P2P Users More Likely to Cheat, Shoplift

paul_wilson · October 4, 2005

thats just a load of crap..

why would downloading songs, which most kids i know dont think is illegal!, make them shoplift and 'cheat'. its like that southpark episode whre stan touched a joint and they think he will be a terorist

pure stupidity!

How2PK · October 4, 2005

Heh, you got to love the slippery slope. :P

DaN · October 4, 2005

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid= ... 188&tid=17

Death_By_Pod · October 4, 2005

That's an unfair comparison. I'm not making money from downloading music. I'm not selling it.

It doesnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t matter if IÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢m selling it; the argument still stands even if IÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢m giving it away. The company will sue me for misrepresentation and use of their trademarks regardless if I make a profit or not. Do you really think they will leave you alone if youÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢re giving it away?

At the movies I don't just pay to see the movie -- I'm paying to see it in the special format it is presented in (surround sound, large screen, luxury seats etc). So ... no.

The point here was that you pay for the intangible product at a movie theatre. I didnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t mean that you solely pay to watch the movie, of course you pay for use of seats and building rent etc. but the point is you also pay money for something intangible (the movie itself). The movie theatre does not get movies for free and in return charges you for this intangible product but when you suddenly get an intangible product from the internet it doesnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t count. The cost of the movie reel or c.d. is insignificant compared to what it stores; shouldnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t you be willing to pay for the price of a c.d. minus the cost of c.d. and packaging instead of completely refusing to pay? There are services that offer mp3ÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s like Itunes, they offer the same thing as P2P so how come they expect you to pay for the songs?

A cabbage quality sample that doesn't always work isn't the type of thing that makes me want to buy a product. It's like an advertisement on TV without colour, sound or proper spelling -- you wouldn't want to buy that product would you?

What are you talking about? All the samples (within reason, sure there might be a few that were misplaced but you know what I mean) work on Amazon.com and the quality is in general ALMOST as good as an mp3. Most mp3ÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s (non lossless) are horrible anyway so something a bit worse doesnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t hurt as much as the initial quality hit of 192kbit. I could probably find 5 or 6 albums I can stream by artists I listen to and probably get a whole bunch of mp3ÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s legally from them and the quality is just as good as the 128kbit or 192kbit songs you download and listen with your horrible Ipod earphones.

Like the samples, the mp3ÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s you download are like an advert without colourÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃâÃÂ¦ because it is inferior to the c.d. version. When does an advert ever play a song from an album in full and offer you a copy for personal use? In a matter of fact when do you ever see a company give away their complete product and say you can pay for it if you like it? Never otherwise people would just take the product and not pay; surely this isnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t a smart way to make money.

Stealing is stealing, yeah, fine. But taking something from a shop is different to downloading music.

How about not paying a doctor or lawyer for their service? Not all stores sell tangible products and I bet you that you will be chased and have the cops called on you if you try to make a runner. WhatÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s the difference between this and something ÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬Ãâ¹ÃâvirtualÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢, the doctor spent the time talking to you much in the same way an artist spent their time making a song for you.

Actually, it is quite different. You see, in this case, the people still have access to their intellectual property. Perhaps tangible or intangible it is still stealing, but then I guess you quoting my post is stealing isn't it? I didn't give permission for you to quote my post, did I now? The post is my intellectual property so technically you're stealing it by using the same logic. If I download music, the artist still has access to their own music. If I steal their car, they don't have access to their car. See the difference?

No I donÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t see the difference; you are still violating their property rights by the fact that the owner does not have control (which access is a part of) of his/her work. Your example doesnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t work because this is a public forum which you signed an agreement and understood the rules in which this forum operates. So long as I quote to you within this forum and under the rules we agreed to it is perfectly fine. Now if I reproduced your article elsewhere without permission then it is stealing.

Maybe if you steal goods you wouldn't have a problem downloading music. But if you download music you won't necessarily be more likely to take a tangible object from a shop.

A rectangle is a square, but a square is not a rectangle.

ThatÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s exactly what I said, read the quote. They should be taking it from the perspective that people who steal physical things have no problems downloading songs rather then the other way around. In this case it would be somewhat factual and point out that thieves donÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t discriminate between the things they steal; they just take advantage of a situation. Much like what you are doing except they do it far more often and on a wider variety of things.

AThousandLies · October 4, 2005

That's an unfair comparison. I'm not making money from downloading music. I'm not selling it.

It doesnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t matter if IÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢m selling it; the argument still stands even if IÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢m giving it away. The company will sue me for misrepresentation and use of their trademarks regardless if I make a profit or not. Do you really think they will leave you alone if youÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢re giving it away?

At the movies I don't just pay to see the movie -- I'm paying to see it in the special format it is presented in (surround sound, large screen, luxury seats etc). So ... no.

The point here was that you pay for the intangible product at a movie theatre. I didnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t mean that you solely pay to watch the movie, of course you pay for use of seats and building rent etc. but the point is you also pay money for something intangible (the movie itself). The movie theatre does not get movies for free and in return charges you for this intangible product but when you suddenly get an intangible product from the internet it doesnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t count. The cost of the movie reel or c.d. is insignificant compared to what it stores; shouldnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t you be willing to pay for the price of a c.d. minus the cost of c.d. and packaging instead of completely refusing to pay? There are services that offer mp3ÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s like Itunes, they offer the same thing as P2P so how come they expect you to pay for the songs?

A cabbage quality sample that doesn't always work isn't the type of thing that makes me want to buy a product. It's like an advertisement on TV without colour, sound or proper spelling -- you wouldn't want to buy that product would you?

What are you talking about? All the samples (within reason, sure there might be a few that were misplaced but you know what I mean) work on Amazon.com and the quality is in general ALMOST as good as an mp3. Most mp3ÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s (non lossless) are horrible anyway so something a bit worse doesnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t hurt as much as the initial quality hit of 192kbit. I could probably find 5 or 6 albums I can stream by artists I listen to and probably get a whole bunch of mp3ÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s legally from them and the quality is just as good as the 128kbit or 192kbit songs you download and listen with your horrible Ipod earphones.

Like the samples, the mp3ÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s you download are like an advert without colourÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃâÃÂ¦ because it is inferior to the c.d. version. When does an advert ever play a song from an album in full and offer you a copy for personal use? In a matter of fact when do you ever see a company give away their complete product and say you can pay for it if you like it? Never otherwise people would just take the product and not pay; surely this isnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t a smart way to make money.

Stealing is stealing, yeah, fine. But taking something from a shop is different to downloading music.

How about not paying a doctor or lawyer for their service? Not all stores sell tangible products and I bet you that you will be chased and have the cops called on you if you try to make a runner. WhatÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s the difference between this and something ÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬Ãâ¹ÃâvirtualÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢, the doctor spent the time talking to you much in the same way an artist spent their time making a song for you.

Actually, it is quite different. You see, in this case, the people still have access to their intellectual property. Perhaps tangible or intangible it is still stealing, but then I guess you quoting my post is stealing isn't it? I didn't give permission for you to quote my post, did I now? The post is my intellectual property so technically you're stealing it by using the same logic. If I download music, the artist still has access to their own music. If I steal their car, they don't have access to their car. See the difference?

No I donÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t see the difference; you are still violating their property rights by the fact that the owner does not have control (which access is a part of) of his/her work. Your example doesnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t work because this is a public forum which you signed an agreement and understood the rules in which this forum operates. So long as I quote to you within this forum and under the rules we agreed to it is perfectly fine. Now if I reproduced your article elsewhere without permission then it is stealing.

Maybe if you steal goods you wouldn't have a problem downloading music. But if you download music you won't necessarily be more likely to take a tangible object from a shop.

A rectangle is a square, but a square is not a rectangle.

ThatÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s exactly what I said, read the quote. They should be taking it from the perspective that people who steal physical things have no problems downloading songs rather then the other way around. In this case it would be somewhat factual and point out that thieves donÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t discriminate between the things they steal; they just take advantage of a situation. Much like what you are doing except they do it far more often and on a wider variety of things.

Okay, I'll level with you; it's the holidays and I'm not prepared for long and winding debates.

We obviously have different opinions on this. You think it's stealing in the same league as taking a product or not paying a practicioner for their servies; I think it's in a different league. You bring up some good points which I cannot argue, but I still stand by the fact that the RIAA or whomever is in charge here in Australia has received more of my money due to P2P programs. Whether that's applicable for others is not my business.

paul_wilson · October 5, 2005

I think it is stealing but its not like im jacking a car or literaly robbing a store.

And the music i download is bloody hard to find in stores. If its in the store then the record company has already sold it to a shop, thus its the shops where ripping off. In the long run it would affect there income but ffs! they make billions in that industry.

If there is a band with a CD out i want. i buy it, but if there is one song from a album of theres and the rest is cabbage why pay 15$ for an hour of crud.

xyrec · October 5, 2005

Downloading music is illegal. By law it is considered stealing. However, I can't imagine why people even bother to compare it to other forms of stealing. Stealing isn't just stealing. You can't generalize about theft. People steal to feed their families. Robinhood stole from the rich and gave to the poor, but he's considered a hero in literature. Nowadays, someone tries to steal from a rich person and give it to poor people the government would arrest them, throw them in jail with murderers and rapists and take back the money from the poor people. However, when a rich person like say Ken Lay of Enron steals millions of dollars and ruins the lives of countless people(even causes the deal of some elderly people who had heart attacks or strokes when they heard that all their retirement money was gone and they basically had no way of supporting themselves). What happens to him? He's probably in a mansion somewhere living the high life on all that money he pilfered.

Try as you might, you just can't compare the two things. Is downloading stealing? Yes. Is it hurting anyone though? Is it? Can you honestly say that it is?

If you borrow a friend's cd that they purchased legally and make a copy of it, your friend won't know unless you tell him, and neither will the recording company, the government or the musician that made the music. So does it hurt them? You might say that it does because they didn't get the 15 dollars for that cd so they arn't receiving as much money.

That's one of those things that people could argue endlessly over but as far as I"m concerned, if the person copied the song instead of paying for it, they obviously didn't want it bad enough to pay for it and wouldn't have. How many people do you know of that have plenty of money lieing around to buy cd's with, that download instead? I don't know any. The people I know that download can't afford to buy music and usually do anyway. Even when napster was at it's peak, I knew people that regularly bought music in addition to downloading it. If downloading is so detrimental to musicians then why did countless cd's still go gold, platinum or multiple platinum in the time period when illegal downloading was at it's highest?

Just for a minute, lets forget about whether or not downloading music is right or wrong and just accept that it's illegal. It is stealing. Why don't we steal? Why is stealing considered wrong in basically all cultures? It's because it hurts people. Not so much just because it doesn't belong to you. People tell their kids not to steal because they shouldn't take things that don't belong to them but that's really a pathetic line of reasoning and the kid probably won't get it. The real reason why people who honestly don't want to steal, don't steal, is they don't want to do something that hurts another person.

{Going into a store and taking an item hurts the store. The store looses an item they already payed for and thus has less money to buy more products. That means less income all around and less income means lower pay for the employees who work there, and the guy who owns the store. So if you steal something from a store like wal-mart, you are literally hurting people by doing so. Same goes for it you come and take something from a person's house.

With a song or cd that you copy illegally however, the artist, recording company or copyright holder did not actually pay for the copy of the song to be made, the cd or hard drive onto which it is stored, or the burner/computer/internet connection used to obtain/store/or copy the song/cd.}

With that statement out in the open, I ask, why is downloading music illegal then? Sure, it is by definition stealing, but is it hurting anyone? So why do people find it so morally objectionable? I honestly don't know. Even stranger than the logic behind why it's illegal is how technical all this stupidity is. To be able to control music the various governments have had to add all sorts of laws to cover every aspect so that people can't find loopholes in the law and download music legally then. None of it really makes any sense.

Consider this. What do the musicians, recording companies, or copyright holder actually own? Well they don't own the concept of sound because they didn't create sound. Neither did they create the instruments on which they're playing(well a few musicians have invented their own instruments but it's rare). They also didn't define the specific wavelengths of sound as certain notes. They don't own the air over which the sound waves pass to reach our ears. So what do they own? Basically a string of sounds in a specific order. How though can they own that string of sounds? They obviously don't own the individual notes or sounds because then none of us could ever play a musical instrument or speak legally because we'd be using something that someone else owns. If they owned even sections of the music but not the individual notes then no one else could strum a chord or play a scale used in a copyrighted song legally. So basically they must own only that specific recording. Those specific notes, in that specific order, played at the same pace and everything. But then if someone changed a version of the song to be a fraction of a second slower in pace, or was missing a split second of music so that it wasn't the exact same recording then it wouldn't technically be their property anymore.

