Recording Industry Thinks Famous Dead Musicians And Their Personal Struggles Will Get People To Stop Pirating
from the because-what? dept
We’ve discussed the legacy entertainment industry’s bizarre infatuation with the idea that if they just “educate” people better, they’ll magically stop gravitating to infringing content. This strategy has never worked, because it completely misdiagnoses the issue. Piracy has never been an education issue. It’s been a service issue. Yet, year after year, the legacy entertainment industry wastes money on ever more ridiculous campaigns, each time thinking that shocking or scaring individuals will somehow get them to stop infringing. None of these campaigns has ever made even the slightest dent in anything, other than as fodder for parody. And, now, TorrentFreak alerts us to the latest “anti-piracy” ad campaign, dreamed up by the folks at Leo Burnett, apparently on behalf of Virgin Radio. Apparently, someone thought that if they featured famous dead musicians, who had lifelong struggles with depression or self-image, that this would somehow convince people to not infringe any more, because “if you knew what went into it, you wouldn’t steal it.”
And, of course, it’s just damn creepy to somehow be pinning some sort of weird guilt trip on people, as if infringement somehow added to the personal struggles of Elvis Presley and Marvin Gaye? Huh? It doesn’t make any sense at all. And while Winehouse at least lived in a time when there was widespread infringement, that would seem to have been fairly low on the list of things that concerned her.
And yet, Leo Burnett is acting as if this is some sort of noble effort, “taking a stand against piracy” rather than a fairly disgusting exploitation of dead artists who had personal demons while they were alive. Burnett calls it “a strong platform to build on for anti-piracy,” which suggests an ad agency so out of touch and clueless, you kind of have to wonder how they stay in business.
Filed Under: advertising campaign, amy winehouse, anti-piracy, copyright, education, elvis presley, home taping is killing music, infringement, marvin gaye
Companies: leo burnett, virgin radio
Comments on “Recording Industry Thinks Famous Dead Musicians And Their Personal Struggles Will Get People To Stop Pirating”
Dear upcoming artists reading this article,
What you’re actually reading are the states caused by these performers and their record labels.
In a time before royalties (and it took a new copyright law to get them, by the way), these performers had no choice but to trust their labels, many of which withheld thousands, if not millions, from the artists which actually created the music.
Their suffering had nothing to do with people stealing their music (trying to walk out with an LP tucked under the shirt isn’t easy).
Their suffering was due to lost revenue by the labels, most represented by the RIAA (whose sole purpose is to extort as much money from artists as possible).
Don’t fall for the ruse. Take a few months and learn business, economics, and the law so you can manage, market, and profit by yourself.
Because the second you take that advance and sign the dotted line, you’ll be hitting the bottle and pain killers too.
Re: Re:
These are not ‘performers’ in the general sense, that are, very specifically Elvis, Amy Winehouse and Marvin Gaye.
If you knew your history you would know that for these three (with the exception of Marvin Gaye – who had some financial problems with Motown) none of what you just said is even remotely relevant or true.
Which is ironic as it’s a history campaign.
Re: Re: Re:
Elvis Presely was purely a performer. He did not write his own music.
And the main problem with this advertising campaign is that none of the music produced by these artists should be under copyright now. They are dead and have no need for royalties.
I never steal music. I can’t read the notes anyways. =b
Can someone please put together a parody of how Prince had to change his name to a symbol to get away from the hardships created by his record label.
Re: Re:
Maybe somebody would if fair use didn’t require that they use one of his tracks to do so. After all, he’s pulled down Vine videos that contained 0% of his IP before.
Re: Re:
Who is this Prince you speak of?
With a name like that I suspect he is an uptight, controlling, selfish, thinks everyone owes him something and generally behaves like a spoiled Monarch to be.
Maybe the labels had nothing to do with his hardhips….
Re: Re: Re:
Maybe the labels had nothing to do with [Prince’s] hardhips….
Prince has got hard hips? Maybe he’ll do us the favour of pulling a Lenny Kravitz so we can all see for ourselves. 😉
Re: Re: Re:
Prints. Not Prince.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Don’t you mean the Artist Formerly Known as Prints? ;D
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
No “the artist formerly known as, the artist formerly known as prints”. I think he goes by just prints these days to make it simpler.
Hey, MAFIAA. Don’t you think it’s kinda strange that the only people who see the unskippable anti-infringement adverts on the beginning of DVDs are those who legally purchased or rented them, thus having not ripped off the damn movies? FFS! (-_Q)
i cannot believe that that Virgin has the gall to try something like this and if they had to get permission, what the Hell possessed those who were responsible to even consider giving this permission. thinking back to how Branson started, if i read and remember correctly, he was selling bootleg tapes on a market stall! to go along with this is a disgrace. i haven’t read anything about it not being acceptable, so assume it is
Okay, so tell us what will get pirates to obey the law and stop stealing?
Jeering is easy. We’ve all got jeering down pat. You jeer at ALL methods industry tries. So you need to make some positive statements of what will work.
Assuming: that you agree with the message that piracy should stop, think anything will, and would write it plain enough to annoy your fanboys. — Okay, I’m pre-loading it with moral principles and observations that it has never worked without some actual payment that pirates will never in any case go for, and you’re just going to say get the “price” down to “free”…
You really ought to write numbered bullet points of your boiler-plate and just refer to them, save much time. You are locked in last century mindset that music can, should, or will be “free as in beer”.
By the way, why do you never mention all the actually FREE (to listeners) streams and instead tout Spotify and Apple which both have paywalls?
Re: Okay, so tell us what will get pirates to obey the law and stop stealing?
Jeering is easy. We’ve all got jeering down pat. You jeer at ALL methods industry tries. So you need to make some positive statements of what will work.
Said it once, but I think it deserves saying again – DO YOUR OWN FUCKING WORK!
Re: Okay, so tell us what will get pirates to obey the law and stop stealing?
Yawn.
Re: Okay, so tell us what will get pirates to obey the law and stop stealing?
Okay, so tell us what will get pirates to obey the law and stop stealing
Easy. Just as the temperance movement discovered in 1933, and just as the war on drugs folks are discovering now, when faced with rampant violation of a law which is not of such critical importance that it justifies government action against the majority of the people, the solution is to legalize it.
Reform copyright law so that any otherwise infringing activity engaged in by natural persons, and which is non-commercial in nature is legal. Merely avoiding payment to the copyright holder would not be a commercial act. If it were, it would moot the new exception, and you’d have to be some sort of a moron to suggest such a reading. Rather, using the work in a line of business, using the work as a draw for advertising, or in a paid venue, accepting payment in any form, etc. would be prohibited.
In effect the only way to take advantage of this exception en masse would be by the people engaged in it to accept that they would have to volunteer their own resources to make it work. An individual might put up a server, paying for hosting and bandwidth out of his own pocket, without being allowed to sell merchandise, or accept tips, or even impose an upload:download ratio. A group might set up a peer to peer network, but no business could be involved in administrating it, as in the case of Napster; it needn’t be distributed, but the burden would have to fall on ordinary people. And of course, anyone could just copy a file on their personal computer for a friend or something.
Meanwhile, all business entities would still have to pay copyright holders to use works as per normal. So to would anyone who does want to make money. This, movie theaters, and performing venues would still have to follow the usual rules. Ditto stores that sell copies or websites that carry ads.
Some money would drop out of the market, but even today plenty of people go to bookstores to buy copies of easily downloadable public domain books. Even if this sort of behavior is legalized, not everyone will do it, just as some people don’t drink, and some people in AK, CO, OR, and WA who could legally use marijuana don’t care to.
And remember the alternative: piracy is endemic now. It clearly isn’t going to go away and there’s been no success whatsoever in forcing it to decline. You can make your peace with it and channel it in a way you can live with, or you can suffer the consequences of your own obstinace and unyielding greed. But things will never go back to how they were.
Re: Re: Okay, so tell us what will get pirates to obey the law and stop stealing?
Way too complex!
Try this:
Since copyright was intended as an incentive to create, let’s make it non-transferable. You cannot sell it, you cannot give it away. It is 100% linked to the creator, forever.
So, an artist would always retain copyright on anything he or she creates. Up to the point of his death. After that: no more copyright.
Makes sense, no? All licensing fees go directly into the artist’s pockets.
Of course, an artist may hire an accountant to keep track of who owns him money, or enter into a business deal with a ‘studio’ to help him record and/or finance distribution in return for a percentage of the profits of said distribution but the copyright itself always stays with the artist.
Now, wouldn’t that solve a lot?
