Piracy

Do you at least wash it?

Oh shit nigger wtf are you doing

Information should never have a price.

You're just naive. People haven't made any money selling music for years now, certainly not now that streaming services have come out.

...

Well, if a penny saved is a penny earned then I'm doing what SocDems always do.
Making a killing.

I used to think about unauthorized copying really ethically: I try to put a limit on my use time with a product if I like it to force myself ot buy it eventually, and I abstain completely from games with shit like DRM. But I have seen so many mountains of anti-consumer shit in the last several years, and so many instances of people who made products I loved and respected completely betraying myself and other fans (especially video game developers), that I just find it increasingly difficult to even give a shit anymore. So you know what? I'm not going to reward that company for doing the right thing once when they never do the right thing anyway. I'm not going to give Amazon money for DRM-free MP3s from a musician I love when they run such a scummy fucking operation everywhere else.

The only thing I feel bad about pirating are indie games, so if I like them I usually buy them later. For anything else, fuck it, I am still a student so I can't go around shoving money to the first thing I see.
This is why I prefer monthly donations, where you make sure the money goes to the person or company instead of the publisher. A good example of this is the guy who does the ps3 emulator for pc.

I always thought that within capitalism a pseudo-gift economy makes the most sense with near-free digital distribution. People have access to the things and after they enjoy them they voluntarily pay an amount proportional to their enjoyment.

Thank you for proving me right.
So here's your argument summarized: I can't complain about piracy in a thread in which the OP asks for an opinion on piracy, and I can't do so because people do it. Is this supposed to be an argument?
Also fuck you for calling me naive, it's not my fault if it is legal to steal my work. Resign yourself to have shitty mediocre mainstream art as long as you'll keep justifying the exploitation of artists.

see

You'll get no sympathy as long as you continue to parrot Orwellian propaganda.

Fine then, artists who devote their entire life to their art do not deserve to afford rent, unless they are willing to destroy their lives with intensive tours and prostituting themselves on patreon and by selling merchandise.
I'm glad that people on Holla Forums think that artist do not deserve to afford food. Good praxis, mate.

I'm sorry capitalism makes living your life how you want it difficult.

So I can disagree with capitalism only because I live in it? Also do you think that this regards just me? It's about the entire art industry being linked to free market, which lead to the catastrophe we're living in, and you're willing to justify it on the ground that it is happening now? Do you know what a real argument looks like?

Now you're putting words in my mouth. I do believe in supporting the arts, but you really need to come to terms with the modern world we live in. The internet and the computer have radically enhanced the ability to duplicate information like never before. Just as book makers had to come to terms with the printing press, so must people come to terms with the computer.

it is not legal you idiot
it is just that costs of reproduction are near zero
rent seekers get the bullet

This does not make it right. OP asked for our opinion, this is mine. It's stealing, it is ethically wrong, and it leads to cultural bankruptcy. This is what OP asked for, and I've delivered.

find yourself some daddy sponsor like artists did before modern times
every wealthy artist had some rich benefactors

Your mind is a joke.

So you're saying that… Copying a thing is morally wrong?

That thing is the result of thousands of hours of individual work from the artist's part. It did not just happen, he made it, and by copying it you're stealing it, for he has no other way to support himself through his labor

I love how pseudo-leftists on Holla Forums are willing to say that their bosses are monster because they steal 80% of their labor, while being at the same time willing to steal 100% of the labor of artists they genuinely appreciate.

rent - the amount paid by a hirer of personal property to the owner for the use thereof

you're a joke

But those aren't the same thing.

Once again making assumptions. Why are copyright shills always so predictable. You attack straw men at about the same rate as right wingers in debates against their fetishized, misinformed conception of socialism.

arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/study-p2p-customers-are-hollywoods-best-friend.ars
techdirt.com/articles/20110727/16233815292/another-day-another-study-that-says-pirates-are-best-customers-this-time-hadopi.shtml

This definition makes sense only in a world in which artists have actually basic rights such as housing, food and water. This does not happen, which means that by stealing from the, you're actively pushing them either in the streets or out of music. Also this means that the only artists who can afford a stable life are the ones who decide to sell themselves to either the public or corporations, which leads, as I've already said, to the cultural chasm that we're currently living in.
Your praxis is all over the place.

They are when your creation can be perfectly copied 1:1 without your consent.

I haven't mentioned the word "rightwinger". I'm just stating the truth: you're willing to steal and justify 100% of artists' labors while living in a society that does not guarantee to said artists not even basic survival.

Nope, see until your brain gets it.

There you go with the straw men again. If I don't agree with your utterly warped definition of stealing then I must somehow be a massively shameless unauthorized copier?

not that i believe your story is real, but…. how do you know that piracy has anything to do with your inability to make the amount of money you want? Just curious. The vast majority of musicians have always had difficulty making a living with it.

Well, well. Welcome to the reality of all the rest of the proles in world. So sad for you.

Do you realize that as an artist, you can yourself take advantage of piracy (and probably already do), right ?
A Portastudio and a few synths with effect units would have costed tens of thousands dollars three decades ago. Now you can just download Ableton Live and get all this and way more, for free.
Who said making music had to be expensive ? It's not anymore, everyone with a computer can literally download a studio, and that is great.

wake up
everyone is selling themselves to the highest bidder
you artists are not indifferent observers, you're not above this all

...

