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The ACLU has a rather unseemly history of collaboration with IP content providers like the RIAA.

But they did more than that; they distributed the compressed versions to people.

But that's not what the court said. The ruling against them from judge Rakoff found them guilty on the grounds that they made the database of ripped MP3s - I don't think the ruling touched on the distribution at all. Even the RIAA web page on this says that the creation of the database was the problem. Read the very first item - the one that discusses the ruling. The RIAA also says elsewhere on their website that ripping a CD for your personal use is illegal.

I think a lot of people are confusing what MP3.com was actually found guilty of with what one would assume they had been found guilty of if the laws in the US made some sort of sense. Being found guilty for the distribution would certainly be more intuitive (although I would still disagree with the principle of the law), but that's not what the ruling stated - it was the database creation itself that got them in trouble.

Most of the articles I have read on the subject would seem to indicate otherwise. In fact, even the RIAA web page on this says that the creation of the database was the problem. Read the very first item - the one that discusses the ruling. It says nothing about distribution and states that the database creation was the problem. If you have references that would indicate that the judgement found that the distribution consituted infringement, please post them.

The RIAA won't die over this. They do not profit from record sales per se.

From their website:

The Recording Industry Association of America is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry.

They are not a business, or a label, just a trade group. However, they are on of the loudest-barking dogs in the fight over copyright protection.

Treating each node as a peer! Don't they know that Peer to Peer networks are stealing from our musicians and corrupting our youth! I just hope they can repent before the heavy hand of justice comse down on them.

Steven

Now this is just a hypothetical, you understand, because I would never suggest that anyone do anything that might possibly upset Hilary Rosen, but if someone wanted to promote use of the .ogg format and started offering interesting files on Gnutella or one of the other peer-to-peer file sharing networks in Ogg Vorbis format, that would certainly encourage more people to find out just what this .ogg thing is, wouldn't it?

Just a thought. Most people would have no idea what MP3's are if it weren't for the Napster effect.

This is slightly offtopic, but I don't know why it hasn't been suggested before. The RIAA is a front to divert attention away from the record companies to save face. And we are falling for it. I suggest that from now on, whenever we would use the term RIAA, we should now use [BMG|Geffen|MTV|MCA|Polygram|Sony|Virgin|WarnerBro s]. It's a pain, but the effort is worth it to point fingers at the right place. You wouldn't believe who is on the RIAA members list:

Asylum Records, Refuge Records, Guardian Records

Greatful Dead Records (!!!), Woodstock Records, PBS Records

Buddha Records, Aware Records, Bliss Productions, Gospel Records, Worship Together Records, Praise Gathering

and of course, Straight Profit Records, Victory Records, Ruthless Records, Ruffhouse Records, and Psychopath Records. <-- At least these guys are for real.

LS

Er... actually both Epitaph and Fat Wreck are *members* of the RIAA. They ain't the upstanding punk citizens they used to be. Check out riaa.org and know your enemy, kids!

Quote: "It strikes a blow against corporate America," Braun continued. "It might tip the balance too far towards First Amendment rights. Defamation is not protected by the First Amendment."

As if corporate America doesn't violate the rights of American citizens.

People won't pay because they're angry.

(Warning: this post will break the long-lived social belief that opinions should be entirely devoid of human emotion lest those opinions lose their credibility. If you happen to be someone who believes this adage to be true, then you shouldn't read this post; and instead should please yourself watching the bevy of security camera footage tapes that I'm sure exist. The rest of us human beings can read on.)

That's right, angry... and for a whole lot of reasons, too.

See, when I want a new shirt, I can go to the store, look at it, try it on, ogle at how it looks on me in a mirror, and decide whether or not I want to purchase.

When I want a new car, I can go to a dealership, drive the car around town, inspect every part of it, and make up my mind as to whether or not I really like it.

When I want an apple, I can pick the one I think looks, feels, and even smells the best out of a huge stack of apples at the grocer or at one of many farmer's markets around town. (At the markets, in fact, I'm encouraged by the mom-and-pop vendors to taste the product. But I wouldn't really recommend putting produce up to your nose and smelling it in public.)

However, suddenly, when the product I'm interested in happens to fall into the "information" category, I'm now expected to pay to even find out if a bit of information I want is even available, much less find out what the quality of that data is.

If I want to know what a particular band sounds like, I'm told (by the artists, on more then one occasion) that I should "buy the CD and find out." (A CD costs anywhere from $15-$20 brand new; that much money routinely feeds me nutritiously for a week. I refuse to spend a week's worth of food money only to find out that a certain group's latest offering sounds like crap.

When I want to know whether or not Word XP will fill my word processing needs, I have to not only buy the CD's, but also call Microsoft to get permission to USE the farking things. And that permission only lasts a year or two! (Just when you thought that only shareware was time limited...)

And yes, there are ways around all these problems - but you utilize these methods at risk of being branded a criminal (and possibly persecuted as one) by greedy people with too much free time©.

If a department store hired bouncers and enforced a cover charge at every door - so you'd have to pay ten bucks before even being allowed to go in and see if there are any clothes you might want - how long do you think they would stay in business?

