Why bother being in a band and why bother trying?

imalone

guitarfishbay said:

Edit : I'm confused here, I'm not a lawyer.

So if you steal a CD it is stealing.

If you copy a CD it is copyright infringement.

If you take a digital file without paying (when it was supposed to be paid for) what is that legally?  Is it copyright infringement, in law?

Neither am I, so take this with a pinch of salt... You can't really take a digital file without copying it or physically stealing the hardware it's on. You could copy and delete the original I suppose. Depending what happens you've probably got unauthorised access to a computer system in there somewhere too. If a legitimate download site has accidentally made something available to you for free then you're into contract and licensing issues (you'd be expected to delete it once told), you have to have done it 'with criminal intent' for it to have been criminal (not being a lawyer I'm not sure what's sufficient for that, simply knowing you aren't meant to have it might be enough). This is actually where the differences start to show up, if you stole a CD no-one would bother with trying to pursue you for having the music without a license (not certain that's even criminal), because you've stolen a physical object.

guitarfishbay said:

That isn't a fair statement.  If his response to me was 'this is how it works in law' rather than a statement that looks like it could be fact or opinion, then I would have responded differently.

Okay, sorry if I wasn't clear enough. Hope my later post made more sense.

thisisguitar said:

I think the cost of using an ISP should double and something similar to PRS set up to distribute the extra money amongst content providers. Youtube and others make millions selling advertising that is sold on the back of largely illegal streams of content, and even Spotify as a business model doesn't really support artists (Lady Gaga got paid next to nothing in a year that she had the most streamed song).

I used to dislike this idea (though doubling is a bit extreme, that's a lot of money). I'm a bit more open to it now that it's clear that's what most people use the net for, but suspect all the money will still end up with publishers and never find its way to small artists and that you can't reconcile it with the international nature of the internet. As for youtube, I thought the situation was that they have agreements to pay publishers a share for things that they detect belong to them, hence the 'not available in your country' things that pop up. Not sure what proportion fly under that radar.

monquixote

I can see why you think a tax of that nature would make sense, but isn't it a bit like putting a tax on the printing press to pay scribes?

I certainly wouldn't consent to pay an additional copyright infringement charge on my ISP fees as I don't infringe copyright.

digitalscream

imalone said:

Neither am I, so take this with a pinch of salt... You can't really take a digital file without copying it or physically stealing the hardware it's on. You could copy and delete the original I suppose. 

This is where it gets murky - the word "copy" has a very specific meaning in computing, and to make "copying" illegal would actually make *playing* a music file on a computer illegal too. When you play an MP3 (for example), it's copied from the hard drive to a location in main memory where the media player program can manipulate it. That manipulated data is then sent to the audio card, which has its own memory (whether shared with main physical memory or not), and then converted into audio signals for output. That's the simplified version, but just by double-clicking on a file you're making at least two additional copies. If you have any extra processing going on (eg surround enhancement) then you're making even more.

Record labels have argued this in US courts in the past, when they were trying to stop people using their computers to play CDs (no, really).

monquixote

By that token portable and car CD players should also be illegal as they copy data into buffers. 

digitalscream

monquixote said:

By that token portable and car CD players should also be illegal as they copy data into buffers. 

Very true. Although they're single-use devices (I think there's a caveat in there somewhere, but it was a long time ago that I read about it).

Drew_TNBD

monquixote;356391" said:

Drew_fx said:



monquixote said:



OK so if I copy one of your CDs what don't you have that you had before?










The chance for one extra sale. Simples. You're robbing people of chances to sell their wares.










But that's not the same. 

If I take your physical CD you've lost the chance of a sale and the physical value it cost you to get the CD produced if I duplicate your CD you've only lost the possibility of a sale and in actual fact you have only reduced the probability, or even potentially increased as when i did illegally download music back in the Napster days (haven't done it for 10 years BTW) I used to delete anything that was crap and buy the CD of anything half decent.

I don't disagree that it's unethical, but I don't think it should be considered the same in law. To me it's the same as the difference between buying a Chibson and putting a brick through a guitar shop window and making off with a Gibson. Both unethical and rightly illegal, but not equivalent. 

I wouldn't put buying a Chibson in any sort of category along with this stuff. What the hell are you talking about!?

chillidoggy

I'd like to say I'm in it for the pussy. In reality, there seems to be more flakey, flouncy cunts than pussy.

That aside, it's a bit like a prelude to sex: You spend ages doing the legwork for a short time in the limelight. But I guess the climax makes it all worthwhile?

