my personal friend's parents were one of the 261 victims of the riaa. here's his rant about the whole thing. when will the record industry get it? when something like the chicago sountrack cd is only 2$ less than the chicago dvd... you think suing your customers will make them want the cd more?


-----Original Message-----
From: Laurent Piol
Subject: RIAA SUBPOENA BULLSHIT


Greetings Everyone,

As a few of you have known or may have read in newspapers and over the Internet, RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has launched "SUE 'EM ALL" campaign in which people who use such music trading programs called Kazaa, Morpheus, Grokster, etc. etc. will be sued for the copy right infringement [censored]. Last Monday the 8th of September, the RIAA started subpoenaing those who were basically supplying music to others to download off of the trading programs. In the whole USA, 261 subpoenas were sent out to those who had over 1000 files and such in their programs to share. Of 261 subpoenas, 24 were sent to LA county. Of those 24, 1 was sent to my parent's residence. They are being subpoenaed cause of people downloading from our computer. The funny part is that we've stopped using Kazaa for quite some time now ever since it had been announced that RIAA would sue whoever was still using it. But the problem was that every time anyone turned on the computer, KAZAA automatically popped up. My brother and I were in Huntington Beach and didn't realize this. And that's how this whole misbegotten mess began.

Now, the reason for my e-mail is not only to warn all you KAZAA users that it CAN happen to any of us, but also to ask for your help. I am angry! I am truly angry! I am angry that these RIAA people could actually stoop so low as to go off and sue anyone and everyone. Just lately, a 12 year old girl had to settle with RIAA and paid a sum of $2000 dollars. There will be many more like her. And then there are us folk who just didn't even know it was going on until we realized we were being sued?no warning no nothing. My parents are a mess, my brother is stressed to hell, and I'm just plain ANGRY! I am not going to stand for this! I may have downloaded music, but I've also bought the CDs of the artist that I really like?and there just aren't many of those now a days. One good song and the rest of their damned CD sucks! Plus these CDs are like 16-20 bucks a pop. And how much of that actually does go to the artist? About 2 cents from what I've heard. They should do more concerts anyways! But if their suffering, imagine the people who they'll be sueing. We could be sued for as much as "$150,000 for each song downloaded." As if they don't have enough money, they are going to take what little money we have! And the worst part about this is that these are my PARENTS! Any loving child would sympathize with me when it comes to your parents. It weren't even responsible for any of this. But to the RIAA, they don't care, as long as they get your money and [censored] you over!!!!! If I or my family are to go down, I am going to take those assholes down with me. I know this is a lot of wishful thinking, but I am going to do what I can do. What am I asking? I ask that we stand against these pigs and hit them where it hurts! No mass murders or anything?.just stop buying their CDs. Stop supporting their campaign against us normal people. I just can't let them do this to me and my family. If you guys can help me with that, it would be great. I mean I've never been a real political person or so defiant as to send out such an e-mail. But what I am is angry! And my blood is boiling. They call this place the land of the free, and for the longest time I believed it. But now, it's become the land of the greed and I'm not gonna stand around and let another family go down as my family may. And whether this works or not, at least I tried.

So to end, I ask that you pray for myself and my family and hopefully this does all blow over and maybe I'm mistaken about this whole ordeal. But if not, I've got a tough road to face and will need your support to make it through. If anyone has any information or even knows of anyone or any lawyers than can help us out, please let me know. I have here a link to BOYCOTT-RIAA which better explains their cause of boycotting RIAA. It helped open my eyes to all of this. Here also is the article in which my parents were interviewed about the RIAA and the subpoena http://www.nbc4.tv/entertainment/2466052/detail.html .

Thanks for listening and for all the help. If you like, please forward a shorter version to others and maybe I stand a chance in making some sort of a difference. But regardless, thanks for your time.

LP

Support the EFF. And they might actually be able to help. They have a couple of top-shot cyber-lawyers.

While I have little time for the RIAA, I do wonder how people can be surprised that they are facing consequences for carrying out mass piracy in such a public way. People have shared music with their friends since the invention of the cassette and that activity is even accommodated within legislation and media taxation in many cases - but putting over a thousand tracks on the net for anyone in the world to help themselves seems like a pretty stupid thing to do.

I'm not sure I could say that the Napster generation is any less greedy or unprincipled than the RIAA.

Rob

Well said Rob.

In my mind, it's an extension of the community cooperation that exists in open-source software. Sure, there are going to be leeches who never do anything other than take, but many people are looking to help out other folks.

