Meet the new boss, David Lowery tackles the internet and the past while Ted Lucas gets past around

No

So burning a CD is illegal downloading (regardless of the # of songs)?

Illegal copying, I think the owner of the original can make backup, but not give it to another person

Or were you being pendantic about the word ”downloading”?

^^^

I am being pedantic, but I sorta rankle at the idea that this is all settled law like we can point at every activity and be like "yeah this is all the same and clearly wrong and illegal and people who do it are disgusting savages", etc.

cracker david lowery

http://oi47.tinypic.com/2wozlsg.jpg

well the bottom line is that either way she is getting a boatload of music for which nobody has been compensated.

you can decide on the ethics of that but to imagine they are profoundly different things is, like i said, kind of tortured logic.

Everyone copies the odd CD. I'm sure David Lowery does. But the time and effort that she put into copying several thousand songs off CDs – if she's being truthful about how she accumulated her music – rather puts the lie to her claim that she only wants music that is convenient and instant and backs Lowery's assessment that what she really wants is not to pay for anything.

“Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive”-Stewart Brand

To be honest, per Lowery's point I had never heard the latter half of this quote before, either. Full 1985 quote:

"Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine - too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away. It leads to endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, 'intellectual property', the moral rightness of casual distribution, because each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better."

Nuance is your best entertainment value.

"backs Lowery's assessment that what she really wants is not to pay for anything."

Hmmn no Lowery's assessment is really that she doesn't want to pay for mp3s and that she really really should because it's the right thing to do according to him. He acknowledges that she is likely paying (at least indirectly for quite a bit)--it's just that all of that money is going to Apple or Motorola or AT&T or whomever and very little (possibly none of it) is going to Yo La Tengo.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/travis-morrison/hey-dude-from-cracker-im_b_1610557.html

Dismemberment Plan singer on how he used to listen to music for free in the old days (and how this is the same as the NPR intern). I don't buy all of his argument

we've been discussing the Lowery piece (and the Huffpo response) on this thread: The RIAA Armageddon has begun

but that one's kinda gone to shit so maybe we should just resume the convo here

That thread is all over the place.

And now of course it's just frogbs.

i'll take some blame for the haywire nature of that thread. i'm easily distracted...

So burning CDs for friends is theft? And illegal?

theft is usually illegal bruh

in terms of the actual law? yes

xp

that ted lucas album is cool

"in terms of the actual law? yes"

Is fair use is actually clear on this? Or have there been changes to the law in the past couple of years that have clarified? It's clearly illegal to sell the aformentioned CDs, but actually making them and giving them away I don't believe is settled law (regardless of the stance of the RIAA).

fair use by nature is not clear. it's a four tier test to determine if something reaches it. http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

like you could make a copy* for classroom use, only use it in the classroom, and you'd be okay. making a copy of a cd and giving it to a friend? much less ok when it comes to fair use.

*as long as the original album was purchased legitimately

Right, but I don't think there is a law on the books that allows for prosecution of a person for burning a CD and giving away (now obviously if you burn a WHOLE ton of CDs and give them away that's a different matter.)

Man if you want some histrionics:

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2012/120619lowery

Right, but I don't think there is a law on the books that allows for prosecution of a person for burning a CD and giving away (now obviously if you burn a WHOLE ton of CDs and give them away that's a different matter.)

Well yeah. A single CD no big deal, a ton of CD's would be.

(10) You are a major part of the problem.

ned
YOU are part of the problem

how does that make u feel, as a man

Feels fuckin' AWESOME, bro.

Is the 'DJs post your mixes for download' thread currently in SNA illegal?

"I think the owner of the original can make backup"

i don't think this is legal, but have never heard of anyone getting hassled for it.
also those bmg/columbia house deals were probably just as bad for artists as spotify.

"i don't think this is legal, but have never heard of anyone getting hassled for it"

If you can find me a law I am happy to be proved wrong.

you can make a backup

you can't make a copy and give it to a bunch of people

Again what law is that breaking?

it has something to do with bypassing copy protection -- might be DMCA? there doesn't seem to be a minimum hurdle as to what constitutes copy protection so it makes every kind of copying illegal.

For example, if I am reading the No Electronic Theft act correctly (which I believe covers exactly this sort of case because no money is exchanging hands) in order to be in violation of that statute the copying needs to be exceed a retail value of $1000...

one ironic aspect of the DMCA thing is that if you develop some kind of nu-napster software with encryption to avoid the RIAA and RIAA dudes "infiltrate" your music-sharing club, you could theoretically sue them for breaking your encryption under the same law.

