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Gazza
Sharing and downloading such material is NOT illegal. The Stones allow it.

Just because the Stones tolerate it doesn't make it legal

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Gazza
We had a torrent site on Rocks Off for a couple of years

Yep, thank you for this!

Downloading in itself is as much a theft as recording FM radio on cassettes was. Which is why in France there is a tax on all media you purchase (CDRs, hard drives, memory stick, cassettes...). The difficult thing is how the money from this tax is redistributed to artists. It is rather obscure, said to be based on record sales...

Bigger record sellers like Aznavour or Halliday get the bigger share, while lesser known artists do not get much. It is becoming less and less fair as record sales do not represent most listeners' habits, when younger people do not buy records at all.

This is the official IORR policy:

If something is illegal by law then it is illegal here on IORR too. Very simple. This goes for both helping out on this illegal activity as well as campaigning about it.

Posted links to copies of illegal material will be removed. If material is never released officially then it is what we used to call a bootleg recording and then it is owned by the community. But when the owner of that music release the "bootleg" officially then it becomes public and you can not use IORR to distribute or spread links of public material.

Feel free to make your own laws but IORR will not be your channel for campaigning such activity.

Thanks!

Bjornulf
IORR Editor

ROCKMAN

This article is full of sh!t really. 101 pro-labels propaganda!

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gwen

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Gazza
Sharing and downloading such material is NOT illegal. The Stones allow it.

Just because the Stones tolerate it doesn't make it legal

Well, I was referring to Stones bootlegs specifically as this is a Stones forum, and it IS legal from their perspective.

You can turn the argument on its head by saying if its allowed, then it's not illegal.

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gwen
Yep, thank you for this!

Downloading in itself is as much a theft as recording FM radio on cassettes was.

For officially released material, I agree. For already circulating bootlegs? No comparison.

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gwen
Which is why in France there is a tax on all media you purchase (CDRs, hard drives, memory stick, cassettes...). The difficult thing is how the money from this tax is redistributed to artists. It is rather obscure, said to be based on record sales...

Bigger record sellers like Aznavour or Halliday get the bigger share, while lesser known artists do not get much. It is becoming less and less fair as record sales do not represent most listeners' habits, when younger people do not buy records at all.

Well, we're singing from the same hymn sheet with regard to downloading official material. I think artists and record labels are more concerned though with piracy of official material than someone collecting bootlegs. There's far more money at stake in piracy than there is in an audience recording of a concert aimed at someone who's likely to own all the artist's official releases already.


My discussion though, is solely concerned with bootlegs, and if I'm downloading a show that someone pressed and distributed as a bootleg LP/CD decades ago, then the only person losing out is the person who made profit out of material that wasn't theirs to begin with. No artist is going to be concerned with prosecuting someone for doing that. Its the original 'crime' - ie the theft of studio tapes or the manufacturing and selling of factory pressed LP's/CDs - that's the problem.

Its a very different 'industry'.

If bands were so concerned about shows being bootlegged, they'd never allow their concerts to be filmed or recorded for TV or radio broadcast.

What if the recording is not available for sale by the artist? If a live Stones show is available as a free download but not as a commercial release, is one supposed to say, "no thanks, I will hold my breath and wait for the band to release it on their own" and then hope they do?

I download live concerts which I would buy if they were commercially available. But they because they are not, downloading boots is my only option. Some of the fan-created CDs

x



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2012-07-16 14:07 by robertfraser.

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Gazza
Well, I was referring to Stones bootlegs specifically as this is a Stones forum, and it IS legal from their perspective.

You can turn the argument on its head by saying if its allowed, then it's not illegal.

Basically, we have the same view in practise. We just disagree on the legal aspect of it. I view the Stones position as a tolerance for an illegal action that causes them little damage. I would not say they officially allow it though. They choose not to prosecute it.

I am not sure the initial poster limited the scope to bootlegs though.

Downloading pirated copies of officially released material is illegal and, in truth, is wrong. [The two not always being the same thing !]

Artists suffer the loss of income from their recorded output and it's a big part of why playing live shows is now the main revenue steeam for many music acts, big and not so big.
[More touring and live music is maybe a positive side effect...ticket prices less so ! ]

All that said, the music industry has to shoulder much of the blame for the whole issue. If there was an industry standard format for domestic playback of any quality, I believe people would still pay for it.
As it stands...there isn't, and folks can download a product that differs little in quality from the official release.

