Digital Music Piracy
Venmoch
Join Date: 2002-08-07 Member: 1093Members
Join Date: 2002-08-07 Member: 1093Members
in Discussions
<div class="IPBDescription">mp3s and the music industry</div> This as a subject is fairly simple. I'm sure most of us have some sort of mp3 on our computers somewhere. I know I do I'm not ashamed of it and if I'm needed to I will delete them.
However do you think that the boom in mp3 distributions is a good thing??
Does it cause as much damage as the music industry claim it does?
Are the music industrys right to enforce hardware like the Fritz chip upon the consumer to protect their "investments"?
Discuss!
However do you think that the boom in mp3 distributions is a good thing??
Does it cause as much damage as the music industry claim it does?
Are the music industrys right to enforce hardware like the Fritz chip upon the consumer to protect their "investments"?
Discuss!
Comments
Does it cause as much damage as the music industry claims it does? Probably not. The damage may be there, but I don't trust the industry to investigate itself and put out reliable facts. I'm no economist myself, so I'd appreciate it if one (or a group) could do a 3rd party investigation to see whether mp3's are helping or hurting the industry for the reasons above, and how much.
Are the music industries right to enforce hardware like the Fritz chip upon the cunsumer to protect their "investments"? Whether they have the right to do so is debatable, but by no means are they correct to do so. The Fritz chip (and related things, like The System Formerly Known As Palladium) are rather heavy-handed methods of discouraging piracy, and to this day they've had limited success. (XP authentication and other software protection workarounds, the infamous "draw-a-tangent-line-on-your-music-CD-here-with-a-permanent-marker-to-make-it-work" trick, etc.). If the industry were to come up with some form of positive reinforcement (as opposed to negative reinforcement, such as the lawsuits we've seen so far) not to pirate music, I'd be more than happy to hear about it.
Anyone with $10k (US) can buy decent recording and production equipment for themselves, which always used to be a major purpose of the RIAA. Since most technology gets very inexpensive as newer models come out, it's very easy for artists with a few bucks to spare to get the equipment for themselves, do the legwork on their own, and keep a bigger piece of the profit pie for themselves.
My friend's brother is the guitarist in a good local band, and they went the "do-it-yourself" route. They recorded and mastered their own first album using about $4000 (CDN) worth of equipment, had a hundred or so album covers professionally printed, burned their own CD's with a standard computer, and now they sell them for $10 a shot. I've seen their MP3's on the Internet, and I even heard one of 'em recently on a worldwide streaming radio station.
But to answer your questions.....
<b>Do you think that the boom in mp3 distributions is a good thing??</b>
It's definetly a good thing for music-lovers and artists. To the RIAA, it's just another slash which will eventually bleed them to death.
<b>Does it cause as much damage as the music industry claim it does?</b>
It doesn't damage the music industry at all. In fact, it's probably doing more for the industry as a whole than anything the RIAA has <i>ever</i> done. Smaller and new bands can easily record their own music and distribute it worldwide for pennies. Obviously, this helps promote <i>more</i> music since anyone can now get their work distributed without having to sell your soul to a faceless organization.
<b>Are the music industrys right to enforce hardware like the Fritz chip upon the consumer to protect their "investments"?</b>
Absolutely not. They're not protecting their investments, they're protecting their business model. Like I said, they see themselves as being obsolete within years if they don't establish a strong grip on this "new" technology, so they're doing what they can to contain it.
It's a little like trying to stop an avalanche. It's already started, so it can't be stopped. The best the RIAA can do is try and funnel it the way they want without getting crushed by it at the same time.
Extremely well written articles with both side's perspectives - but the overall consensus is that the RIAA won't exist in 5 years. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Like Syco said, the RIAA is doing everything within their power (and IMO, beyond their power) to keep the gravy train rolling and on time. Like any person with an addiction, these people are trying to keep the source of their next hit open to them, and fighting tooth and nail against any change.
