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Ring-Tone Royalties
Bonker writes: "I shook my head sadly when I saw this article on Techweb. It's about a company in the U.K. called Envisional, who monitors intellectual property violations. It seems that they believe that each Ringtone download is worth 7.5 c. The 'monitoring startup calls the downloading of musical ring tones "another Napster in the making" and says the industry may be losing more than $1 million a day in related royalties.' Sad sad sad." If it was April Fool's this would go down much easier.
AFAIK here in Finland each ringtone you download has a small percentage in it which goes to support the Gramex/Teosto copyright organizations.
My personal opinion is that the said organizations suck ass because of them you do not eg. hear radio in the bus (it would cost too much to pay the copyright mafia "their" money for the priviledge of "broadcasting" music to an audience). So you just have to sit quietly and stare out the window. If you've been in a Finnish bus, you know what I mean. Also, basically the money you pay end up supporting the most popular artists, Finland's equivalent of someone like B. Spears.
Why should there be these kind of organizations? Why should there even be record labels? Straight from artist to the consumer is the way to go. At this point there are too many middlemen in the chain.
BUt its true and you know it.
If 10000000 people get something for free, then how can you know that the demand would be the same for $20, or $100?
its like saying , hey we sold 12000 copies at $39.95, but if we sold these CDs for $100each we could have made more money, thus did they really LOOSE, 7200000, or gain 479400. Im sure the tax man would tell you to fuck off, if you told him you made a loss of selling software fore $39.95 and said you made a loss of 7.2M$ because you could have sold it at $100each.
The BSA is full of shit.
In the UK press there are hundreds of ads for absurdly expensive "services" "selling" ringtones of chart songs at £1 a time. I suspect they are not run by the sorts of people who regularly 'fess up to the PRS (Publishing Rights Society). I've never owned a mobile, but if I did (and had the bad taste to want to draw attention to myself with the latest from Destiny's Child bleeping out from my crotch) I'd rather my £1 went to Beyonce than some dodgy geezer in a lock-up in the East End of London.
Correct! We run a ringtone site here in the UK, and 10% of everything we make goes to the MCPS http://www.mcps.co.uk/, the Mechancial Copyright Protection Society. Just like the PRS protects the performance of a work, the MCPS protects the composer of a work, the composer being a much more appropriate recipient of the royalties.
I don't know wether I'm for or against this; one part of me (the bit that wants to be a millionaire;) says no but I can see the MCPSs point.
We're employing professional musicians to recode the essence/melody of popular (i.e. well known) tunes in to MIDI files. Sometimes this works really well and other times it comes out sounding awful, but bearing in mind the process I'd still say it's "music".
The UK population is, I think, about 50-60 million. The proportion owning mobile phones recently reached 60%, surpassed in the world only by some of the Scandanavian countries. That's about 35 million cell phones. 13 million calls a day seems reasonable.
This sig is a figment of your imagination.
Every now and then somebody with a midi capable phone asks 'Can I convert a .wav/mp3 to midi?' on comp/alt.music.midi. There is software to do it, but your mileage may vary. After somebody asked this on /. some time ago I started writing a package, WaveGoodbye, available here, but this is designed for polyphonic conversion which phones cannot handle (yet). This is now the most capable of the free wav->midi conversion programs, and can rival the commercial packages at piano music conversion. The version 1, Windows only, binary is freely available and version 2 is currently under development. I am considering releasing the source for this and taking it cross platform. Any Kylix developers out there interested? The alt.music.midi faq (linked from the above link, unless it has moved again) contains a list of poly- and mono-phonic conversion programs. Polyphonic conversion is very difficult and still a topic of research in many university media groups. Monophonic conversion is easier and these programs are generally more accurate.
This sig is a figment of your imagination.
1) Most people are downloading these ringtones via
calls to premium rate lines, so somebody is
making money off them. It's a commercial venture
and as such should they be paying for rights to
use other peoples more-or-less artistic efforts.
2) Custom ringtones are so annoying that they may
in fact herald the apocalypse. I for one would be
for the human toaster in the event of such, so
anything that cuts down on their use is a good
thing.
K.
