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Clearly you failed at reading the bit where I wrote that "American spends something like $50/yr on copies of movies/music"

Clearly, I did not miss that at all. There's a diff between RIAA and MPAA. The rest of your post discussed music. Your fault for any diff between what you say you meant by artist tax and what you wrote.

And your source of the info that Americans spend about $50/yr on COPIES of music/movies is from...? The same people using our courts nefariously? The same people screwing the artists? And those of us who spend $0/yr on COPIES of music/movies and download nothing illegally and share nothing illegally should pay your proposed tax because....??

Talking about $50/yr puts some metrics so that we can discuss how we can support artists, preferably through voluntary schemes.

Try http://www.magnatune.com/ or http://www.jamendo.com/ and give the artists the $50 directly. Companies that Are Not Evil and support Creative Commons licensing are way ahead on the metrics of which you speak.

Wow, you're just plain obnoxious.

Now you're talking about taxing all sorts of countries. I'm obnoxious, AC? You fucking bet.

The two classic counterexamples to your curmudgeonly and frankly unbelievable assertion (seriously, who doesn't listen to music?)

You must have been living under a rock for half a decade to think that there is only commercial music.

I listen to music all day long ... and every single album is Creative Commons licensed, either from Jamendo (14,000 albums) or from Archive.org (300,000 recordings), so I will never exhaust those catalogues in my lifetime. What's more, the albums are vastly better and more diverse than the charts crap.

And your comparison with public services is irrelevant. Music is not a public service, it's entertainment, so my subsidizing someone else's choice of commercial entertainment is completely without basis.

True, I quickly found 13,315 albums that definitely are *not.

Suggest this to your friend:

http://www.jamendo.com/ Jamendo is a website with free, legal and unlimited music published under Creative Commons licenses. You can loose one or more weeks listening to the traks there... all legit and free.

I'll tell you what's unethical: It would cost me around a million dollars to fill up an iPod, if I bought all my music from the iTMS.

Whine, whine whine...

Sooo... I guess you've never heard of legal alternatives to iTunes like Jamendo (free) or Emusic (cheap)?

But you're right, damn those unethical people for forcing you, the victim, to acquire music solely through Apple.

Although Pandora is often seen as the little guy fighting the big bad music industry, Pandora just repackages the output of that industry, so it's feeding the monster and helping to ensure that the money-grabbing evil continues. If we want the monster to die, we need to stop feeding it. Pandora doesn't want the monster to die, it merely wants it to eat less.

So it's make-your-mind-up time, if you want to influence the evolution of music.

If you really want a sea change to occur, try listening to Creative Commons music instead of commercial output. The immense repositories at Jamendo (11,955 albums) and at Archive.org (53,088 concerts, 310,685 recordings) should be enough to keep you busy for the rest of your life, but there's lots more out there.

It's hard work, because there is nobody around to tell you what you must like, as the industry has been doing to us through radio and TV all these years. The diversity and sheer scale of Commons music is astounding, and exploring its uncharted vastness isn't quick nor easy, but ultimately your voyage will be very rewarding. Mine has been.

But you have to take that first step yourself, nobody can help you, short of handing you a few links.

The future really is in your hands. If everyone were to stop buying label output today, the Big 4 and the RIAA would disappear as soon as their coffers dry up, and the small labels would adapt perfectly happily because they're agile. You *can* drop your favourite chart bands if you try --- the discomfort doesn't last long, because there is no shortage of very high quality replacements. The Commons is vast, and the creativity amazing.

The future really is in your hands.

I do use bittorrent to download music....from Jamendo. It isn't just the Music industry that needs to change folks. It's us as well.
The best way to get rid of copyrighted/drm'd music is just to not use it. Either listen to free music (you can donate if you want) or create your own. Either way, we will all be better for it.

Oh my god, I'm a fanboy! Arghhhhh!

You forgot Dance Industries and Jamendo.

You mean like Jamendo?

