Kazaa - is it legal?

[beet1e]

Originally posted by mjolnir
Point of order, Bowling for Columbine was NOT a documentary, despite winning in that category.  Surely you remember the big stink that it caused.

Oh well, I bagged one ( at ra)

[-dead-]

Originally posted by Maniac
This is an battle the record companys cant win... its that simple really...

They are screaming that they are loosing money due to piracy, but now they spending millions on hunting down the ones using file-sharing progs... Then what? the programs wont be going away, and even if they did manage to ban these types of programs we can go back to FTP´s and webpages etc etc...

They simple cant stop the piracy....

Welcome to the computer age...

Actually, I reckon the record companies can stop the piracy, but the only way they'll do it is by biting the bullet and dropping their prices to a level the market will actually bear. Nothing else will save them though: if you can play the music so you can hear it, you can copy it - it's as simple as that. The only foolproof copy protection is a disc you cannot listen to at all, and despite their triumphs with NSync, the Backstreet Boys and all the rest of that soul-less, ball-less mediocrity, I don't think even the record companies could market discs you can't listen to.
In Hong Kong the movie companies stamped out VCD piracy by dropping the price of a VCD movie from some $120-$200 (US $15-25) to about $20-$50 (US$2.50-$6). Pirates were selling VCDs at about $10-$25 (US$1.25-$3.20) and were making such huge profit margins that it was run by organized crime (Triads), and all the movie company backed legislation with its big fines and five year's jail time were no deterrent. But people don't mind paying a couple of dollars more for the genuine article, so the movie companies won out, once they dropped their pants. This stands as a somewhat contrary lesson to all those who claim piracy harms consumers. Not in this case: piracy forced the movie companies to lower their prices, and the fact that the pirates were selling sooo cheaply and still making sooo much money that the Triads took it over makes me wonder what sort of astronomical markup the movie companies still have selling the discs at the pants-dropped prices.

[ra]

Actually, I reckon the record companies can stop the piracy, but the only way they'll do it is by biting the bullet and dropping their prices to a level the market will actually bear.

What price would the market bear for cars if they were available for free?

If the media industry doesn't develop technology to protect copyrights all media content will eventually deteriorate to amateur productions.  Who will invest in a $200 million dollar movie production when it will be available for free download 1 week after it is released?   If you think pop music sucks now, wait till there's no profit in it.  Piracy may make music, movies, and books cheaper (free) for the consumer in the short run, but in the long run the consumer will get exactly what he's paying for.  Lowering prices as a response to piracy only slows down the deterioration of the industry.  They have to solve the problem technologically or they are hosed.

ra

[midnight Target]

If cars were available free, they would be free.

What you are arguing is for a maintaining the status quo. If 200 million dollar movie were available for free, there wouldn't be any 200 million dollar movies. If someone invented a way to get you from one point to another in 1/10th the time it used to take... the old way would be obsolete and no one would pay for it.

So should we protect those buggy factories?

[Charon]

NSync, the Backstreet Boys and all the rest of that soul-less, ball-less mediocrity, I don't think even the record companies could market discs you can't listen to.

LOL dead.


I'm surprised someone hasn't stepped in and created a digital lable for the 99.9 percent of talented artists who rock, but don't push the POP chart dollars - the undiscovered Janis Joplins who can't get a contract in today's Brittney Spears world. It's funny how the biggest supporters of the Music machine - Madonna and Metallic for example - have reached the rare point in the industry where they aren't getting screwed by the machine and in fact rely on the machine's marketing power to maintain relevance at their current level of stardom.

The new lable would have to take a smaller cut, and be an actual service provider, ruinning promotions, booking venues and helping support touring (where the artisits actually make their money, sometimes). The music would be cheap, or even free outside of the concert circuit.

However, I imagine the recording industry has touring and airplay so locked up that they could "lock out" the new lable(s) from most venues and corporate radio networks. It's anti-trust, but if you have enough dollars and influence the DOJ might take a long time to notice since the new lables wouldn't have much pull in Washington.

Charon

[ra]

If cars were available free, they would be free.

If cars could be stolen from the manufacturer at no risk and no cost, they would be free, but soon they would no longer be manufactured.

What you are arguing is for a maintaining the status quo.

I'm not arguing, I'm stating the fact that those who create and market intellectual property have to protect it from piracy or their products will be worthless.

