Torrent Talk (1 Viewer)

[Bottomfeeder Sports]

... I also believe that the differences between torrenting files and other forms of theft/copyright violation/whatever are significant enough that relying on existing thoughts and analogies is inadequate. New technology has created new problems, which require new solutions.

Right, you are ultimately agreeing with myself and, I think Scooby here but you are still clinging to the status quo, the old solutions.

I am owed compensation because that is the economic model we as a society have successfully employed. It works, better than other failed economic systems. People are compensated for their creative efforts, and therefore there is incentive to continue to create.

That benefits everyone, not just the creator. This isn't micro-loss vs macro-gain; the free distirbution of perfect copies of things hurts on the micro level and ulitimately on a macro level. Despite what you and others have claimed, society does NOT ultimately benefit from making file-sharing (or the more futuristic "object-sharing") an acceptable practice.

I have claimed that your assertion that this macro level benefit is always just assumed. No one in this thread has demonstrated that it exists. Jefferson, per the article linked yesterday stated that even at the formation of the constitution this was all just assumed to exists without evidence. I'm confident that this benefit some individuals, and harms others (some guy with a really good story set in the Star Wars universe for example). I'm not sure if there is any benefit worth the cost that we as a society are paying to protect the interest of a tiny few. I don't know and make no such claims, but I do have and will express my doubts.

 

[KarmaPolice]

Protections are necessary because without them there is no incentive to create.

This keeps being said, but it's not true. Not in the case of music anyway.The artists who are doing the creating have never really been protected. The copyright belongs to the label, not to the artist. The money goes to the label, not to the artist. (see note) The artists have continued creating music anyway, because that's what they enjoy and because albums are good promotion for their shows. There's no reason to think that won't continue.Note: In most cases. The majority of bands are never considered "recouped", so they see 0% of their album sales. Those who are fortunate enough to reach a huge number of sales will get about 10% of any royalties above the "recouped" value.

I agree about music - in fact I made this point in post #4 of the thread. Music is a different animal, because there are multiple revenue streams that all benefit by leaking songs onto torrents. The songs are really just advertisements for the other revenue generating sources (concerts, merchandise, etc.)Most other producers do not similarly benefit from their products being torrented, though. To make a simplified example, the guy who developed Photoshop only makes money if people buy Photoshop. He's not going on tour and selling t-shirts with his face on them. If we, as a society, decide it's acceptable for people to freely distribute copies of Photoshop on the internet, then the developer has no incentive to ever create another piece of software.

Then we're probably on the same page. Music is the only file sharing I participate in. I've still never been motivated enough to try torrents, but it's easy enough to find most stuff on sites like megaupload.And like others have said, I now spend more money on music than I ever have. The number of concerts I attend has risen from 1 or 2 a year (stuff I'd been listening to forever like Buddy Guy, Pearl Jam or Bob Dylan) up to 15 a year (mostly bands I never would have heard of if not for file sharing).

This is where I fall as well. I haven't downloaded a movie or a book, and probably never will. The most I would do with movies is copy a couple kids movies so my son can beat them up without damaging the original. As you guys have stated, music is different b/c in most cases this is not where the artists get most of the money - not the case in other forms of media where there is one maybe two ways to make their money back.

 

[jwb]

I agree about music - in fact I made this point in post #4 of the thread. Music is a different animal, because there are multiple revenue streams that all benefit by leaking songs onto torrents. The songs are really just advertisements for the other revenue generating sources (concerts, merchandise, etc.)

Most other producers do not similarly benefit from their products being torrented, though. To make a simplified example, the guy who developed Photoshop only makes money if people buy Photoshop. He's not going on tour and selling t-shirts with his face on them. If we, as a society, decide it's acceptable for people to freely distribute copies of Photoshop on the internet, then the developer has no incentive to ever create another piece of software.

Agreed.In regards to music, I wonder how profitable this concert/merchandise model will be in 20 years? Because we're still seeing a lot of the "more established by the old way" acts do this. I'm not up on it, so maybe I'm ignorent, but have any purely "discovered / marketed on the internet" bands made it big - I mean big enough to fill an arena on their own and sell hundreds of thousands of T-shirts / etc?

The bolded seems pretty hard to define. I'm not sure anyone is "purely" discovered on the internet. Dane Cook maybe?There have definitely been bands/artists who have made it big since the advent of file sharing, which is probably what you should be asking.

But that's still with a boost from the record company, etc - right now, we have a mix of the two. We're at a crossroads, really. But if all music is free, and anyone can upload anything anywhere, we don't need record companies (etc) then.I'm just wondering the the file sharing / wild west / everyone participates / everyone gets the tunes for free model can really support an act making a living. Because if it can't, you'll start to see many acts die out when the members hit their mid 20's, and music is reduced to smaller venues, smaller bands, and a scant handful that actually tour / make a living into adulthood.

I dunno - maybe that's the way it's supposed to be, too - maybe the last 50 years have been an anomoly. Maybe there isn't a lot of value in a supergroup/artist that lasts 35-40 years, etc.

 

[KarmaPolice]

I agree about music - in fact I made this point in post #4 of the thread. Music is a different animal, because there are multiple revenue streams that all benefit by leaking songs onto torrents. The songs are really just advertisements for the other revenue generating sources (concerts, merchandise, etc.)

Most other producers do not similarly benefit from their products being torrented, though. To make a simplified example, the guy who developed Photoshop only makes money if people buy Photoshop. He's not going on tour and selling t-shirts with his face on them. If we, as a society, decide it's acceptable for people to freely distribute copies of Photoshop on the internet, then the developer has no incentive to ever create another piece of software.

Agreed.In regards to music, I wonder how profitable this concert/merchandise model will be in 20 years? Because we're still seeing a lot of the "more established by the old way" acts do this. I'm not up on it, so maybe I'm ignorent, but have any purely "discovered / marketed on the internet" bands made it big - I mean big enough to fill an arena on their own and sell hundreds of thousands of T-shirts / etc?

The bolded seems pretty hard to define. I'm not sure anyone is "purely" discovered on the internet. Dane Cook maybe?There have definitely been bands/artists who have made it big since the advent of file sharing, which is probably what you should be asking.

But that's still with a boost from the record company, etc - right now, we have a mix of the two. We're at a crossroads, really. But if all music is free, and anyone can upload anything anywhere, we don't need record companies (etc) then.