Because of this they now put labels on cd's that say you don't actually own what is on the cd. You own the chunk of plastic on which the music movie or game is recorded. Thus you can't reproduce or edit anything on it without express written permission from them. Therefore even if you own a cd, making a copy of it is now illegal, ripping them to mp3's and putting them on your mp3 player is now illegal and so is listening to samples of music on amazon because I highly doubt that amazon has gotten permission from every artist it sells cd's for to copy their song, convert it to another format and cut out a small section to use as a sample. So if you do that, you're committing a crime just as much as anyone who downloads an mp3. Whether you realize it or not, you are copying their music when you stream it and listen to the sample. They send the file to you and it's stored in your ram as the media player, plays it. So even though it is automatically deleted when you close the media player, you still stole a song for a few seconds. It's no different than someone downloading an mp3, listening to it once and then deleting it.

Basically the bottom line is, it's now illegal to tamper with anything recorded on a cd or dvd, whether it be music, a computer program, a game, or a movie. Arn't they sneaky? So when you purchase a cd or dvd, basically what you're paying for is not the actual contents of the disc, but the right to use it as it was originally intended to be used(ie music is designed to be listened to, movies are supposed to be watched, games are supposed to be played, if you do anything other than those original intended purposes with the data on those discs then you're breaking the law just as much as any mp3 downloader)(Imagine stealing a book from a wal-mart, reading it, then returning it to the wal-mart from which you stole it. You still stole their book.....).

So what does that mean? I can't be sure but as far as I can tell, that means that if you arn't paying for the right to use it, you can't use it. So if you borrow a dvd from a friend and watch it, it's an illegal action since you didn't pay for the right to watch that movie. Same thing would go for borrowing a game or listening to music on the radio. That would also make movie rental companies criminals since they are purchasing a copy of a movie and then renting it out to people who haven't payed for the right to watch that movie, and then collecting all the profits which could amount to much more than what the original movie cost, without paying any royalties to the owner of the copyright. Maybe I'm misinterpreting the way the law works but then that's why all these complicated laws are so ignorant, nobody knows what is or isn't illegal.

The stupidity of these laws and the deviousness with which they are crafted brings me to my final thought on the matter. Why don't artists want their music copied? Is it really because it feels like it is an invasion of their privacy? Or because they just don't want their works copied without permission? If you think logically about it, it becomes pretty obvious. It's about the money, and in some cases, sheer greed. That's why the laws are there, to make sure they get all their money.

Where has the artistry gone to? They call musicians artists all the time but the art in this world just seems to have died. I may be going out on a limb here by trying to assume what the intentions of people are but it seems to me that at one time, art was intended to be a beautiful thing for all people to enjoy. Something that people created for the express purpose of bringing joy to others. Now it's a business. What is a business? An organized means of making money, that's what a business is, and that is what art has turned into. Painters make paintings in the hope of finding some rich snobs with too much money on their hands to buy their painting for a ridiculous price. Musicians make songs and expect to sell them for millions. Why should a series of sounds be worth millions? I have no problem with people playing music for a living. It's a respectable job just like any guy sitting behind a desk filing stacks of papers for a living.

However getting filty stinking rich by selling something like that for an inflated price to people who can't really afford it seems wrong to me. I guess that's how things work though. We live in a capitalistic economy, at least here in the states, and that's what happens in capitalism. If you make something that people want, and they're dumb enough to pay out the nose for it, then I suppose it's all fair. It's no coincidence that the more popular the musicians are, the more music they sell. They portray musicians as cool on channels like vh1 or mtv and then people want to be like them and buy their music because of that. It's the same as any other advertising except that it's a live spokesman representing the product. Also the majority of the population in most countries is below the middle class line so then the majority of the people who they are trying to sell their music too probably have trouble affording 15 dollars for a plastic disc that doesn't serve any purpose other than entertainment, which isn't a necessity, it's a luxury. That is why it seems so wrong to me for them to make millions upon millions while their fans who pay for their albums in many cases are poor as church mice.

So in short, what am I trying to say by all this? I think art is something that should be enjoyed by everyone, not used to make inordinate amounts of money at the expense of the poorest class of most countries. You can agree or disagree with me on this but if you respond, I'd at least like to see logical opinions in return instead of flames. I can appreciate other people's opinions so if you think something I said is stupid, please explain why.

On a side note, I really don't download much. I probably have less than 40 songs downloaded and own most of the cd's to that music. Then I think I've downloaded two dvd's and I own both of them. I just have a very strong opinion of this matter and it irritates me when people compare people who download songs with shoplifters and such.

Faux · October 5, 2005

Downloading music is illegal. By law it is considered stealing. However, I can't imagine why people even bother to compare it to other forms of stealing. Stealing isn't just stealing. You can't generalize about theft. People steal to feed their families. Robinhood stole from the rich and gave to the poor, but he's considered a hero in literature. Nowadays, someone tries to steal from a rich person and give it to poor people the government would arrest them, throw them in jail with murderers and rapists and take back the money from the poor people. However, when a rich person like say Ken Lay of Enron steals millions of dollars and ruins the lives of countless people(even causes the deal of some elderly people who had heart attacks or strokes when they heard that all their retirement money was gone and they basically had no way of supporting themselves). What happens to him? He's probably in a mansion somewhere living the high life on all that money he pilfered.

Try as you might, you just can't compare the two things. Is downloading stealing? Yes. Is it hurting anyone though? Is it? Can you honestly say that it is?

If you borrow a friend's cd that they purchased legally and make a copy of it, your friend won't know unless you tell him, and neither will the recording company, the government or the musician that made the music. So does it hurt them? You might say that it does because they didn't get the 15 dollars for that cd so they arn't receiving as much money.

That's one of those things that people could argue endlessly over but as far as I"m concerned, if the person copied the song instead of paying for it, they obviously didn't want it bad enough to pay for it and wouldn't have. How many people do you know of that have plenty of money lieing around to buy cd's with, that download instead? I don't know any. The people I know that download can't afford to buy music and usually do anyway. Even when napster was at it's peak, I knew people that regularly bought music in addition to downloading it. If downloading is so detrimental to musicians then why did countless cd's still go gold, platinum or multiple platinum in the time period when illegal downloading was at it's highest?

Just for a minute, lets forget about whether or not downloading music is right or wrong and just accept that it's illegal. It is stealing. Why don't we steal? Why is stealing considered wrong in basically all cultures? It's because it hurts people. Not so much just because it doesn't belong to you. People tell their kids not to steal because they shouldn't take things that don't belong to them but that's really a pathetic line of reasoning and the kid probably won't get it. The real reason why people who honestly don't want to steal, don't steal, is they don't want to do something that hurts another person.

{Going into a store and taking an item hurts the store. The store looses an item they already payed for and thus has less money to buy more products. That means less income all around and less income means lower pay for the employees who work there, and the guy who owns the store. So if you steal something from a store like wal-mart, you are literally hurting people by doing so. Same goes for it you come and take something from a person's house.

With a song or cd that you copy illegally however, the artist, recording company or copyright holder did not actually pay for the copy of the song to be made, the cd or hard drive onto which it is stored, or the burner/computer/internet connection used to obtain/store/or copy the song/cd.}

With that statement out in the open, I ask, why is downloading music illegal then? Sure, it is by definition stealing, but is it hurting anyone? So why do people find it so morally objectionable? I honestly don't know. Even stranger than the logic behind why it's illegal is how technical all this stupidity is. To be able to control music the various governments have had to add all sorts of laws to cover every aspect so that people can't find loopholes in the law and download music legally then. None of it really makes any sense.

Consider this. What do the musicians, recording companies, or copyright holder actually own? Well they don't own the concept of sound because they didn't create sound. Neither did they create the instruments on which they're playing(well a few musicians have invented their own instruments but it's rare). They also didn't define the specific wavelengths of sound as certain notes. They don't own the air over which the sound waves pass to reach our ears. So what do they own? Basically a string of sounds in a specific order. How though can they own that string of sounds? They obviously don't own the individual notes or sounds because then none of us could ever play a musical instrument or speak legally because we'd be using something that someone else owns. If they owned even sections of the music but not the individual notes then no one else could strum a chord or play a scale used in a copyrighted song legally. So basically they must own only that specific recording. Those specific notes, in that specific order, played at the same pace and everything. But then if someone changed a version of the song to be a fraction of a second slower in pace, or was missing a split second of music so that it wasn't the exact same recording then it wouldn't technically be their property anymore.

Because of this they now put labels on cd's that say you don't actually own what is on the cd. You own the chunk of plastic on which the music movie or game is recorded. Thus you can't reproduce or edit anything on it without express written permission from them. Therefore even if you own a cd, making a copy of it is now illegal, ripping them to mp3's and putting them on your mp3 player is now illegal and so is listening to samples of music on amazon because I highly doubt that amazon has gotten permission from every artist it sells cd's for to copy their song, convert it to another format and cut out a small section to use as a sample. So if you do that, you're committing a crime just as much as anyone who downloads an mp3. Whether you realize it or not, you are copying their music when you stream it and listen to the sample. They send the file to you and it's stored in your ram as the media player, plays it. So even though it is automatically deleted when you close the media player, you still stole a song for a few seconds. It's no different than someone downloading an mp3, listening to it once and then deleting it.

Basically the bottom line is, it's now illegal to tamper with anything recorded on a cd or dvd, whether it be music, a computer program, a game, or a movie. Arn't they sneaky? So when you purchase a cd or dvd, basically what you're paying for is not the actual contents of the disc, but the right to use it as it was originally intended to be used(ie music is designed to be listened to, movies are supposed to be watched, games are supposed to be played, if you do anything other than those original intended purposes with the data on those discs then you're breaking the law just as much as any mp3 downloader)(Imagine stealing a book from a wal-mart, reading it, then returning it to the wal-mart from which you stole it. You still stole their book.....).

So what does that mean? I can't be sure but as far as I can tell, that means that if you arn't paying for the right to use it, you can't use it. So if you borrow a dvd from a friend and watch it, it's an illegal action since you didn't pay for the right to watch that movie. Same thing would go for borrowing a game or listening to music on the radio. That would also make movie rental companies criminals since they are purchasing a copy of a movie and then renting it out to people who haven't payed for the right to watch that movie, and then collecting all the profits which could amount to much more than what the original movie cost, without paying any royalties to the owner of the copyright. Maybe I'm misinterpreting the way the law works but then that's why all these complicated laws are so ignorant, nobody knows what is or isn't illegal.

The stupidity of these laws and the deviousness with which they are crafted brings me to my final thought on the matter. Why don't artists want their music copied? Is it really because it feels like it is an invasion of their privacy? Or because they just don't want their works copied without permission? If you think logically about it, it becomes pretty obvious. It's about the money, and in some cases, sheer greed. That's why the laws are there, to make sure they get all their money.

Where has the artistry gone to? They call musicians artists all the time but the art in this world just seems to have died. I may be going out on a limb here by trying to assume what the intentions of people are but it seems to me that at one time, art was intended to be a beautiful thing for all people to enjoy. Something that people created for the express purpose of bringing joy to others. Now it's a business. What is a business? An organized means of making money, that's what a business is, and that is what art has turned into. Painters make paintings in the hope of finding some rich snobs with too much money on their hands to buy their painting for a ridiculous price. Musicians make songs and expect to sell them for millions. Why should a series of sounds be worth millions? I have no problem with people playing music for a living. It's a respectable job just like any guy sitting behind a desk filing stacks of papers for a living.

However getting filty stinking rich by selling something like that for an inflated price to people who can't really afford it seems wrong to me. I guess that's how things work though. We live in a capitalistic economy, at least here in the states, and that's what happens in capitalism. If you make something that people want, and they're dumb enough to pay out the nose for it, then I suppose it's all fair. It's no coincidence that the more popular the musicians are, the more music they sell. They portray musicians as cool on channels like vh1 or mtv and then people want to be like them and buy their music because of that. It's the same as any other advertising except that it's a live spokesman representing the product. Also the majority of the population in most countries is below the middle class line so then the majority of the people who they are trying to sell their music too probably have trouble affording 15 dollars for a plastic disc that doesn't serve any purpose other than entertainment, which isn't a necessity, it's a luxury. That is why it seems so wrong to me for them to make millions upon millions while their fans who pay for their albums in many cases are poor as church mice.

So in short, what am I trying to say by all this? I think art is something that should be enjoyed by everyone, not used to make inordinate amounts of money at the expense of the poorest class of most countries. You can agree or disagree with me on this but if you respond, I'd at least like to see logical opinions in return instead of flames. I can appreciate other people's opinions so if you think something I said is stupid, please explain why.

On a side note, I really don't download much. I probably have less than 40 songs downloaded and own most of the cd's to that music. Then I think I've downloaded two dvd's and I own both of them. I just have a very strong opinion of this matter and it irritates me when people compare people who download songs with shoplifters and such.

QFT :lol:

AThousandLies · October 6, 2005

Downloading music is illegal. By law it is considered stealing. However, I can't imagine why people even bother to compare it to other forms of stealing. Stealing isn't just stealing. You can't generalize about theft. People steal to feed their families. Robinhood stole from the rich and gave to the poor, but he's considered a hero in literature. Nowadays, someone tries to steal from a rich person and give it to poor people the government would arrest them, throw them in jail with murderers and rapists and take back the money from the poor people. However, when a rich person like say Ken Lay of Enron steals millions of dollars and ruins the lives of countless people(even causes the deal of some elderly people who had heart attacks or strokes when they heard that all their retirement money was gone and they basically had no way of supporting themselves). What happens to him? He's probably in a mansion somewhere living the high life on all that money he pilfered.

