ION BRITTON wrote:By reading the first post of yours I also want to ask you
I know some people argue that selling a used record also cuts out the artist from any profit but the truth is they received their deserved profit when the record was originally purchased.
Doesn't that deserved profit thing apply to the bands that have only a demo or a 7" put out 100 years ago and they see now their music being uploaded on the internet? What is it so different between sellers and uploaders on this case?
I honestly don't see the clear cut example of contradiction that you seem to....but as far as the above goes, yeah, if a band put out a demo or 7 inch 100 years ago and now it's being uploaded/downloaded for 1,000's of people to own, they should at the worst have knowledge and control and at the most be compensated monetarily.
If you are selling the single item, without any implied rights to the music or distribution beyond the one person who purchases it, no they should not.
Rockadelic wrote:
If you are selling the single item, without any implied rights to the music or distribution beyond the one person who purchases it, no they should not.
Sorry, I just cannot agree with this. If you can actually differentiate right from wrong then you will know that the significance of the 'crime' is the same whether it is commited by one person or 1000 people. Does it matter if I go alone and rob a bank or if I do it with five more accomplices? I'll be charged for the same offence both in the first and in the second case.
Good against Evil, Evil sure to win
"It really didn't matter if they liked it or not, i was going to give it to them straight down their throats" -John Stewart
Rockadelic wrote:
If you are selling the single item, without any implied rights to the music or distribution beyond the one person who purchases it, no they should not.
Sorry, I just cannot agree with this. If you can actually differentiate right from wrong then you will know that the significance of the 'crime' is the same whether it is commited by one person or 1000 people. Does it matter if I go alone and rob a bank or if I do it with five more accomplices? We'll be charged for the same offence both in the first and in the second case.
No....they produced and distributed the original item with the intent of an individual owning it.
I don't care what you're dealing with whether it's clothes, books, cars...you name it... if you find an existing item, like a 1945 Ford Sedan, and you sell it, you do not legally owe Ford Motor Company a cent.
If you reproduced the item in any way, and distribute it for profit or not, Ford can and probably will press charges and sue you into non-existance.
Last edited by Eskew Reeder on Wed Nov 17, 2010 2:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
ION BRITTON wrote:Please point me to the law that says that mp3s are reproductions of the original product and to which countries that law applies.
In the U.S. copyright, intellectual property and publishing laws protect against the unlawful reproduction and/or playing of music....period.
Certainly you understand that...why else do these things exist?
By the letter of the law, everytime a song is played at a strip club, on a jukebox, even by a live band....compensation should be made to the rightful owner.
What logic are you using to convince yourself that MP3's are exempt from this??.
I'm not trying to convince myself, but since I'm not an expert at legal matters I'm trying to find out what the law says.
Apparently, by the letter of the law most people are transgressors and what the vast majority did was simply stealing the bands. Probably over the years some bands have lost more money from illegal radio airplays, clubs and live bands than some mp3s that were shared online recently. I can't help but wonder if they had all actually sued each and every one of us who did any of those illegal activities how many people would still be interested in music.
Good against Evil, Evil sure to win
"It really didn't matter if they liked it or not, i was going to give it to them straight down their throats" -John Stewart
There are well known bands and artists that you wouldn't dare post up their material for free download for fear of certain legal retaliation.
Like most things in life, the rich and powerful get protection while the little dude gets screwed.
There are plenty of folks out there finding obscure artists, getting them involved re-releasing their music, posting up for free and sometimes even getting well paid.
These "unknowns" who's music you enjoy as much as Metallica should be getting recognition and share in the resurgence and appreciation of their music.
If your intent is to share great music that you think people will dig, it seems very selfish that if you succeed in making it popular, the band wouldn't even know about it.
MEXDefenderOfSteel wrote:from a HM musician point of view:
whats the point of releasing 1000 copies of my new CD if the "fans" will donwload it 2 months after its released...in that case its useless to print covers,make cds and pay for my expensive cover art....new pseudo metal generations are losing values here...
on a brighter side,my bandmates and i have discussed several times that finding your album on the internet is unavoidable,but its a good thing at least from the promotiong side, people is showing interest and it does feel good to be aware that people in far away countries at least listen to your music,at the end,thats the point of creating music in first place
we know we are not gonna live from our HM music,wheter is downloadable or not...but one thing is certain, claiming your are the real trve metalmaster for having tons and tons of "obscure"(my ass) mp3´s is a legit as being a doctor with a boot degree printed from the internet,that is a fact
This means that anyone who doesn't buy your CD is not allowed to listen to it.And anyone who brags of his mp3 collection,is as retarded as the ones who envies him.
