yep true avishai, but surely it must gladden your heart that yet another JW has fallen into a mire of the "best internet music file sharing thingy" post..... Tragic ain't it. Hope I haven't "stumbled" you too much though....for goodness sake.
Whats the best internet music file sharing thingy....?
by ScoobySnax 118 Replies latest jw friends
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foreword
And maybe you'd like to know......
Most record contracts given by labels are only advanced funds to the musicians. In other words, if the cost of producing an album is say $100,000, the artist will only start receiving income (in his pockets) after the initial costs of the production has been paid for through his royalty payments.
Now if you consider that the average artist gets about 15% of wholesale price (if he's lucky), which is not the $15.99 you were talking about, but more like $8.00, add to that that the artist has to pay the producer 4% out of his 15%, and you'll see that for artists in general it's not a profitable venture, and it takes a loooooong time for him to receive any income, if any.
A thief, which all of you who share music are, can get caught many years down the road. So I think that either yourself or your ISP will become liable. The amount of the bandwidth you are using when downloading files will eventually come and bite you in the rear, and you'll need to pay for all that free music that you've been downloading (unless you can prove that this was not the case), so in the end you'll end up with a bigger bill to pay than if you would've simply went and purchased the music outright. With technology, it might come sooner than you think, and actually it has already started.
Now you say you downloaded 400 tracks, are you ready to pay for those rights.....get ready cause someday you might have to. And plus you'll only have a compressed mp3 rather than the real thing.
And even if that money never ends in the artist's pocket, I will still savor the victory. That the regular Joe thought he was getting away with it, especially when he states with such arrogance that he has a right to this, cause they have no right whatsoever.
Thiefs, yes you are. Is that blunt enough for ya?
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Aztec
I use winmx but I only download music that I already have on cd or tape because I already paid for it. I leave most of my cd's in my car and I'm too lazy to lug them back and forth. I agree that downloading music you haven't paid for is stealing but I hope this forces the music industry to reduce their prices. ~Aztec
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Francois
Scooby has a point. I used to purchase CDs for Hitachi and in the volume that top artists have their CDs reproduced, they must cost pennies apiece, yet they are sold for $15.99 or more.
And other thing. Fourteen audio files do not take up all the space on a CD. Yet, with classical music, we still get - say - one symphony per CD. That's ridiculous. How damned stupid do they think we are? And they're charging $19.95 or more for these CDs.
This problem is rooted in greed; the greed of the artist, the producers, the distributors, etc., coupled with the desire of the end user to get a deal.
There's gotta be some middle ground somewhere.
francois
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teenyuck
Here is a column from the Chicago Tribune....the writer has a question and answer column everyday. He is acknowledged as a Windows guru. He is an aspect of file sharing some may not be aware of:
James Coates
Be careful....we don't want to call in Shaggy....File-sharing virus/worm can be rousted
Published April 12, 2003
Q. On my computer I have Windows 2000 Professional and both a CD burner drive and a CD-ROM drive that we once used a lot. Recently, an error comes up when I try to access either drive.
On one of the drives it will say, "The disk is not formatted. Would you like to format it?" If you click no, nothing will happen, and if you click yes it will say the disk can't be formatted.
When you try to open the other drive the computer says the drive is not accessible and "The network request is not supported." Even on the floppy drive, "The disk is not formatted" error will occur.
I am not able to move files on or off this computer. However, the USB still works. The computer is used often. Kazaa was on it and now Kazaa Lite is on, and we have tried to network it many times. Could my fiddling with the network configurations, or Kazaa, have anything to do with it?
Devin Bernhardt, Santa Cruz, Calif.
A. If ever there were somebody who doesn't have the right to preach on the ethics and dangers of Web peer-to-peer file-sharing schemes, it's me. But it looks like you've been stung by a pretty rare blended virus/worm called W32.Elem.Trojan that sleuths at Symantec Corp.'s Norton anti-virus shop have traced to the wildly popular and wildly dangerous Web-based Kazaa file-swapping system.
The amazing proliferation of digital goodies dangled before us computer users by the likes of Kazaa is difficult to resist. Want to hear a song? Type in the name at one of these peer-to-peer connections and you'll find it on the hard drive of some participant awaiting your download. Everything from Hollywood movies to people's baby pictures gets offered.
On the plus side, peer-to-peer systems can be used to share files legitimately and are welcome tools for doing that. Mostly, though, they're piracy hotbeds and virus breeding grounds.
When acquired over Kazaa, W32.Elem.Trojan overwrites key system files in computers with empty files. This disables all kinds of functions, including elements called dynamic link libraries (DLLs) that handle things like recognizing hardware such as your CD and floppy drives. So you need to remove the virus and then re-install the operating system.
Luckily, this bug doesn't affect the BIOS or basic boot-up settings, so you can start the computer from the Windows CD and do the cleanup by reinstalling the operating system files.
