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Greene's Grammy Speech Debunked
jonerik writes: "Today's New York Times has this article which debunks at least part of NARAS president Michael Greene's much-publicized speech at last week's Grammy Awards ceremony in which Greene claimed that he had hired three students to download a whopping 6,000 songs "from easily accessible Web sites" over two days. Leaving aside for a moment Greene's bizarre admission on national TV that he'd hired three students (at least one of whom, Numair Faraz, is a minor) to break the law (the No Electronic Theft Act), Faraz has been interviewed by the Times, saying that they spent more like three days on the project and that the other two students (both unnamed, though both are apparently attending U.C.L.A.) barely used P2P file-sharing programs at all. Instead, they used AOL's popular Instant Messenger to receive song files from friends."
The lengths some people will go. Why don't I just hire some people to shot some other people to show guns are bad? Oh, because it's illegal..
They have to lie to make their points because the facts show that Napster, et all seem to have a positive effect for the most part on sales...
What do you MEAN it might be illeagal?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
im guessing that they were using some very high speed connection and that those numbers don't fairly represent how much music can really be downloaded.
Easy to prove, he made an admission that was recorded and video taped.
Doesn't he want all music pirates convicted?
Fight Spammers!
You to register at the new york time before they will even let you look at their web site.
That is alot of pipe for 2 days worth of downloads. 6000 x ~3.5megs per song = ~21000megs of download. I don't think that this was accomplished on a 56k modem.
I believe it is in bad taist to plug your agenda at an event like this.
I think I will go home tonight and "Hire" 3 friends of mine to download a hack of starcraft and play all night.
If I were only smart enough to accomplish the things I dream about.. Or maybe too dumb to care.
Is not AIM P2P when two users are "directly connected" as when they are transfering files, pictures, or just typing to each other? If not then what are they directly connected to? I was under the impression that if I was directly connected to someone and the AOL servers ceased to exist, I could continue my conversation with them until one of us severed the link.
Love,
Jay and Silent Bob
3 college students download songs off the internet... call CNN, make sure /. is notified!!
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
6,000 songs is nothing. Come to my school and download 50,000 via my search engine.
Nice to know, not only did he hire people to break the law he hired minors to do so. Excellent, courts sometimes overlook the piddly petty-theft stuff but "Corruption of a minor" is hardly looked upon lightly almost anywhere. Or are we going to be told that he had been licensed by the individual copyright holders to do the downloads?
:P
What's the number on all the Microsoft CD's? 1-800-IS-Legit? I wonder if RIAA has one too
Did anyone listen to the speech?
This problem won't be solved in short order. It's going to require education, leadership from Washington and true diligence to help our fans - that would be you - to embrace this life and death issue and support our artistic community by only downloading your music from legal Web sites
How can anyone compare death to music piracy with a straight face? Needless to say I turned the channel and stopped watching the shortly there after. The little respect that I had for the Grammies was lost that night. I think it pissed me off more that no one booed him off stage.
couldn't help it ;)
Maybe I have the wrong IM friends. Hey... I wonder if those UCLA students are still for hire!
-magic
6000 songs is probably inaccurate. 3 people downloading over 3 days would have many duplicates between each other.
Also, each person probably downloaded many copies of one thing. I've done it myself. Incomplete files should not count either.
They probably just added up the number of files on all three computers.
Whatever... the RIAA just wants to make up big numbers to impress people.
they aint got nothing It doesn't take more than one person and a hig-speed connection to get 6000 songs in 2 days gimme a T1 line... 24 hours... and some caffeine... i'll get you anything you need
--JonnyBlog
I found that speech rather humourous.
First off he said that downloading music is a bad thing. Then in the next breath he incuraged everyone to download music from RIAA approved web sites.
Second. Who uses the www to download music anyway? It's all FTP or the various P2P services. The only exceptions that I've seen is music that has already be approved for download. MP3.com is an example of that.
Third. My guess is that MP3.com would have 6000 MP3s avaliable. All you would need is wget and a small shell script to download all the songs automatically. Keep in mind that there is legally nothing wrong with downloading music from there.
I find it pretty sad that they had to go to all of the trouble of writing that speech just to try and sway the public away from downloading online audio. Was downloading the 6000 songs trying to prove a point? It just sounds to me like they were breaking their own laws. If it is okay for them to do it why can't I? The RIAA knows their current role is coming to an end and they fear this. The truth is, is that they will not become obsolete, their role will only change.
So the record companies should sue AOL Time Warner! Um...
Mr. Greene doesn't want anyone sharing music with their friends either. Or putting them on their hard drives, or uploading them to their MP3 players, or burning them onto blank CDs... All of these actions kill potential revenue, and no matter how it inconveniences the average listener, he'll push for anything that'll protect the bottom line.
the fact that this guy lied doesn't justify your theft.
In a way, this reminds me of the "airline safety" brouhaha after 9/11. No, no, I'm serious. Think about it:
Greene claims that P2P programs are bad, and that thievery is easy, backed up by the 6,000 songs they got. Then it comes out that they weren't really using P2P programs at all, but doing something covered (legally) by fair use.
Post 9/11, there was a need for more airline security and an outcry over the pisspoor airline security that was in place at the time...and then it comes out that the hijackers used boxcutters, which were legal to take onto airplanes at the time.
...when half of that 6000 files included remixes of "Who Let The Dogs Out"...
Simply shows that most execs simply don't get it....when they try to explain what they've done, they screw it up, and look stupid. They read somewhere that product X is bad, and jump on the bandwagon to protect "share holder interests", and forget the details in the dust. Man I hate suits.
Interesting that in the US copyright infringement can now be a criminal offense (rather than a civil matter) even when it's not for commercial gain. How recent is the No Electronic Theft Act? -- I don't recall having seen any coverage of it on the web, but maybe I missed it...
Anyone know whether similar things are happening (have happened?) in the UK/EU ?
The fact that you can embed a link to the article within your own text, does not absolve you from using correct grammar.
Instead of saying "The New York Times has this article...", you should say "The New York Times has an article..." You can still embed your link in the phrase "an article." Your way of stating it makes you sound like a 5 year old child who has just learned to form complete sentences, but who just hasn't quite got the hang of it yet.
In addition, you shouldn't say "...that he'd hired" (which is really saying, "...that he had hired"). Instead you should say "...that he hired..."
Finally, the sentence beginning with "Leaving aside..." is a run on sentence. It is very difficult to understand, due both to its run-on nature, and excessive use of parentheses.
Michael E. would never claim that music privacy is a bad thing. Music privacy is what makes the USA the best country in the world: everyone who makes music should make money and that's why we have muci privacy. Bill Gates will eat you.
This sig intentionally Left Bank.
If Mr. Eisner, and Mr. Greene are hellbent on alienating their consumer base, let them have at it. Its still relatively isolated on the net as it stands, but soon, they're going to get cocky (I'd argue they already are) and start frothing at the mouth on public TV. Give audiences (and artists) enough of this, and the ensuing hatemail/flames and public outcry, and I think we'll see a marked change in the view that consumer=evil pirate.
Until then, Mr. Greene provides a vast ammount of entertainment, and I can just avoid watching his programs, and contributing to his cash flow.
Witty quotes suck.
From Greene's Speech:
This illegal file-sharing and ripping of music files is pervasive, out of control and oh so criminal.
He is implying that ripping music is illegal is he not? Someone should teach him of what he speeks before he goes world wide with a speech that makes him look computer illiterate.
- Mike
This looks like another attempt at hyping the public from a long list of people for whom it's financially helpful to do so. The RIAA is constantly throwing about ridiculous numbers about how the internet is driving them out of business. But the past year brought them more box office sales than any other year in history!
Media Executives need to wake up and realize that stirring up controversy where none should be had is simply going to come back and bite them later. Why not show us the real story from the get go?
