OK works for me. The problem is 'supergroups' such as U2, The Beatles, Bee Gees, Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson, Madonna etc all make several million each year from their back catalogue of old recordings.
Of course. But none of these are really facing poverty. Except maybe Michael Jackson but that is his own fault and has nothing to do with him not having made enough revenue.
Copyright has only existed for a couple of hundred years (and in its present draconian and overarching form, less than a century). Are you seriously trying to argue that "no significant new music or art" were created until 200-odd years ago ?
No, but what I am saying is that it will be more difficult in the future because where in the past people had either a rich benefactor 200 hundred years ago or record company support through record sales 30 years ago, that line of support is now vastly reduced. People are less likely to be able to afford the time to make the art or music if they are not paid for it.
No, but what I am saying is that it will be more difficult in the future because where in the past people had either a rich benefactor 200 hundred years ago or record company support through record sales 30 years ago, that line of support is now vastly reduced.
I would be jaw-droppingly astounded if the amount of money on offer from benefactors, corporations, governments, and anyone else for "art" today is not several orders of magnitude higher than it has ever been in the past.
Quote:
People are less likely to be able to afford the time to make the art or music if they are not paid for it.
So if the people who were only in it to make money rather than to make good art, stop doing so, why would this be a bad thing ?
Not only in France....
In Sweden the Pirate Bay owners have recently been on trial for providing the tool for file sharing - they have been sentenced to 1 year of prison and a hughe fine approx 3 000 000 Euros (I know for an American it can be seen as peanuts, but from a Swedish point of view this is hughe - penalty fines are usually in terms of a 100 up to a few 1000 Euros).
Interesting to see what effect this will have on other types of search engines.
A direct effect in Sweden has been so far that loads of people have signed up for membership in the Pirate Party, a lobbying party for copyright topics, resulting in they being the 4th largest party based on number of members. They're hoping to take some seats in the European Parlament later on in June when the election takes place...
Last edited by Piafia; 21.04.2009 at 21:39.
Reason: Type-O
I think you're missing the difference between not getting paid for every copy downloaded and not getting payed at all.
Maybe musicians should start accepting that a certain percentage of songs will not get payed for. If you're selling drinks you factor in a certain sum for spillage. If you're selling vegetables you factor in some spoilage. If you're a carpenter you throw away the chippings. But you still make money off the rest. Not every person who downloads a song would necessarily have payed for it. Not every person even wants what they download. Have you ever downloaded something only to discover it was an error and that it wasn't what you wanted and then trashed it after having heard the first three bars. There are so many songs out there and many have similar or identical titles. Is that really equivalent to stealing a CD from a shop as the labels would have us believe? I guess its more equivalent to listening to the CD in a shop and then putting it back on the shelf when you've realised you don't want it. However the music labels who just see the statistics will assume that it is full lost revenue.
As I already explained. I download some stuff and I pay for some stuff. Some of the stuff I pay for I first discovered through downloads. Wasn't that initial loss that the musician suffered a worthwhile investment in view of the overall picture?
An interesting video on this topic is the one with regards to the Nine Inch Nail experiment on how to reach their fans/customers and make a profit, despite free downloads and file sharing (how to make music business in the future).
(Please note -quite long video approx 15 minutes, but worth the time I think)
I think of course if someone creates something and there is a market (large or small) the creator should have a stake in revenue - therefore some copyright is necessary. Earlier it was (as someone wrote also earlier) benefactors/mecenates to support artists and facilitate them reaching the market, today it is the record companies et al, tomorrow/future there might be a new set up of stakeholders in this - eventhough the record companies wouldn't agree on this currently...
This is equally concerning too, were it to creep into CH ( sometimes I am pleased that CH is yet to be included in the EU ).
=Net firms start storing user data=
Details of user e-mails and net phone calls will be stored by internet service providers (ISPs) from Monday [ Apr 6th ] under an EU directive
You're kidding yourself if you think that all the ISP's haven't been doing this all along.
Storing (and retrieving) this sort of information involves a substantial amount - to the tune of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars per year even for a relatively small operation - of computing, personnel and bureaucratic overhead for zero benefit (said information is of no value to the ISP). I am quite confident that no ISP would do it unless they absolutely had to.
I guess everybody who is for filesharing and thinks it is Ok to steal somebody else's creation isn't a musician/author/painter etc.
Filesharing is hurting the individuals who cannot sell their music/short film because somebody put it out on the web for free. Big companies are not the only losers here.
I can imagine an author who is undiscovered and worked full time on a novel for 1 year being very happy to find that the first person who bought an electronic copy for download then disabled the DRM and offered it for free on the net.
Being paid for nothing (for instance logging in to this forum for an hour while at work as I'm sure some of you are :-) ) is very different to being unpaid for doing your work. Try it sometime, hope you like it. Work the next 3 months for free and check your bank balance.
