Napster Being Shut Down 213
helix2301 writes "Napster was one of the earliest and most popular P2P music-sharing services. After a long legal battle that saw Napster slowly gutted in the face of infringement lawsuits, it was reinvented as a legitimate music download service. The resurrected Napster is now being shut down. Rhapsody has completed its purchase of Napster and will be absorbing its subscribers and assets."
Without Napster we'd still be buying all CD's (Score:5, Insightful)
The music industry had to be dragged kicking, clawing, and screaming into the 21st century. If it weren't for Napster and iTunes we'd all still be driving down to the record store to buy $15 CD's, just to get the one or two songs you actually want and the 10 other songs that are complete filler. It's sad that Napster had to be a sacrifice on the road to the industry finally waking up and realizing that people actually want digital music and they want it at a reasonable per-song price--that we'd had enough of getting gouged under the old LP/CD system.
Of course, they're still grumbling about it--and many of them still want to slap DRM on their music. But at least Napster (and later Kazaa) were there to scare the industry and make them realize that people want to download digital music, and iTunes was there to show them that, yes, you can still make money off it (but we're not buying your overpriced albums anymore for one song).
Of course, I'm sure the arrogant stoner at my local record store hates this, as he no longer gets to snort at my record choices and tell me about how *HIS* taste is so much more hip than mine.
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Except now you're paying $15 for a digital copy, and $10 for the CD, or $1.99 for that "just one track".
Re:Without Napster we'd still be buying all CD's (Score:5, Insightful)
Except now you're paying $15 for a digital copy, and $10 for the CD, or $1.99 for that "just one track".
I am completely fine with $1.99 for one track, if the rest of the album isn't of any interest. I'm an old Album Rock dude, but will be among the first to recognize how many one/two hit wonders there have been where I won't want the whole CD.
Re:Without Napster we'd still be buying all CD's (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Without Napster we'd still be buying all CD's (Score:5, Insightful)
> Suppose in the (not too distant) future, next to no one ops to buy entire CDs vs. a single track. Won't all artists then be one or two hit wonders?
It depends on how talented the artist is and how devoted the artist's fans are. There are people who will only buy singles that they hear and like, but many people prefer to buy albums (especially if they've heard several songs they like one one album). A few will fall in love with the music and buy absolutely everything the artist produces.
Look at Lady Gaga's sales for The Fame Monster. 5.8 million albums in 2010. The songs were available as an MP3 single for $0.99 the same time the album became available at the end of 2009. Half the songs were on The Fame which released in 2008. People still bought millions of copies of the album.
For a (much) smaller artist, look at The Dollyrots. It's probable that you've never heard of them, though they've gotten enough exposure that it's not impossible. They are definitely not a superstar band.
They did a kickstarter campaign [kickstarter.com] to raise funds for a new album. Of the 540 people that pledged money up front, only 39 pledged the minimum required to get a download of the album or less and 110 more pledged the minimum to get a physical CD. 291 (over 50%) of the people pledged more than the minimum necessary to get the album in the form they wanted it in.
The rewards varied, but as you get up into the hundreds of dollars, you can be certain that you're looking at the hardcore fans who will buy anything this group produces. 15 people pledged $300 each to get the band to write songs for them (which, since there are so many, are going to be made into a 2nd album that everyone who pledged gets a copy of). Two people pledged $1000 each to spend a day in the studio with the band where they get to watch, sing gang vocals and join in on hand claps. One idiot pledged $500 to get the album and a bunny suit (disclaimer: yes, I'm the idiot). These are fans who will not only buy anything the band produces, but will act as patrons to help fund the band's production of new material.
So... yes, there may be fewer people who buy albums, but there will always be people who buy albums even if individual songs are available. There will also always be fans who will buy everything produced by their favorite artists and dedicated fans with money who will help their favorite bands far more than a CD sale ever could.
