Industry Minister Tony Clement has songs in his I-Pod that he didn't pay for. He should be removed from Cabinet right away while we call in the RCMP and hold a full public inquiry! He should be arrested and put to a civilian court to determine the appropriate prison sentence. And it shouldn't stop at Clement; I demand the search and seizure of every I-Pod owned by every MP in Parliament. Let's smoke 'em all out. Okay, I'm just kidding, if you didn't figure that out already.
For the record, I don't download illegal music anymore. I did in University when nearly every student was using Napster, but I reached a point where I realized that I don't have the right to free music. The old argument was always that you used to have to buy an entire album to acquire that one song you like. The CDs that I own, 90% of them only have one good song. Now with I-Tunes, I can buy that song for 99 cents instead of having to pay an additional $15 for the other 12 lousy songs. But I would like to pay artists for enjoying their songs, and I-Tunes now gives me the opportunity to do that.
You should check out the Pirate Party of Canada regarding the copyright stuff coming our way.
ReplyDeleteIt is funny having the bloc, Liberals, NDP all push for more taxes on recording devices and media to support the ARTS.
The way I understand it, Mr. Clement did pay for the songs. He broke the existing law by transferring the music that he purchased from one play-back instrument to another. You know, the same way you used to buy a cassette recorder with the dubbing function so you could copy the music onto a second cassette for safe keeping in case the original cassette was lost or damaged.
ReplyDeleteThe way I see it, the music industry wants to operate the same as software companies; you don't own what you purchase, you only lease it. That way, when the storage media changes from records to eight track, eight track to cassette, cassette to floppy disk, and floppy disk to CD/DVD you have to repurchase the product because you can't transfer it. Nice work if you can get it. No wonder so many people just pirate the stuff.
"For the record, I don't download illegal music anymore. I did in University when nearly every student was using Napster"
ReplyDeleteTwo things - he wasn't actually downloading illegal music (a la Napster). He bought the CD, then transferred the desired songs onto his iPod. That's a bit different, but still illegal. Stoopid, but that's the law.
Second thing, OMG I had no idea you were SO YOUNG!! You were in University downloading off Napster. I was in high school when we weren't allowed to bring slide rules to exams. Damn, not only do I FEEL old, but I AM OLD. :o(
They shouldn't prop up the record industry middlemen like in the U.S.
ReplyDeleteIf the record companies can't adapt then they should be allowed to fail.
After all, its them that create bands like "new kids on the block", "spice girls" and similar junk.
If a new independent artist wants to publish a song online and gets 1,870,000 total downloads over the course of 1 year while selling 560,000 of those downloads at $0.99 each, he is still making a fair amount of dough.
The record industry mistakenly sees that glass as half-empty and that those "illegal" downloads are a "loss". When in reality the bulk of those downloads are from people who wouldn't otherwise spend the money for the song and don't always even keep the song indefinately.
Thats what seperates those who "love" the song and those who "like" it.
A wise one would also have the option off his website to donate a little extra of whatever they want as a show of support.
He's in control and even if many more people download that song without buying it he is still making plenty enough dough off a single tune in only one years time. So years later he could still get a peak in popularity and have even more people buy or hear about that song.
At any rate no one should feel guilty or be criminalized over "illegal downloads" as it more often works as something of a compliment that anyone is evening listing to his or her stuff in the first place. More "illegal" downloads eventually leads to more people knowing about you and purchased downloads of those who truly enjoy your work well enough to support it.
What IS needed is better intellectual property rights and/or protections.
So not just any Jane or Harry can take an author's work and attach it to a youtube video or broadcast against the author's wishes or without paying a royalties fees of some sort*.
*seperate from song purchase, obviously.
I'm not implying that the government get involved with that process but that they prehaps** set the ground rules.
**or however it works.
At any rate, you have to all see that the pro-copyrights recording industry sees people downloading as "pirates".
Rather, their failure to adapt sealed their eventual irreverence.
Their arguments of losses from downloads is also ridiculous since nothing was taken, merely copied/duplicated and it was never really "their" creation to begin with as they're not the author(s) in nearly all cases.