In the latter, instance, the recording was made -- probably at some considerable expense -- as part of the profession of the individualMore to the point, it simply isn't morally or ethically correct, and that should bother you.In my humble opinion...
I think copyright laws and the way they are applied should be changed. There's need for compensation for someone's work but also the need to allow common cultural heritage to be shared by people without ridiculous law suits which are only meant to make an example and criminals of ordinary people who want to enjoy culture. Shorter instead of longer periods for copyright. Also any law inforcement should be targeted to those who actually make money from pirating, not your average Joe who downloads a few songs to his computer
The problem here is that it is unlikely in the extreme that the pirate recording will approach the quality of the legitimate one, which compromises the options for those of us who desire a quality recording.
I'm curious: where do people get this idea about pirated media? A pirated album quality is usually the exact same as if you put the CD into your computer and ripped it yourself.
Of course it is, I think we were talking about downloading from the internet? Back in the days when I used P2P sharing programs, the quality of the files was usually pretty low and inconsistent. Not so much anymore I guess, but still a bit more work than just using itunes to get what I want immediately.
And what about two different renditions of the same musician? Lets say Evgeny Pogorelich recorded Liszts 29th piano concerto and put it on iTunes. And it just so happens that Evgeny Pogorelich made another recording of Liszts 29th, but put it on YouTube. Would you still consider it pirating if you take the one from YouTube?Because I mean, they're different renditions, and one might like the one on YouTube better.
Sorry if this wasn't clear: I'm talking about downloading an album without paying for it, not copying from a burned CD or something. Using things like Limewire, you're going to find a lot of crappy audio, but I've been pirating for about as long as I've been using the internet (10 years?) and I don't think I've ever come across an album I downloaded where the audio was "bad"...a couple 128kbps rips here and there, but that's what paid downloads (through iTunes and Amazon) gave for quite a long time, and to the average listener isn't even that bad.Actually, the thing is, iTunes downloads (unless they've changed) are 256kbps aac. They used to be even lower, 128 aac. FLAC (essentially CD quality) is significantly better quality than what you're paying for from iTunes. I never pay for digital downloads for this reason. CDs are significantly higher quality.
So I just don't feel like taking the trouble to look for the free files even if they are better quality. But I can well understand why someone would. The price on most classical music is low enough in itunes to make me pay. If it was any higher, that would surely change things. For me it's also about being able to browse and prelisten the different recordings before I purchase.
a CD, first, offers the fact that it is physical and can't be taken away from you (except by force, of course), whereas a file can be deleted or lost, if a hard drive fails.
Am I paranoid or what?
The average person puts way too much faith in computers. Hard drives crash all the time. I wish I could have full backups of my stuff, but it'd be way too much, sadly (I have a few TBs of stuff).
Its totally legal in my country
Which country is that?
If it's for sale, I don't pirate it. I think that's stealing.However, if it's not available for purchase, I'll pirate it.
I remember watching a video on youtube. I think it was Rach sonata 1 first movement by Valentina Lisitsa. And she got into an argument with this one guy about pirating recordings. The guy she was arguing with supported pirating, while Valentina didn't. But of course Valentina won the argument! I mean, come on! She's freaking Valentina Lisitsa! She wins everything by default!No but yeah, ANYWAYS, this is what I do. If I hear something I like, I get it off of youtube. Because I think it's kinda stupid how you can watch youtube videos all you like, but you can't download them on your Ipod. I mean, come on now. Seriously? But I get my stuff off of youtube unless I can find a better rendition of itunes or something. But since everything is on youtube, I get almost all of my stuff from there.SO... What do you guys think about this issue? I remember seeing this meme where the guy who's the owner of megaupload gets like life in prison, while some other guy who killed his wife and kids gets only like 27 years in prison. I think this whole pirating thing is stupid.
Lebanon
Are you trying to tell us that there is no such thing as intellectual property rights of any kind in Lebanon?Best,Alistair
I'm not paying 80$ to sightread a couple pieces by Kapustin. Our town has the benefit of having a really good music library, but they don't have everything by Kapustin. (There's not a lot they don't have however, it's a pretty big library). So anything the library doesn't have I will search online to see if there's a free copy I can download. I'd say 50% of the time, with enough searching, it can be found. I find that scribd has a lot of sheet music that imslp doesn't have.
