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Trent Reznor Says "Steal My Music"
THX-1138 writes "A few months ago, Trent Reznor (frontman of the band Nine Inch Nails), was in Australia doing an interview when he commented on the outrageous prices of CDs there. Apparently now his label, Universal Media Group is angry at him for having said that. During a concert last night, he told fans, '...Has anyone seen the price come down? Okay, well, you know what that means — STEAL IT. Steal away. Steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealin'. Because one way or another these mother****ers will get it through their head that they're ripping people off and that's not right.'"
Trent Reznor - "Do What You Want Because A Pirate Is Free ..."
Can't wait until Nine Inch Nails covers that...
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
You're right, the 13 cents he makes per cd should totally be given back. Power to the people!
This was during a concert, not an interview. A YouTube clip of him talking about it.
Send him some mail. It'd be interesting to see if he'd do it... and if he does it'd be a pretty powerful gesture to the music industry (I think we all know which gesture ;) ).
(rot13) rpbzbab@tznvy.pbz
IIRC, his contract is going to be up soon anyways, and if this is how he feels his company is treating him I doubt he'll sign a new one. With the innovative storytelling he's done with Year Zero, and essentially making open-source music by releasing the original recording data so that anyone can remix it, it'll be interesting to see how he goes about releasing new music without a large distribution network that the major label gives him.
Actually, if he stopped accepting royalties, then the record companies will make an even larger profit and they wouldn't care. That would make it an empty gesture.
My twitter
Nothing can stop him now.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
motherbuckers?
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Yeah, because I'm sure that his contract wouldn't land him in court for doing that.
At least this way he can take the "It's actually my intellectual property" defense to the US Copyright Office if he gets thrown into court.
FanFictionRecs.net
Why would refusing royalties from CD sales (thereby giving more to the record company) be "putting his money where his mouth is"? It seems to me that encouraging people to "steal" his music *is* putting his money where his mouth is, since he just won't make royalties on that music.
He said recently in an interview that he's trapped in a contract and has to produce some number of albums for his label, but after that he'll probably distribute MP3s from his website and accept Paypal donations-- or something like that. I don't have the quote handy.
Jeopardizing one's employment by publicly disagreeing with the immoral practices of one's employer doesn't sound very empty to me.
Sure, he might not have said these things back when Pretty Hate Machine was about to be released, but that doesn't negate what he's saying.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
From who? Universal? Robbing the majors is the thing to do these days.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Back to the same old B.S. that has caused turmoil in Hollywood since I can remember.
Artist makes contract with "BigCo", and "BigCo" agrees to a % of the "sales" as they define them, and then "BigCo" sets the price of the movie, book, or music where they want to get their profits they want. That was the way of the 20th Century.
In the 19th Century, artists of all types made money on direct sales, direct live acts and there was little other than a shop that might sell works for a % of the sale.
Now I wonder if the 21st Century Artist is not moving back to the 19th Century methods, where the artist controls things more, since it is the Artist inspiring the viewers, listeners, readers of his work that counts for quality artistic expression. If Artists have something hot, that your subset of the human race likes, the Internet allows those mutual groups to find each other in lots of ways.
I think the Internet is leveling the playing field, and artists are likely to see a resurgence of interest...provided they have quality work.
If you can steal a Ferrari in such a way that the original owner still has his Ferrari and suffers no loss from your theft, then more power to ya.
I love Trent and think he's a very talented musician, but I'm wondering if someone's back on heroin again. I agree that the music industry is ripping off the artists and the listeners, but when you sign a contract, you agree to many things and it's doubtful that the company with which the agreement was made is going to look fondly on any attempt to decrease what they were promised (i.e. profits).
Face it Trent, you've still gotta make a few records for them. Do what Prince did, paint 'slave' on your face and release a few "best of NIN" albums and then do whatever you want on your own label or just sell your stuff online, we'll buy it.
Guess publishers were smarter 2 scores ago.
...what the Anti-Christ is to the Catholics. :-P
Rock on Trent, rock on.
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
Are you kidding? Musicians don't see a dime of royalties from their record sales. Creative accounting and "recoupable" expenses take care of that. Thats why musicians like Reznor encourage the public to steal from the record companies, because the record companies are stealing from the musicians.
Musicians make all of their money from live performances and merchandising. Reznor may earn royalties from other musicians albums he has producer credits on, however.
Also, I seriously doubt that Trent Reznor is "very rich" or even "rich" by first world standards.
That is the way that it (AFAIK) usually works. The artist gives the rights to the studio, they publish it and give the artist some money back. If the artist retained the IP, they could sell it themselves and bypass the studio. Studios don't like that.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
If you can fucking download one - then knock yourself out asshole.
Right down his alley.
If he meant this, he'd be busy paying his penalty to break contract. Otherwise it would just lure people into the RIAA clutches. "Trent told me to download it" can't hold up forever if the contractual locks are still in place.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Not another reason for NIN fans to grow even more angsty. That's the last thing we need. He did it for the press.
622677120
Royalties? you are enjoying that smoke I hope...
Having been in the biz I know why he said that at a concert; he gets NOT ONE DIDDLY PENNY for those CDs. nada, nothing nyet! that is the way it works. All your uber stars get nothing more then a screw job for the recordings which is why they go on tour. Life on the road sucks but at least you DO get a percentage of the concert take. Remember that band from the 60s you loved? They are playing the county fair in Backwoods Iowa today and may get 20% of the gate or if they are lucky car fair, and a straight grand or so for a week's performances. Music biz is a reality check; The record companys get the other sort of chequeues.
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
And is not afraid to go against the labels' will, e.g. see the history behind an eastern egg on the "Broken" album:
It sounds similar to Matt Groening and FOX. They pissed him off by not letting him concentrate on Futurama and making him churn out more Simpsons so he used the Simpsons as a vehicle to insult FOX executives whenever he could. They had to put up with it as he was sticking by his contract and making them money.
I dont read
They do have to strike a balance, because there *is* a breaking point where artist will *stop* signing to their label, and where they give competitors an improved bargaining position... In aggregate, the RIAA and their ilk are a pretty formidable looking entity, but individually, A&R agents really do have to compete, and the margin balance is pretty delicate.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
He's already hit the top of his career. His fans will find him even if he never pays another dollar in marketing.
:)
In fact, his hard-core fans will probably be happier with him if he never pays another dollar in marketing.
The problem is that the industry is structured to cash in on people like Trent who make millions.
Then there are the one-hit-wonders. Use them up and spit them out.
Then there are the hordes looking for a chance to make it big. They can give away their stuff until they're signed. Then the labels own them.
Why, if his point is that they're charging too much for CDs, not that the entire edifice of the music industry should be torn down? Refusing royalties would be pointless since all that would happen is the record company would keep even more of the CD price. Canceling his contract would be a dramatic gesture, but then he would have zero influence in that company anymore.
I mean of course it's just a gesture from a very rich man -- being rich is kinda what enables him to be able to afford to say "steal my album even though I'm payed through royalties". You won't see any small-time act say that unless they all have day jobs. But whereas he could make a more extreme gesture, this is one where he is putting his money directly where his mouth is -- i.e. he's threatening his own royalties through increased piracy.
Just compare it to the "gestures" of other rich musicians who make a lot of money from royalties -- yes, I'm thinking Metallica here. Compared to Lar's "stop stealing our stuff, pay full price and like it bitches" I think Trent is a lot better even if he isn't going as far as you'd like him to.
On the other hand, System of a Down actually named an album "Steal This Album" so I think they win in the "encouraging piracy of their own products" dept.
The enemies of Democracy are
What about bands that no longer tour? Brendan Perry of Dead Can Dance hasn't put out new material in years, and his last series of tours was brief, but he's still getting enough from sales of old catalogue to get by. Cocteau Twins have disbanded, but at least their guitarist Robin Guthrie still gets plenty from sales of their old albums. While it is true that there have been some artists completely screwed over, plenty of other musicians see royalties.
Actually, until 2005 Trent was running Nothing, his own Label and Studio. And given his attitude to the industry (the record industry, not the musicians), and his past affinity for the internet and viral marketing, it would not be surprising to see him go to a fully independent internet only distribution system and start a new label once his contractual obligations to Interscope are done.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
>> Until the studio pulls out the contract with his signature that states that the studio owns the IP.
Anytime you see the term 'IP' used in this context, think 'Illusionary Property' because that's exactly what it is. The whole fiction of IP being somehow property that can be owned, sold, stolen, or otherwise equated with real hard goods is a fiction created by lawyers and corporations to extract more money and control for themselves.
He's right though, CD prices are still too high. An extreme example is in Malaysia, a I looked at some CDs, and they costed 45 ringit, which is about $15. Normal price for an American. But if you consider that an average Malaysians make 3 times less than an American, then a 45 ringit CD to a Malaysian is like $45 to an American. Now, who the hell is going to pay $45 for a CD????
Can you please cite the judicial order or legislative ruling that establishes copyright infringement as equivalent to theft?
And, on topic, what about the big fuzzy gray area where the creator of a work still has free expression to say things like "steal this book" or "my agent is a dick nose and I want out of my contract?"
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
It might just work... I'm a rabid Pearl Jam fan, largely because they allow their amateur-taped concert recordings to be given away between fans. I've heard a LOT of good Pearl Jam shows, and in turn, I have bought many CD's because I've heard so many, mostly shitty, recordings of their shows, and I want to have some really good, clear recordings of their shows.
Regardless, music distribution companies simply add no value any more. When a company doesn't add any kind of value, they die. It happened with buggy whips, vacuum-tube manufacturers, and countless other industries. Right now, we can also see the slow death of Realtors because most, if not all, real estate information can be found easily for free. That's life. Adapt or die.
I don't respond to AC's.
While I agree with Trent that the music companies are totally screwing the people who want to buy the music, stealing it will only cause the music labels to want to up the price of the cds to recover what was "stolen" by people downloading and sharing the music. More power to him, but I fail to see how this is going to make those motherfuckers see the light.
Don't forget he has to pay for studio time, so make that 13 cents per CD (that's a very good deal, as these things go) minus $200,000 for each project.
How's the math on that?
-Nathan
PS:I'm sure trent has built his own studio by now and has engineers lapping at his johnson to work on his stuff. But still. I bet the studio cost a couple million.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Go with the subscription model of rhapsody napster. Listen to everything. Listen to all of it. Is a win situation for the record companies and you. Since you'll be bored of the same songs anyways. And if you want to quit for a month. Just quit.
When he's free of the shackles of his label I think I'll buy even more of his music. He knows music enriches lives not just the wallets of corporations.
Shh.
But doesn't stealing something require taking it *WITHOUT* permission?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It's quite easy for Trent to say this - because if he never saw another penny through record sales, it wouldn't hurt him - he's making his money touring and his money from selling merch. Increasingly, that's where the money is for the artist. And as long as folk are turning up at the shows, the sales of the record don't matter so much, because often they're not where the artist's payday is, that's on the road.
The label would just keep the money. That's not really a punishment for them "Do what I say or I'm going to give you MORE money!". If he could force the label to give the money to the consumers, ok then maybe I could see a point, but he can't so it would just be giving them more.
Rather, he seems to be encouraging his fans to not buy his music, which deprives him of royalties, but also deprives the label of money.
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
While I agree with him on this, it is wrong to tell people to steal when you are a role model like he is. I suppose he justified stealing his music by explaining the situation with prices and record labels, but that does not make it right. What next, the CEO from Dell gets leaves and tells everyone that the computers they are buying are way overpriced and that people should try to steal them instead of paying that price? That is a slippery slope obviously. Instead, he should instruct people not to buy it at the price it is and let the people, themselves, figure out how they want to go about not paying for it.
The correct thing it do here is vote with your dollar - do not pay the prices if they upset you. That said, stealing the goods instead of paying for them is not voting with your dollar, it is stealing. See how that works?
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
I'm told he took a long break from recording after Pretty Hate Machine until his record contract expired because he didn't like the terms he signed. No love for the system from that guy.
Here is the wiki section on his issues with the cooperate world:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Inch_Nails#Corporate_entanglements
-- http://thegirlorthecar.com funny dating game for guys
If you can steal a Ferrari in such a way that the original owner still has his Ferrari and suffers no loss from your theft, then more power to ya.
/. argument why copying music/video/software is not theft. (I realize you are not making the argument here) I think it is wrong - even if you could magically replicate a Ferrari - the creator of the original has not been compensated for his work in creating it - and so suffers a loss. That to me is theft. As a side note, the ability to create unlimited perfect copies reduces the value of the original paid for Ferrari - so that person has suffered a loss in resale value - which
This is one of the standard
Now, you can argue that person does not deserve to be compensated for copies produced by others and so the law should be changed; but that is a different position than "anything I can take without cost to the owner is not theft and should be legal."
that position, of course, means the GPL cannot exist - because you can take the code without cost from the original owner and should be able to do whatever you want with it regardless of the creator's wishes. To use the corollary to the "It's not theft argument" - "I would not have bought it anyway so they aren't really losing money" - if a company would not use GPL code unless the code modify it without redistributing the source when the distribute the resulting code they would not make nay changes so your not losing any enhancements since they would not do them if they had to comply with the GPL.
