> File Sharing, Illegal Downloading Blah Etc...,

i've got to write a paper for uni about audience and consumption. thought it would be interesting to do it on music consumed via the internet, via youtube, soulseek, bit torrent blah, to coincide with the radical file sharing debate that has suddenly appeared in the media of late (the uk media that is). would really like to hear peoples views.

cheers

wink

have you read this?

the first rule about illegal file downloading is you don't speak about it.

dont tell anyone but i sometimes download mp3s.

hope thats useful for your school report

Well, if nothing else, systems like p2p and Torrents are useful forms of information, and to ignore them is a bad idea. Even if at the time being they are illegal, fighting it is not the answer for people are against. Rather you should try to use it for your advantage.

Example: Napster when shutdown offered the chance to sell all of their mp3's and have the royalties go to the respected receivers. Actually documents about this with discussion between Napster and the leader of RIAA. IT didn't happen, but it DID happen ... 6 years later as "iTunes". It basically would of been too much of a mess/chaotic/progressive to do it all at once like that so the RIAA had to say no.

Compare that to the even faster amazing system that is torrent systems. A very effective and fast system for transmitting data.

Even if you're against music or data piracy, the developments in technology that comes with it is very useful/beneficial for people over all. Any improvements of transportation of data is helpful.

So then when it comes to the actual pirating of data, there is the ethics of it. For one thing I think it's good to stress how useful pirating can be. For one, there is obscene amounts of information in the world that is by people who have been long deceased. Be it classical music to analytical writing etc. People should have the right to freely spread this information and open source information databases like soulseek and torrents are AMAZING tools for this, and thus should not be battled against.

Also, as a musician I'm 100% pro-piracy of everything and anything. Information is information, if you create it and don't want as broad an audience as possible than why are you making it? Of course having the ability to live comfortably for what you do with your time is something you want, but people should be capable to cope with a slight-loss and instead having a broader audience. I mean so many good artists never made any money. (Faulkner, R. Stevie Moore etc. lol)

yeah ...r.r.r.r.rrrrr

  On 10/2/2009 at 2:56 AM, titsworth_courier said:

have you read this?

nice one :)

it's killing record labels big and small. but it's not going to be persecuted away, so record companies are just going to have to adapt. whether it's moral or not is probably not that important. you should explore ways that labels and artists can continue to make a living within and outside current models.

  On 10/2/2009 at 3:04 AM, Glass Plate said:

Well, if nothing else, systems like p2p and Torrents are useful forms of information, and to ignore them is a bad idea. Even if at the time being they are illegal, fighting it is not the answer for people are against. Rather you should try to use it for your advantage.

 

Example: Napster when shutdown offered the chance to sell all of their mp3's and have the royalties go to the respected receivers. Actually documents about this with discussion between Napster and the leader of RIAA. IT didn't happen, but it DID happen ... 6 years later as "iTunes". It basically would of been too much of a mess/chaotic/progressive to do it all at once like that so the RIAA had to say no.

 

Compare that to the even faster amazing system that is torrent systems. A very effective and fast system for transmitting data.

 

Even if you're against music or data piracy, the developments in technology that comes with it is very useful/beneficial for people over all. Any improvements of transportation of data is helpful.

 

 

 

So then when it comes to the actual pirating of data, there is the ethics of it. For one thing I think it's good to stress how useful pirating can be. For one, there is obscene amounts of information in the world that is by people who have been long deceased. Be it classical music to analytical writing etc. People should have the right to freely spread this information and open source information databases like soulseek and torrents are AMAZING tools for this, and thus should not be battled against.

 

Also, as a musician I'm 100% pro-piracy of everything and anything. Information is information, if you create it and don't want as broad an audience as possible than why are you making it? Of course having the ability to live comfortably for what you do with your time is something you want, but people should be capable to cope with a slight-loss and instead having a broader audience. I mean so many good artists never made any money. (Faulkner, R. Stevie Moore etc. lol)

 

 

 

yeah ...r.r.r.r.rrrrr

i read somewhere that the RIAA used naughty technology to tap into peoples IP's to see if they were uploading torrents.

something thats been discussed in the UK in order to clamp down on such activity... cutting peoples connections etc...

btw i was listening to this when i wrote this.

