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I think your view of records is a bit unfair.

> I am also happy to pay to see a movie because movies could not exist prior to being able to film.

I am happy listening to records, because records could not exist prior to being able to record. See, some album music is really unique in its own right and could not be easily reproduced live. The same as some movies could not easily be translated to a theater play.

> I don't get paid for people to use my work without any involvement from me past the fact I created something. Why should a musician be paid for you listening to the music they created.

Isn't it a bit the same as with software? When I buy some software, the developers also aren't putting any hours for me at the moment I'm using it. Still, most people are ok with paying for software.

You can get plenty of software for free. Most people I know seem to have dodgy or OEM installed versions of software, and use free products on top of that. The ones who do pay for software usually have it paid for by their work.

>The music is not the end product. The live show where I go to see the musician perform is.

Hey, how much of all the music you listen to you listen live? One percent perhaps? Don't be hypocritical please. Without recording you wouldn't get a chance to hear the best musicians from around the world.

Also a lot of people don't see or don't care about the difference between recording and live performance. For them music is the end product.

You shouldn't pay for advertising if you don't want to. The issue is that, as the creators of the work, artists have the right to decide what they want to charge for access to their creation.

You do not have a right to access that content without paying whatever price it is the artist has decided to charge.

If any artist WANTS to release their music for free, they can. If they do not want to release their music for free, they can also do that.

But it is their right and choice. Not yours.

Should that right include the option to have people jailed and fined for behavior nobody can prove is harmful to anybody?

But that criticism could be leveled at any law or regulation, except assault, theft, and murder. Why single out copyright?

If you want to be an anarchist, great, but stop picking on creators of intellectual property.

What makes you think I don't use that criticism against everything equally? Law is supposed to prevent harm, not to satisfy feelings.

Many artists feel that the current state of affairs does harm them.

As far as I see it, the big media companies are the cause for most of their troubles. To a large part through resisting better business models, and through forcing themselves into the position as gatekeepers.

Artists should be supported, but I can't see any sane justification for letting them dictate the terms for how a society may interact with its own culture.

That's a very convenient excuse. Media companies can't actually force themselves into that position. Artists have to sign contracts with them voluntarily.

That's a very naive way of looking at it. Why do you think artists historically have felt they had no other choice than to do so? (hint: they control the vast majority of the distribution and PR)

What about recoupment contract terms and similar unjust practices?

That is a very paternalistic way of looking at it.

You are effectively saying to artists, shut up, you have no right to sign contracts or have your voluntary agreements respected because you are too exploited to know what's good for you. And now step aside and let me download all your stuff for free until we have sorted out all the warts of media business models, capitalism and the universe in general.

We all face constraints and we are not completely free in the choices we make. That doesn't mean the choices we do make can simply be discounted.

Why are you calling it paternalistic, instead of anti-monopolist?

You're essentially excusing slave trade where people sell themselves to become slaves "because they could choose not to", when they actually in the real world couldn't see any other viable option for survival.

And while at it you're blatantly ignoring (or perhaps obscuring) the other option, of targeting the other side of the equation and banning such exploitative contracts, requiring that they offer reasonable terms instead. Are you claiming it is impossible for them, who keep making record profits, to afford to be fair?

>Why are you calling it paternalistic

Because you are talking over artists' heads like they were little children unable to understand how enslaved they are.

If an artist says, I feel enslaved (and some probably do), I take that seriously, and I would have a very close look at those contracts.

But if an artist says I am acting voluntarily and I demand restrictions on free music downloads, and a consumer of music such as yourself says no you are being enslaved and therefore I feel entitled to free music downloads in the name of fighting big bad media companies, then that is too obviously self-serving for me to take at face value.

The artists are prioritizing their careers first, can't afford great lawyers when they're fresh (so they don't actually know how horrible the contracts are!), and everybody keeps telling them it is harder to succeed alone.

How can't you understand the effects of that? Are laws against lies in advertisement also paternalistic?

And why in the first place do you even believe that piracy is a problem that can be solved legally? Why do you believe it even should be solved using the law? Why should the mere request of the media companies be sufficient to put people in jail!?

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe...

You are making a lot of unfounded assumptions about what I believe.

I'm not defending any particular contractual structure. I'm not arguing against banning specific types of contracts. I'm not calling for excessive punishment for copyright infringement or for a surveillance state to enforce copyrights.

I'm saying that artists can be trusted to understand their own situation and act in their own interest, possibly with the help of lawyers or organisations that support them.

If some of them come to a conclusion that is different from yours, you can't just go ahead and declare them mentally incapacitated. That is what I call paternalistic and it is actually a rather moderate way of putting it.

Artists are not enslved imbecils who need to be protected from themselves. They may need to be protected from others, but that is something they need to diagnose themselves and make demands accordingly (some certainly do that).

Our societies are moving pretty quickly in a direction where we take away people's freedom to enter into voluntary agreements with other adults based on the claim that they are in a forced situation and can no longer be trusted to speak for themselves. Just look at prostitution, smoking, gambling, foreign currency loans, variuos fetishes, assisted suicide, etc.

