8 ms·

Fighting With Teenagers: A Copyright Story

63 points by soundsop 16y ago

iamdave 16y ago
for the tl;dr crowd- The author writes about an incident in which he discovered a teenager was trading his sheet music, without his permission and approaches her about it, said teenager actually makes several very good points, which get ignored by the author on various occasions in their conversation in lieu of a "lecture" on copyright. Further tl;dr - the comment section by and large are all pats on the back to the writer. Few worthy of reading, but not many. While I certainly see the perspective of the author here, wanting to preserve the integrity of his work, invariably he faces the same crisis the mainstream music industry faces: refusal to accept the change in mentality about content distribution and consumption, and an ardent unwillingness to entertain the idea that maybe in order to attract new audiences you have to tickle their senses and find out what they want, and how to give it to them. "Build it and they will come", thing.
- jws 16y ago
  You let the kid off too easily. He is already selling artists sheet music that they absolutely need for their profession via instant download for the cost of a coffee and the teenager in question still believes it is her right to misappropriate a copy instead because she doesn't want to pay. The author isn't trying to preserve his work's integrity, whatever that is, he is trying to preserve his income. He is a song writer. He genre is not a big recording industry item, mechanical royalties will be minimal. There are no concert tee shirts ,to assuage anyone's guilt here.
  - megablast 16y ago
    If I want a coffee, I take my cash to the corner store and buy it. It is easy. Doing any commerce on the internet is nowhere near as easy as that. You are clearly someone who has never not had a credit card. These things are almost impossible without one, and certainly not as easy as getting a coffee. And news flash, lots of student and poor people DO NOT HAVE A CREDIT CARD! And even if you do, you go to some dodgy website that you have never heard of before and just enter in your credit card details? Well, I don't.
    - sliverstorm 16y ago
      > If I want a coffee, I take my cash to the corner store and buy it. It is easy. Doing any commerce on the internet is nowhere near as easy as that. If you have the right form of currency, it's EASIER. You don't have to go to the corner store. > You are clearly someone who has never not had a credit card Are you kidding me? I didn't have a credit card until I was 20. How did I get by, how did I survive? Any checking account nowadays has the option of a debit card, which works just as well. Any bank account at all can be accessed by Paypal, and bank accounts are not nearly as exclusive- I opened my own savings account when I was 12. Friends, parents, friends' parents... Someone you know has a credit card, and you can pay them back. Besides, just because you don't posses the means to pay for something doesn't mean you can take it. If I go into a corner store with only Yen in my pocket, I can't very well pay for a magazine even though I have the money. Does that justify me to steal it? Not a chance. P.S. it's actually easier to get a cc if you are a student...
    - jws 16y ago
      There is a Walgreens about every 10,000 feet where I live. Each one of them has prepaid credit cards in the impulse buy racks[1] by the checkout. Anyone can convert their physical dollars into credit card dollars. Would you like the remains of your shattered argument in a bag or may I dispose of them for you?[2] [1] And pregnancy tests. Who impulse buys a pregnancy test? [2] Ok, that was uncalled for, but its hot and I'm not feeling civil right now, and you started it with the all caps.
      - megablast 16y ago
        Congratulations. As someone who does not live in the US, I have never seen these before, and I am pretty sure they are new as in the last few years. They do sound like a solution to my problem, and I will investigate if they have them here in Australia.
  - mquander 16y ago
    Yes, but the author is couching his rhetoric in claims to "fairness" and moral righteousness. I think his stories are most revealing of his position: I am an author, I tend to believe that I should be able to get paid for doing that work (and it is work, Eleanor, it's really hard work)...You think you're entitled to deny all of those people their rightful share of the work they do. I don't understand why you think that. That's the core of his argument. He thinks that since he has been making a living this way for a long time, and it has worked out all right for everyone, his way is the right way and anything else is of dubious morals, because why would you want to deprive a good man of good work? The discussion seems to be about whether the girl has a "right" to download or share his sheet music. In my opinion, she can do it, and that's that; should he have a "right" to stop her? He has not convinced me that there's any reason he should have that right.
    - sliverstorm 16y ago
      > In my opinion, she can do it, and that's that; should he have a "right" to stop her? I certainly can brutally kill puppies. Do you have the right to stop me if I own them? Stop trying to twist the argument. There's a helluva lot of things you can do, but whether somebody else has the right to intervene and stop you is irrelevant.
      - mquander 16y ago
        And most of those things that you can do, you should be able to do. The exceptions are what need to be justified. I don't see a lot of justification for claiming that piracy is wrong or bad. It's directly helping someone and not directly hurting anyone, and I haven't even seen someone claim credibly that it's hurting artists' pocketbooks. Certainly this girl's actions were a totally victimless crime. I certainly don't see evidence that piracy is resulting in a lower quality of art, and it's obviously great in the short-term for consumers (especially ones like teenagers who have a hard time buying music and movies and books.)
    - cschwarm 16y ago
      > He has not convinced me that there's any reason he should have that right. OK, suppose your girlfriend agrees to have you take some rather private photos of her under the condition that you will never make these available to someone else. (Or the other way 'round if you're a girl) One day you break up and you're sharing these photos. Does she has the right to stop you distributing them? According to your logic, she has not. After all, you're just sharing among friends. And it's not as if she's loosing income of something like that. Following the authors logic, your girlfriend has the right to stop you distributing them. For you made a promise before she agreed -- you basically entered a contract. His point is that he offered copies of his work under certain conditions (called copyright). In other words, he expected everybody who agreed to the contract not to copy and redistribute his work. He expects them to hold their promise, their site of the contract. Nobody's is forced or required to enter the contract and make this promise. You're free to make your own music and share it. Or used someone's music who doesn't expect you to make a similar promise. However, violating your promise (ie. changing the conditions of the contract) is clearly immoral. Or would you want to be the victim of somebody who changes the contract conditions after the deal was made? Or would you want to be lied to, or have your friends break their promises? If the answer is 'No', then copying stuff without a license is clearly immoral.
  - kiba 16y ago
    The author isn't trying to preserve his work's integrity, whatever that is, he is trying to preserve his income. She may be rationalizing her actions, but from my ethical perspective as a libertarian, she's actually in the right. She didn't stole anything, nor did she agree to a explicit contract with the author. The author don't actually have the right to any profits, only profits that he endeavorer and successfully earn in the market. But that doesn't matter much to me, anyway. As long as people like him don't lay their hand on the results of my intellectual labor, I don't care about what happens to the pirates and the copyright mafia. I will be very happy to eat the lunch of other game developers at the end of this silly cultural war.
    - jacobolus 16y ago
      WTF? The author’s sales of sheet music to everyone who buys it include an explicit contract (called the laws of whatever country the sale is done in). The girl seems to have gotten a copy from some party to that contract, explicitly against its terms, and is now re-trading the item in question (the sheet music file), on her own. Except the law, as written, quite clearly applies just as much to her as it does to the person who violated his contract with the author in providing her the sheet music. The nature of the stuff being traded makes it somewhat different than physical goods, but in principle this is no different any other illegal redistribution of goods, for example reprinting cheap copies of some copyrighted book and selling them on the street at barely above cost. When you talk about your “ethical perspective as a libertarian”, what you apparently mean is that you don’t believe in the concept of copyright (or other “intellectual property”, or perhaps even that society’s laws should be binding on citizens). This is not the usual libertarian “ethical perspective”, and you should be careful about implying that libertarians necessarily feel the same way you do. > successfully earn in the market There is only a market for sheet music insofar as that sheet music can’t be trivially gotten for free from a third party. Basically, your comment says something like “we should eliminate the market for sheet music, and the author should do something else.” Well okay, that might be what happens anyway, but that’s not “the market” deciding. For markets to exist requires a set of social structures which regulate its form and function. When those structures break down, as in this case, the market is destroyed. (These social constraints need not be written down or enforced by an official police force, etc. They just need to be commonly agreed upon and have some social weight. I need to know you won’t take my money and run without giving me the promised chicken, or spend all your time copying the book I sold you and selling it behind my back while I’m trying to write the next one.)
