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for the sound of that resounding *SMACK* as the gates of Sony/BMG hit the collective arses of the executive brain trust responsible for green lighting this reprehensible action in the first place.

Unfortunately the usual suspects are busy defending them.

Sadly, Sanctuary is a member of the RIAA

That's nothing.

There's evidence of grass consumption by various species of dinosaurs in north america. I'm not sure they eat it, though.

They have a parental advisory notice at the bottom-right corner of the page:
http://www.riaa.com/default.asp
Yes, kids can go unhappy after reading how many years they'll have to spend in jail after trading a Britney Spears CD for a box of bubble-gum.

Please send cash here http://www.riaa.com/default.asp

Once we are through lining our pockets we will use the remaining funds to further develop new planets and moons. Please don't steal extra-terrestrial property without paying our astronauts as it helps support terrorists and baby snatchers.

Darn them riaa's!!! Slashdot their friggin web site!! Now!!

riaa.com

Oh, and who are they to declare themselves owner of all video recording...? Ooh, lets flood their inbox, (e-mail webmaster@riaa.org!!)

Now, can we do something about the other industry cartels?

RIAA says it is up to $150,000 per song.
http://www.riaa.com/issues/copyright/laws.asp
By my math that makes it: $7,680,000,000

and corporate lobby groups are always right?

i don't particularly care for the law, but...

the bill was voted on by those elected to office by the people of california. if you do a little research, you'll find that the bill was passed by quite a large margin. if the people in california don't like the law, then they should elect different officials. that's the way government works. i don't like the idea of corporate groups deciding what should and should not be law. hell, i suppose you'd like to elect someone like Mitch Bainwol (http://www.riaa.com/about/leadership/default.asp) or Dan Glickman (http://www.mpaa.org/about/dan/index.htm) as president to tell us what to do.

Nope, go look for yourself. "In support of this mission, the RIAA works to protect intellectual property rights worldwide and the First Amendment rights of artists; conduct consumer industry and technical research; and monitor and review - - state and federal laws, regulations and policies.

Audio Home Recording Act: This 1992 legislation exempts consumers from lawsuits for copyright violations when they record music for private, noncommercial use and eases access to advanced digital audio recording technologies. The law also provides for the payment of modest royalties to music creators and copyright owners, and mandates the inclusion of the Serial Copying Management Systems in all consumer digital audio recorders to limit multi-generational audio copying (i.e., making copies of copies). This legislation will also apply to all future digital recording technologies, so Congress will not be forced to revisit the issue as each new product becomes available.

"It's something we have to do, but it has to be done well," Wright said "These movies are so expensive we have to be careful ..."

Rough translation:

Every time you pirate, Bob DRMs a movie.

Please, think of the movies!

But seriously, it does sound a bit more lax than the SUE50rz!!1!onetwothree method that another group likes to use. (*sigh* they still call CI "theft"...)

Judging by the comments, they are clearly losing the battle. You should support the losing side to even the balance, then near the end, when they're about to be mutually destroyed, we post a story with a largely exaggerated title and a couple of links: http://www.microsoft.com/ http://www.riaa.com/ and watch all our dreams come true (except for a date.. but considering those are both the biggest time-wasters in Slashdot, if they're gone we may get bored quickly and actually *gasp* leave our parents basements!)

