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Brazilian Pop Music Scene Thrives on Piracy
langelgjm writes "When people talk about the failing business model of the traditional record company, they often only offer vague suggestions as to how things would work otherwise. But a concrete example of a music scene that thrives on piracy is to be found in Brazil, in the form of tecnobrega. From the article: 'While piracy is the bane of many musicians trying to control the sale of their songs, tecnobrega artists see counterfeiters as key to their success ... Ronaldo Lemos, a law professor at Brazil's respected Getulio Vargas Foundation, an elite Rio de Janeiro think tank and research center, says tecnobrega and other movements like it represent a new business model for the digital era, where music is transformed from a good to a service.'"
Why go to Brazil to report on this when you can witness the exact same thing happening in just about every country's independent music scene?
just because something is against the law doesn't mean that it's wrong.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Looks like someone finally got around to watching Steal This Film.
=Smidge=
my question is why "Brazil" is in the title. the us, maybe, but brazil?
To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were capable of staying awake long enough.
or weird al's "Don't Download this Song", which can be found on his website. i think it's the best media out there that shows the consequences.
To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were capable of staying awake long enough.
I think you got that wrong. Who is to judge on which laws to abide? Keep the democratic principles, even if they sometime bother you.
The other direction is right. Not everything that is allowed by law is ethically justified.
The concept of tecnobrega as discussed in the article is an interesting one. If you are planning on being a stage band and making your money off of the shows you perform then it's great. However what happens if that's not our thing. For a hugely sucesful artist who's shows are sold out they are being stolen from with no added benefit at all. This "tecnobrega" only favours the new or the unsuccesful.
If I was a start up musician I would post my music for free and give copies to all the pirates. That way your name gets out there and people would listen to free music. Then have a concert or two to get your sales up. Sell cds or make a website that has something else with it if you buy it on that website. There are lots of ways to get piracy to help you to become famous. You could even dress up like a pirate!
Looks like someone finally got a chance to see "Good Copy, Bad Copy".
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7727
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
You can't make money giving away music...except for taper/trader friendly bands like the Grateful Dead. And I doubt 50 Cent got any royalties from mix tapes with his early stuff, but the bling comes from somewhere.
It's kinda like saying, everyone complains about Microsoft but there are only vague suggestions about alternatives.
The tendency for technology to provide support for basic producers (music, videos, EFF, etc) is wonderful. It is also very threatening for large organizations based on the scarcity principles of "old" economics.
Seems like its time to re-read my dog-eared copy of Moon Is A Harsh Mistress (Heinlein).
Maybe we are getting closer to the future after all.
Lost in space at an early age. Survived the vacuum. Now rebuilding castle in air.
This is an excellent example of how what we think of as ethical derives not from a god, but rather from evolved justifications of behavior. There's a mighty struggle going on to re-define taking music without the author's permission as ethical, based on the ego-soothing concepts that it's really in their interest.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Who are these musicians who "control the sale of their songs?"
I don't care why you're posting AC
now now, there's no need for insu- , wait, my pirated copy of xp just froze up. give me a second.
To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were capable of staying awake long enough.
The well researched Danish Documentary(the Docu is spoken in English though) Good Copy Bad Copy
covered the Brazilian tecno brega movement and other examples of using digital content that are not necessary legal according to the Mega Corporations of content creation. Techno brega uses alot of sampling from major recording industry material. Tecno Brega artists give their content to bootleggers to distribute throughout Brazil. The artists themselves make no money from these CD sales instead they make money by throwing parties and burning recordings of their events to people who attend.
Thepiratebay link to a torrent download of this Documentary (Note this torrent is legal and the Documentary makers on their website which I linked to above created this torrent)
Streaming Flash Clip of the same Documentary from Blip.tv
Laws have never struck me as democratic. I don't remember ever voting for the DMCA.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Well, I bothered to RTFA. It mentions both mixed tapes for hip hop and trading tapes for the Grateful Dead. Both well established, time tested schemes.
So what's "vague" about these "suggestions"?
i talk regularly in chatrooms on the p2p program soulseek. Soulseek has a massive south american userbase and I have discovered so many cool bands thanks to their members sitting in chatrooms and telling people to download their stuff
just think about how fast popularity can spread if it's not linked to monetary value
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
SELECT country_name, "Pop Music Scene Thrives on Piracy" FROM countries WHERE GDP_per_capita < some_limit
King Copyright: I am your king.
Woman: Well I didn't vote for you.
King Copyright: You don't vote for kings.
Woman: Well how'd you become king then?
[Angelic music plays... ]
King Copyright: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Copyright, was to carry the DMCA. THAT is why I am your king.
Dennis: [interrupting] Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' laws is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
More established artists might feel different.
I don't see how this makes piracy more or less legitimate.
It seems like this is just another form of artist control that just happens to incidentally intersect the information-wants-to-be-free meme.
Ah... so lets say that there was a purely hypothetical law saying that if you know a Jew you have to turn them in so they can be summarily executed... you wouldn't call this morally wrong and disobey it?
Or... that wasn't democratically decided on?
How about slavery in the US then?
Law and ethics/morality are seperate, although (sadly) they're often confused.
Our ethics should be based on what makes our life better, and things that people can agree on.
Back before edison and all those other people figured out how to record music the musicians had to play music live.
If the artist is giving this stuff away is it piracy?
It seems that the issue is getting a bit blurred between the concepts of giving something away and piracy.
I know it's not a popular idea but I still think that an artist should have rights to do what he wants with his creation. If they want to give it away for free to build a good fanbase that's great but that still doesn't dismiss people who are taking something without paying for it if the artist has put a price tag on it. Nor does it justify the downloading of a work even if it is offered freely from one source such as the Radiohead issue.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
"Piracy is the way to get established and get your name out. There's no way to stop it, so we're using it to our advantage," explains Gabi Amarantos, who frequently appears on Brazilian TV on the strength of bootleg sales of her CDs (from which artists don't get a cut).
Technically, there is no copyright infringement involved since the artists themselves allow their works to be duplicated.
What is however interesting is that this technobrega movement severely undermines one of the arguments frequently cited by the RIAA in favour of stricter copyright laws, which is that piracy undermines the ability of the music and film industries to invest in the next generation of local talent by lowering revenues from current sales.
Also from the article
The original intention of copyright as stated in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause/ was
Given that the tecnobrega movement has shown that copyright protection is not necessary to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, isn't it time to reconsider the whole basis of copyright law?
I think you got that wrong. Who is to judge on which laws to abide? Keep the democratic principles, even if they sometime bother you.
The other direction is right. Not everything that is allowed by law is ethically justified.
