filesharing.
Sep. 15th, 2003 10:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zotzhttp://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/technology/14MUSI.html
(registration required, I think)
Much of the stated concern over file sharing has centered on the revenue that record companies and musicians are losing, but few musicians ever actually receive royalties from their record sales on major labels, which managers say have accounting practices that are badly in need of review. (Artists do not receive royalties for a CD until the record company has earned back the money it has spent on them.)
Even the Backstreet Boys, one of the best-selling acts of the 1990's, did not appear to have received any CD royalties, their management said.
"I don't have sympathy for the record companies," said Mickey Melchiondo of the rock duo Ween. "They haven't been paying me royalties anyway."
[ . . . ]
Serj Tankian of the hard-rock band System of a Down, for example, said he thought that the free exchange of songs by his band and others online was healthy for music fans, but objected when that free exchange included unfinished studio recordings.
On the other hand, I think I've stopped liking Loudon Wainwright, which is a shame.
(registration required, I think)
Much of the stated concern over file sharing has centered on the revenue that record companies and musicians are losing, but few musicians ever actually receive royalties from their record sales on major labels, which managers say have accounting practices that are badly in need of review. (Artists do not receive royalties for a CD until the record company has earned back the money it has spent on them.)
Even the Backstreet Boys, one of the best-selling acts of the 1990's, did not appear to have received any CD royalties, their management said.
"I don't have sympathy for the record companies," said Mickey Melchiondo of the rock duo Ween. "They haven't been paying me royalties anyway."
[ . . . ]
Serj Tankian of the hard-rock band System of a Down, for example, said he thought that the free exchange of songs by his band and others online was healthy for music fans, but objected when that free exchange included unfinished studio recordings.
On the other hand, I think I've stopped liking Loudon Wainwright, which is a shame.
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no subject
Date: 2003-09-15 03:45 am (UTC)On the issue of file-sharing, I tend to be in favour of the file-sharers. The record companies arguement suffers from being directed at an unsympathetic audience. Regardless of the legality of their position, primarily they depend on the public favouring them and their products postively. The resultant law-suits will back-fire on them, simply because people don't like bullies and they preceive those indited as innocent. (It should be mentioned that the public hate lawyers too, so the recording companies have done themselves no favours.) File-sharing is something the companies have to embrace and work with.
Oddly enough I don't bother with file-sharing myself. This is mostly because I enjoy owning CD's and vinyl. Also downloaded tracks tend to have poor sound quality in my experience. Remember Richard's skipping CD's at the Q!
no subject
I suppose, though, removable harddrives and laptops would... Hey, no they wouldn't. That would work, wouldn't it? Then it's only available as software and you can't sell it, or play it anywhere apart from on a computer.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-15 07:01 am (UTC)I don't - it locks up too many other things. Do a web search on 'Palladium', 'TCPA' and 'fair use'.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-15 11:13 am (UTC)OK.. done. I understand, I wouldn't want someone controling my machine either, it all sounds positively frightning, but that's not what I'm talking about. At all. I'm just thinking about sharing specialised types of audio files which open on a specialised application.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-15 11:57 am (UTC)Then the special application - will it be as fully featured as your favourite media player? Will it have good playlist support? Random play support? Will it let you play the music backwards to search for hidden satanic messages? Will it even run on your favourite OS - not everyone wants to run Windows to listen to music. Why should you be locked in to a proprietary playback application when there are so many others that might suit your needs? You'd laugh in their face if they said you needed a special CD player for that disk you just bought - it should work in anything you can pick up in Dixon's.
So, i) it can't work, not on today's computer architectures, ii) even if it could be made to work (by radically changing the definition of "PC") it would be a marketing disaster.
The level of control being sought by the industry is something they have never had before in any other medium - because in principle filesharing on the net doesn't let you do anything you couldn't have done before. It's just more efficient.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-16 06:02 am (UTC)Ah. Yeah, significant setback.
Then the special application - will it be as fully featured as your favourite media player? ...Why should you be locked in to a proprietary playback application when there are so many others that might suit your needs?
This is the thing, it would have to be real basic, just a playlist and the most necessary controls; stop, play, rewind etc. so what you have is a means of allowing people to download music for free, but that music is impossible to play anywhere other than on a highly low-tech player on a PC. If you wanted a better, more versatile player, or play your downloaded music somewhere else, you'd either have to pay for the download of mp3s or buy the CD.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not thinking of a system for control of computers, rather a system for record companies to staunch the production of bootleg CDs and such through mp3 downloads. This way, people can only download music for free if its of a really un-versatile format, which can't leave a PC in any other form. Anything else, you pay for it.
