Click here for the LA Times Story (Beware of Pop-Ups)
 

I'd say the net effect of the whole thing ended up being that a lot of people spent a lot of money and did a whole lot of hootin' and hollerin' but it was all for nought!

Sounds to me like somebody in the record industry has a severe case of Recto-Cranial Inversion!

 

I have a ton of hard drive space on these machines, so I record and edit the music CD's as MP3's and WAV files, depending on how I want to use them and what program I want to run them under.

What really irks me is I like some of the older music that is out of print and no longer available. Napster was an excellent source for it.

Unfortunately, much of that stuff is full of pops, scratches, hisses, and hums. I have a program I can use to get rid of scratches and pops, and I can partially EQ out the hisses and hums.

There is no way I would pay anyone to be allowed to download music in such a horrible condition.

If Napster is going to charge for downloads full of glitches and defects obvoius to the listener, then what Randy said about the case of Recto-Cranial Inversion by the Recording Industry applies in the fullest extent.

The Recording Industry can take their music CD's and..(you fill in the blanks)..just because of their greed.

The reason CD sales are down is because there are no "blockbusters" yet this year. Last year there were new albums by Britney Spears and NSync, both of which mega-sold in their first week. This year, there is no comparable product bringing the kids into the stores. (That fact is stated in the LA Times article...most of the other stuff in there is speculation by various people.)

I think it's just as hard to quantify the Napster effect as it is to quantify the number of people who see movies for free by "crossing the hallways." Of course Napsterites buy a lot of CDs...they are MUSIC FANS, which is why they're hooked to Napster in the first place.

The whole justification thing for Napster astounds me. The idea that otherwise-honest people now "expect" to get music without paying for it. Why not just read the reviews and listen to the radio (or the sound samples which are so readily available on the Net)?
 

In my mind, this "pirating" thing is stealing someone elses work and selling it for a profit, whether it be music, video, or computer software.

You can be assured that if anyone was to charge me for a pirated duplicate of any kind, I would not touch it with a 10 foot pole. To me, that's a moral issue that definately rubs me the wrong way.

Mike, with that crap Hollywood has been giving us to run in the theaters, I wouldn't pay to see in the first place. The word of mouth carries the movies to success or to a total flop.

Not so in Music CD's. People buy the CD's because of what they heard on the radio or maybe heard on the Big Screen, or just by the name of the artist. Some people like to hear the song several times before a committment to buy is made. That's how I do it.

The only songs I have MP3s of that I don't own CD recordings of are approximately 15 songs that I wanted that have never been put on CD, that I will gladly buy on CD if they ever come out, to get better copies of them. I got the MP3s of those particular songs so I could make a CD that I could conveniently play on my home stereo.

I used to average buying 183 CDs a year for several years but now don't buy nearly as many because there just isn't enough new stuff coming out. I check the box sets section and there has been no change for a while. I have most of the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s stuff that I really like, and there aren't any new oldies being recorded. This means that if I don't like the new stuff (which a lot of I detest), then I won't be buying as many CDs.

I have to hear songs on the radio and songs have to "grow on me" before I'll buy a CD by an artist. I'd say the decline of radio stations playing the "Top 40" new music format is to blame for the lack of CD sales. In Huntsville, we have only one station that plays "new music" (we used to have two) and some of the songs out now are just downright annoying to listen to. At least we have a 50s and 60s oldies station, but I have nearly all of the songs played on that station that I like. The same applies to the 70s and 80s station.

The only way to get me to buy more CDs again is to have some good music come out that I like that gets radio airplay (enough to get me to listen to the new music station more often, since I'm currently only listening to it about once every two weeks), or put out more CDs of older music with tracks that have never been released.

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site

One thing that I and some of the other local DJ's in the Nashville area noticed last year (during the height of the Napster craze) was the proliferation of the new "Radio Shack Warriors" - the $100.00 a night DJ playing for local private parties and events. It cut us deep. It was hard for us to justify charging $800.00 a night, when the "newbies" came in with their "burned" CD's (most likely from Napster) and undercut us by $700.00. Sure thier level of service to their client most likely sucked, and I could almost bet they never paid a cent to the likes of BMI, SESAC, and ASCAP, but it did hit our pocketbooks pretty hard.

I spend an average of $3,500.00 a year on new music, buying many disc's with only one good song. I have a collection of almost 3,000 CD's, and many I've only played once (i.e. "Debbie Boone's Greatest Hits" - there was ONLY one!!).

Like Paul said, it's really an issue of moral's. I could burn copies of my entire collection and start a 3rd system that goes out on the weekends, but doing so would violate every copyright law ever written.

Since I personally listen to mostly talk radio every day at the office, I sometimes find myself "out-of-touch" with popular music. Subscription services that cater to DJ's like myself are a god-send. All of the "good songs" (singles released for airplay) for the month of July show up on a single disc near the middle of June. I never find myself at Tower Record's with the "staple-faced" clerks at midnight desparately seeking to find that one song I'm missing.

If people want to trade music without paying for it, they'll do it, whether Napster is around or not.

Remember... a lock on a door only keeps an honest person out.

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Barry Floyd
Floyd Entertainment Group
Nashville, Tennessee
(Drive-In Theatre - Start-Up)

and 2 yes it was GREAT for getting very rare, hard to find, out of print, etc music, alas the redording industry has squashed that
 

I guess I didn't make myself clear enough. People who sample music and then buy what they like, that's fine. The ones I get mad at are the ones who now, thanks to Napster, feel like they are "entitled" to music for free because the record companies have been "ripping them off" for years.

There are millions of people around the world who have said "I haven't bought a CD in months, because I download everything." They have no guilt feelings at all about the fact that they have basically stolen the artists' work. Many of these same people would never think of shoplifting a CD from a music store, but the effect is the same.

I also have very little patience for the theory that "music is too high-priced". Back in the early '70s an LP cost about five bucks. Here it is 30 years later and you can buy a CD which is far superior sounding, longer lasting, more compact, more durable, and recorded with far superior technology for 14 bucks or less. (Anyone paying more than that isn't shopping very carefully.) In the '70s we were paying less than 50 cents a gallon for gas which now costs up to $2 a gallon. I bought a new Ford car in '76 for $7200...my latest vehicle, a 2000 Ford, cost $23,500. I went to a Fleetwood Mac concert in '77 for $7.00; in 1997 their tickets were selling for $67.50. EVERYTHING (except computers!) has gone up, so why are people so irritated about music prices?

I'll tell you why. It's because the media has perpetuated a myth that a CD only costs about 50 cents to make. That's true...it costs about that much to PRESS a CD, but what about the costs of recording, shipping, retail expense, advertising and promotion, backing musicians, guitars, drums, booze, etc.

This is just like saying it costs about $1500 to make the film print in a typical theatre auditorium, so we as an industry are TOTALLY ripping people off by selling tickets at $6 or more apiece. (which in the case of some movies, we are, I guess!)
 

Mike, you are absolutely correct. I support your comment in the above quote 100%.

Barry, Those "Radio Shack Warriors" you spoke of are the some of the ones who ruin it for us all. They should be stopped dead in their tracks!

Absolutely right. (Actually if you look at the Billboard chart, it is surprising just how much of today's music IS actually available on LP.) However, it's hard to imagine those LP-philes wanting to download anything digital!
 

Not to say that a company shouldn't be able to profit from the fruits of its labor but it seems to me that all these record companies want to do is put their greedy little fingers in everybody else's pie and wring out every last cent they possibly can. They seem to have no sense of style, nor do they seem to have anybody's best interest in mind but their own. They continue to put out product but whine when they don't make windfall profits. (Sound familiar, doesn't it?)

Sometimes I think people (companies) need to stop and think for a moment. They need to quit thinking about the short-term penny pinching and think about the long-term dollar.

Like Chevy Chase said in the movie, Caddy Shack, "Sometimes the shortest distance between two points is a straight line... in the opposite direction."
 

Napster = Theft

I mean, you hear all these rationalizations from people who *know* that they are taking something that doesn't belong to them. What's the word for that? And what's the difference why they wouldn't do the same thing at Wal Mart? They'll get caught at Wal Mart. Narrow self-interest, greed & fear, are your basic motivators here.

I think nasty .mp* 's are one of the wonderful tools to explain to folks why digital does not mean better quality. It's the format that makes the difference, not just digital.

Vinyl LP = analog
RealAudio = digital

Which sounds better, class?

Music companies are berated for "wanting to make a profit." Folks: EVERY COMPANY IN THE WORLD wants to make a profit. This is not a sin...this is business. As Elton John once said: "I really don't think my music is that good, but as long as people buy it, I'm certainly willing to give it to them." (This was in Rolling Stone sometime in the '70s.)

