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.)"

Comments

yup

[xao gypsie]

songs are really just ads for CDs, and thus should be freely traded.)

most assuredly that is the truth. i have bought tons of cd's after getting a few mp3's. the RIAA needs to understand the marketing potential in filesharing......jsut my thought, at least

xao

re: yup

[hhknighter]

"most assuredly that is the truth. i have bought tons of cd's after getting a few mp3's. the RIAA needs to understand the marketing potential in filesharing......jsut my thought, at least"

Actually, I think they do. I mean they are suing a few kids for 97 billion dollars, that's more than the actual market value+potential, perhaps. For that amount, the marketing potential in filesharing is rather psychotically huge.

Re:yup

[Evil Adrian]

If the copyright holders decided to give away songs freely as ads for CDs, then that's fine.

But what everybody keeps forgetting is that the choice is THEIR prerogative -- NOT yours, NOT anybody else's.

There's plenty of good free music at mp3.com and other legitimate sources.

Taking copyrighted mp3's off of Kazaa, Morpheus, or whatever is unethical -- yes, unethical:

If you don't like the price they charge, you have no obligation to purchase -- but you have an obligation to not deprive people of their income.

Re:yup

[tuba_dude]

I beg to differ.

While mp3s are still at the same sampling frequency and bit depth of a CD, the compression algorythm is far from perfect. Almost every mp3 I've ever downloaded was encoded at 128 kbps, far from CD quality. As a musician and an audiophile, I've found that mp3s usually need to be at 256 or 320 kbps before they're accurate enough for long-term listening. Of course, this is all subjective, and if you're just listening casually, 128 kbps is probably plenty.

You're also probably right about the damage p2p can do to the RIAA, but if there are many people like me that find the mp3s floating around to be poor substitutes, it's about the same thing as tape trading, only with less legwork. In the end, the CD will probably be bought by the audiophile or musician if he/she enjoys the music sampled as an mp3. The cheapskates won't buy the CD anyway, they might even steal it off the shelf if it's good enough (costing even more). The average consumers are most likely to buy the artist's next album if they like a song or two.

All other arguments aside, people are going to do what their personalities dictate, filesharing just speeds up the process.

Re:yup

[zcat_NZ]

Interesting persepctive for you to consider.

The Nazi Government was in power. Hell, they were even democratically elected by the people.

Once a government is in power they make the laws.

Texas and some other states say it's OK for the state to execute criminals. Nazi Germany said it was OK for the state to execute Jews. From a strictly legal standpoint there's very little difference.

So it really comes down to ethics.

Is it ethical to kill an entire race of people? Most people say not. We make some new laws to reflect this.

Is it ethical for a small group of companies (remember this is the RIAA member companies; the artists no longer own their own work) to lie about profits and losses, maintain a stranglehold over distribution, maintain artificially high prices, lobby to perpetually extend copyright, and keep 80% of art unavailable (depriving both the artists from potential revenue, and the buying public from legally purchasable content?)

If most people think not, then it's time to change the law. That's how a democracy is supposed to wor isn't it?

Re:yup

[Noksagt]

Recording off of the radio requires comparitively greater effort than does pirating mp3's. While pirating, you can do a quick search and find what you are looking for on demand, whereas you need to "hunt and trap" what you are trying to find on the radio.
I've argued in the past that the ease of "consumer copying" should increase the burden to prove piracy (i.e. with intent to profit). But I don't know how hard it is to tape a song, especially when you can call in and make a request.

By recording off of the radio, you are getting a lower-fidelity signal (noise and compressed sound), definitely an inferior product to that which you would be purchasing.
So, let's say you tape digital radio, off of syrius or xm or the music channels on digital tv, etc.

I don't know about the legality of recording off of the radio or not, but it is obviously much less harmful given my points above.
I would argue that the Sony-Betamax case should apply to radio just as it does to TV, which means that you can tape radio for personal use. Selling those tapes would obviously be illegal, but I do think there is a real gray area when you start to give them away, either physically or on the net.

I would definitely say it was a stupid, round-a-bout way to get your music, but I think that it can be done legally. If ripping and sharing is copyright infringement (it is...), then where do you draw the line between the two?

Re:yup

[ATMAvatar]

MABYE THE RIAA SHOULD FOCUS ON MAKING A PRODUCT PEOPLE ARE WILLING TO PAY FOR?? if someone wouldnt buy a cd anyway how the FUCK does it hurt the artist if they download teh cd?

Because the artist makes royalties off of the sale of the CD.

So, instead of getting 8% of $0.00, the artist gets 0% of $0.00

Your logic is faulty, as it misses the expressed point of the parent - if people have no intention of buying a CD, regardless of whether or not they download mp3s from that CD, there is no income. You cannot deprive the artist of money that doesn't exist. You can only say that downloading music deprives the artist of income if you can successfully prove that a person would buy the music in the absence of free mp3s.

