The Filesharing Conspiracy

Originally posted by Fiverz
Regardless of your view on the points above and from the OP, I think we can all agree one one thing - the nature of business surrounding our creations is changing and will keep on doing so. Hopefully we can all find a middle ground somewhere.

Yeah, we need some Moderation. But the first step is to see current reality for what it is. I think neither the Industry ("Everything is OK, hopefully Pirateby will be down soon. CDs are the new thing after Vinyl") nor the habitual Pirate ("Its not theft") are in touch with whats actually going on.

The Industry needs to loosen up and face reality and the habitual pirate needs to realize that he is traceable and, in the eyes of the law, he is committing a crime.

reply to post by B.Morrison


I am a believer in Karma and that stuff balances itself out. naturally. But at the level society is currently on, thats not an idea I would introduce as a basis for law and order. In 10 000 years maybe, not today.

Based on some things I've read in various internet discussions, perhaps there's a conspiracy to end filesharing... There are plenty of industry players that claim Creative Commons or Open Source as things that should be made illegal, and would be more than happy to remove the public's right to access them.

Also there seems to be a conspiracy to destroy public domain. The original contract behind copyright was that after a certain time, various works were to go into the public domain. Copyright (in the U.S. at least) was originally intended to help bolster this resource. But now it seems that just when certain works of possible cultural significance are due to enter public domain, some [censored] group manages to bribe lobby the legislature into extending the private protections of copyright longer and longer. Essentially the original contract with the public that made copyright reasonable has been breeched. The new terms being dictated by the industries most likely to profit and run roughshod into law regardless of what the public would actually prefer.

If anything, I'd like to see copyright terms go back to what it was in 1783. If you couldn't make a profit on whatever in the first 14 years, your progeny (or promoter) doesn't really deserve it as a future cash cow in the form of some contrived perpetual property.

Right now as it is, if there's something that's 50 years old but not being currently being published via print or recorded media by the rights holder, then it seems the only way of obtaining a copy is via means currently deemed illegal. If they're not going to make some work available, then why not release it to the public domain? Why leave the right of deciding what cultural artifact is worthy of sharing to some limited group of people?

Copyright needs definitely needs reform, but not in the direction the big media industry is currently pushing it. (So it's understandable why people don't respect the laws around it as they now stand. The young people aren't stupid, and know when they're being hosed. Despite the artists that could honestly use the income, the current and proposed laws behind copyright are no longer fair or ethically just.)

And yes, I'm an artist of 3D and visual digital media and do give some things away for free. So no complaints of "think of the starving artists". (Although I do ask for donations if people would like more of similar quality. And if only the busker concept worked as good on the internet for visual media as it does for music... But I get by.)

reply to post by lowki

Great vid man! The best I have seen in quite awhile. Thanks for getting us the info as it is greatly appreciated.

reply to post by StargateSG7

I understand your frustration with the types of filters you get in
Nuance, or Sound Forge or Pro Tools...but using a CONVOLUTION
filter when you REALLY need to do a boolean-logic pattern match
to remove the right frequencies and DIRECTLY synthesize acoustic
environments is the whole REASON I made my many posts!

Well point me in the direction of where this is available to the public. Then point me to a place where it is available at a price that isn't price prohibitive. Because I've worked in a number of the top comercial recording studios in the US and have never seen it in use. Nor have I heard anyone any where in the industry talking about using it. If this was something that was readily available it would be in use already. It would be just like the new Melodyne DNA or auto-tune. It would be flooding the market.

Horsepower? LOTS AND LOTS of it which is why I designed a
massively parallel grid-processing system that turns unused
network computers into processing nodes to create an easy-to-use
virtual supercomputer

So it is not possible using a single home computer. At least not in a realistic time table. The computing power would be so much that it would swamp the computer and make it unusable for anything else for hours or even days. A network the likes of which you describe is light years beyond the budget of almost any studio or DIY person.

I still say my mixer program can outperform ANY human operator
and I've had my software do a LIVE mix of over 20,000 TRACKS
of 192 KHz, 24-bit audio.....

But it only takes fifteen channels to record the whole London Philharmonic. There is literally no real world use for twenty thousand channels of sound. Your computer may give me a pretty RTA on a massive number of channels, but it won't sound as good as a human. It won't know where to shift the mix for emotional effect or dramatic effect. It can be programmed to recognize musical commands like Forte or piano, but then it is still the human ear telling the machine how to perform.

Most of all it is technology creating a solution to a problem that has never existed. Who needs 20,000 channels when it all gets cut don to 8? Who needs that many channels when a complicated prog rock album can be done on less than 64?

