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Re: Samples and looping



On 9/2/09, Louigi Verona <louigi.verona@gmail.com> wrote:
> This sounds reasonable, but in real life turns out to be a disaster.

This is just your point of view, your experience, your expectations.
Not reality.

Thousands of art workers around the world disagree with you. If you
think they will just sit back and wait until every internet company
has a few more million dollars in their accounts, you are mistaken.
People have given their lifes for the right to work, people have
fought for the right to have a future, long before the internet.

Do you want to hear about real disasters? Check out how many people
lost their jobs in the last five years because of piracy. Those are
real people, not forum avatars. They have real families. Real dreams.
Yes, that is the truth: people lose their job when a studio has to
close down, when a band can't afford to tour anymore, when a record
label can't even pay the rent.

99% of the music industry is hard working people, small studios, indie
bands, small labels. Those are who are taking 100% of the risk, 100%
of the damage. Not the superstars.

> In
> order to control what everybody does with your music, you would require
> draconian measures and you will have to literally spy on every person in 
>the
> world in order to actually see it through.

You don't understand how the law works, no one is spying on anyone. If
you use a sample from a movie and you release the album without a
license, the director is not going to spy on you. He has better things
to do, like make original films, for example. But you are liable for
damages from the first day of release. Do you want to risk a lawsuit
that will force you to pay money for all the years that the album was
available? Do you want to spend the rest of your life waiting for a
publisher somewhere to notice your music playing on the radio? Do you
want to risk your unlicensed material being tracked from the automatic
log systems of the royalties societies?

> Also, what if 10000 people use
> it?

If 10,000 use a sample without a license, then 10,000 lawyers are
going to make some extra money sooner or later. It is not about if you
are going to get caught, it is about when you are going to get caught.

>Is it necessary to receive so much money for one piece of music?

How can you possibly know how much money an artist has invested in his
profession?

> Clearly, this business model is flawed and seems reasonable only at the
> first glance.

The only business model that is flawed is the model of stealing the
indie artists to build internet corporations.

> But
> who said that making good music should result in gaining money?

Good music is used by many industries and companies to make money. Why
shouldn't the artist earn a fair share?

I have never heard a music supervisor/director say "hey, have you
heard any bad music lately? I have to find some really awful tracks
for a new documentary".

> People do
> lots of good things and do not gain money.

Do they do those good things for 8 hours every day, 360 days a year?

> In fact, people who do gain money
> in many cases fail to deliver an inspired piece of music.

Most artists who make a living from their art are delivering inspired
pieces of music, otherwise they would not make money at all.

Your assumption presents the music listeners as stupid consumers, as a
whole, worldwide.

> A person can decide for himself when it concerns only him. The question 
>of
> information control, however, concerns the whole society and in fact it
> would influence the society more than the artist, since society would 
>have
> to abide by the license and the artist would only wait for the bonuses.
> By trying to control the flow of information, one unwillingly would 
>control
> much more than that - personal freedom. That's the nature of 
>information. So
> licenses are a matter of freedom - everybody's freedom.
>
> This is my view on the subject.
>
> Louigi.

Music is an art, it is not information. The only information related
to music that exists is album notes, press releases, bios and
interviews. All this information is free for the public and no one is
interested in controlling its flow.

Calling music as information is the favorite game of the various
internet companies. Of course they want to present music as
information, how else are they going to sell bigger hard drives,
easily exploited social networks and traffic statistics to their
customers?