I am curious, just how could one prove that they lost money to filesharing?
Seriously, I am curious, and not trying to start a fight, what would qualify as proof of lost revenue? Theoretically speaking?
I am not saying that people should worry about filesharing, or bitch about, it or do anything other than accept it, because it is inevitable. But it occurs to me that perhaps the reason there is no available proof of the economic losses caused by filesharing is not so much because there are no losses, as it is because it would be really difficult to prove them as a practical matter.
"But we also feel like the work that our artists produce is worth more than a cost of a latte."
Why is this?
When you think of it, the amount of work that goes into a latte is staggering. Consider:
The work involved in growing the coffee, which has high nutrient requirements and very specific environmental needs, not to mention the amount of time the plant has to be alive before it bears beans worth picking
The amount of work that goes into harvesting and shipping the beans.
The amount of work that goes into sorting and roasting the beans.
The amount of work that goes into creating, processing and shipping grade a pasteurized milk.
The amount of work that goes into designing and making the paper cups and lids and coffee machines and espresso machines.
And finally, the creation of the actual latte by some cute little barista.
I'm all for supporing musicians, but lets not underestimate the work of others just because their work isn't as glamorous.
"Although it might ultimately be beneficial to the authors, that isn't the point. Copyright is all about having the right to control copying, with a few well known exceptions. Indexing the work so you can sell ads against it isn't one of the exceptions, as far as I know."
Have you looked at the page of a Google Book search?
I really just don't get this anti-Google attitude that pervades the so-called 'literary elites'. The Google page of a book whose publisher doesn't want a preview has no ads, no quotes, no cover art, nothing but the publishing information and links to places where you can buy the book.
There is no reasonable objection to this. There just isn't. I'd welcome a worthy attempt, but I have never seen anything that even came close.
I often wonder if these numbers would change significantly if they added income from sample libraries. Many of the sample companies that I have worked with are (like my own company) owned and operated by musicians. I myself have made more money off of sample libraries than I have made playing live.
Musical activity on the internet is much more diversified than most people realize.
This is absolutely ridiculous. And the fact that the guy is talking about encouraging 'better and better recordings and orchestrations' shows that he knows nothing about recordings of classical music. There are no 'orchestrations' of the classics, unless you are talking about student editions that have the hard pasrts left out.
And in any case, no 'orchestrations' will be used in this project anyway, because the orchestrations wouldn't be in the public domain now, would they?
If I hadn't seen this article myself, I wouldn't believe it. It sounds too much like a parody to be real. But it seems not to be all too real. Sad.
"Piracy is natural and normal and it's just how things are.
And then...
People who exercise their rights and go after pirates are evil and the scum of the Earth.
One reality is OK, but the other is not."
1. I don't know if piracy is natural and normal, but it does seem unavoidable. Every kid under the age 20 that I know thinks that trading mp3s is OK. Every single one. Somehow, suing an entire generation of people seems kind of counter-productive.
And again, I say this as a rights holder. I don't see a way to stop this kind of infringement without creating a police state. And I don't want to live in a police state.
2. The people 'exercising their rights' often seem to be, not artists, or coalitions thereof, but rather, teams of lawyers who start entrepreneurial litigation companies. These lawyers often represent people who represent other people who are supposed to represent artists. But there is reason to be skeptical of the transparency of this process.
For myself, I simply don't like entrepreneurial litigation as an idea. I think it is a perfect example of a scam, something that supposedly does one thing (punishes wrongdoers, vindicates the wronged), that in fact does little more than give teams of lawyers billable hours that they can charge their clients for.
Sure they have the 'right' to do this, but I can't see how any of this is making the world a better place for anyone but lawyers.
"We all know what Mike thinks about this reality though. He can't stand it."
Neither can I. And again, I am a rights holder.
"Only a blind person couldn't see Mike's bias."
I certainly never said that Mike has no bias at all. I said that this bias wasn't accurately described as 'pro-piracy'. And it isn't.
