David Lowery On the Ethics of Music Piracy

New submitter Mystakaphoros writes "Musician David Lowery (of Cracker fame) takes NPR intern Emily White to task for her stance on paying for (or failing to pay for) music. Quoting: 'By allowing the artist to treat his/her work as actual property, the artist can decide how to monetize his or her work. This system has worked very well for fans and artists. Now we are being asked to undo this not because we think this is a bad or unfair way to compensate artists but simply because it is technologically possible for corporations or individuals to exploit artists work without their permission on a massive scale and globally. We are being asked to continue to let these companies violate the law without being punished or prosecuted. We are being asked to change our morality and principals to match what I think are immoral and unethical business models.'"

Comments

for artists?

[dmbasso]

This system has worked very well for fans and artists.

No, it's been superb for the middleman, the famous MAFIAA.

Re:for artists?

[gl4ss]

well, that's where artists want to end up on their old days. of course very few of them can become MAFIAA execs.

and well.. being asked to conform to technical realities? OMG CALL OBAMA!!!!!!!

wtf do they want, bend the rules of physics so that it would be expensive to copy bits?

Re:for artists?

[mcgrew]

What I took exception to was "'By allowing the artist to treat his/her work as actual property, the artist can decide how to monetize his or her work".

But your work is NOT your property, at least not according to the US Constitution (haven't rtfa so I don't know if it applies to this fellow). I never heard the term "intellectual property" until they passed the Bono Act (which should have never been passed; copyright was already too long).

Plus, under US copyright law, phonoecords are "works for hire", meaning the label holds the copyright. The artist doesn't hold the copyright unless he's self-published.

Yours is good, too -- it has neither worked for the fans, nor the artists. But you are correct, it has indeed worked for the MAFIAA.

Re:for artists?

[hhawk]

yes.. copyright law IMHO and IANAL only protects against commercial sales of copy written materials. It maybe less than ethical (or not) to make copies, but it isn't illegal. DMCA of course makes it illegal to circumvent some copyright protection schemes; those schemes are illegal in my own mind..

Re:for artists?

[cpu6502]

I hate that I had to "register" just to post a reply to these 2 blogs. Why can't we just post as guests and supply our email as verification? I don't feel like setting-up a permanent account that I will never use again.

Re:for artists?

[Wrath0fb0b]

No, it's been superb for the middleman, the famous MAFIAA.

Two wrongs still don't make a right. I'm very much in favor of a lot of the reforms that you might propose to limit the power of the record companies and many of their abusive relationships with artists. That is entirely orthogonal to my views on the ethics of copyright (and I'm a mushy moderate on those anyway).

If you want this claim to make sense, you'd have to show that not only is our copyright system empowering greedy middlemen that add nothing productive, but that every such system must inevitably do so. To that claim, I disagree -- I think we can design a system that does not allow such abuses.

Re:for artists?

[Josuah]

The point is that the owner of copyright should be free to dictate the terms under which others can access that content. There's no ethical or moral argument that really holds water to contradict that. If the copyright owner is charging too much or inconvenient, you can surely argue it is too expensive or not a good value but you cannot argue any of those reasons makes you exempt from the owner's terms. This is the view our society has agreed upon and in reality we all like that view because each of us wants to have a say in what happens with what we create/produce, even if that say is that what I've produced as an individual should be freely available to everyone.

The only moral exception to this is for survival. No one would dispute moral violation of accessibility terms when it comes to medicines or food or even property (e.g. living under the city bridge) although that does not preclude legal punishment.

Re:for artists?

[cpu6502]

The whole purpose of copyright is to make sure artists get paid for their labor. Of course if they were smart they would ask to be paid wages, like we engineers and programmers do. Get paid Upfront rather than off the backend through sales.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

It keeps out anyone who doesn't care enough, guaranteeing only partisans and hard-core trolls post.

Re:for artists?

[ongelovigehond]

This is the view our society has agreed upon

More accurately, it's the view the politicians have decided for us. See the secret ACTA negotiations in the EU for instance.

Re:for artists?

[mcgrew]

The whole purpose of copyright is to make sure artists get paid for their labor.

In your country maybe, but in the US our constitution says "for the promotion of the useful arts and sciences". Writing a book doesn't guarantee it will be published, and getting published doesn't gurantee it will sell. With that in mind, and considering that most songs, movies, and books are financial flops, from your perspective copyright must have failed miserably, because most do NOT get paid for their work. Only the good stuff earns any cash. Well, usually only the good stuff, sometimes crap is successful.

Re:for artists?

[jedidiah]

The "owner" can only exert control so long as something is entirely within their possession. After it leaves that state, there is no good moral or ethical argument for placing the rights of the "artiste" above everyone elses.

You're basically arguing that everyone elses rights should be subservient to the those of the creative classes and that's simply contradictory to the notion of equality under the law.

A creative work cannot really be owned because it can't really be contained. It does not exist in a single time and place once it is released into the wild.

Once it is "out there", controlling it becomes a matter of restricting the liberties of others.

Trampling the First Sale Doctrine is a great example of copyright run amok. So's Harlan Ellison.

Re:for artists?

[Jane Q. Public]

"The point is that the owner of copyright should be free to dictate the terms under which others can access that content. "

But of course, that's the way it already works.

If you mean they should be free to enforce the terms any way they want, however, then I must take the opposite stand.

Re:for artists?

[gorzek]

This is incorrect. The NET (No Electronic Theft) Act, signed by President Clinton, criminalized copyright infringement even when there is no profit motive on the part of the infringer.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

What I took exception to was "'By allowing the artist to treat his/her work as actual property, the artist can decide how to monetize his or her work".

But your work is NOT your property, at least not according to the US Constitution (haven't rtfa so I don't know if it applies to this fellow). I never heard the term "intellectual property" until they passed the Bono Act (which should have never been passed; copyright was already too long).

Plus, under US copyright law, phonoecords are "works for hire", meaning the label holds the copyright. The artist doesn't hold the copyright unless he's self-published.

Yours is good, too -- it has neither worked for the fans, nor the artists. But you are correct, it has indeed worked for the MAFIAA.

I agree, where does this guy get the gall to expect us to buy his music when the fact that we are entitled to download music for free is enshrined in the constitution.

Re:for artists?

[darjen]

I have to agree. A song is not someone's property, and no amount of wishful thinking or even congressional lawmaking can magically make it so. The same argument holds for intellectual property in all its forms. Granting a monopoly to individuals for their ideas is bad for society and leads to less innovation and creativity. A good book about this for those who are inclined to explore this idea further:

http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/against.htm

Re:for artists?

[cpu6502]

>>>The only moral exception to this is for survival.

The other moral exception is the 100+ year copyright. Before the invention of copyright culture was a shared commodity. Artists created and the people enjoyed. Copyright was invented as a way for the artist to recoup his labor with money, but nobody should be paid 100 years after they create something (or after they are dead).

10 years should be enough for the artist to earn money from sales to repay his labor. Anything beyond that? He should make new music, statues, books, whatever instead of sitting on his laurels. The rest of us don't get to collect money for work performed 20, 30, 100 years earlier.

Re:for artists?

[zidium]

Gosh, you must be old! I wasn't even born when that act was passed (in 1976).

Re:for artists?

[dmbasso]

I didn't say anything about greed, or about the middleman being useless, or about piracy being right. I made just two claims, which stand on their own:
1 - no, the system is not good for the artists (e.g. http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/07/13/1737224/riaa-accounting-how-labels-avoid-paying-musicians)
2 - the system is excellent for the MAFIAA, to the point a major effort was needed to avoid legislation being passed that would corrupt the system even more.

Re:for artists?

[icebike]

Why is it people who quote the constitution never bother quoting the whole sentence:

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.

That some artists sign stupid contracts while young and inexperienced is not germane to the issue at hand. Stop throwing that out there like it matters.

Re:for artists?

[Grayhand]

Actually it worked until there was technology for people to easily redistribute the content. Music was successfully sold with few complaints for nearly a hundred years. What changed was not how music was sold perse it was the ability of people to convert the formats and redistribute. People talk like this has been a battle that has been going on from the beginning but it really started showing up in the late 90s and didn't have a major impact until after 2000. There obviously is no debate on the impact since digital distribution and piracy killed the record stores and record industry profits have been dropping for more than a decade. The record companies circling the wagons and focusing on select artists has had a major affect on me, I mostly buy older music. I've only bought one album and a handful of song produced in the last ten years. The music is all crap now.

Re:for artists?

[bws111]

Bullshit. The whole purpose of copyright is to encourage creation of new works. The method of encouraging creation is giving people control over their works.

Not the stupid 'get paid wages' argument again! Here is a clue for you: the ONLY reason you get paid a wage is because someone else expects to make more off of your work than they paid you to do the work. The only reason that person expects to be paid more than they pay you is because they intend to sell or use your product in a money-making operation. Now, if you eliminate (or substantially reduce) the ability for someone to sell your work, do you really think they are going to continue to pay you?

Re:for artists?

[Belial6]

I would be much more in favor of copyright if the 'artists' didn't build their work on other people's 'Intellectual Property'. Of course, If we want to call it property, then lets just tax it as real property. Let the 'owner' declare the properties worth. If they declare that a single copy is worth 10 million dollars, fine. They can pay taxes on that 10 million dollars. If they declare it to be worth $1, then that is how much they can sue for when it gets copied.

If they are required to pay taxes on the 'property' every year, you will see a lot more of it make it to the public domain.

Re:for artists?

[hairyfeet]

Bimbo Newton Crosby. Know how much Cheap Trick gets from iTunes for their back catalog? That would be ZERO, the middlemen take every cent. Or how about the fact that Meatloaf had to file for bankruptcy TWICE because using Hollywood Accounting the record company claimed that Bat Out Of Hell I, which has the record for longest time on the top 200 BTW, and this before the age of piracy, made NO MONEY and therefor he didn't deserve shit for one of the biggest selling albums in history.

As someone who makes music and hopes to actually make a living from it I have to say FUCK THE MAFIAA as the current system is so damned rigged for the middlemen it is about like trying to win 3 card monty, its a total scam. living a hop, skip, and a jump from two major music centers I've held the actual contracts in my hand, got to see what actually happens. i've seen artists that sell more than half a million copies of an album they 1.-recorded on their own time with their own money and 2.-promoted themselves with no help from the record co get handed a BILL for $50,000 for the "privilege" of giving them a half a million in sales! I've seen bands have to break up and never work together because the "standard deals" for new artists are so damned skewed that unless they sell Britney numbers right out the gate they LOSE MONEY and they LOSE THEIR SONGS whether they sell Britney numbers or not!

So Cracker, who last i heard was working as a producer and thus being a middleman himself, can frankly kiss my ass. The system DOES NOT WORK for anybody but the leeches, PERIOD. As a final note, know what Metallica gets for all their MAFIAA ass kissing? 89c an album. That's it. they practically blew the record execs and the greedy fucks won't even give them a whole dollar. Fuck the MAFIAA and the quicker they DIAF the better, it'll be a better world without them

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree. A song is not someone's property, and no amount of wishful thinking or even congressional lawmaking can magically make it so. The same argument holds for intellectual property in all its forms. Granting a monopoly to individuals for their ideas is bad for society and leads to less innovation and creativity.

Yeah, let the artists and creators starve, that way we're sure to see more innovation.

Re:for artists?

[bws111]

Guess what? A house is not someone's property either except for the fact that congress made it so. How about we get congress to void all deeds (or simply not enforce them) and see what remains your property.

Re:for artists?

[Purity Of Essence]

The whole purpose of copyright is to make sure artists get paid for their labor.

No, that's exactly half its purpose. The other half is to get works into the public domain after a limited period of time, something right-holders are fighting tooth-and-nail to prevent. Copyright law becomes a mockery of itself when that limited period can be extended an unlimited number of times.

Re:for artists?

[Skarecrow77]

I think you're arguing this from the wrong point of view. There are many valid arguements on this side of the issue, but "it's easy to do so it shouldn't be wrong" is not one of them.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget, Apple is a middleman too.

Not just for artists, but for developers as well.

Re:for artists?

[hazah]

Why do you assume they starve, exactly?

Re:for artists?

[Gr33nJ3ll0]

Actually the argument has been going on since the beginning of the printing press, if not earlier. In the 1900s the argument was all about the copyright the song writer held over his sheet music, which was easily copied and re-printed by rival companies, depriving the artist of royalties. I suspect that there might have been arguments between various bards as they plied their trade over people overhearing and repeating their songs, who knows?

Re:for artists?

[geminidomino]

There are many valid arguements on this side of the issue, but "it's easy to do so it shouldn't be wrong" is not one of them.

That's not the argument. The argument is "What the fuck does scarcity economics have to do with digital distribution?"

Re:for artists?

[Grayhand]

Everyone makes the same silly ones and zeroes argument and they ignore the real issue. Producing the music and advertizing it costs money. Yes digital distribution is dirt cheap but even it isn't free. There's hosting and bandwidth considerations. Also everyone makes the argument every time that artists should only charge for live performances. A little reality check. Small venues don't pay for the music. Yes you make lots of money when you play 10,000 seat houses but the ones that handle a few hundred don't pay they expect bands to do it for exposure. It's been that way since the 80s. What's the point of exposure if people expect you to give away the recordings? The Venues don't want to pay the artists and the fans don't want to pay for the music. Basically no one wants to pay the artists so you might as well get a job at Starbucks, at least there's money in it.

Re:for artists?

[Belial6]

Except for the moral argument that the copyright 'stole' ideas from other people's creations. 100% of all works under copyright are pulled from a tainted well. Thus, there is no ethical or moral argument FOR copyright at the personal level. The only argument for copyright is to support the functioning and improvement of society.

Thus, the moral standing of copyright is highly debatable. I say, tax it as real property. Let the 'owners' declare it's value every year on their taxes. If it gets 'pirated', let them sue for that value being 'stolen'. This would still leave the profit motive to generate new 'IP', while encouraging 'owners' to accurately declare the 'IP's worth. Too high, and they are paying unnecessary taxes. Too low, and anybody can copy with impunity. Plus. New tax stream!

Re:for artists?

[hackula]

Fuck the US Constitution. It does not talk about a whole bunch of things. It did talk about how slavery is A-OK. BTW, I agree with everything else you are saying, I just take issue with the constitution argument.

Re:for artists?

[geminidomino]

Why is it people who quote the constitution never bother quoting the whole sentence:

Because everyone up to and including SCOTUS seems to think the most important part of what you bolded is irrelevant?

Particularly, the word "limited."

It's certainly conducive to an attitude of "why should we unwashed masses play by the rules when the fat cats refuse to?"

Re:for artists?

[darjen]

Physical property ownership makes sense for society to enforce. Intellectual property does not. The ramifications are totally different.

Re:for artists?

[geminidomino]

Bimbo Newton Crosby

OT as hell but DAMN.

Been a long time since I've seen a Short Circuit reference...

Re:for artists?

[hackula]

No way. Piracy and all aside, an artist should have control over his/her songs. Without some protection, bullshit high profile musicians could simply steal songs from lesser known artists much in the same way Elvis did with a lot of his hits (which most people would agree was pretty fucked up). Also, corporations would be free to sell an artists music without compensation, or use recordings in ads. Sorry, but no thanks. It sounds cool in theory, but some IP still seems better than none at all.

Re:for artists?

[jp10558]

Also, in a society that considers government to represent and be "of and for the people", perhaps if some large enough percentage do something or see nothing wrong with other people doing something - it de-facto isn't wrong, and ought to be legal?

Re:for artists?

[Endo13]

If they're too stupid to figure out that they're no good at content creation and should have gotten a day job, well then, their content probably wouldn't have been worth jack anyway.

Giving incentive to create more useless dreck is not innovation.

Re:for artists?

[Endo13]

Wrong. We call houses and other physical things our property because it's human nature and instinct to do so.

Re:for artists?

[kiwimate]

This system has worked very well for fans and artists.

No, it's been superb for the middleman, the famous MAFIAA.

Didn't read the article, didja...Read paragraph six, the one that starts "'Itâ(TM)s OK not to pay for music because record companies rip off artists and do not pay artists anything.' In the vast majority of cases, this is not true." And paragraph seven, the one that starts "Secondly, by law the record label must pay songwriters (who may also be artists) something called a âoemechanical royaltyâ for sales of CDs or downloads of the song. This is paid regardless of whether a record is recouped or not."

Re:for artists?

[Solandri]

Fundamentally, this is an issue of rights vs. practicality. Ideally the author should have exclusive right to distribution of their work. Practically this was easy to do in the old days of printed books and stamped vinyl records. Today, books and music are so easy to copy that completely enforcing authors' rights to control distribution of their work would require creating a legal and enforcement infrastructure whose cost far exceeds the value all authors combined contribute to society (not to mention turns 90%+ of society into criminals). It's completely impractical.

However, since the right in question isn't a human right, but rather an artificial right granted for economic expedience, some compromise can easily resolve the situation. In the old days, wedding photographers used to charge little for the wedding shoot, but would charge a lot for the prints. The wedding shoot itself only took a few hours with small hand-portable equipment. Printing represented the majority of the cost - requiring large equipment and expensive materials, and frequently hours of arduous work retouching to make the picture just right. So this cost structure made sense.

Today the situation has reversed. The most difficult/creative part of the process is the wedding shoot itself. Retouching can be done in a few minutes to a few seconds on a computer, and prints are literally a dime a dozen. Technology has realigned the cost structure to where most of the cost is in the original shoot. Consequently, most wedding photographs today charge a lot of the wedding shoot, and very little for the prints or even give the prints for free. Times changed, and they adapted.

This is what needs to happen to music. The Constitution was written when reproduction and distribution were a large if not the largest cost in the process of getting creative ideas out to the public. Therefore it made sense give authors exclusive control of reproduction/distribution. But today, reproduction/distribution have gotten so cheap it almost can't be measured (200 GB monthly data cap for $50 works out to 0.1 cents per 4 MB MP3). Insisting that authors retain control of reproduction/distribution doesn't reflect the reality of these price changes, and will lead to huge economic inefficiencies if allowed to persist. 100 years from now when everyone could potentially own a solar powered car by printing it on a 3D printer for $500 dollars (2012 dollars), do you really want the automakers holding the copyright on the design charging $30,000 per copy for "distribution"?

The nearly zero cost of reproduction and distribution is why the industry is trying to hold onto traditional copyright law. By all rights, you should be paid for work you do. And when a lot of work was involved in making duplicate copies of your work and distributing them around the country, you deserved to be paid a lot for it. But now that those costs of dropped to near zero, the industry sees a huge profit opportunity - being paid per copy, while paying nearly nothing to make copies. No other industry works like this. If I construct a computer for a client, I get paid for that one computer. If I prepare a meal for a customer, I get paid for that one meal. If I stitch a tear in a shirt, I get paid for that one shirt. Only in the copyrighted industries do we have the concept that a person can work once, then get paid for it over and over without ever lifting a finger again. That idea made sense in old times because reproducing and distributing a work required much effort than lifting a finger. But now that it requires less effort than that, the law needs to change to reflect that economic reality.

Re:for artists?

[JesseMcDonald]

Guess what? A house is not someone's property either except for the fact that congress made it so.

That's not true. Anything which is scarce has a de facto owner in the form of the person(s) with the right to consume it. In the case of a house, that means living in it (since only a limited number of people can do that at any given time) or altering it in any way, up to and including destroying it. The idea of a persistent owner is somewhat artificial—though not actually dependent on government as you implied—but the only alternative to someone (or everyone) having the right to consume a scarce good is that no one does, which would render the good useless.

Without scarcity, however, there is no need for an owner. Superabundant goods, including anything digital, are not capable of being consumed (used up), so there is no rivalry involved. Any number of individuals can benefit from them to the fullest without depriving any of the others, so there is no need to arbitrate between them by considering a digital good the property of some, to the exclusion of others.

Re:for artists?

[Skarecrow77]

A. I don't think that's what GP was saying,
and
B... risking the ire of the single-minded legion of modders in this thread:

why the fuck does digital distribution need to run on scarcity economics? It's not scarce, so it's not valuable? Why, just because it's trivial to copy music digitally, is digital music now considered to have little-to-no value?

If you're asking why -artifical scarcity- needs to be implimented in this scenario, I would guess that you already know the answer to that, but just for the sake of arguement, it is because of the tragedy of the commons. None of us wants to pay for music when it is freely available. I know I don't. But all of us not paying for music has long term devastating impact on the production of music as it currently exists.

And of course all attempts at artifical scarcity are failing... and not necessarily because they're wrong.

The music industry will change. That's a given. It's probably unavoidable at this point. The question that the author of TFA is posing isn't a "what can I do to legislate people away from doing what they're doing" but "how can I properly explain to people what they, not the RIAA, are doing to the music and musicians they say they love". He is pointing out that changing the way that music is created and that society treats artists is the tyranny of the majority. We are forcing these changes not because it's "the right thing to do" but simply because it's in our own intrest, and we vastly outnumber them.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the sentence you just quoted, you'll notice that the purpose is to "promote the progress..", and the means to this end is "securing for limited times ... exclusive right[s]". GP's comment stands: the purpose of copyright and patents is to promote progress.

Re:for artists?

[shutdown -p now]

The argument is "What the fuck does scarcity economics have to do with digital distribution?"

Everything, since the same people are agents of both, so you have to make them work together somehow.

Re:for artists?

[Baloroth]

Guess what? A house is not someone's property either except for the fact that congress made it so. How about we get congress to void all deeds (or simply not enforce them) and see what remains your property.

Not true. According to Locke's political philosophy (on which the US Constitution was heavily based), the right to physical property is an inherent human right. Government exists to protect it: it does not grant it. Same with life and liberty, or do you also think that Congress gives people the right to live? No: the right is part of human existence. The purpose of forming government is to protect it against others who would infringe on it by force, whether individuals or nations.

Re:for artists?

[Skarecrow77]

Also, in a society that considers government to represent and be "of and for the people", perhaps if some large enough percentage do something or see nothing wrong with other people doing something - it de-facto isn't wrong, and ought to be legal?

Because that arguement legalized slavery.

Some things are just -wrong- even if enough selfish people want to do it.

Note, I'm not equating filesharing with slavery (because I know that the downmodders have their finger on the button). I'm saying that the arguement you're using to promote filesharing is a very weak one, and you need to latch on to the better ones if you hope to make your point.

Re:for artists?

[HornWumpus]

But all of us not paying for music has long term devastating impact on the production of music as it currently exists.

We can only hope. A world without Beebers is a dream.

Why do musicians think the last 80 years is the norm? The world is returning to the norm. They will get paid by audiences for live performances. Instead of a very few getting paid mega bucks, many will make a living. Sucks to be a 'studio band' (e.g. Guns and Roses) that can't play live.

Re:for artists?

[Ghostworks]

Isn't that what already happens when we fail to pay our annual usage fee? (You know, property taxes....)

Re:for artists?

[Digicaf]

Kind of, but not really. It takes time to build a house just like it takes time to make art. Just because it costs very little to copy the final product does not automatically mean that there wasn't some investment of time and effort on the front end. Copyright law seeks to recognize that original time and effort.

Most of the pro-copying arguments I've seen involve this logic: "It costs me almost nothing to copy this thing, therefore it has no value and the creating artist deserves nothing for it". I've seen it dressed up a lot of different ways but it usually boils down to that, and it's a logical fallacy. If it were true, then people wouldn't recognize a difference between listening to static, and listening to music.

Whether or not intellectual property has value can be argued all day long, but that's not at issue here. What is at issue is whether or not an implementation of an idea has value. Most people confuse those two things, simply because the music they interact with is so easily manipulated. We must be very careful to recognize the difference between a thought, and something created from that thought. Creation has value, the only question is how much value, and how to recognize it.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Paying $15 for a shit album and competing with WalMart is what killed the independent record stores. And I do buy my music, generally from the band at the show. I also get a lot of great live music free from Archive.org with the blessing of the bands.

You want to support your artists? Go to the live shows, buy the t-shirts (just don't wear the shirt to their show, don't be that guy). Feel bad for downloading a few tunes or an album? Let a friend borrow your disc? Drop a few bucks in the guitar case at their next show, or offer to buy a live CD from the band (burned CD and sharpie cover art). All the money goes directly to the band that way, and I guarantee you the band has received orders of magnitude more money directly from me than they got from their record company (again, major label not self published) for what I purchased. If that is not an option go to a local independent record store.

Local record store here is still in business, sells obscure indie, sells local artists, sells used CDs, sells used Vinyl, sells new CDS. AND SELLS TOP NEW RELEASES AT $10 AND LETS YOU HEAR BEFORE YOU BUY. Support Record Store Day.

Sadly, many new artists on record labels have to pay absurd prices to the label for the discs of their own music they sell at their shows because the record label has control. Oh, and the new contracts the MAFIAA offer now want a piece of all the band's touring revenue and merch sales. Meet the new boss, now with extra sadism. I'm looking at you DeadandBuried(TM)Nation.

Yes, professionally produced recordings can be quite expensive, that is why there are local recording studios offering 5 song EPs fully mixed for $500 bucks, or 10 song full CD's for a grand and add $100-150 for 100 pressed CDS. Doesn't sound like a 10,000 copy break even point now does it? Admittedly it's not Bob Rock in there producing your record, but there are many incredible engineers out there. Once you take the record company hookers and blow charges away, music gets a lot more affordable. Yes, studios, engineers, and everyone else deserves to be paid for their work. THEIR is the active word here, not someone else's. David makes many good points. Just as they have DMCA for IP takedowns, maybe a similar system for Google and other advertisers for the labels to report ads on an infringing site. Or just like youtube, if a site is hosting and making money off of advertising let a VERIFIED rights holder assign the advertising revenue from the infringing bit to the proper holder.

Lastly, how about collective bargaining or some anti-trust protection for new artists signing up with a major label? Independently audited promotion and recording costs. Caps on % fees for labels. Realistic limits on promotion charges. Tour revenue and merch sales goes to artists, not labels. Absolute abolishment of the breakage fee artists are charged for downloads. I think David said something about record companies eating the loss if an album fizzled. My ass, just ask the artists who were released from their contracts and never paid, but had their music legally stolen by the record labels to offset costs.

Captcha = causal

Re:for artists?

[Skarecrow77]

The ironic thing is that the Beebers of the world will likely be the ones that survive the longest. The mega-stars, the obscenely-pushed "talent".

When the bottom drops out of an existing industry, it's never the top that feels it, it's the bottom. it's the 99% of profesisonal musicians who are filing tax returns averaging $33k a year with no benefits (TFA's statistics, not verified) who are hurt first. It will be years and years before this sort of thing affects the megastars, and by then they'll all be obscenely rich anyway.

Re:for artists?

[Radres]

The new reality is that once you record and distribute your music to more than a handful of close friends, it's now the world's music and not just yours. If you can't afford the up-front costs to record (which are dwindling every day as computers and recording equipment get cheaper), then you should find something else to do with your time besides record music. Your distribution cost argument is laughable when you consider peer-to-peer file sharing.

I still think that despite these hurdles, we are going to have thousands of great songs each year for people to listen to, more than any one person could possibly have time to consume. If it really gets desperate, we could move to a model where the rich fund talented musicians to produce at the start of their careers.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Scarcity = value. It's a truth of market based economics that things don't hold value based on how difficult they are to produce or some sort of ethical concept of how much something should be worth. Value is based on supply and demand. A digital recording has infinite supply and therefore there is little value.

The writing of the song and the original performance is where the scarcity lies. Unless companies figure out how to monetize this portion they are destined for failure due to economic realities brought on by technological progress. This is not an ethical issue, this is an economic issue and the people who want to make it an ethical issue are people who can't adapt to a changing reality.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

I explain this as a de facto law I've dubbed "Copyright forfeit upon release". Once you send it out to the world at large, you no longer have control over it. Is this just to obvious for artists to understand? Anyone care to wrap it up in a metaphor involving ancient cultures, the spirit of a badger and sensation of thinking about thoughts?

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be confusing purpose with mechanism. It is pretty simple:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts -- purpose

by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. -- mechanism

The OP stated that the whole purpose of copyright is to make sure artists get paid for their labor. Nope, that is the mechanism that supports the purpose (of promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts.)

Re:for artists?

[UnknownSoldier]

> Before the invention of copyright culture was a shared commodity.
Correct.

> Copyright was invented as a way for the artist to recoup his labor with money,

Um, NO, it was invented for publishers to maintain control by _preventing_ other publishers from making a profit!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law
"The history of copyright law starts with early privileges and monopolies granted to printers of books. The British Statute of Anne 1710, full title "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned", was the first copyright statute. Initially copyright law only applied to the copying of books."

and

"Pope Alexander VI issued a bull in 1501 against the unlicensed printing of books and in 1559 the Index Expurgatorius, or List of Prohibited Books, was issued for the first time."

and

"The first copyright privilege in England bears date 1518 and was issued to Richard Pynson, King's Printer, the successor to William Caxton. The privilege gives a monopoly for the term of two years. The date is 15 years later than that of the first privilege issued in France. Early copyright privileges were called "monopolies," ...

and

"In England the printers, known as stationers, formed a collective organisation, known as the Stationers' Company. In the 16th century the Stationers' Company was given the power to require all lawfully printed books to be entered into its register. Only members of the Stationers' Company could enter books into the register. This meant that the Stationers' Company achieved a dominant position over publishing in 17th century England"

- - -

With the history lesson out of the way, here is my commentary:

What most people seem to forget is that Copyright is a compromise between two diametrically opposed idealogies. That is, All ideas, discoveries, inventions, expressions, or representations:

* should be FREELY available and shared amongst the public for the greater good of EVERYONE.
versus
* should ONLY be available for those that are willing to pay ONE for it

Said another way, copyright is a balance between "needs of the many vs the greed of the one" with TIME used a means to control the balance between the shift of individual profit to society gaining the benefits.

Keep in mind, anytime you take any ideology to an extreme, it is never beneficial.

'The printing press changed the artificial "ownership" of ideas by disseminating knowledge (which provides control which is ultimately power -- the power to control your own destiny.) Certain people / organizations would duplicate books off a "master copy /original" and sell them. Since anyone could copy and sell, this would cut into your sales as a publisher. As a result Publishers saw that this competition would threaten their profits so they banded together to petition the government to grant them an exclusive license so that only they could reproduce books. That is, ONLY they had the "right" to "copy", NOT the author !

Copyright has _always_ been about control, and greed.

The foundation of civilization is built upon SHARING ideas. What value does "art" have if the artist has no one to appreciate it?? What do you think "Culture" is? A sharing of perspectives, values, morals, art, science. It is not unreasonable for a creator to want compensation for the time and effort he used to create their work; but to _demand_ that kind of respect from everyone shows a total lack of understanding what culture is. Since now-a-days text, video, audio, can all be represented digitally and copied without the original artist "losing" anything (except _potential_ future profits) it is MUCH harder to gauge what the true "cost" is when society enjoys

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they're too stupid to figure out that they're no good at content creation and should have gotten a day job, well then, their content probably wouldn't have been worth jack anyway.

Giving incentive to create more useless dreck is not innovation.

You think a large corporation isn't just going to steal content when there's no legal reason to force them to pay for it?

It's not my fault that so much of the public likes paying for dreck, but just because there's dreck out there, you want to destroy the good stuff too. That's not an improvement.

Re:for artists?

[Grishnakh]

Ok, and how exactly do you know that filesharing is "wrong"? Slavery is a bit of a red herring, because no one asked the slaves what their opinion on the issue was. Files aren't people, so they don't get a vote; slaves are people, so even though they didn't get a vote back then, they should have.

Things are "wrong" because the majority of people think they're "wrong". Then they make a law to restrict it, so they can restrict the activities of other people, with the goal being to create social harmony and keep the majority of people happy. Stealing cars is illegal, because in a society where cars are necessary for transportation, it would be a giant hardship to find your $30k car missing when you need to go to work in the morning, and now you need another one and don't have another $30k lying around to buy it; most people agree this this is a problem, so they agree to ban the theft of cars. In practice, car theft is a small problem, very few people do it, and if you were to put the issue up for a vote, very few people would actually vote to legalize it, because they don't want their car stolen either.

Now of course, if you're a religious conservative, you'll probably try to say that morality is absolute, but that's mostly bunk. There's nothing in the 10 Commandments about file sharing, though there is something in there about theft, but then again, that can equally apply to slaves, so that's really quite useless since it doesn't specify exactly what can and can't be considered "property". If you went back to those days and tried to tell people that ideas were property, they'd think you were nuts. So unless you can get God himself to come down and settle the issue for us, then we're stuck with popular morality whether you like it or not.

We tried banning alcohol here in the US about 100 years ago. It was a complete disaster. That's a good illustration of what happens when you try to ban something that most citizens want to do, and are going to do despite any laws to the contrary. Ergo, laws must be made based on popular whims: if most people don't want it to be illegal, then it shouldn't be. Otherwise, what you have is not a democracy at all, but a totalitarian police state (it'll be a despotism to keep something illegal that people want to do, and it'll have to turn into a police state to keep fighting the will of the people).

Re:for artists?

[Grishnakh]

None of us wants to pay for music when it is freely available. I know I don't. But all of us not paying for music has long term devastating impact on the production of music as it currently exists.

Bullshit. Every time one of my favorite bands comes to town, I plunk down well over $100 for tickets to go listen to them. Judging by all the people at the concerts I attend, plus all the T-shirts I see sold at them, there's a LOT of money being made by people "paying for music" (or really, a musical experience).

This whole idea of selling recorded music is very new, and really rather silly. We're just going back to the way it was before, where musicians had to tour and perform live if they wanted to make any money; it's been like that for millennia.

Re:for artists?

[DerekLyons]

Why do musicians think the last 80 years is the norm? The world is returning to the norm. They will get paid by audiences for live performances. Instead of a very few getting paid mega bucks, many will make a living.

And where will they be making a living? (Not that very many outside of the top performers made a decent living before the last eighty years.) The concert halls, musical theatres, etc... etc... that provided a bare living a century ago are all but gone - not only physically, but from our culture as well. (They've been replaced by movies, TV, and the internet.) Dance halls, which used to be fairly common, are also all but gone. (Nightclubs aren't dance halls, and you can't make much of a living playing either anyhow.) Making the situation even worse is the fragmentation of musical culture over the last few decades...
 
As is so often the case, the "golden age" of your imagination never existed in reality.

Re:for artists?

[Grishnakh]

To be fair, GnR used to be a live band, 15+ years ago. These days, it's not really a "band" any more, it's just one guy who's kept the name while everyone else has fallen away and moved on to other things (like Velvet Revolver).

Re:for artists?

[Grishnakh]

Those 99% never made any money anyway; it was always the megastars that made all the money. Most of the rest had some short-term fame, but they didn't make any money; sure, they got to live it up for a while, but they were doing that by taking out high-interest loans from the record companies. Now they're working as security guards.

Re:for artists?

[Skarecrow77]

To harken back to a previous arguement I made, ethics can trump economics. If not, we'd still have slavery.

Your arguement does point out a flaw that both sides are making however. They are equating the distribution of CDs and the distribution of Digital copies as if they were two different processes for the same result, that could be weighed vs each other. They are not the same thing.

The CD (cassette, album, whatever) always included in it's retail price the distribution cost, the advertising cost, the production cost, the management cost, and the payment to the talent for the original creation. They could get away with this method of bundling costs simply because until the mid-90s, CDs were not easily copied.

now that we have digital distribution (and digital copying), the industry will need to find a new way to monetize the other portions of the bundle, the advertising, the production, the management, and the talent payment. they need to find a way to do this not because their original method was the wrong way to do things, but only because it is now obsolete. A lot of people in the comments here are equating "0 price for distribution" now as "0 price for music, period", and that's simply wrong-headedness.

We've got a chance here to shape the way an industry and a cultural medium we all love (or else we wouldn't be in here) is reborn in the face of a new paradigm, and we're spending the time saying "lol fuck you mafiaa" instead.

Re:for artists?

[HornWumpus]

They sucked balls live 15 years ago. If it wasn't the first date of the tour you were wasting your money.

Re:for artists?

[Radres]

Copying music costs the artist nothing. Having you squat in my house does cost me something. What we are learning is that once you release something that can be easily replicated by a computer over the internet, that thing is no longer just yours. The world has changed; you need to adjust.

Re:for artists?

[HornWumpus]

Not my job to assure they make a living. I know lots of musicians, if the gig covers the cost of getting there and back they will play just for the fun of it.

They can all work day jobs as far as I'm concerned.

Re:for artists?

[Skarecrow77]

as I pointed out before, you cant' make something legal just because lots of people want to do it, because people do what's best for themselves in the short term, not what's best for themselves in the long term or society in general. It's the tragedy of the commons.

you can, and certainly should, reconsider if something should be legal in the face of overwhelming popular support of it being legal. you can reconsider if the benefit in keeping it illegal is disportionate to the harm in legalizing it.

That doesn't mean that the answer to the mob should always be "yes, do whatever you want". Sometimes the best answer is "no".

We elect our leaders not just to represent our voices, but to -govern- us. I think we can all agree that they generally do a piss-poor job of this, but I'm talking about the theoretical here.

and to answer your question, I -don't- know whether file sharing of music should be illegal. Nor do I know it whether it should be legal. What I know is that it's a complex debate and we do ourselves a disservice by pretending otherwise. That is why I told GP to champion better arguements for his point.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

lolwut? You bitch on slashdot about how people should not be permitted to post anonymously, but now you bitch because some other site won't let you post anonymously?

Re:for artists?

[Znork]

Paying for music does not require artificial scarcity; there are many methods by which creators could be compensated that do not require control over duplication. And frankly I doubt even wiping out monetary compensation from the music industry would affect it negatively, considering the vast majority of music, with or without functioning copyright, gets produced without any reasonable expectation of significant compensation at all.

Fundamentally there is no ethical wrong with copying; copying is what humans do and it's what keeps humanity moving forward instead of standing still and starting over each generation. Preventing copying on the other hand is unethical as it is an intrusion into others freedom to do something that does not affect the complainer (in the absence of copyright it would be hard to argue harm done due to copying, indicating there is no natural law foundation for harm caused). Whether that unethical limit (a limit whose harm can actually be shown ouside law) on peoples rights leads to a tradeoff that is more valuable or not is the question.

Simply stated, preventing copying is not 'the right thing to do', and the question is if it should be done, and the only reason it should conceivably be done is if it is in the majorities interest. If it isn't, allowing such unethical laws to stand in the interest of a few would be the wrong thing to do.

And on that point it's simply an economic question where creating artificial scarcity destroys vast amounts of wealth due to the marginal value of most duplicatable objects for most people fall below the market clearing price on the demand curve. Ie, the 10 people for which object A is worth more than the sales price of 10 dollars buy object A, but the several thousand for which it is worth less but non-zero go unpurchased and unduplicated, which in total is far more potential wealth that is lost to the economy.

In the ideal situation the producer would get paid that $100 value while still allowing the unrealized $thousands to get duplicated into existence. But that would require a system far different than copyright.

Re:for artists?

[Radres]

Why would Elvis steal other musicians' songs if there was no money to be made in it? Why would anyone care if Elvis recorded his own version of a little-known band's song if it didn't result in him achieving super-stardom?

If they used music in ads without providing compensation, that would mean that the artist isn't a vested interest in the product being sold, which is the main reason for objecting to having your favorite band sell out to the big corporation.

Re:for artists?

[Skarecrow77]

But some of the best albums I ever bought were by that 99%. I'd rather they had incentive to keep making music.

widespread popularity has -never- equated with perceived quality. if it did, mcdonalds french fries would be america's "best" food, budweiser would be america's "best" beer, and so on.

I want people who aren't megastars to keep making music cause a lot of it is worthwhile nonetheless.

Re:for artists?

[kiwimate]

Why do musicians think the last 80 years is the norm? The world is returning to the norm. They will get paid by audiences for live performances. Instead of a very few getting paid mega bucks, many will make a living.

Except that they won't. There was a recent article on /. which pointed to a post by the same David Lowery. In his post, he made a brief comment about the economics of touring. Suffice to say it's hardly a reliable way to make a living. If you're in a tour bus you'd better be playing to a sold out venue. If you're in a van, well, stinks to be you...

(And I've been there, done that - touring, for all but a few, is a desperate scramble of musicians playing for the love of it. Mostly, you lose money and are forever running to get back from your late night gig so that you can get to your paying job on time and struggle to stay awake on three hours of sleep...just so you can do it again.)

Re:for artists?

[Skarecrow77]

how many touring bands and musical acts were there in the millenia before recorded music? how many genres of music?

the widespread exposure of your favorite bands that allows them to play huge halls and arenas and charge $100 per ticket is purely a result of broadcast and recorded music. you're also dismissing any band that isn't famous enough to play those huge halls or charge those large amounts of money. A lot of those bands produce music that, while not as popular as the arena bands, is quite often preferable to listen to.

to imply that we can simply "go back to the way it was before" is disingenous. This is a new playing field with new rules.

Re:for artists?

[robkeeney]

They're going to. People who make good music love to do it, and love for it to be heard. They make recordings of their music and post them on youtube or whereever for people to see and hear them for free. There are a lot of really talented people in the world. Very few of them get any radio play.

Re:for artists?

[next_ghost]

I think you're arguing this from the wrong point of view. There are many valid arguements on this side of the issue, but "it's easy to do so it shouldn't be wrong" is not one of them.

I think that the only argument that's really needed is this: "No matter how hard you try to legislate water to flow uphill, it just won't happen."

That said, TFA is utter BS. I support my country's Pirate Party. I did a lot of work a few years ago in open translation of Free Culture into Czech. And I say screw the corporations. My only concern is about culture. If you can make a living from your art, well, that's nice, good for you. But I won't give a damn if you can't. Content doesn't become culture by someone making money from it. The entertainment industry is not our culture no matter how much they try to make it look that way. They just happen to be the biggest contributor to our culture at the moment.

Content becomes culture when it's being shared. Think about it: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Frankenstein, Dune, Star Wars, Star Trek, Moby Dick, Disney cartoons etc., all of that is part of our culture. Why? Because people know what those stories are all about. But there's also a bajillion obscure books and movies that are not part of our culture because nobody has ever heard of them. That's why locking down content is wrong. I don't care why you're trying to lock down content, whether it's for money, political ends or whatever, it's wrong because it harms culture. If the lockdown is successful, then what's important part of our culture now may be lost forever just some 10, 20 years from now. I don't mind paying for content but at the same time I won't jump through burning hoops just for the privilege of paying somebody. The author has the right to get a fair share of profit from whoever makes money using his content and not to publish the content in the first place if he chooses so. But nobody has the right to lock down published content. Not the author, not anybody else.

Re:for artists?

[dmbasso]

Didn't pass the "interpretation reading skills" exam, didja? Where did I say it was ok to not pay the artist? Here, read this -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2925975&cid=40374301

Re:for artists?

[Grishnakh]

If you don't do what the mob wants, they'll replace you or overthrow you, eventually.

Yes, the mob makes bad decisions, because popular whims change quickly. The job of a good leader is to look out for peoples' long-term interest. Over a longer term, the mob will forget the things you did that were unpopular, if they've changed their minds about it. But if they haven't, then you need to change yours if you want to remain the leader.

This is the whole reason the Founders originally wrote the Constitution so that Senators were elected by State legislatures, and not by the people directly; it provided a much longer feedback loop, if you will. Eventually, people could change the Senators (by electing different legislators), but it took a lot of time, so the Senate didn't feel the need to answer to the immediate whims of the people the way the House of Representatives did (who are popularly elected every two years).

So, if something's illegal, and people are still widely disobeying the law 20+ years later, then it really shouldn't be illegal. In a properly functioning democracy, it wouldn't be, because eventually the people would elect new politicians who promise to overturn the unpopular law. The problem we have now is that our government isn't functioning properly at all, since it's a fascist government and doesn't represent the people at all.

Re:for artists?

[Grishnakh]

There were tons of traveling musicians in the middle ages. Shakespeare (not a band, but still a performer) had little trouble playing huge outdoor theaters, and that was long before any recording or broadcast technology was invented.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Only in the copyrighted industries do we have the concept that a person can work once, then get paid for it over and over without ever lifting a finger again."

No, that concept rules in the real-estate business too. You construct a building once, and then collect rent on it forever. (Not a perfect analogy since some maintenance is required... although if you're like my landlord, there's almost no maintenance, just rent-seeking.) Tenant farming might be an even better example.

Re:for artists?

[jp10558]

I have lots of arguments for filesharing being legal. This is one I thought had broader implications that is often forgotten. Specifically, if you govern by the consent of the governed - then you theoretically can't keep making laws that go against the will of the people.

And remember, our government doesn't know better than the people. They certainly don't listen to experts and are rarely experts on any given topic they make laws on.

I'm not sure you will get widespread agreement that we elect leaders to "govern" us as if we are electing parents, as opposed to represent our goals.

Re:for artists?

[next_ghost]

as I pointed out before, you cant' make something legal just because lots of people want to do it, because people do what's best for themselves in the short term, not what's best for themselves in the long term or society in general. It's the tragedy of the commons.

you can, and certainly should, reconsider if something should be legal in the face of overwhelming popular support of it being legal. you can reconsider if the benefit in keeping it illegal is disportionate to the harm in legalizing it.

You're turning the issue of legality upside down. Things should only be illegal when they cause serious harm to the entire society AND making them illegal won't cause even worse problems. So what's the harm from unauthorized file sharing? Well, in the worst case, some people may not get a return on their investment. Big deal, like that doesn't happen to millions of people in other professions every day. And what's worse, it happens to lots of artists anyway, regardless of copyright.

and to answer your question, I -don't- know whether file sharing of music should be illegal.

If you don't know a very good reason why something should be illegal, then you already know one very good reason why it shouldn't.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, just because it's trivial to copy music digitally, is digital music now considered to have little-to-no value?

In a word, yes. The processes of creating, distributing (as well as performing), storing, and even listening to music have value, but music itself, abstracted from these processes, has no value. Artists should be compensated for their creativity, but ought not comprise a special class of beneficiaries of copyright law. Instead, what a just and economically efficient society requires is a market mechanism that rewards musical artists for their past and expected future efforts of composition and that then permits distribution of their compositions in a manner that promotes maximal societal value.

Re:for artists?

[Zordak]

So just to be clear, since you've released this comment "to the world," if I could hypothetically find a way to turn it into a very successful pamphlet, and I sold millions of copies, and then turned it into First Sale: The Motion Picture, which grosses $300 million at the box office, and I don't give you a single penny---you would be okay with that, because for you to be able to stop me from doing any of that would require you to "restrict my liberties"?

Are you an avid atheist? Would you be okay if I used quotes from your post to promote evangelical Christianity? (Or if you're a fundie, would you be okay if I used your post to promote atheism?) Are you pro-choice? Would you be okay if I used quotes from your post at a pro-life rally? (Or if you're pro-life, would you be okay if I used it at a pro-choice rally?) Are you a Linux zealot? Would you be okay with Microsoft using your post to promote its products?

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

you might want to ask that of Hal A Varian, Chief Economist of Google...

http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/effs-john-perry-barlow-is-wrong/

There are many valid arguements on this side of the issue, but "it's easy to do so it shouldn't be wrong" is not one of them.

That's not the argument. The argument is "What the fuck does scarcity economics have to do with digital distribution?"

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could probably make money as a studio band too, even now, if they understood the internet and could produce the music themselves long enough to build a following that'd pay for it. Hell Radiohead and Reznor could do it, sure they got big during the MPAA heyday, but there's always going to be a culture that follows bands with actually talented Musicians. You see DJ's mixing songs getting fairly popular, which is right up Reznor's alley.

What there won't always be is bands like Cracker, who get shoved down everyone watching MTV's throats for an entire summer as filler between soundgarden, nirvana, pearl jam and whoever else. Radio/MTV timeslot hits riding the actual decent music in the genre to almost mainstream relevance. That's not a bad thing. Now if we could just ween kids off crap like Bieber, boy bands, and other horrible pop.

I suppose if you are What's his name from historically irrelevant generic band of whatever genre is popular during your heyday that's a bad thing and you'd rather things went back to what got you your 15 minutes and "almost" platinum record. For the rest of us, why the hell are we supposed to be sad if he ends up working a day job like the rest of the world? Did we lose anything? no.

Re:for artists?

[meta-monkey]

You're right about how the photography industry has changed. That doesn't quite work for recording artists, though. The difference is that wedding photographers are making a custom product that only has value to the client. No one else (except maybe your mom) wants your wedding photos. And they're not working on spec, either. They're commissioned directly by the end user to create a one-of-a-kind work that only has value to the client. Musicians, though, are working on spec. They or the record company are putting up tens of thousands to record a song hoping they can sell copies of it for a buck apiece to the public. So the wedding photographer model won't work for recording artists.

Only in the copyrighted industries do we have the concept that a person can work once, then get paid for it over and over without ever lifting a finger again. That idea made sense in old times because reproducing and distributing a work required much effort than lifting a finger. But now that it requires less effort than that, the law needs to change to reflect that economic reality.

The problem really with the disconnect between the artists/industry and the consumer is the industry has forgotten that they don't have any fundamental, natural rights. They have protections granted by lawbut they don't have fundamental "intellectual property rights" the way we have inalienable human rights that the Constitution says government may not restrict (except in certain specific cases and only with due process).

I have a right to free speech. If a musician sings me a song he wrote...I have a right to turn around and sing that same song to somebody else. I have a right to my personal property, to use it how I see fit (unless it hurts blah blah blah). So I have this copy machine right here called a "computer"...I have the right to use it to copy a song or a photograph or a movie or whatever. But nobody has a fundamental right to not have their stuff copied.

This is a bit of a problem, because as you said, the hard part is creating a new song or thinking up a new invention, and society really likes having those things. So to encourage artists and inventors to create and share, we as a society will agree to curtail our right to use our copy machines (whether they be computers, printing presses, or our own voices) for a limited time. We'll do them that favor, giving up our fundamental rights to free speech and the use of our physical property to help them make a buck. But only for a limited time...say 14 or 28 years.

And that worked for a long, long time, until they forgot what the agreement was. Now the industry thinks they're the ones with the rights! They think that just because they strung 3 chords together and said "baby" a lot that they have the inalienable right to dictate who can and cannot repeat those sounds and for what purposes for about 120 years. And will bankrupt us through the courts if we defy them. And then they want to lecture us as if they have the moral high ground!

And that's why there's conflict between the artists and industry and the public. The artists and industry forgot they don't actually have any fundamental rights and are compensated only because of the good will of the public. But they've squandered that good will and are killing the goose that laid their golden eggs.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also a logical fallacy to expect to be paid per-copy when the only costs incurred to you were during the original production.

Re:for artists?

[farble1670]

So, if something's illegal, and people are still widely disobeying the law 20+ years later, then it really shouldn't be illegal.

you are either a simpleton or trolling. look at all the crimes that are persistent across not just decades but the ages: rape, molestation, slavery, and so on. so because these are widely disobeyed, they should be legal?

Re:for artists?

[spazdor]

If you're asking why -artifical scarcity- needs to be implimented in this scenario, I would guess that you already know the answer to that, but just for the sake of arguement, it is because of the tragedy of the commons. None of us wants to pay for music when it is freely available. I know I don't. But all of us not paying for music has long term devastating impact on the production of music as it currently exists.

