Every day tens, if not dozens, of albums are sold in record stores across America. And yet the average American musician represented by a major record label is forced to scrape by on only millions. Their only fault: Being born talented and with a marketable face. They are forced to criss-cross these United States in search of sustenance, peddling their wares hoping to provide for their backup dancers, many of which have never known the feel of a gold Jacuzzi filled with Dom Perignon or the simple pleasures of a personal jet. No one should have to settle for mere multi-platinum status. Won’t you help?
In recent years, the benevolent and wise executives at the Recording Industry Association of America have taken it upon themselves to combat the deterioration of the American entertainment industry’s luxury by taking the fight to the very doorstep of those who would stand in the way of such progress (read: your dorm room).
A recent provision of the Higher Education Opportunity Act, which among other things provides for greater access to federal education loans, protection against illegitimate diplomas and the support of underrepresented groups in American institutions of higher education, now enables the federal government to strip funding to universities who fail to take a proactive stance against illegal peer-to-peer file-sharing.
The use of university networks in the exchange of music and video files is no new phenomenon however. The University of Wisconsin had in recent years refused to forward the RIAA’s pre-lawsuit settlement notices to its students, opting instead to remind the students of university policy against such illicit activities. A number of cases were brought against students found to engage in this dastardly trade, yet time and again universities stood in the way of justice and protected their students, leading to a lapse in individual lawsuits by the RIAA.
This latest measure, however, strikes at the heart of those who would harbor or aid such criminals. Let’s see how these scofflaws and ne’er-do-wells enjoy their precious music when their universities cease to be financially anchored. No universities, no students, no piracy. How’s that for logic and reason? Those RIAA executives are truly a bunch of Kants.
It is to be expected that universities, for fear of lost funding, will take greater measures to combat such infringements of copyright law in order to better protect intellectual property. Among the measures specified in the legislation are the monitoring and reporting of bandwidth and enacting a policy to curtail further infringement. In the end though, unless the university can convince students that what has been arguably a perk of constant university network access is wrong and to be avoided, the RIAA, with the assistance of the federal government, can put a stop to such criminal activity.
So where is a student to turn for sufficient entertainment? Purchasing the entire Earth, Wind & Fire discography, however noble a pursuit, is no minor investment. There must be an alternative to piracy or poverty. The answer may rest with public domain.
Seventy years or so after the death of the author, the material, in this case music, enters a magical land open to fair use rules. Once under these rules, the intellectual property may be used for certain applications without the permission of the author. It’s like grave robbing with none of the guilt.
Who doesn’t love “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” or “You’re A Grand Ole Flag”? This music may be performed and enjoyed with limited restrictions. Students could get creative with this vast catalogue of hits. Have you ever heard a mash-up of “Happy Birthday” and “Camptown Races”? Nor have I, but this is only a taste of what awaits those who choose legitimacy over piracy, and all without harming the works of contemporary performers and artists.
So when an advance copy leaks or the appeal of torrents feels to be too much to bear, whistle a little tune and know that your service to this country and its millionaires is much appreciated and you’re doing your part to keep champagne corks airborne and rims chromed.
Jake Begun (jbegun@badgerherald.com) is a junior majoring in journalism and history.
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You know it’s wrong to steal.
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In a free market, the value of something is whatever someone is willing to pay for it.
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You seem to be confused, so allow me to enlighten you:
Stealing removes the original item, piracy simply makes a copy. Since it is a reasonable assumption to assume that an individual would not have bought the music if he or she had been unable to download it, the marginal loss of revenue to the record company is zero.
The music industry is simply suffering from the unwillingness to update an outdated business model, and instead expects the rest of the world and the government to cater to them.
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Last I heard stealing involved taking something from someone else. When you Pirate something you create a copy.
I wouldn’t steal a car, but if I had a duplicator gun that could create an exact copy of the car for myself, I sure as hell would use it.
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Is it really stealing?
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Yes - REALLY.
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One depressing yet hilarious issue with your article - you actually wouldn’t be able to get a free mashup of “Happy Birthday” and “Camptown Races”, as the copyright for “Happy Birthday To You” is owned by Warner Music Group, which collects around $2 million annually for the song’s use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HappyBirthdaytoYou#Copyrightstatus
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wrong. “Mash-ups” are generally protected from copyright infringement claims as they exist as a “transformative work” that protects them. Much the same way parodies are protected.
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Copying is not stealing. Stop trying to be as confused and dazed as our republican politicians.
