? Were you really the defending digital restrictions which are the largest component of the next attempted lockout?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The Archbishop of Ussher declared, after a careful study of Biblical geneologies, that the earth was created in 6006 BC, on October 31, at nine o'clock in the morning. Therefore, you are BOTH wrong. The earth is really 8013 years old. http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/4,500,000,000_BC_to_1 BC
All praise to the FSM!
Goddamned kids! Get off my lawn!
When you say "play the lottery" in this sense, it seems more like "play Russian Roulette" -- the likelihood of winning over multiple games is quite a bit lower that you may have hoped.
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
The only problem I see with your issue is that when you "pirated" those music files (through edonkey or bittorrent network I assume) you were not only downloading them but, as you downloaded them you were *providing* them to other people (hence *distributing* them).
I believe that, if you downloaded those tracks from a service like say, allofmp3 where you only perform the *download* but do not make available for distribution while downloading, then you would not be guilty.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
You don't understand because those two paragraphs are about completely different things. They were in different posts, and responding to different people's comments. The first was responding to the statement that there is no money in albums, which is demonstrably false. If you look at the replies, when I said that, the argument immediately changed to "there is no money in albums for artists that sign with major labels," which while it isn't completely true, is at least somewhat defensible.
The second paragraph was responding to the statement that artists don't benefit from music sales. It is my opinion that, when there is so obviously ways to benefit from music sales, that there is no reason why the artists should not benefit from music sales. Just because some people make poor decisions is a poor argument for getting rid of copyright protection.
I wasn't aware that I had said a thing to do with DRM in the first place. This same argument has been going on since the napster days, before DRM-protected music was at all common. As it happens, though, I'm indifferent on the subject. Some parts of the DMCA are bad, and should be overturned, but the music industry should be allowed to encode their bits in any way they want. If it causes a problem, don't buy it.
And I'm not "condemning" anybody. The artists are adults, and they should be allowed to make their own choices. With all the publicity, nobody can say that they don't understand what the music industry is like. I may think they're making a poor choice, but if they want to go for the 1-in-a-million chance of being wildly rich, that's their business.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
It is quite possible that I am mistaken. It has happened once or twice in the past :)
l l l
I thought your two quotes were related, because although they were to two different people in two different posts, the second was in defense of the first.
The discussion at this point, as I understand it is that there is money to be made selling recorded music, despite what Courtney Love said about it.
I believe that Courtney's essay on the subject of record industry chicanery is probably accurate - she's not the only artist with the same view.
I take the Techdirt view of the value of recorded music:
http://techdirt.com/articles/20070215/002923.shtm
http://techdirt.com/articles/20070222/002451.shtm
http://techdirt.com/articles/20061218/203728.shtm
etc, etc, ad infinitum.
Basically, technology has rendered musical recordings worthless as a product in and of themselves. Yes, people will continue to buy them. Some people will actually continue to buy them at their current, historically inflated prices. But the number that do so is dropping year after year.
This doesn't change the other issue, most bands have always made more money from touring and ancillary sales (t-shirts, bumper stickers, etc) than from recording sales. If they don't have a recording contract with a distribution deal, or their contract allows them to do so, they can make a bit of cash off CD sales at concerts.
And here now, I see the crux of my disagreement, I believe. I mistook this quote!
When it is so patently obvious that owning music is worth quite a bit to hundreds of millions of people, the old argument that recorded music "should" just be used to draw people to concerts seems more than a little self-serving.
Yes. You are certainly correct! The only point I was trying to make about this is that the price of that ownership will drop dramatically.
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
I don't think that this is true today. It may be true if we were to get rid of copyright protection, and it could become true in the future if most artists begin releasing their work for free, but both of those are still hypothetical at the moment.
If the price of ownership drops naturally, as people become less willing to pay for music, then I have no problem with the role of recorded music changing to match. It's those that advocate removing copyright protection in order to force the price down that I see as self-serving. (And I don't find the other arguments against copyright to be very convincing, either.)