Well now, there's a problem with many potential solutions! So here's one thought: who pays to maintain public roads and how are they compelled to pay for it?

Re:for artists?

[Bob-taro]

You're basically arguing that everyone elses rights should be subservient to the those of the creative classes and that's simply contradictory to the notion of equality under the law.

Anyone can create and copyright their creation. Where's the inequality?

Re:for artists?

[JustSomeProgrammer]

Most of them were called bards, played only the popular songs everyone knew for the past 100 years or so, didn't create anything new, and often begged for dinner and slept in the street.

Re:for artists?

[10101001 10101001]

The question that the author of TFA is posing isn't a "what can I do to legislate people away from doing what they're doing" but "how can I properly explain to people what they, not the RIAA, are doing to the music and musicians they say they love".

The public is fickle. They "love" a new song every week. And a lot of the people who are "devote" fans are just liars.

He is pointing out that changing the way that music is created and that society treats artists is the tyranny of the majority.

Yep, that's the free market for you. You can set whatever price you want for your services and your products. But you can't make people buy your services and certainly you can't--at least in any other industry--prevent other companies/people from copying your products and undercutting you. That copyright was meant to promote the useful arts and sciences and of which I doubt anything David Lowery has every created qualifies--and I doubt very very little of anything I've created qualifies--really just makes me want to play a small violin. Having said that, I still like the idea of showing my appreciation of various works I enjoy. That doesn't mean I necessary feel compelled to buy a copy just because it was on TV or a need to send a check in. Meanwhile, if we wish to ignore the basis for copyright and support the idea of mass-produced entertainment, I'd suggest making a new copyright-like law to cover it with a much more limited time span, untransferable to others, and setup with fixed price structures so musicians don't get screwed over by producers/distributors. But, then, there's really no solution to the digital download problem, and certainly musicians complaining about it won't work because most people are greedy and fickle.

We are forcing these changes not because it's "the right thing to do" but simply because it's in our own intrest, and we vastly outnumber them.

That's the Republican way. Well, it's also the Democrat way too, but they'd want to enshrine the RIAA into the government and setup the above mentioned quasi-copyright to keep musicians employed. As for "the right thing to do"? Given that there's nothing "right" about copyright and it's wholly a social construct and especially copyright over most entertainment really falls into the category of "society could do without"--the copyright laws as I'm sure entertainment would continue--, it's really more a political question of just how much and where society should be forced to pay for government inflated CD/digital download prices, be it through a government mandate or a copyright law.

Re:for artists?

[Grishnakh]

I think you're the simpleton here. How on earth are rape, molestation, etc. "widely disobeyed"? The percentage of the population committing these offenses is minuscule, and worse, most of them are hated and reviled by the population at large (esp. child molesters). Maybe you think they're "widespread" because they get media attention. There's always going to be people breaking the laws, that doesn't mean that crimes are "widespread". They're widespread when a majority, or a very large minority, of the population is committing them (like when people drank alcohol during Prohibition), and the costs of enforcement are huge and causing many other negative effects in society.

Re:for artists?

[fritsd]

The "owner" can only exert control so long as something is entirely within their possession. After it leaves that state, there is no good moral or ethical argument for placing the rights of the "artiste" above everyone elses.

That's a very good point, publishing something means casting your pearls of wisdom before the swine of society ;-)

But in copyright laws in european countries I think there are some differences: in USA the focus is on the right to copy the work (hence the name copyright), in e.g. the Netherlands I thought the focus is more on the right to be the author (Auteurswet), to keep some say over the work's place in society even after it's published. Those rights have good moral and ethical arguments that they should belong to the author; IANAL but I think they were the following:

• The right to be recognized as the author of the work
• The right to ask the state to forbid plagiarism of the work (copying without attribution of the source)
• The right to ask the state to forbid parodies or modifications of the work if they can be mistaken for the author's work (this is a bit of a gray area)

Re:for artists?

[Grishnakh]

Sounds a lot like local bands these days; they play in restaurants for a few hundred bucks on weekends, usually playing someone else's songs. They have to have day jobs, and only do gigs because it's fun and they get a little extra spending money. Really good ones turn it into a business by recording their music (cheap to do these days) and selling CDs at their performances.

I don't see the problem.

Re:for artists?

[wild_quinine]

The point is that the owner of copyright should be free to dictate the terms under which others can access that content. There's no ethical or moral argument that really holds water to contradict that.

Are you joking? The creator of a work should be able to decide whether or not to release a work, and... well, that's about it. Once it is out there, they absolutely should not have any say over how it is used or accessed.

The complete underlying rationale behind copyright is to encourage new works to enter the public domain. The public domain is the space in which shared cultural works are available to everyone and anyone, without restrictions of any form - in case you were in any doubt at all about that.

Allowing content creators to selectively control the process of release and distribution is a workaround to generate more of this free content, longer term. It's not an inalienable right, let alone some kind of good in and of itself. Thinking that we own our ideas sets us down some very dark paths.

Already we've lost the right of first sale on most copyrighted works, which is a right which applies to every other kind of property. Already copyright terms have begun their long journey towards infinite duration.

These are the states of affairs which have 'no ethical or moral argument that really holds water to contradict' them.

Re:for artists?

[steelfood]

Correct. The "artists" just want to make a quick buck. That's the same pervasive mentality that cumulated in the current recession and "financial crisis." Everybody wants to make money without actually having to do anything.

Re:for artists?

[element-o.p.]

Logic fail.

Simply because one has the ability to do something does not mean it is right to do that. If people acted ethically all the time, there would be no need for copyright. However, people clearly do NOT act ethically all the time, and thus copyright was created so that content creators would be able to make a living from the content they create (assuming that it was, in fact, good enough content for people to desire it). If you want content creators to continue producing content, then it is only fair to compensate them for the work (yes, it IS work, even if it's enjoyable work) they went through to create said content.

You can attempt to rationalize your desire to obtain content without paying for it if you choose, but no amount of pseudo-intellectual rambling about "[other people's] rights...[being]...subservient to those of the creative classes..." and "controlling [creative content becoming]...a matter of restricting the liberties of others" will change the fact that if the contract creator releases content under the condition that content consumers will compensate them for their efforts and you choose to obtain that content by ripping tracks from someone else's CDs or copying their digital media, then you are acting unethically.

Re:for artists?

[steelfood]

Creation has value, the only question is how much value, and how to recognize it.

By your very own logic, if creation has value, then the artist should be paid for the act of creating. Copying is not an act of creation, and therefore has a separate value (which is near 0 in the digital age).

Re:for artists?

[Endo13]

This should be modded up. Clearly someone can't handle the truth.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

This doesn't take into account the cost of producing the record which has not gone down significantly. DAWs and and increased software usage have made things easier but studio time still involves many man hours that isn't recouped in any way through the cheap near zero distribution when no one pays.

Re:for artists?

[Immerman]

In the ideal situation the producer would get paid that $100 value while still allowing the unrealized $thousands to get duplicated into existence. But that would require a system far different than copyright.

Actually, copyright allows almost exactly that, provided that it expires and allows works to fall into the public domain in a timely fashion. The real problem is just that the system has been perverted by some of the big publishers towards a perpetual duration.

Re:for artists?

[markjhood2003]

Not the stupid 'get paid wages' argument again! Here is a clue for you: the ONLY reason you get paid a wage is because someone else expects to make more off of your work than they paid you to do the work.

No, often you get paid a wage because someone wants you to provide a good or a service that they actually need or want. For example, I pay a house painter $X/hour because the house looks like crap and I want it to look nice. I'm not going to sell the house, I just want to live in it. I paid a musician to play at my wedding because I wanted the experience of live music at my wedding, not because I wanted to record it and sell it.

Re:for artists?

[farble1670]

first, there are many places in the world where rape, molestation, and slavery are commonplace and accepted. and even if you don't want to swallow that pill, try looking in the history of the world. but perhaps you'll argue that your morality only applies to modern culture, in say the last hundred years or so?

second, what argument are you making exactly? if rape and molestation were commonplace, should they be legal? oh wait, you did say that. never mind what the world is like beyond your rocking chair in anytown, USA.

your argument is recursive. as long as whatever the majority of society believes is good and right, it should be legal, as long as it's good and right. if you want to make your argument, you have to look at the extremes of what has been accepted practice in societies around the world, throughout the ages.

Re:for artists?

[10101001 10101001]

It takes time to build a house just like it takes time to make art. Just because it costs very little to copy the final product does not automatically mean that there wasn't some investment of time and effort on the front end.

It costs very little to copy a house? Wow, that's news to me. Last I checked, the major cost to a house is the land it resides on, the materials to build it, and the labor in the act of copying. Generally, whatever design copyright there is over the construction is a very trivial component. Put another way, there's nothing to stop a painter from selling each individual painted canvas for a nice fee, but expecting poster prints to sell at near the same price and return much higher income is silly. The same goes for musicians and concerts/hand-written manuscripts. In the end, the labor and materials are what people pay for, most often paying a premium on good labor.

Copyright law seeks to recognize that original time and effort.

Granted. But why? Is it because we have a soft spot for artists? No. It's because we want that artist, on creating his art, to distribute his work and then to further create more works. One could argue that happens now...except for all the one-hit wonders and how the RIAA has converted the system into one where the large profits from the few big hits pay for many experimental possible hits to be mass marketed with the knowledge that most will fail and few will go on to produce more works in any sort of copyright-made-possible profitable way. That might be great and all, but clearly that's not what copyright was all about. By the same token, stocks weren't supposed to be bought and sold in mass at fraction of a second intervals to make a profit. One could argue what the RIAA does is good...but then you're no longer really standing on copyright anymore or any of those supposed principals except the most base, to encourage more works to be produced. To that point, I don't even know if copyright is really needed except to prevent artists from undercutting the RIAA's marketing machine.

Re:for artists?

[ExecutorElassus]

You're mis-assigning value here. What is scarce in the case of intellectual property - or in the case of copyright - is the physical copy. Since that's a tangible object, which previously required considerable investment to mass-produce, that's what got restricted to a licensed monopoly. But since making and distributing copies is now trivially easy, there's no reason to restrict them.

What has not been monetized, however, and is the only link in the chain that is not trivially easy to replace by digital means, is the original, physical act of performing the work. Artists have known this for some time: they make very little of their income from CD sales, and most of it from going on tour, and actually playing stuff live.

That event is the only thing that cannot be infinitely replicated, because it's a live event, so that's the only thing in the chain that has any real reason to have value. Everything else was artificial scarcity that has been imposed for the last several centuries until technology caught up. This guy's open letter to unrepentant filesharers makes a huge number of bad assumptions about spending and payment habits (really? Every time I download something free, it's a lost sale that directly impacts a struggling artist?), that just serves as further evidence that most people in the industry haven't realized yet that their entire business model is on borrowed time.

Re:for artists?

[Endo13]

Talk about apples vs oranges. Collecting rent for a building is the same as it's always been, and about 1,000% different from digital distribution. The landlord still has to pay taxes, still has to collect the rent (not always an easy task!) and has to pay for the upkeep on the building to keep it desirable to rent. There's lots of overhead and time or money involved in renting out a building. And while you're renting it out, you also can't use it for something else.

Re:for artists?

[Endo13]

That doesn't take into account the fact that you don't have to have a studio to record any more. DIY equipment is relatively cheap nowadays, and at MP3 quality, you probably can't tell the difference. Unless, of course, you're a talentless hack who needs someone else to do all your work for you.

Re:for artists?

[Endo13]

You're trying to make this an "either or" question, but that is a false dichotomy.

The best stuff will be made either way, because the best stuff gets made by people who do it because they love doing it, not just for a buck. But right now it's nigh impossible to find the best stuff because there's so much dreck to dig through. Getting rid of the dreck would be a HUGE improvement.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone can create and copyright their creation. Where's the inequality?

You don't pay the guy who painted the crossroad markings every time you cross the road.

Re:for artists?

[wierd_w]

Here is the problem with intellectual property:

Let's say for a moment, that I am a biological engineer. I specialize in creating designer microbes and plantlife.

I create a new plant. It is very pretty.

I decide, after I get rave reviews from the people seeing my new, unique plant, that other people would like to purchase seeds and seedlings of my new plant, because it is so very pretty.

I decide to make those seeds and seedlings available.

The seeds and seedlings I have then sold, do what seeds and seedlings do: they mature into adult plants, and make more seeds that are not my property anymore. While I designed the lifeform, and am ultimately responsible for creating it in the first place, my job in the lifecycle of that new organism is finished. The plants do not require me to make seeds, and frankly, don't give a shit about my wishes.

The plants were sold. If another person who bought the plants wants to try selective breeding pressures on the plants to make new varieties of my new species, that use should be allowed under the premise of the first sale doctrine. The new varieties they produce are under their exclusive control, up until they sell them to somebody else. At that time, the role of custodian once again changes hands.

What right do I, the initial biologist, have to tell other people what they can and cannot do with their own things?

Ideas are exactly the same.

I create a new idea. It is useful, and desireable, so I share that idea for a fee. Others accept the idea, and that new idea in turn cross polinates inside their heads to spawn yet more ideas I could not have concieved of myself. What right do I have to limit other people's creative evolution of my idea?

Every single thing you have around you, and every scrap of knowledge, philosophy, culture, art, and science that you treasure and value has similar evolutionary origins. No more than sigmund freud's estate has a right to demand royalties on all derivatives of psychotherapy, should any author, artist, scientist, engineer, architect, or laborer have over the evolution of their ideas and works as reinterpreted or used as an influence for works of their own engenderment or labor.

The power that the original artist has, and the only one which is intrinsic and inalienable, is the right to not publish.

Once released into the community, ideas stop being the exclusive treasure of their creators, and no longer require their creators.

Their creators are wrong to expect to, or try to, control them in any way.

Making art and making new ideas is a lot like making children. The grow up. They own themselves. You don't get to tap their bank accounts, and put garnishments on their wages, just because you sired them, or gave birth to them. You don't get to dictate who they marry, or have sex with. You don't get to dictate what carreers they will take. You have no claim to their work, property, or progeny.

These are common sense.

Yet, that is exactly what "intellectual property" does with art and ideas.

Re:for artists?

[Grishnakh]

your argument is recursive. as long as whatever the majority of society believes is good and right, it should be legal, as long as it's good and right.

And what's your alternative? To have some self-appointed despots or warlords deciding what's "right" and making laws based on that? We've tried that many times, and the results haven't been pretty; they usually involve mass executions, burning people at the stake for disagreements about things that are totally unprovable, etc.

Sorry, but the best we've come up with in human history is to have the population of a country elect their own leaders, and then have laws based on what that populace believes is moral. If you don't like it, I challenge you to show a working example of a better system.

Re:for artists?

[hairyfeet]

Actually of all people i think Yahoo! has the right idea, live shows on the net paid for by advertising. so far they've only been doing it for comedy but I see no reason why it can't be done for music, and we could also use all these HD theaters we have set up now. I know i personally would rather see a live show where i don't have to spend 3 damned hours trying to find parking, fighting my way to the front, being crushed like a bug, etc.

And there are plenty of smaller clubs friend, i play in quite a few of them and they are damned nice. After the show i can sit there with a drink and actually get to talk to the audience, find out what they liked and what they didn't, its quite a learning experience.

In the end the ONLY ones making any real money off of this is the middlemen, think all those one hit wonders from the 60s-80s are getting shit? Hell i saw an interview with keith from the Stones and he said even THEY don't get shit on any of the stuff made before 73, which naturally covers most of their biggest hits, because the record execs fucked them like they do everyone else. In the end you can't make something scarce that is instantly and infinitely copy-able, you just can't. I'm sure there are corps that would like to charge you for every breath you take but luckily people can see what a stupid fucking idea that is, well so is trying to say a stream of ones and zeroes should be treated no different than a car, its ridiculous.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

With all due respect, the assumption in your reply and in TFA is that 'artists' have a 'divine right' to be the sole & exclusive designers of how a given work is monetized. While there are laws in most (all?) countries governing 'copyright', this is by no means a 'divine right' and as such references in the TFA to 'moral or ethical' considerations are entirely misplaced...moral & ethical considerations can and do change across cultures, times & places...in 100 years it might be considered 'morally & ethically irresponsible' to sell music directly (who knows? I certainly won't predict the future)...

Statements such as 'changing the way that music is created and that society treats artists is the tyranny of the majority'...O really? And I suppose the invention of the cotton gin was the 'tyranny of technology'? That technology, people's views on what is 'right & wrong' etc. changes how we live or how segments of the population need to monetize their skills is no 'tyranny' it is the natural progression of society.

The TFA says that "Google isn't a music company"...that's true now, but as in centuries past what is stopping any of these companies from being a 'benefactor' and paying directly for the creation of the music to be 'given away for free'...perhaps setting up a business to pay for 'works for hire' that are simply given away for free and monetized by the very same advertising that is done on 'illegal file-sharing sites'...

And harking back to the moral & ethical considerations, unless these same artists decrying file-sharing also decry taxes on blank media (which is REAL theft, state sponsored but still theft, not the type propagated by the nonsense regarding copyright infringement) or laws restricting my personal use of art that I have legally obtained then they have no moral or ethical grounds to even comment in this regard...and trust me I have not seen a lot of struggling or even established artists gathering their forces decrying these morally & ethically questionable changes to the laws of various countries.

Re:for artists?

[Quirkz]

I think you start out well describing the shifting costs of wedding photographers, and how the business has adapted. That works well for them because they lost money in one field (prints) but were able to make it up in another field (charging for the service of taking the pictures).

You say the same thing needs to happen in music, but if the analysis for music is to lose money on the distribution and there's no place to make it up, that's not really going to work for them, is it? Maybe I simply missed it in your post, but I'm not seeing where you suggest they shift the costs to in order to have a viable business providing their service.

Re:for artists?

[cpt kangarooski]

Locke's wrong on this one, though. People have a right to property if they can personally defend it, and manage to do so when necessary. Beyond that, the right to property is a matter of consensus. If enough people think that you own something, then you do. If they think that you don't, they'll separate you and it. This is why I may own the clothes on my back, but I don't own the Brooklyn Bridge.

The purpose of government is certainly, in part, to protect this consensus, but also to enforce it against outliers who disagree. The same force that is used to defend property from trespassers is frequently used to take it from those too weak to resist.

Copyright is more clearly utilitarian, but at the end of the day, all property is, even if we didn't recognize this as we created laws about it and tried to explain it at the time.

This is why, if you look at the Declaration of Independence, when Jefferson cribs from Locke, he only mentions life and liberty, and adds his own 'pursuit of happiness', but ignores Locke's 'property.' Jefferson knew it wasn't a human right.

Re:for artists?

[reve_etrange]

I don't know a single musician under the age of 35 (or, for that matter, over the age of 100) who views government granted monopolies as their "incentive to keep making music."

Re:for artists?

[Eivind Eklund]

The point is that the owner of copyright should be free to dictate the terms under which others can access that content. There's no ethical or moral argument that really holds water to contradict that.

I disagree with that. If the work has influence on a person, that person has a moral interest in it.

Let's start with a simple ethical hypothetical, just to demonstrate that there exists situations where your dictum fails completely:

Postulate a religion based on an obscure science fiction book; say, Roger MacBride Allen's Torch of Honor. (We've already got that kind of thing going on with Scientology.) Say they consider the book so important that they will kill those that can't answer questions about it - and their families. Say this religion gets significant in an area. Say Rober MacBride Allen choose to raise the price of a copy of the book from $8 to $200000 because he finds that's the price that's likely to make him the most money.

I postulate that it would ethical for a parent to get hold of a pirate copy of the book to protect their children.

"But that's completely made up!" I hear you say. Yes. That's not at issue. The issue is that we can construct situations where it is ethical to use a work in violation of the terms a copyright owners wants to dictate, because the copyright holder is behaving unreasonably.

So the question up for debate is "What are these situations, and does any of the common pirate copying fit with such a situation?"

Re:for artists?

[reve_etrange]

The concert halls, musical theatres, etc... etc... that provided a bare living a century ago are all but gone - not only physically, but from our culture as well.

Not where I live. If you want to enjoy live, new, local music, move to a cultural center.

Re:for artists?

[cpt kangarooski]

What moral argument is there to support the idea that merely by virtue of having created and published something, that the author should have the right to censor anyone who dares to copy it? I can see a utilitarian argument, but not an ethical one. Surely, if we must consider ethics, the pirate who copies such works without a desire for compensation, and who spreads knowledge far and wide to anyone who wans it is more ethical.

Re:for artists?

[hairyfeet]

OT as well but congrats, I didn't think anybody would get the reference. That is a great little movie with a ton of one liners, anybody who hasn't seen it in awhile ought to fire it up. The 3 Stooges bits, the one liners, its just a really cute little movie without all the cynicism the movies today seem to be required to have. And how can you not love a movie that has lines like "I don't know about you, but I am planning to scream and run" or "Ooh. Her pants are blazing for you, Newton Crosby" in it?

Re:for artists?

[cpt kangarooski]

I'm not the previous poster, but with regard to your first paragraph, that's fine with me. Check out my .sig, in fact. I wish you luck.

With regard to your second paragraph, that's a completely separate issue from copyright; now you're talking about trademarks and publicity rights. The only way it would be relevant here is if we're discussing a absolute right of free speech. While I am concerned about fraud, defamation, abusing the identies of others, etc., I will admit that the idea nevertheless holds a lot of appeal. I might prefer to proceed slowly toward that, dipping the toe, rather than jumping right in, but as an experiment, there may be merit in it. And even if not, that doesn't mean that we're currently in an ideal position. It may be that we're currently limiting speech more than we ought to, and should relax our rules somewhat. (Or vice versa, or it may vary depending on the particular facts of a given case)

Re:for artists?

[cpt kangarooski]

You assumed that copyright is ethically good. This may not be true, however, certainly not for all possible permutations of copyright. I'd be very interested to know why you think it is good to restrict people's liberties so as to allow a subset of people to make a living in their chosen profession. I would like to make a profession out of sitting on my couch at home, playing video games and fapping about on the Internet. Should we control people in such a way that I can make a living at it? If not, why not?

Re:for artists?

[AngryDeuce]

But they're not widely disobeyed. A study that I read around the time of the SOPA blackout (Stanford, I believe, emulating one that had been done in The Netherlands) found that over 70% of the general public finds nothing wrong with sharing their media among friends and family. Are 70% of people murderers? Or rapists? No, of course not, those sick bastards are a small fraction of the general population, and the other 99.9% of us don't much want to be raped and murdered, anyway, so that will obviously never be legalized.

The .0001% of the population that comprises the MAFIAA organizations may not like the fact that the vast majority of people out there don't give much of a fuck if they approve of file sharing or not, so in effect, they're the murderers in the above scenario, bitching that everyone won't just submit to their thievery.

When you're dealing with something that has mainstream approval, no amount of law is going to stop it from occurring. I would think we'd all seen what a dismal failure the war on drugs has been, but it seems like nobody in any position of authority is able to take the overarching lesson in all this to heart. But then again, they're being paid not to see these things, so it's not like there's any motivation to change the status quo. Who give's a shit what the majority of people want if a goddamned Corporate person is being harmed? Send in the R.E.A.C.T. squad!

Re:for artists?

[Radres]

I would like to dispute whether all the hot girls in my vicinity own the clothes on their backs...

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Beebers exists because we fail to value composition. The primary way to compensate people who write music is to buy recorded music. Beebers would be a blip if we paid. Music would be diverse if we paid. Beebers is precisely the damage we're talking about.

Instrumentalists can survive on the live show model... but this doesn't help diversity of composition. Will music be an activity of the mind? Instrumentalism alone is little more than sports presented by beermongers. We need.both talents and they often appear in different people.

You can argue of course that we have no responsibility to make someone elses living for them, and that the last 80 years arent "natural"... But is any property natural? We make the world what we dream it to be.... ...at least until the asteroid hits.

Re:for artists?

[element-o.p.]

You assumed that copyright is ethically good. This may not be true, however, certainly not for all possible permutations of copyright.

Agreed. As it exists today, copyright certainly may be abused in ways that are clearly unethical.

I'd be very interested to know why you think it is good to restrict people's liberties so as to allow a subset of people to make a living in their chosen profession.

Now we are getting down to the point: is it ever ethical to restrict peoples' liberties? If you stop and think about that question for more than about five or ten seconds, then you will realize that the answer has to be, "yes." Any time two or more people live in reasonably close proximity to each other (with "reasonably close" being a term that can only be defined in each particular circumstance), then it is impossible to coexist without impacting each other. If I buy a plot of land, should I be allowed to do whatever I want on it? The Libertarian in me says, "yes." But practical reality says otherwise. If I dump my raw sewage into a river that crosses my property, then that can make people downstream ill. Is it ethical for me to dump raw sewage into the river anyway? Should I be allowed to shoot guns on my property? What if someone builds a house or a school at the border between my property and theirs, near where I am shooting? What if the house or school was there first? All of these things involve placing a restriction on my liberty, but I would argue that all of these restrictions are good. Even though it might prevent me from doing something I might want to do, it is better for society as a whole, and truthfully, it is good for me too, because it prevents other people from placing me in harm's way as well.

In regards to the argument at hand, copyright creates an incentive for people who want to create content to do so. That, in my opinion, is beneficial to society. There are certainly cases where copyright can be abused, and that is, of course, detrimental to society. We've all heard of patent trolls who stifle innovation by filing frivolous lawsuits involving an overly broad patent, of the **AA's using unconscionably heavy-handed tactics to enforce copyright restrictions, etc. I would like to see IP laws changed to address those problems, but the underlying principle of copyright isn't the problem, any more than the underlying principle of society creating laws to safeguard the well-being of others by restricting the rights of landowners to do as they please on their property is an inherently bad idea.

Should we control people in such a way that I can make a living at it? If not, why not?

You are missing the point. It is not about controlling others so that you can make a living at whatever you want. However, society clearly values content, as can be witnessed by the effort people go through to obtain content. However, they are not willing to compensate those who have footed the bill (both in time and in real money) to provide that content. It seems reasonable to me that if one creates content that others desire to consume, then they should be compensated for their efforts and expenses in creating that content. That is what copyright is meant to protect: the right to restrict a created good to those who have compensated the creator for that good.

If you want to convince me that copyright is inherently evil and that intellectual property is an artificial construct which therefore should be free, then you first have to convince me that you have an inherent right to that content and that all the costs of production and distribution are the responsibility of the artists rather than the consumer. Since it seems to me that the consumer is the one who benefits from the consumption of content, then, well, good luck with that.

Re:for artists?

[dougisfunny]

Well, if you go back to the days of slavery, neither slaves nor women were real people.
I was under the impression it was rather common for slave owners to rape and abuse their slaves. I also seem to recall it wasn't (isn't?) rape if a husband did it to their wife legally speaking.
So I imagine the rape and molestation have at times been widespread, because they were being done to non-people.
Now, I have no citations for any of this but I'm sure it would be easy enough to find, as that is a side effect of dehumanizing, or making certain groups property. The banality of evil and all that.
That said, if a person makes a song and people just take it, I don't know that it's treating them as less of a person or in any way evil.
If you think an idea is property and a person has the right to sue you for using their idea, well that's another thing. There are different balances between the idea maker and the idea user.
I'm sure that some people out there would like to charge every time you hear a song, read a book or watch a movie debited directly from your bank account upon consuming the media, as determined by an implanted system on a chip, and if you don't want to pay or can't pay your sensory input is hijacked, but that's a little too far one way on the balance.

Re:for artists?

[sneakyimp]

That might be your argument, but it's not Lowery's. RTFA. His argument is that if people don't pay for music, artists don't get paid for making music. This is a tautology really so you can't refute it no matter what economic argument you use. He does lapse into some fairly loaded language, but he makes some thoughtful points. You don't make any interesting points. Try again?

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

The purpose of copyright is to keep older music from competing with newer music and providing an older generation with material from their youth to use for their own entertainment. It is all about control :(

Ever wonder why whole Radio Stations are dedicated to decades (60's, 70's, 80's, 90's)? If copyright was 20 years then music from the 60's, 70's and 80's (when I was a teen) would be free for me to play, mix, and alter to have fun with. Music would be interactive again (remember mix-tapes, bleeding songs together, overlapping songs, play it ourselves on instruments, etc); that was the fun of music and that is what is missing these days.

Re:for artists?

[farble1670]

A study that I read around the time of the SOPA blackout (Stanford, I believe, emulating one that had been done in The Netherlands) found that over 70% of the general public finds nothing wrong with sharing their media among friends and family.

yes, and ...

what percent of germans found nothing wrong with the internment of jews?
what percent of americans found nothing wrong with slavery prior to the US civil war?
what percent of americans found nothing wrong with the internment of japanese during WW2?
what percent of americans during the 1700 and 1800's found nothing wrong with the genocide of native americans?

really, what's your point?

Re:for artists?

[AngryDeuce]

I'm a musician, and I will make music until the day I'm either dead or too feeble to pick up an instrument, whether I make money off of it or not. I create music for myself, first and foremost.

Music has existed since the first caveman banged on rocks or sticks and enjoyed the sound it made. How long as the MAFIAA been around? 100 or so years?

Re:for artists?

[AngryDeuce]

didn't create anything new

[citation definitely needed]

Re:for artists?

[FiloEleven]

Should that same argument not then be applied equally to all makers of software? The issue is the same: effort is put into something novel which is nonetheless easily reproduced after the original idea is implemented. When put that way, the same argument should abolish all patents as well--after all, the idea once created is easily transmitted, so anyone who wants to make the effort to reproduce whatever invention the idea was for should be able to do so.

Re:for artists?

[FiloEleven]

What about authors? Books generally take more time to produce than music does, and you won't see nearly as many people buying tickets for reading or speaking engagements...

Re:for artists?

[sneakyimp]

So, if something's illegal, and people are still widely disobeying the law 20+ years later, then it really shouldn't be illegal.

What, like murder? It's been "illegal" since Hammurabi's code and "people" still do it. I think we'd all agree that murder should generally be illegal -- the devil is in the details though. Was it self defense? Was it accidental? Et. al. File sharing admits of the same complexity: Was it fair use? Did the artist intend for it to available on file sharing services? Does putting my files in the cloud also entitle all my friends to access my music too, regardless of the artists' intentions?

And it's pretty clear that the process of legislation is a ridiculous mess. Not to mention the use of the phrase "shouldn't be illegal". Shouldn't? According to whom? Morever, the process of legislation is often too slow to effectively deal with the problem at hand. It probably should have been illegal to evict native Americans from their land and break deal after deal with them and yet it was done and we non-native Americans benefit from that immoral behavior to this day. It probably should have been illegal to slaughter the Buffalo for no reason at all but it wasn't and so our ancestors did -- much to their later chagrin. The word should is rife with moral overtones and I don't think anyone posting here on /. actually wants to examine the morality of their actions. They just want free music. Ethically speaking, I would say that you should probably honor an artists' wishes when it comes to file sharing.

I think the real essence of the "file sharing question" (or the "MAFIAA question" depending on which side you are on) is one of self interest. If you like an artist and want to hear their songs, you should support them financially. Would it kill anyone to pay the legislated amount of 9.1 cents for a song? If you RTFA, you would know that this the amount legally mandated for an artist when a song gets sold -- and the record company and MAFIAA don't get any of that money. This results in the artist being able to make a meager living. The median wage is $22.39/hr according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics but very few musicians are employeed full-time. Annual wages average $35k per year which is well below the overall average wage which is $45,230 per year. If we don't pay for music, there will be less of it. If we pay for the music we like, there will be more of that music.

Re:for artists?

[farble1670]

Sorry, but the best we've come up with in human history is to have the population of a country elect their own leaders, and then have laws based on what that populace believes is moral. If you don't like it, I challenge you to show a working example of a better system.

there are inalienable rights that can't (should not) be revokable regardless of what majority of the population think they should. there's at least some people here arguing that the right of an artist to control distribution of their work is provided in the US constitution.

you can dispute the constitution, you can believe it's being misinterpreted, or you can outright disagree with it. however, the fact is that the constitution provides inalienable rights that can't be infringed upon regardless of a majority vote.

i'm not an expert on the constitutions of other nations, but i'm fairy certain most of them have something similar. there are limits to what can be made legal by an angry mob of voters. and thank goodness for that.

Re:for artists?

[icebike]

And that worked for a long, long time, until they forgot what the agreement was.

Why is it always THEY who forgot what the agreement was?
Why isn't it YOU who forgot what the agreement was?

After all, are you claiming that you ONLY make and distribute copies of songs older than 14 years, or even 7 years?

Or are you (fess up now) copying (or obtaining without payment) songs that are FRESH off the presses, released THIS YEAR?

You rail against the creeping term of copyrights, while at the same time ripping off music and movies on which the ink hasn't even dried yet.

I submit that YOU forgot what the agreement was long before They did.

Quite frankly, I doubt you ever honored the terms of the agreement. Fess up, you started pirating before you EVER purchased any music or movies didn't you? Now you come around cring about the terms of the agreement that you never honored in the first place.

Lets face it, you have, in your mind, and in your actions, repudiated the agreement, declared it null and void, and appropriated the artists works as you saw fit, always blaming someone else for breaking the agreement first.

You are not alone, there seems to be a lot of people like you who have never created anything of value but feel entitled to everything created by others simply because a) you want it, and b) you can get it easily.
I would say your view is becoming the prevalent view, especially here on slashdot, and among those under the age of 25.

There is no agreement. You denied it. Your generation has broken it beyond repair. You take as you wish.
So why cling to the lofty goals of "advancing the useful arts"? You thru that out with the "exclusive rights".

I have no delusions that this post will not be modded to minus 200 in about 2 minutes flat. Because arguments that show you for what you are can't be tolerated.

Re:for artists?

[Grishnakh]

No, and you also don't see nearly as many people bothering to copy them. That may change with e-books, but copying a paper book is not a trivial task, like copying an MP3 or CD is.

I think the lesson here is that, if you don't want people copying your stuff, don't distribute it in a way that's trivial to copy.

Of course, there's some other dynamics here too. Even 10+ years ago, people liked to listen to music on their computers; these days, they like to have it on their MP3 players or phones in addition. But not that many people like to read books on their PC or phone. Of course, ebook readers and tablets may change this in time.

The other big factor I see is the ease and cheapness of availability of legal options. For instance, Netflix has made it so many people just don't bother to pirate movies that much any more; why bother, when a Netflix subscription costs $8/month? Of course, there's a bunch of movies that aren't available on Netflix instant play or some similar service (e.g., Game of Thrones), so those continue to be pirated massively. With all these flat-rate streaming music services, I wonder if that's greatly decreasing music piracy as well.

Re:for artists?

[sneakyimp]

So what's the harm from unauthorized file sharing? Well, in the worst case, some people may not get a return on their investment.

Actually, the worst case is that good music doesn't get made. If you RTFA by Lowery, you would have seen the stat that there are 25% fewer musicians in the U.S. than in 2000. As with other professions, if the money's not there, the talent flees.

Personally, I'd rather have fewer lawyers, fewer middle-men, fewer Kim Dot Coms and more musicians.

The issue of file sharing may not be a legal one, but it is certainly an ethical and practical one. If you like music, you should pay for it or you can't expect it to get made.

Re:for artists?

[sneakyimp]

We can only hope. A world without Beebers is a dream.

This is indeed a dream, but it ignores an important point. Beebs is the product of cynical corporate assholes. There are actual talented musicians who make awesome music who also suffer when money doesn't change hands. I think the whole trick here is to root out the cynical asshole fat cats in between. Modern recording technology makes recording easier and modern communication technology makes distribution trivial. What's lacking is a scheme whereby an artist can be compensated a dime at a time for a good song.

Also, have you ever bothered to listen to popular music made over 80 years ago? The past 80 years has seen enormous increase in the quality and variety of recorded music. It is partly money that made this possible.

Re:for artists?

[cpt kangarooski]

Agreed. As it exists today, copyright certainly may be abused in ways that are clearly unethical.

That's true, but what I meant was that there are many ways of implementing copyright. One copyright statute may itself be more ethical than another statute. And our current copyright law may very well be on the bad side as compared to other possible implementations.

is it ever ethical to restrict peoples' liberties?

Depends on your system of ethics. Just as there is no single, enshrined, 'correct' copyright law, so too is there no one 'correct' set of ethics, or at least no way of telling which it is. Things would've been a lot simpler if that weren't so.

In any case, you seem to be moving toward utilitarianism in your paragraph about ethics, which is handy for me, since that's what copyright is based in. You're stopping a little short, though: The goal of copyright is to incentivize the creation and publication of as many works as possible which otherwise would not be created and published, while imposing minimal (or no) restrictions on the public with regard to those works.

An ideal world would see everyone who could create and publish a work doing so for free, with no protections, so that the work could be copied, enjoyed, modified, etc. maximally. But we don't live in that world. Instead, in the absence of copyright (as was the case from the dawn of time to 1710 in England, and later elsewhere), there are some natural incentives to create and publish, e.g. selling creative labor; selling copies as objects, rather than as instances of a work; art for art's sake; fame; etc., and thus many works are created. We know this, because that's what happened. Some of those works survived to the present day, although many others were tragically lost. And in the absence of copyright, there are no restrictions at all on the public (save for despots limiting free speech, but that applies to authors too), and so the works could be copied (which was important -- most of the things that we have from antiquity only survive due to unauthorized copying), distributed, altered, etc. The lack of copyright had no effect on quality. Shakespeare, for example, had no copyright, and copied and made derivatives almost constantly, and it worked out nicely.

In order to provide an additional incentive -- the ability to monopolize certain actions with regard to eligible works and thus command monopolist prices -- we created copyright. But the downside is that it inherently reduces our satisfaction of the second half of the goal of copyright, since now the author can prohibit the free copying, modification, etc. of copyrighted works.

If and only if the benefit to the public of granting copyrights -- i.e. the quantity of works -- is great enough to make up for the harm to the public by granting copyrights -- i.e. the inability to legally do whatever you want with the works -- then the tradeoff is acceptable. Otherwise it's not. The incentive isn't itself the goal, though. It's just the means.

(And in case you were wondering, in practice, very little copyright, in both scope and duration, is needed to act as an incentive. Further, the incentivizing effect of copyright very quickly peaks and then falls, entering the land of diminishing returns. The harm, however, only increases the longer the copyright does. Thus terms must be limited, and really must be very short, with minimal protections even during the term. And ideally, there should be a way to only grant copyrights to authors who require it as an incentive. Authors who would've created regardless of copyright should not get one, as it would produce no benefit to counteract the inevitable harm, and basically be a great waste.)

However, society clearly values content, as can be witnessed by the effort people go through to obtain content. However, they are not willing to compensate those who have footed the bill (both in time and in real money) to provide that content.

Re:for artists?

[sneakyimp]

It's apparent you know nothing about the music industry. There are roughtly 176,200 musicians in the United States according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and they do make a little money. All of those famous MoTown records were made by musicians you've never head of. Can you name a single person in James Brown's band besides Maceo Parker? How about Paul Simon's band?

But it seems pretty apparent that you're more interested in being cynical. You are probably enjoying music while you are sitting there being cynical. You probably didn't pay for the music.

Re:for artists?

[sneakyimp]

So all you listen to is your musician friends that weren't good enough to make a living at it? If so, someone remind me not to come to a party at HornWumpus' house.

If, on the other hand you listen to *professional bands* (and by "professional", I mean bands that actually get paid) then your argument fails.

Re:for artists?

[Grishnakh]

The US Constitution also says that slavery is legal, so if you're going to cite that as an authority, then you're also implicitly supporting slavery.

Luckily for black people, angry mobs of voters finally decided to change it (despite some other angry mobs that wanted to maintain the status quo), and slavery was banned.

there are inalienable rights that can't (should not) be revokable regardless of what majority of the population think they should

And what exactly are these inalienable rights? Where are they listed? What is the authority you're citing for them being "inalienable"? (I hope it isn't the Constitution.)

Re:for artists?

[Grishnakh]

I'm not going to get into genocide, but what exactly do you think would have happened if killing buffalo were illegal back in the 18th and 19th centuries? How would that have been enforced exactly? What are you going to do, create a giant police force to patrol the entire western half of the continent looking for people slaughtering buffalo? Same goes for the passenger pigeon, which people slaughtered to extinction. How would you police that? The only way to do it would be to create a massive police state. The more people disagree with your law, the more effort it's going to be to enforce it. Banning child molestation and apprehending the 0.0000001% of the population that does it isn't that hard. Banning some other "crime" that 75% (or even 25%) of the population decides they're going to do anyway is mostly impossible, unless you want to eliminate democracy and create a totalitarian dictatorship.

Re:for artists?

[cpu6502]

>>>You bitch on slashdot about how people should not be permitted to post anonymously

I bitch about *registered* users posting anonymously. The only reason they do that is so they can post Attacks or trolls and not harm their UserID. (As for guests, I could care less.)

Re:for artists?

[sneakyimp]

You have entirely ignored the issue of whether it's actually a good idea to do something just because someone can. I'm not arguing in favor of any monstrous legal solution to the "file sharing question" or whatever it is. Maybe you should read my post again. You'll see that I'm not proposing legal solutions, but questioning the ethics of file sharing and pointing out its practical ramifications. The fact was it was NOT illegal to slaughter buffalo and we went and did it. It was still really stupid.

In my reckoning, a decline in of 25% in employment of musicians since 2000 is pretty compelling evidence of the impact of file sharing. Note that these are musicians and not lawyers, executives, or clerks that sell music, but the musicians themselves.

If you're OK with that, then congratulations. I think it's kind of a bummer.

Re:for artists?

[tombeard]

The artist has absolute control of distribution of his works. If he never publishes them then they will never be copied. Once he turns them lose into the world then they will be captured, copied and distributed to the ends of the earth. Don't like that, too bad. Some people don't like gravity either.

Re:for artists?

[Shadow99_1]

One of my favorites of that 99% had a contract with a major label and after releasing 3 of 4 albums in their contract the music execs decided they didn't like their next set of music. This happened multiple times because the execs decided they didn't want anything more from them... Yet they were still under contract and couldn't perform any longer as a band. They had to break up and can no longer play any of their old music because the labels of course own it. Zero insensitive to make jack shit now.

They were hardly the only groups I've heard of this tactic from. The bloody archaic system is an utter fail at helping any of those 99% long term and the sooner it dies the better.

Re:for artists?

[Sabriel]

Not the OP, but - "hypothetically"? Ha ha.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_seeking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Bono_Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
  - specifically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Copyright_term.svg

Copyright's a great idea in theory. And, between comparable parties, in practice too. But when on one side of the table you've got John Q Author, and on the other side of the table you've got a limited liability corporation with more lawyers and accountants than you could fit inside the entire building, supported by an industry powerful enough to write laws for Congress to rubber-stamp, you've got buckley's chance that any contract between them is going to be equitable if the LLC doesn't want it to be.

Re:for artists?

[rebot777]

Things are "wrong" because the majority of people think they're "wrong".

Democracy is great and all but it doesn't define what is "wrong".There are many examples of tyranny of the majority where a majority group passes laws that hurt a minority group often for no reason.

I'm going to go out on a limb here an say that an action is "wrong" because it harms someone else. So if an action is harming another party than we can try to pass a law to make it illegal.

In the case of piracy the musician is clearly harmed monetarily but agreeing on what to do about it is much harder. I don't think you should be able to mangle my property(drm) because I could steal your music.

Re:for artists?

[ATMAvatar]

The Constitution states:

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;

There are several problems with current law, though:

• Most often, it is neither the artist nor inventor which owns the IP rights to the work.
• The duration (of Copyright, at least) has been extended to the point that one can hardly call it "limited".
• In the case of patents, it is easily demonstrated that the rate at which new inventions are created has been exponentially increasing throughout history, and we have undeniably hit a point at which patents are actually obstructing scientific and technological progress.
• The enforcement of IP laws (particularly Copyright) has gone from a relatively benign civil process to a very draconian criminal process which largely sidesteps other constitutional protections, most notably the 5th and 6th amendments.

I'm sorry, but IP laws have been incredibly perverted from their initial state, and I have absolutely no sympathy for someone playing the pity card about piracy. Their protections are stronger than ever and their enforcement measures are stronger than ever.

I also find it highly suspect that the most vocal advocates of IP law - the MPAA and RIAA - are constantly proclaiming the end times are here. Yet, they are doing surprisingly well given the fact that they deal exclusively in luxury items during one of the worst economic downturns since the great depression.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

I bitch about *registered* users posting anonymously.

Correction, you accuse ACs of being registered users posting anonymously. But without proof, it simply comes across as you bitching about anyone posting anonymously.

The only reason they do that is so they can post Attacks or trolls and not harm their UserID.

You just keep on believing that lie.

Re:for artists?

[Grishnakh]

It should be pretty obvious by now that I'm addressing the practicality of legalization or criminalization of anything, as well as the ethics behind it. This discussion has been about legality since the beginning (actually "jp10558"'s post saying something that most see as not-wrong should be legal, and Skarecrow77's reply about slavery and right and wrong.

You may not like the effects of file-sharing, but it's pretty clear that much of society doesn't think it's unethical. And as Prohibition showed, banning something that many, many people don't think is unethical has huge, negative effects on society.

Re:for artists?

[Zordak]

I disagree that the second paragraph is about trademark and publicity. It is soundly within U.S. copyright law, as it involves reproducing a copyrighted work. The only way it would involve publicity rights is if I also used your image along with the quote or something like that. Even using your name probably wouldn't be actionable as long as I was simply doing it to attribute a fair and accurate quote to you.

In your case, since you are dedicating your comments to the public domain, those uses might implicate moral rights in countries that recognize those. But under U.S. law, moral rights are a fuzzy concept at best. And I think that makes my point just as well. If the originator of the comment continues to feel enough proprietary interest in the comment to want to exercise control over how it's used, then that person has attached value to intellectual property, even if he or she isn't interested in monetizing it.

(Also, I wonder if you would feel the same way if your most marketable skill was the creation of artistic works that can be digitally copied. Perhaps you would. It's at least a question worth asking.)

Re:for artists?

[Grishnakh]

I'm going to go out on a limb here an say that an action is "wrong" because it harms someone else. So if an action is harming another party than we can try to pass a law to make it illegal.

That seems a little simplistic. A law banning slavery harms the slave-owners, because it deprives them of their cheap work force. So is banning slavery "wrong" in your view?

For piracy, would you say that "intellectual property" should remain the author's property forever? What about after he dies? Are copyright laws which place time limits on copyright terms "wrong"? After all, it might "hurt" some descendant if they can't continue to get free money for something one of their ancestors wrote 100+ years before...

Sorry, I don't buy it. Every action "hurts" someone. Putting a murderer in prison hurts him. Police shooting a violent criminal in the act is undeniably hurting him. These things are OK because the good of the many is more important than the good of the one, so society works for the good of all by "hurting" people who harm society in general. Having artistic works pass into the public domain helps enrich society, which is why copyright laws have a time limit. Every action hurts someone and helps someone else; I think ethicality corresponds to what helps the greater number of people, or society in general. However, since we don't have some benevolent alien overlords who can see the future and tell us what the best course of action is, the best we can do is consider what most people think is right and wrong at any point in time.

Re:for artists?

[meta-monkey]

Wellunfortunately you guessed wrong on pretty much all counts. I'm 33, and I make my living as an artist. And I don't pirate music, I either stream it through Pandora or I buy it through iTunes. Not out of a moral obligation but simply convenience. I don't have time to hunt around file sharing networks, and I'm not poor so I can afford a couple of bucks for some files.

And you're wrong about who broke the agreement first. The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act was passed in 1998, and Napster wasn't released until 1999.

So, yes, I expect you'll get modded down, but only because you have no idea what you're talking about.

Re:for artists?

[sneakyimp]

I think we'll both agree that file sharing technology is here to stay. P2P is nothing short of a revelation. As to whether it's practical to ban it or not, I think the Great Firewall of China illustrates pretty well what is possible practically speaking. I disapprove of this type of censorship and believe that most musicians would also disapprove of this type of censorship. I like most effects of file sharing. I dislike others.

On the other hand, I hope they throw old Kim Dot Com in the slammer. It seems readily apparent to me that he is a unscrupulous scumbag who was making a fortune by making copyrighted works available to the world at large in exchange for advertising revenue without sharing any money to the artists or commercial entities whose works were on his servers. As to whether it is ethical and/or impractical to prosecute him and his ilk is a different question on which we might disagree. I think it is both ethical and practical to halt him from profiting in this way in the same way it's right and practical in some cases to prosecute Wall Street fat cats for insider trading. It seems a fair boundary to prevent broader abusive financial practices in society.

That society doesn't think it's unethical to share files without authorization is sad to me, but that's my opinion. It might even be argued that it's not unethical in certain circumstances -- depending on how the files are obtained. What's most disappointing to me in the whole discussion is the sense of entitlement people like Emily White feel to any old music they want. It betrays a complete ignorance of the process and economics of music creation. I'm not calling her a lawbreaker. Her naivete is depressing.

I believe a technical solution may be found. I imagine this solution might take the form of a button one can press in one's application to send a few cents to an artist in a fit of music-induced euphoria. Alternatively, perhaps the companies like Youtube and Spotify and other file sharing sites might actually start investing some of their wealth in bands, but I expect this will have the same results as traditional record companies with all of the corporate nonsense and copyright turfing and evil that comes along with it.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd also like to throw in this, based on my working in The Biz for over 25 years, from bottom/retail for one of the Billboard reporting stations up through live sound/performance and right into Legal with one of the major 3 publishing houses:

When we were being courted (retailers) at the emergence of CDs (yes, I'm that old), we were told all kinds of crap about bringing the costs down after recouping the retooling effort to switch from vinyl to CD production. CDs would be cheaper and since costs would fall, the retail pricing would also fall (in 3-5 years) and music would flow etc etc. They lied. They kept jacking up price way beyond what any other industry would consider fair profit margin. None of that money went to artists - it went to the middlemen, who squeeze both ends of the spectrum, artists & listeners/consumers.

The other thing they did to cut their own throats was to take over radio, which was free music, yeah. They destroyed regional radio (which is where many bands got heard to start with); they homogenized everything to play the top 20 songs they'd selected for profitability (meaning with the worst contracts) and have been trying to dictate culture by telling people what they should be listening to, because that's where the execs made their hugest profit margins.

Free readio, and the 45 single, were the best promotional tools the Industry had. I know this because it was part of my work to study sales. When the Biz started to phase out the 45, every single retailer of music in the US told them they were making a monstrous mistake, based on figures of 40+ years of retail sales and marketing. Same with regional radio. They wouldn't listen to their own industry.

Yeah, it's a little rough now for artists invested in this system (which as the parent poster points out, is a rigged mafia that rips off artists left, right & center), but the System is already screwed. Free radio could be taped, aye, and people did it, but it didn't lose profitability, it stimulated sales. I taped tons of stuff off the radio as a quick-and-dirty sample of what was out there; I also paid for a hell of a lot of music (over 8000 lps and boxes of 45s in my possession) based on what I heard on the radio; I know a lot of people who did the same.

