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File-Sharing Ethics Taught In Classrooms?
shams42 writes "According to the New York Times, the movie/record industries are taking their concerns about P2P file sharing into the classroom (free reg. req.) Among other activities, they are planning to play a game called 'Starving Artist' with 5th-9th graders, where students come up with an idea for a record album, cover art, and lyrics only to be told by teachers that the album is already available for download for free."
I think I'm going to brainwash little kids too.
We'll play a game called "Let's sue 12-year old girls!"
I wonder if they tell the kids the artists are starving since the RIAA gives them $0.00000083 for every CD sold.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, consult.
In school they told me that smoking was bad, I should eat a balanced diet, I shouldn't drink, and I should never smoke pot.
And look at me now!
I remember when I was in the early grades of school and TV networks went berserk over teachers using VCRs to tape shows and play them in class. I thought at the time that it was the stupidest thing I had ever heard of, and I am sure that will be the reaction of the kids today in this analagous situation.
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
The children will also participate in a club called the Spies where they learn to turn in dangerous dissidennt traitors.
Can your child meet the expectations like Suzie Q. did last week when she overheard her parents saying that the RIAA should be ashamed of itself for sueing children and the elderly. She marched right over to the local police station and turned them in.
Can your child be as happysafe as Suzie Q.? You had better send them to the Spies and make sure!
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
It gets better, I hear they're also sponsoring classes on how to drown puppies for kids who want to become Recording Industry Ass. of America lawyers.
(yes, this is a joke. Probably.)
The best way to get a young kid to do anything is to tell them they are not alowed to do it. How many smoke because they are told it is bad ? As soon as they find out it is bad they want ot know why so they try it. I think this will make the problem worse.
they could submit their music to mp3.com and maybe even make some money instead and see that the market is shifting..
btw. most of the records I bought the last few years I wouldn't have heard of if it wasn't for p2p-software..
but then.. I'm the kind of the consumer the RIAA doesn't want.. one who choses what he wants to listen too.
- I choked on the red pill and now I'm stuck in limbo
This'll be about as effective as...DARE
Presumably there will an advanced course where students will look at how a artist can market his work in an age when record companies monopolise the retail channels and are interested only in supporting artists conforming to some corporate identity.
not
Choose your allies carefully, it is highly unlikely you will be held accountable for the actions of your enemies
1) Their CD will be sold for $20 of which they will get 20 cents.
2) Their new and creative song will be played once per day while they have to listen to boy bands have their song played twice per hour
3) Their CD's will be used to test the latest anti-copying technology which winds up ruining their bands reputation.
4) They will have to pay their own money to make their own tape, and the "record industry" will give their music to a prettier classmate to create a cover song for a totally lame commercial that ruins any hip appeal their song might have had.
Can anyone else think of anything?
check out that crossword on the right. What does "3. Take music off the computer" correspond to -- "Digital theft" or "Download" or "Piracy"? And "14. Online Stealing"? Is that "Piracy" too? Arr, matey!
Good lord. "4. Software that traces a person's usage" must be "Spyware" -- are they teaching that Kazaa is evil (must not sleep, clowns will eat me), too?
Not a curriculum for me, thankyouverymuch. Unless it's in a lesson about corporate control of American schools, and they buy all the kids free Pepsis out of the vending machines with which the school has an exclusive contract.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
I love it where is says:
"There is no issue in my life I take as seriously as this," said Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer of the News Corporation, which owns 20th Century Fox. "This is going to be with us for the rest of our careers. But if we remain focused on it, maybe it won't kill us and we won't have to panic."
Clearly they have already panicked, and frankly, I hope it does kill them. Extinction isn't so bad for an industry who has gouged the public for so long. Also, lets not forget that the artists get very little money as it is, because they grab most of it..
But there is a growing contingent who fear the threat is closer than some in Hollywood want to admit. Already industry analysts suggest there could be as many as 500,000 copies of movies swapped daily.
Could be.. maybe so, maybe not.. What should we do? Panic, I guess..
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
C = child, T= Teacher
;)
C: Yes, so I'll make the CD, the album art like that, and it will have 12 tracks...
T: It's already available on the net (smiling)
C: Hmmm... let me think... How many downloads? Yes, they seem to like it, hmm... Yeah, good, so now I'm famous. Let's prepare my next concert around the world.
T: !!!
Starving artist? No way! An artist to play for the public, to have tours around the world, yes!
A good artist will never starve because his art is priceless.
P.S. The "Starving Artist" game is stupid, as showed above
No it isn't theft. Probably copyright infringement under our current draconian and broken copyright laws, but not theft. I for one would prefer my child not to recieve morality lessons in school, especially ones containting brainwashing propaganda like this crap. I send my kid to school for academic advancement, not to be spoonfed some lobbiest's political agenda.
If the students come up with good ideas, the record labels can steal them. So, the students will create great ideas only to have them stolen by corporations and distibuted for free by online traders.
I can't imagine a better real-world education.
After suing a 12 yr old, knowing that they did it, and STILL they settled for $2k US? I think they should play a game called "Greedy Lawyer". Here the kids go up infront of the class, make a band, songs, album art, etc... then the RIAA says "Hey thanks for that, you get 1 cent an album we sell!".
Is this even legal? They are not a public entity like the Fire Dept or Police Dept that can come in and give lecutures on safety and saying no to strangers. They are a privatly owned firm of lawyers that will brainwash our kids to think their way. I really don't want my kids comming subjected to that. Yes, I could keep my child out of school that day but then they would lose any other classes that they would have that day also.