"Mike says he's not anti-IP and he's not pro-piracy, but anyone who reads techdirt can tell that is so obviously BS."
As a person who:
A) is a professional 'content' producer (i.e. I am a musician and sample developer by trade), and
B) who has never knowingly 'pirated' anything, not even a single mp3, and
C) who disagrees with Mike all of the time,
I am going to call bullshit.
I am especially going to call it on this statement:
"Mike can't be honest about his stance. He chalks it up to pro-reality. Murder's a reality too, but you don't have to make a site that glorifies it like techdirt glorifies piracy."
I have seen websites that glorify piracy. Websites like Dogs on Acid are filled with links to pirated content. I have never seen one such link on Techdirt.
I am sure there are people who frequent this site who pirate things, and it is true that Mike never scolds them. But why should he? They don't bother him. They obviously bother you, so why not start your own blog? It's really easy to do these days.
And comparing IP piracy to murder is ridiculous, and an insult to people who have lost loved ones to that most heinous of crimes.
Seriously, you aren't improving the reputation of your chosen profession with this kind of talk.
"They dont work eh !!!, tell that to iTunes, or any phone company that charges micropayments for each SMS or call. iTunes has a hugly popular method of micropayments for music."
"Is that what you wanted me to acknowledge? Seems rather obvious to me."
sigh....
Is there a whole section of legal pedagogy called 'obfuscation and prevarication'? Because you are really great at doing these exact things.
What you left out was: they get away with doing these bad things because "their positions as cops and lawyers give them authority and expertise that allow them to game the system in their favor".
Other bad people don't have this advantage.
And so, when you write:
"There is a prima facie case against the defendants. If they put up no defense, then default judgment will be entered against them. The burden shifts to them to prove their innocence. Prima facie evidence has shifted the burden."
You are ignoring the fact that proving their innocence could cost them a lot of money, and that it might easily cost them less to settle.
It is really easy to believe that the people issuing these lawsuits know exactly this, and are counting on it as part of their business model. And if one does believe this, than it is a pretty clear case of the abuse (or puddintain, or whatever you want to call it) of the legal system by people who know how to game the system in their favor.
"I quoted the Black's Legal Dictionary definition of "abuse" above. In the strict meaning of the word, one who breaks a law abuses it. Yes, it has another meaning as you have indicated. I don't find these "debates" over the meaning of a single word very interesting. Let's talk about something with some meat on it."
If you look at what I wrote above, you will find that I was asking a question, not debating.
You keep talking around this point, so I will put it in the plainest terms possible: sometimes cops and lawyers do bad things and get away with them. They get away with them because their positions as cops and lawyers give them authority and expertise that allow them to game the system in their favor. In my last few posts here I have given you numerous examples of exactly what I am talking about.
I don't care whether you call it "abuse" or "puddin tain" or "that's why I am going to law school dumass", just so long as you acknowledge the fact that this stuff happens.
"A person who breaks a law is both a lawbreaker and an abuser of that law. Means the same thing. I posted the definition above."
OK, but there is a problem here, in that the phrase 'abuse of the law' is meant by people around here to be something distinct from 'breaking the law'.
Karl's example was pretty good, actually, but let's use another one. A black person who buys cocaine is a lawbreaker. A white person who sells cocaine is a lawbreaker. A policeman who apprehends these people in the middle of a transaction, but who 'throws the book' at the black person while letting the white person off with a warning is abusing the law.
What the cop does in this example is, perhaps, legal. But it is clearly an example of racism practiced by someone who is supposed to act with strict regard to the letter of the law. This is the sort of thing that people are calling 'abuse' of the law. And it can really only apply in this sense to someone, either an officer of the law, or an officer of the court, who has some kind of legal authority.
Is there some term of art that you have acquired in your legal education that has the sense that 'abuse' does in this example? If there is, you would do the community a service by telling us what it is.
If there is no such term, could you suggest one other than 'abuse'?
