And of course the original "Battlefield Earth" trilogy & it's prequel "What The Big Alien Did Before Landing On Earth" trilogy some 20 years later were equal blockbuster successes to "Star Wars" at the cinema also...
By your same logic, I should be writing this from prison since, as the cook in my house, I have a really nice set of sharp cooking knives that I *COULD* kill someone with - but there are currently no policemen smashing my door down to arrest me.
Incidentally, I said in a previous reply to someone that I'm a Linux user and therefore well acquainted with file sharing as a perfectly legitimate application for downloading free software and Linux distros - so please don't try to manouevre me with semantics into something I clearly did not say.
No-one did anything during the 90s because money was not in short supply & most people appear to have had plenty of it to waste.
It's times like these with money in short supply that people need to take a serious look at how they're spending their money and how to put it to best use.
Unfortunately, there are still too many mindless maggots that queue at midnight for new computer games or new iPhones that end up sending a message to corporations about how it's okay to screw us over with DRM and sub-standard products, provided there's enough marketing and hype around it.
So you're one of those bastards that keeps the media cartel in business? In fact, you even fund their lobby towards evil legislation such as the one in TFA.
Sorry, do you drive a car by any chance and think about what it might be doing to the environment?
Do you drink Starbuck's coffee and think about how much the farmer got paid for growing it?
Do you wear branded jeans and wonder about how much the Third World employee got paid for making them?
Surely all the above are more important issues to consider than who gets the profits from every CD you buy, yet you're here trying to "change the world" and trying to justify your greed & theft in the process.
Like I said already, I buy my music, as a self-admitted freeloader, you steal it. Therefore you don't get a say in the matter because I subsidise your music habits.
So shut the fuck up and go earn some money so artists get paid for their work.
"*ALL* I care about" Well what you care about is not frankly very interesting in the overall scheme of things. That you are happy with a broken outdated system is fine. Your argument seems to be based around " I am happy, I personally cannot visualize another system of music distribution, thus I ignore the implications of a monopoly situation".
Why should I? It works for me... music is one of the few things I spend my hard-earned money on that is consistently good value for money. I don't see a broken out dated system, I've been happily buying CDs for 20+ years now, and they are much better than the LPs and tapes I bought before that.
Black or white? Your definition, perhaps because people disagree with you?
Is that not the purpose of posting on here? To inform and also have discussion and intelligent argument?
None of the music I own was connected to me by marketing. It was discovered via means other than a major label.
Well, I'm listening. Enlighten me, how did you discover it?
The cost of recording music now is virtually free now anyway.
How did you work that one out? Playing an instrument is free (once you have access to an instrument) and you can certainly record yourself for low cost. But for a professional quality recording you still presumably need someone to engineer and mix it, and you would probably want to record it in a studio that's accoustically designed for the purpose. That all costs money...
By the way I work with lots of musicians and I tell them all the same when I record them, give your music away in order to build an audience for your live performances. The old system is dead.
Well fine, let's see if they do that and see if it works. If I walked up to the same group of musicians and suggested they, say, jump off a cliff, I doubt any of them would do it... just because you told them to give their music away, doesn't mean they would do it either. I mean, in what professional capacity did you give them that advice? Such that you're confident they will follow it...
Maybe Eric Clapton made money from the "old system" but 99% of the working musicians never made a dime from recorded music.
In which case, they make the decision that either music or money is more important to them - if it's the latter, go get a proper job then. Sorry what does this have to do with anything I've said? I'm just a music listener who wants to find good quality music at a good price...
And yes, if there are thousands of music web sites, we have enough technology and search knowledge to allow people to find what they want.
Right. So you mean to tell me that you are going to spend lots more time finding stuff that you will enjoy listening to, are you?
So, in other words, you're not a serious music fan at the moment because you don't like the CD format (I believe the term you used was "broken"?) despite it being the best and clearest way to buy music at the moment, but when it's available for download in a lossy format from thousands of bands web sites, you're then going to become a serious music fan and spend hour after hour searching for stuff to listen to... I think not.
Now explain tome exactly how this music monopoly benefits anyone besides you. It certainly does not benefit the majority of musicians. Oh, I guess maybe copyright exists to make sure U2 and Eric Clapton can make the maximum from their music and damn the rest.
Explain to me how someone who gets maximum enjoyment from listening to high quality audio CDs on a reasonably good hi-fi benefits from having to download it in a lossy format just like "Pick N Mix" sweeties at the cinema.
