US woman to pay 1.92 mln dlrs in music piracy case

[iansales]

Originally Posted by Dave

I was reading an editorial in one of the newspapers (sorry I forget which one) but it was noting how bands have changed in the last few decades. Once bands played concerts simply to promote albums, and made their money from album sales. Now bands release albums and singles (often for free) to promote tours, and make their money from the concerts. The record companies make little money from the concerts. They should have caught on to this change sooner.

More than twenty years ago, Sting complained that his occupation in his passport should be "T-shirt salesman" and not "musician".

Having said that, in the old days many bands would usually play extended versions of studio tracks at concerts - which is why many rock bands released live albums. Frank Zappa famously played a different set at every gig. These days, bands play their albums note for note. They need to add more value if they want to encourage people to see them live.

[Lacedaemonian]

It seems to me like the old school rock bands seem to on the rise again, appealing to a newer generation of music lover. I think half of my mothers music collection is of recorded gigs, and it always seem to have another quality to it.

Surely musicians should earn their bread and butter by performing live. This might put an end to the charlatan music that has ruined my ears for the last twenty years or so. Didn't Top of the Pops have a policy of having so many songs done live and in effect killed the show because so few acts could perform live???

[Parson]

Originally Posted by Lacedaemonian

Surely musicians should earn their bread and butter by performing live. This might put an end to the charlatan music that has ruined my ears for the last twenty years or so. Didn't Top of the Pops have a policy of having so many songs done live and in effect killed the show because so few acts could perform live???

"Hey, Hey, were the Monkeys,
The peeps say we monkey around,
But we're too busy singing
to put anybody down..."

For those of you not alive in the neolithic, this is a quote from the theme song of the made for TV band "The Monkees" who could not play their own music when the group was put together. --- To their credit they did learn to play and some have continued to dabble in the music industry.

I see this whole thread as a battle of maxims. On the one hand--

"Might makes right." If you can do it, it is right. Or if enough people do it then no one can stop us. [The usual view is that a law that is not automatically kept by near 95% of the people in the society is not enforceable. ]

On the other hand:

"If you can't do the time, you can't do the crime." Nearly everyone would agree that at some level stealing intellectual property is akin to stealing someone's wallet. But when it's so easy to do.... and there is next to no chance of getting caught or punished, then....

Here's my favorite example. Before I became pastor of my church it was very common for people to run off photocopies of music for church. I was able to put an end to MOST of it. By saying this: "If I would put 35 cents on the copy machine on Monday, it would still be there next week. No one would think of stealing it. But we steal from the authors of the music by making copies of their music and not paying for it.

The church thing has been largely fixed here in the US by copyright companies. You give the company X amount of money, and you have the right to make copies for worship services. From time to time you have to keep a record of all such use and the copyright company reimburses the authors based on the percentage of use seen in their sample.

I don't know that the same thing would work in secular society, but I think something like this could be tried.

[chrispenycate]

Here in Switzerland every photocopier has a counter on it, and every three months you have to say how many copies you have made, you pay a sum of money to an organisation that redistributes it to creators. The sum for each copy is decided by what sort of job the photocopier does; an office doing mainly accounts will generally pay less than a university library, which photocopies practically only copyrighted works.

The problem arises when it comes to distributing the booty. With the tax on blank CDs, it goes to the musicians who sell the most discs, and the most popular software programs (to those who have, it shall be given) but how to know what is photocopied in any particular office? Besides, I'm more likely to scan a document for retreatment nowadays, and the system isn't set up for computer printers.

So, it doesn't work too well, and is only going to get less effective with time, but can serve as a basis for discussion.

[iansales]

Stealing intellectual property is plagiarism - i.e., claiming said "property" as your own. You can't "steal" a story or a song by copying or downloading it, because you're not permanently depriving the owner of it. Nor can you prove that the "thief" would have paid for the song or story if they had not been able to "steal" it. So any such "losses" are hogwash.

