EggXpert

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But piracy is costing record lables, production companie etc. On our end, the reprcussion of not doing anything would be no music and no movies or a decline in the qualities of those materials.

I've always wondered how that would apply to music. I mean, what cost actually goes into making an album? Generally at most it's the work of a writer, a producer and the artist themself. Possibly a small ensemble for a few dozen recording hours. As well as studio time. Even assigning everyone low six figure salaries(aside from the ensemble), we're looking at a quarter million dollars assuming a whole half year of work(which is VERY uncommon). Which would be recouped on 30,000 sales. Generally regarded as a major flop. Some movies like Avatar wouldn't be possible, but I don't even see how music is affected.

The thinking seems to go, if the music industry doesn't achieve a new record profit each year, then music is dead or at imminent risk of death. 

products:

From what I know, the problem inside America's bad. But people in Brazil and China seem to pay nothing, like pirating is the standard. I am afraid that with this, we are gonna be hit with higher prices to compensate for piracies that occur in other parts of the world. 

Our TV and radio are already biased toward American views and agenda.

Eh.. piracy is pretty much legal in Holland and the movie industry's profits there are at record highs. It's been pointed out quite often that most pirating is dead weight loss. Trying to prevent pirating for profit is a good goal. Trying to prevent it altogether is not possible.

Won't this also affect other countries also not just America? Another thing is if these products were reasonably priced instead of inflated more people would be likely to buy them. Louis CK proved this here: https://buy.louisck.net/news. If you do buy the movie or album or w/e and you want to post you favorite quote or lyric they can still block it? Will I be allowed to type words on the internet anymore? Nine Inch Nails has the right idea also and put an album for free on their site or u can buy it to support the artist. In my opinion it's greed bringing this up at all opposed to owning rights or property.

MewMint:

products:

But piracy is costing record lables, production companie etc. On our end, the reprcussion of not doing anything would be no music and no movies or a decline in the qualities of those materials.

I've always wondered how that would apply to music. I mean, what cost actually goes into making an album? Generally at most it's the work of a writer, a producer and the artist themself. Possibly a small ensemble for a few dozen recording hours. As well as studio time. Even assigning everyone low six figure salaries(aside from the ensemble), we're looking at a quarter million dollars assuming a whole half year of work(which is VERY uncommon). Which would be recouped on 30,000 sales. Generally regarded as a major flop. Some movies like Avatar wouldn't be possible, but I don't even see how music is affected.

The thinking seems to go, if the music industry doesn't achieve a new record profit each year, then music is dead or at imminent risk of death. 

Hm.... not exactly.  Anybody could produce studio quality music if they have several hundred dollars. But if you look at the studio recording artists signed to record labels, at the production stage, there's a cost of studio time, a composer, writer, and producer. After that labels and artists need to split the cost of promotion. For instance, the promotion includes the production of a music video, costs associated with appearing on TV and radio, etc so that people know that there's something new one there.  Artists sometimes borrow millions to produce music videos to promote an alabum or music and they are supposed to pay back the debt to the label from the album sales. Lables collect money from sales of a track or album, and use that to pay royalties to artists and repayments of debts artists have with the label. But lable's not getting as much of revenues now that some artists go broke / end up losing money as a result of promotion. Not only do people give out copies of ripped music tracks. people can now easily record a song off the radio or website like VEVO. Basically free music for people.  Stuff like this is becoming increasingly common. That's why anybody from JLo to Justin Bieber is doing stuff like perfume because that's more lucrative. Brandng / doing other things using their fame is way more profitable than doing music.  And cross promotion by product placement in whatever they do.

The thing is that only work s for artists that area already famous uisng the music platform.  And music lables don't get money.

Oh well, you could argue that labels and artists used to make *too much* when people were buying 'albums' frrom stores though. but that doens't stop them from trying to make as much as they can now.

MewMint:

products:

From what I know, the problem inside America's bad. But people in Brazil and China seem to pay nothing, like pirating is the standard. I am afraid that with this, we are gonna be hit with higher prices to compensate for piracies that occur in other parts of the world. 

Our TV and radio are already biased toward American views and agenda.

Eh.. piracy is pretty much legal in Holland and the movie industry's profits there are at record highs. It's been pointed out quite often that most pirating is dead weight loss. Trying to prevent pirating for profit is a good goal. Trying to prevent it altogether is not possible.

