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Suing Your Customers: Winning Business Strategy?
Cobarde Anonimo writes "The Knowledge at Wharton has an interesting
text
about the RIAA strategy of suing its customers.
As Wharton legal studies professor G. Richard Shell writes below, this same tactic was tried 100 years ago against Henry Ford. It didn't work then, and it won't work today."
Glad I got that off my chest.
The lawyer profession is still alive and well, isn't it? ;)
"Old man yells at systemd"
The judge wasn't constrained by laws such as the DMCA and other nonsense that favors business over innovation. The same scenario today would probably have swung against Ford, despite public support.
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
the RIAAs forte...maybe they can litigate themselves out of existance...or maybe they and SCO can join forces and sue each other.
I think this is more commonly known as an "exit strategy" in the business world.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
They best thing about the RIAA's strategy is that their heavy-handed tactics have brought them to the mainstream press and now has A LOT of people pissed at them. Before, it was just rumbling amongst the geeks and a few other industry players. But suing 12-year olds, suing thousands of people, going after anyone and everyone with reckless abandon, has forced even the most average news-reading Joe to go "man...what a bunch of sleezeballs". Had the RIAA kept this an underground fight and sued more discriminately, they may have succeeded in their scare campaign. Luckily they didn't and now that it's in the mainstream press maybe something will be done to halt their actions.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
+4 Insightful methinks!
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
1) Sue our customers so they have no money
2) ???
3) Profit!
I really think the RIAA is screwing themselves on this pretty bad though. People are going to go back underground where it's multitudes more difficult to track. Piracy is not going to go away because of the lawsuits.
The RIAA could have done all this differently and made a TON of money with a good marketing scheme, but instead they went for the throat and screwed themselves. They won't ever be able to 100% protect against it, and it won't fade on it's own. I just see it as bad business planning, and nothing more.
The other side of it is there are alot of good indy artists who provide their music free to download, and don't answer to the RIAA. I have a feeling you'll see more people take this route eventually, and less rap stars turned producers...
Just my $.02
Ok so i dont want to burn my karma,
but sofar what a piss poor responce by everyone,
basicly just me two's, not evena good karma whoreing of 'In Soviet Russia Your customers Sue you'
Sue people to make them become customers....
go figure..
Oh shit, I mentioned SCO..
Darn there I go mentioning SCO.. Shit!
1. Upon clearance of your check by the bank, we will sue you.
2. You agree to settle out of court for whatever amount we ask.
3. Failure to follow the terms of this agreement are grounds for lawsuit.
...drives corporations and conglomerates to do morally repugnant things like suing its customers in order to achieve the all-important goal of preventing revenues from dropping from previous years'.
On the other hand, its also the same thing that drives corporations and conglomerates to be penny wise and pound foolish. Dirty money from suing children is a source of income that is necessarily limited. It will end. The individuals in the RIAA aren't stupid: they know it will end, too.
However, the RIAA, the entity itself, will charge ahead anyway.
It didn't work then, and it won't work today.
Think again, this is scaring everyone around me into going out and buying CD's or purchasing rights to the music (mp3's) online. I think it is worthwhile for the RIAA to bring on these lawsuits. I only think they were too late in the game that it may not have near the effect it would have had had it been a few years back and with slightly different tactics.
[[ the only 15 letter word that is spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable: it may soon be, however. ]]
I'm no psychic, but I think I might understand the "logic" behind the suits. Since the RIAA dominates the popular music market, they probably think it's safe to sue some people without losing too many customers. I mean, where else is little Cindy going to go for that latest Brittney Spears record? It's just a shame that more people don't know, or don't care, about small labels and independent artists. I guess some just find it hard to beleive that there are people out there who love making music more than their love of outright profit.
I thought we'd already decided the RIAA screwed themselves up by doing this. Maybe to push the point further, rather than repeating ourselves we should have a coup de etat and take over the RIAA offices, turning all they're computers into a massive LAN party. I don't think any authorities will mind, really, since they are targets of the RIAA's scheme as much as anybody. And the RIAA has been walking a fine line of legality as it is so far...
Theives are not customers. It's plain and simple.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Actually, it is a winning strategy. All you need is one big win, and you're set for early retirement.
About the time the courts handed somebody millions for spilling coffee on themselves while taking the lid off the cup and drinking it while speeding on the shoulder of a busy freeway, the companies learned something:
To make a billion dollars, you can sell a hundred million units at $10 each, OR you can win one or two major lawsuits. Seriously, which way would you go if given these options?
...nothing that wasn't discussed at length here :)
Tsuyoikoto ha taisetsu da ne, dakedo namida mo hitsuyousa (Strength is an important thing, but tears too are necessary)
From the article: "But having a strong legal claim on the merits is only one factor in legal strategy success. Indeed, this factor is often the least important one from a business point of view." Does this explain SCO?
...is that the first part of the introduction to the article is exactly the same as the first paragraph of the article itself. I wish I had that editor's job; must beat workin'.
I looked into the abyss, and the abyss looked into me--and we both winked.
I never went to law school. The guy has some valid points but misses the overall point.
In the case of Ford he was actually selling a product. The people could actually see what he had to sell and gave him money in return for that product.
In the current case no one, that I am aware, who downloads music using Kazaa or whatever, pays for that music. They are, in fact, stealing since they are not compensating someone for the product they now have.
I'm not sure why people have such a problem grasping the concept: if you didn't pay for it it's stealing.
Anyone ever heard this?
Don't bite the hand that feeds you!
Is it bad karma to mention SCO? Can't resist: the whole time I was reading that article I thought "...and SCO vs. IBM ...and SCO vs. IBM ...and SCO vs. IBM." The parallels are obvious.
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
A Slashdot favorite, you can read about it here, here, here and a synopsis here and another one here.
Basically, suing the customers backfired horribly and Mr Novak ended up being countersued and lost. A cautionary tale!
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
Whoo, boy, this'll invite the "Flamebait" mods, but here goes anyway.
the RIAA strategy of suing its customers.
This is such a blatant spin, I can only shake my head in awe. The RIAA is not "suing its customers" - it is suing illegal filesharers. While I suppose it is remotely possible that a small fraction of those people actually occassionally buy a CD every few months, and would thus technically make them "customers", the logical connection drawn by the inflammatory statement in the story summary is completely backwards.
If Microsoft, acting with the BSA, took action against an illegal OfficeXP piracy ring in Korea, would you say that Microsoft is "attacking its customers?"
Actually, yeah, you probably would, sorry, bad example. I forgot. Microsoft is evil too. Lemmie see if I can come up with a better one.
If a hacker (oops, "cracker," I'm all over the negative mods today, aren't I) broke into Valve and copied the Halflife2 sourcecode, managed to get it to compile, and started giving away binaries from his website, and Valve sued to shut him down and get injunctions against all those who downloaded the binary, would you say Valve is "going after its customers?"
It's ridiculous. Give us a little credit guys, come on.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Give them a break!
At least the RIAA has given us the hysterical image of L.L. Cool J at the same desk with Jack Valenti. Given their recent track record for providing late-night TV with such opportunities for comedy, the RIAA's lawsuits are the next-best thing to "The Governator" when it comes to the laugh-factor.
Tim
ASs the article states:
It was called the Selden Patent and it gave its owners the exclusive right to sell a very basic invention: self-propelled vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. Many people in the car business thought this patent was an outrage - much as some online retailers today are angry that Amazon.com received a patent on its "One-Click" checkout system. But the U.S. Patent Office had issued the Selden Patent and a group of powerful incumbents had purchased it and formed an association to enforce it.
I don't see the relationship between an over encompasing patent, as the Selden Patent and a song copyright for a specific song. I think it is a weak analogy.
In addition, its nice to see that the US Patent Office hasn't changed much in 100 years.
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
How about you just lower the price of CDs to $10 so the 12 year olds can afford it. Duh...
> No legal rule is strong enough to overcome a radical technical innovation.
This one sentense sums up the the fate of the RIAA crusade. Digitalization of property is a reality and has made their business model outdated. No litigation can stop the wave of changes occuring also. People would never stop sharing things they possess, ever. RIAA can either adapt themselves to this (like news paper industry) or get perished (like whip manufacturers). I wish RIAA understand what Victor Heugo had said long back , "you can stop an invading force, but you cant stop an idea whose time has come".
http://www.nasirudheen.blogspot/
i blame clinton
If the RIAA wants to sue anyone for poor sales, they should go after radio station operators (Infinity, Clear Channel).
Really, how many FM music stations in your area really feel compelled to bring you new music you might want to buy? How many of them sound different?
Customers DO like variety, and being able to "browse" you know.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Regardless of agreement or disagreement with the RIAA in general or this particular lawsuit strategy, "suing your customers" is a silly way to put it. If I walked into Wal-Mart and stole a case of Coke, they would not worry about whether or not it was a good idea to "put one of our customers in jail". They would be stopping their loss and taking legal action against an offender. If I happened to be a past or future customer, that's a separate issue.