Explain to me how musicians who are currently used to touring off the strength of a new album will organise tours in future when they are only producing odd tracks here and there because the people with no attention spans who call themselves music fans have decided this is the way music should be distributed.
Of course, telling people to "get balls and a backbone" just because they disagree with your approach isn't abusive in the slightest...
Right, so tell the people who come on here proudly crowing to everyone that they're "sticking it to the man" just because they're greedy leechers who want something for nothing to stop also - because I'm *SICK AND TIRED* of subsidising their music habits...
Everyone's views of "good music" differ, if someone else likes music from $EVIL_LABEL they have three choices, buy into the DRM BS, download and be labelled a cirminal or miss out on something they enjoy because of the greed of someone who didn't even have a hand in producing the music, literally a leech on society benefitting from the talent of others.
Why's this relevant to anything I've said?
I don't buy DRM music, the one time I did it went back to the shop and I got a refund. Other than that, I don't give a shit about record companies making profits, that's up to them. As far as I'm concerned they produce more than enough good product at a good enough price for me to continue buying music. Like I said already, Eric Clapton does not give a shit that I got no bonus last year; I like his music but I don't give a shit about his cut of the profits.
As for your view on when a group is or isn't allowed to refer to itself as a party, it's totally nonsensical. Would Labour or the Conservatives have ever come to power if they'd been forced to call themselves a coallition of loonies with broadly similar principles instead of the X Party?
Many a true word spoken in jest!:-)
In truth, hadn't thought about it and don't really care. In my 48 years on this Earth I've learnt there are far too many people with far too much time on their hands who think they have something inportant to say but I don't have the time or inclination to listen to it.
I like music, I like CDs, music is good value for money.
Digital downloads are a lossy waste of money that will ultimately destroy the music industry. And it will be destroyed by people treating music like Pick N Mix sweeties because they've not got the attention span to listen to a music album properly.
What - like the Green Party? Or the Christian Party? You can quite happily be a political party with millions of supports no seats in Parliament. Does that make you not a politcal party?
And both of them dangerous loonies in the process.
Oh, I see - so you can "support" a party but not actually "vote" for them? That's an interesting slant...
This is the FINAL time I will say this - you have NO political representation in government, therefore you wield NO power and you might as well be "The Free Clogs For Dogs" party...
If nobody has elected someone in your party to a position of political representation then it doesn't say much about interest in your policies, does it?
I could form a party today called "Free Party Hats For Pets Party" that has no more political power than the "Pirate Party" and probably has just as much chance of political representation.
Tell me something, when every music artist is selling their own music through their own web site, and there are tens of thousands of them all doing it at the same time, what is going to aid you in finding the stuff in all that "noise" that is going to appeal to your tastes? Are you *REALLY* telling me that every piece of music you own has not, in some way, been connected to you by some kind of marketing?
Again, you're a Slashdotter that refuses to accept anything unless it's in true "black and white" terms...
I don't give a shit how much money an artist makes from their work, just like Eric Clapton does not give a shit whether or not I got a pay rise last year.
*ALL* I care about is I'm getting a product that is worth the money I paid for it - sure, I like to think I have some social conscience before I buy stuff but I don't think world poverty is being preserved just because I buy a music CD...
Why do people feel this *NEED* to get behind some kind of cause all of the time?
Besides which, if I buy a CD, the artist gets *SOMETHING*...
So the Green Party in the US is not a party because they have no Federal representation (or do they? I really don't know for sure)?
I'm in the UK, I have no great interest in US politics - as I believe is also the case the other way round.
Nope, if they don't have representation in government, they're not a party - and the Greens are a prime example of an organised bunch of tree-hugging loonies.
You are a narrow-minded piece of shit that is probably paid by the assholes ruining the world of "intellectual" property.
And you must be telepathic or highly empathic to make that assumption about me purely on what I have revealed to be my views on music buying.
Actually, I'm nothing more than a person that enjoys good music - and I'm willing to reward someone who makes something that I enjoy.
You also probably need to go read some of my historical posts also - from them you'll see that anyone who throws abuse at me automatically loses the argument; because if you need to resort to abuse, you've nothing more intelligent to say to me.
So thanks for another victory and "Have A Great Day"!
But then my argument is that if they're not given the "Piracy" justification to do it in the first place, then they just look like a government infringing on personal liberties - in which case we can just kick the bastards out.
Not that my political allegiances are any of your business but I've never voted BNP nor do I think I ever will.
