As Recording Industry Announces Massive Growth, Why Do We Need Article 13 Again?
from the questions-to-ponder dept
A key claim by those who support Article 13 is that it's necessary to get "fair compensation" for artists on the internet. Whenever more specifics are needed, supporters almost always point to musicians, and talk about "the value gap" and how internet companies are taking all the money and recorded music has been destroyed by the internet and all of that. And, of course, if you've followed the rhetoric in the last 20 years since the introduction of Napster, you'd believe that the recorded music business is in a never-ending death spiral. Of course, as we've pointed out, the "recorded music business" is just one segment of the larger music business, and nearly all other aspects of it (especially live music) have continued to grow pretty consistently each year.
But, a funny thing has happened in the past few years that undermines the doom and gloom message: the recorded music business has been growing. Rapidly. And it's entirely due to the internet and all of the various services that the RIAA had been slamming for years. Indeed, it did seem notable when the RIAA put out its latest revenue numbers for 2018, showing the incredibly rabid growth over the past four years of the recorded music business. So I started taking an even closer look at what's happened over the past decade. Thankfully, the RIAA actually makes all of the data available, and so I put together this handy chart:
So, yes, things sort of bumbled along for the first few years of the past decade, but the last few years are ones of massive and incredibly rapid growth due to online streaming. The US recorded music business is right at about $10 billion (if you're interested, the live music business in the US is about the same, counting both ticket sales and sponsorship).
Now, you might say, well that's just the US, and Article 13 is about Europe. Thankfully, IFPI puts out similar numbers (counted slightly differently, unfortunately, so it's not an exact comparison). IFPI has not yet released its 2018 numbers, but looking at the report from last year you see that the global numbers show a pretty similar change, again, with things bottoming out a few years back, and then showing new growth, almost entirely from the rapid increase in streaming services. I expect when IFPI releases its 2018 numbers, we'll see just as dramatic a bump up as we see with the RIAA's US numbers:
So, it certainly looks like the internet (as some of us predicted...) has absolutely been the savior to the music business -- it just took the legacy companies hellishly long to embrace it.
But, again, I'm left wondering why is it that we need Article 13 again? To hear Axel Voss and other supporters talk about it, the recording industry is in a death spiral without it. Yet, the actual stats show things are going quite well and growing like gangbusters.
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Filed Under: article 13, copyright, culture, eu, eu copyright directive, growth, recording industry, streaming
Companies: ifpi, riaa
Reader Comments
The First Word
“Article 13 specifically and deliberately targets sites that already engage in legal activity. “Pirate sites” would never be affected because such sites already exist in what you could call a state of illegality. Like DRM, Article 13 would do nothing to prevent or stop piracy while it affects the average person’s Internet usage.
made the First Word by Gary
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Back to the roots
Whereas the idea is that the record companies take all the money. Well, not all of it: of course a fair cut is also given to the collection societies.
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Re: Back to the roots
And more to the artists, the people who MAKE the music that the pirate thieves TAKE, which also diverts money to criminals.
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Re: Re: Back to the roots
As shown in the charts above, you're wrong.
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Re: Back to the roots
As we can clearly see, the US uptick is entirely proportional to Vinyl/LP sales. The MAFIAA should never have stopped selling them in the first place. Now see how they have massively improved the profits. As for the Paid Subscription contribution, that is just masking the Columbia Record Club profits, and their LP of the Month promotion. Also, this has come at the expense of Cylindrical Distribution [wax cylinders]/ Direct Vinyl Distribution (CD/DVD).
Watch out for the re-emergence of Direct-Reel-to-Digital-Reel-Enhanced™ (D®.D®E), and Binaural-Enhanced-Analog-Tape-Systems.
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Re: Re: Back to the roots
Funny comment of the week winner here, folks! :)
Sadly enough, some record company exec probably thinks all that is true. A bunch of stupider, greedy con-artists I've never seen.
If the figures show us anything, it's the parasitical nature of modern media conglomerates. They earn more than half their income from a huge library of music they scammed out of desperate artists that, thanks to Mickey, will be theirs for the foreseeable future, and sold across a platform they had no hand in making or perfecting. Indeed, they hindered the platform as much as inhumanly possible in their lack of vision.
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Re: Re: Re: Back to the roots
Thanks Joe. Here's some more.
Once in a while, you may write down words
And the music, of a song you heard before
By transcribing secret songs, like the Vatican forbade
Like Mozart and Gregorio Allegri, maybe more
But just like Mozart, all this music makes you glad
And you want, to spread joy both near and far
So you start out singing songs, everyone wants to perform
And backing tracks, and maybe adding in some neat guitar
So don't write down this song
Upsetting Rome is very wrong
Keep it all to yourself, like a good peasant should
No. Don't write down this song
Oh you never ever want to, make it Public Domain
Keep it locked away in chains forevermore
You might be a virtuoso or a child prodigy
It's not your place to go and set this beautiful music free
Don't write down this song
Upsetting Rome is very wrong
Keep it all to yourself, like a good peasant should
No. Don't write down this song
This music's been controlled by the Roman Holy See
They never want it out there on cassette or MP3
Or sung by common choirs, these things must never be
So Amadeus, do as we decree
Don't write down this song
Martin Luther know's it's so wrong
Keep it all to yourself, like a good peasant should
No. Don't write down this song
Don't write down this song
Don't give it to the common throng
Keep it all to yourself, like a good peasant should
No. Don't write down this song
Please don't upset Rome
They might set fire to your home
Keep it all to yourself, like a good peasant should
No. Don't write down this song
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Back to the roots
Just stop forwarding that crap to me.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Back to the roots
A parody of a Weird Al song seems a little redundant, but I like it.
