Click

All well and good untill I go to download legal music and get the message


Oh well back to KazaaLite I go...

Someone explain to me in detail how it's copyright infringement if you're not using it for your own personal gain. Because that's what they would say if they caught me copying CDs for my friends. My dad wanted KazaaLite off the computer cause he said that and my music files took up too much space - trust me, they didn't, he doesn't know what he's talking about, but he owns the computer. So all gone. Now I have to buy a crapload of CDs.

The fact that the music industry is such a monopoly is all the more reason to buy CDs. Quite a portion of revenue comes from those sales, and downloading, illegal or not, just hurts the industry. No industry, much harder for good music to get across. Think about it.

Well, let's see. I can think of two ways to find out if people are using Kazaa to share copyrighted files. They could do searches on Kazaa for copyrighted material and track down people they find. This is prohibited clearly under the Kazaa End User License Agreement (you can't run searches to find out information on other users, or use Kazaa to collect information on other users), and is thus an illegal use of the software. Connecting to the Kazaa via any other software is also prohibited. As far as I can see, there's no legal way to find anybody who's sharing files.

@gothic: Maynard James Keenan said it best:

"My music is not yours to give away"

thats pretty much what it comes down to. you can argue and rationalize all you want, but it doesnt matter, thats what it comes down to. now weither or not you give a crap or not, is another matter. like you said in your own post, "now i have to buy a crap load of cds."

soo... how is that not stealing and therefore illegal?

Stealing? Yes. Of course it is.

On the other hand we have some observations about the music industry. CDs are very cheap to manufacture. CDs are light, and compact, thus having relatively low transportation costs. CDs cost more than tapes.

Perhaps I would be more sympathetic to the industry if they hadn't been taking the piss so much and for so long.

Oh... Sean, good point but, you're making the mistake of thinking that people could afford to stay in court for long enough to mention that little gem.

It's all simple economics, where price is set by supply and demand. Demand is constantly high, supply is usually constant. People are willing to pay the prices set by the music industry, and the industry charges as high as it possibly can to maximise profits. Welcome to the free market, chaps. That's how the world works.

A word on 'the music industry' and stealing ....

I just saw a Michelle Shocked video at this site called Woodsongs.com ... Its a radio show that gets filmed and distributed freely on the net ... but never mind that.

She told of what happened to her, with 'the music industry':

She had her music, that she wrote, and that they liked. They came to her and offered an advance, which is a large sum of money THAT THEY LEND YOU, waiting to get payed back via sale of the music. The downside was that the 'music industry' (in this case Polygram) wanted a contract whereby Michelle gave up her rights to the master tapes, and therefore her music. This means that they wanted to OWN her music. Them, NOT her.

Anyhow, she said 'NO' and negociated a deal where she retained her rights to her music. After 6 years of recording, they came to her and said "Michelle, you have cut yourself too good a deal' and implied that her contract would have to be re-negociated, and she'd have to give up HER rights to HER music. As she says, this is like a bank coming to you when you finish paying off your mortgage and saying "We'll take over from here" ...

She said no to that too, and claimed her master tapes back. They were hers. She had a RIGHT to them, without any shadow of a doubt.

They refused.

She faught for another 6 YEARS to get her tapes back, during which time she was NOT able to access those tapes, and therefore benefit from HER OWN music, eventually taking them to court.

THE DAY BEFORE the court case, they gave her the tapes back, thus 'agreeing out of court' and avoiding the trial...

To conclude: THEY tried to BARE-FACEDLY steal from her, just going on the strength that they had more and better lawyers.

Now I laugh loud and long when I hear 'the music industry' talk about stealing ...

Exunctly. Perhaps given time they will realise that they've been creating the urge to pirate with their own policies. I understand that companies will charge what the market will bear. They don't understand that people refusing to buy from them is a suggestion that the market will no longer bear their highly suspect pricing structures.

To give an example... I roll my own cigarettes. To contain the tobacco I purchase cigarette papers. A pack of 50 costs 20p. No problem there. If they cost £5 a pack I would spend a night in a cheap hotel every couple of months for the Gideons bible, and buy a pritt stick. I don't do this now because it just isn't worth the hassle.

So if I buy a piece of paper that's stamped MEAD and give it to a friend, are they stealing? Or does it have to have its own specific copyright? DO artists own their music? What exactly is the copyright registered for?

