Challenging Music Downloading Myths 560
The BBC is reporting on a study by digital music research firm The Leading Question, which found that people who download music from peer to peer networks paid for four and a half times more music than regular music fans. Also that most of these people "are extremely enthusiastic about paid-for services, as long as they are suitably compelling." What is nice is that the BPI welcomed the findings that not all file sharers are actually evil... they still pledged to carry on the 'carrot and stick' approach though.
Re:Common knowledge. (Score:5, Informative)
Because not every bit of music is available with iTunes... If you're looking for music from American artists, then you'll probably find it there, but don't try finding more "local" music or you'll be deceived.
What I truly hate about iTunes though is that they actually have the music I want, but it's only available on their German store, or on their British store, or even sometimes on their US store, but not on the Canadian store, which I am required to use because I live in Canada (global market my ass).
They have the file I want to pay for, but they won't let me pay for it, so guess what? I'm gonna figure out another way to get it, and that other way might not involve payment.
Re:You're wasting your time (Score:2, Informative)
They are shrewd businesspeople and they know as well as you and I that we will acquire music legally if given the occasion. The Economist has already revealed that their losses has little to do with music download and has helped if anything
What they want to do is to frame the question in such a way that they can promote legislation that will do away with fair use and will strenghten their (the distributors') control of the market.
Re:Common knowledge. (Score:5, Informative)
As for local music, this will change as apple expands its network of content managers and iTunes will probably end up dealing with the artist directly.
This is perhaps why some albums will never appear in iTunes, the record label wants the boxed cd set to be sold and not the download.
I must mention another alternative, where many good artists are trying something totally different. I am of course talking about Magnatune, where music is not evil. You should really check it out [magnatune.com]
Re:carrots? (Score:5, Informative)
If you download the whole album (instead of one track at a time) it's only $10, or about $0.67 per song. There is a well-known tool for removing Apple's (intentionally) weak DRM, so that's barely an issue anymore.
You don't get what you pay for... (Score:2, Informative)
However as I found out, I can't use the iTunes format in MS Photo Story. So then I had to download another program to hack the songs out of iTunes. In the end it would have been much easier to illegally download them. At least then I've got it in a format I can actually use for something.
Just another case of DRM hurting legitimate users.
Re:Common knowledge. (Score:4, Informative)
How is downloading music to "test-drive" it any different?
Copyright isn't property and downloading it doesn't take it away from anybody.
If you are going to download illegal music files, at least call it what it really is.... theft
Copyright infringement isn't theft, and anybody who persists in saying that it is is either an idiot or a troll. Dowling vs US, 1985, even the Supreme Court says that it isn't theft. Or try looking in a dictionary, they generally say something along the lines of "the object must be moved, however slightly, from it's original position", or a definition involving taking something, which does not occur in copyright infringement.
These arguments have come up many, many times, and nobody has ever put across a convincing argument as to why I should believe some random stranger on Slashdot about what is and isn't theft above and beyond the dictionary and the Supreme Court.
Of course this is true. (Score:3, Informative)
I, and most of my peers, have downloaded plenty of illegal music in our day. Now that the P2P services are getting worse and worse, and the legal services are getting more and more enticing, we're making the switch. I, for one, spend at least $30 a month on the iTMS each month. I do this not because I may have downloaded a P2P track here or there, but because I like music. This is not a cause-and-effect relationship.
On the other hand, my relatives over the age of 50, many of whom do not have computers and thus have never used a P2P service, do not buy a lot of music. So, in my little group, our results match those of the survey.
This is a second-order relationship: Younger people buy more music. Younger people tend to be more wired. Younger people who are online and who like music are likely to have used a P2P service at some point. This is the very psychographic that the online music stores are targetting. In other words, of course the generation of younger online music listeners is going to be the first to flock to the legal stores.
Typical Slashdot responses (Score:3, Informative)
When you can now go to iTunes and preview all the music you want (well, the first 30 seconds of it), you have no justification for still doing this. I won't argue, the RIAA is evil. They price fix and people should be legally going after that monopoly. But just because some group is using crappy practicies, it doesn't give you the right to break the law.
That being said, I actually don't care if people download music or not. Just don't try to justify that you are doing the right thing. Because you aren't.
Re:Common knowledge. (Score:2, Informative)
No DRM at all. Lossless encoding, perferable FLAC, but I can convert. Full albums.
I'd like album covers and other stuff you get with CDs, but that's optional.
I have yet to find anyone who has that. (Beside the quasi-legal Russian one.)
That's what I get with the CD, and I refuse to pay for anything less unless the price is much less, too.
I'd also like the ability to try out songs. (Yes, with DRM and lossy encoding, I'm not crazy.) And to purchase a song or two, and then 'upgrade' to the album at a discount. But those are absurd pie-in-the-sky concepts when the music industry can't even get the basics right.
Re:Common knowledge. (Score:3, Informative)
Interestingly I have a recording of Shostakovich' 7th symphony by the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra under Gennady Rozhdestvensky (a very strong performance by the way), and it's exactly 75 minutes long.
Re:Say it's not "stealing" and get karma points (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Common knowledge is hardly ever common. (Score:3, Informative)
To back up, "Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud." So, to quote your own case, there are property interests and it's not just "run-of-the-mill theft".
You are misreading that. It does not say that copyright infringement is more than "run-of-the-mill theft". It says that copyright infringement is not "run-of-the-mill theft". I notice you didn't quote the more relevant sentence that preceded your quote:
Now, from dictionary.com: Theft: "a criminal taking of the property or services of another without consent."
Property OR services. Check. Without consent. Check.
Take: no check there.
I notice you conveniently ignored the part of my comment and the dictionary definition that pointed out that you have to take something in order to steal.
Magnatune (Score:4, Informative)
There are other websites that like Magnatune allows free or low cost music downloads. Some of these are:
Also there's Berklee Shares [berkleeshares.com] where you can find free music lessons.
Falcon