+1 Winder...
You nailed it! I'm an amateur pianist and I will attest that the competition in the music industry is insane. But people always value a live performance because there's just something pleasant about it, something more human and "real" about people actually playing instruments as opposed to just cranking up a CD.
But the recording industry has the effect of crowding out all but the "select few". Music - particularly pop music - is an inherently "diverse" line of production... people want variety, a variety of music from a variety of artists. The copyright protections are reducing the amount of variety and squeezing out innumerable potential artists in favor of endowing a few chosen artists with untold fortunes and this is sold to us as "capitalism", the "necessary risk/reward to incentivize musical production"... complete and total nonsense.
Clayton -
Tex & Phi - thanks for those suggestions, I will check thos eout properly and come back to the discussion - seems like they are a prerequisite.
Basically I'm learning, and I'm here with an open mind, but with issues / questions I'm trying to resolve - so I don't know which side of the argument I'm going to come down on yet. I see benefits both ways, but my final concern is simply *in principle* (which I believe logically is always going to work out to be the best *practical* concern as well, it just naturally follows), what is logically the most practical, just, sound etc system. If that turns out to be a world without IP, so be it. I don't believe in compromise to the point that if I had to just work out something else to do, well I'll just have to do that.
Clayton don't you think the monopolistic media empire is the ones who create that homogenised sound through content filtration and by rewarding a sound that they deem is what people want - McDonaldising music? - and I believe that social control / social design has a lot do with why they do that and what material is selected for a start. It's not music it's mostly mind numbing garbage. The internet is the antidote to that of course, but mainline media still has the iron fist on these things. Their monopolism is really due to the federal reserve system ultimately - at the higher level it's not about music but about corporate homogeny, so the music is irrelevant at that stage. They know they can sell anything to the dumbed down masses if they tell them it's the new thing. I don't see how copyright is causal in that.
Their monopolism is really due to the federal reserve system ultimately - at the higher level it's not about music but about corporate homogeny, so the music is irrelevant at that stage. They know they can sell anything to the dumbed down masses if they tell them it's the new thing. I don't see how copyright is causal in that.
Have you read the links that have been provided? In particular, have you read Against Intellectual Monopoly? If so, how are they failing to make the connection between copyrights and the piss-poor quality of modern music, for example?
No I haven't read those yet, I'm going to do that - I do have other things to do, so I'll do that as soon as I can.
Well, I think those resources - particular AIM - will help you see the connection. The Fed is not to blame for Justin Bieber. The recording industry is - through their ultra-powerful lobby in Washington.
To give you an idea of what is wrong with copyrights, just check out this YouTube search. Now, when the YT user who wrote this ("artofcounterpoint", Giovanni Dettori) released it about a year and a half ago, there was only just one rendition that a friend of his did on piano. Since then it has exploded (it's "viral" by classical music standards!) and look how many different renditions and variations. These are all based around a theme that Lady Gaga - on the strict view of intellectual "property" - owns. Shouldn't these people all be paying her - actually, her label - royalties? What an absurdity! The fact is that no one owns any patterns, sounds, numbers or any abstract thing. And this is precisely the powerhouse of human creativity, the very engine that is driving human progress.
Edit: There was a video posted in the low-content threads some time back... a young, hip-looking guy, released through TED but not a TED speech... basically he goes on a riff about how ideas mix together... can someone find this?
Edit again: One more note on the Lady Gaga Fugue: What people don't realize about the "boring" classical composers like Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, etc. is that their music sounded to the ears of their contemporaries just as this LG fugue does to your ears. You hear a well-recognized folk (popular) tune/theme, surrounded by a musical tapestry that provides greater depth and variation to the bare theme. Much of Bach's music was based on folk themes of the time. Daniel Dennett discusses this in one of his lectures and terms Bach the "first memetic breeder", that is, the first individual to consciously apply principles of artificial selection to memes.
What I do is sell my work and the only way my work is able to be sold is if it's protected as an idea that nobody else can just arbitrarily copy and produce.
@Mike The key word is sold. You made a trade with another person, your music in exchange for money. If you did not want them to have it, then why do you sell it? I disagree that without IP no one would buy your music. It has to get out in the first place, and the only other way besides stealing it from you would be to buy.
Also, ideas are limited in supply, that's the point of IP, to keep the idea limited. Ideas are limited by the number of people that know it and the number of available resources to impliment it. If 50 out of 100 people know how to make a paper airlplane then that knowledge is limited, if there is only 20 pieces of paper to make the plane then it is again limited.