Re: Re: Re: Okay, so tell us what will get pirates to obey the law and stop stealing?
let’s make it non-transferable
This is not a productive idea.
Exclusive and non-exclusive licensing would presumably still be permitted. This means that a publisher could just pay for an exclusive license, transferable or sub-licensable as the licensee(s) wish, for the duration of the copyright; in everything but name, this would constitute an assignment of the copyright, so nothing would have changed.
There’s certainly no reason to believe that authors would have any greater leverage over publishers than they do now; after all, since copyrights are initially vested in their authors, no author is obligated to assign their copyright. The leverage that convinces them to do so is that publishers are experts at publishing and marketing; many authors would rather spend time creating works than self-publishing, and many authors recognize that a professional publisher is better for the author’s career than self-publishing would be. So the assignment is not a big deal.
Now, wouldn’t that solve a lot?
It would solve nothing other than to require that the words ‘assignment of copyright’ on contracts are scratched out and replaced by ‘exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, license of copyright.’ Us lawyers could bill a little for that, but it is the most meaningless reform ever.
Re: Re: Re:2 Wow. Thanks.
I was wondering the same question, and yeah, it’s a painful truth that it would just make for a modest change of wording on all the same contracts.
In that case, I suggest we as a society come to terms with the notion that copyright (and all other intellectual property rights) were all just bad ideas in the first place.
I’m sure this means that some people won’t do art or useful science, but plenty will because they’re driven by the love of that art or science, and not by the gagillions they hope to make.
In fact, that describes pretty much all the actual artists I know. Before the accountants and financiers come and take it all away from them. Most creators just want to do their create thing. Most scientists and inventors are compelled by curiosity.
Re: Re: Re:3 Wow. Thanks.
In that case, I suggest we as a society come to terms with the notion that copyright (and all other intellectual property rights) were all just bad ideas in the first place.
There’s no need to go that far.
The central idea behind copyright is that it is in the best interest of society to promote the progress of knowledge. One way of doing that is to offer authors an incentive, beyond those that naturally exist (e.g. art for art’s sake, fame, commissions, etc.) to create and publish works that they would not have created and published otherwise. Another way of doing that is to not impose restrictions on the public’s use of those works so that the most use can be wrung out of the work, including freely making and distributing copies, preparing derivative works, public performances and displays, etc.
Copyright temporarily cedes some of the latter in order to get more of the former. If the two were basically equal, e.g. giving up one ‘unit’s’ worth of free use of a work was worth one ‘unit’ of new work being created and published, copyright wouldn’t be useful since it would not leave the public any better off. But it so happens that a little bit of restriction on the public can act as a tremendous incentive for authors. It’s like paying a penny to get a dollar — absolutely worthwhile.
The trick is the returns quickly diminish: One year of copyright is far better for the public than zero years of copyright. But one hundred and one years is not appreciably better for the public than one hundred years.
The failings of copyright basically lie in our poor implementation of the idea. We need to adjust the amount of copyright protection we grant so that it produces the most incentivizing effect for the least restriction on the public. This probably will involve reducing the scope and duration of copyright from where it is now.
I’m sure this means that some people won’t do art or useful science, but plenty will because they’re driven by the love of that art or science, and not by the gagillions they hope to make.
Just having commercial, copyright-based motivations doesn’t make art bad. We’re all better off with as many works getting created and published as we can get. Some we might have to forgo because they come at too high a cost, but ideally every work that might be created should be.
In fact, that describes pretty much all the actual artists I know. Before the accountants and financiers come and take it all away from them. Most creators just want to do their create thing. Most scientists and inventors are compelled by curiosity.
And copyrights can help to incentivize (and sometimes even help finance) authors who would not create and publish works otherwise. I’d rather have a reasonable amount of copyright than none at all; don’t assume that the current ridiculous copyright law is the only option aside from abolition.
Re: Re: Re:4 Copyright has only become further reaching with time to benefit legacy players at the cost of the people.
I’d certainly rather no copyright than what we have now, and we’d have to implement some clear legal device that could not be captured to prevent modest copyright protections from expanding to what they are now.
a) have any ideas?
b) have any ideas how to implement them in the current political clime?
Re: Re: Re:5 Copyright has only become further reaching with time to benefit legacy players at the cost of the people.
a) have any ideas?
14 years copyright on registration, plus an optional one-off 14 year renewal within the last 5 years, seems like a good place to start (discussion).
b) have any ideas how to implement them in the current political clime?
No 🙁
Re: Re: Re:2 Okay, so tell us what will get pirates to obey the law and stop stealing?
I don’t think that’s what was in the AC’s proposal.
He specifically stated “non-transferable”.
I think he actually meant that there should be no way to transfer the monopoly granted by copyright. You re-introduce transferability by encapsulating the entire copyright monopoly in licenses (and especially exclusive licenses and sub-licenses). Don’t.
Sure, a studio should have the (maybe even exclusive) right to sell the recording they helped make, but that shouldn’t give them any say in another recording made somewhere else (say during a concert). Let alone that the studio could prevent such alternate recordings from being published!
By only allowing the artists to be the holders of any type of monopoly (call it copyright or call it exclusive licensing or whatever) on the creation, I think the original poster has a genuine good proposal to fix this broken system…
Re: Re: Re:3 Okay, so tell us what will get pirates to obey the law and stop stealing?
He specifically stated “non-transferable”.
I think he actually meant that there should be no way to transfer the monopoly granted by copyright. You re-introduce transferability by encapsulating the entire copyright monopoly in licenses (and especially exclusive licenses and sub-licenses). Don’t.
So let’s say that Alice writes a book. As she is the author, we grant her the copyright in the book.
A license is fundamentally a promise not to sue someone. That’s why they’re used: everyone has the right and ability to copy works, but copyright holders have a right to prohibit people from engaging in that behavior, within the scope and for the duration of the copyright. They grant licenses as a way of promising to not enforce their right to prohibit under certain circumstances.
If Alice wants a publisher to publish her book, she’ll need to, at a minimum, grant the publisher a license. Otherwise the publisher would just be an infringer and would be begging to be sued. Even if Alice simply wants a friend with a press to print up some copies, a license will be needed. Maybe the license will be implicit, but it is still necessary to avoid infringement by the printer.
So there’s no escaping licensing. Without it, authors would have to do literally everything themselves, i.e. personally, or put their works into the public domain just to get things accomplished.
Likewise, a publisher might not own its own press, and might instead bid out the printing job, necessitating sub licensing.
The only question left is whether the license should be exclusive or non-exclusive. Well, let’s say that Bob is Alice’s publisher. Bob is willing to pay $10,000 as an advance for the book, and a royalty of $0.10 per copy after recoupment. If Bob is the only publisher, these terms might make sense for him, as he doesn’t have to worry about competition for the exact same book. But if Alice cannot give him an exclusive license so that he is the only one who can legally publish the book, Bob has no enforceable way of keeping Alice from licensing Carol, Dave, and Eve to also publish the book. Now the book is worth a lot less to Bob. Maybe he will only be willing to pay $100 as an advance against royalties of $0.001 per copy. Maybe less. And that will just further encourage Alice to license the book to every publisher under the sun, to wring out what she can from it. The whole thing becomes a race to the bottom.
So it sounds like we need exclusive licensing to exist or else the publishing industry, which authors should have the choice of using, if they want to, isn’t going to be viable. But if you can have licensing, sublicensing, and exclusive licensing, you can effectively have assignments.
Sure, a studio should have the (maybe even exclusive) right to sell the recording they helped make, but that shouldn’t give them any say in another recording made somewhere else (say during a concert). Let alone that the studio could prevent such alternate recordings from being published!
They don’t. The copyright on a sound recording is limited to that specific recording. Not another recording of the same song. (This is why you sometimes see compilation albums that consist of the original performer but all new recordings; it’s because the performer doesn’t have the rights to the original recordings) The copyright on the song is involved for any recording, but anyone, including the original performer, can cover the song.
Ultimately, authors are perfectly well protected because the copyrights best in them. No one can force them into assigning them, but neither can the author force someone else to work with them sans assignment. It’s all a matter of negotiation. An author who adamantly refuses to assign copyrights is free to do so, but will have to work harder to make up for the loss of business partners who will perceive them as obstinate and greedy. (And it makes no matter to the partners that they’re the ones that wanted to be obstinate and greedy)
The proposal is paternalistic; it tries to protect authors by assuming that they can’t manage their own affairs. It does nothing for the public, really. It tries to limit the power of publishers but only as to authors. The sum of author-publisher power against the public would remain unchanged. And it ignores the fact that copyright used to work okay in the past (it’s former unobjectionableness is why no one paid attention when it was captured by the interested parties) but assignment has been a feature of copyright since the beginning.
