The difference between piracy and theft
dp | 04.02.2007 15:58 | Culture | Technology
CDs always only cost a few pence to produce, but until file-sharing became wide-spread they were always sold for £15 in the UK, $10 in the US. That hefty mark-up was the same for Sony BMG CDs, for EMI CDs, for Vivendi Universal CDs and for Warner Music CDs. No legal charges against this monopolistic, exploitative, price-fixing cartel were ever brought because governments protect business not citizens.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), (aka Sony BMG, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Warner Music), prosecuted a New York woman for piracy. She fought back and insisted on taking them in front of a jury. So they dropped charges against her and instead have went for her daughter and son who were 16 and 12 respectively at the time. Michelle is blaming the file-sharing company Kazaa for marketing that allowed her, with no computer knowledge, to think she could download freely. Bobby Santangelo is demanding trial by jury.
Bobby points out that Edgar Bronfman, chairman and CEO of the Warner Music Group, recently admitted that his own children 'stole' music but that he 'dealt with it within the family' by reprimanding them. That's a nice option compared to having your family bankrupted by a series of malicious lawsuits. The rich get richer only when the poor are cowed into submission. The Santangelo family, supported by the file-sharing community, prove if we take a stand, we can reverse the situation.
http://p2pnet.net/story/11178
If you can afford a small donation to Bobby's court costs, remember it could be your kid next time: http://www.p2pnet.net/goliath/
Bill Gates, another rich as sin scourge of pirates, recently met with the President of Romania to promote his latest over-priced product. The President told him "Piracy helped the young generation discover computers. It set off the development of the IT industry in Romania and helped Romanians improve their creative capacity in the IT industry, which has become famous around the world... ten years ago, it was an investment in Romania's friendship with Microsoft and with Bill Gates."
Gates said nothing - no MicroShaft lawyers have contacted the Romanian goverment.
Bobby points out that Edgar Bronfman, chairman and CEO of the Warner Music Group, recently admitted that his own children 'stole' music but that he 'dealt with it within the family' by reprimanding them. That's a nice option compared to having your family bankrupted by a series of malicious lawsuits. The rich get richer only when the poor are cowed into submission. The Santangelo family, supported by the file-sharing community, prove if we take a stand, we can reverse the situation.
http://p2pnet.net/story/11178 If you can afford a small donation to Bobby's court costs, remember it could be your kid next time:
http://www.p2pnet.net/goliath/ Bill Gates, another rich as sin scourge of pirates, recently met with the President of Romania to promote his latest over-priced product. The President told him "Piracy helped the young generation discover computers. It set off the development of the IT industry in Romania and helped Romanians improve their creative capacity in the IT industry, which has become famous around the world... ten years ago, it was an investment in Romania's friendship with Microsoft and with Bill Gates."
Gates said nothing - no MicroShaft lawyers have contacted the Romanian goverment.
dp
Comments
Hide the following 38 comments
Time Linux
04.02.2007 16:12
Handsup
theft, piracy, whatever you call it
04.02.2007 16:24
CDs themselves may well cost only a few pence to make ... true, but you're being economical with the truth if you think that's the only cost.
You may think Microsoft products are overpriced - simple answer ... don't buy them.
sceptic
We Dont
04.02.2007 17:56
...
Artifical Scarcity
04.02.2007 19:30
This is not good for capitalism, so billions are spent to create artifical scarcity, while millions starve to death and the richest 2% of the population own 95% of the worlds wealth, it's a sick system.
Linux, and it's the manner in which it is produced rather then the result that is of most importance, does provide an alternative -- the Free software mode of production, this basically involves everyone doing what they want and making everything they produce available for free.
The Free software mode of production has many precedents but it appears to be the best example of a post-capitalist mode of production to emerge so far.