Is this what the education system is comming to these days now? Coperate sponsed education? It's bad enough that M$ is pushed in all the schools (nice that they get free computers though) now we're going to have the RIAA pushing their ethics? What's next? No, seriously, this is frightning to me. My two childern are just entering the school system now and with things like this croping up what will they be learning?
It was only yesterday, I think, when I was reading the /. stories about anti-spam services being taken down by ddos attacks, etc, I was thinking: what a depressing news day. The world looked pretty messed up then.
And then, *this* happens. Well, I take it all back: this is without doubt the most worrying, disturbing, depressing, troubling thing I have read in a long time. I'm not a parent, but if I was I'd being doing everything in my power to ensure my kid wasn't subjected to this propaganda in the classroom. Scary, scary times.
DARE is beyond worthless. I remember getting these lifesaver candies on a necklace that we had to wear all day, and try not to eat. (Supposed to emulate resisting drugs) I ate mine within 5 minutes. And, also if you think about, what they were really teaching us is that drugs are like candy.
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
Pictures of Keith Richards should not count.
I hope the teachers will make it clear that, while slavery was abolished many many years ago, the recordcompanies basically still treat their 'artists' that way...
And ofcourse they'll explain how, with record sales going platinum, you'll *owe* the record company money (see TLC, they declared bankruptcy).
And hey, while we're at it, try explaining the 'record breakage fee' of 10% (if i remember correctly) which is still in place, while records haven't been easily breakable since they went to vinyl (ok, you'll probably have to explain what vinyl is too.).
I could go on for a while, but i'm sure you get the picture.
I remember at school being encouraged to share with my peers because it was nice, now big multinationals are giving early lessons in consumerism, what the heck happened?
Well isnt it nice to know that education isnt revolving around history, math, literature, science and technology, etc.. Its about how to become a comsumer for the bigger companies. And some people wonder how the american education system seems to falling apart. I think this answers it.
The answer is obvious. It's all about money. There is far more money to be made in a civil proceeding. The fact that the RIAA pursues the matter this way clearly indicates their real motive. It's not just about stopping piracy. It's about seeing what kind of income they can make while stopping the piracy.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years , the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped ,or turned back, for their private benefit.
Robert Heinlein
Of course, stranger things have happened, like Coke and Pepsi sponsoring schools. What, I wonder, would the teachers make of it if a student piped up and said they were going to give the album away for free anyway? Would they be carted off to RIAA-retraining camp?
> Why are they always suing in civil proceedings rather than prosecuting with a criminal trial?
Because - for the zillionth time - copy right infringement is not theft, and not a criminal offence. It is copy right infringement, an actionable matter carrying fixed penalties. Some associated activities are criminal: screwing with your cable connection, DMCA violations. But purely copying the data is not a criminal offence.
Is that enough italics, or do we need to go over this again?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
NYT: Studios Moving to Block Piracy of Films Online
The civil version, on the other hand, is quite obviously violated. Plus the burden of proof in civil court is easier. Plus the RIAA gets some money out of it (maybe not a lot) and they don't in a criminal trial. Plus they don't have any direct control over prosecutors for either deciding to lay charges or how the case is argued or won. Plus, I think they want most of these cases settled out of court anyway.
Possibly more reasons, but I think that's pleanty.
fact is, unless you're eminem, michael jackson (jacko was at the top for years) or someone similarly successful with record sales (ie. worldwide #1) the take from album sales and royalties is a pittance once you have been charged all the expenses.
ever listen to Tom Petty's song with the lyrics "Don't wanna live like a refugee". that was a protest song over the screw deal the record label signed him to. he had hit songs and debts so high, he'd never be out of hock. this is still happening today. the record labels sign artists deceptively (with so-callled "A&R" reps) to long term agreements without mechanism for release at the artists discretion, then use these agreements to either lowball the artists, or keep their music off the shelves. its a dirty, dirty business.
fact is, the artists won't starve from filesharing. they are starving from being robbed blind by the big 5! damn shame.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
"Among other activities, they are planning to play a game called 'Starving Artist' with 5th-9th graders, where students come up with an idea for a record album, cover art, and lyrics only to be told by teachers that they will only get $1 for every album sold and then still be $1,000,000 in debt to the record company. Then teachers will tell them that they'll be spending the next 3 years like slaves performing 6 nights a week, unable to see their family or friends because they're travelling the country, living with 8 other people in a van with a $10 per diem, and showers once a week. Then the teachers will tell them to keep their fingers crossed because they have a solid 1 in 100,000 chance of hearing their album on MTV.."
It was a rhetorical question. The thing is, if the crime is so henious that it can be punished by the amounts being claimed, should the defendant not have the same rights as a criminal in cases where the fine is considerably lower? Should we be using the civil courts ro punish wrongdoers?
How bout this game, call it rockband.
95% of the kids are told to form bands.
the remaining 5 % are broken up into record execs, AR men and lawyers
The kids in the bands all have to try to get the attention of the AR men, when they do the AR men have to get them to sign a letter of intent.
Once the bands have signed a letter of intent they can then negotiate with the record companies. After going into debt to both the record companies and their lawyers they can then record their album.
Then you can have the fun part. The royalty statement where, the bands can find that even though they have sold 32 million dollars worth of CD's they still haven't made a profit. Matter of fact they are in debt to the record company. And, Their effective earning power would have been better if they were at 7-11
Now you can tell the kids in the band that their fans are downloading their songs.
This is the kind of game I wouldn't mind seeing in schools. You could follow it up with other fun legal games like, Make the laws benefit you, Patent Grab, and sue your competition out of business.
