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the king is dead! (cassette tapes)
long live the king! (mp3)

The king isn't dead.

Nope, this one:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/731486 6

How did you get the name Darth Vader?

"Darth" is a variation of dark. And "Vader" is a variation of father. So it's basically Dark Father. All the names have history, but sometimes I make mistakes -- Luke was originally going to be called Luke Starkiller, but then I realized that wasn't appropriate for the character. It was appropriate for Anakin, but not his son. I said, "Wait, we can't weigh this down too much -- he's the one that redeems him."

Lucas himself openly said "Vader" is a bastardization of "Father" in a Rolling Stone interview about Star Wars. It's online if you do a bit of digging.

This interview?

"It's about Ben and Luke's father and Vader when they are young Jedi knights. But Vader kills Luke's father, then Ben and Vader have a confrontation, just like they have in Star Wars, and Ben almost kills Vader."

It's pretty obvious that when he wrote Obi Wan's dialogue, he hadn't decided this. Then he added the "true, in a manner of speaking" line as a retcon.

And he had no idea what a Parsec was either.

I couldn't locate any Steve Jobs quote about uncopyable DVDs. I spend a while on Google trying.

All I've seen is this Steve Jobs interview where he seriously trashes DRM.

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on the contrary, i think about every review that i read made fun of the dialog (RollingStone magazine's review was one of my favorite). you have to be careful where you get your reviews from. one easy rule of thumb is that if the source is someone that has radio/tv call letters next to his name, he's probably as dirty as the men's room at the local poolhall.

> I'm curious about the logic of that statement.

Yeah, me too, a bit. :)

> Have The Allman brothers (Who i'm not familiar with at all) ...

God, you're making me feel old. The Allmans were monsters of guitar rock with a string of huge hits in the early seventies. Duane Allman was killed in a vehicle accident (and band broke up for about a decade) but he was recently voted as the second greatest guitar player of all time - after Jimi Hendrix - by Rolling Stone Magazine (I know, I know - consider the source). He also played on one of Clapton's best-known albums, Layla. His brother Greg is probably best known for having once, briefly, married Cher. :)

> ...given a reason for the line between digital and analog recordings?

It's not between digital and analog (most analog devices are electronic, y'know). They allow one-on-one trading, but no electronic trading or mass distribution. What they want, I think, is to keep the tapes in the hands of fans only, and out of the hands of professional bootleggers, and off eBay. But I admit that their policy, as stated, is a bit ambiguous and confusing.

Similarly:

Video game makers are getting sued because young people occasionally shoot at people (unwilling to believe that young people kill for personal reasons too). Example.

Performers are getting sued because many people are uncomfortably aroused by nipples (because they are sexually repressed). Example.

How about this and this.

There were also stories directly addressing Apple's negotiations with the RIAA, but It was a couple of years ago and can't dig up the exact refference at the moment. Apple's DRM position is well doumented in many places, and the outcome of the Apple-RIAA negotiations are obvious. Everyone is busy praising Apple for having the least oppressive DRM and iTunes has pretty well crushed all competing services. That is because Apple fought for and got different terms from the RIAA than anyone else was able to get. Apple was about to walk out of negotiations over it.

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Yes, after Apple was forced into using DRM they obviously tied it to the iPod. When someone won't let you have anything other than lemons, you make lemonade.

Apple has been rejecting DRM and Steve Jobs gave an interview interview with Rolling Stone he explaining that DRM is just stupid and the Music industry is clueless about computers. I don't have a specific link, but Apple did in fact battle the RIAA against having any DRM at all on the music download service they wanted to create.

The business Apple currently has is not the business they wanted to create.

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Apple likes DRM, otherwise they'd only sell one of any mp3.

You have no idea what you are talking about. Thanx for playing, but you are the weakest link. Goodbye.

Apple is rejecting DRM and in thisSteve Jobs interview with Rolling Stone he explains that DRM is just stupid and the Music industry is clueless about computers. I don't have a specific link, but Apple did in fact fight the RIAA against having any DRM at all on iTunes. Apple has less oppressive DRM because Apple fought against DRM.

