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There's a significant difference between stealing Mark's Century and stealing a recording via Napster. If someone steals a physical object, the original owner no longer has it. If someone steals a recording by copying it, the original owner still has the recording and so is not harmed. The person who _is_ harmed is not the owner of the object but rather the owner of the copyright who would have received royalties if the thief had instead legitimately purchased a copy of the recording.

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This keeps being repeated, as an attempt to say the only people affected by Napster-facilitated theft are the evil huge record companies. Strangely enough, in this case the huge record companies are being the good guys here, because they have the money that the smaller independents *don't* have to legally pursue & shut down Napster.

The recurring, obscuring statement about "it only affects the record companies" is a refusal to admit the people *most* affected are the performing artists & songwriters. The recording artists & songwriters get their cut from *each CD sold*.

The huge record companies are not affected as much by Napster pilferage, they're going after them as a matter of course. It's the individuals trying to make a living that are being hurt by it. Once again, it seems to be back to the sentiment that everyone wants what artists produce, but they say that they don't deserve to be paid for what they do.

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[quote]There's a significant difference between stealing Mark's Century and stealing a recording via Napster. If someone steals a physical object, the original owner no longer has it. If someone steals a recording by copying it, the original owner still has the recording and so is not harmed.

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The fallacy there has to be pointed out every time ASCAP, BMI, SAG, & AFTRA (artists' organizations) find another instance of theft of work.

The short example is software theft: Everyone will acknowledge copying software & not buying it is theft. Somewhere on some magnetic media, there's a copy to make more. But why is there a need to evade the fact that music is the same way? Is it because programmers deserve to maintain their business & jobs, but not recording artists & writers? Another short example: pirating video. It's theft. *So is pirating music.*

In a longer explanation of why stealing a *work* is equivalent to stealing a piece of hardware, there are some other examples.
You have invented a new weirdo miracle screwdriver that you will sell at Wal-Mart. You patent it. You have tooling, you make them, you sell them at a store. People walk in & take them without paying for them. You still have the tooling. You have the original. You just have had your work stolen. What will you buy dinner with tonight?

SAG & AFTRA are constantly having to negotiate & sue about residuals, & even though the issue was settled in courts long ago, the first thing the opposition says is "we paid the artist once, it now belongs to us & we can sell their work as many times as we like. They only worked once, why should they continue to get paid?" It's because the *work* is being sold, & it is the work of the person who produced it. If someone buys one miracle screwdriver, then tools up & starts selling copies without paying the person who *owns* that particular work, the seller repeatedly gets paid for the work of the originator & the originator gets nothing. That's against the law, in several specific ways.

The nice thing is that the courts will shut down Napster.
Euphemisms like "sharing" for "stealing" don't fly in court, they deal in hard language.

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I hope that this sentiment doesn't get terribly misinterpreted. I believe pretty strongly in the importance of respect for copyright, as it is an important incentive to encourage the creation of original works in all formats (books, movies, records, etc.). However, I also happen to think that the US copyright laws are somewhat broken; for example, the retroactive copyright extensions which have been legislated in recent years seem to be clearly wrong.

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Almost everyone agrees there, except Disney.

Otherwise, others are just rationalizing. Like 2 year olds who see something they like, they just say "Mine!" And as you try to say, "No, that's not yours, it belongs to someone else", the little greedy child goes, "NO, Mine! I want it!"

The term for smaller types of theft, since Dwayne was looking for it, is "petty theft". That's the word they use in court.

I think people feel the need to rationalize petty theft so much is because no one has any respect for a petty thief. Bank robbers, huge embezzlers, that takes brains & courage. Stealing Fritos from Circle K or shoplifting music via Napster is just severely lame and does not require brain or nad one.

It's so depressing the way the standard of crime has plummeted.
It's the country that produced Dillinger, Bonnie & Clyde, Capone, Rockefeller & Alferd Packer! Now, just geeks copying software & looking over their shoulders.

What about Gnutella? The courts can't and won't shut that down. That's because there are no central Gnutella companies or servers. People can trade MP3s all day and night. Since there is no way of stopping this, let's see what happens. Let's see if Lars (or whatever his name is) from Metallica gets his panties in a wad over this as well, even though there is nothing he can do. Metallica used to encourage bootlegs, actually. Strangely, I have only seen a few different artists speak out against Napster and MP3's.

