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EMI Customer Relations Tells It Like It Is
hype7 writes "The Register is running a story about the most outrageous email sent from a customer services rep at BMI in Germany to a customer who had difficulty playing a copy-protected CD in his CD player. One of the most stunning lines from the translation: "If you plan to continue protesting about future audio media releases with copy protection, forget it; copy protection is a reality, and within a matter of months more or less all audio media worldwide are copy protected. And this is a good thing for the music industry. In order to make this happen we will do anything within our power - whether you like it or not.""
but it was copy protected.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Now I can't buy anymore CDs, whether the music industry likes it or not. Which of us is going to blink first?
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
If this customer service rep was not just a malcontent and really was telling the customer what was passed down from management, BMI is shooting itself in the foot.
Complete and utter. However vile and loathsome record companies might be, I do not believe that any one of their drones would say such a thing. It sounds like typical FUD/satire/what-not. Can anyone establish the veracity of this supposed email?
Pax Digitalia
The scary part is that this comes from a Customer Service Rep. CS Reps don't formulate their own ideas, they get them from management. This is a clear indication of the corporate doctrine being taught. It must be in full swing to have reached this level, and for this action to be already taking place. Feared...
I never, ever, play CDs anywhere but on a computer. I therefore will never buy a CD I cannot play on a computer. I am not alone.
Besides, their first attempt was defeated by a permanent marker. What will the next one be defeated by? A stapler?
Oh well.. give the RIAA enough rope, and it will hang itself. It's already acting like it's having a nervous breakdown. And with the GOP running the Senate, Fritz Hollings (aka Senator Disney) has no chance in hell of getting his SCCCCCCCCCCA bill passed.
Maybe I should buy some stock in Sanford (manufacturers of Sharpie markers)...
"All your Ace of Base are belong to us."
Don't they realize that they more they antagonize the music-sharing community the harder they will work to circumvent the copy protection? Even on the artists that really suck. It's all about principal now.
Which isn't to say that a platform can't fail - vis. the Mini Disk. But there's a difference between a platform failing and trying to imagine that simple competitive pressue exists for musical content.
Firstly, The Register is the National Enquirer of the net. Take it with a huge grain of salt.
Secondly, even if this letter were authentic, it could very well be the result of a disgruntled employee who had a really bad day and just didn't give a shit anymore. Unless someone can show me widespread responses along the same line, or a mandate that this is the official response, I'll take this as no more than one guy. While the truth is that they are actively pursuing copy protection, which is their right, I find the overly hostile and confrontational content of the letter incredibly dubious.
how much grief Garth Brooks took when he protested people reselling used cds...
I think we have a new "piss off the public" " king-of-the-hill now...
In the Portland, Ore area and like card games? Check out: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/portlandgames/
I won't buy any more Music CDs.
Unless of course they are not copy protected. Most of their music sucks balls anyways.
they will do anything within their power, apparently including going out of business by producing media no one can play or will pay for. Smart guys at BMI, they seem to have stumbled onto an alternate reality or somthing.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I know people have mentioned it before; but if you listen to some of the 128kb MP3 files out there, a recording taken from the headphone jack could be an improvement. Rather than fight copy protection, I think we should educate the "pirates" as to a good encoding system (Ogg, LAME MP3)
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
I'm not a big fan of this action, but I can understand BMI's point. Imagine for a second how it would be if you wrote a song and discovered a few months later that BMG had released a CD in which someone had recorded that song without your consent.
You'd be pretty angry about it.
This is exactly how BMI feels. I know I'm not taking the popular stance by not denouncing "facists tactics" or whatnot. But the truth is that BMI needs to protect its property. I think we should give them credit for at least being upfront about it.
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
Why don't we simply boycott CD's, it would take a lot of effort and restraint by people, but I think if we banded together and worked towards a common goal we could send a message to the RIAA and record companies. Belly aching about how they shouldn't do this does absolutely no good. We need to stand up in mass against the recording industry and tell them "No we will not be treated like criminals, we will only buy CD's that work in any equipment and the US courts have shown time swapping to be legal".
Lets do something about this. Something other then complaining and giving up.
Is anyone claiming that they produced the music they copied? Apart from, perhaps, the musicians who sample the work of other musicians without crediting them?
To paraphrase the NRA:
You can have my money when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
1) Copy-protection on CDs is a losing battles. Computers can always be modified to get around copy protection schemes. And even if they can't, there will always be the "analog" hole. I can always take an embedded device like a CD player and pipe it straight into my sound card. 99.9% fidelity, copy-free recording.
2) None of it matters, because if one person buys a copy protected CD, does the above, and puts it on p2p, the pee-in-the-pool effect kicks in, and the copyprotection-free version will be around forever.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
With all the hype surrounding Microsoft and Sony wanting to place console/PC style hardware at the heart of every home's entertainment systems (taking on the role of the CD/DVD player), I wonder how long it's going to take the non-recording big boys to turn around, and start complaining that the recording industry is about to ensure that their plans are being rode roughshod over...
Also, considering that most people who buy stuff want it to work anywhere and everywhere, I wonder how long it'll take the general public to simply stop buying, as it's no longer 'safe' to do so..
Especially with some of the new laws in the EU, and the UK being put forward as also written on The Register. And if people buy even less than they did before they protected the media, who are they going to blame? Perhaps this is a case of things needing to get worse before they get better, and perhaps even be a case of the big recording industries shooting themselves in the foot and crippling themselves..
Malk
Anyone want to take bets on the one straw that will break the consumer's backs?
Personally, I think it will come when people regularly cannot play discs in their cars. Or PlayStations/Xboxen. There's a lot of 'convergence' devices out there. Furthermore, in the car example, many manufacturers are actually using CD-ROM mechanisms in dashboard players simply because they are cheaper and more error-tolerant (except of course, in the case of purposeful errors introduced by the record companies).
Ph33r my mighty analog plug, you slack-jawed marketroid fuckwits.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
With customer service like that, how can anybody complain? (without getting arrested, I mean).
For many companies, marginal products are often offset by good support.
For the music industry, it seems that they offer 90% of the time is a poor product (and one that's getting increasingly poor as copy-protection makes them less compatible).
The attitude toward the majority of consumers is that we're all music pirates.
And now this. There is no customer service, and an increasingly degraded product.
And yes, they wonder why CD sales are down? Truly, what do the major music companies have to offer except a bunch of aging big-names and song-of-the-moment artists who have been caught in contract hell?
I'm always curious to find out how they get stats like this. Where do they get the 250 million blank CDRs and tapes number? Sales alone is rather inaccurate, as it fails to account for data and photo CDs, as well as what *could* be considered legitimate backup CDs.
But obviously, all CDRs that are purchased are for the sole purpose of piracy...
As a techie, I am quite confident I will never have a problem getting my music for free. With kazaa and my cd-rw, I havent bought a CD in years (come get me, jackasses). Even if I did buy a copy-protected CD I am sure I could break it (if I can hear it, I can rip it, duh).
My grandmother (and any other AOL user, really) on the other hand, if she had the experience mentioned on the register, she would be pretty much out of luck. So, this policy really only hurts the non-tech-savvy.
so BMI hates my grandmother
From now on, I am going to make a point of trying to find BMI stuff to download off kazaa. Guess I better learn to like n'stync
I think we can look forward to the same with the music industry.
As Mark Twain once said (something like), History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
As others have already mentioned, it's questionable that the email is real, due to the absolutely combatative attitude contained in it.
That said, I'm going to treat it like it was legit for the remainder of this post.
1. there's something stinky in the music industry, and it's their general attitude that -all- of their consumers are pirates. Fuck that noise. They wouldn't -exist- if it were for the bands and their fans.
2. I play music on my computers -exclusively-. if a cd won't play because it's copy protected, then they obviously don't want my business. oh wait, that's right, they'ver already said they don't want my business....(points at point #1).
Seriously, though: a boycott here -will- -not- -work-. which is unfortunately. Why won't it? Because the bands' fans will still buy, regardless of the new effort it will take to listen to the CDs.
*mutters*
At one time (for most of history), musicians primarily made their performing live. Composers made money by having their music published (for musicians to perfom live...).
Anyway, maybe cheap digital recording, file sharing, etc. will bring about the end of the recording industry and the music industry will go back to the old model.
Maybe the last hundred years will be seen as an anomaly in music history and the music industry will primarily be considered a live performance and publishing business.
Yet Another Web Site
I have for the most part been on the side in this issue. People I knew who downloaded free music I used to encourage to buy the music they really like so that the artists get their cut.
/. when I am ready.
Not anymore. I have a CD collection of well over 300 CDs I have bought over the past ten years. I am no longer going to buy ANY pre-recorded music until the industry stops treating good, responsible consumers like myself as criminals.
I am going to catalog my CD collection and put it on eBay. I will donate the proceeds to the EFF.
I will send the link into
--Jon
Hmmmm... so let me get this straight... These CDs are copy protected, yet we can still get them off Kazaa and other P2P networks. Yet the legit customers have difficulty playing these CDs. So exactly what did this accomplish for the record companies? Ahh yes, MORE piracy. Great idea guys! Way to go! This is like saying "Our software is being pirated because it costs too much. We are going to have to raise the price of our software to compensate". Any ways, why WOULD any one buy these RageAgainstTheKornBizkit Cds???
Branding all customers as pirates, giving out terse PR statements, and not providing satisfactory responses are just consequences of the record companies having exclusive access to popular media.
Look at the airline industry: polite, apologetic, and responsive. Why? There's hundreds of competitive airlines out there.
Look at the Record Industry: rude, unresponsive, and completely devoid of PR sense -- Consequence of record companies colluding with each other record companies to maintain their monopoly.
There ARE avenues of competition, such as pay-per-use Internet media distribution, but they nixed it at governmental levels because it threatens their monopolistic attitude.
What record companies don't understand is that if they treat consumers with respect and ship products at reasonable prices to compensate for a good piece of recorded media, consumers would be more inclined to purchase such products instead of downloading it off of Kazaa. What's worse is that these "state of the art" copy protection measures are so breakable that they tend to show up on Kazaa in no time flat.
------
Amadaeus
The last bastion of Mathie-ism
Boy, these music execs seem to be a bit dull don't they?
:-)
I mean, if they're going to copy-protect *all* CDs, how will they know whether it's a move that pays dividends?
Surely, if they are really going to get an accurate indication as to the effect that CP has on sales, they need to include a "control" represented by some albums sold on unprotected disks.
If the sales of the unprotected albums remains unaffected but the sales of CP disks goes up or down then they're much better positioned to determine the commercial merit of CP.
It's almost as if they don't care whether CP affects sales isn't it?
What next? Copy-protected audio cassettes that come pre-tangled?
I don't really buy a lot of CDs, nor do I get a lot of music online. The reason: some of the acts that the record cos. put on platters totally s*ck. The most salutary (and ironic) effect of this trend toward copy protection of CDs, movies, etc. would be for people to drop out of the slavish worship of mass culture-- the top-down delivery of music, movies, literature, and news. Whether it's because you can't afford it anymore, or because you are disgusted with their antics, it is increasingly becoming an attractive alternative. Wouldn't it be refreshing for us to drop a dime on a local club, where we can hear a band play live music? Hell, even if they are covering someone else's tunes, it would be better than stuffing the pockets of greedy record companies, who feel they owe us nothing and apparently think they own us. We owe them nothing.
Always look on the briight side of life! (whistle, whistle)
... I have just recently implemented wallet-protection technology. It completely prevents the Record Labels from recieving any money from within my wallet. This radical step is necessary because their business practices force me to tightly control where my money goes. Only legitimate businesses should recieve money from people's wallets.
1. Intellectual property is an artifical construction to keep the wealthy classes rich at the expense of the working classes. There is nothing in nature which creates 'intellectual property.'
2. Nobody claims to have produced music they share with friends. They are simply helping their friends to avoid paying for the media.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I haven't bought a major label CD for years. I've found more than enough good music through independant and small groups. I've even had a group accept a small payment online and download a few of their songs that I could burn to CD myself. The very few big-label songs I do want I grab off the radio to tape, and if I really want it on CD, I'll record it a few times and remaster it on my PC. Sure it takes a little time, but its fully within fair use.
frob.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
1. CD's get copy protected
2. People can't play these CD's and stop buying new CD's
3. The music business sees the drop in sale and assumes more piracy
4. They encrypt CD's differently
5. Goto 2
It's a vicious circle....
...all they can do is (possibly) prevent people from making perfect digital copies. There is no way they can stop people from simply re-digitizing what comes out of a line out port. Seeing as how all compressed music sounds a bit funky anyhow, the slight distortion you get from re-digitizing is unimportant. They can't stop piracy, but they are doing a good job of pissing off their paying customers. This is good. Once the people that have a stranglehold on the music industry are floating tits up in their swimming pools, all those great basement recording artists will have a chance to get their music listened to. As a crappy basement recording artist, I couldn't be happier about it all. Art is not supposed to be an industry.
From the article:
There are 250 Million blank CDRs and tapes bought and used this year for copying music in comparison to 213 Million prerecorded audio media.
I'd like to see where these numbers come from. Personally, (yea I know, I shouldn't put my personal anecdotes on top of the population.) I have bought nearly 2000 CDRs for myself and school.
For school, we put our "Publication/School Newspaper" on the CD and give it to students for a keepsake. For my private use, CDRs are a cheap easy server backup format. Toss in a CD. scribble a date and put it on a spindle. If/when I need to roll back my home network server. viola.There it is.
Have I ever used a CDR to copy a commercial Music CD? Yes. Once. I have a Vitamin C CD (It was a gift--honest) and it wouldn;t play in my CD Player. So I ripped it (methinks there was copy protection on it) and burned it to a CDR. Viola. Now I can listen to the CD that was rightfully mine to listen to.
When The music industy pays to upgrade my listening equipment so that I can listen to their music, then maybe I'll consider not complaining.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
There's unlimited supply
And there is no reason why
I tell you it was all a frame
They only did it 'cos of fame
Who?
E.M.I. E.M.I. E.M.I.
Too many people had the suss
Too many people support us
Un unlimited amount
Too many outlets in and out
Who?
E.M.I E.M.I E.M.I
And sir and friends are crucified
A day they wished that we had died
We are an addition
We are ruled by none
Never ever never
And you thought that we were faking
That we were all just money making
You do not believe we're for real
Or you would lose your cheap appeal?
Don't judge a book just by the cover
Unless you cover just another
And blind acceptance is a sign
Of stupid fools who stand in line
Like
E.M.I E.M.I E.M.I
Unlimted edition
With an unlimited supply
That was the only reason
We all had to say goodbye
Unlimited supply (E.M.I)
There is no reason why (E.M.I)
I tell you it was all a frame (E.M.I)
They only did it 'cos of fame (E.M.I)
I do not need the pressure (E.M.I)
I can't stand those useless fools (E.M.I)
Unlimited supply (E.M.I)
Hello E.M.I
Goodbye A & M
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
Question: Does "copy-protection" work?
No. Every CD that can be played can be copied.
(Unless there exists "trusted" hardware, where from pickup up to the D/A the data is encrypted)
So, what is the result. I still can download music from the Internet. It just becomes potentially even more uncomfortable to buy a CD and play it in my X year old Harman/Kardon CD-player, which just happens to expect a valid CD (speak, not intentionally corrupted).
How will this affect my purchasing behaviour?
The label avex/trax (Japan) already sells only "copy-protected" CDs. Not that this made buy more CDs from them. But since I'm not a good statistical test group, I can be wrong and it will improve the music business.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
This kind of attitude really pisses me off. The straw man argument that, if you complain about our CDs not playing in your player you must be a pirate really makes my blood boil.
#include "SoapBox.h"
I have never pirated music. However, I do have the marjority of my CDs on my computer for ease of use. At the moment, I'm sitting in New York, 2700 miles from my home in Arizona, listening to a large sample of MY music on my laptop while I work. This is Fair Use, as I paid for all of my CDs. I have the same collection at work so I can listen to the music at work. In order to combat the music "piracy" threat, manufacturers are impinging upon my fair use. Grrrr.
I don't mean to be a troll. I personally feel that sharing music online is stealing, but at the same time the music industry must get up to speed with the realities of the 21st century. They need to modifiy their business model to include distribution of music in an inexpensive and easy way that allows people to purchase only the music they want. They also need to find more artists who create an entire album worth of useful music, but I digress.
Most of this copy protection, I expect, will be broken soon enough, and the record industry will realize that this is doing nothing but wasting money and alienating customers.
harumph!
C8H10N4O2 | Developer > Code
In my experience, in the past they have had more journalistic integrity and readily admitted when they were wrong about something than many other organizations. But the fact is that they communicate regularly with many insiders in the IT field, they have been doing it for a while, and a lot of people who know what they are talking about both read the Reg AND supply them with information. Please stop spreading FUD about the Reg.
While you are busy copy protecting your stable of has-beens, boy bands, and warmed over focus group music, I will be investigating the wonderful world of non-label bands.