Ooh. There's a can'o'worms. Copyright laws are an absolute minefield. They've built up over time with new bits being tacked on, but none of the old bits getting cleared away or clarified. That's why copyright lawyers cost so much.

@pab: that has happened to everyone and their mothers. Aimee Mann has even a more tragic tale as her battles to get her music back lasted for nearly 15 years.

but how would i help Aimee Mann by downloading all her music and not buying her cds?

im not referring to theft from the music industry, but theft from the musician of deserved income.



@gothic: musicians are entitled to profits of their music. it is not easy or cheap being a musician. you abstain from a normal job so all your profits MUST come from your music. when you download and enjoy their music for free, you are stealing money from them, from their only source of income. who cares about copywright laws? this is the way it is.


i am a painter. imagine how i would feel if i sacrificed all my time and energy creating a work of art, then some dude came along, looked at it, thought it was really cool, and made a bunch of copies of it and gave them away for free to people who might have otherwise bought it from me. it would be nothing short of stealing money from my pocket, which would inhibit me from making a living and therefore resort to me getting another job which would detrimentally detract from my work.

all for other peoples self righteous greed (how else can you describe someone who would enjoy and seek to own an artists work and not pay for it knowing full well that they are preventing the artist from earning a living?) . i mean, whether you give a crap or not is up to you, but dont decieve yourself into thinking there is some kind of morality behind downloading music for free. there isnt. its stealing, and no matter how evil the music industry is, it doesnt matter, because by hurting the music industry you are hurting the artist. (on a side note, you can bet that decreased profits in the music industry thanks to music downloads hastaken away the extra income that record companies might be using in order to sign riskier more experimental bands. in harsh times, you dont take risks, so you see whats selling and you only spend your money on clones of whats selling. so we can effectively blame music downloaders for the horrendous pain of 3 days grace, trapt and all those nameless, faceless, whiny punk-pop bands. way to go everybody, way to stick it to the man!)

You wouldn't, but you don't know you'd be hurting her personally. You're assuming each and every song by an artist that is downloaded immediately comes back and slaps the songwriter/musician(s) in the face and lowers their salary. People have been sharing music for a while, it's not that recent. If all the artists were losing pay, there'd be much more of an uproar.

Actually no, a lot of musicians work part-time jobs, and what's stopping you from getting a part-time job to help your income? You're not making CDs 24/7.

See my first point.

See both points for the rest of your post, I have to go to school

I can agree that a recording artists income comes from sales of their music, and thus ownership thereof and so ... What I want to say with my point above is mostly that the real thieves towards artists are the people who tie the artists up in contracts and fleece them savagely for everything they can get, and then disgard them like last months newspaper. These are the criminals. These are the thieves.

In that vain, the artists income problems are still not solved. But I believe it to be 'wrong' to say that the artists need the record companies, particularly given the despicable asset stripping mentalities of these companies. It doesnt take much to get to the conclusion that the system that we are taught to think helps these artists does not help them at all, on the contrary it restricts, constricts and severs the artists from there potential income.

So the system needs changing.

By that I mean that artists must now look towards their own recording solutions, their own distribution methods and their own promotional development. This can all be arranged. This very forum, as a tiny example, is already active enough and thoughtful enough to be able to serve as a medium for allowing music to be known. Inky is a one-man promo outfit for good music, of all vains. And the hardware required can be bought, hired or used in any amount of ways that still leaves these artists with true ownership of there work, and thus their income.

As for art direction and production, another alleged service offered by the industry sharks, well in my humble music-mad opininon, 'production' has more of a tendency to restrict the artists out-put, and to drag all creativity through the same over-used recipe-driven mediocrity that has been rife in popular music since the 70's, let alone the 80's, 90's and whatever they call this decade. Would Oasis sound the same if they werent produced by massive recording magnets? (maybe, but its just an example, replace with someone you like) ... I think not ... Would they sound better? ... dunno. but they'd sure sound different: they'd sound like they had decided to sound when they were coming up with the stuff in the first place, and that has to be closer to their own artisitic bent ...

Look what happened to the Beatles. Music-culturally speaking, they built the house we live in. And they go and re-edit Let It Be because they wanted it to sound like it was supposed to, without the industry tampering ...

The more I rant about this to myself (maybe 20 years or so by now) the more I am sure that the music industry is only a hindrance, ESPECIALLY regarding income. And now the tools are naturally in place to allow artists to express themselves, publish themselves and sell themselves the way THEY choose to, not the way some fat cigar-smoking gold-rings-wearing limo-driving contractmonger sees it. And you KNOW he doesnt even like the music ...

