It looks like poor Carol Kaye doesn't understand the internet

[THand]

What if the bartender sold the DUI guy his first three drinks, then his sober buddies came to the bar and bought drunky his next three? Maybe the bartender should be punished for letting other people buy drinks for others(?), but is he guilty of manslaughter?

No. Not if he didn't know. Even if he did, if the drunk wasn't in the establishment at the time it was being bought or consumed, I seriously doubt he could be held legally accountable. Morally, would be a different story.

What if I link to a site that on Monday I thoroughly vetted and has no illegal material, and they post some mp3s on Tuesday. Am I supposed to know this? Am I responsible for it? How often do I have to check to see if they have anything illegal there? Every day? Every hour?

These are good questions that people with greater minds than mine will have to one day answer. But to stay on topic, as you so diligently try to keep others , I think you and I both know that people linking to torrents (even Google) know these torrents are more often than not, illegal downloads. The only exception that I can think of is Linux distributions being totally legal and very frequently available by torrent...but I am sure there are other legal activities done with torrents that I'm not aware of.

I agree with you that people want to avoid responsibility for their actions (edit: and that this often is wrong and/or results in wrongdoing). I think the difference between you and me is that I think the question of who is responsible for what is sometimes very complicated and that intelligent people (and even governments!) can reasonably disagree.

I think I just rubbed you wrong with the nerd comment. jk,jk.

 

[Rocky]

You realize that you just described www.google.com, right? If I introduce you to my friend and he picks your pocket, am I a thief? Maybe, if my friend and I had an agreement beforehand. There are colors other than black and white.

If you know your friend is a thief then yes you are an accomplice, and that also makes you a thief in my eyes! Seems to me if your website is promoting other websites for business purposes you should know what that website your promoting is all about. You can call it whatever you want but if the original party that created the work is losing money or value of product because of your actions or participation in any manner IT IS STEALING, and that is black and white.

 

[baalroo]

I won't pretend I know the right answer to your questions, whatever that means. But here are some issues for you to consider:

Artists do perform their works as a form of charity. Look at radio. Look at (earlier) MTV, VH-1, BET, Myspace. Might this have something to do with the increasingly common perspective that music is/should be free?

Artists do give their works away for free. Look at Trent Reznor/NIN. Look at Radiohead. Does this only work for artists who are already established? I don't know. But even up and coming bands "give their tracks away for free" on their Myspace pages. Is this a viable general business model? Sometimes. Does there have to be one business model for all artists? Should all music be traditionally copyrighted? What about Creative Commons licenses? Can the average consumer tell the difference?

Whether or not copyright laws should exist or be enforced, it's clear that what, if any, business model will arise from the ashes of the existing one is an open question. There is a lot of experimentation and doubt. But it's increasingly clear that digging your heels in will not make the problem go away. If the existing laws are not working, is the solution going to be to make stricter, tougher laws and pour money into enforcing them? (Maybe we should make murder twice as illegal -- that'll cut the crime rate! It worked for Hammurabi...)

And by the way, just so it's out in the open, this discussing is turning into a lot of bait-and-switches. Turning around from a moral argument to a practical one means you're no longer arguing about the same thing. They are both important discussions, but they are not the same.

just as a bit of anecdotal evidence:

a friend of mine recently finished recording an album. he made it available for free DL and used the DLs to advertise that he would be releasing a "limited edition" hard copy CD with "special artwork." Within 24 hours he had made $2000.

IOW, it can be done and is a perfectly viable business model, if you know how to use the new paradigm to your advantage.

This is exactly the problem.

FWIW, they were found guilty because the video was found to be in violation of their policy, they were notified but waited months to remove it.

I understand that we live in a world where people stepped over a person in a store who fell to the floor and passed out. No one called 911, but someone did take out his phone to take a photo of the dying woman.

We live in a world where people witnessed a man get run down in traffic by a hit and run driver, and walked by as he lay in the street, no one called 911 although many stopped to look.

We live in a world where two transit cops watch a teenage girl beat another girl inches away from them but say nothing or do nothing to stop it because "it's not their job" to do that.

No one is to blame, no one assumes responsibility, no one understands or cares about their role as a member of society.

I guess my viewpoint makes me out of touch. All I can do is what I still think is right, and try to teach my children the same and maybe others by example.

