Bootlegged Music in Russia 888
Guppy06 writes "MosNews.com has an interesting article on the thoughts and opinions of everyday Muscovites on the rampant music (et al) piracy in their country. It seems that some of them don't have much trouble justifying it to themselves, with quotes like 'Yes, I know that some of the sellers are here with burned CDs. But they have to earn a living too, I can understand them.' The article also mentions 'In a country where the average monthly salary is about $240, buying the latest album for $15 is a grotesque luxury, let alone spending $600 on Adobe Photoshop or a similar computer program.' Apparently, catchy slogans like 'Listen up, you pirate, I choose copyright!' just aren't working."
True (Score:1, Insightful)
15 bucks (Score:4, Insightful)
that's why i like online music stores where you can get singles for $1. something like this could really kick of in russia, not sure what the internet usage is over there though.
The price of music (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're hungry... (Score:5, Insightful)
While it's kind of a stretch, it's basically the same as "it's okay to steal a loaf of bread if you're hungry." (With the vendors being the thieves).
Re:15 bucks (Score:4, Insightful)
$1 out of an average of $260/month income is still HUGE. The problem is it's way too expensive for them in general. Of course, if they lowered the prices for Russia, then we could just buy music and software there for peanuts, and the publishers would be fucked.
Cannot afford expensive programs... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
It also works the other way around - when the people of a country, whose assets were supposedely owned by noone and everyone at once were 'freed' from the regime, and the valuable assets were divided among the top elite who had access to some money and were in power, and the average person was left in the cold with nothing at all, after slaving their entire lives for this regime, these are the people who allow Putin to be the president, obviously he is representative of the population and who is to say that anyone at all in that country would behave differently from Putin given the power, then what do you expect from those people?
Generations of Soviets grew up with assumption that they had to steal from the state because the state stole from them. The sense of someone elses property is nonexistant. Mix this with the fact that making digital copies nowadays is cheaper than buying a loaf of bread and you have yourself a runaway copyright infringement process on 1/6th of the landmass of this planet.
All Copyright laws are not created equal. (Score:1, Insightful)
A lot of countries have no concept of copyright to begin with. The battle to standardize intellectual property laws across the world will be very, very long.
That's how things are over there (Score:5, Insightful)
No Different In America (Score:3, Insightful)
I found the best way to deal with this is just to avoid paying. I don't have cable anymore. I ditched it because the terrible programming wasn't worth $110/mo. I also don't buy DVDs or CDs and I don't go to the theater. Few movies are worth $10 per person these days. What, am I going to blow $20 so myself and a date can go watch Eurotrip? Get real.
I've taken the money I would have spent on the MPAA/RIAA/BSA goons and redirected it toward buying USED books. Instead of $30 to buy the latest ridiculous Spielberg rehash (ooh, this time he added three lighting effects in this one scene that weren't there before!) - I can use that $30 to buy half a dozen good reads. I've been working my way through the Top 100 Science Fiction Books of All Time (excluding the ones I'd previously read). Much better value. And when I'm through, I can hand them off to someone else without worrying about the MPAA/RIAA/BSA sending the FBI to break down my door and put me in prison for four years without due process.
Re:The price of music (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of the reasons why pharmaceutical companies are so reluctant to sell AIDS drugs for cheap in developing African nations. They know almost no one in African countries can pay full price for their drugs, but they're afraid that if they lower the costs of their drugs in these developing nations, people will buy drugs there and import it back into the first world, cutting into the margins they need to cover the costs of development and to underwrite further research.
Re:i for one... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:15 bucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Maybe they need a new slogan (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:15 bucks (Score:5, Insightful)
They're fucked anyway. And I say good riddance to them. What they did worked before the internet, but it doesn't now. They use mass media to control 13yo girls and buy popularity, they suffer when we use the same systems to get their content free. I'd sleep if there were never another new song recorded, there's so much out there I'll never come close to running out of new stuff to listen to. And the people who're in it for the music will still produce, and the people who want to see live acts, and want to support the acts they like, will still pay.
