No , actually I need the exposure at this point in my career. Only when I am rich and super greedy like the music undustry and Metallica will I care. But, how can you compare an original piece of paint with a piece of noise that can be reproduced in many ways? Tape, CDR, MP3s and CD rippers? Who wants a Xerox copy of a painting? PEople pay for original stuff in the art world not copies. I understand you guys, its that we are all brick walls with our own opinion here. Don't worry, I'm sure Napster will lose and I'll be buying CDs soon enough. I promise! I was only being funny for my Napster using friends here in this posting and annoyingn to you guys. God Bless America. ------------------ Whatever you want to do, you have to do something else first.
Nothing. Not one thing. "Instant karma's gonna get you." I'm interested to know what RM95 asked mr. oily. How would you feel if your boss told you that, as a courtesy to your company's clients, he wanted you to work for free at least 1/3 of the time? Bottom line is that stealing music is no different from stealing food, books, a car, whatever. You can justify it any way you like but it IS stealing and it IS illegal. DOD: Well, that's ONE! ------------------ Me fail English? That's unpossible.
don't see downloading music and listening to it on your home computer in the same category as shoplifting from Best Buy. For one Best Buy incurs a direct loss of income from someone stealing something they purchased. Nobody is directly taking money out of another persons pocket by using napster. The artist who wrote the songs are not having money deducted from their bank accounts with each down load. "Napster is a victimless crime, like punching someone in the Stomach"----Nelson Muntz [This message has been edited by Ty_Webb (edited February 16, 2001).]
It is theft according to the laws protecting copyrights and "intellectual property." Just because you aren't taking money out of their bank accounts doesn't mean it isn't stealing. ------------------ Me fail English? That's unpossible.
I want to clarify my position on Napster before anyone misinterprets me. I DO NOT care one iota if anyone here wants to download songs for free. I could care less. That's totally up to you. What bugs me is Napster's choice to facilitate it and everyone's refusal to admit it is stealing an artist's work. I find it a little convenient that people seem very willing to take the high moral ground on politics, religion, ethics, etc. but are able to download with no guilty conscience. Your choices are simply that, yours. You have a right to do whatever you choose and face whatever consequences there may be. I do too. However, PLEASE don't try to convince me or anyone else that downloading does not constitute theft. That is simply untrue. If you can justify it to yourself, you don't have to justify it to me or anyone else, but at least be honest about what it is that you are doing. ------------------ Me fail English? That's unpossible.
why are you so worried about other peoples conscience and whether we KNOW what we are doing is wrong (in your eyes)? Does it make you feel better to proclaim that you are above all us common intellectual property thieves? Maybe that is not you guys intention, but it sure does come off that way. Hope you guys have plenty of tissue for your nose bleeds up on that HIGH horse. [This message has been edited by Ty_Webb (edited February 16, 2001).]
Not that I'm trying to speak for RM95 or anything but he doesn't need to. The Supreme Court (or Congress, not sure which) has established the idea of "fair use". This means that, among other things, small smaples of copyrighted ideas can be used in reviews. I believe this is also why cdnow, amazon, etc can offer brief samples of songs. They don't need to get the studios permission. Fair use allows them to do that. dylan ------------------
Give me a freakin' break! I purposefully went out of my way to say I could care less about what you do. I do plenty of **** that would constitute a breach of my own ethics so I put myself above NO ONE. ------------------ Me fail English? That's unpossible.
Jeff, that's becuase many people dont' consider it stealing. The idea of theft when it comes to IP is very murky. If I "steal" an mp3 of yours, you still have it. I just also have a copy now. Now if I intended to purchase my own copy then you will lose my potential business. But if I had no intention to buy your song then you have incurred no loss by my "stealing" your mp3. For example, for a party my house hosted a while back I downloaded a large amount of dance music becuase I had none. If the option to download the tracks did not exist then I still would not have gone to bestbuy and bought any cd's. I would have had friends come over and bring their dance cd's and played music via cd instead of mp3. Even if they brought over different cd's the the ones I was planning on playing via mp3 no ecomomic loss would have incurred. This is why the definition of theft is being stretched. The same thing occurs with software piracy. The SPA determines the "loss" caused by piracy by estimating a number of illegal downloads (which is usually much higher than the actual number) and multiplying by the full retail price. This assume that everyone who downloaded software illegaly would have purchased it directly from a retailer (ie no used software places). This is obviously no going to happen. While software piracy is a "bad thing" (tm) and the same can be said for downloading mp3's, over-reactions like the RIAA's and the SPA's backfires. It's kind of like the DARE program (or at least how it used to be) and the anti-drug propaganda of the 70's and 80's. It was so obviously false that it made it diffucult to take anything they said seriously. So, in summary, the reason many people don't consider downloading mp3's stealing isn't born of self-delusion but by careful consideration of the fact that no loss occurs. dylan ------------------
I'm rather enjoying this latest Napster debate. Please continue. Jolly good! GO ROCKETS YEAWAWAWAWAH!!!!!!!!!!! Surf ------------------
All you gotta do to get one of those little burning folders is include the word "Napster" in your Topic! Geee thanks Rockhead! ------------------ Whatever you want to do, you have to do something else first.
