The Filesharing Conspiracy

reply to post by Skyfloating

why is it that the recording industry and all of it`s artist`s continue to cry foul over their music. i`m 1 of those unlucky people who have and album collection of over 10,000 albums [records for those whom are uninformed]

this our music industry continues to come up with a new format of music
about every 10 years -
1-albums
2-eight track tapes that were crap that broke at the joint

3- cassette tapes that stretched and broke
4-cd`s that scratch and are useless
5- mp3 was the next idiosyncrasy of theirs
6- ipods and the list of this insanity is growing.
and i`m to replace all of my albums 6 times so far just to feed the greed
of the recording industry.
albums were 2.99 to 5.99 each.
cds run 17.00 each and up ,i`ve been quoted up to 55.00 each for rare albums or more for British imports .i love my music and i hate greed ,there seems to be no help or middle ground as money and greed are all that matters to some ,and the rest of us are just a big piggie bank for them.
money is the root of all evil and yet greed knows no bounds ,money is used to enslave us all -like their greatest of lies money makes the world go around .

reply to post by B.Morrison


I think we both misunderstood each other. Part of that is my increasing frustration witht he "it should all be free because I want it to be" crowd. I tend to lump all down loaders in to that category. That may be short sighted or prejudicial on my part, but I find it to be too often true.

I can understand your point of view even if I don't agree with it completely.

Downloading a fifteenth century book that was never part of intellectual property laws in any modern way is fine in my opinion. I have downloaded some eighteenth and nineteenth century scholarly works that are public domain. I have also down loaded some old time radio shows that are in the public domain or the copy rights have been forfitited.

If the author is dead but the copy right has passed on to his heirs then it is more complicated. If the book is no longer in print then downloading may be justifiable. However if it is still in print and money is passing on to his heirs it is theft. The difference is that money made on out of print books bought from a collector rarely gets shared with the copy right owner either way. In that case it is more important to preserve the knowledge. However, if the book goes back in to print I feel it only fitting that the "bootleg" copies stop circulating. Then purchasing the print copy is then the right thing to do, especially if you have the digital copy.

or home made HQ digital recordings of rare psytrance & hip hop vinyl,

By rare do you mean hard to find or out of print? If it is just hard to find then downloading it is illegal. To me it is that simple. If you mean it is out of print and collector's are charging $100 for a 7" then it is different. Then you have every responsibilty to find a way to make sure you support the artist. I feel like if you download it you should at least go see a show or buy some merch. Make sure they still get something out of the effort.

My point is that if it is in print and the money goes to the creator or their heirs you should always buy it instead of downloading it. If it is a rarity that collectors are jacking people around on then downloading it is permitted if you still find a way to show the artist monetary support. If you just download it and fail to support the artist it is not right. If it is a rarity that can be bought at retail and you download it just because you don't want to pay a higher pricce for rarity it is stealing in my opinion.

You can purchase digital content only to have it become corrupt during the download, you can have a virus and lose all you legitimate downloads & have to repurchase everything

It isn't a digital copy if it isn't in three distinct places. That is the general rule of thumb in music production. I know that sounds like an ass hole attitude but, I am the type of guy that rips a copy to his computer, has the original cd, and has it on a back up drive as soon as I get it home.

If you buy an MP3 then you should put it on a back up drive or burn it to CD for safer keeping. You (people in general) wouldn't expect a store to replace a cd or DVD that was damaged unless it was a factory defect.

I wonder how many people could live with themselves repurchasing $20,000 of audio production software because the manufacturer was unsympathetic regarding the clients virus situation & only care about the bottom line...

I had this happen with Pro Tools. With proper proof of ownership they helped me get everything back up and running in less than 36 hours. No fees were charged.

I also use Glyph drives because they will restore your hard drive if it crashes. I have had it done before and it only took like a week.

the poor woman is raising 3-4 kids on her own, working 2 jobs & feeding them 'no brand' food because Sony+court decided it was ok for her to pay all court fee's etc, lawyers costs, etc because she didn't settle initially for something like $11,000.

