

RIAA: Online Music Piracy Pales In Comparison to Offline Swapping - alt_
http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-online-music-piracy-pales-in-comparison-to-offline-swapping-120726/

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user49598
The way we (obviously not all of us) think about culture is pretty
fundamentally flawed IMHO. Copyright exists only to create incentive to
produce more copyrighted works(aka culture) and not explicitly make anyone
money. Culture can't, and shouldn't be contained. When you release a song,
movie, drawing, game, some source code, you've given it to the world. You took
everything the world gave you, got inspired, worked hard, and gave back. To
think that you in some way own those vibrations, or light recordings, or bits
is kind of childish. You've been granted a temporary monopoly on their
production and that is all.

Should you make some money? Absolutely, but pretending like anyone actually
owns any intellectual property is a mental deficiency induced by our childish
need for control.

In the face of unprecedented sharing, all culture producing industries are
thriving. More money comes out of movies, music, games, and other software
than ever before. So anyone that really thinks that they can create culture
and then _own_ it can cram it.

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JamesLeonis
While I take anything the RIAA says with a brick of salt, I am very curious
how they know hard drive swapping is a bigger source of piracy than P2P. This
boggles my mind. Is there some underground network of hard drives that I'm not
aware of?

~~~
JonnieCache
At universities worldwide, every dorm room features a terabyte external hard
drive overflowing with booty.

The 16gb drives everyone has in their pocket also help.

~~~
hessenwolf
But they're also the people that have no money, and wouldn't buy anyway.

Now that I am a professional, it's not that common for me to swap a hard
drive.

~~~
bodyfour
Would they buy terabytes of music? No, but few people of any income level
would. However it should be remembered that once upon a time, college students
were a _major_ market for recorded music.

Twenty years ago when I went to college (ugh, that felt weird to type) every
dorm room had stacks of CDs in it... maybe an average of a couple hundred
dollars worth per head. That music-selling bonanza just doesn't exist today.

I don't really have a strong opinion one way or another about whether this is
a good or bad thing.

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prpx
They seemed to have misplaced the "burning/ripping from others" section.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy>

~~~
greyfade
In the US (where the RIAA operates), the levy only applies to CD-Rs that are
labeled as being for "Music." Standard CD-Rs and DVD+/-Rs, and so forth aren't
covered.

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zumda
Interesting to see that P2P has gone down 6% and downloads up 3%, whereas
physical media has stayed the same. It's clear where the growth market is, now
the RIAA just has to read their own numbers.

The one thing that puzzles me is that the numbers for burning have gone up.
Who in the time of wireless networking, huge disk drives and USB sticks burns
a DVD? I just can't see this segment growing 6% in a year.

~~~
__chrismc
> Who in the time of wireless networking, huge disk drives and USB sticks
> burns a DVD?

Not everyone has a computer, so those that do burn a DVD for those
friends/family who don't.

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ChrisNorstrom
In collage someone passed around a pirated DVD of "Shawn of the Dead" in
class. Everyone just put in their dvd-rom (feels so weird saying dvd-rom /
disc drive) copied it, and then passed it along to the next person till most
of the 80 guys in the room had it. Not to mention the sharing that went on
over home wireless networks. Each student would share their music / video /
software folders and make them public to anyone on their LAN. You could then
browse their collection and copy over whatever you wanted. That's not
something stoppable.

Sharing is an evolutionary trait among humans, we have an inner instinct to
share the things we find useful with others. Despite the bullshit excuses and
justifications and delusional utopian ideology that many file sharers babble
about, it can and does cause damage. However, p2p file sharing is an
extraordinary distribution platform. Maybe even the most efficient, effective,
wide reaching distribution platform for anything digital. If we can design
with it in mind and find a way to monetize around it / despite it, I think we
can all live happily ever after. For instance, Star Wars made more money from
the merchandise than it ever did with the films. Even if all the star wars
films were made free to the public, it still would have still made massive
amounts of profit. Not all movie franchises can follow that path but it is a
creative alternative and proof-of-concept that you can make money from movies
without charging for the movie itself.

In other worlds, use freely distributed digital content to advertise and
solicit sales of real world products & services.

~~~
cookiecaper
The reality is that the classical concept of copyright, where it is illegal to
make a copy of a covered work without authorization from the rightsholder,
cannot be enforced in a digital world. The further reality is that people are
not motivated by the moral argument that consumer-facing copyright law is an
intrinsic good that must be universally respected.

Together, this means that no one is going to heed that aspect of copyright
law. We have to adapt. There are still plenty of ways to make money on
intellectual property, but it's time to just _let go_ of this concept that
piracy can or should be fought. It's an outmoded idea that has been shown
irrelevant in a world of instantaneous, perfect replicas.

Big media is throwing a fit because it doesn't know what else to do and
causing all kinds of collateral damage to both legal and technical systems in
the process. We need to face facts and just tell them to calm down, grow up,
and accept that their old business model doesn't work in the new frontier of
widespread content digitization.