However, they do have some elected representation (in the European Parliament I seem to recall) and can probably justify referring to themselves as a party.
Again, let's not talk semantics - any bunch of loonies can gather together and call themselves what they like and (within reason) say what they like. It doesn't automatically follow that anyone's listening to them or that they wield any form of power.
Very good advice indeed, and not only is that my approach, but I recommend it to everyone else as well. Check out sites like Jamendo. Also, donate to support those artists and corporations who have a 21st-Century approach to distribution.
Thanks for the advice but if you don't mind, I'll choose what music I listen to and how I'll buy it...
You know, that's the problem these days - everyone's far too busy poking in their big fat noses as to "how" something was done, rather than just deciding on the quality of the end product.
Sure, investigate into it if there's human rights issues in the production of something, or if people are on unfair wages - but quite frankly, for music, it's irrelevant. "Did I enjoy it?" and "Was it value for money?" are all that matters...
This just isn't true. If you stop pirating, and buy their media, they decide that their increased income is because the anti-pirate measures (DRM, horrific legislation, etc) are working, so they work to get more of them. On the other hand, if you stop pirating, and don't buy their media, they decide that their decreased income is because the anti-pirate measures (DRM, horrific legislation, etc) aren't working, so they work to get more of them.
So don't buy the stuff with DRM on it - finito.
I bought a DRMed CD once in HMV that wouldn't play in my car. I took it back, asked the sales assistant for a refund, he refused. I got him to get his manager, argued with him for 15 minutes, then got a refund. Get balls and a backbone...
I -- and the Pirate Party -- have absolutely no intention of "[stopping] with the politics." The erosion of civil liberties and privacy rights being pushed for by the international media cartel are totally disproportionate to the actual damage they are suffering (minimal), and are fundamentally unjust, and deserve to be fought against.
Nice speech, but get an MP elected in Parliament, then I might start taking you seriously - until then, don't call yourself a "Party"...
Please don't try to confuse the argument with semantics - it's clear by implication that I meant "BitTorrent when used for the purposes of music downloads". If you're too inane to work that out for yourself, that's not my problem.
Nope. I remember all too well when CDs came out. We were told they were virtually indestructible, would play covered in jam & hairs and would be much cheaper than vinyl. At the time, they were around 10GBP in the UK compared to 5-6GBP for a vinyl album. We were told within a couple of years they would be cheaper than vinyl. Ten years later they were 15GBP+
The chances are that if I get jam or hairs on a CD, I can wipe it clean and it will play as it did before - unlike a vinyl LP. Besides which, if you get jam and hairs on CDs and fall for marketing hype then you probably need to be put in a cage in a zoo with a label "Greater Idiot" on it.
As for £15 CD prices - get real. Maybe if you buy everything in HMV in the high street - in which case you go in the cage also. I buy around 5 or 6 music CDs a month, I don't remember the last time I paid more than £10 for one; plus I buy a lot of remasters meaning they've got the extra tracks on them making them twice as long as a vinyl LP anyway.
Yep(ish) but you did get double LPs with glorious artwork, liner notes etc.
Yes, agreed, a lot of the great artwork hasn't survived well being knocked down to CD size, although many do have good liner notes - especially, again, on a lot of the remastered stuff. I always thought it was a missed opportunity to not put some of the old artwork and photos on the music CD as well.
That's a whole other agument. Back in the day, the A&R department might let a band put out 3-4 albums while they found themselves. Many now great bands had some dreadful early works - if we followed your rules we'd never have the good stuff. That was always the equation, the handful of uber successful groups funded the up and coming ones.
Yes, I think part of your statement is true, even to this day. I've certainly read somewhere that the Britney Spears of the world selling their trash by the millions helps to finance smaller artists - but then surely that's an advantage a record company has over a small artist trying to market themselves?
As to the first part of the statement, I'll talk about what I know. I mainly listen to classic rock & blues music from the late 60s to the present, and many artists that have been active pretty much throughout all of that period - e.g. Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin (and their solo projects), Nazareth, many others...
In pretty much all of those cases, the artists served "apprenticeships" on the pub and club circuits before making it anywhere near super-stardom. In turn this meant that many of the songs which would end up on albums had probably been played in front of live audiences for some time before, so I think this helped many bands put out very high quality initial albums.
In many ways that's changed today because artists are, in many but not all cases, are catapulted to fame instantly, just because the record companies market artists as fashionable and see a chance to make quick bucks. That's why, in my opinion, the general quality of music has dropped now.
