Posted by FatKat on 09/21/05 16:47

Technomage Hawke wrote:
> this is an oldie, but a goodie...
>
> ************************************
> Date: November 30, 2003 @ 9:12 PM
>
> As a long time fan of symphonic rock I literally spent years downloading,
> wading through and tossing out garbage on MP3. The object of this quest was
> to find at least one album by a recent band that was of comparable quality
> to the best symphonic rock of the 70's.

Do you mean artistic quality or sound quality?
>
> Then I listen. I like what I hear. I like it so much I burn it to a CD
> so I can play it on my stereo or in my car. I like it so much that when
> I eventually run across a pro-copy of this CD I plunk down $40 to buy
> it, with glee.

This sounds like something Iluvzlaur might be interested to hear. He
argued that WinMX users don't eventually buy the music they DL. I
suggested that they might, or would at least buy other albums by the
same artist/band that they wouldn't have thought to even look for -
either for the reasons you say below. I was surprised though by how
emphatic you were about spending $40 for the album, assuming at the
outset that the DL could not match the published version.

Also, I don't see where you mention this at the outset, but based on
the lower part of your post, the beef seems confined to DL's from
pay-sites, even AFAIK, the industry has been confining its complaints
to the free-sites.
>
> "There's so much sound," I exclaim. "Where did all this sound come
> from. I never heard this in the MP3's."

Again - why the surprise? You were DL songs from who knows where, from
what source, having undergone who knows what transcoding.
>
> Why do so few people notice this? 2 reasons. One, most people don't
> listen to MP3's on good hi-fi equipment. Most people listen to MP3's on
> computer speakers and small portable players that aren't expected to
> put out the full range of sound you can hear on a CD. And two, most of
> the music people listen to today is not dynamic enough to even require
> hi-fi.
>
> So now I apply this discovery to 2 basic flaws in the RIAA's thinking.
> First, not one of those thousands of downloads I wasted could possibly
> have represented any kind of loss to the RIAA. It was all garbage. I
> would never have bought any of it.

That's a conclusion, not a fact. Also, you're assuming that a
widespread problem (problem from the industry standpoint) involves
large numbers of audiophiles who want better than mp3 quality when you
above admit that most listeners rely on less discriminating players -
their computers or portable players. Unless that's incorrect, then the
industry can say that most listeners are willing to accept lower
quality if they don't have to pay for it, even if it's for music they
would have otherwise paid for. As for yourself, it's unclear at what
point you decided that the stuff you DL'd was garbage - was it stuff
you realized was crap AFTER you DL'd it? If so, that's still stuff
that you may have considered buy-worthy before the DL. If you DL'd it
knowing it was crap, why did you DL it then? In either case, there's
still the question of your sharing of that file with others, which is
what I think is the industry's real problem. By keeping it around, and
allowing others to access it (others who don't think it's so garbagey)
you're making it easier for others to get something that they might
like better than you do, and would have paid for.

arguably.

> And when I finally did find an album
> I liked, I not only bought it, but paid twice the RIAA price, being as
> it was only available from Japan. Which brings up another point for the
> RIAA to choke on. They didn't get one cent of that money.

I'm not sure what the point of that is. Does the RIAA get any of our
money from music sales, whether directly or otherwise? They may choke
on the fact, but what does that transaction say about file-sharing?
>
> Next let's look at this insane notion that anyone with any sense would
> ever pay for an MP3. The above experience proved that MP3's aren't even
> on a par with cassettes. The audio ranges that an MP3 can't seem to
> capture represent very similar limitations on vinyl.

But people often forego the better quality item for something that's
free. I don't understand why anybody would pay for a bootlegged DVD
rather than waiting to get the legit version a few months later. yet,
wherever I go in NYC, I still see bootlegged DVD's. These people
aren't even saving themselves anything - DVD's are released much
sooner, and eventually their prices come down near or at those of
bootlegged versions - unlike file sharers who get it for free.
>
> Basically, for me and thousands of others with similar experiences,
> downloading MP3's has been no different than tuning across the radio
> dial trying to find something we like.