For every over-produced single that your 'A&R' people put out there for the clueless masses, there are two *albums* by talented, REAL musicians who believe in what they do.
Sure, they don't have the marketing power that your big company has, but while you are lumbering around trying to pin the tail on the donkey, you will find that the party is over and you missed it.
I will continue to seek good music that I can legally download, make good music that others can legally download, and push good music that everyone can legally download.
There is plenty out there. It might not be as easy to find as your latest Clear Channel release, but it's there. You are over. Your time is done. You won't see me at the wake.
I'll be listening to music.
Sincerely, teamhasnoi
At first there were records and they were good. You could easily seek to any song, but they weren't very portable. Cassette tapes were a step forward in this respect, so people switched. Later on there were CDs which are just as portable as cassettes with the added benefit of seeking. For the average music listener, 8 track, DAT and reel to reel offered no advantages and they sort of died out.
Now the music industry wants to change formats to encrypted digital disks. What are they offering us to switch? Extra content? Digital liner notes or cover art? DVD-esque interviews, band commentary? The disks aren't even a new color or shape for crying out loud. Hopefully people won't rush out and buy new players "just because".
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
Wave of the future. Get all the music you want, without copy protection, and without those obnoxious high prices. What a concept. Quite frankly I've always been more interested in their music catalogs, only the very occasional band makes me want to go out and buy a new CD.
Also of note is that this is going to be a European experiment. So at least for the moment the US will be copy protection free. But it is probably worth boycotting BMG anyways, if their record sales completely erode, maybe they'll consider different policies.
I guess I'll also have to cancel my BMG music club account too.
With bullet-proof copy protection now available, I should now be able to buy a CD-R in Canada without paying any tariff that goes to the record companies, right?
I mean.. that was the whole purpose of the tariff in the first place. To give back some money to the record labels that were losing money from dubbing of CDs that people would buy otherwise.
What are the odds of the tariff being eliminated? I'd say about the same odds of the GST being eliminated.
Mozart, besides of being one of the worlds greatest composers, had the ability to listen to a piece of music and repoduct it word for word note to note, from only one listening. Perfect Pitch, and Photographic memory. If he was alive today, He would be thrown in jail for breaking the DMCA, Sience he instantly copies all that he hears into his brain.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Here's the bottom line, like it or not. The ratio of us (computer types, you know, educated...) and them (everyone else) is about 50:1 in their favor. Why is that important? (Warning: I'm probably going to offend some with this...)
As long as an item, be it copy-protected CD, DVD, PS2 game, etc.. is sold at Wal-Mart, Target, and the like, a boycott will never succeed. If all of us stopped buying CDs tomorrow, Cletus T. Bohunk would still go out and buy his Fullscren copy of Spider-Man. He'd still by the Allman Bros. Greatest Hits (no offense to fans), and its not going to matter if it works in his computer, because he doesn't use that to play music like we do! He puts it in his $49 DVD player and listens to it through his 20 year old Magnavox TV speakers. Or he puts it in the $20 boom box he also bought from Wal-Mart. While I agree that if CDs stop playing in cars, there will be a huge outcry from the public, calling for boycotts simply won't work in such a small community as ours...
(Yes, I realize it isn't a SMALL community. But in the grand scope of US vs. the population in general, we don't measure up.)
"Goodness, how did you people live long enough to invent tools?" -Hobbes (the tiger, not the philosopher)
I would like nothing more than for ALL future music to be copy-protected. This, combined with high prices for new equipment, inconvenience of having to purchase a new DiscMan, new car stereo, etc. by everyone on the planet who wishes to listen to the new discs will surely cause it to fail.
All the while those of us who can will go to the indy lables to get our music if not directly to the bands (Mp3.com still hosts some indy bands - go check out Cruiserweight) and in my book, I'd rather go buy their music and have the artists recoup most of the profit than some large, boorish conglomerate.
What we need to snap these CD nazis back into reality is a world-wide boycott of these "CDs" and pray that Philips sues the snot out of anyone trying to put a "Compact Disc" lable on what doesn't comply to Redbook standards.
Speaking of which - anyone got a link to the Redbook spec?
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
Is this individual case relevant? Of course not. Is it in aggregate? Ask the guys behind DIVX.
sulli
RTFJ.
I recommend that you guys read, if you haven't, Courtney Love's speech about the labels and artist's pay.
I sincerely believe that it will happen: artists will go independent or to new label companies that cater to the fans and break the business process for the major labels.
The software industry tried many years ago copy-protection and mostly it didn't work. Only some holdouts like AutoCad remained copy-protected. Now MS is trying again and I doubt they will succeed.
Artists need to be paid. Period.
But I don't think we need to make some un-talented sons-of-a-bitch rich in the process. We want the music from the artist and the artist needs our money to be able to dedicate him/herself to art. If we cut the middleman, both the fan and the artist benefit.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. - Cardinal Wolsey
I don't like lots of the music today.
.......
That doesn't mean it is devoid of musical value.
You can see people dancing and moving and getting emotionally attached to it. That is music, that is art.
The fact that it is candy coated, semi-rebellious crap doesn't make it any less musical then it was in the 80's, 70's, 60's, 50's
Music is the voice of the generation, not surprising many don't want to listen, they'd rather dismiss it as garbage. Myself, I'll just live in the past. (And I'm in my 20's)
I dunno .. .. on average .. that i buy (or have bought in the past) most of the albums i have downloaded - if i like them. .. but i nuke the ones that have nothing i like on them, no space to keep the dead weight around.]
.. are no longer produced, or I cant seem to get my local cd shops to order.
.. if anyone can find me T-Ride's only cd .. I'll buy it from them .. until then .. ill have to use my only copy .. which i downloaded. [i still own the audio tape .. regardless of it being 1/2 demagnatized.]
.. if i like it enough .. ill buy it .. if i can find the cd around.
.. is at LEAST HALF of the 500 or so cd's i have were bought from 2nd hand music shops .. rather than pay $16 for a new cd .. i can buy it for $5.
.. that this costs the record lables a hell of a lot more than the people that download. they certainly don't see any of the 2nd hand money.
I have over 100 gigs of 192encoded mp3s.
thats over 600 albums
maybe 100 of them tops I do not own.
I would say
[i may keep albums that are borderline
A *LOT* of the albums i download are albums I have owned in the past
For example
Sometimes ill get new stuff that I have not heard yet. To see if I like it
What is really funny
I would think
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
Wow, that statement was so the way out in left field, you just earned a permanent trip to my foes list.
Get this through your skulls: it's ILLEGAL to use ILLEGALY OBTAINED music. Sure I do it, everyone does it, but I for one am gradually replacing my music with authentic copies that I paid for. You may not like the fact that some people make their money off of making and distributing music, but hey, you're such a head-up-your-ass liberal it doesn't really make a difference to you does it?
They are simply helping their friends to avoid paying for the media
Media is irrelevant in this situation. It's the actual sound recording (lyrics + music) that you're paying (or should be paying for), asshole.
"Hey j4cka55es! WTF is up with me not bein able to rip yor CDs and pirate them off to peeps?
Peace,
Mr. xxx!"
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
Record companies need to figure out that they do not dictate demand, I guess they've become delusional due to their oligopic power, but sooner or later one company will figure it out and the rest will follow. The consumer wants digital music formats that trust the consumer. If the consumer does not have the ability to convert the music to different media and formats, they will not buy it.
I dunno -- I kind of like this new "kindler, gentler" customer relations that calls it like it. This is way better than the more typical "Duh, I'm not sure what you mean?" or "Please hold while we transfer your call. Your call will be served in the order received. We value your business and thank you for calling. (click) (dial tone)" or "Thank you for your letter on BMI products! Enclose please find coupons good towards your next purchase!"
Ok, I'm going to say this plain and simple. We don't matter to them. The slashdot crowd doesn't matter. We can sit here and write about all these wacky protests we're going to do. How many people actually buy crippled CDs, open them, then return in principled disgust. I know I haven't. I know none of my friends have. Frankly, I don't know one person who has returned a crippled CD to a store because 'it didn't work'.
I can dig your music. Most of the people who write about their fav bands like indie stuff, or local, regional bands. That's cool. I don't think too many Slashdotters have front row tix for Pink or Justin Timberlake. Those are the acts that sell the majority of the CDs. Try explaining to a 12 year old girl with $20.00 burning in her pocket why she shouldn't buy the Britney Spears CD all her friends have because it's 'crippled'. It plays in her walkman and that's all she cares about. The worst part is, if it doesn't play in her player, she'll buy a new one.
Articles like this don't surprise me. To the informed crowds, all 2% of us, they might as well rent out big billboards and post a big "F*ck you" for all to see. We're not their bread and butter in their short term vision. Keep slapping a belly-baring shirt on a 17 year old with golden vocal cords and you'll never run out of $$$.
So in protest, we download the specific music we want. Morals or not, most people have done it or still do. It just adds the fuel to the fire. They cite pointless statistics about dropping sales. To us it's because the music might suck. As long as they keep putting the words File-sharing and Kazaa in the press-releases, people will assume the two are related, and legit file sharing gets screwed.
They won't go out of business because I don't buy their CDs. Or you don't buy them.
Start getting the 11-14 year olds to stop needing their N'sync fix and then you're onto something. I hate to say it, but with as much knowledge and purpose as we may have, we're no match for teenieboppers with mommy and daddy's money.
sig--we don't need no goddamn sig
Exactly. I use them to burn movies I download too!
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
From the email: "There are 250 Million blank CDRs and tapes bought and used this year for copying music in comparison to 213 Million prerecorded audio media. This means the owners are only being paid for 46 per cent of the musical content."
:P
1) The music industry gets a percentage of the price of every blank digital recording media sold in the United States.
2) How can the recording industry (or anyone for that matter) know how many CDRs were used for copying music, and how many for copying data? I've never seen this statistic before, and it reeks of propoganda. It's been months since I burned an audio CD, and I burn several data CDs a week. Musicians don't have as much to worry about as game/software manufacturers
You do three things when a disc won't play on a standard player because of copy protection:
- Insure that the disc has the CDDA label on it, that you legitimately bought it and that it's a standard player (car stereo, home stereo, etc.) and not a computer drive. Basically give the music guys no toehold at all to call you a pirate, unless they want to claim that playing an original purchased CD on your stereo is piracy.
- Return the disc to the store as defective.
- If the store refuses to exchange it for a working disc, or refund your money if they can't find a working disc, file a complaint about the store with your local government's consumer protection office. Don't treat this as an intellectual-property issue, that's playing into the music industry's hands, treat it as a defective-merchandise issue where the warranty and related issues are much more clear-cut and much more in your favor.
When stores start getting in legal hot water for defective merchandise and failure to obey warranty laws, their legal departments will take notice and have a talk with the music industry sales reps. Even the big chains will drop labels rather than take the legal heat on a large scale.There are 250 Million blank CDRs and tapes bought and used this year for copying music in comparison to 213 Million prerecorded audio media. This means the owners are only being paid for 46 per cent of the musical content. For a comparison: In 1998 almost 90% of all audio media was paid for.
Aside from the fact that most of the CD-Rs I buy go to record data (and the few discs I copy outright are out of print)... there's that little matter of the media taxes levied on tapes and other blank media. Hey BMG, whether we like it or not, we are paying for your damn music. Maybe we should call your bluff: the widespread implementation of copy protection should mean the end of blank media taxes period.
Even without a degree in economics everyone should realise that such trends will result in the music industry ceasing to exist.
You mean, the music industry as it exists today would cease to exist? What a tragedy.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
after all it was the politicians who urged us to finally introduce copy protection measures.
Ummm, yeah. It was the politicians that "made" you develop and implement copy protection measures.
> it's ILLEGAL to use ILLEGALY OBTAINED music. Sure I do it
Does that mean you'd surrender yourself to the legal punishment for said behavior?
"Old man yells at systemd"
The least the editors could do would be to make the headline, story, and article match, but I guess they read like I do.
These corporations seem to be of the mistaken opinion that they can make a decision like this without repercussions. There logic is probably that if they, Sony, Vivendi, and Time Warner, all decide to just put their foot down and tell customers to shove it, there will be nothing we can do.
Even assuming that all of them do agree to do this, and that somehow, they aren't prosecuted for illegal collusion for this seemingly coordinated assault, the only people that are going to suffer for this is the labels and the artists who sign with them. People will just stop buying CD's if they won't work in their players. Class action lawsuits will happen because the media industry is releasing intentionally deffective products.
My expectation is that over the coming years their sales will continue to drop because nobody wants to buy a deffective product. People who have, for ethical reasons, decided to go out and actually buy CD's will see no reason to do so going forward. They'll try to pass a bunch of new laws to save themselves from the beast they've unleashed, and though some may pass, eventually through citizen outrage these new laws are going to get shut down.
So, BMG, and EMI, I say fuck you and the horse you rode in on. I don't need your music, I've got local bands, freely distrubted independent artists online, and intelligently run on-line music services like E-music. You will not see one more dime of my hard earned money in this lifetime.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
No, the music has not died, you just don't know where to look. You certainly won't find much worthwhile listening to radio stations. Their playlists are determined not by listener voting or requests as they might lead you to believe, but by the record labels and radio empires. They feed you whatever artist (and I use that term loosely) they want to sell. Don't look for treasures in the septic tank.
There are lots of independent musicians making good music. They're in local bars, local venues, playing college stages, distributing music online for $4 a CD. Or maybe you just wanted to hear some tired old Metallica again; maybe those geriatric millionaire whiners are what you equate with good music. Their voices long ago slipped into irrelevance for me (not coincidentally when they donned suits to protest their fans sharing the music). But maybe the sight of some 40-something, balding fat guys does something for you, I don't care.
I've heard a lot of music from Pavarotti to Poto Duodongo, Grieg to Green Day and just about everything in between and on the outskirts. Now I don't mean to sound harsh -- well, yes I do -- but it's this constant whining about how bad today's music is that really pisses me off. There are as many vibrant, vital new artists out there now as there was twenty years ago playing in all the same places they played back then. Just look. Look in your local Weekend section of your morning paper. Look online. Tune in your local college radio station. But by God's grace, don't bother with commercial radio.
That is a two way street my friend. (note my sig below...)
If you don't like music CDs with DRM, dont't buy. Go spend your money on books, clothes or "open" CDs, that don't impose DRMs. A good online catalogue of artists that have accepted it, and thus should be boycotted, should be published.
From the letter:
There are 250 Million blank CDRs and tapes bought and used this year for copying music in comparison to 213 Million prerecorded audio media. This means the owners are only being paid for 46 per cent of the musical content. For a comparison: In 1998 almost 90% of all audio media was paid for.
In other words, they believe that without the availability of blank CD-Rs, they would have sold 463 million CDs last year. Which is to say that without piracy, the annual growth in CD sales over the past 3-4 years would have been between 20% and 30%.
I assume that they're correct because they're so smart and all. Perhaps the world economy would have skirted the current recession if it wasn't for those bad pirates stealing profits from helpless corporations?
I'm a geek like the rest of you. I love free tools and OS's, and I prase those who work on them. But music is a different matter all together. I also out a recording studio with my Brother (www.screamalongsongs.com), and I can tell you that Bands (even independent ones) spend a great deal of time and money writing and recording music. It's simple not a cheap thing to do. We have a fairly small computer based setup, but we still spent over $10,000 on it. We have to recupe that cost, so we have to charge bands to record. The bands have to recupe thier cost, so they have to charge for the CD.
At the end of the day you are creating a product. And people create products to make money. It wouldn't be fare to buy a box of corn flakes and take it home, and put is in your Plexstor 24x corn copier and make all you want and never by corn flakes again... thats not right, and neither is copying a friends CD to aviod buying it.
Are all listeners pirates, no. Are all CDR's sold used to copy CD's that people would have bought otherwise, no. However, you show me a way to sell unprotected music and still make sure that you can make money on it, and make sure no one is stealing from you, and I'll change my mind. Until then this is the only option we have.
"Failure is not an option, it's part of the standard package"
I can just find an explanation for this kind of answer: there are so many complaints that the consumer answer guy can't stand it anymore and started to spit in anyone that asks.
Perhaps that's only in Germany or Europe?
Perhaps that's only Audio CD-Rs?
Yes, there are Audio CD-Rs and Data CD-Rs. Audio ones cost a lot more, because they have a bit set that lets them work in non-computer burners. (also, part of their cost goes to the recording industry, part of the DAT TAX.) (Yes, I'm being US-Specific here.)
Every time I see somebody buying Audio CD-Rs, I ask them if they're going to burn them with a computer or a stereo component. They always say computer, and then I tell them to go buy the cheaper data CD-Rs, because they'll work too. And they usually thank me :)
In any event, assuming that every blank CD created is used to pirate their music is incredibly incorrect. 1) in the US, we can make copies of music that we have purchased, for our own use 2) people do record computer files on these as well and 3) people also record music that they've made on them. Some small bands even sell CD-Rs with their own music on them (it costs a lot of money to make CDs `professionally'.) (These people have had problems with selling them on Ebay, however -- Ebay assumes that if it's a CD-R, it must be pirated.)
