The great music copyright debate.

[lion_cub]

No your not stealing a song by copying it; but you are stealing the artists's opportunity to make revenue out of their art.

The funniest thing I hear, in a sad way, but I hear and see it over and over again, in this kind of debate is the people who justify ripping off the copyrights of hundreds of artists on the grounds that the major record companies are either screwing their artists or their customers. That doesnt seem to make them care about screwing over the artists themselves, especially when they listen to less mainstream music which are probably on independent labels anyways, not majors. "Hey downloading getting back at the man cos my CDs are too expensive and they screw the artists." Its bullshit, pure and simple.

What are the other classic arguments? That you have a right to listen to stuff before you buy? No you dont, but it sure is handy. But how does that transform into "a copy of every track off every album?". And do you really think people who use this argument actually delete the stuff they dont rush out and buy? I dont know anyone who does; they seem to keep it all, even if its crap.
And you dont need to download it. I heard single tracks on Peel's show, and bought the album the next day; what fuckin happened that people have to suddenly have everything a band ever did before they'll shell out the costs of 4 f**king beers? I heard two Blonde Redhead tracks that were legitimately available on the web, and subsequently bought three albums. Most of the albums Amazon sell have previews, as do many, many other places, and the bands's websites themselves have tracks available. So that argument is bulshit as any other.

Another one - "but I cant afford to buy all the albums I want". Its a f**king harsh world, innit. Funnily enough, even with a good job and a decent salary, neither do I. And yet I have a much smaller music collections than many people who can afford it less than I do, because they spend all their time downloading MP3's because they 'can't afford' CD's. I find not buying them unless I really must have them is what actually saves me the money, not nicking them off small kids, or downloading them.
And these days its TV shows and DVD's as well. How did that become a 'right'? It can be done so it must be done? And it must be done for everything? Im getting sick of tired of telling people about tiny little unknown bands I've found and love (like Blonde Redhead) only for them to turn up 3 days later with everything the band ever did on a CD and say 'here, I know you dont download stuff, but have this'. No I f**king dont want it, I want to give this band some f**king money so they'll continue making stuff I love.
I know someone buying his second 500Gb RAID array just to store his downloaded DVDs. Not someone who's close to being a bit short of cash, btw. Funny he can find the money for the drives but not for the DVD's he likes.
"I cant afford it, so its my right" - yet another classic line of bullshit.

Another one. "Well it promotes the artists and they can make all their money some other way, like touring or selling stuff". D'you know how much a tour costs to set up? Where does that f**king money come from in the first place if noone buys the album? So a band has to finance an album, which they effectively give away, so they can then finance a tour, and hope that enough people can be bothered going to see them to recoup money on the tour? How the f**k do they know what the size of their audience is without sales? What the f**k do they do if they cant perform, if they laboriously construct tracks on a laptop but they dont actually play anything physical? How are they expected to make money touring?
So, more bullshit

If all you do is make music, then if your audience think they're entitled to that for nothing, are you supposed to becomes a plumber to pay the bills just so you can make more music to give away to your 'fans' who tell you they have the 'right' to your work for nothing?

In short, over the years, Ive seen nothing which indicates that people's prmary reason for downloading MP3's isnt just plain old greed. There are plenty of 'justifications' being used, but they just dont wash. And whilst I'd be quite happy to see the major labels disappear in a puff of sulphur tomorrow, the fact remains that people who rely on not paying for their music do so indiscriminately. They dont looks for free stuff by the known bands, they dont look for unknown bands trying to take advantage of this 'publicity by MP3' wonderland that's supposed to exist, and they dont even just listen a couple of times to one or two tracks, and either buy the album or delete the MP3s. They grab everything they can, and keep doing so, and their expectation very quickly becomes that they're entitled to it.

Whether you like it or not, whether you care to admit it or not, that deprives artists of revenue money. No Britney and Robbie dont fuckin' need it. But it doesnt just happen to them. It happens to everyone, big or small, but its the small acts who have most to lose. Even if the large acts made no money from 95% of their listeners, they'd still make money. If a small act only makes money out of 5% of their audience, maybe they can just about fill the van with diesel. But its more than likely they'll become just another group of guys working in regular jobs who'll be telling you how they were in a band 5 years ago, but never 'made it'.

