ITT, We whine about how bad humanity is (especially white peoples), and rip off

[The Good Reverend Roger]

but still they got paid, yea.

[Mourning Star]

Why?

His constant whining just fills me with a desire to punch infants, especially the lawsuits against file sharing programs and the companies or persons that make them..  A few years back, I don't know if anyone remembers this, but He and the rest of metallica attempted to sue some canadian band for using two guitar chords that he claimed were a "trademark of metallica's sound"

The man is the enemy of music.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Why?

His constant whining just fills me with a desire to punch infants, especially the lawsuits against file sharing programs and the companies or persons that make them..  A few years back, I don't know if anyone remembers this, but He and the rest of metallica attempted to sue some canadian band for using two guitar chords that he claimed were a "trademark of metallica's sound"

The man is the enemy of music.

So...because he objects to being stolen from, he's the enemy of music.

Someone takes MY money away, I'm going to break their legs and kill their dog, not just sue them.  I guess that makes me the enemy of asshattery.

[Mourning Star]

Why?

His constant whining just fills me with a desire to punch infants, especially the lawsuits against file sharing programs and the companies or persons that make them..  A few years back, I don't know if anyone remembers this, but He and the rest of metallica attempted to sue some canadian band for using two guitar chords that he claimed were a "trademark of metallica's sound"

The man is the enemy of music.

So...because he objects to being stolen from, he's the enemy of music.

Someone takes MY money away, I'm going to break their legs and kill their dog, not just sue them.  I guess that makes me the enemy of asshattery.

That's just it, noone was taking money out of his pockets, there is evidence to support that in the first year that napster was in popularity, music sales actually increased signifigantly, I can say exactly why as well, because of napster, a lot of people, myself included, were being exposed to all sorts of music that we otherwise wouldn't have and buying more albums...

but anyway, our personal views on file sharing aside, trying to sue another band for using two guitar chords? trying to claim that your band and your band alone has the right to use two guitar chords?  That'd be like someone trying to say that E5 on a piano is owned by them and noone can use that note in their songs...  That'd be like me telling people that rubbing sandpaper on a microphone is a Ruined888 trademark and that if I find out anyone else is using that technique to make a noise sample for their songs I will sue them sideways.

Sueing someone over the use of guitar chords is asshattery at it's finest... IMO

[The Good Reverend Roger]

That's just it, noone was taking money out of his pockets, there is evidence to support that in the first year that napster was in popularity, music sales actually increased signifigantly, I can say exactly why as well, because of napster, a lot of people, myself included, were being exposed to all sorts of music that we otherwise wouldn't have and buying more albums...

but anyway, our personal views on file sharing aside, trying to sue another band for using two guitar chords? trying to claim that your band and your band alone has the right to use two guitar chords?  That'd be like someone trying to say that E5 on a piano is owned by them and noone can use that note in their songs...  That'd be like me telling people that rubbing sandpaper on a microphone is a Ruined888 trademark and that if I find out anyone else is using that technique to make a noise sample for their songs I will sue them sideways.

Sueing someone over the use of guitar chords is asshattery at it's finest... IMO

If you take someone's intellectual property without permission or payment, you have stolen from them.

As for the two chords, I am not familiar with the lawsuit.  Link?

[Thurnez Isa]

As for the two chords, I am not familiar with the lawsuit.  Link?

Im curious as well
i acually dont doubt it
copywrite law has gotten a little ridiculous

as for the Napster case
im not a metal fan, so i could be wrong
if i remember correctly they had no problem with the distribution of bootleg or live material
it was having free access to their back catalogue they had a problem with
with seems a little reasonable to me

of course Im little bit of a hypocrite
<-----a dirty thief

[Cain]

If the artist wants to distribute it for free, then they should.  If they don't, then they shouldn't.  But of course, when you consider the say the big record companies have in this, some bands may not be able to make some of "their" stuff free, even if they want, because they don't fully own it.

It is often in the record companies interest to allow limited free downloads, however little they actually do it.  Thats what happened in America with anime, the Japanese companies allowed it to be copied and shared freely, then came along later with charged items.  They built a huge fanbase that way, much more quickly than most expected.

[Mourning Star]

If you take someone's intellectual property without permission or payment, you have stolen from them.

As for the two chords, I am not familiar with the lawsuit.  Link?

Agreed, but I have to argue devil's advocate for file sharing because my collection would probably get me upwards of 20 years, so as to not sound like a hippocrite (call me a thief damnit, but not a hypocrite!) I argue the pro-filesharing standpoint...

As for the lawsuit, this was about 3 or 4 years ago I think, and I'll look for an article on it,  I remember that it was thrown out because the ruling was simply that no band or musician can own a chord or a note or anything of that nature.

As I said, I'll look for an article, I don't know how much luck I'll have.  If I recall it was one of those links that came my way back in the day, I put down my bong, read the article, and probably made some really deep statement like "Wow, that's a total bummer" and went back to being so stoned I couldn't stand.

*Shrug*


Edit:

Found a link, and also that this "lawsuit" was a hoax..
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/07/17/ctv.metallica/

I stand corrected, and I humbly shut the fuck up.

[Triple Zero]

That'd be like someone trying to say that E5 on a piano is owned by them and noone can use that note in their songs... 

in fact, John Cage has the copyright on a certain piece of conceptual music, a few minutes of silence.

when some guy "recorded" a piece of silence explicitly as a tribute to Cage, he got sued.

