Quoting:

Its funny how Napster used to be the greatest thing, then when it was shut down, new similar sites started popping up.  Now, everytime they shut one down, 5 more start up.
End Quote

I predict that trend will continue.  Dont forget www stands for world wide web.  Sites could probably be set up in other countries where the RIAA cant do a whole lot about.  What is going to stop a file sharing site that pops up in such places as the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Columbia or South Africa.

Quoting:


I predict that trend will continue.  Dont forget www stands for world wide web.  Sites could probably be set up in other countries where the RIAA cant do a whole lot about.  What is going to stop a file sharing site that pops up in such places as the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Columbia or South Africa.
End Quote

I always wondered why Shawn Fanning of Napster fame didn't do that. For those of us who remember Napster in it's heyday it was the greatest. Over 60 million users at one point. You could find anything. He could have made Napster a pay site and charged a minimal fee like one dollar a month. I certainly would have been willing to pay one dollar a month to be able to download anything I wanted. It's amazing to me that no one has yet set up a music file sharing website out of Mexico or one of the countries that you mentioned. At 60 million dollars a month you could split it 50/50 with the government of that country, make them happy and still have more money than you knew what to do with.

Quoting:
If I buy something and then try to SELL it to others, THAT is wrong.
End Quote

That's all record stores do. They buy CD's at wholesale and sell them at retail. They also buy used CD's for 4 or 5 bucks and then re-sell them for 8 or 9.
But what I'm doing is buying a CD for fifteen dollars and then giving away copies for free. The record companies don't care at all if I buy a thousand of their CD's for ten dollars each and then re-sell them for fifteen.
But they don't want me giving away fifty thousand copies for free.

Quoting:
File sharing it itself is not a crime. Technically, the crime relates to the unauthorised recording of original material. Copying any copyrighted material is illegal. Publishing lyrics on websites is technically illegal without the permission of the copyright holder or their administrator. Playing a recording in public without permission (through a PA, for example) is illegal. Videotaping films off the TV and then showing them outside the home is illegal. Even photocopying pages from books for purposes apart from private study is illegal. Why? Because it infringes on the copyright of the original artist. You are technically "stealing" their work. I'm not going to argue the ins and outs of it now because it's way too complicated, but as a writer myself, I've seen others use things I've written without asking my permission or without proper credit, and it doesn't make me a very happy camper.


End Quote

If all thats true... I should be locked up now... and the key thrown away!  ;D

Quoting:
Music making should be thought of as a hobby... something you do for fun... AND get a little money out of it. It shouldnt be all about money... it shouldnt be a job. Artists who make music for the money usually arent worth listening too.
End Quote

I couldn't agree with you more, but....try telling that to LOSER LARS...Napster killer....Ulrich >:(

Quoting:
Muic making should be thought of as a hobby... something you do for fun... AND get a little money out of it. It shouldnt be all about money... it shouldnt be a job. Artists who make music for the money usually arent worth listening too.
End Quote

Not a big patron of the arts, eh?  I suppose I could say the same thing about sports stars... it should be "thought of as a hobby".  If you don't want to pay Lars for his music, then why exactly should he provide it for you? How 'bout next time I need an oil change I say to the guy:  "mechanics should be a hobby, so I'm not going to pay you"?

Quoting:
Oh my goodness Hairspray, what did you originally say here  ???

You got moderated !  ;D ;)
End Quote

LOL!!!  :D I had a t-t-t-t-typo!!!  :o :o :o Ah, The Horror.  ;)

Quoting:


Hehe... and I lost my link to Metropolis Record's cases against "file-sharing." I could give you the e-mail addresses of various bands, artists, and executives from Metropolis, so that they themselves can tell you how much they are losing due to piracy and theft (aka "file-sharing"). If people dislike the prices, then don't buy, but, again, don't steal others' bread and butter because you feel they are being unfair with their pricing. A lot of things in this society are over-priced, why does it seem okay to steal from artists because of this? Heck! If, theft is okay to do, then I'm gonna take an Acura NSX for a test drive and leave the dealership without paying for it :) :D ;D
End Quote

Did you just mistake my meaning?  ;D

Quoting:There's always a happy medium, I think. Think of us old fogies who either taped stuff off the radio/tv, copied tapes, recorded records onto cassettes, borrowed music from our neighbors, recieved the gifts of music. MP3 file-sharing is just am amplification of all those processes, IMO and more practical.

Most shared files are older stuff and rarerities not found in any other music format in this century, anyway, in my experience and also according to a survey I read a while back. Now I wish I had a link available to it.  

I don't feel the artists of today lose money by way of file-sharing.

I believe it's the "suckiness" and the lack or originality of/in their music and the outrageous concert prices and cd prices that make people wary and down-right revolted. Greedy company execs are also to blame, In my opinion.End Quote

I guess I'll rephrase this:

"I don't feel the artists of today lose money by way of file-sharing."