So despite all the tumult and confusion with this changing model, I say to hell with the middlemen, the leeches, the raiders, the thieves. They have brought it upon themselves with their manipulative carpetbagging, their muzzling of culture into a narrow band of profitability and their absolutely criminal treatment of musicians.

"Time... to die." - Roy Batty

Re:for artists?

[west]

That's nice for you. Unfortunately most artists actually have a family and have to earn a living. If they want to pursue their art seriously, it has to pay enough to live off of. Hobbyist artists are fine, as are, for example, hobbyist programmers. But having any field confined to only hobbyists will strip away most of its talent.

Re:for artists?

[cpt kangarooski]

I disagree that the second paragraph is about trademark and publicity. It is soundly within U.S. copyright law, as it involves reproducing a copyrighted work.

If you're merely quoting, especially from such a short post, you're likely within the realm of fair use. But using a quote to serve as an endorsement of a product or political position -- especially in a misleading fashion -- doesn't sound like copyright is an issue at all. More likely publicity rights, maybe defamation, now that I think about it.

those uses might implicate moral rights in countries that recognize those

Moral rights are bullshit. Those other countries wouldn't know sensible copyright policy if it bit them in the face. My posts are solidly in the public domain as far as I'm concerned. I wouldn't put it past some jurisdictions to protect it anyway out of paternalism, even though I know my own mind on this very well.

But under U.S. law, moral rights are a fuzzy concept at best.

VARA really, and it obviously wouldn't apply here.

If the originator of the comment continues to feel enough proprietary interest in the comment to want to exercise control over how it's used, then that person has attached value to intellectual property, even if he or she isn't interested in monetizing it.

I can see a desire in wanting to control (to some event) the use of one's identity, and to avoid misleading third parties, without having to support copyright.

(Also, I wonder if you would feel the same way if your most marketable skill was the creation of artistic works that can be digitally copied. Perhaps you would. It's at least a question worth asking.)

Before I went back to school, I was a professional artist. I made a comfortable living creating works that could be digitally copied. And because the particular way in which I made money had no relation, even indirectly, to copyright, I would not have cared if people copied my work for whatever purpose. I might care if people were led to wrongly attribute certain positions to me, personally, but works I create need not be involved for that to occur.

Re:for artists?

[AdrianKemp]

The next time an artist produces a self-replicating mp3 file, you've got a point.

Until then, shut the fuck up you idiot.

Re:for artists?

[AdrianKemp]

You're absolutely right.

Also, before copyright, people were simply killed if they were found to be creating forgeries of works people cared about.

So... we could go back to that option...

Re:for artists?

[AdrianKemp]

So, just to be clear... you aren't okay with the GPL right?

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen a musicians bring in over $100K via kickstarter, comedians bringing in multiple millions via private websites, and a growing list of Free software companies turning profits. I've also seen people begging in the streets after serving in our military, teachers and home-builders put out of work. It appears that all of Mexico is going to be eaten by the drug war. I'm sorry, but under these circumstances asking the entire world to accept an *artificial* scarcity, especially one that requires the equivilant of every person on the planet being forced to drive with square wheels, is an obscenity. The market requieres adaptaition. Deal with it like the rest of us.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

why the fuck does digital distribution need to run on scarcity economics?

Digital distribution does not need to run on scarcity economics. The consequence of that is filesharing. In scarcity economics, songs are distributed based on people being willing to pay the opportunity cost of acquiring the song ($10 for a CD instead of a movie ticket). As music files are essentially a non-scarce resource, they can be passed around solely based on whuffie.

It's not scarce, so it's not valuable?

Non scarce resources can be valuable. Example: air. It's ridiculously valuable to your life, but you don't pay for it. Value and price are not the same thing.

Why, just because it's trivial to copy music digitally, is digital music now considered to have little-to-no value?

Judging by the amount of digital music that gets copied, and by the time spent listening to that music, digital music is very valuable to many people.

Digital music is very valuable. An individual .mp3 is trivial. A music file costs almost nothing to reproduce. It has zero marginal cost. An individual digital music file is basically worthless. If you want another just like it you can make one in two keystrokes. If it gets destroyed, you can have another one before you have a chance to feel the loss. People don't like paying for digital music files, because a digital music file is worthless.

As for the tragedy of the the commons. Other posters have commented on that. Problems aren't solved by wailing and railing against the onslaught of progress. A digital music file is not scarce and not excludable in any real sense, so it's stupid to base a business on people paying for them. Talented musicians are scarce, new music is scarce, live music is scarce. Patronage, crowdfunding, and concerts are all viable revenue streams. As an example, my favorite band crowdfunded their most recent album. Instead of paying $.99x13 for the tracks on iTunes so the band could maybe get a dollar, I contributed $50 (too poor for more, sadly) directly to the band and got others to give money as well.

The individual music files from the album are non-excludable and easily reproduced. It makes no sense to pay for them. But, enabling my favorite band to create new music is very valuable. It's excludable: they are the only ones who can create new music by them. It's scarce: it doesn't even exist yet.

Re:for artists?

[HornWumpus]

I know two musicians (well enough that they would know my face and name) that make a good living at it. One has #1 singles, the other plays studio.

They still play for fun.

It's still not my job to assure them a living.

Re:for artists?

[HornWumpus]

The day canned software is good enough to put me out of work I'll quit coding without complaint and go into business configuring the canned software. Complicated problems will never be easy.

For mass produced software there are many business models that seem to be working. Advertisement etc.

Re:for artists?

[mckinnsb]

Why take exception to the first part of that statement when you can take exception to the second?

Sure, you can decide how to monetize your own work however you want. You can decide your own copyright terms. But if you decide on copyright terms that do not fit into a business model which operates within the market, you have shot yourself in the foot, plain and simple. Go ahead, for all I care.

I too, create copyrighted works ( as a developer ). In the end, I realize that the vast majority of the time, I better benefit myself by giving the majority of it away for free ( useful libraries and such get my name out there ), and then charge for premium services ( such as consulting, contracted projects, and keeping me on retainer - otherwise known as a 'job' ). There are many other companies who have realized this. Several of the "big corporate bad guys" that Mr. Lowery lambasts have provided - free of charge - libraries such as Google's v8 that have the potential to kickstart entire fucking companies - like Nodejitsu. I suppose this is somewhat analogous to a big-name band giving a lesser known band a shot, but more importantly, this is the "new model" in the software industry, which long ago - before the music industry - realized that it could not sell boxes of physical objects and expect a profit in the 21st century marketplace. Even old companies, like Microsoft and Apple, are moving far away from this.

The only difference I can see between myself and an artist - other than our audience - is that there are fewer opportunities for an artist to actually be kept on retainer. But that's the nature of the market with relation to being an artist, not the nature of being a creator of copyrighted works.

Re:for artists?

[Theaetetus]

Think about it: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Frankenstein, Dune, Star Wars, Star Trek, Moby Dick, Disney cartoons etc., all of that is part of our culture. Why? Because people know what those stories are all about. But there's also a bajillion obscure books and movies that are not part of our culture because nobody has ever heard of them. That's why locking down content is wrong.

... Dune, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Disney cartoons are all covered by copyright, and Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Frankenstein were. It sounds like you're making an argument for copyright, not against it.

Re:for artists?

[rtb61]

Copy restriction is of course a completely artificial construct. You are not denying anyone any 'thing'. The only way you can steal in reality via copying is to force some one to do the copying for you, to steal the effort of copying. The completely artificial construct of copying completely denies the societal knowledge required to generate the initial version.

No human being is capable of producing content separate from the input, knowledge and understanding provided by the rest of human society apart from pretty much apart from shit smears of leaves. They have no language to draw from, no kernel of understanding from which creativity can sprout, basically they have nothing to communicate to no one.

The public domain, the creative commons provides them the critical input they need to create, also and never to be forgotten. When it comes to society providing the economic support to content creation, to creating artificial value to something that does not support society and parasitically draws value off society, how much value, how much economic activity content creation can draw from the actual necessities of human societies needs to be controlled.

Much like all other parasites, if artificial value assigned content creation 'copying' becomes too great it starves the society and everyone suffers including the parasite. Extending copyright, attempting criminal penalties, pushing the cost of civil infringements upon the rest of society is bad enough by far worse is pretending advertising is news, corrupting democracy, disrupting human morality for profit, psychologically damaging and manipulative marketing and of course the continuous active promotion and distribution of lies.

Based upon it's current behaviour there is substantial reason to purposefully bankrupt all content creation, have free slather of copying for say a decade and then allow a new much reduced model to emerge.

Re:for artists?

[Theaetetus]

Why is it people who quote the constitution never bother quoting the whole sentence:

Because everyone up to and including SCOTUS seems to think the most important part of what you bolded is irrelevant?

Particularly, the word "limited."

Actually, that's the only word SCOTUS has quibbled over, and even then, they've simply said that "limited" means "limited", not necessarily "short". SCOTUS has certainly upheld exclusive copyrights and patent rights.

Re:for artists?

[Theaetetus]

They think that just because they strung 3 chords together and said "baby" a lot that they have the inalienable right to dictate who can and cannot repeat those sounds and for what purposes for about 120 years.

You seem to be mixing up copyrights and patents, in an odd way, since patents can't protect creative works. But similarly, copyrights don't protect against independent creation, just copying. Someone who strings together 3 chords certainly can't dictate what another person who strings together the same 3 chords can do... They can only dictate what another person does who copies their arrangement.

Re:for artists?

[Theaetetus]

The "owner" can only exert control so long as something is entirely within their possession. After it leaves that state, there is no good moral or ethical argument for placing the rights of the "artiste" above everyone elses.

An owner cannot possess their house. They cannot pick it up and put it in their pocket, or otherwise exercise exclusive physical control over it. Therefore, can I have your house, since you believe there is no good moral or ethical argument for why you should have greater rights to it?

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you cite any court opinions where the Constitution's language was determined based on an interpretation of Locke? If not, then I'd be curious to see how you believe that Locke's philosophy is relevant to the law.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lot of people back then had very poor and unhealthy living conditions.

Re:for artists?

[Radres]

Most artists already don't earn a living at their art. RTFA Lowery admits that the average salary of a musician is around $35k. You have a better chance of winning the lottery than becoming a successful musician. Money isn't the driving factor for these guys.

Re:for artists?

[Radres]

Kind of a rambling post (and this is a rambling response), but I think you hit the nail on the head with the price point of Netflix. I think it's easy to say that once you release something that can be copied digitally that it is no longer yours. In reality, there will always be at least some way to restrict people from copying, if not technologically then at least legally. The trick then is to charge people a fair price for goods. If the Kindle store has a book for $2, I don't really have to think about paying for it, unless I'm on the 50th book I've bought for the month. Similarly, if the iPhone app store has a game I want to play for that price, I'll gladly pay it rather than risk getting caught pirating the game. Now if music was more like 5 cents a song, I bet iTunes would see their profits go through the roof on sheer volume of sales.

Things that are typically more expensively priced like textbooks will be replaced by communal works like WikiBooks (and seriously, good riddance to the textbook pricing model). Really specialized books can still go the print-only route, and are generally so rarely purchased that they are difficult to find online. Larger software applications like AutoCAD have built-in protections around licensing. If your company needs AutoCAD and is caught pirating it, there is a large penalty to pay. Fiction books might get less readership, but perhaps being able to sell directly to consumers without a publisher will make up for that. Most fiction authors don't expect to get rich, anyway.

Re:for artists?

[AssholeMcGee]

He should stick to music and STFU, unless the artist is supplying/managing/distributing the albums to stores, and merchandise, you are not making any money. If the artist was responsible for doing these things then it would make some sense, but that money would go right back into, keeping the business end afloat. They make there money from doing tours or shows, they see little if anything from the album sales itself, or merchandise. If he owns a label, he is more then likely signed to a big time distributor to handle paying the bills, he if is speaking as an artist then he must not know how it all works!!!

Re:for artists?

[hairyfish]

the widespread exposure of your favorite bands that allows them to play huge halls and arenas and charge $100 per ticket is purely a result of broadcast and recorded music.

True, but this not paying for it won't change this.

you're also dismissing any band that isn't famous enough to play those huge halls or charge those large amounts of money.

Bands will still be famous whether you pay for recorded music or not. Radio stations and Music videos will still exist.

to imply that we can simply "go back to the way it was before" is disingenous. This is a new playing field with new rules.

Not exactly the same, but actually better. Musicians will still record music, distribution will be free via the internet, radio or TV, and people will pay for concerts and merchandise. I don't see much changing apart from a bunch of fat rich guys in the middle suddenly losing their jobs.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Econ 101: pricing is determined by the cost of marginal production. That is, the cost of producing an extra widget, not the cost of producing the first widget. That's because producers will bid down the cost of a widget until the price matches the marginal cost in an open market. If a producer's cost is too high, they will lose money on the sale and be priced out of the business. No one sell air at 1 atm pressure because the price would be $0. Now, producers rarely have to deal with a completely open market, so their pricing will also reflect the amortization costs associated with the production of the first widget, but normally, this needs to be recouped over X widgets. If they don't sell X widgets, they don't get their money back. If the marginal cost of production for a digital song is nearly $0 then it's probably impossible in most cases to recoup the investment of the song production if they use standard industry practices, but recording a song today can cost very little, so it's possible to get the money back through legit sales, if X is large enough. The standard industry practice is that the artist needs to sell X+ records before they see their first dime, with the costs of production subtracted first, then costs of production are still subtracted even when sales exceed X+ records. It's a double-booking of expenses. However, the price of all music is going to $0 as per the laws of economics, regardless of what people in the industry want to do about it.

Re:for artists?

[Roger Lindsjo]

So, if something's illegal, and people are still widely disobeying the law 20+ years later, then it really shouldn't be illegal.

What, like murder? It's been "illegal" since Hammurabi's code and "people" still do it. I think we'd all agree that murder should generally be illegal -- the devil is in the details though. Was it self defense? Was it accidental? Et. al. File sharing admits of the same complexity: Was it fair use? Did the artist intend for it to available on file sharing services? Does putting my files in the cloud also entitle all my friends to access my music too, regardless of the artists' intentions?

Is murder "widely disobeyed"? I think a survey asking people if they share music illegally and / or they think all music should be shared freely would get a very different "yes" rate than if they were asked if they murder other people and / or you should be free to murder other persons freely.

Re:for artists?

[DerekLyons]

I hate to break it to you - but where you live isn't the whole of the world. Back in the day, they were fairly common *everywhere*. Today, they are all but extinct despite the presence of a few clusters of survivors.

Re:for artists?

[drkstr1]

Yes indeed. Everyone seems to keep confusing the business of making art with the business of distributing it. Piracy hurts one of those business, while helping the other. I will cherish the day when we can get back to appreciating (and paying for!) art based on its merits, not it's marketing budget.

Re:for artists?

[next_ghost]

... Dune, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Disney cartoons are all covered by copyright, and Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Frankenstein were. It sounds like you're making an argument for copyright, not against it.

All content created in Europe in the past 100 years and in USA in the past 20 years, even remotely creative, was covered by copyright at some point. Copyright based on Berne Convention attaches itself to any content at the moment of its creation and it takes a lot of effort to pry it off. In some places, you can't pry it off completely no matter how hard you try (my country is one example, you can't give unlimited license for uses which are not yet known here). The requirement for something becoming culture is people knowing about it, copyright just happens to be attached most of the time.

But if you need this pointed out, even copyright violations form a part of our culture. The most prominent cases that come to mind are anime fansubs and manga scanlations.

Oh, and BTW, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet were written a whole century BEFORE the very first copyright law (Statute of Anne) came into effect in 1710. It's true that these plays were copyrighted for some time but that was long after William Shakespeare died.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, if you eliminate (or substantially reduce) the ability for someone to sell your work, do you really think they are going to continue to pay you?

You don't need to record songs for anyone to pay you. You have your fans who are craving for your work.

Turn around and announce to the world: "World, I have a new song in the works none have ever heard. If anyone out there wants to ever hear it, here is my account number. When there is a sum I demand on it, I'll release it to you. If the sum is not reached by the end of the month, the song is done for, FOREVER!"

All the legal and tech fantasy anal BS (pun not intended) about remotely controlling the flow of information between third and fourth and ... nth party comes from the idea that you could strike gold with a song that becomes greatest hit of all times and nets you more then you ever hoped for. Get real. Ask what you need and get it. If it becomes super popular, you'll cash on it when time comes to push out next one. And we'll all live happily ever after.

Re:for artists?

[pantaril]

If you're asking why -artifical scarcity- needs to be implimented in this scenario, I would guess that you already know the answer to that, but just for the sake of arguement, it is because of the tragedy of the commons. None of us wants to pay for music when it is freely available. I know I don't. But all of us not paying for music has long term devastating impact on the production of music as it currently exists.

This is IMO bad argument. You are mixing two independent things together - payment to the creators and distribution limitation (or artifical scarity). Yes those two thing are tied together in current copyright model but it doesn't have to be so. You can have functional legal models (mandatory culture tax or tax deductible coupons, distribute the money among creators via platforms similar to kickstarter for example) which provide payment to artists but place no restriction on distribution and don't create artifical scarity at all.

The artifical scarity is the root of problem here. People have no issue with paying for their culture, but they have a huge problem with a law that greatly pervades their privacy, their ability to build upon existing knowledge, their ability to effectively get, archive and share knowledge.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

No way. Piracy and all aside, an artist should have control over his/her songs. Without some protection, bullshit high profile musicians could simply steal songs from lesser known artists much in the same way Elvis did with a lot of his hits (which most people would agree was pretty fucked up).

You of course realize that these "lesser known artists", whose names you don't even care to mention, could never make the money Elvis (BTW, am I supposed to know who is this Elvis?) made with these songs. If he never had quality material, he would still had been a major star. You can't with straight face say they made him great or that he owes them compensation for their lost revenue - they wouldn't made them into hits. You always get what you are worth in total.

Also, corporations would be free to sell an artists music without compensation, or use recordings in ads. Sorry, but no thanks. It sounds cool in theory, but some IP still seems better than none at all.

Oh, sorry. You know, engineers designing microphones should have their say in what gets recorded with their devices, right? And, they should get payed by the amount of dB-seconds that passed through that mikes, too! Am I being ridiculous? Well, you started it first!

Re:for artists?

[next_ghost]

Actually, the worst case is that good music doesn't get made.

Again, big deal. There's more than enough content made just for fun and distributed for free that's just waiting to get some spotlight.

If you RTFA by Lowery, you would have seen the stat that there are 25% fewer musicians in the U.S. than in 2000.

If that's true, it's a problem that seems to be specific to USA. I can throw a similar survey from Norway against that which lists completely opposite numbers between 1999 and 2009: 28% increase in the number of artists, 114% increase in the total revenue of all artists combined and 66% increase in annual per-artist income. I don't have numbers for Czech republic but I can quote top 3 Czech musicians (Karel Gott, Lucie Bila, Jarek Nohavica) saying that piracy is good advertisment. Jarek Nohavica even quit the recording industry, offers his own music for free on his official website and makes money from live concerts.

If you like music, you should pay for it or you can't expect it to get made.

I completely agree.

Re:for artists?

[L4t3r4lu5]

FYI Guns 'n' Roses isn't Guns 'n' Roses any more. It's Axl Rose and session musicians, and Axl can't sing anymore.

If you want to see Guns 'n' Roses done right, watch Slash with Myles Kennedy. He can sing far better than Axl ever could. First albums I've bought in over 5 years.

Re:for artists?

[swilver]

I do act ethically. By not paying for music I help reduce the gap between the rich and the poor.

Re:for artists?

[jmcvetta]

So just to be clear, since you've released this comment "to the world," if I could hypothetically find a way to turn it into a very successful pamphlet, and I sold millions of copies, and then turned it into First Sale: The Motion Picture, which grosses $300 million at the box office, and I don't give you a single penny---you would be okay with that, because for you to be able to stop me from doing any of that would require you to "restrict my liberties"?

I would be more than okay if you turned this comment into a blockbuster movie - I would be gratified that my work had been so useful. Clearly I wasn't able to make any money off it, and neither was anyone else - but if you figured out how, then it rocks to be you.

Are you an avid atheist?

Pretty much.

Would you be okay if I used quotes from your post to promote evangelical Christianity?

Have at it! Use my words as you like - they're just text, and clearly I didn't mind publishing them on the internet. Do not, however, falsely claim to the public that I support your kooky religious ideas. That's defamation, and unrelated to Imaginary Property issues.

Re:for artists?

[Lonewolf666]

So, if something's illegal, and people are still widely disobeying the law 20+ years later, then it really shouldn't be illegal. In a properly functioning democracy, it wouldn't be, because eventually the people would elect new politicians who promise to overturn the unpopular law. The problem we have now is that our government isn't functioning properly at all, since it's a fascist government and doesn't represent the people at all.

In Europe, such a change is starting to happen with the rise of the Pirate Party. One of their agendas is legalizing file sharing. The resoning behind it is that prohibition does not work anyway and the side effects are a burden on society.

One major difference to the US is the election system:
Many European countries have proportional representation, which allows even smaller parties to gain some seats in parliament. In the US system, the Pirate Party would still be far from gaining enough seats to be a measurable influence.

Re:for artists?

[pantaril]

Guess what? A house is not someone's property either except for the fact that congress made it so. How about we get congress to void all deeds (or simply not enforce them) and see what remains your property.

Well i'm all for physical property. You write your song, it's your property, you should be able to do with it as you like. But if you decide to publish it, i shoud be able to make copy of your song, which will be my own. Excatly like i'm able to copy your house to make one for myself.

Re:for artists?

[fearofcarpet]

Add to that Reel Big Fish. They downplay it on their official bio--so as not to seem too bitter--but they cannot even perform some of their own songs any more because, somehow, a record label owns the rights.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

bullshit we don't elect our leaders to govern us, we elect our leaders to faciliate projects shared by society as a whole, when it comes to my own actions I don't need a governess, I'll make up my own mind and actions thank you very much.

I consider introducing artificial scarcity a crime, it might be legal, but it most definately is not the moral highground.

it's going from 'every has access to this' to 'that's mine payup'. Yes it's a tragedy of the commons, but you're looking at it backwards.

Re:for artists?

[king neckbeard]

No, the US Constitution says that slavery is illegal. In it's original form, it didn't explicitly outlaw slavery, but that doesn't mean that it's inherently legal either. It was legal in some states, and illegal in others.

Re:for artists?

[pantaril]

The point is that the owner of copyright should be free to dictate the terms under which others can access that content. There's no ethical or moral argument that really holds water to contradict that.

Why should he be able to do so? Is the manufacturer of furniture egligble for the same rights? If i buy a chair, should the manufacturer be able to dictate how i use it, how i resell it, whom i allow to sit on it etc? In not, why should copyright holder have those rights?

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Fundamentally, this is an issue of rights vs. practicality. Ideally the author should have exclusive right to distribution of their
> work.

I disagree with that, if I come up with a joke and tell it to you, then that joke is as much mine as it yours. I have no moral right to stop you from telling it to a 3th person.

Same thing with music, The song stopped being solely yours as soon as you shared it with the world. Yeah from an artist point of view it may suck that recording and digital distrubtion are increasing the supply pretty much infinately, making it so that people can reproduce music without having spent years practicing an instrument. But that's just progress, you can either learn to deal with it or go the way of the buggywhip manufacturers.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

guess what? there's a fundamental difference between a taking house and a copying song.

if I take your house, you can no longer use it. If I copy your song, you can still sing it.

As for the house, if I go 'wow cool house' and build one just like it, then how is that any skin of your nose?

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that the owner of copyright should be free to dictate the terms under which others can access that content. There's no ethical or moral argument that really holds water to contradict that.

Bullshit. if I have a copy of something that copy is mine. It is in no way ethical or moral for you to pose artificial restrictions on what I can do with my copy.

Re:for artists?

[king neckbeard]

I don't think you comprehend the change that's going on. The way things are changing is that we are no longer in an environment that can support giants. Absent a drastic change in the future, nobody will be as popular as the Beatles, the Stones, or Elvis were at the peak of their popularity. Instead, more and more will shift into what is currently the 'long tail' portion.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

nowhere, which is why it's perfectly fine for me to make my own digital copies.

Re:for artists?

[Ash Vince]

None of us wants to pay for music when it is freely available. I know I don't. But all of us not paying for music has long term devastating impact on the production of music as it currently exists.

Bullshit. Every time one of my favorite bands comes to town, I plunk down well over $100 for tickets to go listen to them. Judging by all the people at the concerts I attend, plus all the T-shirts I see sold at them, there's a LOT of money being made by people "paying for music" (or really, a musical experience).

This whole idea of selling recorded music is very new, and really rather silly. We're just going back to the way it was before, where musicians had to tour and perform live if they wanted to make any money; it's been like that for millennia.

Cool. So someone like me who has no interest in going to gigs but likes listening to music every day on my ipod gets endless quantities of it free and never has to give any thing back. You might think that people like me are in the minority but in my age group (mid to late 30's) hardly any of my friends go to gigs anymore but we all listen to music loads.We also have more money to spend than you young-uns so designing an economic system that involves us not contributing anything financially is a bit of a silly idea.

In my student days I used to go out to gigs most weeks but that still did not compare to the amount of money I spent on buying CD's and records. This leads my to believe that the economics of supporting all musicians just using gigs is not going to work unless the cost of going to a gig is at least doubled.

Of course, then this will all be horrific to most people who support the idea of endless filesharing, as in my experience most of them are young people who have far less disposable income to spend on music than me and are desperately looking for a way to rationalise their own actions in downloading stuff.

I used to think file sharing was great when I was a student and had no money coming in as there was no other way for me to afford all the music and movies I wanted to listen to and watch. As I got older though and started to earn more of my own money I started to think more about how I would feel if I knew there were lots of people out there with piles of cash who were getting free enjoyment out of my work but not helping to keep in me in food money.

Re:for artists?

[Ash Vince]

There were tons of traveling musicians in the middle ages. Shakespeare (not a band, but still a performer) had little trouble playing huge outdoor theaters, and that was long before any recording or broadcast technology was invented.

Of course, back then the only way to enjoy his work was to go and see it live. Nowadays you can get enjoyment out of someone's work without going to a live performance, that is a big difference that you do not seem to acknowledge.

Re:for artists?

[Ash Vince]

The system DOES NOT WORK for anybody but the leeches, PERIOD. As a final note, know what Metallica gets for all their MAFIAA ass kissing? 89c an album. That's it. they practically blew the record execs and the greedy fucks won't even give them a whole dollar. Fuck the MAFIAA and the quicker they DIAF the better, it'll be a better world without them

Yup, but if you rethink copyright law and abolish it the leeches will just move to a different field as they are just capitalist business people. What happens to the musicians though?

Both sides of this argument are a bunch of leeches in my opinion, both the people who want to endlessly download free music and not pay for it and the record execs who think they can sell us the same stuff in a slightly different digital format for more money. Neither side are in the right.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that's the most reasonable idea concerning intellectual property ever posted on Slashdot. Would you like to copyright it?

Re:for artists?

[mrchaotica]

I'm saying that the arguement you're using to promote filesharing is a very weak one, and you need to latch on to the better ones if you hope to make your point.

Okay, how about this:

Morally speaking, information belongs to the Public Domain. This is self-evident by the fact that an idea has no value until it is shared. The US Constitution recognizes this, and allows creators to obtain what is essentially a loan from the Public Domain for the sole and express purpose of "Promoting the Progress of Science and the Useful Arts." The reason these loans (copyrights and patents) were allowed is that they were the best way 18th Century politicians could think of to maximize the creation and spread of new ideas.

However, here in the 21st Century, we have a new way to maximize the creation and spread of ideas: the Internet. Filesharing makes copyright as a mechanism for the dissemination of culture obsolete; therefore copyright should be abolished.

The creators of an idea are not the owners of that idea; the idea inherently belongs to the Public Domain. The public is morally right to fileshare!

Re:for artists?

[mrchaotica]

Your argument doesn't go far enough: I argue that getting works into the Public Domain is the whole purpose; paying the artists is merely a means to that end.

Re:for artists?

[mrchaotica]

A house (or other object) has value because I can use it. But an idea has value precisely because I communicated it to others -- the value is created by the act of sharing it.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

And after music theory finally came around?

Great composers did a great job making a fortune because they could make much better music people were willing to pay more for.

The 19th century is a much better example than when everyone was poor but the nobles.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slavery *isn't* economical.

Only someone who has no understanding the velocity of money actually believes slavery is good for an economy.

It's good for SOME people, just like implementing controls on music is good for SOME people. Slavery is bad for an economy as a whole as it reduces the amount of people participating and exchanging goods and services.

That, and the fact large groups are subjugated and rarely become educated or can leverage their abilities.

Re:for artists?

[mrchaotica]

Cue the Monsanto hit-men in 3...2...1...

(But in all serious, the actual Monsanto reaction to that is to patent the new plant and sue everyone who interferes with their profit, including not only other horticulturists doing selective breeding, and not only their customers who wish to save seed rather than buying from them again next year, but even the farmers in neighboring fields who are trying to save seeds from their own crop that was accidentally contaminated with pollen from the Monsanto plants next door!)

Re:for artists?

[aitikin]

Because that arguement [sic] legalized slavery.

It also re-legalized alcohol in the United States.

Re:for artists?

[aitikin]

This is what needs to happen to music. The Constitution was written when reproduction and distribution were a large if not the largest cost in the process of getting creative ideas out to the public. Therefore it made sense give authors exclusive control of reproduction/distribution. But today, reproduction/distribution have gotten so cheap it almost can't be measured (200 GB monthly data cap for $50 works out to 0.1 cents per 4 MB MP3). Insisting that authors retain control of reproduction/distribution doesn't reflect the reality of these price changes, and will lead to huge economic inefficiencies if allowed to persist. 100 years from now when everyone could potentially own a solar powered car by printing it on a 3D printer for $500 dollars (2012 dollars), do you really want the automakers holding the copyright on the design charging $30,000 per copy for "distribution"?

I was with you until that paragraph. First off, listening to music in MP3s is ridiculous now, given our storage devices available, but my issue isn't that.

The nearly zero cost of reproduction and distribution is why the industry is trying to hold onto traditional copyright law. By all rights, you should be paid for work you do. And when a lot of work was involved in making duplicate copies of your work and distributing them around the country, you deserved to be paid a lot for it. But now that those costs of dropped to near zero, the industry sees a huge profit opportunity - being paid per copy, while paying nearly nothing to make copies. No other industry works like this. If I construct a computer for a client, I get paid for that one computer. If I prepare a meal for a customer, I get paid for that one meal. If I stitch a tear in a shirt, I get paid for that one shirt. Only in the copyrighted industries do we have the concept that a person can work once, then get paid for it over and over without ever lifting a finger again. That idea made sense in old times because reproducing and distributing a work required much effort than lifting a finger. But now that it requires less effort than that, the law needs to change to reflect that economic reality.

You're talking about taking away the financial incentive for the person who does the creative work. The author (or composer, in this case) creates something and you're talking saying that that person doesn't need to get paid for it. So it costs you $0.0001 to download this song. It costs that artist studio time, mastering time, and creativity. Studio rates vary greatly from $25/hr-$100/hr, or in days, anywhere from $400-$4000 a day. Mastering can be as cheap as $100/song or as expensive as $5000 for 45 minutes of audio. So right there, you're talking about as little as $1500 for the studio time and $1000 for the mastering, but if they're a big name (or just rich and want to work with [insert name here]), it's going to be closer to $30,000 for the lot of it all. Now that's just flat fees, don't forget, if you have a producer, they usually get a cut of the profits.

I'm not saying that the current model is good. In fact, I'm saying it's bad. But taking away the financial incentive of the musician is painfully wrong on so many levels. Most of the time, the musician is putting in at least an hour of creativity on one song alone, not to mention the time spent rehearsing it, tweaking it, etc.

Maybe it's time for me to turn my /. card in, but I'm sick of hearing how the musician shouldn't make money off of their work. So they're in a different field, where their creativity is their income and they have a chance (about equal to that of winning the lotto) of hitting it big and being rich for their life. That's not something to be jealous of, that's something worth awing over.

Re:for artists?

[Grishnakh]

Don't forget the easiness factor: watching a movie on Netflix instant view is pretty trivial: just go through the menus to find what you want to watch (easily the most difficult part of the process), and when you find it, hit "play", and it starts playing. Contrast this to either 1) going to the trouble to get the DVD, which requires time and forethought, or 2) going to the trouble to download it on BitTorrent, which requires a lot of time too (esp. if it's not that popular and doesn't have many seeders).

Same goes for the Kindle store, the iTunes/iPhone store, etc.; these things make buying stuff trivially simple and fast, so if you're only going to save perhaps $1-2, what's the point of going to all that extra effort? However, if you're going to save $1500 on AutoCAD by pirating it on BitTorrent, suddenly the time spent makes a lot more sense (assuming it's not for company use, since the BSA does audit companies, but not individuals).

Re:for artists?

[pnutjam]

Anyone with a 4th grade education should recognize that line from the "Declaration of Independence", here let me past the relevent section:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Seems pretty straightforward to me. This is one of our founding principles, no matter how much it chafes those currently in power.

Re:for artists?

[pnutjam]

Education is always better then legislation, which is good. It's easy for one person to decide to force everyone else with legislation, it's hard for one voice to drown out the sea of enlightened voices.

Re:for artists?

[pnutjam]

The last 100 years have been a anomaly in the arts. The newness of recorded music and video allowed a select few financiers to manipulate things, and the bubble has burst. The days of the mega star have passed. There just isn't alot of money in entertainment without a coddled middle class and manufactured adult/child age groups like "teens" and "tweens". We already see this divergence on TV, how many friends can you discuss that great show you saw last night with? We have less shared experiences and we need to learn to deal with it as a nation instead of defending every hill to the last man.

Re:for artists?

[pnutjam]

Murder is against the human condition, it usually only occurs in times of extreme emotion. Armies have spent millions of hours attempting to train humans to kill other humans because it goes against our nature.

Re:for artists?

[pnutjam]

Why should everyone be forced to pay their pittance to support artists when, to many of us, music is background noise that we enjoy occasionally. If the only thing on the radio was some guy playing a fiddle, a lot of people would listen to some guy playing a fiddle. This isn't healthcare or some other necessity. It should be supported by those who truly care about music, whether that is the musician or their fans.

Re:for artists?

[element-o.p.]

What makes you think that is ethical? Did the rich take their money by force? Are they robber barons who use unfair business practices to force the "little guy" into bankruptcy and then jack prices through the roof once they have a monopoly? Once you have not paid for music, what are doing to raise the poor to a better standard of living (or are you just helping yourself, as I suspect)?

Nick Mason, the drummer for Pink Floyd (my all-time favorite band, FWIW) owns a Ferrari Enzo -- that's a car that is so expensive that you can't just go to a Ferrari dealer and buy one. Ferrari has to invite you to buy one. Me? I probably can't even afford an oil filter for Mason's Enzo (okay, I probably can, but you get my point). Nick Mason is clearly far, far richer than I most likely ever will be. My response to that, is "Good on ya', Nick!" He is a very talented musician, he worked hard for his success, and I wish him nothing but the best of luck for the rest of his life.

You are not acting ethically. You are cheating a professional musician (and recording engineer, and mastering engineer, and...) out of the just reward for work they have done, and trying to wrap that in some noble-sounding B.S. to rationalize your unethical behaviour. If you believe the Bono or Justin Bieber or Janet Jackson or Jerry Garcia (yes, I know he is no longer with us -- RIP, Jerry) already have enough money, and you truly believe it is unethical to pay them more money for the right listen to their music, then you have an ethical option: don't consume the product (music) that they produce. But you are not legally or ethically entitled to consume their content and refuse to pay them any more than your employer would be ethically or legally justified to decide that you are already rich enough, so he is going to withhold your wages for the past several weeks and give it to the poor, instead. You worked for that income, you had a reasonable expectation of receiving that income, and your employer would be in the wrong to take it from you and give it to someone less well off than you.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

... Dune, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Disney cartoons are all covered by copyright, and Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Frankenstein were. It sounds like you're making an argument for copyright, not against it.

thanks for making this point... Star Wars: A new hope. I wanted to watch it with my kids the other day... only have it on VHS tape... I no longer have a tape player. I'm happy to go PAY FOR IT AGAIN on DVD. Can't. I'm in Australia. Its not available at the moment... only gets re-released every couple of years. All stores have been out of stock for ages. Only legitimate version I can get is a blu-ray box set for $180. This is a movie that has been publicly aired 100s of times on free to air TV. A movie that I have paid for MULTIPLE times in different formats. A movie that I have OWNED multiple versions of. A movie that I CANNOT show my kids, because it simply isn't available. This movie is 30+ years OLD!!! I don't pirate. I won't pirate. But fuck all of them to hell and cry me a river. I'm still voting for the Pirate Party in my country.

Re:for artists?

[Saint Fnordius]

A lot of studio musicians actually do use this model. They get paid per recording session, or a fixed rate per gig. Composers also often get an upfront fee in lieu of royalties, so in reality we are talking about a very small minority of artists involved, and for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth there is not less money being spent on music, and the amount going to commercial bootleggers and so-called pirates has not increased.

What *is* true is that Apple and Amazon, with their bookkeeping of copied downloaded and/or sold have exposed how often studios and the RIAA would cheat those due royalties. What also is true is that the first copyright laws were not written to protect the authors, but to protect those with printing presses who wanted to cut exclusive deals to offset the cost of their equipment. It is a system that originates from an era when duplication was expensive, when duplication for personal use was unknown.

Re:for artists?

[mcgrew]

And that worked for a long, long time, until they forgot what the agreement was.
Why is it always THEY who forgot what the agreement was?
Why isn't it YOU who forgot what the agreement was?

Because "YOU" were not part of the agreement. The agreement was between author, publisher, and government. There is and never was any agreement between author or publisher and consumer.

Quite frankly, I doubt you ever honored the terms of the agreement. Fess up, you started pirating before you EVER purchased any music or movies didn't you?

LOL, I'm not the guy you were responding to, but there were no PCs when I was a teenager, let alone an internet, and there were no movies for sale or rent because the VCR hadn't been invented yet. But yeah, we taped records we borrowed from friends. You know what? It was perfectly legal.

You rail against the creeping term of copyrights, while at the same time ripping off music and movies on which the ink hasn't even dried yet.

But I don't. I get my movies at Walmart and my CDs from the local bands that produce them *and who thank me for sharing them, they get bigger audiences that way); today's commercial music is almost all crap. There has always been crap music, but it's worse now than it's ever been. It's not only not worth paying for, it's not worth the effort to download. I have the book I wrote and a lot of FOSS seeding on bittorrent.

You are not alone, there seems to be a lot of people like you who have never created anything of value

There are about 400 slashdotters who would disagree with you. One fellow called my /. journals "slashdot's best kept secret gem". Another said he had it as his home page. Yet another said "I don't know if you're a great writer, or jst a really good one who knows a lot of interesting people". I've written songs, poetry, science fiction. And I've never tried to monetize it.

I see the fellow you responded to is in a similar position, even though he's only half my age.

Re:for artists?

[mcgrew]

Someone who strings together 3 chords certainly can't dictate what another person who strings together the same 3 chords can do

I'm afraid you're wrong. George Harrison was sucessfully sued for the three note song "My Sweet Lord", ZZ Top was successfully sued by Howlin' Wolf for the "Ahow how how" in "La Grange".

Re:for artists?

[Saint Fnordius]

Considering that most artist work on commission up front, your snark is kind of moot. We're letting a tiny elite control the dialogue, and have long since abandoned the "publish or perish" intent of the original copyright term limits for their benefit.

Re:for artists?

[mcgrew]

Even professional recording studios are cheap these days. I have friends who've recorded and had professionally stamped CDs (including cover art and packaging) for about a dollar per CD in lots of 2000. A decent piano costs more than that.

Re:for artists?

[tbannist]

So you would continue the treatment that killed them rather than accept change?

This is not optional. Technology is changing the world, recorded music is going extinct as a money maker for musicians. There's at least two problems here:

1) Recorded music can be easily replicated and transported to any place at any time, on demand.
2) The library of recorded music gets larger every year, which means every individual participant in the marketplace faces more and more competition. This is nearly perfect competition, margins will be squeezed to nothing. Economic laws predict that there soon will be virtually no profit margin on producing recorded music regardless of piracy.

The money will be in goods that can't be duplicated at the click of the button. It will be in merchandise and concerts. It doesn't matter if you don't think that will be sufficient, that's the way the world is headed, for better or worse. The current piracy crackdowns are only alienating the very people the music industry will want to get money from in the future.

Re:for artists?

[mcgrew]

Yep, I sure am. I was 24 in 1976. I watched the moon landing live on TV.

Re:for artists?

[JustSomeProgrammer]

19th century is Post Copyright legislation.

Re:for artists?

[Grishnakh]

The Declaration of Independence has absolutely zero legal weight in the US, and means nothing outside it.

Again, I'm asking what your authority for "inalienable rights" is. A piece of paper written by long-dead men is not an authority, and the only reason you think it is is because there's a bunch of other people who agree to the same concept, which means you're agreeing with a "mob".

Re:for artists?

[Theaetetus]

Someone who strings together 3 chords certainly can't dictate what another person who strings together the same 3 chords can do

I'm afraid you're wrong. George Harrison was sucessfully sued for the three note song "My Sweet Lord", ZZ Top was successfully sued by Howlin' Wolf for the "Ahow how how" in "La Grange".

No, you're wrong. You have to read the entire post:

They can only dictate what another person does who copies their arrangement.

In the Harrison case, he had heard "He's so fine" before, and the jury determined that he had copied it. And ZZ Top wasn't successfully sued - the judge ruled that the prior works were in the public domain.
Nonetheless, as I said, the question isn't "were there three notes," which is what you seemed to be focusing on, but "did the alleged infringer copy the prior work". In other words, did they know about it, and did they copy it in their work. If a hermit in the woods who had been out of popular culture for 20 years wrote a book about a boy wizard named Harry Potter who attends Hogwart's school and had honestly never heard of Rowling, that would not be copyright infringement, even if every word was exactly the same.

Re:for artists?

[tofarr]

I would submit that ethics has never trumped economics - Do you think it is a coincidence that slavery ended around the time that mechanisation and industrialisation were taking off? We still a high standard of living without the same level of hard or tedious labour, but now said labour is performed by machines enabling us to have a higher ethical standard. Take away the machines, and I suspect slavery would come right back.

Re:for artists?

[FrankieBaby1986]

Someone Mod This UP!

Re:for artists?

[NulDevice]

Most of us do.

Recording and playing live, for about 99.9999999% of artists, represents a rather significant financial loss. I'm lucky enough to be competant at IT stuff, so I can afford gear and take the occasional vacation to tour, because my day job pays for it. But that's not the case for everyone. If this sort of thing continues, the only people who will be able to record and perform will be those that are wealthy enough in the first place. Do you really want that?

Re:for artists?

[NulDevice]

"Tons" is relative. There are tons more now.

And there is a resource scarcity for playing live. How many shows do you go to in a week? How many venues are in your town? If you go to see a band once, would you go see them or a similar band the following week? If there are two bands playing that you like on two different venues on the same night, how do you choose which one to see? Do you always buy merch?

See the problem here?

Eventually, there will be a market scarcity, because nobody will be able to afford to be a musician.

Re:for artists?

[richieb]

I don't know. My band recorded several CDs. With professional mixing and pressing few hundred copies it costs us about $1000. If you look at many jazz recordings, most of the tracks are recorded live in the studio in one or two takes. Then you need few hours of studio time to mix and master. Costs are not excessive..

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that they are already taxed on it, right? When they sell it and make income from it, that income is taxed. Income from the sale of a home is not taxed in the same way as income earned from a job, either. Likewise, your car is property, but you aren't taxed on it. Your computer is property, but you aren't taxed on it. Just because they call it "property tax" doesn't mean that it applies to all property.

Re:for artists?

[Grumbleduke]

why does digital distribution need to run on scarcity economics? It's not scarce, so it's not valuable? Why, just because it's trivial to copy music digitally, is digital music now considered to have little-to-no value?

You're confusing (digital) music and its creation with digital music files. Digital music files (mp3s, flacs etc.) have virtually no value; they're just information and can be copied, deleted, shared (almost) effortlessly (and supply and demand comes in). The music itself is a little more complex; mainly because it doesn't really exist, without being expressed. The "valuable" part of music is the creation (and first recording) of it. Unfortunately that only happens once, so can't really be re-sold. Even then, there is so much music available now (having already been created) that there is an argument (based on supply and demand) that new music of itself is of little value.

I am not an economist, but scarcity is important because if something isn't scarce, it is hard to get people to pay for it (as in "have a nice jar of air, only $10"). Either you have something that is of itself scarce (gold being a fairly good example), you add scarcity by introducing an extra component ("this is a jar of air that's come from [somewhere important], one of only 5 in existence"), or you add scarcity by introducing a service element ("this is a tank of air, but highly compressed, and prepared especially so you can use it to go diving"). Or you use the law to impose some sort of artificial scarcity ("here's a jar of air; note that it's currently illegal to breath air from anywhere else, and we can sue you/have you locked up if you dare to do so").

So given this, how do we apply these to music? Well, music isn't scarce, so you're going to have trouble selling music in general. Can an extra component be added? Yes. That's where the CD comes in, or the "extended, improved, special limited edition" CD, with fancy artwork, bonus features, signed etc. (where the valueless digital files are bundled with something that can be made scarce). Can a service element be added? Yes, that's your live performance, signing, getting fans involved with the creation process and interacting with them, or providing a service for accessing the valueless music files (i.e. what iTunes, Spotify and all those others do). Or you try to enforce copyright, or convince people that they shouldn't share music on their own (which seems to go against the point of music?).

Of course, the real world isn't quite as straightforward as that, as "perceived value" is more important than actual value (hence a CD with a handful of songs can cost the same as a DVD box-set which took considerably more money to create). And this is where a lot of the media/marketing campaigns come in, with interested groups trying to convince us that there is something special or magical about music (or a particular musician's work). Or people such as the original author, suggesting that artists should be entitled to extra stuff, beyond the rest of us, because they're special. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

As for the underlying issue of this activity "devastating the music industry", as someone who has been studying this in depth for a few years now, reading accounts from various people, watching the numbers (those of which are available), I'm yet to be convinced that there's sufficient evidence to come to any conclusion (other than this one, obviously).

Onto the specific articles, the NPR blog post struck me as a typical "intern, just starting the job, and writing a few words in a quiet corner about thoughts on the music business from a radio perspective." The response seems to be typical of someone who has a lot to say (and wants to say it strongly), and is going to say it whether relevant or not (somewhat like this post... but meh, it's a free internet). It's well-written and sounds convincing, but most of the content is rather thin (such as the cherry-picked statistics that don't say anything, anecdotes, a

Re:for artists?

[hackula]

Because they put the work into writing the fucking song. If Elvis wants to release a song, then he should write it himself or pay someone else to do it. It is not about the money that a song has the potential to make, it is about Elvis (or whoever) using the song without permission and passing it off as his own.

Re:for artists?

[wcgOtt]

You said it. It's import to point out that only a very small percentage of musicians make enough money from record sales in the first place. Cracker dude is one such lucky bastard and thus not even representative of the majority. I will pay for music when it goes directly to the artist no iTunes, no record company, right off their own website. Guys like Jonathon Coulton are spearheading this and he does quite well. I would bet he nets much more than many popular artists because his costs are minimal (he even hit the billboard charts last year, all with self produced and released albums.) Metallica could easily self produce an album and sell it but I bet they are locked in solid to some contract that restricts this for years.

Re:for artists?

[pnutjam]

I am responding to your request for a citation, and yes, this is not a legal document. However, it is does espouse the principles of our founding fathers, hence it contains "founding principles" of the United States. The truths espoused don't change because they become inconvenient.

Re:for artists?

[jp10558]

Well, it depends. I recently managed to go see Cirque du Soleil live, but while there I also picked up a DVD of the same show (though a different performance) so I could show it to people who weren't able to come.

Let's just say that while the live performance was expensive and cramped (the airplane seats were more spacious than the theater), the experience was much better than watching the DVD in my much more comfortable seats at home. Way better.

It's going to depend on the experience I think. Now, this is of course only a delay - I expect once we have something getting close to a Holodeck, then, yes, you can have close as you couldn't tell the difference...

Re:for artists?

[Raenex]

Ideally the author should have exclusive right to distribution of their work.

You state this as if it was some uncontroversial fact in the copyright debate. That's bullshit. Lots of people don't agree with this anti-freedom, artificial scarcity model for intellectual works.

Re:for artists?

[BakaHoushi]

I think you're hitting it here, too. Gabe Newell of Valve was told, so the story goes, that releasing their digital game distribution system Steam in Russia was a waste of time and money because Russians pirate so much.

They launched it anyway and made a lot of money. Why? Well, my guess is because Steam is easy to use, comes with built-in neat features (achievements, in-game chats, auto-updates, etc.) and constantly has sales that make games pretty damn cheap. (As in, 60%+ off)

Basically, if you can't make up for a price-point (and it's hard to beat free), give people a better service. Make buying a good faster and easier. Going to the store to buy a physical copy takes time and money. Pirating is free, but runs the risk of waiting a long time (especially if what you're looking for is obscure) on top of the risks associated with malware.

For music, iTunes is a great step. But honestly, I usually don't bother with it because I've lost songs with no backup and I couldn't restore them, which soured me on the system, and I still feel that the stuff is overpriced. (This, of course, still doesn't CONDONE piracy, but let's face it. For many people, convenience and price will trump morality. It's just a fact.)

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why, if you look at the Declaration of Independence, when Jefferson cribs from Locke, he only mentions life and liberty, and adds his own 'pursuit of happiness', but ignores Locke's 'property.' Jefferson knew it wasn't a human right.

Know I'm coming late to this, but the original version of the Declaration did say the right to own property. Jefferson changed it to pursuit of happiness because he didn't want it to be used as basis for an argument that owning slaves (who were legally considered property in many states at that time) was a fundamental right.

Re:for artists?

[sneakyimp]

It's still not my job to assure them a living.

Nor is it up to you to decide if their music should be shared world-wide without their permission.

Re:for artists?

[Josuah]

"The point is that the owner of copyright should be free to dictate the terms under which others can access that content. "

But of course, that's the way it already works.

If you mean they should be free to enforce the terms any way they want, however, then I must take the opposite stand.

No, enforcement is outside the moral argument. All of the debate around this topic is really around what is "right" or "okay" to do. Obviously enforcing through pain of death that the crappy painting I made can only be viewed by people of mixed race and an annual income over $500K who also bark like a dog on national television would not be acceptable, legally or morally.

Re:for artists?

[sneakyimp]

That study is interesting -- although I would like to point out that it is hosted by Torrentfreak -- hardly a neutral entity. I haven't bothered to check the study's data sources or methodology, but feel those numbers may be realistic. However, if the numbers are not corrected for inflation, 4% growth in Norwegian kronor revenue would likely represent a contraction of the market because inflation is typically 2-3% per year. 1 kronor from 2009 is probably worth about .744 kronor from 1999.

