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Grateful Dead Productions wants to pull MP3s 59

Posted by Hemos from the crackin'-down-on-the-free dept.
rsidd writes "According to latest information Grateful Dead Productions have asked www.deadabase.com to pull MP3 files of concerts from their archives, or to face legal action. I wonder, does this have the sanction of the band, and if the band who pioneered free distribution of their music does this, what else is in store? " From the tone of the information, this sounds like something that isn't at the sanction of the artists, BTW.
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Grateful Dead Productions wants to pull MP3s More

Grateful Dead Productions wants to pull MP3s

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  • Sugarmegs.org (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There are a few places you can get Dead shows. First you can goto www.sugarmegs.org. Second you can go to the usenet. Personally, I hate the online trading of dead/phish/numerous other coattail bands because it does not involve any community. Not even a, "Hi! I'd love to get a copy of your xx/xx/xx show..." Just a download, if net traffic isn't so bad you can't get on the FTP server.

    If you want dead tapes the REAL way(or as close as possible to it), goto www.tapetraders.com or rec.music.gdead and TALK people into letting them go.

    You gotta be in the community to properly reap the rewards of the free music.

  • grateful dead and mp3 (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm not a huge dead head; but I love improvised music, jazz, etc. The dead, phish, and other such bands are a good bridge between hard-core jazz and rock 'n roll.

    Most rock bands play the same songs, the same way, each night. How uninteresting...

    Mark
  • What's the SHN format?
  • Deadheads like to think the terms of
    the music trading is based on the words
    of Jerry Garcia: "When I'm done with
    it you can have it"

    But This is more an expression of Garcia's
    self absorbed musical egoism (which I LOVE )
    rather then a legal contract.

    The real story is on the back of the ticket:

    AUDIO TAPING IS FOR NONCOMMERCIAL HOME USE
    ONLY. UNAUTHORIZED SALE, DUPLICATION, OR
    DISTRIBUTION IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN.

    (Alpine valley 6-28-86 )

    The Dead's music has never been free
    in the open-source sense.

    So they are within their rights to ask
    for this. There are contradictions here
    though.

    My first thought was that these MP3's are not
    boots. They are made from peoples crispy
    legal home tape collections. Hey if folks
    want to make their collections available on
    the web, WTF!

    It does make it pretty easy to start
    a collection, and be uber-nerd at the same
    time.

    But on reflection ,
    it changes the rituals of the tribe.
    No longer will you have to spend years
    asking for miracles, groveling, getting
    to know people, who is reliable, and spending
    the effort, time, and cost of nice nakamichi decks
    required to make the tapes you are trading.
    In fact all of the effort required to
    take part in collecting shows. The notion
    of belonging the deadhead community.

    Normally, such an argument , akin to what Ayn Rand
    called "the devine right of stagnation"
    is not one I buy. New technology has simply
    the way people share the music. Made it faster
    and easier. And besides! Jerry is gone. The
    Dead are no more, gimme a break!

    But in this case the moral rules are
    on the side of the band. The contract
    on the ticket is quite clear and explicit.

    The band members have worked to build what
    they have. And they have the right to make
    whatever choices they think are best.
    Even to make the wrong choices. If they
    think that they need to smash MP3 distribution
    in order to protect the Dick's Picks series,
    and to protect thier future net distribution
    plans, I will live with it.

    trades anyone?






























































  • I think the problem the recording industry find in mp3 is the high quality of it. I would bet they said some time ago 'ok, lets record these people the shows, this would not do any great harm, as the quality would be bad, and it would not spread to more than a few people'. This way the could do as if they were consumer-friendly without many loss of $$$.

    But the rules have changed with mp3. mp3 has good quality, the quality will not decrease regardless how often you copy the music, and it is too easy distributable over the internet. And so they are afraid that we don't give them our money anymore.

    thats the problem why the recording industry does this big fight against mp3. as long as we recorded there music on low-quality tapes, all were ok, but now its going to lower there profits, and so they are taking action against it.

    so it seems this is another record company giving a shit on what they said yesterday. bad enough.

  • For many years DeadHeads have been taking direct mixing desk feed into portable DAT machines, and burning CDs from them - producing better quality "live" albums than many commercial offerings.

    Ok, but even if they allowed people to do this high quality recordings, this was not a very big risk to lower their profits. To get a copy of one of this recordings, one had to:

    • know the person which made the record
    • get this person to invest some time for making the copy
    • invest some money for the medium

    And that are the points where the internet makes the difference.

    I don't need to know anyone who made a record, i will simply do a search in altavista or another search engine, and will find the music. Without the internet i would have had finally gone to the record shop and bought the cd...