Ask Mata if he wants an agent to take his art and his money... I'd guess he didnt ...

Personally I download stuff to listen before I buy. Then I buy the CD from CDWow or Play.com as they sell them nice and cheap. Either that or I wait until they are in the sale. I'd rather have the CD than a copy anyways. Sometimes my mates offer to copy CD's for me and I accept. Yes you can argue all you want that it is stealing in it's most basic form but if I am a true fan of said band then I spend money on the CD if it's good. If it isn't then I don't buy it or download it as it's just not something I'd listen to.

@pab: i totally agree with you about artists taking their own production into their own hands. to use Aimee Mann as an example again, after finally being forced to buy her mastertapes back she released her own albums using mostly webstes to spread information about her cd (she was also helped out tremendously by Paul Thomas Anderson, who gave her a bit part in The Big Lebowski, then pretty much used Aimee Mann songs as the basis for Magnolia, as all 9 major characters are supposedly based on different songs of hers, and he also lifted dialogue for the characters straight from some of her songs. This led to Aimee being nominated for an oscar, but unfortunately losing to a no talent hack by the name of Phil Collins.

after this, Aimee mann and Bob Mould and a few others formed a thing called Musicians United that releases and promotes musicians music like it was a record company, taking a cut of the profits, but they allow the musicians to retain their own copywrights. personally, i think thats a wonderful system. musicians get the benefit of an established organization that knows how, where and when to market a particular band, without the mess of having their music sold to Kidz Bop vol6 if they hit it big or having to buy their master tapes back.


but again, i ask, getting back to the music downloading question, how is downloading music helping to defeat the music industry? its just making them more penny pinching and making the cost of cds go up.

it seems to me that you think two wrongs make a right, that if you steal from the musician twice, then its okay, because the record companies do it to. and thats not right.


on a side note, Aimee Mann, having had her music stolen from her for more then a decade, is obviously against music downloading, along with most of the Musicians United. theyve had their stuff stolen bye greedy music industry pigs for so long, that they dont need their music to be stolen by greedy internet jockeys now either.


@gothic:



id like to respond to that statement by quoting you again.




with big bands, it doesnt matter much, but with small time acts like Rufus Wainwright and Aimee Mann, music downloading IS putting tremendous strain on them because obviously, as you yourself pointed out, people download music instead of buying their cds which they get profits from. millions of people do that like you do. as for the uproar? look at the backlash that metallica had when they spoke out against music downloading. in 5 days, metallica and lar ulrich became the most hated names in the music industry. if you go on the warpath against music downloading, a lot of fans will percieve you to be greedy swine and steal even more. aimee mann is quite outspoken against downloads, but she doesnt have much name power to generate press on the matter, and after seeing what happened with metallica, i dont know if she wants to.




wouldnt you want to make a full living off of what you love to do? musicians in order to make it big usually have to buy some expensive equipment and tour constantly (except for one man djs). touring constantly isnt really condusive with having another job. also, working a job cuts into the time they can actually hone their craft and thus is detrimental to their music. anyway you slice it, music downloading does not help music out one iota.

and you know what, screw it, they deserve it. if they create something that you enjoy like that, they deserve their money. how are you just gonna take a musicians music then tell him to get a part time job if he wants money? its theft, plain and simple.

and i think my last point is still valid. when you steal from the music industry and their profits decrease, they take less risks, so you will see less and less risky experimental bands being signed and given exposure because they will opt for "safer investments" as any business would do. Safer investments mean clones of all the bands that are selling right now which leads to stagnation. seriously, quit decieving yourself..

Everyone is entitled to their opinion and I see no one deceiving themselves from that point of view. If someone honestly believes they are right doesn't necessarily makes them right but it does entitle them to their point of view without being shot down. It's just the way I read it. Perhaps I wrong but that seems a little harsh to me.

I think clones of "safe" bands are always going to be around because the record buying public do just that....buy the records. Thats why we must suffer Westlife, Boyzone, Take That and all the manufactured pop bands before and after them. Because there are people who like them and will listen to them. In my opinion it's got nothing to do with the fact that people are downloading music "illegally".

