Beware iTunes update!!!!! Pulease read. - Page 2

That does happen, but that's not all: You always have to assume a "dull roar" standard of abuse and fallibility. If the referees called every actual foul in a game, no-one would get anywhere.

The other side of the coin is that the music industry is abjectly terrified of copying, and Apple has to shut down any obvious avenues that allow it in order to sell them on distributing music online at all. This is a pragmatic gesture as much as (or more than) an ethical one.

After all, if you measured the damage done by the music industry's dishonesty in dollars, vs. the iTunes rippers, I think you'd find the result was hopelessly lopsided toward the industry. The big 5 labels were just busted for collusion and price-fixing, and nobody here is calling for iTunes to be patched to deal with their abuses.


Looks like you bought into the RIAA's story hook, line and sinker. Sorry, but no. Napster was user-friendly, interactive, and convenient. You could get albums that were hard to find in stores, or that were no longer in print. You could sample new bands, and find out how many songs on the hot new CD were actually worth listening to. You could get around RIAA pricing so skewed that, for some titles, the soundtrack to a movie cost only $1 less than the whole DVD!

If you look around, you'll find that lots of musicians and songwriters have much higher opinions of P2P than publishers do (of course, this is not unanimously true). If you want to find a far more consistent target for the ill will of the people whose work is under discussion here, look no farther than the companies sheltering behind the RIAA. The RIAA would just love it if you believed that its members were honest, fair-minded businesses, and the P2P services were Mafia-controlled dens of iniquity serving evil, dark-eyed scum who cackled as they stole bread from the mouths of poor, innocent artists with big, moist doe eyes. The fact is that nobody - and I mean nobody - has done more to deprive artists of the fruits of their work than the Big 5 record labels.

As Camper Van Beethoven say in the liner notes to their new collection: "HOME TAPING IS KILLING THE RECORD INDUSTRY! AND IT'S ABOUT DAMN TIME!"

Which reminds me: The RIAA's argument (and your argument) is identical, almost verbatim, to arguments against every form of commercially available recordable medium all the way back to the reel to reel, and also to the MPAA's argument against videocassettes. They've always been wrong. These technologies have always grown the industries they supposedly destroy.


P2P programs were the best thing to happen to the RIAA. If it hadn't been for the DMCA, the RIAA would have no law to lay down. As it is, the tactics they've resorted to (trying to pass laws allowing them to hack into people's machines and delete files on suspicion?!) are uniformly dishonest and repugnant.

If it wasn't for Napster and Grokster and Gnutella and what-have-you, there would be no iTunes Music Store, and we'd all be discontently shelling out $20 for the latest Coldplay CD (of which money Coldplay would be lucky to see one lonely pence). I cannot stress this often enough: This is an industry that did not want you to be able to listen to a CD before purchasing it! They are completely anti-consumer. If Napster was a bit too pro-consumer, it was hardly worse. If it did any damage at all, and none of the RIAA's claims hold enough water to convince me that it did, then it hurt the labels much more than the artists.

The RIAA is the lobbying arm of the five major labels. It does not represent artists or their interests in any way, shape or form.


First of all, do you know how old FTP is? Or, say, USENET? Both were firmly in place - if not exactly popular - when the 1976 copyright act was passed.

The point you consistently miss is that the RIAA is not honest. The politicians who accept hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from the RIAA to pass anti-copyright bills into law are not honest. The aide who slipped in a provision making all music recorded for labels into work for hire, automatically, was not honest.

People are honest. In fact, they are honest enough to know when they are being ripped off, and eager to look for alternatives. Napster was grievously flawed, and it could not last as an enterprise, but it came into existence to fill a void that the major labels, in their utter greed, had opened wide. It gave some power back to the consumer, and forced the industry to strike a better deal, and forced a fruitful and long overdue debate on industry practices and copyright. One could not implausibly think of Napster as an act of civil disobedience, at least in its original form.

