Dinjiin: Teiritzamna: They are under no obligation to "make content easily available." None whatsoever.

You're missing the point. People don't care. The attitude has arisen that if your business model is a dinosaur, you deserve to go extinct. There will always be a willing pool of talent and they'll hook up with any surviving company with a working business model. The morality and justification of such actions can be debated all day and it doesn't change the fact that the shift in attitude has already occurred.

Are they under obligation to provide cheap and easily obtainable content? No. Will I be caught and successfully prosecuted if I pirate it? Extremely unlikely.

At least when their ship sinks, they'll be secure in knowing that they were right.

Well see there is a difference between a justification, and a statement of fact. Most people martial the ol' "they are dinosaurs" argument as a justification for why they feel ok doing something wrong. I find that to be silly as it applies equally to all property crimes.

fracto73: rugman11: ignatius_crumbcake: rugman11: See, this is the biggest problem with piracy. We're raising an entire generation of people who feel entitled to media. You're basically saying "I'm going to take what I want and it's up to you to find a way to make money from that." You're so dim you don't even know who you're hurting when you're downloading. CBS couldn't give a shiat that you're downloading old stuff because they don't make any money from it. Quit martyring yourself and just admit that you're too damn cheap.

Also, if The Big Bang Theory is such a shiatty sitcom, why are watching it anyway?

I never said it was a shiatty sitcom; I said it was a mediocre sitcom.

I'm saying that I am going to take the easiest avenue to the content. With that particular content, it happens to be bittorrent. Such is the way things are today. The entertainment companies can either adapt or continue to lose money to online piracy. Nobody is claiming to be a martyr, but yes I am too cheap to pay $150 for five seasons of that show.

But how can they possibly adapt to that? You're getting your content completely free, commercial free, in good quality. What could they possibly do to compete with that? They'll never get your business without instituting a financially ruinous business model so, for the moment, they're just going to do their best to mess up your torrenting and search for ways to monetize their actual customers.


You've hit the nail on the head here. The company would have to spend a non-trivial amount of money to put the show online. Then people would pirate them because of the quality. If they increased quality then people would pirate because of the commercials. There is no way they can win in this situation.

Then they are trying to operate on a now outdated business model. Before, it wasn't just that they controlled the content, they also controlled the broadcast and distribution of the content. They no longer have a stranglehold on that second part. They're basically a stagecoach driver standing outside of a bus terminal going "This isn't fair!"

Burr: A few are, admittedly, from a stint in the 5th grade with the file-sharing program Kazaa.

Damn...Now I feel old

In the 5th grade (computer related) I was playing X-Wing and passing around Doom shareware.....

YOU feel old?? In 5th grade I was hoping to get a chance to see one of those newfangled Apple IIs or TRS-80s that I'd heard about. Using one, much less owning it, was just a fantasy.

Doubletwist-: So let me get this straight. You've got what appears to be a cover band with a single song on a compilation CD from which you don't even get royalties [aka you got screwed by the recording industry]. You have 30-second demos of songs online. You make no mention having any full-length albums or tracks available for purchase [amazon, itunes, rhapsody etc]. I looked at your web page and see only a picture of the CD from which you get no royalties [and which only has a single song of yours anyway], and not even a link to where to purchase it and if I'm not mistaken, the song of yours on that CD is a cover anyway.

Exactly what music of yours do you think is in danger of being shared in such a way that you are likely to get screwed by piracy?

You're not failing to make tons of money because of piracy. You're failing to make money because:
a) cover bands don't make a lot of money,
b) Surf music has a pretty thin fan base these days,
c) You have no music available anywhere for anyone to purchase.


And for that matter, since you seem to play primarily [if not solely] covers, have you ensured that every venue at which you've played has a current ASCAP license? Have you paid the ASCAP fees for any of those venues that didn't have a current license? If you've ever played a gig at a non-licensed place without paying the license yourself, then you sir are a "thief" and have broken the law.


You know how I know you haven't read any of my other posts?

I play with more than one band. We do play original music as well, much of which I wrote. I played with bands who had top 20 and top 10 hits, and the cuts I am on are on albums currently available. I mentioned that we do pay licensing fees to cover venues who do not pay ASCAP, BMI and other licensing costs. And all of that is in this thread. Call me thief all you want; you are ignorant of reality.

Reading can be your ally.

stonicus: fracto73: rugman11: ignatius_crumbcake: rugman11: See, this is the biggest problem with piracy. We're raising an entire generation of people who feel entitled to media. You're basically saying "I'm going to take what I want and it's up to you to find a way to make money from that." You're so dim you don't even know who you're hurting when you're downloading. CBS couldn't give a shiat that you're downloading old stuff because they don't make any money from it. Quit martyring yourself and just admit that you're too damn cheap.