Try as you might, you just can't compare the two things. Is downloading stealing? Yes. Is it hurting anyone though? Is it? Can you honestly say that it is?

If you borrow a friend's cd that they purchased legally and make a copy of it, your friend won't know unless you tell him, and neither will the recording company, the government or the musician that made the music. So does it hurt them? You might say that it does because they didn't get the 15 dollars for that cd so they arn't receiving as much money.

That's one of those things that people could argue endlessly over but as far as I"m concerned, if the person copied the song instead of paying for it, they obviously didn't want it bad enough to pay for it and wouldn't have. How many people do you know of that have plenty of money lieing around to buy cd's with, that download instead? I don't know any. The people I know that download can't afford to buy music and usually do anyway. Even when napster was at it's peak, I knew people that regularly bought music in addition to downloading it. If downloading is so detrimental to musicians then why did countless cd's still go gold, platinum or multiple platinum in the time period when illegal downloading was at it's highest?

Just for a minute, lets forget about whether or not downloading music is right or wrong and just accept that it's illegal. It is stealing. Why don't we steal? Why is stealing considered wrong in basically all cultures? It's because it hurts people. Not so much just because it doesn't belong to you. People tell their kids not to steal because they shouldn't take things that don't belong to them but that's really a pathetic line of reasoning and the kid probably won't get it. The real reason why people who honestly don't want to steal, don't steal, is they don't want to do something that hurts another person.

{Going into a store and taking an item hurts the store. The store looses an item they already payed for and thus has less money to buy more products. That means less income all around and less income means lower pay for the employees who work there, and the guy who owns the store. So if you steal something from a store like wal-mart, you are literally hurting people by doing so. Same goes for it you come and take something from a person's house.

With a song or cd that you copy illegally however, the artist, recording company or copyright holder did not actually pay for the copy of the song to be made, the cd or hard drive onto which it is stored, or the burner/computer/internet connection used to obtain/store/or copy the song/cd.}

With that statement out in the open, I ask, why is downloading music illegal then? Sure, it is by definition stealing, but is it hurting anyone? So why do people find it so morally objectionable? I honestly don't know. Even stranger than the logic behind why it's illegal is how technical all this stupidity is. To be able to control music the various governments have had to add all sorts of laws to cover every aspect so that people can't find loopholes in the law and download music legally then. None of it really makes any sense.

Consider this. What do the musicians, recording companies, or copyright holder actually own? Well they don't own the concept of sound because they didn't create sound. Neither did they create the instruments on which they're playing(well a few musicians have invented their own instruments but it's rare). They also didn't define the specific wavelengths of sound as certain notes. They don't own the air over which the sound waves pass to reach our ears. So what do they own? Basically a string of sounds in a specific order. How though can they own that string of sounds? They obviously don't own the individual notes or sounds because then none of us could ever play a musical instrument or speak legally because we'd be using something that someone else owns. If they owned even sections of the music but not the individual notes then no one else could strum a chord or play a scale used in a copyrighted song legally. So basically they must own only that specific recording. Those specific notes, in that specific order, played at the same pace and everything. But then if someone changed a version of the song to be a fraction of a second slower in pace, or was missing a split second of music so that it wasn't the exact same recording then it wouldn't technically be their property anymore.

Because of this they now put labels on cd's that say you don't actually own what is on the cd. You own the chunk of plastic on which the music movie or game is recorded. Thus you can't reproduce or edit anything on it without express written permission from them. Therefore even if you own a cd, making a copy of it is now illegal, ripping them to mp3's and putting them on your mp3 player is now illegal and so is listening to samples of music on amazon because I highly doubt that amazon has gotten permission from every artist it sells cd's for to copy their song, convert it to another format and cut out a small section to use as a sample. So if you do that, you're committing a crime just as much as anyone who downloads an mp3. Whether you realize it or not, you are copying their music when you stream it and listen to the sample. They send the file to you and it's stored in your ram as the media player, plays it. So even though it is automatically deleted when you close the media player, you still stole a song for a few seconds. It's no different than someone downloading an mp3, listening to it once and then deleting it.

Basically the bottom line is, it's now illegal to tamper with anything recorded on a cd or dvd, whether it be music, a computer program, a game, or a movie. Arn't they sneaky? So when you purchase a cd or dvd, basically what you're paying for is not the actual contents of the disc, but the right to use it as it was originally intended to be used(ie music is designed to be listened to, movies are supposed to be watched, games are supposed to be played, if you do anything other than those original intended purposes with the data on those discs then you're breaking the law just as much as any mp3 downloader)(Imagine stealing a book from a wal-mart, reading it, then returning it to the wal-mart from which you stole it. You still stole their book.....).

So what does that mean? I can't be sure but as far as I can tell, that means that if you arn't paying for the right to use it, you can't use it. So if you borrow a dvd from a friend and watch it, it's an illegal action since you didn't pay for the right to watch that movie. Same thing would go for borrowing a game or listening to music on the radio. That would also make movie rental companies criminals since they are purchasing a copy of a movie and then renting it out to people who haven't payed for the right to watch that movie, and then collecting all the profits which could amount to much more than what the original movie cost, without paying any royalties to the owner of the copyright. Maybe I'm misinterpreting the way the law works but then that's why all these complicated laws are so ignorant, nobody knows what is or isn't illegal.

The stupidity of these laws and the deviousness with which they are crafted brings me to my final thought on the matter. Why don't artists want their music copied? Is it really because it feels like it is an invasion of their privacy? Or because they just don't want their works copied without permission? If you think logically about it, it becomes pretty obvious. It's about the money, and in some cases, sheer greed. That's why the laws are there, to make sure they get all their money.

Where has the artistry gone to? They call musicians artists all the time but the art in this world just seems to have died. I may be going out on a limb here by trying to assume what the intentions of people are but it seems to me that at one time, art was intended to be a beautiful thing for all people to enjoy. Something that people created for the express purpose of bringing joy to others. Now it's a business. What is a business? An organized means of making money, that's what a business is, and that is what art has turned into. Painters make paintings in the hope of finding some rich snobs with too much money on their hands to buy their painting for a ridiculous price. Musicians make songs and expect to sell them for millions. Why should a series of sounds be worth millions? I have no problem with people playing music for a living. It's a respectable job just like any guy sitting behind a desk filing stacks of papers for a living.

However getting filty stinking rich by selling something like that for an inflated price to people who can't really afford it seems wrong to me. I guess that's how things work though. We live in a capitalistic economy, at least here in the states, and that's what happens in capitalism. If you make something that people want, and they're dumb enough to pay out the nose for it, then I suppose it's all fair. It's no coincidence that the more popular the musicians are, the more music they sell. They portray musicians as cool on channels like vh1 or mtv and then people want to be like them and buy their music because of that. It's the same as any other advertising except that it's a live spokesman representing the product. Also the majority of the population in most countries is below the middle class line so then the majority of the people who they are trying to sell their music too probably have trouble affording 15 dollars for a plastic disc that doesn't serve any purpose other than entertainment, which isn't a necessity, it's a luxury. That is why it seems so wrong to me for them to make millions upon millions while their fans who pay for their albums in many cases are poor as church mice.

So in short, what am I trying to say by all this? I think art is something that should be enjoyed by everyone, not used to make inordinate amounts of money at the expense of the poorest class of most countries. You can agree or disagree with me on this but if you respond, I'd at least like to see logical opinions in return instead of flames. I can appreciate other people's opinions so if you think something I said is stupid, please explain why.

On a side note, I really don't download much. I probably have less than 40 songs downloaded and own most of the cd's to that music. Then I think I've downloaded two dvd's and I own both of them. I just have a very strong opinion of this matter and it irritates me when people compare people who download songs with shoplifters and such.

In my several years on the internet; in my approximate two years of forumming, this is the best post I have ever come across. Brilliantly written, and I could not agree more. I congratulate you. Art is beauty, and should not become based on monetary gain. I admire you for coming up with something such as this.

DaN · October 6, 2005

THis just in.

The Riaa sues a child

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/06/0014240&from=rss

____ · October 6, 2005

Can't say I'm suprised by the RIAA there...

xyrec · October 6, 2005

QFT :lol:

Please excuse my ignorance, but what does QFT stand for?

Faux · October 6, 2005

QFT :lol:

Please excuse my ignorance, but what does QFT stand for?

Quoted For Truth :P

indy500fan · October 6, 2005

start off by saying that i think the moral of your post is that musicians should be playing music just for the music, and not for the money. i respect that opinion, but i dont quite agree. the musician can choose what to do with his music, if he wants to just let anyone listen to it for free he can, and if he wants to make millions he can. its HIS choice, its not the general populaces place to make slaves of everyone else.

Downloading music is illegal. By law it is considered stealing. However, I can't imagine why people even bother to compare it to other forms of stealing. Stealing isn't just stealing. You can't generalize about theft. People steal to feed their families. Robinhood stole from the rich and gave to the poor, but he's considered a hero in literature. Nowadays, someone tries to steal from a rich person and give it to poor people the government would arrest them, throw them in jail with murderers and rapists and take back the money from the poor people. However, when a rich person like say Ken Lay of Enron steals millions of dollars and ruins the lives of countless people(even causes the deal of some elderly people who had heart attacks or strokes when they heard that all their retirement money was gone and they basically had no way of supporting themselves). What happens to him? He's probably in a mansion somewhere living the high life on all that money he pilfered.

stealing IS stealing, doesnt matter if you take 5 bucks out of my pocket, or take a few grand out of my savings account. you are still STEALING. so what if people steal to feed their families... what gives them the right to take away someone elses property? maybe they should WORK, then they would have enough to buy food. this robin hood thing is pretty funny actually. the tagline should be: "steal from the oppresive government that steals/taxes from the poor". instead of being an anti-totaliarian story, someone decided to make the tagline steal from the rich (which happened to be the same people who taxed them to death, so its using the term loosely like you would call a thief who stole millions, yes he is rich but he didnt earn anyof it, and he doesnt have a right to have it) to make it simpler. this adversly affects nowadays, because the rich arent the government that taxes people and takes all their money, the rich of today earned their wealth (most of them, theres still a lot of government control over the economy which still makes people rich who dont earn it). so now robin hood is against being smart and sucessful. while that enron guy may have stolen from the company that he was a part of, it is still stealing and he didnt earn it. he probably had some friends in washington who got him off the hook. that is NOT a trait of capitalism, the government has no control over it. i dont know the enron story though, so i dont know exactly what happened and that response may not correspond at all with what really happened.

Try as you might, you just can't compare the two things. Is downloading stealing? Yes. Is it hurting anyone though? Is it? Can you honestly say that it is?

If you borrow a friend's cd that they purchased legally and make a copy of it, your friend won't know unless you tell him, and neither will the recording company, the government or the musician that made the music. So does it hurt them? You might say that it does because they didn't get the 15 dollars for that cd so they arn't receiving as much money.

yes, downloading is stealing. yes it is hurting someone. yes. yes. would it hurt me if you took a few cents out of my paycheck each week? change adds up after a while. id be angry if someone got into my car and took the handful of change i got in there. its still my property, that no one except me had the right too. i dont want to be anyone elses slave, working just so that they can steal from me.

they didnt get the 15 dollars, so they arent getting as much money. maybe the record company was going to give this one guy a big christmas bonus, but instead gave him a fruit of the month subscription because the profit was $15 less than the line (i know $15 wouldnt make that big of difference, but it still does).

That's one of those things that people could argue endlessly over but as far as I"m concerned, if the person copied the song instead of paying for it, they obviously didn't want it bad enough to pay for it and wouldn't have. How many people do you know of that have plenty of money lieing around to buy cd's with, that download instead? I don't know any. The people I know that download can't afford to buy music and usually do anyway. Even when napster was at it's peak, I knew people that regularly bought music in addition to downloading it. If downloading is so detrimental to musicians then why did countless cd's still go gold, platinum or multiple platinum in the time period when illegal downloading was at it's highest?

doesnt matter if someone sold more of a record because people could download it and try it out first. they have the right to do what they want with their song, if they dont want people to download it, it is their choice not ours. musicians are now probably noticing that people who buy their cds like to try them out first, and a good way to do that is to allow them to download, or stream it off their website. if thats what they want to do, they can. its their song, not ours. if they want to get someone in trouble for downloading a song that they didnt want to people to download, the person should get in trouble wether or not they were planning on buying the cd. its illegal.

Just for a minute, lets forget about whether or not downloading music is right or wrong and just accept that it's illegal. It is stealing. Why don't we steal? Why is stealing considered wrong in basically all cultures? It's because it hurts people. Not so much just because it doesn't belong to you. People tell their kids not to steal because they shouldn't take things that don't belong to them but that's really a pathetic line of reasoning and the kid probably won't get it. The real reason why people who honestly don't want to steal, don't steal, is they don't want to do something that hurts another person.

why shouldnt people steal? because the person they are stealing from has rights. they have the right to be free (although the government doesnt seem to realize this...). they have a right to private property. as soon as some takes something from you and claims to have a right to do so, claims its not stealing, then you are degraded to nothing more than a slave. your rights dont matter at all, you are just here for others to take from.

