meshou
2004-04-25 10:45 pm UTC (link)

I'd really like to go through all this and replace the word "music" with "accounting." "Accounting is free. All those numbers are just paper, man. To put a price on numbers profanes them, and your price is too damn high. And since I wasn't going to pay for those numbers anyway, it's not stealing."

I figure, there are very well paid accountants out there. Some out there may be paid roughly as much as non-pop star musicians. Which ones? Well, the pop star's backup bands. If the CDs don't sell enough to warrant a tour (or only warrant a short one), they're screwed out of allot of their livelihood.

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	nakannimi 2004-04-25 10:52 pm UTC (link)
	Not paying for music downloads(that are not given out by the band, etc.)=Stealing. Equations are fun, but analogies are even better. Buying CDs is to making sweet love as downloading music is to rape or is it Buying CDs is to hiring an overpriced whore as downloading music is to making sweet love? tries to resist temptation to start debating (Reply to this)(Thread)

Oh, jump into the debate..

wankprophet
2004-04-26 05:58 am UTC (link)

Cause the replies to that comment are as stupid as fuck. I have no clue how those idiots can be so self-deluded as to think there's an analogy between comments and words they post in public with no expectation of profit and music pirated and made freely available on-line without the consent of the musicians. I assume they're trying to rationalize their way out of a moral dilemma by making up dumb shit. The rationalizations I hear just bore the hell out of me. Why doesn't anyone just say, yeah, I'm doing something illegal, it happens? Why must they keep creating torturous justifications?

Problem is, calling it stealing is not an analogy. Sorry. Someone creates something. That something is legally owned and copyrighted by the creator and distributed for a profit in a supply/demand economy. Someone else illegally replicates that item and distributes it for free, thus removing the potential market that would otherwise be paying. I swear, I've heard more than one person ask, "How can it be stealing if the person distributing/receiving it doesn't make money?" ::boggles:: Er...same way someone stealing anything and not selling it is still stealing. Even if one argues that people who download free music wouldn't buy it, that has no bearing over whether the music was stolen in the first place and received by someone else. I see no substantiative difference between this and, say, someone creating a painting with the intention of creating a line of prints for sale, and someone else sneaking in, scanning that painting, and putting out their own line of prints...for free.

The real question isn't whether it's stealing. It clearly is under the law. The real question is whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. Many artists -- musical, literary, et cetera -- actually encourage copyright violations in certain cases. Others look away, especially if there's no profit being made by the violators. There are very good arguments for the beneficience of such things as fanfic, file-sharing, etc, with regards to the profit margin of the original creator. JKR, as far as I can tell, has no real problem with fanfic -- it helps promote her original texts (except in the case of a few Cassie Claire fangirls who apparently prefer CC's stuff over JKR's.) But it's a mistake to equate that sort of tolerance with actual ethical high ground on the part of those violating the copyrights. Personally, I think that so long as they are not actually profiting, fanfic writers, for instance, are about par for the course. Obviously certain authors disagree (Ann McCaffrey springs to mind) but they are certainly entitled to their opinion, and the law backs them up. For now. After all, it's all a grey area -- satire and fair use are already exempted -- and the ethical issues have yet to be resolved to everyones' satisfaction.

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Re: Oh, jump into the debate..
nakannimi
2004-04-26 06:53 am UTC (link)

I don't think downloading music can be called stealing. The downloader gets something she didn't pay for, but nothing is taken away from anyone else. Because I can't seem to argue anything without making analogies, here's one. Downloading music is not like stealing a DVD, because no one loses anything. It is more like sneaking into a movie theater. You're not supposed to do it, and it's illegal, but it is not quite stealing.

I'm not saying it's right, or legal, just that it's not that bad, and I do it constantly without guilt.

Whether it's a good thing or not is certainly debatable. Many people download music to the exclusion of buying CDs. Many others buy more CDs as a result of discovering music they like through downloading. I do know that all the good record stores in my town have closed, but whether that was caused by downloading or online shopping or the rise of Barnes and Noble I don't know.

So . . . conclusions? I got nothing.

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Re: Oh, jump into the debate..

wankprophet
2004-04-26 07:18 am UTC (link)

Er...music is a product, a good. It's the output of a musician, just as much as a VCR is the output of an electronics company. You are illegally acquiring the product without paying for it. The simple fact that music is intellectual output and VCRs are tangible makes no difference. You may not have a physical CD manufactured by the corporation, but you certainly have the music -- which doesn't exist in a void of any sort. Someone retains rights and profits on his or her intellectual property, whether it's because he/she created it or because he/she/it acquired it (and generally invested money in distributing it.)

