forestfrolic

[hide=Al Baker on file sharing]Dearest Dolies, Late this morning I saw, through my twitter feed, Mr. Frank Turner post a link to an article from the Daily Mash (the poor man's Onion), satirising the arguments of pro-file sharers as "File Share Crackdown 'Breaches Fundamental Right To Steal'" (see the article here...) For those of you not quite in the loop, this strand of the long running debate began a few days ago when renowned evildoer Peter Mandelson released a statement describing a Government proposal to 'crack down' on illegal file-sharing by cutting off repeat offenders from their internet service. This, coupled with the recent fining and imprisonment of the Pirate Bay founders has brought the debate to something of a head, and I'd like to put my thoughts in the ring while most people are still calm enough to listen. There is no question that, if you download for free an LP (for the sake of argument, let's say it is Elvis Costello's Armed Forces) which you did not own on another format, you have broken the law (there is some question, apparently, about whether you have broken the law if you already owned Armed Forces on Vinyl, for instance). But we all know that the law isn't always right - and more to the point we all know that theft isn't always morally wrong. So no sensible person will argue "This is illegal" or "This is theft", therefore it is wrong. In order to determine the rightness or wrongness of illegal file-sharing, music piracy or whatever you want to call it, we'll have to think a bit harder than that. Firstly, I need to spill a couple of not-so-secret industry secrets. Selling records is just about the least profitable part of making music. The amount of money it costs to record, press and promote a record to put on general release is staggering, and the money is very rarely made back (a very large number of artists finish their fifteen minutes of fame in debt to their record labels for this reason). If you sign up to a record label, which is pretty much a necessity if you want to get your music well promoted and distributed, the chances that a musician will see any of the money from the sales of that record are pretty slim, and for the lucky few that do make some money back, or don't wind up in debt to their label, the sales still aren't generally enough to live on (artists only ever get a variable percentage - I haven't the exact figure to hand, but roughly 2.5% of what you pay for a CD goes to the people who wrote the music). The way musicians make most of their money (I'll hopefully include myself in that number before too long) is through royalties and live performance. Whereas your averagely successful rock and/or roller might see 2.5% from a sale of a CD (25p from a £10 product), they're likely to see roughly 25% of the face value of a ticket to see them in concert. It's fairly common knowledge now that the number and attendances at live performances have gone up since file-sharing became more widespread, and I think there is a very easy explanation for this. If you are forced to shell out some £10-£20 in order to hear a new artist, you're unlikely to do it. If you can do it for free, you'll listen to as much as you can, and if you like it you'll pay to see it done live. And, the more live shows a musician does, the more royalties the songwriter gets (for instance, I'll get about £5 in royalties when I play half an hour down my local pub, if I get played on Radio 1, it's about £20 per minute, it all depends on the audience size and various other boring things that Chris tried to explain to me once). In terms of hard, money grubbing, selfish, capitalist scumbag thinking, I firmly believe that file-sharing has been a good thing for musicians in of themselves. Besides which, I think that people still will buy people's physical format music if they like it (I've done exactly that, tried-then-buyed, with plenty of artists, too numerous to mention). And it strikes me as a very unpleasant, almost blackmailing habit, when musicians insist that people have to shell out pretty substantial sums before they're allowed to hear whether they like what's on offer or not. Is it harmless? Absolutely not. As I said in the opening paragraph, by far the easiest way to get your music heard is to sign on to a label. Labels will judge your performance on record sales, and small labels can't afford to take the sort of blow that file-sharing often deals out. So I would urge you, as I have urged people in the past to think on this, to remember that the artist you like will only be allowed to continue working with a label if that label makes a profit - and that it is through these small labels that artists often get their first 'break'. The music world needs independant labels, and we need to be responsible enough to make sure they don't go broke - but I have enough faith in people to know that when we can afford to help people out, we will. If that's not possible, I personally would always rather someone heard my music for free than that they didn't hear it at all. In the words of Stan Marsh "If we're real musicians, then we should just play and be stoked that so many people are listening". Yeah it's a job, and we need to make a living, but it's our art first and foremost. One final main point - I think that people who bang on too much about the wrongness of illegal file sharing of music and videos, in defense of the creators (that's you and me, Frank), are, to be honest, pissing in the wind. We would, in my opinion, be serving ourselves far better if instead of making time-honoured arguments equivalent to the "home taping is killing music" campaign of the 80s (it didn't, in case you hadn't noticed), we looked to the future. The music business is going to change enormously in the very near future, and with any luck it'll mean the end of EMI, Vigin and Colombia. The best way that we can ensure that we get paid fairly for the work we do is to organise ourselves and lobby for legislated internet-generated royalty guarantees. Spotify, MySpace, YouTube, and similar services are where people go to listen to music now and if we don't act soon to ensure that we get our fair share of the revenue generated from such services, then all the decisions will be made without us, by the same people in the industry who are ripping us off now, while we're still bickering over Pirate Bay. I think that's all for now, if anyone has any comments, corrections or questions I'd be pleased to hear them - and there's a very good podcast from Stephen Fry that anyone interested in the issue should hear (just go to his website and subscribe from there). Thanks for your time, Al x[/hide]