Do I think copyright law is out of date and needs correction? Yes, but silly not theft arguments detract from the real issue.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Now, they may start suing the artists, for encouraging copyright infringement; then they'll have neither customers nor artists producing music. Countdown to complete industry implosion continues....
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
if he can make a song out of my manifesto O:)
Well, nothing's turning out the way he planned, you Pig!
what you think of Trent or this latest bit of backlash on his part. The important thing is that artists now have someone to rally behind without being the 'frontman' as it were. Similar to how iPod and Apple were the first, other's followed. I hope that Trent is able to parlay this into a continuing and successful career move, and that others follow.
He, among other things, is right about the RIAA and their members.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
How about just 'copy'.
How we know is more important than what we know.
He can distribute as much as he wants, as often as he wants, and people by the millions will help him do it. It's called P2P. LimeWire, BitTorrent, and even Kazaa. And nobody can legally interfere, because if they have his permission, it isn't stealing.
(By the way, it should be pointed out that is NOT "stealing" anyway! Copying copyrighted music is legally a completely different animal. If you call it "stealing" when it is not, then you have already bought into the bastards' propaganda. Yes, there IS a big difference, legally and ethically, between copyright infringement and stealing.)
I think the point about royalties is that he built his career using their distribution and advertising networks and continues to enjoy the benefits (royalties) of their restrictive (high priced) distribution model.
NiN is a Big Deal & could easily start their own label and do whatever they damn well please. So, by suggesting he renounce royalties, the GP is saying that Reznor shouldn't just say "Fuck the Man", he should actually stop taking money he's earned through the system he decries.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Actually, if he stopped accepting royalties, then the record companies will make an even larger profit and they wouldn't care. That would make it an empty gesture.
Feh! They real money is in the live shows. CD sales hardly enrich performers at all.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Didn't pantera run into this where they were stuck in a bad contract and had to product so many albums with so many sales before they could get out.
I remember them talking about it on stage and saying something like they are releasing singles to pad a bunch of crap so they could meet their contract and go with a different label. They were cranking albums out just to get out of the contract.
All your uber stars get nothing more then a screw job for the recordings which is why they go on tour.
Paul McCartney is worth $1.5 billion. Believe me, that's not just from tours. I know it's the commonly accepted wisdom on slashdot, but it's just not true.
Maybe they get screwed the first or second album, but the more successful an artist becomes the more bargaining power they get and the more legal representation they can afford.
Can you "steal" my Ferrari in a way that doesn't deprive me of it?
Can you please cite the judicial order or legislative ruling that establishes copyright infringement as equivalent to theft?
;-)
Pfft...who needs judicial orders or legislative rulings when you can have wild speculation?
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
While we all appreciate the contribution of the baker, it's no longer his bread to give away.
If an artist speaks out against filesharing, people are quick to say, "We're not sheep, I'm not going to stop doing that just because they tell me to"... but if you get someone like Trent Reznor telling people to do it, you hear, "But Trent Reznor said it was okay!"
Your car analogy has failed. -10 points.
instead YOU have stolen our hearts, as ./ers, liberals, geeks, open source people and such.
what are you going to do about that ?
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What exactly makes this an "fairly" empty gesture ?
Was it when he stood in front of people who PAID to witness his art live, and said they could go ahead and steal the SONGS ?
Was it when he stood there in front of people who PAID for his CD and said they needed to do no such thing.
Was it when he exposed his CDs as over priced, hurting his sales
that this turned into an empty gesture ?
Perhaps it all became an empty gesture when he turned away CD sales
from people who would have bought the CD after the show ?
If more artists started performances like this, would it really be
an empty gesture ?
I have the $20 royalty check for my plus 130,000 sold albums. McCartney is not a normal musician and I do nto abide by slashdot wisdom bunkie. been there, but I could not AFFORD the teeshirt. -nuff said.
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
But if it's the Ferrari designer telling you to do this...
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Can you please cite the judicial order or legislative ruling that establishes copyright infringement as equivalent to theft?
How about...
The No Electronic Theft Act?
hey CDs in Australia are EXPENSIVE. at least compared to what I'm used to. I went a year ago, and the CDs where around $20. granted, thats Austalian dollars, but the exchange rate was reasonably close at the time. (what? .75USD to 1.00AUD? [this is at the time i went people, not now. so dont get your panties in a bunch)] and what? I can buy them for $10-12?
CD's in this country are not that expensive. I think they have been about $25AU for at least 15 years. Infaltion seems to have had no effect on music. If anything music has gotten cheaper due to the competition from iTunes. I used to buy a lot of CD singles. I have one that still has the price sticker on it, $9! (The average was more like $5.50) Today, I can get a CD single for about $3.50. Not only that but wages growth has exceeded infaltion by a very healthy amount here so I can buy a lot more music that I used to for the same proportion of my income. Music may be cheaper in other parts of the world but it certainly isnt expensive here.
Concert tickets, on the other hand, now there's inflation. It wasnt that long ago that a concert ticket was the same price as a CD. Now, you can pay 4 to 12 times the price of a CD for a concert ticket.
Paul McCartney is a songwriter as well as a performer. In the US, there are statutory royalties for songwriters. For example, every time someone covers a Beatles song, they have to pay him something like 7-8 for each copy they sell.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
So you're all right with the fiction the labels use that artists are just working for hire and the labels really deserve to own the copyright to their music?
1) He's not an employee in any way
2) charging more than people want to pay for entertainment is immoral? How... precise of you.
3) the fact that he is saying now that he is independently wealthy (ie has already profited from that which he now derides) certainly does call things into question
4) talking bad about record companies isn't exactly hurting his publicity, further increasing the self-serving aspect of this whole thing.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
How can he just leave? Most contracts with labels specificly forbid such a thing for very lengthy periods of time, or with the same band name/members.
FanFictionRecs.net
I know this isn't really your point, but I just hate seeing this fallacy repeated over and over again. The cost of creating the physical media IN NO WAY represents the full production cost of the product. That's like saying that the cost of software is just the cost of creating the installation CD.
He already has announced his scheme:
After his current contract is fulfilled (one more original album), he intends to do the following:
Distribute music for $4/album
If you want a physical something (i.e. CD, CD+case, CD+case+addt'l album art), you can pay for that separately.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
First, if Linux actually violated lots of enforceable patents owned by Microsoft, they would have sued by now. This has been hashed over by just about everybody in the industry, and Microsoft has "agreed" (ahem) to not sue anybody yet. To everybody but the clueless the translation goes something like this:
Microsoft: "This is an empty threat. We know we do not have a leg to stand on."
Second, and in support of First: almost all software patents that have been granted in recent decades have been bogus anyway. Even Congress has finally realized that, and have passed bills purported to be attempts to fix the problems. But their most recent "cure" is probably worse than the disease. It is nothing but a giveaway to corporate interests. If it becomes law, you can probably say goodbye to a real patent system in the United States anymore.
Third, copyright infringement is NOT "stealing"! Both legally and ethically, they are two very different things. Learn the difference.
Fourth, it is a hot topic on Slashdot because lots of people here know who is doing the real stealing. Hint: it is not the everyday user you see posting stuff here.
Bah.... it's never good enough for some people. Honestly, I don't care if he accepts royalties or has a distribution contract, etc.. Perhaps he's calling their bluff, they say they aren't happy with what he said, so he's seeing if he pushes and pushes if they'll cancel all of the above anyway. My thoughts? They won't, they make too much money. They'll grumble and then go hide in their little cash igloo's.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
What if the creator of said Ferrari tells you to make your own copy? Since this is what happened here.
You shouldn't expect anymore than that when you sign with major record labels.
"We'll give you mass distribution, advertising, etc. for the rights to your music."
If they are cool with that, then they shouldn't complain.
622677120
Or did I entirely dream this whole thing up? Regardless, he won the nerd heart years ago when he did the music for Quake, and moves such as this only make me respect him more.
If you're as big as NIN then your bosses are the fans rather than the record company. If there's *enough* demand then *somebody* will sign up to distribute you.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
What about the SCOTUS says it isn't theft argument?
Badass Resumes
Why? IA(definitely)NAL, but You don't refer to any position that suggests abolishing all contracts. Unless this law were to proactively forbid any compensation to the original artist in any case, I could still set up a contract with my end-user that required (or forbid) compensation for copies or derivative works.
-.-- -.-- --..
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My point wasn't to say that copying intellectual property never creates a loss. I was merely trying to point out the inherent difference between intellectual property and real, physical, property. Perhaps I should not have included the 'more power to ya' part, as I can understand how that could convey that my opinion is that only real, physical, property can be stolen.
For physical items such as a Ferrari, most of the value does not lie in intellectual property (the design).. much of the value is in the materials, manufacturing, and labor that go into producing the car. While there is certainly a diminishing cost with each subsequent Ferrari produced, there is still a very real and measurable cost-per-unit produced. For purely intellectual property, all of the cost is in the creation of the first work, and each copy after that is as near to zero in cost as is possible. This makes the concepts of theft, loss, and value a completely different animal for each type of 'property'. I had not meant to imply that all copying of intellectual property is fair and morally legitimate, only that the two types cannot be compared to each other so casually. They are simply not the same thing.
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Hmm, no mention of IP here. But, keep fighting the power.
On February 12, 2007, a USB drive was found in a bathroom stall during a NIN concert in Lisbon. It contained a high-quality MP3 of the track "My Violent Heart," which quickly circulated throughout the Internet. Another USB drive containing the same track was purportedly found in Madrid.
On February 19, another USB drive was found in Barcelona, containing the track "Me, I'm Not" and an MP3 of static.
On February 25, a third USB drive was found in Manchester, containing the track "In This Twilight" and an image of the Hollywood sign apparently demolished.
Concerning the use of USB drives as a form of promotion, Reznor explains:
" The USB drive was simply a mechanism of leaking the music and data we wanted out there. The medium of the CD is outdated and irrelevant. It's really painfully obvious what people want -- DRM-free music they can do what they want with. If the greedy record industry would embrace that concept I truly think people would pay for music and consume more of it.That's awesome, and makes my nerd heart warm.
I have the $20 royalty check for my plus 130,000 sold albums. McCartney is not a normal musician and I do nto abide by slashdot wisdom bunkie. been there, but I could not AFFORD the teeshirt. -nuff said.
Then you had an especially lousy contract. I wouldn't extrapolate your experience to the entire industry.
Except it was a fiction enshrined by the founding fathers into the Constitution
Could you provide a link? To the best of my knowledge copyright is not part of the US Constitution.
If the govt becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law, it invites man to become his own law, it invites anarchy
Will you be my running mate ?
You managed to write a response and not defend your position that
this is an empty gesture at all, but you did attack mine.
I could use someone like you on my team.
Off topic, but since you brought it up....
If he's not "very rich" or "rich", well, it's not because of a cash-flow problem:
http://www.ninwiki.com/Trent_Reznor
http://www.killoggs.com/news/?news=2651
Granted, it would suck to have your cash stolen by your business manager (if that's what happened), but the implication in your post is that he hasn't become rich. Quite frankly, he has. Sure, he's not as rich as some, but even at the lowest figure quoted in the above he's much better off than most folks: http://www.fool.com/personal-finance/retirement/2007/05/30/youre-ahead-of-41-million-americans.aspx
I also recall reading/hearing somewhere that having a true net worth in excess of $500 million US put you in the top 5% world-wide for net worth, but I cannot find the stat and don't know if it is true.
Either way, he's not a starving artist.
Especially considering it was released back in 1989. Something is telling me that sharing MP3s over Internet was not a big deal at that time ;)
:: There is no light at the end of a tunnel. There is a tunnel after a tunnel : Thom Y.
Both your examples are signed to an independant label, however (the same one, in fact, specifically 4AD). Also, what makes you think that someone like Brendan Perry is surviving entirely on royalty cheques? Chances are, he has some other revenue stream, like say, a job.
- Frans.
You shouldn't expect anymore than that when you sign with major record labels.
Just because it's in the contract, that doesn't mean it's not a legal fiction, or (in this case) that the baker isn't telling you to steal someone else's bread.
There's plenty of precedent for 'take it or leave it' contracts being nullified. There's plenty of precedent for unreasonable terms being overturned. So if you want to support that "baker" analogy you have to explain why this is not merely in the contract, but something that should be considered reasonable by the people you're talking to. Who, I might remind you, are slashdot readers.
But if you aren't even willing to TRY supporting it, you're just trolling.
Agreed. Dell was just an attempt at a well known brand here on /. though - nothing more than that. I own a Dell laptop and am rather pleased with it thus far.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
That's, why Reznor persists attracting me: he is delivering value in risky circumstances.
Servant of karma
I'm going to guess that Brendan Perry made more money from his last tour (based on the ticket prices I saw) than he has made in royalties in quite some time. How many DCD records can really be sold every year? I'd guess at most 10,000. That isn't much of a living.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Major label payout at 10%
Wholesale price: $9 / 90 cents per CD = $90,000.00
Selling as independent artist and Amazon(tm) Partner
Staff member to mail packages: $30,000 per year
Cost per CD, printing: $1
Cost per CD, packaging and mailing: $4
Cost per year: $530,000 on revenues of ($15 CD) $1.5m
Net: $1m
Going indie is not just more trendy, it's more profitable, once you've already got that mega-media marketing machine convincing 100,000 people they need to buy your (mediocre) music.
technical writing / development
NiN is a Big Deal & could easily start their own label and do whatever they damn well please. So, by suggesting he renounce royalties, the GP is saying that Reznor shouldn't just say "Fuck the Man", he should actually stop taking money he's earned through the system he decries. Like Prince was a big deal before his label took his NAME away from him?