I always amazes what bullshit some people come out with in order to justify their continued use of BitTorrent.
My friend, stop with the politics because it's actually very simple - if it's too expensive, don't buy it. Then grow a backbone and don't copy it either.
When you start hitting these mega-corporations in their wallets, then they will start to listen to you.
It truly amazes me how so many people like you only see "black" or "white" in discussions on this or related subjects.
Firstly, if you happen to be a big music fan like me, you want to be able to continue to buy & listen to good quality music that you consider to be a fair price. Personally, I consider £10 to be more than a fair price for a music CD I may have enjoyed for 30 years or more. Plus I may want the artist to continue producing music of a similar quality, therefore to encourage that he/she should be paid for his work.
Secondly, I object to freeloaders. People who copy music, games or movies can only do so because enough honest people like me go out and buy the stuff in the first place - or likewise don't buy it (or copy it) if it's not worth the money.
Thirdly, I don't want mine or anyone else's Internet traffic filtered or monitored. But the fact is our governments are in the pockets of big corporations who have no desire other than to screw more and more money out of all of us - and file sharing just helps in giving them the justifications they need to cause that to happen, which in turn makes it bad for honest people like me as well, who have to put up with crap like DRM even though we're honest people.
So please don't just assume that being anti-piracy also means your anti-privacy.
Despite the fact that CD's were supposed to be a cheaper alternative to Vinyl, they still milked the fuck out of it and the consumer got zero benefit.
Wrong. The consumer got a format that was much less susceptible to damage, that didn't deteriorate in quality the more times you played it, and you didn't need an ultra-expensive hi-fi system to get pretty good audio sound from it.
Also, please don't forget that a single vinyl LP was limited to about 20 minutes of music on each side (40 minutes total) whereas a CD holds almost twice that amount - I agree it's taken the music industry a while to realise that fact but I'm certainly very pleased with what they're doing by remastering a whole load of classic albums and putting extra tracks on the CDs.
And now, when duplication and transmission costs are essentially zero (no more physical product, no transportation costs, no distribution costs), they STILL want to charge the same gross markup they did in 1971 ?
That only affects someone who is lame enough to buy lossy, compressed digital downloads. Personally, £10 for a music CD that I have possibly enjoyed time-and-time again over the space of 30-odd years is pretty good value for money, even if during that time I've rebought it once as a remastered edition with more content.
And please don't respond with the usual "but there's only ever two good tracks on a CD" nonsense. If an artist or group cannot maintain quality over the space of a complete album then they shouldn't be making albums - it's that simple.
If it's a case of paying 20 bucks for something, knowing that the actual artist will get 10 cents if he's lucky, then fuck them.
I doubt very much that any artist cares about whether you or I got a payrise this year - so what does it matter what they got paid? All that matters is that you get a product that you consider to be value for money, the musicians can go negotiate their own contracts.
There's a difference between leechers who just want a free ride (and unfortunately always will), and those of us that can actually see the wrong in a situation and stand by our principles to effect some kind of change.
I agree 100% with you on this. If you don't like the price of something then don't buy it, and don't copy it. Get a backbone instead.
I've used OpenBSD so rarely that I wouldn't deign to offer an opinion on it - I was merely responding to the comments about upgrading Linux.
Is BSD a mess? As above, I've no idea - I just don't like using any OS with pre-built binaries, even Linux, because I don't feel I'm getting the best optimised OS for my hardware. Gentoo compiles everything from source when you update it, and you set dependencies with "USE" flags. It's not perfect all of the time but having gone through Linux From Scratch, Gentoo has been the "happy medium" for me now for about 5 years.
I don't use really old hardware, I just don't use the latest hardware, so for me Gentoo does compile quite fast - however, compiling, say, the latest version of OpenOffice can be an "overnight" job. So, yes, you spend some time updating it, I just have a few machines at home so if one is updating itself then I'm working on another.
PS. Is it true the "BSD" stands for "Big Superiority Disorder"? I thought we free software types were kind of on the same team but you guys have got it *BAD*!
Slashdot Mirror
And of course the original "Battlefield Earth" trilogy & it's prequel "What The Big Alien Did Before Landing On Earth" trilogy some 20 years later were equal blockbuster successes to "Star Wars" at the cinema also...
By your same logic, I should be writing this from prison since, as the cook in my house, I have a really nice set of sharp cooking knives that I *COULD* kill someone with - but there are currently no policemen smashing my door down to arrest me.