-
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
A ring tone doesn't use the original recording (yet). If it's just performing the song, then only the song's publishers and writers should be concerned, not the record companies. Keep your evil money-grubbing industries straight, you analysts and writers!
"Method of using symbols or verbal / musical tones to communicate thoughts, ideas, and emotions between individuals."
I'll charge $10 for every letter typed and $50 for every spoken syllable (special discounts available - contact me for details). That takes care of me ever having to work again, saving my time and energy for more valuable things like playing all the way through Doom in less than eight hours.
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
Coppin said record labels are entitled to 7.5 cents for each download of a ring tone that uses copyrighted material....
Um, NO. The recording industry trades in music recordings, not music compositions. If I was to purchase the sheet music for the Brandenburg concerto and put an excerpt on a mobile phone, I owe the recording industry NOTHING. Same happens if I was to purchase sheet music for "Hey Jude" by Paul McCartney, or something else recent. The only person to whom I would owe money is the composer. The recording industry cannot claim royalties from anyone for making their own performances from the original, legally-purchased sheet music.
--
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
You still pay royalties on a "reinterpretation" of a song. I've performed a cover on each of my last two albums, and in both cases my record label paid about 7 cents per CD manufactured in royalties to the publisher of the song.
The law establishes what's called a "compulsory mechanical license", essentially saying to the owner of publishing rights on the song "yes, you own the rights, but if someone wants to cover your song, you MUST grant them that right so long as they pay the current per-use royalty rate."
You can check out more info at:
- http://www.nmpa.org/hfa/mechanical.html
-Ed http://www.funkatron.comIf it wasn't something they'll probably think of, that would be really funny...
Wondering- My car stereo is louder than most, am I an evil man because people outside of my car (and when I'm feeling annoying, down the street and in their houses) can hear the music too???
Remember when it was ok to listen to music, and you only had to pay if you wanted to own a copy? Those were the days, weren't they?
--Gfunk
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I mean as far as ring tones go, it's much easier to manually duplicate a series of tones.
It's not quite the same as the issue of a full blown song and trying to replicate that from scratch, or is it? If it is copyright infringement to download a ring tone, is it also copyright infringement to display a list of numbers to press and save that will "sound just like" a popular song? Additionally, would it also be copyright infringement for me to attempt to duplicate a song without directions, merely pressing keys to a song in my head that I know exists?
I assume this will happen in more countries and I assume it already happened in the UK.
Hooked on
This is just another step. Lawyers will keep trying to clamp down on intellectual property until we finally say "ENOUGH". Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should go out and pilfer every piece of IP that isn't secured (and even try to get the ones that are). But, at some point, Joe Sixpack will realize how insanely stupid it is for him to pay $0.076 for a tune on his Nokia phone. One that may or may not be copyrighted or may not even really resemble the original song. He'll then start wondering why CDs have never come down in price and why the artist (who we only want to protect, remember?) gets so very little. Then he'll wonder why he can't play his new "enhanced" music media in the car AND at home. Then he'll wonder why he spends so much money on IP in the first place.
Yes, it's fun to have a unique ring on my phone (mine happens to play Europe's Final Countdown). I wouldn't pay extra for the benefit. I coded mine from some very old sheet music I had laying around. I don't know if that's copyright infringement, but I do know I could play it on my keyboard in 1987, and I could even program my keyboard to play it ad infinitum if I so chose. I don't see the difference between it and my phone. If anything, the phone is lesser quality.
At any rate, back to the original conversation. The record labels are shooting themselves in the foot. Even Wal-Mart figured out that to get people in the door, you've got give a little bit away. They can lock down every musical format they want, make it where it's not usable any more, and guess what? Their customer base will die out. I'm quite sure they'll just blame it on piracy though, like they always do.
I'm just waiting patiently for the day the pendulum starts swinging back the other way. More and more people are getting appalled by the increased prices, restricted uses, and gestapo tactics. When they finally get this phone thing locked down, I'm sure it'll be about as useful as www.lyrics.ch.
-------------------------------------------------
He only wants you to contact him so he can then sue you for patent infringement - you must infringe the patent to contact him. Beware!
For all the people talking about public domain... take a look at: http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm. Basically there are different periods when different songs come into the public domain... just look at the chart for the info.
