It seems that as we are flooded with a huge number of MP3 players and various other mediums for the storage and playing [ not to mention sharing] of published music from various artists that the issue of copyright is a hot potato(e).

Should the industry attempt to govern their intellectual property rights at all or should they adapt to the current trends and hope that good will, will put money in their pockets. Obviously they can capitalise on the initial release of the music but after that it seems that any control over their product is lost or potentially lost.

just my uneducated opinion.....

So what do you think?
What is the future of copyright issues in this industry?
How can an artist protect his reasonable rights to fair return on his creations?

Care to discuss?:)

sorry if this has already been recently discussed......

I don't think the industry should have any IP rights concerning works of art at all, only the artists.

Even more, I don't think art should be an industry at all. :)

It seems that as we are flooded with a huge number of MP3 players and various other mediums for the storage and playing [ not to mention sharing] of published music from various artists that the issue of copyright is a hot potato(e).

Should the industry attempt to govern their intellectual property rights at all or should they adapt to the current trends and hope that good will, will put money in their pockets. Obviously they can capitalise on the initial release of the music but after that it seems that any control over their product is lost or potentially lost.

just my uneducated opinion.....

So what do you think?
What is the future of copyright issues in this industry?
How can an artist protect his reasonable rights to fair return on his creations?

Care to discuss?:)

sorry if this has already been recently discussed......

Lets be realistic here. No i'm sorry your right, lets erase all creative abilities from the human mind. There is only 0 and 1 and some beeping noise.

r2d2, is that you?

The record industry should encourage the positive increase in the technology, rather than the negative. I.E. Shops for Mp3, rather than KaZaA. So far they've done such and have been succesful in so doing.

Recently I've been buing quite a few cd's, but none of them from RIAA or any big label.
But RIAA still counts me in in their loss statistics, as if I would have been their customer if not for the Internet. The real thing is - their music's crap.

Been buying records from these and other labels/shops:
http://www.equilibriummusic.com/
http://www.coldmeat.se
http://www.coldspring.co.uk/
http://dangus.lt

If you think about it, music is the vibration of air that can be detected by your ears. So you are basicly buying air... :)

Seriously, the music industry has to find other ways to make money, because technology will not stop. Also, we can look at it this way: free music is the reward what we pay for losing personal privacy...

That's a funny way of looking at things, you're right! We lost our personal privacy so we deserve something back, like pirated illegal music for our entertainment pleasure :-!!!

I concur with said statement....

In regards to the idea of whether or not music should be copyrighted, well... they did sue people for singing happy birthday right? If they can do that they can do anything :-(

"Intellectual property" is a concept of the Industrial Revolution, which provided the ability to mass-produce printed copies of written work and recorded copies of musical and theatrical work. Now that the Information Revolution has taken that ability to a new level, that particular genie is out of that particular bottle and can never be put back in.

The reality is that copyright protection will soon no longer be possible, and all arguments about right and wrong will be beside the point.

Thank god! Burn in hell RIAA

You do realize that once copyright protection is made impossible, that there will be virtually no development, as profit will be impossible also, yes?

I personally support everyhthing being copyrighted up the ass. If nothing else to keep things moving.

Maybe copyright infringement ought to become a federal offense, like counterfitting?

With all the discussion of software patents, maybe there'll be music patents?

Maybe I'll be able to patent the major scale... :D

You do realize that once copyright protection is made impossible, that there will be virtually no development, as profit will be impossible also, yes?


No. First we are talking about music and not development here. Also lots of musicians make music for just the sake of it and not necessery for money.
Also for the bands the real money is in touring. That's why several bands didn't mind their songs to be given away for free, they got their money by their increased audiences...

In England a few famous musicians wanted to extend the copyright years from 50 to 75. I say if you couldn't make money in 50 years, you should be shot.

The whole question is interesting because technology clearly overtook laws.
People in the industry have to find other ways to make money. Their profitratio is incredibly high anyway, what they justify by carrying lots of losers for every winner...