"Are you really assuming that in the future I'm going to do something you find despicable, and then holding it against me now? That seems really, really desperate. Don't you think?"
Well you do spend an awful lot of time defending despicable practices. It's not really a huge cognitive leap to assume that you might engage in such practices in the future.
You see, you might be completely right about how the law works. The problem is that many people think that the law in these and many other cases does more harm than good. That the legal system generally has been distorted into something that serves the best interests, not of the public, but of lawyers and law enforcement.
The law is distorted all of the time. Just read some Radley Balko articles over at Reason.com to see how cops abuse the law with knock and announce drug raids executed at 4 AM. Every single one of the raids he discusses involve harmless low level drug offenders whose houses are broken into by SWAT teams, whose dogs are shot on sight, whose children our terrorized, all to get half an ounce of marijuana.
Now you will find many citizens who are outraged by these raids, but if you ask many police officers, they will tell you that this is how the war on drugs has to be fought, and that if people don't want to be terrorized by police then they shouldn't buy marijuana (which is, after all, illegal). They will also tell you that these raids are standard operating procedure.
Now here's the deal: you kind of come off like one of these cops.
Sorry if that hurts your feelings, but it's true. If you want to avoid this, you might want to look at the way you write things and try to add a bit more balance to them.
But of course, you think that your views are balanced, don't you?
"I'm sorry if me expressing my honest opinion makes you question my sanity. Such a response on your part, in my opinion, is childish at best."
Yes, I agree. There is rather too much of that sort of thing around here.
"I disagree that USCG is abusing the courts. The courts apparently disagree as well. If the courts felt they were being abused, trust me, we'd be reading articles about that."
Well, yes, you are a law student, no? I am sure that you could also explain why the $600,000 in damages awarded to the plaintiff in Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants is a perfectly reasonable settlement.
And I am sure that you could also explain why the nearly 20,000 lawsuits that U.S. Silica was served with in 2003 alone were not an abuse of the courts.
And I am also sure that you can tell us all why it is perfectly reasonable to sue the maker of the lawnmower that some negligent idiot ran over a child with, and why the 2 million dollar verdict against the lawnmower manufacturer is a sensible use of tort law to further justice and personal responsibility in our time.
The problem is, to those of us who are not law students, these lawsuits make no sense whatever. And the system that allows them to occur seems, well, less than perfect.
But then, we stand little chance of gaining anything from these kinds of lawsuits, whereas you, as a law student, stand to gain from such suits, whichever side you end up working for.
It's cool how the legal profession seems to remain a growth industry even during a major recession.
"The plan is technically outdated. People are already doing "Classical MIDI." There are MIDI editors which work pretty much like word processors, giving one the ability to gradually revise a first draft. Using such an editor is ten or a hundred times more labor-efficient than an orchestra performance, in the same way that writing with a word processor is more efficient than hand-etching copper printing plates, as was done in the sixteenth century, or writing with a quill pen. To play a conventional instrument, you not only need to have the aural ability to be able to hear music, but you also need the manual dexterity to manipulate the instrument's keys, strings, or valves, as the case may be, and you have to do this perfectly every time. Naturally, that decreases the number of people who can perform music at a high level. A much larger pool of people can arrange music on a MIDI editor."
As a person who spends a great deal of time creating music using MIDI files, I can tell you that it is extremely difficult to duplicate the sound of naturally played acoustic instruments using MIDI and multisamples.
While there are some great sample libraries out there (such as VSL and QLSO), making them sound natural is a great deal of work. To create an average classical symphony performance would take many weeks of work for one person, and even then, it wouldn't be completely convincing.
"In practice, the most ambitious projects, such as Bach's Brandenburg Concertos or Beethoven's Symphonies, are being routinely undertaken by individuals, such as music students, with no institutional backing. MIDI files get posted on the internet, much like blogs. New classical composers (again, often students) are putting their compositions directly into MIDI, and effectively bypassing the performance-interpretation stage. In this case, the published MIDI file sounds exactly the way the original composer intended it to sound. MIDI files are small enough that they don't require peer-to-peer software or broadband internet access. Bear in mind that a lot of people still haven't found out about Classical MIDI yet. It will grow. The situation in all kinds of audio-video-related computer fields is rather like what it was for word processors, circa 1980-85."
