2002 MP3 Winners and Losers

An anonymous reader writes "MP3newswire.net is running their annual losers and winners list in digital media. Each has 8 finalists with the big winner KaZaa for becoming profitable and doubling Napster's peak traffic despite setbacks like getting briefly booted from Download.com. The big loser? No surprise, it's the RIAA who despite several wins in court have failed in their quest to stem file trading. Lawrence Lessig and Dmitry Skylarov also made the winners list, though as the article points out it wasn't exactly a great year for Dmitry."

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Whew

[nightherper]

I hope this is really good news in the long run.
Today I finally went over to the EFF site and joined up after I had an epiphany of sorts. I realized that now is the time to keep the internet from going the way of marijuana and any other ideas, items or whatnot that have been made illegal. Just to keep someone's pockets lined with green that he's sharing with a few of his buddies which help make and enforce our country's laws. I love my country, but I feel we are not really as free as we should be, and that our freedoms are being traded for profit.

What is it going to take before the companies realize that the best way to fight their losses is to join in on it. By that I mean that they could release high quality mp3s (or OGG, but hopefully not wmp formats) with commercials tagged at the beginning and end. Sure, most of us here can edit them out, but they will still be heard. My idea probably sucks, but there has to be a solution, a compromise, or we all will end up losers.

Re:Whew

[DarthWiggle]

The problem is one of incentive. What incentive do the RIAA have to engage in such a compromise? They're not really losing an absurd amount in profits, because millions of people all over the world are still buying good ol' CDs, merchandise, and all the other tools of RIAA's profits. The RIAA isn't suing p2p services to restore lost profits, but to protect the distribution scheme in which they've invested a tremendous amount of money. Your idea that they should "get with the times" is noble, but it doesn't address the fact that the RIAA and its affiliated companies need to get a return on their investment in the business model that millions of folks are still participating in.

Add to that the fact that the "artists" are an absolute non-factor. Those who provide content to the RIAA's member companies already have a separate contract with RIAA which provides them with royalties, advances, and so forth. While it is true that those royalties depend on album sales, the royalties themselves are not, generally, substantial as compared to the revenue that RIAA (et al) retains from those sales. Further, and again, album sales have not decreased to critical levels. (I'd challenge anybody to prove to me that the decrease in album sales in the last few years is the result of p2p activities and not a foreseeable decrease resulting from bad product and the bad economy.) So, the RIAA is clearly not pursuing these lawsuits to protect the interests of the artists, who only detract from the RIAA's profits in the short term.

What we really need is a revolution in the music distribution system by aggressive labels not affiliated with the RIAA, perhaps a label that is, like Southwest Airlines, owned entirely by the participating artists. In order to have such a revolutionary change be successful, those artists have to pump out compelling product that will compete with what the RIAA's companies offer. So far, no label or collection of artists have managed to usurp the corporate-art of Britney, Christina, etc.

I wish the RIAA would just disappear. But they have enough of a market to make their business model tenable. Until that market is disrupted in a real way, RIAA is going to keep doing what they're doing, and they're going to win.

If you want a change, don't just download MP3s of RIAA artists. Support non-RIAA artists and labels. Find artists who sell their music directly to the consumer. That's how to fight the RIAA.

RTFA

[citizenc]

And the RIAA has had excellent results in the courts. They saw the destruction of Napster by the California legal system. They have left Madster (formerly Aimster) bloodied on the ropes and about to be called for a TKO and this month they won the right to sue Australian-based KaZaa in the US.

What has this won them so far? To be quite blunt, nothing. (Source)

[Insert witty you-should-have-read-the-article comment here.]

Kazaa profitable... that's not worth a celebration

[LostCluster]

I'm not sure Kazaa being profitable is that good of a thing for the 'net in general.

Remember, Kazaa is a Spyware/Adware-filled program which brings along with it a lot of annoying programs that pop-up ads while users are browsing sites other than their own, redirect click-through commissions from sites other than their own, and spy on users when using programs other than their own.

