Banana's Beard Emporium - The Off-Topic Chat Thread

I appreciate your point Tom, and in a purely moral sense there isn't a difference. But I think LTL made a brilliant case that pirating music has far greater implications in terms of ripping off the artist than say, watching a stream of a football match, or downloading a torrent of Game of Thrones. Why? Simply because those things are already developed and marketed and have a huge customer base willing to pay the full cost. What LTL is talking about is the fact that piracy has hit the music industry so hard that the major record labels are unwilling to risk putting their money into acts like a Fable unless they are sure she is popular enough to make a return on their investment. In purely artistic terms, that is turning every single artist into an X Factor contestant, where popularity, and not artistic integrity, is everything. As LTL said last night, ultimately that could mean that a musician who is capable of single-handedly changing the course of musical history, such as Bowie, might never get on the radio at all. Personally, I wouldn't want to live in a world where all I could hear on the radio or buy in a record shop was top 40 junk, and I don't think that will ever happen, but musical piracy makes it more likely.

 

it's never been easier for someone to produce their own stuff from a bedroom and get exposure from word of mouth (twitter/youtube) though.

no reason we can't have more james bedingfields and jessie j's.

ok, bad idea.

 

The comparison between file sharing and stealing I get, because it has to feel like that for the one losing out on sales, but it's called "file sharing" because you're actually making a copy of something. There used to be those anti-piracy ads in cinemas which said "you wouldn't steal a car" - the thing is it's more like going up to a car, making an identical copy of the car and driving off with the copy, leaving the original where it is. The problem for the manufacturer is that he wouldn't be able to sell the car if everyone could just keep coming up and doing that, but from the consumer's point of view he hasn't actually robbed anyone of anything. The car is still there (until the manufacturer can't afford to produce the cars, and then no one gets them, free or otherwise).

First thing we have to do is recognise it's a moral grey area, rather than straight up stealing, but also a problem which needs fixing. When something is in unlimited supply and the means of getting it is right at everyone's fingertips, people don't want to pay for it. Like water or oxygen. I think the trick is efficiency. Torrenting is a quick and efficient means of downloading something, but probably not quite as quick and efficient as iTunes. People pay for the efficiency of iTunes and there's no debating it has been great for the music industry. Spotify is efficient because you don't even have to download anything (or so I understand; I don't use it), and the industry makes its money from advertisers rather than consumers - the most popular modern solution to making money on something in infinite supply. Unfortunately the artist's cut from that is a pittance, or so Moby tells me. Surely a similar model, but where the artist makes a more reasonable cut, is the probable solution. Easy, immediate access to music which is stored in the cloud, and funded by advertising and optional consumer purchases which can improve their experience. I don't use Spotify because of the problem I mentioned, but surely it's similar to what will be the eventual solution. I'm no expert in the economics of it, but I can't see why artists shouldn't be able to make decent money from such a thing.

 

Why pay for your clothes when you can shoplift them for free?

Streams are different because there's no alternative - there's nowhere I can pay a few quid to legally watch the game online so a stream is the only option. If, like with the NFL, there was a subscription based deal to watch every single game (on demand and all, like with Gamepass) for a few quid a month I'd definitely do it.

 

Well I've paid to watch baseball so I can watch every game if I want to. I don't download music very often anyway and I download it onto my phone with an app I found not onto my laptop. Not my fault I can do it for free. I only use torrents for TV shows.

 

Be careful at the zoo (sound on is better)

http://m.liveleak.com/ll_embed?f=d51b0650e695

 

If there was an MLB TV alternative for the Premier League then your comparison to streaming would be valid. And "not my fault I can do it for free" only serves to ensure you're less to blame than the people who provide torrents and downloads, not completely free of moral scrutiny as you seem to think. Besides, if you don't do it very often, surely you can spare a few quid every now and then? Particularly if it's from new, small or struggling artists, in which case piracy is pretty much entirely indefensible.

 

I know it's morally wrong, but I'm not downloading music from new, small or struggling artists so I don't feel guilty.

 

I suppose one good thing is that the more obscure artists are less likely to be available on torrent sites anyway. Or if they are there'll be no seeds and it'll take forever.

 

Pistorius trial has resumed today. Examination shows that he was NOT suffering from a mental disorder.

 

There are no degrees of honesty

 

I'll come back to the other points later (the point you make earlier Joe is v sensible), but you're wrong on this one. The Fable track was on a torrent within 10 minutes of us putting it on Soundcloud, even though you can't even download it from Soundcloud (without I suspect some tricky equipment). I have no idea how, but it was.

 

This is the problem. "I'm better off, so **** everybody else".

 

I'm not spending money when I don't have to. End of.

 

I just use Spotify.

 

Point proven.

 

Fine. You spend whatever you want on music - I've got more important things to spend my money on.

 

Ouch!

 

It's Monday morning and I didn't sleep well last night. I'm grumpy.

 

Lifesize statues of Phil Dowd to worship, probably.