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I see no reason to pay for my music, ever

Started by Toolmaker Apr 7, 2008 at 7:05 PM 43 replies 6.5k views
Original Post
Toolmaker
Toolmaker
Ok, this might sound like about to put on my eye patch, hook and wooden leg, but trust me, it's a discussion. The title is there purely to attract your attention. This is the deal: In Dutchland, it's pretty much legal to download music/movies for private use. If you download complete movies or complete albums, nobody can ever sue you for piracy, even if you do not own these copyrighted materials. So if I were to download the latest Paramore album, it's legal by law. Before everyone lights up their torches and shipping to run us over and exclaim that we're all pirates, we do have a 'home copy' system for this. For every sold EMPTY CD / DVD / etc. a certain amount of money goes into a huge jar and the money in there is divided amongst the producers(ie, the money flows directly into the pockets of EMI / BMG / etc.) of the content. While this seems like a good deal for the producers of material, it actually encourages piracy in my opinion. For every empty CD / DVD I ever buy, no matter what I'm going to do with it, a certain percentage of my money goes to the big bosses of music corporation. If i buy 10 DVDs to burn my brother's wedding pictures on and hand them out to family members who want them, my money goes to some asshat who doesn't have the right to receive my money. If I buy 250 empty CDs to burn my software on and sell them to clients, the money of my company flows directly into the pockets of these asshats, while I'm losing money on more expensive CDs. Because I buy empty media every now and then, and my money goes to these asshats wether I buy their CDs or not, I see no reason on why I ever should buy music / movies again. For the box art? I got a high resolution printer myself, and I can perfectly download those boxes from the internet. To say I originally own ? Why would I pay twice for something I want to see? I fully agree that if you enjoy a musician that you should buy their CDs, but with this system, it's completely justified to just download it, because you already paid for it. Discuss! Toolmaker
 
Kaze
Kaze
Quote:
Original post by Toolmaker
For every sold EMPTY CD / DVD / etc. a certain amount of money goes into a huge jar and the money in there is divided amongst the producers(ie, the money flows directly into the pockets of EMI / BMG / etc.) of the content.


Recordable media tax is the reason I have zero sympathy for the recording industry, the only problem is I don't actually want to listen to anything published by RIAA regardless of cost.
ibebrett
ibebrett
as long as you admit to yourself that downloading music without permission is = to stealing its fine. i do it.
Drigovas
Drigovas
Quote:
Original post by ibebrett
as long as you admit to yourself that downloading music without permission is = to stealing its fine. i do it.
His point is that it's not stealing, but instead refusing to double-pay. For you, who live in the USA, it is stealing.

It's a racket, plain and simple.

Sounds like you need to start up a software company Toolmaker, and get yourself some of that sweet empty media tax money. Not that you have to actually sell or produce anything...
j_smith4
j_smith4
Granted artists don't make much of anything from record sales but you are stealing money from them. And I'm sure if you spent 100 million to make a movie you wouldn't like people watching it for free. Justify it however you want but it is theft.
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MTT
MTT
I would say it's morally justifiable, although sometimes it's nice to get the pretty packaging
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Yann L
Yann L
The situation is very similar here in France. If you buy recordable media over here, you implicitely pay a (quite hefty) tax, which directly goes to the SACEM/SACD (the french equivalents of the RIAA/MPAA). This is meant to pay for the right of private copies.

According to the law, you can be refunded the tax if you are a business, and you can prove that you have used the media for something not covered by the above copyright management organizations. In practice, getting the refund borders on impossible, and can take several years (you can supposedly get it when sueing them, but the insufficient cost/benefit ratio prevents most companies from doing this). Private persons cannot get a refund ever, even if you record your own data onto the media.

And of course I copy music and movies for private use. I paid for it.

For business related data (backups and whatnot), we just mailorder thousands of DVDs from Germany, where there is no such tax.
Trapper Zoid
Trapper Zoid
Quote:
Original post by j_smith4
Justify it however you want but it is theft.

Not really. It's copyright infringement or music piracy, which is still against the law, but it's not exactly the same as theft. That's why we've got different terms and laws for it.

I know this may seem like quibbling, but I really dislike this particular muddying of the whole issue of IP because I think it does more harm than good. I'm fine with arguments that piracy is equivalent to stealing, but it's not exactly the same. It doesn't mean piracy is justified.

Back the original point: I don't know if Australia has the same deal going on; I strongly think we don't. But if I were paying for music indirectly through blank CD sales I know I'd be expecting something back in return. I currently don't listen to any recent music save from what I rip out of computer games, weird indie stuff that's free to download or MIDI compilations of music from games from the 80's and 90's (that last one might be legally dubious...).
klems
klems
This seems to be quite common in all of Europe; Sweden has the exact same system.
Trapper Zoid
Trapper Zoid
Quote:
Original post by Valderman
This seems to be quite common in all of Europe; Sweden has the exact same system.

