From: Peter Gannushkin <shkin@shkin.com>
AM> Burning unauthorized audio IS stealing.
I think burning a CD technically is NOT stealing at all. Stealing is taking somebody's else property away, so this person doesn't have it anymore.
Well, it is stealing. It's stealing the artist's royalty that otherwise would have been paid if the burned-copy-recipient had bought a legit copy instead. However, I still burn unauthorized copies, because as I think has been established, getting the music out to people who wouldn't hear it otherwise ultimately constitutes a GREATER GOOD that trumps the small royalty theft. I go all the way back to 1982 and getting a couple of homemade compilation cassettes of punk gems ("Lose Your Job" and "Lose Your Friends," in a punk trilogy that will probably never be completed [in true punk fashion] by "Lose Your Self-Respect") that led me to buy gobs of legit releases by the Huskers, Minutemen, Clash, Buzzcocks, Pistols, Meat Puppets, etc etc. Still, I try not to kid myself -- the greater good started then and starts now with a small theft. V/A compilations definitely have more good karma than burning whole albums for friends; burning OP albums has more good karma than burning in-print albums; burning albums from major labels is better karma than whole albums from indie labels, which I don't like to do anymore if they're in print. The same friend who made those tapes 20 years back gleefully downloads everything he can via various peer-to-peer methods, because his contention is that the music industry as it currently exists is evil, with labels stealing from artists, and the sooner we crush the existing recording industry and cut the corporations out of the loop, the sooner the artists can deal directly with their public. In this vision of the future, studio recordings would exist only as free tastes to be freely disseminated, which would encourage the artists and their audiences to get up offa their couch and conduct the REAL business of music -- live performance, with as much of the gate going to the artist as possible. It's not a fully-formed theory, and even if it were I'm not sure I would agree with all of it (I have a hard time with artists doing studio work entirely "on spec," as it were), but it brings up some interesting and legit points, so I thought I'd toss it out here. William Crump
on 11/30/02 2:03 PM, William Crump at crumpw@bellsouth.net wrote:
I think burning a CD technically is NOT stealing at all. Stealing is taking somebody's else property away, so this person doesn't have it anymore.
Well, it is stealing. It's stealing the artist's royalty that otherwise would have been paid if the burned-copy-recipient had bought a legit copy instead.
It's funny to me that a large part of Zorn's record collection, which certainly contributed to his inspiration, was, in fact, stolen back in the day when Zorn was relatively impecunious. I wonder (not!) if he's ever gone and repaid any of the poor artists whose music he ripped off. --Mike
Mike Chamberlain wrote:
It's funny to me that a large part of Zorn's record collection, which certainly contributed to his inspiration, was, in fact, stolen back in the day when Zorn was relatively impecunious. I wonder (not!) if he's ever gone and repaid any of the poor artists whose music he ripped off.
No small irony there, especially when people make a big deal about stealing from artists, but of course Zorn was only stealing from his retail outlet, which had already paid the distributor. Nonetheless, Zorn's practice is instructive: Buy what you can. Steal (burn, that is) what you can't. And burn to distribute, too. I've been sending CDRs to friends for quite awhile now. Oh and where I live, I can go to my university library and borrow any book whatsoever and then call a guy on a phone who drives over and picks up the book, takes it to his print shop and prints up a nice, bound paperback copy of the book for the nominal cost of a few bucks. Why do I do it? Because I can. :-)
On Behalf Of William Crump
The same friend who made those tapes 20 years back gleefully downloads everything he can via various peer-to-peer methods, because his contention is that the music industry as it currently exists is evil, with labels stealing from artists, and the sooner we crush the existing recording industry and cut the corporations out of the loop, the sooner the artists can deal directly with their public.
Well, others could contend that copying, even of mainstream music, is never justified because the record industry is a complex entanglement of economic dependencies. If you're making a CD-R of, for example, the latest Britney Spears release you're not only damaging her royalities! The artists are not the lone cogs in this work - there are the people in pressing plants, in distribution and retail. If the new business models (William mentions one of them) are successful, there will be a lot more folks out of work than just upper-region record company executives [and they're probably the last ones that will have to go ;-)] To call these changes epochal isn't hyperbole, that's for sure. But of course the big companies are far from being innocent of the resentment they are facing. You just have to think about CD prizes, which have been kept artificially high for so long - a real scandal! Regards Franz Fuchs
on 11/30/02 12:20 PM, Franz Fuchs at f.fuchs@gmx.net wrote:
If the new business models (William mentions one of them) are successful, there will be a lot more folks out of work than just upper-region record company executives [and they're probably the last ones that will have to go ;-)] To call these changes epochal isn't hyperbole, that's for sure.