I think it swings both ways, sometimes things allowed by law are unethical and something disallowed by law aren't always unethical. Legalist systems represent one idea of morality and their complexity often results in unintended consequences.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
With regards to your sig... one space after the period was not really started by the internet... but became the new typographic convention once everyone started using mostly proportional fonts. Its the defacto typographic standard these days and has been for quite some time. THe fonts these days are designed with having a single space in mind. Im not a graphic designer but have many of them as friends.
If you perform a cover of a song, record it, and sell it as if it were the original song performed by the original artist, maybe THAT is counterfeiting.
But if you give away a byte-for-byte duplicate of a digital recording of an original performance, what you are giving is exactly the same as what comes on the CD. That hardly qualifies as counterfeiting.
We just use the word to make the act seem harmful to the consumer, when in fact it is not.
In Free Culture, Lawrence Lessig describes the doujinshi (copyright-infringing comics) industry in Japan and describes how it not only fuels the market for "official" manga comics but can influence them as well.
Linky: http://www.sslug.dk/~chlor/lessig/freeculture/c-piracy.html#creators
--
"Extra Anus Kills Four-Legged Chick" -- Headline
Just so you know, nobody listens to this in major cities. I don't think this stuff is nowhere near the airwaves of major cities. It's a very low-wage kinda subculture thing and as such gets very little attention. Except where it's lumpenproletariat galore, which is basically their scene, I suppose.
"Brega" means "tacky", having extremely bad taste. Like refrigerator penguins. Like when you try to interpret a fashion trend but get it all wrong because it looks so cheap and ridiculous. Imagine rednecks, but a 1000 times worse. Definitely not mainstream. And limited to a specific region of Brazil.
Low-wage Brazilians typically don't want to pay for anything. They get tax discounts after tax discounts. A typical porter or handyman is a tax-free guy. He gets free medical services and education (which both suck, BTW...), sustained by those that are between a rock and a hard place - the middle class that does pay a hefty 37% tax on income; and the businesses, industries, etc. That's 3-4 months working for the government. Yup. Doctors, engineers, consultancy firms - anyone who's not poor. The leftist corrupt government caters to these people, giving out more government aid and tax-cuts, because then they vote for them.
So why would they pay for music? They're already a bunch of freeloaders, anyway. If they're unemployed, they just pack up and go buy contraband products in neighboring Paraguay (they have a tax-free policy on imports, I think) to resell on sidewalks. No Union protest... Just their very own tax-free shortcut to survival. This is just how their life is. How fucked up. And now some foreigners and academics are fascinated with this...LOL.
Plus, that music sucks. Real bad.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
From the story: "Tecnobrega producer Beto Metralha said the music developed out of necessity in a place where few musicians could afford to pay a whole band and most music consumers don't take home enough money to buy non-pirated CDs. The average ensemble consists of little more than a keyboardist and a singer, sometimes accompanied by an electric bass. The signature shuffle rhythm is derived entirely from a single program on an electronic keyboard."
And: "Brazil's top-selling Banda Calypso, whose "brega" sound paved the way for tecnobrega, claims to have sold more than 4 million CDs nationwide, avoiding traditional distribution networks and marketing its CDs directly through news stands and other unconventional outlets."
And: ' "Before you couldn't get your record played on the radio if you couldn't afford payola. Now if a song hits big with the aparelhagens, the radio has no choice but to play it," says Metralha. "The dynamic has changed." '
Brazil seems to be ahead of the rest of the world in creating new forms of music. It's not surprising that cultural changes in how music is distributed happen in Brazil.
Still they are democratic, you may just as well be the only one disagreeing. Again, how can you claim justification not to follow such laws but ask for criminals to be locked away? I'm sure they disagree with their verdict. Democracy includes accepting other citizens' votes until votes/laws etc have changes by the same democratic means.
Kelefah Sanneh of the NY Times summed it up nicely in this article about Vampire Weekend: For a proactive indie-rock fan in 2007 a debut album is more like an end product than a starting point. By the time that first shrink-wrapped and bar-coded CD finds its way into shops, the band will probably be old news, having suffered through many online cycles of hype and backlash. In a world that won't wait patiently for an album release date, it probably makes more sense to talk about a debut MP3, a debut YouTube appearance, a debut MySpace page.
In a sense this new state of affairs is really an old one, a throwback to the early 1960s, when concerts and singles ruled, and albums were merely compilations. And it probably makes bands (not to mention record companies) nervous: It means you can pick up fans faster, and lose them faster too. I don't know how the economics work, but I'm sure that for certain bands, if they can give away an album to get people to come to a show, they may end up making more money that way.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
From the dawn of history, music has always been a service, and never a good. I don't see why the existence of ultra rich musicians should be seen as anything other than an anomaly.
May the Maths Be with you!
What is however interesting is that this technobrega movement severely undermines one of the arguments frequently cited by the RIAA in favour of stricter copyright laws, which is that piracy undermines the ability of the music and film industries to invest in the next generation of local talent by lowering revenues from current sales.
:
Also from the article
"This year the multinational record labels will only release about 40 records by Brazilian artists, while tecnobrega artists will release around 400,"
Actually, this doesn't undermine the RIAA position at all. Don't forget that as much as we like to target the RIAA as an entity we're forgetting the man behind the curtain: The record labels.
What the technobrega kids are doing is putting out their own works and hoping for a profit at a show. Labels can't do that. Labels live on the sales of the recordings and for a record company to take a chance on a new artist they're going to need to see sales from an existing artist to have the capitol to make it all happen.
If artists can afford to produce their music and tour without the financial help of others it's a really good deal. We're still not in a time where that is always possible and some artist simple can not fund their own releases while keeping food on the table. That is where the record companies come in.
People are still being very short sighted into seeing why record labels had and to a limited point still have a place in the music industry. There certainly has been a big turn around in the last decade but it's still not perfect.
And knowing that these kids are mixing up their works mostly on PCs, it makes me wonder how much of the software that they're using is pirated. While I don't think the manufacturers of professional music software are hurting too much it still makes me hope that those who are doing well for themselves will take the time to owe up and put some money back into an industry that they're making a buck off of.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
- Nobody purchases original CDs here. People just get them on the streets, with "3 for 5 reais" price tags (~$1 each CD)
- Trash music is everywhere. It is hard to listen to good music nowadays, be it in the radio, the clubs, or the stupid loud car sound systems around the city.
- Musicians get almost nothing selling CDs by normal means (recorder company contracts etc), if you're not a TOP 20 you make more money with shows/presentations anyway, making it very good to spread your music - the more the better
- "Lend me your CD so I can copy it" is normal practice, creating even many "pirated pirate copies" which are copies of pirate CDs purchased on the street.