To this:

I don't feel the artists of today lose a major percentage of their money by way of file-sharing.

And my quote:

"I believe it's the "suckiness" and the lack or originality of/in their music and the outrageous concert prices and cd prices that make people wary and down-right revolted. Greedy company execs are also to blame, In my opinion."

The above refers to the quite possible reason, in my opinion, artists are losing a major percentage of their money.

That reason is not being investigated well enough or at least not publisized.

MP3 file-sharing is being blamed, the music industry's failures scape-goat.

Your quote:

"steal others' bread and butter because you feel they are being unfair with their pricing..."

I didn't mention anything in reference to this matter of which you speak.

Again, the only mention of pricing I made was in reference to my educated guess as to why the artists/music industry are/is losing money and that is:

Quoting:I believe it's the "suckiness" and the lack or originality of/in their music and the outrageous concert prices and cd prices that make people wary and down-right revolted. Greedy company execs are also to blame, In my opinion.End Quote

I don't think of file-sharing as stealing. If it were stealing, it wouldn't be called file-sharing but rather file-stealing. That's just not the case, IMO.

There are the bad apples who probably do download and perform copyright violations, but there are bad apples everywhere.

For instance -

There are those "pirates" who copy and make available "bootleg" copies of feature films.

The industry is not going to stop renting videos out to the general public because of those "pirates", which in reality make-up the smallest percentage of the population of video consumers.

Ok.

So, by this logic, file-sharing should not be banned because of the "few" bad apples.  8)

Quoting:
Downloading a nice, clean copy of the song from the internet is hardly the same as taping off of the radio where you've got Joe Pipes yakking over the song intro and the end of the song being cut off with some dippy radio jingle.End Quote

If artists made better music nowadays, for starters, it would help them quite a bit, as far as having more of an impact sales-wise.

Secondly, the economy is bad all around not just for musicians.

Taping off the radio was quite clean in the 1980's. I was quite successful at it too.  ;D ;)

I respect your opinion on the issue. Not everyone will ever agree on everything.  :)

Quoting:

I C-A-N R-E-A-D.

I didn't make any mistakes. I proof-read everything I write :) :D ;DEnd Quote

Didn't mean to offend ya' old buddy.  :)  
Just didn't understand where that one part of your response came from.

Quoting:
Wow!  I'm still reeling from the idea that music should only be regarded as 'a hobby'.  Very troubling to me.
End Quote

   Well hells-bells FOXVOX,  my hobby has always been getting-up at 4 a.m. to go work at the refinery.  To this day I still refuse to accept a paycheck. :P

Quoting:
This is part of what I originally replied to and which you later on stated: "didn't mention anything in reference to." If you think the prices are "outrageous," then, don't buy, but to justify theft because of this, because you think there's no harm and no big loss in piracy, because you think people in the industry are being greedy, and because you think their product is of low-value then... well, that's justifying theft.End Quote

You're making assumptions and I didn't make justifications, just gave you my opinion as to what is possibly really happening to the music industry, which is causing it to "lose money".

I simply said:

"I don't feel the artists of today lose a major percentage of their money by way of file-sharing.

I believe it's the "suckiness" and the lack or originality of/in their music and the outrageous concert prices and cd prices that make people wary and down-right revolted. Greedy company execs are also to blame, In my opinion."

People being wary and down-right revolted enough not to attend concerts by the mobs as it was in past decades and enough not to submit to purchasing cds.

Consumers have their right to make those choices, no matter how much it offends those who worry about puting food on the table of those corporate execs and artists.

File sharing is not stealing. It really is not. At least and absolutely not technically.

I'm sorry we cannot agree on this issue Tarzan Boy.

Everybody can't always agree on everything.  8)

Quoting:


   Well hells-bells FOXVOX,  my hobby has always been getting-up at 4 a.m. to go work at the refinery.  To this day I still refuse to accept a paycheck. :P
End Quote

LOL.  But Davester, I would venture to say that throughout civilzation, music became an integral aspect of our everyday lives; and while I concede that many musicians who represent themselves as "professional' are, in fact, not, and their egos are further perpetuated by record companies who insist they can market these "professional musicians" (and successfully do), we all have some kind of job to do.  Should a career in music be belittled as "a hobby" when music entertainment seems to be, for most ppl,  such daily need?  Similarly, should a professional athlete's job be regarded as hobby?  They sure do make a lot of money for their "hobby", but for some reason, that seems to be okay.  

Quoting:
 I've downloaded stuff that is not available on CD, including the original version of Chubby Checker's "The Twist" which remains unavailable on CD! And CD singles are impossible to find, and those that are available are of songs you don't care for anyway!
End Quote

Interesting point.  The record labels do hurt themselves by not offering CD singles.

