Bootlegs, Piracy, what's your opinion?

Let's put it this way Mark, if you have a book that falls apart and you want to read it again do you feel that because you have already paid for the book once you shouldn't have to pay for the same words again?

The fact that you had to pay four times for four different versions of the same music is because you made the choice to succssively have four different ways of playing music and you wanted to play Machine Head on them all. Yes the musicians got lucky in that their work was being reissued but that still doesn't mean that you have a right to take their work without paying for it not matter how many times you've paid for it in other formats - let's face it, most artists, musicians and writers dream of getting lucky like that and I don't begrudge those who do.

As I understand it, Mark. If you’ve bought the title ie cd, you can copy it for personal use.
How many of us have made up compilations for personal use, friends etc. that can’t be piracy, as long as it is not selling the finished product.

Although I can see why owners of artistic works do not like to see their work & incomes compromised sometimes their industry is their own worst enemy.

As a teenager in the 70's I became a bit of a rocker, enjoying bands such as "Deep Purple" & the 'Stones, spending my meagre pocket money on their albums. I remember buying "Machine Head" on vinyl & rushing home to play it. The cost included copyright fees & royalties paid - the music was mine to enjoy! Then I got a car. In order to play my music on the move I invested in an Eight Track player. This meant buying another copy of "Machine Head" & paying ANOTHER lot of copyright fees & royalties to the artist who has not had to do anything more. So far I have paid twice for the right to own that album. Then Eight Tracks were superceded by cassettes, so it was off to the record shop again!! Then CDs came along....

I have paid FOUR times for the same piece of music but the artist has only recorded the album once. The original album sale covered his earnings. So the artist & everyone else in the supply chain has done very well out of me just because technology has changed, & not in ways I would have been able to foresee. If I want to listen to "Machine Head" in the car I will download a pirate copy from the internet & put it on a stick. I will not pay yet again for something that I already own! Maybe I will feel a little guilty when I see Mick Jagger busking in the Underground.

Just add it to my list of criminal activities - I'm a paedophile (when I was 17, at a party, I had a "knee trembler" with a girl I later discovered was only 15), but I was a victim too - over the course of a weekend when I was 15, an 18 year old 6th form girl from Tonbridge "groomed" me for sex. The shock & humiliation has been difficult to live with - she never took my phone number!

Hi John,

what is very intersting to me is that I was talking to an old mate of mine yesterday in Australia who actually prepares the 'play lists' and recordings for ten commercial radio stations 'down-under' on behalf of a MAJOR, MAJOR player worldwide in the music and movie scene. He tells me that the top-selling albums are taken from the 'back catalogues' with very few of the newer bands really making much of anything but temporary blips in the sales charts.

There is little talent out there which is also driving technology as few companies want to take up the cost of recordings and promotions with new singers or bands. Companies do rush to sign up Simon Cowell's finds, but few have any lasting talent largely being one-hit wonders.

Being a family man with two (now) grown-up daughters he is also saddened by the increasingly pornographic self-promotion videos some of these young women are having to produce to get 'seen'. They are now almost and end in themselves and the musical content very secondary.

I agree that technology and not talent is and will continue to shape the entertainment industry - and even the literary one . Like most of a certain age I like the holistic pleasure of holding a 'real' book (yes and owning it), but I don't think this really applies now to the growing generation. The bigger problem as I see it is in the shortened versions of everything, as few households I see have groaning shelves of books as in my house.

Even allowing for spelling nonsenses, somehow I don't think that SMS is the real answer, and how do you write a book in that? I know that is not the intention, but will we finally end-up going the full circle and end-up just grunting at each other, and banging drums? Will the written word simply die?

Not in my anticipated short lifespan, but in other 20 years? Horrible thought!

Maybe the pirated stuff is our only salvation to save what we now have before it all disappears?

I agree Zoe. A shake up in the so called music industry is long called for. If it is technology that drives it so be it.

As an aside, bootlegging has been with us a long time. A week after Thomas More's 'Utopia' was published, bootleg copies could be bought.

Gosh, you’re not a very happy camper, are you Vincent. I suspect you don’t really grasp the technological shift that is taking place. Try reading Norman’s posts, he really understands. On a more philosophical note, Life is all about change. Some of it can be termed progress and some not but getting all hot and bothered about it probably daft. Cheer up.

Largest grossing film ever Avatar. Most downloaded film ever avatar! I know when i was younger an album would have 12/13 songs on, now you just get 7 or 8 (most are crap songs with one number 1 on it) and they are shorter but the prices haven't changed. I think that if you download something for yourself every now and again you should be forgiven but when people do it and sell it for personal profit it is wrong

Talking to our webdesigner in Australia today, and not being a techie, I was astonished to hear him say that the latest computers (laptops in this instance) will no longer have CD/DVD drive, which tells me something. Not really knew i suppose but the days of CD and DVD are rushing to their demise and soon it will (apparently) be only possible to get product from corporate 'libraries'.