- Soulseek, donkey2k, kazaa are your friends. You find everything Brazilian.
- There are a few websites promoting local FREE AS IN SPEECH music/art. Like Estudio Livre.
I have very few original CDs and don't feel any pressure into purchasing more. If things keep this way I will keep downloading free licensed and unlicensed content. The same applies to movies and games.Good stuff in these websites make me want more, make me want to know the artist behind them. Lately I was chatting with "Varios Um", a Brazilian artist which has very good FREE songs published here.
find -name "*base*" -exec chown us {} \; ; ln -s
This looks a lot like the cut-throat competition of the Jamaican recording industry until they signed the Berne convention in 1994, after that date they became irrelevant from a cultural point of view.
The idea that the mathematical representation of an idea is ownable property is repugnant, and you may be assured that while it can exist in an ethical framework, it is not a universally accepted tenet and it is not incorrect to reject it.
We realized murdering people was a bad thing, we realized stupid laws against wearing purple were a bad thing, and we're realizing this intellectual property garbage is a bad thing. All three of these reflect understanding evolved over time. Jesus Christ, the idea that you can own a mathematical representation of an idea is itself an evolved understanding.
Both directions apply.
Illegal does not necessarily equate with unethical.
Legal does not nessesarily equate with ethical.
It is illegal to sing happy birthday in public without royalty payment. This is not an unusual example. Copyright is long enough, where even when all authors are dead, some corporation is there to collect.
Currently, legal bribery by corporations plays a large role in forming laws. It should be no surprise that monopolies of many kinds are protected by the government at the expense of citizens.
RIAA,MPAA bought laws to extend the copyright monopoly to 95-120 years.
Drug companies would like to extend patents to milk every possible penny out of a discovery, even at the expense of human health.
Industrial farm companies, like ADM have extended patents to cover biological life, and would like to push things like terminator seeds for profit at the expense of humans.
Microsoft enjoys a unchecked monopoly granted by software copyright monopolies that last 95 years.
Software companies patent the most trivial algorithms, with these granted monopolies often slowing innovation.
Even with 95 year monopolies, media companies would like to further restrict media, by using DRM to encrypt media. The DMCA was bought by the media companies to protect DRM.
The release of expiration of copyright monoplies into the public domain stopped in 1975, and will be dark until 2018. At 95 years after media publication, the majority of publications are likely lost. I regretfully expect RIAA,MPAA to try to extent the copyright once more in 2017 fully to 120 years to beyond 2043.
Yes, there is a theme here. Government granted monopolies that last 20, 95 years are bad.
There's a mighty struggle going on to re-define taking music without the author's permission as ethical
That was the norm for thousands of years of recorded history. The notion of copyright is a much more recent (i.e. modern times only) idea. The redefinition was the introduction of copyright, not the desire of some people to return to the previous system.
The situation in Brazil is somewhat unique in the world (and perhaps not the best example) because Brazil has among the highest (sometimes the highest, it fluctuates year to year) income inequalities on earth. There are multi million dollar mansions covering the hills around Rio, complete with walls, barbed wire, and armed guards with crime ridden and poverty stricken shanty towns visible through the distant haze from these mountaintop redoubts of the elite. Now, if you were living in a crap filled and crime ridden slum day after day with street gangs, violence, the highest murder rate on the planet and innumerable other hardships are you going to care about copyright? Certainly not, you would go to the local Internet cafe (when you had some cash to spend) and download music for copying and listening OR you might buy it on the street for a couple of Reals from a vendor's stall. You talk about the moral high ground, but would you want to pursue these people, who cannot afford your first world prices, for their last pennies simply for trying to get some entertainment that may serve to distract them, if only temporarily, from the miseries of their everyday lives?
If you are looking to bring up the copyright debate then the Brazilian context is perhaps not the best because it brings with it a lot of other baggage.
First, I never voted for the DMCA, and I know a whole bunch of people who would much rather it never became a law. The senators voted for it, not the citizens, and so if I choose not to follow the DMCA it doesn't mean I'm refusing to follow the vote of the citizens because they never voted for it. Also, because of the way our legal system works, just about the only way to have a law repealed is to be arrested for violating it and to appeal to the supreme court. Finally, I'm not asking for criminals not to be locked away, but the fact is, until you've been convicted and run out of appeals you aren't legally a criminal, therefore if you get arrested for violating a law, appeal it to the supreme court and have the law overturned, you're not a criminal. There's also a difference between saying you're innocent of a crime that you either committed but didn't want to be caught for, or didn't commit and are falsely convicted of, and saying you're innocent of a crime because you don't think it should be illegal in the first place. If you fall into the later category it's your duty to appeal to the supreme court and convince them of why exactly it is that that law should be repealed.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
While piracy is the bane of many musicians trying ...
No, I think the true bane of Brazilian musicians is the existence of this song
They are not. People dont vote for laws. A lot of them doesnt reflect the will of the majority.
I enjoy early music, which is medieval and before classical-styled ecclesiastical music. There are some who still practice it, and having their MP3s has allowed me to know what to buy when I do place that order through the pain-in-the-ass place in Ohio that actually has some of these CDs.
technical writing / development
You should tell that to the sheep down here in Texas.
My god is it frustrating to talk to people who actually think your behavior should be determined by that of the law.
And yes... I still talk to them, just reserve my infuriation for their ignorance on one of the principles of Freedom.
Nobody purchases original CDs here. People just get them on the streets, with "3 for 5 reais" price tags (~$1 each CD)
I do. I would rather buy music on a one-song basis from iTunes but due to this widespread piracy here, Apple doesn't seem to give a shit about Brazil.
Trash music is everywhere. It is hard to listen to good music nowadays, be it in the radio, the clubs, or the stupid loud car sound systems around the city.
Why is that? Maybe it has to do with the music industry being overwhelmed by these favela freeloader fuckers with no music talent but with a beat box and the street commerce that is driving artists to a difficult situation, while the very good Brazilian music people enjoy from London to Tokyo is having a hard time just surviving. Tom Jobim (the guy who wrote "The Girl from Ipanema") used to complain that an artist could never get filthy rich in Brazil, even though even Frank Sinatra recorded The Girl From Ipanema and Bossa Nova plays worldwide daily on thousands of radios ever since the late 50's.
Musicians get almost nothing selling CDs by normal means (recorder company contracts etc), if you're not a TOP 20 you make more money with shows/presentations anyway, making it very good to spread your music - the more the better
The music industry's to blame here. I remember back in the 90's when Real had dollar-parity, CDs here cost the double what they would cost me in New York. Now the cancer has spread and there's no stopping it.