This guy was on Politically Incorrect a couple days before the Grammy's and tried to give the same spiel ("we had a couple kids download 6000 songs in 2 days!"). He contributed NOTHING to the other topics on the show.
When you paid for the law, you get to say when it should be enforced. Thus the RIAA can hire minors to 'steal' music and declare that the law won't apply.
Because, and I quote:
NAPSTER BAAAAAAAD
James Hetfield
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
You think that's bad? Just the other day, my wife downloaded 5 gigs of songs in under a half hour! Talk about thinking you know someone!
Let's say it takes 1.5 minutes to download a song. Let's say each kid has a seperate computer with a dedicated connection.
45 songs/hour * 48 hrs * 3 kids = 6,480 songs.
That's IF they spent no time searching and downloaded for 2 days straight. Aren't minors required by law to work something less than 24 hrs a day, anyway?
c-hack.com |
had the second lowest ratings since Nielson started tracking. After this lovely speech, next year's will easily have the lowest ratings of all time.
Go here:w ww.nytimes.com/2002/03/07/arts/music/07POPL.html To view the article without registration.
http://college.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://
I'm not karma-whoring, I've already hit the cap.
Then: Napster use was up and music sales were up.
Now: Napster's gone and music sales are down.
This does not mean that napster's demise was the cause of music sales being lower. There could be some other reason for the correllation. For example, music could have been better a couple of years ago. That would explain both music sales and napster usage. Or maybe interest in the music scene was just higher back then. Currerntly there are plenty of other programs that filled the void left by napster (e.g. gnutella) we don't see the amount of music sales as we had in napster's prime.
How surprising is it that Greene was easily debunked? When we all know that mp3 trading is the best thing to happen to the music industry, this snivelling little weasel has the nerve to get all prosecutorial in a five minute rant during the Grammy award show. He may call it theft, I'd call it sampling. There are many CD's in my collection that if it hadn't been for the fact that I found mp3's to listen to, they wouldn't be in my collection. It's because of those mp3's and the ability to sample the music first that caused me to head for the store and purchase the album. The RIAA should be glad that we're swapping songs.
Now, here's a question I'd like to ask: If I have purchased all of Sarah McLachlan's albums (for examples sake) and if she were to release a "Best of" compilation, and I already own the CD's on which the songs that are part of that compiliation originally appeared, then go to USENET and download that "Best of" CD in mp3's, am I a thief? I've already paid for the rights to listen to the songs on the original albums. Hell, for all they know, I got the track list and created it myself based on burns from my original CD's.
The RIAA can go fuck itself, in my estimation, hopefully using a large, blunt instrument, such as a baseball bat or rubber pitchfork. I've never seen an industry try so hard to alienate it's customers.
Faraz has been interviewed by the Times, saying that they spent more like three days on the project and that the other two students (both unnamed, though both are apparently attending U.C.L.A.) barely used P2P file-sharing programs at all. Instead, they used AOL's popular Instant Messenger to receive song files from friends."
The speech specifically said easily accessible websites, it didn't even mention p2p or im clients. Either way, they should arrest this guy and the kids he hired to do is dirty work.
It's going to require education, leadership from Washington and true diligence to help our fans - that would be you - to embrace this life and death [my own empahsis here] issue and support our artistic community by only downloading your music from legal Web sites
Geez, can't the music folks go back to "raising awareness" about other life and death issues like HIV and Breast Cancer? Seriously, life and death? Has this guy been reading too much of The Onion? A statement like this completely undermines all of the actual life and death situations in the world, ones which Greene mentioned at the beginning of his speech.
The only thing seriously in jeopardy is Mr. Greene's ability to continue payments on his Porsche as he watches his 1950's-era business model crumble under the weight of 80's-era technology that's finally come of age.
I mean seriously. This guy already made his (admittedly sensationalistic and unrealistic) point live, on tv, in front of all the corporate big wigs and 'important' people he wanted to.
Do you really think anyone's going to notice an article refuting those claims, even if it is on the NY Times site, refuting his claims?
These people (The RIAA types) aren't after verifiable truths and hard facts. They're after media-friendly catchphrases and meaningless FUD they can sow to get their way.
Anything said in this article is going to be about as meaningful and have as much impact as those tiny size 8 retractions printed on the inside back of a tabloid after they've splashed the latest unsubstantiated rumour over the front cover in size 40 bold print.
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo - H. G. Wells
So he hired three people to create some FTP servers with a fat pipeline and transferred files? They informed each other what the FTP server ip was via AIM and they downloaded at leisure? What constitutes a "College Student"? I would love to know some facts about his "fact finding" mission.
:)
Unfortunately the public won't see this as Mr. Greene's pathetic attempt to manipulate public opinion. Oh yes, and he is breaking the laws that his company helped push through, I hope someone takes him to court
It seems that a common theme for Content Control stories coming out this
year has been (will be) how efforts by people like this to show
the "evils" of technology will backfire due to their own basic lack
of understanding of how the technology works and where it comes from.
(Not to mention that his speech also served to make more people aware of
how easy it could be for them to get online and share music)
I know that is a little redundant, as it has been going on thru most
of the "Information Age". But its coming to the point where
this may be used more as a tool in and of itself - all we do is point
out the interconnections in the business relationships between
producers and providers, and then watch as people like Greene trip
over thier own conflict of interest.
This is why many artists are taking a stand:
:/
Recording Artists Coalition
(take a look, you'll be suprized who's there)
ps. I think I did hear one person boo... I'm sure he/she got to enjoy the remainder of the grammays outside.
"I fail to see the relevance for nerds here. Definitely not stuff that matters. Okay, perhaps he's saying that is the naked thruth or lies covered in horsedunk, all it all it just doesn't change squat. We all now P2P mp3 exchange is here to stay, and that's about it. That's NOT nerd news. "
.
Ugh, last two paragraphs make it obvious this is a troll but. . .
aaanyways.
This IS stuff that matters because when some idiot brings up this little 'experiment' as proof of how bad p2p programs are we(Nerds) can bring forth the evidence to debunk this experiment.
Had we(nerds) not bee alerted this this debunking then some droid might have gotten a point against us in a debate.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
What do I bet you won't be signing up for a subscription?
Posted from Lynx.
Graphics? What graphics?
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Music industry heads have long relied on the fact that money can buy credibility, especially from the two classes of people they're most concerened with... government regulators and performing artists. Before the music-sharing era, these were the only ones they *had* to be credible for.
What RIAA heads like this guy and Hillary Rosen are demonstrating, however, is their complete and total lack of intelligence, wisdom, and understanding of the technology they're dealing with. MPAA's going through the same thing. DeCSS was supposed to be uncrackable, and I beleive in my heart that Jack Valenti and his buddies bought that hook line and sinker. When Jon J. cracked it, it was not just a kick in the movie industry's legal nuts, but a phenominal blow to their credibility. Record industry is going through the same thing right now with CD copy protection. Nothing they can do will prvent the ripping and encoding of CD's, even if MP3 traders have to revert to using non-digital capture methods. (Headphone to Audio-in port, anyone?) Despite this *obvious* problem with audio copy-protection, the music studios are trudging forward with poorly thought out, poorly tested, unworkable, and uneeded copy protection controls. This makes them look like idiots to the public.
Articles like this are both promoting and refelcting the popular opinion that not only is the RIAA a bunch of idiotic cartoon bad guys, but that they *deserve* to be taken advantage of.
The RIAA's worst enemy is not P2P, MP3, or even the people who trade audio files. The RIAA's worst enemy is itself.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Next the RIAA will try and shutdown AOL IM for allowing users to share files.
I did the math in my head after that wanker gave his speach, the numbers just didnt add up. I did something like,
6000 mp3's/2 days = 3000 a day
3000 a day / 3 peeps = 1000 a day per person
1000 a day / 8 hours = 125 mp3's an hour
which means about 2 mp3's a minute (on average) for 8 hours! I'm guessing they were on a bit more than the average speed of a DSL or Cable line. Anyways, glad to see it got out in the public.
