Survey
By Sam Varghese
November 17, 2003

Music industry professionals want the Copyright Act changed so that it is legal to copy music which one already owns, a survey shows.

Two hundred professionals, who attended the AustralAsian Music Business Conference from August 14 to 16, anonymously answered the survey, dubbed Music - The Business, Law and Technology Report. (http://www.immedia.com.au/stats/) The results were compiled by Immedia, a music industry service company and publisher of the AustralAsian Music Industry Directory.

Questioned about CD burning, file sharing and copying one's own music CDs, 55 percent said they considered it an inequity that it was against the law to make a copy of CDs which one had purchased. They felt the same about compilations made for personal use on CD or tape and digital copies for their own use.

Eighty-one percent said the Copyright Act should be changed to allow personal copying of purchased CDs - but not other people's borrowed or downloaded music.

Other findings in this category:

*57 percent considered burning CDs stealing from artists, 29 percent considered it stealing from labels and 14 percent did not consider it theft

*48 percent regarded downloading free music theft from artists, 25 percent from regarded it as thfet from labels, while 27 percent did not consider it theft

*54 percent admitted that they illegally copied computer software while 26 percent said they copied games illegally

Of the 200 professionals who responded to the survey, which was distributed to the 600 attendees of the conference, 42 percent were musicians or songwriters, 16 percent were artists or band managers, 14 percent were music business students, 6 percent record company staff, 6 percent music media, and 14 percent fell in the 'other' category which included music publishers, agents, lawyers, producers, engineers and copyright association staff.

Immedia music analyst Phil Tripp said the responses had surprised him as the sample surveyed had all been from the industry itself. "We knew that this type of survey had never been done within the industry. We were not convinced of the credibility or accuracy of an earlier ARIA survey on burning and downloads they did in late 2002, released in June of 2003. Even though we're not a statistics company, we undertook this simple survey and spent quite a bit of time compiling it."

It may be recalled that ARIA refused to answer questions about the methodology adopted for its survey.

The survey showed that of the 76 percent who played music using their computers, 47 percent listened to CDs, 19 percent to MP3s, 10 percent used streaming media websites, including online radio, and 24 percent used all of these.

It also found:

*77 percent had a CD burner, 11 percent use one belonging to someone else and only five percent had never used one

*48 percent burned music from their own purchased CDs, 21 percent from borrowed CDs, 6 percent from downloaded songs and 25 percent from all these sources

*In the past year, 47 percent burned fewer than five CDs, 25 percent between 5 and 10 CDs, 14 percent 10 to 20 CDs, 7 percent 20 to 50 CDs, 3 percent 50 to 100 CDs and 4 percent of music professionals burned more than 100 or more CDs a year

*Of 45 percent who downloaded music, 50 percent went only for free music while 18 percent paid for it and 31 percent did both

*25 percent purchased 10 to 20 CDs this year, 24 percent none to 5, 21 percent 20 to 50 and 4 percent over 100 CDs

*14 percent purchased CDs online with the top sites for purchase being Chaos, Amazon & HMV

*CD ownership was high - 32 percent had between 200 and 500 CDs, 24 percent had between 100 and 200 CDs, 16 percent owned 50 to 100 while 8 percent had collected 500 to 1000 and 8 percent admitted to owning more than 1000 CDs

*DVD ownership was lower - 32 percent had none to 5 DVDs, 25 percent had 10 to 20 and only 6 percent had more than 50

*Vinyl owners numbered 68 percent; of this, 24 percent had 100 to 500 LPs and 26 percent less than 20 LPs

Tripp said the results overwhelmingly confirmed the view that those people who supported the music industry, by buying music or owning their own albums, should have the right to transfer tunes to other playback media without breaking the law.

"This is the case in the US for example - it is called 'Fair Use' - and in many other countries. We support lobbying the government to change the law now, so that the industry does not further alienate consumers who buy and own music by preventing their personal copying," he said.

He said it was also interesting to note the widespread use of P2P file sharing to sample music before buying, the number of CDs bought both in retail outlets and online by music professionals and their attitude to downloading and CD burning of music versus the rights of artists and labels.

