What are your questions on downloading & copying music legally?

tobybowes

If you legally download a song/album can you put it on your friends/familys/partners ipod or would this be illegal? I used to lend people cd's all the time but I wouldnt lend out a mp3 player. I suppose im saying when you purchase a track how many people can listen to it? Can it be resold like a cd could be (say you had an mp3 player with legally downloaded mp3s on it can it be sold or should it be formated)?

sugarcoma101

adouglasmhor wrote: »

Most linux distros must be illegal then.

Apologies, allow me to clarify. 99.9% if not all MUSIC downloads via Bittorrent are illegal. I can't speak for anything else.

dobspoon_2

I've got a stack of records in the attic, weighing down the ceiling and generally warping their way out of usefulness. I don't have any way of playing them.

Would it not be fair, especially given the high price I paid for those records in the Eighties, for me to have a file version of all those records which I don't have to obtain via some complex and time-consuming piece of kit hooked up to my PC?

I can't say I'd feel too strongly in the wrong about downloading these albums given that I've already paid more than 79p per song without allowing for inflation...

sugarcoma101

cherrynicola wrote: »

I have been burgled and the laptop on which I had backed up my CDs has been stolen. Unfortunately and co-incidentally, my car was broken into shortly afterwards, and my CDs (but not the CD cases, which I still posses) were stolen.

Do I have the right to download the CDs? Am I right to think that as I have already paid for them, then I am the legal owner of the content, and that if anyone has stolen content from the industry that it is the burglar and the thief?

(NB to claim for the CDs on my car insurance would incur a huge excess, and increase my insurance premium, so it does not seem reasonable to do this if I do technically still own the content and have a right to download it).

Unfortunately not. To give an example, if you had your TV stolen, you would not have the legal right to go into Dixons and pick up a new one without paying. You have paid for one CD and the music on that one CD...downloading from illegal websites is NEVER legal.

buzzablinio

Yes, I've got a question - why don't the BPI tackle the real pirates - the music industry itself.

How can they justify the current price structure for downloading a track when they are providing only 10% of the original digital information (compared to what you get on a CD), ie its a compressed file, no CD, no case, no booklet or artwork etc etc. If they charged 10p a track 50p an album more people would do it legally I'm sure.

The music industry has always seen the public as something it needs to milk. When expensive CDs became threatened by cheap online imports were they shamed into lowering their prices? No, they tried to make us all illegal importers!

When we were all buying vinyl, they tried to stop the cheap US imports that became available. They also used cheap vinyl (compared to that used for classical records) hence the usual snap crackle and pop experienced with any new purchase.

A recent Panorama showed that those that download most, spend the most legally on music.

The record industry needs a kick up the bottom. Charge a reasonable price for downloading music, bring CD prices in line with what is available overseas, and we'll all be happier!

sugarcoma101

buzzablinio wrote: »

Yes, I've got a question - why don't the BPI tackle the real pirates - the music industry itself.

How can they justify the current price structure for downloading a track when they are providing only 10% of the original digital information, ie its a compressed file, no CD, no case, no booklet or artwork etc etc. If they carged 10p a track 50p an album more people would do it legally I'm sure.

The music industry has always seen the public as something it needs to milk. When expensive CDs became threatened by cheap online imports were they shamed into lowering their prices? No, they tried to make us all illegal importers!

When we were all buying vinyl, they tried to stop the cheap US imports that became available. They also used cheap vinyl (compared to that used for classical records) hence the usual snap crackle and pop experienced with any new purchase.

A recent Panorama showed that those that download most, spend the most legally on music.

The record industry needs a kick up the bottom. Charge a reasonable price for downloading music, bring CD prices in line with what is available overseas, and we'll all be happier!

What would you class as a 'reasonable price' considering from a 79P download, the artist, the songwriters, the musicians, the recording engineers, the studio time, the graphic designers, the marketing and promotions teams, the press teams, the manufacturers, the producers, the sales teams AND the retailers need to be paid for their fair work from it?

adouglasmhor

sugarcoma101 wrote: »

What would you class as a 'reasonable price' considering from a 79P download, the artist, the songwriters, the musicians, the recording engineers, the studio time, the graphic designers, the marketing and promotions teams, the press teams, the manufacturers, the producers, the sales teams AND the retailers need to be paid for their fair work from it?

They won't get much if nobody buys it though. Lucky for them some sell in thousands.

sugarcoma101

buzzablinio wrote: »

Yes, I've got a question - why don't the BPI tackle the real pirates - the music industry itself.

I have a question for you. Why would you see the 'music industry' as a pirate? Why do you have an issue with them? Record labels are a business at the end of the day, and businesses exist to make profit from the goods/services they provide. They allow artists and musicians to fulfill their ambitions and dreams of being in music for a living and provide the investment and revenue needed for these artists to record and release albums. The money is costs a record label to launch a brand new artist from scratch goes into hundreds of thousands.

if you listen to this new artist, and like their work, how to you think it is fair to them and to those that have invested in making them a success, to not pay fairly for their work?

dawson001

Downloading has a marginal cost of near 0p - I.e. For your music, it costs barely any more to distrubute it via mp3 to 1 person than it does to 1000 people. This is completely different from CD costs so why are you still using your old pricing model?

What do you say to audiophiles who cannot find lossless audio versions of the music they want online? And it is only the pirates that provide this online?

Do you still think that MP3's will be around in 20 years time?

Is it illegal for me to burn off a CD of music I've downloaded legally and play it in my car?

What is you're view of the downloading youth? Who are heavily into music but don't have the funds for it therefore use illegal sites? Would you take their parents to court? What if their parents have no idea about computers and they don't know what their children are doing?

jamespir

dawson001 wrote: »

What is you're view of the downloading youth? Who are heavily into music but don't have the funds for it therefore use illegal sites? Would you take their parents to court? What if their parents have no idea about computers and they don't know what their children are doing?

ignorance isnt an excuse