Déjeuner

Reasons I Like to Post In-Print Recordings #598

Look, I buy a lot of stuff.
Buy a lot of CDs, lot of paid downloads, loads of stuff. (Back in the day, I bought me a lot of 8 Track carts and cassettes.)
So it's not like I haven't supported the music y'know.
I can't count the thousands I have spent on buying music and going to live gigs over the years.
So the way I see it - I am owed a bit of cream.
A bit of 'extra': - some reward for my support.
Some gratis shit from artists I have supported with my coin in the past. As well as some I haven't of course.
I'm still going to buy some things. I'm just going to 'not buy' some others that I'll be adding to my collection, is all.

Here's what really annoys me though -the people down at the local supermarket flat out refuse to go along with this fair minded way of thinking.
I have supported this supermarket for years - purchasing countless amounts of household items, food and beverages over that time. I don't know how many hundreds, no thousands, of dollars I have spent there, supporting them and their industry. Not forgetting the food growers too...
I'm one of the biggest supporters of the groceries industry from around here.
And food man - food is a right. We all have the right to food - otherwise we die.
So why have the peopole down at the supermarket freaked out when I took a little extra off the shelves and stuffed it under the front of my jacket?
After all my years of support of them - how disappointing.
Being threatened with arrest - likewise disappointing.
Arguing my case about my point of view on the matter and being given a lecture on the basics of a market economy.
And having to put the stuff back on the shelves.
Disappointing.

Reasons I Like to Post In-Print Recordings #412

There are loads of musicians who don't mind others making their recordings available through file-sharing circles.

Most musicians probably.   I can name hundreds just off the bat.   Or a hundred probably.
Or at least dozens.  Well, I can count 'em on my fingers and toes anyway.
Like the guy out of the White Stripes is one.  And maybe Lady Gaga.  And Neil Young, Eugene Chadbourne, Amanda Palmer, Steve Coleman, er.. Norah Jones .   And what about that 12 year old article by Janis Ian on the subject ? She's mad for file-sharing - absolutely loves it..

Many musicians - possibly the same amount as above (possibly not) - download in-print stuff for themselves as well. Some have admitted it!

So I mean, if musicians are downloading in-print stuff AND don't mind their own stuff being made freely available - well, what more is there to say?  Case proven I think !


Here is an article with further proof on the issue  It's got pie charts and some graphs.  These are tremendously authoritative, and tend to convince people of all sorts of things, more often than not.
The public comments at the end of the piece reveal a diversity of views.
It's  a pity maybe that such words as "whiny troglodyte" are brought into play, but hey that's internets for ya..
Far more interesting is the new argument made there that musicians suffering "economic damage" are to blame themselves - for making crappy music!  This is an exciting new justification for my activities - I may yet make it  "Reasons I share in print stuff No. 736"...

Reasons I Like to Post In-Print Recordings #347

The amount of people grabbing my lossless endlessly reproducible copies of the music is insignificant  - it's hardly anyone really..

Certainly not enough to do any financial damage to the artists whose recordings I admire.

Some of my favourite artists sure, would struggle to sell 5000 copies of a new release worldwide.

[Hey, it's esoteric music and that's just what we accept right?]

But I doubt that letting 26 dudes have a free download is going to make much of a dent in the resources of some small record label run from a kitchen table in a sleazy suburb on the outskirts of town - hey?

And hell, I'm sick of the tired arguments about "lossless changes everything" and "what if my 26 downloader-club  friends in turn have 26 friends each?".

Shit, that's still only 676 guys that have my original rip, and I am willing to bet that NONE of those 676 dudes have many friends, or maybe any friends (the music we love is pretty marginal, y'know..)


Because if those 676 have only 8 friends, the we're well over the 5000 copies that was our original maximum-exposure  sales projection.

We would'nt be recompensing the artist we enjoy so well - we'd be sucking them dry.

And we wouldn't want to do that would we ?

Reasons I Like to Post In-Print Recordings #264

If something is in print - by which I mean available in the shops or by mail-order, I post it on the internet (to a smaller or greater global audience) because..

