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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Posted on 01/21/2003 11:51:47 AM PST by TroutStalker
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:47:57 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
There are degrees of lawbreaking. Speeding is one thing; driving 120 mph on the freeway is something else again.
Likewise, making a "mix tape" (which though they were technically illegal weren't ever considered a "threat" to intellectual property because the quality of the sound was inferior) is one thing; distributing tens of thousands of "free" copies of a song is something else again.
I'll bet you drove 55 mph, too.
I try to stay out of the theoretical squabbles. I'm an empiricist. Laws are ultimately by the consent of the governed. When the governed do not consent to something, attempting to enforce it breeds disrespect for law and contempt for lawful authority. Such things are a cancer on the body politic.
Many people believe that a simple price adjustment would make a great deal of this 'stealing behavior' go away. One can plead to the heavens that the copyright owners have the right to charge anything they like, but one then must accept that a generation of students is learning that stealing is no big deal; that everyone does it; and that for most, there are no consequences. Is that really a social good? How does it stack up against the divine right of copyright holders to charge prices that its market will not accept?
I don't propose answers to these things. I only know that when I was a kid, laws were laws, and people obeyed them. And then came the 55 mph speed limit. And a whole nation learned to be criminal; to think of police as the enemy; to consider "getting away with it" a good thing. That may have been the most destructive law ever passed in the United States. It taught people that the Emperor had no clothes. Things have not been the same since.
Now we are watching a generation of students violate their own 55 mph limit. What are they learning? And what is the price of this learning? I'm not arguing that they should do this; I only note that they are... and that they are learning something by doing it. And that there are a lot of them.
Please show me where I advocated stealing music?? Before you call me a thief, you ought to have some evidence of thievery, you dirty Rat.
I don't download copyrighted music (unless the artists have given their permission to do so), and I WILL boycott the labels and artists who are advocating the prosecution of individual citizens, or who try to coerce ISPs to invade their subscriber's privacy.
Furthermore, I will continue to advocate the same for other people who I speak to.
Reasonable people should insist that artists and labels come up with a REASONABLE policy like the one I mentioned in my previous post. Coercing ISPs to invade people's privacy is NOT a reasonable policy, in my opinion.
Very good point. As usual today's music biz teaches rot and corruption, in the music, gansta personas and lyrics, in the buying of Congress by bribes and perks, and in distribution schemes that are sewers.
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Fortynine times out of fifty you'd win that bet. I generally drive the posted limit, but, when I don't - and I'm ticketed for breaking the law; I don't whine about it, or say, "but everyone does it" and try to tell the cop that the law is unpopular, restrictive, unfair and unenforcable. I understand that going faster than the posted limit has consequences and I accept that responsibility, I don't disrespect the law because the majority of offenders get away; I know that it's there for a reason.
Many people believe that a simple adjustment to speed limits would make speeding violations go away, and many fools drive as if there were no restrictions and don't care about your safety or theirs. Because they do, it doesn't make it right.
Interstate 89 passes right by where I live and I see cars ticketed for exceeding the 65 mph limit every day. Over the holidays in North Carolina I drove the 70 mph speed limit as others passed as if I was standing still. I saw that some of the "governed" don't like the 70 mph restriction either. If the limit were 90 mph some jokers will go 110 - do you want your kid's school bus sharing that road? We elect representatives to make or laws and personal problems with the laws should be addressed at the ballot box, however; laws that would rob property rights are a dangerous precident.
My only point is that some people will always push the limits, break the rules (as well as laws) and pretend that the consequences for doing so are unfair. That other individuals join in under the cover of a flury of lawbreaking is nothing more than a looting mob. We cannot change the laws everytime criminal activity surges to make the activity legal. As an empiricist, you should know all that. You should also know that downloading property as blackmail to pressue the companies to reduce prices is a foolish theory at best - the thieves are not going to suddenly start paying for something they take for free already. That's too naive for even an empiricist with no life experience (now there's an oxymoran). I prefer to live as a moral men rather than as a cynic or a thief, in the hopes that my example may someday find asylum, if not supporters in society. I believe it is wrong to speed and it's unethical to steal; no matter how many others are speeding or stealing - at this moment, previously or in the future - whether the Emperor has clothes or not.
I consider the taking of intellectural property without paying to be "stealing", no matter what others call it and no matter the consequences or lack thereof. If I am caught speeding or stealing, I will take responsibility and pay whatever penalty justice imposes, whether I like it or not because it's the price of living in this society. But, that's just me. ymmv
You've hit the nail directly.
Napster arrived in about 1998/99. Since then there have been a host of peer-to-peer tools, and there's no sign that they'll stop.
RIAA is protecting a distribution and (thus) a pricing system which many consumers find objectionable and technologically antiquated.
The recording industry needs a better distribution model, period.
They are seeing a big decline in sales. They attribute it to copying. Why should we believe them? They are selling 12 songs for the same price a movie studio gets for a full-length feature film. Does your gut tell you that anything might be wrong there? These are mostly kids doing this... are there other things kids spend their money on now that they didn't before? When I was at the age when I cared who the hot bands were, there was no such thing as video games. Kids only have so much money... I'm sure video games came out of music's hide. Then there's "diversity." That splits the market up and makes it much harder for a single act to sell the kinds of numbers that once were taken for granted.
In short, there are a lot of reasons why their sales might be going down, and I'm not convinced that this Internet sharing isn't just a bogeyman to cover up some bad business judgements.
It's probably always been true that kids have a tendency to flout the law. Illegal drugs are a commonplace in their lives; we all know how we drove when we were that age... it's a wonder many of us lived. Perhaps stealing intellectual properties is just part of the youthful exuberance that goes away when responsibilities arrive.
The music business has been selling drugs-as-recreation for as long as I've been around. If the culture of doing illegal drugs paved the way for doing illegal music copying, then Karma Man is laughing his head off.
No matter what it is, you can't treat as the customers as The Enemy and expect to survive in business. They need to lose the lawyers, and find another way.
That is exactly what I would expect from what the technology permits. That's the thing the RIAA doesn't seem to "get" -- nobody needs their big, expensive, centralized manufacturing-and-shipping model of music distribution. You need the performers, the listeners, and the cheapest possible thing in between them. The RIAA is no longer the cheapest thing. So out they go.
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