If I tape songs off the radio, thats not theft. A store will supply me with a DVD recorder with the specific purpose of recording shows, music videos etc. that I want to watch later.

So what is the big deal with internet downloads? We can come up with all the statistics we want (i.e. 20% less sales), but the reality is most of the songs that people download they aren't going to go and buy anyway. As with most of my friends as well, if they hear a song they really enjoy, they'll go out and buy the album.

Although I was a bit too young to remember, I've heard how in the 80's, they were saying that recordable videos and video hires were going to ruin cinema sales. Some time later, we see Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Jurassic Park all pulling in some of the highest grossing packets of all time.

If artists start going broke over it, I'll bite my tongue. But I can't see it happening. It means is there is new media for the record companies to distribute their products. All they need to do is invent some gimmick which makes their product desirable (like CD covers, lyrics inside, certificate of authencity did for CDs). If people can market tap water for $2, surely this can be achieved.

Stephen Peach is right and

Deuc “Copyright infringement is not theft. Theft, stealing, larceny all involve taking away something with the intent to deprive the owner of that property.”

is wrong

It is wrong because Deuc has rationalised the statement to suit his corruption of ownership to fit with his particular manipulation of morality.

What theft of copyright does is deprives the “copyright owner” of the “benefits of ownership”

In the case of copyright, the “benefit of ownership” is the income stream which is generated from the ownership.

An analogy – a taxi cab owner. can only work (say) 12 hours a day so when he is resting, someone else, without his knowledge, takes his taxi, uses it for their own benefit, returns the cab but makes no financial restitution to the driver. The driver is thus deprived of the benefits of ownership of his taxi cab and the person who used the cab is a thief.

It is a fact, the music industry makes a lot of money from successful releases. The reality of the industry is this – for every success, there are around 16 – 20 failures. These failures are also “paid for” by the recording industry but generate no sales for their costs to be recovered against.
“Economic viability” finds the balance between the successes and failures – it applies to the development of every innovation be it medical, (new drugs and procedures) musical (copyright fees) or mineral (oil exploration – not every well sunk produces oil!).

If the method of finding / revenue generation – including copyright and royalties, is tampered with (deprived by illegal copying) the ultimate consequence is less money for development that means fewer risks on new music and more emphasis on reliable income (already successes) . So if you want to see fewer or no new bands promoted in pre-recorded formats – keep on stealing – otherwise the alternative is stagnation of what is available and recycling of “Max Bygraves hits of the 1950s” (not a nice thought).

Sometimes the law is an ass.

This whole thing is symptomatic of the music business multinational style of operations... LAZY.

The biz churns out such homogenised, quasi authentic dross, devoid of any credibility and smothered in the whole corporate treatment that the general music listening and buying public are staying away in droves.

The talent i nothing like it was only 20 yrs ago. You just dont get anyone coming thru these days with much of a chance of establishing a long term career. The record companies do not nurture talent. They test market their corporate make overs to middle aged housewives in the burbs for a minute over the telephone and on that basis change an intro, tweak a verse, alter a chorus. You get the drift. Then they wounder why people chuck that stuff out like the disposable product that it is.

The record companies will build an entire album around one or two hits. Much of wot you get is padding. Its got no heart. Then they wonder why people dont want to buy what is essentially a single with 8 or 9 B sides. The buying public will only do so much of that before they feel ripped off. And ripped off is how many of us feel. Then again, the record companies have been ripping off and robbing everyone blind for decades now. They rip off the public, the musicians, the writers. If it were up to them, they would own all of the creative output the minute you walk into one of their studios and the talent would just end up going on the payroll at $15hr.

The oh so big scarey reality of the internet is that it challenges the hegemoniacal monopoly control that the multinationals have over DISTRIBUTION. When you control the channels of delivery and distribution you basically own the landscape and all the bodies that want to traverse it. That is the essence of their power. It is the guts of their business model.