Home taping never "killed music" as the warnings used to predict...because a casette tape never sounded or felt half as nice as the LP...

Today, with the market conditioned to accept MP3 quality rubbish as the industry standard...asside from your conscience, where's the motivation to pay ?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012-07-16 14:37 by Spud.

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WeLoveToPlayTheBlues

Uploading is illegal? That's what you do when you put a CD on your computer. You don't download music from a CD.

That's stealing. No way around it. Don't give me that line of shit that the industry is too slow. It's stealing. Period.

It's changed since then, and except for the young and dumb, it really wasn't very long ago. There's no reason to steal music nowadays. And how come people will stupidly and happily pay through the nose to go see a band yet they won't plunk down $10 or $15 for a record? What is that about?

Welcome to the machine indeed.

See, that is exactly the problem with people like you. You disqualify to participate in this discussion, because in the first sentence you already reveal not knowing the most basic technical terms. Uploading is not what you do when you put a CD on your computer - that is called ripping. Uploading is what you do when you share the file on the internet, e.g. upload it to Rapidshare or share it as a torrent.

So you believe it is shit that the industry is too slow? It's the truth, deal with it, it already happened. So you think it's (only) the young and the dumb that download music now? Guess what, they young will be the ones who will shape our future.

There is no way around it. Music is being downloaded. It is not seen as a moral or ethical problem by those who download. Copyright laws have to be adapted, solutions have to be found (cultural flatrates). You cannot - and you will not - criminalize a whole generation (not even speaking of future generations). That's how it is. It doesn't really matter if you believe it or not or if you want it or not, it is happening

@Rockman - what is a study without another one saying exactly the opposite:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/12/05/swiss-government-study-finds-internet-downloads-increase-sales/

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bv
This is the official IORR policy:

If something is illegal by law then it is illegal here on IORR too. Very simple. This goes for both helping out on this illegal activity as well as campaigning about it.

Posted links to copies of illegal material will be removed. If material is never released officially then it is what we used to call a bootleg recording and then it is owned by the community. But when the owner of that music release the "bootleg" officially then it becomes public and you can not use IORR to distribute or spread links of public material.

Feel free to make your own laws but IORR will not be your channel for campaigning such activity.

Thanks!

Bjornulf
IORR Editor

Discussion closed, gentlemen! The official IORR policy is straight and just.

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kleermaker

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bv
This is the official IORR policy:

If something is illegal by law then it is illegal here on IORR too. Very simple. This goes for both helping out on this illegal activity as well as campaigning about it.

Posted links to copies of illegal material will be removed. If material is never released officially then it is what we used to call a bootleg recording and then it is owned by the community. But when the owner of that music release the "bootleg" officially then it becomes public and you can not use IORR to distribute or spread links of public material.

Feel free to make your own laws but IORR will not be your channel for campaigning such activity.

Thanks!

Bjornulf
IORR Editor

Discussion closed, gentlemen! The official IORR policy is straight and just.

BV reminded us of not uploading official albums or videos etc on iorr.org and keep this to a discussion, opinions about sharing music - the thread is not a campain for uploading official material.

Interesting thoughts everyone, we live in a time when technology is connecting people.

Is there a international difference in how people look upon this? There could be a difference if you live in America because that's where everything (in one way or another) is produced and/or marketed/sold, it might "feel" more like stealing if you download a film or music, when you live in LA, the Valley or NYC.

I think "feel" is a keyword.

BV: >> If material is never released officially then it is what we used to call a bootleg recording and then it is owned by the community.

OK, this is the sight of some sharing communities. But I can only appeal urgently: Do read the law in your country!!! All what's said here by fans or webmasters can't defend you in court ...

And we can discuss some wishfull thinking here, but we can't change the national and international law here. Tell your demands to your politicians and convince them to change the law, if needed ...

BVs rules are respected and followed. Doesn't mean we can't discuss the pros and cons of downloading (which is what the topic was started for).

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Lorenz
BVs rules are respected and followed. Doesn't mean we can't discuss the pros and cons of downloading (which is what the topic was started for).