As I mentioned above, MIDI files need sample libraries to become audible sound. MIDI files that are executed by a standard GM sound module (say, the sort of thing you get with a cheap Yamaha keyboard like a PSR-225) sound unrelentingly cheesy. They might work in limited educational applications (say, musical examples in an online history of music), but they don't really sound at all like classical music was intended to sound.
To make MIDI sound convincing, you need an intimate knowledge of not only the performance practices of the composer's age, but also of the tricks and quirks of the sample library you are using. Every sample library has different methods of executing trills and appogiaturas and glissandi and so on. The MIDI file itself needs to reflect these methods or it won't work.
Please don't misunderstand me: I love public domain MIDI files of the sort you mentioned. My favorite site for these is CPDL, which is a truly wonderful resource. But such MIDI files, whatever their value, are not a substitute for a genuine performance.
I wish, though, that they would do something older than Telemann. A great deal of the music of the Flemish Renaissance is unavailable even in commercial releases.
"Hopefully by now, you've come across the "Autotune the News" phenomenon, where various news clips are turned into sometimes brilliant music numbers thanks to the magic of autotune and some very creative individuals." (Emphasis supplied, obviously)
Is there any ephemeral music trend that you don't think is cool?
I mean, I know I come off as a snob, but on most forums that I frequent I am one of the ones telling the snobs that they are off base, that music has evolved, that sampling is a legitimate technique and so on.
But this place is extreme. I just don't have the stomach for it. You might as well call porn with a musical background a 'brilliant interpretive dance' as call this a 'brilliant music number'.
"Also note that free-market outsourcing of their defense industry led to the sacking and fall of Rome. Or would you argue that free-market capitalism demands dark ages?"
The fall of Rome was due to it's over-extension.
Outsourcing it's defense work was merely a symptom of this problem.
"So, anytime anyone talks seriously about "saving" any particular industry, challenge them on what they really mean, and see if they're actually just talking about saving a few companies, rather than saving an actual 'industry'."
I would say very few of them even care about whatever industry they are trying to save.
What they are worried about saving usually ends up being their own jobs.
On the post: LA Times' Propaganda Piece Claims Piracy Hurts Filmmakers Without Any Actual Evidence
Seriously, I am curious, and not trying to start a fight, what would qualify as proof of lost revenue? Theoretically speaking?
I am not saying that people should worry about filesharing, or bitch about, it or do anything other than accept it, because it is inevitable. But it occurs to me that perhaps the reason there is no available proof of the economic losses caused by filesharing is not so much because there are no losses, as it is because it would be really difficult to prove them as a practical matter.
Or am I wrong?
On the post: Label Complains That Amazon Devalues Artists By Making Music Cheap
Why is this?
When you think of it, the amount of work that goes into a latte is staggering. Consider:
The work involved in growing the coffee, which has high nutrient requirements and very specific environmental needs, not to mention the amount of time the plant has to be alive before it bears beans worth picking
The amount of work that goes into harvesting and shipping the beans.
The amount of work that goes into sorting and roasting the beans.
The amount of work that goes into creating, processing and shipping grade a pasteurized milk.
The amount of work that goes into designing and making the paper cups and lids and coffee machines and espresso machines.
And finally, the creation of the actual latte by some cute little barista.
I'm all for supporing musicians, but lets not underestimate the work of others just because their work isn't as glamorous.
On the post: Literary Critic Blames Google For 'Undermining The Literary Tradition'
Have you looked at the page of a Google Book search?
I really just don't get this anti-Google attitude that pervades the so-called 'literary elites'. The Google page of a book whose publisher doesn't want a preview has no ads, no quotes, no cover art, nothing but the publishing information and links to places where you can buy the book.
