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Time to Face the Music

Posted by michael on from the schadenfreude dept.

Mortimer.CA writes "The Toronto Star has an article up about the ailing recording industry with some possible scenarios for solving the problem(s). Choice quotation: 'We must ask ourselves what Elvis would do to stop the theft of music via the Internet, now so widespread and so brazen that it makes the Baghdad looters look like trick-or-treaters.'"

16 of 393 comments (clear)

  1. Explode on contact? by Second_Derivative · · Score: 5, Funny

    Record companies should start flooding the Internet with bogus MP3 files that look like songs, but that explode on contact inside the hard drives of Internet thieves. Anyone who illegally downloads an MP3 file via KaZaA or any of the myriad peer-to-peer (i.e. thief-to-thief) services would at best get a corrupted file, and at worst a ruined hard drive.

    The companies should band together and enlist a dark force of special-ops hackers to make this happen. Once Net users discover that all they're downloading is a World Wide Web of pain, only the most determined and technologically savvy of them will continue to steal music.

    Explode on contact? Hey great, while we're at it why don't we get those 1337o hackers make loads of nasty pixies flood out of the downloader's coffee cup holder... er I mean CD ROM drive (you know, that nasty thing used for ripping CD's)

    So this is the sort of utter crap that Slashdot is linking to these days? Word to the editors: This is still in Mysterious Future, I'd recommend you dump it posthaste ;) (Yes I'm a subscription whore. $5 or so is fair game for an extended post history. Morbid curiosity)

    1. Re:Explode on contact? by yintercept · · Score: 4, Funny

      Hard disks can't explode on contact...

      I am not sure. I played a mpeg last week that I downloaded from KaZaA. The file had some really kewl content beginning with:

      "Jim, your mission is ..."

      It had some junk about some museum in a place like Baghdad. It had something about saving humanity...it showed me dossiers of international incriminals and other kewl stuff...like it was going to be a really fun spy movie.

      Then suddenly, my entire laptop fizzled on me. It was really freaky, the MPEG had all of these instructions on how to save the antiquities of the world.

      But, it sounded impossible to me, so I didn't do anything.

    2. Re:Explode on contact? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      but if it makes the hard drive explode as soon as u get it, how do u share it on kazaa and give it to others?

  2. Well, if the Baghdad looters... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Were simply making copies of the original items and leaving them intact, I think I'd be fine with it.

  3. Elvis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Elvis would just order another burger and shoot the TV?!

  4. Well... by Loki_1929 · · Score: 4, Funny

    "We must ask ourselves what [sic] to do to stop the theft of music via the Internet, now so widespread and so brazen that it makes the Baghdad looters look like trick-or-treaters."

    File Chapter 7 (liquidation) bankruptcy on Monday, and by Friday, all your troubles will be over; I promise you.

    --
    -- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
  5. T.A.T.U. is the answer by disc-chord · · Score: 3, Funny

    What you need to do is make the consumer want to purchase this hunk of plastic. So package the hunk of plastic with some jerk off material like T.A.T.U.'s CD with wet-tshit pics.

  6. I totally hope they do by neurostar · · Score: 4, Funny

    If those two eat pussy, I'll eat my cat.

    Oh man, I really hope they're lesbians. I'd love to see you eat your cat. (well, and if they were lesbians, that'd just be fucking cool).

    ;)

    neurostar
  7. Elvis would agree with Janis Ian by techstar25 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Elvis agrees with Janis Ian. I ran into him the other night at the 7/11 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, while he was refilling the propane tanks outside.

  8. Living Colour put it best... by uncleFester · · Score: 3, Funny

    elvis is DEAD . .. so who gives a shit what some ass supposes he would think?

    -fester

    --
    -'fester
    1. Re:Living Colour put it best... by gilesjuk · · Score: 2, Funny

      Elvis? the rich fat bastard who never wrote a song in his life. Just the ideal man to ask for advice on a troubled industry.

  9. meh by bryanthompson · · Score: 2, Funny

    back in the day it was soo badass. I could get on IRC and download music, then send those songs to the computer i built for my car and cruise with that.
    for once the 'crusin' crowd thought i had something sweet, but no. then napster came out and everyone's dog is downloading music.

    damn. I want to be a badass again...

  10. We love the Iraqi Information Minister! by carpe_noctem · · Score: 2, Funny

    It seems to me that the RIAA should hire the Iraqi Information Minister on to their PR department. I think he'd fit in great there.

    "The music-pirating infadels shall fall to their knees at the hands of our lawyers! Our profits shall be restored once more!"

    --
    "Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
  11. Industry changed by technology by MisterMook · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'm sure the horse market went under when Ford had his neat idea, and the shackles and whips market probably took a hit with the Civil War.

  12. Re:Lame Canadian radio is based mostly on gov't re by Zork+the+Almighty · · Score: 2, Funny

    I wouldn't mind if radio stations played 35% more Rush... - Quick ! What's 1.35 times zero ? And DON'T tell me it's zero !

    --

    In Soviet America the banks rob you!
  13. Whoa, Jimmy, slow down... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Whoa, whoa whoa, there, Jim Anchower, a hard-rockin oldies fan like you isn't supposed to like The Hip! (Oops, did I say oldies? I meant, of course, erm "classic rock"... by which of course I mean the slightly-less-old-oldies type of music...)

    Anyways, I'm getting off topic here. In addition to Led Zep and Hendrix you're also supposed to like Jethro Tull, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Blue Öyster Cult, REO Speedwagon and Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

    PS: You're also not supposed to mind smoking joints that smell like sea-otter piss.

    [Sorry, right-wing classic rock fans with names like "BigBlockMopar" are just too damn easy...]