Incidentally, I said in a previous reply to someone that I'm a Linux user and therefore well acquainted with file sharing as a perfectly legitimate application for downloading free software and Linux distros - so please don't try to manouevre me with semantics into something I clearly did not say.
No-one did anything during the 90s because money was not in short supply & most people appear to have had plenty of it to waste.
It's times like these with money in short supply that people need to take a serious look at how they're spending their money and how to put it to best use.
Unfortunately, there are still too many mindless maggots that queue at midnight for new computer games or new iPhones that end up sending a message to corporations about how it's okay to screw us over with DRM and sub-standard products, provided there's enough marketing and hype around it.
Chris Jarvis, 31 year old Star Wars fan, finally gets laid and gets a life.
So you're one of those bastards that keeps the media cartel in business? In fact, you even fund their lobby towards evil legislation such as the one in TFA.
Sorry, do you drive a car by any chance and think about what it might be doing to the environment?
Do you drink Starbuck's coffee and think about how much the farmer got paid for growing it?
Do you wear branded jeans and wonder about how much the Third World employee got paid for making them?
Surely all the above are more important issues to consider than who gets the profits from every CD you buy, yet you're here trying to "change the world" and trying to justify your greed & theft in the process.
Like I said already, I buy my music, as a self-admitted freeloader, you steal it. Therefore you don't get a say in the matter because I subsidise your music habits.
So shut the fuck up and go earn some money so artists get paid for their work.
"*ALL* I care about" Well what you care about is not frankly very interesting in the overall scheme of things. That you are happy with a broken outdated system is fine. Your argument seems to be based around " I am happy, I personally cannot visualize another system of music distribution, thus I ignore the implications of a monopoly situation".
Why should I? It works for me... music is one of the few things I spend my hard-earned money on that is consistently good value for money. I don't see a broken out dated system, I've been happily buying CDs for 20+ years now, and they are much better than the LPs and tapes I bought before that.
Black or white? Your definition, perhaps because people disagree with you?
Is that not the purpose of posting on here? To inform and also have discussion and intelligent argument?
None of the music I own was connected to me by marketing. It was discovered via means other than a major label.
Well, I'm listening. Enlighten me, how did you discover it?
The cost of recording music now is virtually free now anyway.
How did you work that one out? Playing an instrument is free (once you have access to an instrument) and you can certainly record yourself for low cost. But for a professional quality recording you still presumably need someone to engineer and mix it, and you would probably want to record it in a studio that's accoustically designed for the purpose. That all costs money...
By the way I work with lots of musicians and I tell them all the same when I record them, give your music away in order to build an audience for your live performances. The old system is dead.
Well fine, let's see if they do that and see if it works. If I walked up to the same group of musicians and suggested they, say, jump off a cliff, I doubt any of them would do it... just because you told them to give their music away, doesn't mean they would do it either. I mean, in what professional capacity did you give them that advice? Such that you're confident they will follow it...
Maybe Eric Clapton made money from the "old system" but 99% of the working musicians never made a dime from recorded music.
In which case, they make the decision that either music or money is more important to them - if it's the latter, go get a proper job then. Sorry what does this have to do with anything I've said? I'm just a music listener who wants to find good quality music at a good price...
And yes, if there are thousands of music web sites, we have enough technology and search knowledge to allow people to find what they want.
Right. So you mean to tell me that you are going to spend lots more time finding stuff that you will enjoy listening to, are you?
So, in other words, you're not a serious music fan at the moment because you don't like the CD format (I believe the term you used was "broken"?) despite it being the best and clearest way to buy music at the moment, but when it's available for download in a lossy format from thousands of bands web sites, you're then going to become a serious music fan and spend hour after hour searching for stuff to listen to... I think not.
Now explain tome exactly how this music monopoly benefits anyone besides you. It certainly does not benefit the majority of musicians. Oh, I guess maybe copyright exists to make sure U2 and Eric Clapton can make the maximum from their music and damn the rest.
Explain to me how someone who gets maximum enjoyment from listening to high quality audio CDs on a reasonably good hi-fi benefits from having to download it in a lossy format just like "Pick N Mix" sweeties at the cinema.
Explain to me how musicians who are currently used to touring off the strength of a new album will organise tours in future when they are only producing odd tracks here and there because the people with no attention spans who call themselves music fans have decided this is the way music should be distributed.
Explain to me, as
Of course, telling people to "get balls and a backbone" just because they disagree with your approach isn't abusive in the slightest...
