"I thought it made perfect sense to me that all music freely belongs to everybody, so I'm shocked that the RIAA is suing me for $10,000 over the 80GB of pirated MP3s that I traded and served to the world over Kazaa, Gnutella and Morpheus. If only the RIAA had slapped my hand over the very first 3 minute song I pirated, then I would have stopped and this action would be reasonable."
First I search to see if the public domain book is already available in HTML on somebody's web site.
If not, I get text files from Gutenberg and format them in HTML.
I purchased the iSilo program for the Palm for US $20
http://isilo.com/
, which comes with a free program (IWindows, Mac and Linux!) to convert HTML pages into iSilo format. It works great and preserves graphics, hyperlinks, CSS, bookmarks and more. It uses color if your handheld supports it.
So I do all my Gutenberg reading on my Clie SJ22 with a 320 x 320 color display.
I read French, Spanish and German in addition to English. These languages have diacriticals and special characters which are not covered in ASCII, because ASCII was created for English and English only.
So you can say that the use of ASCII prevented Project Gutenberg, in the earlier days, from considering working with any texts in any language other than English.
Now that Unicode 8 is a standard, it's possible for classic works in many languages to be represented in Gutenberg or affiliated projects.
Seven years ago I was a 33-year-old bachelor who had a lot of work fixing friends' computers but who had given up on dating, let alone love.
A nosy friend of my mother's fixed me up and introduction to a young lady. At the time I lived in Atlanta and she lived in Lafayette, Louisiana. We were both in school. We emailed each other and made a phone call or two for three months before she came to Atlanta to visit her mother.
Now I do Windows, but at heart I'm a Mac guy. As soon as I introduced myself to this lady, I determined that she was a Mac user. She told me that her mother was a self-employed person who ran her business out of her home on a Macintosh, and that her mother needed a great deal of computer help, which she wasn't really able to pay for.
(Lightbulb goes off).
We met. Five months later she bailed out of grad school and moved to Atlanta. We were inseparable. And I spent a lot of time, gratis, helping her mother tackle her Mac problems and get her business and office under control. I upgraded both of them to newer Macs, largely at my own expense.
When I asked the young lady to marry me, and she said "Yes," I went to her mother.
I said, "Linda, how would you like a lifetime of free technical support?"
Warlok wrote: "Of course, this solution makes so much sense, the union won't accept it."
Exactly. It's even more likely that the record label which has signed the band to an ironclad contract will refuse to permit the sale of an instant commercial recording from the club solely because the record company doesn't exclusively own said recording.
Thus artists must bring pressure to bear to change the way those record label contracts will be drawn in the future--giving artists the right to market their own product on the side, at gigs, independently of the record company which fronted the money to record and market their studio albums. This has to be A Good Thing. Selling instant recordings from the show seems like a win-win for everybody, to me, as long as all the parties get compensated.
I was just pointing out that it'll be a bit more complicated than the original poster of this thread had considered.
While we are at it, what about permitting the artists or venue to sell USB drive recordings from the artists' existing back album catalog, iTunes-style, at the gig? You may not realize it, but when your favorite band on a record label sells their own CDs at the gig, they have to pay their own record company $8 per CD in order to be able to sell them for $10 or $12. Hear that? They have to pay thousands of dollars up front to their own record company to buy cases of their own CDs in order to be able to sell their own music at their own gig! That's the way it's always been done, and it needs to change, because artists can't realize enough profit from such an arrangment.
What the performers negotiate to be paid for a concert depends on the use to which the concert is being put. With symphony orchestras, which are represented by the American Federation of Musicians union, the players get one pay rate if it's just a live concert, a much higher pay rate if the show is also going to be broadcast on radio or television, and a still higher rate yet if there is going to be a commercial CD or DVD made from the performance. The concert promoters have to pay up, or the orchestra will refuse to permit them to record, broadcast or sell recordings of the performance.
Same with rock bands, or any other musical genre. Just because a concert hall owns a recording system and the means to sell instant recordings to the audience does not mean that the band is going to accept this without a big increase in their fees, and this is as it should be. So a concert hall or club is going to be in for much higher costs than just purchasing the means to record and sell duplicates of the recording. On a show-by-show basis, they are going to have to pay for the band's permission to sell a recording, and I also haven't mentioned that they are going to have to pay additional fees to the publishing companies who publish the songs that the band performs. If the band is under contract to a record label, the concert hall may also have to negotiate a contract with the record label. Some artists are forbidden by their record label contracts to make or sell any recordings that the record label does not approve beforehand. Any recordings they make while under contract are automatically 100% the property of the record company (which is not a pleasant situtation for the artists!).
