Craig is right, when it comes to copying an entire CD or even a big chunk of it. That is certainly taking someone's income away. And I'd say that's a perfect place to draw the line, when you're generating copies of someone's entire album that is inprint and readily available. But if I put one or two John Zorn cuts on the CD that I'm making for a buddy who doesn't know about Zorn's work (and where's he gonna start with that catalogue?), then I've what I've done is less to give him product than to have given him consumer information. It not even a question of "will he shell out the money?" at that point, but rather "is he aware that this product exists and is available?" Also, in many cases, I know the tastes of my friends well enough to know what of Zorn's is most likely to elicit a favorable response. I don't think this is crap, because my friends and I have exposed each other for years to music via making compilation tapes (and now discs) for each other. And our respective record collections have been dramtically affected by that. When I was a young jazz player, how many people made me tapes of their favorite stuff hoping I would catch the bug? it worked, too. I would not have known about Denny Zeitlin or a lot of other folks had enterprising people not made me copies of the stuff. And I did a LOT of record buying based on those compilations, and so have a great many of my friends. Still do, too. The record companies have totally made speculative purchase impractical. If some of us want to do something about the problem by recording a cut or two off an album because we think we have a friend who will hear that and want the album enough to buy it, it's a helluva lot better than sitting around and bellyaching about how nobody can afford to check out new music. sh on 11/30/02 2:34 PM, Craig Rath at fripp@attbi.com wrote:

...

Please tell me why, if someone copies and keeps one of our releases, thereby depriving me of the sale of that release and our artist for the payment of the sale of that release, why this *isn't* theft?

The sense I'm getting from some people here is that they don't consider it stealing because you would never have made that sale in the first place - they wouldn't have shelled out the money anyway, so you can't lose what you would never have gotten in the first place. I happen to think this argument is crap. If you aren't willing to invest your money in purchasing the disc, what gives you the right to enjoy the disc? I would love to have a new car, but I won't get one because I can't afford one. But I really want it anyway, so just taking one isn't wrong because I would never have bought it in the first place, right? I realize there is a difference in scope here, but where do you draw the line? The only real difference I see is that I can't easily make a copy of a car whereas copying CDs has become ridiculously easy.

The other prevailing argument seems to be that copying music and giving it to others helps the bands by spreading the word to an audience that otherwise wouldn't have been exposed to it. Again, crap. What about loaning your legitimately purchased copy to someone else for a week to let them make up their mind about it? If they like it, they can buy a copy and you get yours back. If not, you get yours back and there isn't an unplayed illegitimate copy laying around somewhere. Why is this not preferable to just giving them a free copy of a disc? Are you trying to expand someone else's taste in music, or just their record collection?

Just because it is easy to do something today with the technology being what it is doesn't make it right. I was going to say that you don't see people making copies of books because it isn't cost effective to do so, but I guess billashline@netscape.net proved me wrong. Then again, his example assumes that a few bucks is better than full price, when you can get books at greatly discounted prices every day legitimately, and without the hassles of printing your own copy. I can guarantee that as soon as it is cost effective to copy DVDs, there will be people doing so and justifying it one way or another.

I am in no way guilt free here - I've downloaded things because it was easier as well. But at least I admit that what I did was wrong. I'm not trying to justify it by coming up with excuses. And about 90% of the stuff I've downloaded in the past was music that was unavailable to me in any other way. If I find one of these releases available legitimately, I buy it and throw out the CDR.

I'm not trying to be preachy - do whatever you want, it's your life. But don't make excuses for your actions or blame your actions on the "evil record companies". It's wrong, and that's all there is to it. If that doesn't bother you, all the power to you.

Craig M. Rath H: fripp@attbi.com W: rathc@questarweb.com

_______________________________________________ zorn-list mailing list zorn-list@mailman.xmission.com To UNSUBSCRIBE or Change Your Subscription Options, go to the webpage below http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/zorn-list

Craig Rath wrote:

I was going to say that you don't see people making copies of books because it isn't cost effective to do so, but I guess billashline@netscape.net proved me wrong. Then again, his example assumes that a few bucks is better than full price, when you can get books at greatly discounted prices every day legitimately, and without the hassles of printing your own copy.

I'll assume you've never worked in the book business and don't know about how the industry determines pricing. It's arbitrary. And it's consistent no matter where the book is being sold. Everything is pretty wide open on pricing in the states, but go abroad and you find a different regime. Where I live, books are usually low priced if they are published locally. Routledge doesn't cut its prices to the local price schedule when they stock the shelves at the downtown bookstores. Their rep imposes the same price structure as in the states. And in the states, the cost of academic trade size paper back books is now about 30 bucks. So you can pretty well tell what's going to happen. In an industry where publishers determine prices based on how much they can get for something rather than how much something is "worth", people are going to find ways to get copies. It's cheap to do here. In places like Thailand, people make a living off illegal copies of music. Nothing you would find discussed on this list, but major label stuff. Again, the record business makes no allowances for what people can afford to pay. Tower Records in Bangkok sells CDs for the same prices as the US. The Tower Records that used to be in Seoul was more expensive than the US. But Seoul is economically comparable to the US. Bangkok is not. In any case, the price of CDs was supposed to come down years ago. It never did. Now it will have to go up so that record companies can make up what they're losing on MP3 files. Too bad. Shortsided industry could have made some efforts to circumvent the activity and let their greed get in the way. Well now, John Q Public responds in kind and let's his greed get in the way. I already buy too many CDs. I don't make copies of other peoples' music for me because I'd rather have the original release. But I'll continue to make copies for others and have no moral qualms in doing so. There's so much else to have moral qualms about, why bother with this minor issue. Creativity is something no one can own. No one is an originary artist anymore. He always owes a debt to his precursors. He always learned from his teachers. All music produced is always already a theft of what came before. The same for all writing. All you can do is be consistent. If you steal or have stolen, then don't complain when others do it to you. But it's cool when people like Eskelin and Cuneiform ask people not to copy. I won't out of respect to their request, accept only to upload to my IPod for easy carriage. Bests