This is the U.N.'s attempt to take control of something that it did not create, for the sole reason of administrating it into the ground. Consider the reasons for this move: - The U.S. is allowing a '.xxx' root domain. This is seen as an endorsement of porn. (That way all the smut is in one place, and can be easily blocked by corporate firewalls) - The U.S. is not doing anything official about SPAM. This is seen as an endorsement of SPAM. (So we are instead allowing jobs to be made to combat this filth) - We can't do anything about the U.S. administration of the internet! (see rant below) Consider the only things that can possibly happen as a result of the U.N. administration of the internet: - Mandates raising privacy concerns (While the european contries are our friends, most of them are far less concerned with the rights of thier consituents) - The mandated blocking of certain words, phrases, individuals, geographical areas, and nations. (See "The Great http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/05/16 20225&tid=153&tid=95&tid=219Firewall http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/12/03 47200&tid=153&tid=95&tid=17of http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/15/18 51244&tid=153&tid=95&tid=219China") - A tightening of acceptable behavior on the Internet through legislation. But it will likely fail as people will find ways to circumvent the blocks put in thier way (just see the http://www.riaa.com/RIAA http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/30/19 13227&tid=123&tid=141&tid=103&tid=95&tid=17efforts ). The U.N. has no right to "take" administration of the internet from the U.S., since it http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtmlst arted out largely funded by the U.S> military. It would be akin to the U.N. trying to take away the http://www.autobahn-online.de/geschichte_e.htmlaut obahn. However,I do invite the countries that are so concerned about the administration of the internet, to instead set up thier own Root Servers, thier own Certification Authorities, thier own Great Firewalls, mandate thier own people use thier country's DNS, and do whatever they care to do. In the meain time, if they want to use the U.S. infrastructure, I suggest they don't complain if we administer ourselves what we alone have paid for.

Perhaps you are confused. Warner Music Group controls two of the approximately 25 board seats of the RIAA Board of Directors. They had revenues of 3 billion dollars last year and a market cap of 2.7 billion. They are considered one of the "Big Four" (EMI, Sony-BMG, Universal Music, and Warner) music publishers responsible for 95% of all music CDs sold worldwide. The Big Four were convicted (along with some smaller players) of price fixing and forced to settle with 43 states attorney generals in 2003.

So Edgar Bronfman, Jr. is the CEO of one of the Big Four music publishers, part of a proven price fixing cartel, and one of the major controlling organizations of the RIAA, a "trade group" (i.e. cartel) that ruthlessly pursues anybody who's interests aren't aligned with the publishers.

What were you saying again?

I for one, welcome our new greedy bastards overlords.

RIAA president, Adolph Q. Hitler

This

message is to every musician speaking out against file sharing:
get your facts straight, and stop regurgitating everything the major label tells you.
Anyone still clinging to the cage-format for music is either a middleman or lazy. Squidnecks

You major label suckers make me laugh
Do you really think your label would come out and say, "Hey we cut your paycheck in half because you've got to help pay for the 250 billion copies we give away. Have they mentioned when they cut new releases by 25% sales dropped 4.1% and they blamed it on P2P? Have they mentioned that they responded to that drop by raising the cost of your CD $1 every year? Does that seem like a good business move to you? Or does that smell like fear?
Ask yourself what kind of business would cut research and development first? I'll tell you: the business that's about to make it's bed up in a mother fuckin hearse.
While Hilary Rosen and the RIAA are trying to convince you that free listeners are a bad thing, those same five labels that pay them are charging you $500,000 to buy you spins
While you're negotiating whether or not the latest Napster pays you 1/3 of a cent per download, Comcast and AOL are turning the information highway into a toll road.
you know the end is near when Britney Spears is calling it a moral issue
they've positioned you right between their wallets and your fans
they can't really expect to turn the tide with a few pathetic lawsuits
So you gotta ask yourself how does one stop a flood? You build a damn.
IT'S THE ISPs, IT'S THE ISPs!
Comcast will have every last consumer on their knees
starting with 5.3 million subscribers to cable access high speed
they own the wires, so they can discriminate with bandwidth and queuing fees
guaranteed monopoly by the FCC so

We're standing on the verge of an artistic cleansing of biblical proportions I say bring it
when the wickedness of big business is great in the earth
and it will even try to sell the waters that it's drowning in
marching two rappers
two rockers
two composers
two programmers
onto a pirate ship
in a free-market flood
until businessmen are businessmen
and art is art again. Rock

this is not an issue of children not recognizing value in art
this is an issue of children recognizing value-less art
getting artists paid doesn't even play a part
The truth is
for the first time since it's creat

This

message is to every musician speaking out against file sharing:
get your facts straight, and stop regurgitating everything the major label tells you.
Anyone still clinging to the cage-format for music is either a middleman or lazy. Squidnecks