She broke the law with full knowledge of the consequences. I hate it for her kids. However, I can only manage so much sympathy for the mother.

Is this the same lady that tried to swap out her hard drive after she got the letter from Sony? I remember in one of these cases the woman tried to cover up the fact and then claimed she never did it. After being confronted with the evidence the lady then blamed it on her eight year old son.


I have very little sympathy for thieves. I came up in a family that hand an almost old west approach to handling thieves. If you got caught stealing something from my family (my uncles were the same way) you would probably have to fight to get away. Steal the tools they use for work and god better have mercy on you.

I do have a question though. Why do people keep saying cds cost $25 or $30 dollars a pop. I rarely see anything that isn't a double album for more than $15 unless it is a collector's edition or from certain classical composers. Amazon is a great place to find cds cheap. Also try the artists website. I know Daptone Records sells their cds for $15.99 usually and gives you a free digital download of the album to hold you untill it arrives.

[edit on 28-6-2010 by MikeNice81]

[edit on 28-6-2010 by MikeNice81]

Originally posted by B.Morrison

Originally posted by MikeNice81
None of this makes piracy any less evil however.

no, but based on your stories about those musicians who while being so passionate to continue in the face of virtually any conditions, and brilliant enough at what they did to be recognized as they were and held in such high esteem, still barely managed to scrape through on minimum wage,

based on that, why do you think that without file-sharing,
financial life would be any easier for the musicians...?

-B.M

They started out at minimum wage but did not stay there. My point was that they were willing to forsake much higher initial rewards because they could see no other life as acceptable. They were able to work their way up from the bottom.

Tom Dowd was chief engineer for Criterion Studios for years and lived pretty well.

My personal friend at one time owned three studios before he misjudged the coming wave of Pro Tools. He invested in better technology. Unfortunately Pro Tools won the battle and he had a lot of over head that he couldn't afford.

Artists not being able to make money is a recent thing. It is like Warren Hayes said a few years ago, "it was a weird summer man, everybody was losing money on the road." Untill eight or nine years ago an artist could play 250 shows a year and make $40,000 a year clear off of gigs and merch. Even though the internet was an infant in popularity indie bands were making some cash if they were smart. Now the same bands doing the same schedule make 50% of what they use to in many cases.

reply to post by picrat


You know they do make record players that can plug in to the computer now. You could just rip your albums on the computer. Then you put them on back up media such as DVDs and/or a hard drive and drop them in a fire proof safe. Then you have the whole collection modernized and save a lot of money.

I need to start typing responses in Word.

[edit on 28-6-2010 by MikeNice81]

Originally posted by MikeNice81
I think we both misunderstood each other. Part of that is my increasing frustration witht he "it should all be free because I want it to be" crowd. I tend to lump all down loaders in to that category. That may be short sighted or prejudicial on my part, but I find it to be too often true.

For a long time i did think it was your oversight but on the contrary I now think I may have given the broader file sharing community too much credit, and I am beginning to see for myself in other threads that this may be true, which is honestly a disappointing revelation for me.

If the author is dead but the copy right has passed on to his heirs then it is more complicated.

True, especially if you extend that to inheritance & then consider families like the rockerfeller's.

I am however singing 'happy birthday' right this minute and will NEVER pay that random greed driven corporation that own the license to it, because that also, would be absurd.

Nor can I stomach paying ANY corporation exclusively for any music whatsoever. It disrespects the deceased musicians who wrote it.

part of my split view on all this is that I am a remixer, mash up artist & regularly use unlicensed samples in my hip hop tracks and I'm sure most of them pass the 12 second fair usage threshold and i don't care because it is first and fore-most a genre of music and a sampling method 2nd.

If we didn't have the MPC3000 due to copyright laws for e.g.
you can forget the existence of people like Pete Rock or J Dilla, therefore forget about ever hearing half of the soul soothing hip hop productions out there.... I struggle between intellectual property laws and my love for sample based music.

Incidentally I have no issues with the creative integrity of the music because I've played guitar & piano for decades & see 'traditional' music as a separate lifeforms.

