‘Pirates’ and files sharers
p2p news view / p2pnet: “File-sharing is done for free. Piracy is not. When someone burns several copies of a popular movie and sells the copies for profit, they’re pirating software. If he or she goes to a street corner and hands the bootlegs out for free, that’s file-sharing.”
The same thing applies to sharing digital music, movie or other digital files online via the p2p networks or individual web pages.
And the distinction, one of the best yet, comes in Brian Fontenot’s post on Louisiana’s Independent Tigerweekly.
But file sharing isn’t all Fontenot is discussing. He also complains about policies for CDs, saying they should be like any other product – returnable under appropriate circumstances.
“What happens when someone gets that movie or album they think they wanted, opens it, and hates it?” – he asks. “Anyone who has ever tried to return opened digital media to a store knows the answer. They have to have a receipt and they can only get an exact copy of what they are trying to return and only if it is defective. And this is simply not right.
“We should have the right to return a product, with a valid receipt, whether it is open or not. But, digital media manages to slip by us for some reason. And this creates quite the absurd situation where an individual can return a half eaten cake to their grocery store for a full refund, but won’t ever see their money again if they make the mistake of opening a ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ DVD. We are, to varying degrees, able to do this with everything from movie theater tickets to haircuts to clothing to cars.”
Back to file sharing >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Give us file-sharing or give us refunds!
By Brian Fontenot - Independent Tigerweekly
If we consider the self-righteous crackdown on “illegal downloading,” we can see just how poorly we, the consumer, are being treated. Organizations like RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and Disney do nothing but harp about the evils of downloading. Disney even went so far as to have a cartoon where music downloading led to the virtual downfall of the music industry.
Those people who happened to purchase the Velvet Revolver album, “Contraband,” would have been treated to quite the nasty surprise when they put it into their PCs/Macs. If the CD is auto-run by the computer’s CD-ROM, a file is installed on the computer without the consent or knowledge of the computer’s owner. This file causes any copies of the album made on the computer to be garbled. Of course, this measure was called a copyright security measure and not what it really was, a computer virus.
A lot of people aren’t really informed about file-sharing, even those who use it. A downloaded file is not guaranteed to be the file it says it is. The encoding of the file is rarely done by a professional and often at substandard or wastefully high bit rates. And some media being swapped online has actually been released by the creators. File-sharing is also the digital equivalent of “promiscuity” and the “health problems” which may arise from numerous swapping, regardless of the protection in place.
Certain ethical problems arise, as well. It is not considered stealing for two roommates to share the movies, music, and games they individually buy. It is not considered stealing for someone to rip a music CD to mp3s to put on their iPod. And no one has ever been arrested for listening to their roommate’s CD collection, while their roommate is studying at the library, listening to all the music from their collection on their iPod. This is file-sharing, but it’s not illegal.
Furthermore, the law has turned a blind eye to what is probably the longest running and most widely used fire-sharing program, AOL Instant Messenger. It is not nearly as convenient or on such a large scale as say Napster was, but friends can still transfer movies and music files. And, AIM is still up, running, and hasn’t been sued.
We also need to distinguish piracy from file-sharing. File-sharing is done for free. Piracy is not. When someone burns several copies of a popular movie and sells the copies for profit, they’re pirating software. If he or she goes to a street corner and hands the bootlegs out for free, that’s file-sharing. The policies and laws preventing stores from refunding your money to you, because the movie you purchased was terrible were put in place to defeat piracy. The CD-keys protecting Windows XP discs were developed to thwart piracy. Copying media isn’t something new to the world.
Clamping down on Internet file-sharing, while not making revisions to existing policies, however, is new. Despite logic, file-sharing is illegal and people have been prosecuted. The whole point of shutting down file-sharing is to keep the media industries from losing profit. But, the other end of things isn’t being adjusted. Law abiding citizens don’t download media, they purchase it. But, they are treated like potential pirates, each time they are refused a refund.
The media industry shouldn’t be allowed to have it both ways and force the consumer into the equivalent of grab-bag shopping. Even with stores and Web sites offering song samples and playing movies, the consumer still can’t make an informed decision. For example, Amazon.com has a sample for Coheed & Cambria’s hit single, “The Suffering,” but the sample doesn’t include the song’s chorus. And good luck to anyone trying to listen to a sample of lesser known or older album in their local Barnes & Noble, as only the music the store is trying to sell is going to be available to listen to. With movies, especially re-releases of older titles, it can be next to impossible to see what the extra footage is actually included in say the international version of “Supergirl.”
