Holy shit! Tis horrible...

[lazygamer]

I understand your skepticism voidmain, but your comments show a high degree of support for our current society. Are you one of those 40+ year old forumites, or is that Calum? Lol, I can see how those 0ld d00dz are stuck in their rocking chairs.  

What your saying Voidmain, is that the law is the law. Whether that law harms someone or helps someone doesn't matter. It doesn't matter just who exactly is getting harmed or hurt. To you, society is king and it's important to uphold most laws. Only the most extreme or crazy of laws deserve defiance.

Why have such support for our corps and our society? Didn't this society you support spawn RIAA and Microsoft?

[voidmain]

You read it completely 180 degrees backwards. You said you wanted to fuck somebody up. And I said the way to really fuck them up is to stop supporting them. It's easy. If enough people get pissed off and enough people won't stand for it and enough people stop supporting them they are either going to have to change or go out of business. Which do you think they will choose? If they don't sell they don't stay in business. They will squeeze every penny out of you they can until they reach the threshold of pain. In your case, along with many others, that threshold has arrived. Now it's time for action, action that is legal.

It's called a "boycott". It's one of the variables in a capitalist system. There's no need to break the law when the masses can make a change by boycotting. You see, you have to make the commitment yourself, then you get a few friends on board to make the commitment. If enough people make the commitment things will change.

You don't have to resort to violence or breaking the existing laws. You change them as long as the majority feel as you do. If you are in the minority and you resort to violence to get your way then you are nothing more than what GeeDubya would call a terrorist. And what are we talking about here? Luxory items, not necessities. If enough people will give up their luxory items (even their illegal ones) for just a short amount of time, things can change very quickly.

So don't buy (or steal) that X-Box, don't buy (or steal) that music, don't buy (or steal) that copy of Windows. You can get by in the mean time using Linux, free music. I was in a band and we have an album out on the net, Calum has music out there, and there is a boatload of good free music out there. You never know, you might grow to like the free stuff and never want to go back even if they do lower their prices and change the laws.

[ November 26, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

[Calum]

and this is why the legions of dumbasses who think pirating hurts companies will have to rethink their ideas a bit or nothing will change. They won't though as that will deprive them of their warez. pity they ddon't realise there are plenty of legitimate alternatives these days, hmm lazygamer?

[flap]

Just to clarify the "anti-piracy" view here, do you think that "pirating" non-free software/music is worse, better or just as bad as paying for it?

[pkd_lives]

Copying non-free stuff for personal consumption is fine - if you have the artists permission. That is legal, acceptable and there is nothing a record company or a lawyer can do about it (unless they own all rights). It is considered advertising and is fine both ethically and legally.

But with Kazaa - nah this is bullshit. I know so many people who use it, and what do they do - they download eminem and the matrix. Sorry but that is not acceptable. If you support an artist you are prepared to pay them money, if you are not prepared to pay them money then you do not like them enough, and therefore you should not support them. By consuming this material you are crowding the pantheon of artists and leaving less room for the truly talented.

It's a wake up call. The TCPA/RIAA will keep on suceeding because people do not have the balls to say yeah thats a fun song but I'm not going to listen to it because it is not a great song.

The ONLY way you will get your message across is if you stop wasting time listening to the same old same old. You have to live your own life - too many people are stuck in apathy, living their lives through other people. I get up each day and I am so happy to be alive, and my happiness has nothing to do with hollywood, AOL Time/Warner, Microsoft, etc. Whereas all those people I know who use Kazaa and the like, they live their lives through entertainment, their lives are ruled by the what did you watch last night?, what movie will you see this weekend?, what latest musician are you listening to?, and almost never do I hear the voice of thought, the voice of an individual saying there is a string quartet playing in the social center, I'm gonna check that out, as I've never really listened to a string quartet. Because they haven't got the balls.

Choose Life for fucks sake. If your happiness depends on owning every harry potter movie that gets made, and having a copy of every Linkin Park album then you, my friend, have serious problems, and your money would be better spent on a phsyciatrist.

[Calum]

music is a different thing entirely. green day went and encouraged bootlegging of their music. so did the dead. radiohead think it's a good idea.

What i'm talking about is copying live music, and live music is always different from the released product. i'm more likely to prefer the live versions of things, but many people will buy the lp on the strength of a live set. As for copying albums, i honestly think that having a copied lp is not the same as owning the real thing, and that if you can put up with having a copy then fine. i'd prefer the real thing though. i buy as much music as i can and copy the music i can't afford, if i can.

with music a lot of artists don't mind whether you copy their stuff, it's their representative companies, labels, agents et c that try to stop you.

With software, programmers and their companies seem to be united in trying to stop you copying their product, or else they are united in allowing you to copy their procudt. this battle between a liberal minded programmer and a hard nosed software company does not occur like it does in the music industry.

Also, using a copied version of a program is identical in all real respects to using a real copy. I copy an lp onto tape, i hear tape hiss. i copy it onto a CD, i still don't get the real liner notes, if i copy a copy of microsoft windows and install it on a PC, who can tell it was installed from a copy?

the issue is more complicated than comparing it to the music industry.

[flap]

It's the artists' fault for signing up with a record label in the first place. If they want their stuff to be distributed without restriction they shouldn't sell out their copyright to the labels.