{Going into a store and taking an item hurts the store. The store looses an item they already payed for and thus has less money to buy more products. That means less income all around and less income means lower pay for the employees who work there, and the guy who owns the store. So if you steal something from a store like wal-mart, you are literally hurting people by doing so. Same goes for it you come and take something from a person's house.

With a song or cd that you copy illegally however, the artist, recording company or copyright holder did not actually pay for the copy of the song to be made, the cd or hard drive onto which it is stored, or the burner/computer/internet connection used to obtain/store/or copy the song/cd.}

music, a movie, a novel, a software program, a tv show, all these things can be copied, with no "physical" loss to someone. but do they own it? my answer is yes, but thats just because i believe my mind and the products of my mind are for myself, no one else has the right to my mind. my thoughts and ideas are my own. lets say someone finds out a new formula for a metal that is really strong and really cheap to make. the formula can be written down, and someone else could see it. that other person could then make his own foundry and manufacture the metal also, and he never physicaly took anything from the first guy.

With that statement out in the open, I ask, why is downloading music illegal then? Sure, it is by definition stealing, but is it hurting anyone? So why do people find it so morally objectionable? I honestly don't know. Even stranger than the logic behind why it's illegal is how technical all this stupidity is. To be able to control music the various governments have had to add all sorts of laws to cover every aspect so that people can't find loopholes in the law and download music legally then. None of it really makes any sense.

yes it is hurting someone, its taking away their right to their property. and it doesnt matter if some one finds something morally objectionable, morals should have NO part in the law making process. morals are all subjective to each person, and laws should be made objectively, with no skewness from anyone.

Consider this. What do the musicians, recording companies, or copyright holder actually own? Well they don't own the concept of sound because they didn't create sound. Neither did they create the instruments on which they're playing(well a few musicians have invented their own instruments but it's rare). They also didn't define the specific wavelengths of sound as certain notes. They don't own the air over which the sound waves pass to reach our ears. So what do they own? Basically a string of sounds in a specific order. How though can they own that string of sounds? They obviously don't own the individual notes or sounds because then none of us could ever play a musical instrument or speak legally because we'd be using something that someone else owns. If they owned even sections of the music but not the individual notes then no one else could strum a chord or play a scale used in a copyrighted song legally. So basically they must own only that specific recording. Those specific notes, in that specific order, played at the same pace and everything. But then if someone changed a version of the song to be a fraction of a second slower in pace, or was missing a split second of music so that it wasn't the exact same recording then it wouldn't technically be their property anymore.

they own the song. if someone changed the song to be half a second shorter, its still infringment of the copy right. they took the original, the property of others, and changed it a little to call it their own. now if they created the exact same song, just half a second shorter, having never heard the original and therefore unable to copy it, then you could argue over who owns it (probably the person who did it first). but the probability of that happening is very, very, very small.

Because of this they now put labels on cd's that say you don't actually own what is on the cd. You own the chunk of plastic on which the music movie or game is recorded. Thus you can't reproduce or edit anything on it without express written permission from them. Therefore even if you own a cd, making a copy of it is now illegal, ripping them to mp3's and putting them on your mp3 player is now illegal and so is listening to samples of music on amazon because I highly doubt that amazon has gotten permission from every artist it sells cd's for to copy their song, convert it to another format and cut out a small section to use as a sample. So if you do that, you're committing a crime just as much as anyone who downloads an mp3. Whether you realize it or not, you are copying their music when you stream it and listen to the sample. They send the file to you and it's stored in your ram as the media player, plays it. So even though it is automatically deleted when you close the media player, you still stole a song for a few seconds. It's no different than someone downloading an mp3, listening to it once and then deleting it.

im pretty sure amazon has to get permission from all the artists to do that, else they would have be sued already. you are given the right to listen to the song by streaming it, the person who owns the song gives you permission to do it.

Basically the bottom line is, it's now illegal to tamper with anything recorded on a cd or dvd, whether it be music, a computer program, a game, or a movie. Arn't they sneaky? So when you purchase a cd or dvd, basically what you're paying for is not the actual contents of the disc, but the right to use it as it was originally intended to be used(ie music is designed to be listened to, movies are supposed to be watched, games are supposed to be played, if you do anything other than those original intended purposes with the data on those discs then you're breaking the law just as much as any mp3 downloader)(Imagine stealing a book from a wal-mart, reading it, then returning it to the wal-mart from which you stole it. You still stole their book.....).

what else would you want to do with a movie other than watch (watching meaning sight and sound) it? what else would you want to do with a book other than read it?

So what does that mean? I can't be sure but as far as I can tell, that means that if you arn't paying for the right to use it, you can't use it. So if you borrow a dvd from a friend and watch it, it's an illegal action since you didn't pay for the right to watch that movie. Same thing would go for borrowing a game or listening to music on the radio. That would also make movie rental companies criminals since they are purchasing a copy of a movie and then renting it out to people who haven't payed for the right to watch that movie, and then collecting all the profits which could amount to much more than what the original movie cost, without paying any royalties to the owner of the copyright. Maybe I'm misinterpreting the way the law works but then that's why all these complicated laws are so ignorant, nobody knows what is or isn't illegal.

um, yeah you misunderstood. you can watch movies, you can read books, you can listen to music. im not really folowing your train of thought at all, so i dont know really what to say.

The stupidity of these laws and the deviousness with which they are crafted brings me to my final thought on the matter. Why don't artists want their music copied? Is it really because it feels like it is an invasion of their privacy? Or because they just don't want their works copied without permission? If you think logically about it, it becomes pretty obvious. It's about the money, and in some cases, sheer greed. That's why the laws are there, to make sure they get all their money.

they have just as much right to make money as you do. lets say you work at a fast food place (i dont know if you work or not, just making an assumption), i come in one day and say "BAM. from this moment on all your money are belong to me." thats basically what you just did to the musicians. oh, and you HAVE to continue working at the fast food place, or else i wont get my food.

Where has the artistry gone to? They call musicians artists all the time but the art in this world just seems to have died. I may be going out on a limb here by trying to assume what the intentions of people are but it seems to me that at one time, art was intended to be a beautiful thing for all people to enjoy. Something that people created for the express purpose of bringing joy to others. Now it's a business. What is a business? An organized means of making money, that's what a business is, and that is what art has turned into. Painters make paintings in the hope of finding some rich snobs with too much money on their hands to buy their painting for a ridiculous price. Musicians make songs and expect to sell them for millions. Why should a series of sounds be worth millions? I have no problem with people playing music for a living. It's a respectable job just like any guy sitting behind a desk filing stacks of papers for a living.

everything is worth as much as people are willing to pay for it. (well, except for government contolled products where some politician sets the price, not caring about anything except getting elected again)

However getting filty stinking rich by selling something like that for an inflated price to people who can't really afford it seems wrong to me. I guess that's how things work though. We live in a capitalistic economy, at least here in the states, and that's what happens in capitalism. If you make something that people want, and they're dumb enough to pay out the nose for it, then I suppose it's all fair. It's no coincidence that the more popular the musicians are, the more music they sell. They portray musicians as cool on channels like vh1 or mtv and then people want to be like them and buy their music because of that. It's the same as any other advertising except that it's a live spokesman representing the product. Also the majority of the population in most countries is below the middle class line so then the majority of the people who they are trying to sell their music too probably have trouble affording 15 dollars for a plastic disc that doesn't serve any purpose other than entertainment, which isn't a necessity, it's a luxury. That is why it seems so wrong to me for them to make millions upon millions while their fans who pay for their albums in many cases are poor as church mice.

i dont see how this is a problem with capitalism. capitalism gives you the complete freedom of property. if millions of people what to buy this album, why cant they? its their choice, not yours. they can like what they want to like, you are not their master. if they cant afford it, they dont buy it. i dont see why you brought capitalism into this part at all. from you perspective this is a problem with the musician, not the economy. (im going to stereotype what rap is about, but most of the time its correct, and i dont dislike rap, im just using it as an example) a common rap song today is about how hard life was while "in the hood", about how bad poor people have it, and about how the rich should be giving a lot more money to the poor. these same rappers will make another song about their $50,000 benz, about their huge mansion and about how awesome they are. i dont know exact amounts, but most of them are definently worth over a few million dollars. now that they are rich, all the sudden they forgot that they think the rich should give all their money to the poor. they will still rap about giving money to the poor, but they wont help any. now is this a problem with capitalism, or a problem with propaganda by the musicians? how about people who dont talk about how poor people deserve all of the rich peoples money: bill gates? he is the epihany of capitalism to most people, and how much did he give to charities? (only article i could find is in 2003, but it gives the example) MORE than 50% of his net worth. 22.9 billion that year.

So in short, what am I trying to say by all this? I think art is something that should be enjoyed by everyone, not used to make inordinate amounts of money at the expense of the poorest class of most countries. You can agree or disagree with me on this but if you respond, I'd at least like to see logical opinions in return instead of flames. I can appreciate other people's opinions so if you think something I said is stupid, please explain why.

the artist is the only one who can say what he wants with his art. without him, the art wouldnt exist. it is the artists opinion that the artist will follow, and if he decides that he wants everyone to have it, and doesnt want to make money off of it, the he can let everyone enjoy it free of charge.

On a side note, I really don't download much. I probably have less than 40 songs downloaded and own most of the cd's to that music. Then I think I've downloaded two dvd's and I own both of them. I just have a very strong opinion of this matter and it irritates me when people compare people who download songs with shoplifters and such.

downloading songs is stealing. shoplifting is stealing.

***afterword***

while some of my statements may seem like flames, they are NOT. i am merely stating my opinion, and i respect the fact that you have stated your opinion. if it seems something was mean, its because i suck at writing and that was the best way i could find to write it.

AThousandLies · October 7, 2005

Try as you might, you just can't compare the two things. Is downloading stealing? Yes. Is it hurting anyone though? Is it? Can you honestly say that it is?

If you borrow a friend's cd that they purchased legally and make a copy of it, your friend won't know unless you tell him, and neither will the recording company, the government or the musician that made the music. So does it hurt them? You might say that it does because they didn't get the 15 dollars for that cd so they arn't receiving as much money.

yes, downloading is stealing. yes it is hurting someone. yes. yes. would it hurt me if you took a few cents out of my paycheck each week? change adds up after a while. id be angry if someone got into my car and took the handful of change i got in there. its still my property, that no one except me had the right too. i dont want to be anyone elses slave, working just so that they can steal from me.

they didnt get the 15 dollars, so they arent getting as much money. maybe the record company was going to give this one guy a big christmas bonus, but instead gave him a fruit of the month subscription because the profit was $15 less than the line (i know $15 wouldnt make that big of difference, but it still does).

I haven't got time to reply to all of this so I'll just reply to this one point.

Although the artist may not be getting the $15, who is to say they were going to? Who is to say the downloader was going to buy the CD? That's the main basis for the RIAA's argument -- speculation.

blade995 · October 7, 2005

so what if people steal to feed their families... what gives them the right to take away someone elses property? maybe they should WORK, then they would have enough to buy food.

I find this just sickening. They could STILL be working and not be getting paid enough, so they have to resort to stealing food. If you ever were working and know how it was like to be tight with money and not get everything you wanted maybe you would understand more. Choices are you don't have enough money for food and die, or steal food and live.

I use to know how it is to be poor. I know what is like.

xyrec · October 7, 2005

start off by saying that i think the moral of your post is that musicians should be playing music just for the music, and not for the money. i respect that opinion, but i dont quite agree. the musician can choose what to do with his music, if he wants to just let anyone listen to it for free he can, and if he wants to make millions he can. its HIS choice, its not the general populaces place to make slaves of everyone else.

Eehhh, I don't think musicians should just make music for the sake of making music. It's just that the music industry seems more centered around the almighty dollar than anything else nowadays. You're right, it is their choice, but it doesn't make it the right choice. I'm not trying to compare musicians to mass murderers, but it was Hitler's choice to persecute jews and attempt to conquer the world. Did it make it right for him to do so just because it was his choice?

I'm not saying musicians should be our slaves either, sitting around making music for our entertainment with no pay. I think I said somewhere in my post that I see nothing wrong with people who are career musicians. Without musicians we wouldn't have music to enjoy.

stealing IS stealing, doesnt matter if you take 5 bucks out of my pocket, or take a few grand out of my savings account. you are still STEALING. so what if people steal to feed their families... what gives them the right to take away someone elses property? maybe they should WORK, then they would have enough to buy food. this robin hood thing is pretty funny actually. the tagline should be: "steal from the oppresive government that steals/taxes from the poor". instead of being an anti-totaliarian story, someone decided to make the tagline steal from the rich (which happened to be the same people who taxed them to death, so its using the term loosely like you would call a thief who stole millions, yes he is rich but he didnt earn anyof it, and he doesnt have a right to have it) to make it simpler. this adversly affects nowadays, because the rich arent the government that taxes people and takes all their money, the rich of today earned their wealth (most of them, theres still a lot of government control over the economy which still makes people rich who dont earn it). so now robin hood is against being smart and sucessful. while that enron guy may have stolen from the company that he was a part of, it is still stealing and he didnt earn it. he probably had some friends in washington who got him off the hook. that is NOT a trait of capitalism, the government has no control over it. i dont know the enron story though, so i dont know exactly what happened and that response may not correspond at all with what really happened.