If you bought a book, but were told that several armed police officers would come to your door after a year or two and arrest you if you hadn't paid for that book again by that time... how many bookstores would stay in business?

If your only choice of produce were limited to several small, online pictures and word-of-mouth reputation vouchers, how long do you think it would be before your online-only grocery store went out of business? (Oh, wait... we know the answer to that one already.)

As a people, we're angry. Angry that someone went out there went and changed the established, customer-is-always-right, service-with-a-smile rules around. Angry that the new system of commercialism is based on blind purchases, leaps of faith, zero-privacy, and other, similar systems designed from the ground-up to screw the customer at every turn. Angry that a group of well-funded, shiny-toothed suits have decided to try and turn what was designed to be a free system of communication into yet another way to make money. And angry that anyone who thinks this is a total crock and peacefully subverts this mockery of a system (even for perfectly legitamate reasons) is branded a criminal and consequently sent to jail and/or robbed of their (legally purchased) equipment.

At this point, it's a wonder people aren't routinely sacking and pillaging the nearest Virgin Records Megastore. I know for me, on a personal note, if Anger were People, I'd be China.

--WorLord

I'm not sure that any of this is really news - at least it's not new. Microsoft has been battling to get a foothold for their music transport format for quite some time now. That they have a relationship with AOL is CERTAINLY NOT NEWS. That they behave as if their windows desktop space is a comodity to be bargained with shouldn't be news to anyone at all. There have been a number of articles on this subject.

In fact, Microsoft - through implementation of HailStorm - is looking to find more virtual realestate to sell off or rent out, since windows desktops have physical dimensions. The solution here will partially be implemented with OfficeXP and will be firther implemented with WindowsXP. By moving services off the desktop and onto servers, microsoft is then only limited by the size of the enviromentally controlled warehouses they use for their server farms.

Back to the main issue of media formats for a moment: I wouldn't be suprised to see a move by Microsoft to implement 'streaming only' restrictions into media recordings. This idea has been played with by several companies and recording industry organizations including the RIAA. This is discussed in a vary good posting on /. which describes the RIAA's version of a Streaming-only service.

I agree that this move by microsoft is yet another anti-competitive behavior, but I have ceased being suprised by Lord Bill's moves, a long time ago

--CTH


---

You have what I've done: the alphabetized list is ALL the data I have. It took at least two literally 18 hour, wrap-around nonstop sessions of data entry plus many less concentrated days to even get that. You've also got the only source of information I had: http://www.riaa.com/Gold-Intro-2.cfm. It does not _contain_ the information you specifically mention. It (when heavily corrected and cross-referenced with Google or some other web or music searcher) does contain more information than I ended up using. I'm aware of that, but not especially sorry or apologetic about it. Evergreens is as much as I could do, this month. Assuming the RIAA keeps its fairly sketchy database online, I may go in and do more someday. I was really _hot_ to add all the Gold records in, weighting them at (number of years out / 2), but time just did not allow that.

If anybody decides to organise an effort to copy out a snapshot of ALL the data in this database and put it up somewhere in a more hackable form, I would be wildly excited and pleased. Imagine one person getting every certified album starting with A, and compiling complete data for year, gold and platinum sales, possibly the individual cert dates for each award- there _is_ no more information publically available. I think it would be great if someone did this. I just know that I can't do it right now, single-handedly.

Your explanation of his calculations is incorrect. I don't think his methods are particularly useful but if you're interested here they are:

Search for "Help!" at the RIAA website here. Get the following results (sorry about the formatting):

BEATLES, THE HELP! 09/02/65 CAPITOL Gold SINGLE GROUP Standard
BEATLES, THE HELP! 01/10/97 CAPITOL Multi Platinum 3.0 ALBUM GROUP Standard
BEATLES, THE HELP! 01/10/97 CAPITOL Platinum ALBUM GROUP Standard
BEATLES, THE HELP! 08/2365 CAPITOL Gold ALBUM GROUP Standard

Meanwhile, on the author's table here we find the corresponding line:

108 The Beatles, Help!

Evidently the calculations were simply:

2001 - 1965 = 36 (total years since release).

36 * 3.0 (number of "platinums") = 108 (his scoring for the album).

In my opinion a better quantity would simply be the number of platinums, since that is apparently roughly proportional to the number of albums sold. Of course that is really a measurement of how much money the band has made from record sales, and not such a great measurement of how popular they are or were.

There are at least some bands from the 90s which have kept selling though. From anntecdotal evidence, I've heard Nirvana's Nevermind is still selling at a decent pace. So I checked it out with the link you gave before. Here's the results: http://www.riaa.com/Gold-Search_Results.cfm?start= 26&title=&artist=nirvana&label=&format=&category=& type=&award=&startMonth=1&startYear=1958&endMonth= 1&endYear=2001&before=off&after=off&sort=Artist&se nse=ASC (This is the second page of the results). As you can see, Nevermind achieved "10.0 multi-platium" level in 1999. I believe that's 10 million records.