BV's rules are respected and followed here, but no judge will have to follow them too. Sorry.

But to discuss opinions here will be a different case ...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012-07-16 16:26 by HighwireC.

Its harder to download stuff from youtube now but it's interesting to see how artists, like the Stones, use youtube to promote a release.

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Lorenz

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WeLoveToPlayTheBlues

Uploading is illegal? That's what you do when you put a CD on your computer. You don't download music from a CD.

That's stealing. No way around it. Don't give me that line of shit that the industry is too slow. It's stealing. Period.

It's changed since then, and except for the young and dumb, it really wasn't very long ago. There's no reason to steal music nowadays. And how come people will stupidly and happily pay through the nose to go see a band yet they won't plunk down $10 or $15 for a record? What is that about?

Welcome to the machine indeed.

See, that is exactly the problem with people like you. You disqualify to participate in this discussion, because in the first sentence you already reveal not knowing the most basic technical terms. Uploading is not what you do when you put a CD on your computer - that is called ripping. Uploading is what you do when you share the file on the internet, e.g. upload it to Rapidshare or share it as a torrent.

Ripping? That is just a poorly used verb. Based on my understanding of it, uploading music from a CD, or ripping, for lame men terms, is from a file - a file on a compact disc ie a track, a song. Uploading something from your computer to the internet is no different than from a CD to your computer - it's from a local source to something else. People like me look at it that way based on what we read. I will stand corrected if that is not the case but until I see otherwise to believe, that is where I stand. And really, it's not the issue. It was more of a...specific thing based upon whoever said something about that. I uploadingly forget.

A good read...


Cory Doctorow: Music: The Internet's Original Sin
- posted Wednesday 4 July 2012 on Boing Boing

In a recent Search Engine podcast, host Jesse Brown wondered about music’s ongoing centrality to the debate over file-sharing and freedom. After all, the music industry has all but abandoned lawsuits against fans, and services from Last.fm to the Amazon MP3 store present a robust set of legit ways of hearing and acquiring music. The labels have even abandoned DRM. So why is the music industry the enduring bogeyman of Internet policy fights? Brown called downloading music ‘‘the Internet’s original sin,’’ and posited that we’ll go on talking for music for a long time yet.

I think he’s right. Music exists in a sweet spot between commerce and culture, individual and collective effort, identity and industry, and digital and analog – it is the perfect art-form to create an infinite Internet controversy.

Let’s start with music’s age. Movies are still in their infancy. Books are in their middle age. Stories themselves are ancient. But music is primal. Books may predate commerce, but music predates language. Our relationship with music, and our social contracts around it, are woven into many other parts of our culture, parts that are considered more important than mere laws or businesses. The idea that music is something that you hear and then sing may even be inherent to our biology. I know that when I hear a catchy tune, I find myself humming it or singing it, and it takes a serious effort of will to stop myself. It doesn’t really matter what the law says about whether I am ‘‘authorized’’ to ‘‘perform’’ a song. Once it’s in my head, I’m singing it, and often singing it with my friends. If my friends and I sing together by means of video-sharing on YouTube, well, you’re going to have a hard time convincing us that this is somehow wrong.

Music is also contingent. The part of a song that is ‘‘musical’’ is totally up for grabs, and changes from society to society and age to age. The European tradition has tended to elevate melody, so we think of ‘‘writing a song’’ as ‘‘writing the melody.’’ Afro-Caribbean traditions stress rhythms, especially complex polyrhythms. To grossly oversimplify, a traditional European song with a different beat (but the same melody) can still be the same song. A traditional Afro-Caribbean song with a different melody (but the same rhythm) can still be the same song. The law of music – written by Europeans and people of European descent – recognizes strong claims to authorship for the melodist, but not the drummer. Conveniently (for businesses run in large part by Europeans and people of European descent), this has meant that the part of the music that Europeans value can’t be legally sampled or re-used without permission, but the part of the music characteristic of Afro-Caribbean performers can be treated as mere infrastructure by ‘‘white’’ acts. To be more blunt: the Beatles can take black American music’s rock-n-roll rhythms without permission, but DJ Danger Mouse can’t take the Beatles’ melodies from the White Album to make the illegal hiphop classic The Grey Album.