Kazaa simply has no morals. They're not just stealing from the RIAA, but if you run a website they're stealing from you too. If you haven't noticed, they don't have much respect the laws of the U.S, Canada, Mexico, U.K... or anywhere else that says stealing is wrong.

Kazaa should just go away... the online world would be better off without them. Them being profitable is a very scary thing...

Re:if only the RIAA had some vision....

[LostCluster]

The problem is, they not only own the content, but they also own the "distribution channels" that control what content is pushed into the marketplace.

The RIAA's MP3 fear is not that they won't be able to make money off of MP3s, but that people other than the existing RIAA members can as well. What's more, it'd be possible for an artist to gain popularity without needing the help of an RIAA label's publicity machine, therefore the artist could make 100% of the money off of the recording, and not have to give the RIAA members any cut of the action.

That's why the RIAA is trying desperately to block the progress of 'net-based music distribution in any file format by anybody. The fact that some people are surcomming to illegally transfering music that the RIAA owns the copyright on just makes their illogical case easier to argue. What they want is for the music distribution system to stay as it is for as long as possible, because if we ever transition to an effective electronic system of any kind, they will be written out of the story.

An advice to all the totalitarian countries

[iamacat]

It's totally all right to arrest US tourists that broke the laws of your country while living in their own. Have a female visitor from Adobe in Saudi Arabia who doesn't wear a veil at home? Into the jail she goes. It's even Ok to give her job offers and lure her into your country just to arrest her for breaking your laws.

No we don't want anything like that to happen. But both Adobe and US justice system should apologize for Dmitry's detention and make sure nothing like this will happen again. Otherwise, they will have no recourse when a tourist from Texas is jailed in Europe for keeping a firearm in his house.

There are other ways to protect local laws. US certainly could deny a visa to Dmitry or make it illegal for anyone to buy or sell his/her software while in the country. Countries can also sign extradiction treaties to enforce common laws. But if I do something which is legal in my country and then come to yours and follow your laws while there, you can kick me out but not arrest me.

I know someone will say that IP laws are different from making people wear a veil or stay away from a particular religion. But, just imagine you didn't grow up conditioned to the stuff. Then, one day someone tells you a story that you like very much. You are happy and share this story with your friends. Would you expect to end up in jail, even if that someone asked you not to repeat it?

Also, consider the Church of Scientology. If a country accepts their IP rights and prevents people from distributing scientology texts, isn't it a form of religious control? True, in US you will probably get some cease-and-desist warnings before you get arrested for practicing unlicensed scientology. And you might go to a nicer jail than in totalitarian countries. But now we are talking about methods, not principles.

Anyway, countries should just agree to only abuse their own citizens and just decide weather to let others in. In the meanwhile, I hope Adobe is carefully considering foreign laws and background of their employees before sending someone on a business trip. I hear preventing someone from backing up programs they bought is illegal in Russia.

Re:An advice to all the totalitarian countries

[MrWa]

imacat tried to raise his karma by writing: Otherwise, they will have no recourse when a tourist from Texas is jailed in Europe for keeping a firearm in his house.

Why do people always make it look like Dmitry was arrested for writing the software? It was the distribution in the US - which he and his company were doing willingly - that was the problem, not writing the software.

What you really happened was closer to: "...a tourist from Texas is jailed in Europre for keeping a firearm in his hotel room in Europe.".

Now, I agree that the law is no good - but don't obfuscate the issue by misrepresenting what really happened. That does no one any good.

You missed the whole point of the case...

[MyNameIsFred]

They weren't in trouble because they had a product that was sold in Russia. They were in trouble because they sold the product in the U.S. With a major point being that they used servers owned by an American company. As with the recent court cases concerning whether Calif. courts have jurisdiction, that fact was important. Without the sales in the U.S., they could not have been tried.

Hey RIAA Want a clue? READ THIS!