And, record companies are berated for "releasing crappy product." They can only release whatever crap the artists hand them...and when some "artist" like Eminem sells multi-millions of his "music," he gets full artistic control of what he does next and can release a full CD of beer farts if he wants to. Then every other similar wannabe releases similar music. Everyone's hoping either to jump on a bandwagon or become the "next big thing." Unfortunately the bandwagon is the easier route, but that's just the way it is.
 

You download a song to listen to. Because you downloaded it, you do not buy the CD. However if you had never downloaded it you would have never bought the CD anyway. It is foolish to assume that for every MP3 downloaded, a CD would have been sold.

-Copyright Violation? Yes.
-Ethical? Hmmmmm.
-Lost Revenue? Nope.

Or another situation that Scott talked about:
You download an MP3 of something that you really never heard of before, or had not heard much about. You like it so much that you buy the CD.

-Copyright Violation? They can bite my ass on this one.
-Ethical? Hell yeah!
-Lost Revenue? Hell no. In fact, that's more revenue than they would have had without the MP3 to download.

What if that song sucked, you do not buy the CD and delete the file (why would anyone keep a file of a bad song)?

-Copyright Violation? Again, they can bite my unshaved ass.
-Ethical? You bet.
-Lost Revenue? Possibly. But only because their song sucked.

What about all of these new MP3 players that the big companies (like Sony, who owns several studios) put out? They aren't exactly saying "don't pirate music". They're just saying "play hundreds of your MP3's on our equipment". The whole MP3 issue really is a grey issue unto itself. I agree that stealing is bad, but in many cases MP3 has made people money. I have purchased CDs after downloading MP3s. I refuse to listen to the radio because
A) Radio sucks (unless you really like hearing those "really cool" DJs banter amongst themselves!)
B) They don't play what you want when you want to hear it. Not a good way to try out specific music.

MP3 is better than radio.

For instance, I downloaded all the tracks to James Horner's Vibes soundtrack. It is not available at stores and was a Varese Sarabande Club Member Exclusive release. Now the CD is worth about $130.00. I also downloaded tracks to Basil Pourdouris' Cherry 2000 which is estimated to be worth $250.00. For awhile Jerry Goldsmith's complete score to Mulan (about 30 cues, no songs) was only available if you were a member of the Academy and received a promo. And for awhile, the promos were being sold for about $450.00. Then the bootleg sells began and depreciated the value to a mere $200.00 I believe.

I bought a promo of Apollo 13 which has about 60 minutes of the score (none of the songs, and no f**king dialogue either) for about $47.00 after shipping and handling, and I lucked out on that because the retail is about $65.00! I and a friend of mine split $100.00 for a copy of Michael Kamen's Die Hard (again, a promo) on an E-Bay auction, and it's retailed at about $75.00 normally but has been sold on E-Bay for as high as $120. I was thrilled to have them (I still am), but then I saw these scores being swapped around on Napster, and I'm not buying these scores to collect so much as to listen to because I love symphonic music. So I felt a little gypped because I wasted $97.00 for those two examples (and those aren't the only promos I have) and none of that went to the orginal artist or any of the album's producers. Granted they are promos and the quality is better than they would be as MP3s (not to mention the CDs are glitch free), but they were still promos. Promos I might add, that said FOR PROMOTIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. NOT LICENSED FOR SALE. Just like all promos. But I paid for them anyway before I thought to check Napster. On occasion Film Score Monthly puts out re-releases, expanded releases, or even previously unreleased soundtracks as does Varese Sarabande and Intrada, but the number of copies is usually limited to around 3,000 and they sell at a reasonable price of about $17.00 to $20.00 if you buy the title within a year. I don't mind at all shelling out $20.00 or even $30.00 bucks for a rare soundtrack, but when you start to get into the triple digits, I think that's bullshit myself.

And then there's the bootlegs floating around out there. A complete 2 CD set of David Arnold's Independence Day sells for about $45.00 and again none of the profit goes to the original artist or the music industry. I'm told that bootleg is actually of superior quality, and it has every note of music from the movie (yes, I am that hungry to have every note from the composition on some of these soundtracks. It's ludicrous, I know.) and there was some damn good music cut from the 50+ min commercial release. Some of these bootlegs are of good quality while others are just shit. If I'd paid $50.00 for Elmer Bernstein's Ghostbusters on E-Bay instead of downloading the MP3s from another user, I would have been pissed because the MP3s were shit, and for comparsion I downloaded a file from the same user of a track from a promo I had and knew to be of fine quality and that MP3 sounded so much better even though the bitrate for it and the Ghostbusters MP3s was the same, so I know that Ghostbusters bootleg had to be shitty quality.

I know that a bulk of the Napster files out there were of material available at any store for $12 to $17, and that's why I made it a point not to download material available, but I grabbed a shitload of rare scores. True, they don't have as much quality as an original CD, but it doesn't diminish the listening experience for me any less. And now that Napster is gone do you guys think I'd be too whiney if I bitched about not being able to lift off the rest of the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade complete score?

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The man with the magic hands.

If it isn't yours, & you take it without buying it, it's theft.

The person who owns it or does the work decides how he will sell the product. Any other acquisition is illegal.

Okay, you've suddenly decided that you won't buy something until you've tried it out for a while first.

So you just go over to Mark Gulbrandsen's, help yourself to a Century projector & sound head he's rebuilt, & take it home. You tell him you're going to use it for a while, you don't know how long, & then decide if you want to pay him for it. Or, maybe, later you'll bring it back & not pay him. Depends.

Mark, of course, will say "Hey, I didn't say you could do that with my stuff". Then, he should get a gun & shoot you as a thief as you walk out the door with his property. He has done the work, he owns the product. He will tell you how you can acquire it from him. It many not even be for sale.

The only difference with Napster is that folks don't feel like they're going to get caught, so they do what they want & rationalize their behavior to themselves & others.

------------------
The man with the magic hands.

I would never steal one of Mark Gulbrandsen's Centurys. No way. I'd want it to work! I'd have to steal it from someone else.

And that being the case Joe, what if I told you I could get you a copy of Mark's Century for free?

------------------
The man with the magic hands.

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. 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.

---

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.

quote:

---

[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.

---

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.

quote:

---

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.

---

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.

quote:

---

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.

---

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."

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.

If you tape something off the radio it is tottally different. (as I have been told by a freind who is an attorney) Because the labels liscensed the station to broadcast it. Also, because you had to sit and listen to the advertisments.
 

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.

quote:

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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...

---

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.

quote:

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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

---

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!

quote:

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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.

quote:

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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

---

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.

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]

That's because most of the people who download lots of stuff from Napster are tech-oriented males, and most of NSync's fan base is little girls who aren't into that kind of stuff.

 

If you are a copyright holder, you "own" one thing and one thing alone -- the right to exclude others from copying and/or performing that work, depending on what type of work it is. This is explicitly stated in the copyright law:

[i]17 USC 202 Ownership of copyright as distinct from ownership of material object

Ownership of a copyright, or of any of the exclusive rights under a copyright, is distinct from ownership of any material object in which the work is embodied. Transfer of ownership of any material object, including the copy or phonorecord in which the work is first fixed, does not of itself convey any rights in the copyrighted work embodied in the object; nor, in the absence of an agreement, does transfer of ownership of a copyright or of any exclusive rights under a copyright convey property rights in any material object.[\i]

So if you are making a copy off of Napster, you are most certainly [b]NOT[\b] "stealing" anything from the copyright holder, because once a copyright holder sells copies of a work, they do NOT retain a property interest in those copies. They still retain ownership of the copyright. No matter how many people download Metallica songs, Metallica still has the right to exercise their copyright. Unlike trademark law, where you can actually lose your trademark if you don't protect it ("Aspirin" used to be a trademark, for instance), copyright law has no such concept.

Now if you were to take someone else's work, register it with the copyright office, and try and enforce your copyright, then you WOULD be stealing. You would be stealing the copyright. However, that isn't what we're talking about.

When you make an illegal copy of a copyrighted work, you are committing copyright infringement. This is completely different from stealing. The concepts are not even close. Stealing is the illegal taking of physical property, depriving the previous owner. Copyright infringement is, as the phrase suggests, the act of infringing on a government-granted monopoly. The law says that a copyright owner has the right to exclude the public from performing certain actions, and you are ignoring that monopoly. But you aren't stealing. You are infringing. Some people think that infringing on a government granted monopoly is a serious crime, and others disagree.

Richard Stallman made a good point recently about what's wrong with copyright. For most of the history of copyright, copyright has functioned as an industrial regulation, not a personal regulation. Copyright is a compromise. A contract.

