The things that pissed you off today ™ thread

[idontreallygiveashit]

Somtimes i go to the park and dropkick the weakest child i can find.

thats way worse than cyber-bullying

for shame

Taking real action, fuck your e-warrior bullshit. Can't wait to have kids so I can beat the self-esteem out of them.

to think i used to dislike you

E-validation is like a fresh can of compressed air to me, i just love it so much.

[Shum]

i wear my sunglasses at night

calm down corey hart

[BonerJams04]

i have a boner

[Sexual_Chocolate]

i wear my sunglasses at night

calm down corey hart

take those off... its only 11am here & you know it

[ehbes]

i wear my sunglasses at night

calm down corey hart

take those off... its only 11am here & you know it

You're from the future

[Sexual_Chocolate]

i wear my sunglasses at night

calm down corey hart

take those off... its only 11am here & you know it

You're from the future

yes

[ehbes]

What's it like

[Sexual_Chocolate]

cold

[ehbes]

Oh that's right your months are backwards

[Shum]

cold

yup.

[Sexual_Chocolate]

Oh that's right your months are backwards

yup. we start in december and our year ends in january

[ehbes]

Oh that's right your months are backwards

yup. we start in december and our year ends in january

Don't play dumb with me you know what I meant

[Sexual_Chocolate]

Oh that's right your months are backwards

yup. we start in december and our year ends in january

Don't play dumb with me you know what I meant

ah yes. we start on either the 31st, 30th, 28th or 29th (dependant on the month that it is) and go down to the 1st

[ehbes]

Oh that's right your months are backwards

yup. we start in december and our year ends in january

Don't play dumb with me you know what I meant

ah yes. we start on either the 31st, 30th, 28th or 29th (dependant on the month that it is) and go down to the 1st

[Liam92]

men harassing me in the street making me feel like crying or like i did something wrong for wearing SHORTS on a HOT DAY

Where do you live? Saudi Arabia?

lol no i live in north london.

i don't like even minor things like "hey sexy" because minor things (a) add up, (b) happen in a context of bigger things and (c) can turn into bigger things, like the dude who said hello to me so i said hi back and he spent the next minute or so literally *yelling* obscene shit about my body as i walked off down the street, or they try and grab you as you walk past to get you to talk to them, or they drive past in their stupid vans making nasty gestures, or they lick their lips at you, or whatever.

something happens nearly every day at this point, PISSED OFF doesn't even cover it, i get worried about even leaving the house and i don't like going out without my headphones because i will hear people's creepy comments. it's a bit different atm as none of it necessarily comes up to the worst stuff that has happened (e.g. people in cars asking how much and driving after you calling you a fucking slag / groping / shouting "suck my cock!" / being followed) but something that bad could always happen and also i'm literally just sick to death of it. been loads of articles about it recently e.g. http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/ ... ing-matter

Jesus Christ, that sounds awful, not really a thing I notice, probs due to being male and having my music on 90% of the time and I'm fairly oblivious to things.

That article was pretty shocking, had no idea the stats were as high as that

[Sonika]

Out to Wub, Noam, and all the other tnucs on this thread, this one's for you

I only made it to 22 pages and it's a really shitty essay but you asked and I will deliver


Nate Hochman
Due 5/30/11
Modern Conflicts
Music Piracy: The Conflict and The Resolution
ABSTRACT:
The conflict around music piracy started in the 70s with the advent of floppy discs, cassette tapes, and other mediums for the copying and sharing of music. It entered the mainstream in the late 90s to 2000s alongside the dawn of the Internet era. With widespread Internet use, it became easier for people to share files with others all over the world, catapulting music piracy into the mainstream through sites like Napster, and creating conflict and turmoil within the music industry. This conflict could best be resolved by offering people more attractive options than piracy. The ultimate goal is to shut down the piracy industry, but this cannot be achieved through force. A better approach is to find a way to make people want to buy the music because it is more convenient and accessible than the alternative choice of piracy.