I think this technology is a great idea, but don't assume that just because your favorite club owns such a system that they're going to be able to give you cheap recordings of every act you go and see there.
There's a famous German legend from the Middle Ages about a theologian who learned all about God and decided that he would rather sell his soul to Satan and use Satan's power to rule the world instead. His name was Dr. Faust.
From this day forward we should all refer to Karl Aigner as "Faust."
That would be like Hepatitis C Inc., boasting about their 500 million customers.
This reminds me of Mel Brook's radio skit about the LMNOP Advertising Agency:
"We just got the Cholesterol account. We're trying to move Cholesterol into the American heart. It's going to be tough, but we'll win. Advertising is a lot stronger than life."
You are an oxymoron. The method that people have to make something legal is called VOTING and PASSING LAWS. If something is illegal, it remains illegal until laws are passed which say otherwise.
No matter how you slice it,if you pirate, you are a lawbreaker. You are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. You deserve to be prosecuted and penalized because each time you do tihs, you are STEALING MONEY from the people who created the music you are listening to. They invested a great deal of time and money into making and marketing that music. They probably went in debt (borrowed money) to do it. When you pirate their music, you are stealing money from them because they don't receive any money from you and can't use that money to pay their debts. You claim to like this band who made this music, but you are bankrupting the band through your stealing.
You are directly hurting people by being a lawbreaker. Don't try to sugarcoat it or rationalize it away. Take responsibility.
In this country "democracy speaks" by passing federal laws. Millions of people downloading copyrighted music without paying for it is the opposite of democracy. It is millions of cases of breaking the law and anarchy.
Until the people of the United States of America pass a federal law through Congress, signed by the President, making downloading copyrighted music without paying for it legal, then it will continue to be illegal, and any and all people doing it will continue to be scofflaws who break the law, not practice democracy.
Because they know they are breaking the law and they intend to break the law.
Has it occurred to you that 100% of people who download copyrighted music they didn't pay for are doing something illegal and should stop?
I'm not aware that in America guilt or innocense is determined by whether you THINK what you are doing is illegal or not. It's illegal because the law says so.
Next time you are arrested for stealing a couple of $100 bills from a bank, try telling the judge that it's okay because you have decided that you think it's okay, you aren't doing anything wrong, and therefore you should not be prosecuted.
I'm sure the judge will be happy to drop the charges and send you right home.
Well, you're not alone. So 91% think that what they're doing is right? These people are WRONG. Worse than that, they are delusional. Just because you are not likely to be caught doing something wrong doesn't make it OK!
In this country we live by a thing called laws, and when you break a law, you are WRONG.
If you feel you have no obligation to obey and follow the law, you are a scofflaw. And a scofflaw is one of the lowest types of disreputable persons to me.
If the people of the US pass a federal law saying downloading copyrighted material without paying for it is legal, then it will become a law in the US. But this is a matter of not only US law but international law. So when the majority of countries in the world pass laws and ratify an international treaty saying that downloading copyrighted material without paying for it is legal, then it will be legal and it will be a law.
Until then, it is illegal, it is a crime, and the people that are doing it are scofflaw scum.
Obviously you've never heard of the AFM, the American Federation of Musicians, which is part of the AFL-CIO and is one of the oldest continuously operating labor unions in America. The AFM is indeed a powerful labor union but it has never had any influence in record contract negotiation for recording artists. What the AFM has influence over is wages and pay rates for members when they do recording studio sessions and live performances. However, the AFM has traditionally only really represented jazz and classical/symphony orchestra musicians, instrumentalists on Broadway, and those that make a living as recording studio instrumentalists.
The AFM has never represented singers, and has had very little influence in pop, rock, R&B, hip-hop, etc. This is probably because classical and jazz musicians stick together and work together, whereas pop singers (of all genres) and rock band members are very independent sorts with little formal musical schooling. Pop musicians would rather fend for themselves, and are, as a group, actually resistant to joining a union!
All major-label records in most markets are recorded under AFM-union rules, and the record labels file with the union. But this is just to make sure that the session players get paid union scale wages.
If "artists" and singers wanted to form a union, or join the AFM, or give the AFM the authority to represent them in contract negotiations, they would have done this decades ago. But they don't wanna.