  - chc 16y ago
    I think you're dodging the question here. If you can show us credible numbers to indicate that stopping this girl from getting her hands on his music has significantly improved his income, that would be interesting. But I don't think you can, so bringing up his income is a red herring. He's fighting this girl on moral grounds. (Ironically, he brings up fair use as an excuse for his copying of media, but won't recognize that copying sheet music for a high school project probably falls under the same umbrella.)
    - protomyth 16y ago
      Well, it did subtract the amount he makes off one sheet music sale.
      - mquander 16y ago
        It absolutely did not. The girl made it clear that she doesn't have a credit card and can't/won't convince her parents to pay, so there's no way he would have gotten a sale out of her.
        peterwwillis 16y ago
        so he should subpoena the website for logs of every person she traded his music to and ask them all if they all have the same convenient lack of ability to pay $3.99 online? get real. one person shares with 10, those 10 with 100, and whoops, now he's lost over $400 in potential sales because she wanted to be nice and share. no i can not prove he would have had these sales, nor do i need to. you also seem to ignore his other suggestion: check out the song book at the library.
        chc 16y ago
        Your logic falls apart at the end. Checking out books from a library must be equally wrong. Hundreds of people can do it, and then he's out over a thousand dollars in potential sales.
        16y ago
  - SapphireSun 16y ago
    There's an even more subtle point here that teenagers don't have an easy way to purchase things in the online economy without their parent's permission. Part of the reason she's trading is because she can get it no other way. If I'm an aspiring artist, I'll be damned if some four dollar barrier stands between me achieving my dreams and not at all. It's pretty clear that she had already tried to convince her parents about this, but failed. Teens can use cash to buy whatever they want, but not online.
- chc 16y ago
  I'd figured this would be an uncharitable summary, but after reading the article, it's pretty much spot on. He keeps reiterating that he needs to make money, she keeps giving good explanations for why her actions don't impede that goal, and he keeps ignoring everything she says in favor of repeating his thesis.
- delackner 16y ago
  The question that you are dancing around is: do we care enough about creative works to support their creation, or do we really care so little about the food for our soul that we look forward to consuming only the side-project crumbs that people make in their evenings and on weekends for fun? Some artists have a "live" performance that people enjoy paying for that un-copyable experience. But do we really want our authors to make their entire living from tips at book-signings? Copyright hasn't caught up to the reality of unlimited instant effortless copying, but artists still need to eat, and paying them for what they do is probably going to remain the simplest way to make sure they eat at all.
  - iamdave 16y ago
    Copyright has caught up with the reality of unlimited effortless copying. The problem is that the content distributors still have not yet grasped the idea that 'scarcity' is moot in an age where information can easily be produced, reproduced, and disseminated at the speed of thought. Actually, they have grasped it, they just have not extracted a method of controlling it outside of the realms of pay walls, destroying UX by forced advertisement campaigns, and the walled-garden that is the iTunes Music Store. "Do we care enough about creative works to support their creation?" I have ticket stubs from twelve Dave Matthews Band concerts that say yes, in my case.
  - kiba 16y ago
    If people don't feel like paying for musicians and the like, than it's a signal to the market to stop supporting musicians and force them to work other jobs that people are willing to pay for. If that what it meant to be, than it will be. Copyright will merely submerge the will of individuals into the underground illegal music scene and not solve any problems for musicians at all. They can keep busting pirate networks all they want, it won't change a thing in the long run. Musicians will die off and soon we will be left with a frozen archive of musics, though a very large library. It doesn't matter that much to me anyway. I'll never be able to get all the favorite songs in the world. I'll never be able to remember enough in my lifetime. I am pretty content with this scenarios. I don't think what artists fear will come true. Instead, many of them will probably find ways to make a living. For me, it's the same cognitively. There are still tons of artists and songs to discover, too much for a lifetime, and too much for the limited memory capacity of my brain.
kiba 16y ago
Let Jason Robert Brown feel mighty and righteous about his sheet musics being copied.....I mean...err..stolen. For the rest of everybody else who actually have some common sense about business, this is a dream come true. It's market inefficiencies ripe for exploitation. Exploit it and don't let the illegal pirates take it away from you, especially when your competitors decide to stick his head into the sand and give you a free lunch. The more Jason Robert Brown type people, the better.
noonespecial 16y ago
The author's "screwdriver" example fairly clearly shows that he's still a little foggy on the distinction between physical property and "intellectual property". He goes on to cement that notion with examples about a show and a book. All of which argue from a base of scarcity which doesn't exist in the venue he's suddenly found himself. Its easy to see how the girl could continually miss his point. This is likely his first encounter with a gift economy, its logic and its denizens (who are mostly, but not exclusively) teenagers. It would seem that the qualities he wants to attribute to the "teenage mind" are really traits of the gift economy that sprung up around trading digital sheet music. Its easy to sympathize with him however. It may turn out that only a handful of generations found themselves in the peculiar circumstances that allowed them to cast elements of culture into items of physical property that could be mass produced but were not easily duplicated. It must be quite disorienting to find oneself at either edge of that transition.
- JacobAldridge 16y ago
  Could one draw the link between the printing press, the availability of printed Bibles rather than the laboriously hand-written copies, the subsequent larger availability of Bibles in the vernacular, and several Reformation ideals, particularly the German Protestantism notion of a direct connection with God rather than one that had to pass through the Pope?
- pmccool 16y ago
  As I understood his argument, it had nothing to do with ease of duplication. Instead, it was about ownership. His contention that the creators (who are by implication the owners) of intangible things have rights too is not invalidated by technology.
  - noonespecial 16y ago
    Hmm. I should stop using "ease" and especially "duplication" when writing about this particular issue. Its too easy to get stuck on. You are right. It has nothing at all to do with duplication or how easy it is. One of technology's greatest and most subtle tricks is the elimination of scarcity. Its not that I can take one for myself (no matter how easy or hard it might be), its that when I do, I don't take yours. It up-ends the economic apple cart in a way that is very non-intuitive and difficult for the human mind to grasp via "common sense". Its easy to comprehend a lower and lower marginal cost per unit but once that cost reaches the zero limit, it seems that the formulas that our current economy depend on become undefined. Technology doesn't invalidate the rights of owners/creators, it forces us to completely reevaluate what ownership means. How to "pay" the author might not even be a meaningful question in the economy that results. We are fortunate that we get a long trial run on things as frivolous as music and moving picture stories before rep/raps bulldoze us on their way through to Star Trek replicators.
zaphar 16y ago
I'm actually genuinely curious how the whole "art industry" will turn out eventually. On the one hand I sympathize with an artists desire to eat and provide for their family. On the other hand I don't quite buy into the idea that intellectual property is entitled to the same protections as physical property. In some ways the medieval and renaissance periods had a more valid model with patronage for the arts. That limited the market to a much smaller pool of career artists though. I wonder what will replace the current state of affairs since a lot of signs point to it being unsustainable. And I do enjoy the results of having a larger pool of artists.
- andresmh 16y ago
  Technology is allowing the pool to get larger. Amateur creativity is going to become increasingly more important and partially replace art that comes from the industry.
- billswift 16y ago
  The reason it limited the pool of artists was the much higher cost of doing art back then. Not just the cost of materials either; most people spent their entire lives doing backbreaking labor effectively all the time they were awake. They couldn't have created art even if they had been gifted with the materials. Artists had to be supported by "gifts" of food and shelter and all the other basics we almost take for granted today.
sliverstorm 16y ago
Frankly, I'm kind of shocked by HN's collective opinion on this subject- and I am not a conservative. In my opinion, it is really very simple. I don't care so much about the nebulous question of whether it's right or wrong to infringe on IP, and all these other new questions that come about when you remove the physical aspect and introduce CTRL+C/CTRL+V. What matters to me, is that books and music and movies continue to exist. That won't happen if we insist we deserve it all for free. Who the fuck will spend their life writing music or books or movies if we don't leave them a way to monetize it? Artists are rarely driven by greed (and if they are, disillusioned quickly) but in nearly every human being, the desire to NOT DIE usurps the desire to express yourself creatively, so artists will be forced to abandon their works to continue living.