The Reg is no Enquirer. How many haunted computers, Jesus-image-in-mouse-fuzz or flying chimp-boy bullshit type stories have you seen on there? How many stories on there have been patently false and untrue? Just because it isn't dry as your grandma boring like the WSJ doesn't mean it's crap. Did you RTFA? If so then I guess you think Heise is crap too.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
From the article:
Only this much: There are 250 Million blank CDRs and tapes bought and used this year for copying music in comparison to 213 Million prerecorded audio media. This means the owners are only being paid for 46 per cent of the musical content.
So, those 250 million CDRs must all be used for copying music illegally, right? Not one single one is being used for legal copies of music that they already own? Not one is being used by an artist who is recording their own material? Not one is being used by someone making a backup of files on their computer? Not one is being used to burn an ISO of a Linux distro? Not one is being used to make a backup of a software package that they own?
I think they've equated blank CDRs with lost sales when this is clearly wrong. No wonder they are so intense about fighting piracy -- they've based their whole strategy on a faulty assumption.
dennis
If there is an EF equivalent in Germany, maybe they would be willing to accept and publish specific donations. Specific not in the sense that they need to spend the money on so and so, but donations in the name of: F*** EMI or maybe something a little more political correct.
Help fight continental drift.
all confused in this thread.
BMI is the Broadcast Music institute, one of the bodies that license the use of composers (or the people to whom composers assign their rights):
http://www.bmi.com/
EMI is a recorded music seller, and a music publishing company, based in London:
http://www.emigroup.com/
BMG is the Bertelsman Music Group, a different company in the same business as EMI, whose headquarters is now in New York City (but used to be in Germany, once upon a time):
http://www.bmg.com/
MEK
Credo quia impossibilis -- Tertullian
BMG's "Big-Time" artist list includes:
Ace of Base
Air Supply
Christina Aguilera
Big Mountain
Chicago
Color Me Badd (LOL!)
Foo Fighters
Kenny G
Kylie Minogue
N'Sync
Outkast
Dolly Parton
Pink
Dionne Warwick
Yanni
Not really sure why BMG is so upset over downloading sites... aside from Christina Aguilera, NSync, Pink, and Outkast I don't think they have much to worry about.
Although I have heard there is a HUGE black market demand for pirated Kenny G and Ace of Base cds!
Out
Oh yeah, the letter is completely fake. That's why all these news outlets are carrying stories about it:
Business Week
CNN
PCWorld
InfoWorld
ZDNet
IT World
iT News
I'm sure they all just publish any old story after all, and never check on or worry about the veracity of what they're writing.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
Second of all, only the big labels with lots of money are going to copy protect their CDs. It's not like the copy protection they're implementing is FREE. It was invented by someone who no doubt patented it and is licensing it to the CD makers (which, consequently, raises the price of CDs).
Personally, I don't care if Britney Spears CDs are copy protected - nor CDs from other no-talent hacks who claim to be artists. Also, I think this protection scheme could be a great instrument in the downfall of such crappy music[sic]. Afterall, teenagers are probably the biggest pirates of this stuff, and it's not like they have money to buy the CDs if they can't copy them, so it can only result in less proliferation of this garbage. Eeeeeexcellent.
There's lots of great music to be had out there, and you can have it without giving up your Fair Use Rights.
- Richard Shindell
- Edie Carey
- Lucy Kaplansky
- Dispatch
- Rockwell Church
- Erin Mckeown
Just to name a few...I have always bought my CD's. Since 1998 i have ripped them and put them on my computer for conviniance and to keep the original CD's in mint condition. To this date i havent had any problems ripping them and i have never ever shared them on kazaa or whatever.
If they make it hard for me to rip the CD's i buy and stop me from using them wherever i want i wont have a choice. I will have to buy my CD's and then D/L the songs from internet. The incentive to buy them darn CD's becomes pretty small by then i can assure you.
Meanwhile the pirates hook their computer to a half assed soundcard and loop the sound to another soundcard ripping into mp3/ogg/whatever. The pirating continues as before and I who pay gets to take the problems.
Copy protection wont ever work and its time they get that into their thick skulls. Palladium/TCPA isnt going to stop pirating either cause once the data is out of the trusted enviroment its not copy protected any longer. Pirating can only be solved by getting to terms with their customers again (lowering prices to an acceptable level would be a start). Then start a nice campaign telling why its wrong to pirate. No one listens to you if they hate you.
HTTP/1.1 400
I want to say that they're wrong, consumers not purchasing their products will change their minds about this whole idea. But, sadly, I believe people don't actually care enough to follow through on that and people will end up buying the CDs anyways.
.NET on Slashdot.
On a side and off-topic note, I find it halarious that I just saw an ad for Visual Studio
Derek Greene
Summary of the reply from EMI Germany:
"If you try to show us that our premises are total bullshit, we'll ignore you or worse, accuse you of piracy. The bullshit coming from our marketing departments is more believable to us than reality."
I'd phrase that more politely, but really, they don't deserve civility over this one.
They claim they know how many CD-Rs are purchased for the purpose of pirating music. I know that's bullshit unless they've got some kind of big brother infrastructure in place that can tell them what I did with the pack of 10 CD-R's I bought last week. Mostly I used them to transfer work back and forth to a home computer in a manner that's a lot faster than downloading.
They claim that anyone stating there are "multiple" CD players that cannot play their broken CD's is lying, despite the fact that they ALSO state they have to maintain a list of CD players that they know work.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
...why people seeem so upset about music companies wanting to copy protect their products. Whether it will work (probably not) or if copying really hurts sales (maybe, maybe not), what's so surprising about it? They obviously think copying costs them money. It's logical that they try to curb that. If you could stick a book in your PC and have honest-to-God paper copies pop out all over the Web, book publishers would be awfully interested in copy protection, too.
Companies selling off-the-rack shrink-wrapped consumer software got burned on copy protection when it cut into sales. Most likely, the same thing will happen here.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
> Joe Programmer has intellectual ownership of the code he produces at his company.
No he doesn't. His company does. And why? Because there are few companies who won't allow him to work without him signing owenership away.
How does this relate to the music biz? Same thing: The only reason IP is such a hot topic is because the groups with the leverage (ie, the suppliers) are able to use that leverage to claim that IP is an inherent right (and _finally_ are on the verge of aquiring the technology to enforce it at their discretion, which is really the more poingant difference today). Is it? Should it be -forever-? 90 years? 2 years? I hear you cheerleading IP alot, but you've yet to make any statement that actually defines what you believe the contraints to IP should be. Certainly a glib position to take, and all the more so when its a view championed by those who've the most to gain from infinate and absolute protection of one's work.
So state the nature of your position or keep your redundant and ill defined IP kissing to your lonesome. Believe me, you've yet to add anything new or relevant to the topic, and I've been following your 'me too' posts for awhile.
"Old man yells at systemd"
When will businesses learn that being circular and shiny doesn't mean its a CD!
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
You might also want to see how much other crap they own. There was a page I saw which listed all the companies, but I can't find the link right now.. :(
Just don't turn on Georgia Tech's radio station looking for it. I don't know what the crap it is they are playing down there, but it is not music! :-(
Derek Greene
The fact is, most of their stories are from respected analysts, representatives of the companies themselves, or rebranded content from Newsforge, Security Focus, etc. As you said,
Maybe you should read it more often before you speak about it authoritatively.
There are huge cultural differences between America and Germany, and it's important to try and understand those differences before over reacting.
I have quite a few German relatives, half in the US now, who I never considered offensive or rude since I grew up around them. It wasn't until one of my friends pointed out how incredibly rude she thought my aunt was when she told my mother, "That outfit looks horrible on you," that I even gave it a second thought.
While trying to avoid making broad generalizations, most of the German people I've met just tend to be extremely blunt. It may take some getting used to, but I prefer the brutal honesty more than the flowery, politically-correct BS that we deal with here in the US.
The music industry really tries to follow the marines saying "Adapt, Improvise, and Overcome!"... unfortunately for them, they'll never reach the Overcome part since their attempts to Adapt and Improvise fails miserably.
Exactly, all this letter shows is just how badly these companies are starting to flounder now. They are like a deperate man on the edge of a cliff by his fingers and suddenly that extremely prickly weed nearby which is a bit sturdier than the grass looks a lot better despite the pain it will cause and the fact that he will likely be unable pull himself up by it anyway.
Recently I saw a very interesting article (can't remember where it is or I would link to it) with the idea that music will go free and patrons to the arts will donate to keep them going. (This is how artists got paid long long long ago, or via money collected at performances).
In the modern case, it will be fans paying to go to their concert and buy their t-shirts, etc in return for free music they can swap and trade and listen to anywhere.
In otherwords, you will make money off the public performances and related merchandice sales rather than the music itself. True artists will continue to make music because it is what they love, not because they may get rich. As long as they can eat and keep a roof over their head from the proceeeds, many will be more than happy to give music away and get paid for the fun of being cheered on stage.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
There's a fundamental problem with CD's and Copy Protection as it stands currently, with the published specs. As it is currently, there is no designed method of copy protection built into the CD spec. Now, copy protection can be achieved, barely, by extending or twisting the spec around in order to destroy that ability, at a cost. I use as an example: Minidiscs. Minidiscs, while they may have achieved only bare minimum acceptance in the US and slightly better elsewhere, come pre-designed with copy protection a central core of the spec. In fact, the spec even goes so far as to permit a single digital quality copy from an outside source to Minidisc. Afterwards, only degraded analog copies might be made. The Specification for Minidiscs took this into account, it is fundamental to the architecture of all player/recorders, and as such, so far as I have seen, not so easy to get around. Compact Discs, on the other hand, did not originally care about copying. The spec was based on the premise that only expensive burners that companies could afford would be the only thing to actually make a CD. A truely 'Read Only' format. This lack of foreknowledge of copying data from the CD to another medium has led to this problem. A lack of a redesigned spec incorperating Copy Protection (and, likely, a new name or encoding method (CD-CP, for example)) further complicates this matter. Unfortunately, the only way I can see this being resolved is if the music companies abandon the CD architecture all together in favor of another medium, one that has protections built in from the start. Either that, or abandon attempts to copy protect CD's.
The Register's problem is not that they have opinions or that their stories lack facts, but that they often mix the opinions and the facts together into the same article. Newspapers have a separate Op-Ed section for opinions because they devalue news content. Ideally news would be all facts, but as long as humans write the news, there will always be a slant to it. The Register makes no efforts to keep their opinions out of the news.
That is why I don't read the Register. I don't want to let some journalist form my opinions and I don't have the patience to sift through their articles separating fact from fiction. Just give me the plain, boring facts, instead of making every event look like the end of the world.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
"There are 250 Million blank CDRs and tapes bought and used this year for copying music in comparison to 213 Million prerecorded audio media. This means the owners are only being paid for 46 per cent of the musical content. For a comparison: In 1998 almost 90% of all audio media was paid for."
I've used over 150 CDRs this year. Not one of them has any audio content. They were all data backups. How does this mean owners of the musical content have lost out?
Your resume requires a CD-R to back up? Must be a hell of lot of experience there....
Although I agree, I've personally purchased over 500 CDRs, and most remain blank and the few that have stuff have data. There is one CD made for my fiancee that is a compilation of her favorite tracks from a number of her CDs, but aside from that *legal* copy, hundreds of CDs they are using in their count don't matter.
I don't know many people who copy CDs anyway. The much bigger portion of the illicit activities is people ripping to mp3 and sharing. CDR sales in no way serve as a gauge of illegal copying...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
or both of your neighbors...
/. (not just the ones that think this is an infringment of their rights) didn't buy music anymore, from this day forward (which will never happen), the record labels would hardly notice it.
or your both of your neighbors and all their children...
People will keep buying music regardless. Their car cd-players, and home cd-players will play them, and if they don't, their new players will play their old CD's.
Consumers are so used to getting screwed into buying "upgrades" to correct home made problems, they won't even blink.
And people won't stop paying for music in the copy protected future anymore than they don't buy macrovision protected DVD's now.
Even if everyone that read
If it is the only way music is being sold, it is the only way music is being purchased. And people won't stop purchasing entertainment.
While you're at work, go into the supply cabinet, see the big black marker with "Sharpie" written on it? Ok grab that, put it in your pocket and take it home to your music collection.
Now after a beer/bongrip/blowjob or whatever it is you do when you get home break out your brand new Sharpie A.k.a. 37337 0-day cr4ckz and pick the first BMI music CD out of your collection that has copy protection.
Now apply your 0-day sharpie cr4ckz to the outer rim of the CD. Story was run on slash a few months ago, surprised no one else mentioned it.
I'm sure that statistic comes from the same mathematicians that produced the BSA's "number of new PCs minus number of new Windows licenses equals number of pirated copies of Windows." The BSA doesn't count those using alternatives to Windows, and I'm sure EMI isn't counting people who use CDs to backup non-music data or make mix CDs for personal use or for their friends (which is neither new or illegal). Besides piracy is not a function of the amount of blank tapes and CDRs in circulation. I am sure the largest amount of pirated music is stored on hard drives; of course this means next they'll be telling us piracy is equal to the amount of space for music on new hard drives.
I did say filling the airwaves, I know where to look, going to two concerts this month, both artists that are not known on a national level.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
But maybe the sight of some 40-something, balding fat guys does something for you, I don't care.
Yes, balding fat guys do do something for me....
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
>Does that mean that when you download music for free you are stealing? Yes
You'd better plug the holes in your legal system. It's not illegal to download music which has fallen into the public domain.
Similarly, the first guy to write the "Hello World" program 'owned' that code, right? You completely ignored by question, which related to your lack of desire to actually take a position on what the relative strength and duration of that ownership should be.
Thats an important point, because it makes your last question result in 'yes' sometimes and 'no' sometimes, according to the letter of the law.
"Old man yells at systemd"
It's more likely though that once a lot of labels using copy-protected CDs, the remaining holdouts will see their sales sky-rocket and take notice. They will start selling CDs with a huge phillips logo on the package and running marketing campaings showing "everyday people" with MP3 players and scratched CDs making a switch.
Also, watch out for other countries recording music specially for US and european markets and selling cheap, working CDs. Mickey Mouse will soon be cornered by Hello Kitty :-)
Oh, right... the music companies are going to require that everyone now dump the last 50 years worth of speakers and buy a whole new system just for the honor of playing their latest crap... sorry, buddy, but this is not going to happen, ever.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
And the bottom line is that legal and economic systems are inherently public while the internet is primarily used by individuals in private.
Laws are there to regulate the public space and create an orderly society. There is very little need for laws regarding the behaviors of individuals within their homes. Many things that are criminal in public are perfectly legal within one's home. It only takes a few minutes to come up with a long list if you think about it.
For many individuals and organizations, this simple mental experiment is too dangerous to contemplate because it's so simple and it invalidates their assumptions about what is and is not legal. The same act can be both illegal in public and acceptable in private. Sharing music on the internet already is legal and so is all kings of other fair use of copyrighted materials that would be illegal in certain public scenarios. Even obscenity is only meaningful in public which is why the internet can be filled with obscenity that is illegal to display in public --it's not being displayed in public so no law is being violated.
If you can't imagine this, go ahead and get started with some experiments. Go outside to the street and take a shit in the street in front of your neighbor's house. Ask yourself, am I breaking the law? You'll probably catch on pretty quick, especially if your neighbors are watching. Taking a shit in your bathroom isn't illegal at all. But if you do it in the street in front of your neighbor's house it is. Holy multi faceted-reality Batman! Hmm, can you imagine other examples of things that are illegal in public but are perfectly legal in the privacy of your home? There are thousands of examples but many don't want to face that fact. The cool thing is that the law is not on their side. They've got nothing but smug refusal to face the fact that people do have liberties and they can keep it as long as they like.
Not to mention the number of CDRs that become coasters.
How is that good? Because it will lead to the downfall of the music industry, or at least wake the public in general up to their tactics.
Personally, I don't really care anymore. I have stopped buying CDs, and I just don't care all that much. They have made me not care. If they want my business, they are going to have to win me back. I am not making any demands, I am just sick of their shit. If they fold, I am not worried - music will rise again on its own. If they succeed with copy protection, I simply won't buy any more CDs, ever. I can live without them, really. So instead of making me feel like music is important, and something that I should always have in my life, they have turned me off of it. Hopefully they will turn everyone else off, people will revolt, and the big record companies will fold. I can't wait for the day when I get to see the news story of Hilary Rosen eating out of a KFC dumpster.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Their name is Thorn-EMI.
Arms manuafacturers.
That they don't care about people is not shock.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I wouldn't hesitate to say that this punk (the customer service rep.) doesn't know what he's talking about... check out this article from New Scientist where John Halderman, a computer scientist from Princeton University, argues that any type of audio-CD copy-protection is futile with the advent of upgradable firmare in CD players. As long as we can reverse-engineer their copy-protection, we can play our CDs in our computers.
