Dutch ISPs stand up against entertainment industry!

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MrXxx
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30 Jan 2012, 7:32 pm

Asp-Z wrote:
MrXxx, you're right that it's a very old industry. And perhaps you'll be able to remember the days when everyone used to tape the latest songs off the radio and the RIAA kept crying wolf about how it was killing music? Or when videos and cable were branded pirate mediums which would kill Hollywood? Or when game data being broadcast over pirate radio was going to kill gaming? All this, of course, is utter nonsense. And I think the same of the idea downloads will kill the industry.

The internet is a relatively new thing, but the idea that new technology will somehow damage the entertainment industry is not. The industry as a whole resists new innovations rather than adapting them right away and have done so for ages and ages. This is very unsustainable and there always comes a point where they're dragged kicking and screaming into using whatever the new medium is, but not before they've had a chance to churn out propaganda about how it'll be the end of the world unless it's destroyed.

To quote Dan Bull's tongue-in-cheek song Home Taping Is Killing Music: "Home taping killed the radio star, after radio topped off the album charts, like when gramophones killed the publisher, once publishing had done it to the orchestra."

Taping didn't kill music and downloading won't either. Profits are soaring higher and higher each year for both the RIAA and MPAA, in fact. They've been steadily growing for absolutely ages. The only thing that can possibly kill the industry is the industry itself, and with technology progressing at the rate it is and with the MAFIAA still trying to cripple the internet in order to protect their dinosaur of a business model, maybe they'll finally do it soon. And you know what? If they die because they didn't keep up with market trends fast enough then quite frankly they should be left to die. YouTube, Spotify, and iTunes have already made the record labels obsolete anyway.


I do remember. What many consumers are unaware of though, is that once cassettes came on the market, cassette manufactures were eventually required to pay a fees structured to make up for the perceived losses incurred. This was meant to offset whatever losses might happen due to music sharing through taped vinyl recordings and later CD recordings. How they calculated it all is beyond my knowledge and rather questionable. The same concerns were raised yet again when CD's came out.

There is a vast difference between the amount of damage that might have happened between sharing tapes and sharing digital files. When it came to individuals sharing, tapes had to be physically recorded, which took time and effort, then had to be physically handed out to individuals. The main concern at that time had very little to do with individuals sharing tapes. The main concern at that time was bulk pirating by people in the industry taping masters and bulk copying them to cassettes. That actually was a legitimate concern. It did happen. Remember the carousels of cassette tapes we used to see in just about every convenience store? A huge number of them were pirated recordings, bulk distributed to those stores by fly-by-night salesman who had no clue, and frankly didn't care where they came from. That was what the fee was designed to offset.

Digital recordings, as they are distributed today, do not require any duplication at all. A single file hosted on a server can be distributed to thousands of individuals simultaneously in a matter of seconds for a single song, or a matter of minutes for a full album. No other technology has ever been capable of that. Legitimate digital distributors do still pay fees. Illegitimate distributors no longer need any physical media to transfert he music to. There is no physical media that fees can be tacked on to. It's a whole different ball game now. There is no way to recoup any losses from illegal digital piracy.

With every previous leap in technology, there were cries that the new technology would kill the industry, and each one of them may very well have done just that, if the industry hadn't eventually found a way to offset the threat with some kind of licensing or fee. Once digital came along, they discovered very quickly there was NO way to offset piracy with licensing and/or fees alone, since now there is no longer any physical "thing" to tack anything onto.

BTW: Gramophones actually did kill the printed staff music industry (at least it killed what it was ~ ever heard of Tin-Pan Alley?). Radio also killed live performances, at least for a time. Radio stations now have to pay a fee now for all the songs they play, and are required by law to log every song they play in order for the Artist Rights Societies to track who's songs are being played and how many times so that they can distribute songwriters and composers their rightful dues. There are others ways of tracking live performances, but that obviously isn't affected by digital files.

It's a very complex, and questionably accurate set-up, but it has worked fairly well for over one hundred years. Digital piracy is unquestionably a threat to the current system. How much of a threat is debatable, but what I personally think is not debatable at all is the POTENTIAL of digital music files to kill the industry that no other technology has ever come close to matching. There is no question that if we all want to continue to have the same access to variety and quality that we've enjoyed for many years now, something has to change.

If nothing changes, I believe we'll be seeing the industry as we know it fall apart. Nothing will be left but homegrown music, which in a way might be good, but I believe we're already seeing more than the tip of the iceberg where that is concerned. Anyone with a DAW in their bedroom, basement or garage can now make pretty good recordings and distribute them on the internet, IF they know what they are doing with the equipment. The problem is, an awful lot of them don't have a clue how to create a quality recording, and the more homegrown music becomes the source of music available to the consumer, the more low quality crap recordings you will see. Though for a while we may see more diversity, finding good quality stuff will become far more difficult.