Also, if The Big Bang Theory is such a shiatty sitcom, why are watching it anyway?

I never said it was a shiatty sitcom; I said it was a mediocre sitcom.

I'm saying that I am going to take the easiest avenue to the content. With that particular content, it happens to be bittorrent. Such is the way things are today. The entertainment companies can either adapt or continue to lose money to online piracy. Nobody is claiming to be a martyr, but yes I am too cheap to pay $150 for five seasons of that show.

But how can they possibly adapt to that? You're getting your content completely free, commercial free, in good quality. What could they possibly do to compete with that? They'll never get your business without instituting a financially ruinous business model so, for the moment, they're just going to do their best to mess up your torrenting and search for ways to monetize their actual customers.


You've hit the nail on the head here. The company would have to spend a non-trivial amount of money to put the show online. Then people would pirate them because of the quality. If they increased quality then people would pirate because of the commercials. There is no way they can win in this situation.

Then they are trying to operate on a now outdated business model. Before, it wasn't just that they controlled the content, they also controlled the broadcast and distribution of the content. They no longer have a stranglehold on that second pa ...

No they are a stagecoach driver watching you take his stagecoach and your justification is that "its obsolete anyway" This is not an instance of a legally disruptive technology, as when cars supplanted buggies and consumers rightfully bought one over the other. This is an instance where a business model (albeit a bloated bad stupid one) is being cratered by an illegal alternative.

Perhaps a better analogy is if heroin became cheap and easy and you justified using it based on the argument that Tylenol manufacturers are dicks.

As a Canadian, I pay a levy on all recordable media and playback devices, which, according to the Copyright Act of Canada, allows 'individuals to make copies of sound recordings for their own private, non-commercial use.'

I have no problems sleeping at night after a hard day of "robbing artists". If your music sucks, I'll delete it from my hard drive and you get nothing. If it's good, I'll consider purchasing it and seeing a live show.

stonicus: They're basically a stagecoach driver standing outside of a bus terminal going "This isn't fair!"

Just grow some balls, put on some pants, and admit you take stuff because you don't want to pay for it. Or because you want stuff you can't afford. Blaming the victim is plain ridiculous.

Teiritzamna: Thus, if federal circuit courts casually call infringement stealing and theft, i feel its good enough for me.

The courts have and continue to use these commonly understood terms interchangeably to publicly conflate what are two separate issues. This is something that the **AAs have been pushing for years. They want people to equate the concepts of physical deprivation and intellectual property rights infringement. It's a disingenuous practice.

UNAUTHORIZED FINGER: ignatius_crumbcake: If content producers made an easy option available themselves, then nobody would pirate anything.

Is this better?

No because lets put all our cards on the table and be honest.

Free high quality no commercial media without any DRM or bells or whistles will always beat whatever media generators can produce. ALWAYS. This is the stalking horse behind people saying "if only it had been available" because what they tend to mean is "if only it had been available in a format i wanted at a price i liked and without any hooks or provisos" There will always be a large segment for whom free > not free.

The reason therefore for enforcement is to counterbalance against this principle. When people say "give them a legitimate alternative and they will use it" what it means is " give them something where the cost of use (in money/effort) is less than than their fear of suit." Which is why i find it funny when the same people who say "make it available!" howl like banshees at enforcement. The companies will never really be able to make it "available" enough to those people. All they can do is make it available such that their fear of enforcement pushes them to legitimate uses.

ignatius_crumbcake: fracto73: The company would have to spend a non-trivial amount of money to put the show online. Then people would pirate them because of the quality. If they increased quality then people would pirate because of the commercials. There is no way they can win in this situation.

That's not true. The show is already online, but the number of available episodes is restricted. It really is easier to go right to a network website and click 'play' and deal with a few commercials than it is to find a torrent, wait for it to download, store it somewhere, and risk a virus. Nobody pirates media because they enjoy it; they pirate media because it's the easiest option. If content producers made an easy option themselves, then nobody would pirate anything.

Also, making a show like that easily available will lead to more fans for upcoming seasons. I've never watched the show when it airs during its regular timeslot before, but I'll be watching in the fall when the new season starts.

The point you still don't understand (or are ignoring) is that the networks don't own any of that content. They rent it from the production companies. Usually they'll pay a little to be able to stream the last few episodes, but the production companies have the back end rights and they'd rather sell the show into syndication or get people to buy the DVDs. For The Big Bang Theory, TBS has paid a crapload of money to have exclusive syndication rights, which is why it's not available on Netflix.

vrax: Teiritzamna: Thus, if federal circuit courts casually call infringement stealing and theft, i feel its good enough for me.