RP
I think it's somewhat of an elegantly stupid business strategy. sue customers for more money than they would ever spend on BUYING music, maybe alienate them, most likely just make them mad that they have to pay for music ever again. it does make some sense, but only lawyers and moneygrubbing jerks in the music industry would try it. maybe they figure that since everyone already hates them for unleashing such people as brittany speared and and christina whoreguileria, that we cannot hate them any more than we already do... :)
Sue me and i'll never consider buying a CD ever again in my life
This actually sounds much closer to the SCO situation. Form a cabal around some questionable patent (and other intellectual property) claims, then sue everybody who tries to enter the market. Describes the USA's dysfunctional software industry perfectly.
Still, the ill-will the industry is generating (and the resources it is expending on being the bigger bully) do expand the opportunity of independent publishers to band together and take the high road. Let's hope we get some Ford-scale contenders in the mix soon.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
The most telling line in the article, for me, was the resources it has available to sustain a legal war , yes folks it is a war but the good news is when they lose they die.
O ur
R ecording
D ownloads!
(lame, I know.. but what the heck)
Speak truth to power.
Because in every discussion about rights that I can remember on Slashdot, at least one person has said "What if the motor car had been patented?"
Well, I guess that's no longer a rhetorical question. And we also know the answer: "not much, as long as just one person is prepared to fight it out rather than cave in."
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Did you read the article? I guess not. The whole point is not about suing RIAA or anything, the article state quite simply that suing customers is a bad business practice. And that over time, peoples take side with David and not Goliath.
Colosse.
They're also suing potential customers (12 year olds with no money *yet* but the desire to listen to music) and mistakenly suing customers (65 year old grandmas using Macs, who since they don't use Kazaa, have probably bought at least *one* CD in their 65 years, more likely more, especially as gifts if not for their own sake).
In the business world, anyone with money is a potential customer, and the process of courtship is what determines whether you get that money or not.
GPL Deconstructed
#1. Be a true geek, only non-geeks get sued.
#2. Have an obscene amount of music. I dont think they will sue you for 15k per song when you have 10,000+ songs.
#3. Dont live in the US. They only sue americans.
#4. If you cant do #3, at least use a proxy.
#5. Optional: use something like bit torrent to download albums instead of using kazaa.
Simple, easy, I know I will never be sued, I follow all 5!
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
Medium-to-large businesses do not generally create or invent business strategies, what they do is to take existing strategies, and refine them slowly and carefully. The biggest reason for doing something is that "it worked before".
(Quite different from the motivation for small teams "damn, that's a great idea!")
So, a business that succeeds once, then twice, in a changing market, is pretty much doomed: they have gone through their innovative phase and now rely on Methodic Inertia to keep going.
The RIAA (like SCO) is just doing what trial lawyers all across America are doing: using lawsuits to extort money. It has worked in the past once or twice.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Throwing lawyers at the problem won't fix anything.
You need to catapult them instead.
At least, the majority of them are.
They can be both customer and thief. If they also buy music legally, they are customers. In this case, the RIAA are suing their customers.
The importance of this: their customers might be thieves, but by suing them, they risk losing them as customers...
The RIAA is suing people that are 'sharing' a huge amounts of their CD's with everyone else around the globe. Some people on slashdot think "that's dumb, they are suing their customers!"
What if a person bought all of a company's commercial software, software that is licensed to you to run on only a handful of machines (example: Apple's home license for MacOS X).
Now that person shares all the software they've purchased with everyone around the globe for free. Company X finds out and sues that person.
They are also suing their customer. Would you agree this is also stupid? If so, why? How is it different from buying music and giving it away to everyone?
It's one thing to make a copy of your CD's for your friends. I consider that fair use even if it isn't REALLY legal. But sharing your music with thousands of strangers is just plain WRONG.
Here are some scenarios...
1. You can't afford as many CD's as you really want to have. Tough shit. Work more, earn more, buy more. Borrow CD's from the library and make copies for yourself.
2. The record companies are bastards that are screwing the artists. OK... and stealing their CD helps them how? Save up your money, don't buy their CD's, and go to their concerts instead. Bring a recording device and capture that memory. Write to your favorite bands and tell them you would like to support them, but cannot stand helping the labels.
3. Music should be free. Correct! CD's, however, are not free. You must pay for them. Get used to it and stop whining.
I used to download music off napster, but never shared it. Not much, maybe downloaded 5-10 albums worth of music the entire time. Now I buy songs and albums off of iTunes, or borrow them from my brother and make a copy for myself. I support my favorite artists by watching them live when I can afford it. And when I can't afford it -- I listen to the CD's I already own. I listen to the radio.
Gee, ya think?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
In case you haven't noticed the RIAA is NOT suing customers. The targets of RIAA lawsuits are people who trying to get music WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT. The whole point of the lawsuits is that no matter how many people the RIAA pisses off, scaring people away from filesharing networks means a hell of a lot more record sales in the long run. No matter how many people try to justify Napster and its kin as great promotional vehicles, they aren't- they just allow people to search for and downloading music they already want, thus cutting out profits for the music companies.
If someone offered litigation insurance, I think I would gladly pay. Join a P2P network for a small fee, and have that money go for insurance. If the RIAA decides to sue individuals en mass, this money would be used to fight them. I would rather flush my money down the toilet than give it to the RIAA.
The was no study, it was an opinion piece. I know that the desire to be the first post is strong but save that for fark.
I'm your customer. You sue me. Fuck you.
I'm not your customer anymore or ever again.
And what's more, I'll bad mouth you from the rooftops and to my grave.
I'll wage a personal psyops war against your ass for life and my kids will carry on the battle after I'm gone. Grudges can span generations in my family..
SBC spent a lot of time fscking me over and I spend a LOT of my time bad mouthing them. A whole lot of my time.
Bad customer relations can bring down a business. One unhappy customer can do a tremendous amount of damage in lost sales and lost customers. And in my business I deal with the public so I get a much better chance than most people to spread my bad words about SBC..
I don't worry about RIAA or MPAA because I don't do that but like these old folks that are wrongly sued, if I was them I'm not only counter sue I would put the bad mouth on them in spades and maybe even hire a voodoo witch doctor to put a curse on them, their children, their mothers, their cats, their dogs, their fish and their canaries..
Forgivness is for those that are too weak to hold a grudge forever..
, they are redundant at this point.
Sure, they may lose/ piss off customers but they really don't have an alternative business model.
Their business is to distribute music; and guess what, that can be done for dirt cheap by anyone now. It is to be expected that RIAA will fight to the bitter end.
I only hope that more artists realize this as well...
Tor
Never underestimate your opponents capacity for stupidity.
Except that the litigation required to overturn the patent took 8 years... or 1/2 of the length of the patent. In that time, the motor car companies made large amounts of money on their ill-gotten gains, and the endless march towards suburban sprawl was pushed back another 10 years.
In short, a real patent lasts 20 years, a fake patent lasts 10. This is "not much?"
The ______ Agenda
c'mon Devin, you can do better than that.
But it took 8 years! In this industry, 8 years is a lifetime.
Fight Spammers!
Especially from the following statement:
What can the Recording Industry Association of America take from Henry Ford's story? First, you will never win your market by suing your customers. Quite the opposite: you will rally ordinary people to your opponents and alienate a generation of buyers. Exactly what has the industry gained by suing, among others, a 12-year-old girl in New York for downloading songs? A raft of bad publicity, a reputation for being a bully..........
Also from the following:
Second, no legal rule is strong enough to overcome a radical technical innovation. Courts can delay progress but they cannot stop it. Unlike the automobile cartel that tried to stop Henry Ford, the recording industry's copyrights are perfectly valid.
But SCO won't and can't prove that any of it's copyrights have been violated. SCO is just trying to Hijack the work of others.
Even with broadband, it is time-consuming to download a CD image. Not everybody wants song-at-a-time poor quality mp3s. Some want high quality, good packaging, and easy storage and cataloguing.
For these uses, CDs provide a high-quality high-bandwidth solution (recall the old saying that there's no higher bandwidth than a station wagon full of tapes). But at $20, CDs are not a cost-effective solution. At 1/10 the price it certainly would be. Perhaps even at 1/5 the price.
I, for one, would fill my bookcases with music CDs at that price. You can bet I'd have a 'complete works' of every artist that I love. But at $20 I can count on zero hands the number of CDs I've purchased in the last year.
I believe that book publishers have set their price-points more in line with the value of the medium. Some people still photocopy entire books, but enough find that the convenience and quality of a bound book is worth the purchase price.
Could distribution companies make money at a few bucks a CD? I don't see why not.
Actually, this article, to me, seems better related to the SCO/Linux battle than the RIAA/downloader battle.
Someone who steals a product is not quite a customer.
This is like saying that it's silly to prosecute a robber who walked into a jewelry store during business hours and bought a new battery for his watch while he got a good look at the floor plan.
Amazing magic tricks
Just because they did not buy this track or that track or even the latest 50 cent album doesn't turn them into non-customers. I'm willing to bet that they actually own several legitimate CD's and DVD's which does in fact make them customers.