I'm not gonna get stressed about this topic. All I have to say is, I download music for free. I buy cds. Humans are selfish, its how our species survives. Even tho music isnt a necessity for survival (sometimes for me it is). Don't reply to this post. I don't wanna debate. Just stating my opinion. *is tired and lazy*

Maybe I missed it but sometimes downloadng music can be helpful to bands. If they are a smaller lesser known band then it's a way to get their music out there, where in turn maybe word of mouth makes them bigger and so on.

Take for example in my area. Right around the time Debs made me download "The Darkness" someone else in my area downloaded it and gave it to one of the local radio DJ's. In turn the DJ played it on the radio. From there it got many requests to be played over and over, and then not to say of course that this is all due to just the DJ playing it, but the record sales in my area of this CD went up. It was even the number one most requested song in the area for at least 2 months. We probably would have heard it eventually through word of mouth from the UK to here, but without downloadng it would have taken a lot longer.

When it comes to people like Maynard James Keanon, I don't think people are really too concerned about stealing from him. Maynard could probably fill up a large swimming pool in 100 dollar bills and take a swim then throw it all away and do it again. A lot of people feel that they are justified in downloading from large bands, because it's not like they really need the money anyway. Or do they need it so they can buy that new designers clothing line that makes it look like their wearing something that a five year old made, just to prove that they are rich and live a life of extravogance.

Have you been to Trapt's website, they have/had (haven't been there since they came out.) several of they're songs online there free to download.

I download some music. It gives me a way of deciding what to, or not to buy. Since alot of the stuff I like has to be imported I want to know if I'm going to like it or not.

I happen to be a fan of Jrock. Not something I get to hear alot of easily here. So how am I supposed to hear singles from the bands? How am I even supposed to find out about new bands? Well my only real choice is to do things like check out Oricons lists, download a few songs by artists listed and head over to my HWV and order them if I like them.

I think music downloading has also helped to insure bands/artists put out all around good cd's rather then a disc with 3 or 4 good tracks.

I think if you think a cd is all around good, then you should buy it rather then keeping the downloads, to support said artist/band, but if the cd is all around crap I dont think you should have to buy it to get the 1 or 2 songs you like.

And record companies have had to lower the prices of cd's since downloading became a big thing. Its all just economics isnt it. They want us to by the discs, then they can put them at reasonable prices.

In my opinion it comes down to this, the music industry is stagnating, there are about 4 major record labels (Sony, EMI...the names of the other two escape me and i'm in a rush) , for the most part they sign either established artists who are garanteed to make money or they will manufacture a facsimile of something that has been popular before (hence east 17, boyzone nsync etc). Now the people that produce what I would call good music are with indie labels (independant...i only worked that out a little while a go) which work on a much smaller scale, now the only people making a big fuss about file sharing is the big 4 because they are the ones that stand to loose the most from this. gotta go now, will type more later

I totally agree that downloading music, meaning for free, meaning bypassing copyright concepts and due retribution, is wrong. I havent articulated it as such, because I find it more important to underline the fact that those complaining, or more importantly enforcing copyright laws are the principle thieves in this mechanics ....

I think Mr Fuzzy said it best when he mentioned that the fact that people arent so easily prepared to buy the stuff is because of a growing awareness that the industry is the thief, and we are just extended victims of the same. The christians and the lions again, if you will.

When I like something, I'll buy it. I like to own a genuine CD, with decent cover art, credits, and so on, all in place ...

It is also true that I discover a large amount of music due to being able to rip it, just like that,. off some P2P program-like tool ... This is no defense, as such, but it shows ME that within MY habits, piracy allows me to buy more.

By now, though, I must admit I resent paying industry prices knowing what a bunch of thieves the contract-mongers are ... But I still prefer 'the real thing' ...

I'll conclude by coming back to a more important point, articulated again by the Fuzz-meister, whereby this tendency to just download should mostly be concieved as an act of protest, that shows that the price these swines are asking for THEIR cd prints are totally off the scale.

I saw a documentary about CD production, centering on 2 brothers in France who had a CD printing factory. The journalist said to them that production people had said that the price of CD manufacturing would decrease to 25% of the original cost within the first couple of years of producing this product. They both nodded their head in unison and abject agreement, and reiterated heartily that this had been the case, and that CD production had indeed lowered to a quarter of the original cost. The journalist then ssked how come, this being the case, CDs cost MORE, and not less, than they had originally cost ... Both brothers shrugged in unison, saying they 'couldnt explain that one' as easily .... Its the industry again ... thieves thieves thieves ...