When a publisher publishes a work under copyright, they gain something and they lose something. They gain the exclusive rights provided by copyright, the right to exclude others from making copies, the right (for motion pictures) to control public exhibition of their works, and other rights. However, the publisher loses certain rights that they might have had if they chose to license their works instead of publish them. For instance, when a publisher sells a copy of a work, he loses the right to control the resale of that work, or its lending. This is why we have used bookstores and public libraries, for instance.

The public also gains and loses by copyright. The public gains in that works are published openly, rather than licensed. One of the original reasons for including a copyright clause in the Constitution was the problem of navigational maps. Without copyright protection, mapmakers were loath to publish their work, because anyone could simply reprint the map and undercut them. As a result, mapmakers took to licensing maps, as trade secrets, to ship captains. Because of this, no one was in a position to compare and correct differing navigation maps, and ships were lost as a result. By offering copyright protection, mapmakers could openly publish their works, and mapmakers and users alike benefitted from open publication.

Now we move on to the last part of the equation -- the rights that the public loses when copyright is granted.

The public loses the right to make and distribute copies of works.

The thing is, for most of the history of copyright, people have NOT had the ability to exercise this right anyhow, because for most of the history of copyright, the making of copies has been an industrial activity, requiring machines like printing presses, record cutting machines, vinyl record presses, cine printers, CD mastering equipment -- large, industrial machines that ordinary people just don't have.

In other words, copyright has not ordinarily been an oppressive restriction, because the public has traditionally traded away a right that they were never in a position to exercise anyhow!

It's only when the public does acquire that ability -- with tape recorders, photocopiers, videotapes, CD burners, the internet -- that copyright changes from being a benign industrial regulation into an onerous restriction on personal activity.

The problem is that when copyright goes from an industrial restriction to a personal restriction, it runs right up against the First Amendment. Copyright is a restriction on a very important type of speech -- the right to repeat and build upon other people's speech.

One common characteristic of copyright debate is the endless scenarios -- what if I videotape a movie instead of buying it. What if I download a song from Napster, then buy the album? What if I don't buy the album?

The answer to all of these scenarios is that copyright is only compatable with the First Amendment if it makes allowances for fair use, and fair use is extremely subjective. The part of the copyright law that defines fair use is one of the most deliberately vague, subjective laws in the entire body of United States law. The law gives only a set of rough guidelines for determining if the making of a copy is infringement -- which is illegal -- or fair use, which is legal:

(continued next message)
 

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include -

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether
such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit
educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in
relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or
value of the copyrighted work.

This clause is striking because it is probably one of the most ambiguous laws on the books. There is no way to objectively determine whether the making of a copy is an illegal act of infringement, or a legal act of fair use. The determination is completely subjective. Of course, if you are sued for copyright infringement, you may wind up having to explain your logic to a judge, which leads to the often-repeated claim that "fair use is a defense, not a right." This is true in one sense, but it does not mean that there is no right to fair use. Fair use is the recognition that the copyright clause is subject to the First Amendment, which it has to be, because copyright is a regulation of speech.

The courts have, in general, done a good job of balancing the letter of copyright -- which bans certain speech -- with the purpose of copyright -- which is to promote learning and progress by encouraging publication. The courts have determined that the private ownership of tape recorders, VCRs, photocopiers, and digital audio recording equipment are legal, because this equipment has substantial non-infringing uses, INCLUDING FAIR USE, which is defined as non-infringing.

Thus there is NO hard line, no set of rules such as "taping off the radio is illegal, but videotaping is legal." It all comes down to what you are trying to accomplish. Are you copying to evade a purchase? Are you copying something that can't be purchased? Are you copying to make a profit? Are you copying to make a copy that you are going to analyze/criticize? These are all subjective criteria, and there's no point in looking for bright lines because they aren't there.

As a final comment, I'd like to address the notion that "digital is different." This has been put a number of ways -- some people say that "information wants to be free", others say that digital copying is a threat because it has the potential to create "perfect copies forever."

First, digital copying has always existed. The first copyright laws were created in response to the invention of the printing press - a digital technology. Instead of zeroes and ones, the "digital bits" on a printing press are individual characters, so digital copying is nothing new. Copyright has always been a response to the availability of digital copying technology.

One thing has changed with the internet. Something now exists that has never existed before.

In the past, once a copyright holder has sold copies of a work, that copyright holder has NEVER had the ability to track what is done with their work. Thousands of photocopiers, tape recorders, VCRs, and CD burners are sold each year, and no one, repeat no one, really knows how they are being used. Copyright infringement certainly goes on day and night, as does fair use, but in a state of privacy.

Not so on the internet and with new digital technologies. For the first time, copyright holders have acquired the ability to eliminate all copying, including fair use. That's the real problem with modern copyright "reform." The public has been stripped of its end of the copyright bargain.

The situation with "digital textbooks" is even more alarming. ebooks and digital books are being designed to deliberately eliminate the concept of a used book, or even the concept of book ownership. If you download an ebook, the data file, which is encrypted, contains controls built in as to what can be done with the file. If you buy a paper textbook, you acquire a lot of rights along with that purchase. You can sell the textbook at the end of the semester, or you can keep the book for the rest of your life. With ebooks, the publisher has the ability -- and they are doing this RIGHT NOW -- to insert electronic controls in the software that make the ebook only work on one reader -- preventing you from reselling the book or even giving it away. One company, in pitching their product to universities, claims among the advantages, that their books have the capability to self-destruct -- erase themselves at the end of the semester, thus eliminating the "problem" of used books. One university has entered into a contract with an electronic textbook publisher where students have to pay a fee every year, or their books become unusable.

The real danger of the digital age isn't to publishers -- publishers have all the rights and abilities to control publication that they have had in the past. The real danger of the digital age is that publishers are gaining something that the Constitution -- and copyright law says they are NEVER supposed to have -- the ability to control, or even to reach out and destroy -- any or all copies of their works after they have been sold to the public.

And that problem, if unaddressed, threatens to leave an enormous hole in 21st century culture.

- John
 

Now I'll make your argument even more muddy. I have software that I have developed that is covered under copyright law. In the tradition of many software authors I have forgone submitting the software for license, giving up the right to punitive damages in a court case but still retaining the inherrent copyright of a creator. Submission requires many pages of original program code to be included with the application, and that code is available for anyone to peruse, thus encouraging theft. My software is instead protected by encryption and a security device.

Since I developed the software, it is protected as a copyrighted work. Yet, for legal reasons, I sell licenses to use the software to users instead of selling it outright. Users may make copies of the software at will, (the opposite of how copyright is supposed to work) but need the security device to operate it. In effect, anyone may duplicate and distribute the software, but only licensed users may utilize it. This totally contrdicts your paragraph:

"When a publisher publishes a work under copyright, they gain something and they lose something. They gain the exclusive rights provided by copyright, the right to exclude others from making copies, the right (for motion pictures) to control public exhibition of their works, and other rights. However, the publisher loses certain rights that they might have had if they chose to license their works instead of publish them. For instance, when a publisher sells a copy of a work, he loses the right to control the resale of that work, or its lending. "

In essence, I sell a license to a copyrighted work and the terms of the license agreement subject it to more strigent contract law. Access to databases and other published works are often sold this way as well. Arguably, BMI and independent production companies do not sell copyrighted works but only sell licenses to the distributors. In an extreme case, the license could be revoked and copies that had been sold recallled as stolen property. I could just as easily argue that this is not correct. Such is the law.

In short, copyright law protects you as much as you can afford lawyers to defend yourself until the other side caves in. In practice, it isn't as much law as it is repression of upstarts by those with the financial wherewithall to destroy the competition. Contract law and the UCC can be more level playing fields for the small business.

You state:
"The real danger of the digital age is that publishers are gaining something that the Constitution -- and copyright law says they are NEVER supposed to have -- the ability to control, or even to reach out and destroy -- any or all copies of their works after they have been sold to the public."

This is not new. You seem to argue that an ephemeral item is against the intention of the Constitution, and this is flatly wrong. Newspapers decay, motion picture film self destructs, magnetic media becomes lossey, vinyl records get scratched. Rarely does a person purchase a copyrighted work with the expectation that it will last forever. Active destruction is no less or more permanent than passive destruction, and newspapers could be accused of using a non-permanent media to limit the life of their copyrighted work.

Copyright law is a law of last resort in many aspects of business today. Shrink wrapped licensing and additional security are much more common to high ticket items, but expect the trend to drift downwards to music "purchases."

First of all, there's nothing illegal or improper about you, the software author, taking technological measures to try and control the software you sell/lease me. If the technological measures work, then everything is moot because I'm forced into the terms of the "contract" by the operation of the software. Thus a small amount of mud is eliminated.