The flip side of this is the artist's viewpoint and the realities of how music is produced. It's more cheaper and faster to have a dozen songs you want to record when you go in the studio than to do a dozen sessions for one song each. If you record it all in one go, for example, you only set up all the equipment once, as opposed to setting it up a dozen times. You're also in the groove as you move from one song to the next. You don't have to spend a lot of time warming up and getting ready to record. The same thing applies to what the sound engineers engineers do as well. They need setup time and time with the band to discuss what the band wants. Mastering a dozen songs in one session is far faster than a dozen sessions with one song mastered in each and sound engineers charge by the hour.
tl;dr - Albums will continue to exist because there are plenty of fans who will buy albums and it's cheaper to record music an album at a time. And you should totally buy Dollyrots albums or might find a guy in a bunny suit peeing on your lawn.
Re:Without Napster we'd still be buying all CD's (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow, really? I buy CDs for one, two, or sometimes three dollars used. My favorite site is Half, but there are many others. Consider using them -- it really sounds like you are still purposely repeating behavior which results in you getting screwed. I can only imagine that you do that in order to preserve your plausible claim to the right to complain, but if you ever feel like actually solving the problem of overpriced music, you can do that easily.
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You weren't supposed to share your "secret" if you wanted to pay up to $3 for used CDs.
Supply and demand my friend.
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What's wrong with paying $1.99 for one track when you would have had to pay $5-10 for the one or two tracks you wanted anyhow?
Just because it had a better cost to track ratio before doesn't mean you were getting a better deal if you never listened to the other tracks. You were essentially paying more for bonus material you didn't care about.
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You should probably check out iTunes or Amazon, since their mp3 albums are only $10 (for between 15 and 30 songs), and their individual tracks only $1. Sounds like youre getting ripped off.
Some of the prices are dropping below $1, actually.
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What's a local record store?
Even without download services, sites like AMazon, CDNow, Music Boulevard and their ilk were eating away at the local record store business.
Re:Without Napster we'd still be buying all CD's (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not sure where the arrogant stoner went after the local record store closed. But if I had to guess, I would imagine he's in his Mom's basement right now listening to a post-pre-punk ska glam fusion band on vinyl and longing for the days when he could spend all day telling customers how much better his tastes were than theirs.
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Forgive my doubts, but I can't imagine a drunk hobo punk being a music snob. Real music snobs listen to progressive (or worse, some random electronic subsubgenre noone has ever heard about).
That's rather narrowminded. I personally know of at least one former musician who has an alcohol dependency problem and lives on the street. I'm certain he turns his nose up at certain "music" as it isn't his cuppa or has inferior instrumentation. He favors accoustic over electric guitar.
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That's where music snobs have gone today, to the acoustic emo pseudo dirge singer/songwriter Firstname Lastname of the week.
Bonus points for slicked hair, "vintage" glasses and greasy skinny jeans (the key is to look like you don't care what you look like whilst obsessing over it)
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Oh, wait.....
Re:Without Napster we'd still be buying all CD's (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Without Napster we'd still be buying all CD's (Score:5, Insightful)
And a backup! Oh, and liner notes and pretty pictures.
Try selling a used download at the local Half Price Books & Music.
Re:Without Napster we'd still be buying all CD's (Score:5, Insightful)
This. I haven't lived in New Zealand for a few years, so I don't know if Real Groovy Records on Queen Street in Auckland still exists. But it was amazing. A room full of used albums, many of which were genuine rarities that you couldn't find anywhere else.
And that includes on-line. There are albums that I cannot buy on-line. The mega-stores don't carry them. They're not available from the artist directly. But I can sometimes find them at the local used music store.
Or I could, before they went out of business because nobody buys albums any more. I do care about the mega-stores going out of business, because there are people who work there who are without a job (I'm talking about the high school kids who had a weekend job there, that kind of person). But I care more about the independent shop that was started with someone's life savings because he loved music. He's the guy who'd find the rarities. And he's the guy who lost his life savings.
Re:Without Napster we'd still be buying all CD's (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're smart you download that rip and buy some merchandising from the artist. You save money, have no DRM, probably pay more to the artist and get some nice t-shirt or similar besides the music.
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If we go that route, then I could take Ubuntu and wrap it up in proprietary code. After that I donate to some Linux programmers who worked on some small part of it ("but Canonical just steals from the poor coders!") and it's justified!
Sure, that's perfectly legal and fine with me. Companies distribute Linux wrapped up in proprietary code all the time, so what?