Its the same with DVD's, a Video costs £15 and costs about £4 to make, A DVD costs about £20 and costs £1 to make,

So what? So they voiced their opinon. That happened. Too bad so sad.

They wouldn't have that many fans to be angry if p2p programs weren't there to circulate music. (Downloaded MY metallica, then went out and got 3 CDs.



bawk bawk bawk!



Yeah but that doesn't happen, and I don't think it will ever for musicians.



So if I love my friend's sense of humor, do I have to pay her every time she cracks a joke?

@pixiegoth:





a little harsh? maybe to a human being with no skin. look, i said many times that i dont really give a crap if people download music, and its up to them whether they give a crap that its stealing. but no one should try and sugarcoat the truth of what you do so you can have a rosier perception of yourself. all im asking is that people at least see it for what it is: theft.

any other perception of it is just your ego trying to make yourself sound like a better person.



true, clones will always be around, but they werent always what the music industry poured all their money into. look, this is a basic rule of business: you make less money, you take fewer risks. its a fact of life. music downloading has caused the record industry to lose money, so therefore, fewer experimental bands are signed. its a simple cause and effect.




@lolo:


maybe, maybe not. it should still be the artists choice whether or not that their music can be downloaded for free. in regards to maynard james keenan, im sure he isnt stressed about the neglibile money he is losing, but i think he made that comment because he does have concern for other musicians trying to make it. god forbid an established artist speak out against something he feels is hurting unestablished artists without being called greedy. sometimes music downloads help bands, sometimes it hurts them. thats why the artist should be able to choose by making free downloads available on their site if they so choose to.




@Oni Usagi: whats your point?


@pab: i agree and understand everything your saying, but i just dont think you can justify it as an "act of protest." that would be like me going to iraq and killing some soldiers to protest Bush's war on Iraq. in the end, the musician is the victim in both cases.

and as for the cost of cds, dude, every product in the world is massively inflated in price. do you honestly think a BMW costs THAT much more then a nissan pulsar? (and actually, the record companys recently had to pay me and a bunch of other people 15 bucks because of an anti trust suit against price fixing, so there are better ways (ike class actions lawsuits) to protest. its basic corportate bs, but actively seeking to hurt the artist will not help the situation.



@gothic:





what do you mean so what? i was referring to your previous post. you asked why more bands werent causing an uproar and i was responding. because of public backlash.

and they wouldnt have that many fans to be angry? what ?!!? this is metallica! they dont need the piddling number of fans that they might have got from peer 2 peer. they were established as one of the most popular rock bands before the internet was even made available to the public.




excellent rebuttal. WHAT THE HELL?!!?






what are you talking about?! no musican has ever made a living making music!?!? are you high?








.......*sigh*

look, telling a joke and making an album are obviously two very different things. if your friends joke required a team of 3 other talented joke writers, expensive aduio equipment, expensive recording time at a decent studio, a producer, an agent and a publisher and her joke telling requirted her to tour extensively, then yeah, she should be paid.

its called stand up comedy, and its usually 20 bucks a show and 30 for a headliner.

i promised i would so i will (bear in mind i've consumed alcohol since my last post in this thread....lots)

It's a very circular argument, people want cheaper CD's and the record companies won't lower the prices until people stop downloading "illegally". Even though a recent study in England showed that more people were actually buying MP3's than they were downloading them for free, it seems to be irrelevent. At the moment I tend to sympathise with the musicians and the techies that make the music, specifically because I want to make a living out of the industry when I finish my degree.
Look at it from this point of view, a tune is written, a lot of money is paid to record this tune in a professional studio (these cost lots of money per hour) maybe a few session musician or more are hired (if you want a string quartet or something) these cost MORE money, then a producer/technician or both/and more making a mixdown of the song, these people all cost money. Now imagine you're one of these people...anyone of them, it doesn't really matter which, they all put a lot of work into one song. (i've just spent 2 days producing a mix of a tune which i don't want to post because i didn't write it and theres more than a slight danger that some arsehole will steal it even though i want you guys to hear it). Now some little shit comes along and downloads this hard work in about 5 minutes, NO money is made out of this transaction yet people still get to enjoy YOUR hard work.....how would you feel?

In my opinion it kind of belittles what you have achieved, and you wonder why these people object to you downloading it for free, would you do a days work for free? no! so why expect these people to?!

Thank you for that statement with nothing to back it up that just sounds accusatory.



Yes, that was my reply to that statement...



I was just making an example.



