Are there any threads discussing the ehtics of downloading music?

My father is a Union Man. It is the American Federation of Musicians, not the Teamsters, but it is a Union. He makes his living playing the guitar and so far my life has been pretty damned good because of it. I got my Card back in September, even though I have no intention of making it my life's work. But he has. And his pension is funded through the sale of those recordings he has worked on. Mind you, he would never rely on such to pay for his golden years - but many are not as lucky - or employed - as my father. The debate about stealing music is not necessarily about the stars. It is about the working men and women who play the sessions and gig as sidemen for your entertainment. What they do each time they pick up an instrument is earn the money to feed and house their families, invest in their future and raise their family.

So, if you steal from them - do you also steal from your grocer? Do you fill your tank and then drive off without paying? I know many still stiff their waiter – thinking they are paid plenty for the work they do – even though any moron knows damn few waiters in this country are paid even minimum wage and rarely get 40 hours a week. I’m just interested in what justification File Sharing junkies have for their theft. And don’t blame the record companies – if you see the inequity in the situation, and still steal what little money is going to the artists – then you have to rationalize your contempt for them, not the faceless Corporation that is complicit in your larceny.

And to add fuel to the fire – I present the unlikeliest of hero – Ms. Courtney Love - who has finally put together an idea worthy of this debate.
http://www.jdray.com/Daviews/courtney.html

go tell it to your blog

cunt.

that's not the same at all, i realize, but it was fun to say.

name-calling narc!

In the end, if there's a living to be made from playing music then people will make it. If there isn't then that's sad but it wouldn't be the first trade to become obsolete or suffer massive redundancies. Courtney Love's article above is perceptive, but she really ought to realise that Capitalism is based on making profit from other people's toil. If you're not satisfied with your job, you're free to find another one. But I don't see any sudden shortage of people who want to be pro musicians.

Perhaps the music industry is just the teeniest bit obsolete? Perhaps they've been flying high on inflated profits for decades and it's time to get back to reality? Just something to consider.

"People used to be able to make a living whaling, too." The music industry argues that it needs to recover costs. We can't see, say, Aimee Mann's tax returns, but she seems to be "making a living" outside the hype machine. Would (again e.g.) Mariah Carey be raking in millions without the popstar industry marketing the hell out of her? And not that she probably doesn't work hard, but she does it in a lot more comfortable conditions than Aimee Mann. Would she still want to be a musician under AM's conditions?

There are two mindsets, I think. That artists get huge because they are "good" - either in terms of their "art" or their ability to "reach" large numbers of people. Or that artists get huge largely on the basis of industry support. Downloading will have different effects depending on which way you think things work.

I think.

I think that 7% referred not to industry revenues but units sold (US albums, specifically: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4566186.stm

2. is there a moral justification for downloading/piracy? no. of course there isn't. there is also no moral justification for driving an SUV, for sending your children to private school, for lying and cheating to make a fast buck (or, for that matter, a fast fuck), for the appalling over-consumption of the capitalist west ... the list goes on. these, i would argue, are more pressing concerns. once we've worked out a way to stop people being selfish cunts who will grab everything they can get their mucky little hands on, then we can address music piracy. it's currently about #234,386,334 on the list.

3. the music industry - hell, the entire entertainment industry - is still working on a 1970s-style bandwagon model. it needs a vast, vast kick up the arse. i'm astonished it's taken it so long to cotton on to the downloading "threat" at all.

4. er, that's it.

-- Mark (r-...), January 2nd, 2006.

That would be a good analogy, except that Authors get money every time the book is borrowed, and of course the library pays for the copies too. My sister is an author and she ends up getting about £500 a year just from 10p everytime someone takes one of her books out of the library. And all of that money goes straight to her, which is pretty positive. I'd love to see a simular system set up for downloading.

Downloading has the potential to bring more money to musicians not less it's just most people are too fucking stupid to see how it could work.

It's like watching thousands of rich people trying to erect a desk without an instruction manual.

Oh god, not that hackneyed old cliché again.

is this true in the US? I've never heard of such a thing.

So why should the customer pay $1/song [or more!] on iTunes? How does that begin to make sense? If anything, it smells like a way for the industry to make even more money while drastically eliminating the need for local distribution models, aka music stores and their clerks.

-- jhoshea (totalwizar...), January 2nd, 2006.

I don't wanna waste my good clichés on you.

Downloading single tracks is good for music because it works again the labels' hit compilation practice, which is killing music.

As for downloading albums, if I download an entire album and like it, then I will more or less always buy the album.

No, in the U.S. libraries benefit from the "right of first-sale," which allows individuals to do what they want with a purchased item: sell it, lend it, copy it, etc.