Can all fish swim?
ok my question is who really gives a shit. His figures are VERY flawed. if he hired 3 students to download music and then came up with 6000 songs and x billion per month he must think everyone is dumb. If those students were hired they probably were working on it all day, i don't know anyone who does nothing but download music all day nor do i hope to. He also assumes that EVERYONE downloads all day. which is another stupid point. some of us have lives. then he goes further to assume that even if we were going to download all day why would we WANT 6000 songs? right now i have 15 songs on my computer. I download the songs i really like. thats it
to violate the law be prosecuted under the RICO statutes? Certainly this "Don" is hiring out the "dirty work"
It seems to be covered. But perhaps this crime will go unpunished
So what's your point? That he exaggerated to prove a point? Or that he was out and out lying and you couldn't download 6000 songs for free off the Internet?
I think what he was trying to show was that there is a huge amount of pirated music available on the Internet and anybody can get it. Of course, that's not really news.
Milo
That's a new one to me (I don't keep up with every law that goes through), but if it's on the books, can we press to have him prosecuted?
He admits paying students to commit illegal acts, which falls under the RICO acts, and since one of them was a minor, there's probably several other laws he can be nailed under.
I wonder if the Maryland AG's office has heard about this.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
Can you imagine how much people are going to hate them when they show back up on campus? I mean the look of fear on their faces when they were put on camera was priceless. "Hi kids, these are your peers and they're working for us to stop you from trading music, please don't hurt them" (now get a nice clear shot of all of their faces)
Every year Michael Greene, the president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, stands onstage during the show he runs, the Grammy Awards, and delivers a speech about an issue that pertains to the music world. On the broadcast last week, however, he chose a strange way to make his point.
The issue he addressed was the unauthorized trading of songs on the Internet. During the awards show he showed clips of what he said were three students downloading "as many music files as possible from easily accessible Web sites." He added that in two days the three students downloaded nearly 6,000 songs.
"Now multiply that by millions of students and other computer users, and the problem comes into sharp focus," he said. As he made his point, the cameras zeroed in on the three students, all looking very sheepish.
His speech, as anticipated, ignited much discussion and controversy among music fans and those in the industry. But in addition, it seems strange that he would admit on national television that he hired three people to break the law (the Electronic Theft Act) and then show them in the process of doing this, especially since one is a minor.
And now one of these downloaders for hire (at about $12 an hour), Numair Faraz, has stepped forward to say that Mr. Greene's claim that three students downloaded 6,000 files from easily accessible Web sites isn't even true. For starters, Mr. Faraz, 17, isn't a student: he left school to start his own technology business. But more to the point, he says that the group didn't spend two days downloading music; they spent three. And most revealing, he says that most of the music wasn't even downloaded from publicly accessible Web sites.
Speaking about Mr. Greene, Mr. Faraz said, "He said it took two days to do all the stuff, and we did it for three days from 9 to 6 and left the computers on all night long, except we'd come back and the computers would be frozen."
"I was the only one who used Bearshare and Kazaa extensively," he continued, referring to two popular file-exchanging programs. "And half of my files never completed: they were halfway downloaded or not downloaded at all."
As for the two others, both students at the University of California at Los Angeles, he said they hardly even used file-sharing sites. Instead, he said, they used AOL Instant Messenger, a chat program, to receive songs, which friends sent them from their hard drives. This not only means that the songs weren't on public Web sites, but also that there is no guarantee that they were ever illegally downloaded, since some could have been from CD's purchased by students and ripped into their hard drives.
Mr. Faraz estimated that 4,000 of the songs were sent as private messages using Instant Messenger, and a few songs were legitimate authorized downloads from the Web site MP3.com.
Barb Dehgan, a spokeswoman for the recording academy, said, "The kids were asked to download as many songs as possible off the World Wide Web, specifically, publicly accessible Web sites." She added that they worked two half-days and one full day. She did not comment about the legality of the project.
While some in the music business applauded Mr. Greene's speech, others criticized it and wondered what point he was trying to make.
"Burning, ripping and sharing is not killing music," Ken Waagner, a digital-media consultant in Chicago who was part of the recording academy's board of governors for four years, wrote in a letter to Mr. Greene. While admitting users of popular file sharing software were "cheap and greedy thieves," he said they are not a real threat to the music industry. "Greed, stupidity and ignorance on the part of the policy wonks and further alienating the listener is the real threat to the business, and ultimately the artist's ability to be heard."
So why, then, when Mr. Faraz knew that the whole project was ridiculous did he go along with it? "I got free hotel in the Biltmore," he said. "That's one reason to stick with it."
Unzipped
Audiogalaxy, a free music-sharing software and Internet site where MP3 files of songs are exchanged, was once the center of a small subculture of music fans who traded zip files of entire albums as well. These files packaged every song on a CD, plus images from the artwork, into a single convenient, easy-to-download file. Because Audiogalaxy was created only for the transfer of MP3 songs, these elaborate zip files were disguised by users to look like MP3 files to computers.
But after this column on Feb. 25 detailed this practice, Audiogalaxy disabled the word "zip" from its search engine. Where previously searching for files with the word zip in them turned up thousands of full albums, now the search turns up nothing, not even song titles with the actual word zip in them.
What happened? Michael Merhej, a spokesman for Audiogalaxy, said that there was such a large amount of traffic on the site and so many different things happening in the company that executives had been unaware of zip trading. Once company employees tried it for themselves, "we did block the word zip," he said.
"The purpose of Audiogalaxy is not to download complete albums that you can go buy," he added. "The system is not made to handle this, but people contrive things to make it work."
Though the word zip is now blocked in the Audiogalaxy search engine, those zip files of entire albums still exist. One just has to find a different word to use to search for them or try the Usenet, where a whole news group is dedicated to full album downloads.
"I fail to see the relevance for nerds here."
:)
Oh I don't know... considering the music industry is the one of the main proponents of the SSSCA that wants to require digital rights management in all computer hardware and software because there is oh so much piracy... can you see where I'm going with this?
If DRM is embedded in all computers and software, how are you going to play those MP3s you get off of a P2P service?
"Slashdunk: news for lawyers, stuff that splatters"
Damn that's witty. Did you spend all day thinking that one up?
I think Taco would be better off dropping the subscription thing and instead bill people who whine incessantly "This isn't Nerd News!"
But hey, everytime those people post their whine they DO generate another page view and that's revenue I guess. Oh well.
GOD, what i'm tired of is trolls posting comments about what should or should not be presented as a story on slashdot. If you don't want to read the story, just skip over it, it takes about 3 rolls of your little mouse wheel. And if it pisses you off THAT much, then you can go into your preferences and disable certain authors, story types, etc. if you are so inclined.
Some of us, however, find these stories interesting, and the fight over copyright law to be at the heart of what will shape many online laws for years to come. So yes, I would call this news for nerds, stuff that matters. Stop whining and head back to your updates on the state on the linux kernel if that's what lights your fire.
Let's see, three students downloading 6,000 songs in two days...that's a thousand songs per student per day, or 365,000 songs per student per year...times millions of students (say fifty million, which was the last figure I recall hearing for the number of Napster users back before the RIAA killed it)...that's 18 and a quarter trillion songs per year!
CD prices are approaching $20 for a disc that typically contains ten songs or so. So the music industry must be missing out on $36.5 trillion dollars in sales every year. Since their actual revenues are closer to $10 billion—a mere one three-thousandth of their potential—it's no wonder they're so upset about file sharing.
Forest through the trees my friend. Yes it may not be great news, but when all CD have built with encryption and everything is pay for play, then all the suddden your stuck! The laws decided the boundries of our society, and I for one am very intrested in keeping up with what bone head lawyers, lawmakers, and corps are trying to drum up with out either 1) thinking it through or 2) having enough sense to ask about something they don't understand.