And though it doesn't cost millions to set up your own DAW at home, and if you know what you're doing with it, you can make a recording just as good as most professional studios today, it still costs quite a bit of money relative to the shallow pockets of most musicians. To truly do it right takes more than making it a hobby. It's got to be a passion at which you spend a great deal of your time. If you can't at least make a part time living from it, it's not worth it for most musicians.

Mark my words, you will see a severe drop in the percentage of quality recordings available.

Digital Rights Management doesn't work. It's been tried, and there have always been ways found around it. DRM, if you don't know what it is, is the addition of coding in files that prevent copying without a purchased license. That crap only works as long as it takes for hackers to find a way around it. Because that does not work, that means that ALL digital files will eventually be able to be copied.

That said, the only way to prevent copying is legislation and Internet control. There is no technological way to prevent piracy anymore. That's a given. Lacking that there are only two choices as I see it. Either clamp down legally on piracy, or accept there is no way to prevent it, and learn to make money some other way.

Personally, and this may surprise you but it's true, I believe that we'll find that legislation and control will work no better than all the attempts at technological solutions such as DRM. They tried DRM though, and they will try legislation. It will fail too.

Since neither work, and piracy can not be stopped, that means that all artists will have to resign themselves to the fact that their art can and will be given away.

Because this is what I believe will happen, that is why I am so interested in what alternatives there are. How, once the art world resigns itself to inevitability, do artists now make a living at what they do?

And here's my final point, to bring this discussion back around to what it's really about (Internet freedom). Most of the reason behind the most recent efforts to control the Internet have been all about preventing piracy. Preventing piracy has been all about preserving income for people who create music. Therefore, the interests of artists to make money are intrinsically tied to our desire for Internet freedom.

If a new paradigm were constructed for artists to make a living that does not require the actual sale of music, this entire discussion would become moot...

...until other reasons are used to control the Internet.

It would be nice though, to come up with a way to stop the perceived necessity for this particular effort.


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MrXxx
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30 Jan 2012, 7:58 pm

Ancalagon wrote:
MrXxx wrote:
My tastes are not popular. Since only what is popular is what is now being produced, my choices are severely limited.

This isn't different from how things were before downloading became possible. The thing is, unpopular tastes are more likely to be catered to over the internet than in a physical store.

One of the nice things about the internet is that it lets you find obscure things fairly easily.


Absolutely true. But...

Where do you find most of this "obscure stuff?" Ten to one it is from one of two sources. File sharing, or artist sites who are either barely making any money at it, or making nothing at all. Yeah, some can be found through legitimate internet sources, but they aren't the ones being challenged, so they are beside the point.

Ancalagon wrote:
One of the things that gets stomped on by old-school copyright enforcement is a bunch of creative, interesting youtube videos. I had one particular favorite that I really miss that was an interesting mix of Rihanna background music and some giant space robot anime video. I've also seen anime reviews get taken down because they use footage from the show in the background while they talk about it. Strict copyright enforcement is not a pure force for more new art.


Yeah, that's called derivative works. It's not just old school, it's much more of an issue today than ever before. Artists have the right to control their own work and how it is used. When you use something they've done, change it, or add to it, or both, you are using what they OWN. It may very well be creative, but to do it without permission is illegal plain and simple. It's illegal because the artist owns it, and should have a say as to whether or not, and how, their own work is used.

If it were your own work, and you were making your living at it, I bet you'd feel a whole lot differently about it.

Why can't those people just create something of their own? Then THEY would own it and have the same legal rights to control it.

The really big issue is that it's on YouTube. If they got their own sites and posted the stuff there, it's pretty unlikely anyone would do anything about it. Unless their site's user-ship rose to the hundreds of millions too. It is legal to do that kind of thing for school projects too, under Fair Use. You just can't post it on YouTube. Interestingly though, and I don't know if you know this or not, it's fine now to post many music recordings you want to behind your own video. Some companies will insist they are taken down. Others, who are getting fees from YouTube, are now allowing it, but I think they add tags to the videos. Google has been working really hard to come up with alternatives. Some of them have been pretty inventive.


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Ancalagon
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30 Jan 2012, 11:08 pm

MrXxx wrote:
When you use something they've done, change it, or add to it, or both, you are using what they OWN. It may very well be creative, but to do it without permission is illegal plain and simple.

It is not illegal plain and simple. Not at least in the US. There is something called fair use that explicitly allows this.

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If it were your own work, and you were making your living at it, I bet you'd feel a whole lot differently about it.