But, as you pointed out above, it wouldn't work anyway as these hypothetical files could be converted with hardware to .wavs and such. Oh well.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-15 03:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-16 09:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-16 11:30 am (UTC)For unknown bands, it would be pointlessly counterproductive. Why should people jump through hoops for your band's music when other bands make MP3s available?
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Date: 2003-09-15 02:08 pm (UTC)All the while that any legal alternatives are also restricted, then there's less incentive for people to switch over to them.
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Date: 2003-09-16 06:16 am (UTC)Oh, sorry, no, I didn't make that clear. These would be free to download.
..I want the ability to be able to play these on my portable mp3 player, on other computers without installing special software, and to burn onto a CD for more general use
Well, with this method, you wouldn't be able to do that, because it would exist to stop people burning CDs and using free mp3s on portable players, while at the same time allowing people to continue listening and downloading free music in their home. So you get thing for free, but also a penalty: its only on your machine.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-15 06:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-15 06:38 am (UTC)I agree that the updated 'home taping is killing music' argument is massively overstating the case. It was commented that smaller acts may even benefit from the extra exposure they gain from people downloading their music. This is not necessarily true, but an interesting idea (suggested to me by
At the end of the day though, my opinion of 'illegal' downloading is pretty clear-cut. If someone has expressly stated that they don't want people downloading their music, people should not be doing it, regardless of whether it is affecting their record sales - that is the artists' (or record company's) perogative. If you cannot afford to buy the album, tough luck; that doesn't justify what effectively boils down to theft. Obviously, many bands are cottening onto the idea that the Internet is a great place to promote their music and so wholeheartedly support downloads. In this respect, the system is identical to the tape-trading phenomenon of which I am such a fan.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-15 07:02 am (UTC)That's a damn good point. I recall the Black Metal/Thrash tape trading scene in the 80's and 90's not only kept the scene alive but gave bands like Sepultura their break. There would have been no way that Malaysian and Brazilian bands could have received such exposure as they did if the record companies had destroyed that network. Tapes didn't go away and file-sharing won't either, but there will be ways for record companies to make a profit. Hosting file-sharing sites of their own would help, plus if they ventured into tour promoting, arranging and managing, which is where bands make their money and which are impossible to download, they'd be in a great position.
As Henry Ford might have said, there's no point in owning horses when everybody wants a car. File-sharing is simply an evolution that has to be accounted for. I note in the NY Times today, there was an article about software being adapted to evade the RIAA.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-15 04:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-16 02:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-16 08:19 am (UTC)Again, "If you can't afford something, you do without it." is based on the conflation with theft. When you can't afford a physical thing you do without it _because_ the alternative is to steal it - if you can find a way to get it without stealing it, like dumpster diving, no-one suggests that's unethical.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-17 05:02 am (UTC)No! I think it's a very reasonable principle that if you own the copyright to something, it is _your_ choice as to what you do with it, and if that involves preventing people having access to it in a physical format or otherwise, then that is your perogative. Whether this is a sensible course of action from the POV of the artists / record company is a moot point - it is still the choice of whomever owns the copyright.
Again, "If you can't afford something, you do without it." is based on the conflation with theft. When you can't afford a physical thing you do without it _because_ the alternative is to steal it - if you can find a way to get it without stealing it, like dumpster diving, no-one suggests that's unethical.
It's no longer conflating theft and copyright violation. If you can't afford something (be it CD or legal download), you do without it because the alternative is to commit copyright violation.. which I personally see as being as bad as theft, if not the same crime.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-17 05:09 am (UTC)I think you've been tricked by the propaganda that sees copyright as a fundamental right, not as a necessary [1] evil.
I think when you're in the position of saying that an act that produces no effect on the victim is as bad as stealing someone's possessions, you need to re-examine the underlying basis.
[1] At least at the time it was instated.
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Date: 2003-09-17 06:06 am (UTC)Say, for example, a popular author writes a novel for himself, that he never wants published and never wants anyone else to read. His reasons are his own. However, somehow, someone manages to make a copy of it and distributes multiple copies of it, for free, to anyone who wants it. The author was never going to make any money from the book, so he is not losing anything financially from others having copies, but do you think that he he would be unaffected?
no subject
Date: 2003-09-17 11:22 am (UTC)"Intellectual property" itself is a misleading term, because it leads itself naturally to confusion with physical property when in fact the two are quite different, a trap you have fallen into yourself. Why _should_ something which may be duplicated freely, that duplication being a net social good, be treated the same as physical objects which if they are given to one person must necessarily be denied to another?