Drew_TNBD

Wait wait wait... if we're talking about ripping a CD to your computer, then of course I don't regard that as stealing. I'm talking purely about you downloading an album without giving the creator any sort of recompense. That's it. The rest of the comparisons are just weird to me and don't make any sense.

Drew_TNBD

Like... if you all went out and pirated BFD3 enough times, to the point where the company I work for made no sales.... I'd be out on the street begging for change and sucking dicks to survive.

Now are we musicians sucking dicks to survive? No. But we are (not me personally, but a hell of a lot of them!) washing dishes and pulling pints because we can't make enough scratch to make a decent living. And it's not the whole of it, but piracy is a part of that.

The mental gymnastics you guys are going through to essentially justify taking someone else's hardwork and shitting all over it is kinda amazing to me. Especially on a site full of musicians.

digitalscream

Drew_fx said:

Wait wait wait... if we're talking about ripping a CD to your computer, then of course I don't regard that as stealing. I'm talking purely about you downloading an album without giving the creator any sort of recompense. That's it. The rest of the comparisons are just weird to me and don't make any sense.

That's the issue - if you're going to try to put it into law as anything other than copyright infringement, then it needs defining...and "copying" is too broad a definition (because it has the scope to include normal usage, much less ripping). It's a thorny one, but I don't see the problem here as a legal one; it's more of a cultural issue, and trying to change that (at least in the short term) is tantamount to stopping the tide by blowing at it, unless you provide a better alternative.

We all thought streaming would do it, but it turns out that Spotify et al are actually even worse than the old model where the big labels took almost everything; now they do take everything (within a margin of statistical significance), and the model has become even more unbalanced.

monquixote

Drew_fx said:

I wouldn't put buying a Chibson in any sort of category along with this stuff. What the hell are you talking about!?

It's exactly the same. 

If I buy a replica Les Paul then Gibson's intellectual property has been infringed and they have lost a potential sale. 

If I copy a TNBD song then your IP has been infringed and you have lost a potential sale.

Copying music is much closer to buying a fake Nike T-Shirt than robbing a bank. 

CabbageCat

Drew_fx said:

The mental gymnastics you guys are going through to essentially justify taking someone else's hardwork and shtting all over it is kinda amazing to me. Especially on a site full of musicians.

Go through this thread and find one person who is justifying piracy.

It's exactly what I said earlier - someone posts that piracy isn't theft and people (or person at least) reads it as piracy isn't wrong.

Drew_TNBD

digitalscream said:

Drew_fx said:

Wait wait wait... if we're talking about ripping a CD to your computer, then of course I don't regard that as stealing. I'm talking purely about you downloading an album without giving the creator any sort of recompense. That's it. The rest of the comparisons are just weird to me and don't make any sense.

That's the issue - if you're going to try to put it into law as anything other than copyright infringement, then it needs defining...and "copying" is too broad a definition (because it has the scope to include normal usage, much less ripping). It's a thorny one, but I don't see the problem here as a legal one; it's more of a cultural issue, and trying to change that (at least in the short term) is tantamount to stopping the tide by blowing at it, unless you provide a better alternative.

We all thought streaming would do it, but it turns out that Spotify et al are actually even worse than the old model where the big labels took almost everything; now they do take everything (within a margin of statistical significance), and the model has become even more unbalanced.

I agree totally that it's a cultural problem, not a legal one.

Drew_TNBD

CabbageCat said:

Drew_fx said:

The mental gymnastics you guys are going through to essentially justify taking someone else's hardwork and shtting all over it is kinda amazing to me. Especially on a site full of musicians.

Go through this thread and find one person who is justifying piracy.

It's exactly what I said earlier - someone posts that piracy isn't theft and people (or person at least) reads it as piracy isn't wrong.

I think it's an academic distinction being drawn. The end result is the same; less respect and money going to artists, less time being put into music in order to make up the shortfall, meaning less quality art and more chance for the mainstream shit acts to hog all of your ear-time.

Drew_TNBD

monquixote said:

Drew_fx said:

I wouldn't put buying a Chibson in any sort of category along with this stuff. What the hell are you talking about!?

It's exactly the same. 

If I buy a replica Les Paul then Gibson's intellectual property has been infringed and they have lost a potential sale. 

If I copy a TNBD song then your IP has been infringed and you have lost a potential sale.

Copying music is much closer to buying a fake Nike T-Shirt than robbing a bank. 

