Discussing leaks

Do bars/pubs in Belgium therefore require a special license to play music?

Maybe we should shift to discussing the Frankfurt school position on commodification of art whereby artistic merit is forfeit as soon as a price tag is placed upon a piece of work.
 
Nice, Metalstrm. Not that it answers that question, but, I know you're not supposed to play the radio in a place of business for the clientele without paying BMI or ASCAP or something. I know they used to send out auditors to crack down on businesses. Don't know if they still do that. (This created a place for Muzak, unfortunately.) Bars and clubs where live music is performed are also, as I barely understand it, supposed to pay, being that bands play covers and whatnot. This is from my music biz class from quite some time ago, so I may be remembering this wrong or things may be different now. Anyone who knows for sure, feel free to explain how it really works.

I think you might be able to create a scenario where a nitpicking dink might call your playing music you bought to a large group of friends a form of broadcast. I'm not sure what broadcast rights are, but I'm sure there are legalities surrounding it that would confound the casual music fan. For example, when I was a kid, my parents had a store and rented movies. When someone stole a movie (which was pretty frequently, actually), my parents were pissed because movies when bought to rent cost well over $100. The same one you could buy for yourself for, like, $25-$40 (at the time, iirc). You were buying rental rights. Don't know if buying something for broadcast would be the same, but I wouldn't doubt it. It's a business, after all. I mean, when a theater group wants to put on a play, like Little Shop of Horrors, for example, they have to pay to rent the scripts and are allowed to perform it only a certain amount of times. There's all sorts of stipulations that can be rather surprising, actually.

So exactly what constitutes a broadcast, I don't know. But I'm pretty sure that when you play music for a group of friends, you're safe. After all, they won't possess a copy, except a memory. And, yes, I know you're being sarcastic. :)

Holy crap, did I contribute to this thread again?! Damn it. But it seems a bit more civil right now...
 
Everybody does it. Hence my earlier point that you cannot take the law as a moral guideline. I mean, the difference between your mother making you a copy of a cd and you listening to the same cd in a friend's car is pretty small. And we could go on and on...

Edit: I was not being sarcastic, though :p I was actually trying to find the needle in the haystack. Really though, there is a very fine line between sensible and insensible laws.
 
Metalstrm said:
Everybody does it. Hence my earlier point that you cannot take the law as a moral guideline. I mean, the difference between your mother making you a copy of a cd and you listening to the same cd in a friend's car is pretty small. And we could go on and on...
Click to expand...

Yeah, but it's about property and ownership. When you own something, you can listen whenever you like. But when someone plays it for you and then takes it home, you can't play it again when you get the urge. It's why Pandora can play stuff by an artist or related artists that you type into that entry field, but they can't play a direct song request.

I respect property ownership. I think minimizing the importance of property ownership is a slippery slope. I want laws to protect and other people to respect my property. I, likewise do my best to respect others' property. Maybe it's overly simplistic, but I try to live by not doing things to people that I wouldn't want them doing to me. Oh, and I also try not to do things to people that they don't want done to them. Here, I think it's simple: unless an artist wants me to download their music for nothing, I will feel bad about doing so. Most of the time, that's enough to stop me.
 
I had no idea of rental rights but it makes sense, since you can make virtually endless gain from a copy. I knew that you have to pay a fee to play music in pubs, and I *think* that here in Italy it's the same (lots of pubs just show MTV on a screen, dunno if they need rights even for that, I guess they still do though). All this rights thing is just useless imho, if a pub just plays a song and you actually like it, chances are that you'll buy (or download) the song/album, and, well, if you do, artists and label will GAIN; at the same time, pubs will attract more people, so it's like a symbiontic (dunno if I spelled it right) approach that will benefit both parties. With a tax like that, they both lose possible gains.

On a side note, I can safely say that piratery did good to those who still buy their music: before the advent of piratery, CDs prices were way higher. This makes me wonder how much label used to gain before that. I mean, they are selling less with a lower price and still gaining a shit load of money...
 
Fair enough soundave. I agree with most of what you said. At least, I feel you are self consistent and follow a set of sensible rules. I agree most of all that discussing a band's leaked material on the official band forum is too disrespectful towards the band, even if you are buying the music afterwards. Especially since the band's main man himself has expressed his hate towards album leaks. Then again there are several people who simply do not know why you shouldn't download illegal music or do not know how to express it, making it sound as if the law is the Bible of universal values.
 