However, aside from Nirvana, it's really hard for me to think of a pure-90's group who will still be relevant in 5 or 10 years (disclaimer: I don't listen to rap music, so maybe the story is different there).

Anyone can do this. I'm using http://www.riaa.com/Gold-Intro-2.cfm as my starting point. While they're not charging for THAT I suggest trying to make some sense of the data.

Specifically, I'm focussing my effort on one particular metric that's convenient. I could have taken down all sorts of information but it would take me far longer and I can't spare the time. What would be great is if someone else went through that data from another angle- for instance, I'm amassing a really _complete_ dataset based on years_out*millions_sold, which is very good at showing historical relevance over time periods greater than ten years. Someone ought to take down all the years of release and the year of the most recent platinum cert! I am convinced there will be strong correlations indicating a brick-wall dropoff for ALL artists post-85 or so, based on the fact that I have seen _all_ the certs while I went through taking down release dates. Even as far back as that, the industry was beginning its pump-and-dump practices: for instance, Shaun Cassidy, and some of the Disco acts illustrated a tendency to go instantly platinum and then never sell another record from back catalog. The thing is, these days EVERYBODY seems to be stuck in that mode, whether it makes sense for them or not.

The truth is out there. Only reason I stumbled upon it was because I set out to do the work. It's amazing that apparently nobody has ever done this- but then, it's an industry where they don't bother to get accurate or complete information on their own _greatest_ sellers for their _own_ website, so what do you expect?

Theoretically, this un-asked-for research might be of great benefit to the RIAA, since theoretically it could lead to their producing artists with staying power. However, I've already mentioned elsewhere that the LAST thing they want is artists with staying power- they want neophytes, veterans demand better pay. So it is my hope that the research can be used to help _indie_ artists develop careers with staying power. And of course, I record music myself- I could use the info too.

And yeah- I'm pretty psyched to have stumbled upon this important something :)

IIRC, the timing of the "clarification" of the original "threat" was such that once the time slot was gone and the talk would no longer fit into the Information Hiding Workshop conference schedule, then RIAA decided to mention that they aren't really going to sue the Prof and they aren't really the enemy of scientific research.

can drown in a river that averages 12 inches deep.

A look at RIAA sales statistics 1991-1999 reveals that CD sales do not always increase. The data shows growth in the early '90s, but nearly flat sales in the mid '90s, actually decreasing from 96-97.

As a music fan, I attirbute this (pre-Napster craze) trend to the explosion of new, unique bands in the early '90s, followed by a bunch of bland, industry-generated, me-too bands that lacked any originality or edge.

With Napster, record company executives now have a scapegoat for thier ineptness. They want to paint the picture of always increasing sales and profits, else someone surely is tampering illegally with thier industry.

Now consider that retail sales are down in many industries this year, and it looks like the record industry is trying to get a good PR spin on the combination of incompetence and a down market.


MotoMannequin

Ok, this is odd. If this is satire, how come this isn't?

[/sarcasm]

"...Makes many of the RIAA arguments ring a little hollow."

I could not have said that better myself. I have always held on tho the common-sense maxim of "No harm, no foul". I have questioned the whole validity of this lawsuit on the grounds of "is it hurting sales".

An analogy can be taken from a real-life experince I had in a shopping-mall parking lot at Christmas time. I stopped for a stop signat the end of an aisle in the lot. However, the driver behind me was not quite so alert, he rear-ended me rather gently. After looking at my car and assessing that I had no damage, the other driver came to me all apologetic, I said" no problem here, it's clean. Is your car alright?" now if I had behaved like the recording industry, I would have slapped him with a lawsuit a short time later. Since I was not harmed or damaged in any way, I did not deem it necessary to vilify the other driver in any way.

After looking at this and other data at RIAA's website, I find that the whole P2P sharing phenomenon is not affecting sales much in either direction.

The bottom line: We live in a far too litigious society. Instead of wrking together and compromising a solution, we sue, this only fosters hostility.

There are different licenses. For what they're doing, Launch probally signed the wrong license and got basic webcaster license. So they can loop a playlist that goes for 3 hours (minimum) without repeating, can't take requests, etc. I'm not well informed myself, but the RIAA's Licensing and Royalties page is a good place to start.

So why don't you figure out what kind of license Launch has, compare what the license covers to what their doing, then flame away. Just a thought...

• warez
• porn
• mp3s
• divx movies
• book-warez
• keeping up with my favorite cartoons.

In 1992 Congress passed the Audio Home Recording Act to (and this is off the RIAA site) "ease access to advanced digital audio recording technologies". Isn't that exactly what we are doing? I am much like Crashnbur, I am a college kid, who's music purchases has gone up simply because we can hear music that the commercial radio stations aren't playing. I buy ~30 cds a year, I rip them, I burn them to MP3 CDs, and I take them with me. Isn't this exactly what Congress foresaw? I think this is, or at least should be, well within our "fair use" rights.
-OctaneZ
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

Oh, that's crap. As I understand it, one way to troll is to completely go off the handle without bothering to address the substance of what you're objecting to. From that vantage, I don't see how "This argument is crap and I stopped reading" is any less trollish than unloading on RMS and his penchant for insisting that others follow his semantics. People are allowed to think that RMS's opinions are wrong. They are allowed to say so in very strong (even offensive) terms, and simply doing so doesn't make them trolls.