P2P filesharing is a demonstration of classic american values. Whenever in this country a small group has managed to buy laws that are significantly out of line with reality the bulk of the country just ignores them.
How does "coming up with an idea..." to do something have anything to do with copyright? You have to actually produce something first. If this demonstrates anything, it demonstrates the issue of prior art, where they are not permitted to pursue their dream and copyright it because someone else already did.
If you want the kids to really get an idea, they're going to have to spend all their time and effort working on something, tell them that they'll be able to sell it when they're done, and then after months of effort, take away the fruits of their labors and tell them you were just kidding.
Of course, the problem with this is, they'll have to actually create something that someone would be interested in purchasing, and it's unlikely that the average 5-9th grader will be able to pull this off, no matter what it is, and most especially not a product of an intellectual nature. Sure there are the rare exceptions, but this is a project aimed at ALL students, not the TAG crowd.
So at best this will be another boring assignment that the students will only half heartedly pay attention to. And at worst, the few students that have yet to figure out what "that there interweb" thing is all about will suddenly realize that they're missing out on a ton of free music.
This is probably another one of those sugarcoated efforts to make the public cry for the poor starving artists that are being robbed blind by the malicious 12 year olds who download their music, instead of realizing that the record industry is the one robbing them blind.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I have another game, where you plant a tree, wait for it to grow, cut it, and use the wood to painstakingly make a table, using your bare hands and a pocket knife. After all your efforts, you find out that tables better than yours are available everywhere for almost nothing, done by machines.
So you stop making tables. Big deal.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
I think the RIAA must have missed the kindergarten lesson on sharing.
GL
Big Bird: Look Elmo, I downloaded all this neato music on the 'In-ter-net'.
Elmo: That's stealing. People who pirate music should die of cancer. You're going to hell. Hehehe, that tickles.
Haven't we had enough of morally deviant predators grooming little kids to turn them into compliant bitches?
Now, I'm all for teaching kids (and adults) about the consequences of their actions, but the action that the RIAA are objecting to isn't file copying, it's not buying music. There's a distinction, and I want them to be honest about what they're saying.
What these kids are really being told is: "If you don't do buy Freshy Q's new CD, the police will take your mommy away. Sorry, I mean, Freshy Q is going to die in the gutter."
Now, sure, Freshy is dead meat if you don't buy because you're downloading his m3p, but the thing is, he's just as destitute if you don't buy because you're happy listening to him on the radio, or by streamed webcast, or on MTV-a-like channels, or (shocker) if despite - or perhaps because of - the many ways that the RIAA pays to get the music to you, you simply choose not to buy a CD.
That's the message that the RIAA is giving, once you strip the bullshit away. Buy more music. Buy music, or you've killed Freshy Q. It's not our job to persuade you to pay, it doesn't matter how generic or plastic our miming meat puppets are, the fact is, Billy, it's your responsibility to pay, and frankly, you should pay whether you like the music or not. It's all about stopping poor Freshy Q from starving.
Spooky prediction? Next year, it's Driver's Ed, but first a short message from our sponsors, the Ford Motor Company Inc.
"Hello class. I'd like to tell you the story of Wally Doe. We had to lay Wally off because you selfish little bastards are walking to school instead of pestering your parents to buy you a Ford Weener. Now Wally has to give handjobs for food. Say, kids, how would you feel about choking the chicken of a 400lb trucker to make ends meet?"
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The artists are already starving in comparison. Why don't they just tell the truth and call the program "Starving Corporate Executive".
They could show the horrors of the poor RIAA execs who could only buy one BMW this year, or the trauma of having to sell one of their estates.
Ouch, sorry. About 2.2 milliseconds after hitting "Submit", I realised that you were actually asking that question. Sorry for attaching my rant to your post.
For what it's worth, I agree. Intellectual Property law needs to be revisited and some consistency brought to it. Why, for example, is it a criminal offence simply to obtain or supply a tool to break the encryption on a DVD? Why is it not a criminal offence to actually create or even use the tool to make a copy? Why is it a criminal offence to produce and sell shirts with a trademarked Nike logo, but not a criminal offence to sell copied CDs?
The only aspect of the RIAA's position with which I have the slightest sympathy is that they really do have to educate people about this area of the law. However, the fact that they're lying about it (consistently calling copy right infringement "theft") disinclines me to cut them any slack.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The answer is obvious.
You're right, it is.
It's all about money.
Uh... what!?!?
The "obvious" answer as to why they pursue these cases civilly instead of criminally is because no crime has been committed. Copyright infringement is not a criminal offense - it's a civil one.
Your answer would sell more papers though. Congrats for that. You might want to take off the tinfoil hat for the photo though.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Bart: Sounds like a pretty crappy game to me.
Principal Skinner: Yes, well... Get started.
-- ``Bart the Murderer''
So, any special interest group gets to push their morals and agendas on our kids? In their classrooms? It's one thing to transmit their propaganda over the TV and radio, but its another to hold the kids captive and force them to listen/participate in such a way.
Hopefully, parents will be given the option of opting their children out of such activities. If not, let's hope one of these kids has lawyers for parents.
What next? The Right-To-Lifers get to stage a school "assignment" that's really just preaching the evils of abortion? The Brady Bill nuts get to do the same preaching the evils of firearms? Where does it stop?
Hey - why stop there? Let's get Coca-Cola to come in and "teach" how their product is superior to Pepsi. And let's get Dunlop to come in and teach how their tires are superior to Michelins.
This is just stupid.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
When I was in kindergarten, I learned to share....
Now the MPAA is going to teach me that sharing is bad?
