Right, wrong and none of the above
I had a brief-but-hearty discussion with someone I love and respect last night over file sharing of the napster sort. He thinks it’s obviously wrong and those who think it will be permitted forever are living in dreamland.
I remain conflicted about this. My friend seemed to be approaching it from a rules-based moral position — stealing is wrong — with pointers to consequences: CD sales are down (well, there’s argument about this), and who knows what the broader effects of wholesale file sharing might be. My friend lives a principled life and I admire him vastly for it.
I, on the other hand, am unsure exactly which rules to apply since we don’t have a pay-per-play policy in the real world — I am allowed to make a copy off the air and I am allowed to give a friend a taped copy of a CD, and you are allowed to re-read my book without paying me again — and I see wonderful consequences mixed with the undesirable ones as a result of allowing some degree of file sharing.
So, I come down to the following assumptions, none of which I believe without qualification:
Having a vibrant, rich public domain is good, important, necessary, etc.
Artists need to be compensated fairly. The marketplace needs to encourage artistry.
We positively do not want to have to pay every time we get value from someone’s creative work even if that would be the fairest way to treat artists. Art needs to suffuse a culture and that can’t happen if the economics demand strict fairness.
The recording industry as it is currently constituted is so unfair to artists that it needs to fail before the right relationship among artists and audiences can emerge.
Except in the extreme cases, I just don’t know what’s right and wrong. But I do agree with AKMA‘s overall educational precept: the truth lies in complexity.
(Apologies to AKMA if I got that wrong. And apologies to my interlocutor for, ironically, over-simplifying your arguments.)
Categories: Uncategorized dw
Things I Owe
I’ll try to catch up today by blogging the last few days of the choir tour and posting photos. I’ll acknowledge David Weinberger’s welcome-back greeting (oops! just did that) and join in his temporary-bachelor status (pizza for dinner…
I’ve just had this exactly discussion over on Zoetrope.com. Thing that annoys me is that you get all these trite responses, such as “Downloading is stealing. Stealing is wrong.” or “Downloading is destroying the music industry.” or “How would you like it if it was your intellectual property being stolen?”.
Most people seem to miss the point that the most important aspect of this is sales. Those who equate every download with a missed sale are making a huge assumption with every little evidence.
People will download a song or album to see if something they’ve heard about is any good. They almost certainly (specially in the UK where prices are so high) wouldn’t take that risk with real money. So no lost sale there, because there never was a sale there to be lost.
If they like what they hear, there is the chance that they may buy the real thing – nothing beats ownership, after all. So what’s that? A gained sale that might not otherwise have come to pass.
Of course, sometimes people, in particular skint people and students, will download without buying, but these people would have been taping off the radio or copying their mates’ CDs anyway. So I’m not sure that they are a large source of lost sales either.
Thing is, with the music press in the sorry state that it’s been in at least since I stopped writing for the Maker [ ;-) ], p2p file sharing is a great opportunity for the industry to communicate with buyers using the one thing that buyers are really very interested in. The music itself.
Most of the new albums I buy now come from recommendations from friends, or music I hear on the radio. I haven’t bothered with the music press for years, because most music journalists can barely string a sentence together, let alone recognise decent music when it bites their arses. Instead, someone will mention and artist or band, I’ll go download a few tracks or the album, and if I like it I’ll buy it. This way i’ve discovered gems like The Shins, Jeff Hanson and Tom McRae, none of whom I could have discovered any other way.
Indeed, it appears that the idea that downloading could be *good* for an ailing industry is be being born out. The Guardian recently reported that album sales are up 3% on last year (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1020727,00.html). This minor fact appears to be deliberately ignored by the naysayers.
If the music industry could only embrace the downloading culture, without ripping us off, I think that in the long term they’d be better off for it.
Of course, I’m not sure that they can resist trying to squeeze every single penny they can from us. Muse recently put a single from their forthcoming album, Absolution, up for download. It cost £1.50 which, for one track, was a little bit pricy. I bought and downloaded it anyway, just to support the concept and because Muse are one of my favourite bands (see blog).
But if the industry are going to charge us that much for a single song, and limit the number of plays, then the whole thing’s going to fall flat on its face. People aren’t used to having their actions restricted when it comes to the number of times and manner in which they can enjoy music that they have purchased, and they won’t take kindly to the licensing business model.
Digital Rights Management appears to be less about protecting the rights of the artist (read: the rights owner, usually not the artist) and more about restricting the rights of the consumer and wringing every last possible penny from them. Consumers won’t wear that.
Finally, downloading is not the only problem that the music industry has. Again, this seems to be soundly ignored by the doom-mongers who prefer to blame p2p for every last problem. I’m not going to go into the causes and cures of the industry’s ills, because I think i’ve ranted long enough already.
P2p is just a scapegoat, in my opinion. But it remains to be seen if there’s anyone with the intelligence and nerve to embrace it and make it work for the industry, instead of against it.
Burns My Toast
A number of people have asked what I think about the recent General Convention of the Episcopal Church. They’re most concerned about the Convention’s assent to consecrating Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. This does not bother me a…
I think that digital downloading is wrong, and people should just go out and buy the frickin albums, even though it sucks because i have to debate and we are doin’ this subject and i have to be negative but w/e this is a bunch of crap, thanks! cya l8r
people who use file sharing will problally fall in two catogaries.
people who are too mean to pay for the original.
or people who cant afford to.
piracy isnt “killing” music just killing the old high arachy of elitism.
technology is becoming cheaper making music is becoming easier.
the premise of file sharing is freedom of speach and patience.
if people like like a file they can make a donation to the artist through paypal just as easy they can upload a rar achive .
i would rather more poeple made what they felt was a fair donation for my music.
than a select few paid through the nose for the cd with lots of cash going not to the artist.
Is downloading stealing, to me it certainly is. Will my comment make a difference, not at all. As a wife of a songwriter/producer and trying to raise a family. It does upset me that my husbands work that he created is being stolen from him. To say it’s all about the sales. Of course it is. With every sale my husband gets his royality payments. That’s his income. There is no weekly or bi-weekly cheque. He invests his time in the hopes that the album does well. People do need to realize it’s not the record company that really hurts from this. It is the new and upcoming artists, songwriters/producers….and the family that they are trying to raise. Anways that’s about it, said my peace.
People who download music and never pay for it ARE stealing plain and simple. Nothing all that complex about it. Go to work for two weeks and expect to pick up your check on Friday only to hear your employer tell you that they didn’t feel the need to pay you any longer for your labor/services. How would that go down with most people?
I see nothing wrong with downloading an album or a song in order to preview it but if you decide that you like the artist’s music, buy the frickin’ album! People who use convoluted or overly legalistic arguments to justify why they want free music are refusing to look at the PRINCIPLE behind copyright laws: stealing is wrong. When you take something from another without paying for it you are stealing. There’s nothing complex about it.