Do you steal music???

[bigbeefdog]

Excellent point, which is why our benchmark should be the principle and not legal or verbal semantics. I loved Clinton, but that whole "well, TECHNICALLY I didn't lie because blah blah blah...". Again, SPARE ME; and while you're at it stop insulting my intelligence. Oh gosh, I guess you check-mated me with that brilliant verbal move (barf).

Marcus, I completely agree. But it begs the question, where does one stand to uphold "the principle"?

If I listen to music on the radio, but change the station when the commercials come on, have I violated principle?

How about if I record from my subscription satellite radio?

What if I go to a friend's house, and listen to his CD's? Or borrow his Ipod, loaded with music from his CD collection?

What if, what if, what if.....

Do understand that I don't disagree with you. I'm just pointing out, as stated before, that it's a *very* complex issue..... one that doesn't really have a precedent that fits.

 

[WalterBush]

.aiff and .wav is a direct audio rip, no compression, sounds the same as the CD.

That's true, as long as it's been ripped at 16 bit 44.1 khz stereo, from the cd and not someone else's .mp3, and has not been tampered with, dithered, or altered in any other way. I am not aware of any music pirates that regularly take this much precaution to preserve audio quality.

 

[Bryan R. Tyler]

Marcus, I completely agree. But it begs the question, where does one stand to uphold "the principle"?

If I listen to music on the radio, but change the station when the commercials come on, have I violated principle?

How about if I record from my subscription satellite radio?

What if I go to a friend's house, and listen to his CD's? Or borrow his Ipod, loaded with music from his CD collection?

What if, what if, what if.....

Do understand that I don't disagree with you. I'm just pointing out, as stated before, that it's a *very* complex issue..... one that doesn't really have a precedent that fits.

It is complex, but if you want the straight answers, you just have to look at the guidelines given to you. Radio can be copied as there has been no preset rule that you couldn't; the material played on the radio is there mostly for promotion. Radio stations in turn are given limited playability rights to music from an album-they can't play a whole album that people could easily copy off of the radio unless given permission by the artists and their label. That's why you hear the same old stuff on the radio-they're only given permission to play certain tracks. I don't watch digital music TV, but I imagine it's under the same guidelines as the radio. CDs, VHS, cassettes, etc. all have notes in them stating that reproduction of the product for anything other than personal use is illegal.

Lending them to a friend is fine, making a copy for them is not. It's a matter of ownership, and if you've paid for it. Downloading music is automatic ownership; you may have gotten an mp3 through email from a friend, but as soon as you download it, you OWN it. Even if you throw it away after listening to it, you've only thrown away something you owned, and owned illegally for that matter.

 

[Marcus Willett]

...it begs the question, where does one stand to uphold "the principle"?...I'm just pointing out, as stated before, that it's a *very* complex issue..... one that doesn't really have a precedent that fits.

Well, yes, I agree with that; it is a hideously complex issue. As quaint as it sounds, sometimes you just have to go with what you know in your heart is right. If it was wrong before, a newer technology that makes it fast and easy doesn't suddenly make it right too. I make no claim to have all the answers. I just know that if anyone puts their time and effort and heart and soul into creating something, then it belongs to them. Period, end of story. NO ONE is "entitled" to it or a copy of it just because "they like it". If I wish to sell or license my creation, then it is MY choice, and you pay what I ASK or you DON'T GET IT.

Yes, when we get into this arena it does get exponentially more complicated. To me the solution is not to get bogged down in minutia.

What was the intent? Did the creator say you could have it for free? Did you pay for the thing you have? Difficult to apply to this situation? Yes and no. Your points are well made, and I certainly admit the logic in them. At the same time for me, it's pretty simple. If I download a song or album and I like it, I buy it. If I like it enough to keep on my player, I like it enough to pay for the thing; I'm not entitled to it just because I can get it free.

Just because I CAN do a thing, doesn't mean I SHOULD.

 

[WalterBush]

Now, I could very easily connect a recorder to my cable receiver. Shoot a line level output to a minidisc machine, sound card line input, or something like that. Make myself a high-quality copy of the music being broadcast over the cable system, so I can listen to it later. This is, by all accounts I've ever heard, completely legal and ethical, since I paid for the subscription. Same logic as using a VCR.

But if I make that *exact same mix* by downloading MP3 files (even while holding the subscriptions), it's considered theft, and deemed unethical.

Actually, that really IS kind of confusing. Are there any lawyer TBers that can explain this one? There's gotta be a clause somewhere in copyright law that explains it.

 

[Norwegianwood]

PUH-LEEZ! You ARE kidding right? OK, I've got a comic book my father bought me when I was a kid. It's torn up and worthless...oh wait, lemme correct that. It's not worth any MONEY. You steal it from me? I will happily take my revenge on you with a passion. What kinda person would even THINK for a second that the reason stealing is WRONG is only because of the money involved? Is that the only thing of value in your world, the only thing that would bother you if someone took it?