Lebanon is a signatory to the Berne Convention and the Geneva version of the Universal Copyright Convention. Copyright is recognised under Lebanese law.Given the sometimes fragile state of enforcement, though, the extent to which IP exists de facto is questionable.
...I question how many - if indeed any - of those who do think along these lines would similarly condone or indulge in that kind of thieving if the material stolen was cars, jewellery, &c.Best,Alistair
i think those are the people that put the arguement into circulation that it's not stealing since, according the 'analogy' i have heard used by them when justifying their actions,if you park your car, and overnight, someone comes up to it, used a machine to create a copy of it, and drives off in the copy, and you wake up the next morning and your car is still there in the driveway, 'you don't feel like somone stole your car' lol. i literally laughed out loud when i heard that/read that. they that they believe that!now i make 'copies of cars' from stuff in our score library that i check out (or if on permanent reserve, might do it in house as that is our only option) but those were purchased legally either by the school or by individuals then donated to the library, i/we (students) pay hefty library fees for that access and the library has a committment to continue to buy new music/support the publishes with regular large purchases. and i certainly don't choose not to buy in spite of access to such resources , if anything they allow me to preview and see first hand what i will buy before hand, many a purchase has been motivated by such after having it in my hands and deciding, "i simply must own/have this"
it makes no difference to the legal principles involved.
be it literary writings of any kind, patents and so on.
Actually, it makes a huge difference, given that one is stealing and the other is copyright infringement. Stealing is a crime because of what was lost as a result of the theft. Copyright infringement is a crime because of what could potentially have been lost as a result of the copy.
While I agree piracy is immoral, the laws surrounding it are ridiculous, at best. Because piracy is not theft, the owners of the copyright can claim a hundred, thousand, even million times the damages they would be able to if it were theft. Thousands and thousands of dollars in fines for pirating a couple dollars worth of music. Does that strike you as fair and just? It makes more sense to have it be the other way around. Stealing a CD definitely results in a loss of $15 worth of concrete, physical stuff. Pirating an album could result in the loss of a $15 sale, but also possibly not. Wouldn't it make more sense to have the punishment for pirating an album be no greater than the punishment for stealing an album, if not slightly less? But they can't catch every single person who downloads an album, so they attempt to make up for it by charging the people they do catch with significantly more. And I am not making this up. This has been used as a justification in the cases for charging people with ridiculously high fines.
haha patents, you lose credibility when you mention how patent infringement is a serious problem. Patent laws are so ridiculous, there's not a lot you can invent that isn't covered by a patent. Patent laws make sense when you invent the cotton gin and everyone tries to make their own and sell it. Patent laws don't make sense when you're dealing with electronics that are 98% the same, and every tiny difference, no matter how small, is given its own patent. The whole idea of the patent system is to allow inventors to make money from their inventions so they have a motivation to invent, but it's become much sillier than that now.
Not strictly true. What can be lost as a consequence of the theft of the car is not necessarily confined to the value of the car or what the owner paid for it but also in the value attachable to the owner's use of it, so it is not necessarily a merely hard and fast matter of a specific number of pounds, dollars or whatever but something that would have to be assessed in a court of law (for example, its value to someone who uses the car only for the occasional shopping trip is obviously much less than its value to someone who depends upon it for business); likewise, damage arising from copyright theft is not a specific sum in each and every case but an amount that would have to be determined by a court in accordance with the best available evidence submitted to it. Once these facts are duly appreciated, the differences in both effect and application are seen as much smaller than you might initially have assumed to be the case.
