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I like Pete Seeger’s paraphrase of his father: “Plagiarism is basic to all culture”. I think we underestimate the damage to society at large when “remixing” the

I like Pete Seeger’s paraphrase of his father: “Plagiarism is basic to all culture”. I think we underestimate the damage to society at large when “remixing” the work of others is legally fraught. The mere reproduction of a previous performance is not additional work for the artist and so does not require compensation: to demand royalties undermines the fundamental structure of art for most of history.

AlecSchueler 1y ago
As a musician: that's totally fine, we can argue the philosophy of it all day and what the law should or shouldn't be. But right now it is what it is and people are basing their careers off that status quo. There should be some respect for that, no?
- welferkj 1y ago
  Sure, and "piracy" is part of the status quo. Show some respect for my total disrespect of IP laws and your livelihood.
  - AlecSchueler 1y ago
    Do you feel that putting the quote from the musician in the testimonials was respectful?
    - protocolture 1y ago
      If its legit feedback, the musician wanted it to be seen, why would it not be?
- komali2 1y ago
  > There should be some respect for that, no? Not really. Like when my friend scolded me the other day for not finishing the dessert I ordered - "trash is burned here, you're contributing to excess methane production." May I be flogged for my excess methane production. I will present myself with no resistance, so long as the floggings are delivered in a linear scale mapping to amount of methane produced. As soon as all the time in the universe is spent flogging the decision makers at all the oil and gas companies, I'm right there. People listening to music for free is less than a drop of water in the ocean of causative reasons musicians get fucked.
  - AlecSchueler 1y ago
    I don't know how you can square that with the fact that when people bought records musicians made more money. Your metaphor is also incredibly impersonal. What about stealing a sandwich from a homeless person and saying "well society already fucked them over big time." It's a drop in the ocean compared to all the meals he's already missed for other reasons.
    - komali2 1y ago
      > I don't know how you can square that with the fact that when people bought records musicians made more money. Everyone used to make more money, and anyway this could just as easily be further evidence that the current streaming model is worse and the harm is coming from megacorporations rather than individual behavior, which is my argument. I don't think your second paragraph is very good faith. It's not clear to me why this basic fact of piracy needs to be restated so often but I guess I'll do it again: Stealing a sandwich from a homeless person deprives a homeless person of a sandwich. Downloading a song deprives nobody of nothing - they can still sell the song. You can't reasonably compare these two completely different actions. You can make other arguments against piracy if you want but it simply isn't theft. Also my original was talking about orders of magnitudes difference. Burning my leftover pastry being the equivalent of like, a millisecond of the methane output of Chevron. Stealing a sandwich from a homeless person is 1 / 336580 vs, what, do I gotta do the math here to show how astronomically small my output is compared to chevron?
      - AlecSchueler 1y ago
        > I don't think your second paragraph is very good faith. It's not clear to me why this basic fact of piracy needs to be restated so often Woah, woah, let's back up here. You made a metaphor about orders of magnitude. I asserted that orders of magnitude on the level of the global environment and the individual human are very different and provided you with a metaphor to illustrate that. I made no suggestion that piracy was theft so you had no need to correct me on this "basic fact." > Everyone used to make more money It's not clear what you're saying with this. Maybe we should just continue the trend and say no one should earn any money anymore? Honestly confused by this one. > this could just as easily be further evidence that the current streaming model is worse and the harm is coming from megacorporations rather than individual behavior How did we come to the current model? Everyone was happily getting recording contacts with advances for instruments, studio time and touring logistics until one day MegaCorps said "let's instead move to a model where everyone pays the absolute minimum, if anything at all, and then try to split the much lower profits between the same number of actors?" Come on, I'm happy to criticise companies like Spotify all day but they weren't the driving force in creating the current model and having some of the richest people in our society sit around in forums like this saying maybe musicians shouldn't be paid at all really isn't helping
- account42 1y ago
  No, with that logic we should have outlawed the internet. It's up to you to find a working business model, not up to society to enable the one that you want.
  - AlecSchueler 1y ago
    Maybe you could explain that logical continuation because I don't follow you. Society has so far agreed to legislate in favour of people monetising their intellectual property. By all means people should be free to disagree with that for whatever reason but I feel it's a bad look to make fun of the musicians trying to follow the rules and make a living within the bounds of both law and social contract.
- cess11 1y ago
  Some people think that music should mainly be a task for artists, and not for careerists in the entertainment industrial complex.
  - AlecSchueler 1y ago
    How are these artists paying for their instruments and studios?
    - cess11 1y ago
      I don't see the relevance.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

