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I'm sure that they would just frame you for something similar if they happened to get inadmissible evidence.

"Scott, Ann and Milo were transporting the other 16 people in their van to the scene of an area to protest. Kendall and I were going to be support people for the group. Kendall and I were supposed to rendezvous with the group at the Greyhound bus station at 3:00 p.m., at which point we would go to the scene of the protest (two blocks away) and perform the action we had planned. The group never showed up.

Finally, at 3:30 p.m., Kendall got a phone call on his cell phone. It was Scott. He told Kendall that 15 Philadelphia State Police officers had surrounded his van and arrested everyone in it. The 19 had not committed any crimes or actions of any kind. They were not anticipating arrest."

"Despite denials by the Philadelphia police to some Green Party members from Houston and me, Scott has confirmed the civil and human rights abuse stories. He says none of the prisoners were given food for 14 hours. He says they never had bathroom breaks. He was told by jail guards that an ACLU lawyer came to represent the arrested activists at their arraignment hearings, but that he was not allowed to meet with any of the arrested activists.

Scott says that asthmatics and diabetics were not allowed to have their medicines. He told me that one diabetic woman became sick and passed out from not having had her medicine, and that the arrested activists had to chant for several hours before the nurse finally came to check on her."

"But whatever the number is, the reports from the inside are not good. For at least ten hours there was no food, at one point the guards had suspended bathroom ?privileges?[MS '?' for "'" retained], the legal team representing those arrested had very little access to their clients, and many of those held were told that their lawyers were not coming to see them when in fact the real story was that the authorities were not telling the legal team who was being held where. On top of this, there are reports of police and guard violence against people in custody, and at least one woman was seen being dragged naked and bleeding. Several people have been held in isolation, including those identified as organizers, and are being given more serious charges. The medical needs of some of the arrestees are not being met, including the withholding of asthma inhalers and medication for hypoglycemia."

"Valocchi [a journalist arrested while covering the protests], still wearing a red jailhouse wristband, said he did not get food for 24 hours, and did not get access to a telephone for 48 hours, even though he cooperated fully with police. In all, he was held for 49 hours. "I hear my girlfriend's been looking for me for like three days," he said. He also said there was one man in a cell near him "vomiting profusely for at least an hour before he got any medical attention. And when he did, that medical attention was a cup of juice and a sugar pill."

Valocchi said he was not the only innocent bystander thrown into jail. "There was a jogger who got yanked in. He was just a scared mama's boy in running shoes and a security shirt. I heard him on the phone with his mom, and he sounded completely terrified, telling his mom they were treating us like pigs."

"As a journalist, I've always been a big defender of the Philadelphia Police Department in general," he said. "But no more. They were completely out of control." "

I'm considering helping in the development of a Mac Gnutella port or starting a Mac OS X Gnutella port. The main thing holding me back is the question of whether it's really the right thing to do. No matter how evil the recording industry is, artists don't get a dime from Gnutella/Napster/Freenet/Blocks. They do from the recording industry, even if it's not very much.

What we need is a site where we can download MP3s for reasonable micropayments ($.20 - $1.00), with half the cash going to the artists. Piracy will die down because it's not worth the hassle to save $.20. People also don't really want to rip off artists, and it will be a lot harder to rationalize when you know every pirated MP3 is money out of the artists' pockets.

Incidentally, Courtney Love mentioned this bit in her speech, transcribed on Salon.com here (the Snow Crash ref is here).

Incidentally, Courtney Love mentioned this bit in her speech, transcribed on Salon.com here (the Snow Crash ref is here).

Salon had a good article on what a failure the buycott was. interesting stuff

The concept of illegal plants and animals is obnoxious and ridiculous.

Salon had a good article on what a failure the buycott was. interesting stuff

The concept of illegal plants and animals is obnoxious and ridiculous.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm growing tired of people bickering over who is right and who is wrong.

Napster has provided a service to all that is convenient, easy to use, fast and comprehensive. Through the Napster servers you can search for any song you like and more often than not, you'll find what you're looking for.

This is great, but its wrong. Copyright laws are in place for a reason. They are there to protect the artist and his rights to retain ownership of what he creates. In this case, music. The RIAA is there to protect those rights of the artist. Napsters very essense is against those rights, and breaches the copyright laws that have been in place for many many years.

People complain that the RIAA is only interested and cares about the lining of their pockets being coated with dollar bills, and to an extent I agree. Many artists and the RIAA are continually charging people far to much and most of us are at breaking point. We like the music, we support the music, but many just cannot afford to buy it.

However that does not excuse the fact that by sharing your files on, and downloading files from Napster you are breaking the LAW. The law that has existed to protect artists for many years now but that with the digital revolution, appears to have been thrown out the window.

So what if its easy to do? So what if there is no way to stop it? Regardless of how people feel about it, its still illegal.

