what happens if SOPA passes?

how about you take that time to think about why it makes no sense to say that things that are hugely prevalent in daily life are difficult to profit off of

it is difficult to measure and capture the true economic value of things that are 1. available freely on some level and 2. are hugely prevalent. w/ music not only are those two things true, they are both increasingly true. what's wrong with that statement?

i think bottled water is the classic example people tend to use in this situation but there are about a dozen others if that doesn't fit the bill

"What makes this "real theft" vs "virtual theft"?"

oh yeah i just meant concrete objects like dvds and cds and non-concrete objects like mp3s. i don't consider mp3s real things.

i don't consider mp3s real things.

this is 99% of the problem facing the music industry right now

bottled water = paying $30 for a tshirt or picture book just to get the music attached

come on that totally works

the bottled water industry created a new need for 'water in bottles'. people consider 'water in bottles' to be something different from 'tap water not in bottles'. if the music industry wants to create a physical product w/ limited availablity and sell it as something 'different' from other music then yes, they can make bottled water money. you can argue this is already what the market looks like.

the bottled water industry created a new need for 'water in bottles'. people consider 'water in bottles' to be something different from 'tap water not in bottles'. if the music industry wants to create a physical product w/ limited availablity and sell it as something 'different' from other music then yes, they can make bottled water money. you can argue this is already what the market looks like.

― iatee, Tuesday, January 17, 2012 2:43 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This argument seems self-justifying though. All this boils down to is, "people don't want to pay for mp3s because they can get the exact same thing for free" -- which is not really something anyone here is arguing with.

oh yeah i just meant concrete objects like dvds and cds and non-concrete objects like mp3s. i don't consider mp3s real things.

― scott seward, Tuesday, January 17, 2012 2:41 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yeah but the concrete objects themselves aren't being "stolen." The bootleggers are the ones making the objects.

seward is the one guy who DOES believe in unicorns but not mp3s

yeah, just like phone companies has never found a way to profit off of peoples' desire to talk to each other

at least until "the era of the MagicJack"

This argument seems self-justifying though. All this boils down to is, "people don't want to pay for mp3s because they can get the exact same thing for free" -- which is not really something anyone here is arguing with.

people shouldn't want to pay $1 for an mp3 because that's not the value of a song for yr average consumer in 2012. and that wouldn't be for most music, even in a world where straight piracy had been 100% cracked down on. the total quantity of music continues to increase and it costs less and less to distribute it. it's p much impossible to figure out 'the value of one song' in this situation, but we prob can have a debate on how much we value music as a society and how much we think should be made and how a gov't could best subsidize the industry.

i see a difference between making thousands of physical copies of stolen material, like a fake handbag or a dvd, and an MP3. i can't help it. maybe its just too soon. an MP3 is basically a new product. like a record was a hundred years ago. people have to get used to the idea that something is worth paying for.

when iTunes introduced the 99 cent song pricing point (like, what, 7 years ago?) it was looked at as a pretty good deal, especially since it was so impossible to buy most songs as a single serving apart from parent albums before that. a lot has changed about the perception of that price since then (and of course the price for some songs went up a bit), but i really think it's more about perception than anything inherent about the 'value' of that song/file or the strength of the dollar or whatever.

perception and value aren't different things!

the economics of pricing music have always been weird. I remember reading that all the goofy "subsections" in the tracklisting of In the Court of the Crimson King were done just to get more royalties as apparently you don't get much for writing "only 5 songs". iTunes and Amazon will still price an hour-long, 7-track album at $6.93 and a half-half, 10-track one at $9.90

i liked the allofmp3 system of just paying per megabyte

then again if you start charging for albums based on length then everything will be like the 90's R. Kelly era where every release is 78-79 minutes long.

especially since it was so impossible to buy most songs as a single serving apart from parent albums before that.

That's pretty much where the music industry started digging its own grave. Majors stopped manufacturing/selling singles in the 90s, so you had to buy an $18 CD for the one song you wanted. File sharing started as "I just want this one song" rather than "I want artists' entire discographies."

it still makes me mad! i loved buying singles. i bought them all the time. i've never bought an MP3 single.

i still understand why they had to do it. you can't charge $3.99 for a half hour cd single and $18.99 for a half hour album. it looked bad.

Yeah, I used to buy singles too. I think I have a few CD singles that are longer than some albums (Yo La Tengo's "Upside-Down" springs to mind -- one of its "b-sides" is 24 minutes long).

how come the price of gas suddenly goes up and then never comes down they should do that with mp3s

what would have happened if the major labels had cut their advertising budgets by half and started putting out five dollar CDs? i would own a LOT of CDs if they had done that.

Speaking of gas, lets remember that iatee is in favor of jailing all automobile owners rather than actually working towards an effective topdown solution that reverses decades of planning America around those very same automobiles, so grain of salt in all.

In other words, like the car argument we all come from the same place but iatee takes a really different route than everyone else.

ya and a train takes me there

what would have happened if the major labels had cut their advertising budgets by half and started putting out five dollar CDs? i would own a LOT of CDs if they had done that.

