I am increasingly of the opinion that the concept of copyright is becoming meaningless. Distributors have always benefited more from copyright laws than creators (it was due to lobbying by book publishers that the first copyright laws were written), because the cost of distribution has always been greater than the cost of creation. Now, however, media has become so easy to digitally reproduce and distribute that conventional distributors no longer serve a valid function.
What I reckon we will soon see (and currently do see in a nascent form with stuff like mp3 blogs and Podcasts) is a new kind of intermediary. Media selectors who will, for a fee, sift through the crud and point consumers in the direction of digital content (music, images, video) being distributed directly by artists. DRM will probably continue to exist, but will either be increasingly shunned or so easily circumvented that it too eventually falls by the wayside.
One of the truest things that Steve Jobs has said (and I'm paraphrasing here cause I can't be bothered looking for the direct quote) was about the $.99 fee for a piece of music from the iTunes Store being worth it to most users because it saved them the hassle of searching for and verifying the quality of the right file on a P2P network. It might take someone an hour to find useable versions of three songs on Limewire, but it?ll cost $3 to get them from iTunes immediately. Most people like to think that their time is worth more than $3 an hour, so the iTunes Store looks like a pretty good option in terms of cost vs opportunity cost.
This - coupled with sentiments like those expressed at the start of this thread - is why I believe people will pay the creators / artists (and the curators / selectors) of good quality content (both in the artistic sense and in terms of usability) that they can access quickly and easily.
...
The Business School 101 analogy about the disruptive nature of new technology revolves around buggy whip manufacturers. There was a time when everyone drove around in horse drawn buggies and buggy whip manufacturers had a nice stable business making sticks for people to hit the horses with. Then people started driving around in cars and buggy whip manufacturers found that they no longer had a market for their product. Those who didn?t change their business and start making fishing-rods soon no longer had a business. Should cars have been made illegal to protect the moribund buggy whip industry?
Artists don't get any money from allofmp3.com. It's a nice service, but it's really no different from regular piracy.
The law doesn't bother me. I know I break the law when I pirate music, that's not my concern. My only concern is whether or not the artist is compensated.
ijerry:
Music piracy deprives no one of property as would shoe theft. Do not start this argument, you will lose.
Music pirates violate copyrights, they do not steal items. It is a night and day difference.
Just because you can't see what you have stole does not mean it is not stealing. That is irrational thought. By your accounts then I could also do software, etc. Knowing full well that the only reason that it is available in digital format in the first place is because of those that spent the money made it so. The fact that revenue is taken away by you pirating is theft of money that can and is calculated, so yes it does indeed deprive several people of property any way you try to rationalize it does not make it a legitimate argument. You steal, you can live with that, thankfully some of us don't play with grey areas when "feeling" out our character.
I'll let our mutual friend Morrissey answer for me:
I decree today that life is simply taking and not giving/England is mine and it owes me a living/ask me why and I'll spit in your eye.
I'm afraid I don't have much of an answer for you, actually. It's difficult to expound on feelings in that way. I suppose I don't think that I am depriving anyone of anything. That and everything else I've said above.
I am not arguing that people shouldn't feel guilty for pirating music. That's up to them.
Neither am I arguing that I am owed something.
It's an interesting subject to me. Because it exploded. It's huge. And the doom drums sounded. And what really happened? Anything? It makes you think. It's fascinating. Definitely more complex than "OMG u steel SHOEZ!"
People want to be able to download high-quality music for instant gratification. Are they wrong for wanting that?
People want to spend less than they did on CDs because they are getting nothing physical. Are they wrong for wanting that?
Give me allofmp3.com with artist royalties and I throw away my piracy apps tomorrow, guaranteed. It isn't that I don't want to pay, it's that I want it how I want it and piracy is the only way for me to get it (to me allofmp3 is piracy on a moral level). I want -aps rips and I want to download them straight to my computer and do whatever the hell I want to own those files just as I would with tracks ripped from CD. I might be an asshole for it, but that's what I want.
I don't think I'm just intellectualizing anti-social behaviors. Maybe I am, but I don't think so. I think there's something else going on.