The solution is simple. Give us refunds or gives us file-sharing. Until then, the media industry deserves no sympathy from us, and it certainly doesn’t deserve our money. It’s bad enough a we have to pay $15 for a CD when we can walk a few aisles over and buy a blank CD-R for roughly $0.35, which can hold nearly 10 of the $15 CDs on it in .mp3 format.
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local political representatives. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, o
December 8th, 2005 at 7:18 pm
I feel that any cd that is for sell should be where a person can listen to the whole thing before the purchase. Then the ony reason for a return would be the cd is defective and should ony be replaced. Along these lines the cd’s must be made playable on computers and cd players as well.
December 8th, 2005 at 7:28 pm
“I feel that any cd that is for sell should be where a person can listen to the whole thing before the purchase. ”
I should have to sit in a store for 45 minutes to listen to the cd before I decide to purchase it? What if I am purchasing several cd’s? I should expect to spend 1 hr/cd I want to purchase?
December 8th, 2005 at 7:45 pm
Well I think it was more so along the lines of being able to sample anything (or everything) on a CD before deciding to purchase it, and not just selected tracks.
December 8th, 2005 at 9:51 pm
I said “can”, that gives the person who is not quite sure which cd they want can be sure. I am not for tying customers to chairs and making them listen to a whole cd before purchase. If you know what you want go for it.
December 8th, 2005 at 10:11 pm
It has always been a sticking point with me that the cartel’s won’t give customers the simple ability of most other businesses of allowing refunds to customers for whatever reason they are unhappy with the product. Almost any reputable business will offer no-strings-attached refunds for customers unsatisfied with a purchase on the thought that a a happy customer will be a repeat customer through good will.
There is no such for dealing with media, music, or software. You open it, even if it is defective, you don’t get your money back.
Those cds don’t have the offical cd logo on them for a reason. They don’t meet the interchangability standards that are required to be a real cd. It was one of the purposes of having the logo on the case. It was the assurance that if you purchased that product, it would play at home, in your car, or in your portable player, without exception. That flies in the face of what the cartels wish to do, which is lock up the music. I am not going to buy a new player everytime the cartels think they have the latest snake oil cure to anticopy. One could go through several players a year doing that with no ability to ever collect a workable library of works for ones enjoyment, defeating one of the very reasons folks would pay to own.
Rather than a refund (which the cartels would choose over allowing file sharing) I want the ability to sample at will. Currently there is nowhere one can do that with any reasonable expectation. I want to hear it on MY STEREO, not the showroom floor that has entirely different acoustic sound setups and most probably will not be setup with the optimal sound listening as the primary goal.
Two of the members of the cartel have already been found guilty of still participating in payolla. The other two are still under investigation. The effect of payolla has been to make the radio landscape a vast wasteland for hearing new music with any frequency. Certainly, you aren’t going to hear indies. They got off far too lightly in their fines and it should have been that the results would have allowed indies into access to broadcast so that the listeners would have a way to hear and be exposed to new music. As it is now, p2p serves that purpose. You can hear of artists you never knew existed, you hear blends that are not the common hit maker themes and much of it is quite appealing to the ear.
December 9th, 2005 at 12:08 am
holy crap! relax already.
where i live - and in many other european countries - it’s been policy at all CD shops for decades to allow any person to listen to any (and as many) CDs as they wish, whether or not they intend to buy them.
no one is forced to listen to them, and no one is forced to first pay for them.
it should be a standard policy also in america, but i guess it isn’t.
December 9th, 2006 at 8:09 pm
I think, probably like most of you, that the music industry should adjust their CD prices. It’s right to say most CD will cost you around 15$ but from my own experience when I’m trying to get some unknown artist, CD prices usually go up to 25$ an album…which is a total rip off considering the percentage of that amount the artist is getting. I’d say if prices would be around 5-8$ an album and that big CD store would have more than U2 or Jessica Simpson’s album I’d buy cd’s more often. But it seems those stores are not ready to do that move anytime soon. Once again p2p help people to get music they never heard of, which most of the time is way better than most cd’s you’ll find at your HMV store. By cutting prices and getting more music available in store, more people would buy it more often, so that would cover the the losses from dropping prices. Plus, buyers will end up with a better quality product that when downloading mp3’s (that’s what they say though)….