However - whoever bought it presumably knew what they were buying. If not, then they can obviously afford to give away £63. At the end of the day, assuming the description on eBay wasn't misleading in any way, then there's not really a case to answer surely? -----Original Message----- From: klf-bounces+chris=k23productions.com@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:klf-bounces+chris=k23productions.com@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of Andrew McCombe Sent: 23 December 2004 22:35 To: All bound for Mu-Mu Land. Subject: Re: [KLF] Blacksmoke on eBay (from www.klf.de) Thomas Touzimsky wrote:
Blacksmoke on eBay
Three days ago, an eBay member from London sold a copy of the Blacksmoke promo EP on eBay for £63 - quite a huge amount for some material that was intended to be free for everybody, being available for download on the Blacksmoke homepage.
"That CD contains material that was available from our website completely free of charge," says Keir Jens-Smith, manager of Blacksmoke. "That was an industry demo showreel and really should be given away (certainly not sold). The person selling it should be quite
ashamed as they're probably an industry executive that's now guilty of
copyright infringement. One has to ask why anyone should subsequently feel guilty of downloading music gratis if label exec's are selling other artists music that was supposed to be free? That's just bad karma!"
This sure is a good point here, but it gets even better - the seller is indeed a record label executive who received the promo directly from Blacksmoke.
"Music exec's lament the industry collapse but refuse to accept any responsibility," Jens-Smith continues, "look at iTunes download chart.
The public love music, they love good music, they have diverse taste and they are free to download the music they really want. Look at the charts... is it the same as the download charts? Nope. The fact is, this guy kind of reflects the common industry attitude. Anything challenging and fresh is just too "dangerous" for them, but he's happy
to sell it on eBay and people are willing to pay decent money for it? How very ironic."
Well, discuss. I will put the most interesting answers online.
Perhaps there should be something like the GPL licence for music? For those that don't know what that is, it's a licence used on Open Source software and is used a lot on Linux systems. The basis is that the source code to the software is free to distribute and modify - the main rule being that if you modify the code, you must share it. You cannot sell GPL soure code, nor take it, modify it and claim it as your own. Maybe Blacksmoke could start a licence for free music - they own copyright but it's free for distribution and selling is prohibited. Just my two-pence worth.. Andrew -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.296 / Virus Database: 265.6.0 - Release Date: 17/12/2004 _______________________________________________ KLF mailing list KLF@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/klf Report list abuse to list-abuse at studio-nibble.com