I'm just wondering the the file sharing / wild west / everyone participates / everyone gets the tunes for free model can really support an act making a living. Because if it can't, you'll start to see many acts die out when the members hit their mid 20's, and music is reduced to smaller venues, smaller bands, and a scant handful that actually tour / make a living into adulthood.

I dunno - maybe that's the way it's supposed to be, too - maybe the last 50 years have been an anomoly. Maybe there isn't a lot of value in a supergroup/artist that lasts 35-40 years, etc.

That's probably a good thing for the artists. I don't know the answer - does anybody have stats on how the other end of the music biz is doing? How have the concert ticket sales, merchandise $, etc. fared over the last decade or so of the downloading boom?

 

[guest 54788]

is this where I come to learn how to be a ?

 

[Maurile Tremblay]

There seems to be a lot of discussion involving the past - I'm seeing quotes from Jefferson and Locke, and discussions about the history of copyright laws, and cavemen trading rocks for fire - and I don't think any of that is entirely pertinent.

I think it's relevant to the question of whether copyright infringement is theft.The concepts of property and theft evolved for millions of years in the chimpanzee lineage, and they refer to keeping stuff and taking stuff away. They don't refer to copying stuff. When you imitate somebody, he still has all of his ideas; it follows that patent and copyright infringement aren't theft. If you told the ancient Greeks that reciting Homer was stealing from him, you'd have gotten a lot of funny looks.

A few hundred years ago, the legal community reached a consensus that it would be good for their clients if people believed that ideas could be owned, so they proselytized. But two hundred years of lawyers' sophistry doesn't overrule ten million years of brain evolution. "Intellectual property" is a massive exercise in calling a tail a leg. (Said to be Abraham Lincoln's favorite joke: "Q: How many legs does a dog have if we call the tail a leg? A: Four. Calling the tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.")

This, however, in no way implies that patents and copyrights are not very real. They simply aren't examples of property. They're something else. And if we examine their basis in law, it's clear what they are: they're examples of contract.

Patent and copyright are creations of government that let societies obtain a public good by giving an incentive to providers. The government makes a deal with inventors and authors: it promises to let them determine who copies their ideas for a given time, if in return they'll think and share their ideas with us. If they go for it, it's win-win. Making win-win possibilities real is what contracts are for.

Patents and copyrights being legally contracts rather than property is implicit in the U.S. Constitution. It says they exist to promote the useful arts, not to protect authors' and inventors' rights; and it authorizes them only for limited times. Property doesn't work that way. Imagine if your building a house meant that the government could take it away from your descendant just because you died and fifty years passed. That would be a taking for public use without just compensation; it's banned by the Fifth Amendment.

Note that I'm not criticizing patents and copyrights; I'm criticizing the way people generally think about patents and copyrights. Thinking of them as part of contract law instead of property law doesn't stop creators from benefiting. (It does, however, preclude the notion that copyright infringement is theft.)

 

[Ignoratio Elenchi]

... I also believe that the differences between torrenting files and other forms of theft/copyright violation/whatever are significant enough that relying on existing thoughts and analogies is inadequate. New technology has created new problems, which require new solutions.

Right, you are ultimately agreeing with myself and, I think Scooby here but you are still clinging to the status quo, the old solutions.

I am owed compensation because that is the economic model we as a society have successfully employed. It works, better than other failed economic systems. People are compensated for their creative efforts, and therefore there is incentive to continue to create.

Well, yes, the "new solutions" I'm envisioning take place within the framework of a larger, capitalist theory of our economy. I don't think we should change the model where people are compensated for the things they create - in that sense, I am clinging to the status quo. By "new solutions" I mean we probably need to find a new way to get the content creators their money, not that we should reevaluate whether or not they should be compensated.

That benefits everyone, not just the creator. This isn't micro-loss vs macro-gain; the free distirbution of perfect copies of things hurts on the micro level and ulitimately on a macro level. Despite what you and others have claimed, society does NOT ultimately benefit from making file-sharing (or the more futuristic "object-sharing") an acceptable practice.

I have claimed that your assertion that this macro level benefit is always just assumed. No one in this thread has demonstrated that it exists. Jefferson, per the article linked yesterday stated that even at the formation of the constitution this was all just assumed to exists without evidence. I'm confident that this benefit some individuals, and harms others (some guy with a really good story set in the Star Wars universe for example). I'm not sure if there is any benefit worth the cost that we as a society are paying to protect the interest of a tiny few. I don't know and make no such claims, but I do have and will express my doubts.

We have probably seen, in just the past 50 years, an explosion of technological innovation and a diversity of artistic expression never before witnessed in human history. I don't think protecting the rights of the producers to gain financially from their products has really hindered society from benefiting from these innovations. We're not paying to protect the interests of a "tiny few" - we're protecting the interests of everyone who ever dreams of earning compensation for the things they produce. It's like you'd prefer to sacrifice the rights of the guy who invented the Star Wars universe, in favor of the rights of the guy who writes a derivative spinoff based in that universe. That seems totally backwards to me. I'd rather live in a world where there is only one story set in the Star Wars universe and everyone gets paid for their efforts, than a world where there are lots of stories set in the Star Wars universe and no one gets compensated for any of them. It's not enough to say that "multiple Star Wars stories" is better for society than "one Star Wars story" - you have to include all of the baggage that comes with each of those scenarios. Sure, it would be great if everyone could download a free copy of Photoshop, but what does that mean in the bigger picture? What is the net benefit (huge emphasis on net) to a society that legitimiizes sharing products that way?Again, I don't want to get too deep into whether copyright laws are THE solution, since I don't know enough about that. I'm just trying to establish the principle that A solution is needed; that producers specifically (and society as a whole) benefit when they are compensated for their creations. Filesharing, and its more futuristic extensions, goes against this principle, which hurts not just the producers themselves but ultimately society as a whole.

 

[Disco Stu]

I'm just wondering the the file sharing / wild west / everyone participates / everyone gets the tunes for free model can really support an act making a living. Because if it can't, you'll start to see many acts die out when the members hit their mid 20's, and music is reduced to smaller venues, smaller bands, and a scant handful that actually tour / make a living into adulthood. I dunno - maybe that's the way it's supposed to be, too - maybe the last 50 years have been an anomoly. Maybe there isn't a lot of value in a supergroup/artist that lasts 35-40 years, etc.

