Evil students nicking music hand over your hard drives

[McRhea]

Isn't there a new site that lets you d/l one song for .99 cents American? I could of sworn I heard something about this a few months ago. Maybe it was just someone wishing there was a site like that. Meh....

[az]

Yes, I agree with you. Yet if we had a really simple cheap micropayment method for everyone (like a button in winamp "give 50c to artist" many people would give. If you found legal mp3s that include the "where to donate to" tag in p2p networks, I'm sure it would be a nice way of income for the artists, especially as they wouldn't need the music industry (oxymoron?), because they'd have their very own, very cheap retail channel.

And I'm sure artists could live well from that (good ones anyway), as well as street musicians can make a living with only a few hundred potential customers each day, not hundreds of millions.

You cannot deny reality - it is so easy to copy, and it IS different from just taking something away from someone, that no one is going to stop it. We NEED to change how we view intellectual property because the old way isn't going to work.

AZ

[THE_Editor]

Yeah ... The music these days is, in general .... CRAP ..

The trouble is... The musicians are struggling to find "that sound". that doesn't sound too much like previous styles or sounds crap !!

Our generation was pretty lucky in that different genre's evolved into better (?) music.

The music has now reached (or is close to) the evolutionary peak... Where to branch to now ?

[az]

McRhea: Apple's iStore. It's only for Mac users, but will open for Windows users till the end of the year.

AZ

[Wombat]

Originally posted by Brian Ellis
az

I'm sorry, your smile analogy does not work. When you steal (without inverted commas/quotes) intellectual property, you steal the author's royalties from him.

It's not stealing, it's copyright infringement. The act of copying something that does not deprive you of the original is not theft.

Also, you're assuming that the unauthorized copy would have been bought, which is often a fallacy.

[KvHagedorn]

Originally posted by az
Yes, I agree with you. Yet if we had a really simple cheap micropayment method for everyone (like a button in winamp "give 50c to artist" many people would give.

In practice, since this would be strictly voluntary, no one would do it. It would simply be an easy starting point for the corruption of the soul. Just like the guilt we all feel when we look away from the bum by the road who is asking for change, except this is someone who has contributed something, invested his time and soul into something. I think we would all say, yes, good musical artists deserve to make a decent living. They don't need to be making such ridiculous money that they are buying their own jet airplanes, but they deserve a decent house and a good income. The sleazebags in the recording industry who promote and own labels don't deserve anything close to what they make, though. They really should be running on treadmills generating our power.. a far better use for their lives.

For the cost of manufacturing a CD, they should cost about $5 apiece at the very most. So should concert tickets or tickets to sporting events. While bullshit artists get filthy rich the people who grow our food can't make a living. There is something very wrong in all this.

[az]

Exactly, Wombat!

I don't steal music from a street musician if I listen to him for a few minutes and then go without leaving a coin in his hat. Of course, if I liked his music, and have the money, I'll give him an Euro.

AZ

[Gurm]

Wombat brings up an excellent point.

How can you assume, as the recording industry does, that all music which is downloaded WOULD be bought if you could prevent it from being downloaded?

THAT is where their huge "losses" come from. They add up what all those songs would cost IF they were purchased, and call that the amount that people are "stealing".

But you know what?

It just ain't so. If I couldn't download the BackStreet Boys, they'd never get a dime from me anyway because there's no way I'm BUYING that crap. The fact that I download it to make my "worst of 2002" mix is irrelevant. If I couldn't download it I'd record it from the radio (also something they tried and failed to make illegal).

In simple point of fact my rate of music consumption has stayed constant. In the first 4 years of my marriage to Julie, our combined CD acquisition rate was probably 50 cd's per year. In the NEXT 4 years, it was STILL 50 cd's per year, despite the fact that for those 4 years, I've been downloading MP3's like a fiend, and Julie is even worse.

If we couldn't have those MP3's, would we buy more albums? No. We just wouldn't listen to the diversity of music that we do.

And the MP3's we've downloaded have INFLUENCED our decision to buy the album in many cases.

The music companies need to wake up and realize:

1. They're overpaying their executives to the tune of millions of dollars.

2. The world is changing. You can't put the digital genie back in the bottle.

Gurm_

[KRSESQ]

Ultimately the only practical solution will probably be a fee (read: TAX) tacked on to your ISP bill. Paying the fee would entitle you to download whatever content via P2P networks and such you please. Funds thus collected would then be distributed to copyright holders.

