seniorpesca wrote:How many tapers back in the day or even now would tape JUST for personal collection? To me the whole point of taping is to spread the music. This weekend I ran into a NASTY guy at the milwaukee and chicago DSO shows. I approached him very respectfully after the show was over in milwaukee and asked him where he uploads. He gives me a extremely snotty look not even looking at me saying nowhere. Then I ask if I can give him my email or anything and he gets even nastier. WHAT A DICK!!
So please tell me guys...is that practice weird or more common then i think. I usually don't interact with tapers unless I'm east coast where I know most of them from living out there for years. Just the whole notion of collecting ONLY for personal seems like smut collection or something weird. Its music....spread the love...am i out of line???
I wrote a long-ish response to this post, but lost it to the internet gods.
I have taped and there is a portion of my collection which is not circulated, but for legitimate reasons:
(1) The band asked me not to circulate.
(2) There were unresolved issues with regard to mechanical royalties. Basically, you need to pay merely to perform the work of someone else (performance royalties) and then you need to pay again if you disseminate copies of that performance (mechanical royalties). I'll cut to the chase and say that the argument that uploading concerts to archive.org is "fair use" is bullshit -except- in the limited case where the artist recorded owns their copyright and gave you permission. This is typically not the case. More often, record companies own the copyright - however, you would still be allowed to post IF you monitored the number of downloads and reported that to the appropriate royalty collection agency and paid the necessary royalties...but who wants to be on the hook for such constant monitoring. The big pain in the ass comes when an artist tells you that they're cool with taping, but the record label says no. I had this happen: reached out to the artist's management and was told "no." Went to the show and had the opportunity to talk to the artist at setbreak. He told me he was completely cool with taping and that I should've brought my rig. Unfortunately, in situations like that, as much as we may not like it, it is the copyright owner (i.e. record label) who has the final say. Uploading tracks and not paying the royalties puts you, and possibly the artist, at risk of getting hit with fines. That's not a position I want to be in.
And then covers of songs add an entire extra layer of headache. Oy.
These two issues have resulted in me not circulating certain tapes. When asked by fellow concert goers where I upload or if I can send them a copy directly, I politely respond with "if the tape comes out good and there are no copyright issues such as cover songs, then I will upload it to the archive." Some are bummed, some are confused, and but a surprisingly large percentage are totally on board with it. However, given your description above, this does not seem to have been the interaction you had. So YMMV, obviously.