It's not exactly the same. The only thing that makes a Chibson an infringement of Gibsons IP would be the headstock. If the headstock isn't copied, no IP has been infringed. But it's not even IP that is relevant here, because IP, copyright, and trademarks are all different things.

monquixote

Drew_fx said:

It's not exactly the same. The only thing that makes a Chibson an infringement of Gibsons IP would be the headstock. If the headstock isn't copied, no IP has been infringed. But it's not even IP that is relevant here, because IP, copyright, and trademarks are all different things.

IP is a superset of copyright, patents, trademarks, etc.

Both things I described are IP law infringements. In both cases the losses are real but intangible. 

chrispy108

monquixote said:

I can see why you think a tax of that nature would make sense, but isn't it a bit like putting a tax on the printing press to pay scribes?

I certainly wouldn't consent to pay an additional copyright infringement charge on my ISP fees as I don't infringe copyright.

Surely that'd make the problem worse, as most people if charged a tenner to pay for their illegal downloads would then do it more, as they've "paid for it". Not going to support many bands/artists/directors/actors/authors is it?

Protest the Hero's Indiegogo to fund their latest album seems a good model, but obviously the issue is it required them working basically for free for a bigger label to get big enough to have enough fans prepared to buy the album in advance for it to work.

The fact there's no money in music is the main reason I walked away from the record deal my band were offered when I was 18. When one of the guys started demanding a bigger cut (of no money) I wasn't prepared to live in a transit van eating Asda value noodles. I'd have done it for a few years for an adventure, but not if I was earning half what someone else was.

monquixote

Of the two people I know who've got signed. 

One of them ended up with and indie and lived his life completely broke living on a tenner a day (he alternated between fags days and eating days), sleeping on people's floors and spending his life in a transit van, 

The other got signed by a major and ended up owing the label £100K despite never having released an album (it was recorded just never released) and then they were prohibited from performing or releasing music for two years because the label wouldn't release them from their contract, but because they were hoping to get someone to buy them out.

imalone

Drew_fx said:

CabbageCat said:

Drew_fx said:

The mental gymnastics you guys are going through to essentially justify taking someone else's hardwork and shtting all over it is kinda amazing to me. Especially on a site full of musicians.

Go through this thread and find one person who is justifying piracy.

It's exactly what I said earlier - someone posts that piracy isn't theft and people (or person at least) reads it as piracy isn't wrong.

I think it's an academic distinction being drawn. The end result is the same; less respect and money going to artists, less time being put into music in order to make up the shortfall, meaning less quality art and more chance for the mainstream shit acts to hog all of your ear-time.

There's a difference, and if you're not allowed to point it out without getting told "it's really just modern day entitlement spoilt brat culture that you're using to justify your theft" then it's not an academic one. And as I said, I do pay for music I like and listen to.

Drew_fx said:

monquixote said:

Drew_fx said:

I wouldn't put buying a Chibson in any sort of category along with this stuff. What the hell are you talking about!?

It's exactly the same. 

If I buy a replica Les Paul then Gibson's intellectual property has been infringed and they have lost a potential sale. 

If I copy a TNBD song then your IP has been infringed and you have lost a potential sale.

Copying music is much closer to buying a fake Nike T-Shirt than robbing a bank. 

It's not exactly the same. The only thing that makes a Chibson an infringement of Gibsons IP would be the headstock. If the headstock isn't copied, no IP has been infringed. But it's not even IP that is relevant here, because IP, copyright, and trademarks are all different things.

Academic distinctions?

chrispy108 said:

monquixote said:

I can see why you think a tax of that nature would make sense, but isn't it a bit like putting a tax on the printing press to pay scribes?

I certainly wouldn't consent to pay an additional copyright infringement charge on my ISP fees as I don't infringe copyright.

This is why I'm only a bit more open to it. That and:

Surely that'd make the problem worse, as most people if charged a tenner to pay for their illegal downloads would then do it more, as they've "paid for it". Not going to support many bands/artists/directors/actors/authors is it?

Yes, that's one of the problems. It probably would have to stop being illegal for a start, if you introduce a levy like this people would have paid for it, no quotes. Though £10 a month per household is quite a lot. How many homes in the UK subscribe to Sky?

Sambostar

If you think about it rationally and pragmatically life is completely futile, there is no point to it at all and it's the same with bands I'm afraid, that is just a fact of life. 

What makes anyone so special that they want a wage slip for it?  Can always go and get a job down the fish packing plant.