You see, inorder to steal something, you have to actually take it away from someone else

If you enjoy the fruits of someone's labor without compensating him for that labor, you are stealing.

I would like to see your reaction if someday you were to, say, write a book, get it published -- and then find out that it only sold one copy because the first purchaser liked it so much he posted it on the internet so everybody else could read it for free.

Would you be upset? Would you ever write another book?

tanstaafl.

why is it that you can't tolerate anyone having an opinion other than your own?

Yz... You are a bright kid (I'm three times your age so I am entitled to call you a kid!). I know this because of PMs we have exchanged, and a few of your posts have been insightful and funny.

But have you noticed... of the 1,994 currently registered bbs users, only TWO have ever incited the overall, general hostility that you have, and of those two, the unhappiness you have generated is greater by at least an order of magnitude.

So think about this. I am not trying to be cute or flip here, I really want you to think about this: Are you the only one of the 1,994 of us who is on the right track? You're right, and the rest of us are wrong? (And that "us" is without question the smartest, most articulate, and best informed group with whom it has ever been my privilege to associate!)

tanstaafl.

I'm not saying anybody's wrong. And maybe I'm wrong. But I'm just telling you what I think. Just like you're telling me what you think.

We have that poster up in the office

Rob

Hi.

Hmm, I like communism. It's a pitty it doesn't work on a large scale.
The real problem isn't communism, the real problem is any kind of dictatorship, be it by a single person (like in some countries on the african or south american continent) or by a group of people (like the communist party in China). REAL communism (which I didn't ever see in any country) is far more democratic then the "free" western countries. And because real communism doesn't need any money at all, the RIAA would surely be outta luck.
There is always the same problem though: As good as communism works in theory, mankind is simply to damn lazy to make it work in practice. I mean: Most people wouldn't want to work if they didn't need to do so, right? And with everything belonging to everyone (well, mostly), noone would _need_ to work, and the only thing you could gain from working is some appreciation.
(Sidenote: I just looked up "Anerkennung" in an online dictionary (dict.leo.org), to find synonyms for appreciation. Did you know that "phwah!" is supposed to be an exclamation of appreciation for a sexually attractive member of the opposite sex?)
Anyway, back to that poster: Even though I do not like people downloading all the music they want and mostly not buying a single CD, I must say that that poster seems like an invitation to do so to me. I mean, should it really be discouraging the downloading of music from the net?
It's simply funny what the RIAA thinks could make the users abide by their rules.

cu,
sven

Umm.. the poster is a parody. The RIAA haven't quite reached that level of communication yet.

Rob

Yup, got that one on my wall in the office, too.

Anyone notice the guy in the picture is using an iMac?

Rob, Tony, any pointer as to where one might aquire a copy of the poster? http://modernhumorist.com/ has T's, bags etc, but I can't find the poster... Maybe out of stock/print?

/Michael

Aww, just use the .jpg and print your own. -=smirk=-

Actually, the JPEG posted here in the thread is a very low quality.

You can tell by looking at the picture that it was originally made in a vector-illustration package and could theoretically be enlarged to very big sizes with no pixellation. I would like to locate a vector version of the original to print at a large size, that would be cool. I'd make a 4-foot high poster out of it or something, that would rock.

I hate to be nit-picky here, but can anyone articulate the difference between pirating an mp3 and printing this poster (copyrighted by Modern Humorist) from an image off the internet?

I believe you've hit the center of the ``-=smirk=-''.

But, to get back to what initially brought this up, there's a huge difference in my mind between printing that out for personal use (or trading mp3s for personal use) and selling a product that includes copyrighted music without recompense to the copyright owner.

There's always the possibility of sharing being the motive in free distribution (whether it's technically illegal or not), but when you start selling products you don't have the right to sell, that's where the line is definitely crossed for me. (And I realize that in this hypothetical situation, it would be more akin to sharing than selling, but it's cutting it way too close for me.)

I think this dilemma (pirating music, and pirating intellectual property in general) is particularly interesting. Not only does one have to differentiate the moral boundaries between sellling another's property (in the case of this loaded empeg player) and sharing between unknown friends (Napster), but there is a much more practical issue at stake. Copying music has always occurred, and it wasn't the issue that it is now. It is an issue now because of the quality and ease of distribution of the copies - which means that it seriously undermines an industry. In the case of the poster, the quality won't be that great, so it isn't much of a threat to Modern Humorist. If I could walk into a poster store with a digital camera and then make great digital copies, share them with friends on the net, and have everyone be able to make great printouts on their printers at home, then it might become an issue. But I can't, so it's not.
I have a feeling that some of the moral objections to the issue of pirating music are accentuated and motivated by an underlying practical issue - the fact that in its reaction to the problem, the music industry will limit the uses of the technology we love.

