No defence for 'stealing' music
So were you among the 800 people to receive a letter from Virgin Media and the BPI about downloading music from file-sharing sites?
The two companies have started their education campaign to try and stop people from using tools like Limewire and BitTorrent to share copyright songs.
It's supposed to be a softly-softly approach but Virgin has done itself no favours by putting the letters in an envelope marked "If you don't read this, your broadband could be disconnected."
That was a mistake, says Virgin.
No-one's threatening legal action yet, but the BPI have made clear time and time again that the hammer remains poised to be brought down hard on the most persistent offenders.
This issue always attracts a lot of debate. It's one I've been following since the early days of Napster.
It's a complicated debate, wrapped up as it is in notions of intellectual property rights, copyright, consumer rights, consumer expectations, the changing music landscape, the revolution in digital distribution.
I've heard a lot of rhetoric from both sides and the arguments of those who defend their use of file-sharing sites tend to be:
•Music is too expensive
• I download music for free to get a taste and then buy the album
• Downloading some songs for free encourages me to buy more music overall
• The entire structure of the music industry is just flawed beyond repair
• The music industry is making enough money already
• The copyright laws need to be overhauled for the 21st Century
I've probably missed a few off. But I have to say that to my mind not one of those arguments is justification for stealing. I actually agree with some of the points and over the years have also felt frustrated by the attitude of record firms. But is that a reason to steal?
And I'll be very honest here. I have used file-sharing sites myself in the past to download music. About six years ago I used Napster and Audio Galaxy to download songs without paying.
What were my reasons? At the time, curiosity and simplicity.
I stopped because it was clear I was breaking the law. I was wrong to do it. I have long since deleted those songs.
The music industry was slow to wake up to the digital revolution. It did spend too long embracing out-moded models of production, distribution and consumption.
And there remain major issues around digital rights management and legitimate digital content:
• DRM frustrates many consumers and imposes often ludicrous restrictions
• Audio quality on many digital downloads is laughably poor
And the music industry's tactic of identifying IP addresses of those machines that are file-sharing tracks without permission and then passing them on to the ISP which operates those IP addresses, is not without flaw itself.
Anyone with a wireless network could probably argue, with justification, that there is no way to definitively prove that the download took place on a machine they owned.
But is any of that a reason to steal? Is it?
UPDATE: A few people have questioned my use of the word stealing. Arguing that it is copyright infringement and not stealing. There may be a point here but to my mind this is semantics. It's a bit like breaking into a car, driving it around and then abandoing it. I believe it's called Taking Without Consent in legal parlance. Stealing to everybody else.
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So, do you legally own a licence for every single music file on your computer?
It appears that the music industry focuses all its energy into people that dowload music from strangers, and never even mention people that plug their external hard drive into their mates' computers and copy the entire "Music" folder over...
... or who borrow a CD off a mate and accidentially click Rip instead of Play...
(Maybe I shouldn't have just alerted the BPI to that... oh crumbs...)
Whilst I agree the artists and promoters do deserve pay for their efforts, this should come from live performances and other endorsements such as use of the music in official media, such as adverts, documentaries etc...
The music industry has become far too much of a commercial product, rather than an art form. Go into a studio, plug in Casio® keyboard, sing lyrics composed by someone else, have voice track edited on computer to make it sound in tune, package, sell, make profit....
... rather than the recorded version being a small part of the picture - in the good old days (or maybe just an ideal world?) music is about people playing musical instruments and standing on a stage performing to people. Musicians should spend more time doing THAT, rather than creating a manufactured and cellophaned product in a studio owned by a fat cat in an Armani suit.
A model where people don't pay for the music tracks is a superb one, and it doesn't have to be one where the musicians get zilch, either.
If you buy an iPod or other portable music player, and it says "wahey, you can fit 10,000 songs on this baby!!", then stop and do the maths.... 10,000 x 79p is £7,900..... who on EARTH is going to spend that much on music to fill up their music player??? Most of it'll be "free" or "borrowed" from a friend.
Having 10,000 songs is great (apparently, someone's told me... I of course don't....ahem), being able to have instant access to pretty much any song you want, any time... great for parties, blah blah blah...... and this is something of course I'd happily pay for, but not almost ten thousand pounds thank you very much....... I'd happily go and see my favourite band twice a year..... in fact whilst living out of the UK I flew back twice in one year to see Muse at the MEN and then at Wembley....
So I'll pay for music, but not per track!
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@Paul Freeman-Powell I think you raise a crucial point. Per track payments, I think, are doomed long term.
The next battleground is the rights we get when we buy a license for as much music as we want to consume.
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I find it hard to believe you are the Saint you make yourself out to be, but wont focus on that aspect.
The music industry is greedy and on a power trip.
I used to listen to Pandora until they banned it in the UK due to licensing laws. Unless they can make money out of any which way we choose to listen to music, they will do their utmost to stop us.
I'm suprised they haven't built giant domes over Reading or Glastonbury festival yet, so none of the sound can be heard by anyone who hasn't splashed out Hundreds of pounds on a ticket.
I own a lot of CD's and legally downloaded music, I am happy to support the bands I enjoy. But how am I supposed to find new artists if I can't listen to them without getting my wallet out (which will never happen).
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Oh... and another thing - I've made this point before but it's relevant again now... stealing is only stealing, I would think, if it actually negatively effects the other party, and takes something from them.
I totally reject the idea that downloading an MP3 is just like walking into HMV and emptying the shelf of CDs into my bag.
Imagine Joe Bloggs turns on his computer and downloads a few songs one day. He downloads 50 songs that he quite likes and will listen to a lot.
I reckon 9 times out of 10, Joe Bloggs only downloaded those tracks because he could, for free. If that option wasn't there, he would have just done without them, because he didn't want them that much that he was going to pay forty quid for 50 tracks.
So, to tally up...
---- Scenario One ----
Joe Bloggs downloads the tracks and pays nothing for them.
Profit for the record company: ZERO
(But with the potential for additional profit because listening to those tracks turns Joe into an uber-fan, and he ends up going to all the concerts, paying lots of money to the record company).
---- Scenario Two ----
"Free" music downloading doesn't happen in this world, so Joe Bloggs doesn't download the songs. He still doesn't buy them, though, because he doesn't fancy spending £40, because he's a student, his loan only just covers his rented flat and he has to buy food at his weekly ASDA shopping trip. So he just does without, and listens to the radio instead.
Profit for the record company: ZERO
Oh look... the profit for the record companies was exactly the same both times.... therefore NO DIFFERENCE to their profits.
Losses to record companies due to music downloading: ZERO (or very close to Zero!!)
Statistics can say what you want them to say, and the BPI seem to assume that every downloaded song takes the place of a song that would otherwise have been paid for. That's just not true!
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What about the 90% of music that the record companies sell to the public completely DRM free?
Yes, the humble Compact Disc. Excellent quality, no DRM, easy to copy.
Maybe if prices were reduced, people would stop downloading, but that will never happen, because the music industry are greedy barons.
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@Paul Freeman-Powell Radio is free for listeners but a license has still been paid to play that music. The radio station pays it.
The music isn't free.
@twelveeightone Not sure I see your point. Yes, you can buy CDs. Yes, you can buy downloads. It's a choice.
And you know, there's nothing wrong with wanting to make a profit!
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I can't remember where I saw it (which is a real pain as I'd love to cite my source), but I'm positive I saw a report which showed that people who download music via nefarious means actually spend MORE on compact discs, concerts etc.
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@darrenwaters Yes, i'm aware that radio stations pay royalties, which is akin to the model i was referring to in my first post (official uses such as adverts, documentaries and i should have said radio stations and music channels too...)
free for listeners was the main point there :)
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This is a particularly emotive issue and I will admit to being on both sides of the law, for instance I was a big fan of iTunes regularly paying up for albums which in the end I regret - the quality was ok on my iPod but try listening to those same files burned to a disc on any mid-range system and the quality is shocking not to mention the DRM which effectively rendered my music collection purchases from iTunes obsolete as I no longer use iTunes or own an iPod. DRM is without any shadow of doubt in my mind an anti-consumer technology.
I do agree with many of the comments posted above regarding the music industries obsession with making vast amounts of money using an old business model.
That said there are some record labels which acknowledge the need to change, eMusic for example is stocked up with music in MP3 format from mostly independent labels. eMusic has what I consider a fair pricing policy, a set fee per month for a set number of tracks - the problem with services such as eMusic is that many of the big names in the industry are not participating because they want to make more profits than the business model eMusic employs will generate... that and the concept of music being sold without any controls.
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I'm with Paul Freeman-Powell on this one. I too don't have a single illegally downloaded MP3, video or game on my system so I feel I can argue on fair ground.
Copyright infringement is NOT stealing. You've clearly been indoctrinated by watching those idiotic "PIRACY IS STEALING" ads before DVDs and the cinema. Legally they are completely different.
Morally, stealing deprives someone of something and copyright infringement does not. If I download an MP3 by Britney Spears then what has she lost by my download? A *potential* sale. In fact, as you hint to above, it may be that I never buy that song but do buy her next album as a result.
What you seem to be missing out on is that the music industry doesn't dislike downloading because it means they lose money, they dislike it because it lowers the barrier of entry to the marketplace. When someone can just stick their MP3 onto the net and have the world download it for free it gives them a great level of publicity and exposure that they couldn't get 20 years ago.
Notice that those getting enraged by the downloading are not the musicians but the labels. Some musicians go as far as to openly say "download my music". In these huge lawsuits and payouts in the US none of the proceeds go to the musicians. It goes in the pockets of the RIAA executives.
Wake up and smell the mustard. The music industry isn't dying just the mainline record labels are making less money because they don't want to distribute music for a price and in a fashion that people want to get it and prefer to sue than actively change their business model.
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I'm interested to know if you have purchased all the songs on your PC or MP3 player from legal download sites? Or have you copied any CD's on to your computer?
It is in fact against UK copyright law to copy a CD to your computer or MP3 player!! I doubt there is a single person waling around the UK with an MP3 player with no CD copied on to it.
Does this mean the BMI will start to take action against Apple, Microsoft and the hundred other companies that product CD ripping software??
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Of course these are not justifiable reasons for stealing. That is why I don't do it, neither do I buy music anymore, as it is still way overpriced.
However there is no doubt that without the masses of music piracy out there has been a great thing for the average consumer. Without it we would probably be staring down the barrel of 20 quid albums.
At least the music industry is being forced to get itself into gear. There is no doubt that they are still way behind the times, and I wonder if they have the desire to ever catch up. Why should the consumer suffer and not get forward thinking technology just because the greedy record companies own the copyrights?
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Is it available on the net?
Can I download it free of charge?
The only way to stop this problem is to make it not available on the net.
Until then, I will carry on downloading whatever I want, when I want, as long as it is available on the net, through whichever ISP I choose.
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@Pyson1970 I believe the BPI has made clear they will take no action against people who copy their CDs to their computer or iPod.
Although their attempt to engender an iPod tax was a mistake.
@ALL The issue of stealing versus coyright infringement to my mind is semantics. It's a bit like breaking into a car, driving it around and then abandoing it. I believe it's called Taking Without Consent in legal parlance.
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For me there are two issues here. One is the determination of the music industry to resist changes to it's structure. We are dealing with a group of organisations who rather than embracing digital music orginally tried to stop CDs from being played on PCs to prevent them being copied. This demonstrated the extent to which they value the consumer and established their attitude for the years that followed.
People like Peter Gabriel have realised the potential for digital music and has developed a system where downloading music is free but contains an advert where is played before the song for a finite number of time before being removed yet this is the exception rather than the rule.
File sharing will not stop just because the BPI has found a way to combat the current trend. Digital music over the internet was a paradigm shift and we cannot go back to what we had before. Newer file sharing systems replace older file sharing systems and people will continue to SHARE (note I used share not steal - is it stealing if someone gives me a football ticket they have paid for?) music regardless of any measure employed by the BPI. Remember this is the same organisation that wishes to stop bands from giving away albums with Sunday papers in case it affects the opportunity to line their pockets
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I'd love to download music but want to make sure that I'll be able to use it in future, I only want to pay once so abhor DRM for not rental items.
However I will never steal. Just because a CD is a physical object the profits are still all about the content so I don't see the difference between not paying in HMV or not paying online.
Over the years I have a smallish music collection of about 4000 tracks all of which are legally bought and (maybe not so legally) ripped to the computer which probably equates to a £2000 investment. It's probably right that I wouldn't go out and spend £2000 on music just to fill up an iPOD but then I don't think I would know 4000 tracks that I would want to listen to without having spent a number of years deciding what to buy.
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> Anyone with a wireless network could probably argue, with justification, that there is no way to definitively prove that the download took place on a machine they owned.
This argument just doesn't wash. If you have wireless network and you have NOT protected access to it by either of the standard mechanisms then surely you have to be prepared for that type of attention: imagine if someone in the street used the network to download (say) child porn: you would be getting far more intrusive and public attention when the police turned up.
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I cannot see why an album that is over , say, 5 years old should still be charged full price on a CD, thats just the record companies rip off!
Secondly, if instead of chasing naughty people for downloading free music maybe the BPI should get its act together and give us in the UK the same opportunities to buy music on-line as they have in the USA. So many times I have tried to buy a track and find I cannot because I live in the wrong place! When you cannot buy it legally of course people will look elsewhere!
The record companies complain of piracy but deny the right to legal downloads because of antiquated copyright rules.
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Please stop using the word "stealing". Copying music is not stealing - it is copyright infringement. There is a big difference.
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"stealing music"?
The legal definition of theft is to take with intention to permanently deprive.
Could Darren Waters explain how downloading - i.e creating an additional copy of a song - permanantly deprives its owner of that song?
Clearly he has not thought through his own arguments and instead prefers to propogate the same illogical arguments the industry use to justify their own profit grabbing immorality.
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@#11 Psyon1970. That's not my understanding of the law at all. I believe it is legal to copy a CD or DVD (for which you've paid) to your PC or MP3 player. When you buy the CD you buy the right to copy it to different formats for your own personal use. But you don't buy the right to distribute it to others.
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You know in 2007 the number of legal singles sales was higher than ever before? Due to the number of people paying to download tracks. And the biggest-ever year for albums was 2004. Industry's own figures. Downloading bootlegs is NOT decimating the market, it is IMPROVING it. Perhaps the BPI ought to spend more money on an education campaign to its members suggesting they don't waste £110,000,000 on Mariah Carey and Robbie Williams.
Most of the "illegally" downloaded stuff is by people who would never have purchased the song in any event. It's not losings sales. Look at Trent Reznor's thing - mate of his sells 20,000 albums, no-one will release the follow-up, Reznor releases it free from his website, with a better-quality version available for purchase. Result? 20,000 sales. Plus another 100,000 downloading it free to check it out. Artist reaches a larger market but keeps his sales level. And receives a larger royalty.
On top of that is the spread of live shows which would never be commercially available. I'd be happy to pay for proper show recordings, plugged into the sound-desk, after all it wouldn't cost much to upload it onto a band's website. But does the industry do this? So the only alternative is bittorrent.
As it is, the BPI wants ISPs to shut people's access to their friends, their bank accounts, their utility providers, their entire digital lives and have a gigantic impact on their REAL lives, without actually bothering to bring a proper legal case themselves to prove what the person is doing is wrong. It's repugnant in the extreme. And cowardly.
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If people are to start downloading music legally, then the fat cats need to sort out a well working and cost effective way of convincing us to do it.
1) at 70p a song, it can work out more expensive to download an album than to actually buy one.
2) I once went to download an album, and worked out that if I downloaded each song individually, I saved £2.30 compared to downloading the album as a whole. How many people were ripped off in that process?
I think most of it is the music companies trying to cover up their poor pricing. They don't see it that they are charging far too much, and that is exactly why people are using file sharers to download music
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Darren,
Please stop perpetuating the music industry myth that copyright infringement = stealing.
Theft and copyright infringement are two very different things, both legally and morally. While I can understand why the music industry likes to equate the two - "theft" sounds much more emotive than "copyright infringement" after all - it's wrong, misleading and undermines the real crime that stealing is.
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The semantics between copyright infringement and stealing is stealing is taking a physical object where as copyright infringement is the reproduction of an idea or concept.
The music industry in america didnt do any favours in the battle to respect copyright however when it was discovered the RIAA were using illegally cracked software.
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I had to sign up to post this, since your rant couldn't stand without clarification.
It is not stealing.
NOT. STEALING.
call it what you will, but duplicating bits involves no loss of content.
It's also not piracy - that involves ships, and normally some amount of violence.
As soon as the mass media stops pushing the music industry agenda (including the brainwashing as to how we should distribute and view content in a digital medium) then maybe - just maybe - people might start listening to you. Of course, it's easier to just sit back there and pretend you're on the "right side" isn't it?
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There's a big difference between stealing and copyright infringement the last time I checked, one was a Civil matter where you could be sued by a person or company for financial loss, the other is a criminal matter which a person can be jailed and is dealt with by the state.
My understanding is copyright infringement doesn't become a criminal matter unless it's being done for commercial gain, your average Joe Bloggs who leaves a torrent window open after a download is done isn't financially in any way. Imagine, if you will, if the lobby groups managed to move the act of copyright infringement from the civil court to the criminal court, our already overburdened with paperwork police force would be swamped!
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"@ALL The issue of stealing versus coyright infringement to my mind is semantics. It's a bit like breaking into a car, driving it around and then abandoing it. I believe it's called Taking Without Consent in legal parlance."
No it isn't, if you take someone's car they are negatively effected. You contribute to the wear and tear of the components (every mile you drive the car is an extra mile on the clock and a mile closer to breakdown). The person is also prevented from using the car when you are using it.
Downloading the music is actually the equivalent of someone using a magic cloning machine to make an identical copy of your car and driving that around. Ford would probably be a bit annoyed, and if someone did it without my permission so would I (I paid good money for the car).
However, if the person who did this wasn't going to buy the car (they couldn't afford it, only wanted to go on a test drive etc.) have either of us lost out?
Of course "Ford" would also have access to that magical cloning machine which would decrease the costs of making their car meaning they make more profit selling the car to those who planned to buy it.
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Until places like iTunes (which I used to download a LOT from) allows you to download without any sort of DRM and in more than the pathetic 128kbps (bearing mind a song ripped from a CD at 'lossless' quality will be around 1000 or so), the record industry will have a problem.
I am in the process of rebuilding my entire music library as I can't play anything downloaded from iTunes on my Wireless Network Music player, and all that does is stream music from my computer to my stereo!
Why is it that I can buy a CD and do whatever the hell I like with it (including as someone has mentioned, lend it to any number of friends) but as soon as I buy an album online for basically the same price (knocking off the cost of the packaging it's probably even more expensive) its completely locked down!
Rubbish. People will continue to download illegally until there's a reasonable alternative.
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People seem to be focusing record companies/artists having too much money but the money that is made for the million selling acts goes back into all the other bands that labels sign which go nowhere. It costs a small fortune to get a band to the point of releasing a record and now that margins are much, much smaller, labels are no longer taking chances. This goes some way to explain the lack of diverse acts that there has been in the past.
Yes, it is cheaper to record these days but even if a new band does record its own music, there is no way they can afford to promote and distribute it.
As for the argument that artists should make their money from live performance: If no one has heard of a group and there are no sales, what promoter is going to take a chance on them?
It goes round and round and will kill off music as we know it.
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Lest we forget, the anti-piracy ads shown on DVDs and in the cinema:
* You wouldn't steal a mobile phone/car/handbag... mp3? Yes, that's clearly the same issue.
* Piracy feeds terrorism. Oh boy, the image of a cackling Osama Bin Laden sitting on a heap of counterfeit DVDs, working his diabolical masterplan of media piracy against the west, is just too chilling.
* Piracy hurts artists. Yes, I'm sure it does under the current system, but it hurts record labels first, and harder. And that's something I have limited sympathy for...