My question has never been about the industry – I purposely attached the Love diatribe in order to show there is an artist friendly delivery stream in the offing. But no artist deserves to have their work stolen. So far the consensus seems to be that it is easy, relatively risk free and therefore OK. How sad that the moral compass skews so righteously against the creative and yet all this energy has yet to be directed at how to steal from the robber barons of Oil, Electricity or Orange Juice.

so much more than what? blank media and recording devices are ridiculously cheap! and often made by the exact same companies, e.g. sony, that are complaining about them!

There was a time in the not so distant past when people's concept of ownership wasn't the driving force in artistry. Musicians have ALWAYS made their coin by touring, musicians always WILL.

I've yet to meet a singer, session musician or songwriter who is anti-downloading. I've met plenty of industry types who are, though.

i'm not against the creative. i'm against the jerks that the creative get involved with to sell their wares.

[N]o artist deserves to have their work stolen.

I completely agree with this, but I wonder what effect it would have on musicians as a whole. Would there be a significant number of them who would believe that that selling their music would no longer be financially feasible (regardless of its truth)? Would it hurt the art form as a whole?

Much more than they need. US copyright law directs a set royalty be paid to the companies whose copyright may be violated by those who purchase such products.

Another question: Would anyone give a crap about MIA, Lady Sovereign or lots of other stuff from the UK if it hadn't been peddled by a label with a significant promotional budget and just put up for download as Lady anybodies on Myspace?

Venturing a guess -- No, because the signal to noise ratio is too high on the latter level.

xpost to Marc

It's a thought that has popped into the head of many. I hear the beer is really cheap in Bulgaria and Rumania.

But could purchasers who might have liked the tracks been taking for free rather than buying them down WalMart? Maybe, except the only album in the last three months of the year to spend more than a single week at the top of the chart was Eminem's Greatest Hits. So, the most successful album comprised almost entirely of tracks you could pick up off the first incarnation of Napster, and which would already have been in most fan's possessions one way or another. It all suggests people will buy decent stuff they already own if the package is right, but have no intention of shelling out for substandard stuff they don't already have.

Have you never dreamed of living in a record store, able to listen to whatever you want whenever you want? Someday that will be possible for me, and it'll fit in a tiny box inside my computer.

Perhaps in doing so I have done something unethical. But at the same time, I spend about $400/month on cds/shows/etc. I evangelize and proselytze for my favorite acts, and styles, and eras.

And you know, if I couldn't download stuff to listen to, I wouldn't have legitimately purchased all those scores of records. I probably wouldn't be spending my cash on Eddie Gale records because I wouldn't know who he was. I wouldn't be digging on my Archie Shepp vinyl because I probably wouldn't even have a record player, which I purchased so that I could buy the albums I couldn't find on cd.

Now I also have downloaded a number of albums that I absolutely adore, and yet would never go to the store and pay for them. Why? Well, I prefer my music to be mp3 or vinyl. CDs are a waste of space, and offer none of the peculiar charms (inefficiencies?) of vinyl, tapes, 8-tracks, etc. I don't want to buy a CD that I have no place for in my life.

As a side note, imagine if all the critics didn't get free CDs with which to sell to acquire other CDs of interest. Imagine how many albums have only come to light because some guy sold three copies of Kidz Bop to acquire them? Not saying that it's wrong or even comparable, just interesting.

Nope. Because the pleasure of visiting a record store isn't duplicated by sitting in front of a computer, no matter how bloated the hardware.

I evangelize and proselytze for my favorite acts, and styles, and eras.

Sure.

Well, I prefer my music to be mp3 or vinyl. CDs are a waste of space, and offer none of the peculiar charms (inefficiencies?) of vinyl, tapes, 8-tracks, etc. I don't want to buy a CD that I have no place for in my life.

If you're trying to be logical, this makes no sense. As neurotic idiosyncracy, OK.

As a side note, imagine if all the critics didn't get free CDs with which to sell to acquire other CDs of interest.

Amateur.

no it's not. promos are not considered saleable goods. hence, being ppromos.

If you knew that every time you illegally downloaded an MP3 a kitten (somewhere on earth) would die, would you still do it?

# of ugly kittens in world / total # of kittens in world = probability of offing an ugly kitten

Because it's not that complicated. Reading The Ethicist in the New York Times Sunday Mag for awhile and you get the idea what he's going to tell you.

For example, "Dear Ethicist: I download pirated music every day because I can and I want to accumulate the equivalent of a record store in my computer. But I'm a rock and roll preacher, a proselytizer for the music. That's good right?"

Answer: No, you're rationalizing that stealing their music is OK because you SAY you're a booster for them with the implication that
you're cheerleading benefits the band as much or more than simply
buying their CDs."

Yes.

Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun wrote (somewhat obliquely) in 1985

One reason of which...1985 and Harry Blackmun wasn't thinking about the existence of a virtual thing placed in cybserspace which could be downloaded and immediately converted into a material -- a very physical thing.

an old story from the LA Weekly about life for most bands on major labels, using the example of Mary's Danish (remember them):
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/99/18/music-pearson.shtml

i am definitely more likely to buy something on an indie label than i am on a major, though.