Some questions for everyone to think about:
If someone is going to have the same amount of legally acquired music, is there a moral difference between having 10 or 10,000 pirated songs?
What have you pirated and why is that more acceptable than what someone else has?
ijerry:
Quote:
By your accounts then I could also do software, etc. Knowing full well that the only reason that it is available in digital format in the first place is because of those that spent the money made it so.
You could pirate software, yes, but that would depend on your own moral compass.
Is there a moral difference between cracking a $15 shareware app and cracking a $500 graphics package?
Quote:
The fact that revenue is taken away by you pirating is theft of money that can and is calculated, so yes it does indeed deprive several people of property any way you try to rationalize it does not make it a legitimate argument.
How can revenue be taken away when I pirate something I never had any intention of buying?
Quote:
You steal, you can live with that, thankfully some of us don't play with grey areas when "feeling" out our character.
Yeah, they just deny it, as if pretending you don't do it makes you better than those who admit it and are willing to talk about it.
Thats a pretty heft assumption you make of me there Groverat, one which really points the finger without knowing much about me. To say I have never stole is a lie, but to say that I sit on judgement on you while doing the exact same thing is also a lie. So, lets not make assumptions about one another Mkay!
with regards to the $15 app as opposed to the $500 app, to me they are the same, stealing, while the monetary value is different, so should be the fine, that is the only way I view them as different. For others, it may be different.
Lastly, you steal, you admit it. That is fine, it is your choice. You come out publicly with something that some find wrong and call you out on it and you don't like it then guess what? You probably should have kept it to yourself, that is the nature of public announcements such as this one, which I am sure a moderator such as yourself fully understands. The fact that you tried to justify your theft is where I have the problem, not the fact that you openly admit it. You steal, you steal, so what? Doesn't affect me any. I really don't care what you do to be honest. If I make the choice to steal something then I went through my evaluations morally and ethically and they didn't stop me. hey, I am human, but I don't try to rationalize it and play with a grey area in order to make myself feel better. And that is my point all along.
To say I have never stole is a lie, but to say that I sit on judgement on you while doing the exact same thing is also a lie.
I never said "the exact same thing", I said "Yeah, they just deny it, as if pretending you don't do it makes you better than those who admit it and are willing to talk about it."
You admit to having "stolen" in the past. And chances are you have some copyrighted material that you shouldn't have somewhere on your computer or in your house.
I know a lot of people who moralize about this stuff but have their own stashes.
(One guy I know gets angry when the subject is broached but he plays poker online for money and rips all his Netflix DVDs. )
I'm not even saying that if someone does it they shouldn't be allowed to say it's wrong, I would just like for people to discuss the topic without throwing around emotional handgrenades.
Quote:
You come out publicly with something that some find wrong and call you out on it and you don't like it then guess what? You probably should have kept it to yourself, that is the nature of public announcements such as this one, which I am sure a moderator such as yourself fully understands.
Of course I understand it. Do you really think I started this thread thinking everyone would cheer me on? Of course not. I am not an idiot. I am more than happy to engage in a discussion, even if that discussion reflects negatively on me. I welcome discussion, that's the whole point.
I wonder why something that nearly everyone does is such a taboo. Are we not adults here?
Quote:
The fact that you tried to justify your theft is where I have the problem, not the fact that you openly admit it.
In what ways have I "tried to justify" what I do? Be specific and quote me because this is an important point.
I have not said that pirating music is the right thing to do.
I have said it is not theft, which it isn't. (And before you respond look up the definition of theft, what it means legally.)
I have not said that it is acceptable to deprive someone of income or property.
Quote:
If I make the choice to steal something then I went through my evaluations morally and ethically and they didn't stop me. hey, I am human, but I don't try to rationalize it and play with a grey area in order to make myself feel better. And that is my point all along.
But you do try to make yourself feel better. Look at your very first post in the thread. You admit that you have stolen in the past and I think it is reasonable to assume that you have violated some copyright law in the recent past. Yet re-read your first post. That is all about making you feel better about yourself. That's the only reason you would have such an angry emotional reaction to start off with.