I don't know about the Netherlands, but euros in general are much more likely to say, "If we like it, we have to support it."  And they buy even though  those things cost more there than they do in the US. Also, they are more of 'collectors' than we are. We watch movies on Netflix or download mp3s on iTunes. Euros prefer to buy albums, singles (like we used to) from a store and put them on their shelevs / enjoy looking at their 'collecitons'.  It's changing though. The teenagers must be different.

I agree, complete prevention is not possible. 

 

Captivity06:

Won't this also affect other countries also not just America? Another thing is if these products were reasonably priced instead of inflated more people would be likely to buy them. Louis CK proved this here: https://buy.louisck.net/news. If you do buy the movie or album or w/e and you want to post you favorite quote or lyric they can still block it? Will I be allowed to type words on the internet anymore? Nine Inch Nails has the right idea also and put an album for free on their site or u can buy it to support the artist. In my opinion it's greed bringing this up at all opposed to owning rights or property.

Yes and no. It will affect people in other countries who use American websites, but that is as far as it goes.

The general idea of the bill is well-founded, however it is implemented in the worst possible way. Here is an example:

YouTube has always been pretty good about respecting the rights of companies. They'll delete any video and user who frequency uses copyright material. Under the new bill, a copyright holder can get a court order to essentially shut down YouTube if there is copyrighted content. Youtube will remain shut down until the "damages" are recovered by the copyright holder. So just because one user uploaded copyright content, they can essentially censor the entire Youtube site while it is stuck in court.

I also can't see this good for jobs. Now that the DNS blocking revision has been removed from the bill, I can see many popular media sharing websites moving their website, and the jobs along with it, overseas to avoid US law.

So basically, the general idea of the bill is to protect copyright content, which, in my opinion, is a good thing. However, the way the bill is implemented is just horrible and needs to be fixed.

Yeah, 'over-done' was my impression with the original version.

But I also hear that they are re-writing and re-writing so that it only targets overseas piracy promoting sites? meaning when we Google, those sites won't show up TO US? 

I have difficulty believing that Americans, most of whom are monolingual, are visiting websites in Portugees or Chinese to download those musics or movies for free.  Of course, the UK and Australia are another story.

:O

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After that labels and artists need to split the cost of promotion. For instance, the promotion includes the production of a music video, costs associated with appearing on TV and radio, etc so that people know that there's something new one there.  Artists sometimes borrow millions to produce music videos to promote an alabum or music and they are supposed to pay back the debt to the label from the album sales.

Sure, but none of that is actually impacting music at all. It would mean a change of marketing. The music is not harmed. A guess a lot people could lose an income. But none of those people were doing anything useful to start with. I've always thought of marketing as being slightly less useful than peeling potatoes in the brig 

MewMint:

products:

But piracy is costing record lables, production companie etc. On our end, the reprcussion of not doing anything would be no music and no movies or a decline in the qualities of those materials. [Already happened]

I've always wondered how that would apply to music. I mean, what cost actually goes into making an album? Generally at most it's the work of a writer, a producer and the artist themself. Possibly a small ensemble for a few dozen recording hours. As well as studio time. Even assigning everyone low six figure salaries(aside from the ensemble), we're looking at a quarter million dollars assuming a whole half year of work(which is VERY uncommon). Which would be recouped on 30,000 sales. Generally regarded as a major flop. Some movies like Avatar wouldn't be possible, but I don't even see how music is affected.

The thinking seems to go, if the music industry doesn't achieve a new record profit each year, then music is dead or at imminent risk of death. 

[The music industry is a lot more complicated then your above statement but to get you to see a point, a simple example:  if  Javier Colene spent $5,000 on 9 songs, bought a computer, software, keyboard, mic, 1000 blank cd's with paper jackets and wanted to sell his stuff and 7-11 sold only 1 (one) copy for $5, and that person put that copy on the internet and 43,000 people downloaded it for free, why would the Javier make more copies or even more songs ?]

products:

From what I know, the problem inside America's bad. But people in Brazil and China seem to pay nothing, like pirating is the standard. I am afraid that with this, we are gonna be hit with higher prices to compensate for piracies that occur in other parts of the world. [it wasn't the prices, that started the piracy, it was the content-one song on a CD was good the rest were c**p, A movie, you would see the highlights promo but the actual movie was c**p ie: boob tube] 

Our TV and radio are already biased toward American views and agenda.

Eh.. piracy is pretty much legal in Holland and the movie industry's profits there are at record highs. [Not true, In 1998, the militia (guys with guns) shut down servers that handed out copywrited material.] It's been pointed out quite often that most pirating is dead weight loss. Trying to prevent pirating for profit is a good goal. Trying to prevent it altogether is not possible.

