"This is an ass sandwich and it is made of ass and poo."
Touche.
My goal was not to judge you or call you stupid or anything, I was just trying to point out that the "invisible hand" is probably guiding your decisions, as well as your own idea of morality.
I find people usually act first, and justify later. I thought maybe throwing some economics into the mix would inspire some thought, though I didn't expect or have any intention of changing any minds.
In my opinion as a Libertarian, pirating music should be legal. Distributing music, as long as a license agreement is printed planely on the product, should be prosecuted.
I don't think others should be held responsible for violating civil agreements that they had never agreed to. This applies to NDA's and other things as well.
I also don't agree with prosecuting over breaking DRM--I don't think you can sign away your right to property, just your right to copy and distribute it.
Copyfight's Alan Wexelblat comments on this and cites a japanese study that didn't find any negative effect on CD sales due to p2p and, in fact, that using p2p may increase CD purchases. And that's not the only study to find the same thing.
In my opinion as a Libertarian, pirating music should be legal. Distributing music, as long as a license agreement is printed planely on the product, should be prosecuted.
Hm.. if by "pirating" you mean "giving it for others to copy" then this is totally unenforceable. You might also mean only the ones who do that and ask money for it... but the market for that will die down anyway, people will just P2P, period. They can only make money in copyright infringment because people in poor countries don't have good net connections.
And when the suits send over these hipster A & R guys, they are lulled into a false sense of security. It's all very devious and predatory.
If I thought the suits were really giving the artists a fair shake I would have no guilt in purchasing legally. I still do purchase CDs occasionally, but I always feel a twinge of guilt in knowing the majority of it is going to the suits, and the big star musician really doesn't know how much shit they are in.
This was the best I've heard so far. You realize that everytime an artist signs with a record label, they do so willingly, and with full appreciation for the fact that they are giving up certain rights? If the artists don't have a problem with it, why do you?
Hm.. if by "pirating" you mean "giving it for others to copy" then this is totally unenforceable.
Just because it's impractical doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do. Certain things must be sacrificed for liberty, and if that means killing the record industry, then so be it.
People shouldn't have to give up their personal rights for ANY business, let alone this one.
This was the best I've heard so far. You realize that everytime an artist signs with a record label, they do so willingly, and with full appreciation for the fact that they are giving up certain rights? If the artists don't have a problem with it, why do you?
California contract law has a "Seven-Year Statute" that limits to seven years the length of time workers can be held to service contracts. In 1987, the music industry succeeded in having recording contracts exempted from the law.
Quote:
The contract law exemption is "unconstitutional because it singles out the record industry," according to Don Engel, attorney for The Dixie Chicks.
Quote:
Country diva LeAnn Rimes testified that she was only 12 years old when she signed a contract with Nashville's Curb Records. Now 19, she will be 35 before she fulfills the contract?if ever, she claimed. "At 12, I didn't understand everything in my contract," she commented. "All I knew is that I really wanted to sing." Her contract also spells out where she can live: her choice of Texas or Tennessee.
Tell me that isn't predatory. Tell me a 12 year old girl knows what her rights are.
Tell me that isn't predatory. Tell me a 12 year old girl knows what her rights are.
12 year olds can't sign contracts by themselves in the US... can they?
I am generally against all regulation, but this is heavy stuff. There is no way kids can be held responsible for contracts "they make". Now if her parents lack common sense, they can make stupid contracts but obviously those should cease to exist once she is an adult. Otherwise everyone could swamp their kid in contracts that totally dictated their life one way or another, no?
And WTF is up with the "where to live" clause Why does the company even care? Who signs such a draconian agreement?
12 year olds can't sign contracts by themselves in the US... can they?
I am generally against all regulation, but this is heavy stuff. There is no way kids can be held responsible for contracts "they make". Now if her parents lack common sense, they can make stupid contracts but obviously those should cease to exist once she is an adult. Otherwise everyone could swamp their kid in contracts that totally dictated their life one way or another, no?
And WTF is up with the "where to live" clause Why does the company even care? Who signs such a draconian agreement?
She emancipated herself before she turned 18, but after her parents had screwed up her financial situation.