Not all of us can or even want to buy a CD based on nothing more than a single, or even on a print review. But if all your friends feel the same way, how are you supposed to ever hear the rest or any of it? It might be the best thing you've ever heard, but if you never have the chance to hear it, then you'll never know.

If the RIAA combined their argument against unfettered distribution with some idea that people could really listen to the music before they buy it, they might be taken more seriously. But the closest they've come is presented as a way to restrict what we've already got, not a way to create what we don't have. Time-restricted demos make sense. Suing 12-year-olds does not. (It also seems at this point that they're targeting minors in hopes that their parents will capitulate instead of going after folks who might want to stand up for what they believe their rights to be, but that's another point altogether.)

I don't really disagree with what you say, but I think there are several other sides to it.

There's a lot to this whole mess that is just isn't coming to play.

Beware, this is going to be a long post.

First off, it's been pretty much established, that if you don't know something is happening on your computer it isn't your fault. We've seen this in cases where people had child porn, and they blamed it on a virus and got off. Or in the case of a virus, if you get one, it isn't your fault that your box was used in a DDoS.

Many people don't know that Kazaa searches their hard drive for ANY usable media, and places it for sharing. Either downloaded, or legitimately ripped. These companies that produce these programs also have very shady business practices, and it comes along in the software (I mean come on, these guys are promoting piracy, no matter how you look at it). And due to these shady practices, these people don't know that there's spy ware going on the system, that it's sharing every single file on their hard drive, or that it installs something that allows Kazaa to sell your computer to be used in a Distributed Computing system.

Not everyone is as geeky, and computer savvy, and reads the EULA and readme’s like we do. But yet, we can't say that "ignorance is bliss" either, cause if that was the case, then anyone could get off any crime by saying they didn't know what they were doing was wrong (which a lot of people are saying in this). So where is the line drawn on things like this?

Well first off, the media has been reporting that these are music DOWNLOADERS, which is not correct. In general, these are music sharers. Whether they downloaded something or not cannot be proven in a court of law, as there is no method to see who downloaded what. You can only see what songs someone is having if they are sharing. So it's the nice people that share their songs that are getting raped here, not the ass holes that don't want to get caught, and have a [censored] load of Pirated MP3's. The RIAA also needs to go after huge piracy groups like RNS, that release high quality (unlike the crap you get on Kazaa), full CD's, usually a week before they hit the shelves. They have an internal leak, that leads to full albums getting posted to newsgroups.

The point is, is that it isn't these people that are sharing MP3's that should be sued, but they are. They only reason that they are, is that this is the only way the RIAA has any evidence to state that they downloaded something, which may, or may not be the case.

But hey, I'm just a low life, in general, Pirate.

Arr! baby.

removed some misc crap

I agree with you 100%, Rob. What is truly amazing is how many people I speak with are mystified when I use the word "illegal" about Napster and its kind. I kind of get the "well, that's what you think, but I have no problem with it" kind of reaction. And moreover, these are people who have no desire to buy any music at all if they can get it for free. I've tried to point out more than once that this is stealing, but I just get a shrug of the shoulders and that's the end of the conversation.

I do see benefits in sharing for responsible individuals who want to try before they buy. I often put music from friends on my Empeg and try it out for a while before either deleting it or purchasing the music. I think this is a legitimate use for file sharing; however, most of the people I know don't use it that way. I really don’t understand why people think they should be able to get music for free without paying anyone for the hard work that went into creating it.

The thing with the RIAA, however, is that they are not educating people, they are making enemies. This is not good business sense, and I'm not sure what they really hope to gain. From day one they have attacked people, acted threatening, and not acknowledged any responsibility for problems they have created themselves (like putting out bad music). And these lawsuits are making things worse: the people I talk to now say things like "I never thought about downloading stuff, but after these lawsuits I'm not buying anything from them again, that's for sure." I'm not sure how much conviction these comments carry, but the sentiment certainly isn't good for the RIAA.

Anyway, the cause is probably hopeless for people on both sides of the issue: some users will never understand that what they are doing is wrong, and the RIAA has set itself at odds with its customer base. Heaven only knows how this is all going to end up.

Heaven only knows how this is all going to end up.

Remember Grasshopper,...... the answer as always, is in the question.

First, it's not illegal. It's in violation of copyright, which is a civil matter, not criminal. (Or at least should be, the Patriot act, DMCA, et al. may have changed that.)