For those talking about Fair Use, we can basically say that Fair Use is a decorative law... basically it does nothing but offer guidelines... it doesn't say anything concrete.. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html. Take a look, you can read it... it's just pretty much fluff.
And then we come to the RIAA site (http://www.riaa.com/Copyright-Laws-2.cfm)... although very biased on the topic, you can see their position in the following quote.
The general rule for teachers and students is that you can use 10% of a song, but not more than 30 seconds... but as the RIAA page states... even value can be derived from a three second clip. So basically, if the people try and fight the music companies on this one... they are taking a big gamble... because "value" is what it all comes down to... nothing in the fair use law gaurantees anything for them.Steve
I see a lot of people here jumpning up and down like this is a big nasty thing. It's not.
Using something like this should be covered under fair use. Let face it, 5 or 6 notes of the latest boy band crud comming out of you cell phone isn't going to cause record companies any grief, if you programmed it in yourself. I doubt that even if you had a site that gave the little tunes you programmed away for free they would care. The problem comes up when somebody starts selling these little clips to other people. That's not fair use, that's generating profit from someone else's trademark. That's why record companies are going to get pissed.
The issue the article brings up is that people are selling these things and not giving artists, composers or publishers their cut of the revenue. I have a hard time thinking that it's a fair use situation.
[screams] "HELLO!!?. NO, I'M IN A ART GALLERY.... NO... IT'S CRAP..."
Check out the Big Mobile Clip.
This is just like Microsoft claiming that since X home users pirate their software that they charge Y for, they are "losing" $XY. This is complete BS, though, because just as a home user isn't going to pay $500 for office, most people are not going to pay money to download ringtones.
Ok, if your cell phone is playing a full 3 minute pop song every time someone calls, you probably are violating copyrights (as well as risking justifiable homicide).
But if your phone is playing a 3-second clip from a song (never mind if that song is 200+ years old and the copyright has long since expired, like Beethoven's Fifth or something), that really seems like it should fall under the doctrine of fair use. Where do you draw the line? Is it a violation of fair use if I hum a few bars of a song? I don't think so.
But anything to get their greedy little paws on more cash, I guess...
-- "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin
Maybe this isn't such a bad thing after all... if I don't hear another monotone version of "Hit me baby one more time" I may just be able to hold off from hitting some 15 year old teenie bopper "one more time".
-ct
--
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
This creates two intriguing but very different applications. First, there's the fun you can have with calling people when you know they're at certain places (eg: at a funeral) and playing a particularly unsuitable tune (eg: for he's a jolly good fellow) on their phone. Second, this would change who is responsible for the ring tone to the caller rather than the owner of the phone.
When you make a performance of a piece of music, you must pay royalties to the publisher (the biggest in the UK is BMG). They in turn will arrange compensation to the composer, under whatever contract they have with them. If you were to buy the sheet music to Hey Jude and play that at a concert you would have to pay the owner of the copyright of the composition (usually the publisher, but in that case I think a certain mr Jackson bought all the Beatles' rights up a while ago).
Note that the publisher can't stop you making the performance or recording, but they can demand royalties. Contrast that with the copyright owner of a recording, they have absoloute control over it and can legally stop you using it.
Just as with anything else, any artist in a "normal" contract doesn't own squat. Their compositions are owned by the publisher, their recordings by the label.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
> It's the use of the major melodic theme of a piece of music without paying for it.
Bullshit. Last time I checked, fair use encompasses the reproduction of small portions of a copyrighted work in both derivative works and for various other reasons, including the ever-popular "just because I want to as long as it's *personal* use." For example, I am entitled to go to the library and jot down a few paragraphs from any given book. If I keep that paper with a few phrases on it in my pocket, is that a violation of copyright? No. If I show that piece of paper to people occasionally, is that violation of copyright? No. That is fair use, and is entirely personal. Now, if I were to start photocopying that piece of paper with those paragraphs on it, and handing out copies to everyone...then it starts to fall into copyright violation, even though it's just a few paragraphs, because I'm distributing it and it is obviously not a personal use.