There are few people on this earth more willing to admit they were/are wrong than me, trust me. I'm (obviously) honest to a fault.
Groverat thanks for the answer. Personally I try not to pirate, but that's not to say I never make a cd for my friends with a bunch of music on it. I think I feel differently because I create music and dream of a day that I might actually be able to make a few bucks off of it and also because I work in an industry that relies on copyright. I also know a couple of people who really depend on their royalty checks to get by and feel like these people deserve their money.
I would also like to point out that I'm not trying to judge anyone, we all have to make our own decisions. Oh, and the whole "record companies make all the money anyway" thing is a little bit misleading. While musicians do not make much if anything off of the sale of the record the songwriters make a great deal and you are really depriving these people of their income if you pirate a song.
Musicians can't really make a living through record sales, anyway, which is why the musicians I know either get Emmys doing TV scores, start tech companies or distribution/import companies, the latter of which won't make you rich, either. Then they, in turn, employ the starving musicians.
Hey, I was listening to that Fiona Apple record on my iPod earlier today!
And this is all the justification I need for not wanting to support record companies:
Quote:
But here's where it gets funky. "Extraordinary Machine" is an album that Apple finished over two years ago, but which was quickly shelved by the sad corporate drones over at Sony because they didn't "hear a single" and because it doesn't sound exactly like Norah Jones and because they're, well, corporate drones. They dictate cultural tastes based on relatively narrow and often deeply ignorant criteria related to marketing and money and fear of the new and the different. This is what they do.
trick fall:
Quote:
Originally posted by trick fall
While musicians do not make much if anything off of the sale of the record the songwriters make a great deal and you are really depriving these people of their income if you pirate a song.
Are you talking about people who write songs and then singers who sing those songs?
If I have anything like that I'll delete it immediately. Not because I feel guilty for the songwriter's lack of income, but because I generally do not like music not performed by the songwriter. I think the only one I have on here is a Frank Sinatra CD I bought years ago. I'm not into "singers".
Not to badger you, but I'd be interested to hear your answer to some of the food-for-thought questions I asked.
This one, specifically:
If someone is going to have the same amount of legally acquired music, is there a moral difference between having 10 or 10,000 pirated songs?
The people that really get screwed from the downloading are not the artists but the labels. They're the ones that lose the money. Artists make a pittance on record sales, even the double platinum whatever super sellers still don't end up with all that much cash in their pockets.
Almost a defiant encouragement for downloading to me. I'm pro-artist, anti-label, but I've also worked for record companies and know how evil they can be.
Are you talking about people who write songs and then singers who sing those songs?
No I'm not. There are two kinds of royalties paid when a record is sold. There are royalties paid for the performance and royalties paid for the publishing. So when you buy that Paul Westerberg album he's getting a few pennies for his performance and a few pennies for writing the song. Publishing contracts are separate from recording contracts. The reason musicians don't really make money off of the performance royalties is because the record companies recoup all of their expenses before the musicians see a dime. The publisher takes an agreed percentage of the publishing royalties and recoups whatever money they advance the artist. This is one of the reasons there are bands where everyone is broke except for the guy who writes the tunes.
Quote:
If someone is going to have the same amount of legally acquired music, is there a moral difference between having 10 or 10,000 pirated songs?
That's a good question and I don't know that I really have an answer for it. I will say that I think it is very hypothetical. I would find it hard to believe that someone would have 10k pirated songs and wouldn't have anything in their collection that they would've bought if it was unavailable by other means.
The fact is that there is probably no more piracy of music that would have been purchased than there was back in the age of tapes. The main difference is that there is more sharing of long tail works, thus increasing exposure for those artists, and more sharing of music that would normally never have been purchased. Add to that the fact that the trading can actually be observed (with tapes it happened in decentralized private situations), and people have been fooled into believing myths.
Here's my situation:
When I was a teenager I had a huge tape collection. The vast majority of it was dubbed because you couldn't get it anywhere and the independent shops (there were a whole lot more of them pre-ballbuster music) tended to be specialized. In fact, everyone I knew had a huge collection of dubbed tapes no matter what they were into.