The question becomes, what if I bypass your copy/use protection. Can you expect the courts to back up your "contract"?

The validity of software licenses is very much in dispute. The courts have decided both ways on similar cases. A couple of points:

(1) The "licensing" tactic has already been tried -- and rejected by the courts -- for both books and motion pictures. In the case of books, a publisher included a notice in the front cover that claimed that the book was only "licensed", and that it was illegal to sell the book for less than one dollar. The courts rejected this, saying that once the book had been sold, the copyright owner had relinquished ownership -- and all rights -- relating to that copy.

(2) The lynchpin of mass-market software licenses is the legal theory that because software operates by being copied into a computer's hard drive or RAM, this is "Making A Copy", and requires the permission of the copyright holder to do so. Therefore, software cannot be used without a license.

17 USC 117 was an effort to legislatively overturn this decision. The law now says:

Sec. 117. Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs

(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy. - Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:

(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an
essential step in the utilization of the computer program in
conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other
manner ...

So lets say that we wind up in court. You claim that we have a contract, and I claim that there is no contract, and that I am the owner of a copy of the software and can use it however I wish.

The courts are going to look at a number of things.

First off, there are a number of ways that a shrink-wrap license can be challenged. I could claim that:

(1) The contract is a contract of adhesion. I never had the chance to negotiate the terms of the contract, and should not be bound by it.

(2) The only contract here is the contract between myself and the software store -- an ordinary bill of sale. I paid cash, I received a CDR containing software. Thus ended the transaction, I became the owner, and 17USC117 gives me the right to run the software, regardless of any enclosed "contract."

(3) The "contract" is invalid because it does not provide consideration to both sides. In general, in order for a contract to be valid, each side must receive something of value. Consideration is defined as either:

(a) Agreeing to do something that one would not otherwise be legally obligated to do, or
(b) Agreeing to refrain from doing something that one would otherwise be legally permitted to do.

Most software licenses are of the form:

LICENSE
(1) The licensee receives the right to install and run the software on a computer
(2) The licensee agrees not to reverse-engineer the software, loan it, etc, etc.

Because 17 USC 117 gives me, the owner of the copy, the right to install and run the software, I can claim that the "license" offers me no consideration, and is therefore invalid. In the absence of a contract, I may use the software under the terms of ordinary copyright law, which includes the right to install and run the software.

The flaw in 17 USC 117 is that it gives the OWNER of the copy of the software the right to install and run it. Many software packages will insist, as part of the contract, that the disc containing the software is only leased to the purchaser, not sold, thus removing the software from the scope of 117. The counterargument is that the software company is in essence laying claim to my property -- the physical disc, after selling it to me. I could countersue the software company for "impugnment of title", and each of our lawyers would get a new BMW by the time it was all over.

The arguments go on and on, but philosophically, the main problem with software copyrights is that software violates at least one of the core assumptions of copyright:

Copyright explicitly states that the right to make copies of a work is legally distinct and severed from the right of the owner of a copy of a work to use and enjoy their copy. This is violated because software is installed and used by copying. If I purchase one copy of a software program, why shouldn't I be allowed to install it on 2 computers? I own the software and I own the computers.

But yes, the issue of software copyright and licensing is extra muddy.
 

Newspapers decay, motion picture film self destructs, magnetic media becomes lossey, vinyl records get scratched. Rarely does a person purchase a copyrighted work with the expectation that it will last forever. Active destruction is no less or more permanent than passive destruction, and newspapers could be accused of using a non-permanent media to limit the life of their copyrighted work.

I will argue that the constitutional purpose of copyright is to establish a public domain by inciting publication, and offering a time-limited monopoly. That's what the authors said, and that's what the courts have held. The original term of copyright was 14 years, with an additional 14 year period. Copyright originally covered printed matter, which at the time meant hemp or rag paper, so yes, copyright was specifically designed to promote the preservation of works. The intent was that works would enter the public domain, and could then be preserved by re-copying, if they proved to be of value to someone.

It's only recently, 1976 then 1998, that copyright was altered so that the copyright term far-and-away exceeds the expected media life. This was and is a huge mistake, and will result in the forced destruction of much of our culture. Film archives are bursting with unique, last-remaining-copies of films that are deteriorating but cannot be legally copied/preserved because the copyright is untracable.

And I will say that there is an enormous difference between a work being lost because the last copy deteriorates, and a work being lost because the copyright holder was able to electronically and/or legally order the destruction of all copies. The first is a failure on the part of the owners of the copies to preserve the copies, and the second creates a new right above and beyond the constitutional purpose of copyright -- which is to expand and build a public domain of works.
 

I wholeheartedly agree that the extention of copyright monopoly is counterproductive to preservation of materials or the establishment of public domain and I'll go further and say that it impinges upon free speech, since extended terms are unreasonable restrictions to the public. The entire concept of extended copyright is based in the fiction of a corporation being a person.

While I have incorporated my business as a method of protecting myself within a hostile business environment, I do not philosophically agree with the idea of a corporation that has a potentially unlimited lifespan. No individual has that luxury and the concept of a corporation being allowed to exist for longer than a normal adult working life (ages 21 to 65 or 44 years) is in some fashion a fraud upon the people. Add to that the fact that the true creator of the work is often minimally compensated, and copyright law becomes a sham of ethical behavior, cloaking the interests of would be monopolists.

When ethics, common sense, and the law come into conflict, many people will ignore the written law. Before it be said that such behavior is inherently wrong, one should study all the laws on the books, including blue laws and such laws that might remain without purpose, such as not propelling a steam locomotive faster than a walk on any street in a town or the requirement for men to wear a cloth hat on Sunday. The body of law is a living body and changes with time. Outdated and arcane laws are more common than might be expected. As opposed to canton law where only a fixed number of pages of laws are allowed, U.S. law provides ample opportunity for selective enforcement and sufficient laws to indict any individual for trivial infractions, no matter how upstanding and noble that person might be. This is a dangerous situation that can be used as a method of oppression.

In theory, laws are developed both by the parties in political power and by consensus. When a law repeatedly acts counter to the consensus and against the good of the public, then that law is subject to revision, and in extreme cases juries may even legally refuse to render a verdict based on a law that they deem unfair or arbitrary. Unfortunately, it takes an extremely well educated jury to recognize the occasional need to force change within the legal system in this manner.

By now, I'm sure we've bored the film-techers to the point of tears, so I'll sign off this discussion by saying that each person is responsible for their own code of ethics. Laws are an external factor that should rarely enter into a person's reasons for behavior.
If somebody wants to spend the time and effort to download a series of tones and lyrics for personal use, when there are only a limited number of combinations of notes, and only 26 letters in our alphabet, I'm not going to consider it a major crime against society. When someone attempts to privatize old folk songs that are part of our combined history and heritage, I find that action much more of a crime against the spirit of our country and its founders.

 

quote:

---

If somebody wants to spend the time and effort to download a series of tones and lyrics for personal use, when there are only a limited number of combinations of notes, and only 26 letters in our alphabet, I'm not going to consider it a major crime against society. When someone attempts to privatize old folk songs that are part of our combined history and heritage, I find that action much more of a crime against the spirit of our country and its founders.

---

Sheesh, this just keeps going around in a circle.

quote:

---

download a series of tones and lyrics for personal use, when there are only a limited number of combinations of notes,

---

Once again it's the argument that "I'm not taking anything that is of value".

Then why do you want it? It does have value.
And a "series of tones" is not a "hit" either.

If you can write & produce a hit, you've done something that is more rare & you can charge more money for than garage music (which there doesn't seem to be much demand for), or "a series of tones".

Also completely ignored is the system includes the method by which the owners are *paid*. The further into generalities to compensate for the joy of finding a friend who'll hold the fire door at the multiplex open so you can watch all you want for free, the further from thinking about *whose* money you're taking, & the fact that it's their right to market it in that particular manner.

Okay, you can approach the mystery like I do, like most of us do who try to figure out why something is running funny, as what happens when people see "Man, look at all this stuff that I know I'm supposed to pay for but I can scam for free, lemme do it now before it's gone!" & try to figure out where the point of denial kicks in for those who need to rationalize behavior which they have been socialized to recognize as theft.

The courts start from the other end, & it's faster: "Who owns this?"

Napster=theft

All the rationalizations are after the fact to justify the theft, & avoid the central point of who is being ripped off, & who is doing it.

You'll notice that when asked "Why did you do that?", folks who are uncomfortable with what they've done evade the fact that something has been stolen. Instead, they quickly move into generalities to de-personalize the situation.

