ethics of CD burning

[Guest cyber]

Mescalinium said

 

"If I never buy any cd's, than cd-only labels will never receive any of my money. This yields a payoff of 0. If I do not buy cd's and I do not download music, I cannot listen to any cd-only releases, which I will also assign a payoff of 0. If I do not buy cd's, but I do d/l music, I can keep track of all types of releases. This yields a payoff greater than 0. So in this theoretical world, nobody is made worse off, and at least somebody is made better off (what political scientists call "Pareto Optimality"). Therefore, from a utilitarian view, this setup is perfectly moral."

 

 

I have to say I'm impressed that someone is even mentioning Pareto Optimality in this forum:) That code next to your name suggests you are in school and if that's good for you:)

 

 

Anyways I happen to be well educated and have to admit that you failed to recognize some assumptions regarding Pareto Efficiency/Optimality, and one of the fundamental ones says that-if they are any negative externalities supply and demand curves will not intersect at the most efficient point and this WILL NOT lead to Pareto Optimality. Having said that, negative externality in this case is people downloading music without paying.

 

 

........but....

 

we don't even have to discuss Pareto Optimality, Neoclassical or Utalitarian schools of thoughts.. we can just remind ourselfes of one basic assumption or even rule if you will of Macroeconomics which states "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FREE LUNCH"

[Guest Mescalinium]

to cyber,

 

I am a politics student, not an economics student, and it is clear you know more about the economic implications of my statement. However, I did not mean to imply that Pareto Optimality was an inevitable outcome in the given situation. I was merely alluding to the simplified no-harm principle present in Arrow's Theorem (Condition P, to be precise).

 

Nonetheless, it is nice to have an intellectual discussion in the forum, and thank you for sharing your own knowledge and adding to the collective knowledge here.

 

 

to EP,

 

I really don't know where to begin. I've refrained in the past from getting involved in these types of discussions, not because I was ashamed of my views (not the case at all, as I'm sure you can see), but because the nature of these arguments lends itself to petty fighting rather than actual debate.

 

As much as I'd like to call a truce, to agree to disagree, if you will, I feel the need to defend myself against some of your accusations.

 

First of all, against your charges of Americano-centrism, I hardly meant to imply that the case in the U.S. is the same elsewhere. I was merely using personal experiences and examples to support my case.

 

Now even if it were true that _only_ "american kids", as you put it, have learned about trance through the internet (which I think is hardly the case), this would still be a good thing for you. The more markets that are opened up to the music = the more markets in which you can sell records!

 

Second, you dismiss my statistical argument because it used American corporate markets that have nothing to do with the goa scene. This is true.

 

However, I said nothing, in my first or second statement, about the goa scene. The statement I was supplying evidence for is the following: "There has yet to be any empirical evidence that the advent of file sharing software has resulted in the decline of music sales".

 

From my statistical evidence, you could derive the following statement: "The advent of file sharing software has yet to have a discernible impact on mainstream, American, corporate music markets."

 

This sequence of statements is logically true. Does this say anything about the goa market? No it does not, but that was not my point.

 

So is it "lame" to use these statistics because they have nothing to do with the goa scene? I think not.

 

Which of the following two theses would be the more difficult to prove: 1) The advent of file sharing software has had a discernably negative impact on music sales worldwide. 2) The advent of file sharing software has had a discernably negative impact on the underground trance music market in Europe and Asia, but not the mainstream American music market.

 

Clearly the second one, because it is more convoluted, and, at the same time, actually says less about the state of music sales.

 

Frankly EP, you keep pulling these absurd statistics out your ass. First you say you're supplying statistics from an individual label ("In 1996 -1998 the overall sale for an ***individual label*** were between 2500 - 5000 copies. Today that sale figure is down to 1000 - 2500." my emphasis). Then you go back and change your statement, saying that this was a composite figure ("That was actually the sale figures for most labels in the scene mescalinium..Not as you think just one label. It's called an "overall" figure. - And that overall figure is made by the labels themselves - together!"). Now which is it EP? One label, or many labels? Moreover, which labels are you citing here? Where are you even getting this information???

 

Your lack of documentation for your sources is ultimately crippling your argument. Not to mention the other ludicrous "facts" peppered throughout your argument. "[T]his is the US major industry calculations. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the worlds recordsale that actually have dropped from 25-35% (all depending what country you talk about) over the last 5 years." So you're asking us all to believe that in the last 5 years, record sales everywhere in the world have dropped 25-35% except for America where sales have *increased* by approx. 5% in the same time period??? (same source as cited in my previous post).

