stealing free music
I personally have not dowloaded any music off the Internet, nor have I ever used iTunes. However, I do own a burned CD that my friend made for me that features five songs. I feel really bad about owning that CD because that music was downloaded on Napster. I'm really big on not dowloading music for free off the Net, and the fact that I have a CD that was downloaded makes me a little bit of a hipocrit. But I digress, I think that pirating DVDs and downloading music off the Internet are not really hurting the film and music industries; however, there is an issue of ethics that is brought up. I think that even though the music and film industries have seen an increase in DVD and CD sales, it still doesn't change the fact that a lot of the material was "stolen." If the material was taken but not paid for, obviously it was stolen. I don't really think that industries have much to worry about because as Barlow stated "In the long run it's more convenient to enter into a relationship with Microsoft if you hope to use its product in an ongoing way. It's certaintly easier to get technical support if you have a real serial number when you call. And that serial number is not a thing. It's a contract. It is the symbol of a relationship." (Barlow).
In response to the conflicting viewpoints between Jobs and Doctorow, I have to say that I'm agreeing more with Steve Jobs. Jobs believes that "DRMs haven't worked and may never work, to halt music piracy." (Doctorow) I think that DRMs in the future will be completely bypassed and will become useless. The fact that people are able to get free music is going to be more appealing than having to pay for it. Surprisingly, CD and DVD sales have only increased over time. Many "artists believe that the answer to selling more music is cooperating with fans, not treating them as presumptive pirates and locking down their music." (Doctorow) There are, however, limitations to downloading music. "Once you put music on your iPod, you can't get it off again with Apple's software." There is also "no recovering your music collection off your iPod if your hard drive crashes." (Doctorow).
Comments
I completely respect the fact that you don't want to download music and that having a burnt cd makes you feel bad. I don't think many people would feel that anymore.
However, and there is absolutely no offense in my comment, I think your discourse is the reaction that the major companies would love to read from consumers.
There's definitely an ethic problem somewhere, but I really think that the persons who stole the most in the past years were the companies themselves.
The contracts signed between bands and record labels oppress incredibly the artists. Record labels have been so powerful in the history of the industry that they forgot they would not exist without the music itself.
Internet is a threat to that whole system, which did not move for dozens of years, but I think that bands can win a lot thanks to Internet.
Posted by: Pierre | April 11, 2007 9:38 PM
While I admire your ethics on not having any stolen material off of the internet (which by the way, you should not feel bad about having a single burned CD, because that is NOTHING compared to others), you should know that the film industry makes the most money off of rentals and people buying DVDs, and when people pirate them, it largely cuts into their profits. However, that being said, I do not think that the companies will ever be able to stop those people. Like you said, they should find some other way to attract them, like having the perks of a relationship, as opposed to wasting money on technological DRMs.
Posted by: Scott Szesterniak | April 12, 2007 12:53 AM