Most eyeball-roll inducing is when the support for Napster becomes a nebulous & selectively distorted argument about the nature of copyright law, & a sudden moral pronouncement of "It's wrong, & we're working to change it!" When what is actually happening is that they're stealling from the artists, performers, & property owners, & attempting to do ego conservation. If it was really a moral crusade, the crusade would be to create a new system so that the people who owned & produced the work would be paid & supported. But paying the artists is not the issue to the folks who lift music via Napster. They are not & have not been interested in paying them for what they do. They're not involved in any social or economic school reorganizing the music market. That's not what they're interested in. They're just taking what they want because they've got the opportunity, & rationalizing afterwards.

If you're just stealing music, just admit it & don't tip your hand to a poorly-resolved self image.
When they asked Bonnie & Clyde what they did, they said "We rob banks." They didn't say "Our work is an active expression of & part of a reorgainzational campaign in our rebellion against a social & economic system which doesn not serve the people whom it should." Because that's hogwash, people would laugh, & Bonnie & Clyde did not have problems of conflict, guilt, rationalization, self-delusion, & weenie-ness. They robbed banks because they wanted the money because it made them happy, & were unconcerned with property issues.

Napster's vaporizing, but Napster users should have just admitted:
"I steal from artists, f*ck 'em."
And some did admit that. The non-weenie ones.

I still don't understand why people keep reiterating a mindset that they don't believe that artists should be paid, or certainly not at least be allowed to let their work participate in the free market system. What a double standard! "I want that, but I'm not going to pay what the market values it at."

quote:

---

I am not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but if I pay $16.00 for a CD, and the artist only gets a buck of that, maybe two bucks, then who is really robbing who?

---

And if it's dowloaded from Napster, instead of only a buck or two, the artist gets...nothing!

quote:

---

Napster should have been a wake-up call for artists. I would rather download their CD from their website for $3.00, giving them all three dollars, and then see them in concert for $25.00, because I like them for bucking the system. Prince supported Napster, and so did Billy Corgan, and they are two very talented musicians. What gives there?

---

Because they're both genius PR boys, too, Under The Cherry Moon excepted. You *know* you've been manipulated, don't you?
They knew it wouldn't last long.

Also lots of acts with no sales were just hoping to use Napster distribution for PR, but not for profit until they could hit.
Like Billy Idol!

The most hysterical one was The Offspring coming out & publicly proclaiming that Napster was great, & to show their support, The Offspring would be selling Napster-logo T-shirts on the Offspring's site.

Napster fumes, gets their lawyers *standing at the door* ready with a cease & desist to deliver to The Offspring to stop selling Napster's copyrighted material on their website, & then realize...

You may want to edit out your first quote, since I explain myself right afterwords, and also because you quoted my explaination. If jumping on the Napster bandwagon was the motivation for Prince and Corgan, then why didn't EVERY other artist do it too? Why was Napster even challenged? You seem to feel that Napster was just a cheap billboard for those artists that didn't have a problem with it. Millions of people would see that they supported Napster, and wha la, buy their CD's, if that was the case then the all musicians should have dumped their execs and went to Fanning and Co. for distribution, right?

BTW, I own the T-Shirt and the Baseball Cap. :-)
 

The new Napster has arrived...
http://www.aimster.com/
 

How hard can it be for the Aimsterpeeple to figure?

Someone offers their property for sale; if someone else takes it or distributes it without permission or paying for it, it's theft.

Aimster will be gone soon, too.

The nastiest part of the Napster & Aimster thing is, it only works if it's organized. I suppose somebody will get very RICO-oriented on these things soon.

I'm struggling, but I don't see what I misinterpreted.
Prince is just playing games again, & Corgan's continuing to mine his populist angle.

The only thing I could get from re-reading is that there are some great garage bands out there without major label contracts, but you KNOW most of them have been working their butts off to get picked up even by one of the minor labels!

> And if it's dowloaded from Napster, instead of only a buck or two, the artist gets...nothing!

This is most interesting, because it turns out that it's false by omission.

In 1992, the recording industry pushed through a law called the "Audio Home Recording Act." In addition to requiring SCMS copy protection on digital audio recorders, it mandated the payment of royalties to the music industry on blank digital audio media.

The bill was called the "DAT tax", which is inaccurate for two reasons. First, the royalties apply to all digital audio-branded media, and second, it isn't a tax, it's a royalty.

So, whenever you purchase a CDR that says, "Audio" on it, a small percentage of that money goes into a government fund, which is then collected by the recording industry. Those royalties are mandated by law to be paid to artists and songwriters.

Here is the copyright office home page. If you page down halfway, you will find information about the "Digital Audio Recording Fund". This is the royalty fund that Napster users pay into when they burn audio CDRs from their downloaded files.
http://www.loc.gov/copyright/carp/

The interesting thing about these web pages is that they never give hard numbers. In fact, they brnd over backwards to NOT disclose exactly how much money people are paying the music industry in royalties when they burn CDRs.

However, they do say who received the royalties:

Broadcast Music, Inc. (``BMI'');
the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (``ASCAP'');
SESAC, Inc. (``SESAC'');
the Harry Fox Agency (``HFA'');
the Songwriters Guild of America (``SGA'');
and Copyright Management, Inc. (``CMI'')

as well as two individuals who petitioned individually for their royalties because they felt they were misrepresented by ASCAP/BMI.

The interesting part, which is left out of the published reports, is the pattern of royalty collection over the years.

Royalties collected on digital audio recording devices and blank media:

1992 $118,227.42
1993 $520,162.84
1994 $521,999.64
1995 $473,592.20
1996 $397,152.52
1997 $969,178.06
1998 $1,978,457.93
1999 $3,551,030.86
2000 $5,285,246.32

These numbers aren't hard to explain. In 1992, when the royalties were first imposed, the only digital audio recording format was DAT. DAT was never accepted in the consumer market, and the declining revenues reflect this. Then, in 1997, CDRs were introduced, and the royalties started to climb. Since the introduction of MP3s, and then Napster, the royalties have started to rise on an exponential curve. These are royalties that are paid, by law, directly to the organizations that represent artists and songwriters -- the very people that William claims are "not paid" by Napster users

The only difference is that Napster users don't pay when they download -- they pay when they burn. But they do pay. And quite a lot.

So let me ask this.

When you buy an audio CDR, you pay a royalty to the recording industry, artists, and songwriters. Now why, having paid the royalty, should you not be allowed to fill that CDR with music by the artists you have paid, by Napster or any other means?
 

Besides, when someone purchases a blank CD or Dat, how do they know who to give the "royalty" to? How do they know which artist that individual is going to be stealing from?
 

First, the royalties are only paid on media that is branded for audio use. So, if you buy "data" CDRs, you don't pay a royalty.

Second, the money is handed over to those organizations as a lump sum. They divide the money up as they please, out of the public eye.

quote:

---

And if it's dowloaded from Napster, instead of only a buck or two, the artist gets...nothing!

This is most interesting, because it turns out that it's false by omission.

---

Absolutely a distortion.

You have downloaded something produced by the artist, & paid the artist nothing for that work. That still hasn't changed.

If I come over & take your paycheck for last week's work, may I then say you are still getting paid because you can expect a social security check later?

You are still dodging the issue of taking without payment the property of someone else.

You are not paying Blink 182 for their new CD by buying a blank DAT type.

Are you suggesting there is a "socialized music industry" which supports all artists, regardless of how many units they sell?

When a radio station plays a song, they write down what song they played, then they pay the statutory royalty. Are the radio stations stealing because they don't pay the royalty before they play the song?

When someone downloads a song, they first download the song, then if they decide to put it on an audio CDR, they pay the statutory royalty, yet to you, even though they are paying, they are still stealing.

This is not imaginary money. This is real money paid by Napster users directly to the music industry, and the payments are mandated by law to be paid to artists as well as copyright holders.

> You are still dodging the issue of taking without payment the property of someone else.

I'm not dodging the issue. I've explained over and over why infringement is different from stealing. You might think that it's wrong. You might think that it's just as wrong as stealing, but it is not the same crime, and your analogies don't hold.

It's really hard to argue with someone who can't or won't understand the difference between infringement and theft. Stealing deprives someone of physical property. Infringement is the violation of a government-created monopoly.

> You are not paying Blink 182 for their new CD by buying a blank DAT type.

When you buy a blank DAT tape (or a blank audio CDR), 3% of the wholesale price is, under federal law, placed in a fund At the end of each year, that fund is handed over to the music industry, which divides the funds up between ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and the major labels.

Federal law requires that these funds be paid to copyright owners, writers, and musical artists. If these funds aren't winding up in the hands of artists, then the record labels are breaking federal law. The record labels, I am told, divide up the money for their artists based on overall sales.

So yes, every time you purchase a DAT, part of your purchase goes to Blink 182.

> Are you suggesting there is a "socialized music industry" which supports all artists, regardless of how many units they sell?

