Saturday, August 8, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
P2P
thoughts on downloading music:
so there's the exposure factor. i can't tell you how many artists i've gotten ahold of solely through the internet. from first discovering them, to then hunting down the album, to finding the artist website / photographs / tour information. this is all online. but if you then take a step back, yeah, there's last.fm, there's also bittorent, and perhaps even direct-download blogs, as well as music-sites that offer free mp3's for people to download. there's multiple sources granted, but what's the difference between tracks that are deemed alright by the artist to be released, and then other things that're essentially basically there to fucking, like... just be there. not with permission, just there, because some guy ripped his cd, took those mp3's, and up'd 'em to a site. is this wrong? photographs are upped all the time. and yes whilst folks are not allowed to profit off of such photographs that essentially can be used but arent to be sold. you have such a thing as free-use, or... whatever... something like that... fair-use i think? decorating your home and the like with it. whats this then thing about suings for nearly a million when someone is perhaps using these files for fair-use terms, listening within the home and the like. aka, not for profit, not for distribution etc. most people download and let that be it. and then perhaps after they've been introduced to the artist via download, then they are interested enough to perhaps sponsor such an artist. another thing is, there's more supply than demand with the music industry today. overbloated, with decades worth of bands, singles, top 10s, etc, all competing for... tour sales and cd bucks. but bottom line is the average guy isn't going to support all of these artists. these laws just pull out figures out their ass when they claim such artists are just going to certainly make such an amount had the download not been done. lets be real, they dont advertize music enough to really say that they would have provided all that the sites currently do. fact is, most all the music i learn of i get through the net, mostly through last.fm, or the rare pitchfork / etc thing, perhaps in the past moreso, but i've found their writing style atrocious. but yeah, you have blogs, sites, most of which you wont bother readnig 'course if you haven't even heard of the artist, right? for me, it's the radio on last.fm that's the best way to get ahold of new artists, as they do a similar-art-radio thing that basically takes a given name and extrapolates all the similar sounding folk and gives you an unlimited playlist of 'em all. you can of course pick any one of the offered new ones and stick 'em on their own radio, further branching you out and slowly getting you aware of so many more artists. and of course whilst these trees do extend rather far, sometimes you just have to throw something off the wall in there, like perhaps bollywood or soemthing, so youre not constantly bombarded with say, freshfaced british white folk. heh. but yeah.
so given the downloads, are these prices that tend to be awarded to such companies worth it? i mean... a million bucks... really? is that due for perhaps what would have beenabout 40 bucks in the mall?
which brings me to my other point... airwaves. can someone claim that all airwaves are then subject to the rules of private company? i mean even in our own basements are we considered to be under jurisdiction of the RIAA? i dont think so. i feel that perhaps ,outside of say radio stations that're private entities with business agreements with the companies, and are granted their frequency by the regulatory committees of the local governments... and such... plus say the private broadcast companies on television such as mtv and the like, these guys all have relationships with the companies that make / manage / and produce music... so they're essentially taken care of as far as the companies go, but... are we all to appease such music companies in all fashions? are air waves of all types fair game for these music companies to come in and claim rights? are we no longer living free, but constantly under the umbrella of the RIAA? this is a strange circumstance. to me, if i listen to whatever i please in public space, or my own personal property, or even private property that grants me permission to do as i please in this manner, then i feel the RIAA has no place to barge in. its just like copying cd's, for friends, mixtapes and the like, or making cassettes of teh radio. people've always done it. and why make laws stopping people from doing what they naturally do? in the same way that we wouldn't outlaw food, why would we outlaw the copying, duplicating, and sharing of that which we find interesting. does a newspaper sue if its paper is shared amongst 2 or 3 families or friends? no. and in the same way, a music company should not sue if a cd is shared among three or four friends. and also similarly, if such a thing is done on a larger scale, say amongst 10 or 20 friends using a networking tool such as the internet. people who get together for the simple reason to share good music with one another, to fuel their appetites for good music, exposing their friends to music they may never normally be exposed to. its the free exchange one would expect in any sort of artistic community. but these laws seem to bar the right of these sorts of communities to even exist.
essentially these laws dont really exist in a way that gives proper accord to the people, and only to the corporate private entity. companies have rights, people do not. thats the simple lesson of today's current state of laws and lawsuits. this may change with time, if america continues to be a just place in spirit, as law catches up with tech, and people are again allowed to live free and happy. give people their rights back.