You can play smaller venues and still make a living. There are more choices now, which leads to more people making a living, not less. You may not have the supergroups milking the same songs into their sixties, but that's probably not a bad thing.For years, Clear Channel and the major record companies basically decided what was popular and who was going to make money (mostly them). That's still the case today, but control seems to be slowly shifting more to the people. They're going to fight it tooth and nail, because it's bad for them. I struggle to see how it's bad for music in general though.

 

[scoobygang]

The problem with the contract analogy, IMO, is that its hard to think of a contract between Maurile and me that should give me a legally recongizable right against Happy Ragnarok, who was never a party to the contract.

So if we're trying to define the legal wrong of copying, it can't sound in contract. Non-parties can't breach contracts. Maybe it's some type of tort for intentional interference with a contract, but I still don't think that works because Maurile isn't supposed to be able to bind Happy.

 

[Maurile Tremblay]

The problem with the contract analogy, IMO, is that its hard to think of a contract between Maurile and me that should give me a legally recongizable right against Happy Ragnarok, who was never a party to the contract.

If you write a song and I buy the CD, the copyright you hold on it is a contract between you and the government. The government agrees to use force to prevent me from making a copy for Happy Ragnarok, and to prevent Happy Ragnarok from enjoying that copy, without your permission.You may also have a contract directly with me that forbids me from making a copy; but that's independent of the copyright. (The fact that any such contract between you and me does not restrain Happy Ragnarok is exactly why copyright laws are needed to maintain your monopoly -- i.e., it's exactly why you need a contract with the government, and not just with me.)

 

[jwb]

I agree about music - in fact I made this point in post #4 of the thread. Music is a different animal, because there are multiple revenue streams that all benefit by leaking songs onto torrents. The songs are really just advertisements for the other revenue generating sources (concerts, merchandise, etc.)

Most other producers do not similarly benefit from their products being torrented, though. To make a simplified example, the guy who developed Photoshop only makes money if people buy Photoshop. He's not going on tour and selling t-shirts with his face on them. If we, as a society, decide it's acceptable for people to freely distribute copies of Photoshop on the internet, then the developer has no incentive to ever create another piece of software.

Agreed.In regards to music, I wonder how profitable this concert/merchandise model will be in 20 years? Because we're still seeing a lot of the "more established by the old way" acts do this. I'm not up on it, so maybe I'm ignorent, but have any purely "discovered / marketed on the internet" bands made it big - I mean big enough to fill an arena on their own and sell hundreds of thousands of T-shirts / etc?

The bolded seems pretty hard to define. I'm not sure anyone is "purely" discovered on the internet. Dane Cook maybe?There have definitely been bands/artists who have made it big since the advent of file sharing, which is probably what you should be asking.

But that's still with a boost from the record company, etc - right now, we have a mix of the two. We're at a crossroads, really. But if all music is free, and anyone can upload anything anywhere, we don't need record companies (etc) then.

I'm just wondering the the file sharing / wild west / everyone participates / everyone gets the tunes for free model can really support an act making a living. Because if it can't, you'll start to see many acts die out when the members hit their mid 20's, and music is reduced to smaller venues, smaller bands, and a scant handful that actually tour / make a living into adulthood.

I dunno - maybe that's the way it's supposed to be, too - maybe the last 50 years have been an anomoly. Maybe there isn't a lot of value in a supergroup/artist that lasts 35-40 years, etc.

That's probably a good thing for the artists. I don't know the answer - does anybody have stats on how the other end of the music biz is doing? How have the concert ticket sales, merchandise $, etc. fared over the last decade or so of the downloading boom?

But let's cross off "old style" artists - ones that have already sold millions of CD's. Aerosmith (etc etc etc) doesn't count here. I'm more interested in going forward, not how it augments what has already been (because we can all agree what has already been is going away)

 

[scoobygang]

The problem with the contract analogy, IMO, is that its hard to think of a contract between Maurile and me that should give me a legally recongizable right against Happy Ragnarok, who was never a party to the contract.

If you write a song, the copyright you hold on it is a contract between you and the government. The government agrees to use force to prevent me from making a copy for Happy Ragnarok without your permission.You may also have a contract directly with me that forbids me from making a copy; but that's independent of the copyright.

So what wrong has Happy done if he violates your copyright? None? He hasn't taken your property. He hasn't violated any contract. I'm just not sure what the conception gets us. It seems to me that any benefit or right incurred upon you by the government is actually property. It can't be taken away without due process. I realize that line of decisions is also controversial, but I think it works.I also think the analogy works a lot better with patents, which require disclosure, than with copyright.

 

[jwb]

I'm just wondering the the file sharing / wild west / everyone participates / everyone gets the tunes for free model can really support an act making a living. Because if it can't, you'll start to see many acts die out when the members hit their mid 20's, and music is reduced to smaller venues, smaller bands, and a scant handful that actually tour / make a living into adulthood.

I dunno - maybe that's the way it's supposed to be, too - maybe the last 50 years have been an anomoly. Maybe there isn't a lot of value in a supergroup/artist that lasts 35-40 years, etc.

You can play smaller venues and still make a living. There are more choices now, which leads to more people making a living, not less. You may not have the supergroups milking the same songs into their sixties, but that's probably not a bad thing.For years, Clear Channel and the major record companies basically decided what was popular and who was going to make money (mostly them). That's still the case today, but control seems to be slowly shifting more to the people. They're going to fight it tooth and nail, because it's bad for them. I struggle to see how it's bad for music in general though.

It's probably not. It is different, though. Trust me, I'm not against file sharing. If musicians survive w/ the model and want it, that's fine. I'm all for it.

What bothers me more is the "I'm downloading, and I don't care". That's what bothers me. What happens when we all have Kindles (etc)? Trust me, nobody is file sharing because it's good for artists. They are file sharing because they don't want to pay for <whatever it is>.

 

[scoobygang]

It's probably not. It is different, though. Trust me, I'm not against file sharing. If musicians survive w/ the model and want it, that's fine. I'm all for it. What bothers me more is the "I'm downloading, and I don't care". That's what bothers me. What happens when we all have Kindles (etc)? Trust me, nobody is file sharing because it's good for artists. They are file sharing because they don't want to pay for <whatever it is>.