Re:When I went to Russia... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:15 bucks (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason they can afford to make DVDs for so cheap is probably because they've already factored the cost of promotion and other expenses into the movie itself and that is usually recovered in the box office long before it hits store shelves.
That and the fact that I'm sure they've conducted expensive research that has surely shown consumers are willing to spend six hours worth of pay on a CD or DVD, but not anything more than that. $20 for a CD and $30 for a DVD might be the price break after which people begin to stop and think "wait, do I really want to dish out this much of my income for a movie I'll only watch one time?".
I would find the cost of both DVD an CD to be acceptable if you were paying for the right to posess and view the content whenever you wanted for the rest of your life. But if your media is lost, stolen, damaged or wears out (or there hardware to play it is no longer made), then it's a rip off to have to pay for it all over again.
Just imagine you're some Star Wars dork and you payd $30 for three star wars movies on VHS. Then you spend $30 on each for laser disc. Then you spend $30 each for DVD. Then someone stole those DVDs or they were damaged while you were moving out of your dorm and you had to spend another $30. That's $480 on just three star wars movies over time - and your life isn't even half over year. Just wait until the next "big amazing format" comes out and you have to upgrade again if you ever want to watch those movies.
The best thing I've ever done is just give up buying DVDs and CDs and going to the theater. I have far more money in my pocket and can get more entertainment for the buck by purchasing used books at half the price.
Hey Why Not (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Thanks Russia for cheap music downloads! (Score:2, Insightful)
*yes, I said "more ethical," not "less unethical." Please don't flame me about it; I'm not in the mood to argue. Instead, just read this [kuro5hin.org].
Re:15 bucks (Score:3, Insightful)
Getting on MTV, "music" magazines (think Rolling Stone), the radio etc. isn't cheap.
Robin RIAA Hood (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, when your countries' finacial system is in shambles and legitimate opportunities to thrive are next to non-existant, I could see where one might look to alternate forms of income. It's not nessisarily right, but then it's also hard to feel sorry for the music industry, who will be making billions a year regardless.
And WTF is so special about black caviar, anyway?
The same thing is happening in the US to (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No Different In America (Score:3, Insightful)
Dinners are fine. Walks are fine. Going to a concert is fine. Going for a drive is fine. Going to the coast or a bookstore is fine. But going and staring at a movie? Not very interactive. Quite antisocial. And not very original.
Re:The price of music (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hey Why Not (Score:5, Insightful)
If nobody wanted to pay for software, I imagine it would fall to academia, hobbyists, and in-house jobs for corporations.
240-15 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Rampant Music! GASP! (Score:2, Insightful)
I swear I am never going to use Latin again! Between the editor who moved the link to someplace where it makes no sense and the moderator here who... sheesh...
Would y'all rather I said "the rampant music (and some other stuff besides music, like software and stuff, making this an obnoxiously long parenthetical for a group of people who probably don't even know what "parenthetical" means, all the while making me wonder if I should put this before or after the word "piracy") piracy in their country?"
Et tu, Slashdot?
Re:15 bucks (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:15 bucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Interestingly enough, it's the shows and appearances that make them the most cash, not the records. Unfortunately, you can't sell many records without the backing of a big label because of the stronghold they have on the industry. Most artists would give their records away for free if they could gain more fans that way, then they would make even more off shows and appearances. But the record label charges for the albums, and it's impossible to get radio play on any popular station if you're independent. The record industry is a scam, and all signed artists know it. That's why you see some artists starting their own labels, both to make more for themselves, and to sign other bands and do the same to them. Dre, Eminem, Metallica... they all have their own labels, and they are all rolling in cash. But you've gotta be a superstar before you start a credible label or you will be ignored.
It would be nice if some big names that have made their money got together and started a campaign to take down the labels, or at least start some kind of change for the better. Maybe come together and start their own label that didn't screw their talent and is not part of the 4 letter organization that we all love to hate.
Re:Cannot afford expensive programs... (Score:2, Insightful)
Think of it: the pirates only have to copy files. All right, probably translate something into the local language (which, in Russia, is usually done by twits with very feeble knowledge of either Russian or English. Therefore, that must be strikingly cheap as well.)