It is vital to make and fully understand a specific distinction between (a) the law that defines what constitutes theft, piracy and other forms of misappropriation and (b) the manner in which each individual court applies such law. This, however, is no different to the situation with any other law, since one court might, for example, sentence a murderer to 10 years and another in the same country to 20 years when the crime committed is precisely the same. Whilst I accept that the application of the laws of copyright when infringement cases come to court may well vary substantially from case to case and court to court, the same is true in respect of the application of any other laws when cases are brought before a court. I do not agree that the punishment for pirating an album should be the same as for physically stealing a single copy of one because, in the latter case, the owner of the CD has been deprived only of the amount that he/she paid for it (unless, of course, it is no longer replaceable) whereas, in the former, the copyright owner of the CD's contents has been deprived of royalties whose value is dependent upon the extent to which the CD will have been subjected to unauthorised distribution. Whilst there have indeed been some cases in which the punishment for copyright infringement might appear to have been disproportionate to the crime committed, this can also be the case in other areas of the law when a court decides to exercise its rights to make an example of the miscreant in a bid to discourage future cases from coming to court; this is a familiar phenomenon of long standing in legal circles.
There are some who seek the abolition of all intellectual property rights and the entitlements to royalties that are enshrined within them; whilst I am not suggesting that you hold such a view, what would you say about those who do and about what you would expect to happen if all such rights were indeed abolished? How would you anticipate the creativity currently covered by intellectual property legislation be rewarded in such a climate?
But surely you don't actually believe that's how the numbers are calculated. Do you think it's possible for someone to make a case that a single $15 CD on a store shelf was worth, to that store, a million dollars? Of course not, you could never make that claim. But for some reason, you can if it's pirated.
Also, as far as the car thing is concerned, it doesn't really matter how much you used the car. Even if you didn't use it very much, you would still have to replace the car. Do you have a source on that, because I have a lot of trouble believing a court would decide that the exact same car is worth significantly more to one person than another when either way, the person would have to replace the car.
It's not a matter of it varying from case to case. Yes, I understand in two separate trials for identical murder cases, one might get 10 years, the other 20. But that's not what this is. This isn't a difference of a factor of 2, it's a difference of a factor of thousands. And it's not random. It's always pirates get ridiculous charges, shoplifters get very little.
As for the value of the contents of the album being recopied, surely that would fall under the next person. If I make a make a copy of a $15 album and give it to my friend, and my friend takes it, we are both charged with equal rates by that logic. So if they could actually charge every single person that has pirated an album with the amount they charge the people they catch, they would make millions of times more than the cost of every single person buying the album, because they'd be double charging, and not only that, but charging at already ridiculous rates.
Also, these ridiculous rates have also been applied to people who only downloaded music but didn't upload, meaning there is no redistribution whatsoever. So that argument falls out the window right there.
And no, it's not a right to make an example of someone. It's abuse of power, and it's a direct violation of the US 8th amendment.
I'm not in support of completely doing away with these laws. To do so would most likely hurt cultural growth significantly because all artists would have to do their work as a pastime instead of as a job. However, I think the laws are far too far in the other direction, and as a result, have stifled creativity in many ways just as much as a lack of any laws would.If theoretically, they were abolished, creativity would be stifled the most in cases where big business is involved, eg pop stars, but less in the cases of musicians who actually enjoy creating music. The vast majority of musicians I admire outside of classical music began playing music with no hopes of making it big, and when they did make it big, still have very little interest in the fame except that it allows their art to be given to the world. Of course, the money is nice too, but most of them were not expecting to make any money when they began their bands. Also, bands make most of their money from concerts and merch, an experience and an object, two things that cannot be pirated.
Film, I believe, is where we'd see the biggest change if the laws were done away with. Movies have astronomical budgets and it would be difficult for them to make a profit with piracy available as it is. Movie theaters would be the only place they could make their money. I'm not sure about the numbers, but I don't think box office sales alone are enough to pay for most films' budgets.
Innovation in technology would continue about as normal, I think. Because the patents refer to specific tiny parts of a product, no individual part is enough to do much of anything. Nobody buys a phone because it has a chip fused to a wire, or whatever stupid obvious idea people are trying to patent these days.