Again what law is that breaking?

If I stab you in the eye over and over again with a fork, technically, I am not breaking a law. There are no laws on the books I know of involving forks. I would probably get arrested though.

Title 17 of the US Code says that making a copy of an original work without the creator's consent is illegal--nothing specific about CD's as far as I know, but still illegal.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/501

"If I stab you in the eye over and over again with a fork, technically, I am not breaking a law."

Uh no "technically" you are breaking any one of a number of laws. And yes you would definitely get arrested.

I don't see that title 17 applies in the case of personally making a copy of a CD you own and giving it to another person (RIAA would say otherwise but again I am not concerned with their reading of copyright, but rather how laws are actually enforced). If you have legal precedent which indicates otherwise I would gladly read it.

I don't think you're reading my posts. Go back and read them. You could make a backup. You could make a single copy, give it someone, and you'd probably be okay. I am not suggesting otherwise. If you made a bunch of copies and started giving them away, you would probably get sued.

there may not be legal precedent, because it's possible that no one has ever taken a bunch of cd's and copied them and given them away and then gotten sued for it. this doesn't mean that doing that isn't against the law though.

if giving them to five people is against the law, why wouldn't just giving it to one person be against the law? CDs don't usually come with a "for you and (1) pal" license (except maybe those cool vinyl releases that come with a bonus CD)

xxp Okay all of this was in the context of the original Emily White article wherein she said that a lot of her music was obtained via people copying songs on her iPod or whatever. People seemed to be making the claim that this was exactly = downloading a mess of music from the web and clearly illegal. I pointed out it isn't same and it may very well not even be against the law at all.

"If I stab you in the eye over and over again with a fork, technically, I am not breaking a law."

Uh no "technically" you are breaking any one of a number of laws. And yes you would definitely get arrested.

haha seriously what the hell even is this argument

forks

people downloading forks

"if giving them to five people is against the law"

Is it? Really? I mean the operative word here is "give" and the threshold as I understand is a retail loss in excess of $1,000.

people downloading forks

― Mr. Que, Thursday, June 21, 2012 4:36 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

uh oh th' tofu hut is in trouble

Cracker's lead singer and songwriter, David Lowery, has posted his most recent statements from various media on The Trichordist, reporting a mere $16.89 profit from more than 1 million Pandora plays. He said that amount is less than he makes from selling a T-shirt.
Lowery went on to specify that the $16.89 was his 40 percent cut as a songwriter, and he actually made a little more (but not much) in performer royalties. The artist also encouraged other songwriters to post their royalty statements in order to "show the world just how terrible webcasting rates are for songwriters."

Point:

http://www.salon.com/2013/12/04/david_lowery_silicon_valley_must_be_stopped_or_creativity_will_be_destroyed/

Counterpoint:

http://www.salon.com/2013/12/12/dave_allen_stop_blaming_the_internet_it_has_always_been_hard_for_musicians/

Countercounterpoint: Lowery has already responded in comments to that second piece.

Conclusion: STARTING NOT TO GIVE A FUCK which is a bad idea but Jesus H.

Has Lowery or anybody else arguing something similar made a case for what they think a good streaming rate would be? Because if there was some sort of reasonable consensus about that, then the question would be what kind of business model could be developed that would pay that amount.

I'm otherwise sympathetic to Allen's argument that current businesses like Spotify or Youtube already exist, do operate legally, and that someone who has made hundreds or thousands or millions of dollars from tons and tons of streams is probably not too unhappy about it.

That would tend to follow...

I don't need to read the Dave Allen piece to know that "It has always been hard for musicians" is a pretty stupid idea for an article.

That would tend to follow...

I guess the point being that it's a different business model and that someone making a lot of money from it now might be less inclined to compare it to what their income might conceivably be if their viral hit had been accomplished through the distribution of a physical medium.

x-post-- I skimmed the Allen piece, and read something earlier this year he had on his blog. He admits to once being anti-Spotify, but his current position is that artists only have themselves and their labels to blame if they don't like the rate that Spotify is paying them. As if some unknown band can dictate the same rate as Taylor Swift. Eh. Plus he contends sorta that since artists post stuff on Youtube they should not complain about Spotify. Perhaps I am missing something in his response to Lowery's we're doomed stance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/business/media/david-lowery-sues-spotify-for-copyright-infringement.html