Oh, gimme a break from your family issues would you?
First your marriage, now your childhoods comic books?
You didn't understand what I was trying to say. My point was that there is indeed a difference between the music buisness and those family issues you describe.

You may be right about your whole intelectual property argument. Still, I have this feeling that when it comes to stealing music, money is indeed a big issue. Obviously the record companies are afraid that people will stop paying for music and download it instead. But if you say record companies go to court because people is stealing "intelectual property" and not because they are loosing money then I stand corrected. I also think that is what the artists are afraid of; loosing money. And I totally understand and respect that.

I still don't think I do anything wrong when I download a song now and then, as long as I keep buying those albums. And please don't bring your neighbours dog into the argument.

 

[bigbeefdog]

As quaint as it sounds, sometimes you just have to go with what you know in your heart is right........ Just because I CAN do a thing, doesn't mean I SHOULD.

We are in complete agreement, here.

 

[Squidfinger]

I have never downloaded music and don't own any burned CDs. I want to support the bands and it is a point of honor with me.

 

[bigbeefdog]

It is complex, but if you want the straight answers, you just have to look at the guidelines given to you. Radio can be copied as there has been no preset rule that you couldn't; the material played on the radio is there mostly for promotion.

I don't disagree at all.

However, when I connect my super-high-quality minidisc recorder to my super-high-quality satellite radio feed, I've just made a super-high-quality copy of some artist(s) intellectual property. I can now keep this copy for years, never buy the CD, and deprive him/her/them of royalties for their efforts, while enjoying it at my leisure.

That doesn't sound right to me......

 

[msquared]

It is? I truly feel sorry for anyone who is so busy or lazy that they can't pop a CD into a CD player. The agony.

I realize that your comment might be overblown because of the thread and your views on music theft, but I'll bite anyway just in case.

Given the choice between listening to a CD in my computer and ripping the disc to listen to the mp3s, I'll rip and listen to the mp3s every time. Some (but not all) of the reasons:
-It's a lot less wear and tear on the discs.
-Every computer in my house has a CDrom which is noisy enough to impact my listening experience.
-Having to get up and get a disc is fine.. if it's in the same room. My stuff is on a file server in the basement. I can play it from anywhere in the house. I can hang out in my backyard or garage and stream it over wireless.
-My three year old daughter loves liner notes. More to the point, she loves tearing them up. She also knows how to wreck perfectly good discs using nothing more than her bare hands and a My Little Pony. For this reason, the CDs are locked up.
-Having a playlist comprised of songs from 20 different albums is a lot easier and less wasteful if it's on hard disk.
-Again with my daughter: she knows how to operate a CD player. It's literally impossible to listen to something in my house unless the password protected computer is playing it.

So yeah, kids at least factor a little bit into my computer-centric music habits. But that doesn't make them invalid, or even worthy of a sarcastic jibe.

Because I despise hypocrites. I don't respect a guy more who steals $10 and says "yeah, I stole it, I don't care either" but I DESPISE a guy who steals $5 and tries to give me some BS about how it's OK, or it's justified because "well, he's got more money than me and it's just not fair...blah, blah, blah..." Spare me. Be a man and be accountable for your actions.

I can respect and agree with that, but IMO you're making it more black and white than it really is. I think that stealing is bad as well, but I don't think that downloading is necessarily stealing. Again, if the artists and their labels end up making more money from "illegal downloading" than they would have to begin with, most of these arguments against downloading are dead in the water.

 

[Bryan R. Tyler]

I don't disagree at all.

However, when I connect my super-high-quality minidisc recorder to my super-high-quality satellite radio feed, I've just made a super-high-quality copy of some artist(s) intellectual property. I can now keep this copy for years, never buy the CD, and deprive him/her/them of royalties for their efforts, while enjoying it at my leisure.

That doesn't sound right to me......

The radio feed is from a standard legal radio station, correct? If so, the station that plays the songs must have permission from the artists to broadcast their songs at the high quality bit rate they play them at, so it should be perfectly legal. Check with the stations for legal info on personal copying-they'll have it.

I do see as you do how it could become problematic in that artists previously knew that the material going out on the radio was of lower sound quality than their CDs would be, and that may no longer be the case. As the high definition audio thing becomes more popular, artists will have to consider what they allow the stations to play more than they had in the past.

 

[bigbeefdog]

The radio feed is from a standard legal radio station, correct? If so, the station that plays the songs must have permission from the artists to broadcast their songs at the high quality bit rate they play them at, so it should be perfectly legal. Check with the stations for legal info on personal copying-they'll have it.

