> Because it's easy to steal something doesn't
> mean it's right.

That's not the slam-dunk you think it is.. A corollary would go 'Just because something used to be expensive to distribute doesn't mean high prices can be sustained as delivery is improved.'

Jagger, bless his twisted little heart, has conceded this point flatly: He's got nothing to lose by telling the truth about his freakishly lucky career, a statistical outlier that's warped the expectations of every teenage shower-singer to follow.

The truth is, music IS free! There are people, talented people, who will make it and distribute it at a price of zero... Either because they'll make up costs through performances, or through some other marketing, or because they simply want you to hear it.

The expenses of recording, sales and distribution are gone. The record companies are GONE. Music, at the cost of pennies or free, is now correctly priced... Especially in the realm of teenage music, the volume business by which so many young people around the globe were (by technological happenstance) market-raped for a couple generations.

If Mizz Olbrich thinks her precious little squeals will compel people to throw money at her, let's see what happens.

Seriously...

I am not a musician. I am not personally being hurt by this.

WTF?—

Suze Olbrich is the Producer of Abbey Road Debuts and Associate Producer of Live From Abbey Road.

I agree with Crid. If she wants to make money, then she should go out on tour or find a way of marketing herself so that people will pay her. I don't condone stealing. However, the sands have shifted and the younger generations function as if all information is freely available on the internet--an incorrect assumption, but they don't care. We're at a point where it costs more resources to police the masses than it does to figure out a new way to make money. The free market at work... and technology radically changing our lives.

I like to listen to music, now rather than buying a CD for 15 bucks when I really only want a few of the songs I use iTunes and pay for my music...a few hundred songs on my iPod are from doing that. I have also downloaded my CD collection and put it on my computer and loaded it to my iPod, that is an illegal act...my change of medium for enjoying the music, if record companies didn't condemn this act I might have some sympathy for them when others take the music without paying for it.

This isn't a justification of actions, stealing is stealing. I changed the medium for their intellectual property that I still own the copies of.

"so what happened in the last decade that erased any feeling of obligation or even will to pay for music?"

The reasons would be thus: Its easy, high school/college students don't have a lot of money so justify it, DMCA laws and other DRM (digital rights management) insanity such as the Sony rootkit security breaches. The topper probably is finding out you've been gouged in the 70s-90s via price manipulation (many major labels were sued and lost), you tend not to care too much about record companies or artists losing money via "online piracy".

"The truth is, music IS free! There are people, talented people, who will make it and distribute it at a price of zero..."

The truth is, some music is free. If those talented people you speak of want to distribute it at a price of zero, that's fantastic and nobody is saying that such freely offered music should not be downloaded.

We're talking about the torrent / file sharing stuff where the creators are not offering it for free. That's stealing. Why aren't people teaching their children this?

You make a good point that given the sharp reduction in production costs of music, the music companies may be gouging. Here is a solution for you: if it's too expensive, don't buy it. Who are you to mete out justice in the marketplace by stealing what you believe is too expensive?

Although music is the topic here, it seems like most people that steal music are also busy stealing movies, television shows, and software. It's the same sense of entitlement at work.

It would be hard to argue that some of the very expensive to produce movies and software out there are gouging in the face of very little capital invested. Jesus, you know how many man hours goes into making a powerful and useful piece of software?

While I'm at it, music is art. Do you judge the value of a painting based on how much the the canvas and paint cost? How dare someone ask me to pay more for that Van Dyck watercolor than that velvet Elvis from the gas station -- do you know how much more expensive velvet is than watercolor paints?

By the way, all these people that are illegally downloading from these dodgy sites deserve every virus they get.

I have also downloaded my CD collection and put it on my computer and loaded it to my iPod, that is an illegal act.

Is it illegal? I thought there was a difference between ripping the file for your own use and sharing the file with the internet.

> We're talking about the torrent / file sharing
> stuff where the creators are not offering it
> for free. That's stealing. Why aren't people
> teaching their children this?

Because it doesn't make a lick of sense.

You're presuming that something other than market forces can determine what something is worth. As if I could go into my boss's office tomorrow and demand a $300,000/yr raise... But no.

(And yes, I am worth it, you peasant!)

From what I've seen, the music industry isn't collapsing... The record business is collapsing. People who like serious music –opera and jazz and the healing music of indigenous cultures– are still pretty much paying to hear it. I'm certain there have been losses in these non-exploitative markets, but who can say that those changes aren't righteous price corrections as well? Again, I think it's the pretty-girl/nancy-boy teenage performers who are most upset about the collapse of their (ill-nourished) career fantasies... THEY'RE the ones who're having their Velvet Elvis 'talent' distinguished from the van Dyck marketplace.

If they're truly making "art" –and that word appeared in similarly slutty dress at the page Amy linked, too– they've got little to worry about.

"You're presuming that something other than market forces can determine what something is worth"

No, I'm not. If a pair of tennis shoes is more expensive than I believe they are worth, I won't buy them in favor of the bargain brand. That's the influence I can bring to bear on market forces.

I won't secret them out of the store under my overcoat. That would be stealing and that's a crime.

I agree that the music that appeals to the younger generations is more at risk and that, in our shared opinion, it tends to be more of the "velvet Elvis" variety. Does that mean that if it's crap, it's okay to steal it?

Tempest in a Teapot.

It's not just easy but, thanks to the Internet, low cost and low risk to download and redistribute any files. That is a fact of life. Even if the publishing industry could shut off any site it wanted, the technology already exist to route around those attacks. Hell's Belles, they haven't figured out how to deal with the current generation of bittorrent. What makes anyone think they will fare better against the darknets, greynets, deep webs, gulchnets, etc?

Call it anything you want. Rail about the rampant immorality. Gnash your teeh, Rend your garments. Then take a breath and remember the adage about "sticks and stones..."

Parabarbarian,

Nobody is arguing that it can be thwarted, but it is pretty shocking that so many people justify it and pretend that it isn't wrong.

I occasionally download tv episodes from pirate bay, I'd be more the willing to rent or even buy some of them if the damn studios would release them.
I can understand not wanting to produces hunndereds of thousands of DVD's without knowing how many will sell, but how expensive is it really to make one digital copy and give it to itunes or amazon and let who ever wants it buy it as a digital download?

Plus I really hate norweigin subtitles

For all the concerts I attended, for all the albums/tapes/CDs I bought, for all the merchandise that I bought at all the concerts I attended, I don't feel too bad about downloading music I already paid for - those record company execs don't really need any more of my money. The artists may be a different story, but paying outrageously high prices for concert tickets ain't cuttin it with me. I support live, local music (having once been a part of it), but the big boys got enough of my money in the 70s and 80s. Except my beloved Ian Hunter. I will never pirate his music, and I will always pay full price to see him. And that's not just because I met him and got his autograph, either!
This is most recent effort, "Man Overboard". Good stuff, and he's almost as old as my da!

It is not necessarily stealing. Bear with me here...

Beginning in the days of cassette tapes, the music industry managed to get fees added to the price of empty media and recording devices. The justification for these fees was the assumption that "of course" people are going to copy copyrighted material.

These fees are, of course, utterly offensive, as they go against the presumption of innocence. Add to that the fact that most of the money somehow is eaten up before it gets to the artists.

Very few countries were clever enough to realize what was going on here. If their citizens must pay fees in advance, because they are going to make copies - fine, then copying has been paid for. It is legal in these countries to download music, or to make individual copies to give away to friends.

As far as I know, this is true in Italy, Spain and Switzerland. The recent Wikileaks documents exposing the pressure the USA was putting on Spain regarding copyright law? This is one of the reasons for that pressure.

Everywhere else, we are patsies. We fees for making copies, and yet copying is forbidden. We pay for our cake, but don't get to eat it.

Sorry, meant to post this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3St_EpZPzE

Nobody makes money off of the *music.* Sure, a little bit comes in, but you'd have a hard time making money if you relied on just royalties. The real money is in ticket sales, merch sales, appearance fees, and endorsements. This doesn't justify stealing the music but stealing the music isn't putting the artists in the poorhouse - it's putting the labels in the poorhouse. That, I think, is what people don't care about paying for, the infrastructure that exists between the artist and the consumer. Some groups have, with moderate success, offered work free to download with a prominent tip jar for people to contribute to. And unlike the TV or CD, me stealing a copy does not take the music out of your - or the band's - pocket.

The other big encouragement to pirating music is the RIAA itself. With the use of it's heavy-handed tactics in pursuit of preserving an outdated business model, it has set itself up as the heavyweight bad guy. Instead of seeing that they're stealing from the artists they claim to love, people feel like they're sticking their thumb into the eye of an orginization that sues grandmas and students into bankruptcy.

