Help please? I'm perplexed :) - Page 2

Quote:

Originally Posted by rroseperry 

Depending on where you live, you should try used CD/record stores. They can have pretty comprehensive collections of music and because so many people do what wavoman is arguing (rightly) against, you can pick up new music for less than the original cost. For example, last week I picked up St. Vincent's Strange Mercy, that just came out in September for $9.00.
Also you're supporting small, usually local businesses, which is always a good thing.

I've always wondered, does the artist benefit at all when you buy a used CD?

Now I'm strongly in favor of respecting copyright and not pirating music (or images, or video, etc.), but pirating music is IN NO WAY the same as theft of a physical object.  It is infringement of copyright.  It is not stolen property.  It is not theft.  No physical object has been taken from its owner as in the act of theft.  Instead, with copyright infringement, an unauthorized copy of a work has been made.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wavoman 

Since you can use WAV as your lossless files for Windows Media Player, why not just keep the original WAV.  I agree with Head Injury of course that I only need to keep my FLAC -8's, I said that myself, but I keep the WAVs because I am paranoid.  What if the FLAC-eating virus hits, or someone sues FLAC for patent viloation (this happened with .GIF images, so don't laugh).  I have spent hundreds of hours making perfect rips with EAC+AccurateRip, and my WAV backup protects that.  I can always automate getting the metadata again and converting to FLAC -8, but I can never recover if the original rips vanish.  As I have said (now 3 times) I could archive the FLAC -8's, but I made the WAVs with EAC so I just keep them on the external 3 TB drive.  No biggie.  Of couse I only use the FLACs, the ALACS, and the MP3's.

 

If you do not think losselss is great for portables, you have not heard my Vinnie-built iMod with the 5.5-Gen Wolfson DAC and iCube amp, loaded with 48000 lossless ALACs created by decimating 96000 Hi Res files ripped from DVD-A's.  Listening thru vintage button RS-1's, with cups that swivel flat so that the whole rig really is portable and easily arrives with me at my hotel room (the phones are open, so they won't work on a plane, but I mostly drive on biz trips), the SQ rivals (certainly does not equal, but gets close) to both my full Orpheus, and my O2 Mk 1's dirven by a BHSE (two rigs considered among the finest in the world -- and I have done many quick-switch level-matched tests at my home to confirm this).  Switch to MP3's, even 320's, and this no longer holds.  I have Doors, Metallica, Fleetwood Mac etc. tracks that will make you jaw drop -- this has happened at meet after meet.

 

With lesser portable rigs and noisy conditions, of course MP3 is the way to go.  But I spend enough "restless nights in one-night cheap hotels and sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells" to want the finest possible SQ on the road.

There's no reason to keep wav backups:

- Patent violations issues: unlikely to happen, the code was checked multiple times. And IF that happened, none of your software is suddenly going to stop working, thus, you xould still reconvert to Wav, APE, ALAC, WMA Lossless if that unlikely paternt violation issue occurred.

- Flac Eating Virus: that's pure paranoia, and the wav eating virus presents the same threat

- Keeping a backup: Keeping a backup with little meta data instead of full meta data is of dubious utility, you would still have to re-tag the files if you lost the FLAC files. Keeping two set of FLAC files is much more sensible, Or you could have one set in FLAC and the other in ALAC.

- Wav files are just as easily corrupted as FLAC, the difference is that FLAC files include a control code that allows to to instantly check if the file was corrupted. Unless you play the was file (and that's not even a full proof solution), you won't know if a wav file was corrupted during a read/write operation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlackbeardBen 

Now I'm strongly in favor of respecting copyright and not pirating music (or images, or video, etc.), but pirating music is IN NO WAY the same as theft of a physical object.  It is infringement of copyright.  It is not stolen property.  It is not theft.  No physical object has been taken from its owner as in the act of theft.  Instead, with copyright infringement, an unauthorized copy of a work has been made.

You are incorrect, at least in the U.S.  The FBI web site makes this perfectly clear -- Intellectual Property Theft is theft, and that includes various types of copyright violations.  Outside the U.S. I can't say, but here in the U.S. if you infringe copyright by taking a whole song for yourself and playing it over and over like you paid for it, you are a thief.  Obviosuly there are lesser copyright violations, but we are talkng here about taking whole songs like you paid for them.  Here is the site and cite:

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/cyber/ipr/ipr

Intellectual Property Theft

 
It’s an age-old crime: stealing.

But it’s not about picking a pocket or holding up a bank. It's robbing people of their ideas, inventions, and creative expressions—what’s called intellectual property—everything from trade secrets and proprietary products and parts to movies and music and software

Of course I back up the FLACs -- I said so.  But I will also back up the WAVs since I made them anyway and the storage is trivial.  All your points are correct, I cannot argue with them.  But the WAVs are valuable, they are perfect copies of my CDs with no transformations.  It is easy to automate making the FLACs and adding metadata.  I refuse to give 0 probability to the chance that there might be a FLAC flaw discovered down the road -- this has happened in the history of computers over and over (Bentley's binary search code comes to mind) no matter how many times routines have been checked.