In the late 60's when synthesizers came out and mimicked the live musicians putting horns and string instruments players out of work did the record companies say its ok?  (ie: Sharkey's Machine) Sure they did because it was cheaper to use 1 keyboard musician, 1 producer, 1 engineer instead of hiring a full orchestra with a conductor, arranger, orchestrator, and singers, printing company, 1st and 2nd engineer, producer and  that was only production not pre-production not post production.  When the record companies moved there manufacturing plants to Argentina, did they say they were giving away American jobs? No.  When actors complained about robots and animated characters taking their job, was anyone listening? When the record/CD’s/DVD’s were sent to the retail stores did anyone think that literately a whole field of American’s would be out of work?  What is the word oh, yeah, "Progress." 

The only time "the people" get involved in politics is when their wallets are threaten.  PIPA and SOPA are bills that only let big business get bigger but force you to pay for whatever they consider entertainment. (ie: reality shows)  Unfortunately, the media field started Piracy now they are threatened, so they are going to take it out on the whole world.

Fire those lawyers and congressmen who introduced the bill to begin with and send them back to California, wait I live in California-send them back to Canada!

 

Bullethead:

[The music industry is a lot more complicated then your above statement but to get you to see a point, a simple example:  if  Javier Colene spent $5,000 on 9 songs, bought a computer, software, keyboard, mic, 1000 blank cd's with paper jackets and wanted to sell his stuff and 7-11 sold only 1 (one) copy for $5, and that person put that copy on the internet and 43,000 people downloaded it for free, why would the Javier make more copies or even more songs ?]

That was relevant years ago. Not now. Might I point you to Band Camp?

Times are changing and the music industry is insisting on trying to upend the world in order to keep doing things exactly like they used to decades ago. It doesn't matter how many times your songs are pirated, only how many sales you get. The vast majority of people will never buy your music even if piracy is impossible. 

Pirates spend more on music than non-pirates. So if no one is buying Javier's music after downloading it, it's because no one likes it.

Bullethead:

In the late 60's when synthesizers came out and mimicked the live musicians putting horns and string instruments players out of work did the record companies say its ok?  (ie: Sharkey's Machine) Sure they did because it was cheaper to use 1 keyboard musician, 1 producer, 1 engineer instead of hiring a full orchestra with a conductor, arranger, orchestrator, and singers, printing company, 1st and 2nd engineer, producer and  that was only production not pre-production not post production.  When the record companies moved there manufacturing plants to Argentina, did they say they were giving away American jobs? No.  When actors complained about robots and animated characters taking their job, was anyone listening? When the record/CD’s/DVD’s were sent to the retail stores did anyone think that literately a whole field of American’s would be out of work?  What is the word oh, yeah, "Progress." 

The only time "the people" get involved in politics is when their wallets are threaten.  PIPA and SOPA are bills that only let big business get bigger but force you to pay for whatever they consider entertainment. (ie: reality shows)  

All good points :)

MewMint:

products:

After that labels and artists need to split the cost of promotion. For instance, the promotion includes the production of a music video, costs associated with appearing on TV and radio, etc so that people know that there's something new one there.  Artists sometimes borrow millions to produce music videos to promote an alabum or music and they are supposed to pay back the debt to the label from the album sales.

Sure, but none of that is actually impacting music at all. It would mean a change of marketing. The music is not harmed. A guess a lot people could lose an income. But none of those people were doing anything useful to start with. I've always thought of marketing as being slightly less useful than peeling potatoes in the brig 

Yes, they have to and they are pushing stuff to the internet , which makes sense but then the internet is so vast.  People don't see it unless they are looking for it, I mean compared to TV, it's become difficult to catch people's attention becuase there's sooo much out there for people to be interested in. And yes the truth is that the whole 'industry' cannot make as much as they used to, so, they are not liking that.

Going back to the original topic. LOL at useful to start with. Well, whole entertainment doesn't save people's lives. Record label heads are used to making millions so they try to keep it though of course what they do is not nearly as 'vital' as what copes, teachers or medical scientists do for that matter.  But this is a group of teckies here. If you ask a group of artists, they could have a different opinion.   So I don't wanna be too judgemental.

Most people who make music hate record labels and the current way things are run. I used to post on di.fm and it's not an exaggeration to say 1/4 of the people who post there are musicians by trade.

Most of them were fairly happy with their music being pirated because it got them out there. No, they don't want %100 piracy. But if the only people who hear their music are people who buy it without hearing it... they won't have many sales. To a large extent they see piracy as an indirect way of breaking the music industry's monopoly on distribution and what anyone is even exposed to.