And c'mon Amy, you never made a mix tape for anyone special in your life and passed along your copies for free? This is an issue that has existed since there was recordable media for music, including vinyl records. Why, it should be that you pay for each performance of the band you love, why should you be able to listen to them as much as you want for free? Think of all the money you're costing them!

Again, this isn't to say that stealing the songs is right. But the existing business model is decimated by the practice and that may not be a bad thing. The business model needs to change to survive. Maybe the record labels are going the way of the dodo bird. Trying to keep things exactly the same in the face of such radical new technology is only going to encourage more piracy.

I don't steal music - a lot of it isn't to my taste anyway, but consider this:

I paid for a lot of what I like on LP records in the 60s and 70s. I purchased a lot of the same stuff on CDs later. The recording industry wants to ignore the doctrine of fair use, and says if I want to make a copy to play in my car I am violating their rights? What about mine?

We could continue with how they bought Congress to extend copyrights from a reasonable timespan to close to forever, but you get my drift. The industry is run by scum. We could get into how they rip off their own artists, but that isn't on-topic.

I have no sympathy for their problem. None.

Everything Elle said.

Music has three primary costs; production, marketing, distribution. The big labels' business model was based primarily on scarcity in distribution; the "product" you were paying for was mainly the entire distribution chain and all its middlemen. The Internet has rendered old distribution channels obsolete and destroyed the natural scarcity in old-style distribution. So the old business model is obsolete, but instead of adapting or letting go these guys are trying to cling on as long as possible, suing grandmas and abusing the system via corporate lobbying.

Production has become much cheaper, thanks to technology, but a good studio and producer are still valuable --- but these are once-offs not related to distribution.

We're also living in an era where music is plentiful; scarcity of music as entertainment has plummeted. Twenty thousand years ago you had to listen to the one singer in your local cave tribe. Now we have our choice of millions of songs from hundreds of years of quality music production of all varieties (a lot of which is out of copyright) plus millions of young wanna-be musicians all producing good quality music. The only true 'value' left in having hugely popular musicians *at all*, is the 'shared cultural experience' aspect, rather than the music itself (let's face it, the average 'hit' today is quite un-special, and the average 'artist' today is churning out unoriginal derivative crap based on what the big pioneers of popular music from the previous century did). It will naturally become harder to make money from music as creative people compete with more and more producers, distributing through a medium which has lost scarcity.

The window of opportunity in which artists could become huge and strike it rich may even be closing; it may just have been a short blip in history. Though I think humans will still collectively want to make some arbitrary artists 'big', because the 'shared cultural experience' aspect will remain important.

I don't agree with music piracy, I also don't agree with the behavior of the RIAA, though it doesn't justify piracy, it's hard to argue that it encourages piracy since people recognize - rightly - that the system is not fair as it stands.

Yes, it is stealing to drink without permission from your neighbor's well, which taps an underground aquifer on his property. The marginal cost of that gulp of water, though, is so very small, only the neighbor--and maybe not even him--gives a shit about it, since the "loss" is immaterial.

BUT, if the neighbor was previously selling his well water for $13 per gulp, and suddenly found he could not do so, because customers could now get that same aquifer's water from another source, I expect the neighbor will be pissed about losing the income stream.

So pissed, in fact, he will likely claim that all manner of evil is done by theft of valuable water, as people stop paying him for *his* well water.

The neighbor will be vindictive towards people who supply water for free. He will likely demand the government "do something!" about the free water to prevent people from accessing free water. He will claim that the prior investment in tapping the aquifer and providing well water (at high, high prices...) justifies a claim on other revenue sources dependent on not his well, but rather, the water in the aquifer, or perhaps even water generally.

People who say "WTF? The aquifer is not just on your property? And you don't own water, only a well that taps a particular aquifer!" are inevitably told that the issue is complex, and that they just don't understand.

Legislation will be proposed and donations to campaigns will be made to steamroll objections from such people, once the well owner realizes the people have zero sympathy for him.

But whatever happens, we can be sure that one thing will not happen: the well-owner will never recognize and accept that his rice bowl will no longer be filled so readily. He needs to find a new value proposition, because people will no longer pay $13 for a gulp of water...unless he can put it in a cooler next to a Pepsi bottle, that is. But someone else already has that gig, so he is screwed.

Wow! I'm a little surprised that anyone would justify stealing music. Whether you agree with the prices, the distribution of funds, the cost to produce, etc, the fact of the matter is that the songs you are downloading for free are not really free. You are stealing them. If you don't like high ticket prices, don't go to the concert but don't steal the music as justification for that show you went to see. After all, you did get the performance which is what you paid for, not their online song catalogue.

There are very few shows that I will go to because of prices and usually I wait until the day of the show and buy the tickets people are trying to get rid of on Craigslist. I've seen Bruce Springsteen and Clapton up close that way and was able to get my son tickets to Kiss and Motley Crue at Jones Beach.

What I didn't know was that putting those CDs I buy onto my computer and MP3 player was illegal. That's a dilemna for me. If its stealing, I'll freely admit I am stealing then. I won't try to justify it. I'll just say that I do it and its illegal.

Until 1905 (Edison's disc phonograph) there was essentially no copyright on music other than sheet music. The reason was that playing music was a talent that you needed to have. (Or thought you did. ;-) )

The recording companies could control the industry until the late 70's or early 80's. My elementary school had a local, small, recording studio/record producer come in. He brought out the vinyl needed to make a record and admitted it cost about $0.75 make the actual vinyl record. The metal "blank" cost about $15.

Until 1905 the only way to make money with music was to be known well enough to get into an opera house, local theater, etc. or by busking.

The last music I bought on CD was from my local ren fest. The people who produced and sold the CDs were the same ones I was listening to. I liked their music enough to buy it after they performed. The most I paid was $10 per CD -- and it really went to the artist.

RIAA is clinging to the model that they should, and need to, be the middleman between you and the artist. This also breaks the model for broadcast radio, but that is a different story.

The advent of the internet allows the masses to go direct to the artist. Technology also changes the need for recording studios.

What is happening is that the model is changing and the record execs are realizing they are in the margin -- not the mainstream.

I do that, Jim P. When I go to a local gig, and the band has its CD right there for purchase, I will buy one if I like the band. I pay full price to see Ian every time I go to see him, as well as every time I go to the annual Allman Bros. show at the Beacon Theatre. I have no problem with that, because more often than not, the tickets are reasonably priced, $45 - $50 is cool. What I won't do anymore is pay outrageous amounts of money ($125 for ONE ticket for Aerosmith?!? No WAY, especially since I saw them multiple times in the 70s and 80s for less than $50; first time was at Colt Park in Hartford, $6.50 in 1976 for Elf [with Ronnie James Dio], Aerosmith AND Deep Purple [David Coverdale singing lead, Ian Gillan was still doing Jesus Christ Superstar on Broadway]) for bands I supported in the 70s and 80s who want more than $75 a pop. The majority goes to the concert promoters anyway. And they SUCK.

Flynne, the ticket prices are outrageous and I do agree with you that it sucks to pay $125 or more a ticket. A lot of that is caused by the scalping though. When Billy Joel was doing the last concert at Shea, I could have had tickets through AMEX before they went on sale to the general public. I ended up not buying because financially I wasn't doing so well. The same tickets I could have purchased for around $100-150, were selling on the internet a day later for $1000. I just would never have the heart to sell them to someone for that but I doubt that the majority of AMEX ticket buyers were the actual ones sitting in those seats at show time.

Back in '07, Radiohead, no longer affiliated with a record company, initially released its In Rainbows album as a download, priced at whatever you were willing to pay for it.

No one seems to have compiled definitive sales numbers, and the album eventually came out on CD anyway. According to one survey, about a third of "buyers" didn't offer anything at all, but the average transaction price was somewhere in the vicinity of £4, at a time when the pound was worth about $2 US. (I paid £4.75 for my own copy.)

Oh I know Kristen, and that's why I won't pay outrageous ticket prices and go to those shows. I've seen 'em all anyway. And I already have most of their albums, and have downloaded only what I've already paid for. I'm not trying to justify stealing music. But I still don't think paying over $100 for ONE seat is justified.

That said, I'd pay close to that, maybe, for a band I haven't seen before in concert. Alice in Chains, maybe. Or the Foo Fighters, I like them. But I've seen the Stones multiple times, and I don't really need to see them again. Likewise Aerosmith, Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, and a host of others. And of the older crowd, the ones I would have paid big bucks to see one more time are dead. What the concert promoters don't realize is that if they kept the ticket prices reasonable, more people would buy them. But they don't have to care because there are people out there who will pay whatever they ask just to see a show. But I REFUSE to have ANYthing to do with TicketBastard, I mean, TicketMaster. Those guys really suck.