I agree 100% with this post !

[herodotus]

But please, if there's anyone here who know any musician making a decent living wage solely as a result of their music being downloaded on the internet, and the secondary revenue they generate that's directly caused by that, can they please chime in.

Well, I don't personally know ANYONE who makes a living off of their music at all, so I can't really speak to this. But I think that this is an unnecessarily cynical view point.

How many software billionaires were there in 1975?

How many aviators were there in 1850?

Certainly these possibilities were at least as unlikely as the idea of a musician making a living in the aforementioned fashion.

Is the present situation really the best of all possible worlds? Is there really nothing we can do to change it? I know of NO ONE who likes broadcast radio in its present form. Why then, is it as wretchedly homogeneous as it is? Could it be that the recording industries aren't as shrewd as people give them credit for being?

Large institutions are usually not that great at anticipating their own demise. My favorite example of this is the breakdown of the old studio system in Hollywood during the fifties and early sixties. Some of the biggest and most powerful heads in that huge, monolithic industry did,in fact, roll. Television did, in fact, take over the pop cultural landscape. And none of the studio heads realized it until it was too late to do anything about it.

The mighty CAN fall. Would it really be bad for music and musicians as a whole if in this case they did? Does anyone really believe it would be bad?

THAT is the question I want to know the answer to.

[TheJudge]

Whatever you call it, it's wrong !

And evil!

Munchkin, no need to make a mockery of what is right

[shamann]

But please, if there's anyone here who know any musician making a decent living wage solely as a result of their music being downloaded on the internet, and the secondary revenue they generate that's directly caused by that, can they please chime in.

I know several musicians who make a decent living performing music, but not a cent from recordings. The same thing applies to download, give yor music away as promotion, encourage others to distribute it, and make money performing.

Hell, don't even give it away free. Sell it, but waive certain rights to encourage others to share or sample your work.

Consider software, we have several different business models to work with: freeware, open source consulting, shareware, etc. Why would we want only one way for music? Especially with something as vital to society as music, which is part of our very fabric.

[TVD]

By MrSpey
Wed Apr 25th, 2001 at 03:25:32 PM EST
Culture
Almost any time you read, hear, or view anything about Napster, music sharing, or mp3's you hear people talking about stealing music. The MPAA is starting to talk a lot about people stealing movies online. Book publishers are even talking about stealing books through online transfer. Well, I have good news for those who are worried about people stealing music or movies through file-sharing programs: no one is stealing anything. What they are doing is infringing.

Whatever you call it, it's wrong !

Remember, that is MrSpey's point-of-view, not mine!

[lion_cub]

To The Almighty TVD:

Sorry ,

[TVD]

To The Almighty TVD:

Sorry ,

All is forgiven brother.

[kritikon]

No, because the advancement is a loan!! Even long after Janet retire from the music industry, Virgin/EMI will still be making money off of Janet...getting their loan money back AND all of Janet's future album sales income for 50+ years after the fact.

Janet's future children & grandchildren will never see future royality outside of the advancement.

Check your business facts...I think you'll find that the advance is a loan in lieu of royalty payment - when royalties reach the $80 million mark or whatever the figure was, then that loan is no longer repayable - either way I can't see that someone like Janet Jackson has been screwed over - she will have had it made plain to her by her lawyers and accountants that the advance is not actually safley hers if her records all flop and don't make the expected profits (and if she hasn't been advised that, she needs better lawyers/accountants. So if she spends all $80 million, her records flop, and the label demand back some money...then she's the idiot, not them. You don't spend that amount of money if it's not yet yours.

And author copyright will almost certainly not have been ceded by her...anyone in her position can haggle very strongly with any major label - so if she wishes to pass on authorship copyright to her kids, then she can do so.

And after Janet retires, she will still be receiving royalty payments...it's not just the label who are making money. And if she ceded royalties for a big fat advance, then again I'd say she's an idiot who is blinded by greed - and her greed would have been more idiotic than the label's.

