Slashdot Mirror
Grooveshark Shuts Down
An anonymous reader writes: Grooveshark, one of the most popular music streaming websites, has announced that they are shutting down immediately. Several lawsuits from the record companies pushed the company out of business. In a notice posted on the Grooveshark website, its two founders said, "[D]espite best of intentions, we made very serious mistakes. We failed to secure licenses from rights holders for the vast amount of music on the service. That was wrong. We apologize. Without reservation." All of their music has been deleted, and the site itself now belongs to the record companies.
NewYorkCountryLawyer adds that according to the settlement (PDF), Grooveshark must pay $50 million, but no money judgment has been entered against individual defendants.
Best I can do now is a shark that can slow dance. It's just not the same.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Despite best of intentions, we made very serious mistakes. We failed to secure licenses from rights holders for the vast amount of music on the service.
Huh? Surely it can't be best of intentions if you publish music on your service for which you know you don't have proper licenses.
We failed to secure licenses from rights holders for the vast amount of music on the service.
But you still continued? Good plan there.
Our national-championship-winning basketball coach of 19 years, Billy Donovan, is leaving, and Grooveshark is shutting down.
Mayday! Mayday!
[D]espite best of intentions, we made very serious mistakes. We failed to secure licenses from rights holders for the vast amount of music on the service
How is it that if I shared that many songs with that many people without authorization I'd be fined literally trillions of dollars, but they get to walk away like this? Very odd.
Except without all that silly permanence when things go wrong.
As long as the founders played the corporation game right, they have no personal liability at stake. A corporation is just like a person, except that when a corporation violates a law which would burden it for life, or financially destroy it, it magically disintegrates leaving the real people who ran it into the ground clean and unencumbered by their wrongdoing.
There are good reasons for the existence of corporations; this isn't one of them.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I get that they have to remove their music library and have decided to shut down as a result... but why must they hand their software, patents and other IP to the music cartels? Why can't they keep their own stuff and choose to go legit?
Buck Feta. You know what to do.
Grooveshark let users to listen to the music the users payed for.
When you pay for music, you neither own the music, the media, the files or even the right to listen to it where you want.
You should have known it was too good to be true.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
If you neither sung it yourself, nor obtained the singer's permission, you have no right to play it. Seems like a perfectly self-evident rule to me.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Why do people think all this music is Free?
Sure, musicians are being screwed over by the labels and publishers, but that's not a reason to outright steal it and deny the musicians the meager cash they are getting paid.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
you will be missed
i wish they could at least allow me to download my playlist in a CSV format
it's going to be though to build it back from scratch
"life is a joke, and someone is laughing at me"
And I'm sure all the artists are rejoicing in the victory that they'll financially benefit from handsomely!!!
As an occasional substitute DJ, this will impact me. I use Virtual DJ software package; it uses GrooveShark as a primary music service. (It also scours the web with their own service that isn't as good.)
(Without reading all of it...) It looks like the judgment cites digital distribution, which is generally covered by SoundExchange. SoundExchange generally covers the type of license (statutory) that covers the media or streaming rights. Whereas the performance rights (BMI, ASCAP) cover the performance rights. Also, for those interested ... business establishments that play music generally need to secure performance rights licenses directly from performance rights groups like BMI or ASCAP. Licensing from BMI and ASCAP increases significantly if your restaurant/club includes a dance floor (implying more of your revenue originates from music).
So, I'm just curious how the breach of non-licensed music (digital distribution) occurred. I'm sure my usage case of GrooveShark doesn't apply to all users. But I am curious how they failed to secure licensing.
Nevertheless, there will be a good chunk of DJs that are scrambling to get music tonight and tomorrow. Credit to those who use their own on-computer library with something like Serato or Traktor. Virtual DJ (on their forums) state that they are looking for another music streaming provider.
Only sysadmins and webmasters deserve to be paid(*) for their work.. musicians, writers and actors need to provide their stuff for free, because they're doing what they love to do.
(*) and no Indians or Sri Lankans need apply. These jobs are for AMERICANS only, that's not evil thinking.
Welcome to the Entitlement Generation.
Population - just about everyone.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Why do people think all this music is Free?
Might I remind you that our app stores are slam full of Free apps, which is the price that the users today demanded.
You know, apps like Pandora...that users can download and install without charge and listen to thousands of hours of music.