Only in the sense that statutory royalties are part of a "socialized music industry."

I have a feeling that you just don't believe that statutory royalties are collected on blank media. Read the law if you don't believe it. It isn't a secret, and the numbers are real. You may say that Napster users are "stealing", but $11,000,000+ so far says you're wrong.
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/ch10.text.html

When you download a song without paying for it, you are depriving
the owners of their money for that work.

The monies paid from buying blank media are not related to that work.

If somebody holds open the fire door at your theater & someone creeps in without paying admission; it is still theft, even if the thief gives money to the theater through other streams - like buying concessions.

 

Comments on the Audio Home Recording Act, from the 1992 Congressional record, by the authors and supporters of the legislation:

The money paid into the royalty fund will be distributed to interested copyright parties to compensate for any loss of royalties due to home copying by consumers

-- U.S. Representative Cardiss Collins, Il.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3204 would make it clear that noncommercial taping of music by consumers is not a violation of copyright law. The debate over home taping of records goes back to 1970 when Congress first extended copyright protection for records but this legislation will end the 22-year-old debate and make it clear that home taping does not constitute copyright infringement.

-- Rep. Jack Brooks, Tx.

There are three basic provisions of the legislation. First, it guarantees consumers the legal right to make analog or digital copies of musical recordings for noncommercial use.

-- Rep Cardiss Collins.

At the same time, the bill resolves an issue that has been of great concern to consumers for the last two decades and that is the home taping of music. The bill makes clear that the home taping of music is not a violation of copyright law.

-- Rep Carlos Moorhead, Ca.

This legislation, the Audio Home Recording Act of 1991 ...
benefits the music industry because it receives compensation. The agreement also removes the legal cloud that has hovered over home taping of sound recordings. Although the practice has become widespread, there are those who have argued that it was illegal under the copyright law. This legislation makes clear the private, non-commercial taping, of both analog and digital material, is permissible under the copyright law. As new and improved recording technologies become available, such clarification in the law becomes more important.

-- Sen. Dennis DeConcini, Az.

Key Elements of Digital Home Taping Legislation

(1) The legislation provides for an exemption from copyright infringement liability for a consumer for digital and analog audio taping for private, noncommercial use.

(2) The legislative provisions discussed below apply to all digital audio recording technologies (DAT, DCC, Mini Disc, CD-R, etc.).

-- Sen. Edward Kennedy, Ma.

One more thing ...

If somebody holds open the fire door at your theater & someone creeps in without paying admission; it is still theft, even if the thief gives money to the theater through other streams - like buying concessions.

That would not be theft. That would be trespassing. Once again, you are confusing two completely unrelated crimes.

You're leaving out the fact that a huge majority of music CD-R burning is done on computers, not stand-alone CD recorders. Computers use data CD-Rs, on which no royalty is collected or paid to anybody. (I'm amazed that such a royalty hasn't been proposed yet...but not complaining!)

Second, all those quotes from government files were made under the assumption that the home taper already "owns" the copy of the music he's taping from. Besides, if those quotes are from the '92 record, they were made long before digital downloading was even a glimmer in the public eye. The rules have changed.

Thirdly, if someone sneaks in the back door of my theatre, he is "just" trespassing only if he doesn't watch the movie. Soon as he starts watching, he's not only trespassing, he is stealing the product I'm selling, the rotten little thief.
 

In the "trespassing" case the individual is only stealing from you, judging from the way your sentence is worded. But is he not also stealing from the people who made the movie, since they see no money from his viewing of it, just like every theater employee does whenever they watch a movie for free? Granted, you work for the theater so that is a bonus to the employee that the theater (not the studio) provides. But still, no money is going to the artist. And if I bring my family or a bunch of friends then the studio is really screwed!

Oh well. I guess we'll all just burn in hell

Media royalties were suggested for all media, but Congress was beseiged by computer users, and explicitly rejected including computer media. Obviously, many people are avoiding royalties, just as many people avoid royalties on printed materials by using photocopy machines. However, many people are paying royalties, because the royalties collected are increasing on an exponential curve. No system is perfect.

I'm puzzled by your assertation that the AHRA was only intended to cover instances where the taper already owns the copy of the music he's taping from. I was very involved in opposing the AHRA, and I can tell you that this was never, ever part of the debate. There was no reason that it should be part of the debate, since it is a long-established principle that personal use of copyrighted materials that you already own is permissible. The debate always was about whether consumers had the right to make copies of music that they didn't already own. Why would someone want to copy a $15.00 robust CD that they already own onto a $20.00 (at the time) fragile DAT tape anyhow?

Anyhow, more from the Congressional Record:

American consumers have been deprived of overall access to this innovative recording technology due to litigation and disputes between the electronics industry, recording industry, songwriters and music publishers in the United States. The dispute stems from the music industry's fear that once consumers get access to this technology, home copying will increase and this will lead to reduced sales and royalties.

-- Rep. Cardiss Collins, IL

Why would individuals copying their own music harm sales and royalties? Would it put an end to the non-existant practice of individuals purchasing more than one copy of a CD? How many CDs do you have multiple copies of?

The royalty system is designed to compensate creators and copyright owners of music for lost sales due to copying on digital audio recorders.

-- Rep. Jack Brooks, Tx.

How would a bill permitting people to copy their music they already own "compensate ... for lost sales." Anyone who already owns a CD has already compensated the creators and copyright owners, and presumably has no reason to purchase a second copy.

and finally, I quote Sen. Edward Kennedy, explaining the purpose of the bill:

I first became involved in the issue of home taping of copyrighted material in 1981. At that time, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision finding that the non-commercial private video taping of broadcast television shows constituted copyright infringement. I disagreed with the decision of the Ninth Circuit and immediately introduced legislation to overturn it. It is difficult to believe that the so-called Betamax decision was announced almost 10 years ago. Over the intervening years, the issue of noncommercial home taping has remained a hotly debated one.

My purpose in introducing this legislation today is the same as it was when I introduced the Betamax bill in 1981, to protect the rights of consumers to tape copyrighted material for their own non-commercial, private use.

So there you have it. According to the author of the law, the Audio Home Recording Act is intended to protect the rights of consumers to tape copyrighted material that they did not previously own, just as the Betamax case was about the rights of consumers to tape copyrighted television broadcasts that they did not previously own.

Besides, if those quotes are from the '92 record, they were made long before digital downloading was even a glimmer in the public eye. The rules have changed.

By 1992, Congress was tired of the recording industry running to them in a state of panic every time a new technology was introduced. The AHRA was designed to be technology neutral. It was designed to cover any and all present and future technologies.

All of the hysterical anti-Napster arguments are exactly the same hysterical anti-DAT arguments of 10 years ago.

Digital audio technology has been around for several years. Compact discs are examples of digital technology. In the mideighties, consumer electronics companies decided to market a new wave of digital audio technology to American consumers--the digital audio recorder. Unlike the familiar analog audio recorder, the digital audio recorder is capable of making virtually perfect copies of source music. With analog recorders, as one continues to make copies from copies, the sound quality deteriorates. With digital audio recorders, on the other hand, multigenerational copies--from the 1st generation to the 15th generation--maintain virtually perfect sound quality.

-- Cardiss Collins

Even more exciting than the compact disc and the compact disc player, is the digital audio recorder. Unlike the familiar analog recorder, digital audio recorders are able to make virtually perfect copies of source music. With analog recorders, as one makes generational copies, the sound quality of the music eventually deteriorates. On the other hand, with digital audio recorders multigovernmental copies do not change the sound quality of the music, so that a 100th generation copy will sound as good as the original version.

-- Cardiss Collins, again

You could replace the words "digital audio recorders" with "Napster" and you would have essentially the exact same argument. Nothing has changed. Napster hasn't changed the basic nature of digital copying. Digital copying is, and has always been about what to do when people have the technology to make an infinite number of perfect copies.
Granted, Napster has dramatically increased the amount of digital copying going on -- that's obvious -- but at the same time, the law has dramatically increased the amount of royalty revenues generated by unregulated digital taping. And, after all, isn't that the hallmark of a successful statutory royalty system? The numbers show that the AHRA, after 5 years of market failure, has only started to succeed in its purpose with the introduction of CDRs, MP3s, and Napster.

As for that rotten little fellow who snuck in the back door of your theatre, you can say that what he's doing is "sort of like" stealing, but if you called the police and tried to have him arrested for theft, the first thing that the police officer would ask you is what did he steal? What would you have the police officer write down as the stolen goods, and do you really think that a judge or jury would convict him of theft? Trespassing, yes. But theft? Honest question. I've never had occasion to have someone prosecuted for unauthorized viewing of a movie.