    Second, i don't need to keep begging the person for making the copy. The number of copies these person would made is naturally limited by their spare time. In the internet they once invested some time to make the files and put them online. After this all the work is on my own. It would make no difference for this people if at all 5 copies are made or 50000.

    To summarize: Internet and MP3 allows the people to make mass copies of the music with out the hassle. And i'm sure thats something the record companies dislike.
  • Maybe you should try some good quality encoders instead of fast ones... I've made mp3's where 90%+ of people don't hear any difference to a cd. And if you want to really ensure quality, encode with 160 kbit/s instead of 128 kbit/s or even 112 kbit/s.
  • Posted by hogfoot:

    i am one of the people that work on deadabase and i can assure everyone that we definatly do not make a profit from our website. we have spent, and continue to spend, large amounts of money out of our own pockets in order to make available all of the music that we presently have. the letter did not refer to our banners at all. and the banners certainly are not the issue here.
  • Posted by hogfoot:

    we are doing exactly the same thing that has been done for years. the mp3's we are distributing are legal recordings of live performances...exactly what people have been trading ever since the Dead have been around.
  • Posted by hogfoot:

    we have spoken with John Barlow, and from what we could gather..the band is in totaly favor of mp3's. it certainly seems like a decision of the management. hopefully, this will all be resolved.
  • Posted by hogfoot:

    It seems that most people think deadabase is being threatened because of the use of banners. The truth is that banner advertising was never an issue. We have been in contact with John Barlow and have given him access to our revenue information. Our costs to maintain the web/ftp servers are far greater than our income from banner advertising. I have also been informed that another website, similiar to our own, has received a threatening letter from the same law firm. I'm sure they will be posting information when the time is right. Hopefully this is not a trend that will continuing for very long.
  • I would bet they said some time ago 'ok, lets record these people the shows, this would not do any great harm, as the quality would be bad, and it would not spread to more than a few people'. This way the could do as if they were consumer-friendly without many loss of $$$.

    But the rules have changed with mp3.

    Not at all. For many years DeadHeads have been taking direct mixing desk feed into portable DAT machines, and burning CDs from them - producing better quality "live" albums than many commercial offerings.

    The underlying philosphy of the band is that each and every live performance is different - even two nights in the same arena on the same tour can have a markedly different feel to them - so preserving that moment is a worthwhile exercise for the fans.

    This is radically different to most "live" bands who either mime to tapes or perform the shows script so mechanically that you might as well be watching a video.

    Now to the MP3 ban. Unfortunatley, I can understand where the reasoning comes from. The original idea of the band was for people to record live shows and trade them for other live show recordings. Deadabase is not adhering to the spirit of the idea.

    Who is right and who is wrong? Don't know.
  • I am not a deadhead, but I'd like to know if the deadabase was trading in live performance recordings, or were they getting mp3s off of live records released by the band? If it was the recordings from the band, then there's the problem, but if it's the live shows from the band, I fail to see how it's any dfferent than someone taking a DAT tape to the show and recording. I thought for a long time that bootlegging Dead shows was permissible from the band. Perhaps they're trying to come up with a new source of revinue since the untimely departure of Jerry Garcia.
  • Obviously, there's a major ripply going through
    the distributors of music, with RIAA being
    one side, and independant labels or such on the
    other, and it looks like GDP is picking their
    side, without being informed of what MP3 is,
    or if they are informed, they are doing this
    to 'protest' the use of MP3 for music piracy,
    even though it's well known the Grateful Dead
    encouraged free music themselves.

    Oh well, we already know the revolution has started, and most likely what the winning side
    will be.
  • High quality of MP3?

    What the hell are you talking about? The quality is about the same as a cassette tape. Low dynamic range, loss of definition...

    Bleah.

  • If I'm not mistaken the Dead always allowed people to record, and to TRADE or GIVEAWAY recordings. That is, you were allowed to record at Dead shows, and you were allowed to trade or give copies to other people. You were NOT allowed to sell or make profits off of such recordings.

    This is (I suspect) where Deadbase got into trouble - I checked their site and they have ads on it. I suspect that the Dead's lawyers interpreted this as Deadbase making money on the Dead's recordings. Thus, the action.

  • From what I understand, the band members have little or nothing to do with Grateful Dead Productions anymore, sadly. I don't know when or how that happened. But I have heard that the GDP office parties are now populated with suits who complain about the unkempt manner of other guests, who happen to be old-time members of the GD family.

    I hope the band now has good, trustworthy help in the legal, promotion, and accounting departments. (And don't tell me the band is no more. That would just show you haven't been paying attention!)