... and 60 years ago black people were considered to not be fully human and women were expected to be subservient to men, so you win some and you lose some and we sterilized thousands of people for being "********." what's your point?

 

[Tim C.]

If you know your friend is a thief then yes you are an accomplice, and that also makes you a thief in my eyes! Seems to me if your website is promoting other websites for business purposes you should know what that website your promoting is all about. You can call it whatever you want but if the original party that created the work is losing money or value of product because of your actions or participation in any manner IT IS STEALING, and that is black and white.

If a citizen votes for a politician, that politician wins an election, and then goes on to embezzle millions of dollars - should the voter go to jail as an "accomplice" to theft and corruption?

No offense intended to anybody here, but all this second- and third-party guilt crap is really, really idiotic. :scowl:

 

[mister-o]

But to stay on topic, as you so diligently try to keep others , I think you and I both know that people linking to torrents (even Google) know these torrents are more often than not, illegal downloads.

I very much doubt that any person at Google knows anything about 99% of the sites they index, which is why the maxim "linking to sites with illegal content is itself illegal" would cause the search engine to implode. It would have the same consequence for any site with user-generated content. In essence, the social landscape of the web would be thrown back 15 years.

And I'm not trying to change the topic. I'm trying to show you edge cases you are ignoring or dismissing that are directly related to the discussion in an attempt to highlight the complexity of the problem. Personally I don't think that everything is either good, bad, or valueless; right, wrong, or meaningless. Life is nuanced, and so solutions have to be nuanced. Compromises need to be made.

I think I just rubbed you wrong with the nerd comment. jk,jk.

 

[Calaverasgrande]

Actually it is a pretty bad analogy. Torrents themselves may be peer to peer, so that the sites such as pirate bay are not actually transferring files. But by providing a service to connect like minded peers they are certainly an accomplice to the act of piracy. Without such sites you would have a much harder time getting all the pieces of your file!
The name doesnt help either!
Carol Kaye is certainly not the first old musician to go nuts about this.
I know some old R&B/Funk/Soul guys from New Orleans. They were almost all stiffed on royalties in the first place. So when the sampling brouhaha broke out in the 80's-90's they were mostly fine with it. So what if Dr.Dre samples a few meters breaks?

But this torrent thing (and napster, Kazaa etc before it) is just too good at scaring technophobic old people.

I gave up on torrents a while ago, too many virii and trojans, and the really rare un-repressed songs I wanted were exactly the ones that had very few seeds. Besides, like I said, I know some old R&B guys that are collecting welfare when they should be collecting royalty payments.

 

[rockinrayduke]

No i don't think she is who you go to in order to work on your metal techniques

Since she doesn't play that style, maybe not. BUT, the things she does teach like chordal tones and playing techniques can be used in all styles, whatever genre of music.

 

[THand]

I very much doubt that any person at Google knows anything about 99% of the sites they index, which is why the maxim "linking to sites with illegal content is itself illegal" would cause the search engine to implode. It would have the same consequence for any site with user-generated content. In essence, the social landscape of the web would be thrown back 15 years.

And I'm not trying to change the topic. I'm trying to show you edge cases you are ignoring or dismissing that are directly related to the discussion in an attempt to highlight the complexity of the problem. Personally I don't think that everything is either good, bad, or valueless; right, wrong, or meaningless. Life is nuanced, and so solutions have to be nuanced. Compromises need to be made.

I understand it is a complex problem, and I am afraid the web will suffer in the long run because of illegal downloads, and because of the Patriot Act.

Some things are black and white. As I said before, stealing has been deemed by society to be wrong for at least 5000 years. That's pretty much black and white.
If you host a link to a torrent for an illegal download, you are knowingly aiding in the theft of property.

It's not just songs, it is software too.

If we continue to accept stealing as the new business model, you can be sure the government will eventually totally change the web.

We shouldn't just accept this. We should deem it shameful.

Someone mentioned how blacks were treated. If Rosa Parks had gone to the back of the bus because that is the way thing operate now, where would society be?

Things can change, and sooner or later right wins out.

The question is do we choose to do what is right, or wait for the government to make us?

 

[THand]

.... Besides, like I said, I know some old R&B guys that are collecting welfare when they should be collecting royalty payments.

That's true, and yet another problem with the music business, but it doesn't pertain to this topic with Carol Kaye, because she is angry about materials she makes and sells herself....so it is stealing from her directly, not for example, Time Warner.

