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Subject: RE: Napster From: Homeless Date: 28 Jul 00 - 03:26 PM Sean, The artist also isn't making any money if the song isn't commercially available. So they aren't getting "further financially penalized." It's not as tho I'm getting something for free that I would otherwise have to pay for. The artist won't realize the missing income if he isn't getting it anyway. Like I said in my earlier post - show me where I can buy it and I will. The point is that there is no where else to find it. Regarding it not being an artist's fault that the label deletes their catalog - I would MUCH rather pay a performer directly than pay a record store, label, etc. If there is a way to find out what the royalties for that song are, and an address I can use to get them to Leo, please point me in that direction and I will gladly send him his due. Ditto for the band Gryphon. In the meantime, I've order CDs from Heather Alexander and Wild Asparagus, and bought some Lefty Frizzell, Traffic, Dave Matthews, Tom Waits, and Michelle Shocked - none (save Traffic) of whom I'd ever heard of until stumbling across them in Napster. Out of curiosity, if I buy something from a used CD store, does the artist make any money from that sale? If not, is re-selling the CD considered stealing? Just for the record - I work as a computer programmer and have written quite a bit of shareware. You know, the 'try it for 30 days and then pay for it' kind of software. So I'm fully aware of both ends of the "not being paid for services due" issue. Sean, it seems like our disagreement is getting a little strong and a bit off-topic (the main point has moved from Napster to a moral/ethical question). I would suggest that rather than cluttering the thread any more, we move to PMs. Do you agree? |
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Subject: RE: Napster From: SeanM Date: 28 Jul 00 - 03:11 PM How does an artist who's catalog is out of print benefit from second-hand sales, then? He/She will not be getting any royalties from their album if I buy it from a collector. He/She will not be getting any royalties, period, no matter what I or any other consumer does unless we track them down personally and send them money. I don't see downloads of discontinued tunes a "penalty", in that case. If anything, they might act as a spur for a record company to re-release the recordings in question. The problem lies that with discontinued recordings, you have no choice. No matter what you realistically do, the artist will never see a penny of your purchase. So you are now restricted to either never getting the recording, or 'stealing' it. Until recently, this was the same problem with smaller label recordings and regional releases, but this has now been partially alleviated with internet e-commerce. Is there an option? Sure! If the record companies and other megalo-control organizations made it possible to download out of print files at reasonable rates, I'd happily do it that way. Until then, your only options are to 'steal', or never have access to the recording. As someone who's band is currently going through the process of putting a CD together, if I had to make a choice between the two, I'd rather take the former. M |
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Subject: RE: Napster From: Sean Belt Date: 28 Jul 00 - 02:56 PM Homeless, The fact that a song may be out of print but available as a free download doesn't make it any less stealing to make use of that download. You ask from whom are you stealing? For starters, the artist who wrote and recorded the song. He/She gets no royalties from your download. It's not the artist's fault that the song is out of print. Should she/he be further financially penalized because Capitol Records (for instance) decides to delete his/her catalogue? Your argument sounds like a rationalization for why its okay for you to rip off fellow artists. Think about it for a while and I'm sure you'll see the ramifications of your actions. If a singer or musician chooses to put their music on the web for free, that's one thing. But the type of downloading you're refering to is stealing, plain and simple, until you decide to start personally sending royalty checks to those whose art you're pirating. - Sean |