Streets of Brazil are overwhelmed with street vendors ("camelôs") who pay no taxes and sell pirate products.
Yeah. Brazil's the future. You wanna see how bad it gets you just look at what's going on here.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Why spend thousands on schemes to protect digital music, why spend millions on promotional material?
Just post some tracks as mp3s on the website, let people copy it. Someone somewhere will buy it, you could sell the CD with a free t-shift and people would then buy it for the t-shirt.
This is how Metallica became famous, people trading their bootleg recordings of them.
In other words, the presence of a work-around does not justify the actions which cause the problem, which, in this case, is "music piracy" also well known as thievery.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The fine article said a tecnobrega musician makes R$ 850 and said that it's a "decent salary." That is a wage you can only live on if you're willing to live in a favela.
The article also said tecnobrega puts out 400 albums/year vs 40 of the traditional music industry. Ask yourself which artist is able to carve out a confortable living, Caetano Veloso or tecnobrega.
Don't take this tecnobrega too seriously. You, as a US American, European or Japanese would not be able to live with the consequences.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
I think Jonathan Coulton would disagree withyou, since he earns a living giving away his music for free (and encouraging his fans to do the same).
The situation in Brazil is somewhat unique in the world (and perhaps not the best example) because Brazil has among the highest (sometimes the highest, it fluctuates year to year) income inequalities on earth.
Let me give you a recent number: 1700 X is the number between lowest and highest incomes.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Given that the tecnobrega movement has shown that copyright protection is not necessary to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, isn't it time to reconsider the whole basis of copyright law?
Sure, as soon as I figure out how to make money by performing software on stage.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
It's not so much that it undermines the argument, as it underscores it for what it is -- a business model they insist is necessary for the production of music, but which probably isn't.
Artists who embrace this self-publishing method don't need investment from the RIAA et all -- they make music, engage their fans, and help people to find and listen to their music -- then they coax them out to a show. They probably make a modest amount of money, but they don't have as much overhead, and they don't have middlemen to pay. They'll probably never be mega-stars either.
For the RIAA to invest in local artists, they need to find acts they think that they can sell, set them up with all sorts of help in producing something that is up to 'professional' standards, and then marketing it to as wide of a market as possible. In the process, the music tends to migrate to a boring degree of sameness, and the artists become beholden to the recording company, and has to sell a bazillion records to overcome the "losing money math" used by these companies.
They're not interested in groups which are locally marketed and have a good following. They're goal isn't to put music into the hands of people looking for it so they can actually hear good music. They're looking to find a group they can market to a very large amount of people -- ideally, conforming to whatever niche market they already have good marketing channels to get exposure to; take Clear Channel for example. Everyone, in every market, hearing a selection of songs chosen to maximize the commercial successes and sell records to the same established fan-base.
The RIAA doesn't care about artists who want people to hear their music and come to a live show in a local venue -- they don't make their money off live performances from what I know. The RIAA is making their money off the already recorded stuff, and to do that, they need to convince us that if it weren't for them, there wouldn't be any recorded music worth listening to. They just don't want you to know that an artist can make and distribute good music without their help.
There's a busker in the city I live in (Ottawa, Canada). He plays in the summer at an open air market. He's got a great whiskey-coarse voice, and plays some of the best steel guitar blues I've ever heard from a young-ish white guy. He sells his CDs out of his guitar case for 10 bucks a pop, and gets good tips for performing. I suspect he does alright for himself, because he always has a crowd, and always gets tips -- because he can sing, and he gives an earnest performance for the crowd. He may even actually play some club gigs as well, I've no idea.
I suspect these Brazilians aren't really all that different from local bands all over the place who manage to eke out an income by actually getting their music into the hands of people who otherwise wouldn't hear it. Unfortunately, the RIAA et al are trying to convince us that all of these "alternate distribution channels" are piracy so they can make people believe that any music not provided by them in a secure, DRM bundle must be illegal. They'd have us lock down any mechanism which they haven't vetted -- even to the exclusion of self-published artists who are encouraging you to give copies of their music to your friends.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
A musician is paid for their service of performing the piece. Everything else in music (e.g. MP3s, etc.) is fair game for free trade, which in turn promotes the artist, which in turn drives performances. Break the cycle and the artists suffer.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Well, it's hard to teach this old dog new tricks. I shall continue to use two spaces after each sentence end, and also after my state and before my zip code in address blocks. Neener!
The old "promotes live music" canard..
What about all those artists like Britney and Ashley? Record Companies invest so much time and money in their images, and in fixing up their vocals in million-dollar protools-equipped studios. "Live music" is simply taking away their right to sell CDs and appear on MTV.
>I do feel however that it's everyone duty to not follow unethical or immoral laws
If I think the laws against murder are unethical, then, by your lights, it is my duty not to follow them?
You mean I would actually be paying to see and hear the performance as a service rather than treat the sequence of air compressions as a good? I mean that would be like... well, like it use to be.
Go out and see your local philharmonic. I mean if you want to pay for talent, imagine having to put on the kind of performance they do. One and a half live performances a week for half the year. Oh yeah... your "set" might include a single movement lasting over 4 hours. ("For Philip Guston", composer: Morton Feldman. Or his unrecorded six hour String Quartet No. 2, the bows are never lifted off the strings.) In general movements are longer than rock/top-40/rap and close to scores of performers are expected to play in tune and in sync. Beethoven's ninth symphony, fourth movement is 25 minutes.
Yes. it's a service. Anybody can make several "takes" and then keep only the best one to sell. The value is in the talents of the performers. That is a service.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
You making money off your software isn't necessary to promote the progress of science and useful arts. Some people make software for money, some people make software for free. Some people make software for free and then try to make money off of related services. The latter two can still happen without any copyright protection.
Do you believe that if copyright was undone tomorrow, people would stop making art and creative works altogether? Many would stop, but everyone?
Yes.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Within ethics there is a distinction between rules as ends (e.g. the ones that "derive from a god") and rules as means to satisfy the rules as ends.
For example, the speed limit is a means to achieve the end of not putting the lives of others at unnecessary risk. As such the fact that speed limits might be changed over time says nothing about whether other ethical rules are "derived from a god".
Copyright is the same way. It is and has always been a human construct. It was invented by humans 500 years ago to serve various ends which have changed over time such as censorship, promoting the useful arts or supporting artist's livelihoods.
Copyright is not an inherent right. So the fact that it might change over time is quite natural even for those who believe that some ethical rules are "derived from a god".
Do you believe that if copyright was undone tomorrow, people would stop making art and creative works altogether? Many would stop, but everyone?