Some will find any justification for stealing, the industry consists of all the low paid worker too.

Technology is a poor excuse, there have been ways to copy tape and stuff for 30 years.

Most importantly though is that MP3's totally suck, you are taking a 30mb file and making it into around 3-4mb. also bootlegs are made by criminals:)

Some will find any justification for stealing, the industry consists of all the low paid worker too.

Technology is a poor excuse, there have been ways to copy tape and stuff for 30 years.

Most importantly though is that MP3's totally suck, you are taking a 30mb file and making it into around 3-4mb. also bootlegs are made by criminals:)

Copyright infringement is not stealing.
Art should not be an industry.
Art belongs to the people.
If you don't know how to make a decent mp3, blame yourself.

Copyright infringement is not stealing.
Art should not be an industry.
Art belongs to the people.
If you don't know how to make a decent mp3, blame yourself.

Hey there buddy :),

oh jeez, ART belongs to the creator who is generous enough to let the public see his\her creation.

mp3's suck period. Over 20mb's of data loss is not good in any situation or with any codec, unless you have a tin ear.

oh jeez, ART belongs to the creator who is generous enough to let the public see his\her creation.
I grew up in the USSR - not brainwashed into the capitalist way of thinking. :p

You do realize that once copyright protection is made impossible, that there will be virtually no development, as profit will be impossible also, yes? I personally support everyhthing being copyrighted up the ass. If nothing else to keep things moving. Maybe copyright infringement ought to become a federal offense, like counterfitting?Reread my post:The reality is that copyright protection will soon no longer be possible [due to technology], and all arguments about right and wrong will be beside the point.We will one day have to learn to deal with this, rather than waving our increasingly impotent fists and demanding that the clock be turned back.

The argument about development being driven by profit is sooooo twentieth century! I thought it was you young folks who were supposed to be able to "think outside the box," not us geezers. If Maslow's Hierarchy is insightful and universal enough to continue to be a useful model in the Post-Industrial Era, profit can be seen as a measure of Esteem, the fourth step: Achievement, Respect by Others.

Perhaps the fifth step, Self-Actualization, will entail an entirely different mechanism.

BTW, copyright infringement is already a federal offense. Fat lot of good those pesky old federal laws do, eh?

The argument about development being driven by profit is sooooo twentieth century! I thought it was you young folks who were supposed to be able to "think outside the box," not us geezers. If Maslow's Hierarchy is insightful and universal enough to continue to be a useful model in the Post-Industrial Era, profit can be seen as a measure of Esteem, the fourth step: Achievement, Respect by Others.
Oddly enough, the open source / hacker culture seems to work that way.

Think about movies - when they can make money, they spend money and make those big special effects and star power films - no profit and the movies will be made by those people that love making movies part time while they work other jobs, with cool efx coming from their PC.
I personally think music is leaning too far towards being folk-art. There will always be good stuff that comes from folk art, but it will only be a small part of the spectrum available.
I know that most of the time I prefer seeing a band that can spend all their time working on the music, rather than working other jobs, and copyrights are what keeps many musicians playing and spending eight or twelve hours a day trying to perfect their craft. Think about what the world will be like with only musicians at the level of local acts who have never been developed.

I don't think it is so bad to download stuff and just see if it is good - if you listen to it once and don't like it, why should you have to pay 15$ for it? But if you do listen to it, you have to support the creation.
Of course a lot of people can't tell the difference between good music and a poke in the ear with a stick anyway... "i had a bad day, you had bad day, blahblahblah whine, blah whine blah etc."

You do realize that once copyright protection is made impossible, that there will be virtually no development, as profit will be impossible also, yes?
Do tell O'Wise One why people created various artworks and literature etc before copyrights?

Do tell O'Wise One why people created various artworks and literature etc before copyrights?
Rich patrons.

It is not a question of how long it takes for the artist to make money.