I don’t see what it is meant to do and how it is meant to do it. It strikes me as a simple minded but pointless and probably harmful proposal.
Re: Okay, so tell us what will get pirates to obey the law and stop stealing?
The only “solution” riaa wants is more regulatory capture than they’ve already got, and they will never be satified. Forcing the labels to stay relevant after abusing musicians for decades now that distribution is easy without them is a losing battle.
Re: Okay, so tell us what will get pirates to obey the law and stop stealing?
1) Reverse copyright trends of the last 40 years.
2) Most of the money goes to the artists, not the copyright holders.
3) Remove all the bullshit around the content, like ads, or at least a button away from getting right to the title menu.
4) Call it what it is, infringement.
Re: Re: Okay, so tell us what will get pirates to obey the law and stop stealing?
4) Call it what it is, infringement.
Maybe this has set a precedent in the US. Just a shame it hasn’t yet happened in the UK so we can use it as a precedent here.
Re: Okay, so tell us what will get pirates to obey the law and stop stealing?
THe answer to your topic is one of techdirts #1 statements. Provide a conveinent product at a reasonable price and, like netflix, people pay for it instead of prirating. its not 100%, but its more effective then what’s been tried.
as for your final question, I’ve never seen techdirt tout (as in sell/praise the virtues of) Apple Music aside from mentioning it because it was current news. And spotify has a free tier. Id imagine anything less burdensome then Spotify would be a pirate site, which you know, your supposed to be against.
Re: Re: Okay, so tell us what will get pirates to obey the law and stop stealing?
(Netflix uses DRM = anti-consumer)
Re: Re: Okay, so tell us what will get pirates to obey the law and stop stealing?
Maybe it’s because there’s nothing particularly praiseworthy about Apple Music.
Back in 2003-2008, yes it was praiseworthy simply because it broke new ground, nowadays however there’s nothing new to selling music tracks at 0.99 a pop.
I sort of want to understand the music execs and labels, but here’s the thing: You can’t force technology to stand still through laws.
I mean you can most definitely try to, but it just won’t work.
What you can do is try your best to stay as relevant as possible since not everyone upgrades to new tech right away.
But these large organizations are not used to being flexible they come from an age where cementing infrastructure for 40-50 years was the norm.
Re: Okay, so tell us what will get pirates to obey the law and stop stealing?
Aye, we Pirates, we don’t steal. We plunder, pillage and burn yer ships down.
Re: Re: Okay, so tell us what will get pirates to obey the law and stop stealing?
It’s the shanties! No wait, it’s the cutlasses!
Re: Zzzz ...
Copyright infringement is not stealing.
If they just keep on producing crap, I promise to continue boycotting said crap. “Music” that sounds like it was produced with a drum machine on steroids with vocals that sound like strangled chimpanzees doesn’t make me want to hear it again. Movies that are do-overs for the Nth time or superhero flicks that are little better than cartoons don’t make me want to watch them, and certainly not pay for the privilege.
It’d be nice if they stopped bribing politicians to write one sided laws in favor of a legacy industry every sane person hates for abusing their favorite artists too, and stop making the rest of the world hate us for exporting those insane laws.
It would be nice also if they stopped falling for the spiel put out by paid astroturfers (such as yourself and Rightshaven) in the mistaken belief that they can fix this imagined imaginary property problem.
Which ones are you writing of?
Re: What will get pirates to obey the law...
Considering that the RIAA likes to screw the artists but good, I think getting pirates to stop … infringing is the least of your problems.
Maybe treating the artists right would be a good start on the labels’ road back to relevance.
Also some serious copyright reform, so that much less of sharing is actual infrigement
PS: calling it stealing you’ve already identified yourself as an ignorant status-quo ideologue. Maybe read up on the problem and tell your mogul masters to stop being so greedy.
Re: Okay, so tell us what will get pirates to obey the law and stop stealing?
Funny how you complain that Mike is just jeering, yet that’s pretty much your entire contribution to this site.
Re: Okay, so tell us what will get pirates to obey the law and stop stealing?
“Okay, so tell us what will get pirates to obey the law and stop stealing?”
At this point it’s just a running joke how many times this dumb question has been asked and answered, but it’s no surprise you’re asking it again. Copyright infringement is about one day younger than copyright law. It has always been there and will always been there. The only proven way to reduce it is to offer people a better option. Obsessing about ‘Stopping Piracy’ is a huge waste of time and money. It’s using resources that could instead be looking at all ways to maximize revenue, which can include accepting that piracy is often a zero-cost method of promotion. By far the best way of course is to provide affordable, convenient ways to access content, like Netflix, Spotify and iTunes.
“Jeering is easy. We’ve all got jeering down pat. You jeer at ALL methods industry tries. So you need to make some positive statements of what will work. “
Again, asked and answered many times. Most ‘industry’ methods are worth jeering at, because they all put the users’ needs well behind the industries’ needs (or greed) instead of coming up with platforms that people genuinely enjoy using. All the companies that have been truly successful at reducing piracy came from outside the traditional content industries (see examples above).
Re: Re: Okay, so tell us what will get pirates to obey the law and stop stealing?
Copyright infringement is about one day younger than copyright law.
For foreign works in the US, copyright infringement is actually a few years older than copyright legislation. Just sayin’. ;p
Re: You know what will get pirates to respect the law?
Easy: Make the law respectable.
Jeering is easy. We’ve all got jeering down pat. You jeer at ALL methods industry tries.
Actually, we only jeer at the stupid things the industry tries, but I can see how you might make the mistake you just did.
So you need to make some positive statements of what will work.
https://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=business+model
Assuming: that you agree with the message that piracy should stop, think anything will, and would write it plain enough to annoy your fanboys.
That’s a strange assumption. Even if I were to agree with each part of your assumption individually and collectively, there’s no particularly strong reason to believe that stopping piracy is or should be the highest priority. What hurts artists more? Piracy, or industry accounting and one-sided contracts? Piracy which gains the artist fans and followers, or publishers who don’t promote the artist and doom them to obscurity?
You really ought to write numbered bullet points of your boiler-plate and just refer to them, save much time.
Not a terrible idea, but it takes a surprising amount of time up-front to do it well.
You are locked in last century mindset that music can, should, or will be “free as in beer”.
When have any of the TechDirt authors ever said this? Well, other than “can” (amongst various demonstrations that money can be made from free, but also that free is not the only business model).
I could just as easily say (with an equal amount of proof) that you are locked in the last-century mindset that ideas, art and creativity can, should and must be owned and controlled.
Re: Okay, so tell us what will get pirates to obey the law and stop stealing?
So you need to make some positive statements of what will work.
This has been done over and over, and people like you just ignore it and on the next story make the same demand again.
This is a really sad and creepy message
What they are saying is: These people were sad. You make them sadder by pirating their work. They would be so very much happier if you didn’t “steal their work”. Except, you know, they’re dead. And the extra money mostly goes to the labels anyway. Someone has to pay for these anti-piracy ads, after all!
One problem...
This campaign would be a lot more believable if they had used artists whose personal demons were not self-inflicted.
Re: One problem...
Marvin Gaye was shot by his father.
Re: Re: One problem...
If only we hadn’t pirated his music, after his death, then this tragedy could have been avoided…….
Re: Re: Re: One problem...
Maybe his father was from Somolia! Pirate!
What else do you expect them to do?
Everyone knows (or should be this point) that copyright infringement != stealing.
Most people realize that people acquiring less than legal copies are doing so because (choose one or more as fits):
official copies are too expensive
official copies are too limited (can’t do what you want)
official copies are unavailable (in format or location)
People who shout back that other people should just stop consuming if they don’t agree, don’t understand human nature, or the hundreds of years of precedent that have gotten us to where we are.
People have always been free to listen, to sing along, to perform. In the United States at least, for more than fifty years, anyone could listen to the radio, or watch broadcast television, simply by using the right equipment (and they didn’t even have to buy one themselves, as they could watch/listen with their neighbors, in their homes, in bars, etc.). No additional charges required. It wasn’t until 1997 when the No Electronic Theft Act (NET Act) was passed that made recording and trading music without payment illegal.
In 1996, and before, you could trade bootleg copies of music, mp3 files, VHS tapes, completely _legally_.
