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Originally Posted by Sean
What a cop-out. The analogy is appropriate enough to illustrate a valid point. Your contract (assuming you have one) stipulates that you get compensated with a certain amount of money in return for each week's work. It's not within your employer's rights to arbitrarily decide that they're only going to pay you for the work you did on Monday and Friday. Musicians have copyrights instead of contracts to guarantee that they get compensated for their work. Neither you or anyone else has the right to arbitrarily decide that you're only going to pay for two of the five files you're downloading from them.
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It's not a cop-out; the analogy simply does not work. At all. Does a musician have a contract saying that they are owed X amount of dollars for simply making a copyrighted work? Musicians get paid based on what the fanbase decides they are worth! I get paid regardless of whether or not my work makes the company lose money or make money. That's because I am being commissioned to do it. Musicians are not. What is the set value of a piece of music? A buck for each person who downloads it? So if someone writes a bad song but markets it well, is his music more valuable than the guy who writes good music but can't get the word out?
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Originally Posted by Sean
You left out the final element of scenario 2: "Artist has been robbed of other $10", as well as "Scenario 3: Artist is owed $20. Artist gets $20." Imagine that. Interesting that scenario 3 didn't even make your list....
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How is that interesting? I'm not saying I'm in favor of everyone downloading albums and not paying for them. I'm just saying; this is a real world scenario. In reality, this person is not going to pay for a disc a friend made for him. In scenario 1, he makes no money. In scenario 2, he does. Scenario 3 is not an option because it's dealing with a person who isn't going to buy the disc anyway. If you were chief of police and you needed to come up with something to curb speeders would your solution be, "people should just not speed!" I'm just saying, copyright infrigement is going to happen. There is not going to be a way to stop it. However the effects of it are debateable. This scenario is one in which the artist is clearly benefitting from it.
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Originally Posted by Sean
I see. So then to paraphrase, "Hey music-man - you did 'x' amount of work, for which you are charging $20. Well, screw that - I've determined that $10 is sufficient, so take it and be thankful you got anything at all." Nice. On behalf of myself and all the other professional artists out there, I'd like to not thank you.
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I actually think most musicans would be thankful. You're acting as though they're being commissioned and then short changed. We're not talking dedicated fans who normally buy the new discs but now don't. Clearly that is hurting the artist. We're talking a scenario where an artist makes money where previously he would make none. The fact that you don't even recognize this is curious.
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Originally Posted by Sean
Holy crap - that's what I've been saying has happened to musicians I personally know, not to mention to me directly! If it meant being robbed of the money they needed to keep their label running, or of being able to continue having a career in music, then abso-freakin'-lutely they (and I) would be (and are) upset! That you can actually sit there in the face of a professional musician who's telling you it specifically happened to them and to other professional musicians they know, and yet you still insist that there's no problem, is simply stunning!
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You see, it doesn't mean being robbed of anything. Okay, so I d/l 2 of your CDs, and pay for one. You are not making the money you're entitled to. Fine. But if I didn't download any of them, you make nothing. You didn't do more or less work because of it. You go broke and can't continue to make music, but at least you're not being robbed of anything. You can sleep well knowing your intellectual property is safe.
The thing is that smaller musicians don't really have any sort of guarantee for an amount of copies they will sell. Say you sell an album for $10. 50 people buy it and 450 download it. You will say, see, I only made $500, if not for downloading I would have made $5000! That is what we call a logical fallacy. Any non-RIAA commissioned study into the effects of file sharing on the sales of music say, if anything, it either benefits the artists or has no real discernable effect. You will argue that without downloading, you would have sold 500 copies. I will argue that you will have sold 20. How do you prove your point?
And I find it interesting that you're ducking the issue of selling used CDs and records - how is this okay while filesharing is not?