How does his life improve when nobody pays the police, fire department, army, navy, air force, marines, and border patrol? How does life improve when there are no federal highways or public schools or courts or prisons or international airports?
I figured you might be referring to money. If anyone got access to my 21-yr old bank account, they'd probably find a negative balance. My assumption was that the only thing valuable on such a machine today would be all the pirated music and video.
Awesome post. I've used all those linux tools except ACL. Will look into that. Given that I'm using Ubuntu and browsing the web a lot, I'm mostly concerned about infection via web browser -- clicking on a funny link or something.
I'm not sure how to set up a linux box as a firewall proxy for windows, but I suspect my router (running DD-WRT) may accomplish more or less the same thing. My LAN connects to my router which connect to my cable modem.
Yeah who needs those youngsters' data? It's all just music/video/games stolen from someone else anyway -- and all they have is that noise the kids are listening to these days -- none of that Clapton or Floyd we veterans need.
We in the older crowd, on the other hand, know that LawnSentry is important to keep your lawn free of those virus infected younglings.
This seems like a good place to ask: What is the best firewall and antivirus software available for Windows? For Linux? I've been a Mcafee customer by default but suspect there's something better for Windows. I also use linux a lot more now and, beyond a custom hosts file, don't have any active antivirus software beyond what comes with Ubuntu. Advice?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
The Feynman Lectures on Physics are awesome. Better than any other materials I ever encountered on the subject of Physics. I don't recall how difficult they are -- i.e., whether they require calculus or not.
Mentally stunted rural honkies also shoot each other. Dick Cheney's Hunting accident comes to mind. I doubt you have any sources to back up your "facts". Sounds like you are just a racist country gun owner.
It's not presumptuous. I think we'll all agree that shooting someone is a helluva lot easier than stabbling/clubbing/strangling them (or shooting a bow and arrow or whatever). Also, check the stats:
Slashdot Mirror
Um, the mandate is funded. Turn off that Glenn Beck garbage and inform yourself!
How does his life improve when nobody pays the police, fire department, army, navy, air force, marines, and border patrol? How does life improve when there are no federal highways or public schools or courts or prisons or international airports?
Also, it's spelled "further" and not "furthur".
Truly inspiring testimony! Lord knows how important a tidy, youngster-free lawn is.
I figured you might be referring to money. If anyone got access to my 21-yr old bank account, they'd probably find a negative balance. My assumption was that the only thing valuable on such a machine today would be all the pirated music and video.
Awesome post. I've used all those linux tools except ACL. Will look into that. Given that I'm using Ubuntu and browsing the web a lot, I'm mostly concerned about infection via web browser -- clicking on a funny link or something.
I'm not sure how to set up a linux box as a firewall proxy for windows, but I suspect my router (running DD-WRT) may accomplish more or less the same thing. My LAN connects to my router which connect to my cable modem.
Yeah who needs those youngsters' data? It's all just music/video/games stolen from someone else anyway -- and all they have is that noise the kids are listening to these days -- none of that Clapton or Floyd we veterans need.
We in the older crowd, on the other hand, know that LawnSentry is important to keep your lawn free of those virus infected younglings.
This seems like a good place to ask: What is the best firewall and antivirus software available for Windows? For Linux? I've been a Mcafee customer by default but suspect there's something better for Windows. I also use linux a lot more now and, beyond a custom hosts file, don't have any active antivirus software beyond what comes with Ubuntu. Advice?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
The Feynman Lectures on Physics are awesome. Better than any other materials I ever encountered on the subject of Physics. I don't recall how difficult they are -- i.e., whether they require calculus or not.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Feynman-Lectures-Physics-boxed/dp/0465023827
If anyone could recommend something comparable for Calculus, I'd love to hear it. I need a Calculus refresher.
Mentally stunted rural honkies also shoot each other. Dick Cheney's Hunting accident comes to mind. I doubt you have any sources to back up your "facts". Sounds like you are just a racist country gun owner.
How about giving us a link so we can make some kind of comparison?
Still, you should eat a dick.
It's not presumptuous. I think we'll all agree that shooting someone is a helluva lot easier than stabbling/clubbing/strangling them (or shooting a bow and arrow or whatever). Also, check the stats:
http://www.nij.gov/topics/crime/gun-violence/
In 2006, firearms were used in 68 percent of murders, 42 percent of robbery offenses and 22 percent of aggravated assaults nationwide.