Poll: How Do You Justify Music Piracy?

[Mr. Gency]

"Fuck you iTunes! I'm not buying it again because the download screwed up!"

Hasn't happened yet, but one of these days...

 

[13lackfriday]

If you can't get it 'legally', then its "alright" to pirate it.

That's my ethic to it...

If I find a nice, rare-sounding acoustic rendition or remix of a song I like, I make sure to put out feelers into all online, legal avenues for acquiring it.
If I can't find any, I'll click the first download link I find.

 

[haddaway234]

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.

As for libraries, its harder to get people to read books so having them for free helps get young people to read. And there is a HUGE difference between recording a song that you paid to listen to live and thne showing your friends and distributing music to thousands of people who will all have their own copies of the song now and have no need to buy it whereas not everyone would have the recording. And we had music for many decades before the internet came around and things were fine..

 

[ace_of_something]

I was in a group that actually had some damage done because of piracy (this was in napster days) because someone recorded us live with what must've been one of those handheld cassette things and put that, shitty garbled sound quality and all, out there and it became easier for people to find that (not sure why) instead of the studio recorded version that cost a great deal of money (keep in mind this was before protools) not long after that poor quality one came out our local popularity plummeted. I'm sure there might have been other factors but still...

Yeah, people are stupid.

Anyway, i might listen to a song on youtube but i won't download it on to my compy and put it on a playlist unless i've paid for it.
I feel there is a distinction.

 

[haddaway234]

After reading all the posts here and doing a bit of research on my own, I'd say its safe to say that you can't justify piracy of music in general, although you can in some very very occasional events such as the song not being available (Although that is very rare now that there is stuff like itunes).

 

[little.09]

i am unable to get a credit card because of my age and lack of credit history, my parents dont have any, and i live about 2 hours from any record store, and pretty much any cd there is close to the $50 mark

 

[BonsaiK]

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.

Question is hugely complicated. Haven't read any answer that I really like yet. By the way, hello.

 

[Kakashi on crack]

It's going to happen.

I don't think there's a person who hasn't pirated music on the internet.

Besides, in the end, a dollar is still a dollar for a song I'll only listen to maybe once. If it were, persay, a song I really liked and would listen to a lot, I buy it, but as a listen-to-it-once-never-again kinda thing, I consider "pirated music" to be the same thing as radio/youtube music videos.

 

[liquidsolid]

I pirate music, because I can. If I could illegally download a car, I would.

 

[Small Waves]

I've bought ten times more music after a year and a half of pirating than I had through the other 20+ years of my life.

 

[ace_of_something]

i am unable to get a credit card because of my age and lack of credit history, my parents dont have any, and i live about 2 hours from any record store, and pretty much any cd there is close to the $50 mark

two thoughts:

Ya know, I remember once when I was a teenager one of our family dogs got sent not one but, two forms from two separate banks and our dog didn't have a 'people' name like Buddy or Rupert.

Do you live on an island or something? I grew up in an area that was had a population density of 1 person for every 50 square miles, in the early 90's and CD's didn't cost that much (it was a 5 hour drive actually) I think we eventually joined the CD warehouse or whatever it was called.

I pirate music, because I can. If I could illegally download a car, I would.

Okay that made me laugh out loud.

 

[Custard_Angel]

I ain't a fan of piracy, but I do engage in it sometimes.

I have shelves of DVDs and CDs.

I also have a hard drive of .avi's and .mp3's.

Movies and music I particularly enjoy, I always buy and add to my collection. If I didn't like it as much, I don't buy it.

I don't attempt to justify it as "morally right". I accept it.

 

[AthrunYamato]

I don't have to justify music piracy because there isn't any music worth listening to. And, if I'm not willing to listen to any music, I have no reason to steal it either.

 

[SonicKaos]

I don't download music anymore, but I do stream it off youtube or other sources on occasion. If I discover a new artist I like by doing this, I'll often buy their CD if it's full of good songs. If I really like a band then I will go to a concert and buy a shirt/CD from them as well.

Angels & Airwaves gives out their music for free, and it helped me through a difficult time a while back. Since I couldn't pay for their music, I felt I owed it to them to go to their concert. I did, and I even tried to buy a CD or anything so I would have paid for it... but I couldn't.

I used to pirate lots of stuff. Now I don't download anything per say... but if it's worth the money, I buy it anyway.

 

[MorsePacific]

How do I justify music piracy? The same way I justify software, video game, movie, TV, your mother, etc. piracy.

I just don't try. It's wrong and that's pretty much all there is to it. People are going to keep doing it and try to justify it any number of ways, but it's still there.

 

[Therumancer]

Spoiler

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.

As for libraries, its harder to get people to read books so having them for free helps get young people to read. And there is a HUGE difference between recording a song that you paid to listen to live and thne showing your friends and distributing music to thousands of people who will all have their own copies of the song now and have no need to buy it whereas not everyone would have the recording. And we had music for many decades before the internet came around and things were fine..