Currently an alternative distribution system is emerging. It's in a clumsy prototype form, and isn 't yet ready to take on the record labels directly, but it's growing. It's Myspace and other networking sites, which allow artists to distribute their music directly with a reduced dependency on established recording labels. Perhaps this will cause job losses in the music industry one day. Well, they can sympathise with red flag men.
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And just to expand on my earlier point, theft is very clearly defined as a criminal offence for which you can be arrested, charged and fined / imprisoned.
Copyright infringement is a civil matter between two parties and has a very different legal defintion to "theft".
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@ exiled_tyke
Ok, i like that scenario - i've bought a CD, it works, so i've chucked out the receipt. I copy the files to my hard drive so i can put them on my ipod, and then, being the generous sould i am, i give the CD to a charity shop, or to a friend. I no longer own the CD, but i own the music. Is that wrong?
And regarding downloads - how can the record company prove that you haven't got in touch with the person you were planning to download something from, and got their consent? If you did that, then surely it's no different to borrowing a CD off a friend? In which case there's no way they can police the legalities of that.
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Your example isnt valid unfortunatly. The main thing about "stealing" is that you are depriving the rightfull owner of the "item". Taking away it's use and value.
In the case of the car, the original user dosent have access to it, and becomes liable to any laws you break while driving it.
If you download a song, you are copying it. The original is unaffected. This is why if You walk into a shop and take the item off the shelf and walk out with it, it's stealing. You have taken an item of value. Copying a song is breach of copyright, as you have only withheld payment of royaltys.
A better example i think is the following:
You walk into a book shop. You take a cook of the shelf and photocopy it. You then put the book back on the shelf (undamaged) and walk out with the photo copy. Now, have you stolen the book?
In my opinion, no. But you have breached it's copyright....
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Thank you Virgin Media for pointing out to me that I am doing wrong in downloading music that has been made available to the whole world on the internet. Do you really mean that if everyone using your service were to do so, then they would be cut off, and you would be prepared to lose this business? If I walk along the street and find a pile of money, pick it up and spend it am I doing wrong, and I should have left it there? I think you have your priorities wrong here - is it not the person who makes the music available for download who is doing an illegal act - read the copyright notice on records next time you buy one.
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I'm actually buying more 'legitimate' CDs now then I did before I could download tracks to see what they were like.
That's not just one or two more either, I've bought dozens this way in the last 2 years alone. If they don't want me to listen to a track before I buy it then it obviously isn't that good and they know it, and let's not forget the industries wonderful idea of discontinuing certain CDs after a few years so that you physically CANNOT buy them, what alternative is there aside from file-sharing networks then?
As for the 'piracy is theft' campaign, I'm actually sick of hearing/seeing the same patronising message all the time, which in turn means I care even less than I would without the ads.
As for downloading movies...if they were released at the same time in all countries you'd pretty much wipe out the movie downloads industry in an instant.
Downloading TV programmes is similar, if the stupid network bosses stopped cancelling shows mid season, or changing the schedule every week, and released them on DVD for a reasonable price (especially the BBC who sell the DVDs of programmes we've already paid to produce!) there wouldn't be a niche for sites like Surf The Channel.
The industry needs to take a good long look at the causes of 'piracy' because in my experience 9/10 times the fault is that the industries have forgotten that the customer is king in ANY business.
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It's interesting reading general opinion on this blog and many others across the web where many view the Music Industry with distain attempting to justify their illegal downloading habits.
Yes record companies may be greedy, yes they may need to rethink their methods for future markets and distribution. Maybe they've already missed the boat but stealing music, both physically or digital copying is simply not legal or moral. We?ve developed a global culture which suggests consumers are the victims and so are entitled to only pay what we want for music. This simple doesn?t work as proven by recent experiments and can only be detrimental to artists we steal from.
Nowadays I use iTunes. It has its faults but there are many new alternatives offering DRM free tracks. More competition can only be better for consumers.
I?m tired of hearing the same excuses. I myself have downloaded illegally in the past, mainly when Kazza and Audio Galaxy were in full swing with all my peers were doing the same. It was normal. I still have friends who laugh at the idea of me actually paying money for music, but I find that sad. Why do people think it?s perfectly normal and acceptable? It reminds me of that rather annoying anti-piracy ad shown on the start of many dvd?s. You wouldn?t walk into HMV and steel a single so why is it different online.
I personally think it?s because it?s simple, it?s easy and people know they can get away with it without getting caught. I don?t applaud invasion of piracy or ISPs withdrawing service but there is no doubt that something needs to be done for people to take illegally downloading music seriously.
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Would all these people who steal music from the Internet be as carefree about going into stores and shoplifting? - because that's all it is- electronic shoplifting.
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It's the excuses/justifications that people use that wind me up more than anything:
-If I like it I might buy it later
-I'd just be lining the pockets of the "fat cats"
-CD's cost too much
These people are just downloading illegally because they can.
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Your abandoned car analogy is absurd. An act that would be analogous to digital copying of music would be building your own car based on the specifications of the car in question.
Your scenario is only analogous to physically robbing an album from a shop and throwing it in a ditch.
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I have fundamental concerns with this approach. I drop a letter in the Post Box and trust Royal Mail to deliver our Post. I do not expect Royal Mail to open my letter, read the content and judge if it is illegal, illicit, inflammatory or immoral. If we are happy with the approach to mail being delivered this way, why then, does Virgin Media think it is appropriate for them to snoop and analyse the content of the data that I download or upload?
I agree copyright should be protected. But before we speak of copyright protection, please ensure privacy of individuals!!
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This is not stealing. As someone else pointed out, someone would have originally bought the song and then shared it over the internet. So it is against copyright law but I am not stealing as someone is providing their copy of the song to be downloaded.
The BPI (and others) constantly claim that 'illegal' file sharing deprives up and coming acts of money but it is the big acts and the hit songs that are being downloaded, not the acts struggling to make a living. I feel absolutely no guilt in downloading for free a song by an artist who is worth millions. It is all about greed and money on the part of the record industry.
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It does make me laugh. As someone said earlier, how can they justify charging £7 for an album that I could pick up in Virgin Megastores for £2 in the bargain aisle.
What also makes me laugh is the way the companies are making it look like they are the victims. It's pure greed. These companies are making BILLIONS a year, yet complain that we wonna save ourselves some dosh (considering the rate of inflations at the moment).
They want to bring in these measures in order to make more money, but once they have us, the consumer, will not get any benefit out of it!
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How arrogant can you get?
People point out that your terminology is wrong, and then you pick a totally spurious example as a way to straw-man your argument into some semblance of legitimacy. For shame. One would expect more from the BBC.
Have you even thought past the impact of how this kind of activity will affect people when technology makes this a feasible approach to media other than movies and music? Physical replication (like RepRap) is going to prove that your argument is utterly, utterly wrong. Open your eyes.
There's nothing wrong with people expecting money for providing goods or services, but preaching that we all somehow owe the record and movie industries an indefinate revenue stream because they were the first people to make a copy of something just beggars belief.
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Also, who is it that REALLY is in the wrong? Is it the person who download it, or the person who puts it up for download?
IMO, I think it's the person that puts it up for download. Arent they the person who is actually breaking the copywrite law, and not the downloader?
Perhaps the companies should turn their attention to thsose people...
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"It's a bit like breaking into a car, driving it around and then abandoing it."
I have to agree with Mark_WE here, this is clearly a very flawed analogy.
Downloading software affects the potential profit that a record label can make from a song.
Other than that I'm sure it doesn't hurt the record label that this song is get more publicly know as it also increases the potential market for the music by having more people hear it.
Breaking into a car, stealing it, driving it around and abandoning it on the other hand causes emotional and financial stress to the person who's car it was, it also causes them loss of time because they have to deal with insurance agencies and the police.
It's not even taking without consent, because once a downloaded copy is made the original doesn't magically disapeer.
I wouldn't normally object but it was such a sensationalist (and flawed) analogy to make that I really feel it doesn't do justice to the BBC brand.
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Working for the BBC website writing articles must get you quite a bit of money so bitching about something that you can afford has no impact on society.
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Absolutely ridiculous, you do what you want Darren but I'll be downloading movies, songs, games for however long I like. It's stealing..... so what? What's the big deal? Hope the music industry continues to screw you over and I'll get everything for free.
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I don't know about in this country, but in many countries, DRM is also against the law, as the track has been mis-sold.
You've ended up paying the right to have it on 4/6 computers, but don't actually own it.
But then again, EMI have better lawyers than most of us.
In response to #11: Go to France to rip your CDs. It is legal there as long as the tracks are ripped from the original. After all, you paid for the CD, you can do what you like with it.
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The record comanies will charge what the market can stand. Personally, I stopped buying from the major record labels some time ago (unless it is a gift a friend specifically wants) - my only words of advice to people is that if they don't like the amount being charged, then don't pay it. They'll get the message.
I've been buying things from independents making their own CD's ... some really fresh music and so far I've found good quality recordings as well. The last one was bagpipe music and it's really got my feet tapping.
It's not only the record companies that need to change their habits, perhaps some of the music buyers could consider changing their own?
I started recording my own keyboard playing on top of being a published photographer and fuction author, (and an ex-music filesharer also) I also have a film script that will shortly go in to production, so copyright pirating and all that is strong on my mind.
My own conclusion on a way forward? I haven't found one yet, but when companies start ripping off the independent individual photographer (as they have done for a good while now) no one seems to see fit to squeak and there is certainly little legal help for those wounded across international borders.
If the public supports the independents; those who are still more concerned with the art they create than massive profits; then I'd like to see file sharers stop sharing that kind of media. Unless file sharers show some kind of morality then I believe there will be little public pity for file sharing. Only the file sharing community can draw that line.
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Clearly the music industry need to protect their revenues and secure a reasonable business for the future; we only wish they would come out of the past and embrace the 21st century rather then quivering behind a high court judge whilst a 14 year old girl downloading ?Girls Aloud? for her party gets hauled before the courts. Does one of the biggest industries in the world really want to go this way?
The ridiculous thing about this issue is the fact that most people ARE prepared to pay for music, it?s just there is yet to be a satisfactory model to do this. The likes of iTunes are unacceptable in their price and format. People want thousands of songs from many different artists on their iPods; 21st century choice. Upwards of 80p for a song is too much and will simply put people off music. Do we really want to be constantly topping up our balance and entering credit card numbers just to get a track your mates told you about? I, for one, haven?t the time for it!
Why cant the music industry embrace new ides like music subscription services; where a user pays a set fee per month/year and can access the music they want without needing the credit card to hand. We don?t pay money every time we go online, flick on a light switch or run a bath. Why cant music be a pre-paid resource?
The industry believes they are fighting for their future business; in reality they are stamping all over it. Imagine the young girl told by her mum she can?t download anymore because they?ve had a strongly worded letter from their ISP. Will she shrug her shoulders and nip down HMV? Clearly not! She will go over her mate?s house, blank CD in hand. Or worse, switch on the Wii and forget all about that album she wanted.
We?re told that as soon as people stop downloading for free this issue will be resolved; most people would probably agree that we?ll really see the end of this tiresome issue when the record companies get of their high horse and provide an agreeable downloading experience. Until then BPI, you can stick your Coldplay album? I?m off to play Mario Karts!!
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This is a nonsense ;p
I do not download music "illegally" however it must not, must not be referred to as stealing.
The reason it is considered "stealing" is not instinctive or intuitive; it is the copyright lobby which have attempted to define it as stealing in law. They have taken the opportunity to try to define a system most favourable to them. We should do likewise, and create a happier medium - like with libraries and books.
It is not necessary for it to be conceptually close to stealing at all. They only use this word to prick your conscience.
IP is like this all over. I am a scientist with membership in science publishers. I can view articles as many times as I like. I can print them. But I can only print them once. If I print them twice I am a 'criminal'. In international researach there are many reasons why I would need to print something twice!!!
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oh and on the subject of DRM:
CDs have no DRM. You can rip from them and stick something on the Internet. So putting DRM on sold digital files does nothing for piracy; buy the cd instead and youre a distributer potentially.
These things are just for profit. A certain major digital music seller does it to increase sales of their mp3 players. Despite what their CEO argues.
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Funny how musicians and the music industry never mention the fantastically privileged position they're in relative to other 'creative' industries. I'm a product designer, and unlike musicians, I get absolutely no automatic protection for my work - if someone wants to copy it, they're free to do so, anytime any place.
If I want to obtain protection I have to shell out thousands to register the design, or patent the idea. In the case of patents in particular, to get the kind of worldwide protection musicians get free, and without lifting a finger, costs me literally tens of thousands of pounds, and has a strictly limited lifespan.
The music industry needs to celebrate its fantastically good luck!
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Darrenwaters, I would point out that it's not always "free" to listen to the radio, small businesses are currently being harrassed by the PRS into buying a licence even if only 2 or 3 workers listen to the radio or stream it through their PC's!!
So consequently businesses are having to switch off the radio to cut costs...
As for downloading music, I have done it legally, then switched PC's and not been able to play my legally purchased tracks on the new PC. Thanks to DRM the BPI has stolen my purchased tracks from me.
Also illegal sites are good for getting albums that labels have deleted or just not released on CD so there is no other way of getting them.
If there was a site allowing DRM free music covering all music in a labels archives and had a reasonable monthy fee rather than by track then they would get my and many other people's business.
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This whole 'stealing' thing cracks me up.
If I went and stole someones car, and abandoned it, pretty much there life would be wrecked.
They'd have no transport, not way to get to work, and no doubt would have no money to buy a new one (probably because all their money has gone on legally downloading music)
They'd then obviously lose their job, and go onto serious debt.
If I 'steal' music, the owner of the record company isn't going to go bankrupt, is he? I doubt his life would be destroyed by it. Because I believe he's earning enough money as it is to miss out on some more bloody money.
The article is a joke, and I think you've jumped onto the bandwagon to save your skin!
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It seems to me that anyone who complains that 'downloading music is not the same as stealing a CD from a shop' is kidding themselves. Just because one is something physical and the other is not does not make it any less like stealing. CDs are essentially copies of information just like downloads, does this make it ok to run into a shop and steal a couple of CDs?
Alternatively think of it this way, is it ok to go into a music shop, pop all the CDs into your laptop and copy the music onto it before putting them back and walking out?
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The argument about copyright infringement is very old and not really the story here. Copyright owners will bust infringers, that isn't going to change.
What interests me is the general acceptance that the BPI has identified infringers. Apparently they harvest IP addresses from P2P and torrent hubs.
But it isn't illegal, or infringement, to visit these sites. And how does the BPI know that the content you are looking at is their copyright? And how do they know your IP address isn't being spoofed in some way?
Is this another example of "guilty until you prove yourself innocent"?
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With regard to some of the above comments justifying stealing / copyright infringement (both equally bad) I'd just like to repeat a phrase i heard on Frasier which stuck with me: Rationalisation is the last refuge of an unsound mind.
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Ha, when I can acutually FIND some of the obsure stuff I listen too avaliable to buy then maybe I will stop downloading it to support the artist.
But record companies tend to push soulless crap that makes them money so why should I give it too them!
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Lets not forget the song "Happy Birthday to you" is still under copyright until 2030, remember if you want a group of people to sing this song at your daughters 1st birthday to purchase a license!
It won't matter before long anyway, in my opinion people are sick to death of the lobby groups telling them they're criminals, the youth of today doesn't believe they're breaking any laws, and even if they did, what multinational corporation is going to sue a 14 year old? That would be create PR for them on top of everything else!
Personally I've not downloaded a licensed song in a long time, there's just nothing out there that I haven't been fed a thousand times before.
What with artists finally waking up and realizing that they don't make their money from the record labels, they make it from live concerts and merchandise sales, with big names such as Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails, and Joss Stone speaking out about it publicly. The internet and torrents make distribution of their music practically cost free.
With sites like Jamendo who have just recently signed up over 10,000 albums under the Creative Commons licensing, who give 50% of their advertising revenue to the artists who use the site, and with the option for fans to directly donate money to artists they like, it's actively encouraging bands to be innovative opposed to fixing people into the same tried and tested formula they're sick of hearing.
The music industry has already lost the battle, they're currently just stalling for time!
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Isn't it just as bad as me taping off the radio or tape-to-taping? that was tollerated!
I can plug my mini disk player in to my computer and record songs from last.fm or other sites or online radio like from the BBC iPlayer. Or just use a recording programme to make it an mp3.
why tollerate that and not this! its not a new problem - as people have said people have borrowed cds and tapes for year and then copied them! - so why not look at why people do it in the first place - drive prices down? we live ion a market economy after all!
plus the greedy music industry do make enough money already!
Also as far as I'm aware, if you buy an mp3 you have bought just that and not the song. therefore is it legal to download a song for free which you bought on LP in order to put it on cd? - why should you pay again! - more greedy music industry!
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Rationalisation is the last refuge of an unsound mind..................
Most people don't care if it's classed as stealing/copyright infringement which may verywell be equally bad...... it's free, it doesn't hurt anyone so screw all of you who don't agree, I'll do it regardless
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music downloads are far too expensive!!
when you think ,the music companies,dont have any packages to do,no discs to produce,and no distribution of stock,and yet they charge such high prices
heres an example ,as I am in the golden oldies bracket I wanted to get some old Elvis tracks,on my download site they wanted 99p for each track,I wnted a double alban,apx £25 via the download .
In Woolworths I found these ttracks for £3 the lot!!
so I ask this question is it cheap to down load from the web??
vinnieo
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"Most people don't care if it's classed as stealing/copyright infringement which may verywell be equally bad...... it's free, it doesn't hurt anyone so screw all of you who don't agree, I'll do it regardless"
Pretty much sums it up, along with your previous post, well done!
As for this 'stealing car is the same as stealing music', perhaps we should turn it the other way round on the companies and see what THEY'RE doing to us!!!
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Of course artists should be properly remunerated for their work. It's a pity that the music industry didn't take that idea on-board in the past, when they had a monopoly on the means of production and distribution, exploiting the artists and the consumers.
Technology has broken their monopoly, the only strategy they are pursuing is to try and shove Pandora back in her box while they pine for the old days when they made money hand over fist.
The technology is not going to go away, consequently there is not enough 'gravy' to go round. Many parts of their industry are redundant. They need to downsize and re-invent themselves with a new business model that makes them relevant to artists and consumers alike.
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The Music Industry constantly "forgets" the demand is a function of price. The lower the price, the higher the demand. As a result, when something can be got for free people will access it, however once there is a price for it the demand will fall rapidly. This means that the projected losses they claim they suffer are unlikely to be anything like as big as they argue. It is more likely that they are currently earning almost all the income they can for their product at the current price they charge and any stopping of internet file sharing will have minimal effect on their sales and profits. Instead it will reduce the awareness of people to their products.
The only people who steal income from the Music, Software and Film industries are those who make and sell illegal copies of their products and even they access a market closed to the main players by the prices they set.
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The difference between stealing and downloading music illegally (copyright infringement) is far from just semantics.
The point is that when you steal a car and drive it around then dump it, you prevent someone else from using that car. If you download a piece of information you do not prevent anyone else from having it i.e. the marginal cost of production of that information is zero (almost zero, electricity etc etc).
I'm not saying that that necessarily makes it ok, just that it is not the same as stealing a car, or any other physical object.
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I also have to agree that copyright infringement is NOT stealing. There is a big difference.
I have to chuckle when you say the difference is merely semantics, and yet try to make yourself feel better about having illegally downloaded music tracks by deleting them when you realised it was wrong to have downloaded them. In your mind it must match the theft of a car and abandoning it scenario. So regardless of the fact you deleted them, it's still a crime you have yet to be punished for isn't it?
I often wonder about the figures published for the money being lost by music industry due to downloads. Do they look at declining sales or try and estimate or count downloads? If it's the later then surely they realise people who download many many tracks would never have paid for them all legally?
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@NOTSTEALING
"preaching that we all somehow owe the record and movie industries an indefinate revenue stream because they were the first people to make a copy of something just beggars belief."
If you want music - pay for it. Or use a service like Last.FM where you can listen to some music for free.
I accept that my terminology on stealing as a legal definition is wrong.
