"It has nothing to do with not being able to innovate. Coming up with new music that people want is itself innovation, and people should be compensated if you would like them to keep innovating in that way."
I'm talking about the old-guard. I.e. the recording industry - not people who make music. People who make music have been doing so for tens of centuries or more. They do not need to be dependent on the music industry.
Sorry I was a bit blunt at the beginning of this reply, but I really am sick of listening to the same old shite repeated ad nauseum. The tide has turned .. it's impossible to push it back.
People who make music are not dependent on the music industry - they are the music industry. Moronic is the person who thinks that nothing can be done to foster a society where the creation of art is respected. Throwing your hands up and saying it's too late is just pathetic. Thankfully there are enough people out there who respect the value of recorded music that it's still a $9 Billion industry, and in fact, the "tide" has risen over 3% this year.
"People who make music are not dependent on the music industry - they are the music industry."
Be realistic - a lot of people in the music industry do not make music.
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The problem is; people need to be compensated, but the way they've traditionally been compensated in the past is no longer tenable. This is where innovative ideas are required. Conceptually, copying an MP3 is no more theft than quoting someone without permission to a friend is theft.
Charge people for the service - not for the goods; because the goods have no finite value.
When someone asks Harlan Ellison where he gets his ideas, he tells them he uses a service in Schenectady. He gives them $30/month and they send him a six pack of ideas every week.
Ideas are easy and cheap. So cheap that they are functionally free. Turning those ideas into something concrete is neither cheap nor easy. Creating a song, a story, a painting, a sculpture, or an app takes a tremendous amount of effort. When a songwriter has an idea, it doesn't just magically appear on the page. The songwriter has to work to put it there. When I get an idea for an app, it takes a lot of effort to turn it into something that can be released.
The value in an mp3 is not in the bits themselves. Bits are cheap. The value is in the novel arrangement of those bits into something that is desired. When you copy an MP3 without paying for it (where applicable), you are conceptually walking into an art gallery and walking off with a lithograph without paying for it. It doesn't matter how many lithographs are available, you still walked off without paying for it against the wishes of the creator of that lithograph (after all, there would be no lithograph to steal if someone didn't come up with the source material.)
An executed idea in the form of an MP3 may be valuable, but it is not worth an unlimited amount of money.
When IP is sold in the same way as physical goods, it can be sold forever - this is problematic because notions of theft depend on the victim being unable to use the item that has been stolen.
The way you are refering to theft is far closer to what a legal professional might refer to as potential lost revenue. Even so, this is still questionable as many of these MP3 thieves wouldn't have paid in any case.
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"When you copy an MP3 without paying for it (where applicable), you are conceptually walking into an art gallery and walking off with a lithograph without paying for it. It doesn't matter how many lithographs are available, you still walked off without paying for it against the wishes of the creator of that lithograph (after all, there would be no lithograph to steal if someone didn't come up with the source material.)"
No. No. No.
How on earth can this be a fair comparison? A lithograth is printed on paper or vellum. Stealing the lithograph would be similar to stealing a CD.
If you want an analogy that is fair .. perhaps the visitor to the art gallery walked out with a photograph on their camera or a JPEG file. Neither of which should constitute a crime in my opinion.
If music is simply an idea that someone can whisper to you once and then it's yours, you wouldn't need an MP3 to remember it. The day you can "quote" John Lennon and sound exactly like him, your argument has merit.
"It has nothing to do with not being able to innovate. Coming up with new music that people want is itself innovation, and people should be compensated if you would like them to keep innovating in that way."
I'm talking about the old-guard. I.e. the recording industry - not people who make music. People who make music have been doing so for tens of centuries or more. They do not need to be dependent on the music industry.
Sorry I was a bit blunt at the beginning of this reply, but I really am sick of listening to the same old shite repeated ad nauseum. The tide has turned .. it's impossible to push it back.