As for a track not being available, I think that this is when file-sharing becomes a reasonable practice.

Quoting:


LOL.  But Davester, I would venture to say that throughout civilzation, music became an integral aspect of our everyday lives; and while I concede that many musicians who represent themselves as "professional' are, in fact, not, and their egos are further perpetuated by record companies who insist they can market these "professional musicians" (and successfully do), we all have some kind of job to do.  Should a career in music be belittled as "a hobby" when music entertainment seems to be, for most ppl,  such daily need?  Similarly, should a professional athlete's job be regarded as hobby?  They sure do make a lot of money for their "hobby", but for some reason, that seems to be okay.  
End Quote

    It's not called the entertainment industry for nothing.  
   Heck, I don't know...if one is making a living from one's hobby, is it really a hobby anymore?  Methinks not, but that's beside the point... As far as the great MP3 debate, I'm with Wicked Lester.  Is it illegal?  Yes.  Is it morally wrong?  Yes.  Will I continue to do it?  Of course.

Quoting:
Here's what I think the labels themselves ought to do. Create a download site with high quality mp3's of every song ever recorded. All the record labels would have to work together on this.

Charge a minimal fee per download like 30 cents.

Allow people to create an account either by credit card or by check or money order. That way kids under 18 could have an account as big as their parents were willing to send checks for. As soon as the account was empty, no more music could be downloaded by that particular user until more funds were put into the account.

The labels could entice people to join by advertising 100 free downloads like AOL does by advertising free minutes.

Keep track of how many times a song was downloaded.
The labels with the most popular artists would get the biggest percentage of the take.

They could have sample cuts recorded at 20k per second, that you could listen to . Then if you liked the sample you listened to, you could download the song at 190k per second which is CD quality.

If you wanted an entire CD of 15 popular songs, it would cost you about $4.50. If you only liked 3 of those songs you could get them for 90 cents.
You could create your own "Best Of" CD's and pay for only those songs you wanted.

However, once you downloaded a song that you had paid for, the labels would have to let you keep it and use it as you see fit.

Copying it to sell or give away would still be illegal, but the file wouldn't go corrupt after a certain amount of time. And it wouldn't have any code in it that would prevent you from putting it on your mp3 player or burning it onto a disk so you could play it in your CD player or copying it 50 times if that's what you wanted to do.

As long as you didn't sell the copies or give them away.

With a site you could download from, the labels wouldn't have to spend money actually creating CD's.

If they charged per song downloaded, then people with slow internet connections wouldn't be getting ripped off.

Most people want to be honest. People begin to rationalize dishonesty if they feel like they're being ripped off. I think most people would rather pay a minimal fee and do it legally than do it illegally for free.

End Quote

This is exactly what will happen, eventually. And each track downloaded will be protected with a special line of code that will prevent it from being copied or re-uploaded, so the only way to get the track will be downloading it from the official site (until someone cracks the code, which will take about ten minutes). However, this is still a long way off. Until then, yes, people will continue to steal music. Is it theft? Yes. CDs are expensive, but that doesn't mean I should be allowed to steal the music that's on them. Cars are expensive too, and the execs of motor companies make more money than just about anyone, but I can't go into a lot and steal a car now, just because I can't afford one, can I?

Quoting:


And each track downloaded will be protected with a special line of code that will prevent it from being copied or re-uploaded, so the only way to get the track will be downloading it from the official site (until someone cracks the code, which will take about ten minutes).
End Quote

Sadly I'm afraid you're right Goreripper. The labels won't have enough faith in us to let us do what we want with the music we paid for. They'll expect us to try to steal from them, so they'll try to make songs we downloaded unusable except to sit at our computers and listen to them with Winamp.
But, as you also pointed out it will take someone about ten minutes to create a program that will change the files into a format that can be played in mp3 players and burned onto disks.
Then we'll be right back to where we are now. Except that the record companies will be screaming that we're stealing music that we bought and paid for.

Quoting:


And that is what I now term as file-stealing (thanks Hairspray ;) ). You may not agree with an artist's lifestyle, but don't have a problem stealing from said artist. I hope you're not attempting to moralize theft ::) If so, that is one weak argument you just made.
End Quote

I question for ya TB:

If a Musician has claimed that they want thier work to be shared (like Moby)  then is it stealing?

Quoting:


I question for ya TB:

If a Musician has claimed that they want thier work to be shared (like Moby)  then is it stealing?

