Bit Torrent SHUT DOWN !?!?!?!?!

[Bungleau]

One's perspective on this changes when you shift from consumer of such items to producer of them.

Case in point: I've written a technical manual for users of a particular software. The manual sells for $70, published by my employer. My arrangement with my employer lets us split the revenue after expenses. On a full book sale, I get around $28. On a discounted sale, I get something less. The best month of sales I ever did was 19 books... you can do the math.

Two years ago, I was at a customer site. The customer had purchased my book, and they had also purchased some software that I sell. I was meeting with them to go over implementation and training on the software.

On the desk of the person I was meeting with was a copy of my book... photocopied and placed into a binder. Clearly an illegal copy, clearly in violation of just about everything, and clearly in plain sight. The customer also represented an additional $30,000 in revenue, compared to $70 for the book.

*edit* Forgot to mention that when he noticed the book was visible, he did his best to cover it up. It was apparent to me that he knew it shouldn't have been there. */edit*
Put yourself in that situation. How would you feel? What would you do? Is it right? Is it okay?

[ 12-23-2004, 10:48 AM: Message edited by: Bungleau ]

[Sir Krustin]

To return fire on Animal's statistics on file sharing, here's the viewpoint of a published artist - complete with verifiable statistics debunking the RIAA's crap:

Prime Palaver #11

See also Prime Palaver #6 for a discussion on internet piracy of IP in general.

Here's a quote from that last article:

What happened in the interim? Well, obviously I can't "prove" it, but it seems blindingly obvious to me that it was the fact that An Oblique Approach went into the Library in the fall of 2000 that explains most of that increase. It would certainly be absurd to claim that being available for free somehow hurt the novel's sales! I can guarantee you that most authors would be delighted to see a two-year-old title suddenly showing a spurt of new sales.

[ 12-23-2004, 11:43 PM: Message edited by: Sir Krustin ]

[Animal]

Originally posted by Sigmar: I buy music albums I like to support my favourite singers/bands. Download all the music you want but basically if you want your favourite mucisians to keep putting out records, then buy their stuff, pay for it to show that you appreciate it! "Someother dumbass will pay for it, so why can't I just download it?" Eventually too many people are going to start thinking like that and the industry is going to go down the toilet is why. "The singers are loaded anyway, they don't need the money, I do." Bullplop, these individuals EARN their money. I'm not going to equate downloading music to being a crime. I'm going to say it's bloody rude, and selfish on the part of the person downloading the music (talking about people who download music with no intention of buying the music later on). Whether there is no evidence about "file-sharing" affecting the music industry and whatever is not the point. The point is that many people are simply "taking money out of another person's pocket", typically for no real justifiable reason, and personally I think that is wrong.

Kudos

[Grojlach]

File-sharing is the best thing since sliced bread for most non-major record labels. Seriously.

Major labels have always held a monopoly interest when it comes to means of exposure, be it radio, tv, the media or advertising; and the most important status quo that's been breached because of the Internet is that there's now a fifth means of exposure that has quickly taken over the other 4. While major record labels notice their revenues slipping as they can't control this latest new medium (as people actually have more of a choice of what they are listening to), many indie bands have now hit the jackpot exposure-wise - bands that used to get three-line reviews in hardly sold magazines now suddenly have an outlet to get people to hear their music world-wide within months of a mere domestic release (often based on only a single positive review on sites like Pitchforkmedia), thereby also severly increasing the number of records sold.
It's no wonder the major labels are far from pleased with this development - they have no control over the media anymore, and mostly cling onto what little they have (like the billboard charts) by disallowing any independent releases or records sold through non-major franchise record stores/many online stores to be counted, which is also all part of RIAA's scare tactics to make things look a lot worse than they are. I wouldn't be surprised if the RIAA conveniently forgot to mention this in their apocalyptic calculations (39 billion to 32 billion! OMG!), especially as many legal record sales simply *aren't* counted in any way.
And to illustrate the above with completely anecdotal evidence ( ), I've literally got hundreds of CDs in my collection (400-ish), a majority of which by artists I would never even have known if it wasn't for the Internet. I'm sure that I'm being frowned upon as a crook by some for downloading a lot of music (which I freely admit), and that they have a point legally, but I hardly feel any moral objections whatsoever to my way of dealing with it. I'm pretty sure my cd-collection would only be a small fraction of what it is right now if it wasn't for the Internet, so bring it on.