I think the argument of stealing tools from White Trash*Mart is a bad one. That is the equivalent of stealing CDs. Downloading MP3's, all of the CDs are still there. You don't physically have it. With the tool thing, you physically have it and there is one less on the store shelves. But what if someone downloaded the instructions on how to make the tool from a website, and sent those instructions into a machine which assembled the tools? That argument would be more applicable.

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I think the argument of stealing tools from White Trash*Mart is a bad one. That is the equivalent of stealing CDs. Downloading MP3's, all of the CDs are still there. You don't physically have it.

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But you do have it. You have it on your hard drive. The storage format is not concrete, like other software. You just want the music, & you don't want to pay the people who make it.

It's just like pirating computer software. Some small programmers who just dabble & don't make a living at it sell theirs as shareware - and they can do that because it is theirs & they make the decistion as to how they'll sell it. People who make a living at it do *not* sell it as shareware, & the software specifies that it can't be copied & redistributed.

I'm astonished that folks who do troubleshooting & must follow logical processes completely will prevaricate & evade when examining their own behaviors! It's just weird, I expected it the least from techies!

Do you know what happens to guys who set up operations where they take a copy of a movie, run off a bazillion dubs & distribute them? Why is there an evasion of the term "theft" when it's music?

Or a better thing to wonder would be...If there were a new video formmat which could make possible a video version of Napster & Gnutella & slightly-less-than VHS quality downloads of 90 minute movies could be made in 60 seconds or so without getting caught...would everyone suddenly start leeching from there & then saying "but it's not really stealing, I don't actually have the movie" ?

I'd bet yes.
The worst is that artists are proportionally more affected by theft of music than by theft of the more high-corporate-involvement movies.

The next question would be: What's behind this huge need & energy expenditure for ego conservation for people who deny it's theft? I mean, healthy but dishonest people just say, "yes, I stole it."

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I have over 2000 MP3 files, some home-ripped/encoded, some downloaded from IRC (BORGscript Rules!), Napster, and even 'legit' places like MP3.com, et al...

98% of the files I have, i own the originals in some other format, which as Scott has already mentioned is 100% perfectly LEGAL (under US law) Does that make me a thief? I think not.

The remaining 2% of the files are either original musical recordings by me (that I hold the copyrights to, and HAVE shared via Napster, [if someone decides to make a CD of the songs available for sale, or covers them without permission then I plan on hiring a lawyer, otherwise the rest is pure exposure, and Napster, MP3.com, etc is a very good outlet for independent artists to get their works out to the listeners without having to put up with major label bullshit... Thief? ...NOT (duh)...

Also in the 2% are files of songs that I can verify are unavailable in ANY retail record store at any price [most if not all of them encoded from vinyl (complete with scratches and pops in some cases) or tapes]... and before you go on saying that I could always go to used record stores and Goodwill, etc and find them, yes, i probably can. Will they be in playable condition? Doubtful, depending on where you bought them. Will the labels and artists demand their money from it? If they can track and collect royalties from used stores and Goodwill, that would amaze the hell out of me. Thief? I think not, especially if its already virtually unobtanium.

In my opinion the whole MP3 sharing thing is analogous to listening to radio, and taping things off of the radio (also perfectly legit as well) only we have to come to some middle ground with licensing however to appease both the listeners and the rights holders...

If Napster stayed the way it was[pre-injunction], and payments were made to the various organizations to cover royalty claims, I would pay big money to subscribe! But alas, the [major] labels don't care (except possibly BMG), all they want is more profits... and its the LABELS, NOT the 'artists' (with a few exceptions) that collect the big profits, the artists get nothing more than a token few dollars per copy the rest goes to the label...

And doesn't anyone else notice the hypocrisy of the major label owners that also are on the other end of all this: AOL Time Warner owns Winamp, the 'illegal MP3 player' of choice these days, and what about SONY... Manufacturing all that MP3 hardware, but wanting to ban the very MP3 files that are played upon that hardware [Note: many of the anti-MP3 people are looking at creating 'secure' formates that would likely be totally INCOMPATIBLE with most if not all of the MP3 hardware out there. What are they thinking? Make your own products obsolete overnight? Doh!]