Honestly, I'd probably want to release everything under an open source license. Depending on where I end up working that may or may not be a possibility, but some software companies make good money from it despite the software being free.

Even assuming I end up making proprietary software with licenses that prevent copying, I very much doubt I'll be worried about piracy taking a significant amount out of my bottom line. For one thing, not all software is for consumption by the public, so I could end up consulting for companies. For another, I'd likely look at it as similar to free advertising or the bottom rung of price discrimination.

I'm not approving of piracy, BTW, just saying that I wouldn't let myself be in a situation where something that's so likely to happen and so unlikely to be controllable would break my business model.

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Why can't those people just create something of their own? Then THEY would own it and have the same legal rights to control it.

Many of them are. The anime reviewer I mentioned is really good, adds her own video to it, provides insightful analysis, clever commentary, and funny parody. But some studios don't believe in fair use and send takedown notices for no good reason, and the videos come down.

So far, I've bought 3 separate anime series specifically because of that reviewer. They should be realizing that it's free advertising, not piracy.

It would be rather different if she were posting episodes from a series.

Quote:
It is legal to do that kind of thing for school projects too, under Fair Use. You just can't post it on YouTube.

This is almost certainly wrong. I have never heard of anything that treats copyrights differently based on whether they are on youtube.


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31 Jan 2012, 4:21 am

MrXxx wrote:
I do remember. What many consumers are unaware of though, is that once cassettes came on the market, cassette manufactures were eventually required to pay a fees structured to make up for the perceived losses incurred. This was meant to offset whatever losses might happen due to music sharing through taped vinyl recordings and later CD recordings. How they calculated it all is beyond my knowledge and rather questionable. The same concerns were raised yet again when CD's came out.


Wow, their propaganda machine is more powerful than I gave it credit for if they actually managed to convince people that was necessary.

Quote:
There is a vast difference between the amount of damage that might have happened between sharing tapes and sharing digital files. When it came to individuals sharing, tapes had to be physically recorded, which took time and effort, then had to be physically handed out to individuals. The main concern at that time had very little to do with individuals sharing tapes. The main concern at that time was bulk pirating by people in the industry taping masters and bulk copying them to cassettes. That actually was a legitimate concern. It did happen. Remember the carousels of cassette tapes we used to see in just about every convenience store? A huge number of them were pirated recordings, bulk distributed to those stores by fly-by-night salesman who had no clue, and frankly didn't care where they came from. That was what the fee was designed to offset.

Digital recordings, as they are distributed today, do not require any duplication at all. A single file hosted on a server can be distributed to thousands of individuals simultaneously in a matter of seconds for a single song, or a matter of minutes for a full album. No other technology has ever been capable of that. Legitimate digital distributors do still pay fees. Illegitimate distributors no longer need any physical media to transfert he music to. There is no physical media that fees can be tacked on to. It's a whole different ball game now. There is no way to recoup any losses from illegal digital piracy.

With every previous leap in technology, there were cries that the new technology would kill the industry, and each one of them may very well have done just that, if the industry hadn't eventually found a way to offset the threat with some kind of licensing or fee. Once digital came along, they discovered very quickly there was NO way to offset piracy with licensing and/or fees alone, since now there is no longer any physical "thing" to tack anything onto.


This is unarguably true: digital files are far easier to distribute than any physical medium, and since they can't be tracked and have fees applied to them, the industry can't offset them. All of this is true. But can I just point out that the industry is seeing increased profits every single year regardless? It appears that you've missed that bit out. Because the MAFIAA don't need to put fees on anything to make profit, they do a damn good job of it already, piracy or no piracy.

Quote:
BTW: Gramophones actually did kill the printed staff music industry (at least it killed what it was ~ ever heard of Tin-Pan Alley?). Radio also killed live performances, at least for a time. Radio stations now have to pay a fee now for all the songs they play, and are required by law to log every song they play in order for the Artist Rights Societies to track who's songs are being played and how many times so that they can distribute songwriters and composers their rightful dues. There are others ways of tracking live performances, but that obviously isn't affected by digital files.


I know, they're so serious about this that the PRS once tried to sue an old lady for singing in her shop. What a threat to their organisation she must have been! 8O

Quote:
It's a very complex, and questionably accurate set-up, but it has worked fairly well for over one hundred years. Digital piracy is unquestionably a threat to the current system. How much of a threat is debatable, but what I personally think is not debatable at all is the POTENTIAL of digital music files to kill the industry that no other technology has ever come close to matching. There is no question that if we all want to continue to have the same access to variety and quality that we've enjoyed for many years now, something has to change.

