Iriver Questions !!!

[Stonewall]

No, shoplifting is a type of stealing. Downloading music is not stealing because no-one is actually deprived of anything. If I steal your CD collection, then you have no more CDs. If I copy your CD collection, you still have your CDs and I haven't stolen anything. I *have* infringed copyright. That's the scenario we're talking about here.

People call that splitting hairs, but I don't see it. To me they are entirely different things.

Accuse me of breaching copyright, and I'll cop it.

Fair enough, me too. But don't the owners of the material have a legal right to financial renumeration for someone possessing their work? I mean, it is for sale.

I hear this all the time, and I'm genuinely interested in the answer to the following question: Why? Is it less against the law? How many is OK?

No, it is not less against the law. My own view is that downloading a few tracks to here what an album or band sounds like is ok, but that making copies of an entire album is generally wrong. Of course there are some exceptions where I think it is ok, if the album can't be bought anywhere, or if it is rare and would cost you $80, or, like when Blitzy and I went to Graspop and wanted to know as much material by as many of the bands as possible, to try and make each band more memorable.
I think 3 or 4 songs is ok.

Ah, I agree with this. I don't think that it's OK that I've got pirated albums. I know it's wrong. I don't argue that it's wrong.

I just don't agree with the whole "it's downloaders that are killing the industry", and the type of tactics and statistics that the industry uses to try and back up these claims.

As to whether downloaders are killing the industry, I really don't have much of an opinion on it, suffice to say they must be losing money if they go to all those lengths that we have seen to try and stop it.




And I just had a thought. I suppose Apple is trying to take on the recording companies in a way, making i-pods so cool and popular (hell, Russell Crowe has three) and thus creating a huge pirating craze. I mean, couple broadband internet with a few Gb of mp3 player you can carry around and plug into everything and who would buy cds? Then along comes i-tunes amidst the push for legitimate downloading....

do you reckon Apple will start signing its own artists soon, for exclusive i-tunes release?

 

[phlogiston]

do you reckon Apple will start signing its own artists soon, for exclusive i-tunes release?

Nah, they're not allowed to. They were sued buy Apple Studios and promised that they would never get into the music industry. In fact, they got in a whole lot of trouble over releasing iTunes even.

 

[phlogiston]

No, it is not less against the law. My own view is that downloading a few tracks to here what an album or band sounds like is ok, but that making copies of an entire album is generally wrong. Of course there are some exceptions where I think it is ok, if the album can't be bought anywhere, or if it is rare and would cost you $80, or, like when Blitzy and I went to Graspop and wanted to know as much material by as many of the bands as possible, to try and make each band more memorable.
I think 3 or 4 songs is ok.

I guess this is the sticking point, really. For me it's either-or, all-or-nothing. You can't say that downloading is wrong except in certain circumstances. Doesn't work like that.

 

[Stonewall]

I guess this is the sticking point, really. For me it's either-or, all-or-nothing. You can't say that downloading is wrong except in certain circumstances. Doesn't work like that.

Maybe there is wrong, and less wrong. I guess it just depends on what you can reconcile your conscience with.

 

[Blitzkrieg]

Downloading music is not stealing because no-one is actually deprived of anything.

The artist/record company/everyone else who gets a cut, are deprived of the income that they would be getting if you were obtaining the album legally.

Maybe there is wrong, and less wrong. I guess it just depends on what you can reconcile your conscience with.

People who use the tool that is downloading to do the wrong thing know they are doing it, most just don't care. Phloggy is one example. When I download a few songs from an album, like them, then buy that album, I don't feel guilty because I think I am doing the right thing. I am using the tool in a positive way. When I got some of those albums before Graspop, despite having good intentions, I did feel guilty. I will amend that by buying the albums that I liked though, the others I will delete.

I like your standpoint Mr Stone. If you wouldn't have bought it anyway, then what business do you have listening to it? Sure not everyone likes everything an equal amount, but if you like it enough to listen to it, you should pay to do so. As I said earlier, the line between liking something enough to buy, or simply liking something, has made a big shift for a lot of people since piracy became mainstream.

 

[phlogiston]

So what you're saying is that except for scale, what you and I do are the same thing?

 

[phlogiston]

And let me just state this once again. I'm not saying that downloading stuff is legal, or even morally right.

I'm saying the statement "downloading is ruining the music industry" is wrong. It may be affecting it, but there are things out there that are affecting it just as much if not more.

 

[Blitzkrieg]

So what you're saying is that except for scale, what you and I do are the same thing?

How do you figure?

Piracy is ruining it. Downloading is a large part of piracy.

 

[phlogiston]

I download an album instead of a few tracks. If I like it enough I buy it. Those that I haven't bought yet I will amend by buying at some point.

