I think they are missing the point here: each track was paid for, but shared twice (on average). Perhaps music rentals and broadcast would paint a fuller picture?
RIAA: Online Music Piracy Pales In Comparison to Offline Swapping
11–20 of 28 posts
Re: RIAA: Online Music Piracy Pales In Comparison to Offline Swapping
#12In collage someone passed around a pirated DVD of "Shawn of the Dead" in class. Everyone just put in their dvd-rom (feels so weird saying dvd-rom / disc drive) copied it, and then passed it along to the next person till most of the 80 guys in the room had it. Not to mention the sharing that went on over home wireless networks. Each student would share their music / video / software folders and make them public to any…
The reality is that the classical concept of copyright, where it is illegal to make a copy of a covered work without authorization from the rightsholder, cannot be enforced in a digital world. The further reality is that people are not motivated by the moral argument that consumer-facing copyright law is an intrinsic good that must be universally respected. Together, this means that no one is going to heed that aspec…
I'm not sure exactly why, but we have a tendency to tie together three not necessarily connected issues.
One is the question of whether there are viable alternative business models complimented by free distribution of traditionally copyright protected content.
The second is whether we can sustain copyright in the digital age.
The third is the moral questions.
People are always mixing and matching from these. Objecting to a morality point with a business one or somesuch. I'll grant that often there are legitimate cross-overs, but a lot of the time its just absurd. If someone thinks copying art is like stealing from someones house, how can you retort with an alternative business model.
Would you suggest that if passers by keep stealing oranges from a tree the owner should accept it & try to sell them orange juice subscriptions?
If new technology made rape much harder to prevent and prosecute, would we suggest women readjust their sexual expectations?
I think copyright is doomed by reality. I think the industries built around copyright will be rattled, resized & otherwise changed but ultimately survive in some new form. I think that copyright infringement is not exactly the same as theft: it's an artificial system of rules that were engineered around a technological & political reality that no longer exist. I also think that the public does not see piracy as morally wrong. These all conveniently unanimous for me. But, they don't have to be. Sometimes conflicts exists.
I believe that heroine criminalisation is morally problematic, creates terrible drug crime. I also think that legalization it would probably lead to increased use and associate problem. It's a conflict.
Re: RIAA: Online Music Piracy Pales In Comparison to Offline Swapping
#13So instead of giving a mix tape to that girl you fancy, it's now the custom to hand her a 16GB USB drive instead?
Re: RIAA: Online Music Piracy Pales In Comparison to Offline Swapping
#14In collage someone passed around a pirated DVD of "Shawn of the Dead" in class. Everyone just put in their dvd-rom (feels so weird saying dvd-rom / disc drive) copied it, and then passed it along to the next person till most of the 80 guys in the room had it. Not to mention the sharing that went on over home wireless networks. Each student would share their music / video / software folders and make them public to any…
The reality is that the classical concept of copyright, where it is illegal to make a copy of a covered work without authorization from the rightsholder, cannot be enforced in a digital world. The further reality is that people are not motivated by the moral argument that consumer-facing copyright law is an intrinsic good that must be universally respected. Together, this means that no one is going to heed that aspec…
> The reality is that the classical concept of copyright, where it is illegal to make a copy of a covered work without authorization from the rightsholder, cannot be enforced in a digital world
The laws of classical physics failed us at the micro scale. We had to come up with new ones to handle the changes in forces at that level. The present state of copyright will have to be supplemented or replaced with new laws to handle the scale at which things happen digitally.
Re: RIAA: Online Music Piracy Pales In Comparison to Offline Swapping
#15Interesting to see that P2P has gone down 6% and downloads up 3%, whereas physical media has stayed the same. It's clear where the growth market is, now the RIAA just has to read their own numbers. The one thing that puzzles me is that the numbers for burning have gone up. Who in the time of wireless networking, huge disk drives and USB sticks burns a DVD? I just can't see this segment growing 6% in a year.