You do what you want.  I'm keeping my FLACs.  Wasteful, sure.  Dubious?  Perhaps.  But I simply don't care.  And just to have some fun here, I do love intellectual combat, you say that the WAV-eating virus is the same threat as the FLAC-eater?   Exactly!  Make the odds of the existence of either even.  Now I have twice the chance to survive as you do!

And btw your patent analysis is wrong for the U.S.  Suppose you were a large commercial company, well-known, with 12.7 Million FLAC files representing every news broadcast recording in every major market for decades.  You had them in WAVs, but your head engineer invoked the khoas974 lemma and destroyed the WAVs, keeping only the FLACs.  Then it turns out that FLACs violate a U.S. Patent -- again, this type of thing has happened many times.  Lawyers for the patent holder tell you that ANY use of a FLAC file requires a $1 fee per file, including converting the FLAC back to WAV.  Do you have $12.7 Million handy?

Far-fetched?  Yep.  But theoretically possible. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by khaos974 

There's no reason to keep wav backups:

- Patent violations issues: unlikely to happen, the code was checked multiple times. And IF that happened, none of your software is suddenly going to stop working, thus, you xould still reconvert to Wav, APE, ALAC, WMA Lossless if that unlikely paternt violation issue occurred.

- Flac Eating Virus: that's pure paranoia, and the wav eating virus presents the same threat

- Keeping a backup: Keeping a backup with little meta data instead of full meta data is of dubious utility, you would still have to re-tag the files if you lost the FLAC files. Keeping two set of FLAC files is much more sensible, Or you could have one set in FLAC and the other in ALAC.

- Wav files are just as easily corrupted as FLAC, the difference is that FLAC files include a control code that allows to to instantly check if the file was corrupted. Unless you play the was file (and that's not even a full proof solution), you won't know if a wav file was corrupted during a read/write operation.

 

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by wavoman 

 

You are incorrect, at least in the U.S.  The FBI web site makes this perfectly clear -- Intellectual Property Theft is theft, and that includes various types of copyright violations.  Outside the U.S. I can't say, but here in the U.S. if you infringe copyright by taking a whole song for yourself and playing it over and over like you paid for it, you are a thief.  Obviosuly there are lesser copyright violations, but we are talkng here about taking whole songs like you paid for them.  Here is the site and cite:

 

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/cyber/ipr/ipr

 

Intellectual Property Theft

 
It’s an age-old crime: stealing.

 

But it’s not about picking a pocket or holding up a bank. It's robbing people of their ideas, inventions, and creative expressions—what’s called intellectual property—everything from trade secrets and proprietary products and parts to movies and music and software

No, in the legal sense of the word, derived from common law, copyright violation is decidedly not theft.

Colloquially you are right, it is called theft - which obviously leads to a whole lot of confusion and debate.  It would seem that the FBI has capitalized on that colloquial definition - remember, they are a part of the executive branch that only enforce the law, not part of the legislative branch that creates the law nor the judicial branch that interprets it.

The U.S. Government Copyright site (the U.S. Copyright Office being a sub-unit of the Library of Congress, a congressional (not executive) agency) explains copyright infringement, including showing the copyright law itself.  Note the complete absence of even the word "theft" in both their publication on infringement (excerpt below) and the law itself (although the word "theft" appears in the endnotes of the bill as documents with the word in their title are referred to).   It is copyright infringement, legally, - not theft.  This is why the charges brought against software and music piraters are for copyright infringement, not theft.

Yes, the whole argument is semantics - but that is exactly what law is.  I also have to note at this point that I am of course in this post arguing solely about infringement of copyright, not other, similar crimes such as patent infringement, trademark infringement, or unlawfully divulging trade secrets - although precursory research on at least patent infringement (perhaps the second-most-common infringement of intellectual property) pretty much turns up exactly the same wording.  From the U.S. Patent Law:

Again, one who infringes on intellectual property is not a thief - they are an infringer.

Our company employs an intellectual property attorney.  He graduated Yale Law School and is a member of the New York Bar.  I tracked him down.  Here is his answer -- he agrees with both of us, as only a lawyer could.  In the end, I am staying with: it is theft.

I would consider copyright infringement to be intellectual property theft.

Copyright infringement can be a crime. There are statutory penalties as well as criminal penalties that can attach (in addition to actual damages and the ability to enjoin the infringement. 

Some, read most, people call it theft but one could argue that theft is the wrong characterization if you want to make the physical versus intangible property distinction. It

is stolen property, not necessarily physical property but this seems to me to be a distinction without any power.

 Quote:

Originally Posted by BlackbeardBen 

No, in the legal sense of the word, derived from common law, copyright violation is decidedly not theft.

 

...

So, if the original owner did not keep any digital copies, everything is AOK.  The artist didn't benefit, but nothing bad happened.

The problem is, you can't know.