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Live music is hourly labor that has little to do with most people who create music, from the songwriters to the many people who produce albums and videos and didn't sign on to have to go touring to (maybe) make money.
Stopping piracy is also about taking money out of the hands of organized crime and other criminals. Everything posted on this site in this manner is designed to dismiss the cancer on both revenue and society that is piracy. Criminals get the IP addresses of visitors to the sites, contact information, could easily infect computers with spyware and malware, etc.
Article 13 will break the CRIMINAL internet (the pirates), but the remainder will survive just fine, even better with more money. Pirates are defenseless against these takedowns because they will not identify themselves to license the work. Masnick's neverending tantrum over Article 13 is nothing more than a desire to see piracy thrive, and content creators (who are much more than musicians) left to have their hard work stolen.
Masnick also lets his commenters do the bullying on this site against any dissenters. He has ties to people who have harassed me, or incited others even to make explicit death threats against me. These include white-supremacists, hackers (basically cyberterrorists), and brazen anti-semites incluing 9/11 deniers as a "Jew conspiracy." On this site he allows direct bigotry with multiple slurs, and has let people make death threats against EU government officials.
If you think a man like this is anything but disgusting, you're no better than him. Thankfully goverments are developing zero-tolerance policies for the type of speech he allows and provokes.
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Re:
"but the remainder will survive just fine"
No it won't for reasons that have been explained to you many times.
"Criminals get the IP addresses of visitors to the sites, contact information, could easily infect computers with spyware and malware, etc."
You still don't know how it works, huh? No, that mailing list you use to scam people with is not being used by other criminals.
"On this site he allows direct bigotry with multiple slurs, and has let people make death threats against EU government officials.
Yet, you can never point to an actual example of this. Why do you lie?
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Re: Re:
That poster thinks that with just an IP addr they can plant malware upon target machine?
lol
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Re: Re: Re:
"That poster thinks that with just an IP addr they can plant malware upon target machine?"
He believes a lot of stuff. By his own admission he's got genius-level IQ, a tech background, a law background, is rich, potent and handsome, has high friends in the FBI, is a successful artist and author...
And according to him you just doubting his word in a snarcastic tone means you'll end up with a SWAT team hauling you off for a good ole rubber hose session in some dank basement.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
Don’t forget he’s also movie mogul, owned a multi million dollar business, is a household name on par with Prince, is in a famous band, is SO POTENT you guys, and has so many girlfriends you don’t even know.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
He's actually never claimed he has girlfriends. I'm not sure he knows what those are.
And the multi million dollar business he keeps lamenting about apparently is his own estimate - if not for those durn pirates ho nicked his self-help books and done stole his mailing list...
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Re:
Article 13 specifically and deliberately targets sites that already engage in legal activity. “Pirate sites” would never be affected because such sites already exist in what you could call a state of illegality. Like DRM, Article 13 would do nothing to prevent or stop piracy while it affects the average person’s Internet usage.
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Re: Re:
"Article 13 would do nothing to prevent or stop piracy while it affects the average person’s Internet usage"
Plus, it would destroy a great deal of their legal competition, as well as a great number of industries unrelated to theirs.
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Re: Re: Re:
Money spent on unrelated stuff cannot be spent on music. So it's win-win.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
They probably think that, but the reality would shock them.
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Re:
"Live music is hourly labor"
Like DJ Master Web?
"Criminals get the IP addresses of visitors to the sites, contact information, could easily infect computers with spyware and malware, etc."
You mean like SmartBotPRO.NET, SmartBOT, Cyberpromo, Plum Crazy, Welchmark, May-21-2018, Facebook-711, EJ_Lavida and Colorado 16075-111?
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Re:
People like you make me want pirate content online out of spite...
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Re:
Article 13 is like torpedoing a ship with thousands of passengers where 1 or 2 are "pirates".
No, the "pirates" just jump into their small cutters and putters away laughing their ass off.
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Re: Re:
He really thinks “this time we will get the pirate bay.”
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Re: Re: Re:
And the utter idiocy of that is that article 13 can't affect the pirate bay because although a site operator can go down for intent to assist infringement, the site itself is quite legal, and magnet links whose copyrights belong to those who voluntarily generated and uploaded them.
In other words, article 13 could only impact pirates if pirates were in the habit of uploading movies to streaming sites - as opposed to, you know, using bittorrent.
But hey, in his little la-la land, an anti-pirate law of any sort MUST mean that tomorrow a hundred thousand pirates will all be hauled off in chains. And there shall be a wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Any delusion he can wank his hate-boner to he will perceive as established fact, is my guess.
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Re:
History says hi and also that you're an idiot. Idiot.
No law has ever stopped piracy, and no law ever will. Denying reality is bad for your mental health.
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Re: Re:
History can throw all the historical fits it wants to. Nobody listens to it anyway. Denying reality may be bad for your mental health but it's good for your vote tallies.
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Re: Re: Re:
History is the momentum of reality, ignore it and it will squish you.
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Re:
"Masnick also lets his commenters do the bullying on this site against any dissenters. He has ties to people who have harassed me, or incited others even to make explicit death threats against me. These include white-supremacists, hackers (basically cyberterrorists), and brazen anti-semites incluing 9/11 deniers as a "Jew conspiracy." On this site he allows direct bigotry with multiple slurs, and has let people make death threats against EU government officials."