Yes, an mp3 is just a reproduction of a song, and so is playing the song on a guitar in your home. Both are reproductions of copyrighted material using your own personal equipment and expertise. The only difference is the mp3 is more accurate to the original. Should playing copyrighted music on your guitar be outlawed, if it could even be regulated?

You. Are. Wrong.

I guess that's a decent comparison, but I think you missed the point. Nobody is talking about "outlawing" mp3s or guitar playing. If you play your guitar in your room - that's fine. If you play with a bunch of friends, that's fine. If you play at a a gathering where you charge money and don't get permission from the artist, that is not necessarily fine. The same sorts of comparisons can be made with mp3s. Comparing different types and contexts of reproduction of intellectual property will get you somewhere, but only if they are on par with each other. So, taking the extreme on one end (getting compensated for another's property or distributing without compensating the artist) and comparing it with the other extreme (private use) doesn't make any sense. I think I might be talking to a wall though.

Ummm do you not actually sit back and think about these arguments you throw out before submitting them? Most people who would play the song on their guitar first off would own the music on CD. Second when you want to hear a song you cant just play it on the guitar and get the same effect. This brings us to the issue of cover bands. While playing music on your guitar in your home is one thing going out and playing for a crowd and charging them money is another and I really am not familiar with the laws governing this. I just wanted to point out how ridiculous your arguments are.

I'm not talking about making profit off of it. Nobody was making money off Napster.

"Most people who would play the song on their guitar first off would own the music on CD."

Most people who make mp3's own the cd. What's your point?

"Second when you want to hear a song you cant just play it on the guitar and get the same effect."

Did you actually the read the post you are replying to? Both examples (guitar, mp3) are reproductions of copyrighted material; just one more accurate than the other. If you're going to outlaw/tax/denounce/whatever one than why not other? I only made the analogy to show how ridiculous banning guitar playing of copyrighted music would be.

"This brings us to the issue of cover bands. While playing music on your guitar in your home is one thing going out and playing for a crowd and charging them money is another and I really am not familiar with the laws governing this."

Bands do this every weekend all over the country, yet nobody minds. Yet when you share an mp3 with someone, of which nobody makes any profit, it suddenly becomes a filthy sin. It's true, mp3 sharing probably hurts people in the music business. But perhaps cd's aren't worth as much as they used to be.

By the way, I'm in the process of writing the book of The. The only word in it is 'the'. It will soon be copyrighted, and anyone who wishes to use my intellectual property will have to compensate me for it.

I hate to be nit-picky here, but can anyone articulate the difference between pirating an mp3 and printing this poster (copyrighted by Modern Humorist) from an image off the internet?


Now consider the fact that downloading this page created an unauthori[s|z]ed copy of said copyrighted works in your computer's cache! You are guilty as charged

But since you asked: (And I preface this with IANAL)


In context of this subject - printing this poster for your own personal use would be illegal, unless you had already paid for a copy somehow. No doubts about that.

However, selling an empeg with 96GB of music on it would not strictly speaking be illegal - as long as the following held:
1) No percentage of the sale price could be attributed to the music. ie the seller sold the empeg and not the music.
2) The seller had the legal right to create the backup copy on the empeg in the first place (ie owned the CD or tape)
3) The seller did not put the music on the empeg just for the purpose of selling the empeg.
4) The seller did not know that the buyer had a specific intent to obtain the copyrighted material without paying royalties. (Actually I'm not sure if this one really matters or not..)

or
1) The seller was also including the original CDs/tapes in the sale.

AFAIK, there is no legal *requirement* for a storage medium to be cleansed of copyrighted material when it is sold - and as the buyer did not create the copy in the first place, he could not be held liable either. [edit: typo - I forgot the 'not']

But morally, and ethically, the situation is far different. I don't think that Modern Humorist are really going to care much about you or I printing a low-res image of a single image, just as I don't think that the RIAA really care about people downloading a single MP3. And I think that the public would agree with that sentiment. But printing hundreds of posters to sell, or knowingly providing someone with 96GB of copyrighted material that you suspect that they keep and use, is both morally and ethically wrong. And I think that the general public would agree there too. (Well, those who are out of their teens anyway).

And since this poster appears to be out of print, ie non-attainable from the copyright owners, I would have no moral or ethical qualms about printing it. And I feel the same way about music too - if an album is out of print, and I have made a good faith effort to obtain a legally licensed new copy, then it's open season as far as I'm concerned. Why??

