If anyone's bored out of their damn head or fed up with election punditry, there's audio and slides from a muckety-muck lecture on "Copyright vs. Creativity" at the University of Reading here:

Copyright v Creativity (link)
A Public Lecture at
The University of Reading
on 19th October 2004

The original "copyright bargain" was developed in the world of the printing press to ensure that commercial publishers had an incentive to commission writers. It was justified as presenting a fair bargain between the creators and the consumers of artistic and literary works. New technology has constantly presented challenges to the existing copyright regime, and particularly to those who grew fat upon the old technology. Mostly the urge to create new culture from old has overridden the desires of the middlemen to retain their business model in framing copyright law with respect to new technology. Recent developments in copyright threaten not only the right to create but the right to engage with our culture, and in addition to stifle technological developments. The debate in recent years has been about ownership and reward. It is time for the debate to move away from concepts of property and profit and back to the fundamental question of not only allowing creativity but encouraging creative development of our cultural heritage. Too much existing work is being lost, and new work being stifled, just to keep hold of an outdated business model. What was originally justified as encouraging creativity has become an impediment to it.

This page contains the slides and the audio of the talk. It is released under a Creative Commons license (see below) as an example of prctising what I preach. So far as I can tell, the images used in the slides are in the public domain (except the "Tired of being treated..." image, which is an EFF image used with permission). They are certainly available in at least one place on the web with no licensing restrictions obvious.


Speaker: Dr Andrew A. Adams

At the time I gave the talk I was a lecturer in the School of Systems Engineering at The University of Reading.


Lecture Chair: Cory Doctorow

At the time he chaired the talk Cory was the EFF's European Outreach Officer.

Say, did anyone in these file sharing discussions ever mention the ethics of buying used records & CDs?

It occurred to me the other day that neither the label nor the artist gets paid when you buy a pre-owned record/CD/painting etc. I'm surprised this hasn't come up in discussions regarding the ethics of file sharing.

If you're at Reckless and you're flipping through, say, the Silkworm records, and you see one new copy of Blueblood alongside twelve used copies of Blueblood, is it unethical to buy one of the used ones, since none of the proceeds will go to the band or the record label? Is it less ethical than downloading the album for free, since some of your money is going to a cool record store?

I just wanted to get that off my chest.

spoot wrote:
If you're at Reckless and you're flipping through, say, the Silkworm records, and you see one new copy of Blueblood alongside twelve used copies of Blueblood, is it unethical to buy one of the used ones, since none of the proceeds will go to the band or the record label?

I believe the thinking is that the physical record/media is your licence and you are allowed to transfer it, just like you are allowed to sell your car, even tho doing so removes the need for the buyer to get a new car from a dealership. What you are not supposed to do, is keep you archive copy of the music that you sold the licence to in active use. You sell the record, you delete the mp3 files.

Damn dawgs, this is a long discussion subject! To long to read entirely but... Buying used cd's, unethically sound? No way. For one reason or another someone thought the record sucked enough to sell, and they can't even get a full refund, just like 5 bucks in store credit -- so who's REALLY losing? Obviously dude is already broke dick, and now he's gotta sell his shit. As for MP3s, artists need to do us all a favor and quit acting like what they sonically produce in their fun-time is a gift to everybody. Let us make that decision. If you wanna record something and keep it to yourself, then by all means... But don't let everyone know about it and then expect them to shell out upwards to 20 dollars to potentially check out some guy's cheap cynicism. Then I'd just be poor Johnny No Bucks pawning his cd's. No thanks howdydoody! But if I hear it and find myself noticeably excited, there's a good chance I may buy that physical record (and help a nigga out in the process) and keep up on their tourdates. Fuck art.

If I may be so bold, I'm gonna disagree AND invoke the word "generation," all in this one post. I think the current generation of kids think music isn't something you have to pay for, therefore they won't pay for it, and I think this mindset stems from filesharing and CD burning.

I have also noticed a trend where younger people download more and buy less. However, I don't think it's generational. I think that younger people:

1. Have more time on their hands than adults with full-time jobs
2. Have little money

Once my little sister (an internet and download junky) has a full-time job and an income, I predict she will:

1. spend much less time on the computer
2. feel guilty about stealing music when she has enough money to buy it

... and thus, she will begin to buy music in whatever form is most convenient, which will probably not be CDs at that point.

I completely agree with Steve that file sharing will not fundamentally change human behavioral patterns and cultural values re: music. Such things change much, much more slowly, and you would be hard pressed to see such changes while living within them.

Another case in point: I used to download "pirate" computer games in high school. I had no money and a lot of time on my hands. Now I'd rather buy an old (or new) Nintendo with cartridges (or CDs or whatever). For the same reasons I predicted will apply to my sister: it's faster, easier and there's no guilt involved (or risk of being arrested, which happened to some of my pirate friends.)

i thought we already destroyed the record and video industry thru the use of re-recordable cassettes. i know i did my part. do i have to turn in all my old mix tapes? as it turns out half the music i like i was exposed to on a second gen medium. some of those bands i even went to shows, some i spent 25 bucks on a damn shirt. if some friend of mine never showed them to me where would i have spent my cash?

i may be wrong, but the shins got their start on limewire, and from what i hear they seem to be doin ok.

I'm thinking mainly of the ethical issue in buying used vs. buying new, given the option, since many anti-downloading arguments bring up the unethical act of not contributing to the artist or to the label when you're enjoying their music. As opposed the legal/illegal angle.

This issue never occurred to me while shopping for records. Which is why I brought it up. I've always been happy to buy a used record in good condition rather than a new record, regardless of the obscurity (and financial need) of the artist or label.

spoot, having worked for years in used record stores, i have given this some thought

i think that as long as the record is a genuine release, it's fine to buy used records

if someone didn't like the record well enough to keep it, the artist was lucky to sell them the thing in the first place

Given that the tastes of the average electrical.com forum whore are going to most likely be niche enough that there's no way they could be satisfied by a night on itunes/napster, it strikes me that there is no way file sharing is going to impact in any other than an overwhelmingly positive way on the the music made and appreciated by this group of people.

Therefore, wherein lies the practical difference between hunting thru torrents, ftp sites, network shares, for leads on new music, and going to a record store and sitting down at a listening station with a stack of discs?

My feeling is that sharing is not the new messiah, but it's a very good thing for music. It populates the world with wider, easier access to music, and in doing so fosters interest in music as a form of expression. This in turn results in more music being made, and this is good.
Using computers for this purpose is perfectly valid, and is no more or less trivial than the fetishism surrounding the Great Sounding Stereo. It's still the pursuit of getting sounds you enjoy into your ears. This is a point I bring up because Steve's comments on the front page of this thread struck me as slightly ill-considered, and it rankled with me. He's a clever guy - wtf is he doing sounding so defensive about people being impressed with the music-access providing capabilities of computers by dismissing them as technology that dazzles? This is not a good reason for thinking something is shit. Why be defensive? But then I recalled that it's his forum, and his opinion, so all power to him. The relative physical technological leap between a player piano and a record player is roughly transferred further from the record player to a networked computer. He has just as good a case for feeling shitty about how the LP has displaced the piano scroll. The relative change is analogous, except with regard to minor obvious points like LP being a sound quality improvement, whereas computers are an access improvement.
I had to get that off my chest.
Fucking LP's. They're not a real paradigm shift in musical entertainment. I'll stick to my player piano. Screw you guys, I'm going home.