A free market with fair-priced goods is all I want and illegal free downloads do not help anybody. This is not only about multi-millionaire movie stars and pop stars. There will be no significant new music or art within 2 generations if illegal downloads go unchecked.
Everytime you download one of my songs for free you are taking the food off of my children's plates, not the music companies. If you do this, quite simply you are a thieving b*astard.
Yada yada yada... have you ever thought that maybe the current approach of the media industry is simply wrong? For example, Google doesn't charge for its products and innovation and makes a fortune out of them. To me, the vinyl era business model is still prevalent on the media entertainment industry and that is leading you nowhere. You need to listen to your customers and stop blaming them for piracy at the same time you play (so well) your victim role. Make your media more broadly accessible and at fair prices, perhaps add paid ads to your content and you may be surprised on how much of that critical mass of pirates you will be reaching.
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In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut
This user would like to thank Yopo for this useful post:
Piracy may be the bane of the music industry but according to a new study, it may also be its engine. A report from the BI Norwegian School of Management has found that those who download music illegally are also 10 times more likely to pay for songs than those who don't.
Everybody knows that music sales have continued to fall in recent years, and that filesharing is usually blamed. We are made to imagine legions of internet criminals, their fingers on track-pads, downloading songs via BitTorrent and never paying for anything. One of the only bits of good news amid this doom and gloom is the steady rise in digital music sales. Millions of internet do-gooders, their fingers on track-pads, who pay for songs they like – purchasing them from Amazon or iTunes Music Store. And yet according to Professor Anne-Britt Gran's new research, these two groups may be the same.
The Norwegian study looked at almost 2,000 online music users, all over the age of 15. Researchers found that those who downloaded "free" music – whether from lawful or seedy sources – were also 10 times more likely to pay for music. This would make music pirates the industry's largest audience for digital sales.
Wisely, the study did not rely on music pirates' honesty. Researchers asked music buyers to prove that they had proof of purchase.
The paper's conclusions emerge just as Sweden's Pirate Bay trial comes to a close. Pirate Bay's four defendants, who helped operate the notorious BitTorrent tracker, were sentenced to a year in jail and fined 30m SEK (£2,500,000) in damages.
This user would like to thank Russkov for this useful post:
Not only in France....
In Sweden the Pirate Bay owners have recently been on trial for providing the tool for file sharing - they have been sentenced to 1 year of prison and a hughe fine approx 3 000 000 Euros (I know for an American it can be seen as peanuts, but from a Swedish point of view this is hughe - penalty fines are usually in terms of a 100 up to a few 1000 Euros)
It looks like a re-trial may be in order for the Piratebay crew
Pirate Bay judge is member of Copyright Association
Posted by Richard Koman @ April 23, 2009 @ 10:18 AM
The Pirate Bay may have grounds for a retrial. It turns out that the judge in the case, Tomas Norstrom, might have a slight conflict of interest. He’s a member of the Swedish Copyright Association and sits on the board of Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property.
Peter Althin, the lawyer for TPB cofounder Peter Sunde, said he’s asking the Swedish appeals court to consider ordering a retrial based on the judge’s possible bias, the BBC reports.
It looks like a re-trial may be in order for the Piratebay crew
Pirate Bay judge is member of Copyright Association
Posted by Richard Koman @ April 23, 2009 @ 10:18 AM
The Pirate Bay may have grounds for a retrial. It turns out that the judge in the case, Tomas Norstrom, might have a slight conflict of interest. He’s a member of the Swedish Copyright Association and sits on the board of Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property.
Peter Althin, the lawyer for TPB cofounder Peter Sunde, said he’s asking the Swedish appeals court to consider ordering a retrial based on the judge’s possible bias, the BBC reports.
I don't have much sympathy for the Pirate Bay guys, since they were a little blatant and pigheaded about the whole pirate thing, but this is a very clear conflict of interest.
Plus I read that Norstrom himself disqualified one of the jurymen (or the equivalent, since Sweden doesn't use the jury system, but you get the idea) for being a composer and member of the Swedish Composer Association. On the grounds therewas a conflict of interest. Heh. Takes one to know one?
French "three strikes" anti-piracy software riddled with flaws
The French "three strikes" policy was put on hold last week after the private company tasked with collecting piracy data, TMG, was hacked and found to be insecure. The hack has allowed the company's data-collecting software to be examined. It turns out that servers weren't the only thing that TMG failed to properly secure; their anti-piracy software is riddled with flaws, too.
French "three strikes" anti-piracy software riddled with flaws
The French "three strikes" policy was put on hold last week after the private company tasked with collecting piracy data, TMG, was hacked and found to be insecure. The hack has allowed the company's data-collecting software to be examined. It turns out that servers weren't the only thing that TMG failed to properly secure; their anti-piracy software is riddled with flaws, too.
Not surprising really; who would want to work for that company?
Did they get the creme de la creme of software writers or the dregs or people who accidentally did a less than perfect job?