Downloading

Wilcey wrote: If an artist has asked you not to take his work illegally under what circumstances would you find it aceptable to do so, at what point do you decide disrespect his wishes whilst enjoying the fruits of his labour?

I'm talking about stuff that's out of print. Say a vinylrip from an album that was released in 1000 copies in 1971, and almost impossible to get a copy of. I voted option two, and I find it to be the only logical option for me.

But I'm also careful with judging people from parts of the world where the usual income is five times lower (or less) than what many of us are used to. That is a circumstance I'm willing to look the other away, because I'm sure most of us would have done the same, even if its wrong. Even the overtly self righteous of us. The artists and the industry can't be saved by angelmk using his hard earned money to buy a CD or two a year. The world is unfair, and its unfair to struggling artists and angelmk.

I have been using the legal Napster service for several years now ... I like it, but the DRM is scaring some people away, and it's only available in a few countries. Also, the software and database structure is far from perfect ... you can't even search by year of release, or sub genre ... which really sucks with like a million albums in the database.

*Sigh* if only the music industry managed to give us a really good solution ... with DRM, if must be, but with a more flexible price structure and subscription/discount models for heavy users, and a really good database browser which enables you to quickly find what you're searching for.

You have plenty of good points and, you're more knowledgeable about this musicbusiness part of things than me, debrewguy. And they should be dealing with reality.

But that doesn't mean its not interesting or possible to have opinions and discuss the moral/ethic part. 

mrcozdude wrote: I don't understand if downloading is such a big issue why they allow torrent and file sharing sites to exist?

Just a short comment before I take my leave again, they don't allow torrent sites to exist per se. The music industry is pretty glad to shut down any torrent site they can with legal action. However, that legal action and just the act of getting enough evidence for shutting them down takes longer than for a new torrent site to spawn. It's one endless whack-a-mole game,  with the player, in this case the industry, loosing steadily.

Mr ProgFreak wrote: We can talk about morality, business models and laws all day, but in the end it always boils down to whether we are respecting the artists or not. If they spend a lot of time and money on recording something, then they also should have the right to sell copies of that work.

In your first sentence you say morality doesn't matter in the end, then in the next you make a moral point.

Make up your mind.

mrcozdude wrote: I don't understand if downloading is such a big issue why they allow torrent and file sharing sites to exist?

Because they can be and are used for legal purposes.

Pnoom! wrote: Natural Science: Property rights do wear out over time.  For example, if a company leaves its railroad cars on the tracks for a year, and some homeless people start living in them, after a while, the homeless people gain property rights over those railroad cars. I can't convey it any better than that, but that's what my philosophy professor is currently working on.  It's fascinating stuff.

Yes, you're right, I was trying to make an extreme example.

I wish you guys lived through the seventies when you had to go out to the store to buy music rather than sitting at a stupid keyboard. It was so much fun. You would actually meet all kinds of freaky people face to face and  the store owners were really cool and actually knew their stuff. The internet is killing the spirit of music.

For example, in the jazz section in Sam The Record Man ( which is no longer there) there was this old guy who knew everything about jazz, I mean everything. He arranged the jazz section himself. He deliberately put the fusion section in the very rear. People would come up to the second floor where the jazz section was located wandering around looking for a Stanley Clarke or Spyra Gyra album and more than once I heard him say that " It`s in the back there although I can`t understand why you would want to listen to that crap but it`s there in the back". He was more of a purist. But my point here is that back in those days the music stores were full of characters. I actually learned a lot about older jazz from this guy who sadly passed away a few years ago.

Fortunately we have one store left here in Montréal, Beatnick Music,  where you can still go to and meet all kinds of record freaks, musicians and the owner, a former local professional musician, can find anything through his many contacts. And believe it or not there`s even a prog section with both vinyl and CDs both new and used!

I dunno, c`mon Duke let`s go out to the porch and watch the sun go down.


Edited by Vibrationbaby - February 17 2009 at 09:55

It's a tough subject. But what I truly believe is that if the artist kicks up enough fuss about file sharing then they are clearly in it for the money. Not the music. Illegally downloading music is essentially stealing, so that is ever so slightly immoral. But if the artist is more concerned about their albums selling than people just enjoying their music, then that is also immoral. Personally, if I were a popular artist, I wouldn't care less who shared my files, just so long as it's making me famous and selling out my concerts.

^ maybe I should have added a wink emoticon to that post ... of course I of all people should know that many users here love talking about music. But sometimes I see that people seem to be more interested in these off topic sections ...

^ I think the most obvious answer is that downloads will inevitably become much more affordable, or even free. It's not surprising that the major labels aren't willing to speed up that process ...