Nex

Not saying it's the norm, but tell that to the fellow who was told by one of last year's top 4, "You've got the chops, and you're great with the visual, but you stick out like a sore thumb when we look at the [snare] line. You're just too tall." He was lucky he was able to find a spot playing set in the pit with another corps at that late of a date (I believe it was April-ish).

Pre-season recordings up on the Fan Network.

TWEET! 15 yards, improper use of logic. There must be an obvious correlation between swag sold and the poster for this to be true, otherwise the amount of stuff sold could be related to any number of other things: audience reaction to the show, fans who just want the latest PR stuff, random kid who thought the uniform looked cool, positioning of the souvie trailer relative to the restrooms . . . or any other location for that matter, etc.

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This 10x. The crassness that's used in (a lot of, not necessarily all) orchestral music that calls for it is generally a specific effect. However, I have a hard time understanding why it is a go-to effect of the PR mellos. Don't get me wrong, in spite of this, they're still in my top 3 favorite mello sections in the activity, but it's really something I wish they wouldn't use as an identifying characteristic.

Boy, do I ever

Intellectual property is not property in the same sense that a car is. If I steal your car, you no longer have that car. If it's your only car, you have no car left whatsoever. If I write a piece of music and someone gets a copy of a score for free (say the choir premiering the composition doesn't give all the copies of the score back to me), I have lost a copy of the score, but I have not lost my work. In that case, someone stole the score, but not my work. Going further, if I get all of my copies of the score back and someone records the performance, I have still not lost my work, nor have I lost my performance. They didn't steal anything. I still have all the memories, the music, everything tangible. No actual property was stolen. Now if they then go and sell that recording without any permissions, then I am potentially out profits I could have made from having a licensed recording to sell, but if they keep the recording for their own use, I have lost nothing. In fact, as a composer, I have gained something. They think my work is worthy of recording and listening to again, possibly many times. Either way, they did not steal anything from me. You're using "property" in too broad of a sense. That's why the law makes distinctions between physical and intellectual property. They are dealt with differently.

Again, you're giving examples of how sales of DCI's DVDs give money to corps and composers. I know quite well (at least as well as anyone not a copyright attorney) about copyright procedures. What I'm saying is that you cannot use the term "theft." The best you can say (and I'm not saying it's good) is "copyright infringement." The two terms are not interchangeable. Now, if people were referring to DCI losing DVD sales due to bootleg recordings, THEN they might have more of a claim to the "theft" charge, but even then, they have to prove that DCI actually is losing sales period. Then they have to prove that it's because of bootlegs and not because DCI hikes the prices. Even DCI's ridiculous prices can't be taken to point to bootlegging as taking sales. There are just too many other small factors that have to be investigated to rule them out before you can definitively say that bootlegging is playing any part whatsoever (good or bad) in the big picture. I'm pretty sure no one has put out the cash for that research to be done. I'm just saying that (1) illegal does not always mean wrong (2) "Theft!" can't be made into a meaningless word because you want to say something is morally wrong without proving it's either actually wrong or theft and (3) crying "loss of sales!" has to be backed up with data, otherwise you cannot make any claim as to the cause. It's the way the world works. Observe facts, report facts, draw conclusions from facts, find the truth (as much as it can be found). You don't observe personal opinion, make claims of speculation to support opinion, then draw conclusion from speculation that agrees with initial opinion and call it a day.

Nowhere in my contract did it saying anything of giving up any rights, but you're concentrating on the wrong part of my post. I wasn't saying I was owed anything. You missed the point of my post entirely.

Theft is taking someone's property without their permission (whether or not payment is involved in the legal acquisition of the property in normal circumstances). The only problem here is that the "people involved in producing the original" don't get paid when DCI sells their DVDs either. I know I never saw a penny from when I marched. Now, if you mean the people who put in time to produce the DVDs . . . well, they didn't put in any time to make your recording, so they aren't owed anything. Again, you're using vague pronouns. Who, specifically, is losing money? Why are they losing it (specifically)? And how much are they losing? Furthermore, what is the actual property being taken? Without answering these, you cannot justifiably say there is theft going on.

And no one has yet to say exactly *how* it is stealing. They've offered vague references to lost profits with no actual data showing how it has caused any losses. However, there have been several folks who have chimed in with information on how these "bootleg" recordings either (1) introduced them to the activity or (2) gave them enough interest to purchase from DCI (I believe one guy actually ended up buying the whole Legacy Set because of the advertisement brought about by these recordings. You can't just say, "It's stealing." because you want it to be stealing. You have to show how it actually is theft, and not this ethereal "stealing of the experience" or "taking from the corps" that has yet to be given any data-driven, fact-based, calculable evidence. I'm cool with you not liking the practice or feeling it's wrong, but you can't claim it's something without anything to back it up. There was a rather amusing (though admittedly meant to be funny) webcomic I can't remember offhand that said something to the tune of, "Piracy is not stealing. Piracy is piracy." with a picture of someone taking an object and leaving nothing in the first frame and someone making a copy and leaving the original in the second frame.

Really, Mike? Just because something is illegal it's automatically wrong? Without putting my own opinion in (because, frankly, I doubt anyone cares or that it will change their minds), I want to point out the fallacy of that quote. How do you equate legality with right/wrong? If you're going to chide people on the use of situational ethics, then you need to make a better argument than "the rules say so, so it must be wrong." There are lots of things I'd consider wrong, or morally questionable, that have been justified by laws in history. Perhaps these people aren't so much in favor of doing something wrong as changing a rule they feel is wrong. You're completely justified in saying, "That's illegal." That's a simple, objective fact. You are not, however, in a position of moral authority to tell anyone they are doing something "wrong."

That's what she said.

Bop . . . wasn't that a song by those Hanson sisters or something?

Please, God, anything but Lauridsen. How that song is so popular amazes me. It's a D9 with a four note motive beaten to death. Then he essentially rewrote the thing with different words and called it Lux Aeterna. I've had to sing both before, and I wouldn't want to make anyone rehearse those for two months.