Bootlegs, Taboo????

I know Neil doesn't like people ripping off his studio work (He actually joined "Burn & be burned" - an anti-piracy orgainisation at the start of the year ), but I'm still not sure about his opinions on bootlegging. Ripping off fanclub CDs is obviously wrong (and you defenitley can't discuss that here ), but downloading unaccessible (any other way) live shows should be fine... (IMO) as long as you can justify it to yourself (I'm sure Neil wouldn't have a problem with someone obtaining a live recording without any money exchanging hands, especially if you've already done your duty by buying all his records - that only seems fair). As for the outragous price of secondhand bootleg & fanclub CDs... they're not worth it. IMO, If you want a fanclub CD, you'd be best getting them direct from the club (a lot cheaper!)... or else you're just getting ripped off & someone's making a packet! Bootlegs the same (although last time I checked, the fanclub didn't sell them )

It all boils down to this. If you purchase bootlegs you help to finance illegal activities and line someone's pocket with thousands of dollars for material that does not belong to him.

However, for years and years, when reel to reel recorders were first available, people have been taping albums from libraries, their friends, from universities, wherever. With the availablity of cassette recorders, people have been making dubs of any and everything for decades.

I'm sure some of you have friends who have stacks and stacks of cassettes of songs taped from the radio, as well as from other friends albums, tapes, and CDs. There are lots of people who buy blank video tapes and tape hundreds of movies from cable TV and build a huge library. But most people don't try to sell them for profit. They simply have them for their own personal enjoyment.
And the reality is, millions of people have built collections like this, lived their lives, died, and then their whole collection either gets stored in a family members garage, or gets tossed in the dumpster.

It's OK for us to trade things and tape or burn things we are interested in for our own personal enjoyment without the pursuit of profit. We just have to restrain from advertising in forums for all to see that we want someone to make us a copy of something.

Email someone in private, or see if you have any friends who have any material you are interested in adding to your collection. And by all means, buy every commercially available audio or video product that is out there to support your favorite artist. Then the rare stuff is just extra special. Merry Christmas!

There IS a thriving TRADING community here, we just do it in a manner that suits the moderators of this board, which acts as a semi-official board.

They don't seem to frown upon people making requests for trades (indeed, last time I looked there was a forum called exactly that), so by all means ask. If people are interested they PM you

neil talked a bit about downloading/trading bootlegs of live shows during his world cafe appearance earlier this year:

question: talk a little about you and the internet, you really embraced the whole wide open nature of this. you don't seem to be afraid of people stealing your music.

neil: not really, i have mixed feelings about it obviously. some of my songs have done well and if not for copyright i wouldn't have benefited from them, so i'm not knocking it, but on the other hand i think music is made to go around a few times. i think if you come overly precious about protecting copyright then you kind of lose sight of what it is that makes music a magical experience. it goes and has a journey out there and some of it is for free, and some of it, you get money. people pay to come to shows or they buy the official release, but then they'll go online and they'll download bootlegs from live gigs, because they're passionate about it and they'll spread it around. that process is all really good. obviously if people are doing it for profit and they're making hundreds of them, it's a different matter. i don't have a problem with people bringing tape recorders to the show if they want. they'll probably get stopped at the door, but i think the greatful dead had some pretty good notions about all that stuff.

Neil talked about this exact subject during his acoustic set at Tower Records in Seattle on July 9th, 2002. Neil thanked everyone who'd bought the new CD, and someone in the audience shouted something about them downloading it instead. Neil laughed and said "well, that's ok....as long as you buy one EVENTUALLY." Then he said that, "actually, you could alternate: buy one, then burn one, then buy one, etc." Then he laughed and said "Yeah, that's fine....I've made enough money!" So there you go. Controversial as it is, we have permission from the man himself.

I wouldn't take that as an OK. That's just an off-the-cuff jokey comment. I should think he'd be rather upset if people were downloading for free and not buying it.

I think he's OK with trading live stuff a) because its not done for profit and b) because its not something you can buy anyway (so he doesn't lose out)

Agreement with Paul H on that note. boarderGurl - thanks for posting those quotes from Neil. Neil Finn's pretty quick & witty when he comes to replying to things. He's also quite funny & laid-back, so I doubt he'd get all emotional at a concert in front of thousands of people telling the guy that what he did was wrong & illeagal & how the artists are losing out on this... Yes, I know your comment ("we have permission from the man himself"]) was a joke & all, but Neil wouldn't want his albums being ripped off! Personally, I'd like the official version with cover art, etc. Wouldn't everyone?