More to the point, if you'd read the entire article you would have hit some interesting stuff. While a good part of it is tiresome KDE vs. Ximian Gnome partisanship, there's also a perfectly reasonable call for the FSF to release information on their finances.

Point is, just screaming "troll" isn't a good enough argument against Powell's article. It fails to contest, for example, Powell's claim that

it is absolutely undeniable that the FSF has thrown its support behind a desktop controlled by two for-profit companies, one of which has an officer who sits on the FSF's board; the same company has purchased advertising aimed at confounding those who are seeking a desktop that is truly free in every rational sense of the word; and the other company has suggested that users can assist its product in surviving but help it avoid paying its bills by donating to the Free Software Foundation, or else an officer of that company has flung down and danced upon his fiduciary responsibilities by saying, in a communication that is part of his corporate function, that people might want to send money to the FSF instead of the company.

I mean, when you look at it that way, it reeks. If the FSF wants to represent the interest of hackers and geeks in the public sphere, I think it's perfectly reasonable that us hackers and geeks call them when they're out of line (or, as is the case here, when there's enough going on to make them look like they're out of line). Just because they're not the RIAA doesn't mean they're saints. If they're not doing anything wrong, the only thing releasing information would do is completely exhonorate them.

Lastly, let's not forget that they're a Foundation, not an individual. Organizations, whether foundations or corporations, can't (or at least, shouldn't be allowed to) claim the same rights as individuals.

Before you go off on me, here's my line of thinking: if you give an organization the same rights as an individual, the organization will have greater rights in a de facto sense. They have resources (time, money, personnel, etc.) to fight when their rights are infringed that individuals simply don't have. I mean, I don't have a legal team to fight for me when I say something that pisses someone off and they take me to court, but major corporations and organizations do. They, by entension, have more real free speech than I do simply because they can defend what they say and I can't -- this holds true even though we technically have the same rights.

The US Supreme Court made a huge mistake when it decided that corporations have personhood. Extending that outward, I think we have every right to see the finances of a corporation or organization, and every right to want to see them when that organization claims to represent us. It's always a good idea to be a little wary of anyone who claims to speak for anyone else, even if they're the FSF, even if they're right most of the time. Just because everything they did yesterday was good doesn't mean we can assume everything they're doing today is all peaches.

Well, but just barely. Check out this RIAA market report and see in 2000 the full-length CD market was up just 0.4% over 1999 in units shipped. That's very small growth compared to previous years (In 1999 the growth was 10.8%, see link for details). So in fact last year was the second worst in the past decade.

Full length CD's make up the bulk of the market, of course singles and cassettes and LP's are all in sharp decline.

Would you want to be in a business with 0.4% growth?

For all the people talking about public domain... take a look at: http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm. Basically there are different periods when different songs come into the public domain... just look at the chart for the info.

For those talking about Fair Use, we can basically say that Fair Use is a decorative law... basically it does nothing but offer guidelines... it doesn't say anything concrete.. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html. Take a look, you can read it... it's just pretty much fluff.

And then we come to the RIAA site (http://www.riaa.com/Copyright-Laws-2.cfm)... although very biased on the topic, you can see their position in the following quote.

"Generally speaking, you are not allowed to take the 'value' of a song without permission, and sometimes that value is found even in a three-second clip."

Steve

If a big corporation wanted to use DeCSS and a lot of individuals were concerned that it would infringe on their individual rights (although it's difficult for me to envision right now exactly how that could come about, but please indulge me for just a moment), would Slashdotters be arguing the other direction?

Absolutely.

Slashdotters want unfiltered, uncensored access to the Internet. They are vocally against any form of censorware....

Except when it's spammers. They cheer and rejoice when spammers are shut down, taken to court, and otherwise are restricted from the same freedoms we want for ourselves.

Why are we against spammers when we're supposedly rallying for free speech for everyone? Simple: we don't like spam. We are totally hypocritical when it comes to our own self-serving interests, just like other groups we often poke fun at for the same hypocracy. We see bugs in Open Source software as an example of why Open Source is great, but the same types of bugs in Closed Source software are seen as reasons why Closed Source software isn't great.

We're a fickle group, and not really different than any other interest group, no matter how much of an intellectual ivory pedestal we like to see ourselves as being on.

This comment

Meanwhile the sales of CDs have actually started to decline for the first time ever. I suspect that this is not just the result of Napster. I suspect that the ultra aggressive tactics of the labels have discouraged many purchases.

where did that come from?

According to the RIAA 1999 year statistics, cd sales are up.

http://www.riaa.com/PDF/MD_RIAA10yr.pdf

I don't know that it's legal to share files only with your buddies, per se, but it's certainly harder for the RIAA to track, for the reasons you cite. That's becoming increasingly important, too. Evidently, the MPAA has already started hiring companies to track individual Gnutella users' downloads and proceeded to "re-educate" them, even at places like Harvard, see here.

