@18

Even if one of those people would have bought it, it is money out of my pocket. And if none would have bought, that’s fine, too. If they don’t want to pay for it, they shouldn’t get to play it on their ipod. It’s their choice, but they can’t have it both ways.

In debating DRM, having even very strong DRM won’t help prevent the situation you describe with your music being available for download. DRM will be broken. There’s just no way around that, as even if you somehow 100% prevent a direct digital solution, in order for someone to list to the music you need to output it as audio at some point, and it can then be recorded. All it takes is a bored teenager somewhere in the world and five minutes of their time and then there’s a digital copy available forever to billions of humans. Stronger and stronger DRM systems are a folly – they present no more of a barrier to a determined pirate than a “please don’t copy this” sticker. In fact – less of one as the sticker and lack of challenge will be a demotivator. So since I’ve shown that DRM is not a hindrance to the pirate and dedicated copyright infringer, who is it a hindrance to? The legitimate, money-in-hand, consumer. You screw them and they remember it and don’t buy any more music from you, thus harming you, the artist and seller, as well.

When it comes to the game of DRM, the only winning move is truly to not play. Trust your fans, and make it possible for them to support you without being stabbed in the back for the favor.

However, a lot of us pretty strongly disagree that governments, law enforcement, and even other industries to be forced to give the entertainment industry preferential treatment, as is the current status quo of their demands. In many cases, the industry bills its income, albeit secretly, as being more important than some basic human rights.

Frankly, very few people seem to understand that this is usually the core of the argument. People can be against piracy, and also be against relinquishing their own wants and rights.

Most people are not having a debate over whether piracy is bad, or whether we want to fight it, no matter how hard certain groups try to hoist that straw-man. What people typically debate is how much damage the industry should be allowed to do to the healthy operation of society in the attempt.

What people really resent is that this industry thinks its wants are more important than everyone else’s needs, and they often entirely deserve to be told to shut the hell up and deal with it.

It is already illegal to pirate, police already use the same methods and respect the same boundaries to enforce it as any other form of “theft”, and what the industry is really saying when they want more anti-piracy is that they want even more. Being equal isn’t good enough, being treated fairly isn’t good enough, we have to sacrifice our needs to give them more.

No matter the mask that is put on the issue, it is essentially selfish malice, and there will be no acceptable outcome but its complete defeat.

I don’t think of music strictly as an art at all. My music is an art and a hobby, but I know plenty of people that live solely off the music industry.

I clearly stated like any business you need to use a business model that works.

Now you can complain about people stealing, and that anyone that condones sharing music immoral or whatever and say once someone creates DRM that works it will all be fine again but it’s pointless and the last part is just not correct.

DRM doesn’t work and there is a very simple reason. One person, in 1.5billion [roughly the number of people with internet access world wide] needs to work out a way to get around it and put the file online before that same 1.5billion people have access to the file. Those are odds you simply can’t fight.

Now I wouldn’t open a store in a crime riddled neighbourhood with no security, but I also wouldn’t bother wasting time and money adding a security device that only needs to be broken once before being rendered useless. Instead I’d work out a better business plan.

Well, few people disagree that piracy is illegal, and few disagree it should be discouraged.

Actually I think plenty of people think it’s acceptable to share music online, I think this is evidenced by the fact that millions of people do it. This doesn’t mean people aren’t going to support artists.

I buy a fair few cds, I buy posters, I go to a hell of a lot of gigs. I also download plenty of music. It’s how I discover music that’s happening outside of Melbourne.

Ideas about making money off one’s own labors are changing. The old saying “If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, Muhammad must go to the mountain” is applicable here. Remember, obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy (http://openp2p.com/lpt/a/3015).

One of my favorite music artists gives his music away for free and offers to let his fans pay him for it as well (http://www.bradsucks.net/). He lets his fans create mashups (which are often *fantastic*) and then upload them to his site for download. I have given him money over and over for things I could have gotten for free. Johnathan Coultan is another music artist who does the same thing (http://www.jonathancoulton.com/) — you can receive his songs for free or by purchasing them. I am a loyal fan to both artists, mostly because I enjoy their music, but also because I love their business model.

