[eyeresist]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ralphp@optonline /img/forum/go_quote.gif Chris, I really don't know your political leaning but from the tone of your posts I would venture a guess that you fall somewhat to the right of center and if not well I've been wrong before and I'll be wrong again. Here's another good one for you since you seem to like to defend the industry side of this issue.

I'm guessing Hempcamp is like me, i.e. fairly leftish, except he thinks musicians should be able to make money by selling their work. Self-styled libertarians put up a smokescreen about how evil the big corps are, and how any musician who complains is just some fun-killing richy, but they obscure the fact that more and more young people are now not paying for their music. They don't "listen now, buy later"; they just don't buy. This reduces the musicians' income, and I'm thinking here not of the obvious super-rich musicians, but the much greater number of artists who are just getting by. The smaller their income, the less time they can devote to making music. Arguing this point does not make me a tool of the Man.

 

[hempcamp]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ralphp@optonline /img/forum/go_quote.gif I really don't know your political leaning but from the tone of your posts I would venture a guess that you fall somewhat to the right of center and if not well I've been wrong before and I'll be wrong again.

Heh. If you had been around here several years ago when we had ugly political debate forums on head-fi I think you'd know differently. I'm definitely not right of anywhere

Quote:

Originally Posted by redshifter /img/forum/go_quote.gif stealing /= copyright infringement while you are on your soapbox please get your terms correct.

While I am on my soapbox, I can call it whatever I like

It's rhetorical. So long as people refer to purchased music as something they "own" I will refer to taking that product from someone else as "stealing." Consider it "fair use" of the English language.

Ease off, folks. I'm a Lawrence Lessig fan, I promise, I read all his books. I sharpened my computing teeth on Linux (Slackware 3.0 circa 1995) and OSS. I'd much rather that there not be DRM. I won't even invest in SACD because I can't make an electronic copy for my own personal use.

My point is: life sucks sometimes, but you have to grow up and follow the rules, and realize why things happen the way they do. The recording industry isn't evil just because they are seeking higher profits. They may be stupid and bothersome and infuriating but they aren't evil -- they are doing what I would hope any of their shareholders would want them to do, namely protect their profits.

Millions of people are infringing upon the copyright held by the labels (see, doesn't it just sound less wordy to say "stealing"?) -- whether or not that actually affects their profits as opposed to trying to sell crap (and I agree, most of it is crap) isn't the issue. The issue is that they are applying DRM to try to stop the infringement, they can legally do it, it is in their perceived best interest to do it, so they are gonna do it. The end.

--Chris

 

[redshifter]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hempcamp /img/forum/go_quote.gif Heh. If you had been around here several years ago when we had ugly political debate forums on head-fi I think you'd know differently. I'm definitely not right of anywhere While I am on my soapbox, I can call it whatever I like It's rhetorical. So long as people refer to purchased music as something they "own" I will refer to taking that product from someone else as "stealing." Consider it "fair use" of the English language. Ease off, folks. I'm a Lawrence Lessig fan, I promise, I read all his books. I sharpened my computing teeth on Linux (Slackware 3.0 circa 1995) and OSS. I'd much rather that there not be DRM. I won't even invest in SACD because I can't make an electronic copy for my own personal use. My point is: life sucks sometimes, but you have to grow up and follow the rules, and realize why things happen the way they do. The recording industry isn't evil just because they are seeking higher profits. They may be stupid and bothersome and infuriating but they aren't evil -- they are doing what I would hope any of their shareholders would want them to do, namely protect their profits. Millions of people are infringing upon the copyright held by the labels (see, doesn't it just sound less wordy to say "stealing"?) -- whether or not that actually affects their profits as opposed to trying to sell crap (and I agree, most of it is crap) isn't the issue. The issue is that they are applying DRM to try to stop the infringement, they can legally do it, it is in their perceived best interest to do it, so they are gonna do it. The end. --Chris

fair enough, i suppose you can call it whatever you like. but you brought up a lot of legal issues, and noted someone else's use of rhetoric to support their position. if you want credibility in your argument stick to specifics and don't criticize something you yourself did.

- taking a cd from a record store and not paying for it is stealing.
- duplicating a recording without permission, and not under fair use (such as a music review) is copyright infringement.

the use of the term "stealing" is false and pure propaganda.

 

[ralphp@optonline]

Chris and eyeresist,

The points you are making are valid ones in the abstract, however, here in the real world the tactics being used by the music industry against the consumer ultimately are not working in the best interest in either party. I own well over 2000 LPs and 2500 CDs, all store bought plus lots of other music obtained in a manner best not discussed on a public forum, does that make me a criminal?

I have never once distributed any music through any file sharing network nor will I ever. I firmly support the use of the internet for the distribution of music via web site such as www.archive.org and I never steal music from any artist whose music is available on that site. They make some of their music available for free and I pay them back by purchasing their music and supporting them by going to see them perform.

It's a brave new world, someone just needs to tell the bozos at the major record labels how it works.

