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Ebay vs. Musician
evenprime writes "Ebay's Verified Rights Owner Program was designed to make sure the auction site doesn't let people
sell things that violate copyright laws. Unfortunately, over-zealous ebay employees have been causing problems for independent musicians. George Ziemann has a detailed
account of the difficulties he's faced when trying to sell copies of his CD on the auction site. Apparently ebay kept pulling his ads simply because he was selling a product recorded to CD-R!
Ebay employees assume that all audio recordings on CD-R are the result of piracy, despite the fact that many indie bands burn their own music to CD-R to sell it. Wired has a nice summary of this story."
Its called Cover You Ass.
EBAY knows doing such a thing will just bring it some bad reviews... OTOH, not doing this can bring in the RIAA hounds... what would you choose?
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The truly ridiculous thing is that this system doesn't work anyway. The most common thing I've seen from people selling bootlegs or other illicit music is for the auction description to say "You are bidding on a pencil (or other random object). The winner will also receive..." The sad thing is that this usually happens with bands that don't mind their music being traded (Pearl Jam, Phish, etc.), but newbies get scammed into buying copies of stuff they could get basically free for trade. EBay has done very little to prevent abuses like this, yet they'll prevent a musician from selling his own work?!
Given that eBay is an auction site, that indies are by nature not likely to have the kind of demand that would make auctioning their music worthwhile, and that CD-Rs of their music being pressed by them isn't something that is likely to be in a strictly limited supply, what's the advantage of selling your own music on eBay over setting up your own website or using one designed to push independent music that already exists?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
More and more modern law is allowing (and sometimes encouraging) any corporation to be come a vigilante. In this case, it's obvious that Ebay has the right to deny service to any customer they please. What's disturbing is that the government is encouraging companies to adopt policies that turn that right of denial of service into the noose used to hang the guilty (as well as the 'likely guilty'). We can blame the RIAA all we want, but ultimately, the government (through action or inaction) is allowing these types of things to happen every day now.
I've vontacted them many times about people selling pirated MST3K videos ("Keep Circulating the Tapes" doesn't mean you can charge for them), even of episodes that Rhino and BBI has for sale.
Their answer is always "The copyright owner must contact us. Please alert them and have them get in touch with us."
I guess the same thing doesn't apply to music for some reason.
and then there's that stupid PLAYING OF INSTRUMENTS that all of us luddites engage in... perish the thought that a computer doesn't make an appearance in part of our life
Someone points out that they have a fraud problem and they go whole hog after something completely different. Often their investigations are totally off base and only interfere with those honestly trying to do some legitmate business.
You're not allowed to sell your own music on CD-R just because it being on CD-R makes it automatically too likely to be inviolation of a copyright somewhere? This from the well-known auction site known for sellers who never really ship anything but cash your check or accept your cc payment anyway? The site where you can easily by "native american" artifacts or jewelry made in locations like mexico or china? The site where you can buy used dvds, videos or tapes at almost any time? Where you can buy stolen goods almost as easily as you can at the local flea market? Ebay needs to buy a life.
CD-Rs are not normal CDs. Labelling them as such is bad.
But ebay's autosearch bot is probably looking for precisely CD-R. So describe it as "writable CD" or "CD created with a CD writer" or something that won't trigger the autobot. Meanwhile hopefully the bad press will get ebay to make their system more flexible, and perhaps even consider making their system especially friendly to independent musicians.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
and many artists dont research it first befoer they put out their first CD's..
you can get 100 of your cd pressed in a jewel case with 4 color printing on the cd and the insert and the case spine PLUS cello wrapped for less than $3.00 a cd. that $300.00 for a first run of your CD so they look professional.. hell most musicians blow that much on booze in 2 nights of practice (ok Joking there... by my buddies and I certianly do)
there is no excuse as a musician if you have an album to sell, for you to have them pressed and looking 100% identical to that which you buy from the sellouts(Read that as RIAA members)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Right, the RIAA. The same way the MPAA sent a take-down order for a fourth-grader's book report about Harry Potter. They don't care if the claim has any merit. All they care about is that no one distributes music except through their channels.
Nope, no sig