So keep trying. Maybe it’s better that way. Keeps you busy, I guess.

And you seem to place no value on people knowing who someone is behind a CD/file, or being aware of the person who created it (as opposed to merchandised it, and who gets most if not all of the proceeds from it) in the first place. Mostly because you say you’re “established”. Already got yours, screw the rest of ‘em, is that it?

So tell us who you are behind the handle. If we like your music, maybe we’ll buy it.

If we don’t like it – or you – well…

(I don’t buy much music anyway these days. Lots to listen to if I choose, online and in the world, very little I want to shell out money for, even less I feel worth putting up with music industry BS over.)

I disagree vociferously with calling it piracy.

Studio exec: We need a word that makes music sharing sound like a crime that would land you in prison.

Lobbyist: Rape?

Studio exec: Worse!

Lobbyist: Murder??

Studio exec: Worse!!

Lobbyist: Well, pirates rape the men and murder the women when they steal a ship. How about piracy?

Studio exec: Perfect. Can we get the death penalty?

You are describing a fictional, counter-factual, technically incoherent DRM, and offering no detail on how it could possibly work. You dismiss people with actual, technical expertise because their conclusions are inconvenient to your hypothesis.

Here’s a hint: “Also, are you saying that the laws against duplicating sheet music without a license are akin the ‘banning the technology’ of printing?”

Of course I’m not. Here’s what DRM does: it says “You may not copy even if the law permits you to.”

Here’s what DRM does: it says, “You may not build a device that can play this media without permission from the DRM vendor, even if that is legal.”

Can you see the difference between DRM and a law prohibiting unlawful duplication of media?

Here are some specific questions:

* How would your DRM work without encryption?

* What legal underpinnings would it requires? Anti-circumvention? Rules against publishing security flaws? Technology mandates limiting compatibility?

* How would it accommodate fair use?

On to your questions:

1. Do you think the people who post those files are acting ethically?

Yes. Ethics have changed. When it became possible to diffuse music over radio, we did. *Then* we legalized radio, by taking away musicians’ right to stop their music from being diffused on radio. We did so because radio was more important than last years’ musicians’ ideas about the right way to get paid for making music. New musicians came up who embraced radio; some of the old musicians embraced it too. Others quit. Music went on.

Copyright is instrumental. It serves the goal of maximising participation in, and diffusion of, culture. It is enshrined thus in the Progress Clause of the Constitution. When new technologies that allowed for broader participation and access to culture came along, copyright gave way. Here’s a short summary of some of those changes:

* Compulsory licenses on compositions so that records could be made without permission from composers

* Consent decree legalizing radio through collection societies (without royalties for performers)

* Compulsory license on recordings allowing for jukebox play without permission from performers

* Compulsory license on TV broadcasts allowing for cable TV diffusion of broadcast signals without permission from broadcasters or the creators of TV shows

* “Betamax principle” in 1984 establishing that making complete copies of commercial movies for the purposes of librarying and time-shifting is legal, even if you skip commercials and even if it undermines a video-rental market. Further, the principle that it is legal to make any technology that “is capable of sustaining a substantial non-infringing use”

Look at history: when a new technology comes along that copyright would stop, we always take away copyright’s “moral” right — the right to decide who can use your work. We sometimes (Betamax) also take away the economic right — the right to get paid for a use. We do so because copyright isn’t there to maximize income for creators, it’s to provide enough income to creators to get the most media at the lowest price into the most hands.

2. What about the people who download them?

See above. They know what computers are for: copying.

3. Do you think posting something on a blog is a fair use, one-to-one transaction (akin to tape-trading or inviting someone over), rather than akin to broadcasting?

No, I think it’s akin to neither. I think it is akin to putting something on a blog.

Also: yeah, “piracy” is a silly buzzword. I’d stop using it, but it’s too dang fun to make pirate jokes about the issue.

