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CEO of RIAA Speaks at P2P Conference
Sarcasmo writes: "Hillary Rosen, CEO of the RIAA ? , spoke at length (PDF of Speech) yesterday, during the 'O'Reilly Peer to Peer and Web Services conference'. " Update: 11/08 02:15 GMT by H : Yeah, I removed the Rosen text. Sorry.
She makes a good point that artists should be able to make money off of their work.
Too bad the record companies screw them every which way from Thursday.
A factory of greed is not indiginous to the United States. Although, we are its best model.
She states that lesser selling but still popular artists have a hard time finding their fans in efficient ways, and fans have needed more direct access to their favorite artists and easy access to ever part of their creative output.
As far as I can tell, the RIAA is the primary obstacle to both of these goals.
If the music industry would focus on producing an entire cd's worth of good music, I'd be much happier to buy it. In these days of image before talent, it's easy to see why the public doesn't feel like spending money on a portion of a cd that they will enjoy rather than a rich listening experience that they'd call 'a good cd all in all'....
She's babbling on about the evils of peer-to-peer and how "the public sees it" as an infestation of theives and porn and big evil computer viruses.
Why didn't she come right out and say that the WTC attacks were planned over a p2p network?
It's frustrating to see how the RIAA is taking advantage of the fact that it's not quite as commonplace as the phone to drum up anti-sentiment. This wouldn't be working if it was "hey, snail mail is peer-to-peer, they can steal our stuff!"
Dear Ms. Rosen,
You make a good point regarding the differences in businesses, whether they play by the rules (major labels), or break them (Napster). Napster-like trading services have changed the way your business competes, and it is an unfortunate truth that your business will have to change in order to deal with that. I don't see how asking consumers to 'step up to the plate', or to 'cough up some money on that plate' are going to help your business be competitive.
Best Regards,
R. Hogaboom
But as long as you?re looking for whom piracy really hurts, ask the guitarist
in the coffee shop, or the group scratching out a living touring in a beat-up van.
Oh bullshit.
It's precisley these people that the wantonly open trading of music helps most.
I saw an interview with the Offspring a little bit ago. They were asked the question 'How can my garage band make it big'.
They gave several suggestions, but the one they harped on most was giving away the music to anyone who would listen to it, be it kids, dj's, or record executives. I think they were talking about free tapes and CD's, but it amounts to the same thing.
Look at Rammstein (sp?) with their hit 'Du Hast'. Rammstein would never have been as big in NA with a German-titled song without the power of MP3 piracy. Nobody knew who they were in the U.S. before their tracks started showing up on Scour, Napster, and Usenet.
Hillary Rosen is a lying bitch. She's not worried one little bit about money, for herself or for the artists. She's worried about the music industry losing control of their golden goose, which has already happened to a great degree.
Jack Jackster into the castle, has the singing harp and the golden goose, and now the evil giant Hillary has to keep him from getting out alive. Here's hoping she falls off the beanstalk and makes a big hole in the ground when she lands.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I want all you brilliant gifted *thieving* developers to build me a better P2P network so I can make millions.
Not the way to make friends with developers.
-- Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
I see.
So it takes guts to get paid $$$ to make a speech?
?
There is nothing brave here. Your point lacks relevance.
I got paid $$$ to tell you, "nice try."
Ok, is it better if I screw some little old lady out of her pension by promising her a great return and getting her to sign over her money to me and then pointing out some bit of fine print that allows me to keep all of it, or if I just steal it all out from under her mattress? Which one makes me an asshole? More specifically does one make me a bigger asshole than the other? This also leaves out the part where record sales were climbing greatly during the P2P peak. Maybe those downloading were still buying?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Of course, that doesn't prove the "would never have been as big in NA" but I seriously doubt the didn't have significant exposure before then. I had certainly heard of them long before Napster (can't say about Usenet, never tried to get mp3s from there).
Sure, giving away music is a great strategy for a new band to gain exposure. However, that's "giving away" music, not "let's get pirated."
That they're not valuable? Apparently it's just because you don't like them.
Okay, let's have a couple of very basic lessons which most of the "Of COURSE I should be given it for free, DUH!" bozos around here seem to need.
1: Does recording a new Britney Spears (or another artist you may actually like) album cost money? You betcha. Recording time, session musicians, studio staff, blah blah blah, not to mention all the promotion for the album, design costs, etc. It all adds up to thousands or even hundreds of thousands in many cases.
2: Is a new Britney Spears album in demand? Maybe not for you, but several million teenagers think you're wrong, and who are you to say you've got better taste than them? First lesson of economics: demand = value. Amazing how many people forget this.
