The difference between your examples and the music industry is that buggy whip makers lost because they had an inferior product; who would want a horse-driven carriage when they could have a car? But here, people are still TAKING the music, just without paying. That's the problem.

SOPA isn't the right answer. It tramples on too many fundamental rights for it to be. But to simply say that the music industry should die because the Internet makes piracy easy, that's a bold statement. Within a decade, books will be scanned and turned into eBooks at an incredible rate. It's already happening, but the technology is too slow to make digitizing every book right away possible. But when it does get there, will writers still be encouraged to write? Their books could be so easily pirated. Sure, some might still write. But those who write books on obscure subjects might not find the motivation to write anymore books when their book turns up on a torrent site instantly. And what about when 3D printers and 3D scanners get to a state of mass-consumption? Who will buy furniture anymore when they could scan and build it themselves from pirated blueprints?

There's no easy answer. But to just say "too fucking bad" is wrong.

I doubt quanticle's intent is to say the music industry should die simply because the Internet makes piracy easy. I certainly wouldn't say that. What I would say is the music industry needs to adapt, and find a business model that works in an Internet-enabled world. Instead, they're digging in their heels and trying to "solve" this problem by suing their customers and trying to turn their customer base into felons. Actually, I take it back. The music industry absolutely should die. They're just a bunch of middlemen who are now living in a world where the Internet makes middlemen obsolete. Musical artists absolutely should thrive, and there's ample evidence to suggest that they can thrive in an Internet-enabled world. For a perfect example, just take a look at Jonathan Coulton. There's absolutely no reason to believe that musical artists can't continue to create and sell their music with the Internet. But the music industry itself is a parasite.

>The difference between your examples and the music industry is that buggy whip makers lost because they had an inferior product; who would want a horse-driven carriage when they could have a car?" But here, people are still TAKING the music, just without paying. That's the problem.

I think an argument could be made that the music industry has such a piracy problem (I concede this here, in spite of the music industry constantly reporting greater profit) because it is providing an inferior product, or service.

(I am linking to the discussion.) There was a very interesting GamaSutra article posted here about a month ago, on how Valve sees piracy as a "non-issue": http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3155052

The summary from 10,000 feet is that the way to beat the pirates is to give those that buy the product a better service than the pirates do. Making music as difficult to acquire (oy, the fuss they put up about previews and digital distribution!) and use (format shifting, moving your music along with you) is not a a very customer-friendly mod of operation.

I buy my music, but, with BitTorrent, you can listen to the entire song before you buy it. I don't know how much music I passed over because I didn't want to waste money on something that I may or may not like.

But that is my point. SOPA is necessary if you want to defeat piracy (actually even SOPA isn't enough, since you can still lend a friend you physical drive, but I guess they would be ok with that), nothing less will do. Even the DMCA (which is still a horrible piece of crap) isn't nearly enough.

So the deal is: do you want to de facto (but not de jure) allow the unrestricted copying of copyrighted works, or do you want to effectively reduce the internet to a walled garden of a few big companies? No more startups, no more wikipedia, no more youtube, no more wordpress, no more twitter?

And it isn't just that -- no more youtube means no more police brutality videos, no more twitter means no more real-time updates from ordinary people, no more wordpress means that if you want to launch a movement or voice your concern you better pray that the MSM will pick it up.

That's the thing, no one is entitled to free music, either.

Your argument is ridiculous because we're talking about a product that everybody still wants. It's not a buggy whip. It's music. If you don't want it enough to pay for it, then you just don't need to have a copy. Is that really such a hard concept for you to grasp?

>Your argument is ridiculous because we're talking about a product that everybody still wants.

Is it a product that everybody wants? Or is it a product that everybody says they want? If music were truly as appreciated as you say it is, then more people would be paying for it, no?

And guess what? More people are paying for music. iTunes is selling millions of tracks each year. Amazon is doing the same. Do you really think that artists would go out of business if they got the whole share of their iTunes proceeds, rather than having to split it with the recording industry?