Is it a whole EU thing, or just individual countries? With everyone being so close to each other in Europe, I'd think if there were countries without the tax then there'd be a sizable grey market of people just hopping across the border to do their electronics shopping.

Goober King
Goober King
At first it seems like an interesting way to not end up criminalizing a near endless mass of people, but then I wonder how much does this raise the cost of media? As someone that next to never puts music onto a CD for any reason, I'm not sure I fancy paying for something I'm not doing.
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Kwizatz
Kwizatz
Quote:
Original post by Toolmaker
While this seems like a good deal for the producers of material, it actually encourages piracy in my opinion. For every empty CD / DVD I ever buy, no matter what I'm going to do with it, a certain percentage of my money goes to the big bosses of music corporation. If i buy 10 DVDs to burn my brother's wedding pictures on and hand them out to family members who want them, my money goes to some asshat who doesn't have the right to receive my money. If I buy 250 empty CDs to burn my software on and sell them to clients, the money of my company flows directly into the pockets of these asshats, while I'm losing money on more expensive CDs.


Have you ever thought about recording a CD of you singing, banging some drums or something (however bad or good it may sound) and claim that since you are a producer you are entitled of a piece of the pie? [smile].
MonkeyInBlack
MonkeyInBlack
Quote:
Original post by Kwizatz

Have you ever thought about recording a CD of you singing, banging some drums or something (however bad or good it may sound) and claim that since you are a producer you are entitled of a piece of the pie? [smile].


Actually, the situation is much worse than that. It's the copyright organisations that decide who gets what amount of money - in Belgium (and I'm sure in our neighbour countries as well) they use a very untransparent system to come up with some scale to divide the coin. In reality this means that only the top performers get any money at all, while smaller artists get next to nothing. This even though people are still saying they don't have to pay for that local artist because they're already paying taxes on writeable media. The smaller artists are the ones really suffering because of this.

(For the record: in Belgium, as in several of our neighbour countries, we don't have the 'legalization' of copyright piracy, but we still have the taxes. This criminalisation of the general population, whom we have to assume doesn't pirate anything, is another disgrace to this system.)
d000hg
d000hg
Quote:
Original post by Yann L
And of course I copy music and movies for private use. I paid for it.
Unless each blank CD costs >$5 no you didn't. I'm guessing even with tax it's less than $1 per blank CD? That's about the cost of one track on iTunes or similar.

It's interesting that everyone seems OK with pirating music, when as a site GD is pretty anti-piracy for software... I don't see any difference except that we don't rely on selling music for our income.

klems
klems
Quote:
Original post by Goober King
At first it seems like an interesting way to not end up criminalizing a near endless mass of people, but then I wonder how much does this raise the cost of media? As someone that next to never puts music onto a CD for any reason, I'm not sure I fancy paying for something I'm not doing.
There are just two problems.
One, copying onto the media we paid the copying tax for is still illegal. Yes, the "creators" actually get to screw us for our money twice.
Two, unless you've got friends in the local RIAA wannabe organisation, you're not going to see a cent, no matter how much "content" you create.

...and this is why I haven't bought a CD in several years - I already paid for it when I wanted to make a backup CD of some of my code and images.
Daaark
Daaark
Meh.

We've had this system in Canada for like ten years now. What they do is sell the same blank CD-Rs with 2 labels. Music ones which are a bit more expensive, and then the data ones.

I've bought a ton of CDs and DVDs over the last two years. This year alone, I've bought a stack of CDs by the Doors, Zeppelin, Ozzy, Sabbath, and not looking to stop anytime soon. I bought well over 40 movies last year.

I don't see the point in downloading an illegal copy of anything. You're not much of a fan of something if you aren't willing to throw your cash to support it, and for the same reason I don't walk into a restaurant's kitchen and swipe something to eat.

Yes, the RIAA and MPAA are greedy, litigious, scum who use mafia like tactics to extort whatever they can from people, but there isn't much I can do about it. I'm not going to stop enjoying movies and music because of it. The new Heaven and Hell (Sabbath with Dio) CD will be out soon , and I'm looking forward to it. I'm not going to deny myself the pleasure of owning it because I don't like the RIAA.

I don't know why someone would rather have a stack of CD-Rs containing crappy downsampled content with their titles scribbled on them in black marker, than a collection of real copies?
alnite
alnite
Buy used CDs. Problem solved.
Daaark
Daaark
Quote:
Original post by alnite
Buy used CDs. Problem solved.
I don't see what problem it solves, assuming I had a problem to begin with... Buying a used copy skips the step of financially supporting the artist, I might as well just be downloading. And I'm not interested in someone's sticky, dusty, scratched up, second hand, crap. ;)

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