What can it do on an i7 intel? A fraction of that in all honesty. There is no way thatn an Intel i7 in your home on a single computer can do more than 1/25th of the work you are describing. Why? Because you used a twenty five computer network.

Everything you say may come to pass. It is still more than a decade in the futre however. Cost and social atitudes will take at least that long to reach a level where it is possibly acceptable.

Plus you have to figure in the need of people to have people to identify with. They want Britney Spears to sing for them because they can relate and empathize. Plus it distracts them from the boredom of their mediocre lives when she flips out or goes to Cancun. People want to read about these people and get a false sense of intimacy with these people. It drags them out of their lives and makes them feel like they are part of something a little more glamorous. It makes them feel like they are part of something bigger than the AT&T call center or the reception desk at Martin and Associates law firm.

Maybe you are right though and the movie Simone was prophetic. Maybe they were testing the waters to see how people would react to the scenario.

I don't think it will replace music or movies as a whole.

reply to post by StargateSG7

And four guys could walk in to a mediocre studio tomorrow with a new sound and a great producer and outsell everything you ever recorded.
Music is about people.

I would agree with Mike above and want to say again, it's time to hear something to back up these claims. I have a Masters in Music Tech and many of my friends are in Music Tech and Interactive Media research, the results so far that I have heard for auto-composing software are primitive to say the least, I can only imagine what auto-mixed music would sound like. Taste, artistic impression, expression, emotion, touch; these are the things that, from what I have seen so far, remain utterly elusive for computer-generated works.

reply to post by Lemon.Fresh

So what are you saying? You have no respect for the law? Or do you just pick and choose the laws you want to follow?

A Scale of Piracy

Just for Fun and Differentiation from 1 (tame) to 5 (criminal)

1 Downloaded something no longer available for sale

2 Download stuff to see whether I want to buy it

3 Download copyrighted stuff habitually

4 Have several servers external harddrives so that I can Download stuff 24/7

5 I Download and if possible, sell the stuff I Download

reply to post by pauljs75

You need to do more homework on copyrights. Artists and songwriters all over the world are for these new laws. In fact we have banded together over the years with petitions,phone calls,and meetings with congress to get these laws changed. We have worked our buts of to protect our property. Oh and by the way we didn't bribe anyone pal. These laws benefit the artists and the songwriters. That's why we fought for them. Well they did until the so-called filesharers decided the copyright laws we fought so hard for didn't mean a damn thing. I am so sick of so-called fileshares talking about the record company ripping off the artist. The so-called fileshares are the ones who ripped off the artist they just refuse to admit it.

reply to post by J.Clear


I remember right before the country band Sugar Land released the song Stay. I was listening to it with three other engineers. One of the engineers spoke up and said, "She gets a little screechy in the middle. It will never sell. They should have fixed that." I looked at him and said that it was part of the emotion. It was supposed to be screechy to convey desperation, and heartache. He looked at me real funny and said "but it isn't right."

The song went on to do well both with critics and sells. It did so well because the producer and the engineer knew that it was a good performance regardless of the technical aspects. They knew not to get her to resing it or to try fixing it with some computer automated cure.

Can a computer make that decision on the fly? Can it ever decide on the emotional impact of a less than perfect performance? It seems to me it will either have to fix all "mistakes" or leave them for a human to decide on.

Will we eventually end up with "art" that has no emotional content? If we do is it still art? What does it say about the disposition of the human brain and emotional center if it becomes acceptable? These are questions the technophiles need to consider when chasing these types of "advances."

Is every advance really an improvement on the human condition? I think my signature gives my position. I think the Technophiles and Technocrats might want to consider it.

Originally posted by MikeNice81
reply to post by J.Clear

 

I remember right before the country band Sugar Land released the song Stay. I was listening to it with three other engineers. One of the engineers spoke up and said, "She gets a little screechy in the middle. It will never sell. They should have fixed that." I looked at him and said that it was part of the emotion. It was supposed to be screechy to convey desperation, and heartache. He looked at me real funny and said "but it isn't right."

The song went on to do well both with critics and sells. It did so well because the producer and the engineer knew that it was a good performance regardless of the technical aspects. They knew not to get her to resing it or to try fixing it with some computer automated cure.

Can a computer make that decision on the fly? Can it ever decide on the emotional impact of a less than perfect performance? It seems to me it will either have to fix all "mistakes" or leave them for a human to decide on.

Will we eventually end up with "art" that has no emotional content? If we do is it still art? What does it say about the disposition of the human brain and emotional center if it becomes acceptable? These are questions the technophiles need to consider when chasing these types of "advances."

Is every advance really an improvement on the human condition? I think my signature gives my position. I think the Technophiles and Technocrats might want to consider it.

