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KaZaA Wants to Be An Official Content Distributor
scubacuda writes "Detroit News: Nikki Hemming, CEO of KaZaA, says KaZaA wants to be the official online distributor for the entertainment industry. 'Realize that this technology is inexorable, and come to the table,' says Hemming to our friends Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti."
Kazaa has basically made it's reputation spitting in the face of media companies. Their attitude to the RIAA and the US Government has been one of defiance, and frankly, arrogance from the very start.
Record labels will build their own online distribution points. Most of them are quite committed to the day Kazaa ceases to exist. If THIS was the strategy of Sharman Networks from the beginning, it was ill-concieved at best, and idiotic at worst. You don't piss in the face of competitors, laugh at them for it, and then expect them to actually WORK with you.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
At some point you've got to sell your soul
Distrubuting Spyware is not selling your soul?
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
'Realize that this technology is inexorable, and come to the table,' says Hemming to our friends Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti."
Continuation of blurb above... "'Realize that this technology is inexorable, and come to the table. Just make sure your pants are at your ankles when you are bent over the table signing the deal because either way you are taking it in the ass, at least when you get *pumped* by me you get a little money"
not of the end user. They have been actively trying to get their software onto machines without the users' knowledge.
And, do they not realise the Hillary Rosen stepped down from the RIAA? Keep up.
Personally, I wouldn't touch anything that has the word "Kazaa" in it with a ten foot pole. Best to stay far away from that advertisement & spyware-ridden beast. Advertisements I can deal with. Spyware on the other hand is intolerable.
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde
You make some excellent points here. I agree that given the resources and time, KaZaA can be crushed. However, the only issue with crushing KaZaA is the users. We as internet users ( yes; like parent, I also have illegally downloaded music/programs/movies from my peers, so sue me ) are far too used to getting these things for free; that we take its legality for granted.
If you ask the average person on the street who uses a computer if they download music and such from KaZaA, chances are, they will say yes. It is also likely that they either don't realize that it's illegal or don't care, as the mentality of "they'll never catch me" applies to most internet users.
If KaZaA is destroyed, some other service will take reign of the illegal file sharing business. It's going to be nearly impossible to stop the everything-is-free mentality of p2p users.
Added to this, many users of KaZaA and the like are minors who do not have credit cards or any other means to support a pay-per-download mechanism. Unfortunately, because these users are so young, they do not have the moral upbringing to realize that copyright violation is stealing.
Okay, I'll stop typing now.
Nonsense. The ethics people follow does not arise from governmental actions. If you stop downloading and you tell your friends that "theft is wrong", the situation might change. However as long as you are promoting your ethical views through hypocritical anonymous ranting that promote government-organized regulations, the rest of the world can be rather certain that your views will not become any more popular than they already are.
The truth is that the majority of people don't care all that much about copyrights and it would take something completely different from what you describe to change this situation.
Kazaa represents not piracy but a new market. The force that you see causing havoc is due to the market not being satisfied. Just like prohibition, where there is a need it WILL be satified. Put DRM on machines... fine. Bring lawsuits on customers... fine. Employ illegal tactics to try to disrupt the services... fine. Do anything beside scratch the itch that is the percieved destroyer of your previously succesful business... fine. When you wake up to reality and things CHANGED, with or without your consent or participation, it really is not anything but your own fault for missing the "window" of time you had to embrace the new market.
This has proven to be both enevitable and incontrivertible. Intellectual property will not be respected at the loss of market. Content will continue to be king, but it's shelf life and control will be a LOT less then what has been enjoyed in the past.
On the surface, what you say makes sense, but after reading it twice it falls apart. You are using the "worse criminal" defense for the RIAA and MPAA. In other words, you want to "crush Kazaa" and let the RIAA and MPAA completely off, because you believe that Kazaa is the only bad guy here. Well, I've got news for you. The RIAA and MPAA (both of whom you think are blameless here), brought this whole thing upon themselves. It started with a cartel attitude they got long before Kazaa even existed. The RIAA has spent years screwing the consumer, the songwriter and the individual artist, while at the same time reciting a mantra that it claims to be HELPING them! The MPAA does the same with actors. They are trade and lobbying groups who only seek to benefit their members. I work in radio and based on your statement, the NAB is good for radio and TV. I'm sure if you ask my unemployed friend, he might give you his impressions which run quite contrary to yours (and he's a conservative republican!). Kazaa should be looked upon as the digital equilavent to the VCR. If you recall, the MPAA wanted to kill that golden goose too. Once they were smacked back by the Supreme Court, cooler heads prevailed over the rantings of Herr Valenti and now the movie industry makes OVER HALF of their income from video rentals and sales. The same could be true of p2p. P2p has the ability to make the music and movie industries TONS OF MONEY! Even 'evil' Napster wanted to cut them into this golden gravy train and their pure ignorance resulted in them again killing the golden goose! But based on your logic, a new entertainment source that had 45 million users that paid for their own storage, marketing and transportation can only be used for evil purposes..right? The bottom line is this: Given a place to BUY MP3's at reasonable prices, people do..IN DROVES! Same is likely true of movies too. Look, when CD's first came out, they cost about 3 bucks apiece to make (mostly because of the huge amount of failures that had to be tested out of each batch - they virtually had to test every individual CD). That alone justified their (almost triple) cost over vinyl. Now they stamp out CD's for a couple of pennies - yet charge more for them. I remember my friend buying an LED digital watch for 300 bucks in 1974. These days, digital watches cost 99 cents! YET the CD hasn't come down a penny! At the same time, the artists and songwriters get less (real) money then they did 25 years ago! Why? Simple greed. Nothing more, nothing less. What the RIAA wants is to kill this threat to their existance...nothing more. Why the MPAA lets Herr Valenti rant again escapes me too... What the record and movie industries don't seem to realize is that they're essentially becoming redundant. Their product isn't necessary for life like food, heat, transportation, clothes and shelter are. In a bad economy (like we have right now), those things take precedence over music and movies. Restaurants are taking it on the chin too...last week I went to my favorite one (after almost a year) and the normally full restaurant was almost empty. Car sales are so in the toilet that that they are throwing out 0% financing for five years now, hoping that someone buys! Yet, I don't see Congress passing laws making supermarkets or busses illegal. Plus, there is a huge fight for the entertainment dollar out there. Video games, digital TV, DVD, Satellite TV and radio, paint ball, fishing, camping and about 100 other things are competing for it. The RIAA and MPAA should be kissing the ground that their consumers are still loyal after them calling them criminals, rather then intimidating them in court!.