The courts have and continue to use these commonly understood terms interchangeably to publicly conflate what are two separate issues. This is something that the **AAs have been pushing for years. They want people to equate the concepts of physical deprivation and intellectual property rights infringement. It's a disingenuous practice.

note what i said before that. There is no legally operative term Theft in a civil context. Its a casual term. It can mean both "the depriving of use" (conversion) or its converse - the "non-rightful gaining of a benefit without payment" (infringement). This is not a semantic fight where one term has a monopoly on meaning and the other is a base attempt to change that meaning. Infringement has been called "theft" and "stealing" casually since the Statute of Anne.

ignatius_crumbcake: Teiritzamna: Most people martial the ol' "they are dinosaurs" argument as a justification for why they feel ok doing something wrong.

Justification is irrelevant. People are doing it. People will continue to do it. Anyone who was a teenager in the Napster era or later is going to continue to get media for free. It's just the way it is now, and the entertainment companies can either adapt or die. The artists will be fine because there will always be a demand for new media. The Oatmeal makes $500,000 a year and his content is 100% free.

And how, exactly, is that going to help a show like Game of Thrones that costs $70 million per year to produce?

ignatius_crumbcake: fracto73: The company would have to spend a non-trivial amount of money to put the show online. Then people would pirate them because of the quality. If they increased quality then people would pirate because of the commercials. There is no way they can win in this situation.

That's not true. The show is already online, but the number of available episodes is restricted. It really is easier to go right to a network website and click 'play' and deal with a few commercials than it is to find a torrent, wait for it to download, store it somewhere, and risk a virus. Nobody pirates media because they enjoy it; they pirate media because it's the easiest option. If content producers made an easy option themselves, then nobody would pirate anything.

Also, downloading once is easier on the bandwidth than constant streaming.

Sticky Hands: Naptowner: Burr: A few are, admittedly, from a stint in the 5th grade with the file-sharing program Kazaa.

Damn...Now I feel old

In the 5th grade (computer related) I was playing X-Wing and passing around Doom shareware.....

YOU feel old?? In 5th grade I was hoping to get a chance to see one of those newfangled Apple IIs or TRS-80s that I'd heard about. Using one, much less owning it, was just a fantasy.

Yeah, he feels old. You ARE old.

Well, phooey. Maybe I shouldn't mention my still-functioning Commodore 64 in the closet.

T.M.S.: Digital Communist: T.M.S.: Digital Communist: T.M.S.: Skyred: I know this is a crappy argument, but when I pirate something I always know I wasn't going to buy it anyway. If it wasn't for pirating I wouldn't have a music library at all, or only have a fraction of the video games I have now.
And I know I wouldn't buy it because I can't. I'm poor as hell and in college to top it off. Once I solve my financial situation I will probably start buying this stuff.

...

If no one gets hurt by piracy why do you bother paying for your video games?

As I explained, I pay for my games to support the makers so they'll make more. I never said that no one gets hurt by piracy. I said I don't care if (and in fact I encourage) the RIAA getting hurt by piracy.

The sooner the RIAA are gone the better for everyone. The RIAA and their ilk are corporate interests that contribute absolutely nothing to the music itself. In fact the RIAA actively seeks to throttle distribution of the music.

Music and artists will thrive even more without their corporate overlords. I for one would love to start having radio stations that played cool music again.

MeSoHomely: DirkValentine: What you said was that 99.9999% of new music is crap. That sounds like someone who isn't' listening to all the music that is out there right now. That's all I'm sayin', musical tastes aside.

I listen to everything from Led Zeppelin to Washed Out but i like to think that all the stuff I listen to is pretty great and rarely comes in line with mainstream consumerism/FM radio. Maybe they do play good stuff on FM, but not from what I remember 10+ years ago.

Lately, of course, some advertisers have been pulling out some great bands that were under the radar a ...

And I still do stand by that opinion. Maybe your tastes find fulfillment more places than mine. Maybe I just haven't found everything that I'm looking for. Either way, I find very little of what is released these days to be something that I want to own or even listen to.

To each his own, I guess...

Let me ask you then (for someone with such a strong opinion) name 3 albums that were put out in the last 3 years that were awesome.

Can you? And yes, tastes differ, I get that. But to 99.9999% or whatever sucks just isn't true and believe me, I listen to a shiat load of music and yeah, there is some serious trash, but there is some serious awesome, too.

rugman11: ignatius_crumbcake: Teiritzamna: Most people martial the ol' "they are dinosaurs" argument as a justification for why they feel ok doing something wrong.

