Piracy- why outlawing downloads is CRAP!

Let me give you the background story of this rant;

My country's government has just decided to take off the velvet gloves when it comes to dealing with downloading that they find "illegal".
New laws are voted for and passed and soon to be enforced.

Of course, the government is wrong about this, and they meet resistance from respected instances such as the national IT-department.
The law did not come through any democratic process and is clearly a result of lobbying. Disgusting!

So what are the assumed pro's about this new law?
Well, major companies such as Time Warner and Universal surely enough applauds this and jumps around like pop-corn out of sheer joy. Now they can make sure, for some time ahead, the supply of millions, if not billions, of dollars won't run out so that they can release more crap movies and crap records with washed-up crap artists that weren't to survive the last "trend" or whatever.

They moan so hard over the fact that their stuff is being ripped on the net, when they in fact must understand that we have outsmarted them for the last time and that they now have to change approach.
One way could be to minimize the industry so that less material of higher quality will be produced. We are currently overflowing with movies nobody cares about and celebrities that make insane amounts of money for doing nothing proper.
I think I heard it on MTV, that music artists more or less created by some label get their "cribs" and "rides" paid by the label so that they can live up to the "superstar lifestyle" expected from them. I mean...what???
If they need to cut down on costs, why not start with that?
And the crazy numbers that movie stars make for really crappy productions...is that truly sane? Is it really?
I don't think so.

My main argument is as follows;
If I, hypothetically speaking, would like to do a record, and really burn from eager to make my music public, I would find a way to do that. If then people in general would just take it off the net and leave me with nothing much, it would not bother me. I mean, art is free man, you can't put a price tag on culture. If the will to create is there, you will create. You don't sit at home and think "oh, how can I make a quick buck? Yeah, I'll make a record, that'll do!". I don't think that all the artists in the world will put down their instruments and never ever play another tune because the money is too bad. If they do, there are plenty of others in line for the long occupied thrones of different musical styles.
Of course it would be nice if you could live on your art, but that is what we call a dream scenario. Such things require that you are really good at what you do. If you are cool enough, you will be able to live on your art, maybe even be wealthy.
Otherwise, you just gotta go get a haircut and a regular job like the bloody rest of us! Besides, there are always live-concerts, you can't rip that from the internet. Also cinemas are hard to download. If people are so devoted to their idols, they will pay the ticket.
In Russia for instance, artist know they won't make much on selling CD's, so all effort is laid on tours. They still release albums, no problem. You just need to look at art as art, not as an industry that must deliver maximum profit all the time. That is gross.

Stars and artists keep whining about that they can no longer afford to have 20 houses and 5 yachts. Well, I am sorry, but I could not care any less.
The companies show their saddest puppy-eyes and say that this is the end of entertainment because it is no longer economically valid to release DVD's and CD's... Well, I don't know, but did they not say the same thing when the MC came out and the VHS? Besides, as I mentioned earlier, it will only be good for the marked to get some grooming and some reality-checks.
What if there would be a maximum of 5-10 premiers at the cinema each year; then they could focus so much more on quality, not on quantity. You have to admit that there is a lot of crap out there. The entertainment industry is running amok.

Then we have all the other stupid reasons not to outlaw file-sharing.
One thing is that you suddenly have an insane amount of criminals out there. Estimated in just my country, more than 60% of the population would be subjects for investigation and criminal charges. And the punishments are freakin harsh! Just there you have no logic at all.
The market needs to adapt to this new way of sharing information. The internet is pretty much here and settled now so trying to reverse the development is just stupid.

What should be outlawed though is the "industrial" piracy when others take the royalties and claim them as their own. That is not ok in my eyes, this is just cheap and sneaky. But a more proper label for that would be tax evasion rather than "piracy".
Of course, me personally have never downloaded anything and will not do so without paying for it. Hello internet surveillance officers!
(Besides, I am a CD-collector so I prefer getting the whole deal with booklets and special editions ans such)

That is my rant for this time.
I would be glad to hear others input on the issue.
Don't worry, this time I won't flame you (without good reason!).

In my opinion music is heading in the direction of being Free anyway (Capitalised Free for Freedom not free as in free beer ). If we forget about the crap manufactured music pushed out my the large record companies more and more artists are actually getting fed up with the record companies anyway, though I expect it will be a decade or two before people actualy start to notice it and support it.

