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Too good to miss?
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thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat
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Re: Too good to miss?
Feb 23, 2012, 20:32
I am enjoying this thread. Brain to keyboard is sometimes good Rhiannon.

One the question of music, I remember there was a very long thread on a similar theme over on Unsung a couple of years ago, involving a guy called Dodge One. It all got rather heated and there was some name-calling (hard to believe such a thing would ever happen here though). One of the strands of that thread revolved around the "availability" of the music that was being illegally up/downloaded. It went something like this:

-Copy of the latest album by Rhianna/One Direction/Andy Williams. Generally agreed by most (but not all) that ripping this and posting it online was a Bad Thing, as it was a new album and easily available to buy, preserving the artist's royalties, etc. This is similar to your comment about the fact that most people wouldn't expect to walk into Waterstones and take whatever they fancied without paying. Those who did not think this was a bad thing mainly argued that the record companies had enough money and the artist wouldn't see any of it anyway.

-Copy of the latest remastered reissue of Sgt Pepper/Darkside of the Moon, etc. Many people took the same view as above, but there was an argument that if you had bought the album previously either on CD, wax cylinder or whatever, you were effectively entitled to download this for free. Hmm. If only this worked with worn-out Explorer maps.

-Copy of long deleted album by Bogshed. The argument here was slightly less one-sided. Although the album was officially released, the lack of "current" availability suggested to many that making it available over the internet was not harming anyone. In many cases where this kind of "out of print" music is uploaded, the sites routinely carry a message to any copyright holders who object to get in touch and the offending item will be taken down. This seems to have been felt to generally less Bad and in many cases may actually bring an artist to people's attention that otherwise had been lost in the mists of time.

-Never officially released "audience" recording of Half Man Half Biscuit playing at the Dog and Toilet in 1986. It seems generally that no-one (even Dodge One) had any particular objection about this, and frankly if anyone was bothered enough to download and listen all the way through they deserved to have it for free. The point was often made that the sort of people who wanted this type of recording were also likely to be amongst the people who bought whatever "official" product the band released anyway (I'm in this one by the way).

So it seems that "availability" plays quite a large part in where you stand on the issue. I think the same is true of books, probably. That seems to square with the article by Rachel Caine linked above.

One other thing that occurs to me is that the taking of other people's intellectual property via the internet is far less public (and therefore less likely to result in arrest and imprisonment) that walking into a bookshop, grabbong 780 books off the shelf and walking out again. It's so easy to click a button and "bingo" here's all this stuff, whereas shoplifting in the real world at least requires the effort of putting on a coat with big pockets. It's a victimless crime isn't it?

Enough rambling on from me. I'm pleased the guy has taken that sale down, shame about the other several thousand still up.
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Re: Too good to miss? (Rhiannon)		 Replies:
Re: Too good to miss? (Rhiannon)
Re: Too good to miss? (moss)
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