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[A Shoggoth on the Roof]

well if we want to compare piracy between different media, PC games are the most fucked over by it. I mean, how the hell else are they supposed to get income? there's no theaters, or shows, just the game. If there's online they could charge a fee but people don't like paying for a game just to get roped into a continuous payment scheme, and you can play on private servers.

[scarred]

Everyone who's anyone knows that videogames are the haunts of the criminally insane and excessively violent. They lack the revelation and catharsis of real art, providing only the simplest of escapes and barely prolonging the inherent homicidal tendencies they also provoke in their players.

[Zingoleb]

I didn't really think my response through too well, other people have brought up better points and I'll go be quiet again.

Scarred, you win.

[Hat]

The problem is not with the RIAA. The problem is with a legal system that cannot distinguish between somebody who casually downloads and shares songs for the purposes of exploring music, and somebody who profits from the illegal reproduction of artist's work.  It cannot do this because it is based on principles of detachment and precision that do not equate to the ways that human beings actually interact in any real way.

The RIAA simply is a by-product that profits from artists who do not share Tommy's agenda of musical integrity.

[pinkpiche]

What distinguishes musical craftmanship (a song/album) from let's say a painting?

[Cernunnos]

Ease of reproduction. A painting can be copied, but there is only one the raft of the medusa. it's a little different in printmaking (etching, traditional lithography) and photography in which there can be a significant number of perfecly legitimate copies. But even here, there is a degree of differing values there as well, as an earlier print of, say, one of rembrandt's fantastic etchings will probably be worth more than one from a later edition. traditional sculpture in bronze is a weird territory as the moldmaking part of the process means multiples can be made, but there is still usually an original. In the other forms of sculpture and installation art, there is only ever one. BUT: the lion's share of a given work's audience have only ever seen it in photographs, and there may be an analog there to a recording of a song being played.

[billiumbean]

I think the distinguishing factor is that fact that music is a concept and a painting isn't.  Music is the result of things banging together and being strummed.  It's also a sound that can bring about a certain reaction.  None of that can ever be truly sold because it's all vibrations and nerve-endings.  You can sell recorded music, but you aren't selling the music itself, only the medium.  A painting is a thing.  Sure the art of painting itself is a concept, but the product isn't.

[Cernunnos]

That's not universal, though. There are entire movements of art which rely on the premise of the idea or concept, being more important than its physical manifestation. For instance, Jackson pollock's paintings were not merely about how they looked, but about the persona of the male artist as an intuitive, intense and visible part of the work itself (one can look at the piece and know exactly how it was made). That's why the photographic images of him producing the work are so important. It's even more accentuated when you move out of the world of painting into conceptual art, installation art, and contemporary sculpture (see: Barry le Va, Mel Bochner, Bruce Nauman,etc.). Granted, there is still a physical form which carries the idea, but that's exactly what a record, tape or CD does, albeit in a stadardized form. But yeah, you are right, there certainly is a difference there too. Like you said, music is intangible, but a painting is, even if the idea it supports is not so physical.       Hmmmm- What level of tangibility do you guys think a digital file, say, an mp3 file, has?

[Hat]

Sorry just read back and noticed this:

If I'm buying an actual CD or vinyl or DVD or whatever, it's presumably because of the artwork and packaging is in some way desirable.

Tommy is so punk he only buys music based on it's aesthetic appeal

You are a good man and your broader opinions are fucking solid, Tommy, but sometimes you just have the worst ways of expressing them.

Personally I think that the tangibility of the mp3 file is virtually non-existent, and therefore don't pay for them, since they are easily replicated from existing tangible mediums I already have.

However I just don't think that is a good standard by which to carry this argument. Intangible doesn't mean "not real" and  painted art is not any more "real" to me. I haven't ever wept at a painting but I've sure as hell had a record do it to me. Arguing about the tangibility of the format suggests a "superior" format (vinyl, mp3, etc) when really they're aimed at entirely different types of music listeners. This obsession with the physical form a piece of art takes, rather than the emotions it inspires in you seems counter-intuitive to what the whole point of art is to me, basically is what I am saying here.

[Patrick]

In the grand scheme of things, the idea of recorded music as a method of generating money is a brief and passing phase in the history of music. Soon it will be gone and rightly so. It's an insane concept.

How about books? All you gotta do is type that shit up, bam, book on the internet.

[Sox]

It already happened to porn, it's now gonna happen to other kinds of media as well.

[Patrick]

Not exactly parallel cases, man, the overwhelming majority of internet porn is complete shit. I don't want music to run the same course.

[Nodaisho]

The overwhelming majority of music is already shit, we just have a harder time finding most of it. At least, unless you go on myspace.

[Chesire Cat]

I totally came in here with the intent of my first post in months to bring up the visual art connection. Looking at an image of visual art is akin to listening to an MP3. But anyway that point was already made, so I will move on to my next one.

This topic is originally about illegality and money. So lets target the illegality first, having a third-party bureaucracy sue on behalf of artists is indefensible. And convicting very few people for something as common as jay-walking (which is also ineffectually illegal) is pointless.

Next up, money. These people being sued on behalf of are artists. Art is a hobby, it happens to be a hobby you can make money out of but it shouldn't be the primary motivation. Its a hobby that often very much forms a lifestyle, that lifestyle should revolve around performing their performance art. It seems at some point a businessman discovered it was profitable to sell recorded imitations of a performance art and started a record label, somewhere along the lines it became not only accepted, but expected that people can and will pay for these recorded imitations of a performance art. Now we the people have decided that since we dont have to pay for these recorded imitations of art, so we wont pay for them.

That being said, we are still able to go watch shows, and if we want a collection (collecting is also a hobby) of said art, we can still by the vinyl or CDs. The delivering of music is facing a sea-change, and the law and the RIAA enforcing it are going to have to adapt, because they simply cant sue there way through it.

And no side has really bothered to take a stance on other parties playing their music collections for other people. Since this whole argument revolves around the fact that the music is intangible, what about people who listen to music at clubs? If a DJ is getting paid to play other peoples music, is the only distinction being the listeners dont get to choose what they hear? So does that make the act of choosing what you are listening to/playing the determining factor on whether or not you should pay for it? Not the act of possession or actual listening?

Bottom line is, as much as I respect DynamiteKid's opinions on this, it has to be Tommy whose opinions I back.

[pwhodges]

And no side has really bothered to take a stance on other parties playing their music collections for other people.

Really? (I don't know what the US equivalent would be, if any.)

Note that the free use of music at home is (the way I read it) a discretionary exemption. 

Offices where music from a radio, for instance, is audible are expected to have licences, and these are chased up to some extent.

[Chesire Cat]

So its both illegal to own unlawfully acquired digital imitations of said performance art as well as to publicly play lawfully acquired imitations?

[a pack of wolves]

Or to have people perform copyrighted material live for the public. Technically, I should have had a music license for my old home since we had acoustic gigs in my living room a couple of times.

[Zingoleb]

Music is crazy. It is illegal to perform someone else's song live. It is illegal to play an acoustic guitar in the park, as it is considered a live performance and you need a permit for it (and I was almost arrested for it, seriously).

As for the whole album artwork thing, that doesn't make sense to me. I download the album artwork, too.