Legally, it is. No copyright lives forever. In publishing books it is 75 years.

And there is a logic in it, because no author lives forever, so why should the copyright???


Do you have some figures to back that up?


Google is your friend. But again, just by common sense in either the music or the filmindustry you can assume that not ALL products are profitable, what more, most products are produced at a loss. So obviously the losers have to be financed from the profits of the winners, otherwise the companies would go out of business...

Some will find any justification for stealing,

It is called describing the facts. It is a uniqe circumstance today, and you like it or not, but technology clearly outgrew the frame of law.

the industry consists of all the low paid worker too.

And guess what. They are not making the big bucks either out of the big hit winners.

Technology is a poor excuse, there have been ways to copy tape and stuff for 30 years.

So have I been... :)

Recorded from radio. Guilty. Bought bootlegs of concerts otherwise UNAVIABLE. Guilty. I even recorded in the cinema with a taperecorder, because there was no such a thing as soundtrack published. Well, I was a teenager. Happy old days... :)


Most importantly though is that MP3's totally suck,

Most importantly, that point is completely IRRELEVANT to the discussion.

If MP3 sucks, why do you care if we steal it anyway? :)

Rich patrons.

They were paid for 'producing', rather than 'owning' the music or art, right?

I grew up in the USSR - not brainwashed into the capitalist way of thinking. :p

ok, now go to work for you pay check like a good little boy.

They were paid for 'producing', rather than 'owning' the music or art, right?
That is the part downloading music "steals".
People still get their performance royalties from tv shows and movies, or commercials or whatever, while their records are being downloaded for free. The music is still owned, it is the recording that isn't being paid for. One problem is that it is in fact the little bands that are hurt by this most because they don't make much money touring, usually none, once all the expenses are tallied up, while opening for big bands or playing clubs. Plus, the licenses they get for their music from tv, etc., are very small because they are expected to basically give their music for exposure. Plus, a lot of tv etc. wants known music, especially now that any band will whore themselves out so any song they wrote can become a promo for some potato chips, or cleaning supply.

And while the argument that music will still get made is ok, as long as we realize some things would be lost (there would be no jimi hendrix without cash supporting the technology and his artistry), people were getting paid to make art - shakespeare, bach, picasso, jimi hendrix.
Even van gogh made money, ok not van gogh, he didn't - some great art will always be created without a lot of financial support - but much will be missed.

Oddly enough, the open source / hacker culture seems to work that way.Motivated by achievement and respect, indeed. Right there on Step Four of Maslow's Hierarchy, and doing it without the enticement of profit. Many musicians and other artists work that way. Of course both the quantity and quality of their output is throttled by their inability to devote full time to their art. They have to have a day-job to pay the bills.

The Information Age promises an explosion of capital, such as the one brought about by the Industrial Revolution: multiple orders of magnitude. It may be that humanity's surplus (another word for capital) will become so great that we will no longer need a day-job that takes up the majority of our waking life, just to make a living. What if it comes to a day when our responsibilities to the nuts and bolts of civilization, to keeping the wheels of production and distribution spinning, to ensuring that we and everyone else (and perhaps by this time truly everyone) have adequate food, shelter, medical care, education and so forth, only keep us busy for six or seven hours each week?

Artists would not need patrons. They would work one day a week for necessities, and they could spend the majority of their time immersed in their art. If they were astoundingly good and astoundingly popular, without copyright laws they would still earn enough money from their art (people will always pay for live appearances) to quit their "one-day-job" and be the Compleat Artiste. If they were just good enough to have a fan base, they could keep working their one day and still spend enough time on their art to develop their potential to its fullest and crank out music, mystery novels, sitcoms or wooden duckies to delight their fans and attain the respect and achievement that Maslow says they want. Even guys like me might manage to write twenty songs in their lifetime instead of just two, and they might be better songs for the immersion in art that is impossible for today's dilletantes.

And people who just wanted a bigger TV, fancier wine and steak every night could work two days instead of one.