They have legal-fu, and they're not afraid to use it.
You can't take the sky from me...
Mmm, except that last time (last many times, as a matter of fact) I was in Malaysia, you got incredibly convincing pirated copies being sold for between two and six ringit an album. And on top of barely being able to tell the difference between them and the real deal, the pirates often pad out the albums with selected songs from the back catalogue - no point in not filling out the full disc!
- Frans.
Unfortunately, we are in the scenario where an artist that people will listen to (read: popular) got that way because of the RIAA and the industry they are in... they have likely signed a long-term contract. Once they are out of that contract, the general population won't really care about them (read: Pearl Jam, Prince) and they will kind of fade away. Personally, I like all of these acts I have named, but they aren't in the main spotlight anymore. This is a system that the RIAA has created, and unless someone can a) gain huge popularity without them and b) stay out of their clutches, it won't seem possible to break out of their system.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
In the world of the copyable Ferrari, the company won't make money from building Ferraris. Designing and building the prototype is just an incidental expense - the real money will be made from the servicing the millions of people with Ferrari copies. There's the 3000-mile engine rebuilds, selling Ferrari tires (with patented 7-lug wheels), providing parts for wrecked Ferraris, driving schools, and money from the Ferrari Bikini Team concert tour.
'And less power to the guy who designs Ferraris for a living.'
Actually, less power to the company that exploits the guy who designs Ferraris for a living. That of course is a good thing, since they currently have several orders of magnitude more power than they are entitled to. There are also alternative business models they could adopt.
Actually, the Ferrari duplicator would eliminate the need for that company and the Ferrari designer would probably end up with a VERY substantial pay raise.
Trent is in a contract with his label to put out a certain number of albums through them before he can break away and do his own thing.
In the interview that was mentioned in the topic (http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21741980-5006024,00.html), he says:
(Interviewer): Given all that, do you have any idea how to approach the release of your next album?
I've have one record left that I owe a major label, then I will never be seen in a situation like this again. If I could do what I want right now, I would put out my next album, you could download it from my site at as high a bit-rate as you want, pay $4 through PayPal. Come see the show and buy a T-shirt if you like it. I would put out a nicely packaged merchandise piece, if you want to own a physical thing. And it would come out the day that it's done in the studio, not this "Let's wait three months" bulls---.
If you do what he says, will the record label still come after you?
...but is it art?
I whole heartedly agree that music should be free, and not just belong to the artist but be free for all the fans to enjoy. It just isn't the case with modern big record labels. They offer their services in exchange for the rights to the music, or that's how I know it. I can't find any sources to back me up, but I'm not trying to troll. I just don't think the music's rights belong to him. They belong to the record label, because NIN wanted to have fame and fortune. It's not the record companies fault, it's the artists who sell out that are at fault.
622677120
You know something is wrong when the MUSIC COMPANY gets pissed at their artist for saying this? WTF, since when did they become the boss, and not the artist? The music company EXIST solely because of the artists and things like lots of annoying sound compressed advertisements (as much as their sold music is) on TV. Let them say whatever they want, and you better just focus on pushing your damn ads everywhere. Musicians barely even need their studios anymore since we entered the digital age and it started maturing to push down artists. Music companies need to come down to earth and realize what duty they have here. The artists are the masters, and they are given their jobs thanks to them. Show them the respect that's due, or if you don't agree, just shut up?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
If you play piano, there's sheet music available for two of my songs, with the rest coming sometime soon.
It's all completely legal to share, as it has a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license. You can create derivative works such as remixes, and even sell my work or perform it in front of a paying crowd, but you must share alike - that is, give your derivative works the same license.
Why am I doing this? I am studying both piano and music theory with the aim of going back to school someday to major in musical composition. I want to compose symphonies.
I'll be in my fifties by the time I graduate - I can't afford to spend years building up a fan base. So when your local symphony orchestra plays my work, I want there to already be a loyal fan base in your city.
Thanks for your help!
Request your free CD of my piano music.
"The Federal Reserve is a fraudulent system."--Lew Rockwell
End The FED. -
to push down artists
Thinking one thing, writing another... Should be "to push down costs". As in hardware and production costs.
Anyway, good to see Trent Reznor put down his foot when it's necessary. Many artists seem to be just so weak that they don't dare and just keep acting safely like the mediabots they were tought to be.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Thanks for all the inspiring music Trent.
We all make compromises trying to be effective in the world.
It is a rare person who can stand up and say "Yes, I made my compromises, and became a little more evil because of it, but good is still good, even when I'm not, and right is still right, even when I'm not strong enough to be."
I have drawn a great deal of strength from what you have produced.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
R O C K ... O N ! ! ! ! !
.
Two immensely talented and popular artists that hate the labels? Yeah, Trent and Prince ought to get together and give the giant finger to the labels.
And both the name and design have value that comes out of decades of hard work from the members of the Ferrari company (family? LLC?) and so if you sell or rent your mock-up and make money off of it, it's arguable that you are profiting inappropriately, and that there may be some reasonable expectation of recompense or other protection for the designers of the copied product and the owners of the trademark name.
Even in my original example, you probably need to gain access to the original Ferrari in order to copy it in full detail. Even a good spec sheet probably would not allow you to make one that looks and feels like the original. So the question is, would anyone who's paid $250,000 for a car loan it to you so that you can take molds and measurements to make your own? Even if you rented it, could the owner of the car specify in the rental contract that you are only allowed to use it for driving?
Of course, you could resolve this problem by buying the car yourself. I don't know what's in the sales contract from ferrari, but I don't know if a "no copying" clause could be enforced in a personal use situation.
In addition to the sale or rental of functional cars, I could see some other places where the commercial use of a copy could be problematic. If, for instance, you were in the business of selling cheap copies of cars to be destroyed in TV show car chases, the car companies whose models you were copying could probably be justified in claiming that you are profiting from their designs and thus could require compensation. Heck, I believe that even HotWheels and their ilk have to pay license to the companies that make the real-world counterparts to their toys.
I'm sure there are other grey areas; obviously, as you point out, copying a car and copying an MP3 are very different issue, but the biggest issue I see with that difference and thus your comparison, is that if you have the mad skillz to make a Ferrari copy that is realistic enough to be a sue-able offense, then you probably could make a good enough living making custom cars that you could afford to buy one outright.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Third, copyright infringement is NOT "stealing"! Both legally and ethically, they are two very different things. Learn the difference.
I definitely agree with this, but being that IANAL, I have a difficult time explaining this to others. Care to explain this in semi-technical semi-legal terminology for those of us without law degrees? I recently heard a (horrible) lecture by an ethics professor who argued that copyright infringement is stealing, so I'm quite interested in the formal argument.
I swear the GP is some kind of RIAA attack dog trained to saturate the net with lies. Good job showing him up.
Oops, how did this get here?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Just a fancy name for Interscope.
NiN is a Big Deal & could easily start their own label and do whatever they damn well please.
They (or rather he) did - Nothing Records. Then it went bankrupt (sounds like a partner took advantage of him, i don't really know the story though) so now having far fewer financial resources he resorted to going back to the big label for a contract. A contract he's not going to be able to get out of soon. In the meantime, he's pissing off his corporate masters which is exactly what I would expect.
The enemies of Democracy are
It's not really accurate to say that he's the "Front Man" of NIN - he's the only member of NIN. He hires a few people to tour with him.
"Exclusive right" pretty much covers that. The right to control something is a property interest.
In a society where rights are evaluated on economic issues, particularly given that the issues that concern IP are business-based, they all function as property rights.
Property is not "things you can own." Property in the law is ALL artificial. Property is the right to exclude, in the simplest of terms. There is no legal relevance to or association with any tangible object in ANY kind of property law. To say otherwise is an extralegal fiction perpetuated by an anti-IP crowd.
Intellectual Property doesn't refer to a "fiction that it's something to be owned." The fiction is the unstated premise that "property" actually refers to a "thing" at all. It doesn't and never has. Real property isn't a thing. You can't own land. You can only own rights to that land guaranteed by the government. There is no difference. The only reason the name "Intellectual Property" exists is for convenience--it flags people as to what specific fields are involved. Real property law is a special pursuit, separate from plain-old vanilla property law, separate from personalty.
People in general don't know what property means, and they don't know what "real" means either, and instead they decide that somehow "Intellectual Property" causes people to think in false terms, as though it has any consequence whatsoever on the legal community. This is why Slashdot's arguments about legal terms of art are spurious at best. Property isn't a thing, and Intellectual Property doesn't imply a thing to own. The thing is the right itself. It's not even a little misleading, contrary to what RMS spoon feeds you.
They also tend to record their live shows (which are amazing still), burn them backstage and sell them at the end of the night.
I still regret not buying one when I saw them a couple of years ago (incidentally, it was the same week that I saw Kraftwerk play. It was great - like watching two German version of the future battling it out. EN definitely took the prize!).
You know what? It's a pretty fucking sad day when the US DOJ can't even be taken seriously.
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act!" -- George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
If I did manage to magiclone someones Ferrari...
Should I pay them, or the designers at Ferrari?
Or the trucking company that brought the finished items from the manufacturer to the lot it was purchased from?
or all three?
Ice Cream has no bones.
the internet has flat out replaced the music publishing business. all we are seeing today in all of these so-called "issues" is the growing pains of moving from the antiquated system to the internet based one
the internet based one, of course, needs no middleman. so your up and coming artist will put out his shingle, his website, be discovered by someone, and grow a fan base. perhaps he will be plugged on some music portal, online radio. people still need somewhere to go to sample new music. traditional radio i suppose won't really change at all, but may return to the era of the salty local dj who picks his own playlists, rather than song lists bought and sold by the music industry
but the money involved in this will all be advertising revenue, not money to or from artists. likewise, artists will only make money, if they ever become popular, via live gigs, or for hawking products: more advertising. artists won't make any money from albums. albums will become a historical artifact of the 20th century. and more importantly, music publishers won't make money from albums, because the music industry itself will simply fade away and die. artists will give their music away for free up front, to grow a fan base. does that sound strange? it's actually completely normal. they did this in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s: it was called radio. you heard songs, you bought the album. now you will hear songs from your traditional radio or online portal, and get it for free. but you will still go to concerts, and you will recognize your favorite artists when at&t hires them to do a commercial, or to play their song in the background of said commercial
and such a future is already ehre, in china, and most of the rest of the world outside the west. this is how most artists in the world live now, and how most have always lived since the dawn of time
just as you say, moving away from the corporate music industry is not some horrible act of trangressive freakish abnormality. it is actually a return to normalcy. it is the 20th century, in the west, with its corporate music industry, that is in fact the freakish aberration in time and place, not the other way around
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Steve Albini has been around the industry for a while, and here is what he has to say on the matter... Also, Courtney Love of Hole pretty much agrees with his assessment. When you factor in "recoupable expenses" bands really don't get much at all from recordings until they hit gold or platinum. Of course, YMMV and I sincerely hope that it does.
My truck is like a series of tubes.
"Exclusive right" pretty much covers that. The right to control something is a property interest.
I have a right as a parent to control my children. Does that make them my property? May I dispose of them as I see fit? It's not so cut and dry.
People in general don't know what property means, and they don't know what "real" means either, and instead they decide that somehow "Intellectual Property" causes people to think in false terms, as though it has any consequence whatsoever on the legal community.
You may have a point there. Consequently, it will be difficult for them to obey laws regarding property when they don't understand the terminology. In any case, "Intellectual Property" does cause people to think in false terms. For example, copyright infringement equating to theft. Or the conflation of a creative work with exclusive rights to its reproduction.
That's relatively low for an act with that much drawing power. I've seen tickets for sale for more than that EACH.
Besides, the labels generally set concert prices, and pay for marketing the album and the concerts... and then bill the artist for the marketing. There was a good article where Courtney Love itemized how Hole did financially off their first album... She ended up owing a couple hundred grand, even considering how well the album did.
Shinma
You're presenting a serious argument, not just shouting that copyright violation equals theft. You deserve a good explanation, and not abuse. But there are several reasons why copyright violation isn't theft, and they have nothing to do with who gets compensated for what (in the US at least).
1. Copyright law, at least originally, was all under title 17 of the US legal code. Criminal actions are kept organized in a completely different section, Title 18. So the congress drafted our most basic federal laws to say copyright violation was not only not theft, but not criminal at all. Some parts of CV have become criminal of late, but they are still not all properly incorporated into that part of the code.
2. Copyrights expire. There is no such thing as an object becoming old enough that it is no longer theft to steal it. So long as the constitution says "for a limited time" copyright violation is being treated as automatically not theft by the U S Constitution.
3. There is still a non-criminal class of copyright violations, including 'violations' that are not even torts because of fair use. 'Non-criminal theft' is an absurdity. If copyright violation = theft, then there can be no fair use, as stealing even part of something is still theft just as much as stealing the whole thing. CV=T means no quotation of even a small portion without permission, and makes negative reviews illegal.
