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RIAA, This Is Earth, Please Come In!
ccnull writes "You might remember George Ziemann as the musician who found his own music banned from eBay because it was recorded on CD-R. Now he's back with a new rant about the RIAA's statistics, which blame piracy for the dire condition of the music industry. What's to blame? Price hikes and fewer titles. The latest rant (including analysis of the RIAA's own data) is mainly circulating by email, here's a readable link. (As an interesting side note, Ziemann says that songs are really just ads for CDs, and thus should be freely traded.)"
Veronica Moser is also another artist who could not sell her own merchandise on Ebay, but her story has not been as publicized as Mr. Ziemann's. Her plight is very interesting, to say the least. Hopefully with a recognition from a website such as this may help her in her situation.
I recently wrote this paper for a university class, describing the basic architecture of Gnutella and Freenet, to offer some technical insights into how these P2P networks tick. I think it's a good read, if you have a chance :) Personally, I gained a new appreciation for these systems while doing the research. Conditions of use and abstract here.
What I wish people could see is that P2P networks don't have to be about illegal content, just as FTP and IRC are not just about warez. Reliable P2P can become a core internet technology of the future. Imagine fast downloads of just about any large media (e.g. slackware CDs, public domain broadcasts/recordings, etc.).
So I think $12.99 is more than fair. Even $14.99.
But that's the thing: if you go out to buy a current CD, the costs are going to be closer to $20. When people can get DVDs for that much, why would they pay for a CD? The consumer has started to question the quality of the work they're shelling out (big time) for.
Thousands, hundreds of thousands are spent on replication and distribution and marketing just so regular people (including the non net-savvy) can hear about new music.
Huh. In the good old days (and golly gee, today even!), people found out about new music through things like the radio, MTV, and (when you get a little older) what's playing in the clubs.
All 3 venues require payment to the copyright holder in order to play the music.
No thanks, I'd prefer not to be paying $14.99 per CD just so some marketdroid can install a 20' high cardboard sign telling me that the new Britney Spears album really IS the hottest album in the US.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Recording off the radio is making a copy of coprighted material. In almost all jurisdicitions this constitutes a breach of copyright. In fact in some jurisdicitions playing the radio in a public (or sometime not so public) area counts as a public performance of copyrighted material and is also a breach of copyright.
I don't see how the fact that more effort is involved reduces the harm. Either you agree with the statutory monopoly set up by copyright law, or you don't. If you do, then any copying, not matter how easily this can be accomplished, must be seen as an illegitimate inteference with the owners exclusive right to copy the material.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Are you sure you read the article? In it, George Zeimann, says:
Maybe it's just me, but that sounds a lot shooting yourself in the foot, then handing the gun to your opponent so that when the police arrive, you can point to him and say "He did it! Lock him up!"
According to George Zeimann, they're losing money because they deliberately sabotaged their own sales....
CDBaby is one of the few online stories that really get it.
I left RIAA music behind a few months ago, why not try and do the same?
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Music now competes directly at retail with DVDs, music videos, and video games. Most stores that carry any of those carry all of them.
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Most of the radio stations in the US are now owned by Clear Channel or Infinity Broadcasting, which play the same old music over and over again.
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Everybody has already converted from analog vinyl to CD.
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We're in a recession. All discretionary spending is down. Cars and air travel are doing much worse than music.
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Concert attendance is down about as much as CD sales are down.
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Rock music tanked a while back, and nothing since has a similarly broad appeal.
With all this, it's surprising that CD sales aren't down something like 50%. We may yet see that happen.Mixonic is worth checking out - they've simplified pressing and distribution for musicians by allowing you to upload your cd and then pressing copies on demand. No physical inventory aside from bits.
They keep $4 per cd of your profit charge no startup costs. It's an attractive business model.
You've got it mostly right and can read the decision thanks to the EFF.
IMHO, nothing in that case gives people a blanket right to copy broadcasts (TV or radio) simply "for personal use."
This is true & future cases fleshed out some things that people CAN'T do. But you can tape unecrypted broadcasts and collect them. Interestingly, both the Sony and Universal indicated that people were accumulating tape libraries. This is why you can use a PVR. The networks do still argue that you can't skip commercials or share your recordings on the net (see, for example, the replaytv case), but they don't complain that you've taped something and keep it.
Clearly this does not apply to a situation where a song is being copied in lieu of being purchased.
It isn't clear to me. The Court actually said that broadcasters would have no objection to expanding their audience. I think this holds true to radio broadcasts.
One standard they cite is that the recordings aren't made for personal gain. It is very clear that selling the tape you made would be infringement. It -might- be infringing to trade broadcast tapes with others (as you're benefitting by expanding your collection. I don't see the extra benefit you get on top of time and space shifting.
Setting the law aside & looking at it pragmatically, I don't know how you would say that the person is taping a song so that he doesn't have to purchase it. In some ways, the author of the article is right, but possibly in the wrong medium. Copyright holders intentionally allow their songs to be broadcast to increase their audience--the songs on the radio are ads. Expanding that audience probably wouldn't raise any hackles.
Is it ethical for people to take things that are not being given freely and not reimburse those that provide it?
According to the Constitution, Copyright exists "to promote the sciences and useful arts". If 80% of recorded music is simply unavailable for purchase, then argueably the current situation is 'not promoting' a fairly substantial amount of art. If indie music can't get air time because of the 'payola' system, then the current situation is not promoting the arts.
Is it ethical for large corporations to pervert a law that was intended to promote the arts, effectively doing the exact opposite in the name of 'profit'?
There's two sides to the coin... and right now, there are laws that govern the side I'm talking about...
The constitution does not read "In order to promote corporate profit and monopoly control.. "
The law needs to be changed. The DMCA and perpetual copyrights promote corporate profits only, they don't promote the arts. That 80% of older music that the pigopoly won't release should already be public domain!
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Why don't I sleep?
I don't think so. Copyright basically prevents unauthorised publication, not the act of copying itself. If you sold or eevn just gave away copies you certainly would be vio;ating copyright. Making a "backup" for your own use is exactly the same as time-shifing TV shows, which "in almost all jurisidctions" is legal.
Unless some fascist interpretation of the DMCA has changed this, of course.
When I encode mp3s from my own vinyl and cd collection, I use the --r3mix settings of Lame. This produces a VBR encoded mp3 that gives the highest quality possible without being overly greedy with storage. (I'm aware there are other Lame presets meant to accomplish similar goals. --r3mix works for me.)
Almost every mp3 I have seen on the trading services is 128kbit encoded and many of those were done with inferior encoders such as the old Xing encoder. What you are seeing is not hypocrasy. A clueful ripper uses a good encoder with wisely chosen settings. Such mp3s sound very good even if some audiophiles insist they aren't quite cd quality. The vast majority of mp3s aren't these high quality ones. I also think many traders don't understand the filesize/quality tradeoff and just get the smallest file to download. This means that the lowest quality versions of any given track propagate the most.
Both statements are true. Good mp3s are indistinguishable from cds for most people. The quality of most downloaded music is inferior for the most part; quality mp3s with few exceptions are not traded.
Ogg is supported by several players, but not all. Is it supported on your sony walkman? No. Your car stereo or any of the other hundreds of devices that (finally) play MP3? Rarely. MP3 is the way to go to reach the widest audience. Using Ogg will restrict who can play it where and that is the exact opposite of what he said he wanted to do in his original post.