HISTORY:
File sharing’s beginnings are rooted in the 1970s, when the means to copy, store, and share files first began to emerge. It has evolved from cassette tapes and floppy discs to a worldwide phenomenon through the world wide web.
In the late 1960s to early 1970s, cassette tapes were becoming a prominent alternative to vinyl. Cassette tapes allowed for the recording of audio, which was the first accessible method for recording music and listening to it without having to pay for it. In an effort to prevent this early form of piracy, cassettes were sold with “write-protection” tabs. However, blank cassettes began to be sold for the sole purpose of recording audio in a response to write-protection, allowing the recording of audio onto the blank cassettes (“What is a cassette tape?” WiseGeek, 2012). In 1971, the U.S. congress passed the Sound Recording Amendment, which stated that the illegal and unauthorized recording of music for personal use and reproduction is a violation of copyright law and therefore is illegal (“Inside The Music Industry” PBS, 2004).
In 1971, the first 8-inch floppy disk was created by David Noble and his team at IBM. It was the first “removable media,” which refers to forms of media storage that can be removed and transported between computers, such as a USB key. In 1976, the first 5 ¼ inch was created by Shugart Associates, in an effort to make a floppy disk that was small enough for a desktop computer, because the previous 8-inch floppy disks were considered too large for use with a desktop computer (“Timeline of computer history” ComputerHistory, 2006).
In 1977, the BBS (Bulletin Board System) was invented. It was a primitive version of what are now referred to as internet forums. The first BBS was called CBBS, and was created by Ward Christenson as a way to share files with some of his friends who were also programmers. It operated via a dialup modem. BBS continued to operate through modems until the early 1990s. The BBS system was largely based around the idea of a “message board,” where users could send and receive both public and private messages to another user or group of users. BBS was integral in the birth and evolution of modern file sharing (“The Birth of BBS” Chinet, 1989).
As BBS became popular, many systems that were very influential to the growth of file sharing popped up. One of the most notable of these systems was Usenet. Usenet was conceived in 1979 and founded in 1980 by two graduate students named Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis. It utilized BBS, but it also allowed the sharing of files through a software called UUCP (Unix-to-Unix Copy System) (“Usenet History” TLDP.org, 1996). UUCP allowed users to share files through the BBS system, uploading their own files to the message board and downloading files that other users had posted (“About The UUCP Project” Usenet, 2011). Usenet was not a system that was originally meant for piracy – it operated around moderated and un-moderated “newsgroups,” which were internet domains within Usenet aimed at the discussion of particular topics. The uploading and downloading option utilized through UUCP was for users to share related media with each other regarding the topics (“What is Usenet?” Faqs.org, 1998). The act of uploading and downloading files and sending and receiving messages to and from other servers was the beginning of “decentralization” in file sharing. Previously, the sharing of files had been within one system, but the UUCP software allowed different systems to communicate with each other and send and receive files and messages, marking the beginning of file sharing beyond one system (“The History of File-Sharing” TorrentFreak, 2004).
In 1980, Seagate Technology created the ST506. It was the first hard disk drive for “microcomputers,” i.e. personal computers, which is what people use at home today (“Microcomputers” MEDS Technology Pte Ltd, 2009). It could store 5 megabytes of data, which was five times as much data as a floppy disk could hold. The hard disk drive became an instant success, and IBM created a hard disk called the DASD (Direct Access Storage Device) in June of 1980. IBM started shipping the DASDs the following year, initially with six different model types ranging in price from $81,000 to $242,000. The first models could hold 2.5 gigabytes, but later IBM improved them to hold 20 gigabytes. IBM sold over 100,000 DASDs, making tens of billions of dollars and making the DASD one of IBM’s most successful products ever (“Timeline of Computer History” ComputerHistory, 2006).