This ring-tone nonsense is identical, only with sounds. Anyone is entitled under fair use to copy the few tones of the phrase "hit me baby one more time" for personal use, just as I am free to copy sentences out of a book and keep them in my pocket. Keeping those few musical notes on my cell-phone is the musical equivalent. It is a personal use. I am only using a very small portion of the copyrighted work. I am not distributing copies of it, it is onjly heard on my own phone when it rings. It can be heard by other people, just as I would be free to show my piece of paper with a few sentences from a book to people without violating copyright. It is a fair and personal noncommercial use of a small excerpt. Now, if I were to charge people to listen to my phone playing such musical notes, that would be a violation. If I were to make copies of the ring-tone and distribute them, then I would possibly be liable for copyright infringement--maybe, there are still arguments to be made either way. But just taking a few bars of music and programming them into my cellphone is NOT copyright infringement, it is a valid fair use.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
My phone is usually silent, but vibrates ;-)
when call comes in. Whan idustry
is losing money here? (I would not rather guess).
If only I had copyrighted "brrrriing, brrrriing" when I had the chance.
--
47% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Repeat after me: Puuuuubbbbblllliiiicccc Ddddddoooooommmmaaaaiiiiinnnn wherein just about any use is fair use. So I can play my Beethoven's fifth reproduction all I want... (note that in this instance a specific performance of music that is effectively public domain is still unique and copyrightable, so you make up your own, as DTMF ain't that hard, burning copies of a recording by $orchestra is still piracy).
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
No - theres a terrible human cost to listening to too much Steely Dan.
perhaps his estate gets some cash whenever someone has their phone on silent or vibrate?
Wait a second...
"Envisional Ltd., which sells software and services for monitoring intellectual-property rights violations online... decided to pursue the ring-tone research on its own."
Well, it's obvious then. Envisional Ltd. is a company that does very little at all, if anything. They 'monitor intellectual-property rights violations'? They'd be more aptly labled 'master serach engine operators'.
Isn't it obvious that this kind of controversial announcement, with no industry backing whatsoever, is simply an effort to gain public attention and therefore clients?
"...cell phone usage is pervasive enough that users are looking for ways to distinguish their cell phones' rings from others."
Funny, I usually have no trouble distinguishing my phone from the others _because it's in my own fucking pocket_!
Just how retarded do they think the users are?
--
and says the industry may be losing more than $1 million a day in related royalties
Yeah, and Ed McMahon and Publisher's Clearing House say I may have already won $10 million, but do you think I'm ever going to see a dime of it?
Its only lost royalties if they would have gotten them in the first place.
NO CARRIER
Two stories in a row with comments along the lines of "This isn't an April Fools Joke"...April was last month. I'm confused
So perhaps a more appropriate comment would be "Mayday! Mayday!"? After all, this is May day (May 1).
---
Am I the only Slashdotter who is sick and tired of losing 9000 karma points every time they moderate?
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Which just goes to show what a fucking stupid comparison that is. Let's take the set of possible melodies of only eight notes. There are 13^8 = 815730721 different combinations of the 13 notes plus rest. In fact, of course, if you then consider rhythm and allow each note to be a crotchet or quaver, there are 26^8 = 377801998336 different combinations. Subtract 13! as combinations which start with rests are indistinguishable, and you get a total of 371574977536 possible tunes. In the circumstances, to claim that combinatorics puts any meaningful check on the number of possible tunes is ludicrous.
jsm, not bothering to check whether subtracting 13! was the right thing to do since 1999.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Fair use depends upon exactly what it says; the use. If my business model is to take the week's top 40, then to convert them into ringtone format, then to place advertisements in the newspapers inviting people to dial a premium rate phone number in order to download the ringtone tune, then it seems pretty obvious to me that I am making money out of someone else's copyrighted work and ought to pay the royalty. Guess what -- that's exactly the business model discussed in this story, and the vast majority of these ringtone operations in fact *do* pay royalties to the Performing Rights Society. There are presumably a few cowboys who don't.
On reflection, I think that on this occasion it's likely to be differences between US mobile phone technology and the rest of the world rather than widespread ignorance of copyright which is responsible for the toxic level of cluelessness in this slashdot thread. Happy to help to clear up this misunderstanding.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
That's right: millions, if not billions, are being lost because I'm able to play a CD in my car radio when I may have unauthorized, unpaying, passengers in there with me. The auto industry (as well as the car stereo industry) are complicit in this massive conspiracy of intellectual property theft.