A word about Copyright. It is a very complicated world, and although it should be straightforward it simply isn't. For example it is now quite legal for someone to re-record someone else's musical work for example and place copyright on it. What isn't realised is that Copyright can now apply to the technical bits and so deprive the original creator of his or her royalty rights.

Copyright is also NOT the same worldwide and depends largely on where you live. In the UK Copyright lasts for 70 years after the death of the Creator, after which works fall into the Public Domain, and probably the most famous case of this was the release of Gilbert & Sullivan works after a fight by the D'oyley Carte Opera Company. Also Copyright in most countries cannot be applied to an idea, but only to a created work. I stand a little on shakey ground here, but I understand that in America music stays in Copyright in perpetuity which is nonsensical.

Most musicians who work on recordings - jobbing musicians usually sign an 'assignment' to the recording company which means they have no rights to anything other than the agreed fee for the job - and nothing more if it goes on to be a major hit for fifty years. The Beatles, George Michael and others have had problems with this over the years.

It can get bizarre as in advertising, unless an assignment is made a Photographer, Model or whoever can claim copyright on their work - which means claim for more money against other uses. So assignments are made as a matter of course. Sometimes this doesn't happen and the BBC has had more than its fair share of clumsy work in this.

Plus who IS the Creator in an association? Problems arise.

Printed works are relatively easy as long as the Author places the Copyright claim on the work and the date - this costs nothing and Copyright is automatic. However if it is NOT claimed then it can be open for plagiarism or worse.

Works such as classic literature pass into the Public Domain after differing periods and in the USA these are registered and listed. However and bizarreky again if someone does a 'live 'reading' of a classic book they can claim copyright on that reading, but not on the origianl work. Thus an 'interpretive' situation is deemed to exist UNLESS an assignment is again made.

The whole business of Copyright gets messy when people say buy an original Van Gogh and believe they then obtain the reproduction rights to it. Not true, ownership of any original artwork gives the owner nothing at all other than the work. However the same thing applies if the death of the creator was (in Britain) more than 70 years prior, and the original is then in the Public Domain and further copyright cannot be claimed.

Very often you will find a Copyright claim to a Published work is known to be in the Public Domain - say Shakespeare for example. In fact the claim again is for the technical side of the production and not the creative side.

Ultimately a Claimant against Breach of Copyright is usually seeking one of two things and possibly both - getting to stop someone using their work and/or obtain compensation for loss of income thus incurred. In both cases this is not easy to do and certainly not easy to prove re. losses made. There are many instances where Courts are not swayed by financial considerations.

Finally and not many people seem to realise this, but in Britain and the USA it is an illegal act (not sure about criminal) to falsely claim copyright, which basically means quite rightly that you need to be very sure you can prove copyright in law - even though in theory it is not necessary. One way is to lodge a copy of your work with the British Library, - in France if a book is printed here two copies are automatically lodged with the National Archives.

I repeat though that the laws are different according to where you live, where the copyright infraction has occurred , and where any legal action would take place. Not easy.

For those concerned with this subject, and it is not one of our books, I strongly recommend getting a copy of the current edition of The Writers & Artists Yearbook. No creative home should be without it!

I agree with Ellis, and being stroppy about something doesn't make one right.

I am not passionate enough about piracy to take a lambasting for hours on here by all the "pillars of the community" (how many of you have taken a shortcut, parked in a handicapped spot when not legally allowed to do so, been guilty of speeding, or eaten the free sample without intending to buy the mango?)

I like owning my CDs, and books, and E-books, I find to be a waste of time, but I will say this... the music industry and writing are worlds apart, the author of the lyrics makes next to nothing until some good looking teenager cries the words to music, on taratata. Still, the writer gets peanuts, and the teenage heart-throb "makes money"..... how good is this money when they are now entrapped. Being told what to wear, how to eat, where to tour, until the point where they overdose on their sleeping pills in their hotel room.
Paying for a CD/downloading from the pirate bay does not break this cycle, and it is about time people saw beneath the ugly cover of this mass produced poison.

I love it when the favourite old clichés are rattled out. We are lulled into thinking the progress involves change: more often for the worst. All I can think of saying about the last post is: crote de bicue!

