Bootleging god or bad?

[wickednick]

In this day and age were nearly any cd or movie can be copied and placed over the internet or on cd and dvd,there is a increasing contraversy on the morals of bootleging.
The bad
I personally don't think that burning a cd or dvd, and downloading a entier cd or dvd from the internet is right.Ill admit im not innocent of bootleging for awhile I was burning games and music for friends, but then my morals kicked in and I wondered am I really supporting these game manufactures and bands that I have so enjoyed.The answer is no.When you bootleg you are no longer supporting the game manufacter,movie,or band.These businesses and bands are supported by are money and even though many are filthy rich the fact is that when you bootleg you steal and when you steal you no longer support company or band.
If you truly love a movie,game,or band then you should pay for there product and support them so they will continue to make quality products in the future.
The good
I'll say that when im looking to by a bands new cd I'll download a few songs to see if I like the new album or band,but I do buy the cd  if I like the music.There are also certin sercumstances that I would understand in bootleging something.A while back my car was broken into and my stereo and cds were stolen.Well seeing as how I had already payed for them once, I had no problem downloading the cds off the internet and burning them to cd.Cases like these I would find aceptable.
Finally I have to say again if you want to support your musicain,game maker,or favorite movie please buy them.You don't support through stealing, and can't be truly considered a fan because a fan would buy there stuff and support them.

[The Burgomaster]

I'm not a bootlegging supporter, but some of my reasons are selfish, rather than moral.

I like top quality and I MUST have the original packaging. So, if someone makes me a copy of ANYTHING, I will probably buy the factory release version anyway.

[JohnL]

I'm not innocent either. I'm not a big music fan, but I have maybe 100mb of songs I've downloaded from the net. I don't have a fast enough connection for downloading DVD movies, but if I did, I probably would. My software collections for previous computers (C64, Amiga) are about 99% pirated and I have some pirated software on this system. Almost all the games I have now are originals though, since I'd rather have a complete copy rather than a CD-rip that leaves out the cut scenes and music. I bought most of them used or at a liquidator store though.

Having said that, I don't think copying something current is usually a good idea because it doesn't support the company. However, depending on the circumstances, I don't think that copying is ALWAYS wrong.

If a movie is out of print and the only way to get a copy is to bootleg it, then I say to go ahead. If the studio thought it could make money from it, they'd still be selling it. Most likely if they re-release it, people will buy the new copy because it will almost certainly have better picture quality.

Old software has no value 90% of the time, so copying it doesn't hurt the company. I mean how much money will Activision lose if you copy the original Mechwarrior?

As for music, people want it in a flexible format.If the music companies offered MP3 downloads for a small fee, people would probably download from them rather than use the various file sharing networks.

Finally, in the case of theft or your originals getting damaged, I don't see anything wrong with replacing them with copies.

[wickednick]

I forgot to mention something.Im a big fan of video games,exspecially the old ones from like nintendo and super nintendo.Now seeing as how nintendo no longer recieves any profit from there old video games I have no problem downloading roms of classic videogames.I think in this case bootleging is not something bad but actually good.If these games were never converted into roms then some of the best games ever made would be lost.
I also think that bootleging something that is out of print like movies and music is ok.

[StatCat]

Depends- bootlegs have their good and ugly side. I don't find anything wrong with taping concerts or distributing unreleased or rare out of print material but posting mp3's of official releases I don't really like music wise. Trading rare movies isn't really a big deal to me either but stuff thats easy to find I won't agree with trading most of the time.

[JackFlack]

With the amount of utter crap that the entertainment industry tries to pass off as "quality", NO, I HAVE NO PROBLEMS WITH BOOTLEGGING.

Think of how many times you've been ripped off when you bought a crappy cd, watched a crappy movie, or experienced anything that couldn't be described as anything other than crap.

Consumers have been ripped off for years, and now the score is just being evened.  The world is not a fair place, for producers or consumers.  It's almost like a war or something, lol.

[Dolph Lundgren]

I agree 100% with StatCat and wyckednick.  Anything that's rare or out-of-print, I don't see the big deal about bootlegging, because how are you going to get the item otherwise?  But if it's in circulation, then bootlegging shouldn't happen.  

Nick

[Evan3]

Hmmmm, I dont agree.

i think that Downloading is a way of expanding horizons and presenting new styles of music to people. I have many Pakistani, Israeli and African music I would NEVER have heard otherwise.

Train, System of A Down and Third Eye Blind have all gotten a CD purchase from me downloading them, soon Cold as well.

I also bought Donnie Darko because of downloading.

I think it is great.

[wickednick]

Evan3 your saying you downloaded it first and then bought it.Ok thats fine seeing as how you bought it,I do this as well I look and then buy.But to download an entire album and burn it on a cd and never buy it is wrong.

[Ash]

I agree with JackFlack.

I myself have no problems taking anything and everything I can get my hands on whether it be movies or music.

The producers and actors/musicians are all rich or close to it.

I'm poor.

I'll take from the rich and give it to myself without hesitation any day of the week.
(yes I know that sounds selfish but oh well...I don't care)



Post Edited (07-02-03 13:13)

[Fearless Freep]

The producers and actors/musicians are all rich or close to it.

Prducers, yes.  Musicians, no.