How does this tie in with Napster? Quite simple. They are aiding and abetting the practice of copyright infringement and THAT is illegal in pretty much any western country of the world. Napster are in the wrong.

Now, before you think I'm totally anti-napster and pro RIAA, let me rip into the RIAA's methods and madness.

No matter whether Napster is doing something it shouldn't or not, the RIAA needs to understand that instead of trying to squash Napster and destroy it, they would probably achieve a lot more by partnering with it. Trading MP3's online is no different to recording a bunch of songs from the radio or TV hows/movies from the TV and letting your friends have copies of those recordings. Its illegal, its wrong, but its common practice and something that most people I know do or have done.

The RIAA needs to understand that they cannot shut down MP3 trading (Just as the MPAA cannot stop DivX or VCD trading by closing down Scour Exchange). In effect, what they're actually doing is promoting the traders hobby, bringing more people to the ranks and pushing all the traders deeper underground. I have been using Gnutella for a while now, and the court telling Napster to shut down its servers created such a huge surge in the number or people connected to the network, it flooded me right off.

The existance of digital versions of music, movies, TV shows, graphical images and the like are here to stay. Anyone with half a clue can see that. What needs to be done, and what several companies are working on doing, is create a digital medium that can protect copyright while at the same time being as easy to use as an MPEG file (both video and audio types). The best idea I've heard of so far is watermarking the medium in a way that would destroy the file if it were removed.

The biggest problem with these initiatives is that the online community sees everything on the internet as free for all. If its available in a digital form then the online community assumes that the author or the copyright holder has given up its legal rights to it and anyone can have it. So what do we as a community need to do? We need to help and promote services that will allow us to continue to enjoy the benefits we have now, while at the same time not stepping outside the bounds of real world legalities. The Cyber Universe exists inside and is very heavily dependant upon the Real Universe for its existance. That means that it too falls within the bounds of real world legalities.

We NEED to learn that just because its in binary does not mean that its any different to its analogue counterparts. The medium is different, the content is the same. We need to learn that we cannot break the law simply because we are in the cyber universe where national boundaries do not exist. By breaking the laws of the real world, we are giving governments and companies reason and right to start enforcing censorship and all that goes with it.

The RIAA is legally right, but their methods are wrong. Napster itself is a great service, but its methods are illegal and wrong. There IS a happy gray zone in there, but so far, everyone has done their best to avoid it, simply because it would mean conforming in the Cyber Universe to a rule/law that exists in the Real Universe. Come one people, pull your heads in. We don't cease to be humans simply because we log on to an ISP and sit in front of a computer.

PS. Don't get me wrong. I'm just as annoyed at the RIAA for trying to do this as most others are. I admit to being a trader (ironic eh?). The difference is that I acknowledge and understand that by letting others copy my files and by copying others files, I break the law. What a lot of people don't seem to grasp is that this is wrong. Too many people see it as their right to download anything, regardless of the laws involved.

Ralph Nader: Millionaire Hypocrite?

That's probably why most consumers, when asked, describe CDs as a good value. At the same time, when asked directly whether CDs cost too much, some consumers will say yes! Why the contradiction?

Probably because the latter was a leading question. Or maybe because the concept of value and cost are not identical?

Because some consumers don't understand why the sales tag on a CD is so much higher than the cost of producing the actual physical disc, a cost, which in fact, has decreased over the years.

Obviously it's decreased over the years. There was obviously a time when CDs were first being developed when it was expensive to make a CD. However, I don't remember a drop in the price of an album in the last seven or eight years, in fact singles cost more now.

Of course, the most important component of a CD is the artist's effort in developing that music.

Then why don't they get the majority of the profits?

For example, when you hear a song played on the radio -- that didn't just happen!

So let me get this straight, you are moaning about how hard it is to get the music listened to, and then turn around and sue the people who can make it easier for you to do that?

New technology such as the Internet offers new ways for artists to reach music fans, but it still requires that some entity, whether it is a traditional label or another kind of company, market and promote that artist so that fans are aware of new releases.

Hmm... so lets see. There still needs to be a company between the artist and the public, that has to deal with promotion etc. Well I don't see "traditional" labels embracing the internet - so I guess you could consider Napster and MP3.com to be competition, in fact, competition that has a significant head-start on the traditional labels. Those lawsuits musta come in handy, huh?

Another factor commonly overlooked in assessing CD prices is to assume that all CDs are equally profitable. In fact, the vast majority is never profitable.

Wouldn't it be handy if there was a way of promoting and distributing the music for less, so that taking on artists would be less risky? Hold on a sec, what about the internet?

Between 1983 and 1996, the average price of a CD fell by more than 40%. Over this same period of time, consumer prices ... rose nearly 60%.

