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Napster Back in Court
Wakko Warner writes "According to this article, Napster lawyers (and RIAA lawyers) were grilled today by appellate judges. What's more interesting, though, is that, to appease the RIAA, Napster may institute a subscription-based service.
Would you pay $4.95 a month to use Napster?
"
If they let me pay by the day/week/month/year, then maybe. I can't say that I would want to fork out the 60 some bucks that it would take for an entire year (I didn't spend that much on cd's before napster came along).
Now, if I could buy a weeks worth of access for $3.00, then I probably would (and saturate my pipe for as long as possible).
I don't think the subscription thing will fly. If the courts say that they have to pay royalties, then they will have to charge per download, and that can get expensive...
Joseph W. Breu
Any sort of subscription model for Napster will fail, both because of the lack of a quality guarantee, and because, if they aren't kicking some of that subscription back to people sharing their files online, people won't put their music up to trade. You can either sell music or trade music - you can't sell trading music.
-Cyclopatra-
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
The other thing that makes the 4.95 a month proposal pointless is that Napster users could just get Napigator and switch to OpenNap.
I think the RIAA isn't interested in the proposal mainly because they want to extend their control and total ownership of music distribution into the online space... but also because they know that it would be pointless. The cat is already out of the bag.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
What is Napster paying for? They do not distribute music, Napster just provides information about who has what.
What would that mean exactly for users? Does this mean if you are a Napster subscriber, it's legal for you to put any music up for sharing on Napster if you pay the fee? Napster users didn't sign anything and aren't part of the lawsuit, how can it suddenly be OK for them to share?
If it's not legal under the proposed system for users to distribute all the files they like, then again I ask - what is the $4.95/mo for?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
well we can dream :)~~, but hamsap references aside...
In the story the Dutch boy saved the village, it makes more sense if you reverse it.
The RIAA are trying to stop the leak into thier territory, but behind the wall there is a whole ocean of file sharing going on, they can't see over the wall, they just stick their fingers in what they can see.
Umm ok that didn't make much sense after all, made much more sense in my head....
Ho Hum
~ppppppppö
Make up some incredibly trivial "content protection" scheme designed to keep out RIAA, lawyers, or anyone else who might give them trouble, then if those people get in, sue on the basis that they broke the "content protection" mechanism.
:)
This sig is false.
People are speaking with their wallets at Fairtunes and sending their money directly to the artist and cutting out the record labels. I totally agree that we need more action and less whining.
Matt.
But an interested in the precedent, in the event I decide to start a service rebroadcasting my video tapes of Alf
When I want to listen to real music I wind up the Victrola and put on some Enrico Carusoe.
--
Chief Frog Inspector
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
as much as we'd like to pretend, napster is _not_ under the GPL, and their fight is _not_ the same as Free Software's fight. while napster raises some interesting IP issues, they still want to make a lot of money with what they're doing, and for those looking to make napster into a shining cause of the New Internet, this was a train wreck waiting to happen.
Err, Red Hat and all the other distro makers are "under the GPL" but they still "want to make a lot of money with what they're doing". The difference is that while Linux is a great example of the power of the "Old" Internet--distributed programming and developer mailing lists and all that--Napster is indeed the quintessential example of one competing vision for the "New" Internet. (The other, of course, is an Internet in which only the big media companies have enough money to create/buy content, scare off most of their competition with lawsuits and choke off the rest through their control of the pipes into everyone's home.)
Now, of course, it can be argued that Napster has less of a right than Red Hat et. al. to make money off their insight, because whereas Red Hat provides tech support and reliability checks, and pays several programmers to write GPL'd software for the entire Linux base, Napster just provides an interface, some database servers, and, uh, pays for Limp Bizkit's promotional tour. Indeed, I have no problem paying for a distro but would strongly consider switching to a different peer-to-peer file network if Napster goes for-pay.
But that doesn't mean Napster's fight isn't worthwhile, and it doesn't make Napster's contribution any less revolutionary.
A subscription-based version of napster, ever if all profits go directly to the artists, will not work.
Why? For simple reasons: would you pay Napster $4.95 to donate YOUR files, YOUR bandwidth, and YOUR system resources? I know that I sure wouldn't, even if I did have the bandwidth.
The whole success of napster is that anyone can jack in and out at any time, and that people with gigabytes of MP3s and a fat pipe can share their unused bandwidth with lesser users. There is no loss on their part. But, if you introduce a charge, a majority of these generous users would leave for a better, free alternative, for the very reason that if they were to continue with Napster, they would have to pay Napster, Inc. to provide a service for them.