 

[baalroo]

Someone mentioned how blacks were treated. If Rosa Parks had gone to the back of the bus because that is the way thing operate now, where would society be?

Things can change, and sooner or later right wins out.

The question is do we choose to do what is right, or wait for the government to make us?

it's obvious that people have ALREADY chosen. I also am VERY uncertain about using Rosa Parks in this conversation at all, but if you must use her heroic acts as a comparison it seems obvious that she was going AGAINST the current rules and regulations and defiantly disagreeing with the previous status quo... which in this case the previous status quo would of course be that Digital Media has an intrinsic monetary value and should not be "stolen." Again, comparing anything that women did to this trivial debate is bordering on being just plain tasteless and inappropriate.

 

[zenrad]

... and 60 years ago black people were considered to not be fully human and women were expected to be subservient to men, so you win some and you lose some and we sterilized thousands of people for being "********." what's your point?

The point was that someone said they didn't understand why something was even wrong, and I was showing that many people don't understand or care that what they are doing is wrong, and that we're devolving in some ways and becoming desensitized to our fellow members of society.

And the situations you described still exist certain places here in the USA and in other parts of the world, with the exception of the sterilization part maybe.

 

[mister-o]

Some things are black and white. As I said before, stealing has been deemed by society to be wrong for at least 5000 years. That's pretty much black and white.
If you host a link to a torrent for an illegal download, you are knowingly aiding in the theft of property.

Stealing is wrong. OK, black and white. What about Robin Hood? Was his theft wrong but acceptable? Right and wrong? Mostly wrong? Just a little wrong? Is stealing black and white? Well, is stealing $1000 from a person more wrong than stealing $1? (Bonus question: is stealing $100 from a struggling single mother worse than stealing $100 from the CEO of Google?) The law seems to think so (generally speaking -- there are categories of theft). So it can't be purely black and white, can it?

And if my previous questions about linking didn't serve to show you that merely hosting a link cannot in and of itself be wrong without a great deal of further context and knowledge about what people know or don't know, then I guess I don't have anything else to say about the matter and we'll have to agree to disagree. But hopefully you don't think I'm an idiot for taking the position I do.

 

[jnuts1]

"These are good questions that people with greater minds than mine will have to one day answer."

hi i'm Troy Mclure, you might remember me from such self help films as Smoke Yourself Thin & Get Confidence Stupid

 

[THand]

Stealing is wrong. OK, black and white. What about Robin Hood? Was his theft wrong but acceptable? Right and wrong? Mostly wrong? Just a little wrong? Is stealing black and white? Well, is stealing $1000 from a person more wrong than stealing $1? (Bonus question: is stealing $100 from a struggling single mother worse than stealing $100 from the CEO of Google?) The law seems to think so (generally speaking -- there are categories of theft). So it can't be purely black and white, can it?

Robin Hood didn't steal anything, because he never existed in the first place.

You have different catagories, misdomenors and felonies, but it remains theft.

Sure you can get into moral and civil reasons where theft is acceptable(for instance stealing ammunition from an enemy during wartime) but it is still theft. You just won't get prosecuted for it, unless you lose the war, then you could be hanged.

And if my previous questions about linking didn't serve to show you that merely hosting a link cannot in and of itself be wrong without a great deal of further context and knowledge about what people know or don't know, then I guess I don't have anything else to say about the matter and we'll have to agree to disagree. But hopefully you don't think I'm an idiot for taking the position I do.

You certainly aren't an idiot in my book. I think I responded by saying I could not answer the questions you posed, but I acknowlege that they are valid questions that need to be addressed one day by someone much smarter than I.

I do feel like this is spinning in circles now. I checked on CK's forum a few minutes ago, and it looks like she took down what she had posted about this. I feel like I said all I needed to say, which was originally that I didn't think JAUQO had a responibility to "straighten CK out" just because he knows her.
So, I'm done for now, with no hard feelings towards anyone here.

 

[THand]

"These are good questions that people with greater minds than mine will have to one day answer."

hi i'm Troy Mclure, you might remember me from such self help films as Smoke Yourself Thin & Get Confidence Stupid

hi i'm Troy Mclure, you might remember me from such show business funerals as Andre the Giant, We Hardly Knew Ye & Shemp Howard, today we mourn a Stooge.

