<p>^ It’s actually way worse. Musicians can earn money outside of music sales through concerts & appearances. Software companies get all of their money through sales of their product. </p>
<p>This is not even mentioning that there are quite a few in the software biz that are ideologically apposed to copyright laws and create software products that the user doesn’t have to pay to use. Because of the revenue factor and because there are quite a few free alternatives, illegally downloading software is def. less excusable than illegally downloading music.</p>
<p>I’ll say the same thing I said to monstor: you aren’t entitled to use copyrighted software for free. There is no (and there shouldn’t be) right to free Photoshop enshrined in law.</p>
<p>I am going to BU and they just sent this article online so… </p>
<p>Seems he was “caught” in 2005 and offered $500 for the lawsuit. They turned him down and sent back the check. Then he offered $5,250 (which is RIDICULOUS) and they wanted even more.</p>
<p>Seriously! $500 would have been enough already! They had the balls to send back his check and say “its not enough”! This has been going on for 4 years! Come on already. He is really just a kid who graduated and wants to start his life already. This is just despicable…</p>
Completely different thing IMO. They are not really forms of art; they are products and I am definitely in favor of enforcing copyright laws on them.</p>
<p>Right, how do you make the distinction between those (software, etc.) creations being art and a musician’s creations? Even in the art industry, what people consider art is pretty subjective.</p>
<p>Those who use software have a clear intention in mind. They already know what a product is before purchasing it; if they don’t, they are exposed to a trial version for evaluation.</p>
<p>Music is not so readily evaluated. Music tastes are subjective and evolve over time; what I hated only 6 months ago is what I listen to now, Whereas software almost always has a defined use or purpose. There’s no real evaluation for MS word; you either need it or you don’t.</p>
<p>Another reason why music has always been a weak ground to establish an industry upon.</p>
<p>I still don’t understand how they say that he owes 22.5k per song. Even with uploading, even assuming that everyone who downloaded the songs from him would have bought one, did he actually upload 2 gigs worth of songs? (Or more specifically, of those 30 songs?)</p>
<p>Surely the RIAA realizes that people will think that this charge is ridiculous, even if he uploaded more than that!</p>
Yes, it is their way of instilling fear into the uninformed. It does have a backfiring effect though as well; it puts some to fear, but it also makes many of the RIAA’s current customers belligerent that they would ruin people’s lives just to make a statement.</p>
<p>Let’s say you write and publish a novel. The publisher sets the price at $30, with a royalty to you of $5 per copy sold.</p>
<p>The book goes out to retailers and 1000 copies are sold. Publisher writes you a check for $5000.</p>
<p>Now let’s say that each of the 1000 purchasers goes to Kinko’s and makes 9 copies of your book to distribute to their friends. There are now a total of 10,000 copies of your book in circulation. You, the author, have only been paid for 1000 of them. You’re OK with that?</p>
<p>Isn’t that roughly what happened to the Twilight author? Someone put on the internet the rough draft of her next book. She won’t finish the book now. The author had her intellectual property stolen.</p>
Once again, apples and oranges. Books are often one-time things; you read it once and maybe you’ll read it again later on but if you do it’ll be months, maybe years, before you do. And the ethic of book customers is different. After reading a book, you might show appreciation for that author by purchasing another of his/her books, but you probably aren’t going to buy merchandise, and you’re certainly not going to go to a book-reading concert. It doesn’t have the same cultural aspects that music does; ALL PROFITS are pretty much contingent on the sale of that book.</p>
<p>The fact that you are trying to use an element outside of the music realm shows a lack of a stronger, more direct argument on your behalf; more importantly, however, it reveals how unique music itself is in terms of the boundaries of its industry.</p>
<p>illegal software, game, and music downloading are virtually the same thing. in fact it might even be worse for the first two because of the fact that a lot of effort is putting into programming. i mean literally teams of people are on the project for months if not longer. and that is basically the livelihood of the programmers. if no one is buying the software, then the company basically go down under taking all the programmers down with them. there are no concerts or merchandise that make up for the illegal downloads. video games and programs can be resold and the developers never see a cent of that. you can’t really resell music.</p>