Here is another reality. What has driven record company profits since the 80s? Since the dawn of the 'corporate treatment' and the dawn of the death of popular music's heart? Answer... technological changes in delivery medium. If it wasn't for the compact disk, corporate profits would have prolly been in a lot of trouble since the eighties. There has been a bit of wind in their sales with the migration to DVDs. Thank god all the old timers are still happy to go out and replace their entire collection of most 70 and 80s pop/rock with first CDs and 20 yrs later DVDs.

But that is not enuff to float the fat bloated boats of the record companies. The new delivery medium of the internet is ephemeral. Its not physical. It cant be pineed down. Its open ended and very difficult to control.

Hence the incessant whinning of the fat cats whose cavier, cream and cognac breakfast, lunch and dinners are now under threat. They barrel out their 'sky is falling' shills who lay some stoipud guilt trip on the public because the public is doing a better rip off job than they themselves have done since the 50s.

Its about time the record company stopped trying to sell their horses, buggies and whips to people who dont want that anymore. Get with the program fools. The internet is just sitting their waiting for you to utilise it as a new delivery medium. Hire a few hundred MBAs and do your friggin job and stop whining about your apathetic desire to stick to the old ways.

Oh, and spare us the red hearings like 'internet downloading is theft.' We are not as dumb as you think we are.

Col, at what point did I say that I supported copyright infringement? Oh, that's right I didn't.

Removing the rhetoric, you're saying that I have read the statement (presumably "illegal copying is theft") to suit my supposedly incorrect understanding of ownership. Well no, what a person owns is the right to dictate how copies are made, you cannot (easily) steal that right you can only infringe or impede it. While there are some offences for certain types of copyright infringement it is generally a civil issue, unlike theft. Theft is about taking the property, not the benefits.

That's a pretty poor example of being deprived of the benefits of ownership. Here's another analogy: you buy a big screen TV, and I set up a transmitter to interfere with your reception or I impersonate you and have your cable switched off or perhaps I even cut the power to your house or take a sledgehammer to the screen. I have deprived you of the benefits of ownership, but it's not theft, there are distinctions in kind and liability between those things, copyright infringement and theft. The attempt to rebadge it as theft is simply part of a PR campaign to combat the wide community acceptance of illegal copying.

As I said in my orignal post, and others have said, the internet can reduce the costs & risks related to new artists; thus reducing the need for record companies. I'm more interested in the harmful consequences of the industries' efforts to protect their cash cows and the continued failure of Australian legislators to allow for the reasonable use & adaptation of copyrighted works, with the best model of music distribution being a secondary issue.

Duec “Col, at what point did I say that I supported copyright infringement? Oh, that's right I didn't.”

At what point did I suggest you did?

Unless your statement

“Copyright infringement is not theft.”

Means you actually support enforcement of copyright – and in fact do consider copyright infringement “Theft” – in which case you would have the words wrong

So Duec does not support copyright infringement – he just says he does! – oh how HE IS A contrary Mary!

The rest of your post sounds like some lame attempt to justify your own bad attitude and behaviour and as such not worth responding to.

Trade215 – the record industry – according to your view – of access via internet does not have any monopoly over the free distribution of music and from my personal experience, I know turn down a lot of wannabe deals more than it takes on bands.

Your proposal is an example of envious and small minded spleen venting eg

“fat bloated boats of the record companies”
“the fat cats whose cavier, cream and cognac breakfast, lunch and dinners”
“Hire a few hundred MBAs and do your friggin job and stop whining about your apathetic desire to stick to the old ways.”

I would note record companies have always been at the front edge of media carrier innovation from wax cylinders to acetate, vinyl, tape, 8 track, music cassette, CD DVD etc. and did not "hanker" for the old carriers - such is the nature of a competitive multi-suppier industry.

Such invective says more about you than it does about music companies (that being more than a touch of the “no-class” Lathams I suspect)

As for

“Its about time the record company stopped trying to sell their horses, buggies and whips to people who dont want that anymore”

No one is forced to buy them

So by the time we read your words

“Oh, and spare us the red hearings like 'internet downloading is theft.' We are not as dumb as you think we are.”

No – you actually sound a whole lot dumber