Lawsuits or not, the RIAA still doesn't understand us
Today is an important day for file sharers: the RIAA has abandoned its mass lawsuit policy. In fact, the organization claims it will stop suing individuals who pirate music (except for the most egregious offenders) and instead, lean on ISPs to battle piracy.
The Recording Industry Association of America will alert an Internet service provider whenever it believes a user is sharing music files illegally. That ISP will then notify the person that he or she has been caught file sharing and warn that if further activity is witnessed, it may throttle back the customer's service. There's currently no word on how many e-mails must be sent by the ISP before the throttling begins, but a similar idea was nixed by the EU recently over a parliamentary contention that the proposed "three strikes" policy violated civil and privacy rights of the affected individuals. So far, none of that backlash has hit the U.S.
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Will it? I certainly hope so.
See, while I'm pleased to hear that the RIAA has decided to abandon its ludicrous idea of suing individuals to get the millions across the globe that engage in file sharing to stop, I'm struck by how deep the RIAA's distaste for file sharing really goes.
I'm even more shocked by how little the music industry really understands about us.
I understand that a key part of the RIAA's job is to protect the record labels and part of that is stopping piracy. But doesn't the RIAA understand the real offenders are the piracy cartels overseas that have created an enterprise out of stealing music and movies? And most importantly, doesn't the RIAA understand that all the lost revenue the industry is dealing with has less to do with piracy and much more to do with its utter disregard for consumer desire?
When I consider that the RIAA has enlisted ISPs to stop piracy, it makes me sick. In essence, the organization is still targeting individuals, but has decided that it doesn't want to look like the ultimate bad guy, even though it really is. It's a cowardly move.
Why can't the RIAA and its label cronies stop with the fear of the Web already and just embrace online realities? A number of independent artists, as well as better-known bands like Radiohead have done extremely well offering their songs for free and asking for donations whenever people feel compelled to do so.
But that idea is unacceptable to the RIAA. See, the organization has a responsibility to the fat cats running the record labels to keep lining their pockets, while the artists -- those who could really benefit from labels embracing the Web -- need to hope that the pennies they make off each sold track will add up and turn into a living.
Though it's a small step in the right direction, the RIAA's decision to abandon lawsuits strikes me as little more than a PR stunt to make it seem like the organization is "growing up." In reality, it's still targeting the same people, but it's enlisting ISPs to do the dirty work for it. And even more saddening, its vision of the Web as a haven for pirates and criminals has remain unchanged.
Thanks for saving us lawyer fees, RIAA, but if you don't mind, call us when your industry really has changed its ways.
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Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Do you know what's truly ludicrous? The fact that apparently I am the only person left in America who can manage even basic use of the apostrophe, correctly.
Do you actually get paid for writing, sir? Good lord.
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Zero Approach to Punctuation
Don Reisinger is a professional journalist. Words are supposedly the tools of his trade. It isn't unreasonable to expect him to make an effort to get them right - he is, after all, being paid to write this piece. Or are journalists suddenly unaccountable? If so, it's ironic because of the amount of self-righteous bleating that comes from so many of them about holding others to account.
I sincerely respect your well intentioned comment. My issue wasn't so much with Mr. Reisingers grammatical carelessness, but with Mjk's hubris, lack of prudence, and intention.
the rules of language only apply to making a piece of communication effective
i think everybody understood what the writer meant with that sentence
so it was effective
therefore not a misunderstanding
thus not a mistake
it doesnt matter how you get the message accrosss...just that the message is understanded
("mistakes" used for dramatic effect)
If MJK1667 grammar and correct punctuation is your only worry in life then i pity you!
Nah. You're not the only person in America. I'm pretty good with "its" and "it's". I'm also competent with commas and capitalization of references to God. But with "they're", "their" and "there", all bets are off. <G>
--mark d.
The music industry is just going to have to realize that they are going the way of the dodo: they are DYING OUT, just like other industries have died out through time, like the tape industry (recording tape).
That being said, I still purchase full CD quality music from the Indies and some of it is very good. And the best thing about that is the artist actually gets paid more than a pittance for their work.
I say boycott any music controlled by the RIAA. If we refuse to buy the drivel the put out they will eventually wither and die. We can only hope...