If that were the case, you'd think that the RIAA would have a hard time finding bands willing to sign contracts, and 7-Elevens would be inundated with job applications from band members who didn't make any money.
But of course, there never seems to be a shortage of new bands polluting the airwaves, so I have to conclude that either your facts aren't entirely true, or aren't entirely complete. Afterall, SOMETHING is driving these bands to aspire for a big contract, and it's not poverty.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Listen, if I'm sitting in the catbird's seat at a major label, I wouldn't be punking these kids out about how filesharing hurts artists, I'd be showing them how the pros do it - legally.
Vanishing royalties, recoupable expenses, double-standard accounting, ball-gripper contracts, long-term litigation - by the time these kids are finished with the class, they'll be dying to work in the industry instead of in front of it as performers. Screw the multiplication table, show 'em how to do math using the Royalty Calculator. Those proficiency tests will get hammered, at least mathematically.
Anyways, your mileage may vary.
Peace.
Wow. The album is available for download before it's even been created. Piracy must be more out-of-hand than I had imagined.
Adopt a strategy of [shock!] playing live at concerts, using the MP3s as advertising instead of your revenue stream. You also realise that you can still make bucketloads of money by selling t-shirts coffe mugs and anything with your logo on it, including (horror!) the actual CD. People want to own memories, and a digital recording is not a memory.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I wonder how much money the record companies spend to have such an influence in schools. Its a well known fact that kids make up the recording industry's largest market, so why is it that this commercial entity has an influence on children's morality and education? What kind of message is this sending?
Why not play the real starving artist game? The kids can sign a contract and never make a dime off of their intellectual property for the rest of their lives while the record company makes a fortune but still claims they haven't recouped their costs!
Sound waves should be free!
Well my version of the game is that you practice guitar since when you were 13 years old, finally get a good band together, do a few local shows for free, eventually get a once-in-a-lifetime deal with a record label, sell a million records, only to find that you still owe the record company $50,000 because they spent so much 'promoting' you, and that you can't make any more music until the record company agrees they like it. Then the record company decides to stop promoting you, and you have to do infomercials and mall openings since you're no longer allowed to make music without the record company's consent. Now that's a fun game.
$8.95/mo web hosting
In other news:
Former Enron executives will teach investment basics
Former Arthur Anderson accountants will teach how to balance a checkbook
Karl Rove will teach civics
Former Pres. Clinton will teach abstinence
I seriously doubt that there will be no record. I got yelled at by a cop when I was 10 years old for setting off fireworks in my backyard. 8 years later while I'm trying to join the military, I get the third degree because I didn't list the "incident" back in '85,
I was 10 years old for cripes sake!!!
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
...for the rest of the musicians in the business. J.Lo represents the top .01 percent of musicians in the industry (that's one hundreth of one hundreth of all people playing music for a living). For the vast majority of musicians, a record contract is a fast route to bankruptcy, which is what the "one-hit wonder" phenomenon is all about. More than a two thirds of professional musicians can't make a living wage doing an album, because the contracts are so draconian that they have to be a huge success before they can pull in a dime. It's telling that Glenn Campbell, a fellow who has had hundreds of songs on the radio and twenty successful albums, has said that he has consistently lost money on making records because of the contracts.
Oh, and by the way, less than one percent of albums sold sell more than one million copies. So next time you pick up a million-seller and have trouble shedding a tear for the artist, consider the 99 other artists who didn't get a thing for all the work (while the record company did) or the 54 who had to declare bankruptcy because they owed so much money to the record company that they couldn't pay it back, while the company actually turned a net profit on the whole thing.
Oh, and one last thing. Musical tastes aside, any artist you've heard of on the national circuit is far, far above "mediocre" in terms of commercial success. Puff Daddy may not be to your liking, but saying his success is mediocre is pure insult to the venue bands that play the clubs all around your house, who can only dream of being as well recognized.
Virg
Kid: It's done. Cool.
Teacher: Yes. And It's already on the net. So you can't sell it. (smiles broadly)
Kid: How can I find it? I got to tell my friends.
Teacher: Well - I didn't put it on the net. But I could have. You see?
Kid: So how do I put it on the web? I still want to show my mom and friends.
Teacher: Well, it wouldn't make sense to put it on the web because you need a special program to view it.
Kid: And where do I get this special program?
Teacher: You can't. It's only licensed to schools.
The obvious moral to your little story is that trying to make money in the music business is a bad gamble. Is somebody forcing artists into it? No. They are usually driven by pipedream fantasies to the point of being stupid. The music business is a *business*. Get a lawyer. If it's a bad deal, go into a another line of work. If artists did this, the music business as it is would die. It's the unwise artists that keep feeding the machine.
--Slashdot: News for Turds. Stuff that Splatters.
There are criminal penalties for certain levels of copying. See U.S. Code Title 17, Chapter 5, Sec. 506 [cornell.edu] for the offenses and Title 18, Chapter 113, Sec 2319 [cornell.edu] for the penalties.
--Slashdot: News for Turds. Stuff that Splatters.
You shouldn't. If the law in question was reasonable and just, people wouldn't *need* "educating" because they wouldn't be breaking it in the first place.
The law is not self defining. "Because it's the law" is not sufficent justification for enforcement.
> Given the amounts the artists have to pay out of their advance on basic expenses, there'd be a hell of a lot of bankrupt artists around if most of them had to pay their advances back! It doesn't work like that, few if any artists would even sign up if it did.