If nothing changes, I believe we'll be seeing the industry as we know it fall apart. Nothing will be left but homegrown music, which in a way might be good, but I believe we're already seeing more than the tip of the iceberg where that is concerned. Anyone with a DAW in their bedroom, basement or garage can now make pretty good recordings and distribute them on the internet, IF they know what they are doing with the equipment. The problem is, an awful lot of them don't have a clue how to create a quality recording, and the more homegrown music becomes the source of music available to the consumer, the more low quality crap recordings you will see. Though for a while we may see more diversity, finding good quality stuff will become far more difficult.

And though it doesn't cost millions to set up your own DAW at home, and if you know what you're doing with it, you can make a recording just as good as most professional studios today, it still costs quite a bit of money relative to the shallow pockets of most musicians. To truly do it right takes more than making it a hobby. It's got to be a passion at which you spend a great deal of your time. If you can't at least make a part time living from it, it's not worth it for most musicians.

Mark my words, you will see a severe drop in the percentage of quality recordings available.


You argue a lot of independent music is of low quality, and you're completely correct, but again you're missing out some important details. First of all, a lot of mainstream music is crap as well. Utterly terrible, in fact. Listen to anything put out by Disney's record label and you'll see what I mean.

Thing is, though, you can go hunting for new tunes on YouTube, say, and you'll come across a lot of crap. But what you don't get with mainstream music, but you do on YouTube, is instant viewer feedback. If people don't like it they'll downrank it and leave a comment and, somewhere along the line, you'll find some constructive criticism. So, as the artist, you can look at what the complaints are and try again.

As a listener, you can just keep on looking through the related videos until you find something you like. And there a lot of very good independent artists on there.

What will happen when the independent artists take over is that, just like today, there will be a lot of rubbish put out. That's entirely true. But there will also be a lot of very good, high-quality independent work out there, a lot of it better than what you'll get from the mainstream labels. And eventually artists will either improve or give up and listeners will disregard artists they dislike and enjoy listening to the ones they do like.

Quote:
Digital Rights Management doesn't work. It's been tried, and there have always been ways found around it. DRM, if you don't know what it is, is the addition of coding in files that prevent copying without a purchased license. That crap only works as long as it takes for hackers to find a way around it. Because that does not work, that means that ALL digital files will eventually be able to be copied.


DRM increases piracy.

Quote:
That said, the only way to prevent copying is legislation and Internet control. There is no technological way to prevent piracy anymore. That's a given. Lacking that there are only two choices as I see it. Either clamp down legally on piracy, or accept there is no way to prevent it, and learn to make money some other way.

Personally, and this may surprise you but it's true, I believe that we'll find that legislation and control will work no better than all the attempts at technological solutions such as DRM. They tried DRM though, and they will try legislation. It will fail too.


It doesn't surprise me at all. Getting past internet filters is easy and keeping your browsing activity hidden from the ISPs is easy too.

Quote:
Since neither work, and piracy can not be stopped, that means that all artists will have to resign themselves to the fact that their art can and will be given away.

Because this is what I believe will happen, that is why I am so interested in what alternatives there are. How, once the art world resigns itself to inevitability, do artists now make a living at what they do?


They can give their stuff away then ask for donations. I donate to independent artists I'm a fan of. One of the bands I like put out their whole album for free on their website and I then went and got it off iTunes. A lot of artists use this model and still make a good living from it. I even once saw a band member comment on their torrent on TPB and say "I'm glad you enjoy our music, feel free to download it, rip it, share it, whatever, it's all appreciated", the next comment then said "If you are who you say you are, I just want to let you know that after reading that, I downloaded and ripped this, then I downloaded it again from iTunes."

Quote:
And here's my final point, to bring this discussion back around to what it's really about (Internet freedom). Most of the reason behind the most recent efforts to control the Internet have been all about preventing piracy. Preventing piracy has been all about preserving income for people who create music. Therefore, the interests of artists to make money are intrinsically tied to our desire for Internet freedom.

If a new paradigm were constructed for artists to make a living that does not require the actual sale of music, this entire discussion would become moot...

...until other reasons are used to control the Internet.

It would be nice though, to come up with a way to stop the perceived necessity for this particular effort.


Good point. The MAFIAA is wrong to try and control a free medium for their own corporate agenda, but at the same time, there's always a possibility that piracy is merely a scapegoat. The last thing governments want is for people to have power.



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31 Jan 2012, 1:12 pm

Ancalagon wrote:
MrXxx wrote:
When you use something they've done, change it, or add to it, or both, you are using what they OWN. It may very well be creative, but to do it without permission is illegal plain and simple.

It is not illegal plain and simple. Not at least in the US. There is something called fair use that explicitly allows this.


