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Lars Ulrich Pirates His Own Album
rudeboy1 writes "Lars Ulrich, drummer for Metallica, and long time opponent of file sharing admitted to 'pirating' his own album, Death Magnetic last year. 'I sat there myself and downloaded "Death Magnetic" from the Internet just to try it,' he said. 'I was like, "Wow, this is how it works." I figured if there is anybody that has a right to download "Death Magnetic" for free, it's me.'"
I figured if there is anybody that has a right to download "Death Magnetic" for free, it's me.
Wrong. I'm going to apply your logic here and say that the real victims are the rest of the members of Metellica that worked hard day and night to make "Death Magnetic." You would have had to buy that in a store to get it and therefore the $18 ripoff that you avoided took money away from your bandmates who did not receive the fifteen cents they normally would have from that sale. On top of that, what about the profit your label would have made or the amounts payable to the RIAA lawyers? You have stolen something physical and real from them and they no longer have it. Those sound engineers at your studio will have to eat at Olive Garden tonight instead of Buca De Beppo.
... yet the many file sharers that have no intent(or in some cases the means) to pay for it are thieves?
So Ulrich's logic is that he never would have paid for this album in the first place and therefore it's ok for him to download it
My work here is dung.
Since Lars and the band perform the song(s) and probably have some rights to the song(s), he can't pirate his own work.
That's like saying a photographer who downloads a picture of one of his works from a gallery is pirating his work or an author who makes a copy of one of his own books is pirating his book.
But please, let's not let common sense get in the way of people justifying not paying performers for their work.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
By stealing this song, rather than purchasing it through retail, he has stolen revenue from AT LEAST the following people:
a) The label
b) The store
c) Marketing
d) Hauliers
He is STEALING FROM THEM.
"I figured if there is anybody that has a right to download "Death Magnetic" for free, it's me."
Now, I haven't read your contract with the record label, Lars, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that, no, you do not have the right to download the music. Your record label probably controls the digital distribution rights of the music contained in that album and, unless you got their permission, you don't have that right. Remember the war you waged for the past several years? That's what was at the core of that fight.
But, like I said, I haven't read your contract so I might be mistaken.
It's the natural progression of all music acts. You start out struggling to survive, then develop and perfect your unique sound, then sell out, then really sell out and alienate any loyal fans you may have had who liked your unique sound (which you also destroy), and then you endorse companies with misleading domain names. Just be thankful the Beatles broke up when they did, or it'd be a Hard Day's FreecreditreportDotCom.
I mean, if he'd had some insight or something this might've been interesting, but all he did was download his own album, call the process bizarre, and.. nothing.
He could have commented on how fantastically easy it was and how that ease makes it a huge temptation and had some kind of ..thing to say.. about that..
But it's just several paragraphs of fluff about how he gets together with friends to drink wine and click about web pages*, but only just now** tried to find out about something they've been railing against..
*which, frankly, doesn't exactly sound very Metal to me...
**and by now, I mean a year ago, of course...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Is his right also to enter a brick and mortar music store and leave with a phisical copy without paying for it? mind you, most music stores won't mind if it was a famous artist, but what about those pretty oscure artists that most likely the store salemen don't recognize?
This is just the artists having a double standart, "if you do it, it is illegal stealing, if I do it is my right".
Saying "oh, it's just a digital copy, not the actual physical copy" goes both ways.
DON'T PANIC.
You're a douchebag and a hypocrite.
I haven't purchased a Metallica album since The Black Album and will never again. (Granted that was the last decent one they had...) You damn near single handedly spearheaded this RIAA anti-filesharing war. Out of spite and general boycott I do not listen to my old Metallica CDs, nor do I have any of them encoded to my computer. I refuse to go to your absurdly overpriced concerts. I will not download or share your music, not because of "piracy" but because I refuse to give any publicity to you or your whining old man bandmates. The "piracy" that you crusaded against made you what you are today. And here you are, yet again, showing what a fucking hypocrite you are and missing the entire fucking point of your previous arguments against file sharing. Peoples' lives have been financially ruined and had their education hampered or destroyed by your asinine crusade while you sit untouchable on your golden throne in your mansion. Fuck you Lars, and fuck you Metallica. Bite my shiney Metal-head ass.
So yeah, the article is blocked by work's web proxy under the category "filesharing / p2p".
The summary says he went and tried to 'pirate' his own album.
Is it safe to assume that this was just him trying to see how exactly the evil pirates are stealing his music, and that this doesn't represent any change in his position or the acquisition of some kind of clue?
