posted
I don't know about the U.S. but in music stores here now you usually get about 12 songs per album for $30. Back when i was a teenager (about 6 years ago) you'd get anywhere between 17 and, say, 35, for $20. But 17 was the minimum. I am honestly sick of the music industry and the complaining about illegal pirating of music. I don't need to do this because if you go to http://music.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=music and hear just about any marketed song and I don't mind buying CDs by underground bands. (which are usually better and always cheaper anyway.)
Then there's Apple who now offer something like 90c per song, but what's the point when they only stock market music and I can hear that free anyway? It's obvious these recording artists and their record companys are making more than 100% profit from their CDs.
There are many bands here (and the rest of the world, no doubt) who don't want to be marketed. They offer their music for downloading for free on their websites and make profit from show tickets and selling limited autographed CDs at shows.
So, I was wondering about your opinions on the matter. Should pirating music be made legal? Should music just be cheaper in record stores? Do the artists not have the right to complain until their CDs are cheaper? Are they sellouts? etc.
Posts: 75 | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
I don't think they can really stop it. People can still rip a CD and send it to another person through AIM or something. Most people will just want to buy the CDs they love. I'd spend 30 dollars on Japanese Dir en grey CDs yet still dl them and burn to a CD and play those instead of the original. They should make the CDs cheaper, stop picking on the people who pirate and also make the music better. Plus, people relly will pay to see them in concert and all if they really like the band. You have to admit file sharing is useful. I wouldn't even have gotten so obsessed with Dir en grey without it.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Record companies pay royalties at about 9 cents per song up to 12 songs per album. Anymore than 12 and the royalties stay the same. Which is why CD's have gotten shorter. Furthermore, the numbers the record company uses to pay royalties are often far less than the Soundscan numbers which actually tell how many of the albums have been sold. Similar weasel moves take place with the publishing rights, but bottom line is that most musicians don't get much, if anything, from album sales.
This is why they tour year round; touring pays pretty well. Also, if they have the cache they can do independent record releases and sell these CDs at their shows. This allows them to make a lot more money because it's about 8 dollars of profit per cd as opposed to $1.08 with a regular release.
The problem is if you're just starting out it's hard to build up a fan base unless you're with a major label. Of course, the internet and places like myspace are trying to change that, but it'll be a while before there're any substantial changes.
The other issue with CD prices is that there isn't really anyplace for the price to go. In the US, the total costs associated with producing, recording, and distributing a CD are around 11 bucks. So they sell from 20-14 bucks each, and there really isn't a huge markup.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Pirating should not be made legal. Antitrust exemptions should be removed from the record industry, and laws regarding required licensing should be restructured or removed (as appropriate in each case) in order to eliminate their cartel-enforcement functions.
Furthermore, copyright should be reformed so keeping it past ten or fifteen years, and again past thirty years or so, requires payment of a small fee. I suggest $500 the first time and $1000 the second (these should be raised periodically, by a bit under inflation). If you haven't seen enough profit from it or don't see enough potential profit from it after that long to cover that fee, then your copyright on the work is not an incentive to create further works. In that case, the reason for copyright stated in the Constitution is done, and the public's interest in the free flow of creativity takes over.
Interesting statistics: someone recently looked at the copyright on published books. Something like 4% of all books published in the US in the last long while (how long doesn't actually matter very much as the sheer number in recent years dominates the rest) are commercially active in a copyright sense -- new copies are being made (selling old copies of old books doesn't secure the copyright holder anything). Something like 20% of all books published in the US in the last long while are in the public domain (everything before 1923, and a few from after then, though most of those are too hard to determine whether or not they are). Everything else is in limbo. A lot of its probably copyrighted, and a lot of its probably not but impossible to verify (every search is time-consuming and expensive).
The best of those works in the public domain are made available again, and are being actively used in the creation of new works. Even many of the less important ones are being made available, typically for scholarly purposes.
The best of those works in limbo are being avoided like the plague in case a copyright holder might take offense.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I think the only things that should be allowed to be copyrighted are intellectual properties that are only distributed at no cost to the receiver (e.g. the book of mormon, the constitution, declassified government documents, etc.). That way people can no longer make profits over made up ideas and you allow complete freedom of information as long as people don't want their ideas twisted and redistrubuted.
Edit: A bit off topic, but oh well. Posts: 75 | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
Rusta: the entire point is to allow people to make profits over made up ideas (of course, from a certain point of view money is a made up idea, so we could say that copyright laws merely allow people to receive made up ideas because of other made up ideas).