Yup, this is what I mean. The software I've seen so far has presets for different "styles" of composers, music, tempo, articulation etc. But it doesn't sound great yet, to be perfectly honest. And, it's a little pointless, really. Art should be about communication. Whether it's communicating a broken heart like that song of that you don't give a # about the world and think everything is phony.. Whether you have something to say, or "I have nothing to say, and I am saying it" (John Cage). I don't see any point really bar the lowest rung of commercial musak for wanting to have automatic music.

Originally posted by rick1
reply to post by daskakik

 

Filesharing did not give a right to the consumer. Show me anywhere it is written that a right has been given to you or any filesharer to use my song w/o my permission.
But at least you have more honesty than most folks. You admit you're a thief.
Your parents must be proud.[edit on 30-6-2010 by rick1]

Rights are not given by laws but lost by compliance. I'm sure King George had all kinds of words he called the colonials. I'm pretty sure they didn't mind. Ditto here.

I don't consider myself a thief because I have not stolen anything. In my country I have the right to download whatever I want and hold it for 24 hours. After those 24 hours I must either pay or delete. In that time I can check it out and make up my mind to go pay for it or not. Then it gets deleted. As a poster pointed out earlier, copyright is only as strong as it's weakest link.

EDIT to add - With movies this works out great cause I can download a movie watch it and delete and no law has been broken.

[edit on 30-6-2010 by daskakik]

reply to post by daskakik

Your country granted you that right? what country are you from? You don't seem to be well acquainted with international copyright law.

Originally posted by J.Clear

Originally posted by StargateSG7

I call "pics or it didn't happen" on this. Let's hear it, Stargate. Show us this process, make a video of it and post some audio. I want to see this. And hear Britney Spears perfectly as a man

---

No Problem! --- This will be fun!

The Britney Spears idea just popped into my head at the moment
I was writing the post...but it sure woudl be FUN to try that....!!!!

I said I could do it....but the result....who knows what the computer will
actually do....there are so many variables in physics based modelling
I personally as a human cannot predict the final result....but we'll find out
soon enough!!!!!!

This takes some horespower so I need a Britney Spears song to try this on!

By 5:00 pm tonight...VOTE on which Britney song you want changed into
a male singer's voice and I'll start the voice resynthesis job on our network
and post the result as a link to a Youtube video!

The result could be a total disaster OR it could be totally STUNNING!!!!

But NOW we're gonna find out.....!!!!!!

What age range and vocal pitch would you like? A 25 years old male
with a metzo-soprano or a 50 year old with a baritone (i.e Basso Profundo)
....PICK ONE....It's take TIME to do vocal resynthesis on a 25 node network
we can always do others later once I know how fast this will be!

I can't give an estimate on time MY GUESS is about 100 to 200 hours
of computing time (i.e. Audio Ray Tracing takes TIME!) or about 4 to 8
days so we should have a result on Monday or Next Friday...I'll resync
the audio to the video and It'll be a real laugh!!!!!!

I'll post the results no matter HOW BAD just so you get an idea
of how much a success (OR failure!) that audio resynthesis is!

Let's Roll !!!!!!!

---

P.S. Actually theres is a very GOOD reason to be able to do 20,000 tracks
of live mixing or "demuxing" which is used for Audio-based location systems
that can find out (Using an Extreme Example!) such as determining where
EVERY sound within a 3D environment originated from...In my case to
find out the originating location of thousands of gunshots within a gunfight
in a war zone so that an automated shot direction locationing system can
AUTOMATICALLY direct return fire to the originating locations within
MILLISECONDS of those shots being fired and heard by the system

- i.e. find, target and kill enemy targets with 6000 round per minute
Gatling gun mounted to robotic tracking & fire system with 3D acoustic
AND visual modelling and object recognition to find, target and kill
enemy targets utterly automatically at speeds UNMATCHED by ANY
HUMAN!!!!!!

[edit on 2010/6/30 by StargateSG7]

This has been a great discussion with many points and opinions.

Firstly, people have to decide what type of society we desire to live in. Do WE desire to live in a society where money is obsolete and most things are free. or do we desire a society such as what we have now, where it's capitalistic?

I think it shows that most people desire a capitalist society so I'll tackle it from this angle.

The problem is that record companies and other media outlets have not caught up with technology. They are the old person still trying to hold on to vinyl while the rest of the world and young people have moved on to digital quality.

Even the artists haven't caught up with technology and learned to use it to their advantage. They have to change with the times or get abused.

Gone are the days of making good money selling huge amounts of cd's thru a distributor. Notice I said "thru a distributor" because I believe it is still possible to sell cd's. Just not in the manner most were accustomed too.

To sell cd's and your product now, I believe you have to be much more personal with your fans. With the tech available now, every artist should have their OWN website. And I mean a good site with interface.