I'd say it's pretty fucking obvious why users think music is free. The industry is presenting it that way.
Grooveshark let users to listen to the music the users payed for and all music ever uploaded to Grooveshark even if they didn't pay for that music.
There. FTFY.
Radio, I don't pay for it, Pandora, I don't pay for it, Youtube, I don't pay for it. But I think radio and youtube downloader apps make people think it's already out there for free.
a. Because we payed for the music already when we bought vinyl/cd/bluerays
b. Because digitizing of soundwaves that reach my ear, should not be illegal.
c. Because anything that can be digitally reproduced, should not be artificially limited by law, its the road to "intellect" can be "property" which is the road to thinkpolice.
Take your pick, and go to live events, pay for those. Abolish copyright, it is IMHO a road to nowhere.
The idea that a recording is worth money has been around for ~100 years. Why is an audio recording worth money? Well, the pressing, the artwork, the liner notes, are all cool things to have, but paying someone money for a copy of them playing...? It's kinda silly. Musicians make money from performing, educating, and from patronage. But patronage via records almost never primarily brings money to the artists; it's mostly going to record labels. Copies of music, I don't care where they come from. OTOH, if a DJ is playing other people's music for gain and not crediting them, well, that is just weak. If musicians can sell their artwork or collaborate with artists and make beautiful things to own that include copies of the music, I'm happy to pick them up sometimes for $1-30 depending.mostly on new versus used. But I hope the major labels choke and die.
How did they even find investors or loans or any money at all? "Do you have permission to use the music on your site?" "No" "Okay, have a $10 million loan!"
Why do people think all this music is Free?
Sure, musicians are being screwed over by the labels and publishers, but that's not a reason to outright steal it and deny the musicians the meager cash they are getting paid.
Yes, but I refuse to support these some companies who keep lobbying to extend the copyright law, and do over devious actions in the name of profit for themselves, not for the artists.
Be seeing you...
Stealing is the taking of property with the intention of depriving the owner of the use of said property.
Copying a piece of music is not stealing because it does not suddenly disappear from the hard drive of the musician or render the musician unable to perform it.
...because I spent 1.5 years of my life @ MP3.com running reports and collecting data as discovery for the lawsuits of record companies, publishers, individual artists, and whomever owned any percentage of any playback rights in any country (and yes this means people who owned less that 1% of a song's rights in Turkmenistan).
I'd love if they could start a new company that pays royalties, Spotify-style, where it can, yet allows users to share rare or otherwise unavailable content as well. Because of the mess of regional rights ownership there will probably never a fully legal way to enjoy all music worldwide, so a gray market will always be necessary to fill the gaps.
In the meantime, I'll sing a song for them.
(...and good luck downloading that legally, US slashdotters)
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Why do people think all this music is Free?
Sure, musicians are being screwed over by the labels and publishers, but that's not a reason to outright steal it and deny the musicians the meager cash they are getting paid.
In the past, free (stolen) music was not common - relatively speaking - because the means of distribution were limited. The average consumer of music understood that the form factor - record, 8 track, tape, CD - required they buy it once. This set the bar for musicians (though let's be honest, record companies always made the lion share of the profit) to expect they could sell their music at a certain price.
Fast forward to our hyper-connected world, delivery seems effortless, or at least bundled with the monthly fee we pay our ISP. Stealing music no longer feels like actual stealing because it is all digital, and we're accustomed to sending and receiving bits without a thought to the huge amount of infrastructure and manpower required to create content and keep all those servers running. Additionally, the market forces dictate a new pricing structure because we're consuming music sans physical medium, so the expectation is that price will drop accordingly. But we have a decades old system predicated on the $10 - $15 price point (give or take inflation) for an album.
We have conflicting interests: Joe Musician still has to perfect his craft and write all those songs. He can engineer it at home, but let's be honest, that is often obvious in the end product. Either way, Joe still has the same level of effort to make an album, but the consumers now have the world at their fingertips and an expectation that with a widespread and immediate audience Joe will take a lot less for his record.
Note: This is not a new phenomenon, nor is it only in the digital space. Costco and Walmart have done the same thing for the cost of manufactured and farmed goods. Do those cheap chicken thighs really reflect the cost of raising chickens? They do if one is okay with cramming chickens into a factory farm. In this instance, the environment and well being of the animals suffer, so no one complains.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
Raveshark?