NarratorDan
"If you're not confused by quantum mechanics, you really don't understand it." - Niels Bohr
When you say "I'm your customer. You sue me. Fuck you. I'm not your customer anymore or ever again" I say let's be realistic. Are you telling me you're never going to buy a CD again?
In reality, hating the RIAA is easy. But actually boycotting them?
That, sir, is another ballgame altogether.
...are destined to repeat it.
Let's see if this takes 8 years like the auto suits did...
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
And this is something we didn't already know?
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
They didn't buy the product. They took it without paying.
This is so far off base, that it does not really deserve reading. After reading this, I was mystified. The two issues have nothing to do with each other.
1. The auto barrons tried to prevent Ford from making cheap cars.
2. Ford sued, and won, allowing them (him) to make cars.
Now if ford had been stealing the other manufacturers cars, and then selling them in his showrooms, that would be more like what is happening today.
1. People are downloading music.
2. The RIAA is trying to stop this.
So, lets compare these another way:
In the auto suits it was little guy suing big guy.
In the music ones, it is big guy suing little.
Opinionated idiot tries to compare them.
(please no comments on stealing vs infringing).
Are oversestimating the importance of this topic to the non tech public. Talk to non geeks and most really don't give a shit either way. They'll steal it if they can, if they can't big deal, they'll just go back to buying em.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
SCO guy: Suing you custumer is pretty fun RIAA girl: yeah weve been doing that before you. SCO: No it was US!! RIAA: what are you doing tonight? SCO: And you? RIAA: setting up my new MANDRAKE 11 pre2. SCO guy grabs girl's wallet and run. GOD: But Hey that was a geek girl its so rare! what are you doing?
The way to respond to the demise of the commercial CD is not to sue Internet-users. It is to figure out new ways to make money on music.
I can't remember where, but I read about a theory among economists that says the business entrenched in a technology is rarely able to embrace the new technology which will eventually unseat them. They have too much invested in the old technology and the risk in using the new techology is too high to warrant a radical change in the way they do business. However, the "upstart" company, with not much to lose, is in a much better position to take the risk. This is not to say that it never happens, but rarely is it a "good business decision".
What it boils down to, is that the RIAA is not very likely to embrace the new business model despite the fact that most everyone else can see how much better it is.
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
The RIAA should consider trying an auction strategy for selling music.
Someone might be willing to pay $10US for the newest Sarah Brightman album and $1 for the four Simon & Garfunkel albums released between 1965 and 1970. Another person would be willing to pay the reverse.
The RIAA would offer to make available to your local record store certain albums. You would offer a bid for a selection of songs or albums. The RIAA would delay the release of certain titles to you depending upon their popularity.
For example, if you bid $10 for the latest Sarah Brightman then you could have it burned onto a CD-ROM at your local record store today. But you bid only $1, then you would have to wait thirty days. The ratio of the length of time that you would have to wait vs. your bid price would change according to the overall demand for a particular title. A $0.50 bid for the latest Backside Boys release would have a wait period of three months while bidding $0.50 for Sam The Sham's Greatest Hits would have no waiting period at all.
Since there very little marginal cost for reproducing and distributing the music on the internet, the industry should consider that they could maximize their profit on each album through a flexible pricing structure that reflects the demand curve (i.e. the musical preference and budget) of each different customer.
You shouldn't have to go through the hassle of downloading music through the internet (and it is a real hassle for those of us with dial-up access). You should be able to just go to a local record store and have a blank CD-R burned with your selections, then and there. The record store would download from the RIAA your auction 'winnings', take your payment, and deliver up your CD.
So many new marketing stategies...So many new ways to make money and make their customers happy...So little willingness to try new things...too many lawyers and sleezeballs...too much historical baggage. That's the whole MP3 vs. RIAA conflict in a nutshell.
The RIAA is a wholesaler of legal muscle for intellectual property rightsholders, not a musical-recording retailer.
The listening public is not its customer. The artists, record producers, and catalog owners are its customers. Music is not its product, lawsuits protecting copyright are its products.
It is suing those who procured, copied, and distributed music without legal entitlement, because that is what it ultimately was formed to do.
I thought this was already sorted out in previous postings on slashdot
;-)
File sharers are NOT thieves by any legal definition. The most you could say are they are copyright infringers. (And there is some doubt that they are even infringing copyright)
You need to be more careful with your accusations, you don't want to leave yourself open to possible LIBEL litigation
This might scare people off Kazaa because its a watched network. But some people are still ignorant to the RIAA and continue to use Kazaa. Eventually Kazaa will be a dead network and other protocols will start to become more mainstream. bitTorrent, although for individual music sharing is bad, its great for large downloads(entire albums, movies, etc.). Gnutella clients are still safe, and while they aren't the choice for everyone, they will eventually become the only choice. New protocols/clients/servers will emerge from this battle with the RIAA with the specific goal to prevent them from succeeding.
I'll still buy CD's to support the band, because I like the music, because there's something cool about the cover art and the packaging. Just don't threaten to sue me because I download music to see if I like it before I buy it.
If I feel threatened by doing something which in my case is essentially LEGAL -- sampling music on a short-term evaluation basis -- then I'm less likely to go buy the CD's, out of anger toward this ridiculous industry association.
I'm sure there are people who download gigs of music and never intend to pay for it. That's something different from what I am doing. It is not lost revenue, because economic demand, as we all learned in school, is DESIRE + MONEY + INTENT. Without INTENT or MONEY, it's not Demand, and therefore you have not sustained any economic damage.
Sell something people will buy, and they will buy it.
1. You shouldn't be sueing potential customers either! ;)
2. Mind where you tread... Because it's legal to share most bands' files... just not the big, major, money-sucking bands. Many small and local bands are glad to have the exposure. My band, for example, tries to encourage file-sharing of our songs
3. Yeah, but it's ethically very cruel to take away a poor man's possessions. Most people don't care about laws... they simply follow personal ethics. To me, it is better to make your own decisions about right and wrong than blindly following the words of rich white male politicians.
4. Copyright is a good invention, because it ensures that artists will want to create works that will wind up in the public domain after 14 years. Wait... no, copyrights last much longer than that! And new copyright laws somehow get retrofitted to old copyrights... isn't that similar to creating a law against something and then going back and punishing people who perpetrated the now-illegal thing under the new law? That particular thing is unconstitutional, and I don't think it's any surprise that many people get pissed about the similar situation with copyrights.
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
Will suing customers hurt the RIAA? It certainly didn't work well for those who sued Henry Ford's customers, but this is a different situation.
The recording industry has done an excellent job of separating the public perception of the industry from the product. There is a classic stereotype of the big evil record label, always trying to force the innovative artist to compromise their vision and sell out. The artist, on the other hand, is viewed as the struggling genius fighting capitalism to bring music to his fans. The truth of the situation is that the artist, and especially our perception of him, is the product the industry creates and sells to us. Buying CDs, attending concerts, getting "into" a band (including attaching our ego to them in unhealthy ways) is how we buy into it. The artist is a partner in crime.
But I don't think the youth of america, especially teenagers, see this partnership. They choose to believe in a system where the big evil record companies screw over the blameless artist while charging them $20.00 for a CD - I mean come on, Enrique Iglesias would never do that to me if he had a choice! By cultivating and maintaining this delusion the industry can be as unpopular as it likes and continue to make money.
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. -Oscar Wilde
People!
Sue (present/future tense; verb)
Sued (past tense; verb)
Suing (present tense; verb)
Suer (noun)
"Sueing" is not a word.
I hereby declare, on behalf of my great, great, GREAT ancester Og,
a retro-active patent on THE WHEEL. Pay up folks.
-- I hereby announce, on behalf of my great ancester Oog, a retroactive patent on THE WHEEL.
I am a person who has a few hundred CDs. Up until they started suing people, I have disliked the RIAA, but made no changes to how I spend my money. Now, I won't buy CDs anymore. It seems fairly obvious to me, with this happening at the same time there's litigation against the music industry for price gouging, that P2P networking is an example of the way that people deal with injustices themselves. And, as they're attacking those that are already computer savvy, I think it's only a matter of time before they really piss off the wrong person. I mean, I'm a software engineer who has experience with P2P programming... If they sued me, even though I have a few hundred CDs, I'd happily lend my hands to groups developing more secure P2P technologies. ~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
First, you will never win your market by suing your customers
SCO is not suing its main customers. SCO knows it doesn't really have a viable Unix business. It knows its Unix customers will go away, whatever it does.
Its real customers are Microsoft and Sun. They have paid (and Microsoft will continue to pay) millions of dollars to SCO. They are buying a service, the service of generating FUD around Linux. Selling this service looks like being a viable business, until the IBM lawsuit comes to court in 2005, when SCO will presumably cease to exist.
If it were only an intellectual property issue. I could take my collection of albums, walk into a music store, hand over the old-media copies of the music and buy a new-media copy discounted by the "license" cost of the content.
Yeah, that'll happen...
