Comments on: Decider 1, RIAA 0

Sorry, but I've got to assume the record labels aren't this callous about the wishes of their customers. Then again, maybe I'm guilty of a Panglossian world view.

[Sir_Stormy_Waters]

It's Panglossian

[Sir_Stormy_Waters]

It's Panglossian not Planglossian.

[Sir_Stormy_Waters]

omg i posted pretty much the same thing twice - i look like such a jackass

[charlie cooper]

not at all. it's a glitch in the upgrading of the software. our bad...and obviously, my bad. typo . all apologies to dr. pangloss.

[dillholio]

The RIAA needs to quit wasting it's time with an antiquted distribution channel & focus it's efforts directly on the content creators that drive the business. It just seems at this point that they are trying to protect the role of the inefficient middlemen of yesteryear.

[tonymkirk]

As an early adopter of the Napster To Go subscription service, I see DRM having a serious use and hope it doesn't go away to the detriment of those of us who like both buying and renting our music.

For somebody to have three subscription services and complain about cross-service use would be like complaining your Toyota key won't start your Cadillac. "Hey, I own both and I have both keys. Can't they get it together?"

Yeah, right.

[Zahloco]

I'm afraid that analogy is lost on me. This isn't a matter of your Toyota key starting your Cadillac. DRM of this sort is more along the lines of your Toyota key not starting your Toyota just because it happens to be parked on Elm Street and you bought it on Poplar Ave. If you want it to start on Elm, you have to buy *the same exact car* again on Elm. The same goes for Main Street, Park Avenue and, oh yeah, come back and talk to me if you want to drive it on the Interstate Highway System.

One problem, as I see it, is that the music industry has gotten quite used to selling us the exact same product every time a new media format is introduced. Without this type of DRM, they are afraid that the next time you buy <insert name of obscure one-hit-wonder-band here>'s Greatest hits will be your last. Better yet, if they can get you to purchase it multiple times without a real new format gettting launched? BONUS!

[i_am_still_wade]

Everyone should boycott Rhapsody or Napster or any other subscription service. It is the ultimate RIAA ideal, which means it is the worst thing for consumers. And here is why: if the RIAA can somehow make subscription services the standard, we would be stuck paying a music tax for the rest of our lives. If you stop paying the tax, you lose all music. The RIAA wants this. Individual labels may be wising up, but not the RIAA. They forget that consumers should come first, then artists, then execs. Instead, to the RIAA, execs come first, second, and third.

[sparrowhyperion]

Personally I have no pity for the record labels. True, piracy is not cool, but I also have a problem with the comparably low percentage that actually goes to the artists. When I was young, you could go out and buy 1 or 2 45 records for a dollar or so. You could listen to that record anywhere that you could find a record player. Then cassettes came out, same deal... Finally CDs, same proposition, with the exception of those stupid DRM fiasco CDs that wouldn't play on a PC. Now record companies are trying to lock in where and when you can play music that you have paid for; and in some cases lock the music to a certain piece of software. Keep in mind that other than the promotional issues as well as bandwidth, it is much less expensive for them to distribute music digitally online. They no longer have the production expense of burning CDs or cassettes. One would think that online music would be cheaper. I still prefer to buy my music on CD. Then I can rip it to stick in an MP3 player and not risk scratching up the CD. I also don't have to worry about DRM violating my right to fair use. Maybe if record companies weren't such greedy entities, they might get more sales and less piracy. And just maybe they should consider paying the artists who actually create this stuff more of a percentage.

[nicmart]

The worst DRM is not for music but for audiobooks. Audible.com (now part of Amazon) never fully releases a file. I've been forced to call the company for a password years after I purchased the book and after I closed my account. This is long overdue for some press attention.

[basraw]

NIN has a new album out - THE SLIP - TOTALLY FREE from Trent Reznor/NIN.

just goto his website! and also check out the remix website.. completely free music to download created by others.

His thanks to everyone who made Ghosts a success!

thumbs up to trent!

[cmfnyc]

Admittedly, I do not know much about the label side of the music industry (in other words, I know a lot of musicians on the fringe with no chance of being signed). So someone can drop wisdom on me anytime. But it's hard for me to understand why the RIAA is still relevant. Distribution channels are no longer under the thumb of the industry. So why do the middle men matter anymore? Yes, they put up the dough for pro recording. But I think that could be duplicated or bettered outside the industry. I'm thinking of a microloan-style marketplace for independent music. A place where established artists could sell their work but also emerging or fringe musicians could sell theirs. I'm thinking of a marketplace where new/fringe musicians could post rough cuts of their music and raise funds from listeners for full production. It would be part iTunes, social network, Internet radio station and maybe NASDAQ (if song price is tied to popularity like shares, rising as a song gets popular, making finding new musicians more fun). The marketplace would take a cut of sales (similar to Apple's upcoming iPhone iApps marketplace), but that's better than the artist getting a cut of sales. I've been waiting for something like this since 2002, when I wrote a short letter to Reason magazine (http://www.reason.com/news/show/28517.html). Am i just thick? Why don't the NINs and Radioheads and other likeminded musicians establish something like this.

[aquamammal]

**** the RIAA.

[fuzzyCWD]

"For somebody to have three subscription services and complain about cross-service use would be like complaining your Toyota key won't start your Cadillac. "Hey, I own both and I have both keys. Can't they get it together?" Yeah, right. " not at all. more like saying hey, i bought gone with the wind on dvd and my jvc will play it but my koss won't...