The thing that artists hope for, almost instinctively, is exposure. Getting their music out where people can hear it is #1 on almost every artist's list (the ones for whom this is not true are generally household names like the Rolling Stones). Widespread copying of bootlegs and albums has served as exposure for lots of up-and-coming bands. It means no album sales - to people who couldn't get their albums anyway. It means an installed fan base they can hit on a tour even though it's far from any of the pitiful distribution channels available to them. It means word-of-mouth marketing, which is both the most influential kind available at any cost and free. P2P is the old way squared. A lot of artists, especially in genres like hip-hop that the major labels don't understand, put their songs on P2P networks themselves. Increasingly, there are bands who offer their songs for free on the web, not bothering with CDs at all, and make money on tours and merchandise - which is about the same business model that major label acts depend on anyway, only without the corrupt middleman, the indecipherable indentured-servitude contract, and the $18 toll you have to pay in order to decide whether or not you like the band.

So, really, the only losers here are the major labels. Not the consumers. Not the artists. And that's why it's the major labels that are complaining so loudly. Not the consumers. Not the artists.

If there's any "right" and "wrong" in this issue, the RIAA is on the wrong side on nearly every count. Don't believe the hype.

ahhh there's the rub!
the main reason the recording industry is dying, is perceived value!
you can buy a movie on dvd, usually 2 discs! (for big releases) for about the same price as a cd.
not to mention the fact that i think everyone feels that side by side a movie is of larger artistic merit than a record. i mean it's just a bigger deal.
(look at the rise in dvd sales with fall of cd sales, they're congruent!)

add to that, the inbred tendencies of labels to only sign carbon copies of previous success's and you have a recipe for disaster.
the toothpaste is out of the tube, and i think all the big five are praying for is a piece of the hardware (ala the video tape spiff hollywood gets) action to compensate for lost royalties.
which would float their corpulent carcasses a few more years.

Mac OS X Unleashed, Second Edition
Copyright (c) 2003 by Sams Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

Yup. That's the text on the book. Now go read the law.

5. What is copyright infringement?
As a general matter, copyright infringement occurs when a copyrighted work is reproduced, distributed, performed, publicly displayed, or made into a derivative work without the permission of the copyright owner.

Oh, this is a quote from the United States Copyright Office's website. I thought I better say that so don't get in trouble for copyright infringment.

*sigh*

OK, since you are determined not to go read the law, I'll do all the legwork for you:

First, read this: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107

Title 17 is the law I've been referring to all this time.

Sections 107-112 deal with the fair use exceptions to the rule you quoted above, which are the provisions in the law I have explicitly identified as my subject matter.

Now, some Supreme Court cases for your edification:

The famous "Betamax" case: http://www.eff.org/Legal/Cases/sony_..._decision.html

First, a general statement of the goal of US copyright law (emphasis mine):


And the note 10 footnoted at the end of the quote:


The monopoly established by copyright law is here explicitly identified by Congress as evil, albeit necessary; but its evilness is given as a powerful incentive to limit its scope and duration.

The RIAA wouldn't be frantically lobbying to change the law if it already backed them up.

Second, repeated affirmation of the "no harm, no foul" (de minimus) standard for fair use. From the introduction (all emphasis mine):


More:


I think that describes the feature in iTunes 4 well enough. In fact, it couldn't even be used directly for infringement, unlike a copier; another program had to be used with it. The removal of the 'net broadcasting feature from iTunes was a political move to placate the recording industry. It had no basis in copyright law.

And, from Harper & Row vs. Nation Enterprises, a landmark Fair Use case (where, incidentally, the defendant lost the claim to fair use by quoting all the good parts of former President Ford's memoir before it had been published):


So: 1) copyright concerns publication, first and foremost; 2) financial interest weighs against fair use, which means that lack of financial interest weighs in favor (i.e., there's a difference between copying CDs and handing them out, and copying CDs and selling them); 3) the unauthorized use of the material caused specific and provable harm to the publisher. No harm, no foul; but in this case Harper & Row lost $12,500 for an exclusive preview from Time Magazine as a direct result of the Nation's actions.

