Comment by citricsquid | Hacker News Reader

Comment by citricsquid | Hacker News Reader

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> The artists can connect with us directly. They love to. Stop bothering us.

So why don't they?

http://bandcamp.com http://soundcloud.com http://myspace.com http://cdbaby.com

All services that an artist can use to distribute music yet musicians still choose to sign with labels to this day. Maybe, just maybe labels provide value to artists beyond what you can comprehend?

Would Justin Bieber be worth over $100,000,000 if he had released his music on Bandcamp? Would Lady Gaga be worth $150,000,000 if she had released her music on Myspace? Do you think Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber want people to pirate their music and care only about people hearing their music? If that was the case why don't they release it for free?

Radiohead released an album independently in... 2005? That was a success, if artists only cared about making music and didn't care about making money why hasn't every artist since released independently?

Why can't people that create content be a business? Surely that is the entrepreneurial spirit everyone here is supposed to have... and if so, why can't they be against people that engage in media piracy?

TBH if artists care about money over music, I'm less likely to like their stuff anyway. There isn't a huge amount of music that costs silly money to produce nowadays, is there?

Though there are exceptions - bands like Muse, that need lots of up-front investment to create a huuge amazing stadium show (the costs will probably be recouped from tickets, though).

> less likely to like their stuff

Quantified this? Or is this something you hope is the case, without really knowing?

I base it on the fact that I genuinely like bands as they are small, and then as they make their stuff more "accessible" after signing a big deal, in order to expand their user base, it loses a lot of appeal for me. I prefer music to be pure and not be changed in order to cater for people who aren't prepared to spend time enjoying it. Each to their own, and if you like mass-appeal stuff, but that's not for me. Similarly, TV shows. Stuff like The Wire, which doesn't patronise the viewer and expects you to pay enough attention to draw your own conclusions, I find much more satisfying than stuff that hands things to you on a plate.

Okay, so how much less likely?

I enjoy narrow genres myself, but I haven't actually done the math to see how this would affect artists etc. Have you?

Point taken. It's good to see the options coming. Yes, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga are creations using the current technology.

Not by suppressing freedom to download, or by penalizing consumers who download, or by asking them to behave properly. I never said artists should release their music for free. You did not read properly.

> I never said artists should release their music for free. You did not read properly.

Please can you explain what your point is then, I don't quite understand what you're saying if that is the case.

> Not by suppressing freedom to download, or by penalizing consumers who download, or by asking them to behave properly.

You mean the freedom to take a product without doing whatever the person licensed to distribute it wants (eg: pay $10) like we have to do with every other product?

Well this is the hard problem. To make it convenient and sensible for people to buy/watch movies officially, make it possible to show it off to their friends (Like I have a paid subscription), may be adopt SAAS or provide rented streaming in such a way that people say "we have an official access to hurt locker" or something.

If it costs $10 a ticket to watch on a big screen, spend gasoline, travel some distance physically, it can surely cost 1/10th (or less) of that amount per movie and yet return similar profits (by volumes) to the artist. People really don't care about the middlemen.

Just a few ideas, but obviously the solution is hard. Yet I believe that teaching manners to people, i.e. annoying the consumers is suicidal.

Did I took your post (with or without permission) by accessing this page? Such concepts don't make sense for non-scarce goods.

I posted here with the understanding I was providing everyone accessing news.ycombinator.com with access to my post.

A comparable example would be if I posted this on my blog behind a pay wall (which meant it cost $5 to access the post) and then someone copy and pasted my post here and you read my post while understanding it had been taken from behind my pay wall. That would be absolutely unacceptable.

It's debatable whether that's unacceptable.

Is it unacceptable to remember something you've read? To tell a friend? To write down and sell it? If you turn a profit? If you don't? If you write by hand, 1 character per second? If you use a machine to do it, 1 million characters per second? Are we allowed to quote? To teach? To paraphrase? To back up?

These are hard questions, and you're reducing them to moral absolutes. Make your case without shouting about how you're right.

Gray areas will always exist, you cannot take something and narrow it down to absolutes and I'm not trying to, there will always be areas where you have to take context into account and analyse that situation independent of another situation that falls under the same "rule".

The general idea is (in my opinion) that if you produce something then you should (to a degree) have the expectation of control over the consumption of whatever it is you produce. This includes the right to sell that production, distribute it for free, license that production out to specific groups or keep that production completely private.

If we stick with the example of me writing a post behind a pay wall then I would personally believe that summarising the post to a friend is acceptable as would be posting a summary of the article on HN, because the value of a blog post is not the general idea it's the way in which that idea is presented and formed.

If you were to take the post and reproduce the content in any form (for profit or not) I would believe that to be unacceptable. However there are gray areas which include people who could read a post and then repeat it perfectly. This is something that can't be included in some big flow chart of right and wrong, but it doesn't need to be if everyone stuck to core principles.

I think it can be reduced to a general idea with ease: Taking something (regardless of deprivation) is wrong.

> Make your case without shouting about how you're right.

Regarding this I apologise, I have very little ability to explain my thoughts coherently (failed highschool etc etc) so while I try to explain myself without letting my frustrations leak in it often happens. I spend a lot of time retroactively editing my comments to try and reduce the amount of that, but I often end up not being able to see my comments problems when looking back -- things like assuming my thoughts are the way everyone thinks etc.

The general idea is (in my opinion) that if you produce something then you should (to a degree) have the expectation of control over the consumption of whatever it is you produce.

Why?

>like we have to do with every other product?

That's not a very progressive spirit. It might seem unfair, but technology has changed the rules of the game. The consumption of many goods has become non-rivalrous.

Whereas taking goods off shelves without paying is covered by other laws, copyright is about forbidding you from sharing what you bought with others who didn't buy it. That's much more debatable.

Reducing this issue to "let's do what we do with every other product" would undo some of the achievements of the technology and hold us back. Copyright has to stand on its own, it can't be justified by analogy to rivalrous goods.

You make good points. The problem is, you're ignoring history by thinking that technology has changed anything. There is nothing new about copyrights, patents, etc. These systems have been in place for centuries, and the debates about their value have been going on for centuries (and apparently, the pro-copyright faction are winning). Technology hasen't changed anything except to make the problem "bigger".

You're right when you say: "copyright is about forbidding you from sharing what you bought with others who didn't buy it. That's much more debatable." But most people who talk about these issues don't realize that all of these things have been debated for a long time. Most people don't add anything new to the discussion, and are woefully ignorant of the thought that's already been put in.

Sources: Read, for example, Eric Flint's writing on the subject http://www.ericflint.net/index.php/2011/09/26/salvos-against...

> you're ignoring history by thinking that technology has changed anything

With your line of argument, what changes can happen? What is new?

Lots of changes can happen. They just haven't here, in this case. Did you read the article? The arguments they had during the 1800s basically foresee all of the issues people talk about regarding copyright, including foreseeing piracy.

Okay, lots of changes. One example? Can you show me a paradigm shift where the rules actually needed to be updated, and explain what is different from this case?

Yes, I can. But I'm not going to go down this road with you - we'll be stuck all day fighting over definitions of what is an "actual" paradigm shift and where rules "really were" updated.

Instead, feel free to make your point. I pointed to an article and made a very specific case - the issues people talk about today, and think are unique to our time because of technology, are not unique, and have been discussed before our time. As proof, I linked to an article which has excerpts from talks given during the 1800's.

I'm still unsure what case you're trying to make, and whether you agree or not that my statements were correct.

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