- jexe 16y ago
  You know what else is interesting - the means to produce music and movies is moving down market, fast. My friggin phone records HD, and my Mac comes with some basic music production software, I can self-publish my own books on amazon or just host them electronically myself.. and this trend is only accelerating. So will we see less art in the future? Absolutely not - we'll be seeing huge amounts more, and from people who may not have had access to, say, a recording studio in the past. The economics are changing on both ends of the "business," which I think is a net positive.
  - chokma 16y ago
    I think it is great that one can take an off-the-shelf video camera and make a movie. And this sparks a whole world of creativity. Each day a 100 years of video are uploaded to Youtube. What we need is a way to compensate professional artists and performers in a world where the cost to distribute is effectively zero. Some stuff (for example a "Michael Moore"-style documentary on the oil spill) is complex enough that it is difficult to produce it without having a way to cover your costs. Does Cory Doctorow's way of doing this scale to movie production? Oh, and we need camcorders and the like to integrate free codecs - the ones currently available by default often produce H.264-movies which need a license if you want to profit from your work in any way...
frossie 16y ago
I realise I wasn't meant to, and it doesn't say anything about my position on the issue, but from reading the exchange I formed an immediate liking for the girl. If every teenage girl was this expressive and self-assertive, I personally would feel better about the world. cough I now return you to your "Illegal downloading bad, m'kay?" programming
- gwern 16y ago
  > If every teenage girl was this expressive and self-assertive, I personally would feel better about the world. She's not your usual girl, it seems to me - how many collect and use sheet music? Just following her musical/theatrical passion that far is unusual enough, and I was a little impressed that she understood copyright law enough to think she was getting around it by emailing stuff off-site. (She's wrong, of course; contributory infringement could be used to nail her.)
- seertaak 16y ago
  > expressive cough she mistook "defiantly" for "definitely".
russellallen 16y ago
You know if we all stopped pirating stuff and obeyed the very letter of copyright law, open source and free entertainment, software, etc would have a huge renaissance. You know those bands that make their money from touring that are always put forward as the future? Their mp3s compete for mindshare with pirated Lady Gaga stuff. Maybe if we all obeyed copyright then Elanor would have looked around for some other composer who gives their stuff away for free. Win-win. Composers who want money get money, composers who want fame get it instead. The biggest competitor to Gimp is pirated Photoshop. Etc.
- kiba 16y ago
  That's why some entrepreneurs in the "free entertainment and open source business" are just begging for the copyright people to do what they wanted in secret, while trying to convince everyone that a post-copyright world is a good idea. Some of us are just convinced that it's good money, but some of us can't help but trying to tell people about the truth while being happy that they don't believe it. It's a weird situation.
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kuahyeow 16y ago
I'm mildly surprised to see the classic FSF lend-a-book argument in there: "Would it be wrong for me to make a copy of some sheet music and give it to a close friend of mine for an audition? Of course not. In fact, it would be considered nasty of me to refuse. But to trade sheet music online is bad? "
kiba 16y ago
From the author's final post update. I have also heard from a continuing stream of extraordinarily hostile young men (always men) who insist on "educating" me on the ins and outs of cybermorality, the definition of "stealing," and why I deserve to choke on my own obsolescence. What he interpret as hostility is a bunch of young men who can't help but try tell you the truth as they see it. It's about watching people oblivious to the fact of life getting chop to bits by pirates and free markets because they refuse to recognize something crucial. And when they can't help you, they will buy other people stuff just to spite you. If they're in the same business, they will manically laugh at you. Then they will try to help you, knowing that you will just dismiss them like last time. Admittedly, they describe me. I am one of those young men who would do this on and off. I wanna crush them, and then tell them the good news.
- ErrantX 16y ago
  Unfortunately I suspect I know the type he is referring too; I've had my fair share of attacks from them over the years. And they (you?) are not doing very well at "educating" us. Mostly it verges from amusingly incoherent to downright disturbing :)
  - kiba 16y ago
    Unfortunately I suspect I know the type he is referring too; I've had my fair share of attacks from them over the years. And they (you?) are not doing very well at "educating" +us. Mostly it verges from amusingly incoherent to downright disturbing :) You can call these people "amusingly incoherent" to "downright disturbing" if you want. It doesn't mean anything about the truth that these people try to explain to you, with everything and anything they have. Every single examples, and every business models big, small, and in between, they will throw out at you. Every single moral, ethical, and economic arguments they employ in their arsenal, thrown out at you. Every single historical evidences, they will dig up. Meanwhile, musicians and record labels and criticize and rationalize away anything and everything. They rather not give out anything and earn a million dollars in return. What these people have for you, is good news. It's very frustrating to see people not take it. These young men might have been your biggest fans, fellow musicians and artists, successful entrepreneurs or just a person well versed in economics dealing with non-scarcity.
kuahyeow 16y ago
Somehow, the more I read it, the more it seems like a case of "Sorry, I don't want you [the entire tech-literate demographic] as a customer". These guy makes a good point : http://www.jasonrobertbrown.com/weblog/2010/06/fighting_with_teenagers_a_copy.php#comment-9345 http://www.jasonrobertbrown.com/weblog/2010/06/fighting_with...
nkurz 16y ago
It's a good exchange, and worth reading particularly if you are one of those "extraordinarily hostile young men" who are likely disagree to with him. I left the article feeling that Eleanor (the defiant teenager) was particularly well-spoken, and that Jason Robert Brown would love for me to get off his lawn. I don't know him, but now I'm prejudiced against him and his works. But he does a great job of explaining his thought process, whether one agrees with it or not. And better understanding those with whom one disagrees is a good thing. I thought the weakest part was his attempt to make it a clear-cut case of right and wrong, and then go on to give some very muddy examples that really haven't been clearly decided: "I then ripped that CD on to my hard drive so I can listen to it on my iPod in my car. Well, that's not FAIR, right? I should have to buy two copies? No. There is in fact a part of the copyright law that allows exactly this; it's called the doctrine of fair use." Logical, I'd agree, but he might want to discuss this with the RIAA, who argue that it's not fair-use, and merely an example of their forbearance not to sue for such petty infringement: 'there’s no legal "right" to copy the copyrighted music on a CD onto a CD-R. However, burning a copy of CD onto a CD-R, or transferring a copy onto your computer hard drive or your portable music player, won’t usually raise concerns...' (http://www.riaa.com/physicalpiracy.php?content_selector=piracy_online_the_law http://www.riaa.com/physicalpiracy.php?content_selector=pira...) But his moral argument seems almost reasonable: I created this music, so I get to control who uses it. He trades fair-use under copyright for exclusive rights to distribution. Inevitability aside, 'hostile young men' of HN, what's the flaw with this reasoning? Does one need to resort to the fairly weak position that 'sharing' with strangers falls under fair-use, or is there something stronger that can be said?
- peterwwillis 16y ago
  I thought his moral argument was "please pay me for the sheet music so my kids won't starve." Which I agree is ridiculous; he'd just quit writing music and find another job before they died of starvation. I mean, hellooo, soup kitchens are free...
  - mkramlich 16y ago
    plus obviously if he has multiple kids, he can afford to let one starve to death because he'll have the other as backup. Cruel man, tormenting poor wittle Eleanor, denying her the free music for her theatre classikins.
Anechoic 16y ago
Well it seems that many (if not most) of the posters here side with the girl's explanation. So be it, but don't get pissed at me when I take your GPL product, incorporate it into my closed-source set top box and refuse to release the source. After all, it's not like I've stolen anything or deprived you of revenue.
- Tichy 16y ago
  Fair point, but people tend to feel differently about the issue once somebody is making money from the IP theft. Eleanore apparently is a teenager trying to become an artist, not a scammer who repackages that artists compositions for ad jingles and becomes a millionaire from it. No matter what the law says or what you think about it, aspects like that will factor into what people FEEL is right.
  - mkramlich 16y ago
    The problem is that Eleanor is not a special and unique butterfly floating inside her own private quantum singularity. Instead, she's just one person among millions out there who could use the same frickin excuse she's using. "I'm special. I can't afford it. (Well, not that AND my iPod AND my cool clothes AND..." Also, technically Jason's reason for contacting her originally was not to accuse her of taking a free copy for herself. It was to ask her to stop making it free for others. Because strictly speaking, if she only took a single free copy for herself, and if the only alternative to that if a free copy was not available was that she would have to buy -- and if she literally could not afford it or would not buy it -- then yes in that circumstance she could argue reasonably that she did not deny him revenue. But that's not the argument. The argument is that she's making free copies further available to others, some of whom would have otherwise bought copies. Whether there is or is not a stimulative effect leading to more copies bought from him is not for her to reason about it -- it's literally none of her business, and not her right to decide -- only his. He created that frickin music. Let him decide, and honor his wishes. Not much to ask, really.
