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Comment by jim-greer | Hacker News Reader

Hear hear. It's about time that someone pointed out that downloading gigs and gigs of movies, games, and music is just like posting a video of a kitten with copyrighted music in the background.

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The part about the kitten isn't directly relevant to the pirate bay, I'll give you that. Though I look at the cartoon as more of an over all social commentary about our current state of affairs; not "this is our situation."

All too often the copyright lawyers said DMCA takedowns against just such videos. Heck they've sent takedowns to youtube because a person was singing copy written music (cough viacom cough).

As someone already said and I'm sure many others will agree, the current system is broken.

The internet allows for piracy at a scale that far surpasses the scale of sharing tapes among friends, but it's not going away and need to be capitalized on. It's a dirt cheap distribution method that should be used to it's fullest potential.

The argument that a pirated copy equals a lost sale is total bunk. I would have bought maybe 1% of what I've downloaded. Why? Cause the other 99% is crap. And I don't know that until I've heard it. I don't hear it until I download it. The radios are owned and controlled so that the one good song on the whole album is played, and the rest isn't.

If someone can find it I'd be grateful, but WIRED had a chart in an article sometime about 2004 showing that: average length of song is trending down, number of songs per album trending down, number of new artists trending down, number of albums per artist trending down, cost per album trending up, piracy trending up, and sales trending down. So yeah, it must be solely the fault of the internet and those dirty pirates that the music business is slowly falling.....

same goes for movies too, most of them nowadays barely go longer than 1:30.

"If someone can find it I'd be grateful, but WIRED had a chart in an article sometime about 2004 showing that: average length of song is trending down, number of songs per album trending down, number of new artists trending down, number of albums per artist trending down, cost per album trending up, piracy trending up, and sales trending down. So yeah, it must be solely the fault of the internet and those dirty pirates that the music business is slowly falling....."

Uh, what? All those facts seem pretty consistent with artists losing sales due to piracy. Fewer new artists and existing artists making less music could indicate that piracy is taking away incentives for people to make music. Even cost per album could be due to trying to re-coup more revenue from falling sales (not saying this is a rational strategy, but not inconsistent with losing music sales to piracy).

That is the record label's argument verbatim. There is not shortage of new bands or artists and most artists make almost nothing off albums sales. Most touring bands make the majority of their money on merch sales.

> Uh, what? All those facts seem pretty consistent with artists losing sales due to piracy.

All? I don't see the relationship between piracy and the number of songs on an album or song length.

Music competes competes with other things for attention and "wallet share". For example, online gaming is exploding among the population that is not buying as much music.

>"The internet allows for piracy at a scale that far surpasses the scale of sharing tapes among friends, but it's not going away and need to be capitalized on."

With services available like the Pirate Bay, an artist might have millions of fans enjoying his music but there will be no way for him to capitalize on it. The only way I can see to monetize bit torrent for artists are very indirect and way out of proportion to the enjoyment they create, akin to putting google ads on a popular website. Examples include using recorded music as an advertisement for big, expensive concerts and begging people to donate after they already have your music for free.

>"The argument that a pirated copy equals a lost sale is total bunk. I would have bought maybe 1% of what I've downloaded."

How much of that did you actually buy? For many people it is 0%.

Money has flowed out of music lately. The industry as a whole is shrinking. Downloaders sometimes say it is because "music isn't as good as it used to be". The music industry blames it on easy free downloads. I am more inclined to believe the latter. There is still lots of great music out there.

That said, I don't think there is any way to stop what is happening, and it is incumbent on artists that want to survive to deal with it as best they can. Unfortunately, that might mean going back to that day job at Starbucks for most of them.

Musicians have always made a majority of their money from playing live shows(with some large exceptions, obviously). Do you need this backed up with facts? It's pretty well known. Albums are a great way to advertise your live music. It used to cost a ton of money to make a crappy recording. Now it's practically free to create a good recording.

I don't see the point of the recording industry, frankly. I'm not willing to give up my right to share with people in order to ensure that the record companies exist. Sorry. Listen to the crap that is put out by record companies. They control the radio stations. You here the same thing all day, from DJs who don't even know what they are playing. Most of the quality stuff is made without their help, they merely act as a distribution channel.

I see music as being much more home grown in the future. Maybe DJs will once again play what they like instead of what corporations force down our throats. One thing is for sure, if people love music they will continue to make it. We will be left with a lot less crap once the record companies are gone.

And, in this home-grown music future, would people pay for recordings of good music? Or is recorded music just worthless?

