Your opinion on piracy?

Im with you there, Nick...Still the analogy of the Ferrari was a cheap one (pass the pun), and not really suitable ! Do you know how much i spend to put a release out ?!? The amount of money that i have to invest before i can even be allowed to press any Vynil, CD's etc ?!?
We cant be selective about what laws we should or not abide to ! Otherwise we will all end up in the republic of bananas.
Im the first one to advocate for open source and whatnot ! I actually am one of four members that have founded a label to put out every so often some free download music albums with the best of the genre around. So, its not like i dont like giving away music. BUT ONLY AND IF I DECIDE TO... PERIOD !
Now if we talk about come with a solution for people less privileged, thats another matter !
I am involved in a lot of charity personally and individually( and i mean involved and not just the give 2 pound a month kinda crap scheme)s., and am quite aware of the situations in what they call 3rd world countries and kinds situations. But still...No excuse for breaking the law !! Plus they taking food out of my mouth ! and my kids ! NAH !!

And that is the difficulty for the subject at hand. There should be fair rights for both the creator of the product and the customer of the product. Outright unlimited piracy is certainly not a solution, but certainly some of the industry practices to combat piracy does punish legitimate customers in such ways as Nick stated. I don't pirate stuff (at least not on purpose) but I certainly understand the temptation to do so if it's easily available on the web. I don't know if there will ever be a solution that satisfied all parties. In the mean time I would suggest that people do respect the rule of law where ever they live and work to change the laws if you feel you have a winnable solution.

Look at the Arduino, for example=Open source, and peolple can trade copies of it; Still it is up to the person to decide if they want to support the original project or not...And it is a fact that the market is more and more getting flooded with ILLEGAL CLONES, CHEAP AND LOW QUALITY COPIES of the arduino...WHY ?!? When they can try trade under another name legally ?!? Not fair !!
People are what they do, and how they behave.
It is the situation that reminds me the words of MARTIN NIEMÖLLER..."AND THEN THEY CAME FOR ME". Only when it touches their own poket people tend to get a straight point of view, instead of the selfish most tend to adopt !!

ILLEGAL CLONES

I think you might be stretching the definition of what cloning arduinos represents. As far as I know the Arduino's only restrictiveness on remanufacturing is not use it's trademarked name 'Arduino' on the board. No other restrictions or limits are claimed or asked by the Arduino company. And not all 'clones' are of lower quality, some are equal at least. I own both arduino built boards and 3rd party arduino compatible boards (those with additional features and/or changes from the original design), and outright 'clone' copied boards. I know that there are those that feel no one should ever buy a standard arduino board built from other then arduino company, but I think that is more of a personal moral statement then valid legal advice.

Arduino's only restrictiveness on remanufacturing is not use it's trademarked name 'Arduino' on the board

yea well what is arduino's true hardware design? avr with a crystal and a serial converter ... not exactly rocket science, though they do put it in a nice package being backed up by brand recognition to make a compelling product

My understanding of the Arduino concept (after watching their video) is that it was intended as an educational exercise. And I think it has succeeded brilliantly in that respect. One of their design criteria was to keep it cheap, compared to certain competition. And if the clones make it cheaper again, well that is part of the idea is it not?

My own posts about making a "breadboard" Arduino are intended to help along those lines:

This "cheap" alternative might be very practical for, say, a classroom of kids where all they have to buy as a $5 chip each, another $1 of other components, and a $5 breadboard. Plus there is the educational value of assembling it yourself.

Mind you, I bet the Arduino concept has sold a lot of Atmega chips.

Osgeld:

Arduino's only restrictiveness on remanufacturing is not use it's trademarked name 'Arduino' on the board

yea well what is arduino's true hardware design? avr with a crystal and a serial converter ... not exactly rocket science, though they do put it in a nice package being backed up by brand recognition to make a compelling product

Well they could have developed it as a propritary design, possibly copywritting the shield pin out with it's 'unique' pin spacing. :wink:

I agree. I think the single most important factor in the Arduino success story is the fact that they made it totally open source both software and hardware and supplied a free open source multi-platform IDE. I think if they had tried to make it a proprietary system like the Basic Stamp most of us would have not given it a second look.

Lefty

retrolefty:

ILLEGAL CLONES

I think you might be stretching the definition of what cloning arduinos represents. As far as I know the Arduino's only restrictiveness on remanufacturing is not use it's trademarked name 'Arduino' on the board. No other restrictions or limits are claimed or asked by the Arduino company. And not all 'clones' are of lower quality, some are equal at least. I own both arduino built boards and 3rd party arduino compatible boards (those with additional features and/or changes from the original design), and outright 'clone' copied boards. I know that there are those that feel no one should ever buy a standard arduino board built from other then arduino company, but I think that is more of a personal moral statement then valid legal advice.

