Piracy - JCHMusic

Cloud Cuckoo Land

01.12.2010

Culture, Marketing, Music Business, Piracy

…with apologies to Aristophanes. As I previously stated, I’m pretty sure that piracy will soon be a thing of the past. And that’s because the concept of ‘ownership’ will soon be a thing of the past. People will no longer need to steal music because they will get it all from ‘the cloud’. They will give up ownership in order to pay for convenience. The question for me is how will artists get paid when this happens, because it sure as shit ain’t part of the business model now. There is also this whole fantasy world which is finally being [...]

Be Sociable, Share!

Irish Court Rocks My Anti-Piracy World

01.10.2010

Copyright, Culture, Music Business, Piracy

I have wondered aloud about the futility of fighting software piracy. Certainly, I’ve given up on any personal relief (ie. within the next 5-10 years.) But the recent ’3 Strikes’ ruling by the Irish High Court, has given me a possible new way to think about the issue that does offer some glimmer of hope. I call it… The Anti-Smoking Campaign People don’t smoke nearly as much anymore—well, at least in ‘the west’. Like our use of fossil fuels we’ve pretty much had our fun and realised that there’s a price to pay. So most people don’t smoke anymore; or [...]

Be Sociable, Share!

I Have A Confession

12.30.2009

Copyright, Music Business, Piracy

Confession? Get it? Catholic joke. I was recently screamed at about my selective ethics. About intellectual property no less! For years I have been a subscriber to NetFlix. Love it. Sometimes, I can’t watch the videos when they send ‘em to me—I’m out of town or whatever. So I rip ‘em. Yep I do. And then, perhaps a month later, I watch ‘em. But then I toss ‘em. This is bad, if for no other reason that I’m contributing to the toxic waste problem. But more to the point, it’s also a violation of federal law that states that no [...]

Be Sociable, Share!

Is It A Crime?

12.28.2009

Music Business, Piracy

…and I ain’t talkin’ about the Sade song which changed me life back in ’81. What I’m talkin’ ’bout is an article by ‘ethicist’ Randy Cohen of the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/magazine/04FOB-ethicist-t.html I have problems with this article. First, his conclusion is that it is somehow ethical to download an illegal copy of any software (aka ‘intellectual property’) if you already own a legal copy. That’s rubbish to me. To me, the problem with all such arguments is that they don’t pass JC’s Hardware v. Software Ethical Smell Test (JCHVSEST®) which, as you already know, says the following: If it [...]

Be Sociable, Share!

Big Champagne: P2P Re-Purposed For Profit

03.15.2009

Marketing, Music Business, Piracy

A while back I ranted on the enormous number of ‘free’ downloads of my stuff. Now here is a very interesting article about how at least one company is making serious money helping record companies convert some of this activity into sales. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.10/fileshare.html In short, Big Champagne gathers stats on P2P file sharing data as demographic marketing information; the frequency by which songs and artists are being downloaded in various cities, states and countries. They then sell this in digestible chart and spreadsheet form to record companies so they can determine which artists to push in which markets. So while [...]

Be Sociable, Share!

An Interesting Post On Copyright

03.4.2009

Copyright, Music Business, Piracy

This is Joe Clark, a writer in Toronto, working on a very interesting book on copyright reform. It refutes a lot of the extreme points of view on both sides of the ‘great divide’.

Be Sociable, Share!

File Sharing: Is It Like Booze?

01.23.2009

Music Appreciation, Piracy

A lot of people who favour ‘free file sharing’, (aka ‘The Pirates’) like to use the Booze/Prohibition argument. Hey, people drink so if you don’t make it legal people will bootleg it. This is similar to the “People copied cassettes back in the day, so why can’t they copy CDs now you hyopcrite?” argument; filled with more flaws than swiss cheese. (OK, maybe yer average Emmentaler has more holes than flaws, but hey everyone misuses their analogies, right?) And that’s the point. Yeah, people have been drinking since before Bacchus. Gettin’ high is a basic human need. End of story. [...]

Be Sociable, Share!

Piracy: Quantity Vs. Quality

01.21.2009

Piracy

Look, down deep, people are either liberal or conservative. You know it. I know it. We feel a certain way about things and then grow our ideas to fit those predelictions. I felt P2P was wrong the day I first checked out Napster. But for years I couldn’t articulate it well. Maybe I still can’t. I kept hearing supposedly reasonable people talk about the good side of P2P their arguments sounded like Saruman speaking from the tower. I thought back to my youth and the massive collection of cassette tapes I kept from parties, gigs. The library. Why was that [...]

Be Sociable, Share!