I remember....Follow

I have some serious issues with people that download music. It's has nothing to do with the fact that our current copyright system is absolute crap. It has to do with the fact that you are getting something for free that someone created for the purpose of selling. It's not 1 hour in the studio to create an album and have it be done. It's usually 3-6 months of 18+ hour days of recording, rerecording, producing, post-production, going back over the originals, adjusting the mix on each of the tracks, and so on. Most musicians make minuscule amounts of money off of each album sold. In fact, most professional musicians would be considered at the poverty level. Record labels purchase the fancy cars, and houses and throw the parties and then give them or loan them to the musicians. Musicians make the most of their money when touring and going to concerts.

Now, why does this make downloading music "bad"? They're not LOSING money, maybe you wouldn't have bought the album in the first place. Maybe no one would have. But what most people don't understand (or they do and don't care) is that the music you downloaded was hosted somewhere. 95% of the music downloaded is using a peer to peer filesharing program, which means everyone running the program is hosting the files as well as downloading others. So in effect, you may have been benign in your downloading of the music ("They were recommended to me, I wanted to listen before I bought it", etc.) but you then become a server for whoever wants to download the music themselves. You are not just downloading the music, you're redistributing it amongst any who cares to download it.

In addition to the rights of the creators, the peer to peer filesharing software is some of the most poorly written pieces of crap out there. They utilize as much of the available bandwidth as possible, without any throttling, latency detection or any other methods of determining when it's getting lower speeds because it is saturating the circuit. It will upload at the full capacity, meaning other internet based traffic you try to attempt will be seriously impacted as well as flooding the downstream with incoming files. It sounds like that's what you want to do, send others files as fast as you can and download files as fast as you can, which is fine, so long as you are doing absolutely nothing else on the internet. The instant you begin web browsing, or say, playing ffxi, it is noticeable. A few of the programs have "throttles" in them that really do nothing at all except set the packet size that it's sending. Setting the "bandwith limit" or "upstream speed" does nothing for it because it is sending at the same rate, it is just prepared to queue any packets that can't be transmitted.

Why should the creators of something not have the decision over whether others can give it away or not? I write software, I write web applications, I write music. I've released a lot of software under the GPL, allowing for others to modify and redistribute it. I've also NOT released a lot of software under the GPL because if everything I do is essentially given away, how do I pay my bills? The same applies for everything, the creator should have the right and the ability to say "No, Catwho, as cool as you are, you can't give my stuff away for free." or to say "Sure thing, Dagiraffe, give it all away."

Our copyright system is flawed in that the current interpretation of it considers the medium in which the product was on, not on the product itself. The current goals of the RIAA and other, similar groups, is to allow you to have only 1 copy per purchase. I.e., buy an album on CD, you can have that CD, but you can't transfer the CD to another medium, like a hard drive, or change the format to mp3 and transfer it to a music player.

Ok, I think I'm done with my rant. You folks don't have to stop downloading music, just understand the full implications of what you're doing.

You like indie? =O

Last I knew only the has-beens were broke anyways... most of these artists own houses worth more than my life is. (STFU, anyone with a comment towards that last sentence... you aren't funny. GTFO. You suck. No. STFU. Don't try to insult me. STFU. No. No. No. Stop. STFU.)

Very interesting... never would have guessed. lol

Funny, I thought they were human beings with thoughts and feelings, which is the way I generally treat people. In exchange I'm generally treated with courtesy and respect back. I also don't hold grudges too long; there are a few exceptions but most of them have been banned by now. I pride myself on being amiable enough to get along with anyone in the game.

Also, you just described what I refer to as a "moo" -- which I shall hope to god NEVER be. For one thing, I'm having my uterus removed or otherwise disabled at the earliest opportunity because I don't want my flawed genes floating around the pool. Kids are ucky. Cats are enough for me. Therefore, I do not need a minivan. I drive a Honda Accord. And the stickers are currently: "How is electing another Clinton going to change anything?" and the usual assortment of Athens junk, band stickers, and UGA alumnus stickers.

I still have fun in this game, which is why I play. It's cheap entertainment, far cheaper than cable or movies.

Please. Only idiots who are mediocre at their job pretend that their job is complex. Black Mage is one of the easiest jobs in FFXI, and it relies mainly on gear. BLM, just like most jobs in FFXI, is stupidly easy, don't pretend it isn't.

You were good untill you had to go overboard on that last post whosyo. D:



I do. If my friends and myself are going to set up a static at X level, and they want to bring Y jobs for it, then I'll see if I have anything I can level with them untill they hit that X level for the static. It's always fun to have a good LS member party with you, especially when there are so few raw#'s of people around at the lower levels. o.ob

I think selling an account is not a huge big major issue today like it was 1, 2, or 3 years ago. RMT do not show a sizeable competing force at end-game. They tried for years but we as players pretty much owned their asses to make it unprofitable to attempt end-game fulltime in competition with us for gil. Because of that, selling an account and having a potential RMT buy it is not such a big blow. Back then it would have been because they have another powerful tool to win their fights. Now they typically become a glorified mule, you don't need a super powerful endgame character to do the mundane tasks RMT do nowadays.

Still, when you have a lot of gear that was by no means a solo effort, it -could- be considered more of a 'sh*ts on you, thanks for the help getting all this gear but its time for me to cash in' - to the linkshell that helped you get all the gear. But going by that train of thought, one could also say the gear was LS 'property'-which it clearly wasn't. A better analogy would be if you won a car on Oprah because you are a single parent struggling to pay the bills and without a reliable car you can't be everywhere yo uneed to be on time for you and your kids...then you turn around and sell it because its an 'oprah car'- and then you buy a junker with money to spare. Its kind of a slap to oprah's generosity. 'Thanks for the car- but I don't want your hand outs, I'd rather have the cash to indulge myself.' The deed itself is inherantly marked with a feeling of greed and selfishness, wether the intentions are there or not. Thats where the phrase we here so much comes into play, 'actions speak louder than words.' - And I hate when it's always right -_-

Edited, Feb 8th 2008 10:47am by FenrirXIII