russia is shutting down allofmp3 to join the world trade organization

[astroglide]

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I have no problem with TM making a profit, but there are other ticketing agencies (tickets.com, instantseats.com, etc.) which will force them to compete on price and that is always good for the consumer. If ticketmaster wants to compete against these services they will have to lower their prices in the long run, or face extinction.

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so why don't you apply this market-will-correct-itself philosophy to music? you're paying for concert tickets in the meantime, but you won't do the same for cds?

[Cry Me A River]

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Agree completely. I'm all for supporting ways to make that happen. I just disagree with people who make these arguments so they can download the latest Christina Aguilera album without paying for it.


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Meh, consider it a form of civil disobedience. Like refusing to sit at the back of the bus.

Obviously many people are just too damn lazy to walk to the back, for others there's a principle involved.


Note: I'm not equating the two issues, I'm comparing them.

[kipin]

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Okay this post is a little crazy, but I didn't mean to change definitions of words. How about instead of stealing I say "taking something that someone owns and does not want to give away for free without paying them"? I'm not a lawyer and I don't want to argue about proper terminology, but would you with what's in quotes as an accurate description?


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Meh, I'd characterise it as unclear since the implication of "something that someone owns" is hard goods where you mean intellectual property.

The reason why I'm objecting to the use of the terms "theft" and "stealing" is that words have power. The use of these words is part of a deliberate and orchestrated attempt to demonise a relatively benign activity. By repeating this, you're either a sucker or a perpatrator.


30 years ago, home taping, from a legal standpoint, was a trivial issue. In the 70's the idea of someobody being arrested or sued for making a copy of a Led Zepplin album on his basement 8-track machine would have been laughable. Today this happens to people all the time for doing essentially the same thing just with better technology.

And remember kids, "Home taping is killing the recording industry". You may not have noticed it, but the recording industry actually died in 1978 due to home taping. It's true, there has not been another song published since and no musicians make money any more.

Oh, and "the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone" (Jack Valenti, 1982)

That's right, both the recording industry and the film industry died more than 20 years ago. What, you never noticed?



Copyright is a relatively new invention. Shakespeare didn't have copyrights. Neither did Homer. Artists becoming wealthy through their art is also a relatively new phenomena. A phenomena that resulted from a perfect storm of reproduction technologies becoming cheap enough that industry could mass market works of art but not so cheap and everybody could do the same thing. Well, that perfect storm is over. Now everyone can make copies of most types of intellectual property cheaply and easily.

Yes, I believe artists should be compensated for their work. However, it's plainly obvious the current system is broken. And I do know it is a horrible, horrible business strategy to sue you own customers. This is not the first time, either. Essentially the same thing happened in the early days of the automobile industry where the industry attempted to keep a closed system and started suing drivers for using unlicensed vehicles and parts. Failed then and it'll fail now.

If you're a business, the world doesn't owe you anything just because your business model is no longer viable.

I don't know exactly what shape the future will take. Perhaps it'll be some sort of return to the patronage system of old, but with advertisers as patrons. Perhaps recordings will essentially become just advertising for live performances. Or perhaps we'll see something like the Canadian levy on blank media where all consumers are taxed and that money distributed to artists.

I do know that the recording industry and film industry have shown themselves time and time again to be corrupt and sleazy. As willing to screw artists as to screw consumers. It definately would not be a bad thing to have the repugnant middle men squeezed out of the equation.

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Very nicely put.

You have said basically everything that I have wanted to say, but you have done so much more eloquently. Send me your Stars screen name and I'll pay you some money if you let me distribute your words (with you cited of course) to as many people as possible. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

And for those interested, some informative reading on the original idea behind the patent system and why Thomas Jefferson felt it important to place provisions for it in The Constitution can be found here.

[PITTM]

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Brain, RJ, kip, etc:

Of course libraries exist. And of course I can loan a copy of a book or CD to a friend.

There is a difference between having access to information and possessing your own copy of that information.

All information being free is inconsistent with living in a capitalistic society. If we switched to socialism, your arguments would imo be much more valid.

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So when you borrow a book from the library can you copy it down by hand? Can you run it through a scanner? Can you read it to a friend over the phone?

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if i go to the library, i can photocopy a book with none of the money i am paying to the machine going to the rightsholders. this seems like a disaster that i should be prosecuted for.

rj

[El Diablo]

kip,

Exactly. But what you're saying is that you don't want to pay for that content (fair enough, your right), but you want to enjoy the fruits of that 200m investment (by downloading it).

If "information was free" as you would have it, that content couldn't exist.

Of course you are smart enough to see the inconsistency in your position.

[NT!]

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CMAR,

"If you're a business, the world doesn't owe you anything just because your business model is no longer viable."

"I do know that the recording industry and film industry have shown themselves time and time again to be corrupt and sleazy. As willing to screw artists as to screw consumers. It definately would not be a bad thing to have the repugnant middle men squeezed out of the equation."

Agree completely. I'm all for supporting ways to make that happen. I just disagree with people who make these arguments so they can download the latest Christina Aguilera album without paying for it.

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funny that the increased propensity for theft among a market's target consumers may actually end up having a positive effect on that market. and yet those who are doing the stealing are still largely hypocrites for making that very claim. (cause they are).

[PITTM]

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I have no problem with TM making a profit, but there are other ticketing agencies (tickets.com, instantseats.com, etc.) which will force them to compete on price and that is always good for the consumer. If ticketmaster wants to compete against these services they will have to lower their prices in the long run, or face extinction.

[/ QUOTE ]

so why don't you apply this market-will-correct-itself philosophy to music? you're paying for concert tickets in the meantime, but you won't do the same for cds?

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if i could illegally download concert tickets i would. but as kipin said earlier(and you chose to omit). in this instance it was a simple choice between: dont pay ticketmaster, dont go to concert or pay ticketmaster, go to concert.

rj

[Aloysius]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I have no problem with TM making a profit, but there are other ticketing agencies (tickets.com, instantseats.com, etc.) which will force them to compete on price and that is always good for the consumer. If ticketmaster wants to compete against these services they will have to lower their prices in the long run, or face extinction.

[/ QUOTE ]

so why don't you apply this market-will-correct-itself philosophy to music? you're paying for concert tickets in the meantime, but you won't do the same for cds?

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I hate to answer for another poster, but I think it may have something to do with the fact that it's harder to sneak into concerts than it is to illegally download MP3s..

-Al

[PITTM]

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And the fact is, everytime you download music illegally, they are getting ripped off.

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as i said before, i wouldnt pay 20 dollars for a cd EVER, nor would i pay anything to rent a cd, therefore, they arent "losing" anything, the key part of getting ripped off.

rj

[Aloysius]

RJ - under current copyright law, you owe them some moniez for your owning their product. Right? That's really all I'm saying. Whether or not you would never have paid for it if you couldn't illegally download it is not really an issue in my mind.

If that's how you choose to justify it, that's fine.

-Al