Medicine, this would be the most catastrophic. Biotech companies pour tons of money into research into medicine that will most likely never amount to anything. As a result, they have to have very high prices on the medicine that actually does amount to something. Surprisingly, this is the one people are most upset about. But the reality is, if the moment they released their medicine, anyone could copy it, they would have absolutely no motivation to develop new medicine since they would just be pouring millions of dollars down the drain and seeing absolutely nothing in return.What would I have happen? I would have laws be less strict, as I mentioned above, but mostly, what I would like to see happen is something I believe is already happening and has nothing to do with laws. I made a rather lengthy post above about what is wrong with the music industry and how it is obsolete in the modern era and how I see the situation changing. If you're interested, go read it, otherwise, here's the TL;DR: Record industry is dying as a result of $.99 songs and piracy. Not the way I would have it die, but I'm glad it's dying either way. Artists are self-promoting and self-releasing albums, keeping close to 100% of profits for themselves, and have complete rights to their own music, instead of record companies owning it.
I see value in intellectual property laws and think we'd be screwed if they ceased to exist. But in their current state, they are not working.
No, I don't, but then I don't think one could do that for a pirate one either; the point is that a copyright owner would have to prove to a court intellectual property rights losses to the value of $1m for any such award to be made in his/her favour and the likelihood of that is very remote indeed!
But what about income lost by the car owner as a sole and direct consequence of the theft? That would have to taken into consideration as well; it wouldn't inflate the value of the car itself, of course, but it would inflate the value of the owner's claim in respect of its theft.
US law applies only in US! In any case, it is up to a court to decide whether, in sentencing, fining or handing down other punishment, it should or should not make an example of a particular criminal and that's legal in many countries although, in most, there right of appeal can take assertions of unfair example-making into consideration. In addition, no laws can of themselves guarantee preclusion of abuse by a court, but that is, as I have already stated, a separate issue to that of the laws themselves. The police have a duty to uphold the law as well, but do they never abuse the rights that come with enabling that duty to be carried out? Of course not! - but, again, that's a matter entirely separate from that of the value, validity and viability of the laws that they are charged to uphold, over which they have no control.
Whilst laws and their application can theoretically risk stifling creativity, the abuse and flouting of them is likely to do the same on a vastly greater scale; if such laws were abolished universally, how would a composer or publisher make any money and, if they didn't, how would they survive? - and, in the composer's case, please think at least twice before considering answering "teaching" because it is plainly obvious that this involves paying a composer to flood the market with yet more and more composers all trying to make a living, thereby directly worsening the situation yet further.
Box office sales are rarely sufficient to pay for anything, especially opera and concerts!
Not all artists can have complete control over the cost of producing what they do. Some years ago, I had a piece of mine recorded by a record company (not one of the global big ones either) and it involved six performers; the end result was a 3-CD set comprising a piece that plays for 170 minutes and a booklet of some 40 pages that included information about the work and the artists involved and the vocal texts set in it; how could that have been done without enormous expense in performers' fees, venue hire, production costs and the rest? And, as the piece was uncommissioned, I did not get paid a cent for writing its 269-page score which, as you may imagine, took quite a few hours!When an orchestral recording is made, someone has to pay everyone involved for the rehearsals and recording, the venue hire and all manner of other costs; how can these be avoided unless everyone involved agrees to do their part of it for free?This is not all about massive international record companies and publishers, though, as I hope I've made clear.
Yes, technology makes self-publishing easier (as I know from my own activities) and I welcome the facilities that this offers, but it also makes pirating easier.
They are working but not well enough and they do need improvement and constant updating, but what they also need - and this has been and is likely to remain the most elusive goal of all - is global commonality, so that everyone involved knows exactly what they are and what royalty rates apply. Did you know that performance and broadcast royalty rates can vary by thousands of % from one country to another? I do not know why that is, but it would make life much easier if this was somehow evened out. But that's not going to happen before we have world government, which is unlikely to be established by the end of next week.
On another note, you said you composed a 300 page piece. I'm assuming that wasn't the first piece you composed.
No, his first piece was 400 pages.
Unlikely, yet it happens all the time.
US companies are behind the majority of copyright claims, so the cases fall under US law.