If Napster acknowledges this and hosts their own files, they would be in even deeper legal trouble; their principal defence has been that they're only the middle-man. it's the users that share illegally-obtained content.
Consequently, any charge, no matter how small, would destroy Napster and the RIAA will be gloating over another victory.
I would not pay. Not unless the service was a *LOT* better.
very rarely, think of the label as a loan shark, a very fussy one, even if they do give you a deal you will be very lucky to see anything at all after the advance, maybe if you do well you will get a better advance on the next album, but even so you're better with a credit card...
Ok they do promote, but what?
*where we have a tangible good or service to produce. *
If you're not producing anything tangible what are you doing? except possibly working in management, music is tangible.
*wealth was even more unevenly distributed*
There has NEVER been such a time.
Hope you were trolling...
~ppppppppö
I can see both views dealing with paying for Napster.
On one hand, there are people who would say "Sure, costs less than CDs, etc, etc..."
On the other hand there are people who would say "Now that I'm paying for it it's not right. I should do this anymore."
The problem is with people like me who are in the third category, right between the two. What are your opinions?
only if they still let you download all the copyrighted songs :) sure, 5 bucks a month is a lot less than I spend on buying cds every month that I only burn. (especially now that I have an mp3 player in my car)
--
Geoff Harrison (http://mandrake.net)
Senior Software Engineer - VA Linux Labs (http://www.valinux.com)
Geoff "Mandrake" Harrison
Some Random UI Hacker
I'm going to either share a couple thousand files to everyone, or pay for the service. Not both.
I'm sure this opinion is shared by virtually all Napster users on fat pipes and broadband. Subscription service will only lead to the death of Napster.
--
Rob Carlson
I think that a fair number of people would be happy to pay 4.95 a month to use napster, but that raises two issues. First, I dont think the RIAA would ever bite for that. Why take 500million in 2001, when they can eclipse that several times with normal record sales (assuming of course that you buy into RIAAs claims that napster is killing their profits and that with Napster gone they can regain said lost ground). The more pertinent question I think would be will I pay 4.95 a month to give you access to my harddrive and the bandwidth that I pay for? I think for napster to charge a monthly service fee, then they would need to provide some sort of return so that people wont feel like they are being charged to share out their own harddrive.
jason
www.cyborgworkshop.com
...and the geek shall inherit the earth...
www.linux-skunkworks.com
The thing that has constantly annoyed me has been the fact that when the media covers Napster and the whole issue, they seem to always make sure to mention something along the lines of "Napster lets users trade copyrighted songs", "pirate music", or the like. The articles themselves are biased against it, and fail to mention one very important fact - Napster allows users to trade .mp3 music files, it's the users that decide whether to use it for commercial copyrighted music, or free .mp3s that have been released and are legal to trade as such.
I have yet to see one story even mention that it has that legimiate use, that there are files that it is not against the law to copy and distribute.
It would be like a story about VCR's and mentioning "VCR's, which allow people to copy movies instead of buying them..." and forgetting all the other uses they have.
See, the media doesn't have a liberal bias, they have a corporate bias...
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
>RIAA/metallica? (emphasis mine): So, am I
>to understand you'll pay for music you
>download, as long as you don't have to pay
>for Metallica
metallica ceased to be *ARTISTS* the day they released "the black album". Up to that point their albums were quite good, inspired, groundbreaking metal. The black album, and everything since, has been nothing more than radio-friendly, MTV-fodder crap.
Since then, they have become worse than sellouts. They have reinvented themselves as the #1 shills for the RIAA, talking heads for the very "establishment" they told us for years they were "rebelling" against.
They became something worse, by many orders of magnitude, than sellouts. They became hypocrites.
When you hear lars speak, you're really hearing what hillary rosen dictates. Metallica/RIAA are effectively the same entity. I see no point in distinguishing between them, when they do absolutely nothing to differentiate themselves.
metallica, the RIAA, the MPAA, lars, rosen, valenti.... is there ANY difference anymore? When you read statements by any of the three establishments, or their talking head spokesmen, they're pretty much interchangable, the only difference (besides a healthy dose of um's er's and uh's from lars (see the
Masters of Puppets indeed.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
I can hear it now...