Starting in the late 80s, it cost less to manufacture a CD than an LP, but CDs were sold at nearly double the price of LPs. Since sales kept rising (more people buying more affordable CD players, yuppies replacing their LPs with CDs), they didn't see any reason to lower prices. At one point, majors tried to mount a campaign against used CD stores, but nothing really came of it, and sales were still healthy, so why bother?

i wonder if the cd was to the music industry what the suv was to the car industry

http://ailicontinifield.com/projects/akbar_and_jeff/images/compact_disk_hut.jpg

I've never bought a mp3 and I've had an itunes card that was a gift for awhile now. I don't know what to do it with. I see mp3s as a transitional copy of music. If someone gives me mp3s of a record, I'm either going to seek the actual record out or I will eventually discard the mp3s. Even the mps I have on my computer are transitional and never stay for more than a year. But I'm guilty of what this bill is aimed at. I copy my records and share them with people. I've never thought that I am stealing, maybe I am. But I've never thought that owning a mp3 is really "owning" anything. But I feel like my records are mine.

was there a time when they were called compact disks instead of compact discs, or is that life in hell comic just wrong?

if it gets too risky for you guys to download files cuz of a new law or something i can hook you up. come by any time. ilxor discount.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/405487_10150547137427137_686202136_8958683_295480582_n.jpg

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/407584_10150547139562137_686202136_8958691_1342874711_n.jpg

s'opa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hve9QES_ICM

Hey scott can I send you a wish list?

was there a time when they were called compact disks instead of compact discs, or is that life in hell comic just wrong?

I seem to remember the "disk" spelling being part of NYTimes style throughout the 80s and into the early 90s. And for a brief period, the Times was referring to them as "compact disk albums."

i'm envisioning a Variety headline: SONY SOUR AS SCOTUS SCUTTLES SOPA!

yes, jacob, sure, why not, you never know......................

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_of_disc

Disk and disc are the two alternative spellings of the descriptive word for things of a generally thin and circular geometry. These variations are due to the way in which the words originated. The discussion here somewhat focuses on Disk storage as an Electronic media. Generally in Computer terminology, disk refers to Magnetic storage while disc refers to Optical storage.

omg i had completely internalized this distinction w/ realizing it

we takin' over

w/out realizing i mean obv

"hard disk" and "compact disc" look and feel completely natural. "hard disc" and "compact disk", not.

wake up sheeple

Taxing the internet is pretty much the opposite of commerce. It's a solution proposed by people who imo don't understand what encourages content production and distribution – at its distant logical conclusion (i.e. a dystopian world in which all content is free and everyone 'subscribes' to everything via an internet tax) what you're doing is basically just handing a load of people some money to vaguely make some stuff, with no financial incentive for that stuff to be good. At least with subscription television (the closest analogue I can come up with) there is some incentive to provide quality/value so that people keep subscribing. All this is in my opinion, in my opinion, in my opinion.

Also in my opinion, piracy absolutely needs to be reigned in, but there's no getting rid of piracy altogether. That has never been possible and it never will be. I think the content industries know that, but it's a convenient scapegoat for them to take to govts worldwide in order to get the SOPA-like protectionism that they will actually need if they want to continue operating for another n decades in their current bloated forms, maintaining artificial scarcity, geoblocking the world &c.

btw DJP's photocopying (and therefore scanning) analogy is u+k, principally imo because it indicates that people will always pay handsomely for the same content if it's of higher quality and easier to obtain. The whole 'you can't compete with free' argument is bullshit.

"financial incentive" does not equal "good music"

people will always pay handsomely for the same content if it's of higher quality and easier to obtain

pretty sure the last decade does not bear this out wtf

ie MP3s sound like shit

not anymore!

pretty sure the last decade does not bear this out wtf

― “How you like that, Mr. Hitler!” (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 18 January 2012 09:42 (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ie MP3s sound like shit

― “How you like that, Mr. Hitler!” (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 18 January 2012 09:42 (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

256 kbps one-click iTunes download is superior to a set of 96 kbps files you found on the third torrent site you tried that day

Taxing the internet is pretty much the opposite of commerce. It's a solution proposed by people who imo don't understand what encourages content production and distribution – at its distant logical conclusion (i.e. a dystopian world in which all content is free and everyone 'subscribes' to everything via an internet tax) what you're doing is basically just handing a load of people some money to vaguely make some stuff, with no financial incentive for that stuff to be good. At least with subscription television (the closest analogue I can come up with) there is some incentive to provide quality/value so that people keep subscribing. All this is in my opinion, in my opinion, in my opinion.

ideally the music downloaded or "subscribed to" would be tracked and money paid out accordingly

obviously this is not going to happen for a very long time given how much legislation is in place already, but it's not like I'm suggesting we give the big three several million in tax money and tell them to find another Justin Bieber

Digital file music actually added a lot of value compared to what came before! I mean you have shuffle, you have cloud storage, streaming through services like spotify, you can play them on really tiny players that don't skip if you jump up and down a lot, etc.

256 kbps one-click iTunes download is superior to a set of 96 kbps files you found on the third torrent site you tried that day

― Autumn Almanac (Schlafsack), Tuesday, January 17, 2012 2:52 PM (46 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

sure and wines taste different lol

That's pretty much where the music industry started digging its own grave

Nah, the industry started digging its own grave when CDs replaced LPs. Digital copies of anything = easy to copy and distribute for free.

At least with subscription television (the closest analogue I can come up with) there is some incentive to provide quality/value so that people keep subscribing. All this is in my opinion, in my opinion, in my opinion.

i think the incentive for cable tv channels is "pls god let us be put into a basic package with espn" :/