It's all fun and games till somebody loses some freedoms.
--cade
"Three counts of Conspiracy to contribute to the deliquency of a minor" -- also, doesn't the Mann act come into play if it's interstate?
AHAHAHAHAHA  HOW  DO  YUO  LIEK  THEM  APPELS,  FELLOWS?!!  GRABOULOUS!
He WANTS to spread the meme that downloading music off the internet is illegal. If a warrant goes out for his arrest because he hired some people to commit the "crime" of downloading MP3's, then his point will have been made. Transferring an MP3 file between computers is not a criminal act -- UNLESS the recipient is not licensed to have a copy of that content.
His implication that the results of hiring 3 people to do nothing but get MP3's all day long for $12/hr plus lodging can be extrapolated to represent the behavior of "millions of students and other computer users" is, of course, ridiculous.
-h-
If he gave me a stack of blank CDR's I'd give him all kinds of songs...
Whats worse is, none of my freinds belive how easy it is! I have to download music all the time on to my hard drive just to demonstrate to them how far this has gone.
I even have to listen to the songs I've downloaded all the time just to be sure these are in fact illegal songs.
I think I should ask the music industry to help me out with a few bucks so I can continue educating the general public about this.
The Internet is generally stupid
Were the 6000 songs different songs or were there some duplicates?
Were any the 6000 songs downloaded legally?
Did any of the downloaded songs have glitches in them?
How many of the songs were incomplete downloads?
So, now how many different songs were downloaded illegally that have no glitches or have the end cut off?
And I bet that he's not going to buy any music now.
At 4 minutes per song, that's...
(wait a sec...)
over 16 days of nonstop music.
At 75 minutes per CD, that's 320 CDs.
At 15 bucks per CD that's $4800 in revenue
(or $4500 in profit) that the record company
has had stolen from them!
My brother has worked at an independent CD maufacturing plant for 13 years (they used to do tapes). He repairs the duplication machines
They handle programs, music CDs, etc. They often make shipments directly to the consumer.
I recently asked him how much they charged to produce a CD today.
He said "18 cents."
I said "No, I mean with the case"
He said "18 cents."
I said "No, I mean with all the inserts and stuff."
He said "That's included in the 18 cents."
He wasn't kidding.
Why download files of suspicious origin and quality from someone who might go offline in the middle of your download, when you can get them from friends who know what they're doing? I used a P2P client whose name I can't even remember anymore once but it sucked for those very reasons. I have a friend who runs a fileserver with about 50,000 tracks on it. They're all well-labeled, have ID3 tags, are encoded at good bit rates with good encoders, and he's not going offline without warning people first. Only friends have accounts on the machine, and he accepts logins only through SSH and file transfers only through SCP. There's no comparison between the level of service he provides and what a P2P client provides.
P2P tools are just that. Tools. Like FTP, SCP, ICQ file transfer, AOL file transfer, &c. Their existence does not create piracy - it is just another way to do it. Resnet here experiences massively more traffic due to kazaa and audiogalaxy than FTP and SCP and I expect this is generally true. Combined with the fact that there's no money behind them, they are easy targets for the huge media companies. If AOL/TW and thee RIAA members were really serious, they'd sue AOL/TW and Microsoft too.
I'm torn between wanting them to cut it out because it's just silly and wanting them to win and teach people to be a little careful and use encryption. Spreading packets all over the internet with your IP and the names of the copyrighted works you're downloading is just stupid. People are paying attention. My ISP told me flat-out that they've sold their souls (isn't that a good Slashdot phrase?) to Sony (among others, though only Sony was mentioned by name) who analyzes every packet they handle searching for copyrighted works.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
god is lie of retarded educated stupid educators.
Lie will hurt children, make children stupid students.
Who watched the Grammy's anyway, once they announced they had cancelled emjay's performance?
Now that would have been something worth watching, all jokes aside.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
By his own admission he has violated Federal Copyright laws, has Contributed to the delinquency of a minor and should be prosecuted and fined for doing so. He had no legal right to do what he did (e.g. no court order) and then went on TV and admitted that he had done it.
I would urge everyone and their friends to gather this evidence together (video tapes, web page printouts, etc...) and send it via USPS snail mail with a certified return receipt to the DOJ asking them when they will be prosecuting him.
The more of us that do it, the more likely it is that he will face fines and penalties for his actions. I'm already looking for a copy of the actual speech (not just a web transcript, but the actual video of him doing it) and will be sending this to the DOJ.
Just becuase two things happen at once doesn't mean they are related. If that were true, people might start claiming things like the El Nino effect increases purchases of gaming systems, etc..
-- Find the Truth...
I knew it...
Send your emails of disgust to ron@grammy.com, barbd@grammy.com and heatherm@grammy.com.
Here's some of the choice words I just sent them:
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
We all know its possible to down load music in large quantities in a short period of time ... so the guy might of fudge the facts a little ... doesn't mean his hypothesis is wrong.
I must say, Mr. Greene appears to have shown excellent taste in hiring the students. Stephanie, if you are reading this, please send me an email.
It was said in another context, about other kind of digital object:
"Owners use smear words such as 'piracy' and 'theft', as well as expert terminology such as 'intellectual property' and 'damage', to suggest a certain line of thinking to the public---a simplistic analogy between programs and physical objects.
Our ideas and intuitions about property for material objects are about whether it is right to take an object away from someone else. They don't directly apply to making a copy of something. But the owners ask us to apply them anyway."
Read the whole text
Actually, I believe the word "thief" is too much prone to libel. "Pirate", being not in any dictionary acception what someone who copies a song or a software is, helps reducing this risk while conveing the message of someone who will board the poor record company, rape its women, kill its men, sell its children as slaves and take away all its treasures.
The problem is that these executive and marketing types are easily confused. Sometimes in their small money counting brains the analogies get blurred and they start to believe the metaphor is real.
6000 songs.. 3 students.. lets do some math..
..
2000 songs per student,
4 min per song (at least this was average when i bought music.. long ago)
8000 min music !
so this guy stands up there and says 3 students download 5.5~ days of music each in 2 days...
what for ? when are they gonna listen to it ? no wait
applause !!!
Chucka-chucka-chucka-chucka-chucka-chucka--
Hmm, maybe lower sampling rate next time...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's a crime to distribute copyrighted works. ie. It breaks the law to *distribute or publish* copyright works, not to recieve them. When you recieve them, you have no way of knowing what's copyrighted or not: the ultimate responsilibity is with those that ripped it and made it available on the web. Once it's out there, the crime has been commited. Downloading it is not a crime.
It's like bootleg videos or whatnot: you can own as many as you want; it's only a crime if they can show intent to distribute.
This is like a modern voodoo doll:
You should be left with hundreds or more copies of the MP3. With each copy, you have STOLEN from the artist. With each copy, your artist LOSES MORE AND MORE MONEY. By the time you get to the end, each keystroke should be DRAINING THEIR BANK ACCOUNTS of THOUSANDS of DOLLARS!!
If we all did this, we could instantly bankrupt any artist. For even more damage, move the MP3s to a CDR and repeat.
Which is exactly what they don't want.
Why is it that so many people who write rules like this can't foresee the logical consequences of the structure they put in place.
what ISP do you have? I would be interested to know who would admit to monitoring users packets for content after the recent business with comcast
This slip of the tongue might just be a result of the general public's sloppy use of the word "web". When the Internet first took off in the mid 1990s, you saw all sorts of long-term Internet users fly into pedantic rages when people used the words "web" and "internet" interchangeably (i.e., "sending email through the Web," not referring to an HTML mail client like Hotmail.)