Second, I don't see how Napster is (legally) in the wrong at all. It's certainly questionable, but making a product that can be used illegally (for lack of a better word here) is not in itself illegal. It would seem the corporation-loving officials we've elected, though, disagree, and like to subvert the law to make it so.

First, it's not illegal. It's in violation of copyright, which is a civil matter, not criminal.

I can see that. I wasn't making the proper distinction between civil and criminal. It still isn't right to violate a copyright, which was my point.

Second, I don't see how Napster is (legally) in the wrong at all.

I was a little ambiguous here, but I wasn't meaning to say that Napster was illegal; I meant that using it was. A duel deck VCR is not illegal, but copying copyrighted VHS tapes is.

Anyway, for me the concern is more the morality then the actual law. There’s no way they can crack down of everyone downloading. And morally I think that taking something that you didn’t pay for is wrong. However, as I mentioned, I think that using something for a trial period is a good thing and only benefits all parties (including the RIAA, because there are things I won’t buy without trying them out first).

Okay, follow that thought through. If it's okay to listen to music before you buy it, and the only way to listen to it is to use P2P networks, then how are the people sharing the files the problem? If it weren't for them, your good thing wouldn't be possible.

Exactly! So my point was (or I meant for it to be) that P2P networks aren't bad, but misusing them is. Plenty of people are misusing them which is screwing up the game for the more responsible parties (and the fact that I do believe the RIAA would still be up in arms even if people were responsible).

Looking back at my origional post, I did say

I think [try before you buy] is a legitimate use for file sharing; however, most of the people I know don't use it that way.

They can't prove that people who share files are in violation of copyrights. Afterall, other people are taking those files from them. I say to hell with the RIAA. this is a free country. nobody is profiting off their music except for them. The market has changed. Music isn't worth as much as it used to be, yet the RIAA continues to raise the prices. They can go suck a cock, just like their music.

They can't prove that people who share files are in violation of copyrights/

Right and wrong isn't about proof. I think most people agree (though perhaps not you judging from your other posts) that taking benefit from another person's labor and not compensating that person is wrong unless that person gives permission for the use of their labor. That's part of living in a free market society.

I've tried to point out more than once that this is stealing, but I just get a shrug of the shoulders and that's the end of the conversation.

Is the shrug, perhaps, shorthand for "Stealing is immoral because it deprives the owner of something they previously had; copyright violation does no such thing, and so if the only reason you believe copyright violation to be immoral is because it's stealing, then that's an unconvincing argument"?

Peter

Is the shrug, perhaps, shorthand for "Stealing is immoral because it deprives the owner of something they previously had; copyright violation does no such thing, and so if the only reason you believe copyright violation to be immoral is because it's stealing, then that's an unconvincing argument"?

Perhaps! However, I'd disagree with the statment that stealing is immoral because "it deprives the owner of something they previously had". Stealing is immoral IMHO because it is taking something you didn't pay for that the owner did not wish for you to have. In the case of a copyright we aren't talking about the physical file, media, etc.. We're talking about the information contained therein. Whether that is protectable is debatable, but this society says that it is (as I think it should be).

I suppose different understanding of morality is what it comes down to. I just don't understand why people would consider something that someone else creates to be of no protectable value because it comes from the mind rather than a factory. But that's where this disagreement lies, I suppose.

Possession is nine-tenths of the law. If you put a water fountain in a park, don't expect people to come ask permission before they take a sip.

In reply to:

---

I just don't understand why people would consider something that someone else creates to be of no protectable value because it comes from the mind rather than a factory. But that's where this disagreement lies, I suppose.

---

I think you are right. Things that come from someone's mind can be easily copied by another mind. I don't like the idea of ownership of thoughts and ideas. I believe copyrights were intended to protect profits. Ok, that's a good thing. But when it restricts personal use it crosses the line.

Copyrights don't guarantee profits; they just guarantee that others won't profit off of your creation. The fact is these days, CD's are almost worthless. If they can't profit off of the goods they provide, then that's their problem. Nobody else is either.

Exactly. It's no more stealing than sneaking into a ball park. Wrong, maybe. Stealing, definitely not.

(It's also a little hard to take when the little guys, the ones that really need the money, are begging you to download their music and it's only the artists making millions of dollars that are the ones telling you it's wrong.)