As the ways and means of an industry change, so must be the laws surrounding it. Example -- look at a 1961 episode of TWILIGHT ZONE or OUTER LIMITS where there's a computer in the story. Look at that gi-normous, monolithic thing that takes up a whole floor of an office building. Did anyone back then ever think that a Bill Gates could emerge from that? Or a Sean Fanning? As recently as 1992, the laws regarding computers and prgrams were more in the 1961 headspace than you'd ever think, but largely because the pre-Clinton administrations were made up of guys who were contemporaries of Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. Their frame of reference for computers was still laregly in that 1961 headspace. We're only in the last few years starting to see the record business be taken over by a new generation of corpo-greedheads, a bunch of MBA pipsqueaks who don't even remember the Sex Pistols first hand, let alone the Beatles. They know from digital transport. Theor emergence is truly epochal. The record industry in LA -- the center of entertainment for the masses -- looks a lot like the auto industry in Flint MI during the filming of ROGER & ME. Now, there's not a whole lot of car production that can happen on an independent level. But CD's can be made so cheaply that there's more music out in recorded form than ever before. And the numbers aren't going down, even tho record companies are downsizing like a pre-SUV GM every month. The amount of music is inversely proportionate to the execs in a place of power. One of the jobs of a good exec is to get rid of his competitors. Coca Cola doesn't want RC Cola out there. So Coca Cola buys the space in every major convenience store chain so there's no place for RC. Literally. In Tower, Border's, the end caps and listening stations are pretty well monopolized by majors or majors masquerading as indies (Matador). Sure, a Tzadik record can be found in Tower. But have you ever seen one displayed? You have the freedom to make any record you want (unless you're black, in which case you have the right to make any record you want and have it boycotted systematically). But do you have the financial freedom to make it known to the public that your record exists, that it could be a perfect product for an audience that exists? If you're Zorn, you have little more money and profile. But what about all these brilliant guys with no financial resources from which to draw once they've depleted their spare funds (saved from their 6.00/hr job at a used bookstore) just to record and press their music? You may get a review in DOWNBEAT or THE WIRE, which is the difference between life and death when the stakes are low but still dire, but is ROLLING STONE spending all that much time reviewing records on labels that aren't taking out ad space? It's been like this for a long time. Remember Keith Jarrett or Sun Ra on Saturday Night Live? Now, it's corpo rock. Even the venues that purport counter-cultural cred are lost to the artists who live outside the cultural mainstream. Thank you all for making Gwen Stefani the spokeswoman for "alternative music". You think mergo-monopolies like Time-Warner/AOL and Clear Channel are happening in a vaccum? No. The way the business works is changing. It's just about the monopoly Jello Biafra predicted in the late eighties. What passes for "alternative" is largely a joke. You can count the majors on one hand (just about), and if you look at what they're putting their weight behind, you can see what's happening to the record industry. skip h NP: Bill Evans, THE PIANO PLAYER
----- Original Message ----- From: "skip Heller" <velaires@earthlink.net> Subject: Re: CD burning/smash the RIAA!
You have the freedom to make any record you want ... But do you have the financial freedom to make it known to the public that your record exists
But in a competitive market place there'll always be the problem of getting your message out. That isn't unique to music. And if the consumer suddenly had too many choices instead of too few, would the prospects of being heard get any better for the artist? I'd guess that if the playing field were suddenly "levelled", you'd quickly see artists forming their own coalitions to help get their word out. And human nature being what it is, some of these coalitions would grow into evil corporations. I'd love to be wrong about that, though.
What passes for "alternative" is largely a joke.
Well, sure, "alternative" is just a genre now. As is "independent film". It seems to me the music that's being discussed on this list isn't something with immediate appeal the way "pop" is. It's more like the answer to a question that not everybody has asked yet. I'd argue that the real trick is getting people to ask that question.
----- Original Message ----- From: "William Crump" <crumpw@bellsouth.net> Sent: Saturday, November 30, 2002 11:03 AM Subject: Re: CD burning/smash the RIAA!
...the sooner we crush the existing recording industry and cut the corporations out of the loop, the sooner the artists can deal directly with their public.... studio recordings would exist only as free tastes to be freely disseminated
But artists are already free to do this if they think it will work. Why "crush corporations"? If this model works, let it exist side by side with the old model. I'd support it. Some consumers would gravitate towards it purely for the "independent" cred it would give their image.
which would encourage the artists and their audiences to get up offa their couch and conduct the REAL business of music --
Sure, some people would go for this. But a lot of entertainment-consumers are more interested in image, in manufacturing/aquiring their identities (not casting stones, here; we were all teenagers at one time), in big media spectacles, in getting a predictable, reproducible, acceptable experience. And they want it delivered to their couches. It's their right to consume big corporate "art" if they like, isn't it? Sometimes there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution.
participants (6)
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A.VanValin -
billashline＠netscape.net -
Franz Fuchs -
Mike Chamberlain -
skip Heller -
William Crump