The problem with the whole language of "stealing music" is that legally this was never theft; it was, and is, copyright violation. The Copyright Act of 1976 treated home recording as fair use... sort of. Technically, it was in a grey area until the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, which explicitly made recording for personal use, both digital and analog, legal.
But the thing here is that the legal right to record the music has nothing to do with copyright. You can make that recording from FM, sure. But you can't start making copies of that recording and giving it to people, because you don't own the copyright (i.e., the right to copy: the words are quite literal).
I'm not defending the RIAA and I think they are indeed going to have to change with the times in ways that they haven't. But let's not kid ourselves into believing that sharing copyrighted files is legal because the files are music rather than software, or because we might have been able to get the same music for free in a legal way, or because the RIAA are a bunch of meanies, or because Britney Spears still has a major label record deal, or whatever other justification we come up with. You may be Sticking It To The Man, and The Man may deserve it, but you're still committing copyright violation.
-Don
Long live TPB!
Even if this IS somewhat of a "PR stunt" to make the RIAA seem like it's less of a bad guy...I feel like it's a huge step in the right direction. Kudos to the RIAA for changing the way they battle piracy.
That's complete bunk, I'm afraid. In just the same way that the assumption that far-eastern organised piracy is the main problem in the software market.
The problem is that while Joe Bloggs pirating some music is not in and of itself a large problem, the fact is that there are an awful lot of Joe Bloggses. Even then, it didn't really matter in the past, because the chances were that the pirated copy wouldn't spread far (probably only amongst Joe Bloggs' immediate friends) or very fast.
As a result, BEFORE THE INTERNET, what you say about organised commercial piracy being the greater problem was certainly true. But because Joe Bloggs can now share his entire music collection with the world in a matter of moments, because ISPs have been absolved of all responsibility for preventing him from doing so (and because some of them?file sharing sites particularly?are actively collaborating to assist him), consumer piracy is now a huge issue.
This isn't about "embracing online realities". It's about the extremely iniquitous situation that now exists on the 'Net where people like Don Reisinger apparently expect musicians, those in the motion picture industry and those in the software industry to live on the tiny scraps thrown to them by the exalted proletariat. And in return they will presumably keep doing their difficult and increasingly thankless jobs for the Greater Good.
Ironic really that Don Reisinger himself relies on copyright to make his living. Perhaps we should start a free news website and just steal stories from e.g. c|net. If we set it up right, it could benefit from the same absolution that file sharing sites and P2P services currently enjoy. What do you think, Don? Would you be so bold about other peoples' copyright if yours was threatened in this way? I doubt it very much.
He understands the "extremely iniquitous situation that now exists on the 'Net" and has embraced it. He gets what people want in terms of distribution, choice, and the ability to interact with the artist and the artist creations. And he is making. apparently, a good living out of it.
These arguments about new methods of distribution, payment, equity, etc. are as old and tired as the various forms of distribution methodologies. The radio did not kill a musicians ability to make a living, movies did not kill theater, the tape recorder did not kill the music industry, the VCR did not destroy the movie/television business, recordable CDs/DVDs did not ruin either the music industry and the movie/TV, the Internet will not destroy an entire industry.
Either learn to adapt or learn to work in another profession. I bet you're one of those people that railed against the government bail-out of the auto industry as a bad idea because the Big 3 automakers couldn't / wouldn't adapt and they get what they deserve. But you fail to to look in the mirror as the same situation exists in the media creation business.
In any case, this isn't an argument about "new methods of distribution". All of the things you mention are distribution that is controlled by copyright and for which the copyright holder is paid a fee. Do you see P2P networks or file sharers paying a fee to the copyright holders of the songs/movies/programs they are illegally distributing? I don't.
> "Either learn to adapt or learn to work in another profession."
And what profession do you work in? I *do* work in an industry that relies (to an extent) on copyright. How about you?
> "bet you're one of those people that railed against the government bail-out of the auto industry as a bad idea because the Big 3 automakers couldn't / wouldn't adapt and they get what they deserve."
While you're right that I don't think bailing them out is the best idea ever, they're in a totally different situation. Customers aren't choosing to steal their products rather than paying for them (and before anyone claims that digital goods are free to copy "so it isn't stealing really", remember that there are at the very least bandwidth and hosting charges to pay, not to mention the cost of originally creating them to recoup).
The fact is that if you don't support copyright in its current form you should talk to your political representatives about it. What you shouldn't do is break the law just because you can, and then whine when the person whose rights you're trampling all over chooses to try to do something to stop you.
