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.

response 75 of 126:

Sep 12 15:01 UTC 2000

It's because the major labels have a pretty good lock on retail space,
MTV/radio promotion, etc.

And even honest promotion these days is pretty expensive at the top end; not
many companies can get a deal with Burger King or McDonalds.

response 77 of 126:

Sep 12 20:23 UTC 2000

  It's largely the access to promotional and distribution channels that
  keeps the smaller labels out on the margins..

response 79 of 126:

Sep 15 13:50 UTC 2000

When did it become legal to make copies of your music and give it to your
friends and family?
(going back to the early bits of the item...)

I've always been told that's illegal.

response 81 of 126:

Sep 15 14:42 UTC 2000

Re 79-80.  See the Home Audio Recording Act for details on this.  I
doubt that making a recording and giving it to a family member is illegal
any more, even technically.  As to friends, I'm not sure.

response 83 of 126:

Sep 15 16:21 UTC 2000

        CD-RAudio would also fit, then, since it two is media that a 
blanket royalty has been applied to.  That's why it is more expensive,
but not all the 75 cent to $2.50 difference one can find in CD-R prices
and CD-RAudio prices.

response 85 of 126:

Sep 15 16:50 UTC 2000

#81> I would assume that what's legal is making copies for household members,
not family members per se. 

#82> "theft" has a definition in the dictionary. It may have a separate (more
restricted) definition in legal lingo, but according to my dictionary,
copyright infringement is theft. We're not lawyers here.

response 87 of 126:

Sep 15 19:40 UTC 2000

Re 85.  Please cite and quote this dictionary definition.

The fact that lots of people say sidewalks are "cement" may make it the
common, ignorant use of the word, but it is a fact that they are concrete,
not cement.

Using "theft" to mean copyright infringement is specifically a political
use of the word, like the use of "murder" to mean legal abortion.

response 89 of 126:

Sep 15 19:53 UTC 2000

Re 88.  Ah, it appears that you transposed the broadest possible definition
of "property" into the "theft" definition, which is apparently too brief.
Better luck next time.