What the hell is the difference?
Ryan O'Rourke
I mean this most kindly, but in regards to what television is all about, I think you're missing the point.
The consumers are the little pigs that love to eat. And having "prime time" television and "late night" television et. al. you can easily seperate the little piggies into little groups. Young little pigs watch shows early on saturday morning. Sell advertising to some sugar-pumping cereal company. Middle age and older male piggies stay up later, and you can sell advertising space during late night shows for Trojan Condoms and Ford Pick-Up Trucks. Of course, lonely/unemployed/gold-digger pigglets watch soap operas during the weedkay, so you sell advertising space to Tampax and Slim Fast. Drink up little pigglets!
Throw a TiVo into the mix, and all the little pigs mix, and you don't know who is doing what and when! And the farm makes much less money.
"When users want one, they pay a royalty fee. If they want to share files, the system forces the next person who wants to get it to also pay the fee. '
So you use your computer and bandwidth and kazaa gets to take a little slice of what the MPAA/RIAA charges you?
With all due respect WHAT THE FUCK ARE THESE IDIOTS THINKING? If someone has to pay to download, there is no compelling reason to share that file when finished.
When it's free (and illegal) there is a sense of community, giving something back to that community is a big reason why people rip and share these things.
When it is legal and no longer free (as in beer) the attitudes will change and kazaa will die.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
"Moral upbringing" is irrelevant, because there's no question of morality involved.
What's the moral difference between recording to analog cassette off the radio which is explicitly legal and recording to MP3 format? What's the moral differnce between tape swapping and file swapping?
Perhaps your RIAA propaganda has an answer for that. Hint: Don't try "perfect digital copy" bullshit here, you can't do that with 128K MP3 which is basically broadcast quality when ripped if everything goes right. Analog information gets lost when a 50 meg file is compressed to about 5 megs. If you were into music, maybe you'd know the difference. The difference is why people buy CDs instead of MP3s.
Most parents are of a generation that grew up recording off the radio to reel-to-reel and later casettes. They are NOT teaching kids that the slightly modernized version of what we did when we were kids is wrong, because they don't see any moral difference.
That's because there isn't any, and not all the RIAA propaganda in the world, not even that parroted here by "useful fools" and people on the RIAA payroll will cause anybody who understands the issues to see a difference.
Why have record companies paid radio stations to play back their materials for generations despite the fact that people will STEAL IT!!!? Because the only value a broadcast-quality audio track has is to promote the actual product, which is a CD album, and nobody will buy the product outside of RIAA label suit fantasies. So the record labels give away free reduced quality samples to induce people to buy the product.
Why aren't the labels thrilled to distribute their promos via P2P and Internet Radio on the dime of the listener?
They have no control over distribution, everything that hits the network has a chance that people will listen to it and buy the CD. Whether the track comes from a bedroom studio or the latest "hot new discovery" (aka n'Sync clone). And they don't have enough confidence in their ability to do a better job of making stuff people will want to hear than a no-budget indie to tolerate a level playing field.
The only difference between "stealing" via digital and legitimate tape swapping is simply that the RIAA paid to get digital recording by end users without DRM illegal back in 1992. (Audio Home Recording Act)
So leave off with the moral bullshit, the RIAA bought the law fair and square and now are openly discussing getting cyberterrorism (you want to explain how "destroying user computers" can be called anything else?) to attempt to enforce the law.
As to why CD sales are dropping, there are lots of reasons starting with the fact that fewer CDs are distributed per album, the market is fractionating into niches too small for record labels to exploit via FM radio (know how many kinds of metal there are?), the economy, etc.
P2P isn't one of the reasons. It's just another promo distribution channel. If people hear tracks they really like on P2P, they'll go buy the CD because it sounds better.
Ask Eminem. His album was prereleased via P2P and went straight to #1... notice he isn't whining about P2P cutting into his sales.
I suspect Eminem himself pre-released it. . . being smarter than the people he and perhaps you work for.
Madonna cut a track whining about EVIL PIRATES and got that into P2P channels. Her album went into the toilet and her career is following it.
As a published writer, I don't favor copyright violation. However, I don't favor making xerox machines and PCs illegal to keep my stuff from getting copied, either. I just get pissed if it gets resold. People copying it for their own use... unlike you, I get the concept of fair use.
Tech Public Policy stuff
If the entertainment industry gives the green light to online media distribution via p2p then how long will it be before AOL has a p2p client built into their existing proprietry software ?. I think it's very possible that if the p2p develpers don't start making strong contacts with the biggest ISP's then they could be forced out of the market that they created.
It is the bandwidth with makes p2p work, which gives the ISP's the power. The concept of p2p is now well understood and it would be easy for any large ISP to develop their own p2p software. Best case scenario is that the ISP's recongise the need for interoperability and get together to create an open standard.