response 51 of 126:

Sep 11 00:45 UTC 2000

Okay, rane. I read the Courney Love piece. Her point is, in essence, that an
artist has two choices -- sign a contract with a record company and have your
creative rights ripped away (and there was a bill passed which changed the
law on how long the company owns the copyright, making it an in perpetuity
deal, when it had reverted to the artist after thirty-five years, just
recently, according to her article) and your records at least promoted and
distributed, with luck, OR try to do the production, promotion, and
distribution all yourself, without any contacts. Now, from the folk musicians
I've talked to, most of them have made the conscious choice to stay small,
and to do it more for love than for financial gain. Many (most?) of them have
day jobs which pay the bills and keep them off the streets. It's sometimes
hard to hear some one with a lot of talent scraping by with only a fringe
group of fans who know who they are, when you know that they could have been
big if only... but at least they get the money from their art, what little
they can get from such a limited exposure.

response 53 of 126:

Sep 11 01:30 UTC 2000

The legal change which gave the record companies the right to control
the copyrights in perpetuity was one of the most classic examples of 
the corruption in the record industry.  The relevant language was 
inserted into a bill in a markup period by a congressional staffer.
Anyone who inquired about ias told it was "just a technical clarification."
And the bill was passed with essentially no one realizing what had 
happened, except for the record companies.
 
The record industry later hired that particular staffer as a lobbyist.
 
Want to tell us again about the laws of mankind, Rane?  Here's a clear 
example of the laws being used to deprive artists of their rights --
without the artists, or even the legislators, understanding that this 
was happening.

response 55 of 126:

Sep 11 06:22 UTC 2000

I'm not arguing in favor of misuses (in my opinion) of copyright, such
as the examples from the recording industry given above. But none of
those cases bear upon the right of the holder of the patent/copyright
to not have their invention/creation stolen. The arguments that are
being made are that the inventor/artist should get the benefits. I
agree completely, and consider it a corruption of the process when
a monopolist grabs the rights. But none of that changes the fact
that there are rights, they are owned, it is illegal to violate 
those rights. If you think that the laws awardiong and sustaining
those rights are flawed, CHANGE THE LAWS. Don't promote theft as
the correction.

response 57 of 126:

Sep 11 12:51 UTC 2000

Just take the Metallica mp3's.

response 59 of 126:

Sep 11 14:41 UTC 2000

Re #55:  Correction won't happen, because the people with all the clout and
influence (i.e., the people who can bribe politicians) have a vested
interest in seeing the situation get worse, not better.  So yes, I agree
stealing isn't the answer.  Unfortunately, I don't think there is an answer.

response 61 of 126:

Sep 11 16:22 UTC 2000

Re 55.  Like Ken, I have never downloaded any unauthorized piece of music,
ever, period.  However, I strongly agree with the point that copyright
laws are essentially arbitrary, and represent rights which are created for
the public interest.  Use of words like "stolen" and "piracy" is pure
spin, not law. 

The abusive change in copyright law (taking copyrights away from
musicians) was slipped through during the impeachment hearings.  Due to
various copyright treaties, which were also written by the industry, this
change in law CANNOT LEGALLY BE UNDONE unless the U.S. is willing to
abrogate its signature to the treaties.

response 63 of 126:

Sep 11 16:37 UTC 2000

Ice T wrote a good article about this in Business 2.0 which essentially
says that things like Napster are only the beginning.

response 65 of 126:

Sep 11 17:47 UTC 2000

Is the Business 2.0 item online, or should I go stand in the magazine 
section in Borders to read it?  :)
 
((Heh, amusing side digression.  In America it is expected that some 
degree of free reading will take place at a newsstand.  When I was in 
London in 1995, strolling down a street, the headline on a folded 
newspaper caught my eye:  "HURRICANE THREATENS BRITS" or some similar
thing.  I'm a hurricane junkie, so I flipped the paper up to glance
at the lead story, which was on the side I couldn't see -- and the 
news vendor's hand slammed the paper down.  "35 pence," he growled.
I paid.))

response 67 of 126:

Sep 11 17:50 UTC 2000

re #65
I have a subscription. I rarely read off the rack.

response 69 of 126:

Sep 11 18:16 UTC 2000

Heh.  True.  I recognized the numbers she used as Albini's.
But Love got the issue much more circulation.
 
And remember that copyright only covers the precise expression of 
an idea, not the idea itself.

response 71 of 126:

Sep 11 19:58 UTC 2000

((Oops, the actual mp3s are in that web site.  Maybe that will be 
ruled an illegal link.))

response 73 of 126:

Sep 12 07:03 UTC 2000

It doesn't sound from what I'm reading here as if the record companies are
treating teh artists very well.  That would seem to open the door to some new
record companies that could lure artists by treating them much better.  What's
stopping that?  Are the costs of running a record company so high that, even
with some competition, they could pay the artists any more than they already
are?

For whatever reason, many artists are chosing to release their stuff through
record companies.  They seem to be deciding that the record companies, in
buying their work from them, producing and marketing their CDs, and so forth,
are providing them with some sort of valuable service, at least more valuable
than what they could get from anybody else.  I'm guessing, therefore, that
if people were to start exclusively making free copies of their music, thus
causing them to provide no economic benefit to the record companies, that
these artists might suddenly start wishing the record companies would come
back.

I do think the record companies' business model is wrong.  When they're
selling $20 CDs that I have to go to a store and look for, I generally don't
buy anything unless I'm quite sure that there's something on the CD that I
really want, and it's stopped getting enough radio play for me to hear it on
the radio on a regular basis (however, if it had never made it to the radio,
I probably wouldn't have noticed it in the first place).  If, however, there
were some online service I could get an account on, and get charged, say, 50
cents per copy for each piece of music I downloaded, I would probably spend
considerably more on music than I do now.  Until something like that happens,
while I don't think it's legal or right, I expect things like Napster to keep
getting bigger.  I doubt many of Napster's users have any strong objection
to giving some amount of money to the artists or record companies, but all
financial issues aside Napster makes a much easier way to obtain copies of
music than buying CDs in record stores.  I think we've seen this happening
with the software industry over the last several years.  It used to be that
there were large stores full of various shrink wrapped software packages that
people had to go buy.  Maybe such stores still exist, but I haven't seen any
lately.  The software industry certainly still exists, split between a few
large players in the computer market whose stuff can be bought at computer
and office supply stores, expensive specialized software that gets sold by
actual sales people directly to the companies that use it, and everything else
that can get downloaded off the publishers' websites by providing a credit
card number.