Slashdot Mirror
What The RIAA Gets Out Of File Sharing
ChrisPaget writes "Wired have a fascinating article about a company called BigChampagne which sells regional P2P download statistics to most of the major record labels. When the labels know what people are downloading, they know what to put on the radio, and sales in the area increase. The record industry's lawsuits against file- sharing companies hang on their assertion that the programs have no use other than to help infringe copyrights. If the labels acknowledge a legitimate use for P2P programs, it would undercut their case as well as their zero-tolerance stance."
Lawsuit Filed Against RIAA Amnesty Program
Contributed by Mike on Wednesday, September 10th, 2003 @ 03:00AM
from the coming-from-all-angles dept.
Even more backlash against the RIAA. I'm really surprised that this hasn't gotten more attention. The story is being squeezed in on some copies of the AP report about the RIAA's settlement with the 12-year-old "threat to the future of the music industry", but a California lawyer has apparently filed a lawsuit against the RIAA (warning: PDF file) for their "amnesty program", claiming that it is "unlawful, unfair and deceptive". The lawyer points out that the RIAA does not provide any actual amnesty in their offer. If the offer really is deceptive, then it seems like the sort of thing the government should step in and point out - but it is nice to at least see a lawsuit bringing more attention to the ridiculousness of the amnesty offer. Found via JD Lasica.
The whole "comparing a study on P2P usage to a study on which cars are stolen" kinda makes any further comemnts on this article moot, but on the subject of filesharing, Napster came out when, 1999?
:D).
I just dug out this PDF showing CD shipments and dollar value "in millions, after net returns"
Singles are sucking and dying (boo-hoo) but album sales (at lest through 2002) were still pretty strong, in fact, in terms of most profitable years, the frontrunners are
1. 2000
2. 2001
3. 1999
4. 2003
All post-filesharing years. P2P doesn't seem to be hurting album sales any, maybe it's time to just give up on singles (they suck anyway and ensure the charts are full of the only faddy pop crap little kids can afford, and apparently 12y/os just download all that these days anyway
it seems irrelevant if the labels cull trending data from P2P use. I think you would have a very hard time using against them in any way.
From another Wired article:
Hatch, well-known as an outspoken critic of peer-to-peer trading of copyright music, warned that if file-swapping networks do not rein in illicit porn trafficking, lawmakers "might have to do something detrimental."
and
Lawmakers said they intend to use information gleaned from the hearing to help gauge the need for new regulations to restrict file-trading activities or to increase liability of network operators to help eradicate downloading of illegal porn.
FYI Isonews still lives
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-Xenocrates
The problem is that you either get fast, or you get anonymous. For the past few years, fast has been the primary desire of most. Freenet *does* hide your identity, but it is slow.
Count your blessings. When that song was popular I was dating this girl and she loved the Spice Girls, which meant their CD found its way into my CD Changer..There was nothing I could do but grin and bear it (and if you were in my position at the time, you would've too..trust me =P ). [un]Fortunately that relationship ended rather bitterly and prematurely so I only had to bear with the spice girls for about a month.
I'll never understand why us men will endure such hardships for a woman.
Errm, don't know why I admit knowing this but... there is a song called 'Girl Power' by 'Shampoo'.
I think you can add that to your list, although I wouldn't want to listen too much of their stuff (can't really call them songs) unless you're into using the music to torture other people (i.e. 'Sesame Street' and a certain detention centre in Cuba)...
..."Uh Oh, we're in trouble. Somethings come along and its burst our..." Arghhhhhhhhh!
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
If the labels acknowledge a legitimate use for P2P programs, it would undercut their case as well as their zero-tolerance stance
Why would they acknowledge a legitimate use for P2P programs ?
They want a complete control over prices and P2P has been causing them woes. Not only that, they have some strong backing from some Senators.
Senators Back RIAA; First Suit Is Settled
Even they admit it's not impossible, just harder to find the true source of the information.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I'm a television student.
Broadcast copy is written in a rather unusual format to make it easy for the on-air talent to read, because believe me, the LAST thing you want is to screw up on air. On-air talent frequently has to concentrate on several things at once (why don't YOU try reading from a teleprompter while listening to the producer in your ear while the floor manager is signaling at you), so the read becomes an automatic process that directly connects their eyeballs to their mouth.
It doesn't go to the extreme of "Em-Pee-Three," but typical broadcast copy might look like:
The R-I-A-A is claiming five (b) billion dollars in damages from file sharing on Kazaa (kuh-ZAH). Slashdot T-V brings you this story and more at 11 o'clock.
Only it's typically all uppercase, but I'm not going to tempt the lameness filter.
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
BigChampagne?
"Because the current active audience numbers in the tens of millions, and is made up of highly motivated "early adopters," we have been able to observe close correlations between online interest and offline sales. "
or the RIAA?
"Says an RIAA spokesman: "In our view, piracy is the primary reason for the decline in sales."
I know who I'd tend to believe on that. How about you?
I take it you mean Negativland's "These guys are from England (and who gives a shit.)"???
http://www.negativland.com/audiogadgets.html
I think its track 2 from this page. They used a recording of Casey Casum going ape shit and dubbed in some guy on a casio playing the U2 song, and a bunch of random sound clips from the 'weatherman' (mostly ppl saying they want to find him and beat him senseless.)
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Don't forget Media Sentry - another company that provides data to the RIAA:
http://www.mediasentry.com
Who exactly, might you ask, gave the RIAA the right to be the "Ministry of Sound"? Where, after all, were they granted these broad powers of search and seizure of your personal information? It's not as if they hold copyright to all of the music, or even a majority of it. Will another large copyright holder decide to embrace this business model as well? Will there be competing (and incompatible) offers of Amnesty? Who would you rather get screwed by, when it comes to major media copyright holders? What, in short, is to blame for this mess?
That's right, it's the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Disclosure: Link is to anti-dmca.org, and hence biased. But that's the problem with hypertext; links are particularly and exactly biased in that they take you to the one page on the internet that the linker wants you to visit. It's up to you, however, to click the link and learn about what just might be the greatest threat to our intellectual freedom today.
It never was shut down. ISOnews was in bad terms with their hosting service. ISOnews got another hosting service, and the old one wouldn't give the old url back, just to be an asshole. For a long while they actually had in www.isonews.com a page that said ISOnews had been shut down by law enforcement, from which the misconception stems. NFOrce is a better site anyway, ISOnews by default reports releases later and has less stuff. ISOnews forums are more useful, though.
This paticular radio station isn't owned by ClearChannel. It's probably one of the few over here (Portland) that isn't. I have called them up before and been placed on the air, and they do local publicity stunts all the time, like free gas and such.
And I know they really have IM, because they advertise their handles all the time.
I do understand that a lot of radio is pre-recorded entertainment, but that is why I switched stations... The radio station I listen to now, constantly rips on the other channels and how the so called hosts usually are clueless about Portland. Usually by pointing out mispronounciations of local rivers/landmarks with indian names. Hell the guys on this morning show pretty much all used to work for the other station, so they used to constantly rip on why it sucks to work for ClearChannel....