If someone can't afford to buy a hard copy book, they can go to the library. Admittedly not all such books are in the libraries: tough! People can share a book and split the cost. As for ebooks, most of them are very cheap, except for those put there by mainstream publishers. So pirating them is just pure meanness and petty theft. Here in the Dordogne the local library has an amazing collection of classical music, which I use. Gone are the days when I can afford to fork out €20 a week for CD, so I take advantage of the lending system. That system, in reality, is a form of piracy: making available for free other people's work.

As a producer, to agree that progress means that producers should accept the inevitable is pure nonsense, and the wider audience comment is in the same stable as all the other clichés. When you think how much money is spent on the devices that are used to steal and listen to the intellectual property of the makers, one wonders why they need to steal, as it would seem they have plenty of money to be able to buy it.

I suppose you could nearly say the rot started to set in when the likes of Tara Palmer Tompkinson was given the first page of the Sunday Times colour supplement. It heralded a world of mediocre middle management and useless university courses, which in turn produced more useless middle management and clones sitting in front of screens with head sets, giving useless advice or trying to sell useless services and cheap solar heating systems, not to mention asking which food your neighbour's cat hated!

Forgive my bluntness, I once wrote such catty stuff for mags and it is a hard habit to drop. I have become fed up with this suburban mediocrity, which has spilled over into France in the shape of expats winging about the lack of baked beans, mint sauce (too thick to make their own) and all kind of other boring "prole" food.

nuff said!

I think all business model have to change over time. File sharing isn't going away and I believe that the industries affected are just going to have to adapt. While I can sympathise with the financial implications for the artists I would hope easier and wider audience access would compensate. I do have a touch of schadenfreude regarding the multiple levels of disintermediated "suits" though.

Well, as an author of quite a few books AND a partner in a Publishing Company and as a A & R man in the Music Industry for a number of years in Australia (for Distributor of multiple labels - called Festival Records if anyone is interested) I think most people here are taking a very simplistic view of a far more complex situation than you obviously know about.

Let's get the Author bit out of the way first. An Author only gets paid from his distributor/publisher and not by Fred Bloggs directly. The going rate for an Author is 10% of the RRP (recommended retail price). NOTE; there is no such thing anymore as Retail Price Maintenance, so a retailer can sell or give books away to his heart's content if he so wishes. Most retail book sales (bricks and mortar not online) are made on a Sale or Return basis, and carry a minimum markup of 40% to the retailer, who takes zero risk. Online is not so very different with Amazon taking slightly less at 33% or thereabouts, but ditto re. risk.

A Publisher has both print production costs and promotion costs and if a sales team is involved at any level then upwards of another 40% can be absorbed leaving the Publisher if he is lucky with 10-15% (which is taxable).

Online i.e. ebooks is cheaper as there is no physical print production involved, so is more profitable.

CD's and DVD's cost cents to produce, and until recently in the case of DVD's were regarded as second-stage sales and suppementary profit after circuit sales had been made. Both these items cost very little to produce, and in my view carry vastly inflated prices to an extent that they actively retard sales, and encourage pilferage and filesharing. Reducing prices to get volume sales is not exactly new or rocket science.

The key to almost everything is in VOLUME, and this varies according to the type of material on offer - text book volume is not the same as a novel volume. No-one that I am aware of has come up with a magic formula for success in either music or films, and least of all in books - novels in partiicular. This means successful books have to contribute to the cost of those that didn't make it.

So, this is a convoluted way fo saying VOLUME is King, and anything that helps that is totally valid. Believe it or not, if something gets pirated it generates interest, and some research has suggested that for every single item pirated online generates up to TWENTY sales. True or not if something is worth pirating by the few (and they still are the few) then this is just one route to getting the product more known. In other words it can be regarded as a Promotional cost.

Remember in almost every case although it is the Creator who theoretically is covered by Copyright, but by necessity has to sign away the greatest portion of the returns - quite validly. Most authors and musicians are in no way equipped to cover all the risk Marketing costs of a Company. It is totally proven that by exposing any and all works and getting them known is the key to success (at least until a reputation practically guarantees sales - Ruth Rendell etc.) Unless you are a 'one-hit wonder' the object is to get a reputation as fast as possible - that means getting your product out there and listened to.

Sorry people, but Piracy and 'illegal copying" are just part of the process. We just haven't figured out to control and maximise the benefits. We provide copies to the media, and to what we call 'Influencers' in any field relevant. These are invariably also 'early adopters' who lead the way in tastes. Put it down to field Research' - if people think it's worth thieving then its probably worth buying by the more legitimate crowd.

NB Retailers and manufacturers also facture in a 'theft' element in the pricing structure, or they should if they are retail products. Pushes up the price or pushes up the awareness?

To make a separate story.

Most people enter the Creative process to 'share' what they have. Many have hopes of wealth and fame, and most never achieve anything like it.