Yes, stealing is stealing but that doesn't mean that all stealing is somehow the same thing. Murder is also murder, but would you try to compare murder cases? If someone gets into a fight with another person, and ends up accidentally killing that person it's murder. However if a serial killer stalks someone, then abducts them and later torture them to death, it's also murder. Would you try and compare the two as if they were the same? They're both a case of murder but are far from the same.

That's the difference between downloading and ordinary theft. With downloading, you arn't actually taking anything from that person. When you download a song, 5 bucks doesn't just vanish from the musician's bank account. Imagine if we lived in the future when they have scanners and machines that can create matter like on star trek. Then lets just say you happen to be poor but have these two things. So lets say for example that you want a watch, but can't afford one. You then go and break into someone's house(without damaging anything), use your scanner to scan their watch, then take the data back to your home and use it to make yourself a new watch just like theirs. Nothing was actually taken from the owner of the watch and they lost none of their posessions or money. But did you actually steal their watch? In a way, yes. Now can you imagine anyone actually complaining because someone got a free watch at no expense to them?

That statement really isn't fair at all. Sometimes there is no place to work, and no way to go out and gather or hunt for food. If you had a starving family and your only way to feed them and keep them alive was to steal, can you honestly say you wouldn't do everything you had to, to take care of them?

Robinhood was essentially stealing from the rich. The taxes were going to the king, who was "the rich" and unlike in a normal government, he was using the money on himself, instead of using the taxes to do things to build up his kingdom and make it better for the peasants. Anyway, the reason I used the example of Robinhood is because I was stating examples of situations where people could reasonably rationalize stealing. Family starving, you do what you have to, to take care of them. Rich taxing the poor to the point where they can't even afford the taxes and yet demanding even more tax, take action and relieve the burdens of the poor.

yes, downloading is stealing. yes it is hurting someone. yes. yes. would it hurt me if you took a few cents out of my paycheck each week? change adds up after a while. id be angry if someone got into my car and took the handful of change i got in there. its still my property, that no one except me had the right too. i dont want to be anyone elses slave, working just so that they can steal from me.

they didnt get the 15 dollars, so they arent getting as much money. maybe the record company was going to give this one guy a big christmas bonus, but instead gave him a fruit of the month subscription because the profit was $15 less than the line (i know $15 wouldnt make that big of difference, but it still does).

Downloading does not cause money to be taken away from musicians.

Who said they were ever going to get that 15 dollars? People rarely download things that they would have paid for if they couldn't have downloaded it for free.

doesnt matter if someone sold more of a record because people could download it and try it out first. they have the right to do what they want with their song, if they dont want people to download it, it is their choice not ours. musicians are now probably noticing that people who buy their cds like to try them out first, and a good way to do that is to allow them to download, or stream it off their website. if thats what they want to do, they can. its their song, not ours. if they want to get someone in trouble for downloading a song that they didnt want to people to download, the person should get in trouble wether or not they were planning on buying the cd. its illegal.

Well you're right. However I'm not attempting to argue whether or not they have the right to do that. Having the right to do something doesn't mean you should do it.

why shouldnt people steal? because the person they are stealing from has rights. they have the right to be free (although the government doesnt seem to realize this...). they have a right to private property. as soon as some takes something from you and claims to have a right to do so, claims its not stealing, then you are degraded to nothing more than a slave. your rights dont matter at all, you are just here for others to take from.

Respecting a person's rights is part of caring about them. People who don't steal, don't steal because they care about someone other than themselves and thus don't want to harm others in any way, it's that simple. Respecting the rights of others is only one aspect of the actual reason why some people don't want to steal.

music, a movie, a novel, a software program, a tv show, all these things can be copied, with no "physical" loss to someone. but do they own it? my answer is yes, but thats just because i believe my mind and the products of my mind are for myself, no one else has the right to my mind. my thoughts and ideas are my own. lets say someone finds out a new formula for a metal that is really strong and really cheap to make. the formula can be written down, and someone else could see it. that other person could then make his own foundry and manufacture the metal also, and he never physicaly took anything from the first guy.

I'm not trying to deny that they own it or have rights to control what is done with it. Most of what I said in my post is related to the true nature of these various points, not the text book, hard, cold facts and info. Yes, musicians have a right to say what people do with their songs but why would anyone want to deny someone the joy of listening to your music? That is where my point of view is coming from.

That's a totally different thing. Using something for your own enjoyment is not the same as using it to make money. Downloading a song to listen to is different than downloading several songs and putting them on a cd, claiming it is your music, then trying to sell it to people.

yes it is hurting someone, its taking away their right to their property. and it doesnt matter if some one finds something morally objectionable, morals should have NO part in the law making process. morals are all subjective to each person, and laws should be made objectively, with no skewness from anyone.

Maybe our definitions of hurting someone are different but I don't see something like that as hurting.

That makes no sense at all. Laws are always based on the morals of the people who they are supposed to govern(at least in theory). Right now things like abortion, homosexual marriage, and right to die are things that they have tried to and in some cases, succeeded in, making laws against and they're all moral issues. Murder is illegal because it's morally objectionable. Rape is illegal because it's morally objectionable. Stealing is illegal because it's morally objectionable(we already discussed why it's morally objectionable). Morals HAVE to play a part in the law making process. Otherwise, what way of choosing the laws would there be? Throwing darts at a board?

they own the song. if someone changed the song to be half a second shorter, its still infringment of the copy right. they took the original, the property of others, and changed it a little to call it their own. now if they created the exact same song, just half a second shorter, having never heard the original and therefore unable to copy it, then you could argue over who owns it (probably the person who did it first). but the probability of that happening is very, very, very small.

You can't just say "they own the song" because the song is just an arrangement of sounds. What they own is that arrangement of the sounds, not the sounds themselves. It's not the same as owning a tv. It's like owning the patent on the design of the tv. People tamper with patents all the time. That's how there are always off brands of everything and they're only slightly different. They took the original design and changed it just enough that it isn't what was originally patented and then sell their version. Copyrights are different than patents though....I'd have to review the fine points of copyright law but I don't think copyrighting covers the changing of copyrighted material, only reproduction and use.

im pretty sure amazon has to get permission from all the artists to do that, else they would have be sued already. you are given the right to listen to the song by streaming it, the person who owns the song gives you permission to do it.

Maybe Amazon does get permission but I find it to be highly unlikely considering the hundreds, if not thousands of different cd's they sell. Either way, lots of people have streams on their websites and think that it somehow isn't illegal like downloading, when in reality it is just as illegal.

what else would you want to do with a movie other than watch (watching meaning sight and sound) it? what else would you want to do with a book other than read it?

What else? Perhaps the topic that we're discussing? Copying copyrighted material. If you do anything other than watch the movie, it's considered illegal. If you copy the dvd onto your computer so that you don't need the disc with you to watch it, you just commited a crime.

um, yeah you misunderstood. you can watch movies, you can read books, you can listen to music. im not really folowing your train of thought at all, so i dont know really what to say.

I still don't know for sure if I was right about the law working that way but I think you misunderstood me. I wasn't saying that you can't watch movies, read books or listen to music. I was saying that it seems from the way the laws are set up, that you can't do those things if you haven't personally paid for the right to use them. Like for instance if you go to a friends house and watch a dvd there, that your friend bought, it would be illegal because you didn't pay for the right to watch that movie. How is watching a movie you haven't paid for at a friend's house any different than making a copy of his movie and then watching it at your house instead? Even if that isn't how the law works, the logic makes no sense.

they have just as much right to make money as you do. lets say you work at a fast food place (i dont know if you work or not, just making an assumption), i come in one day and say "BAM. from this moment on all your money are belong to me." thats basically what you just did to the musicians. oh, and you HAVE to continue working at the fast food place, or else i wont get my food.

Sure they have a right to make money. After all, everyone needs money to buy the things they need or even things they want but don't need.

That example is not at all like downloading and it isn't basically what you do to musicians when you download music. All their money isn't taken, none of it is taken. If anything they just don't get as much money but that would be a rare situation because people don't just download things they would've bought if they couldn't download it. It's also different because people need food, but they don't need music. If you had a magical spell to make your own food and you conjured up all your food just like the brands from the store instead of going to the store then you would be doing harm to the store because you had to go buy the food otherwise. Without food you starve. The stores stock food because they know you need it and if they bought food and stocked it but then nobody bought it because they were making the same thing at home, then the store would go out of business. Music is different, it isn't a necessity. So just because someone downloads it doesn't mean they would have had to pay for it otherwise.

everything is worth as much as people are willing to pay for it. (well, except for government contolled products where some politician sets the price, not caring about anything except getting elected again)

Yes, that's true. That's why I wish people wouldn't pay so much money for music, they're just willingly cheating themselves. The consumer should set the price, not the seller, because the consumer will pay how much they can afford, wheras the seller will set the price as high as he thinks he can, and still sell the product or service. This is part of why we have inflation. If people as a whole would just refuse to buy things that are overpriced the seller would reduce the price but none of us seem smart enough to do that. Gas is way higher in price than it should be, yet people still pay the price. If we just flat out refused to pay that much, they would lower the price. However, nobody wants to go without gas for however long it takes to strongarm the oil companies into lowering the price. So we just stupidly pay too much and line the pockets of exxon executives while making their share holders very very happy.

i dont see how this is a problem with capitalism. capitalism gives you the complete freedom of property. if millions of people what to buy this album, why cant they? its their choice, not yours. they can like what they want to like, you are not their master. if they cant afford it, they dont buy it. i dont see why you brought capitalism into this part at all. from you perspective this is a problem with the musician, not the economy. (im going to stereotype what rap is about, but most of the time its correct, and i dont dislike rap, im just using it as an example) a common rap song today is about how hard life was while "in the hood", about how bad poor people have it, and about how the rich should be giving a lot more money to the poor. these same rappers will make another song about their $50,000 benz, about their huge mansion and about how awesome they are. i dont know exact amounts, but most of them are definently worth over a few million dollars. now that they are rich, all the sudden they forgot that they think the rich should give all their money to the poor. they will still rap about giving money to the poor, but they wont help any. now is this a problem with capitalism, or a problem with propaganda by the musicians? how about people who dont talk about how poor people deserve all of the rich peoples money: bill gates? he is the epihany of capitalism to most people, and how much did he give to charities? (only article i could find is in 2003, but it gives the example) MORE than 50% of his net worth. 22.9 billion that year.

Yes, it's their choice to buy the cd, but much of the reason why people buy those cd's is what you yourself mentioned, propaganda. They dazzle people with the larger than life way that they portray all these musicians. Watch a recording of an old N'sync concert and you'll see countless girls screaming like they just won a million bucks or passing out just because Justin Timberlake looked at them while he was singing. What in the heck has he ever done that makes him that great? You were wrong when you said "If they can't afford it, they don't buy it." Many people buy cd's that they can't afford to buy because they need the little money they have for other, more important things, and all that propaganda is exactly why they do it. The reason I brought capitalism into this is because it is what allows them to do this. Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against capitalism, but without capitalism they couldn't do that. In a communist country(i dunno what the term to refer to the style of economy in a communist country is) the government says how much you can charge for your products or services and how much money you're allowed to make. In capitalism you can charge as much as you want and make as much money as you want. Even if you do it in a devious way that isn't illegal but nonetheless devious.

We agree here, I very much dislike the way they portray various things in rap. However not all rap musicians, or musicians in general horde their wealth. P. Diddy donated money and trained for months to run a marathon to raise even more money that was donated(to inner city schools).

the artist is the only one who can say what he wants with his art. without him, the art wouldnt exist. it is the artists opinion that the artist will follow, and if he decides that he wants everyone to have it, and doesnt want to make money off of it, the he can let everyone enjoy it free of charge.

Yep, that's true, but I have trouble thinking very highly of someone who doesn't want to share their art. After all, what's the point in even making art if you don't want anyone to enjoy it, or at least only people who pay you to enjoy it? Can you imagine making a statue, setting it up after being paid for making it, and then still charging admission to see it? I suppose someone could do that but it would be awefully odd, and music is no different.

downloading songs is stealing. shoplifting is stealing.

***afterword***

while some of my statements may seem like flames, they are NOT. i am merely stating my opinion, and i respect the fact that you have stated your opinion. if it seems something was mean, its because i suck at writing and that was the best way i could find to write it.

Once again, yes they are in the same category of crime but not the same thing.