Downgraded to GrooveEvilTrout.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
those radio and youtube download apps follow the same principle as cassette tapes recorders and VCR's. Sony Betamax case made such actions legal. These downloader apps do the same thing. It's just a different source.
Exactly! The legal definition of stealing or theft involves tangible property. When you can take one copy of a thing and effortlessly make hundreds of copies, their is no tangible value. That is why it is called copyright infringement. No stealing or theft.
GrooveMutantSeaBass
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
I'm guessing you have never heard of mix tapes or mix cds? I imagine it even happened in the 8 track era as well, but I don't have experience back that far.
In the middle ages, it was common for music to be shared for free, what suddenly changed to make it so expensive? It has only gotten easier to reproduce music.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Maybe RADIO had something to do with it......You know getting free music for almost a CENTURY...
Good-bye
Is there any way I could get my playlists?
They don't think it's free, they think it's paid for indirectly. They listened to the radio for years, and never (directly) paid a dime. It was paid for by the resulting sales of records, concerts and merchandise that those radio listens generated. Why should it be any different just because "radio" is now "streaming"?
Most people did not record on 8-track, but cassette and 8-track were largely coincident formats, kind of like betamax and vhs. 8-track offered playback convenience and maybe a little quality bump in the beginning, cassette offered size convenience (until we got auto-reverse).
True audiophiles back in the day would record to reel-to-reel.
To return to the thread, pirated music goes back a long, long way. It was just sheet music before performance recordings. And before that, bards copied each others' songs. And before that, Grog beat his rocks just like L'hurd.
they forgot the lasers
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
A streaming service that offers more than the usual EU/US crap had to end sooner or later. This seemed to be pretty much the only service in the western world with a decent enough selection of Japanese and Korean music.
Copying a piece of music is not stealing because it does not suddenly disappear from the hard drive of the musician or render the musician unable to perform it.
It is not stealing. You are absolutely right. It is copyright infringement. Punishable with fines up to $150,000 per work (unless the copyright holder can prove that the actual damage is higher).
So now that the labels own the website, what will they do with it?!
They have a crappy reputation for shutting down sites which actually function pretty well in terms of giving consumers what they actually want, and then never reviving them again.
Wouldn't it make sense for the labels to operate these things? Why don't they? It's been over 15 years now.
ad
Because I can! [Brainrub.com]
I wonder how they're going to refund current customers who prepaid (yearly)
It goes back even farther than the 8-track era... I still have a *huge* collection of my father's mid-to-late 1960's equivalent of mix-tapes and concert bootlegs... on reel-to-reel.
But, yes, there were kids dragging portable reel-to-reel recorders out to concerts back when the Beatles were still a fairly new thing, and they were certainly running a wire from their friends' record players to the line-in/mic jack on the aforementioned player/recorders (and more than a few who rigged a few similar setups off their dads' brand-new HiFi AM/FM stereo sets.
The biggest draw from what I've heard is that you can fit a whole lot of LP albums and/or a metric ton of 45-RPM singles onto a single reel...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I don't buy new music or go to concerts
Lots of people don't buy new music, and it's not because they're boycotting an "evil industry", it's because all the new music sucks.
I don't go to movies or subscribe to cable
"Cord cutting" is skyrocketing, and again it's not because people are intentionally boycotting, it's because cable TV is just commercial-packed bullshit programming like Honey Boo Boo and people have lost interest, as they would rather spend their free time doing or seeing things on the internet. It's not just geeks, it's everyone.
To be fair, radio is/was was as 'free' as Google is today.
The radio's 'product for sale' isn't the music, but the ears of its listeners sold in a 15/30/60 second time-slice to advertisers.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Thanks! Now can you define "colloquial" for us all too?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Maybe RADIO had something to do with it......You know getting free music for almost a CENTURY...
Radio isn't "free." The radio stations had to pay the record labels, songwriters and artists for the music they played. In turn, they charged businesses money for - horrors - "unskippable" ads that you had to listen to. Or in the case of public radio stations, asking you for money directly to keep them on the air.
There is no free lunch.
"95% of all Slashdot
sorry, but Musicans see no cash from music sales. They make their money playing live shows. So what your meant to say is it is wrong to steal from shady music execs who legally steal from Musicians.