But it's not an intellectual property issue. I've got 1 CD (Queen's "A night at the Opera" - showing my age) that I've bought 4 times - 8-track for the car, album for the house, cassette for the car, and now CD. And if I put an MP3 of it on my home desktop and then access it from my notebook I could be sued???
If I steal a car I've got it and the original owner doesn't. If I steal "Intellectual Property" I've got it, but so does the original owner. Moreover the production cost of intellectual property drops dramatically with digital copying. The margins increase with every copy. I'm not advocating theft, but it's awful hard to feel any sympathy for the RIAA's position.
I say let's be realistic. Are you telling me you're never going to buy a CD again?
In reality, hating the RIAA is easy. But actually boycotting them?
That, sir, is another ballgame altogether.
No, not really. I am sick of mega-corp bullshit. I boycott LOTS of things. I don't even listen to the radio anymore and haven't bought a CD in YEARS. Last time I bought a CD they still stocked vinyl alongside of the CD's..
I either listen to classical or indie stuff but I do NOT listen to what everyone else listens to.
Some people are suckers and they slobber and drool over every little fad and run out like good little consumers to throw money down the toilet everytime some belly slithering money changer decides to introduce some greedy scheme for robbing the weak of mind and will.
I prefer to keep my money for myself. Everyone is out to take it from me, I would rather they didn't and it's easier to keep it if I don't HELP them..
A suggestion from the article:
The way to respond to the demise of the commercial CD is not to sue Internet-users. It is to figure out new ways to make money on music. Maybe concert ticket prices will have to rise.
Hey, that's a good idea. Steely Dan was just in town a couple weeks ago, and it only cost about $120 a seat. (Sure, you could opt for the cheap seats at $60 each, but who would do that?) Oh, and t-shirts were $35 each. I didn't check, but I'd guess the beers were at least $5 each. Park the car, grab a meal before the show, pay for the ticket, buy a shirt and a beer, and you're out the door for about $200.
Yup, raising concert ticket prices sounds good to me!
Igor
Back before the introduction of consumer video recorders, I met a few film pirates. These were people who had bootleg copies, on film, of many movies and short features. Illegal as hell, and the MPAA wasn't any "kindler and gentler" back then. These "pirates" were the biggest film geeks that ever existed, spending every nickel they had on seeing films and buying film-related books and merchandise.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The association launched hundreds of lawsuits against Ford's customers to scare them away form his showrooms for buying "unlicensed vehicles."
I think the intersting question is: why did the association sue Ford Co. customers? Ford motor company was the one violating the patent, yet the association chose not to sue the company and leave things at that, but to attempt to sue individual purchasers of the company's products.
There is only one reason I can think of.. the association wanted to sow a bit of fear, uncertainty and doubt around Ford's products because they knew the patent was weak or not applicable. This says to me that the association was basically not in the legal right and they knew it.
In the RIAA's case however, rationalizations aside, they really are in the legal right. Their members own all rights to the songs and none of them have granted purchasers of the songs the right to reistribute the songs without paying royalties. Furthermore, none of the people distributing the songs (via download) have gotten permission from the owner of the copyrights to distrubute the songs without paying royalties. Lastly, the law clearly states that if you don't have rights to distribute someone else's intellectual property, you can't. It is kind of interesting that they are suing the holders of illegally-obtained songs as well as those that are redistributing them, but again, still on firm legal ground -- for example, if you stuffed your house or apartment with stolen goods that you knew were stolen, you do have to fear legal reprecussions when the law comes knocking.
The worse part about this whole mess is the precedent that is being set. Both in public opinion as well as legally. Individuals are being conditions to accept mass legal proceedings by companies perpetrated against individuals (with shallower pockets).. and by caving and admitting wrongdoing, the legal precedent is being set that this is a normal way of doing business. After all, just look at SCO's lawsuits and realize we'll soon be seeing more of that kinds of thing.
Welcome to the net of 1000 lies. Upgrades are scheduled soon that should bring us to the 10,000 lies mark.
The National Cash Register Company, under John Patterson, sued customers who bought competing cash registers, and forced most of the competing manufacturers out of business. NCR became the largest cash register company and maintained that position for most of a century. This was contemporary with Ford's litigation with the Association of Licensed Vehicle Manufacturers, around 1900. Details can be found in biographies of Patterson or of T.J. Watson, the founder of IBM and once Patterson's top salesman.
Patent lawsuits are hard enough to win that sueing customers is not particularly productive, so this is rare. Copyright lawsuits are much easier to win, especially after the DMCA, so sueing customers is a workable strategy.
The majority of people here don't want the RIAA suing anyone. The RIAA wants to protect it's property.
So what's the solution?
What do people want? To have the RIAA just not do anything? That's not going to happen.
We know the RIAA would be just happy to keep prices where they were for CDs. People aren't going to put up with that, and want lower prices.
Lowering prices to $10 a CD isn't going to work because there are always going to be people that trade music for free, and never pay for it.
Does the price have to get down to what Apple is charging (99 cents a song) for everyone to be happy? Do people think even THAT is too much?
So what's the real solution that people want to this whole thing that will make both sides happy?
The author's analogy between Henry Ford and Shawn Fanning doesn't quite hold.
Ford legitimately used the assembly line idea to provide a commodity. He didn't
create a skeleton key to the "Big Business"'s warehouses full of automobiles.
For a proper analogy between Ford and Fanning, Fanning would have had to create
his own music production company, get artists to sign with him, and sell his CDs
for $5. That would be the legitimate way to do it. Instead, he chose to give
consumers the skeleton key.
I think that might fall under the "uninsurable" catagory. It wouldn't be uncommon for a single person to have anywhere from a billion to several trillion in fines. Since no one, except maybe M$, can pay this, settling out of court, aka blackmail tends to be cheaper for everyone. However, if the RIAA found out the person had insurance they wouldn't be so quick to settle.
Lets put it this way, you probably save money just going out and buying every single album than paying some kind of insurance each month. Small fee? dream on.
This is how business works when it's run by people who don't think. Shortsighted blindness to anything but profits, backed by enough power, produces this sort of crap.
The RIAA is stupid. I cannot have more than sheer scorn for this type of group. I myself quit buying CDs altogether because of their crap, years ago. I put my money where my mouth is.
I have a lot of CDs from back in the day, but I don't buy them anymore, and I advise everyone I know to avoid buying from labels backed by the RIAA.
In the end, the RIAA will discover who has the power. In the end, the customer is always right - because without the customer, you are dead as a business.
That they dare to sue their customers (and that's who they're suing, consumers of music) is the height of idiocy and arrogance. They could have probably increased their revenue by 1.5 to 2 times over had they embraced the new technology that Napster presented. But no. They're brain dead thugs, and they have only enough brain cells to see a threat, not a potential.
So in the end, they will fail. I cannot say how much they make me want to vomit.
Avoid labels backed by the RIAA. Stop feeding the bully. Start paying the artists for their work, not the brute that has forced the artists into prostitution.
The problem with big business is that it loses sight of it's feet - no matter what, the customer is what keeps it standing.
"it's only after disaster that you can be born resurected" - My friend Dave
I thought that the purpose of copyright law was to protect the copyright holder from others PROFITING from their work, not to protect the holder from not makeing money, I fail to see how one could profit from Giveing Away their Purchased music on the internet, provided they are not trying to run the musicain out of business in order to sale their own music. Seems like we have lost site of the original purpose of copyright law. I cant wait to see what hapens when CNC machieens become a staple at home. Will milling and roboticly asembeling your own versions of patented household apliances become ilegal too. What have we gotten ourselves into.
Faith_Healer -- The antethsis to almost everything, and the worlds worst speller.
Theft is really the wrong word. I KNOW it's nitpicking, but really. If you could walk out of Wal-Mart with a coiped case of Coke, only they didn't actually lose a case of Coke, would you still feel they had the right to subpoena your address?
seven two six five
seven four six one seven
two six four two e
I used napster when it was still around. It was what got me into listening to music in the first place. If I didnt like music from a band, I deleted it. If I did like it, I bought the CD. Bought about 30 in a two month period. None of which would have been purchased if napster never existed. Napster Got Shut down. I havent bought a CD from any record label since then. Now if I want music of a cirtain genre, I find some non-famous band that offers their own music for download on their website. If I like the music, Ill buy a CD directly from them. I suggest other people to do the same thing. The record labels lost me as a coustomer long ago. Now what the RIAA is doing is just pissing me off further. (I actually know one person who is being sued by the RIAA) Theve destroyed any small chance of me EVER buying a CD from them again.
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
1. Sue all customers
2. ???
3. Profit!
Please stop your libelous accusations. People who share music are not thieves. I bought the music I have in my computer. If other people come and copy that music, it means they (and not me) are COPYRIGHT INFRINGERS, not thieves, get it?
OK, since you were the first to step into that slippery path of analogy and metaphors, it's like this: suppose I buy a Ford car and leave it parked in the street, with the keys in the ignition. Someone comes and drives away with my car. Would I be a thief? Do you think the Ford Motor Co. would have the right to sue me? No, "theft" is a VERY bad analogy for "copyright infringement". The RIAA and MPAA thought it would be good marketing, but calling your customers thieves is a quick way of turning them into EX-customers.