As a general conclusion though,It's all about listening to this music in my opinion,not about "owning" or acquiring it.And I don't mean we shouldn't buy anything,by no means!I just feel that anyone who wants to listen to the music should do it and all those who want to buy it will.If you think that the ones who won't buy it shouldn't listen to it,it's against the law,put them all into jail for being illegal!The rights belong to the creator only,all the rest are for the labels to whine for losing money.Nobody liked what Metallica did with the Nero case but I can't see much difference to what you are talking about now.
it would be stupid to think that i dont want my music to be heard if they dont buy the cd, more stupid considering that i said im aware i wont live from making HM music...but im sorry if im no mother theresa to give away for free all the investment i have made,financially,intelectually,phisically,damn,even cancelled important events for the sake of my band and music...and still! i personally give away free stuff from my band (cds,shirts) when i truly find interest in my music from other people,maybe as passionate in metal as me...at the end of the day i need some kind of income to keep my band moving,part of it from selling my music and thats a fact for eveyr band...its also dififcult to have a similar opinion if you dont play in a serious band and/or run a label
personally i avoid downlaoding stuff unless its super undergound shit or music that that i know i will never pay hundreds for it simply because i dont have the money,and still i save for my most wanted items whether is cheap or not at all....my mp3 files last no longer than 2 months in my computer,simply because it such an empty feeling for me. i prefer having the music as it was intended to be heard in first place,meaning its original form or at least a legit and legal reissue....but oh well thats how sacred metal is for me and thats a very personal point of view
Rockadelic wrote:I ran a label for 20 years where, for the most part, I searched for unknown and in some cases unreleased music and made it available to the masses(300-1,000 people) while making sure the band got paid.
I stopped doing this a few years ago for a variety of reasons with one of them being the fact that within a week of releasing an LP it would appear for free download on various websites.
Just curious: how well did your releases sell? If you managed to sell most copies of a release of a certain artist, even though it appeared on a blog, do you still think that the posting of said album hurt your sales?
Also, do you think there's some correlation between the popularity of an album and the probability of it being posted online? Do albums that sell well get "ripped and blogged" more often, or is it the other way around?
As for tracking musicians:
I don't have the skills to track down people in the US. You who live in the US might find it easy, but for a foreigner it's not.
I had no idea it was such a large problem sharing music from bands no longer active, and who have no current label. I was actually believing, naive as I seem, that this would generate interest in the band's music, and with that interest, label owners (who know how to track band members down) might contact them about re-releasing their material. My intentions have always been to help the music scene, never to profit from it.
Since it seems I have gotten everything wrong, and that sharing unknown music is actually hurting the bands (without them knowing it, probably) rather than helping them - I'll refrain from posting any more obscure stuff in the poisonoise section in the future. Thank you from all of you who liked my contributions. Over and out.
I'm gonna try to reply to some of the points made against my arguments, but I don't have the time to do it thoroughly so I might get back to this some other day.
About labels doing it for the money, I never said that. I mentioned that there's labels that make a lot of money (let's say Nuclear Blast), some that make some money (let's say NWN, Hell's Headbangers or whatever) and some that make no money and go out of business (countless ones). Whether they're doing or not for the money, I don't think nobody is willing to lose tons of money, those that keep going are probably making at least enough to keep them going and fund new releases, etc. As I said, this is a niche business filled with subgenres. There are thousands of bands, dozens (probably hundreds) of labels of all sizes and not enough fans to mantain all of them. Offer and demand, that's how capitalism works, and that's the system you're defending when you talk about copyright and the illegality of free downloads.
Somebody also mentioned the little guy always getting screwed, well, that's also how capitalism works. See, I live in a third world country and I don't really have a lot of money. Most of it goes into buying records, trades and whatnot. I spend a lot of money (at least what for me means a lot) in Metal but I just can't afford to buy all the albums I'd like (I would even say I'd need) so I have to be picky about it, therefore I download. Buying stuff is not easy from where I live and it means a lot of extra costs that make every single album more expensive for me than for many of you. So if you're implying that just because I can't afford it I shouldn't be able to listen to it I will never agree with you. That'd be the little guy getting fucked from my perspective and I'm not letting it happen.