I know you weren't trying to flame me and I appreciate your response which you obviously put thought into rather than the drive by flaming that most people do. Thank you for that.

indy500fan · October 7, 2005

I find this just sickening. They could STILL be working and not be getting paid enough, so they have to resort to stealing food. If you ever were working and know how it was like to be tight with money and not get everything you wanted maybe you would understand more. Choices are you don't have enough money for food and die, or steal food and live.

I use to know how it is to be poor. I know what is like.

ive always had enough food to eat, and a house to live in, and clothes to wear. my family was never considered poor. but i most definently did NOT get everything i ever wanted. up until i turned 16 and got a job, i never got anything except for necessities (besides for my birthday and christmas). i lived a lot worse (if you want to call it that) than pretty much all the other families that make around the same amount. that was just because my parents are really tight with money. there were a few times i felt cheated, but most of the time i knew i got what i needed and their were people out there much worse off than me, so i never really felt bad about the situation. then i start my job the summer after i turned 16. i worked at an iga, not the highest class place, and it was situated right infront of the trailer park. after working there a few weeks i started noticing some of the regulars, none of them looking like they took a shower in a few weeks. i then stereotyped them as the poor people who were worst off than me, and felt bad about it. then whenever i was bagging their groceries, i noticed some paid with food stamps, and i felt bad about it. then i started to look at their groceries, and they were buying mostly pop (something i never had until i started working and paid for myself), lays chips (not the off brand kind, the only kind i ever got) and many times they bought the steaks from the meat department. i never got steak at home. i thought, why do these people eat better (better being used loosly here, some would consider it unhealtyier but im not comparing health into it) than i do? i was pushing the cart out to this one middle aged guys car, (your not supposed to for anyone who doesnt need it, like old people, but i was looking for some tip money and we werent busy) and i realized what time it was. 1:00 in the afternoon on a friday. i though, shouldnt he be at work? then i remembered him coming in on moday at aroudn this time too. and he came in late at night on wednesday. i then concluded after his shabby appearance, foodstamp usage, and not ever being at work, that he was on welfare. i wondered why someone who i pay to live gets to eat better than me. when we got to his car, which was a brand new honda civic (not an expensive car, but still new isnt cheap) i got mad. im drivign around in a piece of crap car that probably wouldnt last to much longer (and it didnt, had to get rid of it) working my butt off over my summer vacation, and here he is not having any worries in the world, just waits for his welfare check to come once a month. living at the people who works expense.

so yes, i do know what its like not to get everything i want, and i do know the frustration of people living better than me who dont work as hard (in this case not at all). but i was never jelous of him, i just wait for the day when the lazy of this world have no one to mooch off of anymore, because the producers got tired of producing just to be stolen from. then i will laugh.

I know you weren't trying to flame me and I appreciate your response which you obviously put thought into rather than the drive by flaming that most people do. Thank you for that.

i used to get into these debates a lot back in the day on this forum and others, but i havent done it in a while. thanks for giving me something to find interesting enough to actually reply to. but alas, while my response to the other person in this post may make it seem as if i hate lazy people, and that i am not lazy, that is false. i am very lazy. and i suck at debating, thats probably why i stopped. so as you have most undoubtedly guessed, it means i wont be debating anymore... you win :P

blade995 · October 8, 2005

I was not trying to win anything. It just seemed as you were saying that people just stole so they didn't have to work. My mom use to work a minimum wage job and life was very hard up untill i was 13 (not to long ago). Then she got a very good job so i am living alot better now. I know what it was like not to have anything at all and see all of them have everything in the world. I was not jelous but it did tick me off. People say i have alot now but i have the same as the them. The only difference is i know what it is like to not be able to aford these things. People in my school are preps that have not worked a day in there lives and do not know what money is worth.

I wasn't trying to flame you but I just feel when people say all poor people are lazy or something around those lines it just offends me. My mom worked so hard to provide for me and her(parents are divorced).

Enough of that I'm done. :D

Death_By_Pod · October 8, 2005

Although the artist may not be getting the $15, who is to say they were going to? Who is to say the downloader was going to buy the CD? That's the main basis for the RIAA's argument -- speculation.

If you arenÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t you going buy the song in the first place then what gives you the right to download it and play it?

It's pretty obvious that if you have downloaded a song and it remains on your hard drive then you enjoy it (remember most companies offer samples of songs, so you can't say your just trying out the song), so why are you not paying for it like every other thing in the universe?

Back in the days if you were too poor to afford a luxury you didn't own it, simple. Now people think luxuries such as music are necessities but music has always been something you owned if you had spare money. Young people especially have the view that technology is a necessity not the three important ones: food, water and shelter, anything else if a luxury.

What you seem to be forgetting that people who make music for ÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬Ãâ¹ÃâartÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢ are not apart of RIAA; RIAA is a collection of businesses out to make money by selling music, not art. No artist would willingly join a RIAA label but would rather release albums through independent or a non-RIAA label (there are surely ones out there).

The reason RIAA sues people for copyright infringement is not because they are evil but because thatÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s what its members want. The record labels and the artists on those record labels want to sue you. Without artists and therefore without labels that have artists, the RIAA is nothing because they wont have a music collection to monitor for copyright infringement. The RIAA are not suing you for owing your friends album on mp3, they are suing you for downloading Britney Spears or Nelly illegally. They are protecting their members and not music in general; music for art and music for RIAA are two different things.

AThousandLies · October 8, 2005

Although the artist may not be getting the $15, who is to say they were going to? Who is to say the downloader was going to buy the CD? That's the main basis for the RIAA's argument -- speculation.

If you arenÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t you going buy the song in the first place then what gives you the right to download it and play it?

It's pretty obvious that if you have downloaded a song and it remains on your hard drive then you enjoy it (remember most companies offer samples of songs, so you can't say your just trying out the song), so why are you not paying for it like every other thing in the universe?

Back in the days if you were too poor to afford a luxury you didn't own it, simple. Now people think luxuries such as music are necessities but music has always been something you owned if you had spare money. Young people especially have the view that technology is a necessity not the three important ones: food, water and shelter, anything else if a luxury.

What you seem to be forgetting that people who make music for ÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬Ãâ¹ÃâartÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢ are not apart of RIAA; RIAA is a collection of businesses out to make money by selling music, not art. No artist would willingly join a RIAA label but would rather release albums through independent or a non-RIAA label (there are surely ones out there).

The reason RIAA sues people for copyright infringement is not because they are evil but because thatÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s what its members want. The record labels and the artists on those record labels want to sue you. Without artists and therefore without labels that have artists, the RIAA is nothing because they wont have a music collection to monitor for copyright infringement. The RIAA are not suing you for owing your friends album on mp3, they are suing you for downloading Britney Spears or Nelly illegally. They are protecting their members and not music in general; music for art and music for RIAA are two different things.

Oh really?

I strongly suggest you read the following article.

http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html

THE INTERNET DEBACLE - AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW

Originally written for Performing Songwriter Magazine, May 2002

* Shortly after this article was turned in, Michael Greene resigned as president of NARAS.

Read Janis' follow up to this article: FALLOUT - a follow up to The Internet Debacle

"The Internet, and downloading, are here to stay... Anyone who thinks otherwise should prepare themselves to end up on the slagheap of history." (Janis Ian during a live European radio interview, 9-1-98) *Please see author's note at end!

When I research an article, I normally send 30 or so emails to friends and acquaintances asking for opinions and anecdotes. I usually receive 10-20 in reply. But not so on this subject!

I sent 36 emails requesting opinions and facts on free music downloading from the Net. I stated that I planned to adopt the viewpoint of devil's advocate: free Internet downloads are good for the music industry and its artists.

I've received, to date, over 300 replies, every single one from someone legitimately "in the music business."

What's more interesting than the emails are the phone calls. I don't know anyone at NARAS (home of the Grammy Awards), and I know Hilary Rosen (head of rhe Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA) only vaguely. Yet within 24 hours of sending my original email, I'd received two messages from Rosen and four from NARAS requesting that I call to "discuss the article."

Huh. Didn't know I was that widely read.

Ms. Rosen, to be fair, stressed that she was only interested in presenting RIAA's side of the issue, and was kind enough to send me a fair amount of statistics and documentation, including a number of focus group studies RIAA had run on the matter.

However, the problem with focus groups is the same problem anthropologists have when studying peoples in the field - the moment the anthropologist's presence is known, everything changes. Hundreds of scientific studies have shown that any experimental group wants to please the examiner. For focus groups, this is particularly true. Coffee and donuts are the least of the pay-offs.

The NARAS people were a bit more pushy. They told me downloads were "destroying sales", "ruining the music industry", and "costing you money".

Costing me money? I don't pretend to be an expert on intellectual property law, but I do know one thing. If a music industry executive claims I should agree with their agenda because it will make me more money, I put my hand on my walletÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃâÃÂ¦and check it after they leave, just to make sure nothing's missing.

Am I suspicious of all this hysteria? You bet. Do I think the issue has been badly handled? Absolutely. Am I concerned about losing friends, opportunities, my 10th Grammy nomination by publishing this article? Yeah. I am. But sometimes things are just wrong, and when they're that wrong, they have to be addressed.

The premise of all this ballyhoo is that the industry (and its artists) are being harmed by free downloading.

Nonsense. Let's take it from my personal experience. My site (http://www.janisian.com ) gets an average of 75,000 hits a year. Not bad for someone whose last hit record was in 1975. When Napster was running full-tilt, we received about 100 hits a month from people who'd downloaded Society's Child or At Seventeen for free, then decided they wanted more information. Of those 100 people (and these are only the ones who let us know how they'd found the site), 15 bought CDs. Not huge sales, right? No record company is interested in 180 extra sales a year. ButÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃâÃÂ¦ that translates into $2700, which is a lot of money in my book. And that doesn't include the ones who bought the CDs in stores, or who came to my shows.

Or take author Mercedes Lackey, who occupies entire shelves in stores and libraries. As she said herself: "For the past ten years, my three "Arrows" books, which were published by DAW about 15 years ago, have been generating a nice, steady royalty check per pay-period each. A reasonable amount, for fifteen-year-old books. However... I just got the first half of my DAW royalties...And suddenly, out of nowhere, each Arrows book has paid me three times the normal amount!...And because those books have never been out of print, and have always been promoted along with the rest of the backlist, the only significant change during that pay-period was something that happened over at Baen, one of my other publishers. That was when I had my co-author Eric Flint put the first of my Baen books on the Baen Free Library site. Because I have significantly more books with DAW than with Baen, the increases showed up at DAW first. There's an increase in all of the books on that statement, actually, and what it looks like is what I'd expect to happen if a steady line of people who'd never read my stuff encountered it on the Free Library - a certain percentage of them liked it, and started to work through my backlist, beginning with the earliest books published. The really interesting thing is, of course, that these aren't Baen books, they're DAW---another publisher---so it's 'name loyalty' rather than 'brand loyalty.' I'll tell you what, I'm sold. Free works."

I've found that to be true myself; every time we make a few songs available on my website, sales of all the CDs go up. A lot.

And I don't know about you, but as an artist with an in-print record catalogue that dates back to 1965, I'd be thrilled to see sales on my old catalogue rise.

Now, RIAA and NARAS, as well as most of the entrenched music industry, are arguing that free downloads hurt sales. (More than hurt - they're saying it's destroying the industry.)

Alas, the music industry needs no outside help to destroy itself. We're doing a very adequate job of that on our own, thank you.

Here are a few statements from the RIAA's website:

"Analysts report that just one of the many peer-to-peer systems in operation is responsible for over 1.8 billion unauthorized downloads per month". (Hilary B. Rosen letter to the Honorable Rick Boucher, Congressman, February 28, 2002)

"Sales of blank CD-R discs haveÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃâÃÂ¦grown nearly 2 ÃÆÃ¢â¬Å¡ÃâÃÂ½ times in the last two yearsÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃâÃÂ¦if just half the blank discs sold in 2001 were used to copy music, the number of burned CDs worldwide is about the same as the number of CDs sold at retail." (Hilary B. Rosen letter to the Honorable Rick Boucher, Congressman, February 28, 2002)

"Music sales are already suffering from the impactÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃâÃÂ¦in the United States, sales decreased by more than 10% in 2001."(Hilary B. Rosen letter to the Honorable Rick Boucher, Congressman, February 28, 2002)

"In a recent survey of music consumers, 23%ÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃâÃÂ¦said they are not buying more music because they are downloading or copying their music for free."(Hilary B. Rosen letter to the Honorable Rick Boucher, Congressman, February 28, 2002)

Let's take these points one by one, but before that, let me remind you of something: the music industry had exactly the same response to the advent of reel-to-reel home tape recorders, cassettes, DATs, minidiscs, VHS, BETA, music videos ("Why buy the record when you can tape it?"), MTV, and a host of other technological advances designed to make the consumer's life easier and better. I know because I was there.

The only reason they didn't react that way publicly to the advent of CDs was because they believed CD's were uncopyable. I was told this personally by a former head of Sony marketing, when they asked me to license Between the Lines in CD format at a reduced royalty rate. ("Because it's a brand new technology.")