All Internet users should pay $4.95 / month because they might use Napster or other evil piracy tools. We need to be able to recoup the cost of piracy, just as we do now for blank tapes and CDR's.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I derive at least that much benefit from it, so sure, why not.
In fact, if you can't afford to pay $4.95 a month, you should probably sell your computer, since you obviously need the money.
If you refuse to pay such a small amount, just know that you're in the same category as those cheap bastards who ask for 50 ketchup packets at McDonald's and steal flatware at Ponderosa.
"It's awfully difficult to spend 40 minutes in the court listening to (Napster attorney) Boies arguing why they don't have to pay," said RIAA chief executive Hilary Rosen.
Hillary is wise beyond her years. Which is impressive, since she's so goddamn old. Hillary is right - if you incorporate, if you distribute music, you're gonna have to pay. The RIAA basically has NO assets. They produce nothing. They exist only to suck money out of both sides of the artist-fan conduit, and to shape that conduit. That's a really good gig folks. Entertainment is the number one industry in the united states, and it has the highest profit margin.
And when you've got a good gig, and someone tries to take it from you...
someone is going to pay.
File sharing corporations have no future.
File sharing applications are the future.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
I would definitely pay for a subscription to the service, but what I guess the record companies don't realize is that there are plenty of Napster users out there like me, that get introduced to new music on Napster and then go buy the cd (or try to find it on ebay if it's no longer in print, as the case was recently for me for KMFDM Naive orange cd).
c ollege/index.html, it was written- "Take local record store owner Gordon Lamb.
I like being able to download songs that are very very rare, or that are no longer being put out by record companies or just plain haven't been released.
It's great to be able to find rare and unreleased songs and according to some record stores, napster has even helped sales...
On http://cnn.org/2000/TECH/computing/10/02/napster.
You might expect him to despise Napster. After all, he sells the music that millions of Napster users are swapping for free.
But business at his college-town shop, Wuxtry Records, is good. And worldwide music CD sales are reportedly up half a billion dollars this year overall.
Lamb thinks Napster should get some of the credit.
"It has helped us a lot," he said. "People have discovered things on Napster and then come in and special-ordered them or bought them right off the shelves." "
I think that other people would pay this nominal fee for use of this service, if it meant being able to get to material easy that record companies won't release.
Yeah, and then Napster can pay income taxes for it, everybody happy, right?
Funny how everything is OK if the government gets money for it...
Like with taxes on CD-Rs. Makes you wonder...
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
The question is if Napster is making a profit.
I use Napster so I can spam-download music and I tend to discard 90% of it before it finishes playing once. As a result, there are artists that I'd never have listened to because they don't get airplay. Mary Lou Lord. Moby. BT. Boa. And with those I'm more than happy to send a few bucks to fairtunes.com (and I really need to get off my *** and actually do that).
And that is the crux. I will support the artist. Which to me is far more equitable than the thug-like, drug-pusher-like cartel of the RIAA. Now look, I know this sounds to you like a big knee-jerk reaction but I have serious issues with the RIAA that I've come to on my own without the every-present nudging of Slashdot. Yes, I know that there are people looking to freeload, but you can't simply lump me with them wholesale.
My .02,
My .02,
zencode
iactivist.org/jason
All the up-and-coming bands will just sign on the line, because what else is there, a lifetime of pub gigs?
This whole suite is now (as Napster has lost) a waste of time. It isn't changing a thing, and there needs to be change.
Not just a change in the distribution, but a change in the parathingy
~ppppppppö
One of the primary arguments behind the thiev^H^H^H^H^Hpeople who download Copyrighted works from Napster is "CDs cost too much!"
But yet, we get people who bitch about the possible $5 subscription price. HELLO! This is less than HALF what your expensive CD costs!
This only provides proof to what I've been arguing. 98% of the Napster community isn't there because "CDs cost too much." They're there because they can get something for free that they would normally have to pay for.
And the minute they have to pay for it, they don't want anything to do with it. Even if it's an insignificant amount.
For Christ's sake, you LIKE THE MUSIC, RIGHT? Show a LITTLE appriciation for the work that went into creating it!
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Napster's popularity is due to the fact that it provides a level of pseudo anonymity. If you have to pay for the service, you'll be easily trackable. The people who are actually committing infringement are not going to pay. People who are downloading the truly free music most likely aren't sufficiently numerous to cover the opersting expenses of a company like Napster.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
you'd think that napster was never in it to make money, or anything....