And yes, I understand that you can't stop the courts or the police from doing things not allowed/intended by the laws, but that's hardly a reason to just sit by and say, "Sorry, nothing we can do about it. Oh well." Who watches the watchmen?
a better balance needs to be struck in order to allow the content creators to earn profits from their labor while their culture is still allowed to spread.
For instance, explain how it makes sense that 59 years after his death, I am still unable to print out Prokofiev's works legally. I understand that he and his publisher ought to own rights to his music while alive, and even for a while after his death, to support his family and such, but 70 years after his death, very few, if any, people Prokofiev ever even knew in life will still be alive. It doesn't make a whole lot of difference to me either way since I buy all my music whether it's public domain or not, but really!
I'm not suggesting you work for free, I'm suggesting that when doing things like this, the middle man should be cut out, or, where that is impossible, lowered in size.
I do not have anything against record companies and publishers. I do, however, have something against their size and the huge amount of control they often have over artists. Getting a record deal is something musicians aspire for, and that's when they know they're finally on their way. They get so excited they sign away all their rights to everything without a second thought. And that's bad. That's what I'm against. Content creators should always, in my opinion, own what they have created. Artists have gotten in situations after their fall-outs with their record label where they are no longer legally allowed to play their own music. That's not okay.
In the case of smaller record companies and publishers, this doesn't seem to be as big of an issue.
And don't get me wrong, I harbor no ill will towards even giant record companies, even when they act unkindly to the artists they are making millions off of. They're just doing their job, and at the end of the day, everything is about money. I get that. But I think they are an old model, and they are dying. And that's okay with me.
But, as I'm sure you're aware, technology isn't going away, and neither is piracy. It's impossible to stop people from pirating. It's easy for just about anyone with a basic knowledge of computers to do, and most methods are virtually untraceable. When I download a file from a server, the only people who know what I downloaded and that I downloaded it at all are the server I downloaded it from, who is providing the files and obviously will not sell me out, and my ISP, who would lose all its business if it were revealed that it was giving out its customers' private browsing details to the government. I'm sure they'd give up the details if confronted with a warrant, but you need sufficient reason to get a warrant, and you can't just use that warrant to look through the ISP's entire logs, only the ones you have a warrant for. And how are you going to get enough evidence for a warrant? The only other way one can prove it is to look on my computer and see my browsing history, which, again, requires a warrant. And, again, how are you going to get a warrant?The internet will help fix this though. The fact that most of the world is connected by the internet and can talk to each other will cause the world to balance out, eventually. Currently, there are very rich countries and very poor countries, but the fact that people in very poor countries are now conscious of just how much better the conditions are in better countries will cause things to change. Maybe not in your lifetime, maybe not in mine, but I think they will change. Once most of the world has entered the modern era, it will be much easier for international law to exist and to be enforced. Until then...we can have these discussions!
On another note, you said you composed a 300 page piece. I'm assuming that wasn't the first piece you composed. Is there somewhere I could hear a sample of your other works? Do you write for piano? If so, do you have a publisher, and who is it?
Would you care to cite some specific case history in corroboration of this, along with some statistics showing how common or not such cases are?Again, can you prove this with sufficient evidence and, even if you can and do, how do you see this as possibly affecting cases heard elsewhere?
It's a well know FAQ in all walks of legal, political and other life, not just that of intellectual property.
But how might you see such a balance as being strikeable, anywhere?
But how would you do this, especially in cases such as the orchestral examples that I mentioned?
Really? Then just go ask the kind of small record companies that do what the particular one did for my work! The money for it all has to come from somewhere!
Whether or not it is so, this is not just about record companies or publishers or any individual profession in particular; it's about artists who create copyright material and who need the services of others to put forward the fruits of their often considerable labours to consumers.The internet is not owned by any legislative unit and so might make many things possible but will not and cannot ensure adherence to laws. Be wary of what warrants might be issued in conjunction with people's browsing history; technological advances will as likely make this as possible as it already makes legitimate and illegitimate uploading and downloading possible - and do once again bear in mind that artists who lose out over pirating will become less and less able and incentivised to do any creative work.