To non-Internet savvy folks, everything online is "the web" and anything you may encounter there is "a website".
jf
This not only means that the songs weren't on public Web sites, but also that there is no guarantee that they were ever illegally downloaded, since some could have been from CD's purchased by students and ripped into their hard drives.
Does that not make sense at all? Isn't this the crux of the argument in question, that I supposedly have no right to give my friend a copy of a song I ripped to my hard drive? Anyway, I hate it when journalists and industry leaders can't even get the damn parlance right. Makes them look like a bunch of illiterate fools. If me and my friends are going to be the object of a huge, industry-wide debate over the very nature of ownership at least take the time to figure out what the HELL is going on.
...have a really fat pipe and download everything in alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.* and sit back and wait.
Think about how much the people who make the phisical CDs are losing. If all these misguided students were actually buying the CDs they steal, we would probably be mining the Moon, Mars and the Asteroids Belt for raw materials to make all these discs.
And don't even get me started about the potential losses of the transport industry.
according to his speech, "...Stephanie and Ed."
What a jerk. As head of one of the most organizations that screw over musicians all over the world, he has the gaul (sp?) to get students to break the law to support his claims. Now, I would agree with SOME of their notions if they actually gave musicians proper recompense for their music. It's a big business, and these organizations are only in it for the money. They really dont give a damn for the people that make the music, save for the amount of profits that come along with it.
.001% of the earnings they get now.
Someday (maybe soon), people who create music will actually be able to distribute it themselves, taking far more than the
I hope he chokes on his words. Heck, he should at least be arrested for contributing to the delinquency of minors for making them commit federal crimes by downloading ILLEGAL music.
It's extremely easy to find pretty much anything on websites. Creative Googling is all that is required. Search for "index of mp3" for an example.
I like music
would be ctrl-a ctrl-c ctrl-v and I guess on a linux box you'd just write a perl script :)
How we know is more important than what we know.
I've got a new format for the music industry. Make CD's a bit larger, for example approx 12" Since the digital stream is so easy to copy, just make the bumps on this new disc at different levels to accompany different volumes, pitches, waveforms etc. To read this a conventional laser would not be useful, so a needle would have to be used instead. You could also save quite a bit of machine wear and tear by slowing the rotation of the disc to, oh about 33 1/3 revolutions per minute.
What's that Mr Edison, its already been done. Oh well vinyl sounds better anyways.
It's so bad that I'm going to prove my point. I'm going to take 5 17 year olds and get them drunk in a bar in Tijuana. That'll show em... yeah
You mean that speach was aimed at people downloading mp3's?
Ok, I guess I need to pay attention then. I thought when he was talking about robbing artists of their livelyhood, and making sure artists get paid for their work, he was talking to the record labels. But then again, they do pay the artists a whopping $.12 a record.
My sig of choice is Marlboro
Let's not all claim ignorance and say that we don't realize that millions of songs are available at any given second thanks to technology, and let's not pretend that this isn't the sort of nirvana that music lovers and humanists have always wanted. Greene made a mistake on the number of days, and made a common mistake of equating the Internet (the network backbone) with the Web (a comparitively well-policed HTML protocol). Those aren't all that important.
More revealing than anything is that in hiring children to break this law he showed just how little he thinks of pirating himself. Therein lies the dillema. Do you think these kids deleted the songs from their hard drives? Is it that horrible? It isn't bad for me to do it, it isn't bad for you to do it. But if everyone does it, then nobody gets any more music (arguable). In the USA, that argument has hardly convinced half of the population to get up and vote, and voting is free.
While it would be an interesting twist, I don't wish jail upon Greene. I reserve that for Rosen. Sadly, though, they are both too rich to go to jail for something as trivial as this. Then again, if they really had the guts to set an example...
The ______ Agenda
From the NARAS website:
The show is now seen by more than 1.5 billion people in more than 175 countries, all celebrating the best the worldwide music community has to offer.
From the U.S. Census website:
According to the International Programs Center, U.S. Bureau of the Census, the total population of the World, projected to 3/7/02 at 22:46:01 GMT (3/7/02 at 5:46:01 PM EST) is
6,210,026,610
More than one quarter of the population on EARTH watched the grammy awards?
No way...
Greene needs to get his data straight. He specifically points to the usage of Napster, P2P, etc...as a direct correlation to record sales.(i.e. if Kazaa downloads increase, sales go down.) This is in fact not the case, since when downloads go up, their revenues follow the upward trend. Their sales have been higher than ever until 2001, and obviously economic factors and the 9/11 disaster accounted for this loss of revenue. The industry finally had a down year to blame downloads which have seemed to "help" record sales. But the question remains...Is the industry losing money that was never going to be spent in the first place?
I just about fell out of my chair laughing. Too bad I don't have mod points. :-)
There are a couple distinctions between this case and the famous one of old, though... the charge of worshipping false gods wouldn't fly in the US (despite continuing religious intolerance issues), and IIRC Socrates was trying to make Athens a better place at the expense of entrenched interests instead of defending them.
...when you're writing a game...tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something [your mother] can cope with. -- onion2k
most of u people believe everything the media and hollywood tells u through their lies. now, because it's "tech" related, u cry foul?
lame little geeks. go run home to mommy and daddy.
Rosen and Valenti's corporate masters suggest that because it's a music show, next year's rant should be a musical number. They've even got the rights lined up for the appropriate song, with a few modifications.
A band launches into the Squirrel Nut Zippers song "Hell"; the two mouthpieces bound onto stage, dressed in tuxes, carrying canes. They sing:
(Cue swing/calypso music)
(The committee in charge of coming up with this was delighted by how little they had to change, but they couldn't quite figure out how to change "suit" to "lawsuit" and still have it sound right.)Recording music your own for friends (like via buddy lists described here) for free is covered under the fair use laws. It's when you provide music to people you don't know (and presumably wouldn't be on your buddy lists) that you're breaking the law.
Give serendipity a chance.
Can you use AIM to search for files?
Last time I checked, the software formerly known as Aimster allowed searching your buddies' file lists.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Using their methods for calculating estimated losses to piracy:
3 people grabbed 6000 songs in 3 days. So that's about 666 per person per day.
If we just for the sake of argument say that 10 million people are trading MP3s, that's
10,000,000 x 666 = 6,660,000,000
Songs illegally downloaded EVERY DAY!
So, assuming 18 dollars per song, since people are only downloading decent songs and the industry standard is one good song per album...losses to the industry are:
6,660,000,000
x
$18
------
$119,880,000,000
EVERY DAY!
$43,756,200,000,000 every year!
We can't let them get away with robbing THE ARTISTS of FORTY THREE TRILLION DOLLARS!
Since they were hired by the Recording industry who holds all the copyrights in question, wouldn't they be stealing from themselves (on an organizational level)?
No, they were hired by NARAS and AOL(tw). Major labels (i.e. RIAA members) and independent labels (i.e. non-RIAA members) claim the copyright on the recordings. And doesn't allowing users to copy recordings freely potentially constitute a breach of the contracts of the songwriters? (There are two separate copyrights on a sound recording: the copyright in the recording itself, and the copyright in the underlying musical work.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
You mean Greene is going to stop me from downloading pap shite like rock-disco-retards No Doubt and neo-plastic-earthy-tripe Dave Matthews?? How oh how will I get by without this putrid excuse for legit music?
I highly doubt this. They are probably talking about AIMster which, can hardly standup to any arguments against it being a P2P technology.
If I search for Metallica and I find 7,000 screen names that have those files, are they suddenly my frieds?
It's even more fun to do this to the movie industry.
Here's a list of instructions, much like the ones you just gave, although they are written in a context-free language so that they can be interpreted directly by a computer as well as a person, to unencrypt the contents of a DVD - ugh, my head.
THE POSTER'S BRAIN CONTAINS THOUGHTS WHICH QUALIFY AS CIRCUMVENTION DEVICES UNDER THE DMCA. THEREFORE, IT HAS BEEN ERASED. - YOUR FRIENDS, THE MPAA.