That is exactly what i meant- THE ONES THAT COME WITH THE NAME AND LOGO OF ARDUINO, when there is no need for, as its open source !!!!
Theres lots of cheap silly clones with either the logo, the name or both, spreading throughout. That is all i meant ! The compatible arduinos are not clones but legal alt versions, which i very much support.
I advocate for open source ! can compete with commercial products due to the love of people !
I actually ordered some of the alternative versions as well, as a lot have something new to offer( other not really).

So, in that sense, you understood me wrong !!

That is exactly what i meant- THE ONES THAT COME WITH THE NAME AND LOGO OF ARDUINO, when there is no need for, as its open source !!!!
Theres lots of cheap silly clones with either the logo, the name or both, spreading throughout. That is all i meant ! The compatible arduinos are not clones but legal alt versions, which i very much support.
I advocate for open source ! can compete with commercial products due to the love of people !
I actually ordered some of the alternative versions as well, as a lot have something new to offer( other not really).

This is what I think too, I paid a fairly cheap price for an uno and mega off e-bay, only to find out after a few months they are clones advertised as the real deal. I would have gladly paid a little extra to have authentic boards. None of the clone profits are returned to the Arduino project.

Exactly. I think its up to the person to decide if they support original project or prefer go for a cheaper alternative.
There are actually nice projects out there at the moment- One of the ones i most interested in is the Pinguino and the Chipkit type of boardsm with the Pic32MX on it... Most libraries are compatible, and you can decide what language to use !! Im definitely having one !!

@ iyahdub

I totally see your point. However the model of the CD-distributer is sort of outdated in our western world. Therefore it would be nice to reduce their rights and increase the rights of the artist. Again, I am not sure yet how this model should work, maybe some micro-credit/payment system - but with my options now I rather download an album then buy it at walmart.

edit: its not only that the distribution system is outdated, its also the fact (and some purists will jump on me for that, but I believe its true) that the equipment required for producing high quality music has become exponentially cheaper in the last 15 years.

regarding the price of equipment is kinda irrelevant, as the cost of releasing it gone up. Plus aint as many shows livewise, which used to be one of the bread and butter of bands and artists.
The thing of producing an album being almost prohibitive was something "invented" by the big sharks to reduce artists share, by inventing extra and inflated prices.
Also- Formats like vinyl still sell a lot as well; Sometimes more than CD tbh. Even if it is all available in E-edition for downloads, will still hurt the artist a lot.
Why is it that people dont listen to royalty free music ?!? because its not the same thing, not the same quality !! Has a different purpose !
But yeah, at the moment something needs to be done. And falling down hard on thoose that use pirate music is a start.
Look at Japan... Why you think its one of the biggest music markets ?!? Because they always been hard handed on piracy, even in the times of tape !

"AH BUT ITS KIDS MAINLY DOING IT"...Well, go down hard on their parents...Its their responsability anyway ! Same way you go to prison if you dont make sure your kids go to school, you have to be responsible for their actions.

how does downloading damage vinyl? a download can never replace a record. With vinyl you get quality which you cannot stream from the internet.

what do you mean with "less live-shows"? (I don't understand)
what do you mean "the price of releasing has gone up?" (I disagree, but maybe I just don't understand what you are saying.)

going down on pirates ... yes and no.
i.e. closing down library.nu deprived me of one of my most important sources for study material I use for university. it will not bring money to anyone, as I will not buy any of the things I downloaded there. so closing library.nu damaged many people (especially in india/africa) while hardly making any profit for anyone...

where it comes to immaterial goods, I am not sure if piracy is only a bad thing.

in regards to the creative industry: cut out the middle-men; ditch an industry which should have learned 15 years ago that their business model will no longer work. cracking down on individuals wont fix anything...

I was just thinking some more about why I am so ambivalent to the whole "music piracy" thing.

a) people have always shared music and recordings - i.e. I remember making and sharing cassettes before napster came along.
b) music is a product, it should be valued as such. but this also means that the artist needs to accept it, when people chose not to pay for your music.

you have two options now. you either say "well, then I wont publish it" or you say "ok, I'll figure out a way to deal with it".

two examples

  1. My own band.

I played in various groups, had some connections, sort of new the music scene and had the basic contacts to set up gigs in semi-nice locations etc. We where super ambitious for about a year - got really good (and really bad) press, recorded a live-concert and sold it as an album (no one bought it) played around 25 gigs and eventually fell apart. This is about 5 years ago.

Last year, somebody from Germany uploaded a bunch of my recordings to youtube (some of them from demo-recordings I made in order to show potential bandmembers what I want us to sound like). A friend of mine stumbled upon a copy of our CD in Warsaw about half a year ago.

As the band no longer exists, I sort of smile at this and feel happy that somewhere my music is still appreciated. If my band still existed I would not react by thinking "They did not pay for the CD. Someone should crack down on them for pirating". Rather I would try to contact these people and see if they could help me set up a gig.