Of course not, although in your way of thinking, it must certainly be a strange coincidence that the most innovative and creative nation on Earth also has some of the strongest intellectual property protection.
Also, you're admitting that "many would stop" producing software? So either IP laws are justified in light of the constitution or writing software is not a useful art?
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Why people are calling this "piracy" when the artists themselves are handing over the originals to be copied? This is not piracy, this is free, lawful, copying.
Close the world, open the NeXT
I don't listen to the radio. I don't want to hear the same songs over and over again for 10 years. More accurately I listen to the radio for an average of 1 hour per month. When I'm downloading music whether legal or illegal, I tend to triple my spending on legal copies of music. You can't buy music you don't know exists. While there are a lot of people out there who fancy themselves justified in mooching off the system, or trendy for bucking it, there are plenty of people that just want to find decent intelligent art.
I'm not sure what you're getting at in the last line. I recognize that software is a creative product of the same general nature as music, literature and so forth. If any of it deserves IP protection, it all does.
But I question both the need and the underlying justification for IP protection. It's an artificial construct, this protection. Traditional theft is much easier to identify as wrong - what you take from me, I no longer have, and therefore I am harmed, so the taking is wrong unless it's of something freely given. IP doesn't work that way. What you take from me, I still have; all I've lost is some nebulous exclusive domain over it, which may or may not be valuable. If you copy my song, or my software, my original loses no quality. I simply am no longer in a position to stop other people from also having it. I'm not clear why I, even as a creator, should have any right to demand that exclusivity in the first place.
But the constitution provides a justification - for the promotion of the progress useful arts and sciences. As a very hands-off, laissez-faire type, I don't even think that's a very good justification (I don't see it as the government's job to ensure art or science progresses), but there it is. So let's deal with it on those terms. While profit potential is -a- motivator for the promotion of useful arts and sciences, and a very powerful one, open source software, this music phenomenon and several other examples show other powerful motivators exist as well. IP law isn't absolutely necessary to promote arts and sciences, though it can help, and surely often does; in its current form, it arguably often hurts the process.
So the real question is, does the constitution's justification for IP law only apply if it's absolutely necessary to promote arts and sciences, or does it also apply if it's merely helpful. What if it's sometimes helpful, and sometimes harmful, as now is the case? As a proponent of liberty, I can't see either of the latter two as a strong enough rationale; it means restricting expression (of others' ideas, specifically) for possible, but uncertain benefit; I'm not OK with that.
It's called civil disobedience. When you have a fundamental issue with a law sometimes the best way to fight it is to break it. Either enough people break it to make enforcement impossible, or you break it publicly to bring attention to the injustice.
It may hurt your head, but some laws are passed in undemocratic ways, or have consequences that harm democracy. For those times, you might need civil disobedience.
Other times, laws like copyright enforcement just simply go against the grain of human nature and will be broken regardless of government action.
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
About Techno Brega music, from Good Copy, Bad Copy, a free documentary.
In Brazil it is not unusual for a local band to draw 800 people.
You can see how Techno Brega is made, and how artists make money: About Techno Brega - from "GOOD COPY BAD COPY" - Part 2 of 2
I was in Sao Paulo about a month ago for 1 week.. while I saw plenty of street vendors selling movies, not once did I see anyone selling music.... Now I don't speak Portuguese (other than a few greetings and a few curse words) but they were trying to unload these things on me.. 5 movies for 1 Real. I can't imagine that even would cover the cost of the blank DVD... so not only were they pirated, I assumed they were also stolen.
:) I don't want to buy Titanic.. it sucked when I saw it in the theatre, it probably still sucks.
And for the love of God.. at least pirate GOOD movies...
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Only if you discount the mighty struggle that went on for the past hundred years to re-define music as property. As technology made it possible to record sound, then ship that sound, then broadcast that sound we had to find ways to make it fit into our economic model. The latest advancement has been digitizing sound, which completely changed the game. There are no longer (non-trivial) physical limitations to recorded sound and the distribution there of.
I don't know which god you got your ethics from, but mine didn't declare that I needed an author's permission to listen to their music. Rather, that was an evolved justification made possible by limited music distribution technology.
Open a history book (or search the internet) and find out how young copyright is before you make yourself look silly by talking about ethics like you invented the concept.
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
synthespian (563437) got the picture right. For those of you who love Brazilian music, here is a site where you can download rare and unprocurable music ripped from collector's original records. Ah, there is even .flac versions!
http://loronix.blogspot.com/
Two women demonstrate Dancing Brega.
find -name "*base*" -exec chown us {} \; ; ln -s
> We realized murdering people was a bad thing, we realized stupid laws against
> wearing purple were a bad thing, and we're realizing this intellectual property garbage is a bad thing.
No, we do not realize "this intellectual property garbage is a bad thing." There's a reason Congress was directly given the power to secure patents, copyrights, and the like, for a limited time, and it's a good thing.
They are perhaps not property per se, but they behave in the same way as property, and for the exact same reason.
In any case, the point of my post was showing how those who want free downloads of music without paying the creator are altering their own perception in order to justify a change in policy. This is decidedly not in the spirit of respecting other people's efforts.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I read the fine article as saying USD850/month since it's on CNN and likely to use USD as the monetary unit.
USD850/month is not that bad in my country (Malaysia, in the capital city, USD850 = about 500 to 1000 lunches or 8-9 months rental of a single room). Are things so much more expensive in Belem?
As for 400 vs 40, and Caetano Veloso vs tecnobrega, that sounds like saying "Ask yourself who is able to carve out a comfortable living, Bill Gates or some programmer in India". Answer: Bill Gates and Mr Veloso of course. So what are you really trying to say? Maybe I don't understand.
[ "All new is well forgotten old." Russian proverb. ]
New????? Under what kind of rock the people are living???
For ages, service model was how artists lived - by making performance and getting paid for it.
Most of classical music, paintings, sculptures were made now on whip - but after a offer from people with money.
My favorite composer J.S. Bach lived by creating music for different religious events commissioned by church.
That's how it worked since dawn of ages.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Somebody decides to utilities file-sharing to promote there music and then make money by doing gigs. Smart move.
Still don't see how this justifies piracy. If somebody wants to make a living selling there music the old fashion way and you don't like it then DON'T BUY THE FUCKING CD. Doesn't mean you should be allowed to pirate it.
I pulled up Varios Um's site on Estudio Livre, and I must say his music is interesting, IMHO definitely worth the time to take a listen. This music may not be for everyone, but part of the fun (and one of the reason I like these kind of articles on /.) is following someone's suggestion, and seeing if it is any good or not. The best part is if I don't like the music, I'm not out $10 - $18 as I would be if I picked up an interesting looking CD from one of the RIAA artists and found out I didn't like it.