More info on this kind of stuff:
Raoul Victor's article is good:
Free Software and Market Relations
freedom
Stealing from the richest man in history
04.02.2007 20:54
I like
As for downloading music, it'll take me years to download the value of music that I've already been over-charged for. And since I have no assets to sue or fine and the prisons are full, they could sue every sharer and I'd keep sharing.
dp
Theft is still theft
04.02.2007 21:48
And whilst digital products may be cheap in themselves, the work that went into making them may not be.
sceptic
sceptic
04.02.2007 21:51
Handsup
dp
04.02.2007 21:53
Sick of windows
Pirates they be
04.02.2007 23:00
The permit or marque only allowed the holder to plunder the cargoes of the Kings enemies but this was something akin to "honour amongst theives".
They flew the Skull and cross bones which appears to be have been rather special to them and still is to members of the Skull and Bones possee including the George Bushes.
Being called a pirate for down loading an MP3 from someone who claims to be within his rights to allow you
to do this would seem to be some what out of order.
Having said that i am totally up for plagarising these corporate pirates.
The music business is a total rip off a lot of the old blues tunes that were written in the 1940's and 50's were
basically copied by copied by white U.S and UK bands.
Once these songs were safely cataloged in some Music lawyers collection anyone who published anything remotely like the track was instantly landed an injunction demanding all the rights to the song if not they
would not be allowed to release it. Pity that some of the poor black guys who had their music ripped off
by the likes of Derek Clapped out and co' did not have high powered lawyers at their disposal when the white
super groups were making billions out of their music. Back in the fifties and sixties their music was called
"the dirty blues" and white people especially women were not allowed to listen to it.
In the seventies and eighties there were loads of bands around lot's of them writing their own music
all dreaming of getting a record deal and making to the top. But the music scene was changing and
the big lables didn't want to deal up with the artists any more (A an R) they preferred to deal with people like Pete Waterman who constructed his own bands, the producer would think up a name and work out style and then go and get "off the peg" artists to play bit parts and so the Boy Bands.
The producer got all the rights and a hefty chunk of the royalties and the band were paid wages one wrong move and they were booted out, was it Brian from E17 found out when he mentioned that he took E.
It was also practically the end of song writing bands.
So where are we today MTTV (empty TV) playing mainly RAP/Pop track tracks nothing better than adverts for BMW and Mercedes (beamer and the benz) and a whole series of sports wear covered in masonic logo's.
Not only has the music industry stolen our music it's main purpose these days seems to be to promote
the consumebot capitalist life style that we are now stuck with.
The Luther Blissett project was a form of a protest about copyright laws, amongst other things and Luther Blissett has had a lot to say on copyright just recently on You tube ... Now owned by Murdog !!!
Capt Bob
dual-boot
04.02.2007 23:38
Sceptic, yes, I steal from rich people - you think I'm going to hell for that ? See you there.
dp
How rich do they have to be?
05.02.2007 00:09
I get royalties from a book I wrote. Not much - certainly doesn't cover the time and effort spent writing it. Now, you might say, the publishers of this are rich bastards, so I'll nick this. Well, you're ripping off me too, and anyone else who writes a book, or a piece of music, or whatever.
You might rip off the 'rich corporations', but you're ripping off the artist too.
Does a lack of conscience absolve you from hell?
sceptic
har
05.02.2007 00:12
Black beard
get it right
05.02.2007 01:06
frill
No fears
05.02.2007 01:10
I promise on my mothers life, I wouldn't ever scan in any of your books. I wouldn't even read them for more than a page. I wouldn't even quote you. If you weren't interrupting a serious conversation then I wouldn't even talk to you this much. I bet anything you copyrighted will safetly go unmolested to your grave with you as forgotten and unloved as you obviously are.
Now a great artist, someone with something worth repeating, that's different. Whether it is a minor artist like Banksy who sells for hundreds of thousands to Hollywood actresses and 'reluctantly' agrees copyright, or a great artist like Ani Difranco who only includes in her work the sentence 'Homecopying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing' or the shrewd free-software developers who contribute their time simply for a mention on the credits, or our sublime fellow contributors who contribute here daily Copyleft simply out of a sense of duty and compassion, well those folk are going to heaven.
dp
Curious ...