Right, so tell the people who come on here proudly crowing to everyone that they're "sticking it to the man" just because they're greedy leechers who want something for nothing to stop also - because I'm *SICK AND TIRED* of subsidising their music habits...
Everyone's views of "good music" differ, if someone else likes music from $EVIL_LABEL they have three choices, buy into the DRM BS, download and be labelled a cirminal or miss out on something they enjoy because of the greed of someone who didn't even have a hand in producing the music, literally a leech on society benefitting from the talent of others.
Why's this relevant to anything I've said?
I don't buy DRM music, the one time I did it went back to the shop and I got a refund. Other than that, I don't give a shit about record companies making profits, that's up to them. As far as I'm concerned they produce more than enough good product at a good enough price for me to continue buying music. Like I said already, Eric Clapton does not give a shit that I got no bonus last year; I like his music but I don't give a shit about his cut of the profits.
As for your view on when a group is or isn't allowed to refer to itself as a party, it's totally nonsensical. Would Labour or the Conservatives have ever come to power if they'd been forced to call themselves a coallition of loonies with broadly similar principles instead of the X Party?
Many a true word spoken in jest! :-)
In truth, hadn't thought about it and don't really care. In my 48 years on this Earth I've learnt there are far too many people with far too much time on their hands who think they have something inportant to say but I don't have the time or inclination to listen to it.
I like music, I like CDs, music is good value for money.
Digital downloads are a lossy waste of money that will ultimately destroy the music industry. And it will be destroyed by people treating music like Pick N Mix sweeties because they've not got the attention span to listen to a music album properly.
Like I said, I like music & the stuff I buy is good value for money.
What - like the Green Party? Or the Christian Party? You can quite happily be a political party with millions of supports no seats in Parliament. Does that make you not a politcal party?
And both of them dangerous loonies in the process.
Oh, I see - so you can "support" a party but not actually "vote" for them? That's an interesting slant...
This is the FINAL time I will say this - you have NO political representation in government, therefore you wield NO power and you might as well be "The Free Clogs For Dogs" party...
If nobody has elected someone in your party to a position of political representation then it doesn't say much about interest in your policies, does it?
I could form a party today called "Free Party Hats For Pets Party" that has no more political power than the "Pirate Party" and probably has just as much chance of political representation.
Join the REAL world...
Great, I knew this one would come out as well!
Tell me something, when every music artist is selling their own music through their own web site, and there are tens of thousands of them all doing it at the same time, what is going to aid you in finding the stuff in all that "noise" that is going to appeal to your tastes? Are you *REALLY* telling me that every piece of music you own has not, in some way, been connected to you by some kind of marketing?
Again, you're a Slashdotter that refuses to accept anything unless it's in true "black and white" terms...
I don't give a shit how much money an artist makes from their work, just like Eric Clapton does not give a shit whether or not I got a pay rise last year.
*ALL* I care about is I'm getting a product that is worth the money I paid for it - sure, I like to think I have some social conscience before I buy stuff but I don't think world poverty is being preserved just because I buy a music CD...
Why do people feel this *NEED* to get behind some kind of cause all of the time?
Besides which, if I buy a CD, the artist gets *SOMETHING*...
So the Green Party in the US is not a party because they have no Federal representation (or do they? I really don't know for sure)?
I'm in the UK, I have no great interest in US politics - as I believe is also the case the other way round.
Nope, if they don't have representation in government, they're not a party - and the Greens are a prime example of an organised bunch of tree-hugging loonies.
You are a narrow-minded piece of shit that is probably paid by the assholes ruining the world of "intellectual" property.
And you must be telepathic or highly empathic to make that assumption about me purely on what I have revealed to be my views on music buying.
Actually, I'm nothing more than a person that enjoys good music - and I'm willing to reward someone who makes something that I enjoy.
You also probably need to go read some of my historical posts also - from them you'll see that anyone who throws abuse at me automatically loses the argument; because if you need to resort to abuse, you've nothing more intelligent to say to me.
So thanks for another victory and "Have A Great Day"!
If nobody buys it, then it wouldn't be released in the first place because there would be no profit to be made.
And copying something that does not exist is impossible - well, with the exception of Microsoft.
Agreed, they probably won't.
But then my argument is that if they're not given the "Piracy" justification to do it in the first place, then they just look like a government infringing on personal liberties - in which case we can just kick the bastards out.
But I'm the "shit moron" that buys stuff legally that allows you to freeload off the back of me - does that make you a "shit moron hag" then?