The enemies of Democracy are
we killed off our fanbase when we starting whining about napster
I think they killed their fanbase when they continued playing music after the early 90s and their fans graduated from high school. I listened to plenty of shitty music in high school, most of those bands had the decency to crawl off and die a quiet death rather than keep playing to remind me how bad their music always was.
if he had had any clue BEFORE he went on his insane rants, we might be in better shape and the music industry might be in better shape too.
I think that's debatable and so does the article:
Of course, Napster was dead and buried a long time ago but thanks in part to Ulrich, the destruction of the service led to the creation of many others ...
For you see, once you assign a very real and tangible target to an intangible idea, you have something to work with. Someone to debate, someone to open dialogues with, someone to launch a campaign against, etc.
... as this is indeed easy logic to defeat (in file sharing, nothing physical is lost to someone). Just something to consider--without Ulrich, you may still be trying to argue against a mob of RIAA lawyers with no face or debatable ideas and the law on their side? I think we need more Ulrichs so we can start to analyze the real heart of the problem with file sharing.
I saw a short documentary on Anita Bryant created by a homosexual who was thanking her and devoting the video to her hate speech against homosexuals. Now, I'm not trying to draw a comparison between homosexuals and file sharers but rather the effect it can have to assign a face to a movement or anti-movement. With a face, you have a target and while Bryant overturned the Dade county pro-homosexual ruling, she eventually made it possible to speak out against what was once this vague idea of hatred towards homosexuals that caused very real pain and suffering.
So Lars Ulrich may have made something very tangible and targetable and debatable over what was once this ethereal idea. You may want to thank him for being such a mindless rube to create a commercial showing him steal physical things from a file sharer
My work here is dung.
Being the middleman can be risky. You aren't in charge of the supply of the products you sell because somebody else makes it and sells it to you (and other middlemen) You can't control the demand for said products, except by advertising. Note that the most successful retail outfits are those that either (a) own a small but very reliable market of consumers (specialist mom-n-pop stores) or (b) also dominate the wholesale and distribution portion (e.g. monster chain stores).
Seriously, the very concept of wholesale-retail-consumer is obsolete for digital media. Music is not the same kind of product as groceries.
It doesn't really require knowing how file sharing works to oppose it. The end result -- people who didn't purchase your CDs ending up with what is, in effect, a copy of the CD -- is fairly clear, and it certainly violates current copyright law.
Being familiar with how the file sharing is actually done is only really necessary if you want to incorporate it into your business model or you want to effectively sue file sharers. (In the latter case, if you're competent and pursuing a civil case, you say to yourself, "Oh. This is going to be tough to prove in court.")
...mind you, most music stores won't mind if it was a famous artist...
Having worked at a music store (chain, not a mom-n-pop), I most certainly would have minded if any artist (whether I recognized the artist or not) tried to walk out without paying. If they could take the nebulous "music" without denying us the physical property (the CD) that we had to inventory, track, and account for - then yes. But since you can't (at this time in 99% or more of cases) take music from a music store without also taking the physical media, you also cannot take the music for free. No matter who you are.
Since we have a published confession of illegal activity, the RIAA finally has a leg to stand on. Best part is, they don't even have to rely on MediaSentry's unproven, flimsy tactics.
Finally, they can have a lawsuit where the defendant can actually pay their absurd fines. I doubt any of the money will actually make it back to him.
WHOOOSH
Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try
they're different
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Keep up with the times grandpa. They are bigger than Xenu.
"But this one goes to 11!"
i think that the subtlety here is in the line:
Wow, this is how it works.
which strongly proves that Lars has no idea what he's being such a strong opponent of.
Too much sense? ... except for the fact that walking into a brick-and-mortar store, walking out with an album without having paid for it is theft, not copyright infringement.
No unauthorized copy was made. Physical object taken unjustly.
Analogy rejected.
So, all those other bands on RIAA labels, who by their association contribute just as much to the RIAA legal budget as does Metallica, do you boycott them as well? I bet you don't.
You only boycott the outspoken and honest. All the other weasels, who want money for their music as well, but play it strategic and don't say anything that might upset anyone, you're okay with them. They sue their customers just as much, it's just that they leave it to the record companies to do it on their behalf, so they don't get their hands dirty.
Lars Ulrich is not the hypocrite here.
True. That's why it is technically called "copyright infringement" and not "shoplifting". It's also why I used the analogy of walking into a store and taking a cd. Because it's not the same thing as stealing, I had to create an analogy.
I have never heard Saint Anger
Metallica fans everywhere envy you.
Believe it or not "they" read sites like /. too...
Who do you think 'they' are? They are us. Don't think that 'us vs them' means that we are actually any different from them. It's just a useful way to rally your base, having a common enemy and all.
Anyway, for most of us, morals won't pay the bills.
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