Citation needed - can you show a single post on this site where someone made a credible threat against you?
Unless these alleged threats are coming directly to you. In which case, please demonstrate how this is even related to TD at all?
For someone who has such a dim view of section 230, you are actually making baseless claims that amount to defamation against Masnick. Rich!!
What is your "simple fix" to the problems you are claiming? And who are these malicious perpetrators??
You are making repeated, serious claims without a shred of proof - and crying that no one is taking action.
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Re: Can’t even keep your lies straight
Record Scratch
Whoh, whoh, whoh! Bro, I called you a delusional, impotent, old, lying, fuckwit. I’m an asshole, NOT an antisemite!
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Re:
"Masnick also lets his commenters do the bullying on this site against any dissenters..."
Was this before or after you threatened to fuck all the "aspies" around here up the ass SO hard...?
Let's be honest here, Baghdad Bob. You complaining about "bullying" is like listening to a card-carrying Daesch/ISIS complaining about the racism inherent in being forbidden to marry a 12 year old against her will.
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Re:
Biggest load of Trump-like twaddle I've read in many a year!
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Party like it's 1999
The CEO of the Italian RIAA honestly acknowledges the growth, but complains we're still far from the total revenue peaks of 1999 (60 % of that level he says).
https://twitter.com/enzomazza/status/1106673240179642374
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IFPI revenue comparisons to 1999
And his source was probably https://www.ifpi.org/downloads/GMR2018.pdf :
(Which still doesn't clarify whether the amounts are adjusted for inflation.)
This comes after the observation that
Curiously, the entire report never users the word "margin" and the only usage of the word "profit" is reserved for "large scale copyright infringement".
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"But, again, I'm left wondering why is it that we need Article 13 again? "
That's actually very simply to explain. While there's a lot of growth, the main part that the two graphs appear to show growing is paid streaming subscription services. Major record labels generally make less money from these, and can exercise less control. They also face greater competition, since my Spotify subscription covers independent musicians, or even podcasts, as much as it does themselves.
As usual, it's no mystery so long as you remember it's all about legacy middlemen rather than the industry as a whole.
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Re: Profit margins
Do we have any actual numbers on this? What were the operating profit margins of the recording industry in 1999, the CD golden age? Are we sure they were lower than now?
I bet the majors get a bigger share now. Back then, they had to share a portion, however minimal, with distributors and shop-keepers. Now they only have to spend some money on a fingerprint database and then Google and Spotify wire them billions without the need to lift a finger.
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Re: Re: Profit margins
"I bet the majors get a bigger share now"
It depends on how you define "share". I personally doubt that they are getting a bigger share overall, but even if they do you have to remember that there's a lot of misunderstanding on there side about what they're getting. According to them, they're getting ripped off because they don't get as much per stream as they did per purchase back in the day, just as their reaction to iTunes purchases was to whine that the single tracks weren't making them as much as a full album used to.
Even if the actual figures are in their favour, the arguments coming from them tend to be about how much they're losing due to unbundling and rental become the norm over full album purchases. Remember, it's always as much about control as it is about raw income, and they have most certainly lost that over the years.
"then Google and Spotify wire them billions without the need to lift a finger"
But... they want more, and have shown themselves willing to be killing off those services in the process of getting it.
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Re: Re: Profit margins
QFT
Not content to laugh all the way to the bank with their unearned billions, they have to whine about how they don't have all the money yet.
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What?? The recording industry is still around? I thought we'd killed them off with our tape recorders. And our CD burners. MP3 players. Mobile phones. Torrents.
Dang. Nothing seems to work.
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Re:
Try silence. It's actually pretty relaxing. It won't kill off the recording industry either, of course, since there are levies on any data storage medium, computer, CD drive and other stuff that has imaginary ability to store music that you should already have paid for.
And frankly, it would be a shame to waste perfectly good storage capacity on the kind of thing they call "music" nowadays.
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Re: Re:
I still want to see a full accounting of the hundreds of millions those levies earn and how that is paid out to the actual artists...
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Re: Distribution of private copy levy
The Italian collecting society alone (SIAE) has hundreds of millions euro from those levies that they don't even manage to distribute. They just sit on their balance sheet rotting (p. 72
https://www.siae.it/sites/default/files/12_04_RENDICONTO_DI_GESTIONE_2017_Approvato_new.pdf ).
Now it will be fun to see if someone magically happens to be given the key to open this safe:
https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Copyright_Final_compromise.pdf
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Re: Re:
Maybe, but who wants to listen to the sound of silence?
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Re: Re: Re:
Hey - that song was not so bad, was it?
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Re: Re: Re:
I'm rather partial silence to on occasion. But I also buy my music directly from musicians and used CD shops.... I know I am an outlier statistically.
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Re:
"What?? The recording industry is still around? I thought we'd killed them off with our tape recorders. And our CD burners. MP3 players. Mobile phones. Torrents."
Yes, but before that we killed them off with the phonograph, the self-playing piano, and radio.
"Dang. Nothing seems to work."
Because what we really need there is a stake, a blessed cross, a crossroads and a shovel.
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Re:
Yeah, they're like my sorrows. I tried drowning them, but the little suckers can swim!
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Its actually quite simple...
The EU doesn't want you to have a free internet. The intention behind Article 13 and Article 11 is shut the internet down. The EU is your enemy! Should the Copyright Directive pass, you must urge your government to break away from this den of corruption that is the European Union
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Re: Its actually quite simple...