The problem is that we are not dealing with tangible objects. Stealing a song in the form of an mp3 only harms an artist/label as much as the money a person would spend buying the song. If the person would never buy the song, there is no loss. If you were to steal a CD, though... there would be a loss. The artist/label would have lost the cost of the CDR used to make the CD, as well as the jewel case and printed material. Thus, stealing a CD is a bit different than stealing a CD's worth of mp3s.

But, that's beside the point. The ethics lie not in the loss that theft incurs, but in the basic idea that you *should* pay money for music you enjoy. The artists and labels choose to distribute their music through sales of various media, and it's only because someone chose to disrespect and circumvent those distribution channels that you are able to get songs for free online. The moral obligation here is to either pay for a song (buy a CD/tape/record/etc) or not listen to it. Artists ought to be compensated for their work.

On the other hand, if you honestly believe that the big problem in the music industry is lost income for artists, your primary objective probably should be the dissolution of the RIAA.

Re:yup

[sebi]

Strange things happen. Whenever the technicalities of music compression are discussed you will find a lot of people claiming that mp3 is indistinguishable from the original CD. When it comes to downloading everyone will say that the compressed music is vastly inferior...

I read the article...

[blake213]

..and I don't think he has much of a case. Even though mp3's are inferior compared to uncompressed CD-audio, many people don't have the ears or the brains to notice otherwise. And I know lots of people who download entire cd's, and haven't bought a CD in years.

Another thing I am tired of hearing people complain about is the cost of CD's. Sure, they can be considered expensive. I agree that the cost of replication is way lower than what they sell CD's for. But replication is probably the cheapest step of the CD-making process. Next on the list is the actual studio time spent recording the CD. But the real money-burner is promotion and distribution. 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. So I think $12.99 is more than fair. Even $14.99.

Not to say the RIAA is always right, but if music pirating wasn't making the record companies lose money, why would they be so against it? If they lost no money, it would be a great marketing scheme. But they lose money. Not as many people buy CD's.

Re:I read the article...

[rco3]

But replication is probably the cheapest step of the CD-making process. Next on the list is the actual studio time spent recording the CD. But the real money-burner is promotion and distribution. 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.

And I suppose you think that the record company pays for those costs, right?

Last time I checked, most contracts for smaller artists included studio time and promotion as recoupable costs. In other words, they are fronted by the record company and the recouped out of the artist's royalties. That's right, the $1 per disc (if that) that the artist gets FIRST goes to pay back the costs of making the recording in the first place, and (usually at least part of) the costs of promotion, etc.
You're right, those things are expensive. But the label is just loaning that money, not giving it. And if the label happens to own the recording studio, do you think they charge the artist at a discounted rate? Ha! How about if the artist buys discs, at distibutor prices, from the label to sell at shows? Guess what - they don't get royalties off of those! Nor do they get diddly-squat ($0.05?) for those Columbia House discs.

Fact is, even if your first album goes Platinum you probably wind up owing your record company a shitpot of money.

Cry for the RIAA if you want to, but you're a sucker if you do.

Re:I read the article...

[Anonymous Coward]

yes they made less money in each year for the last 5 years.

but then again, they also produced less albums. so google for the stats, but their profit margin INCREASED. so they cant cry to me that they made less money when they made less products.

besides that, here is a nice idea. why does the record industry believe they are exempt from the economy. gee, the last 3 years the economy has had troubles, why should record sales be ANY different.

people are buying less of everything. cd's are and always will be, a LUXURY. people need the necessities first and foremost. i know the brain dead coked up record execs cannot wrap their mind around the concept that CD's are not a necessity of life. they are a nicety.

so i HOPE the RIAA (members of actually) goes out of business. they are greedy people. they STIFLE creative work.

Songs? more like singles...

[nfg05]

I wouldn't really say all songs are ads for CDs, singles are ads for CDs. An advertising practice of giving away your product would certainly help boost your units shipped, but as for the revenue ahhhh.... no. This is a great idea tho, imagine if you just got some free McDonald's food whenever the burger commercials came on TV. I mean after all that burger is just an advertisement for errrr.. the burger so jus give it to em right?

Ummm...the economy?

[suzerain]

Excuse my French, but why the fuck doesn't anyone ever talk about the economy?

It seems to me that the RIAA's sales drop also seems to coincide with the dot-com bubble burst, the Terror attacks, and the lack of sunsequent economic resurgence.

I know that, as a resident in New York, freelance work has shriveled up -- if I hadn't had personally satisfied past clients who wanted to work with me again, I would have had to move. Quite frankly, we just don't have money to piss away on CDs right now, even if we didn't want to boycott the assholes at the RIAA.