    - Tichy 16y ago
      Why should Eleanor care about the things you mention?
grrr56 16y ago
Well, hopefully there are people in this world that write free and open software so people can build startups and earn money. If these open source people had his mentality, a lot of recent startups wouldn't even have been born. Greedy, disgusting artist.
- russellallen 16y ago
  He's greedy and disgusting because he's not giving his work away for free so that other people can build startups and earn money? Huh?
  - john_45 16y ago
    I think you clearly misunderstood. The guy is a selfish and greedy person, trying to get these $4 out of this poor girl. Read the comment mentioning the creative common license potential usage, that's the right way to share to people and earn a decent living.
    - russellallen 16y ago
      Seriously? $4? Would he still be selfish and greedy if it was $1? $0.10?
      - john_45 16y ago
        Requesting money when the derivative representation/usage of the work is in return given for free (as in free theater show, free movie, free mixtape, other free software) is IMHO selfish and greedy.
    - mkramlich 16y ago
      dude, this whole discussion is so Bizarro World for me I can't tell when somebody is being serious or being sarcastic anymore. Yes, being greedy because he wants to be paid for something he created and this other person is benefiting from, who has circumvented the payment mechanism. Because she "deserves" it. Hilarious!
alextingle 16y ago
Absolutely hilarious that he blithely violates Eleanor's copyright as part of his programme to "educate" her about copyright law. (He has reproduced her copyrighted e-mails, against her clear wishes. She should educate him back by slapping a DMCA notice on him.)
- mkramlich 16y ago
  I'm pretty sure it was mentioned a couple times in there that he asked her and she gave permission. The fact that you would criticize that element and not on her attitude about not paying for his work frankly blows my mind a little.
  - alextingle 16y ago
    She clearly stipulated that he only had permission to reproduce some parts of her work, and he goes out of his way to mention that he breached that license. Why on earth do you think that copyright law should protect him and not her?
    - Anechoic 16y ago
      She clearly stipulated that he only had permission to reproduce some parts of her work Where? From the article - JB: "I'll answer your question, but I'd like your permission to post the exchange on my website. Deal?" Eleanor: "absolutely!" From the update: "For those of you who were concerned, I did eventually hear from Eleanor. She said she didn't feel annoyed or offended that I had posted her remarks, she did understand where I was "coming from," and she appreciated that I took the time to deal with her." I'm not seeing where she "clearly stipulated that he only had permission to reproduce some parts of her work."
      - alextingle 16y ago
        That quotation in full: JB: "I'd like your permission to post the exchange on my website. Deal?" E: "absolutely! that would actually be kind of cool. but if you wouldn't mind changing my name in it to 'Eleanor.' I'm not sure why my iPod put it as 'Brenna' but that's not what I go by and I don't like that name."
mkramlich 16y ago
he was classy and accurate. I couldn't believe the attitude of that girl. unbelievable sense of entitlement to the fruits of someone else's labor.
lena 16y ago
In one of the comments someone asks the author if he himself never infringes on copyright. I thought his response to that was disappointing: while the majority of the imagery on my site is co-owned by me I can't vouch for all of it nor can I promise that it's all legally sound; none of that should prevent me from asking people not to trade my music illegally
mkramlich 16y ago
this is the type of story that's going to bring out in clear distinction the line between the HN readers who are in their teens or college and the HN readers who are working adults, especially those with families of their own to feed, and/or pre-Internet memories
ErrantX 16y ago
They both fall for the common fallacies and null arguments common to this sort of dispute. It is still an interesting read though; and I think they both come off well (less so the "obnoxious young men" :)). Who is right though? It's a morally difficult question because this is not like, say, a big film producer or an indie game developer (representing the two main extremes). This is a girl who (supposedly) wants sheet music for her school production. On the other hand Jason arranges music exactly for those sorts of scenarios; and at what point do you say "this person is now deserving of having the music for free". Thinking this through there is a fairly easy solution; Jason should offer his music through schools and other youth organisations for free (or free loan). Thus allowing teenagers such as this to put on their shows and practice their art. Then there will be no need for such people to trade the music. Solution, no?
- cschwarm 16y ago
  > It's a morally difficult question... Hardly, in my opinion. Just use the rather common approach of the Golden Rule: 'Treat others like you want to be treated'. If you want others to keep their promises to you, you should keep your promise to others. Likewise, if you want others to fulfill the contracts they agreed to, you should fulfill the contracts you agreed to. The author offered a contract: "Pay 4 dollars and promise not to copy and redistribute the media, and I promise to give you a copy". Nobody who accepted this contract, has the moral right to violate it. Otherwise, everybody would have the right to violate contracts, in general. Everything else is just a matter of organization: If teenagers need sheet music for school production, their parents should pay for it. Or the parents can create a club, hire somebody to write music, and share the resulting work.
  - ErrantX 16y ago
    Sorry yes, you are dead right. There is no moral obligation for Elanor to expect to get the music for free. Or feel she has a right to distribute music etc. I mean't in the larger sense.
noibl 16y ago
The author links to his wife's blog post of a year ago in which she says a major part of the problem is the lack of an easy, legal way to access the material in question. He later links to a site where he says his work is available for instant purchase. When you visit that site, the first thing you see in Chrome is a giant 'missing plugin' block and an invitation to download the 'Scorch' sheet music plugin, which it turns out is available for IE, Firefox or (on Macs) Safari. JOY. Further down, you get the following message: "We advise you to check your printer setup now before you buy. You will only get one chance to print your music after you have purchased it. If you have difficulty printing, please see our print problems help page." WTF? OK...let's have a look at the print problems help page: "=== It says Printing To File Not Allowed === "Copyright law prohibits us from allowing customers to store image files of the scores on their computers. Therefore, when you buy from us, we only allow printing to paper." No. Seriously? The takeaway for me: not only do these people not get filesharing, they don't get computers and their attitude to those who do is one of xenophobia.
- nikz 16y ago
  Try getting a refund when their crappy plugin crashes your browser... How about the printed copy that's now unusable (because it's, you know, paper, and paper has a habit of getting crumpled or ripped or wet or binned...) Even iTunes doesn't make me pay for an mp3 again if my HDD dies...
TerminalDummy 16y ago
Art. Only for people with money.
timinman 16y ago
I'm impressed with the length of dialogue between the two, and disappointed that it got condescending on both accounts. As far as I can tell, Mr. Brown is legally correct and yet Elanor had some wisdom to offer him. I still haven't heard his work, but I'm thinking about it on her recommendation.
loewenskind 16y ago
I think he made a mistake posting this on his site. He was technically in the right but he came off as a total asshole. The girl was offering to basically advertise his work. Plus she stopped trading his music when he asked. She could have put it all on torrent to spite him (and something like that is very likely to happen if certain groups like 4chan see this). Hell, if his site wasn't so miserable I would just pay the $4 or whatever for her (i.e. I would but it doesn't look like there is a way for me to pay it for her). Sheesh.
drewcrawford 16y ago
I have a tiny bit of domain knowledge that I'd like to impart: 1) To be fair, real scores are hard to find. Most of the published stuff is simplified, has parts removed, or is otherwise substantively altered from what is actually performed by professionals (code for this: "Vocal selections from..." "Adapted from..." etc.) I can't speak to this particularly to JRB, who may very well publish real scores, but there is a perception in the industry that in general the good stuff is unavailable. 2) There is no iTunes for sheet music. If you click through his links, get ready to install ActiveX DRMey plugins to preview the music. On mac? Too bad. So there's no way to confirm, i.e., that this is the "real stuff" as opposed to simplified sheet music. 3) If you study the industry in any detail, you'll discover that it's set up like a "Good ol' Boys" system. You can't get a part until you join the union, but you can't join the union until you get a part. New actors are placed on secret lists that are passed around to other directors either to promote or defame them. This may be totally valid and even necessary for Broadway to function--but it does breed resentment among those trying to "break in" to the system. These three factors spell the perfect storm for piracy. There are multiple roadblocks to acquiring the music legally, and there's a huge resentment factor on the part of the consumers.