4. All copyright law in the US is federal, and the courts have ruled it cannot be delegated to the states. If copyright violation is theft, then the Federal government has no legal grounds for prohibiting the individual states from passing laws to prohibit theft taking place within their borders.
Now, you could argue that the U S Congress, the Justice Dept., and the Supreme Court are all wrong on various points, and the Constitution itself needs amended. Maybe. But I have yet to see any of the persons who are yelling "CV=T!" on Slashdot accuse their congressman of pandering to thieves, or demand a recall of the Supreme Court because they are misapplying the constitution so egregiously, or even lobby their state to pass its own copyright laws that make CV=T locally, and fight the court decisions prohibiting them. The CV=T! crowd seems to love calling typical slashdot posters thieves, but until one of them stands up in the capital rotunda and applies their very same logic to the congress, I'm assuming they either don't really believe it, or are too cowardly to speak truth to power. (That's very much not directed at you, OK?)
On the same note, I've been repeatedly called a thief, just for making these very same points before. Since I have never either uploaded or downloaded music (except downloading by fully legal methods where I have paid properly for every track), I think I can safely say I am not a thief, even by the strictest CV=T definition. So, if the CV=T! shouters are right, and "the law is the law, its all so simple, there are no other factors and only a crook would think otherwise", I know 15 or so Slashdot posters who have committed Libel. I don't see anyone posting to these endless copyright threads with "What you've just said = Libel" when this comes up. None of the CV=T! people seem to give a damn about whether a crime is being committed against me, just against the RIAA. They come off like they live by the George Orwell phrase "Everybody's equal, but some are more equal than others.", and I suspect that's why a lot of people are fed up with them. Personally, I'd rather let them insult me than complain - their lack of rational behavior will eventually make it clear what they really want is very far from justice for all.
Who is John Cabal?
Tag it as willdo, for the lols.
Paul McCartney is worth $1.5 billion.
You can't compare the popularity of NIN or Reznor with the Beatles or McCartney. They're on different scales.
Also, McCartney was recording for an independent label (Apple Records) at the height of his career. That makes a big difference. He also owned the copyright to some of the most popular songs in the world, which he sold for a substantial sum. There aren't many songs that a collector would pay to own the copyright to. It's not a great business proposition.
He ought to split up, citing musical differences with himself. Then set up a new band under a different name.
Seriously though, he makes this plea at a concert, where he's doing what he does best, ie performing rather than perfecting it in a studio to be played off plastic, do the royalties really add up that much? Maybe he's happy to gig. If he's a "very rich man" then why tour now that NIN are no more?
sounds like 'bang my woman!' for me... oh wait
just wonder why there are so many anonymous cowards in this world....
the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; (emphasis mine, obviously)
Sounds to me like it's suggesting the writings and discoveries belong to their writers/discovers. Sure sounds like property to me.
Ownership of real property does not require a government. It only requires the ability to defend possession. Ownership of "intellectual property" can only exist with the aid of a government. You seem to think that everything begins and ends with the law, completely ignorant of nature.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
No more so than the idea of anything, including "real, hard goods" being property that can be owned, sold, or stolen is a fiction created to extract more money and provide narrow control to a favored subset of the population.
Property is a social construct, not something with any kind of natural essence. This as true of tangible personal propert and real property as it is of intangible personal property like stocks, bonds, copyrights, and trademarks.
Legitimate arguments can be made over whether any proprietary rights should exist in some things and what kind of proprietary rights should exist in each class of things to which those rights are ascribed, but the idea that proprietary rights in anything or something other than a social construct designed to facilitate the extraction of value and wall off things from the general use is a wildly inaccurate starting point for any such argument.
You must, simply must, stop thinking of 'property' in a legal context the same way you think of the word "property" in discourse. May I dispose of them as I see fit? That is one property right. Property rights are usually expressed as a "bundle"--you don't have to have every right in the bundle of possible property rights, and in fact I can think of no case in which you ever do have EVERY SINGLE property right to anything. Consequently, it will be difficult for them to obey laws regarding property when they don't understand the terminology. You don't know what property is. It doesn't have any material impact on your life. People aren't expected to think about legal theory--they're expected to obey statutory laws. For example, copyright infringement equating to theft How does this materially impact the average person? People in general can't handle the murder/manslaughter distinction, either. Does it mean we have to do away with it? Of course not. The charges are not important--the rule is: don't do it. Copyright infringement is against the law; only lawyers, courts, and legal scholars have any concern about how. There is further a distinction between theft and stealing. Copyright infringement most certainly is stealing, a lay term. It is not theft, a legal term. Do you follow the finer points of the burglary/robbery distinction? No. It's academic unless you've been charged, in which case your lawyer takes care of it. Or the conflation of a creative work with exclusive rights to its reproduction. What conflation? Authors of a work do have exclusive rights to its reproduction.
Sounds to me like it's indicating the author of a written work or the discoverer of something.
For his last album he should do what Aphex Twin did and just let his cat walk all over his synthesizer for an hour.
They're releasing the new album independently through Ryko in the States, and Potomak/Indigo in Europe. The first supporter's album was released as Perpetuum Mobile through Mute as a means of funding a world tour. The reason the album is different is Mute wouldn't allow them to re-release the same record they had already released to the public. EN is a very different beast from most bands. Since EN incorporates so many different instruments, items, and sounds into their music there is a fascinating process by which to fill in the webcasts. Another point about the instant live DVDs they've been doing is Clear Channel took a Royalty of about 40% on everything. In case you're ever wondering why a T-Shirt costs $40.
New! Device Legs: These legs will help your poor OEM installed product escape any hamfistedness it may encounter. Ava
Putting aside the idea that creation should be its own reward, I think this would lead to a world with less SUV's and more deloreans. In a world without scarcity of resources, there would be nothing for people to do but design better ferraris, and use their nanoforges to hook themselves up with prototypes.
Your thinking is very limited (I am tempted to invoke your sig but I wont). You dont have to give people incentives to be creative. For every paid musician, theres a guy in his bedroom mixing tracks, for free. The end result is that passion and professionalism wins, not for profit revenue maximization.
I will now repost one of my favourite slashdot posts ever on this subject (author is sadly unknown)
In this worldview, society benefits, not just the privileged few who are able to pay a license fee for ferrari or hammer blueprints.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
I'm going to run out and buy their latest CD.
.....
Oh, wait
-- Will program for bandwidth
The top and bottom of the music world is rarely about the money. Whether it's George Michael bypassing traditional distribution to release online, Trent Reznor bitching onstage, or Skip the 17 year old wannabee rocker handing demos out in the park, they're all seeking to express their work first. It's the corporations and handlers that force the endgame, because they're into business not music. Trying to trip a musician like Reznor up on hypocrisy charges ignores the paradox he's faced his entire career. Sure you can own your work, but not if you want anybody other than friends and family to hear it. http://tierzero.com/
You don't know what property is. It doesn't have any material impact on your life.
I would be willing to bet that the concept of property predated law.
What conflation? Authors of a work do have exclusive rights to its reproduction.
A creative work is not the same as an exclusive right to reproduce it. The creative work is not the property of the creator, the copyright is.
Sounds to me like it's indicating the author of a written work or the discoverer of something.
Strange. The word "their" is a possessive pronoun. Which should clearly suggest possession, and I don't know how posession is possible without property.
you mean he's biting the hand that feeds him?
:-P
he should write a song about that!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Nothing was Interscope's compromise to Trent after they bought out TVT Records. Nothing was still very much a child of Interscope which is child Universal. Reznor was still subject to a lot of the BS involved in the major label business. He still had to answer to a major label whenever he wanted to release material.
New! Device Legs: These legs will help your poor OEM installed product escape any hamfistedness it may encounter. Ava
You're wasting my time. Does that mean that time is my possession?
Artists make almost nothing from CD sales anyway. They are signed to horrid contracts and record labels use "hollywood accounting" to deprive them of CD royalties. Fifteen % of zero and zero % of zero are both zero. Trent was right to encourage stealing his music because only the labels will lose because they pocket all the $$$, and he can still draw an income from concert appearances.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
System of a Down actually named an album "Steal This Album" so I think they win
Only us really old geezers recognize the reference to Steal This Book, by Abbie Hoffman.
Oh come on, how can this be off topic boo! anyhow...
well, the last time i remember someone starting off like this,they ended up having an extremely hard time later in life, and since then i haven't heard of anyone else do what pearl jam tried to do.
We should support these few brave artists so the companies who control their music understand.
arrrrg
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
If you want to go back a few thousand years and stop society from forming, fine. But that ship has sailed, and it's a flight of pure fantasy to speak of nature as guiding or controlling any action of humanity. It is nothing more than a theoretical foundation, long since abstracted away from. You seem to think that everything begins and ends with the law, completely ignorant of nature. Nature doesn't govern society. Primal instincts gave way thousands of years ago. Nothing in your life today would exist without a departure from "natural" "law." There's no dispute resolution mechanism, no possible rationalization of shared and interconnected interests, and no possible reconciliation of technological advances without a government guaranteeing rights and managing the citizenry.
You'll have a point when everyone lives in log cabins they built themselves with no roads, no utilities, and no technology. Society is not possible without a civilized and binding method of dispute resolution.
I personally know musicians who've got albums in the "100 best sellers of all time" list and didn't make a penny from record sales. Not one.
This isn't anything new either, it's been going on since at leat the 70's. The web is full of stories about major artists who disbanded because they ended up owing money to the record companies.
I remember the day I first showed them Napster and they laughed out loud because they knew it would be the end of the record companies.
What should artists do? First set up a web site. Next, go and talk to somebody like CDBABY - they garantee you at least $6 per CD sale (minimum!). Link to them from your web site.
What should the public do? First watch the movie "Before The Music Dies". Next, steal from the RIAA like Trent says but buy direct from the artist or through people like CDBABY.
The record companies aren't just ripping off artists they're also stifling innovation and killing decent music. The sooner we get rid of them the better.
No sig today...
He could pull a "Band Formerly Known as NiN" like Prince did.
After all, I am strangely colored.
So Trent acts out his persona and the bigwigs at Universal do their thing and pretend to be totally P.O.ed about it. If they really wanted to stop him, they could.
Meanwhile, the story gets out and more people hear what a rebel Trent Reznor and NiN is. More people download the music... and at the same time, more people go to the record store and buy the over-priced CDs.
It reminds one of the way Microsoft pretends to hate piracy, but knows full well that the more people pirate Windows, the more people buy it. The big labels must be realizing that the more people pirate their music, the more people will buy it.
Culture is somewhat analogous to platform.
Has he put his money where his mouth is?
No - he appears largely to have put his label's money where his mouth is.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
The idea of ownership predates law. The creative work is not the property of the creator, the copyright is. The creative work is the exclusive possession of the creator and has a number of property rights associated with it; the copyright is a property right not strictly associated with the physical work itself. I'm not sure what your aim is in attempting to establish a contradiction here--the work itself is a thing held by the owner of said thing. No one can claim superior rights than those of the creator if s/he has not sold the original--s/he will still hold the majority of property rights to that work.
Licensing the production of copies transfers a limited set of rights to the customers. They do not become owners of the work--the author still owns the work. They become owners of a copy, with which there is a small number of rights, most of which are dead-end rights, with the most notable exception of the right to resale.
I would say that if you managed to slip in peacefully and didn't deprive anyone of their seat, conduct yourself peacefully, don't push the stadium over its maximum occupancy, etc etc, then yes, it is truly harmless. Hard to gauge the maximum occupancy, especcially not knowing how many other people hyptohetically sneaked in, so it would be hard to know ahead of time if you are creating a dangerous situation, so it's not a good idea, but the act isn't intrinsically harmful. Ethically justified, hard to say, but not impactful to anyone signifiantly. It's not like you get anything other than to listen and interact with other fans. If anything, helping fill the house enriches the experience in a NIN concert.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Trent has one more CD to put out and he's fulfilled his contract with his current label. He has said after that CD comes out that his contract is over and he will be going independent and will release his music via his website and such.
Prince was pretty much nobody when Warner Brothers took his name from him. The last few albums before "The artist formerly knows as" were fairly lackluster, both in terms of production and sales, not to mention the gimmicky New Power Generation. While Prince was the butt of a large number of jokes for choosing the unpronounceable symbol he actually gained some credibility back as an artist among underground and indie musicians. By the time he had earned his name back, he had enough draw to pretty much get any contract he wanted with record companies, including single album deals with a majority of the earnings and complete creative control in the studio.
Considering how Trent Reznor has often been inspired by Prince (such as playing a vast majority of the instruments himself on recordings) it's really not surprising to see him start to publicly battle the record companies. Taking such a stance would probably also resonate much better with NIN fans. People who listen to industrial music generally tend to hold a much stronger anti-establishment ideal than fans of dance-pop.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
That should totally be the tag :)
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
It's very easy to give stuff away - once you've already made your pile.
That is about right. Usually how it goes is 130,000 albums multiplied by $10 (released that limited are usually $10-15) and you get 1.3 million. Now for a young non-established artist the record company will give at best 10% (because of the risk of not getting their money back). So the artist is left with 130,000 now. But we are don't yet, for chances are the record company fronted the expenses of studio time, which can easily go above $200,000 depending on the studio, and the record compay will recoup this out of the artist's royalties. There are some really good independent labels, but on the other side there are some independent labels that are worse scammers than the majors.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
Also, more importantly no mention of profit anywhere. Patents and copyrights were never in any way intended to help anyone make a profit much less guarantee a profit. Any idiot I see supporting the current system trots that argument out as did the GP. The current system is unconstitutional as I see it.
