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Napster Users Being Arrested In Belgium
Coward Anonymous writes: "According to this AP bulletin in Salon, the Belgian police are arresting Napster users. This is a new twist on things, isn't it?
Now if only the Belgian police would be so effective at arresting pedophiles..." But don't worry, this only applies to people who have "been warned." How comforting.
So far, only a small minority of artists have made money. Read their interviews. Watch VH1 behind the music. Learn to play an instrument, get in a band and go see it first hand.
Most musicians do not make much off their music. The vast majority have to do something else for a living. It's been that way for decades. Napster is not picking their pockets; musician's pockets were empty to start with.
The record companies are bagging the money. They are the ones making all the fuss while using this artist's intellectual property argument as a smokescreen. Don't confuse the record companies interests with the artists interests. They're not the same.
When it comes to ripping off the artists, Napster users just can't compete with the record companies.
Artists have fared no worse with Napster and the record companies have sold more CDs.
Napster won't help big name acts but it might help local bands. I doubt there is any way to significantly increase the income of musicians but I do fault the record companies for their disingenuous sanctimony. They gouge consumers, shaft artists and pocket the lion's share of the money. If anything Napster is more of a threat to them than it is to artists since most artists can't make much less than they are making now and many would benefit from the free distribution.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
However- what's wrong with 100,000 bands each selling 10 cds? That's my entire point- it establishes a market where one didn't exist before. Spudly with the big hair can sell 10 CDs, and there's nothing wrong with that. 'Bassic' (a very competent, likeable mp3.com musician) can sell thousands of CDs, and has- just through the natural sorting process. More importantly, it becomes possible to tread waaaaaay outside the mainstream and get away with it- I've sold (while I was at mp3.com) a DAM CD (meaning, nothing but 128K mp3s burned to CDR in a pretty package!) consisting of entirely raw NOISE music: you can hear the tracks at besonic, above, it's the 'Hard Vacuum' album. It was entirely done manipulating EQ and compression on raw shortwave radio interference and 'circuit bending' the compressor. I have never heard, or made, ANYTHING with less commercial potential, or less claim to be considered music. But I discovered there was a community out there which liked Noise, read some rants about what Real Noise was, and went for it- and that's one of the CDs that I _sold_ a copy, even without being able to offer a proper audio CD of it! I felt the experience was educational...
I hope I can wind up recording, mixing, mastering other musicians who don't have it together technically- that's what I'd like most to do. And you're absolutely right that people shouldn't be trying to get 1000 CDs pressed and then try to place them in stores- too many people get 'million cellars' (a million records in boxes in your cellar ;) ). But my whole point is, you don't have to do that anymore! Don't even burn the things yourself- set up with Ampcast, set up shirts etc. with CafePress, if they drop the ball then hook up with other services, but _decentralise_ it. Because it may be kind of unnatural to sell 5 million records- but what is wrong with selling 5, or 500? From where I'm sitting I could reach over and touch a modified Kurzweil Micropiano, a nice little synth module that I bought from an mp3.com royalty check. You can say that I don't have the fucking talent, if you want- maybe you're right, from some perspectives! But if I can pick up a few hundred dollars just from my music alone, I gotta wonder how well someone would do who _was_ really 'pop', without those nefarious Zappa influences that plague me and make my melodies dissonant :)
And it's not even about the idea that someone can be earning tens of thousands of dollars off their music- that's always going to happen for a few- the important thing is that I can get a couple hundred without any trouble, and that other people can get, say, $50 simply because, in all the world, there were some people out there who liked what they did.
To be accurate, currently I don't get a penny from my mp3s- I'd like to keep it that way but probably will switch over to ampcast completely on the basis of the CD program, and ampcast pays some sort of micropayment for downloads. They don't charge _listeners_ and if they did I'd find somewhere else to put mp3s. But my point is, I don't have to be the next Ricky Martin in order to earn a few bucks on my music. This is 2001- it's not all or nothing anymore. When I get rolling with the Ampcast CD program, I'll sell a couple to people who like the music- a couple to audiophiles or people who want to test stereos with it- here and there, it adds up, and doing order fulfilment is not MY problem. I get to focus on the music, and by doing so it will get better. What's not to like?
Some houses of people, operating an illegal MP3 site were raided - no arrests as of yet.
IFPI (the Belgian RIAA) has been busy the last couple of months collecting data on Belgian Napster Users. They've send out a warning to everone who was identified to scare them away from Napster. If these "warned" users appeared multiple times on their lists later on, they were added to their blacklist - which IFPI gave to the authorities. IFPI has stated multiple times that they are declaring war on the individual napster user.
Coincidental, the people who were raided, had also napster installed. IFPI added them directly to their blacklist.
Yesterday, the justice minister in Belgium - Marc Verwhilgen - sent out a press release that litigating napster users has absolutely the lowest priority in our courts. This is basically the same as: "This napster-thing is really just bollocks, we have better things to do". In reality being "low priority" in the Belgian courts means that there won't be a trial for an individual napster user unless hell freezes over.