I think it's less of a problem when everyone has Kindles or IPads. Because Kindles and IPads make it very, very easy to purchase online media legally. And much more time intensive and burdensome to do so illegally. I own a Kindle. I buy my books from the Kindle store or from the Amazon website. The book is wirelessly delivered to my device. I can email a PDF file to it (and have done so with work stuff), but it's clunky and not very satisfying.

 

[Bottomfeeder Sports]

We have probably seen, in just the past 50 years, an explosion of technological innovation and a diversity of artistic expression never before witnessed in human history. ...

Most of the laws we are questioning were significantly changed in the past 25 years. Copyrights and how they were viewed were much different in the US until March 1 of 1989 and we have been going down a completely different path than the one we were on prior to that.

 

[Maurile Tremblay]

So what wrong has Happy done if he violates your copyright?

That's a complicated question.He's broken the law. Under what circumstances it's wrong to break the law depends at least to some extent, I think, on whether it's a good law or a bad law -- which comes back to your efficiency justification. But it's complicated because different copyright violations have different costs and benefits, different trade-offs, that affect different parties in different ways. I think, for example, that uploading stuff is worse than downloading stuff. And uploading freshly pirated stuff is worse than re-uploading what's already been pirated by others. And making indefinitely many copies generally available to everybody is worse than making a few copies for your friends. Yadda, yadda. There's a continuum of copyright violations, some of which I'd consider pretty clearly wrong if they subvert the usefulness of beneficial IP laws, some of which I'd consider so de minimus that they're not meaningfully wrong, some of which I might consider affirmatively good if they subvert the harmful effects of inefficient IP laws; and so on.

 

[Bottomfeeder Sports]

But let's cross off "old style" artists - ones that have already sold millions of CD's. Aerosmith (etc etc etc) doesn't count here. I'm more interested in going forward, not how it augments what has already been (because we can all agree what has already been is going away)

How much does the existence and dominance of these "old style" artists prevent newer artists from emerging? If we assume that there is a pie for the music industry how much can that pie grow if it is dominated by consumers predominately supporting artists that are retreading creatively they once had? For society our question is does having a market where groups like Aerosmith that are mostly resting on its laurels when it comes to its own creativity increase or decrease overall new creativity. Does the prospect of being able to one day earn your living off of a brief creative period create a bigger incentive for new artists to create, or does it largely inhibit their ability to even make a modest living off their art?(I don't know here. I'm inclined to think that most all music has sucked since the teenage male record store manager stopped filling out surveys to record record sales rather than actually hooking up the cash registers and inventory management to create Top XXX lists. But that could be a more of a function of being an old fogy that has seen music pass him by than reality.)

 

[Chaka]

What about shtick? Is shtick protected?

 

[Christo]

We have probably seen, in just the past 50 years, an explosion of technological innovation and a diversity of artistic expression never before witnessed in human history. ...

Most of the laws we are questioning were significantly changed in the past 25 years. Copyrights and how they were viewed were much different in the US until March 1 of 1989 and we have been going down a completely different path than the one we were on prior to that.

Isn't that just the law catching up with technology? Most people didn't have the ability to copy music 30-40 years ago so it wasn't an issue.

 

[jwb]

It's probably not. It is different, though. Trust me, I'm not against file sharing. If musicians survive w/ the model and want it, that's fine. I'm all for it. What bothers me more is the "I'm downloading, and I don't care". That's what bothers me. What happens when we all have Kindles (etc)? Trust me, nobody is file sharing because it's good for artists. They are file sharing because they don't want to pay for <whatever it is>.

I think it's less of a problem when everyone has Kindles or IPads. Because Kindles and IPads make it very, very easy to purchase online media legally. And much more time intensive and burdensome to do so illegally. I own a Kindle. I buy my books from the Kindle store or from the Amazon website. The book is wirelessly delivered to my device. I can email a PDF file to it (and have done so with work stuff), but it's clunky and not very satisfying.

I agree for now. But at some point, that might not be so - it might be very easy for Joe Sixpack to download whatever.I mean, you don't get much easier than iTunes and an ipod. Yet, music is still file shared quite a bit. I guess we'll find out soon enough whether it's just a fringe thing, or if it's a real problem.

 

[Mr. Pickles]

What about shtick? Is shtick protected?

Yes, but mine is open source.

 

[KarmaPolice]

But let's cross off "old style" artists - ones that have already sold millions of CD's. Aerosmith (etc etc etc) doesn't count here. I'm more interested in going forward, not how it augments what has already been (because we can all agree what has already been is going away)

I understand, and that more what I was referring to. I work with a bunch of HS kids and while (unlike us old farts) they don't seem to spend much of anything on albums/songs, they still seem to go to a lot of concerts. Not sure how to pull stats on that. It would be something like overall $ for ticket sales, and also looking at how much is going to the old groups like McCartney or U2. If the stats are $2B in 1990 and $2B now, but in '90 the top 5 tours earned $1B and now they earn $600M, we could see that the money is still there, but it's more likely that the lesser known bands are getting their fair share of it. Don't know where to find these stats though.

 

[jwb]

But let's cross off "old style" artists - ones that have already sold millions of CD's. Aerosmith (etc etc etc) doesn't count here. I'm more interested in going forward, not how it augments what has already been (because we can all agree what has already been is going away)

How much does the existence and dominance of these "old style" artists prevent newer artists from emerging? If we assume that there is a pie for the music industry how much can that pie grow if it is dominated by consumers predominately supporting artists that are retreading creatively they once had? For society our question is does having a market where groups like Aerosmith that are mostly resting on its laurels when it comes to its own creativity increase or decrease overall new creativity. Does the prospect of being able to one day earn your living off of a brief creative period create a bigger incentive for new artists to create, or does it largely inhibit their ability to even make a modest living off their art?(I don't know here. I'm inclined to think that most all music has sucked since the teenage male record store manager stopped filling out surveys to record record sales rather than actually hooking up the cash registers and inventory management to create Top XXX lists. But that could be a more of a function of being an old fogy that has seen music pass him by than reality.)

