In a sudden turn of events (sometimes referred to as Christmas) I seem to have stumbled upon an “Ipod” device. It is a curious creature, and it seems to be able to store many moons worth of musical “Cds.”
However, I have also duly noted that the Grinch has seemed to have taken away, “SuprNova.”
This is troublesome to me and my new device-friend. We are interested in knowing about other viable means of acquisition of these new musical files.
Also, we wish to hear some band recommendations, as we both seem to not be that “in” with the music scene. In the past, we have enjoyed Pete Yorn, some of the Eels, Moby, and Fatboy Slim. (I never claimed I had class.)
Oh yeah… and Merry Christmas! Or Happy Holidays! Or Awesome Kwanza!
Just to be clear: you’re welcome to join WASTE only if you intend to share your own music files and leave the client up when you are not downloading stuff. You don’t have to share a huge amount, but we’ve had a lot of “leechers” join lately, or guys who are only offering what the core members already have (basically because they are only sharing what they download off us) and we like to think we’re not just some warez community. The entire idea is to share with others music you like that you hope for them to buy. Expanding your own musical horizons is ancillary. So if you don’t have any loved cds you want to share with us in the hopes that we’ll discover a new artist and buy them, but instead just want to fill space on your iPod, you’ll have to go elsewhere. WASTE is pretty incredible and we’ve got a great community of music lovers there, but leechers and warezers just drag the intention down.
This is arbitrary, but I’d say you should be sharing at least 500 meg worth of stuff. That’s only about 15 albums, I think, so that’s a reasonable bar to entry. If you can swing that and are still interested, post in the WASTE thread.
Pirates with honor It is so nice to see the scene move from the heavy handed - “You can’t enter here if you are cop, and these warez are only for trial” to Crypt’s “If you share enough, you aren’t a pirate because by sharing enough you must actually be buying cds.” Or is it some parental tough love, “We pirate because we love music that much?”
From the beginning on the Qt3 Waste network, the idea has always been that it’s the virtual equivalent of having some buddies over, playing some tunes for 'em, and having them ask you to dub them a tape or burn a CD with that stuff. Such things tend to spur sales of CD’s far more than retard them…and is something I and my friends have done for decades.
What Crypt is getting at is that if I’m having you over to my place to listen to my out-of-print Grifters discs from the mid-90’s, you’d damn well better let me come over and go through your stacks too.
From the beginning on the Qt3 homo network, the idea has always been that it’s the virtual equivalent of having some buddies over, playing some tunes for 'em, and having them ask you to jack them off or burn their asshole with that gooey stuff. Such things tend to spur boners far more than retard them…and is something I and my friends have done for decades.
What Crypt is getting at is that if I’m having you over to my place to jack off, you’d damn well better let me come over and go through your ass too.
I’m not going to argue with you here, Chet. What we’re doing is still technically pirating. All I can tell you is that I’ve bought at least three times as many cds over the last year directly because I was exposed to the artists on WASTE first than I have over the last few years combined. Considering CDs are about $25 a pop over here, that’s no small increase.Most of the other guys on WASTE, at least from what they’ve told me, are the same way. Don’t believe us? I don’t care, because you don’t know what you’re talking about.
I mean, really, all you guys are saying is “I have so little will-power that if I downloaded a lossy mp3 of a music file and liked it, I would never have any reason to buy the real thing.” Sorry about that - you’re probably wise to stay away from something like WASTE. But you’re not talking about me and I don’t think you’re talking about the other guys on the WASTE network either. I certainly don’t feel that way - there are tangible benefits to owning a CD by a good artist, including liner notes, a physical copy and just the feel-good notion of supporting them going forward. Actually, the last aspect is the most important to me, and stuff like WASTE allows me to expand my horizons and make informed musical investments in a way that I never could have before.
I’ll be the first to admit that I think the RIAA has their head stuffed up their ass - the way people want their music delivered has changed and they are trying to bludgeon people into accepting an out-dated business model. It’s really the age old thing, isn’t it? For decades, people are made rich doing the same old thing, and then all of a sudden, the same old thing isn’t good enough and they don’t understand why. Which is why I think it’s important not to buy blind anymore. I want to actually hear an album before I buy it, because otherwise, I’m supporting an industry that I feel is a complete anachronism for the sake of an album that most likely sucks, when almost none of the money would go to the artist anyway.