Well, it's not "plain and simple." Even the copyright law specifically says it isn't. It can, in some cases of what one might perceive as "fair use," not be fair use.

Quote:
The distinction between fair use and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission.


The law is however specific about which purposes for which a piece is used that qualifies as "fair use."

Quote:
Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
2. The nature of the copyrighted work
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work


Posting derivative works on YouTube using a personal account would rarely, if ever, constitute "fair use."

Ancalagon wrote:
Quote:
If it were your own work, and you were making your living at it, I bet you'd feel a whole lot differently about it.

Honestly, I'd probably want to release everything under an open source license. Depending on where I end up working that may or may not be a possibility, but some software companies make good money from it despite the software being free.

Even assuming I end up making proprietary software with licenses that prevent copying, I very much doubt I'll be worried about piracy taking a significant amount out of my bottom line. For one thing, not all software is for consumption by the public, so I could end up consulting for companies. For another, I'd likely look at it as similar to free advertising or the bottom rung of price discrimination.


Fair enough. You are the owner of your work, and you have the right to ignore, or not ignore, violations of your copyright for whatever reason you see fit. All other owners also have the same rights, and are not required to ignore violations.

Ancalagon wrote:
I'm not approving of piracy, BTW, just saying that I wouldn't let myself be in a situation where something that's so likely to happen and so unlikely to be controllable would break my business model.


Good point. Really. You, however (as well as anyone entering any business at this point in time that would be impacted by current technology and law), have the advantage of building a business model that takes into account current technologies. The music and movie industries as a whole do not have this advantage. Their business models were devised long before the advent of digital media. During the first century and a half that the current model was devised and changed, nobody had a clue digital media would someday turn the entire process on its head. Changes to the current model would affect millions of artists and thousands of companies. Changes would also affect the thousands, if not millions, of estates and the estate's beneficiaries for artists that have passed away. Changing the status quo models represent extremely far reaching effects to a great many individuals.

Ancalagon wrote:
Quote:
Why can't those people just create something of their own? Then THEY would own it and have the same legal rights to control it.

Many of them are. The anime reviewer I mentioned is really good, adds her own video to it, provides insightful analysis, clever commentary, and funny parody. But some studios don't believe in fair use and send takedown notices for no good reason, and the videos come down.

So far, I've bought 3 separate anime series specifically because of that reviewer. They should be realizing that it's free advertising, not piracy.

It would be rather different if she were posting episodes from a series.


You're talking about a reviewer. Reviewers are specifically covered under fair use.

Ancalagon wrote:
Quote:
It is legal to do that kind of thing for school projects too, under Fair Use. You just can't post it on YouTube.

This is almost certainly wrong. I have never heard of anything that treats copyrights differently based on whether they are on youtube.


Well, Google doesn't agree. Since they took over YouTube, there are a lot more videos using copyrighted works that are not being allowed. I can tell you from personal experience that it isn't. I posted some college projects on YouTube that were derivative works. I was ordered to remove them or have my account closed. The reason given, "copyright violation." In the notice I received I was told that if I could provide proof that I had permission to use the work, that would be fine. Well, I couldn't, so it was taken down.

There ARE reviewers and critics that post on YouTube. That is covered by law under fair use. The same project I posted on YouTube was posted on a college site, and posted on my own web site. On the college site, it was perfectly legal. On my own site is questionable. On my own site though, I specifically stated they were college projects, AND I included disclaimers in each of them stating the videos should never be copied or presented publicly. I also took reasonable measures to prevent them from being downloaded. The bottom line about my own site is that it's unlikely anyone would care what was there because the traffic and ratings were so low hardly anyone knew they existed. Still, I could have been challenged had any of the owners of the work discovered they were there and wanted them removed. My web hosting company would almost certainly have erred on the side of the art owners and ordered me to remove them under the threat of having my account closed.

Fair Use can be tricky to determine. Many cases of claimed fair use are challenged. Some successfully, and some not. There is a lot of gray area in Fair Use.

BTW: There are, of course, a lot of YouTube videos that do use derivative works. When you've got nearly 500 million unique users every month, it's impossible to stop ALL of them. The bottom line with YouTube and other sites with that many users is that the owners of the work always have the right to find and demand their work to be removed. In most cases, it will be, unless "fair use" very clearly applies.


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MrXxx
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31 Jan 2012, 2:10 pm

Asp-Z wrote:
MrXxx wrote:
I do remember. What many consumers are unaware of though, is that once cassettes came on the market, cassette manufactures were eventually required to pay a fees structured to make up for the perceived losses incurred. This was meant to offset whatever losses might happen due to music sharing through taped vinyl recordings and later CD recordings. How they calculated it all is beyond my knowledge and rather questionable. The same concerns were raised yet again when CD's came out.