If the book is no longer in print then downloading may be justifiable. However if it is still in print and money is passing on to his heirs it is theft. The difference is that out of print books bought from a colector usually does not get shared with the copy right owner either way. In that case it is more important to preserve the knowledge. However, if the book goes back in to print I feel it only fitting that the "bootleg" copies stop circulating. Then purchasing the print copy is then the right thing to do, especially if you have the digital copy.

if it was a process I would be willing to put myself through, I would do nothing differently and agree with all of that.

By rare do you mean hard to find or out of print? If it is just hard to find then downloading it is illegal. To me it is that simple.

Illegal, agreed. Is everything that is illegal 'wrong' per se? no.
take j-walking on an empty street while listening for cars & during the night so you could see headlights, not 'wrong', not 'risky' therefore common sense dictates the law no longer applies, I'm not saying that is the case here specifically, just that its another aspect to things, and explains why nothing is 'that simple', thankfully.

If you just download it and fail to support the artist it is not right.

I agree with this to an extent, but believe that at the end of the day, someone knows deep down if what they are doing is wrong, and I trust my own judgment, for clarity though, there is nothing I would love more than a complete restructuring of the entire industry, something where the artist comes first, rather than one where even the (apparently) successful are mostly just a false perception thrown up as bait by the greed machine to snare more talent. What is so cruel about it in my eyes are musicians & creatives by their nature are generally kind, caring creatures, and therefore incredibly easy to manipulate by the cold calculating money grubs of the major label world.

Also I believe that its already too late due to the fact that people will pay to survive over entertainment always & that due to the economic situation in many places, many people are demanding more distractions, with less & less 'spare' money to pay for it. This has always been the way for the entertainment industry, it will always come second to everything else, in the eyes of everyone else.

You (people in general) wouldn't expect a store to replace a cd or DVD that was damaged unless it was a factory defect.

no I wouldn't, that is true, but my point is that if someone assumed that because the piracy laws are the same, that everything else about the product they are getting is the same, they would be wrong. There are a lot of ignorant people out there who would lose mp3's regularly due to data corruption, it is not then the responsibility of the online store to replace it, no, but the customer was foolish if they did not appreciate the differences in medium. At the same time, the differences are not made clear for these kinds of people. Its for this reason I feel its worth paying for CD's (Vinyl is better) at all, you get something tangible, and often, pleasing to the eye.

I had this happen with Pro Tools. With proper proof of ownership they helped me get everything back up and running in less than 36 hours. No fees were charged.

thats good to know,
I have LE 8 and it was supposed to come with a bunch of free plugins, but apparently I need an ilok device that it say I have but which did not come with the bundle (le8+mbox2mini)... seems I have to buy one over the net & get it imported.... >_<

She broke the law with full knowledge of the consequences. I hate it for her kids. However, I can only manage so much sympathy for the mother.
Is this the same lady that tried to swap out her hard drive after she got the letter from Sony? I remember in one of these cases the woman tried to cover up the fact and then claimed she never did it. After being confronted with the evidence the lady then blamed it on her eight year old son.

not sure, but if you like mash ups, want to hear more opinions on copyright from both sides of the arguement & can spare the quota, the documentary I posted early is a LEGALLY free download, all legit, and an entertaining watch, you could see if it was indeed this person who pinned it on her son...

if it is, I feel sorry for the kids also yes, but that woman's life should not be ruined for one relatively minor mistake, and if pinning it on her son, meant that no one would get convicted & she could in turn send her kid to college with the money saved, then its not as clear cut anymore...

I have very little sympathy for thieves.

its all relative my friend, never forget that, equal punishment for equal crime, you do not hang for a loaf of bread, a cup of sugar.... its all relative.

I do have a question though. Why do people keep saying cds cost $25 or $30 dollars a pop.

because the good ones are. & or location, where ever you live has excellent prices.

I'm glad we could settle on some common ground & arrive at a more mutual conclusion..

P.L.U.R.I
-B.M

[edit on 29/6/10 by B.Morrison]

Originally posted by MikeNice81
They started out at minimum wage but did not stay there. My point was that they were willing to forsake much higher initial rewards because they could see no other life as acceptable. They were able to work their way up from the bottom.

same situation I feel like I'm in.