    One way or another, this darkness got to give.

    James
    james@jmarshall.com

  • Doesn't Garcia have a couple of widows or previous wives or whatever fighting over his estate? Could one (or both)of them have a lawyer that's pressuring these other lawyers to plug as many leaks as possible in the money bucket?

  • ...of many years, and who has many many hours of live Dead on mp3, I hope this has something to do with some naughtiness on Deadabase's part (ad banners?) and not a general crackdown on trading Dead shows. I really, really, really hope that. I find it hard to believe anything else, in fact.

    Of course trading tapes and DAT's is no different at all than trading mp3's. I think maybe where Deadabase got in trouble is that they tried to portray themselves as the "official site on the net" for downloading Dead shows, a big no-no.

    I will be really worried if they go after Sugarmegs. [sugarmegs.org]

    They can have my 4-6-69 Set II when they pry it from my cold dead fingers!

  • Open Source? You used a Buzzword!!#%$!@#

    Seriously though, of course the execs are going to be against distributing recordings. They're not making their money, so it's not acceptable. To hell with what the band supports, and to hell with what the consumer wants. If the corporate monkeys don't get their money, it's gonna be a problem. That rule applies to almost anything out there in corporate America.


    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • Who says you have to download the music that you like? Nobody is stopping you from encoding your own mp3's from CDs you already own. That way, you can listen to your music, and still enjoy the benefits of mp3.


    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • Any artists that alllows their music to be recorded and traded and then argues against the format in which it is traded is a fool.

    It's not the band that is upset at the trading, it's the Legal department REPRESENTING the band. Since they have a contract, the Legal department has the final word.

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • Wow The last comment was real intelligent. People like you are morons the grateful dead can be enjoyed with out drugs. That same ignorance is behind the anti-linux fud....
  • No they don't that tour was cancelled...
  • Looks like they got taken down for awhile too but due to equipment relocation.... you should have knocked on wood when you said that ;)
  • just an enjoyment of music. The Dead are a good band, and I've never taken any drugs when listening to them. If you really want more intellectually-challening music though, Phish is 100x better.
  • They are supporting 2 servers and a T-3 connection out of their pockets, and the banner ads won't be paying for that and giving them a profit at the same time, they were only so they could survive and also give this service to the larger Community of the Internet. I hope the band can give their management a good talking-to and resolve this issue.
  • You gotta be in the community to properly reap the rewards of the free music.

    That's like saying you have to be in the GNU community to reap the rewards of free software. Where would GNU and Linux be today if you had to buddy-up to some guy who once met RMS to get your copy of emacs on CD?
  • Hogfoot, from the deadabase website, has posted several responses in this thread to clarify things, and I thought it'd be useful to place them in the main forum for people to see.

    1) They trade in live recordings, not in mp3s ripped off CDs, and I quote:
    the mp3's we are distributing are legal recordings of live performances...exactly what people have been trading ever since the Dead have been around.

    2) Evidently the banners and profits are not the issue:
    We have been in contact with John Barlow and have given him access to our revenue information. Our costs to maintain the web/ftp servers are far greater than our income from banner advertising. I have also been informed that another website, similiar to our own, has received a threatening letter from the same law firm.

    3) The band itself isn't involved in trying to shut them down, evidently, and they've been in contact with John Barlow:
    we have spoken with John Barlow, and from what we could gather..the band is in totaly favor of mp3's.

    So further speculation should be perhaps that it is just upper management being 'misled' by the RIAA that this is piracy, when it was always sanctioned by the bad, or they fear loss of control of the music, or something...

    AS

  • grateful dead and mp3 (Score:3)

    by blkwolf ( 18520 ) on Sunday April 18, 1999 @12:30PM (#1928503) Homepage
    MP3 and similiar technoligies can do more to support the "artist" than any other distribution medium before.

    I believe it's that more than anything that has RIAA freaking out. For the first time ever an artist or group has a medium to distribute their music themselves and make it instantly availible to a world wide audience, cutting RIAA completely out of the picture.

    Your argument that I dont use MP3's because music is protected by copyright would be akin to saying I dont listen to music on CD's because alot of people have CD Burners at home now and can make their own copies, or tapes etc.

    It's not the medium that's at fault for the actions of a few pirate sites on the web and college kids trading music across their lan network. The truth is MP3 music "pirating" isn't any worse than "pirating" that has allways existed with other distribution formats of music.

    RIAA doesn't really care about pirating itself, in fact alot of times it helps them as someone downloads a new single on mp3 and says thats cool now I want the whole album on CD. You can see this in it's attempt to attack MP3 as a technoligy so hard.