But whether its stealing or copyright infrigement - it's still wrong.
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I download potentially anything i might buy if i like it i buy it, if not i delete it. I own around 1000 CDs so i feel, whatever this blogger might say, it is a perfectly good reason to 'steal'. Many years ago i got sick of spending sometimes £15 on an album that turned out to be rubbish i no longer have this problem, thank you napster.
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First let me say that I try very hard not to illegally download intellectual property of any sort, and I do not condone such acts. Genarally I'll do without or find a legitimate channel to obtain my music, movies, software etc.
Illegal copying of music tracks is nothing like theft. If I were to steal a car I would be depriving the owner of it's use, if I copy something without obtaining the correct licence then the owner can continue to use it. It seems to me that the intellectual property laws are fundamentally broken, perhaps because those who make the laws are unduly influenced by the same big business that produces the intellectual property.
The cost of reproduction of data has shrunk to virtually zero since the development of the internet, this has profound implications for those producing the data. The music companies are finding that the business model that has made them very rich over the last half century or so is no longer viable. Rather than adapt they have instead pressed (often successfully) for legislation that criminalises their prospective customers. It's hard to see how this can be a good thing for anyone in the long term.
Artists deserve paid for their work, even the ones for whom money is more important than art. Similarly those involved in the distribution and promotion if such work deserve to earn a living. They do not necessarily deserve the fantastic wealth they are currently afforded. When Simon Cowell and Madonna are down to their last mansion then perhaps the balance will have swung too far in favour of the consumer, but I can't see this happening any time soon.
Finally, can we please stop using the word 'piracy' in connection with intellectual property. Piracy is something very different from copyright infringement, we may as well start calling shoplifters rapists and tax evaders murderers.
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Stealing huh?
Solution: Make them give it back. That is, if you insist on making that analogy.
Oh and by the way, make ISPs give back the money they've earned in the process.
Why should we stand by watching the industry criminalise consumers for the sake of ISPs and the BPI trying to defend outdated entrenched positions?
This position is being deliberately fueled by all those industry legal middle-men who obviously stand to gain much from this entrenchment. Not to mention a whole industry growing up around countermeasures to help ISPs clamp down on their own customers. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Next they too will be going cap-in-hand to government complaining they will be put out of business by emerging new business models. Oh yes, mark my words. And the government will of course want to encourage this new market sector in order to facilitate new surveilance technologies. It gets worse.
Solution? Of course!
It is about time ISPs became fully licensed "Media Service Providers" or MSPs, and started channelling the profits they have earned from downloading back to artists.
The MSP business model is already established, with companies such as PlayLouder.com leading the way, yes right here in the UK.
So come on!
I'm also getting a tad fed up with the BBC just reporting the entrenched positions, of the BPI, the ISPs, and yes even the ORG, while ignoring some of the very real solutions out there. As a result 99.9% of the general public are unaware that THERE IS A SOLUTION.
So less of the industry PR churnalism please. Please, please, please more investigative journalism.
These are important times when government are being called upon to act. Isn't it right that we have all the facts, and all the options at our disposal?
Check my blog user profile for other stuff i've said. Crikey i'm getting soooooooo worn out at this point.
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It is not "theft." Such ridiculous comments belong in the propaganda from the music industry itself, not the BBC.
It has always and will always be the case, with the human race, that if it can be seen/touched/heard/tasted or smelled then it will be copied. It doesn't matter what copy protection is used, at some point it has to be decrypted to be accessed by human senses, and at that point it can be copied.
That is the risk that is associated with all of us in all of our jobs. We "risk" going to work for a whole month between pay dates on the promise we get paid at the end of it, but if the company goes broke, naturally we wont. Any exchange of goods/services carries risk of loss. Of course people should try to protect their incomes just as workers might act to protect their jobs by belonging to a union. This is an issue that must be solved by market forces, and not the law courts.
There really are bigger problems for man to solve than this.
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There are rafts of albums which are out-of-print on CD and thus commercially unavailable.
If I buy an out-of-print used CD from eBay, does the artist, record company or songwriter receive a portion of my payment? Obviously not. I've paid over £100.00 on more than one occasion for less than an hour of music.
My first choice for owning music will always be a factory-pressed official disc. Failing that, I'll support the artist by downloading an MP3 from a legal download store. However, if neither option is available, I see no harm in obtaining the music by other means.
I don't see why the major record labels can't open their vaults and make everything they own available to purchase, in either MP3 or (preferably) FLAC. Surely the cost of renegotiating contracts and encoding the music would be minimal, compared to the revenue generated?
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typically, there are tons of immature kids trying to jump through semantic hoops to justify theft here. I doubt any of them try to run a business that actually CREATES anything of value that is copyable.
The sheer ignorance of people who seem to think that music and movies and games are made by space aliens for free, and that nobody suffers if they steal them is just mind blowing, and says a lot about peoples lack on basic intelligence.
taking someone else's hard work for free is THEFT. I don't give a damn how much you try to dress it up will silly hippy reasoning or arguments about distribution costs. It's not yours, you didn't pay for it, so if you take it, expect to end up in court with a criminal record.
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Congratulations, your clarification on the 'common' use of the word theft confirms that you are completely unqualified to write on this subject. Do you get paid for this?
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My favourite band of the moment is a band called Ultraviolet Sound. You can download their entire album for free on their myspace site, basically because at the start of each track is a message stating that each one is sponsored by a company.
That way, each download remains free and the band make money from the sponsorship from the company.
Why can't more bands do ti this way? This would iron out all the illegal downloads for the sake of 5 secs extra on a track to have to listen to the sponsorship message. It doesn't bother me having to listen to it!
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@justinionn I agree entirely. I hate the way record labels and film studios control the flow of content, especially archive content.
I'd love to purchase old archive stuff at a bitrate of my choosing.
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What gets me about the whole thing is DRM. I paid over £70 on a certain legitimate UK site that closed down. I have since upgraded my computer and tried to copy the tracks to the new PC. guess what? they won't play because the DRM link associated with them to reinstall the license is gone. I'm out £70.
so... I 'stole' them (it's not stealing Darren but I went with your term anyhow).
Here's another DRM issue. My wife owned an IPod, used ITunes a LOT. I convinced her to go with a Zen and ALL of her music is now lost.
so... I 'stole' those too.
But, given I paid already for the track, who, dear Darren, is stealing from whom when I can no longer use it due to their sloppy encoding?
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How many of the muppets who are arguing about the definition stealing on here are the same people who rant and complain and moan like anything when politicians try the same trick?
Its not a 'war' but a 'conflict' right? Its not internment, its 'detention without trial'.
If you take something thats for sale and you didn't pay for it, you are not only a Thief, but you are leeching off the goodwill and honesty of the law-abiding majority.
In short, you are a morally bankrupt, thieving leech.
The kiddies moaning about music costing too much should go buy a guitar and flipping write their own.
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@Paul Freeman Powell's Joe Bloggs scenario.
It seems to me it may be more like this:
1. Joe Bloggs is 24 and a music obsessive. He downloads lots of obscure bands, and gets into some. He buys their CDs, even getting them sent from far corners of the world.
He spends more money becuase of free downloads, but either with small labels, or on back catalogue or low run stuff. No economy of scale for the record companies.
Profit for major labels: small.
2. Jane Bloggs likes Kylie and Madonna, but is only 15, and hasn't much money to spend. She used to buy maybe 3-4 albums a year. Ones that were pushed by the music biz, and which have economy of scale behind them.
She now downloads them all for free.
Profit for the record company: minus £40.
The music business make their money from the Jane Bloggs of this world, and losing them has caused their current woes.
The Joe Bloggs types often moan about how they spend more these days, and how they have discovered music they wouldn't have heard otherwise is beside the point. The biz doesn't care - the major labels want everyone to like the same few artists. Having to stock vast numbers of small interest groups is not profitable.
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Dear Susan King,
I'm not trying to justify anything here, I take games off t'internet for free when you have to pay for them in the shop, I do the same with music.
You pay for them probably like the majority of people, I don't pay for them. That's the way it is. It may be theft, it may not be theft, I don't really care. It is free for me, and it does not hurt anyone ( I would use a FACT statement here if it wasn't such a idiotic thing to do)
Cheers for now, I'm off to look for DVD rips of Kung Fu Panda, would check out the new Coldplay album too if there weren't so awful.
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"I'd love to purchase old archive stuff at a bitrate of my choosing."
I'd like to buy a purple ferrari, but they don't make one. Doesn't mean I'm justified in stealing a red ones does it?
The lack of basic intelligence here is mind boggling.
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"and it does not hurt anyone ("
DO YOU THINK EVERYONE WHO WORKS MAKING GAMES DOES IT FOR FUN? DO YOU NOT THINK THEY HAVE BILLS TO PAY?
You are a thief, pure and simple, nothing better than that. I hope people like you get what's coming to you, friends of mine in the games industry would happily see thieves like you in a prison cell, and I don't blame them.
Grow out of this child like sense of entitlement you ave developed.
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Dear Susan King
"It's not yours, you didn't pay for it, so if you take it, expect to end up in court with a criminal record."
As has been pointed out, copyright infringement is a civil, not a criminal matter. You can't "end up with a criminal record"...
If you're going to get so pious, I suggest you understand what you're ranting about first. ;)
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@darrenwaters:
"If you want music - pay for it."
No, thank you. I'll listen to music which I can obtain freely (quite legally, I might add). I will deliberately avoid paying any middleman for music up to the point where they stop pretending that their customers are criminals.
To clarify - I have no problem remunerating an artist for their work - I paid for In Rainbows, I paid for NIN Ghosts, and myself and my wife quite often pay artists directly when we find something we enjoy via other channels such as myspace music, Pandora, or your excellent suggestion of Last.FM. However - the act of listening to music and the act of paying for it should not be explicitly tied together as though that's the only state of existence.
I honestly hope you're not suggesting that listening to music is wrong - and if it's right (and as you acknowledge, it's not stealing) then why does the delivery mechanism to your ears matter so much to you? Have you never enjoyed a whistle or singing a song yourself? have you never played a tune on an instrument?
Music and money are two different things - stop pretending that they have to come in a single shrink-wrapped package, and stop perpetuating the fallacy that listening to someone's music is somehow theft just because you didn't hear it on the radio.
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Despite the update you posted, the difference between stealing and copyright infringement is vast.
If I walk into the National Gallery and take a photograph of a painting, that's copyright infringement.
If I take a the poster of the same painting from the gallery shop without paying, that's stealing.
Can you really not see the difference here?
And yes, copyright infringement is a crime, and no, I don't have a problem with people doing it anyway. If I fix my mate's computer and he gives me 50 quid for my trouble, and I fail to inform the inland revenue, that is a crime. That's tax evasion. I don't have a problem with that, either.
No-one really cares if people fail to disclose minor, occasional sources of income. No-one should care if people commit minor, occasional copyright infringement. Neither are serious, and the music industry should just shut up about it.
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@majesticHumbucker
You are absolutely spot on mate. Without revenue from record sales, companies won't take risks. Without taking risks companies won't find the new acts and promote them. Without promotion you can't get fans. Without fans you can't get people to concerts.
"Oh everything's on myspace these days" - it's not.
Right now I'm in an unsigned band, yes we're on myspace. Because we're the same side of 30 as most of the people who spend money on music, we aren't going to get signed any time soon. Are we any good? We're good enough to be playing a support slot at Dingwalls tonight for Britpop legends Dodgy - a support slot I managed to get without an agent simply on the strength of the relationship I've built with the venue doing free gigs and open mic gigs. And also because the venue believe in the music I'm making. I'm working like a trojan to get a gig that most bands with management just see as "an ordinary night" - that's the difference. Because the music industry is dying on it's backside it will take the easy money - the cute 20 year-old with the soulful voice rather than a bunch of guys making catchy tunes and doing it the "slow" way. Will it stop us? no. But it will slow us down. Without promotion, as you say, no-one hears what we're doing so there can be no sales - either ticket sales or album sales, so no promoter, or agent, or manager, or record company will take a chance on us.
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Actually the games industry is the one of the big 4 (games, movie, TV and music) that have actually got something decent up and running, steam anyone?
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@Susan King.
Did you not see the crucial word I used. "Purchase".
I'd love to purchase music from the archive at a bitrate of my choosing. Not rip it off!
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Your zero tolerance stance is what has got everybody in the mess we are in. I have about 500 pieces of vinyl, as well as the same number of albums on cd. Let's have a rough guess at 10000 pounds worth of music. That's more than I ever spent on anything apart from my flat. I have the entire back catalog of many bands, sometimes in more that one format, (I didn't include all the tapes I bought that got chewed up). So when loaded my player with the mp3s of tunes i own of a certain band the other day that I've blown hundreds and hundreds on, I felt pretty justified.
And I'm certainly not forking out any more on an album I've bought 3 times already to have it in a format where the quality is actually worse that the ones I have.
Your analogies are awful too. It's nothing like pinching a car for half an hour at all. I didn't deny anybody the use, ownership or ability to sell what they had. You are comparing "replayability of a sound" to "physical ownership of something that is yours that no one else can have" which is nonsense.
What else? Well I don't see the record companies taking all their freely available videos off you tube, do you? You can hear what you want when you want. So they have a two tier stance which cheapens their argument by some margin. Plus there are so many internet radio stations that you can practically here what you want anyway. As well as the fact they give away all sorts of music to the Daily Mail brigade every Sunday. I spent money on some of that!
Finally the person who mentioned it's ones own fault for not protecting their wireless network you really need to learn more about computers and hackers before talking like this. If you think having to type bob123 is enough to protect your wireless network you should turn it off.
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Susan, there is no need to become hostile, accuse people of things they may or may not be this is an open blog and I'm sure the people here welcome open discussion about such matters, but calling people thieves and commenting on how you would like to see them in a prison cell is hardly discussing a matter it's labeling people who you don't know guilty of something they may not have done.
Also, as already stated before, Copyright infringement is a civil case unless it's done for commercial gain, which means nobody can be sent to jail.
I'd suggest you calm down a little and try and make your point in a more rational manner, preferably without assuming everyone posting here is a thief!
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Susan King said:
"The lack of basic intelligence here is mind boggling."
Yes, you really should stop posting, dear!
;-)
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The music industry has destroyed e-commerce as a viable concept by using DRM in their online products. If Borders or Waterstones sold me a book for £9.99 but then came to reclaim the book after 30 days, or when I tried to move house, I would NEVER shop at those stores again. Many consumers feel this way about iTunes and other DRM-infested services.
"Home taping is illegal" didn't deter teenagers from sharing their music in the eighties, so I wouldn't expect these scare tactics to work now. People would be better off leaving Virgin anyway, as their service is renowned to be sub-par.
The exchange of creative ideas sustains contemporary culture; this culture of art, music and literature is part of what defines modern "civilisation"; artists are entitled to earn a living by fulfilling their vocation, but the majority of music revenue passes the artist by and goes back into the record "industry".
How the music industry makes money is ultimately the responsibility of the music industry. If, by securing its commercial longevity, this industry is allowed to strangle the free exchange of ideas, then it is, IMHO, a backwards step for "civilisation".
There is an opportunity now to embrace and exploit a new, highly efficient method for disseminating information and ideas. There may be some financial injuries sustained along the way, but, with a little vision and faith, we may find that file-sharing networks could open up a great cultural future for all involved.
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Susan,
You think I'm a thief, That's your opinion etc etc. I don't think I'm a thief.
Your friends in the gaming industry do have bills to pay, and the majority of people buy games, music cds so there you go it pays their bills. People like you pay their bills, I would say people like me are in the minority. And surely you don't think you friends will get a pay rise if I (and others too of course) start buying all the games cds movies.......... the men at the top will get more money, no one else.
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Everybody has missed the massive irony in this, which is that if you want to avoid the BPI letters, and you're a Virgin Media customer, they are offering an easy way to avoid being caught.
Simply ditch the peer to peer (bittorrent, edonkey etc) and get yourself onto the Virgin Media newsgroup (usenet) servers. Plenty of copyright material to be had there.
Will VM be cutting themselves off from the Internet for making copyright material available?
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Copying music isn't stealing, anymore than taping Eastenders is stealing. If you walked into the studio and physically lifted the master tape, THAT would be stealing music. It's not semantics.
I don't download music, BUT for example: I have a huge vinyl collection. If I wanted some of that music on my iPod, I would download it. I've already paid a "licence" for that album, format is irrelevant. The trouble with the industry is that they see each new increase in technology as dollar signs: you buy the tape, you buy the vinyl, you buy the cd, you buy mp3 on and on. Obviously, this is fantastic for the industry, but not for consumers.
If you walked into a shop and stole a cd, that is slightly different. It costs money for physical packaging, for transportation etc. What does an mp3 cost? a fraction of a pence on bandwidth. So why does an mp3 album cost almost the same as a cd album? What is the consumer paying for, exactly?
The problem seems to be not that "home taping is killing the music industry" (remember that?) but that society as a whole is waking up to the practices that have ripped them off for so long. If the industry changes, people will accept it. If the industry holds on to its old model, against cultural shifts, it is fighting a losing battle.
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When I can obtain a copy of something myself - but am instead forced to obtain it via someone for a fee, isn't that extortion?
Their business model doesn't work, and they should face it.
But then, I think all copyright and IP etc. needs to disappear - it's all extortion and bad business models.
Sparkle
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I have proof that making stuff available for download free and without any restrictions actually increases the profits of the creators of that content.
Baen.com, a book publisher, has loads of books available free to download (including New York Times best-selling authors). They actually include CDs full of electronic copies of books with hardbacks they sell and encourage readers to copy the CDs and give them to friends.
The authors that take part have publicly acknowledged that their royalties have shot up as soon as their books became available legally for free.
Their logic is simple, no one has ever handed a book to a friend with the words "read this it's awful". Every book that's out there is free publicity for the author. The next book that comes out will be bought, maybe even back catalogue books. If someone reads it and doesn't like it, no loss, they'd probably never have bought it anyway, but because it was free, people will give them a try, it doesn't cost them after all, and they might just turn out to like the author and then they'll start spending money.
There will always be people that just take, but most people want their favourite authors to keep writing, so they pay even if they don't have to.
The model works, the music industry is just too narrow minded to see that and in the process they are alienating the wrong people. Those that are never prepared to pay are a lost cause and don't care what the music industry and others do, no level of adverts, abuse and "measures" will deter them. All the while those measures are making life difficult for the honest people.
And when it comes down to it, if a musician or author isn't good enough that people are prepared to pay to support them, then that should be a big enough hint that they should be doing something else.
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Is this just not economics?
Scare away the heavy users and clean up on people who only use broadband for web surfing and email?
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Of course downloading music illegally is stealing.
People who argue that what they are downloading is worthless should have a wee think about the implications of that claim - if it's genuinely worth nothing, why waste time downloading it?
Illegal downloaders who protest their innocence are indulging in wishful thinking, casting about for feeble excuses for their behaviour. Pathetic.
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@GilesGoodenBand
You should have a look at Jamendo you can get paid for sharing your music!
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Not just semantics eh?
So if someone copies some of my work without permission and uses it to their own ends then I cannot accuse them of stealing?
I must instead complain that they infringed its copyright? What a load of rubbish, morally it is wrong, and is the equivalent of stealing, whatever the legal term for it.
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I think the people who nitpick over "stealing" versus "copyright infringement" have a point, to an extent.
Your car analogy is illustrative; there's 'taking without consent' and 'taking with intent to permanently deprive'.
When you infringe copyright, you take without consent, but in the case of copies of digital media, there is not the same argument that you are 'taking with intent to deprive', because the copyright-holder still has the original.
The laws on theft and copyright just haven't quite caught up yet with electronic content.
Then there's the commercial dimension. Think of sites like mp3.com, which used to provide a means for those artists who wanted to do so to make their work available free or fee, one track at a time or by the CD. It was forced to stop doing so, even though the artists in question had control over which tracks they made available for free download.
The Beeb, of all entities, ought to be keenly aware of some of the issues involved... look at all the fuss over iPlayer.