Well I will try not to comment further until I get through that material, and I've been busy all day so haven't had a chance, then I'll try to comment on what you've said. Maybe I'll agree with you. I have to say my position when I started posting on here was 50/50, which is why I posted.
But in regards to music sales, sure the first 100 - 1000 people may buy the album or song but very soon someone is going to repost it for free, and people will just go there. So that argument doesn't make sense.
As for the Gaga argument, I don't disagree with you, there is no argument that those people playing her music owe her money. Those are performance royalties... the question is are they making money off it? Then yes I think if they are making money on the back of someone elses song, because they can't write their own song, they should pay a percentage royalty. My point is more about, if someone now is taking a Lady Gaga CD and copying it and distributing free mp3's to everyone, you're saying that's a good thing for the artist?
Consider if the first farmer had copyrighted the art of growing corn. He copyrighted how he put a seed in the ground, covered it up with dirt, fertilized it with organic matter, kept the weeds off it, then harvested it when it was ready. How is his idea different from the idea of a song? Or would it be best for society if everyone who wanted to eat or raise corn had to pay royalties to his descendants? Maybe we should find the descendants of the man who invented the wheel, the world owes them a ton of royalties!
The only one worth following is the one who leads... not the one who pulls; for it is not the direction that condemns the puller, it is the rope that he holds.
Mike99:But in regards to music sales, sure the first 100 - 1000 people may buy the album or song but very soon someone is going to repost it for free, and people will just go there. So that argument doesn't make sense.
People pirate the songs/games/movies already even with draconian "IP Protection" in place. What happens with the digital age now is that the marginal cost of copying data has fallen to near 0.
What has to happen instead of complaining about people not paying you, is competing using alternative methods (aka, being an entrepeneur).
As was mentioned previously with the examples of Steam, Amazon Prime, Netflix. They came up with a way to compete against the pirates in the realm of delivery, and trustworthiness. Those companies have made it so easy and dirt cheap to deliver you the goods that you want, many people will shift towards actually paying for the content instead of pirating. You are guaranteed to get the product that you want and paid for, and the companies have their reputations on the line if something goes wrong.
There are also different methods of selling games such as the Humble Bundle (pay any price that you want for this bundle of games, if you pay above the average you get extra goodies), you can release free albums on your site and have a "pay whatever price you want" button. You could be paid by advertisers, or referrals (join site XYZ using this link, and they give me a % of the sale). You can have things like Kickstarter where if you hit a certain limit, you will release your album/book/whatever, (and those who donate beyond certain Intervals can get extra goodies... for example, a signed copy).
You will never get rid of the pirates, even if you charged $.01 for your song, but those people were never your customers in the first place! If you watched that video I linked to earlier... you have to give your customers a REASON TO BUY.
Mike99:My point is more about, if someone now is taking a Lady Gaga CD and copying it and distributing free mp3's to everyone, you're saying that's a good thing for the artist?
Yes, it is a fantastic thing. For example, I listen to metal. You will never hear metal on the radio, I had no friends that listened to metal (couldn't borrow a CD), I had no one to talk to about it, I would never have known such music existed. A long time ago, I put on a patch and stumbled into the land of pirates, I found one metal song/band and enjoyed it, I took a look at what other music this person shared. From there, it expanded to two bands, then three, then five, and now into every single band I like now. I have purchased many of their CDs, I have visited them in concert, and I have bought a few of the band's shirts.
A key thing to note as well is... I have spread the word of these bands to many of my friends, who in turn have spread the word to their friends, and on and on. This all occured because of me pirating and finding bands I enjoyed all those years ago. All of this would not have been possible without that initial piracy! Think of all the great things that pirate did for the world, he has made those bands hundreds/thousands of dollars which otherwise would have never occured!
While you are only focusing on the DIRECT benefits (getting paid by someone who purchases the songs), there are many indirect benefits created by releasing the ideas/music/books for free. For example, the stance that the Mises Institute takes on books. Most publishers think giving books away for free is madness, well the Institute has shown that it actually allows MORE physical books to be sold than ever before (plus spread the ideas to every corner of the globe).
