[advocacy] Re: Personal Music License

[Daniel James]

> pir-acy (n)
> (a) robbery by pirates.
> (b) illegal copying or broadcasting.

I think the term 'pirate' was first applied to the unlicenced radio
stations which broadcasted from ships in international waters in the
1960's, but I could be wrong. The connection is less obvious with
unauthorised duplication of CD's, but the implication is that crimes
against 'intellectual property' are equivalent to crimes of violence
against the person, and I think that's highly unlikely.

Of course you could argue that maritime piracy was taken so seriously
because of the commercial value of ship cargo rather than the loss of
life to seafarers - the punishment being death.

> it hurts both the music and the game
> industry.

It hurts artists and game programmers alike if people buy pirated
copies instead of commercial versions, sure. In my experience, a
market exists for the pirated versions because people aren't prepared
to pay the price for the legit version. They are more likely to use
an unauthorised copy if they think the price is unreasonable, and
they know how little of a CD retail price goes to the artist.

I do think that in the case of a program like MS Office, the amount
of pirate versions around contributes to its market dominance, which
is why until now they haven't made it difficult to copy. I remember
Quark used a hardware key (keyboard dongle) to prevent unlicenced use
back in the 90's - and what's their market share (outside publishing)
now?

> It's of course easy to demand it to be either legal or not moral
> subversive if your income doesn't depend on actually selling the
> original product.

My income does come from authoring content, and I don't want to be
ripped off, or make being ripped off legal. I don't think anyone in
the world of free music has argued for the commercial exploitation of
other people's work - the point of licensing is to prevent exactly
this.

To bring this discussion back to the context of Ogg Vorbis, we have
to make sure that the format is seen as being on the side of the
artist and programmer, and not on the side of those who want to rip
them off. Language is important, so I understand Richard's reluctance
to equate people downloading songs with murderers and thieves.

Cheers

Daniel

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