Um, there are a hell of a lot of bankrupt artists out there, and they do have to pay the advance back. See, the contract is written to work royalty recoup before expenses. In the example, the band gets fronted $1M for the record, and they hit the studio. Expenses end up on top of that (say $200K). Now, when the record starts to sell, the record company pays the band 20 percent of the proceeds, but then takes it back to recoup the original $1M. If the record grosses $5M, they recoup the entirety of the advance. Now why that doesn't count as having to pay it back is only academic. It's true that the band doesn't have to pay it back if royalties don't cover the advance, but they still have to pay it back before they make any money.
Oh, and did you forget the $200K in additional expenses? If the record makes $4M, not a dime of the $200K is paid off, and that money is indeed recoverable, which means that the record company makes $2.8M (that's the $4M in sales minus the $1M advance minus the $200K) and can sue the band for the $200K expenses (but not the leftover $200K in unrecouped advance), which forces the band to declare bankruptcy and break up, never to perform under the now-defunct name again. Since they got advanced $200K that they never repaid, assuming five members in the band, they each made $40K for one year, and had to drop the band at the end of that one year. The national average for a manager at a convenience store in the U.S. is $38K a year, and you get to keep the job from year to year, and you get a benefits package.
Not pretty, is it?
Virg
That's not exactly true. Copyright infringement is actionable in a civil lawsuit (by the copyright owner) or in a criminal lawsuit (prosecuted by the US government). You should check out the the copyright act's section 506. It's a higher burden to prove criminal copyright infringement (you have to infringe "willfully"), but it still happens, and not just for cable, DMCA, etc. The bottom line is that the labels are suing because they have the money to do it and they can control the legal strategy. Also, the US government may not want to sue because it has other priorities (and a more limited budget).
Sure. What's driving them there is fame and exposure. I remember one artist, whose name I don't recall, :-) said that she made more money by starting her own label and selling 250,000 albums than she did by selling a million when she was with a major. The tradeoff is, only one quarter the people actually heard her music. Likewise, even if the average artist could make more by independent distribution, they would reach a fraction of the audience -- probably much smaller than my anonymous example since they hadn't sold a million in the first place.
The record companies work hard to maintain this kind of clout, including some $200 million paid to radio stations every year to decide what gets played. (Do a search on salon.com for 'RIAA payola'.) As long as they can decide what gets heard, they could get whatever artists they want, even if the artists had to agree to actual, nonmetaphorical rape instead of the money kind.
Is paying the artists jack squat a requirement in order to support this business model? Of course it isn't. They could easily split off a fifth of that 6.6 million profit. *They don't have to.* It's cheaper to buy an audience, and get the band for free.
So who consumes a larger chunk of the total revenue from a record -- the filesharers or the RIAA members?
And the "marketing is expensive" line that publishers use is amazing. Yes, that's what you do, RIAA folks -- market records. You're expensive. Nobody is arguing with you there.
May we never see th
I'd be the first to agree (hey, I am, in fact), but I do believe that there's a moral and pragmatic foundation behind copy rights. The problem is that the law isn't consistent, and it isn't clear. Until we can get it cleared up, all that the RIAA can do to support their (theoretically moral, pragmatic) position is to play the cards as they're dealt.
I'll also be the first to point out, however, that that's not what they're doing. They're buying laws and misrepresenting the morality. Once they get back to working for creative talent rather than owning it, I might change my mind.
But that said, I don't believe that there's anything wrong with copy right law in principle, it's just a clusterfuck in practice, and getting worse with each revision.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
"Theft" is not a legal term but rather a colloquial term. Those who discuss law seriously find it more productive to use the legal terms such as "larceny," "grand theft auto," "armed robbery," and "copyright infringement" that have different sets of statutes and different sets of case law behind them, rather than some blanket term such as "theft."
Some legal dictionary may actually define "theft" along the lines of "any offense involving the unlawful taking of another's property." But now define "taking," and define "property." If the copyright in a work is in fact property, why don't copyright owners have to pay property tax?
Will I retire or break 10K?
That sounds good, but it's never been the case. Athletics, shop classes, etc., have been a part of the education scene for as long as anyone alive can remember. They serve purposes other than pure academic advancement but someone, somewhere a long time ago decided that those purposes were sufficiently valid that time should be taken off of pure academics to engage in those activities.
The question is: What non-academic stuff is so important that we can all (pretty much) agree on the positive utility of taking time out of the school day to focus on it? Where I came from, football is so important that it ran roughshod over everything else. I didn't agree, but I was definitely in the minority with that opinion.
For many people today, discussion of HIV/AIDS is so important that it should happen in school. It's not purely academic and it certainly is also about socialization and life skills, but most people are willing to accept that some HIV/AIDS education during the school day isn't a bad thing. So now we come to political agendas and my real point. Once you get beyond math, everything is tainted by a political agenda. You can't avoid it. Do you object, on the grounds that it is spoonfeeding some lobbiest's political agenda, to the teaching of HIV/AIDS-related information? Even if it's by a "gay activist?" What about gun safety? Is that important enough to spend some time on? Even if the only really effective and accurate program on the subject is the "Eddie Eagle" program from the National Rifle Association? Have you fully reviewed the genesis of the history books used in your local school? The amount of political jockeying that ultimately decides what does and doesn't go into school books is flat out insane.
My point is that everything is political. Condemning the RIAA from wanting to get into the schools on the grounds that they are political is pointless. The schools are already shot through with political agendas.
Far better, I think, to simply object on the grounds that this thing isn't important enough to waste your kid's limited time on.
Yeah, it's too bad that most kids' imaginations are well-done by the third grade.
Kids: "Look teacher, we made the new Eminem CD."
Tacher: "Uh, that's already available for download."
