[Sunday Business Post] Irish music industry hit by downloading (1 Viewer)

[Primitive]

Tell that to someone in a poor part of the world who wants to listen to some music.

There's no bounderies in music so whatever your circumstances you'll always be surrounded by music. For instance, where do you think the Blues came from? African people have made a signicant contribution to many musical sounds we enjoy today & i presume they weren't rollin' in wades of money over the last few centuries.

 

[nlgbbbblth]

Large Mound did it that way. Now buy our vinyl people!

I bought vinyl and CD

 

[broken arm]

For instance, where do you think the Blues came from? African people have made a signicant contribution to many musical sounds we enjoy today & i presume they weren't rollin' in wades of money over the last few centuries.

yea, it's always the whitey being greedy and bankrolling culture.

imperialist mentality reduced to a black plastic disk.

 

[Mitchum]

There's no bounderies in music so whatever your circumstances you'll always be surrounded by music. For instance, where do you think the Blues came from? African people have made a signicant contribution to many musical sounds we enjoy today & i presume they weren't rollin' in wades of money over the last few centuries.

...and vica versa. It's easier for me to download African mp3s from a blogger based in New York which were originally sold on cassette than it is for me travel to Burkina Faso to source same. It's off-topic somewhat though.

File-sharing is a victimless crime

 

[RED(tape)MENACE]

Artists on the other hand would seem to have a much greater moral claim on the use of their own work, but as its been established, copyright is a right granted by society. Its not in the ether, its not elemental and it has no philosophical foundations.

Ooooooooooookay.
This whole 'copyright is bullshit' thing.
What about the laws that say you can't drive around housing estates at 120mph?
Are they any less 'valid' because loads of drivers disobey speed limits as a matter of course?

 

[Mitchum]

There's no one these days who would agree to pay a royalty for taping an episode of Corination Street that they had missed, neither would anyone see it as stealing for not paying a royalty for singing happy birthday to someone or for lending someone a copy of a dvd.

Oh that reminds me of Jack Valletti's famous quote about how 'the VHS is to the film industry what the Boston Strangler is to women at home alone' or something. Again from the early Eighties.

 

[CitySickness]

Ooooooooooookay.
This whole 'copyright is bullshit' thing.
What about the laws that say you can't drive around housing estates at 120mph?
Are they any less 'valid' because loads of drivers disobey speed limits as a matter of course?

I guess you're less likely to kill someone with an mp3 - although some of the 128kbps ones are pretty lethal.

 

[Vinnie]

Singing happy birthday contradicts no copyright laws. Fucks sake.

There's no one these days who would agree to pay a royalty for taping an episode of Corination Street that they had missed, neither would anyone see it as stealing for not paying a royalty for singing happy birthday to someone or for lending someone a copy of a dvd.

These are all rights to the use of copyrighted material to which societly feel that they are entitled without having to recompense the copyright holder.

Yet by the definition given by some of the posters here all of these are stealing.

 

[Stereobaby]

Everyone here paid up on their Television Licence?

Good!

 

[Mitchum]

Ooooooooooookay.
This whole 'copyright is bullshit' thing.
What about the laws that say you can't drive around housing estates at 120mph?
Are they any less 'valid' because loads of drivers disobey speed limits as a matter of course?

Yeah...Copyright Law is not as black and white as the example you provide.

 

[Squiggle]

Ooooooooooookay.
This whole 'copyright is bullshit' thing.
What about the laws that say you can't drive around housing estates at 120mph?
Are they any less 'valid' because loads of drivers disobey speed limits as a matter of course?

Or because cars are capable of doing 120mph?

As far as I can see the argument seems to be:
the technology is there to endlessly copy and distribute music freely
the quality of said ripped music is comparable to the original (disputable)
record companies are evil and the artist wouldn't get much anyway
therefore we should all 'share' music

There are lots of things that I could do that are completely legal but unethical. I can't see how people who squawk whenever a politician makes use of a legal loophole can use such feeble arguments to justify a hard-drive full of unpaid for intellectual property that they intend to offer freely to whoever wants to download it.

 

[jane]

GUYZE, can we get back to a more pressing issue of this handsome stranger who's gonna be in Vinnie's life?

 

[avernus]

downloading music has certainly extended the reach of smaller bands, but does it increase or decrease their revenue? regardless of the stealing / ethics element - a lot of filthy viral marketeers would argue it's more of a positive than a negative - is it actually helping or hindering bands? because if it's making more money for bands in other ways, by creating more fans and filling bigger venues and selling merchandise etc., then it's more of a positive for music and a negative for record labels. but then there is the argument that without the labels, a lot of musicians and music would never have been created. the big money backing being gone would have an effect on the quality of recordings. it's all rather messy. rather like this post. my 's' key seems to be fucking up on me. I want to kill it.

