The Sampler as Host

Some readers of literary criticism may notice the debt that the title of this essay owes to a classic piece of Yale School deconstructive criticism, J. Hillis Miller’s “The Critic as Host,” and that debt is not altogether unintentional. Indeed, in that piece, using his trademark late-period hypnotic style to reveal the undecidability of texts, the binaries that the critic reveals, and the constant reformation of context around the “univocal reading.” But the role of the critic is central to pointing this out, and I think this paradigm can translate well to a particular artistic version of musical piracy that has emerged since the 1970s: sampling. Simply put, this is the use of a phrase or motif from a previously written song to use as a base for new lyrics, as in hip-hop, or the creation of an entirely new composition. To sketch a brief, essentializing genealogy of the popularity and artistic horizons of sampling, one can start with the whole history of hip-hop, starting from the Bronx block-party ciphers, to Run-D.M.C.’s rap-rock fusion, EPMD, the Bomb Squad, and the Beastie Boys via the Dust Brothers visionary cut-and-paste techniques, D.J. Shadow’s groundbreaking completely sample based epics (which are still not fully realized or appreciated today) to the proliferation of mash-ups and remixes that has flooded the internet recently (and college campuses with Girl Talk). But I would like to focus on a mainstream hit single that uses sampling within the legal frameworks of copyright law, but nonetheless opens up new possibilities for the medium: Alicia Keys’ 2007 song, “Teenage Love Affair.” Taking a simple riff from The Temprees’ 1972 song “Girl, I Love You,” Keys, along with her team of producers/songwriters (especially Jack Splash; he’s worked with Estelle and Solange Knowles too) construct an absolutely majestic pop single. The original, somewhat limpid, riff undergoes such a radical reanimation in the hands of Keys and her cohorts; a staggeringly catchy melody of teenage romance weaves throughout the verse, releasing into an orgiastic chorus of released inhibitions, with the climax of the song coming in its Madonna/Whore-themed bridge: Keys coos to her youthful lover, leading him through the metaphorical bases until the brakes have to be slammed: she has to go home. If this doesn’t recall the glory days of Motown (think Supremes mixed with a killer Stax-cum-hip-hop feel), I don’t know what does. But the thing is, the sample absolutely revives the original, unpacks it, brings it into its true light. The production and Keys’ performance just kills it. As noted professor/music journalist/blogger Oliver Wang (of NPR, Vibe, and Soul Sides) puts it: "[Jack Splash] gives the original loop a boost that makes this a rare case where the progeny >>> progenitor. Specifically, the way he makes the guitar even more prominent and milks the keys are what help give Alicia's song such a memorable musical hook…Some have accused Keys of going too far towards the 'big diva' vocal over-singing…I found her performance here more nuanced." Certainly, it is an impressive performance, as I have not been so transfixed by a contemporary pop song in a long time, and this is no doubt due to the horizons that Keys and Splash have opened through the sample. A parasitic relationship, of course, with the original feeding its host, but one that produces something above and beyond its foundation. The ability to write one of the best pop songs off of a simple sampled musical phrase shows sampling’s profound possibilities, and something that goes beyond hip-hop’s already astonishing achievements in the medium. Now, the question must be raised of copyright laws and the like, and frankly, this is not the area that I am an expert in or carry any weighted opinions about (see Jake’s post below for a great take on the problematic of piracy and suggested solutions). What I can say, however, is that Keys followed the rules: she gave The Temprees’ full credit and their half of the royalty check. But the lines are blurred with acts such as Girl Talk, who does not operate through this framework, but rather sees his own creations as artistic achievements in their own right, and perhaps he is right. What I can say for sure is that sampling opens up an infinite amount possibilities that exceed any context the progenitor might exist within. The sampler becomes the host, the host that allows the song to be seen as more than a unique circumstance, but as a singular artistic statement; such is the case with “Teenage Love Affair.” The questions of piracy must wait until after the event.

Guest Writer Leonard Katzman On Piracy and Copyright: History and the Rights of the Public Domain

The mental picture of pirates on the high seas, current events notwithstanding, brings to mind visions of centuries old battles and the taking of cold hard cash treasure. But, when you picture copyright piracy, that brings to mind visions of ......... well, to tell the truth it would be visions of centuries old battles. Copyright piracy is not remotely new. The argument over what’s yours, what’s mine and what’s ours has been around for centuries. This being The Tartar Sauce you might be asking, what does this have to do with music and video games or whatever? The answer is, everything. When you understand why we have copyright laws in the first place you then can form well-reasoned opinions about what today’s copyright laws should be. I can’t go into a long tome about copyright history because (1) I don’t have time, (2) there’s plenty of good sources on the web that cover it and (3) I don’t want to put anyone to sleep. So I’ll just touch on a few things and then get back to the present. One note of warning: if you go to a law library and look at one of the recognized treatises on copyright law you will find that they are massive multi-volume publications. Patry on Copyright (a great source) is eight very large looseleaf volumes and Nimmer on Copyright (the most widely cited source in court opinions) is eleven large looseleaf volumes. My point in saying this is that nothing I say here is complete. Copyright law is large and complex. To summarize the law is to misstate the law. Jake says his “views on music piracy aren't very simple”, and so they should not be. Copyright law is not simple. So, all the typical caveats should apply such as YMMV and IANAL (well actually I am but that’s not the point). Venture with me now, back about half a millennium. In the 1500s, Martin Luther complained bitterly about the problem of piracy. Many printers made a handsome living on pirate editions of Luther's writings. Interestingly, Martin Luther wasn’t that concerned about the loss of potential income. Instead, he was much more upset that the content of his writing wasn’t reproduced accurately and that his message ended up distorted. On the subject of printers ripping off his work, Luther said,

“these misers and thievish pirate printers handle our work faithlessly. Because in their hunger for money they do not worry themselves about whether one of their pirated texts is correct or erroneous. Often have I had to experience that a pirated text is so incorrect that in several places I could not recognize my own work.”