Who is John Galt?
Not get out his contract of soon? he has one more CD and his contract is done with his label. He'll be out of his contract within a year from now.
According to the Australian interview he has one more record to go and then he's done with them. He also says he'll probably do an internet release and self released package of whatever comes afterwards.
Hooray for helping the cause (albeit slightly prematurely). I've already stolen his whole catalog.
Geeks strike again 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Ozzy is coming to a city near me, in Canada, and his tickets are $120 apiece.
Or Nothing Interactive. You might have seen mention of said company at the ending credits of Quake I. Which also mentioned Nine Inch Nails, incidentally. But you should know that already.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
People like you don't seem to understand what the English word "promote" means because you and all the other disingenuous supporters of the current system seem to think it means profit. The only constitutional reason for any kind of extraordinary control granted over ideas to an individual or company are to promote progress. You show me anywhere that word "profit" is mentioned. Nowhere is there any hint that the granting of those extraordinary rights purpose is to help anyone profit on anything. This is where your arguments in support of the current system fall apart since the current system has been shown again and again to retard progress (except progress for IP lawyers) rather than promote it and is therefore unconstitutional.
Who is John Galt?
Marillion have done some albums funded by their fans.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep03/articles/marillion.htm/
http://www.theregister.com/2004/04/28/marillion_comeback/
Your thoughts form your reality.
Most music fans have no idea how the music business is structured. Reznor says that the record companies and current distribution system rips off music fans, but the record companies get a substantially smaller percentage of retail CD sales than Reznor's share of live gate receipts. When performing acts become successful enough to tour nationally and perform at venues like arenas and outdoor amphitheaters they get over 90% of the gate receipts. This is true for just about any headlining band at a major venue and certainly includes NIN. With some performers venues will bid on the show, giving points to the artist. Barbra Streisand, for example, has sometimes demanded 100% of the gate receipts plus percentages of concessions, and venues will accede to those demands for the prestige of hosting a megastar. The big venues make money from parking, concessions (where they sell you $0.25 worth of CokePepsi for $4) and usually 33% of merchandise sales. The artists aren't willing to make less money so t-shirts at concerts are typically more expensive than from the band's web site. The promoters do get a cut of the gate, of course, less than 10%, but with current ticket prices, a show can easily gross $1,000,000, and $50K-$100K isn't bad for one concert. Megapromoters like SFX/Clear Channel can make big bucks with all the shows they are simultaneously promoting. But it's the talent that makes the real money at Reznor's level in the music biz. Factoring in merchandise sales, he's probably grossing close to million dollars a night. While it's true that it costs money to put on a show, it should be pointed out that record companies haves costs as well. The record company receives at most 50% of the retail price of the CD and has to pay production, promotion and royalty costs out of their share. Reznor gets over 90% of the ticket price at concerts, so he really has no moral standing to criticize record companies and record stores (regardless of how loathsome I consider the big 5 record companies to be). At least with the CD you are buying a tangible item that might actually retain some monetary value (or become a valuable collectible, even). A concert ticket buys you an experience, of unquantifiable value, and I doubt that Reznor's ever refunded tickets for putting on a bad show, so it's unclear whether Reznor is giving you a better overall deal than the record company.
I think the part you missed about the article was that he wasn't actually complaining about how much CDs cost in the US, but in Australia, where prices are apparently ridiculous. Honestly I'm not sure what to make your "he-man" comment, and I was neither defending Reznor's actions nor condemning them, I was simply pointing out that $44.50 for a ticket to a concert of the scale of a Nine Inch Nails show is pretty reasonable in today's market.
But then, I tend to go to more underground shows in small venues, and pay around $8.00 to $20 for a ticket, and all the bands I know survive (literally) off their merchandise sales at the shows. If they sell well, they eat, if they don't, well... they don't.
Shinma
Odds are - it isn't his intellectual property, much depends on the contracts he signed. Even if it is his intellectual property, he certainly licensed it to the record company for distribution - which means back to the contracts to see who has what rights.
That is the right ballpark for Japanese CD albums, actually... I paid I think $22 for my last single here. (As you can imagine, I don't buy them that often. iTunes, ho! Or even that cruddy I-can-believe-its-not-iTunes Sony music store that won't work with my iPod but at least has the music I want.)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Duh! Just change your name to a symbol and you can get out of the contracts...
Wait a moment here! Isn't that a hidden subliminal pernicious message from a RIAA artist: that sharing of music files is actually stealing? But is it really? Since when has it become common to call copying (not moving) of bytes "stealing" instead of "duplicating"? If at all, duplication contributes to the author's popularity, and increases his (but especially his label's) wealth out of residual CD and concert tickets sales. Wouldn't that be free advertising, the very opposite of stealing?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Did you know Maureen Tucker (influential drummer from the Velvet Underground) actually worked at WAL-MART (!) as a single mother for years after the band's breakup?
I'm not sure what my point is here (they admittedly weren't that popular, and hadn't yet become legends) but... shit! Mo Tucker! WTF?
Jeremy
TIAEAE!
Reznor has his own recording studio, and CDs are getting cheaper and cheaper to mass produce. Distribution is really all that the labels do these days. They are nothing more than a specialized FedEx or DHL but yet take > 85% of the profit. Something is not right there.
today is spelling optional day.
The whole point of copyright is to give value to something which has no value by allowing for the control of distribution. By controlling distribution you create a finite supply and the math changes and gives you a value. Copyright modifies the free market in order to give an artificial value to a zero value product.
So now the question is why? And the answer is very simple because it's actually written into the constitution.
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts . Now you can make all sorts of arguments of what exactly useful Arts are(and whether music is one), but the meaning is pretty clear. Copyright exists in order to encourage scientists and artists to spend their time doing science and art instead of doing other things. The founding fathers believed that having people do this sort of thing had value and so they created an artificial value for their ideas.The thing is they did not provide for the suppression and control of ideas for essentially unlimited periods. Nor did they provide for the right of non creators to profit from the actions of creators. I firmly believe that if the framers of the constitution saw the modern music industry and the current expiration period of copyrights they would be appalled.
read the original posts subject. he is not saying that pirating music is equivalent to theft. he is saying that trent reznor believes that pirating music is equivalent to theft
"I like to wear big boy pants."
There's a whole bunch of artists on eMusic selling songs for $0.30 and albums for around $5.00 (assuming 15 songs on an album), who have yet to make their "pile". If they can do it, and Trent can do it, there's no reason that all the artists at in-between levels of famousness can't do it too, as well as those who sell many more records than Trent.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Prince is by far not the first musician to play every instrument by himself on recordings. Stevie Wonder did this over a decade before Prince, and I know he wasn't the first. I doubt that Trent Reznor got inspiration from Prince to do this. It is far easier to get a piece of music out of your head if you don't have to get someone else to play it for you.
This sentence no verb.
If I were him, I'd make a whole CD out of white noise and screaming sounds, maybe with some drums on top for effect.
Bears don't normally eat things that talk and move backwards.
I whole heartedly agree that music should be free, and not just belong to the artist but be free for all the fans to enjoy.
Nope, that's not what I said either.
I said that the artist should retain the rights. That they don't is due to the massive imbalance of power between the labels and the artists that the labels have built up over the years.
Music production and book production aren't that different, but authors don't have to sign over their rights forever to get published. At most they sign over a SPECIFIC set of publication rights for a SPECIFIC time. If book printing had started in the laissez-faire capitalism of the early 20th century, instead of growing along with copyright and related laws over the centuries prior, things would be different.
So the current legal situation is purely accident, bad luck for the artists, and there's no moral or ethical reason to treat it as a fait accompli rather than oppose it.
I guess you all don't remember how much he really hates the major record labels. Oh, he know he has to do business with the mafia bastards to get that big in the music industry. All bands who want to get to that level have to do it. But that all does not mean that he likes it. Back when he got a Grammy for "Wish" on "Broken" he dissed them by not showing up. When he got his Grammy he took a picture of it in a toilet. Also when his label demanded that he make another "Pretty Hate Machine" Trent up and left with his band to a country house in Pennsylvania. He told nobody where they went. Not even his agent. He them recorded "Broken" which was the opposite of "Pretty hate Machine". So when Reznor says steal my music it like when System of A Down said "Steal This Album". They really do mean it. :)
But besides the IP issues, you signed a contract with Trent Reznor!
You signed a contract with a performer who features bondage, torture, humiliation, S&M, and extreme interpersonal conflict.
I think the record company should feel fortunate that they are only being humiliated from the stage, and not in Reznor's basement.
You have listened to a NiN album before, right?
Janis Ian is outspoken about the industry. Long career, lot of releases, and she said _every_ one has been accompanied by a letter from accounting telling her how much _she_ owes _them_ for the release.
and I hate the price of CDs over here. The retail price of CDs was creeping up over the $30AUD mark (but from memory dropped back down around the time the GST was introduced). It's only recently, something like the last two years, that labels like Universal have dropped the retail prices down to $20AUD.
Compare that with importing CDs. Especially with our current exchange rate, it's usually cheaper to order a few CDs online and get them shipped out than to buy the exact same CDs in stores out here. Store imports are even worse. Using Nine Inch Nails as an example, I paid $40 for the DVDA and $50 for the SACD special editions of The Downward Spiral. I could have gotten them much cheaper had I imported them myself.
Concert tickets though, I completely agree. It's almost costing as much to go to a single concert than it is to go to the Big Day Out these days - and I've been considering making next year's Big Day Out my last due to rising costs and declining quality.
All of the class of Universal Media Group disagrees.
-Red
Guns don't kill people, "with glowing hearts" kills people.
Trent Reznor Says "Steal My Music"
Done.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Hah... as if UMG had class.
Yet for some reason everyone else just wants to increase their already excessive pile. It's nice to see someone say "enough" for once.
Did you even read what you linked to? There was a fallout between him and his partner, John Malm. This is the record company he's trying to break away from.
What about the SCOTUS says it isn't theft argument?
Maybe because they didn't say that:
The phonorecords in question were not "stolen, converted or taken by fraud" for purposes of [section] 2314. The section's language clearly contemplates a physical identity between the items unlawfully obtained and those eventually transported, and hence some prior physical taking of the subject goods. Since the statutorily defined property rights of a copyright holder have a character distinct from the possessory interest of the owner of simple "goods, wares, [or] merchandise," interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use. Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud.
They ruled on an interstate transportation of stolen goods statute - and the decision has apparently not been used in other cases.
So it's not as simple to say that the SCOTUS has ruled definitively on the issue (and the wikie article you quote points that out)
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Apples to oranges. Nobody wants to see Ferrari go out of business. But in this topic we are talking about one of the most evil corporations on the face of the planet. They attack ordinary decent citizens from all walks of life. Anything that can be done to destroy them is the only morally right thing to do. Therefore paying for music is actually morally wrong. Many laws have been put through by corrupt pollies who have been bought off by said evil corporate body. So abiding by those laws is also morally wrong they are laws sponsored by evil.
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
is buying a second hand ferrari theft? money changes hands but the creator got none of it. did they suffer a loss because you bought it second hand instead of buying a new from them?
No, because they got their value from the first sale - hence the doctrine of first sale which generally allows you to resell something you bought without the original sellers permission.
Some countries are modifying that to where an artists is entitled to a cut from subsequent sales.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
He does. He named it 'Hell'
Anyone got a light for my sig?
It's very easy to give stuff away - once you've already made your pile.
It's very easy to give stuff away - when selling it puts money in someone else's pile.
Artists for major record labels don't make any money selling CDs. You give your mechanical rights to the record company, they promote you, and you make your money on performances. That's the deal.
In the old world, this was a 'good' deal, as without the muscle of the record companies promoting you, your act was going to continue to play bars and night clubs instead of stadiums.
In the new world, there's the internet, and you can do quite well for yourself keeping your mechanical rights and performing less.
paintball
And still not be free to copy it because he's a big phony.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Could you provide a link? You could start with the discussion in Copyright Clause.
The founding fathers saw that creative people were very valuable to society, and should be able to make a living from what they do. That means the CREATORS of music, art and video games should own their idea. What is so blatantly unfair about the recording industry is that the means of production (recording studios, CD presses, distribution system etc.) are monopolized by a few corporations whose only interest is making money, not music. The 85/15 profit sharing split is blatant proof that the system is skewed.
If you are fed up with high prices for CDs, download them, and send the artist $4 per album... if iTunes didn't have this DRM bullshit I would get right into it. (I don't own an iPod)
So let me get this strait... He WANTS us to steal HIS music? Humm... then wouldn't that be giving it away since he is saying "go ahead"?
_____
"OJ Simpson is proof you can't cure stupid!"
And for the fourth time, I'm going to remind you to stop conflating lay property with legal property . Property cannot predate law, because property is a legal construct.
Prove it. Please demonstrate that the word property exclusively denotes a legal construct, and nothing else.
The creative work is the exclusive possession of the creator.