63 points by soundsop 16y ago

for the tl;dr crowd- The author writes about an incident in which he discovered a teenager was trading his sheet music, without his permission and approaches her about it, said teenager actually makes several very good points, which get ignored by the author on various occasions in their conversation in lieu of a "lecture" on copyright. Further tl;dr - the comment section by and large are all pats on the back to the writer. Few worthy of reading, but not many. While I certainly see the perspective of the author here, wanting to preserve the integrity of his work, invariably he faces the same crisis the mainstream music industry faces: refusal to accept the change in mentality about content distribution and consumption, and an ardent unwillingness to entertain the idea that maybe in order to attract new audiences you have to tickle their senses and find out what they want, and how to give it to them. "Build it and they will come", thing.

jws 16y ago
You let the kid off too easily. He is already selling artists sheet music that they absolutely need for their profession via instant download for the cost of a coffee and the teenager in question still believes it is her right to misappropriate a copy instead because she doesn't want to pay. The author isn't trying to preserve his work's integrity, whatever that is, he is trying to preserve his income. He is a song writer. He genre is not a big recording industry item, mechanical royalties will be minimal. There are no concert tee shirts ,to assuage anyone's guilt here.
- megablast 16y ago
  If I want a coffee, I take my cash to the corner store and buy it. It is easy. Doing any commerce on the internet is nowhere near as easy as that. You are clearly someone who has never not had a credit card. These things are almost impossible without one, and certainly not as easy as getting a coffee. And news flash, lots of student and poor people DO NOT HAVE A CREDIT CARD! And even if you do, you go to some dodgy website that you have never heard of before and just enter in your credit card details? Well, I don't.
  - sliverstorm 16y ago
    > If I want a coffee, I take my cash to the corner store and buy it. It is easy. Doing any commerce on the internet is nowhere near as easy as that. If you have the right form of currency, it's EASIER. You don't have to go to the corner store. > You are clearly someone who has never not had a credit card Are you kidding me? I didn't have a credit card until I was 20. How did I get by, how did I survive? Any checking account nowadays has the option of a debit card, which works just as well. Any bank account at all can be accessed by Paypal, and bank accounts are not nearly as exclusive- I opened my own savings account when I was 12. Friends, parents, friends' parents... Someone you know has a credit card, and you can pay them back. Besides, just because you don't posses the means to pay for something doesn't mean you can take it. If I go into a corner store with only Yen in my pocket, I can't very well pay for a magazine even though I have the money. Does that justify me to steal it? Not a chance. P.S. it's actually easier to get a cc if you are a student...
  - jws 16y ago
    There is a Walgreens about every 10,000 feet where I live. Each one of them has prepaid credit cards in the impulse buy racks[1] by the checkout. Anyone can convert their physical dollars into credit card dollars. Would you like the remains of your shattered argument in a bag or may I dispose of them for you?[2] [1] And pregnancy tests. Who impulse buys a pregnancy test? [2] Ok, that was uncalled for, but its hot and I'm not feeling civil right now, and you started it with the all caps.
    - megablast 16y ago
      Congratulations. As someone who does not live in the US, I have never seen these before, and I am pretty sure they are new as in the last few years. They do sound like a solution to my problem, and I will investigate if they have them here in Australia.
- mquander 16y ago
  Yes, but the author is couching his rhetoric in claims to "fairness" and moral righteousness. I think his stories are most revealing of his position: I am an author, I tend to believe that I should be able to get paid for doing that work (and it is work, Eleanor, it's really hard work)...You think you're entitled to deny all of those people their rightful share of the work they do. I don't understand why you think that. That's the core of his argument. He thinks that since he has been making a living this way for a long time, and it has worked out all right for everyone, his way is the right way and anything else is of dubious morals, because why would you want to deprive a good man of good work? The discussion seems to be about whether the girl has a "right" to download or share his sheet music. In my opinion, she can do it, and that's that; should he have a "right" to stop her? He has not convinced me that there's any reason he should have that right.
  - sliverstorm 16y ago
    > In my opinion, she can do it, and that's that; should he have a "right" to stop her? I certainly can brutally kill puppies. Do you have the right to stop me if I own them? Stop trying to twist the argument. There's a helluva lot of things you can do, but whether somebody else has the right to intervene and stop you is irrelevant.
    - mquander 16y ago
      And most of those things that you can do, you should be able to do. The exceptions are what need to be justified. I don't see a lot of justification for claiming that piracy is wrong or bad. It's directly helping someone and not directly hurting anyone, and I haven't even seen someone claim credibly that it's hurting artists' pocketbooks. Certainly this girl's actions were a totally victimless crime. I certainly don't see evidence that piracy is resulting in a lower quality of art, and it's obviously great in the short-term for consumers (especially ones like teenagers who have a hard time buying music and movies and books.)
  - cschwarm 16y ago
    > He has not convinced me that there's any reason he should have that right. OK, suppose your girlfriend agrees to have you take some rather private photos of her under the condition that you will never make these available to someone else. (Or the other way 'round if you're a girl) One day you break up and you're sharing these photos. Does she has the right to stop you distributing them? According to your logic, she has not. After all, you're just sharing among friends. And it's not as if she's loosing income of something like that. Following the authors logic, your girlfriend has the right to stop you distributing them. For you made a promise before she agreed -- you basically entered a contract. His point is that he offered copies of his work under certain conditions (called copyright). In other words, he expected everybody who agreed to the contract not to copy and redistribute his work. He expects them to hold their promise, their site of the contract. Nobody's is forced or required to enter the contract and make this promise. You're free to make your own music and share it. Or used someone's music who doesn't expect you to make a similar promise. However, violating your promise (ie. changing the conditions of the contract) is clearly immoral. Or would you want to be the victim of somebody who changes the contract conditions after the deal was made? Or would you want to be lied to, or have your friends break their promises? If the answer is 'No', then copying stuff without a license is clearly immoral.
- kiba 16y ago
  The author isn't trying to preserve his work's integrity, whatever that is, he is trying to preserve his income. She may be rationalizing her actions, but from my ethical perspective as a libertarian, she's actually in the right. She didn't stole anything, nor did she agree to a explicit contract with the author. The author don't actually have the right to any profits, only profits that he endeavorer and successfully earn in the market. But that doesn't matter much to me, anyway. As long as people like him don't lay their hand on the results of my intellectual labor, I don't care about what happens to the pirates and the copyright mafia. I will be very happy to eat the lunch of other game developers at the end of this silly cultural war.
  - jacobolus 16y ago
    WTF? The author’s sales of sheet music to everyone who buys it include an explicit contract (called the laws of whatever country the sale is done in). The girl seems to have gotten a copy from some party to that contract, explicitly against its terms, and is now re-trading the item in question (the sheet music file), on her own. Except the law, as written, quite clearly applies just as much to her as it does to the person who violated his contract with the author in providing her the sheet music. The nature of the stuff being traded makes it somewhat different than physical goods, but in principle this is no different any other illegal redistribution of goods, for example reprinting cheap copies of some copyrighted book and selling them on the street at barely above cost. When you talk about your “ethical perspective as a libertarian”, what you apparently mean is that you don’t believe in the concept of copyright (or other “intellectual property”, or perhaps even that society’s laws should be binding on citizens). This is not the usual libertarian “ethical perspective”, and you should be careful about implying that libertarians necessarily feel the same way you do. > successfully earn in the market There is only a market for sheet music insofar as that sheet music can’t be trivially gotten for free from a third party. Basically, your comment says something like “we should eliminate the market for sheet music, and the author should do something else.” Well okay, that might be what happens anyway, but that’s not “the market” deciding. For markets to exist requires a set of social structures which regulate its form and function. When those structures break down, as in this case, the market is destroyed. (These social constraints need not be written down or enforced by an official police force, etc. They just need to be commonly agreed upon and have some social weight. I need to know you won’t take my money and run without giving me the promised chicken, or spend all your time copying the book I sold you and selling it behind my back while I’m trying to write the next one.)
- chc 16y ago
  I think you're dodging the question here. If you can show us credible numbers to indicate that stopping this girl from getting her hands on his music has significantly improved his income, that would be interesting. But I don't think you can, so bringing up his income is a red herring. He's fighting this girl on moral grounds. (Ironically, he brings up fair use as an excuse for his copying of media, but won't recognize that copying sheet music for a high school project probably falls under the same umbrella.)
  - protomyth 16y ago
    Well, it did subtract the amount he makes off one sheet music sale.
    - mquander 16y ago
      It absolutely did not. The girl made it clear that she doesn't have a credit card and can't/won't convince her parents to pay, so there's no way he would have gotten a sale out of her.
      - peterwwillis 16y ago
        so he should subpoena the website for logs of every person she traded his music to and ask them all if they all have the same convenient lack of ability to pay $3.99 online? get real. one person shares with 10, those 10 with 100, and whoops, now he's lost over $400 in potential sales because she wanted to be nice and share. no i can not prove he would have had these sales, nor do i need to. you also seem to ignore his other suggestion: check out the song book at the library.
        chc 16y ago
        Your logic falls apart at the end. Checking out books from a library must be equally wrong. Hundreds of people can do it, and then he's out over a thousand dollars in potential sales.
        16y ago
- SapphireSun 16y ago
  There's an even more subtle point here that teenagers don't have an easy way to purchase things in the online economy without their parent's permission. Part of the reason she's trading is because she can get it no other way. If I'm an aspiring artist, I'll be damned if some four dollar barrier stands between me achieving my dreams and not at all. It's pretty clear that she had already tried to convince her parents about this, but failed. Teens can use cash to buy whatever they want, but not online.
chc 16y ago
I'd figured this would be an uncharitable summary, but after reading the article, it's pretty much spot on. He keeps reiterating that he needs to make money, she keeps giving good explanations for why her actions don't impede that goal, and he keeps ignoring everything she says in favor of repeating his thesis.
delackner 16y ago
The question that you are dancing around is: do we care enough about creative works to support their creation, or do we really care so little about the food for our soul that we look forward to consuming only the side-project crumbs that people make in their evenings and on weekends for fun? Some artists have a "live" performance that people enjoy paying for that un-copyable experience. But do we really want our authors to make their entire living from tips at book-signings? Copyright hasn't caught up to the reality of unlimited instant effortless copying, but artists still need to eat, and paying them for what they do is probably going to remain the simplest way to make sure they eat at all.
- iamdave 16y ago
  Copyright has caught up with the reality of unlimited effortless copying. The problem is that the content distributors still have not yet grasped the idea that 'scarcity' is moot in an age where information can easily be produced, reproduced, and disseminated at the speed of thought. Actually, they have grasped it, they just have not extracted a method of controlling it outside of the realms of pay walls, destroying UX by forced advertisement campaigns, and the walled-garden that is the iTunes Music Store. "Do we care enough about creative works to support their creation?" I have ticket stubs from twelve Dave Matthews Band concerts that say yes, in my case.
- kiba 16y ago
  If people don't feel like paying for musicians and the like, than it's a signal to the market to stop supporting musicians and force them to work other jobs that people are willing to pay for. If that what it meant to be, than it will be. Copyright will merely submerge the will of individuals into the underground illegal music scene and not solve any problems for musicians at all. They can keep busting pirate networks all they want, it won't change a thing in the long run. Musicians will die off and soon we will be left with a frozen archive of musics, though a very large library. It doesn't matter that much to me anyway. I'll never be able to get all the favorite songs in the world. I'll never be able to remember enough in my lifetime. I am pretty content with this scenarios. I don't think what artists fear will come true. Instead, many of them will probably find ways to make a living. For me, it's the same cognitively. There are still tons of artists and songs to discover, too much for a lifetime, and too much for the limited memory capacity of my brain.