No, it wasn't the first, although it was a very early one amongst my extant works. There are currently three CD recordings of my work on the Altarus label and, if you're interested, please check out www.altarusrecords.com and/or www.sorabji-archive.co.uk for more information. I do indeed write for piano and I self-publish (again, see www.sorabji-archive.co.uk for details of the works that I issue).
You basically said, "It's a fact of life, deal with it", when in reality, it doesn't have to be a fact of life. The answer is we watch the watchmen, but only if we realize that we can.
With laws that increase what falls under fair use. By allowing music to fall into the public domain after a reasonable amount of time.
It doesn't take a record company nearly the size of the ones that exist to pay to record an orchestra, and then any immediate losses should be made up for in record sales. And if the sales of the CD don't pay for the price of the recording, there won't be another one.
It'll come in the form of a downpayment, and be returned in the form of record sales. If the record sales can't pay for the downpayment, maybe the record should never have been created in the first place.
I'm not saying it's good, I'm saying it will happen, so if money from recordings is the only thing keeping anyone being creative, creativity will die.
And at least in the US, people will not stand for the government regulating the internet. Many people here are passionate that it is a violation of 1st and 4th amendment rights. Yes, the government certainly can look through all our mail. It's physically very possible. But it's not something people will allow.
I will look into it, thank you.
But what IS a reasonable amount of time and how could universal international agreement on what constitutes it ever be reached? In many countries it used to be 50 years and now it's 70. Any fair and realistic assessment of what is a reasonable amount of time should take account of the fact that some composers' work receives little attention during their lifetime; however, consider also the example of Elliott Carter's James Joyce setting My love is in a light attire which dates from 1928 and will not enter the public domain until 2092 and even then only if the composer dies this year, which hopefully he won't; this means that its copyright term will be at least 154 years, which might seem excessive for any work but you would surely not expect the law to control the length of Elliott Carter's creative life, would you?! I'll bet that such an idea would run counter to all manner of amendments in US!
And in cases where the sales don't cover the costs, that's OK with you, is it? Bear in mind that many record companies sell through distributors who then sell to retailers, so by the time their respective cuts have been taken, the company probably gets little more than one third of the CD's retail price so, once it's then deducted its own costs and taxes on what's left, it becomes abundantly clear that it would have to sell many thousands of copies of anything just to break even. If it goes the download route instead of physical CD manufacture, the price for each download will obviously be far less than the price of a physical CD, so although the record company can reduce its cots and cut out the middlemen, it also slashes its per product revenues, so it may not help all that much, if at all, in overcoming this problem.
Ah, so recordings of safe bet repertoire performed by with safe bet artists only, then; that would certainly mean that a lot of music doesn't get recorded and a lot of artists don't get recorded performing it, then!
Well, fortunately it isn't, but the same affects live performances too, so in fact it is a larger problem that one that applies only to the recording industry's input into the scene.
It's been mooted over here but it is already accepted the UK people won't stand for it either; that said, we're talking laws here, though if the law says that the government can't do such things, the government is still capable of doing so as long as the technology allows, for governments can break their own laws if so they choose.
I don't have a perfect answer. I would be fine with the copyright outliving the artist by 10 years, but I don't think that's something you would agree with. I'm curious, why do you think it matters whether the works received attention during the artist's lifetime?
Well, if it doesn't cover the costs, it shouldn't have been created in the first place, from a business perspective. Obviously, one cannot know this for sure before creating the album, but they can get a pretty good idea, and if the album does not sell well, another will not be paid for. At this point, it's best to think, perhaps this recording is more to do with an artistic decision than a business one, in which case the recording should be paid for by someone who is not looking to make money, but rather just likes the art. If even that cannot be paid for, well, out of luck, I guess. I don't know where else you expect the money to come from. Even in the current situation, it doesn't make sense for a business to pay to record an orchestra playing music no one wants to hear.
The sad reality is, yes, unless you can find someone with money who is willing to spend it to record a piece very few people actually care to hear. Perhaps it would make more sense to record live performances, which I think can usually pay for themselves. You've already paid the musicians to perform, and people are paying to come see them. Just add the costs of a few mics recording the musicians, which most concert halls already have, I think, and that's that. Many of my favorite recordings are live.