A better analogy: suppose you wrote a book. Someone then acquires the book by some means -- buying, snatching it from the press, whatever -- and then proceeds to scan it and make it available to anyone who wants to download it. You are no longer receiving recompense for your intellectual output, the words and ideas that you created, from a certain segment of the population, yet they are still in possession of said output. Stealing is an act of taking something from another without permission or renumeration. In this case, you're acquiring music. Just because you're not breaking into the artist's home and making off with his or her demo tapes doesn't mean it's not stealing. It just means that you don't feel as guilty about something that can be reproduced and distributed more conveniently. You just don't think it's "that bad." I'm not sure that's actually a good argument, but, heh, it's at least an honest analysis of how you look at it. Kudos!

It's really not something I'm passionate about, though. Personally, I don't download music for reasons which have nothing to do with ethics and everything to do with a lack of enthusiasm for most music being churned out nowadays. I have heard and understood many of the arguments in favor of downloading music for free. I've also heard and dismissed just as many as being untenable in logical terms. Personally, I have no idea which side of the fence I'm gonna come down on eventually.

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Re: Oh, jump into the debate..
nakannimi
2004-04-26 07:31 am UTC (link)

The problem with intellectual property is that you have to draw a line somewhere. No one thinks it's wrong to loan someone a book, or to record a tv show and let a friend watch it, yet these are forms of taking intellectual property without paying for it. You can choose to draw the line where the law draws it, or not, but when you're talking about intellectual property there's a lot of grey area.

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	Re: Oh, jump into the debate.. big_bad_wolf 2004-04-26 02:55 pm UTC (link)
	See also: taping music from the radio. (Reply to this)(Parent)

Re: Oh, jump into the debate..

wankprophet
2004-04-26 06:54 pm UTC (link)

The problem with analogies is that a semi-valid analogy loses to a fully-valid analogy. Neither of those are particularly valid. Better analogies are: photocopying a book and handing it out to friends/complete strangers/whatever; and downloading a commercial-free copy of said TV show off the Internet. Both are completely illegal and people rarely make bones about this. Authors do indeed sue quite vigorously when their works are redistributed in primary form without royalties being paid (Harlan Ellison was famous for this, as have been several others. Some authors have literally gone broke dealing with court costs. Charles Dickens, for instance, went bankrupt dealing with unscrupolous rip-offs of his Christmas Carol.)

Certainly, there's grey area. But it generally gets greyer the more the person indulges in activities which allow him/her to receive said property for free. Lending someone a CD -- with full expectation of having it returned -- isn't the same as making copies of it and giving it out. Lending out a taped version of a TV show (which got grey primarily because, until relatively recently, there was very little supply for the demand except in the form of re-runs -- which isn't the general case for music, though there's always exceptions) may be commonplace, but mere ubiquity doesn't make it a grey area...just an area where it's considered futile to pursue. Technically speaking, one can be arrested for copying and redistributing audio as well as video tapes...but in practice, it's considered too difficult to pursue. Usually. They still do arrest DVD bootleggers, as well as those who bootleg current movies. I'm not choosing to draw a line. I'm merely pointing out that said "line" isn't quite as subject to the power of analogy as one might hope. A good deal of the greyness comes from people not being willing to just concede that they are doing something of questionable ethical merit, and don't particularly care. If you're going to take something on the basis that a corporation is ripping you off, to take a common rationalization, it's not really philosophically helpful to simply say that the corporation deserves it when you're effectively saying, I want it and don't want to pay what's being demanded. Blaming the corporation is fair to some extent, but in the end is basically a useful shunting of responsibility.

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Re: Oh, jump into the debate..
nakannimi
2004-04-26 07:25 pm UTC (link)

Oh, I concede that downloading music is of questionable ethical merit. You make a lot of good points, but I still think that there's a fundamental difference between physical property and intellectual property, and it's very difficult to define what stealing is in the case of intellectual property. I would never steal from a store, but I don't mind downloading. I don't feel like I'm depriving the musicians of royalties, because if I really like an artist, I still buy the CD. If I couldn't download Love to love you, baby I wouldn't go out and buy a Donna Summer CD, I would just do without.

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	(Anonymous) 2004-04-25 11:02 pm UTC (link)
	The guy with the "1s and 0s" writes EXACTLY like my brother talks. Further investigation has revealed that he is not my brother. But that was a scary coupla minutes. (Reply to this)

melange
2004-04-25 11:55 pm UTC (link)

This struck me as ironic, because today I read an article which claimed that downloading music was not solely responsible for the decline in record sales. In fact, they found that the high price of CDs was a greater factor in that then the availability of free downloads.