 

Any knowledgable person can readily see through your smokescreen of lies. I ask that you come back with some hard evidence rather than a pile of made-up bullshit.

[Guest Max]

Mescalinium, you bring up many interesting points. but there is somthing that EP said that you did not mention...

 

"...But I get it directly from the ARTIST! That's the big difference here. I get it with their permission you don't!"

 

would there not be a moral decision to ask for permission, that you are ignoring?

[Guest Max]

Cyber: "...negative externality in this case is people downloading music without paying...."

 

in order to prove your point here you would also have to prove that the music is avaible to purchase via downloading.

[Guest bugbread]

Janua: "everybody knows what's right but doesn't want to admit it cause than they have to live like that or else they won't be true with themselfs ... it's called egoism ..." What sounds more like egotism, someone who has reasons for their beliefs wanting some sort of evidence for why they're wrong, or someone who assumes that since they believe something to be true, then everybody else also "knows" the same thing but ignores it? Arguments such as yours are just a way to pat yourself on the back for your beliefs while absolving you from the work of actually defending your viewpoint. It's pretty much akin to someone saying "Well, everybody knows that Christianity is the one true religion but you don't want to admit it because then you can't commit evil acts that you enjoy". No, everybody does NOT know that, and unless you can point out some evidence that it is true, the only people who will agree with you are the people who agreed from the start anyway.

 

Once again, I'm not saying that all pirating is non-harmful, but I AM saying that neither is all pirating harmful. Specifically, in the example I present above (the X + Y + Z) example, HOW am I harming the artists? If it's really harmful, this should be easy to answer without resorting to random statements of "universal morality"

[Guest Elysium Project]

I am not even going to argue with people that call me a liar. Just because my way of expresing myself is not as fluient as yours (I am from Denmark and not USA) does not give you the right to call me a liar. I did and I repeat I DID not think of only one label in my 1st post. Maybe my way of writing made you think so...sorry for my bad english skills!

 

Whys should I come up with solid evidence to kiss your ass? Is your evidence teh truth...For all I know it can be something you made up....!

 

Grow up...idiot!

[Guest JanUa]

Bugbread,

 

you know what i meant.

 

i'm not deciding for others, everyone has to decide for themselfs...but you make decisions that "can't" be made in a way... cause you decide to illegaly download music that isn't yours and the guy that made it chooses to decide that he doesn't want people to download his music free or put his music on the internet.

it's called "RESPECT THE ARTIST" and if you don't have respect for his choice but only act in your benefit ... what's it called???

 

this descussion shouldn't be existing.

 

i know that there are diffrences in downloading music while thinking ... i wanna hear it and maybe buy it if it's good .... or ... i'm downloading it fuckers, come and get me, it's possible so kiss my ass.

 

i was referring to the kids that think like this! .... so what do you think?

[Guest JanUa]

but while reading this post i get a point you tried to point out ... i can't say "you know what i meant" cause maybe you didn't and i can't know if you did ... just like i said "everybody knows what's right" ... okay ... apart from the ethic discussion i learned something ... tnx

[Guest Mescalinium]

EP,

 

I will believe you if you say that you made an honest mistake in your first post, and I retract and apologize for my having called you a liar. (Whether or not I had a "right" to call you a liar or not is another question entirely which I will not address here for the sake of brevity.)

 

There are two reasons I asked you to supply further evidence and/or citation.

 

First, I am personally curious as to the nature of the psy trance market, and would very much like to study pertinent statistics in regards to goa sales.

 

Second, one of the main differences between our arguments was that I presented a proper citation for the information I supplied. You ask, "Whys should I come up with solid evidence to kiss your ass? Is your evidence teh truth...For all I know it can be something you made up....!" But if you looked up the statistics I used, you would know that I did not make them up. And you _could_ look them up because I supplied a source!

 

The reason I had initially called you a liar is precisely because you avoided providing a source, which implies that you may have made up your information. This is not to say that you _did_ make it up, just that I (or any other curious third party for that matter) have no way of knowing whether you did or not!

 

In any case, it's unfortunate that our opinions are irreconcilable, but I genuinely meant you know disrespect. When I see what I believe to be a bluff, I call it, regardless of whose bluff it is.

 

A final note: you end your last post with the phrase "Grow up...idiot!"

 

I find this statement to be particularly ironic. Presumably if Person A tells Person B to "grow up", it implies that Person A _is_ him or herself "grown up." And yet by ending the sentence with "idiot!", you have demonstrated that you have not even progressed beyond the point of petty name calling!