Yes, and given that we don't live in a totalitarian state (at least in the US, can't speak for the UK ), the information about government corruption will eventually get out, and people will be fired, etc. Government corruption has been happening for as long as there is government, and it can't be stopped. But if the people of a country are attentive, such corruption will be weeded out eventually, only to be replaced by more later on.
Either way, it's irrelevant. The government can obtain the data, sure, but what is it going to do with it? Take you away in the middle of the night? No, you'd be given a trial, and in a trial (in the US), evidence obtained illegally is not permitted to be used. And it doesn't matter anyway, because the government isn't the one who cares if you pirate music and movies, it's the RIAA. So the government isn't going to look into people's internet usage records for the purposes of suing you for copyright infringement since it's the RIAA who is doing the suing.
Bollox.Best,Alistair
Quite simply because if some of them are not performed, recorded or broadcast during his/her lifetime, they may have a very short copyright self-life, especially if 10 years after death were to be set as the accepted norm. As you probably know, I am responsible for the music for Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988), whose creative life spanned the years 1915-1984 and some of his works have yet to receive their first performances whereas others were first performed many years ago. The Carter example that I cited earlier is an example of an enormously long copyright shelf-life, although a set term equivalent to the preset one does even matters out somewhat.
If everyone took that attitude, there would be very little new music left and a great deal less exposure to earlier music as well. Almost no "classical" music makes a profit - and I'm not just talking about recordings here but also broadcasts and live performances. You can fill a concert hall with a paying audience at quite high ticket prices and still make a loss. Most "classical" music activity has to be subsidised, either by charitable trusts, the state, local government, private individuals and corporations and anywhere else from which money for it can be found. Why stop at recording (which is what you write about mostly here)? The work of mine that I mentioned earlier didn't cover its own costs, let alone the additional ones for recording it, so would your argument in principle be that it shouldn't have been written in the first place?
That's all very well and, of course, there are already plenty of recordings of live performances but, as I wrote above, live performances also usually make a loss. Just think for a moment about a symphony orchestra of 100 players with average salaries of £30Kp.a.; that's c.£3m p.a. just for their salaries. Add in the tax costs of employing them all, then add holiday pay, then salaries for orchestral management, librarian, administration, marketing &c., then add transportation costs for touring and the venue costs for the orchestra's home performance space, then add the costs of royalties due on any copyright works that it performs - oh and let's not forget the conductor and any soloists booked to perform with it - and you're already at an eight-figure sum. The orchestra generates little income apart from box office and no one pays to listen to it rehearsing so, if you suppose that it gives, say, c.120 performances p.a., it would have to generate in excess of £10K per performance in net box office revenue - that's box office revenue after collection costs, taxes and the rest - just to break even, so a more realistic gross box office receipt figure might be nearer to £15m p.a. IN terms of profit-making ability, it doesn't look all that good, does it?..
I'm still missing what the problem is here. Will they not be performed if they are out of copyright? Does Sorabji have family who need the money? God knows Sorabji doesn't need it anymore.
Well then, of course I have no problem with it. That would all fall under my comment, "in which case the recording should be paid for by someone who is not looking to make money, but rather just likes the art." The record industry dying or becoming much smaller doesn't reduce the amount of money in the world, it just puts it in different places, and other companies, people, trusts, etc. could just as easily pay for recordings, could they not?
Yes, I understand now how expensive they are, but how does this situation change if the record industry were to die? It sounds like donations are the only thing keeping concerts happening, and would the donations cease if the record industry collapsed?
On the contrary, I think that you are seeing a problem where there isn't one under the present régime; there has to be a decision made as to what represents a reasonable copyright term and the current one does at least mean that a composer's last works will still have some copyright shelf life which they would not have, for example, if copyright ended with the composer's death.
but you are concentrating on the record industry whereas pirating of music is not confined to recorded or broadcast performances but extends also to live performances but far more so to published and unpublished scores.
Topic: What do you guys think of pirating? 