That said, I still think that downloadable music isn't going anywhere, and if they RIAA was smart, they'd create some more downloadable sites of their own for music pirates with a conscience.

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	(Anonymous) 2004-04-26 12:01 am UTC (link)
	In fact, they found that the high price of CDs was a greater factor in that then the availability of free downloads. I don't think those two factors are that independent. IMNSHO, the former causes the latter. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: rann 2004-04-26 12:11 am UTC (link)
	Yup. MP3s have a lot of benefits, but at the end of the day, I'd still rather buy a CD. Unfortunately, with new CDs steadily climbing towards being $20, my poor ass just can't afford it. I kind of have to go with the "they wouldn't be getting my money anyway", because I just flat-out couldn't afford to pay that much. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

moodeln
2004-04-26 12:20 am UTC (link)

Very true. Actually, I thought by this point people were acknowledging that the cost of cds was the real problem, and downloading wasn't such a big issue. Little did I know, I guess. :) Didn't some record company announce in the last few months that they were going to drop all their prices to $14 or below? I know I've read in a few different places that $15ish is the magic number where, if cds get above that, people will choose not to buy them in fairly high percentages.

My god, I'm just participating in the wank. *Damn* it!

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Re:

rann
2004-04-26 12:27 am UTC (link)

One record company announced it's going to drop prices of some of its CDs by up to $6 (which means that the ones costing something like $22 will be dropped that much, to my cynical ear). It remains to be seen if other companies will follow suit, but the problem is, a lot of the CDs have already gone up by that much anyway.
You're not really getting a deal, or even a price that's correct for what you're getting. (Seems like as prices have gone up, the number of tracks on the CD has gone down.) You're just not getting ripped off as bad.

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	meshou 2004-04-26 12:24 am UTC (link)
	Yeah. I've only ever bought 2 CDs in my life. Apple Music Store is my friend. A buck a single, and ten for an album ain't that bad. But then I think daisies grow on all paths Steve Jobbs hath trod, and he should have all my disposable income, so I'm biased. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	wolfsamurai 2004-04-26 07:13 am UTC (link)
	It may not stay a buck for long. They're talking about popping it up to $2.50 a song. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

mariagoner
2004-04-26 11:00 am UTC (link)

Which is crazy, cuz ain't nobody gonna pay that much for one measly song. If prices hike up that much, people are just going to go back to illegal song downloads. Which happened in the first place because of the high prices of songs in CD format.

...Music execs are such idiot ass-wipes that seem to relish shooting themselves in the foot, aren't they? You'd think they'd eventually learn the value of the "product" to the consumers who have a free (though illegal) alternative to it but... no. They don't. Were they all repeated dropped on their heads as young children? Or do the years they spend in the moribund music industry just eventually make them all greedy and stupid?

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wolfsamurai
2004-04-26 10:28 pm UTC (link)

It's really kind of pathetic. iTunes finally becomes an actual viable online music selling venue...and they want to bump the prices so that it's actually ~more~ expensive than a CD. WTF kind of crack do you have to smoke to make that sound like a good idea? I think they kind of want to force people back to buying CDs. Probably because they make more per CD than they do if you break it down track by track and sell it online, espcially since you can avoid all the crappy songs on an album online and don't end up having to pay for them as you would with a CD.

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diamonde
2004-04-27 10:55 am UTC (link)

In Australia all new-release CDs are $20 or more, even the ones by Australian artists. At places like JB HiFi they have great bargain bins where you might get something good for $10-15, but that's lucky finds. If you're out looking for something specific, chances are you'll end up paying $20-$35 (older stuff, less popular artists, double-CDs and imports can reach nearly $40). Particularly if HMV is the only place that has it. They have the widest range and have more older stuff and things which weren't released here, but they want all your money, a pound of flesh and a little dance before they give it to you. ($28 for top 40 albums, I'm not kidding.)

I do buy CDs regularly, I like having the real album and the liner notes and pretty pictures and a nice case. But there are some things I just cannot justify buying at that price. If I like one song, no way am I paying $30 for it whether I can download the fucker or not. I just don't have that kind of money.

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Re:

rann
2004-04-27 12:03 pm UTC (link)

Yeah, but that's $20 Australian, right? You're actually getting them a bit cheaper. The current exchange rate would translate that to a bit under $15 US... which is about regular for SOME new releases over here, if the label/store's not getting too greedy.
Sounds like you're being hit by about the same ripoff prices, in translation, but at least you're not being ripped off worse.

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Re:

diamonde
2004-04-27 05:35 pm UTC (link)

How the Aussie dollar converts doesn't have an whole lot to do with how much it buys from where I'm standing - it's gone up from 50 cents to 75 cents and nothing's got cheaper. I'm not sure exactly how it does translate, actually. Compared to my weekly expenses one CD is about a quarter of my rent and not much less than I spend on food - about 1/11 of my total income.