When her parents signed the contract, yes it did dictate her life. Where it stands after emancipation, I don't know.
The fact is that the major labels do take advantage of struggling artists. I don't see how any of you can deny this.
As for how consumers get screwed, have ever heard of the MAP scheme the labels cooked up with retailers?
Just to play devils advocate for a bit (side stepping the discussion about how majors screw artists in any and all orifices (orifi?)): why should musicians (or writers or artists or actors or film-makers) expect to make millions from their work anyway? Shouldn't, say, a salary in the region of $100,000 be sufficient (particularly when you take into account that they are doing something they love)?
why should musicians expect to make millions from their work anyway?
Very good point since...
Quote:
a salary in the region of $100,000
...few musicians make anything near this amount.
Music doesn't pay. Even if you are at the top of your field you aren't making close to what people at the same level of other fields (law, medicine, software, business) are making. If you are a mediocre musician, you'd be lucky to get make what a starting software developer makes. Looking at it another way, you can be a mediocre physician making more (sometimes much more) than a top musician. You'd be surprised how little musicians you've heard of make in a year. And when musicians actually do make money, it's rarely from record sales.
Just to play devils advocate for a bit (side stepping the discussion about how majors screw artists in any and all orifices (orifi?)): why should musicians (or writers or artists or actors or film-makers) expect to make millions from their work anyway? Shouldn't, say, a salary in the region of $100,000 be sufficient (particularly when you take into account that they are doing something they love)?
Exactly what I'm saying. Record companies selling records is a relatively recent thing. Before, musicians would make money from concerts they advertised on radio and even before that, word of mouth.
I don't feel sorry for musicians at all. If you've got something that a big company wants, you sure as shit better get a lawyer on that contract.
If you don't, it's hard to have sympathy for you.
In addition, who's to say artists don't make more from the process. After all, the record companies cross-market their product through MTV, CNN, ABC, VH-1, MTV2, and CBS.
So what if the artists only make 5¢ off each record? Perhaps they sold 50,000 times what they would've otherwise! Take crappy bands like Insane Clown Posse. What would they have sold without the RIAA? 200, 300 albums? Well they sold something like a half million, so who's the loser here?
Not only that, but the record companies are dying. TIMEWARNER (formally AOLTIMEWARNER) has scaled back their music division by something on the order of 40%. If it's so damn profitable to be these big evil companies, why the hell are they dying??
The answer is that these companies are mismanaged and their margins are super slim to begin with. Back in the old days, they'd only take bands that were semi-popular, now they'll take anything, and they're over extended as a result.
From an economics standpoint, piracy probably couldn't help sales. It's a nice theory that maybe sampling music would widen the market, but I highly doubt that anyone would go out and buy a CD when they could get it for free online.
Not only that, but listen to all the anti-record company sentiment just in this thread! Like anyone here is going to support the "evil" record companies by buying music instead of pirating? Yeah right.
In other cultures, MAYBE, but in this one, we demonize those who stand in the way of our goals. The college kids say their goal is to pirate music, so therefore the RIAA must be evil, because they're trying to stop them.
How many songs were downloaded off napster in that peak week when they were all over the media? I heard somewhere around a half billion a day. If even a fraction of those sales had the opportunity cost of a CD or two, that would mean millions in losses for these "evil" companies.
There are two sides to every story, if you go around hating "them" you're mearly making yourself unsuitable to accurately gauge the situation. Emotion in politics only serves the purposes of those who wish to control you. If you want to be a kool-aid drinker and hate the RIAA, that's fine, but people will take you much more seriously if you stood back and tried to spend a moment in their shoes.
It's childish to attempt to reduce the anti-RIAA argument to "they don't want me to steal music so I don't like them". I couldn't really take your post seriously with that kind of characterization coursing through it.
I posted this before but it bears repeating because it is true:
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.
This is what it boils down to. There's no need to buy CDs anymore. If the RIAA doesn't want to realize this I am happy to see them fail.
This is what I (we) want:
- Downloadable high-quality tracks
- Cheaper than CD prices ($0.10/MB)
- No copy protection (or at least an extremely lax method that's a snap to strip)
Make this available and people will pay. Keep it away from us and we'll just get 2 out of 3.
why should musicians (or writers or artists or actors or film-makers) expect to make millions from their work anyway?
