The publics attitude on piracy

[Hookjaw Brown]

Elser,

You forgot Global Warming....terrorists and moral terps have been around a long time. Definitely before DOD's Darpanet and Al Gore's invention of the Internet.

The history of Patents and Copyrights is interesting. Before the adoption by Western governments of this system of protection for intellectual property and inventions, no one shared anything. Ideas were lost by burning a single library and inventions were lost with the death of the inventor. Organizations occasionally burned inventors at the stake just to shut them up. Giodorno Bruno is one who said "With luck on your side, you can do without brains" among other crimes. For this he burned.

Some cultures do not encourage invention and ideas. They are fairly closed societies. Japan is one example where ideas are formulated by consensus of peers and new ideas that do not conform are rejected. It has lead to economic stagnation.

The USA has the problem of individualism, which promotes new ideas......lots and lots and lots of new ideas. So many the the US Patents and Copyrights offices have problems keeping up with them all. So many ideas that the value of an idea is diluted. Technology will gain control of theft of ideas, or the ideas will stop being shared. Think about the value of free advice (and its usefulness). Free music will have just as much value. People will either place value on music or they won't, it cannot be forced by the musicians.

[mazz]

It goes beyond music and musicians. It's intellectual property and the concept of intellectual property in general. I'd be willing to bet that Toyota doesn't allow just anyone to see the designs of cars they intend to manufacture, and I'd also be willing to bet that they don't share it freely on their internal network or over the internet. And I'm sure that someone caught stealing those designs would be punished heavily, because that person was stealing their intellectual property. Even if the car was designed by one person or a team of 200 persons, it's still intellectual property and protected by laws.

Sure, the difference between a car design and a song might seem big, but in reality they're both creations and have the potential to generate income for the creators and stealing either one is theft of intellectual property.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but if you take something without paying for it, it's stealing. The Mexican grocery store down the street from me has lots of fruits and vegetables on stands on the sidewalk. Is it right for me to nick an apple and justify it to myself that it's OK because there was no one standing out there to take my money?

It seems so basic to me, am I missing something?

[jonathanm]

Is it right for me to nick an apple and justify it to myself that it's OK because there was no one standing out there to take my money?

In today's society, all you have to do to justify taking the apple is say it was "for personal use only" and you were not selling it or making any money off of it.

[t4mh]

Don't get me wrong here, I'm on your side. And you can take this to the next level and say Intellectual Property instead of Media if you want to. Most businesses are able to protect their intellectual property simply by not making it available to the public. PUBLIC USE is the issue here. Even so, I don't believe that there is no governing body inside the USA that can get this done. WWW goes beyond their borders and so does your computer. A worldwide governing body? What?, and the one we have can't even agree on what to do about Iran? We want them to be concerned about intellectual property rights? I don't think so.

So can we at least agree that regardless what we call it, we want public use, we want the public to listen to our stuff, we just want the public to pay for it.

Your going to have to monitize the issue. Business will have to see a big profit before anyone big enough to actually make a change will ever do anything to stop the situation. I think we should also becareful what we wish for.

Just askin
Keith

[themadpad]

It seems to me that this is a generational issue....... i'm only 22 and an inspiring musician (why else would i be on taxi!) and to be honest 90% of my friends illegally download music off the web. I have to admit i have done it before myself.... a lot of the bands my friends would download are already very popular artists who have made millions......

personally i dont see anything too wrong with me downloading for example..... ehhhhh 'dark side of the moon' because it has sold millions all around the world and that wont make much of a difference to the pockets of waters, gilmour and co.

Its really just a fact of life now, it aint gonna go away any time soon....... plus for the average young person who is already strapped for cash and cant afford to splash out €15 on an album every week, they wont really feel too bad about getting an album albeit an 'invisible' album.......... this is just the harsh truth...... im being a bit of a devils advocate here.

As i said theres nothing i dont want to be in my life except a musician but i fully accept the fact that people can 'steal' music off the web.

[themadpad]

One more thing.......

To be honest if i, myself, were a professional recording artist i could imagine myself being pissed off with the idea of people stealing my music and me not getting paid for it, but then again if i had already made loads of money from the industry i wouldnt be too pissed off because at least people were getting to hear my music....and in the long run these people might turn up to my gigs.

I hope all of yous wont get too pissed off with me, i'm really just writing the opinions of what most 'young' people nowadays think. I sympathise for those of you who havent made 'millions' from the industry but still get ripped of coz of illegal downloading..... sure hey that could be me in a few years ranting about how i hate illegal downloading!


http://www.myspace.com/paddyhunt

[jdstamper]

then again if i had already made loads of money from the industry i wouldnt be too pissed off

themadpad ...

Since you and I haven't yet made it in the industry ... how are we going to make loads of money if people will be stealing our music instead of buying it? What do you think is the new business model that's going to pay our bills ... I hope your model includes a place for non-performing songwriters.

[t4mh]

Hi themadpad! Thanks for being honest! I guess you've made your millions and so downloading won't hurt your wallet very much either, just like Pink Floyd.

A couple of years ago my kids set up on my computer a downloading site complete with a user interface and told me that I really needed to be doing this. I'll be honest, I downloaded a song. I don't remember which one, it would have been one that I could find the artist and song name easily. I couldn't get past what it was that I was actually doing. Stealing. I deleted the entire thing and I've never downloaded another track.

We all realize that it is a culture thing.

Thanks for joining the conversation!
Keith

[jonathanm]

Is it right for me to nick an apple and justify it to myself that it's OK because there was no one standing out there to take my money?

In today's society, all you have to do to justify taking the apple is say it was "for personal use only" and you were not selling it or making any money off of it.

...or the apple seller has already sold lots of apples, so it's not really stealing.

[jdstamper]

Hey themadpad,

I meant to also say thanks for sharing the view of your friends. Some of my younger friends (a few older ones too) make the same arguments. To me the arguments just aren't valid, they come off sounding like someone rationalizing "a crime", that's what I can't get past.