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Friend Or Foe: RIAA Radar
CrookedFinger writes "RIAA Radar is a bookmarklet that helps users find out if an album was released by a member of the RIAA. This will make it a bit easier to decide whether my purchase would fund attacks on my rights or support a plucky independent..."
words can not describe how useful this may be. I ran some of my recent cd purchases through the RIAA radar, and I didn't buy a single RIAA release :)
But that was just by accident, not by any concious decision to boycott the RIAA. This tool, on the other hand, will make it a whole lot easier to decide what music to buy and what music not to buy.
Props to who ever wrote this.
"However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."
Did anyone else read the title and think, OH MY LORD! DRM has gone TOO DAMN FAR this time!
Can't get it to work. Is it my fault, or is Opera to blame?
well, nobody's perfect... but we're going to have to kill you, anyway. ;p
"Life is great; without it, you'd be dead." -Harmony Korine
i will buy from the indies, and I won't buy from the RIAA...
Since this is such a limited boycott (ok maybe not THAT limited, but we do have the tech gap to deal with.) Those savvy enough to care, will just download the artists music for nothing. And feel little or no compulsion to get some miniscule revenue into an artists pocket.
So far... Bjork, DMB, Chili peppers, U2, Rage and a few other favorites are now on my blacklist (until such time as they break from the RIAA)
Thumbs up to bad religion..... umm... that's about all I found for my tastes anyways.
Sweet, I've been looking for something like this.
... but occasionaly I buy from bigger labels.
... any chance of a movie version?
I buy from a mostly indie labels (the kind where you can send out an email to the label head and as soon as he gets home from his non-music-related day job he writes back [or she actually])
It's just nice to know how many of your CD purchases are funding the RIAA which then funds Congress which then passes those lovely laws.
Actually to be honest the RIAA isn't quite as scary as the MPAA when it comes to these things
I'd just like to point out to people that according to this site, a band may not stick with just one label. A lot of Prodigy's stuff seems to be RIAA tainted, but Jilted Generation is not. In short, if you want a CD, check to see if its under RIAA grips instead of going off of other albums you've seen/may have.
Major props to the creator of this program; I can now feel purchase a replacement of my old Jilted Generation without convulsing from guilt. =)
This statement is false.
Nah, that'd be cool. This is more like learning your wife of 30 years is a guy.
I don't get it, I thought that we were supposed to buy RIAA DRM CDs and then return them as "defective" -- won't that hurt them a bit more than simply not buying the CDs?
Although the creator "assures us that the bookmarklet is safe," how do we know? And what is with the "Most Recent Queries" box on the right?
...but I sure wish this had hit the main /. page.
A tool to avoid an abusive business interest that only functions in the product of another abusive business interest...
That is to say, it only works in Microsoft Internet Explorer.
All right, all right, it's a joke! Happy now? Unfortunately, the radar seems to think the distributor of the album is the company that released the album, so even small Norwegian independent labels like Rune Grammofon (I did a test with Supersilent) get tainted by being distributed in the USA by ECM/Universal. 4AD is a British company, and should be quite independent of the Recording Industry Assosiation of America.
This means this RIAA Radar is quite useless for anything released on a non-US label and distributed by a major label, unless you really don't want them to have any of your money. Then I suggest you buy your CDs from amazon.co.uk instead.
Uhhh... Polydor is (or was) a british company. You think they're not an RIAA member? Most of these giant labels distribute worldwide and have ties from the US to China to Japan to Russia. You don't seem to understand the very definition of "distributor." No matter whose studio the recording was made in, and no matter whose "indie" label it's on, if it goes through an RIAA member for distribution then it is indeed "tainted" because:
1) the "tainter" (the distributor) owns the exclusive right to that recording in the country in question (in this case the US). Which means...
2) Purchasing said "tainted" content does indeed mean you are funding the RIAA and its lobbying efforts. It also means "distributing" that content yourself via the internet may well get you slapped with a DMCA violation.
There are plenty of "indies" that manage to get distribution without being "tainted." Sioux records, for example, manages to get their limited release product even into Virgin Megastore yet remain "unattached." Granted, Siouxsie fought for years to get such a deal, but they managed and (from what I can tell) are doing quite well.
I dig Cocteau Twins and DCD as well, but I really don't feel any remorse about downloading their stuff when I find it - especially seeing as how I already bought it - most of it years ago when those POS cassettes were the only media you could find in many stores.
I mean this seriously, not as flamebait
1. Create a tool to help people boycott the RIAA
2. Get said people to buy CDs through your link
3. Profit!!
aggh!!!! not Bjork!! Oh well, I'll still see her shows, but not buy any more albums. I wonder how long her contract is for.
...one that perhaps conveys custom copyright permissions, such as the promise to make it free after, say, 20 years. At a minimum it should convey that the media has no copy protection.
Whoa now. We want to know if the RIAA is behind an album we want, but we have to visit the evil Bezos' site to do it? WTFO?
Warning: This signature may offend some viewers.
Reminds me of that line from Dude, Where's My Car?: "Dude.....you're a....dude!!!"
Since home computers are realitively new to the music industry, Mp3 and file sharing just cannot find a home yet.
My vision of a new buisiness model would be in store burning of disks with any mixed content for customers. With write protection on the disk for a number of reburns. I believe this buisiness would take off, as music stores could include coffee etc, etc.
The oldested story about not paying the musician happenend centuries ago in Germany. The music industry needs to evolve, but paying the piper is still the real issue.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!