Forum Moderators: open
An interesting story from The Register
[theregister.co.uk...]
"In other words, just putting files in a computer directory that other people can access is insufficient an action to constitute illegal distribution - at least under Canadian law." More details in the link.
Judge compares files a publicly accessible directory to books in a library with a copy machine.
The artist has a near-free channel to market. Why use the ludicrously expensive distribution channel based on shifting tacky plastic boxes?
The record industry will soon become a pure marketing service. They'll be encouraging file trading just to get their clients heard.
Shift in power. Speaking as a musician myself, this is not before time.
BTW: The music today is better than ever :)
<edit reason>dodgy grammar</edit>
[edited by: feeder at 5:01 am (utc) on April 2, 2004]
To call sharing music 'theft of intellectual property' is really going too far. To give a website example, if people wanted to make copies of my websites they thought were cool and hand these out to their friends, I would consider this successful website promotion, not theft.
Besides, copying of music has gone on since music was there to be copied, through musicians themselves and then older technologies like cassettes. This doesn't seem to have damaged musicians at all.
The music industry sees files sharing and the internet in general as a threat to their supreme power and control over musicians and their output (and the means to distibute it) hence their ridiculous heavy-handed tactics. The sooner they are vanquished, the better.
Letting any tom, dick, or harry simply steal our ideas and use them for their own without renumerating us would completely undermine our ability to protect our intellectual property.
Hey! I resent that comment! It was my understanding that ideas could not be copyrighted, only works!
Kidding aside, the comparison to libraries holds, but not entirely. There's a fair use quota on how much people can photocopy out of books. Go to any serious neighboring college copy centre, and they'll refuse to copy even a chapter for you.
Back in school, the professors used to get permissions from publishers before copying articles and giving them to students.
However, since Canadians already pay a levy on every blanks cd they buy - that should be enough to starve off the music industry. I mean, can anyone prove to me that all blanks are purchased for music copying and swapping? Just looking at my stuff, my cds are full of my data, not music. The music industry in Canada should be happy to get that much. They have too much already.
I know the Artist didn't get paid, I know the record company didn't get paid - and I don't care.
Know why? Because I *WANT* them to go out of business. I want these clowns who should never have gotten a record deal to stop singing and get a job. There will ALWAYS be music - there will always be people who compose/play/sing because of their passion for it as an art, not as a source of revenue, and I look forward to that day.
I look forward to the day when I turn on the radio and I hear music that's good because the local radio station hand picked it after listening to a bunch of artists - not because the parent network forced them to play it because of a deal with a record company.
I'm not paying for it. I'll stay with Talk radio, it doesn't bother me - keeps me up to date on politics and what's really important anyway, not what 15 year olds think is important :)
It comes down to this: First question: What is the purpose of this creation? Second question: does it fill its purpose?
The answer to the first question most often falls into the tool or entertainment category. If it is a tool, it is meant in some way to make your workflow more efficient thus making your labour/income ratio lighter. If it is entertainment, it entertains you - without giving you any possibility of bettering your income with it.
Now the answer to the second question: if it is a tool and it does fill its purpose and you use it to make money you better be [expletive] sure that you had better compensate the person who invented it. If it doesn't fill its purpose you discard it. Now, should you pay for this tool before you can even try it? For manual labour we usually learn to use a tool by using someone else's, or we are told by a professional that 'this' is what we need to better do 'that' . As far as the computer is concerned there are many resources of the latter type out there but an uninitiated user would rather try something first (as he already has a fixed goal) to see if the tool works rather than read about it first. There is a sea of possibilities to choose from to boot, so how can you choose which best fills the purpose? Shareware does a pretty good job of answering this. If it ain't good, toss it. If it is, pay.
Now for entertainment. Does it fill its purpose? Is it entertaining? How can you see if it's entertaining before you pay for it? How can you choose when the web offerse a list of literally hundreds of thousands of titles? Will the user, in face of this mother of all record stores, be willing to buy an album without being able to hear it beforehand and risk being disappointed? If you do hear a snippet, is that enough to like it or are you expected to count on heresay and ad campaigns? If you DO like it and there's only a low-quality copy available for free, what will you do? Again, I think the answer lies in the shareware direction.