That's a negative definition. I won't quote further, just because this post is already absurdly long, but I've linked the decision. You can read for yourself. If the copying is not piracy (that is, unauthorized publication); is not for profit; is for personal, educational, critical, or parodic use; and has no causally established negative effect on the marketability of the product; then it's probably fair use (although the Court notes, and it's important to remember, that copyright violations have to be considered on an individual basis).

Now, Copyright law is currently infested with all kinds of crap that runs absolutely counter to basic principles such as prior restraint, thanks to the likes of the RIAA and the MPAA. These organizations are not primarily concerned with rewarding artists or enriching the public domain, so I consider their opinions on the nature of copyright law to be irrelevant.

I give up

LOL

While these quotes are on the topic of Copyright law, they aren't actually the text of the law.

Addressing the first quote:
Publishers have an economic incentive to characterize copyrights as more protective than they actually are. Thus, they aren't the most unbiased source.

Addressing the second quote:
The key phrase in this sentence is not 'reproduced' but rather 'As a general matter'. As Amorph has so verbosely and eloquently pointed out, further reading can clarify this generalization.

US Copyright Law

[edit]misrepresentation of fair use doctrine deleted[/edit]

Has anyone here ever stolen an orange? I doubt it. Most people consider that oranges go for a fair price, and it is low. If people started charging 14.99 for a dozen oranges, I assure you people would start lifting them from the grocery store, and it wouldn't be prosecuted.

My point isn't that it is OK as to steal as long as you feel ripped off. What I am pointing out is that with digital files, music and movies are a commodity. People don't take the claims of theft seriously because we don't feel like the labels are hurting. I would buy a million songs if the price were more realistic (and no $1 is not realistic except for the newest hits). I'll be damned if I will ever pay a dollar for some of Van Halen's '80s stuff, but I would like to have it. The music companies are passing up the 2 bucks I would pay for "1984", and I don't feel too bad ripping it from a friend because it sits in the bottom row of their CD rack. The odds of him and me listening to it at the same time are slim, so we actually would be practicing fair use, I just don't have a physical copy.

It doesn't make it OK, but I can sleep at night.

My $.02

Is there any particular reason that the idea of copyright as rewarding artists and enriching the public domain is so onerous to you? Is my ability to back up CDs to a personal archive (or, say, the ability of a library to back up its collection to an archive) such a tremendous burden? Have we fallen so far that immediate profit outweighs the most fundamental principle of democracy? I'm not exaggerating here: The Supreme Court has repeatedly described (and defined) copyright as "the engine of free speech." (This is, historically, a polemical definition: Government enforcement of the original copyright collusion was granted by the British government to the presses in return for the presses' promise that they wouldn't print books the Government didn't want them to.)

You wouldn't happen to work for a publisher, would you? That might explain your insistence that the copyright holder (as distinct from the creator, of course) have absolute control - except that I know some publishers with more enlightened views than that.

Further reading for anyone interested in my post: The Statute of Anne, the first modern (read: sensible) copyright law, enacted by the Parliament of England in 1710, and the historical antecedent for the Copyright Clause in the US Constitution.

The Interactive Digital Software Association on how the Doctrine of First Sale does not allow people to just hand out copies willy-nilly (but it does allow people to make as many copies for their own needs as they please. Note that handing out tapes of albums is tolerated as a de minimus violation under the 1976 Copyright Act; this paper addresses a different issue. Note also that most software vendors attempt to use licenses to get around the Doctrine altogether - Deneba's license agreement for Canvas purports to conjoin me from giving the CD to anyone else, as if it were any different in substance from a book or an audio CD.

So, by your definition, it would be morally OK to just steal the current PowerMacs? 8)

first off, I agree that music labels are bad to an extent, but eliminating them all-together is not the end-all, be-all answer. I've yet to see a business model in place that can benefit both the consumer and artist, without the help of a middle man. When it happens(it will one day) I'll be happy, but until then....


if you've ever been a ref, and actually went through the training for one, you'd realize what you just said is false. Not all calls are made due to how they comprehend what happened, and where they saw it from. If some ref's let a foul slide, it is by no means "acceptable" and you can be fired for doing so. Missing a call on a foul is either incompetence or bias, neither of which are permissible.


it's called the domino effect. If people steal music, the industry doesn't get paid, which means the artist does not get paid. And there is a reason the industry gets paid, it's called advertising and marketing, and those two things can make or break an artists career.


no, the industry patches come in the form of millions of dollars in lawsuits.