Artists Make Nothing From Recordings - and Never Have

The artists don't make money off recordings anyway - the greedy record companies take all the cash. 
Artists have NEVER made money off record companies - who are inherently evil and exploitative.
Artists make money off live gigs. People should really go to gigs.
So really a CD is just like a business card - only louder..

Reasons I Like to Post In-Print Recordings #107

If something is in print - by which I mean available in the shops or by mail-order, I post it on the internet (to a smaller or greater global audience) because..

Because it is good exposure for the artists!
More people will like and enjoy that artist's music that I make available for download - many may even buy it.as recorded music -a CD or a purchased download for instance.

If they don't do that, they might well go to a gig of that artist (if the artist happens to be appearing anywhere near your town at some point).

Persons from institutions and societies may be influenced too - the artist in question may eventually receive prizes, grants, awards, faculty tenure and so forth - helped by my exposure of sharing their recorded work to strangers.

My labours are in the service of the artists I love I suppose - a promotions and publicity role is what I have .
Someone should pay me really.

Sharing What Exactly?..

Depending on what kind of material is being shared - different moral views and opinions may be held by people concerning different 'categories' of recordings.

At the broadest, 'categories of music recordings' could be

Live recordings: -  so-called ROIOs (Recordings of Indeterminate Origin). It's assumed, taped not for commercial release - often (but not exclusively) by audience members - sometimes with artist consent, sometimes without.
Many people feel that sharing and trading this sort of material is perfectly OK: - entire communities exist to exchange live recordings.  Some - like the well known Dimeadozen Bittorrent site - will not allow any material that artists have requested not be made available - or have a ban policy for any music that is commercially available in any form.
It's worth noting in passing that the 'ROIO' label is frequently fairly disingenuous as the 'origin' [the O in ROIO] of many recordings is extremely precisely known [ie. it was my buddy Johann, with 2 Telefunken U47s strapped to his the ends of his crutches, 4 rows back, at the Bohemia Palace on 26th June 1996. I then mixed it in Goldwave and uploaded it from a Macbook Pro with a Core Duo CPU with sticky tape on the lid].
"Indeterminate Origin" indeed ...

Deleted recordings - Just because the record label has deleted / discontinued a recording (and this can be tricky to verify sometimes) - doesn't mean that it is out of copyright.
Many feel however that in this circumstance, it's OK to swap and share these  recordings that are commercially unavailable.  After all, how else would anyone get a chance to hear any deleted recording? A reissue from the original label or some other may - or may not - be forthcoming in a usually unknown amount of time..

In-Print Recordings - These are commercially available - perhaps from local shops, perhaps from small outlets online, usually - but not always - on the mega shop sites like Amazon.com.
You can buy them - but many prefer not to spend that money - when there are others prepared to offer them for free. Someone buys a copy originally - but that one copy can be disseminated to hundreds/thousands/hundreds of thousands of people extremely easily.
This is the stuff that has brought (what used to be called) The Record Industry to its knees.
For every 10 cents somewhere like the iTunes store pulls in, untabulated hundreds or thousands of theoretical dollars (euros, pounds, rupees, roubles) flow away in the form of 'illegal downloads' - of many stripes and sizes.

There are arguably other categories - such as unreleased studio material, recordings that are in shops but discontinued by the label, or issues that are 'out of stock' but not advised as deleted.

But - keeping it simple - the above 3 categories I would suggest are the main three.

And whilst many will have no interest in this delineation and will download whatever the hell they feel like of any of the 3 kinds of material mentioned - other people will have differing responses to the 3 different areas I've outlined above - and will respond differently.