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The DMCA was passed unanimously by both parties under Clinton. Biden is the staunchest supporter of the RIAA and DRM in all of Washington. But I realize this upsets your internet-mandated Democratic partisanship, so continue to ignore this if you please.
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@Anon I think the main point is that the industry is using pressure to force universities to do their dirty work for them. However you feel about piracy, the RIAA is totally off the rails with how they file lawsuits. Look it up.
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I cannot take credit for this but I wish I could. One time I heard a comedian talking about that new little clip at the beginning of movies where pirating a movie/album is like stealing a car. Well he takes them to task and says that it is nothing like stealing a car. It is more like, you borrow the car, make an exact replica and replace the car you borrowed. I am sure no one would pass that offer up if they had the chance.
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It’s wrong to be an asshole too
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its wrong to do collective punishment as well , steeling money from kids who have a hard enough time paying for school . the riaa will next go after hati aid to line there pockets . they would kill kids if they could
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It’s wrong to be an asshole too
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Piracy is not stealing, it is making a copy of a file already stored in other places. Someone who pirates may or may not have intended to purchase said item anyways.
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You know it’s wrong to use the word “steal” in the context of intellectual property.
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You couldn’t even use Happy Birthday. That’s copyrighted.
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It is not the government’s business to back the MAFIan findAA’s shitty business practices. If they want to use an outdated business model, then capitalism (you know, that thing all the wealthy conservative Americans tout as the epitome of modern society?) will do its job and they will lose in the end. Copyright infringement (note I did not say STEALING - p2p filesharing is NOT stealing) may not be morally right, but it isn’t going away. They can find a way to adapt to modernity or die off.
Now that it’s so much easier for artists to record and release their music themselves (and get a much bigger percentage of the profits), the recording industry is going to find itself mired in its own uselessness. Good riddance, I say.
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It’s sharing, just like borrowing a book or a magazine or a DVD or a CD or even a newspaper if you don’t profit from it financialy then what the problem?
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The RIAA represents the recording industry (record labels)’s interests, not artists. Artists generally make a extremely small fraction of the amount of what the record companies make for record sales. Hence the increasingly common of artists telling corporations to go eff themselves and releasing albums and mixtapes online. Don’t hate on the wrong culprit here. I have nothing against my favorite artists bathing in a hot tub filled with dom parignon on their own private jet while listening to a mashup of happy birthday and grand old flag which was acquired through legally obtaining the copyrights for both tunes. In fact, I might be a bit jealous.
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Well said. To the dolt who said something about stealing: you obviously don’t know the law. Infringement is NOT stealing. No one has stolen the hard drive on wehich resides the only master copy of the specific song. If a person downloads a song without a license, the owner has lost nothing. they can just clone a million more digital copies and unleash them into the wild.
There is no competent evidence that downloading music without license has resulted in billions of lost revenue. That’s just idiots’ propoganada.
Universities need to tell the feds to go f- themselves.
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Paying for music and movies is a rip off. Same as road taxes… None of the funds collected goes where it should. Helicopters and Holidays are not reinvesting time to revolt people! In the morning.
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If you want to protect artists go after the companies that steal from them. Through book manipulations they are able to rob artists are far more than we are.
http://boingboing.net/2009/12/07/major-record-labels.html (in Canada alone, companies that are part of the RIAA in the US, they’ve managed to steal over 300k songs without paying roalities)
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I feel so guilty listening to songs played on the radio - shouldn’t we be sending checks to every musician we hear the station play? From now on I’m only gonna listen to the commercials and plug my ears during the music.
America has SO many lawyers - if you could line them up head-to-toe from New York to England - YOU SHOULD.
Just WHO ARE THE THIEVES?!?!?!?!??!
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If a University isn’t held responsible if someone steals your car from their parking lot, or items out of your dorm room, how can they be held responsible for people using P2P? They are saying the university is allowing it by having a link to the Internet. Every ISP in the world is responsible then! They allow me access to the Internet, so they are all held responsible!!!! End all Internet Access!!!! That’s what the RIAA is trying to do here! Just my two cents worth!
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shiver me timbers
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With regard to this section:
“Seventy years or so after the death of the author, the material, in this case music, enters a magical land open to fair use rules. Once under these rules, the intellectual property may be used for certain applications without the permission of the author. It’s like grave robbing with none of the guilt.”
I believe you’re confusing public domain and fair use. Fair use is a legal defense that allows the use of copyrighted material for some applications, such as education, news reporting, or parody. It allows you to use a copyrighted work without the owners permission.