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Virgin Media broadband is, IMHO, a great service. The only reason I changed ISP was because they didn't operate in the area I recently moved to.
However, If I'd recieved a 'If you don't read this...' I'd probably cut my service with them myself.
I don't pay the butcher to tell me what vegetables to eat. I pay him for the meat.
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I tend not to download music legal or otherwise because of the simple reason that the quality ? even at 320 bits ? is rubbish - I buy the CD.
I would also point out the misconception regarding artist being paid for the work. Organisations like the PRS only pay recording artist if they register with them. I DJ and a few weeks ago I had a member of the PRS staff write down the records I was play in a two set, that?s how hi-tech this situation is. So any idea that if I play Joe Bloggs record that he will automatically get royalties for his record I have just play is actually rubbish. One can understand artist preferring to sell direct to their fan-base because they actual get the money!
Another new money making wheeze of the music industry is the need for DJs using music from a lap-tops to get a digital dj licence costing around £200 a year, despite the fact that the venue they work in has paid the PRS licence to play vinyl and/or CDs. It seems the music industry except dj and/venues to pay twice for legally obtained downloads. Therefore, whilst the music industry continues to introduce nonsense like this is it no wonder people stick to fingers up to them an illegally download when they can.
As someone said of the music industry: it is a 19th Century business trying to operate in a 21st Century environment.
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Very interesting article and extremely topical - it was only a few days ago I was having a heated debate about this very subject.
Having read all the comments, much of the discussion seems to centre around whether downloading music is in fact stealing or "merely" copyright infringement. I have to agree with advocates of the latter view and this can be summarised by the simple fact that downloading is not a tangible good/activity and therefore it is diificult to see the negative impact it has on the owner (especially when one considers the points raised by others that had downlaoding not been abvailable the song would still never have been purchased anyway).
However i can also see that many will be unconvinced by this and so would like to propose a few other arguments as to why I believe the "downloading is stealing" argument to be skating on thin ice.
1) To say that downloading music is morally wrong is treading down the slipperiest of slopes. If you are going to preach that viewpoint then you had better be damn sure that every other aspect of your life is squeaky clean too. For instance, has the author ever used a wi-fi connection that he hasn't paid for even for a split second? Or has he ever gone thorugh the open barriers of a tube/train station when really he should have bought/swiped his ticket? Or has he ever needed the toilet so badly that he has gone in some deserted alley? Trivial arguments one might think, but all that matters is the fact that the person knows what they are doing is wrong and still goes ahead and does it anyway, thereby commiting a "crime". Are any of us that clean? I for one can't truly claim to be.
2) The internet has been a double edged sword for the music. Whilst many claim that downloading freely is causing serious harm to the industry, it seems to me that they forget what the internet has done for them. It has revolutionised the way the industry works, with bands now able to promote their work and getting access to the public through myspace, youtube etc that they would never in a million years have been ablle to do before. many of these bands complaining wouldn't even be in a position to claim "harm against them" had it not been for the internet. Now this is not a justification for being able to download music willy-nilly - my point is merely that they should remember what technology has done for them rather choosing to simply dismiss it now. You live by the sword, you die by the sword.
3) It amazes me that the music industry thinks this a phenomenon unique to them. It isn't! As people have already mentioned the film industry suffers from the same thing, as do sitcoms, series, soaps, language courses, tuition etc etc etc. In other words anything that is downloadable is vulnerable to "crime". So why is it then that the music industry (and film) seem to be the ones "whining on about it"? That isn't the solution - rather, the industry should be embracing the advancement of technology and seeking ways to capitalize on this. it is basic business evolution and they can either fosu their energy negatively by trying to prosecute anyone who downloads, or positively by thinking of ways in which downloading can be used to make (more) money.
All in all downloading music for free may not be the correct thing to do, but having said that do we all lead such sin-free lives? The music moguls need to adapt to change rather than counter it and if they do this i'm sure the era of people downloading music for free, will soon be remembered, not as the stealing or copyright infringement, but instead as the one which triggered massive revenues for the industry.
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Those adverts crack me up. "You wouldn't steal a car!" Um.. if I could download my friend's car leaving him with his original completely untouched, and me with a fully functioning replica, then yes I would!
As someone who has both had music downloaded from their computer and had someone steal their car, drive it around, and abandon it, I assure you that the latter causes far more problems.
Generally I'm unwilling to criticise BBC columnists even if I don't agree with their opinion, because they have a job to do and they stimulate debate, even if they themselves are wrong. The smug, holier-than-thou tone, the reliance on blatant industry propaganda, and the lack of any kind of research whatsoever into this subject matter however leads me to the inevitable conclusion that this particular chap is nothing but a drain on my license fee.
I don't want to be preached at by this guy, and yet I'm paying for the privilege. That's like someone breaking into your house, setting fire to your bed, and defecating into all of your shoes.
See, we can all make over the top analogies. I suggest next time you keep yours to yourself.
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97. At 11:58am on 03 Jul 2008, matstace wrote:
Everybody has missed the massive irony in this, which is that if you want to avoid the BPI letters, and you're a Virgin Media customer, they are offering an easy way to avoid being caught.
Simply ditch the peer to peer (bittorrent, edonkey etc) and get yourself onto the Virgin Media newsgroup (usenet) servers. Plenty of copyright material to be had there.
They even went so far as to mail their customers to tell them about the bright new shiny servers with masses of more content and longer retention!
If they want their customers to stop using their services why invest so much extra money in making this content available for free? Hypocritical at the very least!
Besides, in a theft the intention is to permanently deprive the owner of their original belongings. In piracy isn't it just a case of making a copy of the original ?
People didn't seem to suffer from the current invasions of privacy in the 60s and 70s when friends used to lend vinyl albums to each other to put onto cassette tape.
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70+ pence for an MP3 is way too high a price to pay. This is because an MP3 is a compressed version of the actual product - the CD. Until the price of the MP3 (which, don't forget, is generally a 128kbps file - a 10th of the sound quality of the CD) relates in some kind of sensible manner to the price of the CD there will be file sharing (or 'stealing'). I personally would be prepared to pay 7p per track for an MP3 but no more than that.
On the subject of CD prices, I had a chat with my dad a few years back about the cost of albums in the 1960s and he said that he would spend about a tenth of his weekly wage on an album. I pointed out to him that now, in the 21st Century, we are still paying a similar percentage of our earnings on buying CDs, even though the costs to the record companies in mass producting these items does not match their costs in the 1960s. So for each CD sold today, the record companies are making 3 or 4 times the profit they were making 40-odd years ago! Why is that? I would suggest it is because they are greedy and arrogant. And while I'm on the subject, I am talking about the record companies here - not the artists. The artists have record deals that return lower and lower percentages from sales year on year. No wonder so many artists encourage sharing (or 'stealing'). Ital Roots Players, my band, share their MP3s for free but if someone wants to buy a CD they can. This is because we realise that an MP3 is not the product - just a poor version of it!
The reason file sharing (or 'stealing') will continue to thrive is that it helps people to find out what is WORTH buying. If the decline of the recording industry is a symptom of the sharing of MP3 files then I would suggest that perhaps these people need to find another way to make money.
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@ Susan King
"In short, you are a morally bankrupt, thieving leech."
I personally have no problem with borrowing a CD from a friend, or even ripping it to computer, because (like most other music-lovers) I feel I put a lot back in to the music industry.
I go to gigs, mainly smaller bands, and wherever possible I buy CDs/merchandise DIRECT from the band at shows.
Ripping a 'Destiny's Child' CD gives me £10 to buy an album from a small band. Beyonce doesn't need any more money, Columbia records don't need any more money, to a small band it's contributing to their survival as a band.
I'm a modern-day Robin Hood.
Morally bankrupt? Morally bankrupt should be reserved for the major labels who lure in small bands with advances they'll never be able to pay back, shelve their albums for two years, break their spirits to the point where they forget why they even started making music and ultimately disband due to a combination of disillusionment and debt.
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PabloElGatto,
What a refreshing viewpoint from someone trying to break into the music industry! I'm off to try and find an MP3 of your band's stuff to see what it's like, and yes, if I like it I'll be buying it!
GilesGoodenBand take notes!
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Oh and Susan King, you really need to chill out my lovely. If you get this worked up about people downloading songs, you must be positively wired all the time. If you want to avoid an early heart attack, I'd suggest sitting back, looking at all the problems that humankind faces, and realising that you can't possibly enforce your "morality" on every person and every issue. If you want to be ripped off for CDs, be my guest. But you're not going to change anyone's mind here by goose-stepping in, calling everyone a criminal. Did you stamp your feet and scream when you wrote those posts? I'm willing to bet you did.
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The question over whether it's stealing is not semantics. It's not like taking someones car,. driving it away and abandoning it. If I took the Master copy of a song, and threw it away, that would be equivalent. But building an identical copy of someone's car and driving away is not stealing it. Though I would be in infringement of various IP laws.
There is a clear moral, social and legal difference between physical theft and IP issues. IP laws effectively work as a reward for creativity and are by negotiation between society and creators. To suggest that the two are equivalent would mean that after a legally defined period of time your car would no longer by protected by anti-theft rights and people could just freely drive it away. No?
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Imagine the RIAA's and BPI's perfect world. No sharing, no copying. Result? No music industry.
First no sharing. Without sharing of music I would not now own every Iron Maiden album that they've done. Why? Because I was given a tape when I was 15 with Iron Maiden's Number of the Beast on it. Quick, lock me up, I've stolen music! The fact is that tape got me into a genre of music I'd previously had no interest in. I now own all their albums, several DVDs and I've been to several concerts.
No copying. Remove the right to copy for personal use and you have the ridiculous situation of having to own multiple copies of the same album. Take it as far as the music industry would like and you'd need a seperate copy for every piece of equipment you wanted to listen to it on. A copy for the stereo system, 3 copies for my computers at home, 5 copies for the various mp3 players and other handheld devices I own and then another copy for use in the car. That's a logical conclusion of 100 pounds for a single album, I don't think so!
So sure copying and sharing may be copyright infringement, but it improves a band's sales by allowing people to say "hey listen to this" and it doesn't force a person to buy the same piece of music several times over when they can only listen to one medium at a time.
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It's Not Stealing id you've already paid for the music historically.
When you buy music legitimately you get the rights to enjoy it in perpetuity (for ever).
If your CD or Player breaks or DRM is flawed (it has happened to many), then you would simply be downloading what you already have rights to.
How many times have you paid more than once for music because it appears on CD compilations?
We've paid four times over in some cases for the same music. Downloads offer a way to prevent this happening. The industry has to get it's act together.
Definately not stealing id you already paid for it.
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@Alie8n There are lots of ways to share music legitimately to give people a flavour of music.
Last.FM, Pandora (if you're in the US), Yahoo music, MySpace.
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Interesting discussion.
I don't personally download, but have accepted without guilt free second-generation copies of downloaded live albums etc. I have often pondered the legal position, however, again without too much agonising...
What it all illustrates is that copyright on artistic endeavour is a hopeless mess world wide, and probably beyond sorting.
We are talking about breach of copyright, not theft of a tangible item. The difference between the two is clearly causing difficult for some people on this blog.
Copyright period and rules for different types of work (books, music, photographs, visual arts such as paintings and sculpture) vary hugely between countries, and fair dealing rules also vary a lot.
And the connection between artistic endeavour, copyright ownership, profit on sales, etc. is a complicated one.
For example, fine artists (painters, sculptors) don't usually get any follow-on payments once their work is sold. If they are auctioned the auction house get two sets of commission but the artist gets nothing. They may or may not get a royalty on a poster of their work, depending on the circumstances and whether copyright on reproduction was expressly reserved on sale of the original. Few artists know copyright law as well as they should. It's all a mess.
In music there are often four different copyrights involved: The lyricist, the composer of the music, the performer(s) and the publisher. Who gets what percentages of the sale price varies enormously. Many contracts were written before downloading and CD burning were even thought of and don't necessarily reflect the world of today. Many musicians signed away copyright in their early years or were plagiarised by more established artists.
The deeper you delve the more complicated it gets, in fact.
So let's look at some scenarios:
If someone looks at a copy of a painting without paying for this, is that theft?
If someone listens to music without paying for it, is that theft?
I think most people would say "no" to both.
Then take the concept a bit further. If someone photographs a work of art (say a sculpture in a public park) and puts a print of that in a frame on their wall. Is that theft? But then if they sell copies of that photograph? Begins to get a but muddier, doesn't it...
If someone buys a CD and copies it onto a MP3 player, is that theft? (maybe not) Then if someone wants to listen to music the industry or artist has sat on and buys a bootleg, is that theft? (getting muddier) If the music is subsequently released and the person then buys the "official" release as it's better quality and has better packaging, does that absolve him of the earlier action? (muddier still).
I very much doubt if anyone, even the most experienced copyright lawyer in the world, could answer my puzzles definitively. It all depends.
The one thing I am sure of is that I want as much as possible of my hard-earned money to go to the artist, not the corporate conglomerate. I'm realistic enough to know that's not how it works. But I can't condemn those who get round the current unclear legal position re. downloading, as these are mostly the real fans who will buy any official release of the artis and pay cash to see their gigs...
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Darren, you are misinformed, or worse a shill for the BPI.
There is no 'intellectual property', there are patents, trademarks, and copyrights - these are government granted temporary monopolies, each created for a specific purpose.
Downloading a copy of a song is not theft or piracy, no one is deprived of a physical object, it is 'copyright infringement' and there are already sufficient laws and punishments in place to deal with it.
I am happy to pay a fair price to the artist to support their talent, but the bottom linee is that, one created, their product that has practically zero reproduction costs.
So, please, try not to parrot the rhetoric of the media conglomerates. Their only intent is to maximise profit at the expense of the consumer, and the artist.
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It's funny how the music business thinks it can get people onside by threatening their own customers with disconnection?
I'm no longer a Virgin Media customer and if my current broadband supplier sent me a letter like this they would be an ex supplier as well.
I expect that car companies like Ford etc will be sending owners letters telling them not to break the law by speeding etc or they will repossess their car?
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Copyright infringement is a criminalised activity. That doesn't necessarily mean it is theft (those pre-film notices decrying "copyright theft" are misnomers: you wouldn't steal a car, you wouldn't steal a policemans helmet... ). Stealing a CD that's theft: merely stealing the contents of that CD is not! That's why there is a SPECIFIC offence for "copyright infringement." It had to be created because copying wasn't theft. It wasn't even appropriate of use.
So let's get our terminology right.
And that's my problem. The fact that the government has criminalised (due to extensive industry lobbying) an act which is fundamentally a private law matter.
Copyright infringement should be remedied by a private action for damages (which would be in the region of... err... 79p per song plus costs) NOT a stigmatised criminal offence enforced by the state (at the expense of the tax-paying public).
If the copyright holders want to enforce their (private) rights they should use private law at their own expense. The use of police and court time to protect their profits is unjustifiable.
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Pundits self-righteously proclaiming the evils of P2P downloads, and in the process bigging themselves up (I deleted them when I realised it was a crime - PAH), is the current flavour of the month.
They all make the same flawed and facile analogies equating civil copyright violations with criminal theft - repeating an invalid argument doesn't make it true, it just makes you look very silly.
In this instance, the music and film industry are fighting a battle they are very unlikely to win. There are many, many other methods of getting the files - Usenet, IRC, old-fashioned FTP sites (increasingly common) based in "safe" countries, and so on. Sooner or later it is probably some bright college student/hacker/coder will code a replacement to BitTorrent that prevents users identifying each other, and it's back to square one for the music.biz
No figures posted have shown that unauthorised downloading has any significant effect on purchases. Radiohead's flawed attempt at giving an album for free, which subsequently topped the paid-for charts highlighted this magnificently.
The music industry is facing an ongoing revolution, and it doesn't know what to do. Bands no longer need recording studios, a home computer does just as well. Free promotion avenues are becoming more available via YouTube, MySpace etc, and distribution is also available through the internet. Internet radio stations are always looking for content - I could go on for some time here.
Simple conclusion - if the industry wants people to stop downloading music, make it available simply, at a reasonable price point.
As a side note to indicate the hipocrisy of this article - media organisations (including the BBC, as far as I am aware) are increasingly sourcing stock photographs by trawling online photographic stores, Google images and so on. No by-line is given to the people whose images are stolen, no royalties are paid, and these actions are putting many photographers out of work.
Morally, how is this different from home-users downloading records of the internet? People don't put the photos online so that commercial organisations can weasel out of royalty payments.
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I buy a CD. To whom does that CD then belong? Me, because I bought it. And since I own that CD, I am entitled to do whatever I want with it, because I am the owner. The record companies have no claim on it because it no longer belongs to them. If I wanted to then upload it to the internet, tough luck to the record companies, they lost any ownership when the money changed hands.
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Is this stealing ?
Taking a car without consent or taking a CD from a shop are entirely different. Taking a car denies the owner use of his car until he gets it back and leaves him with the worry that he may never get it back. Taking a CD from a shop leaves the shopkeeper with one fewer CDs to sell and permanently deprived of an item he has paid for.
"Stealing" music in this way only leaves greedy record companies short of a few quid that they weren't going to get anyway.
If this is stealing, then stealing ain't always that bad.
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I am amazed at the number of people here justifying what they are doing on the grounds that it is not theft, merely copyright infringement. What difference does that make, it is still illegal.
Many are also saying, so what if it is theft - I don't care and will continue to do it. I think what they really mean is 'I know it is illegal but I also know the chances of me being caught is almost zero so I will take my chance'.
I'm sure if the likelihood of being prosecuted or sued was high very few would take the risk.
My understanding of licensing is that when you buy an album part of what you pay is a licence to listen to the music on the disc (or tape or vinyl). I'm sure someone will correct me if I am wrong.
I'm sure I am not alone in having paid for the same licence many times.
I bought Dark Side Of The Moon back in the 70's on vinyl. I then bought a second copy when the first became scratched. I then updated to cassette tape and bought it a third time before updating again to CD and buying the same piece of music on a different format.
I recently lost this disc during a house move so I have 'illegally' downloaded it. I do not consider this to be either theft or copyright infringement. As far as I can tell I have already purchased the licence to listen to this music four times.
My point is that even if I am correct, if Virgin or anybody else should query this I no longer have the vinyl, cassette or disc nor do I have a reciept to prove my purchase. By the same token nobody else is able to prove that I did not buy them.
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I think the confusion arises because most people have an innate sense of justice and smell a rat with the music industry, who don't mind giving us free music when it serves their ends.
As Jefferson said, "law is often but the tyrant's will", and we're talking about an industry that does more than provide loans to aspiring entertainers (record deals must be repaid in full), also stitching up the retail market to restrict independent bands and labels.
It's important to differentiate between the big multimedia players like Sony and BMG and, say, a struggling band trying to sell its songs online. The law that theoretically protects the little guy (although who would sue their fans?) is used by the big guys to justify sueing the general public over a trifling amount instead of spending the money improving their download service.
All this after the big ents companies spend millions generating buzz for the music- they stick it in adverts, magazines, on the radio, in the background in the Eastenders cafe even- all to get the song stuck in our heads/make the artist desirable, and when we become curious about it sue us for failing to engage with it in a way that makes them 79p. I'll pay their 79p, but only if they pay me 79p every time their boorish marketing imposes itself on my perceptions. Sadly, the letter of the law isn't on my side, which is a shame because it's an injustice.
Music's easy to make too- if the record companies disappeared, music would increase in diversity, not go away. The bizarre rules governing being allowed to sell music in a record shop (to do with barcodes) would perish, opening up local acts to local audiences. I often write and perform music, as do millions of others, with no expectation of doing it as a living- it's not about making money and I happily give my music away for free. But without those restrictions, I'd cover my costs from sales and maybe afford some new sounds for the mix. I'd feel dreadfully dishonest if that's all I did all day, as making music's a fundamental human ability requiring the minimum of skill.
DRM is a nonsense- my vinyl records all have a picture of a cassette on it saying "Home recording is killing music". It was rubbish then, it's rubbish now. All it does is restrict the legitimate use of an audio file, and can easily be stripped out by pirates.
