UK Musicians Back Watered-Down "Three-Strikes" Rule 229
A brace of anonymous readers sent along coverage of UK musicians who have turned around to support three strikes, or a milder variant of it. What they suggest is more like "three strikes and you're hobbled" — after a third offense a downloader would be not disconnected, but rate-limited. The artists involved include Lily Allen, George Michael, and Sandie Shaw. The Guardian has more details. The final quote from the music industry, striking out at UK ISPs, is priceless: "BT is clinging on to an old business model which is supported by illegal downloading. That's not only unfair to artists and creators, but penalizes BT's many customers who use the Internet legally."
That's fine, you just lie there and be ironical (Score:5, Insightful)
"BT is clinging on to an old business model which is supported by illegal downloading."
Doesn't that pretty well describe the music industry to a T right now?
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"BT is clinging on to an old business model which is supported by illegal downloading."
Doesn't that pretty well describe the music industry to a T right now?
That, of course, is the joke, but I think even more silly is that the accusation doesn't make any sense in the case of BT. "Old business model"? Huh? If anything, it's the newest business model around.
One gets the impression that the music industry heard themselves accused of said offense, but are hoping to grab the initiative in the public eye.
I think it's actually a common propoganda technique: accuse your opponent of that which you are guilty of, and do it early, and often. If you're lucky, it wil
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"BT is clinging on to an old business model which is supported by illegal downloading."
I miss the days when the Internet was only used by Universities, how I long for a day when only educated people had access.
Re:That's fine, you just lie there and be ironical (Score:4, Insightful)
Lets provide the answers for the most disingenuous of fools.
1) Cheap hi-def video phone calls (typical family times that by four).
2) Typical wedding, christening, birthday, anniversary videos, distributed to all guests.
3) Hi-def web cam feeds from all over the world, the scenery channel like it's never before been seen.
4) Web parties, vid cam links ups with big screen displays.
5) A whole world full of legally free creative commons work, remember it never stops going back and forth because it keeps getting added to, complete with, shock horror, free publishing and, oh my god, an absence of commercials (yes, I know it is the ultimately threat to locked up world of dead end media).
6) Live streams from every political chamber from all over the world, complete with speech feeds from every standing and potential politician, the end of corporate for profit and corruption, broadcasting of political commercials, a new era in politics.
Now I know that someone like you might find that last one the most threatening of them all but you have no idea of my level of contempt for your ignorance. Just think sex, drugs and rock and, roll and it's greedy drunken drugged minstrels and publishers will completely and utterly lose their ability to influence politics via political donations.
George Michael supports it? (Score:5, Funny)
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Yeah, very funny, make fun of poor old George.
But don't forget many reputable artists support this - like... em.... Lily Allen.
And what about Sandie Shaw? Downloads of "Puppet on a String" must be crippling her career.
Well it's better than (Score:3, Funny)
Trust people George
Dear Lily (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL9-esIM2CY
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:About Lily Allen (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, the Metallica that helped kill the original Napster many years later?
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I saw this in an interview with Lars Ulrich long ago: Metallica was the name a friend of Ulrich had in mind for a metal-themed music magazine. He convinced him to call it something else and used the name for his band.
The hypocrisy is hilarious.
Re:About Lily Allen (Score:5, Interesting)
One artist wrote a open-letter/song [youtube.com] on this. It's brilliant.
Re:About Lily Allen (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:About Lily Allen (Score:5, Funny)
Mod parent up. He's right.
Re:About Lily Allen (Score:4, Funny)
Re:About Lily Allen (Score:4, Funny)
Mod parent down. He's right!
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Who said crime does not pay.......^__^
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Report her to her ISP. That's one. Two more and we'll be rid of her!
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James "fat fuck" Allan; Government Consultation (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly (I submitted a story on this, but I think it's still lost in the firehose). It's depressing that so little of the mainstream media are covering this, instead still going with "Wonderful Lily Allen rallies and unites artists, and she closed her blog because people 'abused' her". She added nothing to the debate, just the same old tired arguments we've all heard before (you wouldn't steal from a shop; it's not free to make, how can it be free to give away? etc), it was like talking to a brick wall - she was completely obvlious to the point people were making when they pointed out her filesharing and plagiarism, instead she then retreated to defending it, whilst still saying it was wrong for anyone else to do it.
Her defence for filesharing mp3s was she "didn't have a knowledge of the workings of the music industry" - what, just like most of us, who don't work in the music industry at all?