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Eh, Rolling Stone reports that "Like so many other Internet start-ups, MoveOn has raised -- and burned through -- tens of millions of dollars, innovating without producing many concrete results."

Wal-Mart Squeezing Record Labels to Cut CD Prices

Posted by michael on Thursday October 14, @08:25AM
from the win-win-situation dept.

Raindance writes "RollingStone.com has a revealing article detailing how retail giant Wal-Mart is making loud noises about throwing its weight around in order to get significantly better bulk prices on CDs. Says one industry executive, 'This wasn't framed as a gentle negotiation, it's a line in the sand -- you don't do this, then the threat is [your product is dropped].' This is the first time a big player has attempted this sort of hardball move on the labels, and the labels may be forced to deal, as Wal-Mart sells 1 out of every 5 retail CDs. Monopoly one, meet monopoly two."

Telling quote from the linked Rolling Stone article:

Tensions are not as high now as they were last winter, but making sure Wal-Mart is happy remains one of the music industry's major priorities. That's because if Wal-Mart cut back on music, industry sales would suffer severely -- though Wal-Mart's shareholders would barely bat an eye. While Wal-Mart represents nearly twenty percent of major-label music sales, music represents only about two percent of Wal-Mart's total sales. "If they got out of selling music, it would mean nothing to them," says another label executive. "This keeps me awake at night."

So, it seems as though Wal-Mart is playing chicken with the music labels, betting the labels will blink first. I would suppose if they can do this with physical media, they can do it with downloads as well.

I read last year that Wal Mart was pushing for lower prices on CDs and that the labels were caving. I just did a google search and found this. "Tensions are not as high now as they were last winter, but making sure Wal-Mart is happy remains one of the music industry's major priorities. That's because if Wal-Mart cut back on music, industry sales would suffer severely -- though Wal-Mart's shareholders would barely bat an eye. While Wal-Mart represents nearly twenty percent of major-label music sales, music represents only about two percent of Wal-Mart's total sales. "If they got out of selling music, it would mean nothing to them," says another label executive. "This keeps me awake at night."
link
Link from Rolling Stone

"The Sound of Silence" was recorded back in '65. Just shows you how little originality is left in the American music scene today ...

Yes, it is offtopic, but unlike the Stephen King troll, this one is actually true. See http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/704522 7?pageid=rs.NewsArchive&pageregion=mainRegion, among others.

Robertson said he's not worried about the record labels and their requirements for rights-management technology. ... "I think the labels are interested in one thing: selling," he said. "If you build the audience they will come.

I think he's probably right, but I wonder if the bigwigs at the record labels are willing (or even care) to listen to his argument. It's not as if Apple didn't try:

When we first went to talk to these record companies -- you know, it was a while ago. It took us 18 months. And at first we said: None of this technology that you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.'s here, that know the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content. ...

And the way we expressed it to them is: Pick one lock -- open every door. It only takes one person to pick a lock. Worst case: Somebody just takes the analog outputs of their CD player and rerecords it -- puts it on the Internet. You'll never stop that. So what you have to do is compete with it.

At first, they kicked us out. But we kept going back again and again. The first record company to really understand this stuff was Warner. They have some smart people there, and they said: We agree with you. And next was Universal. Then we started making headway. And the reason we did, I think, is because we made predictions.

I think the general consensus is that even though Jobs and his "Ph.D.s" knew DRM is always crackable, Apple still needed to implement some form of DRM in order to convince the record labels to open their catalogs. For the record companies in April of 2003, ever chary of the Internet, DRM was non-negotiable.

My question is: what's changed since then that would cause them to reconsider? After all, iTunes has shown that a service offering DRM tracks can be wildly successful. So why would the record labels want to open their catalogs to a DRM-free solution from some dude who made his name pawning a Linux desktop?

Anyway, this is definitely something to watch. I sincerely wish him luck. I just hope he can get the labels to open their catalogs.

Check out this link, as posted on slashdot a couple of days ago. The bottom of the article has a break down of where the money for a $16 album goes. $1.60 goes to the artist, which when you look at the other costs seems like a 'fair cut' to me.

