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Ebert, Gillmor on the Music Industry
TTop writes "Roger Ebert has weighed in with a scathing critique of the Universal Music Group and its new copy-protection scheme which renders CDs unplayable in non-Windows operating systems, DVD players, and CD-compatible game consoles. It's nice to see the mainstream press start to come out against the idiotic copy-protection war the RIAA is declaring on their best customers, music lovers. Having to agree to a legal contract to hear a CD you've purchased on your own PC? Puh-leeze. Ebert compares these copy-protection schemes to Circuit City's failed DIVX DVD format." Columnist Dan Gillmor wrote a piece a few days ago about drawing a line in the sand.
For that to happen, the 12 year old girls will have to be convinced of the importance of the boycott, so that they will stop buying CDs by BoyBandOfTheWeek and J'Britney.
Maybe we could find a way to make buying CDs uncool.
Best Slashdot Co
A couple of weeks ago, Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal did the same thing in his article, "Digital Consumer Takes Up the Fight Against Copyright Plans in Congress".
In the article, he proposes a whole new digital copyright law that gives the user back their priveleges to make copies of the content they have legally obtained.
He proposed the following rights:
- The right to "time-shift" audio or video content; that is, to record it for later playback.
- The right to "space-shift" music or videos; that is, to copy material to blank CDs, multiple PCs, or portable players in different locations.
- The right to make backup copies.
- The right to use the content on any platform they choose: a Windows PC, a Macintosh, a DVD player, whatever.
- The right to translate content into different formats.
I think this, along with Roger Ebert's comments should hopefully catch the eye of Congress and the RIAA and actually get something done. Kudos to the two of them for realizing that our rights are being infringed upon.
They can't. The bands have no say in how their music is sold, they gave up the rights to it. Without some sort of publishing infrastructure for their music they can't possibly make a living making music which means they lead the life of the bar band. There are bands who've come forward and said they didn't like how the RIAA was treating fans/consumers or the bands themselves. These bands of course have made their money and are popular enough to pick up a contract with any publisher if their current publisher decided to drop them because of their statements. Most bands' goal in life is to get signed and be able to make music professionally, telling the companies that allow them to do this to fuck off is not condusive to that career aspiration. You've also got a factual falacy stating bands are being ripped off by people not buying a 16$ CD. You'd do much more to support a band if you went and saw them in concert rather than bought their CD. They make a larger percentage off performances than they do off of albums they sell.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I know this is off topic, but with several instances over the past couple days, I'm forced to cry out - would the editors PLEASE fix incorrect uses of "its"/"it's" on the main page?! It's not that hard:
"it's" means "it is"
"its" is the possessive form of "it"
If you can't replace "it's" with "it is," then you're using the wrong word. It just makes the main page look like someone's guestbook. Fix it for my English teacher's sake, please!
The important rights that are being taken away are:
the right to speak, even if the speech is describing a computer program
the right to run the computer programs of our choice on our own equipment [there is no right to use/hack someone elses equipment]
Someone needs to acknowledge these are essential rights, bound intimately with our first amendment and privacy rights.
/. garbage filler at work. Either delete the extra spa ces, or:
click here.
It's called Pitch Black.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Check http://uk.eurorights.org they have an updated list of known proteced cd's and their labels. It covers mostly European releases. For info on US a good site is http://www.fatchucks.com/corruptcds/index.html.
I think what Ebert has to say is little news to the average Slashdot reader
True, but his opinion just went out the the unwashed masses. He has MUCH more pull than Slashdot, in that respect. The discussion is mostly so the readers know that it's being publicized.
Works great.I actually had to use it last night to recover a CD track that would not rip, but would play OK on the portable.