And if their sales are in the hundreds of millions, why shouldn't they expect it? Sure many argue is that many artists wouldn't get the exposure w/o major labels, or that it is the company taking the financial risk. However, without the artist's vision there would be no music, no product. And the percent that a company spends on failed new artists is a smaller percentage risk than the company is imposing on artists. Plus, they recoup their losses from the successful ones and move on. All the while the new successful artist, who often is an idealist is fucked. If they survive the business to their next contract they may be wiser. But why shouldn't artists demand more from the majors, especially now that many (not all) know what kind of game it is. The ones with the clout take the labels to court, I hope they win. It will make it better for the newcomers.
BTW anyone realize that the legal status of P2P networks is being looked at in U.S. federal court today?
She emancipated herself before she turned 18, but after her parents had screwed up her financial situation.
When you say screwed, do you mean below-zero? Again, if that is possible, it's the stupidest thing ever - legal slave trade for recording child artists.
Kids should not be able to have debt in their name no matter what.
Now if Rimes was at ground zero both economically and contract-wise after turning adult, I'd probably be okay with that. She would have a chance, and any screwup she made would be her own. Nothing would prevent her from doing other work until she got a reasonable contract.
Aren't there any recording companies that do reasonable, short-term contracts? One would expect them to outcompete the unreasonable ones.
When you say screwed, do you mean below-zero? Again, if that is possible, it's the stupidest thing ever - legal slave trade for recording child artists.
Kids should not be able to have debt in their name no matter what.
Now if Rimes was at ground zero both economically and contract-wise after turning adult, I'd probably be okay with that. She would have a chance, and any screwup she made would be her own. Nothing would prevent her from doing other work until she got a reasonable contract.
Aren't there any recording companies that do reasonable, short-term contracts? One would expect them to outcompete the unreasonable ones.
I don't know. I'm not privy to her financial details only what I saw in news reports of her emancipation. What I remember is that financial mis-management was one of the problems cited.
As for minors and debt. I agree to a degree. However, it seems that our credit institutions aren't up to snuff on this matter. Teens in high-school are a huge target for identity theives, b/c even though they don't have a credit history yet, most haven't screwed it up yet either. But this is off topic.
BTW anyone realize that the legal status of P2P networks is being looked at in U.S. federal court today?
I figured everyone did and that was why this was such a hot topic \
If anyone still wonders why these companies hate p2p, this from cory doctorow sums it up:
Quote:
In Hollywood, your ability to make a movie depends on the approval of a few power-brokers who have signing authority over the two-hundred-million-dollar budgets for making films. As far as Hollywood is concerned, this is a feature, not a bug. Two weeks ago, I heard the VP of Technology for Warners give a presentation in Dublin on the need to adopt DRM for digital TV, and his money-shot, his big convincer of a slide went like this:
"With advances in processing power, storage capacity and broadband access... EVERYBODY BECOMES A BROADCASTER!"
Heaven forfend.
These companies are very open about their intention to keep control away from content creators and content consumers, and the 'artists' that back them in this effort are completely clueless.
With p2p, artists can make more money by reducing the need for a label to give them exposure. In the case of Fiona Apple, hype has been generated around the album despite the label trying to shelve it.
And it's not like there is no role for distributers. People will still buy physical albums -- they like them. The Fiona Apple case also shows us that consumers *demand* physical media. Hell, people still buy vinyl. And for downloads, one of the things that makes the iTMS so great is that it's more convenient and full-featured than any p2p, so people like me pay to use it because to me it's worth it not to have to search for a copy that may or may not be any good.
History shows that progress is all about old models dying and new, more efficient and more profitable ones taking their places. The only folks that lose out are those who don't adapt.
And it's not like there is no role for distributers. People will still buy physical albums -- they like them. The Fiona Apple case also shows us that consumers *demand* physical media.
Another great example of this fact is Radiohead. Before the release of their "Kid A" album, they made the entire album along with other content availble to download for free, and the album still went to number 1.
Comments
Originally posted by groverat
"This is an ass sandwich and it is made of ass and poo."