Imagine what Luther would think about Microsoft Songsmith. He worried that his ideas on scripture would be screwed up by careless printers. Not money, not economics, but the rights of authors to preserve the integrity of their work. There were others, however, who did complain about the money lost to authors. Jean Le Chapelier addressed the Paris Assembly on the subject in 1791. He said,

“The most sacred, most personal of all the properties, is the work fruit of the thought of a writer [...] so it is extremely just that the men who cultivate the field of thought enjoy some fruits from their work, it is essential that during their life and a few years after their death, nobody can dispose of the product of their genius, without their consent.”

So at least as far back as 1791 some folks disagreed with Jake’s position below that an artist’s work should enter the public domain upon their death. Le Chapelier thought the economic rights should last “a few years” after death. Of course, Le Chapelier had lots of unpopular ideas in the French revolutionary period, and Le Chapelier met a rather gruesome demise at the bottom of a guillotine. Championing author’s rights a century later was Victor Hugo. A prominent author in his own lifetime, Hugo was the founder and first president of the Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale, an organization formed with the purpose of advocating for the establishment of fair laws to protect authors. Speaking of the status of things at the time, Hugo said,

“Before the publication, the author has an undeniable and unlimited right. Think of a man like Dante, Molière, Shakespeare. Imagine him at the time when he has just finished a great work. His manuscript is there, in front of him; suppose that he gets the idea to throw it into the fire; nobody can stop him. Shakespeare can destroy Hamlet, Molière Tartufe, Dante the Hell.

But as soon as the work is published, the author is not any more the master. It is then that other persons seize it: call them what you will: human spirit, public domain, society. It is such persons who say: I am here; I take this work, I do with it what I believe I have to do, [...] I possess it, it is with me from now on.”

Victor Hugo was recognizing that the rights of society, what copyright laws today call the public domain, arise as soon as authors publish their works. Exactly what that those public domain rights are, and where they must yield to the superior rights of the author, was the center of his debate and it led to the Berne Convention, an early and now widely adopted copyright law that protects the rights of authors. So, there are two distinct interests that these early thinkers identified: (1) The economic rights in a work, and (2) the rights of authors to preserve the creative integrity of their works, now more often referred to as “moral rights”. Here in the United States, the drafters of the Constitution held the prevailing English view at the time that economic rights are to be protected, but they didn’t concern themselves much with moral rights. The U.S. Constitution, drafted in 1787, grants to the Federal government the power to enact copyright laws. Article 1 Section 8 clause 8 of the states that congress, “shall have power [...] to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” James Madison, in the Federalist Papers, wrote to justify the position that copyright laws are good for society and that the states should let the Federal government have that power so there would be uniformity. He wrote,

“The utility of this power will scarcely be questioned. The copyright of authors has been solemnly adjudged, in Great Britain, to be a right of common law. The right to useful inventions seems with equal reason to belong to the inventors. The public good fully coincides in both cases with the claims of individuals.”

So in the USA copyright law started out with the purpose of protecting economic rights in order “to promote the progress of science and useful arts”. Congress enacted copyright laws many times since, with major enactments in 1790, 1831, 1909, and 1976. Then, in 1989, the United States became a signatory to the Berne Convention and thereby (mostly) also adopted a set of provisions that protected moral rights. My opinions on copyright law start with the assumption that at least some degree of economic rights and moral rights are valid and should be protected by law. We need those laws. I am not an anarchist. Authors need to earn a living, they deserve credit where it’s due, and they deserve to keep others from taking their work and botching it up without permission. On the other hand, the public has rights too. For example, just because Gene Roddenberry wrote cool stories about people making treks in star ships doesn’t mean no one else can write stories about star ships travels. Of course, you probably better not name the captain “Kirk” or “Picard” and have a “Vulcan” named “Spock”. That would be bad form, not to mention illegal. But, even the rights to those characters of his creation shouldn’t last forever. West Side Story is a deliberate retelling of Romeo and Juliet. Yet, Roddenberry makes a good example, because he is dead. It is the heirs of Roddenberry that own the Star Trek estate. Jake proposes that all copyrights should die with the author. Maybe that’s right. Maybe not. What if a young musician, trying to earn a living and raise a family, creates a popular song and is then tragically hit by a bus. Jake would have his family be out of luck. Sorry, the song is in the public domain now. I see it as reasonable and proper that the law provides financial incentive to authors to create their works. Speaking for myself, I’m not working to earn a living just for my own self, but for my family too. Frankly, speaking as a parent, it’s all about the next generation. I believe the right to control an author’s work should rightly last that author’s lifetime, and then to the heirs of the author for at least a little bit. Maybe twenty years. On the ridiculous side, the law now provides rights for the life of the author plus 70 years which I think most people who aren’t copyright owners would agree is too long. I like the guidance provided by Madison. Underlying copyright laws are the purposes which they are intended to serve. As set in the Constitution, those purposes are, “to promote the progress of science and useful arts.” If a law encourages people to create music, art, literature and so on, then that law is serving a rightful purpose and should be respected. But, if a law really bears no relation to encouraging those things, then the law is wrong and should be changed. My biggest gripe about copyright law is that the major copyright holders (Sony, Disney, Warner, etc.) spend more money on lobbyists in Washington than most people earn in their lifetimes. The result is that Congress continually grants more and more rights to copyright owners and leaves less and less rights to the public domain. The worst offender was the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act which extended the term of copyrights by 20 years. What was most offensive was that the extra 20 years was applied RETROACTIVELY, so that works which were due to expire were given a new life of 20 more years. No one has yet to recite a plausible argument how adding 20 years to the rights in a creative work done in fifty years ago in any way “promotes the progress of science and useful arts”. All that happened was a giveaway to the rich corporations who were upset that the early Mickey Mouse cartoons (or their songs or their books) were about to be public domain. In most cases, the original authors were long dead. The Supreme Court’s basic logic in upholding the extension even though it isn’t consonant with the Constitution’s purposes was no more complicated than, “well... Congress has done it before lots of times so we guess it’s OK to do it again.” So the law is the law, and you can argue all you want about “justification” (as Jake put it) for breaking the law. But if you get caught breaking the law, a court doesn’t look at the justification so much, just the letter of the law. Yet, Congress keeps protecting the rights of copyright holders without remembering there are counterbalancing rights held by the public domain. We should not be looking at “justifications”. We should be looking at the underlying purposes of copyright laws and deciding whether those purposes are well served. Then we should look at the underlying purposes for preserving public domain rights and decide whether those purposes are well served and well balanced against copyright owner’s rights. Most practitioners today argue that the pendulum has swung far too much in the direction of property owners. We can try to lobby Congress to be more understanding of the necessity of striking that balance. A host of great organization engage in that lobbying on our behalf, such as the American Library Association, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Consumer Electronics Association, Consumers Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and many more. Let’s hope Congress is listening to us. I’m not all that optimistic. About the only area where the public’s rights have any strength is when copyright butts up against First Amendment free speech rights. Among other virtuous uses of the First Amendment, that’s how Weird Al makes a living. For a good outcome, a win for the little guy, see the wiki page on Golan v. Holder here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_v._Ashcroft. Unfortunately, it is the courts that push back on copyright law to make way for free speech instead of Congress doing the right thing by drafting laws that are balanced. And I don’t expect this new President will help at all. I’m as much of an Obama fan as you can get and I still proudly sport my two Obama/Biden bumper stickers. But, on this topic, there have been some ominous signs. Obama has nominated to top Justice Department positions several people who have been the copyright industry’s lapdogs. He nominated Donald Verrilli for associate deputy attorney general. Verrilli is the lawyer who went after Grokster, brough a suit again Google on behalf of Viacom, and (horrors!) represents the RIAA! There are other RIAA types he has nominated too, see: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10133425-38.html for example. As for Vice President Joe Biden, he was a steadfast RIAA and MPAA ally when he was in the Senate. Sorry to end on a down note, I see things only getting worse. Industry will lobby to get stronger and stronger protections and will continue to implement stronger (and lamer) DRM. Every time a movie ends up online prior to release the MPAA will shout bloody Armageddon to Congress. Every calendar quarter that CD sales are down the RIAA will plead to Congress that their industry is Doomed unless the evil downloaders are stopped. And all we have is the EFF and the Library Association saying, now now let’s be reasonable. Maybe that anarchy thing isn’t too bad an idea after all.