so there's the exposure factor. i can't tell you how many artists i've gotten ahold of solely through the internet. from first discovering them, to then hunting down the album, to finding the artist website / photographs / tour information. this is all online. but if you then take a step back, yeah, there's last.fm, there's also bittorent, and perhaps even direct-download blogs, as well as music-sites that offer free mp3's for people to download. there's multiple sources granted, but what's the difference between tracks that are deemed alright by the artist to be released, and then other things that're essentially basically there to fucking, like... just be there. not with permission, just there, because some guy ripped his cd, took those mp3's, and up'd 'em to a site. is this wrong? photographs are upped all the time. and yes whilst folks are not allowed to profit off of such photographs that essentially can be used but arent to be sold. you have such a thing as free-use, or... whatever... something like that... fair-use i think? decorating your home and the like with it. whats this then thing about suings for nearly a million when someone is perhaps using these files for fair-use terms, listening within the home and the like. aka, not for profit, not for distribution etc. most people download and let that be it. and then perhaps after they've been introduced to the artist via download, then they are interested enough to perhaps sponsor such an artist. another thing is, there's more supply than demand with the music industry today. overbloated, with decades worth of bands, singles, top 10s, etc, all competing for... tour sales and cd bucks. but bottom line is the average guy isn't going to support all of these artists. these laws just pull out figures out their ass when they claim such artists are just going to certainly make such an amount had the download not been done. lets be real, they dont advertize music enough to really say that they would have provided all that the sites currently do. fact is, most all the music i learn of i get through the net, mostly through last.fm, or the rare pitchfork / etc thing, perhaps in the past moreso, but i've found their writing style atrocious. but yeah, you have blogs, sites, most of which you wont bother readnig 'course if you haven't even heard of the artist, right? for me, it's the radio on last.fm that's the best way to get ahold of new artists, as they do a similar-art-radio thing that basically takes a given name and extrapolates all the similar sounding folk and gives you an unlimited playlist of 'em all. you can of course pick any one of the offered new ones and stick 'em on their own radio, further branching you out and slowly getting you aware of so many more artists. and of course whilst these trees do extend rather far, sometimes you just have to throw something off the wall in there, like perhaps bollywood or soemthing, so youre not constantly bombarded with say, freshfaced british white folk. heh. but yeah.
so given the downloads, are these prices that tend to be awarded to such companies worth it? i mean... a million bucks... really? is that due for perhaps what would have beenabout 40 bucks in the mall?
which brings me to my other point... airwaves. can someone claim that all airwaves are then subject to the rules of private company? i mean even in our own basements are we considered to be under jurisdiction of the RIAA? i dont think so. i feel that perhaps ,outside of say radio stations that're private entities with business agreements with the companies, and are granted their frequency by the regulatory committees of the local governments... and such... plus say the private broadcast companies on television such as mtv and the like, these guys all have relationships with the companies that make / manage / and produce music... so they're essentially taken care of as far as the companies go, but... are we all to appease such music companies in all fashions? are air waves of all types fair game for these music companies to come in and claim rights? are we no longer living free, but constantly under the umbrella of the RIAA? this is a strange circumstance. to me, if i listen to whatever i please in public space, or my own personal property, or even private property that grants me permission to do as i please in this manner, then i feel the RIAA has no place to barge in. its just like copying cd's, for friends, mixtapes and the like, or making cassettes of teh radio. people've always done it. and why make laws stopping people from doing what they naturally do? in the same way that we wouldn't outlaw food, why would we outlaw the copying, duplicating, and sharing of that which we find interesting. does a newspaper sue if its paper is shared amongst 2 or 3 families or friends? no. and in the same way, a music company should not sue if a cd is shared among three or four friends. and also similarly, if such a thing is done on a larger scale, say amongst 10 or 20 friends using a networking tool such as the internet. people who get together for the simple reason to share good music with one another, to fuel their appetites for good music, exposing their friends to music they may never normally be exposed to. its the free exchange one would expect in any sort of artistic community. but these laws seem to bar the right of these sorts of communities to even exist.
essentially these laws dont really exist in a way that gives proper accord to the people, and only to the corporate private entity. companies have rights, people do not. thats the simple lesson of today's current state of laws and lawsuits. this may change with time, if america continues to be a just place in spirit, as law catches up with tech, and people are again allowed to live free and happy. give people their rights back.
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