With their views of the ethics involved, and with their wallets I'd suggest.

lack of ethics | glut | tiny freedoms - from sotise

Note from serviceton: - the below text was left as a comment by SOTISE on the post "Some Issues" - A Shortlist" .  By way of a resumption of discussion , and for its own merits, I have copied sotise's text here.  He responds to earlier comments (see posts preceding) from Igor and JC
I have made some tiny edits for the sake of clarity - for full text see the original comment.
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SOTISE says
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I Dont Know about you guys but Evidence of Personal Ethics is scant in the world we now inhabit ,The Political Classes, the Technocracy, the financial establishment, the Military industrial complex, and that includes the Leading dominant,Orthodox cultural political establishment Brands and Labels... all Demonstrate a remarkable lack of ethics, and since the Power elites are Role models in our society , (ever more so as schools and universities have increasingly subservient ties to the military industrial political nexus ,and given they no longer teach independent thinking rather priming people as drones in the established producer/consumer order ..

Is it Therefore Reasonable to expect people to rise above the Pervasive Moral Order and , take into consideration the Rights, and need to make a Living of struggling artists? .

there is another Issue , generally unmentioned among Music lovers floating uneasily beneath the surface of all such discussions , and that is one of Glut , (quite apart from the artifact, ie,Lp, Cd , which has been devalued with the explosion of online Musical delicatessens,and rampant digital dissemination in varied forms) there is a case that marginal musics , free jazz, improvised and so called Avant Guard musics , have themselves been devalued , since one of their central (the Very thing that makes them antithetical to the establishments, entertainment as pure consumption aesthetic) has been undermined and gradually eroded if not entirely subverted , by the ease of free push button consumption , many fans of even relatively ethical blogs , have amassed enormous caches of un listened to music , this music we love is deep listening music , which but slowly reveals itself accretionally through successive listens.... Everything about electronic download culture undermines its very core aesthetic , its raison d'etre as a meaningful cultural experience ..

this gluttonous , Hording Mentality (almost indistinguishable from pure consumer instinct as corporately purveyed) , the electronic Vulgarization-Fetishization and ultimately commodification of rare free jazz lps, for example must ultimately impact on the music itself significantly eroding its cultural significance

one small example is the way downloading has changed my relationship to the CD'S and Records i already own , forcibly diminishing their accessibility for one thing , changing noticeably i think the way i hear or experience the music.... or certainly in the process of doing so...

that is one way that we are destroying if not the thing we love , then our relationship to it , its cultural significance ..

as i alluded to in my first comment , months ago , i believe this tendency towards electronic consumer glut is in some way a form of revolt , against the corporatisation of everything , kicking against the pricks of constraints on personal freedoms , where the only freedom seems to be confined to the arena of personal consumption , ironically the revolt replicates and mirrors the soul destroying systemic notion central to the consumer ethic , which perpetuates the illusion that accumulation , ownership etcetera confer Identity , stability and personal Happiness.

--- End of sotise's comments --

those who buy the laws | ethics | piracy.. - from JC

Note from serviceton: - the below text was left as a comment response by blogger JC on the post "Some Issues" - A Shortlist" .  JC is responding to the comments of Igor (see previous post). - his views are worth a separate post I think.

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JC says


Movement is slow around here but I seem to be subscribed...

On the first part of your thoughts the evidence is clear:

Mega-corporations continue to ply their double standards. Those with the piratical, rapacious "content delivery" systems are emphatic about strong patent/copyright protection for their software/ad sales systems (and are continually suing each other about those elements) while simultaneously striving to abolish any copyright protections for the artistic/creative content they want to deliver (or appropriate). Nothing new there... Those who buy the laws bend them to their benefit.

I might agree personal ethics are the best solution, but the state of the world and nearly any circumstance in it shows us the result of relying on personal ethical compasses. Ethics is one foundation of (or lens for viewing) social relations but that foundation is in general (though perhaps not universally) quite corrupt - and in most cases imminently corruptible. Flawed laws are marginally better than none, bad laws may be worse than none, but the relativism induced by which side of any table one is seated on colors each person's views of "good" and "bad".

Onxi's idea of essentially accruing royalties is in some ways a form of volunteering to submit to the existing framework, but the administrative burden of getting money due to the particular individual producers is monumental. Even ASCAP/BMI work on an estimated basis rather than real accounting. Doing something for the producers may be better than nothing, but it couldn't really do enough for anyone to notice (not that the cultural shift and karma wouldn't have value though).