Arr, this new album be pleasin’ to me uter– erm, ears!

These numbers have nothing to do with offsetting the losses from theft, since Apple has incurred no losses due to theft. Again, a subscription model is likely to emerge soon in many country markets, and that will fix the value of any individual song at somewhere between $0.02 and $0.10 based on many industry estimates. That’s even worse, but there would be no appreciable piracy. You can rest assured every copy is legit, and you’ll see little money from all those legit copies. I’m not sure it’s an improvement.

I too am a recording artist and many of my recordings can’t be recreated live. I’m not happy about the situation at all, but am pragmatic enough to see that recording sales at best will be a small part of any economic strategy for my music-making.

As has been posted elsewhere, the sudden value accorded mass-duplicated commodities which propelled the industry from the 1950s-1990s is perhaps more of an anomaly than the loss of value we’re experiencing at present. The business models that have any potential for success today hinge upon figuring out how to monetize or to derive benefit from the free distribution opportunities that are available, not how to monetize low value content. The other model – create highly collectible art pieces.

I may be jumping into this conversation a bit late, but I’d like to point out the immense success that Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails have had ENCOURAGING sharing of their music. You can’t stop the copying, making money in music the ‘old way’ just isn’t working any more.

Check out this great interview on Digg:
http://blog.digg.com/?p=567

Also, I wonder if you ever produced a Zine called ‘Avast’, back in the early-mid 90′s. You sound like someone I once knew.

I think of digital recordings as akin to modern stock holdings. These days, most people don’t own physical stock certificates, they have digitally authenticated information tying a certain “share” to a certain user account. It’s just ones and zeros, and the “share” itself would be trivial to copy. So why is it wrong to copy shares and take advantage of their value, either by voting as a shareholder or trading them? The original share is still there, right? So how can it be stealing?

It’s stealing because it dilutes the value of the original, ultimately making it worthless. Hardly fair for the original issuer. Everyone understands this, and nobody complains that brokerages use authentication to protect this. In other words, DRM.

[/soapbox]

Jeez, Cory, I thought my comment was civil and polite, but if you;re gonna be snarky, sarcastic and arrogant, you should at least have your facts straight.

And you didn’t address the point about DRM and how it prevents dilution of value. Or do you not think that real, non-corporate, working-stiff folks make their living creating music as a commodity?

#thoughtfulresponsiblejournalistfail

No, I replied in great detail about something I care about for the 10th time today without reading the post I’m responding to. See Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions for more like this.

1. Do you think the people who post those files are acting ethically?
Yes. Ethics have changed.

Summarizes your position nicely. All the rest is just so much rationalization of it and, IMO, a selective and biased reading of the facts. At least now we know where you stand on pirated music. Remind me never to lend you anything.

over and out

Totally agree about all those economic factors, and I think your analysis is insightful. But to the extent that theft is also a factor, it’s still wrong and should be mitigated, not condoned. Theft is a fact of life and perhaps inevitable in this context, but it’s too bad so many people say “copyright infringement is ok and/or a right of liberty” instead of “copyright infringement is wrong, but we don’t think we can stop it.” Cory D. is explicitly in the former camp.

Again, you have good points and I don’t think we are necessarily in disagreement?

There are 2 other semi-viable scenarios that continue to exist: 1) works for hire (you get paid a large one-time sum for your compositional work), or 2) digital audio as a promo for live gigs.

There will never be a viable DRM for digital audio, nor will mp3s ever have a value larger than the current value of somewhere between $0.00 and $0.99 (and expect that the $0.99 ceiling will drop over time to $0.69, 59, and lower). Even if we end up with a subscription model controlled by the ISPs, don’t expect that payouts per listen will be more than $0.10.

I’m a recording artist and not particularly happy about the present situation, but this is the way it is, and with ever -increasing supply and ever-decreasing demand for the digital-audio-commodity, like all other commodities the value of a single unit will only drop. If more DRM devices are made, it will simply maintain the current supply while lessening demand, which is counter-productive. You can argue ’till you’re blue in the face that it’s stealing and wrong, but that won’t get you increased payouts for your mp3s.