Our faithful parent has been handed a list of desired media by their spouse. They go to one of the big media retailers, like Sam Goody (is there a listerine for the brain...I hate that place!), collect the desired titles and endure the latest R&B female vocalist performing an orgasm over the PA system (shudder) while waiting at the counter.
"Hi, are you ready to check out?"
"Yes, uhm, could you tell me if this," the customer holds up the first title for the clerk to see, "is copy protected?"
The clerk has this "uh-oh" look and nods.
"Yes," the clerk hesitantly replies trying to avoid the attention of the other clerk who is busy ringing up someone else's order.
The Customer holds up each title and each time the clerk nods, looking less happy as the customer puts them in a seperate pile, until at last there's only the pile of copy protected titles.
"Well, it was nice shopping. See ya." The customer shrugs.
The clerk watches as the customer walks away from the counter, leaving the small pile of titles, probably near $200 worth, sitting on the counter.
The worst part...if this kind of thing happens a new policy of ignorance will emerge, where the clerks will simply say they don't know or can't say. And then the store will refuse to accept any media for refund or exchange once it's been opened.
Oh, and don't forget, there's always a charge for refunding purchases made with some form of plastic, so there's going to be many people who will simply "eat it". Especially the passive cattle with plastic in this great land of diminishing returns.
Cheers.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
there are very few artists I will blindly go out and purchase a CD from. Thanks to "pirates" I can now listen to the whole CD in the comfort of my own home without haveing to be distracted. Thanks to RIAA, BMG and others like them I will no longer purchase any CDs
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Y'know, I hate to point this out to the RIAA, but blank CD-R's are used for a lot more than music. Between work and home, I maintain a collection of several thousand CD-R's that contain various kinds of archival data, (legally purchased) stock images, my own photography and design work, source code, and so on, including legally purchased MP3s (from Emusic) and legal free MP3s (from MP3.com, among others. The assumption that CD-R's sold equals music CDs pirated is just plain false.
I'm fortunate in that the majority of the music I buy comes from independent labels, so this won't affect me much, especially since, henceforth, I'll be buying all of my music from independent labels. It's not a great loss -- for each of the hundred or so acts the RIAA manages, there are thousands of better independent acts. Which is, I suspect, what they're really afraid of.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I was discussing a billing error with them last night. They said to me, flat out, "It doesn't matter who's right, we're a big company and there is nothing you can do to touch us. We say you owe us the money. Pay up." It's not just BMI. Corporations know they can roll right over any single one person and they are happy, happy to do it.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
Sounds like the EMI Customer Rep had a previous job as a television programmer at ABC.
My guess is that in a few days, we'll hear the same sort of reply:
Dear Customer:
Very very very sorry, overzealous insensitive person fired, did not reflect company philosophy, blah, blah, blah, fully support technology, homina, homina homina, we like you customer, yadda yadda yadda, etc.
Sincerely,
Pointy Head VP
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
As an addenum, you seem to understand that ownership does and (in my mind) should exist, but completetly unable to grasp the difference between being in favour of legislated ownership and being in favour of weakening or strengening the rights and/or priledges that accompanies said ownership.
Actually, I'm also interested in knowing how old you are, since I'm trying to group various stances on the issue into various age brakets so I can get a sense of what demographics support which view. You don't have to answer that, of course.
As a final aside, for somebody that claims to regard right to ownership as a very important thing, its somewhat ironic that you should choose to eschew the ownership of your ideas by posting as an AC. I take it you only support ownership when it serves you but not when it doesnt?
"Old man yells at systemd"
I think that this point of view is propogated by the distillation of the labels' back catalog of music.
I'm 30, so my pop music consumption began in earnest in the early-to-mid mid-80's, when I got my first radio. I'm sure there was a lot of crap in the 50's, 60's, and 70's, but I never hear hear it anymore. What I hear on the radio is the popular stuff from those eras.
Today, what little I hear on the radio (and used to see on MTV), they pump out a lot of crap. Sure, there's good stuff, but it will bubble to the top over the next ten years and wind up in rotation on whatever "best hits of the 80's, 90's..." Clear Channel affiliate is out there at the time.
Do you think that in 20 years, people will get stoned and go soul searchin to N'Sync and Britney Spears albums, like people still do to Pink Floyd's The Wall? I highly doubt it. Will we see "Laser Backstreet Boys" at the local planetarium 30 years from now?
There's pop music, truly groundbreaking music, and then there's utter crap. Sometimes they overlap, and everyone's threshold is obviously different for each category.
I simply love the Beatles. I freely admit that their first albums were no better in content than current boy bands. I'd argue that they grew and contributed to musical history in their later albums. Bands just don't have that kind of shelf life anymore, so they never get time to grow anymore. Joplin, Marley, and Hendrix, also from that era, made some truly soul-shaking music. I don't get that from any current music.
Though I've consumed my fair share of pop music in the 80's and 90's, I can't think of any groups/performers I've followed that have had similar impact on people (as opposed to musical trends). Some of my favoites are Suzzane Vega, Enya, Kirst MacColl, Cheryl Crow, I don't know if any of them will stand the test of time. My wife introduced me to 80's rock these past five years or so (Cinderella, Bon Jovi, Great White), and while those feel more timeless and relavent today than those I loved in that era (Cindy Lauper, Huey Lewis, The Cars, Dire Straits), I don't know if those will last 20 more years either.
Another factor, IMO, is the seeming death of the theme album. I ask this question with all honesty: is there anything from the 90's and later that is equivalent to Sgt. Pepper, Abbey Road, The Wall, and Bat Out of Hell? I'm open to expand my contemporary music tastes here -- let the titles fly.
Having spewed all of that, I'll state that 2nd-hand music sources have been my primary source for a long time. It seems that every college town has a great used music store nearby (any Von's or JL Records fans from Purdue?). Several years ago, I discovered secondspin.com, which I have used almost exlusively since the first RIAA lawsuits began in the late 90's. I haven't bought I new album in quite a while, and these crippled CDs will only reinforce that behavior for me.
Who knows... maybe there's a scientific reason for the generational gap in musical tastes. Perhaps the hormone-charged angst most go through in our teens and early twenties cause us all to bond to whatever music we listen to at the time -- like a duckling that imprints on the first living thing it encounters. I like to think I'm really being objective when I say that the quality of music has been diminishing over time. Maybe it's the homogenization of Clear Channel and the like? If I could get music from the 20's thru 50's produced with today's recording technology (instead of scratchy mono tapes we have in the archives), I'd have a lot of it in my collection.
Method of processing duck feet
Not worth much in the general outrage, but I would just like to say to any BMI employess reading these forums, I have not bought a CD for a year now, and I will never buy one again from BMI or any other record company that sells or tries to sell me broken CD's in this form.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
the big record companies, the RIAA, the MPAA, DMCA, etc. guard a world that existed before the internet. they are attempting to reverse history. let them go on with their bad selves, they can't possibly win. pandora's box is already open.
;-P
we are not in gutenberg's time anymore, my german media company friend. we live in a world where information like music and books and movies is as transmuteable as water. in a way, information wants to be free. entropy naturally leads to the release and spread of information. trying to contain information is a losing game like trying to fight gravity is a losing game.
music is about nothing specifically, and is enjoyed for it's own sake. this should be free. you can steal atoms. but you can not "steal" data. you can steal a car. but you can not steal a song, or a book, or a movie. think this doesn't make sense? kazaa, etc. are NEVER GOING TO GO AWAY. think intellectual property law is pretty damn important and should be a pillar of modern society? meet the internet my living-in-denial friend. disseminating information effortlessly and freely with no chance of shutting it down IS WHAT IT WAS DESIGNED TO DO. close their servers, block their ports, do whatever you want. someone, somewhere, will circumvent. copy protect your cds. people will buy black sharpies. add a dongle, do whatever! you have to turn the info on the cd into audible music at some point. at which point, the audio signal can be captured, digitized, and distributed. there is absolutely no way to defeat this! if it can be heard, it can be copied. END OF STORY.
send armed guards out with each cd purchase to go home with you and make sure you don't copy the cd. that is all you can really do.
whether you like it or not, free music, books, movies, etc. is the way it is now. this is what the promise of the internet is all about! i mean come on people, weren't we getting excited about exactly this kind of dreamy stuff ten years ago? and now we want to put the genie back in the bottle? the internet is pandora's box, my lawyerly friend. litigate all you want, pass as many laws as you want, line as many political pockets as you want, you can't reverse the flow of time. YOU ARE FACING HISTORICAL OBSOLESCENCE NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU KICK AND SCREAM. why would we want less convenience? should we throw out all of our cds too and go back to vinyl while we are at it? these corporations and their lawyers are fighting simple, obvious progress that a kindergartner can understand.
but who will make money off of music! no one will!???
so the future is about the status quo? things change dramatically because of new, historically-ground breaking discoveries, and not always for the better of everyone. just ask the aztecs or the incans. the internet is exactly such a historical, groundbreaking discovery. the death of the information middleman is exactly the dramatic, bloody side effect that is warranted. these companies are being replaced by not a better business model, but a better DISTRIBUTION model. who said it had to make someone money!
the convenience of millions versus the fate of a few middle man music companies is an obvious choice. besides, there are always alternative models for turning a dime. someone will learn how to stand at the internet portals that tell people what they might want to listen to, and artists or the groups that represent the artists will pay them to put their name on that portal. everyone has to go somewhere to figure out what they might want to listen to, given the plethora of choices out there. there's money in that statement somewhere, and someone will figure out where.
i think radio has been handing out free music for decades, and we don't see them worrying about their economic model. nor do i see the publishing industry quaking in their boots over the existence of libraries with free books on loan. i think barnes and noble found out that if you let people sit around and browse their book selection for free, you make more money. on it's face, this is antithetical, but it is a centuries-old well-established business practice that handing out freebies leads to customers who feel obliged to patronize your wares.
no one is going to read books on a clunky, expensive ebook when they can read the paperback version for three bucks. no one is going to copy a paperback to digital when it is so much cheaper in time and convenience in the pulp wood form! a book is a BETTER TECHNOLOGY for reading than any computer version can ever hope to be: convenience, power consumption, viewing contrast, ease of use, etc. check down the list. ebooks are a dumb idea. so the publishing industry need not worry.
and i don't care how many movies you have on your hard disk. there is a reason people go to theatres when they all have tvs at home. people like the anonymous company in the darkness munching popcorn when they watch movies, movie houses our like our new churches of worship. it is human sociological thing, a group mob human principle of enjoying the emotion of a movie with the rest of the herd... it makes the movie more enjoyable. so movie houses are never going away, and can charge $9, $10, $12, $20 PER VIEWING (not per copy!) for a movie well into the future for decades. nothing on the horizon threatens this business principle. so the movie industry need not worry.
but the music industry? worry, worry, worry. they produce a product enjoyed in private, and easily copied and digitized... unlike books... unlike movies. WORRY A LOT my music industry friend.
the artisits? the artists will make money the old fashioned way, by working for it. live concerts. or they won't make money. they will do it because they love to do it. teen age boys will still try to play guitar or scratch vinyl or fiddle around with 808s even if they know they will never be millionaires... it was always about getting the chicks anyways!
ok i have ranted. LOL
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
No, actually, I've already quit buying CDs. The RIAA and their kind have finally irritated me to the point where I simply won't willingly send any more money their direction.
Sure, there are a few things I'd really like to own on CD -- but I can go to one of the many used CD/tape/record stores in town to shop for them, or even buy used on eBay.
There is so much music already floating around on CD, there's really no good reason to buy new product anymore, unless you have to have the latest releases. (And with the poor quality of most new music being released, I'll pass on that.)
If I only have "so so" interest in something, I'll copy it/download it.... I already got tired, long ago, of paying $15+ for a disc just for one or two good songs on it. Since the recording industry refuses to become flexible enough to sell "burnt to order" discs made of your own individual selection of songs - I refuse to give in to their marketing model of buying stuff you don't want, to get the few songs you do want.
2. Copy-protect music CDs.
3. ???
4. Profit!
While the responses that people have gotten from the customer service departments may seem outrageous, their tone isn't always reasonable, either. Consider this exchange (it's in German, I've translated the bits I quote below):
:-)''. I fully agree with this statement, but I can see how it would lead people to believe that you do, indeed intend to crack or circumvent the copy protection (note the emoticon).
;-)
``On the back of the CD, it reads:
"It is designed to be compatible with CD audioplayers, DVD players
and PC-OS, MS Windows 95, Pentium II 233 MHz 64MB RAM or higher."
These statements are definitely false!''
That _is_ definitely false. Just that the CD doesn't play on _your_ CD audio player or DVD player doesn't mean that it can't be designed to play on such hardware.
``Finally, the copy protection doesn't fullfil its purpose, for clearly copy-protection = purchase-protection.''
Nowhere has he proven that the copy protection is at fault here, or even that the CD has copy protection. Both are likely the case, but suddenly attacking copy protection out of the blue strongly suggests a biased view.
``Unfortunately, you oversee that your reduced tunover is not solely the fault of copy pirates.''
Again, he's assuming the common prejudice that the music industry are pursuing copy-protection because they blame their lost revenues on illegal copying. While this may indeed be true, it, again, suggests a biased view. After this, he mentions a couple of (IMHO probably valid) reasons why revenues might have decreased for music companies (mostly boiling down to ``consumers spend their money elsewhere''). He then says ``There is no copy-protection that cannot be cracked
At multiple occassions, he asserts that the CD he bought is ``useless'' (more literally ``valueless''). Flat-out stating that somebody's product is useless is clearly offensive.
He also states that every consumer is allowed to make a copy of any CD that they bought, and that EMI's copy protection prevents this, and is thus illegal. Assuming for now that this statement is true, and the copy protection is, indeed, illegal in Germany, it is still a very strong statement.
I think that, considering the tone of this customer's message to EMI, it is not surprising that their response is less than friendly in tone, and seems biased towards assuming the customer to have at least a positive attitude towards pirating CDs.
If we want to show the world that copy protection is a Bad Thing, we need to at least sound objective. Yes, CDs should play in devices that can play CDs, even if they are copy protected. Yes, using the CD logo on your disc suggests that it does indeed play on CD players that adhere to the Red Book standard. We need to make those points if we want people to reject techniques that violate these principles. But accusing companies of all sorts of ideas and policies, without backing up your claims isn't going to help.
What I want to know, before I take a stance on these issues is:
1) Do copy protected CDs actually violate the Red Book standard? AFAIK, current copy protection schemes exploit the fact that CD audio players read the first table of contents, whereas CD recorders read all TOCs, where the last-encountered entry counts. Is the reason the CD doesn't play that the _CD_ doesn't conform to the Red Book, or the _player_ not conforming to it (but following, say, the Yellow Book (CD-ROM) or Orange Book (CD-R, CD-RW) instead?
2) What of the ``we are allowed to make copies for personal use'' claim? To which countries does or doesn't this apply? Does this mean that copy protection can be introduced in some countries, but not in others? Isn't there a point in saying that the benefits of making pirates' business harder outweighs the losses for customers? How many people actually make copies for personal use, and how often are copies made for illegal purposes?
Personally, I wouldn't buy any CD that I couldn't backup. I don't redistribute my music (or software) illegally (well, not on purpose, anyway), and I don't think others should. If you think that CDs are too expensive, don't buy. If you need the music, then pay for it. If you like, you can search for cheaper music by looking at alternative bands. But there's no excuse for illegally distributing music (or software)!
Please mod me up, I worked on this post for a long time
---
If an S and an I and an O and a U
With an X at the end spell Su;
And an E and a Y and an E spell I,
Pray what is a speller to do?
Then, if also an S and an I and a G
And an HED spell side,
There's nothing much left for a speller to do
But to go commit siouxeyesighed.
-- Charles Follen Adams, "An Orthographic Lament"
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
You won't find the ability to copy music CD's enshrined as a basic human right anywhere. Most people in the world have a few more basic issues to worry about before they have the luxury of getting irate about copy protection.
This is an economic issue and the market will decide. If enough people buy copy protected CD's, companies will keep making them. If not, they'll stop making them. People will simply have to decide if their "right" to hear Band X is more, or less, important than their "right" to copy CD's.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Oops...I should have said, "If they opt instead to keep buying, whining and/or stealing, they'll be getting exactly what they deserve."
Imagine for a second how it would be if you wrote a song and discovered a few months later that BMG had released a CD in which someone had recorded that song without your consent.
Even worse, imagine for a second how it would be if you wrote a song and discovered a few months later that BMG had released a CD in which someone had recorded that song, seventeen years before you even wrote the song, and now you're being sued for infringing the song's copyright. It has happened. It has happened again. And with four notes considered sufficient to establish "substantial similarity" of works, and with only 50,000 possible four-note melodies in the Western musical scale, how can anybody possibly write music that a court will consider original?
Will I retire or break 10K?
The Rolling Stones are playing at Pac Bell Park in SF tonight, if anybody still cares. Tickets have been on sale since May. You can still buy tickets. Price is in the $50-$100 range. The good seats are in the open. It's raining.