I recommend these two speeches by Jeffrey Tucker:
https://mises.org/media/3087/Dissident-Publishing-Then-and-Now
The Evils of Intellectual Property:
https://mises.org/media/4255
Two side notes. Since Jeffrey Tucker has moved onto Laissez Faire Books, he has created a LFB Book Club. You pay $10 a month, and you get exclusive forums where everyone can discuss the books, you get Jeff Tucker's reviews/interviews, and you get a free ebook every single week. Sure, you can have people releasing those books for free on the internet (I don't believe Jeff Tucker would mind that though), but LFB has created a reason to buy, you have many people paying the $10 a month because it is such a great value!
http://lfb.org/
Also Tom Woods has created his Liberty Classroom, $99 a year and you get massive amounts of lectures teaching you History.
http://www.libertyclassroom.com/
Phi, only I'm not talking about copyrighting the idea of a "song" - I'm talking about copyrighting "a" song.
I know there is piracy today, the point is without any laws or anything then people could just go at it 100%.
Thank you Tex, that's a good practical example that I can relate to. I'll check those links out when I'm done with the first links I haven't managed to get around to checking out yet, and get back to you! Thanks again for the suggestions.
Mike99:I know there is piracy today, the point is without any laws or anything then people could just go at it 100%.
If you listen to the IP course by Kinsella, he covers this very topic. Most of the people who discuss IP (ESPECIALLY on the pro-IP side), know nothing about actual IP Law, they just assume that is how IP Law works, but nothing can be further from the truth. Copyrights and Patents are monopoly grants by the state in order to stop a third party from using their own physical property in a given way, for an arbitrary amount of time. Kinsella can explain it much better than I can... so get to listening to those lectures!!! :D
It is also great to look at sectors which have no Intellectual Monopoly protection (Recipes, Fashion/Clothing), or sectors which did not have patents until recently (software).
You can copy any recipes you want and say they are your own, you can put them online for all to see.... But there are still massive amounts of cookbooks being sold. Who would buy these when the recipes are free for anyone to use/copy?
A particular cookbook might be laid out in an innovative way, or a way which specifically fits your needs (Breakfast/Lunch/Desert, Low Sodium, Chicken/Beef/Lamb/Octopus). Perhaps it can be a cookbook completely dedicated towards Sushi, maybe the images that you take of the food makes the book much more appealing towards customers. You can make the food at home if you wanted, but sometimes it just "doesn't turn out right." People still pay chefs to cook for them as it is more convenient than going out and buying all of your own ingredients and spending your time.
The First Mover Advantage (Against Intellectual Monopoly covers this very well) is a huge deal in the realm of ideas. A great example in Fashion is Uggs. There are people who pay a premium for the official Uggs over the knockoff brands, and there was a good deal of time (months/years) before many competitors started to create the same style of shoe. Over time, other companies chip in with their own versions (lower quality, different materials, slightly different styles), but the Ugg name has already gotten the foot in the door and can sell at a premium above those versions.
Here is a fascinating TED talk on the subject of Fashion:
http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html
Against Intellectual Monopoly also does a fascinating job of looking at the history and also countries which did not have patents/copyrights, with those that did. For a long time the United States did not recognize foreign copyrights. If I remember correctly, they compare the sales of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol", and how well it sold in the US (no copyright), and Great Britain (copyrighted). He made more royalties from the "pirated" US sales, than he did in Great Britain, while the US version of the books were much much cheaper than the British counterparts, and much more widespread.
Another area that has no copyrights is government documents. Against Intellectual Monopoly goes through the example of the "9/11 Commission Report", and how even though anyone can get the documents and print them, there is still lots of money to be made for being a First Mover.
Mike99:Thank you Tex, that's a good practical example that I can relate to. I'll check those links out when I'm done with the first links I haven't managed to get around to checking out yet, and get back to you! Thanks again for the suggestions.
You are welcome.
Ok, the rest of your argument notwithstanding - regarding books you aren't explaining how bootleggers fit into this. You say recipies are freely gotten, so why would anyone buy a book, but why would they buy YOUR book, when they can buy the copy for half the price, from someone who didn't take the troulbe to take the pictures, lay out the text, take the risk of marketing it before finding it had a market, select the recipies etc.
Ok and sorry re Charles Dickens yes I know about early US copyright laws / lack of them and that's a compelling argument but you say he made more money from US royalties?? How could that be if people were selling his books and not paying him?