Soapbox mode off.

-Aaron

The upcoming Windows XP operating system will not natively support MP3s. It will use a new MicroSoft "secure" system in it's place. Thank God the moral gaurdians at MicroSoft are watching over us to keep us in line.

Another question: Who has screwed who more? People screwing corporate America (with MP3's, etc) or Corporate America screwing the people (everything else)? I know I know, that doesn't make it right. But that would be a similar argument to having a country attack you in war, but not fighting back because killing is "morally wrong". Anyway, if you don't like it, don't do it! Nobody is in charge of anyone else's moral values (parents of children exluded).

As for the comparsion of downloading MP3s to recording radio or television signals onto tape, that brings another interesting point to mind. Let's say you're a Simpsons or X-Files freak and you've been taping every episode since the pilot. You've obviously got quite a collection of tapes going. Well the quality probably isn't going to be as good as a DVD, but they don't have your favorite show on DVD... until now. The DVD of the first season of the Simpsons has just been released and two seasons of the X-Files are currently available (as well as almost every episode on VHS). If you don't purchase the DVD collection (or the VHS) now yet you decide not to erase your tapes instead opting to keep them to watch a show on occasion... you see what I mean?

Perhaps I'm reaching. Maybe all of us Napster users are on some level petty thieves and don't want to admit it. It seems obvious we sure don't like being called such. Even if the term is technical. I'm also assuming that those who believe Napster users to be electronic shoplifters have never used it. But there is one thing I find interesting about Napster. What amazes me most is that this kid who developed Napster merely as a means to swap music (albeit without authorization) had consequently created possibly the biggest music database on the Net. Prior to Napsters inception, I used to look for music with only a sliver of info about the song. For instance, I caught the lyrics but not the title. Or the title and not the artist. In most cases I would look at on-line purchasing websites to find the song, and listen to a sample of the music to verify. It works in most cases as far as popular music goes, but when trying to find a classical piece or more obscure (but still available) tunes, it's a little more challenging.

I'll find myself listening to the classic station from time to time and if a piece really strikes my fancy, try to catch the information from the D.J. on the composer or the title of the piece, and I more often than not, manage to miss a piece of it or the title refers more to the key of the piece, and the composer and conductor is difficult to remember, let alone spell correctly. Now I'll admit I haven't done a vast search of all the possible on-line purchasing music websites out there, but the one I found most informative was CDNow. I'd nail information on just about any current popular music out there, but when you look for classical, several options will come up. And the annoying thing is that many of them do not have wav file samples. I know Classical CDs tend to be cheap, but I'm not about to buy all the CDs from the list of possibilities to find out which one I wanted. So then I'd try some of the actual labels like RCA, Columbia, Searchlight (which I can't find probably because the website doesn't even exist), and other classical distributors (including a company that I'll decline to mention because they have a propensity for causing trouble when their name is mentioned in a derogatory fashion on this site), and the results are just as frustrating. When I tried Napster, I wouldn't find much more... at first. But then as the community grew, I decided to try to find certain classical pieces I've always wanted but couldn't place, and although it was tedious and I aborted several downloads that turned up negative, I managed to find most of them through Napster. I even had the "thieving" option available to me.

So if anything, Napster's potiential applications as a major music search engine is amazing. It was certainly one of the biggest music databases I've ever used if not THE biggest. As I said before, I haven't done a vast search of all the websites out there that can provide information on any type of music in existence and the statement that Napster would put most to shame can be debated although to those who've never used Napster I'd suggest you not even try since you have no basis for comparsion.

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The man with the magic hands.

Anyway, with radio, the DJs rarely even mention the title or artist of a song. They'll just say "Coming up in the next hour we have some crap from such an such, etc..." Then, they play 10 songs in a row with little interruption and never the song title. Good luck finding that song in stores! But hell, if you're there with a tape recorder and record it, you have it (although it sounds like crap since the radio station compressed it, but then again MP3s sound like crap as well.) Are you a thief? Hell NO!

Radio sucks.

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In my opinion the whole MP3 sharing thing is analogous to listening to radio, and taping things off of the radio (also perfectly legit as well) only we have to come to some middle ground with licensing however to appease both the listeners and the rights holders...