And the music industry was slapped w/ a lawsuit for price-fixing. And you work under the assumption that all those millions of people on napster are "honest" people, who only sample the music to see if they like it, then go buy it. Are we living in the same world here? I know almost no one who buys cds now, because p2p is free and no one is getting punished for doing it. It sounds to me that you are one of the many who have convinced yourself and bought into the mentality that it's ok to download music without paying for it. You think that because it only costs pennies to make an actual cd, that a whole cd should be only a dollar. Never mind the fact that it costs money to make plants to produce these cds, and to put the music onto them. And then there's the cost of distribution. And what about the time and money spent on recording this music? The equipment that is used to record this music on? The equipment to play the music? What about the building this is all done in, and the money required to power it? Do you think this is all free of charge? I got a feeling you've never worked or been around the music industry.

The biggest beneficiaries of p2p programs are independent artists. They've made their music and haven't relied on the industry. They may not have enough money to pay for their own marketing, advertising and distribution, and/or the industry might feel that making an investment in that artist is not a profitable venture. For the artist then, p2p is great. It takes care of the distribution, and marketing and advertising to a lesser extent. The songs are out there now, you just have to wait for someone to take a chance on downloading your song.

Now here's another question for you. Say an independent artist does put his/her music on p2p, instead of getting in bed with the industry. How is this artist supposed to recoup the money he/she put into making this music? And how is he/she supposed to provide for themself while making this music? You don't seem the least bit concerned with that, as long as you get your music for free, you're happy.

[quote]
If you look around, you'll find that lots of musicians and songwriters have much higher opinions of P2P than publishers do (of course, this is not unanimously true). If you want to find a far more consistent target for the ill will of the people whose work is under discussion here, look no farther than the companies sheltering behind the RIAA. The RIAA would just love it if you believed that its members were honest, fair-minded businesses, and the P2P services were Mafia-controlled dens of iniquity serving evil, dark-eyed scum who cackled as they stole bread from the mouths of poor, innocent artists with big, moist doe eyes. The fact is that nobody - and I mean nobody - has done more to deprive artists of the fruits of their work than the Big 5 record labels.

Which reminds me: The RIAA's argument (and your argument) is identical, almost verbatim, to arguments against every form of commercially available recordable medium all the way back to the reel to reel, and also to the MPAA's argument against videocassettes. They've always been wrong. These technologies have always grown the industries they supposedly destroy.



P2P programs were the best thing to happen to the RIAA. If it hadn't been for the DMCA, the RIAA would have no law to lay down. As it is, the tactics they've resorted to (trying to pass laws allowing them to hack into people's machines and delete files on suspicion?!) are uniformly dishonest and repugnant.


The legal system took care of the pricing, not napster or gnutella. The itunes music store would've came out eventually, as artists have been looking for quite some time for a way to cut the middle man(the record labels) out of the picture.

"Did not want us to be able to listen to a cd before purchasing it?" Isn't that what the radio is for? Or those fancy music stations that are, and have been pretty much standard in music stores? What about this, have you ever just went into a music store and "asked" to hear a particular artist? 99% of the time you'll get a warm response because record labels send out demo cds for that very purpose.


What you are missing is that I do understand the RIAA and the record labels are dishonest. What you do not understand is that we have a legal system in place. What you also fail to address is dishonest music traders. But alas, you've already convinced yourself it's ok to download music without paying for it.

you're definitely right, exposure comes from marketing and advertising. By word of mouth and airplay. And it's the record label who pays for this.

You also fail to acknowledge that most bands don't get to go on tour until they've actually made it big and are a household name. Unless of course you decide to play in local bars the whole time. But then there'd be no "big money" off of merchandise and tours. By the way it costs money to make this "merchandise", and if an artist is still new and unheard of, without the financial backing of a third party, how are they going to pay for the initial costs?

