# Talk:Bootleg recording

Bootlegging is often incorrectly referred to as piracy but there is an important difference between the two terms. Bootlegging is trading in recordings that the record companies either do not own or are unwilling to release. Piracy is the illegal copying/sale of recordings that are available commercially. Although bootlegging is not legitimate since it invariably violates at least some copyright, it can at least claim it is giving music fans something they want that is unobtainable from official sources. Piracy however cannot make such a moral claim since it purely done for profit rather than filling a consumer niche.
However piracy (as in internet filesharing) is typically done where no money changes hands, thereby nobody is making money off someone elses recording. --Arm

What Arm said —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.172.84.53 (talk • contribs) 21:13, 27 October 2005  (UTC)
Since the rise of internet piracy of official material of all different types, the term "bootleg" has fallen out of favor among most collectors as well as many casual listeners due to the association with piracy. While some still use it, for many others it has become a pejorative and an insult because in the minds of an unknowing third party, the term often equates the "bootleggers" with some kind of Malaysian street crew that loads thousands of DVDRs of "Zodiac" (but spelled "Zodaic") into a truck and selling them on the black market. The usual formal term is usually ROIO (Recordings of Independent Origin) and the informal term is usually something like "audience recordings" or simply "shows".  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.16.45.115 (talk) 08:59, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I think this article leaves the impression that bootlegging is mostly not a good thing, but with some exceptions.   I think it's just the opposite.  I don't know of any artists that oppose it and I don't know of anyone selling it or anyone willing to pay for low quality recordings.  It's all about being a fan and spreading around novel tracks for people who are really into it.  I think the first paragraph ought to be re-written. It reads like something from the RIAA.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.57.31.240 (talk • contribs) 18:58, 29 December 2005  (UTC)

Well, 66.57.31.240, I trade bootlegs all the time - but I think the first paragraph is fine. It simply defines what a bootleg is. If you have a suggestion for a rewrite, please elaborate on what you would like to see there. Folkor 07:57, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
How about getting rid of "A bootleg recording is a video or musical recording, distributed for profit or other financial compensation". That definition of a bootleg is flawed.  It could have something to do with profit. It needn't.  In your case it doesn't.  Does that mean you don't actualy trade bootlegs?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.163.120.251 (talk • contribs) 12:35, 18 January 2006  (UTC)

24.163.120.251, can I ask that you sign your posts? Anyhow, I agree with editing that line. I've never paid or received any money in my bootleg trading. Thankfully, CatherineMunro already fixed it up for us. Folkor 06:42, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm glad you liked the change, I meant to drop a note here to see if my edit satisfied the objection.  I took a deeper look at the article today, copyedited and wikified a few sentences, and reorganized it a little, moving some paragraphs around.  Let me know if you disagree with any of my changes.  Thanks!  — Catherine\talk 22:18, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
It' seems like a fine article, now.  BillK also known as 66.57.31.240 and 24.163.120.251
Just wondering if you can clear up the issue of sharing bootleg material when its not for profit. I came across a link which ruled that actual bootleg recordings are completely constitutional but does not make reference to sharing not for profit, or the differences if any. Here is the court ruling link
Also I don't know if this has any place in law, but seemingly sharing bootleg recordings publicly should have no effect in sales declining, rather quite the contrary, it promotes an artist, and would in my opinion promote sales especially in the event that the artist later produces an official live recording of the concert. Yossi    10:04, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the opening paragraph here for the most part, and I own a lot of bootlegs myself (mostly Dylan); however, I have seen Bob Dylan for one being quoted as hating the practice (albeit that was many years ago).  I think he was most concerned about how bad the quality was on so many of the bootlegs; and in compiling the Biograph set and others, there were many songs that he refused to have released simply because a high-quality recording could not be located. Shocking Blue (talk) 22:43, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Bootlegging had been going on for decades prior to its impact on rock music starting in the late 1960s. Dean Benedetti, for instance, made a career out of surreptitiously recording Charlie Parker, obsessing to the point where he compiled just the Parker solos, cutting out those of the other musicians in the band. Opera fans had also been clandestinely recording their favorite singers for decades. These pre-rock and roll origins of bootlegging need to fleshed out far more fully.PJtP (talk) 18:09, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm tempted to get rid of all the external links. None of them offers any more information about bootlegs than is available in the article - the section is just a spam-magnet. Any objections? --OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 11:49, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