I bought Shakira's album Laundry Service about a week ago. Unfortunately for me, I didn't notice the small print on the cover and on the CD itself ("will _not_ play on PC/MAC") until I got home and tried to convert it to MP3s. I have encoded all my CDs to MP3 files so that I wouldn't have to change the CD in the CD player whenever I want to listen to some other artists. I have a high stack of CDs, the MP3s are there just for extra convenience. A small hint to everyone: get an Evation IRman infrared receiver so you can control your MP3 player remotely. I couldn't live without it.
Oh, back to copy protection.. I was unable to play or rip that CD with any of the computers that I have at home. I tried various ripping programs, but none of then did the trick. They didn't even recognize that there was a CD in the CD drive. My regular Technics CD player played the disc just fine, along with my DVD player in CD audio mode (this was somewhat surprising). Computers were completely unable to play the CD. Yes, the CD does have the Compact Disc digital audio logo on it. Or actually, it's "Compact Disc digital audio TEXT". However, that additional "text" part hasn't stopped ripping some other CDs that I have. The actual reason why the CD didn't want to cooperate was most probably the fact that it had a nice "SACEM/SDRM" logo right next to the Compact Disc logo. You can see an image of the CD here if you're interested about the details. Unfortunately the image quality isn't very good as my scanner is kind of old and the print quality on the CD itself leaves something to be desired.
Fortunately, a friend of mine at work had the same CD without the copy protection scheme applied so I was able to encode that troublesome CD to MP3. Seems like they released a few copy protected CDs to test how the consumers would react. Both of those CDs were manufactured in Austria.. go figure.
Well, at least I know I'll have to be more careful the next time I go shopping for CDs.. I would have most probably returned the CD if I had found some non-computer device that was unable to play the CD, but as I found none, I guess I'll just keep this as a reference in case someone asks my opinion about copy protected CDs. You can bet I won't buy another CD that won't let me encode it to MP3s.
Follow your Euro bills at EBT
Record company executives always find something to blame a decline in sales on. And any increase in sales they attribute to their own brilliance. Back in the 1980s, they were blaming cassettes with the "Home Taping In Killing Music" nonsense, with it's pathetic "cassette & crossbones" stickers. In the 1990s, they were blaming used CD sales, and trotted out Garth Brooks to clame that the legal "right of first resale" was taking food from his children's mouths. And before that it was:
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
Ah, yes, contract law. The thing about contracts is that the damages are usually enforceable as "expectancy" (meaning that the prevailing plaintiff receives the "benefit of the bargain" as damages) and, since a contract made by a minor is "voidable," the minor can disaffirm the contract and avoid those damages. "Restitution" is a different matter: "restitution" means you have to give back what you got (or its fair value) so as to avoid unjust enrichment (to you) and unfair deprivation (to the other party). So if a minor enters a contract to make X number of payments at $Y per month for a car, and doesn't make the payments, he does have to give the car back, even though the contract is not binding upon him.
What this probably means in this context is that a minor who buys a CD, makes a zillion copies and sells them, and then tries to disaffirm the contact will still have to make restitution, even if he is not bound by the contract terms. (IOW, a exception to contract law is a shield, not a sword, and the law is not always an ass).
Didn't know there was a tv adaptation of "Next". Do you happen to recall when you saw it & on what channel? I'd like to see it.
I'm going to say that I swaw it a couple of months ago, and it was either on public TV, or on the discovery channel.
I think it more likely that the bands can typically only come up with one or two good songs in the time frame they have to record an album. I'm not a musician though, so the whole creative process there tends to amaze me anyway
That may very well be. But I've heard guys like Dwight Yoakum talking about how his record contract says he can only put 12 songs on a disc, and that he had to pay his record company to put out a 14 song disc. It looks like the record companies are not much into supplying value for the money we spand.
The label's business is selling "units". music on a physical medium. They don't make money unless you buy the media from them, and they aren't smart enough to figure out how to make money using a software licensing model.
They were in a position to be the only ones with enough resources and access to get records made, and they exploited that fact for a long time. They are losing their grip on their market place, and those in power never give up without a fight, and they'll fight dirty as necessary.
My Heart Is A Flower