While this is the case with non-SCMS DAT and CD-recorders, an MP3 is HARDLY a 'perfect' or even 'virtually perfect' copy, even at high bitrates. I have NEVER heard an MP3, especially one ripped from a CD, that *perfectly* matched the original recording.

-Aaron

 

Here's an interesting article. Since the evisceration of Napster, the recording industry is apparently in free-fall. Major label album sales are down 8%, and concert ticket sales are down 12%.

http://www.salon.com/ent/music/feature/2001/07/19/industry_downturn/index.html

Now this could just be the downturning economy, or a string of poor product, but while Napster was operating, record sales were booming, and now that it's shut down, record sales are in free-fall. There's a good chance that something entirely different is happening -- something that the recording industry doesn't really want to think about.

Previous generations of young people listened to the radio to find the music that they liked and wanted to buy. The current generation of young people have abandoned the radio and have become used to searching Napster to find the music that they like. Now that Napster is essentially gone, how does the recording industry expect them to discover new music to buy?

One thing for sure, they aren't going back to the radio. All the stations are owned by Clear Channel now, and they all have been reprogrammed with the lowest-common-denominator, pre-programmed corporate crap imaginable. Radio is dead, dead, dead.

Napster is looking more and more like the goose that laid the golden eggs. Kill the goose, no more eggs.
 

Most home tapers asserted that they used their machines mostly to make copies of LPs for use in their cars, or to make compilation tapes. Again, impossible to quantify. The same thing is happening now... is it any wonder the computer industry raised an outcry, when a HUGE number of blank CD-Rs are used for non-musical purposes? (My wife, who is in the banking business, has probably burned 25 CDs in the past month but has not put a music file on any of them.)

When the original, non-recordable CD came along, and people started buying CDs to replace their scratchy records and fuzzy tapes, the debate cooled for awhile because sales were great. Then the CD-R and Napster came along and heated things up again. And whether you like it or not, the game HAS changed...in the olden days 10 or 15 years ago, a kid might allow two or three or six of his friends to make a cassette copy an album...now, with the internet, one copy uploaded could theoretically turn into millions of unpaid-for copies.

quote:

---

All of the hysterical anti-Napster arguments are exactly the same hysterical anti-DAT arguments of 10 years ago.

---

No they aren't. When DAT came out, yes you had digital recording, but you didn't have the worldwide web (at least not in widespread use like it is today) with the ability to fling a copyrighted file worldwide in seconds.

quote:

---

As for that rotten little fellow who snuck in the back door of your theatre,...[snip]...the first thing that the police officer would ask you is what did he steal?

---

Well there is a thing called "theft of service" which might hold up...same as if you hook up an illegal satellite dish or cable TV. I'm not a lawyer. But the bottom line is, if I catch somebody sneaking into the theatre, I kick'em out...the only time I would call the cops is if the little bastard refused to leave. Haven't had that problem yet.

Joe said:

quote:

---

Are we the only ones who notice how bad MP3's sound?

---

You're not the only ones, but you gotta admit that millions of the downloading masses, who listen to their tunes on cheap headphones or crappy boomboxes or super-bass-pounding car stereos, probably don't give two hoots about sound quality. The operative word is "free."

Also, Joe: You're right about the free movie viewing. SHeeesh, I must owe Spielberg alone at least a couple of hundred bucks!

John said:

quote:

---

Since the evisceration of Napster, the recording industry is apparently in free-fall. Major label album sales are down 8%, and concert ticket sales are down 12%.

---

Well now we've come full circle; this is the topic that started this whole thread. Allow me to quote myself from waaaaay up on page one:

quote:

---

The reason CD sales are down is because there are no "blockbusters" yet this year. Last year there were new albums by Britney Spears and NSync, both of which mega-sold in their first week. This year, there is no comparable product bringing the kids into the stores.

---

When the next big thing comes along, you'll see sales soaring again. The boy-band craze has cooled; the Spice Girls aren't so spicy any more. (A new NSync album was released yesterday; let's see how well that sells.) The problem lies more in artists being unable to make more than one or two decent albums, and kids' musical tastes being wildly fickle. Bring in some good music and sales will increase. Copying or no copying.

This is great, arguing a debate that has no answer. It means the argument never has to end!
 

quote:

---

Bring in some good music and sales will increase. Copying or no copying.

---

I fully agree with that! Too bad the recording industry doesn't see that it is good music that usually sells (there are exceptions, of course).
 

The music industry likes to blame Napster. The real reasons are (not in any particular order):

• Racist sales practices
  
• Racist advertising practices
  
• Overreliance on superstar product
  
• Overreliance on record company promotions
  
• Industry support of censorship
  
• Industry support of blacklisting
  

The CD format is fine the way it is and as someone who has "been a good boy" and purchased CDs of all the music I wanted, I resent the practice of messing with the CDs to make them not work in computer CD-ROM drives or make it harder to make MP3 files to play at work (to keep me from having to constantly transport CDs around).

Since I typically bought, on the average, one CD every other day for many years, Sony and Universal won't get that money from me any more unless they change back to standard CDs. Imagine what happe\ns when they piss off other frequent buyers. It's been good for me as far as saving money goes. That 200 to 300 dollars stays in my bank account rather than going to greedy record companies.

Why could I suddenly do this and quit "cold turkey"? The new music is very poor quality in comparison to Top 40 music from even 2 years ago. My favorite music category is 50s and 60s rock, and I never hear anything on the oldies stations that I like that I don't have. I've pretty well achieved closure on the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and the years 2000 and 2001, and I don't like the new music of late 2001 and now, so I quit. Either they're going to have to come out with new oldies compilations with stuff I want, or generate some new music that is good and not on copy-protected CDs if they want my business again.

Evans A Criswell
A collector and lover of music

Joe Public might believe the crap that the music companies put out about CDs being indestructable and be quite happy to play their original, copy-protected discs in a player like this. But we all know that even slight scratching can make a track unplayable, and I don't see that I should have to run this risk just because the big record companies say so.

Besides, the copy protection won't work. Ultimately a CD is just bits and bytes encoded on a carrier, and if they can be encoded by software written by a human, then they can be decoded the same way. There's probably already a download site somewhere offering a program to crack these discs, just like there are several which tell you how to defeat the region coding in DVD drives.

Unauthorised copying of copyrighted music recordings has been going on since the days of 78s: neither magnetic wire recording, open reel tapes, cassettes nor CD-Rs killed the industry. I take the point about the increased quality of digital copying and the industry's perception that this is 'cloning' the original, but people are still going to buy legit versions if only for the packaging, marketing or whatever. And besides, a lot of the music industry's revenue comes from sources other than retail CD sales, e.g. royalty payments by broadcasters.

So I agree - if the music industry wants us to buy its product, it needs to start selling a product worth buying.
 

Another example where the public is smarter than the rich and powerful.

Here's the total hypocrisy in the RIAA's stance. They do NOTHING at all to acknowledge the FACT that music CDs are way way overpriced. For example, I paid more money for my "original motion picture soundtrack" CD to "The Matrix" than I did for the DVD of "The Matrix".

It is a fact that 28 states have filed a class action lawsuit against all the major record labels for price fixing and price gouging. Do they really expect people to pay $20 for a plain, bare bones CD in this day and age!!!????

It is also a fact that many recording artists do not make one red cent off the albums they sell. The music industry is every bit as bad as the film distributors in "rolling-break-even" accounting practices. I seem to recall music artists like Don Henley and Alannis Morrisette testifying before a house sub-committee about how many artists do not get paid for album sales. Most music acts only make their money from touring and selling merchandise. The sharks at the record companies keep the proceeds from CD sales. Only when a group has gotten as big as U2 or Brittney Spears can they have the clout to demand their royalty checks and have those royalty checks exacted from a fair percentage of the album earnings.

So when that clown stood onstage talking about how "we must guarantee that artists get paid" I really have to belly-laugh over such hypocrisy. Give me a freaking break!

When music CDs are priced at a more fair level (like perhaps $7 to $10 per disc) and I know the record labels aren't bending over their artists without any benefit of lube or even a kiss before being sodomized, then I might feel a little less inclinded to download a lesser-than-CD-quality MP3 file off of Morpheus. But, gee, I'm hardly even doing that.

Much of my entertainment dollars are going to buying DVD Video and watching movies at well aligned movie theaters. At least that is one area of entertainment where I feel I am getting my money's worth.

F**K that stupid dude from the Grammys and screw the RIAA too. It is my first amendment right to express that opinion as well. So their lawyers can get bent if they ever read this and have a problem with it. Stupid scumbags.
 

