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Singing Cow To Attack CBDTPA
karmawarrior writes "Gateway is launching an advertising campaign against Senator Holling's CBDTPA bill, which, apparently will include its cow mascot encouraging computer users to legally download MP3s and burn their own CDs." Wired also has a story; see Gateway's website for more, as Gateway takes a page from Apple's "Rip-Mix-Burn" playbook.
...take a page from Chik-fil-a. I can see it now, 2 cows on a ladder, painting a billboard to say "Download more Zepplin"
The Hollings bill has drawn the support of major recording companies, who believe fast Internet connections and an array of digital devices such as MP3 players and CD burners, as well as Napster and other file-sharing services, were partly responsible for a decline in album sales last year
Didn't sales go up when napster started and then descreased when RIAA went and shutdown napster?
Hell I know people who used to get Mp3's so they could decide whether to buy an album who now just get them to piss off RIAA.
--"Karma is justice without the satisfaction"
Ok i'm all for lobbying against the bill...
but PLLLLLLLLLLEAAAAAAAASE dont show more of that cow!!!!! I hope Steve from Dell eats it! then gets mad cow disease and dies!!
While I think this is good news and all...
Gateway is another large company with an agenda, and ITS agenda happens to coincide with my interests, and so I think it is good news.
But really, what is the online-privacy and free-speech fight really? It is large corporations fighting each other to see which one gets to write the laws. There is a debate going on, but we are not really part of it, except as the Prize. If a divorcing couple fight over who gets to keep the Car, they aren't really worried about what the Car wants.
God is real unless declared integer
Basically, both sides are rallying around a cause in order to drum up support. The recording industry is chanting, "The artists! The artists!" At the same time, tech seems to be saying, "The consumer! The consumer!" But in the end, everyone's just looking out for their own threatened business model.
Open Source advocates may find opposing Hollings bill makes for strange bedfellows. It actually suggests that Microsoft might be our ally (gasp!) because of their recently found devotion to streaming media and peer to peer networking.
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
Following the RIAA's logic, I guess car companies that advertise their wares are really encouraging the breaking of speed limits, reckless driving, and driving too fast for conditions when they show advertisements with the disclaimer "professional driver on closed course".
Do insurance companies then complain that auto manufacturers are behaving irresponsibly? No.
Should the RIAA be complaining about Gateway's ads? No.
I went to the city because I wished to live without deliberation.
Emphasis mine. Way to go, Gateway! Just what we need -- a few more high profile companies to echo this particular line. First Apple, then Gateway. Maybe if the moneybags at IBM and Intel stepped into the game, this war could be considered won. But (sigh!) they're too busy planning copy-protected processors and hard disks to actually think of the consumer
Apart from saying they support your right to mix-rip'n'burn, this doesn't really take issue against the CPDB... CPTDB... Bad Law Thingy(TM). (Maybe because it's so hard to remember the acronym, especially since they keep changing it)
This ad doesn't go far enough, or bring home the true horribleness of the law. We need shock tactics, like those highway-safety ads. I want to see the cow standing in the middle of the highway with a big placard, screaming "The CBDTPA SUUUUUCKS!" and then getting run down by a Disney truck, preferably driven by a Senator Hollings impostor.
For those of you keeping score at home, here's another one for the opposition of CBDTPA (or whatever they're calling it today)
This one from eWeek
enjoy
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
On NBC while watching the Great Race. It was funny as hell.
My wife rolled her eyes and it gave me the perfect chance to let her know *why* they were running that commercial.
Now that Gateway has clearly chosen sides, I think we can start selling tickets to the battle royall:
"In this corner weighing in at a puny few billion in stated revenues is MPAA, AOL/Time Warner/CNN, RIAA and the BSA. In the Far corner, weighing in at an incalcuable sum is Gateway, IBM, Sun, Dell, Apple and all the people. This ain't really gonna be a long fight folks so don't blink."
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
Comment removed based on user account deletion
From Hollings's Point of View:
"First, they attack you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they moo at you.
Then they win."
Where interests coincide, support. Where conflict, oppose. It's very simple. There are no "good guys" and "bad guys", just different people and groups of people with varied agendas. They do not have to be exactly like you, and insisting that unless they tow your line all the way down the line they are enemies is rather childish.