Once again, prove it. The work belongs to everyone. That is the arrangement. The copyright belongs to the creator, or to whomever they transfer it to.
I guess what I am trying to say is that if the constitution was the guide, the current copyright laws would be flushed down the toilet, into the sewer, through a drain pipe, out into a lake, drunk by a moose....
But if you consider that an average Malaysians make 3 times less than an American, then a 45 ringit CD to a Malaysian is like $45 to an American.
What does if mean for one number to be three times less than another? I know what it means to be three times more. 3 times more than 15 is 45, sure. But what the hell does three times less mean? Three times what? It seems to me that three times less than 45 should be -90.
Actually he's been running his own studio since the release of "Broken" in 1992 :)
"Exclusive right" pretty much covers that.
Well, the right is only to the creator. If you want to be literal, then they shouldn't be allowed to be transfered to anyone else. Oh, it should be their "right" to transfer this to someone else? Well, when I can let someone else cast my vote in my stead, then they can transfer their right. Just because it's a right doesn't make it transferable. Not to mention that it can be done for the promotion of the useful arts and sciences and for no other reason. Yes, that means that a law that codifies copyright that has the purpose of protecting the profits of Disney are unconstitutional. The constitution doesn't guarantee copyright. It allows for it, but only if it advances the useful arts and sciences.
Learn to love Alaska
Working on the logic of some assholes on here, you just said something positive about something, ergo you must be a shill for Tool.
Anyway, Tool aren't bad. I've been a NIN fan for about 14 years now, and in 2000, I started boycotting RIAA CD releases. Trent's new album this year, "Year Zero", is the first CD I've bought in seven years. Why did I buy it? Had it been a traditional release, I would never have bought it most likely, despite being a huge fan of Trent's work. However, Trent's marketing, in particular leaking several tracks on USB drives and dumping them at various concert venues was enough to hook me (not to mention the multiple websites and the extremely elaborate back story for the whole album). Because of all that, I wound up buying the CD the week it was released.
Trent has already said that once his contract with Interscope is up (one more album) he's going to an online distribution model and not bothering with a label.
As for Trent's comments... I already knew his attitude toward the labels. On that video I'm more interested in the fact there seems to be not one for TWO security guys right in front of the person with the camera not doing anything about the dude with the camera.:)
"includes all a person's legal rights, of whatever description. A man's property is all that is his in law. This usage, however, is obsolete at the present day, though it is common enough in the older books.... In a second and narrower sense, property includes not all a person's rights, but only his proprietary as opposed to his personal rights. The former constitute his estate or property, while the latter constitute his status or personal condition. In this sense a man's land, chattels, shares, and the debts due to him are his property; but not his life or liberty or reputation.... In a third application, which is that adopted [here], the term includes not even all proprietary rights, but only those which are both proprietary and in rem. The law of property is the law of proprietary rights in rem, the law of proprietary rights in personam being distinguished from it as the law of obligations. According to this usage a freehold or leasehold estate in land, or a patent or copyright, is property; but a debt or the benefit of a contract is not.... Finally, in the narrowest use of the term, it includes nothing more than corporeal property -- that is to say, the right of ownership in a material object, or that object itself."
--John Salmand (legal scholar, as cited in Black's Law 7th edition). Once again, prove it. The work belongs to everyone. That is the arrangement. It most certainly does not. The work belongs to the creator until he sells it. My paintings don't belong to everyone. They belong to me. If I choose to license copies, that physical piece of canvas still belongs to me. The likeness of that painting within the copies still belongs to me. It continues to belong to me forever, though I lose the ability to enforce that ownership after the copyright ends. Society does not subsume ownership of anything--once something is protected by copyright, the likeness of that work becomes freely accessible to all, with NO ONE able to assert ownership when the copyright lapses. This is distinctly different from "everyone owning it"--if that were the case, you would open the door to disputes between individuals over its use. Once something is in the public domain, it is excluded from anyone asserting ownership, individually OR collectively.
Their functional similarity is not the basis of their association. Either the FSF is being disingenuous or they're painfully ignorant in making that claim. Rather, it is their concurrence in a legal dispute that makes them form a convenient grouping. Copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets are very closely interrelated (along with stocks and bonds, certain aspects of contract law, and a number of other components of business and commercial law) in legal proceedings.
The term's convenience or transparency to the general public could not be less relevant. The fact that people think there is a unifying theory that makes them functionally similar is completely beside the point.
You can replace "intellectual property" with "real property" and make the same rant (substituting other elements for copyright, patent, and so on). Not surprisingly, words have different meanings in legal contexts. The FSF is preaching to the choir--legalese is confusing to lay people! What a shocking revelation!
It would have been poetic justice if he performed "Head Like A Hole" after that speech.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
by his standing up to the record labels that I want to buy one of his CDs but that would be wrong now.
They had to put up with it as he was sticking by his contract and making them money.
Uh, yeah... he sure showed them!
sic transit gloria mundi
But that's subscription-only. What if I want a-la-carte?
I could use the Myspace store, but those seem to be all $0.99, or worse $1.30, per track.
Actually, a quite suitable studio isn't all that necessary these days, especially if you're recording from a lot of digital equipment. If you were doing live guitars, still, a small room and a decent mic is about all ya need.
I bet he could put together a very nice studio for less than the cost of a cheap car. (and that's a VERY nice studio).
Cheers,
Jds
I always find it sad when the guy who misses the joke and retells the joke like he's the one that's clever gets the mod points.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Straw man. The word property is not at issue here.
I refer you to your own words: "Property cannot predate law, because property is a legal construct." and "You don't know what property is." It would seem that the word property is an issue here.
"includes all a person's legal rights, of whatever description. A man's property is all that is his in law. This usage, however, is obsolete at the present day, though it is common enough in the older books.... In a second and narrower sense, property includes not all a person's rights, but only his proprietary as opposed to his personal rights. The former constitute his estate or property, while the latter constitute his status or personal condition. In this sense a man's land, chattels, shares, and the debts due to him are his property; but not his life or liberty or reputation.... In a third application, which is that adopted [here], the term includes not even all proprietary rights, but only those which are both proprietary and in rem. The law of property is the law of proprietary rights in rem, the law of proprietary rights in personam being distinguished from it as the law of obligations. According to this usage a freehold or leasehold estate in land, or a patent or copyright, is property; but a debt or the benefit of a contract is not.... Finally, in the narrowest use of the term, it includes nothing more than corporeal property -- that is to say, the right of ownership in a material object, or that object itself."
I don't see anything there about an idea, or an array of pixels on a monitor, or a pattern of dots on a canvas, or a sequence of words being classified as property. Indeed, it seems to affirm what I said before, that the copyright or patent is the property.
It most certainly does not. The work belongs to the creator until he sells it. My paintings don't belong to everyone. They belong to me. If I choose to license copies, that physical piece of canvas still belongs to me. The likeness of that painting within the copies still belongs to me. It continues to belong to me forever, though I lose the ability to enforce that ownership after the copyright ends. Society does not subsume ownership of anything--once something is protected by copyright, the likeness of that work becomes freely accessible to all, with NO ONE able to assert ownership when the copyright lapses. This is distinctly different from "everyone owning it"--if that were the case, you would open the door to disputes between individuals over its use. Once something is in the public domain, it is excluded from anyone asserting ownership, individually OR collectively.
That's not a proof. That's your opinion. Whose property is The Iliad? According to you, it is the property of Homer. Never mind that Homer isn't alive, nor that anyone knows who Homer was. The point is moot anyway, since I don't know what property is.
No, read the parent post again. The context was: "how is he going to distribute by himself, without a big label behind him?"
You as a member of the public never attain any legal ownership rights to works after lapse of copyright. When a work enters the public domain, that means that it is open to all, not that it is owned by all--it is owned by none. There's a difference between no one owning a work and everyone owning a work, and it is not merely a semantic one. If you require an elaboration of that framework, take a 1L property course.
The right is the property, as I've said no fewer than three times previously in this thread.
Well, at least we agree on this. Whew.
Nowhere is anything different suggested.
Except when you say "The work belongs to the creator until he sells it." Unless, of course, you assert that the work is not property of any kind. In which case, how can one own something that is not property, much less litigate over it?
I'm surprised nobody seems to have brought this up yet, but I will.
Think about the language he is using.
Is he encouraging people to go into record stores, grabbing copies of his albums, and running?
Or is he encouraging people to make copies of his music and distributing it?
The former is stealing. The latter is copyright infringement. There is a difference. When someone steals from you, you lose something that you had. When someone makes a copy of something you have the copyright to, you don't lose anything. It can be argued that you lose the potential to make some money, but that's a sticky issue - in at least some cases, copyright infringement has been shown to actually boost profits. Anyway, that's not important here.
What is important is that we keep the terminology straight. Copyright infringement is not stealing. People who share music are not thieves. We shouldn't encourage them to be thieves, either. And we shouldn't let the RIAA set the rules of the game, by copying their slanted language.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
That was the joke.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
http://www.theninhotline.net/
nothing.can.stop.me.now
You think?
... you're no longer happy just having a car because your neighbour has a bigger BMW than you, so it's time to get a Mercedes.
I think it just as hard to give stuff away when you've made your pile,
If you can comfortably eat, sleep and slashdot (basic human rights I think!) then you've got your pile, and you're in just as good a position to be generous as anyone else... don't make excuses for others having more generosity than you -- accept the fact that you're a selfish greedy human, same as most others.
Me, I've got my pile, and you're not getting any of it! Good on Trent for giving his pile away to you undeserving thieves. I always stole his albums!
karma's a bitch aint it? :P
HAND
It's been like a decade since I've listened to anything he's done, but I applaud him for this. Really, the whole thing is ridiculous. I think even the biggest record labels only have about five good years of life left in them.
Bands don't need the labels for promotion when they have the internet.
Bands don't need the labels for production when anyone can build a usable digital recording studio in a spare bedroom.
Bands don't need the labels for manufacturing when CD duplication is getting cheaper by the day.
Bands don't need the labels for distribution and sales when there's UPS/FedEX/DHL, FOSS e-commerce solutions, and Paypal.
So what exactly DO bands need the labels for? As it stands, nothing. But many artists either don't know it, or are contractually enslaved for the time being.
Basically, all the labels are good for is putting your CD in big name stores no one actually buys music from anymore, and taking damn near every last penny of profit.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
By pricing music out of the market to avarage citizens, they just feed the pirate market. This is exactly what trent is asking australians to do. BTW what does a CD costs in Australia?
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
Not so, in the absence of government, IP could still exist. It would just be defended with industrial espionage, guns and explosives rather than laws and judges.
Nice factory you've got here, it would be a shame if anything were to happen to it. Say, have you got our 'factory licence'?
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
Nope, since he like most musicians ended up selling the copyrights to this music (something that I fail to see any argument for being legal in the first place) to the labels, even if he (quite obviously) wants to just give it away/change the price/whatever, he can't, he doesn't actually own it.
The actual, physical work--the original painting, the paper manuscript, the guitar tabs with scribbled notes, etc.--is subject to the laws of personalty or chattels, depending. The intellectual property rights are likewise mine to control. There is no requirement that I share copies of it with the public at all (if I do elect to do so, then I become subject to these limitations). Hence copyright--it offers a compromise to authors and artists to compel them to share without giving up the farm; it does not require that they enter into that bargain, however. My private diary doesn't enter the public domain if I've elected never to share any of my rights to it with anyone else. The physical book remains my property, as do all intellectual property rights. Things get quite a bit more complicated upon my death, but generally, all of those rights pass onto my estate and continue to remain private.
If I decline to license copies of my work at all, that is my right and no reproduction of any kind permissible--there's no 70 year limit, no fair use, nada. You must gain some sort of equitable right to my work by my authorization before I'm bound to honor any terms. 70 years later, you still can't just take my diary and publish it. In that sense, no one in the general public has any legal right to my work at all. Thus, if I never surrender any of my inherent rights to a work, you (and society) never gain them. An owner has exclusive rights in perpetuity so long as he never transfers any of those rights to anyone else.
In short, it's not a contradictory statement. As long as you keep your work entirely private, you're the sole owner of every aspect. There has to be a copy before the whole copyright bargain sets in.
First time I downloaded a NiN track, I redownloaded a couple of times before I figured out it was actually supposed to sound like that and wasn't a corrupted file!
Umm.. downloading isn't stealing, right?
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
Actually this company seems pretty cheap. www.yourmusic.com Considerably beats the price of iTunes on most music. However, they don't have everything.
You are losing sight of the original point TR is raising. Prices in AUSTRALIA are stupidly high. His original rant (back in May) was when he found out that his album was priced at AU$32 (US$17.50) while generic top40 fluff was sold at AU$21. The reason given by the record company (UA) was that his fans would pay that price, so they will sell it high. The video is him continuing that rant. Australian prices hadn't dropped (RRP) and as he found in China, his music was damn near impossible to find apart from pirate copies sold in markets. In those cases (prices artificially inflated or items not available) he said to download it free. That you can pre-order in the US for a cheap price means nothing to the argument. You either have to wait a few weeks for the item to be sent, or pay extra for priority airmail (negating the cheap price anyway). If you can buy any CD cheap, cool. But some of us do get ripped off just because we aren't in the good ol' USA.
have any of the people bitching at Trent for "breaking his contract" seen said contract?