"The EU doesn't want you to have a free internet."
"The EU is your enemy!"
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Funny thing... the only way we'll ever force the recording and movie industries to [help] get copyright laws back in sync with public [and human] rights is to boycott their products, not by throwing even more money at them. Much of that money just goes straight into the pockets of lawmakers. The rich get richer by stealing the money out of our pockets.
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Re:
A better idea, work on getting politicians who will do what's best for the public elected, and the Industries can cry all they like as copyright is rolled back.
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Re:
The sad thing is that we live in an entertainment culture. Most of Europe and North America is so prosperous that he have huge amounts of disposable income to throw at things that amuse us.
I don't think it's going to get any better either. What happens if robots are doing all our jobs, and people are given a "universal basic income" just to keep down starvation and riots? People won't go around making art; they will just watch it.
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Re: Re:
Nonsense. There are a whole lot of artists who'd spend more time on their art if they didn't have to work a day job (or two, or three) to pay the bills.
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Re: Re:
Many will, maybe even most. Some will be freed from the burden of doing things they hate to scrape an existence and create what they always wanted to. Some of that content will also be far more worthwhile than that created by the vapid corporate models employed right now. Such is the way of things.
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“Rabid” growth?
What’s “rabid” growth? Is it foamy?
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Re: “Rabid” growth?
With the MAFIAA, it is more vampiric growth, based on sucking the profits out of every company they can get to pay royalties.
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Re: Re: “Rabid” growth?
"With the MAFIAA, it is more vampiric growth..."
Cancerous. The word you're looking for is cancerous. A vampire is smart enough to leave the blood donor alive for another meal.
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Re: “Rabid” growth?
I'm sorry, I was peeing upside down
and/or that's crazy
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13 reasons
We need Article 13 to kill off "Fair Use," that is nothing but an excuse to use unlicensed works. Everything should be licensed - nothing can be uploaded without a paid license and a certificate of use.
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Re: 13 reasons
Even the record labels you're shilling for would have a problem with that.
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Re: Re: 13 reasons -- Oh, look paid troll "PaulT" spamming.
"PaulT" has recently admitted that is PAID to do little more than surf the net.
And what does he do with all that PAID time? Trolls this tiny little site. He's spent nearly a work-year at it!
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Re: Re: Re: 13 reasons -- Oh, look paid troll "PaulT" spamming.
On the other hand, there are some who come here everyday even though they hate the site - without getting paid.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
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Re: Re: Re: 13 reasons -- Oh, look paid troll "PaulT" spamming.
Someone’s totes jelly.
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Re: Re: Re: 13 reasons -- Oh, look paid troll "PaulT" spamming.
"He's spent nearly a work-year at it!"
As I've mentioned before - I bet you've spend waaay longer at it, you're just too much of a chicken shit to log in and let us see how long you've been at it.
I'm not surprised, given the low quality of what you post, but if this is the only argument you have against my words, you've already lost.
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Projecting hard enough to rival the sun
There's just something very funny about someone who has demonstrate a flat-out stalker level of obsession with something, like the site and those who post on it, accusing others of being obsessed(and/or spinning wild conspiracy theories about those that aren't as obsessed as them) and acting as though that's some horrible thing.
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Re: Projecting hard enough to rival the sun
Oh, it gets better.
blue thinks that trying to extend a thread to several hundred posts is some form of achievement.
Even though there's already a thread from the early days which user posts run into the thousands. Granted, most of that thread is AI-generated spambot fodder, but it doesn't make blue seem any saner.
Trying to outspam AI is his definition of a crowning achievement.
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Re: 13 reasons
"nothing can be uploaded without a paid license and a certificate of use."
In your plan, would independent artists have to license their own works from themselves and will the government charge fees for this ubiquitous licensing of everything? They hate was for our freedoms.
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Re: 13 reasons
Then fees for use must be set by the government and allow for $0 fees for satire of and commentary on the licensed material. $0 for non-profit use, too. Fees for other uses should be kept in check and published on a schedule.
There needs to be a government clearinghouse for acquiring these licenses so that progress isn't held up by bitchy content creators. Of course this government licensing house will have to collect these fees and it's not free to run the clearing house by any means so they'll keep a giant chunk of the fees collected.
In the end we'll have greater complexity, even less creator control and you'll still not make any money off your trash.
Great plan, sparky.
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Re: Copyrights best and brightest right here.
I’d say that was sarcasm, if I didn’t know for sure what raving lunatics you people were.
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Artists on the internet will see a loss of revenue under article 13, they will have a fewer options when they want to reach
the public directly promote their work,
Fewer options to post trailers ,promo,s , music clips ,
artwork.
There will only be only be a few websites that will be able to afford expensive filters to examine every
audio clip,video, trailer etc to see if it is infringing ,
Sites like facebook or youtube will probably have to reach a license deal with all major tv,film, companys to protect themselves from legal action.
the music industry is booming because it
finally made deals to get into the digital age of streaming,
digital downloads etc
This law is being lobbied for by german newspapers ,publishers and legacy ip holders ,
large corporations ,they hardly care about
indie artists, streamers, free speech or the public,
They want more power when it comes to doing licensing
deals with google,facebook,etc
they don,t care if 1000,s of small eu websites shut down
or stop allowing user uploads in the future .
This law is in contrast with the american new digital music law of 2018 which was designed to make it easier to set up a streaming and digital music service and to compensate
singers, composers ,songwriters , and record companys
fairly without putting massive legal obligations
on other websites to install filters .