kiba 16y ago

Let Jason Robert Brown feel mighty and righteous about his sheet musics being copied.....I mean...err..stolen. For the rest of everybody else who actually have some common sense about business, this is a dream come true. It's market inefficiencies ripe for exploitation. Exploit it and don't let the illegal pirates take it away from you, especially when your competitors decide to stick his head into the sand and give you a free lunch. The more Jason Robert Brown type people, the better.

noonespecial 16y ago

The author's "screwdriver" example fairly clearly shows that he's still a little foggy on the distinction between physical property and "intellectual property". He goes on to cement that notion with examples about a show and a book. All of which argue from a base of scarcity which doesn't exist in the venue he's suddenly found himself. Its easy to see how the girl could continually miss his point. This is likely his first encounter with a gift economy, its logic and its denizens (who are mostly, but not exclusively) teenagers. It would seem that the qualities he wants to attribute to the "teenage mind" are really traits of the gift economy that sprung up around trading digital sheet music. Its easy to sympathize with him however. It may turn out that only a handful of generations found themselves in the peculiar circumstances that allowed them to cast elements of culture into items of physical property that could be mass produced but were not easily duplicated. It must be quite disorienting to find oneself at either edge of that transition.

JacobAldridge 16y ago
Could one draw the link between the printing press, the availability of printed Bibles rather than the laboriously hand-written copies, the subsequent larger availability of Bibles in the vernacular, and several Reformation ideals, particularly the German Protestantism notion of a direct connection with God rather than one that had to pass through the Pope?
pmccool 16y ago
As I understood his argument, it had nothing to do with ease of duplication. Instead, it was about ownership. His contention that the creators (who are by implication the owners) of intangible things have rights too is not invalidated by technology.
- noonespecial 16y ago
  Hmm. I should stop using "ease" and especially "duplication" when writing about this particular issue. Its too easy to get stuck on. You are right. It has nothing at all to do with duplication or how easy it is. One of technology's greatest and most subtle tricks is the elimination of scarcity. Its not that I can take one for myself (no matter how easy or hard it might be), its that when I do, I don't take yours. It up-ends the economic apple cart in a way that is very non-intuitive and difficult for the human mind to grasp via "common sense". Its easy to comprehend a lower and lower marginal cost per unit but once that cost reaches the zero limit, it seems that the formulas that our current economy depend on become undefined. Technology doesn't invalidate the rights of owners/creators, it forces us to completely reevaluate what ownership means. How to "pay" the author might not even be a meaningful question in the economy that results. We are fortunate that we get a long trial run on things as frivolous as music and moving picture stories before rep/raps bulldoze us on their way through to Star Trek replicators.

zaphar 16y ago

I'm actually genuinely curious how the whole "art industry" will turn out eventually. On the one hand I sympathize with an artists desire to eat and provide for their family. On the other hand I don't quite buy into the idea that intellectual property is entitled to the same protections as physical property. In some ways the medieval and renaissance periods had a more valid model with patronage for the arts. That limited the market to a much smaller pool of career artists though. I wonder what will replace the current state of affairs since a lot of signs point to it being unsustainable. And I do enjoy the results of having a larger pool of artists.

andresmh 16y ago
Technology is allowing the pool to get larger. Amateur creativity is going to become increasingly more important and partially replace art that comes from the industry.
billswift 16y ago
The reason it limited the pool of artists was the much higher cost of doing art back then. Not just the cost of materials either; most people spent their entire lives doing backbreaking labor effectively all the time they were awake. They couldn't have created art even if they had been gifted with the materials. Artists had to be supported by "gifts" of food and shelter and all the other basics we almost take for granted today.

sliverstorm 16y ago

Frankly, I'm kind of shocked by HN's collective opinion on this subject- and I am not a conservative. In my opinion, it is really very simple. I don't care so much about the nebulous question of whether it's right or wrong to infringe on IP, and all these other new questions that come about when you remove the physical aspect and introduce CTRL+C/CTRL+V. What matters to me, is that books and music and movies continue to exist. That won't happen if we insist we deserve it all for free. Who the fuck will spend their life writing music or books or movies if we don't leave them a way to monetize it? Artists are rarely driven by greed (and if they are, disillusioned quickly) but in nearly every human being, the desire to NOT DIE usurps the desire to express yourself creatively, so artists will be forced to abandon their works to continue living.