What was I talking about? Oh, 40 days and 40 nights was such a great movie!
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
DMusic.com raised questions about the speed of the downloads and numbers way back on March 1st in this article
They suspected that the test was faked, or done from dedicated servers, as even with broadband connections P2P filesharing is often much much slower. It was obvious from the beginning that the numbers didn't add up....
(Note: I have posted this in another discussion so before you go accusing me of karma-whoring...I don't care if this gets modded up.)
entertainment
Pronunciation: "en-t&r-'tAn-m&nt
Function: noun
Date: 15th century
1 : the act of entertaining
2 a archaic : MAINTENANCE, PROVISION b obsolete : EMPLOYMENT
3 : something diverting or engaging: as a : a public performance b : a usually light comic or adventure novel
Somebody needs to remind the ENTERTAINMENT industry just what exactly their place is in the grand scheme of things! They've bent and twisted copyright laws and now they want to cripple every digital device under the sun, and for what? To protect Mickey Mouse cartoons and a few lousy movies??? NO! It's ENTERTAINMENT! It isn't something that actually matters that much! Yeesh, You'd think that it was a "national security" issue...like protecting nuclear secrets or something!
No Disney, you can't cripple all the computers. People use them to do things that are more important than a stupid cartoon mouse...like helping to treat the sick!
You're using her as bait, Master!
6000 songs split 3 ways (2000 songs each) figuring the avg mp3 is 3-4 megs a piece comes out to 6 to 8 gigs per each of the three.
even downloadin off a fairly slow mirror i just got the two RedHat isos (bout 1.2 gigs) in under 4 hours, with my crappy power link connection i wasnt even gettin the kinda speeds im capable of. on a fast server i could have done it in half that time easily.
i'd assume that to proove his point they gave theese 3 access to a T-1 each at minimum, maybe they shared a ds-3 or somethin who knows, but im sure the bandwidth was not skimped on to proove their point most effectively.
6000 songs doesnt really seem that impressive, but then again nothing about that example they tried to make is...
"...6,000 songs. That's three kids, folks. Now multiply that by millions of students and other computer users and the problem comes into sharp focus.... The RIAA estimates that - now listen to this - an astounding 3.6 billion songs are illegally downloaded every month."
2 21&mode=thread&tid=95)) and multiply by 1000. Now, multiply by 365. That's 182.5 Trillion MP3s per year! Wow! No wonder the Record Industry sales were down a few percentage points this year.
Because, remember, no college monitors bandwidth to websites. Every student and every other computer user has 8 hours a day to spend downloading MP3s, and wants to do so. Everybody I know skips class and parties to download music everyday. My parents don't work. They just sit around and download music on Morpheus. Everyone I know really does download about 1000 songs a day. In actuality, there are probably 500 billion MP3s downloaded everyday. Just take the number of web users (approx 500 Mil (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/03/07/1710
"...he RIAA estimates that - now listen to this - an astounding 3.6 billion songs are illegally downloaded every month."
I know last year wasn't very good for the RIAA, but it seems like there'd be a larger chunk taken out of their profits if this were as damaging as he's trying to make it out to be.
I think what's going to happen is that the RIAA is going to play this 'pity us' act for the next couple of years until it realizes it can't bend the law in their favor anymore. Eventually a new organization will form that will do basically what the RIAA does (finds and promotes talent...), and then make them big on the web.
Frankly, I'm glad I'm not an investor for the RIAA. I'd be plenty hacked off. I can liken this to Intel and 3D accellerators. 3D accelerators put less processing on the main (Intel) processor and more on the add-in card. So when a gamer wants to upgrade their machine, an investment in a video card has better yields than an investment in a new processor. This means Intel could potentially get less money.
Did Intel try to put a stop to 3D cards? Nope. The first thing they did was they tried to compete in that market. Unfortunately, their offering wasn't that great. Nividia kicked their buts basically. So what'd Intel do? They didn't try to pass laws that require computers to only use one brand of processors all across the board. They didn't accuse people of buying video cards instead of new processors of being theives or even disloyal. They didn't even muck around with the AGP standard to prevent these cards from reaching full potential. Instead, Intel worked with driver developers to make their CPUs talk more with the video card. Early in the 3D card game, the choice to make was which card do I want. Today it's 'which card/processor combination is ideal for me?'. Now I realize I'm oversimplifying what really happened, but instead of 'correcting my details', take away the point I'm making which is that Intel innovates to compete, instead of trying to buy legislature in their favor.
What the RIAA should have done was taken Mp3 trading as a call to innovate. The simple fact of the matter is that audio is easy to capture and easy to transmit. So what do they do? Well, one idea would be to release a new format that has more capabilites. One real simple idea is to have music "DVD's" with music videos and other goodies on board. This creates at least a temporary problem with would-be hackers because they have new challenges to overcome to transfer the full experience into a web deliverable component. The more features they add to these disks, the harder it is to get a satisfactory piaratable copy out there that'd truely devalue the media.
The RIAA could have been spearheading the MP3 player movement. They could have made a player that plays little chips/cards instead of discs, solving people's mobile needs. Maybe they could have created a new media that is smaller or can hold more.. or something like that. I dont know. The point is they could have done SOMETHING to try to compete. The idea that they think CD's should be all people listen to forever and ever seriously limits my estimation of how long they'll be around. If I were an investor, I'd be selling now. It's obvious this organization isn't trying to grow.
"Derp de derp."
I had no idea that music was worth more than most of the planet...
No wonder the music industry is so powerful. I bet they just give the senators involved small countries when needed.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
He sounds like a good man to know!!
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
ps. I think I did hear one person boo... I'm sure he/she got to enjoy the remainder of the grammays outside. :/
Huh?
Enjoy the Grammies? I think not..
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
So, seeing as how we all know that EVERY mp3 downloaded represents the lost sale of a CD, shouldn't the RIAA be after this guy for, lets see, 6,000 CDs at an average of 20 bucks a CD, 120,000 dollars?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Okay, so he lied. He was bait and he got ate and it's his own damn fault. What does this mean in real terms?
Not a damn thing.
How many people watched that speech? Million--Tens of millions--Maybe hundreds of millions. How many people know about him being debunked as a fraud? Perhaps a million if you stretch the figures.
It's not a great leap to assume he willfully lied -- and why shouldn't he? It was a carefuly crafted gamble. So what if even half of the people who watched that speech believe he's a charalatan? He has still indoctrinated is message in the remainder of the people who don't know any better.
He either lied or didn't bother to follow the real figures, not because thought he could get away with it, but because he knows that it doesn't matter if he gets away with it or not. Public relations people everywhere know that a lie is only a lie if you know about it.
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
... that Britney Spears and N'Sync had 6000 songs to download!
That is all.
Damn, where are these "students"? I need to find out why their internet connection is so good. UCLA's internet connection sucks hardcore.
Or perhaps they're the ones hogging all the bandwidth?! Damn them!
http://www.theregus.com/content/54/24195.html
Of course, if Hollings gets his way, we'll be forced to pay every time we whistle a tune...
I modded this up. While I agree with the previous poster that the use of "piracy" rhetoric to obfuscate that illicit duplication of copyrighted work has always been a minor civil infraction, I was never aware that the OED has recorded uses of piracy in the context of copyright violations going back hundreds of years. You wrote a truly informative post! So sure, piracy on the high seas is nothing like copyright infringement, but it's fascinating to note the history. Thanks! This post is just to point out that some moderators mod up posts which contains factually accurate material, even if it supports a point with which they may disagree.