Her claim about it being 5 years ago is nonsense too, as the mp3s were still being shared until she took them down *after* she was found out (ignorance is no defence of the law, and it won't be in this new law either).
The claims that she received "abuse" - or "vitriol" as the Featured Artists Coalition [featuredar...lition.com] claims - is nonsense too. I saw the blog, and most comments (all that I saw) were polite and well argued. It was heated sure, but with her accusations of people being thieves, she gave as good as she got. Furthermore, she posted and offensive rant by James Allan in support of her, who referred to people as "tight fucks" and their girlfriends as "fat fucks" [digitalspy.co.uk]. Why is this offensive and sexist rant being excused and ignored by the media, whilst instead they focus on allegations of "abuse" from random anonymous people on the Internet?
Oh yes, and the Government Consultation ends 29 September (Tuesday) - please repond, unless you want the debate to be run by people like Lily Allen: http://www.berr.gov.uk/consultations/page51696.html [berr.gov.uk] .
I'll just leave this here... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.pirateparty.org.uk
Also, please respond to the Consultation (Score:3, Informative)
There is a Government consultation [berr.gov.uk], that is open for anyone to respond to. Please do - although it closes 29 September (Tuesday).
Otherwise this law will be decided by the likes of Lily Allen and James "fat fuck" Allan, who have nothing useful to add to the debate, other than using their fame to get media attention on the matter (whilst being a filesharing hypocrite of a pirate herself, in the case of Lily Allen).
Solution (Score:3, Interesting)
arg (Score:4, Insightful)
If someone hasn't been convicted of breaking a law there can be no punishment. If they had anything of substance against someone they wouldn't be pursuing a three strikes law; they'd be in court. If the music industry doesn't want to follow the law but instead act on a hunch then I'd say the entirety of their limited monopoly should be done away with entirely. The law should not be used to intimidate; its purpose is to serve society not serve the greedy to the eclusion of all else.
Re:arg (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:arg (Score:4, Insightful)
Free Speech is worth more than Profitable Music (Score:4, Insightful)
That's all I've got.
Where did this "distribution" thing come from? (Score:2, Insightful)
There's nothing saying that you have the right to control distribution in the constitution, is there.
You've make that up just so you can say that P2P is wrong.
And free speech means I can say what I want, even if someone else said it before.
Even if I say it to a tune.
And play an instrument.
In front of lots of people.
Even if they paid to get in.
THAT is free speech.
Censorship is what you want and it is the antithesis of free speech.
Now if you want us to agree to censorship, you'd better pay up to get your cont
It is basically just old technology against new (Score:5, Insightful)
And as allways before, the old technology will lose and be a historical footnote. So will the companies and artists that do not understand the new one or are unwilling to switch. No law will help. This has happened countless times before and the outcome was always the same.
True, the times were you could get rich distributing creative works by others are over. Distribution is now extremely cheap. Also true the times of insanely richt musicians are likely over as well. Those that adapt will still be able to live very decently, as long as their product does apeal to a reasonable number of people. Examples exist. On the plus side, all those that had problems earning anything, now have the chance to distribute globally with very little cost. Getting a global small audience was pracitcally impossible before. And any audience contains a significant number of people that are willing to pay or donate. I do not see the music culture losing anything overall, just a few rich, lazy and inflexible peole that cling to the old status quo. I do see "big music" dying however.
What counts as "a strike"? (Score:5, Insightful)
What counts as a "strike"?
I know the obvious smartass response of "anything the RIAA/MPAA wants", but in practice... Let's even say, for the sake of argument, that "they" can 100% reliably detect when I download something copyrighted. We then have a problem in that everything (in the past 75 or so years, varying a bit by country) has a copyright on it. When I visit the totally legit New York Times website, I have downloaded copyrighted material. When I buy a song on iTunes, I have downloaded copyrighted material.
So now we need the qualifier of "unauthorized", which becomes much more subjective. Who can authorize me? If I have Trent Reznor in my office and he tells me to grab a copy of his latest unreleased album off Kazaa, then I have "authorization" from the artist himself. Yet my ISP has no way of knowing that.
Okay, too unrealisitc? How about MySpace, which Ms. "Can't even write her own anti-piracy rant and has to steal it" Allen used to great effect to promote her own career... Any moron can upload tracks there, even under the band's name (if the band didn't already think to make an account). How can the ISP ever know which count as legit and which don't? For that matter, how can we know the difference?
So yeah, I have a problem with effectively taking away my primary means of communication with the rest of the world, by force of a law that I can't accurately know whether or not I've violated.
