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The RIAA Hit List - A Pattern Emerges?
Desus writes "Slyck News seems to have found a pattern in just what files the RIAA is searching on to find offenders. It seems the RIAA is targeting a wide reach of music, including Hip Hop, R&B, Rap, Rock, Pop and Country songs. Artists such as Ludacris, Michael Jackson, NAS, Busta Rhymes, Keith Sweat and Musiq were very common throughout the subpoenas. They've even created a helpful chart showing exactly what artists and songs seem to get one flagged." Update: 07/31 13:12 GMT by H : Here's another source for the chart.
What I find irritating is that the "number of times" field ought to be it's own column in the spreadsheet so you can actually sort the frigging list.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Hint: put only one type of data in each cell. When you mix data in a single cell, it makes it very hard to sort or analyze. For instance, this spreadsheet has two colums: "Artist" and "Song title (times appearing)".
Would it have been that hard to break out time appearing into another column, so interested people could actually *use* the data for something? No. In fact, it would have been *less* work.
Sorry to bitch and moan, but spreadsheet abuse is one of my pet peeves.
Cheers
-b
THe article claims that from 50 total subpoenas being checked, they can deduce overall proportions of artist representation in the subpoenas, which is, frankly, a load of crock; with a sample size that small, margin of error would be enormous. Oh, and by the way, it's not like the RIAA needs to limit itself to these artists of these songs, they just happen to be what they were searching for to trigger some results, and with the huge body of work protected by the RIAA, I imagine that if it were not for simple lack of motivation, they could easily cycle through an enormous number of searches to perform... Perhaps they'll do exactly this each time someone tries to analyze their "pattern"...
hmm, out of a miniscule sample size of 50, we found that a wide variety of types of music were being shared. Many popular songs were shared by many people, while some songs where only shared by a few. This roughly fits a bell curve distribution as would nomally be found in a random sample of shared files.
Therefore we conclude that the RIAA is targetting people with specific music sharring patterns.
yeah.
Ah, you just want to use the labor of someone who you consider to be a whore, so you can keep your pristine innocence. That's very noble.
Cheers
-b
If you haven't noticed, Rab/R&B/Hip-Hop is really popular with the disaffected suburban youth. Who have computers.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
What a stupid chart. If you're going to go through all the trouble of making an Excel spreadsheet why not create a proper spreadsheet and put the number of times a song was mentioned in its own column? See, now it's even more useful because I can sort by the number of times a song was mentioned to see what the most popular one was instead of having to scan the whole list manually. Simple, no?
And then you don't have to figure out if the number in brackets is actually the number of times it was mentioned or maybe makes up part of the title. If I was being pedantic and took the "Title (Times song appears)" column header to be gospel, then the Jay-Z song "I Just Wanna Love U" has been mentioned "Give It 2 Me" times, and the Ludacris song "Cry Babies" has been mentioned "Oh No" times. What is this? How many is "Oh No"?
"Not everybody has to like the same stuff you like."
Very true, however, the original poster is *quite* correct here.
Have you seen the list?
Wham?
I'm beginning to think they really *are* herding us towards greener pastures.
--- What
The one pattern I see is that the overwhelming number of the artists seem to be those that appeal to under 25's. Obviously the RIAA have decided to go for those who can least afford to offer legal resistance (school kids and college students).
Or maybe it just turns out that the file sharing demographic is disproportionally composed of young people... nah, you're right. They must be specifically targeting people who can't afford a lawyer.
-a
Only on slashdot will you see people complaining about *anything*.
Those guys rummaged through the 911 subpoenas to compile a list on a spreadsheet, they let you download it for FREE, and not only did you show a token of appreciation, but you bitched about the formatting?
Would it have been that hard to break out time appearing into another column, so interested people could actually *use* the data for something? No. In fact, it would have been *less* work.
Interested people can compile their own list if they want.
Next thing you know, they'll have a version with actually splits that column into two, and we're gonna see people say stuff like "Why the FUCK would these idiots use a Sans Serif font? Everybody knows that a Serif font looks better on the monitor! Those insensitive CLODS!"
Yes it's mashed in the same column. Yes they used Arial. Yes they used a proprietary format by Big Bad Microsoft. Yes they weren't thoughtful enough to put in plain text so I can run your Perl scripts on it. Yes it's not encoded in ogg vorbis. Yes it won't play on your iPod or microwave. Yes they deserve to burn in hell for not making 2 million different versions catered for each person that downloads it.
No they don't! Thank them for spending the time to sift through all the subpoenas!
Why dont we setup fake servers serving files with names that match the file.
or setup p2p clients that will respond to all requests for these files with a spoofed address.
If we flood the network with false positives, when it comes to the lawsuit it comes out that some people accused were not actualy shareing any files, they would have to prove that they verified each and every one of their victims.
we could easily create blank files with the same time and size as the "real" files
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
Your not amazed, your just making a mistake. See, the internet as you know it consisting of a bunch of www adresses and p2p apps is just the result of what has been going on on networks long before your parents screwed to pop you out. Its called free exchange of thought.
Yes, I do agree with your point of it being a utopia of sorts, and thats exactly the point! When all those people you consider geeks and nerds were telling you this was going to change the world, they were right. The world is now changing, take a step back 20 years and think about how people would react if you told them that in 20 years most media(books,court records, music, etc) would be available to anyone, anywhere for FREE! This does have the potential to change the world, and it already has in many ways.
Dont fall for newsspeak so easily...example...it was called the .com bust, not the .org, .edu, .gov, bust. why? because commercialism is in reality(whatever that is) .com is a very small subset of the useful information available to you, unless your just replacing one phosphorous tube for another(TV -> PC)
War zone? hardly, just because your ignorance gets you in trouble doesnt mean it needs to be changed for everyone to satisfy your need for security. Networks were a lot more 'dangerous' as you like to call it, years ago than they are now. Cops and robbers, cat and mouse, call it what you will...but the more things change the more they stay the same. Most NOCenters were lucky to have one person to maintain and police their subnets...now every jackass that can write a C+ script gets a job to watch over the traffic on subnets. that to me is more dangerous than whatever it is you think is so threatening about the internet.
At some point you are going to have to realize that nobody cares what you think everyone needs to realize.
Hi!
One of the reasons the RIAA is targeting a specific group of files (in addition to target market, etc.) is that the RIAA is acting, legally, as the agent of the copyright owner. The RIAA doesn't own the copyrights to the music--generally, neither do the record labels. The "artists" (using the term very broadly in a few cases) own the copyrights, and the RIAA is acting on their behalf. They're looking for U2 files because U2 has given them permission to haul kids into court on a trumped-up infringement action.
Which might give you pause, next time you're in the record store looking to buy a CD.
Which brings me to an interesting idea:
If you see the name of an artist you admire--and perhaps support with your hard-earned dollar--why not drop an email to the artist asking why he or she is supporting the draconian actions of the RIAA? As always, it pays to be polite--screamers just get ignored (or reinforce the "they're all crooks" attitudes). But a few hundred polite, irenic notes might just change a few attitudes.
And a few hundred thousand polite irenic notes might just drum some sense into the musicians.
People don't listen to pop music because it's good music. It's because the singers are sexy or cool, and because it's marketed well.
Pop music, like pop movies, are primarily a marketing phenomenon. Very few pop movies induce me to say "Wow, that was really impressive acting."
Why do you think so few resources go into producing the music, and so much into marketing it?
May we never see th