I produced a recording last year that cost about $20,000, to get best-of-class session players for the sound I was after. While I'd rather people hear the music than not, even if they don't pay for it, I would sure appreciate folks buying a copy.

Since under his utopia those session players will be basically out of work, they would be a lot cheaper and you could still make your album.

> Examples include using recorded music as an advertisement for big, expensive concerts and begging people to donate after they already have your music for free.

What? But this is exactly how musicians earned their living since the forever.

> Downloaders sometimes say it is because "music isn't as good as it used to be".

That's not true. Many people simply claim that the good stuff isn't being promoted as it should. Instead what you'll see all day on MTV are boy bands.

I do pay for the music I like. Not because I want to reward the artists, but because it's a lot of fun going to the mall, looking at entire shelfs of CDs, meet girls, stuff like that. And when I'm going to a concert I feel the need to re-listen to the songs I just heard.

>"The only way I can see to monetize bit torrent for artists are very indirect and way out of proportion to the enjoyment they create, akin to putting google ads on a popular website."

They don't necessarily have to do it over bit torrent. Television is available over bit torrent as well, and a lot of people use it to download shows. But now that hulu is around a lot of people are getting the same desire met through a channel that compensates the copyright holders.

I'm not sure what the corresponding setup would be for music.

Thats MPAA/RIAA's fault. They spent so much effort enforcing bullshit aspects of copyright, that they lost the goodwill of people to enforce the non-BS portion.

No, it's our fault for having an archaic copyright system that people are still trying to enforce instead of fixing the root issues.

Pray tell me, what are these root issues you speak of? I'm mostly in agreement with vaksel. I don't see how the copyright system has anything to do with how the MPAA/RIAA tries to enforce it's copyright upon meaningless things like dancing videos of babies.

Which by the way happened http://www.switched.com/2008/08/21/dancing-baby-lawsuit-turn...

The DMCA seems to legally broaden the intellectual property rights of mega-corporations in nasty ways. The RIAA, MPAA, and many electronics corporations frequently abuse these rights, while staying within the law.

Maybe the RIAA and MPAA are the good guys. They're just stress-testing the system to work out bugs. Legal loopholes and kinks will be discovered, abused, and patched up much more hastily this way.

Well just to throw it up for consideration, I think granting exclusive rights to a work for "life + 70 years" for an individual and 120 years for a corporation is rather absurd. If the point of copyright was really to encourage artists/writers to produce content, don't you think 25 years would be sufficient time to capitalize on a work? Although I'd even settle for simply "life". The original copyright terms (in 1790) were 14 years with an option to extend once for 14 more.

The current system is in place so corporate copyright owners can continue to profit off their long-dead artist's creations... ahem Disney. Nothing made since 1923 has entered the public domain.

So yeah, the MPAA/RIAA definitely make bone-headed enforcement decisions, but the underlying system is also broken.

IMO, I think life + 20 is reasonable. To avoid upsetting company's like Disney a fee per work to preserve valuable copyright seems reasonable. I would say 10k / year + 5% of the gross sales would be reasonable. That way you promote new works, but don't need to fight corporations that want copy write to last until the end of time. It's also a good divider between works that people are actually interested in preserving from works that generate little income.

I think "life" is sufficient. With that, someone can capitalize on their work for their entire career. Anything past death simply serves to allow offspring to ride the laurels of their parents.

As for corporations, I'd be open to a pay-as-you-go system like you propose, only I'd make the payment grow at some exponential percentage. Say the first year costs $1 and the fee grows by 25% a year. Adjusted for 3% inflation, the fees would be something like:

  Year  Fee/yr
  1     $1
  10    $5.71
  25    $104.17
  50    $13,169
  100   $210 million
  150   $3.36 trillion

This would put a natural limit on corporate copyright, due to their willingness to pay. With this system, Disney would pay $5,659,799 this year for the Mickey Mouse copyright (assuming it started at 10 cents in 1928, which is assuming 3% inflation backwards from now). By 2033 this would be a billion dollars a year... by 2064 a trillion. (Again, at 3% inflation, a trillion dollars in 2064 is like $200 billion today).

lol what if someone commits murder for the sake of obtaining a copyright?

that's not actually that far-fetched if you think about it. well...maybe. big evil corporations are, after all, the stuff of movies haha

The root issue of having copyright laws that enable corporations to sue people for dancing baby videos.