Call it overly dramatic, but I don't think the courts realize yet that for anyone under 40, depriving them of internet access amounts to a "dead to our entire peer group" sentence. Just wait, we will see people going on mass killing sprees over this.
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agreed with most of your post..
actually, not really, as most of it is pretty far fetched, but I wouldn't put it past 'the industry' to go for these things.
But 'what counts' should at least be clarified in both letter and spirit. Spirit because as soon as the letter is written down, thousands of people will write up (contrived) work-arounds that don't go against the letter of the legislation; even though it would likely be against the spirit.
That said, then...
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You pay anyway (Score:3, Interesting)
Well if you think about it, you pay the isp, not the music industry or copyright holders. The music industry quote is a bit of a wakeup call on the concept of 'free file-sharing'.
If you are a p2p downloader, then work out how much you've spent on hardware/software, your time and skill (pro-rata if you desire) and regular payments to whomever to keep the services running. It amounts to a significant recurring charge. Also what about the down-time when you are not P2P-ing? That's wasted bandwith and capacity that you're paying for.
The point being is that it is not free and if the RIAA/MPAA or local equivalent is upset about that, then it's the ISP who will be faced with some form of tax or levy because presently there is no other way around it. The entertainment industry hasn't monitarised copyrighted P2P - I don't think it can. It's expensive to sue infringers, as downloading seems to be legal but uploading (the sharing bit) is illegal, so it's the P2P software at fault here and government intervention by lobbyists is restrictive to personal freedom and the 'free net' philosophy.
Lily Allen is still going to complete her tour, but states that she won't release another track. This is very interesting as tours and tour promotion can go ahead without the arm of the RIAA. Live performances may be the key in all of this. No more digital tracks to download, just go to the live performance instead. If you are an existing band or new band/singer then YouTube/Radio/FTA/Web is the way to promote your goods and make money by touring, wholesale video tracks to Apple and put up with crappy YouTube video of bits of your live concerts.
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The point being is that it is not free and if the RIAA/MPAA or local equivalent is upset about that, then it's the ISP who will be faced with some form of tax or levy because presently there is no other way around it.
They know that's the road to hell paved with dubious intentions. Once you introduce a tax or levy, people feel entitled to download since why else are they paying? If you don't try to meter it, chances are people will download everything because it's a sunk cost and kill sales. If they try to raise the levy to a point that matches sales income, it'll be absurdly high and everyone not interested will cause a huge backlash. If they make the levy variable they're back to the impossible task of monitoring all f
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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What would be a better title?
'Some UK Musicians Back Watered-Down "Three Strikes" Rule'?
Fox News? (Score:2)
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Who gives a damn about "Lily Allen, George Michael, and Sandie Shaw" in the first place? Who are they?
They're well known singers from the 2000s, 1980s and 1960s respectively. The vast majority of British people would recognise their names.
I would assume the newspaper writers took a look at the list of signatures and picked out what they felt were the three most recognisable names given their intended readership.
Musicians aren't the only people who create things (Score:3, Interesting)
Programmers create software and software gets pirated. Why are all these new laws structured as if the "music industry" and "movie industry" are the only ones capable of producing copyrighted material? I guess they just have the most lobbyists. They certainly don't have the most money (the game industry alone exceeds the movie industry in revenue), I guess they are the ones willing to resort to abusive legislative tactics, while the software industry is satisfied with abusive anti-piracy measures.
It's hard for me to be sympathetic when most of the music coming out is very derivative and it all sounds the same and is composed of roughly the same rock and blues and R&B riffs.
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Lilly Allen is a self confessed drug dealer (Score:4, Interesting)
...and now she wants legal protection for the business model that screws artists because she's one of the few that profit by it. You want the law enforced. Fine. Go fucking hand your skanky mockney arse in and stand trial for fucking up kids lives with your drug dealing you filthy two bit self congratulatory self important piece of human trash. It doesn't surprise me in the least that you don't see a problem with a law that means the mere accusation of a person is enough to prove guilt when it's convenient for you. It's because we live in a world where people like your worthless self are treated like gods. What the fuck is she afraid of anyway? That one day her lifestyle of running around with other skanks like Linsay Lohan might be limited to one million per fucking trip instead of two. Boo fucking hoo.
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Look man, obtaining drugs to sell on the street isn't cheap.
Lily Allen, George Michael, and Sandie Shaw? (Score:3, Funny)
I thought you said "musicians".
penalizes BT customers (Score:2)
[...] penalizes BT's many customers who use the Internet legally.