Well yes, maybe in the UK

They've tried to do a lot of that in the US but ISPs haven't been as eager in US to give away their customers. RIAA have also sued a deceased women and like a 7 year old girl or something like that. (I think both for just a FEW pirated tracks)

RIAA i think for the most part in US have only managed to sue people they actually downloaded tracks from on p2p, but I don't really know for sure.

I'm so glad US is striving to have net neutrality at the moment.

though there's some new programs trying to promote "Cyber Hygiene" which is gay. Fuck that.

  On 10/2/2009 at 3:19 AM, Glass Plate said:

"Cyber Hygiene"

whats that?

i read a year or two ago that comcast was going to block bittorrent downloading, but i doubt they do that...

look it up, lmgtfy: BBC Cyber Hygiene

it's basically trying to get people to have less shit on their computer. (shit as in virsus, malware, etc.)

  On 10/2/2009 at 3:23 AM, titsworth_courier said:

i read a year or two ago that comcast was going to block bittorrent downloading, but i doubt they do that...

some ISPs have been doing the thing were they throttle connections that they suspect are uploading torrents etc. To try to discourage/fight excessive use of bandwidth.

I think comcast was one of them but they got in trouble for it, and I think a lot of it was forced to stop, but a lot of ISPs still do stuff like that to keep you from being able to go too crazy with your connection. (totally sucks)

you may want to talk about how piracy can be used to rapidly, widely and cheaply advertise artists who may otherwise not get the coverage, i.e. not the few high selling bands around, but the small and medium sized bands. there's plenty of pro-filesharing stuff on the net. boingboing.net normally talks about the pros of piracy fairly often. bands like nine inch nails and radiohead have spoken about it, too.

i download all my music normally, and a lot of it. (unless it's something like new squarepusher, boc, aphex (if), then i'll automatically preorder it.) but i always make sure to buy whatever i enjoy. I'm planning on buying my top ten favorite records of the year. I don't feel bad about using soulseek as much as i do, but i feel awful when i sneak into local shows, i guess because the musicians are actually there. so i do spend money on music because i think it's important that musicians get paid, but i'm pro torrents and p2p whatever because why not?

I'm a hands on thief and I'm not allowed anywhere near the town centre for two years.

  On 10/2/2009 at 3:04 AM, Glass Plate said:

Also, as a musician I'm 100% pro-piracy of everything and anything. Information is information, if you create it and don't want as broad an audience as possible than why are you making it? Of course having the ability to live comfortably for what you do with your time is something you want, but people should be capable to cope with a slight-loss and instead having a broader audience. I mean so many good artists never made any money. (Faulkner, R. Stevie Moore etc. lol)

this idea is somewhat pervasive, and it's wrong. we live in a world where money is exchanged for food and shelter, and if you want to encourage the creation of art, you have to create a climate where art can be exchanged for money. the fact that good art has been devalued in the past is a tragedy - not a reason to further a broken system.

i agree with the sentiment that the artist should strive for as broad an audience as possible. however, what you're advocating isn't a "slight loss", it's the death of many artists under a certain popularity threshold. it's the death of whole labels like benbecula and sublight. for top 40 artists and a select few others, it's a loss they can live with, and their work can still translate into a living. but for most people, it's the reason why creating art isn't a sustainable career.

maybe you're not serious enough about your music to want to live off of it, which is fine - i think there is a lot of great stuff that comes out of that. but to say that nobody deserves that chance is the death knell of independent music, and art in general. please don't take it lightly.

as it stands right now i am still formulating my argument. my research has to be qualitative rather than quantitative. i have been following various blogs on the topic since lily allen posted hers some weeks ago. its amazing what people in bands will say when they get there back up, without really considering what they are saying.

i think many of the demographics for the argument are formulated all wrong. a friend of mine on facebook put in her status..."illegal file sharing. right on wrong?"

this from the out set i thought was the wrong way to tackle the debate. of course its wrong, its illegal and we've established that copyright infringement is illegal and thus wrong. good or bad would have been a better choice of words i feel.

many artists who are having hissy fits about all this in the media are tackling downloaders as criminals without considering, (at the risk of sounding massively pretentious on my part) that art as a commodity is more of a crime and surely the real moral issues lie in the ethics of intellectual property.

these are just a few ideas i have at the moment. like i say, i'm in the middle of the whole thing. i'll be the first to admit that i download music for free using p2p and bit torrent and most probably illegally in the process. i also buy a lot of music too. a lot. i think the media and eventually the law are tackling this all wrong. more to the point, i'm interested and also deeply infuriated at how artists in the industry seem to consider by default the effects it has on money and the bussiness rather than art, society, culture and progression in technology.

further i might add, that i have yet to find actual proof of the real effects its having. which i intend to find.