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Go ahead. Steal you a copy of Ubuntu. Wrap it up in whatever dressing you care to. Lot's of people have already done so, and given it names like Mint. Knock yourself out. As for the "proprietary" bit - better cover all your bases. The minute you begin SELLING your version of Ubuntu, the entire world is going to take notice.
Maybe that's where you're confused. People who "steal" soundtracks, then resell them for profit are an entirely different breed, apart from the common "pirate" who downloads some m
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So, what's your problem here? You want to lock up the source? First, you can't. Anyone who wants the source can go upstream for it, even if you don't provide it. Second, if you could lock up the source, you would be in court really quick. You can't take away from the public what the public owns. DUHHH. Next, you'll be trying to sell land located in a national forest!
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Makes me miss the old days where you'd use a modified driver for your disc drive to gain direct access to the tracks (copy them straight as WAV files).
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Re:Without Napster we'd still be buying all CD's (Score:4, Funny)
AND I contribute to my local economy.
Buying from my local record store was only helping keep the local weed dealer in business. But to each his own.
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To a weed dealer, EVERYONE is a "friend". Unless that someone is a cop, a narc, or has no money.
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I DO go to my local CD store, buy $10-$15 CD's, rip them for my own use, AND I contribute to my local economy.
I've never understood how buying anything that is not produced locally benefits the local economy. The money was already in the local economy (you had it). When you buy a CD some of it stays local and some of it goes off to the record company some where else. The net result is that money is removed from the local economy. Now if you purchase from local bands that produce their own CDs that would keep the money local. Even better if someone from a nearby town comes over and buys from your local band.
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Yes, if the CDs were manufactured locally, if the instruments and equipment used in the production were manufactured and sourced locally...
Re:Without Napster we'd still be buying all CD's (Score:4, Informative)
If it weren't for Napster and iTunes we'd all still be driving down to the record store to buy $15 CD's, just to get the one or two songs you actually want and the 10 other songs that are complete filler..
They really shot themselves in the foot with the whole CD single thing, that was gouging pure and simple. I still have an old '45 from 1980 with the original price tag still on it: CAN$1.49. That was when LPs were 40 minutes or less with 8 songs, going for around CAN$9.99.
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They really shot themselves in the foot with the whole CD single thing, that was gouging pure and simple.
CDs always used to be grossly overpriced in the days before the original Napster and online retailers like Amazon selling them much cheaper. But CD singles were the worst of all, in the UK at least.
Circa the mid-90s, while you used to sometimes be able to get them for £1.99 on the first week (when they wanted them to get into the charts), they were usually £3.99 otherwise.
They usually included more tracks than a traditional vinyl single, but those were still essentially B-sides (occasional h
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I'm sure the arrogant stoner at my local record store hates this, as he no longer gets to snort at my record choices and tell me about how *HIS* taste is so much more hip than mine.
When in 'reality' we know that your taste is so much more hip than anyones. I'll bet that that they see you growl at the their suggestions seemingly out of habit.
However, were you even alive in the days when there really was a record store culture? It wasn't the internet that killed off the independent record store, but the chain retailer. Well that and CDs, because as you didn't have to buy your tenth copy of 'Dark Side of the Moon' once it couldn't as easily wear out.
Re:Without Napster we'd still be buying all CD's (Score:5, Funny)
When in 'reality' we know that your taste is so much more hip than anyones.
I listen to bands so niche that even they haven't heard their music.
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I listen to bands so niche that even they haven't heard their music.
I like Beethoven too.
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"However, were you even alive in the days when there really was a record store culture?"
I'm 55, and only vaguely recall the record stores. As you say, the chain retailers took over. I was in junior high school when the "Town Mall" was built, complete with a music outlet. That business was so profitable, that the town soon had several stores competing, only to see them all snowballed by the larger retailers. At that time, it wasn't WalMart, but K-Mart. Then it was "Adios, record stores!"
Without Napster we'd still be using FTP (Score:3)
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If you were buying albums with 1 good song for every 5 bad ones, then yes, the local store's stoner's taste is probably better than yours.
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... to buy $15 CD's, just to get the one or two songs you actually want and the 10 other songs that are complete filler...