If 200 million dollar movie were available for free, there wouldn't be any 200 million dollar movies.

Yes, and some of us don't want to be stuck watching only PBS.

If someone invented a way to get you from one point to another in 1/10th the time it used to take... the old way would be obsolete and no one would pay for it.

And this relates to piracy how?

[midnight Target]

Does anyone know who the biggest money making band in the world was 10 years ago?

The Grateful Dead

This is a band that encouraged bootleg recordings, had a spot on the grounds of each concert designated as the best place to record.

There is money to be made by artists even if Kazaa lives on. Artists will always be in demand. Record companies will not.

[capt. apathy]

as long as you aren't selling cd's or charging people to copy your files I see nothing wrong with it.  I see little or no difference between this and recording songs off the radio or shows of the tv.

mostly I just d/l songs I can't seem to find in the stores. and I only share the hard to find albums.  I won't take a new release cd I've just bought and put it up to share.  and once the artist is dead I figure his music is fair game (he isn't making a dime off it anymore, just the exec who ownes his contract)

 but these are just my personal limits on what I think is 'the right thing to do', I see nothing illegal in it. they broadcast these songs for free on radio and tv, it's perfectly legal to record them.

  and as far as stealing, what did I steal?  show me what I've taken.  IMO for it to be stealing I'd have to take it away from them but they still have all their property.  it's more like copying someones product.  like I see a product, take mesurements reverse engineer it and make my own product that does the same thing.  (that is what I'm doing after all my pc 'takes mesurements' of the sound produced, it doesn't exactly copy the cd, it even saves the 'mesurements in another laguage, then it builds a new cd, on a disc I own and pay for using the info I copied from the origanal) and as far as I know that is still legal as long as it's for personal use and you aren't using this copy of someone elses product for profit.  you could even share the measurements of the copied product with your freinds, as long as you didn't charge for them.  if you sold these reproductions, or charged for sharing of the digital info, or even if you played these at an event that you charged admission to, then I would see a legal problem.  but free sharing of a mp3 based digital discription of the sound made when you play the original I see nothing wrong with.

[-dead-]

Originally posted by ra
What price would the market bear for cars if they were available for free?

If you could copy a car on your computer and share it with hundreds of other people, then no one would be able to sell cars at their current price - but you can't copy a car digitally - so it's an irrelevant analogy.

And it's totally unanalogous economically - a car is mostly priced on raw materials and components used - a music CD is generic - you don't have to retool to produce a different one, and it probably costs about $0.50-$1.00 to make with a nice box and a printed book (depending on the number in the run). The band will typically get 10 - 20% royalties on the wholesale price of a CD out of which they pay the record company for the packaging (typically 25% of all royalties are withheld to cover this) the recording of the album, video production costs, tour support, radio promotion, sales and marketing costs, packaging costs and any other cost the record company can subtract from their royalties. Everything they can recoup from the band and the 80-90% of the wholesale price is record company profit. It's the reason that organized crime took such an interest in Hong Kong: it's silly money - a huge mark up and money for old rope.

If the media industry doesn't develop technology to protect copyrights all media content will eventually deteriorate to amateur productions.  Who will invest in a $200 million dollar movie production when it will be available for free download 1 week after it is released?   If you think pop music sucks now, wait till there's no profit in it.  Piracy may make music, movies, and books cheaper (free) for the consumer in the short run, but in the long run the consumer will get exactly what he's paying for. Lowering prices as a response to piracy only slows down the deterioration of the industry.

Well if "The Hulk", "Chicago" and "Dumb and Dumberer" and N-Sync and Brittaney Spears are what we can expect from professional productions,  I say kill all the professionals and bring on the amateurs right now! Seriously though - A large budget generally tends to bring out the mediocrity in a movie or a band - a lowest common denominator for widest possible appeal (to recoup all the cash lavished on the production). Yet almost every year there are "surprise" low budget movies that often beat the box-office orientated big budget stuff. Another example: which had the higher budget: Matrix or Matrix:Reloaded? Which one was better?
 
And get this: there were professional musicians before there were record companies. And there are many today who don't have a record contract but are in a band. There are lots of movie-makers out there that don't have fat studio contracts. These perverts are doing their thing because they enjoy it. They'd love to make money doing it too - but they're doing it firstly because they love it. And in the case of music, I fail to see exactly what the record companies do to enhance the band. They seem to me to be a useless middle man.