Leonard Katzman is an intellectual property attorney with focus on business counsel and transactions. He is the Director of Technology Commercialization at Brown University. When not concerning himself with intellectual property legal matters, Len likes to play acoustic and electric guitar. Currently, he is trying to master the ways of Logic Studio (a non-pirated copy of course).

Piracy Week wrap-up

So Piracy Week is spilling over into next week, because that's how we do it at The Tartar Sauce. We have a few more posts coming up that I'm sure you'll all enjoy. In the meantime, I would like to turn the mic over to the world-renowned MC DP: Don't Copy That Floppy.

Cool Thing Of The Week: Home Of The Underdogs

Game sales are a fickle animal. Most games have a shelf life measured in weeks, with only the loudest and most-publicized receiving any sort of attention. The rest are simply overlooked. So what happens to these passed-over games? They die a painful death, fading into obscurity. Or so it was until an intrepid Thai woman with a passion for games created Home Of The Underdogs, the videogame archive that was so much more. HOtU was an archive, first and foremost, containing hundreds of older, obscure games. Better yet, unless the site received a complaint from a copyright holder, it offered a torrent download and a direct download for each. I found many great games on this site that I had never even heard of, and anyone interested in the history of this young art of ours should investigate it. My favorite part was that each game had a short entry, a miniature review or retrospective describing it. There was both a site and user ranking system. There was even a series called Top Dogs, that catalogued the cream of the crop. It was freakin' awesome. Unfortunately, the original owner and updater had issues securing a domain, and then issues with free time (real life? What's that?) and HOtU stopped being updated, and then died. Fortunately, an enterprising community member managed to restore it under new management. It's missing some of th old features, like rankings, and the games are no longer hosted on the site, but the listings and reviews are still intact. Check it out!

Ethics of Software Piracy

One of the most fascinating things about software piracy is the number of nonsensical justifications offered up for it. Most people simply don't like owning up to the fact that they are leeching off of the talent and effort of others. It seems that there is a sense of entitlement that comes with mastering the oh-so-difficult act of using the google searchbar. Look at any internet forum when the subject of piracy comes up, and you invariably here some version of the following excuses, some legitimate, others less so: 1) Piracy is harmless, I wouldn't buy this anyway 2) I don't think it's worth what they're charging 3) I'm just trying it out, I'll buy it if I like it 4) This is a protest against DRM 5) Nobody sells it anymore. 6) I already own it! These are the most common arguments for pirating software. Let's go through them in turn, shall we? 1) Piracy is harmless, after all, people who pirate don't buy games. I wouldn't buy this game anyway, so the company isn't losing anything by me playing it.

This one often leaves me speechless. Really? You wouldn't buy it anyway? If you're interested enough in downloading and playing the game, clearly you would buy it. Some thing's keeping you from it, though. It could be the price is too high, or it could be that you're a lecherous leech The thing is, most publishers are going to decide that you didn't buy the game because there was not enough DRM to make you buy it. So what are they going to do? Increase DRM.This doesn't just inconvenience legitimate buyers, though, because DRM costs money to implement, meaning less money put towards development. In addition, unless you're playing singleplayer only, without downloading any updates, you are causing damage. Multiplayer games are launched with official servers, and pirated games take up just as much bandwith as legitimate copies. Pirates also expect technical assistance, put strain on update servers, and all after-launch support in general. Don't believe me? Ask Stardock.