What the hell. Decided to just be bold and do it. --OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 11:52, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Thank you!  Probably the best solution.  Of course they'll come creeping back....think I'll drop a comment in to attempt to discourage them.  — Catherine\talk 17:05, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I restored some of the section.  Some of those are noteable websites with relatively strong Alexa rankings and good, useful information.  We can certainly debate which links to keep and I definitely agree that this section may, over time, accumulate cruft and link spam.  But that's not a good reason to delete the entire section.  --ElKevbo 17:24, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I was also concerned at the sheer number of links. Good ones are welcome, of course, but every site ever created? A line needed to be drawn. Good stuff. Hopefully the case can be made on this page first, before any new links are added. If they pass the discursive "test" here then, sure, add away. --DaveG12345 21:49, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
You deleted Bootleg Archive (www.bootlegarchive.com) but you kept the Bit Torrent equivalents. I'm adding Bootleg Archive back because it's a site that hosts bootleg artwork and information as well as checksums for bootlegs. However, that's just the WEBSITE...the ACTUAL Bootleg Archive is a Direct Connect hub where you can download many many bootlegs--it should be right up there with the Bit Torrent links. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lumarine (talk • contribs) 01:58, 13 July 2006  (UTC)
If we're gonna provide links to online bootleg communites, we might as well provide all of 'em - no point in being selective. And we SHOULD provide links because chances are if you're reading this article you're trying to get your hands on some bootleg material yourself! Does anyone have a problem with that? Keep in mind that the links we're providing are links only to websites that have strict copyright standards.
The fact that the links being provided DO IN FACT comply with Wikipedia's copyright standards doesn't even matter:
The links were recently removed by the user, Catherine Munro under the guise that it was because they violated Wikipedia's copyright terms or something. I didn't know that the policys of external websites related to articles here on Wiki had to match up with allof wikipedia standards... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.190.160.82 (talk • contribs) 22:57, 2 August 2006  (UTC) 

Wikipedia is not a repository of links.  In addition, please see the policy on external links for further guidance.
And please sign your posts.  --ElKevbo 23:05, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
The relevant section of Wikipedia:External links:  "External sites can possibly violate copyright. Linking to copyrighted works is usually not a problem, as long as you have made a reasonable effort to determine that the page in question is not violating someone else's copyright. If it is, please do not link to the page. Knowingly and intentionally directing others to a site that violates copyright has been considered a form of contributory infringement in the United States (Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry). Also, linking to a page that illegally distributes someone else's work sheds a bad light on us (see Wikipedia:Copyrights and in particular Contributors' rights and obligations)."
Bootleg performances are copyrighted, as all performers own the rights to their own performances.  Most are never going to sue over them, as most are not traded for profit and the works are going to their most loyal fans, but that doesn't change the legal facts.  See article 6 of the international WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, which says "Performers shall enjoy the exclusive right of authorizing, as regards their performances: (i) the broadcasting and communication to the public of their unfixed performances except where the performance is already a broadcast performance; and (ii) the fixation of their unfixed performances."
Our article copyright infringment says "Music enthusiasts may use the term "bootleg" to differentiate these otherwise unavailable recordings from "pirated" copies of commercially released material, but these recordings are still protected by copyright despite their lack of formal release, and their distribution is still against the law."
Keeping any external links at all in this article is an invitation to continued link insertion by the distributors of bootlegs, well-meaning or not, and I think we have good reason to eliminate the section.  — Catherine\talk 00:42, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
That and as someone else point out up there a bit ^ Wikipedia is not a repository of links, that is what search engines are for. Wiki is not here to provide links, but to provide meaningful content. Any external link should add to the subject or provide more information on the subject. NOT link to a discussed type of media. ViridaeTalk 06:59, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
Some of these sites have useful information, albeit in their wikis[1] and forums[2]. I agree links to bootleg BitTorrent trackers have to go as they mostly list their own content and are not useful as reference material on the subject of Bootleg recording. Furthermore, since some of these sites don't want the publicity, they should be removed immediately.
What's holding me back from deleting the following is the potential for a revert war:
Bootleg Archive - Website for a Direct Connect hub of lossless bootlegs
Dimeadozen
Live Music Archive
The Traders Den
Bootcity Live Music Sharing
Does anyone object to my removing these? – edgarde 15:17, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
No objection from me.  I think your analysis of it leading to a revert war is correct but I agree that these links don't really add much to the article.  --ElKevbo 18:18, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
Removed those, and expanded CatherineMunro's comment. Added Etree wiki & forum as they seem to have good information — hopefully those will provide examples of pertinent, informative links.
Also snipped DigitalBoots - lossless live links, tho there might be a useful sub-section on that site, and BootlegBrowser, which mostly links to downloadables. – edgarde 20:36, 11 October 2006 (UTC)