Who's to say that any of those people would have bought the CD's if the songs weren't available for free? I can't find a single study on this, one where a reputable surveyor such as Gallup actually asks people that question. I think no one's run one because everyone is afraid of the truth - most of the downloads are people who want to try an artist out, or who can't find the music in print.

And if a percentage of that 1.8 billion is because people are downloading a current hit by Britney or In Sync, who's to say it really hurt their sales? Soft statistics are easily manipulated. How many of those people went out and bought an album that had been over-played at radio for months, just because they downloaded a portion of it?

Sales of blank CDs have grown? You bet. I bought a new Vaio in December (ironically enough, made by Sony), and now back up all my files onto CD. I go through 7-15 CD's a week that way, or about 500 a year. Most new PC's come with XP, which makes backing up to CD painless; how many people are doing what I'm doing? Additionally, when I buy a new CD, I make a copy for my car, a copy for upstairs, and a copy for my partner. That's three blank discs per CD. So I alone account for around 750 blank CDs yearly.

I'm sure the sales decrease had nothing to do with the economy's decrease, or a steady downward spiral in the music industry, or the garbage being pushed by record companies. Aren't you? There were 32,000 new titles released in this country in 2001, and that's not including re-issues, DIY's , or smaller labels that don't report to SoundScan. Our "Unreleased" series, which we haven't bothered SoundScanning, sold 6,000+ copies last year. A conservative estimate would place the number of "newly available" CD's per year at 100,000. That's an awful lot of releases for an industry that's being destroyed. And to make matters worse, we hear music everywhere, whether we want to or not; stores, amusement parks, highway rest stops. The original concept of Muzak (to be played in elevators so quietly that its soothing effect would be subliminal) has run amok. Why buy records when you can learn the entire Top 40 just by going shopping for groceries?

Which music consumers? College kids who can't afford to buy 10 new CDs a month, but want to hear their favorite groups? When I bought my nephews a new Backstreet Boys CD, I asked why they hadn't downloaded it instead. They patiently explained to their senile aunt that the download wouldn't give them the cool artwork, and more important, the video they could see only on the CD.

Realistically, why do most people download music? To hear new music, or records that have been deleted and are no longer available for purchase. Not to avoid paying $5 at the local used CD store, or taping it off the radio, but to hear music they can't find anywhere else. Face it - most people can't afford to spend $15.99 to experiment. That's why listening booths (which labels fought against, too) are such a success.

You can't hear new music on radio these days; I live in Nashville, "Music City USA", and we have exactly one station willing to play a non-top-40 format. On a clear day, I can even tune it in. The situation's not much better in Los Angeles or New York. College stations are sometimes bolder, but their wattage is so low that most of us can't get them.

One other major point: in the hysteria of the moment, everyone is forgetting the main way an artist becomes successful - exposure. Without exposure, no one comes to shows, no one buys CDs, no one enables you to earn a living doing what you love. Again, from personal experience: in 37 years as a recording artist, I've created 25+ albums for major labels, and I've never once received a royalty check that didn't show I owed them money. So I make the bulk of my living from live touring, playing for 80-1500 people a night, doing my own show. I spend hours each week doing press, writing articles, making sure my website tour information is up to date. Why? Because all of that gives me exposure to an audience that might not come otherwise. So when someone writes and tells me they came to my show because they'd downloaded a song and gotten curious, I am thrilled!

Who gets hurt by free downloads? Save a handful of super-successes like Celine Dion, none of us. We only get helped.

But not to hear Congress tell it. Senator Fritz Hollings, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee studying this, said "When Congress sits idly by in the face of these [file-sharing] activities, we essentially sanction the Internet as a haven for thievery", then went on to charge "over 10 million people" with stealing. [steven Levy, Newsweek 3/11/02]. That's what we think of consumers - they're thieves, out to get something for nothing.

Baloney. Most consumers have no problem paying for entertainment. One has only to look at the success of Fictionwise.com and the few other websites offering books and music at reasonable prices to understand that. If the music industry had a shred of sense, they'd have addressed this problem seven years ago, when people like Michael Camp were trying to obtain legitimate licenses for music online. Instead, the industry-wide attitude was "It'll go away". That's the same attitude CBS Records had about rock 'n' roll when Mitch Miller was head of A&R. (And you wondered why they passed on The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.)

I don't blame the RIAA for Holling's attitude. They are, after all, the Recording Industry Association of America, formed so the labels would have a lobbying group in Washington. (In other words, they're permitted to make contributions to politicians and their parties.) But given that our industry's success is based on communication, the industry response to the Internet has been abysmal. Statements like the one above do nothing to help the cause.

Of course, communication has always been the artist's job, not the executives. That's why it's so scary when people like current NARAS president Michael Greene begin using shows like the Grammy Awards to drive their point home.

Grammy viewership hit a six-year low in 2002. Personally, I found the program so scintillating that it made me long for Rob Lowe dancing with Snow White, which at least was so bad that it was entertaining. Moves like the ridiculous Elton John-Eminem duet did little to make people want to watch again the next year. And we're not going to go into the Los Angeles Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning series on Greene and NARAS, where they pointed out that MusiCares has spent less than 10% of its revenue on disbursing emergency funds for people in the music industry (its primary purpose), or that Greene recorded his own album, pitched it to record executives while discussing Grammy business, then negotiated a $250,000 contract with Mercury Records for it (later withdrawn after the public flap). Or that NARAS quietly paid out at least $650,000 to settle a sexual harassment suit against him, a portion of which the non-profit Academy paid. Or that he's paid two million dollars a year, along with "perks" like his million-dollar country club membership and Mercedes. (Though it does make one wonder when he last entered a record store and bought something with his own hard-earned money.)

Let's just note that in his speech he told the viewing audience that NARAS and RIAA were, in large part, taking their stance to protect artists. He hired three teenagers to spend a couple of days doing nothing but downloading, and they managed to download "6,000 songs". Come on. For free "front-row seats" at the Grammys and an appearance on national TV, I'd download twice that amount! ButÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃâÃÂ¦who's got time to download that many songs? Does Greene really think people out there are spending twelve hours a day downloading our music? If they are, they must be starving to death, because they're not making a living or going to school. How many of us can afford a T-1 line?

This sort of thing is indicative of the way statistics and information are being tossed around. It's dreadful to think that consumers are being asked to take responsibility for the industry's problems, which have been around far longer than the Internet. It's even worse to think that the consumer is being told they are charged with protecting us, the artists, when our own industry squanders the dollars we earn on waste and personal vendettas.

Greene went on to say that "Many of the nominees here tonight, especially the new, less-established artists, are in immediate danger of being marginalized out of our business." Right. Any "new" artist who manages to make the Grammys has millions of dollars in record company money behind them. The "real" new artists aren't people you're going to see on national TV, or hear on most radio. They're people you'll hear because someone gave you a disc, or they opened at a show you attended, or were lucky enough to be featured on NPR or another program still open to playing records that aren't already hits.

As to artists being "marginalized out of our business," the only people being marginalized out are the employees of our Enron-minded record companies, who are being fired in droves because the higher-ups are incompetent.

And it's difficult to convince an educated audience that artists and record labels are about to go down the drain because they, the consumer, are downloading music. Particularly when they're paying $50-$125 apiece for concert tickets, and $15.99 for a new CD they know costs less than a couple of dollars to manufacture and distribute.

I suspect Greene thinks of downloaders as the equivalent of an old-style television drug dealer, lurking next to playgrounds, wearing big coats and whipping them open for wide-eyed children who then purchase black market CD's at generous prices.

What's the new industry byword? Encryption. They're going to make sure no one can copy CDs, even for themselves, or download them for free. Brilliant, except that it flouts previous court decisions about blank cassettes, blank videotapes, etc. And it pisses people off.

How many of you know that many car makers are now manufacturing all their CD players to also play DVD's? or that part of the encryption record companies are using doesn't allow your store-bought CD to be played on a DVD player, because that's the same technology as your computer? And if you've had trouble playing your own self-recorded copy of O Brother Where Art Thou in the car, it's because of this lunacy.

The industry's answer is to put on the label: "This audio CD is protected against unauthorized copying. It is designed to play in standard audio CD players and computers running Windows O/S; however, playback problems may be experienced. If you experience such problems, return this disc for a refund."

Now I ask you. After three or four experiences like that, shlepping to the store to buy it, then shlepping back to return it (and you still don't have your music), who's going to bother buying CD's?

The industry has been complaining for years about the stranglehold the middle-man has on their dollars, yet they wish to do nothing to offend those middle-men. (BMG has a strict policy for artists buying their own CDs to sell at concerts - $11 per CD. They know very well that most of us lose money if we have to pay that much; the point is to keep the big record stores happy by ensuring sales go to them. What actually happens is no sales to us or the stores.) NARAS and RIAA are moaning about the little mom & pop stores being shoved out of business; no one worked harder to shove them out than our own industry, which greeted every new Tower or mega-music store with glee, and offered steep discounts to Target and WalMart et al for stocking CDs. The Internet has zero to do with store closings and lowered sales.

And for those of us with major label contracts who want some of our music available for free downloadingÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃâÃÂ¦ well, the record companies own our masters, our outtakes, even our demos, and they won't allow it. Furthermore, they own our voices for the duration of the contract, so we can't even post a live track for downloading!

If you think about it, the music industry should be rejoicing at this new technological advance! Here's a fool-proof way to deliver music to millions who might otherwise never purchase a CD in a store. The cross-marketing opportunities are unbelievable. It's instantaneous, costs are minimal, shipping non-existantÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃâÃÂ¦a staggering vehicle for higher earnings and lower costs. Instead, they're running around like chickens with their heads cut off, bleeding on everyone and making no sense. As an alternative to encrypting everything, and tying up money for years (potentially decades) fighting consumer suits demanding their first amendment rights be protected (which have always gone to the consumer, as witness the availability of blank and unencrypted VHS tapes and casettes), why not take a tip from book publishers and writers?

Baen Free Library is one success story. SFWA is another. The SFWA site is one of the best out there for hands-on advice to writers, featuring in depth articles about everything from agent and publisher scams, to a continuously updated series of reports on various intellectual property issues. More important, many of the science fiction writers it represents have been heavily involved in the Internet since its inception. Each year, when the science fiction community votes for the Hugo and Nebula Awards (their equivalent of the Grammys), most of the works nominated are put on the site in their entirety, allowing voters and non-voters the opportunity to peruse them. Free. If you are a member or associate (at a nominal fee), you have access to even more works. The site is also full of links to members' own web pages and on-line stories, even when they aren't nominated for anything. Reading this material, again for free, allows browsers to figure out which writers they want to find more of - and buy their books. Wouldn't it be nice if all the records nominated for awards each year were available for free downloading, even if it were only the winners? People who hadn't bought the albums might actually listen to the singles, then go out and purchase the records.

I have no objection to Greene et al trying to protect the record labels, who are the ones fomenting this hysteria. RIAA is funded by them. NARAS is supported by them. However, I object violently to the pretense that they are in any way doing this for our benefit. If they really wanted to do something for the great majority of artists, who eke out a living against all odds, they could tackle some of the real issues facing us:

The normal industry contract is for seven albums, with no end date, which would be considered at best indentured servitude (and at worst slavery) in any other business. In fact, it would be illegal.

A label can shelve your project, then extend your contract by one more album because what you turned in was "commercially or artistically unacceptable". They alone determine that criteria.

Singer-songwriters have to accept the "Controlled Composition Clause" (which dictates that they'll be paid only 75% of the rates set by Congress in publishing royalties) for any major or subsidiary label recording contract, or lose the contract. Simply put, the clause demanded by the labels provides that a) if you write your own songs, you will only be paid 3/4 of what Congress has told the record companies they must pay you, and B) if you co-write, you will use your "best efforts" to ensure that other songwriters accept the 75% rate as well. If they refuse, you must agree to make up the difference out of your share.

Congressionally set writer/publisher royalties have risen from their 1960's high (2 cents per side) to a munificent 8 cents.

Many of us began in the 50's and 60's; our records are still in release, and we're still being paid royalty rates of 2% (if anything) on them.

If we're not songwriters, and not hugely successful commercially (as in platinum-plus), we don't make a dime off our recordings. Recording industry accounting procedures are right up there with films.

Worse yet, when records go out-of-print, we don't get them back! We can't even take them to another company. Careers have been deliberately killed in this manner, with the record company refusing to release product or allow the artist to take it somewhere else.

And because a record label "owns" your voice for the duration of the contract, you can't go somewhere else and re-record those same songs they turned down.

And because of the re-record provision, even after your contract is over, you can't record those songs for someone else for years, and sometimes decades.

Last but not least, America is the only country I am aware of that pays no live performance royalties to songwriters. In Europe, Japan, Australia, when you finish a show, you turn your set list in to the promoter, who files it with the appropriate organization, and then pays a small royalty per song to the writer. It costs the singer nothing, the rates are based on venue size, and it ensures that writers whose songs no longer get airplay, but are still performed widely, can continue receiving the benefit from those songs.