 

[Blitzkrieg]

I did that once for a greater purpose. Was it wrong? Perhaps. I don't intend to do it again, nor make it part of a routine of checking out whole albums and eventually buying them if I like them enough, and persisting to listen to them and not buy them if I don't like them enough to warrant purchase.

 

[Goreripper]

Phlog is both right and wrong. Piracy is affecting the music industry, but it would only "ruin" the industry if everyone did it all the time. There are other things which have the potential to ruin the industry as well, like record companies wasting money on bad talent, but they have always done this and it still manages to not only survive, but thrive. If they keep doing this, then people will start pirating things all the time, because people won't be prepared to fork out money for crap and won't need to.

 

[KoichCPA]

This thread is funny.

Downloading songs is good. Being a nazi and saying I can't is bad.

NAZI NAZI NAZI NAZI

The day every artist on the planet agrees to refund my money personally if I think their album is shit, is the day I will stop trying before I buy.

Oh and brian, you can take your car for a drive before you buy it to see if you like it. You have to by law. I would like to see a similar law be introduced for cd's. Any non perishable goods should be availble for test usages.

ps. Jordy is a Nazi Steve Ravic manowarrior now.

 

[MeKaChrOme]

like record companies wasting money on bad talent, but they have always done this and it still manages to not only survive, but thrive. If they keep doing this, then people will start pirating things all the time, because people won't be prepared to fork out money for crap and won't need to.

But in saying that some people will always like what is put out by the companies (i.e. everyone has different taste). I guess if they really start putting money into stuff which isn't getting returns, then they'll start to lose out more.... Also I guess if the crap becomes crapper, people will have even less incentive to fork out....

 

[Goreripper]

This thread is funny.

Downloading songs is good. Being a nazi and saying I can't is bad.

NAZI NAZI NAZI NAZI

The day every artist on the planet agrees to refund my money personally if I think their album is shit, is the day I will stop trying before I buy.

Oh and brian, you can take your car for a drive before you buy it to see if you like it. You have to by law. I would like to see a similar law be introduced for cd's. Any non perishable goods should be availble for test usages.

ps. Jordy is a Nazi Steve Ravic manowarrior now.

Of course you can go for a test drive, but you can't take the fucking thing home with you. That said, this whole argument is full of grey areas. It's really not an easy problem to solve.

 

[Goreripper]

But in saying that some people will always like what is put out by the companies (i.e. everyone has different taste). I guess if they really start putting money into stuff which isn't getting returns, then they'll start to lose out more....

But in saying that, record companies spend fucking millions on "developing" artists that bomb after one big hit, while keeping potentially awesome acts on so-called "development rosters" and then dumping them when their 'stars' fail. The whole industry is a gamble that no one can predict. Who would have thought that the whole "Seattle" thing was going to go ballistic? No one would have believed that the glam metal thing would be as big as it was. The problem is that when scenes or fads like that do take off, the industry milks the shit out of them until all the good stuff is gone, washed out or bled dry, then fumbles about for a couple of years looking for something else to exploit to recoup the money they lost after their last trend went bust. The big wheels do more damage to the industry than geeks downloading stuff; that said, downloading does have an impact on artist revenue. The bottom line is that consumers lose sometimes, artists lose almost always and the industry just rolls on like a bulletproof tank.

 

[Blitzkrieg]

Yes there is other factors like those that are a problem, but they always have been really. As I said earlier, the way sales are now, number one charting artists are selling less and less and still topping charts. Number one singles used to sell in the hundreds of thousands, now they are selling in the twenty thousands. This isn't attributable to record company behaviour, it is attributable to piracy.

 

[phlogiston]

Yes there is other factors like those that are a problem, but they always have been really. As I said earlier, the way sales are now, number one charting artists are selling less and less and still topping charts. Number one singles used to sell in the hundreds of thousands, now they are selling in the twenty thousands. This isn't attributable to record company behaviour, it is attributable to piracy.

Using your quoted number to be 200,000 then (i.e low hundreds) and 80,000 now (i.e. high twenties), you're assuming that a 60% decrease a) actually happened, and b) is entirely due to downloads?

You've either got an absurdly high degree of faith in the technical abilities (and bandwidth) of the general population, or you need to go and do some research and come up with some factual numbers.

 

[Southy]

The pair of you whiny do dats shut ya damn pie holes, yes the arguement is entertaining, but you are both running over the same shit, knock it off, do some research, of fuck off, I dunno, start live action fisticuffs, hell i'll come down to watch the live action fighting

 

[Sydo]

iRivers are fat bitches.

 

[Spiff]

I'm seriously considering deleting everything from my iRiver and starting again. Not serious enough to actually do it, but serious enough to consider it. Seriously.