Wow, their propaganda machine is more powerful than I gave it credit for if they actually managed to convince people that was necessary.


They did. And they still collect the fees for that (audio and video cassettes). I believe they also collect fees for blank CD's.

Asp-Z wrote:
Quote:
There is a vast difference between the amount of damage that might have happened between sharing tapes and sharing digital files. When it came to individuals sharing, tapes had to be physically recorded, which took time and effort, then had to be physically handed out to individuals. The main concern at that time had very little to do with individuals sharing tapes. The main concern at that time was bulk pirating by people in the industry taping masters and bulk copying them to cassettes. That actually was a legitimate concern. It did happen. Remember the carousels of cassette tapes we used to see in just about every convenience store? A huge number of them were pirated recordings, bulk distributed to those stores by fly-by-night salesman who had no clue, and frankly didn't care where they came from. That was what the fee was designed to offset.

Digital recordings, as they are distributed today, do not require any duplication at all. A single file hosted on a server can be distributed to thousands of individuals simultaneously in a matter of seconds for a single song, or a matter of minutes for a full album. No other technology has ever been capable of that. Legitimate digital distributors do still pay fees. Illegitimate distributors no longer need any physical media to transfert he music to. There is no physical media that fees can be tacked on to. It's a whole different ball game now. There is no way to recoup any losses from illegal digital piracy.

With every previous leap in technology, there were cries that the new technology would kill the industry, and each one of them may very well have done just that, if the industry hadn't eventually found a way to offset the threat with some kind of licensing or fee. Once digital came along, they discovered very quickly there was NO way to offset piracy with licensing and/or fees alone, since now there is no longer any physical "thing" to tack anything onto.


This is unarguably true: digital files are far easier to distribute than any physical medium, and since they can't be tracked and have fees applied to them, the industry can't offset them. All of this is true. But can I just point out that the industry is seeing increased profits every single year regardless? It appears that you've missed that bit out. Because the MAFIAA don't need to put fees on anything to make profit, they do a damn good job of it already, piracy or no piracy.


True, they are increasing profits. If it sounds like I'm coming down on the side of the industry, I sure as hell don't mean to. I'm a closet song writer. I record my own stuff at home on my own DAW. If you were to hear some of the stuff I've written (and some I haven't finished writing yet), you'd know I'm anything but a proponent for the industry as a whole. There's a lot I hate about it. hypocrisy is just one thing.

Really I come down somewhere in the middle, and only on the side of industry aspects that attempt to (but often do a poor job at), protect the artists. It does a great job protecting extremely successful artists, but fails miserably at protecting the bottom rung artists.

I'm NOT trying to defend the industry by any means. They don't need my damned help, nor do they deserve it.

My main issue is what I've been driving at from the beginning on this thread. How can artists make a living while ignoring piracy? The fact is, I think we're ALL eventually going to have to learn how, like it or not.

I don't give a crap if the industry as we know it fails, as long as some kind of renegade independent grass roots thing can replace it and we all have just as much choice (or the way things have been going lately, MORE choice), in quality material.

Asp-Z wrote:
Quote:
BTW: Gramophones actually did kill the printed staff music industry (at least it killed what it was ~ ever heard of Tin-Pan Alley?). Radio also killed live performances, at least for a time. Radio stations now have to pay a fee now for all the songs they play, and are required by law to log every song they play in order for the Artist Rights Societies to track who's songs are being played and how many times so that they can distribute songwriters and composers their rightful dues. There are others ways of tracking live performances, but that obviously isn't affected by digital files.


I know, they're so serious about this that the PRS once tried to sue an old lady for singing in her shop. What a threat to their organisation she must have been! 8O


Yes, and ARS's play a role in stuff like that too, and come under fire for their strong-arm tactics from time to time. I remember cases of hair-dressing salons coming under fire for playing radios in their establishments. That seemed stupid to me since the radio stations were already paying fees to them for playing the music in the first place. Playing radios in public businesses is somewhat of a gray area. In a way, I can understand going after huge bars that charge cover charges for entry. It's been the case for a long time now that bars that feature cover bands playing live are supposed to pay fees to PRS's and ARS's, and even keep track of WHAT is played by the bands, even if the establishment doesn't charge a cover. Hair dressers playing the radio though? That's just stupid.

Asp-Z wrote:
Quote:
It's a very complex, and questionably accurate set-up, but it has worked fairly well for over one hundred years. Digital piracy is unquestionably a threat to the current system. How much of a threat is debatable, but what I personally think is not debatable at all is the POTENTIAL of digital music files to kill the industry that no other technology has ever come close to matching. There is no question that if we all want to continue to have the same access to variety and quality that we've enjoyed for many years now, something has to change.