You major label suckers make me laugh
Do you really think your label would come out and say, "Hey we cut your paycheck in half because you've got to help pay for the 250 billion copies we give away. Have they mentioned when they cut new releases by 25% sales dropped 4.1% and they blamed it on P2P? Have they mentioned that they responded to that drop by raising the cost of your CD $1 every year? Does that seem like a good business move to you? Or does that smell like fear?
Ask yourself what kind of business would cut research and development first? I'll tell you: the business that's about to make it's bed up in a mother fuckin hearse.
While Hilary Rosen and the RIAA are trying to convince you that free listeners are a bad thing, those same five labels that pay them are charging you $500,000 to buy you spins
While you're negotiating whether or not the latest Napster pays you 1/3 of a cent per download, Comcast and AOL are turning the information highway into a toll road.
you know the end is near when Britney Spears is calling it a moral issue
they've positioned you right between their wallets and your fans
they can't really expect to turn the tide with a few pathetic lawsuits
So you gotta ask yourself how does one stop a flood? You build a damn.
IT'S THE ISPs, IT'S THE ISPs!
Comcast will have every last consumer on their knees
starting with 5.3 million subscribers to cable access high speed
they own the wires, so they can discriminate with bandwidth and queuing fees
guaranteed monopoly by the FCC so

We're standing on the verge of an artistic cleansing of biblical proportions I say bring it
when the wickedness of big business is great in the earth
and it will even try to sell the waters that it's drowning in
marching two rappers
two rockers
two composers
two programmers
onto a pirate ship
in a free-market flood
until businessmen are businessmen
and art is art again. Rock

this is not an issue of children not recognizing value in art
this is an issue of children recognizing value-less art
getting artists paid doesn't even play a part
The truth is
for the first time since it's creat

If you put money in Sony's pocket, either as an artist working for them, or as a buyer of music, well, you're part of the problem.

If you feel the need for a role model, as your age would indicate, look at the Grateful Dead for guidance.

The Grateful Dead are members of the RIAA. Do not support them.

"In general, they [Copyright Laws] are designed to protect the rights of artists while preserving the public's right to benefit from the works of those same artists." (From RIAA.com )
Its seems that the Artist doesnt WANT some "protections" :P

The artists should not sign if the contracts of the Record companies requires they "soul". The musicians and the music exist since always... the companias not. ;-)

BTW i dont want to sound as an asshole, but that info was posted in the sonymusic forum some days ago... maybe its all marketing? :?
Although thinking it better, if those are the "PROTECTIONS" that they are developing, I do not believe that they have many people qualified managing the forums.

Good Bye

Go ahead. Wright them a letter. Their contact info is here: http://www.riaa.com/sitemap/default.asp

Dare them. Let us know how you humbled them into submission.

My experience is that avoiding buying into things like this isn't a solution. Don't like Microsoft's lack of standards compliance? Don't buy Windows. Whoops, a decent chunk of the Web is now unuseable due to shoddy frontpage-based design (less of an issue now than it used to be, but only due to sterling work by the Mozilla Foundation et al).

Don't like software DRM? Don't buy from companies that use it in their software. Whoops, you've just been sent an important document in MS's latest AllYourRightsAreBelongToUs Office format. Sorry, you'd better get saving up for that Windows box you promised you'd never buy.

Don't like music DRM? Don't buy from labels that use it. Whoops, sorry, didn't we tell you that your new music player won't play unprotected formats like MP3 any more? Oh, and since the major labels have a nice little cartel set up, you're going to find that you're getting somewhat out of touch with mainstream culture. But you can live with that, right?

The problem is that, when a decent proportion of the population is willing to accept whatever crap is thrown at them, said crap will tend to overflow into everyone else's life - a new tyrrany of the apathetic majority. Good luck avoiding DRM in the future without actually ditching your computer.

It seems that there is a quite a bit of donations coming from various corporations, but I haven't noticed any http://www.riaa.com/RIAA contributions. I think that they could spare few bucks from the "frivulous suit campaign".

Funny, they have no trouble calling it theft on their website

The law they are using is even call the "No Electronic Theft Act" or NET Act (does every goddamn law have to be a stupid acronym?)

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry. Its mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members' creative and financial vitality. Its members are the record companies that comprise the most vibrant national music industry in the world. RIAA members create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 90% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States.