The big companies are essentially selling ice to the eskimos, having restricted the local ice supply. I don't care if the law is on their side - it stinks and I think people should engage with music in whatever way they find convenient- an incentive for record companies to make their own back catalogues freely available for paid download.
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@ highwalker
BT actively promotes the open sharing of all its wireless equipment under the product name 'BT Fon'.
I have it at home and anyone is welcome to use my broadband, they don't even need to login they just use it.
Why should I secure it unless someone is ripping my bandwidth. I have unlimited usage and can advise BT of the computer name and MAC address responsible for the usage so they can monitor should they wish.
So no i do not use security on my wireless so at least I can blame anyone i like...
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Darren Waters, It's NOT semantics. copying software is NOT stealing! How dare you?
Stealing means I take something from you without your permission, and then you do NOT have it anymore. You do not have access to it, it is GONE!
Piracy is illegal copying. It is as if you have a car, and I copy it, making one the same, so I don't have to buy yours. You still have yours. You can still sell yours to someone else. There is a big difference.
It is NOT semantics. Copying is SIMILAR to stealing, but it is not the SAME as stealing. So, if it is not the same as stealing, it is something different from stealing, so it is NOT stealing.
How did you ever get a career in writing if you do not even have that small basic grasp of english? You do not know the difference in meaning between the words 'similar' and 'same'. They have very different meanings in language and in law.
Men and women are similar in the sense that they are both human, but they are still very different, I mean, you try giving birth!
My advice to you Darren, invest in a dictionary and do NOT attempt a career in law. You are incapable of understanding the subtle differences in language that a legal mind requires.
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Perhaps when the music industry can sort out their pricing (especially pricing across international borders) then maybe people will be less inclined to download music.
As a quick example, I recently wanted to purchase a CD so I looked on Amazon, where it was listed at GBP17.99. So I looked at the marketplace on Amazon and was able to order the exact same CD from America for GBP9.50, which included delivery from America.
As another example, the new Coldplay album is 10USD on Amazon's US site but GBP9 on the UK version.
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Darren, when I was 15 there was no internet. However the analogy is still accurate.
I'll tell you about a recent version of what happened when I was 15.
There's an artist called Emilie Autumn. You will not hear her music on any radio or tv station. You can listen to several of her songs on her MySpace profile however.
A friend introduced me via a few music tracks shared over msn. I liked what I heard, but wanted to hear more as you should never assume an album is as good as a single track (or 4 in this case). A trawl of several sites and I've got a good selection of music from several albums, turns out she's done about 4 albums of varying styles. I've also shared those tracks with a couple of friends.
Result? Several albums have been bought (which would never have been bought otherwise due to the complete lack of radio and tv coverage) and concerts have been attended, not just by myself, but by all of us involved. Although I'll admit to be unimpressed at the 18 pound price tag on a t-shirt. So we have the very thing you seem so incensed about generating so far in excess of over 100 pounds worth of sales that would never have existed otherwise.
The reason MySpace works is that it remembers the most fundamental aspect of music, music is social. MySpace allows you to share music by allowing you to add music to your profile, for you to say to your friends "hey, listen to this". MySpace is a good way to do it I agree, but it doesn't go far enough for me to go "yes, I'll buy that album on the basis of a single track".
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Point 125 - power to the ppl says that having purchased a CD you are entitled to do whatever you like with it and the record companies have no claim on it once the money has changed hands.
This is not actually correct. When you buy a CD you then own the jewel case, the inserts and the disc itself. You also have a licence to listen to the music which is on the disc.
At no stage do you own the material on the disc or any of the artwork. You own the piece of plastic which is the disc but not the contents. You own the paper insets but not the art or words printed on them although you do own the ink which is used to create the images.
If you subsequently copy the disc a dozen times you are in breach of copywrite regardless of the fact that you have purchased the original disc.
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I think we have established that downloading music is not stealing but rather copyright infringement - a more intersting debate would be whether downloading music is morally wrong?
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Darren
Your updates confuses rather than enlightens.
"It's a bit like breaking into a car, driving it around and then abandoing it. I believe it's called Taking Without Consent in legal parlance. Stealing to everybody else."
Err, no, not necessarily. That's why its called TWOCing and not theft / stealing. Theft permanently deprives the legitimate owner of something of their enjojment of that item.
The reality of TWOCing is of course usually horrible. I've been a victim myself more than once. It normally involves criminal damage to the car, theft of petrol, inconvenience to the owner, and often damage to the car and theft of the contents, not to mention secondary effects in terms of inconvenience getting the car back, hassles with insurance companies and the police, etc....
Not comparable to what happens when a geek downloads a Dylan bootleg from 30 years ago, or even when someone copies the latest Beyonce or whatever.
But in principle, TWOCing a car found with the keys in the lock, driving it round for a while, then returning it undamaged and maybe even putting petrol in it, would be morally a very different crime...not quite victimeless, but of a minor character compared to the teenage joyrider who takes a car if my first example.
Maybe more comparable to downloading?
So the analogy to downloading music is a VERY weak one, unless it's to illustrate that the law is much more confused and less clear-cut than we all assume.
But I don't think that was your point, was it?
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@devilzadvacate
I don't necessarily think people are trying to justify what they're doing, I suspect they're trying to decry the myth that copyright infringement can get you locked up!
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re: 133.
OK if that's the law I stand corrected. But the law is wrong.
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It is NOT just semantics - You cannot wake up one day and decide that a particular word, 'theft' in this case, has a new meaning; What makes it worse is that the people trying to redefine the word are being dishonest about their intentions, and their intention is to maximise profit at the expense of both the artist and the consumer... But hey, thanks for correcting both me and my dictionary....
There is no such thing as 'Intellectual Property', there are only copyrights, trademarks, and patents.
theft : noun - an act of stealing someone else's /property/, with the intention of permanently depriving them of it.
copyright : noun - the sole right, granted by law [that's me and you at the end of the day...], to print, publish, translate, perform, film or record an original literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work for a certain number of years.
Therefore, if I copy someone song, I have infringed their copyright, I did not steal from them because they are not deprived of anything..
Please, you work for a publicly funded company and you are blindly repeating the rhetoric of private, extremely wealthy, media companies - try to engage your brain before passing off your/their opinion
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UPDATE: A few people have questioned my use of the word stealing. Arguing that it is copyright infringement and not stealing. There may be a point here but to my mind this is semantics. It's a bit like breaking into a car, driving it around and then abandoing it. I believe it's called Taking Without Consent in legal parlance. Stealing to everybody else.
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semantics say you, but legal definitions have been created to avoid exactly this kind of ambiguity.
Do the recording companies "own" those songs ? the answer to that is no. Do the song-writers "own" the song. again no.
To "own" the song, they would have to "own" the words and music contained within it. Which would pretty much make using any word in the english language , or strumming a guitar, theft.
The song-writers are granted a copyright, which says that the lyrical structure (the sequence of the words) and the melodical structure (the sequence of the notes) [it gets a little more complicated but that will suffice] is of their own creation and individual thought process.
The recording companies are granted a license by those copyright holders to publish their copyrighted items.
furthermore the legal definition of theft is ?the dishonest appropriation of property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving that person of it?.
as no-one OWNS the song, no-one can be deprived of it - and I would argue that its a brave man who stands in court and argues that they have been deprived of their music.
The only offences which are applicable are Copyright Infringement and conspiracy to defraud (which is to do with depriving the license holder of the use of their license. i.e preventing them making money from selling the music)
labelling people thieves or "pirates" is just factually incorrect.
confuzatron - you seem to be confused between the meanings of "worthless" and "valueless".
When you buy a CD of music - you pay for the Physical CD and Box, and a license to play the music, you do not pay for the music itself, if you paid for the music then you would own that music and that is a situation that cannot occur as the people selling it to you do not own it either and so it is not theirs to sell. They can however, as I mention, license you to play the music. so even when you buy a CD you are getting the music for free, albeit with the consent of the license holder. The music in and of itself has no value.
file-sharing is illegal and there isn't any justifiable argument in its defence.
having said that, if there existed a "duplicator" and , as a for-instance, Hovis produced a loaf of bread for £200, and I were to duplicate that loaf in the "duplicator" (note I have not deprived Hovis of the loaf, it is still existing and intact and "under their auspices") and then make copies of that copy which I give away for free, am I stealing Hovis's loaves ? quite clearly not, and its absurd to argue that I am, but equally clearly the action is not legal and above-board. Now Hovis have two choices 1.) sue me for infringing their copyright (their trademark name on the loaf and/or packaging in this instance) or 2.) look at their pricing structure, if people arent paying £200 for the loaf then they have clearly got their market position and pricing wrong.
Yes Hovis are free to charge what they like for the loaf (and it is not extortion), but they should not expect there to be a market for that loaf at that price.
When Radiohead gave away their album for free, but asked people to pay a price they thought was fair. I wonder how many actually paid the £15, £16 pounds currently charged for a CD. [for the record a survey found most people paid around £4].
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@137
haha that is an oxymoron if ever i saw one!
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Stealing still isn't the right word. Taking the car and abandoning it relieves its owner of the capability of using the car while you have it. When I copy digital data, I'm not stopping anyone else from accessing that data. There is no trespass to property (another legal term) because the property remains with the place it was legally supplied.
Also, what music do you have on your computer? I am concerned that my own CD's, stored on my computer for private/research/backup use might be copyright infringement. The CD's say 'no unauthorised copying' on them, so I have to use the exceptions in the law to defend the copies on my computer.
Finally, DRM: please consider adding that DRM is conceptually flawed: the protection has to be supplied with the way to overcome the protection, or law-abiding users won't be able to enjoy their purchases. This leaves a big hole through which the buying public is able to restore their fair-use or fair-dealing rights previously obscured by DRM. Until the movie or music or games companies control the boxes through which we use their works of art*, there will remain this hole.
*NB: the XBox Live, Playstation Network and Nintendo Wii online all provide updates which can restrict the use of these devices in the hands of the end-user; but are still futile because the hardware is sold to the user to do with as he or she pleases -- even tinkering and soldering.
Take care.
Ken.
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re: 140
Alright, 'morally wrong'. And it is.
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The music industry doesnt like downloading precisely because it allows you to sample the music first.
They would prefer to bring in a new pop star, put out a strong first single then launch the album hoping that people will by it on the strength of that one song alone. That means that the rest of the album can be absolute carp but they still get their money.
They know that allowing the customer to listen to the album first in those circumstances would mean a potential lost sale.
Yes I know teh argumetns that we would buy more music if we can lsiten first because we wont be taking a risk, I do this myself, however the record companies would rather that they dictated what music you bought. That way they can have fewer artists and put more money behind them instead of having to cast a wider net.
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138 - Just to put the record straight, Theft is defined as -
'A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the owner of it' Sec 1 Theft Act 1968
For the offence to be committed all parts of the definition have to have occurred. This is why the analagy of the car being take for a joyride is not theft. There was no intention to deprive the owner of it permanently; for this reason there is a specific offence of 'taking without consent'
The real difficulty is deciding what is and what is not property.
You may well believe that there is 'no such thing as intellectual property' but that would put you at odds with the people who drafted the Theft Act 1968 did because part of the definition of property is 'may include intellectual property'.
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@power_to_the_ppl
do you not think though that preaching the moral high ground is a slippery slope argument? after all wouldn't you have to be clean as a whistle in all other aspects of life - it wouldn't be hard to think of cases where all of us have deliberately sidestepped the law in some way or another, deliberately. (see my earlier post)
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What's more of an issue is an ISP allowing itself to play "judge and jury" by an outside influence.
If I pay an ISP for their service I expect to get the service I pay for, i.e. access to www.....if I want to download music, watch movies, even look at some porn that is my choice alone and I don't need the ISP pointing an accusing finger at me with the BPI skulking behind. Let them do their own snooping.
And if you're trying to tell me that you don't download even 1 song "illegally" every now and again I'm a monkey's uncle.
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"I hate the way record labels and film studios control the flow of content"
So do we, Darren, and likewise we hate the way in which those industries abuse their customer base by selling inferior products with restrictions on own use and claiming that for us to demand otherwise is unacceptable.
Certainly downloading music without payment is illegal - that much is defined by the existing statutes. What is not clear is whether it is morally wrong. If, like you, we feel that consumers have a right not to be abused and to receive the products we pay for, then there is a moral imperative to resist what is essentially immoral (though legal) conduct on the part of the music industry. People may be legally punished for their civil disobedience (as Thoreau himself was), but that doesn't mean what they did was wrong.
(And let us not forget that much of this downloading technology they use was once itself illegal. Where would the music industry be today if they'd succeeded in shutting down the likes of Napster way back when?)
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As I understand it we are paying not for the music but effectively for a licence to play it. However, over the years thanks to the music industry changing format every few years, I have had to purchase the same music on vinyl, cassette, cd, and now they want me to pay them to download it??? In a fair world, the music industry would give us any new format free provided we had purchased it once.
Hence, if others are like me I suspect they are downloading (for free) primarily music that they already own, but not in a format that now works on an ipod.
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Darrenwaters - are you working for the BPI or something? Do you sit near Susan King? Care to explain exactly what your agenda here is. Surely none of this actually matters to you but you nevertheless seem very opinionated on the subject.
I am just curious to know why a BBC employee seems to be in cahoots with the record industry in peddling their (flawed) propoganda.
Oh, and please lets stop going on about whether downloading a free song equates to taking a car without consent. Really boring now and clearly not the same.
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I think Darren (and the majority of contributors) have missed a key reason for filesharings success - simply access to material unavailable elsewhere - mainly live bootlegs or ROIOs (Recordings Of Illegal/Independent Origin).
I have almost all of the Led Zeppelin catalogue - some on three different media...and all of the DVDs but I still want to see uncut videos of Earls Court 75 and Knebworth 79. This just isn't available by any conventional legitimate means.
The same applies to audio bootlegs - especially classic 70s bands where the live versions are vastly superior; and differ from performance to performance, from the studio recordings.
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re: 145
I was referring to the law being unjust, because in buying a CD we get only partial ownership, not the act of illegal downloading. See 137. I think sharing music online is a great thing!
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I feel that all this is really just a temporary 'blip on the screen'.
We are going through a transition stage between the old style record shop with no ability to make a decent duplication of the material and the future which will be all digital.
I sincerely believe that within a very few years owning music in the form of CD's mp3's or whatever will be a thing of the past.
Surely the ultimate step is that all recorded music will be held on a huge database that can be accessed in realtime, a bit like a global jukebox. Economy of scale will be such that requesting a particular track will be so cheap that it would not be worth buying it even if you could. The artists would get their cut based on the number of requests.
Likewise with films - why would I want to spend even as little as 3 pounds to buy a DVD which I might only watch once or twice if I had the option to view it for 50p?
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Its not semantics, its the recording companies trying to make 'copyright infringement' sound much more serious than 'invasion of privacy'. I use peer-peer networks regularly for legal purposes, are these guys seriously aloud to snoop my data? What if I am trafficking data via peer-peer that I own copyright on, are they guilty of infringement by looking at it? What if the information is sensitive? Who are the people snooping on this data, and how are they vetted? These are the serious issues here!
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Susan King: Your "purple ferrari" analogy misses the point completely.
As I stated in my earlier post, many albums are simply unavailble commercially, due to their being currently out-of-print. That isn't the same as a product never having existed... The record companies have locked away many "purple ferraris" in their garages.
A number of others here have also raised the interesting point of previously paying for music and then either damaging or mislaying the medium upon which it is stored...
I used to own Aretha Franklin's 'Aretha' album from 1986, on cassette. It's by no means a classic album, but I'm fond of it for nostalgic reasons. Well, the last time I played it, the tape stretched and snapped. I trawled online to buy a new copy until realising that I can't. The album is out of print and none of the legal download services offer it for sale. I've never seen used copies of the CD on sale at eBay either.
I eventually "obtained" the album by other means. The music isn't exactly hi-fidelity; in fact the (low bitrate) MP3 files sounded muddy and dull. However, they were better than nothing and I burned them as audio files to a blank CD-R.
Now, my point is this... I COULD have made a back-up copy of the original cassette when I first owned it, back in 1986 - but I obviously didn't. Nearly every home Hi-Fi system at the time had twin cassette decks for tape-to-tape dubbing... What is the difference between my making a copy of the album 20 minutes after I originally purchased it in 1986 - and making a copy 20 years later?
And yes - If a factory-pressed CD of the album were to be reissued, I'd dispose of my CD-R copy and purchase the album again.
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Interesting - its nice to know BBC employees can afford music, that will be my £11 per month ... but thats a different matter.
In your eye's then, borrowing a DVD from a friend is copyright infringement, as bad as stealing a car? Lending a CD to a friend, or a book to a family member, simply theft?
The thing with the ISP's is that of course virgin want to stop it, they own a share of the music industry, its like when sony kick up a fuss about copyright issues but then make and market products based around copying such data. However i think Virgin should sort out their problems in house, like lying to customers about connections speeds before they get to big for their boots.
Also you can log onto the net annoymously, which is when people look at some real dodgy stuff. Thats what would happen it would go underground.
If taking a track is as bad as taking a car the prisons are going to get full up quickly!! I personally think that some of the music shoved down our throats, especially on bbc stations is criminal, theres nothing interlectual about that tripe, if a sharer goes to jail so should rhinanna and Usher, and Sam Sparo. Remember its better to share than be selfish, im off to download and distribute every episode of My Family, only joking, My Family is rubbish!!
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Putting aside any moral arguments for a moment, if Virgin - who provide my broadband - are going to monitor my illegal downloads and make it difficult to do this then I'm not going to need a 20MB connection anymore, am I?
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If nobody bought music, the music industry would die and there would be no new music to download/copy/rip illegally. That's a simple fact.
If you're downloading without paying, you're the technological equivalent of a sponge. You're that guy who leaves before it's his turn to buy a round of drinks, who tries to get a free train ride by hiding in the toilet, who will do anything for a free ride.
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It quite simple really:
1. Scrap the nonsense that is DRM
2. Have all songs encoded at 320kbps in the three main compression formats (mp3, wma, AAC).
3. Sites selling songs should offer the option to download either format.
4. Reduce RRP considerabley for albums that are downloaded (i.e. £4.49 for a new release, £3.49 for older releases).
The current practice of selling a download album with DRM for £7.49 when the CD costs £7.99 is nonsense.
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I'd like to add a comment on the "moral" issue.
The music industry believes it's "morally wrong" to illegally download music so no one gets paid. So they are suing people who illegal download music.
I think it's "morally wrong" for large music labels to have a large budget for "fruit and flowers" (more commonly known as illegal drugs) so will not give these labels my money for them to spend on illegal drugs.....
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What's clear from the comments here is how strong feeling is running against the music industry these days amongst music fans becuase the industry targets their own best customers. And I would count myself as one of those people even though I don't download music from the Internet, either "legally" or "illegally".
Many people have pointed out that the full recommended prices for CDs have not dropped even though the manufacturing and copying costs for the record industry have reduced many-fold.
In your car analogy, Darren, that would be like Ford charging the same money in real terms for a Ford Focus as they did ten years ago even if all they had suddenly found a magic way of making them to the same quality out of Lego.
Also studies have indeed shown that people who download tend to be the highest purchasers of legal music, but legally these people can only download using overpriced services such as iTunes.
In your car analogy, Darren, that would be like Ford charging £1000 a go for test drives of their latest Focus model.
A few years back many record companies started selling me and my fellow music-buyers CDs that were efectively broken: they wouldn't play on some of my players, and would only play on some of my PCs using an embedded low-quality MP3 player, even though I'd paid full price for CD-quality sound. This was because of the embedded copy-protection software, that had the horrendous side-effect of adding files to my hard drive that corrupted the operating system and made it vulnerable to hacker attack.
In your car analogy, Darren, that would be like Ford selling you a full-price Focus that would break down when you took it on certain roads, and would only go at 20mph on some others. Oh, and it would also knock some bricks off your house and unlock all the house's door and windows so that burglars could break in whenever you parked it in your drive.
