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Pirating Sucks

wmmk

wmmk

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Mar 28, 2006
2,414
0
The Library.
i personally, as a musician (and very low paid one at that! :mad: ) who thinks piracy is totally terrible!

a jerk at school who uses limewire on his peecee says that he can't get caught for downloading copyrighted stuff 'cause he's not on the web and his external ip can't be traced. he also says "nobody" gets sued for using limewire, and that music from a CD won't work with his iPod.
after i got him scared about the RIAA, he asked if he'd be ok if he stopped downloading and uploading, then deleted all of his illegit music.

can he actually be traced?
do many people get sued by the RIAA for piracy?
is he legit if he stops pirating?
 
sorry to hear about the financial woes, but you can't blame piracy completely. you can start swearing off itunes and other online-music-providing-retailers because all they do is give you jack for your music (most goes to your label and your label gives u just about nothiing). its fighting a never ending battle imo.. i've just learned to accept it and embrace everything. if it works for you, ignorance is bliss
 
Philberttheduck said:
sorry to hear about the financial woes, but you can't blame piracy completely. you can start swearing off itunes and other online-music-providing-retailers because all they do is give you jack for your music (most goes to your label and your label gives u just about nothiing). its fighting a never ending battle imo.. i've just learned to accept it and embrace everything. if it works for you, ignorance is bliss
Click to expand...


well, im a teenager who occasionaly does live shows, so making $ isn't a priority, i just love playing music!
 
Philberttheduck said:
sorry to hear about the financial woes, but you can't blame piracy completely. you can start swearing off itunes and other online-music-providing-retailers because all they do is give you jack for your music (most goes to your label and your label gives u just about nothiing). its fighting a never ending battle imo.. i've just learned to accept it and embrace everything. if it works for you, ignorance is bliss
Click to expand...
In fact, almost all of the money goes to Apple, and then whatever is left from that (less than 50 cents a song I'm sure) is divided amongst the label and the artist...

This is why my brother's band won't be on iTunes -- and why none of Victory Records' artists are on iTunes. It really sucks..
 
Coolnat2004 said:
In fact, almost all of the money goes to Apple, and then whatever is left from that (less than 50 cents a song I'm sure) is divided amongst the label and the artist...

This is why my brother's band won't be on iTunes -- and why none of Victory Records' artists are on iTunes. It really sucks..
Click to expand...

According to this article, among others, Steve Jobs is quoted as saying that record labels make about 70 cents from a 99 cent download.

And, ironically, the Voodoo Glow Skulls have a pre-Victory Records era album on the iTMS... so I guess the pitiful cut they get from Apple can't be so bad after all.

(Not that I like the Voodoo Glow Skulls, it's a slow day and I felt like doing a little research)
 
Democrat622 said:
well, im a teenager who occasionaly does live shows, so making $ isn't a priority, i just love playing music!
Click to expand...

but making a whole new OS is a priority!!
 
yup. you know, i have a life, and i don't really care when i finish the OS, which is making steady progress, thanks to lots of help for lots of great people.
 
Yes, he can be traced.

His ISP (Internet Service Provider) has a record of the IP addresses their DHCP server assigns his household/computer for certain dates & times. Along with that, every computer has it's own unique MAC (Media Access Control) number that is hardwired to their NIC.

edit: As for getting caught; just show your friend this commercial.

edit x2:
Democrat622 said:
is he legit if he stops pirating?
Click to expand...
He still broke the law, and you can't change history, so, No. But that doesn't mean he shouldn't stop.
 
Coolnat2004 said:
In fact, almost all of the money goes to Apple, and then whatever is left from that (less than 50 cents a song I'm sure) is divided amongst the label and the artist...
Click to expand...
That's pretty much exactly the opposite of what really happens. Apple gets a much smaller amount than the labels, not to mention all the costs of servers and software and administrative costs. They are lucky to make a cent or 2 per song. The labels dole out their share to the creators, staff, advertising, etc. Every article I've ever read about this says that, and I'm sure I've heard Apple mention it too. Some indie labels were not happy with their contracts at first, but they still get a majority of the profits from songs. I have some friends on iTunes, and they're pretty happy when anybody buys their indie album.