Well Microsoft sues its unloyal customers. And unfortunately they seem to have a winning business strategy
This is the best article on the subject I have read to this point - it hits on none of the sore spots, and yet hits on exactly the problem.
That's odd. I guess some people just come from different worlds.
I can easily never buy another CD again. No sweat. Granted, even if the RIAA gave 95% of it's profits to charity, the FSF, NASA, and anti-spammers, I would still buy very few CDs. But, I have recently wanted a CD (Evanescence) and consciously decided against it. A lot of other slashdotters do the same. Some people have no problems sticking to their convictions, "high-moral grounds" or whatever, even if it means they have to suffer slightly. Not that that makes us *better* than anyone else, or anything like that - just different.
Why do people have such a problem understanding the difference between copyright infringement and theft? They are NOT the same thing. With theft, you actually deprive someone of something they have, and its associated value. In your example you deprive Walmart of its case of Coke, and the money they spent to get it. With copyright infringement, you deprive the owner of nothing, since you simply make your own copy.
Here's the other thing: Most people that download songs, also buy CDs. Often the more they download, the more they buy. I've known more than one person who loved to play with P2P software and owned literally over a thousand CDs. That would not only make them a customer, that would make them a big customer. You do not want to piss these people off.
Also there are plenty of people that were customers but are now no longer buying CDs because of the tactics, though not targeted at them. I know more than a few people that never used P2P software (yes, luddites exist) but as so enraged by the tactics that they are boycotting (or claiming to at least).
So this is not at all like going after a theif. this is going after people who sample your msuic, at no cost to you, and then buy it. Making them, and others who hear about it, angry is a BAD IDEA. Music is a pure luxury good. People like buying music but it is not in any way required for survival. Hence, if you piss them off, they can very successfully boycott you.
What's more, it is leading to the strengthening of indie labels. People decide they are sick of this shit, but still want music, they look for alternative sources. They will happen across indie labels. Now those labels might not have just what they want, it may turn out to be sub par to what they are used to. But they buy it anyhow since they want music and are pissed at the RIAA. This strengthens the indie market.
Really, their strategy is stupid. When MILLIONS of customers do something like P2P, you find a way to exploit it, not try to stand in its way. There are plenty of ways they could turn an Internet distribution to their advantage, but they stubbornly refuse those and just go on trying to stop a tsunami with a sandbag.
Being born in 1957, I watched the industry switch from vinyl (45's, 33's and 78's), to reel-to-reel, to eight-tracks (argghh), to cassettes, and now CD's and DVD's. They resisted every one of these changes to varying degrees. But they all happened anyway. 'Why?', you ask. Well, I would say that sound quality, durability and portability got better and even though the price remained relatively stable, you were getting more bang-per-buck.
So I think that the point of the article is that times and technologies are changing. Is the RIAA going to wake up and or not? They need to offer services such as these. If it's affordable and easy to use it will make money.
Unlike in the past, there now exists a near-zero cost distribution medium; namely the internet/WWWW. Napster showed that the distribution was doable and iTunes shows that it can be profitable (even with a miniscule user base that excludes all Windows and *nix users).
Regardless of agreement or disagreement with the RIAA in general or this particular lawsuit strategy, "suing your customers" is a silly way to put it. If I walked into Wal-Mart and stole a case of Coke, they would not worry about whether or not it was a good idea to "put one of our customers in jail". They would be stopping their loss and taking legal action against an offender. If I happened to be a past or future customer, that's a separate issue.
That's not why customers is the wrong word. It's the wrong word because I don't buy music from the RIAA.
The RIAA is an industry association -- some labels pay in and get PR for hire ... and lawyers for hire too of course. If I buy from Wal-Mart and they sue me -- yes, I am/was/is/will-be a customer. But no one buys music directly from RIAA. The RIAA is more like the "bad cop" (visible, influencial, and negative) to the industry's more sunny face -- the PR machine for individual musicians, etc.
They may ultimately LOSE the public relations war, or may have already, but the RIAA can afford a little bad press because they have already accepted that their role is the bad cop role for "the industry".
Ultimately, while the RIAA is indeed following through with its promise to its artists to protect their property--intellectual or no--from outside offenders and thieves, it is clear they are lashing out in an uncharacteristic 'emotional fury' by pursuing those they catch with reckless abandon. The 12-year-old girl as an example. The reason for this, is that the recording labels see their horizon, and they are scared. They are scared because the reasons for _HAVING_ a record label is becoming less and less necessary, due to the onset of networking, data transfer, and the technical magic of the web. Now, it is entirely possible for an artist to completely circumvent the record labels, and advertise, produce, and sell their talent virtually over the 'net. I'm sure there are some who already do this. Tools are available, these days, for relatively little cost, to do your own recording, dispersment and advertising all over the world with the web. What's to stop an artist from producing songs directly to MP3, and selling them from their own website? I can see it happening soon. And so do the record labels.
Sure it's easy. I have bought exactly one CD in the last 14 years. I bought it last May, as a gift for my mother's birthday. Why did I buy it? 1. I was given free access to a live concert, and the artist was really good. He's a Jazz musician. Jazz usually isn't what I listen to, but I liked it, and I knew mom would too. 2. The musician owned his own label. No middleman. I have neither bought CDs nor downloaded music for a LONG time. Abuse me as a customer, and I can make your product lose sales. Not only mine, but those of everyone I know...
"it's only after disaster that you can be born resurected" - My friend Dave
Suing thieves
That would be infringers, not thieves. To be a thief you have steal something, and these people aren't stealing, they're infringing.
If this attitude wasn't pervasive ("win at all costs!"), we wouldn't have scummy lawyers. The scummy lawyers are just providing the services we want.
There are some things more important then "winning". In fact, there's a lot of things more important then winning.
- The record company is not a member of the RIAA, and that it is not affiliated with any company that is
- The CD record itself does not employ any DRM technology that aims to restrict the rights of the purchaser
The word mark could be accompanied by some eye-catching logo and put on the CDs, to make it easy for customers who are fed up with the RIAA members' attitude towards them, but would still like to spend some money on music, simply because they enjoy listening to it.
What is a "certification trademark"? It's basically like a normal trademark, except that anybody who fulfills the criteria that are specified for that particular mark can use it. One example of a certification mark is the OSI mark for Open Source software.
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
Slashdot has an interesting text about the US strategy of insulting and bullying its Allies. As ThinWhiteDuke points out, this same tactic was tried 200 years ago by Napoleon against Russia. It didn't work then, and it won't work today.
;)
Sorry, I could not resist
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
This is a publication read by a great many influential MBAs running large corporations around the country. If this magazine gets it, then MBAs will get it. That is, if something has become so maddeningly obvious that even the PHBs get it, then you know that the politicians won't be far behind. You see, it's rather like us explaining to the PHBs using crayon and large-childlike images and letters and they, in turn, dumbing it down for the politicians by use of grunts and clumsy gestures.
The RIAA and its members are done for.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
1. Sue Customers
2. GO TO 4
3. Profit!
4. Bankruptcy
The title is flawed. The RIAA isn't suing it's customers. A customer is someone who purchases your products. It is suing people who STOLE their product. Get it right.
In case you've had your head buried deep within your ass for the last three decades, the same people who share music are the principle purchasers of music. The one not only does not exclude the other, it has been shown time and time again, in study after study, to be tightly correlated. In short, the vast majority of people who share music also purchase music.
This has been true for decades, and remains true, whether the exchange medium is sheet music, cassette tape, CD-R, or mp3. The cartels are in fact suing their customers and are in fact generating a lot more ex-customers as a result than any amount of inappropriate file sharing ever could have.
The whole point of the lawsuits is that no matter how many people the RIAA pisses off, scaring people away from filesharing networks means a hell of a lot more record sales in the long run.
No, it doesn't. It means a hell of a lot of ex-customers, for a number of reasons:
The RIAA cartel has not only done the collassally stupid thing in suing their customers (and regardless of what you and their lackeys may try to tell themselves and others, the people they are suing are in fact their customers, and no small percentage of those customers either), they have done an even more collassally stupid thing in drying up their most potent revinue generating stream
They have, in short, managed to conjure for themselves the worst of all possible market phenomina: boycotts by those enraged by their heavy-handed behavior, enniu by those bored with their current lackluster offerings, disinterest by those seeing no new offerings worth the trouble of buying or listening to, and the wide, very accurate perception that they are out of touch with current technology (and trying to forcefully move the rest of the world back into the twentieth century), out of touch with current musical taste, and out to screw both their customers (the public) and the producers of their product (the musicians). Even a Microsoft-sized PR budget probably wouldn't get them out of this one.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I haven't bought a RIAA member company CD in years (since they sued Napster), and I still buy plenty of music. There are tons of independent labels out there, with music just as good (if not better) than the big-wigs.
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
Well, not to split hairs but you wouldn't be advocating theft anyway. Unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material is not theft, it's copyright violation and has to do with the perceived dilution of value of an activity the rights-holder has exclusive license to do.