Hell, I've got about zero respect for Gateway products. They have effectively filled the consumer space crappy OEM PC manufacturer vacated by Packard Bell. But, at least they realize that stringent hardware requirements mandated by the government are not in their best interests. As this conicides with mine, yeah I'll support them by pointing out the issues they are bringing to light to the less tech-savvy. Doesn't mean I'll be recommending their products any time soon.
It shouldn't.
HOWEVER, indirectly, things will trickle out of legislation such as this that will affect legal users-
Maybe ISPs will start filtering for all MP3s due to fear of legal action or the such...
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
Gateway is a struggling PC manufacturer. Why can't a few tech companies with deeper pockets spend money for this quest? I admire what they're doing, hopefully people buy a Cow next time they're buying a pre-built box so their $$ isn't spent without a return.
Apple computer realized this a good while back. Steve Jobs himself even came out and said that the RIAA is wasting its time and money on this as no matter what they do, hard core pirates will find a way to steal music.
:)
Gateway is only following Apple's lead, just the way the rest of the PC industry often follows their lead. Granted this is a good thing this time
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
"If only they would devote a little bit of the millions of dollars they're spending on this ad campaign to help stop illegal downloading ... but that wouldn't help them sell more CD burners, would it," said Hilary Rosen
<sarcasm>Yes, because all CD burners are sold to make discs full of illegally downloaded music!</sarcasm>
Maybe if the RIAA would price their CDs more reasonably, actually give money to their artists, and stop the overwhelming and unnecessary homogenization of the music which they promote to (read: push on) the public, people wouldn't be so inclined to download music.
is the broad adoption of Jack Valenti's misnomer "piracy" to denote "unauthorized copying." It's an improper usage of an emotionally loaded word and it unfairly biases the audience, albeit in a subtle way, every time it's used, even by journalists and others in support of Fair Use. It's like the popular but WRONG equation of "hacker" with "cracker" - which is also gleefully promoted by all those authoritarian a**holes who would like nothing better than to enslave us all to the RIAA and MPAA.
Real "piracy" is rape, pillage, and murder on the high seas or some remote godforsaken mountain pass or desert wadi. It still happens in the seas around Indonesia and Malaysia, and in the Caribbean, and it still happens on land in places like Africa and continental Asia. To equate sampling a piece of music by MP3 prior to deciding to purchase it with "piracy" is all so over-the-top hysterical that it would be merely comical if it hadn't gotten widespread currency.
Jack Valenti and Hillary Rosen should have their mouths washed out with soap for hammering on this to the point that even their opponents adopted their skewed language.
This is a new one. Hit the video at Gateway's site. Same cow, same Ted, same truck, but a with a different song. The dig at the Holling's bill is new too.
The song itself is available for download as an MP3 too.
Actually, when I first saw the "Whip It" version, I thought Gateway might be trying a "get them while they're still legal" type of thing. But this is way cooler.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
I love how the Yahoo article explains what the CBDTPA is supposed to do... "a copyright-protection bill that would
prevent computers from playing pirated movies and music." More like "a bill that would prevent technology from eating into the profits of large corporations that are slow to adapt."
Anyhow, the CBDTPA is really just an OLURMATOWIRM (an Overly Long, Unwieldy, Redundant and Misleading Acronym That Obfuscates What It Really Means.)
... "Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the w
"If only the music industry would devote a little bit of millions of dollars they're spending on lawyers and buying senators to update their distribution model into the 21st century... but that wouldn't let them fuck the artists as much would it?"
nuff said.
(A bit OT, but bear with me)
Don't let them believe its hurting the artists, cd sales were way up during napster's days, and went into a slump shortly after it was shut down.
There's really nothing wrong with cd sales at the moment, the problem for the recording companies is that with that sort of thing going on (napster), they lose a lot of control of what people listen to.
People in general like whatever music they tend to listen to... if all we hear is pop, we come to like pop, if you hear lots of heavy metal, you start to like heavy metal, and so on. As it stands now, the recording industries more or less control what you hear on the radio, and ensure that you're buying music produced by their label.