How exactly are BT's "legal" customers penalized by downloaders?
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How exactly are BT's "legal" customers penalized by downloaders?
<devil's advocate>
Bandwidth on contentious ADSL connections, used up by the neighbour's Bittorrent.
</devil's advocate>
'BTs customers suffer from illegal downloaders'. (Score:2)
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In the last couple of weeks I've downloaded a Sony PS3 update (about 400MB's) followed by a 90MB Singstar update, followed by buying 8 singstar tracks (approximately 70MB's each). Re-installed Steam on my PC and downloaded my games collection (20GB). When you put all that together I'd have to download 289 albums this month to match my completely legitimate use of bandwidth. While Steam has knocked up my download
Lily Allen. Right. (Score:2)
Lily Allen. Isn't that the girl/woman who sings songs with naughty words in it in a baby's voice ? And she's against it ? Well then it must be good. Or something.
More "three strikes" laws... (Score:2)
Artist should also be subject to "three strikes", where all their works enter the public domain if they are caught three times snorting coke or doing whatever other criminal activities it seems the well-paid lawyers of the music industries get them very lenient punishments for.
"Yes, your Honor, my client did take drugs but sine he is an important celebrity he should spend three months at Betty Ford (paid by the record sales) instead of six months in jail."
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"Artist should also be subject to "three strikes", where all their works enter the public domain if they are caught three times snorting coke or doing whatever other criminal activities it seems the well-paid lawyers of the music industries get them very lenient punishments for."
Surely mean if they are accused, not if they are caught.
all the best,
drew
Rate limited ? (Score:2)
law for people? (Score:2)
bullshit. we the people are not interestes in this kind of laws.
but we the big corporations ARE interested in this kind of laws.
question remains: why do we the people vote and what do we vote for?
we vote for companies to run our countries?
Legalise filesharing (Score:2)
If any UK citizens wish to protest this, feel free to take a look at my petition to legalise filesharing [number10.gov.uk]. Thanks.
As a British musician... (Score:3, Interesting)
Be that as it may (Score:5, Insightful)
Illegal downloads hurt all of us
So do laws which find the accused guilty based on the accusation alone.
It doesn't matter how mild the punishment is. Accusation alone, no matter how many there are, should never be sufficient to determine guilt or impose a sentence.
In any civilized society, the accused must have an opportunity to defend himself, and guilt must be determined by an impartial party.
The pillars of justice are more important than the profitability of business models built upon artificial scarcity.
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These morons need a lesson in marketing.
If no one is buying your music it's because they don't want to, quit looking for scapegoats.
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Re:And Be That As it May... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, it isn't far off from what we have now. There are too many crimes out there that are too heinous to be found innocent of; simple accusation warrants the worst punishment. The legal system may still be applied, but the minds of those in it, and those who make the laws, are too clouded by knee-jerking to actually think rationally. Innocence? You were accused; innocence is no excuse, and you will be punished.
Outcry has replaced justice, and pundits have replaced judge and jury. What the sparkly box with faces in it says is true cannot be argued with; what is written in Wikipedia must be fact; what the drudge report aggregates must be news. Welcome to the Information - or perhaps, Media - Age.
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Re:And Be That As it May... (Score:5, Insightful)
OTOH, accusation is sometimes enough to warrant corrective action. Which while it might be inconvenient, should not be so harmful that it can't be resolved afterwards, should the accused in fact be innocent.
You are a danger and a menace and should be removed from posting on Slashdot.
See how that works?
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OTOH, accusation is sometimes enough to warrant corrective action. Which while it might be inconvenient, should not be so harmful that it can't be resolved afterwards, should the accused in fact be innocent.
How about "due process" and "innocent until proven guilty"?
And can you please tell me what's so bad about copyright infringement that warrants taking away our freedom?
Proportional response (Score:2)
This is the most logical proposal I've heard yet, aside from ignoring the damn pirates. Considering what dickheads the suits in the music biz are, however, I'm sure that "cooler heads will prevail."
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Also, this isn't the time to do it. No matter how good the intent, we're talking about a law that is poorly written and will have bad side effects. Bring up the comment again on a more reasonable story.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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But I'd like to point out that while the US is up there for insane copyrights... the world MINIMUM is life + 25years. So something like a 70year minimum up to 100+ in the states.