Your hypothetical example of the author is quite different from your original person who "cannot afford the album"; in the original case, where person B cannot afford the album but copies it anyway, person A most certainly is unaffected; person A will be completely oblivious to the copying unless they go out of their way to spy on all possible person Bs.
The author is in a different position because his privacy has been invaded, and he is indeed affected; but the root cause of the effect is the invasion of privacy. In a world without copyright law, the abstraction and duplication of the original would be equally invasive.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-18 03:18 am (UTC)Where we disagree fundamentally relates to a previous question you raised - I believe, in terms of art (and I recognise that that distinction in itself is open to debate, but not here), people do have a right to dictate what happens to the art they have created - like the author, they have the right to prevent it being read by anyone else, or like Metallica (or other bands / record labels) they have the right to insist that people pay for their product. This may not be a sensible marketing policy, but it is still their perogative. Free duplication of art, to mind at least, does not equal 'net social good', though as this can never be measured in any meaningful manner, it is futile debating it. The comment about person A being oblivious to the actions of persons B doesn't hold water either - the point is would person A be bothered if they did know? It smacks of 'what they don't know, won't hurt them' and I'm sure I don't need to point out the problems associated with that way of thinking.
We are never going to agree on this, because I believe people do have a right to hold copyright on art they produce, and decide what becomes of the art in terms of its dissemination. You do not. This is not me being hoodwinked by propaganda, it is simply my opinion.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-24 04:54 pm (UTC)Free duplication of art certainly does equal net social good; I think we can agree that if someone acquires a copy of a work that's generally a good thing for them, and there's no penalty for that duplication.
[This is not to say that we might feel that the social good that stems from giving authors an incentive to create works is a greater one.]
If you're going to assume author's rights as an axiom, it's still possible to show that that axiom leads you to absurd consequences; for instance, you're having to defend the idea that a small group of people should be able to control the actions of a large group of people, even though those actions don't affect the small group.
[Other than that they might be upset if they knew. Big deal - Mary Whitehouse was upset that people were watching filthy movies on television, but there it's clear that it's not her business. What's the difference?]
Out of interest, do you support the span of copyright extending past the author's death?
no subject
Date: 2003-09-16 04:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-15 06:56 am (UTC)an old essay which is probably still germane and Janis Ian writes about her personal experience of royalty payments with respect to the file-sharing issue.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-15 07:12 am (UTC)http://rocknerd.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/15/0715230&mode=nested&tid=20
http://rocknerd.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/12/139200&mode=nested&tid=29
http://rocknerd.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/11/0522230&mode=nested&tid=29
http://rocknerd.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/09/0425224&mode=nested&tid=29
http://rocknerd.org/search.pl?topic=29
</trumpet>
no subject
Date: 2003-09-15 05:10 pm (UTC)Until recently, the actual musicians received no royalties from radio play etc, but the Digital Performance Rights in Sound Recordings Act of 1995 entitled musicians to performance royalties from digital broadcasts watched by subscribers.
In practice, unless a record goes platinum, musicians are unlikely to see any perfomance royalties, as not enough product is sold and hence not enough royalties are earned to cover the advance. The Back Street boys probably haven't had any royalties because although they have high sales, they probably got an enormous advance.
Note that the publishing royalties are a totally different thing altogether - the composers of the song usually assign the copyright to a publishing company in return for a payment agreement. Royalties are due any time the song is used, either TV or Radio broadcast, live performance, pub jukebox etc and irrespective of who actually performs the song. Obviously, to allocate these royalties accurately would mean logging every song played in all these media, so in practice, sample playlists etc are taken and revenue distributed as fairly as possible (allegedly). Smaller acts tend to miss out more than larger ones as they are less likely to show up in samples.
I'm not 100% on this, but I think performance royalties are due on legit mp3's paid for and downloaded through sites like apple's one.
Obviously, as digital media takes over from physical media, the record companies will be concentrating on earning money from the rights than taking their cut of the sale price of physical CD's. This is the real problem with illegal MP3's, CD sales will naturally decline as the use of MP3 players, PC's etc increases, but the record companies have no way yet of ensuring that the royalties will be paid on this new musical format. Publishing companies aren't affected to the same extent, so the songwriters should be OK (it's the musicians who don't have songwriting credits who will suffer.). In the long run though, no performance royalties means no advances to cover new recordings, so maybe it will be back to the old punk days of recording an album as cheaply as possible......