"Widespread copying of bootlegs and albums has served as exposure for lots of up-and-coming bands"

and in your infinite wisdom, did you ever stop to think that it costs money to make these albums to "bootleg?" You're saying there should be no record labels, and only people with a lot of money should be able to make music? I fail to see your point.


touche, and why not try seeing both sides of the music business before making assumptions. All i see is a person who expects a lot, and wants to give nothing in return.

You forgot to mention the costs of developing sophisticated copy protection mechanisms.

We work on a system of producer/consumer. The consumer recieves Wages for Labour, Rent for Land, Interest for Capital, and Profit for Enterprise. With that income, the consumer purchases goods and services.

Businesses used to compete on the best economic model, and hence the biggest profit for the producer. That worked with commodities. However, technology like computers are not commodities. They have to be designed. The same applies to art. Art is good. It's part of culture.

However, artists need to be "enabled" to create art. Artists can't produce art for free and do nothing else. They'd starve and die. Hence copyright. Copyright exists to supply a safe minimum amount of money to the artist, so they can be "enabled" to produce art and not starve and die.

It's slightly different with products like computers. Businesses compete on economic models still. It's not like they would recieve no money on their product if copyright didn't exist. However, where's the incentive? Why should a business design a product if all other companies would copy it? There is a DISincentive, as the business is spending money that other companies don't have to. So copyright exists to provide and incentive to create products. Again, a safe minimum incentive is what should be aimed for.

The question which SHOULD be asked is this; "If respect for copyright by individuals is not enforced, will artists/businesses continue to receive enough money to continue to create art/products?"

The question that SHOULDN'T be asked is this; "Are artists/businesses recieving the money that THEY want for every single use of their creative or unique work?"

The reason for the producer/consumer system, and copyright, is to ensure that consumers all get the most possible goods and services. The latter question is the polar opposite of the "public interest", because it's artifically reducing the goods and services consumers recieve.

Artists are now 99% of the time consumers. No doubt they want the most goods and services they can get. Some artists (ie musicians) don't see a dime anymore for their labours. All the enabling money they should recieve due to copyright is ending up in the hands of a few "gatekeepers". The system we have now with regards to music is the worst of both worlds. Not only do we only get art from those desperate enough to create it for free, but that art is controlled by the "gatekeepers" so that we the people cannot legally buy it at a market price or use it how we want.

A copyright system where a safe minimum of enabling money is distributed to artists and businesses without personal freedom being sacrificed is probably achievable. Hopefully I won't be dead by the time such a system is put in place.

Barto

You bet your filthy copywrong apologist ass it is.

PS I love/hate my emotional/rational split/personality

first off, I agree that music labels are bad to an extent, but eliminating them all-together is not the end-all, be-all answer.

Eliminating publishers is definatly not be all/end all. Someone needs to get the music out. And businesses with lots of capital will always be better than individuals (ie P2P). Hence the reason why copyright works at all. Eliminating the music labels would be a good start though. The reason music so expensive is because the big 5 music labels are bloated and corrupt. They don't have to be efficent at helping create and distribute music, they don't have to. They just send their FBI cronies in to bust down the door of anyone who competes with them.

Missing a call on a foul is either incompetence or bias, neither of which are permissible.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.06/view.html

it's called the domino effect. If people steal music, the industry doesn't get paid, which means the artist does not get paid. And there is a reason the industry gets paid, it's called advertising and marketing, and those two things can make or break an artists career.

Artists got paid!? When did this happen!? Also, check out "consumer soverignty" v "business soverignty" sometime. And think to yourself, if a piece of music or an album needs anything more than a minimum amount of marketing to get the public aware of it, is it really art? Are people just buying it because they're conviced that a particular piece of trash is a good product? Also, I renew my objection to people who refer to copyright violation as stealing.

"Did not want us to be able to listen to a cd before purchasing it?" Isn't that what the radio is for?

Why should analoge radio exist then and not internet radio, or P2P? What gives you or anyone else the right to choose which distrobution mediums should exist and which should not, except for the people as a whole?