So yeah, we're all getting fucked and we're supposed to like it. And be concerned that profits have dropped for record companies for the first time since the seventies! Oh, the humanity! Me, I say if they're still making a profit and this is the first time it's stopped going up in thirty years, they can quit their fucking bitching. Especially since a lot of the fluctuations in their profits recently can be tracked to whether Britney or Eminem released an album that year. If neither of them do in a financial year, there's cries of doom and calamity. Album sales dropped by five million! No shit. Run that boy back into the studio and breathe into a paper bag, it'll pass.

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	bunny 2004-04-26 12:45 am UTC (link)
	Or the former is just the beard for the latter. At least when you are one of the "These greedy three big record companies just want my money!" believers. Or were it four? (Reply to this)(Parent)

guinevere33
2004-04-26 03:56 am UTC (link)

I used to get a kids' consumer magazine called "Zillions." About 10 years ago, they ran an article on exactly how much it costs to make a CD (so up their estimate by the rate of inflation).

Turns out that after all the studio time, paying the royalties, giving everyone their cut, getting the artwork, and paying for the distribution and advertising, the cost of making a CD is...$1.

I no longer feel the RIAA's pain.

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	calluna 2004-04-26 08:47 am UTC (link)
	Hey, I remember that! I'd almost forgotten about that magazine... ^_^ (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: rann 2004-04-26 08:55 am UTC (link)
	I used to have a subscription. I STILL remember the article they did about how they fix hamburgers up to look good for commercials... (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	liarliar 2004-04-26 09:20 am UTC (link)
	Yeah, all those pins and such. But it still looks so good... (Reply to this)(Parent)

	thewashinator 2004-04-27 01:00 am UTC (link)
	I remember that one! I loved Zillions. I would skip recess so I could read back issues in the library. I was an odd child. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	mariagoner 2004-04-26 11:01 am UTC (link)
	Heh. If ever I needed a reason to keep illegally downloading music... (Reply to this)(Parent)

	(Anonymous) 2004-04-26 12:33 am UTC (link)
	...Which is why I burn all my music to cassettes. (omgyes Eighty-Eights are teh best kars evah!!!1!) -Lowbrow (Reply to this)

	mireille 2004-04-26 01:47 am UTC (link)
	The "1s and 0s" guy was sounding at first like some friends of mine, the ones who would rather own everything on vinyl (particularly older stuff that was released pre-CD)... and then he said he'd rather own the "album or CD." Dude? The CD is digital..... (Reply to this)

beethoven
2004-04-26 02:16 am UTC (link)

You know... I really don't know what the big deal is about downloading music. I'm a musician... I'm intending on making my living in the music industry and I download music. I still though, buy CDs if I really like the artist/musical (as I'm more of a Broadway fanatic than anything).

That, and as one poster brought up the notion of how much artists actually get. *shakes head* A lot of artists are glad for music to be downloaded as their music is thusly reaching a larger audience. If I find an MP3 I love from an artist or a show, chances are I'm going to buy the cd.

That, and *points to username* So, tell me how when buying a CD of the Eroica or the Ninth Symphony is Beethoven going to get the Royalties?

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	wankprophet 2004-04-26 06:09 am UTC (link)
	The music itself is now public domain. It's the performers who profit now. The London Symphony Orchestra does a mean Fur Elise, my friend. The Billy-Bob Hoedown Tin Can Quintet? A little less magical. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	nekoneko 2004-04-26 03:16 am UTC (link)
	Over 100 comments at the moment, and yet, I see no one asking the obvious question... how the fuck did the Pointy-Haired Boss manage to download music without blowing up his computer? I could have sworn that the Pointy Haired Boss had an Etch-A-Sketch instead of a real computer. Did he draw in the notes, or what? (Reply to this)(Thread)

	(Anonymous) 2004-04-26 04:04 am UTC (link)
	Possibly he told his secretary (Carol?) to download fill-in-song because he'd seen the CD artwork and the cover was shiny, and Carol cheerfully complied (and absolutely didn't record subliminal You Will Give Carol Large Raises And Quit Telling Her To Make The Coffee messages on every track. Really). (Reply to this)(Parent)

	notapirate 2004-04-26 03:35 am UTC (link)
	Meh, when I see this argument...I think back to when I was 10 and my friend's mother had a wall of cassettes of songs she taped off the radio. It's the same thing isn't it? Music is about the Music and if I like the band's music as a whole, I will end up buying the CD. I'm just too poor now to buy my own. Aw...no music for me. (Reply to this)