As another comment below me says so eloquently, "Louis CK gets it. Trent Reznor gets it. Radiohead gets it. The recording industry doesn't get it and neither do you."

Your ignorance and oversimplified reasoning is woeful. If banks left their vaults on locked and didnt enforce theft, you would bet your ass that people would filling their fat pockets with wads of $100s. If someone makes something and wants to charge a dollar amount you cannot say no and just take it.

Your argument of people doing it right is irrelevant. They choose to sell it one way, and other artists choose another. You as a consumer can have an opinion as to which way is most effective, but you cannot decide how they distribute.

Think of a bank that CANNOT have an effective vault because there is technology available that allows people to walk through solid matter.

You could outlaw (or make difficult to use, restrict its features) the walk-through-walls technology. Or you could just stop clinging to your old idea of what a bank or a vault is.

You're going to drive away customers by being negative like that. That's your right to be angry, but it's not good business. The new way of doing things is to work with your fans. Screw the pirates. Pretend the pirates don't exist. They weren't going to give you money anyhow, so they can go screw themselves.

But your fans? They are. Focus on making them happy. You can't do that by being negative all the time. I know this issue is a sore spot and it makes you feel hurt. That's why I'd focus on the fans. You know, people who are happy to hear your music. You're absolutely right that making music is not obsolete, so focus on getting that music to your fans and providing the things they want. It's just good business.

See Louis CK? See that success? Go copy it.

Why are you suddenly focusing on happiness of customers?

I thought the debate was about legality, or, if not that, at least about moral right to download music. And what earbitcom is saying is - if you think the digital music costs too much or has too much DRM, you don't have to download it.

And, by the way, what Louis CK did that is so revolutionary? He did a show and sold the recording online. For money. What is so revolutionary in that?

> Why are you suddenly focusing on happiness of customers?

Because that's how you get people to give you money. It should be common sense, but I see people failing badly.

Louis CK is a good example because he showed that caring more about fans than pirates is good business sense. Pirates are going to pirate, so he said screw them, I'll do right by my fans. See, you get $0 whether they pirate or don't pirate. But with fans? You get a sale if they buy and no sale if they don't. So the pirates are all zeroes anyway, while the fans are the difference between sale and no sale, and that is what makes or breaks your business.

> I thought the debate was about legality, or, if not that, at least about moral right to download music.

As far as business goes, that debate is irrelevant. And unless you enjoy the whole starving artist thing, business is kind of important. Pirates haven't gone anywhere, so screwing your fans in the name of fighting piracy is cutting off your nose to spite your face. But you don't have to listen to me. You can tell your fans that it's your way or the highway if you want to. Just don't complain when they take the highway instead and go off to buy from someone who treats them well, like Louis CK.

The thing is, it's the copyright holder's right to do whatever he wants with what he owns. If he wants, he can put it online for free, with Creative Commons license, for everyone to enjoy and reuse. Or he can go and sell individual songs for 50 dollars each.

And it should be his right to do so, and this right should be protected.

If you write software, you can put it under GPL code and demand that everyone, who sells and re-uses your code, also release it under GPL. And that's OK, you wrote the code, you are the author, you can do whatever you want to do with it, you can set your own rules (within the law).

But you wouldn't like some corporation (say, Microsoft) to take your GPL code and re-sell it as closed-source without you seeing a dime of that money. But that's exactly what is going on at large with music and other culture today. Sites like MegaUpload, that is now seen on here like almost a harbringer of free speech, is making giant amounts of money on other people's work.

Now I like that Louis CK is selling his comedy online without DRM. But conceptually it's not that much different from bands selling their music on iTunes, only that Louis is well known from TV.

> And it should be his right to do so, and this right should be protected.