If people can't make profits over made up ideas, there's little incentive to make up ideas, something this culture finds valuable. We like all the new ideas people come up with, so it makes sense to offer an incentive to come up with more.
Notably, neither of the two things you suggested there could be copyright over have any copyright over them. Both the BoM and declassified gov't docs are in the public domain.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Pirating in general should not be made legal, but the following two changes should be made to copyright laws, because the value of the change to society greatly outweighs the costs to society and to the artists in question:
(1) The length of copyright protection should be greatly shortened, and should vary by type of work based on the principal that new works are copyright protected while classic works are not. This is because the period when a work is new (the first five years or so for a song) is when the value of paying the author of that work outweighs the value of distributing the book freely in society. This is when the author has just finished producing it and needs income, and also when the work will be in high demand based on its innovative value. But in the period when the book becomes a classic, society has a much greater need to distribute it freely, and a much smaller need to continue paying the author. At that point, paying the author goes from compensating him for his past work and increasingly becomes a means to avoid having to create additional future works. Furthermore, once a work has become integrated into society and becomes a classic, it's distribution is needed for generating all sorts of related projects, ranging from teaching them in schools to integrating them into advertising to posting them on forums. Continuing to overprotect these works after this point prevents creativity by disallowing any spinoff projects related to it. What all this means is that songs should have a copyright length of maybe 5-10 years. Books should be longer at about 20 years. Movies would probably be around 15 years. We might consider adding some sort of limited rights after these points, such as giving authors of books extended special rights if their books are adapted in films.
(2) Copyright laws should be clarified to specifically declare sharing, including file sharing, to be fair use. Most types of sharing, including between friends and through libraries, are already fair use. File sharing has been an exception because the technology wasn't available until recently, and it seems similar enough to buying bootleg CDs/DVDs that people have fallen under the impression that they should be placed into the same category. We need to rectify that - file sharing is too valuable a means of distribution and maximizing the value of our music/movies/literature to simply give up the consumer's right to use those means. Artists and the industries surrounding them can, of course, decide to stop producing once we make this change - but I seriously doubt any of them will, especially those of the highest quality who tend to produce out of a passion. I have not seen any sign that art, music, film, and literature would cease being a lucrative industry if these changes were made.
If these changes are made, I think it will result in a much healthier music industry. Pop music and other massive superstars will be hurt to some degree, but other makers of quality music who would not otherwise get national attention would benefit from an easier spread of music less dominated by the recording industry. There would be a greater incentive to continue to produce quality music if the copyrights were shortened and if the top end of the superfamous had their incomes shorted some. Creativity across all areas would increase along with greater access of music and a greater ability to use the works of others. Consumers would benefit from greater access to music. The recording industry would have to change radically, but they exist to facilitate the exchange between artist and consumer - the artist and consumer don't exist to provide profit for the recording industry.
There is one industry for which this would be more problematic, though - that would be computer programming. Video games and other computer programs are extremely expensive to make, and depend entirely on selling individual copies of their program for a profit. If we took my proposals, exceptions might have to be made for that industry in particular - unless we find that effective business models can be built around giving software away, in the way that free AIM is profitable for AOL.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
When i say "made up ideas" what I mean is blatant lies, cons, etc. Fiction, for example, are lies, but they are not cons, and they are not (and here is where instead of "intellectual property" I should have said factual/ unchallegable information).
So I'll reword it myself rather than leaving the rest of you to decipher it:
I think the only things that should be allowed to be copyrighted is factual/unchallengable information only distributed at no cost to the receiver (e.g. the book of mormon, the constitution, declassified government documents, etc.). That way people can no longer make profits over blatant lies and you allow complete freedom of information as long as people don't want their ideas twisted and redistrubuted.
Okay, I've lost myself. Someone please help me work out what I mean or else just ignore this and my last thread <sigh>
Edit: Don't worry, I'll work it out, but right now I have to sleep. Please don't robut this and my previous post until I have, because I don't even believe what i said. <grin>
Posts: 75 | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
I'm pretty certain you don't know what copyright is, no offense.
Tres: what is filesharing and what is a massive file clearinghouse? First thing that happens if filesharing becomes legal is someone sets up a massive site distributing all recent music, all recent software, et cetera. This is all legal if its fair use for them to file share, and they can avoid shrink wrap license issues for software by receiving it via file sharing from others. This would massively undercut the potential markets for music and software (among other things), as there would be a central place you could go to get a fast, legal download of just about anything. The ad funding and premium services would pay for it manyfold (think software listing sites like versiontracker, only far more lucrative).