I only buy DRM-free music. Luckily, there are various sources, including:

• Jamendo
• eMusic
• Amazon MP3 (WHY can't I use this from Canada?! C'mon Amazon, get your act together.)
• Magnatune
• iTunes Plus

LegalTorrents has been around for a while now, it's just that nobody has paid them any attention since they have such a small selection. That can change, though.

Jamendo also operates on a similar idea, and they have a much bigger selection (seems to be a lot of French stuff, but whatever). Also have choices between direct download/torrent and mp3/ogg.

Jamendo uses it to distribute Creative Commons-licensed music, all of it with the explicit permission of its copyright holders.

BitTorrent is crucial to my musical aspirations, as distributing my music with it allows me to provide formats that would use a lot of bandwidth, such as FLAC, without incurring expensive bandwidth charges.

While musicians can host their music for free at places like MySpace, it's really best to for artists to have their own websites, and to host their own music. That way, growth in the popularity of their sites will enrich the artists, rather than the music hosting service.

But a hit song can bankrupt struggling musicians if they just supply regular HTTP downloads; p2p enables mass distribution at a very low cost.

It's very important to get the message through to lawmakers and the public that filesharing, while it can be abused, is inherently perfectly legitimate, and should be kept both legal and technically possible.

Most of my music collection is from http://jamendo.com/

Uhm... See "Lala" read Jamendo, anyone?

Music is prohibitively expensive right now, thanks to declining sales, not completely the fault of piracy.

I'm currently enjoying Rhythmnbox's direct connection with Magnatune and Jamendo. There's a fair bit of rubbish, but there is certainly a fair amount of talent as well.

If you really want to hear music from this mysterious duo, then perhaps search ebay/amazon for second-hand CDs.

Maybe this is a sensible design, and there is a software front end to the driver which passes a key you specify to the processor to encrypt data (with all the trimmings; keyfiles, salt, entropy etc), but all the enc/dec overhead is handled on-chip, not in main memory.

Kind of like accessing a TrueCrypt volume on a networked machine, if you catch my drift.

Then again, none of these devices seem to have been thought out properly... I'll stick to TrueCrypt volumes and cheap external drives (which, by the way, are more than responsive enough to access DVD video and high quality OGG audio from).

DVD's I own, and OGG from Jamendo.com, obviously.

I recently set up torrentflux on my always-on box at home, sharing some music from Jamendo and the latest Kubuntu beta. Nothing wrong with that. But I sometimes wonder if someone will see that I'm running a bittorrent node and attack me because of that, without bothering to notice what content I am sharing.

BitTorrent is also critical to unsigned musicians such as myself who offer downloads of their music from their websites. P2P allows bandwidth to be contributed by one's fans, whereas direct HTTP downloads can bankrupt a struggling artist if one of their tracks becomes a sudden hit.

And yes I know there are many music hosting sites such as MySpace. But it's better for musicians to offer downloads from their own sites rather than to use a host.

Torrents aren't just for Linux distros and media piracy. Jamendo distributes music via torrent and World of Warcraft updates are torrents, for example. Jamendo might be a small fish, but you probably know at least one person playing WoW.

Managed torrents (like WoW updates) would be an excellent way to distribute operating system patches and updates.

You might want to check out http://www.jamendo.com/ it has a lot of free music. I can't speak for all the bands there, but it looks like a lot is distributed via creative commons and not RIAA. Some decent stuff from what I've listened to. I'm also a fan of cdbaby.com, which is smaller bands (not sure on the labels). Most of the cd prices there are reasonable.

Try http://www.jamendo.com/ ... Free CC-licensed music in a wide range of styles, OGG and MP3 downloads directly or via BitTorrent, voluntary donations accepted. I've found some great bands and albums there.

You mean like Jamendo?

I don't think this means the end of niche shows. Yes, bittorrent scales with the numbers in the swarm. So obviously popular content will download faster than less popular content. But that doesn't mean that less popular content isn't available. The music on Jamendo isn't mainstream, but all the torrents are fast and well-seeded. All you need is a few people who care enough to seed.

As long as ~someone~ else cares about the show, you'll be able to download it, however slowly. For instance I would guess that at a minimum any show distributed by this method would be seeded by the people involved in its production. So a niche show might take a day to download instead of an hour. Waiting a day is still rather less than waiting for the niche show to appear on conventional television (which would probably never happen).