I tried to condense my long rambling down with a spoiler thing above to save space.

Sorry if I was unclear in my giga-rant, but we seem to mostly agree.

The point I was trying to make is that someone like Gene Simmons is largely walking around with a chip on his shoulder because his heyday was decades ago before a lot of the current technology and distribution channels, and before we had these massive recording studios putting control on everything. He simply put sold stuff or allowed his stuff to be recorded publically by his core fan base, and as such had very little money coming in from his work. A lot of what he's saying is basically QQing about being from a differant time period and blaming piracy for him not making as much money as he would be if he hit his stride right now.

There is a definate differance between someone recording a song for your own use from a live performance, and say distributing a song limitlessly to free to anyone who wants it over the internet, however the point is that guys like Gene Simmons aren't making that kind of a distinction, and that's why they have earned such ire.... besides which, nowadays when it comes to live performances there are policies about not recording while your at the concert, the recording your making it's "legal" due to the conditions of the venue and when you bought your ticket, and if your caught with a recording device you'll be tossed by security (though to be honest this is becoming harder to police given what cell phones and Ipads and such are increasingly capable of). Guys like Gene Simmons likely never put that kind of limitation on their performances back when they were big, because nobody really thought of it being a problem. The bands were worried more about ticket sales for their shows, than the sales of recordings and so on.

The point about libraries was simply a side point about publically accessible media, since it doesn't JUST apply to books. Most libraries have audio/visual rooms and such along with the books. What's more when it comes to piracy media is media, while the guys in the music and video industries are the most publically known and vocal, the same exact arguements have been being made about print media.

You talk about anyone being able to download something off the internet, or get a copy to consume for free, but a point to consider is that you can do the same exact thing from a library. You can get music, movies, and other things from libraries besides books.

One battle that has been going on is someone in a classroom re-using the same books of say Harlan Ellison, or copying the relevent sections of the books (say specific short stories out of collections) from the school library for students. It's been argued that this is piracy because all these people consuming the media didn't pay for it, and the author and his publisher are not receiving royalties. In a "basic" sense, someone teaching a language class might also run off copies of tapes and video on "How to Speak Spanish" or whatever for students to use as part of the class, again without paying the producers. Someone doing a music class might very well run off copies of songs by bands like KISS or The Beatles for people to study. While you can say that this is "obviously differant" coming from a school, or from someone expericing these things for free at a library, in a legal sense it isn't. Harlan Ellison was quite blunt about this, Gene Simmons effectively makes the same
arguements in regards to music as I understand him.

What I'm trying to get at is simply that piracy is a more touchy subject than people give it credit for. I agree with the mass distribution of things like songs over the internet for free to be wrong, and hurtful for a lot of the artists and the recording industry, at the same time however I feel that they gouge users in trying to resell the same material for each new format, and that things like libraries need to be considered an obvious exception despite technically falling under that umbrella, a point that I rarely see being brought up. I think a lot of anti-piracy advocates jump on the "piracy is stealing" bandwago, which I generally agree with as many people might know from my posts, but don't think things through and consider the full ramifications of what the industry is acting on things like libraries which are one of the signs of a strong civilization.

 

[TheHecatomb]

Well first of all the industry needs to get rid of this idea that every song that's ever downloaded is a song that otherwise would've made them money. This is simply not true. I'm willing to bet that over 80% of all illegally shared music is either shared illegally or just never heard at all. Just because someone who totally isn't me has about 18.000 MP3's on his harddrive, doesn't mean the artist missed out on selling 18.000 CDs. I do not say this to justify piracy, but I do think people like Gene Simmons have to get their facts straightened out.

Having said that, I do have dozens of legit videogames, about 120 movies and another 200+ original CD's. If I really like something I'm likely to buy it, and I encourage others to do the same. But to tell you the truth if it weren't for illegally pirated music I'd know half the bands I do now, I'd have missed out on half of the hundreds of concerts I've visited over the years and half the merchandise I've bought and worn(you know, shirts that turn me into a walking advertising board for a band, something they should be paying me for har har.).

I know there are a lot of people who do not download stuff with the intention of just checking it out and buying it later, who do not visit concerts and who do not support the artists in any way. But to be honest, if anyone downloaded MY music, I'd just say "Hey, they were never planning on buying it anyway, I'm just glad they can listen to it, maybe tell their family or friends about it, and ultimately it will reach someone who does buy the album, a t-shirt or a concert ticket. Someone who otherwise wouldn't have heard about my music."

The social network is a great way to share music, and musicians shouldn't underestimate that. To sum it up; without piracy the music industry and more importantly the artists would've gotten less of my money over the last 10 years.

 

[iblis666]

i havent downloaded a song in years and years since i only use pandora any more but when i did i didnt try to justify it after all if i wanted it i just downloaded it