I do see as you do how it could become problematic in that artists previously knew that the material going out on the radio was of lower sound quality than their CDs would be, and that may no longer be the case. As the high definition audio thing becomes more popular, artists will have to consider what they allow the stations to play more than they had in the past.

Oh, it's legal, make no mistake. It's absolutely no different from changing to a video channel, and copying a movie with my VCR (another legal action that could cost an intellectual-property owner revenue from a sale).

But the point is - if I do this *completely legal* thing, the artist is getting gypped out of a royalty. Exactly the same as if I downloaded the song from the Internet.

So, by the same logic, recording from the satellite is..... legal stealing?

 

[Marcus Willett]

You didn't understand what I was trying to say.

Hey man, your words, not mine. (emphasis mine)

"Isn't stealing a moral issue?" you might say. Off course it is. But WHY is it? Because someone is LOSING MONEY. When nobody is LOSING any MONEY at all, then tell me where does the etics come in?

Perhaps YOU didn't understand what I was trying to say.

Taking something and keeping it without permission is theft where I come from. Plain and simple. I don't buy situational ethics. Money may be invloved, as in this issue, or it may not. It doesn't matter. If it's wrong to take something without permission, then it's wrong...period. That's why I used the comic book analogy. Common thread? The theft of something of value.

Oh, right. It's just a COPY. Well, I won't deny that the ability to make more-or-less exact duplicates of things can make the issue SEEM complex, but it just SEEMS that way. Did you have the permission of the creator to copy it for your own pleasure? If yes, enjoy. If no, you stole it. Some things really are black and white if you step back and really think about it.

 

[Bryan R. Tyler]

So yeah, kids at least factor a little bit into my computer-centric music habits. But that doesn't make them invalid, or even worthy of a sarcastic jibe.

I've got a daughter that gets into everything as well. You're making it sound like listening to CDs was hell before mp3s and playlists were around. It wasn't. Remember cassettes? Had to get up and flip them over every 30 minutes, finding a song meant fast forwarding and rewinding over and over, and the sound quality on a good system was still about ten times worse than a CD in a noisy CD player. No one considered it ludicrous to have to use them. They were happy to hear the music. CDs are much easier, and sorry, but I still feel sorry for anyone who is at a point where popping in an actual CD is a ludicrous notion.

 

[Marcus Willett]

I don't think that downloading is necessarily stealing. Again, if the artists and their labels end up making more money from "illegal downloading" than they would have to begin with, most of these arguments against downloading are dead in the water.

Problem is that's speculation on what might happen in the future. If I murder your son, it might be a good thing in the future because maybe he would have become a mass-murderer (yes, I do enjoy extreme examples).

What you suggest could happen, but maybe not. I like to deal with what I know. If the band ends up folding because they ended up broke are you gonna buy the CD then?

 

[Bryan R. Tyler]

Oh, it's legal, make no mistake. It's absolutely no different from changing to a video channel, and copying a movie with my VCR (another legal action that could cost an intellectual-property owner revenue from a sale).

But the point is - if I do this *completely legal* thing, the artist is getting gypped out of a royalty. Exactly the same as if I downloaded the song from the Internet.

So, by the same logic, recording from the satellite is..... legal stealing?

No, because the artist has to give permission to the radio/tv station for them to play their goods. They do give permission to these stations because of 1. promotion and 2. depending on the media, they DO make royalties. There's a balance between making money from CD sales and how much free promotion the artists are willing to give. Pop stars with big teen audiences will put half the songs on their album out as singles, because the promotional material will bring in millions because of the merchandising the teens of America will buy. Artists whose popularity is not so marketable will be less likely to allow many markets to freely use their material, as their music (or intellectual property) is going to be the primary source of their income, as they won't be making it from merchandising.

 

[Marcus Willett]

Man, I LOVE this stuff, but I gotta wake up in 6 hours and go play at church. Well, they pay me, but I still gotta wake up early.

More tomorrow, no doubt...

 

[bigbeefdog]

No, because the artist has to give permission to the radio/tv station for them to play their goods. They do give permission to these stations because of 1. promotion and 2. depending on the media, they DO make royalties. There's a balance between making money from CD sales and how much free promotion the artists are willing to give. Pop stars with big teen audiences will put half the songs on their album out as singles, because the promotional material will bring in millions because of the merchandising the teens of America will buy. Artists whose popularity is not so marketable will be less likely to allow many markets to freely use their material, as their music (or intellectual property) is going to be the primary source of their income, as they won't be making it from merchandising.

OK. So, by that argument, any artist who allows his/her/their music to be broadcast, is authorizing (in fact, giving permission for) the making of copies by those receiving the broadcast?