I think the RIAA is aware that it gets some boosted sales through increased exposure to music, however, their main target with new legislation isn't your generation, but, more importantly, future generations. Even though I don't agree with the means they are trying to pursue, they realize that they can not retain their iron grip over music and strong sales, as my generation will not pursue the same philosophies as yours. I constantly see these posts on slashdot, anecdotal experiences about purchasing music due to a p2p utility, but I don't see this sort of activity occuring among my peers.
Let me clarify: I'm a 17 year old in a fairly rich suburban high school region. . . Even in the face of prosperity, most of the kids involved in p2p sharing in our school are doing so without the intentions of ever buying a CD. Even though this is a well-off suburban region, most kids are fairly limited in money supply - when balancing movies, friends, and everyday food, music is the easiest to scratch off the list because it can be obtained from p2p. As we get more and more accustomed to the idea of downloading music for free, buying music may become foreign to us, thereby locking off a large market segment for the RIAA.
In the past two years, even though I have downloaded over 3000 songs, I have not purchased a single CD. In fact, the mentality I have described has pervaded me that I do not think I will ever buy a CD. Rinse and repeat for most of my classmates, for whom piracy of music has become so commonplace that they ask why they should spend their hard earned money when they can just download for free.
Granted, the RIAA should embrace this changing market as opposed to rough-handing the changing market to its own needs. However, I do not think that the argument of a net benefit from the piracy of music will hold weight for much longer.
Calling God a lie makes Baby Jesus cry.
barely used P2P file-sharing programs at all. Instead, they used AOL's popular Instant Messenger to receive song files from friends."
What exactly does this prove? The guy's point was how easy it is to hand music to other people over the internet, and how simple it is for people to acquire things that have never before been so readily available.
Whoever wrote this is nitpicking to avoid the matter at hand.
Not that any of that prooves Greene's point. In the real world people use much faster p2p networks. They don't select files en masse. And most people aren't in college right now, so don't have the fast transfer rates that go with it.
omnia tua castra sunt nobis
One of the kids said he still went along with the scam even though he knew it was wrong because he got a free room at the Biltmore. If we (the kids who download music) are going to go up against the big bad guys, shouldn't we stick by our morals too? I mean, a room at the Biltmore would be nice, but isn't this all about the principle? Nothing against any of the students who downloaded the tunes but I think they should have told Senor Greene where to stick it when he wanted them to play his little game.
oh cmon.. its just like the "every cd-r sold are 20$ less in our bank account".
Sorry, I never knew that. As it is, being a foreigner from a non-English speaking country, I would hardly have ever come across such a piece of information.
My only doubt is if when a member of the general English speaking population hear the word "pirate" the image that comes to his/her mind is that of photocopiers/CD-burners/etc or that of bloody smeared swords and black banners under a tropical Sun.
In related news, the RIAA and MPAA jointly announced the grand opening of their online digital movie/music store today, before being fined and having their equipment confiscated under violation of the recently-passed FUCT bill. "We're going to loose millions on this deal, it's an outrage!" said Jack Valenti, fresh out of the hospital after recovering from a carpal-tunnel injury sustained while signing lobbyists' checks. "We will fight this in the highest courts until justice is served"...
This will never end.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
In his speech he mentions that ripping also has to be stopped because it's criminal... ..... ....
:)
I might be wrong, but isn't ripping legal? Just the sharing with commertial intent is illegal right?
Can someone say:
This is legal:
This is illegal:
thanks
OED Online: 'piracy'
You are using the same false assumption that RIAA uses: that all downloaded music is illegal or that they have jurisdiction over all music in the world.
;-)
I download about 5gigs of mp3 and 15 gigs of shn's every month....all live, all legal with the bands blessing.
BUT I also download lots of Portuguese and Vietnamese music illegally...they DO NOT fall under the jurisdiction of the RIAA, so if the kids DL'ed non-RIAA songs, they broke the law too.
I guess we'll be bunk mates in a cell one day....
Hmm, fresh college boys
Who made the RIAA the guardian of all music worldwide? Believe it or not, there are other countries on the other sides of the two oceans.
Have this guy locked up for ten years. He abducted three teens, forced them to perform illegal acts which he later blamed them for and washed himself of any guilt.
Seriously, it's fricking religious nuts like these that are turning the world into a bureaucratic nazi hell. Money has corrupted these people beyond return, and then they go on TV and tell the world how fun it is to be a corporate puppet.
Stop the civil wars, and declare a war on these hotheads. They are the ones threatening our lives and our freedom. They are the ones who want us locked up just because we're going to deprive them from one cup of coffee by downloading one song off the net, when they can very well afford coffee without our help. They are the enemy.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
is there an mp3 player that can play off an m3u with ssl?
the only way up to my archive is scp but lots of people suck down m3us through a cgi interface and stream all day long. i suppose someone could be watching upstream..
You know what? If I had access to a line where I could gather 2 friends and suck down a mega library of tunes, I'd do it in a heart beat. I'm sick and tired of paying $18 bucks a disc (we buy them for 25 cents apiece anymore). Fuck the RIAA, fuck their opposition to the revolution.
The record companies will have to face it. Music was once a freedom that humans enjoyed. Once they found out they could control the flow, they pounced. But not that we can control our own musical habits, they've lost the edge and ability to suck us dry. Guess what: You no longer control things. We do. Face it, it's over.
Music fans will support their favorite artists by going to clubs. And artists dying to be heard will take the opertunity to get their music to reaches that not even a little local company could hope to do (which is where most bands end up nowsdays).
This guy basically said Fuck You to the RIAA and it's machine. The bands want the money because the companies take the majority of it. The only way they make tons of cash is if they're really huge. And yes, some are greedy. But give them control of their own musical destiny (ie take away the CDs and say hello to true digital music) and you'll see them quiet down. No longer will the companies be making all the cash. The few people who actually run things, that is. The bands will see what they deserve if they do it properly. And the RIAA will have no say...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
I'd have discovered a reason to respect Christina Aguilera?
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I can see all those kids at home watching the Grammies, and then this old codger tells them they can download 6000 songs for free! Talk about planting a thought in their heads!
They'll be straight off to bug Dad for an internet connection!
* * Always question "the National Interest" - 9 times out of 10 it is a cover for evil
Out of curiosity, what university are you at? Wisconsin-Madison here, our resnet blows too. That's what they get though when they try to put 7500 bandwidth-hungry college students under a 40mbit cap. :(
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
If record execs are so worried about their precious artists livelyhoods why don't they start by stopping the 15% "breakage" fee they take off the top. This made sense when we (well they) bought ceramic records. Hipocritacle fu*kers. We are talking about the greasiest, slimeiest business in the world here. Record companies need to be phased out. Think about it. An entire industry of businessmen scum who make their livings squeezing every penny they can get out of talented people (well some are talented, most of the talented ones we'll never hear because they don't fit into a marketing demo). With the internet, artists can easily distribute their music to the entire world without the need for record companies. I'd gladly pay $5.00 to download an album from an artists website. $5.00 is alot more than they get from the record companies. The only thing the RIAA is worried about is loosing their own jobs when people realize they arn't needed anymore.
I go to UCLA many times each week and hook up my laptop to go on the Internet. Their connection plain out sucks. You may get 10KB/sec during regular hours, 20KB/sec at night. Someone could probably download about 450mb during regular hours, and 850 at off peak hours (if they were just going constant all day and night). So thats 1.3GB/day. 1.3GB would be how many songs? Maybe 400. Unless they had friends at UCLA transfering directly over their network, then it would be quite a bit faster.. but still, 6,000 songs?
I say it's BS. There is no way in hell that a couple UCLA students downloaded 6,000 songs in 2 or 3 days. I hang out in the dorms there all the time and know what the connection is like.
So if the they paid these kids $12/hour...
$12/hour x 8 hours/day x 5 days/week x 52 weeks/year...
The RIAA is trying to ROB me of $24,960 a year! Where's my PokeSenator??
