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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."
Seriously now, they lose a lot too.
Sure, Joe Shmoe (haha it was funny on spike tv...but the guy looks handicapped so you feel guilty for laughing at him) anyways Joe Blow downloads some obscure song and buys the album...and it increases sales
But 100 other people download albums and burn them instead of buying the CD. It is quicker for me to download and burn an album then to go to the store...and cheaper...so there isnt even much of a reason NOT to (aside from morals...but we all lost those a long time ago).
Lucky I am Canadian...and pay that fee with my blank cds thats lets me more legally do that.
The recording industry is losing a TON, just based on common sense and my personal practices, as well as those I know. "Dont buy that cd! I have it! I will burn you a copy in 30 seconds!"
So, lets still feel a bit guilty, like laughing at the handicapped looking Joe Schmoe...but not guilty enough to stop doing it.
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
There are certainly other benefits for the music industry from P2P sharing. For the artists, especially those who aren't part of the small handful of superstars who get massive marketing, it allows their music to be heard. Typically only a few songs by smaller artists are available via P2P, so if there if a downloader who likes the music, they must purchase a CD if they want to hear more. This theory is based only on my own experiences for a dozen or so smaller artists whom I "discovered" through Kazaa and then bought CDs for.
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
Just let people download all the music they want.
Then, market CDs as gifts...nothing says "I love you" like a new original CD, instead of a home-burned one with a Sharpie-scrawl label. They could even go for the Hallmark market share, or perhaps go into Valentine's candy boxes with a CD inside, surrounded by chocolate. Employees can be rewarded not with a simple "You're #1!" keyring, but a "You're #1!" keyring which is also a mini-CD single with their favorite song!
"Say it with a CD," that's the ticket. Just watch out for proper etiquette: an "I'm sorry honey" CD-bouquet should not include the song "Oops! I Did It Again."
...
The RIAA will not take a step back with th rhetoric because they have gained too much power to turn back. With the power they now possess they will soon be a new goverment bureaucracy entitled "Ministry of Sound Sueing".
/.'s only. I'm talking about Joe Average. Everyone will start to boycott and our representatives will also get involved because they will see it as an opportunity to get new votes. The RIAA will have to back off and come up with a "fair and balanced" (don't sue me Fox) approach for copyright infringement.
We all know that everything they have been saying is in direct opposition of what's actually occuring with cd sales. Yes p2p plays a role but it isn't anything near what they claim it to be. The point is the RIAA will take this as far as they can or until the backlash is so severe that they have no choice other than alienating consumers and pissing off the goverment even more.
I will make the following prediction...
Due to the RIAA calous and careless approach on p2p and their so-called loss of sales they will continue to piss off consumers who will then come together in a massive boycott. I'm not talking about
We will beat the bad rap and the RIAA will continue to do business but in a goverment imposed andfair/legal manner.
The goverment has spent billions on the war on drugs and it hasn't done a thing so does the RIAA really think a few lawsuits will stop p2p? As the RIAA's tactics on finding, pursuing, and prodding p2p users come out in the open it will only help coders take it more underground and guarantee our privacy. The RIAA had their chance to make p2p work with Napster in a centralized server setup but they blew their chance and with it the centralization of p2p. Decentralized servers, new anonimity, and a general interest in going more underground are the way now.
The RIAA better enjoy these days because they are the best they're going to have. Reality is going to bite their ass pretty soon...
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
My impression is the whole thing was a publicity stunt.
For the mother/child to go to the media in the morning, then settle that night? Like I said before, if they went to the press legitimately, it'd be because they felt the suit was unjust, and they'd be literally flooded with lawyers willing to take the case pro bono just for the publicity.
The whole thing makes absolutely no sense, except to get people to read the "I'm so sorry I hurt the artists I love - please kids dont do P2P!" message.
I wish I had the free time to investigate and show it for the scam it was. I bet you'd find that the mom works for the RIAA or local Tower records or some such shit.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
IIRC, the original argument for pricing CDs at triple the going rate for LPs back in the early '80s was that the manufacturers had to recoup R&D costs. And shouldn't 20+ years be sufficient to recoup those costs? Seems to me that the "industry" has been charging grossly inflated prices for years as a group effort...
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
Auto theft is already profitable for the auto industry. A car is stolen (and presumably chopped up for its parts) means the owner gets a fat cheque from his insurance to get - a NEW car from the auto maker. Why else are cars so easy to steal out from the factory with only a slim jim and perhaps a screwdriver? There is no business case for making cars harder to steal for the auto industry.
If the Major Lables start reacting to what the public is actualy listening to, instead of trying to convince people to buy a product thaey have produced.
The major problem with most music lables is that they have become manufacturers of music instead of distributers of music.