And I have NO sympathy for the RIAA's position or more specifically that of the businesses they represent. What I do have is a belief that the basic architecture of copyright is going to stick around. It will be illegal to distribute unauthorized copies of copyrighted works. And this fundamental flaw will continue to interfere with anyone trying to make a go of alternative distribution of THEIR product. Dance our way or go to hell. Do it your own way, get sued.
But what you point out is that as the conventional industry is REDUCING the value of their product (don't use it this way, don't use it that way, oh look now it breaks your computer, sure you can have a compressed file but only this bundled Windows Media version! What you're an online store and you want to stream our product so potential buyers can browse the catalog? Heavens no, what if they capture it off the sound card, it'll be like they've got a cassette tape made off the radio, horror! You're welcome to start an internet radio station to stream our product - here's all your paperwork and here's your fat bill for royalties, and no you may not serve on demand and no you may not say what will be playing next! Thank you for sharing our music with thousands of potential customers. You're sued.) In this atmosphere, independents can RAISE the value of their product simply by doing NOTHING - just producing regular old CDs and not suing anyone - or even doing NEXT TO NOTHING - releasing under a license that specifically sanctions certain types of redistribution, like open source licenses do. That's a pretty cool opportunity the indies have and I'd like to see it used more and more, is all I'm saying.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
The usual connotation of "apathy", and the way it is typically used in this context, is that people care but don't invest the time to actually do something about it. Thus the antiwar crowd insisted that almost everybody agreed with them but were just too apathetic to do anything about it. Insulting the group of people you're trying to convince and calling them things like "sheeple" does not make for a compelling case.
Instead, people weren't "apathic", people as a whole simply didn't care about the antiwar platform, for reasons that differ from person to person. This is not "apathy", this is disagreement, passive or even active.
I stand by my word choice.
That really doesn't address the real problem here. It's just turning a broken legal system on itself - and only the lawers win.
Now take the Insurance idea.
They can leave open the ability to finance the legal defense but cap the potential coverage. Now if you are faced with an insurance company footing the legal bill and only a possible $1000 judgement coverage what are you going to do.
Leave the people alone. Any award over say $1000 has to come out of the persons pocket, ie the Student or 12 year girl declares bankrupcy. Case closed, RIAA lost all the legal expenses.
Help fight continental drift.
Could somebody please send a copy of this Wharton article to Mark Heise and the other guys at SCO?
By the way: does somebody have more information about this Anti-Ford and Anti-Ford-Customers lawsuits?
I'm just wondering how many of the companies involved in that lawsuit are still in business...
Enjoy,
ix
When will people realize... the more people that listen to your music the more popular you are. thus having more people listen is a good thing not a bad thing. the only people copyright protects are the people that are in the music business to make money and those people are in the business for the wrong reasons.
if you are tallented and make alot of music (im thinking dylan, floyd, zeplin) then the fans and money will come to you. moreso if you dont have cartels taking most of your money.
the problem is that people who make music (and i know quite a few) mostly want to make money. the really tallented ones are in it for the fame and the glory of being ARTISTS NOT TOOLS.
like my man chuck d public enemy reprezent!! says "I trust the consumer more than I trust the people at the helm of these (recording) companies," and the o so great one liner: "P2P to me means power to the people," link
Oh the ordeal! An AYB joke that actually made me .o0_lol_0o.ers etc. k3w1 ,.;:-'`
If a store owner has a shoplifter arrested, would you say he's "harassing his customers"?
I thought not.
By the same token, people who download music without paying are hardly customers of the RIAA's members. Worse: if they pass on their illicit copies of music to other people, they might convince more people not to pay for their music and pirate it instead.
Don't get me wrong, I am firmly of the belief that the RIAA's business model is outdated, and that the RIAA should get the hell out of the way instead of trying to maintain their stranglehold on music distribution. Or, they can stay and keep peddling their mass-marketed rubbish to thosse inclined to buy it. But downloading their music without paying is against the law, no matter how you slice it. If you do not agree with that law, you can work to have it changed... one such way is to break the law and duke it out in court. But to break the law and then whine about being sued is just stupid.
I'm not talking about the RIAA's outdated business model, or how they seem to be losing the fight for public opinion, or how America's court system is broken, or how stealing music isn't really stealing, or why information wants to be free. But if you do the crime, be prepared to do the time as well.... and don't call yourself a 'valued customer' of the people you are stealing from.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
It's an interesting premise, but what insurance company would be willing to get involved in this?
From a pure profit motive, just thinking out loud about the numbers...
Say 100,000 people signed up. Any one of them could be sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars, but let's assume for a moment that the RIAA always settle for $2000. Further let's assume that 1% of the people with this insurance get sued. At these numbers, without any profit or overhead you'd need $20 per person to cover the costs. Which seems reasonable.
The problem is that the liability is essentially unbounded. If the RIAA refused to settle for $2000 and went for $10,000 now you need $100 per person.
Now add on the fact that the insured know they're violating the law and have gotten insurance against it. Buying insurance against being sued by the RIAA isn't going to look all that good in the eyes of the court, so those settlement numbers could go WAY up.
I'm not saying we're not going to see this insurance. I'm just suggesting that it probably isn't going to be all that cheap.
It's not like that at all. Here's the analogy you should have given:
If Wal-Mart suddenly started charging 5 times what everything was worth to the average consumer, but most consumers had no real stores to shop at that weren't Wal-Marts, and in addition if the quality of most products unpredictably shot below even Wal-Mart standards...
Some shoppers might start going into the store and think, gee, that bag of chips costs $25, but I have little confidence that it doesn't suck. I think I'll eat some right here in the store before I take a chance of wasting that much money. Once a few people started doing it, lots of people might start doing it. When Wal-Mart executives found out this was going on, they might call the police and have thousands of people arrested for shoplifting. But even though shoplifting is wrong, and can be enforced, putting many of the people who might shop in your stores in jail (or in the RIAA's case, the poorhouse) won't do anything to fix this hypothetical Wal-Mart's flawed business model. It would eventually make people scared to "sample" the products, but it would also represent the last straw for most of them, who aren't about to sit back quietly and pay $25 for a bag of chips of dubious quality. Even though in this analogy they didn't have a nearby competitor, that wouldn't protect them forever. The shoppers will eventually seek out a competitor and take their business there. The competitor in the RIAA's case is independent music. Customers will eventually quit buying RIAA music altogether and shift to listening to excellent bands from smaller, independent labels like Vagrant or Kung Fu Records. Labels like these just give away MP3's on their websites. No, not WMA's or some RealPlayer format. They give the fans lots of free music to sample and they know that one way or another, the fans will support the bands they love. And they do.
Either all RIAA music has to suddenly become undeniably friggin' amazing, or the fscking prices have to come down. The way it stands people won't pay that much for music that's that mediocre. They'll listen to it for free, sure, but I for one would not have paid much of anything for most of the MP3s and AAC's I downloaded from Napster, KL, and Gnutella.
I should point out that there are already several services that are the equivalent of "legal insurance" that anyone may purchase. By way of example, see Pre-Paid Legal Services (NOTE: also a MLM company), but there are several others. Prices tend to range from $8 per month to $30 per month depending on the "coverage" provided.
People like to listen to music - that much is obvious from the popularity of radio and p2p services. People don't like to pay for bad music.
My suggestion is to have a combination coffee shop/light food type place, with sound isolated booths. Listening to music selections is free.
If you like stuff, you can have a CD burned for
you at checkout, or tracks can be accumulated
until you have a disk full, then burned on
request. The music sales would be an add-on
to the main business of selling food and drink.
The shop remits payment to the music companies
as required.
The problem with music stores as they operate
now is they are essentially data warehouses in
very expensive locations. By reducing the
setup to essentially a PC in the corner, you
can cut the overhead dramatically and still
retain the same income for the music makers.
Daniel
Could distribution companies make money at a few bucks a CD? I don't see why not.
The songwriter wants his cut; that's $1. FedEx wants its cut to deliver the disc and its packaging to the mail-order customer; that's $3 more. The recording studio, the recording engineers, the commercial radio stations (there's currently no other way to reach listeners in moving vehicles), and the rest of the chain want their cuts as well. Can you see where it begins to add up far beyond the 4 USD price that you suggested?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Everything else has come down in cost over the years (DVD players, CDRW drives, etc) but not this.
Unlike production of DVD players and other electronic devices that conform to established standards, production of copyrighted works is highly labor-intensive, and labor prices tend to rise vs. the U.S. dollar. In fact, the inflation-adjusted price of a new release CD has fallen over the last two decades. Unlike DVD movies, which have often already recouped production and promotion costs while in theaters, CD albums do not have such a high-revenue theatrical exhibition tier.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Call Jeff Bezos to write up a patent application for the process of distributing music "with a computer."
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Someone who provides a thousands songs for download is not a customer, it's a competitor. The RIAA rightly recognizes that the only way to compete against someone who gives their own product away for free is to sue them, since it is illegal. This is nothing like the Ford case, in which, competitors sued Ford's customers for buying Ford's cars instead of theirs. If Ford stole the competitors cars and gave htem away, and then Ford got sued, then the analogy would be better. If SCO starts suing Linux users, that would be analogous to the Ford case.