Rarely do I go out and look for MP3s, simply because I know that I wont listen to them more than once (and because Kazaa keeps giving me viruses), but I still want that option for me, and for everyone else. Call me a sentamentalist, socialist fool, but I dont like companies telling me what
In high school, I had some friends that started a band (Bench Grinder it was then). The only way that they were ever able to get noticed by the record companies (I think they are working on getting a contract) was to get their songs out over the internet. I personally think that with the measures that these companies are taking only help to stifle new talents that cannot afford the massive costs of studio time.
As to the Fritz chip, when it comes out I am switching to Athlon/Lindows. (seeing as they are not supporting it last I heard)
Besides, what are they going to do when the new MP4s come out, which are better quality and roughly 1/10th the size of an MP3?
please pardon the LONG quote
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->There is a cycle of frontier inhabitation which has usually gone like this: Misfits and dreamers, rejected by or rejecting society, are pushed out into the margins. There they set up camp and maintain what little order they want in it by unwritten codes, the honor of thieves, the Code of the West.
Despite their usual haplessness, they discover resources and start exploiting them. Burghers and boosters back in the civilized regions hear of these discoveries. Settlers, a milder sort, come in with their women and children and are repelled by the savagery and license of their predecessors, whether mountain men, prospectors, or Indians. They send for troops to secure the frontier for the Rotary Club and the PTA. They elect representatives, pass laws, and, pretty soon, they've created another place which is boring but which at least appears predictable.
Already we can find the usual Christian soldiers massing at the borders of Cyberspace. Whether their instruments of entry are the FBI's Digital Telephony proposal (which proposes to hard-wire the Net for automated surveillance) or the NSA's Clipper Chip (which would allow you to lock your digital door, but only if the government kept a key) or well-meaning legislative efforts ensure equal access to the Net, or increasingly punitive props in the collapsing structure of copyright law, or pure, blue-nosed priggishness, the government is preparing to place this new frontier under the rule of law. Whether the pioneers already there want it or not.
There are, however, some critical differences between this frontier and its predecessors. For one thing, while there was no question that the government in Ottawa had legitimate jurisdiction over the Yukon, the same could not be said of the relationship between Washington and Cyberspace.
Cyberspace, being a region of mind rather than geography, is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. There are no national borders. The only boundaries which are significant are those which one crosses by entering a password. The location of those systems is irrelevant.
What difference does it make that the actual whereabouts of a hard disk is, say, California, when one may as easily actuate its heads from a keyboard in Berlin as from the desk it sits on? The Internet is essentially one great machine (or, better, organism) all elements of which are continuous if wide-flung.
Nevertheless, the American government maintains the conceit that someone moving encryption software from a hard disk in California region of that great digital Critter to another in the Berlin region would be engaged in the illegal international shipment of embargoed arms.
Nevertheless, the American government maintains the conceit that someone moving encryption software from a hard disk in California region of that great digital Critter to another in the Berlin region would be engaged in the illegal international shipment of embargoed arms.
Or take the case of a Cupertino, California couple who were recently convicted on federal charges of distributing materials deemed pornographic according to the community standards of Memphis, Tennessee.
In both of these case, a local government is trying to apply its ordinances upon all of Cyberspace, and thus the entire planet. This might work for a time. Because of the American origins of the Internet, Cyberspace seems "ours," rather as Panama once did. This won't last long. As increasing numbers of non-Americans jack in, even such little willingness to submit to Washington as now exists will cease.
And it's unlikely that any new external power will arise in Washington's place. The Internet was designed to survive nuclear ordnance raining down all over it. This required that it be headless and self-organizing. It is thereby as resistant to Washington's efforts to control it as it would have been to Soviet efforts to decapitate it. It is the largest functional anarchy the world has ever known and is likely to stay that way.