The artist revenue numbers are encouraging. I've seen Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails go direct to their fans online and make MUCH more money than they ever made from a record label. On the other hand, these bands benefitted from years of marketing funded by major labels.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the future of music, but am still very concerned about the sense of entitlement among listeners like Emily White. She has 11,000 songs and hasn't paid for the vast majority of them.

Re:for artists?

[Josuah]

The "owner" can only exert control so long as something is entirely within their possession. After it leaves that state, there is no good moral or ethical argument for placing the rights of the "artiste" above everyone elses.

By extension, plagiarism is okay and the GPL is not. There is no requirement to provide credit where credit is due (because it is not due).

Re:for artists?

[sneakyimp]

Nice armchair economics/culture analysis there. You obviously occupy the chair in Culture studies at some prestigious university. I can tell by all the facts you offer in support of your thesis.

Re:for artists?

[sneakyimp]

Is murder "widely disobeyed"? I think a survey asking people if they share music illegally and / or they think all music should be shared freely would get a very different "yes" rate than if they were asked if they murder other people and / or you should be free to murder other persons freely.

I think that's more or less what I'm moaning about. Murder is certainly infinitely worse than file sharing, but there is no ethical awareness or opprobrium in society against profiteering in music against an artist's wishes. If you asked every artist in your music collection directly if they wanted Kim Dot Com to make money sharing their music while they get nothing, I'd wager the vast, vast majority would say NO. On the other hand, if you ask users of Megaupload if they have the right to share this music freely, the vast majority will say YES or I DON'T GIVE A F*CK. Something about it stinks and nobody seems willing to admit it.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

"it's easy to do so it shouldn't be wrong" is a straw man. The serious argument is "it's impossible to enforce without infringing seriously on people's liberty, therefore it shouldn't be illegal."

Re:for artists?

[Ash Vince]

Well, it depends. I recently managed to go see Cirque du Soleil live, but while there I also picked up a DVD of the same show (though a different performance) so I could show it to people who weren't able to come.

Let's just say that while the live performance was expensive and cramped (the airplane seats were more spacious than the theater), the experience was much better than watching the DVD in my much more comfortable seats at home. Way better.

It's going to depend on the experience I think. Now, this is of course only a delay - I expect once we have something getting close to a Holodeck, then, yes, you can have close as you couldn't tell the difference...

Sorry for the utterly off topic reply here but good example. I worked as a stage hand for them a few years ago just so I could see the gig for free after watching one of their videos. I would have quite happily worked for free just for the 2nd row tickets I got to the dress rehearsal of Quidam.

The thing is though that I would consider them an exception since they are so good at what they do. I would say that if only artists of their calibre could make a living it would discourage many from considering it as a career and putting in the vast amount of practice needed.

I also think things like circus skills are different to music due to their interactive nature and spectacle. Even mediocre people can make a living doing thing like that. I used to be balloon modeller, stilt walker, juggler and fire breather when I first left university but I was nowhere near the calibre of a true professional. I still made more than the professional musicians I knew though when we went out busking.

Re:for artists?

[next_ghost]

That study is interesting -- although I would like to point out that it is hosted by Torrentfreak -- hardly a neutral entity.

The study is not hosted on TorrentFreak, they just report about it. The study itself is hosted on Scribd. Also, it's a master thesis from BI Norwegian School of Management. I can't comment on how good the school is but Lowery doesn't even bother to say where his numbers come from. And while TorrentFreak is certainly not neutral on the issue, neither is Lowery. So let's ignore who says what and just focus on whether or not those arguments stand on their own merits.

However, if the numbers are not corrected for inflation, 4% growth in Norwegian kronor revenue would likely represent a contraction of the market because inflation is typically 2-3% per year.

Those numbers ARE corrected for inflation. The 4% increase in industry revenues is mentioned twice in the article and the first time it specifically says the number is corrected for inflation in the very same sentence. The raw numbers are 1.4 billion kronor in 1999 and 1.9 billion kronor in 2009.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the future of music, but am still very concerned about the sense of entitlement among listeners like Emily White. She has 11,000 songs and hasn't paid for the vast majority of them.

I'm not concerned in the slightest. Even if people completely stop paying for recorded music (which is even more unlikely than successfully crushing all freeloaders with iron fist), musicians will simply start using Kickstarter to get paid for making completely new music. Not to mention millions of amateurs who make music just for fun without expecting a dime in return.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

So we should screw the artists to screw the middlemen?
How about lobbying for legislation with allows the artist to enforce their copyrights themselves, and thusly cut out the middleman entirely?*

* = that's a trick question, we all know the answer is that you don't give a rat's ass about the artists, and the middlemen are just a straw man, you just want stuff without paying for it.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you do for a living? Let's remove your ability to make a living from it next, shall we?

Re:for artists?

[Digicaf]

Copying is not an act of creation

It's besides the point, but copying data is creation. You're just using an existing template to guide the final form of the new creation. Also, it's a deflection to say that copying data is the value at question. It's not, the pattern being copied is the thing being valued, and that pattern does have value.

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Both are valid points.
I'm not a fan of the general /. attitude that we should completely fuck over the artists because the middleman is a selfish fuck. Why abolish copyright altogether to punish the Artists in the name of punishing the middleman, when there's the possibility of concocting a system where the artist can enforce his or her own copyrights and therefore cut the middleman out entirely? Only the middleman loses, everyone else wins.

Re:for artists?

[sneakyimp]

Lowery's numbers on employment are backed up by the Burea of Labor Statistics -- an entity of the US federal government responsible for tracking industry trends. You can see for yourself that the 2000 data says there were 52,180 musicians employed in the United States earning a median annual wage of $36,740 and a mean annual wage of $44,520. From the 2010 data you can see that there were 43,350 musicians employed. They don't offer annual wages, saying that these occupations typically don't work year round, but the median hourly wage is $22.39 and the mean hourly wage is $30.22. While we can't compare the apples and oranges of the wage reports, we can certainly see that there was a substantial decrease in the number of employed musicians in the United States.

I'm not concerned in the slightest. Even if people completely stop paying for recorded music (which is even more unlikely than successfully crushing all freeloaders with iron fist), musicians will simply start using Kickstarter to get paid for making completely new music. Not to mention millions of amateurs who make music just for fun without expecting a dime in return.

Having recorded both as a professional musician signed to a record label and as an Independent musician using kickstarter (for the same band), I expect I speak with some authority when I say that the money available to a band -- meaning the musicians themselves -- for recording a record (and living) will likely be about 10-20% as much as this band might expect from a record label 10 years ago. I will go so far as to say that when there's less money in a business, there's less talent in it. I think the employment numbers in the US speak for themselves.

I understand you're not concerned. Maybe you're not concerned about deforestation or overpopulation or the euro crisis either. I suppose we'll just have to wait and see about all these things. In the meantime, I hope people will consider assisting their favorite musicians financially. I hope they will also consider not sharing music for artists they have not assisted financially. That seems pretty fair to me.

Re:for artists?

[Digicaf]

Copying music costs the artist nothing.

That's arguable. Despite what some people think, there is the concept of a lost sale involved. I don't believe RIAA claims (which are no doubt very inflated), but when a song is copied many many times, there will be some percentage of people who copied that music who would have bought it otherwise. That might be a very low percentage, but it is assuredly non-zero. Also, there is the cost of lost control. Copyright law entitles the rights holder of an artistic pattern to the control of that pattern. Because they created it, they get the say in what happens to it. Just because the creation is digital now, does not automatically negate that. In a nutshell, copying a file may be easy and it may seem ok, but it's still illegal unless you have permission to do that. That's the cost for not having created it yourself or having secured the rights to it for yourself.

What we are learning is that once you release something that can be easily replicated by a computer over the internet, that thing is no longer just yours. The world has changed; you need to adjust.

The adjustment here is part of the argument in question. Just because the pattern being copied is easily manipulated, does not automatically mean it is morally acceptable to copy it. Copying it may be easy, but the fact remains that in so doing, you're using a template to create a new file. The template wasn't free to create, and the current system recognizes that by stating that the pattern itself has some value and that the pattern has an assigned ownership (which isn't you in this case). It therefore remains the property of the copyright holder. In effect, whoever went to the trouble of creating the pattern owns it, and they should be compensated for it.

The argument that the internet has changed the morality of these things is infantile. The difficulty of an act does not determine whether it is right or wrong. For example, killing someone with a bat would take considerable effort, and would be wrong. However pushing that same person off a bridge to their death is much easier, would cost almost no effort, and yet is still wrong. I'm not comparing murder to the unlawful copying of music, just illustrating that an eased effort of an act does not erase the morality of that act.

Re:for artists?

[next_ghost]

Lowery's numbers on employment are backed up by the Burea of Labor Statistics -- an entity of the US federal government responsible for tracking industry trends. You can see for yourself that the 2000 data says there were 52,180 musicians employed in the United States earning a median annual wage of $36,740 and a mean annual wage of $44,520. From the 2010 data you can see that there were 43,350 musicians employed. They don't offer annual wages, saying that these occupations typically don't work year round, but the median hourly wage is $22.39 and the mean hourly wage is $30.22. While we can't compare the apples and oranges of the wage reports, we can certainly see that there was a substantial decrease in the number of employed musicians in the United States.

The obvious question is: who counts as a musician in this statistic? From the description on the web (especially the list of organizations in the 2010 statistic), these are normal day jobs where musicians are paid by the hour - theaters, opera houses, churches... I bet the list doesn't include artists signed up to labels which makes it completely useless for our discussion. Basically, close a few hundred theaters and opera houses around the country and you get 9,000 fewer musicians in this statistic. What does the RIAA statistic say?

I will go so far as to say that when there's less money in a business, there's less talent in it.

Exactly. The market will take care of balancing money and talent.

I understand you're not concerned. Maybe you're not concerned about deforestation or overpopulation or the euro crisis either.

Actually, I'm concerned about a lot of things. But artists in general getting paid is not one of them. No offence but paid artists are simply not that important for creation of art. Art will get created either way. Perhaps different art but that doesn't matter. The thing is, if you want to get paid for doing something, it's YOUR responsibility to find people who will pay you for doing that. Not mine and especially not the government's. The US constitution specifically says that copyright was created for the benefit of consumers, not to create jobs for creators.

In the meantime, I hope people will consider assisting their favorite musicians financially. I hope they will also consider not sharing music for artists they have not assisted financially. That seems pretty fair to me.

Of course it's fair. But I don't see any good reason why it should be a requirement.

Re:for artists?

[ukemike]

Things should only be illegal when they cause serious harm to the entire society AND making them illegal won't cause even worse problems. So what's the harm from unauthorized file sharing?

Instead of just jumping in with your opinion you might actually RTFA. It contains the most succinct and convincing set of arguments on the subject I've seen so for. So the answers to your question are in the linked letter that David Lowery wrote.

One of the best points that he makes is that there is an industry that actually makes lots money by distributing works of art without compensating the artist. They make their money by selling ad space on their websites. Others make money by selling hardware that is used for illegally copying music. Some make money by selling things like mp3 players. Certainly mp3 players would be much less popular if it weren't for the fact that you can fill them with music for free if you make that moral decision. On the other hand the recording industry does make contracts with artists and they do pay royalties for the recording artist and the author of the work. The file sharing industry and the hardware support industries contribute absolutely none of their income with the artists who's product they distribute.

Your statement that "Things should only be illegal when they cause serious harm to the entire society" is an astonishing statement. So if the RIAA sends some thugs to rough you up it makes very little difference to the entire society, (I wouldn't care) but it would make a hell of a difference to you. Should it be legal? Naturally not. Our threshold for what is wrong or illegal is much lower and includes causing harm to individuals.

The rest of your argument can be summed up like this, "Everyone does it so it must be okay." If there really is this overwhelming majority of people who think artists should work for free then I would suggest that you build a movement to modify law to eliminate copyright. Until you do so your claims of popular support are only claims. Recall that copyright is enshrined in our constitution, "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." I am the first to argue that current copyright law violates the "limited times" portion of the constitution, but in most cases the artists who are impoverished by the fact that millions of people who should pay for music choose not to, are living people today and whether you should have free access to Leadbelly songs is a much different issue than your access to copyrighted material by current living artists.

What it really boils down to is this: do we want professional music in our society? If we do we have to make it possible for musicians to make a living.

Re:for artists?

[cpt kangarooski]

Do you have a source for this? I googled a bit and nothing I could find indicates that.

Re:for artists?

[Grishnakh]

What "truths"? Why are the things in this document "true"? How can you prove that?

You sound just like Bible-thumpers who claim the Bible is "true" and "inerrant" because it says it is.

Re:for artists?

[Grishnakh]

Moreover, why should anyone care about the founding principles of one particular country? How does that make these "truths" for people on the opposite side of the planet?

Re:for artists?

[Grishnakh]

what percent of americans found nothing wrong with slavery prior to the US civil war?

This is a red herring. For one thing, slavery was already illegal in the North, and had been for a long time, so there wasn't much support for slavery up there even then. Finally, any such poll would be invalid, because it wasn't asking the slaves.

Comparing this to media file sharing is invalid, since you can't ask the media files if they want to be shared or not.

Your other examples are similar; you're singling out specific groups of people, instead of asking all people. So what's your point?

Re:for artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that arguement legalized slavery.

Copyright is not a right, like the right to life, liberty, and property. Copyright is a favor granted by the people to content creators in exchange for the content entering the public domain after a "limited time". You can't compare it to slavery. We can have congress change copyright terms to five minutes if we want (assuming they cared what we wanted). Artists do not have a natural right to their works, and natural rights is the basis of our constitution.

Re:for artists?

[pnutjam]

It is a belief for those who love freedom, it is a historical awakening similar to the Magna Carta.

Re:for artists?

[rebot777]

It is a little simplistic. I think in the case of slavery you would have to consider all parties harmed and decide which is worst, duh slaves.

I think we probably have pretty similar views on intellectual property. In my view people should have copyrights and patents for the amount of time will encourage the creation of the most 'valuable' (not measured in dollars but enjoyment-happiness) works. We can probably agree that amount of time isn't zero.

You are zeroing in on trade offs in harm which for most things there are. People do have to decide what is fair which is why there are laws and guidelines for shooting violent criminals and such. I was just trying to point out that often times in history there are cases when the majority was wrong about what's right and that we also need to balance respecting minorities rights. Here is a good website on the issue I'm trying to get at.

Re:for artists?

[Grishnakh]

Exactly my point: it's a belief, not a "truth". You can believe it's "true", and I might even agree with you personally, but people believing something doesn't make it objectively true. Basically, we're a "mob" that holds the same beliefs, and those beliefs change over time, just as long before the DoC or the Magna Carta, people generally had very different beliefs about freedom, believed that slavery was OK (even the slaves believed it in some ancient societies! They even took oaths to that effect!), etc. So just because we in the 21st Century developed countries think something's a "right" doesn't mean it really is; people long before us had very different opinions, and people long after us will probably also hold very different opinions. (A few hundred years from now, the idea of "personal freedom" will probably be considered a quaint historical curiosity, as people swear oaths of fealty to various megacorporations.)

Re:for artists?

[next_ghost]

Instead of just jumping in with your opinion you might actually RTFA. It contains the most succinct and convincing set of arguments on the subject I've seen so for. So the answers to your question are in the linked letter that David Lowery wrote.

I don't see any convincing arguments. Just whining that the business model he has chosen doesn't pay as well as he'd like. When you make cars or sell shoes and your business model doesn't work, it's your problem and the only acceptable solution is to change your business model, not blame others for your own failure. I don't see any good reason why music should be an exception.

One of the best points that he makes is that there is an industry that actually makes lots money by distributing works of art without compensating the artist. They make their money by selling ad space on their websites. Others make money by selling hardware that is used for illegally copying music. Some make money by selling things like mp3 players.

In that case, Mr Lowery should hire a lawyer and demand a fair share of turnover from this industry through court. However, shutting this industry down is not acceptable.

Certainly mp3 players would be much less popular if it weren't for the fact that you can fill them with music for free if you make that moral decision.

Oh, I'd certainly love to see you try and succeed in that. Because you see, the MP3 player is popular on its own due to its convenience. If you managed to split the music market into music made available for use in MP3 players by the artist and music that cannot be played from an MP3 player under any circumstances, the only thing you'd really achieve would be massive boost in popularity for those artists who made their music available for MP3 players (and also equivalent loss of popularity of those artists who did not).

Your statement that "Things should only be illegal when they cause serious harm to the entire society" is an astonishing statement. So if the RIAA sends some thugs to rough you up it makes very little difference to the entire society, (I wouldn't care) but it would make a hell of a difference to you. Should it be legal? Naturally not. Our threshold for what is wrong or illegal is much lower and includes causing harm to individuals.

Har, har, har, very funny. It doesn't matter whether one thug beats a thousand people or each of a thousand thugs beats one person. In both cases, a thousand people get beaten by thugs. That's why violence is illegal regardless of the number of victims.

The rest of your argument can be summed up like this, "Everyone does it so it must be okay."

You got only the first half right. Everyone does it. The other half is: Unchecked copying got humans from a cold damp cave to the Moon. If you stand in the way of copying, you're standing in the way of progress. And history tells us that progress never loses.

If there really is this overwhelming majority of people who think artists should work for free...

I never said anything like that and I'm really getting pissed that you pulled out something like that. If you didn't get the point from my other 4 comments in this thread, I'll repeat it one more time just for you: If you want to get paid for making art, that's perfectly fine. But finding a way to make it work is your problem just like in case of any other enterpreneur. The world doesn't owe you anything.

then I would suggest that you build a movement to modify law to eliminate copyright.

I'm already an active member of the Pirate Party movement.

What it really boils down to is this: do we want professional music in our society? If we do we have to make it possible for musicians to make a living.

No, it boils down to the fact that professional musicians are not necessarily needed.

Re:for artists?

[reve_etrange]

I hate to break it to you - but where you live isn't the whole of the world.

I'm aware. That's (one of the reasons) why I live here (a major cultural center).

lame

[bs0d3]

what a stupid post

Re:lame

[Endo13]

Couldn't agree more. I managed to get through the first 2 or 3 paragraphs without choking. What a crock. He is definitely some kind of RIAA shill.

Re:lame

[BanHammor]

Okay, so can YOU tell me, please, what are the ethics of software piracy, or unauthorised copying, or however you name it? Yes, indeed, the RIAA were swimming in money in the previous years, but the artist got paid something. Now, the artist gets considerably less not because there is a technical possibility of copying, but because people willfully choose not to pay for the music they enjoy, e.g. they copy. How do you justify that?

Re:lame

[Endo13]

There's nothing wrong with copying for personal use, ethically, morally, or otherwise. That's not what copyright is about. Copyright is about protecting the rights of the rightholder to exclusively sell copies of the work; no one else is allowed to sell new copies. What's called "copyright" today isn't that at all any more, it's now more of a "corporation right to fuck their customers for every bloody cent they can get while robbing their artists blind".

Now, the artist gets considerably less not because there is a technical possibility of copying, but because people willfully choose not to pay for the music they enjoy, e.g. they copy. How do you justify that?

Blatantly false. There's more money to be made in art right now than EVER before in history. The only reason it seems like less is because there are so fucking many "artists" competing for it now. Go back and read your history. Artists getting rich has always been limited to a very very small percentage of the artists at the time. Many late artists whose work is now considered great never made a living off their art while they were alive. For every Beethoven, there were a hundred more "starving artists" who were happy if they got paid with a meal for a night's entertainment.

Re:lame

[Lithdren]

Speaking for myself of course, I dont.

Because of these absurd, stupid laws, its illegal to sing "Happy Birthday" at a resturant where the employees join in. Music made by John Lennon is still under copywright. The lifting of a CD from a store and 'stealing' the MP3's off a website carry with them punishments that range from "Slap on the wrist" to "Indentured Servitude" for effectivly the same offence. Because of the money they're making, or already made, they're buying laws and turning people into criminals for doing what comes naturally, like having a friend listen to something you like. They're trying to destroy things that make it easy and affordable to engage in my own culture. I consider these laws immoral, and as a result, I dont respect them.

Much like if it was against the law to give coins to the starving homelss beggers, or to provide photo ID every time I want to cross the street, or whatever absurd concepts you can come up with, i'd do the same. I pay for music, I subscribe to Pandora, and I own an iTunes account with plenty of purchased music. I also pirate things, music I cant seem to find to purchase for a price that isn't absurdly overvalued because its no longer activly printed on physical media or offered as a download somewhere I can be sure I can get another copy of at some point in the future. I dont justify it, because I dont respect the law as its written, as do most people who act like I do. I agree that people who produce music should be paid for it, the disagreement seems to be in how much they should be paid.

People will follow the path of least resistance, and right now that tends to be pirating music they cannot easily find. Some people will always do it, some will never do it. Most, do it as a show of force of will against something they dont understand. Much like I dont buy seasons of TV shows for a few hundred dollars that have been out of production for 30 years, I dont spend money on music that can be had easily via other means, legit or not. I dont need justification, and I dont need you to agree with me. Through such action does change happen, be it for the better or worse.

I like to believe it will lead to positive change, given enough time.

Re:lame

[Skarecrow77]

He's actually the founder of an indie rock band and a college professor.

He's using math and real-world industry-specific experience to attempt to find real world solutions to complex arguements. He makes several valid points about the network of websites, software, and hardware surrounding the music-should-be-free and copying-is-not-a-crime debates, arguements that are difficult to find a valid rebuttal to. I know because I'm trying to do so.

Perhaps you should read more than the first few paragraphs. You may not agree with him, but he knows what he's talking about.

Re:lame

[BanHammor]

Well, you know, rephrasing words of one not-so-famous musician, I'm not scared of pirate copies, I'm just scared of musicians never being paid. I am not exactly free from piracy myself, but I am more than willing to pay for tracks I enjoyed whenever I get money. Those who I do not like but listened to I just delete from my hard drive.

Re:lame

[cpu6502]

Music sales are HIGHER now than ever before, thanks to teh convenience of iTunes. I don't know how anyone can say "artists are getting less" with a straight face when single sales are setting records.

Re:lame

[Anonymous Coward]

I did read through the first few paragraphs. He is mostly right with respect to what he chooses to write about. If someone is downloading over ten thousand songs in blatant violation of copyright laws then that is wrong. There is little wrong with asking people to pay for their entertainment. He says that he does not want to build a straw man, but that is exactly what he does. I cannot argue that the person downloading all those songs for personal use without reimbursement is in the wrong.

What he does not write about is the obscene length of time assigned to a copyrighted work in the US. Also, the steady erosion of fair use rights is a big problem. The people that he is trying to defend are doing everything they can to turn copyright into a weapon and make it near impossible for people to make use of and share ideas and concepts.

He is right that there is a problem with some people ignoring copyright, and they should reconsider their behavior. At the same time he should be calling to task the people who have turned copyright into a scary mess. Part of the reason there is a generation of people who think copyright is something to ignore is because it has been used as a way to control people rather than simply be used to compensate people for their efforts. Copyright is becoming meaningless primarily because it is being used in ways that are self destructive.

The author of that piece needs to think about the bigger picture and realize that there is plenty of blame to go around. Anytime anyone starts defending the current situation it only weakens their case even when they are right. A quick glimpse across this thread will confirm that for you.

Re:lame

[Belial6]

The ethics of 'IP piracy', software or otherwise is that 100% of the works under copyright are derivative of someone else's creative work. Thus 100% of all works under copyright is pulled from a poisoned well. There are no ethics concerning copyright. Copyright is strictly a pragmatic system that attempts to generate new, hopefully improved, derivative works.

Thus, asking for the ethics of software piracy is as loaded as asking if you still beat your wife.

Re:lame

[mccrew]

Mr. Lowery eviscerated every single one of the usual Slashdot rationalizations, so it's not much of a surprise that either one of you can't muster an argument beyond "what a stupid post" and "definitely some kind of RIAA shill."

It's kinda fun to see all of the typical dodges and rationalizations so totally and utterly obliterated, and the apologists sitting there in a daze, with nothing better to say.

Re:lame

[Skarecrow77]

I dont' disagree with you in the least. There is a large hole in the author's arguement where he simply glosses over the extreme length-of-time that copyright exists, and that there is no end in sight.

nobody's perfect, and there is no perfect defense of his side of the debate (or of our side, really).

I'm saying that his other arguements, many of them valid points of consideration in the debate, are being completely swept under the rug by people who want to put their fingers in their ears and say "la la la I can't hear you you're wrong!".

This is a complex debate and anybody willing to completely disregard either side of it doesn't truly understand the debate. I'm saying that the author of TFA is presenting intelligent and articulate examples of his side of the debate, and they are worth discussing, not dismissing. you can never truly win a debate by dismissing, only by explaining where the oposition is wrong.

Re:lame

[elsurexiste]

The blog tackled that statement a while ago.

Re:lame

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry buddy, but his sickening hit piece is a regurgitated apologia best left in the gutters where his mind trolls.

I guess he has company.

Enjoy your stay.

Re:lame

[Anonymous Coward]

He's using math and real-world industry-specific experience to attempt to find real world solutions to complex arguements. He makes several valid points about the network of websites, software, and hardware surrounding the music-should-be-free and copying-is-not-a-crime debates, arguements that are difficult to find a valid rebuttal to. I know because I'm trying to do so.

Please feel free to post the arguments that are difficult to find a valid rebuttal to - I will do my best to help you figure out how to rebut them. It doesn't look like he's using either math or his industry-specific experience to me - it looks like he's pretending to use math and logic (while conveniently forgetting that correlation != causation) and his industry specific VIEWPOINTS, and attempting to reduce complex arguments to simple ones. Oh, and he's taking full advantage of ad hominem attacks and straw men along the way.

There are really strong arguments against piracy. They do not appear in this blog post. Again, if you post the pieces you're trying to rebut, I'm fairly comfortable that I or someone else can break down the flaws and help you find the rebuttal you're looking for.

Re:lame

[bs0d3]

saying that some people dont get paid for valuable services highlights the errors in capitalism, not errors in the ethics of piracy. I couldn't even list all the things that people need but can't get because of money, the least important of which is music, movies, and software.

Re:lame

[Skarecrow77]

Sure. let's start with few of the more interesting ones he makes:

Why are we willing to pay for the hardware (sometimes exorbinant prices) to play music on/with, but not willing to pay for the music itself if we don't have to? Spending the kind of money we do on ipods, bose, and beats would imply we value the musical experience (even if we have poor taste)... but why do we not place a value on the music itself and those creating it?

Why are we as a generation willing to pay a little bit more for fair trade coffee, or purchase clothing from sweatshop-free clothing manufactuers, in order to make sure that the people working in those industries are fairly compensated, yet we don't feel the same way about compensating our musical artists?

Re:lame

[sdguero]

He's actually the founder of an indie rock band and a college professor.

No. Just no. He may have started another indie band after making money off of Cracker in the 1990s, but Lowery is most certainly not a college professor. Until an associate professor (requires a PhD 99% of the time) is granted tenure, which can take OVER A DECADE , they are not called a professor. As stated in the article, he has been a LECTURER for 2 years at the University of Georgia. That means he is currently a guest of the department head. While the top dog of that music program has been able to bring this guy in, along with some other industry shills from the 1990s who are probably cheap and need the work, I seriously doubt Lowery will ever be a professor unless he gets his doctorate (4+ years of work, and tens of thousands of dollars). Even then it would likely take him 5-10 years of additional lecturing and researching to become a professor (which, again, requires tenure).

Perhaps you should read more than the first few paragraphs. You may not agree with me, but I know what I'm talking about.

Re:lame

[Endo13]

Just one small problem with that: most of what he posted is factually incorrect, and the rest is irrelevant.

Re:lame

[king neckbeard]

There are no ethics. Copyright is not a system of ethics or morality. If you think there are ethics or morality involved in copyright or violation thereof, you are an idiot.

Re:lame

[Endo13]

Nice to see the troll shills have mod points again.

Re:lame

[king neckbeard]

Why are we willing to pay for the hardware (sometimes exorbinant prices) to play music on/with, but not willing to pay for the music itself if we don't have to? Spending the kind of money we do on ipods, bose, and beats would imply we value the musical experience (even if we have poor taste)... but why do we not place a value on the music itself and those creating it?

Because the hardware has a fixed per unit cost, meaning each new piece of hardware takes additional labor and resources. The cost of creating an additional copy of music is negligible, and we do pay those costs, through hard drives, internet connections, electricity, etc. The copyright holder doesn't do any additional work, so why should they receive additional funds. If I want to make money as a musician, I'll play a show.

Re:lame

[element-o.p.]

I don't agree with everything Lowery said, but his overarching point is valid: a content creator gets to set the terms of use for the content. A content consumer has the choice of complying with those terms or doing without the content. Any alternative choices are unethical.

The fact that the **AA's frequently act unethically in an attempt to enforce those terms has absolutely no bearing on that argument.

Re:lame

[bws111]

Right. All of the hardware manufacturers are operating as charities, and only charge the actual BOM+labor cost for their products. None of them make any profit selling those devices.

Re:lame

[Skarecrow77]

does this imply that as soon as we have 3d printers in our homes capable of reproducing said hardware, their costs will also plummet to 0? Is the expertise in designing a new pair of sennheisers that is better than the old model worth nothing?

Re:lame

[king neckbeard]

does this imply that as soon as we have 3d printers in our homes capable of reproducing said hardware, their costs will also plummet to 0?

I don't think they plummet to zero, since it still requires the same material, but yes, the costs would fall precipitously.

Is the expertise in designing a new pair of sennheisers that is better than the old model worth nothing?

No, I'm not sure why you'd think it is. If someone has the expertise, they can be commissioned to design a new pair. They can also teach others. If they have a skill, and they make use of that skill via a service, and that service is in demand, they can make money by doing that service.

Re:lame

[king neckbeard]

Who said anything about charity? They are doing actual work. When Alice copies a song for Bob that Carol wrote and recorded, Alice is doing the work, not Carol. If Alice wants to charge Bob and Bob is willing to pay, that's fine.

Re:lame

[Radres]

If a content creator doesn't want the world to use his content, then he shouldn't release his content to the public. This is the world we live in. How's that for you?

Re:lame

[element-o.p.]

Ignorant.

Let's just get rid of all property laws then. If you don't want someone living in your house, you shouldn't own a house. If you don't want someone driving your car, you shouldn't own a car. That's the world we will live in if we follow your ideals. How's that for you?

Re:lame

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone is downloading over ten thousand songs in blatant violation of copyright laws then that is wrong.

It would be more wrong to give tens of thousands of dollars to those would lobby to take away our freedoms, expand the surveillance state, and transform "limited times" to "damn-near forever".

Re:lame

[bws111]

Ever hear of profit? It is what is left over after paying for the 'actual work'. It represents things like the fact that you had a good idea for a product, which could have been a very long time ago. The profit made from selling a copy of a song is no different than the profit made selling anything else.

Re:lame

[Endo13]

And which blog would that be? The same feces-covered rag featured in this story? Some blogger posting something doesn't make it true. I can make a blog myself tomorrow, posting the polar opposite of everything David Lowe claims, and it'd be closer to the truth.

Re:lame

[king neckbeard]

Yes, but the profit is made by doing actual work. In the given scenario, Carol did not do any work for Bob, so it doesn't make sense for Bob to pay Carol. I have no problem with selling a copy of a song for profit. It doesn't matter to me if Alice, Bob, or Carol does that. It's also fine in Alice, Bob, or Carol gives a copy of the song away.

Re:lame

[Endo13]

but his overarching point is valid:

No it's not.

a content creator gets to set the terms of use for the content.

No, he doesn't. Copyright law sets that. Content creators conveniently like to forget how copyright originated, and what its true purpose is. But that's already been posted many times in the comments on this story before. The fact that you choose to ignore it changes nothing.

A content consumer has the choice of complying with those terms or doing without the content. Any alternative choices are unethical.

Wrong again. Copyright law in its current state is what's unethical.

Copyright law is so twisted and perverted we truly would be better off with no IP laws at all.

Re:lame

[bws111]

Who do you think makes more profit off an iPod, Apple or Foxconn? Who did the actual work? Profit has nothing to do with actual work

Re:lame

[Endo13]

Troll. And you know it.

Re:lame

[king neckbeard]

Let me clarify, I don't care if you make money without doing any work. In fact, if you want to send me money for doing nothing, I would enjoy that. However, if you aren't doing any actual work, you are generally very easy to replace. We've managed to get making copies of songs down to something that can be done for free, doing just as good a job, and often a better job than the record companies, iTunes, etc., so they've lost out competitively.

Re:lame

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he's a relic who can't look at the issue objectively.

He had friends who were, in his eyes, great musicians who should have been making more money than they should, and they were unhappy with how little money they had and they succumbed to their mental illness. And these are all the fault of this NPR intern and her generation for not buying Bieber's album. I knew a guy who wrote a book. Everyone he knows tells him how good it is. It's not even that bad. But the reason he's not rolling in Harry Potter money or Fifty Shades money isn't because there are pirates. He wouldn't have a book deal if only pirates hadn't sapped so much money from the publishing industry, and even if he would have, he shouldn't. Adapt or die.

The number of incidents of piracy of most things goes up with popularity. Something like Avengers with its huge box office success is going to be more pirated than, say, Moonrise Kingdom. Assuming there's no truth to the "piracy = marketing" argument, which the artists themselves disagree on, then a lack of piracy would mean both films would make more money but Avengers would still make more money than Moonrise Kingdom.

The author's just having trouble adjusting to the new paradigm. There are artists that have adopted the paradigm by creating or leveraging other revenue streams (online advertising for streaming videos, pay-what-you-want downloads, higher ticket prices, merch sales, single songs released exclusively through various venues to increase single sales), and there are artists.

Re:lame

[Anonymous Coward]

They only look like valid points if you aren't paying attention. Think a bit more critically when you re-read the article, you just might learn something.

Re:lame

[BanHammor]

I am not arguing about copyright, I am talking about people. I hear that they have ethics.

Re:lame

[jmcvetta]

Why are we as a generation willing to pay a little bit more for fair trade coffee, or purchase clothing from sweatshop-free clothing manufactuers, in order to make sure that the people working in those industries are fairly compensated, yet we don't feel the same way about compensating our musical artists?

The examples you list are smallish mass-luxury markets. Many of those same consumers also pay for copies of music from iTunes.

Now as to the question of whether I would pay extra to see the performance of a fair trade, sweatshop-free musician... well, maybe if she were also all organic and free range..

Re:lame

[jp10558]

Well, lets play a bit of Reductio ad absurdum and say that it becomes legal to use digital media and you can get it however you want ("pirate" media - though I doubt it would be piracy if legal in my thought experiment). I mean, not just private but commercial use - i.e. abolition of intellectual property in all it's forms - at least as regards digital media.

You might see an immediate collapse of the industry as we know it. But then what? No new music, novels, shows?

What will all the websites and hardware purveyors do? They still have stuff they can flog for ad dollars or actual payments for physical goods. They might well fund content to draw in people to buy upgrades or new users.

Also, Kickstarter. Seems to work well for many projects, I see no reason it couldn't be used for an episode or a season of a "TV" show...

Re:lame

[king neckbeard]

You are talking about the ethics of people copying without paying or without permission. There is obviously nothing unethical about that. Copying is vital to human advancement and survival, so it's ridiculous to call it unethical.

Re:lame

[element-o.p.]

I wasn't calling him(?) ignorant, I was answering the question (s)he posed. His argument was ignorant. I could perhaps have made the distinction a little more clear, and for that I apologize. But no, I am not trolling, although I have very little patience for the self-absorbed, entitlement mentality coupled with extremely poor reasoning skills that so many people in this discussion are displaying. Radres then followed it up by being snotty ("How's that for you?"), and perhaps I got a little testy as a result. Again, I apologize.

However, saying that a content creator shouldn't release content to the public if he doesn't want it posted on file-sharing sites is every bit as absurd a statement as the counter-examples I provided. And if you want to say that file-sharing is okay because "that's the world we live in," then I guess you are okay with the **AA's doing what they do because "that's the world we live in" too?

If you would like to provide a logical argument to rebut the points I have made, I am all ears. See Capt. Kangarooski's counter-arguments for a good example of how to debate someone -- I don't entirely agree with him (her?), but (s)he has certainly earned my respect for far, far above average reasoning and logic skills.

False assumptions from gatekeepers

[jedidiah]

It's not property and never really was. So all of these arguments about devaluing music or not paying for it are all entirely bogus.

Besides: it was always gratis.

Video killed the radio star.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Anonymous Coward]

So with this logic, if you build your own home, I can live in it?

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Hatta]

You're free to make a copy of it and live in that one.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Radres]

If you make something, it's up to you to decide how you want to distribute it. If I write a song, it could be the best song ever written, but if I never record it then good luck trying to find it on The Pirate Bay. I have a reasonable expectation that people should respect my wishes when it comes to how the song should be copied, played, or otherwise consumed. Your right to listen to my song ends where my right to protect my work begins.

Now, of course the realities are that the internet makes it so that many people can get their fill of listening to my song once it's been recorded and distributed without paying compensation. This in turn diminishes the market value for my song. The market should adjust so that the cost to hear a song is more inline with the actual cost to produce and distribute it, not the $15/CD that the RIAA has been getting away with. It still doesn't make it right for the people to pirate the song.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[jedidiah]

Your response nicely sums up the entire gatekeeper position on this situation.

You are trying to conflate actual natural rights with a temporary statutory grant that exists for the sole purpose of achieving some public good. There is simply no inalienable right to a copyright or a patent. Intellectual property is a legal fiction that's better described as artificial property.

It gets really interesting when people like you want to trample actual natural rights (like speech and personal property) in order to defend an expansive view of copyright that doesn't even exist in the law.

That particular problem was directly by the authors of the Constitution.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[debrain]

It's not property and never really was. So all of these arguments about devaluing music or not paying for it are all entirely bogus.

Some food for thought: All property is a legal fiction.

It just so happens that most property is tangible. Copyright is intangible, but the legal fiction of property as it applies to qualifying artistic works is no different than the legal fiction of home ownership, stock ownership or life insurance ownership. All these forms of property are granted by legislation.

Whether copyright in its present form is morally objectionable or adequately serves the social utility for which it was created is another question. Given the mortgage crisis, one could entertain the same question about home ownership.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[h4rr4r]

I disagree, if you don't want me to do anything I want with your song do not record it.

You have no reasonable expectation that I give a tinkers damn about your wishes. Copying cheaply does not diminish the market value for your song, it sets it.

There is no shortage of music being produced, nor would the total end of copyright even do that.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[bws111]

Native Americans didn't consider land to be 'property' either. Does that mean it is not property?

The only thing that says you 'own' a house, land, or any other 'real' property is a piece of paper with some words on it - a legal fiction. You only reason you can 'own' anything is because the government says that you can, and backs that up with laws.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Radres]

I recorded it. I can't stop you from copying it. I can tell you what I expect in return for you listening to it. You can choose to ignore me, but you are disobeying the law, much like I would be if I decided to set up a taco stand on your property.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Anonymous Coward]

This fundamentally ignores the fact that "building a copy" is not the same thing as "producing the hardware, designing the house, and creating blueprints."

Yes, the cost of copying is low. No, the cost of creation is not driven to zero by "zero-cost copying." It still takes real time, real instruments, real recording gear, and real expertise (developed over the course of real years, at real expense to the real musician) to be able to play music *well*.

Ethically speaking, if you value a song enough that you believe it is worth having a copy of, you should be willing to give something to the artist who produced it (and, by extension, the chain of support personnel who helped produce it).

IF YOU VALUE A SONG, it is ethical to compensate the artist for creating that song - in some way, and to some degree, according to the measure of enjoyment and "use" you get out of the song. If you cannot agree to that simple principle, then you reveal yourself as nothing but a looter, who cares as little for "advancement of the arts and culture" as you like to claim the RIAA & other gatekeepers do.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[h4rr4r]

You can setup your taco stand on a copy of my property all you like. Like it or not many people disagree that music can even be property. I am one of those folks.

You can try to tell me, and yes I can ignore you. Using the law to keep your outdated economic model working is far more immoral than me copying your music.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Mystakaphoros]

As an artist, I'd better find a way to get some of that money up front, because once it's out of the bag, there's very little technological reason why I would see another penny. Then again, if we look at the patronage models of old (or modern crowdsourcing), people supported the artist because they wanted him or her to generate future content.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Anonymous Coward]

... and backs that up with laws.

And backs those up with guns.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[kokako]

OK jedidiah, now can you please explain what the distinction between a "natural" and "artificial" right is? Why is personal property a "natural" right? How do you define "personal property"? Please explain to us how these are not what you call legal fictions, without using an appeal to authority in your answer (e.g. because it says so in the Constitution! Because John Locke wrote that in his big book!).

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a software developer. I've made millions that I would not have made otherwise if everyone had pirated my software. I also think that it's unfair and unethical for a large number of people to derive value from my work without giving me any compensation. That being said, I absolutely object to intellectual property rights. The fact that something is unfair or unethical doesn't give you a blank check to respond in however way you feel like. It's immoral to cheat on your spouse but we don't put adulterer's in prison (anymore). The same goes for piracy. It's a social issue. Why is it a social issue and not a legal issue? Is it because there's not a lot of money in creative works? Clearly not. Is it because there's not that much impact on society? No, not that either. It's because it's not a form of violence, theft or fraud. Nobody's person or property is being harmed or stolen. That's the maximum extent to which legal justice should reach.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Anonymous Coward]

"Native Americans didn't consider land to be 'property' either. Does that mean it is not property?"

Would you have refrained from stealing it if they had considered it a property?

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[American AC in Paris]

...so the simple response to your vision of "IP should not exist" is:

"Hey, that's fine. Instead of distributing mywork through public channels, I'll simply enter into one-to-one contracts with everyone who wants access to my creative work. The Internet makes this really, really easy. In my contract, I'll stipulate that you get to use my art for personal, non-commercial use, that you cannot redistribute it publicly via any medium. You, being an adult of the majority with free will and agency, are welcome to enter into this contract or not as you see fit. If you do decide to enter into this contract, you'll receive a uniquely imprinted, trackable version of the work in question. If this version of the work turns up on the Internet, you'll be in breach of contract, and I'll sue you."

or

"Hey, that's fine. I'll just keep all the important stuff you need to enjoy this creative work locked behind a secure server, so every time you want to use said product, you need to ensure that you have an Internet connection and that your account is paid in full in order to enjoy it. The work itself will be designed in such a way that the user only ever sees the assets they need immediate access to, so that it's virtually impossible for any given user to reconstruct the whole experience. That way, I can avoid a Blizzard of pirated copies of my work floating around out there."

Unless you want to fundamentally eliminate the ability to create service contracts, you can expect more and more people to distribute their creative works via onerous, legalese-laden means. This blade cuts both ways.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Hatta]

Ethically speaking, if you value a song enough that you believe it is worth having a copy of, you should be willing to give something to the artist who produced it (and, by extension, the chain of support personnel who helped produce it).

I agree with this entirely, and this is entirely compatible with copyright abolitionism. The right thing to do is to support the artists whose work enriches your life. However, nothing about this means that's it's OK for the government to force you to support artists you don't value enough to willingly support.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Maximum Prophet]

..., people supported the artist because they wanted him or her to generate future content.

That and bragging rights. My artist in residence is better than your artist in residence.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[jedidiah]

Copyrights expire.

Property doesn't.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Endo13]

IF YOU VALUE A SONG, it is ethical to compensate the artist for creating that song - in some way, and to some degree, according to the measure of enjoyment and "use" you get out of the song. If you cannot agree to that simple principle, then you reveal yourself as nothing but a looter, who cares as little for "advancement of the arts and culture" as you like to claim the RIAA & other gatekeepers do.

So, by that same logic, if I find myself in the unfortunate situation of having listened to a piece of utter dreck that made my ears bleed, the artist in turn should compensate me for the negative value of the song, due to the mental and emotional trauma it caused me, and for wasting my time. Right?

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[jedidiah]

Actually, Native Americans did have a notion of property.

Try an argument based on something more than urban legend next time.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Maximum Prophet]

All property is a legal fiction

No, all ownership is a legal construct. The property itself can be real or fictional.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Anonymous Coward]

For instance, if you consider the reason for property rights, you'll see it is a method of preventing conflict in an environment of scarce resources (my use precludes your use) and unlimited desites. Now, do the same for IP rights and what do you find? To me, it appears people want there to be creative works, and it is presumed that those works will not ebe created unless the creator can usurp the property rights of others to prevent unauthorized copies. I find it unlikely that with so many individuals paying for works when they could get free copies, and so many who support IP laws, that that usurpation is not a necessary incentive to create.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[MozeeToby]

Well, I say that it's unethical to artificially create scarcity so that you can make a buck and even more unethical to destroy the lives of people who take steps to end your artificial scarcity. Of course creation costs, but we're not being asked to pay for creation, we're being asked to pay for a copy. Find a new business model or get out of the way and let someone else do so; passing laws and taking people to court in an effort to prop up your (recently) broken business plan.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[calzones]

That's legalistic obfuscation of the relevant point.

The relevant point, is that tangible property is associated with certain "natural rights" whereas IP is not. It's clear that physical items and land are claimed by creatures as being their own and they naturally defend against intruders and looters. IP, however, has no natural analog. It is simply an entitlement created by our civilized social order to promote creative efforts because we see some value to them.

A squirrel hunts for a nut and gets to keep it and has a natural right to hold and defend the nut against other squirrels. A lion protects her kill against free-riders.

That same squirrel has no right to prevent other squirrels from observing and adopting it methods for nut finding. That same lioness has no recourse against another lioness following her to find her secret pack of wildebeest.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[gandhi_2]

Because humans are free in a state of nature, sovereign over their personal property, they have natural rights over the property they own. When the form governments, the join in a social contract. In the enlightenment / classical US model, the social contract are limited rights voluntarily surrendered to secure life, liberty, and property.

Coming along later and declaring that music is property deserving of the same government protection is pretty much exactly an artificial right.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Anonymous Coward]

By this logic, anything we consider to be a right is nothing more than a legal fiction.

Personally, I acknowledge the need for such. Without them the natural right to be born might be viewed as complete shortly after you've finished wailing for the 1st time. Then you'd be at the mercy of whoever happens to be in the general vicinity. Technically, this is the way the world works anyway. The Law only allows you or your survivors redress after the fact, anyway.

As for so-called natural law. You can ask God, when you meet her, what rights she intended to confer on your immortal soul when she 1st let there be light.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[MozeeToby]

Native Americans didn't consider land to be 'property' either.

This is probably off topic but what you say is factually incorrect. The reason that the Indians sold and gave away their land for a pittance is because the Indians the colonials were buying/taking from weren't the one's that owned the land. Like saying that guy you met on 1st avenue must not understand real estate very well since he was willing to sell you the Brooklyn bridge for just $500.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[cpu6502]

>>>no different than the legal fiction of home ownership, stock ownership

It's not a legal fiction that I sold my body (40-45 hours/week) in exchange for money. The money has become my property because it is the end-result of what my body created. My labor is "mixed in" with the paper and becomes a part of me. (To paraphase John Locke.)

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Maximum Prophet]

That's not what a "legal fiction" is.
A legal fiction is a fact assumed or created by courts. A corporation being treated in some respects like a person is a legal fiction. It can sign contracts, and even if the real person who signed the contract leaves the corporation, it's still on the hook for the completion of the contract.

As far as the courts are concerned, if you own real estate, you really own it, it's not a legal fiction.

If you own a horse, and that horse kicks someone, you are liable. (Adjust for state law here)

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Endo13]

It's much easier to define than you think. Natural rights are rights that we as humans by nature assume we have without being told. Simplest way to find out: ask a young child. It won't take long at all (usually by about 1-2 years old) before someone starts claming objects as their own: it comes naturally. Meanwhile, my 7-year-old niece copied (by hand!) an entire library book into her notebook so she could still read it after she took it back. She wouldn't have the slightest clue anyone might claim that as being "wrong", or that she doesn't have the right to do it. Again, it came naturally. No rational human would ever assume there's anything wrong with copying anything until someone else manages to convince them it is.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't want anyone with your personal information, such as your name, location, SSN, bank account numbers, site passwords, etc., then don't ever use them anywhere. After all, once it's out there somewhere, instead of just in your head, it's out of your hands, and you have no right to dictate how it is distributed.

Also, why would it be wrong for anyone else to have such information? They're only a copy, after all. Usually just ones and zeroes (and maybe even a two!). Not like anyone's actually stealing, like, say, a car or a kidney.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean to say that the natural right of the dead to be dead forever is not the same as the natural right of the rich to be rich forever ?

Who knew ?

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[h4rr4r]

I would agree with that view, do you not?

Using that information to steal from me or to commit fraud by impersonating me to get a loan would of course still be illegal and immoral.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[spire3661]

Your expectations are not reasonable. You assert that you should be able to totally control whether i hear your song or not, AFTER you release it to the public consciousness? And thats reasonable to you? fuck you.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[spire3661]

Native americans were militarily conquered. Nothing was stolen.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[i_ate_god]

Oh I get it, all music should be done by singular musicians with little aspiration beyond their dollar store guitar and $10 usb microphone?

This really is a mind blowingly stupid post that if it weren't for the low uid, I'd have pegged this a troll. But I guess you really believe what you just said, and so you're just as much a part of the copyright problem as the MAFIAA.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Bryansix]

Your argument is not firmly grounded in reality. You are never going to control the medium after the initial performance. Sorry but it will not happen. I'm a photographer. No matter how I display my work, it is possible for it to be transferred from one medium to another with minimal effort. Because I understand this reality, anything I publish on my website is released with "Creative Commons -Attribution -non-commercial" licensing. Does that mean I give away my photography for free? No. I sell it in its complete form at high res or on prints. But if I posted it in an article and you take it then fine. If you want a print of it or commercial rights then pay for it. Simple as that.

BTW this is similar to what Trey Ratcliff does. http://www.stuckincustoms.com/licensing/

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[mcgrew]

I have a reasonable expectation that people should respect my wishes when it comes to how the song should be copied, played, or otherwise consumed.

I disagree, your expectations are completely unreasonable. What is reasonable is for you to expect that I won't sell copies of it.

Your right to listen to my song ends where my right to protect my work begins.

No, your rights to control what I have in my possession are extremely limited, except by artificial constructs. Which is a good thing for you, if you have any talent. If I give your stuff to someone who has never heard it, they may become your customer. If they never hear it you'll never get their money.

Doctorow puts it succinctly: nobody ever lost money from piracy, but many artists have starved from obscurity. As long as it isn't pure crap, the more people that are exposed to your work, the more people will shovel money your way.

IMO any artist who doesn't embrace noncommercial piracy is a damned fool.

Good day, sir. Enjoy your obscurity.

Now, of course the realities are that the internet makes it so that many people can get their fill of listening to my song once it's been recorded and distributed without paying compensation.

If I "get my fill" of hearing your song, it sucks. I see why you're so anti-pirate, talentless hacks are always against piracy.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[ImprovOmega]

Ethically speaking the value of the performance to the artist (the time put into making it) can be realized by taking the overall cost of ticket sales for a concert: say, 10,000 people at $100 a ticket for a sold out show = 1,000,000 dollars for an album's worth of performance for a highly popular artist. Then let's say you sell that album to 10,000,000 people. The cost per album should be about $0.10 for the artist's time and effort.