You carry on with your little "Robin Hood" crusade of justifying your personal greed, and I'll keep subsidising your music collection for you.
Not that my political allegiances are any of your business but I've never voted BNP nor do I think I ever will.
However, they do have some elected representation (in the European Parliament I seem to recall) and can probably justify referring to themselves as a party.
Again, let's not talk semantics - any bunch of loonies can gather together and call themselves what they like and (within reason) say what they like. It doesn't automatically follow that anyone's listening to them or that they wield any form of power.
Very good advice indeed, and not only is that my approach, but I recommend it to everyone else as well. Check out sites like Jamendo. Also, donate to support those artists and corporations who have a 21st-Century approach to distribution.
Thanks for the advice but if you don't mind, I'll choose what music I listen to and how I'll buy it...
You know, that's the problem these days - everyone's far too busy poking in their big fat noses as to "how" something was done, rather than just deciding on the quality of the end product.
Sure, investigate into it if there's human rights issues in the production of something, or if people are on unfair wages - but quite frankly, for music, it's irrelevant. "Did I enjoy it?" and "Was it value for money?" are all that matters...
This just isn't true. If you stop pirating, and buy their media, they decide that their increased income is because the anti-pirate measures (DRM, horrific legislation, etc) are working, so they work to get more of them. On the other hand, if you stop pirating, and don't buy their media, they decide that their decreased income is because the anti-pirate measures (DRM, horrific legislation, etc) aren't working, so they work to get more of them.
So don't buy the stuff with DRM on it - finito.
I bought a DRMed CD once in HMV that wouldn't play in my car. I took it back, asked the sales assistant for a refund, he refused. I got him to get his manager, argued with him for 15 minutes, then got a refund. Get balls and a backbone...
I -- and the Pirate Party -- have absolutely no intention of "[stopping] with the politics." The erosion of civil liberties and privacy rights being pushed for by the international media cartel are totally disproportionate to the actual damage they are suffering (minimal), and are fundamentally unjust, and deserve to be fought against.
Nice speech, but get an MP elected in Parliament, then I might start taking you seriously - until then, don't call yourself a "Party"...
Please don't try to confuse the argument with semantics - it's clear by implication that I meant "BitTorrent when used for the purposes of music downloads". If you're too inane to work that out for yourself, that's not my problem.
Nope. I remember all too well when CDs came out. We were told they were virtually indestructible, would play covered in jam & hairs and would be much cheaper than vinyl. At the time, they were around 10GBP in the UK compared to 5-6GBP for a vinyl album. We were told within a couple of years they would be cheaper than vinyl. Ten years later they were 15GBP+
The chances are that if I get jam or hairs on a CD, I can wipe it clean and it will play as it did before - unlike a vinyl LP. Besides which, if you get jam and hairs on CDs and fall for marketing hype then you probably need to be put in a cage in a zoo with a label "Greater Idiot" on it.
As for £15 CD prices - get real. Maybe if you buy everything in HMV in the high street - in which case you go in the cage also. I buy around 5 or 6 music CDs a month, I don't remember the last time I paid more than £10 for one; plus I buy a lot of remasters meaning they've got the extra tracks on them making them twice as long as a vinyl LP anyway.
Yep(ish) but you did get double LPs with glorious artwork, liner notes etc.
Yes, agreed, a lot of the great artwork hasn't survived well being knocked down to CD size, although many do have good liner notes - especially, again, on a lot of the remastered stuff. I always thought it was a missed opportunity to not put some of the old artwork and photos on the music CD as well.
That's a whole other agument. Back in the day, the A&R department might let a band put out 3-4 albums while they found themselves. Many now great bands had some dreadful early works - if we followed your rules we'd never have the good stuff. That was always the equation, the handful of uber successful groups funded the up and coming ones.
Yes, I think part of your statement is true, even to this day. I've certainly read somewhere that the Britney Spears of the world selling their trash by the millions helps to finance smaller artists - but then surely that's an advantage a record company has over a small artist trying to market themselves?
As to the first part of the statement, I'll talk about what I know. I mainly listen to classic rock & blues music from the late 60s to the present, and many artists that have been active pretty much throughout all of that period - e.g. Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin (and their solo projects), Nazareth, many others...
In pretty much all of those cases, the artists served "apprenticeships" on the pub and club circuits before making it anywhere near super-stardom. In turn this meant that many of the songs which would end up on albums had probably been played in front of live audiences for some time before, so I think this helped many bands put out very high quality initial albums.