Piracy is literally communism dude.

Doesn't the quesiton of piracy perfectly demonstrate the incompatibility between the productive forces and the mode of production that Marx talked about? Every software, song, picture, movie and tiddy mag, once created, can be distributed to everyone that wants it for (basically) free, but in our current mode of production this possibility is seen as a problem rather than an incredible step forward, so all sorts of artificial scarcity is invented to keep capitalism going.

If you think that by selling music you would have made some money you are completely delusional. It is common knowledge that only a habdful of rich artist earned from selling media, the poorer artists usually get the peanuts. Have you read "the problem with music" by steve albini? It really shows the process behind the trap they call "making an album". I'm not saying lel juss go wit it xd but in my opinion we should make this moment our chance. I mean the copyright industries don't know how to respond to this and imho an alternative solution have to exist

So there it is, argue against their right for survival through semantics. Here's the reality of the situation: art requires a lifetime of dedication. Once I make a piece of art, which again, has a necessary condition for its wxistence my pure dedication to the field, the only thing I can use to afford to survive is that piece of art itself. If you copy it that piece of art becomes worthless, which means that I can't afford food. If you think this is a good thing, you're mental.

Me and my band made an experiment. We were cashing in (this included very exhausting tours that really harmed our health, and whoring ourself out by selling merchandise). 3 months ago we stopped doing that, to see how much we would earn by our music itself, which is the central aspect of our career. Our earnings dropped 92%. To me, this means that the music in itself is considered worthless, and that in this system it can only be used to promote the aforementioned merchandising. It fucking means that my music is basically an ad for tshirts and posters.
It doesn't help that people will go long ways to justify your lack of rights on your own labor through semantics.
I'm also a cellist and I compose (have been since I was 4), and in the classical world the situation is so grim and pathetic that… well, every word would be wasted on it. Of course we're not talking about cds, but scores. I'll just say that Stravinsky at the heights of his career could not support himself through composition itself, and had to devote a great chunk of his time on conducting to get to the end of the month. No matter how good and celebrated your music is, people simply won't care and will still argue against the legitimacy of your only tool of survival.

I'll explain it to you for the 3rd time: OP asked us our opinion about piracy, and I've explained why it's wrong. Now, you can't talk about the fact that piracy exists, and its material implications, but this is beyond the point. I'm not changing society at large here, I'm just giving my genuine opinion on the matter. Taking away from artists their only tool of survival, forcing them to prostitute themselves for the public, is immoral, detrimental to society, and agains the communist praxis, which wold justify such a behaviour only if survival is guaranteed to the artist.

Moralize all you want but the reality of the modern world means that people whose product is a particular combination of information that can easily be copied need to seriously re-evaluate the traditional exchange model.

I don't think people like this are really all that interested in your music to be honest.

You see the "there is no moral consuming under capitalism" or whatever it is is true, sorry but it is immoral to buy a computer/phone made in chinese swatshops and with metals from congo warlords. But moral consumerism is not the point of communism. It is destroying of old order of things.

It's not an exchange model, it's my labour, and you're just trying to find an excuse to exploit it without guaranteeing me survival. This is what you are doing.
Then again, if this happens it does not matter. OP asked for our opinion and I gave it. My opinion can be a critique of the current order of things.

My god it never stops with you people. Can you make even one post without accusing someone you disagree with of malicious intentions? Do you think this is a productive way to get your point across?

Composers were not starving in the USSR, weren't they? No, because their work was legitimated, and to them was guaranteed basic survival (although under Stalinism a great deal of censorship went on).
This does not happen in our society, which means that if you deprive artists of their intellectual property, you take them away the possibility to survive through their art, which is what should happen under communism.
Then again, notice that I'm not talking about wealth, rather I'm concerned mostly with basic survival.

It's literally what you're arguing for. Should I dissociate your opinions from your identity? Should I suppose that you're just lying?

I don't believe I literally posted anything of the sort in this thread. Can you point to the post perhaps?

Wow, it's like me when I stopped going at my job, I stopped getting money after that, can you believe it ?
Read this and realize the situation has always been shit : negativland.com/news/?page_id=17
If anything, nowadays you have more opportunities to be independent and that's a good thing.
Most musicians had to work besides their musical activities to survive just like today. Most of them weren't Bono or Roger Waters.

I didn't hire you how can I exploit you?
SNLT required to mass produce your music is null
get over it

Today's society does not guarantee basic survival to a lot of people because of the modes of production of capitalism. By playing victim ofble ebil piratez you only trap yoursef into moralfagging. I mean at least you can get another job. People in the third world have their "basic survival" at the hand of porky directly. Not only in the third but in the first too. It's not rare that in my country people who pick tomatoes live like zoo beasts. Should I feel bad for buying tomatoes? Should you? No we must change the order of things not playing moralopoly

What I am arguing is that you need to re-evaluate how you think the system should work with how it can work. Your traditional view of how artists produce value, how society perceives that value, and how that value is exchanged for a means to survive are simply no longer applicable in the internet age. No amount of finger wagging or intrusive DRM or garbage like current copyright law is going to change how the material conditions of today have forever altered things in the long run. People whose lives depended on their monopoly of information or ability to transcribe had to re-adjust when the printing press was invented and now so must you.