To produce something that can really compete with major products, years in development by major software shops, you have to invest lots of money and effort. Sure, probably somewhat less than you'd have to in Silicon Valley. But then again, keep your programmers seriously underpaid and the last you'll see from them would be an e-mail from California.
All right, suppose you managed to create something that is at least nearly as good as the stuff one can buy from pirates for $1.5/CD. Do you expect to return your investments? Really? Hey, it'll just be pirated as well.
Yes, there are some software companies in Russia that somehow manage to make ends meet. What they sell are mostly things that have no competition from the industry's leaders: Russian OCR systems, accounting software carved to fit the sick mess our raving legislators made out of accounting, etc. And most of it still can be bought for $1.5/CD in a shop around the corner.
I find it hard to believe that they can put pirates out of business.
Re:15 bucks (Score:1, Insightful)
Erase from your mind completely the misguided but popular notion that what producers charge for their goods is directly related to the costs of producing that good. Producers charge whatever price will bring in the most revenue. There is an indirect relation, of course, when competition between firms comes into play, driving profits towards zero; but as I'm sure you're aware the mainstream music industry is not exactly the most vibrantly competitive market in existence.
Re:15 bucks (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're an average band and you pull 1 point (80 cents) per album, you are still going to have to pay your lawyer, travel expenses, equipment, studio time and sometimes even your own videos out of that. But from the standpoint of the album points, it's one or two points.
Stealing music is stealing music, and we're all adults here. We don't need to sugar coat that. But at the same time, when an artist walks away with a dime out of every $16-$20 album (or even ends up broke in some instances after all expenses) - it's hard to call that anything but theft and strong-arming, either.
There are a lot of similarities between the mafia and record labels.
Good for Russia (Score:2, Insightful)
First, there is no way to stop this piracy until Russia has enough money that the average person has disposable income.
Second, I'm tired of dual standards, where western countries crack down on 'pirating' when the sale price is based on western incomes. Even if you changed it to fit local incomes, it's not enough. It needs to reflect
And you would have them give that up to people in the west? Does the music industry, people like Britney Spears, and the software industry, people like Bill Gates, really need Vladya's two rubles after food and rent?
Re:Maybe they need a new slogan (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is i couldnt care less. If they "flamebait" comments like this, im actually proud to have "bad" karma. I have no idea where are the moderators are living, but when a heavily centralised goverment with a not rocket scientist leader to say the least thinks he knows better whats good for the world rather than following international "standards", then when someone points it out, shouldn't be considered flamebait.
To stay Ontopic a bit, if you look at the russian music market, from a production perspective, then "illegal music pirates who endanger the world order" are actually competition. Competition with low prices. And how does the industry react? Not wanting to fix the issue, they shout "pirates" and "crime", instead of being competitive (which they could be). Why everyone's "pirating" music in russia? Yes, because its cheaper than buying it in a music store. But if you look at the figures, this is totally irrational. Around 1-5% of the price of the cds goes to the actual artist. Well, if the music industry would be smart enough to realise things, they would go competitive. It would mean lowering prices to their 1/5. Giving around 10%-20% of the price to artists, and having the benefits of mass-production, the recording industry would still stay competitive. The only reason they are not doing this is just out of pure greed and short sightness. They can keep this state up for a while, but not on a long term. Eventually someone will figure out a way to pay artists while getting round the music industry.
Now you can hit the -6, Flamebait, Troll, reason of Apocalypse, etc button to rate my post.
Let's end the hypocrascy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The price of music (Score:4, Insightful)
As you've no doubt been told a million times by now, the cost of research is dwarfed by the advertising budgets. This is because company execs have figured out that a dollar spent advertising a drug you already have for a new disease returns at least twice as much as that same dollar spent trying to develop new drugs. That's why heartburn became "acid reflux disease".
The big, dark secret of the drug industry is that they just aren't very good at finding cures. I could name more than one large company with empty pipelines... This despite the fact that they receive what is in effect an enormous subsidy in the form of government-funded basic research. Part of the problem is that the for-profit modus operandi of "patent everything and let the lawyers sort it out" actually does more to stifle science than it does to stimulate it. Sure, there are now many companies that make their money selling licenced lab products and techniques to drug developers, but this just means that a lot of effort gets wasted in a) trying to do your science without infringing on 50 different patents, or b) raising funds so you can actually afford to pay for the one crucial step that would take 30 minutes in the lab with a heat-block and some enzyme.