The RIAA can't be far behind. Bring on Aimster & Freenet!

From this point forward Napster will be little more than an R&D lab for the recording industry, which now seems to have legal license to force Napster to install whatever copy protection widgets they want to field test. The RIAA couldn't ask for a better development platform to further their own schemes. Sean, I admire you immensely and I hate to say this, but Napster is completely in the hands of the Dark Side now. It's time to push that big red button and get the hell out.

ie. is it goatsex that is leading the way?
Or is it plain Jane erotica?
Or do people simply not care as long as it's free?

That's the kind of metrics I care about. Maybe we could loosen the religious right's hold on America if we could show that, indeed, most people in this country are depraved lunatics. After all we are a D E M O C R A C Y right?

Steven

So taking that into account, there will be no need for Rip-Proof CD-Rs because the RIAA wants Napster to use Opt-In filtering. Voilà, now Charlie Pride doesn't have to worry about his songs being on Napster, and there is no need for Rip-Proof CDs.

"The RIAA represents five music publishers."

And even worse, here's something I just read about recently. The NET Act (No Electronic Theft) :

"The No Electronic Theft law (the NET Act) is significant because now sound recording infringements (including by digital means) can be criminally prosecuted even where no monetary profit or commercial gain is derived from the infringing activity. Punishment in such instances includes up to 3 years in prison and/or $250,000 fines. The NET Act also extends the criminal statute of limitations for copyright infringement from 3 to 5 years.

Additionally, the NET Act amended the definition of "commercial advantage or private financial gain" to include the receipt (or expectation of receipt) of anything of value, including receipt of other copyrighted works (as in MP3 trading). Punishment in such instances includes up to 5 years in prison and/or $250,000 fines. Individuals may also be civilly liable, regardless of whether the activity is for profit, for actual damages or lost profits, or for statutory damages up to $150,000 per work infringed."

Rader

This is an interesting link. It seems that now the RIAA is siding against censorship, but only because the censoring could affect the RIAA's income...

With the large number of blackhats likely to be in the population of those pissed-off about the way things have been going, I'm surprised that the RIAA and its major members still have intact web prescence. Not that I'm advocating or condoning civil disobedience as a means of political action. Oh, and I'm also surprised to see that the MPAA site is up.

With the large number of blackhats likely to be in the population of those pissed-off about the way things have been going, I'm surprised that the RIAA and its major members still have intact web prescence. Not that I'm advocating or condoning civil disobedience as a means of political action. Oh, and I'm also surprised to see that the MPAA site is up.

Matt

There is an easy solution to this inflation quible; take a look at the actual amount sold (jamie does site the link so you can check the numbers.) There was a gain in number of cds sold (although a small gain compared to 99-00... but if you work in the front lines of retail you know that it is always difficult to have large gains following large gain because you are competeing against last year's numbers.) Also there have been actual losses (96-97) before so obviously there are a lot of factors involved other than napster (sorry I had to bring this back to the story topic)

AMEN!!
Anyone crying about freedom of speech and such needs to face facts: Trading copyrighted songs is illegal whether you like the music industry or not.

I hate McDonalds, but you don't see me breaking into their restaurants at night, stealing their "beef" patties and giving them away on the street the next day.

Suck it up. Yes, the current music distribution methods are antiquated. Perhaps they should even be updated. There are other ways to let those in charge know about this.

And maybe, *just maybe*, since the music industry is a growing multi-billion dollar business, they're still doing something right.

If those Napster users didn't break the law in the first place, we would not have to listen to idiots complain about the music industry stepping into a possible legal quagmire and complaining to the police.

OK, I'll admit that I am karma whorin' a bit, but I think that I wrote a fairly good essay and someone might even like reading it. I wrote this essay for my final project in an english class. While it is not comprehensive, even in my own knowledge, and certainly a small fraction of what is really evil about huge companies it was written to give people who just didn't understand what the big deal was about having large corporations in charge. I wrote it with the average person in mind (dumbed down and not at slashdot level). I do think that is a fairly good essay to show people to give them a solid idea of why you feel anger towards large corporations (if you do) without having to write an essay yourself or give a speech to every person you want to tell. I know that some things might not be entirely accurate but I did try to cover all angles, so don't come down too hard on the mistakes. Also, if you ever wanted to know just how much the big record companies screw artists out of money check out This link It is Steve Albini (producer of In Utero) talking about the manipulations of some recod companies. My point in this is that something like this WILL NOT help consumers, and is only used as a tool for further influence by large corporations. So anyway ...