And sure, I will believe that especially 12-18 year olds are guilty of downloading a lot of music, and that the sale of cd-singles is hurt by their new-found "rebellish" attitude, but that's also a result of the major labels putting pretty much all of their eggs in one basket in the years before the Internet Boom, as they have literally been milking young buyers' potential (which severly increased in the 90s), saturating the market with pre-fab crap; while slowly phasing out focus on older buyers, as these don't let themselves be influenced and tricked into buying crappy gimmick or extremely formulaic (boybands!) records that easily.
But teenagers' appeal has simply shifted in recent years - cd sales and comics have been on the decline for a lot longer than that they've been illegally available on the Internet on a wide-spread level, while there's been a substantial swift of teenagers' limited resources towards consoles, computer games, clothing (and other means to increase their status/appeal in an increasingly materialistic society), dvds, etc. It would simply be naive of the music industry to think that teenagers would just keep on buying the same amount of music for decades on end; and while the Internet may be a catalyst that has sped up the process, it was bound to happen eventually. Sure, teenagers can be moulded/tricked into buying about anything if the advertising approach is lewd enough to create a social pressure to peruse the items, but only a few other factors (new technological developments, different fashion stigmas) are needed to shift their attention from one status symbol to the other.

[ 12-24-2004, 05:14 AM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]

[Melusine]

I comepletely agree with your first paragraph Groj, and I think downloading habits like yours are indeed beneficial for the music industry (if not the hit-pushing kind).
But there's one thing I've noticed, re: your second paragraph. I've seen quite a lot of children recently who really have gotten so used to illegal music being available online, that they would never consider buying a CD because they hardly know any better. They are used to the (auditively inferior) MP3 format and the notion of buying music (or films, or games) that they can get for free is ludicrous to them. So I don't see a problem now, but there may very well be one in coming years. There's a huge difference between people who download because they love music (like you) and people who in downloading show that they don't in fact give a crap about it.

[LennonCook]

Originally posted by theGrimm: I don't believe making copies without permission from the author for any reason is ethical. Although, I was tempted with Half Life 2, having no Internet Access at home. Do you think it would have been wrong to have installed a modified version, provided I paid for the orginal, too?

Wrong ethically, no. Wrong legally, yes. Software is a slightly different beast to music, in that it can grow and change more easily. But if a company (like most) decides to limit your right to contribute to this improvement, you have two options: bow to their will, or watch them go bankrupt for their methods. Take your pick.

Groj, yes, overuse of copyright can be disasterous for record labels. But isn't that their problem? If you don't ever hear their music because they

The internet has changed the way the world works. Many things will be freely available soon, and alot of copyright laws will become moot. It will become both legal and ethical to redistribute things without permission. The major record labels may go bankrupt if they continue to push copyright to its extremes. This is simply because the internet is the perfect tool for distributing things widely. But before this happens, things like Kazaa and iMesh need to be shut down. Illegal music sharing needs to be stopped, and artists need to see how good it was for them. The artists need to make the decision for themselves. But until this happens, "sharing music" is exactly the same as "stealing music". The consumers may be the bastion of change, and maybe even a catalyst, but we (legally) have to abide by the old rules until the change is come.

[Grojlach]

Originally posted by Melusine: I comepletely agree with your first paragraph Groj, and I think downloading habits like yours are indeed beneficial for the music industry (if not the hit-pushing kind). But there's one thing I've noticed, re: your second paragraph. I've seen quite a lot of children recently who really have gotten so used to illegal music being available online, that they would never consider buying a CD because they hardly know any better. They are used to the (auditively inferior) MP3 format and the notion of buying music (or films, or games) that they can get for free is ludicrous to them. So I don't see a problem now, but there may very well be one in coming years. There's a huge difference between people who download because they love music (like you) and people who in downloading show that they don't in fact give a crap about it.

True, we'll have to wait and see how this is going to work out in later years - I do think a large part of them will come around when they get older (a part of it will just do it for the heck of it, though I somehow wonder they would have bought anything if it wasn't for the 'Net), but it will also depend on how smart the movie and music industry are going to deal with all this. Most of them have less than a foothold on the Internet, and I do expect this will change in the future - movie-streams becoming available for a small fee online is in the works for example (and definitely an interesting prospect for the future, which would slowly but gradually be the perfect 21st century replacement for video-rental stores, or maybe even tv in the end), and legal file-sharing initiatives like ipod and the new Napster are also picking up and quickly turning into a whole new booming business, *especially* ipod. There's definitely a market for legal music and film purchases over the Internet (even if it doesn't involve every annoying little hormone-driven pock on the Earth's crust ), it's however still severly underdeveloped at this point - and until it has reached its fullest potential, we simply can't say a single thing of how the current generation of teenagers will look upon movies and music when they get older and become "more responsible".