I just want one reporter to, like, ask them why they think the economy has not had a deleterious effect on their business?

All this bullshit about MP#s being an ad for CDs, and so forth is just that: bullshit, IMO.

Two things are going on: (1) the economy sucks; (2) CDs are becoming obsolete.

Either way, the RIAA has no argument.

Old Song or It's all about control

[DeadWizdom]

People don't realize that durring the explosion of radio the recording industry went nuts as well, citing bad sales and tried their best to destroy radio entirely. Once they embraced it, however, they got richer and richer and richer...

But the issue to them isn't really the money that they claim they lose; it's the control. You see the recording industry is trying their best to keep us all in a world dominated by the MTV, not the MP3. In the world of MTV they can rely on certain things that will sell, they can even go so far as to control fads to control what will sell. With the MP3, that's all out of their hands.

Ofcourse the first record company to figure this out gets the capitalist prize!

I never buy CD's anymore unless

[BigBir3d]

I think it has something truly worthy / interesting. Something like the Johnny Cash cover of Hurt. A great song (NIN originally) done by a great artist. The newest Britney or Justin or whatever the RIAA tells me to buy? I ignore that stuff. It's the same junk that has been spewed out since I was a kid. Think about "alternative" music... how can it be that if everyone knows / buys the album? I realized a while ago that most new musics sucks, and I have reacted accordingly.

Example from another industry

[ArtHack]

It's interesting to take a look at another industry that is dealing with similiar issues... that of book publishing. While I don't think that eBooks are quite as popular as MP3 and other digital music formats, publishers are still grappling with the question of "piracy" and deciding what affect that has on book sales. One publisher, Baen (publisher of SciFi and Fantasy) has been experimenting with making selected volumes of their library available freely (in a fairly wide selection of formats), going so far as to package free eBooks on CDs with some hardback editions of popular authors. Many are available free on their website

You can read the details at their website, but what they did was allow authors to voluntarily put books in the "free library" and they seem to be happy with the results. Oddly enough, people read the free eBooks, and wind up either buying the paper copy or other books from the author once they determine they like it! Surprise, suprise... There's also a good article comparing what Baen is doing with the record industry also.

Once again, I ask Slashdot

[teamhasnoi]

to make the out-of-date, taking up space, obsolete, unrewarding Radio Section that has not been touched since

Friday, June 29th 2001

into a wonderful place to review and discuss new and old music and artists that *do not* support the RIAA.

It seems that every /.er listens to music, and would welcome the chance to push their favorite band, song, or albums available on the net.

Besides, as a place that is (usually) current, shouldn't the sections reflect that? Perhaps /. could even get a kickback...(wink wink nudge nudge)

Who's with me?

Part of the problem....

[telstar]

I'll leave the "is downloading illegal" argument alone, but part of the problem is that the music industry has failed to introduce any notable download service to compete with what consumers have come to expect as a way to obtain their music.

I'd guess that music companies currently spend millions, if not billions of dollars, trying to figure out how to get their music in the hands of consumers ... yet here the consumer is telling them that they want the ability to download electronic copies of the songs. Out of fear of what the impact of such a service could mean to their bottom line, the music industry has failed to answer this demand ... and instead, has reacted with lawsuits. The result -- Consumers continue to download, since there's not a legal alternative answering their desire to get their music online.

I'd guess that if the RIAA's strong-armed legal tactics were introduced side-by-side with an affordable online music-download service, they'd see that a large population of users wouldn't mind paying for a well-marketed digital distribution service. Right now they'd rather spend their time trying to get the genie back in the lamp instead of cashing in on what the consumer is telling them they want.

Re:why CDs cost so much

[schnits0r]

The reason it costs so much is demonstrated by a simple equation.

12.00
-.25 (artist royalties)
-.50 (Blank CD)
-.25 (To make up for piracy loss)
______
$0.00

What? The math doesn't add up? But it worked for Enron.

Feh

[Srin Tuar]

Just because there is precedent doesnt make it any more right.

Comparing copying to piracy was as stupid back then as it is now. It was likely done for the shock value of the term pirate, which was probably an even more loaded word back then.

Youve just proven that its both old and stupid.

Dissemination of ideas can never compare to annexation of physical matter.

Re:You don't deserve a reply, but here it is...

[Anonymous Coward]

> All matters of morals and ethics is subjective to the times you live in...

That is one of the most frightening and evil ideas I have ever heard.

In some parts of India, women are thrown alive onto their husbands funeral fire. But since it's part of their tradition, you are saying that it's all right.

In some parts of China, girl babies are drowned because boys are preferred. But it's part of their tradition, so you are saying that it's all right.