But I digress - you've missed the point of my posted example: the movie companies are still making loads of money  in Hong Kong - if they weren't, real VCDs would have disappeared completely - they're just making less money per unit than before, but I'll bet they're selling a lot more units than before - there's certainly a lot more VCD stores around now.

And that is how the record companies will survive - by dropping their pants (whilst a car company couldn't because most of the cost of a car is it's components). Producing and promoting the music is quite expensive (although this is somewhat irrelevant as record companies get the band to pay for those costs out of their royalties) but the unit cost of actually manufacturing ANY music CD is pretty much the same for any company, and it's ridiculously low. You can sell 10 CDs at $100 and make $980 profit and whine about 1,499,990 pirates, or you can sell 10,000 CDs at $10 and make $80,000 profit and whine about 1,490,000 pirates or 1,000,000 CDs at $3 and make $1,000,000 profit and whine about 500,000 pirates: the choice is theirs.

At the moment they are choosing to waste billions on technologies that not only won't work, but by definition can't work; and by prosecuting their (potential) client base (grrrreat business move ) - all to defend a monopoly which, although they seem unaware or unwilling to accept this fact, they can no longer effectively monopolize.

They have to solve the problem technologically or they are hosed.

You missed this in my last post too - here it is again for the visually impaired: THERE IS NO TECHNOLOGICAL SOLUTION. None. As I said last post: if you can hear it, you can copy it. And you have to be able to hear it, so by definition - it has to be copyable. Furthermore - if you really can't copy it, you can't actually make the millions of copies of discs to sell to people.

They can make it harder - like the current copy protection just creeping in that doesn't allow you to play it on a computer - but that also makes it less attractive: the record company will find those CDs a hard sell to owners of MP3 walkmans and iPods, for example (I know 2 people who refused to buy CDs purely because you can't listen to them on a computer - they'll no doubt wait till you can download them for free). But let me say it again.... THERE IS NO TECHNOLOGICAL SOLUTION AND, BY DEFINITION, THERE CANNOT BE ONE.

[midnight Target]

I'm just wondering how all that music was written by Chopin and Mozart and Beethoven and their cronies without a record company watching out for their rights?

I mean.... songs will go away if we can get them for free right?

The buggy whip analogy Mr. Ra relates to a change in the pardigm not piracy. Things aren't what they used to be. The record companies have created a world that they wish to protect. That does not mean that it is right, only that it exists. I say it will soon be gone and music will reach us in different ways. So be it.

 I think it equates nicely to the elegant solution scientists eventually went to, to proclaim credit for a discovery. Instead of hording knowledge of something new, which may have benefitted one man, they decided that the first to publish is the one who gets credit and the resulting acclaim.

 If it ain't worth sharing it ain't worth doing.

[Dowding]

How much does a typical CD album cost in the US?

[ra]

-dead-,

Rather than go through your whole post bit by bit I'll just post another followup.

I didn't miss your point, you seem to miss mine.  Commercially published books, music, movies, and software are the property of the owners, whoever that may be.  As long as they own property rights to their product, they are entitled to make as much money on its sale as they can.  It is a monopoly, and deliberately so.  Most commercially published items make little or no money, popular ones can make a fortune.  How much it costs to produce one CD does not factor in.  I have to wonder if the CD would have ever been developed were it not for the record industry.

The new technology is causing the owners of these commercially published goods to lose control over its sale.  So, yes, things are changing.  You assume that getting the Suits out of the picture will only improve things, but that is irrelevant even if true.  The fact remains that without the ability to protect intellectual property rights the producers of these things, whether they go through Suits or not, will not be able to sell their products at market prices.  The technology makes it too easy to steal.  I have to laugh when I hear someone complain that they paid $15 for a CD when they only wanted one song from it.  Apparently that song was worth $15 to them, at least before Kaazaa.

I don't share your belief that taking most of the profit out of creative endevors is a good thing.  If the Beatles hadn't started making money hand over fist they probably would have quit before most of us had ever heard of them.    Those boys were fond of money, like just about all Rock stars are.  If the last Harry Potter book had been widely distributed over the Net before the publisher could put it on the market, it may well have turned out to be the final Harry Potter book.