Also, artists make their real money on tour. More people having their music just increases the number of tickets and t-shirts sold at a concert.
Don Reisinger relies on a completely different type of copyright. No one is claiming that the song is their's, they are just sharing the good. Don also doesn't have other means of income - he doesn't have shows touring the country where he reads his articles (or maybe he does, I'm just assuming...). In the end that is what every artist needs - their name and music given out in more and more circles so that they get a good fanbase going.
That day can't come too soon.
As for the OP no proof = no case, any lawyer should be able to see this... what is wrong with the states lately?
Most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and hand to mouth. Until the RIAA, MPAA and others realize that the time of extremely high prices has come to an end FOREVER..... people are going to 'steal' music (and they aren't really stealing it since it is available on FM radio for free, albeit at a lower quality supposedly).
The shortsightedness and focus on profit maximizing at any cost including godawful PR and attacking their clientele directly is simply part of these organisations makeup, and won't go away anytime soon. But can we really blame the big record companies and their executives? At one point, they were making money hand over fist for doing essentially nothing but exploiting the real talent. That profit is shrinking, and now they even have to bribe... I mean, give incentives to centralized radio conglomerates like Clearchannel to get their stuff on the air. It's a tough time to be a record company exec, they actually have to work to make their billions.
Slightly off topic comment - I find it interesting that the industry now proposes to recoup some of their financial losses due to piracy by demanding the artists share their merch and ticket sales revenues. Of course the industry really can't quantify what is being lost but that doesn't stop them from demanding up to a 50% of those revenues.
The artists I know have all, in the last decade, dumped the labels and self publish. A couple are big enough that they can get their CDs in brick and mortar stores but most rely on their online sites. This is the wave of the future, I think. The labels haven't yet realized they aren't necessary but artists increasingly are.
The ISP plan? It stinks. But it probably won't succeed either.
What good is self-publishing if everyone still "shares" the product on their blogs?
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What good is advertising if you feel the need to sue every customer that likes your product enough to do it on their own without charge?
Man you RIAA 'tards have a warped sense of the world.
Public-lynching-style lawsuits, rootkits, and throttling broadband are all flawed solutions that miss the point: Music as a product is dead. Read the artist catalog of Sony/BMG and it looks like the cover of a supermarket tabloid. This industry is the dying remains of the hype machine born in the early days of rock and roll, with nothing left to hype that's of any substance. Their obsessive use of the word "theft" shows that they still want to OWN music, and they will always see it as something to be hoarded, controlled, and doled out for a hefty price - multiple times if they can get away with it (via format changes, expiring DRM, or whatever).
The bands I like (Tangleweed is one) are mostly local, and work for a living the same as I do. They play concerts, have blogs, sell CD's and merchandise, and offer some free downloads and some downloads through sensibly structured channels like iTunes (despite its own flaws, it's a step in the right direction). They make money the old fashioned way - they develop customer relationships and deliver their service, which is to perform music, to entertain and amuse us. As an amateur musician, I think that a recording is just a recording. A recording is not a performance and a recording is not the music.
It drives me nuts how people can't even post guitar or banjo fingerings to help each other learn songs because the music publishing companies have threatened any website that lets people exchange even tutorials about songs (most of which are traditional and aren't even covered by copyright, but they don't care).
The music industry is a dinosaur that should die soon. I haven't bought a CD at a store in over ten years. I buy them at concerts or through the artist's website. I look for good stuff on archive.org where real working musicians allow it to be stored and shared (Railroad Earth is an example). I don't file share because there are other good ways to avoid this corrupt industry. I did do a bit of that in the Napster days, mostly to get fresh copies of things I'd already bought on vinyl, but grew more wary of tainted files than of stealing from Roy Orbison's widow, which the RIAA archly informed me I was doing. Right.
My taste is in alt-folk and alt-country but I'm sure every genre has plenty of people like that. They aren't getting rich, but they aren't puking for the paparazzi either.
By the way, MS Word keeps trying to change my "its" to "it's" so they don't handle apostrophe's (sic) correctly either. Reminds me of the old Zippy cartoon where he gets beat up for pointing out incorrect apostrophe usage to the owner of a store called "Beer 'n' Gun's."
I have several times been targeted by the RIAA, MPAA and ESA. However, none of my file sharing activities are illegal. If its not a court order my ISP will do nothing but tell me they got a letter.