This means that individual users on the IFPI-blacklist won't be prosecuted by the Belgian authorities for using napster. If you were using napster to burn thousands of illegal CDs and sell them, you've got a whole different situation. In that case you will be prosecuted for the selling of illegal copyrighted material - not for using napster.
Not so dumb here in little ol' Belgium, eh? ;-)
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
I have several friends that are in bands, Good bands. and My 16 year old son knows one that was recently signed by a record company. here's what happened....
their lawyer looked over the contract and stated that it was a standard record company contract (he compared it to other contracts from that company.) so it's not some special screw em contract.
They lost all rights to all their music. they own nothing now. The lead singer recorded an acoustical version of a song he wrote years ago and posted it on napster/gnutella the company found out and fined him $2500.00 and told him that he was responsible for getting it off of there. when you sign a record contract you sell your soul completely. The company own's you for the duration of the contract... Let's look at that closer. The lead singer of this band, wanted to take a vacation and visit his parents, the record company said NO, they will tell him when he can do something. He cannot appear on TV or call into a radio station without prior approval of the company, and any money he recieves for his skills must be reported to the company for their cut. (don't play in a bar on the side.... they get a cut of that!)
the record companies screw the artist hard. and I have yet to meet a real artist that didn't like napster. (metallica don't count they are NOT artists.)
This whole music thing is a simple gambit. The overlords are looking to quell the peons. and if the peons don't comply, opress them.
There is not one thing that a record company can give a band that the band cant get on their own (except airplay, as radio stations can only play music sanctioned by the group owned by them. (I know this... I worked in radio))
I support any artist. I do not support the leaches that steal from the artist (record companies)
Unfortunately, the leeches will win, as they can outspend every one of us.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If you break the law by infringing on someone's intellectual property, and do so repeatedly in spite of warnings, what do you think will happen?
:-)
Caveat: I don't think it's right to enforce copyright laws AND impose a blank-media tax. That's screwing consumers, left, right, and center. You should only be screwed once
Slashdot cried when the record companies went after Napster. "Deal with the law-breaking individuals," they said, "leave the company alone." Now, the record companies and artists are going after the users, and we're still crying. Why? Are we all hypocrits?
I agree that much is broken with the current copyright system and recording industry. That doesn't give you carte blanche to rip off artists. Personally, I fulfil my moral obligations to the artists by donating through Fairtunes. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like many other people do (judging by donation stats).
Go ahead and flame me. I ask only one thing of you if you do: come up with a viable scheme for artists to make money from their work. If you can't think of one, you can hardly blame the record companies for clinging to what they have.
1) Police *searched* homes for evidence. THey did not arrest.
2) Those searched were users of a website. The authorities were *contemplating* Napster cases.
With the passages of new content laws in the EU and US, it seems we are coming one step closer to having industrial police running our streets. Gutenberg's printing press brought books to the masses and resulted in an advancement of personal living standards. Let us just hope that the internet eventually serves to redeem itself by benefiting mankind and not the corporations. It's be an awful shame if the internet were responsible for the privatization of the world's governments.
Pax Digitalia
Regarding napster or any P2P thing, all I can say is: please include my content in whatever peer-to-peer network is the latest greatest thing.
Here: www.besonic.com/chrisj
I am not essentially a consumer. I don't have time to keep in touch with the latest P2P developments- because my time is spent keeping in touch with what affects me as an artist.
It may interest you to know that as an artist using P2P as distribution, I have access to print-to-order stuff over the net, everything from T-shirts to mousepads to coffee mugs, all of which can have my GFX or whatever on it, and I can get paid for selling _real_ _tangible_ stuff... and the very latest development (ampcast.com, just the other day, announced this one) is that I can go to a _good_ hosting service with a fair contract and good artist relations and get Red Book Audio CDs burned to order over the net. This isn't ready yet but it's due by the end of March: I supply a CDR master (I can get professional quality as will quickly become apparent: this is what I do...) and they keep it on file, burn from it when a copy is ordered and keep an image of the CD for 30 days on HD in case of repeat orders to save on filing and handling hassles.
I can't begin to express how awesome this is: it's the first time I'm aware of that a musician could set up a burn-to-order fulfillment service (and not have to deal with juggling CDR blanks, inventory etc, or even taking orders) and be selling full-on, uncompressed, bit-for-bit untampered Red Book Audio CDs over the net, with color booklets and inserts! It's the epitome of the internet musician's wet dream, and should be a very nice business for Ampcast.
And it profoundly legitimises peer-to-peer: now, mp3s (or whatever) really _have_ a value. If they get into the hands of someone who wants a proper REAL CD of the music, now they can have one- and if nobody wants one, hey, nobody's out anything! Ampcast just stores one extra boring CD in the files, they're not out the cost of printing up thousands of the things, and I'm not out anything either, except the cost of the CD blank.
This year will see the final maturing of the complete product support network for the internet musician- with burn/print to order for everything from shirts to full-on audio CDs to fscking _mousepads_ we're practically at the level of 'Jackson 5' merchandising capabilities, without using the record industry. That is very, very exciting... now the only thing I'd like to see is print-to-order _posters_... that is just about the only thing left that isn't already covered!