I agree with your redifinition of stealing... well said.
The problems with P2P software's shady dealings and the RIAA's lunacy is well documented... even in this thread. What seems to be lacking is the individuals ability to show the RIAA exactly what would be helpful in a non-theoretical way. For example what would happen if a p2p network charged a dollar a song and then used the funds to pay off legal fees of those prosecuted... I realize this is not a long term fix. However it shows that users are most willing to pay reasonable fees for music. We all know they are, and you would think that the Apple site would have already proven it, but I guess not. Another possibility would be for a peer to peer group to charge and send money directly to artists downloaded.

Before I get bombarded I realize that these ideas are a bit far fetched, however I would like to see a rebellious way to protest the RIAA without sacrificing my ethics...

If they can't profit off of the goods they provide, then that's their problem.

And everyone else's too. Because, you see, the problem is that if I produce something and anyone can duplicate it easily without my involvement, then I have no incentive to produce it in the first place. Sure that may work in a communist environment, but not a capitalist one.

They can't prove that people who share files are in violation of copyrights.

No, so (at least in this country) they created a new criminal offence of allowing others to commit civil offences by their violation of the copyrights of shared files.

Peter

(It's also a little hard to take when the little guys, the ones that really need the money, are begging you to download their music and it's only the artists making millions of dollars that are the ones telling you it's wrong.)

Very true. I had a friends band that had "please copy this cd and distribute it freely" on both of their selfreleased albums before they got signed. Once signed, though, they had to be very clear with their fans that this was not a policy that they could continue. What's really crazy is that these guys sold an amazing amount of CDs all across the U.S. before they got signed.

if a p2p network charged a dollar a song

Apple has shown that people are willing to spend money on downloadable music. (I'm mostly not; I want a CD, dammit, because CDs don't get erased accidentally.)

But that's not the point. The P2P thing is about listening without charge. Whether for nefarious or curious purposes is up to the end user. All I know is that the only time I ever use P2P is when I don't know if I want to pay money for the CD (and, to be honest, sometimes when the CD is out of print). I'm not going to spend money on something in order to find out if I want to spend money on it. That just doesn't make any sense.

On the other hand, a P2P-style music store might be a good idea. It would assure the definite legality, but also allow one to see what people that liked the one thing also liked -- the browsing aspect of P2Ps.

Well if anyone can duplicate it, then is it really worth anything? It's like urine...anyone can make it. Should we all pay royalties to the first guy to ever take a leak? Maybe the incentive to make something new should be the enjoyment you get out of making it. If you can make money off of it, great. The copyright should only keep someone else from making money from it. It shouldn't stop people from copying your idea and making their own for their own use. That is anti-productive, and it goes against the very thing this country was founded on - freedom.

You're (intentionally) conflating the duplication of a CD and the recreation of the music. Your argument means that since anyone can duplicate a CD, then the duplication process is worthless (which is obviously untrue on it's face).

Well if anyone can duplicate it, then is it really worth anything?

Why do you download music if it isn't worth anything to you? Of course it's worth something, whether you can duplicate it or not.

The copyright should only keep someone else from making money from it.

We do not allow people to take possessions if only for their personal use; it's wrong no matter how it's used.

it goes against the very thing this country was founded on - freedom.

Depends on what you mean by "freedom". We are not "free" to rape, steal, or do whatever we like. In fact we are "free" to compete on the basis of what we produce (capitalism) instead of who or what we swear allegiance to. What you want sounds like capitalism for physical products and communism for intellectual ones. I see that as being counterproductive and definitely NOT the very thing our country was founded on.

I just don't understand why people would consider something that someone else creates to be of no protectable value because it comes from the mind rather than a factory. But that's where this disagreement lies, I suppose.

Yes, I suppose it does. I just don't like the idea of victimless crimes, and I don't see any victimhood in theft other than the victim being deprived of their property, a victimhood not present in the Napster case, as the artists clearly still kept their own copies of the files. I view the protection offered by laws against theft, as being protection against deprivation; the protections offered by copyright laws obviously are far wider (as a matter of law), but I don't believe them to have the same moral foundation.

Suppose, as a thought experiment, someone invented a machine that could construct replicas of any object out of thin air -- so that grain, for example, could be "copied" at essentially no cost. Would it solve Third World famines for good, or would it be sued out of existence by the Farming Industry Association of America? If the latter, would you be rooting for the farmers to win?