In 1981, Sony created the 3 ½ inch floppy disk. Hewlett-Packard adopted the 3 ½ inch in 1982, which helped the disk format gain momentum, soon leading to the release of the CD-ROM (Timeline of Computer History” ComputerHistory, 2006).
The CD-ROM (Compact Disk Read-Only Memory) was announced in 1984 by Philips and Sony. The first CD-ROM released to the public, in 1985, was “Grolier’s Electronic Encyclopedia” (Timeline of Computer History” ComputerHistory, 2006). Philips and Sony worked together to make the CD-ROM the new standard format and integrate it with the computers being sold at the time. It was initially meant to be primarily an audio format, but soon software was being stored on CD-ROMs as well. By the early 1990s, most of the computers sold had CD-ROM drives. The CD-ROM format was integral to the development of file storage (and consequently, file sharing), because it could hold up to 650 megabytes of data. This was a massive step up from the previously used floppy disks that could only hold a few megabytes. This made the storing and sharing of files publicly accessible, because the only format that could hold large files before the CD-ROM was the DASD, and that was much too expensive for the average person to purchase. Software and audio that was previously too large for one floppy disk and had to be stored on multiple disks was now easily fit on one CD-ROM (“History of the CD-ROM” eHow, 2010). Within 3 years of the CD’s release, over a million CD players were sold. In 1988, CD sales surpassed vinyl sales, marking the beginning of the decline of the vinyl format in the music industry (“Inside The Music Industry” PBS, 2004).
In 1987, shortly after the CD-ROM was released, the DAT (Digital Audio Tape) made its debut. It allowed for easy recording of high quality audio, at even higher sample rates than the CD-ROM (“DAT Technology” MixOnline, 2007). There was an instantaneous backlash from the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), because they feared that this would give rise to the recording and duplication of music without purchase (essentially what is now known as piracy). As the controversy over DATs continued, the music industry began to slacken its interest in the production of tapes. As less and less artists released on tapes, the consumer interest in buying DATs waned, because there was less material to be played on them. Without the consumer interest, production of DATs lessened, and by the 1990s the DAT format had effectively become obsolete (“Inside The Music Industry, PBS, 2004).
In December of 1990, the world was changed forever by Tim Berners-Lee. Berners-Lee was a programmer who worked at CERN, an advanced scientific research facility in Geneva, Switzerland. He had been working since the early 1980s on an idea to connect all of the nodes in the world through one large system, creating a web of interconnected files and information. On Christmas of 1990, the World Wide Web was announced, and with it came one of the largest steps forward that humanity has ever made. In the following years, the web developed further, integrating itself into the everyday life of humanity. By the end of the 1990s, the World Wide Web had truly become a worldwide phenomenon (“A Little History of the World Wide Web” World Wide Web Consortium, 2000).
In 1991, the coding algorithm for MP3 encryption is released by the MPEG committee after a week-long meeting in Japan (“MPEG Press Release” MPEG Committee, 1991). An MP3 file is a compressed audio file. It is compressed through a complex algorithm that allows for the size of the audio file to be reduced dramatically with little or no loss to the sound quality. An MP3 is compressed to a ratio of 12:1, reducing its file size. The MP3 format would go on to allow for the advent of easy file sharing through the internet, because of its relatively small size, and would be the basis for the beginning of many early piracy websites (“History of MP3” About.com, 2010).
In 1992, the Home Recording Act was passed. It requires digital recorder manufacturers to pay a 2 percent tax to copyright holders because of the potential for piracy that digital recorders allow. The Home Recording Act also required digital audio recording devices to include technology that would not allow serial copying (“Inside The Music Industry” PBS, 2004).
In 1993, one of the first music piracy lawsuits was filed by Frank Music Corporation against a website called CompuServe. Frank Music Corporation argued that CompuServe allowed users to download music files for free without the consent of the copyright holders. Frank Music Corporation won, and CompuServe paid over $600 for each illegally downloaded music file on the website (“Inside The Music Industry” PBS, 2004).