Here is my moral compromise.  I buy used CDs.  If I love the music, I buy a different CD by that artist new off Ammy.  If the love is only so-so, I buy a digital track or two.  If I don't like it at all, I sell it back to the used CD store which gives the artist a chance that the CD will fall in the hands of someone who will become a fan.  But when I sell any CD to the store, I destory ALL digital copies I made.  If I love a CD, I keep the disk and liner/booklet, and re-cycle the jewel case (unless it is one of the bunch where I keep the whole thing, but I am now out of space so that collection is fixed in number).  This becomes less and less of a problem as I buy only digital downloads in the first place.  When a friend gives me a rip, I either erase it or buy the CD (and then usually re-rip).

If we all don't start doing this, musicians will not be able to make a living, and they will become day traders or copyright lawyers instead, and life will be unbearable.  There is no question that listening to music every night has allowed me to avoid drugs/alcohol/depression/sex addition/porn/suicide/mindless TV/whatever (but unfortunately not overeating ... heck 6 out of 7 ain't bad, to almost quote Meat Loaf) and why would we not want to give something back to these wonderful people?

Quote:

Originally Posted by deadlylover 

 

I've always wondered, does the artist benefit at all when you buy a used CD?

Quote:

Originally Posted by wavoman 

So, if the original owner did not keep any digital copies, everything is AOK.  The artist didn't benefit, but nothing bad happened.

Then it's kind of the same thing as theft/piracy, as the artist wasn't paid and yet you are enjoying their music.

I'm with you on supporting the musicians. I go to great lengths to support the artists I like, even if it means having to pay $40 per CD that's only supposed to cost $10. Ah well, gotta love that warm and fuzzy feeling.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wavoman 

Of course I back up the FLACs -- I said so.  But I will also back up the WAVs since I made them anyway and the storage is trivial.  All your points are correct, I cannot argue with them.  But the WAVs are valuable, they are perfect copies of my CDs with no transformations.  It is easy to automate making the FLACs and adding metadata.  I refuse to give 0 probability to the chance that there might be a FLAC flaw discovered down the road -- this has happened in the history of computers over and over (Bentley's binary search code comes to mind) no matter how many times routines have been checked.

 

You do what you want.  I'm keeping my FLACs.  Wasteful, sure.  Dubious?  Perhaps.  But I simply don't care.  And just to have some fun here, I do love intellectual combat, you say that the WAV-eating virus is the same threat as the FLAC-eater?   Exactly!  Make the odds of the existence of either even.  Now I have twice the chance to survive as you do!

 

And btw your patent analysis is wrong for the U.S.  Suppose you were a large commercial company, well-known, with 12.7 Million FLAC files representing every news broadcast recording in every major market for decades.  You had them in WAVs, but your head engineer invoked the khoas974 lemma and destroyed the WAVs, keeping only the FLACs.  Then it turns out that FLACs violate a U.S. Patent -- again, this type of thing has happened many times.  Lawyers for the patent holder tell you that ANY use of a FLAC file requires a $1 fee per file, including converting the FLAC back to WAV.  Do you have $12.7 Million handy?

 

Far-fetched?  Yep.  But theoretically possible. 

 

Automated metadata is a joke, especially when you need to tag classical music, my metadata (tagged by hand) often includes the soloists, the venue, the year, of that specific performance, the version (if the partition exists in several versions), multiple catalog numbers... Automated tags leave a mess with the whole thing a mess. The 255 file path limit in windows doesn't allow you to store anything in the filename either. Jazz disc have the exact some issue with automatic tagging. Loosing the metadata would represent a considerable waste of time.

The odds of a Wav eating Virus attacking your computer is probably lower than the odds of a fire burning your data, or a thief breaking into your house and stealing your hard drives, or hard drive damage (the latter being the most likely by several magnitudes IMHO). In my opinion, proofing against those kinds of threats takes priority over keeping a wav copy.

But you are not a large commercial company, merely a private person saving archiving your data. No one is going to know you are using FLAC, nothing prevents you from reconverting that those Flac files to another format if this ever happens.

Hey Perplexed -- no trolling going on here.  We're just doing the forum thing.  Feel free to put me on ignore.

khoas974 -- all your points are correct from a pactical standpoint.  You are taking me seriously, which is a big mistake -- I'm just pointing out all the theoretical flaws in your logic (lots of them), just to twist you up a bit ... and you take yourself so seriously too ... but indeed you have made a ton of logical mistakes ... however everything you say about what to do in practice is correct of course ... not the argument I'm making ... you totally miss the point here ... but I give up and will just put you on ignore.  You think I'm serious about  a "flac-eating virus" ???   Of course it COULD happen .. uh oh, here we go again ... no no no .

deadlylover -- now this is important.  When you buy a used CD and the original owner kept copies, YOU are not the one depriving the artist of money.  The original owner is the criminal.  The purchase price of the original CD, and the license it is sold under, includes the right to stop using it, destroy all copies, and sell it to someone else.  This is all fine, and the artist has been compensated perfectly -- the re-sale possibility is priced in to the original copy.  But as the second owner you are in moral hazard if you think it likely that the original owner did not destroy his copies.  What one does when in moral hazard is up to the individual.  You have done no crime, but still.  My answer is to buy more CDs from the artist if you like what you hear.  I refuse to accept your lumping me in with the real pirates.  Think about it.  I have, deeply. 

Over and out ... I've got music to listen to, and CDs to buy.