However, with something like napster available, people could just download songs from whoever, fo free (and frequently did). The recording companies saw this, and they had visions of a future where they had no control, and couldn't suddenly make whoever they felt like popular. So they got scared, and sued the pants off of napster.
Now that they've realised that people are going to swap mp3's even without napster, (and with gnutella, etc, there's nobody to sue), they're paying senators (Hollings) to write laws in the US to force computers not to be able to share copyrigthed material somehow (and I personally can't think of a good way of doing that).
I'm guessing that you and most slashdotters already know most of this story, but the point is, *don't* even say that it may hurt the artists, because it doesn't. It helps independent artists and the small record labels immensely. Its the recording companies it hurts, don't lose sight of that.
We refuse to be COWED
So the content industry should ruminate on this. Find some udder solution. Maybe tipping. Or a place where the grass is greener. And especially no bullshit.
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
Maybe they should contact these guys?
www.eFax.com are spammers
"If only they would devote a little bit of the millions of dollars they're spending on this ad campaign to help stop illegal downloading ... but that wouldn't help them sell more CD burners, would it," said Hilary Rosen, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America.
Now let me get this straight? The RIAA, MPAA and others (through the Disney Senator) want to take away many of the rights that hardware manufacturers have in building their systems. And now they want these same companies to spend money to help keep the horrible music system in place? At least movie stars make money. 99% of artist's don't. Read This article [Salon.com] by Courtney Love if you want to know why I personally don't like the RIAA.
I applaud Gateway for this, and I really hope that this helps bring them from the brink of going out of buisness. I plan on supporting them through corporate purchases (which I oversee). I hope supporting companies who endorse (publically) our ideals will win in the long run
Blah Blah Blah.
www.eFax.com are spammers
By rallying behind Gateway (and all their money) are we going to put them into a position to corner the market?
I don't think there's any danger of Gateway cornering anything. They make overpriced, underwhelming mass-market PCs. Most educated users wouldn't buy from them anyway. However, they can stand to benefit from this campaign. As I understand it, the AOL users of the world still buy their computers based on the testimony of bovine corporate representatives.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
"If only they would devote a little bit of the millions of dollars they're spending on this ad campaign to help stop illegal downloading ... but that wouldn't help them sell more CD burners, would it," said Hilary Rosen, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America.
I see, it would seem that the RIAA is still of the mindset that the tool maker is responsible for the use of the tool.
There is no way that the tech industry is going to voluntarily cripple its equipment on just the media companies' say so.
Thankfully there has been NO support for the SSSCA/CD...whatever they're calling it today. Not that that means it's dead.
Rosen and company should realize that forced DRM will pan out in one of 2 directions. Either it will be defeated by some 13 year old in a matter of minutes, or it (if *unbreakable* =P )will annihilate the market for new equipment and create a huge aftermarket for pre-DRM equipment.
Both are failures for the media folk, but the second option promises to make an already ugly looking ecomony even worse. And potentially turn millions of people into felons for effectively sitting still.
There are laws already in place to handle every issue they keep bringing up, but appearantly it won't be enough until they can force feed use everything.
If they want to kick the piracy issue I have a suggestion for them. PUT SOME PORDUCTION QUALITY INTO THEIR PRODUCTS! I'm not talking about the quality of the music itself, but everything that goes along with it. Case in point, the soundtrack for "Queen of the Damned". Retailing at the local Walmart for $13.99. I think it a pretty good soundtrack, personally. However, the packaging and liner notes are TERRIBLE! No lyric sheet, tracks aren't even listed in order as they are on the disk, it's just a simple tri-fold. How about a little something more for my $14? Seriously, give me one good reason why I shoud not just d/l the tracks that I want, aside from the (il)legallity issue. There is NOTHING, no added value whatsoever in purchasing the actual CD.
This is primarily their greatest problem, they fail to see that they are selling more than simply music, and until they realize it, 'pirating' (I still hate that term) looks very appealing.
You know, the Cult of the Singing Cow.
   
   
   
Ow! Stop hitting me!
It was just a joke. Geeze.
Ow!
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
vegetables: it's what food eats.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.