Why didn't he hook them up with 3 computers, a ultra phat pipe and Gnutella - they'd be able to download every song recorded over the past 30 years, that'd sure sound alot better than this lousy 6,000 number they managed to scrounge up :)
This music stuff is getting very interesting. We are watching a group of people as their whole livelyhood is disappearing before their eyes. Many comments discount the threat, but it is real. But not from the source that the executives are thinking.
I forsee the music industry as it stands collapsing due to the fact that these people cannot walk and chew gum at the same time. Notice the lack of any decent new music? Death of rock and roll and all that? The industry is tied in knots trying to figure out how to protect it's distribution, unable to give any attention to the product they distribute. Music sales will drop as they desperately try to market more trash, try to recreate the vinyl/cassette to cd sales bump with a new protected digital format. They will get the legislation they want, draconian and ultimately placing unacceptable limits on the listener. Which will decrease sales even more. Remember, the largest market for music is young people, who have all experienced the joy of downloading music, ripping, etc. This group will never be satisfied with the old ways.
The real crunch will come when the artists, seeing their income drop due to the incompetence of the distributors, back out of agreements, or resign with someone who actually is interested in distributing their music.
Derek
There's a Pulitzer Prize-winning piece done by the L.A. Times on Michael Greene and his questionable dealings. The series of articles is available on the Pulitzer site.
Also, any of you living in Chicago may want to tune into to an excellent radio talk show called Sound Opinions. It's aired weekly on WXRT (93.1 FM), Tuesday nights from 10pm-midnight, hosted by rock critics from the Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune.
Anyway, they interviewed Michael Greene a few months back, and he hung up on them when they brought up the L.A. Times piece. Since last Tuesday was the first show after the Grammys, they spent the first 30 or so ripping on the Grammys. In particular, they talked about Michael Greene and replayed a clip of when Michael Greene hung up on him.
It doesn't look like the archives have been updated to include this week's show, but check back later.
Down here, the equivalent of BSA runs ads with the skull and bones banner and eye-patched pirates in its campaigns against software copyright violations. The message comming across is much more like the later.
It's so nice to know that if you're rich and powerful you can use legal technicalities to commit crimes without getting prosecuted - and then brag about it on national television.
My nation is in the toilet.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
I tink I just figured it out. RIAA doesn't give a damn about people copying songs. not one bit. It puffs up and whines aobut losing revenue, when it's upper execs and MBA's have identified the fact that by denying users the right to do it, they will of course have free publicity, postings on slashdot, Free CNN coverage, and on and on... We all beeing duped into getting excited about music. Remember the adage: a rising ship lifs all boats. It stands to reason that if I listen to more music eventually, I will buy some. Three years ago, I dind't download MP3's, but I _also_ didn't buy any CD's. Now I download _and_ buy CD's. In closing, music was not a significant (financially)part of my life since high school, Now it is. We're all creating massive viral marketing buzz for the entire music industry, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I like music now, listening to Madonna's beautiful Stranger as I type. My wife bought the damn CD at Target for full face value - she forgot about the BMG music club we're in. I don't really care she paid face value, well not too much. The cool part is that its now on the PC / with wireless 2.5 gHz transmitter to the home stereo. Music is very cool now!!! Go RIAA. Drive the technology you so ardently claim is killing you but is in fact spurring your growth. ug too much caffiene
I did. We all do. Your priorities change when you're not a snot nosed punk (no offense I was one at one time) and you DO have money, you're inclined to spend it. Not to mention the fact that typically around age 23 -25 you begin to assume your parents moral sense of values, and what's right and wrong.I remember I used to hat eit when adults would tell me you're just going through a phase. It was soooo patronizing. Anyway, you're just going through a phase.
Good call man!!! Leave it to The Onion to tell it how it is.
Just doing a simple little bit of maths.. assuming that every MP3 file they downloaded was 3.3MB :
They downloaded a total of 19.8GB in two days..
If they stayed awake for the full 48 hours, they would have been downloading 412.5MB/hour of data between them. That seems quite possible I guess if they were downloading constantly. But assuming they took 8 hours of sleep a day and didnt download files during that time, that would have been 618.8MB/hour..
I dunno - theoretically, these stats are quite possible, but including all the time it would take to actually find the music, and have to cancel from unreliable sources, it just doesn't make sense for me.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
read the law. What violation did he make? None!
So are RIAA now going to sue AOL Time Warner and force them to stop distributing this subversive Instand Messenger software? This is absolutely delicious and shows just how foolish some of the earlier hysteria has been. Unfortunately instead of seeing the truth, that people will find a way using the tools available to them, they lie about their findings and misrepresent which software was used in an attempt to demonize a whole class of applications.
It's kind of a shame if you think about it.....
Some people who download songs off the internet instead of buying the CD will never buy the CD no matter what. The RIAA shouldn't even waste their time and money with these people; if they can't download for free, they're still not going to buy. Rocky Mountain High is a cool song, but who would spend $20 for a John Denver CD?
Some people who download songs decide they like the artist enough to go and buy the CD. Stop that person from downloading, and you just lost the potential sale. The RIAA just lost money again.
Two groups of people; and stopping music downloads has done nothing except cost the RIAA money.
Finally, there's the person who has the money to buy the CD, but decides to save it and download. The RIAA stops this person from downloading, and the person either buys the CD, or borroes hos friends and makes a copy.
Out of four possible scenarios, only one benefits the RIAA. Am I missing something, or do these people use 'fuzzy math'?
was Micheal Jackson not showing up. I heard he was going to do a duet with Britney Spears and sing "I'm not a girl, not yet a woman".
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
send him to jail, that is what he deserves
I was watching the Grammies and as Greene gave the same old industry spin on "digital music piracy," I definitely heard some guy in the Grammy audience actually yell "BOO!"
Whoever that Grammy boo-boy was, he definitely earns a Guts Award.
Deep in the ocean are treasures beyond compare; but if you seek safety, it is on the shore.
I have always found that for willful copyright infringement, Lycos is your best bet. Google has the tendency to actually return useful information. If I want to know something, I use Google - if I'm looking to commit copyright infringement, it's Lycos.
(And not just for mp3s; Lycos is where to go if you want to find, say, old infocom games)
...who I saw on "Politically Incorrect" a week or so ago? I remember some guy (it had to have been this dude) saying that he had three kids rip 6000 songs. I couldn't figure out what he was talking about (how does reading 600 CDs make a point about copyright violations) until it became apparent he was talking about downloading.
I thought it was interesting that he would abuse the language in that manner, trying to make "to rip" into a bad thing. Ignorant mistake, or calculated malice? Hmm...
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
That's why I pretty much stopped my CD purchasing habits. I listen pretty much to what I've already purchased and not a lot more. I don't listen to the radio all that often these days either.
That price, it DOES put things starkly in perspective, doesn't it?
Folks, isn't it time to remind them that we're why they're here in the first place and they should be a little nicer to us?
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I just love this old canard, dragged out at least half a dozen times for each Slashdot discussion on music piracy--oh, I'm sorry, "sharing". Piracy is justified...because CD's cost too much! and how do we know they cost too much? Because they're so cheap to manufacture! Look!
You are aware, of course, that the idea that the value of a product should be equal to (or at least derivative from) the cost of its manufacture, the cost of materials and labor, is essentially a Marxist concept.
hyacinthus.
fnord
Moderators,
If there is any goodness in you, please mod parent down. No one should be submitting comments with a +1 bonus who doesn't think before they submit. Please HELP.
Using RIAA numbers:
3.6 Billion songs downloaded every month...
6000 / 3 students / 2 days = 1000 dl per day per person...
= 3.6 Million people per month
= 1.4% of the population of the U.S.
BUT, the RIAA never said this was only in the US, so if we take the world population into account...
0.06% of the world population...
Oh, the horror! The RIAA can't survive on the money of only the "honest" 99.94% of the population!!!
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"