Think about it. You may love the open source movement, but how would you like it if you wrote software at your day job for a salary...and then one day the government said "Hey, we decided that all software is free now. So you can't charge for it, even if you worked hard to make it and invested tons of money in the software-making process."
That's a nonsense argument. Absent monopoly grants, software goes to the person who paid for it, and they have the choice of whether to release it or not.
It's when it's released to the public, do you have Men With Guns threaten the People for making copies of that software or not? That is the ethical question. Do predictions of purported benefit from social-engineering justify threats of murder?
You, or at least anyone reading this who fits this profile, should think carefully about the foundation of your own ethics.
*Yours* is based on threats of violence for duplication (not stealing) of information. It abolishes a portion of _real_ property rights for imaginary ones, when there is no demonstrable harm other than a postulate of diminution of earning potential.
The reduced argument is "murder for profit".
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
copyright
käprt/
noun
noun: copyright; plural noun: copyrights
1. the exclusive legal right, given to an originator or an assignee to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material, and to authorize others to do the same.
adjective
adjective: copyright
1. protected by copyright.
"permission to reproduce photographs and other copyright material"
Sure...just because you write a tune doesn't mean people will pay for it. But if someone wants to hear what you wrote, you have every right to charge them. Same as if you wrote a book. If you charge too much, or what you wrote sucks...no profits for you. If they DO like it, then you have every right to profit from it.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The biggest draw from what I've heard is that you can fit a whole lot of LP albums and/or a metric ton of 45-RPM singles onto a single reel...
Not really. The biggest draw for reel-to-reel tape was audio quality. A Quarter-track 7 inch reel of 1Mil tape running at 7.5 inches per second (normal speed) will only hold 30 minutes of music on each side.
If you had the "Big" 10 inch reels, then you could fit an hour on each side at 7.5 IPS, or if you slowed the thing down to 3-3/4 IPS you could get 2 hours per side, but then the quality was no better than a modern Cassette.
If you wanted very high quality, then you ran 2-track mode, (one direction only) at 15 IPS, thus only 30 minutes on a 10 inch reel.
History never had a way to record "a whole lot of LP albums and/or a metric ton of 45-RPM singles" onto a single media until the mp3 encoded compact disk, then flash media.
Yes, I am broadcast engineer, recording studio engineer, Hi Fi enthusiast, old timer >my lawn, etc...
> Musicians being screwed by labels and publishers is coming to an end
Oh, that's hilarious. I'll believe it when I see it.
With frickin' lasers on its head?
When I make a company that makes product A and it competes with product B from abother company, I'm "depriving that company of revenue". Is that stealing as well?
And also, as is commonly stated here, just because I'm willing to download an album for free does not mean I would have bought it for ten dollars had the free download not been available. If anything, my downloading the free album exposes me to an artist that I otherwise would not have been as familiar with and make me far more likely to attend their shows, where they can charge me anywhere from 10-200 dollars at the door.
The definition of stealing does not require tangible property, it just involves depriving the owner of that property.
If you take a trade secret from someone and share it with the world, you have stolen the trade secret, because, while the owner might still have the information, they have been deprived of a secret that was not yours to share. Plagiarism too is a form of stealing, for you are depriving the author of a work from their name rights. (And yes, while not honored in the U.S. outside the bounds of copyright, I agree with the moral rights of authorship.)
Copying a song does not deprive the owner of the source copy nor the author of the original work of anything, hence it is not stealing. It's not even a crime morally. In the U.S., Congress has decided to sometimes make this a civil crime called copyright infringement, because the Constitution allows them to do so if they think it will encourage more work from those authors. Something it's not a crime at all, like for older works or government publications.
In other words, I agree with your sentiment, but don't wrap the definitions of theft and copyright infringement up in the terms of tangible property. Intangible things can be stolen, too. Focus on how it deprives the author of something they previously possessed.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
I'm guessing you have never heard of mix tapes or mix cds? I imagine it even happened in the 8 track era as well, but I don't have experience back that far.
In the middle ages, it was common for music to be shared for free, what suddenly changed to make it so expensive? It has only gotten easier to reproduce music.
As I said, people tended to buy music once. Yes, there was pirating in the form of mix tapes, but I'm fairly certain it was not even a drop in the bucket of online piracy (to use the parlance of our time).