Today, I don't download mp3s because I'm too lazy to (or busy, depending on how you look at it). If I want a disposable track I buy it off iTMS, listen to it 3 times and forget about it. If I want it for longer, I either order the CD off of amazon or have the girl pick it up on lunch. It then gets ripped at a high bitrate, put on the ipod and the CD gets lost. Both situations are very rare.
However, a HUGE part of my rather substantial mp3 collection (the vast, vast majority of it, actually), comes from friends just like my tape collection did. The difference is that these days I have friends that run big distribution operations or own labels and, therefore, have massive collections that I go through phases of ripping.
Like when I was a teenager, virtually none of this music would I have purchased, not least of the reasons being that I didn't know it existed or that I liked it until I ripped it. But a natural consequence of me ripping a great CD from someone is that if I like it enough, I go out of my way to get the next album when it comes out, and because I'm too lazy (or busy) to download it, I buy it.
The idea that file sharing hurts musicians is a myth and the only thing that file sharing hurts with labels is their broken business models, models that actually could be adapted to make even more money off of long tail sales.
Tape collections, that reminds me -- I used to have a HUGE collection of cassets (legal) but as anyone who has been there knows, tapes "dissapear", depending on how many parties you tend to host in a given month.
I am of the opinion that if you ever owned a legal copy of an artist's work, on any media, you are entitled to get it by hook or by crook.
I pirate . . . and from extremely rare and hard to find stuff . . . I don't feel a bit guilty because, quite simply, if I didn't pirate I simply wouldn't be listening to the music at all !!
. . . . I cannot afford CDs AT ALL!!
and would simply never buy a new CD, with the exeption of an occasional one now and then . . . and with those that I truly love and must have, then I will buy them (Camper Van Beethoven's new CD which I bought after allready pirate-ing anyway, or HEAD, by the Monkees) . . . because I like the Object of the case/with art etc . . .
I pirate . . . and from extremely rare and hard to find stuff . . . I don't feel a bit guilty because, quite simply, if I didn't pirate I simply wouldn't be listening to the music at all !!
There's plenty of places on the web to get free music by people who choose to give their music away.
Quote:
I cannot afford CDs AT ALL!!
I can't afford a lot of things I'd like to have. Should I just take them?
But the extremely rare stuff, the stuff that I usually listen to, the artist would probably be geting some money if I managed to hunt down a distributor . . . but chances are they are the sort of artist that would share thier music anyway . . . I'm talking obscure here: like Phil Niblock, The Tape Beatles, Green Pot Blue Pot, Oswald, etc etc . . . these people aren't counting on sales to get them by . . . if they were they would be making different music entirely . . . Matmos
Better that I listen to them and spread the word, get the meme out there, than not even consider buying or not even finding out who they are or what they are all about . . . which would be the case if I had to purchase everything that I listened to.
Comments
What I reckon we will soon see (and currently do see in a nascent form with stuff like mp3 blogs and Podcasts) is a new kind of intermediary. Media selectors who will, for a fee, sift through the crud and point consumers in the direction of digital content (music, images, video) being distributed directly by artists. DRM will probably continue to exist, but will either be increasingly shunned or so easily circumvented that it too eventually falls by the wayside.
One of the truest things that Steve Jobs has said (and I'm paraphrasing here cause I can't be bothered looking for the direct quote) was about the $.99 fee for a piece of music from the iTunes Store being worth it to most users because it saved them the hassle of searching for and verifying the quality of the right file on a P2P network. It might take someone an hour to find useable versions of three songs on Limewire, but it?ll cost $3 to get them from iTunes immediately. Most people like to think that their time is worth more than $3 an hour, so the iTunes Store looks like a pretty good option in terms of cost vs opportunity cost.
This - coupled with sentiments like those expressed at the start of this thread - is why I believe people will pay the creators / artists (and the curators / selectors) of good quality content (both in the artistic sense and in terms of usability) that they can access quickly and easily.
...