From EMI letter: There are 250 Million blank CDRs and tapes bought and used this year for copying music in comparison to 213 Million prerecorded audio media. This means the owners are only being paid for 46 per cent of the musical content. For a comparison: In 1998 almost 90% of all audio media was paid for. Even without a degree in economics everyone should realise that such trends will result in the music industry ceasing to exist.
[breaks out calc.exe.... tap-tap-tap...] OMG! By similar calculation, I calculate that, allowing for deaf people, there are 12 Billion ears on this planet used for listening to EMI cd's, in comparison with the only 50 million or so microphones in the world. That means 99.995833% of all the world's hearing power is used for EMI music, but EMI's 1996 sales were still only about £2.7 billion. That puts the entire music industry's annual sales for 2002 at about £3 billion. Therefor, each individual ear only pays about £0.25 annually for the more than 213 Million CD's EMI gives to them. That's £0.00000000117370 per CD. Now subtract the greedy musician's 15% royalties, and poor EMI has only pulls in £0.00000000099764.5; not even enough to afford a spot of tea to quench their thirst after a hard day's work.
Oh, and I DO have a degree in Economics, but I didn't use one bit of it to write the preceding rant.
$8.95/mo web hosting
Someone who worked with American, German, and Japanese managers on a project explained this to me as Hamburger Theory. The American managers subscribed to a style of surrounding all criticism with positive remarks, like a hamburger is surrounded by bread. The German comments were all meat. The Japanese were all bread.
People will be up in arms the same way they were when the local McDonalds went and changed the sizes and prices so what used to be a small is now called a medium and costs more.
Oh, wait, that didn't happen. Maybe people accept what they're given because they don't pay attention to 90% of what goes flying by. Yes, that applies to you and me as well. We just miss/ignore a different set of items. (Did a t-shirt always cost $25?)
Here's a google translation of the original letter sent out by Mr xxx, the original German can be found here.
Mail of EMI (attention, long text) RF600R (27 October 2002 17:13) Hello,
after bought CD ran in none of my devices, I had one Mail written EMI. Here can do you my Mail and the answer from EMI read.
schnipp --
Ladies and Gentlemen,
yesterday I acquired the CD of TOTO "Through the looking glass". Up the back is to be read:
"It is designed tons compatible with CD audioplayers, DVD players and PC-OS, ms Windows 95, Pentium II 233 MHz 64MB RAM or more higher."
These statements are definitely wrong!
* Only the pieces of 1-8 in my DVD Player leave themselves actual play. The pieces of 9-11 appear not and are not playable. A common CD Player does not possess I no more, so that these CD becomes worthless.
* My Macintosh with MAC OS X 10,2,1 with that actually plays Software of itunes only the pieces of 1-7. All remaining pieces appear as only one audio TRACK, which is playable to the half only. Result: the CD is worthless.
* My PC with Windows XP actually plays the CD only with up that CD Player present off. Unfortunately you conceal the fact, that this Player is mandatory on the CD Cover. There I very much carefully the software selects, which I on my computer is installed and I do not force themselves leave, proprietaere Software to use, is worthless as result these CD.
I insured myself fortunately with the purchase that I these CD if necessary under refunding the purchase price to return can. This is but only possible, since the dealer was so obliging.
In the long run the copy protection does not fulfill its task, because it applies obviously: Copy protection = purchase protection!
This is the more unfortunaty, there I an expressed fan of the group of TOTO are and all albums possesses among other things. Too it harms that IT prevented that I also the most current work at my cabinet to place can. Because I tend to also hear the music, which I buy. PilotFederal Labour Office-close I do not need.
Altogether I would like you from given cause mine comment to Topic copy protection convey:
Unfortunately you that not only the bad robbery copiers debt survey on Their recession in sales are. Rather are the rather following reasons decisive:
* The main consumer - young people - give a majority of their Budget for Handys out, * with the DVD a competition medium appeared on the market, that deeply into the Gefilden of the music industry it fishes because it applies that one a euro only once to spend can and everyone more or less limited budget has * by the copy protection is playing the CDs on DVD Playern not or only very reduced possible. Many households are only still with DVD Playern equips. Unfortunately you cut yourselves thereby in own meat. Much toericht. * there is no copy protection, which is not to be cracked: -)
Altogether you ignore simply the fact that each salesman by law is permitted to make a copy of its bought CD. Their behavior is altogether illegal. Unfortunately it shows up here that those Disk industry obviously a too strong lobby has.
Result: I become no more CD from their still from another house buy, which is equipped with a copy protection. They are in my household not playable and thus worthlessly.
How do you intend to recover me in the future as customers?
Faithfully,
xxx
||:|::
But ceriously, even tho you could make inroads with me in terms of strengthening your credibility, choose to post AC. Hrm.
What practice? What cases? Support your claim!
"Old man yells at systemd"
You're following their line by associating the damage they are doing with so-called theft at all. The ability to play your CD on your computer, for instance, while it's certainly desirable if you want to 'steal' the music is not by any mean only desirable for that purpose. My laptop is my portable do-it-all device, and with my mobile lifestyle it's also the only cd player I own. I'm in the minority on that, but these days it's a pretty sizeable minority, this is not at all an uncommon pattern. If I buy a CD and it won't play on my laptop, then I'm screwed unless I am willing and able to go to some lengths to defeat the copy-prevention mechanisms and rip the sucker. Now, if I were a big-time "music pirate" I would doubtless do just that, and the music would be on Kazaa or maybe flowing from my assembly line if I were really bigtime in hours. But since I'm not, my only option is to return the defective CD and get my money back. If they try to deny that option too, and call me a 'pirate' the results of that are unpredictable but certainly not beneficial to them.
I guess the point is that this sort of crap will hardly slow down the pirates, not the amateurs and certainly not the larger more organised commercial groups that sell unlicensed CDs, it's really only going to interfere with those who are doing nothing illegal, who just want the CD they bought and paid for to work on their laptop or their carstereo.
These companies are doing nothing but pissing in their own cornflakes... the only way this makes any sense at all is if you assume it's a ploy to play for some huge government bailout... that's the only way a company can treat their customers this way without destroying themselves.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
It's worth skipping from The Register to the original German, then running the customer's letter through babelfish. You might get a better idea of why he got such a response - the letter talks about the inevitable hacking, and how BMG have lost him as a customer. Read it...he's being fairly inflammatory himself.
Cheers,
Ian
but i haven't bought any cd's for years mostly because the quality of mainstream music is so shitty that i had lost nearly all interest in it.. instead i had turned purely to internet bhased sources like spinner.com to hear diffrent artists of a widely varying and electic range of cultural musical backdrops and hopefully more and more people will find out that like one of the parents above this one pointed out they have been obsolete for several years and are jsut now figuring it out and trying to stave off their inevitable demise.. they're not needed as middle men so they better find a way to "add value" from the *consumer*'s viewpoint instead of theirs
"Oh well." is NOT the attitude to be taken here. This is serious. We have to stop feeding the beast that is looking to destroy us. What I found most interesting about the letter quoted in this article was the the arrogance. We are doing this and you can't stop it, but here is the thing, we can, we absolutely can... we can bankrupt the "Music Industry" it's all within our power, we're the customers and we are always right, and it's time they learn that. Fuck the major labels. As everyone on these boards mentions, the music out there sucks and you couldn't be more right. Their music sucks, soon it'll be copy-protected but who the fuck cares, let the baby have it's bottle. We need to stop whining and realize we have power. Music is everywhere, in your own state alone you could find dozen's of independent label's putting out every kind/genre of music imaginable. It's time to support those labels and the artists under them. Those labels can't make their artists rich, but they take care of them, and they are fair. This is art, this isn't business and as a result the music is good and pure. My CD collection is now aproaching the 1000 mark, about 33% of those are from major labels, and in the past 2 years i'd say only 5% of the CD's i bought were from the "majors" I am very committed to this, and if others were too, music wouldnt' be suffering the way it is and the "majors" wouldn't have a leg to stand on. So lets quite whining, lets quit eating the shit they feed us, lets change their arrogance into fear. At the very least we discover great music and rediscover our love for music, we stop paying the "majors" exorbitant prices, we enjoy fair use of our property, we use the internet and filesharing to broaden our taste in music, we learn to support real artists by buying cd's, merch and concert tickets. Best case scenario though, we bankrupt this so called "Music Industry" There is nothing to lose.
"If you plan to continue protesting about future audio media releases that are leaked onto filesharing networks, forget it; peer-to-peer filesharing is a reality, and at this very moment more or less all audio media worldwide are available online. And this is a good thing for the music industry . In order to make this happen...oh wait, it already has -- whether you like it or not."
"I may be quite wrong." - Socrates
It is also illegal to violate the Constitution. I don't consider longer terms for copyright than the UK leased Hong Kong to be a limited time.
In most jurisdictions, this is a civil not criminal matter. So the copyright holders can sue you for copyright infringement, but I do not stand for have my fair use rights torn away. If your buiseness model cannot handle the new state of affairs, then find a new buiseness model.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
... and that's not the point of their efforts. There has always been (and will always be) those who will (quite easily) circumvent copy measures and share illegal copies to others. They know they can't stop them, and that it's futile to try.
No, what they are doing (under the guise of the above argument) is making sure Joe Average user never gets to be able to exercise their fair rights through simple, legal means. Let's face it: right now when someone buys their kid a copy of the latest Disney movie on tape or DVD, there is no simple and cheap means for him/her to make a personal copy for backup. When the tape gets eaten by the VCR or the DVD gets stepped on, the only option is to go out and buy it again. This doesn't even touch on the holy grail of media distribution: pay-per-use media! Having DRM that can't be legally by-passed means that non-techies will have to swallow it, regardless that fair-use dictates you have the right to use it much more freely!
What the media distributors fear is that Joe Average will start to clue in to the fact that backups/spaceshifting/timeshifting are *legal* and start to have access to tools to make such activities happen *easily and cheaply*. They would lose FAR more money because of this than to Internet sharing (since most sharing doesn't actually affect sales: most would never have bought the product to begin with).
These guys know the facts, and where the revenue is *really* gained or lost. But they have to publicly spin it right. After all, it would look rather bad to say:
"We want to restrict the public's ability to make *legal* use of the music/movies they purchase".
It's much more palateable to say:
"We want to restrict the public's ability to make *illegal* use of the music/movies they purchase".
Our job is to educate Joe Average on why this is important. They need to know their rights, and the efforts being made to restrict their rights. There must be a mass of people to reject these "solutions" so they fail in the marketplace, and there must be even more to protest any more legal enforcement of these "solutions".
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
Send it to MusicLink this the former Fairtunes.Com where you can pay the artists directly!
Here's the reality: a principled few may boycott. But can there said to be competition for music? If people like Band X's music, and Band X's music comes out on Label A, then a boycott of Label A is going to mean nothing for fans of Band X, and that's the end of the story.
There's a lot of truth in that. I think the key is to get to new musics before some label signs them.
Record labels really screw artists over, if there was a mechanism for artists to be successful without being signed, the RIAA would die.
Here are some unsigned bands in LA: Breech,OO-Soul, and Powder. Go to there sites, try out their music and if you like it buy the CDs direct from the band!
Anyone else have unsigned bands to recommend?
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Alright, this is a totally broken analogy, but I'm going to do it anyway:
How much good attention did Winston get for being the honest cigarette company? "No" additives? How come we can't get a Winston out of the top five labels? Someone that will put a "We support fair use" sticker on their CDs and sell them for $9? It seems like they'd get some press, and customers would go out looking for the labels. I know I would.
Hell, it could motivate me to buy a CD in a store, which I haven't done for... God. Four years now. Then I'd go home, rip the CD, and throw it in my closet.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Why bother with going thru analog?
I have a couple of these at home. They supplement my turntables, mainly for when I only have a song on cd or need to use something I can only find in mp3 format. They're dirt cheap nowadays, under $100. Not great for dj-ing, but they will play ANYTHING. I had a cd I stepped on that cracked almost in half (a crack running from the center all the way to the outside edge) and it didn't even skip. I didn't realize the thing was cracked until I tried to rip a copy of it. Doh! I had copy protected it! But fortunately the cd player itself has a digital output, so I just ran it into my friend's Audigy. I had to record it at 1x speed obviously, but I got a digitally perfect recording. As more people get dvd players and other gizmo's with digital output, sound cards with digital input will explode in popularity. The most copy protection can offer the music industry is that a couple years from now people won't be able to rip at 16x, but they'll be able to copy at 1x. A lot of you out there may have an Audigy or Extigy already. Do you also have a dvd player? I'm sure your dvd player can play cds, so you already have a means of creating digitally perfect copies of protected cds.
There are 250 Million blank CDRs and tapes bought and used this year for copying music in comparison to 213 Million prerecorded audio media. This means the owners are only being paid for 46 per cent of the musical content. For a comparison: In 1998 almost 90% of all audio media was paid for.
Wow, I didn't realize it was only possible to burn MUSIC on to CDRs.
With fucking idiots like this in the biz, it almost makes you want to pirate their overpriced shit to get his ass out of a job.
I can tell you this though, their current stance and "fuck you consumer" attitude WILL increase piratism of music, and WILL decrease sales of music. Their ignorance prevents them from seeing that, but it will happen. Never, NEVER slap someone in the face after they give you money.
In the future, the music industry will think they won.. But I can promise you, I will not buy a single music cd again. I will pirate every last little song, and support my favorite bands by purchasing concert tickets and memoribilia at them.
It's the way it should be anyhow.
It should be fairly simple for most people to boycott the recording industry, if you really want to, because so much good music is out right now, right in front of you, on independent music labels. These labels are barely holding their financial heads above the water, so I would certainly say that they could use your/our support much more than the big 5 ever could.
Let's start with someone you may have heard of: Slobberbone. These guys tour constantly (they were just in my town Wednesday night for the 6th or 7th time in about 2 years). Though no recording can really do their live shows justice, they manage to cram more of their immense musical talent into each subsequent album they produce. They are really an amazing rock band, and you should definitely listen to them or go see them.
How about another example? Here you go: Kirk Rundstrom: Blue China (review) - Kirk Rundstrom, lead singer/songwriter/guitarist of the bizarre bluegrass band "Split Lip Rayfield" is out on his own now, and the albums he's putting out these days are completely insanely good. Seriously. I won't do him as much justice as the review I've linked here, but I will tell you that what this guy does with rock and bluegrass is completely different than anything else that has ever been recorded. His new album manages to sound entirely different even from his own usual style, which in my opinion shows a growth sadly missing in nearly all of the RIAA's "artists".
Don't forget to visit this site as well: Bloodshot Records - Maybe you missed the whole alt-country genre when the recording industry thought it was going to be the next big thing and signed a whole bunch of bands like the Old 97's, Ryan Adams, Uncle Tupelo/Wilco/Son Volt, and so forth. This style of music (called "insurgent country" by Bloodshot) has already passed through a brief, sort of popular phase, and back into relative obscurity. There are A LOT of really talented bands on Bloodshot that never got a big break, but blow away anything the RIAA has ever managed to put onto an album. I suggest you check out some of these people, like Neko Case, Split Lip Rayfield, The Sadies, Alejandro Escovedo, The Blacks, and anyone else who sounds interesting there. Prepare to have your musical knowledge broadened.
If you're ever around my area (Lincoln, NE), we have some really good local bands as well. It would do you some good if you're from around here to check out some of the shows. Besides the local talent, nearly everyone I mentioned above has been through here quite recently. If they're in a little town like Lincoln, chances are you can see them in your town as well.
You may find this useful.
SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
The problem with this is that the concert and radio businesses are monopolies. Any artist seen as anti-business will soon be a street artist.
:) If artist can sell music through their own web pages, why would they sign their souls away to a big label?
Then buy music from unsigned musicians and street artists!! There's a lot of good original stuff out there that you can find if you look for it. Any more most bands have a web page where you can sample their music, buy a cd, and find out about a show.
Here are some great unsigned bands that I've found: Breech,OO-Soul, and Powder. Go to the sites, try out their music and if you like it buy the CDs direct from the band!
This music isn't free as in Napster, but it's close to being free as in freedom
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Here's where to send your comments/criticisms/death threats:
e .com
EMI Music
Consumer Relations
Im MediaPark 8a
D-50670 Köln
Fon 0221.4902.2557
Fax 0221.4902.124
info-emi@emimusic.de
www.emimusic.de
www.emiclassic.de
www.bluenot
"Anonymous Coward" is for whistleblowers, not unpopular opinions.