If nothing changes, I believe we'll be seeing the industry as we know it fall apart. Nothing will be left but homegrown music, which in a way might be good, but I believe we're already seeing more than the tip of the iceberg where that is concerned. Anyone with a DAW in their bedroom, basement or garage can now make pretty good recordings and distribute them on the internet, IF they know what they are doing with the equipment. The problem is, an awful lot of them don't have a clue how to create a quality recording, and the more homegrown music becomes the source of music available to the consumer, the more low quality crap recordings you will see. Though for a while we may see more diversity, finding good quality stuff will become far more difficult.

And though it doesn't cost millions to set up your own DAW at home, and if you know what you're doing with it, you can make a recording just as good as most professional studios today, it still costs quite a bit of money relative to the shallow pockets of most musicians. To truly do it right takes more than making it a hobby. It's got to be a passion at which you spend a great deal of your time. If you can't at least make a part time living from it, it's not worth it for most musicians.

Mark my words, you will see a severe drop in the percentage of quality recordings available.


You argue a lot of independent music is of low quality, and you're completely correct, but again you're missing out some important details. First of all, a lot of mainstream music is crap as well. Utterly terrible, in fact. Listen to anything put out by Disney's record label and you'll see what I mean.


You won't get any argument from me on this point. I may not have said anything about it, but I couldn't agree with you more.

Asp-Z wrote:
Thing is, though, you can go hunting for new tunes on YouTube, say, and you'll come across a lot of crap. But what you don't get with mainstream music, but you do on YouTube, is instant viewer feedback. If people don't like it they'll downrank it and leave a comment and, somewhere along the line, you'll find some constructive criticism. So, as the artist, you can look at what the complaints are and try again.

As a listener, you can just keep on looking through the related videos until you find something you like. And there a lot of very good independent artists on there.

What will happen when the independent artists take over is that, just like today, there will be a lot of rubbish put out. That's entirely true. But there will also be a lot of very good, high-quality independent work out there, a lot of it better than what you'll get from the mainstream labels. And eventually artists will either improve or give up and listeners will disregard artists they dislike and enjoy listening to the ones they do like.


Again, I couldn't agree more with you. There is a lot of great stuff out there, but for me it's really, REALLY hard to find. I believe for me the problem stems from my particular brand of "Aspie" taste. Because of the "instant feedback" it's become a popularity contest, and my tastes aren't very popular. So instant feedback doesn't really help me much. I end up stumbling over a lot more that I don't like, than stuff I do like, and that's pretty frustrating for me.

Asp-Z wrote:
Quote:
Digital Rights Management doesn't work. It's been tried, and there have always been ways found around it. DRM, if you don't know what it is, is the addition of coding in files that prevent copying without a purchased license. That crap only works as long as it takes for hackers to find a way around it. Because that does not work, that means that ALL digital files will eventually be able to be copied.


DRM increases piracy.


Not sure how you're reaching that conclusion. Not sure it matters to me anyway, considering I'm firmly convinced it doesn't work in the long run anyway. So far, the only form of DRM I'm aware of that hasn't been cracked (though I could be wrong by now), is Blu-Ray. Has that been cracked yet? If so, it wouldn't surprise me in the least.

Asp-Z wrote:
Quote:
That said, the only way to prevent copying is legislation and Internet control. There is no technological way to prevent piracy anymore. That's a given. Lacking that there are only two choices as I see it. Either clamp down legally on piracy, or accept there is no way to prevent it, and learn to make money some other way.

Personally, and this may surprise you but it's true, I believe that we'll find that legislation and control will work no better than all the attempts at technological solutions such as DRM. They tried DRM though, and they will try legislation. It will fail too.


It doesn't surprise me at all. Getting past internet filters is easy and keeping your browsing activity hidden from the ISPs is easy too.


The problem is, of course, that just as DRM's always seem to get cracked eventually, tools to hide your activity from ISP's are also being cracked. At least I presume so. I just assume the war works both ways. I gave up a long time ago assuming it was possible to entirely hide my identity and activity from anyone. These days I assume that somebody somewhere could possibly figure out who I am, where I am, and what I'm doing. I don't put much faith in measures and tools that are supposed to do that, though I do use some of them anyway. I take a kind of "Caveat Emptor" attitude toward them.

Asp-Z wrote:
Quote:
Since neither work, and piracy can not be stopped, that means that all artists will have to resign themselves to the fact that their art can and will be given away.

Because this is what I believe will happen, that is why I am so interested in what alternatives there are. How, once the art world resigns itself to inevitability, do artists now make a living at what they do?