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
This sounds absurd, but that's my point. You can't FORCE music to be free.
I don't understand. You don't force soundwaves to be free. They are free by default. Similarly, bits and bites are free by default. There is nothing absurd about it - proprietary software and singers are in the same boat.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
online piracy
Or maybe I should say, digital piracy.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
You know getting free but old, overplayed music for almost a CENTURY...
FTFY! Radio plays the same, banal top 100 music over and over. These songs have been played so many times on radio, nobody enjoys them anymore. If radio started to play all the good music, nobody would buy records, they would just listen to the radio.
If you wrote some software and sold it to someone for $1000, you are cool with them making copies and giving it away?
After all, you still have your copy and the original buyer still has theirs. So it's not stealing, right?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
So I expect you are against patents too. So if you invest 5 years and 5 million dollars into designing a product that no one else has and everyone needs, you're cool with someone stealing your design and selling it for lower costs?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
If you wrote some software and sold it to someone for $1000, you are cool with them making copies and giving it away?
If it took him less than 20 hours, he's making over $104,000 / year writing software, so he's probably OK with it.
The entire GNU philosophy / GNU Manifesto is based on the idea that software writers are craftsmen engaged in making works for hire. It's no different than making furniture.
I personally don't agree with that economic model, but I'm pretty sure by his statements that he's OK with it.
Anyone with some legal experience able to clarify this? Given that grooveshark wasn't...exactly...apologetic about their strategy(nor has it changed all that much), my assumption is that the sudden shift to grovelling-apology-mode has much more to do with losing than it does with any change of heart.
I'm pretty sure the apology has a hell of a lot more to do with the transfer of control of the domain name to the record label than it has to do with the actual opinions of Grooveshark, or really, anyone who was employed by them, since whatever statements are up currently are hosted on RIAA owned servers on a RIAA owned domain, and likely dictated to RIAA employed web masters by RIAA marketing executives.
I don't think anyone at Grooveshark would willingly admit legal liability so blatantly, unless they had discontinued their schizophrenia medication.
If you pay 1/100th or 1/200th the full retail price of a toothbrush, expect to pay every time you use it. That's what's happening with streaming music. Listeners are paying a tiny fraction of the 99 cent song to listen to it once.
It was his decision to record music and sell it to the public.
Fixed.
If you enjoyed his work, he happens to have a sale going on...$10 for the album and you can enjoy it anytime you want. You can put it on your computer, ipod, cell phone and enjoy it anywhere.
But if you just download it and do the same, then you are taking money out of his pocket just the same as if you lifted a bag of chips from 7-11.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
You fundamentally fail to understand intellectually property rights
i do understand intellectual property rights, that's how i know intellectual property is fundamentally wrong.
you, however, seem to fail to understand how the media industry works.
The patent system is actually there to let other people copy your design, but adds a grace period where you can be paid back for your effort in working on an idea, usually through making sure you are first to implement that idea. It is merely supposed to be a provision to encourage you to share an idea which you might otherwise hide while you sought to benefit from it. It is not supposed to "protect" your "property".
It is quite possible for a company to preserve its trade secrets without a patent. Patents are primarily supposed to help the People, not the "owners". The patent period is a bribe so that the information is more effectively spread and not hidden.
If a patent is turned from a vehicle which is supposed to encourage the spread of ideas into simply a government sponsored industry, which counter intuitively tries to make it harder to spread ideas, it goes against the original reason for patents.
Copyright has a similar premise, and is going the same way. Mickey Mouse or a Metallica album is supposed to be protected only long enough to make it worthwhile for the artist to profit from its creation. That isn't supposed to be a guarantee that they get to drive a Bentley at the end of it or that you'll be able to have an industry based on the limitation of ideas.
What is actually happening is that the copyright and patents are being used to make it worthwhile not for the artist to make their music or the inventor to profit from their invention, it's being used to make it possible for publishing companies and patent-holding organizations to profit from the works of those artists. That's why copyrights are getting extended all the time.
Ease in which music or ideas can be copied should be a hint that these are not a solid basis for an industry. And the extremes to which these industries go to in order to halt the natural spread of performances and ideas only proves that point.
As someone who works in software, I think we have actually solved this issue very simply. Open source software makes money and provides a living to people who work with it every day. The ease in which that software can be copied has only made it more popular and the people who have created it even more in demand.