Before I did what I do now I was an Author of Marketing books, and so no-one can accuse me of a one-sided view, look at these two pictures; One is the original (color cover) and the other is a Vietnamese pirated issue. Should I feel upset because I didn't get my dollar or so Royalties or happy that my book was, and possibly still is, making the rounds of Asia as a text? I know what I think.

As an author and small publisher, copyright contravention is a deprivation of the the author of income, so if it isn't theft, it is a form of fraud.

As to free ebooks. All ebooks on the amazon kindle shop are digitally protected and cannot be swapped from one tablet/pc/ etc to another. Smashwords don't offer this protection, so I and friends won't use them. One author who used them says they aren't that good, where as, on kindle, she sold 60 thousand books in two years up to last month! (lives in the Dordogne) Andrea Frazer.

As for getting permission to bootleg concerts from musicians, this isn't quite straightforward. One of my colleagues here at Radio Liberté (Dordogne) Russell James, who once worked in the music industry, says that very few musicians actually own their own music, and cannot give such permissions. He relays his programs onto the likes of myspace and has to show proof of the ownership of music before they will allow it to be posted up.

vincent flannery, Culturegap program radio liberté, (also amazon book store!)

Sticking to music for a moment (where I have a little knowledge), illegally downloading a piece of music does not just cheat the composer of his revenue, but also does the same to all the other musicians on the recording (many jobbing musicians), all the technical staff as well. Every time someone buys a CD or whatever and then makes a copy for a friend there are a lot of people who lose the payment for their services.

Ellis put his toe on shaky ground there. My OH are not fiction writers but certainly much closer to Thomas Paine, however whether we are academics or human rights 'activists' is beside the point when the actual one is that the work is done, analyses made on the basis of research and conclusions drawn by us. It is badly enough paid as it is without people begging, borrowing and stealing. Naturally we do not want to deprive anybody of access to what is written by whoever, it is nonetheless free-booting on the part of those who have full versions of texts they use toward earning their own income but that they have not paid for. Library use is accepted but people who get access to a photocopier free of charge and where nobody oversees what they are duplicating are only just a little less blatant than somebody who goes shoplifting in a bookshop. I think Ellis is pushing it a bit. It is, nonetheless, bad enough having to accept that it is nigh on impossible to do much about it without going the other way and more or less justifying it.

Actually Ellis, taking something without payment - when you are supposed to pay - is theft. I am a writer, everything I write belongs to me unless I specifically assign the copyright to someone else - that's the law. By downloading one of my books illegally you are infringing my copyright just as much as if Penguin published it without my permission. Please don't spout that guff about artists not losing anything by illegal downloading - potentially you do because some of the theives might have actually bought it, and in any case whether or not illegal downoders woould have paid for it is entirely beside the point.

It's still illegal.

Offering freebies to promote ebooks is entirely another matter. That is in the control of the author who specifies how long the book can be downloaded free and it's done to bring yourself to the attention of a market that might not know about you. It works very well when you've got a substantial backlist - you can be sure Paulo Coehlo only ever offered one book free, those who read his free book and liked it would then have had to pay for the rest.

There is a point that a number of ‘amateur’ authors put their books for free on download sites such as amazon for a while. I’m assuming this is to stimulate sales. I don’t know we’d have to ask.
As for your point two, I’ve heard that, and I know from personal experience as far as music goes to be true. I don’t like downloaded music. I have to own the cd. So if I hear something I like I buy it.
The same with books. I prefer to buy the book as an item not download. So a freebie by a quality author would probably stimulate me to buy her/his books.

I actually agree with both of you about it being theft. The problem has become that however illegal it may well be, little effort goes to pursuing those who produce illegal copies of whatever. I have a couple of friends who own the texts of songs they composed but that have been recorded and released by other artists 'informally' so that they get no copyright fees at all whereas the artists who record these versions get all there is to earn from their own versions. My main income from anything I write is from ALCS, the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society. If they did not collect copyright fees I would see almost nothing from any of my work over the years and people who write academic articles especially do not expect to earn anything much from their work. The issue is that it has become too easy to copy work and there is too little incentive to pursue those who reproduce it illegally.

I think you are correct Victoria. I know how much work goes into writing a novel, for example.
However, I remember a bootleg time when the illegality was exciting. The only way, for example, to get hold of the legendary 1966 Bob Dylan Albert Hall concert, because CBS were too stupid not to release it officially for years.
(For clever clogs on the site, I know it was the Free Trade Hall in Manchester.)
Also, with Leonard Cohen’s permission I have bootlegs of all the concerts I’ve attended.
But ripping off a book like Stephen King’s is theft.