Wow Paul H, you took that WAY too seriously. I can see it now: I'll start my own Neil Finn pirating company, and when I get sued in court my defense will be, "But Neil SAID I could!" Yikes, chill out. The entire POINT of that post was to illustrate Neil's liberal stance on the subject in general, not to condone, or in ANY way imply that Neil condones illegal copying of music.
Neil was just being Neil.......chatting comfortably with the hundred or so of us fans that turned up for the free acoustic set. I think he just liked the irony of the conversation taking place in Tower Records......
Talk about irony......whilst penning this message I'm listening to my new copy of Sweet Secret Peace that was in the mail today. $17.49 (with shipping) from Amazon.com when I could've just downloaded it from Kazaa. Yes Secret : God, I definitely want the cover art.

Without making this any sort of official comment as I always prefer to leave stuff like that up to Neil, all of us have always been fine about fans swapping live material. The main thing has always been to keep it subtle.
The times when we will get heavy (put on my Docs now) is when someone takes full advantage of fans.
Example: a few years back (no names please) a club member who was one of the first Life members got a copy of "stage talk" with his kit (we included them in a lot, just as a bonus.) Like most club stuff we ran out within months and it became a hard to find item. Several months after that I find out that the same club member has made a lot of copies, printed out the cover and was selling them for $60.00 each at one of the collector fairs.This is the sort of person who I will happily take legal action against, and encourage publishing to do so to the full length of the law.
I tend to hate ebay every so often becausethat 'less then 1%' of fans will take advantage.
We have and always will stress that any club related things are for club members only. They are not to be resold to the general public and especially not resold on ebay a few days after receiving them.
It's good that Neil is so fair, I just totally hate it when such a small number, and it really is a small number ,take full advantage.All it does in the long run is mess it up for the other fans....and there is a degree of trust. We trust 99.9% of clubbers, BUT when you start selling on ebay you have no idea who is buying it- example a bootlegger from KTS and then they churn it out etc....it will just put any future club stuff in doubt...and less things like radio shows.
Thankfully we have a lot of club members who keep an eye on ebay for us, and other areas so I can put my "mean peter" hat on and our legal notice in the mail.....I try to ask first shoot second but you can usually tell, who is there to make money.
Even the Springsteen fan 'boots.' end up at small markets (I've seen them everywhere around England) but it's a good attitude and whilst we DO NOTsay WE TOTALLY SUPPORT this, we tend to turn a blind eye if fans are swapping and subtle.
I'd say NF would hate his studio stuff being traded on napster...live and studio are two different areas (depending on the song of course)....but studio is creating material and not releasing it for many reasons, live is playing it to the public so its out there...... where as its great to hear studio, I think Neil likes to keep most of that ..in the studio.
Radiobug is correct, personal enjoyment is a good thing, and private, subtle contact is even better.
At the end of the day, its against the law, publishing etc BUT we are talking about a CULT type community here, where I'd say nearly all of you have most of the Finn related catalogue, buy tickets travel extreme distances- whereas that does not give you the right to make bootleggs, it should (unofficially speaking )(ahem) be looked upon by US as a way that you guys remember a good show or simply satisfy some musical hunger.
I never look in any trades area, that way (in the immortal words of Sgt Schultz) "I know nothing".
keep enjoying the music.
Peter

Bravo, Peter!

boarderGurl,

*big slice of humble pie* I'm sorry you felt aggrieved at my comments. In my defence, a) the emphasis of the written word can sometimes be lost - I genuinely didn't see that you weren't being serious - my fault *doh*; and b) I was erring on the site of caution because this question was asked by a newbie who maybe didn't know the nature of the banter and humour that exists here, nor whether that IS actually Neil's stance.

I'm sorry you felt upset enough to tell me to chill. I'm well chilled, I was just covering your tracks

I hope I'm not still in your bad books

well said peter.

as a moderator of this topic I really do try to make sure you guys are keeping within the limits when it comes to these kinds of things. Most of the time everyone knows right from wrong and there is no problem.

I understand how bootlegging could be a real problem and I'm totally against anyone who makes a profit from duplicating bootlegs and fanclub material.

Anyway...it is really meant for the fans who love the groups covered in FOTE and if you love SE, CH and Neil and Tims' music enough to be a member of the club then I believe you should respect their music and privacy enough not to got and profit from stuff like this.

Just sit back and enjoy the music to yourself and think how lucky you are to have such material. I'd like to think that you'd be able to think that you were actually lucky to have something the general public isn't offered.

Kate

aka::: sacredcow11. CH moderator.