And as someone who has produced both software and music, I agree 100% with the parent on this. And I'm not posting AC :)
I get paid for what I produce, not for what other people experience/consume. This is the case for most developers of intellectual property. It's the next level up: the lawyers/distributors/vendors that require payment for distribution of intellectual property. A lot of their work would vanish if Congress made such a move, because their jobs are artificially created.
Anyone who actually produces intellectual property who would feel threatened by things becoming free needs to take a hard look at why they feel threatened. Do they feel like they are currently being paid more than what they develop is actually worth on an open market?
Pandora makes it pretty clear that music at least costs attention. It has a *lot* of ads, both audio and on the screen. They tell you that you can make the ads go away, for a price.
People still don't quite connect that attention is being used as money, and they do still think of things as "free" even when they're paying in attention. But of all the ad-supported mechanisms I've seen, Pandora most specifically seems to make clear that you're paying one way or another.
agreed.
It was his decision to record music and sell it to the public.
Fixed.
If you enjoyed his work, he happens to have a sale going on...$10 for the album and you can enjoy it anytime you want. You can put it on your computer, ipod, cell phone and enjoy it anywhere.
But if you just download it and do the same, then you are taking money out of his pocket just the same as if you lifted a bag of chips from 7-11.
Really?
First part is false if you live in the UK: format shifting is considered infringement, as it deprives the author of funds they could have gathered by providing it to you in that format.
"Just download it and do the same" -- are you saying that my iTunes downloads don't give me the same freedom to format shift as if I bought a CD?
"you are taking money out of his pocket just the same as if you lifed a bag of chips from 7-11" -- No. If I downloaded something without paying when I would have gladly paid $10 if the free version hadn't been available, I am depriving the author of potential profit. If I walk out of 7-11 without paying for physical goods, I've taken something with tangible value and deprived the store of it (and deprived them of selling it to someone else who would be willing to pay the $2.50).
Look at it this way: if an audio track is on a website next to a "donate" icon, anyone in the world can download it and donate. The cost is the cost to serve the bits, plus the sunk cost of producing the audio track.
If a bag of chips is sitting on a shelf next to a "donate" jar, anyone who is locally present can take the bag of chips. Once that's done, all that is left is the jar, possibly with some money in it.
Where things break down is that we have a concept built around the exchange of value. I might have a bag of chips, you might know how to fix a leaky faucet. In exchange for the bag of chips, I could a) fix your leaky faucet (this is exchange of goods for services) or b) tell you how to fix your faucet (exchange of goods for information). Music is exactly like the second one of these, even though some people conflate it with the first.
If I told you "you can't tell anyone else how to fix a leaky faucet without paying me first" you'd probably just ignore me.
Many music contracts are, however, written up this way, so that the distributor gets the right to say who can tell who (and how) how to fix that faucet. If someone breaks their agreement not to tell, and then tells a bunch of other people how to fix the faucet, are those other people suddenly taking money out of the pocket of the guy who sold this information to the distributor?
Think about that.
I haven't traced back what the GP said, so I'm not exactly sure of the point of the parent.
However, where I come from, forests are for the most part public property. I grew up not only picking berries, but also picking mushrooms, and selling those on to distributors. Does this mean I was stealing for profit? Others were unable to pick those mushrooms after I did. However, I made sure to cut them appropriately so that a new bunch would grow back, and I put in the actual work of picking, sorting and transporting the mushrooms. My picking was only depriving other people of immediate mushroom gratification/profits from doing what I had done.
Now, if you live in a place where all forests are owned by individuals and corporations, then picking berries/mushrooms would indeed be theft/poaching. But I'd argue that "owning" that forest could be considered theft from people at large as well -- just like "owning" a public event such that any re-depiction of that event afterwards by anyone other than you is cultural theft. Yes, I'm talking about DIsney/IOC/etc. here.
If they DO like it, then you have every right to profit from it.
Not every right, just copy right.
"Can you"? Could you clarify? Do you mean legally under copyright law?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
There's a whole list in Bite magazine :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Let me put it this way... there's plenty of free sand on the beaches. Can someone offer me a free CPU, since it is mainly made of sand (and should therefore be free according to your logic)?
Lets be clear, when you say music do you mean some nerd hitting running some scripts in some synthesizer program, because that definitely has value.
yet another victim of the cloud. tragic.
