The publics attitude on piracy

[elser]

This is a pretty important step in the war on piracy but what really got me was the people who posted responses to the article. Check it out.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ytech_wguy/2010 ... guy_tc2048

Unless we change how people think about piracy it'll be hard to make any progress.

It's a little like what happened when the Musicians Union backed away from supporting night club bands. The money went way down and so did the quality of performers. Now "Live Music" on a night club marquee conjures up negative stereotypes of some creepy duo with a bunch of canned backing tracks.

If people aren't willing to pay for great music then they will only be left with music made by hobbiests.

[mazz]

I think this ruling is great. The problem, though, lies with the lack of education on the concept of intellectual property. It's a fairly sophisticated concept and the riaa, record companies and even musicians themselves could do a better job of educating the general public about this.

Imagine if it was illegal to charge money to fix cars. Can you imagine how the quality of car repairs would plummet? I like the one reply that said "let's just make everything free!". Very well put, IMO!

We must teach people, particularly people of the younger generations, of the value of music and the value of an artist working to be able to dedicate their life to their art. We have to help them realize how much their lives are enhanced by greet art and what the world would be like if the quality of music available was only amateur level because no one could afford to do it full time.

It's a sad state of affairs but we can start where we are

[crs7string]

One issue that was discussed at the Production Music Association meeting in Vegas last month was ISPs beginning to own their own content.

Comcast purchasing Universal is a great example. The point that was made is that an ISP that is streaming content that they own will most likely be more dilligent about protecting said content from being illegally downloaded. The ISPs have had no skin in the game to protect providers of movies and music etc. Now they are one.

Another point that was made was that Suzannah Boyle's You Tube video is the most watched in the history of You Tube and the four songwriters that wrote the song she sang have collectively received $0. How would you like to be one of those guys.

I also agree that education is key and it starts in our own backyard. How can we make a stink about illegal downloads in China if we are letting our kids download illegally?

I have no problem if an artist wants to give away his or her music, but to do so with any implication that all music should be free doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Chuck

[elser]

I suppose to really make a difference I should have posted at the end of the article instead of conferring with a group of people who already agree with me. Guess I will. Still it makes me wonder if people are that simple, do they really think their entitled to free music? Or do they know better but shut down that reasoning in their own minds?

When audio software first started to catch on with Digital Performer and the Bitvibe stuff, it seemed there was a philosophy among some developers (the whole freeware and shareware thing) that suggested these products and technologies ought to be shared freely. While it didn't make sense to me how that philosophy could work, I entertained it long enough to acquire more than a few hacked audio wares. But as the industry has progressed I think that philosophy has proven to be unworkable so that we now have very sophisticated authorization processes. And that only makes sense, so I no longer am a pirate nor would I want to be. But I wonder if the thinking amongst many of the file sharing crowd is something similar. I don't believe they are all criminal types, but some how they don't grasp the concept that this music represents some one's hard work and talent and that they depend on it for their lively hood.

I don't know, just thinkin.

[mazz]

I wonder how those pirates would feel if we could somehow funnel their paychecks into our bank accounts instead of theirs. When they come after me, I'd say "what, dude, your information was moving around the internet and I figured out how to access it so now it belongs to me". Do you think that would hold water? Or if their boss said "dude, you're working for me for free this week just because I don't care that much for you or the work you do and besides, I'm such a nice guy that you should just want to give me your time for free, you don't need to eat or buy clothes for your kids do you? Heck, let's just make the clothes and the food free too while we're at it"!! The other night I stole someone's Escalade and when the police caught me I said "dude, I'm thinking about buying one of these and I just wanted to try it out for a while before I make my decision". (I hope you know I didn't really steal an Escalade..........it was a Camaro )

Because you can't hold music in your hand or drive it, people think it's just this amorphous thing that has no boundaries or borders, and the auditory aspect is for sure that way. But the underlying effort and intelligence that it took to create it is worth something, even if you can't touch it physically. It takes brains somewhat above the Neanderthal level to understand that concept, but not that far above.