They all love last.fm, slacker and pandora too :) Which the record industry generally resisted every step of the way.

One of the false frames the industry mostly pushes is "getting something for nothing". But most pirates buy a lot of stuff. It's more like "getting more than what the record company wants them to have at that price".

Hate to break up all the intellectual conversation going on here, but I'll just post this rather funny, and yet still on-topic video.

http://blip.tv/blizzblues-with-darnell/blizz-blues-45-sopa-is-not-dead-5894170

If you have any friends who play video games but yet hate reading (aka: my roommate), show it to them. Maybe it'll get them involved.

MewMint:

Most people who make music hate record labels and the current way things are run. I used to post on di.fm and it's not an exaggeration to say 1/4 of the people who post there are musicians by trade.

Most of them were fairly happy with their music being pirated because it got them out there. No, they don't want %100 piracy. But if the only people who hear their music are people who buy it without hearing it... they won't have many sales. To a large extent they see piracy as an indirect way of breaking the music industry's monopoly on distribution and what anyone is even exposed to.

They all love last.fm, slacker and pandora too :) Which the record industry generally resisted every step of the way.

One of the false frames the industry mostly pushes is "getting something for nothing". But most pirates buy a lot of stuff. It's more like "getting more than what the record company wants them to have at that price".

Yes. That's consistant with what I hear as well. Most of the musicians are unhappy with their record companies because they see it as milking, the way any workers can be dissatisfied to their employers, especially after the percentages of sales artists receive have been reduced over the past decade.

I think the reason for the industry's loss is going from selling albums to selling tracks. I may be wrong. But it used to be there if you like like 5 singles released out of the album, you buy the entire album without buying the rest. Today you only buy those specific tracks. But the cost of promoting 5 singles is higher, and increasing the prices of music only "encourages" piracy, so they can't do that either. --> if they could push a bill like this, they might well try to increase the price a lil bit.

Also for them, the proliferation of the interent has made their TV/radio promo less effective as people's attention is much more diverted to the internet

Another small factor might be the disappearnace of the middle class in the US. There's less 'disposable income' in people now than there used to be say 20-30 years ago.

Personally, I don't think record companies are losing as much as they think or they claim to be to "piracy" itself. A lot of people download illegally because it's there / it's free and they wouldn't buy if they couldn't even listend to those musics first whereas record companies may see the total number of illegal downloads and imagine how much sales that would be. It is also true that music enthusiasts download a lot more for free and buy more at least in europe and America. Not where you go to places where piracy is the 'standard' but those are typically places where the music industry did not really consider as major 'markets' traditionally. If anything, sales in those markets are something that I think the industry would love to get but they don't have control over how things go in let's say China.  Now that they have some people who can pay for American musics, those people's piracy is costing the labels.

If you have been a big international artist who used to make huge multi million dollar contracts for X,, Y Z numbers of albums, then you might want record labels in ordr to reach audiences in areas where people still buy physical CDs. It's not easy to organize promo outside the US without the backing of large entities like Universal, Sony, and publicists who know the markets, etc, or distribute physical CDs.  Not to say you'd be happy with your label because you remember the day you could get more. But you could be better off being signed still.

Musicians by trade is completely another story.  First of all, they don't have the experience of making multi millions and that's not what they expect unlike big name musicians. The proliferation of the internet helped them come out from ares that used to make them geographically disadvantaged (like outside major music industry cities).  And widened the channel of exposure. For them, the shifting of people's attention from TV/radio to the inernet is a good thing.

Piracy prevention helps those who traditionally made a lot hell a lot more (established and signed artists and record labels) than musicians by trade.

 

No one wants to be a pirate.  I pay for netflix and I love it. I get a free amazon video subscription with my prime account.

 

I wouldn't mind paying $40 or $50 a month and listening to and watching ads if I could have access to any media any time.   

 

Any song, any book, any movie, any show, etc.   I don't mind paying for it.  

 

The content industry though wants me to buy physical tangible media at huge mark ups.  I do own copies of my favorite anime, and movies, and music albums, and books.   

 

In my opinion the media industry is it's own worst enemy,  if they gave us what we wanted in the format we wanted there would be absolutely no reason for us to pirate anything, and they would still get paid, and we would still buy physical copies of media if we liked them enough to do so for our collections. 

 

 

lordmaynoth:

No one wants to be a pirate.

