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2004-05-16

MattisManzel said on #wiki-de: [de]ein freund sagte vor einer weile: napster ist der einzige ort, wo kommunismus funktioniert. [en] a friend said a whole ago: napster is the only place where communism works.

napster is lacking one incredibly vital piece: production. napster produces nothing. it, and its successors, are just facilitating the trading of things that have been made elsewhere, and often by people who are not part of the trade system. i have no problem with p2p; i think it's great -- i do have a huge problem with piracy. if a musician doesn't receive anything for sharing the music zie writes, something is very wrong, because to write more music that musician has to receive something worthwhile.

on the other hand i think wiki is in fact a place where communism can work. we can all produce something and share it with everyone else.

If we assume for a moment that most musicians don't get any money for their record sales [1], they must clearly derive other benefits from being a musician: Fun, fame, earning money by playing live. In that case, recordings of their music are just byproducts we might as well share. The artists don't get less money, since they are getting none anyway (given the assumption above).

The music distributing industry, however, might suffer sales loss. I don't mind. And there is research to support the idea that music sharing does not reduces sales, so that's another argument pro music sharing. PDF

That leaves us with the selected few that do earn incredible amounts of money with the current system. To be honest, I don't want to support these superstars, either. I don't believe their music to be as valuable as the renumeration they are getting.

When distributing music is a valuable service, as it must have been a few years ago, I would gladly pay for that service. Now that I find cheaper alternatives, the music distributing industry is trying to prevent me from using them.

Therefore, if we assume that most musicians don't get any money for their record sales today, I have no problem with the copying and sharing of music. In fact, the law should be changed to reflect this.

I share this assumption based on my talks with the very few musicians I know.

courtney love is on too much drugs to do math, but aside from that, no, "we" don't assume any such thing. you might, but i don't, and i think musicians and other artists should receive recompense just like i receive something for the code i write. i derive fun from that too. i don't insist it be money, but that's right now what i get for code, so it seems alright by me if musicians get that for their work as well. not all musicians are famous, and not all play live. i don't understand, frankly, why so many people seem to think that musicians should be glad we listen to their stuff, as if any of us had ever been able to survive off the pleasure we give other people alone. (ok, maybe some of us are gigolos).

note that none of this supports the record industry, which IMO is a bunch of dickwads who've been getting rich on all of our backs. i am also not saying anything against music sharing per se. i think it's fine. i don't want to make it illegal. i download mp3s like the rest of ya, to check out music i haven't heard yet, and i share quite a bit of music by lesser-known artists to allow others to find out about them.

but i also don't support ripping off artists. just because one can doesn't mean i consider it ethical. there are alternatives. and i hope they're gonna win over this stupid attitude on both ends of the spectrum, the record industry and the pirates; i care about neither of them. after listening to napstered music, i go and buy the CD if i like it. i've got an emusic account. i am all in favour of micropayments for individual songs.

anyway, we were talking about communism. napster is still not a good example thereof. :)

I hope you don't mean to say that I think ripping of artists is fine. It is not, depending on what you think is fair recompensation. Writing a good song, and getting paid for it until you die and then 70 years or more in addition to that is not fair recompensation in my book. Just as in software, the entire licensing business model stinks to heaven. My employer would earn just as much money using a service business model: People are paid by the hours they spend working on the code. If people were free to reuse existing code, software might even be cheaper than it is today. Why should the same line of thought not apply to music?

And yes, just as FreeSoftware has nothing to do with communism, file sharing does not, either. ;)

I shoot things out, an ironic undertone is fun, and I let the word flow. Please feel not mocked dear friend pir.

You have the music downloaded and if you like it you go buy the CD? You can burn a cd from the file. It sounds the same as the one in trade. My proposal: instead of making a gift to dubious companies why not send the artists a dollar? Maybe they have email? If not write a postcard to the record company to get you in touch with the musiscians. The adress of the record company is on the backsleeve of the cd. Copy it from there. It's a good reason to go to a recond shop too by the way. Copying adresses is even legal as far as I know. Depends on any f****** license I guess.

I grew up in West-Berlin. "Inside" the iron curtain. Not left, not right from it. Communism, or better the stuff they did right of the curtain "worked" somehow, "existed", whatever as long as there was this iron curtain. Napster, Skype, eMule, blogs, wiki, the stuff we do here has no location. It's everywhere. Like measels. There is no left and right of it. Right/left - nowhere/everywhere. A question of Zauber.

i tend to mean what i say, Alex, and not hide negative opinions if i actually have them. so, unless i say "you support ripping off artists" i don't mean that. i was talking about people i consider pirates; those who only care that they get music for free. and we agree about licensing, and copyright -- *bleagh*. lots of things wrong there.

Mattis -- you don't know where i buy the CD. :) i buy some number of CDs directly from artists, or small distributors who have what i consider a fair agreement with their artists. i buy some songs online, where that is possible, and burn my own. i still buy some in record stores, however, because there's a limit to how much time i have to track down individual artists. tell me the truth, do you actually write a postcard to every artist whose music you listen to, so you can send them a dollar? artists need to find ways to make this easier for listeners. some do, and whenever i find something like that, i distribute the link. that's not all i could do, but all i am willing to do at this time. if you have addresses of artists, maybe you could make a wiki page listing them, to help others find them more easily? maybe we need a musician's wiki?

http://sunir.org/meatball/NapsterDotCom_paranoia.jpg

priceless, Sunir. where did you find that, or did you make it yourself? ... nevermind. found the source. :)

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