And - if it is entertainment, and it does fill its purpose, you better be [expletive] sure that you had better compensate the person who invented it.
A copy of a website is fine if you are selling a product. If they copied your content site and removed the adverts (i.e. source of revenue) or copied it and said that they would match all your prices (i.e. your source of revenue) would that be fair?
> Besides, copying of music has gone on since music was there to be copied, through musicians themselves and then older technologies like cassettes. This doesn't seem to have damaged musicians at all.
The cassette did not damage the music industry much because someone needed to buy the original record/tape/CD in the first place. The group was smaller. I don't know many people who bought a cassette and copied it 10,000 times for friends and even people they don't know. But the 10,000 times is happening now with the progression of the internet.
Theft is theft, plain and simple. Theft of intellectual property for personal use is one thing, but for sharing with anyone?
It is no different to myself taking a copy of your website and putting a duplicate page on the internet. I know you care about that - why? Because it affect you and your personal income.
There is another side to the record industry. In the UK, CDWOW have been banned from importing CD's from Eastern Europe where they are cheaper. Amazon apparenlty were next to be investigated. CD's on CDWOW rose by about £2 per CD ($3 approx).
These were original CDs produced by the record company who were making profit from these CDs.
Price-fixing. Greed. No wonder people download.
The record firms are two-faced in their decisions.
I think you are confusing the comparison I made here. If someone copied a site and then wanted to use that to make profit, this is a different matter entirely. File sharers do not stand to profit from downloading music. In fact, from what I've read the people sharing and downloading music are the same ones still going out and buying records. Try before you buy if you will (something which is necessary considering the lack of consumer confidence in the music industy's 'product').
To stretch the comparison slightly, everyone who has ever visited a website has a copy saved locally, at least temporarily. the internet itself is just a big file sharing network.
>>It is no different to myself taking a copy of your website and putting a duplicate page on the internet. I know you care about that - why? Because it affect you and your personal income.
It is completely different - then you would be passing off my intellectual property as your own and trying to profit from it. The equivalent of releasing one of my records and saying that you wrote it - not the same thing at all.
Come on up, there is lots of room!
I went to a concert 2 weeks ago. For 20 bucks they put a wrist band on you and after the show they gave you 2 cd's with the entire concert. I was at the back of the line and had to wait for 30 minutes, but it was still worth it. They sold about 500 copies from my estimation. The sound on the cd is superb.
It was great to know that the band got the whole 20 dollars.
The record companies brought this upon themselves. I have zero sympathy, I mean there are some albums I bought three times in three different formats, and it was more expensive every time.
A tree that falls in the forest that no one knows about never happened. If you want to sell tickets to the event, you've usually got to pay to advertise that there has been an event. And you may not recoup your investment. There's something to the observation I quote above.
How did the upstanding high moral rectitude music industry or portions thereof try to insure exposure in the "good old days" before P2P? The cops called it payola and it cost Alan Freed, the New York DJ who virtually invented rock 'n' roll, his career.
He only coined the term, therefore did not invent rock 'n' roll, per se.
But I think you knew that, there is a good movie on his short life.
There will ALWAYS be music - there will always be people who compose/play/sing because of their passion for it as an art, not as a source of revenue, and I look forward to that day.
Your day is here! I'd love to play you some great music because I love to compose. But sorry, it's not finished yet, I'm too busy with my full time computer work. Oh, and I don't have 10 extra k for good recording equipment. But if you'd like me to spend $1000 to travel to where you are and get paid $200 for a gig, maybe I'd be up for that self encapsulated version of hades.
My other option, since I love it, is to just make my music for me, and not expect any compensation. Ok, but, why would I work to put my music in front of you (which, yes, does take work - you can't even steal it if you don't know who I am) for no money if I'm making my music for me? I'll just keep it for me thanks, and you can listen to talk radio. Come over for a beer if you want to hear the latest work in progress. It's pretty catchy, I have to say. But like I mentioned, I haven't had time to finish it.
All musicians should hold day jobs because art has no intrinsic value. Hogwash.
I think you are confusing the comparison I made here. If someone copied a site and then wanted to use that to make profit, this is a different matter entirely.