In support of this mission, the RIAA works to protect intellectual property rights worldwide and the First Amendment rights of artists; conduct consumer industry and technical research; and monitor and review - - state and federal laws, regulations and policies. The RIAA also certifies Gold®, Platinum®, Multi-Platinum(TM), and Diamond® sales awards, and recently launched Los Premios De Oro y Platino(TM), a new award celebrating Latin music sales.

Nice long rambling explanation there, but I can find used cd's for half the price of new. Used cd stores have overhead. I commonly find cds at CDBaby for $5-8 a pop. Certainly those guys have overhead and salaries to pay too. Downloads could certainly be cheaper. Of the 99 cents Apple charges at the iTMS, about 30 goes to the credit card processor, 10 goes to apple 10 goes to the artist and the other 50 goes to the record company, who by the way, have done squat diddly other than authorize Apple to sell the tune. (In contrast, unsigned Indies keep the lion's share of the 99 cents for their tracks.)

In short, I call bullshit. Explain it with gross/net margin, shipping, returns, price protection or whatever. We all know better. The prices 'the industry' charges are too high and the extra is going to the RIAA's Adolescents Litigation fund, the 'lobby congress for infinite copyrights' fund, the 'lobby congress for higher blank media levies' fund, and of course, payola.

Yet you sit there and tell me they aren't over charging even in the face of rock solid evidence to the contrary. Either you are badly misinformed or deliberately spreading lies. They are the thieves. They steal from me with blank CD levies. They steal from their customers with price fixing. They steal from the public domain with copyright extensions. I will never willingly give them another dime of my money. EVER.

Free & Legal Music
Boycott the RIAA
The shit list. Do no business with these labels.

but Apple's research appears to indicate that there more consumers like me than you.

CUSTOMERS

SALES TO END USERS ONLY
The iTunes Music Store sells products to end user customers only.

You will not find the word "consumer" anywhere in that agreement. The word consumer implies that I will somehow deplete my supply of music after it is purchased and therefore be compelled to buy more. Customers on the other hand have the prerogative to buy something else entirely or buy nothing at all. If you do not provide value to your customers, they will go elsewhere. The RIAA is simply witnessing that.

Hey, WTF?

Whenever I buy an "Audio CD-R" or "Music CD-R" the price includes a royalty payment. The royalty payment is set at 2% of the manufacturer's revenue (not profit, revenue) and deposited with the U. S. Copyright Office, which in turn pays it into other funds in a complicated way.

According to the RIAA's own frickin' website, two thirds of it goes into a "Sound Recordings Fund" administered by an entity called the AARC which distributes it to artists, and the rest gets distributed to copyright holders.

So how the *&$%&! is this piracy? What's their beef, anyway? They're not getting enough? It should all go to the RIAA instead of some it going to artists? Nothing should ever be copied by anyone, no way, no how?

I mean, just what is their problem?

Hey, too bad Epitaph, along with other "independent labels" Absolutely Kosher, Hush, Jetset, Equal Vision, Sub City, SpinArt, Lookout, Fat Wreck Chords, Relapse, Nitro, BYO, Ferret, Tommy Boy, Taang, Kung Fu Records, and Smash, just signed up with the RIAA.

link

It never ceases to fascinate me the way that "liberal" is a word whose definition is created and defined by absolutely everyone except whoever the liberals themselves are supposed to be. Ever notice that? Practically no one ever stands up and says "I am a liberal, because I believe this". We just get people going "you are a liberal, because you believe [blah]". The word is starting to be like "commie" or "nazi"; it isn't a political category, it's an insult.

Also fascinating that Bob Dole and George W. Bush are apparently "modern liberals". Who knew?

Why not choose some less ambiguous terms to describe Hilary Clinton, like "socially conservative"? Or why not just ditch the idiotic "liberal/conservative" dichonomy altogether, stop playing shell games with words that may or may not mean the same thing to different people, and discuss things in terms that actually describe what is going on? Here, I'll give you an example:

Hillary Clinton supports media censorship and is not worthy of anyone's support. If anyone looks at this in terms of "she's just lost my vote", then this means they weren't paying attention 10 years ago, because she's always been like this.

