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iPod free music - am I deluded?

42 replies

trinni · 19/11/2011 21:56

Help! My son has an iPod nano and I'm a bit clueless about getting music onto it for him.

We do use i tunes and a friend puts bits and pieces on a memory stick for us but...is there any free music to be had?

I used to use lime wire but alas, no more.

OP posts:
nikon1968 · 21/11/2011 16:54

I usually buy used books but I would buy new if it was cheap.

You do not have to say it again I understand what you are saying........i don't buy new books you don't get paid.

Bottom line I cannot afford £7.99 a book.......I can afford £2.70 for a book.

I honestly do not give the author a thought.................I know that is harsh but sadly true.

trinni · 21/11/2011 22:17

We are a Kindle owning family so, I'll get my comeuppance.

But I do absolutely agree with nikon though - sorry, but I don't imagine many stop to think of the loss suffered by the author when we pick up a cheap book. I know I don't. We all like a bargain, it's human nature.

OP posts:
BadgersPaws · 22/11/2011 10:52

I think that we need to split out the two interconnected issues.

Firstly you have the copying of things and either spreading those copies or retaining the copy after you've sold or returned the original item to it's owner. So for example downloading for free the latest album by some artist, copying a borrowed CD and then returning it to a library or selling a game that you've bought but keeping a copy to play.

I don't think that anyone is arguing that that's an OK thing to be doing.

And then we have second hand sales, such as Amazon's marketplace (ignoring for a moment the use of that channel to sell stock that shouldn't be sold, such as review copies). With second hand sales the original creator doesn't get any money from the sale, but personally I think that's fair enough. As long as the seller is genuinely selling on the item and not retaining a copy for themselves then I don't see a big problem with it.

However...

I do sympathise with the problems of authors like Abra1d. And I do have some niche interests where printing runs can be very low. And for those things I do try to buy from genuine providers where I can reasonably trust that the money will go back to the creators and I'll avoid second hand copies.

That's not some altruistic charity on my behalf, it's actually just a very selfish realisation that unless the creators do get paid for all the work that they put in then they will have to either stop creating or cut back on what they can produce.

nikon1968 · 22/11/2011 17:27

And I do have some niche interests where printing runs can be very low. And for those things I do try to buy from genuine providers where I can reasonably trust that the money will go back to the creators and I'll avoid second hand copies.

So you don't want me to copy an obscure 'item' but don't mind if I copy 'anything from microsoft or take that''

BadgersPaws · 22/11/2011 17:38

"So you don't want me to copy an obscure 'item' but don't mind if I copy 'anything from microsoft or take that''"

No, that's not what I said or meant. Copying from anyone is wrong, in the end even Microsoft employ lots of "normal" people and they'll suffer should the software from various divisions undersell.

I was talking about buying things second hand, which I don't think is wrong but for some things I will deliberately avoid it in order to help support an area of work.

nikon1968 · 22/11/2011 17:42

Ah I see sorry got the wrong end of the stick there.

Abra1d · 22/11/2011 19:39

'for some things I will deliberately avoid it in order to help support an area of work.'

:)

nikon1968 · 23/11/2011 07:24

so abra1d.......do you admit to being naughty on other things.

Abra1d · 23/11/2011 11:59

Give me examples and I will tell you!

nikon1968 · 23/11/2011 17:28

you said some things you deliberately avoid I am asking what you do not avoid?

Abra1d · 23/11/2011 18:38

Erm no, I was quoting BadgersPaws. Hence the speech marks.

nikon1968 · 23/11/2011 19:14

Ah but you smiled and therefore agree.

I do not believe there is one person in the whole country that does not have at least one copied cd [music] or piece of software.

BadgersPaws · 24/11/2011 00:42

"I do not believe there is one person in the whole country that does not have at least one copied cd [music] or piece of software."

I'm sure that there are people who regularly shoplift or steal who try to pretend to themselves that there's not a person in the country who hasn't stolen at least one thing, and that therefore makes their own thefts somehow acceptable, or somehow less "wrong".

In all honesty I'm sure that if you carried out a complete audit of every one of my drives that date back a decade or two you might turn up a handful of illegal copies of music tracks, out of the several thousand that I own scattered through out them all.