The Business School 101 analogy about the disruptive nature of new technology revolves around buggy whip manufacturers. There was a time when everyone drove around in horse drawn buggies and buggy whip manufacturers had a nice stable business making sticks for people to hit the horses with. Then people started driving around in cars and buggy whip manufacturers found that they no longer had a market for their product. Those who didn?t change their business and start making fishing-rods soon no longer had a business. Should cars have been made illegal to protect the moribund buggy whip industry?
Originally posted by groverat
rws:
Artists don't get any money from allofmp3.com. It's a nice service, but it's really no different from regular piracy.
The law doesn't bother me. I know I break the law when I pirate music, that's not my concern. My only concern is whether or not the artist is compensated.
ijerry:
Music piracy deprives no one of property as would shoe theft. Do not start this argument, you will lose.
Music pirates violate copyrights, they do not steal items. It is a night and day difference.
Just because you can't see what you have stole does not mean it is not stealing. That is irrational thought. By your accounts then I could also do software, etc. Knowing full well that the only reason that it is available in digital format in the first place is because of those that spent the money made it so. The fact that revenue is taken away by you pirating is theft of money that can and is calculated, so yes it does indeed deprive several people of property any way you try to rationalize it does not make it a legitimate argument. You steal, you can live with that, thankfully some of us don't play with grey areas when "feeling" out our character.
May I ask why you don't fell guilty?
I'll let our mutual friend Morrissey answer for me:
I decree today that life is simply taking and not giving/England is mine and it owes me a living/ask me why and I'll spit in your eye.
I'm afraid I don't have much of an answer for you, actually. It's difficult to expound on feelings in that way. I suppose I don't think that I am depriving anyone of anything. That and everything else I've said above.
I am not arguing that people shouldn't feel guilty for pirating music. That's up to them.
Neither am I arguing that I am owed something.
It's an interesting subject to me. Because it exploded. It's huge. And the doom drums sounded. And what really happened? Anything? It makes you think. It's fascinating. Definitely more complex than "OMG u steel SHOEZ!"
People want to be able to download high-quality music for instant gratification. Are they wrong for wanting that?
People want to spend less than they did on CDs because they are getting nothing physical. Are they wrong for wanting that?
Give me allofmp3.com with artist royalties and I throw away my piracy apps tomorrow, guaranteed. It isn't that I don't want to pay, it's that I want it how I want it and piracy is the only way for me to get it (to me allofmp3 is piracy on a moral level). I want -aps rips and I want to download them straight to my computer and do whatever the hell I want to own those files just as I would with tracks ripped from CD. I might be an asshole for it, but that's what I want.
I don't think I'm just intellectualizing anti-social behaviors. Maybe I am, but I don't think so. I think there's something else going on.
Some questions for everyone to think about:
If someone is going to have the same amount of legally acquired music, is there a moral difference between having 10 or 10,000 pirated songs?
What have you pirated and why is that more acceptable than what someone else has?
ijerry:
By your accounts then I could also do software, etc. Knowing full well that the only reason that it is available in digital format in the first place is because of those that spent the money made it so.
You could pirate software, yes, but that would depend on your own moral compass.
Is there a moral difference between cracking a $15 shareware app and cracking a $500 graphics package?
The fact that revenue is taken away by you pirating is theft of money that can and is calculated, so yes it does indeed deprive several people of property any way you try to rationalize it does not make it a legitimate argument.
How can revenue be taken away when I pirate something I never had any intention of buying?
You steal, you can live with that, thankfully some of us don't play with grey areas when "feeling" out our character.
Yeah, they just deny it, as if pretending you don't do it makes you better than those who admit it and are willing to talk about it.
with regards to the $15 app as opposed to the $500 app, to me they are the same, stealing, while the monetary value is different, so should be the fine, that is the only way I view them as different. For others, it may be different.
Lastly, you steal, you admit it. That is fine, it is your choice. You come out publicly with something that some find wrong and call you out on it and you don't like it then guess what? You probably should have kept it to yourself, that is the nature of public announcements such as this one, which I am sure a moderator such as yourself fully understands. The fact that you tried to justify your theft is where I have the problem, not the fact that you openly admit it. You steal, you steal, so what? Doesn't affect me any. I really don't care what you do to be honest. If I make the choice to steal something then I went through my evaluations morally and ethically and they didn't stop me. hey, I am human, but I don't try to rationalize it and play with a grey area in order to make myself feel better. And that is my point all along.