Sorry for that, I tend to be a bit vague. I just think the artists are being chicken when they don't voice their opinion just to keep the money coming.



I meant that everyone couldn't do JUST what they loved and make a living off of it, and many musicians have to have jobs off to the side.



You're missing the point. I was asking where the line was to be drawn.

And hey, keep your cool, or we'll have to buy an air conditioning unit for you (or download one, whichever.)

sure its accusatory but i think i have provided a sufficient enough thoery to back it up. humans like to think they are a good person so they try and justify everything they do. but humans are flawed so not everything they do can be justified. its important to recognize that in yourself and im tired of hearing self righteous rants (dont be offended, im not referring to you) about how by downloading music you arent doing anything wrong, but are actually helping the musician when if you sat down and thought about it you would recognize it for what it is. if you take something without permission that you would have normally have to have paid for, you are stealing.


i think the line should be drawn at how much expense and time and hard work it costs the creator. telling a joke over a persons shoulder takes little time and no money.

creating an album creates massive amounts of both, like sir psycho sexy has stated. when you create something at great personal expense to yourself and others enjoy it, you should be compensated.


(on a side note, ive been told to keep my cool and that i have been a little harsh... i mean, i dont see what the problem is, but whatever, i intend no malice.)

Once again, you're assuming that an album, an entire album, is downloaded instead of buying one. Yes, that happens, I'll give you that. So, money and hard work make everything? Personal expense, doesn't that counteract with "loving what you do and are able to make a living off of it"? My friend does very good drawings and she works hard on them and spends lots of time on them, even with a professional art teacher. We all enjoy her VERY hard work, but we don't pay her. What's the difference there?

but your her friend. im sure she just wont hand over an illustration to rolling stone magazine or to a gallery. no, artists get compensated. im an artist myself. and in order to put the hardwork and patience needed to create a GOOD work of art you need time and money and you should be compensated. any society where an artists requires an additional job isnt going to be a society that create great art. imagine if michellangelo had to have had a part time job. or rembrandt. good art doesnt happen in a day or a week.


also, your friend CHOOSES to show you her work for free. how would you feel if your friend tried to make a career of it, but before she could sell her paintings to a museum or hang them in a gallery some jerk comes by and does a reproduction of her work and gives them away to other people. this jerk gives on to a gallery, so they dont pay for her work. dont you think thats not right?

I only download music if i can't get the CD in the shops. eg Evanescence's album Origin.

Clint Eastwood, I have to say that I thoroughly agree with you. I am absolutely shocked that people on this forum are continuing to justify their violation of copyright laws and their theft of a product rightfully owned by a company or individual. This is simply a crime! It is not victimless! One cannot justify it!

When record sales fall because of illegal downloading from the Internet, it is not only the musicians that suffer. The companies that distribute the music also suffer - and, contrary to most people's apparent belief, these corporations are not faceless, megalithic monsters. They are run by real people and employ hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. They contribute enormously to the economy, and damaging them through theft indirectly damages the economy, society and everyone employed (directly or indirectly) by the music industry. Your theft damages innocent people's livelihoods. Are you so righteous now?

Now, you may think that prices are too high. Well, you don't get to decide what the prices of products are. The pricing mechanism does. This is a capitalist society, and no action other than democratically induced changes in the law to lower the cost of music products is acceptable.

And remember, not only music products are "overpriced". Practically every single product you buy costs way more than its production costs. Food is enormously more expensive than its production costs, and food prices are subsidised by the US government and the EU. What, then, can one expect prices to be like for a luxury like music, which is unsubsidised by the government? One would expect, in keeping with the workings of capitalism, that the prices are going to be as high as the music industry can get away with. Such is the nature of the free market.

And in case you were all kidding yourselves still, downloading music for free does damage artists. Statistics published in The Times newspaper yesterday confirm this. I think the most important statistics shown here are these:



So all of this talk of musicians getting extra publicity from online downloading is nonsense. Most people, after hearing music downloaded from the internet do not go out and buy the CDs. Music downloading does not solve any problems, it justs makes the music industry desperate enough to start suing 12-year-old kids.

If you want to do the right thing, stop buying the highly-priced music and do not download it from the internet. That way you'll force prices down through honest economics, and not through theft. And I reiterate my previous point: music downloading *is* theft, and theft is wrong because it is a non-victimless crime.

Downloading music does not make you Robin Hood, it makes you a criminal.

Dude, I know you share music.