End Quote

Technically, no it's not. If I put a whole pile of old furniture out on the street with a sign next to it that says "Take what you want", and everyone does, that's not stealing. But if I leave it in my garage and someone breaks in and takes it all, that's stealing, even if it's stuff I don't want. The principle is the same. By the way, is anyone here actually in a band? I'm just really piqued about this whole 'music as a hobby' idea. Even the great composers had to get patronage from the rich to be able to live. What record companies do now isn't that different, except for the profit margins involved. PLaying music is very expensive. Writing, recording, rehearsing, touring, playing live... all of these things cost a fortune. If you want to do it seriously, it can't be just a hobby. It has to be a career. Noodling away in your bedroom for your own amusement is a hobby. Playing and recording for the entertainment of others is a job, and you should get paid for it. People criticise Metallica for the stand they took, but I think many failed to see both sides of the argument. They just wanted their music for nothing. Metallica are multi-millionaires now, but it took them ten years of living out of suitcases, touring incessantly nine months of every year, living on a shoestring. Until their fourth album got into the Top 30, they were virtually penniless and had been since 1981. The point is, they got to be successful because people bought their records. If file-sharing stops people from buying records, eventually the people who make the music won't be able to afford to make it anymore, and all we'll be left with is crap made by spoilt rich kids with no talent.

Actually, that's already happening.

Quoting:
bumping this up to add a news clip from Yahoo

Technology - AP

Net Providers Must Help in Piracy Fight
Tue Jan 21, 6:56 PM ET  Add Technology - AP to My Yahoo!


By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Internet providers must abide by music industry requests to track down computer users who illegally download music, a federal judge ruled Tuesday in a case that could dramatically increase online pirates' risk of being caught.

The decision by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates upheld the recording industry's powers under a 1998 law to compel Verizon Communications Inc. to identify one of its Internet subscribers who was suspected of illegally trading music or movies online. The music industry knew only a numerical Internet address this person was using.


The ruling means that consumers using dozens of popular Internet file-sharing programs can more easily be identified and tracked down by entertainment companies trying to prevent the illegal trading of movies and music. For consumers, even those hiding behind Internet aliases, that could result in warning letters, civil lawsuits or criminal prosecution.


"Just because you can doesn't mean it's legal to become a digital Johnny Appleseed," warned Michael McGuire, an industry analyst for Gartner Inc., a research firm in Stamford, Conn.


Verizon promised Tuesday to appeal and said it would not immediately provide its customer's identity. The ruling had "troubling ramifications" for future growth of the Internet, said Verizon's associate general counsel, Sarah B. Deutsch.


"The case clearly allows anyone who claims to be a copyright holder to make an allegation of copyright infringement to gain complete access to private subscriber information without protections afforded by the courts," she said.


Deutsch said Verizon planned no immediate changes to disrupt sharing of computer files among its customers.


Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites), which won the case, said piracy is a "serious issue for musicians, songwriters and other copyright owners, and the record companies have made great strides in addressing this problem by educating consumers and providing them with legitimate alternatives."


The judge acknowledged the case was an important test of subpoena powers Congress granted copyright holders under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (news - web sites).


The judge said that controversial 1998 law, enacted to uphold copyrights online, lets music companies force Internet providers to turn over the name of a suspected pirate upon subpoena from any U.S. District Court clerk's office, without a judge's order.

Think this will change anyone's mind about filesharing?

End Quote

Welcome to Amerikkka. Land of the free, my ____!

Quoting:
I think the old "power in numbers" theory applies here.  

On Imesh alone there are over 40,000,000 registered users, thats right 40 million.  And thats just one single site.  I really don't see how its possible for them to hunt down millions and millions and millions of people worldwide for simply downloading music off the web.  

Its totally pointless and a lost cause.  Not to mention a total waste of time and resources.
End Quote

Quoting:
I think the old "power in numbers" theory applies here.  

On Imesh alone there are over 40,000,000 registered users, thats right 40 million.  And thats just one single site.  I really don't see how its possible for them to hunt down millions and millions and millions of people worldwide for simply downloading music off the web.  

Its totally pointless and a lost cause.  Not to mention a total waste of time and resources.
End Quote

I'm shaking in my shoes!  I wonder why they didn't plant someone at every record store to follow LP buyers home...making sure they hadn't bought a blank cassette tape to record the LP and then "Share" it with friends...for FREE ::)

Quoting:
I thought that maybe they might try to scare everyone by making an example of someone and actually trying to throw them in jail. However, I think it would be impossible for anyone to prosecute someone who was downloading music off the net and here's why;
computer + teenager + internet connection = downloading music.
No lawyer worth his salt is going to allow a juror on the jury panel who has a son or daughter or friend or niece or nephew or uncle or aunt or grandparent or anyone that they know who has committed the same crime as the accused.
So, where are they going to find a jury of twelve people in this country who doesn't personally know anyone who has committed this same crime?
Where are they going to find a judge for that matter, who doesn't know anyone who's ever downloaded a song off the net?
No lawyer for the prosecution is going to allow a juror on the jury panel that's biased for the defense. No lawyer for the defense is going to allow a juror on the jury panel that's biased for the prosecution.
There's no way they can find 12 people in this country that don't know anyone who's ever downloaded music off the net.
End Quote