....and presumably recording it off the radio, which is what I used to
do before getting into P2P in the summer of '02. There's an argument
to be made to analogize to the culture of mix-tapes, but some important
distinctions as well. While sound quality does erode between the
original and the mp3 version, the differences were more profound for
casettes - I didn't need a hi-fi to listen for differences between the
radio version and the taped copy I made of it. Also, degradation was
inherent in the first copy, and worsened both with every copy, and with
the age of the tape. MP3's, from what I can tell, take their big hit
when they transcode - but otherwise remain as pristine. Lastly,
there's a difference (from the industry's POV) between music available
on the radio with their permission, and music (admittedly of lower
quality) on the internet or file-share networks.

> And when we've found things we like, the MP3 was never satisfying enough to
> prevent us from buying the album.

You're never prevented from buying anything - it's just whether you're
satisfied enough to forego the better version if you have a cheaper
(free) version on hand. I've got about a hundred in my queue on a good
day - many claiming to have a couple hundred files, some having 3000 -
5000 files, many of those being music files. Can I assume that all of
these users have these copies of these songs from legitimate sources?
You're concluding that all users are unsatisifed with mp3's, but with
that many users having that many files, it's just hard to believe.

> Thus these millions of lost sales calculated by the amount of
> traffic on p2p are nothing more than a myth. They are the product of
> some music executive's paranoid brain.

Doesn't seem paranoid to me - if people are willing to buy this stuff,
why would they DL it?
>
> Yet, because of the paranoia of the RIAA we are expected to loose our
> valued ability to freely share and promote music to one another, and be
> satisfied with pay sites as compensation.

Waitasec - valued ability to share music? I thought it was crap? If
MP3's are of such low quality, maybe bands have an interest in not
having them shared. You need to decide one way or the other. Also, if
it's not music that you've made, you're not losing out by not being
able to promote it, are you?
>
> Now, let's just look at what you get and don't get with a pay site. The
> price of each track is 99 cents. For a CD with 18 tracks you are paying
> the exact same price they've been gauging us for all this time. But are
> you getting an equivalent product? NO! You're getting the same limited
> quality sound we used to pay $6 for back in the 70's. But are you even
> getting as much value as we got for our $6 way back then? HELL NO!!

I used to pay closer to $8, but I'm not really an educated music
consumer. However, having gotten some of the same music on tape and
CD, and putting aside the whole "adjusted for 30 years of inflation"
thing, MP3's may still have something going for it over casstttes.
First of all, the above is a great argument for not getting DL's of
albums - but how many people want the entire album? How many are lucky
enough to find the so-called "Desert Island Disc" in which every track
is a keeper? Those people are unlikely to even consider paid downloads
based on quality, let alone price. For the rest of us, we're likely to
want just a few songs - maybe half of the album, costing you about $9,
slightly more than you'd pay for an entire cassette, but you're likely
to end up listening to the same songs anyway. While mp3 quality may
trail CD's, they can easily surpass cassettes, so you're definately
getting more on that score. CD's are easier to copy and play than
cassettes, and I've yet to have any get eaten by their players.

> What you are getting is a vinyl quality sound bite that can't even
> leave your computer.

I thought vinyl was actually reputed to be good, as long as the player
was good. My MP3's have left their player, burnt onto CD-A's, and
(once I got an MP3 playing CD player) on CD-R's, so fexibility and
playability is not an issue.

> Most people wouldn't even be able to play it on
> their hi-fi system because pay MP3's are protected from being
> transferred.

That's an argument that doesn't apply to free-sharing systems like
WinMX, the "source" for much of my stuff. Transfer-protection isn't
something that WinMX users have to pay anything to get past. That
music will play anywhere - stereo-deck, portable or boom-box. (I don't
have a portable MP3 player, but have no reason to assume it won't work
there.)

> Ok, after 12 listens our frustrated pay site user is just about ready
> to accept this major hindrance to his enjoyment of the album when the
> absolute final insult to end all insults kicks in. A little window pops
> up that says, "You have reached the limit of 12 plays for this album.
> The MP3's will no longer work. If you wish to hear this album again you
> must go back to the pay site and pay another $18 to download the tracks
> again."

I'm not sure what the point of this is. If it's an argument against
pay-DL sites, it's a good one, but again irrelevant to WinMX.
>
> See, the RIAA has not only figured out how to get you to pay for
> nothing, they've figured out a way to make you pay twice. Maybe even an
> infinite number of times if you really like the album and would like to
> go on listening to it for the rest of your life. Imagine over the
> course of your lifetime paying $100 or more for one album. Do they
> really think anybody is that stupid?

