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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."
of how a super-anal IP climate pretty much just hurts those trying to break into the market.
.. nobody is going to run/approve/host indie boy's audio bits unless they've been signed off by a big label.
The RIAA should just rename itself 'The Trustworthy Music Initiative'. The more strongarm RIAA gets, and the more fear they seed
"Old man yells at systemd"
~ Don't say in the auction listing that the CD will be on a CD-R. Just say that it is the original, un-altered cd. Put any questions feel free to email me (or something similiar) at the bottom of the auction. Ebay doesn't snoop through packages and unless they ask you or another user actually reports that you are selling music on CD-Rs they won't know.
Now, the musing. This kind of blanket policy in regards to anything is the proverbial throwing the baby out with the bath water. For example, back in 1997, a friend of mine got me anime (the first Tenchi movie) for a birthday present, which inspired me to start collecting the series. Finding a Suncoast that would sell it to me at the age of 17 was difficult, though, since almost every one I visited had "Must Be 18 or Over to Purchase" stickers on every title - even on titles with absolutely no content that could be justifiably deemed "offensive" to those not of legal age. I eventually just enlisted the help of an older sister to get what I was going after.
The irony of this is that when I turned 18, virtually every Suncoast in the area dropped that blanket policy.
What was very interesting, at:
.. so why should the little players?
http://www.negativland.com/riaa/dowesue.html
was the bit about Top 40 artsits only clearing samples you can recognize.
Its not like it surprises me, but thats some good argumentative fodder should you be talking to proponants of *air-tight* copyright laws.
That is, music doesn't/can't get made without samples, and even the big players dont clear all their samples
"Old man yells at systemd"
As others have noted, Ebay has a blanket policy of no CDRs, even though they themselves point out that there are CDRs you can sell that do not infringe copyright.
My worse example is that I tried to sell an import copy of final fantasy 9 on ebay. (I am in the UK and this was the US version).
I basically stated that this was a US PS1 disc and you couldn't play it unless you had a US or chipped console.
So they pulled my auction, stating that I was "encouraging console chipping" to play (original) imports, which Sony had told them was illegal.
They said it would be OK to resubmit the auction if I made no mention of chipping, but I felt disinclined to walk the thin line between stating something they felt was encouraging evil crime and on the other hand not giving people enough information, so they'd complain when they couldn't play it. (I have had people in the US for example buy PAL videos from me and be mystified as to why they can't play them).
graspee
If you read his story, it seems to me that he got angry at eBay, stopped focussing on how to sell his CD on eBay, and started focussing on protesting.
It should have been clear that any listing that mentioned CD-R or CD-RW was going to get tagged. It should have been clear that this was being done by a dumb automated process. It should have been clear that eBay does NOT have the staff to spend very much time researching the actual status of every listed item. Maybe this is wrong, maybe this is right, but it should have been pretty clear what was going on.
What he should have tried was continuing to sell his CD's on eBay, but simply avoiding any red-flag terms in the listing.
It's obvious at this point that he wants eBay to accept listings _in which he calls them CD-R's_.
In other words, it's no longer a genuine effort to see whether independent musicians can use eBay to earn a living selling their recordings; it's become a crusade to change eBay's policies about listing CD-R's
Well, that's fine if that's what he wants to do. Personally, if it were me, I'd try to see whether there was some reasonable, hypocritical way to list my CD's in a way that was honest and didn't misrepresent them in any way material to buyers, but which would pass eBay's automated filters.
If the automated filters don't catch the listings, it's unlikely that eBay would cause him any problems UNLESS there actually was a COMPLAINT from the likes of Vivendi--and that wouldn't be likely to happen if the situation is as he represents it to be.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I'm a (not terribly good) independent musician (if you have any interest in hearing my stuff, you can navigate over to the URL on my user page).
In 1999, at the height of the Napster furor, I decided I was going to boycott the entire RIAA until further notice; the implications of their copyright fanaticism on free speech are staggering, and I feel like I would be remiss in supporting it.
You can't really base a boycott on piracy, so I've stopped listening to RIAA recordings altogether; 99% of what I hear is stuff I download from other musicians' sites and burn to CD-R. And although you have to search a little harder, I think some of my CD-Rs are plain and simply *better* than anything the Big Four have put out since, say, 1985.
Here's two of the primary problems I encouter:
1. That fucking CD-R tax. Every time I buy a CD-R, Congress assumes I'm a pirate, and I have to pay a nickel to mega-acts like Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys. That's exactly the kind of shit I'm trying to boycott in the first place; it infuriates me that they've circumvented some of my boycott through Congressional lobbying. In a way, I feel like I'd be justified in stealing a Britney CD and microwaving it; I'm paying for it, right? But I don't.
2. This eBay policy, and the dozens of similar policies, that assume that legitimate music cannot be packaged as a CD-R. News flash: it can. I own probably 100 CD-Rs given to me by various local and independent bands (in about 10% of cases, I paid about $5, but usually they just give them to me because they want me to hear the music). This stuff is not contraband! I'm not a pirate!
The most important thing we can do is be vigilant against the notion that if something doesn't come out of mainstream channels, it's somehow inferior or illegal. The RIAA pays lobbyists like Rosen millions of dollars a year to sell us that proposition; let them know we're not buying.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
That said, there is a simple answer to the eBay problem: simple and literally true. Advertise the CDs like this:
Music CD: Not Mass Replicated
The process by which major label CDs are made is called 'replication'. It's different from home CD burning or low-volume duplicating- both use CDRs, replicated CDs are stamped in an expensive (hundreds of dollars) process allowing them to be churned out faster and cheaper. It's mass production.
Anyone who seriously cares about not getting a CDR in their music purchase ought to know what 'mass replicated' means. If they don't, maybe they can guess. Again, this is literally the technical term for it- rather than saying 'CDR' you can say 'not mass replicated' which means exactly the same thing. Even some small label releases are duplicated on CDR rather than replicated, so if it matters you can't go by whether it was a pressing run, or outsourced. It's strictly about whether the CD was replicated or duplicated.
Oh, and go check out MY music- I don't mailbomb people ;) how's that for a sales pitch? "Listen to my music, I promise not to hack onto your computer and delete your mp3s, or mailbomb you, or prohibit you from reselling the CD you bought from me on eBay." This world we live in...