Yeah, that's the new technology premium for you. The fall in price can probably be attributed to the fact that in 1983, CDs were high-tech, and were commonplace in 1996.

While the price of CDs has fallen, the amount of music provided on a typical CD has increased substantially,

Not that I've noticed. I'll admit, I've not been buying CDs since 1983, but I can't remember a time when albums didn't have at least twelve tracks on them.

along with higher quality in terms of fidelity, durability, ease of use,

EASE OF USE?

and range of choices, including multi-media material, such as music videos, interviews and discographies.

Bullshit. I never see two different CDs on the shelf, one with videos, one without. Sometimes there are exceptions, but they are few and far between. And there is no choice in the matter, you either get an "enhanced" CD, or you don't.

Content of this type often requires considerable production expense and adds a whole new dimension that goes beyond conventional audio.

Now, I find it hard to believe that I can quite easily produce a music CD with a video on it, with minimal effort, yet you cannot. The video is already made for TV, so why not just stick it on the CD in MPEG format? It's not hard or expensive.

This has the same tone to it as Microsoft's "Linux is bad, mkay?" Linux Myths page.

Slashdot columnist Jon Katz was apoplectic. "The band's efforts to identify and intimidate 335,435 fans and Napster users for alleged copyright violations are a shock." A shock to whom? The need to collect actual names is spelled out clearly in the DMCA, which Katz, who's been writing about the Internet for close to a decade, must surely be familiar with. Either that, or he convincingly feigned ignorance as he heated up the rhetoric: "Urge everyone you know to [boycott the band] until Metallica calls off its legal Rottweillers, [and] leaves kids downloading music alone." (Apparently "kids" are now immune to copyright laws.) Katz also insisted Metallica, by complying with Napster's request to ID alleged copyright infringers, was "challenging the ability of others to move freely and privately about the Net."

A published author whose latest book, "Geeks," was optioned for six figures by New Line Cinema, Katz seems unconcerned about musicians' rights and royalties. The day after the initial injunction against Napster, Katz told Rollingstone.com, "to take this privilege away from this generation is a loss of a right." (Emphasis mine.)

Your cost analysis is interesting, but ultimately flawed. I refer you to the much more interesting speech on the subject given by someone actually involved in this process.

But don't believe for a minute that the recording industry is the only one to use these tactics. There is an interesting analysis of the book industry and the advantage of going your own way here. It would be interesting, to say the least, to see what would happen should musicians follow a similar road.

Sure, I could sneer about how this topic was so -- this past May, and how ESR grabbed it for his own agenda months ago. But I agree with the premise that the tech community is too invoved in itself to deal effectively with the outside world. I reach some different conclusions.

Reading Slashdot, you see people shouting the party line at each other and moderating each other up. It leads to lots of karma as well as to forgetting that what's obvious to the, err, "community" isn't really how anyone else thinks.

Look at Napster. Instead of thinking about how we can develop a music distribution that is efficient, popular and respectful of artists' rights, everyone here reminded each other how copyrights are evil, that the FSF says it's not really piracy because there are no puffy shirts involved, how the artists should all just sell T-shirts instead. That didn't lst long in front of a judge.

Look at internet filters. Libraries want to install filters and Michael and Jamie scream that parents should take responsibility. A rabbinical court in Jerusalem advises its congregants to restrict their children's net access and Michael writes a sneering, bigoted rant against parents who take responsibility. (Said rant vanished from /. a few days later.) Every time some new software comes out, Michael or Jamie find some site that they think it improperly does or doesn't block and pronounce that all filterware will be forever hopeless and that the idea should be immediately discarded. Look -- if you think the world is going to accept the YRO credo of "all porn access, all the time" you're kidding yourself. Filterware will be used and when shoddy software is the norm, the tech community will have itself to blame for ridiculing parents' concerns instead of trying to develop a reasonable alternative.

Even more ludicrous was her essay in Salon regarding the supposed fall of San Francisco - Borsook seems to forget that hippies and art types hijacked the city only a generation before - she's simply annoyed with the fact that this time she's on the receiving end of the boot. The bulk of San Francisco's history is that of a rough western town - not a glorified art colony.

First of all, Courney Love gave a very intelligent speech about music, MP3s, and how the recording industry is the real pirate. Reading it made me think Katz isn't too far off the mark in this case (wow! a first! :-)

The solution? A site where you can buy plain old MP3s (no copy protection or wierd proprietary format crap) at whatever bitrate you want for a reasonable cost ($.20 - $1.00 a track). Throw in a few sample tracks... Artists always get half the take. Simple as that.

Sure, there will still be piracy, but most people really don't want to screw over artists, and would really prefer to get MP3s they know are well encoded. The convenience+conscience factor will win out if the price is reasonable.

Why haven't I gone out and started musicvana.net (instead of whining a la Katz)? It would take a lot of capital to pull it off, and I don't have the connections. If you do, or know someone who does, please contact me. I have a bunch more ideas for such a venture.