Touche.
My goal was not to judge you or call you stupid or anything, I was just trying to point out that the "invisible hand" is probably guiding your decisions, as well as your own idea of morality.
I find people usually act first, and justify later. I thought maybe throwing some economics into the mix would inspire some thought, though I didn't expect or have any intention of changing any minds.
In my opinion as a Libertarian, pirating music should be legal. Distributing music, as long as a license agreement is printed planely on the product, should be prosecuted.
I don't think others should be held responsible for violating civil agreements that they had never agreed to. This applies to NDA's and other things as well.
I also don't agree with prosecuting over breaking DRM--I don't think you can sign away your right to property, just your right to copy and distribute it.
Originally posted by slughead
In my opinion as a Libertarian, pirating music should be legal. Distributing music, as long as a license agreement is printed planely on the product, should be prosecuted.
Hm.. if by "pirating" you mean "giving it for others to copy" then this is totally unenforceable. You might also mean only the ones who do that and ask money for it... but the market for that will die down anyway, people will just P2P, period. They can only make money in copyright infringment because people in poor countries don't have good net connections.
And when the suits send over these hipster A & R guys, they are lulled into a false sense of security. It's all very devious and predatory.
If I thought the suits were really giving the artists a fair shake I would have no guilt in purchasing legally. I still do purchase CDs occasionally, but I always feel a twinge of guilt in knowing the majority of it is going to the suits, and the big star musician really doesn't know how much shit they are in.
This was the best I've heard so far. You realize that everytime an artist signs with a record label, they do so willingly, and with full appreciation for the fact that they are giving up certain rights? If the artists don't have a problem with it, why do you?
Originally posted by Gon
Hm.. if by "pirating" you mean "giving it for others to copy" then this is totally unenforceable.
Just because it's impractical doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do. Certain things must be sacrificed for liberty, and if that means killing the record industry, then so be it.
People shouldn't have to give up their personal rights for ANY business, let alone this one.
originally posted by OBJRA10
This was the best I've heard so far. You realize that everytime an artist signs with a record label, they do so willingly, and with full appreciation for the fact that they are giving up certain rights? If the artists don't have a problem with it, why do you?
Read this link http://stereophile.com/news/11133/
California contract law has a "Seven-Year Statute" that limits to seven years the length of time workers can be held to service contracts. In 1987, the music industry succeeded in having recording contracts exempted from the law.
The contract law exemption is "unconstitutional because it singles out the record industry," according to Don Engel, attorney for The Dixie Chicks.
Country diva LeAnn Rimes testified that she was only 12 years old when she signed a contract with Nashville's Curb Records. Now 19, she will be 35 before she fulfills the contract?if ever, she claimed. "At 12, I didn't understand everything in my contract," she commented. "All I knew is that I really wanted to sing." Her contract also spells out where she can live: her choice of Texas or Tennessee.
Tell me that isn't predatory. Tell me a 12 year old girl knows what her rights are.
Originally posted by LiquidR
Tell me that isn't predatory. Tell me a 12 year old girl knows what her rights are.
12 year olds can't sign contracts by themselves in the US... can they?
I am generally against all regulation, but this is heavy stuff. There is no way kids can be held responsible for contracts "they make". Now if her parents lack common sense, they can make stupid contracts but obviously those should cease to exist once she is an adult. Otherwise everyone could swamp their kid in contracts that totally dictated their life one way or another, no?
And WTF is up with the "where to live" clause
Originally posted by Gon
12 year olds can't sign contracts by themselves in the US... can they?
I am generally against all regulation, but this is heavy stuff. There is no way kids can be held responsible for contracts "they make". Now if her parents lack common sense, they can make stupid contracts but obviously those should cease to exist once she is an adult. Otherwise everyone could swamp their kid in contracts that totally dictated their life one way or another, no?
And WTF is up with the "where to live" clause
She emancipated herself before she turned 18, but after her parents had screwed up her financial situation.
When her parents signed the contract, yes it did dictate her life. Where it stands after emancipation, I don't know.
The fact is that the major labels do take advantage of struggling artists. I don't see how any of you can deny this.