Thus, the electronic frontier also differs from its predecessors in that setting up reservations is not likely to suffice for corralling the natives. As digital pioneer John Gilmore said, "The Internet deals with censorship as though it were a malfunction. It routes around it." Furthermore, unreal estate is unlimited. Unlike land, they are making more of this stuff. If you don't like the politics of the system you're on, you can set up your own for the price of a clone and increasingly cheap Internet connection.
There is, in addition, an irresolvable mismatch between the accelerating pace of technology and the changes it will enact upon the terrain of Cyberspace and the geological ponderousness with which the conventional legal structure of any jurisdiction, physical or virtual, can adapt to those changes.
Unfortunately, while governments have been good at imposing limitations, they show little capacity for accepting their own. Personally, I don't believe that government as we've known it as a promising future. I think the terrestrial powers will pursue us into Cyberspace and die of confusion there, thrashing arbitrarily and crushing miscellaneous unfortunates as they do. Like rabid dinosaurs, the fact that they're doomed will not make them any less dangerous
...
But don't come to this wild place expecting to civilize it, as I once did. This frontier may well be permanent And, finding bedlam, please don't send for your troops. They will only get in the way of a future which you will have to invent yourselves.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Another thing this quote brings up: What in the name of **** gives American corporations and American government rights to concern itself with the actions of citizens of other nations (I of course exclude things such as espionage and other things with the potential to do harm to America and the people within).
This was written in 1994 and entitled "Jack in, Young Pioneer", so some of the issues have died. The rest of this passage, and many others, including the Decloration of Independence of Cyberspace, can be found at the link in my sig. I would also reccomend reading in that link:The Complete ACM Columns Collection (1st section), Stopping the Information Railroad (if anything, read this), Selling Wine Without Bottles: The Economy of Mind on the Global Net , Jackboots on the Infobahn: Clipping the Wings of Freedom (relating to the Fritz chip, but written about one proposed in the early 90's).
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->
It is, as my goodfriend and Wired Editor Louis Rossetto put it, as though "the illiterate
could tell you what to read."
Well, **** them.
Or, more to the point, let us now take our leave of them. They have
declared war on Cyberspace. Let us show them how cunning, baffling, and
powerful we can be in our own defense.
I have written something (with characteristic grandiosity) that I hope will
become one of many means to this end. If you find it useful, I hope you
will pass it on as widely as possible. You can leave my name off it if you
like, because I don't care about the credit. I really don't.
But I do hope this cry will echo across Cyberspace, changing and growing
and self-replicating, until it becomes a great shout equal to the idiocy
they have just inflicted upon us.
I give you...
A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The rulers of the old world are still trying to run the new. But, hey, such are the problems of being pioneers in uncharted lands.
"Its as if the ignorant could tell us what to read."
For full coverage of many of these piracy cases (including the entire casefile of the Napster and Kazaa lawsuits) check out <a href='http://www.eff.org' target='_blank'>The Electronic Frontier Foundation</a>
Aside: I just found a disturbing document. Seems to be very truthful in a very eerie way.<a href='http://www.eff.org/pub/Publications/John_Perry_Barlow/HTML/bill_of_rights.html' target='_blank'>Bill O' Rights Light</a>
Edit: added some "reccomended readings"
I don't condone piracy, I do it myself a little...but only because I don't always have twenty bucks to go out and lay down on a CD which I might not like and not be able to return. Right now i'm listening to Tatu (the Russian group) and when I have some spare cash i'm gonna buy the Album because I like it and I think my girlfriend will like it and so we'll end up supporting them.
And in some cases I want only a single song from a CD (i.e. KoRn's Alone I Break) but they sell the single song for 5 and the entire CD is 15
And don't forget that some music artists live ridiculously rich. Like Eminem who just bought a six million dollar mansion.
Plus the Internet and the resulting stuff helps spread the music of relatively unknown artists to far corners. I've never seen Taproot on MTV (where I see most of my new music, I get bored by it easily though) and now I have a couple songs. When I get some extra cash i'll probably get the album.
three w00t's for Napster for starting the fall of the way-too-rich musicians.
btw, most of the MP3's I have are from CD's I bought. I have Requiem for a Dream so all my Kronos Quartet's are backups. I have Hybrid Theory/ Re-Animation so that covers my Linkin Park songs.