Easy. If the middleman is costing too much, cut the middleman out of the picture and take 100% of the compensation for your work yourself, instead of less than 10%. Think you're too small? Accounts are FREE.

She has already done the math, so I wish that Courtney Love would contact me. *sigh* We could help eachother a lot, IMO, and I liked her recent rant. Oh well.
JMR

Easy. If the middleman is costing too much, cut the middleman out of the picture and take 100% of the compensation for your work yourself, instead of less than 10%. Think you're too small? Accounts are FREE.

She has already done the math, so I wish that Courtney Love would contact me. *sigh* We could help eachother a lot, IMO, and I liked her recent rant. Oh well.
JMR

Here is an article on salon that you might be interesting in: It is Courtney Love's take on the real culprit in music piracy - the RIAA .
Hope this helps,
Rainbowfyre

From the Salon article: I don't think this is the end but it sends a message that copyright will not be ignored. It shows that the basic principle of copyright protection -- as made clear in the Constitution -- is very important. Except that it's defending the wrong end of "copyright protection", Jack. ARTICLE I, SECTION 8: The Congress shall have power to [...] promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries; (Boldface is, of course, mine; if it wasn't, maybe we wouldn't be having these arguments.) You're meant to be able to make some coin off of the creation and distribution of your "art" and then, after a reasonable time, pass it into the public domain for future generations to enjoy. Instead, people still have to pay money to see "Steamboat Willie". Why? Is "Steamboat Willie" really that timeless? It's little more than a historical footnote, anymore; the first appearance of Mickey Mouse. Big deal. Like Mickey Mouse's face isn't slowly becoming synonymous with "rampant corporate greed" to anyone over the age of 7. The court has upheld one part of the copyright trade-off -- more clearly defining what constitutes infringement upon the rights of copyright holders to duplicate or distribute protected material -- but they've been sloughing off on the other end; the part where, after a reasonable length of time, these protected works are released into the wild, to flourish and inspire. I wish the "Ghost of Intellectual Property of the Future" could trip these guys forward, say 100 years, so they could see what kind of a future their efforts would bring. Then again, I don't know if they'd cry or cheer... Jay (=

I must give credit where it is needed, so this piece came out of the salon article Courtney love does the math. It does an excellent job of showing that we should be against the RIAA and record labels, not the artists, and not lars ulrich. Lars is worried about people stealing his music because he gets paid so little. This article made this very apparent to me.

I want to start with a story about rock bands and record companies, and do some recording-contract math:

This story is about a bidding-war band that gets a huge deal with a 20 percent royalty rate and a million-dollar advance. (No bidding-war band ever got a 20 percent royalty, but whatever.) This is my "funny" math based on some reality and I just want to qualify it by saying I'm positive it's better math than what Edgar Bronfman Jr. [the president and CEO of Seagram, which owns Polygram] would provide.

What happens to that million dollars?

They spend half a million to record their album. That leaves the band with $500,000. They pay $100,000 to their manager for 20 percent commission. They pay $25,000 each to their lawyer and business manager.

That leaves $350,000 for the four band members to split. After $170,000 in taxes, there's $180,000 left. That comes out to $45,000 per person.

That's $45,000 to live on for a year until the record gets released.

The record is a big hit and sells a million copies. (How a bidding-war band sells a million copies of its debut record is another rant entirely, but it's based on any basic civics-class knowledge that any of us have about cartels. Put simply, the antitrust laws in this country are basically a joke, protecting us just enough to not have to re-name our park service the Phillip Morris National Park Service.)

So, this band releases two singles and makes two videos. The two videos cost a million dollars to make and 50 percent of the video production costs are recouped out of the band's royalties.

The band gets $200,000 in tour support, which is 100 percent recoupable.

The record company spends $300,000 on independent radio promotion. You have to pay independent promotion to get your song on the radio; independent promotion is a system where the record companies use middlemen so they can pretend not to know that radio stations -- the unified broadcast system -- are getting paid to play their records.

All of those independent promotion costs are charged to the band.

Since the original million-dollar advance is also recoupable, the band owes $2 million to the record company.

If all of the million records are sold at full price with no discounts or record clubs, the band earns $2 million in royalties, since their 20 percent royalty works out to $2 a record.

Two million dollars in royalties minus $2 million in recoupable expenses equals ... zero!

How much does the record company make?

They grossed $11 million.

It costs $500,000 to manufacture the CDs and they advanced the band $1 million. Plus there were $1 million in video costs, $300,000 in radio promotion and $200,000 in tour support.

The company also paid $750,000 in music publishing royalties.