3: The way you talk, you'd think that all commercial music was Britney and Spice Girls. Oh, right, I'm sorry, I forgot that there are no commercially-produced CDs in your collection. Well, if I'm wrong, surely those CDs have some value? Right? Or are you going to say that the tons of good work that gets produced by thousands of recording artists every year is worth nothing?
As much as I hate what the RIAA is doing, arguments like yours make me want to side with them. I care about music because it makes my life better. If music has no value to you, I don't know why you even care whether you can download it for free or not.
-- Yoz
> From what I can surmise, the speech dealt both
> with her love of money and her desire to roll
> around naked in a pile of money.
From what I can surmise, the replies will all consist of Slashdot users' love of free music, wrapped by claims of freedom and fair use.
I downloaded the matrix soundtrack off gnutella a long while back. Heard du hast on it. Have since bought 2 Rammstein CDs. Never would have happened w/o gnutella. Hmmmmm.
I guess I'll have to post this anonymously just to make sure I don't get arrested for copyright infringement that lead to me paying them $35.00...
Of course, the problem with Napster was that the stuff got too freely distributed, cutting out the whole "pay the artist for thier work" step.
REAL ARTISTS HAVE DAY JOBS
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
Aging musicians who can't tour anymore should do what ditch diggers and automobile assembly workers and engineers and pretty much everone else does: Save up for their retirement during their working years!
Why should artists (and the corporate scum who exploit them) be the only people who continue to get paid for years and years, for work they did once? If I stopped producing new intellectual creative works (of engineering) today, my gravy train would be cut off tomorrow. No residuals, no speaking engagements, no MTV retrospectives. Why the hell should artists be different?
im not sure if i understand how the issue of her being a lesbian means anything to this subject at any case, except that she seems to exploit it rather well...
although i did get a kick out of the last sentence there: "Rosen manages to maintain a view of the big picture when dealing day-to-day with policy questions that on the surface can appear contradictory..."
if there was an organization called CIDA (Computer Industry Developers Association) and here is how it works. Every piece of software develop for computers goes through them. They own all of the distribution channels, copyrights, and they pay you a small royalty for all sales of your software. If you try to sell your software without going through them, they use their power and money to sue and your stop you. Basically, you can't get a piece of software out into the world without going through them.
Personally, I think this type of sytem would really blow.
We're obviously biased towards Linux, and against the RIAA.
We value certain things, and think certain ways, and have never set up illusion otherwise.
It's called a community.
Then the reviewers are reviewed as well, again 1-5 is the easy bit and maybe other categories. Some people can choose really good music but not articulate their reasons for liking it well. Other people are very good at discerning the artistic influences on a musician (even if the musicians don't realize their own influences)
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
"If you do not like how the Record company handles things, boycotting them is fine but STEALING their copyrights through P2P networks is not justified."
Perhaps capitalizing does something to the definition of a word that I'm not aware of, but I'll assume for the purposes of this discussion that such a mutation is not built into the English language. Now, no one has ever stolen a copyright over a P2P network. It's impossible. Why? Two reasons:
1. when I download something via a P2P network, the person whose machine I copied it from still has it. That pretty much makes it impossible to steal anything.
2. I download mp3's, not copyrights. What P2P network are you on?
What-- you think I'm being flippant, or dodging the issue? I'm not, but the RIAA is (as are you). This is not an issue of stealing. No one's stealing anything over P2P networks. You still have it when I download it. Why do they talk about stealing instead of copyright infringement? Because stealing makes it sound like you're taking money away from some poor artist; copyright infringement makes it sound like you're cutting into the recording industry's profits. If they got too in-depth and started talking about real issues, everyone would realize in a second what disgusting slime these people are. As long as they can bog people down in the typical platitudes of "two wrongs don't make a right" and "stealing is wrong", they never have to worry about real scrutiny. Don't be fooled.
And I'm glad to see you can get modded up for the blatantly obvious observation that /. isn't an impartial news source. Thanks, Sherlock.
Oh, and did you see how the Microsoft icon is Bill Gates looking like the Borg? I think that there may be a little anti-MS bias here, too.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
I don't understand why the debate about music on the Internet needs to go beyond MP3.com's original service (not their "My MP3.com" crap with the commerical CDs that ehy got sued for). MP3.com lets artists freely upload their music to be freely downloaded by anyone. Why do we need to bother with the RIAA or any of the artists they "represent" ever again? Just stop buying CDs from your local supermarket, or whatever, and start downloading new music from a couple of interesting categories on MP3.com. How hard is that?
It's precisley these people that the wantonly open trading of music helps most.