As such the internet is an amazing medium, and if people would crack-down on pirates the options I just described would never come about.

  1. Wir Sind Helden

They are a german band. I think around spring 2003 my girlfriend introduced me to them - she had found out about them from a friend who gave her some mp3 files. I did not really care much for them, but becouse she liked them so much I downloaded some music, and it grew on me. It got no airplay, because, while being very much pop-music it was definitively not mainstream.

That summer we went to a music festival. Wir Sind Helden was still unsigned and unknown when the festival was set up, so they had a timeslot from around 11:30 am to noon, or something like that. The place was packed. As in. there where more people there than came for metallica or placebo who where the main headliners of the festival.

Now realize - this band had next to zero airplay in austria (where I grew up) and their CD was not on the market yet. The only way people new about this band was through the internet.

After that summer, Wir Sind Helden became huge - they are quite a phenomenon IMO.

I heard them play a couple of years later, and the lead singer commented on piracy. She said that she is agains it. She also says though, that she is really confused about it, as she credits a large part of the bands popularity to mp3 files destributed over the internet. She told of her first concerts she gave in Austria:

"When we played [some song, I cant remember which one] all of a sudden everyone started singing along the lyrics. I was really confused - it was our first show in Austria, and our CD was not yet for sale. So I asked the crowd 'How do you know the lyrics' and they said 'We downloaded the music from the internet'"

My point is, that while Wir Sind Helden wants us to buy their CDs, it would be hypocritical of them to demand that governments crack down on music sharing, as music sharing is what made them the phenomenon they are.

ok.

I'm off. Just felt like sharing.

p.

Regarding vynil was an afirmation, and less live shows was expressing all the other things that aint helping the situation.

And please dont mix using the net as an advertisement place to download it illegally.
Those casual cases u mentioned and others are one in a million. For such a case theres thousands of artists being ripped of money they would otherwise have gotten into their pockets. So dont think theres excuse. You can say what you want. From the moment you say it is alright to break one law, then the thing is you also saying any law can be broken.

And the difference of you sharing a tape with some friends as to share it with millions if not the whole world has no comparison . All it takes is one to share it online !! How can you even compare that ?!?

Plus might be alright for you, but its not for me that i live off the music industry.
Now, i agree we all need to adapt. No doubt about that !
But as i said, i already give some music away for promotion purposes, but let me chose what i want to share.

If not, we might as well forget about civilized societies and break into anarchy...

dude. I completely agree that you should decide what to share and what not to share.

I just do not believe that you can have the great promotional tool: internet and complete control over your media at the same time. Many artists profit greatly from this promotional tool, so it would be hypocrisy to fight against it simultaneously.

I also do not believe that every track of yours which is illegally downloaded is revenue you miss. I think that is a bit of a naive assumption. If somebody is ripping off artists its huge record labels which pay shitty royalties.

Or do you actually feel like the net is making you loose revenue? Or do you have a concrete example where there is direct damage? (I am actually open to hearing this - I am not just asking rhetoric questions.)

I, as a user, want to be able to dump my favorite tracks on my friends computer. Just like I used to copy cd's onto tapes to give to friends, or later on burn CDs.

Saying I do not understand, because I don't live from it is too simple - I attempted to live from it for quite some time, and I have several friends who do live from producing or working with music. My personal opinion is far from set in stone. Its a really difficult question...

Yeah, of course. I might not have expressed myself right, so might have sounded a bit abrupt, for which i apologize. But its something too close to chest.
Yeah i have several cases, as i release stuff out of my pockets as well, so yeah, hurts straight in my pocket ! But you are right in the fact that net also helps a lot.

fkeel:
I heard them play a couple of years later, and the lead singer commented on piracy. She said that she is agains it. She also says though, that she is really confused about it, as she credits a large part of the bands popularity to mp3 files destributed over the internet.

This is the thing, basically. A band becomes popular these days because people can download their stuff. Once they become popular they will get paid for live performances. So piracy has helped them, full stop. If there wasn't the initial piracy, they wouldn't be well known, they wouldn't get paid, and they wouldn't be in a position to complain about the piracy.

I think the Internet also frees artists (and authors) from having to convince a publisher, or record company, to produce the physical product. So you can self-publish these days for virtually nothing. Of course some of it will be pirated.

But I remember the days of Turbo Pascal, when other Pascal compilers would cost $1000 or more and you had to sign agreements not to copy, and they had copy-protected disks, etc.

Then Borland released Turbo Pascal for (from memory) $79. It was not copy-protected, and came with a hefty user manual too. In fact, photocopying the manual would probably have cost you $79. So everyone bought it. Maybe a few copies were made for friends, or colleagues, but hey, Borland get very rich from the approach of taking a light-hearted view of piracy. They are still going strong. No-one ever hears of their competitors, the ones who were so anti-piracy.

I leant to program c++ on Borland. My collage tutor gave me a copy because it's what we had at collage.