She's in a great position...no way has she been shafted by anyone (although maybe not in the biblical sense )

[dystonia_ek]

Some essential reading:

http://www.negativland.com/intprop.html
- a huge list of resources on copyright and intellectual property issues.

http://www.irdial.com/new_index.html
- UK independent currently running on an open-source, go-ahead-and-file-share platform

http://www.ram.org/ramblings/philosophy/fmp.html
- the Free Music Philosophy. A model for the decommodification of music. "the word "free" refers to freedom, not price. Specifically, Free Music means that any individual has the freedom of copying, distributing, and modifying music for personal, noncommercial purposes. Free Music does not mean that musicians cannot charge for records, tapes, CDs, or DATs."

[kritikon]

Is the present situation really the best of all possible worlds? Is there really nothing we can do to change it? I know of NO ONE who likes broadcast radio in its present form. Why then, is it as wretchedly homogeneous as it is? Could it be that the recording industries aren't as shrewd as people give them credit for being?

You are absolutely right there.
In fact if it were possible for musicians to take more control over the production and distribution and even direct sales of their own music, then that may well be a better system worth encouraging. But those same musicians might be the ones still suffering from piracy. IF piracy directly effects sales, then even if labels aren't part of the loop, the bands still lose money from their work.

I have absolutely no idea how that can be combatted though...any protection systems on the media itself are obviously only a token gesture at best - Vinyl can be taped, DAT protection could be ripped, CD and DVD protection can be ripped - all easily and more to the point, very cheaply.

Maybe if musicians were to sell directly, the costs to the consumer would be at least halved overnight - probably CDs could be bought legitimately for $5 each. I still don't think piracy would be touched though - anyone prepared to rip off a $25 CD is just as likely to rip off a $5 CD - until the actual buying cost is less than what they can buy a blank CD for, it will continue - and when that happens, no musician makes any profit at all from any direct sale.

And if labels were to not exist...I don't see how musicians would be able to check piracy through any law court, because the cost is too prohibitive...at least for the small fry (who probably are the ones to lose most through piracy, because their profit margins are so small).


As mentioned...another way of musicians making some sort of living is through live gigging. Ask many musicians how easy it is to make anything through small gigs and you'll soon find out that's not an answer. And anyway, that takes music back to the select few...those musicians who don't gig will almost disappear, and I personally think that the easy access to anybody to make their own music via PCs is a good thing irrespective of how much crap music is churned out.


And as for the high moral ground...yep...I don't like theft of music. I also think that bad though some labels may be, it can be a better system for muicians selling their music than directly through the net....labels came into being simply because musicians never had the wherewithall to do their own business - it's an expensive game potentially. It can be heartbreaking to press a run of CDs, vinyl or whatever at your own cost - maybe pay for some advertising, give most of them away and then also not actually sell any, and that's $1000 (or plenty more) of your own gone in a puff of smoke...and start again with the next one.

Do many of you realise what hard work it is to firstly even convince any shops to stock unknown artists' CDs (on a no-sale return basis) so if they don't sell them, you get them back and no money? And that you personally have to chase up each individual shop to stock any of your music, and that may mean meeting each and every one face-to-face...across the whole country?
And then if you can't make sales that way, you go back to net sales....catch 22 already.


I don't know what the answer is, but I can't see that piracy is acceptable to any musician that doesn't actually want to give away their music freely.

[dystonia_ek]

But please, if there's anyone here who know any musician making a decent living wage solely as a result of their music being downloaded on the internet, and the secondary revenue they generate that's directly caused by that, can they please chime in.

Well, I don't personally know ANYONE who makes a living off of their music at all, so I can't really speak to this. But I think that this is an unnecessarily cynical view point.

How many software billionaires were there in 1975?

How many aviators were there in 1850?

Certainly these possibilities were at least as unlikely as the idea of a musician making a living in the aforementioned fashion.

Is the present situation really the best of all possible worlds? Is there really nothing we can do to change it? I know of NO ONE who likes broadcast radio in its present form. Why then, is it as wretchedly homogeneous as it is? Could it be that the recording industries aren't as shrewd as people give them credit for being?