Peter

what if I encode a bunch of random bytes by hand, and it just happens to make a file that sounds like WHO LET THE DOGS OUT. I made this, why is that illegal? Why is it illegal for my friends to do the same, whether they copied mine or not? What if I want to paint a picture of a copyrighted work of art to hang on my wall? Should that be illegal? Then what if my "peer" comes over, sees the painting and "uploads" the mental image into his memory, and paints his own version of it? Should I be sued for that? Or is the fact that paintings aren't easily copied a natural protection of the original artist's investment?

I see that as being counterproductive and definitely NOT the very thing our country was founded on.

The US was founded by people who viewed copyrights as just another form of the Crown-bestowed monopolies which so hamstrung the British economy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The US didn't get copyright protection for literary works until 1891, following much campaigning by the likes of Charles Dickens -- surely the Lars Ulrich of his day.

Peter

Suppose, as a thought experiment, someone invented a machine that could construct replicas of any object out of thin air -- so that grain, for example, could be "copied" at essentially no cost. Would it solve Third World famines for good, or would it be sued out of existence by the Farming Industry Association of America? If the latter, would you be rooting for the farmers to win?

What an excellent question! My only answer at this point is to say that I think capitalism is problematic at its core, especially pure-capitalism (as would seem to be implied in your question). However, in the U.S. our capitalism is not "pure" (there are certainly exceptions for the sake of mercy). Even our version of capitalism is problematic, however, so I must say that when I speak of right and wrong, I must be doing so in context of our society. Because the truth is that I think that pure communism is probably a much more "moral" system of economics that capitalism. Unfortunatly it also doesn't work as long as humans are greedy and self serving.

Why do you download music if it isn't worth anything to you? Of course it's worth something, whether you can duplicate it or not.

I mean monetary value. Water is dirt cheap, but it's worth everything you got if you're dying of thirst.

Suppose, as a thought experiment, someone invented a machine that could construct replicas of any object out of thin air -- so that grain, for example, could be "copied" at essentially no cost.

Well said.

The US was founded by people who viewed copyrights as just another form of the Crown-bestowed monopolies which so hamstrung the British economy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Yes, but that wasn't my point. I didn't say that the US was founded on the idea of copyrights, but capitalism. Copyrights are merely a (possible) logical outworking of that principal. What I was referring to as "NOT the very thing our country was founded on" was the idea that people should be expected to contribute to socity regardless of profit.

Edit: Edited out IRregardless. ARRG!

Pure capitalism I believe is freedom. It's the freedom to do with your belongings as you see fit. If you create something with your mind and body, or any machine that belongs to you, whether it is a reproduction of someone else's creation or not, it is still of your making and therefore belongs to you, even if you produced it at basically no cost. In pure capitalism, there wouldn't be any copyrights or patents.

CD's aren't worth much because anyone can make their own. If that's not capitalism then I don't know what is.

I'm not looking at "pure" capitalism as much as the principal. The principal that makes capitalism great (as far as production goes) is that it harnesses human selfishness and turns it into productivity. The underlying principal is that a person is rewarded based on how much "need" there is for that person's product. This benefits society by driving producers to focus on the most important "needs" of society and letting other, less “necessary” products fall by the wayside.

Protecting intellectual property enables this concept to be carried beyond physical production and promote the innovations and ideas that society "needs" the most. While perhaps not "pure" capitalism, this is very consistent with the goals of capitalism.

And my point was that the converse is also true. To not protect IP is to work against the idea of capitalism: it says that intellectual ideas will not be reward on the basis of how much society "needs" them.

There is nothing great about capitalism in and of itself: it is only good as long as it serves society. When I said that the US was based on capitalism I was probably wrong. More likely the idea was that those who give the nation things that the nation “needs” should be rewarded the most, and I mislabeled that concept as capitalism.

so that grain, for example, could be "copied" at essentially no cost.

I'm reluctant to mention this, as it's a side issue to this thread, but on rereading that post it occurred to me that seedgrain itself can be viewed as a way of copying grain at very low cost. Except, that is, when the "intellectual property" lawyers scent blood in the water.

Peter

A friend of mine was using LimeWire and recently removed it, relunctantly, from her computer. She had been paying for the pro version and thus assumed that it must be legal. Now she understands otherwise. The lawsuits scared her into realizing that there was a downside to file sharing. That's entirely the goal of the RIAA: set an example, generate a ton of press, and get through the thick skull of the existing file sharers that their behavior has a downside to it.