Vote for Pedro
And yet, at the same time, they claim that swapping music is killing the industry.
And even after a few years of swapping, there's still plenty of coke being consumed by musicians.
This is why the people don't view swapping music as a moral crime... because they figure that these people are not suffering from what they do.
He wasn't talking about you, he was talking about David Bowie.
"But if you do the crime, be prepared to do the time as well..."
I'll bet people within your family don't consider cliches "insightful".
No offense.
The analogy with the Ford case is a bit weak. The auto manufacturers' cartel had a patent on something that was already common-knowledge. Two German fellas called Benz & Daimler had already invented the 'carriage that propelled itself with an internal combustion engine.' How those eejits got a patent on it is beyond me, a bit like Amazon and their 'one-click ordering' method.
The music industry is quite different. It takes a lot of creativity to write music and the artist should benefit from their work in the same way that a book author should benefit from his. The difficulty arises in that books lend themselves to the printed format that is hard to copy and expensive to distribute. Music lends itself to the electronic format that is easy to copy and cheap to distribute.
I apologise for not having the answer here, but the music industry could make better use of their time and resources in finding ways to add value to their products in the same way that DVDs provide a considerably enhanced user experience beyond just watching a film. CDs that include videos and interactive goodies for your computer are a step in the right direction.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Sharing intelectual property is not wrong, it is a win for the whole humanity.
First: I am not talking about intelectual property. I am talking about music that was on a CD which someone bought and then distributed for free to everyone else.
That money goes towards the people that PRODUCED that work of art. They produced that work of art in order to: (1) make money, (2) recoup money spent promoting the artist, (3) pay the artist a little bit. The artist gets promotion. This promotion means that even if they can't make money from the CD, they can have a good chance of drawing a crowd to a live concert, which you also must go pay to see/hear.
No one is saying you can't have access to that "intellectual property" -- you can listen to the song for free on the radio, you can sing the song yourself, you can purchased the CD (a produced version of the art for sale), etc.
The CD is not the music, it is the music produced into a specific work that is for sale. Distributing the contents of the CD for free is illegal and immoral.
Would you like to live in a world without art at all, or where you do not have the right to see, hear, feel art?
This has nothing to do with my position on this. The art is still out there for you to see and hear. Why does it need to be completely free? Do you want the artist to produce more work? Well, he needs to make money. Hence he performs work for hire.
Shakespeare wrote his plays for money. Most artists create their works to make money. Face facts. Read some history. Do you think Van Gogh painted Starry Night and gave it away for you to look at? No, he sold it (not for much), and that got sold again and again until he died and the work became more appreciated and the price increased, and then the current owner licensed reproductions of it, and on and on.
It's ALL about money. People need money to survive, even artists.
If you would like to dedicate your life to creating completely free art, be my guest. However, you do not have the right to force that viewpoint on every other artist that wishes to make money doing what they love.
Businesses are supposed to provide services rather than just set themselves up as toll collectors. In this era of new distribution technology, exactly what services are the record producers providing for us?
a) screening of new talent? We can do this ourselves over the web by popular demand better than they can.
b) producing new recordings? This is a legitimate service but it not worth the $16 per CD that is the going rate.
c) distributing music? Napster, Kazaa, Limewire, Xnap, et. al. have proven that they do a much better job of this than the record companies can do.
The record companies need to look in the mirror and ask themselves what is their reason for even existing any longer. If they can't think of some and build a business model on them, they had better make plans to depart the business because they will not be able to collect their tolls for very much longer now that the internet is here.
I said nothing of the sort! I said there's no proof illegal file sharing is responsible for the decline in music sales. I also said there were other factors at work that likely have a larger and more verifiable affect on music sales than file sharing.
I am aware of studies purporting to demonstrate file sharing increases music sales. For example, Report: File Sharing Boosts Music Sales from July 21, 2000, which references a Jupiter Communications report with such quotes as "Napster usage is one of the strongest determinants of increased music buying," and "the SoundScan study shows that music sales dropped off before Napster launched and does not take into account the shift from brick-and-mortar music stores to online CD sales." What the??!!?? That kinda supports what I was saying. Good thing I can link to a supporting reference.
And then there is CD sales fall despite drop in downloads from October 07, 2003. Huh? The fight against file sharing was supposed to help music sales. But if less downloads doesn't equal more sales, maybe more downloads doesn't equal less sales. My mind has been blown!
News.news.com.com has Study: File sharing boosts music sales from May 3, 2002 which has numbers from different sources supporting both sides. Maybe the issue isn't as clear as more download==less sales. Seems there isn't much solid support for your assertions or your gratuitous use of ALL CAPS and Bold and BOLD ALL CAPS. (I'm kidding with you now. Can you tell?)
Here's the part where I do something you'll never see from the jokers at the RIAA...admit I was wrong. I did a little more research, and it seems my numbers on sales for the last few years where a little off.
Of course, that does not change the framework of the discussion or go to refute any of the heart of my comment. Correlation does not prove causation. File sharing on the internet started to get big about 3 years ago. Music sales started to drop about 3 years ago. The economy went into the tank about 3 years ago. The stock market hit a peak and started a downward spiral about 3 years ago. My neice was born about 3 years ago. A lot of thinks happened about 3 years ago. That does not show any cause-and-effect.
I stand by my claim, there is no proof, no evidence file sharing is responsible for the drop in music sales. I'm not saying that isn't the case; I'm saying the RIAA hasn't proved it is the case.
But wait! Perhaps I was wrong, but not in the way you suppose. RIAA piracy arguments, figures just don't add up from April 20, 2003 has a couple things to say on the issue. It seems the SoundScan numbers for music sales dropped for the first time in 2001. (SoundScan started tracking sales in 1991.) But the RIAA numbers show sales dropped in 1997. What gives? Well, SoundScan does not poll all retails and sources of legal music trade. The RIAA does not represent all artists and music publishers. So I guess the question is moot. Before we can discuss causes for a drop in music sales, we'd have to establish such a drop has indeed happened. Not only are the various industry groups highly suspect as dependable sources of information, but they don't agree with each other.
The sales figures for 2002 from SoundScan and RIAA differ by 20%. The drop in music sales was less than 10%. It's noise. It's reporting error. The pro-file sharing lobby is playing nice by accepting the premise that music sales have gone down. I a
You would pay for insurance against being sued for sharing the files, but you won't pay for the files.
Makes sense.
It is very close to the Ford case.
SCO UNIX is extremely expensive. Linux is not. SCO is making bluster about suing people who use Linux (except those who buy a "licence" from SCO and stay away from the source code).
Public opinion turned against the old style car manufacturers because they sued customers of Ford. Many of those people would not have been customers of the old style car manufacturers because those manufacturers had prices that were too high.
Likewise many Linux users would not have used SCO UNIX anyway.
Your comparison from book pricing to CD pricing glosses over several important details. First of all, movies have a theatrical window, a video window, a pay-per-view window, a premium-cable window, a basic-cable window, and broadcast TV. Many movies have already recouped during the theatrical window. Likewise, books have a hardcover window before they hit paperback. Second, with books, you don't have two separate works from two separate authors to license under two separate contracts, unlike with CDs where the songwriter and the artist both get cuts. Finally, what many listeners really want (a custom mix CD with singles by several artists) has to be shipped to each individual customer, rather than in bulk from a warehouse to a store.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Excellent quote and article. While nothing seems yet to exist to prevent passage of bad laws, nothing exposes it more quickly as a bad law than a big, well-funded bully using it.
Previous examples include the raft of anti-SLAPP suit legislation.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Well, duh! How much innovation is spent on making more expensive and harder to use products?
Windows doesn't count.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The only way the defendants in the recent RIAA vs. Joe Schmo cases have any legal standing is if they downloaded _NON-RIAA_ "covered" music. In the Ford analogy, the NON-RIAA music is analogous to the Model-T and the RIAA music (which is just about anything most people are interested in) is analogous to the Seldon Patent cars.
I'm personally sorry about the state of things, but that's just the way it is right now. What we need are more flexible labels _interested_ in working with new media such as freely downloadable music. My personal best suggestion is that artists make themselves more accessible by signing with such labels and touring like they've been... and making money! I'll bet that most Slash readers would be more than happy to buy a CD from a concert KNOWING that he or she was SUPPORTING their favorite artists, rather than through FYE or wherever. But that's just my 0.02
-Robert
Wrong. They are BS when they are continually extended into perpetuity.