Daily reminder that pirate ships in the age most associated with piracy, "The Golden Age" were almost entirely made up of crews who had undertaken work place revolts at sea and seized their means of production (the ship, its cargo, their own labour). These revolts happened in a period of wage depression and declining working conditions. Pirate ships were just hardcore strikers.

Daily reminder that imperialists lie, rape was banned, punishable by death on most pirate ships. Pirates engaged in violence, the empires also engaged in violence, to a much greater extent, and not in order to defend their own survival.

Daily reminder that local communities often supported piracy in many ways, providing provisions, information (and misinformation to the colony) and hiding for pirates. Remember, these were almost universally colonised populations.

Daily reminder seafaring had a long tradition of direct democracy and share pay rather than wage pay, the pirates merely re-instated these values.

Daily reminder that pirates of the period , under these democratic conditions implemented health insurance programs for injured pirates (in a job fraught with injury) .

Daily reminder that captains were elected individuals and nonetheless had direct authority only in a battle or storm scenario, their authority was drawn entirely from their prowess as a leader. Daily reminder the pirates with brutal efficiency removed leaders who attempted to overstep this boundary and the role of the quartermaster was a further check and balance to this, the quartermaster had control of all material provisions, but was again, ultimately answerable to the crew.

DAMNACON TO THE GOVERNOUR, CONFUSION TO THE COLONY

Didn't know any of this. Anything I should read?

this book

Republic of Pirates also isn't bad

I'm probably gonna have to look at this too pirate collectivism is dope

But this doesn't answer my question. How do you know that piracy is the cause of this? You're saying that performing and merchandising made up 92% of your revenue, and 8% from selling copies of your music. But what would the percentages be without "piracy" and how did you determine that? (I think you didn't determine that, you're just imagining it.)

The fact is that most musicians make little money on selling recordings, and always have. Recordings are usually an ad for the artists' performances (and maybe tshirts etc). Very few musicians actually make a living from selling tapes or cds, or ever have. Most of them have to perform, or teach or even have other jobs, and always have.

Damn that piracy making Stravinsky poor. Oh wait….

The fact is, what you want is a world where you do some piece of work (labor), and are then paid for that work over and over again in perpetuity.

That isn't how things work for construction workers or plumbers, or really anyone else except capitalists. Why should it work that way for you just because your chosen work is "art"?

If someone makes a copy of your music, you're not doing work for them. You did that work already whether they make a copy of it or not. If they copy it, you still did the same work. If they don't copy it, you still did the same work. Really, the only one doing any labor here is the person making the copy.

Nobody in capitalism is guaranteed survival from their labor. Everyone has to sell their labor to someone that will agree to pay for it. Instead, you want to do the labor first and then demand that everyone else has some obligation to pay you if they ever make some use of what you did. Note what this does to "your" labor. You write a piece of music and record it. Then someone copies it, you demand payment. Someone else does the same, you demand payment again, but you didn't do any more labor each time. This can go on into infinity, and you get more and more money based on how *other people* act (how much labor other people perform) after you did some labor of your own choice and without securing any guarantee of payment from anyone for it before you did it. In this situation, you're not demanding payment for your labor. You're demanding payment for theirs. What you're actually demanding is rent on a piece of intellectual capital.

You're saying that there is nothing wrong in making copies of other people's art, even if this deprives them from their only way of supporting themselves.

My job is making art, not tshirts. That's my whole point for fuck's sake.

I'm not playing the victim, I'm giving my opinion on piracy, and my opinion happens to be a critique.
Is this so fucking unconcievable for you?

It's not about distribution, it's about labor. I don't think composers lost their rights on their labor (which you are incorrectly equating with their physical component, printed scores) only because pirating a recording or a score is a common behaviour. This happens, but this does not means that this is inherently a right thing. OP asked us what we think about it: I think it's wrong. It happens and it's hard to be fixed, and it is linked to a plethora of other even more complex problems, but this is beyond the point, for its existence does not imply that I have to approve it.

Well, you were placing musicians as victims here and I gave you a response. Is this so fucking unconcivable to you?

word my dude

and he's right, there isn't

quality posts

For a lefty board, I thought Holla Forums would agree more about how the current state of the music business fosters accumulation of power, harming little artists in the process
Some fat man said "intellectual property is the new commons", and he was right. Do you think it makes sense that Shakira or J-Zay are rolling in dough, while that money could have gone to smaller artists?

You care when a rich man owns a factory, but not when a record label owns an artist?

I know, it's shit.
I hate people's entitlement to get free shit, they don't realise that they hurt artists they like in the process.

You think this thread is about that? Read the OP again
It makes little sense that record labels harness so much power and money in the world of automatic distribution.
It makes little sense that an artist becomes 1% for no more work than you.