The oringinal intention of copyright law was to increase the public wealth of knowledge and art. Not to enrichen artists. To encourage the creators to publish their works, the state granted a limited monopoly on their works in which time the copyright owner was compensated for each copy made. But the whole purpose was to make the works available.

What we see today is a complete travesty - the 'limited' monopoly is so long as to be farcical, and availability seems to be at the whim of the publisher - "Buy Disney's <insert title here> on video NOW before it gets locked away in the vault for another 10 years..." ("Cinderella" IIRC). This was not the intention of the founders of copyright law, and as far as I'm concerned is morally and ethically disgraceful.

And the music industry is no better with their back catalog either. With their resources, they should have been able to make the vast majority of their out of print music easily available to consumers - either as mp3 downloads or by 'burn-in-store', or 'burn-to-mail-order' technology, but they haven't.

Instead they have pointlessly invested in lawyers to try and kill the technology, in marketing propaganda to convince us that using our empegs is somehow bad, in political donations to try and make our empegs and any other computing device without DRM illegal, and in download services where you lose the right to listen to music you've downloaded unless you keep a subscription current. So I'm really not going to lose too much sleep about obtaining an unlicensed copy of something that they can't be bothered to keep available.

Hmm..I ranted a bit. Time to breathe.

By the way, I'm in the process of writing the book of The. The only word in it is 'the'. It will soon be copyrighted, and anyone who wishes to use my intellectual property will have to compensate me for it.


Fine by me. Copyright pertains to the work as a whole, not of it's constituent parts. So if I were to copy the exceedlingly boring book "The", by author Yz33d, then I would be infringing his copyright. However, I would be quite at liberty to quote portions of the book. But then again, I'd probably quote a portion of The Oxford English Dictionary instead, as it's a more interesting read. Maybe I'll quote the first word of their definition of magic.

Yet when you share an mp3 with someone, of which nobody makes any profit, it suddenly becomes a filthy sin.

Under certain circumstances, this is actually illegal even for the people that own the copyrights. It's called dumping and it's a well-established illegal monopolistic practice. The idea is that if company A has a product that company B wants to perform poorly, company B can produce a similar product and sell it under cost or give it away. If company B has more gold in the coffers than company A does, company A could be put out of business. It's essentially a war of attrition, and it's illegal most places I'm aware of, because it allows company B to exert its influence in one area in another unrelated area, which is pretty much the definition of illegal monopolistic practice.

And just because it's not one particular company that dumping doesn't make it less wrong. And, in this case, you're not even dumping a similar product. It's the exact same product.

Bands do this every weekend all over the country, yet nobody minds.

ASCAP collects fees for live performances as well as for recorded performances. BMI does the same. These fees are usually extracted from the venue proprietor rather than the performer, since it is the proprietor that is gaining revenue from the performance, which is why you don't often hear about it.

I'm not defending ASCAP or BMI; their distribution of said funds borders on the criminal, in my opinion. But you should do your research before stating things as fact.

Thank you for clearing this up I know when I was in a small local band we never did tours at public concerts where we got paid. Yes we did do a couple during practice or some free shows, but never when we got paid.
Was playing a cover for fun where we made no profit illegal? Im not sure. Was is morally wrong. To me HELL NO we did it for fun not to get free music we didnt copy exactly we added our own twist and we had fun doing it did it stop someone from buying a CD from the artist who originally wrote it NO, actually I bought a number of CDs to help learn a particular song.

As I was listening to the radio today I heard a commercial for Gateway. What was interesting was that they were pushing a certain model of their computer for the music lover, that it came with all the software needed for encoding and burning and free high speed internet access so you could download and share music easier and faster. Maybe they don't know the laws?

When I say ``free'' in this context, I actually mean totally without charge. And, more specifically, it's an issue of losing money on the transaction. If a company can underprice and still make money on it, that's just good business. The thing is that Gateway is selling those services. They're just hiding the charges in the cost of the rest of the product and using the word ``free'' as a marketing gimmick.

Now, there is another illegal monopolistic practice known as ```bundling'' or ``tying''. This is where a company sells a monopolized product only under the condition that the customer also buy another non-monopolized product. (This is what Microsoft was accused of by integrating IE with Windows.) That doesn't apply in your Gateway case because there's no monopoly involved anywhere. But if Gateway had a monopoly on peecees, then it could be considered as such.

No, I just meant that it sounded like they are encouraging people to download music and share it around with others. If a company like Gateway is doing that, the average internet user will see nothing wrong with it.

And I'm not going to get into the wrongness or rightness of it.

And I'm not going to get into the wrongness or rightness of it


Chicken!

Yep