It was the golden shower scene that got clipped.

Third Generation (I think that's what they're calling it) P2P programs like ANtz and Mute rely on a sort of plausible deniability and waste a lot of bandwidth. They're strictly peer-to-peer and distributed. When you get a request for a file, you don't know whether the originator is the person connecting to you, or someone behind them. There is no request to make a direct connection. So while you could point the finger at them, you may be wrong.

The problem with this - and I've pointed it out to the developer of Mute - is that someone with enough resources (like the RIAA, or that British Porn group) could log on thousands of times, and make enough reasonable guesses about who's sharing what with who to pinpoint some of the major sharers, who would be smart to figure out how to change their IP address and what parts of their collection they make available on any given day frequently to avoid detection.

Also, as I said, this wastes a lot of bandwidth, because you're not making a direct connection to the person you're sharing with, you could be acting as a conduit as well, so people who pay for bandwidth will raise the familiar bittorrent protests - I'm paying too much for what I'm downloading. Of course, P2P not being bittorrent and being used for trading 99.99% illegal stuff (bittorrent at least is used to distribute things like linux flavors), all those people should shut up and be grateful they're not paying $20 (or their local currency equivelant) for the CD/DVD etc. they're downloading.

Also, once this third generation stuff catches on, it's just a matter of time before they start sueing the guys who make the software for aiding and abetting file sharing, or whatever that thing congress wants to pass into law says is illegal. You know, the thing that overturns the Betamax/Mr. Roges law. Then again, the guy who makes Mute told me that he's in it for the fame, so being sued could just make his day. Though sueing the developer seems like a free speach issue to me.

The ultimate irony is that most of these client are based on Waste, which was made by Justin Frankel (homepage, Rolling Stone article, Wikipedia entry), who was an employee of AOL Time Warner at the time he released it.

Did you read the Rolling Stone article?
Here!

excerpt:
At which point O'Reilly executes his signature move -- the bellowing, bullying, peremptory interruption. "They've lost billions of dollars in France, according to the Paris Business Review!" he thunders.

In short, amazing TV -- the modern media equivalent of witnessing a Christian torn apart by lions, with a touch of opera buffo thrown in. (Boycott Canada?) It mattered not that most of what O'Reilly said bears no relation to the truth. The Paris Business Review doesn't exist, and the "billions" of dollars France supposedly lost reflect figures dating to the 2001 recession, predating by two years O'Reilly's call for a ban on buying French goods (since then, French exports to America have actually gone up).
He just makes stuff up... so he must be a brilliant journalist.

Watch OutFoxed... they give plenty of proof. Also, read Rolling Stone a few issues back. Here is the online article: The guy is just a jerk who lies and screams and intimidates if he doesn't get his way.

Well, when you see the list of the top grossing musicians of 2004 it roughly breaks down like this:

The majority of the acts seem to be highly succesful, artistically relevant artists, although the majority of those are way past their prime (the Stones, Aerosmith, the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac) and haven't made anything terribly important recently except new T-shirt designs based on their third Greatest Hits compilation (which might have one new song or a remix of an old song).

The minority of those acts are talentless label-driven/label-created "products" (Matchbox 20, Christina Aguilera, to some extent Justin Timberlake, Eminem & 50 Cent). Note that Britney Spears does not even appear on that list (I'm sure she's on the Top 100).

Some acts no longer exist (the Beatles), some are gaining revenue based on their fame or past work (Queen Latifah, Ice Cube). Some acts are succesful despite the labels (most notably Phish, the Dead, Jimmy Buffet).

It also appears that 2% of the most succesful artists are children of Ravi Shankar.

A lot of the artists on there are country acts, which you don't really hear about too much on filesharing discussions. And some of them you probably have never heard of (Eros Ramazotti, Trans Siberian Orchestra, Bill Gaither, Maná).

And out of all those 50, you can probably argue that only a handful (say, 8 or so), are artists who are really pursuing art and pushing boundaries as oppposed to touring based on past fame or ability.

But when you see that the top 10 artists netted (not tour-grossed) roughly $1bn, I'm not shedding any tears.

