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NARAS vs. the RIAA
sdbrian writes "An all around excellent paper concerning the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) and their position with regard to the RIAA has been published on Salon.com. The author (John Snyder) quotes from many articles that have been discussed on here on Slashdot. One of Snyder's conclusions, "NARAS should take the lead in this matter. Those who are taking it now are leading us over a cliff. The RIAA has staked out an untenable position that is as unrealistic as it is anti-consumer and anti-artist.""
The RIAA has staked out an untenable position that is as unrealistic as it is anti-consumer and anti-artist.
And the sky is blue... That conclusion is obvious. What I want to know is why the government hasn't stepped in against the RIAA... Microsoft had anti-trust against them... The RIAA has got to have something... Isn't having more than half the US population hating you enough? Any lawyers out there care to elaborate... Is there some legal thing I'm missing that we could use to finally hurt the RIAA?
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
I think there is some validity to this position, because there is no possible way to get rid of filesharing, since people will always find ways around blocks...That is the nature of the internet. I've seen many posts on slashdot, and I know that many people would prefer to buy very high quality (i.e. lossless, or 320kbits ogg or mp3) for a small fee. The transition period, as has been noted, is very difficult. Change is always difficult, and the shortsightedness of the RIAA has not helped them. They are obviously either opportunists or vagrants out to steal people's money. If they truly were real business managers, they would find a way to make the current reality work. You can't change reality to fit what you want. This has been shown throughout history (which is also why wars have been fought, ahem, French Revolution). I think it is very good that we don't have to resort to violence to solve this conflict anymore; it shows how far our society has evolved. Anyways, I hope they can figure something out, because I'm tired of 128kbits mp3s off p2p networks =P
If they keep pushing anticopy systems, they're locking, or better "setting a time bomb". Like Alexandria library, but centuries latter and with delayed fire. I hope in 200 years people will not point to us as the persons that left them unreadable culture. If it keeps going on, I know what new career will appear, Digital Art Restoration, with lots of classes about math, cryptography, and electronics, with the purpose of removing the "white paint that was put over the wall to hide the picture".
NARAS is a more technical organization than RIAA, right? (More audio engineers, etc., than executives.) And regarding executives...
Record companies are not logical, righteous entities. They are ramshackle, profit-driven enterprises. They act in their perceived best interests, and they act ruthlessly and, in many cases, irrationally. The people who run them still have their e-mail printed out by their secretaries.
Did anyone else visualize Dilbert's PHB sitting at the desk of President of the RIAA? Scary and yet strangely compelling.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
This article appeared on Fortune website, or businessweek, or an avenue where the people who actually matter in this debate (businessmen, politicians) frequent. If that happened, it might actually DO something, other than ignite the pirating passion of /.ers
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
It's even worse - this isn't about intellectual property as we know it. This is about IP bought by large companies from small artists. So it's not intellectual property since it didn't come from their intellect but from their wallet. It's all just about money and stupid artists that really believe those large companies are going to do them any good while they only do a lot of good to a few and about nothing for the rest. Their marketing-machine (which is paid by the CD-buyers - the price of a CD is mainly for funding the marketing machine) is waaaaaay louder than that of smaller artists trying to do it by themselves and therefore these companies have by now replaced music with top40 and artists with stars. So I'll say it once again: don't buy CDs, don't watch MTV and if you're an artist: don't go to the big boys. They're crippling their own market.
Real artists don't mind if their work gets "stolen". They're proud it is so good people want to "steal" it.
0x or or snor perron?!
This is just opening a moral can of worms, if you ask me...
But it's good to see more and more, people getting back against the RIAA.
But what will come if the RIAA dies? What after that? Will it manifest itself in the form of a new P2P program that monopolizes all file sharing (somehow, kinda like fileplanet) and charges ridiculous prices?
I'm tired of people (on both sides of the music sharing issue) trotting out the same rhetorical arguments all the time. There's nothing new here. Snyder's arguments about growth in other media don't prove his point; rather they show that the decline in record sales can't be blamed on the slowing economy. I believe I bought fewer CDs from major labels this year, not because I was downloading them from the internet, but because I wasn't interested in them. My money instead goes to new, independant artists (via CD Baby a fantastic way to buy music that doesn't make you feel like a criminal.)