The RIAA is not being kind or coming to reality: there lawsuits are starting to get serious challenges and many of the loopholes and methods they use will start being punished by courts. They are simply ducking and running like any good criminal would do when they here sirens.
The record execs, and the studios, and the RIAA are old fashioned and arcane. They blew it and didn't jump into on-line music like they should have. You are right about all that. SO WHAT? It is still completely illegal to steal their product. It is no different than hurling a brick through a store window and walking off with a TV.
You can't steal a loaf of bread, a car, or a telephone, or anything else just because you think the manufacturer is old-fashioned or greedy. But somehow, people get it in their head that music is different. IT IS NOT.
Pay the price and buy the product, or not. But shut up about it and stop acting like the RIAA "owes" it to you to offer it the way you want. Personally, I think it's too bad they stopped suing offenders. I was hoping they would pull down so much money from the lawsuits, which they virtually always win, that the money could compensate artists for all their piracy losses.
Answer : $0.00
Answer: $0.00
And how much money have file-sharers paid to the artists whose music they steal as compensation for the royalties they have lost from the legal distribution of their music?
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How much money have file-sharers paid to the artists BY GOING TO THEIR CONCERTS OR BUYING OTHER PRODUCTS FROM THEM (tee-shirts, hats, posters)?
Uh-oh, you didn't want to go there now did you.
Frankly, until there is no 'free' way to get music, I am not going to have one twinge of conscience for downloading music, movie, etc. online. Not one!
Wrong. FM radio stations have sponsors who pay between $30 to $65 for a thirty second spot, and up to 24 of these spots play in one hour of broadcast time. That's $720 to $1560 an hour for playing "for free" 48 minutes worth of music. This isn't to mention the ASCAP license that the station needs to play all of the music, which is paid for out of the ad revenues made from playing "free" music.
I really wish people would get out from behind their computer keyboards once in a while and learn something.
As for the RIAA, they have violated privacy laws, civil procedure rules/laws, and basic due dilligance "requirements", amongst others, and they have only started to "change" their tactics because some ISPs and consumers are now starting to fight back, and they're losing in courts across the country, particularly in the John Doe lawsuits. You cannot sue someone in a state that does not have jurisdiction over them or in which the alleged illegal act did not take place - and that's a basic principle learned in the first year of law school. Courts have to have either personal, in rem, or subject matter jurisdiction, and the venue in which you file a suit has to also be proper. The RIAA lawyers should know better. What good is a judgment that's not legally enforceable?
They are wasting tons of money on strategies that are proving fruitless. Not only are they not stopping online file sharing, but they continuously irritating and alienating the very demographics they want/need as customers.
For years the recording industry has over priced merchandise, and consumers, for the most part, happily paid those prices because they didn't have any other choice. At first the industry claimed CD's were more expensive than records and tapes because they were working on the new technology, but that once they figured that all out, they would drop the prices of new CD's. Prices did not go down even though CD production costs dropped to pennies on the dollar. But now we have a choice. And what about the fans who purchased album X on vinyl, and then on 8 track, and then on cassette tape, and then on CD, and who do not want to pay for the same music again a fifth time. How many times do we need to purchase the same music before we are said to own a copy of it? We, as the public, don't own any of the copyrights that attach to a particular song, for the most part as some songs have fallen into the public domaine, but the RIAA doesn't own all of them either and they do not make it easy for consumers to figure out what they can and cannot legally download. To be fair, it's not their responsibility to let consumers know what they can and cannot download legally, nor is it arguably in their best interest to do so.
Let us not forget too that the RIAA had it's chance to make most of this all go away when Shawn Fanning sat down with the heads of the major record labels and told that he wanted the original Napster to be the online distributor for them. They turned him down; he warned them of Grokster and other like p2p networks waiting in the wings, and they chose to ignore him. They successfully cut off the heads of both the original Napster and Grokster, but how many have grown up in their places? And how many paysites have since cropped up that appear ligitimate, but that the RIAA does not recognize as legal music trading entities. As long as intent isn't a requirment to prove copyright infringement, the RIAA doesn't have to care what service you use, nor whether you paid for it or not, or whether you authorized files to be saved in your shared folder or took steps to try and not share certain files, nor whether you are alive or dead, own a computer or not, nor whether the IP trace they use successfully identifies you or not. Is that cowardice as others here have described it, extreme arrogance, or just an industry so full of itself that it can no longer see move it's head to actually see the ground underneath it? It's like athletes whinning about having about only getting to take home 13 million in income because of new proposed tax schemes - do we really feell sorry for them and should we?
