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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"
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.
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.
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.
"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.
Bingo.
That would have been me. My CD collection soared when Napster was online. I would spend hours going from song to song from groups I liked. The songs I found may have been from earlier CDs that I didn't no exist.
The other thing that Napster did was turn me on to other bands. I would hang out in the chat rooms and ask for suggestions based on what I liked. People were happy to show me other bands. I'd download a tune, listen to it, if I liked it I picked up a couple more. If I liked them all I'd go buy the CD online.
Why did I buy the CD? Was it for a sense of obligation? Sheepishly I'll tell you it wasn't. It was for the simple fact that I like to rip my songs at 320K. I'd buy the CD, rip the songs to 320K and use the resulting MP3s to listen to.
That is fair use in my opinion and one that the RIAA wants to take away from me.
Sounds about right to me.
What I really see is the RIAA more concerned about *power* then *profit*.
Example: I went to MP3.com and bought the Megatokyo collection - didn't like all of it, but enough of it was pretty cool (like the Megatokyo theme itself) that I figured the lost cost of $4 of an entire "CD" of MP3's was worth the cost.
I was taken to a little secure site, and allowed to download to my local computer. From there, I've transferred that music to my iPod, and everybody's happy. Kim Justice gets my $, MP3.com gets my $, and I get some nice little tunes for cheap. And if I want a "real" CD, it's $10.
Now, look at the RIAA. They still want me to shell our $15-$20 for a CD, which I'm going to burn to MP3's anyway. Why not put up a website where I can either pay $10 for the CD, or $2 per song? I'd go for that - I didn't like the entire Cherry Poppin' Daddies track, but I would have paid $2 for each MP3 track I wanted.
But no - the RIAA hasn't learned what the Software industry has learned. Go after the big illegal distributors, and leave the little guys alone. If they gave me a way to go get Britney Spears "I'm a Virgin Slut and you Know It" single for $2, I would never feel the need to go online and get it illegally because I knew of a safe, secure, simple way to get it for a cheap ass price.
But because they are afraid of losing that power, because it might cut into their profit, they won't do it.
Disney fought the VCR for the same reasons - and makes more money from it now than from all their movies combined. Yet they refuse to learn from their own history with the technology of MP3's.
Those who don't learn from history aren't doomed to repeat it. They're just doomed.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Most recordings I own are ones I got because I heard them from friends in the service on a good system, not radio play. Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon just doesn't have the punch on radio as FM just can't do the deep bass properly. FCC regulations in the US limit the carrier deviation permitted by a broadcaster and AFT(Automatic Fine Tuning) on many recievers eliminate the rest of the deep bass by tracking the carriers low frequency instead of permitting the detector to use it. Only a crystal locked systhesized tuner has any hope of capturing the little deep bass a broadcaster my transmit. Any Ace of Bass recording on FM and on a CD will make the diffrence obvious. I liked Dark Side of the Moon enough to get the Mobile Sound Fidelity Labs master edition. (I know i'm telling my age here) It was over twice the price of the standard pressing.
The truth shall set you free!
"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.
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)
"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
"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.