/. makes ya login if you want to participate in the moderation system, which, in its own special way, is the thrill of it all.
OF COURSE they're going to subscriptions, just like every other content provider throughout history. magazines, cable tv, newspapers--hell, even
they have to pay that army of lawyers, liggers-on-of-shawn, and shawn's uncle somehow. not to mention the folks who actually are coding the damn thing.
as much as we'd like to pretend, napster is _not_ under the GPL, and their fight is _not_ the same as Free Software's fight. while napster raises some interesting IP issues, they still want to make a lot of money with what they're doing, and for those looking to make napster into a shining cause of the New Internet, this was a train wreck waiting to happen. napster is just another channel on that miraculous box in the the den, only instead of the news and weather it's music on demand. isn't that what cable companies have promised for years with movies?
napster has always been about the network it spawned, and it will go to great lengths to market, protect, and profit from that network, much like AOL and instant messenger.
don't be surprised when napster sells out. this was never a fight about free (as in beer) music and the growing of community. this was a play fight for publicity, plain and simple.
i feel bad for shawn fanning. i get the feeling he lies up at night and wonders how much better he could have handled this on his own, instead of letting the VC'ers take his creation away from him.
london is drowning and i live by river
I'm suspicious of this - you might even say paranoid. But right now Napster isn't making any money directly off the trading of music - Just Ad revenue, right? So what happens when they ARE making money directly off of the service? Even if they have an agreement with the RIAA (and they had better hire as many lawyers as they can afford to participate in their side of the drafting of such a document) there are often loopholes, and the RIAA may believe that in this agreement, they have a way to screw them.
I know how ridiculous this sounds to some of you. I know others of you are nodding your heads in agreement. Still others are wishing they had moderator points to slap me with :) But remember, these people have consistently shown that they are the closest thing to pure evil (in the form of greed) that the world has seen in some time. They are more than willing to step on anyone necessary in their attempts to own the whole pie.
Personally, I'd like to keep my pie to myself, but they don't want to see things that way. You should watch out for your slice when these greedy bastards come near...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This whole subscription thing is really a moot point. The RIAA already said no to the idea. They would rather take this to court and set up a precident that they can use to control everything about music. Remember when music was a form of expression to be shared and loved amogst friends? Neither do I.
How you see the world is how the world sees you.
...I don't have to pay for any of the content I obtain from other Napster users!
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
It's really simple. The Napster executives could have said "Wow, that's really cool", let's go ask the RIAA for their permission.
At that point the RIAA could have said yes or no, and perhaps Napster could have made their plans a reality.
But instead they took the approach of promoting blatant piracy with the thought that it's better to ask forgiveness than permission.
They should have known better.
RIAA artists and indie labels have a contract with the artists. The label pays to promote, produce, etc the artist and the artist agrees to their usually evil paying scheme. Lets say the "pay the signed artist" deal goes through then the RIAA will be suing their own musicians, and they will win everytime.
Un-signed bands are a completly different story, you can send them whatever you please.
Next out of the pipe?
Footster: Provides links for fans wanting to view copies of past Football games (NCAA/NFL paths) (Why not? #@%& TV networks never replay them!)
BatsterUp: Links to copies of past Baseball games (Hey, remember that game when McGwire hit his 70th? Yeah, let's watch it!)
BradySter: Uh... nevermind.. next
Sitcomster: 20 minutes of dumb jokes and laff tracks at the click of a mouse...
Toonster: Watch all your favorite old cartoons from peoples' VHS collection
Filmster: Watch movies from other people's VHS/DVD collections stored on their drives.
Etc..
Some of these may seem absurd given the current size and download time, but consider in a few years when glass runs to each house... uh huh.
Tip of the iceberg, eh?
--
Chief Frog Inspector
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This is just as bad as the media tax.
A flat rate per month is WRONG. It should be based on what you download, otherwise everyone who uses Napster will be paying the RIAA whether the music they trade is owned by RIAA members or not. If anyone is going to be paid for Napster, it should be the copyright owners, who may or may not be RIAA. If they get Napster Inc to agree to this, then it will just strengthen their monopoly and put anyone who competes with RIAA at a disadvantage.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
What you're looking for is MP3.com, then. Forget ever being able to pay RIAA artists directly. Barring divine intervention, their souls were sold so long ago that they're no longer eligible for depreciation tax deductions on the RIAA's annual returns.