Certainly my computers do not have one single piece of unlicensed software upon them as they are what I use the most and what I'm most ware of.

Likewise I do not have any dodgy DVDs or CDs.

I did go through a brief phase more than a decade ago where I did download a very literal handful of music tracks from file sharing sites. But then what I was doing hit me, I claimed to be a fan of these people yet I was kicking them in the teeth by stealing from them, so I stopped.

And no matter what I own it doesn't make stealing any more or less right.

Either it's OK to steal from people and to take their work from them, or it's not. It really is quite that simple and quite that black and white. If I have done some bad things in the past, and I have, that doesn't mean that I can't now say that that was ignorant and wrong. If I have done wrong before it doesn't mean that I can't now grow up, stop being quite so selfish, stop being quite so ignorant and just generally grow up.

MortenHasNiceShirts · 24/11/2011 01:11

Er. I don't have any copied CDs or software....

nikon1968 · 24/11/2011 07:36

It certainly is a subject that is discussed a lot.

And badger as you have said ''i did download some files from illegal sites but then stopped'' so you have done it at least once and I believe most people have.

We could go around and around talking about what is right and wrong and I suppose at the end of the day it is wrong, but I firmly believe that the industry are not that bothered because as I said before they would put blocks on their cds.

I know it can be done because I have had a couple.

But like shops that moan about the shoplifting but dont employ a security guard the expense of doing anything about it would cost more than what they lose.

Thank you for a nice discussion on the subject and it not turning into a bun fight like on some other threads on here.

BadgersPaws · 24/11/2011 10:08

"I firmly believe that the industry are not that bothered because as I said before they would put blocks on their cds"

It can't be done, not reliably enough.

The industry, and more importantly the creatives who are the ones who get hurt the most, are immensely bothered by the whole thing.

With regards to CDs there really isn't much that can be done. Audio CDs have to adhere to a very strict standard so that they can be played on all players. Some companies did try to do things to CDs to stop people copying them but that breaks the compatibility and they often had to take the CD logo off of the discs because they were no longer "proper" CDs. Those CDs would then often fail to play on certain players, car stereos were a frequent victim of this.

Some companies went even further and put software on to stop music CDs being copied on a computer. However that ended up with Sony putting a very nasty and very buggy piece of software on their discs that left any PC that installed it with a gaping back door that hackers could use to get onto the machine. The got into an awful lot of legal trouble and had to offer to replace all of the discs with proper CDs without the bad software on them and pay compensation to those affected.

And after all that the discs protection was trivial to get around if you knew what you were doing on a computer. So the only people who had their machines broken by Sony were honest people who just wanted to hear the CD on their computer.

I think that was the end of music companies trying to protect CDs in that way. It's impossible, easy to get around, quite possibly illegal and leaves them open to very nasty lawsuits.

So, yes their bothered, very bothered.

And now their efforts are focussed on trying to stop the file sharing sites themselves, so you've got BT being threatened with court action and ordered to block one of the biggest offenders.

And then you've got people like me and Abra1d who work in industries affected by this and just ask that people stop stealing from us.

"But like shops that moan about the shoplifting but dont employ a security guard the expense of doing anything about it would cost more than what they lose."

Most people don't shoplift not because they're going to get caught but because the accept that it's stealing and that stealing is bad. Most people don't like to do bad things.

"Thank you for a nice discussion on the subject"

Discussion is the only way to resolve this huge problem. I don't believe that there is a technical solution to it and don't support the industry when it does try to block access to certain file sharing sites. The answer is for people to accept, as they do for shoplifting, that illegal file sharing is bad and that it really does hurt people. If people joined the dots up and realised that claiming to be a fan of something while simultaneously stealing from the creator of that something are incompatible concepts then it would die right down.

The OP who brought this whole thing up genuinely didn't seem to realise what they were really doing when they downloaded "free" music from places like limewire. Hopefully they'll now stop, all due to discussion.

Abra1d · 25/11/2011 16:24

'Ah but you smiled and therefore agree.'

I was thanking Badgerspaws for choosing not to buy AM books when she could buy new! I was thanking her for being sensitive to a big problem that new/mid-list authors have!

And like the others, I don't have illegally downloaded music or software. It's stealing.

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