Yes, the business model may need to change, but the bedrock of it, namely intellectual property, needs to stay the same, otherwise why try to make a living at it?

I hope everyone is teaching their kids about this, it's one of the most important issues of the 21st century and it has implications well beyond the music business.

Ok, choir, and a one and a two................

[Casey H]

It's a tough problem. Kids today, and many adults, share music files with the feeling, "Why should I pay for downloads when I can plug my iPod into Johnny's computer and get all those songs for nothing?". We did this years ago by taping albums to cassette but the process was laborious enough that it didn't spread music like a virus.

I wish there was an answer. There's a genie out of the bottle that can't be put back in. All attempts to address this with technology fail because there always is a hacking solution out there. And often they annoy the heck out of people who aren't trying to pirate anything. DRM was a total pain in the rear.

Casey

[Hookjaw Brown]

The whole concept of the "free" society is that somewhere there will be a monetizing scheme that will pay those who create intellectual property. The problem is the monetary scheme has not developed.

IMHO the quality of music is declining into mashups and re-releases, to give a feeling of newness. Rolling Stone just released a new survey of the best 500 songs. I was listening to the Mark and Brian radio show when I heard this...the 60's has the largest number of all time great songs (around 170), the 70's had around 150 while the 90's had 30 top songs and the 2000's only 21. At this rate there will be no new memorable songs.....

Good ol Bach wrote church music (composer for hire), wrote one song a week and had twenty children. It may come around again that a composer must have a patron to support his art.

[Randall J]

It should be interesting to see what happens from here. Every single album, movie, software, game, book...etc...etc... is floating around the net somewhere for free if you look hard enough.

If the people that put up share sights and p2p sites know they can be facing major fines and jail time it should cut down on them, one would think. It is the WORLD wide web though and lots of sites originate from "God Knows Where"...this will be interesting to watch.

I thought when Napster was originally busted it would have slowed down the file sharing but that didn't happen.

Randall J

[jfraizer]

Great ruling. It's amazing how oblivious people who download from these sites are to the fact that they are just plain stealing. And then there are those who know it stealing, but find ways to justify it to themselves.

I wrote a screenplay about this. The main character is a guy who downloads songs off the internet, makes cd's and sells them and see absolutely nothing wrong with what he is doing. The opening scene is him at his parole hearing (so you know he gets what is coming to him) then it's a flashback of how he got in the position he is in. It's a comedy with some turns, twists and lessons

I wrote it several years ago and it's been on a shelf collecting dust because, well, I guess I need a kick in the ass to do something with it.

I'm going to post something in the collaboration corner to see if anyone out there is interested in working with me to bring it to life. PM me if you are interested.

[mojobone]

I want my music to be viral; I want to be paid for my music. I can't have it both ways. It's not copyright infringement that more people need to understand, but the Fair Use Doctrine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjiVvMFETfI

Quoting from the blurb under the video:

"ABC-The Jackson 5
Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.

R.I.P. MJ"

The poster believes his use of the Jackson 5's ABC is fair, apparently because he receives no remuneration, yet he allows Google to collect ad revenue, and promotes his other videos using MJ's music; who should pay MJ's (or the writers') kids?

The DMCA does a pretty good job of specifically defining what constitutes fair use; you're allowed to make backup copies of CDs you buy, even use commercial music to underscore your home movies, so long as they're not broadcast to the public at large, which in my opinion, is what happened here. But are the writers of Susan Boyle's I Dreamed A Dream going to sue Boyle, Google and Britain's Got Talent? I think not.

My personal view is that there's nothing wrong with people making mixtapes and mashups for each other in a social context; home tapers have been doing this for decades, and it's a form of free promotion that helps artists and helps music, but we shouldn't confuse MP3 files with music as the artists intended it to be heard. We need to establish a level of quality for which the writers and performers must be paid, and get the public to agree. That shouldn't be too hard, right?