Justification is irrelevant. People are doing it. People will continue to do it. Anyone who was a teenager in the Napster era or later is going to continue to get media for free. It's just the way it is now, and the entertainment companies can either adapt or die. The artists will be fine because there will always be a demand for new media. The Oatmeal makes $500,000 a year and his content is 100% free.

And how, exactly, is that going to help a show like Game of Thrones that costs $70 million per year to produce?

Good point, shows like Game of Thrones are going to be one of the few real casualties of piracy. As for most movies and television, as soon as they started with the shameless product placement, they lost all my sympathy. And it's not like our culture would be hurt if Hollywood went away. They haven't produced anything with substance for decades.

/ pays for HBO because they deserve the patronage
// Avengers was pretty awesome

Let's say I'm a ready mix concrete provider and you call me up and ask me to deliver 6 yards for a chiller pad. Let's say I just blow you off and never show up. Meanwhile you have a foreman and two finishers on site sitting around like a bunch of goons waiting on a concrete truck that isn't coming. You still have to pay those guys for their idle time plus the time it takes them to do the work once you find a more reliable ready mix plant. I just cost you a chunk of your future profits. You lost real money because of me but I didn't steal from you. If one of my drivers did show up but went into your truck and took $80 out of your wallet you could have him arrested. I cost you hundreds of dollars or more but you have much less recourse in dealing with me than my driver.

The issue here is that when you pirate intellectual property you are not "stealing" in the legal sense. You are depriving someone of theoretical future revenue yes but it is separate from actual stealing. You may not like that and it may even irk you when people use it as a justification of piracy but that is reality and you must deal with it. Remember that not everyone who downloads would buy what they were downloading if they were unable to obtain it in any other way. It costs the industry real money but not nearly the same amount of money as if everyone who pirated stole all the CD's from stores instead. That's why the law views it as separate from "theft" or "stealing". Intellectual property theft is a unique crime that doesn't really have a good analogy. Even an analogy about concrete.

MeSoHomely: Sticky Hands: Naptowner: Burr: A few are, admittedly, from a stint in the 5th grade with the file-sharing program Kazaa.

Damn...Now I feel old

In the 5th grade (computer related) I was playing X-Wing and passing around Doom shareware.....

YOU feel old?? In 5th grade I was hoping to get a chance to see one of those newfangled Apple IIs or TRS-80s that I'd heard about. Using one, much less owning it, was just a fantasy.

Yeah, he feels old. You ARE old.

Well, phooey. Maybe I shouldn't mention my still-functioning Commodore 64 in the closet.

Did you ever play Basketball Sam & Ed?
Still have FOND memories of Pools of Radiance and Wasteland on my C64...

ignatius_crumbcake: Teiritzamna: Most people martial the ol' "they are dinosaurs" argument as a justification for why they feel ok doing something wrong.

Justification is irrelevant. People are doing it. People will continue to do it. Anyone who was a teenager in the Napster era or later is going to continue to get media for free. It's just the way it is now, and the entertainment companies can either adapt or die. The artists will be fine because there will always be a demand for new media. The Oatmeal makes $500,000 a year and his content is 100% free.

They do it because they make the illegal and immoral choice to do it. The business model is fine, its the customers who found a hole in the bank vault, take everything inside and then blame the bank for not having a better vault. In reality, if YOU and others you teach to do it were honest, then they could keep money on pallets in the open. Of course, they don't, because of dishonorable people.

Musicians ARE working on finding ways to secure their product... but we'd sure like to be spending more of our time making music than worrying about how to keep villains from ripping off our revenue. We're not trained for it.

m3th0dm4n: As a Canadian, I pay a levy on all recordable media and playback devices, which, according to the Copyright Act of Canada, allows 'individuals to make copies of sound recordings for their own private, non-commercial use.'

I have no problems sleeping at night after a hard day of "robbing artists". If your music sucks, I'll delete it from my hard drive and you get nothing. If it's good, I'll consider purchasing it and seeing a live show.

How magnanimous of you.

DirkValentine: MeSoHomely: DirkValentine: What you said was that 99.9999% of new music is crap. That sounds like someone who isn't' listening to all the music that is out there right now. That's all I'm sayin', musical tastes aside.

I listen to everything from Led Zeppelin to Washed Out but i like to think that all the stuff I listen to is pretty great and rarely comes in line with mainstream consumerism/FM radio. Maybe they do play good stuff on FM, but not from what I remember 10+ years ago.

Lately, of course, some advertisers have been pulling out some great bands that were under the radar a ...