05.02.2007 09:22
sceptic
hobby
05.02.2007 10:40
filesharing, cd-ripping, cracking software is helping to undo intellectual property rights - and that is an amazingly good thing.
you may come with that garbage ' what about the artists?!', 'it's destroying the music industry!'
well into the dustbin with them, never to see the light of day ever again!
You have petty little ideas and general shit-for-brains.
remember those fucking stupid government adverts against copying films because it is 'funding organised crime, terrorism, blah blah blah'. ?
fuck you idiot!
anarcho-pirate
EgoBoo
05.02.2007 10:41
And sceptic, maybe not everyone has time for a hobby, but you certainly need one. Do I work for free ? Mostly I do, depends on the work. Teaching you is a full time job these days but I still find some time for other stuff.
dp
BUSINESS DEGREES ARE KILLING MUSIC!
05.02.2007 11:02
Pirates are generally despised by the warez people and seen as parasites and and a magnet to legal trouble.
Pirates are seen as as fair game, anything goes targets to warez people. Warez people have been known to grass pirates up without any feeling of hypocrisy.
Warez culture is all about providing free and unrestricted functional intellectual property to all. But most warez people do not condone people earning enough money to pay for the software carrying on using it.
There is a similar distinction with the warez people involved in music files. Albeit, their primary interest is to get a release, a pre-release and ultra rarities out there.
Think of warez culture like a cross between CB radio and fishing and you're are in the right direction.
These days, most music file sharing has nothing to do with either warez or piracy- irrespective of whether the first copy was released by a warez group. Which as an ex-warezer, I think is the coolest and funniest thing to have happened to the scene. P2P file sharing is about as un-elitist and pure as it gets. You share what you like and get what you like with no gatekeepers.
Steve Albini once wrote a rather sarcastic piece (for maximum rock'n'roll i believe) where he accurately shows what most recording artists actually earn.
And, hey let's not forget the old scam of putting more money on the debt tab to cover the "higher cost" of producing CDs.
I remember friends being signed to majors on development deals and being expected to sign on the dole to support themselves. Any longstanding readers of the music press may remember some labels being raided and fined in the early nineties.
I've known people who were signed to major subsidiaries and actually paid to release nothing for three years, so the company could stop the band eating into the marketing of another band. Mothballing.
In short, the days of record companies being driven by aficionados developing acts through a genuine enthusiasm for getting the music out to the public are long gone. Even the bigger independents these days make Richard Branson look like Frank Zappa.
Modern record companies are sausage factories manned by business and marketing graduates who know nothing about music or recording. In short, they are just throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks, and coating the shit with backhanders to DJs and journos to help it stick a bit better- buying "heavy rotation". They like to see themselves as Svengalis but in truth they are just chequebooks waiting for some exceptional artist to break the mould off their own back and create the next bandwagon, spawning an army of sound & lookalikes.
Smashy & Nicey's "punk with melody" was ironically prophetic.
So, basically, most artists see the square root of fuck all from their recording or publishing deals and can be dropped at a whim with no comeback. And a 'dropped' artist is treated like a social leper in the industry.
How much are you crying for the theft of music now?
If you care about the struggling artists that much, steal their music and send them a personal cheque. Better still, go to their shows and buy loads of merchandise (t-shirts etc.)- that's where the real money is for the majority.
Check who owns the artists label, and if it's a Major then steal it!
And I could write a whole book on the software scene and publishers' hypocrisy regarding proliferation and pricing and the marketing concept of 'zero purchase intent' knocking all their bullshit lost revenue statistics into a cocked hat.
One thing is for sure: despite the harsh legislation and the harsher still to come, if it can be stolen and shared on a network it will. In the spirit of the corporates' 'neoliberal philosophy' evolve or die!
BOYCOTT THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PIMPS!