In 1997, Capitol Records announces its intention to release a single from a forthcoming Duran Duran album in a downloadable format on the Internet a month before the album’s physical release in stores, in an attempt to explore the Internet’s marketing potential. However, record shops felt threatened by this announcement and pressured Capitol Records to not carry out this action. Capitol Records eventually gave in, and did not release the single on the internet until the album came out in stores (“Inside the Music Industry” PBS, 2004).
In 1998, the RIAA filed a lawsuit against Diamond Multimedia, the manufacturers of the Rio MP3 player. The RIAA argued that the Rio MP3 player did not have the technology required by the Home Recording Act requiring a device that prevented the serial copying of files. However, the wording of the Home Recording Act is such that it only applies to digital audio recording devices, and consumer electronics such as the Rio, which was meant to record audio from a computer, were exempt from the law. Diamond Multimedia won the case (“RIAA v. Diamond Media” Findlaw, 1999).
In the summer of 1999, 19-year-old Shawn Fanning and two of his friends who were also programmers coded a simple music download search engine. Before this, to download a song off of the internet, one had to find the web domain where one user had posted this song, and then download it. This was a very faulty business – many of the websites were unreliable, sometimes links were broken, and Internet traffic could significantly slow down download speeds. So Shawn Fanning coded a simple search engine that allowed users to easily sift through hundreds of music sharing websites. It blew up. Word spread of this new application, which Fanning had named “Napster,” and website became huge within months. Fanning and his two friends, who were all currently freshman at Northeastern University in Boston, moved out to the Bay Area, which was the center of the digital revolution at the time. As Napster continued to grow, the RIAA began to notice. The RIAA had been focusing their anti-piracy efforts on finding a way to eliminate the many websites that were posting MP3s, but as Napster began to dominate the world of music piracy, this effort became irrelevant. The RIAA turned its focus to the website Napster, and began to bombard it with their legal force. Napster could not defend themselves, and slowly began to crack under the RIAA’s force. It continued to diminish until the founders resigned in 2002 and it disbanded and reformed as a legal music purchasing site, but its effect lingered on, and gave birth to second-generation music piracy sites such as Gnutella. Napster’s entrance into the world signified the beginning of music piracy in the modern sense of the word (“The Day The Napster Died” Wired, 2002).
As Napster died, three major piracy websites emerged from its ashes: Gnutella, eDonkey2000, and Kazaa. All three of these websites became very successful for a short period of time in the early 2000s. However, all three of these sites were based upon commercial interest, which became an attack point and they were shut down one by one (“The History of File-Sharing” Torrentfreak, 2004).
In 2001, a new player in the piracy industry emerged: BitTorrent. Its creator, Bram Cohen, had become frustrated with the download speeds of previously existing peer-to-peer file sharing networks. On the websites that existed before BitTorrent, when a user downloaded a file, it was downloading it directly from the user that had uploaded it. This meant that one could only download a file as quickly as the speed of the uploader’s connection. Combine that with Internet traffic and faulty connections, and that’s a very slow download time. The BitTorrent software was built on the idea of “seeding,” which is essentially the idea that when downloading a file, one is downloading it using the combined connection speeds of everyone who has downloaded the file. This requires the user who is downloading the file to “seed” the file after it has finished downloading to their computer, essentially allowing some of their computer’s connection speed to be used by the next users who download the file. The more the file is seeded, the quicker the download is. As people realized the potential of the BitTorrent technology, websites such as the Pirate Bay, Torrentz, and Mininova (“A History of BitTorrent” Mozy, 2012).
And with that, music piracy has entered its current state of existence. In the past decade, its form and medium has remained much the same, but it has grown and continues to grow, and the conflict surrounding the legal and moral aspects of it continues to grow as well.