Only 15% of the 120,000 people clogging the servers of Demigod had actually bought the game. And this is Stardock, the people who published the gamer's bill of rights, the guys who refuse out of principle to put DRM on any of their games. They're leading by example, and what example are they setting? If you make your game DRM free, 85% of people will steal your game and cost you tons of money and bad press due to server strain. So if you think that you're not causing any harm by pirating a game that you "wouldn't have bought anyway," fuck off. 2) This game isn't worth $50! That's so expensive! I can't afford that! Really? You could afford a $500 graphics card but you can't afford a $50 game? You pay $30 a month for internet but can't fork over $20 for a budget title? You can't afford $6 for a GOG release? If this is true, you either a) have some messed up priorities or b) are still under the legal care of someone else who pays for all the above but wants you to buy games out of your allowance. Or of course option c) are a lying bastard. You know, there's a very simple solution to this problem: If you don't feel a game will be worth the asking price, don't buy it. Wait. All games have a price drop at some point. It's the principle of capitalism. If the supplier sees that demand isn't great at $50, but is huge at $25, then the supplier will try and meet that demand. If you pirate, then the publisher sees that there is still a demand at the $50 price point, but that piracy is preventing that demand from translating into sales. Is this always true? No, but it's a valid conclusion that can be drawn from the data, and the most common one. And seriously, folks, this is the textbook theft. Someone wants a good, but doesn't want to pay for it. Stop beeing a leech. 3) How am I supposed to know if I'm going to like it? I want to try before I buy! Same way you decide if you're going to like a movie before you go see it: Trailers, screenshots, reviews, and word of mouth. Yes, most AAA game reviews are glorified blowjobs administered by supplicant "journalists" in exchange for advertising dollars, but you have at your disposal THE ENTIRE INTERNET. Somewhere on the internet you should be able to find enough information to decide if the game was something you're interested in, and if it was executed competently. Most games even release a demo, allowing you to play a small portion. And even if you don't end up liking it, the fact remains that you are not entitled to every single dollar you spend being repaid tenfold in terms of enjoyment. If a developer ganks you, then be more wary about buying from them in the future. The thing is that I'm very sympathetic to this viewpoint, and actually consider it somewhat legitimate in some cases- especially where the "will it run on my computer?" issue is concerned. The problem is that very rarely do people actually go out and pay for a game after they've pirated it, because that takes morals. Leeches don't have morals - and the vast majority of pirates are leeches. See, the problem with "try before you buy" is that you have to occasionally buy something. I'll admit to doing this from time to time. For example, I thought Sins of a Solar Empire sounded cool, but I wasn't sure if it was something I was into. So I borrowed a copy and played a few skirmish games to try it out. I found it wasn't my cup of tea, so I deleted it and haven't played it since. Same with Dead Space, Fallout 3, and others. I played maybe 1-2 hours of each, then stopped. I played through Crysis' entire singleplayer campaign, so I bought it, even though I didn't think it was the greatest game ever. In fact, to make up for the fact that I bought it after it's price had dropped (I pirated it when it was full price) I ponied up for Crysis: Warhead, too. Lots of people will play through a game and say, "Well, I didn't have multiple orgams every other minute while playing this game, so I don't think it deserves my hard-earned cash. Especially since I won't be playing through it again, why should I buy it?" So it's a good idea in theory, but rarely ever works out that way in reality. 4) This is a protest against DRM. Down with DRM! Down with DRM! Yes! Down with DRM! Down with Stardock! That'll teach them to release the Gamer's Bill of Rights! Or those money-mongering bastards behind World of GOO! As you can see, pirates steal from everyone, from indie developers who feel every lost sale (though World Of Goo's developers have taken an extremely enlightened approach against DRM), to principled publishers who are taking a risky stand against DRM. There's no morality involved. In fact, piracy as protest is extremely counter productive. Remember Spore? Remember the absolute shitstorm that EA's draconian DRM scheme kicked up? I remember a flurry of activity on the internet, as Principled Pirates did their best to make a statement by downloading the game as much as possible, even if they had no interest in it. I believe my good friend Jean-Luc Picard expresses it best: I hate to break it to you folks, but nobody gives half a damn about Internet protests. First off, anonymity removes any impact from the movement. Protest only works if it takes effort, whether it's organizing a march or depriving yourself of a product due to a boycott, protests get attention because somebody goes through a lot of trouble and expends effort to set them up. Sorry to break it to you, but it doesn't take any kind of skill to Google search "(name of game) torrent" and click the first link. Boycotts, especially, are only effective if you are refusing to purchase a product, not stealing it. If you don't want to buy Spore because of its DRM, then you don't get to play spore. Simple as that. Think about it. What does EA executive think when he sees the number of pirated copies of Spore? Does he think, "Man, look at all of the potential buyers that we scared away because we used too much DRM. Clearly, we should change our policies to be more accomadating to the end user. Perhaps if we remove all of our DRM, like Stardock, then we shall enjoy no piracy whatsoever, also like Stardock!" No. He's thinking, "Man! Look at all those people who would have bought the game if we only had stricter DRM!" You see, despite the Angry Internet Man getting all up in arms and filling Amazon with negative reviews and stealing the game left and right, the game still sold over two million copies in three weeks. EA makes massive profit from its policies, and now has incentive to make even stricter DRM schemes. Nice work, fellas. 5) Nobody sells the game anymore! This case is special - in fact, I don't consider this Piracy. If a publisher no longer wishes to support a product and make it easily availible, then they really can't complain if people find alternative ways to get their product. Simple as that. In fact, the Cool Thing of The Week this week is all over this. I feel the same way as Jake does about music, in that if the original creator no longer benefits its OK to pirate. Considering how volatile the software industry is it's surprisingly hard to get ahold of older games (one of the things preventing gaming from being recognized as Art, I believe.) The term for this is Abandonware, and while it holds no legal standing I consider it to be morally A-OK. 6) I own the damn thing! Now this might suprise some people: If you own it, why are you pirating it? I can think of several reasons: *No-Cd cracks are some of the most common, making playing games you own much more convenient. *Improving performance: some forms of DRM degrade performance performing disk-checks, etc. *You lost your copy This last one is a sore issue for me. Most games contain an EULA stating that you have purchased a licence, not a physical product. If that's the case, then once you've purchased your licence, you should be able to obtain a copy of your software through any means you see fit. For example, I have bought every Command and Conquer game from the original through Generals and its expansion multiple times, mostly through buying software bundles when I lost my old disks. I felt perfectly fine torrenting a copy of The First Decade for several reasons: 1) It was a total hack job, if they had done anything more than drag and drop all of the games onto one CD I would have bought it 2) I own copies of all of these games. The single installer makes backing them up that much easier. 3) It consolidates the patching process for all of them Westwood (and later EA) has gotten my money multiple times. I think I own 4 or 5 licences to each game. So I don't feel a shred of guilt doing this. So that's my views in a nutshell. Check back later today for the Cool Thing Of The Week.