One major miscalculation on the RIAA's part is that they can somehow undo the impact of the Internet and go back to the old status quo in which the major labels controlled output and exposure for the most part, because that's simply impossible with a medium as huge and chaotic as the Internet. You'll always have illegal file-sharing; and even though in a way illegal music has been around for decades already (bootlegs, home-taping, illegal compilations or hit records sold on the black market), it's just that it has become more mainstream and easier to do so.
The main problem is that most major labels have gone through a golden age during the 80s and 90s, and are now suddenly roughly awakened by the end of that era, forcing them to take a step back - which doesn't work well with the overly positive multi-record multi-million dollar record contracts they had signed with certain artists when everything still seemed to be going smoothly (and who are selling a lot less than expected, like Metallica, R.E.M., U2 etc), too optimistically expecting business to improve even more throughout the first decade of the 21st century. They've severly underestimated the Internet's potential, and are now lagging behind.
I'm confident however that the Internet is not going to be the end of the music industry, even taking into accounts worst case scenarios with regards to the current "future" of our counry, the 12-18 year olds - it's going to be a new start altogether. [img]smile.gif[/img] These teenagers aren't as much snubbing cds and dvds as they are embracing new technologies (an mp3-player is a lot more convenient than the old walk/discman, for example), and it's vitally important for the MPAA and the RIAA to look into that behaviour to tap it to its fullest potential. The Internet is here to stay, as well as its potential illegal use, but that doesn't mean it would be the end of either the movie or the music industry. Heck, creating a service to sell movies and music in digital format could actually be rather lucrative, as you don't have to deal with the huge costs involved with distribution that there used to be - Animal's article mentioned something about major label albums being printed in >1 million batches and only 10% of those being actually lucrative, but if there's indeed a public tending towards digital purchases rather than regular ones, you could save a lot of money by some changes in this department. Sure, there are other important factors to be taken into account (advertisements, publicity, exposure on popular media like tv and radio), but not only could cds become a lot cheaper this way without the major labels losing money over it, the risks involved could be a lot less as well.

Of course, let me note that the above is only a possible solution to the problem; I don't have huge teams of statisticians backing me up with studies regarding future behavioral patterns, but if a large group of people is indeed interested in music offered in digital format rather than on vinyl or cd in case of lower costs involved and a wider availability, then that will become a substantial part of the Industry's future.

[Grojlach]

Originally posted by LennonCook: Groj, yes, overuse of copyright can be disasterous for record labels. But isn't that their problem? If you don't ever hear their music because they

I think something is missing from your argument...

The internet has changed the way the world works. Many things will be freely available soon, and alot of copyright laws will become moot. It will become both legal and ethical to redistribute things without permission. The major record labels may go bankrupt if they continue to push copyright to its extremes. This is simply because the internet is the perfect tool for distributing things widely. But before this happens, things like Kazaa and iMesh need to be shut down. Illegal music sharing needs to be stopped, and artists need to see how good it was for them. The artists need to make the decision for themselves. But until this happens, "sharing music" is exactly the same as "stealing music". The consumers may be the bastion of change, and maybe even a catalyst, but we (legally) have to abide by the old rules until the change is come.

Most (smaller) artists have already come to this conclusion in fact, and many of them offer quite a few mp3s for legal download on their band sites. They've come to the conclusion that the Internet has a huge potential for increased exposure, and are building an audience a lot more rapidly than they would have after years of touring and trying to fight for their music to be noticed by radio and tv.
However, I do think artists and bands that had already established a name and reputation in pre-Internet society have been damaged somewhat by illegal file-sharing (especially as they don't have the same monopoly position now as they used to have in exposure), but that's because the major record industry itself had been living on a self-made cloud, living the ultimate capitalist dream by owning most of the airwaves and pretty much deciding who's hot and who's not*; a dream that has dissipated in recent years and resulted in the backlash featuring the RIAA, as well as the rather awkward, if legal, actions by Metallica and Dr. Dre.


* Of course, you could argue that I'm also partly responsible for the decline in major record label album sales - that by developing a taste of my own thanks to the Internet, I won't fall as easily for slyly marketed major record label artists, and prefer buying an album by relatively small indie-bands over purchasing the latest record label-initiated-hype album.

[LennonCook]

Originally posted by Grojlach: quote: Originally posted by LennonCook: [qb]Groj, yes, overuse of copyright can be disasterous for record labels. But isn't that their problem? If you don't ever hear their music because they

I think something is missing from your argument... [/QUOTE]Odd, so do I... I could have sworn I put all of that in... something to do with posting at 10PM, I guess. Anyway, what I meant to say (in full this time) was:
If we never hear their music because they effectively prevent us from getting it, what do we loose? You could say we don't hear good music, but do we know any better? They are the people who suffer, and they are the people who can change. It isn't the consumer's problem, because we simply cannot do anything about it.

[Dadams1]

I only have one thing to point out:

A lot of people here are confusing the legality of actions with the ethical and moral values of actions.

Legality and ethics are completely unrelated. In fact, if anything pertaining to these two things happen to coincide, it is completely coincidental.

Just because something is illegal doesn't make it unethical, and just because something's legal doesn't make it ethical.

Got it? Good.