KISS frontman on P2P: "Sue them all" | Hacker News Reader

KISS frontman on P2P: "Sue them all"

arstechnica.com

25 pointstwymer36 comments

Old blowhard hard wants to use the law to preserve his revenue stream rather then innovate. News at 11.

The funny part is that he is innovating to increase revenue, but that his "sue everyone" plan will kill off that stream, too.

He wants to have KISS-branded TVs. Fine. But if nobody listens to KISS, then the brand will be worthless. If he starts suing people who know what is brand is, he'll be tarnishing its reputation. Nobody cares about legally right, they care that he sues 7-year-olds and grandmas. So then the brand is destroyed, and the branded-crap revenue stream falls off, too.

Artists should not run businesses.

Neither should executives, apparently. At least in the music industry.

KISS was always a business proposition. They never cared about making music and I don't think they ever pretended to.

What does that even mean, as a criticism?

Has not KISS made better music than thousands of other bands who "cared about music" more? I'm pretty ambivalent about KISS myself, but they make music which many people enjoy and which is technically pretty good by rock 'n roll standards, so what does it mean to impugn their motives?

No, this is not criticism. KISS have repeatedly stated that they are in it for the money, not the music. If they don't get paid (well) they wont play, it's that simple. They don't "jam" with other bands, they know the songs that they perform and that's about it.

They are the Microsoft of the music industry.

His intention was to give advice to aspiring musical artists. Someone who cares about the music they make, rather than just the money they can get for it, might not have the same interests as KISS and might find those interests hindered by suing all their fans.

Kiss was a Rock n' Roll band with all that entails. Business was one part of it, Music another. Sex a third.

Their live performances are what made them, and it is no coincidence that Alive was their breakthrough album. It was a strategy later followed by Peter Frampton and Cheap Trick.

Edit: They weren't the hottest band in the land when Alive was recorded. But a year later they were.

Distribution is no longer a task that requires an industry to carry out. Just because at some point in the past you were able to sell a service that people needed doesn't guarantee that service will always be a viable revenue stream. The record companies are still useful for promotion, but not too much else. Trying to keep an old business model around through litigation when there is no need for it, simply because it was profitable at one point, is a waste of time.

The problem has less to do with the companies than it does with us.

As Eric Schmidt said in his Atlantic interview, 70% of the laws are written by lobbyists. The masses clearly aren't outraged enough by this process, and industries with decrepit business models get away with using the legal system to protect themselves.

If people came out for fairer copyright laws in the same numbers that the Tea Partyers do, don't you think some politicians would take heed?

Yea I'm sure Mr Simmons wasn't swapping cassette tapes when he was a kid. These people have short memories..

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Gene Simmons was born in 1948, and cassette tapes didn't come into widespread consumer use until the mid-70s.

So, no, I'm sure he wasn't swapping cassette tapes as a kid. He was probably saving up to buy records.

But he probably was going to music venues to listen to records without the appropriate public performance rights.

Old, rich rock stars are apparently more 'old, rich people' than they are 'rockstars.'

Fun facts: Gene Simmons was born as Chaim Witz in Haifa, Israel, and at one point planned on being a rabbi.

Fun fact 2: Gene wasn't the frontman, Paul Stanley was. :)

Fun fact 3: I'm submitting for dishonorable discharge from the KISS army because of this article :(

Now that's the real spirit of rock and roll!

Damn the <strike>people-who-use-P2P-to-legimately-purchase-music-after-doing-a-taste-test</strike> man!

The music industry should realize that piracy is a good thing. Nobody listens to KISS (or pirates KISS), but because there are no good numbers on piracy, they can blame piracy instead of their own inability to create good music.

If they eliminate piracy, then they'll have nobody to blame but themselves.

A little miffed here at what seems to be the HN consensus. Stealing is not okay. It's not sound ethical reasoning to point to the fact that someone is wealthy, technophobic, or might not otherwise have fame to justify not paying for their content.