To say I have never stole is a lie, but to say that I sit on judgement on you while doing the exact same thing is also a lie.
I never said "the exact same thing", I said "Yeah, they just deny it, as if pretending you don't do it makes you better than those who admit it and are willing to talk about it."
You admit to having "stolen" in the past. And chances are you have some copyrighted material that you shouldn't have somewhere on your computer or in your house.
I know a lot of people who moralize about this stuff but have their own stashes.
(One guy I know gets angry when the subject is broached but he plays poker online for money and rips all his Netflix DVDs.
I'm not even saying that if someone does it they shouldn't be allowed to say it's wrong, I would just like for people to discuss the topic without throwing around emotional handgrenades.
You come out publicly with something that some find wrong and call you out on it and you don't like it then guess what? You probably should have kept it to yourself, that is the nature of public announcements such as this one, which I am sure a moderator such as yourself fully understands.
Of course I understand it. Do you really think I started this thread thinking everyone would cheer me on? Of course not. I am not an idiot. I am more than happy to engage in a discussion, even if that discussion reflects negatively on me. I welcome discussion, that's the whole point.
I wonder why something that nearly everyone does is such a taboo. Are we not adults here?
The fact that you tried to justify your theft is where I have the problem, not the fact that you openly admit it.
In what ways have I "tried to justify" what I do? Be specific and quote me because this is an important point.
I have not said that pirating music is the right thing to do.
I have said it is not theft, which it isn't. (And before you respond look up the definition of theft, what it means legally.)
I have not said that it is acceptable to deprive someone of income or property.
If I make the choice to steal something then I went through my evaluations morally and ethically and they didn't stop me. hey, I am human, but I don't try to rationalize it and play with a grey area in order to make myself feel better. And that is my point all along.
But you do try to make yourself feel better. Look at your very first post in the thread. You admit that you have stolen in the past and I think it is reasonable to assume that you have violated some copyright law in the recent past. Yet re-read your first post. That is all about making you feel better about yourself. That's the only reason you would have such an angry emotional reaction to start off with.
There are few people on this earth more willing to admit they were/are wrong than me, trust me. I'm (obviously) honest to a fault.
Darren Hill
Ten Pin Management
176 Park Avenue
Warwick, RI 02889
He's good people.
Also, is there a cooler record label than Anti?
Tom Waits
Neko Case
Eddie Izzard
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Marianne Faithfull
Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros
Merle Haggard
Jolie Holland
It's like they said "Hey what would Adam like? Because we should just do that."
So is Velour.
I would also like to point out that I'm not trying to judge anyone, we all have to make our own decisions. Oh, and the whole "record companies make all the money anyway" thing is a little bit misleading. While musicians do not make much if anything off of the sale of the record the songwriters make a great deal and you are really depriving these people of their income if you pirate a song.
Originally posted by groverat
Blaming failure on piracy is the Hot Thing.
no kidding
Originally posted by ijerry
Just because you can't see what you have stole does not mean it is not stealing.
But the fact that it's copyright infringement means it's not stealing.
And this is all the justification I need for not wanting to support record companies:
But here's where it gets funky. "Extraordinary Machine" is an album that Apple finished over two years ago, but which was quickly shelved by the sad corporate drones over at Sony because they didn't "hear a single" and because it doesn't sound exactly like Norah Jones and because they're, well, corporate drones. They dictate cultural tastes based on relatively narrow and often deeply ignorant criteria related to marketing and money and fear of the new and the different. This is what they do.
trick fall:
Originally posted by trick fall
While musicians do not make much if anything off of the sale of the record the songwriters make a great deal and you are really depriving these people of their income if you pirate a song.
Are you talking about people who write songs and then singers who sing those songs?
If I have anything like that I'll delete it immediately. Not because I feel guilty for the songwriter's lack of income, but because I generally do not like music not performed by the songwriter. I think the only one I have on here is a Frank Sinatra CD I bought years ago. I'm not into "singers".