People more often break laws they feel are unfair. People are also the force that changes laws for the same reason.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I don't want the CD's -- just the music. The CD's can stay in the store since I'm not stealing them.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
When you say 'RIAA' or 'Record Label', who here thinks of the pigs in animal farm sitting in a sky-scraper office snorting coke? Now thats a bad image, the problem is that they dont care, why should they? Most people don't know or care who the RIAA is or what label signs what artist, they just go and buy their CDs. The label is a tiny little logo on the case. Even free-range eggs get more consumer attention. If people were made more aware of what labels were doing what and sold what then they would be more answerable to their actions. Labels dont matter, artists matter. With most other goods, the company behind them matters allot, people recognise and favour brands with food, airlines, isp's, mobiles, most electronics, cars, and clothes. Thats why skoda actually had to bother to improve their image or no-one would buy their cars. If people cared about record labels' reputations and what they did you would hear conversations like
"hey yo, you got the new 50 cent album man?"
"dude no way! im not gettin no BMG record! all their stuff is shit and u see what they did to that little girl?"
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Anyone who thinks their Gnutella client is safe from the RIAA is living in Fantasyland [tm of the Disney corporation and copyrighted forever]. KaZaA is the first, but in no sense the last or only P2P network whose users the RIAA plans to sue. And they've already collected the information about big users on other networks.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Especially appropriate for a company that once marketed a computer that had no high-speed registers.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
nuff said.
Which just goes to prove the old axiom, "Those who don't know the past are doomed to repeat it."
If you steal a CD produced by someone, that is theft. It is a tangable object and once you have stollen it, then that same object cannot be sold to someone else.
Copying a song so that you have a copy and the original person has their original back is not theft. It is copyright infringement. The person still has the original that they can sell or keep. copyright infringement is not theft. If it were theft, then it wouldn't be called copyright infringement.
A song is an intangable thing, someone making a copy of a song you have performed does not stop you from performing that song. It does not render you speechless, neither does it take away whatever ablity you have to play an instrument. Copyright infringement is also no piracy. Piracy is theft, murder and rape on the high seas.
An Example:
If someone shoplifts a CD, that is one less CD the store can sell. This is called theft.
If you make a copy of a CD from a friend and give the CD back afterwards, this is not theft.
There is no such thing as Intellectual property under US law.
There are legal monopolies granted for distribution of either a work of art (copyright) or for a single instance of an idea (patent). The duration for patents is about 20 years, the current duration for copyright is effectively forever at this point, because you and I will be dead before anything ever enters public domain again. And a patent is not a monopoly on an idea... it is a monopoly on a single istance of an idea. Therefore you cannot patent "Chairs" but you can patent a particular "kind" of chair and then only you would be allowed to sell that kind of chair.
Let's face it, we are not stealing from artists because most of the time they end up owing money to their record companies for producing records. We are just cutting out the middle man and directly enjoying our favorite bands.
Bands make money on tour, and what is the best way to get fans excited about seeing their favorite band on tour? That is right, free mp3's! That is why so many bands are putting their own albums out as mp3's on their own web site and getting a bunch of flack from their own record labels for doing so.
One thing that pisses me off are EULA's, which I always state verbally that I disagree with as I ask a third party to come and press the button without looking at the screen... I don't know, the software was just installed on my computer. I certainly didn't click I agree to anything. In fact I strongly disagree with any conditions being applied after the sale was completed. The doctrine of first sale clearly prohibits any such agreements from being binding. I certainly didn't sign a contract before they took my money.
And the last thing that I hate is the DMCA which made me a criminal when I circumvented a copy protection device in order to play DVD's on my Linux box. DVD's which I bought and which I own. But I am a criminal for watching them on my platform of choice. Fuck the DMCA.
My understanding is that Discover Card has a habit of eventually suing its own customers who are behind on their payments even if the customers are actively offering alternative arrangements. This happens after they've given the customer several months to pay, but they don't offer flexible or partial payment schedules, and they then turn the account over to an attorney. It doesn't matter if you've been in contact with them each month after you stop paying and have proactively offered partial payment before an action takes place. They'll take all or nothing. And then their lawyers are worse, threatening to sue to garnish wages.
;)
And don't even bother with their CreditSafe insurance; that's from another company who even the Discover Card staff have nothing but contempt for. They'll require proof of disability or unemployment for every single month that you apply. As if you can prove the negative, just like that.
This is based on my own experience as well as reports from others who have seen lots of lawsuits in the newspapers filed on behalf of Discover Card toward their own customers.
In my opinion, this is very much similar to the RIAA situation in that we are dealing with a customer base comprised of a lot of pathological deadbeats but also many who are upstanding but merely temporarily down on their luck. The company doesn't care if you've clearly authenticated yourself as a non-deadbeat by faithfully buying plenty of their services for years, then indicating that they're willing to meet you halfway. Yet they treat us all like deadbeats by default if we don't follow their narrow, rigid formula.
I'd say they're out of touch with the very fabric of society, business principles, and basic ethics, in an extremely myopic and exaggerated form of short term self preservation. And it doesn't even work, at that!
Of course there are exceptions to my point and almost any other point; don't bother me with minutiae
There was an antitrust suit. NCR lost at trial.
-
On February 13, 1913, a jury convicted
Patterson and 28 of the 29 executives (excepting the shadowy Park,who had left the company's
employ) were convicted.Patterson was sentenced to one year in jail and a $5,000 fine. Other
executives received lesser sentences,but many,including Thomas J.Watson, were sentenced
to three months in jail.
After an appeal, the jail sentences were overturned, but NCR was subjected to some restrictions on their tactics, and other companies entered the field. NCR remained the dominant player in cash registers for most of a century.This is more like Microsoft than SCO.
John Williams sounds *GREAT*...even at telephone audio quality! Luveno (575425) told of encoding his cd collection at higher and higher bitrates for better sound. Here are my results from just one track using Ogg Vorbis: The 1960's: The Turbulent Years - John Williams - Nixon Soundtrack (1995) 1) 'Telephone' quality length : 5:03 average bitrate : 9 kbps file size : 377,520 bytes nominal bitrate : 8 kbps channels : 1 sampling rate: 8000 Hz 2) 'Near CD' quality length : 5:03 average bitrate : 405 kbps file size : 15,401,018 bytes nominal bitrate : 499 kbps channels : 2 sampling rate: 44100 Hz 3) The wave file itself from the CD 53,449,244 bytes (computed from a 5:03 run time and includes 44 bytes for the wave file header. a full-quality .RKA version of this file would likely be around 26-27MB)
Simonetta (207550) suggested an 'eBay' model that forces certain individual to wait to get their music after they pay for it.
May I suggest the following model where customers buy only the tracks they want at the quality they want and get their music at the point of purchase
as Simonetta mentioned above.
Using the Nixon soundtrack as an example
and assuming it costs $20.00, consider these prices....
The 1960's: The Turbulent Years - John Williams - Nixon Soundtrack (1995)
1. The 1960's: The Turbulent Years (5:01)
2. Main Title... The White House Gate (4:15)
3. Growing up in Whittier (2:40)
4. The Ellsberg Break-in and Watergate (2:40)
5. Love Field: Dallas, November 1963 (4:51)
6. Losing a Brother (3:17)
7. The Battle Hymn of the Republic (1:03)
8. Making a Comeback (2:20)
9. Track 2 and the Bay of Pigs (4:46)
10. The Miami Convention, 1968 (3:18)
11. The Meeting with Mao (3:09)
12. "I Am That Sacrifice" (4:49)
13. The Farewell Scene (5:00)
Total Time: 47:23
(track list above from the Filmtracks website)
(compressed) Wave file - $1.59 per track
(download/burn lossles .rka or .shn to save space. If the wav files are uncompressed, a real 'mix cd' could be made)
'Near CD' ogg file - $0.79 per track
(download/burn)
'Telephone quality' ogg file - $0.39 per track
(download/burn)
'Telephone quality' ogg preview - $0.19 per track
(listen on [customer's/store's] headphones to the full track with a 'cancel playback' button with no refund.)
CDR fee - $2.00 (probably should be $5.00 - see further down below to see why.)
The $1.59 is actually a value between $1.53 and $1.54 but is rounded up in 'retail style'. The other prices are structured and rounded in a '50% off' manner. The $1.59 price is about 1/13 of $20.00 This rationale can be extended to more expensive multi-CD titles.
This way, a customer could do the following:
Preview track 1 (the best) for $0.19.
Preview the whole CD for $2.47
Pay $0.39 - $1.59 for a copy of track 1 only.
Pay $2.47 - $20.67 for the whole thing.
The preview option could also be used by individual's seeking the best performance and/or recording of a widely recorded work such as Gustav Holst's The Planets. In the case of movie soundtracks...only the original one will do from the purist's standpoint.
To speed up the process for the 'tech savvy', the customers could bring their laptops and network to the store computer and download their purchases as computer files. This way the media is paid for and a CD is burned by the customer later if they want to.
Of course, if the above is done through the internet by the record companies in an 'iTunes' fashion, there would be no need for storefronts to sell their products. The money paid to create and ship physical CDs to stores would become additional profit for the record companies.
Another thing the RIAA labels could do would be to simply FLOOD P2P networks with 'decoy' MP3s consisting of the 'telephone quality' versions of tracks repeated 15 to 20 times. This way, the hardcore freeloaders are discouraged from downloading while everyone else looks on it as a free sample to try before they buy the CD in a store.