STAKEHOLDERS/CURRENT CONFLICT:
Within the debate centered around music piracy, there are three groups: Those who are definitively against music piracy, often referred to as “anti-piracy,” those who are definitively for music piracy (and in doing so are generally against copyright laws), often referred to as “anti-copyright,” and those who are somewhere in between the two in their opinion. The last group is made up of people who do not fully agree with each side, but do not fully disagree with each side either – their views fall somewhere in the middle of the two arguments.
The large stakeholders on the anti-piracy side of the conflict are mainly made up of people involved in the music industry. This includes various affiliated organizations, members of bands, producers and various musicians, and those involved in record labels. One of the largest roles in the piracy conflict has been played by the RIAA. The RIAA is a group of lawyers and other people who deal with the legal aspects of the music industry in America. As piracy has grown and manifested itself into its modern shape, it has become one of the largest conflicts in the music industry, and consequently one of the main things that the RIAA focuses on. As music piracy has evolved, the RIAA has been there every step of the way making an effort to stop it, and when it could not stop it, control it and slow down its progress. The RIAA has done this through lobbying, passing laws, carrying out various lawsuits, and campaigning to demonize piracy in the public eye.
One example of a campaign by the RIAA was the 1992 video “Don’t Copy That Floppy.” This was a video made by the joint efforts of the RIAA and the SPA (Software Publishers of America). It featured a boy and a girl attempting to make a copy of a file onto a floppy disk, but when they put the floppy disk into the disk drive, a video of a rapper who called himself “MC Double Def DP” appeared on the screen and started rapping about how this act of copying was wrong (“Don’t Copy That Floppy” KnowYourMemes, 2010).
The RIAA states that piracy is theft, and is deeply hurting the music industry on a statement in their website: “It’s commonly known as “piracy,” but that’s too benign of a term to adequately describe the toll that music theft takes on the enormous cast of industry players working behind the scenes to bring music to your ears. That cast includes songwriters, recording artists, audio engineers, computer technicians, talent scouts and marketing specialists, producers, publishers and countless others. While downloading one song may not feel that serious of a crime, the accumulative impact of millions of songs downloaded illegally – and without any compensation to all the people who helped to create that song and bring it to fans – is devastating. The annual harm of piracy is $12.5 billion dollars in losses to the U.S. economy as well as more than 70,000 lost jobs and $2 billion in lost wages to American workers” (“Who Music Theft Hurts” RIAA, 2012). The RIAA also states that since 1999 (when Napster was created), music sales have declined 53 percent, from $14.6 billion to $7.0 billion (“Scope of the Problem” RIAA, 2012). The RIAA states that their mission is to “to protect the ability of the music business to invest in new bands and new music and, in the digital arena, to give legal online services space to continue to prosper.” Essentially, the RIAA is against piracy in all forms and will do everything they can to stop it forever. They believe that they are winning, as the amount of people who pirate music has declined in recent years, and the amount of people who purchase music is growing (“Why We Do What We Do” RIAA, 2012).
One band that is vocally anti-piracy is Metallica. In 2000, Metallica sued Napster for copyright infringement. The Metallica drummer, Lars Ulrich, was quoted as saying “It is sickening to know that our art is being traded like a commodity rather than the art that it is” (“Metallica Sues Napster” Forbes, 2000).
Another artist who has spoken out in favor of anti-piracy is the rapper and producer Dr. Dre. Following Metallica’s lead, he also sued Napster for copyright infringement in 2000. In a press release, he stated simply, “I don’t like people stealing my music” (“Rap artist sues Napster” Cnet, 2000).
The rap group called Bad Meets Evil, which is made up of the two rappers Eminem and Royce Da 5’9”, have spoke out against piracy in one of their latest songs, “Take From Me.” In the first verse, Royce Da 5’9” raps, “I don't spit raps this ill/For you to just hack and steal/ and leak my shit/ so peep my drift/I hope y'all don't think y'all helping me out with that shit/That shit’s stressin’ me out” (“Bad Meets Evil Lyrics – Take From Me” AZlyrics, 2011).