Lastly, the point of P2P is to offload the high-consumption traffic from central servers. A smart implementation would involve having the client try to join a swarm, and if no seeds are found it switches to a conventional download from the central repository. (Equivalently, the central repository would always seed every show.)

I am going to do a little creative quoting to illustrate my point, then I am going to educate you on a couple of tenants of Communism (read: not a bad thing, just a form of economy different from Capitalism), then I am going to give you a (c) choice.

The government isn't holding a gun to musical artists heads and censoring the ones that haven't been signed my record labels. I still say that capitalism is going to eventually win the day, and not because the record industry is going to change its ways. The joys of capitalism will herald huge victories to bands who can be successful in using P2P, word of mouth, and live performances to pay their bills. These bands won't need to sign record labels to be successful. They don't need a corrupt government committee to approve their content either. The real tragedy... the industry is dying and it is stronger than ever. The real tragedy... the musicians making the most money are going to be the ones giving away their songs FOR FREE (through merchandising, performance fees, guest appearances, and donations from adoring fans).

As far as Communism... it is a touchy subject whenever you want to talk about any broad-based economies where the government is given control of the commerce. To this day, I am still not sure if Communism is derived from Community or Commerce... but the fact remains that it is very, very anti-Capitalistic. And that being said, it is what you are suggesting by "having one official government-implemented "pipe" would be most beneficial to the consumer". To be fair, I don't think this is a bad idea except for three aspects. Aspect (a) under your plan, I pay a music tax. Aspect (b) under your plan, the government gets to serve a role as a censor. Aspect (c) under your plan, there seems to be *NO* copyright and thus I can quit my day job and start signing *YOUR* songs in my spare time and start collecting my Government Music Wage. No, I don't like that. Concentrating the power of a market into the control of the government would be a Very Bad Idea (TM).

And that leads me to (c), but lets review (a) and (b). =

• ONE subscription for ALL content (your method)
• ONE fee for EVERY copy (RIAA method)
• ZERO fee for EVERY copy, and artist control over band economics (my method)

Believe it or not, there are good sources which provide you with all the music you'd ever want for free. If you take a liking to a particular band, it is your CHOICE to support them. Maybe you want their tee-shirt. Maybe you want to see them live. By all means... if you find musicians who are any good and you want to share their music with your friends... DO IT! Don't hide it. This isn't Justin Timberland where the RIAA might sneak out from behind the corner and grab you by the nuts. There are plenty of artists who are currently embracing the "free music" paradigm. So please... embrace this as a fan. It is capitalism at its finest. Competition based on quality and merit.

QED

If TOR is too slow for everyday web browsing, it's way too slow for torrenting, and shush about newsgroups! ISPs might start thinking about blocking port 119.

Actually, the better thing to do would be to teach them about free music, such as ones provided at Jamendo and Opsound. And I mean free as in freedom, not as in lunch (kids shouldn't be drinking beer anyways).

And hopefully, the video situation will change in a few years as well ...

Please, don't go develop a album. Find one you like HERE http://www.jamendo.com/ download it legally and share it legally.

But if you really want to do a Album yourself then share it :D

The RIAA represents the big four and many smaller record companies. You shouldn't direct any special malice against Sony BMG... but identify songs by RIAA artists and then use your own judgment.

I actually prefer searching for songs that are distributed under Creative Commons-style licenses, as these are often pretty high quality and always free-and-clear of all litigation worries.

It's also important for musicians like myself, as well as to the musicians that are members of Jamendo, which distributes Creative Commons-licensed music via BitTorrent and eMule.

A struggling musian who distributes his work via HTTP can easily be bankrupted if one of his songs suddenly becomes a hit. P2P filesharing, via BitTorrent and other protocols, provides an affordable alternative.

In discussing P2P with other people, and especially with your legislators as well as your ISPs, it's important to stress the legal uses of it. Otherwise they will only see it as a source of lawbreaking and copyright infringment.