Now we have people busted for playing music to horses without a license. Schools dragged through court for compiling study packs. Streaming music and video that can’t be saved, heck isn’t even available if you are in the wrong country. DVDs that were purchased legally, that can’t be played legally because the _region_ it was purchased in differs from the one that it’s attempting to be played in. Buy a bunch of media (say from Amazon), legally, in Norway, watch it all get deleted when you vacation to Great Briton.
So _of_course_ the powers that be (including the RIAA, MPAA, etc.) are focusing on education. What are their other alternatives?
Take a massive pay cut.
Treat artists with respect.
Give customers what they want.
Join the frakking twenty-first century.
…. yea, education that’s the ticket.
Re: What else do you expect them to do?
“Everyone knows (or should be this point) that copyright infringement != stealing”
Close…
Stealing copyrighted material is called infringement.
Fixed.
Re: Re: What else do you expect them to do?
Close…
Stealing copyrighted material is called infringement.
Fixed.
Not close nor fixed.
Stealing copyrighted material is called theft, just like stealing anything is called theft. An example would be pilfering a book from someone’s backpack on the subway.
Copyright infringement refers specifically to violating the enumerated rights granted to the copyright holder in 17 USC § 106 through 17 USC § 122. An example would be if you Xerox’ed pages from the book you pilfered on the subway.
Re: Re: Re: What else do you expect them to do?
That’s what I said “Stealing copyrighted material is called infringement”.
Re: Re: Re:2 What else do you expect them to do?
Wow, are you truly this obtuse, or do you have to take lessons at a special school?
Stealing (a.k.a. theft) is that process where there is some physical object, that I don’t have legal rights to, which is taken thereby depriving it’s rightful owner of the use of that physical object.
ex: Someone steals your bicycle forcing you to find some other way to get around.
Someone steals your lunch, forcing you to buy another one or go hungry.
Copyright infringement is violating an enumerated right granted to an author or designated copyright holder in a manner not allowed for under fair use or some other statutory exception.
ex: Uploading a copyrighted movie, that you don’t have the rights to, and have not otherwise gotten permission from the copyright holder, to a web site or torrent.
Making copies of Tupac’s latest posthumous album and selling them on the corner.
Photocopying the entire copy of Twilight from the library for your own use.
When you infringe upon copyright, the original is unimpaired. When you steal something, the owner is deprived of that copy.
If I steal your copy of “Copyright for Dummies” you can no longer read all about copyright. If I commit copyright infringement by making a copy of your book, you are still able to read up on the difference between copyright infringement and stealing.
Re: Re: Re:3 What else do you expect them to do?
Again, just what I said, “Stealing copyrighted material is called infringement”.
Re: Re: Re:3 What else do you expect them to do?
“When you infringe upon copyright, the original is unimpaired”
“If I commit copyright infringement by making a copy of your book, you are still able to read”
Splitting hairs here but… if you copy my book the a) It won;t be unimpaired , as the spine will be all bent from being forced open in the photocopier, and b) There will be a period where I won’t be able to read it due to your stealing it as it will be with you at the copy centre having it’s spine fucked.
So you’ve f]got a wad p photocopies and I’ve got a fucked book. Happy days.
Re: Re: Re:3 What else do you expect them to do?
Wow, are you truly this obtuse, or do you have to take lessons at a special school?
I attended a special school and I like to think I’m smarter than the person you’re responding to, but thanks for the ableism. Jerk.
Re: Re: Re:4 What else do you expect them to do?
There’s more than one meaning for “special.” MIT and Stanford could be considered special, compared to their less illustrious competitors. I assumed he meant a special school for liars and trolls.
Don’t be such a paranoid, snowflake. It not all about you.
Re: Re: Re:5 What else do you expect them to do?
It wasn’t until you just made it that way. I’m aware that I’m not the only person who’s ever attended a special school even if you’re not, and since there’s only a single definition for the phrase ‘special school’, linked to special educational needs, it’s pretty obvious what was meant. Additionally, your use of the word ‘snowflake’ in that context is also ableism, given that it’s generally used that way with the word ‘special’ before it. Now lay off my case, or I’ll have to take this further.
Re: Re: Re:6 What else do you expect them to do?
I don’t associate with assholes or bullies. G’bye!
Re: Re: Re:7 What else do you expect them to do?
That must make your bath time awkward
Re: Re: Re:7 What else do you expect them to do?
I don’t associate with assholes or bullies.
Says he who has been associating with both since conception.
Re: Re: Re:2 What else do you expect them to do?
That’s what I said “Stealing copyrighted material is called infringement”.
And that’s wrong.
Stealing involves taking another’s property without permission. If I make a copy of a book I have legally purchased, I have committed copyright infringement, but I have not stolen anything.
Stealing and copyright infringement have completely different legal definitions and conflating them is simply an appeal to emotion used by the copyright maximalists.
Re: Re: Re:3 What else do you expect them to do?
” If I make a copy of a book I have legally purchased, I have committed copyright infringement,”
See “Stealing copyrighted material is called infringement”.
Re: Re: Re:4 What else do you expect them to do?
See “Stealing copyrighted material is called infringement”.
Nothing was stolen in my example, so no, I don’t “see”.
I’m done with this thread. If you wish to be obtuse, that’s fine. I’m choosing not to indulge you anymore. Have a nice life.
Re: Re: Re:4 Calling copyright infringement "stealing" is lying.
For all your willful attempts to avoid (and mangle) the truth, I’ve just awarded you a free “report” on each of them. You should feel honored. No really, you should. No, it’s not censorship. It’s my way of helping your posts stand out. This way, they’re worth more than the others. Now, anyone who wants to read them has to explicitly click “show.” They have to pay a “show” click in order to read them, all of them.
You’re most welcome. I’m happy to oblige. Have a marvy day.
Re: Re: Re:5 Re:Trying to be a prick is actually being a prick
They’re still there. So you have obliged me nothing.
And if they do ultimately get hidden you STILL will have obliged me nothing.
Who’d of though saying that Stealing copyrighted material is called infringement, which we all know is true, would cause so must consternation amongst those who know it is true.
Re: Re: Re:6 Repeating a falsehood does not a truth make
The ‘consternation’ is not because you’re posting an ‘annoying truth’, it’s because you’re repeating a lie that’s been debunked so many times it’s just tiresome at this point.
No matter how many times you lie, it does not change the actual fact, and in fact those spouting the infringement=theft line do not want anything but the emotional baggage that the term brings.
Infringement has insanely high penalties, utterly divorced from any ‘harm’ caused, and allows punishment without proof(you don’t have to prove you own something for it to be taken down, merely claim that you do).
Theft on the other hand has penalties drastically lower, proportional to the harm suffered by the one who’s property was taken, and requires the one stolen from prove that they have been deprived of ownership that they previously had.
Quite unlike claims of infringement, where an ‘Oops, my mistake’ is generally enough to weasel out of punishment for making bogus claims, if someone went around charging random strangers with theft they would likely be looking at a pretty nasty benchslap from a very annoyed judge.
By all means, if you think infringement is the same as theft, then push to make them equal under the law, but I can guarantee you that the first people in line to object would be those that use the same lie, as while they’re happy to use the emotional baggage the term ‘theft’ has for their own arguments, the last thing they want is the legal baggage as well.
Re: Re: Re:7 Repeating a falsehood does not a truth make
I didn’t say infringement is the same as theft, I said that stealing copyrighted material is called infringement.
Also are you saying that being burgled causes ‘low’harm ?
It’s hard to make out what you’re saying, you’re tripping over your tongue ?
Is having a youtube video removed worse then being imprisoned for armed robbery? That’s what you’re saying? Nothing that happens to a thief is worse than what happens to a copyright stealer?
Re: Re: Re:8 Repeating a falsehood does not a truth make
I didn’t say infringement is the same as theft, I said that stealing copyrighted material is called infringement.
Cute. ‘I didn’t say that infringement is theft, I said that theft is called infringement.’ Let’s just leave off the follow-up, that of ‘If theft is called infringement, then infringement is theft’ shall we?
To which the question is, what copyright material is being stolen? Be specific, what does the copyright owner no longer have due to an act of infringement that they had prior to the infringement?
If someone steals something, that item is demonstrably gone, no longer in the possession of the former owner. If someone infringes on the copyright of something, such that they have a copy where they didn’t before, the copyright owner is not suddenly missing something that they had before.
Also are you saying that being burgled causes ‘low’harm ?
No, I’m saying being burgled, or shoplifting, or whatever example of actual theft you care to use causes measurable, demonstrable harm. If someone shoplifts a CD, then a store has demonstrably lost a scarce good that they previously had. They can no longer sell the item, because they no longer have it.