The one point I agree is the fact that I have to pay for the song repeatedly if I want to listen to the music I purchased on a different medium. Like everyone else in this discussion, I have a collection of CDs that I paid for.

So, because technology allows people to listen on iPods, I should pay for the same song again? I don't think so. Particularly since it involves no physical resources to send a song via the internet.

Kristen: "Wow! I'm a little surprised that anyone would justify stealing music."

Ms. Alkon: "And Kristin is exactly right about people who justify stealing music. "

There is a difference between justifying stealing and refusing to provide support to victims overplaying their harm and asking for an exxcessive law enforcement resources allocation to address that harm. Many people seem to recognize the latter circumstance as the RIAA's current predicament.

I would place them somewhere around 1,365 on the list of outrages we must address using state resources.

Amy, I agree with your stuff a ton, but you're way off. The actual music industry -- ie performing etc -- is doing EXTREMELY well. It's the recording studios and the old model where music was chosen by the kingmakers in CA... please read up on www.techdirt.com -- they get into why copying is not like stealing your tv, and musical artists are actually doing fantastic. It's the suits and the old business model that's been taken out back and put down.

Whether the RIAA is abusive or whether they're doing extremely well is not the question. A song an artist records and puts up for sale is not yours to take without paying for it. That is theft, and if you engage in it, you are a thief.

Yesterday, vis a vis a creep who wrote me asking to drink my bathwater, somebody said I should sell it to him, but send him tap water. As I told that person, I don't have a problem selling him my bathwater, but to send him tap water would be unethical. I committed to being ethical in my early 30s (not that I was a sleazebag before), and I'm only as ethical as my actions.

Being ethical means, when I was getting Costco deliveries, and I noticed that there was a case of orange juice I hadn't ordered on top of my stuff, telling the driver I couldn't take it. It didn't belong to me. Now, maybe he threw it in the trash instead of giving it to me, but I didn't take something I hadn't paid for fair and square.

If you're dishonest, you know it, and there's a personal cost to that, whether you know that or not, whether you justify your dishonesty or not.

"Whether the RIAA is abusive or whether they're doing extremely well is not the question."

Yes, but also no, Ms. Alkon. We care more about rectifying some wrongs than others, based on a variety of variables. Some of those variables include the amount of harm involved to the party suffering harm, the ability of the harmed to bear (and spread) the loss, the cost-benefit of using state (i.e., our collective) resources to address it. Etc.

For example, we do not let Wal-Mart sue people and impose tens of thousands of dollars in fines and attorneys fees for shoplifting a $13 CD. Why? Because we rightly take account of the harm Wal-Mart suffers (minimal) in each theft when deciding how to address the matter. We also note that Wal-Mart has the opportunity to address the problem via a variety of low-cost, low-impact means.

That said, I am quite sure that Wal-MArt suffers some large shoplifting losses, in the aggregate, and that Wal-Mart, like the RIAA, would *love* the chance to recoup those losses from a small percentage of dumb schlubs caught in a legal web of statutory fines and court proceedings initiated by Wal-Mart.

But that sort of remedy would strain courts, and it would lead to ugly "justice", as the perps are then subject to staggering penalties relative to the nearly immaterial harm their particular crime imposed.

Now, if someone is stealing from orphans who will starve if that $13 is taken from them, we understand that the orphan cannot bear that loss, and the consequences to the orphan are dire. Thus, our society will likely punish that thief with a greater intensity and focus. Properly so, I think, in order to demonstrate our societal bias in protecting orphans from people who would prey on them.

Similarly, I am disinterested in allocating public resources to aid the RIAA, relative to other uses for that money. Put simply, the RIAA is Wal-Mart, not an orphan.

If the RIAA wishes to spend time and money to protect their rice bowl, I won't argue much. But when they try to recruit prosecutorial and police power to help them chase a 21 year old with burned music or movies on their hard drive, I say "nope, we have better things to spend that time on." I would rather see those resources allocated elsewhere.

And if the RIAA seeks to change laws to make punishing 21 year olds easier and the civil fines more severe, they completely lose my support, as they are now trying to lob high explosive impacts on schlubs doing almost zero marginal harm. Using my earlier analogy, it is like allowing Wal Mart to fine people $200,000 for each instance of shop-lifting a pack of gum. We would recognize that outsized penalty is simply unjust, given the crime involved.

So, yes, stealing gum is wrong. Yes, just because the RIAA is rich, that does not change the wrongness of it. A thief is still a thief, whether she steals from King Midas or a beggar.

But justice does not require us to (1) pay much attention to any particular theft from Wal Mart, or even a whole lot of them, (2) use state resources to punish in an outsized manner a small faction of gum stealers with shockingly high fines and court costs, or (3) change laws to permit Wal-Mart to do (2) when the state shows no interest in doing so.

In fact, I would say (2) or (3) would be unjust, and we are right to avoid permitting that.

Put simply, just because something is wrong does not mean we must go to extremes to eradicate it. Or, in literary terms, Inspector Javert may disagree with me, but just because I do not agree with his viewpoint, that does not mean I am cheering on the thefts of those he pursues.

Yeah, Amy, you're way off. How can you call it stealing? Vizio and Best Buy are doing extremely well. Taking a TV without paying for it is just a drop in the bucket to their huge profits. It's about time those corporate fat cats got what's coming to them.

Wait, we were talking about TVs, right?

downloaded my CD collection and put it on my computer and loaded it to my iPod, that is an illegal act

Except that it isn't. Not in the US, any way. You're allowed to make an archival backup. Which in your case is the original CD sitting safely in its case on your shelf.

Of course Big Music wants you to believe it is illegal. But they are, shall we say? not a reliable source when what is legal impacts their bottom line.

Compare that with Big Movie, with their DVD releases. Not only are they producing BluRay and DVD bundles, but usually there is a computer-friendly version included that you can put on your computer so you don't have to rip the DVD to a computer-friendly format.

One of them treats their customers like thieves, the other like...customers whose needs they try to meet.

If someone renders a creative work and makes it available under conditions of licensing, and you replicate that work with the intent of abrogating the creator / author's license, then you have misappropriated the work. It's really that simple. This is true whether or not the RIAA is nasty, popular music sucks, digital is cheap, or 'information wants to be free'. The creator has offered their work under under the conditions of a license, and you've deliberately violated that license.

Also if you are going to discuss financial impact, you need to factor catalog values. Direct payments and royalties from first release sales are only a part of the picture, and typically the minority portion for the lifetime of the work. The erosion of catalog values is what is hollowing out creative financing, for both music and film. It's why we're seeing far fewer quality independently developed projects. The current market is made up of a super abundance of amateurs and a hand full of super stars. The independent producers and distributors have been killed off because their catalogs are becoming worthless.

I cant believe anybody supports stealing music, our society is on the tailspin of death.

"Amy, I agree with your stuff a ton, but you're way off. The actual music industry -- ie performing etc -- is doing EXTREMELY well. It's the recording studios and the old model where music was chosen by the kingmakers in CA... please read up on www.techdirt.com -- they get into why copying is not like stealing your tv, and musical artists are actually doing fantastic. It's the suits and the old business model that's been taken out back and put down."

Whether the music industry is doing well or not doesn't change the fact that if you download a song on a pirate site instead of paying for it, you are stealing it. It may not be the same as stealing a tv or robbing a bank, but neither is shoplifting a gallon of milk in the grocery store. Stealing is stealing regardless of how justified the thief may feel when committing the act. Are we going to start assigning levels of theft and who it is ok to steal from and who is allowed to steal?

> If a pair of tennis shoes is more expensive
> than I believe they are worth, I won't buy
> them in favor of the bargain brand. That's
> the influence I can bring to bear on market
> forces.

Yeah? So let's say there's a farmer out there. And he decides that instead of selling his ears of corn for a dollar a pound, he wants fifteen dollars a pound. Because his are special, dammit... So when the guy comes with the truck to take them to market, farmer tells the driver "Remember: Fifteen dollars a pound! Not a penny less!" And driver says, "Got it."

And he dumps the $15 ears in the bin with all the $1 ears. And he goes to town, and spreads everything out on a sheet at the market square in the morning sun. And that night he comes back back the farm and says "Yeah, sorry, I could only get a doller per."

Well, the farmer's all pissed off! He wants to know why his precious ears of maize couldn't be recognized for their obvious fabulousness!