I for one don't believe that we're going to (or that we should) do away with copyright. I just believe that the current music industry is going to be end-runned. I hope that we don't end up legislating it's continued existence. By that I don't mean that we should permit illegal file sharing, but that we shouldn't mandate a technological solution which only allows big media to create content.
-c
"If you are an idealist it doesn't matter what you do or what goes on around you, because it isn't real anyway."-R.P.W.
At http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=7555 a lengthy report on the same subject, just released today.
Similar in some respects but different in others - like it has some stuff about copyright expiry scaring the crap out of the RIAA. Certainly worth a read. Very nice synchronicity!
I read through the article, and it seems pretty clear that NARAS has decided to embrace P2P, file-sharing, and subscription models without DRM as the primary form of music distribution. One of the arguments he made was that it turned out to actually profit many artists, and among those he cited was Janis Ian.
/.ers are going to think "Yay, NARAS! Boo, RIAA!" after reading this. Are we looking at a power struggle?
So I found it very interesting that the link off the article to Janis Ian's Internet Debacle quotes NARAS as follows:
The NARAS people were a bit more pushy. They told me downloads were "destroying sales", "ruining the music industry", and "costing you money".
Looks like NARAS has done a 180. But if they previously didn't believe in what this article is arguing for, why do they believe it now? Is it really just because they think they have to adapt to the new model? Or are there other motives which we don't know about? After all, I bet a huge load of
Indeed. I believe that the recording industry has completely confused cause with effect and refuses to accept the consequnces of its actions.
While I do not download copyrighted material, many years ago my music budget and I completely abandoned the regular commercial stream in favor of independent artists and recordings. The top 4 reasons were:
1) Quality
2) Choice and variety
3) Value for money
4) Contempt for an industry that would be as at home selling hamburgers - a soulless marketing machine that didn't have a clue what real music was, treated it as a commodity and treated its customers and artists with equal levels of contempt while continuing down a path towards providing less of items 1-3. I wasn't alone with my feelings and options arose - we took them. I'm not going back - I'm much happier where I am now.
Sigs are bad for your health.
Here's an idea I just had for anyone who still cares about good music. Go download some top-100 crap, open it up in whatever sound-editing software you like best, and voice-over it.
Rant about music you like, mention a few unsigned bands that record a similar genre the the RIAA track you're spoiling. Talk about fair use, payola, price fixing, whatever. Mention a few good URL's about the issues such as the one in this story.
Repeat for as much of the top-100 as you can stand, then share it around. If the RIAA wants P2P networks polluted, let's do it RIGHT!
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
Are you going to try and convince me now that the 1s and 0s that make up your bank account are not property because they exist as money only due to government regulation and you can't stick a fork in them? How about transferring it to me then!!??!
Sure, how about if I transfer, from my account to yours, the 1s and 0s that represent -1000000 dollars? *GRINS*
Owning "intellectual property" is like owning the wind. Once an idea is manifested, it can no longer be owned, as anybody who saw it, heard it, touched it, can now use it and even improve upon it, without depriving you of anything. All our laws are trying to do is encourage people to be creative, to innovate and thus advance the well-being of all our society. Big monied interests have been trying to use these laws to make more money, as is their obligation under capitalism. Eventually, though, the roof *will* fall in on them, and what emerges from the chaos afterwards will be a radically different world.
I'm a small-scale jewelry artist. I create items that I consider beautiful, and sometimes sell them, or just give them away. The designs are, by current thinking, my "property", but I don't care. I create for *me*, and once an item has been created, duplicating it endlessly becomes a chore, keeping me from doing any more creative work. So, to stay creative, I refuse to "protect" my "property" by hiring lawyers to fight anybody whose designs look similar to mine. My muse freely gave the ideas to me, and I freely share them with the world.
What goes around, comes around.
Lemon curry?