Damn right! As anyone who bothers to go out and support their local music scene knows, 99% of "garage bands" just want to play music, and the more people that hear their music the better. I was just talking to my friend this morning about how he had run into the guitar players for one of the hardcore bands around here over the weekend. The guitar player had been really nice and insisted that he take one of their demos (the only merchandise they have) for free so he would know the lyrics next time my friend saw them play.
The more I hear about these major labels and their bands whine about money, the more it makes me glad that I'm a part of the local independent music scene. There's a lot of absolutely incredible bands that I cannot believe how good they are and yet no one outside of the maybe 200 people who show up every weekend to go to shows knows about them. Come on people: if you're so sick of these major labels raping artists, and the artists bitching that their new CD is only selling a few million copies and that you owe them something, go out and support your scene! There are plenty of incredible bands in your area that would be more than happy for you to just come and hear them play.
And if you're in the NC area be sure to check out NCMusic.com for show listings or NCPunk.net for punk/emo/indie rock show listings and resources. And you must get off your lazy ass and see Beloved, Aria, Hopesfall, One Six Conspiracy, One Amazin' Kid, and Near the Never.
Your kidding right? You don't see the point. Mundie and Rosen were picked just for that reason, to show what we're up against. The old, know your opponent...Yeah this guy has no idea what he's doing, O'Reilly GPL'ed the Linux Device Driver book to encourage the development of Linux drivers, that company must be crazy...They're actually trying to help the community..that's unbelievable..
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." -Homer Simpson
Oh please. I would love to see some of the people who complain about bias explain to me how you can run a site where the content is generated by the readers without opinions showing up. That comment was made (by me), and I have opinions just like all the other readers. Why not complain that Slashdot doesn't filter out biased comments under the story itself? It would make as much sense. I find it hard to understand how people get their panties in a bunch even when it's an editor making an opinionated comment after the story. Are we all so stupid that we need opinions to be labelled for us? It's a different story when an opinion is being presented as fact, but if you can point out that kind of blatant lie by an editor, then I'll give you a cookie. Meanwhile you're just schmucks, nitpicking your own personally generated content for being personal; while I'm sure you're likely to get your nightly news from MSNBC, or CNN, where you can't bitch and complain about bias because the professional bullshitters don't bother to state their predispositions; they just decide what you can and can't see.
Riight. That would explain, then, why the last concert I attended -- performed by two guitarists in a coffee shop (Peter Mulvey and Erin McKeown, if anyone cares) -- both artists encouraged people to record and spread the show itself, and even went as far as to say "Copy our CDs for your friends. Tell 'em that if they like it, they can pick up their own copy at our websites."
Even ignoring the terminology ("piracy"), it seems that those two starving-artist types are interest in (wait for it..) people hearing their music. What a novel idea. Too bad Hillary will never get it, nor does she want to.
A few of the replies so far have critizized Love's article because it doesn't absolve napster/etc. users of any wrongdoing. WAKE UP!!! If you painted a masterpiece would you want to give it away for free instead of selling it to a company for 20 dollars and watching them sell it the next day for 20 million? Neither option is acceptable!
Her article boils down to a few key points.
1. The music industry rakes in billions of dollars anually, but only a small portion of that actually makes it to the artists. The majority ends up with the record labels.
2. RIAA affiliated record labels make use of a variety of unethical buisness tactics that prey on informed and ignorant music artists alike.
3. Being signed to a RIAA affilliated record label doesn't necessarily make you money. Most artists are in effect giving their music away for free. There is however at least *some* hope that you might make money affiliated with RIAA.
4. The money RIAA rakes in from these lawsuits goes to the record labels, not the artists.
5. She suggests that if artists can make P2P services work directly for them, so that they can get their music out there, make people aware of it, then the artists can dispence with the major record labels and actually see some of the profits from their own music.
This article, while not endorsing copyright infringement fully as some may wish, shoots a hole the size of Texas in any of RIAA's arguments that claim they are on the side of the artist. This is a primary source folks, and not some script kiddie telling you what he heard from the friend of a friend. It's worth reading just because of that.
It's articles like this that have convinced me that buying a CD from a RIAA affiliated record label is as evil, if not more so, as downloading MP3's online. The only way I can think of to ethically obtain music from groups on a RIAA affilated label at this time is to pirate the MP3's and send a money order directly to the band. (and pray the record labels don't have clauses in their contracts that lets them steal that income too) I'd rather send 50 cents directly to 20 artists I like than buy one CD and see 16.50 of 17 dollars go straight to the record label. More money making it through the middlemen to the artists is a good thing!
However, a system that relies on voluntary acts of charity is only good if people are relatively generous. Currently, too many people think they have a right to freely access and download artists' works. Love makes a very valid point. Yes, there are some "pure" artists out there that would be singing their hearts out whether they were being paid for it or not. However, many artists are in it at least partially for the money, and many of those "impure" artists produce damned good music. Expecting artists to donate their music to the world free of charge with no hope of payment would thin out the talent pool and deprive us of a lot of great music.