Some artists may have a workaround, like live performances which people go to for the experience.   But authors, software developers, and film actors have to sell their products under tight controls in order to make the big bucks, which is what they want and which is their right.  If their product is crass but it sells, who are we to judge?  There is plenty of crass garbage available for free, so if people will pay to see Dumb and Dumberer, let them.

A technical solution does not have to be perfect, it only has to keep a majority of people honest.  Anyone can download just about any software for free over Kaazaa, but most would not be able to figure out how to install it because of the simple blocks put in by the owners.  

ra

[Vulcan]

Originally posted by ra
I don't share your belief that taking most of the profit out of creative endevors is a good thing.  If the Beatles hadn't started making money hand over fist they probably would have quit before most of us had ever heard of them.    Those boys were fond of money, like just about all Rock stars are.  If the last Harry Potter book had been widely distributed over the Net before the publisher could put it on the market, it may well have turned out to be the final Harry Potter book.

There are many examples which blow this theory out of the water. The most recent I can think of would be Southpark. Had it not been for the netwide FREE distribution of the first episode Southpark probably wouldn't have made it to primetime (or lived passed the first episode).

En guarde!

[ra]

Originally posted by Vulcan
There are many examples which blow this theory out of the water. The most recent I can think of would be Southpark. Had it not been for the netwide FREE distribution of the first episode Southpark probably wouldn't have made it to primetime (or lived passed the first episode).

En guarde!

Assuming they gave away the first episode free, do you think they would have made any more episodes if there was no money, or very little money, to be made for their efforts?  The fact that cable can charge advertisers to see Southpark shows that there is still some control over its distribution.  If every episode was widely available for free download as soon as it was created, the cable audience would dwindle as would the ad revenue.  

ra

[-dead-]

Originally posted by ra
I didn't miss your point, you seem to miss mine.  Commercially published books, music, movies, and software are the property of the owners, whoever that may be.  As long as they own property rights to their product, they are entitled to make as much money on its sale as they can. It is a monopoly, and deliberately so.  Most commercially published items make little or no money, popular ones can make a fortune.  How much it costs to produce one CD does not factor in.

OK so you're doing a really good impression of someone having missed my point then. I concur with the above view - owners of copyrighted stuff are entitled to make as much money on its sale as they can. I have no beef with that. It doesn't contradict my point at all. Indeed, that little bit at the end - the "as they can" proviso is precisely the whole point: They can't sell it at the price they're charging, and they are merely encouraging more of their market to copy stuff for free. In short - charge whatever you damn well like, but don't whine about piracy if you charge too much. It's really up to you. People are prepared to pay for the stuff, but if you take the piss too much, they'll just copy it instead. I'm not arguing whether this is good or bad, I'm not saying it is or isn't morally reprehensible. Those are personal ethics, and up to the individual. I'm saying it is WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS. It is an observable reality of the post-internet economy. The unit cost of producing a CD is crucial - it gives the record & movie companies a way out. It means they can drop their pants much much more than a book publisher, a car manufacturer or any other bad analogy you can come up with. And therefore they can compete with file sharing.

I have to wonder if the CD would have ever been developed were it not for the record industry.

Actually if I recall the record industry moved to CDs mostly because they could not be copied to a similar level of fidelity. It was their foolproof system. So much for foolproof copy protection... The irony - if you enjoy a good twist of fate as much as I do - is that they have been hoisted by their own petard - they have facilitated their current loss of earnings by moving to CDs. As a side note: I also recall that they were considerably more expensive than LPs - which was odd because there was considerably less plastic involved and considerably less packaging and obviously less freight costs etc. However the record companies assured us that it was merely a question of the economy of scale - a temporary hike in prices and that later they would become much cheaper. The bit with CDs becoming much cheaper appears not to have come to pass however, which is curious to say the least.

The new technology is causing the owners of these commercially published goods to lose control over its sale.  So, yes, things are changing.  You assume that getting the Suits out of the picture will only improve things, but that is irrelevant even if true.  The fact remains that without the ability to protect intellectual property rights the producers of these things, whether they go through Suits or not, will not be able to sell their products at market prices.  The technology makes it too easy to steal.  I have to laugh when I hear someone complain that they paid $15 for a CD when they only wanted one song from it.  Apparently that song was worth $15 to them, at least before Kaazaa.