### Authorized live bootlegs
The Dead's policy is notable enough to be expanded a little (and not being a Deadhead myself, I'm sure someone else can do the work).
However, starting with "Also, Pink Floyd's David Gilmour stated...", this section wanders off topic into band member comments that may not have the weight of official policy, and unverfied comments about other bands that don't add much to the article.
I'd delete from "Also, Pink..." to end of subsection. Any objections? — edgarde 04:22, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

No objection from me.  This article does tend to gather some cruft over time necessitating pruning.  --ElKevbo 05:16, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Done. — edgarde 06:09, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I removed the following:
"Due to the wealth of material of this type, Bob Dylan is probably the most widely bootlegged artist ever."
Feel free to reinsert it if you can find a source, or a fact that adds to the article, at the moment, I feel it doesn't add much, as well as not being verifiable. Ianbittiner 12:02, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

It's difficult to say who's the most widely bootlegged, because a great deal of effort has gone into concealing the trade of unauthorized recordings. Other good candidates would probably be the Grateful Dead or Phish. But I think you're right; it adds little to the article to assert that one artist is the most widely bootlegged and it certainly is the sort of claim that would require a source. —ptk✰fgs 18:30, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
This link might help [3] (although it is 8 years old, and only refers to Britain) Edelmand 12:56, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I just couldn't imagine any other band being bigger that the Grateful Dead in the quantity of bootlegs floating around. Live music archive (link below) lists over 5600 different bootleg sources in circulation, from probably thousands of concerts over 30 years.  
[4]  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.197.145.100 (talk) 10:21, 27 July 2008 (UTC) 

There are no doubt numerous concert recordings of the Dead out there, but I would submit that only the very earliest could legitimately be called "bootlegs", since the band openly encouraged the practice of fan recordings for decades.  Since the removed line was from me if i recall correctly, I concur that it would be unverifiable.  However, I would challenge anyone to name an artist whose non-concert bootlegged recordings amount to even a fraction of those that are out there by Bob Dylan. Shocking Blue (talk) 23:12, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Is LiveMetallica [5] worth mentioning on this article? It's a site authorized by the band themselves, and it offers downloads of concert recordings.SolidShroom 18:21, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

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The scads of tags in the article about facts needing to be cited is a little over the top. It really isn't necessary to footnote every single sentence in an article. Some of the information tagged ranges from obvious to definitions to simple description: there being crowd noise in concert recordings, live bootlegs are recorded with smuggled sound equipment, sources include demo recordings, bootleg sound quality has improved over the years, blank album covers were common in the early years, etc., etc. Is all of that really necessary? Shocking Blue (talk) 23:27, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

This tagging is an alternative to simply deleting unsourced claims, including several of the "obvious" (it's not obvious to someone who cannot observe these things) and "simple description" (therefore easily sourced, right?) items you list. Unless this article can be better sourced, much of it will be removed, per Wikipedia:Verifiability.
What is really necessary is proper citations. If the things you list are common observations about bootleg recordings, reliable sources should exist. / edg ☺ ☭ 10:20, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
I agree with User:Shocking Blue. Many 'citation needed'-tags are placed with common knowledge and don't even need a citation. I will remove some of them, because the make the article a mess. --Jeroen (talk) 16:39, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
Very often, the cite tag seems to be attached by someone with no (or little) knowledge of the subject, to a thing someone who knows anything about it takes as given & not in dispute. And as I understand it, only something liable to be challenged should be taken out; that doesn't, AFAIK, mean something not known by every uniformed twit on Earth. (Note, I do not attach that description to anyone here present.)  TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura  09:05, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

The word "bootleg" originated during Prohibition as a description of illegal moonshine. It was then passed over to the illicit recording industry when bootlegs became popular in 1969-70. BootleggerWill (talk) 16:55, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to see this article talk more about the distinction between copyright and performers rights, both of which often restrict the production of bootlegs, but for different reasons - and also more about local variations in the the presence and extent of these protections. In particular, my general impression is that a performance of a public domain song is protected only by performers rights. I'd also like to see some discussion of the DMCA as applied to bootlegs. Dcoetzee 21:59, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

