[mb-users] Bootleg DiscIDs

[Age Bosma]

Schika wrote:
> On 10/17/06, Age Bosma <agebosma at home.nl> wrote:
>> Sami Sundell wrote:
>> >
>> > To put it shortly, what is the situation with DiscID's for bootlegs 
>> that
>> > don't have any real pressings but are distributed as CD-Rs? The issue
>> > came up on <URL:http://musicbrainz.org/show/edit/?editid=5788581>, and
>> > while I agree that DiscID has some use (at least they give us track
>> > times), on the whole they are fairly useless when it comes to CD-Rs.
>> >
>> > I think that the proof of the existence of some bootleg should be
>> > provided in edit notes, and perhaps even more in annotations. Some
>> > artists have dozens of bootlegs with no information about the 
>> origins of
>> > the release; since we're talking about unofficial releases, at least
>> > some information should be provided.
>> >
>>
>> There's not much that can be done about this problem. They are bootlegs
>> and there for by definition illegal recordings. Because of this you
>> can't only allow pressed CDs in MB since CD-Rs are just as well
>> bootlegs.
> 
> No bootlegs aren't per definition illegal! You might think of recorded
> radio shows like the UK "Essential Mix", "John Peel Sessions" or the
> "HR3/You FM Clubnight" and some of them are official released.
> No CD-Rs aren't bootlegs! There are a lot of CDRs labels around, also
> promotional copies are often given out on CDRs from big name labels.
> 

Did you actually look up the definition? ;-) From the online Cambridge 
Advanced Learner's Dictionary [1]:

*bootleg (ILLEGAL)*
adjective
illegally made, copied or sold:
bootleg CDs/liquor

*bootleg*
verb [I or T] -gg-
to illegally make, copy or sell something

As Lauri Watts stated earlier in this thread:
'...which is that even if they are sanctioned by the band, whether
implicitly or explicitly, performers often do not own the rights to
distribution of their performances.  So they mostly are in fact
illegal, and labels have gone after people in the past for
distributing them.'

It is tolerated to make bootlegs but that doesn't mean they can't sue 
you for it. It does happened every now and again that a bootleg 
recording is 'officially' released but technically that makes it invalid 
to label it a bootleg.
...And foreign people look strange at us for our 'tolerant policy' 
towards cannabis use in the Netherlands... ;-)

Besides that, it's not really a point of discussion. I was merely trying 
to point out that as long as we allow bootlegs to be added to the MB db, 
our policy towards DiscIDs shouldn't or can't be as strict as with 
official official releases.

Yours,

Age


[1] http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=8888&dict=CALD