And since when did hypocrisy invalidate an argument?

A lot of artists have to choose to show their art for free to get it out there and seen so that maybe one day it can blossom into something else. I'm a bit of a hypocrit in this next thing I'm going to say because I am going into a field that highly commercializes my art but I still think this is true. If one is an artist who is only making the art to make money then they are a sell out. A true artist does their art because they need to get it out of their soul and down in whatever medium they choose to put it in. (This is not a justification for downloading music, it's just a short side rant.)

So do you neglect art as a way to make a living? What if that is the only talent of the individual?

I know what you mean, but it has to be said that a. very VERY few people make a living out of 'talent' ... and b. being a highly paid member of the recording industry is no guarantee of 'talent' ... Plus I dont think it would be very clever to say to ones self "oh I only know how to do one thing" cos that is a highly limitating fib, not to be encouraged ...

Here's a quote from John F. Keneddy, to explain about record companies, and their recording deals:

" Above all, we are coming to understand that the arts incarnate the creativity of a free people. When the creative impulse cannot flourish, when it cannot freely select its methods and objects, when it is deprived of spontaneity, then society severs the root of art. "

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Not all of them are compensated. Would you agree that Vincent Van Gogh was a good artist? He only sold one painting in his lifetime.

No one has still really answered wether or not its okay to get some of the tunes to decide wether or not you like a band/artist.
I wasnt going to buy the Christina Aguilera or Muse Cd's, because I thought they would only have a few good tunes. The I downloaded a few more of the songs and decided it was well werth my money.
Then theres bands that you just hear about, but you've never heard the tracks before. Someone on her mentioned Ultraviolence, so I went and checked out some songs by them and decided to buy the earliest Cd. But as I wasnt to keen on the newer stuff, I probably wouldnt have been to happy spending money on a cd that I didnt like, having no way to hear the music before hand.

@gothic: yeah, and that totally sucked for him. it would have sucked even more if his work was stolen from him. essentially, if you want less great artists to die in the gutter while everyone enjoys their work, then dont steal it. (also, van gogh was unappreciated in his time... no one stole it, but no one bought it either... thats something you cant help) my point about michallengello not being free to create by having another job is that he never would have had the time or energy to create his masterworks, his sistine chapel, his david.

i mean, any art historian can tell you this: one of the main reason the renaissance suddenly began brimming with wonderful art is because of the patron system. wealthy patrons started sponsoring artists which freed them from working at other jobs and let them be free to create. this is an unarguable fact of the renaissance and about art and general.


bringing up van gogh further helps my point. great artists dont deserve to live like he did when they make such amazing stuff that people enjoy.


you really are trying to decieve yourself that there is some sort of morality with this. there isnt. its cut and dry.





@lolo




"choose" being the operative word. by downloading music without permission you are taking the choice out of their hands.


and as a side note, for your own personal choice to go into a commercial business, i wouldnt worry about it. i assume you mean graphic design or illustration. well, look, no one makes art solely for the money. it takes a lot of drive and inititative and guts and patience and hard work and study to become a good enough artists to sell stuff to corporations or magazines. even GOING to an art school is a risky venture because theres no guarentee you will ever make a career out of it. to even consider going into this line of work you MUST enjoy doing art, the process of it.

frankly, even though im a fine artist (and will most likely never make a living from it), i see absolutely nothing wrong or "sell outish" about an artist going into a career where they can live securely doing what they love. to be a sell out means that you do something you dont want to do in order to make money. Graphic designers and illustrators love what they do (if they didnt, they wouldnt have had the drive to become excellent at their craft) they just also get paid handsomely.

your not a sell out so long as you love the process, the actual art of creating, i think. theres still something holy to it.





@bunnie: i think polocrunch answered you. despite anecdotal evidence such as your experiences, the facts are there, most people download out of greed, not to discover new bands and have no intention of buying the cd they download.

Yes well people do always seem to be able to destroy a good thing, dont they.

I'll agree that its wrong to go around ripping off peoples music and cd's. But I still dont think theres anything wrong with testing out the music to see what you like.
I suppose if artists just started putting samples of the majority of songs from a cd on there website, then I would be all for getting rid of songs on p2p systems that the bands didnt want on there. But most artists or bands only put one or two samples of songs on there website, and so I dont see it as being worth my $20 if I might not like it.