To pick my favourite artist and get some free advertising out there for him :p Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has released two albums since he finished his contract with whatever crap record company he was with. Both albums free to copy share and remix/modify without paying a penny.

What most people fail to realise is that even though free suggests no one would ever pay for it more people pay for Free products (for a lack of a better word) than the big multi million dollar companies would like you to realise. Last I heard the Ghosts (his first Free album of sorts) made $750,000 from selling the limited edition version alone and as far as ive heard The Slip (his latest album) has made millions.

We haven't even got to tours.

So who needs record companies? With the right sort of community and the right sort of cooperation music can be Free and profitable even for small lesser known artists.

And if that doesn't persuade anyone that Free music is good would you rather pay for a copy of your song for every device you put it on? when it comes down to it the large record companies would love to have you pay for your music every time you put it on your ipod (though you should all be using cowon DAP's anyway there so much better ) regardless if you own the cd already or paid for a downloaded copy.

I know how you feel Raud, the music industry sucks, I dont even bother listening to the radio or puting any music off the TV on, the majority of it is carbon copy mush created to get an extra buck.

What Law was this anyway? and what country?

I heard the EU has rejected Frances proposal for the 3 strike law they wanted to force ISP's into using against its users who download via bittorrent. I honestly dont know how dense these politicians can be, how many times do they have to be told that you simply cant know if someone is downloading something illegally or not. They would be cutting the internet off on people they have guessed downloaded something illegal, and they must know this because I havent heard of them planning to arrest people who get '3 strikes' surely if they broke the law you could arrest them.

I don't know what the law is called, it is probably just some #(number) but the country is Sweden (blizzard outside my window, that's fkkn hard!!! *headbangs*)

I want to make my point clear that I also talk about the movie industry, which is somewhat one and the same as the music industry.

I mostly listen to Black Metal, and one of the reasons for me doing that is because I have such respect for the underlying concept that making a profit on you music is not the issue. The art itself is the whole deal. You make your recording and if you are lucky someone will buy it. Or listen to it in some way.

Its the same with most industries. Im a big supporter of Free Software and I think the principles behind it can be applied to most industries.

Music is definitely going to head in the right direction faster than film, but if you haven't seen it you should look at Elephants Dream and Big Buck Bunny two open films made with help from the Blender Foundation. In a similar fashion to NIN's new albums there free to coy redistribute and edit without restriction.

The problem is people are to greedy, they want to make as much money as possible regardless of its affects on society then they want to make more money. In the end they just make money for the sake of making money. What use is a billionaires fortune when he dies? Its not much of a life if you spend it all trying to collect money then not use it.

without illegal downloads isps would not be in business

Originally posted by Edn
Its the same with most industries. Im a big supporter of Free Software and I think the principles behind it can be applied to most industries.

Yeah, I almost actively get Linux downloaded and upload it via bitTorrent, just to spite those idiots who think it's all illegal.

It really is ridiculous the amount they go on about it. As well as that though, is the way things are done as if the internet isn't there. For instance, the BBC currently is showing Heroes season 3 on the TV, and on I player. While NBC (or whoever) in America is doing the same thing, two weeks ahead of BBC, and IIRC you can't watch it off their site unless you're in America. So what do they really expect to happen? Anyone who has an internet link capable of watching it off iplayer can also illegally stream it or torrent it, so there really is almost no incentive to watch it legally. This is the real issue IMO, that the people making the content still release it like they did years ago, despite the rampancy of possible piracy now. If they released DVDs (or Blu-rays) about 2 weeks (maybe a month or so) after the release to cinema rather than longer, and for less (a really good film will probably profit from cinema alone, and discs are dirt cheap, nowhere near £10 or so that they charge) then the piracy would go down. But instead they seem to prefer whining about it and not considering that just maybe thay could do something over than use DRM.

DRM being of course cracked within a day or so anyway, possibly longer for CSS. But on games and other software, it's cracked so quickly it's worthless. And as a result of this the DRM only really screws the legal users over, giving them an incentive to use the disc cracks. Those people who put DRM on really are morons.