Mr Samsara said:
You realize that having a civil discussion which concludes with agreement and some sense of moral culpability and personal responsibility isn't allowed here..... right?
Click to expand...

Oh. Shall we start arguing and calling each other names then? :p
 
Thanks for answering. I liked seeing the differences between soundave and Opethian's answers. Really, both had good and reasonable points.
 
I think (correct me where I'm wrong, I don't want to speak for you) the main difference between soundave's and my reasoning, or rather our view of morality, is that soundave considers something morally wrong if it's a morally neutral choice when there is also a morally "righter" choice to take, while I consider anything that doesn't inflict any harm or has a negative effect to others (which includes both morally neutral and morally right decisions) as not morally wrong. Another difference, which is clear by comparing our answers to the 3rd and last question, is that soundave attaches importance to not taking any actions that would violate a band's wishes about what can and can not be done with their creation, even when the band itself will never notice anything from those actions, and will not be affected by them.

I guess aside from my division of morals in wrong, neutral and right, and soundave's division in just wrong and right, my view of morality is based more on dry logic and analysis of the effects of choices, while soundave's view is based more on feelings and principles. I think soundave believes certain principles should be upheld to be morally right, even if they don't have any effect. For example not downloading the album if the band wouldn't want you to, even if you've already paid for the album, but it hasn't arrived yet, and not downloading a single illegally, even if you could have legally downloaded it before. The only problem with this reasoning is that the band will not be affected by these choices, and so the choices will not cause any moral harm.

In essence, I think that his view of morality is not the best way to analyse the effects of choices, but I do think that it's a very good attitude for a person to have, since every once in a while when you take decisions based on analysis of possible effects, you're going to miss some factor and take a choice that does have negative effects. If, like soundave, you follow your feelings of what is best (granted you're not a psychopath who misses those feelings), or uphold certain rigid principles, you're very unlikely to do something with negative effects for others.

Hope I didn't make too many erroneous suppositions.
 
Well I don't know the law and I don't mind them; I listened to Watershed on youtube and then I downloaded them and put them in my MP3 player. But I don't feel morally wrong because I PREORDERED the album! I just couldn't wait to listen to it and I had it illegally, then I liked it. That's why I preordered it, Opeth's work worth every single dollar to pay. If I'dn't listened to it on youtube I'ld never knew if it will worth buying it. Now I know every song of that album rules and I feel happy to pay 20€, and support this awesome band.
Now, am I wrong to listen to it AND THEN decide if I will buy it or not?
 
I wouldn't want to be Mr. Samsara right now.

Dude, you can at least keep it to yourself whether you've illegally downloaded the stuff or not. I mean, don't you respect Mike? This is his board. He actually pays for it! Forget the question whether or not you should download the stuff illegally for a moment, and think on what Mike said:

"I totally understand how filesharing helped spread our name and I'd never diss it on that basis. From my personal point of view I don't download as I want the actual copy of the album. I could never have a CDR copy in my collection. I'd see the fake spine of the case in the corner of my eye while watching the telly and go..."Fuck that thing!". With my record collecting I've always been purist and that aint gonna change anytime soon.

There's a few things I really don't like about it and that is the "leak" of a new record. That upsets me to no end and I can honestly say I hate it. It's our piece of art/work that WE decide when it's made public, not anyone else. So yeah, when a new album leaks before the release we feel nothing short of ripped off. The people leaking it seem to have the "look what I found...you can thank me later..." type of attitude.

These are rough times for metal bands. The only way to survive is to tour a lot but I'm worried ticket prices will be massively inflated soon because of the album sales going down. Then again, that's just speculations.....

Hope all is well with you guys.
Cheers
Mike"
 
Yes, in fact I should've kept it for myself, but I wanted to say that not everybody who downloads them doesn't buy them. Otherwise I respect Mike and his work, he brought a new dimension to the music.

But I don't agree with the fact of "leaking" but once it's leaked, wait until the release is difficult. If admins think that my posts are harmful for the board I apologise and as you to delete my posts..
 
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