Ethically purchasing used compact discs: ?

Read the thread.

 

better than shoplifting it
(I was a bad seed as a kid...….but they got their money tenfold over the years!)

 

Alright who's the smartypants that chose the first option?

 

Most libraries stock CDs too. In the old days, they had cassettes and before that LPs. If any of this was "unethical," it needed to be caught a long, long time ago.

What the naysayers don't realize about all this is that it often creates an audience. What got me to be a Beach Boys fanatic was chancing upon some cheap used Capitol titles at a secondhand shop. What got me into jazz was listening to Miles and Coltrane in my college library.

If you don't introduce kids to music at a price they can afford, then you fail to create a consumer base. Or treble.

 

OK, I didn't cast a vote, but I did give everybody before me here a like.
Can I go listen to my records now?

 

I like the CD vs Vinyl threads better.

 

Okay, I'm going to assume this is an honest question, even though 90% of the posts in this thread deal neither with lawfulness or morality, but only with convenience.

Lets say for example you have a friend who is not nearly as much into music as you are (most of us here do, I'm sure). You want to turn this friend on to some modern music since he has never listened to a pop song past 1989, so you burn him a mix CD with twelve songs from different artists that you currently enjoy. I'm not going to take a poll, but my strong suspicion is that most folks here would have zero ethical issue with you doing that.

Now lets say that your friend reacted to it so strongly that you decided to burn a couple dozen of them and go stand in front of the Dollar General (oddly specific, I know) and sell them for $5 each. Again, I'm not going to take a poll, but I strongly suspect that most of our membership would frown upon that activity. That is the difference between the library and the used CD store.

 

I see it as art being passed along to be appreciated and the artists' legacy lives on for generations.

 

Who can argue with such a detailed, well thought out rebuttal? What do you do for a living?

 

CD's are literally tossed into free boxes and left curbside. Ethics are for people who care about real world problems, and that ain't one of them.

 

I confess... I habitually rip the tags off my mattresses. Come got me!

 

What was I supposed to do when I wanted to get the 1985 original CD of Duke, not do it? It's not like Genesis is providing that mix on streaming services.

 

It's called an analogy. You are making it easier for me to feel that way.

"We"? I've sold used CDs on here. I never said I thought it was wrong. I said that most posters in this thread are over simplifying the situation.

 

Which brings up the real question... What is the difference (ethically) between buying a used copy and grabbing a rip from the internet? I know there is a legal difference, but the OP started this thread talking about ethics, not legality.

 

Give the state time, and it will be.

 

Good grief - You don't see the ethical difference?

When you buy a used CD, the owner is selling you not only the physical disc, but the license to play the contents of said disc as well. There is no ethical dilemma.

Comparing this to ripping a disc downloaded for free off the internet is nothing more than non-sequitur.

 

I've been buying used CDs since my once local Wherehouse Music started selling them in the late 80's/early 90's. I've never thought about the ethics of it and after I type this, I probably never will again.

 

No need to confess, you're already on our list, we plucked it directly from your brain via satellite.
Signed,
National Security Agency, a.k.a. Dick Cheney a.k.a. Vladimir Putin a.k.a. the Roswell Aliens

 

I'm sure your logic is sound. It's just that it makes no sense to me at all, however, it appears to me that you have the advantage of occupying a higher intellectual & a higher moral position than me.

 

I remember Garth Brooks making a huge stink over this exact thing...then Napster happened.

 

Until physical media is eliminated, you enjoy right of First Sale.

Keeping the market for physical product alive and rolling (even if rolling over) is good for the consumer and the industry.

(OTOH, as someone has mentioned.... landfill.)

You've got bigger crises on your hands to lose sleep over than whether you are meting out pennies to every last warm body which went into making the recording. That's not your job, anyway.

 

Small quibble: Intellectual property is property, too.

As someone who has long followed these wars, I thought choice #1 and choice #2 in the poll were the same POV.

 

Back in the 80s there was quite a market for pirate cassette copies of original albums, including compilations of the chart of a certain week.

 

Oh come on.

 

Is this the biggest issue currently facing professional composers and songwriters? Not really.

This kind of discussion just serves to shift the attention of creators from the true source of their problems towards the group who are best positioned to help them.

Every issue facing creators is essentially a labour dispute with their label and publisher (and if they have no label and no publisher then with Apple, Amazon, YouTube and Spotify).

The final recourse in a labour dispute is to withdraw labour in the manner of the Hollywood Writer's Guild Strike in the late 80s and late 00s and unless musicians and composers are prepared to act collectively then nothing changes. The industry relies on the competitiveness between artists and perceived tendency towards narcissism as a guarantee that this will never happen. So far they've been proved right.

Though to be fair those with a more ruggedly individualistic outlook, I am sure they intuit on some level that every artist being listened to is in effect paying for development of all the artists who aren't. Just as every credit card user paying interest is covering the losses on the defaulters. This is a big reason why pay day loan interest topped 1000% PA - the credit checks on borrowers were absolutely minimal. All the risk is loaded on to the honest customer. The same is broadly true of recording artists. Royalty rates are directly proportional to the industry's inability to pick a hit. Scandalously the strike rate is barely better than that of a scout of junior football players would be at picking a future international.

This kind of distraction, built on blaming the consumer, is a distant echo of the RIAA response to Napster. The industry could have bought Napster well before the balloon went up for buttons compared with the self inflicted damage that followed. Presumably they didn't feel they could do that on Monday and still play golf with their mates from Tower and HMV on the Friday. Business-as-usual cost everyone involved an absolute fortune but what do you expect from the folks that came up with the jewel case and the long box?

Coming back to the nitty gritty of the original question for a second - surely the core issue here is whether the person selling it is ripping it before they sell it? That renders the house / car / library book comparisons redundant as the owner has passed on the object but continues to have enjoyment of the contents.