I'm still confused as to why you don't finish the pizza you ate half of, instead of eating another one creating a bunch of halves. Someone explain?

You're articulation in the OP is superb. :thumbup: I'm sorry to hear about your construction woes.

Menofmen, please keep it clean(er). Added to OP. :thumbup:

I really want to see the winning videos. I tried watching some.. but almost all were so bad I had to stop.

You cowards! Has no one the dedication to do this task? I will do it!

There's a difference between fantasy, and pizza.

I'm having trouble embedding the video.. Anyway, enjoy.

You see, there's a computer screen between me and you. Therefore some people don't have a problem belittling others they don't know, to make themselves feel better.

A bicycle thread. Last summer I discovered the joy and freedom cycling has to offer when one day I just decided to ride my bike to not place in particular, just to ride. I live in a mountainous forest area, so it was really scenic and refreshing. I ended up getting in good shape and started to ride 20 plus kilometers a day. I ride a Trek Mountain Track 820 that's a bit old, but it holds up. Unfortunately I had surgery recently so I haven't been able to ride.. and it's killing me. Right now I'm looking into taking a bicycle mechanic class at my local store, so I can get a job there. And I either want to get a nice Trek hardtail, or build a fixie. I realise fixies have become somewhat of a scene thing, but hell.. I fit right in. EDIT: If you like watching fixed gear videos, there's a huge community on vimeo. I'll link some videos here in the morning.

It took me up until this morning to learn what mudkips are, after finally searching them. I didn't watch any pokemon during my childhood.

Thank you both. :thumbup:

Nice blog, good luck on your goals! How hard is Stealing Creation? Worth the time to get the tools for 2x xp?

When runecrafting, do you bring all of your pouches with you? I can use up to large, so I bring large, medium, and small. But my friend told me he only brings the biggest one he can and keeps the smaller ones in the bank incase he dies from lag in abyss/wild.

When did he say this? The OP says he has it with him. :wall: Oh. Well looks like your problem is solved. Good thinking mate.

viewtopic.php?t=478642#wrapheader The wikipedia page no longer exists. Not a big deal but I figured I'd mention it.

When did he say this? The OP says he has it with him.

He speaks the truth.

9/10.

This person has a serious problem.. grow up.

Awesome. What are your stats?

/rants. Please post anymore rants on a topic that has the purpose of ranting. I let the ranting go because it was linked to the latest tweet pertaining to how there will be no update this week. Now the posts are just bashing Jagex, which you have every right to. Just please not here. Thanks.

Certainly you're not including my thread which is titled 'Post and discuss all Jagex Twitter updates..' with rant threads about updates. People just started ranting in here after a tweet was posted saying no update this week.

Wow. I just don't understand using omegle for anything other than funny conversations or trolling. I mean, he provided you with nice pictures of himself. Why? It's weird.

Haha, that made my day. : I would just keep away from them. If they escalate the threats, I would contact the police and just make them aware of your situation in case anything does happen.