And I still do stand by that opinion. Maybe your tastes find fulfillment more places than mine. Maybe I just haven't found everything that I'm looking for. Either way, I find very little of what is released these days to be something that I want to own or even listen to.

To each his own, I guess...

Let me ask you then (for someone with such a strong opinion) name 3 albums that were put out in the last 3 years that were awesome.

Can you? And yes, tastes differ, I get that. But to 99.9999% or whatever sucks just isn't true and believe me, I listen to a shiat load of music and yeah, there is some serious trash, but there is some serious awesome, too.

If I find 3, I'll let you know.

Torok: Let's say I'm a ready mix concrete provider and you call me up and ask me to deliver 6 yards for a chiller pad. Let's say I just blow you off and never show up. Meanwhile you have a foreman and two finishers on site sitting around like a bunch of goons waiting on a concrete truck that isn't coming. You still have to pay those guys for their idle time plus the time it takes them to do the work once you find a more reliable ready mix plant. I just cost you a chunk of your future profits. You lost real money because of me but I didn't steal from you. If one of my drivers did show up but went into your truck and took $80 out of your wallet you could have him arrested. I cost you hundreds of dollars or more but you have much less recourse in dealing with me than my driver.

The issue here is that when you pirate intellectual property you are not "stealing" in the legal sense. You are depriving someone of theoretical future revenue yes but it is separate from actual stealing. You may not like that and it may even irk you when people use it as a justification of piracy but that is reality and you must deal with it. Remember that not everyone who downloads would buy what they were downloading if they were unable to obtain it in any other way. It costs the industry real money but not nearly the same amount of money as if everyone who pirated stole all the CD's from stores instead. That's why the law views it as separate from "theft" or "stealing". Intellectual property theft is a unique crime that doesn't really have a good analogy. Even an analogy about concrete.

1) as noted above - the law most certainly does not view it as separate from "theft" or "stealing" as judges refer to it as theft and stealing all the time, and "theft" and "stealing" are not terms of legal significance. Once more you are thinking of conversion - an actual term of art.

2) you gave an instance that is not even a legally operative act beyond breach. You can get the person who blew you off to pay for the cost of getting someone else to come and deliver the concrete, but you wont get them to pay for the lost time. This is a theoretical tort of "lost profits" its not really a thing because as an economic tort it is too dangerous to enforce (long story). Thus no one would call this stealing.

3) however if we change the scenario such that i asked to to come and do work for me and i provided the materials but for some reason we did not have a valid contract and i repudiate after you did the work, you could say in a real sense that i had stolen labor from you - that i had been unjustly enriched. The trick about the term stealing is that it covers both sides of the transaction. In a tangible property matter: Victim = infringement of rights of use and exclusion; bad guy = unjustly enriched. In an intangible property matter: Victim = infringement of right of exclusion only; bad guy = unjustly enriched. In both we could say bad guy stole from victim, and law talking guys often do.

Teiritzamna: 1) as noted above - the law most certainly does not view it as separate from "theft" or "stealing" as judges refer to it as theft and stealing all the time, and "theft" and "stealing" are not terms of legal significance. Once more you are thinking of conversion - an actual term of art.

2) you gave an instance that is not even a legally operative act beyond breach. You can get the person who blew you off to pay for the cost of getting someone else to come and deliver the concrete, but you wont get them to pay for the lost time. This is a theoretical tort of "lost profits" its not really a thing because as an economic tort it is too dangerous to enforce (long story). Thus no one would call this stealing.

3) however if we change the scenario such that i asked to to come and do work for me and i provided the materials but for some reason we did not have a valid contract and i repudiate after you did the work, you could say in a real sense that i had stolen labor from you - that i had been unjustly enriched. The trick about the term stealing is that it covers both sides of the transaction. In a tangible property matter: Victim = infringement of rights of use and exclusion; bad guy = unjustly enriched. In an intangible property matter: Victim = infringement of right of exclusion only; bad guy = unjustly enriched. In both we could say bad guy stole from victim, and law talking guys often do.

I think you agree with more of my argument than you think but you still missed the point.

Torok: Teiritzamna:

I think you agree with more of my argument than you think but you still missed the point.

I'll bite, esplain?

VibroCount:


You know how I know you haven't read any of my other posts?

I play with more than one band. We do play original music as well, much of which I wrote. I played with bands who had top 20 and top 10 hits, and the cuts I am on are on albums currently available. I mentioned that we do pay licensing fees to cover venues who do not pay ASCAP, BMI and other licensing costs. And all of that is in this thread. Call me thief all you want; you are ignorant of reality.

Reading can be your ally.

Fair enough I hadn't caught every post of yours on this large-ish thread. It's great that you ensure the proper ASCAP fees are paid.