[kennethlawson]

I know this is rather long and drawn out. This is a reprint of a blog entry I did in my blog back on 1024/07 . Please have the patience to read it,:
"Open Letter to The RIAA"

Until a few years ago I had never heard of the RIAA.
Now it seems they've become the BIg Brother of the music world.
And they're looking for a fight. I venture to say that most folks had never heard of the RIAA until the started suing everyone for doing something they've been doing doing for many years. Actually they didn't know it at the time. When I bought a record, (LP) You remember them? I would play it the first time and make a copy onto whatever tape machine I had at the time, cassette or 8 track and put the record away and save the record. If someone wanted a copy I'd either make a copy from the record or the tape, whichever was easiest at the time, that not counting all the mixed tapes with songs from different artist on it. Of courses we were using good 'ole RCA jacks and swapping cables back and forth.we were using the technology we've had for the last 60+ years, of course Until about 20 years or so, we had never heard of digital anything. Now everything is digital theses days.

There is a term in the entrainment industry called "fair use". I first read about it in connection to the early days of VCR. The studios had tried kill VCR and the courts had rejected the studio argument's saying that consumers had a limited right to use the VCR to time shift TV broadcast to a more convent time.
I am not going to try to explain a very complicated subject, which I only have a broad and very basic understanding of the concept. Instead I will supply links at the bottom of the article to give you more detailed reading material.

The idea of this article is to try bring together the idea of protecting copyrighted material, and the individual consumers right to use the material as they see fit. It is generally accepted the one can make a couple copy's of a disc for back-up proposes. The question starts to be sticky when you try to give a copy to someone else. Is it just sharing a interesting work or stealing,?

In the early 1990's when the mp3 craze started and Napster came into vogue, and folks discovered they could copy all their Cd's into their computers, which were finely powerful and fast enough to actually store and play them, This also coincided with the opening up of the Apra-net, becoming the Internet. We all know the stories of college students sharing gigs of music through the campus. This is when the RIAA came out of hiding. Of course once the cat was out of the bag, so to speak it can't be put back in.


The records companys say the because of the sharing of music over the Internet that they had lost a substantial amount of sale, and thus monies they would have made through the sales of CDs during the heyday of file sharing. While this may be true, they know they will never get that money back. That's like saying you lost money because you didn't or did do or buy something and wanting the money you would have made back. Not going to happen. Essentially the 1990's and early 2000's is water under the bridge.

Its time for the RIAA to bite the bullet and sowoll hard and stand up and say they've made some big mistakes in the last 12 or so years. and essentially, be a man ,and take their lumps. and start over and work on new models is distribution , which if it wasn't for Apple and I-Tunes they probably still wouldn't be doing.

By continuing to down the path they are now, they are alienating they very public they are trying to reason with.

There is the question of where all the money that they get when they settle one of the suits goes. In theory, it should go to the artist, they are supposed to represent . We all know about the only people making money is the lawyers.

It would seem to me that if any suing was done at all it should be up to the artist themselves. After all it was their work that was "stolen" Then the RIAA can sue on behalf of the artist and the amounts of damages should be up to the artist themselves. and make sure they get the money.
I would venture to say most artist probably would elect not to sue, if nothing else because of the negative image it would bring them, and if the truth were known, most of them had probably done some file sharing themselves. Which puts them in a rather interesting spot. If a artist had the RIAA sue some one and in the course of the trial it come out that they had or even at the time were doing exactly what they were suing about, one can imaige what a laughing stock they would be.


There is also another aspect of the file sharing, that is how much of the material downloaded by folks is material that they already own in LP or cassette or 8-track from and what they were essentially doing was getting material they already own in a new format. That opens up more questions of fair use and copyright issues. If one can prove they a already own a copy of the material and were getting copies of their material.
No one I have seen has mentioned that issue.

In short , its time for the RIAA to back down and rethink its approach to the consumer. By continuing as they are they are in a lot of cases driving people into he idea that they don't want to support them and refuse to buy CDS , if nothing else in a form of protest.

I have been reading lately, the there has been a movement to drop DRM on mp3s. This is a sign that they have finely discovered that it don't work and causes more problems then it solves. Sony got into trouble earlier this year over a hidden root-kit it had on some of it CDs, which had actually damaged peoples computers.This proved that that model was not going to work and it was dropped by Sony after they were sued.

What it all boils down to is when doses "fair use" turn to stealing and who decides it and what are the penalities and who gets to droll them out.

This is a open letter to the RIAA asking them to rethink their tactics and consider the points I've mentioned.

As for the links;

Here are the links I promised;




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use


http://www.copyright.iupui.edu/fairuse.htm


http://w2.eff.org/IP/DRM/fair_use_and_drm.html


http://www.digitalconsumer.org/bill.html


http://www.eff.org/


http://www.riaa.com/

My blog is:
kenenthlawson.blogspot.com/

[Altotus]

I suspect the model is this having reached the limits of growth by now overpricing the product the model has shifted to a new concept of economic slavery by legal judgment of collage students who will provide a growing income for the industry far beyond the sale of cd and dvd media. The customer is now the dupe a slave nothing more than a thing to be used.

[Altotus]

Well professor Pangloss says this is the best of all possible worlds at least for the recording industry targeting the wage earner of tomorrow (collage students) with a plan of economic slavery for all promising young people.