Supporting a couple high profile artists for speaking out is commendable, but you should also be supporting artists that are, and have always been, truly independent of the corporations.
I dunno, maybe it counts as copyright license. In which case his label will be really annoyed with him. E.g. imagine if a programmer said "please steal my code" and that code was something he'd written while employed by some company. Now the programmer doesn't own the copyright but he is an employee of the company. And pirates might say that as an employee he was speaking for the company and thus the company has given them a license to copy the music.
I certainly wouldn't take the risk with code I'd written but sold to someone else, which is essentially the same situation.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Hmm... Coincidentally, that line sounds oddly familiar.
http://www.theaterhopper.com/vault/070523.jpg
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Good question, I once read an article that bands in this league usually earn more per concert than they do by record/cd sales of a full year.
So for him having as much non concert audience as possible is more vital than sold CDs.
It probably really is the better deal to get as much audience as possible upfront so that his concerts are full.
Classical example for this is the Grateful Dead, while not having had a huge hit for decades, they constantly had full concerts and probably earned a lot more than many other bands.
Problem is getting that big probably still is impossible without the record industry and their propaganda machinery, but once you are in the contract you hare a slave of them for a period of time.
It would be nice if someone bought some for a change. There's a few videos I've made for various albums, and, to stay on topic, mny remix of "me i'm not" that I wrote using the multi-track sources Trent released for his new album (which I think, personally, is his best work in years).
Of course, no one has really ever stolen my music, since I tend to give it away, following the 'try before you buy' approach that is preached around here. I just think that you can't steal what I give away, but sometimes it's nice to get something back to continue along with all the work that I've done over the years to make my albums, writing and artwork.
Of course, one can alway just make a donation or buy some merchandise if they want to support the cause as well. I've been on this site for years and follow it's practices well...unfortunately it doesn't seem to pay, or not at least yet.
I hear most my work is quite good, maybe you might think so too.
Listen to my music.
Don't be stupid. X times less is a common way of saying 1/X. "3 times less" = "one third".
since he like most musicians ended up selling the copyrights to this music (something that I fail to see any argument for being legal in the first place)
I work, I don't get to keep the copyright on my work why should musicians be any different.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
When living in Greece I was quite surprised by the way they handle this problem. Every singer, from the unknown to the most famous, is actually working. To make a living they produce CDs and then perform in front of people almost daily! Take note that the CDs are usually pirated, and even if they were not over a 10Milion potential customers there is not a great demand. So there are special venues where people can go with friends sit at a table and enjoy a dinner or drinks while listening to their favourite singer live (all included). This can get really expensive in case of the most famous singers but I never heard anyone complain about the costs of a live night compared to the costs of CDs.
Enrico
I'm afraid you're forgetting that the record companies have the distribution rights, not Trent... he can't just give his former works away even if he wanted to.
Coffee-driven development.
I don't think it's wrong to be somewhat hippocratic in this business; with lots of money and an established fan base he's in a much better position to challenge the system than if he was an amateur bedroom musician with all the right opinions. What was that movie or legend or story where a child gets adopted by his people's sworn enemy and in the end overthrows the empire that helped him to power? Or something like that.
Despite your humerous and gradeschool rhetoric, for limit time simply means "not forever".
He had no tours between 1999 and 2005. That's six years where his income must have been only record sales.
I think you missed the part where the artist approves of this "stealing" and is not an asshat.
OSx86 FTW
It must really suck to have a bunch of ACs after you yelling after such an inspiring statement. I support you. If I get modded down, so what? Go right ahead.
OSx86 FTW
first time i saw that. im not much into web comics.
Read radical news here
Why UNIX?
You missed the most amazingly geektastic thing about that thumbdrive. At the end of the leaked My violent Heart there is a few seconds of what sounds like white noise.
When someone on the intarwebs eventually decided to run a various type of analysis on it, it was found that it actually encodes an image. I think you have to plot time on one axis, frequency on the other, energy at that frequency, at that time as brightness at thate point.
Anyway, the image is a version of the "hand reaching through" thing is now on the the album cover.
The hidden image is now at the end of The Warning on the actual album.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
I was talking about his future works.. as was everyone else in this thread.
How we know is more important than what we know.
In a way, yes. In many other ways, no. If I were Trent, I'd have a nice liveroom, just because, which is more than the cost of a car to begin with.
I'd buy a couple Neumann mics for $10k+
And a couple other nice $3k mics
I'd probably get the best preamp available, at $2.9k for two channels for an Avalon. I'd probably get two of these.
And the Avalon stereo compressor for another 2k.
A super awesome mac: 6k (why not get a good one?)
Protools with a nice control surface is 9k: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Control24LE
If I were trent, I'd have a digital drum kit for $1k-2k
A midi controller that felt nice for $500 or more
And a piano is nice. I'd put that in the liveroom. Say $2000 for a reasonably priced good one.
Now this is far short of the million dollar mark, since I was exaggerating for the sake of being on slashdot, but it's still not cheap. So:
30k - mics
8k - preamp and compressor
6k - mac
9k - protools
1k - drums
500 - midi controller
2k - piano
50k - liveroom
So I think we'lre looking at 100k, which is pretty goddamn reasonable. And I'm also not really estimating the cost of a vocal booth, the engineering room. The studio monitors, the headphones, and all the additional hardware. I've really looked into this a lot, and my friend Joe is an audio engineer, which while far from making me an expert, I've at least talked to someone who's not only taken a theoretical studio building class, but also built a studio.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Yeah Baby!!!!!! Rock & Roll!!!! ...I'm getting too old for this
Isn't that what NiN already does? They're not exactly Chet Baker, are they?
I remember when Trent was on Mtv slamming artists for putting mp3s out let alone encouraging the audience to take what is free anyway.Yeah thats right,music is free.You can no more charge for soundwaves than air.
Even if someone takes time to put air in a bottle its still free air inside there.You only pay for the bottle and labor(if you're so clever as to buy air when its free)
Performance is worth paying for.Supporting leeches who work for the music industry is not.They can find other employment(hey the world needs ditchdiggers too).
The industry is dead.Bad business model.We are only watching it shake like a dog who's just been run over.
It's not going to get better.
Artists can survive wonderfully without some megabucks to tell John Q.Public whats good to listen to and charge them a middlemans fee for it.
Steal away indeed,bullshit,it's free.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Wow, those anonymous cowards showed you! They're sure fighting the power!
Personally, I think you're off-base, but have a small point in there. But here's the question:
How long should someone stay independent at the cost of his own cost of living?
Let's stop dilly-dallying and just change "-1: Overrated" to "-1: Disagree" or "-1: Doesn't Subscribe to Groupthink".
Well, that's is one downside. However, just look at it this way. Get the cheapest subscription. That's $10. For 30 songs. If you want more than 30 tracks in a given month, then buy a booster pack. The songs are a little more expensive this way (up to $0.60 a song, but as cheap as $0.40 cents), and your booster packs only expire a year after you've bought them, so you shouldn't have trouble using those up, especially with booster packs as small as 10 tracks. If you buy less than 30 tracks a month, than maybe eMusic isn't for you. But if you buy 11 or more tracks, you're still saving money over the other 99 cent music services. I think the major reason they have subscriptions, and this isn't in their literature, is to cut down on transaction costs for charging your credit card for 30 cents every time you buy a track. This lets them charge each person once a month, keeping their transaction prices low, and allowing them to keep their prices low.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I always thought IP meant Internet Protocol. But that's just me.
If I'm not mistaken though, it's largely Thomas Jefferson's work to define copyright law. To keep ye learned men writing ye learned works or some such.
I'm relatively sure the concept was, at first, relatively benign and not sinister at all.
Have you listened to Year Zero? If the record is any indication, Trent has some pretty interesting anti-establishment ideals as well. Hell, just about every record he puts out has at least one "fuck the man" song on it. Also, Prince was not the "first" to play every instrument. Besides, I don't think you can be inspired by something like that. You either have the talent and gusto to play all/most of the instruments yourself, or you don't. I highly doubt it that Trent heard a Prince album and said "Hey that sounds good! I should learn the guitar/drums/bass/synth and play everything myself, like Prince does."
There's one thing Trent seems to forget. There's more than just majors. There are also music stores. These are those who lose the most. I've been working in a CD/vinyl shop. We had to close down in 2002 because of low sales. The shop was open since 1993. Majors can still get their bucks by selling music online while sellers of "physical" format lose their jobs... In the last 5 years, 8 records stores closed down around where I live. When Trent says: steal music to hurt the majors, he forget all the other people living of music. Music sellers are almost always forgotten by people encouraging copy.
I've found the nin softening more recently,
maybe this will add fuel to the fire of TR.
---
Burn them baby, burn 'em all!!!
Under his current contract he owes his label 2 more CDs.
burrocrisy
and that would be what? Ruling by jackasses? Never has a slashdot misspelling been more apropos
Hey, would any of us know your band?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Not necessarily. He could have been writing songs for others, producing music, charging for use of his studio, living off investments, etc. Royalties from record sales may have (and probably was) only a small part of his income.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Ratface23 says "No thanks - it sucks"
(And I am a fan of lots of indutrial music, but NIN tracks always sound the same to me for some reason)
A little planning goes a long way...
He did have one in New Orleans, but he's since moved. Last I heard the New Orleans studio was up for sale. I'm sure he's probably built a new one somewhere near where he lives now...
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
I'm just going to note that Trent seems to have made several headlines for himself by telling his slave-owners to f**k off. This in and of itself is probably a good move for him - and, ironically, for them. While they get "bad" publicity, none of their bottom line is going to change. The people stealing music are going to be the same people. The people buying the CDs are going to be the same, too. The only difference in this scenario is that Trent is more likely to get people at his concerts.
[Ego]out
Cam the show.
Let's see if his attitude changes after ticket sales decline.
That is very true, as is the rest of your comment. But wouldn't you if you were Trent? My justifications for the parts:
1. Sound Quality - why spend 1000 on the preamp and 2000 on your set of mics when you can get THE BEST for 15000? When you're Trent Reznor, I mean.
2. Ease of use - why NOT spend 1k on a keyboard, and buy Protools with the best control interface you can get?
3. Interoperability - why NOT get Mac Pro with all the standard stuff so if you want to send something to somebody else you work with, it's easy? And why not use a system that everyone uses so that you can bring anybody in?
Please stop stalking me, bro.
That's pretty typical, and I've seen bands get screwed where the record company contract stated they were entitled to some or all proceeds from merchandise sales until recording costs were recouped (ok, some I can understand, but all really sucks). Record companies structure contracts in a way that artists (except songwriters) almost never break even - they pay themselves first (producer, songwriter, recording engineer, manager, marketing, distribution, and probably a few more I've missed), then use the artists tiny cut to pay off the recording debt. New artists often get horrible contracts that pay little, and even if their take is $1/album (good by some I've seen) the label needs to sell 10000 albums to "break even" if $10000 is borrowed up front to do the recording (10k was a typical 1990s session). The album probably technically recoups cost at about the 2-5k range (and since it's my opinion that most marketing costs for new artists are pocketed, probably less), but is considered a loss until all the "up-front" money is paid back. If the artist manages to sell 10k, they're still at the break-even point, and everyone else has been paid nicely (if the songwriter(s) is in the band, at least one member has made money).
That $44.50 covers venue cost (including maintenance), crews, engineers, etc. A bigger band usually has more up-front costs, but as long as the cost of the venue is paid, income is usually in the band's favor. Many artists make sure to pay themselves first and some are notorious for not paying their crew or set builders (like *ahem* that guy that was named a symbol for a while *ahem*). Anyhow, some bands are milking the audience for $100+ tickets, which I think is absurd, but then again, pro sports does that too (which I think is absurd).
In 1989, bands like Metallica were already pissing and moaning about tape traders.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
"I reside in the great nation of Canada, fuckwit, where downloading music is still legal due to the levies we pay on storage mediums like blank CD's which go to the CRIA."
It goes to the copyright collective; the majority of it ends up going to SOCAN. The whole "record companies evil, artists good" thing falls down in consideration of the fact that SOCAN represents the composers and lyricists. They represent the artists in the way that the CRIA represents the record labels. I point this out because if you are to defeat your enemies, you must first understand them.
Either way, I agree that the Canadian levy is wrong because:
Social programs can work great... socialized medicine, social security, and so on. But Canada (or any country) doesn't need a socialized music program. Music isn't a rare and precious item; new CDs are around $12 here in the US and you can always find free, legal music (the radio being an excellent source). But the biggest problem is that it penalizes everybody. I pay for my music, thanks. I would not want to pay twice.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
For a new artist the big thing the labels do is promotion, getting your stuff played on the radio, getting it availible in record stores etc.
Some claim the internet makes this unnessacery but I haven't seen much evidence of that.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
You need to go reread that sentence and actually comprehend the words instead of making up stuff to support your position. The sentence starts with "To promote progress". That is the only constitutional purpose of any IP laws. You're claiming that part comes only after the IP laws no longer apply? Well then the laws are unconstitutional. Again "To promote progress" is suppose to be the only purpose for granting the extraordinary rights. There is no "carrot and stick" in that sentence. There is only "To promote progress". The only part you and everyone who supports the current system sees in that sentence is the words "exclusive right" while you completely ignore the conditions for those "exclusive rights" and claim the constitution grants those rights to anyone and everyone for any reason whatsoever. I'm going to say it again so maybe you'll finally actually comprehend the words. The only reason those extraordinary rights should be granted is "to promote progress". Not to promote progress after the extraordinary rights no longer apply.