Now yes because you take don't mind paying 1 dollar per track. 

But I remember when Napstar came out.  And how Australia has some law that prohibits stuff like that from being shut down.

Many Americans, primarily kids & young people, like me would start thinking like why should we pay anything at all when it's free?  Of course if you are  huuuge fan of someone, then you might buy an album but if you just heard something on radio, why not just download that one track and not buy an album?

The American music industry had to then start the 1 track sales instead of whole albums in order to stay competitive. And after like 10 years or so, now we take it for granted that we pay.

Without Napster, the chances are online sales would be mostly albums costing 15 bucks today.  And they might actually do that if they could get this passed.

 

I want to be able to watch anything anytime, listen to anything anytime, read anything any time, and play anything anytime (single player), all for one monthly fee and or advertising based revenue.

For years television and radio have been free to anyone with antenna's, and everyone still got paid via advertising. 

Now in the age of the internet they are freaking out because they refuse to adapt, they want people to buy an physical tangible products, when that is not how they wish to consume for the most part. 

 

If they could embrace change and evolve their business models they could earn more money than they did before, and render piracy irrelevant.  But this all boils down to greed, they won't be satisfied with a low monthly fee from all Americans and advertising based revenue.   

 

Look at Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, and Louis C.K. they all released a pay what you want model for downloads and succeeded in making handsome profits.   Nine inch nails also sold deluxe collectors edition albums which sold in record amounts.

People who are fans will buy the product, everyone still makes money.

 

 

 

lordmaynoth:

If they could embrace change and evolve their business models they could earn more money than they did before, and render piracy irrelevant.  But this all boils down to greed, they won't be satisfied with a low monthly fee from all Americans and advertising based revenue.  

 

They don't mind adapting and they have. But they can't make as much money.  The internet has more addresses than the number of TV channels, their adaptation strategies would be charging hell a lot for an album to make the same amount they used to make.  Or charging you a lot for accessing Lastfm, VEVO and so on. Gimme 60 dollars a month for unlimited access, gimme 30 dollars for up to 15 hours a week.  And completely blocking piracy that could result from overcharging.   So that they can buy banner spaces on many of the websites just to get the same 'probability" of their stuff shown to you that they used to have in the 90's on TV.. Quite frankly, I think that's the direction they'd like to go with the above proposed move though I don't think they can make as much as they used to anyway.

Back in the analog days, TV and radio brought in tons of money via advertising and you could view or listen for free.

People still bought vhs tapes of shows they liked even though they could copy them from a video rental store, same goes for taping songs of the radio.

 

There is plenty of money to be made.  Look at nine inch nails, look at radiohead, look  at louis CK.   They allowed users to pay what they wanted for basic downloads and offered deluxe versions of their albums,   it was highly profitable. 

 

Piracy could be eliminated by making it pointless and irreverent, but greed is preventing this. 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/01/19/anonymous-hackers-claims-attack-on-doj-universal-music-and-riaa-after-megaupload-takedown/

lordmaynoth:

Piracy could be eliminated by making it pointless and irreverent, but greed is preventing this. 

Hm...... if they didn't mind making zero dollars then yes, piracy would not exist.   well, I am not comfortable with the idea that the government should be able to shut down something without any due process just to protect the economic interest of the large industry. On the other hand, I am also not sure if copyright holders should be forced to lower the prices to compete against piracy sites who make money off of piracy activities either, or forced to lower prices because of the piracy fear either.  It's like going to Texas or Arizona and telling people to accept 5 dollars an hour wage so that they will be competitive against illegal workers from South America. "you are not competitive because you are too greedy to take 5 dollars an hour" You know? lol. Law enforcement + due process makes most sense to me personally.  If they charge too much, then people won't buy not because they can get the same things cheaper illegally but because they don't think the commodity is worth the dollar they get charged. That's how it used to work in the analog days, and sounds more fair to me.....

gandalf91:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/01/19/anonymous-hackers-claims-attack-on-doj-universal-music-and-riaa-after-megaupload-takedown/

wow. o_O

Well, both laws are 'tabled' for the time being http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16655272

 

On the topic of ethical piracy,  I saw this and thought products might like it:

This is exactly how I feel,  I would gladly pay for things if it were made possible for me to legally consume media how I choose to do so.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

 

 

 

somehow I left out the middle panel

 

 

I think Games of Thrones is probably the best book to tv adaptation I've seen to date. It's very good. I like the casting and while it moves through everything quite rapidly, it doesn't miss much and doesn't feel rushed. It's very much a complete and well told story.