People wouldn't be pirating your stuff in the first place hadn't been for the mindset created by all other fucking media being expensive.
That's what I meant with "re-think our relationship with digital media"

It's absurd that many disks cost the same online as hard copies.
I personally rather pay to small bandcamp artists, but a lot of people want that latest Shakira, and that woman receives a disproportionate amount of power for it.

Non-solution.
People want to consume what others like to make. There should be a sensible way in place for them to give back to the artists for their music.
This is just fantasy.
The moment artists cannot professionally substain themselves will be a golden age for the "dude lmao with guitar" genre, but so much music takes a lot of time and effort to produce. You cannot expect all artists to live off his own artistic masturbation.

Yeah, I try to help anyone who struggles
Music is 90% of this for me, I listen to a lot of music

But he is not a porky who bought up a house to rent. He is the man who built the house in the first place.
The difference is he cannot sell the house to a single person, so yeah, he can only live off his rent.
Don't fuck with small artists

What if you were a consultant, and you gave professional advice, and someone didn't pay you?

I won't disclose the name of this musical project, but we are pretty big in my country. We can book a concert everytime we wants and be sure that we will pack it. Even if we have a solid proof of a massive (for a indipendent project) fanbase, that is nor correlated with any sort of earning that could let us survive. I'm not talking about wealth, I'm talking about downright homelessness even while having the absolute proof of the success of what you have created. If it were for music itself, we would be in the streets, yet this is what we do. You telling me that I should be fine with selling tshirts even in the privacy of my own opinion is honestly disgusting. Do you really think that even when I'm by myself I actually think that this music that has mesmerized so people does not entitle me to any degree to fucking food and a roof on my head?
And yeah, there may be worse problems in society, but this does not mean that this is nto a problem itself. What should I have done? Responding to OP by talking about the homelessness problem in my town's suburbs? It's a thread about piracy and I'll give an opinion about piracy.

YOU WOULDN'T DOWNLOAD BREAD

I can download a gun now

People would, can, and will be pirating their shit whether the record industry wields undeserved power or not. When someone needs to save their money for food and toilet paper, paying a content creator to create a copy of their work is the least of their concern.

If what I've described is to you victimhood, then you should consider all workers victims. It's still about exploitation of labor in a capitalist society, the only difference is that the rate of exploited labor is 100%.

Then there is nothign wrong with what I've said earlier.

Are these finally capable of firing more than a few shots?

Yeah, and most of them even harm the target and not the shooter now

I didn't read it.

No. It's rent.

Piracy is not exploitation in the common sens. And yess all workers are victims

yeah, but were them fun like in cartoons?

You don't make money selling out concerts? Maybe you should be worried about why that is more than you're worried about piracy.

And you still have not explained how you know any of this is due to piracy.

Give me a break, it's semantics. The labor of the composer is his own composition, yet he is not allowed to support himself through it, and this happens only because other people can avoid giving him any sort of support, since they can just make a copy. You guys are just trying to rationalize collective egoism.

stallman.org/articles/end-war-on-sharing.html

But he's not trying to rent the house to one person. He's trying to rent the house to an infinite number of people at the same time. Or more accurately, trying to charge rent to everyone else who makes another house that looks like his (a copy).

To be honest we should just kill all artists for the time being and let artforms reemerge after the revolution. It's clear for the time being that they are a counter-revolutionary force.

Not saying that. I'm into music myself and think it sucks how hard it is to make a living off of it.

But you're not doing any labour when someone pays a dollar and clicks download on your bandcamp page. And you're not doing any labour when someone downloads your music illegaly either. The labour is already done. You can't just say stupid shit like "the rate of exploited labor is 100%.", because it's wrong. You're collecting rent.

If you worked 8 hours a day producing music for a capitalist who, when you went home, took that music and sold it for a profit, and your wage for that was 0 dollars per hour, then your statement would've made sense. But that's not the case.

So the labor of the composer is inherently worthless? It is obvious that when you buy a score of a living composer you're also technically paying him for having composed it, and that the written score is just the medium used to share the composition, rather than the actual product itself. Even when it comes to old scores the same applies, for they are all revised by experts and scholars who have spent thousands on hours on them.
Again, it's semantics, and it does not account for its main consequence, which is that it justifies the status quo with which you are apparently disagreeing. Generally, you're not really analyzing the material conditions that surround the profession of an artist.

doesn't matter, it is still rent
he can sell the house, he just doesn't want to, because he built it so that he can rent it

this guy gets it. basically, musicians have been proles throughout history. Bach sells his services to a lord or duke, or performs or teaches for money in exchange for service. Then, for a brief period of time, the recording and distribution technology was such that it allowed some musicians to become capitalists (collecting rents in perpetuity on an 'intellectual property'). Then the internet came along and they see themselves being made into proles again, and they're pissed.

If I make a chair and sell it, I get money for the labour I did making that chair. If I want more money, I would have to build another chair and sell that.

If I built a chair, that once built, could be replicated an infinite number of times (at no extra cost), and I sold a million chairs I have still only done the labour of building one chair. Clearly this is a completely different situation than the one above.

I'll copy paste another post I made in this thread.