On the other hand, infringement lacks this. If someone downloads a CD, the seller still has their copy. They can still sell it, multiple times at that assuming a digital store. They have not lost anything, except at the most a potential sale, and even that’s not always a given, since people can download something now and end up buying later.
Is having a youtube video removed worse then being imprisoned for armed robbery? That’s what you’re saying? Nothing that happens to a thief is worse than what happens to a copyright stealer?
For the life of me I cannot figure out how you got this from my comment. It’s either deliberately mischaracterizing what I wrote, or completely missing the point.
My point, which you apparently missed, was that those who use the ‘infringement is theft’ line don’t actually want infringement to be treated as theft, as currently infringement is treated much more harshly than all but the most extreme examples of theft.
Downloading a CD would go from something that carries the potential of thousands, if not more in fines, to something that would carry a fine of under a hundred. Companies and individuals would no longer be able to automate takedown demands, but would have to provide proof that they had lost something for each and every file/site, and false accusations would likewise carry negative consequences where they do not currently.
‘Infringement = theft’ is used as an emotional plea, but it is not only wrong, those using it would be among the first to object were it treated as fact in a legal setting.
Re: Re: Re:9 Repeating a falsehood does not a truth make
“If someone steals something, that item is demonstrably gone,…if someone infringes on the copyright of something, such that they have a copy where they didn’t before, the copyright owner is not suddenly missing something that they had before.”
But you do have something in your possession that you didn’t pay for, and how is that? Because you stole it. You can rub that one anyway you like but if you posses something you shouldn’t have cause you didn’t pay for it, it’s stolen.
You do realise that the whole not stealing thing comes from a bootleg album case, where the tapes had been made at a concert and NOT STOLEN from the record company. You also know that was only in the US, not the whole rest of the world. And you know this is the WORLD WIDE web?
But you’re right, there’s a distinction, and stealing copyright material is called infringement. I know that now.
Re: Re: Re:10 Repeating a falsehood does not a truth make
And of course you ignore everything I said and just repeat the same claims from before, what a surprise.
Call it theft all you want, you’ll still be wrong, and you’ll still be in a position where you don’t want to be right.
Copying is not theft, taking is. If someone magiced up a perfect replica of a car on a showroom floor without paying the dealer they have not stolen anything, and the same applies when someone makes a copy of a song, movie or book.
Re: Re: Re:2 What else do you expect them to do?
Reading comprehension isn’t your strong suit, is it?
1. “Copyrighted material” ==> “material which is under copyright”, ie, a printed copy of “Fifty Shades of Grey” on your mantle-piece.
2. “Stealing Copyrighted material” ==> Me coming in to your house and taking your printed copy of “Fifty Shades of Grey” and walking off with it.
3. “Copyright Infringement” ==> Me coming in, taking pictures of the pages of your printed copy of “Fifty Shades of Grey” and using an OCR routine to create a new copy of the book for which the author/publisher/etc has not been paid.
Do you see the difference between #2 and #3?
Now, the term ‘theft’ can be ambiguous. For example, if you and I are both applying for a job and I get it, you might very well say that I “stole” that job from you.
Re: Re: Re: Photocopying pages from a book
…in a library for public use might be copyright infringement.
Stealing the book from the subway is just plain theft.
Giving your friend an mp3 of a song you ripped from your CD is dubiously infringement. I call it sharing. It’s as immoral as driving 70 (flow of traffic) in a 55 mph lane.
And considering the way the labels have treated artists, sharing is probably more ethical than forcing your friend to buy the CD or get the song on iTunes.
A match made in heaven.
They stay in business because they cater to businesses that are out of touch and clueless. Duh.
Re: A match made in heaven.
They stay in business because they can get custom made laws passed in their favor.
Despite almost daily evidence to the contrary, people no longer seem to think of the DMCA as a travesty of justice.
Re: Re: I think your average American...
…is resigned to the travesty of justice that is the DMCA, or doesn’t understand it.
Those that do understand it and get pissed off about it will ignore it for private purposes, and sigh more in resignation as a business technician.
Re: Catering to businesses that are out of touch and clueless.
This sounds very akin to why we have DRM schemes that require persistent online connections to play single-player games.
To the accountants that don’t play games hate their consumers that do, such schemes must sound fabulous.
Re: Re: Catering to businesses that are out of touch and clueless.
Yeah, good point. DRM is catering to a specific kind of business just like this marketing… the kind you want no part of.
The advertising agency has a much better idea of what their customers, other businesses want, than the business buying the adverts has of what its customers, the public, want. They do not have to sell the advert to the public, but rather to the business paying for it.
Re: Sharing the real money now
I hired into LucasFilm in October, 1975 for $5.oo/hour, did my last job for him in late 1983. Do I share the wealth of the product we all created for George?
Yes, I get $460 in Social Security each month, representing my cut from those years.
‘Sharing’ is a four letter word in ‘The Industry’, which hides it’s pauper ‘Stars’ to die in the ‘Motion Picture & Television Country House’.
My total ‘take-home’ now (including 600/month from a short USArmy career) is larger now than from any film, aerospace, food, optical, nursing or sales ‘Job’ I ever had.
A lot of my co-workers got caught in an endless loop of coke&meth. See ‘The Book Of Job’
By 1981 I had built my own film studio & paid a lot of employees to shoot movie ‘inserts’ and TV ads for Leo Burnett, et al.
Most ads never see the light of day, but Leo gets paid.
~~~~~~
‘I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty -to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.’
-Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to Joshua F. Speed, August 1855
Contrariwise
These famous dead people would have been better off with less IP, even with less money for themselves. Wanting things is a basic state of life for almost everyone.
Instant gratification is a terrible seduction, robbing people of their hobbies and their purpose in life and driving them to increasingly more extreme ways of passing their time without the ability to enjoy those.
It is just better for musicians not to sign any record contract at all.
Rehab
Maybe if the record executives gave a damn about Winehouse and actually made her go to Rehab instead of raking in the dough from he song about steadfastly refusing to do so, she might still be alive.
Re: Rehab
They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said, ‘No, no, no.’
They allowed me to die, now they’re raking in my dough, dough, dough ;(
Every time you download a song, you Elvis dies all over again. His spirit won’t rest until you enrich his estate.
And the copywriter doesn't even know English.
The Elvis ad talks about “yet another hoard of screaming fans.” Hoard? A collection of valuable artifacts? I should have thought a horde, or great multitude of persons, was more apt.
Re: And the copywriter doesn't even know English.
They were originally going for “herd”
An education campaign is exactly what they need
The only people who need educated here are the record labels.
Maybe we could get some peeps charged with secondary copyright infringement on the basis of incitement. After all, if certain artists had less money because of a huge amount being lost to ‘piracy’ (and the efforts to combat it), then they wouldn’t have had enough to waste on substances that fucked up and shortened their lives. Simples!
You know, there are probably a few dead artists who could have done with a little *less* money. Because maybe then they wouldn’t have been able to afford as many drugs.
Amy Winehouse would not somehow be alive today if only she just had made a little more money. Presley was the best-selling solo artist in the history of recorded music and died even before “home taping is killing music” was a thing.
Now, they might be able to find someone from the late 90’s who wasn’t totally obscure but couldn’t make enough money from music. But then someone might point out exactly how much of their music was sold and how much the labels kept from them.
And what’s the point of showcasing dead people, anyway? You can’t steal from a dead person. Obviously none of the proceeds are going to those singers anymore. Maybe some money goes to their relatives, but probably mostly to their labels.
Sadder than dead?
Will these artists who are long dead somehow cheer up if I buy an album? Will Elvis record a new song if he receives enough encouragement from record sales?
Re: Sadder than dead?
Why not?
Being dead hasn’t stopped Tupac Shakur from releasing more albums……
Re: Re: Sadder than dead?
Even Michael Jackson released a few albums after he died.
Re: Re: Re: Sadder than dead?
He even starred in a video with Justin Timberlake despite having been buried for nearly five years. o.0
Re: Re: Sadder than dead?
Know your history man.
Elvis has released far more records since he died than when he was alive.
And way more than Tupac (alive and dead)
Know your history when commenting about a historical campaign.
The two of you look like fools.
Hey look! More anti-artist propaganda from Techdirt! What a shocker!
Re: Re:
Hey look! More anti-label propaganda from Techdirt! What a shocker! [not really]
There, fixed it for you.
Re: Re:
More anti-artist propaganda from Techdirt!
Care to point out the “anti-artist propaganda” in this article? I didn’t see any.
Re: Re:
As if dead artists are concerned about anything?