I like where this discussion is heading, as now it's really getting interesting.I think about this a lot, and how music is changing. This was brought up in another thread that in the future, there won't be that collective experience in regards to media. The internet has made it so everyone can have exactly what they want, exactly when they want it. Where surveying a high school in 1975 might have yielded 15-20 favorite bands (and all of them known), now the number might be more like 150-200, with an awful lot of "who?". Is this bad? Not necessarily, but it is different, and will likely lead to less longevity overall - it's going to be very hard to make a sustained living off of internet followers who are used to just clicking over to the next thing. It's interesting for sure.Maybe this whole file sharing thing is overblown. Maybe it's nothing in the big scheme of things, and most people will gravitate towards the paid models that exist. I still don't like the attitude it fosters, as I feel it's dishonest, and I don't think blatent dishonesty and a disregard for others is a way to live your life, but that's for another thread (plus, it usually has its own way or working itself out anyway.)

 

[Bottomfeeder Sports]

We have probably seen, in just the past 50 years, an explosion of technological innovation and a diversity of artistic expression never before witnessed in human history. ...

Most of the laws we are questioning were significantly changed in the past 25 years. Copyrights and how they were viewed were much different in the US until March 1 of 1989 and we have been going down a completely different path than the one we were on prior to that.

Isn't that just the law catching up with technology? Most people didn't have the ability to copy music 30-40 years ago so it wasn't an issue.

Except that you probably know that we became party of a 100 year old treaty in 1989. Hard argument to make that a 1880's copyright treaty was a response to catching up to the "explosion of technological innovation and a diversity of artistic expression never before witnessed in human history" "in just the past 50 years". But I'd love to see you try. And 40 years ago is just about the time that cassette tapes started emerging, though I'd give you the '70's and the abomination of 8 Tracks and let you argue that recording on cassettes didn't become mainstream until 30 years ago. Right around the time of the Betamax case.

 

[scoobygang]

If you're interested, here's an article that tries to estimate the economic effect of file sharing (it finds it statistically neglible).

http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf

 

[wazoo11]

What about shtick? Is shtick protected?

Yes, but mine is open source.

 

[Phurfur]

Nice abuse of numbers but it only shows your point is very weak.

Most of the songs on iTunes are $1.29. This includes a 30% price increase during "the worst economic times since the great depression”. Production costs are next to nothing compared to the past and distribution is a non issue. I see nothing but greed by the music industry and they are feeling the consumer push back.

Does anyone know the profit margin on the sale of 1 million MP3s?

Consumer push back should be in the form of non-purchases - not illegal downloads.Prices generally have little bearing to costs - unless you have a commodity. By definition, almost any performer is the opposite of a commodity.

By way of example I work in a division that has 8 other companies - my company operates at a 50% margin - very profitable. Same industry, and another company in our division operates at a 10% margin. My company provides very unique products with very little competition. I don't set prices based on my costs. I set prices based on the value we provide to our customer. The other company is closer to a commodity with lots of competition.

I agree, I have not paid $1.29 for an MP3.

 

[BassNBrew]

For those defending illegal file sharing as a right or something that benefits the greater good....should I be able to give away my FBG password to anyone would rather have access to FBG for free? Wouldn't this serve the great good of fantasy football players?ETA: Since I only purchased a subscprition last year to play in the contests and support these boards I'm I entitled to let someone else use the content that I don't access?

Like I posted above, it's a little different b/c of what the artists are getting compensated with the album sales. Lets say that Joe had to run the site through a company and although it was his idea he might only get $1 out of that $25 subscription through his contract. He might say that some sharing wouldn't be bad since that person is more likely to tell somebody else after seeing the site, buy a FBG Tshirt, buy the magazine, or feel that it's really worth the price and get a subscription themselves - all of which benefit him more than just saying no and losing that person's initial $1. That's not the case, so it's not a great example. Your example is more like an author - it's basically their only stream of revenue to giving it free hurts them a lot more, and they wouldn't see much benefit at all.

Well Joe could be akin to the evil record companies. Ruds, Pasquino, Chase, etc develop a majority of the content. They don't need to rely on by Joe for income when they can make money with their expertise via other sites, speaking engagements, or selling t-shirts. Shouldn't we be sharing our passords to FBGs to help promote draftguys and dynastyguys?

 

[Jason Bourne]

If you're interested, here's an article that tries to estimate the economic effect of file sharing (it finds it statistically neglible).

http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf

Scooby - while I disagree with you on some key points, you have generally provided a solid basis for your position. But using a paper from 2004 is a bit dated, don't you think?

 

[Pots]

In my oppinion torrents of shows/movies actually support the popularity of the series and helps more than hurts. I can only speak for myself as an exmaple, but I would never pay the outrageuos prices for DVDs of a show that I know little about or were simply 'recommended' or I only caught a few times. However, if I watched an entire season from begining to end, I'm much more likely to buy additional seasons. You could say "Hey, Tivo it" but that's not always an option and you still have to wait WEEKS to get a good portion of episodes when you could download a season in a day, watch it front to back, get hooked if it's good. Simply for me, I wouldn't get hooked if I didn't download it to beign with, and I wouldn't pay without getting hooked. I don't believe they lose sales because of the situation.

 

[scoobygang]

If you're interested, here's an article that tries to estimate the economic effect of file sharing (it finds it statistically neglible).

http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf

Scooby - while I disagree with you on some key points, you have generally provided a solid basis for your position. But using a paper from 2004 is a bit dated, don't you think?

More recent would be better. I'm not sure the point is invalid. The data is pretty much from the height of the Napster days. In any case, you're welcome to find a better study. I just thought that I should at least look for something on the topic if we were going to make assertions about it. I knew studies like it existed, but nobody really had a reason to take my word for it.

 

[Chaka]

What about shtick? Is shtick protected?

Yes, but mine is open source.

mr.pickles.s7e01.open.source.shtick.aXXo.torrent

 

[Christo]

We have probably seen, in just the past 50 years, an explosion of technological innovation and a diversity of artistic expression never before witnessed in human history. ...

Most of the laws we are questioning were significantly changed in the past 25 years. Copyrights and how they were viewed were much different in the US until March 1 of 1989 and we have been going down a completely different path than the one we were on prior to that.

Isn't that just the law catching up with technology? Most people didn't have the ability to copy music 30-40 years ago so it wasn't an issue.

Except that you probably know that we became party of a 100 year old treaty in 1989. Hard argument to make that a 1880's copyright treaty was a response to catching up to the "explosion of technological innovation and a diversity of artistic expression never before witnessed in human history" "in just the past 50 years". But I'd love to see you try.

