Dear Administrator,

I noticed that there are several links to free "full MP3 downloads" on the discussion board. Are these downloads cleared with the copyright and phonoright owners?

As the wife of a composer, I am very sensitive to people "stealing" music that they should buy. This deprives the producer, publisher and eventually the musicians who have slaved over the project from getting paid for their work. They get little enough money as it is.

If having these downloads posted is a copyright or phonoright violation, then could you please take these links down?

As adminstrator of this discussion board, I would imagine that it is not your intent to violate the copyright laws by publishing unauthorized versions on your website. I would like to know your intentions and the policies of the discussion board on these issues.

Dancing and loving it,

Karen

Thank you for pointing out the post. It has been taken care of.

I normally try to avoid moderating this forum as much as possible, going so far as to allow people to post announcements and endorsements of competing websites and businesses, and criticisms of our own website and business practices. However, because message facilitated the illegal act of downloading and trading copyrighted material, I was obligated to remove it.

The trading of music and media content will continue whether we endorse it or not. That doesn't mean we should therefore endorse it. As administrator of this website, my job is not to try to prevent music trading altogether, rather, it is to prevent people from using our website as a means to engage in such acts.

I encourage all of our visitors to use this website freely and without restraint, to discuss topics, trade ideas, post advertisements (in the appropriate forum, of course), and even to trade and share files, if they are in public domain. I encourage you to take advantage of our product in any way you see fit, as long as you use it in ways that are not, in the words of Dr. Laura Schlessinger, "illegal, immoral, or fattening".

On second thought, if you really want to get fat using our website, be my guest.

Regards,
Jonathan Atkinson
www.ballroomdancers.com

The ideal situation would be for the consumer to be able obtain the recording or whatever directly from the artist, cutting out the incredible middleman that is the recording and distribution industry. That way the artist gets paid (and possibly more than they were getting before in per-copy royalties) yet the consumer pays a lot less than they were before. The World Wide Web and high-quality downloadable formats can make this possible.

I'd much rather be able to go to a musician's web site, download a bunch of 1-minute samples, decide that their stuff is really great and that I want more, and then pay via an online transaction to get the full versions of the artist's work.

Karen might do well to pay attention to the fact that these are merely links - the disputed files are being hosted by a completely unconnected entity. In fact, given that this website sells dance recordings, it's probably not in the administrators interest to facilitate alternative distritibution. But censoring the discussion board is a different matter.

And ultimatley, we have to look at the reality of the situation. Dance music is a speciality interest prohibitively expensive to stock and distribute on physical media. With prices as high as they are, and availability as limited as it is, piracy is simply not going to be stoppable. A few recent latin CD's from a major European publisher have that silly 'copy protection' that mostly hampers legitimate uses - such as trying to play the disk in a variable speed DJ system.

There is an alternative though - the pricing and distribution model being pioneered by Apple, where you buy the tracks you want for a dollar a piece, could work very well for dance music, pro bably even at $3/track.

Thank you Jonathan for your response. I agree with your position on this and where I adminstrator of this site, I would do the same.

Thank you everyone else for a lively discussion on the issues of copyright. We certainly should look at the ways things are done, and where an improvement to the law is beneficial, promote change.

Dancing and loving it,

Karen

I have great sympathy for Karent's view. I get paid for my work, and i'd hate it if people could just steal it for free.
i would have to disagree that the cost of dance CDs are prohibitively expensive. Compared to the total cost of dancing (the lessons, the travel, the gear, the everything else)the music CDs aren't a big deal

Perhaps Jonathan brought up "Dr. Laura" just to be funny - but in reality, she's a good illustration of the underlying problem. That women has some very controversial ideas about what should be immoral, and by extension, illegal. Society is stuck trying to find a balance between her views, conflicting views of others, and what to some extent it may be possible to agree is logically fair or just.

The situation with copyright and "file sharing" is actually fairly similar. Here you have something that is pretty much illegal under current law, however is considered moral by (according to recent polls) perhaps a majority of the population. Shure, the industry will go and on about 'property rights' but ultimately a copyright is not physical property - it is a social construct. And a much, much more powerful one that it was when the idea was first conceived. Powerful copyright may be the law of the land, but it's tough to be a copyright enforcer when you discover that your own mother is innocently trading files with her friends...
Some sort of balance is going to have to be achieved between industry and consumers, cost and availability before this issue will die down.

Of course there mere fact that something is not considered immoral does not mean the law will be changed to permit it - look at speeding. Most places, it's fairly unsafe to drive on a highway at the speed limit, as everyone will be flying past you. Yet the limits remain what they are, and we count on selective enforcement to keep the system somewhat workable.