Large Media Corporations are Abusing Their Power By: Simeon Bassett

The larger the corporation, the more collective influence they will have over their industry. There is a point in the rise of power of anything that can work as whole that the power becomes too great, and it is abused. It has happened in every society that has given power to a specific person or a group with similar motives. One example is the emperors of ancient China. One emperor, Quin Shihuangdi wanted himself to be remembered as the first emperor of China, and went on a crusade to erase anything from the past and to make China start over under his rule. He burned literature and destroyed libraries, reminiscent of the thought control portrayed in George Orwell's 1984. He originally wanted to have his personal army buried alive with him after his death to protect himself in the afterlife. This nightmarish example of tyranny seems to be almost cliché in history, but thought is not given seriously to the parallels of the present. The United States of America was founded so that people would have choices throughout their lives when dealing with their religious beliefs and any other elements that affect them. Branches of government were created to balance the power and create subtle conflict so that decisions are not made out of personal interest from a select few in power.

The biggest culprits of corporate over-control and consumer neglect are the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America). Sure, there are companies such as Microsoft, which is under scrutiny because of their monopolistic practices with their huge (90%) user base on desktop computers. Intel, which is out of hot water because of a recent rise of competition, took their time releasing incrementally faster microprocessors until they had someone to compete with (Advance Micro Devices). Cisco, who has a much-overlooked tendency to buy up competition before they turn into a threat, seems like the Microsoft of the networking world, but never seems to be under corporate pressure. All of these are examples of companies that have clearly abused their power in many instances, but they pale in comparison to the two giant alliances of media powers.

To quote Jack Valenti, head of the MPAA, when talking about digital movies: "Our attorneys believe we need to pursue this very cautiously. Industry wide compacts where you sit down and say, `This is what seven or eight companies are going to do' - that's very dangerous ground." To say that this is hypocritical is something of an understatement. Seven giant companies acting collectively is, for the most part, what the MPAA is. It is an organization made up of the following major film companies: Walt Disney Company, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., Paramount Pictures Corporation, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., Universal Studios, Inc., and Warner Bros. Each one of these companies is a household name and together they make a massive monolith that has influence on almost everyone in the country. Unions of workers were created to give more power to the working class. A union of giants gives exponentially more power back to the titans of the corporate world. You can observe the control of the MPAA yourself by looking for their logo. Have you ever seen the symbol at the end of the credits of a movie with the oval shape, inner oval, and five dots in the middle? If you haven't, look for it and you'll find it - on almost every movie you see.

While I won't go into everything the MPAA has done that crosses the line between business tactics and monopolistic practices, and I won't debate whether or not Ronald Regan was right in cutting the separation of the movie industry and movie theatre chains, I will go into one recent, blatant, and insulting event that has taken place at the hands of the MPAA.

I say recent because the court decision in favor of the MPAA is still in the appeal process, blatant because hopefully it will be easy to see why this is such an extreme violation, and insulting because it flies in the face of the first amendment. A program written by Jon Johansen called DeCSS decrypts (unscrambles) the encoding that the MPAA has put onto all DVD movie discs (more on this later). He put the source code into the public domain, and not only was he attacked by the MPAA, but so were web sites that merely linked to places where the DeCSS source code could be acquired. Source code, which is text describing a program, can be read just as anything else can, and not jut by a computer. So why is it that it is not protected under free speech laws? The MPAA's answer would be that its primary purpose was the unauthorized copying of DVD discs. They maintained this stance throughout the trial even though they could not document one case of piracy due to the program. The intent as stated by the author and the users of the program was that they wanted to create their own DVD movie playing software so that they wouldn't be contained to using the software made by other companies, which is mostly sold commercially. It would enable them to watch the DVD movies they own on any computer they wanted to program for, not just ones sanctioned by the MPAA. This would actually increase the number of potential buyers of DVDs but the MPAA still came down hard. Even if the intent of the software was for copying DVD movies, it should still be considered free speech. If something can be sung in a song, or put on a t-shirt then clearly it can and should be treated as speech. In fact, both of these things were done, the song was taken down from mp3.com for "offensive lyrics" and the retailers of the t-shirts, copyleft.net, were given a subpoena by the MPAA. At least they're consistent.

Even if you overlook all of atrocious logic of the MPAA, the fact still remains that they sued and won their case against 2600 magazine for merely providing a link to the source code of the program. This is the equivalent of one person telling another where to buy gasoline and getting blamed because that person could potentially use it to harm someone. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the judge presiding over the case, Judge Kaplan, is a former employee of the MPAA. How do they get away with all of this? Maybe it's the huge political involvement they have, from the parties thrown at Republican national conventions to the large amount of financial support for the Democratic Party.

This isn't an isolated problem either; the RIAA is just as bad or worse than the MPAA. They're recent bought with digital music distribution methods like Napster, have been much publicized by the media, but the sheer legal aggression that they have shown in their battle to maintain their current revenue stream without increasing their quality of service, has been passed over for the most part. To quote the RIAA website directly: "RIAA® members create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 90% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States." Ninety percent control is a lot. Especially when it covers the entire industry. Microsoft has about a ninety percent control over the operating systems of desktop computers (the program that keeps everything running) with Windows, but a parallel example would be if they controlled ninety percent of all the software commercially sold. To be fair, the RIAA is composed of many more companies than the MPAA. Any record label that meets their requirements can apply. This should make everything fine as long as being a part of the group doesn't require monopolistic practices like price control. But it does. They even have an acronym for it - MAP. MAP stands for Minimum Advertised Price scheme. It says that no company can advertise CD's for below a certain price. Shouldn't the FCC step in and do something about this? They are, and it's about time. Deals have been struck out of court so that companies that don't agree with advertising for a certain price, like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Circuit City don't get angry. But now the FCC is finally stepping up and alleging that fixed pricing schemes have cost consumers $480 million.