They spent $2.2 million on marketing. That's mostly retail advertising, but marketing also pays for those huge posters of Marilyn Manson in Times Square and the street scouts who drive around in vans handing out black Korn T-shirts and backwards baseball caps. Not to mention trips to Scores and cash for tips for all and sundry.

Add it up and the record company has spent about $4.4 million.

So their profit is $6.6 million; the band may as well be working at a 7-Eleven.





Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net

But Napster is an evil all onto itself, and you (the proverbial you) know that the very moment they could have started to squeeze money out of their users, they would have. Napster was the drug dealer that gave away free samples to get you addicted.

Okay, I'm over generalizing. Napster isn't evil at all, it was simply a misguided attempt at making someone rich.

As NPR said, there is a difference between Napster the product and Napster the concept. Napster as a concept is here for good and the RIAA and MPAA and any other industry trade group has, as a Valenti said in a Salon article a small window of opportunity to provide a mechanism to handle the obvious demand before another Napster raises its head. And this time, with preknowledge of where the old Napster failed.

In fact, Gnutella and FreeNet are being touted as litagationproof. While I wouldn't necessarily agree with that, it does go far enough to demonstrate what is going to happen. RIAA and MPAA's short sightedness actually will harm artists in the long run as there won't be any way for an artist to defend their rights when everything is underground.

For my part, I've decided to use Tapster, at Tapster.com. It only has one song, but that just means I don't have to do any searching.

I think that the Record Companies may be winning the battles but loosing the war. They can shut down a company, but can they stop a Movement ? They are scared, no doubt about it - don't believe their hype. See Scott Rosenberg in Salon and the discussion on Buzzwaves for a longer view.

This link has probably appeared on /. before, but if you missed it, it's worth a read. Courtney Love's speech to the Digital Hollywood online entertainment conference, given in New York on May 16. She stands up for artists while ripping the big recording companies to shreds.

If Chevy's only designed car had a built in jet engine, oil slick, battering ram, and 6 inch gun, and that car were used in the overwhelming majority of bank robberies, then perhaps your analogy would be more in line with reality. Napster exists to disseminate copyrighted music. This is _all_ it was ever intended to do.

I, personally think, given the current state of the record industry:

http://www.salon.com/tech/featur e/2000/06/14/love/

that Napster, and all the little second-gen Napster sprouts are a _good_ thing. Napster is what the music-listening world needs at the moment. But to try to liken Napster to anything other than the gargantuan freebie music-orgy that it is is deluding yourself. Call it what it is, and love it anyway.

No offense to Mr. Taco, but Salon's Scott Rosenberg writes eloquently on the topic of the RIAA being doomed by peer-to-peer filesharing even as they proceed to defeat Napster. A worthy read.

Well... there's a lot that could be said, and obviously a lot of sides to every situation.

MP3's are favoured as a format because it gives you fairly decent sound quality for a small size. MP3's are despised as a format because the record labels are having a harder time to control the standard as they did with cassette tapes and CDR's.

Let's break that down. MP3's sound like crap at the typical bitrate they are sent out in (128k), but most people who aren't anal-retentive audiophiles like myself, don't give a shit.
Record companies don't like this because they no longer truly have control. Did they ever really? I mean, it's *EASIER* to just have your friend burn a CDR copy than it is to deal with downloading MP3's on Napster... unless you have broadband, which I don't. Plus, relying on others puts you in the situation where you have to depend on them for a good source... and this rarely happens for several reasons: Bad CD ripping, using lousy MP3 encoders (Xing is a good example), or Napster showing incomplete downloads as available tracks. My personal favourite 'bad' MP3 file is the sort where dumbfuck kids use their sound cards to record something instead of trying to bypass it through ripping. What happened once was a kid left his mic plugged in, and it picked up everything he was doing while recording the track. He didn't bother to listen to the track. Let's just say I know what kind of porn he likes best.

I'm going to try to spare being redundant as much as possible, but there are some overall points that really make me wonder every time...

Record sales are up this year, despite the existance of MP3's, Napster and other sharing devices. Hmmm... that kind of speaks for itself. Let's also forget that one of the things FUELING the free-for-all MP3 sharing are the overwhelming prices at the record store. Unless you do online ordering with a slew of coupons for CDNow, etc... you're paying close to $18 a CD at Tower or HMV. Weren't the big-five record companies recently accused of unfair price fixing practices? Why haven't prices gone down since then?

Other people mainly use it as a form of shareware. Try before you buy. I think the record companies fear this idea as much as most record companies don't like releasing singles... because it cuts into sales. How's that? Well... when you buy a single, you pay $6 for one song that you want, plus some goodies, depending on what was put on the single. You would probably avoid buying the album because you have that ONE song you want... same for downloading the MP3. We are no longer restricted to buying entire albums full of filler just to get that one song we want.