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Subject: RE: Napster From: SeanM Date: 28 Jul 00 - 02:25 PM Homeless, I'm with you on that one. I admit! I'm guilty! I've downloaded material that's probably copyright protected! However: Because of that material, I've searched out and bought CDs from several bands that I'd never heard of. ~or~ I've downloaded copyright protected material that I already own in other formats, that I wanted to be able to listen to while I work. ~or~ I've downloaded copyright protected material that while it's still protected, is only available from rarities vendors, used stores, or through informal exchange networks (read: pirates) of out of print releases. I'm not going to put on the rose-tinted glasses and say that every Napster user did the same as I. Pirates are pirates, and hackers are hackers. All the sabre rattling in the world will NOT stop them (or even slow them down). I'd hope that RIAA and the rest of the corp machinations realize the futility of that front. As to the other 19 million users who don't consider themselves pirates or hackers, one would hope that the 'industry' will realize that this is a 'market', and ignoring it will just cause MORE napsters, gnutellas, Mapsters, and god knows how many other clones to pop up and exploit it. *Sigh*... probably do more on this later, after I'm off work and can organize my thoughts. M |
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Subject: RE: Napster From: Homeless Date: 28 Jul 00 - 02:01 PM Alice - granted stealing is stealing. But when I go to buy a car I make damn sure I test drive it before I spend a penny on it. When I want to buy new clothes I try them on beforehand too. And if I do buy something at a store and find out that it doesn't fit/match/work, or that I don't like it, I can take it back to the store for a refund. But if I buy a CD, at $15 a shot, and don't like it after all, I'm screwed. Can't exchange it, can't get a refund. The only choice I have is take it to a used CD store and get maybe one dollar for it. And if someone wants to let me know where I can get a CD that contains the Leo Sayer song "Long Tall Glasses" I will gladly purchase a copy. For over ten years I have been unable to find this song on any media. So who am I stealing it from? There is no official channel that I can find where it is available. So if they won't put it in a position to be making money off of it, how can I be stealing it? |
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Subject: RE: Napster From: DougR Date: 28 Jul 00 - 01:59 PM Thanks for the comments. I hope there are some more. DougR |
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Subject: RE: Napster From: Sean Belt Date: 28 Jul 00 - 01:59 PM I'm with you on this, Alice. The musicians that I know who have CDs in release are generally living pretty close to the bone. They count on selling those CDs at gigs or through local shops and internet sites like Amazon, County Sales, etc. for a big chunk of their income. My understanding is that with Napster and the like, I could post the entirety of, say, The Boney Goat Band's latest CD without their approval and then anyone who wanted to could download it for free. The artist then receives no money for their music. This seems very wrong to me. I believe strongly that unauthorized duplication vioaltes the law and does hurt independent artists and labels. But then, this gets all tied up with another pet peeve of mine: Folk artist's work is not held in even the same regard as that of plumbers. We're often asked to play our music for free at schools, fund raisers, etc. Then when we point out that we make our living this way and can't really afford to do all the freebies that come our way, people are offended. However, they'd never think of asking a plumber, accountant, electrician to work for nothing. But that's another rant for another thread, eh? - Sean |
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Subject: RE: Napster From: MandolinPaul Date: 28 Jul 00 - 01:46 PM I think that the record companies went after Napster because it was an easy target. But strictly speaking, I'm not convinced that Napster was breaking the law.
Back in the seventies and early eighties, a lot of records had a little logo in the bottom right corner, of a skull and crossbones, with the slogan "Home-taping is killing music and it's illegal". Now, maybe I'm not old enough to remember, but the whole lawsuit against Napster seems equivalent to having the record companies sue BASF, and other companies that make blank tapes, for providing the means by which we, the lawbreakers, tape albums. I don't think there was ever any such lawsuit.
Napster was just providing the means by which people could exchange music. A lot of the users were breaking the law by exchanging copyrighted material. It is just easier, however to sue Napster than to come after each of us (oops, I mean "those criminals") who misuse Napster.