The growth of the muisc industry is also a sign that article 13
is pointless, in 2019, Simply
provide app,s services and content at a fair price in the free market and the public will pay for the content.
Whether by paying subsciptions or using an ad supported
service like youtube.
At the moment artists can use streaming service,s ,youtube or a host of smaller websites to reach the public directly
and promote their work or even get donation,s like patreon
and similar websites .
The music industry is working in the free market
and getting more revenue without going to the extreme
of bringing in new laws which restrict free speech and
reduce the current freedom to use content for fair use ,
parody and commentary , eg film ,tv reviews .
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Re:
Looks to be a bad cut 'n paste.
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Re: Re:
I probably agree with that, but it looks like spam.
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Re: Re: Re:
I dunno what that particular anon's deal is, but I see posts like that in a number of threads. Copy-and-paste could explain the weird linebreaks, but not the weird spaces and use of commas instead of apostrophes.
I'm inclined to cut the poster some slack in case they're disabled or not a native English speaker or otherwise have some difficulty that's not their fault. But yeah, those posts sure are hard to read.
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DUNNING-KRUGER FOR DUMMIES
Many people think they are amateurish when they are, in fact, professional (professional amateur). Likewise, many other people think they are professional when they are, in fact, amateurish (amateur professional).
But, at first, it is only the amateur professionals that will put down the professional amateurs. This is because the former have unfounded and irrationally high self-esteem while the latter have unfounded and irrationally low self-esteem, even if these last people are factually better than those firsts (as per Dunning-Kruger) and this state of things is a magnet and fertile ground for all kinds of bullies, abusers and generally unsound people, who will make everything possible to convince the professionals believing that they are amateurs that they are, in fact, amateurs believing that they are professionals, just like them.
It is only when the professional amateur finally understands this phenomenon that they will be able to grow in self-esteem and hopefully become a professional professional. And then they will also be able, if willing, to criticize and condemn the amateur professionals, just as they were treated themselves, but this time on solid ground, and not on make-believe as the ego-stroking and unfounded lies of the "officially skilled", the "unprofessional professional", and their modus operandi, would prefer them to do. Still, these last people will always remain amateur professionals, while those first, the professional amateurs, the "unofficially skilled", the "professional unprofessional", will soar to greater and new heights, if given possibility.
And that's the key: if given possibility. Because the amateur professionals, understanding this situation, and as the bullies that they are, and in case the ridiculing and hating and distorting is not enough, will then begin to conspire to silence the professional amateurs, once and for all. And they will even enact legislation to accomplish their sick objective.
Of course, there is always the possibility that the professional amateur, having become professional professional, will eventually become "officially skilled", hence an amateur professional, especially when confronted with fresh and new realities, and so with new professional amateurs. But this is exactly what laws like these want to prevent. The supporters of such kinds of legislation are those forever stuck on amateur professional modality, probably because they were so from the start (I'd say they are fakers and they have no real talent but their "acquired" status makes them believe that they have it) and since they have no chance of redeeming themselves, they prefer to just remove the competition by making it unable to create or do anything.
The real irony, and tragedy, in my opinion, is that the general populace will blindly trust and appreciate amateur professionals much more than professional amateurs. There are guys who don't know shit, in fact having very basic skills and no talent, but they "sell themselves" and go very high, especially because most of people believe them, since they don't get who is a real professional and who's not. And eventually, at the very moment when they conquer their publicly or officially sanctioned status, often through underhand schemes, everyone will just magically trust them because they're "authority". Instead, some other individuals have talent and skills, but because of low self-esteem they put themselves down, and because of this they are appreciated only by "professional" circles like them, and not generic people. In fact, the more you know, the more you understand that you don't know (hence the low self-esteem); instead, these very sure ones seem to know everything, and people will believe them just because they present themselves well.
To me, this also ties in with the difference between "selling" and "being", or the contrast between marketing/persuading/monetary/egotistical "truths" vs original/experiencing/essential/selfless "truths". This difference gets complicated very easily because people often mistake the two truths, due to lack of discernment, saying that something is an expedient of persuading or marketing while in reality it is genuine, or they believe and trust and like something that they think is genuine, when in fact it is something designed only to "sell" in a broader sense.
In my opinion, the danger lies in left-brain thinking getting the upper hand on right-brain one (I know the left/right brain dichotomy has been disputed by some, but this is just for the purposes of explaining in layman's terms). It would be like digital thinking predominating on analog one; yet, would digital thinking even exist without input from analog one? Or if it existed, would it be a worthy and inspired thinking and not an uninspired, counterfeited one? (kind of like the difference between an original piece of music from Bach himself, and a Bach copycat created with artificial intelligence and artificial neural networks à la DeepBach).
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Re:
TL; DR
Flagged as spam.
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Re: Re:
Off topic for sure.
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Re: Re: Re:
Desperate, at least.
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it's about control, same as with all the entertainment industries!! they dont want to have to supply any media to anyone for less than it costs to buy it from a highstreet store, but doesn't cost only a fraction of producing it for download!! remember, torrent files have been the worst thing ever invented, according to the entertainment industries. as there is nothing better as far as downloading is concerned, watch what happens to this opinion once all countries have given the industries what they want! torrent files will suddenly become the best thing ever!!
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Re:
No, it's about stopping thieves and organized crime from profiting at the expense of legitimate content creators who create jobs and pay taxes.
Opposition to Article 13 is rooted in a desire to let piracy thrive, so that those who take can pilfer the hard work from those who make. That is why it will pass.