Now the record companies try and sell me a poor selection of restricted-rights, low-quality files for downloading at 79p a pop.
In your car analogy, Darren, that would be like Ford selling me a full-price Focus that only came in bilious green, wouldn't go above 20mph absolutely anywhere, and wouldn't go at all if you moved house or your wife tried to drive it.
If the motor industry behaved like this it would be interesting to see what your attitude to it would be, Darren, particularly if all the while you suffered the scenarios above, you could get fully functional but "illegally cloned" Ford Focuses down the road for a fiver.
Personally I think the days of the recording industry being able to get away with this sort of behaviour are numbered. For example, the EU in particular look as though they will be taking a dim view of a DRM system that tries to dictate how you can use goods that have been legally purchased.
Finally to Darren and everyone else taking the moral high ground here: have you ever taped an episode of Eastenders and lent it to your friend who missed it? Maybe in return for some babysitting? Whoops, looks like you have benefitted from some illegal copyright infringement and that you too can look forward to a visit from the boot boys from FACT and a spell in court...
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aardfirth wrote:
"If nobody bought music, the music industry would die and there would be no new music to download/copy/rip illegally. That's a simple fact."
Heh! Of course, before the music industry came along there was no music in the world, they invented music didn't they!
Without the music industry the only thing we'd lose out on would be manufactured groups and I can live without them!
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I think the word stealing is overused. When you go to a Virgin and take a CD in your pocket, it is stealing because there is a physical copy. But when you take a song on the internet, no physical copy is taken.
This means two things:
1) Music retailers are not directly hurt, because choosing the internet is like choosing another retailer like say, HMV, or iTunes for the internet.
2) The real hurt is for music companies and artists and as you said, it is more about copyright infringement.
One theory says that pirating could be beaten because consumers are on the look for three main factors. Those are convenience, quality and price.
Price can not be beaten because piracy means "free", but the music industry could sell tracks for a cheap price to get close to free. Then they need to be very strong on "convenience" and "quality" to overtake piracy. Convenience is basically how easy and quickly you can find the file you want and get it while quality is simply the file quality for that matter.
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#157: Hear hear. I wish people would ditch these laughable fig-leaf arguments and just admit that they like being able to get music for nothing that would otherwise cost them money.
The ones that spout drivel about the Evil Record Companies, placing themselves in the role of a musical Che Guevara battling for justice... well they're the most laughable of all.
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This whole file sharing thing is like buying a CD, and making 10 hard copies and just handing it out to all your friends at work.
What's the difference then?
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Artist get paid way too much anyway and the price for music thats another story.
So before we start debating if its ethically right or not to download or share music lets debate the salaries of doctors, nurses, firemen and alike who's jobs have a real impact on our lives.
Musicians and record companies stop crying you greedy capitalist robbers.
Remember its only music.
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Darren, the more I read your original piece the more I smile.
Firstly, you admit that you have yourself downloaded from p2p sites but subsequently deleted the files because you knew it was illegal.
You then use as an example the 'stolen' car which I thiunk we have established was not a particularly good choice.
Another unlikely but possible scenario is that the person who steals your car later returns it to you undamaged and apologises for what he has done. Does this make it OK? Clearly not - the offence was committed at the time it was taken, subsequently returning it may be admirable but does not alter the fact that it has been stolen (or TWC'd), a bit like the shoplifter who, when caught offers to pay for the goods thinking it's OK.
Fact is that you are as guilty as anyone else, the fact that you no longer do it means you are a reformed character, that's all.
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The claim that making a product easily available for zero price has no effect on retailers of the same product who make it available at a cost is... hilarious.
You could argue that people would avoid the stealing option because it's wrong, but you only have to read this thread to see how inventive people can get when they need to persuade themselves it's okay to nick something... so long as they can get away with it.
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Last night I went to a friend's house and watched Cloverfield on DVD. I didn't pay any money for it. On the way home, a car went past with a song that sounded very much like Snoop Dogg playing loudly. I have never given any money to the makers of Cloverfield or Mr Dogg, but others have shared their "intellectual property" with me.
Consequently I am now off to my local police station, with a copy of my friend's name and address and the registration number of the offending motorist. Hopefully they'll go easy on me for ratting the other two folk out, and I might only be flogged.
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164: mass producing copies of a CD for your friends is stealing with a lower impact.
If I may make a less ridiculous analogy than the one you tried to get away with:
"File sharing is like sharing files on the internet for people all over the world whom you've never met, to easily download at zero cost"
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168: 'reasoneddebate'.
Satire! Well done!
Meanwhile in the real world...
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I download music without paying. Often i'll download 4/5 tracks from a band's new album and, depending on whether or not I like what I hear, buy the album on my next shopping trip to town.
If this file-sharing service was not available to me I simply wouldn't buy half as many albums as I currently do. I recently downloaded four songs from Sigur Ros' new album and as a result i'll be buying it after work in a couple of hours. So, if the BPI want to take this downloading service away from me I simply won't buy the albums.
I'd never download entire albums onto my iPod, legally or illegally, because I prefer to have a physical product to take home with me. Having the 500-odd cds in my collection replaced with a hard-drive just doesn't look as impressive or authentic...
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*Big Yawn* I'm so bored of listening to people like Darren compare outdated business models with 'stealing' when there's no physical product involved. Why wont the music industry get their head's outta the clouds and wake up to the 21st century. Stop paying artists millions for a few records, and then there wont be as many costs to recoup, as a producer myself I understand numbers. It's a false economy to continue the rich 20th century model when music has no value anymore. How many 'talent' shows are there?
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Many people complaining about the vast amounts of money made by the music industry and the artists and justifying their illegal activity on the grounds that they should not have so much.
I can see the argument and I'm sure that the likes of Clapton, Madonna, Bowie, Spears or the CEO of Sony or EMI would probably not even notice if their incomes were cut by a few hundred thousand.
The truth is that for every megastar earning millions there are thousands of up-and-coming artists who earn very little.
If the record companies make less money they are less inclined to take a chance on some of the lesser known acts.
Just a few thousand pounds less income can be the difference between a band being signed or not.
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oh and don't get me started about legitimate downloads, paying 99p for a track that is 10% quality wise of a uncompressed CD track, that is where music is value-less, take it from me with a amplifier/receiver multichannel setup. I have no quips with downloading shitty encoded music, and paying for CD's that demand that quality for my system.
FYI - bittorrent is a legitimate service, it's proven, clean, efficient, and workable, I've been using it for the past five years, why would i require to install so many different apps (itunes/iplayer etc) when one app suits all needs. The industry needs to stop playing catch up and get their content onto websites that mirror the success of mininova, oink, et all.
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I am frenquently more reminded these days of a book I read when I was a little younger. Sci-fi, but talks about a future where *all* digital media was free because there was simply no way to control it. Therefore, the only money really made by these media giants who scoffed themselves in the late parts of the 20th century now came from live content, where people had to see it first and therefore submitted to the advertising. Paying for media? - didn't exist, someone could easily replicate something within minutes of release and make it available to the world.
Now, I believe this is exactly the type of scenario we are moving to. There are still going to be fat cats, giants, conglomerates, etc., just that the current ones are going to lose power.
Quality of music may decrease a little, but it will return to more of an art form and a hobby than a money maker.
However, quality of TV - oh dear, poor! Without money to spend on massive series or films, we're going to be overloaded with soaps. Ouch. So download all the great movies you can now, because you won't be seeing as many, or as good quality ones in the future.
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Laugh a minute...
I've just read Bill Thompson's blog, from the same BBC technology page as this blog is linked from.
Everyone should go take a look at it - it has a markedly different, and, in my opinion, a markedly more realist, honest, open, and correct approach to the issue - and doesn't rely on dubious semantic arguments that aren't semantic arguments at all!
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@ 156,
Never mind illegal downloads, if Virgin are monitoring my downloads at all they can stick my 20meg connection where the sun don't shine.
That's the bigger issue here, ISP's are apparently threatening to snoop on your internet traffic on the offchance that you might have done something illegal. If people don't find that in any way frightening (and if the moral majority could spare me from the "if you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to hide" argument because it's fatuous and misses the point completely) there's something wrong.
There is no way on earth that such blatant breaches of privacy should be permitted simply to protect the profits of an entertainment industry, we're not talking about preventing terrorism or averting disaster, it's inspecting everyones data streams to check if the odd one might be downloading some music or a film, it's an outrage.
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This debate will rattle on forever. People have been sharing and copying music for a very long time.
Since the days of copying your vinyl records onto tape, has the music industry collasped yet........no.
One of the main reason that music, movies, games whatever are downloaded is because it is not available in that country, it comes down to why should I wait 2 month when I can download it now.
Until the industry gets its act together and start doing global releases, downloading will continue. The world is getting smaller and the entertainment industries need to recognise this.
I have downloaded music and movies from less than legitamate sources, since they are only available in Japan or America.
Now music is not that expensive anymore, and can be downloaded quite cheaply. But when bands such as NIN are releasing albums under the 'creative commons attribution non-commercial share alike license.' and encouraging you to remix and share the album. Since they know that people will still buy the album and will go and see the concerts. Here's hoping that more bands follow suit.
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The BPI mentions tracking people (i.e. IP addresses) on P2P networks. However, I would guess that most people now get illegal music from links to 'hosting sites' such as rapidshare, Megaupload etc. from blogs on the web. Do a Google search, for example, the following:
"[Album name] blog download"
and most of the time it will take you to a blog that has a rapidshare or megaupload link for the album in question.
I suppose ISPs will eventually block access to these hosting sites.
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"And I'm certainly not forking out any more on an album I've bought 3 times already to have it in a format where the quality is actually worse that the ones I have."
don't then. but don't try and kid yourself that this justifies you stealing it.
its sad listening to all the thieves on here trying to convince themselves that stealing is ok. Shouldnt you stop posting here and go get a job? that way you might be able to afford the things you want.
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rapidshare records IP addresses of every download, including timestamps and details of the file. If you think that's anonymous, your delusional.
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I notice people going on about how much the industry supports up and coming artists. Maybe they should do a search for a singer called Poe and then they'll take a different view. FYI Poe wanted her music to be rereleased, there was a demand for it but the label wanted to keep her music off the shelves for their own reasons. The result was a 7 year legal battle over control of her music during which time she was not allowed to record or perform her own music, written by her. The record label would have lost nothing by releasing the masters, they'd already made it clear they had no intention of rereleasing, but out of spite forced an artist into near bankruptcy for having the audacity of wanting her fans to be able to buy her music!
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Re 177:
I hear what you're saying but you're opening up a can of worms. Where would you draw the line on what it is and is not acceptable to monitor?
To stop terrorism - yes.
To prevent illegal downloading - no.
TO prevent child pornography - then what?
Or depraved material that only certain people want to watch but "might" be harmful to long term scoiety- ????
Unfortunately we're living in a Big Brother world more than ever and what we do is being monitored whether we like or not and whether we know about it or not.
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"One of the main reason that music, movies, games whatever are downloaded is because it is not available in that country"
a laughable and pathetic justification. I have friends who sell games on-line to every country on earth from their small 2 person office. Don;t try and kid yourself this is why people steal games. You just reckon you wont get caught.
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Would you call someone who parks on yellows a criminal? Would you say that two under 16 year old kids having sex is a crime?
If you want to follow the letter of the law, why don?t more people throw down a gauntlet in court, why don?t people get prosecuted for smoking weed?
Some 'crimes' are acceptable.
You are still a ?criminal? if you have stolen music and then deleted it. It?s like stealing a newspaper and then throwing it away when you?ve finished with it.
Downloading is acceptable and very easy to do.
Will this enforcement from Virgin work, of course not. How do you think people in Iran blog? Using the same technology I stream shows from US equivalents of iplayer, which are supposed to only let people who live in the US watch them. This technology hides my ip and more and more people will adopt it, it'll be built into every p2p program shortly.
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2susan king - get a life and get back to work, probably at the BPI. "
has it every occurred to you that some people may disagree with you, without working for the BPI?
No of course it didn't what a little bubble world to exist in, with your fellow thieves.
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Bang on Darren - absolutely right. It is an intellectually interesting question whether it is stealing (as you don't deprive anyone directly) but either way it is against the law. There are a few remaining questions. 1) Should it be against the law? In my view, yes. However, if someone can come up with a better model, all power to 'em! 2) What is a proportionate response? Is it really a good idea to deny Internet connectivity, or is that just expediency on the part of the BPI? I don't think that is sensible - particularly when Internet crime of a dramatically more serious nature goes unpunished. 3) Is it a good idea to build your brand and business model around threatening potential customers? Even if they are 'stealing', the demographic is the one they are targeting, right? Last act of a desperate industry? As you say, that doesn't justify illegal downloading, but it means people should ask some sensible questions!
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I suspect that someone that considers the difference between permanently and totally depriving someone of their tangible property and someone else using their own resources to make a copy of a piece of someone else's information to be a trivial distinction probably doesn't have anything meaningful to say about filesharing, DRM or business models for content distribution.
Stealing a car may be "a bit like" copying music, but then hopping over one's neighbour's fence to retrieve one's football is a bit like burglary, spanking one's naughty child is a bit like invading an oil-rich Middle Eastern state and burning one's garden waste on the bonfire is a bit like sparking the next Great Fire of London.
It's the differences that count, not the similarities. The content industry and its "media partners" have tried very hard to create a widespread climate of moral disapproval for copyright infringement. They've failed. While there may well be negative consequences of widespread infringement for artists, publishers and for society at large, we need to be clear about the exact nature of the problem before we can begin to tackle it.
Emotively branding filesharers as thieves just reduces the fidelity of that conversation beneath a point where it has any purpose.
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"Would you call someone who parks on yellows a criminal"
YES.
if everyone acted in an anti-social "balls to the law!" way like you advocate we would have parking chaos. The law applies to everyone, not just "everyone but me!"
You cant even see how your behaviour si antisocial can you?
pathetic.
Admit it, you steal stuff because your reckon you might get away with it.
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AdrianShort, its clear you cant tolerate any views that don't agree with your own desperate attempts to justify taking other peoples work for free.
Pathetic.
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#181
Did I suggest it was anonymous. No, of course I didn't...
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Can those of you who see no problem in illegal downloading please post your addresses and tell the rest of us where you've left the keys?
Then we'll come around when you're out, use your computers, watch your DVDs, perhaps do a bit of sunbathing in the garden. We won't take anything so won't be depriving you of a thing. I'm sure you'll agree that there is no problem with doing this. Look forward to coming around!
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"Artist get paid way too much anyway and the price for music thats another story. "
plumbers earn a lot too. why don't you break into their houses and swipe their Telly eh?
Its easy to become all socialist about stuff when its just a way to rationalise swiping free movies and music isnt it?
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"Go and take a cold shower and calm yourself down love."
lost the argument have we diddums?
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"So no i do not use security on my wireless so at least I can blame anyone i like..."
enjoy your internet banking passwords being snooped...
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To all those slating Susan King - you may not agree with her but that doesn't mean she isn't entitled to her opinion.
Susan, irrespective of whether it is stealing or copyright infringement you are right in the fact that it is illegal. If you are as clean cut in every aspect of life as you make out then fair play to and it is highly commendable and you can indeed preach the moral high ground. Unfortunately though you are in the minority, and i nthis day and age it is unlikely that many people can preach justifiably and/or will be able to see your viewpoint.
The challenge though still remains for the industry to use downlaoding as a tool to their advantage in the long run rather than merely trying to counter it becuase that just seems to me to be a pointless path to try and go down.
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If your argument boils down to ad hominem "pro-filesharing people are thieves" or "anti-filesharing people are fascists" attacks, please go away now - you're not contributing anything.
I used to buy music from iTunes on a regular basis until they started tinkering with it so that you could only listening to it on specific devices and not others. And let's be frank - the quality wasn't good. So now I don't download music at all.
Well done, Apple - your music is clearly safe from the likes of me.
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Its water off a ducks back to me. Im used to antisocial little thieving kiddies whining about "I'M STICKING IT TO THE MAN!!!!111111"
its about the level of thieves intellects unfortunately :(
Who would give a job to someone who steals from people as a hobby? Not me, or anyone I know, that's for sure...
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#197 - No, Susan is entitled to her opinion but she is going about expressing it in a rude 'hollier than thou' attitude which is completely unjustified.
Susan. No, I have not lost the argument. You have lost your dignity in the manner of your posts. I am guessing that you are old and bitter, probably sat at home alone with no friends, full of hatred for everyone and everything who opposes your conservative views of the world.
I am quite happy with my position on this subject and will continue to download songs for free as and when I see fit. Thank you.
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Whether you class file-sharing as illegal or not, there are alternatives to it and to fans paying for music. Despite the threatened action of ISPs, the music industry is becoming increasingly positive to digital music delivery in many forms and are actively being more open to ideas that can gain income from a generation of music fans who have never paid for recorded music - cue the recent launch of ad-funded models (like We7) which feed labels and artists.
Steve Purdham
CEO www.we7.com
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#190
@Susan
et al
For free?
1) What happens to the £20/month paid to my ISP?
2) The Gowers Review reported to HMRC that only 8% of revenue from LEGAL downloads go to artists. I know of no artist who has got anywhere near that figure. Then of course they have to pay agents fees and tax like everyone else.
To figure out who the real "thieves" are why not just follow the money?
The BPI reckon they represent artists interests. If so, why are they not promoting the VRR/MSP business model? Surely in not doing so they are allowing ISPs to make huge profits at artist expense. Unlicensed and with no artists royalties.
Virgin's "we are just a conduit" position is dishonest to say the least.
The legally entrenched position ain't gonna fix the problem.
Worst of, 99.9% haven't got a clue that a solution actually does exist. This is largely due to the fact that the BBC et al, simply churnalize industry PR.
Take a look at
http://www.eff.org/files/eff-a-better-way-forward.pdf
There is plenty more where that came from.
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@Susan King
I have a room here at home that is lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves. Every one is filled with LPs, books, VHS tapes, DVDs, cassettes and CDs collected over the last 23 years. All of them are bought and paid for but today I'm going to download an MP3 just to annoy you.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Oooh. Susan King has officially lost the plot, nevermind the argument. Official complaint on teh way.
Thanks for the feedback Susan. Have a nice day.
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I think many people would agree that the popular definition of stealing is taking something that does not belong to you, without having permission to do so. Whether that something is an original, or a copy of an original, doesn't really come into it.
If you take a copy of a digital music file, without having permission to do so from its creator, then you are effectively stealing it. Of course its not as bad as stealing a car, or someone's wallet, or stealing money from a bank, but it's stealing nonetheless. I think that's what Darren Waters meant when he was talking about semantics: it may not be stealing when viewed from a legal or language standpoint, but it does match the commonly held definition of what stealing is.
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Remember the "Home Taping Is Killing Music" campaign years ago? Guess that was around 1980something. Here we are 20 years later and still the music industry is singing the same song but still making plenty of money. Home taping didn't kill music at all. Being given a home taped tape that a friend thought I'd enjoy was what got me into the music I like.
Adding up the concerts to which I've been, the t-shirts I've bought, the websites to which I've contributed, that all makes for a lot of money. Money the music industry would not have had had that friend said "Listen to this lot, I think you'll like it".
Can't have it both ways. Seems like the music industry is trying to.
Here's an example. A band I like played an excellent show to which I went (paid for the ticket and then spent an obscene amount of money on t-shirts) and which was one of their best shows in my experience of seeing them several times.
I find a so-called "bootleg" recording of the show. Nowhere is that show officially released for me to purchase. How can downloading that recording be theft? If the show had been recorded and issued for purchase I would have bought it!
If I buy a CD (and the last few I have bought I have bought from the artist themselves) then why do some argue that I can't rip to to MP3 so I can listen to the music on my preferred device when I'm out? Why do others insist on trying to restrict what I can do with that CD and infect my computer with a rootkit when I try to play it on there?