    The true fear hear is that if MP3 becomes too popular, and widely accepted as a standard then music artists will no longer need the big label record company's at all. Groups like public enemy are showing others that there are alternatives to being locked into a 5 year contract with a label company that jacks up album and concert prices sky high and then takes the majority of the profit. RIAA see's this and thinks what happens when all those 5 - 7yr contracts we currently control our big money making artists with come to term? If MP3 is acceptible then those artists have a chance to finally leave and distribute their next album themselves via mp3 downloads and direct cd sales off their web site.

    MP3 doesn't take rights away from the artist it gives them way too many as far as RIAA is concerned.
  • check out my tapes page [servtech.com] and be sure to let me know that you found me on /. :)
  • One thing we need to check: was the Dead's open source attitude actually sanctioned by whatever music label they were enslaved, oops, signed by? I recall an unattributed comment on Garcia's death that the suits had always opposed concert taping.
  • You mean I can enjoy linux without drugs?
  • 1.
    >know the person which made the record
    Not really. Digital copies are pretty good. I'm guessing there's a pretty good-sized amount of people that are -really- into tape trading with DAT decks and CD burners.

    2.
    >get this person to invest some time for making the copy
    True, but the majority of "die-hard fans" are pretty generous about it. Lots will do it pretty much for free, or help people get started by offering 2-for-1,3-for-one, etc trades.

    3.
    >invest some money for the medium
    True, but blank tapes are super-cheap, the price of blank CD's has gone down a heckuva lot in the last couple years. Ultra-purists can use DAT, but honestly, I don't have slightest clue how DAT prices have been. The recorders sure aren't cheap, though. 90 minutes of decent-quality blank cassette tape is still a heckuva lot cheaper than the hard drive space to record 90 minutes of 128kbit .mp3's.


    I'm guessing you're not a Dead fan... It's really not that hard to find good quality recordings, either on the Internet or at record stores or "head shops". Granted, some of those copies were illegal (eg, live shows copied onto CD with laser-printed cd jackets, then sold for $50+ at some swap-meet show)... Last I checked, there were a couple stores in the area with a list of a couple _hundred_ shows that they would copy for you for free, provided you brought them decent blank tapes to put them on. Heck of a deal. :)

    Bands that allow taping of live shows tend to develop pretty loyal followings, it seems. Once people start collecting tapes/mp3s, they tend to accumulate them in huge quantities; but they still go out and buy the new studio releases. (Not really applicable to the Dead, I suppose, but for Phish, Dave Matthews, etc.) The bands that do it are (AFAIK) bands that really put on a better show live, have lots of songs, and do extended jams in concert. I really have to wonder how much the record companies figure on losing on people taping live shows compared to getting a huge, loyal fan base.

  • Pull the banner ads and change the name of the site. I think GDP is starting to loose a ton of money because the dead are no longer touring. It ain't about the money. It's the music that started this whole thing, let preserve it and keep it playing. It's ashame that GPD has gone to this.

  • Let's hope Red Light Managment (Dave Matthews Band) doesn't follow this lead--it'd rock quite a few people the wrong way.
  • I disagree. The threatening letter from GDP lawyers doesn't address any profit motive the owners of Deadabase may have. It just cites the difference between trading recordings by hand and by the Internet, and quotes supposedly appropriate legislation which was drafted to protect copyrighted material from being distributed over the Internet.

    Personally, I think it's foolish for GDP to ignore copyright law in many circumstances, but to want it enforced when it comes to the Internet. Perhaps a bunch of geeks downloading shows from the Deadabase doesn't conform to their ideas of "community". 8)
  • No, but you can enjoy drugs without linux
  • >i am one of the people that work on deadabase and >i can assure everyone that we definatly do not >make a profit from our website.

    MAKING a profit is totally different from a for-profit operation. I saw a banner ad, that violates the "NON-COMMERCIAL, HOME-USE ONLY" terms of the joint copyright license.

    I'm interested to see if GDP would mind an unrelated ftp site? Probably not.

    But who really cares, MP3 blows.
  • Why, DMB house mix usually is so overcompressed it's not worth recording...
  • What? The logic here escapes me. The Dead have allowed their concerts to be recorded and traded by fans. End of story. Tape, vinyl, mp3, wav, etc... are formats, and only formats for the distribution and trading of this music. Any artists that alllows their music to be recorded and traded and then argues against the format in which it is traded is a fool.

    The bigger question (IMO) is why people are so fascinated by the Grateful Dead? Boring, boring, boring. But i don't indulge in drugs, so that may explain it.

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