I think there is still a place for commercial copyright. I think that one can
still make a bunch of money selling access to copyrighted material. It's still
enforceable and reasonable to sue Studio A if they use content from Studio B
in their latest blockbuster without a license. This is much, much different
than downloading a movie instead of driving to the rental store.

Old media is constantly screwing themselves over by choosing to pour money
into legislative influence and lawsuits instead of innovative content delivery
platforms that could be bringing in $50+/mo/user. Right now, all that
potential revenue is lost because the studios are so busy hoarding their
material that often unauthorized channels are the only places that content is
easily available.

The attempts that have been made suck; the TV people don't want to let go of
ads as a revenue stream, prohibitive DRM and lockdown everywhere and on
everything, forced to use Flash Player to watch video, forced to use special
adapters to access content as desired, etc. It seems these people are just
incapable of an objective analysis of the consequences and realities of
digitization. Are there any ways we can help inform and create meaningful
distinctions, or do we just have to wait until everyone with an irrational
attachment to the old tricks of the trade retires?

~~~
netcan
I'm not sure exactly why, but we have a tendency to tie together three not
necessarily connected issues.

One is the question of whether there are viable alternative business models
complimented by free distribution of traditionally copyright protected
content.

The second is whether we can sustain copyright in the digital age.

The third is the moral questions.

People are always mixing and matching from these. Objecting to a morality
point with a business one or somesuch. I'll grant that often there are
legitimate cross-overs, but a lot of the time its just absurd. If someone
thinks copying art is like stealing from someones house, how can you retort
with an alternative business model.

Would you suggest that if passers by keep stealing oranges from a tree the
owner should accept it & try to sell them orange juice subscriptions?

If new technology made rape much harder to prevent and prosecute, would we
suggest women readjust their sexual expectations?

I think copyright is doomed by reality. I think the industries built around
copyright will be rattled, resized & otherwise changed but ultimately survive
in some new form. I think that copyright infringement is not exactly the same
as theft: it's an artificial system of rules that were engineered around a
technological & political reality that no longer exist. I also think that the
public does not see piracy as morally wrong. These all conveniently unanimous
for me. But, they don't have to be. Sometimes conflicts exists.

I believe that heroine criminalisation is morally problematic, creates
terrible drug crime. I also think that legalization it would probably lead to
increased use and associate problem. It's a conflict.

~~~
skymt
It can be relevant to answer the moral question with a business argument
because the moral question often has economic underpinnings. The idea that
copying is equivalent to theft is based on the idea that pirates would
otherwise have bought the work, making piracy an indirect financial loss.
Creating a new business model that accommodates piracy with equal or better
returns resolves the fundamental moral issue. (Whether that's possible is
beyond me, though.)

There is, of course, the completely separate moral issue of the rights of
artists to control their work. Business arguments are inappropriate there.

~~~
netcan
Sometimes, but very often it isn't.

If copying is equivalent to theft new business model that accommodates piracy
with equal or better returns does not solve the moral problem. It solves the
business problem.

If copying is equivalent to theft, the copyright owner has similar rights to
property owners. Can a property owner have his stuff stolen if allowing it
gives them some other financial advantage. What about the right to control how
their work is sold? What about the right to stop selling? This isn't just
theoretical. For example, Prince wants to exercise these rights.

~~~
cookiecaper
OK, but I don't understand where you're going with this. Some people think
digital piracy is bad, maybe even "equivalent to theft" of real world
artifacts. Most people familiar with technology don't agree with them. As
such, our society is not obliged to grant these unnatural monopolistic
"rights". Do you want to argue that copyright _is_ equivalent to theft, or do
you just want to point out that people who hold an alternate view of copyright
are going to be upset when the laws inevitably catch up with society? Of
course, there are some people who are going to be unhappy no matter what
happens.

I recognize your point that even though the artists feel they are making
equivalent or more money than previously, they can still feel wronged when
something that is contrary to their concept of copyright occurs. But like I
said, I'm not really sure where you intend to go from there.

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Mordor
I think they are missing the point here: each track _was_ paid for, but shared
twice (on average). Perhaps music rentals and broadcast would paint a fuller
picture?

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mtgx
As soon as we have the technology to monitor's everyone's moves offline and
see what they do or _think_ , you can bet RIAA will try to use it. Hopefully
they don't exist anymore by then.

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ben1040
So instead of giving a mix tape to that girl you fancy, it's now the custom to
hand her a 16GB USB drive instead?

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djKianoosh
I tried lots of mixtapes :) It was hit or miss. :-\ I married the girl I gave
a mix CD to though! ;-) That was almost 10 years ago. Kids these days have it
so easy. They have software to match beats and do perfect mixes... back in the
day it was a real talent to produce a smooth mixtape! Probably the next thing
is to give her a streaming music subscription lol.. too easy

~~~
tomflack
"I made you a spotify playlist" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

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thronemonkey
The sneakernet returns! I predict that this trend will only increase with
time.

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drcube
I'm pretty sure it's been the main conduit for viruses for a while now.

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bluedanieru
I'm sure they won't let that stop them from continuing to fund the erosion of
civil rights worldwide. The assholes.