People like to use the argument that we're hurting artists by not buying (if that's the case) their actual releases. Uhm, I'm sorry, if you ever saw Courtney Love's rant (and what a great one it was), or even know about the entertainment industry in general, some bands, or most, really don't make that much money off sales in general. Hard to imagine (not) that record companies make close to 70% of the sales on ALL records they sell. She made the very valid point that true artists are more concerned with appealing to their fans and just letting their work being heard, as opposed to making sure that they get every single goddamn dime off sales... (or penny, depending on how their contract screwed the over) After all, TLC, Toni Braxton are just two of the mega-selling artists who have had to file for BANKRUPTCY PROTECTION because of unfair contractual agreements. Everyone should know by now (even Metallica, those dickweeds) that record companies make more than half of the money on all record sales.

What is the issue here, really? Control. Artists have the option. If they don't mind working that 9 to 5 job while doing their music on their own time and giving it out for people to enjoy, then most do that. Punk bands like Dropkick Murphys tour for a living, they don't rely on record sales. (The band ENCOURAGES people to bootleg, HEAVILY)

It's just so hard to believe (sarcasm) that a record company that makes billions would just want to control the latest attempt in which they can be bypassed. Cassette tapes, CDR's, now MP3's. (And DeCss/DivX ;-) for movies, VHS/Betamax) It's just so ironic that the artists that probably were lucky enough to get high yielding contracts are the ones complaining the loudest. Smaller-time bands (for the most part) don't care. All this is too petty for them... they won't take part in the billion dollar squabbling because IT DOESN'T INVOLVE THEM. They won't see a dime of all that money that is "lost" because someone downloaded the latest N'Sync MP3. They still play and create music because they want to. I just wonder if both the record companies and Selloutica realise that they're both fueling the fire by raising such a stink.

My mother was so adamant about not letting me buy a CDR a few years back... I had to explain to her exactly what a CDR was and what I could do with it. She thought all I was going to do was rent music at Blockbuster (shows you how much she knows about things like this) and copy everything. I explained to her that I mainly wanted to get a CDR so that I could put my 400+ piece vinyl collection onto CDR's... for backup. Her response? "But isn't that bootlegging?" Flash forward to the future. She learned about MP3's due to all the stories she kept seeing on major news sites. She read Metallica's venomous statements here and there. (Mind you, she's a pretty hip lady. :) After she started reading all the sides to this situation, she wanted me to help her install Napster so she could start downloading MP3's herself. (Her exact words: "Screw those greedy bastards!") If my own MOTHER could get turned off by the actions of the RIAA and others who protest, what could that say about other non-geekish folks who aren't accustomed to ripping apart their PC's and reading Slashdot every day?

But still, I just wish people would rip CD's properly...


Please insert thirty five cents to continue...

The author of that article is Scott Rosenberg. Now wouldn't it just be great if he were related to Hillary Rosenberg, the president of the RIAA?

This article at Salon should put your mind at ease. It talks about the landmark case, and reiterates what has been said here: if Napster goes down, it's phenomenon on the Internet will get stronger.

I tend to agree with a lot of the points he makes.

I tend to agree with a lot of the points he makes.

> Radio makes a profit, but not from broadcasting music. They do so by charging for advertising time.

Courtney Love had something to say about that awhile ago.

Look for the paragraph, the twelveth from the top, about independent radio promotion. FFT.

This salon article has a somewhat similar perspective on this.

But the poster of such information could be held liable as aiding and abetting to a crime. If DVD's start being pirated, couldn't MPAA start suing all the distributors of DeCSS?

I guess the various Gun manufactures must be in a lot of trouble then. And car manufactures.

The various gun manufacturers are in trouble. Several states attorneys-general are suing them for making their products in such a way as to encourage violence (the was Saturday night specials are marketed to urban communities is the commonly cited example). Here is a fairly old article about that. I'm not sure if it's been settled.

There's also the Paladin Press case, where the publisher of the book "Hit Man" was successfully sued when a reader followed the instructions contained within in committing a murder. This article has a fairly biased summary of the case.

The point is the First Amendment does not absolve you of responsibility for the consequences of your speech, and some could interpret DeCSS as an invitation to violate copyright law.

Kook9 out.

There is a definate fear in teh disabled community especially that by using genetics you are in fact devaluing people by saying what is perfect (which is subjective anyway)

As an example - cochlear implants are being met with a great deal of negataive response from the deaf community, who see such medical advances as the source for potential erosion of deaf culture.

TO offer counselling to pepeople who might possibly have a chance of an inherited disease is ludicrous. We all have our faults. My father was born with Spina Biffida but lives a normal fulfilled life. We all carry imperfections which are what make us.

Can you imagine growing up with such a monkey on your back? Parents of juvenile diabetics have spoken time and again of the sometimes-suicidal thoughts and tendencies of their children, all because these kids are growing up with the knowledge that they have a disease that could well cripple or kill them before they're 25. It's one thing to educate people who are considering (or have received) sperm or ova donations about the potential risks involved in these circumstances - another to tell an individual in gross statistical detail about the genetic axe hanging over their head.