I don't know how we should handle these problems while capitalism still exists. I do sympathize, but I don't think creating artificial scarcity of digital media and fighting back against technology is a good thing, generally, you know? The fact that we have technology that could and should be used to improve people's lives, but because of the current mode of production is seen as a huge problem is just another reason we need to move beyond capitalism. I can't answer how these problems should be solved while capitalism remains though. But, I mean, good luck getting people to stop making use of technology that improves their lives.

Again, I'm concerned with basic survival, which can possibly imply a ideological compromise. Piracy is a problem because no one is willing to pay for the art "once", just like it would happen with someone who build chairs. This could happen if patronage existed, yet the existence of free market makes such a system inherently disadvantageous, and it does not help that this society is based on money.
So here's the problem: you're equating the act of selling a recording with the act of selling your music once. This is not true, otherwise recordings would cost hundreds if not thousands (depending on how much the artist worked on it) of dollars.
In a socialist society this would be a non-problem, and the act of sharing media would be a blessing. At the moment piracy just harms the developement of the arts, which means that the benefit of saving money does not counterbalance the death of public culture.

Read.

well, one thing I can think of is crowdfunding
there's a high risk of scam tho

This.

I'm an artist, I live on my art, and I have friends that live on my art. But I don't think it's right to claim some inherent monopoly over what I publish. In part, it's because to me, the art isn't mine alone. The process of artistic creation is one of synthesis, wherein all the influences I've experienced in my life are filtered through the skill that I've developed, such as it is.

Further, even if I were to create some entirely new conception, entirely original and coming from no previously established relationship, I still wouldn't have a right to control what others do to it once I'd published it. If I want complete, monopolistic control over it, then I would have to keep it to myself and share it with no one.

The unfortunate reality of being an artist in this current economic system is that you can't live from your art alone (generally speaking). For Internet artists, it involves a whole rigamarole of conventions, merchandise, hype, collaboration, and drama more often than not. But as hard as this may be, it still doesn't grant one a holy right to monopolize, enclose, and tyrannically control art, even if you're the one that "made it."

That's objectively untrue.

All labor is inherently worthless. You've never heard the "mudpies" meme? Cappies love to try and beat Marxists over the head with it.

I'm not saying the work you do is bad or useless, but unfortunately you're creating something with no value for a number of reasons:
1) any other artist can recreate it with their own instruments
2) the digital medium makes it infinitely re recreatable at practically zero cost a effort, and when supply is effectively infinite then it's economic value falls through the floor

And so in a capitalist frame, the only recourse is to create an artificial monopoly for you to extract rent from, enclosing this cultural product for your sole benefit. And we can see where they gets us, with a few megscorps owning the majority of cultural output and controlling it's use and interpretation, and indefinitely extending this monopoly to keep both profits and control.

I feel for you my dude, but the problem isn't piracy, and the solution isn't enclosing the cultural Commons.

they were actually, they drank nearly all the time, to the point where sobre men were sometimes thought to be spies, also usually a ships articles (their constitution) would entitle a man to "strong liquors"

i would say this is wrong though. It's not the labor of, for example, composing music that has no value. That does have value. For example, if you're a good composer someone might hire you to compose music, to write music for a film, etc. Someone might pay to hear you perform your compositions. So you can be creating something that has value.

It's *making copies* of your compositions that increasingly has no value. That used to have more value because the general public couldn't easily make their own copies themselves. They don't need you to do this labor for them anymore really. They can do it themselves.

But even making copies still has some value. If you're a popular musician, if you offer cd's for sale at your performances some people will buy them. Some people might do this just to show their support for you or because they just enjoy having a physical product to hold in their hands, with a cover and liner notes etc. This is kind of why LP's have made a comeback. The big cover art, the feel of dropping a needle on it, the classic sound etc. Even making copies still can have some value.

They aren't, it's just that user whining that nobody want to buy his infinitely replicable strings of bytes.
I'm sorry but this mentally makes me mad. He lives in an era where he can distribute his music worldwide for no costs, where setting up a home studio or pressing records has never been so cheap, where it's easy to find places to play to without a manager thanks to the internet, but he is complaining that he isn't making as much as Robert Plant in the 70s. Hell, he even sell t-shirts while most musicians I know don't and have a day job.

Yes, not everything is idyllic for a musician nowadays. Playing gigs pay less nowadays and this is a real problem since it's the main source of income for musicians.
But at the same time, there are a shitload of bands I would have never saw live if I hadn't pirated their music. Recorded music aren't the main product you sell anymore (if you aren't famous), it's live music and merch. And there is nothing you can do about it. This user is like a scribe revolting against the invention of printing press.

I have absolutely zero backing up evidence for this but I would say that streaming is much more detrimental to the artist than piracy solely due to how easy and widespread it is. Any idiot can boot up spotify and listen to an album giving them a fraction of a penny per listen, which unless you're a massive band ain't gonna do shit.
No-one in their right mind anymore is paying upwards of a tenner for a digital download of music, it's just the way that the industry has developed and there is no way to go back now unless these service die. Even before internet piracy was widespread anyone with a dual tapedeck could make copies of their mates albums.
Besides back in the day it wasn't all that great for the band anyway. Instead of losing money via piracy it was all being ripped away via the labels, the studios and everyone else in the music industry. Read Steve Albini's "The Problem with Music" article and you can see just how little a new band would be getting as they're churned through the system back then. I know personally if I were a band I'd rather the regular person save their money than see 90%+ go back into the pockets of the industry.
It's been said before and I'll say it again to make money now you're going to have to provide shit whether you want it or not, shirts, LPs, gigs, anything you can sell to directly make a profit.