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Re: Re:
How will article 13 stop piracy on sites such as the pirate bay? Can you cite, where in article 13, does it have anything that will allow the gov't to take action against sites such as the pirate bay?
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Re: Re:
If your idea of protecting your stuff is to fuck everyone else's stuff up I take exception. It also means you are an unreasonable man who doesn't care who he has to trod on to get what he thinks he is owed, just like a fanatic.
You lack intelligence and wisdom, may you live in interesting times.
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Re: Re:
Article 13 has absolutely nothing to do with piracy the way you use the word. Nothing at all.
Where did you alt-right get this information? I'm genuinely curious who started this fake news.
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Re: Re:
You know that’s what they said about SOPA...
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http://wazua.com/forum.aspx?g=posts&t=1942
This is someone who went by "Satoiti" in Nairobi, Kenya, who, in 2009, organized a DVD of over 800 pirated books that he offered for sale, along with a "business plan" for anyone who gave their e-mail address to this forum. The DVD was sold for a pittance, the money going to criminals rather than to the legitimate creators of this content.
These are books on topics as varied as finance, self-help, and others that people claimed they NEEDED, not that they wanted to try them out. Absent piracy, many of these people would have had no alternative but to purchase any of these works. Publishers, particularly independent ones (some of whom have popular titles in this list), would have had to go to KENYA to sue this individual. Apparently, few did because other websites have sprung up with similar groupings, including but not limited to Pirate Bay-type sites.
This is pure THEFT of works that honest people had to pay considerable money to purchase. The distribution list of people who wanted these books itself is extremely valuable (figure out what Google charges per click to drive traffic to these authors). No one who buys this DVD has any need to make future purchases, so there is no benefit there. Piracy on THIS scale is what Article 13 is required in order to stop, since it would cut off any website which linked to it, or even mentioned it.
The only "business model" that publishers (not "legacy" in any way) need is one where this type of THEFT is no longer allowed.
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Who the f*ck buy DVD's today? Anyone with internet and an interest in those books just shrugged their shoulders, typed the title of the books into pirate-bay et al and downloaded them for free.
Which will still happen if article 13 is implemented.
You had to dig 10 years into the past to find a post of someone selling DVD's in Kenya to prove your point. That's called anecdotal evidence.
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"Nairobi, Kenya ... in 2009"
You had to go back a decade to the other side of the world to find something to prove your attacks?
"Absent piracy, many of these people would have had no alternative but to purchase any of these works"
False, all of those people would have had the choice just not to read those titles. Or, borrow, buy second hand or many other options that are perfectly legal but wouldn't have led to a penny in any publisher's hands. Many wouldn't have bothered without such a cheap compilation to begin. All of which assumes that the people who bought were actually allowed to by the industry, especially if they needed a DRM free digital copy or a copy not published in the language where they happen to reside.
As long as you base your points on simplistic lies, you will always lose this conversation.
"Publishers, particularly independent ones (some of whom have popular titles in this list), would have had to go to KENYA to sue this individual"
Wait... I'm not clicking on any bullshit link you supply unless you find a reputable source, but doesn't this story imply that the person involved was caught and prosecuted without the need for the draconian shit you're trying to push? What am I missing here?
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Oh noes! Criminals got pittances of money!
Are you saying that all those Kenyans would have gone out and each bought 800 book libraries?
Let me guess: the business plan was 1) Sell a promotional item, 2) collect a mailing list, 3) sell a business plan for PROFIT!
You can't even keep your outrage straight. Some dude selling bootleg DVDs on an internet forum is as bothersome as a fly on an elephant's butt to the people pushing Article 13. Article 13 isn't going to protect whatever your mailing was, either.
By the way, nice anecdote. FWIW, Kenya isn't in the EU.
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Article 13 won't address this in any way, shape or form.
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So you are complaining that you would have to hire a lawyer in the country where you are suing people? How awful Jhon boy. How tragic that you would have to follow the law to stop copyright infringement. How inconvenient that article 13 would do nothing to stop this guy whatsoever. How stupid that you think anyone cares about your email scam lists. How impotent you rant is yet again.
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Ah, John Smith goes back to his good old "pirates stopped me from selling my scam artist self-help books" angle again.
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Yes, making billions is reserved for the folks at Google, not people involved in art.
Masnick- do the entire world a favor and go die in a fire.
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In other words, I don't have an argument therefore I think people who doesn't agree with me should be dead.
Seems you are psychopath that needs to be locked up and medicated.
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Masinck is Google "shill" of Section 230 Pirates! He Bad MAN! who not Respects true "Artists" such as My Self, Chip.
I, Chip, am a very "good" artist who used to make Lots of "money" on my Art, until Section 230 and Mike Misnack and "Google" started stealing all the Money! It is definitely all Their fault ,and als othe filythy, "filthy" Priates, and Not because I have a "forth Grade" education and spend all my "free Time" whining on Tech "dirt" and eating delicious, "delicious" Leaded "paint" Chips!
Is called Personal RESPONSIBILATY, Minsack! LEARN "it"!
Every Nation eats the Paint chips it Deserves!
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Re: Is that a threat?
Best watch out. According to you that’s gonna bring down the full might of the FBI, Scotland Yard AND the Keebler Elves Cyber-Assassain Squad.
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Re: Re: Is that a threat?
The Keebler elves are opting out of that one. Even they have a line in sand on who they work for.
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People making billions outside of Google would like to have a word with you.