Copyright, however, is not designed to afford consumer protection or convenience but, rather, to protect the copyrightholders' property interests.... Stripped to its essence, defendant's "consumer protection" argument amounts to nothing more than a bald claim that defendant should be able to misappropriate plaintiffs' property simply because there is a consumer demand for it.

The biggest problem for resorting to civil disobedience against the current "intellectual property" regime is that the general public may not even understand the importance of the protest (you have to gain some amount of public support or sympathy to achieve any meaningful goals).

I think it's mostly because it's not that important. In the 60's, it was about people dying over in vietnam, copyright infringement laws only effect the people that are infringing on someone else's copyright.

Sharing copyrighted material on the Internet doesn't show anyone that the copyright laws are too harsh. It would be similar to boycotting the sale of nikes (because of sweatshops), but having all of the people involved wear them to the demonstration, it's hypocritical, and in many ways..doesn't make sense (from a boycotting point of view).

It really seems to me like an excuse for getting music, movies, and software...for free. If you don't want to abide by a license that a movie or song is released under, don't download it.

It's the same with the GPL. If a company doesn't wish to abide by this license, they shouldn't use it in their commerical application.

when are people going to realize that This is just as wrong as this

Take a look at how many recording companies are part of the RIAA. The RIAA has too much control, there's almost no difference between boycotting the RIAA-owned companies, and boycotting all music sold on CDs.

A better tactic is to boycott specific bands that are loud and public with their support for the RIAA and their actions. Make it so that nobody wants to speak up for the RIAA, and every artist who speaks up speaks up *against* them.

Sure, you'll still have all the same people hiding behind the RIAA suits, but when the celebrities are saying they hate the industry, and the suits are saying the industry is "good for America(tm)" then who do you think the average music buyer is going to listen to?

You are correct. It is the RIAA that has the crazy guy..

Clueless idiot? Buahahaha. People in glass houses shouldn't throw feces.

You "inform me" of the issue of artists getting paid virtually nothing, after I EXPLICITLY ADDRESSED THIS ISSUE IN BOTH POSTS. I was simply answering the prior poster's question, and I did so ACCURATELY. I informed him of the artist payment issues. I did not tell him to buy there and I did not tell him not to buy there. If you have morality issues, well take them up with him and whatever decision he may or may not make.

But hey, thanks for just repeating back to me exactly what I already said. Brillant and most usefull. You know... just in case I didn't know it already, or maybe I forgot it after I wrote it.

I implicitly indicated that both Russian and US law should be fixed. Anything that is "buggy" obviously needs fixing.

US law should be fixed, to be more like Canadian law. US law needs to ensure that innocent people do not become liable for damages because of something someone else does. US law is buggy. Presuming you are in the US, I can cause you to become liable for hundreds or thousands of dollars in copyright infringment damages, and I can do so against your will.

Russian law should be fixed - to properly correct and expand the classes of copyright holders that get compensated by the statutory license in question. Allofmp3.com would still be able to sell MP3s, but the price would be higher and the appropriate artists would be properly paid. The Russian law would then properly operate as it was intended to operate.

they have not entered into an agreement for distribution rights

Congratulations on being an IGNORANT idiot who does not understand copyright law and the concept of STATUTORY LICENSES. Russia, Canada, the US, Australia, France, and virtually every contry on earth has statutory licenses of one form or another in their copyright law.

Under a STATUTORY LICENSE you do not need to enter into any sort of agreement. The government itself grants the distribution or other rights, so long as you comply with the terms of the statutory license.

And I have a feeling you are goting to object and make a fool of yourself - so I will repeat - STATUTORY LICENSES ARE PERFECTLY VALID AND LEGITIMATE AND APPROPRIATE. YOUR COUNTRY ALREADY HAS STATUORTY LICENSES IN YOUR COPYRIGHT LAW.

If you object to statutory licenses, then I suggest you go lobby your government to get them eliminated. And you can expect all radio to go off the air, and you can expect the RIAA to have a shitfit because it would suddenly be ILLEGAL for them to sell much of the music they currently sell.

And by the way, even the RIAA website praises the benefits of statutory licenses. It says, in part: "Statutory licenses are efficient because they do not require the person or entity using the recording to obtain separate licenses from each sound recording copyright owner."