Re:15 bucks (Score:2, Insightful)
The really funny thing about trying to stop piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
The entertainment industry spends millions upon millions upon billions of dollars just trying to figure out what sells well. Omnipresent advertising saying how good something is, cover art designed by teams of marketing experts and run through focus groups. Music designed and tailored to appeal to people at the most fundamental levels.
Now you take this product that companies have literally spent millions on in an effort to make it the most desirable thing on the planet. You take that same item, and put it in the middle of a population and price it so 90% of the people are not going to be able to afford it.
Then you are surprised when all of the effort you put into making the product irresistible actually works? Even people with scruples have a breaking point, where they just throw them away. The products are designed to break you down and make you do something you were not planning on in the first place - it is all too easy for the human mind to turn that impulse to taking instead of a purchase, especially so if the purchase is not a practical option anyway.
That's why iTunes works so well. It's a great channel for that impulse to be satisfied fairly cheaply (for a US or UK citizen). But in Russia, they'd have to price stuff at, well, AllOfMp3.com levels. And that might even work except I have to imagine that the percentage of people with decent internet connections is somewhat low. So street vendors and a whole industry springs up to take up the slack and cater to the impulses that the media companies worked so hard to induce.
Now THAT to me is funny.
Re:15 bucks (Score:3, Insightful)
Same as in Russia, cost (what a person has to sacrifice) over perceived value (how a person benefits from a product). I'll lay you odds that if legal DVDs/CDs were sold there for the same price as the bootlegs few if any bootlegs would've been sold.
Re:If you're hungry... (Score:4, Insightful)
Also please note that 240$ is the average salary, but Russian society has very uneven distribution of income today. The decile (sp?) coefficient for Moscow (incomes of top 10% divided by incomes of bottom 10%) is greater than 40 and is more than 15 in Russia overall.
Re:No Different In America (Score:1, Insightful)
And since when did the credits rolling signify the end of a date anyway?
maybe you usaians all have TV's so big that the cinema (theatre) is nothing special now but personally i still like seeing movies like Hero/Crouching Tiger/The Returner/.. on the big screen with surround sound rather than a 30" like i have at home.
Hollywood however can keep its polished turds I don't want to watch that cheese mongering on any screen however big or small. no thanks. I don't even want it for free. The only incentive to download it is to keep up the global civil disobedience thats going on in regards to copyright law in the hopes that one day we'll have a fair system where creative arts are not held to ransom by accountants and are free to spread as they wish to and will anyway.
In a democratic society how does one end up with laws that make the majority of the population criminals every day of their lives?
Geneva Conventions (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, the Geneva Conventions are in some ways absolutely absurd. For instance, prisoners are supposed to be guaranteed athletic uniforms. In a lot of ways the Geneva Conventions are a reflection of a 1920s notion of how gentlemen ought to act to each other in a state of peace; they do not speak very much to the modern state of the world or to the modern state of war. Let's not forget that Geneva was drafted in the post-WW2 period by diplomats whose military experience and notions of 'the laws of war' were shaped by WW1.
Third, Geneva sees the world in strict black and white. For Geneva to apply, you must be either a civilian or a uniformed soldier in the service of a recognized government. If you're neither a civilian nor a uniformed soldier in the service of a recognized government, Geneva considers you to be a spy and entirely outside the protections of the Geneva accords.
So think about this: the detainees captured during combat operations in Afghanistan are not civilians. (Some may be, and we desperately need a legal process to determine who is a civilian and who is not; but I do not believe the majority of them are civilians.)
The Taliban were not the recognized government of Afghanistan. Only one country in the world recognized their government as being legitimate, and anyone who suggests that the opinion of a generalissimo dictator (i.e., Pakistan's Musharraf) lends credibility to the Taliban-as-government idea has no credibility at all.