The artist's name was Linda Mbube, and was a migrant worker.
If you don't like links, here's some cut and paste from the site.
More importantly, and perhaps less complicated, is the matter of Solomon Linda's Mbube , a song that, thanks in part to Seeger, qualifies as South Africa's most famous melody - and the focus of one of the world's greatest musical travesties. Linda, a migrant worker, recorded Mbube in Johannesburg for Gallo Records in 1939. Seeger directly copied it and released it in 1952 as Wimoweh - but with its composer now credited as "Paul Campbell", a pseudonym for Seeger and his band, The Weavers. Once Seeger, who thought the song was a "traditional" piece, learnt it was Linda's work, he made arrangements for the South African to receive a share of Wimoweh's royalties.
Then, in 1961, a New York group, The Tokens, released The Lion Sleeps Tonight - for all intents and purposes, Wimoweh with English lyrics. Now the "composers" were Tin Pan Alley songwriters Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore and George Weiss. This version topped charts the world over and would come to be recorded by more than 170 artists. It dominated charts again in 1994 with the Disney film The Lion King . All this earned Peretti, Creatore and Weiss millions of dollars. Linda, on the other hand, died penniless in 1962. Over the years, his estate - four daughters, Philda, Delphi, Elizabeth and Adelaide Ntsele - has received an estimated R130 000 in royalties, a paltry amount considering its overall earnings.
There's also some info here.
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
You know, we've had musicians for thousands and thousands of years. These professionals always historically have made their money through live performance. Recently, the introduction of technology allowed a few to capitalize and exploit the talents of musicians for a while, making them money from people that they never actually performed for. Yet this line of work has endured the ages.
What happens when music no longer can be sold as a commerical product? The artists make their money from live performance, as was the case for all of previous eternity. This isn't a case of technology changing reality, its more of technology coming back to reality. Recorded performance art only should serve as an introduction, and advertisement, if you will, to the work of an artist.
I find the idea of paying for a metallica song just as repulsive of the idea of paying for euclidian geometry, though I would equally pay money to hear metallica as I would to learn geometry. Its a contribution to mankind, not a sales item.
Actually, there might not be a middle ground on this issue to report.
The fundamental question is: "Are you free to trade your files with others"?
Slashdotters tend to answer that question by saying "Yes, period.".
The recording industry tends to answer that question by saying "Yes, but
The problem is that no matter what anyone proposes for that "but clause", it inevitably requires some authority to sniff around your data stream, and to clamp down if they don't like what they see. That result is pretty much incompatible with "freedom".
The failure to find a "but clause" that's compatible with freedom explains why no middle ground has been found yet.
----
The industry will insist on defining that "but clause", and it will fight to the death until it gets an adequate one engraved into the legal tablets. "To the death" is literally true: if they fail, their current business paradigm becomes moot, and it will cost them billions to construct a whole new paradigm from the ashes.
Does the current discussion sound shrill to you? Perhaps that shrill noise you hear is the death screech of an entire industry.
I always took that quote as them providing a reason why you should go see their concert ie. new music will be performed and not the same old stuff you've seen them do before. The promotion of the album is for the recoding company's benefit and as a way to try to get increased visibility. Before they got recoding contracts, bands most likely made money by their performances and any merchandise they had available for sale. That's one of the reasons why they got a recording contract in the first place. Selling more albums helps them get more airplay and other promotional help from the label which then helps them draw bigger crowds. Whether they make money on it is dependent on the deals they've made with the promoters, how extravagant they want to be, and/or how much they have to pay the label for recording costs.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
He was also talking about people who copy books and then sell them, making a commercial profit, thus ACTUALLY depriving the owner of REAL sales - not potentially depriving the owner of projected sales, which is the most that can be said for p2p sharing.
1) The copyrights are given by the people of this country to artists and journalists because we receive a benefit - the increased production of content. Unfortunately, the founders of our country did not anticipate the music industry, who take advantage of both the musicians and the people who pay for music. The government created this situation, and they need to correct it. My suggestion is a complete elimination of ALL media copyrights on the internet (meaning movies & music) for a period of 5 years; after which the government can come up with a new, fair, law.
2) There are restrictions on what is and isn't legal in a contract. Clauses that are obviously unfair should be thrown out in court. To use an extreme example, if Microsoft puts in the license agreement that you can't use Front Page to work on a site that has negative things to say about Microsoft, that is a completely unfair clause that shouldn't be permitted by the courts. Unfair contracts to musicians (particularly the whole works-for-hire deal) should not be allowed.
Mark