haddaway234 said:
So I read that article on anonymous and Gene Simmons, and apparently they (Anonymous isn't really a group, just a bunch of unrelated guys who think its cool to go under the same name) are mad at Gene Simmons for wanting to sue everyone who pirates music, but honestly, I think this would be a good idea. Maybe not everyone, but people who distribute pirated music, sue a bunch of them, and then that will send a good message.
I understand that many musicians are rich and don't 'need' all the money they get but what about newer artists who are just starting out? How about the many people involved in the music making process, there are many people who need to be paid and a lot of people in the music industry have lost their jobs because of piracy.
Also, from the point of view of some guy on a computer, I'm sure its easy to say "I wouldn't care" but if you were really a musician, you would care that people are taking your music which many artists consider a part of them that they spent a LOT of time on, and then people just steal it.
So I wanted to know, with my reasoning in mind, how is piracy of music (We are just talking music) justified and made okay? Do you feel 'entitled' to somebody else's work?
NOTE: I'm not sure how to delete a poll so I just changed it to have no real options because the only thing a poll did was have people answer with no reasoning whatsoever.
Well, a lot of this comes down to how you want to define piracy. In a lot of cases the people complaining about piracy are being ridiculous. The guys at the forefront of the crusade being old time rockers who came up as technology was developing, didn't have the safeguards that were in place due to nobody who saw where things were going, and/or were irresponsible with their money and decided to drink, snort, inject, or party it all away and wound up being famous without any real proceeds.
A good example would be how long-time rock bands used to do a lot of open performances, and/or had no objections to people making recordings during their concerts, heck a lot of them thought it was pretty cool, and even encouraged it since any exposure was more exposure. The whole recording industry took a while to evolve to it's current form. Looking back at bands like "The Rolling Stones" and even guys like "Ozzy Osbourne" or "Michael Jackson" there were plenty of oppertunities for people to legitimatly record their work, and never have to pay for those songs. They became more concerned about things as technology advanced, and the recording industry grew, and they watched guys who came up with more knowlege and at a later poing in the evolution making a lot more money due to being better assimilated to the way things work.
Not to mention the whole issue of musical formats, and the demands various artists and labels make that a person basically pay money for every format a song is on. Basically if tech advances they want everyone to pay again for all their music in a new format, rather than being able to say upgrade their records or 8-track tapes onto cassettes, or their cassetes onto CDs, or put their CDs onto digital platforms. Especially when your looking at old bands it's possible to go back as far as things like vinyl records, 8 tracks, and singles, which were purchused without even the slightest pretension of limitation on use (as nobody even conceived of later technologies) when looking at someone's rights in what they do with a song they purchused in transferring it. Not to mention the whole issue of certain performances becoming public domain, after all it used to be far more common for bands to show up in parks and such and perform publically without even ticket sales, and that right there means that a given song could have been captured by anyone who was present without any kind of agreement, and thus arguably the material became public domain.
Whether you agree with me or not is kind of irrelevent, the bottom line is that it's a mess, and a lot of the issues and anger comes down to guys like Gene Simmons screaming about injustices simply because they didn't have all the benefits people in the more evolved industry did, and of course a lot of them now caring a lot more about the money than they did then. Of course I suppose if your with one of the really great, long-time bands, it does kind of burn to see some bubblegum pop star of the moment making tons more money simply because their people have the benefits of being savvy to an evolved industry.
To be brutally honest, all the specific arguements made aside, I think a lot of the expectations are kind of ridiculous anyway. As far as I'm concerned if you've bought a song, you've bought it. I don't think you should be forced to keep re-purchusing the same material, if someone wants to transfer to updated technological formats I think that's their right. 20-30 years ago it would have been ridiculous to even suggest that someone be considered some master criminal for daring to transfer their 8 track collection onto cassettes or whatever.
The bottom line is that I'm hardly pro-pirate, despite how it might sound. I believe you should pay for things like this, however I don't believe in a lot of the technicalities placed on it, and guys like Gene Simmons in paticular seem to be taking the most greedy and ridiculous stances they can. I think the proper path is somewhere between the "I am entitled to steal everything" and "you should pay me again and again for the same thing" position. I also think as I explained, that a lot of the most extreme elements of this come from old timers QQing largely because they are old timers whose prime came and went in a very differant market, and are expecting people to shower them with massive piles of money. It's especially annoying when your dealing with guys who HAD massive piles of money, but were a big part of building up that whole "sex, drugs, and rock and roll" image, and pretty much pissed it away. The fact that someone blew their fortune stupidly does NOT mean they should be taking it out on the fans.
I think Gene's problem was that he stuck himself out there to to a ridiculous degree, taking a rather extreme stance, and being pretty much an example of everything that is wrong with the position he's argueing... well that and he threw down the gauntlet of challenge. That's why he got reamed by Anonymous. Plenty of people were saying the same basic things that he was, but didn't get attacked.
To an extent he reminds me a bit of Harlan Ellison . Mr. Ellison being a really talented (but sadly departed) science fiction author, who has produced some extremely insightful stuff. His stuff being so good that a lot of schools like to use his material for teaching students. He was really into argueing against literary piracy. I agree that people should pay for books, and the authors deserve royalties. His position however was that he believed that everyone who read one of his stories should have paid money to do so. The basic arguement being as I understood it that a school wanting to use one of his stories should have to buy a copy of the story for each student who reads it... as opposed to say buying the books, and passing them over from generation of students to generation of students, OR buying copies for the school library and then having teachers copy the stories through xerox or whatever to distribute to the students in class. His basic arguement getting down to saying that a library is effectively a criminal institution, whether it's school based, or publically run, because countless people can read the books there, but the authors only get paid once for the book in the library.
Incidently this is very similar to what I've seen of Mr. Simmons position, because everything else I've said aside, consider also that a lot of libraries include things like Audio Visual rooms, archives, and records. You'd be surprised what you can find there, especially in schools with music programs, because in general schools get tons of stuff that is never used. If say someone donated a bunch of music from KISS to a public library, or a music teacher who was a fan at some point purchused some of their stuff for a school A/V club/library, Gene is basically argueing that these guys are flying the Jolly Roger because he's not getting a fee from every single person listening to that stuff.
A lot of people don't bother to think piracy arguements through, especially when it comes to things like libraries. People tend to think of teenagers sitting around burning CDs off the internet, or people selling bootleg discs at flea markets and the like, however a lot of the same arguements made there also apply to things like libraries, Ellison was pretty direct in going after schools for daring to re-use books, and a lot of what guys like Gene Simmons are saying comes down to the same basic position. Even if the logic is differant, let's just say that throughout history there have been a LOT of people who have wanted to shut down libraries and such, and it's NEVER a good thing when it happens. That's where a lot of this anti-piracy stuff ultimatly goes, because the people making the arguements are doing so from what are some pretty extreme positions when you look at them fairly.