Your Brother's band is shooting itself in the foot. Feet. Whatever.
 
solvs said:
That's pretty much exactly the opposite of what really happens. Apple gets a much smaller amount than the labels, not to mention all the costs of servers and software and administrative costs. They are lucky to make a cent or 2 per song. The labels dole out their share to the creators, staff, advertising, etc. Every article I've ever read about this says that, and I'm sure I've heard Apple mention it too. Some indie labels were not happy with their contracts at first, but they still get a majority of the profits from songs. I have some friends on iTunes, and they're pretty happy when anybody buys their indie album.

Your Brother's band is shooting itself in the foot. Feet. Whatever.
Click to expand...

themselves in their feet. or each member of your brother's band is shooting his or her in the foot.

:p i could very well be wrong.
 
Philberttheduck said:
themselves in their feet. or each member of your brother's band is shooting his or her in the foot.

:p i could very well be wrong.
Click to expand...
Depends on the band being counted as individuals or a collective. The band's foot or the band mates feet. I'm not sure, but to be honest I don't really care. :p
 
ok. i got this dude (not my friend, just a jerk at school) pretty scared. i told him about that cleanslate thing that the RIAA used to do. on the RIAA website, they say,
"For all others, the easiest and simplest way to avoid being sued for infringement on peer-to-peer networks is to stop engaging in this illegal conduct."
i am actually beginning to feel sorry for this guy. now that he knows it's illegal, he deleted his limewire music and stopped using limewire. would they seriously sue a 12 year old kid for downloading a few songs off limewire. a also heard that you can only be sued if you upload, not download. this guy never actually uploaded stuff, but wonders if stuff he downloaded into his limewire folder was actually uploaded w/o him knowing. poor kid. he may be a jerk, but i hope he doesn't get sued.
 
Democrat622 said:
ok. i got this dude (not my friend, just a jerk at school) pretty scared. i told him about that cleanslate thing that the RIAA used to do. on the RIAA website, they say,
"For all others, the easiest and simplest way to avoid being sued for infringement on peer-to-peer networks is to stop engaging in this illegal conduct."
i am actually beginning to feel sorry for this guy. now that he knows it's illegal, he deleted his limewire music and stopped using limewire. would they seriously sue a 12 year old kid for downloading a few songs off limewire. a also heard that you can only be sued if you upload, not download. this guy never actually uploaded stuff, but wonders if stuff he downloaded into his limewire folder was actually uploaded w/o him knowing. poor kid. he may be a jerk, but i hope he doesn't get sued.
Click to expand...


They've sued NUMEROUS other 12 year olds, or at least, their parents. So yes. The RIAA is ruthless.

Pirating music? I really don't care. If it's a band i'm devoted to, I'll buy their album. If not, sorry, I'll download the single I like and take it. My advice: Make better music.

As for spoofing Mac addresses, and going through IP's. EVERYTHING can be traced. Spoofed, proxied, or not. It's a fact. Anyone pirating music isn't going to go to the length of bouncing their connection off of 5 million proxies at an internet cafe with a spoffed MAC address.
 
Democrat622 said:
ok. i got this dude (not my friend, just a jerk at school) pretty scared. i told him about that cleanslate thing that the RIAA used to do. on the RIAA website, they say,
"For all others, the easiest and simplest way to avoid being sued for infringement on peer-to-peer networks is to stop engaging in this illegal conduct."
i am actually beginning to feel sorry for this guy. now that he knows it's illegal, he deleted his limewire music and stopped using limewire. would they seriously sue a 12 year old kid for downloading a few songs off limewire.
Click to expand...
You shouldn't feel sorry for him unless you want to feel sorry for 90% of the other teenagers out there.

He really shouldn't be that worried, just worried enough to stop.

a also heard that you can only be sued if you upload, not download. this guy never actually uploaded stuff, but wonders if stuff he downloaded into his limewire folder was actually uploaded w/o him knowing. poor kid.
Click to expand...
I would say you are at more risk uploading than downloading. Look at those people who posted the Star Wars movie on the internet for example.
he may be a jerk, but i hope he doesn't get sued.
Click to expand...
The chances of him getting sued are extremely small (unless of course he was downloading songs into the 1,000's, then you chances go up).

Onizuka said:
They've sued NUMEROUS other 12 year olds, or at least, their parents. So yes. The RIAA is ruthless.
Click to expand...
They shouldn't be prosecuted?
 