While we're at it, there should also be no poverty, everyone should have a place to live, and be safe from violence, etc. But this is the real world and people need to figure out how to deal with that, unfairness included.

There simply aren't any working solutions. Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. To computers, everything is a number. You tell the computer that no one is allowed to say "5" any more and they'll say 2+3. Or 6-1. Or 10/2. You block those and they'll find infinitely many other ways of saying it. It's binary. All or nothing. Half a solution is nothing. Zero. No good. One copy is enough for everyone.

The game is completely, utterly unfair. You have to control every computer. Once there's one unrestricted copy, it's game over. That's why people are not eager to accept "solutions" that merely screw a lot of things up, but do not, will not, and cannot fix the problem, any more than all the effort put into anti-spam has stopped spammers, in spite of 99.99% of the techies in the world hating them with undying passion and working night and day to stop them.

When's the last time you got no spam at all? The piracy thing is harder because people actually want to pirate and nobody wants spam. So why would anyone accept something like SOPA, which will drag tons of innocent sites into the crossfire while accomplishing nothing? I responded initially to someone blaming the techies for not coming up with solutions. The reason for that is because there are no technical solutions.

The only real solution to piracy that anyone has managed is not to play that game. Forget the copyright game, you're just going to spend your life swearing at pirates and wasting your energy on things that do not make money. Instead, play a different game where you build up a fanbase that supports you. It has worked. I have shown actual, living, breathing examples of people who have become successful playing that game instead. If copyright were abolished tomorrow, it wouldn't even matter. The fans support them, not some knock-off or pirate.

I can't for the life of me understand why someone would instead keep at the old game. Don't they want to be successful?

>The piracy thing is harder because people actually want to pirate and nobody wants spam.

Spammers want spam. And there's more money in being a spammer than there is in being a pirate.

I'm not so sure about that. And they face a lot more technical opposition than pirates have, not that it matters so much.

Except that we don't see corporations taking someone else's music and selling as their own. File-sharing applies to copyrighted software too.

Sites like Grooveshark or Megaupload are distributing other peoples' work, directly making money from the distribution - it could be called selling. You can make the same argument against torrent sites like PirateBay too, they have tons of ads around the site (and that's one of the arguments against them in Swedish court). They may be in loss, but that doesn't justify their actions.

I agree with second part - that's why BSA is pushing SOPA, too. Yes, I agree that BSA itself does things that are verging from borderline legal to illegal (see earbit's article, just substitute BSA and RIAA).

Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and a ton others are also directly making money from distribution of other people's work. These concepts are not clear-cut on the internet. Grooveshark often get's bundled with file-sharing websites, but they do have a deal with EMI and smaller labels, it's just that UMG want's a larger slice apparently.

I agree that this right should be protected (selling my work), but you do have this right today and nobody is going to take it away anytime soon. It just so happens that information can be distributed instantly to anywhere in the world nowadays, so the business model of selling copies is failing. There is no conceivable way of changing that other than breaking the internet.

If you paid U$1000 for a karate lesson, is teaching your friend a bit of karate stealing?

Thing is, music isn't even a product. It's an experience. Packaged, mass-produced, recorded music is a product, but it has only been in existence for a tiny fraction of human history. On the basis of history alone, there's no good reason to think it will continue to exist.

Consider a few centuries in the future, when everybody has brain / computer interfaces, and access to perfect recollection through playback of previous sensory input. Do you think recorded music will still be a traded product then, when any friend or family member can casually transfer to you an exact reproduction of their own experience?

Heh if it worked like current DRM, you'd have to delete your own memory to transfer it to someone else, but only when that memory is of some copyrighted visual or sound. Really interesting thought experiment :-)

No one wanted a buggy whip. They wanted, and still want, what the buggy whip got them: transportation from point A to point B.

People still want music. They never wanted the music industry.

It's worth pointing out that in general, people still have to pay for transportation even though the buggy whips are gone.

The argument here is whether in general, people still have to pay for music.