... and how is it that he's managed to do so much to America's War Machine, without having ever served ... ermm ... make that actively done everything he possibly could to stay out of action ...

>> How would you eat then?

> Concerts. It's how artists make their real money anyway....

You might be onto something. Rolling Stone had an article about this recently: Touring revenue doesn't come from ticket sales, but from selling merch. (Merch is short for merchandise.)

Here's a quote from the Rolling Stone article to ponder: "You're not making that much money off records anymore, so until people can figure out how to make a rewritable Hanes Beefy-T, merch is one of the last bastions of individuality, commerce and style that an artist has left."

When we first went to talk to these record companies -- you know, it was a while ago. It took us 18 months. And at first we said: None of this technology that you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.'s here, that know the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content.

...

And it only takes one stolen copy to be on the Internet. And the way we expressed it to them is: Pick one lock -- open every door. It only takes one person to pick a lock. Worst case: Somebody just takes the analog outputs of their CD player and rerecords it -- puts it on the Internet. You'll never stop that. So what you have to do is compete with it.

sorry to say but the major record labels and the RIAA are TOTALLY useless. here's an example: unknown musician earns prifits The RIAA likes the way it used to be with radio payola and marketing and retail distribution because THEY controlled what the prices were and they were always needed. Now, with internet distribution, any musician can put themselves on the web and by low cost means ( p2p, word of mouth, internet pages,blogs, etc), unknown musicians can get themselves known while earning decent money from their fans thru playing live, selling cd's and t-shirts and fan memorabilia.

The old way of distribution is not working anymore. radio stations and fans with eclectic tastes Fans are not willing to listen to the same old pop-trash "madonna" "michael jackson" "nirvana" songs. Since the internet, people's tastes in music has opened up to include a lot more musicians even on the extreme ends. In the metropolis areas, radio stations playing the same old pop-trash are declining in popularity and the stations getting popular are the ones who include the "left field out there" bands. In a way, i kind of worry that when the "left field out there" bands get popular, the major record labels starts recruiting them, too which is what they want AGAIN ----->>CONTROL OVER DISTRIBUTION & HYPING in order to make more money for themselves.

but to your statement, no, the big record companies ARE USELESS. The major record labels thrived on putting a half dozen bands out there who had the looks and had the one hit which they'd HYPE all over the place so that they could get the CLUELESS masses to buy just those few bands and profit by the millions$$$. If you are "extremely talented as a musician," you still are earning loads of money. In the rollingstone article i listed, notice the new bands that are earning the loads of money?? The big bands may not be earning billions as before but they sure aren't among the working stiff di*ks like us out there. A lot of the bands being helped now are the middle tier bands and musicians who in the pre-p2p days wouldn't be able to get the major record label backing for HYPE and payola anyway. ( Thank you Courtney!!! )

The story is probably true, and Apple is doing damage control because they know the peril to their business if they raise song prices. Perhaps they are eating the extra cost themselves, and giving up most of their already-small cut of the revenue. But what is known is that the music industry is pushing for more expensive downloads. The labels are saying it themselves.

Additionally, neither the term "RIAA" or "Recording Industry Association of America" was mentioned in the press release.

This Rolling Stone article also neglects to mention the term "RIAA" but does cover some of the amounts owed:

"For some, the payout amounts to a drop in the bucket. The Dave Matthews Band is owed just over $14,000 (its 1996 album, Crash, for instance earned $4,000 that wasn't properly paid), while the $10,700 that Bowie was owed was just for 1997's Earthling. And for other artists, the payout comes too late, as deceased artists including Jim Croce, Waylon Jennings, Dizzy Gillespie and Frank Sinatra were all owed sums. But the estates of deceased musicians received some of the larger payouts, including that of songwriter Tommy Edward, which is due almost $230,000."

...and has this quote from Spitzer:

"It's not like there was a grand conspiracy to cheat them out of these big sums of money," he said. "It was just a failure to do what should have been done. That's why we have this settlement."

Spitzer also pointed out something that's forgotten by many Slashdotters:

"[Some] artists struggle," Spitzer said at a press conference announcing the deal in New York City today. "They depend on the stream of royalties."