I always preferred buying the whole album and still do. But if you bought a whole CD for one song, more fool you. There were these things called singles, they've been around since music became commercialized. I don't get why people perpetuate the myth that individual song purchase was bought about by the digital age!
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I see nothing wrong with having to still buy CDs. The prices of them were the problem. Sell a CD for $5 or less, and people would have bought them. The tools to rip your own collection then would have evolved to be easier/faster/better. Cdex on windoze isn't too bad. Personally I wrote some perl scripts to do this long long ago, and they still serve me well today .
You then have
1) uncompressed masters
2) the ability to re-encode as technologies evolve
3) the ability to put the stuff on ANY device you want
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Steve Jobs did not change the music industry, Napster did
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...Of course, they're still grumbling about it--and many of them still want to slap DRM on their music.
While I'm certainly not standing on the side of MPAA/RIAA here, the reason for DRM is very simple and straightforward from their point of view, as a means to keep the product distribution legitimate and ensure a revenue stream and profitable business model. Yes, I know that "profit" can be demonized here as we all listen to the 1% rapping about the glory of being the 1%, but try and draw an agreeable line between "profitable" and "greedy" with ANY business...it's not that easy, as you'll always find people
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It is a nonzero number, but probably not for the reasons you are thinking. It has nothing to do with keeping people from piracy. I'd be highly surprised if anybody sold copies of music in excess of the cost
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It's sad that Napster had to be a sacrifice on the road to the industry finally waking up...
I agree with your general points, although I carry no emotional attachment to the service. I'm thinking of a football metaphor: Napster was the lead offensive blocker; iTunes Music Store was the running back that established the ground game. Amazon, Google Music and any number of other services are the wide receivers who are now able to come into play.
I'm sure that some people would disagree with what services played what roles, and I don't feel strongly enough about it to argue the details, but my mai
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If it weren't for napster, I'd still be downloading albums over IRC.
With Napster I was buying CDs (Score:2)
Re:Without Napster we'd still be buying all CD's (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Without Napster we'd still be buying all CD's (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, they just record twelve versions of the same song for each album. I swear that I cannot tell the difference between any Nickelback song. It's like if the Beatles only recorded dozens of variations of She Loves You.
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The major question is, who has tastes so bad that they'd even want to listen to any one of the twelve different versions of that song?
Raah raahhh booze, drugs, stripclubs yeah! Raaaahhh party, drugs, booze, cars! Cars, booze, party, girls! Yeah! (guitar solo)
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Probably nickelback. They're good as mass production.
I initially read that as ass production. Picking nits, I guess.
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If it cost a penny to see a nickelback performance, I'd want a nickel back. I hear them on the radio from time to time. I can't help thinking that they have a sound that COULD be worth a lot. But - it just isn't worth much. Like MightyMartian, I find it difficult to differentiate between one nickelback title and another. They are a cut above rap, but only a cut.
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I would agree, and I would add Maroon 5, except that they don't actually fit the description, because they can only produce zero songs per album that I'd actually want to purchase.
Re:Without Napster we'd still be buying all CD's (Score:5, Insightful)
Anything my girlfriend likes.
Re:Without Napster we'd still be buying all CD's (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, there are bands whose albums you buy and then there are bands who make one or two decent songs and then sleepwalk through the rest of the recording sessions. At least now I have an option to treat them differently.
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And even bands whose albums I buy don't consistently produce albums I want to listen to all the tracks on.
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Consider how many albums have 12 songs and only one of them is ever aired on the radio. Sometimes that one is a typical indicator of the content of the album, often it's the only track most people can listen to more than once without wanting to kill someone. After realizing that, consider how bad the songs on the radio are that don't inspire you to consider looking for tha album.
Sure there's good music, and good musicians, but there's a whole lot of drek that is much more advertised.
One great thing about last.fm listen to see if you like something, before deciding upon album or only a few songs. This is rather how it was back in the old days of records stores, where you could actually listen to tracks to decide if you warranted the album worth buying. May have one track, which was so exceptional (beyond just pop appeal) warranting purchase of the album. May have several tracks which are very good warranting purchase of the album.