Sure, why not? Changing technology forced the US to re-evaluate its current law concerning the protection of artistic works. The US had taken its first step towards this in 1952. By 1988, the US realized that was not enough and embraced the Berne Convention. Simply put, advancement in technology forced the US to realize that foreign law was more appropriate than current domestic law when it came to copyright protection.

And 40 years ago is just about the time that cassette tapes started emerging, though I'd give you the '70's and the abomination of 8 Tracks and let you argue that recording on cassettes didn't become mainstream until 30 years ago. Right around the time of the Betamax case.

But copying using cassette tapes is much more difficult and involved much more effort than mp3s or DVDs today. If I bought a U2 cassette in 1980 and used my dual deck to copy it for a few friends, U2 lost a few bucks. Today I can can upload U2's latest album and thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people never have to buy it. In other words, up until the last 30-40 years it was cost prohibitive to screw artists.

 

[Disco Stu]

In other words, up until the last 30-40 years it was cost prohibitive to screw artists.

Not if you worked for the record label.

 

[safariplanet]

Today http://www.techi.com/2010/04/the-riaa-and-...cultural-shift/"]on Techi://http://www.techi.com/2010/04/the-ri..."]on Techi

Though we have, over the past few years, become accustomed to rather strange, aggressive ideas from those who run the movie and music businesses, the latest move from the RIAA and MPAA is a little astounding.

Today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization dedicated to defending internet users’ rights, outlined some of the suggestions made by the media conglomerates for protecting their content. They, along with many other players, were asked to weigh in on how intellectual property should be treated in a changing, networked world.

And you know what the MPAA and RIAA suggested? Well, among other things:

* Anti-infringement spyware to be installed on users systems

* Filtering technology on internet service provider’s networks to prevent the spread of copyrighted material

* ‘Inform’ and ‘educate’ (i.e. harass) entrants to the US about the ‘dangers of pirated material’

* Intimidate countries that do not agree with these policies, using US economic clout to threaten them

* Use federal resources to employ agents to crack down on copyright thieves

So, how does that sound? Having spyware installed on your system and monitoring what you’re watching? Having your ISP filtered and throttled so that the MPAA and RIAA can control what gets distributed around the internet? Super, right?

But it isn’t simply the stunning sense of entitlement and invasiveness that’s the issue here. There’s something bigger at stake than simply ‘this is not how you should treat your customers’.

What the RIAA and MPAA have failed to understand is that new technologies like the web don’t simply represent new ways to pirate material – they are part of a seismic change in culture. By failing to understand that this is a cultural and not only technological or economic shift, media businesses are on the brink of becoming obsolete due to an obsession with control.

Technically speaking, you might articulate the change in how we think of these things by talking about ‘the economics of scarcity’ vs. the ‘economics of abundance’.



See, physical media is hard and expensive to create and distribute – not only do you have to find the materials to press CDs or print books, you have to then distribute them on trucks and trains and what-have-you. This creates an economic system based on scarcity, or as we more traditionally think of it, supply and demand. Limited by physical constraints like materials and labor, you make a certain number of things and then you set the price based on how many people want that thing.

But when you switch to digital, this scarcity often disappears. An MP3 or movie file or eBook is just ones and zeroes. After the initial costs of creation are done with, creating a new copy costs almost nothing. Suddenly, things are abundant – there is no physical limit on how many of something can be made – and this changes things.

But that’s only the economic side of things. Culturally, there has also been a shift in how we think of accessing content like TV shows or films or music. Whereas once it seemed to make sense to save our pennies for new records or films, it’s now much harder to justify that expense because there is so much available for free, legitimately or not. You know this – it’s everywhere around the web, because no-one can control the spread of information.

People will often talk about this in terms of ’stealing’ or ‘entitlement’ – which has it merits – but also misses the point. Once a person has experienced the freedom of something like Napster or Bittorrent, it’s hard to put that genie back in the bottle. It isn’t about ‘thieving’ as much as it is this: once you know what it’s like to access culture with such freedom, going back to the basics of plunking down 20 bucks for a iTunes movie you can’t copy, can’t take to your friends house or can’t watch on your PS3 not only feels strange, it feels plain backwards and absurd.

They have a good point with this. [Old-fashioned] music distributors are digging themselves into a hole by creating unnecessary costs. Does anyone think every album should cost $14 if we were told that the digital version costs $.40 per album in bandwidth costs? Can anyone justify the existence of the RIAA at this point? Music is becoming more prolific, and you can't apply the antiquated supply/demand curve when it comes to digital data. Its resources are infinite.

 

[Walton Goggins]

I posted a few pages back where my ISP suspended my account for downloading a movie that was already out on cable, on a channel that I subscribed to. They removed the suspension when I called them up.

What was interesting was that movie studios (this is what my ISP told me so I don't know how truthful this is) put pressure on my ISP who in return monitor their customers.

I asked them what about all the illegal downloading of music which doesn't seem to carry the same weight with suspensions. He told me that while just as illegal they don't monitor that.

So, if this is all true, unlike movie studios, why can't record companies apply the same pressure on ISP?

 

[AhrnCityPahnder]

Good article on how small group Jedi Mind Tricks sees sharing as a plus. JMT has never sold more than 75K of any of their albums, this is good perspective for those who say the only bands who can leverage this are bands who have reached Radiohead-esque status.

http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2010/03/int...enemy-soil.html

Recently, I spoke with Yan, who is the manager the hip-hop group Jedi Mind Tricks and now partner in Enemy Soil, a full-service music company, with JMT front man Vinnie Paz.  In this interview, Yan talks about the emergence of a middle class of artists, what it’s like being in a niche based music business, and how JMT is taking control of their music.

Over the years, with the rise of file-sharing and social networks, has JMT’s level of involvement with their fans changed at all?  In what ways has their involvement in JMT’s career – their “vested interest” in their art — evolved as well?

Absolutely.  I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of artists talk about the blessing and curse that is file sharing.  For JMT, it has been more of a blessing.  Yeah, they’ve lost sales to illegal file sharing just like everyone else, but the efficiency of those file sharing networks has allowed their music to spread across the world in a way that the physical distribution network never achieved. 

Those file-sharing networks are definitely part of the reason why JMT can play a show in front of 2,000 kids in Bogota, Colombia or to a similarly-sized crowd in Bucharest, Romania.  They may have lost a sale, but they have gained new throngs of fans by playing live in places that their music may have never reached without the Internet.  With the improvements in digital distribution, the hope is that file sharers will become supporters.