Barto

This is completely false! Most non-famous musicians only make money at small gigs. That 3 bucks you give the bouncer at the door... is frequently the only money that the musicians make. Sometimes the bar gets a cut and sometimes the bar takes it all and pays the band a pre-arranged amount. Also, T-shirts only cost a few bucks to make... go out and investigate how much it costs to have 100 shirts printed. Its pretty damn cheap. Local musicians also just burn CDRs and photocopy inserts at the local copy shop. Once again, investment in a stock of band related merchandise is pretty cheap.

It is nearly impossible for musicians to make money with a major-label distributed and promoted CD. However, nearly all professional musicians at least partially support themselves with local gigs and intermittent tours with cover bands. Basically, while I agree with the motivation for copyrights, they aren't achieving their intended goal in the music industry. They aren't promoting creative endeavor by musicians and are, IMHO, hurting the music industry by perpetuating an inefficient and unsustainable economic model.

No, for two reasons.

1) It would be depriving the current owner (Apple, Reseller, Individual) of their actual property.

2) Apple doesn't collude with Dell, HP and IBM to keep the price of PC cum workstations high. Apple just sells 'em at a high price and no-one buys them.

Barto

if no one hears a piece of music, is it good?



i've never stated that internet radio shouldn't be an option. P2p is a problem because you can download cd-quality music without paying the artist. If it were a perfect world, there'd only be short clips of each song on a P2P that you could download, or even a full song that could only be played once or twice before it expunges itself. That'd benefit the consumer and the artist. But you know, someone will always try to come along and find a way to try and crack it so that song can never expunge itself.

It's always going to be a battle between consumers who feel music should be free and the artists who want to get paid.

If you want an issue that really peeves me, and is probably more of a joke than the music industry, its the unGodly amount of money that is paid to professional athletes, and the whole business model behind that.

You just rehashed what i said. Smalltown bar gigs pay very little. And T-shirts cost more than a "few bucks" to make. You have to take into consideration the cost of the shirt, then the actual cost of any imprinting you want to do on it. Same with cds. Between the blank cd's, the cost of material for the inserts, the cases, then having the burning process and printing process done. Not to mention if you want to have a decent sounding cd you're going to want to record with decent equipment. I have a friend who just signed on with indi records, and he managed to do all the recording himself, but his setup costs around 10k, and that's just starting out, no frills, no extras, just your basic recording equipment. You'd be lucky to make a couple bucks per cd/shirt.



i'd also add that the music label provides the recording studio, sometimes the artwork, the equipment, etc.. and yes I do agree that gigs do help, but not to the extent they should. When you have the likes of ticketmaster raping you, your profit starts to go out the door.

if we never paid for music, how would artists be given compensation for the time, money and effort they put into making this music, so that they can continue to do so? Should only the rich be able to make music?

What i find most amusing, is the fact that it seems people are arguing the same point, but the means to reach a resolution has led everyone down their own path.

I think everyone can pretty much agree that the music labels are evil and the artists need to be paid what they're due(well some of you don't even believe the artists should get paid).

The popular opinion(and I guess I just can't seem to grasp the concept behind it) is making music "free".

I'm simply saying there needs to be a new business model in place. You simply can't pull the proverbial(music labels) rug out from under the artists and expect everything to be fine, it'd become chaotic.

If I paint a painting, write a book or a song I should own that painting, book, or song. You should not be able to duplicate that painting, book, or song without compensating me. My opinion, possibly not yours or someone elses.

Notice a) the smiley, and b) the "Oranges for $14.99" quote I was referring to in my post.

Please READ my posts before replying to them.

We work on a system of producer/consumer. The consumer recieves Wages for Labour, Rent for Land, Interest for Capital, and Profit for Enterprise. With that income, the consumer purchases goods and services.

Businesses used to compete on the best economic model, and hence the biggest profit for the producer. That worked with commodities. However, technology like computers are not commodities. They have to be designed. The same applies to art. Art is good. It's part of culture.