I'm not really a fan of Amazon's approach to listen t
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Funny thing I've found over the last 10-15 years or so, I've been buying most of my CDs (and now electronically distributed music) without even having heard a single track. They're either bands I already know and will get because it's their latest, or I'll have heard about a band/read a review and taken a chance. Found lots of great music this way. Or heard one of their songs and bought a different album.
That said, I also haven't listened to the radio in about the same amount of time :)
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Hey, I'll have you know I've hiked every mountain in Skyrim.
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Come on, you know that no one will consider you socially adept until you have equal mastery of Half-Life and Fallout
Who cares ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, who cares ? The original Napster is long gone; this is just a corporate entity that bought the name.
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That's Gnutella. The Napster protocol is now largely unused. (At the time it was shut down, there were tools to redirect the client to different central servers, but that's no longer really popular.) The Gnutella protocol, on the other hand, is still used by a wide variety of clients, including Limewire, Frostwire, and Bearshare.
The Real Question is.... (Score:2)
Napster??? (Score:2)
No need to be illegal any more (Score:4, Interesting)
Pioneers have it rough (Score:2)
Columbia PC was the first to do battle to defend their right to manufacture PC clones. Don't hear much of them now, do you?
I wonder what they'll do with the Cat with headphones logo.
Repost (Score:5, Funny)
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Napster, as it stood back then, is long dead. The Napster being discussed now is (was?) a music store that was formed from the ashes of the old music-sharing service. The second sentence of the summary even explains it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster [wikipedia.org]
How you people get informative mods, I'll never understand.
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NAPSTER BAD (Score:2)
MP3 DOWNLOAD GOOD! [youtube.com]
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Social network (Score:2)
I wonder (Score:2)
I wonder if they will bring "ded kitty" back?
The first time Napster died:
http://news.dmusic.com/article/5385 [dmusic.com]
Taking all bets! (Score:2)
I am curious when we're going to see the story "All corporations in North America now owned by Exxon-Mobil-Time Warner-Comcast-Microsoft-Clear Channel-AT&T-Verizon-Bank of America". It's inevitable if someone doesn't stop the rampant "I'll just buy my competition" strategy.
Wait... (Score:2)
Thank you Lars, for napster. (Score:2)
thank you. shove your extra millions you still not have been able to get, up your ass. and no, your half assed apology and admittance, does not cut it.
its sad to remember that i onc
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Cue defense of music/software piracy in 3....2....1...
Why should I pay when self-delusional bullshit rationalizations cost nothing?
Re:morality (Score:5, Informative)
We are talking about a business here that has regularly ripped off its own artists. I keep up to date on Robert Fripp's struggles with UMG/Universal. They just do whatever they want, and when he demands accounting information and information on how songs that he never gave permission to be placed on download services ended up there, he basically enters that evil realm of lawyer/accountant double-talk.
However bad music piracy may be, the biggest pirates of them all have always been the record companies. They'll even try to steal of big name acts. Both Pink Floyd and the Beatles have had to go to court to retrieve royalties or to enforce contractual requirements.
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I'm not trying to justify piracy. I'm trying to point out that it has always struck me as the height of hypocrisy for record companies to bemoan piracy when they've been stealing from artists for years. The same goes for the movie industry, where Hollywood "accounting" would most likely, in any other industry, lead to lengthy prison sentences for embezzlement.
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Good thing he's not taking anything, then.
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It's not "pedantic" to me. I apparently feel that being technically correct is important.
But, in addition to that, it could make people get the wrong idea about what copyright infringement really is. Other times, using such words could make people who know what it is outright dismiss you from the very beginning.
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We are talking about a business here that has regularly ripped off its own artists. I keep up to date on Robert Fripp's struggles with UMG/Universal. They just do whatever they want, and when he demands accounting information and information on how songs that he never gave permission to be placed on download services ended up there, he basically enters that evil realm of lawyer/accountant double-talk.
However bad music piracy may be, the biggest pirates of them all have always been the record companies. They'll even try to steal of big name acts. Both Pink Floyd and the Beatles have had to go to court to retrieve royalties or to enforce contractual requirements.