Sounds good... next week, I'm going to buy a PC with a good sound card, and a 200GB drive. I'm going to set up recording software to capture everything the satellite station plays (their playlists are VERY extensive) to MP3 files on my hard drive. Set it so that it changes to a new track every time it detects two seconds of silence. Leave it running, copying twelve songs per hour for many months... after which I will have tens of thousands of songs to listen to at my convenience, all for free.

I agree with you - by the letter of the law, this is legal. But it's darn sure unethical.

By contrast, someone else may download music to check it out, then delete all the music at the end of their computer session, and head over to the CD store and buy the music they liked. That's MUCH more ethical than what I'm planning to do - but by the letter of the law, it's clearly illegal.

I'm not trying to pin you down, Bryan.... but this does illustrate how impossibly complex this issue is.....

 

[Bryan R. Tyler]

I'm not trying to pin you down, Bryan.... but this does illustrate how impossibly complex this issue is.....

Oh, I know. For me, the same thing could be done with a radio station-set up a couple recorders and you'd have a million songs in a week. But of that million songs you've recorded, you'll probably get maybe 2 or 3 tracks from each artist (maybe a few more if they've been around the block). And that's a lot of work to do that-that's why a lot of groups put out greatest hits albums-to cater to the folks who don't want to buy all the albums the songs were on and don't want to go to the effort of recording them piecemeal off of the radio.

Maybe it's a little clearer for me because I tend to get bored with radio singles pretty quickly and would much rather hear an entire album in context. I'd rather pay $14 for a CD I want than sift through 10,000 radio singles I got for free. You basically have to trust that the artists know what they're doing in putting out singles, how many of them they put out, and the formats that they allow they to play in. To me it sounds like you have extra concern for the artists who might not realize what they're doing when they distribute their music, which is a great thing. Ethics are a touchier subject than legality.

Hypothetically, if you did get a PC like that and followed through with that plan, would you feel like you did something unethical on the whole, or did something unethical towards the individual artists? If you look at the scene with a wide angle lens, you'd say "hey, I just got 10,000 songs without paying for them." I can see how that seems wrong, or unethical. For me, when you break it down and see the entire picture, that you're only getting a couple songs from each artist, and even then the songs you're getting are the radio singles that they put out for promotion on every radio station in the country, it puts it into perspective-that the quantity doesn't connote the quality or content. And that the songs you get from those artists are ones they gave you permission to copy, while downloaded one song illegally, while sounding far less than collecting 10,000 songs, is far more unethical to me. Would you feel worse if someone knowingly and willingly gave you $10,000, or if you stole $1 from them? For me, it's the $1. The ethical choices are up to us consumers to consider what we think is right and wrong. The legal issues are NOT up for consideration, and my problem with some of the folks in this thread has been because of their dismissal of the simple legal facts that it's not okay to take someone's music if they don't want you to.

That's the best I can explain it.

 

[msquared]

You're making it sound like listening to CDs was hell before mp3s and playlists were around.

It was annoying, but not hell.

Remember cassettes? Had to get up and flip them over every 30 minutes, finding a song meant fast forwarding and rewinding over and over, and the sound quality on a good system was still about ten times worse than a CD in a noisy CD player. No one considered it ludicrous to have to use them.

But no one had mp3s and playlists back then. Stereo technology was different back then. It's gotten easier, and as a result, point of reference has shifted. It wasn't a ludicrous notion ten years ago to change CDs. It is now.

Feel sorry all you want, but it seems like it comes down to me being more efficient than you. The whole deal isn't really germane to the discussion though, so whatever point you wanted to win, I concede it. Let's move on.

Problem is that (someone saying "if the artists and their labels end up making more money from "illegal downloading" than they would have to begin with") is speculation on what might happen in the future.

If you look at Soundscan data for the last ten years and then factor in the bubble/recession things using sales data from non-music companies, you can make a reasonable assumption as to whether downloading has helped or hindered the making of money. While that's not predicting the future, it's certainly getting a good grasp on the past. You'd have to do it now though because the latest payola ruling is possibly going to throw a wrench into things.

It's a tough question to accurately answer, but it's definitely doable.

I like to deal with what I know. If the band ends up folding because they ended up broke are you gonna buy the CD then?

You don't know that the record companies are losing a dime. You hear what the RIAA is saying, but that's a bit like the fox guarding the chicken coop isn't it? To me, this question is the crux of the issue. Is it stealing or is it free marketing? It seems to me that the available data points toward the latter.

If the band folds because they ended up broke, it's a whole lot more likely that they're broke because their label screwed them. I'll concede that this isn't really germane to your point, but it's definitely worth mentioning, especially if your preference is to deal with what you know. How do you prove that a band went under because a ton of people downloaded their songs instead of buying their album? What if it was because the songs sucked? What if the label didn't market them or slip the radio stations enough money to get their single played? There are a number of variables in play which make it impossible for mere mortals to pin a band folding on that one factor.


I guess I'll go to bed too. Sigh.