I think in regards to composition, that kind of labor too has little value outside of some very specific circumstances. Once a composition is complete and exposed to the public, anyone with a learned ear and a bit of musical ability can recreate it.

I would agree though that making copies is a production process that is diminishing in value. In my opinion, it illustrates the capitalist necessity to enclose and restrict access to any sort of productive commons. When people can just recreate or copy what they want or need at next to zero cost, profit is decimated.

So in any case, I don't think you're wrong, but neither can I entirely agree with you.

10/10 post, specially:

except in ensuring an artist's means of survival
pls be shitpost

wonderful

That's why I mentioned the Madonna example
My beef is with that scale
His "rent" is a way of survival, not porkiness

Surprises nobody mentioned this:

Maybe in an age of such global accesibility, where you can enjoy artists from all over the world, acces to art has been magnified to the point where a samller number of artists suffice

Maybe it's ok that mediocre artists are starved out of the business. Thechnology made them redundant, like the industrial revolution did, like automation will.

I don't like this too much, but it may be.
Even in a perfect communist centralized economy, leaders and technocrats might find that fewer artists should be employed, as demand can be covered by less people.

I hate that this might kill obscure subgenres

Nobody denies that

But you still haven't provided a reasonable alternative to flow food into an artist's mouth

i'm currently unemployed. you have to provide me a way to flow food into my mouth. I'd like to do this by playing guitar or by shitposting. It's what i'm all about. I don't want to do anything other than what i love.

Go.

Best thread I've seen in a while

I see your point
Read the first part of my post
I acknowledge that not everyone deserves a right to do what they want

I'd still like there to be a way for a musician to live from music alone, but only it:s in my best interest as a consumer to have more obscure artists I like live from it and produce more

Maybe it's not possible

...

Woah! 10,000 listeners!? You would've made like ~$7000-15,000 off of LP sales if every single one of them bought one new!

That's totally a sustainable income for a multi-person band to make a living on without touring back in the day(and of course who even toured back in the day, you know when people used to go out to listen to live music more, like back when people would go out to dance to a band instead of a DJ, yeah….)

Woah! 10,000 listeners!? You would've made like ~$7000-15,000 off of LP sales if every single one of them bought one new!

That's totally a sustainable income for a multi-person band to make a living on without touring back in the day(and of course who even toured back in the day, you know when people used to go out to listen to live music more, like back when people would go out to dance to a band instead of a DJ, yeah….)

Someone double posted my own post?

He means the labor put into making it in the first place, but I agree the word stealing is unwarranted. The copy, distribuion and download is not his own labour

A better way to see it is that his actual labour isn't stolen, just goes unpaid.

Leveraging copyright for profit is porkyism of the highest order.

I'd rather every artist on earth died than encourage the kind of progression witnessed in - say - Furries, who were certainly a bellwether for Patreon whoring.

I've got enough of a backlog to tide me over until death as it is.

Consumerism leads to cultural bankruptcy. Rent seeking leads to cultural bankruptcy.
A total lack of reproduction costs leads to unbridled creativity.

This means nothing.
If we made rent-seeking over owning a crucial road illegal, you're actively pushing Porky out of the road-rent-seeking business. So what?
Or

And you're willing to steal entertainment from people living hand-to-mouth who can't afford to pay your rent. Go fuck yourself, I have more sympathy with the other guy.

it's the double post ghost

or you fucked up

forgot the shitpost flag on? Because I'll have to agree with a socdem now…

Bullshit and you know it.
It was always worthless in terms of exchange value.

As though Stalin would've been a Patreon of your Jazzidelic Death-Vapor experiment.

Yes. The technical consequences don't matter. If your ferry goes out of business because people have built a bridge, tough.
Fuck, I never knew it was so easy. My job is to be an Astronaut, not a shelf stacker…
It's impossible, and any attempt to fix it will merely maim society further.

Patreon whoring is already a thing and it doesn't really work, but it's about the closest you can get under capitalism
(Until retard artists try to use it as an ersatz paywall, in which case communally minded individuals leak things and we're back to square one because people come to view it was purchasing goods instead of providing patronage.)

You missed the (partially tongue-in-cheek, partially dead serious) implication that (by telling you to watch an old film) we could enact a golden age simply by no longer producing anything.
I don't care how artists live so long as they don't do it via rent-seeking.

Give me a break, it's semantics. The labor of the SocDem Poster is his own posts, yet he is not allowed to support himself through it, and this happens only because other people can avoid giving him any sort of support, since they can just make a copy. You guys are just trying to rationalize collective egoism.

$50 please, made out to the Rosa Luxemburg foundation.