Large institutions are usually not that great at anticipating their own demise. My favorite example of this is the breakdown of the old studio system in Hollywood during the fifties and early sixties. Some of the biggest and most powerful heads in that huge, monolithic industry did,in fact, roll. Television did, in fact, take over the pop cultural landscape. And none of the studio heads realized it until it was too late to do anything about it.

The mighty CAN fall. Would it really be bad for music and musicians as a whole if in this case they did? Does anyone really believe it would be bad?

THAT is the question I want to know the answer to.

That's an important issue - there's never been a better time for musicians to strategically USE these new media and new paradigms to further autonomy and creative freedom. The war on P2P, filesharing, etc is being spun by the media in a manner not dissimilar (though on a much smaller scale) to the way the war on (some) drugs was spun in the Reagan era, and the way the war on (some) terror(ists) is being spun. Essentially the tactic, whether consciously pursued or not, consists of creating an atmosphere of fear and paranoia of one degree or another, while trying to impose a set of rules and regulations conceived for physical media (which, in the form of physical objects, is by necessity limited in number) to non-physical media (which can be reproduced endlessly with no loss of information/content to any of the parties).
Home taping was the enemy in the 80's... the industry effectively killed the DAT as a commercial format before it even got started. Every new technology that takes control out of the hands of the corporations and governments and puts it in the hands of artists and their audiences is immediately and methodically stigmatised by the industry. Normally the creative people tend to be the radical innovators, and it surprises me that so many slaves are rushing to defend their masters in this debate.

To answer Whyterabbyt's point, I doubt there are very many people who make their living exclusively via downloads. That's diverting the issue - physical media are not yet obsolete. Online music is generally distributed in lossy formats that renders it less appealing to serious audiophiles - myself included. The fact is that only a very small number of artists actually make 100% of their incomes from music - you'd be amazed at how many indie artists still have day jobs - and many of those that do are living quite marginally. The ones who do better have either reached a certain plateau in terms of music and merchandise sales (thus enabling them to get out of debt to their label and management, the single greatest obstacle to actually making any money at all in this business) and concert attendance (and tours, if well planned and not too heavily budgeted, are generally more profitable for musicians than record sales), or alternately have liscenced music for use in cinema, television or commercials (where the royalties are enormously more generous).
Online music is in its infancy at the moment, and the question is: who will decide where it goes from here? Would you rather see the future of music dictated by a bunch of lawyers and accountants, or by those who make music and those who love it? Why are so many musicians taking a passive 'armchair' approach, or just simply spouting pro-corporate doublespeak in a reactionary fashion, rather than diving in with both hands and taking advantage of all the potentials this new situation can offer? Why not have the best of both worlds? You can still sell stuff through the usual channels anyway - but your work will reach many more people than it ever could in the past.
See the 'Free Music Philosophy' link I posted above for more, and more eloquently put, ideas...

[munchkin]

Whatever you call it, it's wrong !

And evil!

Munchkin, no need to make a mockery of what is right

In your opinion maybe! Instead of just posting one-line sanctamoneous platitudes actually engage in the debate please.

[herodotus]

And if labels were to not exist...I don't see how musicians would be able to check piracy through any law court, because the cost is too prohibitive...at least for the small fry (who probably are the ones to lose most through piracy, because their profit margins are so small).


And as for the high moral ground...yep...I don't like theft of music. I also think that bad though some labels may be, it can be a better system for muicians selling their music than directly through the net....labels came into being simply because musicians never had the wherewithall to do their own business - it's an expensive game potentially. It can be heartbreaking to press a run of CDs, vinyl or whatever at your own cost - maybe pay for some advertising, give most of them away and then also not actually sell any, and that's $1000 (or plenty more) of your own gone in a puff of smoke...and start again with the next one.

Do many of you realise what hard work it is to firstly even convince any shops to stock unknown artists' CDs (on a no-sale return basis) so if they don't sell them, you get them back and no money? And that you personally have to chase up each individual shop to stock any of your music, and that may mean meeting each and every one face-to-face...across the whole country?
And then if you can't make sales that way, you go back to net sales....catch 22 already.


I don't know what the answer is, but I can't see that piracy is acceptable to any musician that doesn't actually want to give away their music freely.