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I think such long copyrights are a wonderful idea. But surely if life+70 years is so important to the profitability of creative art, it must also be so retroactively. If we are granting rights to dead people in the future we should also grant them to dead people in the past.
And now on behalf of the danish family of H.C.Andersen and the german family of the brothers Grimm I would like to charge the Disney corporation and all it's resellers for criminal copyright infringement (theft and piracy) to damages of
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Hi, I'm posting from the future. At first I thought, "Don't worry, be happy", but then it was more like, "It's gonna be a hard days night" and now it's pretty bad, almost "Heaven knows I'm miserable @#%^H!*( NO CARRIER
Re:Finally, some sense (Score:4, Insightful)
No matter how illegal, how immoral, how unethical a down loader's conduct might be - those people who wish to punish him need to go to court to punish him. The ISP has no authority to punish anyone, nor do the rights holders. Only the court has that authority. Attempting to delegate that authority to anyone other than the court for any reason undermines any claims of "justice". It's really that simple.
I will not change my mind for some argument of "Woe is me, I can't afford to file an injunction and a suit against everyone who "steals" my song!" To that, I say, "Tough shit, dude. Find another way to make money from your work, or find another line of work!"
Re:Finally, some sense (Score:5, Funny)
Congratulations <Anonymous Coward>, we at slashdot are happy to inform you that you're the one-millionth poster to blur the line between downloading music and stealing a physical object. Your prize, should you wish to accept it, is a one-week vacation in The Guantanamo Bay Hotel. Please reply within 48 hours to accept your prize.
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What about restaurants which pay their employees with tips? You don't -have- to
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Dude, you're missing one big point.
Motley Crue sold like 40000 copies of "red white and crue", a compilation album. That alone netted a total income of about 7 million bucks.
Do you think they're going to give up the ability to make such a massive profit on a couple days' worth of work and tons of marketing? That's really their money machine, the marketing. It has nothing to do with the bands being good in alot of cases (Cases in point: Jonas Brothers, Britney Spears, and a million others). They can just sel
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That's really their money machine, the marketing. It has nothing to do with the bands being good in alot of cases (Cases in point: Jonas Brothers, Britney Spears, and a million others). They can just sell the bejesus out of their product.
I happen to think that ...Baby One More Time and Toxic are among the greatest pop records ever created. But our subjective views on the quality of music is not really relevant here.
Your point is well taken though. The marketing is inherent to the product, it's creative and it's expensive. To sell 1,000,000 albums, you would expect to spend $1,000,000 or more (figures gleefuly plucked from the air, but you get the idea) on image consultancy, design, photography, promotional travel, buying lunches for TV exec
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Lets take the closest physical thing to the music industry, a book store. I can go into almost any book store and read the entire thing if I so please. Guess what? They don't come running over to you screaming "thief!" and press charges when you do that. In fact, many book stores actually -encourage- reading by providing comfortable chairs and tables for reading and having coffee shops so you can drink coffee while you read.
But they wouldn't let you walk out carrying a book without paying. I suspect you'd get booted out of the shop pretty quickly if you took a laptop and a scanner in and started scanning their books.
Bookshops encourage reading in their shops because they anticipate that having read a couple of chapters, you'll want to buy the book and take it home. Further, they've found that by providing that kind of atmosphere, they're able to sell books more effectively than a competing bookshop that doesn't.
Record shops pr
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Lets take the closest physical thing to the music industry, a book store. I can go into almost any book store and read the entire thing if I so please. Guess what? They don't come running over to you screaming "thief!" and press charges when you do that. In fact, many book stores actually -encourage- reading by providing comfortable chairs and tables for reading and having coffee shops so you can drink coffee while you read.
And when you do buy a book, it's yours. The pages don't blank out when the store closes.
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"Hollywood as we know it would die.
The music industry as we know it would die."
Key words are "as we know it". Of course, you knew that, or you wouldn't have typed the words. ;^)
Allow me to say, that I'm ready for those deaths. Seriously, screw them. When they are dead, someone will inherit the assets, figure out how to make the assets work profitably, and the world will go on as it always does. No big deal. The world has survived the deaths of emperors, kings, prophets, monopolists, and corporations, a
Re:Lilly Allen quitting over this (Score:5, Insightful)
Never heard of her. But I have heard of Bach, Tchaikovsky, and Ravel.
Maybe it would be a good thing if the modern music business died.
Re:Lilly Allen quitting over this (Score:5, Funny)
Never heard of her. But I have heard of Bach, Tchaikovsky, and Ravel.
So have any of those three stated a position on this policy?