Use value? No. (Well, often yes. Lots of music is shit.) Exchange value? Yes.
If you really wanted to lever your position without directly rent-seeking you'd adopt a kickstarter model where people pay you in advance for a product not yet produced, since that side-steps direct rent seeking. (If however you paywall something already produced, it's completely unacceptable. Life is fun like that.)

Forgive me if I don't weep for the aspiring bourgeoisie.

Gonna suggest kickstarter again.
Not really. I'm going to go and guestimate that the fact people can pirate music software, video editing software, etc, has probably done more for entertainment than abolishing piracy and throwing money at the most popular artists (who would benefit disproportionately, whether we fancifully assume "everyone paid" or - even worse - actually graded it based on what they'd buy if they were once again cost-constrained.)

I want to be an Astronaut.
youtube.com/watch?v=oqMl5CRoFdk
(Look, it's even on the official channel - no naughty-boy piracy for me!)

No no, I loathe copyright like I loathe Milton Friedman, and since he's already dead…
I mean, even the "muh starving artists" problem already had a solution in 1970s Britain: A very relaxed dole system.
Then John Major introduced JSA and Blair ramped up that cuntery.

Okay since you apparently cant agree with any of the other posters, I'll give it a go.
Why should the people who are affected by Capitalist exploitation pay extra money for an otherwise free product, so the artist can live outside of Capitalist exploitation? To give an anology, it would be like demanding you support a co-op. You're a worker, who is exploited like everyone else, so why should you give up legitimately precious wages to support an artist? I'm sorry we live in a society where you can't do what you love easily and without exploitation, user. You're gonna have to exploit yourself, or be okay with less money.

...

Some of those that hold your flag here and liberty hold the flag cause free shit.
They don't support free software. I bet they havn't read Lussig's works such as free culture.

who doesn't want, man

we need advancements in space travel on the level of shipbuilding and navigation innovations that made the Age of Exploration possible

this world becomes too small
we need new avenues for surplus population who has little to no prospects in this old world

Most of these arguments against freedom of ideas and for IP laws made in this thread has been dissoudre by Lawrence. Here is some of his works.
codev2.cc
the-future-of-ideas.com
And that free culture book that I mentioned earlier that displays the solution to those that delve into the arts and sell their work.

Yeah of course. I get free refills all the time and the workers are cool with it because fuck the bosses.

Thanks for having immediatly shown your ignorance.

Too bad that I've bought a contemporary example as eminent as Stravinsky to prove to you that no matter how sublime and well-recieved the music is, society still deprives the composer from his only way of surviving, and they do so only because they can.

Nice strawman. Worthy of your other arguments.

Therefore workers can be exploited as long as that work can be exploited? How does your argument not apply to regular workers?

The point is that if I produce something, people are able to steal it, and apprently fucking Spartacist are even willing to justify on the ground that it happens. I guess wage slavery is good too, and if you don't think so you're just a naive idiot who likes to imagine a better world.

You're an idiot. Also your example would include everyone, from an idiot with an ukulele to fucking Beethoven. But sure, the complete death of the arts is not something that will maim society.

So? Will you keep describing the system I'm criticizing as if this is some sort of coherent response? Would you justify in the same way slavery to a slave on the account that it does not seem likely that slavery could go away in our lifetime? Wake up.

Then tell me how are they supposed to live through their labor. Also tell me why they should share it with society in the first place, given that even radical leftists are willing to argue with semantics that they do not deserve to live.

This does not happen in a capitalist society. It looks like you're completely unaware of the material conditions that define artists, and it looks like you are willing to argue against their survival on the ground of pure semantics, rather than the actual fucking material consequences of your ideas. Read more theory, you're a reactionary.

No one has talked about wealth and luxury. I have so far only talked about food and housing, which I regard as basic human rights. If they aren't in our current society is irrelevant, for I don't derive my morals and ethics from it. You're not arguing against basic survival, not against aspiration of wealth.

Piracy damages corporative entertainment only superficially. At the same time it bleads out everyone who has not a major or a tenure behind his back. Your praxis is leading you to support a system that benefits the rich and commercial, and destroys the small and interesting. You're supporting Jay-Z instead of Beethoven.

I'm not this guy.

Leftist praxis accounts for material conditions. The fact that the material conditions of 1970s Britain are not in place mans that acting as if they were would be uncoherent and in fact damaging.

Thanks for having immediately made a typo, retard.

Why should I not outsource my work to sweatshops? I mean, I can so it's right, isn't it? This is your argument. I don't care if people can do it, if you ask me what I think about it I'll tell my opinion, which can lay outside of the status quo, as a critique: my opinion is that what is happening is wrong, and deserves criticism.

Are you asking me why the Arts should be supported?

You're just operating on capitalist narratives. It's no wonder that your system grants complete control over culture to old money and corporations. But I'm sure that that is just a coincidence.

What you call rent seeking leads artists to be able to survive. We do not live in a society that guarantees that, which means that copyright is basically self-defence for composers, and you're arguing against it on teh basis of theory you clearly don't understand, since you are not able to apply it to a system you live in.
Also you're inability to point out the value of art is telling of the mediocrity of your character.