Many Slashdotters presently justify their use of Kazaa to get their music because -- as we know from MTV Cribs -- artists have plenty of money. Spitzer is absolutely correct that many artists live royalty payment to royalty payment. A songwriter cannot pay the rent with a praise of a 14-year-old who loves the album he downloaded with Kazaa, and a songwriter doesn't make money on all those concerts and t-shirt sales that don't happen because the record didn't sell enough in the first place. Luckily for Kazaa users, there's a new justification: it's okay for me to deprive the songwriter from their royalties, because the record company does it, too!

For what it's worth, here's another royalty dispute in which Bob Donnelly was involved.

There are other articles on the web which cover this settlement, but none that I could find mention the RIAA, either -- only the Slashdot writeup. This is because the RIAA was not a party to the settlement.

Actually is looks like DMB have plans to start selling their live concerts.

They said: We will let you distribute our albums as a whole, but not individual tracks. And we declined. We said: You know, our store is about giving the user that choice.

IMO iPod users shouldnt have to feel vendor locked by not getting access to the service Steve Jobs dislike. If Apple got issues with people renting music, why not let a second music provider give consumers a choice?

Apple and Sony seems to be making the Betamax and mac error all over again by providing DRM format with NO industry support. It would be wise for Apple to team up with Sony and then with a subsription based music provider. Even better: License fairplay to any company willing to cough up the money needed

Soooooo, it was actually Darl? It would explain the dope, but didn't we all think it was crack he was on?

They settled out of court.

This depends on what the fingerprinting technology is. Audible Magic's technology, for example, can supposedly generate fingerprints for audio files that are independent of specific encoding. I don't know whether they'd end up with a single fingerprint for all versions of a track, or a couple, but in either case the number of fingerprints would be much smaller than the number of hash values.

Also, the system doesn't need to block every single copyrighted song to be effective, because not all songs are equally popular. There are perhaps 1m copyrighted tracks,

There are perhaps 1m copyrighted tracks. That's probably still too many to block. Luckily, tracks are not all equally popular, so if you block the most popular tracks, that would be disproportionately effective. Perhaps the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time could be a start. That's only, say, 10,000 tracks.

How hard could it be to transmit 10,000 numeric fingerprints, and block sharing of any files that match them? P2P networks are great at transmitting data, so it'd be easy to update the list. :-)

why not just right-click on the file and choose "convert to MP3"?

Oh, so that's what the single mouse button is about, copy protection! It's all so clear to me now.

Really, if you try the "convert to MP3" thingy on a protected AAC file, you get a dialog box saying "'Foo' could not be converted because protected files cannot be converted to other formats."

The easiest way to convert is to burn the tracks to CDDA, then import to iTunes as MP3.

At any rate, it sure is amusing to watch all the "fight the man!" BS being tossed around here. Apple's view toward DRM is "we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content." -- they fully expected this.

Unquestionably, riding the crest of popularity for awhile. Probably, also, they just couldn't make enough to sell... and they probably still can't, bet they're just ramping up. The design is probably in the can, though, and they'll be showing that off. They're trying for the US$100 price point, though as Jobs said in October to Steven Levy:

"Some think you wouldn't want to sell a $100 iPod because the profit margin would be so low.
What are you talking about? We'd love to have a $100 iPod! We just don't know how to do it right now. We're constantly trying to make cheaper iPods. We're working on the next step."

It's a pretty interesting interview... Apple's been thinking pretty hard about the music biz. The Rolling Stone interview from December 3rd is worth reading too, for his analysis of why the music industry's business model is broken.

Given the alternatives (mp3 on Kazaa, aac on the iPod) already out there, who is really going to choose to buy their music in .wma format?? I just don't see this really taking off with public. It's a case of too little too late, and trying to copy the iTMS model without really offering anything compelling.

If you want to really be inspired, read this article from Rolling Stone where they interviewed Steve Jobs, who knows how to do this the right way...