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Considering that none of them ever tried to sell records of their music, they would be surprised to know that music industry in its current state is even possible.
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"If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours; if they don't they never were." - Bach
Interpret as you like.
Re:Lilly Allen quitting over this (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, but it was Bach before your time.
Sorry.
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Maybe it would be a good thing if the modern music business died.
The music business actually died a long time ago. What we have now is the *record* business. They're only concerned with moving plastic, and view the artists who supply the music only as contract labor hired to make that physical product. The artists are the only people in the record industry that actually care about the music. Everyone else is only concerned with slapping a price tag on anything that will give them a nice turnaround to bump up that figure on the company's quarterly earnings sheet, and it
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Perhaps she had to downgrade to a Gulfstream 3 instead of a Gulfstream 4. You know, the Gulfstream 3 doesn't even have a remote control for its surround sound DVD system! :-O
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Hmm. I wonder if no one has told her that many musicians earn a perfectly good income by means of live performances, as all musicians did not all that long ago. Earning vast sums from recordings is by no means the only business model for music.
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I would like to get paid for my comments on slashdot. Doesn't give me the right to lobby congress to pass laws that force readers to pay me.
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I'm sure the RIAA, MPAA or Microsoft could help you out there.
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That's rubbish. I know several musicians who only play pub gigs and sell CDs out of the back of their station wagons, and they're still very much alive. Perhaps they aren't living la dolce vita, but the fact is that they're alive. Imagine if Lily Allen adopted this model - are you suggesting that she would perish from malnutrition, unlike my musician friends? The fact is that just because these "chart-toppers" have gotten used to being paid squillions for stringing together a few songs, doesn't mean they de
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"Pubs will always need musicians to play gigs, and that's a liveable wage if you're halfway talented."
That's the real problem. A bunch of lazy oafs who happen to be photogenic are herded into a studio, where a crew of technicians make synthesized music, and dub voices where appropriate get used to an artificial lifestyle. While the industry is making billions, they sprinkle a few millions on the lazy oafs, which convinces them that they must be talented.
How many popular "artists" today actually worked thei
Re:illegal downloading is hard to stop (Score:4, Insightful)
If you can download music for free, why bother purchase it from itunes?
The problem has gone far beyond that. When the *AA wants Apple to pay for each 30 second sound sample, when they try to remove all independent internet radio stations, and remove YouTube videos with music on them, that is too far. Seriously, how many songs has anyone bought without knowing them? No one buys songs without at least knowing the artist or at least hearing some of their other songs. If I can't even hear what the artist sounds like why am I going to buy the album?
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If I can't even hear what the artist sounds like why am I going to buy the album?
Oh but you will hear what the artist sounds like - via officially-sanctioned channels playing the current set of promoted artists and songs.
The things you mention are as much about controlling the promotion of music as they are about controlling access to it. That way the artists that the industry has decided will be pushed as the next big thing will become the next big thing, as that's what's being forced down people's throats
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Yes, downloading music pieces illegally has long been a issue that bothers the whole music publishing industry.
There, fixed it for you.
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If you can download music for free, why bother purchase it from itunes? However,
Because in Canada every time I burnt a distro or backed up my own photos some musician rights group got the levy I paid on the cd's. And they wonder why I don't buy ANY new music besides being shit. They're greedy enough to make me pay to use cd for things other then music, well I'll just download all I can for free.
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Most musicians (notice the use of "most", not "all) make very little money from records, if in fact not leaving them with a debt to the record company. They get their money from live appearances and t-shirts and such.
Laws that limit the number of people listening to their music are likely to limit their income.
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Some random musicians the music industry could bribe/fool into supporting their position publicly.
Ok, George Michael used to be quite famous for his permanent five-o'clock shadow...
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Well George Michael is a convicted criminal so I won't bother listening to what he has to say with regards the law.
Lilly Allen has engaged in blatant copyright ingredient, on the web including infringing mix tapes, and copying of newspaper and other articles. Let he with out sin throw the first stone...
Not A Compromise - Restriction Is Flawed (Score:2)
Sadly I feel this is just an argument to moderation [wikipedia.org]. The "restriction" method still has the same flaws, and also introduces some of its own. By compromising, all they're doing is rewarding Lily Allen for taking an extreme position, despite the fact that her arguments were very poorly made.
What about artists (or indeed, software developers, etc) who disagree with this law altogether? Supposing we decided to take an extreme position and say "Copyright shouldn't exist at all" - does that mean we should "compro