While you posted Anon, I wish I still had mod points to mod the comment you just made up. You summarized it very well.

In the end, each and every person participating in their economic ecosystem is contributing and funding this sort of insanity
either through direct funding through purchases or through network effect from the people trading it illicitly.

Just say "no" just like they tell you to do with drugs- for it's little better, really.

I've found that there's a lot better batch of people making their music available solely
through places for free like Creative Commons or Jamendo
and through online for pay venues like PayPlay.fm where they charge a minimal fee and
give out selected freebies from most bands for free under a "karma points" system. I've just found out about Jamendo,
and I've been buying a LOT of MP3 tracks from the Renaissance/Celtic performer crowd that's taken to distributing much
of their stuff via PayPlay.fm.

In the end, I think a quote from Wargames best sums up my feelings in regards to the RIAA game:

"A strange game. The only winning move is to not play."

Hurt them, indeed!

http://www.jamendo.com/

For several years, I ran an open connection. Nothing bad happened. I doubt anybody used it, because it was in an apartment complex with mostly older, non-tech savvy individuals. But it was there.

I have since moved, and found an open network in my area. I browse, chat, e-mail, do occasional software updates, and occasionally download free music. I stream a Sirius radio audio connection from time to time, but that is low bandwidth. No streams of pirated movies. No infinite queues of warez or copyright infringing music. No password sniffers. Not even a packet sniffer to see what else is going on.

I protect myself by keeping a close eye on all of my accounts (and keeping the list of accounts that are important to me SHORT).

Meanwhile, the sharing provides me with enough personal entertainment to make me justify to myself NOT paying for cable TV (I have an antenna, but the signal is mediocre). But that fact is good too, because it gives me more of an incentive to visit friends when there is actually something on TV that I want to watch.

So, yeah. Agree with Bruce. Stealing/sharing Wifi is the way to go!

And the guy who compared using an Open Wifi connection to downloading a mp3 that infringes on a copyright is an idiot. The Wifi connect is not a creative work which an artist created. It is a service/utility. The fact that it can be trivially shared (unlike phone, heat, or electricity) is a bonus.

Want to download good stuff? http://blue.jamendo.com/en/

Comes in Mp3 and Ogg Vorbis (Your Choice) Bittorrent and Emule distributed downloads and CC license.

Note: You don't have to pay for a scratch card and there is no Britney Spears. I specially like those http://blue.jamendo.com/en/artist/lowcostmusic/

Want to download good stuff? http://blue.jamendo.com/en/

Comes in Mp3 and Ogg Vorbis (Your Choice) Bittorrent and Emule distributed downloads and CC license.

Note: You don't have to pay for a scratch card and there is no Britney Spears. I specially like those http://blue.jamendo.com/en/artist/lowcostmusic/

First off, you save your silly rant for someone else and for the right context. The article has to do with ripping CDs that you own for your own use, which the RIAA doesn't recognize as valid, but it falls squarely under Fair Use laws. It is not just my opinion that they are wrong on this issue. It is the clear law in the U.S., as confirmed by the courts in the Sony case back in 1984.

Second, I've spent (rough ballpark guess) $15,000 over the past 25 years or so to amass my entirely legal music collection, including several hundred records, about 1000 CDs and a couple hundred albums from eMusic and a couple dozen more on Mindawn and Jamendo. Musicians have made a lot of money off of me and I've gotten more than my money's worth from them.

Third, I am active in several online communities devoted to progressive rock, and am personal friends (online) with several professional musicians, managers and other people in the business. I've even provided the (modest) cover art for a CD from one of my professional friends, which you can find here. I promote (though not formally nor professionally) a few groups in particular whenever possible (Spock's Beard, The Flower Kings, and The Tangent) who work for a label that is an RIAA member and I have legally purchased all the recordings available from each of those groups. These are exceptional artists who merit much more attention than they get. In fact, I've purchased roughly a third of everything this label has ever released.

And third, I have created my own music and have shared it freely with others. You can find one of my tracks here. I can provide a few more upon request and several more if I get off my duff and digitally master them, but honestly I don't think too many people would be interested.