Who is John Galt?
Not to say that I think people shouldn't have the right to video the things they see - on the contrary, I think if someone wants to document their own personal experiences, they ought to have that right. I don't agree with the idea, at ball games for instance, of the management saying "all this you're seeing, we own this, you can't do anything at all with it."
But it is pretty frikkin' annoying, being at a show or something, and a bunch of dipshits holding their cell phones up to video it. It's like, can't people just be where they are, enjoy the experience they're having, without having to hoard a bunch of digital recordings of it? I wanna smack people when they start putting their phones up in the air.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
So, I haven't listened to a lot of Nine Inch Nails, but I guess "Download This Song" is one of theirs? Must be, just seems logical if you think about it. But 228.6mm Nails fans should heed the warnings in "Don't Download This Song":
"You start off stealing songs, then you're robbing liquor stores, and sellin' crack and running over school kids with your car..."
Violating international copyright law is clearly a slippery slope.
(P.S. - what's a motherf****er? Motherfuucker? And are we so childish now we can't say the big bad F word? Fucking pansies...)
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Ah... Another math major started school too, eh?
Check out Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music for more on this concept.
Australian CD's usually cost $25 but Year Zero is like $35. He asked about the high price to an exec in Australia a few months ago and they told him they could charge whatever they wanted because his fans were loyal and would pay anything for the album. He was outraged at this, the record company telling him they would rip his fans off. He wrote about it on his blog, and it got picked up by a lot of music magazines and sites, so a lot of people read his rant on the record company. They didn't lower the price of the album in Australia. So now that he played in Australia again, he said STEAL IT.
It doesn't matter that the music is cheaper. The tech is different, production costs are different. The problem here is that in Australia, his album is way more expensive than the rest of the albums in the stores.
Go hug some trees.
Have you heard NIN latest Album? Looks like the joke is on his label. Its almost like he doesn't want to sell any CD's!
I am a NIN fan (I think I have 5 of his albums), don't get me wrong, I like his stuff. However his latest (not "With Teeth", that one wasn't bad), I wouldn't even download, let alone buy!
I've had an entourage of ACs following me around for months.
They really think I care about this karma system, as though I scour the web doing research so I can get a higher score than them in some database somewhere. Or at least, they really care about the karma system. Or something.
I just come here to read the articles, post my opinions and hopefully get some intelligent feedback to chew on when I'm sick of writing code. Gives me a chance to see where my very abstract views of the world are being miscommunicated, or leaving someones underlying needs unrepresented so I can adjust my views of how the world ought to work.
Why these losers think I should be operating as though I was under some obligation to read every single post to see if anyone else has already said what I'm thinking, I don't know. Most of them don't even read the fucking articles before they post their inane crap, yet they think I should be scouring the thousands of posts making absolutely sure I'm not "stealing karma" from someone engaged in a dialogs on the same topic. Or that I should be mindlessly following their stupid little tangent that sprung from a bad joke, rather than commenting on the article.
It's really annoying. I wish they'd just get a fucking life, or add me to their foes list, automod me -5 in their settings and just go do their own thing.
All you can do is be philosophical about it, I guess. I kind of feel sorry for them... they clearly have no life at all.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Now if only he could make his voice not sound like Weird Al's. /Listen to "Animal" and then to the Weird Al polka track where he sings part of "Animal" //Great song writer and composer... has no business being behind a mic.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
If the price wasn't so high, maybe people would buy it again.
Hard to blame the record stores like yours im sure, something tells me you dont really set the prices. But if it wasn't for the music companies out there, I could walk into your store, and custom burn a CD with the songs of my choice for 10 bucks.
And i'd do it too, often. Keep that in mind.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I remember watching a documentary about Depeche Mode many years ago. The thing that I remember most was that over $1 million was made just in merchandise at a concert. I don't remember how much was made in actual ticket sales but I figure it's roughly comparable (assuming a T-shirt cost about as much as a concert ticket back then).
I've also read several times that artists prefer live appearances to making CDs because they personally get more money that way. And if you ever read Techdirt, you'll see that giving away the music (an infinite good) makes the finite good (the concert ticket) much more valuable.
Free Programming BookLearn to program
I certainly agree. I've got a fairly nice setup for about $5k.
Goddamnit, I'm just now getting out of debt. Congratulate me. Yay. But the point is, I get what you're getting at.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper [(candle)] at mine, receives light without darkening me.
That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."
--Guess who!
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Your selective Jefferson quote always tickles those in the legal community, and I'm glad you took the bait. It proves your ignorance and clearly demonstrates that you're a fish out of water here--just like when you talk about "real property" (hint: it doesn't mean what you think it means). You do know that Jefferson was the person who first implemented patents and copyrights in this country, right? You also know that the letter you're quoting from doesn't refer to patents or to copyrights, but merely to knowledge, right? That he drew the distinction, which still stands in the law, that the property rights were the copyright and the patent, not the information? That the writings and actions of Jefferson prove the very point you're arguing?
Maybe you're not clear on the distinction that Jefferson made for you in the difference of those property rights from the law of obligations (i.e. personal rights). The letter counters the theory, somewhat in vogue at the time, that patents and copyrights extended beyond commercial and property interests to fundamental human rights--a view which is not part of the modern rationales.
True, but I hardly believe that the framers of the constitution envisioned that 'limited use' would get interpreted as 120 years of copyright protection for a piece of work that is made by an anonymous author. That is right, an AC post is automatically copyrighted in the US for 120 years. You can not legally reprint an AC's post from Slashdot made today until the year 2127. It is even worse if I posted something today and than died 80 years from now. In that case, my Slashdot rantings would be under copyright until the year 2157. The fucking singularity could have been done and over with for a hundred years, and my random posts on Slashdot would still be automatically copyrighted.
Further, even if you could some how argue with a straight face 'limited time' meant "as long as congress keeps kicking the date out... which will be forever", that still ignores the whole "to promote the useful arts". It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that protecting an ACs post on Slashdot for 120 fucking years is not "promoting the useful arts". I really doubt that anyone creating copyrighted material would have been disuaded from producing that content if they had learned that the copyright would only last for 30 years, instead of 70 years AFTER that are dead and buried in the ground. If you need 70 years after you are dead to collect your due on your copyrighted material, I have a feeling it probably is not "useful art".
"The saying there shall be no monopolies lessens the incitements to ingenuity, which is spurred on by the hope of a monopoly for a limited time, as of 14 years; but the benefit even of limited monopolies is too doubtful to be opposed to that of their general suppression." You also know that the letter you're quoting from doesn't refer to patents or to copyrights, but merely to knowledge, right? That he drew the distinction, which still stands in the law, that the property rights were the copyright and the patent, not the information? A point that is completely irrelevant when regarding the cost and effectiveness of enforcement. Next thing you know, you'll be trying to claim that property rights are excludable because law makes them so. That the writings and actions of Jefferson prove the very point you're arguing? Yes, they do prove the point I am arguing. They don't prove the point I am arguing against.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The problem with taking a legal term and trying to take the law out of it is that you're left with nothing, much like your argument. There is no enduring need to connect anything to what some crap-flinging primates would do. It's an academic basis for theory, not a binding limit on practice.
It only requires the ability to defend possession. PS, "By nature's law, every man has a right to seize and retake by force his own property taken from him by another by force or fraud."--Jefferson again
You keep sticking with the laws of man, I'll stick with the laws of nature. I suggest that you lobby your representative to get a law passed declaring that pigs fly.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I don't want your music, Mr. Reznor.
Anyway, most of the music I *do* like is in the public domain. Something about the composers having died by the middle of the eighteenth century...
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Maybe the prize of you shutting up, since you have yet to provide a natural rights argument for why you have an inherent right to the work of others or to interfere with that which they can control. If I happen to see your credit card, I'll be especially glad to know that I'm free to use it and then to sell it to someone else to use.
Good luck with your laws of nature. They'll be especially helpful in signing your first employment contract when you grow up, and free from any guidance in nature, be immensely useful when you're terminated for breach of said contract.
Sure, Jefferson thought property rights in tangible property were valid, but that's irrelevant unless all you care about is an obscure point of abstract law - in which case get your ass to some other website where that matters. But he did everything in his power to eliminate property rights in ideas. Just because the political reality made it impossible for him to completely succeed in eliminating them doesn't mean he didn't try. And he certainly wasn't alone in that belief - George Mason a fellow virginian and member of the constitutional convention refused to sign it precisely because of that one clause and the ratifying conventions of North Carolina, Massachusetts and New Hampshire all wanted it stricken too. You start disregarding the law in your day to day actions and you let me know how far you get before the lawfully delegated neutral third parties start applying force to your person. Done. Easy enough. Now what do I get? Done huh? So you are now experiencing the application of force to your person? Interesting it was so quick, I guess you didn't get far at all. Or is it that your reading comprehension is just poor, like your reality comprehension? Maybe the prize of you shutting up, since you have yet to provide a natural rights argument for why you have an inherent right to the work of others or to interfere with that which they can control. Actually the problem here is that you have confused the work of others with the results of work of others. I've never once claimed that I can force others to work for me. But I sure do claim that the results of their work can be mine, just as the constitution does when it says that they can only be secured for a limited time. The only difference is that congress has interpreted "limited time" to approach infinity and I have interpreted it to be so short as to be negligible.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I saw NIN in concert last summer at Shoreline in Mountain View, CA. And about 20min into the set, security came, and escorted me to the coat check area, and made me surrender my digital camera till the end of the show. It was the ONLY show I went to all summer at that venue that no cameras was the policy. The venue itself doesn't have a policy at all. But the artists can have that as a restriction for their tour.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
What he wrote against, and what no one except the mythological argument constructed by clueless twits like you, is the idea that information is property. It's not. Property is property, and copyrights and patents are property. I've already shown you two quotes from him demonstrating that he felt strongly that property rights in ideas were dubious at best and there are lots more where those came from. You've demonstrated no such thing. You've given nothing that says copyright and patents are distasteful--again, he didn't believe they were. He believed them to be a valid tool in his utilitarian view of commerce and society. He disagreed with the conflicting rationale of "inherent value" of an idea itself, prompting his letter in 1813 regarding the concept of an idea as personalty--a concept rejected by Jefferson and the law. Curiously, you have solely quoted from it and not from the context of his discussions prior to or after with McPherson. Of course you wouldn't, because they don't support your conclusion.
You can keep writing until you turn blue, but you're railing against a point no one is making. The only difference is that congress has interpreted "limited time" to approach infinity and I have interpreted it to be so short as to be negligible. Actually, the only difference is that the Supreme Court found one to be constitutional whereas you have no authority.
You are losing sight of the original point TR is raising. Prices in AUSTRALIA are stupidly high. His original rant (back in May) was when he found out that his album was priced at AU$32 (US$17.50) while generic top40 fluff was sold at AU$21.
You think that's unreasonable?
Try goddamn 19.90 EUROS for Pretty hate machine in Finland. Boohoo poor australians have to pay all of $17.50 for it..
Can we have AUS pricing? Please?
Sure... if we can get the Euro selection for music ;)
The releases we get here isn't quite the full list available to the EU/US part of the world... Weighed heavily towards the cRap/R&B/TOp40 end of the charts, and less towards the indi/electronic/industrrial end.
For that selection, expect prices to start at AU$30 and rise.
I have found the trick is to bittorrent on the release-date, order the CD from the EU/US, then wait for it to arrive.
Sure... if we can get the Euro selection for music ;)
I have found the trick is to bittorrent on the release-date, order the CD from the EU/US, then wait for it to arrive.
I don't usually pay much attention to release dates so waiting the stuff to arrive for a week from some hong kong based mail order venture (cd-wow..) isn't a big problem. What is a problem is that I actually like Finnish bands a lot so I'm stuck with the local pricing that starts at 20e and MAYBE drops to 15e year from release. For reference, 20e is about 27.50 usd..
For that reason, itunes is actually much better deal for us than you might think.
DRM? yeah.
Relative crap sound quality? Check.
Same price as cd? You have to be kidding me.
9.90e for fresh cd vs 19.90e? At least you see clear difference between what you pay and what you get.
Huh, well I stand corrected. Still, I wonder if he actually said that, or if it was "inferred" by the interviewer. Either way, thanks for the info.
The claim sounded a bit outrageous to me when I first heard it, as well.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
No, but she should have received some sort of payments for general awsomeness. Enough to at least cover her basic expenses.
Again, not sure what my point was, just that such a household name (admittedly amongst industry and hipster circles only) could be flat-ass broke.
You can bet her drumming has put at least a few record executives' children through college.
Jeremy
To add to your very correct comments, importing CD's is NOT cheap. Expect to double the cost of your goods if you can get them. So as cheap as mail-order looks on the surface you'll quickly learn the cost of importing.
Jeruvy
That can depend. One of the distributors I deal with will ship without cases to minimise shipping costs. Cuts shipping right down. The others are all happy to discuss ways of getting the price down.