The tricky part then becomes, how do you track the titles that are traded, to be sure the fees go to the right people? The only answer may be some kind of tracking subroutine in your Kazaa/Morpheus/Napster clone, which tabulates the transactions in a central database.

The other problem is, what about misnamed titles? Lord knows we've all run across those (what the hell is it with people that can't name their music rips right? Is that intentional? What are they trying to prove? Is the recording industry behind it? Doesn't that make THEM guilty of copyright infringement? It isn't as if they've NEVER ripped off the artists working for them, RIGHT?)

But I digress...

Any thoughts on how this could be made to work?

Kevin

[The PIT]

Why should I pay tax for something I don't even want.

Perhaps if some good music came out at a decent price someone may go to the shops and buy it. Come to that it so crap I can't even be bothered to find the mp3's to download.

[az]

I think it'll just have to be an easier and better solution than illegal p2p filesharing (better search options, faster downloads, no misnamed files, good quality, correct id3v2 tags, no drm), easy, safe, and cheap micropayment (maybe you pay with your ISPs bill every month), and better quality music from real bands people can relate to. No one wants to pay for a band they know is the fiftieth project of some filthily rich producer.

Also, the music industry needs to realize that OF COURSE they'll selling less now than two years ago. We're having rough times currently, and EVERYBODY sells less this year. Plus, their main consumers (kids) have less and less money for music, because they need more for mobile phones, computers, game consoles, etc - so music now has to compete with all those for money, when it didn't have to some years ago.. surprising that the music industry hasn't had a crisis long ago.

And besides, people now rarely dub tapes, record from the radio, etc. - it's not different today, only more modern (and easier, faster, and with better quality, but EVERYTHING went this way - CDs are also easier to handle, better quality, and accessing tracks is faster than with vinyl).

AZ

[The PIT]

Another problem is poor bands. They all sound the same, they look the same and they all dance the same. They look like stuffed dummies. Well they did when I had the misfortune to be in a pub with a large screen showing the latest chart tits sorry hits.

[paulcs]

Originally posted by Brian Ellis
az

I'm sorry, your smile analogy does not work. When you steal (without inverted commas/quotes) intellectual property, you steal the author's royalties from him. This is pecuniary theft. If it were done wholesale, as when ripping off the Internet, you may be depriving the author of his main source of income, maybe to the extent that he is declared bankrupt or he voluntarily decides that the game is not worth the candle and future work just does not appear. The world may be a poorer place in consequence.

Frankly, and with all due respect, I'm having problems with your analogy as well. I got my start in the academic publishing industry, and I believe we're talking about two very different animals. Academic publishing -- even the ridiculously cut throat textbook sector -- is downright gentile when compared to the recording industry. The RIAA membership have a proud tradition of price fixing, illegal market manipulation, kickbacks, extortion, royalty theft on a grand scale, and an enduring, near mythic relationship with organized crime. (And I bet their counterparts outside the US have similar business practices.)

That might look like hyperbole, but I really don't believe it is. Small-time operators. Large record companies. It doesn't seem to matter. Cheating authors/artists seems to be a standard operational procedure. And getting caught doesn't seem to be an impediment! Weathy artists have been remarkably successful when suing management and record companies for back royalties. Most artists just don't have the means of a Bruce Springsteen, so I have to assume that most of the royalty skimming goes unchecked.

While academic publishers certainly don't like all the photocopying that goes on at academic institutions (and have complained loudly about it), I just can't imagine agents of the American Booksellers Association bursting into university libraries with court orders to confiscate photocopiers and essential business machines components. The recording industry seems to be resorting to familar tactics: bullying and thuggery. Think of it as the recording industry, through the Australian legal system, returning to its mobster roots and getting in touch with its "inner thud".

All kidding aside, I'm willing to bet this is as much a harrassment tactic as anything else. By confiscating hard drives, and being as disruptive as possible, the industry appears to be strong-arming Australian universities into policing students for them. It's something they have been trying to do in the United States for a while. I'm sure most universities have neither the desire or the resources to effectively monitor the downloading habits of their students. It sounds very expensive, and I don't think it's fair. But I don't think this is really about fairness.

I think the industry and its supporters are simply using the rhetoric of fairness. You would think if the suits in the recording industry were so concerned with fairness towards and the rights of artists, they wouldn't have spent the better part of a century gleefully stealing from them.

Paul