[scratchie]

Originally Posted by AAR.oner

i find it funny how "downloading" and "bittorrent" and "file size" keeps coming up ...guess some folks don't remember collecting by mail trading...you know, before the intardnet

Are you kidding? I remember it very well and I still have the boxes (and boxes and boxes) of cassettes to show for it. That's why I have to laugh when I hear people saying that mp3s are going to "ruin the trading pool" or some such. The "trading pool" is so much richer and more varied -- by at least a factor of 10, if not 100 -- than at any time in the last 20 years, mp3 proliferation notwithstanding.

this site was not started to be a place for the casual listener or obsessed fan...it was & continues to be designed for the serious collectors & audiophiles out there, & the site's standards continue to morph based on current technology improvements


now don't get me wrong, we are more than happy that people come to the site even if they don't fall into the collector/audiophile category...many of our users are casual listeners or just fans looking for a show...we are glad you are here! but our "rules" and beliefs regarding the taping and collecting of shows will never degrade from the lofty standards we seek to keep in place...we want TTD to be at forefront of the sites out there, not in the middle

I'm 100% in favor of this. I'm glad TTD is here and I'm glad TTD has the rules it does, and there are cases where I've proposed even stricter regulations, only to be ridiculed and shouted down by a mod who shall remain nameless.

But, none of that changes the fact that once a recording is "out there", it's out there, and there's not much you can do (any more than the original performers have control over what we do with their music).

I appreciate your reasons for writing "Please do not convert to mp3 except for personal use", but I'm glad to see that you appreciate the actual likelihood of that request being followed in all cases (pretty slim). And when I see some crap-tacular audience tape over at DIME with a notice that says "DO NOT CONVERT TO MP3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!", I'm still going to laugh my fool head off.

i understand what yer sayin scratchie, and as we all agree, there ain't mucgh you can do...some of us put "don't encode to lossy except for personal use" in hopes that people might actually respect our requests...ya see, i'm the one lugging $4000 working-class dollars worth of gear to shows so that everyone else can enjoy a recording...least folks could do is respect my requests...

OK, but you know what? To take this thread all the way back to the very first post, this whole site -- and the whole hobby of trading live recordings -- is, in essence, based on disregarding the requests of musicians (and their representatives). Sure there are some artists who encourage taping, but they're still in the minority, and even on a site like this one, I'd be willing to bet that the majority of torrents available were recorded at a concert where taping was forbidden (or recorded off of a TV broadcast where "Unauthorized duplication" was forbidden), etc.

The Grateful Dead were the most notoriously bootleg-friendly band in the history of rock-music, but even they prohibited videotaping at their concerts. Yet, since upgrading to FIOS a couple of months ago, I've been downloading Grateful Dead videos like they've been going out of style.

I just think it's important to remember that this whole bootleg culture is based around the notion that the fan's desire to hear the music is more important than the artist's desire to keep control over their music. Just something to consider the next time you start to get upset about what someone else does with your recording.