This is a typical pattern for the RIAA; they seem to want both ends of every deal. Another example would be that they receive royalties from any blank CD sold. This is supposedly to compensate for anticipated piracy, but the cost is spread around to everyone who buys CD-R discs, whether they use the blank CD's to copy and resell music or not. If I as a musician want to make music and distribute it recorded on CD-R discs, then I am not only paying the company that made the disk, I am paying the RIAA, my major competitor, with every CD I create. You would think that they would be satisfied, but they have still created large-scale efforts against supposed music piracy. I guess the compensation isn't enough.

One such effort is the ongoing lawsuits against music distributors such as mp3.com and Napster. Napster has made no money at all from its efforts at the time of this writing and even though they distribute no music themselves, and the people that do distribute music do it with no money changing hands at any point, the RIAA still feels that they are a threat created through illegal means. Even more odd, is that Napster should technically be shielded by the Home Audio Recording Act of 1992, which states that any distribution of music that is not being sold by any standard is legal. It was meant to facilitate the copying of music between friends and such, and at the same time, compensate the RIAA with royalties from the mediums of choice. Now that there is no medium, as with network file sharing, there are no royalties and the piece of legislation that the RIAA personally created, lobbied for, and oversaw through congress, is now Napster's suit (pun intended) of armor, and what the RIAA is fighting against.

Another battle being waged is over mp3.com. A service offered by mp3.com allowed people to listen to music they owned whenever they were at a computer connected to the Internet. This was seen as a violation of the RIAA's property and mp3.com was attacked in a lawsuit, which they lost, and which crippled the entire company. Now mp3.com must pay royalties on every song that is "owned" by the RIAA and that the service offers, which has forced them into charging fees for the users (the service was originally free). In the end people are paying more money to listen to songs they already own. Could all this tight control be that the RIAA is looking out for the interests of the artist? Not likely. Steve Albini, who produced Nirvana's "In Utero", stated in an essay that in a typical situation with a hot band the money is distributed as follows: Lawyer: $12,000, Agent: $7,500, Previous Label: $50,000, Studio: $52,000, Manager: 51,000, Producer: $90,000, Record Company: $710,000, Band member net income each: $4,031. That's a total of $976,531 that the band has made. It is unfortunate that each band member gets 00.41% of the money they create. Yes, less than half of a percent comes back to each band member.

The RIAA and MPAA do not care about the consumer, or the artists that are making them rich. They have used tactics and business practices that go far beyond the limits of capitalism. As I have alluded to, there is much more to the story and many more instances of the RIAA, MPAA, and many other large companies flexing their corporate muscle to gain an unfair advantage in their industry, and to ultimately exploit consumers.


Bibliography 1. Music retailers irked by CD discounting (2000). 5 Dec. 2000. http://www.cnn.com/2000/SHOWBIZ/Music/12/05/cds.re ut/index.html

2. Who we are (2000). href="http://www.riaa.com/About-Who.cfm

3. Cave, Damien. A hacker crackdown? (2000). 7 Aug. 2000 http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/08/07/yoink _napster/index.html

4. Sabin, Rob. The Movie's Digital Future is in Sight and it Works (2000). 26 Nov. 2000 http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/26/arts/26SABI.html ?pagewanted=6

5. Albini, Steve. The Problem With Music. href="http://www.negativland.com/albini.html.

6. Gross, Robin D. Court Uphold Right to Digital Music (1999). 29 June. 1999 href="http://www.mp3.com/news/283.html?lang=eng

In fact, the only non-consensual thing is the theft of the music, which you seem to think you have the right to do. And the only reason that is because you can get away with it.

The only reason I can do that is because someone else was willing to share it. To contribute (since they arent getting paid) their time and resources to a further appreciation of an artist. The people who have the biggest problem with this arrangement are the ones who have to be paid to perform a similar function.

People seem to think that they are big corporate entities that just rip people off.

Re-writing copyright law so that an entity recieves 50% of ALL streaming revenues is a great example of this.
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Here are some answers to commonly asked questions about SDMI.

Q. What are the differences between current MP3 players and SDMI-compliant devices?
A. Current MP3 players can only play MP3 content. SDMI-compliant devices will play content originating from both SDMI-compliant and non-compliant sources.

Q. Can SDMI-compliant devices play MP3 files?
A. Yes. SDMI-compliant devices will be able to play both protected and unprotected formats; it is up to the manufacturer of each device to choose which particular formats to support. The only content SDMI-compliant devices will not play is illegally copied new music with SDMI technology (beginning in Phase 2). Unlike non-SDMI devices, SDMI devices can also be upgraded to play new music released in the future in new SDMI-compliant formats. And many SDMI portable devices will be able to play music that is digitally downloaded in new, protected formats right away.