So in summary, I think this gives me more than the right to express a simple opinion on the RIAA. All I said was that their opinion on the matter of ripping is as irrelevant as my opinion of them is, which is a objectively true and correct statement. Fair Use laws are clearly on the side of those of us who rip our legally acquired and licensed music to our own devices for our own use.

And finally despite its correctness as a statement of fact, it was clearly and obviously meant to be a joke. Someone here is being illogical and childish, but it surely isn't I. Maybe you should criticize what I am actually saying rather than your completely wrong prejudices. That's not too much to ask, is it?

Any big label artist is normally stuck in an impossible to leave contract. Look at the stupidity that the Prince Formerly Symboled by Name had to get up to to escape his contract. The death will come partly from unlicensed copying but also from completely different alternatives with different artists. I refuse to download as long as I believe it's illegal which has kind of locked me out of music buying recently (I thin RIAA music is immoral). Driven by this I finally got round to going onto Jamendo was suprised to find that for my music tastes (jazz mostly) there's already enough music there to stop me buying albums for a year. I was so suprised I donated a few tens of euros to random artists there. The content from Jamendo isn't going to (can't) go away; it's just going to grow. When you can get all the old good music, the constant charts treadmill the RIAA and co. force on you goes away and you can just choose and listen to the music you like.

I'm guessing that that doesn't yet apply to "pop" people (though I'm really not sure - there's quite a bit of rock on there) but if it's true for just a few groups of listeners now then within a few years there's going to be no need even to go to the risk of illegal downloads and the music industry will lose it's last few "law abiding" customers like myself.

Also...

Madonna signed with LiveNation concert promotion group (I don't know if they are embedded or not).

Harvey Danger (90's one hit wonder) released a free CD

Barenaked Ladies have interesting views on releasing music (I can't remember the details, but they distribute through a non-traditional site)

Beastie Boys have put out at like one Creative Commons song and I think their latest album was somehow independent

But my favorite is any musician with decent music posted on Jamendo, where provides BitTorrent downloadable Ogg-Vorbis albums under Copyleft licenses. The site is a virtual treasure trove of exciting artists waiting to be discovered.

If you are not making money, I will assume you do music as a hobby. If you are... then GREAT! It is an awesome hobby to have. But if you want to quit your day job, you have to dedicate more of your time to your hobby.

If you are any good, I would recommend choosing a Creative Common license (NonCommericial-ShareAlike, since you don't want people making money from your work). With this license, you can promote yourself and your product through the popular non-corporate website called Jamendo. Through here, thousands of local and global listeners can discover you and support you. Their support will help you develop a fanbase and will make it easier to book local gigs. I know a band from Massachusetts who posted to Jamendo and was discovered by a fan in the UK who he developed them a webpage. They have since booked 4 or 5 gigs in the last few months (one which I attended).

You too can book small bars and get them to pay you $400 a night (to give them the ability to charge 100 patrons a $10 cover charge). As your fanbase grows, it will be easier for you to book more shows because the bar will get more customers by you playing there. Then maybe you'll make the money that will give you enough time to quit your job and support yourself through music.

The great part? You don't even NEED copyrights to your music. Copyrights only constrain you. You cannot promote yourself for FREE online with copyrights. You described that you just want to stop others from profiting from your work. The clock starts ticking (hypothetically) during your first public performance of a song (or the day on which you were upload it to a public network).

So, if you loaded your entire discography to Jamendo today, you would have until 2013 before others could begin to perform your work for profit (given the 5 year rule). If you haven't written anything new in that time, then obviously music isn't really a passion for you and losing that right to your previous work might be a good thing in case somebody else can find the hidden value in it. But if you do continue to write music, then when 2013 rolls around you might have 30-50 new songs and losing the exclusivity rights on the original songs wouldn't be a terrible thing.

In summary - I don't know what your particular situation is, but the war that is going on between listeners and the RIAA is generational... and if you want to participate in the next generation of music then you best realize that it is necessary to abandon some of the dogmatic beliefs about copyright and realize that the world is changing.