3x-1337 \/\/4r3z 14g
Quality and loss
05.02.2007 11:31
I share CDs I've bought with strangers at < 192kbps - good enough to listen and enjoy, but a real music fan ( or posh folk with expensive hifi's ) would get their own copy to avoid the loss due to compression.
As for theft, I asked one artist and he laughed 'Don't worry - I've stolen every guitar riff I've ever used from previous guitarists'.
Filesharing promotes music. I wouldn't have heard of Ani Difranco if wasn't for a pirate tape, now I have bought almost every CD of hers, mostly at her gigs. She also proves you don't need a major label if you are a quality artist, she started her own label for $50 when she was 17.
Now Sony on the other hand, those bastards are where the open-software and free music arguments collide. Sony boobytrapped their CDs with a 'rootkit' designed to hijack the functions of your computer. They were exposed by an excellent freelance windows programmer called Mark Russinovich. He has since sold-out to Microsoft which is sad but never the less, never put a Sony CD in your own PC without checking on the net if it is 'rootkitted'.
dp
working for free
05.02.2007 11:38
sceptic
bored myself
05.02.2007 13:02
What rent ? I fuck your wife for money when I'm broke, more out of sympathy than financial need.
"Or do 'state benefits' cover that?"
State benefits don't cover squat, remember I can code and I am happy to steal from rich people when I can. I'm happy to take resources from this murderous state anyway although I'd need to live to be 200 hundred to get back what I've paid in tax. Given you don't don't have a job it seems typically hypocritical for you to try to sneer, and typical of you to try to turn this into a chat-forum. I've fallen into the trap of feeding th troll again haven't I ? Away and get some news, a hobby or a friend, 'it ain't me babe'.
dp
dp
05.02.2007 13:35
The cost of people stealing from their company whether through consumables, skimming or just simply wasting company time on the Internet is incalculable.
Needless to say, unless you are working in a collective or a publicly funded service, I thoroughly recommend it.
Perhaps, Sceptic is just the kind of "scum" that the CBI waste thousands reporting on.
\/\/4r3z
dp
05.02.2007 13:42
Handsup
Resorting to ..
05.02.2007 15:54
Working for free as a hobby - fine. But for many writers/artists/musicians, their work is their only means of income.
Now you may be happy stealing from the rich, but in stealing books/records etc, you're also stealing from the poor - the writers/artists/musicians.
sceptic
wrong
05.02.2007 20:38
lawyer
greed & worth
05.02.2007 22:01
buckys balls
lawyer on wrong track
05.02.2007 23:12
sceptic
Oh dear!
06.02.2007 00:26
Okay, my comment was a little bloated, I'll admit. But do please read the Steve Albini article I linked to before you proceed with that line of reasoning.
Most artists make next to nothing, usually any royalties that get to them will be mechanicals from gigs or radio play. Recording contracts are a con and publishing contracts are generally not much better.
Most record companies are parasites to varying degrees. From what I gather, the world of book publishing isn't much better for your average novelist- academic publishing is about as lucrative as vanity publishing for authors.
Intellectual property is theft! It's a classic example of capitalism stealing the means of production and creating wage slaves- except that most don't even get a living wage out of the deal.
If the company just covered the costs and shared the profits fairly, priced the products fairly, I'd agree with you. But the reality is they don't and Intellectual Property Law is just unbridled greed.
Did EMI go under as a result of the Philips Compact Cassette? Did classical musicians go bust as a result of the Fairlight CMI sampler? Did drummers die out as a result of Roland Drumatix? Did Metallica have to go live in a trailer park as a result of Napster?
Will music die as a result of P2P? Will the sky fall in? Will sex ever go out of fashion?
All this bleating and what is the reality? Massive corporations trying to hold back the tide of change and corporate IP lawyers creating straw men to litigate.
BOYCOTT THE PIMPS!
\/\/4r3z
Royalties
06.02.2007 09:07
I get paid a set percentage of the price of the book. Someone buys a copy; I get £x. That's the only money I make from the book.