(I'll leave the Gattaca references and allusions to the dozens of other people that will make them.)

A lot of people question theories of physics. For the most part, they have no evidence and show a gross lack of understanding of the actual principles involved, so they're dismissed out of hand. The exact same is true for evolution. Evolution is a comprehensive theory which fits the available facts quite well. I doesn't fit a number of people's personal philosophies, but that's hardly a requirement for a scientific theory. If you come up with evidence which truly calls into question the principles of evolution, the truth will be heard. It may not happen over night, and the entire scientific establishment may not beat a path to your door, but it WILL happen. A number of classical physicist did not want to accept Einstein's theories. Einstein himself, and others, did not want to accept QM. No modern physicist seriously questions either theory. Science moves slow sometimes, but it does work. If evidence supports a theory, it survives. If it doesn't, it dies.

Britain a nice, peaceful, gun free paradise?

Crime and Justice in the United States and in England and Wales, 1981-96 "U.S. crime rates -- whether measured by surveys of crime victims or by police statistics -- generally fell in the early 1980's, rose thereafter until around 1993, and then fell again (figures 1-10). For most U.S. crimes (survey estimated assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft; police-recorded murder, robbery, and burglary), the latest crime rates (1996) are the lowest recorded in the 16-year period from 1981 to 1996. By comparison, English crime rates as measured in both victim surveys and police statistics have all risen since 1981. For half of the measured English crime categories, the latest crime rates (1995 for rates from victim surveys; 1996 for rates from police statistics) are the highest recorded since 1981 "

Crime Wave Sweeps Britain"Despite its reputation as a genteel and pleasant land, a new government report depicts Britain as one of the most violent urban societies in the Western world, a place where a person's chances of being assaulted, burgled or robbed are substantially greater than in the United States."

Here's an article. Decide for yourself whether it was written about you. When liberals lie about guns. It was written by the well known bunch of raving right-wing crazies at Salon Magazine.

I think these statistics held by the RIAA are less about both distribution control and about artist control, as Courtney Love explained quite well.

Tools like napster loosen the recording industry's control over which artists will eventually make it to the top, thus making the companies the most money. The recording industry knows that the more control they wield over the artists, the more revenue they can generate for themselves. The digital revolution may be what gives the individual artist the exposure that the recording companies once offered so exclusively.

I see, now, how this will obsolete not only the record companies' business model, but their business, as well.

Salon has an article today about hacktivists. It's pretty hostile though. Check it out.

The bus came by and I got on
That's when it all began
There was cowboy Neal
At the wheel
Of a bus to never-ever land

There's also a salon.com article about this here.

There's an article on Salon.com about this focusing on the email screening element. It makes some pretty good points about the difficulty of the screening process (for example). One interesting example is an old friend you haven't heard from in years, who happens to be in town for a day. I just hope there is some way to disable this option (which I'll bet will be pretty difficult in a work environment).

That's funny because Salon thinks the movie is totally about gay teens.

That's funny because Salon thinks the movie is totally about gay teens.

For the non-Americans who haven't seen the show or people like me who don't watch TV here's a very good episode guide from Salon. The show actually seems very interesting, the interplay of personalities and double dealing as well as how low people will go for money is entertaining in a surrreal kind of way.

I'll definitely give the next show a try.


WHY C SUCKS
-----------
int i =0;
i = i + 1;

*gasp*

"Going down to Colombia and BOMBING all of the cocoa fields there would accomplish more than anything else we've tried in the past 20 years. I'd love to see that done"
--Zach'

We have been doing this for many years Zach. And did you know we are providing the better part of $1.5 BILLION over the next three years for more of that>

I wonder if anyone around here thinks we could be using that money to treat drug addicts here in America. Or treat people who cannot afford medical insurance. Or fucking PAVE ROADS or whatever!!

This "Drug War" must STOP!!

"America will cheer in glee at another battle won in the war on drugs"

I agree with most of your comment but there have been no battles won in the war against drugs, only casualties.

If you are interested, take a look here:Salon.com article on one of these casualties

Here's a link to an intersting interview with Courteny Love on Salon.com. It really pulls together all of the various arguments related to Napster/Digital Music/Piracy. A very good read.

Fittingly, he also refers to the Code of Hammurabi, one of the first codified systems of law dating back to the days of Babylonian dominance. That code dictated that if a mason constructed a building which collapsed and killed the owner, the mason would be summarily executed. Imagine the bloodbath if modern engineers and inventors were held accountable that way.

This idea was stressed and reinforced when I was taking engineering classes. We realized we had responsibilities akin to a doctor, except a doctor has a hard time killing hundreds of people at one time.