With that said, it still sounds like you're whining about piracy when it's the music industry which is screwing you out of so much money. You say you have your music legally available for purchase, yet you still don't see any revenue. That's not pirates stealing from you. That's the music industry stealing from you. You signed an incredibly one-sided contract with the devil. You can hardly blame the 3 college students who might accidentally download one of your songs from a friend/Kazaa/Bittorrent/$FOOSITE for your lack of income as a result.


Don't get me wrong, I agree that downloading (for free), music which the artists wants you to pay for is illegal and morally wrong. Notice I didn't say "free music" is wrong. The new reality is that artists who sign with a major label and then insist on being paid for every-single copy of every-single song are aiming for failure in the long-term.

First of all because the music labels/industry are NOT in it for the good of the artist no matter how much they may try to claim they are. They are in it for the profit to the shareholders and nothing more. They will take as much money from consumers as they possibly can, and at the same time will keep as much money from being sent to the artists as they possibly can.

Secondly, this type of musician is completely ignoring an important fact. A wider audience can only be a good thing for them. For a musician who REALLY wants strongly for their music to have an audience, there is no possible situation in which it's a negative to have more people hearing your music. The last 80+ years of radio was essentially based on giving away [streaming] music for free. So much so that the labels even [illegally] PAID to have their artists music given away for free. Now all of a sudden it's supposed to be a bad thing?

Now the big problem is that these artists and the recording industry as a whole have wasted SO much energy and time trying to quash file sharing, and trying to prevent their product from moving into the digital age, that they've turned all of their nightmares into self-fulfilling prophecy. At first, only a few tech-savvy people and kids were using Napster/Kazaa etc. The industry went ape-sh*t, and instead of recognizing a potential revenue stream, tried and failed to stop mp3's from being used/traded. What they should have done was realize, "Hey, people want this. Lets *sell* it to them!" By not making digital music available, they left very little choice for people who wanted to fill their Rio's and iPods but to go to Napster/Kazaa/Torrents. For years the only way to get a lot of music [esp more rare genres/tracks] was to get it illegally. So the music industry has accidentally trained an entire generation to expect their music to be free.

Now, yes, there will be people downloading songs illegally. But the vast majority of people are more than happy to pay $.99 per song [or $10/album] on iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, etc. By the end of Oct 2011, Apple alone had sold 16 BILLION songs. Does that sound like so many people are pirating that nobody is buying music? Doesn't seem like it to me.

So my hope is that artists such as yourself recognize that you can NEVER completely stop illegal music downloads. The only solution for you is to accept that, make your songs available legally, easily and reasonably priced, and most people will be happy to buy them. Make them available for download on iTunes. Negotiate contracts which allow you to actually get revenue from paid streaming of your songs on Rhapsody/Spotify etc instead of contracts in which you get screwed by a label.

There will still be a few people who download your music illegally, but you can still count them as having gotten free radio airplay. Hell, put a small selection of your songs online for free to begin with. Hopefully they will tell their family and friends about this great new band they heard, and maybe they'll choose to buy some of your music. If it's easily available legally, you'll be MUCH more likely to get paid for it. If the only way they can find it is to grab it off TPB, then you have nobody to blame but yourself.

Teiritzamna: Torok: Teiritzamna:

I think you agree with more of my argument than you think but you still missed the point.

I'll bite, esplain?

I'll bite you right back because you seem to be intentional conflating the issue. I'm talking about the term in a legal sense and you are talking about casual conversation. Take a look at some legal documents and definitions.

Torok: Let's say I'm a ready mix concrete provider and you call me up and ask me to deliver 6 yards for a chiller pad. Let's say I just blow you off and never show up. Meanwhile you have a foreman and two finishers on site sitting around like a bunch of goons waiting on a concrete truck that isn't coming. You still have to pay those guys for their idle time plus the time it takes them to do the work once you find a more reliable ready mix plant. I just cost you a chunk of your future profits. You lost real money because of me but I didn't steal from you. If one of my drivers did show up but went into your truck and took $80 out of your wallet you could have him arrested. I cost you hundreds of dollars or more but you have much less recourse in dealing with me than my driver.