If the RIAA wants consumers to start buying music again, largley in the form of CDs, then they really need to clean up their act and image. Stop suing consumers or shutting down their access to the internet, and start listening to what your constituents want. There will always be people who think that all music should be free, but that's never going to happen nor should it. The music industry is a business, like it or not, and they have to turn a profit to be able to produce and distribute music. Most people would happily pay a reasonable price per album or file, if it was DRM free - look at the success of Itunes. But that doesn't mean that the industry doesn't have to change with the times.
No, I wouldn't steal a Ferrari off the street. If I did that, the owner would be out one Ferrari and would have suffered a great deal of harm.
If, however, I had a magical futuristic gadget that could replicate the Ferrari, I would quite probably replicate it and drive off in my copied Ferrari. The owner of that particular Ferrari wouldn't be very inconvenienced and the people in Maranello would certainly not have lost a sale since I don't have the money to buy a real Ferrari. The only drawback perhaps would be that with copied Ferraris zooming around, Ferraris as a whole would be less attractive to the megarich, and quantiying that damage is a lot more challenging, but still...
There is a huge difference between stealing even a loaf of bread or copying a music CD, and that makes these comparisons to physical products asinine and misleading.
Now that's beginning to change with Amazon, iTunes Plus, Zune and eMusic, thank goodness. Perhaps pirating would slow down if people find they can actually use purchased music on all their players and computers. I still buy CDs and rip them for that reason. No I do not share the music on P2P. But I won't fault those who do.
Believe me - if you were a musician, you would want the music industry to do everything in their power to prevent the illegal copying of your music, no matter how small the infraction.
It is entirely unreasonable to expect someone to pour their blood, sweat and tears into their profession, give it away for free, and hope that someone decides to donate money to them out of the goodness of the donator's heart.
You cannot pay the mortgage or buy food on donations my friend. You need real, steady income.
Just ask any of the hundreds of struggling musicians, actors, etc. who are waiting tables hoping for that next big break.
They are going to have to: do concerts, do small venues, etc.
The time of the 'big money' off music is coming to an end, period and done with, argument finished, SHUT THE HELL UP!
It's just OVER! Until the musicians realize that and realize that they are going to have to put some HARD WORK into making money off their music by touring....... I feel no sympathy for them.
That was obvious when you stole their music in the first place.
No one expects to "get rich", but for someone to say they don't care enough to give someone a lousy 45 to 99 cents for a song, is absolutely ridiculous. If I knew who you were, and you showed up at one of our live remotes I'd have security escort you from the premisis simply on the fact that you don't care and I don't want you there.
I don't like what the RIAA and the MPAA have done any more than anyone else, but this attitude that today's consumer has that sticking it to the record companies and any and all collateral damage to anyone else is ok makes me take this stance. The relationship between the artist and the fans has been hurt the most in the season of nonsense.
They don't need to wait for major labels to make a living in music, especially in the internet age.
You are truly an idiot.
Now the REAL pirates overseas (which by the way is where I got the DL from in the first place) steal this music, mass produce it themselves and sell $3 CDs. They make massive profits off the music and give nothing to the artist.
So the real question is, why don't the record labels start dropping the prices on the CD they sell to a reasonable value, and give the artist responsible more than a few pennies on the dollar of profit? Go after the people who profit, rather than the people who are simply enjoying art?
If you offer a quality product at a fair price, you would have a hell of a lot more loyal customers, and far fewer problems with piracy.
The far-eastern commercial pirates are still a problem, but they were only the biggest problem until the advent of illegal file sharing by consumers. Now it's consumer piracy (which copyright was never designed to deal with) that's the biggest problem.
The problem with CD's and Digital Downloads, is that the artists themselves receive PENNIES per cd sold. 15.00 for a CD retail that costs probably 3 cents/CD to stamp out, maybe 30 cents per CD booklet. Granted citation is needed for this comment, but do some searching around the internet, you'll see that artists make a good lot of their money on tour selling their wares themselves.