Ethically speaking, given the cost of reproduction these days, far too much money is being spent on a work product that is only worth perhaps 1% of what is being paid. Now, it shouldn't be free by any means, but it *is* ridiculously overpriced. If you cut out the middle man and charged, say, $1 for an album, even poor college kids would be hard pressed to try and justify pirating. And you'd have significantly more and realistic competition if distributors weren't locking out all but the safest bets.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Anonymous Coward]

That same squirrel has no right to prevent other squirrels from observing and adopting it methods for nut finding.

It also has no right to stop a bigger squirrel just coming along and taking its goddamn nuts.

That same lioness has no recourse against another lioness following her to find her secret pack of wildebeest.

Sure she does: she can turn round and rip its throat out.

I don't think the laws of the wild form a very good model for human society...

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Anonymous Coward]

Your response nicely sums up the entire gatekeeper position on this situation.

You are trying to conflate actual natural rights with a temporary statutory grant that exists for the sole purpose of achieving some public good. There is simply no inalienable right to a copyright or a patent. Intellectual property is a legal fiction that's better described as artificial property.

It gets really interesting when people like you want to trample actual natural rights (like speech and personal property) in order to defend an expansive view of copyright that doesn't even exist in the law.

That particular problem was directly by the authors of the Constitution.

All property is fiction, the Romans found that out pretty quickly when the Franks, Vandals, Goths, Huns, Alans etc... invaded their empire, enslaved them and moved into their houses. Why is owning land, a house or a car real while claiming to ownership of intellectual property is an inexcusable impertinence? Why can a cat be owned but not a human being? You think that your claim of ownership on your house and the land it stands on is sacred because if somebody were to take it away from you, you'd have to sleep outside in the rain. Of course the person taking it away from you would take the opposite view. You are weak, you can't stop them from evicting you from your house and thus they are entitled to take it (and they'll probably justify it with delusions like: 'manifest destiny', 'we are god's chose people' etc...) Similarly, you think that your are entitled to download music without compensating the artist, the artist is weak, he can't stop you and you justify it by telling your self you are entitled to free music because patents, copyright and IP are bullshit. Unsurprisingly the musician disagrees but who cares about him, he is weak.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Bryansix]

False Analogy alert! False Analogy Alert!

Physical property is not the same as Intellectual property. Sorry Bubs but we are going to see right through your false analogies now matter how many times you repeat them.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Radres]

You leave me with no choice then but to simply not create. Which I guess is what many content providers will do. The world won't necessarily be a worse place for it if we remove all profit seekers from music.

I'll admit to playing a bit of devil's advocate in my previous posts. You're right; there simply is no argument to the fact that once you've recorded a piece of music and distributed it to more than a handful of people, there's no stopping it from being copied at will. It does not matter what it cost me to produce said content, nor what I wish to charge you for it. The sooner we can get people to realize that and move on from the outdated RIAA/MPAA the faster we can evolve.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[ifiwereasculptor]

Oh I get it, all music should be done by singular musicians with little aspiration beyond making their music?

If it were up to me, yes, and I think not only we, but also music would be much better off. That's not what jedidiah suggested, though. Just that it's a very, very low minimum requirement.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Bryansix]

You kind of miss the point. When you take physical property, you deprive the current owner of the use. This is why you can be sued even if you are not stealing but simply depriving use of my property. The stupid taco stand on my front yard analogy works well here. The taco stand prevents me from using my front yard.

Copying music or any other Intellectual Property does not deprive anybody of its use.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[seepho]

On top of that: onerous, legalese-laden means of distribution are expensive. Except your 99 cent song to cost about a buck ten by the time that's implemented.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[h4rr4r]

That is your choice, and I think nothing of value would be lost. So much music is being produced and already has been produced that there really is no problem with the level of production going down.

It would probably be good for the remaining performers as well.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Savage-Rabbit]

Copyrights expire.

Property doesn't.

Sure it does, your property rights expire the moment somebody drives into your town with several tanks and a few hundred armed militia, kills anybody who resists and evicts you and your neighbors from your houses at bayonet point to be locked up in squalid concentration camps. If you don't believe me you can go and ask the Palestinians.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[betterunixthanunix]

If you make something, it's up to you to decide how you want to distribute it

That does not mean that you can decide how or whether others can re-distribute it.

Your right to listen to my song ends where my right to protect my work begins.

"Protect" your work from what, exactly? People listening to your song? People using your song for their own purposes? What are you trying to "protect" your song from?

Now, of course the realities are that the internet makes it so that many people can get their fill of listening to my song once it's been recorded and distributed without paying compensation.

It is not a matter of paying, it is a matter of distribution. We do not need the recording industry to distribute music, because we have computer networks. The law should be re-worked to reflect that reality, not expanded to preserve the state of affairs of the 1950s.

This in turn diminishes the market value for my song

No, it diminishes the profitability of your distribution strategy. There are other things you could do, like use your song as a way to promote live performances (say, by using a video). New technologies necessitate new business strategies; if you do not want to adapt, why should we have any sympathy for you?

The market should adjust so that the cost to hear a song is more inline with the actual cost to produce and distribute it

Sorry, but this is sounding more like someone who has a sense of entitlement than a legitimate argument.

It still doesn't make it right for the people to pirate the song.

People are going to download music. Accept it, revise your approach to monetizing music, and get on with your life.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[melikamp]

Some food for thought: All property is a legal fiction.

No it's not. Try yanking a purse from a girl on a street and see whether she opts to scream or to calmly go home and have her lawyer contact you. Personal property is way, way older than any law or religion, and is understood on a visceral level. The fact that chimps own personal tools should be a dead giveaway.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Belial6]

As soon as you make a song that is not a derivative of other people's creative work, I will agree with you. No doubt it would be both the best song ever written, and contain the power to drive anyone hearing it into madness as their mind tries to come to grips with concepts and sounds that no human has ever been faced with before.

So, until this Lovecraftian song of madness appears, copyright isn't a question of right/wrong, morals or ethics. It is an attempt at a pragmatic solution to the problem of getting people to improve on what is already there. Claiming the song is "Yours" and that anyone copying it is doing something wrong is basically a claim that "It is wrong for anyone to rob you of what you properly stole".

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[tomhath]

You're free to make a copy of it and live in that one.

Not usually. Most often the house was designed by an architect who still owns the copyright. Kinda like when a musician or artist creates something.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[PraiseBob]

Question: IF, for whatever hypothetical reasons, there was no way for any artist to make money with music. Would people stop making music?

Getting paid isn't the only incentive for making music. I know hundreds of people who have devoting tens of thousands of hours to the task of learning instruments, practicing their art, and playing for the enjoyment of others who knew they wouldn't get paid for it ever in their lives. Yet still they play their instruments, and they sing. Why are they doing this for free? I know plenty of accountants and programmers who studied their craft with the sole incentive of getting paid. I don't know a single musician who dedicated their life to music with the primary goal of getting paid.

People like to make music so much, that virtually everyone on the planet sings or plays an instrument at some point in their lives. The barrier to entry is incredibly low, and as such, competition to make any kind of profit is incredibly high. I do think artists should be compensated, but the vast majority of musicians aren't extraordinarily talented. It isn't a unique skill to play an instrument, it isn't rare. If nobody ever got paid again for making music, I have no doubt that there would still be wonderful music being made that I would enjoy listening to.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Belial6]

BS. There may have been SOME that didn't consider land to be property, but the term 'Native American' makes about as much sense as saying "Asians", "Africans", or "Europeans", and trying to declare a common world view. There were plenty of guns fired to maintain control of land from all sides to allow the claim that "Native Americans" didn't consider land to be 'property'. It isn't even a good fiction.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Anonymous Coward]

Property expires too. There's a limitation (dead hand rule) on how long after your death that your will can dictate the terms on what is done with your property.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[elsurexiste]

It's immoral to cheat on your spouse but we don't put adulterer's in prison (anymore).

Even if it isn't violent, there's still legal consequences, especially with a divorce. Instead, non-violent copyright infringement has no consequences whatsoever.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[hackula]

This "it's expensive" argument is such a joke.

If you are a real musician, all you need to do is sit down and point yourself at a microphone.

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. To record a standard "adult contemporary" (a popular genre as an example) album these days it is going to cost 20k-50k to get a decent radio quality. This is not counting the countless hours that go into writing, mixing, recording, and mastering. Some genres require less production (you rarely hear these on the radio), but even then, plugging a mic is woefully inadequate in most cases. Your average studio microphone costs $1500 by itself. Sure, you can record a little demo on a MBP with GB and the built in mic, but not anything professional by most genre's standards (some stuff is supposed to be lofi, but that is a different story).

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[elsurexiste]

Nice, I got a mod down because you disagree with me but were too cowardly to respond.

So, you were trolling with grandiloquent phrases, got bitten by the mod system and complained about it? Cry me a river.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Kjella]

If you make something, it's up to you to decide how you want to distribute it. If I write a song, it could be the best song ever written, but if I never record it then good luck trying to find it on The Pirate Bay. I have a reasonable expectation that people should respect my wishes when it comes to how the song should be copied, played, or otherwise consumed. Your right to listen to my song ends where my right to protect my work begins.

Your problem is that your demands aren't reasonable or indeed supported by copyright. In general, how it's copied has been your right and how it's played or otherwise consumed is my right, my copy is mine and where/when/how/why I choose to do that is my business. The book model is fine, I buy it at the bookstore and there your interests in it practically cease except making copies and public performance. One of the biggest annoyances with modern media are people like you who insist that despite me handing over money for it, you should still have the right to dictate what happens in my living room. I wouldn't want to accept a business model where Ford sold me a car, but they still controlled where, when and how fast I could drive, how I could get service and where I could fill gas and so I won't support your idea of "artist's rights" either.

Every law is a combination of pros and cons, obviously giving creators incentive to create is a pro. But when you say that to protect that right in the modern society we need mass surveillance laws, three strikes laws, million dolllar fines for sharing two dozen songs, DRM laws restricting the whole playback stack to a closed source blob and all computers with it then the cons start outweighing the pros. Particularly since I'd say practically people already have and make that choice today, I don't know anyone who considers the complexity or risk of getting caught a barrier to using P2P. Those that buy choose to do it to support those who made it and that can continue to be harnessed without copyright. If the foreshadowed doom of the creative industry was real and everyone who could avoid paying would, it'd already have happened.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[calzones]

No, she doesn't. If she turns around, she misses her chance to kill her dinner and risks getting killed herself or at the very least hurt. Instead, she's going to opt to hunt one down and claim it as her own and only defend that.

A bigger squirrel coming to take his nuts is committing a violation of property. The squirrel will do what it can to protect the nut outside of risking its safety. However, the squirrel will take no action against another squirrel who's copying what it does.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[scot4875]

The world won't necessarily be a worse place for it if we remove all profit seekers from music.

It's tough to come up with an industry that got better when the profit seekers came in and took it over.

--Jeremy

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[debrain]

Copyrights expire.

Property doesn't.

Nonsense.

Property rights can be lost through e.g. laches, limitations periods, and adverse possession. If you do not pay your property taxes, eventually the municipality will take possession of the property and sell it. While not strictly expiration, one cannot separate the relationship between land and recurring taxes, since that is how land "ownership" evolved.

As a matter of interest, if you are in a commonwealth or former commonwealth country then you almost certainly draw land-ownership rights as a "fee simple" (aka freehold). Fee simple is a form of license granting the right to exclusive use of the land by the sovereign, which right is granted in exchange for payment of taxes. In the commonwealth countries the sovereign is the Queen, and in the US the Queen has been replaced by the "People". The Queen owns all land within her territory because she answers only to god (i.e. is a sovereign), and the rights of subjects to the use of land within the commonwealth are derived from this hierarchy of god, sovereign, landholder.

Practically speaking, being a sovereign - since the Peace of Westphalia anyway - means having an unchallenged exclusive statehood recognized by state peers (e.g. at the UN, or by the world's postal system, etc). Boundaries may fluctuate according to the resolution of disputes by force or agreement or certain accepted rules (e.g. the Law of the Sea), but the essentially autonomous governance remains over the areas remaining under the state's control. Within those areas property ownership typically flourishes. Outside those areas, it is a murky prospect - try delving into the law of treasure salvaging in the deep ocean.

The registration systems for each jurisdiction have changed, but the fundamental relationship of land ownership to government remains effectively unchanged.

Unless you live in the bayou or Sealand, the numbers in the computer that give you an exclusive right to enjoyment over certain areas of land are subject to the governing laws of the land. If you do not meet the requirements set out under that law, then your rights to the land will be extinguished.

Even supposing a complete legal enjoyment to land, it remains subject to change and destruction by nature. And in any case, when you die you cannot take it with you.

This is the legal fiction of land ownership. Unless you circumvent your sovereign and talk to god directly, it is a fiction imposed by the laws of the land. Literally.

As a lawyer who has acted on behalf of several individuals with property disputes, I can assure you that land ownership is neither more or less fiction than copyright ownership. They are all rights derived from the law.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[element-o.p.]

Wrong.

Why does your employer pay you to work for him (or her)? The simple answer is, "Because your time is valuable." If your employer wants you to give up some of your time to accomplish her (or his -- you get the picture) goals, then you should be compensated for the loss of your time. Likewise, if a content creator spends his time creating content for your viewing, listening (or whatever) pleasure, then he should be compensated for that time as well. Furthermore, musical instruments cost money to acquire. Strings, drum heads, drum sticks, saxophone reeds, and other gear wear out and need to be replaced, which costs money. Studio time costs *lots* of money. Then there is post-processing, marketing costs, distributing... Do you seriously think that it's fair for content creators to pay out of pocket to create the music and movies that you enjoy? Whether or not the media is or ever was physical property is entirely irrelevant; it costs content creators real money to get content to you, and therefore if you want to continue to enjoy content, it is only fair (and ethical) for them to be rewarded for their efforts.

Are there problems with the current system? You bet. But that in no way invalidates the fact that artists should be compensated for the work they have expended to create content.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[element-o.p.]

Cool -- so if you hire an architect to design your house, you hire a structural engineer to make sure that it is structurally fit to occupy, and you hire an interior decorator to make the inside beautiful, then you have no problem with me duplicating all of that engineering work so I can build an exact copy of your house?

I take it you've never had to foot the bill for the engineering and design work that goes into building a house before...

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[JustSomeProgrammer]

I think if you're forced to listen to a song that causes you mental distress by the writer of said song without having the choice to you know... turn off the song, then yes. You do get to sue them for mental distress.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[element-o.p.]

Using the law to keep your outdated economic model working is far more immoral than me copying your music.

Upon what basis do you make that claim? What is immoral about using protections afforded to me under the law? What is moral about deciding that 1) you don't like the terms for using something that I created (tangible or otherwise), but 2) continuing to use my creation even though you have refused my terms? Do you not understand that if it takes time and money to bring content to you (and it does), then it is reasonable to ask to be compensated for that effort?

Would you still show up at work tomorrow if your boss decided he didn't want to compensate you for your time and effort on his behalf? After all, time isn't property either...

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Hatta]

Yes, I'd be happy to share all of that with you. But I'd be more likely to use plans that had already been shared freely. Share and share alike.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Endo13]

I think if you're forced to write a song and release it for people to buy, you have an ethical right to demand compensation.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Anonymous Coward]

the value of the performance to the artist (the time put into making it) can be realized by taking the overall cost of ticket sales for a concert

Wow, it's like you have no idea how any of this shit works. You don't, do you? Off the top of my head:

1) The artist will spend years honing his craft to be good enough to play professionally. The old "10,000 hours to expertise" maxim, you know?
2) The artist will usually spend a fair amount of time writing the song, then weeks or months recording it and "getting it right" - multiple takes, trying different arrangements, tracking session musicians, backing vocals, etc.
3) The artist will rehearse and practice the song dozens or hundreds of times before he is ready to perform it, either live or in the studio.
4) The artist will need to have money to eat & sleep at the very least during that time - they can live cheaply, but it costs some money.
5) The artist will need someone who has the gear to do the recording and mastering, or they will need to have the gear to do that work themselves, AND develop the expertise - both of which, again, cost time and money.
6) The artist will typically sell FAR fewer than 10 million copies - a self-produced "hit" would probably sell 50,000, if they're lucky. A very few will ever reach the 100,000 mark, and even fewer will ever sell even 1 million. If you want to price them by expected sales, you can't assume that every album every artist ever puts out is 10x Platinum because that's so rare that it's still noteworthy.

Interestingly, using your figure of $1,000,000 total compensation (remember - pays all fees & expenditures for the duration of the album production - this pays for living fees, recording fees, production fees, hiring session musicians, paying the band, mastering & duplication, shipping, advertising, and a nut for funding a tour to support the album, maybe - a million doesn't go far when you start adding all that up and spreading it among 4-5 people in a band) for "an album's worth of content," if you divide by 50,000 expected unit sales, you'll see that the CD should be selling them for $20. Imagine that. Maybe CDs aren't as overpriced as you whiners like to moan about.

If you cut out the middle man and charged, say, $1 for an album

Then you'd end the professionally produced album. Period. See above - nobody is going to spend 20-50k on studio time and musicians and engineers and producers knowing that they're only going to get a buck for the finished product. The cost of duplicating cds is *already* a vanishingly small part of the overall cost. Yes, eliminating the middlemen should mean that artists can charge less and actually make the same (or maybe even a little more) money - but they're still going to have to hire managers, producers, engineers, manage advertising and social media / fan contact, and everything else that artists typically do - there simply is not enough time in the day.

You have a distinctly "manufacturing" approach to music production. It's not a matter of "mix ingredients A, B and C in the right order, get 10 million guaranteed sales." Average prices for a full album ranging from 10-20 per CD are not unreasonable, even with digital distribution, given the time and costs of producing a listenable album.

I'll say again: if you value the music, you should be willing to compensate the artist for your copy of the music. This is simple enlightened self interest: I like the music of Bruce Springsteen, therefore, I want him to continue making more music that I will probably enjoy - a good way to do that is to make sure he can pay his bills and doesn't have to work a 9-5 office job to keep groceries in the fridge, and can devote more of his time to creating more music, and touring around to perform his music so I can hear him play.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Anonymous Coward]

Many older masterpieces are nothing more than this.

Oh really? Name 5. Just five "masterpieces" that are nothing more than a single performer and a microphone. After all, if it's that easy, there must be THOUSANDS of examples, right?

If you can't, I'll take that as an admission that you have no fucking clue what you're talking about - that once again, jedidiah has chimed in with a made-up piece of bullshit to feel like he's "got something important to say."

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Theaetetus]

Then again, if we look at the patronage models of old (or modern crowdsourcing), people supported the artist because they wanted him or her to generate future content.

If we look at the patronage models of old, then only the 1% would get music, movies, theater, art, books, etc.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Theaetetus]

I have a reasonable expectation that people should respect my wishes when it comes to how the song should be copied, played, or otherwise consumed.

I disagree, your expectations are completely unreasonable. What is reasonable is for you to expect that I won't sell copies of it.

So, Apple should be able to give away free copies of Windows and Microsoft Office? As long as they aren't selling copies, it's perfectly kosher? Or let's forget the big company... Apple should be able to give away free, fully unlocked copies of Minecraft, not paying Notch a dime, as long as they don't sell them? Or any other indie developer's product they like? How many Slashdot posters do you think are programmers - if one of them makes something cool, is it reasonable for Apple to put it up in the App Store without their permission, as long as it's free?

Frankly, I think it's unreasonable that you believe that giving something away has no commercial impact.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Theaetetus]

Some food for thought: All property is a legal fiction.

No it's not. Try yanking a purse from a girl on a street and see whether she opts to scream or to calmly go home and have her lawyer contact you. Personal property is way, way older than any law or religion, and is understood on a visceral level. The fact that chimps own personal tools should be a dead giveaway.

You misunderstood his point. Absent a force protecting property - the government, the lawyer, a gun, an angry chimp fist - your "ownership" of the property is a legal fiction, and even more so when you're dealing with intangible property, such as a deed, a pension, a stock share, or a song.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, in fact, if somebody forces you to do something against your will, and harms you, you have the right to petition a court for the damages they've caused.

Of course, you have to demonstrate that you were harmed, and explain to a court how they were the cause. But let's say you buy an iPod, and it is defective, and blows out your eardrums the first time you listen to it. You don't think you'd have a product liability suit against Apple for your pain, suffering, and medical bills to repair the damage? I personally know at least 3 lawyers who would consider that worth pursuing... I'm sure you can find a few near you, too.

You're trying to be cute here, and frankly, it's just sad watching a presumably grown, ostensibly mature man try and twist his way out of supporting artists whose art he appreciates. Because I'm not talking about N'sync, who you presumably hate. Let's say you love Radiohead - lots of people do. If you find their music brings value to your life, it is ethically proper to provide them with something of value in return. As I said before, if you can't agree to that fundamental principle - though we can certainly disagree and discuss "how do you set a price tag on that?" - then you're nothing but a looter who is doing as much damage to art & culture as you like to claim the RIAA/MPAA are doing.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[jmcvetta]

Your right to listen to my song ends where my right to protect my work begins.

Your wish to profit handsomely from work you enjoy is of trifling import - petty even - compared with the social value of universal, equal access to cultural data.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Ash Vince]

I have a reasonable expectation that people should respect my wishes when it comes to how the song should be copied, played, or otherwise consumed.

I disagree, your expectations are completely unreasonable. What is reasonable is for you to expect that I won't sell copies of it.

Your right to listen to my song ends where my right to protect my work begins.

No, your rights to control what I have in my possession are extremely limited, except by artificial constructs. Which is a good thing for you, if you have any talent. If I give your stuff to someone who has never heard it, they may become your customer. If they never hear it you'll never get their money.

Doctorow puts it succinctly: nobody ever lost money from piracy, but many artists have starved from obscurity. As long as it isn't pure crap, the more people that are exposed to your work, the more people will shovel money your way.

IMO any artist who doesn't embrace noncommercial piracy is a damned fool.

Good day, sir. Enjoy your obscurity.

Now, of course the realities are that the internet makes it so that many people can get their fill of listening to my song once it's been recorded and distributed without paying compensation.

If I "get my fill" of hearing your song, it sucks. I see why you're so anti-pirate, talentless hacks are always against piracy.

Who pays the artist then? You didn't as you were given the song for free, then you friend didn't as you give him the song for free. Do artists who record music have to do it just for the love of recording?

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[pantaril]

If you make something, it's up to you to decide how you want to distribute it. If I write a song, it could be the best song ever written, but if I never record it then good luck trying to find it on The Pirate Bay. I have a reasonable expectation that people should respect my wishes when it comes to how the song should be copied, played, or otherwise consumed. Your right to listen to my song ends where my right to protect my work begins.

I believe you expectations are wrong. When a car manufacturer sells a car, does he expect to have control over how the buyer use the car, where does he drive it, whom does he drive in it, whom does he lend it or resell it? I think no, so why do you expect to have those rights over a song you sell?

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[mcgrew]

Who pays the artist then?

Free sells. Read the coment again -- look at the Doctorow quote. Had it not been for reading hundreds of Isaac Asimov's books for free, checked out from the public library, I wouldn't have bought the two dozen volumes of his work on my shelf right now. The same goes for the albums and tapes and CDs I have.

I repeat -- nobody ever lost money from piracy, but many have starved from obscurity. I'm not going to buy a pig in a poke; if you see a CD from someone you've never heard of, what on earth would get you to buy it?

I'm sorry, but this is far to simple for anyone to not be able to understand.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[jedidiah]

This isn't about "a single performer". This is about lack of modern production technology.

For most of the history of recorded music, there simply wasn't the option to monkey around with the process much or make up for the fact that you're trying to put no-talent posers on a pedestal.

The tech simply didn't provide a means to hide a total lack of talent.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[h4rr4r]

It is immoral to take away my natural right to copy just to offer you a way to control something intangible.

Feel free to ask, and be prepared for me to say no to compensating you if I want.

My boss is taking something from me in that case, time. He can make all the copies of that he likes though.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[element-o.p.]

What makes you think that copying is a natural right? Furthermore, you claim that you should have the right to something intangible (content), but state that your boss should compensate you for taking something intangible (time) from you?

Also note that I do not in any size, shape or form disagree with your statement, "Feel free to ask, and be prepared for me to say no to compensating you if I want." I do, however, disagree that you still have a right to a copy of work that I have created if you say no. You are not entitled to the fruit of my labor. If it has value, then I expect to be compensated for it (after all, it took my time, and quite often, my money, to create it); if it does not have value and if you therefore choose not to compensate me for it, then you have no right to help yourself to the fruit of my labor. Period. I may choose to grant you the right to it anyway (and in fact, I have chosen to do that with most -- but certainly not all -- of my creative works, by releasing them in a CC-NC-SA license), but that is my choice to make, not yours. Why do you think that you are entitled to the benefit of my labor unless either we enter into a mutually consensual contract?

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[h4rr4r]

I can naturally do it, it does not hurt anyone. It is a far more natural right than restricting my actions to enrich you. Nothing I do costs you anymore than you already invested.

My boss can take a copy of my time, much like I can copy things. It has nothing to do with being intangible, only that it is free to copy. If you can copy time, that would be pretty neat.

There is no cost to you if I copy your work. You still have it and my copy cost you nothing.

I am entitled to copy anything I like. Your labor is the same if I copy it or not.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[element-o.p.]

You say that creating a copy of something I have created is okay because it costs me nothing. I have already invested time and effort into creating something, and therefore there are no additional costs to creating duplicates. Suppose, however, that we were talking about a tangible item. GM, for example, has already sunk the costs into designing and building the shiny, new Corvette on their sales room floor. Therefore, by your logic, GM should only be compensated for the actual materials that were used to build that Corvette? I guarantee you that there is not $111K of raw materials in a 2012 Corvette ZR1 (link to pricing), nor even $50K of raw materials in the base model. Nevertheless, all of us intuitively understand that just because there is only $10-20K of raw materials (just a wild guess; let's just go with that for the sake of the example) in a ZR1 does not mean we can reasonably expect to waltz in to a GM dealer, drop $10-20K on the table and drive out in a brand new ZR1.

Yet that is the moral equivalent of what you are arguing: that because there are no raw materials in a digital work of art and because the technology exists to copy it at essentially zero cost, you should be allowed to make a copy of every song ever written or every movie ever recorded because it costs the artist nothing to produce additional copies. So let me ask you a question. What makes a ZR1 worth $111K, if not the raw materials that go into its construction? And to that, I offer the answer, "the design work and engineering" (as well as the desirability of a top-of-the-line supercar). That design work and engineering is no different than the work it takes to produce a work of art; in fact, the ZR1 *is* a work of art, to some extent, because it is the result of the creative efforts of many, many people, all of whom are investing their time, their energy and their money in a product exactly as an artist invests her time, energy and money into producing digital content. Yes, we have the technology to create essentially unlimited copies of that work, but just because you can doesn't mean it is ethical to do so, any more than it is ethical to drop $10,000 on the Chevy salesman's desk and take the keys to a brand new ZR1 over his objections.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[h4rr4r]

GM can charge anything they like when they sell a car. I am not sure if you are aware of how capitalism works, but price and cost are only barely coupled.

I should be able to make a perfect copy of it using my own materials though. Exactly the same as anything else. Not that I would, corvettes are for old people and barely qualify as super cars.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[element-o.p.]

I'm not a huge fan of 'Vettes either :) but they work for purposes of this example. Anyway...

Whether or not you should be able to make an exact copy of a Corvette is the crux of the argument, and here we may simply have to agree to disagree. I believe that if one devotes resources to creating an original design, one is entitled to the benefits (i.e., income) that result from that effort. You, apparently do not see things that way. That's ok, I guess, but IMHO, that viewpoint will disincent others from being creative, and again, IMHO, that's a bad thing.

However, even if we don't agree, it has been enjoyable debating the topic with you. You have done a good job of responding to my arguments with well-reasoned counter-arguments of your own :)

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Ash Vince]

Who pays the artist then?

Free sells. Read the coment again -- look at the Doctorow quote. Had it not been for reading hundreds of Isaac Asimov's books for free, checked out from the public library, I wouldn't have bought the two dozen volumes of his work on my shelf right now. The same goes for the albums and tapes and CDs I have.

I repeat -- nobody ever lost money from piracy, but many have starved from obscurity. I'm not going to buy a pig in a poke; if you see a CD from someone you've never heard of, what on earth would get you to buy it?

I'm sorry, but this is far to simple for anyone to not be able to understand.

But if I can obtain anything I want for free why would I pay for it?

Are you suggesting that artists only release certain things for free or are you relying on me to donate to the artist voluntarily like shareware used to work. I am fairly sure I saw a statistic regarding shareware that only 10% of people who regularly used software actually felt the need to contribute to the creator.

Your idea to my mind seems to be reliant on people to want to support artists and unfortunately the world we live in encourages people to behave in a very selfish manner and not contribute unless they have to. The current system is pretty crap, but it at least forces people like me to pay or risk breaking the law, something that I do not want to risk even though I am unlikely to be caught.

I would love to live in a world where most people would do the right thing just because the knew it to be morally right, but I think most people in this world only do the right thing because the law tells them to with the threat of enforcement hanging over them as well. This is especially true when money is involved as nobody has as much as they would like to have.

I think the real solution to this is the abolition of money, especially as we get closer to the idea of star trek style replicators that can do for physical goods what we can already do with digital goods. Until then though, I think it important to try and keep digital goods restricted on the same terms in case it dissuades people from choosing certain careers just because they only produce new digital creations rather than physical ones.

The thing is though I have seen your contributions to this debate often enough and realise we are both fairly decided as to where we stand. I certainly appreciate your contributions far more than many as they at least more thoroughly thought out than most.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[h4rr4r]

I agree we do not agree, and will need to leave it at that. I believe it will disincent those only interested in income, I do not believe that to be a downside.

I do believe we have broken the rules of arguing on the internet.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, yes all property is a legal "fiction". Look to the history of private property. As I understand, people started fencing off portions of common land so that their herd could exclusively graze there. They didn't ask anyone's permission (originally), they just did it. People noticed a benefit to society as a whole: less overgrazing of land, and thus the enclosure movement (property-ization) was regarded as a means of improving land through labor (making the fence). Eventually laws were made to protect the enclosed land from others who would like to have their sheep graze inside the enclosed portions (even though they had done none of the work to enclose it). This notion of property extended to other, unrelated areas. It's also known as conquest.

Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[mcgrew]

Are you suggesting that artists only release certain things for free or are you relying on me to donate to the artist voluntarily like shareware used to work.

I'm saying that a thing without substance is a thing without financial worth, although making it convinient can be. You can't sell music, but you can sell tickets to a venue, you can sell a physical recording, but you can't sell sound. The RIAA labels were incredibly stupid when they went after Napster. Had they used their marketing clout to tout the superiority of CDs over MP3s and used Napster to sell CDs, rather than iTunes to sell bits, CDs would still be selling well. And notice, people are still spending money on iTunes, even though they can get the same MP3s from the Pirate Bay?

Cory Doctorow makes a good living with his writing, even though he posts electronic versions of his books online at boingboing for free download. He credits his success to his posting his work online for free!

I can get all the free movies, books, and music I want for free, legally, right downtown at the city library. Reading books has always been free. Yet libraries, rather than putting authors out of business, promote them. Wanting everyone who reads your book to pay for it is exceedingly foolish; you're not going to sell very many at all that way.

The recording industry thought radio would kill their industry with its free music, yet radio made so many more sales for them that they wound up paying the stations to play their music, even though payola was illegal. The head of the MPAA in the '80s famously said "the VCR is to the movie industry what Jack the Ripper was to women," and look how much monet the studios made from rentals!

I am fairly sure I saw a statistic regarding shareware that only 10% of people who regularly used software actually felt the need to contribute to the creator.

They wouldn't have bought those titles if they couldn't get them as shareware, anyway. The shareware I saw was mostly in the form of you get one free game, register and you get the next n volumes. I bought the original Duke Nukem side scroller because the game was downright hilarious, when I finished it I wanted more. Apogee not only sent me parts two and three, but another game as well. It was worth the money. I found an excellent pinball game as shareware, the registration gave me nine more tables on CD. DOOM and Wolfenstein 3D were two more that one just had to keep playing. But I probably have hundreds of shareware floppies in the basement that were only run once and discarded. If I give you a free turd sandwich, I certainly shouldn't expect you to buy two more turd sandwiches. It wasn't the shareware model that killed them, it was the poor quality of the games. 10% seems high to me, considering the poor quality of most of it.

The current system is pretty crap, but it at least forces people like me to pay or risk breaking the law, something that I do not want to risk even though I am unlikely to be caught.

There are few like you, who don't want to take such a tiny risk. Millions of people smoke pot every day, despite the fact that you can be put in prison for it.

I would love to live in a world where most people would do the right thing just because the knew it to be morally right, but I think most people in this world only do the right thing because the law tells them to with the threat of enforcement hanging over them as well.

Odd, I know lots of pot smokers who are honest as the day is long. Most people have morals and don't need the usually empty threat of authority to make them do the right thing.

I think it important to try and keep digital goods restricted on the same terms in case it dissuades people from choosing certain careers just because they only produce new digital creations rather than physical ones.

Again, I think producing digital-only things is foolish. Like you say, if we had Star Trek-like replicators, there would be no need for money or commerce. And when it comes to art and music, that replicator is your computer. The genie is out of the bottle, and he's not about to go back in.

Bad summary

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary is completely empty of the stance of either party. Who are they siding with? Does everyone hate the Labels? Based on the summary, nobody knows. What a waste.

Re:Bad summary

[Radres]

OMG unbiased reporting on Slashdot that doesn't tell me what to think? The horror.

Re:Bad summary

[wjousts]

Agreed. I had the same reaction. Had to wade through the articles to figure out who was arguing what.

Re:Bad summary

[Anonymous Coward]

They're siding with exploitation & greed.

Re:Bad summary

[ColdWetDog]

Gee. Sorry. You had to spend 5 minutes (if you're a slow reader) in an attempt to digest a complex, difficult problem.

tl;dr: back to watching TV for you.

Re:Bad summary

[bws111]

Here is a longer summary for those too lazy to read TFA.

An NPR intern named Emily White did a piece where she mentioned that she has downloaded over 11,000 songs, but has only ever paid for about 15 CDs. She justifies this with the same rationale that many slashdotters use: the labels are just ripping off the artists and the artists don't get the money anyway, and artists have always made more money touring than through sales, so they such just tour and not worry about sales.

A musician named David Lowery has responded to her. As to her first point (the the labels are just ripping off the artists), he says that despite a few well-known abuses, in the "vast majority" of cases that is false. As to her second point, he says that touring is generally a money-losing operation, and that only the very top acts make any money at all touring.

The "companies" he is complaining about are not the labels, they are The Pirate Bay and MegaUpload.

Re:Bad summary

[wjousts]

It's supposed to be a summary not a teaser. There should be enough information in the summary that somebody can make a decision as to whether or not they should give a shit about the story. That is not the case here.

Re:Bad summary

[ZombieBraintrust]

Actually she said she had 11,000 songs on Itunes and only purchased 15 physical albums. (The context was another article where the author ripped a bunch of music and then destroyed the cds) She never said she stole all of those songs. She did spend several paragraphs describing the music she did steal. But there is no breakdown of what is stolen and what was purchased through Itunes.

Re:Bad summary

[wild_quinine]

The "companies" he is complaining about are not the labels, they are The Pirate Bay and MegaUpload.

And Google. And Apple. What nonsense. It's just the same old 'ohh, it's big technology' argument again.

Even Megaupload is something of a stretch. Or are they really guilty until proven innocent, despite having their assests unlawfully seized, and despite being denied access to defence materials, and despite the fact that due process was not followed in either the seizure or the extradition proceedings?

Megaupload MAY have been profiting from unathorised copies, and there MAY be a criminal element to this. This remains to be seen. But a billion dollar business got killed overnight because the music and movie industries sent government agencies to another country to take them out of the game, and as far as we can tell they're only now looking for evidence to use against Megaupload (whilst denying Megaupload the corresponding opportunity to look for evidence in their defence). They're building a case after the fact, and they've already destroyed the company.

This isn't some one sided thing. Even if it turns out that nobody is clean, you can definitely point out the 'bad guys' right now.

Re:Bad summary

[plonk420]

here's an amazing post from the comments: http://wetasphalt.com/content/everything-old-new-again

...however i am not good at summarizing, either.

Re:Bad summary

[element-o.p.]

Huh. I though Lowery was arguing against the greedy people who want content, but don't want to pay for it. My bad.

Re:Bad summary

[Anonymous Coward]

> he says that touring is generally a money-losing operation, and that only the very top acts make any money at all touring.

And the reason for that is that everybody tours like they're a major band. Most people can't afford an entourage with 100 people, huge expensive fireworks displays, lasershows, suites in 5-stars hotels, booze out the wazoo, a different costume for each act, ....

It's perfectly possible to make a living touring doing small gigs, see for instance http://www.sjtucker.com/ for a smalltime artist making a living that way. Yes it will be a different kind of touring experience then what the record-label tours are today.

Once again, somebody misses the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Look: the world changed, and we now have computers and the Internet. They are the single greatest boon to productivity, creativity, knowledge and freedom in the past hundred years. The Internet relies, fundamentally, on its ability to make exact copies of data, nearly instantly, and nearly for free.

We have a choice between strong intellectual property protection and a functioning Internet. We cannot have both, as they are in direct conflict with each other.

Anybody making arguments for the ethics or piracy, or the benefits of intellectual property, is yelling at clouds. It doesn't matter if piracy is unethical. It doesn't matter if it hurts artists. It doesn't matter if it hurts the economy. The Internet is much more important.

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[Mystakaphoros]

And that's where I thought the author had a nice heart but very little understanding of the scarcity issue. It's not hard to get music anymore. Yeah, it really stinks that artists are starving. But the bottom has just fallen out of that market. I agree with him that The Cloud isn't the vaunted next step, but I think the better solution is just sharing peer to peer.

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that you missed the point. The better solution is paying for what you use. It's cheap, easy to do, and not doing it simply makes you a selfish, heartless bastard.

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[bws111]

Please explain how the internet stops working if people stop pirating. I am not seeing the connection.

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[jedidiah]

Video killed the radio star already.

This is not a new problem. It's just more visible because of the nature of the Internet. Everything is out in the open.

I think the real problem that the industry is having has nothing to do with "piracy". The industry is producing a very forgettable product these days and the stuff that is able to stand the test of time can only be sold to you once.

There are no new formats for the industry to use as a cash cow. They can't sell you the same thing over and over again.

It's really funny that this comes right after an article about how everyone is just streaming these days. It's like everyone has forgotten about MTV and radio.

You simply don't need Pandora or Napster to get your daily dose of forgettable Top 40 music.

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[pavon]

Look the world changed, and we now have guns and artillery. They are the single greatest boon to hunting, personal and national security in the past 1000 years. Guns are fundamentally instruments of death at the hands of anyone regardless of their personal strength, and nearly for free.

We have a choice between strong right to life and the ownership of guns. We cannot have both as they are in direct conflict with one another.

Anybody making arguments for the ethics of vigilantes or the benefits of human rights is yelling at the clouds. It doesn't matter if murder is unethical. It doesn't matter if it harms families. It doesn't matter if it hurts the economy. The benefits of guns are much more important.

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[honestmonkey]

Wish I had mod points, you'd get them (well one at least). I read the whole article and Lowery makes almost 100% sense. People that think "teh internets, they can do it so it's okay" just don't get that they are actively killing the very thing they like. And as he points out, it doesn't really cost that much to actually BUY the friggin' music. Other than free samples or loss-leaders, I've bought every song I have, some a couple times (in LP form and then again in CD or download). There were a few times that I was tempted to illegally download something because I couldn't otherwise even find it for sale, but I resisted and either did without, or got it when it did eventually come out legally. None of this has hurt me at all, financially or otherwise. I've got over 60+ gigs of music, more than I can listen to in any reasonable amount of time. I keep buying music, too. It's not that fucking hard, and it always (barring artists that made bad deals, but that's on them not me) sends some money back to the artist. If I can, I buy it directly from the artists website. Again, not that hard.

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[hldn]

Anybody making arguments for the ethics of vigilantes or the benefits of human rights is yelling at the clouds. It doesn't matter if murder is unethical. It doesn't matter if it harms families. It doesn't matter if it hurts the economy. The benefits of guns are much more important.

finally, someone posts something on this shitty site that i can agree with.

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[jedidiah]

The Internet stops working if the music cartel is able to force the issue. Their solution will be like amputating a leg to lance a boil. They will care only for their own personal limited interests and care nothing of the broader social or economic impact of the solution.

Censorship of basic news reporting, political commentary, and suppression of business rivals being an obvious direct effect.

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[MightyMartian]

Perhaps the point is in the middle. Yes, we should pay, but should we pay as much as we are, and on the flip side, should the artist be paying the middle man so much to distribute a product at pre-Internet costs when the actual costs of distribution have substantially dropped.

The problem here that I see is that everyone is so fixated on the personal piracy issue that they've lost sight of the big picture:

1. The media companies (music and film in particular) have built up elaborate systems whose purposes, in no small part, are to minimize the payments to artists and to maximize what the consumer pays. This has involved, over time, everything from outrageously one-sided recording contracts, creative accounting (literally in many cases keeping two sets of books in violation of every notion of good accounting and most certainly in violation of pretty much all statutes anywhere you go), hiding sales to distort royalty reports to artists, in some cases actually not reporting sales at all, violating fiduciary obligations, and so on and so forth.

Now obviously, in one respect, charging the customer as much as you can isn't precisely wrong, but at the same time going out of your way to break the back of the customer when alternate distribution means that rob you completely of profit doesn't seem very wise. Look at TV. A lot of people are pirating American or British TV shows not because of any particular desire to defraud anyone, but rather because the rights holders refuse to make product available in a timely fashion. The media giants put a lot of money and effort in the pursuit of piracy, but for the most part, have made only half-hearted overtures to their customers to find a middle ground. Even when they do, they cannot help but try to play the game the way it has been for decades, becoming heavy handed with legitimate online distribution points (look how they absolutely trashed Internet radio, to what end I cannot figure out).

There has to come a point when an industry remains so unwilling to compromise, to accept new technologies and to adjust accordingly, that both the consumer and the artist have to ask themselves "Why am dealing with these guys?" Consumers in large numbers have already asked the question, and have responded. Artists are beginning to as well, but typically they are caught in the middle in a fight between the distributor and the consumer, and inevitably will suffer the most.

Time will tell how this shakes out, but I really do predict that companies like Apple and Google will tire of the constant battle to give consumers what they want, and ultimately will begin to look at those vast warchests of cash they have built up and begin to think that maybe they should be starting their own production companies and record labels. It's not quite there yet, but the dinosaurs have constantly and unremittingly tried to cut them off at the knees, and there will be a point where Apple and Google too will tire of this.

Let's put this in perspective. For the bulk of human history, we have possessed no copyright laws and no large media companies. Homer did not need an agent, Mozart and Michelangelo did the bulk of their work for hire, and relied upon patrons and works for hire. Some of the towering achievements of human artistic endeavor were done with none of the artificial systems put in place over the last few centuries. Shakespeare wrote all his plays for the sole purpose of having something for his theater to put on, and gained his coin from the performances (and apparently did rather well). The debate we are having, no matter how ethical or moral, or how much we may feel it is important, is an artificial debate. Art does not require copyright to exist. It never did and it never will.

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[fa2k]

Please explain how the internet stops working if people stop pirating. I am not seeing the connection.

It's not like that, the problem is that people will break the internet in trying to force everyone to stop pirating.

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[spire3661]

Its not the cost, its the idea that an artists and their agents attempt ( and succeed) in limiting technology for nothing else then profit. Art is insignificant compared to the technological communication infrastructure we are building. They need to get the fuck out of the way before we as a society decide to really change the nature of copyright.

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[Anonymous Coward]

1) It is a new problem, because we have people running around shouting about how "music is free" and "my taking a copy doesn't detract from YOUR copy at all," while ignoring the fact that it still costs very real time, money, and materials to PRODUCE that original track which can then be "infinitely copied." How stupid is that? The cost of producing a copy of a CD has ALWAYS been a small fraction of the overall cost of the CD, which goes towards paying studio fees, engineering costs, all of the advertising and other administrative support artists receive from labels, and profit (generally fairly small) to the artists & labels themselves.

2) The "industry" is producing plenty of good stuff these days. I know, I know, you're over 35, and so the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd are absolutely the best bands ever, and nothing will ever approach their greatness. This is mostly because it's what you grew up listening to, not that those bands are intrinsically "ZOMG AMAZING." There are lots of independent artists out there today producing lots of great music, and making very little money off it. Dismissing them in a single stroke just makes you look like a retard.

3) It's not about "no new cash cow," it's about "people taking copies of songs, which they obviously value because they have obviously gone to the trouble of seeking out, downloading, and saving them, and giving nothing in return to the artists who created the songs." This is *fundamentally* unethical.

You keep repeating "video killed the radio star" as if this is some profound insight. It's not, it just makes you sound like a fucking idiot, especially when the problem now is "pirates killed the professional musician." For somebody with such a low userid, you sure do have a lot of shoddily constructed opinions. Is there anything you're not willing to spout ignorant bullshit in defense of?

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[Radres]

The author does make his point about the starving musicians who died on their $35k/year. But the fact is there were plenty of people killing themselves trying to make it as artists before internet file sharing.

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[Radres]

Shooting someone with a gun takes their life away. Copying someone's music costs them nothing.

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[Anonymous Coward]

The Internet stops working when you pass laws that violate people's online privacy, in order to help the copyright industry. It stops working when you ban file-sharing programs and websites because some people use them for illegal purposes. It stops working when you block Youtube videos over false copyright claims. It stops working when you steal domain names or take down websites that are wrongfully accused of copyright infringement. It stops working when you sue fans for making fan websites. It stops working when people are afraid to share any content because they fear they might unknowingly infringe some copyright and get sued.

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[bws111]

So, in other words, if people stop pirating there is no impact on the internet, but if people continue pirating the internet may get broken.

So again, how does the internet break if people stop pirating?

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet will stop working when they allow whiny bitches to make new laws that break the fundamental nature of the internet. (ie. deleting/changing DNS records breaks the internet). There is NO good excuse to interfere with the underlying infrastructure of the internet ; it is too powerful, and too useful the way it is, and we should leave it as it is. Yes, there are lots of questionable things out there (goat.se anyone?) - there are a lot of questionable things in the Real World too. Does that mean we should change the laws of physics to make it more profitable?

And by the way, I have purchased hundreds of cd's, legally, in my time, and I support internet piracy, 100%. It's no different than listening to music on the radio; except there are no (good) radio stations anymore, or MTV, which doesn't even play music most of the time anymore. If I like something, I will buy it. But I'm sorry, Justin Beiber and Kanye just don't do it for me. I've looked, trust me!

You want your "starving artists" to be able to make more money? Then get your product out where people can see it. Find new ways to monetize it. On their own people will share, or at least "spread the word" about good artists. People WANT to buy their favorite artist's new disk (all 8 songs and 30 minutes of it, for the low low price of only 25$!) - they WANT to legally own these cd's, they WANT to buy the band's T-shirt, they WANT the blu-ray box set of their concerts, they want to go to their concerts, at $75+ per ticket, they buy them!!! But guess what? The flawed business model means that they DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO THOSE ARTISTS ARE.

Of course, when you make it illegal to even listen to their music, why would any of us want to? My solution to the RIAA/MAFIAA's continual abuse of their customers? I don't buy music. I haven't heard anything new that's good, so what would I buy! The only stuff I listen to is at least 5 years old, and purchased before this bloated corpse of an industry crippled itself. Try spending some money on promoting new artists, instead of spending millions BRIBING public officials to make laws to protect your failed business model, and other countless millions suing your own (potential) customers? Do some research on how you can promote new talent, that are young and fresh, the internet is powerful guys, get with the program. You didn't have a problem back in the day when you could see most of an artist's work on MTV or the like, why is it a big deal now?

When you were a kid, didn't you ever record a favorite song from the (AM) radio, just so you could listen to it over and over? And then, when you were an adult, didn't you BUY every single cd that band every created?

Canadians have been spending more than anybody else on music (http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6527/125/) and the RIAA has bribed our politicians over and over again, and finally we have a new anti-piracy law passed as of today. Wait, what's that you say? We spend MORE than anyone else, even countries that are HUGE compared to us, but piracy is a problem? HOW?

And don't even get me started about all the talented artists that die before their time. That is AWFULLY CONVENIENT for the rights-holders(RIAA), isn't it? Just saying.

Posted AC so the RIAA doesn't sue me, or my family, or my dog for copyright violations.

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no benefit to a gun.

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[Anonymous Coward]

I love when people reply to a post with name calling. I think it makes YOU look like a mouth-breathing knuckle-dragger, by the way. AC no less, as if we would expect any different.

"The industry" is producing plenty of good stuff these days? Then you go on to say that there are lots of INDEPENDANT artists making good music? I assume you mean by independent, that they AREN'T signed by any major label? THEN HOW IS THE "INDUSTRY" PRODUCING IT???? You contradict yourself.

But this is precisely the problem! Nobody knows who those guys are! The record companies should be working to discover these talented hardworking artists, and helping to promote them, so that we CAN buy their music. I know they have to be out there, I just don't know WHO they are.

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[rjforster]

No, the point was that people would have to (almost) stop pirating if the internet stopped working. I put the word almost in there because we would still have sneakernets so some piracy would still occur but it would be tiny in comparison to what is happening now.

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[element-o.p.]

IME, whenever you have a situation like this, the truth is often found somewhere in the middle.

Like you, I abhor a closed, locked-down Internet. That would truly be a tragedy of epic proportions. However, it would also be tragic if we were to instantly lose all concept of intellectual property. The framers of the Constitution were wise enough to see that it is a good thing to protect the intellectual property rights of creative types, and that doing so* provides incentive to continue creating things. The trick now is to find a way to provide reasonable IP protections to the creative types without unduly restricting the single greatest communications medium since the printing press.

*One could argue that we have strayed quite a ways from what the authors of the Constitution envisioned and that our current copyright and IP protection situation is anything but conducive to creativity. I would have to agree. However, as the saying goes, "don't throw out the baby with the bath water." The concept was good; the implementation needs to be tweaked, however.

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Please explain how the internet stops working if people stop pirating. I am not seeing the connection.

The problem would be to get them to stop. It takes the same technology to make people stop pirating as it takes for making dissident voices to shut up on the internet. To make dissident voices shut up, you have to make it near impossible to speak for everybody; to prevent "illegal" file transfers, you have to break the internet.

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Posted AC so the RIAA doesn't sue me, or my family, or my dog for copyright violations. -> BUT I am not a pirate. This is my opinion though, for what it's worth (I'll admit, probably not a lot in the grand scheme of things). I support internet piracy, because it is also the freedom to share legal files, and those that are OPPOSED to it, seem to want to destroy the internet. And that is a Very Bad Thing.