The reality is that all music takes from all other music, anyway. They called Brahms’s first symphony ‘‘Beethoven’s Tenth’’ for reasons that are immediately apparent to anyone familiar with both composers. The parts of music that can be used under the banner of ‘‘inspiration’’ and the parts that constitute ‘‘infringement’’ or ‘‘plagiarism’’ or some other frowned-upon taking are arbitrary, and there is an enormous gap between how the law treats music production, how music producers describe what they do, and what scholars who study music see happening.

Meanwhile, the recording industry has always had a well-deserved reputation for corruption and maltreatment of artists. From the recurring payola scandals that crop up every decade or so to the never-ending stream of stories about the bad deal musicians get, the industry has never been able to credibly claim that buying artists’ creations from their labels will end up enriching the artists themselves. No fan cares much about the commercial fortunes of labels themselves – if we care about anyone, it’s the musicians. When you learn that – to pick just one example – the labels only recently ended the practice of running secret ‘‘third-shift’’ pressings in the dead of night, CDs that were not on the books and that were sold without generating royalties for the artists, it’s hard to credit the idea that taking music without paying for it always harms artists. Incidentally, the thing that stopped third-shift pressings wasn’t ethics or artists’ rights movements – it was the provision in Sarbanes-Oxley that made executives personally, criminally liable for balance-sheet frauds.

Maltreatment of the talent isn’t unique to music, of course. But movies don’t have obvious ‘‘creators’’ to sympathize with. Rather, they have directors (who tend to be either totally unknown or incredibly rich and famous), and actors (ditto). Even screenwriters have a reputation for being awfully well-off when compared to other kinds of writers, especially novelists. And while novelists are obviously the creators of the books we love, the standard novel publishing deal is much better than the standard recording deal – a licensed work rather than a work for hire, no expenses charged back against the creator, more transparent royalty reporting, etc.

I think even the record industry recognizes that appealing to the innate justice of its survival and profit is a nonstarter. That’s the only explanation I can think of for their campaigns in the past decade that have focused on the risk to young peoples’ moral character as a result of file-sharing. This is a pretty poor argument, of course: when the record industry spends half a century telling would-be censors that it is not in the business of safeguarding the morals of young listeners, it’s pretty rich for the same industry to turn around and announce that it is only suing and threatening kids to save them from a life of sin and degradation.

Music production is also in the sweet spot between movies and books when it comes to technological advances. It’s true that word processors, desktop publishing, and e-books have increasingly led to a credible notion of a truly independent author who does it all for herself, but the one-man music studio is a more advanced than the one-writer publishing house. Meanwhile, movies are still generally viewed as enormous collaborations requiring big, complex companies behind them to coordinate all the big, complex tasks that go into making a feature. There is a widespread sense that almost everything a record label does can be done by the musicians themselves, using the same equipment that the rest of us use to play Minesweeper and watch YouTube. The reality is that there are many musicians who can write or perform a song, but can’t arrange or edit or master or market or bookkeep that song, but it’s still pretty easy to imagine a world in which all the current record labels die, but recorded music continues to thrive.

Back at the beginning of the file-sharing wars, during the delirious 18 months during which Napster went from zero to 52 million users, much of the focus was on the novelty of getting music for free – but there was also a lot of buzz about getting some of that music at all. Prior to Napster, more than 80 percent of recorded music wasn’t for sale (except as uncatalogued, obscure used LPs). The record industry had always enjoyed both the savings from not having to warehouse and manage all those physical products, and the increased profits that arose from limiting choice. Napster, the original long tail marketplace, showed that audiences hungered for abundance of choice.

Twelve years later, abundance is the signal characteristic of all media. The media choices available to us are staggering in their variety and depth. As I write this in mid-2012, there’s an hour of new video appearing on YouTube every second. Video-on-demand services like Netflix present libraries that make the biggest Blockbuster store of yore seem like a single shelf at the back of the corner shop. Amazon’s self-publishing platform is attracting thousands of new books, from marginal titles of extreme specialist interest to algorithmically generated spam titles that repurpose Wikipedia entries and random scraped Internet text. There’s also plenty of fiction, some of which is brilliant and much of which is in the ‘‘90 percent of everything is shit’’ region predicted by Sturgeon’s Law. Curation is the watchword for the coming century: some process by which you are able to outsource some of the reviewing and ranking of all this material to communities, algorithms, or individuals.