Kids: "We know. It actually works, and we're selling copies to the underclassmen."
Teacher: "The lesson for today is... you all get detention."
Since when is taking a photograph or replica of a statue the same as using a crane to hoist it away?
It's been a long time.
The kids will learn 2 things from this exercise
1. If everyone just downloads music for free from the Intarweb, well...that sucks for the artists, because they get no monetary compensation from it.
2. The current business model being blasted into our brains by the music industry sucks, because they take too much of the money. We pay too high prices and the artists still get little or no money from it.
Some of these little darlings will grow up to become businessmen and women. A few of them even good businessmen and women.
Maybe one of them will come up with a system that actually does work.
$Deity, I hope it doesn't take that long!
The RIAA gets $2 for each CD recorder. .02% of the manufacturer's sell price for each CD-R and CD-RW sold. This is the "tax" they get to offset the copying of music.
The RIAA gets about
The RIAA has been paid a "tax" for each blank audio tape since the '70s.
Overall, this amounts to millions of dollars.
So, far, no one has found an artist that has received any part of this.
Perhaps, just perhaps, you have already paid for your copies of music.
The only similarity between physical property and intellectual property is that the ownership thereof has been artificially created in both cases.
The primary difference between intellectual property and physical property is that while "stealing" one may dilute its value, it does not deprive anyone of anything they would have gotten had you not done so, whereas acquiring the other without permission means you are depriving someone of something, and actively costing them money. The legal system can tell the difference, though in this day and age it doesn't seem like it -- can you?
Put simply (in deference to you, Kent) when you stock a store shelf you expend money to do so, and if someone steals your stock, not only is that money gone, but you have been deprived of assets, namely the physical object. If someone puts your CD into their PC, and makes an mp3 rip, or downloads a rip from the internet, you lose nothing except a sale -- assuming that they would have purchased it anyway.
If someone steals stock from your store, you gain nothing. If someone copies your album, you gain exposure.
Hence, copying music to which you are not entitled is illegal, but not necessarily immoral or unethical. That may be your opinion but I don't think it's exactly been proven. What has been proven time and time again is that major label artists, who are overwhelmingly the group most concerned (or at least, the label is concerned on "their" behalf) about music "piracy" (I don't remember firing any cannons at anyone. ARR! PREPARE TO BE BOARDED!) make more money when you go see them in concert than when you buy their album. So, if you want to support the bands you love, while getting something for your trouble, go see their shows as many times as you can, and spread their music to people who have not been exposed to it who like to go see bands live.
I am sure you will write this off as just another justification but the fact is that your basic premise is flawed because taking physical property, which is called stealing, and copying intellectual property, which is a violation of copyright law but is not theft specifically because it does not deprive anyone of anything are not the same thing. That is a fact whether you approach the problem legally, logically, morally, or ethically. Whether copyright violations are wrong is a matter of opinion. Clearly there are many people opposed to the existence of copyright at all, and I don't know if they are necessarily "right" or "wrong". Traditionally, what is "right" is what has been agreed upon by a society, and it varies between groups of people.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The movie/record industry have always been an indirect influence on the classroom, whether they want to admit it or not:
We have a new generation of parents with no idea of how to raise kids, they forget that growing children are impressionable. Out of habit, they plop their kids in front of the TV or the radio as a babysitter, a distraction.
TV and radio has more foul language, violence, sex, and immoral behavior than ever before. The mass media encourages children to be rebellious to authority. These kids with impressionable minds mimic their TV characters and rebel against their parents. When they see how well that works, they progress to rebel against their friends, against their society, against their teachers, their principals, their law officers, their judges, their politicians, on and on. Unchecked, this behavior is cast in stone into their adult lives.
Think this is ridiculous? The effect of TV is manifested in the Jerry Springer shows. There was a grade school class where the teacher began changing the channel when the Springer show came on. In protest the kids in the class threw chairs at the teacher, mimicing the Springer show.
Another one: Beavis and Butthead episode where one of the characters plays with fire and chants "fire is good, fire is good." Shortly after it aired, a five year old boy set fire to his trailer home killing his little sister. He admitted that he was influenced into the act after viewing the Beavis and Butthead episode. It was never aired again. That is a blatant admission that the media knows the devastating influence they have on culture.
Right here on /. there was a story of a high school counselor who reprimanded a student. In retaliation, the student made false accusations of sexual assault. Despite the repentance of the student when she admitted to authorities that she made the whole thing up, the counselor lost his job and his career. One guess where you think the student saw that immoral behavior...
Movies and TV shows glorify indiscriminate sex and trashy fashion. More and more teenagers are having sex before they graduate high school. The likes of Madonna and Britney Spears have influenced teenage girls to dress provocatively. They're not shy about wearing low rise jeans with the tops of their thongs showing. The jerks that the media is pushing as "male role models" are influencing an entire generation of men, who inherited all the wrong ideas of a healthy relationship and family values.
The result? Unwanted pregancies, widespread transmission of uncurable STDs, broken families, and a whole generation growing up with corrupted ideas of indiscriminate sex with zero accountability for their actions. These are the consequences that movies, TV shows, and records NEVER EVEN BROADCAST.
And now these hypocrites want to broadcast their view of ethics in the classroom. Riiiiiiight...
Take a good look at the late Katherine Hepburn, who has been called a "role model". She married once, and divorced in 1934 as her movie career was taking off. She was quoted "I don't believe in marriage. It is bloody impractical to love, honor, and obey." In short, she rebelled. She then had affairs with many Hollywood men, including Howard Hughes. She then had a long extramarital affair with Tracy Spencer, a married man who refused to divorce his wife. Hepburn rejected everything about marriage and embraced fornication, adultery, and indiscriminate sex. All starting in the 1930s. And todays' women look up to this person with reverance and admiration?!? If you want to find out why today's family culture is so fucked up, look no further than this "role model".