Mere overt similarity is not enough to justify filesharing as it exists today being fair use in the way that libraries or lending tapes is. Fair use is not merely dependent on the particular methods involved, but on the uses, intents, and impacts of those doing the sharing. Those are massively different for modern filesharing.
I think the remedies for most infringements in filesharing should be almost all civil, and the remedies for non-uploading filesharing should only include the costs of the songs, and that be only if the offense is particularly blatant, aggravated, or repeat. There should be a legal preference for non-monetary judgments. But filesharing is in most cases a cut-and-dried example of infringement. Fair use does not mean common use.
There are potential exceptions. There's a considerable case to be made, for instance, for allowing the distribution of broadcast TV content, particularly with ads intact. I would support some form of mandatory licensing for that, actually. The public has a larger right to the uses of the airwaves than to things distributed in theater and on DVD (for example).
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Copyright laws should be clarified to specifically declare sharing, including file sharing, to be fair use. Most types of sharing, including between friends and through libraries, are already fair use.
Yes, by "file-sharing" isn't sharing, it's copying. It is exactly akin to bootleg CDs and DVDs.
quote:here is one industry for which this would be more problematic, though - that would be computer programming. Video games and other computer programs are extremely expensive to make, and depend entirely on selling individual copies of their program for a profit.
They're not more expensive to make than movies. The only market available to movies not available to videogames is the broadcast market. Movie theaters are analogs of arcades, movie rentals are analogs of video game rentals, dvd sales are analogs of video game sales.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Tres: what is filesharing and what is a massive file clearinghouse? First thing that happens if filesharing becomes legal is someone sets up a massive site distributing all recent music, all recent software, et cetera. This is all legal if its fair use for them to file share, and they can avoid shrink wrap license issues for software by receiving it via file sharing from others. This would massively undercut the potential markets for music and software (among other things), as there would be a central place you could go to get a fast, legal download of just about anything. The ad funding and premium services would pay for it manyfold (think software listing sites like versiontracker, only far more lucrative).
Well, "filesharing" ceases to become sharing once it becomes part of any sort of business model aimed at making a profit. Then it becomes selling someone else's work.
But other than that, a fast, legal download of just about anything is exactly what we should want to promote. It is good for the consumer, and I'd predict good for the music industry in general. It would massively undercut only one particular market of the music industry, and that would be the market for electronic personal copies of music. But that particular market has only been around about 50-80 years, far shorter than the music industry in general has existed - and the music industry will continue to survive without it. It should be noted that the sale of CDs or records has only rarely caused a particular artist to begin producing great music. Rather, typically an artist begins to produce quality music through performances, and is only afterward tapped to being producing CDs, once he or she begins to become well-known. And I've noticed that those exceptions that were originally created explicitly to sell CDs (the boy bands, the pop stars, etc.) often produce music of a lower quality. (That's just an opinion, of course, not a fact.)
And the thing is, if I'm wrong on this and music production does significantly drop after these changes were made, we always have the option of changing the law back to promote a higher degree of protection again. There's not really much unreversable risk of permanently hurting music by trying a change like this.
quote:Yes, by "file-sharing" isn't sharing, it's copying. It is exactly akin to bootleg CDs and DVDs.
No, bootleg CDs and DVDs are an attempt to make a profit off someone else's work. File-sharing, if it is really file-sharing, is not an attempt to profit, so they are not really akin. File-sharing is more appropriately akin to letting a friend listen to your music or going to the library to check out a book, only doing so far far more efficiently.
quote:Movie theaters are analogs of arcades, movie rentals are analogs of video game rentals, dvd sales are analogs of video game sales.
Movie theaters are not analogs of arcades because movie theaters are both tremendously popular and profitable to movie-producers, while arcades are not. DVDs and television has not stopped the profitability of releasing movies in theaters, and accordingly I don't see much reason to think file-sharing would do so any more. The experience of watching a movie in a theater just cannot be replicated by watching it on a computer or TV.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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quote:Well, "filesharing" ceases to become sharing once it becomes part of any sort of business model aimed at making a profit. Then it becomes selling someone else's work.