> Who in the time of wireless networking, huge disk drives and USB sticks burns a DVD?
Not everyone has a computer, so those that do burn a DVD for those friends/family who don't.
Re: RIAA: Online Music Piracy Pales In Comparison to Offline Swapping
#16So instead of giving a mix tape to that girl you fancy, it's now the custom to hand her a 16GB USB drive instead?
I tried lots of mixtapes :) It was hit or miss. :-\ I married the girl I gave a mix CD to though! ;-) That was almost 10 years ago. Kids these days have it so easy. They have software to match beats and do perfect mixes... back in the day it was a real talent to produce a smooth mixtape! Probably the next thing is to give her a streaming music subscription lol.. too easy
Re: RIAA: Online Music Piracy Pales In Comparison to Offline Swapping
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reality is that the classical concept of copyright, where it is illegal to make a copy of a covered work without authorization from the rightsholder, cannot be enforced in a digital world. The further reality is that people are not motivated by the moral argument that consumer-facing copyright law is an intrinsic good that must be universally respected. Together, this means that no one is going to heed that aspec…
I'm not sure exactly why, but we have a tendency to tie together three not necessarily connected issues. One is the question of whether there are viable alternative business models complimented by free distribution of traditionally copyright protected content. The second is whether we can sustain copyright in the digital age. The third is the moral questions. People are always mixing and matching from these. Objectin…
It can be relevant to answer the moral question with a business argument because the moral question often has economic underpinnings. The idea that copying is equivalent to theft is based on the idea that pirates would otherwise have bought the work, making piracy an indirect financial loss. Creating a new business model that accommodates piracy with equal or better returns resolves the fundamental moral issue. (Whether that's possible is beyond me, though.)
There is, of course, the completely separate moral issue of the rights of artists to control their work. Business arguments are inappropriate there.
Re: RIAA: Online Music Piracy Pales In Comparison to Offline Swapping
#18The way we (obviously not all of us) think about culture is pretty fundamentally flawed IMHO. Copyright exists only to create incentive to produce more copyrighted works(aka culture) and not explicitly make anyone money. Culture can't, and shouldn't be contained. When you release a song, movie, drawing, game, some source code, you've given it to the world. You took everything the world gave you, got inspired, worked hard, and gave back. To think that you in some way own those vibrations, or light recordings, or bits is kind of childish. You've been granted a temporary monopoly on their production and that is all.
Should you make some money? Absolutely, but pretending like anyone actually owns any intellectual property is a mental deficiency induced by our childish need for control.
In the face of unprecedented sharing, all culture producing industries are thriving. More money comes out of movies, music, games, and other software than ever before. So anyone that really thinks that they can create culture and then own it can cram it.
Re: RIAA: Online Music Piracy Pales In Comparison to Offline Swapping
#19So instead of giving a mix tape to that girl you fancy, it's now the custom to hand her a 16GB USB drive instead?
I tried lots of mixtapes :) It was hit or miss. :-\ I married the girl I gave a mix CD to though! ;-) That was almost 10 years ago. Kids these days have it so easy. They have software to match beats and do perfect mixes... back in the day it was a real talent to produce a smooth mixtape! Probably the next thing is to give her a streaming music subscription lol.. too easy
"I made you a spotify playlist" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
Re: RIAA: Online Music Piracy Pales In Comparison to Offline Swapping
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
At universities worldwide, every dorm room features a terabyte external hard drive overflowing with booty. The 16gb drives everyone has in their pocket also help.
But they're also the people that have no money, and wouldn't buy anyway. Now that I am a professional, it's not that common for me to swap a hard drive.
Would they buy terabytes of music? No, but few people of any income level would. However it should be remembered that once upon a time, college students were a major market for recorded music.
Twenty years ago when I went to college (ugh, that felt weird to type) every dorm room had stacks of CDs in it... maybe an average of a couple hundred dollars worth per head. That music-selling bonanza just doesn't exist today.
I don't really have a strong opinion one way or another about whether this is a good or bad thing.