CLOSE SHOT A WHISKEY TUMBLER

That sits on an oak side bar under a glowing green bankers
lamp, as two ice cubes are dropped in. From elsewhere in
the room:

Man (off)
I'm talkin' about friendship. I'm talkin' about
character. I'm talkin' about--hell, Leo, I ain't
embarassed to use the word--I'm talkin' about
ethics.

Whiskey is poured into the tumbler, filling it almost to
the rim, as the offscreen man continues.

. . . You know I'm a sporting man. I like to
make the occasional bet. But I ain't that
sporting.

THE SPEAKER

A balding middle-aged man with a round, open face. He
still wears his overcoat and sits in a leather chair in the
dark room, illuminated by the offscreen glow of a desk
lamp. This is Johnny Caspar.

Behind him stands another man, harder looking, wearing an
overcoat and hat and holding another hat--presumably
Caspar's. This is Bluepoiont Vance.

Caspar (cont'd)
When I fix a fight, say--if I pay a three-to-one
favorite to throw a goddamn fight--I figure I got
a right to expect that fight to go off at three-
to-one. But every time I lay a bet with this
sonofabitch Bernie Bernheim, before I know it the
odds is even up--or worse, I'm betting the short
money. . .

Behind Caspar we hear the clink of ice in the tumbler and a
figure emerges from the shadows, walking away from the
glowing bar in the backgound.

. . . The sheeny knows I like sure things. He's
selling the information I fixed the fight. Out-
of-town money comes pourin' in. The odds go
straight to hell. I don't know who he's sellin'
it to, maybe the Los Angeles combine, I don't
know. The point is, Bernie ain't satisfied with
the honest dollar he can make off the vig. He
ain't satisfied with the business I do on his
book. He's sellin' tips on how I bet, and that
means part of the payoff that should be ridin' on
my hip is ridin' on someone else's. So back we
go to these questions--friendship, character,
ethics.

xpost
Yes, as Blackmun observes, downloading is materially different from stealing physical cd's, yes, clearly. But the definition of "stealing" is sufficiently broad to encompass cases in which the original owner is not deprived of the use of some thing the person stealing has appropriated. (By the way--"theft" also, as it is defined simply as "an act or instance of stealing".) Again, avail yourself of a dictionary, or simply define things as you please to protect yourself from the consequences of doing so. The tendency of some on this thread to treat "infringing copyright" and "stealing" as mutually exclusive is arbitrary and self-serving.

Or do labels chage their deals with artists after the fact ? Ha-ha. "Sorry guys we didn't recoup because of illegal downloads so you get nada". Some would argue that it might eventually discourage them from investing in artist development - if they are stupid enough to really believe massive downloads are their only problem. I doubt they are and I think they stopped doing that before the Internet already.

Agreed. It happens slowly.

The others are listening to and sharing private, below-industry-standards lossy audio files. Not the same product and little harm done, we've heard how it encourages promotion.

I'm skeptical it's great for promotion but go with what you're saying.
My view is it's the same mentality at work as with the teenage software pirates of the Eighties. These people were never going to buy copies even if deprived of their warez, so calling it lost sales
stretches it.

Then the question becomes "how do you promote/choose from myriads of artists on a largely decentralized network ?".

Now there's the question no one has been able to answer. If anything, it's trending in the opposite direction, that is the abundance and multiplication of "items" makes it fruitless labor to locate something unless you already know its name.

Never going to happen. It will just be different flavors of the same old same old. Exponential growth of "items" and the subjective nature of description of music, and the general way it is poorly done by people who think maximization of hits and commerce first, guarantee it.

For decades I've shopped in record stores. Much of it is devoted to speculative buys. In a store, even with a really big catalog -- like Amoeba -- I can find something that is almost always guaranteed to be something I'll like, because I know it when I see it. Computerized list-making and sorting with catalogs of "items" orders of magnitude larger have never come close to making the same approach realistically manageable. Plus, I've never been much impressed by cross-linking, if you liked this or downloaded this, then you are sure to like [this] approach.

George the Animal Steele OTM indeed.

GTAS - What does "I know it when I see it" mean? Do you mean you buy music based on the packaging? You can' honestly believe that this is a better way to find new music that you will like, can you? I mean, I've definitely picked a bunch of records out to LISTEN to (at a DJ store) based on their cover art, but I am, more often than not, totally off-base with my mental prediction.

And I think that the reason these systems aren't open-source/free is that they have to have a big back-end setup behind them to stream all the music, etc. The player and the plugin are available.

Only partly kidding.

Heh. Now there's a bushel of flies in the ointment. It's hard enough for me to keep my own resources productive.

It's hilarious to watch all these people talk about copyright law when they have absolutely no idea what the law even is.

If you're going to pretend you know what you're talking about, at least try to cite some legal sources.