The RIAA at al. knows that P2P could become the next radio, and they know that p2p is not the real reason for bad music sales. But the RIAA is not really sueing people beceause of loss of sales, it's sueing beceause of loss of control over what people listen to. The RIAA loves radio for the very reason that they can control it (and actualy own it in some cases).
The RIAA/Lables can't "own" p2p or force it play what they want, so they choose to shut it down. I have always thought that the RIAA/lables have been more worried about loss of promotional/playlist control then profits.
Prior to P2P a label could promote the shit out of an artist/group with out them having to be any good, and still be SURE it was going to make a profit. Now the Major labels have to wait and see if the public actualy LIKES the music before it can make a profit.
Everyone... go download some Right Said Fred and Spice Girls. Let's see if we can get them back on the radio!
I did RTFA. (Read the Friendly article.)
Unless I misunderstood something, the picture I got was that they were relly looking at what people were searching for, not what people were downloading.
There was a description of a green screen of text scrolling by in a blur. BigWig asked if they could freeze the display. Tech drone froze the display. You could see searches, from certian IP addresses, for various phrases. Article remarked that a lot of people were also searching for pr0n.
I think all you would need is a bot to send reasonably frequent search requests for, say, Goatse, in order to get this onto the radio. In fact, by manipulating the network, such as gnutella or fasttrack, you could possibly arrange it such that your search requests mostly only ended up going to BigChampagne so as not to hog bandwidth of other filesharers.
Taken to its logical conclusion, a network of friendly bots, with a web driven front end would allow anyone in a certian zip code to request what they want on the radio.
Something with a very similar effect could be implemented with low tech. A radio station could have a telephone line to accept requests manually, and then such forward looking free thinking radio stations could actually play what people are asking for.
I don't know. Maybe such a far-out idea is just going way too far. After all, the article did say that their mantra was "We don't need no research, just play the f***ing song.", and they must know better than we what we want.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
The RIAA has the same problem as you. They think of downloading songs as the equivalent of stealing cars. Apples and oranges. File sharing can be made to work for the record industry. There is no way to make auto theft profitable for the auto industry. If the record industry is willing to make some heavy changes to their business model they will survive.
Well let me then suggest that you have the same problem as a lot of
You say that file sharing can be made to work for the record industry. Fine. That's your opinion (and a pretty common opinion around here). But keep in mind that 5 years ago there were a lot of business cases that were pretty commonly espoused on
In the last couple of years, there is a quote that I see in a lot of people's sigs: "It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees." It seems to me that it's like that with companies too. The RIAA may know they are in trouble, but they are not prepared to merely roll over and accept the fact of piracy. They would rather go down fighting. And you know, I kind of admire them for that.
-a
I wonder if the worry of the RIAA over file sharing is its effect on the purchasing habits of the current generation of teenagers. I may download a couple of songs off an ablum to see wether an alblum is worth buying and I know I have increased the number of alblums I have bought in the past year.
However, my younger brother and sister have had napster, kazaa, etc available since before they ever started buying CDs. So the don't buy anything as they were never used to buying CDs.
It would be interesting to see any sort of statistics on the number of CDs bought by people 12-17 or 18-24 before widespread file sharing and after. It would easily show if file sharing is helping or harming the industry.
You have a very good point. During the late 90s in Atlanta, GA there was a huge spree of air bags being stolen from Honda Civics. Turns out the dealer cost for the replacement was in the neighborhood of $500, so many "independant" shops were paying thieves $100 for a stolen one.
From one report that I read a qualified thief could smash a window and take the airbag in something insane like 20 seconds.
Still, with a plan, you only get the best you can imagine. I'd always hoped for something better than that. -CP
Not that I think the RIAA's stance is a good one, but I'll take a questionable RIAA over a bad metaphor any day.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Actually, it does. There is a great deal of confusion on /. about the difference between a crime an a civil offense, so perhaps you can be forgiven. /me gets up on soapbox
Copyright "infringement" is what we might call an actionable offense. It falls into the same class of issues as contract violations. Breaking a contract is not "against the law" -- the police aren't going to arrest you. The law says that if you copy something without the author's permission then the author can choose whether or not he/she has been maligned, and if so he/she may try to seek damages from you by bringing the matter in front of a judge who also has to agree that damage has taken place. And even if they both agree and the judge makes you pay, you still haven't "broken the law." (Now if you refuse to pay like the judge asked, THEN you will have broken the law.)
Copyright infringement is neither immoral, nor unethical, nor illegal. It's merely actionable. The very excellent reason for this is that it cannot be determined whether you damaged a copyright holder by copying his/her work except by examining each case as it comes along. As we see in this case, unauthorized copying does not necessarily damage the copyright holder. No harm, no foul as we used to say.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.