What if you wrote a book. It should be distributed freely? It takes no work that deserves compensation to write a book? You're not making a profit reading a book, but it's still worth something to you. Websites with content worth direct compensation charge for access to content.
/je suis confuse
Come on man - every "artist" you hear on the radio today probably spent hours in their garage band, spent years doing gigs at bars, opening for other bands, whatever. Granted many did it because they wanted to eventually get a record deal, but I know a couple of guys who have a decent band and they do it because they like it not because they want to get a record deal.
What I said stands ... there will always be people who want to put their music out there for no reason other than their passion for the art.
There is also the publicity. If they need an income, they can make it doing concerts and selling copies of the concerts to people who are there. Consider the distribution of their music a "free trial" - afterall, that's basically what radio is. If you like the product, buy it or come to a concert.
As for the E-Book comparison, there are a ton of publishers out there who put their words out for free on the web. People download their EBooks or just read on their website. How do those guys make money? By speaking at seminars (the publisher's equivalent of a conert). People get their ebooks for free and then pay to listen to them speak at a seminar.
I tell you again that it's the PURPOSE of the publication that should be the central issue when it comes to discussing its 'value'.
Personal music or professional music: if you do it in your spare time and put it on the web for all that's one thing, but if you make music for a living it's another - it's your purpose in life and that's something not to be trifled with. Now, whether the quality is up to par is another angle, and there is some music out there made by the former case which is much better than the latter, but the former certainly won't profit from the protection the record labels give their 'professional music'. And, if the game is played with all the cards above table, it's the best quality that sells in the end.
Now sure, anyone can call themselves a professional musician and protect his work with all the copyright, software and hardware protection in existence, but - how are you going to sell it if we can't even know if it's good or not? Another tree falling in the forest, albeit a well-protected tree.
IMHO 'purpose' for ALL entertainment media (and that including art and spectacle) is the message it tries to relay, it's just the support that differs. The quality is in the talent and experience of the person relaying it. Does he do it well, can you relate, do you want to own it in the best possible quality for yourself? None of these questions are even considered by the record labels.
Let me put it like this. You see a few rented DVD's at a friend's place and you remember them on your next visit to your local DVD megastore. Which one did you immidiately forget after seeing it, and which would you rather own: Apocalypse Now or Terminator III?
Perhaps It seems I stray off track - but I think in a way it's the integrity of the entire creative process these 'dealers' are putting at stake.
(added) my tacking other issues onto the matter aside, let's not forget that even if you like it it's rare that you'll find it for free in any good quality on the net.
Most guys in bands do it to impress girls. ;-)
Come on man - every "artist" you hear on the radio today probably spent hours in their garage band, spent years doing gigs at bars, opening for other bands, whatever. Granted many did it because they wanted to eventually get a record deal, but I know a couple of guys who have a decent band and they do it because they like it not because they want to get a record deal.
yes. but most of us who jam a couple of times a month (for lack of time), you'll never hear. We're not out at a bar promoting ourselves, we're busy working. The ones who don't work so they can travel and play, want a record deal, because to just play bars is far from worth it. You can only make good money performing *after* you're big and famous, which you can only become, if you have a record deal. Catch 22.
But that wasn't my original point at all about why this is a bad thing for music, and how it will kill off more original artistic musicians - the kind you like so much.
What I said stands ... there will always be people who want to put their music out there for no reason other than their passion for the art.
yes and you'll never hear us, even with point to point. There is no reason for me to spend my money promoting myself so that you can hear about me, download my music, and then not ever pay for it.
There is also the publicity. If they need an income, they can make it doing concerts and selling copies of the concerts to people who are there. Consider the distribution of their music a "free trial" - after all, that's basically what radio is. If you like the product, buy it or come to a concert.
It's a paltry argument to say downloaded mp3s are a preview - like radio. You have a perfect, permanent copy placed right into your main stereo. People aren't rushing out to replace it with a cd they have to then rip.
And you're not going to see me in any concert if I'm busy working. We can't make enough to get by properly until we're signed. 1 in 1000 bands that GET a record contract end up making a profit. Don't think there is tonnes of cash to be had bar hopping with your guitar as an unknown trying to build a buzz one show at a time with no other support at all.