jexe 16y ago
You know what else is interesting - the means to produce music and movies is moving down market, fast. My friggin phone records HD, and my Mac comes with some basic music production software, I can self-publish my own books on amazon or just host them electronically myself.. and this trend is only accelerating. So will we see less art in the future? Absolutely not - we'll be seeing huge amounts more, and from people who may not have had access to, say, a recording studio in the past. The economics are changing on both ends of the "business," which I think is a net positive.
- chokma 16y ago
  I think it is great that one can take an off-the-shelf video camera and make a movie. And this sparks a whole world of creativity. Each day a 100 years of video are uploaded to Youtube. What we need is a way to compensate professional artists and performers in a world where the cost to distribute is effectively zero. Some stuff (for example a "Michael Moore"-style documentary on the oil spill) is complex enough that it is difficult to produce it without having a way to cover your costs. Does Cory Doctorow's way of doing this scale to movie production? Oh, and we need camcorders and the like to integrate free codecs - the ones currently available by default often produce H.264-movies which need a license if you want to profit from your work in any way...

frossie 16y ago

I realise I wasn't meant to, and it doesn't say anything about my position on the issue, but from reading the exchange I formed an immediate liking for the girl. If every teenage girl was this expressive and self-assertive, I personally would feel better about the world. cough I now return you to your "Illegal downloading bad, m'kay?" programming

gwern 16y ago
> If every teenage girl was this expressive and self-assertive, I personally would feel better about the world. She's not your usual girl, it seems to me - how many collect and use sheet music? Just following her musical/theatrical passion that far is unusual enough, and I was a little impressed that she understood copyright law enough to think she was getting around it by emailing stuff off-site. (She's wrong, of course; contributory infringement could be used to nail her.)
seertaak 16y ago
> expressive cough she mistook "defiantly" for "definitely".

russellallen 16y ago

You know if we all stopped pirating stuff and obeyed the very letter of copyright law, open source and free entertainment, software, etc would have a huge renaissance. You know those bands that make their money from touring that are always put forward as the future? Their mp3s compete for mindshare with pirated Lady Gaga stuff. Maybe if we all obeyed copyright then Elanor would have looked around for some other composer who gives their stuff away for free. Win-win. Composers who want money get money, composers who want fame get it instead. The biggest competitor to Gimp is pirated Photoshop. Etc.

kiba 16y ago
That's why some entrepreneurs in the "free entertainment and open source business" are just begging for the copyright people to do what they wanted in secret, while trying to convince everyone that a post-copyright world is a good idea. Some of us are just convinced that it's good money, but some of us can't help but trying to tell people about the truth while being happy that they don't believe it. It's a weird situation.

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kuahyeow 16y ago

I'm mildly surprised to see the classic FSF lend-a-book argument in there: "Would it be wrong for me to make a copy of some sheet music and give it to a close friend of mine for an audition? Of course not. In fact, it would be considered nasty of me to refuse. But to trade sheet music online is bad? "

kiba 16y ago

From the author's final post update. I have also heard from a continuing stream of extraordinarily hostile young men (always men) who insist on "educating" me on the ins and outs of cybermorality, the definition of "stealing," and why I deserve to choke on my own obsolescence. What he interpret as hostility is a bunch of young men who can't help but try tell you the truth as they see it. It's about watching people oblivious to the fact of life getting chop to bits by pirates and free markets because they refuse to recognize something crucial. And when they can't help you, they will buy other people stuff just to spite you. If they're in the same business, they will manically laugh at you. Then they will try to help you, knowing that you will just dismiss them like last time. Admittedly, they describe me. I am one of those young men who would do this on and off. I wanna crush them, and then tell them the good news.

ErrantX 16y ago
Unfortunately I suspect I know the type he is referring too; I've had my fair share of attacks from them over the years. And they (you?) are not doing very well at "educating" us. Mostly it verges from amusingly incoherent to downright disturbing :)
- kiba 16y ago
  Unfortunately I suspect I know the type he is referring too; I've had my fair share of attacks from them over the years. And they (you?) are not doing very well at "educating" +us. Mostly it verges from amusingly incoherent to downright disturbing :) You can call these people "amusingly incoherent" to "downright disturbing" if you want. It doesn't mean anything about the truth that these people try to explain to you, with everything and anything they have. Every single examples, and every business models big, small, and in between, they will throw out at you. Every single moral, ethical, and economic arguments they employ in their arsenal, thrown out at you. Every single historical evidences, they will dig up. Meanwhile, musicians and record labels and criticize and rationalize away anything and everything. They rather not give out anything and earn a million dollars in return. What these people have for you, is good news. It's very frustrating to see people not take it. These young men might have been your biggest fans, fellow musicians and artists, successful entrepreneurs or just a person well versed in economics dealing with non-scarcity.

kuahyeow 16y ago

Somehow, the more I read it, the more it seems like a case of "Sorry, I don't want you [the entire tech-literate demographic] as a customer". These guy makes a good point : http://www.jasonrobertbrown.com/weblog/2010/06/fighting_with_teenagers_a_copy.php#comment-9345 http://www.jasonrobertbrown.com/weblog/2010/06/fighting_with...

nkurz 16y ago

It's a good exchange, and worth reading particularly if you are one of those "extraordinarily hostile young men" who are likely disagree to with him. I left the article feeling that Eleanor (the defiant teenager) was particularly well-spoken, and that Jason Robert Brown would love for me to get off his lawn. I don't know him, but now I'm prejudiced against him and his works. But he does a great job of explaining his thought process, whether one agrees with it or not. And better understanding those with whom one disagrees is a good thing. I thought the weakest part was his attempt to make it a clear-cut case of right and wrong, and then go on to give some very muddy examples that really haven't been clearly decided: "I then ripped that CD on to my hard drive so I can listen to it on my iPod in my car. Well, that's not FAIR, right? I should have to buy two copies? No. There is in fact a part of the copyright law that allows exactly this; it's called the doctrine of fair use." Logical, I'd agree, but he might want to discuss this with the RIAA, who argue that it's not fair-use, and merely an example of their forbearance not to sue for such petty infringement: 'there’s no legal "right" to copy the copyrighted music on a CD onto a CD-R. However, burning a copy of CD onto a CD-R, or transferring a copy onto your computer hard drive or your portable music player, won’t usually raise concerns...' (http://www.riaa.com/physicalpiracy.php?content_selector=piracy_online_the_law http://www.riaa.com/physicalpiracy.php?content_selector=pira...) But his moral argument seems almost reasonable: I created this music, so I get to control who uses it. He trades fair-use under copyright for exclusive rights to distribution. Inevitability aside, 'hostile young men' of HN, what's the flaw with this reasoning? Does one need to resort to the fairly weak position that 'sharing' with strangers falls under fair-use, or is there something stronger that can be said?

peterwwillis 16y ago
I thought his moral argument was "please pay me for the sheet music so my kids won't starve." Which I agree is ridiculous; he'd just quit writing music and find another job before they died of starvation. I mean, hellooo, soup kitchens are free...
- mkramlich 16y ago
  plus obviously if he has multiple kids, he can afford to let one starve to death because he'll have the other as backup. Cruel man, tormenting poor wittle Eleanor, denying her the free music for her theatre classikins.

Anechoic 16y ago

Well it seems that many (if not most) of the posters here side with the girl's explanation. So be it, but don't get pissed at me when I take your GPL product, incorporate it into my closed-source set top box and refuse to release the source. After all, it's not like I've stolen anything or deprived you of revenue.