The issue here is that when you pirate intellectual property you are not "stealing" in the legal sense. You are depriving someone of theoretical future revenue yes but it is separate from actual stealing. You may not like that and it may even irk you when people use it as a justification of piracy but that is reality and you must deal with it. Remember that not everyone who downloads would buy what they were downloading if they were unable to obtain it in any other way. It costs the industry real money but not nearly the same amount of money as if everyone who pirated stole all the CD's from stores instead. That's why the law views it as separate from "theft" or "stealing". Intellectual property theft is a unique crime that doesn't really have a good analogy. Even an analogy about concrete.

people who steal music don't even like the stuff. they just do it to get kewl. so they can get laid faster and faster. eventually it will be 16 year olds

The music industry made a LOT of money by shifting formats and forcing old formats out of the market. If you're old enough and very rich, you could have bought your favorite music 15 times - 8-Track, Vinyl (album and 45's), Cassette, Betamax, VHS, CD, CD-Video, Laserdisc, DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, AAC (old itunes), PlaysforSure, and MP3. Unfortunately for the MAFIAA, MP3/MP4 is good enough, portable, and sharable with no diminishing quality over time or per copy issues. There's no reason to go buy yet another format, ever. Rip your CDs/DVDs and buy any new songs (assuming you can find anything worth it) from iTunes.

"Musician" Lowery suggests that selling internet access is nothing but charging a fee for creating a gateway to copyright infringement and that PC ownership is exclusively for stealing from RIAA. I call bullshiat. The majority of internet access doesn't revolve around infringement and we certainly don't need draconian laws to extort more money from residential internet users. But this guy takes the cake as he's best known for covering (or as he would put it - stealing) someone else's song.

Torok: Teiritzamna: Torok: Teiritzamna:

I think you agree with more of my argument than you think but you still missed the point.

I'll bite, esplain?

I'll bite you right back because you seem to be intentional conflating the issue. I'm talking about the term in a legal sense and you are talking about casual conversation. Take a look at some legal documents and definitions.

No sir, i am saying that "steal" has no real legal sense in this discussion. It doesnt. It has only a casual sense. There is no tort of theft. There is the tort of conversion, which has the requirement of depriving someone of use. That is the legal term. Speaking of theft as if it had an iron clad legal meaning is like talking about "hooking-up" as if it had a single definition.

thetubameister: The business model is fine, its the customers who found a hole in the bank vault, take everything inside and then blame the bank for not having a better vault.

The business model has never been fine. That's like saying that the Pimp/Ho business model is fine.

thetubameister: m3th0dm4n: As a Canadian, I pay a levy on all recordable media and playback devices, which, according to the Copyright Act of Canada, allows 'individuals to make copies of sound recordings for their own private, non-commercial use.'

I have no problems sleeping at night after a hard day of "robbing artists". If your music sucks, I'll delete it from my hard drive and you get nothing. If it's good, I'll consider purchasing it and seeing a live show.

How magnanimous of you.

Cry to a politician about it?

thetubameister: fracto73: thetubameister: fracto73: thetubameister: hdhale: slumcat05: Since I'm pretty confident that artists would love for a new generation of fans to hear their music however they can, I'm sorry but I simply don't have a problem with it and neither should you.

Seriously?!? You think artists are some sort of altruists who just want you to have their product? Wow... Just... WOW! We're in it just for your joy, that's the argument?


No, that isn't the argument he is making.

Okay... what'd I miss?


He prefaced what you quoted with:
"For sake of argument...what if all 15 gigs was "out of print" and the record company didn't want to re-issue it"

The context for his argument was that there was no way for someone to pay money to the artist or record company in order to legally obtain that material.

So what? Therefore, you're entitled to it?

Yeah, this argument always got to me, too.

Wanting something does not give you a right to it.

The usual argument is "I want to make a free copy, and then endless copies for my friends, all of which are the exact same quality as the original, and never pay for any of it. After all, I'm helping the band by promoting their product" ---- to other people who also don't pay for it.

It is UP TO THE ARTIST (or at very least, the owner) to decide whether to give you something for free or not. YOU do not have the right to TAKE it (or COPY it) because you want to.

Teiritzamna: Torok: Teiritzamna: Torok: Teiritzamna:

I think you agree with more of my argument than you think but you still missed the point.

I'll bite, esplain?

I'll bite you right back because you seem to be intentional conflating the issue. I'm talking about the term in a legal sense and you are talking about casual conversation. Take a look at some legal documents and definitions.

No sir, i am saying that "steal" has no real legal sense in this discussion. It doesnt. It has only a casual sense. There is no tort of theft. There is the tort of conversion, which has the requirement of depriving someone of use. That is the legal term. Speaking of theft as if it had an iron clad legal meaning is like talking about "hooking-up" as if it had a single definition.


I completely agree. So why are you arguing with me?!?

It seems like it would be more productive to talk about this stuff in the legal sense though. Casual conversation can be fun but at the core of this issue is how the courts will deal with people who share files illegally. So far I see a lot of suing and civil action. I only see criminal cases where physical media or actual monies are taken.