Beware of Sleestak
Most music is crap anyway...not worth buying, let alone downloading (especially in the US).
It's easy to be a 'sucess' and 'thrive' - just redefine the meanings of the words to suit your situation.
from the article...
The best songs are played by "aparelhagens," hugely popular DJs running shows with laser displays, smoke machines and giant video monitors that alternate images of the dancing crowds with psychedelic imagery.
Uhh...is it just me or does this sound strangely like a rave?
Believe me it's pretty easy to make money at one of those.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
hey were trying to unload these things on me.. 5 movies for 1 Real. I can't imagine that even would cover the cost of the blank DVD
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Crime rate is sky-high in Brazil (as always) and hijacking truck loads is a very common crime. So, with all probability, that guy was dealing stolen goods - not only pirated. Often, the truck driver pays with his life (this type of story is always on the 6 o'clock news). That's how sick this thing gets.
Sometimes you see street vendors selling a whole line of, e.g., Johnson & Johnson's cosmetic line dirt cheap. Where did he get it from? From the mafias that steal transport firms.
So you are a witness to how debased this piracy business gets. Now I get to read on Slashdot about US Americans fascinated by a shitty music market that is so poor that they don't even try to sell their records and have to churn out 400 'albums' a year just to put food on the table.
People, get real. Pirate Bay is is Sweden. Tecnobrega is in Brazil.
LOL.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Wow, Malaysia is really cheap! Good for you!
Some cities in Brazil rank among the most expansive in the world, the cost of living in São Paulo and Rio corresponding to 72% of those of New Yorkers who are - as you know "rich Americans."
http://www.citymayors.com/features/cost_survey.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/portuguese/reporterbbc/story/2007/03/070306_cidadescaras_pu.shtml
(Sorry this BBC article is in Portuguese - but if you read Spanish you can probably handle it).
But anyways, it was US $ 850, I stand corrected, which by today's exchange rate is R$ 1528.3. Which is way better, but you still don't qualify as middle class (well, technically you would, but that would be "lower middle class"). Anyhow, that's around 4 times less than a better qualified job (such as a software engineer for a big Brazilian bank).
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Most of what I listened to in Brazil was American music on the radio... other than the night we spent at a Samba school... after that I didn't listen to much of anything for about a day because I couldn't hear anything :).
We were down at the big street market in Sao Paulo and I saw 4 or 5 people selling pirated movies. The cops don't really do anything in Brazil from what I've seen.. every once in awhile they'd drive by.. probably just to play a joke on the street vendor by making him grab his blanket on the ground with all the movies and run around the corner.
But that was about the time I left because a crazy drunk older women started throwing empty bottles at people and cars...
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
You don't have a right to violate copyright. Just because you disagree with their business model, that doesn't give you the authority to violate their rights. The EFF are hypocrites for going after GPL violators, but supporting copyright infringement of music.
Demand for Immediate Take-Down: Notice of Infringing Activity
URL: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=337017&cid=21086931
CASE #: [snip]
23 October 2007
Dear Slashdot,
This letter serves as notification under the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act, 17 U.S.C. 512, or equivalent notice provisions of your local law,
that content currently residing within your computer system infringes on the
copyrights of the BBC Corporation. I am
authorized to act on behalf of the BBC in this matter.
The infringing material residing on your system is the comedy sketch from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This comedy skit is,
copyrighted by and proprietary to the BBC, is on your system at the
following location:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=337017&cid=21086931
Posting of BBC's comedy lines as described above is not authorized by
the BBC, any of its agents, or by law. Pursuant to this notification, you
should immediately take steps to locate and remove and/or disable access to
the BBC comedy that is on your system at the web address detailed
above. As a service provider, you may otherwise be liable for copyright
infringement if, upon obtaining knowledge or awareness of infringing
material being stored upon your network, you do not act expeditiously to
remove, or disable access to, the material. 17 U.S.C. 512(c).
The information in this notification is inaccurate. I swear under penalty of
perjury that I am not authorized to act on behalf of the BBC in regard to its
exclusive rights in the work(s) identified above that I believe has been and
continues to be infringed as described above.
We hereby give notice of these activities to you and request that you take
expeditious action to remove or disable access to the material described
above, and thereby prevent the illegal reproduction and distribution of this
idea via your company's network.
We appreciate your cooperation in this matter. Please advise us regarding
what actions you take.
Yours sincerely,
Detective asshole,
Internet Investigator
Hmmm. Let's try that.
"A man should be rewarded for what he makes."
Hmm. Not good enough.
Lets try:
"A man should be rewarded what he makes, if it's not easy to steal it."
Much better!
IN BRAZIL, car drives on sugar cane water, stealing music make people rich, and hats go on FEET!
Ok, I'm not exactly a major consumer here, but before I got into music downloading I NEVER bought any CDs at all. I just listened to the radio. Of course, since I could never remember the names of the songs I liked, I never bought anything. Now, queue filesharing, just yesterday I spent some $100 on music because I couldn't be bothered trying to find hundreds of individual tracks that may or may not be of decent quality, and which may or may not be correctly labelled etc... Sure, maybe I'm not in the main target group, but I'd imagine making it easy and convenient for people to actually go legit would make a lot more sense than creating a DRM riddled hassle and threatening to sue your customers...
brega is a slang term for a whorehouse in Northeastern Brasil. fits quite nicely when discussing the RIAA.
"Ronaldo Lemos, a law professor at Brazil's respected Getulio Vargas Foundation, an elite Rio de Janeiro think tank and research center, says tecnobrega and other movements like it represent a new business model for the digital era, where music is transformed from a good to a service.'""
You know I can't wait for someone to apply this to software. Oh wait! Now why is it good for music, but not software?
"I do feel however that it's everyone duty to not follow unethical or immoral laws"
Apparently the first duty of civic responsibility was skipped.
"..and if arrested for violating those laws to take it to the highest possible court they can in the hope of getting the law overturned."
Fortunately the court of public opinion has low entrance requirements.
Like the Wiki article on technobrega says, this "style of music" is localized to the north/northeast part of Brazil. Notoriously the poorest part of Brazil. I don't think most of the population there can spend money on retail CDs (about 20 reais) when you can find pirated copies for as little as 2 reais.
:/
:p
Technobrega could be translated to technotrash. I must say that brega is a pretty horrible style itself, i can't imagine what technobrega must sound like
FYI, this is one of the most famous Brega singers in Brazil: http://images.uncyc.org/pt/1/14/Falcao.jpg
You can imagine the rest
Are you kidding? Tropicalia is huge in the States. It's not on the radio, but it's still very popular.