I can live with $4.95 a month, but it would be better if any fee you paid for downloading an MP3 could be credited to the purchase of the corresponding CD. I object to having to pay for the shitty sound quality of MP3s.
But hell, maybe that could be the RIAA's way to make everyone happy. People pay a small fee for access to MP3's with a stronger incentive to buy the CD, and all of us sharing files get paid a small commission by RIAA member companies when they make a sale.
Of course, the RIAA is too greedy and too stupid to go for a system like that.
--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
It depends.
If the subscription fee were simply going to Fanning and co. as payment for the wonderful service that is Napster?
$4.99
If the subscription fee were being payed into a general fund that is payed directly to the artists whose music is being downloaded?
$9.99
If the subscription fee were arranged so that there is NOT a general fund, but the fee that *I* pay goes ONLY to the artists whose MP3s *I* download, and the vapid crap that *I* never download doesn't see a penny of MY fee?
$14.99
If so much as a penny of the subscription fee goes into the coffers of the RIAA/metallica?
$0.00
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
Perhaps that would be better, but I think we all know the RIAA would never accept it. That are not after a piece of the "online distribution" game, they are after the WHOLE game. The own distribution in every other media, and they will not rest until they completly control online distribution as well. If they can't they will buy enough laws to make online distribution illegal.
That said, I would STILL rather a system be devised to pay the artists directly.
Finkployd
www.c-span.org
Thanks for the link. They don't look to have a lot I'd want to pay for-- and certainly not to commit to a 12 month sub, but this is exactly what I'm talking about. I don't care who makes the money, I care about my price as a consumer and my rights to fairly use my purchases. And this is exactly what Napster should at as an example of what they could offer to the record companies as a way of working.
I do not have a signature
...with a strange "H" on the water jug. Now who is that woman in the picture? Looks sorta like Janet Reno with Sandra Day O'Connor's face.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
So basically, the Napster server logs would show that the two paying guys from Nevada are currently logged in from over 10,000 IP addresses worldwide.
Paying for access to a device created to transport pirated material...yeah, THAT'LL happen in real life!
------
Let me give you the lowdown
By agreeing to this license:
1. You certify that you are not member of:
i) RIAA
ii) Lawyer association
iii) Law enforcement
iv) An artist with copyrighted works
2. That you won't sue us.
If you aren't paying for music, you aren't helping the musicians, period. "The RIAA is screwing them, so I might as well do the same" doesn't put a dime in a musician's pocket. At least when I buy a CD, I have a general feeling that some of the money makes its way back to the musician.
"...I feel that music, like other forms of art and all forms of information, should be free..." and I am going on the assumption here that you mean "without cost to the consumer."
I wonder what you do for a living, and I would like to know how you would feel if some stranger came in and said, "I think what you do should be free. We've set up a system, and your boss agrees. No more paychecks for you."
People work. Pay them for it. Until food, shelter, clothing, and the lower end of the hierachy of needs are free, don't start devaluing what a lot of us are making a living at. I just did a webpage. I made a few dollars. I make webpages for a living. Maybe you would like it that I made no money at all? Perhaps we should all work in factories, at fast foot joints, and barbershops, places where we have a tangible good or service to produce. Yeah, let's go back to that system where wealth was even more unevenly distributed and you had to be born to a family that owned a factory to have a decent lifestyle. Let's go work in those coal mines, because, gosh darn it, this information shouldn't cost anybody anything.
Honest, I am NOT trying to troll, it's just that ... greed masquerading as "we know what is best for you" communism gets to me.
And not because I download music from Napster, which I do not very often owing to the fact that people are not quite open about their private collections like old days. Previously it was quite possible to download pretty much anything that you wanted to, and I use to leave napster running through out the night and see around 300 downloads by the next day. However nowadays, I have found people masquerading 56kb links as T3 and shutting off access to their private collection, while at the same time downloading from others. Thats what napster community has become.
:)
I would pay the amount but I dont really believe that everyone would, because most of the people who download music from napster really dont care about RIAA, Napster and what free digital content is all about. They just wanna download just another mp3 while Napster is still up and running. What Napster really did to the world was just opening up a new way to trade mp3 files. It really didnt care about anything other than that. I respect Napster and the people behind it for creating the first (maybe) Peer to Peer sharing mechanism, and its a sad thing that it was used for piracy. But then thats life. In a similar analogy, the only Ecommerce sites (after all this dot com hype) who makes money are the Porn sites. So its quite humane to take technology and profit from it no matter whats being exchanged and most of the times its quite impossible to define whats legal and whats not.