A Piracy Rant

First off, I'd like to make it clear that this post will only be focusing on music piracy. It's something I have very strong, detailed opinions about, which can't be said for movie or video game piracy (which Bobbicus wrote an excellent post on). So just bear in mind while reading this that all of its arguments will only apply to pirated music.

So, now that that's out of the way... 

I'd like to think that my views on music piracy aren't very simple. At the very least, I can't summarize my stance on music piracy in one sentence, and many of my friends already know that when asked what I think about music piracy, I'll either go into a 20 minute long rant that will be challenged by everyone, or I just won't answer because I don't feel like getting into it. I'll start off by saying that I think music piracy can be harmful... sometimes. I would prefer that in general people purchased their music legally, but there are some situations where I think that illegally downloading music is 100% justified. Here's when I think it's OK to illegally download music:

1. When the artists post the music themselves

This one should be pretty obvious. When artists make some of their songs available on the internet for free, it's a great promotional tool. I don't see why anyone would be against this, so I'll just move on to the next one.

2. If it's a rare album

OK, if there's an album you really want on your computer, and it's never been released on CD, or to buy it would cost like 50 million dollars, then it's cool if you illegally download it.

3. When the artist is dead

The central idea behind my opinions on music piracy is that a recording artist, as well as everyone else involved in the creation of an album, should be able to profit off of their music up to a certain point. I'll get into where exactly that point is in a little bit, but what I want to focus on right here is that the people who should profit from the album should be the people involved in making the album sound (and look) the way it does. That means that in addition to the musicians, other people such as producers, songwriters, and album artists should profit as well. Sorry, but this doesn't include the children of the recording artists. From what I understand (please correct me if I'm wrong), the way copyright works now is that any money made off of the work of a deceased artist goes to that artist's heirs. What I'm about to say might make me sound like a cold-hearted asshole, but here goes: there's absolutely no reason it should be this way. If the main person responsible for the creation of the music won't profit from album sales, there's no reason people should be forced to pay for the album. If a musician is dead, then all of their music should be made available on the internet for free. People should still have the option of buying a physical copy of the album, however, if they want to support the producers, songwriters, album artists, and maybe even the artists' kids. They just shouldn't have to give money to someone who didn't do anything related to what they're paying for.

4. If the artist is already ridiculously rich

One of the main arguments, I mean justifications, I've heard in favor of piracy is that really rich musicians don't need any more money from consumers. Well, that's true. I have no problem with people illegally downloading an album by Paul McCartney, or Michael Jackson, or Jay-Z, since it won't make any difference for them. I said earlier that musicians should be able to profit off of their music up until a certain point. Once a musician has a mansion, a private plane, and 20 cars, I'd say they've passed that point. People shouldn't be forced to pay for their favorite musician's 50,000 clothes. Of course, as with the previous situation, people should still have the option of paying for a physical copy of the album, since their money will support everyone else involved in its creation. 

So, if your powers of deduction are good, then you can probably tell that the only situation where I'm absolutely, 100% NOT OK with piracy is when people illegally download music by struggling or underground musicians. I think it's selfish and greedy (yes, both, even though they mean the same thing) to enjoy listening to music by someone who has to work another job in order to feed themselves without them earning anything for it. I'm well aware that many underground musicians disagree with this philosophy, and that's completely OK; they can make their music available for free. But if a musician feels that they deserve to profit off of their music enough to have a decent life, then I, for one, will NOT illegally download their music. 

Usually when I tell people my stance on illegal downloading, I receive tons of arguments, usually from people who illegally download music and don't want to feel terrible about themselves. So right now I'm going to attempt to refute all of the arguments I always receive in favor of illegal downloading.

One that I always hear, and that always makes me angry, is the classic "I still support bands whose music I illegally download, because I go to their shows." This argument is... what's that word I'm looking for... STUPID. For one thing, people who illegally download music often have absurd amounts of music on their computers, and a lot of it is by bands who have broken up; or by bands from other countries who are too obscure to tour outside of their home; or it's never listened to by the people who have it, because it was just an impulse download or it's meant to make them look more eclectic, so they'll never go to one of the shows. Or they don't even end up going to the concerts of the bands they like and have illegally downloaded, complaining that concerts are too expensive. Know why concerts are too expensive? BECAUSE BANDS DON'T MAKE AS MUCH MONEY OFF OF CDS AS THEY USED TO, BECAUSE OF ILLEGAL DOWNLOADING. Don't ever try this argument on me.

And now, a tangent:

Another effect of lower CD sales that I've observed first hand in Los Angeles over the past few years, and that I've written about before, is that CD stores are disappearing. Since no one buys CDs anymore, all the CD stores I used to go to in LA, except for the legendary Amoeba, are gone. This argument really just comes from personal attachment and nostalgia, and you may argue that there's nothing wrong with CD stores going out of business. But I remember a time when after school I could take a 15 minute bus ride to go to one of my favorite CD stores, where I would discover new music and be surrounded by like-minded people who were constantly judging my taste. It was wonderful, and now it's way harder for me to have those experiences.

Anyway, back to destroying the justifications of illegal downloading. I've been told many times that I'm just as bad as people who illegally download, since I burn CDs for friends and buy used CDs, which the artists don't profit from. Well, maybe I'm a little hypocritical, but I'm not as bad. I don't do it on as large a scale. If I were to sell a CD to a record store (which obviously I can't really do anymore), then one person could buy it. When I really like a CD and think other people should hear it, usually I'll burn it for 5 people at most. If I were to put a CD up on a website, then hundreds, if not thousands of people would download it. That's HUGE. And all of those people would be seeking it out. Burning CDs for friends is totally the opposite; usually when I burn a CD for friends it's the first time they'd heard of that band, who gets more publicity out of me. When people download albums, obviously they'd already heard of the band and won't be buying any of their CDs. 