First) Not all cultures are based on accumulation. In fact, our original (Brazilian) culture is based on gathering status by giving -- not having. So, not only is ethical to distribute things in such view, it even benefits the author.
Second) Don't call it piracy. For starters, piracy is a wrong word for "violation of author rights". Then, it's not piracy if the author wants his/her work widely distributed. E.g., you cannot claim someone is pirating GPL software.
Third) Beware of your economy being based on hiding knowledge and keeping other people in the dark. We might find ourselves in opposite sides of a certain border. Like, you know, the bad/good borderline.
Sorry to be blunt but you're looking dumb. Get your act together.
It's called Civil disobedience
Actually, this is what the fine article said: But tecnobrega also is an economic engine -- moving about $5 million a month through Belem's economy, according to a study by the Getulio Vargas Foundation. The average singer makes about $850 a month -- about five times the minimum wage in Belem, and a decent salary for a musician. The point is, the artist was making five times the average minimum wage in the place he was living in. Well, I'd say that's a pretty comfortable living.
Taking this one step further, assuming this model was successfully applied in US, Europe or Japan and the artist was able to earn five times the minimum wage in those areas... wouldn't this be attractive for the artist concerned?
Granted these are mere assumptions for now, but the events in Brazil suggest that this could happen.
If you're going to be analytical, then you could start by not basing your argument on the manifestly inaccurate claim that music sharing is theft of music (the copyright holder does not lose any music), let alone piracy (avast!). Both points render your conclusion empty.
You might also argue that the copyright holder suffers potential loss of earnings, but even if that were true (and it isn't since not being able to download doesn't mean that a purchase is likely) then you still have no argument because "theft of potential loss of earnings" is not theft either.
Which of course means that you have said nothing at all of substance, just offered us a handwaving rant.
It's a shame you can't get your head around the fact that some performances take years of prep and production work
It's never been easier to produce music in the comfort of your own home, mastered to a level of quality that far surpasses the demands of regular popular music. Statements like yours are just a thinly disguised attempt at misdirection to hide the fact that you're rather keen on the business model of "Produce once, earn cash in perpetuity."
If you fail to acknowledge this letter, we'll be sending several of our experienced lawyers to your home as soon as they return from chasing ambulances but before they go out on their funeral run.
You make a very good point about the music industry and the lack of need for copyright protection. I've always thought that copyright was way too long (I believe something like 10-20 years would be more appropriate), though you're making me reevaluate the need for even that in some specific media.
That said, I thought I should point out that your argument has limited applicability to copyright in general. Music is a special case because of the need for live performers in the music industry. Despite the ease of (in the absence of copyright) playing a CD for your customers in your store, in most cultures live music is preferred. Thus performers remain in demand even if the content those performers create is not protected. The same could be said about plays and operas.
However, this is not applicable to many (dare I say a majority) other cases where copyright and intellectual property are enforced. Movies, books, and computer programs, for example, do not depend on live performances, and so cannot be made into services using this business model. Similarly, this is entirely inapplicable to patents (which I'd also like to see scaled back).
You have tried to support your argument with faulty reasoning! Go directly to jail; do not pass Go, do not collect $200!
Of course not, although in your way of thinking, it must certainly be a strange coincidence that the most innovative and creative nation on Earth also has some of the strongest intellectual property protection.
Why do you automatically assume that IP law promotes innovation? It could equally be that innovation attracts IP parasites.
That's the problem with a lot of IP proponents. They hand wave a lot but they lack any actual rigorous evidence for this massive interference in the citizen's business.
Billions of people are being blocked from sharing because one, count them, one person should be given total control always.
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
Plato said that unjust laws should not be obeyed.
Who am I to argue with Plato. ;-)
Bring back Sirius Punk!
Us users thought getting around to using a pricey little friendlier-than-nix system for free was a getting-away-with-it. It worked for companies who use computers because they don't have to train that much for employees and it worked too for the companies who supply companies with computers with licensed copies, ultimately it inflated Micros***t's pockets a lot than it did for everyone else.
(Piracy) worked and still works for Micro***t but that bandwagon can't carry everyone in. Any (business) model will continue work as long as only a few are engaging in it.
There was an interesting documentary released earlier this year called Good Copy Bad Copy about music and video file sharing. There is a section in the movie dealing with the Technobrega scene in Brasil showing the process of a producer hearing a new song, what goes into re-mixing it, to the final performance at a party.
The film also features, amongst others; founders of The Pirate Bay, Lawrence Lessig, Danger Mouse and Dan Glickman.
First God made idiots. That was for practice. Then He made Jack Thompson.
This business model is "effective by design".
I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
all of their rhetoric about P2P is that ALL copying of digital music is piracy. The artist giving permission notwithstanding.
that's funny, I thought being gay wasn't against the law any more.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Yes, for a limited time is a good thing. However, life of the author + 70 years is not.
OSx86 FTW
what's unethical is the idea that you can create a song and release it to the world, and then somehow tell me that i don't have the right to hear it.
if you don't like it, don't create it. no one will miss you because someone who enjoys creating music for music's sake will be right behind you to pick up the slack.
but let me add some light to murder.
If you follow the civil disobedience [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Disobedience_(Thoreau)] set up by Thoreau you should only use it for what is morally right, but denied by law; so if you view killing someone morally right in a certain situation but the law says no, then you could call upon civil disobedience; in this case my answer, like the previous poster, would be "yes".
For example I view morally eating meat as a moral wrong, a form of murder; other people clearly do not - if I then had a moral that said that killing people who broke my moral code was right - I as such wouldn't mind such a law, but it wont work since too many people wont care very much for it, and continue to break it, bankrupting the law and making it pointless.
Normal human murder, especially murder committed by sane men and women who have reasoned it out, and done it for their own benefit (outside self defence) are for the normal human, moral monsters, especially if they have killed their children/parents or in general someone cute - and very much like you (a link to you strengthen the injustice and sense of a moral wrong).
Very few, hopefully none, can say that killing a person, outside of self defence, is morally right, and what is morals here? I like Kant, and Hume.
For the Kant The Categorical Imperative [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative] and the law of universality fits in - that is would it be ok if everyone did as me? well if it was ok for everyone to kill people for their benefit (outside self defence) or at random, we would soon be wiped of this rock! can't be good that.
Hume, and the utilitarians [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism] are consequentialists and simply believe that the overall utility is what counts, that is does this act benefit the world or not? if not then don't - in general killing someone randomly does not benefit humanity, nor the world - though you could argue that it would be self defence for Gaea, and there would be fairly good defences against that - but as always the dogmas comes in and rock the boat - and do not doubt that people in war often have moral "rights" to do so in their mind - for moral it seems is not easily pinned down.