It's not a matter of supporting the artists - if you want to support them you can download their music and then mail them a cheque for a couple of

[Calum]

i agree! why hasn't shareware music ever caught on?
actually the reason it hasn't caught on is that the main reason to pay for shareware is to get tech support. this is not necessary for music, yet another reason that music and software cannot be compared as a product.

[voidmain]

Because nobody pays for shareware. Oh there are 1 or 2 who pay out of thousands. Back in the late 80's I wrote a couple of shareware programs used for administering a BBS. One of the programs was used by every admin of this particular BBS software around the world. I know because there were FIDO and Metrolink threads where this program was discussed. I don't recall getting a single registration on this particular program, and I was only asking $5. I wrote another shareware app that was more widely used that I believe I got two registrations for, also $5.

[lazygamer]

quote: and this is why the legions of dumbasses who think pirating hurts companies will have to rethink their ideas a bit or nothing will change. They won't though as that will deprive them of their warez. pity they ddon't realise there are plenty of legitimate alternatives these days, hmm lazygamer?

Lol, alternatives?  

Agh, but I like my mass market Eminem! Surely it's ok to listen to and pirate your "popular" shit, just as long as you listen to, and pay for, independant stuff?

It just don't add up though. What's the difference between pirating to harm and boycotting to harm? No money=no money. With MS I can understand, but music?

[voidmain]

You pirate to harm, you boycott to "change". Pirating only induces more of what you call stupid laws. If you boycotted rather than pirated there would be no such thing as DRM that does nothing more than fuck over the rest of us who don't pirate. Now stop doing it before I send my thugs up there to rough you up.  

[ November 26, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

[pkd_lives]

When you Boycott you don't buy their product. When you pirate it can be considered advertising, someone might hear your copy and buy one. When you boycott the product stays on the shelf. The popular loving sheep out there see oh it's not selling very well, and if it is not popular it must be crap  :rolleyes:  .

Also boycotting stops the company - and that means they can't sell other stuff - it hits their wallet directly - because the stores send the stuff back unsold - or do not buy off them next time, because they know there is a boycott, and the stuff is just going to sit there taking up stock space.

[TheGreatPoo]

I agree with Flap.  When you buy a CD, just hopw much money do you think goes to the actual artist?  Would you be shocked if I told you almost none!!!???  Artists make the bulk of there money off of live performances.  That's why some artists that sell millions of copies of their album but do not tour, often don't make it for long.

Another point to raise is that the RIAA is not needed.  They rob the consumer, they rob the artist.  Filesharing is the future of music advertising but many of you fail to realize that it IS advertising!

Scenario 1) During the Napster campaign, filesharing was booming.  There were millions of people sharing music all over the world.  Was this hurting record sales?  As a matter of fact, during the same time when Napster reached it's peak of popularity, record sales reached record highs!  Why, you ask?  Because filesharing=advertising.  Someone downloads a song (noting that it is not as high quality as the original CD would otherwise be), likes it, goes and buys the CD.  Granted, not all cases are this way but many, many are.

Scenario 2) A new independant artist wants to get his name out there to the people.  He records a couple of songs and sends them out on Kazaa or Gnutella.  The files spread.  Some people in his area download the songs, and like them.  Soon, he puts up flyers to tell people of a live show he's putting on.  People come, his popularity grows.  The cyle continues with more music.

To truely make music means to truely understand what you are making the music for.  The answer is NOT MONEY!!!!!  For those of you people out there that say musicians should get paid for makin music miss the point entirely and regard making music as a job.  Most musicians today make a career out of making music and this is precisely the reason why music sucks today.  No body wants to make music for the hell of makin music anymore.

[hm_murdock]

I agree here. There's so much great stuff that people never hear because nobody thinks that it would sell.

I know that I'm most likely doomed to being a blue collar guy to support my music. I'm too far from the norm in wanting to do things that I consder to be "genreless music".

I think people would like it but I can neither afford to have it recorded, can't afford my own recording gear, and can't find anyone who would think of helping.

Capitalism sucks raunchy balls.

[voidmain]

If Scenerio 1 is true then why are they going to such great lengths to install copy protection within the media and the players, and I believe also to be the reason for the emergence of Palladium. If people were honest and didn't "steal" there would be no need for Palladium, copy protected discs and players.

It pisses me off because if it weren't for this shit I could play my DVDs through my VCR rather than having to unplug my VRC from the TV and plug the player in directly. I could make backup copies of my media for my own *personal* use, as in an actual literal backup. Now they are coming out with Paladium and DRM built in to CDRW drives that give me real concerns if I will even be able to use Linux on any future hardware. All because people are thieves.

Scenerio 2 is good but it also makes people believe that all music can be handled this way, even if it produced and distributed under a completely different license/contract. It's sort of like Linux vendors allowing you to download a copy of their OS in hopes that you will buy a boxed set some day. This is my preferred method. But because RedHat has such a deal, don't assume that it's OK to go download an ISO containing a cracked version of XP. That's the logic people have today, it's not right.

If they want it to change they need to boycott. Pirating will only cause more activation mechanisms which costs a lot of money to implement and pisses people like me off. Boycotting will solve the problem. It's harder to boycott, it actually takes a little thought and organization. Anybody can be a common thief. Is it that hard to play by the rules? Apparently it is in today's society, so sad.