The anti-copyright stakeholders are mainly made up of piracy websites and resources. The people behind these organizations are generally driven by philosophical and moral factors rather than commercial or corporate ones. A large number of them are, in some way, affiliated with the Pirate Bay, a website at the forefront of the anti-copyright group.
The Pirate Bay is the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker. Essentially, it is a site that hosts the downloading and uploading of torrent files. It was founded in 2003 by the Swedish anti-copyright group PiratByran. The three members of PiratByran who created it were Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde. In 2004, they split off from the PiratByran and started running the Pirate Bay as a separate organization. The Pirate Bay claims that they are not illegal because they only host torrent files – they do not distribute or promote them. They state this one their website: “Only torrent files are saved at the server. That means no copyrighted and/or illegal material are stored by us. It is therefore not possible to hold the people behind The Pirate Bay responsible for the material that is being spread using the tracker. Any complaints from copyright and/or lobby organizations will be ridiculed and published at the site” (“The Pirate Bay – the galaxy’s most resilient bittorrent website” The Pirate Bay, 2006). Members of the Pirate Bay gave a famous interview in 2008 where they stated their opinions on copyright and what goals they wanted to achieve. They said that copyright is not completely wrong, but it needs to be cut down on a lot, because it is much too strict and is not evolving with the changes in the world: “We think that the copyright needs to be changed to fit the current climate of usage and taken the distribution platform into respect. The opposite side thinks that they need to close the internet down so they won't lose control. I won't say I have the best answer for how the copyright should work - but a creative commons license is better than what we usually have today. But my personal opinion (that is not always the opinion of all of us behind the bay) is that copyright is not needed when it comes to personal use.” (“The Pirate Bay Interview” Slyck, 2008). The Pirate Bay earned its nickname as “the galaxy’s most resilient BitTorrent client” after the server raid in 2006. On May 31, 2006, Swedish police raided the Pirate Bay’s base and took the servers, shutting down the Pirate Bay and arresting the staff who worked there, including the three founders. Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde, as well Carl Lundstrom (a Swedish businessman who was affiliated with the website and had funded it) were arrested and after a long trial, were convicted of facilitating copyright infrigement in 2009. They were all sentenced to one year in jail as well as $3.8 million in fines each. However, just three days after the raid and shut down of the Pirate Bay, its servers went online again and it was back up and running after finding a host in the Netherlands. A group of people identified as the Pirate Party now run it, and the servers are no longer in an office space but are hidden in an undisclosed location in Sweden (“This Day In Technology: Pirate Bay Raided, Shuttered” Wired, 2011). The Pirate Bay remains open and highly active to this day. It is symbolic of the anti-copyright philosophy, and embodies the ideals and values of the entire anti-copyright agenda.
There is no clear answer to this conflict. There are people on either side of it, but then there are the people who identify with both sides, and yet do not place themselves completely on one side or the other. These people have opinions that fall somewhere in the middle, between anti-piracy and anti-copywright.