And don't get me started on "Boom Boxes" that can quickly turn a whole backyard of people into a group of criminal anti-capitalistic pirates.
So now a ringtone is a derivative work of a full piece of music, and all the work in encoding the music is irrelevant because it's derivative?
I can understand that.. but surely that means that a full piece of music can be a derivative of a ringtone. After all, you can just take the ringtone as the melody and add lyrics and orchestration, but that's irrelevant - it's still derivative. (I always thought that "having the potential to be a derivative work" was pretty much strictly commutative (*being* one isn't because it depends on which one was (c)'d first).)
Also, ringtones don't take up much space. And they have a limited range of values...
Anyone for a distributed.net style project to enumerate all possible ringtones? By their logic we'd also enumerate all possible music, so all music produced would be derivative of something in the ringtone space. Then GPL the ringtone archive..
The RIAA is lobbying for legislation mandating the deployment of "secure showers" -- if the user hums an unlicensed song during a shower, it switchs from water to sulphuric acid.
That's nothing!!
My band of lawyers have been working with several key record labels in order to go after people who sing along with the radio, music video, mp3 and "I can't get it out of my head" songs. We figure that the record companies are losing 5 Kabillion USD per day to people enjoying others sing their favorite tunes...not to mention least favorite. This will include humming as well as not knowing the correct words, but having the melody correct.
IBM is already working on a system to track such offenders as they sing a long. The combination of facial and voice recognition will uniquely identify you and the song, so that record companies will be able to immediately draft your personalized lawsuit as soon as you utter the first few notes of the tune!
Look for your lawsuit in the mail soon!
I know it's only Rock-n-Roll,
but I like it, like it
Yes I do!
-dman7
Blarf.
This one falls squarely under fair use as you are at the most using just a few seconds on the song not the entire song. Now if the recording industry wishes to create specific ring tones then they would have a rightful ownership of the ring tone.
:P
I for one am waiting for the inevitable backlash that will make corporations, evil empires, bad laws, and politicians turn and run. I for one will welcome it when it does come.
The copyright system started out as a way to encourage production of intellectual property by making sure the person or people who "Created" it were paid for their creation. The recording industry is a promotional system and not a content creator. In plain, English the RIAA is a leech on the musical creation system. They exist to make themselves the most money possible screw the consumer and screw the artist.
--
When I'm good I'm very good, when I'm bad I'm better, But when I'm evil you better run
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
The record industry has announced today that it may be loosing as much as $12,000,000,000 a day due to people thinking about a song without actually paying for it. They claim that "Radio stations are largely to blame, for playing music that the listener probably does not own, but only paying royalties once" stated one RIAA official, "We need to find a way to read peoples minds, so that we can force radio stations to pay royalties on the mental music that they distribute" he also added that upcoming lawsuites may include charging royalties for singing or humming to oneself, including charging anybody who may be able to hear you singing or humming, even if they have no desire to hear how horribly you sing. Also, bystanders that may have heard your CD player as you pulled up to a traffic light will subsequently be charged. "We then intend to pursue charging aftermarket audio system manufactures because of the flagrent copyright violations that they contirbute too by allowing anyone within 500 feet to hear copyrighted music." Mr. Kissmy Ass, a lawyer for the RIAA explains, "In a public setting, like near the beach, subsequent violations can reach into the thousands"
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
The music company should not be entitled to royalties here, because the mobile phone ringtones are not original copyrighted material. The people who put the ringtone codes on the internet have to work out the notes and their corresponding keystrokes, etc. The result is far from the original - no lyrics for instance. If royalties are to be charged on these, then they should also be charged on a person singing along to a song they hear on radio or a CD, after all it too is replicating (albeit, mostly poorly) the melody of the songs.
"Australia... The land up over, depending on your frame of reference."
at least then I won't hear the fucking top 40 coming through tinny little monophonic speakers...
I think we need to upgrade phones to have full midi capability.....
Then worry about ring tone copyright
----- One piece short of Legoland
And your counter argument iiiiiiiis?