Yes there are situations in which people need to be protected from themselves and their inability to grasp their own situation. But these situations are exceedingly rare. There should be a very high threshold before coming to that conclusion.

> I'm saying that artists can be trusted to understand their own situation and act in their own interest

I'm saying this indeed is wrong in 90% of the cases because the big media companies are intentionally deceptive, and control the message that the artists are getting. Try reading a bunch of blogs of musicians getting fed up by the companies - they're easy to find, and most of yet stories are very similar. They're promised everything and get nothing.

> possibly with the help of lawyers or organisations that support them.

I'm saying this is a necessity with independent organizations that actually care about the individuals, because right now they don't have that kind of support.

>I'm saying this indeed is wrong in 90% of the cases because the big media companies are intentionally deceptive, and control the message that the artists are getting.

And what makes you so uniquely positioned that you cannot be deceived and the information you have access to is not tightly controlled by these supposedly omnipotent media bosses?

I haven't heard anything from you that makes me believe in your superior insight compared to the people who signed the letter the NYT is reporting on.

Artists talk to each other you know. If 10% knew some super secret truth about the media business, the other 90% would quickly learn about it.

I'm afraid you'll have to accept that there are different opinions out there and not everyone who disagrees with you has had wool pulled over their eyes.

Has it occurred to you that the reality may be more nuanced so that reasonable people can disagree? Or that media conglomerates and their business models may be one problem that artists have and copyright infringement on a massive scale another one on top of that?

This is hardly scratching the surface:

http://musicconsultant.com/how-to-make-it-in-the-music-indus...

Looking up recoupment in the music industry is infuriating on its own, it isn't far from modern day slavery. Control over PR budgets is another one, and shitty royalties is a major one.

If you spend a few hours looking up those leads, I sincerely doubt you'll still think I'm misguided or not educated enough afterwards.

I'm not saying that you are misguided or not educated enough.

I have a problem with the principle of disregarding someone's express will based on a claim that he or she is manipulated and unable to speak for themselves.

That is dangerous for a free, democratic society based on the rule of law. If you disagree with someone about what is good for them, you need to convince them, not ignore their will.

And that has nothing to do with the extent to which I agree or disagree with your opinions on the subject of media contracts. We may well agree on a lot more than you seem to think.

Recorded music is the advertising for the musician. I don't understand why I should pay for that advertising. What they are advertising is their ability to perform music and they will receive my money when I pay to watch them perform or purchase their merchandise.

That's a very limited view of music. Tons of music/audio workers out there neither sing nor play live instruments. Songwriters, composers, electronic musicians, recording engineers, mixers, Foley artists, etc. To them, recording is their only product.

Yep. They should be paid by the musicians. Not sure of the problem here.

You keep using this word "musician" but I believe the term you mean to use is "recording artist."

That's that person you go see at shows, like you know, famous rappers and pop stars and rock stars.

These are professional entertainers.

Beethoven was a musician. So is Aphex Twin. So is a guitar player in a bar cover band. Each have a work output that take very different forms.

Many musicians are composers whose work ONLY exists as a recording.

I don't know how it is possible for you to hold such strong opinions about this topic without understanding these concepts.

Definition of musician: a person who writes, sings, or plays music.

If their work is only a recording they can make money off of donations. This is how it works in my example of Hoodie Allen. He was directly telling his fans they could download his album for free and they were still paying for it.

I truly don't see how anything you have said here detracts from what I said.

> Recorded music is the advertising for the musician. I don't understand why I should pay for that advertising. What they are advertising is their ability to perform music and they will receive my money when I pay to watch them perform or purchase their merchandise.

No. Just no. Concerts and merchandise are lame excuses for people who prefer not to pay for music. You don't decide what the artist is selling.

In most cases the album is the actual product. You may see it as an advertisement, but it has a very real price tag attached. If you don't want to pay for it, fine - but please don't feel entitled to it because you attended a concert or bought a shirt. Furthermore, do you realize that not every artist is a rock band? An ambient artist releases intended for home listening, may have a hard time a) selling t-shirts to a mature audience that isn't all that interested in colorful prints on hip shirts

b) filling anything but the smallest venues since the music might be less suited for clubs and stadiums compared to that band you probably had in mind

> I don't get paid for people to use my work without any involvement from me past the fact I created something. Why should a musician be paid for you listening to the music they created. They aren't putting in any hours for me to hear that past the original creation. What are they getting paid for?

I can't believe how naive this sounds. You probably don't sell any kind of digital good, do you? Would you say the same thing about software, apps, books? The artist put a lot of hours into the original work and that's what you pay for. Do you think you paid for the medium or the distribution process back when you bought CDs? That was a fraction of the price.

> On that note... fuck the music industry.

The music industry is much more than the handful of major labels. There are countless small, caring and niche labels that absolutely have the interests of artists and listeners in mind in everything they do. Your view is very narrow in that regard.

Do you not like listening to music from home?

I think you need to read my comment again.