As for how consumers get screwed, have ever heard of the MAP scheme the labels cooked up with retailers?
Originally posted by kneelbeforezod
why should musicians expect to make millions from their work anyway?
Very good point since...
a salary in the region of $100,000
...few musicians make anything near this amount.
Music doesn't pay. Even if you are at the top of your field you aren't making close to what people at the same level of other fields (law, medicine, software, business) are making. If you are a mediocre musician, you'd be lucky to get make what a starting software developer makes. Looking at it another way, you can be a mediocre physician making more (sometimes much more) than a top musician. You'd be surprised how little musicians you've heard of make in a year. And when musicians actually do make money, it's rarely from record sales.
Originally posted by kneelbeforezod
Just to play devils advocate for a bit (side stepping the discussion about how majors screw artists in any and all orifices (orifi?)): why should musicians (or writers or artists or actors or film-makers) expect to make millions from their work anyway? Shouldn't, say, a salary in the region of $100,000 be sufficient (particularly when you take into account that they are doing something they love)?
Exactly what I'm saying. Record companies selling records is a relatively recent thing. Before, musicians would make money from concerts they advertised on radio and even before that, word of mouth.
I don't feel sorry for musicians at all. If you've got something that a big company wants, you sure as shit better get a lawyer on that contract.
If you don't, it's hard to have sympathy for you.
In addition, who's to say artists don't make more from the process. After all, the record companies cross-market their product through MTV, CNN, ABC, VH-1, MTV2, and CBS.
So what if the artists only make 5¢ off each record? Perhaps they sold 50,000 times what they would've otherwise! Take crappy bands like Insane Clown Posse. What would they have sold without the RIAA? 200, 300 albums? Well they sold something like a half million, so who's the loser here?
Not only that, but the record companies are dying. TIMEWARNER (formally AOLTIMEWARNER) has scaled back their music division by something on the order of 40%. If it's so damn profitable to be these big evil companies, why the hell are they dying??
The answer is that these companies are mismanaged and their margins are super slim to begin with. Back in the old days, they'd only take bands that were semi-popular, now they'll take anything, and they're over extended as a result.
From an economics standpoint, piracy probably couldn't help sales. It's a nice theory that maybe sampling music would widen the market, but I highly doubt that anyone would go out and buy a CD when they could get it for free online.
Not only that, but listen to all the anti-record company sentiment just in this thread! Like anyone here is going to support the "evil" record companies by buying music instead of pirating? Yeah right.
In other cultures, MAYBE, but in this one, we demonize those who stand in the way of our goals. The college kids say their goal is to pirate music, so therefore the RIAA must be evil, because they're trying to stop them.
How many songs were downloaded off napster in that peak week when they were all over the media? I heard somewhere around a half billion a day. If even a fraction of those sales had the opportunity cost of a CD or two, that would mean millions in losses for these "evil" companies.
There are two sides to every story, if you go around hating "them" you're mearly making yourself unsuitable to accurately gauge the situation. Emotion in politics only serves the purposes of those who wish to control you. If you want to be a kool-aid drinker and hate the RIAA, that's fine, but people will take you much more seriously if you stood back and tried to spend a moment in their shoes.
Don't hate the player, hate the game
I posted this before but it bears repeating because it is true:
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.
This is what it boils down to. There's no need to buy CDs anymore. If the RIAA doesn't want to realize this I am happy to see them fail.
This is what I (we) want:
- Downloadable high-quality tracks
- Cheaper than CD prices ($0.10/MB)
- No copy protection (or at least an extremely lax method that's a snap to strip)
Make this available and people will pay. Keep it away from us and we'll just get 2 out of 3.
originally posted by kneelbeforezod
why should musicians (or writers or artists or actors or film-makers) expect to make millions from their work anyway?
And if their sales are in the hundreds of millions, why shouldn't they expect it? Sure many argue is that many artists wouldn't get the exposure w/o major labels, or that it is the company taking the financial risk. However, without the artist's vision there would be no music, no product. And the percent that a company spends on failed new artists is a smaller percentage risk than the company is imposing on artists. Plus, they recoup their losses from the successful ones and move on. All the while the new successful artist, who often is an idealist is fucked. If they survive the business to their next contract they may be wiser. But why shouldn't artists demand more from the majors, especially now that many (not all) know what kind of game it is. The ones with the clout take the labels to court, I hope they win. It will make it better for the newcomers.