One of these people is Jon Aldente, who goes by the abbreviation Jon AD. Jon owns a record label called Lo Dubs, and also works in and co-runs a record shop in Northeast Portland called Anthem Records. Lo Dubs is a midsize record label, having been very successful in the underground dubstep scene (focusing mainly on the deeper, more meditational characteristics of dubstep), and has a back catalogue of many very successful releases from respected artists under its belt. It is run out of Anthem Records, the previously mentioned record shop, which is why Anthem is a popular spot for Portlanders who enjoy the deep aspects of dubstep, making it somewhat like a home for that sound within Portland. Jon is very involved in the music industry by nature of the fact that he owns a record label and is affiliated with a record shop, and was very willing to talk about his views when I was having a conversation with him at Anthem. His predicament represents many other stakeholders of his kind – a sort of “middle man” in the music industry, who, according to Jon, are the ones getting hurt the worst by music piracy. “A lot of people think that music piracy is just cutting down huge labels like Interscope Records, but in reality, those are the labels getting hurt the least. A label like Interscope is fine – they’ve always been fine and they’ll continue to be fine. They’ve got contracts with their artists, they make money off of their shows, they get royalties from radio plays, they get money from merchandising – they’re making enough money. It’s midsize to small labels that are really getting hit the worst.” Jon thinks that piracy is wrong, but he goes on to say that the RIAA and the large corporate companies in the music industry are not in the right either: “Of course I think music piracy is wrong – I’m a label owner, I see artists and labels get fucked over by piracy all the time. But yeah, it’s true what organizations like the Pirate Bay are saying – the music industry is messed up. They don’t have any respect for the consumers, their customers who keep them alive, really. So why should the consumers respect them? Way too many of these copyright laws are bullshit. Yeah, copyright is important, but it hasn’t evolved with the times. Neither has the music industry as a whole. I think it’s getting it together, though, I’m seeing some changes. I think the music industry is going to begin to evolve – they have to, really.” Jon went on to say that he was not sure exactly how this evolution of the industry was going to happen, or what the change was going to be, but he foresaw a slackening of the strictness of copyright laws and better, more industry-friendly alternatives to piracy being some of the aspects of that change (Aldente, Jon).
One other person who falls somewhere in the middle of this conflict is the co-founder of Napster, Sean Parker. Sean Parker has recently created the website Spotify, which allows users to stream music on the website from their desktop. However, Spotify is one hundred percent legal, because it does not allow for downloads, and the artists who have their tracks featured on Spotify have been paid money for the permission to have those tracks streamed on Spotify. Parker says that he believes sites like Spotify are the future for the music industry in a 2010 interview, stating that the music industry has been scared to take this leap up to this point but that he believes they are about to. “What are people willing to pay for? I think the answer is convenience and accessibility. So that leads you to a model where you have unlimited streaming on your desktop. You can’t play it anywhere else, not on your mp3 player or anything like that, just your desktop. So then you end up building a vast playlist [utilizing Spotify’s playlist function, which allows you to build a playlist on the website] of more songs than you would ever have on your iPod or music library. Then you see some of these songs on your friend’s playlists, you hear them on the radio, hear them on ads – and then you’re hooked! We’ve got you by the balls” (“Sean Parker on Spotify: ‘We’ve Got You By the Balls’” TheDailyBeastVideo, 2012).
Resolution: appeal to consumers, not to piracy sites
Coincide with jon ad’s “respect of consumers” sentiment
Music industry has power over consumers, as witnessed with DAT