The rise of the social networks has been a great asset for JMT as well.  Those networks have created unprecedented access for fans to artists and vice versa.  Our business is a customer service business; we care about how the fans feel about the music.  We’re always looking for new ways to interact with the fans, because the fans’ reactions to what JMT is doing musically are a better barometer of their success than SoundScan numbers.  For a long time now, we’ve chosen to measure their success in the fans’ passion for the music rather than Billboard chart positions.

It seems like human nature to root for the underdog.  Fans of independent music are typically a different breed of music fan, because they generally have to work to discover you and they’re actively seeking out music rather than waiting for it to be spoon-fed to them through traditional radio, TV, etc. outlets, so when they discover you they wear it like a badge of honor.  JMT has fans that send them pictures of themselves with tattoos of JMT’s logo or lyrics – they’re literally wearing the music as a permanent badge of honor.  That type of passion isn’t measured by a Billboard chart, but we’re fine with that.  We’ve built a business model that exists outside the gates of that hierarchy. 

How open do JMT fans tend to be about their file-sharing habits?

It’s not uncommon for fans to come up to the guys at shows and say, “I’ve downloaded all of your ####.”  It says something about the age that we live in when a fan goes up to one of his favorite artists at a show and feels comfortable admitting to him that for all intents and purposes he “stole” his life’s work.  But, this is the music climate that every artist inhabits these days.  Our hope is that the fans understand that buying from an indie artists is important to keep indie music culture alive.  It’s not just a transaction; it’s a vote of confidence for a different type of music business.

Has the digital age brought forth the circumstances and tools necessarily to allow for the emergence of a middle class of hip-hop artists?  Also, would you consider JMT to be a part of this class and why so?

I think the digital age has helped enable the emergence of a middle class of artists.  It’s a strange dynamic, because the digital age has helped facilitate the physical sales shrinkage, but it has also enabled more artists to communicate and sell directly with fans without all the typical industry tollbooths taxing artists along the artist-to-fan path.

JMT is a niche business.  Over the 14 years of their career, the Internet enabled them to take what started as a passionate fan base in say Philly, NYC, Boston, and maybe a few other major cities like Los Angeles and grow that fan base across the world. 

Without the Internet, they may have been relegated to a regional phenomenon or maybe a group that plays 10-15 shows a year in major markets.  With the help of the Internet, they’ve grown from a regional niche into a worldwide niche with a worldwide fan base.  They’re 14 years into their career and there are still cities that they haven’t played where there is a demand to see them play, so they’re very fortunate in that respect.  The Internet helped them carve out this middle class niche that they inhabit today.  There are a lot of indie artists out there who have carved out niches for themselves thanks, in part, to the digital age.



During what journalist Steve Knopper has deemed “The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age,” do you feel like more opportunities have opened up for JMT and how does Enemy Soil play into that vision?

I think JMT was fortunate to be starting their career right at the time that the Internet was gaining mainstream acceptance in ‘96.  The internet created an opportunity for them to have their music distributed across the world in a way that physical distribution hadn’t achieved.  They recognized that opportunity and seized it by developing their worldwide touring business.  In the early years, they took low guarantees to go play for their fans; they were confident that they would draw a crowd and get invited back.  Now, those tour dates are the anchor of their business.  Between the creative accounting of labels and depleting sales, they knew that they had to develop their touring business if they hoped to carve out a sustainable career.  Ironically, in this digital age, artists are looking to the analog experience of playing a show to a crowd of actual human beings as the cornerstone of their businesses.

In the age of “The Spectacular Crash” there are fewer opportunities to sell records at physical retail, but there are also more opportunities to sell direct to your fans.  There are more opportunities to retail merchandise through a band-controlled website.  There are more opportunities to tour.  The new venture, Enemy Soil, is set up to help artists take advantage of those opportunities.

Amidst all of these changes how has the creation of Enemy Soil allowed JTM to take control of their music in ways that they haven’t before?  Do you feel like it will be a sustainable business model for you during these times?

We’ve made a concerted effort to engineer Enemy Soil not as a record label, but as a full-service music company that focuses on artist management, music marketing, and distribution.  Our goal is to bring our years of experience spent developing a sustainable business model under the Jedi Mind Tricks banner to other artists through Enemy Soil.  It took a lot of years and a lot of mistakes to turn JMT into a sustainable business.  Now, we have the advantage of applying all of that experience to Enemy Soil.

It’s tough to make any predictions about the music business these days, but we have confidence in what we’ve accomplished with JMT and we think we can repeat those successes with hard work and perseverance and by partnering with talented artists who want to be active participants in their own careers.  At the end of the day and through all of the changes that the music business has and continues to go through, it always comes back to the need for great music.   You look at labels like Sub Pop, Merge, XL, etc. that have had continued success in the face of all of these changes and then you realize it’s because they’ve done a great job at continually discovering and developing great new artists.  The hope is that there will always be not only a market, but also a place in world culture, for great music. Our first release on Enemy Soil will be Jedi Mind Tricks Presents Army of the Pharaohs: The Unholy Terror, which comes out on March 30th.

 

[Mario Kart]

I have downloaded CD's and movies in the past. I see no issue with it. The few movies I have downloaded, I have never put into a DVD format to watch on television. I see no point in doing so as the quality is not there nor do I want to waste a couple of DVD's in case something goes wrong in the burn process. I do make CD's of the music I do download, at times, but mostly I keep it on my computer and use it while at my computer. I have never downloaded music and then sold it to profit from it nor will I ever do that. I also make my own ringtones for my phone instead of paying $1.00+ for someone to do it for me. I see no issue with this either.

The bottom line for me is the following. If artists are losing money due to downloading, then something has to change. What has to change? Getting the RIAA out of the music business is what needs to change. I pay artists for their music but I do not pay the RIAA for music from that same artist. If artists would set up their own distribution, which is not all that difficult nowadays given the internet, and got rid of the RIAA from their contracts, I will happily donate directly to those artists.

 

[Chaka]

I pulled the audio from this commercial (Man's Last Stand) and use it as the ring tone when my girlfriend calls. (sometimes I just listen to it because I think it's hilarious).

Where do we stand on that? It's a publicly broadcast commercial and freely distributed on YouTube. Is it wrong to DL that audio? Is it wrong to use it as a ring tone?