There is no reasonable objection to this. There just isn't. I'd welcome a worthy attempt, but I have never seen anything that even came close.
On the post: Yet Another Study Shows Musicians Making More Money
Musical activity on the internet is much more diversified than most people realize.
On the post: Vandals' Bass Player Not A Fan Of The Public Domain, Thinks PD Recordings Will 'Destroy' Classical Music
And in any case, no 'orchestrations' will be used in this project anyway, because the orchestrations wouldn't be in the public domain now, would they?
If I hadn't seen this article myself, I wouldn't believe it. It sounds too much like a parody to be real. But it seems not to be all too real. Sad.
On the post: John Mellencamp: Takes From Others, But Refuses To Give Back
Sigh.
And to think that I actually had a tiny amount of respect for you a week ago.
On the post: John Mellencamp: Takes From Others, But Refuses To Give Back
And then...
People who exercise their rights and go after pirates are evil and the scum of the Earth.
One reality is OK, but the other is not."
1. I don't know if piracy is natural and normal, but it does seem unavoidable. Every kid under the age 20 that I know thinks that trading mp3s is OK. Every single one. Somehow, suing an entire generation of people seems kind of counter-productive.
And again, I say this as a rights holder. I don't see a way to stop this kind of infringement without creating a police state. And I don't want to live in a police state.
2. The people 'exercising their rights' often seem to be, not artists, or coalitions thereof, but rather, teams of lawyers who start entrepreneurial litigation companies. These lawyers often represent people who represent other people who are supposed to represent artists. But there is reason to be skeptical of the transparency of this process.
For myself, I simply don't like entrepreneurial litigation as an idea. I think it is a perfect example of a scam, something that supposedly does one thing (punishes wrongdoers, vindicates the wronged), that in fact does little more than give teams of lawyers billable hours that they can charge their clients for.
Sure they have the 'right' to do this, but I can't see how any of this is making the world a better place for anyone but lawyers.
"We all know what Mike thinks about this reality though. He can't stand it."
Neither can I. And again, I am a rights holder.
"Only a blind person couldn't see Mike's bias."
I certainly never said that Mike has no bias at all. I said that this bias wasn't accurately described as 'pro-piracy'. And it isn't.
On the post: John Mellencamp: Takes From Others, But Refuses To Give Back
As a person who:
A) is a professional 'content' producer (i.e. I am a musician and sample developer by trade), and
B) who has never knowingly 'pirated' anything, not even a single mp3, and
C) who disagrees with Mike all of the time,
I am going to call bullshit.
I am especially going to call it on this statement:
"Mike can't be honest about his stance. He chalks it up to pro-reality. Murder's a reality too, but you don't have to make a site that glorifies it like techdirt glorifies piracy."
I have seen websites that glorify piracy. Websites like Dogs on Acid are filled with links to pirated content. I have never seen one such link on Techdirt.
I am sure there are people who frequent this site who pirate things, and it is true that Mike never scolds them. But why should he? They don't bother him. They obviously bother you, so why not start your own blog? It's really easy to do these days.
And comparing IP piracy to murder is ridiculous, and an insult to people who have lost loved ones to that most heinous of crimes.
Seriously, you aren't improving the reputation of your chosen profession with this kind of talk.
On the post: Rupert Murdoch's Paywall Disaster: Readers, Advertisers, Journalists & Publicists All Hate It
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/why-itunes-is-not-a-workable-model-for-the-news- business/
On the post: Debbie Does BitTorrent: 113 Sued For Sharing Classic Porn Movie
sigh....
Is there a whole section of legal pedagogy called 'obfuscation and prevarication'? Because you are really great at doing these exact things.
What you left out was: they get away with doing these bad things because "their positions as cops and lawyers give them authority and expertise that allow them to game the system in their favor".
Other bad people don't have this advantage.