And the reason for that would be that, uh, there wasn't any. His $15 ears are already boiling in the same soup that has 40¢ carrots and 80¢ bell peppers. It's an ear of freakin' corn, dude.

Listen, Steve Jobs was the one who had the pleasure of cracking the whip on the record company guys. He walked up to them and told them what their prices were going to be. (That's a real-life comic book superpower... And he'd used it earlier in his career, when he told the chip vendors how much he was going to pay for parts for the Apple and Apple II computers.) So the record guys said No! 'We want copy protection, too!' And so Steve said fine, until a few years later, when his customers wouldn't put up with it.

So now, for a few pennies more, you have absolute unrestricted control of the recordings you've paid for, and no fucker on the planet can say otherwise. And if you want to email one to your cousin, there's not a damn thing any one can do about it, or should do about it. And it will never be worth the trouble or co$t of tracking you down to punish you for this idiot, imaginary "theft".

> For all the concerts I attended, for all the
> albums/tapes/CDs I bought, for all the
> merchandise that I bought at all the
> concerts I attended, I don't feel too bad
> about downloading music I already paid for

Exactly. Folks our age are through... At least for the acts whose French chateaus we've already paid for. (Hi, Mick!)

(FlynneFlynneFlynne— The heat-packin' sister in a cocktail dress.)

What's funny about this is the crazyshit egocentrism of all these hundreds of thousands of "artists" who feel like they should be able to price their work as they see fit. If they want to charge $20 per song, who are WE to say they can't see how big their market is?

But then, boo-hoo, the music gets "stolen"! And –I'm swimming through the tears, here– and our little idiot rock star DOESN'T get to buy the Malibu mansion and the French chateau or the private jet...

As if those things were ever in the cards anyway.

The RIAA and the "music industry" are desperately clinging to an antiquated business model. They're still selling songs in an album (with album cover art) while the customers are downloading it by the song.

The performers have bought into these unrealistic expectations. They are producing one album every 1-3 years and expecting to live on the royalties. Performing is considered merely a way of drumming up interest in the album.

Some bands/performers have caught on to the new paradigm. They're licensing their songs for use in popular television shows, commercials, movies, movie trailers, etc. ... an act once considered "selling out."

And the customers are tired of paying $15 for a $1 CD. When CDs first came out, customers were promised that the cost would eventually drop to around $5-$8. When the record companies found they could get away with charging twice that (because the customers had no alternative), they happily bilked their customers and raked in the profits.

Very few industries are as contemptuous of its own customers and cannibalistic of its own market as the record industry.

Is transferring a file without paying for the song stealing? Yes. But, as someone who occasionally taped friends' albums in college, I have no room to be casting stones.

Jagger, bless his twisted little heart, has conceded this point flatly: He's got nothing to lose by telling the truth about his freakishly lucky career, a statistical outlier that's warped the expectations of every teenage shower-singer to follow.

Mick Jagger displays an understanding of the market and his industry's evolving business model ... as one would expect of a student of the London School of Economics (even one who didn't graduate).

"Very few industries are as contemptuous of its own customers and cannibalistic of its own market as the record industry."

That should be: "Very few industries are as contemptuous of their own customers and cannibalistic of their own markets as the record industry.

It started out as "No other industry...," but I figured there had to be at least one other, so I changed the initial wording and forgot to change the rest.

From Wikipedia entry about ripping audio data:

In oral arguments before the Supreme Court in MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., Don Verrilli, representing MGM stated: "And let me clarify something I think is unclear from the amicus briefs. The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it's been on their Website for some time now, that it's perfectly lawful to take a CD that you've purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod.

Whether you think it's unethical is another matter.

What's funny about this is the crazyshit egocentrism of all these hundreds of thousands of "artists" who feel like they should be able to price their work as they see fit. If they want to charge $20 per song, who are WE to say they can't see how big their market is?

I don't see any song marketed for $20 a pop. And you still don't explain how its justified to steal from them because you somehow feel they didn't earn their mansion. Does that mean we can find a Lotto winner and steal his car because he didn't earn the money fairly and he wouldn't make a sympathetic enough victim? Really Crid. You can do so much better.

I happen to love Dooney and Bourke bags but I think they're way over priced. I don't go in and buy one and steal two and think to myself that they should be happy that I'm purchasing anything. When did it start to work like that? Where we decide the price of something and instead of not buying it because its too high, think its ok to steal the portion we feel is overpriced?

> And you still don't explain how its
> justified to steal from them

I don't think they're being "stolen" from.

> because you somehow feel they didn't
> earn their mansion.

That's an ancillary pleasure, not directly contingent on the previous point. Marketplace comeuppance is fun. Who among us hasn't snickered with glee to see an aging film starlet, once pampered and beloved, now sniveling through her sagging, deeply-lined, once-rosey jowls about how 'Hollywood needs more roles for older women'? It's like that in almost every sector, not just showbusiness. Deflated monopolies are the best kind!

If these darling "artists" feel that their music is correctly priced at such a higher rate, then they should go out and sell it at the higher rate. No one will stop them.

And if they feel the common distribution channels are causing their margins to be unfairly impinged, then they can build their own distribution channels. They can go to their $20-per-tune customers and provide intimate performances, or they can offer special, locked Ipods that only play their music. I am not kidding.

(Old rock stars sometimes do that, playing concerts at cotillions for the daughters of idiot billionaire Arabs, etc. Didja hear about the time Elton John played at Rush Limbaugh's birthday party?... Crazy, right? Everyone has a price.)

Not kidding, not-not-not. Listen, the people who're complaining about the internet theft want all the advantages that come from these stunning innovations. They want the rock-solid demographic data, they want the instantaneous transport, they want global distribution at (essentially) zero cost, and they especially want the universal penetration....

...But there's something they don't want.

They don't want market feedback. They don't want to be told what their product is worth by the customers who have to choose how much it means to them.

(It was just like me in my boss's office this morning. He didn't want to pay me my $300,000 raise... And I didn't want to hear that from him!)

(Actually, it's a day off.)

Well, my little duckling rock stars, tough luck.

And for the record, this isn't the first time this has happened in the computer industry. In the 80's, copy protection of software got ever-more intrusive and obnoxious... People who'd paid hundreds of dollars for programs were unable to make them run because the programmers had put so many tripwires in their own code. Eventually it had to stop, and for the most part it has.

Bill Gates became a billionaire by selling $400 seats of his Office Suite to corporations in batches of a thousand... But those days are gone. You can now download essentially identical packages of software for free. And if you don't want it all in a turdlike bundle, Google will be happy to do it for you online, piecemeal. The best monopolies are deflated monopolies.

> Really Crid. You can do so much better.

Oh, Blow me... Blow me under the Christmas mistletoe. Sheesh.

Hi Crid,

It's a bit shocking to see you railing against the free market. I thought you were a conservative? If someone was to sell his $1 corn for $15, it probably wouldn't sell very well.

So let's steal that bastards corn rather than simply not buying it. That'll teach him.

"If these darling "artists" feel that their music is correctly priced at such a higher rate, then they should go out and sell it at the higher rate. No one will stop them."

That's not true. You and your ilk will steal from them rather than wait and see whether their music is correctly priced at a higher rate. You, the thief, will subvert the free market.

The market is working efficiently: People are paying what they want to pay, what the goods are worth. That any number of idiot vendors aren't getting their preferred price is to be expected.

"Oh, Blow me... Blow me under the Christmas mistletoe. Sheesh."

I think I'm going to embroider that into a pillow!

> You and your ilk will steal from them...

Dude, READ THE COMMENTS.

Seriously, are people always this full of themselves, or is a holiday thing?... Is it a misplaced manifestation of anger at Amazon's customer service emails or something?

Can't read everything here. I have never downloaded music. I have to ask, though: If it's illegal to do that, why isn't it also illegal to record music off the radio, something people have likely been doing ever since portable tape recorders were invented? I don't get it.

(I realize, of course, that SELLING it would be different.....)

> Can't read everything here.

Whaaaaaaaaa....?

What did she mean by that?

Take it back!!

Dammit, make time!!!!

One reason people may not feel like they're stealing when they download illegally is that they're not directly depriving the victim of anything. If you steal a TV, even from Wal-Mart or Best Buy, your victim doesn't have that TV anymore. If you download a song without paying, however, the artist loses neither the song nor the ability to distribute it to paying customers.

Would you have bought the song if the free download wasn't available? If not, you haven't deprived the artist of anything. What he's losing is the income from people who would pay for his work if they had to, but won't pay if they can get it for free. And that loss exists as long as free downloads are available, whether you do them or not.

I'm not saying that illegal downloads aren't stealing, or that people are justified in using them. Just suggesting why it may be hard to make them feel shame.