But the accelerating growth of media in the online world means that no matter how carefully you choose your curators to ensure that you’re getting just enough media and not being overwhelmed, you will still end up overwhelmed. Everyone feels like there’s more media than they can handle coming in through the narrow, select channels they opted into, from Facebook and Twitter to a favorite blog or podcast. It’s not enough to choose one’s channels carefully; you also have to be able to skim what comes through those channels and make snap decisions about what you will experience in depth. Blog posts and quick YouTube clips are easy enough to glance at and decide whether they’re for you or not.

But novels and feature films are damned hard to ‘‘skim.’’ Figuring out whether you like a novel enough to read it through requires a substantial investment of time and attention. Deciding whether to watch a feature film, likewise.

A lot of music reveals itself well and quickly. Sign up for a predictive personal radio station like the ones provided by Last.fm, and you’ll find that it only takes a few bars’ worth of sound before you know whether you’re going to keep listening or hit the skip button.

What’s more, music is well-suited to multitasking, that characteristic survival activity of the 21st century. It’s not easy to read a novel while doing something else – notwithstanding the comedy cliché of a bookworm proceeding down a public road with his nose in a book – and movies also want you to switch off everything else while you watch them.

Music is much less jealous of your attention, perfectly comfortable with fading into the background. If you’re one of those people who works with music on all the time, you want your music to come out of your device like water coming out of a faucet. It’s natural that music that ‘‘feels free’’ fits right into our lives.

It’s also customary – and simple – to reference music. Whistle the Jeopardy!theme when a friend dithers over the menu at a restaurant; ‘‘Whistle While You Work’’ when you want to get your roommates to pitch in and pick up after themselves; ‘‘Blue Skies Smiling at Me’’ when spring has finally sprung where you are (and ‘‘April Showers’’ when the rain comes back). Sure, we quote iconic movie-lines at each other, and everyone knows a few literary quotes, but music is quoted much more widely in our daily lives – and in music itself, which is chock full of snatches from other music – than other media. When it comes to learning to be a musician, re-use, copying,­ and performance are central: you learn to play music by playing other peoples’ compositions, period. Budding filmmakers may try to re-create their favorite scenes, or work in ways that are obviously inspired by their predecessors; young authors may copy out a favorite passage to see how it works. But music is a field in which it is considered central and normal to reproduce others’ creations for years, commercially and privately, as a means of earning your chops.

All these factors – music’s suitability to a world of abundance, music’s ubiquity in our culture, music’s freight in our history, and the industry’s tarnished reputation – mean that the Internet and music businesses will continue to collide for the foreseeable future. There’s no end in sight to this controversy.

*** COPY/PASTED from an ongoing online discussion involving this same issue...

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Redhotcarpet
Its harder to download stuff from youtube now but it's interesting to see how artists, like the Stones, use youtube to promote a release.

Yes, some artist, like The Rolling Stones too, want to do so, but in Germany it's not allowed by the GEMA. There is a battle in-between the artists, publishers and some chambers of artists. It's all about the money ...



As said above: Different countries, different laws ...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012-07-17 09:29 by HighwireC.

Personally I feel if you want the music you should buy it. Aside from audience tapes or other recordings that aren't available on the market, and/or posted here on IORR. Unfortunately these things also come under fire because they're thrown into the whole download controversy. In the past we loaned each other albums and taped them etc, but these days a lot of people don't even bother to do that, they go straight for the illegal download. I actually get offended if someone asks me to burn them a copy. They can't be made to understand that it hurts artist productivity, all they want is something for free. In the end we get poor albums like ABB, which could have been awesome.

abb sucks because ppl want free stuff? how's that again?

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StonesTod
abb sucks because ppl want free stuff? how's that again?

I think the argument is that ABB could have been better if it hadn't been overloaded with poor song choices. Overloaded prolly so that it takes longer to download, therefore a deterrent.

A perfectly logical argument IMNSHO.

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StonesTod
abb sucks because ppl want free stuff? how's that again?