Re: Re:
Why am I, as an artist, so much in favor of Techdirt?!
Oh yea, it’s cuz I’m not a shilling village idiot and I want more money to go to um…what are they called again? ARTISTS! That’s it.
The common theme of all those ads is ...
… that the music they refer to was produced when copyright was A LOT weaker than it is now.
Hey here's a good story of an artist with personal demons
Badfinger was abused by their label and management so badly That Pete saw no way out.
Really? You included Elivs Presley
The contract arrangement Presley performed under was dramatically less copyright term than currently exists. Apparently, it was enough for him to perform and thrive to become “The King”. It’s a farce that he is included here. Why not include the author’s of the Happy Birthday song while you’re at it?
I wonder what some of these dead artists thought of their record labels and/or the RIAA when they were alive. Methinks there has to be some irony somewhere in their new campaign.
And of course, it’s completely disingenuous to talk about that artist’s struggle when they were alive, only to be profiting now from their death.
“If you knew what when into it, you would be angry that some soulless corporation took the lion’s share of profit from this dead artist’s struggles.”
Speaking of artists being sad...
I imagine they’d rather people not spend too much timing thinking about the artists who are struggling, or were struggling, thanks to being screwed over by their labels.
Bands that sell thousands/hundreds of thousands of records/CD’s yet get nothing thanks to the utterly one-sided contracts they signed.
Artists that get pennies from the new streaming services thanks to the contracts between the service and the labels(and who then idiotically blame the service, rather than the label for their pittance pay).
Artists that get screwed out of what they are contractually owed because the label just doesn’t feel like paying.
No, I don’t imagine they want people to think of those particular brands of ‘artist suffering’…
South Park
It’s like they saw that episode of South Park about downloading music and thought it would make a good ad campaign.
The only thing worse than using dead people for political means, is using dead people to lie.
antidirt and out_of_the_blue just hate it when due process is enforced.
Re: Re:
Remember, out_of_the_blue believes every flagged comment to be accurate.
Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
I like this, actually; at least in comparison to past attempts at anti-piracy. The chronic problem with anti-piracy campaigns is that they employed aggressive and invariably dehumanizing condemnation as their chief means of persuasion, trying to frighten or shame people into not pirating. I credit this with a big part of what turned casual piracy from a never-mind-the-details thing to a worldwide political movement, as pirates responded to attempts to frighten or shame them with indigence, hostility, and ultimately doubling down.
Painfully absent from almost all existing anti-piracy efforts is an attempt to appeal to pirates at an intellectual (rather than emotional) level. To talk to them as intelligent, reasonable people, not as the scum of the earth that can only be reasoned with with a really big stick. The effects of this were completely predictable, and history has shown those predictions to be spot on.
That’s where the new campaign comes in. It tries to give people a reason to not pirate. Admittedly it’s melodramatic, you can immediately tell it’s trying to manipulate your emotions, and it still uses a shame-based catch-phrase, but I think it’s a big step in the right direction. They’ve managed to finally figure out the critical ingredient, now they just need to perfect the recipe.
Re: Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
That this campaign is better than previous attempts is mostly just pointing out how low the bar has been set.
Even this campaign fails at the first intellectual step – there is no way to link the situations being described to piracy. Elvis didn’t get into barbiturates because people were downloading his songs (well, I’m pretty sure, anyway). Pirates had nothing to do with Marvin Gaye’s home life.
Unless the underlying message is “If you knew what went into it, you’d run away screaming and never touch it, let alone download so much distilled depression that your preferred listening device will die of sadness”, I’m not sure what the reason not to pirate is here?
Re: Re: Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
Very right on the first point.
As to the second, the key factor here is empathy. If there’s one thing the internet has proved beyond a doubt, it’s that people that are out of sight are out of mind (and that most certainly is not limited to piracy). People pirate for various reasons, and the consequences for the different reasons range from beneficial to harmful. I believe copyright infringement can be theft tantamount to physical theft, but ONLY in cases where it is tangibly harmful (e.g. it takes the place of a legitimate sale). It’s easy to steal from some series of letters on a paper/computer screen; it’s not as easy to steal from a person. And by building empathy with creators people are less likely to commit harmful types of piracy.
Of course you are certainly right that this is still imperfect. As already stated, it’s melodramatic and heavy-handed in a box-of-dead-puppies way. But appealing to empathy rather than guilt/shame/fear is definitely the way to go, here, and might have saved the record labels if done 2 decades ago.
Re: Re: Re: Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
I pretty much agree with everything you are saying, and 100% agree that “appealing to empathy rather than guilt/shame/fear is definitely the way to go, here”.
Empathy isn’t quite enough, though. I live in Australia, and it sucked to have to pay an extra 20% or even more compared to the US because of legacy deals with entrenched local importers who add exactly zero value in the age of the internet. And we were one of the lucky countries that tended to receive content at all! There are any number of stories out there of a public hungry for music (films, books, etc) with exactly zero legal options, and piracy is the only way that people could get access to the content – http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2125608/, also the anime fan-sub movements, unlicensed translations of books, etc, etc.
And that’s the whole point of articles like this one. Why is the legacy industry spending so much time and money trying to work on the empathy bit, and nothing else… when they could spend some time on providing their potential customers with the opportunity to buy, and then they probably won’t even need the “education” campaigns!
Re: Re: Re:2 Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
Certainly. I decided not to feed the troll, but what I would have said to that guy that said piracy was on the ropes is yes, that’s true; Pandora, Spotify, and Netflix have taken a huge bite out of piracy (about 50%).
The thing that the MAFIAA never managed to comprehend is that demand is a function of price, they aren’t independent variables. As the price rises, demand falls; as price falls, demand rises. By offering the content at a lower price point, services like the above have lowered the price to a point that 50% of former pirates are willing to pay. Piracy is of course the point at which demand is maximal, as it has 0 cost, but the cost benefit is balanced by other things such as moral aversion or empathy for the people pirated.
So in explaining that I’ve explained a few things, but to tie this back to what you said and theft. By my definition, it is only theft if you would have paid for it otherwise. And the higher the legal price the lower the chance you would buy it legally, and thus the lower the proportion of piracy that could be counted as stealing as overall piracy increases.
Re: Re: Re:3 Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
What a total farce.
Why not call it Digital Material Kidnapping, or Internet Highway Robbery, or Copyright Material Murder.
Piracy, is the boarding and holding of sea-faring vessels, in order to steal all the valuable property from the held ship, and then to either take the ship and refit her for further piracy of other ships, scuttle her where she stands after dis-boarding, or simply leave her adrift on the sea. The members of her crew are usually killed or kidnapped for ransom, and the ship itself is stripped of everything valuable, or useful to the pirates.
File-Sharing is the process of downloading a COPY of material – music, video, images, or other data – that has been recorded as digital media and made available by someone who purchased a Retail COPY and uploaded a COPY of it to a hosting site in order to share that material with others. No material is stolen, as the uploaded COPY was also just a COPY of the purchased COPY and the purchased COPY remains behind in the possession of the purchaser as does the original COPY held by the artist/label, remain behind in the possession of artist/label, regardless of the number of people who purchase or download any subsequent copies of that material.
How on earth can anyone with a brain relate these two activities as identical in any way whatsoever?
Remove the words “with a brain” from the above question for a perfect answer.
Most people who “File Share” do so to discern whether the Movie, Music, Image, Data, is worth spending the money for a retail copy.
If its a piece of shit they save themselves some money and if its a good purchase, they buy a retail copy.
The legacy industries prefers the old model, where you pay the price and THEN learn the product is a piece of Shit, because then they can sell way more shit and have less worry about producing quality material.
As to the silly notion that every file-shared copy is a lost sale, those who file-share just for free stuff, would not be buying the material anyway.
As with the War on Drugs and the War on Terror, you are being emotionally manipulated into thinking a new crisis exists – File Sharing – by corporations and politicians, so that new legislation can be introduced to “Fight the Piracy Crisis” – just like they did for the War on Drugs and the War on Terror and are planning to do for the War on Cybercrime.
The new legislation will have no effect on File Sharing – just as the laws that allowed the War on Drugs has no effect on the sale and distribution of drugs and the laws that allowed the War on Terror has no effect on the existence of Terrorists.
The new laws will however, effectively remove more and more of your rights and freedom, simply to increase the annual profits of the Legacy Dinosaur corporations and those politicians who are paid by the corporations to screw you over.
Wake up, or die in your sleep people.
—
Re: Re: Re:4 Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
What a total farce.
Being gay, it is the quality of being care-free and happy, or perhaps a colourful vibrancy such as shown by a gay bunch of flowers.