And then there's Microsoft. What happens to Apple when they build an iTunes-clone into the Windows desktop?
I think Amazon does pretty well [against Microsoft]. Microsoft hasn't really been able to compete with them -- maybe not wanted to. EBay does pretty well; Google's done pretty well. Actually, AOL's done pretty well -- contrary to a lot of the things people say about them. So there are a lot of examples of people offering services, Internet-based services, that have done quite well. And Apple's in a pretty interesting position. Because, as you may know, almost every song and CD is made on a Mac -- it's recorded on a Mac; it's mixed on a Mac. The artwork's done on a Mac. Almost every artist I've met has an iPod, and most of the music execs now have iPods. And one of the reasons Apple was able to do what we did was because we are perceived by the music industry as the most creative technology company. And now we've created this music store, which I think is nontrivial to copy. I mean, to say that Microsoft can just decide to copy it, and copy it in six months -- that's a big statement. It may not be so easy.

I've seen no evidence that iTMS exists or is commericially viable because of the RIAA. In fact, Steve Jobs himself has said that they had to go to record labels one at a time and convince them. After getting "kicked out" many times they managed to convince some labels. Warner signed on first, then Universal. The RIAA had nothing to do with it, and I wouldn't doubt they'd be opposed to it. True, these are labels that are members of the RIAA, but they are not the RIAA.

Although your point might not be directly valid, it still has merit. iTMS still would not have motivation to exclude RIAA members since they individually signed on to iTMS and helped make it successful. But I certainly wouldn't give the RIAA any credit in it.

When we first went to talk to these record companies -- you know, it was a while ago. It took us 18 months. And at first we said: None of this technology that you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.'s here, that know the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content.

Of course, music theft is nothing new. Didn't you listen to bootleg Bob Dylan?

Of course. What's new is this amazingly efficient distribution system for stolen property called the Internet -- and no one's gonna shut down the Internet. And it only takes one stolen copy to be on the Internet. And the way we expressed it to them is: Pick one lock -- open every door. It only takes one person to pick a lock. Worst case: Somebody just takes the analog outputs of their CD player and rerecords it -- puts it on the Internet. You'll never stop that. So what you have to do is compete with it.

At first, they kicked us out. But we kept going back again and again. The first record company to really understand this stuff was Warner. They have some smart people there, and they said: We agree with you. And next was Universal. Then we started making headway. And the reason we did, I think, is because we made predictions.

We said: These [music subscription] services that are out there now are going to fail. Music Net's gonna fail, Press Play's gonna fail. Here's why: People don't want to buy their music as a subscription. They bought 45's; then they bought LP's; then they bought cassettes; then they bought 8-tracks; then they bought CD's. They're going to want to buy downloads. People want to own their music. You don't want to rent your music -- and then, one day, if you stop paying, all your music goes away.

And, you know, at 10 bucks a month, that's $120 a year. That's $1,200 a decade. That's a lot of money for me to listen to the songs I love. It's cheaper to buy, and that's what they're gonna want to do.

They didn't see it that way. There were people running around -- business-development people -- who kept pointing out AOL as the great model for this and saying: No, we want that -- we want a subscription business. We said: It ain't gonna work.

Slowly but surely, as these things didn't pan out, we started to gain some credibility with these folks. And they started to say: You know, you're right on these things -- tell us more.

Music quality is a constant

How does this internet fund raising effect the current climate of pro-campaign finance reform?

According to Kerry, Republicans have been contributing to Dean's campaign on the Internet.. Whether this is true or not, it very well could be. How would we ever know?

I'd like someone to explain to me how this is actually "grass roots," and not possibly one of the major parties (if not both) giving large sums in small packets under various proxies?

the recording industry has been threatening to throw anyone caught illegally downloading music in jail. Is that a smart approach ... I think that they're within their rights to try to keep people from stealing their product.

He's wearing shorts, a black T-shirt and running shoes.

"First off, since they give Kazaa away, where is the money for the ad campaign coming from?"

Ad revenue, of course. Kazaa is a for-profit business. Like a web site, they provide a medium and then sell ad space on it. Kazaa usage is down, and this means ad revenue is down. They are (rightfully so, as any business should be) alarmed about this. One thing which may have them concerned is the relative success of the legitimate download services.