No, I'm not referring to the "Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers" recordings, which were official commercial recordings and on only some of them were "the Beat Brothers" actually the Beatles, contrary to what has been claimed elsewhere.
At least one of the Beatles' Hamburg sessions was recorded (by a member of another band performing at the same gig) and subsequently issued commercially, despite opposition from the Beatles.  Finally, the Beatles managed to legally block the latest re-issue (and any further re-issues); their spokesman (I think it was Paul McCartney) said something like "a verbal agreement between a drunk and four other drunks does not constitute a binding legal contract".
I think that if references can be found, this belongs in this article. — 188.29.227.38 (talk) 04:42, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Both opera and jazz have a long and lively tradition of fans recording and trading live performances. The present article is almost exclusively about rock and pop bootlegs, but the phenomenon of fan recording and trading is in no way limited to those genres. 83.254.151.33 (talk) 23:36, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

The article does give a brief mention to these, but Great White Wonder and Live'R Than You'll Ever Be sold orders of magnitude more, was documented far more in sources and created the entire modern industry. To give a neutral point of view, that's where the attention has to go. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 10:10, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

As someone who has worked in record stores and later worked as a recording engineer, it seems clear that "bootleg" refers to those disks that were sold for profit, and that "fan traded" recordings are not bootlegs, but rather a different category.
Now it is true that usage of words does creep - for example, in the 20th Century a "music producer" was a guy who sat behind the engineer in a recording studio, and would affect the overall direction of what occurred.  Whereas, in the 21st Century, a "producer" is a guy who uses music software to create a song (as opposed to a "DJ" who plays the song in a live setting).
So, this Wikipedia article could merely be the result of some ignorance on the part of the writers and/or editors, OR it could be that the word's usage has creeped.  But I'd like to see some evidence of the latter before concluding that fan traded recordings are "bootlegs".
Note that putting bootlegs and fan traded recordings together in the same word, gives you no separate word to use to indicate illegal for-profit disks. 162.205.217.211 (talk) 01:00, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

If there is a suitable reference that makes that distinction, feel free to include it. Personally I consider the two inter-changeable. Dime might host 'fan-traded' recordings, but as soon as they are out there, anyone can put them out really. There is no mechanism to control that. Karst (talk) 11:03, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
I would say nowadays that "bootleg" and "fan-traded" are basically interchangeable given you can find pretty much any bootleg you want on the internet for free, if you know where to look. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 10:10, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

This wiki page says that it was about loosing out on money, but the band has clearly stated numerous times that it was due to lack of creative control as stated in this article https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/metallica-napster-still-bad-20010214 208.102.180.134 (talk) 05:14, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

It says "Metallica were strongly critical of the ease in which Napster could circumvent the traditional channels of royalty payments", which isn't necessarily anything about "losing out on money", and is cited to one of Clinton Heylin's books, who is an expert on bootlegs and authoring. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 20:10, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

I am confused about what this sentence means: "Although unofficial and unlicensed recordings had existed before the 1960s, the very first rock bootlegs came in plain sleeves with the title rubber stamped on it." 
Is it intended to mean: "Although unofficial and unlicensed recordings had existed earlier, they did not become well-known until the very first rock bootlegs appeared in the 1960s. These came in plain sleeves with the title rubber stamped on it."? 
I think it is the "Although" that is confusing; I am expecting something balancing it in the second half of the sentence. And I am not clear whether it is saying that "the very first rock bootlegs" appeared in the 1960s or not. The reference is not online and I don't have access to the original to check the meaning. FrankSier (talk) 17:31, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Great White Wonder was the first time somebody tried to press a "rock era" artist, by taking a tape, going down to a "second in line" pressing plant and paying for a run of black vinyl in cash, no questions asked. They needed to rubber stamp the cover so people would recognise it, but they couldn't professionally print a cover as it was too expensive and likely to attract attention towards record companies in a way that an anonymous pressing wouldn't. Before that, unlicensed recordings had mainly been film soundtracks or other unreleased material that sold in limited numbers, that had some sort of packaging associated with them, and they were the same idea as modern bootlegs, in that they gave hardcore fans something they couldn't get hold of anywhere else. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 17:42, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Unreleased songs. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 July 7#Unreleased songs until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion.  signed, Rosguill talk 17:15, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

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You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 20:23, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps of interest to this article? [6] Popcornfud (talk) 14:32, 18 December 2021 (UTC)