EricNau said:
You shouldn't feel sorry for him unless you want to feel sorry for 90% of the other teenagers out there.

He really shouldn't be that worried, just worried enough to stop.


I would say you are at more risk uploading than downloading. Look at those people who posted the Star Wars movie on the internet for example.

The chances of him getting sued are extremely small (unless of course he was downloading songs into the 1,000's, then you chances go up).


They shouldn't be prosecuted?
Click to expand...

I'd take a stab at saying "NO." Why? Because the record industry bitches about not making the money they want, yet they're flooding the music market with utter, useless crap. Every rap artist that sings about escalades and bling bling, every country singer who sings about barbecue stains on white t-shirts, every "punk" band, and just about every "metal" band out there now SUCKS. Sorry, it does. Why should I pay for crappy music? Not that I listen to crappy music, but why should I pay for it?

IF the record industry actual pushed artists out like it used to, who had talent, were weren't a bunch of hacks, then maybe they'd be getting all the money that Indie bands are right now.
 
Onizuka said:
As for spoofing Mac addresses, and going through IP's. EVERYTHING can be traced. Spoofed, proxied, or not. It's a fact. Anyone pirating music isn't going to go to the length of bouncing their connection off of 5 million proxies at an internet cafe with a spoffed MAC address.
Click to expand...

Nope. The most identifying piece of information regarding your connection is your MAC address in the ethernet packet you broadcast. If you can connect to a network without authenticating yourself, you are anonymous.
 
Here in Canada, the only way you could possibly get sued is by uploading, Downloading music is perfectly legal. I think downloading is the best thing that happened to the music industry. Sure there are easy ways to abuse it, but the fact is more people are listening to music. My Music Library went up by about 7000 songs in the last few months, very few of these are illegal downloads. But the one thing I hate is when people get annoyed with people who stealing music. When you are a recording artist, if downloading music bothers you... do something about it, invent your own anti-piracy technology or something... But don't complain and say that all illegal downloaders are insensitve, and disrespectful of their art. And it really shouldn't be under the government's durisdiction (sp?) to control the act of downloading. So don't complain about it unless you've got a solution, because no matter what, illegal downloads are always going to exist. Face the fact, the sooner the better.
 
Oryan said:
I think that was unnecessary in this thread.
Click to expand...
Indeed. Extremely unnecessary. Maybe we can make it an official MR rule that whenever Democrat622 posts, his words must be twisted and used against him in a fashion that ridicules him for his goals. I mean, if a mod apparently thinks it's a good idea, it must be a good idea. :rolleyes:

That said, I don't think anyone's ever been truly busted for pirating music on the Internet. I find it more logical to say that several were made examples of for the purpose of scaring the rest of us into believing that we will be busted too if we download music from p2p apps, and that those who were "busted" were probably never really fined, or at least not to the extent claimed. In reality, the odds of actually getting caught for this crime (and yes... as much as I hate to admit it, it is a crime) are slim to none.
 
OLD ELPASO said:
Here in Canada, the only way you could possibly get sued is by uploading, Downloading music is perfectly legal. I think downloading is the best thing that happened to the music industry. Sure there are easy ways to abuse it, but the fact is more people are listening to music. My Music Library went up by about 7000 songs in the last few months, very few of these are illegal downloads. But the one thing I hate is when people get annoyed with people who stealing music. When you are a recording artist, if downloading music bothers you... do something about it, invent your own anti-piracy technology or something... But don't complain and say that all illegal downloaders are insensitve, and disrespectful of their art. And it really shouldn't be under the government's durisdiction (sp?) to control the act of downloading. So don't complain about it unless you've got a solution, because no matter what, illegal downloads are always going to exist. Face the fact, the sooner the better.
Click to expand...

You have to complain about it, because you can't do crap about stopping people from downloading your music. We are musicians, not tech people. The last thing you want to do after you finish producing a song, is to find a way to make it non-downloadable. I have personally lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue, because of illegal downloading.

And no, I'm not a big shot.. nor do I work with them. I am a small time artist, and I have stopped composing music simply because of the downloading issue. Why the heck should I make music if people will just download it? I'd rather spend my time producing stuff for other people.. and get paid for it. Basically, after all my work was downloaded (6-7 years ago) I haven't composed a single tune.

