Comment by klez | Hacker News Reader

Comment by klez | Hacker News Reader

If I have an apple, you have an apple and you give me your apple, you remain with no apple and I have two.

If you have an idea, I have an idea and you tell me your idea, we both have two ideas now.

Music is not a good. Your argument is invalid.

If music business would shut down tomorrow I won't lose anyting. It's full of artists using Creative Commons licences that still make music despite not being payed for it.

It's the business model that is wrong. You shouldn't make money from selling CDs. You should make money from live performance. And if you are not a good live performer you won't get a dime for me anyways.

So please stop with the argument of stealing. If I go into a shop and put a CD in my poket, yes, I'm stealing a physical good.

If I download an album from bittorrent I'm not stealing. I wouldn't have bought that album anyways, so it's not a loss for you.

P.S.: before you start with nonsense like "You are not in a position to talk about this", I'm a producer who lets people download his music for free.

Just because you decide to give away your music for free doesn't make you an expert and it doesn't mean that you should be able to make that decision for other content creators. Simply put, if you don't care about it enough to buy it, then you don't need to have a copy. No copy - no problem.

The business model of making something people want is always a good business model. The act of taking things you enjoy from people without paying for them is bad business. It makes continuing to create the content cost prohibitive and ultimately means that you end up with less things you like being made. Not every artist is in a position to tour.

If you want a better comparison, this is like a model letting you take pictures of her for an agreed upon fee, you take the photos, give her the negatives but refuse to pay for the copies you keep. You spread the copies around so nobody else has any reason to pay her for them either. Sure, she has her copy, but you've made it difficult for her to make money from them, and you have not paid for something that she created under the premise that it should only be taken if paid for. She certainly didn't lose anything, oh, except time, dignity, and her rights. Sharing or leaking a CD is basically the same as this. I'm sure you'll argue that you would not have paid for the photos, and that taking copies of them is okay. I tend not to like to engage in things that take advantage of other people, no matter how many steps I am removed.

If the music industry shut down tomorrow you'd have a lot less quality music to listen to. Artists who rely on selling music, licensing it, playing live shows, etc. would have to get day jobs to support themselves, hence have less time to make good music.

Why would you download a song from bittorrent if you have no interest in buying it? Are you just interested in collecting music you don't like?

I don't see much difference between stealing physical goods and intellectual properties. I wonder why you, a music producer, would take the time to defend people who steal music?

About your first point, it's a bit surprising seeing someone on HN saying that.

I'm sure we can agree that free software (as in freedom) is also made for free (as in free beer) and it's on average of good quality, if not better, compared to proprietary software.

About not downloading music since you are not interested, well, I admit you have a good point.

Personally it's been a while since I downloaded music last, so I'll make an example about movies.

I download a movie, watch it, don't like it, never watch it again, delete it from my hard drive. How can I do this if I paid for a movie? Renting? Theater? Yes, that could work.

The important thing, IMHO, is re-balancing the power between the entertainment industries and the consumers.

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About your last point, see the point about free software.

But maybe it's just me. Maybe I don't see a problem in sharing music because it's not a source of income for me. But then I think about professionals like NIN or Radiohead who let people download their album and still manage not not to starve...

My point is still that it's the revenue scheme that needs to change. If a business is not profitable because of technological changes, it needs to adapt or die. Or, as of today, we would have to listen just to live music, because the performers of the time thought that recording music was stealing.

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