Sorry, no, you're quite wrong. You and your friends who are uploading music to publicly accessible file-sharing sites are "the real pirates" these days.
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Wow, a stupider comment I haven't read all day.
The ironic thing about the Metallica debacle, is that they made it because of piracy in the 80's. Without it, they would likely still be in bars playing. Cliff Burton will likely still be alive so they wouldn't suck as bad as they do today.
How can you make a living with your music "shared"? Hmm, how have others done so over the last couple of decades? Make decent music people want to listen to, then play a concert for your fans? Sell them shirts, hats, posters, banners, CD's at the show? How about TRY TO BE SUCCESSFUL instead of thinking a few hours in a recording studio entitles you to years and years of obscene profits.
"the concept of "I did a lot so I should be paid" isn't much of an argument."
Are you people trying to tell me that 1) if the songs are really very good, 2) The lyrics are relevent to you and many other people, and 3) you really like the artist so much that you'll pay $45 dollars for a ticket, gas money to get to the concert, AND pay for some lousy bit of overpriced memorabilia, BUT 99 cents for the actual track is too much to pay?
You're kidding me. Wow, this has really been an eye opener. And here I thought that the only bad guys in this thing were the RIAA. I've never seen such a ****** attitude from so called "fans" in my life. You guys really want to the artist to spend time on the commercial trappings of making CDs, Tshirt and whatever else, and SELL THAT, rather than spend time extending their abilities as actual musicians? Yeah, there's a time for touring, but for you people to say you'd rather pay for the garbage memorabilia than the actual music itself? Are you people really saying that the music is that much of secondary part of the equation?
I THOUGHT that making music, being a musician and people listening to my music, either in concert on their iPod, was about the music itself being good and relevent and people being touched by the music. Had I known it was about some consumeristic view of crass commericalism I'd have never become a musician. I thought that the reason that this was all worth while because people would hear a song like "Knockin' on Heavens door", connect with the song and the artist because it's relevent to them, that it speaks to both artist and listener, and that because that ALONE was worth something the artist didn't have to go commericial and sell tshirts and hats and other crap.
I was apparently wrong, about a lot of things.
Yes, you are wrong about a lot of things. Pull your head out and get some fresh air.
Your comment is not a fair comparison of the topic at hand. File sharers such as myself do not claim creative ownership of the media we share, I certainly will not change the name of the latest Death Jam album I share to Shawn Jams and try to cash in on the notoriety.
I'm a firm believer that if I bought a piece of media from an artist, it?s now mine. I did not create the music or movie myself, but If I decide to give it away to my granny and my 10 friends (wit NO financial benefit to myself!) that?s my right. Mr. Reisinger is spot on with his opinions in this article. The RIAA latest actions are still part of an attempt to maintain the status quo, at a late point in history when the phenomena of the Internet and its ability to transmit information should have been evident 10 years ago!
The entertainment industry must learn to adapt to change. I compare this to the days before television, when entertainment was assessible only by going to a show or sticking a quarter in a machine somewhere to see a short film. Think of the money those vendors must of lost with the advent of television. They had to give it away for free but earn a buck via advertising...brilliant! That model worked and has not changed much today.
Well its 2008 and information share is here to stay. Entertainment industry the ball is in your court.
"I'm a firm believer that if I bought a piece of media from an artist, it?s now mine. I did not create the music or movie myself, but If I decide to give it away to my granny and my 10 friends (wit NO financial benefit to myself!) that?s my right."
But firstly, IT ISN'T YOUR RIGHT. If you think it should be, you should talk to your political representative and urge them to adjust copyright so that it is, BUT AT THE MOMENT IT IS *NOT*.
Second, file sharers typically *DON'T* just give it away to their granny and their 10 friends. Most people in industries that rely on copyright don't really care all that much about that kind of distribution anyway, because as I said above, it doesn't spread very far or very fast that way. The problem is that file sharers typically give it away to *EVERYONE*, which destroys the ability of the artist to make money.
NO, it is definitely NOT your right. You have been granted a license for your own personal use, which does not permit you to grant additional licenses to anyone else. By trying to give it away, you are depriving the creator of revenue. By your argument, one person could buy the first license and give it to everyone. So the price for the first license would have to be huge. That's just dumb. If ALL the users pay their fair share, prices can be reasonable. Freeloaders make the price higher for everyone else.
Tell me.. does my opinion matter? If I told you I need to change careers because of the massive amounts of piracy would that matter?