Their heavyhanded behavior is a direct result of KaZaA and friends making themselves difficult to sue. Now the RIAA is trying to educate the public. Getting Lars and company up there to do the P.R. mostly resulted in a barrage of articles about how records companies screw the little artist. Their current tactics are instead generating stories of 12-year old girls being sued. This plays nicely into their goals of educating people. If that girl could get sued, what about others? Now parents start paying attention. Somehow, the RIAA will continue to stay in business, despite the negative press (which, I believe, is exactly what they wanted).

Long term, we all know the correct answer is cheap, high quality, legal downloads. I figure the magic price is $10/month for all-you-can-eat with some caps to deal with massive downloaders (precisely what EMusic does for a one-year commitment). At that point, assuming you've got the same breadth of content (not present at all on EMusic), people will prefer the legit service, particularly because they can provide you with consistently high encoding quality and tagging, not to mention collaborative filtering and other fancy tools (likewise, not present in EMusic).

Wow, Peter, what a fascinating article!

I figure the magic price is $10/month for all-you-can-eat

Just remember that there are other issues besides price. There has to be a sufficient warehouse of music, the quality must be high (not likely to happen), and what we're able to do with that music is very important. If I am not able to do what I want with it, the service is useless.

A BIG incentive for me to pay for such a service is something that the record companies probably won't bother with: old and out of print material. If there's nothing but what's on TRL at the moment, you won't find me there.

But above all, I'm with Bitt. I want my CD.

Just remember that there are other issues besides price. There has to be a sufficient warehouse of music, the quality must be high (not likely to happen), and what we're able to do with that music is very important. If I am not able to do what I want with it, the service is useless.
But above all, I'm with Bitt. I want my CD.

I happen to agree with this statement. For me to pay $1.00 per song or $10.00 per album, I was a lossless encoding (ie FLAC) with no DRM on it what so ever. If I don't get that, I'll spend the extra 3.99-5.99 plus tax and get a CD which I can do whatever I want with.

Not to mention that at brick-and-mortar stores, you can often listen to the entire album if you want, which is not likely to happen with online stores, whether mail-order or download.

as long as humans are greedy and self serving.

Interesting you say this, as I was going to reply to your earlier post and note a problem with "pure capitalism" is its underlying assumption that nobody is ever motivated by anything other than pure self-interest and/or greed. Both its success and its issues in America result from this assumption. I think the problem with the RIAA claiming to represent the artists whose IP is being appropriated is that many/most artists/musicians aren't driven to create by greed.

This country isn't run by greed. It's run by people who just want to provide for their families. Communist dictatorships are run by the greed of the dictators.

The top tier who run this country are in no way driven by the need to provide for their family on a base level... unless you count private jets, tennis courts, multiple hundred thousand dollar cars, multiple mansions, etc etc as providing for your family. Greed runs the desire for monetary excess.

Now, if you solely define those that run this country as the everyday blue collar worker, then i might buy into that, but it would be a false statement if you think those who just want to provide for their families run this country.

its underlying assumption that nobody is ever motivated by anything other than pure self-interest and/or greed.

That's a really good point.

I think the problem with the RIAA claiming to represent the artists whose IP is being appropriated is that many/most artists/musicians aren't driven to create by greed.

And so is that.

As an artist myself I totally agree with you. One step further is that the music I create is spiritual in nature and my conviction is that I do it not for the money but that other people might be spiritually blessed. So while I hope to make money someday to support my "ministry", it is certainly not the overriding factor.

So my own situation puts a big fat hole in my theory of IP protection being necessary for music to be created. However, it's still true that a lot of music we have wouldn't have been created if someone hadn't gotten money for it, if for no other reason than to put food on the table while the person makes the music.

Communist dictatorships are run by the greed of the dictators.

Which is why communism doesn't work. If people were perfectly selfless, however, I believe communism would be far superior to capitalism. Oh, and you'd need a governing body with perfect knowledge to be able to distribute resources as the are needed.

a very common misconception is that the artists are losing royalties because of a reduction of cd sales. most artist earn a significant bulk of their earnings thru concerts. i agree with the view that the current course of the recording industry will make it so that songs and cds will serve just as adverstising. the current model sucks because you don't get what you pay for, and p2p to most people seems to be the only viable alternative.

supporting link

Just remember that there are other issues besides price. There has to be a sufficient warehouse of music, the quality must be high (not likely to happen), and what we're able to do with that music is very important. If I am not able to do what I want with it, the service is useless.