Now admittedly, it would be naive to think that the purpose of Napster, and blank tapes for that matter, is strictly intended to be the legal exchange of music. But to take it to an extreme, when somebody gets shot in a bank holdup, nobody sues Smith&Wesson. Paul. |
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Subject: RE: Napster From: Alice Date: 28 Jul 00 - 01:39 PM Stealing is stealing. I don't know why people can't understand that and go so far as to condone it. Hopefully this alternative will help: Napster founder gets copyright-friendly with new firm click here |
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Subject: RE: Napster From: SeanM Date: 28 Jul 00 - 01:24 PM There have been several threads on the overall topic... a few specifically about Napster. I'm of the opinion that Nap could have been good for the industry. Unfortunately, the industy still hasn't apparently figured out that you can't get the genie back into the bottle merely by jumping up and down on it and calling it names... In the meantime, there's going to be a division between the business, a few fans, and some artists who claim that any of this technology is bankrupting them and stealing their reason to create, and other artists along with a few businesses and slightly more fans claiming that Napster and it's ilk is at best an uncontrolled distribution channel that encourages more people to buy their recordings and disseminates them to markets otherwise untouched by the Industry promotion machine (my opinion as well), or at worst is a trifling problem compared to the sheer greed, money grabbing and graft going on within the industry itself. Whatever happens, if history has proven one thing, it's that once a technology has been disseminated to the general public (and if the estimates of 20 MILLION napster users is correct, that's a good amount of users, let alone the ranks of those informed of the service), you can't just get rid of it by saying "don't do that". M |
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Subject: RE: Napster From: Homeless Date: 28 Jul 00 - 01:20 PM DougR - I got on Napster once to find a song that I've been looking for for years and could never locate on any media. (I did find it.) Then I started poking around and finding other things of interest - I did a Napster search on "Long Black Veil" and found 12 different versions by different artists. Similar results with "John Barleycorn." What was nice about it was that it gave me exposure to artists that I'd never heard of but quite enjoyed once I listened to a track or two of their music. I've since ordered CDs from those artists. I think that it's capabilities for helping find songs that have been out of print for years are nice. Ditto with it's ability to give smaller artists more exposure. But I think that it can be (and for the most part is) abused. Any song that you can currently hear on the radio, IMO, doesn't belong on Napster. |
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Subject: RE: Napster From: GUEST,John D. Date: 28 Jul 00 - 01:08 PM Farrrrrr Out! |
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Subject: RE: Napster From: DougR Date: 28 Jul 00 - 11:54 AM I really haven't followed the Napster controversy very closely. I wonder, however, how Mudcatters feel about Napster and other sites like it. Is it good for the music industry, for the recording artists, or bad? DougR |
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Subject: RE: Napster From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler Date: 28 Jul 00 - 11:41 AM At lunch over a glass of wine to celebrate the switch off of our old computer system (hope the new one works on Monday!)someone was talking about using WAP phones to connect to the internet. I said if they conected to Napster they'd only get MP3 files of Doo-Wap music. Well it seemed funny at the time, OK, well, you hadda be there...Oh OK I'll go now. RtS |
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Subject: RE: Napster From: SDShad Date: 28 Jul 00 - 11:08 AM Oh, and there's an official page for mIRC at www.mirc.com. C. |
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Subject: RE: Napster From: SDShad Date: 28 Jul 00 - 11:06 AM Mind you, I should've mentioned that IRC stands for "Internet Relay Chat." What it is is a chat program, unlike the other three, which are vaguely Napster-like, but there are channels where you can get MP3s. Many channels. Just look for channels with "mp3" in the name, basically. Chris |
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Subject: RE: Napster From: SDShad Date: 28 Jul 00 - 11:04 AM Well, I've probably download mIRC, the best IRC client, from Tucows at www.tucows.com, which also carries all kinds of Windows freeware and shareware. As for IMesh, Scour, and Gnutella, I don't really know, but Yahoo gives links for 'em at:
IMesh: www.imesh.com, none to surprisingly Chris |
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Subject: RE: Napster From: Morticia Date: 28 Jul 00 - 10:53 AM I just posted on another thread re Napster....and I didn't know about any others either,SD, tell us more? |
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Subject: RE: Napster From: MandolinPaul Date: 28 Jul 00 - 10:38 AM Thanks Shad.
Most of the answers I've been able to find elsewhere have agreed. I've never tried any of those other things; do you have links? Can you tell me more about them? Paul. |
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Subject: RE: Napster From: SDShad Date: 28 Jul 00 - 10:17 AM More like 3 am Saturday, Mudcat Time. And who needs Napster when there's Scour, IMesh, Gnutella, and best of all, IRC? Short-sighted decision on the part of the judge; this technology ain't going away. Not that I'll miss the bandwidth-hogging of college students who know absolutely nothing about how to use a computer except use Napster and download porn.... Chris |
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Subject: RE: Napster From: reggie miles Date: 28 Jul 00 - 10:08 AM Paul, I think that's 8pm Mudcat time. |
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Subject: Napster From: MandolinPaul Date: 28 Jul 00 - 10:02 AM I'm surprised there isn't a thread about this already. Here's a statement from Napster's homepage: How You Can Support Napster
My main question is: What does midnight in pacific time convert to in Mudcat time? |
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