The RIAA is the industry association made up of all the (for-profit) record labels in America. Most every record/tape/cd you've ever seen in a store was created by a company which is a member of the RIAA, but the RIAA itself is not a profit-making business, it's a lobbying group. It has been around since the dawn of the selling of recorded music. Practically speaking it's almost 100 years old.
It's the organization that speaks for the record industry in America.
It's the organization that gives out the Grammy Awards every year.
Saying that it has "provided some service to artists" is a bit like saying Ford, General Motors and Chrysler have provided "some service to people who drive cars."
Still, your question is a very good one. Could Janis Ian have become a star without a major record label promoting her music in the 60s and 70s?
I have a degree in music business, so I'll tell you an interesting fact. With major-label records, around the world, in all genres of music combined, 90% of all albums lose money. 5% break even. And 5% are big hits and make enough money so that the record company can still show a profit after losing money to record and market the other 95%.
That's the reality of the current record business. It's also why most recording artists who sign contracts with major labels don't ever show a profit for themselves, even though the record labels as a whole make profits.
I'm sure that the Internet is going to change this, because record companies won't be able to afford the $$$ to do things according to the old system. Will artists figure out how to make profits once the apple cart is turned over?
Interesting.
Sorry if my earlier post got truncated.
The cost of a CD/album has nothing to do with the cost of a PC music recording system. That would be like saying the cost of a Spielberg motion picture can't be much more than the cost of a camera and a roll of film. The cost of making a Spielberg picture depends (in part) on the cost of hiring Spielberg and Tom Cruise to make it, plus many other costs.
The cost of recording studio equipment has dropped dramatically in the last 20 years. But the cost of making an album is the cost of hiring all the musicians, songwriters, engineer and producer who make it, and those guys charge money because they've been working their whole lives to become good musicians.
Furthermore, if a movie is to become a hit, the film studio or record label has to spend millions of dollars marketing it. "Spider Man" would not have been a hit unless the studio had spent a great deal of money on all the movie trailers you saw all over TV and all the posters you saw at bus stops. Web sites cost money too.
With all major-label record albums, the label spends much more money promoting and marketing the album than they spend recording it. And very, very few albums become platinum or gold sellers in the absence of hundreds of thousands of dollars in promotion money.
So, in short, the cost of recording an album might be small if it's an indie punk project where the musicians don't expect to get paid. But the cost of a major-label pop record is a huge gamble involving hundreds of thousands. The record company invests the money (gambles) in the hopes that they can reap rewards (profits).
The question is, how will the Internet, P2P and MP3s cause the balance to tip? Will record labels have to figure out how to have hits when they have the potential to earn far less money from them? If so, how can they justify the marketing budget if it will be even harder for them to earn their money back?
Fascinating.
Answer: Easy. An established artist can leave. But the more interesting question is: "Could an artist ever become established in the first place without the RIAA investing a great deal of money in establishing them?"
Robkill wrote:...Artists like you, Christine Lavin, and Ani DiFranco have proven that it's possible to survive and prosper away from the major labels...
----------
I say:
Actually Janis Ian does not belong in the same category as Christine Lavin or Ani DiFranco. Lavin and DiFranco make livings as musicians WITHOUT ever having had major-label investment/promotion/backing. Ian, on the other hand, is making a living as a musician today BECAUSE a major label invested megabucks in promoting her career in the 60s and 70s.
This is an important distinction.
You know, Anonymous Coward, that the questions that get the most responses are the ones that will be forwarded to Janis Ian for comment. So with every negative post you make, you promote and encourage the very questions you seem to disdain.
Lighten up, how about it?
I'd like to point out that not all technologically literate computer geeks think P2P sharing of copyrighted material is a Good Thing. I don't. Generally I side with the RIAA. I have a college degree in Recording Studio Engineering and Music Business and I have a great deal of friends who are professional musicians and songwriters. Most of them are very upset by and against Napster and online piracy on principle.
Janis Ian is a highly respected and revered songwriter. Her opinion counts.
If you haven't heard of her, it's because you are not educated about American songwriting and American pop music.
Her hits were in the 70s, but she has been a working musician all this time, so she has a lot of wisdom to share.
Do you think the "major label system" of investing huge amounts of money to make stars, and being able to recoup that investment to turn profits, can and should be preserved? If so, we've got to engineer a way for them to continue to make money. I don't think you would have the ability to earn the living as a musician that you enjoy today unless thirty years ago a major label had invested big bucks in promoting your songs "Society's Child" and "At Seventeen" until they became big hit records.