Lynching a black man in the old south? Killing white farmers in today's Zimbabwe? Imprisoning children, and torturing men and women to death in Saddam's Iraq? All okay by your standards.

It may or may not surprise you to learn that your "all morality is relative" idea is what German philosophers were teaching prior to the rise of Naziism. Thus, when bad things happened, the people were intellectually disarmed -- all they could say was, "I wouldn't do it, but who am I to argue with society?"

But the West was originally founded on a different philosophy. Our rules of right and wrong -- as exemplified in British Common Law, The American Bill of Rights, and so on -- were based on the idea that morality is rational.

If you start with the idea (perhaps an axiom) that the life of an individual human is important, then it leads logically to ideas like freedom, justice, a prohibition of violence (except in self defense), trial by jury, free speech, and so on, including property rights.

So your philosophy scares me, because it would mean an end to our civilised rule-by-law society, to be replaced by a brute force "anything goes so long as a large number of people feel the same way" society. You would replace the jury with the lynch mob.

But what scares me even more is that I know the schools are teaching the same moral relativism that you espouse.

Clarification

[MacWiz]

Hate to interrupt here, but I'm George Ziemann. I'd like to correct a small error in the original post. What I said was that mp3s were ads for the actual recording. They ARE inferior because they only contain 10 percent of the original data. Maybe YOU (that's a very non-specific "you") can't hear the difference between a 128 bps mp3 and a 44.1kbps 16-bit recording, but I can. And it doesn't matter if you think it's immoral or not. It's my music and I should have the option of being a total moron and giving away crappy copies of my music for free if I want to. I can reach a global audience at a cost of $20 a month. Once I've made a CD, the mp3 costs ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to produce. As a result, I no longer need a record company. Record labels were invented to help the artist connect with their customers. Now they merely stand in the way. We don't need them any more, unless they successfully criminalize the sharing of mp3 files, in which case they gain complete control over my ability to make a living as a recording artist. Again.

Re:Clarification

[MacWiz]

My ads said that I was the copyright owner. Every time. The way that the copyright law is written, I don't need to prove it unless I am accusing someone else of infringing upon my copyright.

Remember that I do not even have to register a copyright to gain protection under the law. All I have to do is put a date and the copyright symbol on it. Registration merely provides me the extra legal option of punitive damages.

Shouldn't someone else have to prove that I DON'T own the copyright? Why should the burden of proof fall on the accused rather than the accuser?

Re:So this guy is better than a major label why?

[richie2000]

Why is one more evil than the other?

Because one of them adds bogus costs like charging extra for "experimental media" until there's almost nothing left and then takes your copyrights, claiming you did "work for hire" for them. That's why.

Well, for one thing...

[metamatic]

If a major label decides you're not making them enough money, they just refuse to release anything else you create. But you're still under contract, so you can't release it through anyone else, or record for anyone else without their permission, until the contract expires. The usual expiry period is 8 years. During that time, anything you create is owned by the corporation, and goes into their big pit of never-to-be-released recordings.

(Yes, I know someone whose career was ruined this way.)

Completely Off Topic: White Stripes/Citizen Kane

[angle_slam]

This is off-topic, but is related to copyrights and music, so I thought I'd post this here. The White Stripes are a fairly popular group, whose previous album featured a song, The Union Forever that contained lyrics from the movie Citizen Kane. (You can view the lyrics here.)Now they face a potential lawsuit from the unauthorized use of the lyrics.

From a legal standpoint, it is fairly clear, The White Stripes copied the lyrics and gave no credit and no royalties to the actual author. What is interesting is the moral or even economic dilemma: The White Stripes almost certainly did nothing to harm the movie Citizen Kane. In fact, they probably inspired some people to watch the movie who otherwise would not have watched it. Economically, the products are non-competing, as one who wants to watch a movie will not susbstitute a song for the movie, and vice versa.

Just curious as to /.ers opinions on the matter.

The Poodle's Core

[nikster]

The music industry, due to their own incompetence and lack of creativity, is unable to provide people with what they want - easy, reasonably priced access to music.

Instead of seeing this as it is and doing something about it, the music industry has entered a self-destructive pattern of denial and blame. The RIAA's arguments are akin to the emperor's new clothes: Nothing at all, backed by enormous power.

But, in the long run, all the power in the world cannot keep alive the network of lies, distortions, and lawsuits. We are in a transitory period.

Sooner or later, a service or company will emerge that will give us what we want. For me, a $5-download-album@256k music service would be sufficient (sorry, no 95% profit margins). Easy. Convenient. Good quality. Give $2,50 to the artists, divide the rest among the distributors. Doesn't sound hard, does it?

George Ziemann asks what we can do: The answer is: Nothing. All we have to do is sit back and wait for them to collapse. And share files with friends in the meantime.