The music industry didn't predict the huge changes the internet has bought about and are frantically using every tactic they can find to wring money out of their cash cow before it finally dies. Ultimately the music industry is some kind of middle man and they're doing everything they can to try and justify and maintain their position.
The last half of point 2 and point 3 of post 187 are valid. The music industry is scared. Suddenly they aren't the big players they used to be, the internet is a far bigger pool. Any halfwit can threaten people. It takes a creative, constructive mind to come up with something original. The artists do that with their music but the music companies don't seem to have that ability in their business sections. Times are changing and change must be embraced.
We are in a society which seems to be driven by the idea of monitoring and criminalising every last thing it can. I'd much sooner the authorities did something about the drug dealers down the road than dragged the parents of a 7 year old through the courts because they downloaded a song. Which is the bigger threat to society?
Darren - your "confession" doesn't absolve you from the crime of theft.
Virgin Media has twice refused to answer a direct question about whether or not it has tested Phorm on its live network just as BT did. It no longer has any credibility as a trustworthy ISP.
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Susan - It's nice to be important, but it's important to be nice!
:-)
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Susan King, I must say I find your tone to be offensive in the extreme. While some of us here would like to participate in a reasoned debate on this and try and show Darren that his ascertations in this matter are flawed you seem purely intent on name calling anyone who dares to suggest that the current status quo is wrong.
I'm not speaking here from a blind idealogue either. I have been a collector of music now for around 28 years (speaking as from when I actually was given my first album for a birthday present) and have a personal music collection of nearly 1000 cds, cassettes and LPs. However I take umbrage at the thought that I'm expected by the music industry to pay a further 10 to 15 thousand pounds to download music I already own in order to listen to my collection on my laptop. Add to that fact that a good percentage of my collection is simply NOT available as a legitimate download anymore, and to be honest never was. Further to this I enjoy new music as well, I've discovered many good bands that I have bought CDs for by the simple expedience of looking at a band I like and seeing if their "genre" has any bands that I've not heard of before. I've downloaded an album to listen to, decided I liked what I heard and bought the album subsequently.
Also the industry is NOT as innocent as you would like to make out. I have heard first hand from musician friends how the industry treats them. The industry has no interest in promoting new and innovative talent, they're interest is purely in packaging and selling a product, music is not an art to them it is a simple resource. The only artists they have any real interest in nowadays ar the ones that will wear what they're told, sing what they're told, and even as far as to eat where they're told. God help an artist that actually wants to write their own music once they've made the mistake of signing that contract.
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#193
The point about sunbathing is actually a better analogy than you realise: the sun is broadcast free for anyone to enjoy, and you won't harm anyone else's interests by using it. It's different from stealing oil from someone's tank.
That is a reasonable simile for the point that several people were making. Once a work of art is published it doesn't disappear because several people enjoy it. The question then becomes what is the fair reward for that act of creativity and whether and how long that reward should be enforced by the state or a commercial interest.
To be slightly tongue-in-cheek, is standing in the sun stealing if the Government or a corporation declare they own it?
p.s.
You can sunbathe in my garden any day. But why would you want to when the sun is available in your own, or in your local park?
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LOL at how this discussion has spiraled into petty ridiculous "i'm right and you're wrong ner ner" depths. Gotta love the internet :)
Whether you're a fan or not is irrelevant but i'd just like to throw the name Nine Inch Nails into the discussion since people have brought up topics like artists' rights and the industry's future. The last two NIN albums were released on their website free, with PDFs and insert booklets for people to print out and stick onto their copied cds. The band's frontman and maestro, Trent Reznor, actively encourages people to steal his music, burn NIN cds and edit/remix his music as they see fit. His own little indie label now contracts companies when it comes to making physical copies of the album, which bypasses massive production, marketing, recording and label costs. The artist can practically take it all.
Have a look at their website and wikipedia for more info. It's an interesting direction he's taking.
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Alien8n...
I was going to write a lengthy reply to the way Susan King was conducting herself but you put it across perfectly.
I'll just steal your answer instead ;)
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re 213
the point 193 was making was that you would be in someone's else garden not the fact you are using the sun.
The sun analogy does not work with reference to downloads because it isn't a public good. By taking an illegal download you won't harm anyone else's enjoyment but that doesn't mean it is a public good. It is a private good - namely the artist's - for his/her distribution/sale.
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You know what I find funny though? I could start a website that lent music cds to people for free providing that they posted them back to me. I could even include a stamped envolope to send it back in. AND while I'm at it, the website could attract so many hits that online advertisers would just LOVE to give me money to advertise on the site and thus all the music bought would be funded.
And there's nothing to stop me from doing that. The user is just borrowing my CD, just like everyone does. And if they say THAT'S stealing then they might as well prosocute every single person in the UK, because just about everyone has borrowed a CD from a mate at some stage(and if you haven't I suggest you find some friends).
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@217: www.lendtoafriend.com appears to be free if you want to register it :O)
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Actually lendtoafriend.com would be classed as illegal unless you bought cds that came with the specific license that they were intended for rental. It's no different to going to a public library and renting a cd from there tbh, even there they're not allowed to rent out retail copies of music.
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#216
"The sun analogy does not work with reference to downloads because it isn't a public good. By taking an illegal download you won't harm anyone else's enjoyment but that doesn't mean it is a public good. It is a private good - namely the artist's - for his/her distribution/sale."
Part of my point (rather obliquely expressed, I admit) was that society determines what is a public and what is a private good, and when effective title passes from artist to individual, or becomes Public Domain.
(In theory the Government could levy a tax on the amount of sunlight falling on your house. The bigger the house the higher the tax. Those in the north of Scotland would pay less tax as they get less solar radiation. But I don't want to labour the analogy too far.)
Back to the point about public / private goods: an artist such as a painter or sculptor does not get additional payment when his work of art is sold on, even if it makes millions in the saleroom.
Equally, we have limits of time on copyright, which are subject to review and amendment by Parliament and / or international agreement.
Of course, the "industry" part of the music world would (quite rationally from their point of view) like to extend that time further and further, to maximise their profits.
If I can can have the temerity to try to summarise their arguments, the bloggers here are arguing is that in 2008, because of new technology, old definitions of what constitutes a "private good" are either
a) outmoded
b) unreasonably expensive
c) unenforceable
d) in need of further review / refinement in the light of that new technology; or
e) a mixture of all of these things.
Some are of course also suggesting that they are
f) immoral
But that is a different argument.
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@168: The licence on the video-recording makes it clear that home use is okay and that will include watching it with friends. However, had you recorded it while you were there, that'd be illegal and you could turn yourself in to the Federation Against Copyright Theft. Your mate would get off scot free though.
The motorist who was playing Snoop Dogg very loudly could probably be had up for noise pollution and a lack of taste. However, it's not broadcasting and I guess you didn't make a copy.
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Re 220
I'm not sure the painter/sculptor analogy is correct either. Here you're talking about a one off physical good whose value lies in its very "physical" uniqueness. I agree that in this case once the good is sold, the owner should receive no further gains.
However with music we are talking about an intangible object whose value lies in the non-physical joy we derive from it. Physically each song is worth very little or nothing. Therfore copies need to be made and it the sum of the value of each copy that gives it a similar aggregate worth to the one off piece of the painter/scupltor.
Furthermore if the music was downloaded legally and then sold on, then i agree the artist isn't entitled to a share of the second sale (i.e. value added) as no party as acted in an illegal manner. The point is that one or more of the transfer of ownership rights are in fact illegal.
i do however like your proposal with regards to length of time of copyright. Here we would have a similar patenting procedure to drugs in the pharmaceutical industry where after a period, the pharma company is no longe protected by its patent and the formula has to be released.
There are still issues with this though. As you mentioned, how do we decide what is an appropriate period for the song to be copyrighted, before being freely available to all? And secondly, the reason pharmas have to do that is for a moral obligation to help the sick - i.e. make drugs more cheaply available for the benefit of mankind. However whether or not the same argument can be made for music is at best tenous and at worst ridiculous. If a musician makes a song, he is under no obligation to make it freely available at ANY time. For instance we don't expect clothing shops to suddenly give away everything for free after that particular season has ended do we?
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164. "This whole file sharing thing is like buying a CD, and making 10 hard copies and just handing it out to all your friends at work.
What's the difference then?"
The only difference is that the files shared on-line could be downloaded 10 thousand times or more.
However, both cases are copyright infringement not theft - and certainly not piracy.
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P.S. 220 For the record I am not supporting the view that downloading is stealing but am merely playing devil's advocate with you ;)
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@212: Nobody is saying that you have to download all your CDs from a music site to listen to them on your laptop. Even if your laptop doesn't have a CD or DVD drive, you could get an external one that fits a USB slot.
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"The real difficulty is deciding what is and what is not property.
You may well believe that there is 'no such thing as intellectual property' but that would put you at odds with the people who drafted the Theft Act 1968 did because part of the definition of property is 'may include intellectual property'."
My understanding id that theft of intellectual property is when you take the only copies - i.e. if someone stole the only copy of a new "Harry Potter" book, as otherwise the offence would have been theft of a few hundred sheets of paper.
However if someone photocopied it then it would be copyright infringement.
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@225: The point is that I have a LOT of music that is NOT on CD. Add to that I actually want my music as mp3s so that I can listen to them wherever I want in th ehouse without having to constantly have to search my music collection for that CD and risk scratching said CD in the process. By ripping my CDs to mp3 I preserve them as I can now store them away without risk of damage.
When I listen to music I pick 5 or 6 albums at a time, I can't fit 5 or 6 albums into my laptop's CD player.
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# 222
I suspect we don't fundamentally disagree about this, just on where you draw the line.
For instance, many artists DO think the lack of follow-on revenue from resale or reproduction of their work is unfair, but then again they would, wouldn't they? And it is an accident of history and copyright law, rather than a conscious decision of society and its lawmakers, that they don't.
All I was saying is that:
a) Ownership rights are a construct of "Society", and don't exist in a vacuum
b) the downloaders (inasmuch as they are a coherent group, which I doubt) DO have an aguable case and "Society" - perhaps in the form on the UN or one of its agencies - needs to think through what is fair and enforceable in 2008.
I further suspect that some of the downloaders rightful indignation is about the power of the music industry and their seeming indifference to the "artistic" element of the music. They are, for example, often able to release stuff musicians want to hold back, or stop them releasing music they want to make freely available, through one-sided contract terms.
Didn't Prince once write "slave" on his cheek in protest at this? And Richard Thompson objected to his record company putting extra tracks on an ablum (which he wanted to be listened to as a piece), in order to get people to buy it a second time.
These things are never as simple as bloggers like us want to portray them!
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Illegal downloads will continue until music bosses address the current problems in the digital age.
I see no reason why an online album should even be remotely the same price as one bought in hmv. Without the high street mark-up, packaging, grpahics, CD cost, printing, transport etc it should be less than half the price.
Yet it's not. It's greed plain and simple.
Does this justify what I do? Nah, probably not but I don't care.
It just makes me feel a bit better that bu my actions of civil disobedience this issue has surfaced and music users are making their voices heard.
For far too long, and the example above is merely the latest, the music industry has got away with their greed.
Now that technology is assisting to return the market to supply and demand they are moaning.
Just for the record - the very concept of recording music is foreign and is only an investion of the last 100 years. Before that musicians literally sang for their supper.
Any of the other creative arts can be copied.
Architects, engineers, clothes designers etc but not musicians. eems a bit odd.
Illegal file sharing will continue for as long as the greed in the industry persists.
If they continue to take consumers for a ride, we'll just take it for free.
When they start selling songs for 10p a song and produce decent quality, then maybe they'll turn the corner.
Outside technology will always be a few years ahead of the game and the record bosses will never catch up.
When they start workign with consumers instead of trying to squeeze them and seek legal remedy, then maybe people will start buying music again.
As for the industry - well it will carry on regardless.
There have been musos since the beginning of time and they will be there till the end of time.
If somebody wants to become a musician they will.
The onyl guys that will go under will the pimps that sit at the top of the pile and take commissions for not actually doing very much.
And of course, if there's no money in recording, we'll see more bands playing for their supper.
Long live live music.
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#226
No, it is using that piece of work not just taking the master copy. If someone copied extracts from a Harry Potter book or used parts someone else's music to create their own piece of work then that would be IP infringement. In other words, using someone else's work for your own benefit without permssion from the owner.
I am pretty sure that IP infringement is in no way relevant to downloading a copy of a song. That is just copyright law, not IP.
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I download mp3 files of cassette tapes I purchased before I got my first CD player in 1992. I've already paid the artist once, I fail to see why I should pay them twice to listen to the same music to get it again on CD, and for my MP3 player.
I also get really annoyed at artists who release an album which I buy, then six months later release a new enhanced version of the same album at the same, or sometimes now lower price but with extra songs on. In this case when I bought the original version of the album I'd download the extra tracks.
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As for the supposed emotional blackmail regarding whether it's stealing or simply copyright intrusion - well, in reality I couldnt care less.
The world has changed and, like many professionas before it, the profession of music industry boss is being made obsolete through technology.
Their desperation to cling onto their greedy model is evident but ultimately they are doomed.
Funnily enough if they had acted earlier and embraced technology instead of fighting tooth and nail against it then they might have survived this.
But as it stands, they didn't, and there is very little pity for them from the public.
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Did you never get a mate to tape an album for you? If the music industry offered a product at a decent price point people might buy it. They have too many mediocre artists who nobody is interested in.
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This is a terribly poor piece of journalism which undermines the entire debate. Most of the flaws have already been discussed in the comments, but I think the author should remember that stealing is a criminal offence whereas unauthorised file sharing is a tort (a civil wrong).
The analogy in the edit comparing file sharing to taking a car and then returning it demonstrates a lack of understanding in the nature of IP (the car racks up extra mileage, wear and tear is introduced, and the owner is unable to use the car while it is gone, whereas copying a file inflicts no such damage upon the original).
I do wish commentators would stop jumping on the bandwagon half-cocked purely to attract a bit of attention to themselves. It smacks of desperation.
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The moral question is, have you deprived the copyright holder of value? If you intended to buy the work, but downloaded it for free instead, then you have.
If you had no intention of purchasing the work then the copyright holder has suffered no loss but may benefit from free 'advertising'.
The music industry's notional 'huge losses to piracy' are based on the specious thesis that every download represents a lost sale.
I wonder who the music industry will attempt to bamboozle when they see that stamping out file sharing makes little difference to their bottom line?
Price is directly related to availability. The music industry has over produced low quality product which floods out of every media orifice constantly. It's no wonder people think it's worthless.
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First i'd like to say that it is not morally right to illegally download someones music if they are trying to make a living from it and have spent lots of time and money to produce it.
That said i don't blame people for doing it given how expensive (and often not very good) most albums are.
What is most pertinant and something which i don't think has been pointed out here yet is that it is not financially viable for the record companies to sue everyone who shares music. It is not even viable for them to sue enough people that everyone who does it will personally know of someone who has been fined for it. This is why they are desperately turning to a combination of scare tactics (those annoying unskippable ads at the beginning of your dvds) and "free" mass media coverage in the way of constant news stories (thank you for helping them the BBC).
Bottom line - it is very costly to sue someone and they will only be awarded damages. The courts in the UK do NOT award punitive damages - that is they will only fine you for the cost of the songs you have downloaded and will not fine you extra as a punnishment for breaking the law. Also, many judges will likely take a dim view of a very wealthy record company suing a 12 year old for downloading the latest Britney Spears album and see it as a waste of court time.
I wish you luck BPI but i fear that unless you change your tactics you are well and truely onto a loser...
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Some of the arguments expressed justifying copyright infringement are just plain comical.
I may be a music thief but I'm not going to make the mistake of saying I'm in the right. I mean, seriously, come on!
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There are no easy answers to this issue - as can possibly be seen if you read all these posts. I also think the original article could certainly have been more objective, and it really does offend me the way that the BPI is trying to criminalise a civil offence.
I do believe that the 'Music Biz' has a lot to answer for, most noteably the way it has comoditised music, so that it become a product, rather than an artistic endeavour. In most respects, modern artists are little different to session musicians, and as such there is an argument that they should be paid for their work on the day, and thats it. Without developing the argument here, I would just like to point out that I see Jive Bunny is making a comeback, and I bet he won't be getting many royalties:)
Anyway, if you go back many years, there where the music composers, the publishers, and the performers. The publishers performed the role of ensuring the product was available to the performers (as neither of the latter two was much use without each other). This situation still exists today - its just that 80 odd years ago, a new technology came along called recording, and a fourth player entered the market.
What the record companies controlled (as was stated in an earlier post) was access to the new market - the technology, marketting and distribution channels. It is these that are now be replaced by a new model, and its one that cannot be controlled by the old ways.
Publishing rights still exist (as they should), composers and performers need rewarding - though art is not a commodity, and you cannot say that a track off the new coldplay album is of the same worth (or value) as 'Hard Days Night' or Havergal Bryans 3rd Symphony.
I don't know what the answer is, but my gut feeling is that if I can have the music I like, and access to new music, wherever and whenever I want it, at a quality that reflects the content, and that I will not lose due to arbitrary restrictions, then I would be willing to pay for it.
When you have the stupid situation of a short while back with EMIs bottom line dependent on the bringing to market of Coldplays latest album on time, then you just have to say that they deserve what they got.
Music companies do not nurture talent, they restrict and homogenise it, and now that other avenues are available to musicians they need to change. I believe Sony have seen this light - according to an interview a while back with their UK head (who used to be in KLF I think). They still have a role, but its more of a management and 'brand development' role than shifting plastic (or bits and bytes).
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I think they clearly need to start thinking about new business model (monthly subscription, etc...) rather than send letters to people who are file sharing. The music industry was let to turn to digitize content and tried to hold on an hold business model.
I don't like buying albums, I use prefer a LOT to buy per tracks because I usually prefer listening to a song from a particular singer. This was not possible before online stores like iTunes. In retailers, you could find some singles, but they were the "greatest hit", if you were looking for a particular song or two out of a whole album, you had to buy the album.
I think the music industry should work on a business model first, then appeal people to it and if some still want to then "steal", then they can send letters and turn down consumers' internet. But before doing that, establish a business model, otherwise it is like complaining about a car you have not bought yet.
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A couple thoughts:
1)the sun analogy would be more accurate if you imagined the sun as being built by a huge team of scientists and laborers, who expected to be paid if the sun proved to be popular. However, once everyone found out they could get the sun for free nobody paid for it and all the sun-makers went broke.
2)instead of writing "music industry" or "music business" , try putting "struggling independent musicians" , or "veteran blues artists" in the same sentence and see it reads any different.
3) I recently produced an album by a female singer...no big star, but known in underground circles, made many records, respected , etc,...Between paying for the recording studio, mixing studio , paying musicians, paying for mastering, etc...she spent around $15,000 on this album out of her own pocket. A small label is releasing it, but they only pay a very small advance, because music sales are so bad. What I can't understand is how anyone can tell me it's right and proper for them to take her music for free after all the time, sweat and $ that went into making it?
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I used to "tape" music from the radio when I was younger.
I used to "tape" the music channels.
You can go to music channels at any time.
You can turn on the radio.
You can turn on MTV.
You can listen to music at any time in practically any manner.
No one pays for this.
So why are the BPI wasting thier time and money trying to stop digital media being recorded or listened too.
Surely, to not be totally hypocritcal, they should also be wasting their time and money on stopping ALL OTHER forms of obtaining music and films etc...... for free!
After all, it will always be a matter of concious.
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Darren, the mistake you seem to be making is in evaluating the "harm" done; you are equating every download with a lost sale, and that simply isn't the case. Many people who download music wouldn't actually ever buy the CD - whether it's because they couldn't afford it or begrudge paying. The "harm" may be real, but it can't be quantified in this way.
That's not meant as an excuse for breaking the law though. But the law these people are breaking (as you noted in your update) is "copyright law", and is thus NOT stealing, but "copyright infringement".