By the way, totally OT, but since you brought up Dickens, I love this article;
http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer93.html
Phi ok let me come back to you.
a) Most musicians are dying for people to just hear a few of their songs, let alone get paid for it.
b) If something can be done so cheaply that people will do it for free, then shouldn't that be a hint that it's a very low-value activity and that it doesn't make sense for the recording industry to be raking in billions of dollars for doing something that can be done practically for free today?
c) The net effect of all that "pirating" is that people's stuff gets heard. BitTorrent is, in effect, a broadcasting system.
d) Value-add and marketing questions are always solvable. By your theory, no one should have ever set up the first TV or radio broadcast station... there was no way to earn a revenue. But then the broadcasters discovered bundling... they just slip in advertisements between content and voila, a broadcast station is a revenue-generating business.
Doesn't matter how artists solve the problem. They might do it through bundling. They might do it by periodical release of "certified" copies that come with special perks such as artwork books, interviews, making-of, raw studio recordings and so on. And if you know at the outset your stuff is going to be copied, you can plan your releases in a staggered form so as to maximize your "lead" (hence, revenue) over the copiers.
And, finally, you can actually perform your stuff live... imagine that! There was a time when performers performed. Of course, dinosaurs roamed the Earth and head-hunting cannibals gorged themselves on the bowels of their fellow man in the darkest caverns and life was generally like a Bosch painting of perdition.
As for the Gaga argument, I don't disagree with you, there is no argument that those people playing her music owe her money. Those are performance royalties... the question is are they making money off it? Then yes I think if they are making money on the back of someone elses song, because they can't write their own song, they should pay a percentage royalty.
Who's to say which is which? Lady Gaga certainly couldn't have written the Lady Gaga Fugue, so maybe she should be paying Mr. Dettori royalties since he is generating free publicity for her with music she could never have written. This is silly.
My point is more about, if someone now is taking a Lady Gaga CD and copying it and distributing free mp3's to everyone, you're saying that's a good thing for the artist?
I don't know whether it's good or bad - for the vast majority of artists, it's good, for a few of the biggest names, yes, it's bad for them. It's not stealing from them, that's for sure.
The thing you seem to keep getting caught up on is how are YOU going to make a living doing what you do now in a free society... but this is a personal issue. Obviously, it is worthy to discuss, and there have been many suggestions in this thread on how it could be done. But you need to be an entrepreneur; you need to take risks; you need to innovate. There must be enough value to others to buy what you want to sell. To beg for copyrights to remain in place (not that you are) is to beg for a special privilege, and one that could only be provided by the state, meaning it cannot coexist with a free society. In one way, its similar to how ages ago, the people that copied books by hands felt about the printing press. How could they go on making a living if the government wouldn't grant them some sort of special privilege? They were fighting technology. And the world is better off that they lost. Those that fight the ability of consumers to cheaply make digital copies with a computer are in the same boat as the old scribes. For the same of humanity, and its advancement, and most of all liberty (we are talking about the free flow of ideas), I hope technology win again. It always has.
As a side note, instead of you doing seperate replies to each post, I would recommend using the board's quoting system (slightly broken). After you click the Reply button, if you take a look at the address bar you will see a "&Quote=False", change that from "False" to "True". Or you can do it the manual way and type (change the <> into [] ): <quote>This is text you want to quote</quote>
Or you can use the format:
<quote user="USERNAME YOU WANT HERE">This is text you want to quote</quote>
I then just copy/paste verything into Notepad and do the work there. One larger post with quotes is much more preferable to 4 small ones.
Mike99:Ok, the rest of your argument notwithstanding - regarding books you aren't explaining how bootleggers fit into this. You say recipies are freely gotten, so why would anyone buy a book, but why would they buy YOUR book, when they can buy the copy for half the price, from someone who didn't take the troulbe to take the pictures, lay out the text, take the risk of marketing it before finding it had a market, select the recipies etc.
I will only sign the official version of my cookbook!
Mike99:Ok and sorry re Charles Dickens yes I know about early US copyright laws / lack of them and that's a compelling argument but you say he made more money from US royalties?? How could that be if people were selling his books and not paying him?
Mike99:Well I will try not to comment further until I get through that material....
Against Intellectual Property goes into the Principled arguments.
Jeff Tucker's speeches are just fun, and covers books and the realm of ideas.
Kinsella's course covers IP Laws themselves and a ton of questions/concerns.
The other videos I pointed you to are giving ideas on ways to compete, and how people currently DO compete in sectors with no protection.
@Phi: +1
Not me, not in that sense.
They can only get the music for free after I produce it and they copy it for nothing.
Yes but it's one that doesn't pay.
I'm sure somebody thought of that before they went to air...