 

[Digitalbath3737]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hempcamp /img/forum/go_quote.gif My point is: life sucks sometimes, but you have to grow up and follow the rules, and realize why things happen the way they do. The recording industry isn't evil just because they are seeking higher profits. They may be stupid and bothersome and infuriating but they aren't evil -- they are doing what I would hope any of their shareholders would want them to do, namely protect their profits. --Chris

I agree with that. There isn't a need to copy infringed, steal or whatever you want to call it. There are plenty of alteernatives. Like buying used. I don't agree with people actually validated the RIAAs claims that everyone is stealing.

 

[Aman]

A couple of months ago, I officially formed a record label which will be soon recognized by CDDB, the RIAA, and other necessary music organizations. I will tell you this much: the RIAA is a complete bitch. The amount of restrictions they place upon your executive output/practices (and, at times, even your artistic practices!

) is absurd, but it's really the only way my firm will be able to recognize any official American music statistics, charts, information, databases, etc.

I agree with the majority here that say that the music industry is killing music, and not the listeners. Peer-to-peer file sharing, as much as I have against it, is allowing music fans to have much more open minds to their musical tastes, and are discovering underground/indie acts at such high intervals that the "indie" musicians have been labeled as an entire genre as a result. The proof in this fact is that small music venues (the kind who play host to classical recitals, jazz, world music, the blues, folk, bluegrass, underground hip-hop, and indie rock) have largely increased in revenues. The business is hot today, and it's because people really value live performances by these artists. I can only attribute this to the internet's enhanced accessibility factor to music.

 

[m_memmory]

I'll just chip in to this argument with my story about music.

When I was younger I didn't have much cash at all - so I would sit there on a Sunday night as the top 40 singles were played on the radio and tape the songs that I liked from the radio and listen to the tapes. Me and my friends would lend each other CDs that we had and copy them to tapes as well. Now I had a very large collection of tapes of music and 80%+ of it was copied from other peoples CDs. Most of my friends at school were the same ... and yet there was no big outcry about people copying music and the music industry was still doing pretty well.

The artists in the charts seemed to be aimed mainly at people in their mid 20s to 30s - ie people with large disposable incomes. My brother was in this group and he never copied any music - he instead amassed a huge collection of CDs.

Fast forward a few years and I was at uni/college. Again I was skint and so this time I was downloading MP3 files and copying them onto CDs to be played by CD players (yeah I know - awful sound but I didn't know better) and through this I gained an extra 30+ albums over what I had originally got. Now of all my friends I knew at uni I was the only person doing this but I'm sure that around the campus there were many more doing the same thing.

By this time however the music industry now seemed to be aiming themselves at people in their late teens to early 20s (which was my age group) and therefore to people that didn't have as much money to spend and people started complaining that the money spent on music was going down.

Now if I was to take a look at my music collection:

All the blank tapes that I recorded have been thrown out, I don't want tapes as I don't listen to them. Of all those albums that I copied there are probably about 50-60% of them I now own on CD because I listened to them and liked them so I brought them. The rest I only got because they were free - I didn't like them much and hardly ever listened to them.

Of all the CDs that I copied or downloaded and burnt I realised that there were only 2 that were that good I would've brought them if I threw the whole lot out. I grabbed a whole load of albums and brought ones that I really liked and chucked the copy. After a couple of years only 2 CDs left that I actually wanted. So I brought those 2 and chucked all the copies. Of all those copies I made there were only about 30-40% of them that I liked, the rest I only got because they were easy to get.

Now I look at the music industry and it seems that most of the chart music is aimed at teenagers .... now these people have hardly any disposable income.

Now I don't think that pirating and ripping off the music is good or right - I did it because I didn't have the cash to buy it all and it was easily accessible... but there will always be ways to do it as there always has been. My parents copied tapes off of vinyl records and my dad used to pass vinyl records around his work and copy tapes off of each other.

I think copying music has always happened and will always happen - but the music industry has always survived. What I believe will keep it going is when there are artists and bands that people really want to listen to and hear and are willing to go out and buy the music. But to make the most sales you need to market to the people who have the money and I don't believe that a lot of the music in the charts is.

Now I could be wrong because, due to the music that was being put into the charts, I stopped listening to radio stations altogether about 5 years ago. I now listen to my CD collection and go back and discover old bands that sound similar. I find new music by recommendations from friends who have similar music tastes.

With all the copying that is going ahead what I wonder is how much "lost sales" are actually there? I mean there are albums that I wouldn't buy for £5 let alone for the £12+ that they are charged for in most places yet I might download it for free ... that's not a lost sale though because if I couldn't get it free I just wouldn't get it at all.

/End rant.

 

[rextrade]

Good rant M_Memory. Bottom line for me is that I used to download a lot of music from the old Napster and and Limewire, and, as a result, I ended up buying a lot more CDs than I would have otherwise bought. The downloads may have been illegal, but the end result is that the recording industry made more money off of me.

Also, there is nothing illegal about copying a CD from a friend (or there is at least a very strong argument that it is not illegal) as long as you don't sell it or pay money to your friend, so we can all stop feeling guilty about occassionally copying a CD. There is a tax/royalty on blank tapes and CDs that goes to the recording industry to account for people doing this.