Homosexuality is the social phenomenon of having a sexual preference for people of your own gender, as opposed to the hetero norm of preference for the opposite gender.
How on earth can anyone with a brain relate these two concepts as identical in any way whatsoever?
Welcome to the English language, GEMont. One word can mean multiple, different, unrelated things, and some words even gain meanings over time! English is a living language, and it matters not whether you agree with the changes or not.
Personally, if you want to avoid the negative valence of “pirate” and “piracy”, I’d recommend avoiding “file sharing” which has neutral or slightly negative valence, and go straight for “sharing” or “sharer” for that nice positive valence glow.
Wake up, or die in your sleep people.
Let governments pass stronger copyright laws… die in my sleep. No, I can’t quite follow that one, you might have to walk me through some of the intermediate steps.
Re: Re: Re:5 Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
“Help, help, I’m being oppressed! Come see the violence inherent in the system!”
“You oppressed me!” “No I didn’t!” “Yes you did!” “No I didn’t!” “Hey, this isn’t an argument. You’re just disagreeing with me.” “No I’m not.”
Sorry. Inside joke. Meh. Life.
Re: Re: Re:6 Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
Inside joke? You’re part of Monty Python?
Re: Re: Re:7 Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
or over 40
Re: Re: Re:5 Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
“Being gay, it is the quality of being care-free and happy, or perhaps a colourful vibrancy such as shown by a gay bunch of flowers.“
Agreed. The word “gay” was however, selected by homosexuals as a slang nickname for themselves. It was not laid upon them by the law, or those writing the law, nor is it a legal terminology designed to denigrate or incriminate, or to induce emotional response in those who hear the term used in reference to certain people.
It has today become so common a term for homosexual that it now does contain an emotional component for those who fear homosexuality, indeed, but that was not intentional.
Because of this association, the word “gay” is very seldom used for its original meaning by anyone, and will likely lose that meaning altogether as far as use among the denizens of western civilizations, beyond the possible rare occurrence in poetry or song.
Piracy is also an old term, but even today Pirates exist and ply their trade and when one discusses high seas robbery of sea faring vessels, by other sea faring vessels the term piracy is still valid and remains in common use.
Since you completely slid over my point in favor of picking this particular nit, I assume you must agree with the Legacy Industry that renamed file-sharing as piracy, or that you were simply pissed and looking for a toilet.
Either way, I won’t bother arguing about whether my agreement is necessary to the acceptance of english words and their new uses, since we already have such lovely things as Politically Correct Word Restrictions taking place all the time in the real world, in which people gather together to change the meaning of english word usages they disagree with.
“Let governments pass stronger copyright laws… die in my sleep. No, I can’t quite follow that one, you might have to walk me through some of the intermediate steps.“
I will also assume that you, like so many others, consider the whole process of copyright control legislation and the means by which corporations induce familiarity and acceptance of the new laws pertaining to copyright, as an un-attached phenomena which will have no real repercussion on society beyond the prevention of infringement of intellectual property by file sharers.
If that is your take on the situation, then there is little point in trying to make you understand the connections to other aspects of human civilization and what total control over the inventions and innovations of everyone can mean in the long run. People never really walk anywhere they don’t wish to.
If you really do want to “walk that way”, a good place to start might be the Trade Agreements which the same Legacy Industries consider so important that they have to keep the deals 100% secret.
You might ask yourself, why these deals are so important.
Or not.
—
Re: Re: Re:6 Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
“I assume you must agree with the Legacy Industry”
By legacy industry do you mean Lawyers that write wills or Subaru dealers?
Re: Re: Re:7 Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
I certainly hope you are not currently trying to make a living doing stand up comedy.
You could easily starve.
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Re: Re: Re:8 Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
Just because I’m curious… which legacy industry do you think it was that first coined the phrase piracy to mean copyright infringement?
Re: Re: Re:9 Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
Piracy goes back to the days of vinyl, it was a distinct form of theft, and I mean theft as physical tapes were often stolen, from bootlegging. (smuggling never got reused for some reason).
Pirate records were straight rip-offs of studio recordings, and bootlegs were illicit live recordings and radio broadcasts.
Read: Bootleg: The Secret History of the Other Recording Industry, by Clinton Heylin
Re: Re: Re:10 Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
Actually it’s much older than that. The first known use of the term piracy in the sense of violating a government-granted monopoly on production was in 1603, and at that time the monopoly was that of the printing guilds, as copyright hadn’t been invented yet.
Re: Re: Re:11 Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
re-read the question
Re: Re: Re:12 Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
Well, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that the printing guild monopoly was the primordial form of copyright; it was, after all, the government-granted exclusive right to copy. All that’s really changed since then is a refinement of the rules by which the copyright game is played. As such the printing guilds were essentially the print publishers of the era (only more exploitative, as surprising as it is that that is possible). Really the only thing from my original post that really needs correcting is to use the term “modern copyright”.
Re: Re: Re:9 Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
“…which legacy industry do you think it was that first coined the phrase piracy to mean copyright infringement?“
I thought it was coined by politicians trying to generate public acceptance of new “anti-piracy laws”, so if not, I would have to guess it was the Music Industry.
And because I am curious, I do hope you tell me which one it actually was.
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Re: Re: Re:6 Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
Interpreting a lack of comment on my part with any particular meaning is more likely to involve an act of projection than any kind of prescience as to what I would have said if I had commented.
On that note, those are some nice assumptions/strawmen you have there.
If you really do want to “walk that way”, a good place to start might be the Trade Agreements which the same Legacy Industries consider so important that they have to keep the deals 100% secret.
I’m somewhat well aware of the various trade agreements currently being negotiated around the world, though nowhere near as aware as I could be if the various texts were actually available to the public. I could even make educated guesses as to what the net effects of these treaties might be in various time frames… like most people though, I’d most likely be substantively wrong.
Further, I’m not aware of any interpretation or extrapolation of any trade agreements that leads to people dying in their sleep… unless an increase in the cost of medicines means that you are no longer able to afford a particular prescription required to live, but you seem to be suggesting something much more general than that.
Perhaps you meant wake up and realise that they’re turning everyday social activities into a crime; once everyone is a criminal then society can be controlled! Well, yes. That one has been and is continuing to be well documented, but you may want to provide slightly more nuanced advice than “wake up” and “walk that way”… unless you’re just after a catchy song.
tl;dr: You might want to wipe your mouth, you appear to be frothing a bit.
Re: Re: Re:7 Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
No, not froth, simply remnants of a mouthful of coffee now spread unevenly across my keyboard.
I will try in future to provide slightly more nuanced advice, as I’ve no need for another catchy song.
And no, I have no desire to participate in a verbal duel with you sir, since you do not offend me in any way.
And if you please, next time, please try and answer to the point of the message rather than dwelling on the parts which, as you have so nicely pointed out, are little more than window dressing anyways.
In case you missed it altogether somehow, the “point” was;
The term “Piracy” is being used as an emotional trigger to gain public approval of laws that will do nothing at all about Piracy, whether the term refers to high seas robbery or file sharing.
I hope that was more to the point and acceptable.
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Re: Re: Re:4 Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
Quite a bit of rambling, but really only one point on which everything else hinges.
You’re scoping the definitions of copyright infringement and theft too narrowly. You are certainly right that it makes no sense to say that someone steals a song/movie/etc, as there is no deprivation. Yet in a percentage of cases (estimates vary from 5% to < 1%) that copy is a lost sale because the person making it would have bought the thing if they couldn’t copy it. In this case, the creator IS being deprived of something: the value of the lost sale. And that brings me back to what I said originally: copyright infringement is theft if and only if there are actual damages (not imaginary every-download-is-a-lost-sale or my-rights-are-being-stolen “damages”).
Re: Re: Re:5 Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
In my experience, those who download stuff because it is free, ONLY download stuff because it is free and available for download.
If it is not free, they want nothing to do with it and thus would not have even noticed the retail version of that material.
“…copyright infringement is theft if and only if there are actual damages… “
To make that point properly in a legal sense then, the courts should simply ask each caught infringer, whether they would have bought the material had they been unable to get it for free.
Anyone who says no, should be set free immediately.
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Re: Re: Re:6 Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
“If it is not free, they want nothing to do with it and thus would not have even noticed the retail version of that material.”
And that is exactly what I meant by piracy growing into a political/ideological system. I know one or two people like that myself. But that is not how most people are. For most people, the decision to buy or not is motivated by an intersection of quite a few factors: price, perceived value (how much they appraise the thing to be worth), convenience and risk of piracy, non-financial difficulty of legal acquisition (going to the store is more work than downloading, and if the thing is not legally available – and in print – in your country you will not buy it, period), moral beliefs, habits, etc.