Again, except for the value of just being famous and signing stuff, nothing I'm interested in - nobody gets paid. Certainly not the producer of the valuable "thing" - the music. Anyway, again I keep resonding to arguments and I'm not up to speed yet on what has already been suggested. So I'm trying to hold back!
I may do that, but that isn't the point of my argument. A musical recording and the things you can do in a studio are not possible on a live stage. It's another thing. Do people buy more copies of Dark Side of the Moon in DSD or HD or live concerts? I bet you it's more than 10:1 at best. You argument in this regard is, with respect, from my point of view verging on the disingenous.
Now that IS disingenous... I don't see how you're making a connection bewteen someone writing a song and someone writing a song about someone else and using their name in the title which is perfectly acceptable. This is the thing, I'm not coming in here telling anyone how to do things I'm new to this forum, but to my mind the theories and the education available in this school of thought is revolutionary and should have become mainstream over 100 years ago but it didn't - and a side thought I have to all this is *why*. Aside from the money interests having their hand to play in things, so far at least from yourself in particular I'm getting the impression of a bit of arrogance, as in "you don't agree, well, too bad". Well, that's fine and you're free to say that, but you're not going to win people over. So the question then is, is this all just theory or do you actually believe it's possible to impliment this so-called free society some day with a proper degree of practical success. It has to become the overwhelmingly populist approach, and it's only going to do that by appealing to people's reason, and if people get the impression that they can go to hell if they don't agree, they're going to say "well go to hell with you then". You know, that's how people are. That's just my thoughts on the issue, I don't make any judgements about anyone per se. It's just my impression. But you know... if I'm wrong, kindly show me (and there have been many helpful suggestions I haven't caught up on because I keep responding!)
I don't care so much about the biggest names, much like you don't really care about me haha - in the sense that yes mostly their income from their music is exaggerated and bloated by the system not by actual talent, so it's almost entirely artificial at best. But for everyone in the wide swathe in the middle band of things, from just above the very bottom to underneath the bottom of the top that huge band there that's everyone else.
Tex, I'm going to try to keep my replies in one message from now on. I don't believe in "saving industries". At all. I get that. I think intellectual property is just that, intellectual. nobody responded by the way to my posts about the mind, nature of reality, how property itself is an abstract fiction of the mind that unless we agree on it, doesn't exist - all law is mental / imaginary. That was in dispute of the notion that IP is fictional. So is everything from that point of view if you're saying it only exists in the mind. I don't accept the argument of taking it to the extreme.
Ok, that said I'm going to shut up now, and really use will power to just not say anything further becuase I'll probably be back here contradicting myself once I check out all that material. Thanks again.
Then you're not most musicians.
b) If something can be done so cheaply that people will do it for free, then shouldn't that be a hint that it's a very low-value activity and that it doesn't make sense for the recording industry to be raking in billions of dollars for doing something that can be done practically for free today? They can only get the music for free after I produce it and they copy it for nothing.
Ask yourself: If I produce a razor-edged-back-scratcher, is it therefore valuable? The fact that you recorded something does not in and of itself make that recording valuable.
The real issue here, as one of the other posters above already identified, is that you are married to a particular business model and you want to use the force of government (IP law) to impose that business model on consumers, regardless of the un-aggressive choices of consumers themselves. "I record, you buy." Who died and appointed you (generic) King? If it is not possible to profitably produce music solely on the basis of recording and releasing it, then - in a society where aggressive force is never justifiable - too bad. Pick a different line of work. Find another way to sell your skills. Boohoo.
Figure out how to make it pay and get rich.
Again, except for the value of just being famous and signing stuff, nothing I'm interested in - nobody gets paid. Certainly not the producer of the valuable "thing" - the music.
Go back and re-read what I wrote, for comprehension.
Anyway, again I keep resonding to arguments and I'm not up to speed yet on what has already been suggested. So I'm trying to hold back!
I know it's difficult to resist. There's nothing I'm saying here that you won't read in Boldrin & Levine... Read it!
Nothing disingenuous about it at all. 100 years ago, the only way to get paid, if you were a musician, was to perform. Lots of musicians make a living performing today. Where's the disingenuity?
so far at least from yourself in particular I'm getting the impression of a bit of arrogance, as in "you don't agree, well, too bad". Well, that's fine and you're free to say that, but you're not going to win people over.
Yes, that's me... winning friends and influencing people.
So the question then is, is this all just theory or do you actually believe it's possible to impliment this so-called free society some day with a proper degree of practical success.