As for your point about record labels not going with experimental bands, I'm not to sure thats true. From a business sense, they would try and find something different that would sell. Rather then some knock off that people download stuff from.

fair point, though in fairness i'm not a heavy downloader, in fact, i'm a very light downloader, last album i got was fire by electric 6 and that was last december (i really should buy it) the last songs i downloaded were time of your life (greenday), blurry (puddle of mudd) and i bleed (pixies, which i already own anyway), the rest of my MP3's i ripped myself from my or my friends albums which as far as i know is completely legal, the last two tunes i actively searched for were the themes to thunderbird and the a-team because i needed them for a university assignments, my slsk is really open so i don't count myself as a major contributer to the decline of the music industry

Bah! I typed out this WHOLE POST, then it didn't post it. So I'll write it AGAIN.

I'll admit to moments of weakness in poverty, laziness, or an inability to find anywhere that sells the damn thing in which I've downloaded entire albums. But that's rare, mainly because of a collector's pleasure in owning the genuine article rather than a CD-R with Nevermind or whatever scrawled across it.

On the other hand, my downloading of music has done the record industry a lot of good. There's a lot of albums I'd never have bought were it not for downloading. Take London After Midnight. Somebody recommended them to me. Great, but that's not good enough for me to spend £14 or whatever on their album. So I downloaded a few tracks. Loved it. Bought the album. Had I decided the downloading of copyrighted intellectual property to be immoral, I, London After Midnight and the record industry as a whole would be that much worse off.

Sorry, but I think you're wrong. From what I've observed and what I've heard from people within the music, publishing and film industries, new and innovative does not sell. What these industries try to do is find something just like whatever's been selling recently. Take the recent "garage rock" trend. One or two bands like that gain popularity. Immediately, the labels start promoting bands like them as hard as they can, saying "If you like that, buy this!" Or in the computer games industry. Tomb Raider 4(or whatever): Angel of Darkness, a more or less cookie-cutter copy of many games gone before, tops the sales charts. The original and innovative Rez and Ico are, as far as sales go, flops.

I have to disagree with your anecdotal evidence. Statistics show that, despite things like that happening, record sales are still plummeting through the floor. One tiny example simply cannot justify massive theft.
And don't BS me about only downloading a few things. I snort in the face of your thousand-strong download collection. So nyah.




Well why does this matter? This is the nasty, EVIL world of business, not the idealistic world of art. Art and capitalism do not work together very well, as any struggling musician, painter or sculptor will agree. Whilst music continues to be sold as a product, and not given out for free as art it remains a product and must be treated as such.

Well, isn't music downloading a sign that they're NOT getting away with it? Majority doesn't always determine things, but if that many people are doing it, then there's probably a problem. If you know American history, you'll remember Prohibition, and how bad things arose from that (mostly organized crime). ESPECIALLY in a democracy, when such a problem ensues, it needs to be fixed...and not by suing.



Well maybe with your moral code, no, but please don't tell me how to shape my morals. And I know you're going to sigh and dismiss this because "hard work and money" have to be involved, but in essence it's not stealing the same way other stealing is. How can you compare it? You go to the bookstore, your friend buys a book, you make a photocopy of that page in a book. (I'm not sure on this, if that IS illegal just disregard this.) If it isn't illegal, what's the difference?

No, its a sign that people are abandoning the free-market system entirely and stealing the product. If something is copied perfectly, as with digitally recorded music, people go for the free product and the price-mechanism gets distorted.

And the reason that most people are downloading music is not because they can't afford the product. Instead, they're just feckless and feel like obtaining music for free. The only answer for music corporations is to forcibly prevent the free dispersal of their property, as is their right by law.

Not quite sure how Prohibition is relevant. Could you elaborate?



And, yes, that is very illegal. Hope we haven't been trying that out now?

First off like I said I wasn't talking about it as a way to justify the downloading of music.

Secondly I don't know if I got the point across, but I was saying if one is doing art strictly to make money then to me they are a sell out. Like you said, yes enjoying the process of doing it helps to not make one a sell out, but if the art doesn't have meaning to it, then to me that is selling out. I feel like I will be selling out if I design an add that has something to do with windsurfing for example, because windsurfing means nothing to me. The way I look at it, the stuff I'm making to sell to companies is sell out stuff, but I also have the art that means something to me, that yes I may sell eventually, but I don't have to to feel like I'm doing something true to my art. I know everytime I have to make another countrified looking flyer for the store I work at, I look at it and am dismayed with myself for creating something that means nothing for me, but that's just part of my job.