I’m sorry you feel this is all so damn unreasonable and immoral. But, again, I don’t really care, because while you and Tim are sitting there randomly spitting out incomprehensible run-on sentences and your own deeply-rooted, homoerotic, Christmas-time gang bang scenarios at all of this (I can’t wait for Part Two, when Tim’s son’s overly tight foreskin enters stage-left, perhaps entranced by the pendulous swaying of my own skewered, trunk-like dong) I’m the guy who can actually look at his credit card statement for the past year and see dozens upon dozens of CDs with the exact same titles as stuff I downloaded off of WASTE. So whatever.
It’s not wrong to steal from a store if you buy more stuf from it later? Huh?
Why do pirates always try to construct silly little justifications? Albums suck? Then don’t buy them. Your displeasure with industry practices has jack shit to do with whether stealing is wrong.
Crypt, you’re stealing because you can.
You’ve happened upon an unattended bag of value, and you are snatching that shit.
Ben, what about what I’ve said don’t you understand? Someone on WASTE whose musical judgment I trust recommends an artist to me. I listen to one of their albums. If I like it, I go buy it, and probably all their other albums besides. If I don’t, because the album isn’t anything I’m interested in, I never listen to it again. Maybe you think I’m lying - okay, fine, I can’t prove it to you, you either have to take my word for it or you don’t. If that’s the case, just come out and say you don’t believe me. But don’t pretend like what I’m describing is anything different or more nefarious than a buddy lending you a book, cd or movie, because it really isn’t. Jesus, did you people do so much hand-wringing while listening to a CD in a buddy’s living room, or making a mix-tape for someone?
There isn’t a single album I have downloaded off of WASTE that I was interested in listening to more than once that I haven’t purchased. In my mind, there’s no difference between that and borrowing a CD, overhearing an album at a record store, or listening to music in a friend’s living room. And don’t make like mp3s are in any way a replacement for a complete album - music I like I want to own in the best format possible, and that’s still CD. There is a very real reason why, possessing an inferior compressed copy of an album, I would want to invest in the original.
The bottom line is that I’ve spent a thousand euros on CDs this year… most of it WASTE inspired. In previous years, I spent a small fraction of that amount. Have you spent that much on music this year due to exposure to a single source?
First off: Ben and Chet are absolutely correct. Sharing files is stealing. Not “pretty much stealing” but “stealing”. No defense there.
Thing is, at least with regards to WASTE–and especially our WASTE network, is that you’re projecting the ethos of file sharing in general (kazaa, suprnova, etc.) to our little band of thieves. Reading Crypt’s post above, I surely see myself in it. I spend a hugely disproportionate chunk of my disposable income on music–more than on games, movies, or books. I do so because of things like WASTE. I hear a song I like, and I want to hear more. I hear more and I really like it (or can imagine myself eventually liking it) and I want the whole shebang. I shell out the bucks for it.
In other words, I’m just like DrCrypt in that regard. I’m guessing that the other folks in the WASTE qt3 thing feel the same way.
And it’s at that point that I’d point out an error in your logic. You’re clearly projecting the ethos of large, peer-to-peer networks onto our little WASTE group. Reading between the lines, I see: “Oh sure, you two might buy lots more music because of this file-stealing thing you have, but what about all the other folks?”
What fucking “other folks”? This is a closed network, maybe with 10-15 people. There are no anonymous WASTE-users in our group. If someone downloads music from me, I know who it was that did it. And casting through the libraries of other folks in our WASTE group, I see a huge diversity of music. The other fellows are sure buying a lot of stuff, too. If I ever felt uncomfortable with seeing unfamiliar names on the list, or saw someone who was clearly just leeching, I’d either drop out or shut those particular users out of access for my stuff.
Just because something is legal or illegal doesn’t mean it’s “stealing.” Next up: humming a song to yourself that you heard previously is an unauthorized use!