When this ad campaign was reported on news.com three days ago, the news.com article covered a point which the above glossed over: Kazaa has been going to the record companies for a while now, trying to work a deal with them. Kazaa wants to morph itself into a legitimate distribution network by partnering with the big record companies, or (as I believe they fear) they will be squeezed out by the iTMSes and Napsters of the world, lose that critical mass of users and -- this is the important part -- will not be able to get the ad revenue they have in the past. Said record companies have, so far, replied with something that rhymes with "duck shoe," and this ad campaign is an attempt to start a grass roots effort to get the record companies to change their minds.

So, Kazaa and a typical record company have a few things in common:

• Seeing lost revenue
• Concerned about their business model
• Using public-awareness campaigns to get their side of the story across
• Slowly trying to change their business model
• Don't pay artists as well as slashdotters would like (ignore this one if you're a slashdotter who's in the "artists get paid TOO much" camp)

"Secondly, if the MPAA & RIAA are both doing so badly, where are all the broke movie and music superstars?"

It's not the superstars you have to worry about; it's the folks more like you and me, but who happen to work in the entertainment industry. Tower Records is in serious trouble and has reportedly asked Kazaa to buy them out. Record companies are hurting and consolidating -- the Sony-BMG merger could mean thousands of people laid off and dozens of artists dropped. But before anybody dances with glee over the artists being dropped... it won't be the Madonnas and Britneys that will be dropped. More likely it will be the more marginally profitable acts. Some of them may be hard working, just like you and me, and not superstars worthy of contempt because they have too much money. This is just a guess, though.

Bullshit. CD sales drop do appear to match the economy, the correlation isn't right to blame sharing, their own numbers suggest the drop in CD sales is better attributed to CD prices, reduced production (and here), organized crime, and a bunch of other reasons. All of these analyses suggest CD sales losses are not due to filesharing.

So, I'm not sure where you're coming from with your "apparently quite rare" statment. The evidence shows otherwise.

Well, despite you anecdotal evidence, better evidence suggest that downloaders do indeed increase sales. So in short, you're just wrong.

This is also a straw man for a couple of reasons: first, CD sales are hurting, so any "benefit" to the industry or artists is being swallowed up

Wrong. You are assuming loss of CD sales is due to filesharing. As the above linked evidence shows, that's not true. In fact, following this one (and there are others), CD sales might be even worse without the gain from the "try before you buy" effect of filesharing.

Additionally, almost any illegal act, civil or criminal, has a "well, it COULD have a beneficial side effect" argument.

Except that this illegal act is illegal for the reason that it is assumed to harm sales, which the evidence above doesn't support. If it's not harmful, there's no need for it to be illegal. (I'm not advocating making it legal, but a different model is at least necessary.) Whatever other acts you are referring to are illegal for the harm the do cause. (If they don't, then perhaps they shouldn't be illegal either.) Also, the point is that the industry seems to be missing the concept (and evidence), that filesharing can be (or perhaps is) >helpful to them.

... if the goal is to feel better about what you're doing

You are making yet another assumption, that I am illegally downloading songs. In fact, I have never illegally downloaded a single song. I have nothing personal to rationalize. I am simply someone cursed with a love for logic and reason, not blind reactionism.

"At the risk of understatement, The Matrix Revolutions sucks."
- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone (review online)

Rolling Stone published a similiar article where Butch Vig of Garbage shows the reporter how easy it is to build a studio and create music. Hopefully this will lower the requirements for a new act. Before they were at the mercy of large studios most of which were owned by the record companies. Not only do most acts get small royalties (as little as 4%), they were also charged for studio time. Some acts like TLC went bankrupt despite selling millions of records because of the high studio costs. That's why most artists who get a little foothold open their own studios.

Yeah, but am I the only one really psyched to hear that Rob Halford has gotten back to his roots?

"Did we look for James Huberty's inspiration when he gunned down people at McDonald's? What did Timothy McVeigh like to watch? What about David Koresh?"

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Try Reason from propellerheads software (no, not the band)