In many ways that's changed today because artists are, in many but not all cases, are catapulted to fame instantly, just because the record companies market artists as fashionable and see a chance to make quick bucks. That's why, in my opinion, the general quality of music has dropped now.
I always amazes what bullshit some people come out with in order to justify their continued use of BitTorrent.
My friend, stop with the politics because it's actually very simple - if it's too expensive, don't buy it. Then grow a backbone and don't copy it either.
When you start hitting these mega-corporations in their wallets, then they will start to listen to you.
It truly amazes me how so many people like you only see "black" or "white" in discussions on this or related subjects.
Firstly, if you happen to be a big music fan like me, you want to be able to continue to buy & listen to good quality music that you consider to be a fair price. Personally, I consider £10 to be more than a fair price for a music CD I may have enjoyed for 30 years or more. Plus I may want the artist to continue producing music of a similar quality, therefore to encourage that he/she should be paid for his work.
Secondly, I object to freeloaders. People who copy music, games or movies can only do so because enough honest people like me go out and buy the stuff in the first place - or likewise don't buy it (or copy it) if it's not worth the money.
Thirdly, I don't want mine or anyone else's Internet traffic filtered or monitored. But the fact is our governments are in the pockets of big corporations who have no desire other than to screw more and more money out of all of us - and file sharing just helps in giving them the justifications they need to cause that to happen, which in turn makes it bad for honest people like me as well, who have to put up with crap like DRM even though we're honest people.
So please don't just assume that being anti-piracy also means your anti-privacy.
Despite the fact that CD's were supposed to be a cheaper alternative to Vinyl, they still milked the fuck out of it and the consumer got zero benefit.
Wrong. The consumer got a format that was much less susceptible to damage, that didn't deteriorate in quality the more times you played it, and you didn't need an ultra-expensive hi-fi system to get pretty good audio sound from it.
Also, please don't forget that a single vinyl LP was limited to about 20 minutes of music on each side (40 minutes total) whereas a CD holds almost twice that amount - I agree it's taken the music industry a while to realise that fact but I'm certainly very pleased with what they're doing by remastering a whole load of classic albums and putting extra tracks on the CDs.
And now, when duplication and transmission costs are essentially zero (no more physical product, no transportation costs, no distribution costs), they STILL want to charge the same gross markup they did in 1971 ?
That only affects someone who is lame enough to buy lossy, compressed digital downloads. Personally, £10 for a music CD that I have possibly enjoyed time-and-time again over the space of 30-odd years is pretty good value for money, even if during that time I've rebought it once as a remastered edition with more content.
And please don't respond with the usual "but there's only ever two good tracks on a CD" nonsense. If an artist or group cannot maintain quality over the space of a complete album then they shouldn't be making albums - it's that simple.
If it's a case of paying 20 bucks for something, knowing that the actual artist will get 10 cents if he's lucky, then fuck them.
I doubt very much that any artist cares about whether you or I got a payrise this year - so what does it matter what they got paid? All that matters is that you get a product that you consider to be value for money, the musicians can go negotiate their own contracts.
There's a difference between leechers who just want a free ride (and unfortunately always will), and those of us that can actually see the wrong in a situation and stand by our principles to effect some kind of change.
I agree 100% with you on this. If you don't like the price of something then don't buy it, and don't copy it. Get a backbone instead.
Balderdash!
Google just wants to make revenue from an advertistement every time someone reads some information - big difference!
But you're right - the thought of Apple creating proprietary lock-in on all the world's hardware frightens me also.
I've used OpenBSD so rarely that I wouldn't deign to offer an opinion on it - I was merely responding to the comments about upgrading Linux.
Is BSD a mess? As above, I've no idea - I just don't like using any OS with pre-built binaries, even Linux, because I don't feel I'm getting the best optimised OS for my hardware. Gentoo compiles everything from source when you update it, and you set dependencies with "USE" flags. It's not perfect all of the time but having gone through Linux From Scratch, Gentoo has been the "happy medium" for me now for about 5 years.
I don't use really old hardware, I just don't use the latest hardware, so for me Gentoo does compile quite fast - however, compiling, say, the latest version of OpenOffice can be an "overnight" job. So, yes, you spend some time updating it, I just have a few machines at home so if one is updating itself then I'm working on another.
PS. Is it true the "BSD" stands for "Big Superiority Disorder"? I thought we free software types were kind of on the same team but you guys have got it *BAD*!