From: athe nonrex (athenonrex@godisdead.com)
Date: Thu Jul 24 2003 - 15:26:20 MDT
you know...it's all rather funny and amusing...
i personally use a few p2p networks....
i found this particular part amusing though:
<snip>
Prime example of a practically perfect person
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Re:The law and what might have been
« Reply #12 on: 2003-07-17 10:39:34 » Reply with quote
New Bill Seeks Prison Time for File Swappers
Source: dc.internet.com
Authors: Roy Mark
Dated: 2003-07-17
Legislation to make illegal file swapping a felony was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday by John Conyers (D.-Mich.) and Howard Berman (D.-Calif.).
The bill carries penalties of up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for uploading a copyrighted file to a peer-to-peer (P2P) network.
<snip>
i've never been aware of being able to "upload " to the p2p network itself. i was more under the impression that people downloaded from other people VIA the network. i should like to find some information on exactly what p2p allows you to store the music on the network, and not your own computer...it would greatly decrease my downloading time, as people would not be downloading from me personally and i would not have *my* bandwidth stretched.
aside from my semantical rant in the key of Tangent Minor, the issue of MP3's, while undeniably over-exaggerated and rather exaserbated, even dramatically torrid like a romance novel (i call 'em cheap housewife porn), the issue does remain...
it is fairly cut in half, too. on the one hand yes, it is music, music is indeed art. you don't charge someone to look at a painting (normally), or to view a inner-city mural dipicting cultural diversity and communal unity.
*a bit of recording industry background*
still, on the other hand, the average band that just got signed to a label
has to sell on average roughly half a million (500, 000) CDs, Tapes, Etc...to merely brake even. the band pays for studio time, production, concerts, music videos, a good portion of travel, distribution...they pay for that themselves (making one wonder why a label is needed if they [the band] do the dirty work themselves...) money from sales, royalties, etc...go to the recording label, the producers, the representatives, etc...and on average from a $15 (US$) CD, the band will make $1, to be split between the band members.
so you have four band members (US$0.25 per CD sold apiece), and about 500k CDs sold...[yay! i can do basic math! watch...] that's 125K per person in a four piece band, or 500K collectively. now....production of US$0.50/CD (that includes the cover art, recording the music onto the cd, disc art, etc...for a final product). now if the band produces only an initial 500K CDs, hoping merely to break even, that still comes out to $1 million [in cost]...
if the initial demographics for the band are appeasing to the industry Big Wigs, they'll usually pay the difference, and appropriate the revenue that was supposed to go to the band (payment for the comp), as well as raise the retail price of the CD [raising the retail from usually 10% - 25%]...if there is a remander in the overall revenue (after the amounts are sliced and fed to the appropriate respective heads), that remainder (usually pitifully small and meager) goes to the band, finally split between the four (not including the managerial cut) as their final profiet (if there was one to begin with).
and this is the best case senario if the band gets signed, does the bare minimum in production, and the record execs don't screw the band over completely (which is almost stadard practice to the point of being an unofficial rule for the industry).
we may very well be seeing one of two things here:
(1) possibly a sort of industrial darwinianism, where natural selection applies to types of music, as well as individual bands, possibly even to recording labels as a whole. this is not a new concept of even a revelation of any sort.
(2) possibly the decline of an entire industry. (in another post i'm commencing in just a few moments after i finish this one, called "jobs and human history as a whole," there are a few related themes you may be interested in if you like this so far...)
we could also be seeing any number of other things happening, but these two seem relatively more likely to me for whatever reasons...
leaving you now, with regards to this thread (for now at least)....
-mo cara,
athenonrex
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