Nice post, Peter . (I just thought you might have problems sleeping tonight if someone else didn't compliment you on your fantastic post ).

Did anyone ever consider that the people paying that sort of price for dodgy bootlegs of fanclub CDs must already be pretty massive fans & would have probably already brought Neil Finn's complete back catalogue? Just a thought. I'm sure that thought had already entered everyone's minds, but still worth mentioning... at least I thought it was ...

The people actually going out of their way to rip off the fanclub CDs are defenitly not about "distributing music to everyone because music should be free" - they are making a packet out of it & it should be illeagal (well it is, but you wouldn't know it), especially if they are actually passing them off as the official copies & because they are so rare. Me, on the other hand... in the past few weeks, I have had three people go out & buy Recurring Dream from my local record store. Why? Because I made a whole batch of CDs comprising of Neil Finn songs - mainly material that was never released on an album... & it sounds fantastic!



For those of you who think this is wrong...

#1 - You can't buy this album anywhere, let alone most of the songs.

#2 - It has already got a few people into Neil Finn & some have even gone & brought Recurring Dream for $20! Success @ last!

#3 - Apart from also including the sleeve design in a graphics project at school (which I got an A for ), my only reason for doing this was to promote Neil Finn's music. No other way was working, but from this - comes a tiny bit of publicity... even if it is only going to turning a few people into lifelong fans.

#4 - I made absolutley no money from this. I didn't even charge anyone the price of a CD-R (come to think of it... I actually lost heaps of money on it because of having to buy the CD-Rs... DAMN! )

P.S.) Silke - I nicked one of your really cool photos of Neil from your website for the CD cover. Thanks. I hope you don't mind... & if you do... I guess you can just hate me forever .

Secret God, your friends are very lucky.

As a longtime member of another community where live taping and TRADING of these tapes was not only condoned, but encouraged, I could never see making a profit from this. Wilco, on their website, also encourages their fans to record live shows, but very clearly states that this is for personal use and trade only.

Thanks for the clarification, Paul H. It was very nice of you to explain your perspective, I really do appreciate it! Now that you mention it, I guess my sarcasm was heavily disguised. I'm sorry I reacted hastily; I just didn't want anyone to think that I would encourage illegal taping. Neil's music means the world to me, and I think the man deserves every penny he gets!

So definitely no hard feelings.....in fact you're in my "good" books. It would have been alot easier for you to just say, "piss off" than it was to communicate your thoughts. Thank you!

Genny

My standpoint on bootlegs has always been, if record companies are not going to release the recordings then why should they bother if fans pass them amongst each other.

The way I see it, the more CD's, tapes, video's and any other source with Neil Finn on them the better!

Those interested should perhaps try this site - http://www.tapetrader.com it's a good community for traders of all artistes!

Neil

Genny, I never like anyone to get upset with me I'm just glad you let me off! Again, sorry for the misunderstanding

Slightly off-topic. I much prefer the way this forum is happy to debate issues and sort them out rather than the usual expletive-frenzy you get on most sites if someone says something that others don't agree with without actually explaining things.

Neil, I pretty much agree with your notion that if a record company/artist won't release something it means that BY DEFINITION they don't want to make money from it. BUT, take the Beatles Anthology: that stuff sat in the vaults for 20-odd years before someone decided they DID want to issue it and make money from. Who's to say that in x years' time CH/NF will want to commercially release some live tapes? And who will be the market? All the die-hard fans... who have the stuff already!

Remember here, that I AGREE with you. I'm just saying that it's not always that straightforward

Hi Everyone - Been I awhile since I last typed, but thought I better jump back in!

I'll look at the Bootleg with a radio point of view (since I work in Radio).

At the station I work at, we have a few CH live stuff now and I am still downloading more as I speak.

I usually like to play the live stuff every now and again because it gives people an different view on an artist.

We as a radio station are protected to play this stuff on-air thanks to the AMCOS/APRA Agreement.
What that means is we pay a royalty each type a song is played.

Though we are allowed to play this rare stuff, thre is one condition. We are NOT allowed to make any copies to sell or giveaway to anyone.
And that original source of music (wether it's on tape or CD or whatever) is NOT allowed to leave the station premises.

All legal mumbo jumbo, but in the end it's good for everyone, because though we didn't pay for the original source, the artist gets a royality each time we play it and they get exposure - while listeners get to hear something different.

I might add though - as a fan I always go out of my way to buy a CD when it is released (might want my money back on afterglow!!!!!!)

Hope that adds something.

Good to be back

Peter
NOW in Bordertown, South Australia, Australia
Population:2,500 - And i'm on the only radio station in town