Wrong. Just flat out wrong. The essence of sharing a nonconsumable good is that the sharer is denied use of the object being shared while the sharer is using it. Files aren't shared - they are copied. The file I download isn't the same file that was on the server - it's a new file. Whether there is a profit motive is irrelevant.
quote:But other than that, a fast, legal download of just about anything is exactly what we should want to promote. It is good for the consumer, and I'd predict good for the music industry in general.
Be that as it may, it's not your decision, and it falls under no definition of fair use that has ever been approved by the courts. A use which totally replaces the market is not fair.
quote:It would massively undercut only one particular market of the music industry, and that would be the market for electronic personal copies of music. But that particular market has only been around about 50-80 years, far shorter than the music industry in general has existed - and the music industry will continue to survive without it. It should be noted that the sale of CDs or records has only rarely caused a particular artist to begin producing great music. Rather, typically an artist begins to produce quality music through performances, and is only afterward tapped to being producing CDs, once he or she begins to become well-known.
Performers are not the only ones that lose out: composers and lyricists do, too. Nor does the relative newness of the medium matter to the analysis at all.
quote:No, bootleg CDs and DVDs are an attempt to make a profit off someone else's work. File-sharing, if it is really file-sharing, is not an attempt to profit. File-sharing is more appropriately akin to letting a friend listen to your music or going to the library to check out a book, only doing so far far more efficiently.
Wrong again. My copying a CD for a friend would be bootlegging. Checking out a CD is the same as checking out a book. Downloading a file is the same as photocopying the book, except there's no loss in quality.
Again, the key difference between "sharing" and "copying" is whether the song can be played more than once simultaneously.
quote:Movie theaters are not analogs of arcades because movie theaters are both tremendously popular and profitable to movie-producers, while arcades are not.
Profitability isn't the relevant factor here.
quote:DVDs and television has not stopped the profitability of releasing movies in theaters, and accordingly I don't see much reason to think file-sharing would do so any more. The experience of watching a movie in a theater just cannot be replicated by watching it on a computer or TV.
But file sharing will infringe on DVD sales. It exactly replaces the need for purchasing a DVD.
You've yet to articulate any principle other than you seeming to think the authors have made "enough" and therefore aren't eligible for copyright protection. In doing so, you've ignored the parts of the market that file "sharing" actually competes with.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I think it's more like copying a CD on a tape for a friend or copying from the radio than bootlegging. The quality goes down a bit, even at 320 bitrate and one isn't making a profit from it too. Bootlegging makes me think of people who sell bad copies of movies made in the movie theatre with people coughing and CDs that have missing tracks or something for about 2 dollars.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Syn, I agree there are differences between running a for-profit operation and copying for a friend. But my principle disagreement with Tres is over calling it file-sharing.
One big difference is that 320 bit rate MP3s can be recopied many times with no loss of quality, while a taped copy cannot.
But, as you said, it's like copying, not sharing.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:The essence of sharing a nonconsumable good is that the sharer is denied use of the object being shared while the sharer is using it.
No, the best sharing is when both people can use it at once. For instance, when two schoolchildren are reading out of the same textbook in school, they are sharing the book. If 1,000 kids could read out of the same textbook, they'd still be sharing.
quote:Nor does the relative newness of the medium matter to the analysis at all.
The newness of the market does matter, insofar as it suggests that music was produced long before the CD market existed, and thus would not cease to be produced if the CD market were gone.
quote:You've yet to articulate any principle other than you seeming to think the authors have made "enough" and therefore aren't eligible for copyright protection.
Isn't that the whole idea behind a copyright law, though? We give creators "enough" rights to motivate them to continue to producing. They aren't entitled to more than that, any more than any person in our capitalist system is entitled to more for their job than it would take to entice them to perform that job. (This is supposedly the point at which labor supply for a given industry is equal to labor demand, at least if you believe traditional economics.) I would like to be paid more for my job, but I'm not entitled to it, unless the amount I'm being paid is so low that it is no longer profitable for me to do it, and unless no one capable is willing to do it for less than I am.
I haven't ignored the parts of the market that filesharing would hurt. I'm simply saying that those parts of the markets aren't necessary for the continued production of good music. We, as the voters who are deciding upon the economic system we allow in this country, have good reason to get rid of those markets and set up more efficient ones. Again, there's no tenet in a capitalist system that says a given market must continue to exist if it is no longer as efficient as other means of meeting a given demand. New technologies alter or even totally eliminate old markets all the time, as the makers of VCRs can now testify to.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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quote:No, the best sharing is when both people can use it at once. For instance, when two schoolchildren are reading out of the same textbook in school, they are sharing the book. If 1,000 kids could read out of the same textbook, they'd still be sharing.