In which case they don't file patents. If trade secret is incapable of protecting the IP (by threats such as reverse engineering), they file patents. It's common sense, since trade secrets can last almost infinite years.
Not true. Patent are an exchange of resources -- a deal/trade. The patent holder can make a ton of money off his novel invention (because of 20 years of govt enforced monopoly) and the govt and the people get improvement in lifestyle because the secrets of the invention are exposed for anyone to remanufacture the product.
Also, let's not forget that the invention still needs an implementer. The implementer of the patent (after its expiry) also makes a lot of money of other people's work and a big corp is usually such an implementer of expired patents. So the patent system benefits the inventor less and the implementer most (along with the govt.). IOW, patent laws were written to benefit big business the most, since after the patent has expired, big business can bring the product based on expired patent to the market, at the lowest cost . And they can make profit off expired patents for infinite years as long as they have the lowest cost of production and distribution.
So just like short copyright terms, inventors are screwed of long term profits so that big business benefits the most. So patents are not a great deal unlike what many /.ers say.
Of course, I am speaking of the reason for patents to be authorized, at least under the US Constitution, not the actual functioning of patents, which definitely has a debatable effect on the ability of an inventor to profit reasonably from their invention.
Personally, I'd be fine with them doing away patents at this point. A scenario that punishes an implementer to the benefit of someone who buys a regulatory fiction like a patent, is counter productive.
this kind of attitude isn't going to allow musicians to snort coke off've hookers, is it. what's wrong with you.
Requiem for the American Dream
Are you the same guy? Anyway... there is inherent value added when you manufacture something from raw materials. The raw materials themselves are also on someone's property. Sand is not "free" and neither are microchips.
On the other hand, if someone is whistling a song and the song winds its way into your head and you start to whistle the same song, you have not stolen anything, there is no moral hazard, and copying the song was completely free.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It doesn't have to be tangible, it has to be exclusive. I can steal your bitcoins because they can only be used by one of us.
Absent intellectual property laws and copy protection, software and music recordings are are worth nothing on the open market because anybody can get it for the price of a USB stick or the bandwidth.
Who would pay you to produce software and music if "the next level up" couldn't sell it on?
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Grooveshark may have caused a very theoretical $50 million in "damage" and were forced to "apologize without reservation" but the greedy evil fucktards that nearly sank the planetary economy get to pay relative pittance fines without apology or admitting guilt?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Because, for tens of THOUSANDS of years, performers needed to be able to, you know, perform, in order to get paid.. WHen the phonograph first appeared the very thought of trying to make money from recordings was ludicrous. We (As a professional musician myselffor 40 years) used recordings as "advertisingt" to get people to comne to our shows. At 5 cents a record profiteering from recordings was considered absurd. The Beatles, and the Rolling Stones, and Allen Klein changed all that.. Nowadays, "artists" NEED to sell their recordinhgs because the big selling artists are talentless nimrods that can't even sing in tune without electronic help. The artists that CAN perform live, conversely, are the ones supporting musiuc sharing, almost to a one...
What you don't understand is that music production is expensive and if you want to be a musician you should be able to make a living at it without having to play I. Clubs every night. There is only one Mona Lisa by davinci, would you pay a lot for a copy? Just because it can be copied and distributed daily doesn't make it right. The artist and the label should be paid. How do you people live in a capitalist society and not understand the basic principal of our economic system. An artist mushy spend $100000 in studio expenses and instruments along with weeks of work and tons of creative effort. And you think you should just be able to get that stuff for free? You think the studio should provide a million dollar recording studio for free? Music and art are a business and just be user distribution mean gods changed doesn't change how the business works.
> I'd say it's pretty fucking obvious why users think music is free. The industry is presenting it that way.
Firstly, no, people don't think music is free, unless you're standing next to a busker or at a venue playing what they paid for to play. Everyone knows commercial music is commercial.
Secondly, by your reasoning, giving people samples of something makes everyone believe all the rest of that thing is also free.
Remember Kazaa back in 2001? Nobody thought they had a right to free music until Kazaa got plastered all over the news and everyone discovered they could be naughty kids and get stuff for free. The concept has stuck ever since - mainly because it's still easy to do with any torrent program. People love getting free stuff if they can, no matter what it is, that's just human nature. As long as it's easy.