A road is not a composition. Again, you're operating on semantic, even if you are apparently a spartacist. You're talking about fantasies, not about the reality of things. The fact that something happens does not imply anything about its moral, ethical and political inherent nature. If slavery happens, this does mean that I have to regard it as right, at best it means that I can regard it as actual but this does not mean that I have to support it.

I have made that entertainment, and that entertainment requires my complete dedication. If you want to experience it, you should at the very least give me the means for basic survival. If you're not willing to do so, then you don't deserve my free labor, just like your boss might not deserve yours. Exploitation is exploitation.

English is not my main language. Keep showing your true colors, my friend.

Which don't make it not rent seeking.

Which does not make it immoral and wrong. And whoch is basically semantics, since selling music bear very little similarities with what is usually actually criticized as rent seeking.

"Society" never deprived them of it. It wasn't there as soon as the technology was available to reproduce things with ease.
If you don't want something immediately and trivially reproducible, you've gotta offer physical products or services.
It does. All those ferry workers lose their jobs and have to work elsewhere or find a way of making the novelty of sailing an experience in itself, since the transportation element has been supplanted.
No they aren't. If they stole it, you would be deprived of it. You still have the music files.
A communist society would be - in vulgar, simplified terms - a society where everything can be pirated.
Beethoven is dead and I'd gladly kill ukulele players with my own hands. Sounds like a win-win.
No, but I wouldn't propose reinstating slavery because a slave can't find a new job after being replaced by a combine harvester either.
Kickstarter, faggot.
You don't need wealth and luxury to be bourgeoisie. A poor factory owner is still a factory owner.
Not the ones who have other jobs and throw shit up on YouTube in their spare time, who have nothing to lose from piracy because they don't charge to begin with.

I'm supporting a system that irritates Jay-Z, kills you and does nothing to the interesting distorted version of Ocean Man uploaded by a 17 year old druggie. As I say: Win-Win.
My point is that to solve this problem you just need welfare, you don't need copyright.

It doesn't though. Again, people make shit and stick it on YouTube just because they're fucking bored, often by flagrantly violating the legal rights of much richer content owners.
You just aren't worth losing a vaporwave version of Ocean Man over, sorry.
Whether or not it's necessary for survival is irrelevant to whether it's rent seeking.
Furthermore, you can survive: You just have to quit art. (Actually, you don't even have to do that - you just have to stop being a whiny bitch, suck it up and sell T-shirts.)

It's a composition of asphalt and polution.
Risible. I'm talking about the material reality that copyright is a form of rent-seeking.
But it does mean that it happens, and that your whining won't change it.
Not really, it's already been made. You can go stack shelves and I'll listen to the copy on YouTube. Goodbye.
Go fight for UBI then. Far less of a lost cause than trying to stop the unstoppable ship of post-scarcity in the digital world.
You've already performed the labor, it's too late to try and constrain access to the result now that it's out in the open. You are not entitled to being paid (theoretically) infinitely for a single unit of labour. The question of social provision for the survival of artists is entirely detatched from the question of the morality of rent seeking.

Not to mention, I mean in simple market terms I must reiterate: Sell T-shirts, get another job, or go home. You can't stop piracy.

Just trying to wind you up. You're not my friend, I don't like you. :^)

It must be the ghost because the flag is different and I tried to delete and it said wrong password.

I torrent everything I can. Especially video games. Even if I spend money on video games I don't own them, I'm just leasing them. Fuck that. I'd rather not spend money and still not "own" it.

It did require your complete dedication, but once your album or track or composition is complete then why should you keep getting paid for it? If it's digital it doesn't require any more direct human labor to reproduce endlessly.

Why? Even if I can recreate your music myself or with friends? If a band played one of your songs, why would they owe you money for work you did however long ago?

You can keep calling it semantics but giving you exclusive control over work you completed however long ago is doing just that, especially when it no longer requires any further labor on your part. If you were pressing these LPs and shipping them out yourself that would be one thing, but if you feel entitled to a share of other people's work or that you deserve to receive income for dead labor then I don't know what to tell you, because that's fucked.

copyright violation is a form of anarcho-communist activism that just about everyone does but pretends they don't to virtue signal

Even listening to songs on youtube uploaded / accessed the ``wrong way," or stumbling across certain copyrighted images, is undoubtedly technically illegal in most of the world

The Pirate Party is awesome! More green/soc groups should adopt its policies. Copyright, net neutrality, etc will just become increasingly important as the internet plays a larger role in our lives, culture, and economy.

People (especially in the USA) are becoming increasingly ``woke'' to the capitalists' / state's ongoing movement to ruin the internet. Internet access and usage liberties are definitely things that the Left should fight for. The internet will be ours eventually, but things may get really bad….

But what when the artist wasn't paid to compose it in the first place? When should he start seeing money?

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (1882-1971)

If Stravinsky had difficulty surviving, it wasn't because of piracy bro.

Wow, these buzzwords have totally convinced me!

The concept of intellectual property is cancer, I don't give a single damn about your work being pirated. Stealing implies a scarce resource being appropriated from someone, not a digital file being reproduced for no cost. There is no possible justification why copying a file shouod be ethically relevant.