Thus, no Taliban fighter could be considered a soldier under the Geneva Conventions. Even if the Taliban were a recognized government, they'd still fail because they didn't have uniforms. (A pedantic point? Sure. But that's law for you; law is nothing more than the rigorous application of pedantism.)
Not only that, but the Taliban committed gross breaches of the laws of armed combat. They mixed in with civilians; they militarized noncombatant areas; they targeted medical personnel; they engaged in military operations against civilian targets. Under the Geneva Accords, they can be summarily executed for this without judicial process. After all, they're not in uniform, not in the service of a government, and not civilians--they're spies. Kill 'em without trials. It's legal.
So when you start talking about Geneva, start thinking long and hard. Do you really want us to treat them in strict accordance with Geneva? Or do you want us to treat them in accordance with some nebulous 'standard' which far, far exceeds Geneva protections?
If you want Geneva, fine. But don't go about talking how awful it is that Bush isn't strictly adhering to Geneva without understanding just how horrible Geneva allows us to be. I'm no fan of Bush, but I have to give him this: he's not summarily executing people in Gitmo. And under the law, he's allowed to.
(Addendum: None of this is an argument to abandon Geneva. I'm only suggesting that we acknowledge Geneva's many shortcomings and understand what it actually says, not what we wish it to mean. If I had my way, NATO would agree on uniform standards for prisoners, both regular and irregulars, with severe penalties for violators. I don't trust the UN to form a new Geneva Convention, given that Geneva is fundamentally a human rights issue and Libya's the current chair of the UN Human Rights committee.)
Re:15 bucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you think that people have some default position of caring for others? The vast, vast, vast majority do not. Scarcely a soul lifts a single finger to help, in any way, the hordes of children rotting on shitty cots in Africa. And you expect these same people to worry about Hollywood movie makers and other "content producers" getting paid? Ha!
Or, are people to worry, for their own good? To worry that they won't have these wonderful movies and music to watch and to listen to no longer if they keep these terribly self-destructive actions up? Equally preposterous. Every modern consumer knows that with the production of a product comes, as well, the production of its desire. No movie is without its trailer, no album is without its hype, no hip new clothing brand is without its magazine spreads. People go to watch the Lord of the Rings because they're told to go watch Lord of the Rings. (Except for a few because they're fans or whatever, something not contained in the structure on production-consumption. And you'll notice that those are the people that pay for the DVD, that pay for the show. Just like the fans of bands who buy the albums, because you're a fan and that's what you do, you're not just buying a product.)
This is the advice of everyone in the business of selling shit: you have to tell people they want it. You have to persuade them. Who in their right mind is going to pay fifty dollars for a pair of jeans that are pre-worn and pre-ripped which say "I live so little, I have to pay for clothes that make it looked like I've lived instead?" Everyone! You just have to tell them that it's cool.
And, say all the makers of these clothes that everyone wants go out of business. Oh no, you say! A great tragedy for sure, right? I mean, it's obviously a good thing that must be saved because everyone pays their hard earned cash for these clothes! Not the case, however. As I said, every consumer knows, the production of any consumer product comes with it the production of its desire. When the product disappears, so will any desire for it. So, if all the super-cool jeans disappeared, no one would care. People would just buy some other jeans. And it is the same with movies, music, etc. Britney Spears no longer around to soothe me with her melodie dolce? I guess I'll, *gasp*, listen to something else? But from where, if the RIAA is fully out of business? And so we're brought to a question that if said, with seriousness, in front of any musician who knows the business would, no doubt, burst out laughing. Musicians make music, have for ten thousand years, won't stop because they're not making a living for it, like any artist. "Starving artist," ever heard the term? There's truth behind that. Would Van Gogh have stopped painting if he didn't make enough to live off of it? Oh wait, he didn't.
Indie artists with a small group of actual fans(like any artists, whereas big famous musicians have that along with a large group of people that purchase them for consumptive reasons that I mentioned) but with little production costs don't give a damn about copyright infringment of their work. Go ahead and download them as much as you want: they know that without the internet you would have never heard about them in the first place. Only the people they have immeadiate contact with at shows, around their town, in their musical community would: and those are where the actual fans are, and they buy the music anyway.