If you take someone's intellectual property without permission or payment, you have stolen from them.

just to get things clear .. intellectual property/copyright laws are tricky business, if you wanna get into this discussion:

i assume with "stolen" you mean breach of copyright. no matter what the RIAA propaganda says, according to the law "theft" is still something that can only happen to physical objects.

then, "copyright" means that the "author" of a "work" has two exclusive rights:

- to make a copy of the "work"
- to distribute the "work" to the public

if anybody else does one of these two things without permission from the "author" (either written as a license as you get with software, or implicitly when you buy a CD)

these rules are agreed on by just about any country in the world. how they are interpreted however, differs. for example in the Netherlands, because Kazaa's lawyers were smart and our local version of the RIAA made a stupid mistake, we have a high court ruling that, for digital music, only uploading counts as "copying", while downloading doesn't.

(i followed a course about copyright and other information laws, learned some quite interesting things there -- the more complicated the rules, the more loopholes .. heh)

[P3nT4gR4m]

Property is theft. Intellectual property is intellectual theft. Fuck everyone from the corporate fat cats to the not exactly starving artists. I steal their ideas and digital copies of those ideas. Same with the software companies and the motion picture association. I wouldn't steal a car because it's too easy to get caught but stealing something that doesn't exist and doesn't go missing is the perfect crime. Catch me if you can.

[Triple Zero]

Property is theft. Intellectual property is intellectual theft.

this comparison doesn't hold, since "Intellectual Property" is really a specific legal term with a specific legal meaning, and not, as you seem to suggest, an "Intellectual" version of "Property".

and if you want to say "fuck exact legal definitions" and want to go with a more "intuitive" definition of intellectual property, you might wanna explain a what you mean bit further than a vague notion of "people should or should not copy what i create".

[P3nT4gR4m]

I have a vague laymans grasp of law, so far it's been enough to keep me out of jail but that's as far as my interest goes. My interpretation of the phrase intellectual property is that it pertains to ownership of ones thoughts and ideas, taken to be treated in the same sense as objects. My point being that I was not guilty of stealing an object when I downloaded a film, game or mp3.

I'm sure you've heard this argument to death but just in case I'll reiterate for the cheap seats - I buy media occasionally. Sometimes I want to try something out or give it a listen. If I play it once and then delete it cos it sucks I don't see that as theft - I see it as avoiding paying good money for something that either sucks completely or is 'not my cup of tea' Regardless. If it wasn't available to 'steal' the chances are I'd have never bothered paying for it anyway.

Then theres' prohibitively expensive software like photoshop, xsi and the like which I use a lot but couldn't justify spending that kind of cash on. They've priced themselves out the market as far as I'm concerned so I nick it. If they want to reduce the price to around 20-40 quid I'll quite happily part with my buck because it's worth that to me. Economically it makes more sense to rip off rather than be ripped off (as I see it) so that's what I do. There's a moral issue but fortunately for me I'm not really big on moral conventions.

[Cain]

I say its theft, but I admit I'm a thief.  That said, if I really like a band I'll try and see them on tour or buy their merchandise instead of buying their albums, because in reality they are only getting a small cut of the profits, unless they somehow become really big and can demand alot on their contract.

I'm pretty certain the intellectual copyright laws on the songs are actually owned by the companies who produce and market the album.  The contract means the writers get a cut, but the corp takes the vast share of the earnings.  And since the corp didn't write it....that feels wrong.  Profits are fine, but that aspect of the current system needs to be changed.

[Triple Zero]

same for me, the last CDs i bought were the Shpongle "trilogy" and OTT Blumenkraft. these CDs are still in their sealed wrapping. as soon as i realized i was actually never playing the CDs but listening to the mp3s (ogg, in fact) of the same CDs, i decided to leave them in their wrapping as a reminder to never buy a CD again.
instead i indeed try to support my favourite artists by going to their concerts, and recommending them to my friends, cause they hardly see a penny from CD sales anyway.

also it's out of a kinda idealistic view. i think that free downloading and spreading of music, without intervention from the (IMO utterly obsolete) record companies would be a great advantage to art/music and especially the more original and innovative types of music (and a disadvantage to sonic diarrhea like MCR).
the infrastructure is already there. once it's free for anyone to use, imagine the possibilities.
i would liken it to complaining that carriage-drivers will go out of business when the speed highways are already there.

basically, yes i admit i'm currently stealing, but i'm of the opinion that it shouldn't be considered as such:

there is a fundamental difference between selling information and selling physical objects. let's say i sell you an apple. the result is that i get money and you have an apple. i can no longer sell this apple because i don't possess it.
now let's say i sell you my weather-prediction for tomorrow. the result is, i get money, you get my weather prediction. but i can still sell my weather prediction again and again! (and so can the person i sold it to but that's besides the point)

this fundamental difference lies at the core of the problem. big software companies like Microsoft with Vista in cooperation with hardware companies like Intel and general evil like the RIAA are in fact with their Digital Rights Management, Palladium chips, DMCA laws and copy-protection stuff basically trying to turn copyrighted information into behaving like physical objects. this is the wrong way to go. these properties of information should be used as an advantage, instead of being tied down like this.

[LMNO]

The basic argument for me remains as follows:


How is your favorite band going to make money if they can't sell their music?  I don't really give a rat's ass about the record company's "take", or the fact that each album only gives a few pennies to the artist.  Record companies decide if an artist will make more albums dependent on how much money they have made or lost on their last album.  An artist is in debt to the company until they "recoup" the money they spent on the album through sales of the album, not merchendise*.  If the comany feels that the band is a financial risk, they will not put up the money for a second album.

So, every song you steal from your favorite artist hampers them from making more of the music you love.  Especially considering that the artists you probably like are obscure and have tenuous deals in the first place.















*In a standard contract.