 

[Febs]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rextrade /img/forum/go_quote.gif Also, there is nothing illegal about copying a CD from a friend (or there is at least a very strong argument that it is not illegal) as long as you don't sell it or pay money to your friend, so we can all stop feeling guilty about occassionally copying a CD.

That is absolutely wrong. Section 106 of the United States Copyright Act provides that "the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: ... (1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords ...."

There is no "making a copy for a friend" exception. Nor is there an "it's OK because I didn't sell the copy" exception.

 

[Gamemako]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Febs /img/forum/go_quote.gif That is absolutely wrong. Section 106 of the United States Copyright Act provides that "the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: ... (1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords ...." There is no "making a copy for a friend" exception. Nor is there an "it's OK because I didn't sell the copy" exception.

By that definition, backups and MP3s are illegal as well.

 

[Febs]

That would be true, except that courts have found that creating MP3s for a portable device is a form of non-commercial personal use that falls within the fair use exception to the Copyright Act. For example, in the RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia case, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that "the Rio's operation is entirely consistent with the [Audio Home Recording Act's] main purpose -- the facilitation of personal use." The court held that, "The Rio merely makes copies in order to render portable, or 'space-shift,' those files that already reside on a user's hard drive. Cf. Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417, 455 (1984) (holding that 'time-shifting' of copyrighted television shows with VCR's constitutes fair use under the Copyright Act, and thus is not an infringement). Such copying is paradigmatic non-commercial personal use entirely consistent with the purposes of the Act."

In contrast, I've never seen any court decision that holds that making a copy of a CD for a friend constitutes fair use.

 

[hempcamp]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gamemako /img/forum/go_quote.gif By that definition, backups and MP3s are illegal as well.

No, because the Audio Home Recording Act (1992) protects the consumer from being sued for infringement when they copy something for personal use. The law is a little vague, however, and it's still unclear how it applies to DRM-protected content. The DMCA (1998) doesn't prevent a consumer from bypassing DRM, but it does prevent someone from distributing or making the tools to do so (thus the controversy over DeCSS). On top of that, there are a whole bunch of new and ever-changing exemptions to the DMCA.

Copyright is held up by a massively confusing system of laws, but again, it's hard to assign blame: it is exceedingly difficult for the political system to keep up with rapid changes in technology, and even more difficult for public policy makers to understand the technologies involved.

--Chris

 

[ralphp@optonline]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hempcamp /img/forum/go_quote.gif .....Copyright is held up by a massively confusing system of laws, but again, it's hard to assign blame: it is exceedingly difficult for the political system to keep up with rapid changes in technology, and even more difficult for public policy makers to understand the technologies involved. --Chris

Whatever their confusion may be it's nothing that a little steak dinner and a nice campaign contribution from an influential lobbyist or PAC can't help but clear up. Sad thing in the US is that no one speaks for the consumer anymore, at least not in the language that the public policy makers understand, which is [size=large]MONEY[/size].

 

[MoreCowbell]

I'm curious about the legality of buying and selling used media. If I drop twenty dollars on a cd and decide later that I don't want it I can legally sell it to whomever I wish, right? If I've copied that cd to my iPod or whatever (considered fair use) am I obligated then to delete the files when I sell off that cd? I have the right to copy it when it's mine but once I sell it do I lose the right to have that copy...? Can I expect the RIAA to bust down the door, scan my iPod and demand to see the source disks...?

What about the guy that sells that cd? I assume he doesn't have to send the RIAA a check for each disk he sells. And the guy or gal that buys that cd didn't contribute anything toward the artist or the record company yet they've still got a copy of the music. Is the right of ownership now transfered to them? Technically they didn't "consent by purchase" to any copy-write or what-have-you...?

I have the same questions about some of the available music servers out there. Olive markets a music server with a huge hard drive and they even offer to "upload" your current Cd's for free. I own well over 500 Cd's, legally bought and paid for. I have fair use right to send them in a huge crate to Olive for uploading. Then what? If I get an average of $3 for each of them I more than pay for the server and I still have the music...

sorry about the ramble... just have a lot of questions.

 

[hempcamp]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MoreCowbell /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'm curious about the legality of buying and selling used media. If I drop twenty dollars on a cd and decide later that I don't want it I can legally sell it to whomever I wish, right? If I've copied that cd to my iPod or whatever (considered fair use) am I obligated then to delete the files when I sell off that cd? I have the right to copy it when it's mine but once I sell it do I lose the right to have that copy...? Can I expect the RIAA to bust down the door, scan my iPod and demand to see the source disks...?

Good questions.

You can sell your CDs to anyone you want. Once you sell the CD, you may no longer keep a copy of it on your iPod, CD-R, etc. You must delete the files or transfer them to the new owner of the CD. It is the same with software: when you sell the retail product, you are (under most licensing schemes) no longer allowed to keep a copy for your own use.

But don't worry, the cops are not going to bash down your door because you sold a CD and forgot to wipe it off your iPod. Do that a few hundred times and start sharing it with others over public networks? Then you might find yourself in trouble.

--Chris