Actually, the argument is inherently illogical. If the music is
"nothing", the dissatisfied user is unlikely to listen to it a dozen
times, let alone pay to hear it again. This seems to be a common theme
to your argument - the music is worthless when it comes time to pay for
it, yet the industry is still depriving people of it, suggesting that
it has value. Well, which is it? Try putting those two ideas of yours
together, and you get something like this: The RIAA is trying to get
you to pay for nothing, which you may want to listen to repeatedly.
While the idea of putting up $100 for the same music over the course of
a lifetime ounds ludicrous to me, I'm not a concert-goer who'd drop
cash in that neighborhood just to hear the same music once. I don't
think the industry expects repeat downloaders - they probably expect
that you'll just go out and buy the album - and seeing that albums are
still in stores, that assumption is the more likely one.
>
> Of course this is not really an RIAA worry. The RIAA has taken steps to
> ensure there will never again be any of those troublesome albums like
> "Tubular Bells" or "Dark Side Of The Moon." Imagine the arrogance of
> Mike Oldfield and Pink Floyd, making albums that can't be cut up into
> five-minute chunks or pigeon holed into specific categories. Sure they
> have consistently been on and off the album chart for the last 30 years
> and made us a ton of money, but we can not have these non-conformists
> making this classic music anymore. We must have prefabricated
> disposable music that will only be of value one year and then thrown
> away. That way people will not want to download albums multiple times.
> We must make music they'll be sick to death of by the 12th play.

Music sucks these days, but this is just an old argument that has
nothing to do with file-sharing.
>
> Well, our poor duped pay site user is sick to death over the fact that
> "Amused To Death" has left his hard drive. But there's no way he's
> going to pay another $18 to get it back.

Your poor duped listener was an idiot to DL the entire album, rather
than just a few songs he'd use to help decide to get the store disc -
assuming he wants to eschew the P2P route.

> Nor is he going to waste his money on the latest over hyped pop hits, which he hates in spite of all
> the ads that keep popping up telling him he's a looser for not liking them.

Are we talking about anybody in specific?
>
> So he remembers an old album he hasn't heard in 30 years. Let's say
> it's Rick Wakeman's "No Earthly Connection." He goes to the search
> engine to look for it. And guess what, it's not there. Why? It's out of
> print, of course. Why is this album out of print? Because A&M owns the
> copyrights. And even though they no longer want to publish the album,
> they won't release the copyrights to the composer so he can release it
> on his own label.

That's the nature of the beast - people who own the rights to something
may decide they don't want to make any of it available new. However,
there's alays old record stores and E*Bay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Rick-Wakemans-No-Earthly-Connection-VERY-RARE-CD_W0QQitemZ4771108868QQcategoryZ14732QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
>
> Realizing he can't get anything on the pay site that isn't currently in
> print, our pay site user remembers, "Damn, used to be I could get all
> kinds of out of print stuff on WinMX. I could just download it and
> enjoy it. What was the harm in that if nobody was selling the album
> anyway?

Even though WinMX is chock-full of those lousy and lossy MP3's? I
think not.

> I sure wish I could go back in time to when the Internet was
> free,

Alright, let's get something straight - the internet was never free.
Maybe you could get on-line at school or at libraries, but for serious
stuff, you needed your own connection and a CD burner. Early
connections were incredibly slow, and finding the music you wanted was
difficult. So-Called free-sites dropped spyware into your computer,
and there was no question that old and obscure stuff was going to stay
that way.

> before those commie bastard RIAA people took over everything. Oh
> well, the hell with this.

Yeah, and if there's one thing we know about commies, is that they're
only concerned with their profits. Lousy, money grubbing, corporate
commies. You know what the commies are afraid of? They're terrified
that workers will rise up and demand an end to the very idea of
property, a capitalist paradise where corporations don't exist, and
everybody has the right to use and enjoy everything.

> Think I'll just turn the damn computer off
> and read a book. At least the law they drew up to stop me from doing
> that hasn't been passed yet."

well, yeah, the books have to be either purchased or borrowed, and you
can't make copies and distribute them without the owner's consent.
> --
> I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or
> numbered!
> My life is my own - No. 6

You know, if they had Peter Falk as one of the guys picked to be "No.
2" on that show, "The Prisoner" would have been toast. I mean Lt.
Columbo was so good at kicking McGoohan's ass in all those Columbo
mysteries. He'd be a great No.2.

[Back to original message]