Not to badger you, but I'd be interested to hear your answer to some of the food-for-thought questions I asked.
This one, specifically:
If someone is going to have the same amount of legally acquired music, is there a moral difference between having 10 or 10,000 pirated songs?
Originally posted by Wrong Robot
The people that really get screwed from the downloading are not the artists but the labels. They're the ones that lose the money. Artists make a pittance on record sales, even the double platinum whatever super sellers still don't end up with all that much cash in their pockets.
Almost a defiant encouragement for downloading to me. I'm pro-artist, anti-label, but I've also worked for record companies and know how evil they can be.
I still buy CDs and software though.
Are you talking about people who write songs and then singers who sing those songs?
No I'm not. There are two kinds of royalties paid when a record is sold. There are royalties paid for the performance and royalties paid for the publishing. So when you buy that Paul Westerberg album he's getting a few pennies for his performance and a few pennies for writing the song. Publishing contracts are separate from recording contracts. The reason musicians don't really make money off of the performance royalties is because the record companies recoup all of their expenses before the musicians see a dime. The publisher takes an agreed percentage of the publishing royalties and recoups whatever money they advance the artist. This is one of the reasons there are bands where everyone is broke except for the guy who writes the tunes.
If someone is going to have the same amount of legally acquired music, is there a moral difference between having 10 or 10,000 pirated songs?
That's a good question and I don't know that I really have an answer for it. I will say that I think it is very hypothetical. I would find it hard to believe that someone would have 10k pirated songs and wouldn't have anything in their collection that they would've bought if it was unavailable by other means.
Here's my situation:
When I was a teenager I had a huge tape collection. The vast majority of it was dubbed because you couldn't get it anywhere and the independent shops (there were a whole lot more of them pre-ballbuster music) tended to be specialized. In fact, everyone I knew had a huge collection of dubbed tapes no matter what they were into.
Today, I don't download mp3s because I'm too lazy to (or busy, depending on how you look at it). If I want a disposable track I buy it off iTMS, listen to it 3 times and forget about it. If I want it for longer, I either order the CD off of amazon or have the girl pick it up on lunch. It then gets ripped at a high bitrate, put on the ipod and the CD gets lost. Both situations are very rare.
However, a HUGE part of my rather substantial mp3 collection (the vast, vast majority of it, actually), comes from friends just like my tape collection did. The difference is that these days I have friends that run big distribution operations or own labels and, therefore, have massive collections that I go through phases of ripping.
Like when I was a teenager, virtually none of this music would I have purchased, not least of the reasons being that I didn't know it existed or that I liked it until I ripped it. But a natural consequence of me ripping a great CD from someone is that if I like it enough, I go out of my way to get the next album when it comes out, and because I'm too lazy (or busy) to download it, I buy it.
The idea that file sharing hurts musicians is a myth and the only thing that file sharing hurts with labels is their broken business models, models that actually could be adapted to make even more money off of long tail sales.
I am of the opinion that if you ever owned a legal copy of an artist's work, on any media, you are entitled to get it by hook or by crook.
Originally posted by trick fall
May I ask why you don't fell guilty?
I pirate . . . and from extremely rare and hard to find stuff . . . I don't feel a bit guilty because, quite simply, if I didn't pirate I simply wouldn't be listening to the music at all !!
. . . . I cannot afford CDs AT ALL!!
and would simply never buy a new CD, with the exeption of an occasional one now and then . . . and with those that I truly love and must have, then I will buy them (Camper Van Beethoven's new CD which I bought after allready pirate-ing anyway, or HEAD, by the Monkees) . . . because I like the Object of the case/with art etc . . .
I pirate . . . and from extremely rare and hard to find stuff . . . I don't feel a bit guilty because, quite simply, if I didn't pirate I simply wouldn't be listening to the music at all !!
There's plenty of places on the web to get free music by people who choose to give their music away.
I cannot afford CDs AT ALL!!
I can't afford a lot of things I'd like to have. Should I just take them?
Better that I listen to them and spread the word, get the meme out there, than not even consider buying or not even finding out who they are or what they are all about . . . which would be the case if I had to purchase everything that I listened to.