I would pay 4.95 and I would hope that the court rules against RIAA (I dont care whether they rule in favour of napster) atleast to rip off the masks they been wearing protecting their own interests and not of their musicians. I hope someone would soon come up with a new model where musicians would be able to reach their fans directly and benefit from it. At the same time I think its crap when people say that music should be free. Maybe part of it, but leave that to the musician, he should be the deciding factor, not some 10 yr old kid in his basement
My two cents
Rapid Nirvana
Where did that number come from? Knowing the single-mindedness of the RIAA, I'm sure they'd want about $(cost of the CD/songs on the CD) per download. That's about $0.75 - $1.00 per track. Then tack Napster's fee on top of that. Otherwise RIAA companies aren't getting the return on investment they deserve, right? I mean, think of it - if someone downloaded 150 songs in one month for $4.95 that would be like $0.50 per album. I'm sure that the industry analyists wouldn't stand for that.
And if they decided to be generous and offer music for, let's say, 1/4th the current price (never going to happen) then wouldn't that be an admission of guilt about the current over-pricedness of CDs?
Cooperating with the music industry will just lead to the destruction of Napster and faster acceptance of alternative swapping services.
I won't use napster now for free as it doesn't provide a service I require. But thats just me.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I would pay for it for the first month to check it out -- (assuming it was a reasonable fee) ... to me (while free music was cool) a trivial fee for basically infinite music surfing would be well worth my money, as napster (yeah-including the damned chatrooms) led me to several of my last CD purchases ... (which were a few months ago now)
bemis
Linux has BSODs -- we just call 'em screensavers...
Why? Gnutella, hotline, swapoo, and even Beos has beshare (which is very nice, gui wise.)
Dutch boy is putting his finger in the dyke, and more holes are appearing.. only ten fingers...
when Push Comes to Shove
Is this just a ploy by the RIAA to be able to waltz into court for the next round and say "See, now they're *selling* our^H^H^H the artist's music!"
Greg
emusic.com offers a (kind of) similar service here.
"I don't need a compass to tell me which way the wind shines." - Mr. Furious, Mystery Men
At $1 per track it's still worth it to me for these reasons:
:)
1. I don't have to go over to Tower records to buy the CD. I can just burn my own (for 50 cents more).
2. I tend to listen to pretty esoteric music that is often hard to find, even on-line. There are albums I have and would gladly pay $25 or more for.
3. I listen to a lot of progressive groups that tend to only have 3 -5 tracks per CD.
Still, I'd happily accept an equivalent per minute charge (maybe 20-25 cents a minute?) to download anything I like.
However, the RIAA will not let anything happen that doesn't leave them completely in control to gouge us how they see fit, preferably by a pay-per-listen scheme that would grossly penalize those of us who listen to music 60 hours or more a week.
Rick
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Fairtunes is a great idea, although personally I'd rather pay a per download fee or monthly subscription on a Napster-like service that cooperated with the production companies to provide more "legitimate" (read complete, well-digitized) copies of songs, that I could feel were ethically and legally okay. Right now, with less than $4K in "tips" to artists, Fairtunes is completely off the radar. But given the contracts that most bands have with their record companies, and the oddities involved, like advances, royalties, etc etc, I have to wonder that a tipping service isn't at least as fraught with potential legal complications as Napster-- especially if it can be shown that these "tips" are in fact payments for what would otherwise be considered pirated copies of songs.
Also, I'm a little skeptical of the need to cut out the record labels (or why I should care as a fan), if the bands themselves-- over and over again in the face of the obvious snow job they themselves are getting from the record companies-- won't refuse to sign with these jokers. There are so many small labels out there and the cost to produce a small run LP or CD is not that huge. Most of these bands seem perfectly willing to play the craps game that is rock & roll stardom. If they get screwed in that process, that's their problem. Maybe they should consider forming a union.
As a consumer, I'm only interested in Napster as a way to obtain rare tracks and sample or single tracks (and hopefully they can work out some legal way between a Napster-like service and the RIAA members for this to happen), although I suppose I'd get into downloading full CDs worth of tunes if available. But if I don't like the price of a new CD at the music retailer, I don't buy it. That's the underlying principle of capitalism, and in this case it's not like it deprives people of something important like housing, food, or their right to bear arms.
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