The other ridiculous justification I always hear goes something like this: "Record companies exploit musicians. By illegally downloading, I'm making a statement and not supporting record companies." True. And you're also not supporting the musicians. If I buy an album, then the musicians make some money off of it, even if it's less than they deserve. If I illegally download the album, then the musicians make no money. And neither do the producers, songwriters, or album artists. I agree that record companies can be terrible, and that the record industry really needs to change. Until that happens, I'll support record companies if it means supporting bands more than I could otherwise. Also, this argument really can't be used to refute my stance; when people talk about exploitative record labels, they're usually talking about the majors, and everyone who's signed to them usually makes insane amounts of money, so I think it's OK to illegally download their music. Most underground bands are signed to independent labels, which usually treat their musicians better. If your stance is the same as mine, then in general you won't be supporting exploitative record labels, and you will be supporting better ones. 

There's one further point about my stance on illegal downloading that I'd like to make. Actually it's more related to general copyright law, intellectual property, and fair use. If I were to make the laws, then any band that wanted to could prevent people from downloading music for free up until they made a certain amount of money off of it. And in my fantasy world, once someone had legally obtained a recording, then they could do absolutely anything they wanted with it. They could turn it into a sample, they could put it in a mashup, they could make a remix of it, whatever. As long as they acknowledged the original recording. I think that academia is a good model to follow. Musicians should be able to directly quote people who have influenced them, as long as they site their sources and don't plagiarize. In a real legal system, laws would probably have to be more complex, but... I don't care. Now you know my stance on music piracy. Argue against it as much as you want.

Piracy: So What?

So what's the big deal about Piracy? After all, if you pirate a movie, or a tv show, or a videogame, you're not actually taking a physical good. Thus, you're not actually stealing. Right? After all, it's not like it cost money to duplicate a copy of that song or movie. First off, what is or isn't piracy is up to debate. Frankly, some aspects of copyright law are quite ridiculous. Have you ever been to an open mic at a coffee shop and listened to an amateur cover a favorite song? Technically, he's breaking copyright, as the owner of the copyright is the sole person who can "perform the work publically." But is any artist going to object to free publicity? Of course not. People loving and wanting to show off your work is something to be celebrated-and damn good buisiness. But someone copying a recording is far different. You're not listening to an interpretation of an idea, you're using a product that had a lot of money poured into it - studio time, producer salaries, etc. When an illegally copied recording is indecipherable from a purchased one, that's when it can become a problem. The issue is even more pronounced for videogames. Videogames don't go on tour. They don't have live performances. They don't sign deals for radio play time. All of the alternative revenue streams that exist for musicians (that have been used quite succesfully, preventing the worldwide collapse of Music as predicted by most record labels) simply don't exist for a videogame company. Being more specific, games can't even benefit from alternates traditionaly availible to other forms of software. Joe Shmoe pirating Photoshop doesn't hurt Adobe all that much, because Adobe rakes in tons of money from their volume license contracts with large production studios. Hell, it's even beneficial - by aspiring graphic designers pirating Photoshop and training themselves on it, demand is created among graphic design firms to license Photoshop to tap into that pool of pre-trained talent. Games don't have that. Buisinesses don't volume-license games. The closest thing that comes to it would be the "cafe" style license, but those are a tiny fraction of the market here in America seeing as how affordable personal computers are. Games have only one way to make money - being paid for. So of course, game companies have a very vested interest in insuring payment. Thus enters DRM. Digital Rights Management is the direct result of piracy, plain and simple. Publishers attempting to prevent people from using their software without compensation. It's been around since the dawn of software. Early DRM took the form of passcodes in manuals, or decoders - since there wasn't any way to easily share programs over the super-slow internet of the time (the tubes were very small, and they couldn't fit the big trucks we have now.) So player would have to use physical objects to access their games. For a while, CD's formed an excellent form of DRM, as hard drives at the time were not large enough to hold all of a game's data. Thus a game physically couldn't be played without the CD. Once CD burners became commonplace, serial numbers became the norm. Now it's not uncommon for a game to require online activation, a cd in the drive, a serial number, and a limited number of installs. Needless to say, people don't like DRM. It's not hard to find a large number of opinions bashing it. It's also not terribly effective. Most games are cracked within 24 hours of their release. Some even before the official release date. So why do companies persist? Well for one, larger companies are subject to the will of their shareholders. And shareholders aren't usually the savviest of people- all they care about is the bottom line. And when shareholders see the figures of illegal downloads, they demand action. Unfortunately, the antidote is often worse than the poison- strict DRM often interferes with ligitimate users more than pirates. An example is Starforce - made famous by the fact that it crippled user's DVD rom drives and was incredibly difficult to remove. These drive ligitimate users to pirate software so they don't have to deal with that crap. More pirates lead to more DRM leads to more piracy leads to more DRM in a vicious cycle. One of the latest and greatest examples of DRM is Valve's Steam. There's always someone moaning about Steam- whether its the requirement of being logged in order to play any game, even single player ones, or the possibility of having your account suspended and losing access to all of your games. Steam is the direct result of piracy. Valve can't trust the general public to pay for its games. Valve is full of smart people who know that other smart people can crack most forms of DRM. Valve's solution - that you can access your games anywhere, anytime, but you have to login with a secure server and can only do so at any one time - is so much trouble to crack that most people give up and grudgingly pay up for Half-Life 2. And it does so without most of the major inconveniences of standard DRM. It's not perfect, but it allows Valve to take in more profits from their work. That's the true result of piracy. Piracy alone is not responsible for a game company failing, though it takes alot of the blame. And not every pirated copy of a game is a lost sale. But every pirated game is an argument that executives can use to push tougher and tougher DRM schemes. There's another effect that people don't think about. The 'casual game' market is booming, and people are bemoaning the flood of 'shovelware' crowding out more hardcore games. But there's the small fact that 'casual' gamers are far more likely to pay for their games. Paying customers are going to get more attention than hardcore pirates. Piracy is creating a market that doesn't support the very games that people want to pirate so badly. Why go through all the effort of realeasing an FPS for the PC if most of your work is going to be pirated anyway? Better to focus your efforts on the console market. Or sell through Steam. Or use Securom. Or all three (see Bioshock.) Piracy really ultimately hurts the consumers. Successful companies can adapt to whatever market will make them a profit. It's what they do. By stealing their favorite games, pirates are creating a market that sees them as non-profitable. Yes, piracy has a lot less impact on the success of a product than quality and marketing, but that's not what matters. What matters is the perceived effect that it has, because that's what investors will pay attention to. This is why we suffer from sequelitis and me-too carbon copies in this industry, because that's what is perceived to make money. So go ahead and pirate. Justify it however you like (something I'll address in a later post.) Just remember that you're shaping the market when you do so.