A BIG incentive for me to pay for such a service is something that the record companies probably won't bother with: old and out of print material. If there's nothing but what's on TRL at the moment, you won't find me there.

Well, as someone already pointed out, emusic provides nearly all of these. I doubt they have a single TRL song on the service. The quality is high (Lame VBR for nearly all tracks). Admitedly, the selection is lacking so that after the initial downloading, you do have to hunt for music you like, but that's what being into music should mean. On a basic economic leve, where else can you get the entire They Might Be Giants dicography, the entire Dropkick Murphy's discography (for you punk fans) and the two disc set of the greatest hits of Wesly Willis for $45?

Emusic may not have the selection, but they've got the business model. The challenge is unsubscribing when your 3 months are up like you planned to.

Matthew

That's fine, but I'm going to hold these stores to a FAR higher standard than my local Best Buy in terms of stock. Whereas Best Buy must sell what they think people will buy, balanced with the amount of display space a non-selling album takes up, online stores have to worry about signing up with certain artists or labels. We're talking iTunes without the Beatles. And just because there are obscure artists doesn't mean they have a large number of obscure artists. I'll look at their site, though. Is it possible to search their inventory without signing up?

*edit*
After a quick search, I'm not impressed. Yeah, they have obscure artists like the Young Fresh Fellows (the very first thing I searched for), but they only have the lesser-known albums, not the hits or the ones that are considered really good. The service has also never heard of Nirvana or the Beatles. However, it appears to have most of Dead Moon's albums.

All in all, their selection doesn't impress me in the least. Plus, many of the big names they claim to have either don't actually have albums on there (Smashing Pumpkins simply has a blank page), or merely a few songs on a compilation. It's quite odd.

*edit 2*
Upon further browsing of emusic, my opinion is that it's a place to go to download what they have. You name dropped some artists, and yeah, they have large selections for them on there, but you only dropped them because they were there. If you actually go searching for an artists, your success rate is about 20%

I have been on Emusic for a year and a half, and I have been downloading at least 10 albums a month. I can't stand listening to commericial FM stations, and Emusic has the stuff that the local college stations play. I must have downloaded over 15GB from them so far. For me, Itunes or anything else that gives major labels would be worthless, except for some older jazz.

This big problem people have with Emusic tends to be "they don't have X by Y!" And I tend to agree, it is annoying. The reason they have only a couple YFF albums (excellent choice btw) is they have deals with the labels. Mostly smaller labels that are not turned off my Emusic's complete lack of DRM. If your album of choice is either not on an Emusic label, or the label has decided not to release the album to Emusic, you won't find it.

The biggest problem I have with this whole RIAA thing is they are completely missing the point. The CD method of delivering audio content is stagnating. People now have the ability to create their own physical CDs from downloaded music tracks and are picking and choosing the music they want. The physical CD is quickly becoming irrelevant to a significant portion of the populace. Create a simple to use, non restrictive, inexpensive store front to your catalog and I guarantee you people will buy. Guarantee high quality encoding and full back catalog searching at say 50 cents a track... and the ease of use will out weigh for most people the Free part of P2P.

It happened with Video tape. Why borrow your friends tape and record it when you can grab "Monsters Inc." at the check stand for $9.99...?

The music and film industry need to deliver what the public is saying they want... or they are going to turn to other sources... in this case P2P.
THAT'S capitalism at work.

...band that had "please copy this cd and distribute it freely"

This brings to mind a dichotomy I have a hard time resolving.

The record companies and artists devote a considerable amount of time and money towards getting their music played on the radio, because they want people to hear it for free.

The record companies and artists devote a considerable amount of time and money towards keeping their music off of the internet, in order to prevent people hearing it for free.

Is there some subtle logic I am missing here?

tanstaafl.

Upon further browsing of emusic, my opinion is that it's a place to go to download what they have. You name dropped some artists, and yeah, they have large selections for them on there, but you only dropped them because they were there. If you actually go searching for an artists, your success rate is about 20%

Yes, that's exactly it. It's definitly a digging for stuff you've never heard of kind of thing. The artists I mentioned are my favorites, and for $45 they're well worth it. If you stay with it, you're going to have to discover artists you havn't heard ot before.

Matthew

Is there some subtle logic I am missing here?

I don't think it's much of a contradiction. As I'm sure you know, radio singles are just the bait to get people to buy albums. The radio stations, not the listener, choose when those singles are played. So what you get by buying a CD is the ability to play that single, and all of the other tracks on the album, whenever and wherever you choose. You also get higher quality playback (satellite radio notwithstanding.) And oh yeah, no commercials, lame DJ interruptions, etc.