<p>for musicians, it’s nowhere near the same though. they may lose out on some potential revenue, but at the end of the day they will live a much more glamorous life than a software programmer or video game designer/developer. not to mention if the music is good it will generally bring in a lot of revenue. musicians can get sponsorships and all sorts of lucrative deals. when was the last time you saw Joe Programmer getting paid to be in a Pepsi commercial? when was the last time Joe Programmer was in the front cover of a national magazine? maybe Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, a while back but it sure isn’t very often that occurs.</p>
<p>but ultimately it’s all the same. music and games are in the same category of entertainment. they’re both different kinds of art. but it’s still stealing if you’re downloading it for free via illegal means.</p>
<p>ironically both industries have similar results when it comes to piraters purchasing games and music. generally most file sharers do go out and buy the stuff they download. those downloads serve as a test almost. makes you wonder why these industries don’t come out with formats that are available for use for X amount of days so that users can test out the music/games/software. it’s available in games and software via demos and trial versions, but i don’t think music has such a thing which is quite amazing. another interesting fact is that the gaming industry is a bigger industry than the music and film industry, but i can be mistaken. i’ve read something to that extent before.</p>
<p>not quite. most of what you see on mtv and the radio are just current pop music. not to mention mtv isn’t even really a music channel anymore, but that’s a whole other issue. whatever is currently popular is what is played on those forms of media though. after a while it dies out. and if you didn’t catch it when it was hot, you won’t know the music ever existed. i’m thinking something more along the lines of downloading a free mp3 that is not listenable after 14 days or something like that. i say this as someone who simply does not listen to the radio or watch any of those music channels. that’s mostly because i consider a lot of what is out today crap. occasionally i might hear a song that came out 1 or 2 years ago from some stranger playing it outside, without knowing what the title of the song is. i do ask for the title or artist sometimes, but not always as that just seems weird to ask. so i’m stuck not knowing who sings songs that came out a while ago. there really should be a system in place where you can just download free songs for 14 days to see what you like. this crap some sites have where they have a 15-30 second preview isn’t enough. there are some sites like pandora that do this but that’s not portable unless you happen to have a internet enabled mp3 player and you have internet access all the time. but it is a good service, and something the RIAA should look into building on rather than fighting. unfortunately, nothing like this would work too much for movies as some people will only watch a movie once and not think about it for years.</p>
<p>If it weren’t for piracy, I wouldn’t have found half the artists that I’ve, well, found.</p>
<p>I’m not saying piracy is good. What I AM saying is that it’s good for promoting artists. I might be in the minority (though according to that study on pirates, I’m not), but if I find an artist I like, I will buy their releases once I have the money. I personally tend to like music that’s somewhat hard to get here, especially where I live (a lot of Japanese music, or less-popular artists), so piracy not only lets me figure out if I like someone’s album or someone’s music, but lets me acquire it until I have the money to actually pay for it, in which case I WILL. If I had stuck to only MTV and radio, I wouldn’t have found the majority of what I listen to.</p>
<p>If there were a way to legally get music with little risk, I’d be all over it. But I think it’s ludicrous to say that they should have to go to all sorts of concerts and buying albums of artists they don’t know on the off-chance they will like them. I’ve heard of more artists I dislike rather than I like, and I’ve had some recommended to me that I didn’t care for; had I bought their CD simply to see if I would’ve liked them, that would’ve been a wasted purchase to me that I could’ve used to support a band I know I like.</p>
<p>I honestly think that, while piracy isn’t necessarily a good thing, the RIAA is going overboard; I’ve read several interviews where they say that DRM should expire (effectively meaning, you will need to re-buy your music later on), or that ripping a CD to your computer is illegal.</p>
Like it’s been said before, acquiring a taste for music is a constantly evolving process that occurs gradually and often over years.</p>
<p>Radio and MTV are not adequate ways of discovering and finding love for quality music. They are essentially marketing tools meant to sell rehashed music and are disguised as ways of finding new music.</p>