Didn't say it sucked. Matter of fact I kind of like it, but it had a lot more potential. They could have focused on the best songs, and dropped a few others. Plus there is terrible mastering, including digital noise, overproduction and brickwalling. Fix these few things (should be easy) and there is a great album in my opinion. I would (buy) it again if they did this.

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frankotero

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StonesTod
abb sucks because ppl want free stuff? how's that again?

Didn't say it sucked. Matter of fact I kind of like it, but it had a lot more potential. They could have focused on the best songs, and dropped a few others. Plus there is terrible mastering, including digital noise, overproduction and brickwalling. Fix these few things (should be easy) and there is a great album in my opinion. I would (buy) it again if they did this.

ok. ok. but what does have to do with folks wanting free stuff?

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StonesTod
ok. ok. but what does have to do with folks wanting free stuff?

I want free stuff too. But unless a band is offering or wants you to download illegaly I just don't think it's right. Hope it doesn't sound like I'm on a high horse or arrogant. Getting back to ABB, I really think they would have put more effort in it if they thought there was a greater reward. Of course one might argue they shouldn't expect big money as reward but rather the gratification of creating something great.

If it weren't for sharing/downlaoding my musical knowledge would be extremely limited. Simply put, it has opened doors for me to appreciate and understand and enjoy modern music even more. Songs I only read about in books I could now hear.
I think it is a wonderful thing for people to refine their taste in music with.

In my opinion, if something is rare/out-of-print/only available as a super high priced import or as a top item on ebay, then people should shut the f**k up about downloading it.

I also believe that a lot of downloaders also spend an inordinate amount of their income on music, but they'd have to be millionaires to get it all so I wouldn't begrudge them for downlaoding some.

I also don't think the "indusrty" should get off easy for making and promoting today's hit music as essentially disposable.

The record indusrty is laso responsible for ripping off and screwing over more artists than all the downloaders combined, that's just my opinion but it's a strong one and there is more than a hint of truth to it.

I think it is hypocritical, however, for someone to call themselves a music lover and then never pay for music.

Check something out online for sure, but if you like it, and like the artist, then plop down a few bucks and make it official. As much as you can afford to. It's the decent thing to do.

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frankotero

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StonesTod
ok. ok. but what does have to do with folks wanting free stuff?

I want free stuff too. But unless a band is offering or wants you to download illegaly I just don't think it's right. Hope it doesn't sound like I'm on a high horse or arrogant. Getting back to ABB, I really think they would have put more effort in it if they thought there was a greater reward. Of course one might argue they shouldn't expect big money as reward but rather the gratification of creating something great.

gotcha.

ok, rolling stones, i have a proposition for you:

make a new album for that gratification thing and i PROMISE i will buy at least one copy at retail price. you can't get a better deal than that....

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andrewt
Check something out online for sure, but if you like it, and like the artist, then plop down a few bucks and make it official. As much as you can afford to. It's the decent thing to do.

decency, eh? hmmm...dammit....

artists were always ripped off by their labels anyway; labels squawk about downloading because it hitys them intyhe wallet

and that is all because they were too slow or too non-pro active to see the technology coming

where i live all the record stores - well cd stores - closed! downloading is the only option

i hate that, but then again i hate digital music (i prefer analog vinyl) and always have, anyways

is downloading music illegal? that question cannot be answered unequivocally in Canada. no Canadian court has made a definitive ruling on the issue. moreover, the only decisions which have touched upon the issue of the legality of downloading music have raised more doubts than they have settled.

we (Canadians) know that it is the general rule that it is illegal to produce or reproduce a musical work if you are not the owner or if you do not have permission from the owner to do so. we also know that you are doing nothing illegal if you reproduce musical works, which have already been recorded, onto a blank cassette or compact disc for your own personal use.

we know that our courts have made no finding about whether downloading music off the internet is an infringement of copyright. we know that the sections of the Act which make it permissible to copy music onto blank cassettes and compact discs in certain situations do not make it legal to copy music onto MP3 players and similar devices.

In conclusion, whether it is illegal in canada to download music is uncertain. even our courts have had difficulty ruling on the issue. different decision-making bodies have arrived at markedly different conclusions. this leaves Canada’s copyright laws regarding downloading music in a state of limbo.