Additionally, we should be speaking up, and Congress should be listening. At this point they're only hearing from multi-platinum acts. What about someone like Ani Difranco, one of the most trusted voices in college entertainment today? What about those of us who live most of our lives outside the big corporate system, and who might have very different views on the subject?

There is zero evidence that material available for free online downloading is financially harming anyone. In fact, most of the hard evidence is to the contrary.

Greene and the RIAA are correct in one thing - these are times of great change in our industry. But at a time when there are arguably only four record labels left in America (Sony, AOL/Time/Warner, Universal, BMG - and where is the RICO act when we need it?)ÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃâÃÂ¦ when entire genres are glorifying the gangster mentality and losing their biggest voices to violenceÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃâÃÂ¦when executives change positions as often as Zsa Zsa Gabor changed clothes, and "A&R" has become a euphemism for "Absent & Redundant"ÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃâÃÂ¦ well, we have other things to worry about.

It's absurd for us, as artists, to sanction - or countenance - the shutting down of something like this. It's sheer stupidity to rejoice at the Napster decision. Short-sighted, and ignorant.

Free exposure is practically a thing of the past for entertainers. Getting your record played at radio costs more money than most of us dream of ever earning. Free downloading gives a chance to every do-it-yourselfer out there. Every act that can't get signed to a major, for whatever reason, can reach literally millions of new listeners, enticing them to buy the CD and come to the concerts. Where else can a new act, or one that doesn't have a label deal, get that kind of exposure?

Please note that I am not advocating indiscriminate downloading without the artist's permission. I am not saying copyrights are meaningless. I am objecting to the RIAA spin that they are doing this to protect "the artists", and make us more money. I am annoyed that so many records I once owned are out of print, and the only place I could find them was Napster. Most of all, I'd like to see an end to the hysteria that causes a group like RIAA to spend over 45 million dollars in 2001 lobbying "on our behalf", when every record company out there is complaining that they have no money.

We'll turn into Microsoft if we're not careful, folks, insisting that any household wanting an extra copy for the car, the kids, or the portable CD player, has to go out and "license" multiple copies.

As artists, we have the ear of the masses. We have the trust of the masses. By speaking out in our concerts and in the press, we can do a great deal to damp this hysteria, and put the blame for the sad state of our industry right back where it belongs - in the laps of record companies, radio programmers, and our own apparent inability to organize ourselves in order to better our own lives - and those of our fans. If we don't take the reins, no one will.

Death_By_Pod · October 8, 2005

Eehhh, I don't think musicians should just make music for the sake of making music. It's just that the music industry seems more centered around the almighty dollar than anything else nowadays. You're right, it is their choice, but it doesn't make it the right choice. I'm not trying to compare musicians to mass murderers, but it was Hitler's choice to persecute jews and attempt to conquer the world. Did it make it right for him to do so just because it was his choice?

I'm not saying musicians should be our slaves either, sitting around making music for our entertainment with no pay. I think I said somewhere in my post that I see nothing wrong with people who are career musicians. Without musicians we wouldn't have music to enjoy.

A lot of artists before American capitalism made art for profit. Many (if not all) of the great artists have done commission work, basically nobles paid good money to get a high quality portrait of themselves. The same thing with musicians, they would get paid by the nobles to perform for their parties. ItÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s not like any of them were starving since things such as music and art were some of the few forms of entertainment, if you had the money you would obviously pay to get some entertainment.

I donÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t think an artistÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s musical talent is centred on money, they make music they enjoy; the problem is a label might not release the album or get the artist to replace some of the songs on the album. The point is the songs are still made to the artistÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s specification but they may have to compromise on the content of the album.

For example I know David Bowie originally wanted to make a series of albums but after the first album didnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t sell well, the label didnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t release the other next two albums, even though he had recorded over 20 hours of music for the series. What an artists records and what they release can sometimes be two different things, they need to compromise in order to make a living much like how you donÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t always get the job you want.

Also GodwinÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s Law, ÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬Ãâ¹Ãâmaking a comparison to NaziÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s will eventually happen the longer an argument lingersÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢. It generally isnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t a good idea to make comparisons to NaziÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s since the issue is so complex compared to the black and white downloading music is right/wrong.

Yes, stealing is stealing but that doesn't mean that all stealing is somehow the same thing. Murder is also murder, but would you try to compare murder cases? If someone gets into a fight with another person, and ends up accidentally killing that person it's murder. However if a serial killer stalks someone, then abducts them and later torture them to death, it's also murder. Would you try and compare the two as if they were the same? They're both a case of murder but are far from the same.

Yes I agree with you, music theft is petty theft (like stealing food or a toy) and should be punished that way. But there comes a point when you own a whole collection of mp3ÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s (a few thousand) where it should be considered more then petty (like being a repeat offender, stealing regularly) and should be punished accordingly. I donÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t think anyone is arguing against this. I donÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t think anyone is comparing downloading to stealing merchandise from a warehouse or car jacking.

That's the difference between downloading and ordinary theft. With downloading, you arn't actually taking anything from that person. When you download a song, 5 bucks doesn't just vanish from the musician's bank account. Imagine if we lived in the future when they have scanners and machines that can create matter like on star trek. Then lets just say you happen to be poor but have these two things. So lets say for example that you want a watch, but can't afford one. You then go and break into someone's house(without damaging anything), use your scanner to scan their watch, then take the data back to your home and use it to make yourself a new watch just like theirs. Nothing was actually taken from the owner of the watch and they lost none of their posessions or money. But did you actually steal their watch? In a way, yes. Now can you imagine anyone actually complaining because someone got a free watch at no expense to them?

It is stealing since you took the item without permission, much like stealing an album from a record store, making a copy and returning it. Not to mention the fact you are breaking and entering, you are breaking more laws then just stealing.

That statement really isn't fair at all. Sometimes there is no place to work, and no way to go out and gather or hunt for food. If you had a starving family and your only way to feed them and keep them alive was to steal, can you honestly say you wouldn't do everything you had to, to take care of them?

Did you know what people did in those situations, they moved to a town where there was work. Are you seriously telling me that at any one time there are no jobs to be filled? Lots of people move to take up job positions, whatÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s the difference between that and relocating for the prospect of a job.

Robinhood was essentially stealing from the rich. The taxes were going to the king, who was "the rich" and unlike in a normal government, he was using the money on himself, instead of using the taxes to do things to build up his kingdom and make it better for the peasants. Anyway, the reason I used the example of Robinhood is because I was stating examples of situations where people could reasonably rationalize stealing. Family starving, you do what you have to, to take care of them. Rich taxing the poor to the point where they can't even afford the taxes and yet demanding even more tax, take action and relieve the burdens of the poor.

Robinhood has nothing to do with todayÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s living, also the story was promoting egalitarianism (everyone should be equal) not to be taken literally. These people were forced to pay unreasonable taxes, while now you are taxed within reason. No one demands you pay taxes you canÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t pay.

Downloading does not cause money to be taken away from musicians.

Who said they were ever going to get that 15 dollars? People rarely download things that they would have paid for if they couldn't have downloaded it for free.

If you download the music you would have paid for it (if you had no choice to download it), otherwise you wouldnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t have downloaded the music if you didnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t think it was worth having. If an album is so mediocre that you wouldnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t pay for it then why would you download it? If I didnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t think an album is worth the money I would rather spend the time listening to albums I do like.

According to you stealing a Ferrari is ok because there were never going to get the money from it from you. You are rationalising getting something without paying for it.

Well you're right. However I'm not attempting to argue whether or not they have the right to do that. Having the right to do something doesn't mean you should do it.

Why would you be granted that right if you shouldnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t do it. They have laws against things you shouldnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t do. You canÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t injure animals even though you can own them, you cant pollute the environment even though you own the block of land. Maybe they should make a law that forces all music companies to provide samples of an album, until that happens they still have the right of allowing/disallowing samples.

Respecting a person's rights is part of caring about them. People who don't steal, don't steal because they care about someone other than themselves and thus don't want to harm others in any way, it's that simple. Respecting the rights of others is only one aspect of the actual reason why some people don't want to steal.

Then why donÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t you respect musicians rights?

I'm not trying to deny that they own it or have rights to control what is done with it. Most of what I said in my post is related to the true nature of these various points, not the text book, hard, cold facts and info. Yes, musicians have a right to say what people do with their songs but why would anyone want to deny someone the joy of listening to your music? That is where my point of view is coming from.

Well if you play an instrument or do a hobby and a friend or stranger came up to you and asked you to play your instrument or do your hobby with them, you wouldnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t comply 100% of the time even though you enjoyed your hobby/instrument. If I enjoyed the work I do, I still wouldnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t work for free. YouÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢re undermining your ability to live if you do everything for free. I would get pretty sick of playing the same song over and over, thousands of times to people; playing music to people losses its edge after you play it many times.

That's a totally different thing. Using something for your own enjoyment is not the same as using it to make money. Downloading a song to listen to is different than downloading several songs and putting them on a cd, claiming it is your music, then trying to sell it to people.

What about giving away my drinks for free that coca-cola branding on them? IÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢m not making any money but IÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢m misrepresenting the brand, their intellectual property and trademarks. By playing mp3ÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s you could claim it is misrepresenting the song because it wasnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t designed to be distributed by the means of P2P, even if you could buy it online from an mp3 store; The P2P program is unprofessional and they didnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t approve of that form of the songs delivery. Even if it has no bearing on how the song sounds, the memory of how you got that song will always stay in your mind (which the company had no ability to control).

That makes no sense at all. Laws are always based on the morals of the people who they are supposed to govern(at least in theory). Right now things like abortion, homosexual marriage, and right to die are things that they have tried to and in some cases, succeeded in, making laws against and they're all moral issues. Murder is illegal because it's morally objectionable. * is illegal because it's morally objectionable. Stealing is illegal because it's morally objectionable(we already discussed why it's morally objectionable). Morals HAVE to play a part in the law making process. Otherwise, what way of choosing the laws would there be? Throwing darts at a board?

If laws were based on morals there would always be a prejudice against minority. The word Prejudice is the from the words pre-judge; if laws have a moralistic view then the law will pre-judge against people that donÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t share the same view. Since morals are subjective the law will be subjective and wouldnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t be fair to people who donÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t believe in the majorities morals. Morals have to play some part but they only play a part in getting a feel of what morals are the same in ALL communities (such as stealing is wrong, murder is wrong etc).

Abortion, right to die and homosexual marriage are all issues in America because America is predominantly Christian and those are Christian morals. In most other countries Abortion and right to die arenÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t really an issue (homosexual marriage is because the word ÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬Ãâ¦Ã¢â¬ÅmarriageÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃâÃ

Death_By_Pod · October 8, 2005

Oh really?

I strongly suggest you read the following article.

http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html

I read it and the only thing I think has any relevance to what I posted was that of out of print or rare albums. I have no problems with people downloading rare or out of print albums, I have a problem people downloading cd's you can buy in a music store.

She responds to RIAA's misleading statements which I agree with (which are pretty stupid like the number of black cds that "might" be used as music cdÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s). Then she goes on about copy protection which I agree with (anyone with who is a little above average with computers will know how to bypass the protection) and poor royalty fee's which I also agree with.

She says there are only 4 major labels left which is true but you think if there were some really passionate artists out there that they would band together to form a new anti-RIAA label? It doesn't matter that they don't have their back catalogues any fans would still pick up new albums by them and over time they would actually get big enough to combat the major labels. If anything it would get them more sales from all the people (which is starting to grow) who refuse to buy RIAA albums.

10% of all cd's in America are not from a RIAA label which is a fairly significant number, so it isn't a lost cause yet. I just think the artists are too lazy to care because if they did they would have already done something about it by now. Music artists are just a flock of sheep they just follow the leaders which is a real shame because you think that a few big guns would pool their money together to do something about it.

You canÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t tell me that itÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s not the artists fault that most labels are apart of RIAA, if they didnÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢t like it they could wait to the contractÃÆÃÂ¢ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¡ÃÂ¬ÃÂ¢Ã¢â¬Å¾ÃÂ¢s over and switch to a non RIAA label.

DaN · October 9, 2005

just dug this up an email I sent to the RIAA last year have still not recived a response.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: file sharing possible help to the industry.

Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 17:53:20 +0800

From: Dan

To: RIAA

When traveling in my friends cars I often hear songs from albums ive

never even heard of if I like the song ill often buy it myself were as

if I didnt hear it from my friends collection I would not even know

about it.

Its the same situation with sharing files across the net there are some

users who buy CD's they would normally never have known about if it had

not been for networks such as Kazza.

~Dan

---------------------------------------------------------------

AThousandLies · October 9, 2005

In my eyes, it seems like the RIAA is only doing this because they lacked the intiative and intelligence to actually capitolise on this whole downloading-music boom. Whereas, you have things like iTunes and similar organisations/programs, which saw the oppurtunity and potential here and made the most of it. The RIAA is just doing this out of spite, and so they can get money to make up for their failure.

P2P Users More Likely to Cheat, Shoplift

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