[Newer Guy]

"An acquaintance recently purchased the new Peter Gabriel CD. It played fine on her standard CD players, but would not play on her computer at work where she regularly listens to music to pass the tedium of her job. What did she do? She simply downloaded the files from the Net onto her PC and played that instead. The problem is she was still angry that the CD she bought was intentionally disabled, preventing her from using it as she wished. Do you know what she did next? She returned the CD. A perfect example of a dissatisfied consumer who (had) already committed to the purchase and was completely discouraged by the intentional hampering of the product. Scariest for the music industry was when I heard her angrily mutter these words..."I won't make that mistake again."" Did you hear that, RIAA? Your antics are really pissing off your customers! Oh wait - I forgot...you don't call them customers, do you? You call them thieves and pirates!

All your talk of piracy.. Its always incorrect.

[LostCluster]

First of all, p2p is used for more then piracy. Its not the "sole intent" as many people like to pretend.
Those who use P2P for legal uses are fine. Those who use P2P for illegal uses are in trouble, it's a bad sign that there's more in the second category than the first.

Yes pirating occurs.. but so does drug running on our roads.. does that make it the 'sole intent'. No of course not.
The highways in the United States are used for legal activities that the government actually wants to occur far more often than drug running occurs. We do make an effort to arrest the drug dealers who use the highways that way. Besides, if the highways were being used by drug runners at the same percentage that illegal files are going over P2P, the government would likely have stopped maintaining the highways anyway.

Plus you are also not considering that waht you consider piracy only applies to YOUR country. many do not reconize copyrights, so its NOT, I repeat, NOT piracy there...
Check the list of countries that don't enforce the simple (non-DMCA-like) copyright laws, and you'll notice that they're mostly countries that have problems with human rights as well. Since you're capable of posting on Slashdot and are refering to copyright-lawless lands as "there" rather than "here", I assume you are not living in such a country. If you'd rather their set of laws for its copyright feature, be willing to accept the rest of the package.

Try to spread the truth, not biased lies desgined to skew public opinion.
A biased selection of facts designed to skew public opinion is what you practice.

Re:if only the RIAA had some vision....

[LostCluster]

Let's face it: What you want is a cheaper alternative to CDs. Why would record labels want to give up their highly profitable and legally established right to sell CDs at $17 a pop in order to collect pennies in royalties off some Internet service

What it'd take is some CD pubisher willing to publish good music for $5 per CD, and making up the difference with volume because they end up selling many more copies at that price. The CD as a format is cheap enough to make that each disc could be profitably sold for $5 each. There's no need for a cheaper distribution media.

The problem is, once this anti-RIAA label makes its splash with quality albums for $5 each, all of the RIAA labels will flood the market with their products for $5 each. The upstart will have a hard time competing with its only distingishing feature being duplicated by everybody else, and not having the same publicity machine advantage as the RIAA labels. When the anti-RIAA label is wiped out, the price will then methodically go back on a path back to $17. Therefore, anybody with the money to launch an anti-RIAA label has no real incentive to do so.

Why Kazaa?

[sean23007]

What I want to know is: why would they choose Kazaa as the number one winner?? That makes absolutely no sense. They talk about how great it is that they are profitable, and then in the same breath explain how they got that profitability: "by stuffing the app with adware, spyware, and most notoriously Brilliant Digital's Altnet, a distributed computing program covertly placed on users machines when KaZaa was downloaded." What is the author trying to do, promote such underhanded moneymaking techniques? When other developers and companies read this, they will undoubtedly make a connection. "How can we be more profitable? Well, Kazaa did it with adware, spyware, and lying to its customers." All those things should of course be mentioned, but in the Losers list, not the Winners. The adware, spyware, and covertly placed programs were the reason I never downloaded Kazaa, and never will. If Kazaa is going to be number one, they should be there because of the FastTrack network, which I think is wonderful. My vote would have gone to Kazaa Lite, which should definitely be up there on the list. It connects you to the FastTrack network without spying on you or lying to you.

Kazaa Lite is the real winner, not Kazaa.