I had to ask that an album I spent 3 years working on and basically emptied my bank account to finance be taken down from a couple blogging sites. My goal was only to break even so I could make another one.
Does my opinion matter at all? I will tell what it feels like. "I" am now "the man" because I would like to get 9. for something I worked my ass off on.
No one will ever win an award for 500,000 illegal downloads...something we don't usually see any financial gain from but usually can be leveraged to build a career and promote tours. The author of this blog has got his head up his ass but is smart at the same time...it is controversial and here I am again pleading my case to a few deaf ears.
Get used to crappy music. and I hope you have a taste for LoFi also because that is what the future will probably hold for you.
You don't get it or you don't care. I am not going to make it up on a tour.
and guess what...I don't want to tour. I like working close to home where I can enjoy my family. Musicians are people too. Most of us are middle class or poor.
You don't know the difference between "sharing" and "copying"
Tou also don't know the difference between "Fair Use" and "Theft"
The internet is a great study in sociology. What will some people do when they feel they can get away with it...when no one is looking.
I love the fact that Kazaa or however you spell it is suing because their P2P software is getting pirated.
Get it all while you can and make sure you squeeze every last drop...you deserve it. You are entitled to it.
Funny I seldom hear a musician speak out against DRM or the RIAA only our "fans". Thanks for the support and thanks for sucking my inspiration any bit of hope at making a decent enough living to support a family or myself for that matter.
you don't want to tour? Why, because that's work? Before you got into your industry did you not come across the fact that that's where you make the money? Name one successful artist who didn't tour... Before asking those bloggers to take your music down, did you ask for feedback? Did you ask what people thought of your music, or if they'd be willing to buy a CD from, or make a donation?? Did you as an artist do anything whatsoever other than spend 3 years to record 40 minutes worth of music and now are pissed off that people are pirating it rather than paying you $15 for a CD you spent $2 on? No wonder you support the RIAA's idealisms
Dan, you sure did make a lot of assumptions. I'm going to ask this question, ONE MORE TIME. Is 99 cents really too much to pay for a track? As opposed to the cost of a ticket to one concert, gas money to get there, and then you might buy a tshirt?
Don't lie to us, you'll never pay back all the artists who you like and you downloaded their music from P2P. You'll never go to those concerts, you'll never buy a tshirt, you just like the idea of having terrabyts of music on your computer to shart because it gives you a thrill to look at all the peers who are downloading from your computer. It's not about the music, it's not about the artists, it's all about you and your selfish desires.
This move is going to bite the ISPs when they are taken to court for breech of contract, for RIAA's misidentifying the alleged pirate, or for calling downloading a song an artist is giving away piracy because the artist is independent.
As for those who are actually 'pirating' by RIAA's too stretched definition, while most ISPs make you agree to not do anything illegal, RIAA saying it is illegal doesn't mean the ISP has a legal right to invoke that clause.
He made $1.5 million distributing an atypical album of short of instrumentals online. All of that money is pure profit, if he went through a major label, he would have been lucky to make $50k. That is the size of the theft that the RIAA pulls off.
Next, he gave away an entire album for free, and eventually offered up CD's which sold fast. Followed up by a massively successful tour.
The only thing sad and disgusting yours and the RIAA's inability to understand and harness the internet.
You are dinosaurs on the brink of extinction, bye-bye.
- by jinx101a December 19, 2008 9:52 AM PST
- Internet service is akin to a public utility these days. Everything from Commerce to personal communication is handled. We would think it obsurd that the RIAA could call our electric company or water company and have them turn it off without so much as a court order. Perhaps that's where they'll go when/if Internet is delivered via the power lines and electricty outlets (which, is possible and the technology exists today). Further, you can't even get most internet providers (like Comcast) to tell you how much bandwidth you've used even though they've imposed a cap... what the odds you'll be able to get any information out of them about an accusation and then even be allowed to argue your case.
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Showing 1 of 3 pages (125 Comments)I'm typically not for regulation, however, I feel that the ISP's should be treated like utilities due to their important impact on society and basic rights and regulations should be put into place to protect the public. Being the telecoms that run these providers are basically a protected industry in which a lot of Americans don't have a second option, there's no incentive for them side with the customer (my farther for instance has 1 choice for broadband due to his location and surrounding trees, it's it, or nothing).