Tom Dowd was chief engineer for Criterion Studios for years and lived pretty well.

Girl-Talk simultaneously was born (-as a performing musician) into this current 'free for all' environment, and his music style openly promotes it, he was a medical engineer, making sweet dough. In that doco he is working at quitting his money making career and attempting to 'sell' his first 100% mash up cd.. the doco never shows how he went...would be interesting to see if he was successful in the venture...

btw, I don't like his work much & feel its more or less the most basic collage of samples he could have done, and if you watch him work, he does the most ridiculously simple things, in the most profoundly complicated ways possible. its like watching someone agonizingly study for 10 years just to butter a piece of bread...

My personal friend at one time owned three studios before he misjudged the coming wave of Pro Tools. He invested in better technology. Unfortunately Pro Tools won the battle and he had a lot of over head that he couldn't afford.

I personally dislike their 'take over' approach of the whole damned industry. But like P2P, I am willing to take advantage of the technology if it benefits my chances of surviving in a world where it dominates, sure it goes against my ideal set of principles, but as I am idealistic anyway, I find praticality & my idealistic principles do not unify well and compromises have to be made to balance the two.

Artists not being able to make money is a recent thing. It is like Warren Hayes said a few years ago, "it was a weird summer man, everybody was losing money on the road." Untill eight or nine years ago an artist could play 250 shows a year and make $40,000 a year clear off of gigs and merch. Even though the internet was an infant in popularity indie bands were making some cash if they were smart. Now the same bands doing the same schedule make 50% of what they use to in many cases.

funnily enough I have been out of touch with the broader musical community for around 7 years or so & a live engineer I was talking to back then was discussing how clubs were dying & things changing, I did not have figures like that to work with tho, that is disappointing to find out, I didn't realize things had ever been that good to start with...

I bet thats what the NWO babies would feel like if they ever found out we had freedoms once upon a time..

-B.M

[edit on 29/6/10 by B.Morrison]

I have a question that maybe one of you people "in the know" can answer for me...

First let me state that I know very little about the industry as a whole, but I do understand economics.

If File Sharing is made legal, or accepted or whatever, how will musicians make any money?

This is a serious question please, I really have no idea?

Originally posted by DHSreallybugsme
I I should be the one who would be responsible for protecting my investment, and making sure I did what I could to keep people from ripping me off.

True. I know a publisher who quit publishing his books as e-books but as print-only for that reason.

In metaphysical terms whats often missing in the pirating-scene is the idea of exchange. This is why there are many more "leechers" than there are "seeders". Society doesnt seem to be enlightened enough to give the same amount back that was taken.

Originally posted by LordBucket

For example, if you were the first person to bang two rocks together to make fire, according to the concept of copyright it would be well and proper and good for nobody else to be "allowed" to bang two rocks together to make fire unless you gave them permission to.

That sounds silly, but that's basically what copyright is.

If I spent 40 hours sculpting the rocks in a certain beautiful fashion or into a tool that revolutionizes life, shouldnt I get some reward for it from society?

Originally posted by Skyfloating
In metaphysical terms whats often missing in the pirating-scene is the idea of exchange. This is why there are many more "leechers" than there are "seeders". Society doesnt seem to be enlightened enough to give the same amount back that was taken.

remaining in the context of the metaphysical...
have you taken 'time' into account? maybe it takes time to balance out...

or that it may not all up to the individual's will alone,
that 'things' find their own way of maintaining a balance and that in time all people eventually pay their dues whether they are initially aware of it or not?

just an afterthought....

P.L.U.R.I
-B.M

[edit on 29/6/10 by B.Morrison]

reply to post by B.Morrison


"If I dont balance things out they will be balanced out"? - yeah, I could see that. Good point.

reply to post by v3_exceed


Thanks for the thoughtful post. Ive often wondered "what will become of professional photographers?" Everyone is a photographer now, flickr is full of free stuff. Everyone is a journalist now. Everyone is a webdesigner soon. And so on. It will be interesting to see how things develop.