I do not steal anything. I am however arguing against restricting the internet. I support internet piracy, because I know lots of people who are, or were at one time file pirates, and they are not evil people, even if you consider piracy stealing. Some of them are just digital packrats, and actually are quite unlikely to listen to their ill-gotten goods. Some of them use it to preview new bands, new songs, or new genres. (I love that youtube does this for us now, it is a perfect analogy to a modern-day MTV which is on-demand. You can discover new music this way.)

People that steal things, often could not afford to buy them (those packrats already own thousands of cd's, movies, and books - they just can't help themselves), and the concept of theft was obviously created to protect one's physical property. If you steal my book, I don't have that book anymore. If I photocopy your book.. well, that doesn't really affect you, does it. It might sound strange, but while wanting to preserve the rights of people to share files, I also want them to keep in mind, that those artists created something that you desire; since you downloaded it. If you really liked their work, PAY for it now. If not, delete it. People are moral creatures, and everyone hates to be stolen from.

Also everyone likes to think they are part of a "counter-culture" - that they aren't blindly following the unwashed masses. Piracy is a way to be a bit rebellious, without causing serious harm to anyone.

Of course I know it's a slippery slope when there are questions of morality; but that's life, there will always be those that seek to remove the freedoms of others, either for their own gain, or for their own political or moral agendas, and there will hopefully always be those that fight to keep those freedoms.

The war against internet piracy is about restricting freedom in my mind. That's why I say I support piracy, because to EVER stop it, you would essentially break what constitutes the internet, and the right to pass along a file or whatever kind to a friend, seems like a pretty reasonable one to me.

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[Theaetetus]

We have a choice between strong intellectual property protection and a functioning Internet. We cannot have both, as they are in direct conflict with each other.

[Citation needed].
IP protections have gotten stronger and stronger over the past three decades, and, as I believe your ability to read this post shows, we have a functioning internet.

Re:Once again, somebody misses the point

[pantaril]

Please explain how the internet stops working if people stop pirating. I am not seeing the connection.

Easy: People will stop pirating only if you ban them from uploading any data at all. If you do that, internet will stop working (or it will turn into Television 2.0).

hollywood account ethics?

[Dan667]

interesting there is never any push back on that even though it screws artists a lot more than anything else.

Re:hollywood account ethics?

[Anonymous Coward]

It goes to court occasionally but always gets settled to prevent a final judgment. "Artists" sign contracts, they're screwed because they think they're going to become the next Beatles or Elvis.

The fact it's near common knowledge record (and movie) middlemen are abusing the law, using frowned about accounting, and taking advantage of naive band shows how long they've been controlling the legal profession, and scared off government.

Re:hollywood account ethics?

[MightyMartian]

And even if an artist becomes a Beatles or an Elvis, the record companies still try to screw them. Even the biggest acts, like, say, the Beatles have had to go after their recording companies for unpaid royalties and violations of contract. Of course, the difference, as always, is that when Johnny Q. One-hit goes after Unimegaversal Music Gluttony Group, his odds of success are low to nil, whereas when Bobby J. Twenty-Number-Ones go against the same company, he can afford a major team of lawyers and forensic accountants.

Free Culture movement?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he has made up his own definition of that term. Don't most other people associate "Free Culture movement" with things like Creative Commons?

Re:Free Culture movement?

[Mystakaphoros]

Yeah, I took issue with him associating streaming services with Free Culture. Streaming services are trying to position themselves between listeners and their content for the sake of alleged convenience.

In a world...

[mw13068]

Long, long ago, before there was equipment to record sound, musicians made money by playing live music for people.

Re:In a world...

[i_ate_god]

what an ignorant statement.

Venue owners believe they are doing the musician a favour by letting them play in their venue. Now go explain how to make a living off that mentality?

Re:In a world...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there was a stint where player piano rolls were highly guarded property, there are many works lost to the world because they weren't allowed to flourish outside their tightly controlled ecosystem.

Re:In a world...

[wjousts]

Then the gramophone came along and the bottom fell out of that market. As TFA states, very few artists make any money from touring and live performances.

Re:In a world...

[mw13068]

The musicians who are very talented and easy to work with became popular and were paid more, and the musicians who weren't quite as talented would just play music in their spare time, with friends at pubs and family gatherings in exchange for dinner and drinks -- and work in other trades to make a livelihood. There is no law on the books that states "Anyone who decides they're an 'artist' should therefore be able to make a living at it."

Re:In a world...

[Endo13]

And in most cases, they probably are. The problem is there are way, WAY too many musicians nowadays for them to all make a living with their music. It's just flat impossible. For every venue (this is including hole-in-the-wall bars) there are a hundred garage bands trying to make a living.

Bottom line, if you're not able to make money selling your current product, the problem is not your customers. It's time for these unsuccessful artists to get a day job, and recognize their "musical career" for what it really is: a hobby.

Re:In a world...

[mw13068]

All these arguments are predicated on the false assumption that because someone calls themselves and artist, that they should then be able to make a solid livelihood from it. And even further, if someone gets some level of fame, that they are somehow entitled to maintain that. The world doesn't work that way. I play guitar in a band, and I have a lot of fun. Sometimes I get paid a little cash. Most of my income comes from an unrelated career that I also built for myself.

Re:In a world...

[h4rr4r]

Why do you have some right to make a living off of music?

If enough people want to play at a venue that the value of the venue exceeds the value of the performance, then this makes perfect sense.

Re:In a world...

[BlueStrat]

what an ignorant statement.

Venue owners believe they are doing the musician a favour by letting them play in their venue. Now go explain how to make a living off that mentality?

I think you're the one guilty of making ignorant statements.

I'm a semi-pro musician. Although the pay rates haven't been great, every bar/club/venue I know of that has live music pays to book bands/musicians to perform. Unless it's a "coffee house" type thing where anyone can just get up and perform.

I and many of my fellow not-signed-with-a-big-label musicians/bands give away recordings (CDs and free downloads). We live in the reality of today where recordings are only promotional tools, not an end product themselves.

Strat

Re:In a world...

[wjousts]

That's nice. So your argument is that society shouldn't value artists and artists should just get a day job and STFU?

Re:In a world...

[mw13068]

Of course society should value artists. Society always has, and always will -- but we must concede that throughout history, most great art and artists went unappreciated in their time. This idea of 1. Make something artistic, 2. Show it to people, 3. ???, 4. PROFIT! is silly. And I know enough struggling artists to know that's how a lot of them think. They are generally miserable and live in fear of needing dentists and doctors because they're poor. So, yes, generally I say to artists: get a day job.

Re:In a world...

[BlueStrat]

As TFA states, very few artists make any money from touring and live performances.

If TFA does say that, then it and you are flat-out wrong.

Most artists/bands make the majority of their money from music in playing bars/clubs/festivals/etc for pay. The only ones that make any real money at all from recordings are the tiny, tiny percentage of artists/bands that sign with a big label, *and* happen to be the "flavor du jour" being pushed by that label. Even many signed touring acts make more money from performances and merch sales than the recording sales.

Here's an excellent, though depressing, piece on how things work for bands/artists with labels.

http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17

Strat

Re:In a world...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's nice. So your argument is that society shouldn't value artists and artists should just get a day job and STFU?

Actually, what I read from the GP's comment is that just because someone calls themself an "artist", it doesn't actually mean that they are an artist.

My brother could call himself a software developer, but that doesn't mean he is one.

The difference between these two situations is that my brother is exceedingly unlikely to be hired as a software developer and be paid for doing that work. On the other hand, it seems like any bozo that gets up in front of a mic or camera these days (like, say, that abomination that calls herself "Adele" and thinks she's actually good, despite crap lyrics and a voice that stinks to high heaven) thinks they are entitled to a boatload of cash.

In pop culture, there are probably in the neighborhood of 6 to 12 people that deserve to be called "artists" and compensated as such. The rest "should just get a day job and STFU."

Re:In a world...

[Anonymous Coward]

Adele just sold her second album TWENTY TWO fucking MILLION times. I think that society values artists just fine.

Re:In a world...

[spire3661]

Society shouldnt value commercial art so much that we limit technological progress to protect vested interests.

Re:In a world...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll pay you if I like your art, because I want you to keep making more.

If I don't like your art, then get a day job and STFU.

Re:In a world...

[elsurexiste]

Read this comment, then the one right up.

Conclusion: it doesn't matter who's right. Either way, society can't recognise good artists.

Re:In a world...

[elsurexiste]

The only measure of artistic capability seems to be the popularity of the artistic productions. Why not tying livelihood to it, as charging for consumption/copy accomplishes to some extent?

You are essentially saying "artists should get a day job" while conceding that most great art and artists went unappreciated in their time. Doesn't that make your brain bleed?

Re:In a world...

[wjousts]

If society values art, then talented artists (note: not just anybody who feels like calling themselves an artist) should be able to make a decent living (i.e. not necessarily "boat-loads of cash"). So the question is, what is the best way to ensure that artists producing stuff that people enjoy are fairly compensated for their efforts?

Re:In a world...

[wjousts]

But if I like your art, and can get it for free, why the fuck should I pay for it? When I can let a sucker like you pay for it instead? Relying on peoples natural altruistic instinct isn't going to work in the long-run.

Re:In a world...

[mw13068]

Given that being creative and holding down a job are not mutually exclusive, no. I'm sure there are a few artists who have been able to work for pay and still create art. Of course, nobody *has* to get a job (especially in America) but paychecks are sure handy for the troublesome parts of an artist's life like food, shelter, and clothing.

Re:In a world...

[Mystakaphoros]

I'm a semi-pro musician. Although the pay rates haven't been great, every bar/club/venue I know of that has live music pays to book bands/musicians to perform. Unless it's a "coffee house" type thing where anyone can just get up and perform.

I and many of my fellow not-signed-with-a-big-label musicians/bands give away recordings (CDs and free downloads). We live in the reality of today where recordings are only promotional tools, not an end product themselves.

Strat

I think I can count the number of times I've gotten paid to play in public on one hand. I sold some CDs to close friends, and then gave the rest I had away at most events. But I guess it's different in that I started the game knowing a) I could record my own music and b) that I was never going to become a millionaire this way.

Re:In a world...

[Mystakaphoros]

Hence why in the past so many of them (visual artists in particular) weren't recognized until they were dead, and then people started swarming over the (scarce) originals they left behind, which someone deemed worth money.

Re:In a world...

[BlueStrat]

I think I can count the number of times I've gotten paid to play in public on one hand.

Like almost any other line of employment, you have to work at it, network heavily, and do what it takes to land a gig. After a few gigs to establish that you're a viable and worthwhile artist/band, you can then approach booking agents about getting on their artist/venue booking rotation. Nobody is going to seek you out to give you money. The competition is enormous.

Bottom line on making money from live performances is that, if you're a reasonably-talented musician/band that wants to play paying gigs, you play as many paying gigs as you're willing, able, and talented enough to play, considering the "willing" part includes doing the footwork necessary to land the jobs.

But I guess it's different in that I started the game knowing a) I could record my own music and b) that I was never going to become a millionaire this way.

One shouldn't have any delusions of grandeur. Extremely few musicians/bands will make more money than they could for the same number of hours working at a convenience store. That doesn't even count time spent at personal practice and band rehearsals. Most will spend more on their instruments/equipment than they will ever make from playing bars & clubs.

I play blues. If I were to set out to choose the genre of music I was least likely to make money at, I couldn't have picked better. I play blues because that's what I feel and play best. I don't do it just for the money. The money is simply a means to keep playing. And CDs/recordings are just another means of promoting what you do: Performing music for an audience.

Strat

Re:In a world...

[Theaetetus]

The musicians who are very talented and easy to work with became popular and were paid more, and the musicians who weren't quite as talented would just play music in their spare time, with friends at pubs and family gatherings in exchange for dinner and drinks -- and work in other trades to make a livelihood. There is no law on the books that states "Anyone who decides they're an 'artist' should therefore be able to make a living at it."

And flash forward to today, where the musicians who are very talented and easy to work with are popular and paid more, and musicians who aren't quite as talented don't make money. There is still no law on the books that requires us to pay anyone who claims they're an artist: if you disagree, swing on down to your local modern art gallery and see if you're able to leave without buying something.

Although you may claim that Beiber or Katy Perry have no talent, it's clearly untrue. You may dislike their style and subjectively dislike them, but it's mere hyperbole to claim that they are making money simply because they "decide" they're artists. For better or for worse, they are popular, just as the high-paid musicians in your premise.

Re:In a world...

[NulDevice]

It's a hobby for most of us already. But it's a very, very expensive hobby. And...well, if you're a musician, it's not like you really have a choice in the matter. You're driven to create music and share it with people, it's just how your brain works.

Re:In a world...

[NulDevice]

I'm also a semi-pro musician. It's true that you can get paid to play a gig, and it can be alright.

But it's really not anything you can make a living at. You can barely break even at it, if you're lucky, given the costs for transportation, food, lodging, etc. - which leaves it at best a time and money-suck of a hobby. It's really not something that you can sustain long-term.

Re:In a world...

[Anonymous Coward]

All these arguments are predicated on the false assumption that because someone calls themselves and artist, that they should then be able to make a solid livelihood from it. And even further, if someone gets some level of fame, that they are somehow entitled to maintain that. The world doesn't work that way. I play guitar in a band, and I have a lot of fun. Sometimes I get paid a little cash. Most of my income comes from an unrelated career that I also built for myself.

No, that's not what the arguments are predicated on. They're predicated on the real assumption that people are consuming work that took time and effort to create. If you aren't willing to pay for it, that's fine, but then it will go away because nobody, even the best musicians and composers, will be able to to make any money from doing it if nobody pays.

Nobody is saying they deserve anything just because they created something. They're saying they deserve money because people are using the efforts of their labor and it's unfair not to compensate them for it. It's the same as the type of work you do at your day job. You expect to be paid for having done work. That's all they want. If nobody's listening to their songs, musicians expect not to be compensated because they realize their work isn't valuable to others. But when thousands or millions of people are listening, that says that people value the work and they should be willing to compensate the artist for that value. Paying 99 cents on iTunes or directly on the artists website is a really easy and fair way to do that.

here we go again

[hype7]

the quintessential disrupted producer, complaining about how the world is not conforming to the way they want it to be, or worse yet, the way the world "should" be.

I'm sure the exact same essay was written somewhere upon the development of the phonograph. "but how will we get paid if they can play back our music a thousand times once it has been recorded?" probably the same argument, too, by playhouse actors when recording movies came along.

the artists/actors might not like it, but the development of technology drives down the price, massively opens the market up, and, if they're smart, allows them to make more money than their predecessors could ever have dreamed of.

writing letters complaining about how people are not paying enough to you is just so 1842.

Re:here we go again

[Anonymous Coward]

the quintessential disrupted producer, complaining about how the world is not conforming to the way they want it to be, or worse yet, the way the world "should" be.

I'm sure the exact same essay was written somewhere upon the development of the phonograph. "but how will we get paid if they can play back our music a thousand times once it has been recorded?" probably the same argument, too, by playhouse actors when recording movies came along.

No kidding - there's a reason that we have "mechanical royalties" in the US, and it's because composers got completely bent outta shape over PLAYER PIANO rolls - for pretty much exactly the reasoning you've described. This nonsense has been going on for a long time (remember the "HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC" campaign?) and will likely keep going...

Re:here we go again

[Anonymous Coward]

the quintessential disrupted producer, complaining about how the world is not conforming to the way they want it to be, or worse yet, the way the world "should" be.

I feel the same way about slashbots whining about H1-Bs. LOL

Re:here we go again

[metrometro]

Yes. Phonographs had resistance from the entrenched music distributor of it's day: sheet music sales. This was how "pop" music fads were propagated before recordings.

Re:here we go again

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for that link:

Washington, Dickens blasted in American Notes, was the home of: "Despicable trickery at elections; under-handed tamperings with public officers; and cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers".

Seems that not much has changed in the last 170 years.

Re:here we go again

[jedidiah]

...except a lot of us were whining about the "2nd class" nature of the H1-B more than the "competition" aspect of it.

Someone valuable enough to import for their skills is valuable enough to offer full status to immediately.

Re:here we go again

[Anonymous Coward]

Somehow you went from "Pointing out an interesting hypocrisy in the slashdot community" to "trolling" in the last three characters.

Re:here we go again

[Anonymous Coward]

complaining about how the world is not conforming to the way they want it to be, or worse yet, the way the world "should" be.

At the beginning of the year, I realized exactly that. Now I preface Every Single News Title I read with: "*I* alone think that <original-article-title>"

Re:here we go again

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure the exact same essay was written somewhere upon the development of the phonograph. "but how will we get paid if they can play back our music a thousand times once it has been recorded?" probably the same argument, too, by playhouse actors when recording movies came along.

Can't find this again; I've looked -- so unsourced. Walt Disney was given a demo of home-playback (VCR?) decades ago (back when he was alive!) He was incredulous after the technology demo ended, but not for the reason you think -- "But how can we charge per viewing per seat?" And so he rejected it.

If anyone CAN find where this came from, I'd appreciate a follow-up, even if it's www.snopes.com.

I agree, a tiny bit.

[Hatta]

it is up to us individually to examine the consequences of our actions. It is not up to governments or corporations to make us choose to behave ethically. We have to do that ourselves.

It seems to me that this is the core of copyright abolitionism. As long as file sharing is illegal, we are expecting the government to enforce ethical behavior. The right thing to do is to pay for the things you value willingly. If you don't, they can and should go away.

The rest of the article, including blaming file sharing for musician suicides (as if musicians didn't commit suicide before) is pants on head retarded. The author isn't even aware that he's agreed with the basic assumption of copyright abolitionism.

Re:I agree, a tiny bit.

[Mystakaphoros]

Exactly! That's why I have been happy to support artists I discovered on Kickstarter, or friends who were producing albums, because I understand that they need my help and I have come to care about them. I will pay to go see a show a friend does at a local bar. I'll also share those mp3s with friends who haven't heard my friends' music, because that's a new fan who might buy an album (or at least pass it along).

Re:I agree, a tiny bit.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The rest of the article, including blaming file sharing for musician suicides (as if musicians didn't commit suicide before) is pants on head retarded. "

Whoa there. I obviously didn't read the entire article, but if he actually did blame file sharing for that I think he'd better blame the RIAA as well. I use to buy a LOT more CDs than I currently do. (I use to buy them 1+ per paycheck, now I buy 1-2 per year.) The reason for the change is entirely due to a boycott of RIAA associated labels for their own unethical behavior (Yes, abusing the courts to mass sue/extort fans is unethical.)

I didn't fill the gap with illegal downloads either. I filled part of it with creative commons attributed music - and realized the rest of the gap didn't even need to be filled. As most of the CDs I was buying by hearing songs on the radio was garbage except for those couple songs on the radio.

So in my case the RIAA is directly responsible for my decision to stop spending thousands of dollars per year on musicians.

Regardless however... If a musician can't cut it as a musician, he or she has the option to get another job just like every other fucking person on the planet. If they choose death over that, that's their concern.

Re:I agree, a tiny bit.

[hawguy]

"The rest of the article, including blaming file sharing for musician suicides (as if musicians didn't commit suicide before) is pants on head retarded. "

Whoa there. I obviously didn't read the entire article, but if he actually did blame file sharing for that I think he'd better blame the RIAA as well. I use to buy a LOT more CDs than I currently do. (I use to buy them 1+ per paycheck, now I buy 1-2 per year.) The reason for the change is entirely due to a boycott of RIAA associated labels for their own unethical behavior (Yes, abusing the courts to mass sue/extort fans is unethical.)

I used to buy a lot of music too, I have a collection of around 300 CD's (which now languish in a big CD binder because I ripped them all to MP3's). But I don't blame RIAA for my not buying much music any more. I have adequate of disposable income that I could spend on music, I could easily afford to buy a dozen or more albums/month if I wanted to, and most music is available as non-DRM'ed MP3's. But I don't know if it's the fact that I'm older now, if modern music just sucks, or because there are plenty of other alternatives to music (I listen to Podcasts in the car), but I just don't buy much music anymore. In the past 2 years, I think I've bought 2 albums. I do listen to some streaming music, but I rarely hear anything that I want to even pay 99 cents for.

I still listen to much of my older music that I own on CD's, but I just don't feel like I need to add to that collection. I remember my parents adding to their music collection when they were my age (even if most of it was on 8-tracks or vinyl), but my music collection has remained fairly static.

Re:I agree, a tiny bit.

[evilviper]

As long as file sharing is illegal, we are expecting the government to enforce ethical behavior. The right thing to do is to pay for the things you value willingly. If you don't, they can and should go away.

Look at the US constitution. When they established copyright, ethics didn't enter into it at all.

What's more, your logic could just as well justify ending all laws, and all government spending. Your mistake is that you've forgotten that it's all one big Prisoner's Dilemma:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma

Re:I agree, a tiny bit.

[David_Hart]

I grew up listening to music. I remember listening to my father's old 45's from the 50's as a kid. I spent most of my childhood summers at the family camp on a lake listening to music on the radio from the late 70's and spent my teen years listening to and buying 80's music. Most of the music from the 70's and 80's, whether you liked it or not, had different styles. You could tell within the first three seconds the song title and the artist. You would be hard pressed to do that with the songs being produced today. My thought is that the lack of variety is a result of the homogenization of radio stations and the need for every song to be commercially viable.

I find that it takes an effort now to find original sounds as you can't rely on the radio stations to showcase new music. For example, I listen to the CBC Radio3 podcast. It showcases new and rising Canadian artists. One of the few radio stations in my area that I enjoy is 92.5 The River. Of course, you can always find interesting music on the streaming radio stations. However, I largely listen to music in the car.

Legal copying?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, the person he is responding to has copied lots of music from friends, completely legally, and he thinks that's horrible. He must have cried his eyes out when the combined radio and tape recorder was invented.

Re:Legal copying?

[Lebofsky]

Since it's in real time to tape record 11,000 songs that would take, at 3 minutes per song, roughly 3 weeks. I'm sure people wouldn't stay up doing this 24 hours a day, so let's say at 12 hours a day of sitting there copying 11,000 songs one at a time, inserting new cassettes, etc. would take about 2 months at least. Two really grueling months making you question the worth of what you were doing.

However to copy 11,000 mp3s from one computer to another, about 7 hours. Go to sleep, wake up, all done. And nobody got hurt, right?

It's all about the ease and the scale at this point radically affecting the bottom lines.

Re:Legal copying?

[h4rr4r]

The ease and scale of the automobile mean I can no longer make money breeding horses. I guess we should tax cars and give me that money for my horse breeding.

Re:Legal copying?

[mjr167]

So what did the artic ice importers do when we infented freezers?

Re:Legal copying?

[Anonymous Coward]

Found a different job, went out of business, starved... but they stopped importing ice.

So, musicians can simply stop making music.

Wrong on every level

[Anonymous Coward]

"We are being asked to change our morality and principals to match what I think are immoral and unethical business models."

No, you're being asked to be realistic and, since you've failed that for so long, now you're no longer being asked but being dragged there by reality.

It's amazing how out of touch he is

[Rix]

She has 11,000 songs on her iPod. If she had bought them, they'd have cost $10,890. Probably more than the car she drives (if she even has one).

Sorry my Sicilian friend, but that's just not going to happen.

Re:It's amazing how out of touch he is

[Lebofsky]

Um... I bought over 1000 CDs before the internet. That's roughly $15,000. Doesn't seem like that much to ask for all that entertainment.

Re:It's amazing how out of touch he is

[jedidiah]

I have twice that many DVDs and it didn't cost nearly that much.

If you are paying "list price" then you are a chump.

There's always bargains and used media resellers.

Re:It's amazing how out of touch he is

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 35000 songs on my hard drive, and I paid for or otherwise legitimately received nearly every one of them over the last 30 years (there may be a handful that I pulled from blogspot that are from out-of-print albums). Many came from emusic.com, others I ripped from vinyl and CDs that I own.

I'm also a musician.

Where do I think the ethical line is? Making a copy of an album for a friend is, to me, acceptable use, in order to turn them onto a band. Ripping an entire hard drive, or pulling music from illegitimate online sources is not.

Re:It's amazing how out of touch he is

[chad.koehler]

David Lowery suggests that the "ethical and legal" amount for ownership of those songs however is only $2139.50 (it's in the article, stated several times).  Unfortunately, David doesn't seem to understand that there is nowhere that the music is actually available at that price (approximately $.20 per song).

Re:It's amazing how out of touch he is

[Rix]

If you don't think $15,000 is a lot of money, then you really don't know what you're talking about.

Where, exactly, do you think a 21 year old college student is going to get that?

Re:It's amazing how out of touch he is

[bws111]

Here is a novel thought: if you can't pay for something that is a 100% luxury (and having your own copies of songs is exactly that), do without!

Re:It's amazing how out of touch he is

[Anonymous Coward]

That thought is better said to the artists: if you (the artist) can't make ends meet doing a job that offers people luxury (making music), stop doing it and switch jobs!

If nobody makes music, there would be no music to pirate, right? That's actually one of the threats/arguments from the anti-piracy side.

I say they should follow through on that threat. Let the events take its course and see what happens. A huge contraction in the whole music (and movie, and software, etc) industry. Something tells me the artists will be hurt more than the pirates.

Re:It's amazing how out of touch he is

[jedidiah]

The only real issue is money. Once money changes hand then you have some actual damages as opposed to some self-serving fantasy. Up until that point, you have no reason to believe that anyone would have paid you anything under any conditions.

Draconian copyright enforcement would just deprive the pirates and do nothing to benefit you. While that might give you some nice sense of shadenfreude, the cost of the externalities would likely be too high.

This is why old school pirates always drew the line at taking money and lumped great derision on those that cross this line.

Making money should be the sole domain of the author. Anything beyond that is problematic.

Re:It's amazing how out of touch he is

[Anonymous Coward]

"Where, exactly, do you think a 21 year old college student is going to get that?"

The one mentioned in TFA is female. She can make that much plus some for one lousy egg donation. A young man in her position would need to make 750 donations at the local sperm bank to equal that.

 

Re:It's amazing how out of touch he is

[Anonymous Coward]

And how many of the 1000 Cds do you listen to on a daily / weekly / monthly / yearly basis? $15,000 might seem like a bad investment to some if even 1/4 of taht is never listened to again.

Re:It's amazing how out of touch he is

[Anonymous Coward]

Artists don't get money on used media, Einstein.

Re:It's amazing how out of touch he is

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a novel thought: if you can't pay for something that is a 100% luxury (and having your own copies of songs is exactly that), do without!

Or pirate it. More is gained that way.

Re:It's amazing how out of touch he is

[wild_quinine]

Here is a novel thought: if you can't pay for something that is a 100% luxury (and having your own copies of songs is exactly that), do without!

Why? It's our culture. It is a different thing to say that it has no value, than to say some must be excluded for lack of funds.

Re:It's amazing how out of touch he is

[jmcvetta]

Why? It's our culture. It is a different thing to say that it has no value, than to say some must be excluded for lack of funds.

Sometimes I think that's what a lot of copyright lovers really want: to keep the bad old system where access to (some forms of) culture was dependent upon, and an outward sign of, wealth.

Re:It's amazing how out of touch he is

[pantaril]

Here is a novel thought: if you can't pay for something that is a 100% luxury (and having your own copies of songs is exactly that), do without!

Why should i do that?

And acording to you, is it OK to pirate non-luxury intelectual property if i can't afford it (school books for example)?

(disclaimer: my opinion is that copyright is wrong and immoral and we should use other methods to compensate creators which don't limit distribution)

Re:It's amazing how out of touch he is

[Anonymous Coward]

> do without!

Why should she go without when theres no need to go without? She obviously doesnt consider it to be morally/ethically wrong, why should she abstain from copying?

Re:It's amazing how out of touch he is

[Rix]

Dear Sir,

No.

Love, The Internets.

Missed the point

[Anonymous Coward]

He missed the entire point. I WANT to support the artists and I'm happy to pay for the music I like. But...I have no legal option to do so. I subscribe to Spotify, I pay for that, I get everything through it these days ... but he calls that out as something he doesn't like. He supplies NO legal alternative, just insists that I drop back to what I was doing ten years ago.

The rest of us want the music industry to catch up to what we are doing NOW.

Re:Missed the point

[Mystakaphoros]

You could always become a groupie! Or buy them dinner after a show. I believe those are both legal ways to support artists, and they don't require paying for a string of zeroes and ones.

Re:Missed the point

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem arose because the industry never provided legal options back in 2000. They just sue individuals for large sums and didn't meet consumer demand for easier music access.

Claiming iTunes as a simple 3 step legal option isn't viable. Many times you go to a site to purchase music legally for download and the site doesn't have some artist because they couldn't negotiate with the label to get them. They also want high prices for each song/album that you only get a download copy of.

There is no 1 easy legal solution. Why subscribe to multiple monthly services?

I buy the music and it will only play on my 1 iPod. With CDs I bought I could take it to my car cd player, computer, or walkman. Now I have to "activate" each device first and am limited. I want to be able to listen to my music 10, 20, 30 years from now, but the DRM format won't activate easily if at all on newer devices for all I know. I've known lots of people who were shocked when their computer had to be replaced and all their music on their iPod couldn't be synced back. They thought "I have all of my music on my iPod." Didn't work out so great for them.

Re:Missed the point

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand how you have no legal option to "support the artists and ... pay for the music I like." What about iTunes, Amazon, CDBaby, or even the website of the artist? Are the artists you like and want to support so off-the-beaten-path that their recordings aren't available in any of those locations?

Re:Missed the point

[Anonymous Coward]

I just signed up for Rdio and now I'm a kid in a candy store. It's tragic that it's taken so long for services like that to become available, with piracy being the inevitable stop-gap.

So, piracy solved. Next: get the artists a fair deal.

Does NPR pay her? Or does it exploit interns?

[cornicefire]

I liked David Lowery's piece. He's right. Record companies do pay people. They may not be as much as anyone wants, but the solution is not to just steal things. It's to pay more for content. The irony is that companies like NPR routinely bring in unpaid interns. She's really the one being exploited. I wonder how she feels about people listening to NPR without paying?

Re:Does NPR pay her? Or does it exploit interns?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how she feels about people listening to NPR without paying?

What are you talking about? NPR is broadcast over the radio for free.

Re:Does NPR pay her? Or does it exploit interns?

[jedidiah]

No. The solution is not to pay cartels that want to destroy the rest of society to maintain their grip on their particular industry.

Pay the artist. Screw the gatekeeper.

Re:Does NPR pay her? Or does it exploit interns?

[cornicefire]

So you will only pay your money directly to the artist? Can the artist hire someone to collect the money for him or her? That's sort of what the old music companies are. And if you see the Beatles' mansions, it's clear that they did pass some of that money along to the Beatles.

Re:Does NPR pay her? Or does it exploit interns?

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously haven't seen the mansions of the MAFIAA bosses.

Re:Does NPR pay her? Or does it exploit interns?

[jedidiah]

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Or those mansions could all be about concert proceeds and have little to do with actual album sales. Although the Beatles did have enough #1 singles to fill an entire album.

If that's the best you can come up with then it's really not a compelling reason for the gatekeepers and it's certainly no good justification for subverting the rest of our laws and technology to suit them.

Also, the entire Beatles catalog should be in the public domain now.

Re:Does NPR pay her? Or does it exploit interns?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you will only pay your money directly to the artist? Can the artist hire someone to collect the money for him or her? That's sort of what the old music companies are. And if you see the Beatles' mansions, it's clear that they did pass some of that money along to the Beatles.

Bad example. The Beatles founded their own recording company.

Re:Does NPR pay her? Or does it exploit interns?

[NulDevice]

This is what we would love to happen.

However, there's one problem. Artists traditionally suck at anything in the process beyond making the art. Or they simply don't have the time. Creating content can be quite resource intensive, at least in terms of time. If the little time that's left over has to be split between marketing, distro, IT support keeping the wesbite running, packaging, order fulfillment, AND a robust and healthy touring schedule...well, something's gotta give.

The reason the music industry exists with as many middlmen and parasitic organizations as it has is becasue there's a real need for these services. The problem is these middlemen basically have the artist - and to an extent the consumer - by the neck, and can bleed both sides dry. If you got rid of them all right now, something new and equally horrible would evolve to take its place.

Re:Does NPR pay her? Or does it exploit interns?

[Anonymous Coward]

As an "artist", (i used quotes because i think it is up to others to call me such) i.e., one who creates music in a home studio, I am slowly working my way through all of the pros and cons of the responses. As an independent producer of my musical creations, I do depend on those who appreciate my efforts to voluntarily compensate me if they find my work worthy of a small amount of their disposable income. Since music is such an important aspect of many of our lives, it seems many would gladly do so, even if there was not a set price for it...kind of a sliding scale. I think it is worth continuing to find solutions that everyone can comfortably live with, especially if the worst possible outcome would mean something more draconian would occur (such as when Sony started putting root kit viruses on their CDs so any attempt to make a copy on ones computer would virtually end that users experience of ANYTHING on their computer.) Even with this voluminous thread, I doubt the arguments are over.

Cry me a river

[Anonymous Coward]

Cry me a f*cking river. Drag up some dead and/or dying musicians who wouldn't be dead/dying if only we paid them money. Boo Hoo.

Here's the thing. I download music and videos all the time. I don't feel like I'm ripping anybody off. I take my cues from the world around me and I don't think I'm any worse than anyone else. Seriously. Look to bankers and stock-brokers and CEOs if you want to find criminals. I'm pretty small-time in the scheme of things. Plus, and here is the bottom line, I just don't care.

David Lowery nails it

[sandytaru]

"The best way to insure the money goes to artists? Buy it directly from their website or at their live shows." $10 to iTunes with Apple taking their $3 of that, or $10 at the concert where the only cost to the artist for the physical CD is $1?

I have a feeling this letter is going to come up in my project management class tonight, seeing how my professor is a colleague of Mr. Lowery...

Failure to adapt

[mosb1000]

That's just not the way media works anymore. Anyone with any ability to think rationally would see that the internet has made labels and paying for content completely unnecessary. The whole industry is an anachronism.

Re:Failure to adapt

[NulDevice]

The INDUSTRY is an anachronism. However, the actual way musicians make music isn't really changing on a fundamental level. Yes, DAWs are cheaper than studio rentals, yadda yadda, but it still requires time and talent to write and perform original material. That's unlikley to ever change, so while industry models will come and go, those who actually produce the content are pretty much at the mercy of whatever's going on. They don't get a say in the matter.

A good response can be found here

[Anonymous Coward]

http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2012/06/18/the-david-lowery-screed/

With all due respect to musicians...

[rastoboy29]

What do musicians know about morality or ethics or, in particular, technology, that the rest of us don't?

I'm sorry, but most music and other art is crap, and I don't see why they should get special treatment from the internet.

I'm not hostile, just trying to make a point.

Re:With all due respect to musicians...

[Lebofsky]

I work on SETI@home, helped get it started, maintain all the servers, databases, web sites, write scientific analysis code, etc. I also helped work on that iPhone game Tap Tap Revenge. And I also regularly record and tour internationally with all kinds of rock bands. I work equally hard on both tech and music careers, I think the ratio of money in tech vs. music is roughly 99 to 1, give or take 1.

Anyway, I'm a musician who knows about technology.

Re:With all due respect to musicians...

[cbhacking]

Yet, cars are also protected by property laws. I can't legally just wander onto a dealer's lot and drive off in a car, even though there's no un-circumventable technical reason that prevents me. What does the auto industry know about morality or ethics or engineering that the rest of us don't?

I'm sorry, but compared to luxury models, most cars are crap. Yet they're everywhere; why should I have to pay for one when I could just use one parked on some asphault somewhere instead? I don't see why they should get special treatment from the law.

I'm not hostile, just trying to point out that property laws are all legal codifications of ethical principles.

Also, while I can't speak for you or the rest of the Internet in general, not all of us are so selfish as to think that we're entitled to something just because the fundamental cost of acquiring it is very low. I've never written a song in my life, either... but I do, for example, take a considerable number of photos and if you wanted to use some of them in a commercial endeavor, I'd expect you to compensate me for the right to make those copies.

Re:With all due respect to musicians...

[Radres]

Because stealing a car is depriving someone of their property. Copying a song is not depriving someone of something.

Re:With all due respect to musicians...

[Anonymous Coward]

Copying a song is not depriving someone of something.

You should read TFA. The author claims that two of his professional musician friends killed themselves, in large part because they were unable to make even a halfway decent living.

Re:With all due respect to musicians...

[Theaetetus]

I'm sorry, but most music and other art is crap

If it's "crap", then why do people pirate it? Could it be that they don't share your esteemed opinion? In which case, how is your opinion - "most music and other art is crap and therefore no one ever would waste the effort to pirate it" - at all relevant to a discussion of piracy?

Re:With all due respect to musicians...

[Anonymous Coward]

But your argument is predicated on the idea that the music has no value. Yet people still choose to listen to it when they could listen to other stuff or nothing at all. That proves that it has value to the people who are listening to it, and that it is in fact not crap by any reasonable definition. (Seriously - if you want to hear really crappy music look up the Annoying Music Show on NPR. That stuff is literally unlistenable in many cases. Most stuff people steal is awesome compared to that stuff.)

Re:With all due respect to musicians...

[rastoboy29]

dude...if you could make an exact copy of a car and drive off with it, that would be fine, too.

Re:With all due respect to musicians...

[rastoboy29]

Just the same, I'm not going to let you lock down the internet because you think you deserve money for your mp3's.

You are not being asked to change your business model because it's easy for us to pirate your music, but because you have to or  you will fail at monetizing your music.  It's just reality.  Bitching and moaning about it isn't going to help, and SOPA is definitely not the right thing to do.

If you really understood technology, I would think you knew that.  But on the other hand, you did not suggest a solution. To be fair, in your post here, you did not claim any special understanding of ethics and morality :-)

Re:With all due respect to musicians...

[rastoboy29]

I like how you limit it to commercial use.  That's kinda the point of my blog which advocates the expansion of fair use to cover all non-commerical use (as do the various Pirate Parties).

Point being, the copyright cartel don't give a damn whether ones use is commercial or not.

not a shining beacon of logic

[snarkh]

We are being asked to change our morality and principals to match what I think are immoral and unethical business models.

If morality can adapt to "immoral" models, do they become moral thereby?

Re:not a shining beacon of logic

[CanHasDIY]

We are being asked to change our morality and principals to match what I think are immoral and unethical business models.

If morality can adapt to "immoral" models, do they become moral thereby?

Non sequitur - morality is subjective, and thus there is no such thing as "our morality"

Re:not a shining beacon of logic

[MightyMartian]

Morality is not some fixed set of principles. It changes over time. In many places in the United States, for instance, interracial marriages were not only illegal, but viewed as deeply immoral. Now, of course, we see that view as bigoted and immoral. There has been a shift.

At the end of the day, a society decides what is right and what is wrong. There may be some near-universal moral precepts (though not as many as once thought), but in general, morals have differed substantially in time and place.

So, to answer the question, if a society decides that intellectual property is no longer deemed important, or even desirable, then the moral landscape has changed. Trying to enforce an antiquated moral code through force is likely futile in most cases. We don't burn witches anymore.

Re:not a shining beacon of logic

[snarkh]

My question is how can morality adapt to something which is immoral -- by the very fact of such adaptation these things become moral.
You have given a few good examples of exactly that process happening in the society.

I don't see anything wrong with her blog

[cpu6502]

I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. She wants to be able to access any song she wishes at any time. Basically something like youtube, but for music instead of videos.

Where's the harm in that? Just so long as I don't have to pay some rental fee. (Ownership is cheaper than renting, over the long term.)

Re:I don't see anything wrong with her blog

[prestonmichaelh]

Ownership is cheaper than renting, over the long term.

Is it? Take the original collection of 11,000 songs. At $1 a song (pretty much the going rate), that is $11,000.
Spotfiy, Slacker radio, Rhapsody, etc. pretty much all cost $10 per month. Each of their goals (although none fully achieve it) is to have a complete catalog of music that can be played as desired. At $10 per month, $11,000 will pay for a subscription for almost 92 years, or your whole life.

Add into this that the streaming services are constantly adding to their collection, so in 2040, you can get the latest songs instead of being stuck with what you have already bought.

Really, with the current models, it is by far cheaper to rent and then just buy the random few songs that don't appear on your streaming service (as long as you can find a streaming service that has a decent collection of what you like, which I would claim most people could).

Re:I don't see anything wrong with her blog

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, I think she was proposing a service that you pay a subscription to and can easily play any music on any device. It would be an awesome service, and honestly I think that would solve this issue. Some people would pirate, but most of the serious music purchasers wouldn't because the service would be easier and the prices fair.

The loser would be traditional labels whose services would be unnecessary. Artist discovery can happen via crowd sourcing. The service does distribution, and small local recorders combined with home equipment can handle recording. Money can go straight to artists, or to recorders who would then pay artists.

There are services trying to do this, but they're missing most of the pieces. The only side that's even close is that they work on lots of devices easily.

Re:I don't see anything wrong with her blog

[jedidiah]

She could sign up for Pandora and get the same net result without doing anything "unethical" or "illegal" and still not give the artists a dime.

Legal payment avoidance has always been easy.

Re:I don't see anything wrong with her blog

[cpu6502]

>>>Spotfiy, Slacker radio, Rhapsody, etc. pretty much all cost $10 per month.

I didn't think you could pick some random song and play it though? Not like I can do with my personal bought collection. And yeah the cost would be $11,000 on iTunes but if you buy a Greatest Hits CD it's closer to 70 cents per song acquired.

Plus it seems kinda strange to buy that many songs. I doubt anybody listens to all those! My collection would have cost ~$2000 on iTunes... cheaper than a lifetime rental... and a lot of the songs I don't play due to lack of time.

"inconceivable!"

[girlintraining]

Er, they changed the law. What they do is legal. If you think legality should follow morality, you should probably move to another country not run by the Ferrengi.

Re:"inconceivable!"

[russotto]

Unfortunately, the choices are the Ferengi, the Kardassians, and Kodos the Executioner. Or some combination of the three (such as the "Kardashians").

Re:"inconceivable!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice Wallace Shawn two-for. It'd be interesting to see Vizzini vs. Grand Nagus Zek in a battle of wits.

the ONLY EXPLANATION is piracy????

[imahawki]

I was with him to a degree until "There is no other explanation except for the fact that “fans” made the unethical choice to take their music without compensating these artists." Its not possible in this guy's mind that competing forms of entertainment, the economy, changes in music tastes, etc. are causes for his friends' sales drops. No, it has to be piracy. That is a total leap of faith and is the same leap the RIAA and MPAA make that infuriates people.

"inconceivable!"

[girlintraining]

"We are being asked to continue to let these companies violate the law without being punished or prosecuted. We are being asked to change our morality and principals to match what I think are immoral and unethical business models.'"

Er, they changed the law. What they do is legal. If you think legality should follow morality, you should probably move to another country not run by the Ferrengi.

On the Decline of Musicians

[eldavojohn]

The post has some merit however I take issue with some of the evidence offered up

Per capita spending on music is 47% lower than it was in 1973!!

The number of professional musicians has fallen 25% since 2000.

Of the 75,000 albums released in 2010 only 2,000 sold more than 5,000 copies. Only 1,000 sold more than 10,000 copies. Without going into details, 10,000 albums is about the point where independent artists begin to go into the black on professional album production, marketing and promotion.

It is my opinion that the introduction of the "Top 40" and other lists of hot songs has recently lead to people who only want to hear the same hook over and over on the radio. Radio stations comply, the labels control what radio stations play and then that's what people buy. I listen to Radio K/MPR's The Current streaming online and I will tell you that the diversity of what's on those stations far outweighs any popular radio station I have access to. It seems more logical to me that the RIAA and bigger labels have done this to themselves and contributed to the decline of musicians. I have been in four bands in my life and aside from close friends that came to shows, nobody cared. No radio station wanted to play our songs (some said they legally could not play our songs) and people just wanted to hear The Killers or Radiohead or Britney Spears or whatever the hell the entire world is listening to these two weeks.

I spend plenty of money on music but it's definitely not to artists that belong to organizations that design their promotional and middleman fees off of a few major acts while absolutely dicking and ignoring everyone else. I pay my money directly to bands like Cloud Cult, to labels that are not members of the RIAA, to kickstarter projects of unsigned bands and use distribution channels like Bandcamp to pay for MP3s that come in any quality or format I want as many times as I want (although after kickstarting a project I now own twenty vinyl records of a punk bluegrass band that I frankly do not know with what to do). That's what stimulates diversity and number of musicians, I'm no longer even a hobby musician and I tried very hard to give my music away. We didn't make great music but there's just no place for it when everyone is trained to listen to the same damn shit on the radio. Have you considered the possibility that if record labels moved money around to starting acts, there would be more musicians? Instead the CEO of Universal Music Group has a new Bentley.

Enjoy your slow death, I'm taking my disposable income elsewhere.

Re:On the Decline of Musicians

[Anonymous Coward]

While I largely agree, there are a few things I'd like to point out.
People often claim that the money should go to the musicians only, but I don't think they fully considered the ramifications of that. Is the guy in the studio on the equalizer's time worthless and they should not be paid? The marketing agent that negotiates the song being played in prime-time event like the Olympics or something do no service? I think it's moral to pay all these people for their work too.
The problem is that all those people are so good at taking visually appealing no talent starlets and turning them into super stars, they forgot that their newly crafted super star is still a no talent wonder.
In the past, musicians had talent - singers could sing (not off key, no voice cracking, wide range of notes, usually a nice voice), musicians could play their instruments like gods, and songs had new musical ideas.
Nowadays, the singer can't sing, the musicians play elevator music to a beat, and the videos.... if you close your eyes, you want to flip the channel to not listen to that junk; if you put the TV on mute, you want to flip the the channel to Playboy or PPV to stop being teased.

When you consider this state of affairs, I was willing to hunt for good songs and pay for them in the days of Napster (at least as much as my discretionary spending at the time allowed me to). There has always been a lot of bad songs to sift through before coming on a gem. Then the music industry came in, and started shutting down websites, suing people, destroying lives with ridiculous judgements, and demanding money anytime from anything everywhere making people fearful to play music in their own home for fear someone unauthorized would hear it from an open window and they'd be slapped with a fine. Thus I re-evaluated whether I needed their music in my life. My answer was no. Since then, I haven't kept up with the music scene, I wouldn't recognize any of the artists de jour if they walked up to me. I'm happy. Turns out I don' t need them at all.

Let me explain - I don't like their the terms of sale of their music. If I buy a CD, I want to be able to play it whenever I like to whoever I like, lend it to whoever I like, and in general treat it as something I own. I accept I don't have distribution license, thus can't make counterfeits and sell them - and I'm fine with that (that's perfectly reasonable). I don't want DRM that prevents me from copying it (or worse - has rootkits) - it prevents me from using MY property the I want. If I want to make a copy for my car, or play a copy for a friend and say "hey, check this out!", that's my business, and I don't want to risk prison or bankrupting fines as a result. Yes, that may or not not be compatible with copyright - I don't care - change copyright not common sense use. You, the music industry, are not entitled to milking me for money every time I hit play on something you sold me to "own". Get over it. If you're not making money at the price you sold it for, rethink your price point or your expenses.

The music industry started behaving like jerks, and gave me an ultimatum in a take it or leave it offer - accept their ridiculous terms, or stop listening. Fine. I made my choice. I suspect I'm not alone but there's still people around who haven't reached the tipping point just yet. I dare you - push harder.

And so, now, are they really whining that no one is listening? Aw, really...? Ain't that a shame...

No Sympathy

[Anonymous Coward]

No sympathy for the decline of 'professional musicians'.
My understanding of art and artists is that their work is something that yearns to escape their bodies with creative force, regardless of income or how convenient it is to their lives.

All this drop in revenue has done is weed out the hacks, real bands and artists are out there touring, writing, and playing themselves into debt, poverty, and addiction. And this is the way it should be.

History

[stinkfish]

Wikipedia says [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law] that first copy right was in 1710 and we all know that before 1710 there were no successful artists.

The Moral Amount...

[chad.koehler]

In this article David Lowery attempts to get readers on his side of the fence by discussing what would have needed to be paid to "ethically and legally" support the artists, specifically for the 11,000 songs that Emily White has in her collection.  His stated value for those songs, $2,139.50.

That is approximately $0.20 per song.  I think everyone would agree that is a fair price.  Unfortunately, there is nowhere that you can actually purchase music at anywhere near that price.

David Lowery suggests that $2,139.50 is fair, and yet then attempts to direct Emily to iTunes, where that collection would likely cost exactly $10,890, assuming an average cost of $0.99.

Re:The Moral Amount...

[zuki]

Funny you came up with the same exact figure that most of these shady Russian sites sold music for.... (AllOfMP3.com, and so many more like Nuloop and such)

I'd say that $0.20 per track is a pretty reasonable price for digital goods, problem is you're starting to run into a conflict with the amount of revenue the law allocates to the composition's publishers and the songwriters they represent, which in the US is a statutory mechanical royalty rate of around $0.09 which did not seem outrageous when songs were selling for $1 or more, but at $0.20 for the whole thing, this has the potential to become a huge problem.

Anyway, my main argument is that the Russian sites must have researched the tipping point that would make people 'click and buy', which for music seems to me remarkably accurate at around $0.15 to $0.25 per song. Of course I wouldn't expect any record label to agree to this, this is a fight that will go on until those on the side of copyright owners who must change their expectations are given no other choice but to grudgingly take it.

Speaking of mechanical royalties, the white elephant in the room that almost everyone is continuing to ignore is that US terrestrial radio is -unlike any other radio networks in the entire world- still exempt from paying royalties to copyright owners for the use of the sound recording due to a long-standing exemption granted to them by Congress in 1933 to build out their FM networks. (they're still building them as we speak) Only publishers get paid, but nothing goes to those who funded and own the sound recording. [yes, publishing and ownership of master recordings are two separate, distinct areas that most people who aren't familiar with the setup tend to bundle as one thing]

To add insult to injury, and because of reciprocity agreements with other countries, this means that the owners of US copyright cannot collect income from radio play from stations in other countries since those foreign artists are not getting paid this income by US radio. That money goes to 'black box', famously shared and redistributed among society members in whatever country this happened

This exemption is therefore costing the owners of sound recordings an double whammy in lost income. This obviously made sense when one hand was washing the other, and radio play helped certain acts sell into the millions. So it was overlooked as a mere promotional expense. But now that records are not selling, the fact that radio is using all of this music for free -by only paying the publishers- is sticking out like a sore thumb.

I'd say for anybody who's mad, that'd be a much more logical place to start looking for some easy and very large additional income streams, rather than blabber on uselessly flapping their wings about online piracy. But it means butting heads with the NAB's tough lobbyists and ruffling a lot of feathers in places we usually don't have much access to, starting with addresses on K Street, District of Columbia.

Re:The Moral Amount...

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like Mr. Lowery would prefer that Emily be robbed of $8K to preserve current systems so that the artists can receive their $2k.

I'm a big fan of his music, and bought all of Cracker's and CVB's music on CD before I learned better, but this article was not well thought out.

Re:The Moral Amount...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up. Completely agree.

"As a college student I’m sure this seems like a staggering sum of money. And in a way, it is. At least until you consider that you probably accumulated all these songs over a period of 10 years (5th grade). Sot that’s $17.82 dollars a month."