The public domain is items that are old enough to have fallen out of copyright, and you can use them for anything. A good example of this is those $1 classic books you can find at many bookstores, such as Great Expectations or War of the Worlds. No one owns the copyright to these books anymore, so they don’t have to pay anything except for printing and distribution costs, allowing them to sell them dirt cheap. It gets a little trickier with public domain music. The lyrics, melody, etc are public domain, but the recorded performance may not be. For example if the London Symphony records a Beethoven work, that recording isn’t public domain because it was recorded recently. However a much older recording of the same work can be public domain.
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You’re technically correct about the public domain, but I like to think of public domain art as belonging to all of humanity rather than belonging to nobody. The law says that copyrighted works enter the public domain either 70 years after the creator’s death or after 95 years in the case of corporate-owned IP, but our culture has the tendency to virtually appropriate popular art long before it has become public domain. That’s why the case of ‘Happy Birthday to You’ is such an egregious abuse of copyright; by all rights that song should belong to everyone but the Warner Music Group claims ownership of it. And though that corporation had nothing to do with its creation or even its publication, it has taken credit for it and expects to be paid for every public performance. The thing is that it’s a part of our culture now and the fact that it’s still protected by copyright means that a corporate entity has a monopoly over a significant portion of our culture. So in my book if anybody is guilty of stealing ‘Happy Birthday to You’ it’s WMG.
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The RIAA is evil, but let’s not group all artists as “millionaires”. A great majority of the artists, even those with major labels representing them make but a small percentage of the millions their music garners. It’s oversimplified to paint the situation as the poor college student versus the greedy artist.
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If only it were 70 years. In the US it is anywhere from 95 to 110 or more in some cases. We have some of the most ridiculous copyright laws in existence, designed specifically to benefit corporate ownership.
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Yeah, I wonder if Mickey Mouse will ever be in the puplic domain.
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if the library owns a copy then so do I. I paid for that copy and therefore can do with it what I wish.
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Can’t believe the RIAA has such strong ties in the government that this is even possible. Thank Joe Pesci I live in Canada.
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Ownership of intellectual property is moot. You can’t own a song, even our copyright law doesn’t imply ownership. It says that you are granted special rights to use this as you see fit to make money for a while so that people are encouraged to create content. So, you don’t/can’t own an idea. You are just granted special rights to use your idea.
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Copyright infringement is not stealing. Stealing involves depriving the legal owner of a good or service.
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Bless me RIAA for I have sinned. I have sung Happy Birthday two hundred times in the last fifty years. Oh and by the way screw you Warner Music Group, Sony, EMI!! and any of the rest that the RIAA represent.
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What a bunch of ‘situational ethics’; aka crap. The many facile attempts to rationalize stealing expressed in the various comments above are sadly revealing of the personal and societal decay of honesty, integrity, and self respect in America.
Most of the lame arguments follow the multiple faulted logic tree as follows:
1) A singer created a song, with the expressed intent of selling copies of that song to earn a living for themselves and their family.
2) It’s a really cool song and I’d like to have a copy of it…but I do not want to pay for it.
3) If I can find a way to access that song and make my own copy, it isn’t stealing and I haven’t done any harm to the singer, his family, or all of the people that his creativity supports.
4)Besides, he’s a rich capitalist SOB and so is his company.
Every thief justifies his predations in similar ways: It isn’t really stealing.
I’m just borrowing it. It’s a victimless crime.
They are rich. They can afford it. They are capitalists (or some group I personally don’t like).
Class warfare. Economic bigotry. Latent racism. All are embedded in the disease know as situational ethics
Some of the ‘It’s not stealing’ arguments use the Bart Simpson defense: “I didn’t do it. Nobody saw nothing. You can’t prove anything!”
If you use any of these rationalizations to defend your unpaid for acquisitions of for sale music, you are a thief. If you use these rationalizations to justify your stealing, you are more lame than a cartoon stupid Bart Simpson.
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Mr. Begun is right to point out the recording industry demands you pay for music and sues you if you don’t. Why do they think they have a right to do so? The Undercurrent analyzes this fundamental moral question.
http://the-undercurrent.com/blog/campus-media-response-its-not-stealing-because-i-dont-want-it-to-be
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They arguments presented that ‘copying a song is not stealing’ since the copier would not have bought said song had a price been levied(therefore no lost revenue) is the same one the Chinese use regarding intellectual property.
The Chinese will have to ‘grow up’ if they want to be part of the international business community; so will many of those writing here. To not do so would void the ‘contract’ of trading work(i.e, much of your life) for money(ex.,food).
Or are there proposals for some other kind of arrangement?