Tatu is a great group! I like how open they are with their love for each other. Hey, did you hear about how Lena and Yulia got into a fight in a hotel room to let off some steam? One got hospitalized for a day.
I've got no problem whatsoever if a musician gets rich. After all, it's their creativity and effort that brings their music to reality. They actually <i>earn</i> their paychecks by using their ability, time, and experience (well, most of 'em anyways <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->).
What I <i>don't</i> like is how the RIAA will get rich off of everyone else's talent. They've appointed themselves the necessary middleman between the talent and the customers, and they refuse to acknowledge that they're no longer needed. They still want to get well paid for these unnecessary services, however.
It is somewhat of a fairy tale to think that money changes hands so linearly. That is, to think that if you sit in your garage and come up with a design for a hyperdrive all by yourself, that you're going to be a rich man and only pay a small percentage to market it. The truth is that all of the major avenues to "get the word out" are controlled by big ogres who charge tolls. Independent artists get bent over the sawhorse and raped when they try to get published or advertised in any large fashion, while creative people who come up with stuff while working for a company usually never have ownership of their ideas at all. In fact, some companies have it rigged so that even stuff you work on at home while you work for them is theirs, if it is related to what you do for them.
If a recording artist gets rich, it is usually only because they are SO popular that they sell SO many albums that they are able to compensate for the miniscule percentage they get. In other words, if Britney makes 20 million bucks this year, it means she generated probably another 400 million that went into the pockets of the middlemen. I was watching this thing on VH1 or something about the group TLC, and Lisa Lopez (before her death) was explaining the breakdown of their finances for 1993 or something like that. I'm doing this from memory so these numbers won't be right, but it went something like this:
They got seven percent of the total revenue from their album sales. The albums generated like 30 million dollars, so they got 2 million. That's a tax bracket of almost 50%, so then they're down to one million. Out of that they had to pay for the recording costs, which were like 400k, leaving them with 600k. Then they had to pay their agents and managers, leaving them with 150k, which they then split between the members (three of them?), so they each ended up making about 50k that year.
The bulk of the money from their albums went to the record company. I'm not saying that the record companies do nothing, but it seems like they take a hugely disproportionate percentage simply because they are in a position of entrenched power, and struggling artists can't afford to bargain. So when the internet offers to provide the same advertising opportunities to artists without all the needless deadweight of burning CDs and printing album covers, and having the record company steal all but a small percentage of the profits, I'm not very sympathetic to the recording industry.
They're basically spawn-camping the the developing artists who are starving and find the prospect of making 50k to be a lot better than making 2k and living with their parents.
Right now i'm listening to Tatu (the Russian group) and when I have some spare cash i'm gonna buy the Album because I like it and I think my girlfriend will like it and so we'll end up supporting them.
[...] <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
An interesting thing to note now that you've said this: that group has actually put an entire CD's worth of contents in .mp3 format, freely available to the public on FTP servers linked to by their official website. The mp3's are in their original Russian (making them obviously better than the English language releases of the CD's) but some tracks have a few imperfections -- assorted random pops and cracks -- that may have been put there intentionally to encourage buying the CD itself.
Personally, I'm very much in favor of this idea. Offer entire tracks (rather than 15 to 30 second clips) worth of content in less-than-stellar quality, letting people "try before they buy" but still offering sufficient incentive to buy the real deal.
And yeah, because I can get some of the songs at low quality i'm gonna get the full high quality CD when I have the money.
Also, if MP3's weren't around I wouldn't buy more cds. I would be more picky about what I listen to.
For instance, I've bought 4 copies of TOOL's Aenema cd. I could have just ripped there music. But I consider myself a true fan and respect their art, so every time something happens to one of their cds I go out and replace it legitamitely.