And so, when you write:
"There is a prima facie case against the defendants. If they put up no defense, then default judgment will be entered against them. The burden shifts to them to prove their innocence. Prima facie evidence has shifted the burden."
You are ignoring the fact that proving their innocence could cost them a lot of money, and that it might easily cost them less to settle.
It is really easy to believe that the people issuing these lawsuits know exactly this, and are counting on it as part of their business model. And if one does believe this, than it is a pretty clear case of the abuse (or puddintain, or whatever you want to call it) of the legal system by people who know how to game the system in their favor.
On the post: Debbie Does BitTorrent: 113 Sued For Sharing Classic Porn Movie
If you look at what I wrote above, you will find that I was asking a question, not debating.
You keep talking around this point, so I will put it in the plainest terms possible: sometimes cops and lawyers do bad things and get away with them. They get away with them because their positions as cops and lawyers give them authority and expertise that allow them to game the system in their favor. In my last few posts here I have given you numerous examples of exactly what I am talking about.
I don't care whether you call it "abuse" or "puddin tain" or "that's why I am going to law school dumass", just so long as you acknowledge the fact that this stuff happens.
On the post: Debbie Does BitTorrent: 113 Sued For Sharing Classic Porn Movie
OK, but there is a problem here, in that the phrase 'abuse of the law' is meant by people around here to be something distinct from 'breaking the law'.
Karl's example was pretty good, actually, but let's use another one. A black person who buys cocaine is a lawbreaker. A white person who sells cocaine is a lawbreaker. A policeman who apprehends these people in the middle of a transaction, but who 'throws the book' at the black person while letting the white person off with a warning is abusing the law.
What the cop does in this example is, perhaps, legal. But it is clearly an example of racism practiced by someone who is supposed to act with strict regard to the letter of the law. This is the sort of thing that people are calling 'abuse' of the law. And it can really only apply in this sense to someone, either an officer of the law, or an officer of the court, who has some kind of legal authority.
Is there some term of art that you have acquired in your legal education that has the sense that 'abuse' does in this example? If there is, you would do the community a service by telling us what it is.
If there is no such term, could you suggest one other than 'abuse'?
On the post: Debbie Does BitTorrent: 113 Sued For Sharing Classic Porn Movie
Well you do spend an awful lot of time defending despicable practices. It's not really a huge cognitive leap to assume that you might engage in such practices in the future.
You see, you might be completely right about how the law works. The problem is that many people think that the law in these and many other cases does more harm than good. That the legal system generally has been distorted into something that serves the best interests, not of the public, but of lawyers and law enforcement.
The law is distorted all of the time. Just read some Radley Balko articles over at Reason.com to see how cops abuse the law with knock and announce drug raids executed at 4 AM. Every single one of the raids he discusses involve harmless low level drug offenders whose houses are broken into by SWAT teams, whose dogs are shot on sight, whose children our terrorized, all to get half an ounce of marijuana.
Now you will find many citizens who are outraged by these raids, but if you ask many police officers, they will tell you that this is how the war on drugs has to be fought, and that if people don't want to be terrorized by police then they shouldn't buy marijuana (which is, after all, illegal). They will also tell you that these raids are standard operating procedure.
Now here's the deal: you kind of come off like one of these cops.
Sorry if that hurts your feelings, but it's true. If you want to avoid this, you might want to look at the way you write things and try to add a bit more balance to them.
But of course, you think that your views are balanced, don't you?
Sigh....
On the post: Lawyer Tries Selling DIY Legal Response Kit For Those Hit By US Copyright Group Suits
Yes, I agree. There is rather too much of that sort of thing around here.
"I disagree that USCG is abusing the courts. The courts apparently disagree as well. If the courts felt they were being abused, trust me, we'd be reading articles about that."
Well, yes, you are a law student, no? I am sure that you could also explain why the $600,000 in damages awarded to the plaintiff in Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants is a perfectly reasonable settlement.
And I am sure that you could also explain why the nearly 20,000 lawsuits that U.S. Silica was served with in 2003 alone were not an abuse of the courts.