However, artists need to be "enabled" to create art. Artists can't produce art for free and do nothing else. They'd starve and die. Hence copyright. Copyright exists to supply a safe minimum amount of money to the artist, so they can be "enabled" to produce art and not starve and die.

It's slightly different with products like computers. Businesses compete on economic models still. It's not like they would recieve no money on their product if copyright didn't exist. However, where's the incentive? Why should a business design a product if all other companies would copy it? There is a DISincentive, as the business is spending money that other companies don't have to. So copyright exists to provide and incentive to create products. Again, a safe minimum incentive is what should be aimed for.

The question which SHOULD be asked is this; "If respect for copyright by individuals is not enforced, will artists/businesses continue to receive enough money to continue to create art/products?"

The question that SHOULDN'T be asked is this; "Are artists/businesses recieving the money that THEY want for every single use of their creative or unique work?"

The reason for the producer/consumer system, and copyright, is to ensure that consumers all get the most possible goods and services. The latter question is the polar opposite of the "public interest", because it's artifically reducing the goods and services consumers recieve.

Artists are now 99% of the time consumers. No doubt they want the most goods and services they can get. Some artists (ie musicians) don't see a dime anymore for their labours. All the enabling money they should recieve due to copyright is ending up in the hands of a few "gatekeepers". The system we have now with regards to music is the worst of both worlds. Not only do we only get art from those desperate enough to create it for free, but that art is controlled by the "gatekeepers" so that we the people cannot legally buy it at a market price or use it how we want.

A copyright system where a safe minimum of enabling money is distributed to artists and businesses without personal freedom being sacrificed is probably achievable. Hopefully I won't be dead by the time such a system is put in place.

fahlman, If that opinion was made law and enforced, the world would collapse. The metaphorical cogs in the machine that is the world would freeze up. It is simply impossible to create every product/artwork competely from scratch for every single product/artwork made. Shakespear's plays could not be written today, as they violated modern copyright.

RazzFazz, I noticed that you were joking. However, the point you raised was actually a valid one. Are there some cases where a company's actions are harmful to society? Yes.

If it were a perfect world, there'd only be short clips of each song on a P2P that you could download, or even a full song that could only be played once or twice before it expunges itself.

Sounds more like a living hell to me. What good is ANY art if the public cannot have access to it, at a reasonable price? Right now, the ONLY competition record lables have is P2P. Without P2P, the iTunes Music Store wouldn't have started, because the record lables would not have been forced to start internet music services.

Barto

I've read your post, and replied accordingly because you're a broken record barto


I fail to see your logic here. If you are able to download a song(the whole thing) and listen to it x amount of times before it expires, and if you decide you like it, you can purchase it, how does the public not have access to it?

Also the iTunes has short clips of music you can listen to before deciding if you want to buy or not. So this also falls under your "living hell?" But you're coming off as preaching it a good thing. So which is it?

It seems like you're really split on how you want things to turn out.

And would that still be your opinion if you were infected with a deadly disease that could be cured by following a procedure outlined in a book that I wrote - a book that you cannot have because you can't provide me with the compensation I am asking for?

So - would you steal it and live or die having remained true to your principals?

You're talking about totally different things. The last thing I want is a world where people are controlled. Apple can control their music service. It's good being able to "try before you buy". I don't have a problem with businesses charging money for their products. Duh.

But it would be a living hell where no individual can share ideas, files, whatever with out individuals. Here's a few sentances of what I want to say to you about a book I just read, you'll have to pay Big Media before I can tell you the rest.

The internet is a reflection of daily life. There are interactions between big companies and individuals. Then there is the interaction between all the individuals on the 'net. An example of this is AppleInsider. In the end, the only thing that really counts is the interaction of individuals. That is, P2P, both on the 'net and in real life. The only reason business exists is as a tool to improve this interaction and to improve the standard of living for each individual. When people are controlled, there is very little interaction.

That is why your idea is a living hell.

Barto

Using P2P to obtain music files is alot like speeding or taking home office supplies - all three are breaking the law - but many people don't seem to care - because they don't see the harm in doing so.