This reply seems to indicate that the complaining customer claimed the CD didn't play in multiple players. If the players that won't play it really are a small minority (and that's not hard to believe) I'd also be tempted to think this complaint was nonsense and that the complaintant was a whiner. And if the complaintant really had difficulty but resorted to exaggeration, perhaps he'll recognize that it didn't help his credibility and will make his next complaint more reasoned and mature. So where's the letter that prompted this? For the record, I don't think "fair use" obligates record companies to make copying easy. As long as a real-time copy can still be made via a CD player's audio out, as it's been done for decades. I also don't think they're obligated to make their product work in all new products that come along (computers, game consoles, etc). But if I bought a disc I couldn't play in a device it was intended for (an audio CD player) I'd want my money back. And if I couldn't make a *digital* copy, even if only in real-time, I'd buy fewer CDs. And if I complained I'd expect a more professional response. Amy
BMI? You mean Broadcast Music, Inc., one of the licensing bodies that ensures composers and songwriters actually get royalties for public performances of the music they have written?
Slashdot editors, you need to EDIT. That means correcting anything in a submission that is factually incorrect.
Simply pasting in some text and putting italics tags around it doesn't count as editing.
Most of my favorite music (experimental electronic composition, musique concrete, noise, electronic minimalism) is very obscure, put out on tiny independent labels. But my listening and buying habits really don't occupy the concerns of the EMI's of the world. They are quite happy making billions and billions of dollars selling boy-bands and overnight-pop-sensations and formula-metal to the 99 percent of the CD-buying public that isn't club-crawling for the newest thing.
Thank goodness in Texas we have Lemon laws, meaning you can get 3 times the amount you paid if it can be determined you paid for a defected product!
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
I find as time goes on I'm buying fewer and fewer CDs. Maybe it's just that my musical tastes are changing.
More and more of the music I listen to is put out by artists who are not on major labels and I think if this is how the major labels are going to treat the buyers then that is only going to continue.
Yes, I do buy an aweful lot of CD-Rs compared to CDs (this year about 300 to one), but I've NEVER burned a CD-R of music I wasn't entitled to. That is, music I had written permission from the artist to make copies of (one of my hobbies recently has been collecting music for an online radio station that hasn't gotten off the ground yet... all of it with full permission from the artists and copyright owners to make MP3 copies for use by the station to by-pass RIAA efforts to tax the hell out of the little guy. In that capacity I've made live recordings of some indie bands with their permission and even been asked to send them copies)
On the other hand, most of the CD-Rs I burn are chock full of free software (open source or otherwise freely distributable) so I resent music industry efforts to make me pay the big labels for the right to buy blank CD-Rs, NONE of which will be used to copy thier "property".
Good ambient - electronical - naturemusic can be downloaded for free from www.kahvi.org in .ogg and .mp3 formats. You also can order a CD from there (obviously, not copy protected).
I've thought several times that the one media where an open audio license could really work is with vinyl. Think about it... a record company releasing techno/electronic music to club dj's. Distributed under the open audio license so that it actually becomes LEGAL for the dj's to make mixes and sell them, and becomes LEGAL for the dj's to spin in a club without paying any artist collection agency. Legal for fans to listen to however they want, legal for them to share with their friends, suddenly the company doesn't need to be dedicated to stamping out fair use to make a buck selling music.
Club djs worship vinyl, always have, always will. The interface of working with vinyl hasn't been equalled by any of the more technologically sophisticated music formats. So when a dj wants a song, they buy it on vinyl. And they spend like 1000% more on buying music than any normal person would dream of. So yes someone can copy the song into mp3 format and distribute - fine. That's just a promotional freebie if you're planning on making bank from distributing the vinyl. Vinyl (not cheaper acetate) is very hard to copy into new vinyl, you really need a record pressing plant for it to be economical. The record company itself would probably distribute mp3 copies of songs, if 10,000 ravers fall in love with a song, 500 professional dj's will go out and buy it on vinyl, and after hearing their favorite big name club dj spin the track 5000 amateurs will go out and buy it too. The rave scene spends an unbelievable amount of money on music and electronic equipment, and are only served by niche record producers for some reason.
Are there any angel VC's reading this? Call me, let's do lunch.
..because it rests on a couple of assumptions that are clearly wrong:
1) There is no such a thing as intellectual property.
2) copying a CD is not illegal or immoral
3) You're somehow equating an artist with a distribution company (they're different).
I think you should reformulate your argument (because you might have a point), but try to incorporate these few ideas:
1) Theft is different than copyright violations
2) You're allowed to make copies of your CDs for personal use.
3) Talk about how the artist and distribution methods are affected in different ways.
4) Finally, talk about how any kind of copy protection must incorporate the notion that once I pay for a CD, I may listen to it in whatever device I decide, and at any time it is convenient for me.
Again, I believe you might have some really good thoughts, but you've sort of muddled things together.
Lets try again, shall we?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
RailGunner: Yay, the GOP-led Congress will stomp all over the SSCA.
Me: GOP-led Congresses have shown no particular desire to get in the way of other copyright-industry-backed legislation in the past, so celebraing SSCA's death is naive and premature.
You: (Something or other, which I didn't quite understand. Could you clarify?)
Incidentally, the GOP is courting a number of Southern Democrats, in the hopes that they'll change teams. Seems to me that Fritz Hollings is an ideal candidate for buttering up... Southern, fairly conservative Senator whose major causes are copyright legislation and Congressional pork. I can't imagine why the Republicans would go out of their way to squash his initiatives, given how useful it is to keep him friendly.
Sorry to state the obvious, but seriously, I have listened to a ton of good bands at mp3.com. You can download this entire album:
Scroat Belly: The Great Alaskan Holiday"
or this one:
Kirk Rundstrom: Wicked Savior"
or listen to these bands (highly recommended also):
Mezcal Bros.
Federal Weights and Measures (Sadly broken up now)
Crush The Clown
There is a lot of awfully good music on there, believe it or not.
"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin..."
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
you're making me hungry man :)
No money goes to the Big Five who effectively own the industry (and the RIAA). Good.
No money goes to the artist. Bad.
Of course, you could buy second hand and mail some of the differential to the artist. Five bucks would be several times the royalty they'd see on the album, anyways. If enough people did it, it might get musicians thinking, although based on the way pop bands allow themselves to be wheeled out for pro-industry ad campaigns, I suspect most of them aren't really capable of it.
As i understand it, all copy protection that can be read on a standard cd player is weak to begin with. cdroms can read multiple indexes, cd players can only read the first one. but cdroms read the indexes starting from the last and working its way to the first. so most copy protections corrupt the second index so the cdrom will fail. a simple firmware upgrade to the cdrom can fix that and make it read the first index first and move down the list. Interesting article here
*** I suffer from a colorful array of psychological problems
Except in the music biz, the artist pays for the creation of the work; the label only fronts the money. They didn't pay for anything (although they pay promotional costs, but this is typically once they're assured a favourable ROI); they simply accepted the risks of investment.
Weakening the risk by strengthening laws that protect their investment simply elminates their incentive to find _good_ artists.
Do you think the stock market would work/last if we artifically weakened (that is, the law approached eliminating the risk altogether) the risk involved in participating in it?
"Old man yells at systemd"
radio stations are in the business to make money. they play whatever people are buying.
Actually, if you read all the reports of modern payola, radio stations play what they're paid to play. And I'm pretty sure the record companies wouldn't pay the stations if airplay didn't affect cd sales. So I'm pretty sure you've got the cause and effect reversed.
If you read the entire letter, not just the juicy bits posted here, you might notice this is a reply to a letter we haven't read. My guess is the original was belligerent, accusative, haranguing, and likely with erroneous facts. I don't know that for a fact; these are my suspicions. **IF** this is true then I say kudos to the Deutsch for slapping this idiot back into his cave. Having a bit of experience with the German psyche I judge them to be very much like Americans in that when they get into this 'customer is always right' pose neither group is particularly polite or reasonable. I've worked in an organization where "customer service" is presented with enough religious fervor to cause projectile vomiting. Employees on the front lines are forced to be flak catchers and subservient to anyone with a bitch and an attitude. Sorry, but the world doesn't revolve around these self-important masturabatory a**holes. To have someone stand up to these guidos is a breath of fresh air. If I can't do it myself, then I can at least enjoy this letter vicariously. Hooray!
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
While it sounds rather bogus at face value, i also got a ranting letter many years ago from a support tech from Mouse Systems.
He went on for several pages telling me how stupid i was for asking if drivers for NT would be available in the future for one of their scanners.
A simple 2 line question, got me 3 pages of inane babble.
That said, this still sounds fake.. who would be stupid enough in this day and age to trash their public opinion like this?
Perhaps a little documentable proof? And if its given, we publish it EVERYWHERE.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Bitstream Dream
;-)
Britta Phillips (Formely the voice of "Jem")
Ghost in the Machine
Jonne Valtonen (formerly of Future Crew)
OS1
Red Delicious
I don't know if/which these groups have "real" recording deals, but you can at least download their music, legally, to listen to. Those particular artists I listed have at least a song or two that has made it to my default playlist.
The biggest problem with finding good indie groups, you have to listen to a lot of them to find something you like. Let's face it - A lot of them suck.
However...
You can listen to as many of them as you want, for free, before you commit to sending THEM (not their label) money for a CD. If you only kinda like them (or really like them but for some sick reason want them to fail), you can settle for their MP3s available, legally, on-line.
And...
I have yet to receive a copy-protected CD from an indie artist.
Exene Cervanka
John Doe
Billy Zoom
DJ Bonebrake
And they are the best American punk band.
> Another factor, IMO, is the seeming death of the theme album. I ask this
> question with all honesty: is there anything from the 90's and later that is
> equivalent to Sgt. Pepper, Abbey Road, The Wall, and Bat Out of Hell? I'm open
> to expand my contemporary music tastes here -- let the titles fly.
Try Marilyn Manson. Or "Scenes From A Memory" by Dream Theater. Or even Eminem.
Matt
Some small bands even sell CD-Rs with their own music on them (it costs a lot of money to make CDs `professionally'.)
If you're talking about a couple dozen, maybe. At quantities of a thousand, your prices will get into the $1.50/disc range, and you don't have to waste time babysitting a CD burner. You also have a better looking product, and no eBay hassles.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
I'm sure I'm in a very small minority but I understand and agree with the perspective of the music companies. People steal their 'product' and they want to stop it. Fair enough.
Rather than slamming the music companies for trying to defend their livelihood (which they are entitled to do, however rich they are and however many lawyers they have) wouldn't it be better to slam the pirates that are causing the problem in the first place? But no, we have countless pro-piracy stories here on Slashdot and all over the web.
Here's what annoys me: I love downloading my CDs onto my portable MP3 player. I'm legally allowed to do this. But soon, probably within a year, I won't be able to do this with any new CDs without resorting to awkward cracking tools. This is the fault of *pirates*, not the music industry, and yet every time I hear/see the issue being discussed, people are blaming the industry and hardly even mentioning the pirates.
I'm a legitimate consumer. Anti-piracy measures are anti-consumer. But they are a necessary evil and despite the inconvenience they will cause me I fully support them.
that was the whole purpose of the tariff in the first place. To give back some money to the record labels that were losing money from dubbing of CDs that people would buy otherwise.
Funny thing about that levy - same thing happened to it that happens to most money that gets sent to the government: none of it has gone to the people it was supposed to.
Bullshit!
It's one thing if these guys seize control of all broadcast media, shut out anyone smaller than say Polygram, lock out all the rack jobbers and Wal-Marts so it's flat impossible for a competing record label to get in, ever, and brainwash the people into believing they are the gatekeepers to *feh!* quality. Fine. Go ahead and do that, oops, done it already, cheers.
However the set of all audio media is not equal to the subset of all RIAA-controlled audio media.
You know, I produce audio media myself. There's the main page where I've got songs so new I don't even have a CD for them yet- also has a number of full CDs of other types of music. There's the other page which also contains numerous full CDs, this time of much more unusual and eccentric music. These are for sale, OK?
Just because the RIAA has poisoned the well so completely that people won't even fscking buy CDs from anybody, doesn't mean that these aren't commercial, for-sale, professional quality, dithered-and-mastered-from-24-bit, Red Book Compact Discs. It is THEIR fault indies are struggling (which they are). Thanks to them, people have a vague notion that it's important to never give anybody money for 'audio media', including me.
Thanks to them, they manage to set the terms and expectations for all these things, even when they have no right or jurisdiction. I mentioned the CDs I sell through Ampcast. I mentioned they're Red Book compliant. That means they are rippable, back-upable, iTunesable etc etc. Now, I also have mp3s up on the page. I used to have a lot more- and the page got so it'd take forever to load. I axed a lot of the mp3s- those songs are still on the CDs. Does that mean I want to suppress trading of the mp3s? NO, in fact on every CD I put out through Ampcast, written ON THE CD ITSELF is the message 'Please copy this CD for your friends'. And I mean it.
If I ever earn money through CDs and music, it will be because I do such good music, and conduct my business in such an enlightened way, that people WANT to support it by buying CDs of mine, and getting the cover art and stuff along with it, and knowing they contributed to my doing more music.
Thanks to the RIAA, this enlightened attitude is so UNTHINKABLE that nobody in the world would ever for a second consider it possible, so people come to one of two conclusions: (1) I am moneygrubbing slime like the RIAA, or (2) I want to work for years and blister my fingers and labor endlessly over music solely for art's sake and would be offended if anyone offered to buy a CD from me, because obviously I'd rather they download the mp3s and burn their own.
*scream*
I have to say, I am very angry with the RIAA for bringing about this state of affairs. They make a fscking mockery of anyone who wants to try and earn the occasional buck by working really hard at producing music. Music can be an all-consuming thing- some people who can do music aren't much good at anything else. I'm a lot like that in some ways. And I understand, I can accept if there's no place for it, if I can never even after decades of practice and work earn a poverty level living from making music. But GOD DAMN IT, is it necessary to poison the well so completely that nobody can even pay for their own guitar strings through selling their music? And then, to make public announcements that 'all' audio media worldwide will now be copy protected, further putting across the meme of 'there IS nothing but us' and having people eat it right up and fight over, pay attention to, only what the RIAA produces...
Now I know what being an 'unperson' feels like. And as it happens I need to go into the studio and work tonight- there's a tune I need to get on tape and get out there, based around a lyrical hook of 'this town ain't small enough for the two of you anymore', pushing the concept of third party politics. I have a killer chimey guitar hook for it. I don't have all the lyrics but one verse is going to end with comparing the Republicans and Democrats to 'Tweedledum and Tweedledee with fat and dirty faces'. I care about this stuff, I'm going for the throat and the stress of trying to produce something that can get OUT THERE and actually be heard is grating on me in a big way. It's a very tall order. Even if you know a lot of the tricks, making a hit song is damned hard work and will leave you wiped out with the ends of your fingers shredded.
And for what? I'm an unperson. I'm a serf and don't matter. The RIAA says so. And, odds are, YOU believe them without questioning it, because you're fixated on whether to, or whether not to, freely trade the stuff THEY make.
I'm a stubborn unperson- I'm going to go ahead anyway even though nothing happens and nobody notices and the RIAA will probably make uncopycontrolled media illegal next, forcing me to be not only an unperson but a criminal, and still for basically nothing.
A lot of life feels like that these days- maybe partly because I _do_ have that 'musician' gene. So rather than just despair about being made the unwilling serfs of psycho corporate Republicans, now I can pour heart and soul into music which I can then despair about its never being heard, due to years of determined work by guess who? Lord RIAA.
Maybe THAT would make for a good song- a song called Lord RIAA. Bearing in mind that it's not terribly singable like that, also to keep the length between three and four minutes (closer to three is better) and keep the hooks clear of overcomplications, and be sure to have the song title recognisable as the hook of the chorus.
Which is of course How You Do It, pity that by now it's completely a moot point because nobody will ever hear it regardless.
Gah. Kill me now :P
*stubbornly goes off to record anyway. hitting drums sometimes helps.*
How about Nirvana's Nevermind. It probably changed the face of Rock more than any other album before it or since. It got rid of the crap spandex hair bands of the 80's like Motley Crue, Cinderella, Warrant, Poison, and whoever else fit in that category.
Even without a degree in economics everyone should realise that such trends will result in the music industry ceasing to exist.
They say that as if it were a bad thing.
Fuck these assholes. The sooner these parasites are out of the chain, the better. Money paid for music should go to musicians, not scumbags like this.
And all the whining about CDR sales is crap - we are ALREADY paying extra for those to placate thses scum, yet tey are still denying fair-use.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
Internet anonymity for Linux newbies
Data security for Linux power users
Certainly, it's tabloid journalism. It is also useful tabloid journalism. It's written in a chatty, informal style. Guess what. Bill Gates' speeches are NOT The Sermon on the Mount and press releases by various vendors are taken far too seriously by the computer industry trade press.
It's fashionable to bash The Reg among the people who mistake mass media news for the real thing. For me, if a person whines publically about it, I start wondering about the writer... which of his toes did The Register stomp on... I'm willing to assume deservedly. They have enough credibilty so I can make that as a default assumption.
BTW, I freelance, I've been writing lately for one of the major online tech news publications. (Hint: NOT ZDnet) I frequently find The Reg useful in spotting things that are worth looking into in more depth than they can provide.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I think you're right, and I have a feeling I know what the problem is.