I do think, though, that the big music companies could learn a lot from the likes of 3 Daft Monkeys who are a self-published folk-band from Cornwall; they sell CD's from their web-site, and offer whole songs (in fact whole albums too) in MP3 format for free so that you can "try before you buy". I've heard enough of their new CD "Social Vertigo" to know that I want to buy it. If I don't get to see them at a festival this summer and buy it personally, I'll order it online.
And as soon as I get hold of it, I will break the law; I will rip the CD into my "music" folder, and stow the CD in the cupboard for safe-keeping (I've done this ever since my CD player wrecked one of my favourite CD's). In the UK there is no exception in copyright law for "format shifting", so bear that in mind the next time you put your latest favourite onto your iPod. It's illegal here, and the UK music industry has made it clear they consider this stealing too. They also would like you to believe that lending CD's to your friends is wrong too.
Increasingly, I find that the mainstream music industry doesn't offer anything that I want (I don't often want bland and boring), so I buy less and less from them. Instead I buy directly from bands like 3DM, Tarantism, or Pronghorn. Then I know that the bands get a fair lick of the cash, and I get lively, vibrant cutting-edge music. I'm also not feeding the cocaine fueled gravy train. Warm fuzzies all round!
A google-search will provide ample evidence to back-up my claims ;-)
-cybervegan
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#240
But nobody will be downloading the songs of the female artist you produced for as she is practically unknown. It is not the small time artists on independant labels that are losing out. The songs that tend to be downloaded are those by major music stars. For example, I might hear a song on the radio I really like and then download it. The ones losing out financially are the people who can afford to because they are already worth millions.
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It is funny to think that people used to tape music from a radio FM station with a radio tape recorder. Everyone used to tape movies and TV shows with VCR recorders too. No industries ever complained about it.
Now if a friend did make me a copy of this tape recorded song, again no one would bother. But if a friend sends me a song over the internet that he bought from an online retailer or imported from one of his own CDs, it's a crime.
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I still think a lot of this is pure ignorance. A comment mentioned the distinction between criminal and copyright law which is true. A criminal act would be to actually physically steal a CD, or to download tracks and physically sell them to people for money. There are entire black market industries devoted to doing this with CD's and DVD's which are often connected to drug and racketeering operations. Surely THAT should take much more of our time ! Not this really SILLY debate about file sharing.
File SHARING. Most people do this to share their file collections. Concentrate on the real criminals instead of criminalising children just doing a passive activity in their bedrooms !
Does anyone remember the "home taping is killing the music industry" in the 1980's ? I think the big music companies have become bitter to be honest. They harped on about their expensive new Digital CD format but didn't seem to realise that it would make it very easy to make copies ! Now they bamboozle people with this "digital issue". Apparently this is supposed to be some thorny new modern problem when it's been going on for DECADES in various forms.
It's about time society got this silly problem sorted out so we can all devote our time to fighting real nastiness.
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On a slightly tangential note it's clear from the number and range of responses that the morality of music downloading is a live political question.
It's plainly unacceptable for a BBC correspondent to use their privileged position to push their own political views. A comment like:
But whether its stealing or copyright infrigement - it's still wrong.
may be Darren's honest opinion, but without putting the opposing view equally in the article it falls seriously short of the impartiality required of BBC news.
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How a so called journalist can be so monumentally ignorant?
Sir, it is not a matter of semantics.
It is a matter of UK, European and international law. If it was just a matter of semantics the same body of law would apply to copyright infringement and to common theft, but lawmakers realized long time ago that copyright infringement could not be equated with common theft, and as a matter of fact copyright itself is an artificial construct that was not accepted in all modern societies (I am thinking about former communist countries for example).
Why do you insist to re-hash this old chestnut when better informed people about this matter have passed judgement not once, but many times, in multiple forums and legal systems?
People like you, that talk about copyright issues without wanting to handle the correct terminology, muddle the waters of an issue that is complicated enough already, and by embracing such loaded language clearly show a bias that is not in accordance with what is expected from somebody writing using an space offered by the BBC.
Your misinformed and misguiding views are of no value in opposition to the blatantly obvious. Just ask a lawyer to see if the difference is purely semantic in case it is not by now abundantly clear how ridiculous is to say such a thing.
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Who decided that the music industry owned culture. Music existed long before the music industry and copyight.
This is not a level playing field. The BPI and its subsidiary PPL dominate the argument because of the resources available to them.
They are actively involved in drafting copyright law. For all intents and purposes they have an unlimited legal budget. They simply outgun any challenge from fragmented consumer interests.
Over the years they have constantly sought to refine the concept of "public performance". The mesh is now very fine indeed. A crafstsman working alone in a workshop in the Cotswolds listening to a CD he has purchased is considered to be a "public performance" because a member of the public can enter the premises. In this instance they want the consumer to pay twice.
Parliament and the US Congress have not been sufficiently robust in giviving weight to consumer interests although Congress was slightly more robust in allowing "fair use".
It is illegal in the UK for me to copy from a CD that I have purchased. My early CD's are starting to fail. Am I really expected to buy them again rather than make digital copies?
They invent new rights when it suits them. Consumers are expected to pay north of £1 for 10 seconds of a song for use as a ring tone irresepective of whether they have already purchased the song.
Consumers have always shared music. I have done so using reel to reel taperecorders, cassette tape and now digitally. Most of my music has been purchased, often more than once and often after listening for the first time to shared or copied music. I have bought music on vinyl, cassette tape and CD. I have not bought much music online being reluctant to pay for content a fourth time.
I do, from time to time, purchase from I-Tunes despite the high cost per song. However where the industry tries to force me to buy an album when I only want one song I wonder about alternatives.
The BPI is trying to maintain an outdated business model by harassing customers and charging prices based on historic rather than current cost structures. They are greedy beyond belief. They have fought every technical advance in music and video reproduction.
Their arguments against downloading are not proven and their conclusions are flawed. Janis Ian has a compelling article on her website rebutting the industry stance on downloading.
Consumers will buy music online if it is convenient, of good quality and and priced at a level consumers are prepared to pay. If not can they be blamed for looking elsewhere?
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Seems like we are missing the forest for the trees with our pursuit of such "criminals". The purpose of copyrights and patents is largely so that innovation is rewarded, and when we are stifling innovation and technology to protect those rights, it becomes counter productive to our goal. Additionally, it isn't worth the loss of privacy, loss of civil liberties, and loss of freedom that we are going to have to give up to make sure that the music/video industry gets their money since the only way to make sure I am not illegally downloading their material is if they are monitoring my computer activity.
Finally, which artists are getting hurt by this? The unknown artists trying to break out are happy just to get their name out, and the well known pop artists have already made their millions and will earn millions more through concerts. Additionally, the record labels have been raking in cash from all this technology. When I get tired of music I buy off of I-tunes (no manufacturing of CDs or Albums involved), it doesn't get returned to the record store and resold to someone else.
In addition to their attacks on our freedoms, it should also be noted that the record industry has engaged in a great many illegal and monopolistic activities over the years. The major labels were nailed in a payola scandal only two years ago, and price fixing continues to be an issue. So maybe there should also be some crying about the money they have effectively stolen from all of us.
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# 240
I was not saying it's a perfect analogy; I was trying to get to the core of the issue by simile or analogy. But at least it's helped move the debate on.
I was also saying the who thing is a societal construct and there is unfortunately not an absolute "right" of any creative person to be appropriately rewarded for what they do.
Creativity is messy and unfair, I agree, and in a perfect world the relatively little known but I'm sure very talented artist you speak of would be given every opportunity to communicate her work and make a fair living from it.
But capitalism and copyright law don't work like that in reality.
And I agree with #243 that the music industry doesn't care about your colleague.
There are a huge number of talented people out there who don't get the recognition we might think they merit. I go to see a number of amazing performers (maybe even the singer you refer to) at my nearest small venue and if I like them enough I buy their CDs direct from them.
They are, however, not being cheated by the Bit-torrents of this world, and in fact file sharing might help them to get better known among the relatively tight-kinit group of people who like their kind of music.
I'm afraid, in conclusion, that it's just much more complicated than it used to be, and these days old-style music copyright is effectively unforceable except by consent of the public. The music industry dinosaurs are trying to hold back the tide, I fear.
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@Paul Freeman-Powell
"The music industry has become far too much of a commercial product, rather than an art form. Go into a studio, plug in Casio? keyboard, sing lyrics composed by someone else, have voice track edited on computer to make it sound in tune, package, sell, make profit....
... rather than the recorded version being a small part of the picture - in the good old days (or maybe just an ideal world?) music is about people playing musical instruments and standing on a stage performing to people. Musicians should spend more time doing THAT, rather than creating a manufactured and cellophaned product in a studio owned by a fat cat in an Armani suit."
This is a real generalisation. I would say that there is more music than ever around that conforms to your ideals, you just won't find it on mainstream TV/radio.
I believe the BPI/RIAA have been heavy-handed in their approach to this, but there's no denying that there are a LOT of people who are not paying for any music nowadays.
I personally favour eMusic's subscription service, I get 75 DRM-free downloads a month for £15. Very reasonable value if you ask me.
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Why is it that i can borrow a mates CD, copy it to my itunes and happily listen to it without there being an issue, but i cant download some new music i want to listen to for free? Isn't it the same thing?
Copying that CD to my itunes isn't a problem? In fact itunes makes it easy to copy CD's onto it. Isn't that exactly the same thing? If anything its more of a problem because i can borrow several albums at a time, but can only download a few tracks at a time online.
I still buy many CD albums like the latest Coldplay and Madonna albums, but i downloaded at least 1 track off each album first without paying because i wanted a listen.
The more people that listen to the artists music whether it has been legally or illegally downloaded is all the better for them due to improved awareness.
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So lets get this straight, knife crime is out of control (as reported by the BBC), the price of a barrel of oil is at it's highest ever, repossessions are soaring, house prices are falling, NHS is underfunded, we're still in the midst of a war on terror (© GW Bush) and yet the BPI thinks that the real scourge of these times is illegal downloading.
Well if the BPI and Virgin Media thinks it'll stop crime and bring an end to war and famine I'll definitely buy a Girls Aloud album and encourage all my music loving friends to do the same.
Maybe then when I see an advertisement saying the "Great new album by X" and it turns out to be garbage I can pursue the BPI et al under trade descriptions and false advertising.
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I am a law-abiding soul at heart, and to me the question of whether copyright infringement is stealing or not is a side issue. Both are against the law so I try to avoid both.
However, I object to how difficult it is to act within the law. Here's an example.
I sing with a choir, and as practice I wanted to download an mp3 of Bach's Mass in B minor to listen on an mp3 player (in this case a Sony walkman rather than an ipod). I wanted to do it legally. So I specifically signed up to Napster, now legal, and paid for the album. It was at this point that I realised that the songs did not come as mp3s, and, because of the DRM on the files I couldn't copy the files to mp3. I could only listen to them on my computer -- which was no use at all.
In the end I had to take my legal, owned download and burn it to a CD and then copy the files from a CD to mp3 in order to play the files on my portable mp3 player.
What incentive is that palaver for downloading files legally? It's contrary to all common sense to expect people to behave legally when it causes them that amount of additional hassle. A bit like the governments' attempt to make us use public transport by making cars more expensive instead of improving the bus service....
Further, image files can easily be transferred from one format to another and prints have been made of great paintings and sold for centuries. Are the interests of painters and other visual artists being degraded by these practices? I agree, for this reason, with those who claim that DRM is about the record companies, not the musicians.
Needless to say I will not be using Napster again.
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Another fact they fail to consider when talking about the loss of revenue is that second hand shops have been essentially doing the same damage to them for years; people have bought an album, listened to it (maybe even copied it but it's almost irrelevant to my point whether they did or not), then sold it on.
The person buying the album off them, whether it be from a high street second hand shop, eBay or whatever, has not given any money to the record label or the artist, but has still gained that music - the net effect as far as the record company is concerned being the same as if they had downloaded it from a file-sharing website.
As a silly addition, if I were to take a track that I had legitimately purchased and used it as a ringtone should I technically be paying them additional public performance royalties if my phone goes off in a busy place?
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If you think copying/downloading a track is stealing, then they are equivalent and you are this person:
Imagine your best friend has his car stolen, has no insurance and will never see the car again. Obviously he's going to feel terrible and/or very angry. You go up to him and say "I know how you feel mate. Yesterday I had one of my songs downloaded by a teenager in texas and he didn't pay, I feel as bad as you do."
He'd look at you as if you were bonkers...and he'd have a point. He'd then say "er, but you haven't lost your music forever, I have lost my car".
A bit like religion, believing that downoading is stealing leads you to do some very odd things...
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Darren
While you may not be able to see a distinction between stealing and copyright infringement, the Law does draw a distinction. Theft is the "intention to permanently deprive" someone of something. If I was "stealing" music then I would have to go over to the copyright holders house, remove every example of that work, and ensure they could never get it again. Copyright infringement is a much less serious offence, regardless of what BPI/RIAA?MPAA would have you believe.
I'm a little disappointed that you would dismiss this important distinction in such a blase manner. While it's true that both actions are illegal and shouldn't be condoned, by pushing the BPI's inaccurate propoganda that copyright infringement = theft, you show yourself to be less than impartial, easily influenced by big business and seriously undermine your credibility as a journalist
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"What you seem to be missing out on is that the music industry doesn't dislike downloading because it means they lose money, they dislike it because it lowers the barrier of entry to the marketplace. When someone can just stick their MP3 onto the net and have the world download it for free it gives them a great level of publicity and exposure that they couldn't get 20 years ago."
^ Totally right.
Real musicians have been sidelined for so long by "home entertainment" and advertising monopolies. Why hire bands when you can get the punters to put money in a jukebox? And on it went. Who called that stealing? Who challenged that monopoly?
Either the media giants are happy for their products to be in the public domain, or they aren't, either way they're dodo's just waiting to die; just a matter now of how many people they take down with them, staining criminal records for no purpose.
As far as games and software are concerned, publishers now feel at liberty to release products that do not work as advertised, promising later patching, which the public by and large accepts. Publishers desire repayment in-full for replacing storage media, bad luck, Bush Public can now download it when her cd dies.
Joe public no longer has to wait on undeserved trust or accept a fantastically arrogant EULA, joe public no longer has to spend a ton a year on magazines for demo's to find out what looks like it'll actually work come release.
The music industry as we know it isn't in jeopardy, it's mortally wounded and lashing out in anger, simple.
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@252, Kevinukuk: "When you can borrow a mate's CD, copy it to iTunes and happily listen to it there without it being an issue..."
Yes it's the same thing. Your mate that lent you that CD is breaking the licence of that CD and could be rightfully sued by the copyright holder.
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@254: There is a lot of choral and classical music available free on the internet if you know where to look. Choral music is generally not copyrighted - I was looking for Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika a few years back and found several mp3's freely available.
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Ever been given a photocopy from a textbook by a teacher?
Isnt photocopying copyrighted material the same as downloading music. If so then why do schools and universities let this behaviour go on. I have photocopied many a textbook throughout my education, as I guess many of you have, without being told otherwise by teachers. Infact teachers often photocopy material from textbooks that is handed out in classes. This adds to the cultural norm that copyright infringment is no big deal. If copyrights were enforced 100% I, and the taxpayer would have had to buy a lot more textbooks than are currently purchased.
Another question this raises is why isnt the book lobby as vocal as the music lobby. Maybe the pride of contributing to human knowledge is payment enough. I guess thats why wikipedia is so succesful.
The culture of CI is deeply embeded in our society these days.
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"A few people have questioned my use of the word stealing. Arguing that it is copyright infringement and not stealing. There may be a point here but to my mind this is semantics."
Crikey im glad that your not in-charge of anything important then. When the dictionary definition for a word doesn't fit do you also just ignore it and make your own definition up?
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Darren
When are you going to admit that your blog and especially the Update are just plain WRONG about copyright law.
You and the BPI may not like it but that is the fact.
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@261
Copyright law includes provisions for fair use that include copying segments of copyrighted material for educational purposes. This is one of the reasons copyright infringement is NOT theft. It's been a long time since I was a student but as I remember it copying more than 10% of a work was forbidden. If you copied a whole book then you were doing something illegal, although I imagine most establishments will turn a blind eye. I assume that the notes the staff handed out did not amount to more than the permitted proportion of a single work.
@263
The article was a bit skewed but well within the bounds I expect (not wish) from the media, although perhaps not from the BBC. It is the update that prompted me to register with this website and post my view (#72). The update is innaccurate, ill informed, inflammatory, and coincides with the misinformation promoted by various vested interests.
To be fair to Mr. Waters there are many people who accept what the record companies say as they have never heard the other side of the argument. It is quite possible that Mr. Waters is unaware of the intricacies of intellectual property law, although it is hard to believe of a tech reporter since such issues are central to the open source movement which in turn is a significant part of the technology landscape.
I would like to see a further update accepting the validity of the points myself and others have raised and explicitly including an assertion that those valid points pertain not only to legality but to morality.
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Joss Stone recently made a terrific comment that p2p sharing is good as it gets more people to listen to music and encourages them to attend live performances (which is what music is about).
I'm (unhappily) a virgin media customer and deeply concerned about the precedents that are being set (inc. youtube data) re. internet privacy. I can't believe the internet community managed to bring an end to the music industry's monopoly (and greed) and hope we don't start letting ISPs determine the content/activities of internet usage. Regardless of what you think about this 'stealing' issue, there is a bigger picture.
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Aaargh
Just watched the newsbeat clips about the bloke who got a notive from virgin (calm and well argued) and the bloke form the BPI (40 second clip as opposed to a 2 1/2 munute one) who just repeated the word illegal about 10 times.
IT IS NOT ILLEGAL. Its a civil matter.
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Darren
#70
"But whether its stealing or copyright infrigement - it's still wrong. "
Fair Use still involves copyright infringment. Fair Use is not wrong. Free speech is not wrong but frequently involves copyright infringement.
That said, i am concerned about your apparent moral position here. Also the apparent position of BBC News when reporting this very important issue on air.
The BBC is completely guilty of dumbing down and distorting the P2P filesharing debate into a Law vs Freetards one.
The real debate is the one of Legal Entrenchment vs Solution. Why no mention of emerging licensed-MSP business models which allow for legitimate file sharing and promote a progressive and fairer market for both artists/musicians and consumers?
Please, please, please, put an end to this Industry PR churnelism!
At least ORG are coming around...
http://www.friction.tv/ftv_debate.php?debate_id=3532
Not all Freedom-tards are freetards!
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I think that by far the best approch to this (although I think tyring to stop the number of people doing this is ludicrus!) is softly softly.
If they carry on with their all guns blazing approch they will drive people into creating and using more and more illegal software, bypassing the security messures. It will become a game of security cat and mouse!
They will find a new way of doing things and be stopped, again and again!
Although companies like apple and napster arn't exactly helping the cause are they? What with taking the format and copy protections off music files download from their services!
I think the whole idea of trying to stop everyone using illegal download file share sites and services is LAUGHABLE!!!
So here is my say:
HAHAHAHAHA
(for what its worth)
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So, if copyright infringement costs the royalties only, then how much royalty is there on a music track? Anyone know?
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#269
The artist in theory gets about 8% of a download sale, or CD sale. In reality most artists see little of even that. It is all sucked up by a whole industry of middlemen. The current business model for so-called "legal" downloading is cheating artists badly, because the industry that grew up around Vinyl and CD still wants the same slice of the currently very small download cake even though it has done little to deserve it.
The solution is to migrate to the licensed MSP model which cuts out many of these middlemen - the artists gets more while the average music consumer pays less or can download more. The effect would be massive growth in, what could become, a much more honest recording industry.
Its a real shame that there is apparently no debate concerning the licenced-MCP option over the current BPI stance of criminalising its own customers. Here in the UK, at least one company is pioneering the MSP business model right now. However this fact has disappeared completely off the BBC's radar screen, hence the rather endless and futile debate we are having at the moment. I partly blame ORG for instantly rubbishing VRR back in 2006, but i am hopeful they are now coming around to the idea, and that many former "freetards" are finally "getting it" when it comes to helping artists make a living, in the name of free-speech, free-expression and all that.
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