Now, I may be an old fart, but this was only 15 years ago, I can't imagine it has changed much (BS Aerospace, 1988).

So, Mr. Katz, I'm having trouble imagining the bloodbath, can you name a few? The double decker highways collapsing in Oakland or Japan? I'm sure a foolish company put in an earthquake resistant bid for those, and I'm sure they weren't the low bidder. Some government official decided those highways didn't need to be earthquake resistant, maybe we should execute them.

You might want to execute the builders too, if you use shitty materials, the best design in the world won't help.

Oh yeah, Salon has a review on a similar book, Collapse, when buildings fall
down.

Also, could we extend your analogy to journalists? Can we execute a journalist if a suicidal teen reads their work?

Of course, engineers and inventors aren't held accountable that way, but then, the only people that are held accountable with a penatly of death are poor, retarded minorities (unless you live in an enlightened country).

George

I submitted this article to the /. crew, but it seems the team of trained mammals haven't found it as interesting...Oh, well

For a more recent example of the RIAA's tactics in action, see this page of Salon.com's presentation of the Courtney Love speech.

I'm thrilled that someone with Hatch's legislative acumen and personal stake in the music distribution system is picking up the ball. But there are 533 other members of Congress, many of them with RIAA- and MPAA-controlled noserings, to contend with before new legislation is passed-- which someone in the White House will have to sign.

And there's no assurance that the legislation that is enacted will be any less flawed than the DMCA. This is very slippery ground.
--
syrynx

Erik Duserre made it excrutiatingly clear that this was just one comparison that could be drawn, and in fact made reference to the even-more-obvious geek reference. (Among others.) So you don't need to feel too left out 'cause an agenda other than yours happens to get a little attention.

Think of it this way ... if you take the NY Post into your local library and copy an article for your friend, are you breaking the law? Sure but not on any grand scope. Now take this SAME article, scan it and put it up on your Geocities account, then get it linked from /. ... are you breaking the law then? You're damn right you are, regardless if you intended for hundreds of thousands of people to utilize your illegal distribution of copyrighted material.

This is why your argument for "non-commercial" duplication and distribution is deemed to fail, it's a brave new world out there were the individual has gained a tremendous amount of publishing power, more than anyone could have ever dreamed ... now it's time for folks to step up to the plate and realize that with this power comes accountability, regardless of your intent to be "non-commercial".

Luckily your argument is completely without any legal merit. According to the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act, any non-commercial sharing of music is in fact perfectly legal and not copyright infringement at all. The method, scale, or "impact" of the copying has nothing to do with it. Period. So long as there is no fee or other quid pro quo exchange, trading music on Napster is not infringement.

What's more astonishing is how your argument is so completely...well, to be fair, so completely based on ethical norms which are opposite mine. You realize that the Internet has moved us into a "brave new world" of content distribution, where, amongst other things, music is no longer a scarce good (like, for example, a car) but a potentially nonscarce good (like air). According to any economic theory (especially free market Capitalism), goods only need to be controlled and sold for profit when they are scarce; once a good is ubiquitous, it ought to be freely available. It has nothing to do with how much the good is worth to someone--after all, air to breathe is undeniably worth more than any other possible good, but any economic system which suggested that air should be charged for would be both unconscionable and plain dumb.

The fact that our technology has partially moved music from the scarce category to the ubiquitous category should be cause for celebration, not handwringing and worry. Napster and programs like it are providing a positive service for humanity (or at least that portion with Internet access), and so are those who, like the poster you responded to, choose to share their music with others.

Yet you apparently don't see it this way at all. You view the "brave new world" the Internet has moved us all into, which allows everyone to (just in this example) share in all the world's musical art, as a negative to be handled with some extra-legal sense of "accountability"--which, by the tone of your post, apparently means "ignoring the possibilities inherent in the Internet".

Perhaps you cling to this view out of the mistaken idea that non-commercial sharing of music is illegal (it isn't) or that Napster is somehow "stealing" money from musical artists (click here to find out who's really stealing money from artists). Maybe you somehow believe it would be a bad thing if the record labels had to undergo actual competition to their monopoly-abusing business model; but even there you would be misinformed, because not only are both CD sales and the outrageous average selling price of CD's up for the past year, but studies show that most Napster users buy more CD's after Napster than they did before, and that their use of Napster is primarily as a sampling tool to try out songs before they commit to buying an album. (This is covered under the fair use doctrine of copyright law, BTW.)

I don't know. But I'm choosing to believe that you're simply misinformed or haven't thought the issues through completely rather than that you're against people being able to listen to more music, against economic progress through new technologies, or are just a record company shill.

So get informed: Napster's legal brief (PDF file) is a wonderful place to start. Of course, many people do disagree on this issue; still, I'd request that you at least read the brief through before making up your mind.