I totally agree. I feel that if something is important, than the message should not be only available to people who can afford to read/hear the message, but should be readily available for anyone who is willing to learn. Whenever I read a great book, or hear a great song, I try to promote it as much as possible because I think that it is important that the artist's message is heard and understood by as many people as possible. Some of my favourite 'artists' (such as Franz Kafka and Carl Sagan) held day jobs in professional/scientific fields. I realize that their material is copyrighted, but my point is that art and learning/the spreading of ideas should be done for the sake of art itself or learning itself, not for the sake of profit. I chose those two as examples because they made their living (for the most part) by working at their day jobs, and created their art because they wanted to deliver a message, not because they wanted to get rich.

If someone gets paid for the art they produce, then they can spend their full time on tuning their art. I wonder what the world would be like if Michaelangelo had a day job.

I hope you're saying this tongue in cheek because Michelangelo (like most of our great artists btw) ofcourse did have a dayjob. He was struggling for money for the better part of his life, taking on jobs that he hated. Where do you think the "poor artist" or "suffering for art" memes come from?

There was no such thing as a "record deal" in the old times either. You had to suffer until your popularity would pay for itself - and without the leverage of mass media, too.

There's a great book about Michelangelo by Irvin Stone that I'd wholeheartly recommend to anyone interested. It's not dry teaching material but his life told in the form of a novel: http://www.amazon.com/Agony-Ecstasy-Biographical-Novel-Miche...

I'm not sure if what you are saying is that creative people should give their stuff away and suffer until the off chance they get popular and get paid? Just because you want to get their stuff for free?

There was no such thing as medical treatment in the old times either, doesn't mean we should stop it. Hell, there was no such thing as reproducing someones creative work for zero cost in the old times either. Does that mean we should stop that?

I think our world is better off by having creative people paid to be creative. I know the RIAA are bad news, but I haven't seen any realistic alternative offered.

I haven't seen any realistic alternative offered

What do you mean by "offered"?

Evolution makes no offers, it selects and extinguishes. In this case it has extinguished the record industry, at least the part that failed to adapt. It also doesn't care much about laws or the outcome of a pirate bay trial.

Time will tell which of the new models can prevail but one thing is already clear: The middleman is gone. The big monopolies that used to shove Britney Spears down our collective throats are mostly gone.

On youtube nobody cares whether you're Britney Spears. If your music is good then people might push the "donate" button. If your music sucks then you can just as well shave your head...

Yes, this will make it probably harder for individual artists to execute their god-given right of raking in millions on end. Cry me a river.

Perhaps I picked a bad example, but for most of his art he was, in fact, paid for it. And it is hard for me to imagine that he would have had the resources to create, say, the Sistine Chapel ceiling if he were doing it for free.

Of course, nowadays our idea of art is a mashup, so maybe that can mix fine with an anti-market ideology.

Michael-Angelo (one of the greatest artists of all time) is as good an example as any. But I think that he was commissioned to do the Sistine Chapel, he didn't paint the Chapel and then charge admission to it (I think the church took care of that).

If the book is to be believed then he was a sculpter at heart and didn't actually like painting much. He was indeed commissioned to do the chapel but I unfortunately can't remember whether he did it out of free will or whether he was pressed to do it.

Thanks for the book recommendation, thats my favourite way to find new material to read. I've put your recommendation on my ever increasing list of books to read this summer.

The reality is that is usually the marketing force behind an artist that generates his revenue, not actually the art itself. I have met so many extraordinary musicians that can shred the guitar and who write very clever music on a daily basis but will never make any money at it unless someone better looking than them takes their music and performs it. Since Meatloaf, I cannot think of any fat pop musicians. Art driven by profits is not always the best art. Coming from eastern Canada, Friday nights and weekends we have caleighs where anyone can pick up an instrument, sing or clap along, and nobody ever holds out for more money to perform. I do agree with your first sentence though, more time spent on art produces better art. But in the case of Carl Sagan who was a scientist, got his inspiration from his day job, which in turn helped him to produce his art (I include his Cosmos series as part of his art, I don't think we need to get into the debate of what is and isn't art). Its more of a sad reality that most art needs money to exist. I'm not calling for an art revolution or anything, I just wanted to point this out as some food for thought. Inspiration can come from anywhere.

Going at art in this way is backwards from the direction that children need to be taught. Not everyone is a potential scientist, or businessman...What about children who are born to be dancers? Or musicians? With this mind set, the arts will slowly degrade as children are shunned away from them due to an assumed "lack of money" in the business.

I don't believe that any job exists a priori in any person. Although if I were born with a better voice I would be a better singer. Bob Dylan wasn't blessed with a beautiful voice (as opposed to Bocelli) but he is still a great singer because he had the passion to learn how to sing. Nobody is born to be a dancer or accountant, these are skills that must be learned and developed.

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