To remove the virus, you want to go to the Symantec Web site for instructions (www.symantec.com) and use the virus name as a search term. -
Abaddon
http://www.kazaalite.com is spyware free and pretty good.
Re. the rights and wrongs, in a musical performance there are two chunks of money; the song writing royalties and the mechanical copyright protection.
The only reason that mechanical copyright laws got passed is that technology made it possible. This was before tape, it wasn't even possible to do home recordings, so it was a sure-fire way of getting the money.
Now technology has made it virtually impossible to enforce them. Huge amounts of money are being spent on hack and crack proof Digital Copyright Systems.
Pity it is all wasted, as taking an analog stream from a player of some description and reconverting to digital can (with the right hardware) give you virtually indistinguishable sound quality, and even with ordinary hardware can do the job pretty well. Music business execs are so paranoid about having to rebuild their revenue models they will do virtually anything to try and maintain the status quo (not Status Quo you understand) even if it is pointless and defeatable by a medium-well-informed 14 year-old.
Now, to me it seems as though just because for a few decades the record companies managed to nail down mechanical copyright protection (which was invented because it was possible to make recordings), some people will expect it to stay that way forever.
Why? Likewise with song-writing loyalties... we are being asked to expect the music industry to go bravely into the future using rules that came about during and suited a span of a few decades. Why?
Why can't we go back to the older principles? Music was free unless you had to pay for a hardcopy(manuscript) or pay to get in. Musicians worked, just like MOST musicians do today. Obviously most 'free copying' that went on was playing a piece of music on instruments, and this piece would be passed on by people who learnt it to people who wanted to learn it without charge. Obviously they didn't have playback devices of some description, but would the process have been any different if they DID? I say no. I say we are not trapping the soul's of performers on CDs.
They are asking for a finate money stream (limited only by copyright laws) of what can be an effortless costless transaction they are not even aware of. It's like farting in 1950 and expecting checks in 2003. They are used to being paid for it becausee it is tradition, but a very NEW tradition they want to keep because it makes them rich... not because it pays them fairly for their work.
The bloated superstars and marketing exercises with their four-year product cycle and their six-versions of the same thing with a different cover are something that will increasingly be seen as an artifact of the late 20th and early 21st C. There will never be a bigger band than the Beatles or U2, as there will never be a revenue stream large enough to pay for a band to become that big.
A song being played by a TV or radio station, or used in some commercial fashion, yeah, easy to track and get the money in, go ahead, they are benfiting from it financially.
An artist touring and working, yeah you're gonna pay to get in, obviously.
An artist you love and will buy the hardcopy of for keepsakes, or because it is bundled with something else you want, fine.
But the fight to have people pay for music they share is already lost.
There will be no great big bands, bands will have more local characeter, control their own destinies (as record companies won;t be able to make enough from them), and bands will tour more. Record companies will invest millions in attempts to stop the unstoppable and then withdraw to lick their wounds, and come up with new ways to make money. Madonna will have to have one house less. What a pity.
Working musicians, as have been mentioned, are not the ones who will suffer. The guys who have to have day jobs will be the least impacted of any group of musicians, as they have the least revenue chain to disrupt because of file sharing and will carry on being able to sell stuff of the front of the stage.
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Simon
I used to be against copying and sharing of music but I think the record companies and hollywood are simply about squeezing as much profit as they can.
An example is regional encoding of DVDs so they can charge as much as they can in each area and not allow peopl to but cheaper from elsewhere.
CDs are overpriced and they make a massive markup. I think the record companies do more to hurt good music than help it as they just trow money at crap artists (eg. M.Jackson) and don't invest in new talent but just want to manufacture short lived copies to a formula.
It would be better for music and consumers if artists sold directly over the web cutting out record labels and retailers.
They could charge very little (less than a dollar for an album) and probably still make more than they would with the record companies.
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hillary_step
Hello,
Given that the basis of the 'downloaders' argument seems to be the innate greed of the record companies, which is not new and existed before MP3 downloads, would we not then logically need to ask why we do not bypass paying for our electricity, or petrol, or gas given the huge amount of profits made by these companies?
Could it be that music is easier to steal than electricity? All I have read here from many are arguments justifying their thievery because they can steal and not get caught.
HS
PS - Many musicians are cutting out the record companies and attempting a direct sell via the Internet. I salute their independance and am myself involved in two such arrangements, but even these schemes are undermined by stealing music via MP3 downloads.
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minimus
Is there a "law" that says you can't download music??? It's funny how some get disturbed over copyright infringements over music but not over the Watchtower Society's publications. I say, "Steal everything".
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unique1
I use Kaaza as well. I have used WinMx and it sux.
Most of the music I download I have already bought, so I do pay the artist, but it takes less time to just look up and click a song than it does to pull all of my albums out that I want a song off of and pick each individual song to download, and sit there and switch CD's. It is just much easier to dowload off Kaaza to make a mix cd.