Q. Is it true that, in order to play MP3 files, SDMI-compliant software and devices will disable MP3 files after converting them into SDMI-compliant files?
A. No. SDMI-compliant devices will translate MP3 files into a format acceptable for that device. The exact form will depend on the device. The original MP3 file will remain intact on the computer.

Q. Why does the SDMI framework allow both protected and unprotected formats?
A. SDMI members agree that protected formats enable the growth of electronic music distribution by protecting the rights of artists. Members also recognize that there are many legitimate uses for unprotected formats. As a result, SDMI supports both.

Q. Will consumers still be able to copy their CDs onto their personal computers?
A. Yes. The specification allows consumers to copy (rip) their CDs onto their computers for personal use (on their PC, on their portable devices, on their portable media, etc.). In fact, the specification enables consumers to do so as many times as they wish - as long as they have the original disk.

Q. Will it be possible to have content that plays on multiple platforms - PCs, car stereos,portable devices, etc.?
A. Yes. The 1.0 Specification is intended for portable devices and supporting PC software, but future specifications will address other devices such as car stereos. Existing requirements that relate to portable media (e.g. flash-RAM cards) were written with portability and multiple platform support in mind.

Q. Will it be possible to have content that plays on portable devices from multiple vendors?
A. Yes. The SDMI Portable Device specification is a framework for security that promotes interoperability and allows content to be converted from one format to another. The specification allows, but does not require, manufacturers to create systems that are interoperable. There are now a number of different music players and systems on the market that are not compatible with each other. And the initial SDMI offerings also will not offer widespread compatibility across devices at this time. Given the extremely short time frame for producing the portable device specification, it wasn't possible to achieve this goal now. But SDMI is working towards that goal and eventually, we hope that all SDMI-compliant devices will be able to play all SDMI-compliant content.

This way to the egress > The Linux Pimp

This article is filled with misinformation.

It's best to go right to the sources at the Copyright Office, ASCAP, BMI, RIAA, etc. The restaurant info, the who-owns-the-copyright info, etc., are wrong in implication if not in detail.

And if the legalese is too much, then go here or (when it's back up) here.

Dennis

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I'll keep this comment within the context of music, mp3's, and CD's, rather then venturing off to the related DVD discussion. Traditionally, we receive our own personal copies of music in the form of CD or tape. CD's are really the only choice as a source for converting said music to mp3's. So, if we receive or music in CD format, and we have computers at our disposal with great encoding tools like Lame, BladeEnc, and algorithms like mp3 or Ogg Vorbis, why should we worry about the RIAA?

Seriously, folks. I don't see CD's dying any time soon, and by legal precedence, we have a right to make copies for ourselves or our friends. If this means burning new CD's or encoding an MP3, we have the right. Distributing said MP3's over the Internet may be another discussion, but actually encoding a song to MP3 format is NOT breaking the law. The RIAA is making the same old argument it always has, "We want control." In the end, common sense will hopefully prevail and once again quell the tantrums of the gorilla sized child.

Sony is a member of the RIAA. Remember to practice wise consuming.

It really doesn't matter whether SDMI is hacked before or after music starts being released with either the Phase 1 or Phase 2 watermark. However, all the watermark can do is identify a track, and give some sort of guidelines of the rights the 'licensee' has. ** The whole plan hinges on software that pays attention to the watermark. ** SDMI's plan is simple: Divide and conquer. The 'big' software companies pay attention to the watermark because they are rich targets for lawsuits, plus they want to use popular (i.e. big five label) content. After the big software companies have signed up, SDMI can start going after the small players. Having a link to Gnutella on your site might make you a target! Let's get anonymous, reliable transfer and hosting for open source audio software going! Chris Owens San Carlos, CA

Why not let the RIAA know too..

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I have followed with interest your dealings with the popular internet music sites Napster and MP3.com. While I do not advocate piracy I feel that you have been somewhat heavy-handed filing law suits left, right and center. I also feel, personally, that these law suits are unnecessary. After all, having read through the list of artists on your web site I doubt that anyone with any sort of musical interest would be the slightest bit inclined to download the popularist pap they tend to release.
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As posted to the form on the contact page of the RIAA site less than 2 minutes ago.

The top selling albums of 1999: BACKSTREET BOYS Millenium,BRITNEY SPEARS, ...Baby One More Time, RICKY MARTIN, Ricky Martin. Not albums which the 40+ crowd are going to be buying.

I'm not going to argue that adults dig Britney, that's for sure. But check out the RIAA's consumer profiles: the 40+ set bought 34% of the records sold in '99, while the 19-and-under crew only accounted for 21%.

• The lawsuit is not about any particular format. MP3.com copied 45,000 copyrighted CDs onto computer servers. Whether the copies on the servers are in MP3 or any other format is irrelevant -- the suit is about the unauthorized copying and has little to do with technology at all.

  ...

  However, MP3.com does not own the rights to most, if any, of those 45,000 albums, and it had no right to copy them into a digital music library without getting authority from the people who own the copyrights.