I think that's a separate subject. IP is certainly no obstacle to free society... only in a small number of countries in the so-called developed world is there anything like strong IP law. The rest of the world already gets it: if it's published, it's fair game.
It has to become the overwhelmingly populist approach, and it's only going to do that by appealing to people's reason, and if people get the impression that they can go to hell if they don't agree, they're going to say "well go to hell with you then". You know, that's how people are. That's just my thoughts on the issue, I don't make any judgements about anyone per se. It's just my impression. But you know... if I'm wrong, kindly show me (and there have been many helpful suggestions I haven't caught up on because I keep responding!)
First of all, I just don't care because I can clearly see that the system of control is here to stay for a long, long time. So what's the point in making myself a target of the Establishment by "strategizing"? Furthermore, the success of the system makes the vast majority of people ideologically un-reachable. They are zealously enslaved to the Establishment. The idea of a "popular anti-statism movement" makes as much sense as a "popular atheism movement."
Second, every "strategy" has been tried before, and they have all failed for the simple reason that any organization can be infiltrated and subverted by very virtue of the fact that it's an organization. The process is no different than territorial imperialism. Invade, cut off the head, install a puppet, and force the existing government apparatus to fork over a sizable chunk of its taxes in the form of tribute, but in the case of ideological imperialism, it's not about money so much as ideas.
Third, there is one strategy that hasn't been tried and will work. In fact, it's the only one that will work: secession. When we reach a point where people's brains are de-programmed and unscrambled to the point where you can have a discussion about secession with someone off the street without the word "slavery" being the first thing to pop into their head, then we might be in a position to resume forward progress toward liberty. In the meantime, the Establishment is winning on every front.
Clayton
Finally found it... Jason Silva's Radical Openness.
The fact that you recorded something does not in and of itself make that recording valuable.
so simple, yet so profound(ly hard for so-called musicians to understand).
On that note, a recording I recently made:
Oh now that's just going too far with the silly arguments. Now I may end up agreeing with you in principle at the end of this, but what is hard for NON musicians to understand that a performance is just one aspect of a studio recording, it's not that simple as just performing and playing the notes. Go ask Pink Floyd to do Dark Side of the Moon *again*.
Hand-crafted, razor-edged backscratcher for sale. Laser sharpened, folded-steel blades requiring over 10,000 hours to construct. Priceless. Cost to you is my labor only at $20/hr. comes to $200,000. Serious inquiries only, please.
Making something that requires a lot of work does not entail you to compensation.
Is it just me or is that a completely nonsensical argument? It is to me.
What are you talking about?
You're saying that as in your opinion my product has no value and is idiotic therefore the principle is void? I'm not asking you to agree to value. I'm trying to find out in principle if it is property. If it is, then it can't be stolen with impunity in a lawful society. That said, I'm still out for break - but I had to reply just for the fact that the argument is nonsense and out of context.
I have a house for sale, it's worth $1m . Serious enquiries only please.
???
What if I give my CD away to someone for free, or sell it in a garage sale? what's the difference between that and digital copies. When I was younger I would make cassessetes off of my friends CD's and record songs off the radio. I did not pay for these, what's the difference?
I don't have a problem with that. That's going to happen in any society. I'm talking about, if you raise the limit and make IP no longer property, it's a free for all. When you sell the CD, you're selling the music on the physical item, now you don't have it anymore. If you kept a copy, AND sold the CD, I wouldn't say that was ethical, but I'm not saying you should be criminalised for it. But if you take the CD, make a million copies, and sell those with nothing for the maker of the music that is turning those cheap blank CD's into something more valuable, besides the production of burning them - that's what I'm talking about.
For those who keep insisting that it's worthless, please watch this video, by the way:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SY5hI98HEi0#!
But you're still ignoring how value comes about. You don't get to decide what the value is. The consumer decides what the value is. So the fact is, if you sell an album for $10, and sell 1000 copies, and a few of those people make copies and sell them for 50¢, and sell a combined 100,000 copies, the fact is that more people value the album at 50¢ than at $10. Meaning so far, the average market value for the album is 59¢. Meaning, you are trying to sell the album at about 17 times market value. Tell me: how well is someone going to do in the market when they try to sell gasoline for $63.75/gallon when everyone else is selling at an average of $3.75/gallon? What if the one selling for 17 times market value is the one who discovered how to take crude oil and turn it into gasoline? It was his intellectual idea on doing that, shouldn't he be able to force people to pay 17 times market value? Wouldn't society be richer if we had to spend so much for something that could be done cheaper?