Fans now will appreciate being able to "touch" their favorite artists. It's expected because it's possible. A artist that isn't in touch with their fans is a lazy artist or a uninformed artist.

Every artist should have their work only available thru THEIR website. What this does is give fans a reason to obtain the cd for a price. What will assist with this is that the artist will frequent their own website and interact with their fans when possible. Listen to what your fans want and to the best of your ability when possible and feasible, accomidate them.

I guess it gets down to customer service. To give an example; imagine if Lil Wayne has his site. And he interacts with his fans. There are fans who desire to hear him over more social topics. If his fans can express this to him, and they know that HE hears them. Just imagine if on the next album he actually grants their wish on his next album.

Taking it one step further, sometimes fans wish to hear their favorite artist over a specific persons production. Or sometimes they wish to have a cameo from a certain other artist. All of this is possible if the tech is used the right way.

As for pirating, it's probably here to stay. So that's why artists have to adapt and over come this. They can do so by creating REAL fans. Most of the pirating done to a artist is by people who aren't really fans. They see the availability of the data and....pirate it. So actually pirating is a help for a artist, if that artist can take the next step to capitalize from it. Because they then have a chance to MAKE that person a fan. If your fan is pirating your product, it's because you haven't capitalized off the upgrade in distribution tech. Meaning it's too difficult/inconvenient to obtain your product.

The only way I can see TPTB stopping dl'ing is if the music format changes, they make cd/dvd burners illegal or they make the file sharing sites (all of them) illegal.

Hey, Kids! Check out my HELL Diamond CD!



For those younger ATS members - it's really Neil Diamond, singer-songwriter.

Well, I live in China, where more value is placed on a single fried dumpling than Intellectual Property Rights. Where CD and DVD piracy is a major player in the economy.

But, by Odin's beard, I do have one request: To the thieves in China - could you possibly do a better job?

It would be nice if at least, say, 3% of your stolen material could be problem free. As it stands, whenever one buys a CD or DVD here, one never knows what one will get.
And please start including the 'bonus material' on your ripped-off movies.

Oh, and the other day I bought the movie Serpico and when I opened the packaging I found myself holding The Incredible Hulk TV Series starring Bill Bixby. Who do I talk to about that?

Thanking you in advance, China.

The Solitary Man.

P.S. Great thread S.F.

Originally posted by rick1
reply to post by daskakik

 

Your country granted you that right? what country are you from? You don't seem to be well acquainted with international copyright law.

I have the right to download what I want. I can then pay for it or delete it. I'm not asking you, my country or the UN permission.

That is my declaration of independance.

Yes my country placed that clause in the copyright laws. It allows the countries tv and cable operators to do what I am doing. They have big money to influence law and I get to use it to my advantage.

Don't have to know about international copyright cause I'm not going to follow it like you want me to cause it allows you to infringe on my rights.

EDIT to add - From Wikipedia

Copyright laws have been standardized to some extent through international conventions such as the Berne Convention. Although there are consistencies among nations' intellectual property laws, each jurisdiction has separate and distinct laws and regulations about copyright.

And also after thinking a bit I have nothing against the artists but they usually sign with a company who gets sole distribution rights. In other words a monopoly. They don't allow me to negotiate price or buy from a different source or in a format that I prefer.

[edit on 30-6-2010 by daskakik]

Originally posted by StargateSG7

No Problem! --- This will be fun!

The result could be a total disaster OR it could be totally STUNNING!!!!

[edit on 2010/6/30 by StargateSG7]

We certainly will find out! Just "Hit Me Baby One More Time" Let's also go with the middle-aged Bass, to make this a significant test.

You say "no problem", but then you say the result will be unpredictable. Eh, those two scenarios don't quite match up, or rather don't match up at all. I'll be expecting the ABSOLUTELY FLAWLESS result you promised initially with great confidence. Spotlight's on ya, buddy!

Originally posted by Skyfloating
I received emails
from people dissapointed that I am quitting. But the world will just have to do without my output in those regards. My line of work needs to support at least food and rent. Wanting a little something in exchange for what was given does not mean one is a "capitalist pig". Meanwhile I am in a Business that is not dependent on music, movies or books and doing very well. However: What will ultimately become of my beloved music, movies and books?

It sounds like the real conspiracy here is that you have to pay for food and rent.

I agree with you though about making a very large number of the populace criminals. I've been saying for years that when most people stop breaking the law, they will make new laws.

Also: in the past people didn't always make enough money to live on and certainly didn't make vast gobs of riches for making music and writing books, but good music and books got made anyways.
I don't know if I can say the same for movies though.

[edit on 30-6-2010 by hexcrass]

[edit on 30-6-2010 by hexcrass]