At the moment, books are less vulnerable than music to digitisation. On the other hand, I could transform my book into a pdf file at the click of a mouse. If the pdf file then got onto the P2P networks, people would be able to download it for nothing. So why should they go into a bookshop and hand over money when, at another the click of a mouse, they could have it free?
Why should Intellectual Property Rights exist? Why should I have the right to copyright my book? Because it is the only protection I have against people like you.
Have you looked at the sales of CDs recently?
sceptic
Sceptic
06.02.2007 10:54
And that's just what Google threw up first.
You have no argument; you have an unresearched opinion.
I have to admit that I have never seen any market stalls brimming with e-books, palmpilot books and .txts. So, the only IP issue I can see with printed matter would be the issue of photocopying sections- which is chiefly a practice at schools and universities which really should be protected by 'fair use'.
So what's your point caller? You want to deny the use of your work for educational purposes? I'm confused.
I have to admit I have some stolen e-books on my drive. All of them I already own in the physical world (some I have bought more than once)- they make it easy to cut and paste quotes. Some of them I actually primarily downloaded for a blind guy I know so he could "read" some new stuff (using text to speech) without paying through the nose for way overpriced audiobooks- many more obscure titles from authors like Philip K Dick don't exist in any digital format legitimately.
I also have to confess that at Uni I'd occasionally go to an academic bookshop to copy down passages from expensive reference books to use in essays.
I guess that makes me Satan incarnate in the book world. I live in fear of the Publishing Police knocking my door down at 5am...
ALL CREATIVITY IS PLAGIARISM!
\/\/4r3z
Guillotine the Royalties
06.02.2007 11:44
Compare that to declining sales at Sony BMG may be better interpreted as consumers getting pissed off with poor children being prosecuted by heavy handed lawyers. Or legal purchasers being annoyed at having their computers bugged by big business and exposed to third-party hackers. Or consumers getting sick of being manipulated by companies like Sony who pay bribes to record stations and DJs to promote certain artists ( Sony was fined $10million for this two years ago). Or just everyone wise to being vastly overcharged for shoddy goods. Or frustrated at copyright being extended and extended to a century past the time of the artists death.
I don't mind paying an independent artist a fiver or more for a decent CD at a gig, I don't mind paying a bit extra to see the gig in the first place so that artists can survive without the maggot -middlemen. What I do mind is paying some corporation money to listen to a song from an artist who died before my parents were born.
And now I don't need to, I simply won't.
dp
Homepage:
http://emuleplus.info
Research
06.02.2007 12:31
Your next link, to the BBC, is dated 2003.
The one after is only two years old.
Your webwatch is three years old.
Not sure then of their releveance to 2007, given how fast things move in this field.
I'm well aware of the 'fair use' clause, and I don't have a problem with it. I don't think any author would.
That isn't the point, nor is the idea of market stalls particularly relevant. I thought we were talking P2P networks here.
I'm also aware of some of the heavy handed attempts at prosecution by some in the music industry, which were a PR disaster, as well as ineffective. However, just because you can't police something doesn't make it ethically valid.
All creativity is plagiarism. Discuss.
Well, first off, are you saying no one has ever had an original idea? You can, of course, quote Newton: 'standing on the shoulders of giants'. But no Newton, then the formulation of gravity would have taken a lot longer. I think you can say he was creative.
And from where did Beethoven plagirise his Ninth Symphony?
sceptic
real artists share; piss-artists exploit
06.02.2007 12:58
I am saying all thoughts that take more than 10 words to express are original ( read why Chomsky became such a famous semanticist if you need scientific proof ) but that no idea just 'happened'. Each idea was fed by ideas from the past, and copyright promotes intellectual starvation, and so exploitatation.
"You can, of course, quote Newton: 'standing on the shoulders of giants'. But no Newton, then the formulation of gravity would have taken a lot longer. I think you can say he was creative."