Btw: James Cameron introducting 3-D to his movie was a good way to get people to want to see it in theatres. The movie industry will have to start becoming THAT CREATIVE if they want to make money.

Well I kinda am guilty of downloading music everyone in a while but in this age, digital information, whether it is music, dvds cannot be stopped because it is digital information. Maybe you need to invent a type of dvd that requires a USB key to unlock. That key cannot be copied, is encrypted, hardened and only one key operates one dvd, or a set of dvds that can be operated by a master USB key.

I also believe that if i buy something I can manipulate, take apart or have complete do whatever with it rights. I'm not saying that I can take apart something and sell it as my own. I am saying take it apart any which way I like such as an ipod.

[edit on 29-6-2010 by THE_PROFESSIONAL]

Originally posted by SpectreDC
How could there be a conspiracy in the works to allow file sharing when for the past 15 years corporations and governments have been working together to make it illegal and easily prosecutable?

If they wanted to make it easily prosecutable, it would be by now. But its not.

Maybe the conspiracy is to introduce super-draconian laws soon that allow some entity to spy on your every online move.

reply to post by darkangel831


Hello?

Anyone out there?

Originally posted by Lonedrifter
Although I agree that for the most part file sharing does a lot of damage to musicians it's not completely bad for them. As a teenager I did a lot of illegal downloading (mostly music), and never bought an album because I only liked one song or two from a particular band's album (there was no ITunes back then). But then I came across a band called Alice in Chains, I started downloading the songs from one of their Greatest Hits albums and really liked them a lot, I downloaded a few more songs but then I realized that I was really into them. I then decided to buy a couple of their CDs at a store. Since then I have bought all of their studio albums, a DVD with all their music videos (since MTV doesn't play any music nowadays),

Im glad to hear this. I understand that there are some bands and authors who intentionally put their material into filesharing feeds and gain popularity in that way.

Its the "give em stuff for free to turn them on to it" method.

Originally posted by darkangel831
reply to post by darkangel831

 

Hello?

Anyone out there?

Sorry, Im still only on page 6 of this thread in reading.

Some great stuff on this thread... Mike, I'll give you a shout later.

On B. Morrisson's point about the 1s and 0s... this is something I actually feel strongly about. This is the reason small labels release on vinyl. I know as Mike says that you can get the USB turntables for ripping them, but it's just not the same. The medium is part of the sound too with vinyl, the way you play it back is part of the experience. If I was the big music industry and I was serious I would be knocking the hell out of that concept.

I used to be an R&D engineer and hated all the buzzwords they had, but "added value" is a really important concept here. You need to show that there's some greater worth in buying it rather than downloading it. For the smaller labels here, it's about being part of a strong grassroots community. In some American music styles it's a muso thing, vinyl is THE format to buy new records on. For the old music industry model, I would be pushing the angle that vinyl is unique and nothing sounds like it. You have a CD, you rip it, you burn another CD - at all points the information is basically the same. I'd be pushing the angle that even if you rip vinyl, it's just not the same - you've lost the experience that's inherent in the playback method, the idiosyncracies and the different sound quality. And actually, that's the way I think the music industry will go. But, they will probably be too late to realise it and there'll still be quite a collapse in the mega-companies before it happens.

Out of interest, did ye hear about the story with Thom Yorke and a new GCSE (UK school exam) textbook? An interview with him is used in it where he says the major label music industry will be dead within months rather than years and that kids should find their own alternatives where they are in control..

On iLocks and USB keys etc... it's interesting to look at the case of Logic Pro. Used to require a key to operate so very hard to pirate. But, Apple did something interesting. They lowered the hell out of the price of it and also got rid of the key, so it's now pirateable. Why? Because it only runs on Macs. Loads more EXPENSIVE Macs sold The end result is loads of people thought, if only I had a Mac, I could rip Logic from somewhere. Loads more Macs sold. I know lots of people who went that way, and God knows I was tempted myself!!

[edit on 29-6-2010 by J.Clear]