If we are just talking about music here, I am pro-piracy to major labels. I'm not anti-piracy to Indi labels though either. If an aspiring (ELECTRONIC) musician wants to make money in this day and age, they may as well just give it away for free, or on a donation basis. Then support your acts live! Christ, that's where the money's at! You can't pirate the experience of a wicked live show!

And lets be realistic here. Even 2nd tier Braindance acts sometimes have to work "REAL" jobs. FUCKING DREXCIYA for example, and that was before file sharing became popular. So I say do what you can to make money if you care to, but selling albums isn't the way no matter how you look at it, so you might as well forget about it. Supplemental income? Sure. Living wage? Not unless you play out multiple times a week.

'i also buy a lot of bread, on top of stealing some'

'i'd like to sample the bread before i commit to paying for it. if i like it i'll pay for the next loaf'

'bakers should provide their work for free because they should be proud of their art and want it to reach as large an audience as possible'

the upshot is, independent labels drop like flies.. tha argument that filesharing is great promotion doesn't follow, except for the majors. they still sell a lot of records. ... all of the models supporting filesharing only really take into account the big four.

indie labels generally work on a hand to mouth basis with each release going some way towards financing the rest .(and it isn't cheap)

now big labels won't invest in developing new talent, all they want is guaranteed sales, so they audition and manufacture horrible homogenous rubbish. indies going out of business. soon there'll only be u2. u2 and no-one else.

that said, filesharing is here to stay. i mean why the fuck would you pay for something that's entirely available for free?

i think the way forward is to accept the situation , and provide people with enough high quality preview material to allow them to choose whether or not they want to buy, codes for exclusive d/l content if you buy the genuine article etc. make it worthwhile for people to buy.

i can't get my head round why people have such an issue with artists of any kind trying to support themselves by doing what they love, especially when so many peole get the benefit of it.

nobody has an issue with professional sportmen now, do they?

this argument is fucking tired though, and things are not about to change in a hurry, so it's a bit of a moot point. unfortunately people's ill-thought out points of view* just take us futher and further into a frightening homogenisation of culture and art

*(everybody has an opinion, especially those who do not depend directly on the music industry, about how little or how much file sharing hurts...let me tell you, if you're a small label, it hurts.)

I don't illegally download music anymore, out of simple respect for the artists (and labels, I suppose). I want those I like to keep releasing music, simple as. I felt a hypocrite when euologising about how great such-and-such an artist or label is on the one hand while stealing their work that's meant to be paid for on the other.

  On 10/2/2009 at 2:31 PM, loganfive said:

that said, filesharing is here to stay. i mean why the fuck would you pay for something that's entirely available for free?

 

i think the way forward is to accept the situation , and provide people with enough high quality preview material to allow them to choose whether or not they want to buy, codes for exclusive d/l content if you buy the genuine article etc. make it worthwhile for people to buy.

word. i don't know if you saw the poll i posted a while ago, but some friends and i are giving it a shot. there's an interesting twist on the idea that i think the indie music community will really react to. hate to be so vague but the market is kind of closing in on our idea and i don't think we can get it online for another 3-4 months - so i'm keeping quiet for the moment.

anybody heard of kickstarter? what do you think this story adds to the debate?

filesharing helps emerging artists because it reduces their barriers to entry.

i wouldn't go and spend 15 quid on an album for an artists i've not heard of. i would however download something from them for free. if i like them i'd tell my friends. both my friends and i would them most probably buy cds if the artists good enough, and definitely go and see a live performance.

i only found out about aphex twin as someone mentioned him and i casually downloaded some of his music. i've since bought loads of cds and seen him live on multiple occasions. all because of filesharing!

the other real issue i have is of people with gigs and gigs of lists of tunes in their media player. meaningless lists of words with various star ratings, which they expended no effort to get.

i mean, having a terrabyte of tunes seems to be something to boast about at the moment, but imhotep, there's no way you can form any kind of personal relationship with the art. it's too nebulous and meaningless in that format.

'bang the player on shuffle man'