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Taping music off the radio is illegal. I've worked in radio, filled out BMI & ASCAP logs, gotten all the little briefs from stations' lawyers, rights firms, in the trades, etc. Ask Paul. He was in radio too.

It's different from home videotaping, in which it is legal to make tapes of a broadcast for *personal use*. "Share" your tapes from HBO via millions of cloned copies on a distribution network like Napster, & see what happens. Networks & cable channels pay the people who own the movies; they license each movie.

Radio stations fill out logs for BMI & ASCAP, & pay the songwriters through those agencies for the songs they play.

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If Napster stayed the way it was[pre-injunction], and payments were made to the various organizations to cover royalty claims, I would pay big money to subscribe! But alas, the [major] labels don't care (except possibly BMG), all they want is more profits

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Napster is negotiating with the labels now for licensing now for their proposed subscription service, through networks that have already been licensing music. However:
1. Some labels are re-stating that their music will not be allowed on Napster until security is bulletproof. They'll license it on excerpts, & on crappy-quality RealAudio transmitions, etc., but they're not going CD quality in an environment that will cost them sales. The artists, songwriters, & label executives don't work for free. Do you?
2. You'll be able to subscribe once those negotiations are finished. But without that large number of people who once used Napster because it gave them stolen goods for free, will the company stand up? My suspicion is that after all the lawsuits for damages are finished from the labels (& I believe that ASCAP & BMI are waiting until the labels are finished with Napster before *they* sue for their damages), Napster will be a great smoking hole in the ground. The only thing saleable will be the name, which is of enormous value due to the PR. Whatever BMG sets up using the name it will ultimately own, it will just be using the name for recognition. The model will not be what it was. It's still a gamble, & subscription music looks like another dot-bomb. As opposed to "place to get stolen goods for free", which as we've seen, packs 'em in!

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... and its the LABELS, NOT the 'artists' (with a few exceptions) that collect the big profits, the artists get nothing more than a token few dollars per copy the rest goes to the label...

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It certainly is a more comfortable way to be a consumer, but you, since you don't own the product, don't get that choice. You can buy it or not, but you can't steal it.

I would like to be there the day Paul walks past the ticket booth at Jerry Chase's theater, & Jerry asks "Where's your ticket?" & Paul replies "I don't pay for movies I don't watch first."

Also, the distortion attempts to hide the fact that it's the artists and techicians that are hurt WORST by copyright violation. At the corporate level, the loss is spread out among many different works. At the individual, artist level, that's your money gone for each theft of your work.

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And doesn't anyone else notice the hypocrisy of the major label owners that also are on the other end of all this: AOL Time Warner owns Winamp, the 'illegal MP3 player' of choice these days, and what about SONY... Manufacturing all that MP3 hardware, but wanting to ban the very MP3 files that are played upon that hardware

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Sony manufactures VCR's & owns movies, too. They want you to use
the hardware for lots of different things, like recording TV & music for personal use. But not for stealing their software.

That's really like the "gun manufacturers are responsible for shooting deaths" argument. They're making the hardware, & people are shooting each other with the hardware, aren't they? The fact is, it's illegal to shoot people with guns, & illegal to use duplication hardware to violate copyright protections.

I'm still amazed that I'm having to defend property rights to people who are far, far from socialists!

I'm not picking on Dwayne. Dwayne's point of view is very prevalent, it's just that he seems to be better articulating and more aware of an unresolvable conflict of justification & want in the individual. What basically must be resolved on an individual, rationalizing level is "Okay, we're petty thieves, but we don't want to be called petty thieves." Isn't that taking up a lot of your processing cycles?

On a property level, the courts are settling it.
People's stuff is being stolen.

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Whaaa??? How did I get involved here???

For the record, I have NEVER used Napster, I refused to load it on any of my computers after reading about how it worked, and thinking of the security holes it could cause. The few sound clips I have downloaded have been the 3 second phrases from movies and tv that loosely fall under "fair use". I'll admit to downloading a fair number of classical midi files, but to my way of thinking, if anyone has a copyright on Chopin, THEY are the ones that are morally vapid.
The worst offense I have copyrightwise is the 20th C Fox fanfare that opens doze on one of my computers.