So it basically boils down to the consumer paying for convenience, along with the non-single tracks. Both of these are things that the radio doesn't give you, but filesharing does.

How about a supermarket that spends "a considerable amount of time and money" giving away free samples, but also spends "a considerable amount of time and money" on anti-shoplifting measures to make sure consumers don't get away with lots of free product. No double standard there, is there?

Sheesh, why am I telling you this, don't you work at a radio station?

The P2P thing is about listening without charge.

For me in most cases, I just need a few good samples to be convinced that I will like the CD. And thus far, I have been very impressed with the iTunes store. It has major albums, and allows 30 second previews of any song without ever giving them any information. I doubt I will buy music off the iTunes system, but I will use it to get a preview and shop online elsewhere to have a CD sent to my house.

On the whole issue, I'll probably think up a response later.

For whatever reason, I've never found the partial samples enough to give me the feel of a song or an album. Maybe iTunes does a better job selecting which 30 seconds (I haven't listened that much), but it's still not as good as listening to the whole song. Hell, if they'd distribute 56kbps mp3s, they'd be doing good. The quality there is enough for me to determine if I'd like the song, but well irritating enough for me to need to get a replacement if I like it.

Is there some subtle logic I am missing here?

They couldn't care less, I'm sure, if the end user gets to hear it for free as long as they get paid, and they get paid for radio broadcasts.

So, yes. You're looking at it from the wrong end.

they get paid for radio broadcasts.

I thought it was the other way around...

Good point, although they do still pay lip service to making radio stations pay.

(I don't know if you were referring to payola or the fact that the RIAA gives gigantic breaks on those payments to large radio stations, though.)

It's also notable that there are rules that radio stations muct play by, including not announcing songs significantly before they are played, so it's hard to get a copy of a specific song. (Unless it happens to be one of the three that get played four thousand times a day; waiting a few minutes isn't difficult.)

It's also notable that there are rules that radio stations muct play by, including not announcing songs significantly before they are played, so it's hard to get a copy of a specific song.

And that, of course, is another notion that has been rather overtaken by technology these days: the smallest winchester you can buy is big enough to tivo two weeks of Radio 1 and costs £40.

Peter

the smallest winchester you could buy would still put a nice hole in a tivo.

(I don't know if you were referring to payola or the fact that the RIAA gives gigantic breaks on those payments to large radio stations, though.)

A little from column A, little from column B.

(Unless it happens to be one of the three that get played four thousand times a day; waiting a few minutes isn't difficult.)

I wonder if in those rules stations are required to talk over the beginning and end of songs so that if someone records a song, it's got the stupid DJ chatter. I'm only half serious here, I mean, I can't imagine such a rule would exist, but it certainly would be another reason to go buy the CD.

As always, the hill-billies have guns on the brain.

Winchester = HARD DISK DRIVE.

Bruno

I wonder if in those rules stations are required to talk over the beginning and end of songs

I've been rolling a theory around in my head lately about this. Back in the old days, like the 1930's, one side of a 78rpm record could hold around 3 minutes of music, give or take. Initially, radio wasn't allowed to play records (the record companies being worried they wouldn't be able to sell records, after all...). As such, there was no pressure from radio on how music should be formatted. The pressure came from the time limit. Songs got started quickly and ran right up to the end, sometimes coming to very abrupt endings, sometimes having nicely choreographed endings, but certainly never having anyplace that a DJ could possibly have jumped in and talked over the song.

Fast forward to the 1980's. "Singles" are still under four minutes in length, mostly as a matter of tradition, not technology. Virtually all of the 80's music on my empeg fades out at the end. I suspect this is a direct result of over-talking from the radio stations. If they're going to talk over your song, you might as well just end your song in a fade-out so they don't mangle the meat of the song.

I don't know if there's any explicit regulation on talk-overs, but there's plenty of evidence that they've been around for a long time. Certainly, you'll never hear talk-overs on jazz, classical, or college radio stations. I think it's just some bastard creation of the commercial radio stations.

ahhh, the winchester! I haven't heard that name in relation to disks for a long while.

Here are a few good URL's, enjoy.

The news story:
http://bbspot.com/News/2003/09/riaa_sue.html

The video:
http://overstated.net/media/RIAA_PSA.mpg

Jeremy Briggs
www.carplayer.com