Broader ethical question: Shouldn't an individual musician or songwriter get to decide, on a song-by-song basis, which ones she wants to give away as a free MP3 and which ones she reserves for sale? Where does a music listener get off copying and distributing something from a songwriter which the listener has received no permission to duplicate? Why does the mere fact that a listener CAN duplicate and pirate copyrighted music mean that a listener has a defensible democratic right to do so?
Slashdot Mirror
"I thought it made perfect sense to me that all music freely belongs to everybody, so I'm shocked that the RIAA is suing me for $10,000 over the 80GB of pirated MP3s that I traded and served to the world over Kazaa, Gnutella and Morpheus. If only the RIAA had slapped my hand over the very first 3 minute song I pirated, then I would have stopped and this action would be reasonable."
If not, I get text files from Gutenberg and format them in HTML.
I purchased the iSilo program for the Palm for US $20
http://isilo.com/
, which comes with a free program (IWindows, Mac and Linux!) to convert HTML pages into iSilo format. It works great and preserves graphics, hyperlinks, CSS, bookmarks and more. It uses color if your handheld supports it.
So I do all my Gutenberg reading on my Clie SJ22 with a 320 x 320 color display.
I read French, Spanish and German in addition to English. These languages have diacriticals and special characters which are not covered in ASCII, because ASCII was created for English and English only.
So you can say that the use of ASCII prevented Project Gutenberg, in the earlier days, from considering working with any texts in any language other than English.
Now that Unicode 8 is a standard, it's possible for classic works in many languages to be represented in Gutenberg or affiliated projects.
A nosy friend of my mother's fixed me up and introduction to a young lady. At the time I lived in Atlanta and she lived in Lafayette, Louisiana. We were both in school. We emailed each other and made a phone call or two for three months before she came to Atlanta to visit her mother.
Now I do Windows, but at heart I'm a Mac guy. As soon as I introduced myself to this lady, I determined that she was a Mac user. She told me that her mother was a self-employed person who ran her business out of her home on a Macintosh, and that her mother needed a great deal of computer help, which she wasn't really able to pay for.
(Lightbulb goes off).
We met. Five months later she bailed out of grad school and moved to Atlanta. We were inseparable. And I spent a lot of time, gratis, helping her mother tackle her Mac problems and get her business and office under control. I upgraded both of them to newer Macs, largely at my own expense.
When I asked the young lady to marry me, and she said "Yes," I went to her mother.
I said, "Linda, how would you like a lifetime of free technical support?"
(Wedding bells)
Exactly. It's even more likely that the record label which has signed the band to an ironclad contract will refuse to permit the sale of an instant commercial recording from the club solely because the record company doesn't exclusively own said recording.
Thus artists must bring pressure to bear to change the way those record label contracts will be drawn in the future--giving artists the right to market their own product on the side, at gigs, independently of the record company which fronted the money to record and market their studio albums. This has to be A Good Thing. Selling instant recordings from the show seems like a win-win for everybody, to me, as long as all the parties get compensated.
I was just pointing out that it'll be a bit more complicated than the original poster of this thread had considered.
While we are at it, what about permitting the artists or venue to sell USB drive recordings from the artists' existing back album catalog, iTunes-style, at the gig? You may not realize it, but when your favorite band on a record label sells their own CDs at the gig, they have to pay their own record company $8 per CD in order to be able to sell them for $10 or $12. Hear that? They have to pay thousands of dollars up front to their own record company to buy cases of their own CDs in order to be able to sell their own music at their own gig! That's the way it's always been done, and it needs to change, because artists can't realize enough profit from such an arrangment.
Change is good.
Same with rock bands, or any other musical genre. Just because a concert hall owns a recording system and the means to sell instant recordings to the audience does not mean that the band is going to accept this without a big increase in their fees, and this is as it should be. So a concert hall or club is going to be in for much higher costs than just purchasing the means to record and sell duplicates of the recording. On a show-by-show basis, they are going to have to pay for the band's permission to sell a recording, and I also haven't mentioned that they are going to have to pay additional fees to the publishing companies who publish the songs that the band performs. If the band is under contract to a record label, the concert hall may also have to negotiate a contract with the record label. Some artists are forbidden by their record label contracts to make or sell any recordings that the record label does not approve beforehand. Any recordings they make while under contract are automatically 100% the property of the record company (which is not a pleasant situtation for the artists!).