Actually the structure of the music biz antedates current technology by many, many, years. That is part of my point. The way the contracts are written is the same way they were written when Frank Sinatra was young and handsome. And the way theft was prevented in the past was simple: stores put locks on their doors.

The music biz simply does not have the flexibility to deal with these changes. it is too goddam huge and monolithic. Whatever one feels about piracy (and yes, I would be pissed if all of my music was stolen and someone else was making money off of it) is irrelevant. If the success of the industry hinges on a whole culture consistently taking the moral high ground, it has already failed. We here might not know the solutions, but then we aren't getting paid assloads of money to figure them out either. People in the industry ARE getting paid assloads of money, and they don't seem to be doing much better than we are.

I don't know what is going to happen, but I think that this is an exciting time to be a musician. I think that we will see big changes in our lifetimes. And though there will be growing pains and suffering, I think that it will be a better world for all of us.

[kritikon]

Online music is in its infancy at the moment, and the question is: who will decide where it goes from here? Would you rather see the future of music dictated by a bunch of lawyers and accountants, or by those who make music and those who love it? Why are so many musicians taking a passive 'armchair' approach, or just simply spouting pro-corporate doublespeak in a reactionary fashion, rather than diving in with both hands and taking advantage of all the potentials this new situation can offer? Why not have the best of both worlds? You can still sell stuff through the usual channels anyway - but your work will reach many more people than it ever could in the past.
See the 'Free Music Philosophy' link I posted above for more, and more eloquently put, ideas...

I read the links...not impressed I'm afraid. I found it dodgy logic, full of dubious deductions and assumptions.
Maybe worth a try for some people...definitely not for me. Take the idea that all music should be freely available and rely on donations from impressed listeners/fans. I wonder how many donations are received by developers who release their s/w available on this very site? I suspect very very little...one developer immediately springs to mind who gave it all up after becoming heartily sick of the whole deal...and he coded some top quality plugins that many here (myself included) use regularly.

Alot of the anarchistic "everything should be free" nonsense such as the tree-huggers, the anti-corporate objectors, anti-globalisation objectors, Animal Liberation Front anti fox-hunting types often comes from those with nothing to lose, everything to gain, and contribute towards society nothing. That's a sweeping generalisation on my own personal observations.
I was into that type of politics when I was younger and more impressionable - when I had nothing but had access to free education, dole, housing benefit etc. Once you start to actually own something from the product of your own hard work, that fades, and you tend to think more along the lines of receipt of societal gifts equals responsibility to society also.

Free music is great for those that receive the free music - I don't see it as being any benefit to those that make the music at all. Bollocks to everything being free...I pay for everything I own and use - so if I produce something that other people want, they can f**king -well pay ME for a change.

[whyterabbyt]

shamann quoth
I know several musicians who make a decent living performing music, but not a cent from recordings. The same thing applies to download, give yor music away as promotion, encourage others to distribute it, and make money performing.

So we go back to a situation where a reliance on the ability to 'perform' rules out a large swathe of people who's creativity can't fit into that realm? Im not a musician. I cant 'play' what I create, but I can create it. So how on earth do I 'make money performing'. Isn't that reviving the 'muso elitism' that computers were suposed to have freed us from??

Hell, don't even give it away free. Sell it, but waive certain rights to encourage others to share or sample your work.

Thats fine if thats what an individual want to do, but why should they effectively be forced to give up those rights because most people are getting too greedy to pay for the bulk of their music collections any more?

Hey, why not force people to give up the right not to be indentured slaves because people want cheap labour?

Consider software, we have several different business models to work with: freeware, open source consulting, shareware, etc. Why would we want only one way for music?

Who says we do only want one way? But when you start saying that people will have to waive their rights to suit a mindset which wants something for nothing, then its you who is narrowing the number of choices people have. When you fail to protect the choices that some people make, even when you dont agree with them personally, then you help limit those choices.
I have no objection to anyone whatsoever making their own distribution choices for their own music. If you want your stuff up on Kazaa that's perfectly fine with me. So I'd like to know why you think its right to insist that you should be able to define how I should have my music distributed and protected (or not). And why you think its legitimate to ignore my preference, just because you dont agree with it, or because it doesnt suit the fact that most people are not prepared to pay for it.