So if you still think there is something wrong with statutory licenses then go argue with the RIAA while you're at it.

It would not matter if they offered to pay the labels

Statutory licenses are not about "offering" anything. If you want to use a statuory licence then you must pay whoever the law says you must pay and you must comply with any other terms and conditions.

The labels have absolutely no right to deny you the use of a statutory license. They are getting free money - as mandated by the government - whenever you use a statutory license (presuming that is how the law is written and that that is whom it says you must pay). I guess the label could decline to accept this free money, but they still can't stop you from using a statutory license. They cannot prevent you from being properly licensed to create or distribut copies or whatever else the law grants.

they do not have the "right" to copy and distribute the music

Under a statutory license they do.

well, at that's what the RIAA believes

I think the kicker is the civil liability, though -
"Violators can also be held civilly liable for actual damages, lost profits, or statutory damages up to $150,000 per infringement, as well as attorney's fees and costs."

I know people at work that share their 400+ album CD collections (ripped to mp3) for coworkers to listen to on the honor system that you won't steal them - since you could steal them and people probably do, the RIAA could push for $60 million (+250000) in liability on those people if they could justify it.

Until the P2P-sharing of the lecture recordings begin to hurt the education industry and the NEA begins to sue us and have us arrested.

Until the P2P-sharing of the lecture recordings begin to hurt the education industry and the NEA begins to sue us and have us arrested.

Until the P2P-sharing of the lecture recordings begin to hurt the education industry and the NEA begins to sue us and have us arrested.

Errr.... no. In many industries, having a range of prices, especially that vary with time, allows not only for greater profits, but for larger numbers of satisfied customers. The math is a bit more involuted than a simple supply/demand scissors curve, because you also have to factor in substitutibility, price elasticity, and information costs, and time value of money, but in many situations this allows for a good thing all around.

This is one reason why grocery stores have sales; people who would not ordinarily buy a product at price X will consider buying it at price 0.9X. Furthermore, it's one reason why grocery stores accept manufacturers coupons; the customer gets a lower price, the grocery store gets slightly more money (for slightly more hassle), and the increased sales (and potentially increased regular customers) result in net higher profits for the manufacturer.

In this case, the RIAA is wishing that they could run the backcatalog at a discount, while charging a premium for newest releases. And if they were willing to, say, knock $0.24 off their current $0.65 share of the price for releases over 10 years old, while adding $0.01 to the recent releases and $0.25 to items released within the last year, I'd consider it likely to be a net benefit for consumers overall.

Someone with more background in economics and without a head cold might explain it better, but it comes down to: the ability for suppliers to have prices that vary is a good thing for the consumer. Unnaturally fixed prices (such as, say, when fixed by a cartel) are bad.

Distributed Labels of Reporting Companies Sony Classical Sony Discos Sony Japan Sony Labels Sony Music Sony Music US (Latin) Sony Wonder

That would be naughty. The Man & the other man is watching.
Bittorrent is evil & no one would Battlestar Galactica

I sure wish someone would grow some ballz one of these days and stand up for their right to free speech. Doesn't anyone have hosting to offer? This site was the only legit way to download music, and now it's over. Artists give permission for CD-trading of live shows - attorney sends letter to an ISP - now music is gone? Get another ISP, quite letting these cartels control our access to entertainment. We are people, not sheep.

If it works, then they could probably corner the music market. If not, well then it'd only be the death of a few RIAA members - no big loss...

Isn't it great when somebody actually get's it...unlike some people.

> Imagine PR on drugs.

I don't have to imagine...

That's just how I see it. It is good to remember from time to time the specific companies which are to blame for all of this.

Enjoy.

This is not always the case.

Divide those two numbers and you see that on average each song has an estimated value of $377,292 for the year. The potential fine for a single copyright infringement is $150,000, or nearly 40% of the average total annual value of a song. For a single infringement.

Yes the more valuable songs are infringed more often. But if you're going to base the maximum potential fine on every song that's on the CD, even the crappy ones, you need to work with the average value. This fine needs to be lowered drastically to put it more in line with reality. Maybe make an exception for more successful songs, but $150,000 per song is ridiculously high.