Record Labels
Compare this to a popular arist with a few albums under their belt, who has the name recognition and leverage to negotiate batter contracts, or perhaps even switch labels. Not nearly as attractive.
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
So the hapless buyer who doesn't read /. takes it back to the store, and gets another CD that's also defective. He tries it on his computer CD audio and it still doesn't work. And this time, they won't give him his money back. So he's stuck with a CD he can't use.
How many times will he do this before he stops buying music CDs entirely? If he's a serious fan, he'll write the artist to tell her why, and the record label fan club will trash the mail.
Being told at the store that "maybe you should buy a new CD player" isn't going to make him any happier, especially since a new CD player that isn't intended for the SACD standard is even more likely to have a CD-ROM drive in it.
If I were your hypothetical BIG NAME ARTIST and found out that I had no choice but to allow my label to put out CDs that an increasing number of my fans can't play, I would be pissed.
It's only a matter of time before a name artist currently in the charts (Prince bugged out some time ago, but who cares?) publically defects.
Tech Public Policy stuff
The original text of the email to EMI: per BabelFish
"Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation." I don't think that that's a problem, yet.
Sounds about like most of what I read on Slashdot or the Register.
Carthago delenda est!
Why dont they get it? If teh CD can be read AT ALL, it CAN BE COPIED!
the only way to copy protect a CD would be to make it unreadable. Or not to publish it.
For some bands, the last option would be welcome.
Can't say if they're real or not, but I myself (located in Germany) believe that the original posting is authentic.
Its original author posted the headers from the response in the same forum.
Have a look and come to a decision.
Remembering similar conversations with EMI some months ago, I pretty well can believe it.
42. Easy. What is 32 + 8 + 2?
What is everyone getting so worked over? Remember the source. I think this letter passes for "nice" in Germany. :)
1) You buy Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns--it's a thick, scary book--and use some of those.
or
2) You think up something different.
Hence the non-resemblance of most good music to other good music.
Only Michael Nyman and Shellac get away with making music out of four notes, and that calculation is supremely retarded anyway, since it ignores rhythm and harmony (but "50,000" sounds better than "infinity" to techie types who're obsessed with denigrating the skill and intellect of all non-dorks).
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
If I were lucky there would only be my ISP and the artist's ISP between me and my music, but it would still be a middle man. If there are only two choices of middle man, MSN/ATT or Time/AOL/Disney, I'd be just as screwed as neither is likely to provide "internet" service as we know it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I believe you will find the original was published throughe Heisse, they publish c't amongst other things. They are open source heavy weights but they definitely are not a National Enquirer. Neither for that matter is The Register, they like a bit of fun but their reporting tends to be accurate.
mp3.com (biggest >1.5 million tunes, now owned by Universal Vivendi, but so far they haven't messed it up too much)
IUMA
Besonic
mp3.de
Soundclick
Garageband
France mp3
Vitaminic (free + pay)
Washington Post (yup)
Online Rock
Peoplesound
mp3.com Australia(not the same mp3.com)
Emusic (pay)
Artistlaunch
Good Google will searches turn up more small sites, thousands of independent artists' sites with free mp3's, smaller labels have free samples, many, many links pages. The biggest problem here is that it takes time to separate the wheat from the chaff. There is some incredibly good stuff out there and a lot of crap. I hope that you have a high bandwidth connection. Who needs the big labels? I don't.
Sigs are bad for your health.
Yeah, This assumes that nobody ever backed up any data, noone saved their work to CD, no digital photographers kept their pictures, no videographers saved threir work to CD, and that the single use for CDrs is to pirate music.
... its much more durable than videotape, with a much better picture, much better sound, and much more convinient. All of which is perfectly legal, as I share none of this with anyoen else, via the internet or any other means).
Yes, they are exceptionally dishonest figures.
The small company I work for, employing around 50 people, goes through over 900 blank CDRs each year. Not to copy music, not even to copy data CDs.
Most (730 or so) are used to make daily backups of our database, on a medium that will last 20 years or more. The others are used to burn boot CDs, Linux installation CDs (Gentoo, Debian, etc.), store critical config files for later recovery in the event of a catastrophe, and so on.
At home, I use CDs to backup data on (mostly again Linux distros, pictures I've taken of travels with my digital camera, home videos I've converted to DivX format, and so on. Some TV shows I've recorded to hard disk, like all of B5 and Max Headroom, also get burned to CD or DVD
The number of CDRs and DVD-R(W)s I have purchased in the last year personally probably number around 200. Of those, exactly 0 have been used to make copies of music, legal or otherwise.
Now, I am just one data point, and I don't know if my usage is more reflective of the common person's usage (convinient, reliable, and durable data storage) or not, but I'll bet its pretty damn common for those who buy 100+ CDRs each year, and a hell of a lot more representative than the dishonest figures those thugs as the European equivelent of the RIAA are throwing around.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
(paraphrase:) If current trends continue the music business will surely cease to exist.
Yeah, trends like putting copy protection on CD's, which lowers value on an already endangered distribution scheme.
And although the piece that he is commenting on has not been verified to be a bonified example of MS strategy, I fully would expect the Register to offer a loud, front page retraction if it turned out to be crap (which it might be, but it also might not be).
Wow, you're optimistic, aren't you? They've never put retractions on the front page before - and the retractions they have posted read like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar -- full of bile and spite.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
I read the Score: 4+ posts and didn't see this point of view. I'll give it a try.
Anyone else remember when copy protection of software became REALLY BIG in the 80s? And back then, they were using some pretty darn good technology for the time. After years and years of copy protection, guess what the software industry decided? Those high tech solutions just don't work. It went away, put was replaced with the low-hanging fruits of copy protection "is the product CD in the cdrom drive"?
This isn't to say that there aren't copy protections here and there today. I think this Palladium thing wants to encourage them to get back into the copy protection business. A story in itself.
But you stopped seeing intentional bad sectors, dongles, and other technological goodies placed in software because they simply weren't effective in relation to the cost. And they caused problems.
Of course, things are a bit different today. The CD industry has a nice chain of stories that won't allow you to return CDs like you could return defective software years ago. But then again, today, there is internet distribution. All it takes is a few people with compromised DACs and your "latest and greatest copy protection scheme" is just as good as the low-hanging-fruit of software protection.
So, watch as the music industry plays the copy protection arms race. But I think the Internet, for reasons of providing alternative legitimate and illegitimate distributions, and sharing of information, aside from following the copy-protection lifecycle, will punish the RIAAs members above and beyond that.
No seriously, I would encourage selective purchasing of those CDs that do not have protection. I like to take music with me when I travel, and I have a notebook PC, why should I buy another CD player? I'm not even talking about MP3s, why can't we play the original on a PC-attached CD player?
Let's make a few things clear:
1) I don't like the RIAA. They're just as bad as the parent poster, just the opposite extreme.
2) I don't condone the shutting down of P2P networks.
3) At the same time, I'm trying to unmask this facade that "it's perfectly okay to steal music." It's not. Most people have probably pissed on the side of a public building sometime in their life. Is that legal? No. But you still did it, right? Do the cops go around town looking for people pissing on buildings? No, they're too busy with murderers and rapists and the like. Such is that with music. Yeah, it's wrong to the artists, yes the music moguls are blood-sucking whores, but we can sweep it under the run and the world would be perfectly fine. It's just sad that many "open source advocates" that frequent this board don't believe in having a steady job and getting paid for it. People that write and play music for a living do.
I'm with you. But I like it better the way it was explained to me. In American style news, you have the "he said, she said" style reporting. Person A said blah, blah, but person B points out "antiblah, antiblah+."
In English (European?) style journalism, journalists themselves are allowed to have opinions and to express them themselves, rather than through the puppet characters that Americans use. So, yes, they are slanted. American news is slanted, too, but the slant is done with the puppets. That's all.
After fuming about this as we all probably did, I thought about it and came to this conclusion: EMI's math is inaccurate, and more insidiously, they are hiding some very important facts.
.." well, you're getting PAID for them dude.
Here's what was said:
"There are 250 Million blank CDRs and tapes bought and used this year for copying music in comparison to 213 Million prerecorded audio media. This means the owners are only being paid for 46 per cent of the musical content. "
This assumes that either; A) all CDRs are used to pirate music or; B) EMI has some magic tracer on blank CDRs that returns which of them was used for illegal purposes. Since neither is true, the EMI statement is rubbish. CDRs are used just as much for backups, non-MP3 warez and coasters as much as they are used for infinging music and film files.
But they mention tapes as well. Ah HA! Now here comes the reall bullshit.
Know what the AHRA is? Well the Audio Home Recording act was enacted to make sure people paid for music they taped. IOW, when you bought a blank TDK cassette, the RIAA and labels assumed you were going to use it to copy music, so they wanted a cut. The therefore dreamed up the "blank royalty" which meant that $3 of the $5.99 you paid for that TDK cassette went to publishers, labels and artists (cough). In return you were given THE RIGHT to make copies.
According to the RIAA:
"This legislation exempts consumers from lawsuits for copyright violations when they record music for private, noncommercial use; eases access to advanced digital audio recording technologies; provides for the payment of modest royalties to songwriters and recording artists and companies; and mandates the inclusion of serial copying management technology in all consumer digital audio recorders to limit multi-generation audio copying (i.e., making copies of copies). "
They get paid for device sales as well. There are similar laws in every First World country, in particular, the UK and Germany.
So Herr EMI, in claiming that ".. 250 Million blank CDRs and tapes [are] bought and used this year for copying music
What's core? That EMI.de is complaining that people are buying media (for which EMI.de is generously paid) to make copies of music that they are entitled to copy BY LAW. The EMI.de guy is complaining that people are buying media that generates MILLIONS per year for EMI!
When EMI, Warner Music, BMG, UMG and Sony Music offer to give back the blank royalty, then we can begin to discuss what percentage of CDRs are actually put to infringing use.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
What I find especially galling is the bit about EMI collecting problem cases and providing feedback to the copy protection provider.
Well, nice, but they forget that the CD I bought is write-once and the copy protection on it will never improve. I doubt that improved copy protection schemes will find its way onto later pressings of the same CD, unless the CD is entirely reissued. There is absolutely no way to fix the copy protection on existing CDs.
What I am left with, then, if I happen to be the owner of a 'problem' player is the choice of being stuck with a severely crippled CD (as documented by the original sender of the email to EMI, whose DVD player only saw tracks 1 through 8), or return the CD for a refund. No way I can legally access all of the CD unless I buy additional hardware or unless EMI chooses to issue an 'improved' CD and I am content to wait for that.
So, while EMI's statement sounds good superficially, it actually documents their absolute lack of regard for their customers, because they'll never be able to fix intentionally broken goods.
Yep, that's a boycott. The WSJ article paroted the music company's claim of "piracy" though it should be clear that most people are not being exposed to good new music. None of them was able to clearly link music downloading to lost sales, or demonstrate that the music downloaded was even available at the local record store. The article then quoted the same publisher's plans to market stale old crap for Christmass, Elvis, Rolling Stones, and other 40 year old junk in boxed sets to try to make up for it. There they go, putting their eggs in one basket as their marketing model with mass pressing/printing in Asia, import by boat and distribution by truck demands. Pthththft! How many times can you sell the same crap?
Actual music sales point towards poor advertising rather than economy. Music sales increased remarkably and in conjunction with Napster, despite economic conditions. When Napster died music sales flopped before the economy started to look bad. A bad economy, combined with "CDs" that don't work, and other poor marketing methods really will cost the greedy jerks some money soon.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I doubt you would have said anything had the previous poster said "17-year-old Pepsi-pushing vixen" but the Metallica reference was spot on (after their dog-and-pony show pimping for the recording biz they deserve our scorn). The well-placed Ballmer Monkeyboy link to reinforce the point was genius.
This post made me laugh, but then again this 40-something, fat guy still has all of his hair (although quite a bit grayer these days!)
A man who wants nothing is invincible
Frankly, I don't know one person who has returned a crippled CD to a store because 'it didn't work'.
Answer: Those of us who 'don't matter' should buy crippled CDs in the store, return them because it didn't work. Have them assume it is damaged. Exchange for another one. Later, rinse, repeat. We should actually patronize these companies and buy their crippled CDs, if only to fill the return pile.
I'm the ideal music consumer. I love music, I earn good money (well, sort of), and I recognize the value of intellectual property (I produce it), so I don't steal it.
Problem is, I've run out of stuff to buy. There isn't a single listenable commercial radio station on the air. They all play the same mediocre stuff, over and over, plus a lot of really crass, insulting commercials.
The online, officially-sanctioned music scene isn't much better. There are crappy, commercial-encumbered interfaces that make available a small number of highly-compressed, proprietary-format, selected-for-the-idiot-masses crap, and there are collections of MP3s of varying quality and completeness in a bazillion poorly-fornmatted, not-enough-information-to-make-good-selections, lucky-if-you-even-encounter them places.
In short, I don't have the patience of God, so my access to new music is limited. Music availability has been pop-cultured into mediocrity.
If record companies want me as a customer, and I used to be a very good customer, they need to fix this. I want a means of previewing available music without ads, spyware or hoops to jump through, and I'm not going to give my social security number, mother's maden name or a tissue sample to get it. Make it proprietary and less-than-audiophile quality to protect your sales, but make it easy to get at, and give me more than mass-market crap.
I'd also suggest fixing the homogenization of radio, but I believe all ad-supported media is beyond saving.
Amy
You buy Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns--it's a thick, scary book--and use some of those.
How do I know which patterns in that book are or aren't safe to use under copyright law?
You think up something different.
I have tried generating melodies AT RANDOM with a qbasic program, based on a simple music-theoretic model, but half the time, I could place the result as a popular song. I would write songs based on what music theory I know, but I'm too scared of being sued.
Only Michael Nyman and Shellac get away with making music out of four notes
Handel did as well. The lawsuit that my article covered was about the four notes of "Hallelujah Chorus"'s hook being copied in "Yes! We have no bananas!".
and that calculation is supremely retarded anyway, since it ignores rhythm
The calculation does not ignore rhythm. It classifies note lengths into three categories, nominally half, quarter, and eighth.
and harmony
Judges may ignore harmony; changing an existing song's bass line doesn't create a new song. The calculation isn't intended to represent what a musicologist will think; rather, it's intended to represent what a federal judge might think. A judge doesn't look for an exact match but rather "substantial similarity" as evidence of copying.
but "50,000" sounds better than "infinity" to techie types who're obsessed with denigrating the skill and intellect of all non-dorks
I'm not trying to denigrate anybody or anything. I just wonder how songwriters can survive in the prevailing legal climate.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The music companies can generally avoid having to deal with us directly, but the stores have to. I really hate to do this, but I don't see a lot of other alternatives for actively getting the point across that I will not buy botched (err, protected) CDs.
1. Go to record store (sorry, but I'm old and to me, its a record store).
2. Pick up a few CDs known to be protected (we've really got to get these things labelled).
3. Initiate a purchase transaction.
4. During said transaction, inquire if the CDs are protected.
5. If they say No, call 'em on it and abort transaction.
6. If they say Yes, tell 'em I wont buy protected CDs and abort transaction.
7. If they say I dunno, tell 'em I don't want to take the chance and abort transaction.
8. Try to retain the ability to look at myself in the mirror after being such a dick to my local music store owner... (well, those guys are pretty much screwed anyway in the long run)
-x
I've been getting my music fix from the source, right down at the local live music bars. The musicians bring their small run CDs and you buy if you like what you hear. No copy protection or other BS. Someone asks me what I've been listening to, I'll point them at Mactra or Chef Menteur, or some good old stand by like Dash Rip Rock (ok, they are kind-o signed, but that was the way things were 15 years ago.) I'm sure everyone here has some kind of good music like that at their fingertips, but it's NOT in a store.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Chef Meteur
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If you're not familiar with mp3.com, it can be daunting in the sheer volume of material (no pun intended). And they accept material of all (musical) quality from absolute crap to incredibly good. They have many genre-based top-40 style charts and new-release charts. Walking through those is a natural first step. Something they have that can be a big help is "stations" - really a euphemism for fan-generated lists of tunes by various artists. The tunes can be played separately or sequentially. So, when you find an artist that you like and get to their page, click on the "stations now playing" tab. On that page could be one to several "stations" where you might find additional good material that someone else has taken the time to comb out and list. I've seen lists from 2 to 200 tunes long - this can expand your options very quickly.
Sigs are bad for your health.
Luckily the new Opeth album comes out on Monday, so I'll still be able to listen to that at least. Maybe for their next album I'll just download some high quality ogg vorbis files and send them a $20 check.
Actually I see all this as a good thing in the end. So I can't listen to CDs in my computer, and the music companies crack down more and more... does this really matter? Sometimes I think people are a bit too caught up in music/media in general. Maybe we should all go check out some of the local bands that are playing nearby - I'm sure they'd be happy to give us a $4 CDR of their stuff.