Tichy 16y ago
Fair point, but people tend to feel differently about the issue once somebody is making money from the IP theft. Eleanore apparently is a teenager trying to become an artist, not a scammer who repackages that artists compositions for ad jingles and becomes a millionaire from it. No matter what the law says or what you think about it, aspects like that will factor into what people FEEL is right.
- mkramlich 16y ago
  The problem is that Eleanor is not a special and unique butterfly floating inside her own private quantum singularity. Instead, she's just one person among millions out there who could use the same frickin excuse she's using. "I'm special. I can't afford it. (Well, not that AND my iPod AND my cool clothes AND..." Also, technically Jason's reason for contacting her originally was not to accuse her of taking a free copy for herself. It was to ask her to stop making it free for others. Because strictly speaking, if she only took a single free copy for herself, and if the only alternative to that if a free copy was not available was that she would have to buy -- and if she literally could not afford it or would not buy it -- then yes in that circumstance she could argue reasonably that she did not deny him revenue. But that's not the argument. The argument is that she's making free copies further available to others, some of whom would have otherwise bought copies. Whether there is or is not a stimulative effect leading to more copies bought from him is not for her to reason about it -- it's literally none of her business, and not her right to decide -- only his. He created that frickin music. Let him decide, and honor his wishes. Not much to ask, really.
  - Tichy 16y ago
    Why should Eleanor care about the things you mention?

grrr56 16y ago

Well, hopefully there are people in this world that write free and open software so people can build startups and earn money. If these open source people had his mentality, a lot of recent startups wouldn't even have been born. Greedy, disgusting artist.

russellallen 16y ago
He's greedy and disgusting because he's not giving his work away for free so that other people can build startups and earn money? Huh?
- john_45 16y ago
  I think you clearly misunderstood. The guy is a selfish and greedy person, trying to get these $4 out of this poor girl. Read the comment mentioning the creative common license potential usage, that's the right way to share to people and earn a decent living.
  - russellallen 16y ago
    Seriously? $4? Would he still be selfish and greedy if it was $1? $0.10?
    - john_45 16y ago
      Requesting money when the derivative representation/usage of the work is in return given for free (as in free theater show, free movie, free mixtape, other free software) is IMHO selfish and greedy.
  - mkramlich 16y ago
    dude, this whole discussion is so Bizarro World for me I can't tell when somebody is being serious or being sarcastic anymore. Yes, being greedy because he wants to be paid for something he created and this other person is benefiting from, who has circumvented the payment mechanism. Because she "deserves" it. Hilarious!

alextingle 16y ago

Absolutely hilarious that he blithely violates Eleanor's copyright as part of his programme to "educate" her about copyright law. (He has reproduced her copyrighted e-mails, against her clear wishes. She should educate him back by slapping a DMCA notice on him.)

mkramlich 16y ago
I'm pretty sure it was mentioned a couple times in there that he asked her and she gave permission. The fact that you would criticize that element and not on her attitude about not paying for his work frankly blows my mind a little.
- alextingle 16y ago
  She clearly stipulated that he only had permission to reproduce some parts of her work, and he goes out of his way to mention that he breached that license. Why on earth do you think that copyright law should protect him and not her?
  - Anechoic 16y ago
    She clearly stipulated that he only had permission to reproduce some parts of her work Where? From the article - JB: "I'll answer your question, but I'd like your permission to post the exchange on my website. Deal?" Eleanor: "absolutely!" From the update: "For those of you who were concerned, I did eventually hear from Eleanor. She said she didn't feel annoyed or offended that I had posted her remarks, she did understand where I was "coming from," and she appreciated that I took the time to deal with her." I'm not seeing where she "clearly stipulated that he only had permission to reproduce some parts of her work."
    - alextingle 16y ago
      That quotation in full: JB: "I'd like your permission to post the exchange on my website. Deal?" E: "absolutely! that would actually be kind of cool. but if you wouldn't mind changing my name in it to 'Eleanor.' I'm not sure why my iPod put it as 'Brenna' but that's not what I go by and I don't like that name."

mkramlich 16y ago

he was classy and accurate. I couldn't believe the attitude of that girl. unbelievable sense of entitlement to the fruits of someone else's labor.

lena 16y ago

In one of the comments someone asks the author if he himself never infringes on copyright. I thought his response to that was disappointing: while the majority of the imagery on my site is co-owned by me I can't vouch for all of it nor can I promise that it's all legally sound; none of that should prevent me from asking people not to trade my music illegally

mkramlich 16y ago

this is the type of story that's going to bring out in clear distinction the line between the HN readers who are in their teens or college and the HN readers who are working adults, especially those with families of their own to feed, and/or pre-Internet memories

ErrantX 16y ago

They both fall for the common fallacies and null arguments common to this sort of dispute. It is still an interesting read though; and I think they both come off well (less so the "obnoxious young men" :)). Who is right though? It's a morally difficult question because this is not like, say, a big film producer or an indie game developer (representing the two main extremes). This is a girl who (supposedly) wants sheet music for her school production. On the other hand Jason arranges music exactly for those sorts of scenarios; and at what point do you say "this person is now deserving of having the music for free". Thinking this through there is a fairly easy solution; Jason should offer his music through schools and other youth organisations for free (or free loan). Thus allowing teenagers such as this to put on their shows and practice their art. Then there will be no need for such people to trade the music. Solution, no?

cschwarm 16y ago
> It's a morally difficult question... Hardly, in my opinion. Just use the rather common approach of the Golden Rule: 'Treat others like you want to be treated'. If you want others to keep their promises to you, you should keep your promise to others. Likewise, if you want others to fulfill the contracts they agreed to, you should fulfill the contracts you agreed to. The author offered a contract: "Pay 4 dollars and promise not to copy and redistribute the media, and I promise to give you a copy". Nobody who accepted this contract, has the moral right to violate it. Otherwise, everybody would have the right to violate contracts, in general. Everything else is just a matter of organization: If teenagers need sheet music for school production, their parents should pay for it. Or the parents can create a club, hire somebody to write music, and share the resulting work.
- ErrantX 16y ago
  Sorry yes, you are dead right. There is no moral obligation for Elanor to expect to get the music for free. Or feel she has a right to distribute music etc. I mean't in the larger sense.

noibl 16y ago

The author links to his wife's blog post of a year ago in which she says a major part of the problem is the lack of an easy, legal way to access the material in question. He later links to a site where he says his work is available for instant purchase. When you visit that site, the first thing you see in Chrome is a giant 'missing plugin' block and an invitation to download the 'Scorch' sheet music plugin, which it turns out is available for IE, Firefox or (on Macs) Safari. JOY. Further down, you get the following message: "We advise you to check your printer setup now before you buy. You will only get one chance to print your music after you have purchased it. If you have difficulty printing, please see our print problems help page." WTF? OK...let's have a look at the print problems help page: "=== It says Printing To File Not Allowed === "Copyright law prohibits us from allowing customers to store image files of the scores on their computers. Therefore, when you buy from us, we only allow printing to paper." No. Seriously? The takeaway for me: not only do these people not get filesharing, they don't get computers and their attitude to those who do is one of xenophobia.

nikz 16y ago
Try getting a refund when their crappy plugin crashes your browser... How about the printed copy that's now unusable (because it's, you know, paper, and paper has a habit of getting crumpled or ripped or wet or binned...) Even iTunes doesn't make me pay for an mp3 again if my HDD dies...

TerminalDummy 16y ago

Art. Only for people with money.

timinman 16y ago

I'm impressed with the length of dialogue between the two, and disappointed that it got condescending on both accounts. As far as I can tell, Mr. Brown is legally correct and yet Elanor had some wisdom to offer him. I still haven't heard his work, but I'm thinking about it on her recommendation.

loewenskind 16y ago

I think he made a mistake posting this on his site. He was technically in the right but he came off as a total asshole. The girl was offering to basically advertise his work. Plus she stopped trading his music when he asked. She could have put it all on torrent to spite him (and something like that is very likely to happen if certain groups like 4chan see this). Hell, if his site wasn't so miserable I would just pay the $4 or whatever for her (i.e. I would but it doesn't look like there is a way for me to pay it for her). Sheesh.

drewcrawford 16y ago

I have a tiny bit of domain knowledge that I'd like to impart: 1) To be fair, real scores are hard to find. Most of the published stuff is simplified, has parts removed, or is otherwise substantively altered from what is actually performed by professionals (code for this: "Vocal selections from..." "Adapted from..." etc.) I can't speak to this particularly to JRB, who may very well publish real scores, but there is a perception in the industry that in general the good stuff is unavailable. 2) There is no iTunes for sheet music. If you click through his links, get ready to install ActiveX DRMey plugins to preview the music. On mac? Too bad. So there's no way to confirm, i.e., that this is the "real stuff" as opposed to simplified sheet music. 3) If you study the industry in any detail, you'll discover that it's set up like a "Good ol' Boys" system. You can't get a part until you join the union, but you can't join the union until you get a part. New actors are placed on secret lists that are passed around to other directors either to promote or defame them. This may be totally valid and even necessary for Broadway to function--but it does breed resentment among those trying to "break in" to the system. These three factors spell the perfect storm for piracy. There are multiple roadblocks to acquiring the music legally, and there's a huge resentment factor on the part of the consumers.