Another thing, I'm not against charging for music. I'm not trying to stop labels and as I mentioned, I do buy stuff and support bands and labels. I'm also in a band and I also released and I'm distributing a tape from another band, a band which I wouldn't probably know if we hadn't exchanged emails and mp3's samples.
About mp3 downloading being equal to steal food, a car or whatever: that's bullshit. That's the kind of thing that the big labels that eat the smaller ones say, and it's sad to see the little ones falling for that too. If I steal your car it would mean you don't have a car anymore and I do, so I'm screwing you. If I download mp3s, you still have the album for sale and I don't have the actual album, just the music. You can still sell that album and maybe you can even sell it to me. Many of the albums I own, I bought it thanks to knowing the bands through mp3s: Impetigo, Deceased, Witchfinder General, Goatlord, etc. Also, most of the people I know who buy records also download mp3s and if anything, knowing more and more bands every day has just increased the amount of albums they buy. One of them has a label and speaks against mp3s all the time, but I know he has his PC filled with mp3s (quite a few of them are the ones I downloaded) and most of the bands he distributes, he knows them because of those mp3s. And thanks to that label, bands that never sold a single record in my city are selling now. Sure, there are guys who just download and don't buy, but those I know who do that, they didn't even buy before downloading mp3s unless they found the album in a 1 dollar bin or some stuff like that so it's not like there's a lot of money loss in that.
Again, I'm not against labels, I support them and I see tons of people do. I just can't stand many of them are always blaming the fans if their business doesn't go well and don't seem to care about many other factors that also play a big part in that. By that I'm not meaning that mp3s doesn't mean any loss for labels, maybe some people don't buy because they download and I don't deny that possibility, but there are many other things as well, and I think some of them are bigger than filesharing.
Oh, and about blind buying, it can be exciting if you have enough money to gamble, but that argument is pretty much bullcrap. The ones that get advantage of that are mediocre bands and the labels who release them. I'd expect somebody like the Metal Enterprises guy to make such an argument. Also, before mp3s existed how many collectors got fucked by paying a lot of money for a super rare NWOBHM single that was nothing but pub rock? That's harder to do nowadays.
Once again I insist, I'm not saying people should stop buying and I do buy albums (I insist on this because in the replies people seem to always say that if you download mp3s you don't buy or you're against bands, labels and stuff like that), and as I said in another posts I'm totally against bootlegging and charging (or "accepting donations") for mp3s, but if I can't afford an album and I want to listen to it, I'll try to get it anyway I can. If I get the money, I'll buy it for sure.
Cochino, from a lawful man's perspective it doesn't make any difference whether you're poor or wealthy or whether you live in Argentina or in Greece. Thing is, if you violate copyrights you should be punished. If you listen to music you have no right to it you should compensate the bands and the labels. It's as simple as that. Any deviation from the letter of the law is considered illegal.
I'm not saying that I agree with all these or that I don't understand the situation in a country like Argentina, but that's how some people see those things.
Good against Evil, Evil sure to win
"It really didn't matter if they liked it or not, i was going to give it to them straight down their throats" -John Stewart
Follow up question regarding posting clips in ebay auctions:
How comes posting a rip of, say, a single on Poisonoise is worse than a seller posting a sound clip in an auction on ebay? The person posting a rip does it to tell the world "Hey, look at this awesome record I found" - the seller does it to tell the world "Hey, look at this awesome record I'm selling a copy of". So, in fact the ebay seller posts the clip in order to make profit, the vinyl ripper doesn't. True, the auction is for a set time only, so the exposure is shorter, but other than that, well you tell me.
I'm not trying to discredit anyone here, just trying to understand how the business works, and how you all perceive things.
Khnud wrote:Follow up question regarding posting clips in ebay auctions:
How comes posting a rip of, say, a single on Poisonoise is worse than a seller posting a sound clip in an auction on ebay? The person posting a rip does it to tell the world "Hey, look at this awesome record I found" - the seller does it to tell the world "Hey, look at this awesome record I'm selling a copy of". So, in fact the ebay seller posts the clip in order to make profit, the vinyl ripper doesn't. True, the auction is for a set time only, so the exposure is shorter, but other than that, well you tell me.
I'm not trying to discredit anyone here, just trying to understand how the business works, and how you all perceive things.
Personally, when posting a clip for an auction I never put up the complete song...and that's true for most dealers.
I've seen people bootleg songs from sources as varied as pulling off an ebay clip to literally recording it over the phone!