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...as would the great many people making money with music who would have their careers destroyed by what he supports...
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Still not at preNapster levels
This is great, but put it into historical context. We still haven't gotten back to late 90s revenues, which were around 14 billion. When you account for inflation the growth looks even more anemic.
It is important to note that the late 90s was a unique time when music profits were being affected by cheap production and high profit margins thanks to CD sales. If you run the numbers further back into the 80s you see different numbers, so don't take the industries sad song too seriously, because a good argument can be made that the late 90s were an anomaly in terms of profit, but at the same time a fair thinker has to admit that simple gross numbers like this can be very misleading.
Moreover, there are good reasons to wonder where those profits are. If you dig into the RIAA numbers you can reasonably ask if most of those revenue increases are going to the musical 1%, meaning the A list musicians.
A better question is how healthy is the music industry? When I taught this to graduate level Communications majors I framed it in terms of what does a healthy entertainment industry look like and how does it work? For me, as someone who consumes non A list artists, I want to see an industry where there is enough revenue generated for independent artists to keep making money and more importantly, good art. That is a much harder question to answer.
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Re: Still not at preNapster levels
I could tell you what happened to me. I am an artist. Many years ago I was sending so many demos to many different labels, major or smaller, independent and whatnot. Nobody ever replied to me, or if they did it was to tell me that my work was not accepted. Since I believed that my music was worthy and I was exasperated, the moment when eventually one label, a smaller independent one, became interested in it, I was elated. They sent me the contract to sign. I read it and it seemed OK, the royalty rate was fine. But it was an exclusive contract, and what I didn't understand (because it was worded in a very unobvious way) was that it would last all of my lifetime. But since I was so happy that somebody finally replied to me, I just said "well, fuck it, let's do it" and signed it...
They published my music in almost every online store of that time. It even went to the top charts of a couple of them. But the royalty statements never arrived, as it was specified in the contract. Nor the money. At that point I started to think twice. It was just by chance that I happened to stumble upon a myspace profile (this was in myspace times) where another artist signed to the label was explaining in very clear terms that they were scammers and he was warning others not to make the same mistake as he did (signing to them). He said there were at least 50-100 other artists in the same situation. He even wanted to push a class action, but at the end decided against it since it would have been too costly to do it internationally, as the label was foreign. The label made sure that not only this myspace profile was deleted, but all of his other personal profiles.
Fast forward to today's times, there are still artists signed to them complaining about this on the Facebook page of this label but they are systematically deleted. They even delete reviews... I thought it wasn't possible to do it on Facebook, but they are doing it, and the process is very expeditious, so it seems that it's possible. They ignore emails, they don't reply to anything, but they keep that damn money.
It was only later when I signed to a better and trusted label (and with a non-exclusive, decently timed contract) and I told them my experience with the previous label that these new label people explicitly told me: "we hear stories like yours all the time and it's terrible". So it means that stories like mine are much more widespread than usually thought, and artists don't talk of it either because of shame, guilt or because they are censored by the labels themselves.
This is my story and I was signed to a small independent label, and we also hear stories everywhere that major labels have the same shenanigans, if not worse. It is only when I finally could take back control over my own music, and I could sell it through non-exclusive contracts and websites such as Bandcamp, that I finally saw some revenue coming in. And it seems that many if not most artists are in the same situation as me. So why now this insane push for Article 13? Could it be that with these new direct-selling websites, artists can finally take back what they are owed and what belongs to them, and labels can't accept this because apparently they think they are the only ones who can gather artists' money, without even having the need to pay it back to them, the rightful creators? Who is the real pirate here? And who needs these middlemen, when direct-selling websites make their job a million times better than them, and even pay the artists? If Article 13 becomes law, it will mean that we are back to the situation when artists need a permit from these gatekeepers to publish their own creativity and their own work. And who with a sane mind would want to go back to that situation? And who appointed these gatekeepers as the arbiters of what is to be published and what not? And if anyone can't see the potential for misuse and abuse within this system, especially after stories like mine, then they're clearly deluded.
Anyway, I also consume non A list artists and I make my own effort to promote them, so that they can continue to make good art. As for them to keep making money, that is always a question mark, because if they are signed to any kind of label, smaller or bigger, it means that they have middlemen managing their money, and there is always the question if these middlemen are doing a good job or are honest. And the vast majority of evidence says that they aren't, sadly. I urge any artist to think twice before signing exlusive contracts that last a lifetime, or even any exclusive contract, and go for non-exclusive ones and websites like Bandcamp. Your sanity, your wallet, and your faith in the human race will thank you for it.
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Re: Still not at preNapster levels
"We still haven't gotten back to late 90s revenues, which were around 14 billion"
You mean the money made by the RIAA controlling every form of distribution, illegally bribing radio stations to only play their product, where consumers were often forced to purchase $15 CDs to get a single track of music and could only buy rather than rent the majority of songs?
Yeah, that's not coming back. Which is the problem when the people who desperately want it to return are driving the kind of crap we keep seeing proposed.
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Re: Still not at preNapster levels
I even hear there are many cases where labels lull hopeful artists into signing contracts and then disappear without even publishing them anywhere. What kind of sick, twisted, foolish people would do that to another human being? Not publishing an artist who wants to be published, and shelving their art with an exclusive contract so that they cannot do anything with it anymore, is akin to killing them. In fact, you can count yourself lucky if you were published, even if they didn't pay you. When they don't even publish you, even if you signed a contract with them, you have to ask yourself if your music was considered a threat for someone or something, a competition that was too risky to have around, and so they shut it down. That is the "magic" of gatekeepers and middlemen. I think that in 2019 we have all the right to be done with this bullshit, no? So please banish that scourge of Article 13 and wipe it off the face of the earth! Go nuclear with it!