At 1,089 a year, that's $90/month average. Let's see a secondary school kid able to talk their parents into spending that kind of money on music! It's more than a smartphone plan, and at least with that, the ability to get in contact with the child is a benefit to the parent. Music is a luxury, and not only that, most parents don't want to buy their kids the music they want to listen to because it's too harsh, depressing, or sexual.

The final thing that irks me is that the guy goes on to cry foul on Spotify. I think Spotify in particular has done much to combat piracy. Something > nothing. Sure, Spotify should probably pay a little more, but they have to get consumers on board first and provide something of value that people can afford.

IF THEY ARE TRUE ARTIST

[SinisterEVIL]

A true artist, creates art, for the sole purpose of having that art appreciated. By spreading the art to as many people as posible who would appreciate it, is helpng a true artist achive this goal. I Believe the term "entertainer" should be used for any such entity that creates works for monetary gain only.

undocumented music appreciation is not a crime!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just download music to provide a better life for my family!

whats the solution?

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't spend money on dividends to stockholders because I think people should support themselves by producing something of value, not by getting lucky enough to have access to capital.
I won't spend money on compensation for the executives of content corporations since the executives produce nothing of value.
I won't spend money on marketing and promotion since I'm perfectly capable of finding out what I'm interested in and finding out how to obtain it.
I won't spend money on packaging or distribution, since packaging is irrelevant and the internet makes distribution effectively free.
I won't spend money on any "artist" that makes more than I do or has more wealth than I do. If I can live off of my compensation for the job that I'm working then he can live off of what he is making without my help.

Nobody needs music, books, videogames, movies, tv shows, funny tshirts, entertaining websites, or other non-essential products. If they all ceased to exist the world would be more boring but it would still keep turning. Nobody "deserves" to make a living producing entertainment, the fact that it is even a possibility is a testament to the quality of life we lead.. And anyone who disagrees should work on a farm for a year then come back and tell me that someone who plays music for a living "deserves" to be compensated more than someone who works on a farm.

Re:whats the solution?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, all of that, just for what boils down to jealousy? You say people should be paid according to value, but the value of that item depends on how many people are willing to pay how much for it. Those investors are the ones who provided the capital that let the business or the bank grow and increase their earnings. Internet distribution isn't free, you've got to pay for hosting, bandwidth and capacity, not to mention the processing of electronic payments, even if they're only voluntary donations. You shouldn't pay somebody if they make more than you? How is it their problem that more people value their product than whatever good or service you provide? They may not be entitled to that, but they shouldn't be penalized for it either. If everyone in the country wanted to buy from your chicken farm, should you only make as much money as the welfare queen buying your product? That's your own position.

It's one thing to say they don't inherently "deserve" to be paid something, but it's batshit crazy to say they shouldn't be able to earn it.

not copyrighted for most of human history

[jweller13]

"We are being asked to change our morality and principals to match what I think are immoral and unethical business models.'" If I read it correctly, according to page 20 this well citation-ed paper music was not copyrighted for most of human history. http://www.rbs2.com/copyrm.pdf

As a musician....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not in it for the music. I love music, who doesn't?

I'm in it for the pussy and money.

Lowery: tell it to the young, poor Jimi Hendrix

[ffflala]

I'd like Lowery to go back in time and explain his you-must-pay-to-hear approach to one young, incredibly poor Jimi Hendrix. That guy started out playing a broom for fuck's sake; his first guitar had one goddamn string. Where would we all be now if Jimi's access to music should have been limited to the amount he could pay?

Lowery's approach would be accurate, if he were talking about selling appliances, or even band merchandise. Without further addressing the multiple mistaken premises (replace every instance of "the vast majority" with "a tiny minority", for starters), the main area he fails is his equivocation of music with a physical product.

We've become used to this model. It has driven pop music culture for close to a century; it's given us the "music star" celebrity model that we've become comfortable with. This approach has progressed naturally, and now we've reached the current point of American Idol-voted celebrity products.

What he overlooks is the natural power of music. Music, when at its best, can give courage to the otherwise cowardly, joy to those in pain, even trigger mystical experiences in the otherwise mundane. It can cement memories and bring people closer together.

The problem is when you slap a price tag and marketing on something that serves as a vehicle for these transformative experiences, a few nasty things happen. For one thing, you inevitably see a homogenization of music as salespersons try to maximize profit. Music is reduced to the lowest common denominator to maximize mass appeal, just like fast food. Services exist that compare proposed compositions to past hits in terms of melodic, harmonic, rhythmic structure -- you have people just rewriting variations on the same old tune. Quality is subjective though, and there's no real basis to say one song is better than another -- all that matters is the experience of the listener.

But the most insidious part of slapping price tags on transformative experiences is that you keep poor people from experiencing them. Can't afford to pay up? Tough shit son, you don't get to experience an essential aspect of your culture. Too poor? Sorry, this joy is reserved for those who can afford it.

I'm sure Lowery means well, but people like him are one reason why I'm a librarian. There must be a way for people to access vital, possibly transformative parts of our culture regardless of ability to pay. For the time being it seems like taxing society to provide public access to repositories of music, art, and literature, while not perfect, is the best workaround.

Re:Lowery: tell it to the young, poor Jimi Hendrix

[Anonymous Coward]

I imagine we'd be in the same place we are now - Jimi could listen to music on the radio, on TV, go and watch live bands. His ability to buy records WAS limited by how much money he had and I think he turned out just fine. Are you suggesting that if he could download 11,000 songs for no money, he would've been better?

Re:Lowery: tell it to the young, poor Jimi Hendrix

[Anonymous Coward]

No I think he is suggesting that because of the commercialization of music we are less likely to find the next Jimi Hendrix because he is not getting a chance to be mass distributed due to the fact that anything truly innovative may not fit the product model that music has become.

i.e. If it doesn't sound like it can make money like all the others it will not be picked up.
This is why we keep on hearing the same old shit on the radio. We are also being condition to accept old as new.
The next Jimi Hendrix doesn't stand a chance in such an environment.

Re:Lowery: tell it to the young, poor Jimi Hendrix

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing is for sure, the next Jimi Hendrix will come from the cultural fringe, if you don't expose yourself to the fringe you will not be the first to hear it, and maybe you will never hear it if you keep consuming the garbage of the middlemen.

Re:Lowery: tell it to the young, poor Jimi Hendrix

[ffflala]

Jimi could listen to music on the radio, on TV, go and watch live bands. His ability to buy records WAS limited by how much money he had and I think he turned out just fine.

I like that point; it's a good one. What I'm trying to get across here is that had Jimi been unable, during his formative years, to listen to music that he couldn't afford to purchase, he might not have been inspired to create his own. Lowery's approach would impose on similarly poor, upcoming musical geniuses a moral obligation *not* to listen to music that could shape their art in a critical manner at a formative time, simply because they can't afford to pay for it.

More generally I'm coming from the perspective that, because the benefits we get from music/art/literature cannot simply be reduced to a $ value, I'd prefer equal access to music/art/literature, regardless of ability to pay. A strict commoditized regime --slapping price tags on culture-- prevents equal access. I see Lowery's approach as one that, if carried to its natural conclusion, would slaps a price tag and a shoplifting alarm on things that offer encouragement, hope, inspiration, insight, and other such things that improve peoples' lives.

Re:Lowery: tell it to the young, poor Jimi Hendrix

[maccodemonkey]

I think Lowrey says it best here:

The fundamental shift in principals and morality is about who gets to control and exploit the work of an artist. The accepted norm for hudreds of years of western civilization is the artist exclusively has the right to exploit and control his/her work for a period of time. (Since the works that are are almost invariably the subject of these discussions are popular culture of one type or another, the duration of the copyright term is pretty much irrelevant for an ethical discussion.) By allowing the artist to treat his/her work as actual property, the artist can decide how to monetize his or her work.

You've just described how music makes YOU feel, but it's not YOUR music. If I create and own something, I'm allowed to decide how to distribute it. And yes, that means I'm allowed to sell it $9.99 album only with only one good track, even if that is stupid.

What you're saying is something like if I saw your car, and I felt it "triggered mystical experiences in the otherwise mundane", I should be allowed to break in and drive it around. And then put it back so everyone could else could use it (thus satisfying the non-exclusive nature of music.)

The law is also built to deal with this situation as well. Copyright eventually expires, and then the art comes into the public domain. I do have issues with companies trying to extend the amount of time work falls under copyright, but I feel the general spirit of the law is the right direction.

The article makes another interesting point. If I'm not allowed to have exclusive rights to decide how to distribute my work, I'm not as likely to create it in the first place. Traditionally, the physical nature of art made it hard to reproduce. In Beethoven's day, you couldn't record his symphony and then bootleg it. You couldn't photocopy the works of Charles Dickens. This provided more natural protection to revenue streams. It didn't make it impossible to copy works, but it sure wasn't easy to type set and reprint Oliver Twist.

But these days, if my creation can be copied instantly and easily, I'm likely not even to move past the creation stage. I'll just go get a job at McDonalds where I can earn more money flipping burgers. You can't really have your "transformative experiences" if the person who created them decided to hand out fries at a drive thru instead.

Re:Lowery: tell it to the young, poor Jimi Hendrix

[ffflala]

If I create and own something, I'm allowed to decide how to distribute it . . . . What you're saying is something like if I saw your car . . . I should be allowed to break in and drive it around.

No that's not what I'm saying at all. You're making the same mistake Lowery is, and which I originally pointed out. Music is not a physical good A car, appliances, band merchanise? Those things are physical goods. There is no "taking" of music. My playing music doesn't prevent anyone else from playing that same music simultaneously. Ultimately Lowery --and you, it seems-- would have every set of ears that can hear to pay money for listening. Well often those ears that would benefit from music most can't afford to pay.

You can't really have your "transformative experiences" if the person who created them decided to hand out fries at a drive thru instead.

You're making my point, but you just don't realize what would drive someone to such a choice. The inspired musician does not create for the money, they create because music moves them. They create because certain music that they heard lit something up in their brain, and from that point on they knew they needed to make music. If these people aren't able to hear that music because they're too poor, the world wouldn't have Jimi Hendrix musician, we would have had Jimmy Hendricks the Seattle burger-flipper. Not because burger flipping pays better, but because he never heard the music he needed to hear... because he couldn't afford to pay for it.

A few musicians per generation get lucky enough to get paid handsomely for their work. More of the music entertainers are simply celebrities who are successful at self-promotion. (Test yourself: think of Rhianna or Chris Brown. What pops into your head first? Is it the sound of one of their songs, or is it a visual image of how they looked in a photo spread? Now do the same with Adele. Do you see her face first, or hear her voice?)

Would-be celebrities who chase fame and fortune aren't driven by a love of music, they're driven by a thirst for attention and money. Just peruse Craigslist band ads for fifteen minutes and read the blurbs of all the would-bes who "are dedicated to making it!" Now look for all the ads describing people who want to make incredible music. The music industry has done its best to eliminate public perception of any distinction between a musician, and a music star. The difference is inspiration -- one is driven by music, the other by celebrity.

So Lowery wanted to be a music star, and the money and attention that goes with it. He didn't make as far as he hoped he would. So now he pushes a world view that would make it easier for people like him to reach that goal. In the pursuit of that unrealized sad dream of music star celebrity, he is willing to eliminate access to the music that will inspire future musicians.

So, fuck that guy.

Re:Lowery: tell it to the young, poor Jimi Hendrix

[maccodemonkey]

No that's not what I'm saying at all. You're making the same mistake Lowery is, and which I originally pointed out. Music is not a physical good A car, appliances, band merchanise? Those things are physical goods. There is no "taking" of music. My playing music doesn't prevent anyone else from playing that same music simultaneously. Ultimately Lowery --and you, it seems-- would have every set of ears that can hear to pay money for listening. Well often those ears that would benefit from music most can't afford to pay.

And as I mentioned, if your car if parked on the street and you aren't current using it, I'm not depriving you use of it either.

Yet much like how I devalue your car by riding it around, you stealing music is also devaluing the value of the music. If a car can be bought for $10,000, or acquired for free across the street, what does the market value of the car become? It becomes devalued. Regardless of the music not necessarily being exclusive, the act of stealing it alone is causing monetary damage by devaluing it.

The whole "music isn't exclusive" argument is made many times on this site, and it's just as bunk every time.

You're making my point, but you just don't realize what would drive someone to such a choice. The inspired musician does not create for the money, they create because music moves them. They create because certain music that they heard lit something up in their brain, and from that point on they knew they needed to make music. If these people aren't able to hear that music because they're too poor, the world wouldn't have Jimi Hendrix musician, we would have had Jimmy Hendricks the Seattle burger-flipper. Not because burger flipping pays better, but because he never heard the music he needed to hear... because he couldn't afford to pay for it.

Nope. You don't get to tell me why I create. Sorry. When YOU create something, YOU are totally free to do it to make to do it to make people hear all the beautiful things in your head. But if I want to create because I want to make money, you don't get to tell me no. If Hendricks wants(ed) to give away his music for free, or only allow people to listen to it in elevators, that's his choice. But the key is it's HIS choice, not YOURS.

When you're dictator in chief, then you're free to try to change that. Honestly, it's actually kind of offensive that you are trying to tell people what to do with their work. That's like me coming into your library and telling you how to sort your books.

A few musicians per generation get lucky enough to get paid handsomely for their work. More of the music entertainers are simply celebrities who are successful at self-promotion. (Test yourself: think of Rhianna or Chris Brown. What pops into your head first? Is it the sound of one of their songs, or is it a visual image of how they looked in a photo spread? Now do the same with Adele. Do you see her face first, or hear her voice?)

While romantic, this has nothing to do with the topic.

Would-be celebrities who chase fame and fortune aren't driven by a love of music, they're driven by a thirst for attention and money. Just peruse Craigslist band ads for fifteen minutes and read the blurbs of all the would-bes who "are dedicated to making it!" Now look for all the ads describing people who want to make incredible music. The music industry has done its best to eliminate public perception of any distinction between a musician, and a music star. The difference is inspiration -- one is driven by music, the other by celebrity.

You don't get to tell me why I do things. Sorry. If I wanted to become some sort of Beiber-esk artist with little talent but a lot of stardom, that's my choice. People also have the choice to buy that.

You may not like it, but that doesn't mean you get to rip other people's industries apart.

So Lowery wanted to be a music star, and th

Re:Lowery: tell it to the young, poor Jimi Hendrix

[ffflala]

much like how I devalue your car by riding it around, you stealing music is also devaluing the value of the music.

Simply repeating your point doesn't make it a correct one. You can steal tangible goods. You can even steal credit for a song. You can steal a CD. You can even steal art that exists in space, such as a painting or a sculpture. But music is an art form that exists only in time. You can't steal a song, you can only copy it. Listening to music without paying for it is simply not "stealing." Your attempt to anchor that word is inaccurate hyperbole.

But if I want to create because I want to make money, you don't get to tell me no.

That's the crux of your argument, and it fails. You can create music becaues you want to make money, sure. What I *do* get to tell you is that you don't deserve to get paid for every time someone hears your song. I *do* get to tell you that if hearing your wanna-make-money song makes someone's life worth living, I will make sure they can get it without having to pay you a single penny.

Yep, you need money to survive. Yep, musicians need money to buy most music gear. Yep, musicans need money to pay for a studio, and yep musicians need money get to and from gigs.

Their need for money does not equal their right to money, nor does their labor. When your industry starts to leak profit from points that used to be airtight lines of revenue because tech advances obsolete your profit model, you don't get to change the world to save your fortune. You didn't *deserve* your fortune in the first place, you just wanted it. If you got some of it, well good for you: you were lucky and had a good run. Now your time with this model is over.

Lowery's article shows how desperate the outgoing model is. He is reduced telling people what we really should be doing "because it's the right thing to do", and that apparently means paying you for the noise you decided to bring into this world.

Like the rest of the working schlubs out there, in order to make money you're going to need to contribute products or services that people are willing to pay for. Didn't get the Bently, the hot tubs, or the groupies, even though your bosses did? Tough shit, would-be stars. Those days are over. So music star doesn't sound like an attractive business model any more? Great. We've had enough stars. It's time to leave music to the musicians.

What's this "of Cracker fame" BS? CVB 4 Life!

[Squirrel Killer]

I was expecting to roll my eyes at another Lowery anti-new-music-business screed, but after reading the intern's post, I'm kind of on David's side. 11,000 songs of mostly ripped CD's from her family, friends, and work? She's exactly the type of pirate Lowery always assumes everyone is defending, and it's right that she's being called out for it.

Re:What's this "of Cracker fame" BS? CVB 4 Life!

[Bryansix]

Who is being harmed? She wasn't going to buy the music. She is not a customer. Just ignore her and market to your actual customers.

Re:What's this "of Cracker fame" BS? CVB 4 Life!

[Squirrel Killer]

Really? How about the artists who produced the 11,000 songs on her hard drive? Someone going in to the music business certainly values it enough to pay for it (although there are legal and ethical ways that she didn't use that would give her to access almost that same library of music for free.)

Look, I get it, her copyright infringement shouldn't be the impetus for increasingly draconian copyright laws (SOPA/PIPA) or result in soul crushing lawsuits (Jammie Thomas-Rasset,) but neither should such wanton infringement be acceptable. Lowery needs to get his head out of his ass when it comes to new business models in music, but he's right to say that it's wrong to rip hundreds of CDs you don't own.

hang on

[Anonymous Coward]

So it was ok when new technology allowed some artist to make shitloads of money by performing only once and sell the recording forever, thus depriving vast armies of live-performing artist of their livelihood, but now that more new technology comes along that changes the winners and losers in this game again it suddenly becomes a moral issue and i is unfair ?

Welcome to the real world Lowery...

[erp_consultant]

The internet, for better or worse, has turned the entire entertainment business on it's head. Personally I don't think it's a bad thing. $25-30 for a Blu-Ray disk? Give me a break. For some movie that I'm going to watch once and may or may not even enjoy? Maybe if those greedy Hollywood execs would start pricing the things at a reasonable level there would be a little less piracy. Have you ever seen the homes that these people live in (the Spelling mansion as an example)? As far as music goes I'm fine with buying it but don't ass-rape me at the checkout counter. $20 for a CD is way too much - and it's not the artist's fault. I read somewhere that Metallica gets a grand total of 89 cents from a $20 CD. Where does all the rest of the money go? Greedy middlemen. Take them out of the game and the artist gets to keep most of the money - as it should be.

For most people, ethics doesn't factor in...

[mark-t]

Most people simply either do not perceive who is affected by piracy, or else they simply do not care. There is no ethical quandry because they are indifferent enough about the consequences that it is a non-issue.

What piracy affects is the overall usefulness of copyright as a means to secure some of a creator's interest, while at the same time allowing the general public to appreciate that creator's work. Piracy reduces the confidence that creators place in copyright to protect their works, and they resort to other means, such as trying to restrict the circumstances under which their content can be used, or possibly even resorting to self-censorship, and not widely publishing at all.

In the end, I perceive that continued piracy takes something away from future generations that is a fundamental freedom that we have all been enjoying for centuries... which is freedom we all have to read and listen to what we want, and under the conditions that we all want. Some believe that abolition of copyright entirely would accomplish the same thing, but in the end, such an approach is little more than an anarchists approach, and in the long run, I believe would be more destructive to the intent of quality content availability than it would be ensuring that the public still had such access to it.

Re:For most people, ethics doesn't factor in...

[Whorhay]

If copyright really does fade out as an effective way for artists to leverage their talents for income I doubt it will kill the art culture. We would probably see a lot less people in it strictly for the money as a get rich quick scheme.

I have an uncle that for decades has made his living traveling the country performing folk music. He makes a very modest living but he loves it and that love is apparent in his music. He's a great showman and people are willing to pay for that.

As others have pointed out music as a commodity is a relatively recent invention. Arguably it is not a great boon to society at large when it becomes marketed as a commodity and live performances become a rarity. Thus far it has produced relatively few succesful musicians while creating a whole industry that leeches of the masses.

It is unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

Paying for music, paying for patent licenses, paying for any form of information is egregiously unfair, unethical, and immoral, and charging for something or expecting someone to pay for access to information is similarly unjust. In the developed world, public libraries, which are being left to wither, have more books, music, and movies available for free than any individual person could read/listen to/watch in a lifetime. Simultaneously, there are people suffering through horrendous living conditions such as political oppression, starvation, and disease, throughout the world. It's simply indefensible to say that someone should pay for a copy of The Golden Age when the $10 could be used to save some starving child's life. It's similarly indefensible to insist that artists will "stop creating" if they aren't compensated since (a) we already have a surplus of art (more than a lifetime's worth of art in the public libraries) (b) artist that have the luxury of not needing to spend most of their day worrying about how to feed their children will still likely play music, write, etc. and (c) if it were (absurdly) the case that we had to choose between a world with no art and less suffering or a world with more of both, any ethical person would surely choose the former. As it is, prioritizing investment in general health and prosperity over direct investment in the arts and eliminating information monopolies granted through patent and copyright law are likely to produce more art and increase its availability.

Produce it yourself, then you own it.

[Nyder]

Stop relying on Recording companies.

You want to own your music and control how it's sold? Then produce it yourself.

This day and age, easy as all fucking hell.

Sure, you'll have to pony some money up for advertising, studio recording time, post production, album covers, even videos if you choose to make some.

But you'll be in control.

Here's a protip though, That piratebay is oddly a great source of getting your music heard. Sure, people are downloading it for free, but they are hearing it. Exposure is key.

And I have a hard time believing touring doesn't make you money unless you are a talentless, or a completely new act that isn't that good. Now some buddies of mine, when they were beginning,didn't make shit at shows. Why was that? No exposure, no one knew who they were. As they got more popular, put out some CD's with music on it, got more people hearing them, then they started getting bigger crowds and started making a little money at the shows. What worked for them? 3 Song CDR's that had the next couple of shows times on them.

Plus if touring didn't make money, why the fuck is there so many bands touring all the time? Seriously, no one wants to waste money like that if there is no return.

Here's the thing:

[Burz]

Lowry treats the music industry as if it exists separate from the rest of society and technology. But all of society is going through the computer revolution which is changing the nature of information. So for Lowry to insist that music continue to be treated according to the late-20th century consensus is to insist that all consumer computing products be locked-down according to the whims of the "record labels" (multinational corporations that are acting as though most of our culture needs to stay in a vault, to be re-marketed according to their leisure or greed). This is an all or nothing proposition because A) that industry have shown themselves to be copyright maximalists with a zeal for punishing its best customers, and B) there is no marketable alternative to digital formats - you cannot go back to analog except as a minor curiosity among collectors.

So Lowry needs to be reminded there is more at stake here than just how entertainment is copied. It is also about whether fully user-programmable computers can continue to exist, which IMHO is the larger consideration by far. Even if computers weren't more important, the data strongly suggest that artists would continue making art and lots of money (i.e. the continuation of the dubious celebrity subculture) without a strict copyright regime.

Not "corporations"

[jodido]

The "problem" isn't "corporations" trying to find a new way to screw musicians. Corporations--no quotation marks--already screw musicians and everyone else. What technology has done is give regular people a way to screw the corporations. Trying to give an anti-corporate slant to anti-file sharing propaganda is standing reality on its head.

So the solution is..

[Anonymous Coward]

So is the solution to force people to be more moral, or to undo advances in technology?

Neither is going to happen, so either complain about it until you die or come up with a solution.

Register artists in a government controlled database, give them each a webpage with a +1 button usable by those that sign in. Set up a payment system and allow 'media donations' to be tax refundable, with a limit or diminishing returns. Registering and donation limits should curb money laundering. Take a % of donation money to offset costs, ranging from moderate to small based off the artist's popularity.

Let the market sort itself out. Big media would still be able to help promote and do merchandising.

Citation Needed

[Bob9113]

This system has worked very well for fans and artists.

Citation needed. Show me your numbers. On what basis are you positing that we are spending the correct portion of our GDP on the production of copyright works? The continuous expansion of the power and duration of public enforcement of copyright grants over the past 100 years has been done almost entirely without objective economic analysis of whether we are getting good value for our money.

It is at least arguable that we are spending too much on the production of copyright works. That we are dedicating too much of our federal resources to copyright enforcement, making copyright production too profitable, and thereby shifting too much of our productive resources into copyright work production. We have dozens of television channels filled with shows that plumb ever shallower depths. Popular music has shifted from Janis Joplin and Gracie Slick questioning the nature of humanity and the tragedies of the soul to Lady Gaga and Kesha telling us how fun it is -- or how difficult it is -- to be a pampered alcoholic party girl. Why do they not write about suffering to which we can relate? Because they are too rich to know what the life of a normal person is like.

Do we have a shortage of copyright production? Are we underfunding the production of cultural works? Or are we awash in cultural excess and funding corporate drivel art that expresses the most mundane of human desires?

If you are going to claim that we need to continue our expenditure of public funds on copyright grants and enforcement, and that we should continue to allocate so much of our productive resources to the production of copyright works, I want to see some numbers.

Re:Citation Needed

[melikamp]

This is a wrong way to frame the question, IMHO. The value of the artistic output is entirely subjective. One could objectively measure the volume and the rate of production, but any comparison in value between a larger volume of crappy work and a smaller volume of superb work is also subjective. There are somewhat more objective metrics, like how many professional artists are out there and how much money they make. But again, measuring the value of having a ton of poor artists versus fewer better-paid artists is subjective. It all comes down to a realization that art to economy is what peacock feathers are to reproduction: it looks fucking awesome, but no one is sure how useful it is. Because of that, I don't believe it would do much good (or bad) to abolish copyright on woks of art for entertainment. Just as long as terms are reasonable and non-commercial sharing is a human right, copyright sits well with me.

There are places, though, where copyright does damage we can quantify. This is off-topic, but anyway. We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that commodity software, for example, is up to 10 times cheaper when it's libre (as it necessarily would be if copyrights and patents were abolished). And economic research shows that in every area where art has utility, copyrights and patents at best do absolutely nothing, and at worst set back the technological innovation by decades. Rent-seekers are the only ones who benefit from it, and everyone else ends up with a bill. Here too, copyrights would not do any harm if they were reasonably framed. A patent law, on the other hand, is just a racket waiting to happen.

Re:Citation Needed

[Bob9113]

I dig what you're saying and I do not disagree. I was not saying that my finger-in-the-wind example of the increase in shallow media is a good economic measure, rather that it is a symptom that suggests overfunding that can be readily observed. A red flag that begs a more substantive analysis.

Your suggestions for other and more accurate measures are good ones. Those and more should be explored. Like any public cost when we are far over budget -- particularly one which has increased so rapidly -- we should be able to show that our spending is justifiable. I do not think it is impossible to measure the value of cultural production -- anything that has value can be measured. It may be difficult, and have some confidence intervals that are subject to debate, but we can at least collect the data, publish it, and have the discussion about the formulae. We may not agree on the exact figures, but if we are to continue investing public funds and inhibiting individual freedom to act, it behooves us as a rational society to explore the empirical evidence.

If we are not willing to at least attempt those steps, any conjecture about whether we are spending the right amount -- or that we should continue to invest public resources when our coffers are empty -- is unfounded.

Problem: Artists get a tiny cut... too tiny...

[neurocutie]

I have many thousands of purchased CDs and LPs. I have no problem with buying music, obviously. But here is a problem I do have, at least somewhat...

Supposing you want to support children living in poverty in Africa, and so you look up one of the many children's funds for such purposes. But then you learn that that foundation only ends up giving 10% of your donations to those children and it keeps 90% of donations for itself, "admin overhead", salaries for the foundation, etc, etc. Are you likely to give to such a foundation?

The figures that I have heard of the proportion of a $10 CD that *actually* gets sent to the musicians and artists is ABYSMALLY low, LESS than 10%, LESS that 5%. The standard metric for non-profit orgs is 85% should go to actual programs with only 15% overhead. Of course I realize that music is for profit, but if less than 5% of the revenue goes to the artists, well I *do* have a problem with it. Sorry I am not interested in 50-60% of the costs of a CD going to music exec salaries. I want to see at least 50% of the price of an album go to the artists. I don't think this is unreasonable...

This is a why I find it harder to connect with the notion that music piracy hurts the artists... of course it does, but it is diluted by that 0.05 factor and the most "hurt", 90-95%, is on the music execs, labels, MAFIAA, etc... which frankly I don't care about...

Bogus assumptions

[dentin]

While I can understand David's point, I think he misses a critical aspect of the conversation: there is no fundamental 'right' that guarantees that a musician should be able to make money off of his or her work, just as there is no 'right' that guarantees that buggy whip manufacturers should always be paid for whips.

The simple fact of the matter is that we live in a post-scarcity economy when it comes to music. You cannot charge much money (if any) in a post-scarcity economy - it doesn't matter what your product is. Music is in no way different from buggy whips: the supply/demand ratio is nearly infinite. (Demand for buggy whips is near zero, supply of music is nearly unlimited.) With an extremely high supply/demand ratio, the cost of the supply nears the production cost - and there are plenty of musicians out there releasing music at zero cost.

The constitution doesn't say "musicians must always be compensated for their work", just like the constitution doesn't say "programmers must be compensated for their work" or "hairdressers must be compensated for their work". The market has changed out from under David, and the sooner he realizes that, the sooner he'll be able to make the transition to a new regime.

Until then, he's just another complainer on his way to obsolescence.

-dentin

the truth, from long long ago

[Charliemopps]

You may disagree with her on a lot of things, but this is worth a read:

Courtney Love does the math:

Today I want to talk about piracy and music. What is piracy? Piracy is the act of stealing an artist&rsquo;s work without any intention of paying for it. I&rsquo;m not talking about Napster-type software.

I&rsquo;m talking about major label recording contracts.

I want to start with a story about rock bands and record companies, and do some recording-contract math:

This story is about a bidding-war band that gets a huge deal with a 20 percent royalty rate and a million-dollar advance. (No bidding-war band ever got a 20 percent royalty, but whatever.) This is my &ldquo;funny&rdquo; math based on some reality and I just want to qualify it by saying I&rsquo;m positive it&rsquo;s better math than what Edgar Bronfman Jr. [the president and CEO of Seagram, which owns Polygram] would provide.

What happens to that million dollars?

They spend half a million to record their album. That leaves the band with $500,000. They pay $100,000 to their manager for 20 percent commission. They pay $25,000 each to their lawyer and business manager.

That leaves $350,000 for the four band members to split. After $170,000 in taxes, there&rsquo;s $180,000 left. That comes out to $45,000 per person.

That&rsquo;s $45,000 to live on for a year until the record gets released.

The record is a big hit and sells a million copies. (How a bidding-war band sells a million copies of its debut record is another rant entirely, but it&rsquo;s based on any basic civics-class knowledge that any of us have about cartels. Put simply, the antitrust laws in this country are basically a joke, protecting us just enough to not have to re-name our park service the Phillip Morris National Park Service.)

So, this band releases two singles and makes two videos. The two videos cost a million dollars to make and 50 percent of the video production costs are recouped out of the band&rsquo;s royalties.

The band gets $200,000 in tour support, which is 100 percent recoupable.

The record company spends $300,000 on independent radio promotion. You have to pay independent promotion to get your song on the radio; independent promotion is a system where the record companies use middlemen so they can pretend not to know that radio stations &mdash; the unified broadcast system &mdash; are getting paid to play their records.

All of those independent promotion costs are charged to the band.

Since the original million-dollar advance is also recoupable, the band owes $2 million to the record company.

If all of the million records are sold at full price with no discounts or record clubs, the band earns $2 million in royalties, since their 20 percent royalty works out to $2 a record.

Two million dollars in royalties minus $2 million in recoupable expenses equals &#8230; zero!

How much does the record company make?

They grossed $11 million.

It costs $500,000 to manufacture the CDs and they advanced the band $1 million. Plus there were $1 million in video costs, $300,000 in radio promotion and $200,000 in tour support.

The company also paid $750,000 in music publishing royalties.

They spent $2.2 million on marketing. That&rsquo;s mostly retail advertising, but marketing also pays for those huge posters of Marilyn Manson in Times Square and the street scouts who drive around in vans handing out black Korn T-shirts and backwards baseball caps. Not to mention trips to Scores and cash for tips for all and sundry.

Add it up and the record company has spent about $4.4 million.

So their profit is $6.6 million; the band may as well be working at a 7-Eleven.

Of course, they had fun. Hearing yourself on the radio, selling records, getting new fans and being on TV is great, but now the band doesn&rsquo;t have enough money to pay the rent and nobody has any credit.

Wo

Give the guy a break already

[beringreenbear]

The comments have been entertaining. What I read the blog as saying, over and over again, is "Hey! You no longer have an excuse to download illegal music! Songs are available for a buck a song on Amazon and iTunes! There are plenty of ways to get your digital music legitimately. Why are you ripping borrowed CDs?"

The guy sounds like every other musician I know trying to make a living. At some point, you have to sell something. This guy had the "bad luck", if you can call it that, of getting his start in the music business (by being in a signed band) before the Iternet explosion and the ability to sell his stuff direct to the public and, if his business model is good enough, make a living doing it.

In short, this guy does get it: Sell 20k people $50 worth of stuff in a year and get by on, after costs, $50k a year. The guy is also under contract to sell his existing stock at a profit (to him) of ~$0.10 a copy. That means he has to sell 20k * 500 or 1 million units. Just to get a measly $50k a year.

Re:Give the guy a break already

[king neckbeard]

He doesn't know what's going on. Records have never been a good way to make money. He also tries to keep up the divide between artists and fans by making it a moral issue.

Ethics change over time

[sureshot007]

That's why slavery was once ok, but is now frowned upon.

he is just a troll

[melikamp]

He is just another troll. He ignores basic facts, like the one that no jurisdiction treats copyrightable material as property. He says that the system worked really well for artists, even though from its very inception in the Statute of Anne, copyright was used by printers to rob artists, and the practice continues to this day. When he complains about corporations taking his profit, it is an ultimate strawman, since no reasonable copyright reformer calls for a free-for-all commercialization. Instead, we want reasonable terms of several years and acceptance of non-commercial sharing as a basic right guaranteed to us by the UN charter in the free expression article. Sure, there are some abolitionists out there, but arguing with them is just as productive as arguing with people who want to abolish civilization. Go back under the bridge, pal. If you are defending MAFIAA shaking down single moms, you are not an artist but a gangster.

Re:he is just a troll

[Mystakaphoros]

Yeah, as I recall, the Statute of Anne also allowed the crown to Censor the one printer allowed to print that material. So if you didn't go along with the Crown, you'd lose your right to make copies, and the next printer in line would get it.

Re:he is just a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, there are some abolitionists out there, but arguing with them is just as productive as arguing with people who want to abolish civilization.

I argue for more freedom in every human endeavor. You can call MAFIAA "gangsters" but you implicitly acknowledge that as a functioning part of society as opposed to trolls ("go back under the bridge, pal" - guess what dickface, I'm not you're pal - only asswipes talk like that) or those who would "abolish civilization".

You could end copyright and civilization will continue just fine - as will Earth for what that matters. There are schemes out there to have voluntary copyrights which might - e.g. - obligate you if you wanted to partake of certain benefits. If you didn't want to, then that would be fine too.

Regardless, you are clearly just a piece of shit as you call people "pal" who are not your friends, label the author a troll, identify the anti-IP crowd as wanting to "abolish civilization", and the MAFIAA as "gangsters". Only people licking your ass count?

itunes? convenient?

[kevmitch]

besides–is it really that inconvenient to download a song from iTunes into your iPhone?

Grrr, yes it is! It requires you to install memory eating proprietary software that doesn't work on all platforms.

Re:itunes? convenient?

[porges]

Or buy it through the phone itself, which you have in your hand.

The irony in the posts in this story...

[GodfatherofSoul]

The summary quote is about people rationalizing pirating content because "corporate America is evil." And, here they are posting rants with that exact sentiment. If two wrongs make a right, then stream on!

Re:The irony in the posts in this story...

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. The mindlessness on here makes me see the points the artist is making. I see a lot of immorality being justified by any means necessary. This generation is screwed.

Re:The irony in the posts in this story...

[sdguero]

I didn't get that at all. To me, the quote in the summary is a guy that works in the music industry complaining about music piracy. He is saying that the digital revolution does not excuse music fans from the old model of monetized distribution (i.e. paying for each copy of the song that is made). I'd argue that is retarded for a variety of reasons that I don't feel like explaining over and over in /. posts. The problem lies with a powerful, but dying, group of power mongers that clearly are not agile enough to adapt to the new model (hence the rampant piracy and tech companies like Apple/Pandora working with a bloated inefficient industry to give consumers what they demand).

Failed social contract - no public domain!

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever this guy is needs a reality check. People are ignoring copyright law because it is a FAILED SOCIAL CONTRACT. When no song recorded in my lifetime will enter the public domain in my lifetime, something has gone horribly wrong in society. Copyright was agreed upon to give people a chance to make money from USEFUL contribution to society (hint: music is not a useful contribution), after which time their efforts are given back to society. Almost nothing since 1930 has entered the public domain. So why should I respect this failed social contract?

Re:Failed social contract - no public domain!

[Dr_Barnowl]

Music is a useful contribution. Music improves your quality of life. If it didn't people wouldn't listen to it. Sure, it's not a design for a working fusion reactor, but if that was easy, everyone would be doing it. It has value, or no-one would pay for it. The same goes for movies and games. After all, if all your material needs are served, what else is there but entertainment? It would be great to live in a world where that was the only concern, but until then, I can listen to music to lift my spirits a little.

People don't ignore copyright because it's a failed social contract. People ignore copyright because it's easier and cheaper to copy things than it ever was before. I remember when I was a kid, copying Spectrum games using a dual tape deck, or a memory dumper. It was a pain in the butt. You had to buy C60 cassettes. You had to wait MINUTES to copy each thing. Then I copied Amiga games using two disc drives. The hardware was much more expensive, but you could get more copied in much less time. I stopped copying in my "PC" era, mostly because I was in gainful employment and could afford my games, didn't have a social circle that included PC gamers, and because the internet sucked (modems, yuck). I still don't copy PC games, but I did accept a few GB of NDS ROM images from a colleague at work ; I don't feel really guilty about it, because I don't play any of them - most of them suck. It would have sucked even more spending £30 a pop to find that out. Most of the games I actually bought for DS I played extensively, because I chose games I knew were good. But it was trivially easy to copy them ; shove in a USB stick, run one command, hey presto. Not once did I think "Hey, I'm sticking it to those damn publishers and their evil lobbying to destroy the social contract of copyright". I just buy fewer DS games because I know so many of them suck.

I agree that they are destroying the social contract though. You see these creaking old pop stars lobbying to continue earning a living off a piece of work they did 50 or 60 years ago, and think "wouldn't it be great if I could earn money for every piece of code I write every year". The reality is that their label fucked them, and now they are lobbying for their label to retain the right to fuck them a little longer.

What they don't get is that if the copyright expired on their recordings, nothing would stop them releasing them for themselves ; unlike right now, where the label controls what you do with your work, you might have a chance of making a few bucks without having most of it clawed back as recoupable expenses. As TFA points out, people will pay extra cash for coffee if they thought the farmer got a fair shake - well, I'm willing to bet that the same applies to music. It definitely applies to games - I know people who will pay extra for Indy games, buy them direct from the developer, rather than pay a discounted rate on Steam, because it puts more cash in the pocket it belongs in. Well, if you sell CDs without the cut for the label, you could easily cut the price and still make more than you were getting in royalties - and make sure you sell it as the "real" album, "Fair Trade" for the artist.

Backwards inference

[Pfhorrest]

Now we are being asked to undo this not because we think this is a bad or unfair way to compensate artists but simply because it is technologically possible for corporations or individuals to exploit artists work without their permission on a massive scale and globally.

No, previously people bought music on physical media, or before that paid to see live performances, because that was the only way you could get music without doing something really unethical like physically depriving someone of something (stealing their record/tape/disc) or something even worse (like kidnapping a musician and forcing them to play at gunpoint).

Now, it is technologically possible to listen to music for free without doing anything unethical like stealing or kidnapping. A musician can willingly make a recording of their music, and willingly sell copies of that recording, and I can willingly trade some money for one of those copies, and then I can willingly make an identical copy of it on equipment that I willingly traded someone else money for, and then willingly give that identical copy to a friend, and... wow, now my friend has free music, and nobody had to do anything coercive at all. No violence, no threats, just normal sales and gifts, with some fancy technology in the middle enabling the gifts.

Logically, the place where musicians have an ethical right to stop that completely ethical process is not recording their music, or not selling copies of that recording. That's their choice to make, if they like. Sure, that will mean fewer professional musicians producing music, and that those former musicians will have to go and do something else for a living. Other people will continue making music either because they can somehow find a market for it, or just for the love of it. I think the free software community is ample evidence that people will develop and practice skills that they enjoy for free just for the love of the art, not to mention all the people playing music for the sake of music across all of human history. The music will not die.

Nobody is forcing musicians to give away music for free; they are free to stop playing music any time, if they find there is not a market for their goods, and marketability is the only reason they play. What they may not do is use the coercive force law to artificially create a market for their goods.

Re:Backwards inference

[kiwimate]

Nobody is forcing musicians to give away music for free

They're not giving it away for free; they're trying to sell it, and you're taking it.

they are free to stop playing music any time, if they find there is not a market for their goods, and marketability is the only reason they play.

That has to be one of the most irrational and flat-out silliest comments I've read on here in a long time.

1. There clearly is a market, or people wouldn't be downloading it. The problem is the market finds it easy to take it for free.
2. This is not the only reason they play. The exceptions of artificially created boy bands aside, musicians dedicate hundreds of hours and significant amounts of money to learning to play music because they love it. (In many cases, their parents also invest a huge amount of money in paying for lessons and instruments.) Most people don't think "I want to get rich and famous, so I'm gonna learn how to play the guitar". They just love music and want to make music themselves.

Do you know what makes people take up an instrument? It's the same drive that makes people study art, or write poems. Musicians love, love, love to make music. Musicians will make music even if no-one is there to hear them. Musicians have a passion for music. Musicians will dedicate years of their life to study and learn and practise for hours on end just so they can get better at their passion, their hobby.

Your comments are insulting.

Re:Backwards inference

[Pfhorrest]

Nobody is forcing musicians to give away music for free

They're not giving it away for free; they're trying to sell it, and you're taking it.

I'm not saying they're *trying* to give it away for free. I'm saying that the situation they're complaining about -- they make music, a bunch of legitimate intermediate steps happen, then people get free music -- is not something that they are forced to participate in. They can stop feeding in to their end of that chain, if they want; if they can't make money from playing music, they are free to stop playing music. What they can't do is stop other people from doing the harmless things they do in the middle of that chain.

Do you know what makes people take up an instrument? It's the same drive that makes people study art, or write poems. Musicians love, love, love to make music. Musicians will make music even if no-one is there to hear them. Musicians have a passion for music. Musicians will dedicate years of their life to study and learn and practise for hours on end just so they can get better at their passion, their hobby.

I explicitly stated in the paragraph before the one you're replying to that some people will continue to make music even if they're not getting paid for it. That some people do art for the love of the art, not just to make money.

And then I said that *if* anyone is doing it just for the money, and finds that they can't make money, they're free to stop if they like. Nobody is forcing them to play for free. But if they want to -- and some people will -- that's great. And if they can find a way to make money without artificially creating a market by force, they are welcome to do that too.

Re:Backwards inference

[Anonymous Coward]

No, previously people bought music on physical media, or before that paid to see live performances, because that was the only way you could get music without doing something really unethical like physically depriving someone of something (stealing their record/tape/disc) or something even worse (like kidnapping a musician and forcing them to play at gunpoint).

just because it is technologically feasible doesn't make it right.

Now, it is technologically possible to listen to music for free without doing anything unethical like stealing or kidnapping. A musician can willingly make a recording of their music, and willingly sell copies of that recording, and I can willingly trade some money for one of those copies, and then I can willingly make an identical copy of it on equipment that I willingly traded someone else money for, and then willingly give that identical copy to a friend, and... wow, now my friend has free music, and nobody had to do anything coercive at all.

Awesome, dude! You totally didn't have to coerce your friend to not pay a dime for music. It's good to have bros, right bro?

No violence, no threats, just normal sales and gifts, with some fancy technology in the middle enabling the gifts.

Not quite like re-gifting, though, right?

Logically, the place where musicians have an ethical right to stop that completely ethical process is not recording their music, or not selling copies of that recording. That's their choice to make, if they like. Sure, that will mean fewer professional musicians producing music, and that those former musicians will have to go and do something else for a living.

Wow. That's about as "ethical" as I mugger telling you that shouldn't have walked down a dark alley. Now, he is ethically in the right to rob and beat you.

Other people will continue making music either because they can somehow find a market for it, or just for the love of it. I think the free software community is ample evidence that people will develop and practice skills that they enjoy for free just for the love of the art, not to mention all the people playing music for the sake of music across all of human history.

You are a complete ass. Farmers have been farming for 12,000 years. For free. They shouldn't have the right to keep what they produce by that logic.

The music will not die.

Nobody is forcing musicians to give away music for free; they are free to stop playing music any time, if they find there is not a market for their goods, and marketability is the only reason they play. What they may not do is use the coercive force law to artificially create a market for their goods.

The willful ignorance here is sickening.

Re:Backwards inference

[Mystakaphoros]

Nobody is forcing musicians to give away music for free

They're not giving it away for free; they're trying to sell it, and you're taking it.

I'm not saying they're *trying* to give it away for free. I'm saying that the situation they're complaining about -- they make music, a bunch of legitimate intermediate steps happen, then people get free music -- is not something that they are forced to participate in.

Anybody remember the story about the beggar eating bread outside a restaurant, when the chef came out and demanded he pay for the smell of the soup? The beggar smiled and shook his pockets and said, "Fine, I'll pay for the smell of your soup with the sound of my money."

Re:Backwards inference

[melikamp]

They're not giving it away for free; they're trying to sell it, and you're taking it.

"Artists" like the one in TFA are not "trying to sell it". Here are just some ways in which they can try to sell it: collect cover and play live, sell physical copies, sell digital copies, sell streaming subscription. When they shake people down for thousands of dollars for non-commercial sharing, they are not "trying to sell it". They are not "trying to sell it" when they strong-arm hardware manufacturers into making devices that are broken by design with DRM, while missing essential features everyone wants. They are gangsters who pretend that they own the art itself, and have the final word about what you can and cannot do behind the closed doors of your house. And if you are audacious enough to share music you love with others over the Internet, without any hope of compensation, just because you love the music and want others to partake, they send lawyers to your house and leave you without a dime. Trying to sell it my ass.

Re:Backwards inference

[Pfhorrest]

No, previously people bought music on physical media, or before that paid to see live performances, because that was the only way you could get music without doing something really unethical like physically depriving someone of something (stealing their record/tape/disc) or something even worse (like kidnapping a musician and forcing them to play at gunpoint).

just because it is technologically feasible doesn't make it right.

You fail at reading comprehension.

People, being generally ethical for the most part, used to be happy to pay for music because you couldn't get it for free without doing something most people would consider unethical, like theft or forced labor.

Now, thanks to technology, it is possible to get music for free without doing anything most people would consider unethical, so now people get music for free.

The technological feasibility didn't make a wrong action right; it doesn't make theft or forced labor OK. What it does is make it possible to get free music without theft or forced labor.

Musicians arguing that getting free music is inherently theft or forced labor are free to lock up all their recordings and stop playing, and see if that puts a stop to people getting free music. Hint: it won't, because they're not getting it by stealing or forcing the musicians to play. They're copying something already in their possession, at their own (negligible) cost, and giving that away for free.

If we invented Star Trek replicators, would all the restaurants have a claim against people sharing food for free? Right now, you have to steal to get a Big Mac for for free, and that is wrong. But some day, technology could change that, and then getting a Big Mac for free wouldn't have to involve doing anything wrong. That is what has happened with music.

Awesome, dude! You totally didn't have to coerce your friend to not pay a dime for music. It's good to have bros, right bro?

I also didn't coerce the musician to play it, or to sell me a copy of it, which is more the point. And now he wants to coerce me to stop using my equipment that I own to make something to give to someone for free?

Logically, the place where musicians have an ethical right to stop that completely ethical process is not recording their music, or not selling copies of that recording. That's their choice to make, if they like. Sure, that will mean fewer professional musicians producing music, and that those former musicians will have to go and do something else for a living.

Wow. That's about as "ethical" as I mugger telling you that shouldn't have walked down a dark alley. Now, he is ethically in the right to rob and beat you.

No, because mugging is inherently unethical. If the only way to get money from you walking down an alley is to mug you, then that is wrong. But if there is some strange means by which I can profit indefinitely from you having walked down that alley, without having to mug you or anything else unethical like that, then there is nothing wrong with that.

You are a complete ass. Farmers have been farming for 12,000 years. For free. They shouldn't have the right to keep what they produce by that logic.

Farmers have never farmed for free. Farmers farm so that they have food to eat, or something to sell in exchange for other food to eat, and other things they need. Taking away the product of their labor takes away the entire point of doing all that hard labor.

On the other hand, people who have plenty of money from other sources play music just for fun, because it's an inherently enjoyable activity. Sure, it takes skill, and produces something of value to other people. But if the supply of that valuable goes to infinity, because infinitely many people can enjoy it at no extra cost to you, then the price you can expect for it drops to zero, despite that value.

The willful ignorance here is sickening.

I agree, but not in the way you think.

Re:Backwards inference

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, you do realize that we had radio "back then" and some of us did use to listen to music for free?

Re:Backwards inference

[NulDevice]

> they are free to stop playing music any time

You're not a musician, are you.

You know what musicians call that point when they stop playing music? Death.

Re:Backwards inference

[Pfhorrest]

People seem to have a lot of trouble with reading comprehension here.

I am not telling anyone to stop playing. I am saying, if you are not satisfied with what playing gets you, nobody is forcing you to keep playing against your will.

If you enjoy playing for its own sake -- and I'm sure tons of people, including the most talented musicians, do -- then please, keep playing.

If you only play for money, and you can find some way to make money from playing -- without coercing other people -- then please, keep playing.

If you only play for money and you can't find a way to make money from playing without coercing other people, then tough shit, get a different job. Nobody is forcing you to play music for a living; if you can't make a living from playing music, you can stop, if you want, and do something else more profitable with your time, if that's what suits you. You don't get to force other people to do or not do things just because it's bad for your business model.

Re:Backwards inference

[Pfhorrest]

True, but not very relevant to my point, because a broadcast and a recording are different products: request lines not withstanding, you can't just make the radio play any song any time you like. The only way you could obtain a recording for free before easy copying was to steal one or force someone to make one (not that I suspect anyone ever did the latter, but it's an option in the "unethical things you can do to get free music" category, and is what some musicians claim copying amounts to -- forced labor for no reward).

slave labor and hostages...

[harvey the nerd]

Lowery confuses the need for compensation with rationalizing some truly evil thuggery.

Let's say (survivors of) Adolf Hitler, under his Reich orders, wanted a royalty for slave laborers' work on European train tracks seventy years later. Sure they deserved to be paid, but paying Adolf et al only rewards the evil part, we know what happened to the slaves. I would be would be willing to help former slaves, but Adolf not so much. In fact I probably am angry with those that do.