In the old days, the distribution networks meant you had to pay because there was no other way - it's no accident that the distributors take the greatest cut of any profit from an album or book. Now the Internet provides an effectively free distribution channel to everyone... which means distributors can no longer lock customers into a pay-for-access model. Rather than continue to enforce that model, the entertainment industry should be looking for other ways to generate revenue - perhaps through merchandising or peripherals, items which can't be distributed digitally; perhaps by offering priced items with added value, signed editions for example; perhaps by advertising....

[Ursa major]

Originally Posted by iansales

Nor can you prove that the "thief" would have paid for the song or story if they had not been able to "steal" it. So any such "losses" are hogwash.

But neither can you prove that they would not have paid for the song if there was no way to get it for free, so the claim is moot, not hogwash.

(A claim that everyone would have paid is hogwash, as is the claim that no-one would.)

[Lacedaemonian]

So some might have paid and some might not have paid.

[Ursa major]

Yes.

If you had to pay, some may have paid, and some may have gone without. (Isn't that how things usually work?**)







** - Oh, and some may have "stolen" whatever it is....

[C Of K]

Originally Posted by iansales

Now the Internet provides an effectively free distribution channel to everyone... which means distributors can no longer lock customers into a pay-for-access model.

A free distribution channel for products that have never been free. The law didn't change because the internet suddenly became so widely used. Illegal downloaders can't be considered customers. They aren't buying anything, so they don't have the rights to a product that is currently on the market.

Whether Illegal downloading is Plagiarism or not, in the Us, it is theft by law, otherwise this thread would have never been made, and that woman would never have been charged.

It's true that they can't catch everyone who does this, but anyone would hate to be the one person that was caught.

[iansales]

Actually, music has been free in the past. When the bard turned up at the tharl's hall, he got room and board for a night, but most of the audience never paid to hear him sing.

And downloaders are customers - they're consumers of the music, film, etc. The fact that they didn't pay is irrelevant. If I buy a second-hand CD, the record label and artist make no profit from the sale. Should we ban that too? What about if someone gives me a DVD for Christmas? The purchaser has "bought" the right to watch the film, not me.

[mosaix]

Originally Posted by iansales

And downloaders are customers - they're consumers of the music, film, etc. The fact that they didn't pay is irrelevant.

Usually, such people are called shoplifters not customers.


I can only repeat what I've said earlier in this thread. A lot of us on this forum are writers and if we suspected, for one moment, that our work was going to be copied and distributed without us getting paid for our efforts then we would be outraged. And rightly so.

[C Of K]

Originally Posted by iansales

Actually, music has been free in the past. When the bard turned up at the tharl's hall, he got room and board for a night, but most of the audience never paid to hear him sing.

The bard had something to gain from his art. He's was paid, if not in coin than with room and board. If he did not perform, he'd have gotten neither.

And downloaders are customers - they're consumers of the music, film, etc. The fact that they didn't pay is irrelevant.

The fact that this woman didn't pay isn't irrelevant to her...

If I buy a second-hand CD, the record label and artist make no profit from the sale. Should we ban that too? What about if someone gives me a DVD for Christmas? The purchaser has "bought" the right to watch the film, not me.

The point is, you bought it from someone who bought it as in they obtained it legally, and so did you. Or, you received a gift that was bought. No reproductions were made.

[iansales]

The Internet has changed the industry. Only fools would ignore that fact. Bleating on about shoplifting and theft won't change it either. You want to protect your revenue stream, then you find a way to do so that works with the way the industry now operates.

And any writer who worries about piracy is wasting their time.

[iansales]

Originally Posted by C Of K

The bard had something to gain from his art. He's was paid, if not in coin than with room and board. If he did not perform, he'd have gotten neither.

If you want to see a band perform live, you have to buy a ticket. Unless it's a free concert, of course. Either way, the band gets paid - whether or not you yourself contributed to that payment. So it could be free for you. Just like the bard in the hall.

[C Of K]

Sure, it was free, if no one bought drinks and or food.

The bard wasn't given charity. People like him couldn't exist unless they attracted enough people with coin to listen to them. If no one ever came to see the bard, and paid to eat and drink while he performed, he would be out of business.

The fact is he brought business wherever he went. He brought money into places, and was thus allowed to eat and stay there for a time.