Incidentally, I notice that Merriam-Webster has (genuinely) added this to their definition of piracy:
So we can no longer claim accurately that "software piracy" is a misnomer because the owner isn't deprived of property. Theft however still requires deprivation of an object, so I'm a pirate, but not a thief. Hurrah.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
So someone's lawyers decided that each ring is worth a value of exactly 7.5 cents. Who comes up with these figures?
I have just now decided that each post I write on Slashdot is worth a value of exactly YOUR SOUL. Please, upon your having completed the reading of this post, return said soul to the possession of its rightful owner, screwballicus@hotmail.com with all speed. Thank you.
What I want is to have caller-ID distinctive midi ring tones. All my friends could be assigned a MIDI riff that describes them. Then I'd know who it was BEFORE I looked at the phone!
ipv6 is my vpn
When that awful phone goes off next to you, grab them by the scruff of the neck and exclaim:- ------
"YOU HEARTLESS SOD!! My Grandfather wrote that ditty and died a penniless alcoholic because of heartless pirates like you, YOU!!!"
{Break into false uncontrollable sobbing}
---------------------------------------
The best lack all conviction
While the worst are full of passionate intensity
{YEATS}
First off IANAL.
Secondly, how much of a song does a phone have to play before it becomes copyright infringement? A bar? A chorus?
If they're referring to the playing of theme songs on phones, does copyright still count even if the phone doesn't contain all (or even most) of the song?
If it does, I think I might just go copyright a few bars of music, and wait for the $$ to roll in..
-Scott
I can not believe that time is wasted with this sort of thing. Someone actually wasted the time to fester about who gets the proceeds and royalties for the cacophonous blips that emanate from a cellphone.
This sort of continual ranting and raving about who own what makes people like me, and most of the "little people" populace want to go out and steal everything in sight. At least I do. Its cathartic to think that my actions may in some way violate some injunction a bastard lawyer crafted.
This is the beginning of the end in the way of copyright law abuse. To think, some day, this horrible lawyer type will look at his kid sticking his quarters into a playschool wind up music box to hear the music so the record labels run by people formerly known as humans can glom a royalty.
I like to see audiophiles stashing away thousands of SHN files - they make nice MP3s and music CDs. The over-regulation of music is like the banning of sex and drugs, didn't work to well, and it wont for the rock and roll either. Just like prohibition created the mafia, this kind of crap just promotes boot legging.
I hope that people can stop focusing on what they are losing and start adding value to things. Try a CD with some words printed on it or some lyrics. And I wont be wasting airtime trying to quip clips of copyrighted music on a device which currently has no mass storage.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
(why is the article in the "funny" category btw?)
We've definitively paid royalties on these a long time already in Norway, but it's very little. But principally of course, it should be illegal to claim ownership of something that is so small it can be sent as an SMS message.
Hmm. Perhaps this is why the melody is often just a little different. I thought it was just people with no ears who made these things, but perhaps it's deliberate to avoid having to pay royalties.
Hey, what if i write a string quartet which includes a chromatic scale? Can I sue everyone who uses a chromatic scale?
C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# H C or as you say
C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B C
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the actual timbre and dynamics of the individual notes in a ring tone are identical. So if there are twelve tones in a octave, and we count the insertion of rests, there are finitely many possible combinations of notes and spaces, seeing as the notes themselves are undifferentiated in any aspect but pitch and duration. And, compared to the total number of combinations of possible sounds (which for all intents and purposes is infinite), this number is rather small. Seen in this light, the argument that some of these are protected works of creativity, capable of being--nay, supposed to be--charged for seems absolutely absurd! Ring tones are lifeless blips and bleeps, despicable apings of real music. Every time I hear Fur Elise monotonously oscillated out of a purse or a pocket I feal like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, strapped down with shunts in my eyes screaming "Its a sin!-using Beethoven like that!" And they have the gall to want to charge us for it. Not Beethoven of course, he's been dead too long for them to wrench any money from his carcass, but probably something worse. moc.nogatnep-eht@umhecbaa
If the RIAA could find a way to monitor our thoughts we'd probably have to pay royalties on every tune that goes through our heads! :)
What is the inverse of the Matrix?