Torok: Teiritzamna: Torok: Teiritzamna: Torok: Teiritzamna:

I think you agree with more of my argument than you think but you still missed the point.

I'll bite, esplain?

I'll bite you right back because you seem to be intentional conflating the issue. I'm talking about the term in a legal sense and you are talking about casual conversation. Take a look at some legal documents and definitions.

No sir, i am saying that "steal" has no real legal sense in this discussion. It doesnt. It has only a casual sense. There is no tort of theft. There is the tort of conversion, which has the requirement of depriving someone of use. That is the legal term. Speaking of theft as if it had an iron clad legal meaning is like talking about "hooking-up" as if it had a single definition.


I completely agree. So why are you arguing with me?!?

It seems like it would be more productive to talk about this stuff in the legal sense though. Casual conversation can be fun but at the core of this issue is how the courts will deal with people who share files illegally. So far I see a lot of suing and civil action. I only see criminal cases where physical media or actual monies are taken.

no prob. all i was saying is that saying infringement isn't "stealing" is silly. its like saying sex isnt "hooking up." To some people, the term means only "non-sex fooling around." To others it of course means "penetrative sex" too. neither is really right because as a term it has a broad penumbra of meanings. If we want to be exact we would say "penetrative sex" or "non-penetrative sexual contact."

If we wanted to be exact in a legal sense in this debate we would speak of "conversion" and "infringement." But dickering over the meaning of "steal" and "thief" are silly. There is no real right answer.

Also as to why these are all civil actions, that is because under the copyright act infringement is only a crime if one willfully infringes and then sells the products to others. 17 U.S.C. 506

Teiritzamna:
no prob. all i was saying is that saying infringement isn't "stealing" is silly. its like saying sex isnt "hooking up." To some people, the term means only "non-sex fooling around." To others it of course means "penetrative sex" too. neither is really right because as a term it has a broad penumbra of meanings. If we want to be exact we would say "penetrative sex" or "non-penetrative sexual contact."

If we wanted to be exact in a legal sense in this debate we would speak of "conversion" and "infringement." But dickering over the meaning of "steal" and "thief" are silly. There is no real right answer.

Also as to why these are all civil actions, that is because under the copyright act infringement is only a crime if one willfully infringes and then sells the products to others. 17 U.S.C. 50 ...


This is one of the things I dislike most about Fark. Way too many semantic arguments. You try and talk about the actual meat of it and everyone wants to talk about how words are used in casual conversation as if everyone doesn't know anyway. You are starting to get there though. Your point about illegally selling copyrighted works being a crime is correct. It's an important distinction but still misses the core of the issue that is general file sharing.

By the way. My concrete analogy was better than your sex analogy and that is just sad
you should feel bad

Torok: Teiritzamna:
no prob. all i was saying is that saying infringement isn't "stealing" is silly. its like saying sex isnt "hooking up." To some people, the term means only "non-sex fooling around." To others it of course means "penetrative sex" too. neither is really right because as a term it has a broad penumbra of meanings. If we want to be exact we would say "penetrative sex" or "non-penetrative sexual contact."

If we wanted to be exact in a legal sense in this debate we would speak of "conversion" and "infringement." But dickering over the meaning of "steal" and "thief" are silly. There is no real right answer.

Also as to why these are all civil actions, that is because under the copyright act infringement is only a crime if one willfully infringes and then sells the products to others. 17 U.S.C. 50 ...


This is one of the things I dislike most about Fark. Way too many semantic arguments. You try and talk about the actual meat of it and everyone wants to talk about how words are used in casual conversation as if everyone doesn't know anyway. You are starting to get there though. Your point about illegally selling copyrighted works being a crime is correct. It's an important distinction but still misses the core of the issue that is general file sharing.

By the way. My concrete analogy was better than your sex analogy and that is just sad
you should feel bad

ok chief - what is the meat here?

Just finished reading this thread on the way home from work. I think I need a nap. Oy.

Teiritzamna:


ok chief - what is the meat here?


Well compadre, I can think a a few things off the top of my head that I feel are worth discussion.

How should the courts deal with file sharers?
-What penalties are most appropriate?
-What are more efficient ways to move cases through the courts?
-What are ways to settle without excess litigation in the first place?

Can laws be adjusted to combat file sharing better?
-Should the DMCA be amended or repealed?
-What involvement can and should internet providers have in the issue?
-Should copyright holders and companies that represent them be regulated in what they can do to pursue file sharers?
-Are the current laws fair and reasonable?

There are more, of course, so feel free to make any additions you see fit.

When NPR member stations share their donor lists with the DNC, who's to complain?