[Brian of the Clan Plush]

so whats everyone have to say about the recent Supreme Court ruling increasing liability for companies like Grokster who facilitate illegal MP3 downloading/sharing?

on one hand, I say f*#% the greedy corporate bastards - throw the music to the masses and unfetter us from the chains of the mediocre tripe that has become popular music...even though I continue to cover much of that mediocre tripe every weekend

on the other hand, if we did away with all this illegal MP3 swapping, just think of the bandwidth that would free up for downloading porn!

P.S. this thread isn't titled "Recent Supreme Court decisions", so how 'bout we save our opinions re: the 10 commandments for another thread, mmmkay?
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I have tiny hands, like a Tyrannosaurus. T-Rex may be the lizard king but he could never play the guitar...

[bassist_25]

I'm not familiar with this court case, but I assume that the ruling had to do with a company providing the means by which people can file share. Personally, I think passing the liability on to a company that provides the means is pure bullshit. Should I sue Coors if I get drunk and crash my car while attempting to drive? Should I blame Remington if I decide to shoot mark without a back stop and kill someone in the process? The programs that are used for file sharing can be used to swap both legal and illegal files. Placing blame on the program authors or domain owners is doing things ass-backwards.

As far as how I feel about file sharing in general - I'd be lying if I said I never downloaded an MP3 (usually with the intent to learn the tune) or copied a tape/burned a cd. I really don't care about the corporate fat cats, but I believe that the artists should always be conpensated. People will usually justify stealing music with some rationalization of "It doesn't matter; the artist only make 7 cents off of an album sale anyways" or whatever. The fact is that's still 7 cents that should be going into the artists' pockets. It's also very likely that the artist is in debt to the record company for recording time, management payrolls, ect., especially if it's the artist's first album. That 7 cents is helping the artist get out of debt. I know a lot of people are going to disagree with me on this, but I think that Metallica had a legit concern with people downloaded their music. The way they attacked the problem was totally wrong (again, Napster shouldn't have been the one getting sued), but they should have control of their music; they were (as Artistotle would say) the principle of it. I think it's a bunch of pretentious bullshit that people with "integrity" think that art should be free just because it's art.

Now, I think that the Mp3 is a great means for distributing music (as long as the artist consents to it). Anything that takes the power away from the record companies and places it in the hands of the artist (where it belongs) is a good thing. Services like mp3.com, Iuma, and Cdbaby are helping very talented groups and individuals get their music out. Now that's what I love about music and the technology revolution.
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"He's the electric horseman, you better back off!" - old sKool making a reference to the culturally relevant 1979 film.

[Brian of the Clan Plush]

If one truly felt the artist should always be compensated, one would be inclined, I suppose, to send in a royalty check every time we made a buck playing a cover of something somebody else wrote and recorded? Its a slippery slope to say the least. When a cover band makes money off someone else's music, it seems thats more of a copyright infringement than downloading an MP3 for personal use. But it can be argued that cover bands are actually promoting the original artist or song, and thus may actually increase sales. The only conclusion then is that this isn't about copyright infringement, its about bank account infringement. Hmmmm.....still don't know which side of this I come down on.
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I have tiny hands, like a Tyrannosaurus. T-Rex may be the lizard king but he could never play the guitar...

[bassist_25]

And it's also interesting to note that a good percentage of my CD collection was bought used, so the artist didn't see any of that money anyways. It definatley is a slippery slope.
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"He's the electric horseman, you better back off!" - old sKool making a reference to the culturally relevant 1979 film.

[no surrender]

anything new in file-sharing? haven't heard much lately, are they still pounding on everyone?

[tonefight]

[bassist_25]

Everyone here does realize that when an artist inks a record contract, they are for all intents and purposes thousands of dollars in debt. Would it be cool if you had a mortgage and your boss expected you to work for free?

I'm not innocent as I've downloaded songs, usually to learn (and as Brian pointed out, I don't have a royalty contract either), but I thought that I would just put out some food for thought.
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"He's the electric horseman, you better back off!" - old sKool making a reference to the culturally relevant 1979 film.

[MeYatch]