This whole thread is kind of ridiculous. It's apparent that most of the people commenting have no idea of how the music industry is structured, why, and what the licensing arrangements are. What they're really complaining about is music marketing, which is distinct from licensing.

It's similarly apparent that most people who post condescending comments in guileless anonymity do so for a reason....

Time for A Christmas Parable!!!

So there's this kid, a high-school football player, from Maizeville, Iowa (Home of the Bulldogs!!). Good-looking kid! Sincere. Polite. Trusting. Enthusiastic.

And one day he went to Manhattan. First stop was J&R Electronics... He bought himself a new Iphone!

And then he went to Washington Square Park to look at the hippies and hang out. And his girlfriend wanted him to buy her a cup of coffee. So he set his new Iphone down on a park bench, and went to buy her a cup of coffee.

But when he came back, the Iphone was gone!

EVERYONE AGREED that it had been "stolen". There was really no doubt! Just to make sure, he took his case to the United States Supreme Court, where in oral argument, the Justices were uniformly sympathetic:

Breyer: That sucks!

Sotomayor: Nightmare.

Even the famously pissy curmudgeon was harmonically open-hearted!

Scalia: Dude, you were robbed.

And do you know what the NYPD did about this? Do you know how they responded to this crime, this outrage?

They didn't do a goddam thing.

Because if his property meant so much to him, he shouldn't have tossed it into a stream of indiscriminate traffic.

It's like that.

> What they're really complaining
> about is music marketing, which
> is distinct from licensing.

I want to disagree with you for being so snooty, but you're essentially correct. The mechanisms of popular music have become so slick that naive musicmakers don't even recognize that they're exploiting them... And so they think they have a right to just shave off the good parts of the experience, at zero cost to themselves, and harvest all the wealth.

Again... Good luck with that. Let us know how it goes.

I have been buying silver bullion off eBay for the last few months. (Can't afford gold.)

I have seen the ounce rise from about $20 to about $32 in six months. That is because silver (and gold) has an intrinsic value. If a crash were to occur, I can spend the silver to buy food, clothing, and the rest I need to live. There is a limited amount of silver.

Music does not have an intrinsic value. I can make more music on demand -- or change it -- or create new music.

What makes this
www.youtube.com/watch?v=826PTEuHKhE
more valuable than
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkMFLUXTEwM

How about this
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9OSXsB946k
being more valuable than
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEG7OzvSMBA
or more valuable than
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhSYbRiYwTY

RIAA and the music companies are trying to prop up their value. The argument is whether their model is dead.

The MPAA is a close second to RIAA, but they have gotten at least semi-realistic about it. They bring a movie out to DVD at $20, but you can generally buy the same movie six months later at $15 or even $10. Long term you can get them at $5.

RIAA brings a CD out at $15 -- it is total crap. But six months later you are still paying $13 for it. The production cost is less than $1. An example of this is Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon. The CD is still retailing over ten dollars since it's release in March of 1973. The DVD of Avatar -- one of the most expensive movies ever made is now down to $13 in less than a year.

Most SW companies have realized that they can't block the copying -- and many depend on the customer's honesty.

I try to be honest -- but I won't kiss the ass of a dead industry.

This is the same as the Starving Artists Sales they have around the country -- you can pay millions to buy a Picasso -- or pay $30 for a pleasing picture to hang on your wall. What makes Picasso worth more than the picture you paid $30 for? It comes down to what you think the worth is.

And for those who didn't go to the links it was "I think we're alone now" By Tiffany instead of Tommy James & The Shondells. The second link is Major Tom by Bowie, Schilling and the Shiny Toy Guns redoing Schilling's version.

BTW, is this a copyright violation

And how about this one?

It seems like a couple of people feel like stealing music is justified because it's easy and because people charge too much for it. Seems like odd rationale.

I also don't understand why Crid feels so strongly about this.

I did think that if you owned a few CD's and make a copy for your own use of your favorite songs on the CD's that was legal.

In childhood, mine wasn't a rich family. You would not believe how much money I insisted be spent on shitty music, pleasure that would have come to us anyway.

Merry Christas!

And how about this one?

Good question. I don't know about copyright infringement, but the California Singing Raisins are alright. They're alright, by God. That's all there is to it.

It's my understanding that J.S. Bach was a copyright cheater back in German olden days -- or it wasn't that he was a cheater so much as the German copyright law wasn't as restrictive and that's why we have The Christmas Oratorio - Schlafe mein Liebster and the like.

That, KrisL, is all I ever believed I was entitled to do. My objection is that, after the purchase, the RIAA wants to abrogate the doctrine of fair use.

I won't steal their stuff. I won't let them take away anything I have either. In my case, if I want to make a copy of something I bought to play in my car, I will. Their protests fall on deaf ears.

It seems like a couple of people feel like stealing music is justified because it's easy and because people charge too much for it. Seems like odd rationale.

KrisL,

I don't advocate theft -- I advocate fair use. If Amy rescues my post from spam hell you'll see what I'm talking about.

The simple thing is that if an entity (RIAA/Record companies) sits there and say that they are still owed $13 for the same music that came out in 1973 and I have bought on lp, tape, and disc -- you are out of your mind.

The majority of music I have downloaded -- I already own. Then you look at youtube -- you can stream that music to an MP3 ripper.

The record companies have created an artificial environment, that is dying quickly when exposed to light and air. It was already dying when WKRP was on the air.

The music (and at some point video/movie) experience are going to realize there models need to change.

Someone above made the point that "stealing" music doesn't deprive the composer of the song the way stealing a TV would deprive Best But of a TV. It's not stealing because it doesn't meet the definition. We need to come up with a new word for what it is.

-------

The music publishing companies have used their market power as monopolists to charge higher than market prices for the unique items in their catalog. Also, they've used this market power to create licensing terms entirely to their favor at the expense of the consumer.

Ask yourself, how many times have you heard a hit like "Satisfaction" in your entire life? Every tine you heard it, you were either directly or indirectly paying the licensing fee again.

When you use your market power as a monopoly to get over on the consumer, you invite them to get over on you as soon as they get the chance.

"Nobody is arguing that it can be thwarted",

Of course it can be thwarted. Just not with the pathetic crap that is passing for DRM these days.

"but it is pretty shocking that so many people justify it and pretend that it isn't wrong."

There are people actually think:

1. If I pay for a DVD I own it.

2. If I copy a file from a DVD I own to a hard drive I own using a DVD player and software I own then I own the copy. (Repeat as necessary to "rip" the entire DVD)

3. If I own the copy I can give it to another person.

Now, I understand the error is in assumption number 1. Legally the hypothetical "I" above does not own the files on the DVD. All he paid for is permission to use it under specific conditions. He may be allowed by the real owner to copy the files onto his hard drive but he does not actually own the copies thereby invalidating assumption number 2. However, people not accustomed to dealing with legal mumbo jumbo have a very simplistic view of property rights: If I bought it it must be mine. The rest follows from that ignorance.

Think on the above for while them maybe we can get into the logical and ethical issues posed by encryption or mapping and translation algorithms.

3. If I own the copy I can give it to another person.

parabarbarian,

Technically you can't. If I buy a copy of Avatar -- open it and watch it -- I now have perpetually leased the rights to Avatar.

Now if I say that I never want to see the movie ever again. I don't make a copy or hold the original I purchased. I hand it to my next door neighbor or sell it on eBay -- technically both I, as the gifter/seller, and the recipient (gifted or buyer) is in violation of copyright.

The lease to the copyright is with the original purchaser. The original purchaser has no legal right to transfer the lease of an intellectual copyright to anyone else. That applies to books, LPs, cassetes, CD's, DVD's,, Blu-ray etc.

If I were a bar owner tonight -- I said you have to but I'm going to show National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation for free in my bar -- I'm in violation of copyright if I bought my copy of the movie at Wal-Mart and not through the MPAA registered source.

SCOTUS held this line. That is why cassette tapes did and CD still costs $0.25 cents a piece when the production cost is about $0.02 cents to produce.

RIAA enforced a "tax" for copyright violation. The media manufacturers have to pay the tariff.

But then if you want to sell your CD on eBay, regardless of whether you ripped it or not, RIAA had a lawsuit that said this was illegal. There was a lawsuit way back in the late 80's/early 90's that tried to shut down the used bookstores using the same logic.

The logic behind intellectual property doesn't have any logic. Under the original laws when Snow White (the Disney film) would now be in the open that anyone could copy, sell or otherwise use it. But that was changed by the DMCA. The thing that everyone forgets is that most of Disney's cartoons movies came from the Grimm's fairy tales. Why don't the Grimm descendants deserve some of the cash?