This is the reason a writer is given a bunch of money and time, then told to go and write a book, then has the book promoted. Same reason a musician is given a bunch of money and time, and told to go and write an album, then has the album promoted. Neither are expected to show up with a polished product created in their spare time in their basement, and then sell a million copies with no promotion.
As for the E-Book comparison, there are a ton of publishers out there who put their words out for free on the web. People download their EBooks or just read on their website. How do those guys make money? By speaking at seminars (the publisher's equivalent of a conert). People get their ebooks for free and then pay to listen to them speak at a seminar.
That's not reality. Go to a bookstore - compare the wares to what's available as an e-book for free, both for quality and quantity. Publishing a novel for free isn't going to get me any highly paid speaking engagements. I would have to 'get published' first, at the very least. Same as getting signed to a record deal. Show me a famous writer who has never been published by a publishing house.
Information is the embodiment of ideas. If you're not willing to pay for access to other peoples ideas, whether for enjoyment or learning, we will remain at odds. I don't like the recording industry either, but I do like a good number of artists, and I think they deserve to get paid.
Musicians will exist without money. They have been doing it from the begining of time, as have artists, writers, poets and a plethra of other creative types who would rather starve than give up their passion (More power to them). It doesn't mean that they shouldn't get paid though. And they are getting paid, I think. It's just the money is getting spread around a little more and the big dogs don't like it.
I have to say that the ability to download music has opened my ears to a wide variety of musicians that I never would have been able to hear otherwise. I then go to the previously unknown bands' concerts when they are in town. They get money from performing, which I thought was what being a musician was about. If it is about selling little shiney disks, showing your tits on national television and marrying your friend as a stunt, forgive me, I was mislead.
I sometimes wonder if record sales are really down or only the big label sales are down. How many indie labels are jumping for joy because sales are up? I don't suppose we will ever know.
It's funny, I haven't heard anyone talking about whether concert sales are up or down, despite the fact that ticket prices have skyrocketed. I'm not saying they are or aren't, but something tells me they are up but no one (ahem... record industry) wants to talk about that. I mean, could they really get away with charging $60 a ticket if they weren't up?
showing your tits on national television
Quiet! You'll jinx it!
How many indie labels are jumping for joy because sales are up? I don't suppose we will ever know.
I'll speak for one and say: way, way up.
What Canadians don't realize is that in todays music industry climate, the Hip would never have been given a chance to begin to survive, because they don't appeal to the masses in any traditional way.
Please... The only reason The Tragically Hip survive is because of CanCon.
I buy CD's. It's all Industrial or EBM music though, so that money doesn't make it to major record labels anyway. And I still end up paying $20 per CD, $12 per single, which means I can't buy as much as I would like.
And how do I decide I want to buy those cds? They don't play that music on the radio! I download the mp3s from the album, and if I enjoy it, I buy it.
And for goodness sakes, if you're going to sell music online, make sure it's encoded at 192kbps at the very least, and that there is no copy protection.
I refuse to put myself in a situation where I have to buy my music again in five years because I changed operating systems!
I disagree, the Hip toured relentlessly. They hit every corner of the country. They also released an album every year, unlike most bands. Plus, they would constantly improvise on stage, giving audiences a different experiences every show. Sure, CanCon helped them, but they worked the road to develop a loyal following.
It's a myth propagated my the music industry themselves that file sharing is hurting music sales. For example, have a look at the report mentioned in this article - [theregister.co.uk...]
I'm busy working too, but I make time to produce and promote music. If enough people like what I do, I will be able to do it full time and get paid, with or without the record industry. In its current form, preferably without.
Discussion seems pretty irrelevant anyway, seeing as the music biz are fighting a tide they neither understand nor will they be able to hold it back.
[edited by: Macguru at 9:47 pm (utc) on April 2, 2004]
[edit reason] Linkless URL [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]
I think you're missing my point. I'm not saying that peer to peer will help unsigned bands get exposure - it WON'T help them at all because no one is looking for them.
My point is that the crap you hear on the radio right now is controlled due to deals the networks have with the record labels. Peer to Peer can eliminate the need for the record labels, and thus eliminate the need for contracts between radio staions and the major labels.
If you do away with that whole system of delivering music, radio networks and even individual stations will be able to pick their own music and air what they want based on QUALITY not what's force-fed to them by the major labels.