You also have to consider that artists are most often very sensitive people, and with the labels doing bullshit like this, and preying on them like vultures, their mental situation could be destabilized.
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PIRATES is your answer. Honest people don't need Article 13.
You criminals who want the unearned are the key problem here. Read your Ayn Rand on the desire for the unearned.
But problem is you need "content" to fill your empty heads. You're past the psychological barrier of regarding content theft as stealing, make only excuses for it now, no thought to those make it. And are addicted to the crap.
Article 13 and copyright will never bother me beyond having to blame the cause of it: YOU PIRATES.
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Re: PIRATES is your answer. Honest people don't need Article 13.
Do you get paid per comment? Per word???
Since you love to come here and shitpost on every article the same thing over and over.... especially on articles such as this one, where you are posting the same thing multiple times on the same article.
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Re: PIRATES is your answer. Honest people don't need Article 13.
Did your mouth froth when you wrote that? It's almost like I can envision the spittle landing on your screen.
Well, in contrast you have only one thing in your head, your hate for everyone not having the exact same viewpoint as you. You are totally incapable of any kind of reasoning that may contradict your reality because you most likely then would have a mental breakdown. You repeatedly lie, misconstrue, omit, falsify, misdirect and distort to make your argument.
You are a fanatic and a blight upon humanity. I do hope karma catches up with you.
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Re: PIRATES is your answer. Honest people don't need Article 13.
I hate feeding trolls, but...
Your answer is right there in your topic line. Honest people don't need Article 13, pirates won't care about Article 13, so the EU should take it and shove it.
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CDs/DVDs aren't "digital" anymore....
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Copyright holders and enforcement keep trying to paint piracy as some form of multimillion dollar industry, which would all flow to their coffers if only laws like Article 13 and SOPA were a thing.
What they enjoy conveniently omitting is that piracy isn't the moneymaker they'd rather have people believe. Like these folks enjoy boasting, the government is on their side, including the full force of the IRS. Yet despite with the money-hunting powers of an organization that tosses fucking SWAT teams in your face if you so much as sneeze, the IRS hasn't found the millions and billions stolen by piracy.
It's not as though copyright enforcers don't know this. The MPAA admitted that a $4 million fine was enough to bankrupt Gary Fung but they still insisted on going after the $110 million fine for sheer symbolism. Same for the Pirate Bay trial; despite having a prosecution and judge on very friendly terms with each other none of the "ill gotten gains" were found.
And it's not like the IRS can't find this money. They shut down all of Kim Dotcom's funds and tracked every single trace of Prenda Law's offshore LLCs. And all of this without the might of SOPA, FOSTA or Article 13.
Maybe the truth is that piracy isn't the million-dollar moneymaker the RIAA thinks it is? (Rhetorical, I know.)
It's almost like the copyright fanatics and cultists have something to gain by constantly acting the victim and portraying themselves as sufferers from a crime worse than it actually is but refuse to have higher standards of evidence and investigation for. (Then again they literally think downloading a song is worse than killing a child and raping the corpse, so... not big surprise.)
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In addition to your points, as many people have pointed out in the past if copyright infringement is really this massive juggernaut of profitability there's nothing stopping the labels/studios/publishers from setting up competing services and scooping up all those millions upon billions the claim is being 'lost'.
I mean, all they'd have to do would be to create repositories of all their content, charge absolutely nothing for any of it, and then the ad revenue alone would have them swimming in money inside a day, just like it does for all those dastardly MU's and Pirate Bays. As the publishers of the content they'd be able to post everything first, and at the highest quality, so clearly they'd get the bulk of the traffic and therefore money from such a scheme, yet for some reason they can't be bothered, and instead leave all those millions upon billions on the table for others to scoop up.
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Kill the internet, bring back live only music :/
Seriously, the internet is killing music. Beato proves it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMhbhH-tR5s
Lol !
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why is it that we need Article 13 again?
"why is it that we need Article 13 again?"
Because it concentrates power and makes every little shred of creativity taxable/monetizable ; Also it's a necessary step along the way to eliminating free speech and making the whole world more like china (socialist totalitarian authoritarian), or russia (fascist totalitarian authoritarian)- so we can operate with impunity.
-ultra wealthy insider (parody)
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Is This a Joke?
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Funny, I was thinking the same thing...
I guess that means everythings good now, no need to protect the interests of major labels.
Fixed that for you, because if you think that passing something that will gut the ability for musicians not signed/'protected' by labels to bypass them is going to help them, you've got a very strange definition of the word.
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Re: Funny, I was thinking the same thing...
On the other hand, their chosen pseudonym is pretty accurate.
It almost manages to distract from the idea that they signed up specifically to astroturf on behalf of grandmother chasers.
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Re: Is This a Joke?
Musicians are being protected. Most of the drop from 1999 levels in due to unbundling (people are able to buy single tracks rather than forced to pay a premium for albums), streaming (people more often rent rather than buy) and competition (youth spend the money they used to spend on music on videogames and other media instead). Not piracy. Article 13 will damage and destroy independent musicians without bringing back a penny of the money the major labels fantasise about getting.
No, you don't get to force everybody to use your overpriced horse & carriage service when people start to buy their own cars instead.
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