At least the label doesn't pretend that they're somehow helping while ripping you off.
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We are talking about a business here that has regularly ripped off its own artists
So youre saying that the artists in question are incapable of making their own decisions and signing their own contracts, and that you should be the sole arbitrator of which contracts are legitimate and which are not?
Or are you rather suggesting that, law be damned, two wrongs DO make a right?
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Copyright infringement != stealing. In neither case.
But, GPL infringement is often for profit, while file sharing isn't. You can be sure that many people that defend file sharing won't agree with making money from it.
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Semantics.
I think it's good to point out inaccuracies, semantics or not.
wrong
And depending on your moral code, it might not even be wrong to begin with.
justification phase.
How horrible that is!
you profit.
Not losing something is not the same as gaining something. You didn't gain anything, you just kept what you already had.
Because some things are only slightly wrong. As long as there's something worse that you're not doing, that makes your crime/law breaking kind of trivial and that's easy to morph into "it's really okay", right?
If it could be worse, then the current situation is good...
I love the defenses on Slashdot.
On Slashdot? They're present everywhere. And 'bad' arguments are, from what I've seen, present on both sides. One side insists what the other side is doing as wrong, the other
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And depending on your moral code, it might not even be wrong to begin with.
Unless you intend to turn this into a religious or philosophic discussion, the legal code of a society is what is most relevant here.
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Why would that be most relevant when he's the one that brought up the word "wrong"? I wouldn't say that the law is always right, and I'm pretty sure that people (in countries where this is true) know that copyright infringement is illegal.
When someone uses a word like that, I will attempt to 'correct' them.
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Because in the absence of a philosophic or religious grounding, you are either left with subjective morality where everyone determines what is right for them; or else you must include some degree of "social contract" in your conception of right and wrong. Certainly if our country was founded with a clause specifically for the protection of copyright, and there is no clear "this tramples on Joes rights" or "this oppresses group A because of what kind of human being they are [that is, male, female, black, wh
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Because in the absence of a philosophic or religious grounding, you are either left with subjective morality where everyone determines what is right for them;
That's not even what I meant. He stated that something was wrong (or, at least, he mentioned the word), so I said that that's not necessarily the case. Life as we know it goes on. The laws stay the same.
Really, all I meant to imply was that it wasn't necessarily absolutely wrong (not that he said that it was).
NO rational basis
There's nothing inherently irrational about emotions. Certainly, they can sometimes lead someone to use logical fallacies and such, but they aren't inherently irrational.
and if you dont understand THAT
I don't see where I said that t
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I think it's good to point out inaccuracies, semantics or not.
It can also be done for little purpose other than to shift attention away from the actual topic.
Not losing something is not the same as gaining something. You didn't gain anything, you just kept what you already had.
Nope, wrong. I understand what you're getting at, but it's pure pedantic sophistry. Read the definition of profit. In my case, you gained my music, representing a huge investment of time and money on my part, and I lost something - that investment that I made. Personally. Not a record exec. Me, and the other guys in my band.
If it could be worse, then the current situation is good...
At best that's debatable. At worst, it's amoral, narcissistic, and verging on sociopathic.
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It can also be done for little purpose other than to shift attention away from the actual topic.
No, because you can debate more than one point at a time. And the exact same thing could be said about people claiming that it's theft. If someone says something that I feel is technically incorrect, then I will probably attempt to correct them. If they don't want that, then they can try to avoid saying things that I think are technically incorrect. And if they don't wish to do that, they could always not comment at all. Or just deal with the replies.
I understand what you're getting at, but it's pure pedantic sophistry.
It's not pedantic to me.
In my case, you gained my music
And? From what I saw, he was talk
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Yes it does, at least in the case of being wrong or immoral. And in the case of illegality, noncommercial piracy might not be technically less illegal, but only in the sense that murder is not more illegal than piracy.
Now that I am of age and education to have a job that pays enough t
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And then cue defense of copyrights/patents in 3...2...1...
Anyone who says anything that disagrees with my opinion is just delusional. I'm the only correct one!
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Anyone who says anything that disagrees with my opinion is just delusional. I'm the only correct one![/sarcasm]
Were you INTENDING to be ironic?
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