Jim, that was the point parabarian was trying to make, that people are assuming that if they bought a DVD or a CD they own whats on it, not that they paid a one time lease fee to use the info only under certain conditons.

Basically we have people 'stealing' intelctual property from people who used inflated sale prices to buy off lawmakers in order to punish their customers from not meekly submiting to the rectal exams. Yes, it sucks, and yes its wrong, but hardly more so then the way record companies used their political clout to carve out special exemtions from copyright laws for themselves.

Creeps stealing from creeps, sure its wrong but most people dont have sympathy for those getting 'robbed' nor do they have sympathy when they courts clamp down on someone doing the 'robbing'.

You know, ideological aruments like this make me wonder if I made a mistake when I gave up my plans to wipeout humanity

You know, ideological arguments like this make me wonder if I made a mistake when I gave up my plans to wipe out humanity

lujlp,

When you take those plans up again, let me know. I think Captain Trips is a good idea.

As far as I'm concerned, the only copies I should have the right to make are when I exchange mediums for someting I already own. If I want to convert my CDs to be played on an ipod, I should be allowed to do that much. I also made tapes of some of my favorite songs from different albums I owned, so I could have my own personal set to stick in my car's tape player.

Assorted points (stop PMSing, Crid):

1) The RIAA has a senior member in Sony. Sony, fancy that, builds and sells VHS-to-DVD recorders, CD duplicators and DVD duplicators. To me, this would seem like a slam-dunk for a court hearing if Crid, for instance, got busted for having three copies of a Ramones song (or Village People, don't really know yuh, huh huh).

2) Excuses, excuses. When an artist puts something out, it takes real effort, which may or may not be increased by the marketing machine which made her a household name outside her own. This is real work. When you say, "{artist} makes too much money", you must then accept the premise that other people can then take some of your work away when they think you're making too much money.

Look at the behavior model some of you propose:
1) You don't like the artist's work, you don't buy it, download it, use it in any way. The artist makes no money from her work.
2) You DO like the artist's work. You download it for free. The artist makes no money form her work.

Thus, the real difference is if you like something enough to take it. That's why it's stealing!

This is about what YOU do. Not RIAA, not the artist, not some anonymous millionaire, that fat bitch.

Alright, here's what I do on a regular basis:

-download albums with optional cost (e.g. Radiohead's "In Rainbows") for free,

and

-check out scores of CDs from local libraries and rip them to my computer.

I'm a very poor college student. I'm paying my own way through everything and have thus far managed to rack up zero debt. I'm also an artist myself. When I can afford to pay for music, I do. When it's offered to me for free (legally), I jump at the chance.

My take on things is that artists should employ the "pay what you want" option on albums more often. Don't tell me I don't deserve to download music anymore just because I'm poor and can't afford iTunes' $1.29/song prices; offer it to me in a more reasonable manner and I'll feel inclined to make it up to the artist in abundance at a later date, when I've actually got the cash to spare.

And most of the music I've checked out from the library, listened to, ripped, and returned, I've bought more of from the same artist later. I had a chance to enjoy it, love it, take it in without it coming out of my pocket; and more often than not it's led me to purchase something I never would've considered buying otherwise.

I fully recognize the amount of effort it takes to put into a work of art. I do it every day. But I also recognize that in order for me to appreciate said work of art, I've got to have it in front of me. Radiohead & Girl Talk are two examples of immensely successful artists that have employed this means of sharing their work, and it's paid them back. Why? Because their fans are grateful. It sounds outrageously optimistic, but believe it or not, people really do pay it forward enough to make up the difference.

Also, Happy Christmas everybody. :)

"As far as I'm concerned, the only copies I should have the right to make are when I exchange mediums for someting I already own"

You will never be able to make copies as a matter of right because YOU DO NOT OWN THE CONTENT.

Anyone who wants to intelligently discuss Intellectual Property (IP) might want to actually try and understand what it is. A salient feature of IP is that the information or knowledge is what is owned. IP can be incorporated into tangible objects in an unlimited number of copies at different locations anywhere in the world without diluting that ownership. The property rights are not in the copies but in the information or knowledge contained or reflected therein. The ownership of that content or knowledge remains with the publisher and you are only allowed to use it in a manner arranged by contract or by law. You may have PERMISSION but you have no RIGHT to duplicate the publisher's property onto another medium.

If you do make copies without that permission you are what Amy is calling a "common thief" and what her screenwriter friend is calling a "fucking thief".

> You will never be able to make copies
> as a matter of right because YOU DO
> NOT OWN THE CONTENT.

Capitalization is fun... But when a jury disagrees with that, all Hell breaks loose, and the RIAA knows it.

"Compare that with Big Movie, with their DVD releases. Not only are they producing BluRay and DVD bundles, but usually there is a computer-friendly version included that you can put on your computer so you don't have to rip the DVD to a computer-friendly format."

Anyone else find it ironic that disney seems to be the best at doing this with their movies now, considering they were one of the biggest backers of the divx disk format back in the day? I'm so glad that attempt to get payment for every viewing failed.

I've bought a ton of stuff including lots of tv shows off iTunes myself. I have torrented a handful of shows, but only because they aren't available to purchase. I'd gladly pay fo them to get the decent quality and to honestly own them. Plus it would support the creation of shows I like.

I also have bought plenty of DVD sets of shows and often rip them so that I can watch them via my appletv or on portable devices, but I always buy and don't steal. Same goes for music.

> stop PMSing

Raddy... Raddy, Raddy, Raddy... Every time I express myself clearly, a little piece of your deepest soul dies... The necrotic odors in your response tell the tale. And over time the process accelerates; it tugs at your identity ever-harder, and you find your entire worldview collapsing in my irresistible whirlpool of inveiglement and persuasion.

Doubt creeps across your life like a liquid on the floor, dampening all enthusiasms: soon, even your finances can claim none of your attention; foods lose their flavors; and the eyes of your loved ones no longer attract your gaze.

Tough times! Did you know that the first of the January is the biggest period of the year for adult white male suicides? Fact! Jus' sayin'... Step cautiously. Let your doubts protect you, fella. Embrace your uncertainty... But don't do it for me! Let it be your Christmas gift to yourself.

> When an artist puts something out

Again, these people aren't really "artists". That everyone here wants to call them that is a ghost triumph of A&R squads long-since disbanded (and cocaine-rehabbed). The people most likely to bitch about this are eager to have a lightening-strike of success, with the attendant thunderbolt of profits... And they think it's their birthright, since that's what happened with young idiots in previous generations, people like Jagger and Jackson (or whomever). Genuine artists get their needs met no matter what, since their dedication is more about doing interesting things, rather than being magical showbiz people.

We don't listen to (or buy) music for the fulfillment of the "artist", we seek it for our own needs. Until performers approach the market with that fundamental humility, they're never going to do well anyway.

> it takes real effort

Again, not so much. It helps to be cute and cuddly, and to play no more than three chords on the guitar, so that your teenage audience can relate: After all, they're not seriously into excellence, either. (Or with rap, to have just the right kind of threatening body language.) Meanwhile people who want to do great things on their own can do so even without Timberlake’s hipshake or Swift’s complexion. Many electronic music makers are happy to have their work played on Internet stations, even if they haven’t got a CD to sell... I’ve seen this happen several times in recent years. Couldn’t buy a product if I wanted to, but the composer gets a thrill from knowing his hobby is respected. Some guys build rock arrangements with such proficiency that you’d swear a team of musicians and producers had been working for weeks; but it’s really just a dude with a laptop and the will to succeed. And his software only has to be good, not great.

> which may or may not be increased
> by the marketing machine which made
> her a household name outside her own.

This is really the point that you guys won't accept. This ain’t 1969: Acts no longer have to pray that Ahmet Ertugen or Clive Davis happens to take a shine them. There is no “marketing machine”. Rolling Stone and Tiger Beat have never meant less to the youthful listener. “Putting something out” is as easy as an email from your grandmother.

You wanna be big overnight? Will you insist on being propelled by a strong-armed industrial process? Fine, go talk to the American Idol guy Cowell... And be sure to have a stiff drink before signing his contract. Because he knows perfectly well that the magic isn’t with whatever goofball teenager seems to have everyone’s attention this week.

> Look at the behavior model some of you propose

You have so MANY unspoken presumptions; That no cute people would ever sing songs unless they were sure they could get rich... That innovation and fulfillment have been in some way hindered, when quite the opposite is true. Go read the links, OK? Per Jagger, the period of time when talents could make money from recordings was extremely brief, and only then for a lucky few. Jagger (economics student, remember) is famous for testing innovative streams of income throughout his career, including before and after the “lucky” decades. (Corporate sponsorship of tours, etc.) Nowadays, if I remember correctly, his group sells recordings through Best Buy, and the income is an incidental part of the enterprise.