ok just wondering because i know tv and film studios sometimes close down fan sites and prevent them from displaying pictures and such. i think Fox studios did this to fan sites for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I was just wondering what the legality of it was in case i ever make such a site ------------------
Yeah, what dylan said. To be honest, we weren't sure how to go about it when we started. We were pretty positive that all the other movie review sites took the time to get the permission, so we thought we'd go ahead and use it. Our thought the entire time has been if a movie company contacts us and asks us not to use that image, we'd gladly stop. That's how Napster should work. Only songs by artists who agree to allow their songs to be traded. ------------------ www.swirve.com...The reason Al Gore invented the internet.
I get that and I agree. Frankly, I wouldn't care if it didn't cost the artist anything in lost sales, but it does. ------------------ Me fail English? That's unpossible.
Now if I intended to purchase my own copy then you will lose my potential business. But if I had no intention to buy your song then you have incurred no loss by my "stealing" your mp3. This is silly. You illegally took a product you're required to pay for without the permission of the creator and without paying for it. What else do call it besides stealing? ------------------ Is it any coincidence that the Cato is the only Rocket with a temperature scale named after him? I didnt think so!!!!
I think it's even more silly to call it theft if there is no loss. To me, the idea of loss is implicit in the idea of theft. No loss = no theft. How can you argue otherwise? The tradional idea of theft and loss are not 100% applicable to IP. We as a socity need to come up with new ideas as to how we are going to deal with IP. To blindly call something theft does not make it true. dylan ------------------
Out of curiousity, how do you know this true? How do you quantify the loss in sales? I have heard that sales in CD's have risen since Napster came out. Now this obviously doesn't prove anything even if it were true since there are many factors in play. But have you seen or heard of a study showing that Napster has hurt sales, and by how much? I really don't think Napster has hurt sales as much as many people think. Now this is just my opinion with no facts or figures so I'm curious if there is such information available. dylan ------------------
Unfortunately I don't think fair use extends to fan sites. It would be nice becuase I know Fox in particular is very quick to kill fan sites that have any images/sounds/etc. of their shows. I am no copyright expert but I believe the idea of fair use began for educational purposes. I am sure you've had an English class where the instructer handed out a photocopied poem or a paragraph from an essay/novel. They don't have to get permission from the copyright holder to do this. Now if they wanted to photocopy a book and charge for it that'd be another issue. dylan ------------------
dylan: Two things. First, maybe it isn't "theft," but it is copyright infringement and illegal use of intellectual property. For example, I got an email recently asking me to stop using the words "books on tape" on my production company website advertising our ability to record audio books. Apparently the term "books on tape" is trademarked and even the use of the term was infringement and illegal. They asked me to cease and desist and I did. Now, I didn't "steal" the term from them. I just used it but it in a sentence as a general reference but it constituted infringement. Same thing with MP3's. You may just be "copying" them, but the act of copying constitutes infringement. Second, Taxi, an independant group that helps unsigned artists get signed, took a pretty extensive look at the use of MP3's on the net. ASCAP and BMI, two groups that represent artists and their publishing, also joined in to study it. They found that MP3's were very helpful to unsigned artists for a variety of reasons and were used for everything from swapping musical ideas to recording to getting signed to selling their records. They also found that the use of Real Audio snippets on places like CDNow and Amazon.com increased the likelyhood that someone would buy a CD by 50% if they listened. The most interesting finding was that MP3 downloaders who used Napster or swapped in other ways only bought the CD's of the music they listened to 50% of the time. They reported that they were much less likely to purchase a CD once they had the song on their hard drive according to their surveys. Downloaders said that they estimated their purchasing of CD's overall had dropped by 25% since MP3's became available. The RIAA estimates those figures a little higher (closer to 35%) but what would you expect. Much of the increase in sales since Napster's explosion can be directly attributed to holiday sales and a few other key factors (the release of specific big name artists who don't put out albums every year, etc). I NEVER trust the RIAA numbers but I do trust Taxi, ASCAP and BMI because their concern is the for the musicians rather than the industry. ------------------ Me fail English? That's unpossible.
Which is why tools such as Gnutella exist. Although in its infancy and nowhere near as good as Napster, it'll get there. Oh, and about stopping a piracy ring by targeting a few and prosecuting them. Sure. That'll work... just like it did with software piracy sites. Those are a thing of the past. ------------------ "Ive seen more class at a Pig Humpin Contest ." -- moestavern19 makes headlines again, and in the process leaves little doubt as to what Saturday nights in his hometown of Lompoc, California are like.
