Bye bye, Pirate Bay

I preview songs on my I pod before I buy them.

If I like enough of the songs I will buy the CD instead of just one or two songs. It's been said that they are afraid nobody will buy a whole CD if you hear all the crap on it first, and I agree with this assessment.

When they put one or two good songs on a CD I won't waste my money on the whole CD. I'll spend .99 cents on one song.

Besides most of the money in the music industry comes straight from touring, not CD sales. Cd sales do not pay for themselves if I remember right.

While I agree with all of that, I don't see how you can hold that view and still claim you believe in independent property rights. If you do believe in such property rights, what business do you have deciding whether the owners' reasons for denying you access to their property are sound, or a "ginned-up bullshit argument"? Do I have the right to use your property against your will just because I think you'll be better off for it in the long run?

DVD manufacturers have been angling in that direction. There's not much being said about it lately, but about a year ago there was talk of film companies coding movies so that you couldn't skip the trailers and pre-feature advertisements (and some greenhorn who was enjoying his fifteen minutes said something to the effect that, "Skipping the previews is like stealing"). I've run across several DVDs which won't allow you to use either the "fast forward" or "menu" buttons, forcing you to waste time watching all the crap.

And the record companies know this, it's just that...

If it wasn't for file-sharing, bands like Metallica would now be bitter, fat old men, fantasizing about how they could have been contenders, and carping about how that asshole Danny Noonan wouldn't cut them any slack on the price of Coke when they were still schlepping 18 holes a day for Judge Smails. Of course, back then, "file sharing" was known as "the mix tape", and while the quality doesn't measure up to today's digital standards, it was more than adequate at the time. The "mix tape" effectively drove interest in lots of bands who might have remained obscure, unknown and destined for the shame of rehab without ever once crossing the velvet rope.

The Grateful Dead encouraged their fans to bootleg (piracy by any other name), and that fact failed to derail the popularity of their performances or their ability to generate positive cash flow.

Don't you ever get fucking tired of being [-]garamet[/-] dishonest? You lie to make your point, claiming here that libertarians want no government at all, while at turns advancing your romantic notion that the government, as we know it, is something other than an self-perpetuating money pit which exists to provide a legacy of wealth and power to a handful of megalomaniacs who've pretty much ceased pretending that they're doing things for "our good".

Let's make it simple for you, Tubby: If the government was a dog, Libertarians want it to heel when it hears it's master's voice, not to shit inside the house or in the neighbors yard, and to understand that if the rolled-up newspaper ceases to be persuasive that it can be dropped off at the Humane Society on the way to pick out a new puppy.

Amazon in general does.

Which is why I only buy music from them, if I buy it at all. I can listen to everything.

Doesn't Itunes let you listen first before you buy?

Believe it or not, illegal downloading actually contibutes to MORE sales.

The Canadian Government did a study awhile back, which is why downloading music here in Canada isn't illegal.

Freedom!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey, remember when you borrowed a friends album and recorded it to cassette tape??

What I think is that, if your complaint is lost profit, and you profit from me in exactly the way you were demanding, the complaint doesn't apply to me. Let the labels come out and admit they only don't me to discover they padded one semi-decent song with 9 shitty ones until after they have my money, if that's the true motivation at work. As they present things, I am not part of the problem they have identified.

How do those "Personal People Meters" work that I hear so much about? Just askin'.

Put on your hip waders because here comes the tidal wave of bullshit excuses!

Every schmuck's got a reason why it's okay for them to do it. You aren't Robin Hood and you aren't in this to help anyone but yourself. Fly the Jolly Roger, enjoy the plunder, and accept there's going to be a volley launched your direction every once in a while or get the fuck off the ship.

Come on UA, give us another lame excuse why it's okay for Mr. Property Rights to steal. Is it too hard for you to go down to a Barnes & Noble and sample any of the music from their massive digital catalog? The shitload of music most bands put up online on their website or Myspace too difficult to find? Is it too fucking hard to hit that little preview button on Amazon or iTunes?

So, does this mean that I'm going to have to buy another copy of the White Album?

But, you know, property rights are whatever Uncle Albert defines them to be, which tends to make them whatever he wants them to be, which tends to make anything he does not a violation of anyone's property rights while making anything anyone else does that annoys him a massive violation of property rights.

Now you'd think that, rather than maintaining the above conception of property rights, there'd be less conflict and humiliation in Uncle Albert's life if he just admitted that he doesn't really believe in property rights, but then you'd be a much clearer thinker than is Uncle Albert. UA's conception of property rights is mostly just a tool to allow him to look down on people who annoy him and to justify the perpetual anger machine that is his brain; as a conception of rights it's totally incoherent.

Yeah. I think the same. But you also know that the owners think differently. And they're the owners. So what, in your property-sustaining worldview, does it matter what you think?

Hey asshole, you asked how the fucking system worked.

Don't jump all over me because you have an inconsistent philosophy.

You know what? If someone has spent time, brain-power, and money to make a product and they have a price-tag on it--and you take it without paying, you're stealing.

No, they don't. They harp on dropping profits, and my actions have zero impact on that.

Oh well.

I actually 'buy' music I like. After I download the CD first.

Actually they have a deal with a music company to record, package, market and sell their songs. But you can easily record it many different ways.

Thats why ist not cut and dry. The music itself goes out into the world. I don't feel you HAVE to buy the disk.

Buying the music is only part of the deal.

At the same time, they put an extra charge on blank tapes and CDs sold in Canada, the proceeds from which go to pay the artists that are apparently losing money because of all the free downloading.

Which is ridiculous.....but, blank DVDs are dirt cheap anyways.

And who the hell burns music onto a CD anymore?

How is that relevant to property rights?

Let's say you own a lawnmower and I don't. Let's say you only use it on sundays. If we assume, for the sake of argument, that my using it doesn't wear it down, would it be OK if I took it on all other days of the week, even if you object, because there's no harm done? Hell no.

That's the point of independent property rights. If you believe in them, they don't depend on whether the owner really needs the property and he sure as hell doesn't have to give any sort of justification if he wants to deny you the right to use it.

I wonder about that. Not saying It's not true, but it goes against my personal experience. I haven't bought music in over ten years. Neither have several of my friends. I do consider d/l'ing music without paying stealing, but as I am amoral bastard, I never let it bother me much.

Well, even if 75% of the people do that, those are the people who wouldn't buy music anyways.

The other 25% in general buys CDs that they like AFTER downloading them.

At least that is what the study says.

I know its true for me. If a CD blows me out of the water, chances are I'll buy it, and other CDs by the same artist.

<Looks over at old CD collection>
Bull. I, and my friends bought plenty of CDs in the past. Sounds like a lot of high-minded justification to me. Just admit that it's theft. It's simple and true.

They don't just harp on dropping profits. They also say they don't want you to download their music.

Oh, I agree that it is stealing.

But, a lot of artists are willing to overlook it because their sales increase as a result of their music being illegally downloaded.

I just pay the 10 bucks a month for Napster. And get damned near everything I want.

UA doesn't want to understand that just because certain property rights are silly and UA doesn't respect them doesn't mean they're not property rights. Of course if you could get UA to admit that he doesn't respect the intellectual property rights of music companies because those rights are ridiculous and serve much more to lock in nonviable luddite business models than to protect legitimate business interests or to spur production of creative content then he would have to admit that he's not really a libertarian after all.

Anyway, the whole point of a property right is that if your action violates someone's property right, it violates that right regardless of harm caused, and that someone can take action upon the violation of right to preemptively prevent or deter harm. Otherwise we wouldn't need property rights at all and could rely solely on tort law.