Anti-piracy people tend to have a very pedantic view of the world, where there is always a bright line between right and wrong, and the most obvious explanation of something is always not only right, but the complete explanation. Back in the real world, there is almost always a blurry border between right and wrong, and equations generally have more than one term.
This pedantic view has had disastrous results thus far (especially in the recording industry), and has largely created the piracy situation of today. Attacking pirates personally has galvanized their beliefs and dramatically reduced moral inhibitions to piracy, DRM and region-locking has erected barriers to legal acquisition and reduced perceived value, and the RIAA giving piracy almost a 10 year free reign of digital music distribution has established piracy as a habit for many.
This new campaign (or some more refined version of it) has the potential to make people reevaluate their morals and consequently shake up habits, which is critical to altering the piracy equation in a way favorable to content creators and mongers.
“Anyone who says no, should be set free immediately.”
…yeah, because the accused isn’t the party in the courtroom with the most reason to lie (and the accuser #2)…
Re: Re: Re:7 Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
…and I just realized I misinterpreted your post. I know a couple of people who pirate on principle, but that’s not what you’re talking about. You’re talking about people that would not consume content if they could not pirate it. And that falls under the category of inert downloads that do not affect the creator because there never was any possibility of a sale to lose.
Re: Re: Re:8 Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
“…there never was any possibility of a sale to lose.”
Whew! That was indeed my point.
By far, the vast majority of people I’ve dealt with and discussed this with fall into the two simple categories –
Those who want to evaluate before they buy and those who download free stuff because they can download free stuff.
The first group almost always buy what they preview through P2P, because the general attitude towards entertainment is more “who is in it” than the quality of performance, and all of these people can watch the same movie over and over again for years. Their Retail Copy Collections are often blatantly on display in their homes and they are usually very proud of those paid for collections.
The other group I run into all the time are collectors of anything online and free, who seem to have connections with each other through which they trade what they gather and brag about who got what first.
In a way, I fall into this category, although I do not participate in the group trade process at all.
For me, if the movie is not available on-line and free, I will likely never see it, unless its shown at a friend’s house using their copy, or possibly if shown on one of the commercial free movie channels on TV, years after everyone else has forgotten about it. The copies of movies I download are stored on a hard drive reserved for that purpose for a time and then deleted to make room for other movies.
I actually do not know anyone who downloads a movie specifically because they do not want to pay for it.
Quite the opposite in fact.
I know very little about the habits of people who download music, and I’m really not all that interested in much of what passes for music these days and download none at all myself. I have old music – much of it classical – recorded on multi-DVDs that comprises my music library, and it is large enough to play a different song every hour for years.
It was all recorded off of purchased retail records and tapes, for quality sake.
While I’ve no doubt that there are those who download entertainment because it is free and who would buy it if it was not free, I have yet to meet one.
—
So, are we sure they’ve paid the artists who did the original sleeve design they’ve based their campaing on or did they simply “steal” it and hope noone would notice?
That is all.
Re: Re:
Gary, is that you?
Re: Re: Re:
Gaaaaary! Gary! Haha, Gary!
Re: Re:
Still using TOR, out_of_the_blue? How piratey of you!
This whole campaign is just a load of crap!!! For one thing most people these days are just streaming music!!! I started doing that a number of years ago and it’s really been catching on. You’re NOT pirating music when you’re using a service to stream to you music!!! I know when I started doing that, that there was no need to buy CD’s, or buy MP3’s or even pirate music. It’s pretty pointless. This whole campaign is just pointless. They seem to be just doing this crap to make it look like they’re doing something to make it look like all that money they’re stealing from the artists is going to something worthwhile.
You can fool all of the people most of the time...
“Recording Industry Thinks Famous Dead Musicians And Their Personal Struggles Will Get People To Stop Pirating.
No they don’t.
But they obviously fooled everyone once again into thinking that they do.
They’re just keeping up the pretense and screaming murder, rape, foul, at the top of their lungs, in order to maintain the farce as fact in the public’s mind, until they can get their “we own the internet” laws enacted.
The legacy industries started the whole process of peer to peer to create a false crisis.
They developed the software and opened up the websites that distributed that software for free and then offered the links to copyrighted material for the public to download right on those websites.
Like the War on Drugs and the War on Terror, its necessary to fool the public into believing there is a crisis “The War on Piracy”, before you can get them to accept a new batch of laws that remove more of their rights and freedom, while pretending to fight that crisis.
The Legacy Industries are fully aware that this campaign is a joke and useless, but the general public is not so aware, and its the general public that they have to fool, always. By continuing to flood the public’s awareness with bullshit designed to “prove” there is a Piracy crisis, they will eventually be able to get their pet laws made reality, through their “Free Trade” scams. And apparently, from what I see here, they are once again, extremely successful in that endeavor.
Then again, perhaps the Legacy Industries are correct and fools simply deserve to be abused, because they are fools.
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They are using dead people who cannot sue.
Copying is not stealing, in any dictionary except MAFIAA’s.
Re: Re:
Stealing copies is called infringement.
Everybody knows that.
Re: Re: I don't know it.
I think making copies is infringement, provided the copies are illegal. That’s why it’s copyright.
I don’t think stealing or theft have anything to do with making illegal copies.
Re: Re: Re: I don't know it.
You’re a sucker for that one aren’t you.
I’m thinking of getting T-shirts made, it’s pirate baiting gold.
“Stealing copyrighted material is called infringement”
“it’s not stealing” Tell THAT to a judge.
Re: Re: Re:2 Tell what to a judge?
The next time you take a little girl to court for downloading a five-megabyte .mp3 and insist that she stole your property and therefore she owes you a Hollywood-math computed figure for her crime, yeah, see how the judge treats you.
And then see how the public treats you.
Oh and when you do get money from those you fleeced through the court system, feel free to tell the whole class how much of the award made it back to the artist whose work was allegedly infringed.
Stay classy, dude.
Re: Re: Re:3 Tell what to a judge?
I think you have me confused with Universal Records.
Re: Re: Re:4 Tell what to a judge?
The judge thing refers to when I asked you about the “it’s not stolen” as a defence and you skirted around it in such a way that I’m now convinced you don’t actually believe it – not enough to stand by it if you had to.
You said you’re past caring what I think, and yet here we are.
Re: Re: Re:5 "Yet here we are"
Dude, you’re the one still hiding behind anonymity. To me you’re a different Anonymous Coward than the one I was talking to in another forum, and yet you’ve done me the kindness of revealing a consistent identity, only after you tried to pin on me…what, hypocrisy?
No, I’m past caring what you thought then or, now that you’ve identified yourself as that guy, what you think now, because you appear to me more interested in nailing someone (I doubt me personally) than you are in discussing legal philosophy, say, in an effort to delineate the differences between larceny and transgression of copyright monopolies.
Hit me back when you have a real argument.
Re: Re: Re:6 "Yet here we are"
Dude, you’re the one still hiding behind anonymity.
And Uriel-238 is your real name?
Re: Re: Re:7 Uriel-238
Actually, yes it is.
More importantly, I’m Uriel-238 consistently through all forums. Click on the profile buttons and you can read every post I’ve ever written on TechDirt, and get a pretty extensive profile as to my personality.
If you wanted to go the extra mile, you’ll find that Uriel-238 is a pretty unique moniker. I’m pretty easy to stalk.
So to borrow a phrase from 19th century parlance, You have me at a disadvantage. Who are you?
Re: Re: Re:5 Tell what to a judge?
You do realize if you commit copyright infringement and tell the judge you didn’t steal whatever you copied they will agree, then tell you you’re charged with copyright infringement, not theft, right? They are quite different offenses (I can’t even say “different crimes”, because only commercial copyright infringement is a crime) governed by completely different laws. Unlike you, most judges know this and do not mix up the two. Theft is theft. Copyright infringement is copyright infringement.
Re: Re: Re:6 Tell what to a judge?
Of course they do. You fail to understand they’re attempting to reshape reality according to their wishes. There’s no misunderstanding here on their part. This is how propagandization works. Tell a lie often enough and maybe it’ll drown out inconvenient truth. You waste your time trying to educate them. They’ve no intention of learning what you teach.
Re: Re: Re:7 Tell what to a judge?
You definitely have a point. Copyright infringement == steal is very slowly becoming accepted among lawyers, judges, and especially politicians because it’s been said so many times by the MAFIAA people are starting to believe it.