I think this technology is a great idea, but don't assume that just because your favorite club owns such a system that they're going to be able to give you cheap recordings of every act you go and see there.
From this day forward we should all refer to Karl Aigner as "Faust."
That would be like Hepatitis C Inc., boasting about their 500 million customers. This reminds me of Mel Brook's radio skit about the LMNOP Advertising Agency: "We just got the Cholesterol account. We're trying to move Cholesterol into the American heart. It's going to be tough, but we'll win. Advertising is a lot stronger than life."
No matter how you slice it,if you pirate, you are a lawbreaker. You are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. You deserve to be prosecuted and penalized because each time you do tihs, you are STEALING MONEY from the people who created the music you are listening to. They invested a great deal of time and money into making and marketing that music. They probably went in debt (borrowed money) to do it. When you pirate their music, you are stealing money from them because they don't receive any money from you and can't use that money to pay their debts. You claim to like this band who made this music, but you are bankrupting the band through your stealing.
You are directly hurting people by being a lawbreaker. Don't try to sugarcoat it or rationalize it away. Take responsibility.
Speeding doesn't hurt anybody unless you have a wreck.
Every time you download copyrighted material that you did not pay for, you are STEALING MONEY from the people who created the music.
You are committing THEFT.
You are hurting the people whose music you claim to enjoy.
You are a SCOFFLAW--somebody who enjoys the benefits and protections of living in your country while feeling no obligation to abide by its laws.
You are one of the most disreputable people in your society.
In this country "democracy speaks" by passing federal laws. Millions of people downloading copyrighted music without paying for it is the opposite of democracy. It is millions of cases of breaking the law and anarchy.
Until the people of the United States of America pass a federal law through Congress, signed by the President, making downloading copyrighted music without paying for it legal, then it will continue to be illegal, and any and all people doing it will continue to be scofflaws who break the law, not practice democracy.
Get your terminology in order.
Has it occurred to you that 100% of people who download copyrighted music they didn't pay for are doing something illegal and should stop?
I'm not aware that in America guilt or innocense is determined by whether you THINK what you are doing is illegal or not. It's illegal because the law says so.
Next time you are arrested for stealing a couple of $100 bills from a bank, try telling the judge that it's okay because you have decided that you think it's okay, you aren't doing anything wrong, and therefore you should not be prosecuted.
I'm sure the judge will be happy to drop the charges and send you right home.
Well, you're not alone. So 91% think that what they're doing is right? These people are WRONG. Worse than that, they are delusional. Just because you are not likely to be caught doing something wrong doesn't make it OK! In this country we live by a thing called laws, and when you break a law, you are WRONG. If you feel you have no obligation to obey and follow the law, you are a scofflaw. And a scofflaw is one of the lowest types of disreputable persons to me. If the people of the US pass a federal law saying downloading copyrighted material without paying for it is legal, then it will become a law in the US. But this is a matter of not only US law but international law. So when the majority of countries in the world pass laws and ratify an international treaty saying that downloading copyrighted material without paying for it is legal, then it will be legal and it will be a law. Until then, it is illegal, it is a crime, and the people that are doing it are scofflaw scum.
The AFM has never represented singers, and has had very little influence in pop, rock, R&B, hip-hop, etc. This is probably because classical and jazz musicians stick together and work together, whereas pop singers (of all genres) and rock band members are very independent sorts with little formal musical schooling. Pop musicians would rather fend for themselves, and are, as a group, actually resistant to joining a union!
All major-label records in most markets are recorded under AFM-union rules, and the record labels file with the union. But this is just to make sure that the session players get paid union scale wages.
If "artists" and singers wanted to form a union, or join the AFM, or give the AFM the authority to represent them in contract negotiations, they would have done this decades ago. But they don't wanna.
The RIAA is the industry association made up of all the (for-profit) record labels in America. Most every record/tape/cd you've ever seen in a store was created by a company which is a member of the RIAA, but the RIAA itself is not a profit-making business, it's a lobbying group. It has been around since the dawn of the selling of recorded music. Practically speaking it's almost 100 years old. It's the organization that speaks for the record industry in America. It's the organization that gives out the Grammy Awards every year. Saying that it has "provided some service to artists" is a bit like saying Ford, General Motors and Chrysler have provided "some service to people who drive cars." Still, your question is a very good one. Could Janis Ian have become a star without a major record label promoting her music in the 60s and 70s?