AlecSchueler 1y ago

As a musician: that's totally fine, we can argue the philosophy of it all day and what the law should or shouldn't be. But right now it is what it is and people are basing their careers off that status quo. There should be some respect for that, no?

welferkj 1y ago
Sure, and "piracy" is part of the status quo. Show some respect for my total disrespect of IP laws and your livelihood.
- AlecSchueler 1y ago
  Do you feel that putting the quote from the musician in the testimonials was respectful?
  - protocolture 1y ago
    If its legit feedback, the musician wanted it to be seen, why would it not be?
komali2 1y ago
> There should be some respect for that, no? Not really. Like when my friend scolded me the other day for not finishing the dessert I ordered - "trash is burned here, you're contributing to excess methane production." May I be flogged for my excess methane production. I will present myself with no resistance, so long as the floggings are delivered in a linear scale mapping to amount of methane produced. As soon as all the time in the universe is spent flogging the decision makers at all the oil and gas companies, I'm right there. People listening to music for free is less than a drop of water in the ocean of causative reasons musicians get fucked.
- AlecSchueler 1y ago
  I don't know how you can square that with the fact that when people bought records musicians made more money. Your metaphor is also incredibly impersonal. What about stealing a sandwich from a homeless person and saying "well society already fucked them over big time." It's a drop in the ocean compared to all the meals he's already missed for other reasons.
  - komali2 1y ago
    > I don't know how you can square that with the fact that when people bought records musicians made more money. Everyone used to make more money, and anyway this could just as easily be further evidence that the current streaming model is worse and the harm is coming from megacorporations rather than individual behavior, which is my argument. I don't think your second paragraph is very good faith. It's not clear to me why this basic fact of piracy needs to be restated so often but I guess I'll do it again: Stealing a sandwich from a homeless person deprives a homeless person of a sandwich. Downloading a song deprives nobody of nothing - they can still sell the song. You can't reasonably compare these two completely different actions. You can make other arguments against piracy if you want but it simply isn't theft. Also my original was talking about orders of magnitudes difference. Burning my leftover pastry being the equivalent of like, a millisecond of the methane output of Chevron. Stealing a sandwich from a homeless person is 1 / 336580 vs, what, do I gotta do the math here to show how astronomically small my output is compared to chevron?
    - AlecSchueler 1y ago
      > I don't think your second paragraph is very good faith. It's not clear to me why this basic fact of piracy needs to be restated so often Woah, woah, let's back up here. You made a metaphor about orders of magnitude. I asserted that orders of magnitude on the level of the global environment and the individual human are very different and provided you with a metaphor to illustrate that. I made no suggestion that piracy was theft so you had no need to correct me on this "basic fact." > Everyone used to make more money It's not clear what you're saying with this. Maybe we should just continue the trend and say no one should earn any money anymore? Honestly confused by this one. > this could just as easily be further evidence that the current streaming model is worse and the harm is coming from megacorporations rather than individual behavior How did we come to the current model? Everyone was happily getting recording contacts with advances for instruments, studio time and touring logistics until one day MegaCorps said "let's instead move to a model where everyone pays the absolute minimum, if anything at all, and then try to split the much lower profits between the same number of actors?" Come on, I'm happy to criticise companies like Spotify all day but they weren't the driving force in creating the current model and having some of the richest people in our society sit around in forums like this saying maybe musicians shouldn't be paid at all really isn't helping
account42 1y ago
No, with that logic we should have outlawed the internet. It's up to you to find a working business model, not up to society to enable the one that you want.
- AlecSchueler 1y ago
  Maybe you could explain that logical continuation because I don't follow you. Society has so far agreed to legislate in favour of people monetising their intellectual property. By all means people should be free to disagree with that for whatever reason but I feel it's a bad look to make fun of the musicians trying to follow the rules and make a living within the bounds of both law and social contract.
cess11 1y ago
Some people think that music should mainly be a task for artists, and not for careerists in the entertainment industrial complex.
- AlecSchueler 1y ago
  How are these artists paying for their instruments and studios?
  - cess11 1y ago
    I don't see the relevance.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]