But, in this case, each student is reading out of their own textbooks - and all but one are copies. It's not sharing.
quote:The newness of the market does matter, insofar as it suggests that music was producted long before the CD market existed, and thus would not cease to be produced if the CD market were gone.
Works of literature were produced before the printing press, and thus would not cease to be produced if the printed book market were gone.
But would the selection be as large?
quote:Isn't that the whole idea behind a copyright law, though? We give creators "enough" rights to motivate them to continue to producing.
Sure. The next sentence in my post is rather relevant to the one you quoted here.
quote:I haven't ignored the parts of the market that filesharing would hurt. I'm simply saying that those parts of the markets aren't necessary for the continued production of good music.
And you've got no basis for saying that other than pure guesswork. And rather shoddy guesswork at that. It's one thing to say that file-sharing won't impact sales. But if, as part of that case, you're badly mischaracterizing what file-sharing actually is, you're not making a sound argument.
quote:New technologies alter or even totally eliminate old markets all the time, as the makers of VCRs can now testify to.
Right. But you're not eliminating a market here. You're taking the market and declaring all the goods in it to be public domain.
That's the difference. DVDs replaced VHS tapes. But they didn't replace the market for permanent, portable copies of movies.
Downloads may replace DVDs in the same way. And if we were allowing one market to replace another, the market for downloads would gradually supplant the market for DVDs.
If you suddenly make downloads free, however, you aren't replacing one market with another. You're replacing one market with a giveaway.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Okay to reiterate my points on copyrighting, suppose these only applied to musicians, comedians and general performers that sell their "art" after their shows. In this event, the products are not just given away. They get the majority, if not all, of the profits for their product and if they hire people to help them do this then we could have a sort of micro music industry.
Posts: 75 | Registered: Oct 2005
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quote:But, in this case, each student is reading out of their own textbooks - and all but one are copies. It's not sharing.
No, I mean 1,000 kids reading out of the same single textbook - as in all reading over the shoulder of the one kid that owns it. That is sharing one book among 1,000 kids.
quote:You're taking the market and declaring all the goods in it to be public domain.
A giveaway is a sort of market. Sort of like how the market of free online mapping services (mapquest, etc.) is more or less eliminating the general market for simple mapping software.
Keep in mind, we are talking about a market that is propped up by laws we created and can choose to alter. Altering it to allow file sharing is one way of opening up a new sort of market that would compete with the CD market. If it will get us the same music more efficiently, at a lower cost, and with greater overall benefits, we should alter the law to allow it. Conversely, if it would hurt the music industry enough to make the costs outweigh the benefits, we should keep the law as it is. I don't believe that will happen though.
Yes, this is just to some degree guesswork, as are claims that these changes would destroy the music industry. We haven't tried it so we can't really know for sure what will happen. But if we do try it and it fails, we can go back. If we don't try it, then we are stuck to some degree.
I will say, though, that I suspect this will come eventually through market forces even if we don't alter the law. Consumers have an incentive to belong to whatever free services are available, and young artists have an incentive to make their material as widely distributed as possible. Thus some free downloading of music will come about. And as these services become more popular among users, more and more well-known artists will be encouraged to offer their songs for free via these networks to gain popularity - just as they are now encouraged to put their songs in the biggest retail chains, on the most popular radio stations, and on the most watched TV channels. Eventually, such free services will compete with and draw customers from for-pay services. If artists really can afford to produce music, distribute it for free online, and make money through concerts, etc., then in time I suspect they will be forced to join free networks in order to remain competitive, and thus for-pay services will lose out. This could be completely altered, though, if recording companies can use their considerable market power to prevent this from happening. And it would also take quite a long time I think.
But this is the value of market-driven capitalism: There is a strong tendency towards the most efficient means of producing and consuming goods.
posted
Almost all digital music distribution is a natural monopoly, and more efficient regulated.
One form of regulation (oddly enough) that removes the social inefficiencies of monopoly is subsidy; this is effectively what copyright is for digital music and software (there's a case that its not working very well in the case of certain software, but that's a topic for another time; for most software its working just fine). Undermining copyright's role in distribution will only reintroduce market inefficiencies. Right now filesharing does not have this effect nearly as much because there are hidden costs associated with downloading that would not exist were it legal.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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