Like Bobby says, CDs are overpriced, and I happen to think that much of the new music is crap. Granted there will always be something good out there to buy. But if the soundtrack costs more than the DVD of the same movie, then something is DEFINITELY wrong! Especially when the DVD is usually recorded in 5.1 channels. I'd rather "rip off" the recording industry them have them rip me off and save my moral conscience and hope that what comes around goes around (things don't work like that). I know some might say "two wrongs don't make a right" but look at it in this perspective: You want as little "evil" in the world as possible, correct? Which is the bigger evil.... A percentage of people downloading some MP3's now and then from the internet, or record companies overcharging EVERYONE with new releases and the such? I think the latter is far more "evil". And if they are going to dish it out on everyone, then I don't feel the least bit bad about downloading 20 or so songs every two years from the internet. Another way to look at it would be if your house was broken into and some things were stolen. You can't prove that you once owned those items and the law can't do anything to help. Do you attempt to steal some of your stuff back or just sit there and say "Oh well, I've been taken advantage of again and I refuse to do anything about it"?

Also many times songs are on soundtracks that are not really in the movie. ("Music From and Inspired By"). Those artists probably get a lot more than the ones that just appear in the movie for a second or two.

I still can't believe the ranting over CD prices when LPs back in the '80s were approaching $10. CDs, 20 years later, are less than 1.5 times that on average, and are a far superior product.
 

Mike, records sound better than CDs, remember?
 

Clearly the cost of producing an album has almost nothing to do with the cost of manufacturing the physical medium on which it is distributed. There are, of course, record companies, musicians, songwriters, composers, arrangers, distributors, record stores, etc., each of which gets a 'cut' of the final selling price.

I really think that the "CDs are overpriced" issue is completely separate from the Napster issue, which is more about what one may do with a recording once one owns it (make a tape for car listening? make an mp3 version for listening on a computer? make a tape for a friend? share mp3s with friends? allow the entire world access to one's mp3 collection? etc...) than about whether something is worth purchasing in the first place.
 

I never said those "inspired" songs made the soundtrack albums any better! (Usually they leave out one or two really good songs that were in the movie to make room for "inspired" crap.)

Can't argue about the LPs vs CDs thing...my turntable is such that CDs will ALWAYS sound better on my system!
 

[not that I am an expert in the music business, just opinionated]

BTW, I do understand how retail prices can have little to do with manufacturing costs. Way back when I worked for a computer peripherals manufacturer (early to mid 80s), the rule of thumb was cost of goods should not exceed 30% of the desired retail price. If COG was higher than that, expect to not turn a profit. COG was defined as the actual cost to manufacture the item, not "burdened" with overhead costs. Things are probably much different now, but the point about mfg. cost vs. retail price is still relevant.

I still say somebody in the music business is being greedy though.

 

Lots of music lovers recall how Music CD prices were plummenting in the early to mid 1990s, down to levels commonly reaching $11, $10 or even $9 per disc in many places (particularly some notable warehouse style super stores). Retailer cost for a CD hovers around $5 to $8 per disc.

Something happened just a few years ago. The record companies issued in their Minimum Advertised Price restrictions and hinged that on their subsidies for store advertisement. Music retailer had no choice but to go along, and pay higher dealer prices for the discs. And in the case of the class action suit being fought, very large retailers like the company that owns Sam Goody, Media Play and Musicland went along with it since they would make more money. No surprise there since any Sam Goody's store shamelessly sells $20 CDs and DVDs that are priced $10 to $20 higher than what Wal-Mart asks.

Most people in the general public have the impression that all entertainment oriented businesses, be the movies or television or music etc., are dishonest and morally corrupt at the core. The anti-piracy message coming from those guys in the pin striped suits rings more than a little hollow because of that. It would be akin to a crack dealer trying to criticise someone for drinking alcohol.

A lot of people don't understand all the fuss with the RIAA and downloading MP3s. Even a 320kb/s MP3 file doesn't sound as good as the original CD. And most of the ones you can get are only encoded at a mere 128kb/s. Sure the encoders might say "CD Quality" but it all sounds more like Radio Quality. To be honest, I've gotten as good (if not better results) in taking music only broadcasts on my satellite dish and sending the stream out of the MD port on my receiver to a MiniDisc player. But even that is not CD quality.

The RIAA is so irrational and shortsighted in all their copy protection hysteria that they are now threatening to screw up the quality on any electronics device that has digital recording capability. Like televisions equipped with a "V" chip, the RIAA and movie studios want all professional and consumer level digital video and audio recording equipment to have all kinds of copy prevention chips put in as well --without regard to what the efforts will do to quality. These guys are so ignorant with these efforts that they must think we'll buy anything no matter how badly the overall quality is compromised.

Obviously these fellows have forgotten just how much money they have made off cassette tape players and VHS decks (oh, but I almost forgot, the same dumbasses tried to outlaw those products too). What a bunch of morons.
 

http://www.suntimes.com/output/show/cst-ftr-lead07.html

'Brother' he never knew

March 7, 2002

BY MARY HOULIHAN STAFF REPORTER (Chicago Sun Times)

"Until two weeks ago, retired Chicago shipping clerk James Carter had never heard of the movie "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" or its hit soundtrack.

...

In the hot summer of 1959, Carter, then serving time for theft, led a chain gang in a bluesy version of "Po' Lazarus," a song about a deadly struggle between a man and a sheriff. Punctuated by the sound of sledgehammers marking the rhythm, it's the only song on the "O Brother" soundtrack sung by its original performers.

...

After months of investigative work, the Alan Lomax Archive finally tracked [Carter] down at his home. Two weeks ago, Lomax Archive representatives presented him with a platinum copy of the "O Brother" soundtrack and a royalty check for $20,000.

...

Carter is receiving this long-overdue recognition because Lomax was scrupulous about making contracts and corresponding with his performers. He also was determined to make sure that royalties were paid whenever these songs made money. So far, the "O Brother" soundtrack has sold more than 5 million copies.

...

"My father always made sure that the people who made the music benefitted from it," Chairetakis said. "With this song making so much money, it was imperative to find Mr. Carter."

...

In an industry rife with stories of unpaid royalties and misappropriated song credits, the Carter saga is amazing. "The fact that they took the time to find Mr. Carter says a lot about the continuing mission of the Lomax family," Burnett said. "And it says even more about their love of the music and the people who made it."

quote:

---

Retailer cost for a CD hovers around $5 to $8 per disc.

---

WRONG! In my day job, I work at a store which sells CDs. We pay between $11.50 and $12.95 for new releases and "front-line" titles. "Midline" titles (stuff over 6 or 7 years old) cost us approximatly $8.50.

We are a small store and thus can't buy music in box-lots direct from the labels. We must go thru a distributor, so our costs are higher than the Wal-Marts, Best Buys, etc. But those stores are still paying label wholesale, which is at minimum, around $10.80 per CD.

Your friendly retailer is NOT responsible for CD prices being what they are, folks. The problem is higher up the food chain.

I used to do music distribution work for small retailers as a second job for extra money a few years ago. The cost of discs did run $5 to $8 at the time. It is only a relatively recent turn of events that dealer costs for CDs has ramped up to levels well over $10 per disc. That is partly in keeping with the goal of enforcing retailers to sell discs at Minimum Advertised Price --which is typically $16.95 to $19.95 for many new releases.

Large retailers like Wal-Mart certainly don't pay as much due to their high volume buys. They're the only reason why different "edited for radio" CDs even exist. Still, some of those large retailers (like the parent company for Musicland/Sam Goody/Media Play) get the wholesale break but still sell the CDs at $20 a piece. And they are named in that class action suit.

The "friendly retailer" for the most part is not responsible for setting prices. And I never blamed them as a whole on it. It is the fault of the record labels and their MAP policies. But places like Musicland and Sam Goody, who get the volume price breaks, still stick it to the customers anyway. So I don't buy any music from them if I can help it.

And I'm not very interested in buying a bare bones music only product that costs more than a lot of DVDs.
 

I've been in the music biz in my day job since long before CDs came along, and while I can't speak for the giant chains, I can tell you that we have always paid $10 and up for new CDs. (In your earlier post you didn't mention that you were talking about "years ago.") I got my figures on label wholesale from Billboard, which is always running articles telling what wholesale prices are. Of course when you start figuring in things like co-op advertising allowances, payoffs for prime display space, etc. then the big stores start doing even better.

I do agree with you about the Sam Goodys etc. No one should ever shop at those stores! BUT, they are still not ripping people off. Prices are clearly marked. People can shop there if they want to, or they can look around and find cheaper sources. The nearest Wal-mart to us sells CDs for $16.99, while our little mom'n'pop store has'em for $13.88 to $14.88. It just gets under my skin when people lump all the retailers in the world together and claim "rip off," when many of us are really trying to give the customer a good deal (but we still have make enough to pay the rent).