Not surprised...

[sdguero]

As I recall, Cracker was one of those 1990's Nirvana rip off bands that were snatched up by the dozens and thrown all over the airwaves by the music industry in it's hayday. Now he's a producer in that same industry, likely trying to do the same thing with 2010's MGMT rip off bands. This is like asking a fox whether or not he should be able to guard a hen house...

Lowery is misleading about advances

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

I admit to being shocked to read what Lowery wrote about how advances work. Maybe on the small labels he presumably recorded on it worked that way, but none of the major labels work that way in general. Advances were used specifically to keep musicians in servitude to the recording company by running up debts that they could rarely pay. You can read about the practice here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recoupment
I don't remember his name but one US Senator called the recording industry something like buying a house and having the bank continue to own it after you paid off the mortgage.

$17.82/month

[Anonymous Coward]

He quotes a figure of $17.82/mo to "get right" with the artists. This is comparable to what I paid Yahoo music to build a collection about half the size of hers. It took me about a year. Two things killed Yahoo music:

1. Poorly maintained software. They had bought the service from a company and struggled with maintenance.

2. The real killer: poorly implemented DRM. Tracks would disappear and had to be re-downloaded to renew, or they might not have even been renewed.

The glitchy software combined with the inability to maintain a stable playlist killed it for me. I think they finally pulled the plug on it a year after I left.

Now? I watch vids on YouTube and pay nothing for them. That's not really an answer either. My experience with Yahoo Music should prove something to the industry:

If you want my money, give me unlimited DRM free music and a good front end for a reasonable subscription fee, and I'll pay $20/mo if I have the disposable income (things are tighter now, so I probably won't).

All of this is a moot point if you tape off the air (remember that?). The money aspect of music was satisfied that way. Advertiser-supported radio pumped in money, artists got their albums promoted, cheap fans like me taped, and fans with more disposable income and a desire to build collections bought. This is one case where it really would be nice if we could just add "on the Internet" to an existing model; because it seemed to be working pretty well.

This Ted Talk seems appropriate here

[terminalhype]

Comic author Rob Reid unveils Copyright Math (TM), a remarkable new field of study based on actual numbers from entertainment industry lawyers and lobbyists. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZadCj8O1-0

the article nails it

[prime_implicant]

A lot of musicians on my facebook newsfeed are passing around a link to this article. Lowry speaks the truth. It's time to stop making it excusable to download music without making an attempt to compensate the artist who created the music. A lot of the comments here are trying to argue that copyright is not property, copyright exists to promote public good ... and then what? Is it for public good to download music for free? As long as the copyright term has not expired, it is exactly like property.

Re:the article nails it

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyright NEVER expires anymore. The right to public domain content is gone. People can't sing happy birthday, or listen to Dr. King's "I have a dream" speach. This is major flaw in the system, that has to be fixed. If people are not willing to pay for your music, I would quit making it, and go dig ditches or work in a field that has demand. Welcome to the new reality. If pirates are hurting your business so much, then the pirates don't really deserve to enjoy it.

The whole system that has been created for artists described in the article reads like a dystopian fantasy; this is what needs to be changed, not bankrupting people for downloading one of your 2.5 minute songs. Read the post above that quotes Courtney Love; no matter my opinions on her personally, she brings an inside perspective to the discussion. These bands are literally selling themselves in an effort to get their music deal. They sell their NAMES for god's sake if they want to get published. The record companies have got the industry by the short and curlies! If you don't see this system as flawed, I would respectfully submit that in some way YOU are flawed.

Fairness as described in the article is a shallow fantasy; the real world is not fair, and has never been fair. They teach you this shit in High School these days; you know, that place where they locked you up for 3-5 years, and you kept escaping to go smoke pot behind the bleachers? Yes, it's true, you don't learn much good there, but that isn't fair either is it?

People will pay for music they like. They will. I have done it, and everyone I know at one time has purchased music they enjoy, including those that pirate. They pay royalties on BLANK cds, they buy cds, LPs, tapes, whatever the flavor of the day is, they pay for iTunes cards, tv and satellite subs to enjoy music legally, they go to concerts when they can afford to and there are interesting bands in town they want to hear, they buy the $50 t-shirt at the concert, knowing full well it only costs $5 to make. They want to support artists! They spend MILLIONS to get entertainment of various kinds. People are not the enemy of the music industry! We are the customers.

iTunes is not convenient. Put in my password is convenient you say? What if I wanted to put a song on my work computer? Or my home computer? Or my no-name branded mp3 player? Why should I have to have an internet connection to listen to a song? Isn't that the point of "buying" it? I've bought all of those things legally, including the music, so why can't I play it anywhere? I don't think most people agree with piracy because they think it's good to get these things for free; they simply don't like being jerked around by iTunes, Universal, Sony, etc. Rampant piracy is the people's way of protesting these things. Sony rootkit debacle, anyone? That was to combat pirates, I am pretty sure, no matter what they said publicly about it. What about the $100s I've spent at the iTunes store, that no longer operate because of the poorly considered technical implementation of DRM that my "purchased" music was locked by? The DRM that is illegal to circumvent in my country? Some of my music from iTunes still works, why do THESE tracks not work anymore. Because I got shafted, that's why. I guess that's on me, I certainly am not going to be taking Apple to court for a few hundred in damages, am I? So not only the artists, but the consumers are largely at the mercy of the monopolistic corporations at the heart of this problem. And that's the part that needs to change, not making ALL music free - we ALL want great artists to make a good living, they deserve it, and quite honestly, I think music will save the world one day (Robotech/Minmei ending the war with a song, anyone here like Robotech? lol. How much in Royalties did Minmei get for every Zentraedi hearing her song? I'm betting, not much.) But it won't be able to if we allow the status quo to continue, with the record companies writing laws that destroy internet freedom. That is the real issue here, in the minds of many, the infringement of OUR FREEDOM vs YOUR right to be paid for your work (which I am NOT disputing). I LOVE MUSIC and I want MORE!

Ownership... Re:False assumptions from gatekeepers

[Anonymous Coward]

nope -- You are talking about ownership/Possession not property. Property is a class, ownership is a property -- of the class Property -- to be proper ty.

This battle is over

[runeghost]

As Thomas Babington Macaulay said in a brilliant speech on copyright back in 1841 "The public seldom make nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the words of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living."

American corporations of the 20th and 21st centuries, thanks to their endless quest for profit and control with scant regard for anything else, have succeeded in thoroughly discrediting the very idea of copyright. While I empathize with David Lowery and the artists on whose behalf he speaks, he is missing the point. Until the corporate-instigated abuse of copyright is ended, there is no chance of rehabilitating it in the public mind. Even then, I expect doing so will take generations if it can be done at all.

P.S. In case you missed it, the same corporate abuses that destroyed faith and trust in copyright are being applied to America's entire legal system.

David Lowery is clearly not about the music...

[sdguero]

I skimmed the comments on wordpress. Didn't see any disagreeing with the lengthy post. The comments on /. look quite a bit different from the 300+ shills on there...

I will say that I don't think music recordings should be monetized other than to cover production costs. Artists should be paid, and paid well, for live performances. But I don't see any reason that someone in a band playing gigs, that works maybe 10-20 hours a week, should make more than $100k a year. If a musician is playing to make tons of money, it usually shows in their work (like the band, Cracker). Most of the mainstream music I listen to these days is hiphop because at least those guys admit they are all about the money.

The content industries in this country are incredibly inefficient, with a select few /coughs artists /coughsagain, producers, and executives taking home enough money to feed entire countries. While much the world lives without running water, electricity, or food; millionaires are created in the USA based on who they know, not what they produce. The digital revolution has threatened some of these powerful people. And they have responded with aggressive legislation that infringes on the constitution, legal bullying by high priced lawyers, and fiery politicized posts like this.

I work for the man, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna give him a hand job behind the building.

Re:David Lowery is clearly not about the music...

[Anonymous Coward]

But I don't see any reason that someone in a band playing gigs, that works maybe 10-20 hours a week, should make more than $100k a year.

You realize that they often work far more than 20 hours a week, especially on tour... right? It's common to roll into town, have in-store performances, on-air (radio) performances, and other "work" to do for hours before you step on stage that night at the small club you're playing.

You obviously know nothing about the life of a traveling musician. Your opinions on how "easy" it is are therefore ridiculously invalid.

Royalties *are* taxed. Next argument?

[cbhacking]

Seriously, don't be absurd. Different types of property are taxed differently. For example, I own a car. I paid tax when I purchased the car. I also pay a licensing cost (a type of tax, in that it goes to the governement for the purpose of supporting public services) to legally operate the car. However, I certianly don't pay tax on it every year. I also own a number of books, which were subject to sales tax when I bought them but nothing else (and certianly no ongoing tax).

On the flip side, you have the various producers of copyrightable works ("artists" for brevity). To an artist, their (intellectual) property is their source of income. That is, of course, taxed (on a continuous basis... assuming they are selling anything from it). Nothing special about that. In the case of the modern publishing industry, artists receive royalties for the copies of their property that the artists have allowed a publisher to create and sell. Those royalties are taxed as income. Often, there's also a contract (occasionally, there's a contract but no royalties) where the artist is paid a lump sum up front. Those payments are also taxed as income.

Your argument is completely empty. A warehouse doesn't pay tax on everything it contains on an annual basis. A farm doesn't pay an annual tax on its livestock, despite those unequivocally being the property of farm. Why in the world should artists pay an annual tax on their intellectual property? Forget empty; your argument is ludicrous...

Re:Royalties *are* taxed. Next argument?

[ThosLives]

A warehouse doesn't pay tax on everything it contains on an annual basis.

In the United States they do. In the US, companies will often destroy goods (and equipment) by scrapping because it's cheaper to destroy them than pay tax on the inventory. This is also why companies will periodically hold inventory-clearing sales with items at stupendously reduced prices.

I don't know about farms and livestock though.

Who is David Lowery, and why should I care?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the second Slashdot article linking to his blog in the last few weeks. Like the other one, this one is full of bad logic, bad "facts", and bad analysis. Pro tip: If you need to say "I’m not trying to set up a “strawman”", it's because YOU ARE SETTING UP A STRAW MAN. When you mention downloading, impoverished artists, and musician friends of yours who committed suicide, you are OBVIOUSLY trying to get your reader - who ADMITS to downloading music - to draw the line. And yet "I present these two stories to you not because I’m pointing fingers or want to shame you." Really? Because that seems like the only conceivable way to interpret the way you laid out the story... and let me tell you, you had to stretch pretty dang far to point the finger AWAY from untreated mental illness and drug problems, and towards downloading music.

So who is this guy? He was in some okay bands, twenty years ago... why does Slashdot care about his fairly uninformed - and seemingly uninterested in BECOMING informed - opinion? I feel bad for the poor intern at NPR he's beating up - but hey, he's a college professor too, it seems. I'm sure he has a ton of experience beating up 20 year olds he disagrees with. (Okay, that was a bit unfair... but I'm afraid I couldn't read the piece without thinking about what he must be like in class.)

Also... way to go on your comments section, dude. You "don't have time" to approve all the comments... and unsurprisingly, unlike the... um... lively, as always, debate on Slashdot... everyone on your site seems to agree with you! You must be brilliant.

HEY INTERNET: Can we all agree that Jonathan Coulton's perfectly reasonable, moderate position on this issue is the right one, and move on?
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2012/01/21/megaupload/

Who Says:

[chmod a x mojo]

Who says any particular song I download I would have bought? Maybe I am just checking you out and decided you suck, good thing I didn't give you any money then because I wouldn't want to hear anything else you made. Not trying to be rude to anyone in particular, but that is just economic basics.

Who says I haven't already "bought" the song(s) and the shitty CDs /tapes stopped working? This has happened multiple times, with no scratches / spills anything physically wrong by any appearance on the CDs / DVDs. There is NO reason why I should pay multiple times for the same thing.

Who says your song is worth $1+ / $20 / CD? especially since almost all CD releases have one or 2 "good" songs and the rest is either mediocre or downright crap.

Who says I want DRM if I do decide to buy a song? I don't want to be tied to a specific device that may or may not stay working for the next day / month / year - see the paying multi time for the same thing. THIS is why it's easier to just go and download a ( generally shittier lower bitrate ) song. It's much easier to deal with lower quality than the hassle of DRM ridden crapware.

That's not the American conception of rights

[Alaska Jack]

Guess what? A house is not someone's property either except for the fact that congress made it so. How about we get congress to void all deeds (or simply not enforce them) and see what remains your property.

The American system is based on the idea that we are endowed *by our Creator* with certain unalienable rights, and that governments are instituted among men to *secure* those rights. - aj

GPL violation bad, music theft good?

[MyNicknameSucks]

What's funny is how myopic many /.ers are: if a software developer comes on and talks about getting screwed over by a client (the recent article on someone wanting support forever) or by a distributor (the recent article on someone getting screwed over by Amazon's app store), there's sympathy, solid advice (including legal advice), and links to resources. If a musician comes on and talks about getting screwed over by Google (Google publishes DMCA takedown notices that list offending URLs; YouTube doesn't, AFAIK, pay royalties), Apple (Apple acts as a middle man, only, and does next to nothing to produce works or discover new artists), or by Torrent sites, he "doesn't get it" or is told to find "new ways to monetize your work". I.e., the lamest and most non-specific comments (not even advice) possible.

What makes me shake my head is how lacking in empathy most of these posters are towards people who work in non-geek fields. The same suite of laws that protect software licenses like BSD and the GPL also protects artists. While it's OK for a software developer to put strings on software and how it gets distributed, it's bad for a musician to put similar strings on his work?

At the end of the day, Lowery's argument boils down to, "I did the work of making music. I assumed the risk (financial liability) of producing this piece of music, I paid for the engineer, I paid the factory to manufacture the CD. Why shouldn't I get paid for work I did? Why can't I control how it gets disseminated? How is it that there are cases where download sites make money from making my work available, without my permission?" And have a look at the last /. article mentioning Lowery -- he was an early adopter of using the Internet to connect to fans AND give away music he chose to give away.

Why is it OK to tell a software developer to lawyer up if he's getting screwed, but not OK to give the musician the same piece of advice? Again, it really is all about people getting paid for work they did AND having control over distribution.

It is, IME, fair game to argue over the details (like how long copyright should be), but it should be a non-starter to argue that someone should have no control over, and chance to benefit from, their own work once it's in the wild.

FWIW, I think software developers are AWFULLY lucky that they have the choice to squirrel away their source code and only distribute binaries. That puts an absolute limit on how widely and easily bits of code can be moved.

Re:GPL violation bad, music theft good?

[Anonymous Coward]

GPL "violation" vs. music "theft"? Hahahaha! You just disqualified yourself.... well OK;

"it should be a non-starter to argue that someone should have no control over, and chance to benefit from, their own work once it's in the wild."

And why not? If you want to keep control, leave it in your Mom's basement. It'll be yours. Allll yours (diabolical laugh). However, once you start shouting something from the rooftops you give up control. Publishing is "making public". What a society can agree on, if it's willing to do so, is to legislate some control over use of the work. Not a repressive government that will tell society how it is, and if they don't like it, they can get a spot in a jail cell to think it over. The rise of the Pirate Parties in Europe (actual %votes = %seats democracy) is so wonderfully refreshing where it comes to speaking out on copyright and asking the public what they think it should be.

Well...

[Weaselmancer]

Producing the music and advertizing it costs money.

The main reason why producing and advertising costs so much is because the people who write the checks and the people who cash the checks are the same people. Here, read this.

What do you think would happen if you had a manager and you told him, "Hey, we think these advertising costs are a bit much. I'd like to hit a few ad agencies on my own for quotes and see if I can find a better bargain." Do you think that would be met with, "Okay and jolly good! Let's try to save some money!" I'm betting not.

The real issue here is the middlemen. They've had a fantastic time of it so far, haven't they? They lock down bands with contracts as the barrier of entry into a closed system. It's closed because they have lobbied for it to be closed. That's why it's closed. Then they set the rules for who gets paid and how much. Then they write checks to themselves in whatever amount pleases them. Then they have the audacity to claim they are "protecting the artists". Then finally in a move of unmitigated gall they complain about the ethical implications of people who try to avoid their protection racket!

I'd love to pay the artists, but currently there isn't a legal way to do so without paying these parasites in the middle. And I think you'll find this to be a fairly popular idea. But the current system is so broken you can't sing Happy Birthday in public. Or how SoundExchange can collect royalties on songs they don't own. Even one you make up and stream yourself - they want royalties for that, and they are legally entitled to them.

It's like telling someone saying how important it is to obey the law. And then realizing Emperor Palpatane is running things. Makes the ethics a little fuzzy.

Re:Well...

[RockClimbingFool]

The real issue here is the middlemen. They've had a fantastic time of it so far, haven't they? They lock down bands with contracts as the barrier of entry into a closed system. It's closed because they have lobbied for it to be closed. That's why it's closed. Then they set the rules for who gets paid and how much. Then they write checks to themselves in whatever amount pleases them. Then they have the audacity to claim they are "protecting the artists". Then finally in a move of unmitigated gall they complain about the ethical implications of people who try to avoid their protection racket!

You know whats crazy? That paragraph could almost apply to our banking industry.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd love to pay the artists, but currently there isn't a legal way to do so without paying these parasites in the middle.

There are legal ways to send them money directly, so why don't you do that, as it gives you that much satisfaction? Go ahead - knock your self out!

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd love to pay the artists, but currently there isn't a legal way to do so without paying these parasites in the middle.

I don't understand. Why can't you go to the artist's website and buy the song directly from them? Doesn't that pay them directly in most cases?

Re:Well...

[Weaselmancer]

You're right. It is a story we keep seeing over and over. It always ends the same way, too. "Government, save us!"

Re:Well...

[T Murphy]

I'd love to pay the artists, but currently there isn't a legal way to do so without paying these parasites in the middle.

There are plenty of bands that aren't beholden to middlemen. I've purchased several albums now from artists on Bandcamp with a pay-what-you-want deal, which is great because I am willing to pay more if I know it will go to the artist. Sure, ASCAP et al. will still try to skim off the top should you play the songs in public or something, but reducing their marketshare is the best way to weaken their influence.

Re:Well...

[Weaselmancer]

I like a lot of larger/more famous bands. I do my part to weaken the RIAA's influence by simply not participating anymore. I simply don't buy music anymore.

But if I absolutely have to, I check RIAA radar first. Or purchase used - they don't get a dime that way. Until they lobby to change that. And yes, they are working on that. Get it while you can.

That's about as well as I can do.

if you like the music, pay for it.

[swschrad]

if you don't, you really don't have to have it.

if you steal it, the artist will not make any more for you. they need to eat, curiously enough.

as for the middlemen, I am still surprised that the artists have not headed for the cloud with their masters and are not getting their geld directly. so many artists have been ripped off over the years by the upstanding Protector Of The Genre, the record companies in collusion as the RIAA.

Priceless chuckle

[paiute]

"Congratulations, your generation is the first generation in history to rebel by unsticking it to the man and instead sticking it to the weirdo freak musicians!"

I will make you a deal, David Lowery.

[amosh]

You promise that you will support - and do your best to encourage - a return to some historical copyright term. Something sub-50 years - I could live with a 49-year copyright. In return, I will support - and do my best to encourage - the legal purchase of music as opposed to the downloading of it, and I will go back and make sure I have the legal right to every song on my various devices.

I think that seems fair, don't you? Internet? Could you deal with that trade? A return to copyright sanity, in return for a return to purchasing sanity?

I think you meant to say "Moral behaviour"

[tlambert]

it is up to us individually to examine the consequences of our actions. It is not up to governments or corporations to make us choose to behave ethically. We have to do that ourselves.

It seems to me that this is the core of copyright abolitionism. As long as file sharing is illegal, we are expecting the government to enforce ethical behavior.

Actually, personal ethics come from within yourself because that is how you are built. Morals are externally imposed by society, and usually adhered to for fear of the penalties for not adhering to them. Those can be the promise of legal penalties, or the promise of burning in hell. This is why the sociopath is considered immoral; their fear of the penalties is broken.

One of the strangest lies we've been told is that there is such a thing as professional ethics, rather than professional morals. It allows self-policing of groups to continue despite their actions clearly being immoral in the context of the larger society, as if that somehow lets them out of the social contract which binds the rest of us.

-- Terry

a basic question

[Onymous Coward]

Here's a fundamental question:

If I am enjoying some music, do I owe the artist for that enjoyment? (Owe in the sense of "some money or obligation is due" rather then the sense of "resulting from".)

Re:a basic question

[CanEHdian]

Here's a fundamental question:

If I am enjoying some music, do I owe the artist for that enjoyment? (Owe in the sense of "some money or obligation is due" rather then the sense of "resulting from".)

Interesting question. Is the artist performing said music or are you replaying a recording of music performed some time in the past? Or are you listening to neighbours who turned their radio up? If it's a recording, how long ago was it made? Is the artist still alive? What recording is it? Is it a "Japanese original 1st CD pressing" (i.e. before the onset of the loudness wars) that has been out of print for decades? Is the only "legal" way of acquiring this recording going through CD collections at flea markets and hope you're in luck (in which case the artist also will get nothing)?

Maybe you're enjoying music over at the LoC's National Jukebox, music recorded over a century ago but still somehow under "state copyright"?

Impolite, but here's a question for you: why would I owe Vesta Victoria a single red penny for listening to her performance of "Poor John" recorded on June 20th, 1907 CE?

Re:a basic question

[SJS]

If I am enjoying some music, do I owe the artist for that enjoyment? (Owe in the sense of "some money or obligation is due" rather then the sense of "resulting from".)

Good question.

Here's a principle to live by:

Value given for value received.

If you stand and listen to a busker, toss a few coins into the hat or case.

If you listen to a song on the radio, remember that it's been paid for by advertising (generally). If the commercial isn't actively annoying or stupid[1], let it play -- you're the product, the music is the lure, and the customer is the advertiser, and if you like the music, you want the customer to keep paying, right?

If you buy the CD or pay for a download from iTunes[2], you've purchased _a_ product. Treat it like a book -- you might loan it to friends, you might copy small portions of it to use in your journal or other personal work -- but remember that it isn't yours to distribute widely (yet).

Here's where things start to get tricky... there's a lot of crap out there. A lot of the music is utter drek, and you deserve the three minutes of your life back after listening to something that purports to be "culture", much less paying $18 for a CD or $10 for an album[3].

That's not good value.

With the advent of cassette recorders, we had a try-before-you-buy model: friends would make friends mix-tapes as a way of informing them about artists they liked. If the friend liked that artist, he'd be inclined to go out and buy that artist's work. This was a good thing, and while technically stealing, it was more like grassroots advertising.

The advent of anonymous file-sharing broke the try-before-you-buy model -- broke it hard. People amassed music collections they'd never be able to listen to, solely as virtual currency in the the file-sharing systems. They're receiving value without giving it in one frame of reference, and engaged in some quite serious value exchanges in another frame of reference.

Others announced[4] that they'd no longer be wasting money actually *buying* music, when all this "free" music was available. What's amazing is that these sorts of people tend to hold very dim views of "leeches" -- those who only take shared music, and never share their own. This is the whole purpose of technologies like BitTorrent -- to MAKE people share, rather than to simply consume at the edges. The hypocrisy is rather stunning.

And now we have the new generation that has never bothered with trying to own music. It's just there, freely available, practically an entitlement -- modulo some jerk whining about how it's theft. The implicit agreement has changed: artists are now supposed to create content for all to share -- and some artists are unhappy about this.

However.

The artists and their representatives changed the agreement first. Thank you Sonny Bono.

Copyrights used to be quite limited. And now they look to be effectively forever. That's not the agreement! And when one side unilaterally changes a contract, surely it's fair for the other side to do the same thing.

And that, I think, is where we're at. We had a sort of value-given-for-value-received arrangement, and then one side broke it, and now we have the backlash. A new arrangement[5] is needed, a new agreement between artists, infrastructure, and consumers. We've broken the old one beyond repair[6].

We need a new arrangement. A new agreement. And it needs to have buy-in from all players, not just the one with the upper hand at the moment. Dictating unreasonable terms never results in a lasting solution.

[1] If it is actively annoying or stupid, switch stations. Don't reward advertisers for producing crap advertisements. Their product needs to be entertaining as well. That's part of the game, after all; paying for the music is only half the bargain. They buy a spot, not your actual attention.

[2] Or iTunes-like service, of course.

[3] Cost of production and di

Re:a basic question

[Onymous Coward]

Value given for value received.

That's an appealing idea. I still feel I'm not quite at the heart of the matter.

What if the music I enjoy is from a dead artist?

What do I do in a situation where I dislike the music? Remove coins from the busker's guitar case?

Oh, shit, I just came up with a real good question. I'll post it over here...

Because of technology...

[Nexion]

I'm now being asked to pay for non-live music. Before recording technology was invented musicians actually had to show up for work. Sorry, your recording isn't worth 10-20$, or more, to have some disk crap out on me in a year or so. I'll gladly pay to see musicians and other performers on stage, in a hall or at a bar. At a bar I might even buy them a round.

My point... yes, just as technology gave you the ability to charge for recordings it also made it difficult to get paid for recordings eventually. You want to make sure you get paid? Show up to work like everyone else does.

Maybe all programmers should start charging royalties for their code being used. ;)

Inconsistancies of David Lowrey

[Anonymous Coward]

From the Trichordist article by David Lowrey:

"Recorded music revenue is down 64% since 1999."

" Per capita spending on music is 47% lower than it was in 1973!!"

" The number of professional musicians has fallen 25% since 2000."

"Of the 75,000 albums released in 2010 only 2,000 sold more than 5,000 copies. Only 1,000 sold more than 10,000 copies. Without going into details, 10,000 albums is about the point where independent artists begin to go into the black on professional album production, marketing and promotion."

The conclusion that many artists fail to support themselves makes an erroneous assumption that their work is worthy of an audience. The Trichordist fails to recognize that lots of music fails to draw an audience. Compare this with lots of YouTube videos that are rarely viewed. Nobody is complaining that all video posters are unable to make a living.

While I don't agree with Emily White (NPR Intern), the David Lowery is pulling numbers out of his a$$. Where did his statistics come from (The FBI)? They don't jive with these statistics:

www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/403465/december-01-2011/stop-online-piracy-act

http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod.html

http://www.tuaw.com/2012/01/25/lesser-known-facts-from-apples-earnings-statement/

From the Tuaw article, "Apple's revenues from the iTunes Store, App Store, iBookstore, and iPod-related accessories totalled more than $2 billion over the quarter (of 2012)."

Where is the money coming from?

http://maplight.org/content/72896

How are the "Indie Bundles" doing so well if people aren't paying? How did Louis CK gross over 1.1 million on one release if people aren't paying?

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/online-sales-of-louis-c-k-special-cross-1-million-mark/

David Lowrey's numbers just don't add up. Most people are paying for content. If you producing content and are not being renumerated, consider that your work may not be popular, iTunes/RIAA/Teenagers screwed you, or you don't know how to run a business. Keep playing as a hobby and go find a day job.

The Day the Music Didn't Die...

[prezkennedy.org]

...will not be the day the RIAA and all of the middlemen die. Music and musicians will live on, regardless of who is in control. So boohoo, nice tearjerking story, but at the end of the day the reason the music industry is flat lining is because it hasn't adapted to the way things are. Instead it continues to pound the sand hoping for the way things were.

Fail

[ZombieBraintrust]

So property doesn't exist because it can be stolen?? Logic fail.

Cunfused Sarcasm Irony?

[ZombieBraintrust]

Are your pro gun or is this supposed to be anti gun?

Re:Cunfused Sarcasm Irony?

[pavon]

Neither. My point is that just because technology makes something possible doesn't suddenly make it ethically right, or even inevitable. When guns made it far easier to kill someone it did not mean that we needed to throw out our laws on murder as obsolete. Nor did it mean that all guns had to be banned in order to have a reasonably safe society. But these are the absurd extremes that pirates (like the AC) and media industry insist must be true.

Hes missed the Point

[Anonymous Coward]

I think hes missed the point. She has only bought 15 CDs but I think she has bought plenty of TRACKs - i tunes etc. People do that without thinking nowadays.
      I agree with here... who would buy an album nowaways.... and Ive got old music in my collection sourced for odd places because you couldnt get good DRM free music for purchase online back then. Now u can.

and his response actually shows just how out of touch with the current generation the artists are... and if they arent in touch with their market - they are in trouble. Dont get me wrong. I am sympathetic with them - BUT artists need to ditch the MPAA - and get a new model that understands the new world. Recently in Aus it was reported that the content holders arent interested in setting up online sources for media because they believe pirating will still occur.... - talk about a stupid attitude....
        How about setting up a source. making it cheap - making it ubiquitous.... getting everyone using it and then increasing the price (a little) in a few years... when everyone is used to it and its integrated everywhere. Thats the way to do it but they cant think outside the square so despite the fact they would make a fortune - they will spend a fortune on a failing model rather than trying to create a new successful one.

Kickstarter model?

[Iniamyen]

Why not pay artists for their work in the way the rest of us get paid? Agree to do a project for a certain price, agreed upon beforehand? Artists that delivered good stuff would be sought after to do more projects for more money. Technology has certainly made this way of doing things easier.

Bits aren't a commodity... and they aren't worth money, sorry. However I fully believe that people's work is worth money.

There is some serious misinterpretation going on..

[Red_Chaos1]

Recently Emily White, an intern at NPR All Songs Considered and GM of what appears to be her college radio station, wrote a post on the NPR blog in which she acknowledged that while she had 11,000 songs in her music library, sheâ(TM)s only paid for 15 CDs in her life. Our intention is not to embarrass or shame her.

Based on their wording, it appears they are blatantly painting it as if because she's only purchased 15 CDs, her 11,00 songs must all be pirated. However, she clearly states:

But I didn't illegally download (most) of my songs. A few are, admittedly, from a stint in the 5th grade with the file-sharing program Kazaa. Some are from my family. I've swapped hundreds of mix CDs with friends. My senior prom date took my iPod home once and returned it to me with 15 gigs of Big Star, The Velvet Underground and Yo La Tengo (I owe him one).

Yes, she admits she might have some ill gotten music, but most of it was bought and paid for. All of Mr Lowery's math seems to be based on this retarded conclusion that all of her music is pirated, when it isn't. His whole argument is based on the same incorrect conclusion. At this point, I have already stopped reading what he has to say, because he's a moron. All of the people singing his praises clearly can't read either, or they'd have caught this too.

Ethicality?

[DaveV1.0]

When is violating someone's rights considered ethical?

artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Art is a process not a product. It is in fact a process conducted for the sake of itself. When one creates for the purpose of profit that is manufacturing not art.

Bad premises beget bad arguments. I'll pay to witness an artist perform but I'll not be told a recording is equivalent to art.

The bottom line....

[Rick Zeman]

...is, as Lars Ulrich pointed out all those years ago it's the artists' music, legally and morally, and if someone chooses to give it away more power to 'em, but if they say no, no amount of rationalization can change the fact that it's no one else's to give away/take.

Blah Blah Blah

[painandgreed]

Discussing the ethics of music piracy is like discussing the ethics of speeding over the speed limit. In the end, there probably is no real ethics to do it in the light of society, yet lots of people, possibly the majority to everybody are still going to do it. Hell, like speeding, it's quite possible that people end up doing it without even knowing they are doing anything wrong. In the end, the chances of being caught no matter what the punishment are next to nil, so people are going to continue to do it. There's not much society will ever be able to do but police it, hit people who get caught with some sort of fine, and hit those repeat offenders with increasingly large fines or other punishments.

not in my experience

[Creepy]

especially this - If there are no or insufficient record sales, the advance is written off by the record company.

my experience (in the mid 1990s)
We didn't sell enough records, so the locks on our studio door were changed and a court order tacked onto the door saying all equipment inside has been repossessed to pay debt owed to studio. Anything that couldn't be proven as personally owned within one week (with the purchase receipt, mind you) would be auctioned off. I lost $2000 in gear that I personally owned (before getting an auction cut - see next sentence), mainly in a set of bass speaker cabinets (I had the receipt for the head, so I was able to recover that, but I had to have the property owner and police there when I took possession of that property and was sadly not able to convince the officer that the head and speakers went together). They actually only "lost" about $4000 (It may have been a little less than that, but it's been so long I'll just use $4k), so I had a check cut out to me after the sale for $800 after the auction. Note that the auction was actually held 3 days earlier than it was supposed to be, and nobody in the band even notified it was happening because they were dirty rotten lying bastards and we couldn't afford to sue them and they knew it. The gear, especially our PA and light system, must have been auctioned off at a massive loss, because they were easily worth 8-10k each, both being relatively new. To this day I don't know how the recording studio even found our practice studio, but I imagine they had one of us followed or something shady. This same studio stole (or in their words, repo'd) another band's tour bus loaded with gear while they were on tour for the same reason. The studio did close a short time later, so I can only assume the behavior was debt driven, but you REALLY need to know who you're getting in bed with in the music industry - it's brutal.

Also I have a hard time feeling sympathy for the studio "loss" - after all, they made thousands of dollars on us and easily recouped the cost of recording, but the way the system works is everyone at the studio gets paid and then the artist pays all expenses including recording time on their cut (it isn't up front). Our songwriter made something like $15k (because songwriting cut is off the top), and I believe that meant the studio head himself made around $20-25k, because I think his cut was 5-10% higher. The band owed $4000. Yep, that's studio math for a "loss" - as the old musician adage goes, everyone makes money except the band. It wouldn't surprise me if they wrote off the $4000 when they went chapter 7.

The article didn't RTFA.

[Poltron Inconnu]

Thank you. Too bad my mod points expired a couple days ago. In any case, I'm glad at least one other person noticed the new Slashdot low of the article not RTFA it's talking about. Didn't only not read it but completely missed the point of it. She was saying the she and her generation were not all that interested in owning Physical Media. She never said she wouldn't pay for music. In fact the whole point of her article was that there needs to be a service that made having access to songs easy and able to sync with any device While paying the artists! I know nothing of David Lowery prior to this but he now strikes me as a reactionary prick with low reading comprehension. He's a perfect example of my biggest pet peeve. People who don't read what you wrote or listen to what you say but instead read or hear what they think you were going to say. And it seems like 95% of people who do that are unwilling to go look at it again because "I already know what it says!" Whew, got a little ranty there.

what works is what is right

[Anonymous Coward]

copywrong is going to die. some stakeholdrs will find ways to monetize their alleged property some wont. if they stop marketing their stuff altogether then maybe i'll believe they have a real problem.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now we are being asked to undo this not because we think this is a bad or unfair way to compensate artists but simply because it is technologically possible for corporations or individuals to exploit artists work without their permission on a massive scale and globally."

No. People would ask you to undo this EXACTLY because I think this is a bad and unfair way to compensate artists. Advances in technology simply make it easier to appreciate the plain immoral ugliness that is "copyright".

Happy Birthday to You

[Anonymous Coward]

You can stop reading if they didn't start out with:

Mr. Lowery, could you please explain to the audience how it benefits society that the song "Happy Birthday To You", copyrighted in 1935, is still under copyright today and, in the US, will be until the year 2030?

It is also quite prudent to bring up the "Intellectual Property Tax" as an alternate way to raise funds to help out young and upcoming (or 'starving') artists. Why shouldn't large IP portfolio rights holders pay a tax on their properties to benefit the artists? Hello, Mr Lowery? Why are you walking off the stage?

I can't believe no one mentioned Jeffery Tucker

[evin.olson]

Jefferey Tucker explains logically why IP is total bullshit and the common misconception that intellectual property is good for business and "protects" them by forcing others to not copy.

http://mises.org/daily/2632/

"A clue to the copyright fallacy should be obvious from wandering through a typical bookstore chain. You will see racks and racks of classic books, presented with beautiful covers, fancy bindings, and in a variety of sizes and shapes. The texts therein are "public domain," which isn't a legal category as such: it only means the absence of copyright protection."

"But they sell. They sell well. And no, the authors are not misidentified on them. The Bronte sisters are still the authors of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Victor Hugo still wrote Les Miserables. Mark Twain wrote Tom Sawyer. The much-predicted disaster of an anti-IP world is nowhere in evidence: there are still profits, gains from trade, and credit is given where credit is due."

My opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if we allow property rights on music it does not mean that music has any value and therefore should not automatically be entitled for compensation.

Your music has value only, if you yourself can somehow sell it. If you can't, then change profession.

It is morally wrong just to expect the system to provide you with something and morally wrong to make laws that force others to do that. Laws should allow you to do what you want, but laws should not force a compensation if one is not able to produce something worth selling.

Music is special. Musicians are not special.

[Anonymous Coward]

ISTM it boils down to:

1. Musicians (who support Lowery's position) think they're special professionals.

2. Market forces (i.e. selfish consumers) are proving musicians are not special.

3. Borderline-obsolete music recording/producing companies try convince public/lawmakers that 1. is true to stay solvent/profitable.

4. Lowery, a professor, (who being such, should know better) makes various emotional and fallacious arguments in support of 1.

5. Technology and consumer expediency will continue to make some industries flourish and others fail.

6. Technology may even make professional musicians obsolete. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiments_in_Musical_Intelligence and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocaloid)

If anyone thinks I'm being unkind to musicians, then I am being unkind to myself: I spent over a decade learning a musical instrument and will remain a music lover for the rest of my life.

I miss the old days...

[Anonymous Coward]

...of buying an album.....and making cassette copies for my friends!

Steve Albini wrote on artist compensation in 1993

[Anonymous Coward]

The letter is long, which is why I only quoted the beginning.

David Lowery should know better. Shame on him.

Well worth your time, so RTFL: http://www.ram.org/ramblings/philosophy/fmp/albini.html

The Problem With Music
by Steve Albini

This is an article from Maximum Rock n' Roll #133 written by Steve Albini, and it details the problems encountered when dealing with a major label. Reprinted without permission.

Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed. Nobody can see what's printed on the contract. It's too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody's eyes water. The lackey shouts to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit. Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there's only one contestant left. He reaches for the pen, but the Lackey says "Actually, I think you need a little more development. Swim again, please. Backstroke. And he does of course.

Piracy is theft, period.

[master_p]

"music is not property, because it is not tangible". No, music is tangible, it is written on paper, like a novel, with symbols being the musical notes instead of letters. When played, music is vibrations of molecules, so it is very tangible.

"piracy does not hurt profit". If one produced a song that was 100% pirated, profit would be 0. So, piracy does hurt profit.

"a pirated song is not a lost sale". It is a lost sale, because it denies profit to the owner of the song.

"copyright exists for the promotion of arts and culture". No, no matter how it is being said, copyright exists to protect profit. Encouraging an artist to create more works is only meaningful if the artist can make a profit from its works in order to sustain him/herself.

"piracy is not immoral because corporations are evil". But you could fight the evil corporations by not using/buying their products, which you obviously do not do. So, that is just and excuse for not paying.

"I may pirate things, but I always buy them later, and most other people do so". Pirates who do not buy the products later will not say so in any poll, or on the internet.

"copyright should not exist because it hinders the promotion of culture". No, it does not, because, by your own admission, you are willing to pay for culture.

"before recording was possible, musicians earned a living only by live performances". No, they did not, being musicians was their hobby, they all had jobs. Those that did not have jobs were protected by the weathy, mostly royalty or church.

"copyright should only be for 15 years, anything beyond that is stupid". No, it is not. You would pay money for a 30 year old car, why not for a 30 old song?

"artificial scarcity should not be allowed". The ability to copy a song does not mean that scarcity is artificial, because before the copy, the song did not exist. Artficial scarcity is when a product does exist but it is not being sold in order to keep its price high. In the case of a song, an instance of it does not exist before being created.

"piracy is out there, the internet cannot be stopped". Nuclear weapons are also out there, shouldn't we make an attempt to stop them? the availability of something does not make that something legal or good, just because it exists.

"why should we pay X dollars for a song, when the cost of reproducing it is almost zero?" because that is what the song's creator wants, and the right to sell one's product at the price he/she wants is a fundamental principle of our economic system. If you find the price too high, you can ignore the product or negotiate a lower price.

Re:Piracy is theft, period.

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if we allow music to be property, it does not mean that the music automatically has any value. The music may not get what he/she wants, but what ever the customer is willing to pay or nothing at all. If musician wants the same treatment as with any other product, then this is how it works.

Price is determined by markets and right now the markets do not want to pay what authors want. Those that can't sell their product should immediately change profession instead of crying for something that no-one owes them. This is how it works in all markets. Immaterial markets are twisted by the concept of "rights".

If iPods won't sell, the producing company shuts down the product. After that every piece out already is obsolete and end up junk. Some find use for that junk, others don't.

Any argument that compares immaterial and material things should manage the product the same way. Comparing an old car and used song is clueless. Old car may or may not have any value at all, and even if it has, it is paid to he second hand car salesman and not to the car building factory.

Thanks,

some elucidating analysis perhaps: who owes what?

[Onymous Coward]

Though the real answers may be subtle, I propose the following questions to be used in evaluation of the idea of "compensating" artists:

If an artist spends x time and effort making a work of art, should she be compensated at least y remuneration, where y remuneration is some reasonable market price for x time and effort?

Okay, now consider if only one other person ever experiences said art. Is the cost solely theirs? Okay, now consider if all the world experiences said art. Does that mean each human only owes y/6,000,000,000 when they experience the full glory of the (digitally reproducible) work?

What, really, does each recipient of the art experience "owe" the artist?

And lowry wants to stop technology

[Anonymous Coward]

And lowry wants to stop technology not because it is dangerous or damaging, but because he doesn't want to change how he does things.

Strawman!

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's not scarce, so it's not valuable?"

Nobody is saying it isn't valuable. They're saying it's not scarce. Therefore it has value, but not the value of a scarce object in demand.

Water isn't scarce. People will pay for it anyway.

But what we DON'T do is have the government say "you must buy water if you want water and you must buy it at a price agreed by the seller and you have no option to negotiate".

So why should we do that with music, scarce or not?

I created a copy of his work

[Anonymous Coward]

So, since "creation" is the valuable bit, I should get compensated for it.

Right?

Well, why not, then?

Additionally, there are other laws with RP

[Anonymous Coward]

With Real Property, you have abandonment laws, squatters rights, rights of way, fair terms clause, right to privacy and so on.

When an IP is abandoned, the copyright doesn't rescind. When nobody is bothering to make any money off it, the copyright remains.

Just look at the whining about Google's book scanning SOLELY based on "well, some other artist may be hurt, right...". Guess what:: THEY CAN COMPLAIN TOO.

And Goods in a warehouse when sold are taxed. VAT ring a bell? Next avoidance mechanism?

Re:Additionally, there are other laws with RP

[cbhacking]

I agree that the duration of copyright is ridiculous. The lack of any kind of automatic "abandonment" for it (such as exists for trademarks) is also perhaps part of the problem. Of course, to pull from your (counter)examples, most countries do appear to have fair-use terms in their copyright laws.

Not all countries have VAT, but even where they do, that's completely tangential to what I was talking about. The tax is on sale of the goods, not on continuing posession of them (like the person I was responding to was suggesting). Some places do apparently tax ongoing posession (so claims another responder, but the country named was the UA which does not have VAT) but in general, posession of most types of property is not taxed - only the transfer of posession, or gain of wealth.

I'm just scared of musicians never being paid

[cyclomedia]

If musicians want to get paid they should perform their music. Not write or record it once and expect to get paid for the rest of their lives (and then some) without having to lift a finger. Does a plumber get paid every time you take a shower? No. The plumber gets paid for performing their physical job.

An example of "working" musicians is Underworld. They're not the kind of band that knocks out an album and plays a "concert tour" to promote sales. These guys are in their 50s and have been gigging almost constantly for two decades - That's how they get paid. Their recorded music is an advertisement for the band itself. The internet is full of Underworld bootlegs & videos and they don't give a crap.

Of course, they're smart enough to own the copyright to their own stuff, no middlemen involved.

Re:I'm just scared of musicians never being paid

[BanHammor]

We're talking about records here. The plumber doesn't get a nickel every time you use a shower, same as a musician who doesn't get a nickel when you listen to the record. The plumber, however, gets paid every time you want an appliance fixed. The musician gets paid whenever you buy his new record. I don't see any problems here. In before you saying that you don't pay if you copy somebody's drainage system: Yeah, you don't. But then, people kind of value different things in plumbing and musicianship. I don't want to get into specifics of intellectual property, if such a thing exists, but it is a very different kind of fruit than the actual property.

Who took what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a CD from Lars' back catalogue.

I then do the work to make a copy and give it away.

Why should Lars be able to destroy my work?

If Lars isn't happy about music being copied, he should stop making music. I'm not FORCING him to.

Confiscation of Property

[Anonymous Coward]

Fools weep for the crops they could have sowed while they played at art.

Welcome to the coming reality of post-scarcity you “talented” hacks. Your “work” is at most a service, at least an advertisement. And we’d no sooner pay for the privilege of your self-satisfaction, than for the pollution of our thoughts with property and obligations attached.

Arrogance is reserved for those that have advanced the species and most of them have slipped into the dark, thankless and unrewarded.

Your ideas are not yours. You know nothing.

What a broad brush.

[Benanov]

The moron posts one form 990 and suddenly the entire Free Culture movement is corporate funded? What a moron.

You do NOT get to take the network this far.

[yakovlev]

Basically his argument is that everyone who makes any money off of a product that is used in illegal file sharing is morally culpable for the decline of the music industry. This is ridiculous.

First, realize where I'm coming from. I have the CD for all of the songs on my MP3 player, mainly because I encode to FLAC. I am not the type that morally condones acquiring music from illegal downloads.

The author argues that we already pay for music, we just pay Dell/HP for our laptop, Apple for our iPod, Sun for the servers, Google for the advertisements, AT&T/Time Warner for the bandwidth, etc. He also argues that all of these companies are as morally culpable as Napster or The Pirate Bay.

For the consumer products, these products have substantial non-infringing uses. I use my laptop for a myriad of other things that are not illegal file sharing. This is true even for the people who do share files illegally. To imply the entire cost of the laptop constitutes a cost of acquiring music is silly. I can at least partially accept this argument for the iPod (not for me, see above), but not for any of the other consumer costs.

Similarly, the server-side suppliers who are paid by the illegal sharing site are also not morally culpable. Someone offered to buy their computer, and so they sold it to them. Why does that make them morally culpable if someone uses that computer to do something illegal? Furthermore, complaining that they make a profit on illegal file sharing is like complaining that the person who works at a restaurant near the server farm is morally culpable. They're just doing honest work. That someone doing something bad happens to purchase their work does NOT make them morally culpable for that person's actions. Taking music without compensating the artists is bad. It's bad no matter if it's the record companies or the consumer doing it. That doesn't make everyone who's ever sold anything to someone in the illegal file sharing business immoral or a criminal.

Further, there is no conspiracy among electronics companies to try and extract music industry profits, as the author implies. Most electronics companies are just as happy to sell you a laptop whether you get your music from iTunes or Napster. Similarly, the server manufacturers are just as happy to sell to Apple or The Pirate Bay. They don't have a horse in this race. I'll accept the argument that Spotify does, but that's a symptom of the larger problem, and they ARE behaving legally.

I hate to say it, but the only ones who have betrayed the music industry are their own customers, the ones who used to buy music and now download it instead. There is no global conspiracy among electronics companies to support file sharing, only among consumers who want cheap music. It sucks to be a musician in this environment, and I realize the author wants someone to blame for poor music sales besides the fans. However, I refuse to be held morally culpable for the illegal or immoral actions that others take using computers simply because I work in the technology industry.

The ONLY way to look at this...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Market is not what it was 5-10-20 years ago. The model for consumer preferred distribution of content is evident if not fixed for the foreseeable future.

The owners and distributors of content... in this case music, continue to fight this heuristic.

The elephant in the room that most miss and content lawyers hope you never bring up is that the value of the content... in this case music, is not set by the producer or distributor. It is set by the consumer. (Notice I did not say price.) The producer and provider collude to set a price far above its actual value and collude to restrict distribution claiming that to succumb to market forces would put them out of business and violate copyright law (constructed hundreds of years ago).

Anecdotally I estimate that less than 5% of piracy is for profit or redistribution out of spite or some malice. The other 95% is merely a market force working towards a correction. That correction is the proper valuation and licensing of content via consumer preferred delivery methods.

Special case in Germany

[dave87656]

Generally I believe that the artist (or perhaps the rights holder) should be able to ask for what ever price he/she wants and if it's worth it to the consumer he should have to pay that price to have the right to play the music or read the book and so on.

In Germany, however, the GEMA demands a tax on anything capable of storing, transporting or playing music. It started with CD's and they have now expanded that to cell phones, memory cards, computers and so on. And it's not cheap. For a higher end Smart Phone, they take 46 euros, 2 euros on an SD card. In otherwords, they make more profit on all of these devices than the manufactures of those devices do.

So, if I've already paid for music in the form of a tax, does that mean, in a moral sense, that I have the right to copy music, at least for my own enjoyment? I'm not recommending that and I don't do it because it is against the law, but the moral question remains.

Nobody is allowed to exercise fair use, however.

[Anonymous Coward]

If your DVD is encrypted (they all are), then breaking the encryption is illegal, even if it's for the purposes of education, review or parody (cases under which fair use applies not copyright).

Rather like saying that the Chinese have every right to speak out against the government, they'll just be killed for doing so!

Saying "period" doesn't make an opinion factual

[Travelsonic]

Piracy is theft. Period.

Prove it. Saying "it is" doesn't prove it. Putting "period" in your sentence doesn't make it factual.

"piracy does not hurt profit". If one produced a song that was 100% pirated, profit would be 0. So, piracy does hurt profit

First off, aside from most people not actually arguing something like this, your argument is really bad. You make one clearly exaggerated scenario that is not entirely realistic AT ALL as proof.

"a pirated song is not a lost sale". It is a lost sale, because it denies profit to the owner of the song.

Circumstantial - not buying [OR pirating] the song, not listening to the song in the first place, for example, does the same thing.

copyright exists for the promotion of arts and culture". No, no matter how it is being said, copyright exists to protect profit.

RTFC [read the fucking constitution]. It is to promote the progress of the arts, bu securing a limited period of time of absolute control over the work after which it becomes fair game for anyone to use. Period. THAT'S ALL. Whether the creator uses it for a revenue stream, or not, it boils down the the control.

"piracy is not immoral because corporations are evil"

Red herring [or strawman]- people arguing against the notion of piracy == theft don't argue this.

"copyright should only be for 15 years, anything beyond that is stupid". No, it is not. You would pay money for a 30 year old car, why not for a 30 old song?

That question dodges the point of those arguing for a limited copyright term. Let me try to spell it out for you. COPYRIGHT is meant to be for a LIMITED TIME, maybe 15 is too short, maybe not, but 50, 70, 100, 200 years is way beyond anything the founding fathers intended,, and the wording in the constitution shows it.

Honestly, if you're gonna argue, argue points actually be made, don't generalize, don't characterize, you'll look like less of a stuck up asswipe... and you still have yet to prove your point of "piracy is theft," so I'll wait.

techdirt says:

[bs0d3]

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120620/03552119398/business-model-failure-is-not-moral-issue.shtml