And Hollywood perpetuated this woman, because this crap made them money.
Mae West wasn't shy about her rebellion either. She admitted losing her virginity at the age of seven and her brashness permeated through al
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
That's like justifying stealing Star Wars action figures by saying "I saw the movie 25 times, so I've given George Lucas enough money to compensate for it".
Oh crap, I hope it's okay with you that I read that, otherwise it would be the same as if I had stolen your pencils and pens.
For those who didn't read the article, the Starving Artist game is only a little blurb in the middle. But if that's your hot button and you have kids in school, find out if the school plans to bring in this presentation. Talk directly to the teacher(s) involved. The school also has a PTA or PTSA where you can stand up and object publicly.
Be prepared that teachers in general tend to be unsympathetic toward behavior that seems to break rules. However, they also tend to frown on deceit and deception. Your best argument is the truth about how the music business works. Try this explanation:
Musicians don't make money from record companies selling CDs, they make money by performing. Recording contracts are deliberately written so that all the expenses for producing, advertising and distributing an album are taken out of the musician's share of the profits, which then magically turns out to be ZERO. What musicians get out of CD sales is exposure, which makes them more famous and gets them better paying performance gigs. They get this same exposure whether a person buys a CD, borrows it from a friend, listens to it on the radio or downloads it from the Internet. The record industry's "poor starving artist" mantra is a flat out lie.
Whatever you do, don't beat this into the ground or launch into a tirade about the Evils of Capitalism or whatever. Just tell the real story matter-of-factly and give them a chance to digest it. Tell them you don't want the Recording Industry or any other industry bringing in a marketing campaign disguised as a learning experience.
I find it odd that this is called Starving Artist. The reason that they starve to begin with this that they receive a small fraction of the revenue from sales of their work. It reminds me of the poly sci folks agonizing about foreign aid to countries with corrupt regimes. The dictator scoops a huge portion of the funds meant for the starving masses which is a huge waste - but the only way to get any money to those masses is through the current regime. So, do you give foreign aid, knowing that it is supporting a repressive regime and keeping them in power - but still feeding some folks - or do you halt aid and wait for the system to collapse under its own weight and hopefully something better emerges? Personally, I think the parallels are actually pretty frightening between the RIAA and say, Sadam Hussein, Mobutu or Idi Amin.
If the exclusive rights in a copyright are analogous to the exclusive rights in a chunk of real estate in so many other ways, why isn't copyright treated like real estate for tax purposes?
Will I retire or break 10K?
What teacher would allow this as a part of his/her curriculum? Good grief. Here you go kids--create, have fun, but just so you know, it's the money that makes it worthwhile, not the satisfaction and joy that comes with the act of creation and knowing a job well done. What a crappy lesson to be giving our kids. That's as bad as suing 12 year olds, actually worse, because their propaganda is teaching children corrupt and false moral truths. As a parent I'd be pissed as hell to find out the schools were allowing my children to be taught these things. How about teaching them the importance of obeying the law because it IS the law, and if the law is wrong, it can be changed, but that the law is important and the law should be followed?
I have a suggestion for those who would like to continue selling those pieces of plastic.
Include a live video of your concert with your studio release(or hell, just release your live show) Package it all on a DVD or two and sell it for $20.
That's what Rush is doing - and at $20.99 for 3 hours of live music + extras on 2 DVD's, it's no wonder their DVD set is in amazon's top 50 nearly a month before its release.
And really, who is going to try and download 2 DVD's worth of material(8-10 gigs) when for 20 bucks, they can get the real thing.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
I hope I am not the only one that is violently opposed to public schools trying to teach our children about ethics. First of all I don't aggree with a government organization trying to teach children ethics (whatever happened to parents?) and secondly the teaching of ethics by a heavy handed corporation. This is wrong in so many ways that I have to question the ethics of the school boards that allow such a curriculum in the first place.
Stay tuned for new sig...
That isn't a new game. I can't count how many times a teacher asked me to slave over a math problem only to tell me later the solution was published in the teacher's edition!
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Actually, speeding itself is not dangerous. DIFFERENCE IN SPEED is.
To wit: two cars going exactly 90 miles an hour, side by side, can bounce off each other repeatedly with very little damage and with neither driver losing control.
However, take a car going 50 miles an hour and bounce off a car going 25 miles an hour, and in that moment of contact that 25 miles an hour's worth of energy has to be dissipated in some fashion, so the trajectories of one or both cars is significantly altered, as is the sheetmetal.
Of course, driving 25 in a residential zone (full of objects moving at 0 miles an hour) is better than driving 50 -- but that's because the difference in speed is greater.
That's why it's always safer to go with the flow of traffic than simply obey the limits -- if everyone else is going 75 and you're going 55, you're creating a hazard, just as if you were going 75 and everyone else is going 55...or if you were going 55 and everyone else was going 10.
As for public schools, they've been dumbing down American kids for a long time now. Charlotte Iserbyt's excellent book explains all --
The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America
If you read nothing else, read Charlotte's article, No American Left Alone. It's an eye opener --
BUT...Any charting artists you see on MTV are banking fat rolls at live shows. We did a show with Eminem several years ago (just after his first Interscope release), and we got a discount due to it being a student function. He still got paid over $30,000 for that one show. And that didn't include the costs that went into paying the Roots and other bands that performed.