So why did I start with a no?
For you used the word murder, murder is a word that implies an immoral killing; thus I view the killing of animals for luxury purposes murder, an immoral act to me; while I do not view someone who has no choice but to become a cannibal to survive morally wrong at all (unless he was immoral to how he got to that sassy meat). Nor are war heroes in general considered murderers at all for example see Simo Häyhä [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4].
So what is murder, and what is not?
Clarification: in my mind the very word murder says that it is morally wrong; most people don't view eating non-human meat as a moral wrong, thus they will use words like killed, put-down or slaughtered; in war, again, it's killed, not murdered - murder is a moral wrong, euthanasia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia] and we do have people who kill their loved ones for mercy for various reasons today due to pain, and they view it as euthanasia, but in the law of most countries in the west it is viewed as murder - and I would hope that those who believe they have moral rights to do this dare follow the civil disobedience moral contract - and admit what they have done so that they can challenge the rules of today - for they if they do not view it as murder does not see a moral wrong with it.
So on abortion when someone say that abortion is murder, they don't mean a
Piracy is armed robbery at sea.
When we use their term for what is actually "copyright infringement", we allow them to make it sound worse than it is. The same goes for hacker. A hacker is someone finding elegant solutions, figuring out how things work and then improving them. We allowed the media to abuse that word to mean cyber criminal/cracker. Now we can't use the word hacker for its intended purpose without causing confusion.
Am i the only one who cares about this?
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
That's the problem with a lot of IP proponents. They hand wave a lot but they lack any actual rigorous evidence for this massive interference in the citizen's business.
"Hand wave"? I have no need of any evidence beyond the strong correlation between innovative societies and strong IP protection. This correlation is obvious and ubiquitous throughout the world.
The simplest explanation for this correlation is that IP protection fosters innovation. So the burden of proof is actually on you to demonstrate not only that this correlation is without causation, but also that innovation will flourish to an even larger degree if IP protections are removed.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
> Yes, for a limited time is a good thing. However, life of the author + 70 years is not.
Well, when Pirate Bay's downloads are mostly 1930's Jazz and Big Band recordings and Golden Age Hollywood movies, then you will have a point. As is, the so-called pirates are using a bad aspect of current copyright law to justify doing whatever they chose, and then declaring that those against their *actual* practices to be immoral, unethical, and fattening.
the assumption of a live performance to follow up an album/single is where the freeloaders went wrong.
there are plenty of works of studio art that will never see a live performance stage.
many composers work alone. Hugh LeCaine made "Dripsody" from a single water drip on magnetic tape cut pasted and spliced with razor blades and tape thousands of times...
the "free downloads, pay for live" model while useful for some is not a revenue model for all musicians and composers.
often, shitty music is made available for free to promote.
sometimes, good music is made available for free to promote.
this is a "loss leader" designed to get new customers to a new or unproven product.
it is NOT a revenue model for recordings.
freeloaders= come up with a revenue model for recorded music and you have a point.
until then you are just justifying your selfish desires to the fruits of someone elses labor.
would you go to your job for free?
would your landlord rent you an apartment for free?
no- because those revenue models are secure...
unfortunately every 2 bit loser wants to be a music star.
so you get people promoting this way...
as far as TecnoBrega is concerned- well these guys arent exactly concerned with revenue models from recorded music are they, they are concerned with getting live gigs...
not the same.
Or, maybe, it is because our music "industry" stopped searching for talents when radios and television started to want to be paid for transimiting a music (jabá, did you heard anything about that?), instead of paying for it.
Of course, the guilty from this situation is exactly the music "industry", that started to make offers to spread their music trought the media. That lead every radio station that didn't take the offer out of business (who can compete when some of them don't need comercials?).
By the time Axé was starting to dominate the media, people still used to buy CDs. After a trash band started to appear every odd week, and vanish every even one, people sudenly stopped to care about bands. And that was not technology related, because software piracy is much older than music around here, people simply used to buy CDs, even when technology perrmited then to copy it.
Rethinking email
If you consider sampling as an original or useful art, or promoting the progress of art, perhaps (alas, that there is no sarc tag). Also, obviously, copyright is not necessary; one could also promote it by legislating that non-musicians have to pay high taxs to subsidize "musicians", regardless of their perceived skill, taste, or originality.
Finally, ending copyright means ending the careers of all non-performing composers and lyricists, as they have no way to get paid except by owning the groups and individuals which play their songs (or patronage, of course; JSBach did make a nice living as house composer to his Elector).
"Hand wave"? I have no need of any evidence beyond the strong correlation between innovative societies and strong IP protection.
Correlation is is not causation and the automatic assumption that it is one of the hallmarks of bad science and bad logic.
This correlation is obvious and ubiquitous throughout the world.
No it isn't, you just wish it was. The fastest growing major economy is China, not noted for being too concerned about "IP". Neither was the early USA. Limited "IP" does appear to work in certain very limited societies and very limited industries but it is not the ubiquitous good that you are claiming.
The simplest explanation for this correlation is that IP protection fosters innovation.
No it isn't, you just wish it was. My explanation is equally simple. In addition the two explanations are not mutually exclusive as you are implying and many other explanations are possible and not exclusive as well, everything from creative societies being likely to have both creative technologists as well as creative lawyers to rich societies being able to support both technologists and "IP" lawyers. The world is not so black and white as your almost religious devotion implies.
So the burden of proof is actually on you to demonstrate not only that this correlation is without causation, but also that innovation will flourish to an even larger degree if IP protections are removed.
No it isn't, you just wish it was. "IP", both copyright and patent, is a massive interference in the citizen's business. Massive interference requires massive justification. It's just not there. "IP" mainly exists because of an historical accident when rich people, not even creators but distributers instead, bought more privilege. Now there are entrenched interests trying to preserve their privilege.
In any case, any law which creates unstable, winner-take-all markets, where a very small number of players derive almost all the benefit (e.g. M$, RIAA and J.K Rowling) is not in general good law. Just like feudalism.
e.g. I've been creating software my entire working life and copyright has never done me any good. Just like the vast majority of the software market I create software for in-house use; it's protected by contract and employee law. Retail "IP" is a tiny fraction of the software market but because of it's visibility it's been allowed to dominate the copyright/patent debate way too much. It's likely that by freeing up copyright and patent law industries that use copyrighted and patented material would be far more productive and creative. And that industry dwarfs the so-called pure content creators.
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Like software, intellectual property law is a product of the mind, and can be anything we want it to be. Let's get it right.
If "noticing things" is "religious devotion", then I'm the freaking Pope.
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