The issue is not really OOP blogs or ROIO networks, unless the participants decide they don't need to buy *any* music anymore, which gets back to that very slippery - and unenforceable - personal ethics issue. The problem is more outright piracy (online or otherwise) and the "legitimate" businesses (Google, advertising agencies, etc.) that do deal with real money generated by outright thievery. The cultural attitudes are not insignificant, but outside an enforcement framework.

--- End of JC's comments --

Copyright | Ethics | Crisis of the Concept - from Igor

Note from serviceton: - the below text was left as a comment by blogger Igor on the post "Some Issues" - A Shortlist" .  By way of a resumption of discussion , and for its own merits, I have copied Igor's text here.  I have made some tiny edits for the sake of clarity - for full text see original comment.
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Igor says
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I look forward to the discussion on the issue of copyright protection and related topics, because last year we witnessed a series of coordinated protests occurred against two proposed laws in the United States Congress - the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA ). After the whole thing somewhat subsided, it is clear that the theory and practice underlying the copyright protection and intellectual property is fundamentally shaken.

The question that is the focus of interest here - how to enable musician / author to capitalize their deserved income in the form of royalties, I see as part of a larger problem that concerns us all. It is the robbery of the common good and traditional knowledge by mega corporations. I'm referring to the practice of illegal appropriation of international funds of seeds and spread of genetically modified crops by companies such as Monsanto, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Svngenta, Cargill, ADM. I also have in mind the patenting of the human genome sequence in order to achieve a monopoly on genetic modification and the profits derived from such patents. I'm referring to Google's plan to digitize all the books in which the copyright protection deadline expired, which, otherwise, are free to use and reproduce. Their plan is not to stop there ...

So, what it is about when we speak of copyright and intellectual property?
The basic purpose of copyright law is to allow the author to enjoy a monopoly on the exploitation of the works for a limited time. But at the same time, copyright means the request from society to grant exemption from the common property, and demands compensation for the use of private property.

Music copyright protection protects immaterial form of property whose biggest problem is their simple multiplicity. Privacy of private ownership ensures that material goods can only belong to one person. If I own a car, a house or land, their owner can not be someone else at the same time. Copying and sharing music over the Internet removes the very essence of private property, because what was private, has made it common. So, what was originally privately owned, is now becoming more ownership for others. It looks like we are in a situation where individuals are losing control of their private, intangible property, while on the other hand mega-corporations increase the scope of privatization not only of material possessions, but also of knowledge, information and communication - what we know as the common goods.

From the author / musician point of view, who is the focus of interest in this place, desirable situation is one that will allow continuity in generating revenue on the basis of his royalities. Currently the situation is completely different, much worse for the authors. They lost due to Internet piracy, the greedy record industry that does not pay them fairly, and because of fraudulent relationships with various agencies for the protection of music copyrights. (Although there are examples of blogs that raise musical culture, develop the habit of buying music and attending concerts, etc. to their regular visitors. But that's another story). I expect positive developments only after changes in the consumers’ value systems. The changes will result from the behavior of consumers, rather than in legislation. I would not bet on the legislation because it is corrupt and serves the consolidation of the existing order, which means the benefit of it has solely the corporate business.

In our post-modern, neo-liberal, just-about-now-confused world, the solution lies on a different plane, on the ethics. If the question of ethics succeed to assert itself as essential, it will pave the way for solving the most important problems we face today: the environment, energy, hunger...
The question of ethics will be the cutting edge to solve many of problems that humanity is facing today. And that means compel institutions and the private sector to realize that they are part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

As for the free sharing of music via the Internet as I see it, it is a crisis of the concept. The rapid development of communications and global network connectivity has reached a level on which the concept of selling CDs is outdated. One possible solution would be a complete abolition of copyright protection allowing the music and the texts have become free and available to everyone as part of common goods. In this case it would be necessary to find some other mechanisms of authors social compensation. From this standpoint Onxidlib's idea [ serviceton: see comment on "Some Issues" - A Shortlist" (below) ] seems to be very fruitful and worthy of further consideration

--- End of Igor's comments --