 

[FUBAR]

I see lots of people talking about downloading dvds via torrents.

Please stop doing that. I guess I'm more sensitive to that as I have several friends that are struggling to get music careers off the ground and this kind of thing directly impacts them.

So please stop the posts about how to do it and please stop the advertising for PMs for people to send you copied disks.

But I'm open to discussing the bigger picture here. For you guys that do the torrent thing, how do you justify it that it's not stealing from the music artist or the creator of the DVD?

J

I don't diagree with you but $1.29 for an MP3 is stealing in my book.

how so?

 

[FUBAR]

In my oppinion torrents of shows/movies actually support the popularity of the series and helps more than hurts. I can only speak for myself as an exmaple, but I would never pay the outrageuos prices for DVDs of a show that I know little about or were simply 'recommended' or I only caught a few times. However, if I watched an entire season from begining to end, I'm much more likely to buy additional seasons. You could say "Hey, Tivo it" but that's not always an option and you still have to wait WEEKS to get a good portion of episodes when you could download a season in a day, watch it front to back, get hooked if it's good. Simply for me, I wouldn't get hooked if I didn't download it to beign with, and I wouldn't pay without getting hooked. I don't believe they lose sales because of the situation.

Is Tivo stealing? Let's assume you record a show and keep it, showing it to your friends at your house. You've never bought a season but you keep the season on tivo. You don't sell it to anyone. How is it different than copying a CD you borrow from a friend or the library?

 

[FUBAR]

So the debate is whether the artists are hurt by this. You claim that the artists suffer because I am taking something that is their creation without compensating them for it. I say that in most cases they would not have gotten my money in the first place so they aren't being hurt. In fact I would argue they they benefit b/c I am now likely to catch a concert of theirs, tell somebody about them, or buy the album. The question becomes for people am I stealing from them if they wouldn't have benefitted from me in the first place. IF there was a list of artists who explicitly stated that they don't want anybody to have their work who didn't pay for it, I would look at it, respect it, and stop getting anything of theirs (probably b/c I would view them as saying "i'd rather have 2 people's $2 than have 100 people hear our stuff"). That is their decision to make. We won't see that list, but what you do see is artists embracing what is going on and using it to their advantage and cutting out the companies who were ripping them off all along.

Each form of media is a different case. Music is different b/c they have albums, concerts, Tshirts, and other merchandise to make money with, and it's been known that hardly any of the artists were making anything on their album sales anyway. Movies are different because there are less revenue streams, and books are are basically one. Most people justify the music thing because the person who created the art isn't affected that much. Movie are different b/c if people wait to download the movie, they aren't going to the theater or buying the disc so the artists get nothing. If people download a book the artist gets nothing. I see books being more of a problem quicker than the movies will, especially with the 3D craze kicking in so people can't get the same quality at home.

So if I state that I wouldn't go to the theater or buy the disc, I'm not stealing movies? I don't feel the need to own many DVDs so I use netflix. I used to copy the discs, I wouldn't buy them anyway so it's okay right? But I no longer do and with the increasing number of movies or shows available on line there's less reason to copy discs illegally.

IMO the solution for music is to create a program where people can program a list of music to play like it would on the radio or download with a brief commercial for revenue or other creative ways of making money, make it a free site but businesses advertise for revenue.

 

[Hooper31]

How much do music artists earn online?

Thought this was an appropriate graph to share. It's from Information is Beautiful. One of my favorite sites.

This image is based on an excellent post at The Cynical Musician called The Paradise That Should Have Been about pitiful digital royalties. (Thanks to Neilon for pointing that out). I’ve taken his calculations and added a few more.

As ever, this was incredibly difficult to research. Industry figures are hard to get hold of. Some are even secret. Last.Fm’s royalty and payment system is beyond comprehension. (If you can explain it to me, please get in touch)

Note: these figures do not include publishing royalties (paid to composers of songs). The full spreadsheet of data does though. You can see all the numbers and sources here:http://bit.ly/DigitalRoyalty

 

[scoobygang]

Is Tivo stealing? Let's assume you record a show and keep it, showing it to your friends at your house. You've never bought a season but you keep the season on tivo. You don't sell it to anyone. How is it different than copying a CD you borrow from a friend or the library?

"Time Shifting" is considered a fair use. The precedent comes from a decision from back in the Sony Betamax days.

 

[FUBAR]

Is Tivo stealing? Let's assume you record a show and keep it, showing it to your friends at your house. You've never bought a season but you keep the season on tivo. You don't sell it to anyone. How is it different than copying a CD you borrow from a friend or the library?

"Time Shifting" is considered a fair use. The precedent comes from a decision from back in the Sony Betamax days.

Right, so it's okay to tivo (record) what's on the air and rewatch it again and again, share it with friends, etc. Your friends are just time shifting and place shifting their viewing from your house to theirs.

 

[GoFishTN]

I saw this Mick Jagger quote the other day and it reminded me of this thread. At least someone in the music business gets it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8681410.stm

But, you know, it is a massive change and it does alter the fact that people don't make as much money out of records.

But I have a take on that - people only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn't make any money out of records because record companies wouldn't pay you! They didn't pay anyone!

Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone.

So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there was a 25 year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the time they didn't.

 

[Britney Spears]

$1.29 for an MP3 is stealing in my book.

Buy a used CD for a few bucks off Amazon marketplace, or a local used bin.

 

[Kinetic]

$1.29 for an MP3 is stealing in my book.

Buy a used CD for a few bucks off Amazon marketplace, or a local used bin.

what if someone just gives you their old cd's?

 

[mon]

$1.29 for an MP3 is stealing in my book.

That's like the most I'd pay for a MP1 or MP2. I'd pay up to $2 for a good MP3.

 

[mon]

I saw this Mick Jagger quote the other day and it reminded me of this thread. At least someone in the music business gets it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8681410.stm

But, you know, it is a massive change and it does alter the fact that people don't make as much money out of records.

But I have a take on that - people only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn't make any money out of records because record companies wouldn't pay you! They didn't pay anyone!

Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone.

So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there was a 25 year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the time they didn't.

I've said this before, or at least something similar. You could also say that in all of history, from the dawn of man to 1900 and up to current day, there has only been 25 years where artists got paid for their recordings. That's probably not a valid argument for anything, but it's an interesting fact.