Is Piracy Really Killing The Music Industry? No!.........?

[habitueE]

'Thou shall not shoplift' is a cultural 'rule', in essence, you don't do it because society punishes you otherwise. On the internet you are basically invisible, there is no social control over what you do and don't do. Stealing becomes an option, it then boils down to morals and ethics. Imagine you are invisible in real life too, would you steal in shops? I dunno, why not? Out of compassion for the guy who's selling the stuff and needs to make a living of it? Sorry, but for many people, the answer would be yes. Pretty basic stuff if you ask me. If you factor in the thing someone above said about a large part of people not considering digital files 'anyone's property', and lets not forget about the ever growing stock, ease & speed of delivery, piracy is unavoidable.

[habitueE]

Weirdly also , I thought fans of more discerning music might show a little more respect, I mean - If I bought a maurizio record, the last thing I'd do is rip it and allow others to download it - out of respect, so I'm wondering who these people are who do, and what motivates them, not in a judgemental way - as in - I'd be interested to know what makes them tick.

It's a really weird situation to me, is it some form of sub-culture rebellion,is it sticking it to the man ? What is it that inspires people to rip and share in the first place ?

I wouldn't count on the people ripping the vinyl & those cd's being 'fans' in the first place They're probably just some middle-aged blokes going to the store and grabbing a handful of the latest releases, ripping them and then supplying it to the kids. They would then go on and watch their e-penis grow a few more inches, all without ever listening to the stuff they put up online. At least thats my idea of it

[New Guy]

'Thou shall not shoplift' is a cultural 'rule', in essence, you don't do it because society punishes you otherwise. On the internet you are basically invisible, there is no social control over what you do and don't do. Stealing becomes an option, it then boils down to morals and ethics. Imagine you are invisible in real life too, would you steal in shops? I dunno, why not? Out of compassion for the guy who's selling the stuff and needs to make a living of it? Sorry, but for many people, the answer would be yes. Pretty basic stuff if you ask me. If you factor in the thing someone above said about a large part of people not considering digital files 'anyone's property', and lets not forget about the ever growing stock, ease & speed of delivery, piracy is unavoidable.

Even on the Internet you are not invisible, you have an IP address, an ISP. All the activities can be traced back.

Basically every time one superimposes the rules and norms applied and reinforced in the off line world on to the on line world, one gets to false conclusions since the two worlds are separate entities. Both impose their own codes of behavior on to the user/participant.

[Van Hagen]

why bother sharing that - surely it benifits you to keep that one to yourself as a secret battle weapon track - why would you give it away to DJs for free, who are gonna take it and play it out - possibly in competition to yourself. I remember when I first learned to DJ with my friends - we always fiercly guarded our selections and often wouldn't tell our friends what records we were playing, cos guaranteed - they'd go and buy it the next week and play it out, we always thought that sorta sh!t was bad form so we always kept our best tunes a secret (from other DJs).

Weirdly also , I thought fans of more discerning music might show a little more respect, I mean - If I bought a maurizio record, the last thing I'd do is rip it and allow others to download it - out of respect, so I'm wondering who these people are who do, and what motivates them, not in a judgemental way - as in - I'd be interested to know what makes them tick.

I always ask myself exactly the same... On the other hand I think that at least 50% of beatport's success is due to people who still respect this 'old school' way of discovering and playing music and therefore dig and pay for tracks they really like instead of ripping what others considered 'good' or whatever...

[habitueE]

Even on the Internet you are not invisible, you have an IP address, an ISP. All the activities can be traced back.

That is not what I was getting at.
In a nutshell what i mean is, people are are not judged as much by their peers, the people living next door.. and society in general for downloading music illegally. There is much less of a sense of 'wrongdoing'. This is why it is so attractive, and why it is such a problem.
The mumbojumbo u write below that is just stating that there's no point in comparing real life criminality with downloading some tunes off soulseek, which is basically what I said.. so i take it you are at least partially agreeing

Anyway I'm just gonna leave it at that because, although interesting, this discussion has been had a billion times before, and basically what it comes down to is ethics. That is, as long as there is no strict followup from 'the man', with punishment for every action. After that, the average Joe will stop pirating again and only the real nerds are left, which will (hopefully) then sort the problem out for a while again.

[New Guy]

Even on the Internet you are not invisible, you have an IP address, an ISP. All the activities can be traced back.

That is not what I was getting at.
In a nutshell what i mean is, people are are not judged as much by their peers, the people living next door.. and society in general for downloading music illegally. There is much less of a sense of 'wrongdoing'. This is why it is so attractive, and why it is such a problem.
The mumbojumbo u write below that is just stating that there's no point in comparing real life criminality with downloading some tunes off soulseek, which is basically what I said.. so i take it you are at least partially agreeing

Anyway I'm just gonna leave it at that because, although interesting, this discussion has been had a billion times before, and basically what it comes down to is ethics. That is, as long as there is no strict followup from 'the man', with punishment for every action. After that, the average Joe will stop pirating again and only the real nerds are left, which will (hopefully) then sort the problem out for a while again.

Ah alright. Basically we were both saying the same thing.

[infernal.techno]

Even on the Internet you are not invisible, you have an IP address, an ISP. All the activities can be traced back.
.

definitely not true. proxy ip addresses/servers, leeching of neighbor's internet and internet cafes have made anonymity that much greater

[AVX23]

@ infernal.techno - this is very true, and this method has been used by hackers and the likes since the dawn of the internet.

However, generally speaking, the people I know with the ability to do things like that, don't waste their time ripping music and sharing it, or if they do,it's shared on private networks and tends to be stuff they like.

@ Van Haggen - I agree with that,and a lot of people I know use beatport for that same reason, they are fairly conciencious and want to buy from what they see as a reliable source.

@ habituaE - I suppose that's one theory, but I dunno,some of the releases I see being shared are sometimes stuff I wouldn't think would be easy access to that many people, I can understand more mainstream releases going like that - sure, but really I'm talking about sites which aren't P2P or torrent based and are providing direct links to more underground material - surely they'd have to be fans to be aware some of these releases even existed. I mean take the site (which has now been taken down) hypnoticbreaks - that was giving away loads of free music on the pretence that it was giving people previews, without being too judgemental, it's clear they were giving away much much more than that, and putting write ups and such to accompany them - I really wonder what motivates that kind of approach, most of the stuff they were giving away was available to buy,so they didn't really have the excuse that they were giving people access to music which was in limited supply, and similarly - a lot of the featured artists probably didn't need any further exposure via the giving away of free music, so what makes people like that tick I wonder ?

@ the people dismissing this sort of chat, don't be too harsh, it's hardly analogue v digital or god forbid - turntable v MP3 - the more open chat about this sort of thing the better I feel as it may help people who are ripping the music feel differently about what they are doing without (I hope) alienating them.