They can give their stuff away then ask for donations. I donate to independent artists I'm a fan of. One of the bands I like put out their whole album for free on their website and I then went and got it off iTunes. A lot of artists use this model and still make a good living from it. I even once saw a band member comment on their torrent on TPB and say "I'm glad you enjoy our music, feel free to download it, rip it, share it, whatever, it's all appreciated", the next comment then said "If you are who you say you are, I just want to let you know that after reading that, I downloaded and ripped this, then I downloaded it again from iTunes."


"Putting out the donation jar" is a very old technique a lot of artists are returning to. Some release low quality CD's at their shows, with website addresses attached so people can pay for higher quality files. Once those high quality files are out there though, anyone can share them of course. Some choose to make most of their money selling merchandise, which is mush harder and more expensive to copy. Some rely on ticket sales to live shows. There's a lot of creative ways around it. I dont' think any of them afford the kind of massive success that used to exist for some artists years ago. Still, I refuse to believe there is no way to make a living out of it, even if you do give all your music away. Movies are a different animal though. That branch of art I honestly don't know enough about to speak of in detail.

Asp-Z wrote:
Quote:
And here's my final point, to bring this discussion back around to what it's really about (Internet freedom). Most of the reason behind the most recent efforts to control the Internet have been all about preventing piracy. Preventing piracy has been all about preserving income for people who create music. Therefore, the interests of artists to make money are intrinsically tied to our desire for Internet freedom.

If a new paradigm were constructed for artists to make a living that does not require the actual sale of music, this entire discussion would become moot...

...until other reasons are used to control the Internet.

It would be nice though, to come up with a way to stop the perceived necessity for this particular effort.


Good point. The MAFIAA is wrong to try and control a free medium for their own corporate agenda, but at the same time, there's always a possibility that piracy is merely a scapegoat. The last thing governments want is for people to have power.


Whether it's a scapegoat doesn't matter as much to me as the fact that I believe there is no effective way to prevent piracy and never will be. I do think what the industry has been up to for years now amounts to the gasps and raspings of a dying monster. It's trying to survive. Anything trying to survive will take extreme measures to keep from dying. I don't agree with a lot of what they're doing or have done in the past, but none of it really surprises me. But even monsters, when they are faced with reality, have to deal with it no matter how unpleasant reality may be, even if that means the end of the monster's existence. They will do whatever they think they have to to continue breathing, but in the end, when the oxygen is gone, they will be gone too. "Not with a bang, but a whimper." ~ T.S. Eliot

What will follow is up for interesting debates. Only time will tell.


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31 Jan 2012, 4:07 pm

Sounds like we're pretty much in agreement then, MrXxx.



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31 Jan 2012, 4:14 pm

Asp-Z wrote:
Sounds like we're pretty much in agreement then, MrXxx.


Pretty much I'd say, yeah.


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31 Jan 2012, 8:12 pm

I think your troubles with youtube were a result of youtube policies, rather than the law itself.

Also, thanks for the interesting debate.


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01 Feb 2012, 12:51 pm

Ancalagon wrote:
I think your troubles with youtube were a result of youtube policies, rather than the law itself.


Partly, yes. YouTube policy though, is based on Google's interpretation of what they may or may not be liable for, which is a legal issue.

Copyright law has never been crystal clear about everything it's supposed to cover. There is a lot of interpretation involved as there is with many laws.


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02 Feb 2012, 2:33 am

MrXxx wrote:
What innovations?

What business models?

I keep hearing people say that's what the industry needs to do, but not very often have I heard any constructive alternatives. The music and movie business is in the business of selling music and movies. If everyone gets them for free, what alternative means of making money from making music and movies are there?

I come down in some ways on one side, and in other ways on the other side of this issue (don't ask me to elaborate ~ I'm not going there :P ), so I'm not challenging anyone other than to offer some real viable alternatives to the way these businesses work now. I believe there are some, but I haven't thought of one yet that would make them anywhere near as much money as they do now. I doubt any of my ideas would support the industries without severely affecting the quality of products they offer.


Different business models?

Play more shows. Sell more merch. Pull a Lil Wayne and release a LOAD of free songs, and the occasional paid album. Radiohead set up a "pay what you want" system and did great with it. Sell packages with the album (I think it was A Perfect Circle that had a package involving motorboating the drummers wife or her best friend, I forget which. Sold out in minutes at hundreds of dollar a pop).

If an artist wants to make money, they have to give people something they will pay for... people don't want to pay for music these days. They can still make money, they just have to find something else to sell.

For reference, this is coming from a musician in 2 bands, getting ready to record an album... that will be plastered all over piratebay and whatever other torrent sites I can find. For free.


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