I appreciate the sentiment, but don’t forget that your idea would equally impact any entrepreneur, not just the bad guys. I’m a strong proponent of carefully overseeing large companies (public or private), ensuring they are not abusing their power or outright committing fraud (as with Enron).

The thing is, you would be hurting the company you like by making lots of free stock, not helping. But I like the “popularity” angle, if you can devise a way for it to work!

You really, really, *really* have this wrong.

We never banned technologies for “diluting” copyright. “Diluting” copyright has never rendered the underlying work valueless.

What’s more, the question about DRM is just as ahistorical. Did you read the article? You didn’t, did you? I can tell because the central lesson of the article is that *every copy control system failed*. Just as every DRM has failed.

We have had *15 years* of legal protection for DRM without any evidence that DRM works, nor that legal prohibition on DRM circumvention reduces copying.

We’ve also had 15 years of facts in evidence about what DRM *does* accomplish: a reduction in competition, a slowdown in innovation, a compromising of fair use, increased surveillance, mission creep to prevent everything from voting machine research to print-cartridge remanufacture, and deep incursions into free speech.

And if you think calling “copyright infringement” (the actual, correct legal term) “stealing” (an absolutely incorrect legal term) is “civil,” I’d hate to see what you’re like when you’re being rude.

We have indeed outlawed piracy on cassettes, sheet music, etc. In order to publish sheet music of a particular composition, you need to obtain a Mechanical License from the publisher, which stipulates a statutory royalty rate. Anyone can do this via simple forms, but the Harry Fox Agency (harryfox.com) does it en masse and charges a commission for the convenience. In most cases, publishers are *required* to grant this license to anyone who applies for it — but make no mistake: reproducing sheet music without having first obtained the license is *against the law.* All of the above applies for cassettes, etc, too.

And, yes, I did read the entire article before posting. The article points out that the industry was unsuccessful in stopping piracy (as you say), but my point is that piracy is still wrong, which you haven’t addressed at all. And furthermore, the article does specifically mention the provisions about mechanical reproduction rights. Just because you disagree with my opinion, don’t infer that I didn’t do my homework.

I’m a working composer and I know this stuff backwards and forwards. I will happily (and politely) admit it if I have my facts wrong, but that’s not the case.

You are correct, I used “stealing” as an informal term, not a legal one.

Really, I am being sincere here: what is with all the vitriol and sarcasm?

Anyway, to your point, I agree that the DRM we’ve seen so far with itunes, et al, has been really poorly implemented and customer-unfriendly. But I think the concept is fine (as akin to the stock analogy) and I look forward to someone doing it right.

Nope. I’m saying it’s my choice whether or not to charge for my music. Anyone who wants to give their work away for publicity is welcome to. How am I preventing them from doing that if I’m saying it’s up to each individual rights owner to decide what’s best in their case? And your reference to “who gets the proceeds” shows your naiveté about us working stiffs. All I want to do is prevent people from having illegal copies of my recordings without adversely affecting the people who bought them. Is that really so weird?

Nevermind, I found it. It was hard to find, but it was publish in ARSC Journal, vol.17, no.1 (1985), p.18-45.

Thank you for keeping the full reference next time!

My choice of business model is for people to pay for my music. You can disagree about the wisdom of that, but the choice is mine and I will succeed or fail accordingly. Don’t impose your idea of a “better” business model on my business, just as I wouldn’t do that to you.

Let’s say you decide that you will not get paid this week for your job, because your employer says there’s a chance that by doing so, you will get a double paycheck the next week. Not a promise, a chance. Is it worth the risk to you? That’s your choice and nobody should make that decision for you. Making music is my job — like anyone, I strive to have a job I enjoy. That doesn’t mean I should do it for free. You seem to be stuck with thinking of music as strictly an art — for us professionals, it’s sometimes art, sometimes a commodity, etc. I have yet to see anyone else post to this thread who makes music for a living, not just a consumer.