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Fileshare and illegally download now!
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thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat
6210 posts

Re: Fileshare and illegally download now!
Nov 22, 2009, 00:17
D1, I take it this is the rebuttal you promised.

I'm a little disappointed that generally this comes across as a prejudice against digital music, rather than specifically illegal downloads. I own an ipod, it has about 8000 songs on it and 7800 of those will have been ripped from original CDs that I own. The remaining songs are almost all iTunes downloads, with maybe a dozen that are otherwise not on CD or a current official release (but which I've probably bought on vinyl anyway).

I post on SOOL most weeks, and 99% of what I mention is owned by me. The other 1% will be the live stuff I have mentioned earlier in the thread - if someone wants to give this stuff a proper shiny CD release, I'll buy that too. I probably buy ten CD albums, a few CD singles, some vinyl and a small amount (probably less that a tenner) on iTunes every month. I reckon I don't need to feel bad about what you percieve as my lack of support for the music industry.

Last night, you mentioned that the issue was with illegally downloading "copyrighted material". I don't know the ins and outs of copyright law, and I'm sure it's different in the UK to the US anyway. However, let's say New Order played a gig in 1981. At that time they were signed to Factory records, and due to Factory's contract policy, the band owned all of their own music. The gig was recorded by an audience member on a crappy tape machine. The record company was never going to release something like this. Fast forward nearly 30 years. Factory (who never owend the music anyway) have been bust for 15 years or so. New Order's catalogue is administered (badly) by Warners under licence from New order themselves. They have no interest in releasing crappy audience recordings from 30 years ago, they can't even do a proper job of releasing the studio recordings. Someone gets hold of the audience tape, digitises it and posts it online. Fans get to download it and hear music they wouldn't hear otherwise. The blogger doesn't make any money from this, but probably takes pleasure in the fact that other people get to hear this stuff.

I think the point that someone (IanB?) made about "entitlement" is fair. It is true that the bootlegger who made the original recording, the blogger who is posting it and the fans who are downloading may appear to believe that they are "entitled" to do so, and I do agree that this is not right. However, my question is, is this activity depriving the artist of income they would otherwise be getting? Only if the recording was going to be commercially released. It could be argued that there is a "loss" of publishing for the songs on the recording. However, one of the copyright holders (Peter Hook) has gone on record to say he has no problem with bootlegs of this nature. Is it depriving the record company? No, because they never owned the rights to this recording in the first place.

When you were younger, did you ever buy a bootleg LP? Did any of your friends ever give you a cassette of something they thought you would like but probably would never buy of your own bat? And did those LPs and tapes make you even more into music?

I've probably said more than enough on this subject now, so I'll keep on listening to music and in the meantime I'll look forward to the knock on the door in the night.
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