And that was just after his major label debut. Imagine what he commands nowadays.
Artists bank major cash on shows. Even your well-known indie hip-hop/underground artist gets paid fairly decent (see, $1,000 for a club show + hotel + food + transportation). Multiply that by, say, sparingly, 100 shows per year. That's $100,000 with virtually no marketing campaign to pay back.
Being that it's an indie artist, royalties (or, profit if they paid for it themselves) skyrocket percentage-wise. Like others have said here, making $7 an album because you paid for it yourself, and then selling 30,000 (a paltry sum), just netted you $210,000. Many popular indie artists have banked from being indie. If you know hip-hop, think Company Flow (El-P/Big Juss/Mr. Len) or Hieroglyphics (Del/Casual/Souls of Mischief/etc.). Both groups sold over 100,000 copies of their first, indie-released albums.
Not to mention all the other sources of income that an artist has (guest appearances, show appearances, advertising, sponsorship, etc.)
I work for a company now that sponsors about a dozen (mostly independent) hip-hop artists. They get free clothing from us (we're a clothing company). We're new so they don't get paid (yet), but we have a history together and they wear our stuff. However, that's free clothing and free bags.
Imagine not having to spend money on food, clothing, transportation, etc., during the course of one year.
Show promoters pay for all kinds of stuff. I've been a part of dozens upon dozens of shows. The only thing the artist ever paid for was...um, absolutely nothing.
Now do that for 60 or 100 or, in a lot of cases, 200+ dates per year.
Cha-ching.
Why do you think artists like J-Live and Defari (Alkaholiks) finally quit teaching in the classroom to focus on being artists?
It's easy to figure that most artists make the majority of their money from live shows, etc. (Unless, of course, you count the divas and consistent 10 million + selling artists).
My .02
-SD/WAXDADDY
how can schools allow them into classrooms? are they paying the schools off or what? the way i see it, time is money, and every minute they waste on this crap they are not learning something else that is much more important
Neil Postman wrote an classic book called Teaching as a Subversive Activity. Everyone should read this.
Parents should be more involved in their kids' education. You should at least have an idea of what your kids' school is teaching them. Meet their teachers, and if they are teaching your kids something you don't approve of, you have every right to complain. Do not trust the school system.
First, who says what the posted limit is? If it is arbitrarily set at a low point, then the speed cameras are placed where the speed limit is artificially low, then who is that saving? I would argue it increases driver frustration and may lead to more accidents.
Second, you don't seem to understand that there is more to traffic fatalities than speed. The vast majority of traffic fatalities fall into one of two categories: impaired driving, and not wearing seatbelts. People continue to drive under the influence and/or without seatbelts. Speed could potentially kill at 30mph. What do we do? Lower it to 5mph? That'd defeat the purpose of automobiles, wouldn't it? Since you obviously don't live in an area where this is a problem, take a look at this link and find out what happens when automated enforcement gets out of control. On another note: traffic fatalities are already double in Edmonton what they were last year. Goes to show that speed cameras are nothing but a money grab.
P2P is only infringment under our new and improved [sarcasm] copyright laws. Under old copyright law it was perfectly legal. The entire copyright "crisis" only exists because copyright law was expanded in a manner that simply doesn't work.
Copyright is exceedingly effective in it's intended role of seizing profits from people who exploit a work and handing those profits over to the copyright holder. It is generally very easy to identify anyone who makes any signifigant profit off of a work and it is straight forward to win those profits in court.
Copyright was never intended to target individuals in non-commercial activites, and if fails miserably when it is distorted and stretched into this area.
The problem is that people are pulling towards two extremes, one side saying copyright should be abolished to preserve P2P and other activities, and the other side saying that P2P and other activities need to be exterminated to preserve copyright. Copyright is a good thing and should be preserved. P2P is a good thing and should be preserved (and legal). They are NOT incompatible any more than free music on the radio is incompatible with copyright. They CAN legally co-exist.
There are many ways to commercialize a work and make a profit. Legal P2P will certainly impact SOME potential commercial routes, just like radio impacts some potential commercial routes. That does not elimiant the ability to profit on a work in a variety of ways.
Hell, free and legal P2P doesn't even eliminate the ability to sell downloads. Pay download sites are getting many thousand of customers in the face of widespread P2P even after they sabotaged themselves FOUR TIMES OVER. (1) They are only offering crippled products. They would attract far more customers if they dropped the DRM. (2) They are only offering limited selections for download. They would get far more customers if they offered their full catalog of music. (3) Their prices are wildly inflated. They are charging nearly as much as they charge for a physical CD, and they have been twice nailed for illegally price-fixing CDs. The fact is a download is a far "cheaper product" than selling a physical disk. It is almost pure profit. They would get far more customers at reasonable prices. (4) They simply refused to enter the download market at all for at least five years. They should have jumped into the market the instant Napster made it blindingly obvious that there WAS a market and that they COULD serve it. Instead they left a vacuum which P2P expanded to fill. They effectively created their own competition and gave it a five year headstart.
If the music industry had started selling non-crippled downloads of their full catalog of music at reasonable prices five years ago they could have had huge and profitable business doing so even in the face of perfectly legal P2P. A well run pay service can easily beat P2P on ease of use, quailty, performance, and other valuable services. And selling downloads is merely one of many ways artists get paid for their work.
The fact that the five major lables of the RIAA have simply chosen not to do this is their own fault. Their position that legal P2P equals no copyright protection is a load of bull. Advocating legal P2P does not equal opposition to copyright. Copyright law simply never should have been expanded to cover individual non-commercial activities.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.