 

[The Lurker]

Copyright expires eventually, too.... then it's in the public domain and fair game for everyone.

 

[mister-o]

You have different catagories, misdomenors and felonies, but it remains theft.

That wasn't the question I was addressing, but OK. I agree with your original sentiment re: Jauqo; regardless of our other disagreements about responsibility, I think we can all agree that one is rarely responsible for the actions and thoughts of another! Anyway, thanks for the conversation and take it easy.

 

[Roy Vogt]

This thread just touches a greater problem-due to Napster, Kazaa, Pirate Bay and Bit Torrent there is an entire generation of consumers out there who think that they should not have to pay for ANY music, software, or information whatsoever. I was first aware of this when I was on tour in Singapore and went to a local shopping mall. There was a store where you could buy the entire recorded output of one Artist/Band on mp3s on a CD (this was in 1999) for next to nothing. This was incredibly illegal.
What everyone has to remember is that at the end of this food chain is not "the Man", but Carol, Victor Wooten, Mike Watt, Nathan East, Michael Rhodes, Jaco's kids, and other fellow bassists and their families. When sales tank less sessions are booked because the Record Companies have no money so it hits the Record Company budget and the session bassists you love to read about in BP lose. Indie artists are hurt because their sales go directly into their pocket so they will feel a 30-50% drop in income. When there's no money and no sales Artists can't afford to tour. Music publishers won't develop new bass books or methods because it all goes on the internet for free. No profit means no motivation to invest.
I'm not some Luddite that believes we can put the Genie back in the bottle, but if you follow this to it's logical conclusion you will end up with old music and video clips on Youtube for Media and Music, some 16 year old kid in his bedroom on Youtube demonstrating how he slaps for Music Instruction and really inaccurate TABs for sheet music.
If "music should be free" then we can't even charge cover when we're playing for the door somewhere. Everyone will have to take their instruments and a tin cup and hit the streets. Not my ideal world.....
BTW, if software should be free, why don't some of you who work in IT/Development just send all of us ALL of your products right now? How about it? Didn't think so.....

 

[JAUQO III-X]

This thread just touches a greater problem-due to Napster, Kazaa, Pirate Bay and Bit Torrent there is an entire generation of consumers out there who think that they should not have to pay for ANY music, software, or information whatsoever. I was first aware of this when I was on tour in Singapore and went to a local shopping mall. There was a store where you could buy the entire recorded output of one Artist/Band on mp3s on a CD (this was in 1999) for next to nothing. This was incredibly illegal.
What everyone has to remember is that at the end of this food chain is not "the Man", but Carol, Victor Wooten, Mike Watt, Nathan East, Michael Rhodes, Jaco's kids, and other fellow bassists and their families. When sales tank less sessions are booked because the Record Companies have no money so it hits the Record Company budget and the session bassists you love to read about in BP lose. Indie artists are hurt because their sales go directly into their pocket so they will feel a 30-50% drop in income. When there's no money and no sales Artists can't afford to tour. Music publishers won't develop new bass books or methods because it all goes on the internet for free. No profit means no motivation to invest.
I'm not some Luddite that believes we can put the Genie back in the bottle, but if you follow this to it's logical conclusion you will end up with old music and video clips on Youtube for Media and Music, some 16 year old kid in his bedroom on Youtube demonstrating how he slaps for Music Instruction and really inaccurate TABs for sheet music.
If "music should be free" then we can't even charge cover when we're playing for the door somewhere. Everyone will have to take their instruments and a tin cup and hit the streets. Not my ideal world.....
BTW, if software should be free, why don't some of you who work in IT/Development just send all of us ALL of your products right now? How about it? Didn't think so.....

Thank you Roy.

 

[Roy Vogt]

In Carol's defense, if it weren't for her and Gwynn Publications a lot of professional bassists of my generation wouldn't have enjoyed the careers we have because we wouldn't have learned to read music, sightread funk rhythms or play any Electric Bass beyond those old Roger Filiberto books from Mel Bay and a couple of random Jazz Upright methods that were floating around in 1969.
She's an easy target because of the controversy surrounding some of the Motown tracks and her sometimes cranky nature, but sometimes I think she's too much like Jaco is here on TB-just a name that someone can diss without any knowledge of her and her background and the times she functioned in.
This has nothing to do with the thread but a lot to do with Civility, IMO.