Here's where the money goes.  (Note: 'recoupable' means it is the money that the label spends that the band owes back to the label)

========
This story is about a bidding-war band that gets a huge deal with a 20 percent royalty rate and a million-dollar advance. (No bidding-war band ever got a 20 percent royalty, but whatever.) This is my "funny" math based on some reality and I just want to qualify it by saying I'm positive it's better math than what Edgar Bronfman Jr. [the president and CEO of Seagram, which owns Polygram] would provide.

What happens to that million dollars?

They spend half a million to record their album. That leaves the band with $500,000. They pay $100,000 to their manager for 20 percent commission. They pay $25,000 each to their lawyer and business manager.

That leaves $350,000 for the four band members to split. After $170,000 in taxes, there's $180,000 left. That comes out to $45,000 per person.

That's $45,000 to live on for a year until the record gets released.

The record is a big hit and sells a million copies. (How a bidding-war band sells a million copies of its debut record is another rant entirely, but it's based on any basic civics-class knowledge that any of us have about cartels. Put simply, the antitrust laws in this country are basically a joke, protecting us just enough to not have to re-name our park service the Phillip Morris National Park Service.)

So, this band releases two singles and makes two videos. The two videos cost a million dollars to make and 50 percent of the video production costs are recouped out of the band's royalties.

The band gets $200,000 in tour support, which is 100 percent recoupable.

The record company spends $300,000 on independent radio promotion. You have to pay independent promotion to get your song on the radio; independent promotion is a system where the record companies use middlemen so they can pretend not to know that radio stations -- the unified broadcast system -- are getting paid to play their records.

All of those independent promotion costs are charged to the band.

Since the original million-dollar advance is also recoupable, the band owes $2 million to the record company.

If all of the million records are sold at full price with no discounts or record clubs, the band earns $2 million in royalties, since their 20 percent royalty works out to $2 a record.

Two million dollars in royalties minus $2 million in recoupable expenses equals ... zero!

How much does the record company make?

They grossed $11 million.

It costs $500,000 to manufacture the CDs and they advanced the band $1 million. Plus there were $1 million in video costs, $300,000 in radio promotion and $200,000 in tour support.

The company also paid $750,000 in music publishing royalties.

They spent $2.2 million on marketing. That's mostly retail advertising, but marketing also pays for those huge posters of Marilyn Manson in Times Square and the street scouts who drive around in vans handing out black Korn T-shirts and backwards baseball caps. Not to mention trips to Scores and cash for tips for all and sundry.

Add it up and the record company has spent about $4.4 million.

So their profit is $6.6 million; the band may as well be working at a 7-Eleven.

Of course, they had fun. Hearing yourself on the radio, selling records, getting new fans and being on TV is great, but now the band doesn't have enough money to pay the rent and nobody has any credit.

Worst of all, after all this, the band owns none of its work ... they can pay the mortgage forever but they'll never own the house. Like I said: Sharecropping. Our media says, "Boo hoo, poor pop stars, they had a nice ride. f**k them for speaking up"; but I say this dialogue is imperative. And cynical media people, who are more fascinated with celebrity than most celebrities, need to reacquaint themselves with their value systems.

When you look at the legal line on a CD, it says copyright 1976 Atlantic Records or copyright 1996 RCA Records. When you look at a book, though, it'll say something like copyright 1999 Susan Faludi, or David Foster Wallace. Authors own their books and license them to publishers. When the contract runs out, writers gets their books back. But record companies own our copyrights forever.

The system's set up so almost nobody gets paid.

-- Courtney Love
=========



Post Edited (07-02-03 13:23)

[Brother Ragnarok]

THANK YOU FREEP!  I'm glad someone else knows the musicians get f**ked on record deals.  Everyone always thinks they're being cool when they don't buy a record or go to a show to support their favorite artists (I'm lookin' at YOU, Ash ;), but they're just knocking a few bucks off that next tank of gas to make it to the next town.  Only those dumbass rappers and huge bands like Aerosmith make that much money.
But as far as movies go, especially for people like us who watch more strange, hard-to-find movies than most people, bootlegging is indeed, as Nick so grandly put it, god.

Brother R

[Great Sage]

Freep,

Is that why recording artists live like kings in their mansions on MTV Cribs?  Frankly, I have no problem with bootlegging when I notice that these musicians can go out and buy a Bently, Benz or Rolls with pocket change.

Bootlegging is what Robin Hood was for Sherwood Forest...

[Kirk]

As someone who spent a couple grand producing an album a few years back...

If I was at your house and saw that you had ripped/downloaded/bootlegged the album I paid to produce, I WOULD BREAK YOUR GODDAMN LEGS.

Napster/Kazaa is theft.  You are a dirty f**kin' thief is you download.  

Kirk

[JohnL]

I've said it before and I'll say it again; If songs were legally available to download for $0.50 apiece, in an unrestricted format, I think most people would buy them rather than pirate.

There's a local liquidator store that sells older computer games for $5 each. The local Staples has copies of Adobe Photoshop 7 for $600. I like games and I like graphics software. Out of the two, which do you think I'm more likely to pirate?

How about this idea: if you download a song that you really like through a P2P network, send a quarter directly to the artist. That's only $10 for every 40 songs. True, a quarter isn't much, but if one million people did this, the artist would make $250,000 of pure profit, which is a hell of a lot more than they'd get from the record companies. The only ones who would be losing money are the thieves at the record companies who give artists the shaft. Bypass them and send your money directly to the artist.