Amazing, amazing... and P2P is the distribution network for publicising this stuff. None of it expects any sort of formal promotion efforts- it's all totally grassroots... which I think is no sort of accident, I think this is the natural reaction to increasing corporatization. People _want_ to discover their own stuff, even stuff that's 'no commercial potential' (as written on old Mothers Of Invention album covers), and having discovered it they'll buy tangible stuff to go with the free digital stuff they have, so long as the tangible stuff is good. What they won't do is be forced to pay money for totally intangible digital stuff that the corporate seller didn't have to pay anything to copy out- that's doomed, the future of making money fairly through IP is being able to offer stuff that is physical and real, that people might enjoy. (Italicisation of stuff in honor of Frank Zappa's typographical style and George Carlin)
Seriously, I always suspected but now I know that the future of being a small indie 'content producer' is to take complete advantage of everything that you can possibly give away or share for free- any digital files, etc, anything at all that you don't have to pay for actual materials, throw it out there! And then, find something that you can sell that is _tangible_ and physical, stuff to rumple and fetish as FZ put it. Shirts to wear, CDs to give nicer sounds and be hard-copy that can't be lost in HD crashes, mousepads to use (different band for every day of the week, why not?) mugs to hold COFFEE etc etc, _physical_ stuff.
Because the equalising effect of worldwide communications makes it possible... put it this way. I've been on besonic for a while, rarely if ever do any promoting, but for some reason lots of people in Sweden have listened to my music. Who knew? I have a track off an electronic album that is very warm and mellow called 'Wood Dragon': at one point it was one of the highest ranking easy listening tracks in Japan. Again, who knew? Supposing I saw that and decided to explore the easy-listening-electronic area some more for the people in Japan who enjoyed it, throwing in some woodflutes and obscure pentatonic intervals (I researched Japanese melodies for a later track and quite liked them). Supposing I made lovely high-fidelity audio CDs available, and stuff like shirts and mousepads, minimising English text and sticking to elegant graphic designs since I know that it's Japan which was showing an interest in the stuff. I could do quite well that way- not getting rich, but paying some bills and buying more synths etc- by doing _good_ _work_ and selling only tangible, real stuff. This is real. The future is now...
So support the P2P networks! This is not about greedy consumers wanting stuff for free. It's about communication and _information_ and I promise you, as an artist, I couldn't GET demographic information like that out of the record companies. The only alternative to P2P and artist independence is the record companies (and other forms of distribution controls and let me tell you a little story... I hang out on a mastering engineer list- and recently one of the top guys came out with a chilling story. He'd worked with an artist for weeks to get the ideal mastering for the artist's CD, testing it in actual clubs, working like mad to balance it just perfectly so it was the best it could possibly be. Then a new A&R guy was assigned to the artist, and against my engineer friend's AND the artist's wishes, decided to assign the mastering to another mastering guy: which is known as a 'shoot-out'. Usually the label wants 'louder, brighter, more' from such a situation, and it's gotten to the point where mastering engineers are _ruining_ the sounds of records just because the labels are _demanding_ that the new record's gotta be louder than the next guy. My friend, I believe, did a terrific job on the CD- just what the ARTIST wanted- but it is _always_ possible to make a CD louder by making it sound worse. And I think that's just what's going to happen, and I pity the artist, because all their work is going to be butchered by a mastering job that squashes it into extreme loudness and ruins the tone- it probably won't even sound as good in the clubs! All because of a new A&R guy who outranks both the original mastering guy and the artist. It's anybody's guess as to whether the artist's career can survive releasing a CD that sounds like crap- you don't get many chances in the music business, and the new mastering engineer has a vested interest in making his mastering sound as _different_ as possible from the original one that took so much painstaking work.
Now, all the mastering guys are absolutely miserable about this general state of affairs, it's hurting the industry, it's hurting the sound of modern releases, and there seems to be no way to get the record companies to stop doing it.
But now, indie content producers can put out full quality audio CDs and none of them are forced to do any such thing- they have _total_ freedom to do whatever their artistic judgement dictates, with the result succeeding or failing purely on its merits- the 'word' of it getting out primarily through word-of-mouth and P2P. THAT is why artists desperately need P2P to thrive and continue- because without it, it is less and less likely that the consumer will even be allowed to hear their art, because already if they have to go through existing channels, the consumer IS NOT allowed to hear their art until label suits have specified which songs, albums etc will be allowed to be released, until A&R guys have dictated the use of mastering engineers counter to the artist's wishes and specifically told the mastering guy to ruin the sound to make it louder louder louder, until corporate execs have decided which markets they're even going to sell the CD in and which markets they are not going to allow it to be available at all.
Only then does the consumer get to 'choose' what they want.
Free market, hell!
I wrote it and my intent wasn't to imply that all Belgians are pedophiles.
It was only meant to stress the hypocrisy of things when the Belgian police was very quick to arrest those dangerous Napster users while letting the likes of Marc Dutroux run wild for months murdering 8 y/o girls.