And see the Postrel link: A greater diversity of music, BETTER music, is available to a larger audience than ever before.

(I assisted a relative through late-stage memory disease a few years ago. Some of the most moving moments came in the care facilities, when she and the rest of the patients in the wing would sing songs from childhood together after lunch... And they all knew the same ones. From now on, that won’t happen. When people my age and younger are old and addled, we’ll be whistling private fetish melodies. And it’s just as well: “How Deep is Your Love” sounds shitty even when youthful, sane people sing it. That future isolation is a very small price to pay for have our tastes so intimately catered in youth.)

There’s things not to like about music business now... But many many more things to like when you and I were driving the markets.

All the eagerness to cluck about “stealing” is just stupid. It betrays a blindness (and deafness!) to the revolution in communications that’s come about. And it suggests a patently bogus appreciation of human nature; as if a rupture in decency of the kind you’re weeping for wouldn’t also appear in every other corner of teenage life.

Or are they all suddenly stealing burgers from the drive-thru, too?

The scamps!

"Again, not so much. It helps to be cute and cuddly, and to play no more than three chords on the guitar, so that your teenage audience can relate: After all, they're not seriously into excellence, either."

Bruce Springsteen cares very much about excellence. He knows more than three guitar chords and musically is a genius. I'd say he's also a genius when it comes to business as well.

"All the eagerness to cluck about “stealing” is just stupid. It betrays a blindness (and deafness!) to the revolution in communications that’s come about."

There may be changes in the music industry and how things are marketed, but the bottom line is still the same. If an artist's music is for sale and not offered for free by the artist, then downloading it without paying for it is stealing it. Call me blind. Call me deaf. But I will never be called a thief.

Really Crid, we disagree on so much and this was one topic I would have bet money on that we'd finally be on the same page. I have to admit to be a little relieved because you're really at your most entertaining when you get on one of your rolls!! My house has been a little boring so I'm turning to you for some free online entertainment.

> He knows more than three guitar chords and
> musically is a genius.

Dear woman... You remind me of one of the few great things George Will ever said: "Listening to language used this way is like watching an infant play with a Steuben vase."

...Especially with regards to someone like Springsteen. I was a high schooler sneaking into work at a college radio station when his first big record happened, that hammy melange of overproduction (glockenspiel!) and marketing: "Born to Run". Now, "Pink Cadillac" was fun and simple, but it was essentially a novelty record. Consider one fan's resentment at the detail in Bruce's non-musical flourishes: "It's hard to imagine anything more contrary to this spirit, any gesture more cynical and condescending toward an audience, than fake sweat."

"Genius"? Really? Is that how much —is that ALL music can mean to you?

> Call me deaf.

Done.

Only now do I notice that both links in the earlier comment are about "fakes".

My favorite artistic person ever was Frank Zappa, popularly assumed to be a deranged comedian. (Jokester radio like Dr. Demento would play Zappa
s records right after "Pink Cadillac".) But he was everything a thoughtful artist, a TRUE artist, ought to be. He did his own composition, financed all of his own projects (after the first one), and ran his entire business from top to bottom with his own hand. He hired everybody, fired everybody, made deals on an honest handshake, paid market price for all services... And he had some really, really brilliant people working for him. The keyboard player on this little ditty was a jazz guy, afraid of synthesizers when Zappa hired him... But listen to what happened! Just try to whistle along with that passage after the solo...

Zappa didn't worry about being called a genius. And he sure didn't worry about fake sweat....

... But Zappa wasn't afraid of having some gut-bucket fun, either. Consider his guitar solo on this piece (starts about 2 minutes in). Inhuman speed, pure rock star pleasure, right? Simple chord progression... But with phrasing sweeter than a wet dream. Golden.

So forty years later, I'm like sitting here on the internet, and I come across this little artifact... Listen carefully to that phrasing.

Well, Jeez. The guy in the second clip isn't exactly a masterful personality, is he? He'd be hard to sell to an audience that wants to have sex with Enrique Iglesias.... But he obviously has the talent. And I got to HEAR it. It's a better planet when guys like Jenkees can get their music heard, without even having to be superhuman leaders of men.

Jenkees wanted 99 cents for the Mp3. I paid it. Some people probably didn't, but I think this is progress nonetheless.

There are a lot of musicians out there that offer their music for free. I'm one of them. I'm just a hobbyist and I have a good solid day job, so I can just enjoy the idea of my friends and family digging the music that I put out there. It's usually "produced" as I drink too much and stay up too late.

I welcome you all to listen to it as well. Some of it can be found at soundcloud.com/jonQpublic

I hope that you'll check it out and enjoy it. Do me a favor and listen to it on decent speakers. I don't yet have the skills necessary to make it sound good on laptop speakers. I'm learning that there really is a lot to the whole production thing, yet I churn out crap every few days anyway because it's a lot of fun.

To sum it all up: Yes, downloading music (that's not being given away for free) without paying meets the definition of theft. That's inarguable. The morality at work... well, it's complicated. There are a whole lot of people, including many musicians, who see this as the record labels getting their long-overdue just desserts.

My brother was in a band that was signed to A&M Records and released two albums for them. I got to meet his band's management and their label A&R rep, and one thing I learned is that the music industry is very, very attractive to crooks and power-hungry narcissists. Let's look at the average recording contract. It usually obligates the artist to produce a specific number of songs or albums within a given time frame. However, it obligates the record label to... nothing really. The label can drop the artist at any time. If the artist completes an album and the label decides they don't like it, they can choose not to release it, and still hold the artist as owing them an album.

All costs of production and marketing of the music are charged back to the artist and come off the top of the artist's share of record sales. This is on top of the label's own cut. And the label decides how much each of these things costs when it charges back to the artist -- the actual cost is immaterial, and there is no way in hell the artist can compel the label to document the expenses. (Many musicians, including some famous ones, have tried. They always lose in court, and then they wind up blacklisted.) So of course these charge-backs are massively inflated, to the point where there are very few artists who have "recouped", meaning that their share of sales has paid off all the charges. The label makes money coming and going, where the artist often winds up with nothing even on a fairly successful album.

Now you'd say, "Well, those artists should have been smarter when they negotiated their contracts". Problem is, for decades the labels conspired (through the mechanism of "industry standards") to regulate the contracts offered to artists. A new artist coming to town, if they were to shop around contracts, would find that every label was offering the exact same deal, take it or leave it. Only a very few superstar artists were ever in a position to compel the label to negotiate. So you might say, "Well, the artist could start their own label", but what they would find is that they would be unable to get record stores to carry their album -- the major labels had total control over distribution with all of the store chains. A store would not dare to carry an independently distributed album because if they did and a major label found out about it, that store would suddenly find themselves cut off by the major-label distribution. (Said distributors also conspired to fix the retail prices of albums.)

The record industry's opinion is that you, the consumer, should pay for each and every time you listen to a piece of music; it's called "pay per play", and it's been the industry's Holy Grail for decades. And the technological and legal controls they would like to implement to make this happen would make you think that Orwell was an optimist. They thought they were getting close to achieving it in '80s, and then the advent of the personal computer capable of capturing and playing music in digital format really upset their applecart. Back around 1995 or so they were (along with the movie industry) pushing a concept misleadingly called the "trusted computer platform". Basically, your computer would be a sealed box, running a Hollywood-approved operating system that you would not be able to modify. This OS would only run application software from certified vendors. You'd have to have a license to be an application developer, and running a non-approved OS would be illegal. The system would have backdoors for the labels and government to use, and it would report every time you used it to play a piece of media.

So yeah, I know this is TLDR. But the point is that the whole industry has been operating pretty much as its own law for a long time, and a lot of people are now looking it as simply the shoe finally being on the other foot.

Dear woman... You remind me of one of the few great things George Will ever said: "Listening to language used this way is like watching an infant play with a Steuben vase."

Well Crid, I'm going to take my ball and go home. However I'd like to still thank you for coming out to play today!

"Genius"? The Boss?

"Genius"? The Boss?

Yeah, I'm going to go with genius. I became a convert after seeing him at Shea stadium. He won me over singing Rosalita live hanging upside down from the microphone stand. Somehow he managed to look like touring was the most fun anyone could ever have without ever skipping a beat musically just hit me in the right way and I've loved him ever since. I brought my son to see him a few years back and he went in not wanting to see him and came out a Boss groupie. Springsteen is a notorious perfectionist when it comes to his music and there is just something about him I find magical. So yeah, I'm going to go with genius.