This mentality that the consumer usually has "Why should i pay when i can download for free?" is the reason why there's nothing but 'crap' music out there.. as someone previously mentioned. Now I'm not complaining because I can't buy a Ferrari or whatever with the lost revenue.. but its a bloody loss.

You won't understand it, until you come out with a product.. thats entirely yours.. and everyone simply steals it.. in front of your eyes. You have to be in a musician's shoes to realize how illegal downloads hurts us..
 
Onizuka said:
I'd take a stab at saying "NO." Why? Because the record industry bitches about not making the money they want, yet they're flooding the music market with utter, useless crap. Every rap artist that sings about escalades and bling bling, every country singer who sings about barbecue stains on white t-shirts, every "punk" band, and just about every "metal" band out there now SUCKS. Sorry, it does. Why should I pay for crappy music? Not that I listen to crappy music, but why should I pay for it?

IF the record industry actual pushed artists out like it used to, who had talent, were weren't a bunch of hacks, then maybe they'd be getting all the money that Indie bands are right now.
Click to expand...
If you think their music is crap, then you don't need to listen to it; thereby not downloading it illegally or legally. Saying their music isn't any good doesn't give you the right to steal it. Obviously, if you download it, you think it's good enough to listen to (and pay for).


OLD ELPASO said:
Here in Canada, the only way you could possibly get sued is by uploading, Downloading music is perfectly legal. I think downloading is the best thing that happened to the music industry. Sure there are easy ways to abuse it, but the fact is more people are listening to music. My Music Library went up by about 7000 songs in the last few months, very few of these are illegal downloads. But the one thing I hate is when people get annoyed with people who stealing music. When you are a recording artist, if downloading music bothers you... do something about it, invent your own anti-piracy technology or something... But don't complain and say that all illegal downloaders are insensitve, and disrespectful of their art. And it really shouldn't be under the government's durisdiction (sp?) to control the act of downloading. So don't complain about it unless you've got a solution, because no matter what, illegal downloads are always going to exist. Face the fact, the sooner the better.
Click to expand...
First of all if it's legal in Canada (which I doubt) how did you get any illegal downloads?

And the government needs to control it. IT IS STEALING!!! It is absolutely no different than walking into Tower Records and shoplifting a CD right off the shelves; but I guess the government shouldn't control that either. :rolleyes:
 
someguy said:
Indeed. Extremely unnecessary. Maybe we can make it an official MR rule that whenever Democrat622 posts, his words must be twisted and used against him in a fashion that ridicules him for his goals. I mean, if a mod apparently thinks it's a good idea, it must be a good idea. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

thanks!
 
someguy said:
Indeed. Extremely unnecessary. Maybe we can make it an official MR rule that whenever Democrat622 posts, his words must be twisted and used against him in a fashion that ridicules him for his goals. I mean, if a mod apparently thinks it's a good idea, it must be a good idea. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
It's what he says that's highly...ignorant? For lack of a better word...
Admittedly he has nice goals. However, his (rather lofty) expectations and image of himself and how he plans on achieving said goals is unrealistic and almost ridiculous...combined with what he doesn't know about how he wants to achieve the goals results in that particular reaction towards many of his posts.

Simply, he's being naive about it, and despite people trying to tell him so, he seems to be refusing to take it into consideration. You would not be seeing people criticizing him in such a fashion if he had planned to write a desktop environment from scratch, was being realistic about the timeline and the amount of effort and time it was going to take (not even 10 years for an OS from scratch...good luck with that...), knew roughly how to do it and what he wanted instead of this vague soup of darwin-open/gnustep-gui-bootloader-overlay-objc-basic-new-programming-language-and-some-applications-ness, didn't essentially ignore anyone telling him something he didn't want to hear until someone else said something backing him up and then go all "I TOLD YOU SO!", etc.
 
EricNau said:
First of all if it's legal in Canada (which I doubt) how did you get any illegal downloads?
Click to expand...
Canadians pay a tax on all blank media (CD-R, DVD-R, HDD, etc) which is supposed to make its way to the record industry. That apparently appeases them enough to legitimize music piracy. I wish the US would do the same.

And the government needs to control it. IT IS STEALING!!!
Click to expand...
No, it's copyright violation. There's a very clear (and important) difference.
 
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