Piracy is not the only way to sample content, nor is it the only way to acquire DRM-free music online.

EDIT: Interesting that some folks are acting like they are not advocating privacy, only revolt over how stringent the fines are.

1) That's clearly not what the consensus is. Most of the top comments to this forum are ad hominem attacks on KISS over the quality of their music, or their somehow "not getting" how piracy HELPS them (which is hilarious).

2) The expected value of your fine is reasonable. It's the probability of you getting caught times the fine. That in essence is your calculus when you decide to download an album for free instead of paying for it, that your expected loss is still less than the cost per CD. Seen in this light the fine is set appropriately.

Murder is also not okay.

No one's talking about murder or stealing, though, they're talking about copyright infringement.

Thank you for making this point, because it's the crux of the argument. If I steal something from you, I deprive you that object. So, when I steal your physical car, you no longer have a car (that you could resell or use).

When you download a song/album, you have a copy of it. It doesn't deprive the original owner/artist from continuing to sell it.

I just looked through the comments again, and... I can't find anybody who says that stealing is OK. The issue at hand is that the response is often grossly out of proportion and just destructive to both parties.

What about the guy who said "The music industry should realize that piracy is a good thing."

Just because it's good for the music industry doesn't mean it's okay.

Scale of OK-ness:

1) Downloading a KISS album from BitTorrent:

A little bit not-OK

2) Prosecuting some kid who downloads a KISS album from BitTorrent, costing him or his family tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars:

Extremely not-OK

That's silly. If you agree that something is both illegal and immoral, then how is prosecution not an appropriate response?

It's the proportionality of the prosecution. If it was a hundred dollar fine and 10 hours of community service, that would be a different story.

Let's put it this way: why should "stealing" a 99c song be any different than shoplifting a 99c candy bar?

You can't own a song, but you can own a candy bar.

As much as the ads say "own the cd now" or "own the blu ray now" you own nothing. You are just paying for a license and some otherwise useless physical media.

Having said that, I still don't get why paying 99 cents for a song is so egregious if you've got a job.

Yeah, the analogy to physical goods obviously doesn't hold; I just think it's funny that the same people who compare copyright violation to theft also tend to advocate suing for incredibly large amounts, when stealing the same physical item has a drastically smaller punishment.

Interestingly enough, I suspect that if Big Media hadn't sought such absurdly punitive damages in the early days, (destroying what little credibility and moral high ground they had), most average people would have sided with them and aided in social enforcement. Something like, say, the cost of the infringing material plus a $100 fine would go a lot further to aid their cause than $100k lawsuits.

I think he's arguing that the scale of the punishment is not just. People get charged up to several hundred thousand dollar fines for downloading a tiny amount of music.

I'd agree that's unjust. Got links to any cases where people have had to pay several hundred thousand dollar fines for downloading (rather than uploading) songs?

I'm not sure what the current state of law is. Morally speaking, I don't believe that people should be paying those kinds of fines for either downloading or uploading in "casual" use ("casual" meaning that they're not original distributors of the material.)

The judgments that I immediately recall are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_v._Tenenbaum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_v._Thomas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMG_Music_v._Gonzalez

If KISS carefully identified infringers and sued them in small-claims court for the cost of the lost track sale + maybe even 10x for the trouble, I think they'd actually be applauded. The problem is that the US copyright system is downright evil. The copyright infringers come out as the good guys just because the other side is so horrible. I know a lot of people in IP fields who still tend to side with the pirates, not because they really think illegal downloading is a good thing, but just because they can't morally side with the status quo.

Has anyone been sued for serious money just for downloading?

Or have all the cases been people who were also uploading (and hence potentially costing far more than one sale)?

It's true that nobody has been explicitly sued for downloading, but in practice they have never shown any likelihood that the person uploaded to other people, so the real liability is essentially just having the track in your P2P client's media folder. It's a very hand-wavy way to sue people for downloading. Simmons advocates for suing "downloaders," but the actual suits would undoubtedly look much like the ones we've seen so far.

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