 

I think the fact that you have resorted to such juvenile methods of rhetoric only serves to undermine your own arguments.

[Guest Elysium Project]

I do appologise for the grow - up idiot remark...had a bad hour there and the liar remark provoked me :-). But nevertheless it was wrong.

 

I will try to explain it to you once again and hopefully make myslef better undestood.

 

I wrote:

 

"In 1996 -1998 the overall sale for an individual label were between 2500 - 5000 copies. Today that sale figure is down to 1000 - 2500. Is that good enough proof for you?"

 

Yes I see it can be interpretated the wrong way but I was trying to point out that the labels in the goa/psy scene went from 2500-500 to 100-2500 sales. I think the misunderstood part is "for an individual label" but I did not and I repat did not think of one specific label. It was merely an expression.

 

And now for the documentation.

 

I do not have a piece of white paper to show you but I do have the first hand information from the goa/ psy labels in UK, Germany, Denmark, France and Israel.

 

As an "old" artist with many contacts directly to the labels I get these informations.

 

In 1999 and 2000 many of the labels in the goa/psy scene made a overall calculation together combining the markets and came up with the above mentioned negative sale figures. I am aware of thet you would liek to see some more evidence but that's all I can give you...My word. Take it or leave it.

 

I also get more "commercial" information via my membership of KODA in Denmark (a musicians rights organisation) and they also report that teh sale in all nordic countries including Germany has dropped down 25-30% the last 4 years. Their conclusion is also the massive downloading on the internet.

 

Furthermore I just today visited Audiogalaxy and was quite amazed to find every single track I have made present. I send them a email asking them to remove or block all my music which include 7 different project names and around 50 tracks!....I would call that quite an amount of music and I am sure that I would have enjoyed the money that I lost there!

 

End of story.

[Guest bugbread]

Janua: Ok, then, we agree. Like I said, I DO think that most piracy is bad. I just have this very anal side to my personality that makes me take issue with little points. I agree that any copying that decreases an artist's revenue is a bad thing, and that people need to stop being freeloaders and pay artists for their time and effort. So we're on the same wavelength

[Guest Mescalinium]

Ok, I see how I misinterpreted that sentence before. Thank you for clearing that up EP. And I accept your apology, as I hope you will do for mine.

 

As for your statistics, I will take your word for them. Although I would still be inclined to question the 25-30% mark (in terms of the statistical methodology used to arrive at that figure), I will believe you that was the figure you received from KODA. I'm still very interested (for personal reasons) in which labels were included in the figures you used (if you're allowed to disclose such information).

 

Now as for the decline in labels' sales over the time period in question, I think there are many other factors at work besides music piracy.

 

For one, there are a great many more goa labels now then there were four or five years ago. It should follow that, in such a small market, profits would decline with the advent of more competitors. I also think it would be likely that an equal number of new labels formed over the same time period would have an increase in sales, although of course this is purely speculation on my part.

 

Secondly, and obviously this is an opinion and not a fact, I think that the quality of many major labels' releases over the past 4-5 years have declined precipitously. Personally I think labels like Transient, Flying Rhino, and Dragonfly have gone from being cutting edge to trying to market whatever they perceive to be the latest fad. Therefore I think their stock has declined among hardcore listeners, which may have resulted in a decline in sales. Just a theory of mine nonetheless.

 

I do not mean to imply that music piracy is wholly irrelevant to this purported decline in sales. However, I think to blame the situation entirely on piracy is overly simplistic and empirically incorrect.

 

Again, I mean you know disrespect, and I'm glad to have had this debate with you. However, I think it might also be a good time to put this topic to rest ;o)

[Guest Slidingtrancer]

I think most people in this genre care about the cd's, mp3 is nice to get to know music and thats what it should be. Our genre has a constant productional quality and psy-people care for that, in general, so most people choose the album over the mp3-collection. I, a producer myself, have lots of mp3'z... partly because I'm a student and I dont have any money and partly because most of those mp3z aren't attainable albumwise. But I know that, whenever I have money and will come across an album, I will instantly buy it. I like the idea of supporting this scene and all of its auricular mayhem.

 

Just my two cents...

[Guest Dovla]

To EP

 

dude thnx for the links to the online shops but psyshop doesn't ship to croatia(that's where I live) and saikosounds doesn't have american express but I'll still try chaosunlimited...but my oppinion is still the same...some of my friends tried to buy cd's from such shops as psyshop and they didn't get their cd's....so for now it's mp3 downloading...if a shop here oppened with psy trance music i would buy it. I don't like having mp3's but i have no choice...it's too expensive for me