If anything, companies giving away free music is a *response* to the how torrenting has presented music to people as free.
There are musicians that would love to have this type of platform. Oh wait they do.
Freshjamradio.com does with the consent of the owners of the music.
The old Model just doesn't work any longer.
no matter how good it is, it is human nature always wants to make things better
What you don't understand is that music production is expensive and if you want to be a musician you should be able to make a living at it without having to play I. Clubs every night. There is only one Mona Lisa by davinci, would you pay a lot for a copy? Just because it can be copied and distributed daily doesn't make it right. The artist and the label should be paid. How do you people live in a capitalist society and not understand the basic principal of our economic system. An artist mushy spend $100000 in studio expenses and instruments along with weeks of work and tons of creative effort. And you think you should just be able to get that stuff for free? You think the studio should provide a million dollar recording studio for free? Music and art are a business and just be user distribution mean gods changed doesn't change how the business works.
Let's take this assertion by assertion.
1) What you don't understand....
Are you sure I don't understand? Or maybe you're not getting part of what I was saying?
2) Music production is expensive
It doesn't have to be. As I said, I've produced music. I've also performed music and recorded music. I've never spent more than $100/sitting for studio time; if you don't go with the major labels, you don't have to pay the major fees -- and the equipment has got to the point where recording and production doesn't really cost all that much in real expenses -- even Garage Band can handle basic production tasks (but doesn't have the recording room, which IS a major sunk expense). These days, I just trade studio time for services, and it costs me nothing but my time (and keeps my ears sharp).
3) If you want to be a musician you should be able to make a living at it without having to play I. Clubs every night.
I've never played I. Clubs. Of course, as a musician, I've never made it my day job either. But I could easily do so simply using an indy producer and social media, and not sell myself to the major labels, who might or might not decide to promote me. There's lots of ways to make a living as a musician; just not as a pop star -- because just like sports stars, there's only room for a few of those. Entitlement doesn't put food on the table.
4) There is only one Mona Lisa....
I personally wouldn't pay for a copy. I can see it online, I can make duplicates, take photos of it, etc. Copies are in the public domain. And da Vinci isn't going to be making any money off it anyway -- and didn't have copyright on his side back in the day; people copied his work freely, and yet people still appreciate it. So how did he make a living? He was a good painter, and people paid him to paint things. I think this example kind of proves my point much better than it proves yours.
5) Just because it can be copied and distributed daily doesn't make it right.
So you think it's wrong that I can copy and distribute the Mona Lisa daily? Do you think it's wrong that Disney can copy and distribute such titles as Cinderella, Mulan, Pocohantas, etc. daily, and even charge money for them? Because that's also copying the works of others. Or is your problem only with works that were produced by people still alive, who are expecting a certain level of remuneration for what they created?
6) The artist and the label should be paid.
Time to review my comments you replied to. Personally, I think the artist should be paid a lot MORE. I think labels should for the most part be abolished. I think recording studios should get paid what they charge the musicians, and if demand drops because someone can do it for less, then they don't deserve to be paid more, just because they want it. Right now, the labels only use specific studios, and so the studios have a monopoly on the labels' musicians, and can charge what they want (which gets paid by the labels, and docked against the musicians' contract).
The bigger question, and the point I was raising is WHO should pay the artist? In my view
Who would pay you to produce software and music if "the next level up" couldn't sell it on?
The consumers. You don't need a "next level up". Also, advertisers, corporations that want works for hire, any anyone else. Would you end up with individuals making millions off of one hit song? Probably not. But you'd end up with many more musicians than now actually able to make a living producing music.
Morons like you should learn how to read. I never said that they were my ideas of property and wealth. I was commenting on the convenient re-defining of "theft" to exclude oneself from moral censure. Grow a brain.
They get their money for that from concerts.
An artist has a moral right to choose how their work is distributed. Copying an artist's work without permission deprives them of their right to choose how they want to share it.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
I'd say it's pretty fucking obvious why users think music is free. The industry is presenting it that way.
Or, people gravitate towards the natural state that music has been in for thousands of years: people pay to hear a live performances, not so much copies of the performances.
A copy of a song, just like on the radio, should serve as advertising for the artist. A live show is the work that the artist should get paid for, not an infinitely copy'able digital file.