FWIW, and I'm not sure without checking, but I think recording off the radio for personal use was covered by the "time-shift" argument for video taping off tv. Distributing taped copies is still illegal, which is probably what you meant.

Also for the record, I don't have a theatre now but primarily content myself with selling my ticketing and concession software and developing artwork for my customers that use my tickets for discount coupons for their own customers.

CLICK HERE

If this is how the music industry wants Napster they deserve to have CD sales fall off big time!

It *is* if the tapes are sold for profit. Otherwise this is a LIE. Scott is correct. There is virtually no difference between taping from the radio and using a VCR if it is for PERSONAL NON COMMERCIAL USE. I suggest you check out Universal vs. [Sony] Betamax. I am pretty sure that home personal radio taping is still considered 'fair use' under the DMCA.

>>Radio stations fill out logs for BMI & ASCAP, & pay the songwriters through those agencies for the songs they play.<<

Obviously, you seem to so obsessed with stopping the MP3 scene, that you have failed to notice that I MENTIONED that licensing issues needed to be addressed in the paragraph of mine that YOU QUOTED! sheesh...

>>Sony manufactures VCR's & owns movies, too. They want you to use the hardware for lots of different things, like recording TV & music for personal use. But not for stealing their software.<<

Several points noted here:

1. IMO, the original 'grand scheme' in Sony's buying Columbia/TriStar was to begin creating a movie/video/hardware 'monopoly' and have super-control on the market. This did not pan out they way they wished it would.

2. You state that "They [Sony] want you to use the hardware for lots of different things, like recording TV & music for personal use." WAIT A MINUTE- Do i smell a little hypocrisy in this? Didn't you just say in the post above that 'personal home taping' of music from the radio was *ILLEGAL*?!?

3. Most if not all of the MP3 hardware out there (excluding computers) is PLAYBACK ONLY. How does one 'steal their software' with a playback-only device? Remember- the courts have already determined that the Rio and its brethren are legitimate hardware devices for playback.

>>I'm still amazed that I'm having to defend property rights to people who are far, far from socialists!<<

I am not EVEN a socialist. However I am not saying [and never have said] that people should just download all the music 'carte blanche'... I have said in several instances that something needs to be done about licensing. And the best feature of Napster was twofold: the aforementioned mega-database (albeit some of it grossly incorrect) and the outlet for songs that are NOT available in ANY STORE at ANY PRICE, I have found things on Napster that i havent heard in 30+ years. and you and I KNOW that we can't just walk into Tower or Virgin and ask for a copy on CD or cassette because guess what: they DON'T EXIST! If they did, i would certainly PAY FOR IT.

>>The fact is, it's illegal to shoot people with guns<<

Unless you are a soldier in the heat of combat, or a police officer in the line of duty (thought lately that seems to be illegal any more these days)...

>>That's an enormous distortion. It's how the performers & guys who operate the studios get their money.<<

Let me clarify. Some examples of the 'few exceptions' to the labels getting the lions' share of the profits would be artists that have complete control of their recordings: Examples are Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, and Neil Diamond. Roger McGuinn gets a few bucks per copy from any Byrds' material sold, while the remainder goes to Sony Music. Others have also presented the same case before the courts in the Napster trial. In most places I can think of, the studio techs, etc. get paid BEFORE an album is even released, so they really don't benefit financially from a records sales, plus I can't recall any studio techs that have a clause in a record contract entitling them to share in the finished product's profits. So maybe we are both 'distorting' this topic.

>>On a property level, the courts are settling it.<<

And it WILL go to the Supreme Court. I have been saying that since the Napster debate began.

>>People's stuff is being stolen.<<

In some cases, possibly so. and that is your opinion. I have mine.

Final argument: If Napster causes CD sales to drop drastically as all the industry doom-and-gloomers have been screaming for the past couple years, Explain this then: N'Sync releases a new album, which has been available for about a month prior on Napster, and it breaks *CD sales* records!! And before you start dropping the 'CD sales around college campuses have dropped significantly' line, it is common knowledge that the data collected from the college area stores was PRE-NAPSTER' and the labels have used it in their efforts to shut the service down. Another college-area survey was conducted while Napster was in its heyday, before the courts got involved, and surprise, CD sales actually INCREASED!! Yep, that Napster is Killing CD sales!...

-Aaron

-Aaron[\quote]