Hey! An Anonymous Coward with something constructive to say. I like it.
I have a degree in music business, so I'll tell you an interesting fact. With major-label records, around the world, in all genres of music combined, 90% of all albums lose money. 5% break even. And 5% are big hits and make enough money so that the record company can still show a profit after losing money to record and market the other 95%. That's the reality of the current record business. It's also why most recording artists who sign contracts with major labels don't ever show a profit for themselves, even though the record labels as a whole make profits. I'm sure that the Internet is going to change this, because record companies won't be able to afford the $$$ to do things according to the old system. Will artists figure out how to make profits once the apple cart is turned over? Interesting.
Sorry if my earlier post got truncated. The cost of a CD/album has nothing to do with the cost of a PC music recording system. That would be like saying the cost of a Spielberg motion picture can't be much more than the cost of a camera and a roll of film. The cost of making a Spielberg picture depends (in part) on the cost of hiring Spielberg and Tom Cruise to make it, plus many other costs. The cost of recording studio equipment has dropped dramatically in the last 20 years. But the cost of making an album is the cost of hiring all the musicians, songwriters, engineer and producer who make it, and those guys charge money because they've been working their whole lives to become good musicians. Furthermore, if a movie is to become a hit, the film studio or record label has to spend millions of dollars marketing it. "Spider Man" would not have been a hit unless the studio had spent a great deal of money on all the movie trailers you saw all over TV and all the posters you saw at bus stops. Web sites cost money too. With all major-label record albums, the label spends much more money promoting and marketing the album than they spend recording it. And very, very few albums become platinum or gold sellers in the absence of hundreds of thousands of dollars in promotion money. So, in short, the cost of recording an album might be small if it's an indie punk project where the musicians don't expect to get paid. But the cost of a major-label pop record is a huge gamble involving hundreds of thousands. The record company invests the money (gambles) in the hopes that they can reap rewards (profits). The question is, how will the Internet, P2P and MP3s cause the balance to tip? Will record labels have to figure out how to have hits when they have the potential to earn far less money from them? If so, how can they justify the marketing budget if it will be even harder for them to earn their money back? Fascinating.
Answer: Easy. An established artist can leave. But the more interesting question is: "Could an artist ever become established in the first place without the RIAA investing a great deal of money in establishing them?"
Robkill wrote: ...Artists like you, Christine Lavin, and Ani DiFranco have proven that it's possible to survive and prosper away from the major labels...
----------
I say:
Actually Janis Ian does not belong in the same category as Christine Lavin or Ani DiFranco. Lavin and DiFranco make livings as musicians WITHOUT ever having had major-label investment/promotion/backing. Ian, on the other hand, is making a living as a musician today BECAUSE a major label invested megabucks in promoting her career in the 60s and 70s.
This is an important distinction.
You know, Anonymous Coward, that the questions that get the most responses are the ones that will be forwarded to Janis Ian for comment. So with every negative post you make, you promote and encourage the very questions you seem to disdain. Lighten up, how about it?
I'd like to point out that not all technologically literate computer geeks think P2P sharing of copyrighted material is a Good Thing. I don't. Generally I side with the RIAA. I have a college degree in Recording Studio Engineering and Music Business and I have a great deal of friends who are professional musicians and songwriters. Most of them are very upset by and against Napster and online piracy on principle.
Janis Ian is a highly respected and revered songwriter. Her opinion counts. If you haven't heard of her, it's because you are not educated about American songwriting and American pop music. Her hits were in the 70s, but she has been a working musician all this time, so she has a lot of wisdom to share.
Do you think the "major label system" of investing huge amounts of money to make stars, and being able to recoup that investment to turn profits, can and should be preserved? If so, we've got to engineer a way for them to continue to make money. I don't think you would have the ability to earn the living as a musician that you enjoy today unless thirty years ago a major label had invested big bucks in promoting your songs "Society's Child" and "At Seventeen" until they became big hit records.
Broader ethical question: Shouldn't an individual musician or songwriter get to decide, on a song-by-song basis, which ones she wants to give away as a free MP3 and which ones she reserves for sale? Where does a music listener get off copying and distributing something from a songwriter which the listener has received no permission to duplicate? Why does the mere fact that a listener CAN duplicate and pirate copyrighted music mean that a listener has a defensible democratic right to do so?