(I sniff the air absently, then turn away all hoity-toity like)

Musical genius.

Ke$ha is a genius. Her words and music will bring bliss to our suffering planet.

Teena Marie was a genius, too. A musical genius. A musical genius from the 1980s... Just like Bruce "The Boss" Springsteen! But she's dead now.

Sorry guys, Springsteen is NOT a genius. Good musician, yes. Good businessman, yes. Genius, ah, no.

Mr. Zappa, however, IS a genius. I especially dug 'Thingfish', even though it didn't get the best reviews at the time. But Springsteen never did off Broadway, and I doubt he could pull off such an ambitious project. He's a fine story-teller, but he's not a scold, because he wants everyone to love him. Zappa, on the other hand, could have cared less who loved him, as long as they got his message. As Andrew Boscardin says on Amazon: "Organized religion, homosexuality, feminism, and racial identity are just some of the subjects Zappa throws onto a groove of tight rock and a sheet of vocal sound. Maybe not one of Zappa's best albums, but certainly one of his most daring."
Daring is genius, standard pablum for the masses, not so much.

Daring is genius, standard pablum for the masses, not so much.

I don't know much about Springsteen or Zappa, but I wouldn't necessarily call "Nebraska" standard pablum. There are some haunting songs on that one.

Not as haunting as ke$ha and Justin Bieber, though. They are daring genius.

Anyone still in here?

The more I think about it, the more certain I am that those of you clucking about "stealing" are wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Like, Wrongwrong.

And it's ironic, because it's so intimately tied into everything else we discuss all the time, and the existence of the very forum in which we discuss it. It's beyond paradoxical that we could all be so cheered by the dissolution of mainstream media and yet worry about the imaginary careers of addled teenagers.

>>The more I think about it, the more certain I am that those of you clucking about "stealing" are wrong.

"More certain" eh? So, Crid, you began with some doubt?

As a parent who has pointlessly shouted herself hoarse, parroting Amy's central point - that stealing is wrong - I now agree with our older son: it's technically wrong, but morally defensible.

(Also, I accept a point our younger son has made many times. I am no longer a passionate consumer of new tunes anyway. I have my library of Springsteen & the Ramones, my husband has his beloved oldies etc. We have no real skin in the game. )

I loved Cousin Dave's comment on this. Brilliant points all.
I think our generation were basically duped consumer dinosaurs...

(Still digging out here on Long Island. Basically, I've just popped in to say this is a GREAT thread!)

Amy, I tend to agree with you on most things, but not here.

The practical arguments for private property to which I subscribe, break down completely when it comes to intellectual property.

The institution of private property is a way to deal with scarcity. We cannot both eat the same banana, so for the sake of peace, we need a way to know who may or may not eat a banana. We can, however, all listen to the same song at the same time in different parts of the world.

Copying is not theft.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4

> you began with some doubt?

It's said to be courteous to pretend that one did.

> Still digging out here

Keep digging. Go-go-go.

CD Baby is a great disruptive music distribution model where independet artists get 91% of the mp3 sales. Why would you want steal from that?

There's even some good slack key island guitar work to stave off the snowmageddon.

And by the way, Tressider, I watched Social Network and I was right-right-right and you were wrong-wrong-wrong, and it's all of piece the confusion of the "steal!" freaks in this message stack.

An enormous, absolutely game-changing revolution has taken place, and people have no idea how much territory has yet to be claimed... So they want to pretend it's about snotty teenagers who wisecrack in depositions and steal music. These are concerns from another century....

>>And by the way, Tressider, I watched Social Network and I was right...

May I ask, Crid - were you entertained, maybe just a little, by the movie?

Just a smidge... The guy was better in the zombie movie.

Mostly it was a missed opportunity. There are so many things about FB that people should be thinking about... Big-picture principles of privacy and little-view matters of loneliness. FB is a freaking colossus, in more ways than one. It might prove to be a myspace-style flash in the pan as a business venture, or it might be an industrial power for decades to come... Either way, these other considerations are quickly-drying cement.

But what does this movie focus on? Teenage bitchery of the kind found in every Hollywood project you can imagine... It's the slenderest perspective they could possibly have taken. They gave zero attention to what FB means to people. They can't relate to Zuck except as conniving starlet, a smug naughty-boy who just happens to have a ten-billion-dollar blockbuster.

And of course, they have to turn up the snot with imaginary mistreatment of imaginary girlfriends.

Best of the year? Then Hollywood is hurtin'.

And golly, I'd hate for anyone to miss why this came to mind, so let's reiterate—

Just as Hollywood is unable to see FB except in Hollywood terms (high-school bitching about how the prom queen isn't-all-that), it's ludicrous to think of the internet as the place were people "steal" music.

The internet is now the STREET of the human mind.

Some streets are dangerous. You can get robbed!

If you have an asset, and it's something that would fit in vehicles or the pockets of a passerby, you have to be thoughtful about how you carry it on the street. By golly, you can't walk down the street with your money hanging out of your pockets. You can't leave things on the street and expect them to be there, unmolested, when you get back.

So there's that.

But streets are incredibly useful. They allow us to quickly get very close to exactly the people and things we want to get close to.

If you wanna weep salty-salty tears about how people "steal", go ahead.

But kids, it's 2011.

You may be living in the wrong century to complain that way.

Cruhhhh-uuuusshhhhhhed velvet seats, ridin' in the back....

Google Street will find people who steal music and put them in jail for life. Give them a life sentence.

BUY BUY BUY this song. Juliana Hatfield needs your support. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ie-mwZ-pSw

Isn't it ironic that Jason, for whatever sincere purpose, linked to the Hatfield song in a YouTube video, whence it can readily be stripped to a file for personal playback and retransmission?

Yeah, well, isn't it ironic that...uhh...that...umm...okay, forget it.
You win this time, Crid. Locks and fences are for honest people, anyway, ain't they?

But this part of Hatfield's carrer might be pertinent to the discussion of record labels and artists and whatnot:

In 1996, she traveled to Woodstock, New York where she recorded tracks for God's Foot, which was to be her fourth solo album (third if not counting Become What You Are, which was recorded with the Juliana Hatfield Three), intended for 1997 release. After three failed attempts to satisfy requests from Atlantic Records to come up with a "single" that the label could release, Juliana requested she be released from her contract. The label obliged, but kept the rights to the songs produced during these sessions (Atlantic had reportedly paid $180,000 to that point on the recordings).

Like I said before, CD baby is pretty cool as far as I can tell.

BUY BUY BUY this song. Jim Hurst needs your support. Bluegrass music is good for you, too. http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/hurstjim

That should be *career*. Hatfield's *career*. I'm slippin'.

> Locks and fences are for honest people

But, Dude... Doooood, doodey-doodle dood-asaures... It's like that for EVERYTHING.

This is a freakin' BLOG. It's an entirely conventional one. I've been commenting here for something like six years, adding or following tens of thousands of links... Amy uses those links, those commercial resources belonging to other people, to offer her opinions and strengthen her market as a modest maker of opinions herself.

Sure... Most of the newspapers (the Telegraph, in this case) and other sources don't much mind... But on the other hand, they didn't produce this material for HER to make money at it. But she's not stealing, right? If you'd gone to the publisher of the Telegraph 30 years ago and described this scheme, he'd have wanted Amy imprisoned.

But that ain't how it works. This infrastructure is a public resource. I think the American taxpayer has first claim, no matter where in the world the IP address points. But the internet is so fantastically important that it's now essential a global human commons. No individual is allowed to be that precious about information on the internet.

If you want to keep a secret, whether it's a diplomatic cable or a $50-per-hearing pop song, don't blame the internet.

Yes, you're talkin' about the new internet "link economy", ain't you? Sorry, it's a dead end.

On the other hand, the Associated Press wants Google, Bing or any blogger to have a licensing agreement with the AP before they link to their content online. That's the better way of going about it all, I think, because then they could backcharge you and Amy for all the links that you used on this weblog. Ha ha ha.

Yo, steal freaks in the message stack, yo. Bring that beat back...

Here we go... boom tchack boom boom tchack Steal freaks! Steal freaks! Yo, steal freaks in message stack, yo. I'm not a dinosaur. Or a dudeasaur. My metataursal just got tore, yo. I can't type any more.

Please do not steal, freaks. Ouch.

I'm gonna find out how to steal some of Crid's work. Bottom line: he thinks it's OK!

Succes in continuare si sa auzim numai de bine! Bravo pentru initiativa! Si sa faceti totul “cu suflet”.