Private recording studios are all over the country. Independent artists ("Garage bands" if you will) can get a professional reel done fairly inexpensively - under $1,000. They can then (if they choose) copyright their music, and distribute it to radio stations and networks to get their songs on the radio locally or nation wide. The radio stations will be able to listen to all of the submissions and pick the ones they want to air.
When people hear music they like, they'll want to buy it or download it, and go to live shows. This enables the artist to make their money by doing concerts, not by selling recorded music - and I don't know if you've payed attention to ticket prices lately, but a single show can generate a couple million bucks and that's AFTER the costs of renting a concert hall, technical staff, food/drinks, cleanup crew, etc.
If that's the kind of money you want to make, the model I just described gives you a much better chance of getting there. You'll get there based on the quality of your music, not on what a record label thinks they can sell.
This will benefit a lot of people in a lot of different ways:
(1) Radio stations aren't restricted to having to air certain songs a certain number of times a week, nor are the restricted as to what songs their library can contain. They get to pick 100% of what goes on the air for themselves.
(2) We (the average joe non-musician) get to start hearing quality music on the radio, not the manufactured garbage that's been piped out recently.
(3) EVERY artist has an equal chance at fame and fortune - if they're GOOD ENOUGH to get on the air.
(4) The average joe non-musician will be able to download the music they want and SHARE the music they want with others, free of charge. Which leads to number 5:
(5) Radio stations, being in a new open market, will pick up new material through friends and family and word of mouth that may not have been submitted to them directly, but is something that matches their station's style and they would want to air it. More free content for radio stations, more free exposure for bands in a new market.
The only one who really LOSES in this scenario is the record label - who currently has a lock on the entire industry that benefits no one but THEMSELVES and the FEW artists (when compared to how many small bands there are out there) they represent. With my model, you're cutting out a really fat middle-man and everyone benefits.
lawman
it WON'T help them at all because no one is looking for them
There is a company called Big Champagne that is making a small fortune tracking P2P. They sell the information about who is being downloaded and where. According to their results, small bands do get downloaded and create sort of micro areas of popularity. The record executives are using that information to dictate where certain bands should be played on the radio. Wired did an article on it awhile back (can't find it now).
Most people don't have any problem with firesharing. It's just an excuse for the RIAA to get more money--Korn said so themselves in a recent music video; they take the money for themselves. Seems it's just another way for them to mess over the people who make the music.
It's like we were running an art gallery and anyone could come in and take whatever they please without paying.
Greetings,
Herenvardö
[edit]
PS: I'm not against intellectual property. I'm against the laws that let companies to exploit the artists' creations
[/edit]
Which makes today's situation very odd indeed. We have the record labels cramming the airwaves (and our brains) with their prefab wares in their attempt to brainwash us into buying them, yet complain when the people who follow their cowbell and corral and actually DO want their 'stuff' don't pay for it when they find it free online.
Less than that. The master copy costs a fortune, studio time has to be paid for and the cost of shipping all those CDs out (which can go through two or three companies before hitting the shelves in some cases - and each company makes money from that). But they still get a lot.
---
But what gets me the most is the banning of UK shops from selling (legal) Eastern European CDs. The artist gets paid, the record company gets paid, the customer costs are lower and there has been no illegal activity! But they are not happy with that - they keep the price artificially higher than it should be and then want people to not download! Maybe they have so much money that they don't realise that 'normal' people just are not that rich on average!
And until recently lived near enough to one of the record company owners to see the kind of 3 million dollar a throw parties ( not business just starlet type parties )that he and his type do with their "cut"..
While I think there is probably no stronger advocate than myself for protection of copyright ....
Nevertheless the obscene difference between what we artists get ( wether visual / musical /writer etc ) and what the bosses get is the reason for all the P2P etc .....
Even the Madonnas of this world dont get more than 2% of the cover price as a performer ( and about 8% or so if they wrote the material ...some are bigger but never ever more than 12% )...
As for banning the import and sale of CD's from eastern Europe depending on the countries thatshould be an item for the EU commision on Free inter member trade .....The ban is illegal...in EU law ...
However the enforcement of anti monoply laws and such always does depend on who your friends are and how long your lawyers can stall on appeal by virtue of your "war chest" .....