H was mad to the point of genuis rather han the other way around. And yet he never copyrighted his ideas. He gave them away. They were worth giving away.
"And from where did Beethoven plagirise his Ninth Symphony?"
Since you are interested, from European folk music and the preceding composers who stole from that tradition. And yet he never copyrighted his music. See the pattern yet ?
Nice spelling mistakes by the way, it all adds to my profile of you.
dp
dp the stalker
06.02.2007 13:45
Who'd want a profile of me?
And you're wrong.
Beethoven, like all other composers, had his scores published. The publisher would sell the printed score - rather like a book. Beethoven would receive money as a consequence. In those days, it might have been a flat fee, or royalties. If an orchestra wants to perform a piece of music still in copyright, then it has to pay a royalty.
And imagining that Beethoven used European folk music in his Ninth Symphony is frankly bizarre.
You could say that no written work is 'original' since it used words, and those words weren't invented by the author. But it's not the words - it's what you do with them ... and that's where the originality comes in.
sceptic
hi liar
06.02.2007 15:40
The waltz came from folk music, the originall 'dirty dancing'. Much of Beethovens tunes have similarly since been traced back or were openly aknowledged by himself if you'd car to read a book once in a blue moon.
"Beethoven would receive money as a consequence. In those days, it might have been a flat fee, or royalties."
No, just a flat fee in those days, there was no system of royalties. However, feel free to invent new histories or make things up when it suits your corpoarate masters since it only discredits you when you lie without proof.
Ah, it what you do with words that is original ? Well, you could propagandise in favour of business interests, rich bastards and government agencies, or you could choose to call that original. It certainly isn't big or clever and it has been done so many times before. The days of sell-out traitors like you is at an end. Today, we, the people have the technology. So complain away, I am just going to ignore you know.
dp
ignorance
06.02.2007 17:16
2. 'In Room 12 (at the end of the tour on the ground floor, to the right) there are three sections
devoted to Beethoven’s possible sources of income. One of his primary sources of income, if
not the most important of all, was the royalties which he received from his publishers'
see
Apology please? [Fat chance]
sceptic
sorry ?
06.02.2007 18:21
All European classical music evolved from European folk music - why are so down on that notion ? Peasants have rights too you know. Your corporate sponsors don't acknowledge that though - look at Starbcks campaign to prevent poor Ethiopians copyrighting their coffee brands.
dp
South Park, Metallica, and the end of Digital Rights
07.02.2007 18:39
In a recent magazine interview I saw with the makers of South Park, I read that they were more than happy that people downloaded their episodes off the internet. They were fully up for it. And in another article, it was claimed that the 'pirating' of japanese manga is the main cause of the economic success around the world of that form of animation. Lots of bands are now allowing downloads because it gets them noticed (if they are any good) and because it allows them to play gigs and sell merchandise (far more lucrative than selling CDs). Oh, and Metallica, the metal band behind suing Napster and against file sharing: they were actively encouraging their fans to tape record their music when they were a lot smaller. (Remember "Home recording is destroying the music industry" - Pah!)
'Piracy' allows talent to flourish. Digital rights and copyright make culture stagnate, allow the vested interests to create markets (marketing) and prevent new styles and interpretation (monopoly and copyright) from being heard by the majority of people who might enjoy them. The reason the recording industry is so against file sharing is not because it is losing lots of money, it is because 1) lawyers can make lots of money out of it, 2) they lose their total control of creating fads and markets, and this is a bit threat to a whole range of job types within the industry.
It is ridiculous that machines and software (the cumulation of thousands of years of mathematical and engineering knowledge) are now being used to prevent human discoveries from working properly. Think about Vista which actively disables parts of your hardware if you haven't got the correct codes or correct hardware, or the IPod that tries to stop you from being able to play your tracks in another machine. The sooner we get rid of Digital Rights Management (aka faulty by design) the better. Or we will end up with machines that have their functionality actually designed out of them!
Keep pirating!
Krop