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Originally Posted by linuxworks  at some point, I can see the music industry fighting to remove your right to keep 'persistent data' (plastic discs) and you'll really have to download and pay over and over again each listen. that does seem to be their goal.
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This.
The music industry, as far as I can see, wants to do away with the idea of music ownership - i.e. that you can buy a CD, and then under the established doctrine of this sort of thing you are free to do whatever you will with the CD - resell it, play it on whatever you want as many times as you want, etc. They want music to be used on a license basis rather than an ownership basis - i.e. you have to pay to use it, every time, and you are subject to license restrictions in terms of how and when you can use the music. It is never "your" music.
The problem I have with this is that the Internet has made large music labels irrelevant. There exists now a way for artists to reach out more directly to their audience. There is a need for record labels, of course, but the need for the large recording conglomerate is gone. Whatever you define that "need" as.
Large labels realize their obsolescence, which is why they are trying to secure for themselves a position as a middleman under the new emerging system of distribution of music. They want to stop direct communication between artist and audience. And the best way to do that is to tout intellectual property rights and wrap up their struggle for survival in an ethical shroud that really doesn't have much to do with the question at hand.
Yes, I do agree that illegal downloading is theft. However I don't have any reverence for the law when it is used in an unethical way by an unethical group, even when the law itself is ethical. It is better to steal, and hurt the industry this way, then it is to go along with its plans or to simply complain about it but not do anything at all.
Buying used CDs is good too - anything really, as long as you vote with your dollar and hit them where it hurts. But you cannot, in this unique case, take the moral high ground on the count of "theft" since it
is morally applicable in this case to steal. IMO, of course.
The RIAA
must die.
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Originally Posted by Uncle Erik Once a CD sells, the buyer is free to resell. It is entirely legal to buy the disc from that buyer. Once you purchase it, it's yours. It doesn't matter if you buy it new or not, it's completely legal, ethical and moral to do so. Further, the artist, et al. benefit the first time something sells. The used market is no secret; they go in knowing that their discs will be re-sold and the industry has never made a stink over it.
Downloading music you don't own is theft. It's really not that difficult of an issue. Unless you're doing it and desperately trying to find an excuse to do it, of course. It keeps artists, et al. from being paid for that first use.
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I agree with this wholeheartedly. But, the record label rips off the artist as much as it rips off the customer. So when you are stealing from a major label, you aren't really hurting the artist as much as the label, which
needs to be hurt as I've already said. After all, the use of the CD that you described is what the label wants to destroy. They want the concept of licensing music to work its way into the public consciousness and it will, by complacency. People will bitch and moan but unless something is
done that's all they'll do, bitch and moan, while a new generation of music consumers gets used to music licensing because they don't know anything else.
Also - and I really do think this point makes the whole business somewhat irrelevant - the person that illegally downloads music is
not the label's potential customer. They don't have the money to buy music, and if their ability to download were to suddenly be removed, by litigation or DRM or whatever, they would not suddenly start buying more music with the money that they don't have. The people that
can afford the music actually tend to go ahead and buy the music. So the labels' financial woes are not because of illegal downloading alone. Rather - and no, I don't have the direct evidence of this on hand and I'm not going to spend the hours to look it up for you - illegal downloading tends to spread the awareness of the artist to people that have the money to pay for the music, and in the end it actually makes
more money for the label and the artist.
The labels are dying because there is no need for them anymore. They are obsolete. But in their obsolescence they're trying to adopt a virulent business model and hurt the consumer. And this is why they must be stopped.
Oh, and with Hillary on the team, it's no wonder the current administration is an RIAA sellout.
but ethically you are still 'stealing' the music in the eyes of big music since their long-term stretch goal is to make consumers pay on a per-listen basis.