"Of course, we were shocked by the amount of illegal copying of software and games that was admitted," he said.

article at:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/17/1069027025447.html

posted by riaaposterchild

YARRRGH

If they don't like it, and most of them are well off, why don't they pony up some money to the EFF, etc and rally to change the law? Otherwise they are just farting in the wind.

I'll get me rum.

wow... if I'd have taken that survey, I'd fall into the "both" categories a lot. Oh well. Guess that's what it means to be an audiophile. No no no.. not PEDOphile, as the riaMafia would have many believe.
I have to address the part about Fair Use in the US.
"This is the case in the US for example - it is called 'Fair Use' - and in many other countries. " I'm impressed that they mentioned it it, but how about mentioning the fact that it's being trampled on by the new guard at the riaa?? IF Oz gets a "fair use" law, then we would do well to watch, because the aria can't be far behind to curtail the rights associated with it.
ttmmm

It's bizarre that there is this discrepancy, since even the RIAA in the US acknowledges legal ability to copy your own legally purchased music cd.

it's interesting that more of them consider it stealing from artists rather than the labels. especially since they don't get paid for it

royalties that is

Of course, we were shocked by the amount of illegal copying of software and games that was admitted," he said.

so it is alright to these ppl to copy software, but not music, sounds like s double standard to me, but who am I, just a consumer is all.

Almost 75 percent said they burned less than 10 CDs all year.

What kind of "industry professionals" are these people? I've gone through almost 200 CDs this year just of my own music and master track backups, not to mention data storage.

In previous years, I was bunrning a brick of 50 blank audio disk a year, and tossing out about 10 useless/poor quality coasters.

But after upgrading to winxp, I burn about 5 blank anykind of disk, and maybe 1 backup of program downloads. I try to get burned copies from stuff I haven't heard from friends as much as possible, "Leeching", since I upgraded to winxp.

Only 50 a year? I go through that many every month.

It really does'nt surprise me because it sounds just like the movie industry and how they come to finding out that it was insiders who were posting movies online as well as some ppl, and to say that music industryand professionals have burned music or software or other and sound shocked is laughable but they want to be anti-consumer about it Hmmmmmmm never really surprised me.

Oh and the copyrights do need to be changed,and fair use needs to be addressed here in the US,also what they call fair use in other countrys.

There are a lot of folks who download music but do not bother to burn many CDs: instead, they listen from their computers or they use an MP3 player.

As for changing the copyright law: what really needs to be done is roll back the life of the copyright to what is was in the past. There would then be more justification for enforcing copyrights on relatively "new" works (albeit not $150,000 per song penalty!) and at the same time allow for plent of music to be freely shared in the public domain.

why dont we make copyright like patents, It costs money if your going to sell the copyrighted work/ item that you created to others, and you copyright is only good for 20 years or less. then there would be less of a reason for the RIAA and what they do.

I wonder how many folks on the riaA bandwagon have "pirated" software on their computers at home and at work?

I doubt the riaA has a license for every copy of Micro$oft Office it is using.

agree, mtekk. There will always have to be differences between certain aspects of copyright and patent. But when it comes to the total duration, they should be much closer together than they are now.

Surveys are designed to answer a question. Questions are designed discover something or point something out. What it is they want to point out is often something specific they suspect already exist, and if they word it right it will always exist.
For example answer the following;
Who do you think is hurt the most by decreasing CD sales due to theft?
A. Record Labels
B. Artists
C. No one

The only people who would answer C are those that would laugh at using theft to describe copyright infringement. We seem to have a surplus of those people here but I'de be willing to bet the majority of mainstream artist, who were probably the ones to get this survey, do not know the difference. So those 14 percent should pat themselves on the back for not falling into the survey. It is also generally excepted that artists dont get crap for cd sales anyway so the number of people who chose B would also be pretty low. Leaving the majority to claim A, and they are probably right to some extent, except for the difference between theft and copyright infringement.

I agree with you both, bufo & mtekk, but the discepancy exists exactly because big corporate interests want it to. And they're the ones who bought the politicians to get what they wanted in the first place. They're not about to change their tune now. (Sorry about the pun). That's why we be pirates, matey, arrr, shiver me timbers and death to the landlubber scum what spoils our waters!
~zippy

So it appears that what we really have here is:

'PIRATES' OF THE INTERNET
VS
'PIRATES' OF THE PUBLIC DOMAIN