So, musics with million dollar productions won't exist any longer. And Hollywood movies with 500 million dollar productions won't either. Like the jeans, is this not a trage
Re:Maybe they need a new slogan (Score:3, Insightful)
So, hypothetically, say that Sony Music gets lean and mean and somehow manages to lower its CD prices by 50%, while increasing the royalties to the artist (to give everyone a warm fuzzy feeling when they buy a CD). That'd set a price at $4-8, which is *still* priced way out of realm of affordability for the average Russian, and cannot possibly compete with a guy on the streetcorner charging next to nothing! Let me repeat: a company that actually has to pay royalties to the artists *and* pay the salaries of all the people working to produce and distribute that music CAN NOT "compete" with someone who contributes 0% to the artist or the company that produces the album.
Are thieves that steal car stereos and resell them on the black market "competition" for stereo manufacturers? Competition would entail actually creating their own alternative to what the RIAA produces, as crappy as it might be, and selling it at lower prices. That's not what's happening.
That said, the current music industry is definately outdated and past its useful life, and artists will eventually find a more direct way to get their music out. Unfortunately, even if they're charging $0.10 for a track or $0.50 for an album, some low-life will STILL find a way to profit off of that without paying anything to the artists. Portraying bootleggers as legitimate "competition" is flat-out wrong.
Re:Maybe they need a new slogan (Score:2, Insightful)
- The 6th, 9th and 10th commandments (but particularly the 6th) have unambiguously been broken by the man. Those commandments don't allow any exceptions.
That leaves him with at most 70% righteousness - which is shit
yes, but (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if there is a legal technicality that distinguishes bootlegging from competition, remember that this is not true from the common person's perspective. Everyone hears music so much on the radio and in movies and from their friends, it really comes down to a price vs. hassle question of how to acquire it. I know for a fact that if the price were loweredo for cd sales or online downloads, I might consider paying for it before I just download it from someone.
Re:The truth? (Score:2, Insightful)
If a job can be done for $10 in some foreign country, it should be done for $10 in the USA.
Wait - that doesn't sound as nice does it? What's the problem? Ah, things cost so much more in the US do they? So people earn more? Oh. Funny how there is a reason for everything, when you think about it.
Re:Maybe they need a new slogan (Score:3, Insightful)
I am very afraid of people who think God is telling them what to do or who attribute everything to God. Can you say Taliban?
I am an avowed atheist. I'm very afraid of the fundamentalist Christian direction this country is going in.
Re:Maybe they need a new slogan (Score:3, Insightful)
"Every time I see someone complaining about this statistic, I ask the same question, and no one can give me a straight answer. Why on Earth should the artist get more than 5%?"
It's because Slashdotters by and large don't know how much time and effort by skilled people, and how much money it costs to record, engineer and produce a CD. There's a great deal of difference between that piece of paper with lyrics written on it that the singer takes into the studio, and a finished CD, but I think a lot of Slashdotters equate them.
If a good singing voice and a piece of paper with lyrics on it were the same as a finished CD, then there wouldn't be a lot more artists who want recording contracts than those that have contracts.
Either way, the poster who used "1-5%" has his math off. Royalties (to performers, composers, lyricists, etc.) are typically north of a buck and represent about 15% - 20% of the total cost of sale to the record company. If the record company is lucky, they might clear a net profit of $2 on a CD. The record company gets two bucks, the artists get a buck. Not bad considering that the record company takes all the risk and has to front all the money; if a CD fails, it's the record company that loses, while the artist loses nothing but time.
Re:Geneva Conventions (Score:3, Insightful)
4) Deliberate usage of civilians and protected sites in an attempt to protect their forces
I love this argument. I went to elementary school near Seattle. The school property was bordered on two sides by a National Guard base. Their garages were 20 feet from the playground. While it was really cool as a child to see tanks, helicopters, and soldiers everyday at recess... as an adult I look back and shiver at the thought of having gone to school that close to a military base. Don't think the US doesn't use these strategies as well.
Re:Geneva Conventions (Score:1, Insightful)
Also, news flash, Seattle isn't wasn't a battleground at the time, so putting a National Guard base there is hardly "using civialians to protect their forces"