RESOLUTION:
If this conflict had an easy resolution, it would have been solved already. There is no obvious solution, and solving this conflict will happen over a long period of time, but it can happen. I believe that the solution to this problem follows somewhere closely along the lines of Sean Parker’s thinking – convenience and accessibility is what people will pay for. The ultimate goal is for people to stop pirating music and start purchasing it. One of the main reasons that piracy is such a large problem in today’s society is because it is more convenient for people to download music for free than to pay for it, and the resources to carry out such an act are very accessible. So what can one do to combat that? One option would be to try to attack the piracy industry – battle to take down sites like the Pirate Bay and use force to prevent people from pirating music. However, that approach – which is similar to the approach that the RIAA has been taking – has been proven to be largely ineffective. The RIAA has proven time and time again that this approach does virtually nothing – in fact, it worsens the problem. Through their various lawsuits, campaigns, and other attempts at attacking the piracy industry, the RIAA has demonized themselves in the eyes of many people, only leading to further backlash by the public and possibly an increase in piracy. A much better solution would be to offer consumers a better option than piracy – I believe websites such as Sean Parker’s Spotify embody much of what this option should be.
Keeping in mind the idea of convenience and accessibility, one would build a website or group of websites that allowed users to stream music for free. Spotify’s setup is based around this, making it very convenient for users to listen to music, and very accessible with a quick (and free) signup being the only thing barring users from unlimited listening capabilities. Spotify’s website format is based off of the iTunes layout, making it a very aesthetically pleasing and easy to use, offering many commercial options and one-click buying opportunities, but not so much that it feels like the website is trying to sell the user the songs. This allows the user to decide to buy the music on their own, rather than to feel pressured into buying it. Users can build their own playlists within Spotify, allowing them to build vast groups of songs. As they listen to certain songs, and see them on their friends playlists, they begin to want to own the song. Not only because they want to be able to have it on their phone or MP3 player, but because something about the feeling of ownership of a song is much more pleasing than simply listening to it on a website. So as they look for a place to download it, Spotify offers them a simple one-step link to buy the song – it’s simple and easy, very accessible, and much more convenient for the user to buy the song directly rather than going to a piracy network and trying to find a copy of it.
So would this end music piracy? No. One needs much more power than the singular website Spotify to be truly effective. Sean Parker and his website Spotify embody the idea behind the solution, but they are not the entire solution within themselves. The entire music industry must head follow in the direction of Spotify if they are to end piracy. Attacking piracy organizations will not do much – they will only find new ways to resist, like a cancer virus. However, if this solution is performed well, then piracy will not have anything to fight against – it will simply disintegrate bit by bit. The music industry must embrace the concepts of convenience and accessibility and integrate them with every aspect of music sales. Other websites similar to Spotify will be created, embodying the idea of “strength in numbers.” Large music purchase websites such as iTunes or Beatport must integrate themselves with the “Spotify system” – allowing for online playlists to be created without purchase, which would eventually lead to users who utilize the playlist option to purchase some of their favorite tracks from the playlists. Other websites that follow a similar model to Spotify would come into existence as well. One idea would be to have a website where one pays a weekly or monthly fee to the website, and then has unlimited downloading rights of the songs on the website. The advantage of this business plan would be that the artist is not actually physically losing money when a user downloads their song, so the money being paid in the weekly or monthly fees would be direct profit. There are no manufacturing costs to the creation of a file (except, of course, the fees to the music studio and mastering engineers, which are relatively small), so the artist would still be making money. The money being paid to the website that hosted this system would not be proportionate to the popularity of certain songs, but the website could make it fair by paying the artists a proportionate amount of money, ultimately balancing out the scale. In a system like this, as well as the previously mentioned ideas, success could be achieved. The music industry has power, as has been proven multiple times – they just need to direct their power in the right direction. In the 1990s, the music industry was displeased with the piracy potential of Digital Audio Tapess – they destroyed the DAT market by directing their attention away from DATs rather than trying to sue the DAT manufacturers and shut the industry down by force. This was incredibly effective, and the DAT market was quickly and effectively destroyed through the loss of consumer interest. I believe the same can be done by the music industry carrying out a similar plan with the piracy industry, and also by following the ideals of convenience and accessibility.



CONCLUSION: Music piracy has come a long way since cassette tapes and floppy disks in the 1970s. It has evolved and taken shape through various events and inventions that propelled it forward, one of the largest being the World Wide Web. Throughout its history, it has created a lot of moral and legal conflict between those who believe that piracy is wrong and those who believe that piracy is right, but that conflict has grown to much larger proportions as it has entered its modern state alongside the creation of the Web. The resolution to this conflict lies in the pursuing of the integration of convenience and accessibility with the current model of online music purchasing and the entire music industry as a whole.




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[BonerJams04]

lol whatup

[Sonika]

22 pages double spaced 12 pt font times new roman. If you take a look at it, it's actually not that long. Some kids in my class are cranking out 40 and 50 page ones and have been working for over a month on them. I don't think I'm going to get a very nice grade on this one

[BonerJams04]

sonika, you shuld apply yourself more towards school

[ehbes]

22 pages double spaced 12 pt font times new roman. If you take a look at it, it's actually not that long. Some kids in my class are cranking out 40 and 50 page ones and have been working for over a month on them. I don't think I'm going to get a very nice grade on this one

I'm just gonna control c this and you can delete it mkay?