And I am also sure that you can tell us all why it is perfectly reasonable to sue the maker of the lawnmower that some negligent idiot ran over a child with, and why the 2 million dollar verdict against the lawnmower manufacturer is a sensible use of tort law to further justice and personal responsibility in our time.
The problem is, to those of us who are not law students, these lawsuits make no sense whatever. And the system that allows them to occur seems, well, less than perfect.
But then, we stand little chance of gaining anything from these kinds of lawsuits, whereas you, as a law student, stand to gain from such suits, whichever side you end up working for.
It's cool how the legal profession seems to remain a growth industry even during a major recession.
On the post: Raising Money To Put Famous Classical Music Recordings Into The Public Domain
As a person who spends a great deal of time creating music using MIDI files, I can tell you that it is extremely difficult to duplicate the sound of naturally played acoustic instruments using MIDI and multisamples.
While there are some great sample libraries out there (such as VSL and QLSO), making them sound natural is a great deal of work. To create an average classical symphony performance would take many weeks of work for one person, and even then, it wouldn't be completely convincing.
"In practice, the most ambitious projects, such as Bach's Brandenburg Concertos or Beethoven's Symphonies, are being routinely undertaken by individuals, such as music students, with no institutional backing. MIDI files get posted on the internet, much like blogs. New classical composers (again, often students) are putting their compositions directly into MIDI, and effectively bypassing the performance-interpretation stage. In this case, the published MIDI file sounds exactly the way the original composer intended it to sound. MIDI files are small enough that they don't require peer-to-peer software or broadband internet access. Bear in mind that a lot of people still haven't found out about Classical MIDI yet. It will grow. The situation in all kinds of audio-video-related computer fields is rather like what it was for word processors, circa 1980-85."
As I mentioned above, MIDI files need sample libraries to become audible sound. MIDI files that are executed by a standard GM sound module (say, the sort of thing you get with a cheap Yamaha keyboard like a PSR-225) sound unrelentingly cheesy. They might work in limited educational applications (say, musical examples in an online history of music), but they don't really sound at all like classical music was intended to sound.
To make MIDI sound convincing, you need an intimate knowledge of not only the performance practices of the composer's age, but also of the tricks and quirks of the sample library you are using. Every sample library has different methods of executing trills and appogiaturas and glissandi and so on. The MIDI file itself needs to reflect these methods or it won't work.
Please don't misunderstand me: I love public domain MIDI files of the sort you mentioned. My favorite site for these is CPDL, which is a truly wonderful resource. But such MIDI files, whatever their value, are not a substitute for a genuine performance.
On the post: Raising Money To Put Famous Classical Music Recordings Into The Public Domain
I wish, though, that they would do something older than Telemann. A great deal of the music of the Flemish Renaissance is unavailable even in commercial releases.
On the post: Stevie Nicks Claims The Internet Destroyed Rock; Seems To Think You Need A Record Label
Re: Re: Article is a bit arrogant
"There's that old trope again."
Yes.
I wonder, does this apply to politicians as well?
"When you get to be the governor of New York, then you can criticize David Paterson. Not before."
On the post: Autotune The News Becomes A Billboard Hit
Is there any ephemeral music trend that you don't think is cool?
I mean, I know I come off as a snob, but on most forums that I frequent I am one of the ones telling the snobs that they are off base, that music has evolved, that sampling is a legitimate technique and so on.
But this place is extreme. I just don't have the stomach for it. You might as well call porn with a musical background a 'brilliant interpretive dance' as call this a 'brilliant music number'.
On the post: Should We Be Interested In 'Saving' Any Industry?
The fall of Rome was due to it's over-extension.
Outsourcing it's defense work was merely a symptom of this problem.
On the post: Should We Be Interested In 'Saving' Any Industry?
I would say very few of them even care about whatever industry they are trying to save.
What they are worried about saving usually ends up being their own jobs.
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