New Writer, Japan, Piracy Week, Shifting, Awesomeness

Yes, so you may have noticed we have a new contributor to The Tartar Sauce: The Great Bobbicus is here to share stuff and articles and things, seemingly about games and the like, should be interesting.

This is -believe it or not- unrelated to the fact that our very own Jake may not be posting as frequently anymore. He's gone 13 hours in the future to Nagoya, Japan, where, in between sake bombs and DDR sessions he now takes time to update his Posts from Nagoya blog/journal that is on our blogroll, and I reccomend you all read religiously (which is a little difficult to do when the blog has no RSS feed (*hint*)).

Also, in celebration/observation/mourning of The Pirate Bay trial verdict, starting Monday will be Piracy Week here at The Tartar Sauce! Featuring rants, tutorials, info, essays, and (as usual) anything else we think is interesting about everyone's favorite internet crime! This is the first time we've done something like this (and you've seen how "weekly" our weekly posts actually are), so forgive us if this goes a bit rusty, but it should be fun either way.

And don't be alarmed if you notice some of the layout shifting around and new elements popping up, that's just me fucking around, trying to add some new functionality to the sidebar/making the site look halfway presentable/getting angry at blogger for being a POS.

Finally, an awesome thanks to you all for reading, and giving us a decent amount of traffic.
It's... it's all I live for....

Cool Thing Of The Week: Good Old Games

So I'm going to begin a weekly tradition: Every Friday, I shall bring to your attention something Awesome. Most likely it will be game related. For the inaugural episode of Cool Thing of the Week, I would like to direct your attention to Good Old Games (linky) If you haven't heard or stumbled across it already, I highly suggest that you go check it out. Essentially, Good Old Games (GOG) is what it says on the tin: High quality titles from the past available for sale inexpensively. "But Bobbicus!" some dolts cry, "These games are old, and easily obtained from Peer to Peer trading networks of dubious legality. Why should I lay down my hard earned cash in order to purchase them from this site?" To them I say "Bah! Your entitlement mentality disgusts me. Leave at once and stop dribbling all over my carpet. I shall address you in a post on Piracy at another time." Others, after perusing the GOG.com catalogue, have a more valid point. "I already own several of these games. What possibly benefit could there be to purchasing them again?" Excellent question! Here's your answer: A) NO DRM Now, I'm not one to fly into an apoplectic rage whenever DRM is mentioned, as I feel that anyone who produces a work has a right to attempt to protect their investment (once again, I'll elaborate more in an upcoming post on Piracy.) However, I much prefer games without DRM, as it's really nice not to have to deal with it. The process for purchasing a game from GOG is as follows: 1) Sign up an account 2) Buy your game 3) Download your game Easy as pie. You can even repeat step three as many times as you want, at any time, on any computer. Each game comes packaged in a stand-alone installer, which brings us to... B) IT WORKS Anyone who's tried to play older games on modern systems has inevitably run into this issue - modern hardware simply can't run some older programs without a lot of work. Well, buy a game from GOG and you don't have to worry about that. All their games are fully updated to be compatible with both XP and Vista. And this isn't some bunk like EA pulled with The First Decade (which basically amounted to clicking the "run in windows 95" mode box.) GOG actually gets their hands on the code and makes it work. For some older games, they package it with DosBox already configured and tuned for that specific game. And in the event that you do have technical issues, they have absolutely amazing customer service. I have contacted them twice, both times receiving replies in less than 12 hours. Pretty impressive, considering that they're based in England. Also, the fix they provided worked. I think it's the first time I've ever had tech support fix a problem completely. The level of care they provide is crazy, especially considering... C) IT'S CHEAP Now come on, are you really going to tell me that $6 is too much money to spend on a classic game that will get you hours of enjoyment from, PLUS tech support for as long as the company is around, on as many machines as you want? Even the pricier games ($10, there's only two price points - $5.99 and $9.99) are less expensive then an entree at a decent restaurant. Add to that the fact that GOG has weekly 25% of sales (this weekend it's a sale on Stronghold) and you really can't go wrong. And you really can't complain about price when... D) THE GAMES Are so damn good. Seriously, go look at their catalogue. Now. No, really. Go. I'll wait. Now, I find it hard to believe that anybody with an interest in gaming could look at that list and not find a single game that they remember fondly (or rabidly,) hear about constantly, or recall reading about as being the "best (insert genre here) of all time." Fallout, Freespace, Duke Nukem 3D, Earthworm Jim - these are classics. And not just older ones, either. With Ubisoft joining in the fun, you can now get modern innovators like Far Cry and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. There's also games that you should have played but haven't, buried gems like Beyond Good and Evil or Sacrifice. There's something for everyone. There's even a thread in the forums where people do a "game swap." Person A posts the games they own, and Person B gifts A a game they think A would like and A returns the favor. Everyone explores new horizons, and usually goes home happy. Finally... E) IT'S THE RIGHT THING TO DO I don't mean to be preachy, but seriously folks. Here we have a company that's defying the status quo by trying to sell old games nobody wants to support without any form of copyright protection. It's what everybody is always saying they want - a company that sells titles based on quality, relying on their customers to be honest enough to support them. It's the antithesis of the draconian DRM schemes and me-too sequels pumped out in large amounts by the mainstream industry. Buying from them not only signals that DRM-free games can be profitable, but it shows that there's a market that goes for quality over graphical fidelity. Last but not least, it shows that games can have an extended shelf life (I'll probably cover this in more detail later, but I think the short shelf life of a retail game is the #1 most detrimental aspect of the industry.) If you like any of GOG's games, even if you already own them, it's not that much to just buy one or two of your favorites to support them. I've always said that nothing happens for moral reasons, only financial, and no amount of Angry Internet Man bleeting about sequel-itis or DRM is going to change how EA or UbiSoft operates until you convince them (through voting with your wallet) that it will make them money to innovate and not lock down their products. If you care about these issues and have the means there's no excuse not to support this company. Good Old Games. Check it out.