No. Now, if the guy who came up with the idea and technique to refine crude oil into gasoline wants, he can charge whatever amount he wants to show someone how to refine the crude into gasoline. This would be analogous to giving a consumer the ability to copy the music (by putting it on a disc that canbe read and copied by a computer).
And should someone figure out how to refine the crude themselves, on their own, they owe the first guy to do it nothing. This would be analogous to someone writing and playing the same song as a previous artist.
Has is helped you understand the stance against IP any better?
Decision of value takes place on both sides of the transaction and then is agreed upon or not. But I'm realy befuddled here guys, your arguments just don't make sense to me and I can't put my finger on why yet. Don't you get what a music recording is? It's not a piece of paper, or a gallon of gas or a piece of wood. It's a piece of art that can be duplicated. If I want to sell more copies I can drop the price *myself*. As the seller in the marketplace I can determine where the price point is for quantity of sales versus individual sale price that works best for me and my customers. I mean don't you get that someone is taking my work and selling it while doing no work?
I have no problem with someone writing their own song, emulating or copying a recording technique or style - those things can't be patented. But a recording is a discreet individual unique tangible item I suppose *that* is my argument. You say it is not. You say it is like so much "air". I breath, you breath, we all breath, you can't copyright the air, you say. That is the fundamental crux of the argument, if I'm not mistaken. And I maintain that a recording, something I created, is my property. Now you say also that IP laws puts a restriction on what people can do with their own faculties - it means they can't use their own property the way they see fit - they can't burn a thousand discs and sell them with their own computer, or something of that nature. Fine, but isn't that what all law does - I mean the law says you can't use your physical body to go and kill someone else, or rob them, or damage their property. You may have a car, it's your property but you may not drive it into someone's bedroom wall with impunity. To say "you can't stop someone driving into a property with their own car if you make a law against it" is a nonsensical argument to me. Of course you can't, but if you say there's no law against it, and it's actually free to interpretation - ie that there is no consequence, not damage or harm done by doing so, then a lot more people are going to do it than would otherwise. Perhaps more to your point, there is no recourse for the injured party.
Of cousre I'm against these spurious IP laws that criminalise end users. And I remain undecided. But I have to say, your arguments so far are unconvincing because they really literally seem weak and nonsensical to me - I'm sorry. I may change my mind. But that's my point of view so far, I remain really unconvinced.
Again the core argument is DO I have a piece of property in something that I have created. Yes you can go do the same. I promise you it will never be the same. If the public does or does not see value in the uniqueness of what I or you have done, that is our problem individually, and our benefit if they DO see the value - isn't that like any other free market transaciton. NO product is guaranteed value. Again, the question is simply is IP property. Is an album I have created property. In my opinion so far you will lose a lot of thinking people with these arguments, they will simply turn away from this school of thought because this aspect is repugnant to them. If you don't care about this, then this is really just theoretically and I'm not interested in that if it doesn't have a practical application. Now I happen to give this school of thought a lot more benefit of the doubt than that. But, I hope you see where I'm getting at anyway.
Edit: I guess what I'm saying is that theory has to adapt to the complexities of society or it's not going to practically be accepted. I'm not talking about special interests. I am saying almost everyone universally agrees that a piece of music or a dvd as a piece of art is considered property of it's creator(s). Although you say these things are intangible, they are tangible. If everything is experienced in the mind - even touch, and even property ownership is a mental construct - an agreed upon idea - then ALL WE HAVE is ideas we agree upon - which is to say merely I don't agree on the dismissal of IP solely on those grounds. Again, I have more research to do. I'm complaining more about what I see as the ireelevance of the argument to the point at this stage (as I see it).
Why is a recording, or a painting, or a book considered by you to be "art" but farming, or wheel grinding, or oil drilling is not "art?" Maybe this is the crux of why you are so stuck on IP and our arguments, so far, have been unconvincing.
This recording you make takes skill, attention to detail, years of practice for expertise, and technique. You developed all of this over time, and you feel that for all your hard work, it qualifies as "art" and should be protected by force, or threat of force, so no one that obtains a copy of that recording may utilize their body and property to generate a copy.
But why limit it to just music, for example? The farmer may not gives two hoots about what you do, and he may not even consider it to be "art."