BTW anyone realize that the legal status of P2P networks is being looked at in U.S. federal court today?
Originally posted by LiquidR
She emancipated herself before she turned 18, but after her parents had screwed up her financial situation.
When you say screwed, do you mean below-zero? Again, if that is possible, it's the stupidest thing ever - legal slave trade for recording child artists.
Kids should not be able to have debt in their name no matter what.
Now if Rimes was at ground zero both economically and contract-wise after turning adult, I'd probably be okay with that. She would have a chance, and any screwup she made would be her own. Nothing would prevent her from doing other work until she got a reasonable contract.
Aren't there any recording companies that do reasonable, short-term contracts? One would expect them to outcompete the unreasonable ones.
Originally posted by Gon
When you say screwed, do you mean below-zero? Again, if that is possible, it's the stupidest thing ever - legal slave trade for recording child artists.
Kids should not be able to have debt in their name no matter what.
Now if Rimes was at ground zero both economically and contract-wise after turning adult, I'd probably be okay with that. She would have a chance, and any screwup she made would be her own. Nothing would prevent her from doing other work until she got a reasonable contract.
Aren't there any recording companies that do reasonable, short-term contracts? One would expect them to outcompete the unreasonable ones.
I don't know. I'm not privy to her financial details only what I saw in news reports of her emancipation. What I remember is that financial mis-management was one of the problems cited.
As for minors and debt. I agree to a degree. However, it seems that our credit institutions aren't up to snuff on this matter. Teens in high-school are a huge target for identity theives, b/c even though they don't have a credit history yet, most haven't screwed it up yet either. But this is off topic.
Originally posted by LiquidR
BTW anyone realize that the legal status of P2P networks is being looked at in U.S. federal court today?
click
They're asking the Supreme Court to rule that any company whose business is predominantly supported by piracy should be liable for that infringement.
Apple, you paying attention?
Originally posted by groverat
click
They're asking the Supreme Court to rule that any company whose business is predominantly supported by piracy should be liable for that infringement.
Apple, you paying attention?
As well as any broadband provider. Cable Modems and DSL sell because of filesharing.
Originally posted by LiquidR
BTW anyone realize that the legal status of P2P networks is being looked at in U.S. federal court today?
I figured everyone did and that was why this was such a hot topic
If anyone still wonders why these companies hate p2p, this from cory doctorow sums it up:
In Hollywood, your ability to make a movie depends on the approval of a few power-brokers who have signing authority over the two-hundred-million-dollar budgets for making films. As far as Hollywood is concerned, this is a feature, not a bug. Two weeks ago, I heard the VP of Technology for Warners give a presentation in Dublin on the need to adopt DRM for digital TV, and his money-shot, his big convincer of a slide went like this:
"With advances in processing power, storage capacity and broadband access... EVERYBODY BECOMES A BROADCASTER!"
Heaven forfend.
These companies are very open about their intention to keep control away from content creators and content consumers, and the 'artists' that back them in this effort are completely clueless.
With p2p, artists can make more money by reducing the need for a label to give them exposure. In the case of Fiona Apple, hype has been generated around the album despite the label trying to shelve it.
And it's not like there is no role for distributers. People will still buy physical albums -- they like them. The Fiona Apple case also shows us that consumers *demand* physical media. Hell, people still buy vinyl. And for downloads, one of the things that makes the iTMS so great is that it's more convenient and full-featured than any p2p, so people like me pay to use it because to me it's worth it not to have to search for a copy that may or may not be any good.
History shows that progress is all about old models dying and new, more efficient and more profitable ones taking their places. The only folks that lose out are those who don't adapt.
originally posted by giant
And it's not like there is no role for distributers. People will still buy physical albums -- they like them. The Fiona Apple case also shows us that consumers *demand* physical media.
Another great example of this fact is Radiohead. Before the release of their "Kid A" album, they made the entire album along with other content availble to download for free, and the album still went to number 1.