Au contraire, people (suit-entangled or suit-free) can ALWAYS sell their products at market prices. The problem here is that the "market price" the record companies are selling at is no longer the true market price  - it is much higher than the market price. Perhaps we should define market price: to me it means the price the market (CD buyers) is prepared to pay for a product (CDs) produced by a company (the record companies). So I'm simply stating a fact of capitalism: if you charge too much people won't buy it. And I'm adding a priviso: in the digital age, if your product is digital, they'll just pirate it. Companies are free to ignore these new game rules, but at their own peril.

I don't share your belief that taking most of the profit out of creative endevors is a good thing.  If the Beatles hadn't started making money hand over fist they probably would have quit before most of us had ever heard of them.    Those boys were fond of money, like just about all Rock stars are.  If the last Harry Potter book had been widely distributed over the Net before the publisher could put it on the market, it may well have turned out to be the final Harry Potter book.

I'm all in favour of people getting pots of cash for being creative. I rely on this concept to make my living. In the case of rock stars as I said - there currently isn't actually much profit for their creative endeavours - they don't actually earn much from CDs and may have to rely on tours for their money. But again this whole line of reasoning is a bit of a straw man - I'd love to get paid $100 an hour to argue creatively on AH BBS, but I can't because.... no one will pay me that much to do it. And there's your answer - you can demand all you the money you like -  it doesn't mean you'll get it. Only if the market thinks your product or service is worth it will you get it.
As to the book analogy - honestly, the best analogy for the record & movie industries are the record & movie industries. At least we're on a better footing than the car industry one - a book can be copied digitally - but again it's a product that basically is priced mostly on the cost of the materials. It also has little to fear from the internet yet, because a single book is more portable than every digital platform except the PDA, it's much higher resolution (2540 dpi as opposed to 72 or 96 dpi), and much easier to read without killing your eyes. The only things the ebook has over the book is storage space for several is much smaller and the search function. In other words the ebook is for the most part an inferior copy of the original - whereas MP3s are pretty much indistinguishable from the original.

Some artists may have a workaround, like live performances which people go to for the experience.   But authors, software developers, and film actors have to sell their products under tight controls in order to make the big bucks, which is what they want and which is their right.  If their product is crass but it sells, who are we to judge?  There is plenty of crass garbage available for free, so if people will pay to see Dumb and Dumberer, let them.

I'm not stopping them at all - and as a fully paid-up, lifetime member of the Centre for the Easily Amused, I'll watch almost anything myself. I was merely poking fun at your assertion "If the media industry doesn't develop technology to protect copyrights all media content will eventually deteriorate to amateur productions." Again I should also reiterate - I don't deny the companies have a right to charge whatever they like - I'm merely observing that it doesn't matter what their rights are: the harsh economic reality of the digital age & the internet economy means that a hike in prices creates more piracy, a drop in prices reduces piracy.

A technical solution does not have to be perfect, it only has to keep a majority of people honest.  Anyone can download just about any software for free over Kaazaa, but most would not be able to figure out how to install it because of the simple blocks put in by the owners.

Ten years ago, you'd have been absolutely right in that assumption. Nowadays, I'm afraid, you're completely wrong.
Digital copy protection has a life expectancy of about 3-6 months, and often less than that - if I recall the incdent with the billion dollar copy protection being defeated by the felt tip pen correctly. Any software will have a crack out to subvert it faster than the record companies could put the copy protection on to all their catalogue. And these copy protections seem to take much longer to develop than they do to crack, so practically speaking they record companies can't keep pace with the pirates - if they persue an arms race, for most of the time their music will be copyable. In short it's a useless waste of time, effort and money to even try.
"Aha! But not everyone can crack software protection - so most people will be kept legal", I hear you cry... Wrong. You need only a few people to crack the stuff and share the cracked files - in 3 days everyone has a copy - ah! the wonder and glory of the internet!
So my point is - it's time record companies realized that they already are hosed- not that they will be hosed unless... - but that they already are. They now have to stand up and take it on the chin and work out a new price that can compete with free. And the bottom line is that they can still compete with free, because a lot of people want to give money to rock stars - in return for cool music. But they don't want to pay $15-$20, especially in light of the fact that many bands are whining that the record companies don't let them see much of that at all.