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
You're right, and I pretty much agree with you.
I should have said, technology has driven the cost of copying musical recordings to almost zero
Removal of copyright - or less forceful use of it, let's put it that way - must be voluntary, will reduce unit prices but, will end up promoting a lot more bands. The only potential loser in this scenario is the record industry itself - the middlemen.
Artists don't need to give their recordings away. If the guy playing in the subway can make a decent living off of donations and $5 CD sales, there's a ton of bands out there that could profit in much the same way.
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
"banish them into the gulfe of Barbarisme"
Beautiful. If only the **AA could at least state their arguments in such prose, they'd be a lot easier to deal with.
Gilbert and Sullivan, who were late-1800s composers that made their money by having a theater company put on their operettas, had problems with other theater companies pirating their scores and putting on competing productions, depleting their potential audiences without paying them. In their case they weren't selling their compositions as a product, but might have been more successful financially if they had.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
count me in ^^
We are the BORG, put this in your sig and prepare to be assimilated
a song comes to mind: "The Sound of Goodbye" by Perpetuous Dreamer
Like a stream that flows into the sea
I am lost for all eternity
Ever since you took your love away from me
Sometimes
The sound of goodbye
Is louder
Than any drumbeat
Your declaration that "tens of millions of Christians" believe as you say does not mean that they do, nor that they are 'true Christians'. Just because I say there are a whole bunch of rabid inbred rednecks in Kentucky who are foaming at the mouth to rebel against the government and rape their mothers doesn't mean that they are the new standard for a 'true Kentuckian'. Even if I have to deal with 'these hordes' every day, and if they are telling me that I am going to burn in hell because I am not inbred still doesn't make my assumption or subsequent labeling of them valid.
This kind of stereotyping makes me less of a person and makes me discriminate against every 'Kentuckian' I think I meet. This is where bigotry comes from.
As much as I see the value of what you are saying, I can only recoil from your logic.
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to govern any other" -John Ada
... Why is it good that CD sales are dropping? All that means is more online music sales and more DRM.
But to quote Eben Moglan:
"Now if you leave [the RIAA/MPAA] alone to buy more congressmen, in this very corrupt time of ours, they will survive for a little while longer but all of this talk is about the technicalities of the adjustment of the terms of their demise. When we want to start talking about something that matters, we would do better to begin from some basic social propositions. Everybody is connected to everybody else, all data that can be shared will be shared: get used to it."
With any luck, it will only be a matter of time, but I'm not convinced that this is a sign of their apocalypse.
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
Damnit. That's a new one for me, I actually replied not to the wrong thread, but to the wrong discussion altogether.
There should be a rule against linking to old discussions from current ones.
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
.... are similar to those of the US and EU (longevity, mortality rates, etc).
A lot of their *proven* success (refer to WHO statistics if your are curious) is dur to put more emphasis in prevention rather than in remediation and cure.
Only because they have got wrong the politicial system does not mean they can't get right their healthcare.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... because any lazy bastard can go and check websites like WHO's, he is actually complementing you because he thinks you are capable of doing this yourself.
SInce you celarly aren't, here it is some information for you:
Just for starters:
Cuba US
Life expectancy at birth (m/f) 75/80 75/80
Healthy life expectancy(m/f) 67.1/69.5 67.2/71.3
Child mortality (m/f)/1000 8/7 8/7
and so on.
Here:
http://www.who.int/countries/cub/en/
http://www.who.int/countries/usa/en/
Happy now?
Cuba is no paradise (the US and Fidel Castro have made sure of that) but to deny that Cuba's healthcare system is not what it is painted to be is to go against most of informed opinion and objectively collected data.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... last time I assisted to a performance by the London Philarmonic, Eugenny Kisin, Placido Domingo of Murray Perahia.
I will pay more attention the next time.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
That is the marketing so sell it to you.
After reading your post one has to give it to the RIAA and other labels: the trick worked to the point that people miss the marketing.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.