 

[Vinnie]

GUYZE, can we get back to a more pressing issue of this handsome stranger who's gonna be in Vinnie's life?

Fred West

 

[broken arm]

GUYZE, can we get back to a more pressing issue of this handsome stranger who's gonna be in Vinnie's life?

what? me?

 

[coast to coast]

Ooooooooooookay.
This whole 'copyright is bullshit' thing.
What about the laws that say you can't drive around housing estates at 120mph?
Are they any less 'valid' because loads of drivers disobey speed limits as a matter of course?

No need to be so fucking agressive. I didn't say 'copyright is bullshit' so you can put the quotation marks away. What I said was that its not an inalienable right, its a pragmatic solution that has come about for whatever variety of reasons - I don't know the entire history of copyright to know if it was to do with some movement or pressure group or whatever. But it has come about.

What about laws about speeding laws? They're also a pragmatic solution so that there's less death on the roads. Here's a couple of less pragmatic solutions - banning all cars as potential weapons. Or again, removing all speed limits because people should be responsible for their own selves and their own cars, its not the governments job to decide how they drive or not.

My point was that society has come to use copyright as a means of letting artists control their work and as a method of getting paid for their work. It doesn't come direct from God on a big stone tablet. Now society has to adapt to the fact that copyright infringement isn't seen as a big deal by most people, probably because they can get away with it so easily and because it doesn't seem to effect that artists revenue streams are affected (most likely in a negative fashion.)

Digital reproduction makes copyright law inneffective and no amount of moral fingerwagging and/or lawsuits prosecuting people for downloading songs is going to stop that. I've never claimed that the material I've downloaded and listened isn't being taken without payment, but I also know that I buy more CDs by the bands I've downloaded and go to more of their gigs and so on that I have before. I can't answer for everyone else, but if someone does decide to come sue me for music I've downloaded illegally (bear in mind copy your CDs to MP3s on your computer is apparently illegal also...) or the music I have borrowed from friends and ripped onto my computer, or the tracks I've downloaded that friends have sent me in emails.

 

[Flux]

there's a different element to this here. the sound quality difference may have been down to the amp difference between the players. one of the drawbacks of increased mp3 player competition has been a noticeable dip in audio quality as the manafacturers strive to bring down component and production costs - as they squeeze more doohickeys in, the core components suffer. quite possibly, the music sounded better on your discman simply cause all it's hardware has to do is play music.

running them through the same amp and speakers, i genuinely find it hard to notice the difference between a 320kbps mp3 and a CD, unless that CD has been particularly well mastered. It's only the difference between vinyl and digital that's particularly striking

Hmm...I've plugged the iriver into the amp/speaker setup I listen to cds/vinyl on and 320kb mp3s still sound inferior to the albums on cd to me. Loveless on vinyl is another story altogether . What were you playing the mp3's on when you compared formats?

I would've though a piece of audio equipment that cost 350 euro (in 2005) would have better hardware that one that cost 30 euro (in 2002). Ya could be right though, it does have a lot of bells and whistles.

 

[Mormon Nailer]

Ooooooooooookay.
This whole 'copyright is bullshit' thing.
What about the laws that say you can't drive around housing estates at 120mph?
Are they any less 'valid' because loads of drivers disobey speed limits as a matter of course?

No but if it happend that society as a whole felt the improvement in car safety made a 40Km limit in built up areas unreasonable and lobbied for 50Km would that be wrong?

If technology improved to the extend that your car would automatically brake if there was a pedestrian in front of it and a 40km limt was all of a soudden complete nonsense would you push to keep it for sentimental reasons?

All of these laws are created by society and depend on what society feel is useful at the time. They are subject to change based on what society as a whole feel is useful. Copyright did not come down on stone tablets from Mount Sinai, it is a set of regulations society uses to fairly regulate the relationship between artists and audience, society allows the artist a monopoly over his work so that the artist my benefit from it and produce more work.

 

[Mormon Nailer]

Singing happy birthday contradicts no copyright laws. Fucks sake.

You sure about that?

 

[MDR]

Just to be clear. Breaches of copyright are illegal as an infringement of property rights. We've been through all this before. Copyright is not some abstract gift of society of the artists any more than the gift of that title deeds to a homeowner is. To ignore what international and national law says on this in favour of self-interested people who want music for free, and then justify it as the wish of society is disingenuous.