Cheers, and Keep writing Music. :)

Indie artists can use HTTP (and Torrent if necessary), theres plenty of willing hosts.

There was definitely a need for a change!

How much of the money goes to the actual artist? And how much goes to the label, to the retailer? Just go towards the needs of both, the customer and the artist, and you'll get things like the Radiohead album, or even better, open music.

What about a situation like EA Sport release? They take last years sports game, do minor graphical update, and market is as a new product? No wonder people aren't feeling bad for getting those for free. I know it's a game, not music, but same logic applies. Stealing bugs your conscience only when you feel sorry for the one you are stealing from, but my feeling for EA are somewhere else.

And besides, it's the old supply-demand law - no matter what the price is, unless it's zero, you are not gonna get as many people getting your album as you could. Free music is the best for the popularity, and guess what affects the sales of the merchandise and tickets to your shows?

And you also get people, actually trying to support you. I own a Year Zero album and as far as I remember, I never actually listened to the CD.

And the corollary, don't support artists with contracts with RIAA member companies! Or at least try not, too. With the radio being a main stream of music, it is hard to completely ignore them... but request that free music that you like gets played on the radio and that might change!

HO MY GOD. I just watched the video clip. There are obvious lies allover the place and a terrible stench of shit.

Ok some lies are obviuos: We all know that a digital copy is a perfect original (digitally talking) so no one can tell the difference between a original CD or a copy just listening to the sound (the video states atrocious sound quality). We could make jokes about the suspicious packaging where some unlucky guy tasted a rootkit from sony and so on...

but most of the stench of crap comes from the assumption that only a pirate CD can contain the good tracks that make it "TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE". This is just admitting that the music labels are producing and delivering inferior quality compilations. I repeat THEY DELIBERATELY SELL INFERIOR PRODUCTS IN ORDER TO SELL MORE AND ALSO CLAIM THAT PIRATES CAN DO BETTER. This also implies that there is NO COMPETITION. If there was some competition that would fill the gap producing legally these compilations. So in the USA now you have the signed proof that the music marked is not perfect and is in serious need for REGULATION to restore competition. If this clip was to be aired in the European Union they would be where they deserve (deep shit) with consumer unions already.

Now take MY advice for the shopping season. Don't buy any music, call the bastards airing those lies and... just if you really need then download some LEGALLY free at Jamendo (Guess none of these stations is givin this link)

I stopped buying CDs a decade ago when MP3s became wildly available on FTP servers throughout the country.

When the RIAA started suing people... I stopped pirating. They can have their cake. I will listen to musicians who *want* me to hear their music. Go to Jamendo as a place where you can download tracks that are licensed with rules that allow free copying for personal use. And enjoy the _real_ musical revolution.

I'm sorry, that would require recognising the fact that true artists will create, regardless of if they get paid to do so.

Obviously, you do not exist, and nor to the people on Jamendo either. Or Machinae Supremacy, or...

To answer that question, cost. It would cost to much to help enforce "protection" of the small guys.

And I agree with you... the system needs to be (a) reformed, and (b) enforced. I disagree that writing to Congress-critters will have much of an effect. Instead, my recommendation it to support bands who publish their music on Jamendo and other "distribution-friendly" sites. There is nothing better for fans than an artist who WANTS you to listen to his music without greedily trying to grab a couple pennies every time you hear a new song.

I had mis-clicked the link to the blog post, so I missed the verifying link :). Video verification, no less...

Some Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/) music providers: Jamendo = http://www.jamendo.com/en/ Search CC = http://search.creativecommons.org/# OpSound = http://opsound.org/ w00tw0t0 Records http://w00tw0t0.net/ and a small internet Radio only CC music http://digilander.libero.it/freemusicstyle/ These are FREE and LEGAL. There is no need to pay anyone and sometimes, depending on the license, you are free to elaborate or even profit. So the estimated cost is "how much you want to donate". The quality is good if compared to the pieces of Britney Spears (for instance) but you won't easily find any boy band. As long as we know they are a marketing product and not real music. I know this is slightly offtopic, but I'll be glad if someone visits those sites and gets inspiration.