However, the ear of corn he makes takes skill, attention to detail, years of practice for expertise, and technique. He develops all of this over time, and he feels that for all his hard work, it qualifies as "art" and should be protected by force, or threat of force, so no one that obtains a seed from an ear he grew may utilize their body and property to generate a copy.
Because you're missing the point entirely I think. Whereas in the farmer example, the second person is making their own crop, so too can someone go and make their own music and put it on a CD. The CD is just the medium. They can copy their own music as much as they want. The digital file, is just the medium for the thing to exist on also. The music itself, that is a distinct, unique, discreet, identifiable, tangible thing. You cannot say it exists only in ones mind. A group of people can agree between this piece of music and that piece of music as being discreet. You can also test them in a computer system and verify that one is the same, the other is not and so on. These are real things. That they exist in a sense "non-locally" does not change that.
In the music examle, someone can by all means go and record their own album, using the same equipment, techniques, copy my playing style, and make their own variation. I actually have no problem with that in the context of this argument (trying to just pin something down here not sure what yet). But we're not talking about that person doing that, as though they took a seed from an ear of corn and using my farming technique we're talking about literally copying my work. Now this is where I think everyone is confused is that there is a failure to make a distinction between something physical that can exist in only one place at one time, and something like a music file that can exist identically in the more than one place at one time. That's just the fact of modern life that we have these kinds of technologies, and you can't simplify that to a level of farming.
This is kind of quantum physics almost: But I'm going to go out on a limb with a weird argument: If a farmer found a way to make simultaneous copies of his corn exist in muliple places at the same time each discreet where if it was used in one place it wouldn't get used in the other, then if you stole some of that corn in a second location it is still HIS corn and still theft. If you make your own corn OR your own method of multiplying that corn, ti's still YOUR corn.
Edit: To just add: There can indeed be an amount of art to farming, which is why a given farmer may choose to keep his cherished secrets just that - and his high quality product as the only evidence of something else going on behind the scenes. Likewise a musician or engineer might have secrets they don't wish to divulge. Good engineers however tend to not mind because from their point of view, it's the individual who uses those techniques who gets the certain results, it's their aesthetic sensibility that determines the actions they take with a given technique and ends up in a result which, if succesful in that sense, listeners will covet.
The farmer therefore has the right and the power to protect his art - the musician should not?
Mike99:You're saying that as in your opinion my product has no value and is idiotic therefore the principle is void?
Mike99:I'm not asking you to agree to value. I'm trying to find out in principle if it is property.
Mike99:Don't you get what a music recording is? It's not a piece of paper, or a gallon of gas or a piece of wood. It's a piece of art that can be duplicated. If I want to sell more copies I can drop the price *myself*. As the seller in the marketplace I can determine where the price point is for quantity of sales versus individual sale price that works best for me and my customers. I mean don't you get that someone is taking my work and selling it while doing no work?
Competition is hard, so I want tariffs/subsidies/monopoly grants for Industry X.
Mike99:I have no problem with someone writing their own song, emulating or copying a recording technique or style - those things can't be patented copyrighted. But a recording is a discreet individual unique tangible item I suppose *that* is my argument.
Mike99:You say it is not. You say it is like so much "air". I breath, you breath, we all breath, you can't copyright the air, you say. That is the fundamental crux of the argument, if I'm not mistaken. And I maintain that a recording, something I created, is my property.
Mike99:Of cousre I'm against these spurious IP laws that criminalise end users. And I remain undecided. But I have to say, your arguments so far are unconvincing because they really literally seem weak and nonsensical to me - I'm sorry. I may change my mind. But that's my point of view so far, I remain really unconvinced.
Mike99:Again the core argument is DO I have a piece of property in something that I have created.
Just because you put a lot of labor into coming up with this idea, does not mean it is ownable. For example, the food examples I gave above. Or I believe one of Kinsella's favorite thought experiments is a large marble slab (this is definitely in the IP course). The lectures go into the details, I will not type more of this. Here is a little Jeff Tucker/Kinsella article titled "Goods, Scarce and Nonscarce": https://mises.org/daily/4630/ There is also this little cartoon pointed to in that article: http://ninapaley.com/mimiandeunice/2010/08/15/rivalrous-vs-non-rivalrous/ As a side note, what do you think about Price discrimination? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination There are many cases of IP Law being used to crush someone from selling your own good cheaper, because you refuse to charge the market price in the given country/area. Here is one article of Kinsella on the topic: http://archive.mises.org/13442/leveraging-ip/