Enter the Bobbicus

Good Day All! My good friend and former hallmate BackdoorAngel has graciously invited me to join the ranks of contributors to the mighty The Tartar Sauce. My shtick here is videogames. Reviews, reminiscences, rants, commentary, and anything else I can think of about the medium. Just so y'all can know where I'm coming from, I started 'gaming' on my Packard Bell PC with a copy of Duke Nukum (that's not a misspelling, Apogee called him Duke Nukum '\because they thought 'Nukem' was copyrighted) that my godfather gave me. I remember quite clearly receiving that first floppy, with the homemade label on which was neatly written "DN1: Property of CK." That and the sound of the floppy drive as it accessed the disk. For those of you who haven't played it, the original Duke game was a sidescrolling shooter in which our tiny orange-skinned pink shirted hero battled the nefarious Dr. Proton in Shrapnel City. Man, this game was awesome. Memorable enemies, great settings, tight gameplay, and best of all no sniggering about a certain overdue sequel (this was before Apogee even became 3D realms.) Good times. Later, my dad bought a game called Red Baron (packaged with A-10 Tank Killer.) I still regard this as one of the most immersive games of all time, even though it looks like this: First of all, if you turned on all realistic settings, it had a fairly accurate flight model (I, of course, usually turned off damage to my plane, resulting in many a frustrated pilot blasting away in futility at my invincible ace. In my defense, I was about four years old.) Turning on "Realistic Navigation" was especially interesting - you were expected to navigate by observing landmarks (mountains, rivers, railroads, etc) and consulting a number of maps that came in the box. This was probably the coolest thing I had ever seen. A videogames with paper maps? That actually mattered? Awesome! Red Baron also had the single best manual in the existence of computer games. Yes, there was the obligatory set-up, controls, troubleshooting, and whatnot, but after that was done there were approximately 50 pages of historical background on WWI, focusing on aerial combat, There were biographies of aces, description of tactics, a detailed timeline of the air war, and best of all, full color diagrams and specifications of all the aircraft featured in the game. I have yet to see anything like it since. It's not just that the manual was thourough and detailed, plenty of sims have such things. What still amazes me is the amount of effort that went into immersing the player in WWI by placing him in the correct mindset and giving him (or her) all the information necessary to think like a combat aviator in the Great War. A-10 Tank Killer I didn't play as much, mainly because it was complicated and hard. I never quite figured out how to operate missles, so I usually just turned off all realism and went around blowing stuff up with the avenger cannon that never overheated or ran out of ammo while all range of anti-aircraft weaponry bounced harmlessly off me. At times I wouldn't even take off, simply rolling around on the ground like a glorified tank blowing up anything that showed its face. Anyway, the next major phase in my gaming life was none other than Command & Conquer. I recieved C&C95 Gold Edition from a friend for my birthday , and immediately found that my computer couldn't handle it. I read and re-read that manual over and over again until my family got a new computer (I remember reading the Dell magazines and being wowed at the $3,000 machine that was a whopping one gigahert pentium 4.) My one requirement was that it be a Pentium processor and have at least 100 mb of hard drive space - enough to run Command & Conquer. When I finally could run it, I learned most of what I know about modems setting up dialup games with my friends (for the record, dialing up somebody to play a computer game and then hearing somebody pick up the phone and start asking who's calling through the speaker on your modem is pretty freakin' funny.) When Red Alert came out I bought it and played it. When Tiberian Sun came out, I bought it and played it. I pre-ordered Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge and loved both of them. This series will always have a fond place in my heart, despite the sharp decrease in charm following Westwood's dissolution. Command & Conquer was my first time in conflict with the ESRB, as it was rated T for teen and I was not, in fact, a Teen, something with made my mother hesitant to allow such a purchase. The second and much more difficult battle was Half-Life. I played it at a friend's house, loved it, but couldn't buy it at home because it was rated M. My mother, God bless her, is one of a very small number of women in the world with enough sense to review the content of the media she buys for her children. At the time I hated it, but now I'm quite glad of having that sense of responsibility drummed into me. Anyway, this introduced me to pirating - I couldn't buy the game, so I downloaded it over my 56k modem over several nights, when everyone was asleep. Through Highschool I started broadening my interests, exploring lots of classics thanks to Home of the Underdogs and sites like it. I installed X-Com on the computers at my job, bought Mount & Blade when it was in version .650, and played all sorts games. FPS, strategy, God-Games (I was absolutely enthralled by Black and White. Never finished it, but damn it drew me in) Flight sims, RPGs, pretty much everything except Puzzles. Most of my finest purchases were off the discount rack at major retailers - its where I found Freespace, Fallout, Deus Ex, and countless others. Today I mostly play PC games, and I've fallen off the "waiting for next big release" bandwagon and started exploring older games that I've missed. I think videogames can be art if they are treated as such. Instead of traditional reviews, I'll be offering up 'critiques' of games here, as well as essays on the industry and medium. Occaisionally I'll be firing off a "Check this out!" post, as well. I hope people can derive at least some sort of entertainment from my ramblings, and if not, well, there'll always be pretty pictures. Until next time - Bobbicus

The Aliens, They're Telling Us Something

Well, maybe I couldn't get you to switch, but super intelligent beings from outer space? They know what's what.

http://maps.google.com/