In fact I'd say if you're an artist trying to get a fanbase, NOW is your chance. As more and more people get locked out of mainstream music, a "nobody" artist can start to distribute their stuff to a much more receptive audience. I mean what else are we going to listen to on our CD players that will probably be obsolete every 1.5 years to keep up with "theft"?
Thnk about it; Playstations, notebooks, desktops, CDROM drives, Mini Disc PC-Link kits, DVD players (maybe). There is all sorts of Sony built stuff that won't play these CDs. It wasn't long ago that Sony Music released a copy protected CD, Celine Dion I think.
Now am I pissed about EMI's attitude? Yes, but hey I'm not an EMI customer (I think). Will I be pissed when I buy a Sony Music CD that I can't use in my Sony console, notebook, CDROM or copy to my Mini Disc? You better belive it.
So in short, no Sony isn't going to say anything to these guys about this because they do it themselves. Microsoft is also in negotiations with all the companies over the "DRM OS (tm)" so they aren't going to do it either.
We are screwed.
And guess what? They're not copy protected.
So go out to the bars that have open mic night or are showing some sort of a local band. And buy their CDs. It's better than the boy-band-of-the-day or whatever crap is playing on your local Clear Channel station.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
I've been trying to convince my family and friends for months to boycott CDs until the RIAA gets real. Now that they'll start running into useability issues when they try and play CDs in their new stereo, it looks like they'll finally get that disincentive to buy $20 CDs churned out by the media/ad agencies (who are one and the same, at this point). Hopefully, they'll start buying independent artists' works. It's a shame that much of this type of product is still poorly produced, but compared to 10 years ago, the indies have really made some progress. It's exciting to see where indies' production quality will be 10 years from now.
Of those 250MM blanks purchased for the sole purpose of raping the RIAA and its members, I'm responsible for about 250 units. None of them are CD-R for audio, since I don't subsidize the RIAA. Not a single one of them was used to burn a copy of a purchased, or burned-from-a-purchased, or even third, fourth, or 10th generation pirated audio CD. About half were used to archive old data from servers / workstations, perform backups; and the rest were used for my own musical projects: original Ded Serius songs, and practice CDs so I could promote other artists work (covers) during live gigs in bands.
So, now that the "industry" is about to force it's consumers to stop buying, I'd like to continue to offer my own material here:
Ded Serius Music, some friends' music here: Layden Robinson, Turkestan Road, and Twig free of charge. Because real musicians (Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Chopin, etc.) did it (and still do) for... the music. People who do music for the $$$ are... the Industry. Who are you going to support?
Go see a local band play live and buy their CD. We'd love to see some people show up for the show.
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
Really,
I *will* play any media I purchase on any device I own anytime I like and in any fashion I like; or I won't buy it.
It really is just that simple because I don't have the time for anything else.
What I love to hear is the how and why this will make you more money. You raise the cost of distribution, piss off your loyal customers, limit title avaliability, yet plan to make more money?
Really! how?
Blogging because I can...
Whether or not a copy protected CD is "broken" depends on your perspective. Sony, for example, might choose to market CD's that work only with Sony hardware. That doesn't mean the CD is "broken". It just means that Sony chose to make and sell those products.
Now, copy protection seems to me to be self-defeating beecause many potential customers -- like you -- will perceive it as marketing broken products. That's where you have rights -- the right not to buy. What counts, though, is that you won't buy the product, for whatever reason. If enough people share your views, market forces will compel CD companies to change or to get out of the CD business.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Speeding laws are designed, from the beginning, to save lives -- and there is some evidence that they accomplish this.
Intellectual property laws are designed to allow wealthy individuals to create an indefinite revenue stream for themselves and for their lazy children; the money pours from the pockets of the workers into the pockets of the IP owners and continues to do so for years, even if the IP owners contribute no further labor to society. There is very little evidence that the primary purose of intellectual property laws is to save lives.
In short, they are one of the very worst features of capitalism and bear very little resemblance indeed to speeding laws.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
There have always been a lot of crappy one-hit wonder artists. We selectively remember the good artists from the past and forget the mediocre ones. There is still good music being made.
I would instead contend that people are spending more of their dollars on DVD movies and less on CDs. Why?
Your average DVD costs 15-20 dollars. So does the average premium CD. A movie is generally at least an hour and a half long, plus bonus materials. A CD is usually not much more than an hour long. And a movie is a much more engaging experience with video and surround sound. If consumers have limited dollars to spend on entertainment they will pick the better value.
The problem is that the music industry is operating from the premise that they are entitled to ever-increasing revenues on a mature technology that is being overtaken by something more exciting. The music industry needs to either spice up the product or get used to making less money.
I'd point you at Chris Isaak's Forever Blue and Allison Krauss's Forget About It; the theme's not political, to be sure, but IMHO John Dowland, Elizabethan angstmeister that he was, would be right proud if he could say he'd written some of the songs on those two albums.
Popping the stack to the question of time filtering out the best stuff--the problem is that oldies stations don't do that. "Oldies Stations" are really "Oldies Top 40 Stations," so while you'll not hear some dreck such as "Tennessee Birdwalk" or "In the Year 2525," you will hear some dreck (e.g. "McArthur Park," "Green Tambourine") and you won't hear some of the great stuff that you had to listen to the early AOR stations for that didn't make the charts, or the regional hits (ever hear any Quicksilver Messenger Service or Pearls Before Swine on oldies stations? How about nonhits by well known groups, like "Heavy Music" by Bob Seger, "Monster" by Steppenwolf, the Association's "Pandora's Golden Heebie Jeebies" or "Requiem for the Masses," or anything but "Help Me" by Joni Mitchell or anything but "Poetry Man" by Phoebe Snow?).
I have never seen speakers with a digital output :)
They have to output an analog waveform at some point (ie: the drive for the speaker cone), and at that point it's vulnerable.
I used to record phonecalls by clipping the mic leads from my casette deck to the wires on the back of the earpiece. Worked great.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
We are arguing obliquely. Copyright infringement (let's call it by its right name) is not theft. It is a legal definition for an intangible priviledge. It is not the job of the police to catch copry right infringers. It is the responsibility of the Copyright holders to defend thier claim to copyright. Doing so such that it hurts those that do respect thier copyrights is wrong.
It can also be argued that copying music is a form of civil disobedience. The state of Intellectual Property Rights Laws is atrocius. By infringing copyrights one calls attention to the stat of disarrear in the system.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
This article is halfway down the home page at /., and there are HUNDREDS of posts like "Yeah, well I have a band and will sell CDRs..." or "I legitimately listen to my CDs in my computer" or a million other variations of the theme.
Listen, people. Posting on slashdot is like shouting real loud in a closet. It might make you feel good, but it does virtually nothing for your cause.
If you really, REALLY have any intention of being heard by those evil people at RIAA/MPAA, write them a honest-to-god printed-on-paper letter.
Phone calls disappear the moment you hang up your phone. EMail is usually considered too easy to send to be taken seriously. But letters get noticed.
If you mean what you say, warm up your ink jet, spend $0.37, and write a letter. Otherwise, you're just talking out your ass.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I won't buy major label crap, but I do love noise. Rapoon, Nurse With Wound, Tackhead, Controlled Bleeding.... RIAA would never have the balls to release shit like that. And that's the problem, there's a small amount of interest in a large number of fringe musical styles. The RIAA would like to see this disappear and only produce a few styles of music to cater to mass appeal, while also stiffling distribution channels for the fringe artists. And why is this? Because it's the fringe artists who create the next popular musical forms. And they can't control that. So, the solution? Monopolize the distribution channel and buy politicians so any other distribution becomes illegal.
Fuck the RIAA. I won't buy their music. I buy CD's from bands at concerts and across the net. I also legally download directly from the bands who allow it. I won't break the law, and I will get the weird music I like. Ugh, it's so fucked up. --M
Mfg'ed bands suck as much as always
They don't even bother pretending it is orginial anymore. I was playing Rock Manager, and I could have sworn one of the songs from the game was being played by the top 40 radio station.
Sure they claim that the use of MP3/Ogg and file sharing is costing them money. well they are probably right, just not to the excess they claim.
whats really hurting them is the cost of CDs, the quality of the music, and the numerous attempts at stopping you using what you pay for.
In my case I buy lots of CD (my collection is heading for 400), and yes every CD I buy is ripped to ogg or mp3 format, but not to be shared, but to make life easier for me to listen to them, on my laptop, as I work, which does not have a CD drive, not that I want to have to carry large numbers of CDs anyway.
I do not share these rips, not though any dislike of piracy, but more selfeshness, a real case of I paid through the nose for the CD, why should others benefit for free.
Mandatory copy protection on music CDs is total madness, and all its going to do is piss off lots of CD buyers, driving them to the file shares.
A far better solution would be to provide legal Mp3/ogg downloads, that are water marked, so they can be traced back to the purchaser.
Sure someone can share these mp3/ogg files, but they can be traced. Given a stiff penality, the sharing would be reduced to a trickle.
There has been discussion of using DRM from the beast to allow for secure digital distribution of music legally. Sure this may work, but again its limiting what you can do with your own property, and will/has pissed off lots of people.
As a non-windoze user, all the beasts DRM is off limits to me, which when/if music distribution happens in this format, will drive me to the file sharers.
I would like to be able to buy single tracks in MP3 or ideally ogg format, straight of the internet. But provided that they are not restricted in any way.
Buying single tracks in this way would save us consumers lots of money, which is why its not likley to ever happen! Just think about it how many cds have you bought that you like every track? very few right?
Message to the RIAA, remember DVD regions? its hard to find a player thats not been cured of the region madness these days, which is just what will happen with your CD copy protection, sooner or later it will be cracked, there is no way you can stop it.
Far better save your self truck loads of pain, and money, and embrace digital distribution before you are sent broke by it. Digital watermarking is the way to go....
The first copy protected CD that I buy, will be the last CD I buy, and I will not be alone in that.
I would say overall MS has learned exactly the opposite.
Antitrust-wise they seem to be in zero trouble, without making any material change in their business practices. So one PR strategy against Linux failed. There will be dozens of others. I still don't find it obvious that Microsoft's products will be eclipsed by open source in the long term.
I think the moral of that story is, do whatever you want to your customers; if you're a big enough monopolist, you will almost certainly get away with it.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Not if you hurry. They want to take a tax on those and give it to the RIAA too.
Sort of like requiring you to write a check to GM for 10% of the price when you buy a used car.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
If all these copy protection mechanisms just use messed up multisession TOCs on the end of the disc to screw up multisession drives.. should it not be a simple matter for a drive to do something braindead simple, like only read session 1? I seem to recall software of old that let me pick which session I wanted to read.
It's more like the New York Post or something. Real news, real facts, but a strong editorial bias.
Nice thought but
CD sales fall, and the RIAA are going to claim that there copy protected CDs are being cracked, sharing is increasing, and introduce something worse.
Do you want the only music available to be tried to windoze XP?
remember we are talking about the RIAA here, and since when did they actually think before acting
No, they'll just interperet that as the copy protection isn't working well enough. Expect headphones that'll inject a lethal dose of botox if unapproved sound comes out of them.
By the Constitution, it is most definately for the Supreme Court to decide. And as a registered voter and Citizen of the United States of America, it is my right and duty to decide what Congress should be doing. This is a democratic republic, or at least pretends to be so.
I am not asking them to change thier actions due to criminals. I do think they should realign thier buiseness models to keep a large protion of thier customers happy. Even if many of those customer are also copyright violators. Copyright violation is not a criminal act, hence copyright violators are not criminals.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
I bought a blank CD-R.
doh!
Where do you think the 1x-24x generations of CDROM drives wound up at the end of the production runs unsalable because the faster ones where available?
The labels had better pray the answer is "landfills".
Tech Public Policy stuff
... into straight english:
"Give us your money. Now fuck off and die."
Well, at least this way we know exactly where they stand!!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
As I recall from previous discussions, when you return a CD, the cost typically comes out of the ARTIST's pocket, not the distributor's profit.
What might help is to return the CD, then write to the ARTIST about why you've returned it. You want to hit 'em as much in the ego as in the wallet, so they think twice about renewing their contract when the time comes.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
What a ridiculous notion. CD-R's aren't used to pirate music, they're used to burn downloaded DVD rips.
http://cltracker.net -- powerful craigslist multi-city search
But what if you're running your dvd player out to your Dolby Digital receiver like I do? The audio stream can't distinguish between playing out to a receiver versus playing out a sound card. I need my dvd player to run out to my receiver - the reason I bought both was the ability to hear the 5.1 channels. My audio receiver was pretty expensive to buy and I have no intention of replacing it if movie studios decide they wanted to encrypt their audio streams. The situation there is pretty analagous to the broadcast copy flag in HDTV that content producers are panting to get - yeah they really want it, but the people that they are pissing off are the ones who spent 5 to 10 thousand dollars on the hardware when it was brand new. The companies really don't seem to give a shit about pissing off their customers, but this group of people have significant lobbying power with the people that actually decide laws if they choose to exercise it. Macrovision prevented copying movies but allowed playback of movies, the implementation of the broadcast flag and any sort of Macrosound would break even the playback function of current hardware, so people will be much more upset about it.
As I said elsewhere, I rather suspect that there are a hell of a lot more CD-ROM drive-based audio players than the RIAA-labels conceive possible in their worst nightmares, I think that instead of the writing off the CD drives towards the end of production run when everyone moved on to a faster drives, the drive manufacturers simply sell the audio manufacturers the closeouts.
Anybody know for sure?
How fast is your CD-ROM drive now? My 486 box had a 2x CD-ROM, I think this older box has a 36x. One can get faster now. I assume that the excess 1x-24x are sitting on consumer shelves and in car CD-ROM decks, and that *most* CD audio drives sold in the last few years will NOT work with the next generation of copy-protect.
We've never had the situation before where ALL the new product at record stores is incompatible with CD-ROM drives.
I think the record labels who are the "early adopters" across their product ranges of this are about to get a terminal surprise.
Even if it's just a very large minority, they've cut their own throats.
Why would we want to stop them from doing this?
Tech Public Policy stuff
And when sales plummet due to a rise in consumer problems with their "copy protection" and/or general discontent...will you still think it is a good thing for the music "industry?"
You know, thinking about it, you're partly right..it will be good for music as it will eventually cause a shake up within the so-called industry part that leeches off of it.
Just my $0.02. -db
Perhaps it's time that something like /. used it's respectiable sized based of readers to drive the first stake into RIAA's heart? I wonder how successful something like a /.'s OGG of the day would in generating interest in unsighned bands who allow free downloads of thier songs? I realize that it would be a big hassle for the /. crew to decide on which OGG is good enough (and if appropriate licenses are in effect) and setting the appropriate mirrors up. but it could be well worth it if it sparks a new paradigm.
Dammy
Show me a journalist that isn't biased. There is no such thing as objective reporting. I'd rather have the bias right out front and honestly admitted to than to have a journalist pretend they have no biases.
A lack of integrity is simple: it is a news organization acting as if they are giving us the 'real' news, the 'objective' news, when such a thing doesn't really exist. The fact is, every news organization is biased, but most don't admit their biases. The New York Times, arguably one of the best in the U.S., has an undeniable pro-Israeli slant, for example. But people think somehow that they are getting objective reporting from them about the Palestinean/Israeli conflict. In fact, just the choice of headlines, of regions of the world to cover, etc. displays a news organization's bias. And it's very rare in the states to find much differentiation in choice of major stories among the big news organizations. This goes to show you what really motivates most news organizations here: money. I can't speak as much for the rest of the world, but as much as I've heard suggests that all major news organizations across the globe are playing a similar game, in different ways.
So, let me ask you this; what is a journalistic source that has a lot of integrity, that doesn't suffer from some lapses of 'objectivity' or editorial slant? I think you'll be hard pressed to find one that we couldn't pick apart fairly quickly. At least the Reg has its biases up front, and attempts to be as honest as it can with the facts it does use.
I would suggest you read not only the Reg but all news sources with a critical eye...or else you are being suckered like all the rest.
already mentioned these... three contemporary UK acts that might do it
for you. None of them do concept albums per se, but cerain... themes?
do tend to emerge repeatedly from their music. AFAIK none of these have
done anything (sales-wise) in the US.
superb albums in the can.)
the influence of Prozac, and it shows
associations of crappy 80s pop to do from the name, don't worry.
I'd give you a brief idea of what they're about, but that'd spoil the
fun
Some other stuff I really like, but seems to be a minority taste
(around here anyway!): Destiny's Child! (`Independent Woman' is
fantastic, classic pop.) And flamenco, whilst it has a seriously
intimidating pain barrier (to the uninitiated it often sounds like
tuneless wailing): the classic, Elvis-Beatles-Stones-Hendrix type
figure, probably the greatest flamenco cantaor of all time, was
Camaron de la Isla. Tons of mp3s at
http://www.flamenco-world.com. I got into it purely by accident,
got stranded at my parent's place for three weeks with nothing else to
listen to. Like the candlestick suddenly resolving into two faces,
after about a week of putting it on as background, I suddenly grokked
it's indescribable beauty.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe